The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => General Chat => Topic started by: Jo'ou Ranbu on December 31, 2010, 04:38:49 PM
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See title, wait 'til 2011 to post I guess? I just like making up thread titles.
SaGa Frontier - Iunno. Asellus quest, lesbian harem edition with Asellus/WR/Emelia as my PCs as of now.
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Defense Grid- Game got much tougher in the past few maps. I won the last couple of maps due to pathing fuckery with deleting towers and putting them back in. So, so much hate for fast boss units- Crashers are a joke on the other hand. That speed makes their effective durability a joke.
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Lufia 2: More gift mode fun, party is Maxim/Tia/Selan/Dekar. It's fun to go down and kick the hell out of everything.
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Grim Grimoire: Week 5 day 2, faceoff against the Overpowered Idiot and Advocat.
Really really enjoying the plot and Lillet Blan aka Lily White aka Herald Of Motherfucking Spring, Yo! trashing just about everything she crosses and losing only due to bells and plot conveniences.
Will have a far more extensive commentary when I'm done, but... yeah. Lillet.
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SRWJ: Murdering everything with Shining Gundam and the Choudenji brothers, which says a lot about just how capable enemies are in this game.
Also, they've been teasing the Combattler/Voltes upgrade for approximately five years now, hopefully it happens soon and they can shut up.
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Oh right I'm actually playing games that people here are interested in instead of repeatedly playing Civ 4 or something.
Koudelka:
Grabbed this on a whim, completed in three days or so, which is pretty long for Koudelka.
Interesting game. The battle system catches too much flak as actively bad, though I respect the comments that it gets in the way; The battle system is oddly slow, mostly.
The game's very easy and the hard parts are completely breakable-and I mean completely breakable-with stackable speed down in a CTB system. Gargoyle thanks for the sword but you were the worst overkill OHKOing boss ever in practice.
Weapons aren't really an issue...except that I'm pretty sure drop rates are tied to luck and it's one of the few things the game doesn't tell you about how stats function. Fortunately if you're meticulous about searching areas(or FAQing) there's way too many guns/bullets for everyone. There's like seven and hundreds of bullets in a short game.
Armor would be an issue but enemies suck enough so that you can go through without armor.
Still, it's a woefully basic and boring system that basically shows you how it works from the first battle, so it's kinda dull.
Flipside, the plot is simple but entirely about character development and interesting base characters, and considering the game's 5 hours long if you bullrush it and mostly plot if you do said bullrush, that's more development than most games get in 40 hours. The plot it's self is almost entirely a vehicle for interesting conversations. I don't know if I entirely like that; It feels like an interesting plot was possible too, instead of mystery mystery mystery solved in last hour! go get 'em. But I can't say it's a bad plot, and the character work was really excellent.
6/10, 7/10 game? The game has one excellent point and a really dull battle system. If you can handle a GB download(or, haha, *find* the game.) it's worth playing.
Puzzle Quest: Completed.
Burial->Flaming Skulls->Berserk Rage converts all coins, skulls, blue gems, red gems and green gems into skulls for a modest mana cost and triggers tons of 4/5 matches for my +6 Mana on 4/5 to keep me fueled up with.
I crashed the game twice using this combo, saw horrible text and graphics glitching during battles, staticy screen flicker, all the likes of which I never saw any other time.
I made the game suffer.
Half-Life 2:
argh city
I like you game come on stop tossing retarded snipers at me.
Seriously.
Please.
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Your own fault for playing FPSes - *shot.*
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(http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/3051/srwjsosuke1.png) (http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/323/srwjsosuke2.png) (http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/6838/srwjsosuke3.png)
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defense grid: fuck that final map. Just fuck it *SO* much. I had a blast with the game. It's a short DLC type of game (10ish maps). Lots of thought and effort are put into the maps, though weapon balance could've been better. It only really mattered on the last few, where they start throwing the fucking fast bosses at you and augh
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(http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/3051/srwjsosuke1.png) (http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/323/srwjsosuke2.png) (http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/6838/srwjsosuke3.png)
Sosuke Sagara. Just that pro.
Right, playing stuff.
SRWJ - I has an upgraded original. Also unbalance.
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FFX-2: Replayed, finally giving this game the 2nd chance I felt it deserved, which took a damn long time since I started it. I can't remember WHEN I started it actually, but I finished it before the New Year, that's gotta count for something!
...I missed the good ending cause of the "Press X rihgt at the end!" BS. Not sure if I'll bother refighting the final for that, I highly doubt its worth it.
Anyway, thoughts after this replay?
NOTE: A LOT OF THIS IS WELL KNOWN, and its me reflecting as a second look at it.
Well, first off, I should note I didn't rush the game til Chap 5, at which point I felt doing extra stuff was kind of just wasting time. Unlike my first playthrough, I didn't feel underpowered against anything I fought (I often relied on Floral Fallal and such, to get through)...but quite the opposite, I felt too strong. I ended the game at level 50~ this time around, with 66% of the game done.
The end result is...the game is annoying if you don't do side quests, and trivially easy if you do. Dark KNight + Alchemist combo is an auto-win in so many cases. I'm sure optional bosses will have a say otherwise, but they're optional super bosses; they don't count! As a result, the game went from "annoying" to "dull." The battle system had potential, but in the end, it all goes to waste. Its not that enemies don't challenge you so much as you don't have a reason to care about synergy. You spam good stuff, you win.
After replaying the game, I can definitely say its below average. It is flawed, and kind of fails on that "Fun" factor. I look at the game and question HOW it could have failed on it; it had all the tools it needed and used them. A remotely interesting battle system, unique use of jobs, a strong setting it builds upon, good characters from FF10...
Then I remember something constantly said about games in the past:
"Their heart was in the right place, but they didn't think things through entirely."
This was said about FF2 and VPDS as two games I can think of. And its true; you look at these games, and you can definitely see what they were trying at, and it shows some degree of willingness and ambition...just the game wasn't put together appropriately for whatever reason.
FFX-2...I feel is the total opposite. Here, they had the ideas, the concept, everything needed to make at least a decent game...but they didn't have any sort of love or effort for it. They just viewed this as a cheap attempt to make money, and did mnimalist work, then said "Wait, that's not gonna work, we need something to hook the fans!", so they removed half of Yuna's clothing, and 80% of Rikku's, then made the game all about skantily dressed girls playing dress up, and called it a day.
It really shows little respect for FF10. Ok, its not quite as bad as, say, DIrge of Cerberus, which jackhammers things that just don't fit in with FF7, openly contradict stuff that happened in FF7, what have you, but its still pretty bad in this regard. Yes, you're in Spira, that's clear, and yes, you're playing as Yuna, 2 years later. They did show an appropriate style of the setting...but that's about where it ends.
Yuna and Rikku have not even half the quality of their characters they had in the first game. Yuna's often acting out of character; I don't buy the "Tidus rubbed off on her!" thing, cause Yuna had a strong self image in FF10, even if Tidus influenced her, she wouldn't act the way she did in FFX-2. I'm sorry, but that was forcing out character traits in Yuna to make her an ADVENTUROUS GUNGHO FEMALE!!! when she clearly was NOT that. Rikku...they lowered her IQ by 20, and removed the two important factors of her character from FF10: Tidus and Wakka. Her interaction with those two are what made Rikku actually likable and fun in FF10...but here, she comes off as a Moronic Genki who you want to strangle every other scene, basically existing just to contrast Paine, whose "Female Squall" (this isn't even an exaggeration; they openly stated they wanted Paine being a female Squall.) Right there, we have a weak dynamic of 3 females, who are the only primary characters. Toss in a HORRIBLE character to be "Charlie" in this Charlie's Angels RPG, "Mr. Generic McGeneric" as your pilot, and a wise ass kid, and well shucks, WE HAVE AN AWESOME TEAM FOR THE CELSIUS!
Now, the game didn't need to be as good on writing or characters as FF10; that's a tall order to ask for. But it didn't even achieve a fraction of that. At very least, I would hope the characters were in character, and reflected their original selves well enough...but no, they felt like they were written by a fanfic here. I suppose Wakka and Lulu were in character, but they have so few scenes, there isn't much time TO screw them up, and they should be happy about that.
Next off, the battle system...I covered it mostly before. The game has all the tools needed, but it just kind of implements them by saying "they're there." You never feel a need to really LEARN the battle system; you could totally ignore the ability to change jobs mid battle, and just treat it like FF3, and the game would be unchanged. I know its not fair, being a game that came out years later, but FF13 is a contrast here; the game made you LEARN its battle system, and how to make use of Paradigm shifts. The system was there and you used it. How much...depends on your playing style. BUt stuff in FFX-2 like chains felt more trouble than they were worth to use, so you just take advantage of them by accident ("Oh hey, I happened to time that right, yay!"), and the impact isn't as big as you'd like.
There's a few other things that point out that this game didn't really care about truly being a sequel to FF10, but rather, just being a cheap cash-in with FF10 slapped on to swarm a bunch of fans in. A big one is, for example, the music.
Remember how I brought up VPDS having "Heart" but poor implementation? Well look at the game. Yeah, a lot of the game reuses VP1 music...but honestly, that was part of its charm. The VP1 music made you go "Yeah...this game is VP" even if it didn't look it. It kept VP's style, at least, just lacked its quality. And the music that was new was at least similarly styled as the old ones, so they fit in.
FFX-2 didn't seem to use a single theme from FF10. Now, FF10 wasn't the GREATEST OST OF ALL TIME, but it had its fair share of damn memorable songs. FFX-2...has one of the worst OSTs in the series. The pure J-pop style is atrocious, and just further gets the point across "THIS IS PURE FANSERVICE. LOVE IT CAUSE YOU PLAY AS HOT HALF NAKED WOMEN!" Oh sure, there was...a brief instance of the Chocobo theme in there. I will give Eternity credit...but Eternity was one of the few songs that felt like it had the FF10 style of music, and strayed away from that super upbeat J-pop style. And I guess Zanarkand Ruins was catchy and a nice background piece.
But was it too much to ask for to, say, have one of FF10's two major themes in there? Most notably, the melody used in "Somewhere the Dream Will End" since that song IS Yuna's theme, in effect, you'd think a game about Yuna would have that song play in some manner. Its completely absent though.
The game tried to reference FF10, but it was cheap ways of "Oh 2 years ago, you did this!" and what not. Very little about actually building off the themes FF10 had, tossing in genuine cute easter eggs FF10 had, etc.
For a "spin off" game that got both Heart and Mind right? Crisis Core. Ok, on paper, game doesn't sound too special, but its executed about as well as that idea can be, and the game doesn't try to be more than it is, just tries to use what's there to its potential. At the same time, it certainly shows it wants to incorporate FF7 into it, rather than distance itself like Dirge of Cerberus did, or "Wants to ignore it but can't" the way FFX-2 did. The game is filled with references to FF7 either easter eggs like Carpenter of the 7th Heaven, or genuine plot link ups, like being able to replay all of Nibelheim from Zack's perspective, *AND* seeing it portrayed in an accurate manner (as opposed to being retconed to hell.)
I guess if we were to look at games like puzzles:
Crisis Core was a moderate puzzle, but all the pieces were in place, and it was finished; as a result, we get a decent picture.
Valkyrie Profile DS was a puzzle of 40 pieces meant to be done by a 5 year old, and it was finished...so we get a cheap, cartoon drawing of fluffy bunnies and happy squirrels, which is fine, except its being marketted towards a much higher age group.
FFX-2 had a complicated puzzle, which would have had a brilliant picture...if it was finished. BUt they bothered to only get the border done, and work maybe an extra layer from the border, then said "Yeah, that's enough, its just faster to leave it that way!"
Dirge of Cerberus is a puzzle that they spilled all the pieces out, found 2 that fit together, then walked away, going "Yeah, no one will notice this isn't finished. PEOPLE WILL BUY IT ANYWAY!", having NO FUCKING CLUE what it actually looks like when its done.
...yeah, FFX-2 still retains its 4/10 rating or whatever it has. I don't HATE the game, but man is it subpar. As I said, it had all the tools needed to make a genuinely strong game, but decided FANSERVICE had to be its number 1 factor, and everything else suffered strongly as a result.
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Bought Castle Crashers since it was on sale and also picked up Scott Pilgrim since I was burning Xbox zenny.
Castle Crashers is so frickin hilarious. I think I almost passed out laughing on the poop forest level.
Level 17 green knight specializing in POIZN because Meeple is my idol.
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SRWJ: Playing the English trans, of course. Up through stage 12.
Took Archangel route at 11, so stage 12 was a slog. Radam! Then, more Radam + Dagger! Then, ZAFT! Suddenly, MORE ZAFT! Oi. Blade got a massive workout this level, as did the Archangel itself. Neither as much as Granteed, but that's only to be expected.
Unit thoughts thus far:
Granteed - The prefered method of suicide for Lizards, Radam and ZAFT alike, with somwhere around a 90% customer satisfaction rating(sadly even this silly mech fails to OHKO sometimes). Went with Festenia, since offense and Xer said he thought she picked up Valor eventually. Also, renamed O Slave to Care Bear Stare. It just seemed appropriate.
Mazinger Z - Some enemy units prefer a more vintage brand of suicide, which is where Koji Kabuto and his Mazinger come in. Not quite as efficient as Calvina, but he's always happy to finish things off on his turn, or contract out the final touches to his exp starved allies. At least until MazinPower kicks in, then he starts handing out the OHKOs too.
Layzner - My go to guy for accelling ahead of the crowd, evade whoring and countering to soften folks up. He gets as many battles as Mazinger and Granteed, easily. Just less kills. Looking forward to the upgrade.
Strike Gundam - Tend to stick with the Aile frame, and use him basically in the same capacity I do the Layzner. Gets the job done.
Tekkaman Blade - See the above two, only this time with actual killing power. IIRC he lacks accel, which is why he sees a bit less action, but that's the only reason.
And that's my top 5, roughly in order. Combattler used to see alot of use, but when Strike Gundam and Tekkaman Blade came along he fell off a bit. Which is fine, still an early game hero so I can respect it. The battleships are both great, of course. Just a matter of getting things into range. And...I like the Aestivalis, at least the chicks, since the formation attacks are fun. But limited range + requires alot of will to get those good moves and not very good before the will comes in = meh.
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Festenia does NOT get Valor - none of the subpilots do. Xer probably got the always-critical spirit (Fury in this patch) mixed up with it.
You can see a full list of each subpilot's spirits and when they get them on this site - just click on the different tabs: http://ikusagami.info/srwj/?section=original&sub=partners&focus=tenia
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Shit, really? It's been ages. Always-crit is still good though.
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Festenia is the best subpilot for offense-geared Super-types anyway, so it's no big loss.
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I personally prefer Melua, because Granteed needs movement more than it needs extra firepower (5 base move will do that). Although it's less of an issue if you have Touya as the pilot, as you can compensate somewhat by using Accel more.
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Honestly, Accel is more important than +1 Move (although Melua+Touya = 9 move whee). But when Gate's using Calvina to begin with... well, he can always slap range/move boosters on the Granteed.
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Melua also gives +300 armor, which makes Granteed the best tank you've got in the early game by a solid margin. That said, fixing the movement issue isn't the most difficult thing in the world, given that the game throws parts at you like candy.
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DKCR: Friend and I played through the rest of stage 6 from where my sister and I stopped. We lost 50 lives in the course of 3 levels. This is incredibly impressive considering that both of us are DKC veterans having played DKC and DKC2 to death. Stage 6 levels are quite a thing.
Rollercoaster Tycoon: One of those fun popcorn games. Never ever finished it (waaaaaaaaaaay too many scenarios), but its a fun way to kill time.
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/me drops SRWJ on Tide for the lul.
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As an aside, Festina also gets the version of Infinity Caliber that most closely approximates Sanger. So that's another point in her favor.
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Finished up Puzzle Quest and Defense Grid, now making my way over to Serious Sam. It's been pretty entertaining so far.
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I'll continue the Castle Crashers Write Up when I refresh myself on the order of levels. Don't worry, I still have memories of hilarious stuff that happened!
That said...
Final Fight: Beat with Guy and Cody thus far. Dunno when I'll do Mike FUCKING Haggar. Yeah, I'm just going in order of character select screen; that's the only reason one should do Haggar last <_< >_>
Magic Sword: Mandy wanted to see this so I played like 7 floors up. Not much to say, other than its obviously meant to be a quarter muncher.
In looking at the Final Fight Vault, I noticed an interesting thing for Stage 6's Vault. "Final Fight the Movie"...I figured it was just concept art of it or somtehing, so hey why-...
*Street Fighter the Animated Series opening kicks in*
...OH DEAR GOD! MUST TURN OF-...
Mandy: Ooh! I want to watch this! *giggles*
...and so she did. I warned her, I really did :(
after that, I played some SSF4. Finally fought and beat Gouken by cheesily just playing Easiest, one round, using Ken (cause he has an Ultra that doesn't conflict with his Specials, and the Ultra is actually good)...not that it gets you much.
I also replayed normally as Juri just for shits. I...can safely say I'm getting better at the game, but also, I feel confident that yes, I will plan on using her as one of my mains.
Which is hilarious cause she was definitely a character I wanted to STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM based off the trailers and such, cause I despised her design (I've warmed up to it a bit; now its tolerable, if still kind of meh), and her fighting seemed like a huge "no" to me...go figure, she ended up playing to most of my tastes despite appearing to play completely unlike them.
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Heh, still working my way through the cast and haven't picked a main yet. So far I'm pretty smooth with Abel and I really like the way Sakura plays. Too bad she takes hit like a Japanese schoolgirl.
Those of you with DQ9 that plan on doing any alchemy whatsoever, make sure you log into DQVC every day this week. Excellent stuff on sale this week, notably Sainted Somas and half-price Chronocrystals.
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Castlevania Judgement: YESZ. Picked this up because it was cheaper for me to get other games with this than without (yay offers!) Spent most of the day watching other people play it, although also took some shots at it myself. Not as hideously broken as I thought it'd be, although it's unbalanced as hell. Dracula is hilarious, Maria is nuts with wave spam and Death is sickeningly good.
Friends have been unlocking random shit, and we managed to beat Time Reaper with both Death and Aeon. Actually not a terrible game, methinks. :P
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SRWJ - Yurika using Naze Nani Nadesico to explain the plot of Brain Powered: Instant, total win.
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SRWJ - Yurika using Naze Nani Nadesico to explain the plot of Brain Powered: Instant, total win.
Damnit I'm trying to play new games stop trying to get me to replay J for a sixth time.
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AI2- Went from Chapter 12 to Chapter 18 yesterday in an attempt to marathon finish before the New Year. It failed. I can't even recall most of the events that transpired due to apathy, except the latest twist about Fee. Oh well.
The world needs more Naze Nani Nadesico. Which also apparantly needs Miss Versange.
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Heh, still working my way through the cast and haven't picked a main yet. So far I'm pretty smooth with Abel and I really like the way Sakura plays. Too bad she takes hit like a Japanese schoolgirl.
Haha, Cap you play the same folks I do. Awesome.
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Started up Fire emblem Sacred stones which I got for 8 pounds and as it usually goes for 20 it was a bargain. Game is actually pretty good and better then shadow dragon in like every way from what I see. Is Seth worth using? I know this is the FE where you can grind but I just want to know if he turns out like Titania or Jagen is all.
Moving post in the old thread here. No real reason as I doubt anyone cares but just in case.
Project zero 3 - Beat. Overall I don't know where I stand on it as on one hand it has better combat then the first one even if it was very hard at first. No really its hard because unlike the first game the enemies tend to sway about and as the attack a lot faster it means you somehow miss a point-blank head shot. I then found you could completely negate these enemies new advantage by just backing away from them while aiming as this causes them to miss their first strike (All enemies have either a 2 or 3 hit combo so its still risky if you're not quick enough).
Story is worse then the first I find but that might be because it splits the story up in to pieces and you really don't find out the reason for the hellish place until right before the final boss fight. The reason is also near exact what the one in the first game is. Shrine maiden is part of a family who does some fucked up shit to seal hell/the rift/VOID and one part of her training is all her earthly attachments must be broken but then even though its forbidden some guy comes along and him and the girl fall in love. On the day of the ritual he sneaks in and promises to get her out before the head of the house sneaks up behind him and kills him (How did the guy not notice some massive dude with a meat cleaver in the closed room?). This causes the girl to unleash hell itself upon the house/village.
Yeah I personally have always wondered what the hell these heads of the houses are thinking when they do this. Yeah rules have been broken but is provoking a girl you horribly killed to seal hell a good idea? At least it wasn't all that bad in the first one at least as everyone is only dead due to the head of the house going insane due the rules being broken because as everyone knows. Break a rule and EVERYONE FUCKING DIES! The one in the third isn't the reason for the deaths and she (I believe its a women, its hard to tell) gets fucks up as well by the shrine maiden.
Characters now:
Rei:
Plotwise: Those are some blinging tattoos she gets but beyond that I didn't like her too much mostly due to how uninteresting everything is to her outside her crying over her boyfriend moments. Theres like one time she gets a call from a ghost who says something like "No one will survive, I'll kill you" and whats Rei's reaction? Put the phone down and pretend it never happened.
Game-play: Balanced in all areas except range which she is best in and the character you use the most. Her added range means she combos a lot easier and hits things easier in general. Her damage is only half Miku's but half of Mku's damage is still pretty good. Her special power flash is rubbish as it only works on things you can easily kill anyway.
Miku:
Plotwise: Is Dissidia cloud or something. Why is she going on about shit she has already gotten over in the first game? Also I love how randomly for no reason she survives in the end even though their is no possible way she could have survived. Even the writers in the end basically put their hands in the air and go she just survived, we won't say how she just does okay.
Gameplay: Game worse range means she has a harder time hitting things....NOT! because her special power slows down time which allows her to easily rape stuff up the arse with her massive damage (Its twice Rei's!). Her biggest downfall is game worse hp but really thats all? With overkill damage, a slow down move its not such a downside as everything just gets curb stomped.
Kei:
Plotwise: His Niece can handle herself but you can't blame the guy for trying. As a man in this universe it means he is greatly handicapped. Seriously the only advantage men have is that they have more hp and can move heavy items because as the game says "Only a man could move this chest" because with being a man comes the ability to move heavy stuff. Anyway he is an overall nice guy but he has very little presence as you play as him the least and you only really meet him at end game (Just before he dies). I like that he came up with the plan to kill the final boss and went to do it because as a man its something only he could do (Because he is a man you see). Sad that the head of the house had already tried it and failed.
Game-play: Game best hp and horrible in all other areas. His damage is a third of Rei's meaning he has truly pathetic damage and his special power is the worst as well. He can hide from shit, big fucking woo.
The final boss:
Plotwise: I liked the whole, driven insane due to having to stare at her lovers cold dead eyes forever but beyond that she is a complete copy cat of the first games final boss.
Gameplay: Her hp isn't massive but due to not leaving herself open very often and the ability to not be comboed means she lasts long. Her damage isn't great but off course as she is the final boss she gets a cheap one hit kill where she zaps you to the void and then OHKOs you if she touchs you. Harder to avoid then it sounds I assure you, and when low on health she spams that shit.
Head of the house:
Plotwise: When the maiden smiled and stuck out her hand due to seeing her lover something should have clued old grandma in. She even looks back and sees nothing and then seems to brush it off as nothing which is an extreamly bad mistake. Maybe not though as she does wait for the guy at the entrance to the VOID so she can kill him RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE MAIDEN! Zahark levels of stupid right there.
Game-play; Looks tough and she has the plot to back it up but is in fact a complete joke. All she does is fly around doing 1 very easily interrupted move. Pathetic.
Hidden face man:
Plotwise: Evil but dedicated to his job. His job entails first building a house with his family and then as the eldest amongst his brothers killing them all and using their souls as pillars for the house to keep it safe. Then he has some 12 sons and passes on his secrets to them so they later can do the same. Evil prick but what he tells you is actually true. He tells you not to open the door as it would unleash the void and he is so dedicated to the job that when all the seals on the door are broken he kills himself and uses himself as a seal.
Game-play: Goodish damage, too bad he is made of wet tissue paper.
The Rope Maiden:
Plotwise: Is the final boss of the first game given form. The final boss is actually dead and all this prick is an imitation.
Game-play: The loss of her strongest attack means she goes from somewhat scary to pathetic in this game.
The Rope Man:
Plotwise: Same deal as the rope maiden except he is from the second game and he isn't the final boss of that game.
Game-play: Man this dude is tough. Quick as lightning giving you little chance to attack him, hard to interrupt, huge hp and massive damage that takes 75% of your hp per attack. He also is one of the few enemies in the game with a projectile even if it isn't very good. Strongest enemy in the game.
8/10 game overall.
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Started up Fire emblem Sacred stones which I got for 8 pounds and as it usually goes for 20 it was a bargain. Game is actually pretty good and better then shadow dragon in like every way from what I see. Is Seth worth using? I know this is the FE where you can grind but I just want to know if he turns out like Titania or Jagen is all.
He's more like Titania, having solid growths to go with the typical Jeigan stuff, so you don't need to be afraid to use him throughout the game. He also gets one of the game's high-end supports with Eirika (two good PCs available from the get-go for a reasonable-length support running off the best affinity combo in the game = toodles).
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Errr what are you talking about Snow? The game has Colm.
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Colm is not the only high-end PC in the game. >_> He does get an Anima+Light support too, but Moulder actually kinda sucks and that support isn't terribly fast. But then, Colm is the one who gets the best support in the game. Gooooooo Neimi.
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FE8 doesn't have other PCs.
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I'll never understand your obsession with him, being a great PC aside. >_>
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Friends have been unlocking random shit, and we managed to beat Time Reaper with both Death and Aeon. Actually not a terrible game, methinks.
...I'm afraid there is something wrong with you, and you should probably seek help!
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The DL played it for a while.
It's not a terrible game.
For a given definition of terrible that would call, say, Clonus: The Parts Horror not terrible because it's so ridiculous.
Edit: Wikipedia says it's Parts: The Clonus Horror. Still, not bad for an MST3k that I watched ages ago.
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Nier- I put together the key I needed. And now it is killing time.
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Grim Grimoire: Okay so rant time!
Plot was damn well pieced together except for the ambiguity!end w/ Lillet Squared and even that closed more plot than it opened so I'll take it. Really, the plot is just neat and well-executed and bow tied and yeah.
General character thoughts:
Lillet 'Queen Of The Morning Star, Dragon Empress And Biggest Badass In The Universe' Blan: Just... just see the nickname. Lillet goes from studious awkward to I WILL KILL YOU WITH DRAGONS AND OWN EVERYTHING IN MY PATH with a remarkable, -believable- ease, and easily gets some of the best moments of the game. Just fucking awesome overall.
Margarita Surpris'ingly Isn't The Lesbian Option' + Surely 'Hypnotoad': Is probably the one major character weak point. How many times did she get told that what she was doing was stupid because she'd -die-? How many times did she do it anyway? Regardless, also sympathetic and understandable.
Amoretta 'Oh, Wait, This Is Why Margarita Isn't The Lesbian Option' Virgine: Well, manages to own the Big Bad twice, but otherwise is kinda just there for Lillet to hit the Lesbian Orgy button for. Which, mind, is hardly a -bad- thing.
Bartido 'Lillet's Beard' Ballentyne: Gets some neat moments when assisting Lillet. Also acts as an excuse for the Lillet Is Not Bisexual/A Lesbian crowd. Poor deluded folks.
Hiram 'Kenji' Menthe: Uh... his nickname says it all. He has nothing else to his personality.
Really the student cast could have used more time but it's understandable why they didn't get it.
Gammel 'I'm Sorry, I'm Supposed To Be Competent?' Dore: Well, the one fight you see him seriously in, he's damn good. Buuuut there's never any ingame proof of this. Granted, you beat the Big Bads by tricking them and thus they could easily just be stronger than Gammeldore, explaining his incompetency, but... Oh. Bonus points mega for BELIEVING LILLET BLAN. CONSISTENTLY.
Advocat: Second-best character in a game, and in a game with Lillet Blan that's -not an insult in any way-. Probably the most important NPC, too, and... he has the plot presence to underline this. A lot of the awesome lines come from him.
This being said, he merits a side note: I was going to hit the DL for what hype I'd seen about him at first, due to the fucking creepy interaction you see between him and Amoretta near the start. This being said the game does damn well at pointing out -there's something else to it- afterward, and managed to de-creep it. So yeah.
Professor 'I'm The Person You Keep Goddamn Fighting, And I Wish My Lovely Lion Were A Zombie' Opalmeria: And yet she's definitely a good guy. What the hell? Anyway, yeah, she's the one that keeps getting into fights with Lillet due to the situation at hand. Her personal plot is... well, it wasn't what I really was expecting! At least it got resolved okay, thanks to Hiram. (Yeah...)
Dr. 'ELLIOT, THE TRUTHINESS IS OUT THERE!' Chartreuse: Not much to say here. He's okay but not imprTRUTHessive; has a single-minded foTRUTHINESScus but isn't a dick outside of it, Opalmeria's just stupid in love. Uh... yeah.
Spoilers 'Become A Great Lesbia- I Mean Magician, Lillet Blan' McSpoilery: A barrel of exposition, also gets a few other lingering questions wrapped up. Really kinda cool to see, and they didn't waste the sprite so.
I'm kinda bitching about everyone here but that isn't my intent; the characters all work together so damn well it's not even funny, and the plot is very solidly done. Gameplay is... gameplay is "Summon two dragons + supporting force, win". I wish I was joking. Dragons, Homunculi (12x Psychic Storm SMAAAASH), and Morning Stars are a solid little core; there's a few other solid units (Unicorns, Demons, Phantoms, Golems) but those three are all you really need, ever (and Morning Stars can be dropped if needed). Fun game to smash through just for awesome plot. Probably an 8 or so?
Oh, right, one final thing: GAMEPLAY AND PLOT SYNTHESIS, THIS GAME ACTUALLY REMOTELY DOES IT. Having the cast acknowledge Lillet is freakishly good after the events of the game start unfolding is awesome to see (as is breaking the latter-game "30 Minutes" missions by killing them all first). Just really refreshing.
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Mass Effect -
Pretty good. Played as an Infiltrator/Commando. Never really ended up using any engineer combat abilities.
Mako sections were great fun.
Galaxy Exploration was very shallow. You're not even collecting most of the things you're able to collect for anyone specifically, yet you get paid for finding them. And the collections are segregated for almost no reason considering that you don't get anything special for 'finishing' them. You would expect some sort of exposition for collecting enough data discs at the very least, but no. Also somewhat bizarre that there are more items to collect in some of the collections than it states there are.
Why are you even bothering to survey resources on-planet considering that the amount there is seemingly too low to be picked up by the ship scanners and probably not worth the effort of extracting. And why do you need to decrypt the on-plant resources to survey them.
Boss of Noveria was somewhat of a pain as the game didn't provide any indication that you wanted to attack the flunkies as opposed to the boss. Especially since the boss went to its second stage as I blew up an explosive container near it, which either took out the remaining first stage flunkies or corresponded with the party members doing so, so I spent several minutes shooting the boss wondering why the health bar wasn't changing.
Then I went over and attacked it physically with the third stage managing to be triggered somehow at the same time again, and ended up flung out of the map somehow. Fortunately for myself I tried attacking the flunkies on my second attempt instead of attempting melee after finding myself unable to get to the second stage and discovered the truth.
Don't understand why the game won't let you save while standing in unmoving elevators and won't even tell you that your being in the elevator is the problem. A number of times I thought that I was in no-save areas because of this.
The story is somewhat disjointed. The part that most stands out is how the characters go from being told that a particular threat is currently dormant and will remain so if you succeed, to them being convinced that they need to be ready to deal with this threat after they've succeeded, with no intermediate steps. The possibility that said threat isn't dormant at all is very possible as it was just a theory but this is never brought up. Romance is even worse as one randomly started with Ashley with no warning or any apparent way in which it was triggered.
Super Robot Wars L -
Pretty good. Top killers were Godannar Tetsuya on 164, Athrun on 90, 'Brella on 89 who I'm not sure I actually killed anything with and just barged his way in when he joined. 326 turns.
I think they went too far with their attempts to make pairing units more desirable than in K. Among other things seems like chain attacks took a ludicrous damage hit.
I'm not sure whether it's just because I hadn't played an SRW in a while, but the friendliness of the enemy AI was terminally overbearing in this title. On the one hand I'm vaguely thankful for not having to reload anywhere near as much as I might have to have had, on the other hand it is facecrushingly depressing to see enemies damage units to low hp and then the enemies next to them ignore the critically-wounded units to attack other ones. Especially egregious when they've critically wounded one member of a pair and then the next enemy attacks the same pair but concentrates attacks on the other member.
Guess now seems like a reasonable time to replay J.
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Yay people liking Grim Grimoire.
Defense Grid- Done. I looked up a video on how to beat the final map, and woah. Other than that, I loved the game. It's a tower defense game that doesn't overstay it's welcome and has pretty creative map and weapon design.
Serious Sam HD- Brutally hard. I'm playing on wimp mode, otherwise I'd be getting owned nonstop. I just got into some suburbs (3rd map? Fourth?). I'm liking the design/feel of the game, though it is a bit overwhelming the way you get hit constantly from three or four directions.
Victoria: Revolutions- I do decently at HoI, but this game makes me just grab my head in pain. My god. Interesting concept, though!
I'm burning through various Steam games I bought in the sale. Mirror's Edge, EU3 and PQ2 are also on the list of games to play.
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Yay people liking Grim Grimoire.
Cthulu Saves The World:
A fun retro RPG experience that should be played on Hard for maximum enjoyment. Like its predecessor BoD7, the game excises most of the annoying parts of RPGs and just gives you the fun stuff such as character customization and thinking your way to victory through the use of your well-built characters. The humor is endearing but not special and the dungeons can be somewhat frustrating at times, but the former isn't as important to the experience as you'd think and the latter is handled *nicely* through encounter limits.
Basically plays like a longer, improved version of BoD7. Quite enjoyable.
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Nier- ending A. Killed some people who deserved it.
Now to play the game for real.
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Valkyrie Profile- Thanks for the advice in the other topic peeps :)
I've decided not to worry too much any more about getting the best stuffs this first run but I am going to go for the A ending (Captain K'ing it) Also Captain K'd for a puzzle in the Gotha Headquarters after fully frustrating myself out over it >.> Thanks to Captain K for Crystal Tricks.
Saved before the Sacred Phase at the end of C3. L18 Jelanda + Ether Sceptre + Magic Bangle + max INT skills for mass MT spamming goodness. Valkyrie is also L18, Arngrim's L15, Lawfer's L12, Jun L13, Janus L9, everybody else still at their default levels. I've also had max First Aid for a while now <.<
Also those poor, poor Dragon Zombies. Dragon Swords and Holy Crystals ...
I thought about restarting the game when I still didn't get Nanami in C3 after finally going with the flow with Jun in C2 but decided I didn't want to do everything all over again this time.
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SRWJ - The druggie trio was not as amusing as I had hoped. SEED PLOT just keeps on giving regardless, though.
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Thanks to Captain K for Crystal Tricks.
You're welcome!
Castle Crashers: Finished with level 36 Green Knight (a level gained during each of the last two fights). Maxed magic and defense, with a few extra points in strength. Biggest sticking point was the mass skeleton battle in the volcano area, due to them laughing at POIZN damage. Great game, great sense of humor. The music was outstanding as well, which is noteworthy because I don't usually pay attention to music.
Scott Pilgrim: Playing as Ramona. Paid off Scott's video rental fees, so I am uber powerful now. Feels like buying the Texas Boots in River City Ransom. Heading to the 5th area now.
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Started up Fallout 3 now that I'm back and have some free time. Got to Megaton after wiping out Vault 101 of all life, and am now debating between disarming the bomb and blowing everyone up. Think I'm going to do all the quests and get all the gear and perks and stuff before I blow it all to high heaven. I am a little curious how the guy is going to pay me, though. And how I'm supposed to survive the explosion. Oh well, those are details, and who needs those? Befriended Moriarty, though, and stood around by my good friend Mr. Nuke until I got severe radiation poisoning, and am now off to find some food and medicine in Raider Territory.
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So some people wanted more Golden Sun Dark Dawn nonsense. I haven't been playing it much becase it is stupid.
But anyway, so after sending the women back to the kitchen you can now restart the Alchemy Forge in one town that you have gone back and forward to constantly so that you can fly to another mountain peak so that you can try to go back to your original fetch quest. This game is matryoshka doll of fetch quests much like BoF 2 is. NOTE: FROM THIS POINT ON THERE IS NO DIALOGUE IN GAME. Anyway, so you fly to the other mountain by going through a short floating platform sequence. Then the only thing you can do over there is go into some ruins and start up a series of clockwork devices by solving horoscope themed puzzles. Once you have all them started the Sagitarius puzzle (the last one) causes the mirror outside the temple entrance to have an arrow shoot out of it. You exit out of the ruins again and use Grip synergy on the arror and it starts the mirror swinging as it was a pendulum on a giant horoscope clock. Because you started this clock a path down from the mountain levitates up from no where and you exit to the world map.
I have no words to describe what the fuck here. This is what I mean when I say the game has all the key things to make a decent RPG. There is a long sequence to get to the next town, a series of puzzles and fairly short challenges. There is just nothing connecting these things, no reason for them, no explanation for them at all and no way at all of knowing the effect these things will have. Why do you solve these puzzles? Because they are there and it will probably get you to the next place. Somehow.
Who the hell made this ruin? Why would you make it like this? This was supposedly a special road that ancient civilisation used. How did the path levitate? How do you make that work on clockwork? Why the hell is it on a horoscope clock? lolanswers
Worst part of it? There was actually a block puzzle Lufia styles where you have 3 blocks to put in spots without overlapping the paths of the blocks that I looked up the answer for online because I was lazy and didn't feel like thinking about puzzles at 8 in the morning on the bus to work while I am listening to a podcast. Easy puzzle, just feeling lazy. You want to know what the answer was? LOL CAST THIS SPELL THE GAME GIVES YOU IT WILL TELL YOU THE ANSWER.
This game has easy puzzles and then like 1/4 of the way through the game it gives you a solve the fucking puzzle spell.
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This game has easy puzzles and then like 1/4 of the way through the game it gives you a solve the fucking puzzle spell.
But it didn't tell you what the road was about. :/
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This game has easy puzzles and then like 1/4 of the way through the game it gives you a solve the fucking puzzle spell.
Not entirely true. It doesn't answer why you're playing the game
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Similar reasons to why I played FF13. I payed full price for entry on this ride, so I sure as shit am finishing it.
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Castle Crashers: Played through the game in an evening as the Thief. Went full Agility build, and damn it's good. Nothing immunes bow damage, and the added maneuverability really helps against bosses and mass mob fights. Ended at level 28 (used the Giraffe for the entire game). Only had trouble against Necromancer's post-treasure chest form until I figured out how to fight him.
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EO3 - New Game+ time~
Retired my resource team into the new guys, so they started around level 19...and promptly retired again at 30 when they unlocked Shogun for me. So the new-new team is Prince/Farmer and Shogun/Buccaneer on the front line, and Wildling/Monk, Arbalist/Shogun and Ninja/Zodiac on the back line. Picked roughly what I wanted for classes, then handed the classes to the toro to make builds for. He is really good at this.
Team synergizes well. The Ninja/Zodiac can pop out 1 MP Dark Ethers to let my Wildling summon Tigers for free to defang most randoms on turn 1, while the Arbalist/Shogun uses Warrior Might to chase every single hit of the Shogun/Buccaneers 2-8 hit basic physical. While the Prince is there largely to tank, buff, use Ad Nihilo on annoying boss buffs, and keep the team alive with Camp Mastery and Slap Awake. Yeah, I'm relying on camps for healing. The Wildling/Monk has exactly 1 rank in Heal and that's it. Which is what I'm relying on to get me from campground to campground.
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Dragon Quest 9 - About 7 hours in. The RAGIN' CONTAGION (awesome name) is the only boss so far who had me worried about losing, but generally easy going. I dislike the alchemy pot being stuck in one town, but at least it's instant to make up for this.
Fire Emblem 6 HM - Played this a lot over the past week! Up to Chapter 16.
Casualties!
Ward - Well HM Rutger pretty much has to kill someone. Ward's not someone I was going to miss!
Lugh - Apparently Chapter 6 decides it's cool to have 4 reinforcements appear right on top of you while fighting the boss with no warning, that is fair.
Treck - You have to rush to recruit him, doing so made me lose people who actually mattered, so yeah, he gets to die instead.
Marcus - Died holding off the Mercenary/Archer reinforcements in C8, after a costly miss.
Zealot - Died holding off the reinforcements from the southwest in C8. It's worth noting that I used both him and Marcus as long as I was able, this game. Marcus in particular is very valuable.
Bors - Died hodling off the northwest reinforcements in C8, stupid Armourslayers.
Thany - Didn't notice I'd put her on a fire trap in C8x towards the end of the map when she was one hit from death. Whoops.
Dieck - Overwhelmed by the pirate swarm towards the end of C9.
Since C11 or so I've been settling into a main team and have started always resetting when anyone dies. Fortunately those deaths are getting rarer because supports in this game are really potent. Promotions are a big help, too, as always, though it remains to be seen what sort of challenges Sacae and endgame will put up.
Midgame character notes!
Roy - Was pretty RNG screwed on speed for a while, which he didn't need. Has since mostly recovered from this but yeesh, getting doubled by enemy swordsmen bad. Has useful supports at least. Got the boots so I wouldn't have to waste actions rescuing him for him to keep up on his march to the throne each map.
Allen - Also somewhat RNG screwed on speed, but a Speedwings fixed this. HM really limits his doubling, but he still has the awesome Lance support and is decent otherwise. Finally promoted with the Knight Crest from C15, the wait there was a bit of a downer.
Lance - Awesome. RNG blessed on speed, was MVP for a while (the Western Isles arc or so) due to the speed/mobility/evade tanking. Now other awesome PCs have showed up who also have good speed and a lot more strength (although supports shore that one up a lot for Lance, to be fair). First promoted unit (end of C13).
Clarine - RNG has kinda spat at her, so she won't be the wall this playthrough she often is. Still not a terrible one and is a mobile staff user.
Rutger - HM makes him even more awesome. The best PC along with Marcus in Chapters 4-7 or so, the best after Lance in the Western Isles, and still kicking ass with +30 crit and good supports for his crit and evade.
Saul - Sorta on the team, off the team, as a second-string healer. Not promoted yet, naturally.
Astol - Chad is borderline untrainable in HM. Astol, on the other hand? Oddly tanky, and has actually seen some use for his combat, though mostly about utility of course. Very valuble. Doesn't play in every fight, mind.
Lilina - With Lugh dead, using her was basically a sure thing since I needed her ability to kill knights (even if they almost disappear after she joins) and more importantly, kill horrible bosses like HM Scott. Not much to say, she doesn't double too much but what she does double DIES and she has solid 2HKO/decent crit due to supports against everything else. Also one-shotting wyverns with Aircalibur, barely. Can heal now too.
Fir - She sure doesn't feel like Level 1 on HM. Other than missing the awesome earlygoing then playing catchup for a few maps, you can basically see Rutger's entry. Blah blah decent strength / amazing speed / solid avoid and HP / +30 crit now.
Shin - Total monster. Starts underlevelled but with great stats, and as he catches up he just gets better and better. Durability is serviceable and once he promotes he can start putitng it to use, offence is just outstanding. He had like 18 str/20 skl/20 spd before he promoted, and possibly has overall best party offence now, though it's a decent fight with a few others.
Gonzales - Figured I'd use him because why not, HM boosts. Not really enjoying this so far. He probably needs to be promoted fast for that +5 skill and +30 crit, but Hero Crests are in short supply. Now that I'm hitting C16, this will change, even though he's only Level 16 or so (has trouble gaining levels due to whiffs). 60 hit on most things is bad, and that's with Iron/Killer. :(
Klein - 16 str/13 spd means he's actually good when he joins! But as everyone else starts promoting, he goes back to his HM sucking. Has good supports but I'm not playing him just for those. Will probably see filler use again, though.
Tate - HM bonuses make her a decent flier and I needed one, for all that she still has a rocky start (her first few maps are axe-heavy and C12 has archers in narrow spaces). Really paid off in the desert though. Is going to be my second last unit to promote besides Gonzales (third last if I promote Saul).
Miredy - Broken. 13 base speed is her worst flaw, but she feasts on the desert like little else, promoted in C14x, and has just been generally a total monster. It's not enough that she has offensive stats of 23/22/19 at L2, but she has 53 HP and 18 Def so she can go wherever the hell she wants, kills all but the fast, and never dies. MVP of late.
Igrene - Still better than Klein when she joins due to the 2 extra speed. Blargh. Oh well. Will probably see some filler use.
Percival - Doesn't look as good as I expected because he competes with other monsters with HM boosts, mostly Miredy and Shin, but still, you don't say no to a paladin who joins with 20 str, 20 spd, 15 def, and 50 HP midgame. Skill's the only sour note. (Wait, skill matters? Wow.)
Marcus, Dieck, Thany, Lugh, Zealot, Lalum, Echidna - All saw notable filler use. Don't really like Lalum's durability in HM, though.
Generally enjoyed this playthrough though it has some polish issues that are apparent. FE6 HM's big major annoyance is removing the formation screen shop, so you can't even sell gems without taking them into maps, and once again I worry about running out of weapons like in 7. Also how the game handles reinforcements is stupid, though at least most maps have a warning cutscene the turn before. PC balance is poor, but mechanically I do like how FE6 is balanced; it really makes hit feel more important than other games, and you can really see the importance of different stats, unlike FE9-10 where it just feels like you can use concrete to get through everything (and the dodgers often have good concrete anyway).
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FFSS - In Chapter 10. Game is good but a little too easy. Something tells me even in hard mode Seth could still go Lol noobs at the enemies.
Stats are below for the characters I use.
Eirika
LV:15
Hp:23
Str:9
Skill:18
Spd:14
Luck:10
Def:8
Res:7
Seth A
Tana
LV:7
Hp:23
Str:8
Skill:10
Spd:15
Luck:10
Def:6
Res:7
Franz
LV:16
Hp:30
Str:15
Skill:10
Spd:15
Luck:7
Def:11
Res:5
Seth C
Gilliam C
Natasha C
I hadn't yet figured out supports that is why they suck. Supports are so different to FE10's.
Gilliam
LV:14
Hp:33
Str:12
Skill:8
Spd:5
Luck:4
Def:13
Res:6
Franz C
Moulder C
Neimi B
Moulder
LV:11
Hp:24
Mag:6
Skill:8
Spd:12
Luck:3
Def:4
Res:5
Vanessa C
Gilliam C
Neimi
LV:11
Hp:24
Str:7
Skill:8
Spd:13
Luck:9
Def:6
Res:4
Colm A
Gilliam B
Seth
LV:2
Hp:30
Str:14
Skill:13
Spd:12
Luck:13
Def:12
Res:9
Franz C
Eirika A
Ross
LV:5
Hp:26
Str:15
Skill:9
Spd:7
Luck:12
Def:6
Res:4
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Final Fight: Beat the game as MIKE FUCKING HAGGAR, so there, played the game with everyone! Doubt I'll ever unlock all the vaults, though, they better have Mike Haggar piledrivering a Shark in there, seeing as they used that to PROMOTE THE FREAKING GAME!
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Golden Sun - So we finally stopped dicking around and made it to the town where we should meet Kraden that is right next to the mountain area where we can find the Mountain Roc and get to the outer layer of the Matroyshka Doll fetch quest. FUCK YES SOMETHING MIGHT HAPPEN. The new recruit left and asked us to get the band to play a specific and she would come back in town.
Can't find the dude in town. The band doesn't have an option to pick the song to summon the chick. So you leave town. You get some dialogue of lol couldn't find that bitch or dude. Then 2 of the band members that can play the song mention that they are going on journeys and that someone else is already on a journey and that there is only 6 people in the world that can play the song.
You are fucking kidding me.
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Man, Golden Sun keeps sounding better and better.
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Then 2 of the band members that can play the song mention that they are going on journeys and that someone else is already on a journey and that there is only 6 people in the world that can play the song.
Its not as bad as it sounds. Besides one of the dudes (and he is easy to spot due to having portrait for no reason) they all randomly(You can't miss them) bump into you as you go along. The game isn't throwing a fetch quest at you for once, its just trying to justify why you don't just play the song the moment you get there.
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Roz: HM in FE8 is pretty legit. There's a lategame Fog map which is disgusting and made me cry a bit.
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They didn't have to do that though. Svelta clearly wanted nothing at all to do with getting the Roc feather and that she was cool to wait until you had done that shit before coming to chill with the party. That is all they needed to justify it.
Also FE8 is totally legit because it made Ciato cry. Totally 100% honest truthful vouching for its difficult *nods nods*.
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A lot of stuff makes Ciato cry, though.
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Inspired by the announcement of Z2, I made progress on my Ex-Hard run of Z. Just got the band back together after chapter 40.
C39, the first Corallian invasion map, involved a restart because I let a squad get past me and couldn't reach them before they escaped the map, and I think I got within 15 kills of the SR point but no way was I going to do better than that.
C40, otherwise known as EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD TRIES TO KILL YOU, was surprisingly simple. I killed maybe six or seven complete squads out of eleventy trillion and didn't even bother with the bosses, but it didn't matter because the only goal was to take down the Garuda in six turns and that was cake. Xine's crows were the biggest obstacle, and it wasn't even because of their attacks - they just clogged up the area so much I had to get rid of a squad just to open up a lane to the damned battleship. Oh well, get the SR point with time to spare, and now I've got a full party so hooray.
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Atelier Annie: Started playing this! Oh god, it's so cute. Also, the whole game is voice-acted in Japanese? Interesting decision. On the plus side, it meant that I could play it with my students when I ran into them at the food court.
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SRWJ - Made it to map 11, where the game has defeated me twice. This is due entirely to me crushing the map and then making the mistake of trying to use an unaugmented Shining Gundam to do, well... anything. This leads to bad things when the Devil Gundam then finishes the job. Next time, Shining gets a mook only policy, and hopefully Devil Gundam will decide to suicide on the Granteed just like everything else. On that note, Toya with Melua at his side, has already almost hit 50 kills. That thing is more disgusting than the freaking Nadesico.
Will be ignoring Great Zeomyer this time, and instead aim for quantity of secrets. Especially since I'll need to play another time anyways in order to see what Kelvina is like. At the very least, she hopefully won't be like Toya, who is currently acting like the bastard lovechild of Akito and Kira.
Fallout 3 - When last we left off, I had departed Vault 101 after dispensing justice on the Overseer. Now, I've got some classy real estate in Megaton, am the hero and saviour of two townships, driven the local superhero into retirement, joined the android underground, arranged a marriage between a sweet girl and a mass hallucination, become the puppetmaster and financier of all the travelling merchants in the Capitol Wastes, and finally, accidentally skipped the fetch quest of finding my dad, and simply went straight to the last place in the fetch chain.
Currently, trying to find my way to a lot of museums in order to loot them before killing everything that moves near the Lincoln Memorial, but have gotten lost and am now stuck in the middle of a turf war between Raiders and Super-Mutants.
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Around that piont in the game, I think Calvina had hit double ace status for me >.> She has well over 50% of available kills so far.
Djinn- be sure to fuck up the megaphone game once or twice. It's an adorable sound effect.
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I'm trying not to feed all the Exp and kills to one guy, so yeah. I'm actually having the Granteed spend most of its time on this map sitting around doing nothing so that other folks can get kills. Pleasant surprise of the playthrough. Without the Belzelute to compete against, Roanne and his Beldy are valuable members of the team. Mostly because he's my only sniper, and only person with Move and Away. This may change now that I have the M&A module, though it's likely going to be hanging on the Nadesico or Archangel, so not real increase in the competing snipers list.
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Atelier Annie - Permanent Hiatus. I got about 2/3 through the game in one sitting and then accidentally ejected the cartridge. It turns out that I hadn't saved in like 7 in-game months. Yeah, I'm done.
I -did- mess up on the Megaphone game in that time and Yes, It Was Adorable.
I think I have a good enough idea how the whole game works that the rest was just padding anyway. I liked Kilbert and Beaux for being my favorite anime tropes, though Kilbert's special abilities sucked. Luckily, he seemed to have gamebest damage no matter what I equipped on the other PCs, so he still worked in my party. Beaux has Stealing, which is super-important in a game that revolves around ingredient-gathering. I played around with the other PCs briefly, but they seemed pretty lackluster apart from Gillian, who just annoyed me. Didn't get to try out Liese though.
Question to the Gust fans: Is this Liese a reference/cameo to another Liese? I haven't played enough Gust games to confirm it, but I was pretty sure that there's another Liese or two in the Atelier universe.
Tal: You can have your game back ^_^ Yay!
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SRWZ: Stage 42 clear. Aki went boom, other that that the stage went pretty optimally. One character death, way under the massacres the previous three stages hit me with; there was a brief hiccup when Zeravire reinforcements blindsided me with two turns left for the SR Point requirement, which required reloading an in-battle save, but hey, that's what they're there for.
I need to give Renton a Fighting Spirit item; he sucks at building morale without skills and Seven Swell would have been really nice there.
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Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - The game threw out some more fetch quests and then it crashed. I lost back to before the band incident. Not sure when I will pick it back up.
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Puzzle quest 2- Is completely awesome. Running an Assassin righ tnow. I'm level 27ish, and am doing quests. Just met the priest's daughter.
The good: NO RANDOM ENCOUNTERS! Once you do a fight, enemies are DEAD and stay that way. They also removed gold/EXP from the grid, which cuts down on some of the really stupid boards you get in long matches in PQ1. It also has cut down on the retarded grinding of item forging immensely (Just costs cash now) and spell learning.
The bad: Challenge? What challenge? *Gets a bunch of change elements into other elements+added damage, smashes universe* Sidequests are a little more awkward as well- you have to manually go back and check in the town for repeats ala the hunting side missions.
It's a really good game, and anyone who enjoyed PQ1 should pick this up.
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Liese was the heroine of the first DS Atelier game. It wasn't ported into english, but apparently this is as much because it was a disaster of GUST CODING PLOT varieties as anything else.
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Also FE8 is totally legit because it made Ciato cry. Totally 100% honest truthful vouching for its difficult *nods nods*.
That rude Fog of War map was double rude on Hard Mode. Tears were appropriate.
FE6: This game is fun stuff~ Miredy is hax hax hax, Alan is stupidly RNG blessed (21 speed? 15 defense? yesz please), roy sux but it's okay. This game has FF7 syndrome; I want the bad guys to win because they are sexier/more awesome. (<3 Rufus)
Trecky-chu died because I got Percival two maps early and he doubled Treck and Thany randomly died. Wolt also died with Wyvern death.
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Back To The Future The Game Episode 1 - Finished
Starts off overwhelmingly slow, in part due to tutorialy nature but not entirely.
Starts getting better and then finishes considerably quicker than I expected. I can only hope that this curve is restricted to this episode.
Looks like the second episode is going to be set in the same time period as the first, which is somewhat annoying but on the other hand the movies didn't exactly jump around in time a lot as far as I know, having only seen the first one.
On the plus side, the game doesn't choke and die when I try to change graphical settings with both monitors active like recent TTG games have been in the habit of doing. On the minus side, when I quit the game it tries to download and install the episode I was just playing, which is somewhat disconcertening. I could understand if it was an updated version or something but the launcher doesn't actually tell you why it is doing what it is doing.
Professor Layton And The Lost Future - Finished
Generally good. I have some reservations about the twist regarding the future, but it wasn't entirely unexpected.
Not really much to say.
Appalled at the 'prize' for unlocking the Layton2 door in this game, which was the last thing in the world anyone sane would want. Arguably better than a concept art gallery I suppose.
Mass Effect 2 - Recently got access to galaxy map and have cruised around the starting system
Well, it's prettier.
The mineral location system is unarguably vastly more sensible than ME1's, even if the controls are annoyingly slow.
Should probably reserve other comments until I have actually gotten through a good portion of the game.
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SRWZ: Stage 44 done! 43, the one with Bartfield, Harry, Kira and Gym vs. the world, was a giant pain in the ass. Had one full reset, and then ended up relying on Lacus to hit a 10% shot in order to take everybody out in time, but I did it. 44 was simpler, but still involved starting over when I forgot about the full restore that happens when Sol Gravion arrives for the first time and didn't set up for it at all.
Also I ordered a PSP in anticipation of Z2, so clearly after I finish this run I should relax by playing Advance Portable. This is the way.
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SO4: Had my first game-over at Kokubiel. Actually that was the first time I'd even had to switch out of the front four characters. Checked a FAQ to save time and saw that Bacchus is supposed to be good in that fight, so I stuck him with three healers and just spammed Termination for a very long time. Then I got a 45-minute cutscene. I'm used to 45 minutes of not playing in the beginning of tri-Ace games, but in the middle of the game itself is quite another story.
After that went to Nox planet and was promptly murdered multiple times by randoms with guns. So decided to go look for better armor/IC stuff before tackling Nox. The good: instant teleport to any town in the game. The bad: Disc swapping. What the fuck is this Legend of Dragoon?
Found some good stuff in Wind Ring-locked chests. Then went and played in the Colosseum. Got up to rank 20 or so with Arumat before losing.
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DQ9: Mortamor is kind of annoying. Not hard, just takes longer than I'm used to. Normally I kill Legacy bosses in 2-3 turns. With him it takes 5-7 turns.
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CK, just how much you are behind on the IC and equips? By that point, even you don't know about Kokubiel's defense trick, his damages should still be very pathetic to let you outslug him.
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FE6 - I heard you like Nomads so I put some Nomads in your maps so they can kill you while they shoot. Still enjoying this game, Alan is still absurdly speed and defense blessed. Only complaint is wanting more Zephy screentime!! omgsolame
MK2 - Fought Yun, he was not as easy as I thought he'd be. Did Enna and Goto CQs, Enna to see Flay and Goto cuz I dunno. I've done a ton of synthing though, even though it annoys me a little bit.
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FF 13- Just beat Bartandalus' second form. Damn, I was not expecting that fight. Or I wasn't expecting that level of HP on an enemy where staggering wasn't an auto-win. Took a damn long time to whittle down all that HP, although he's not exactly damaging so generally wasn't too badly pressured.
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Welcome to the end of FF13, where in which they decide that you have grinded the fuck out of Chapter 10 or have levelled your weapons up and jack enemy HP up out the arse and figure that they have to counter the combat method that they have drilled into you all game and have bosses punish you for staggering. Hooray for choosing between having to alternate between offensive and defensive or between slow and boring whittling down enemy health!
If you have capped out tier 2 weapons then feel free to stagger things and launch them, just have a Defender/Healer/Healer combination availble to handle the counter.
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Lol capping out tier 2 weapons. I have 1 tier 2 weapon, nowhere near capped out. But staggering worked fine on him at least. Just no one near as effective on most+a bucketload more of HP. Not happy to hear that the remaining bosses would all be in this vein though.
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Abusing the weapon upgrade system it isn't to hard to at least upgrade to tier 2 where you are at. There is a simple sidequest (like it is just running around the area finding items) that will give you more than enough currency to do it back on the destroyed town of the crazy bitches. You can go back there whenever you want when you get to the last chapter.
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Oh, tier II beginning isn't hard. Of course, tier II beginning is worse than tier I ending. Either way, I did a few hunts, but upon realizing that the only real sidequest was 64 revamps, I wasn't too enthused to do too many.
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The quest in particular I mean isn't hunts, it is finding and fixing up an old robot or something, it is really just running around that last area of chapter 10 for a while and it gets you a stupid amount of Gil/items worth a stupid amount of Gil.
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This is eery. Ok, so there is an enemy I cannot pass in The Last Remnant, so I set the game aside for a moment as when dying long into a long battle is exhausting. I just set it aside - it's the sidequest I want to do before I beat the game.
But.
This is eery. (Maybe no so)
I picked up Radiata Stories, even when my WA3 disc was on the inside. I really have some unfinished business with this game. The first playthrough, I did the Elf arc. I have embarked (with the option, restart even stronger! ! !) on the human arc now. But what is eery. Eery. Is that. I. I played this game for 7 hours straight. This is my longest gaming experience since Xenosaga Ep III. I am excited. Perhaps RS can prep me for conditioning myself to sit at the TV for long periods of time again. This means I can get shit done.
I've only done the first required Croccogator task for Theatre Vancoor. I bought a really spiffy outfit from the armor store in the town square (can't remember its name at the moment) . . . Hm. Yes. Poor Ganz.
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Defense Grid- Bought and beat the DLC maps. MAnaged to get a silver star on every map except the free form one, which I got a gold medal on. Now looking at youtube videos to see precisely what strategies worked for getting gold medals on maps. The solution I saw posted to roundabout was a bit surprising (Way shorter path than I expected).
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Dunie seems to have questionable taste in what to marathon.
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Radiata Stories is awesome.
Currently doing a sewer quest.
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Do not question Dunie's taste; it is obviously impeccable.
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I prefer Ratatta Stories.
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/me haunts Ciato with the ghost of aiels past thwacking her with VPDS.
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You mean present?
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:) What can I say, I like giving.
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Three more stages down in my quest for self-flagellation!
45: Looks more threatening than it is. Tons of Mobile Suit squads with shields and the Garuda, the Frost Brothers and a crapton of Psyco and Destroy Gundams beyond them...but the only reinforcement is a gimped version of Big Duo Inferno. Just wade in and take care of business. Didn't even need Seven Swell, although I had to let one of the Frosts get away.
46: One reset - this is a fake-out stage and it got me good. It's got a very similar arrangement to 45, with a bunch of Gundam enemies and Psyco Gundams and battleships waiting behind them. Plus there's a time limit of four turns for the skill point, so with no upgrades the natural strategy is to get to those capital ships ASAP and start wearing them down, killing what grunts you can for Will while the rest get left for a cleanup MAP. Except that when you kill enough squads, everything retreats and a fresh set of Turn A enemies show up instead, including Turn X. And you have to kill them by turn 4 for the point. The first run I didn't even trigger them until turn 4 and had no chance in hell. The second time through I focused on wiping out grunts, got the Turn A goons to show up at the beginning of turn 3 and Seven Swell wiped the floor with them.
47: OMG REUBEN ISN'T NICE. The first half of this stage was a bitch. With no upgrades for me and 50% for them, Asakim's parallel Glory Star jerks got ~40% hit rates against Setsuko, and she got 4% against them. Thanks to 11/11 B I had 10 SP Inspire and Focus to make that more fair, but I still had two resets where they killed me on 10-20% chances. Lovely. But then I finally triumphed over the RNG, got the Balgora Glory's final upgrade, and went on to steamroll the second half of the level. It looked challenging when I thought I had to kill all three 60K-HP Chimeras, but then it turned out I only needed one, so I got the skill point with a turn to spare, and a Hyper Jammer from Xine's corpse.
Now on to the ZEUTH route! I've been looking forward to this.
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You mean present?
No, I mean past. The ghost of aiels present tries to stuff VPDS into your stockings.
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Idun should play some other tri-Ace games perhaps? RS has its fun points, but there's definitely better in the same vein. VP2 comes to mind.
Legaia 2: Popped this in on a whim and it really... exceeded expectations. It is challenging enough to be engaging, but straightforward enough that I can rush through it when it feels slow. The characters are kind of fun and the beginning is amusing and well-paced. It's nothing to write home about, but it was easy enough to get all the way to the penultimate dungeon in 2 days, so I'm glad to be finishing up another ranked game.
One thing that really worked for this series' concept: They turned it into a cheesy martial arts flick (only with some JRPG magic trappings) and played up the corny villains and Kazan's even cornier dialogue. I think this is what Legaia 1 wanted to be but the directors were just so excited to be making a game in THREEDEE that they forgot about everything else.
Having a talking main helps, too. Especially since you can make him into a snarker without any real consequences. Yay for getting the main character punched in the face by his step-father!
Cons: Maya. Taking too long in the beginning to get enough art slots to do something worthwhile. Maya. Sharon joining so late in the game. Maya. Randomly making one of the first bosses the victim of animal rape by a man named 'Bubba'. Oh god my soul. *weeps in a corner* Also, I really dislike Maya. I thought she was an annoying plot device when she was mute, but then she started talking and she just got worse and -more- bland somehow. Also, she's a terrible PC. Probably one of my least favorite RPG characters of all time if nothing interesting happens with her in the next few cutscenes? Even Kongol, I mean Ayne, gets more amusing scenes than her.
Side note on DL site stuff: Sharon's last name is Blade. Ayne's real name is Silent Eagle, Ayne is just a nickname that Lang came up with. Kazan's an alias - his real name is Nazak, the "Thunder God". Not sure if the last two really need to be reflected in the DL, though there is some precedent for it with Nadia/Marle and Nanaki/RedXIII. (What is it with JRPG PCs' real names starting with 'Na'?)
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Idun should play some other tri-Ace games perhaps? RS has its fun points, but there's definitely better in the same vein. VP2 comes to mind.
Played it, and no.
However, Legaia 2 Kazan = awesome drinking. He's also fairly useful when going through the trials later on, spiffily to Soldier's Ordeal.
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Also, she's a terrible PC.
What. Do you not have Gospel yet? I forget when that shows up, but from what I recall buffs + healing pretty much makes Maya indispensable. She sucks at offense throughout the game, yeah, but still, LoL2 bosses aren't so feeble that you can get by without healing. EDIT: Well, unless you're demolishing everything in one turn with variable arts or whatever. Should note that I never bothered with finding/learning the really broken skills in that game.
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I'm abusing the 2x Item Effect passive ability on all three good PCs and ignoring Maya's existence. I was just worried she was going to be forced at some point.
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Maya's healing is great from a DL standout; from an in game standout, LoL 2 has some of the best healing items in terms of power, MT, and ease of obtaining that you're generally going to find in an RPG. Gospel is not early, and Maya's pretty easily replacable.
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Valkyria Chronicles- Played the second round of Edy DLC. Good stuff! They're all actually skirmishes that focus on each of the individual classes. Good challenge, and mostly Kill All Enemies missions with an Escort Mission thrown in there for Engineers. I actually got most frustrated with the Lancer one for some reason.
Rosie with the Ruhm still murderizes puny units though.
Moving on to Legaia 2 next.
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Djinn: Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction to Legaia 2 entirely. It's wonderfully good fluff for what it is.
And yeah, while Gospel is good stuff, Maya's healing is totally unspecial in-game, see Dhyer.
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Super Mario RPG: Got this on the Virtual Console a week or so ago, been playing it on/off, cleared it today. I'd played it briefly before a few years back, so knew what to expect, but really didn't expect any challenge whatsoever - I'd remembered the first half of the game or so being relatively simple, and expected that to follow through. Nice to see they could throw in one or two challenging bosses, even if they were simple for the most part.
Start of the game is fitting to the Mario title: simple, straightforward, yet strangely fun to play. The first few bosses provide little challenge and are just 'use the new thing you just got'. As the game progresses, though, fights become more interesting, although the number that come down to 'buff and attack' is kinda annoying. That said, the platforming sections are good, the Axem Rangers make for a good fight thanks to needing MT (unlike.. pretty much anything else before that, and barely anything afterwards). Naturally, though, the best section is at the very end: the Factory run is pretty damn good, and the fights against Smithy are really different to the rest of the game - the final fight actually provided a fair bit of challenge (if only because I didn't realise Shredder was removing Geno Boost.) The fact that the game throws coins at you throughout (and quite literally at the end, with an infinite coin block and random enemies dropping 50+ coins) is kinda odd, but it makes Items actually usable over Special/Attack, I guess.
Still with Geno had made it into Brawl. :( Also kinda disappointed the Mario RPG series went down the Paper Mario route, since I was really disappointed with Thousand Year Door, and SMRPG is by far the better game, if only because it's actually creative with its platforming. ;o
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FF13: Played this a bit yesterday, with two comments. So very pretty, and I cannot read the battle commands as I input them, and this... has had little to no impact on my ability to play the game. So, uh... good thing I'm not all about the gameplay, because then this thing would just be putting me to sleep.
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Idun should play some other tri-Ace games perhaps? RS has its fun points, but there's definitely better in the same vein. VP2 comes to mind.
Played it, and no.
Holy crap, I'm NOT the only person who likes RS more then VP2.
/me high fives Idun!
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Idun should play some other tri-Ace games perhaps? RS has its fun points, but there's definitely better in the same vein. VP2 comes to mind.
Played it, and no.
Holy crap, I'm NOT the only person who likes RS more then VP2.
/me high fives Idun!
I've never played RS but I assume I'd like it more than VP2~ Too much of a backlog to find out though!
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Legaia 2- Started. Went until the first boss. Game looks okay. I like the music throwbacks, as while I'll probably get shit for this, I liked a lot of the music in the first Legaia. Not a lot of middle-of-the-road choices for Lang, but I'll probably have some fun with the dialogue choices.
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Super Mario RPG: Got this on the Virtual Console a week or so ago, been playing it on/off, cleared it today. I'd played it briefly before a few years back, so knew what to expect, but really didn't expect any challenge whatsoever - I'd remembered the first half of the game or so being relatively simple, and expected that to follow through. Nice to see they could throw in one or two challenging bosses, even if they were simple for the most part.
Start of the game is fitting to the Mario title: simple, straightforward, yet strangely fun to play. The first few bosses provide little challenge and are just 'use the new thing you just got'. As the game progresses, though, fights become more interesting, although the number that come down to 'buff and attack' is kinda annoying. That said, the platforming sections are good, the Axem Rangers make for a good fight thanks to needing MT (unlike.. pretty much anything else before that, and barely anything afterwards). Naturally, though, the best section is at the very end: the Factory run is pretty damn good, and the fights against Smithy are really different to the rest of the game - the final fight actually provided a fair bit of challenge (if only because I didn't realise Shredder was removing Geno Boost.) The fact that the game throws coins at you throughout (and quite literally at the end, with an infinite coin block and random enemies dropping 50+ coins) is kinda odd, but it makes Items actually usable over Special/Attack, I guess.
Still with Geno had made it into Brawl. :( Also kinda disappointed the Mario RPG series went down the Paper Mario route, since I was really disappointed with Thousand Year Door, and SMRPG is by far the better game, if only because it's actually creative with its platforming. ;o
I'm not quite so convinced MT is actually a good idea against the Axem Rangers. While it does clear them more quickly than anything else, it also means you'll have to brave Spritz Bomb counters from Black (always), sleep counters from Pink (sometimes), and it also gives Pink the ability to doubleact until she dies, increasing the chance you'll see the dangerous Petal Blast. This is fine; it means there are multiple valid ways to fight them, is all.
Hmm, unlike you I found the Factory a major letdown. Design-wise it feels mailed-in, and I feel like they missed a great chance for what could have been a fun boss rush (the Machine Mades were jokes). Smithy's the only boss there who feels even potentially dangerous and I didn't find him nearly as good as the midgame bosses like the cake, Yaridovich, and the Rangers. Partially because Toadstool just gets more stupidly good as the game goes on; at least earlier bosses can exploit her poor durability (rangers not so much, they just have 5+ turns to work with to accomplish things) but by the end this weakness has vanished entirely.
In general I think a lot of SMRPG's challenge can be negated if you know the timing for Geno Boost (or use Bracers) and know to equip status protection on Toadstool (otherwise MT mushroom/sleep+damage like Petal Blast and Aurora Flash from various bosses post-Seaside can ruin your day). It's still a fun game, though.
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Holy crap, I'm NOT the only person who likes RS more then VP2.
/me high fives Idun!
While RS is one of the weakest tri-Ace games, it is still more enjoyable than VP2.
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I've never played RS but I assume I'd like it more than VP2~ Too much of a backlog to find out though!
This is not something I would bet money on. RS is a bit out there and it definitely suffers in the gameplay department which given your biases is going to hurt it a ton. RS is one of those games you are more likely to enjoy if you are into concepts and interesting experiments regardless of whether or not they really work.
Golden Sun: DD - So I forced myself to play through the parts I knew. This game goes much faster when you know exactly where you are going and where to search in town for all the hidden stuff worth shit. I am now falling asleep to uncurse a tree or something. Again I am not exactly sure why this is happening. I thought I was supposed to be saving some pirates kid from being boiled alive, but hey I ended up in this town, talked to a woman and she said to do it. So it is happening.
Also a side plot that only really comes up in books and in one area of the game (has been expanded in books in like every town since that one area) is the exploits of Emperor Ko and his general failings as a human being. I approve of this message.
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Sopko, did you lounge on the sheep yet? It's in the first village, go and find it if you have not yet done it.
Finished the penultimate dungeon in Legaia 2, it was kind of a pushover after the hell that was the fire dungeon. For some reason, I can't convince the overweight merchants to show me where the ultimate shops are. I want that Always 100% AP bangle, dammit.
According to the walkthrough I'm following, apparently I've been missing a lot of Maya's PA scenes. This isn't because I've been avoiding them, they just don't seem to be available when I seek them out. I suspect this is the result for having been a jerk to her at every possible opportunity. Now I feel like my disdain of her was self-reinforcing. I didn't like her much at first, and so the game stopped giving scenes with her at all, so my opinion could never change. I'm not sure whether I'm happy because it means there's less of her, or annoyed because now I'll never know if she would have become a decent character if I was nice to her.
...probably the former.
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Well, I finished Nier, felt like I was dying inside, and decided to play Resonance of Fate.
My gun has eight barrels and three grips and four mags and five scopes.
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Well, I finished Nier, felt like I was dying inside
Nier: Touching and hopeful for part 1, CRUSHING YOUR WILL TO LIVE in part 2.
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Even part 2 isn't so bad on your first playthrough. Though there's a few people I don't feel bad about killing regardless. Some people deserve it.
Also, I noted how Nier's dialogue transforms through the game, from being wary in part 1 boss fights to snarking in part 2, and then by the final boss battle all his lines have been replaced with "I'LL KILL YOU!" and incoherent screams of rage.
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Fire emblem SS - At the stage where the enemy army arrays against you. Well by all that is holy it seems someone in the fire emblem world actually knows the basics of having a formation instead of randomly sending human wave tactcis at you. I actually can't recall a time where this happens in the other FE games I've played :).
Deadly premonition - Gameplay, the driving sections and the graphics are all horrible. York somewhat makes up for it with his sheer insanity. That and he channels columbo and can make deductions based on the most minor of things. I'm guessing he has physic powers because the insight he gets from clues makes little sense.
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I don't like the human arc. ):
The human arc is full of vapid, dogmatic humans with enmity towards elves. I prefer staying in Radiata, to be honest. The coolest thing about the human arc is that Jack's armor is designed much better. I hoped opting for the Human arc would have included more background on Algandars and how the castle is handling it. . . etc. Nope. Not so far. I just had both of my buttcheeks served on a polished silver platter from Gawain.
Forced Charles to start playing SO3. Man. I cringed. I couldn't stop cringing. I immediately became impatient and annoyed - considering he's used to games that require significantly less reading - he doesn't have the instant reflex of hitting X at the end of a text box despite the end of the voice actors sentence. This reminds me that I do hate the beginning voice acting of the game, where the figures are much less animated. He had the nerve to create a Battle Trophies file, and that shit is 1200KB. I can't afford that shit since I don't ever plan on buying another PS2 memory card.
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Human Path has better PC options, which means its the preferable arc if you want to do the after game, where your options suddenly MATTER (granted, you ALWAYS get the super PC late in the after game, so that's one slot filled or something...if you get that far...). Main game is easy enough that such things aren't a big deal.
Fairy Path is...better at everything in terms of writing, really. Better characterization of Jack, the relationship with Ridley is actually well handled, Gawain is not as big a lamer since now his motives are clear, backstory is explained, and suddenly he MAKES SENSE, and Cross gets what's coming to him. Also has a few extra little fights and such with human characters that help show some emotional impact related to Jack's choice, rather than "Oh look, more elves, lets beat them up!" like the Human Path has.
(Granted, Zane, I think his name was, is hateful prick regardless which path you do. Nothing saves him, and I can't tell if you're suppose to hate him, or if the Fairy Path just failed to make you sympathize with him. Cross, the game very clearly wants you to be against him regardless, and both pathes do display him as a total dick)
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To Cross's credit, he had like the one redeeming scene in the human path. And that was just him being a total fucking dickhead and ranting about his destiny as a leader (while rightly calling Jack a moron)
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I think Cross is a well done character to be honest, cause while you hate him...that's exactly what you're suppose to do. They did a good job of making a character with nothing redeeming about him as a human being, at least morally. His rant just helped establish that further, but also showed he had some logic to his thought process and wasn't just being a blow hard moron whose full of himself...ook, he's totally full of himself, but he actually makes sense with his rant!
I can see disagreeing, but as I said, they did a good job of insuring you're NOT suppose to like him at all.
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I always found the party members on human side to be much more varied and interesting. Fairy path is "you get three PCs you may know and then a whole lot of ones you probably can't tell apart."
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Yeah, I already did the fairy path and still prefer it. Got Lenneth, etc. etc., just getting all my Human Friends. As Rob mentioned, the characters are much more non-distinct, due partly to that your exposure prior to choosing paths.
I'm not too fond of Cross. There's many scenes where, if he's such a subordinate, he clearly oversteps his bounds. If the knighthood had the rigidity it appeared to have, Dynas should have put him in place plenty of times. In the same vein, the connection for marriage between him and Ridley was completely unnecessary; it was used as a mechanism to offer more insight into budding feelings between her and Jack. Otherwise, party scene between them? Not worth it. Secondly, it was too short.
I do enjoy seeing the father-son (perhaps brother) relationship between Ganz compared to the fairy side where he's all about his father, mingled with a bit of self-discovery. RS is such a short game, but it could definitely benefit from more dialogue between each side's major plays compared to the assumptions both parties make about each other's intentions.
That said, I really do prefer the armor on the human side - especially the armor in the Storeroom after Urusula's last request when she couldn't pay up. They do need to bring up the issue of the orb's functions a bit earlier. I believe developers knew the majority of gamers would choose the fairy path first, unless they're douches (Sorry, OK. Wait, did you play the human path first?), and the human side is really much a "fill in the space" experience with better eye candy, weaponry and livelihood in the city.
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Also you get to kill a bunch of fuckin elves, and you get Dynas on your team in a fight. Pretty much awesome on all counts.
It's like the Witcher. If you give me choices and one of them is kill elves and not only that but the elf-killing quest is called "The Flame That Cleanses" the fuck choice do you think I'll make?
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Playing Dragon Age a bit more today I was reminded why it is awesome. Because you can decide to kill the elves and have werewolves join your army instead.
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This gets a seperate post because it isn't worthy of being in the same post as the above.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - Fuck this game. Fuck it in its stupid fucking everything. It pushed beyond the point of mediocrity in how far it will stretch being mind numbingly dull. The fetch quests have no end in sight as the fetch quest that started the game is resolution to another fetch quest that we only just recently got (that we still have other things spiral off to fetch to get answers from). I lost my patience with a 10 minute text scroll of bad dialogue between a Djinn and 2 Trees that told us that the princess fetch quests were in another castle. I hate everything.
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Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - Fuck this game. Fuck it in its stupid fucking everything. It pushed beyond the point of mediocrity in how far it will stretch being mind numbingly dull. The fetch quests have no end in sight as the fetch quest that started the game is resolution to another fetch quest that we only just recently got (that we still have other things spiral off to fetch to get answers from). I lost my patience with a 10 minute text scroll of bad dialogue between a Djinn and 2 Trees that told us that the princess fetch quests were in another castle. I hate everything.
So...the game is Lufia 1?
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No. Lufia 1 is a fucking masterpiece compared to this shit. Lufia 1 has actual classical story telling techniques in it. Lufia 1 is regardless of all the bullshit an overarching plot that is a love story.
This game is about getting a feather to fix a jetpack that some dick head broke. I am about to get that feather and in doing so going to keep going with more sidequest bullshit that oh my god just make it fucking stop.
Edit - I am clearly not framing this properly. There has been a single sequence with the main villains at this point it is a good few hours into the game and is long out of sight by now. One scene with someone who is probably a lackey that was never properly defined and happened a couple of hours after the main villains. Otherwise there has been absolutely zero interaction with your antagonists. It has just been chains of fetch quests to do completely bat shit insane random bullshit.
Edit 2 - That is right. This is a game about a magic back pack and it is FUCKING BORING AS SHIT. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU SCREW THIS UP.
Edit 3 - I haven't been this pissed off about a game since FF13 god fucking dammit.
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/me grabs a bucket of popcorn.
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My experience in chat this evening (Just the relevant parts)
[00:19] <Grefter> ;'jklfdsff THIS GAME
[00:20] <Grefter> So go through a forest maze in Golden Sun. Jump on a Tree branch. Get lifted up and talk to a tree with a face on it. Half way through the conversation the party gets suprised by a talking cliff right behind them that they didn't see.
<Grefter> This entire fucking game is full of "ERrrr what do we do here? Oh I know talking cliff from original games"
[00:21] I wish someone had been actually physically pregnant with the idea of this game.
So I could build a time machine and punch them in the stomach.
<Grefter> So then the fact that this game is a complete and total miscarriage would at least be my fault.
<Grefter> Wait, sorry, it isn't a talking cliff.
It is an arse ugly tree that just looks like it is made of rock.
[00:25] <Grefter> STOP TALKING OH MY GODS JUST STOP TALKING
<Grefter> For fucks sake.
So much stupid shitty dialogue to get a fetch quest.
And it still isn't over.
[00:28] <superaielman> You really make that game sound worse than GS1.
<Grefter> We have to have the next part of another fetch quest pushed along.
<superaielman> And that is pretty damn bad
[00:29] <Grefter> It should be played.
FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
FUCK FUCKING FUCK YOU
<Grefter> The solution to the next fetch quest?
[00:30] Involves resolving the fetch quest that starts the fucking game.
MY GODS I WANT TO FUCKING PUNCH SOMETHING>
[00:31] <SageAcrin> So basically they decided that what people liked about Golden Sun was "Everything" and didn't bother examining anything and instead cloned GS1 in a haphazard way that accidentally made more fetchquests, then tossed in GS2's battle system.
I see.
<Grefter> SO MANY FETCH QUESTS.
I can't keep up with why we are going fucking anywhere anymore.
[00:32] <Grefter> AND THEY ARE STILL TALKING.
[00:33] <Grefter> Subtracting five minutes for me to bitch about it.
<Grefter> That is 10 minutes of raw text scroll.
To be told to go away.
I hate this game.
This is the first time I actually ahve hated it.
Not just it being bad.
<Grefter> I just straight up fucking hate it now.
[00:36] <Grefter> Nonononononon onononononon o don't make my read more tlaking after walking one screen.
[00:39] <Grefter> stoptalkingstoptalkingstoptalking
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Doesn't sound that much like GS1, since while that game did lack a lot of interaction with the villains, at least most of the stuff that wasn't villain interaction was trying to get to where the villains are. Or early stuff and therefore framing exactly why what just happened is bad, and why you need to try and put the world to rights which is helpful in a better game where the second half builds off of that established premise.
Or, to put it bluntly, GS1 has a story that you are actively working on. Whereas this sounds like you don't even spend much time working on the primary story that the game gives you.
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My experience with GS:DD was basically the same as Grefter's. I played it until getting the fifth party member and after sitting through an ass-long cutscene to get a spell that TELLS YOU THE SOLUTION TO PUZZLES I just finally said fuck it and traded that garbage in. What a worthless game. I mean, Golden Sun 1 wasn't that great of a game in the first place, but it wipes its ass with this one.
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FE6 - Tee hee, about to get the Sword of Seals. Hell yeah baby. I'm going to ruin Zephy's shit so hard it's not even funny.
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PSP acquired! I was going to try out my copy of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite except Gamestop put the wrong UMD in the case. Gooooo retail employees. Also I'm downloading Advance Portable in preparation for hackage, because apparently that's pretty simple with a 2000 model.
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Softmodding is simple in the 3000 version too. Yours is just more permanent and less annoying. *Shakes fist impotently.*
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Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - Fuck this game. Fuck it in its stupid fucking everything. It pushed beyond the point of mediocrity in how far it will stretch being mind numbingly dull. The fetch quests have no end in sight as the fetch quest that started the game is resolution to another fetch quest that we only just recently got (that we still have other things spiral off to fetch to get answers from). I lost my patience with a 10 minute text scroll of bad dialogue between a Djinn and 2 Trees that told us that the princess fetch quests were in another castle. I hate everything.
So...the game is Lufia 1?
Sounds more like Breath of Fire 3 minus interesting characters and beating shit up with dragons.
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To be honest it sounds like the only good thing about GS:DD was that it enflamed the obsessive shipping communities that TVTropes tells me exist for the original Golden Sun games.
Although the fact that Golden Sun has hardcore shippers is vaguely depressing in its own right.
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Legaia 2: Complete!
Mystic Arts wasted Avalon so hard. Go go Tireless Ribbons.
I enjoyed the game. It's very mediocre, but it's good at what it tries to do. The Art comboing system is easy and intuitive and the encounter rate is low enough that sitting through the ridiculously long Arts animations for the entire game doesn't get as repetitive as I had predicted it would. Though by the final dungeon, you can bet I was all about the No Encounters skill. The battle system had just worn out its welcome by then.
The game's story was... there. It was more about its characters, which were far better than I was expecting considering that -none- of them fell into anime tropes that I normally like. Lang was saved by his dialogue options. Kazan was awesome by virtue of turning the story into a martial arts flick. Sharon was genuinely funny a few times. Ayne was just kinda there, but his unexpected fatherhood thing was kinda cool. The less said about Maya, the better, though. Avalon was just kinda there, too. Velna somehow managed to be a more deep villain there. Oddly, the three members of the quirky miniboss squad were far more developed, and really lent to the amusing nature of the earlygame. So... a decent cast overall, though nothing special.
The game feels a lot like Grandia to me. A simple adventure with colorful characters on both sides of the conflict. Although in Legaia 2's favor is the fact that it had actually competent challenges to overcome in terms of gameplay. Probably the game's strongest point is that it is well-balanced throughout. Or maybe it's not as well-balanced as I think, I didn't figure out Mystic Arts until Avalon, so that might have changed my opinion.
tl;dr: 4.5/10 game, possibly 5 if I'm feeling generous. It exceeded my expectations, but that's not saying much.
NieR (PS3)
Immediately jumped into the English version of NieR after beating it.
I had played the first half of this game in Japanese, but as I don't have an HDTV, I could hardly read any of the text, and had to muddle through what was going on based entirely on the fairly rare voiced sections.
Playing it in English, I -still- can't read most of the text because developers seem to think that everyone who buys the new systems has an awesome TV so they can make the text super-small. It was hard enough in 360's ToV, but apparently we've gotten even further into the realm of microscopic text. It gives me a headache to play it, but at least my native language is more intelligible in too-small text. Dear god, I have no idea how even native Japanese speakers can make out kanji in that font size.
Really good English VA work in this, though. Kaine's opening spiel of bile was so vicerally entertaining and convincing that I'm glad I decided to give the English version a whirl. I may buy this game once I return this copy to Tal.
Also: Oh this soundtrack. Best OST since Katamari Damacy? Game is worth it solely for the soundtrack. The fact that it's a fun game is just a bonus.
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Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - Fuck this game. Fuck it in its stupid fucking everything. It pushed beyond the point of mediocrity in how far it will stretch being mind numbingly dull. The fetch quests have no end in sight as the fetch quest that started the game is resolution to another fetch quest that we only just recently got (that we still have other things spiral off to fetch to get answers from). I lost my patience with a 10 minute text scroll of bad dialogue between a Djinn and 2 Trees that told us that the princess fetch quests were in another castle. I hate everything.
So...the game is Lufia 1?
Sounds more like Breath of Fire 3 minus interesting characters and beating shit up with dragons.
Difference being BoF 3 actively has active antagonists for a large part of it blocking your way for the first half and the second half is largely spent trying to overcome insurmountable barriers that were actively setup that way by the main antagonist. The game relies on a grand total of one natural disaster blocking your way (volcano erupted).
I honestly don't have anything to describe just how layered the bullshit is here. If I can pull together my bile enough I will find a map of it online and map out where you had to go for what just to give people a visual example of it.
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Resonance of Fate-
Chapter 4. Still owns.
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I honestly don't have anything to describe just how layered the bullshit is here. If I can pull together my bile enough I will find a map of it online and map out where you had to go for what just to give people a visual example of it.
Please do. This is highly entertaining.
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Grefter's pain is our schadenfreude.
Shining Force: I am a hen. Fear my white feathers of death, Runefaust!
Oddly enough, being a hen does not seem to let me hatch a Domingo egg.
Also, Marionette is how you do a boss right! Massive AOE death to everyone.
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Domingo egg is for chapter four. Poke around the caravan town until you find a dude with an incubator. Can't remember if this is on your first or second visit there, but Domingo's permanently missed if you don't take your one chance, so just talk to everyone. And yeah, Marionette is fairly badass. ...Probably moreso than any other boss in the game, really.
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Also, Marionette is how you do a boss right! Massive AOE death to everyone.
You'll never fight a boss as competent as Marionette ever again in the game.
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In the brief update world.
Mass Effect: Beat it and it was awesome.
Mass Effect 2: Beat it and it was awesomer.
My life is now hollow since I clearly have nothing worth looking forward to until ME3.
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Golden Sun DD sounds like it should have been called Golden Sun Yo Dawg with a picture of Xhibit on the front of the game instead of...whoever the hell it is on the front cover.
Yo dawg, I herd you liek fetch quests, so I put a fetch quest in a fetch quest so you can get stuff while you get stuff.
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In the brief update world.
Mass Effect: Beat it and it was awesome.
Mass Effect 2: Beat it and it was awesomer.
My life is now hollow since I clearly have nothing worth looking forward to until ME3.
Now you have time to play inFamous at least!
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Valkyrie Profile Lenneth (PSP)- Good ending get. I didn't cry too much - I was mostly all bawwed out after sending Lucian up to Asgard >.>
Final levels: Lenneth 33, Arngrim L33, Aelia L27, Shiho L26 - Asgard Hill say hi to max Auto Item and Guts abuse, also CT say hi to max Auto Item and Guts abuse since I never had to abuse this combo before (well I used Guts for most of the game but not auto item) I imagine going through Palace of the Dragons and/or using the Creation Jewel to get good equips would have made it a different story perhaps.
On FFXIII the problem with the fight at the end of C11 is that he has a stagger/chain bar reset ability so it's probably impossible to defeat him in one stagger without a hell of a lot of grinding, Fang and a Genji Glove. Probably can do it with other characters and a Genji too but that would require even moar grinding. I didn't manage it with a Vanille, Light, Hope team with all three main roles maxxed, extensive secondary role development, a Genji and max Tier 2* for all and having an early Genji was kind of irrellevent there anyway considering none of them was breaking the damage cap yet, waste of an accessory slot, STR/MAG boosters would have probably worked better (Vanille did hit 99'999 when COM's Scourge ability triggered as he was ending his second stagger, which finished him off though) Of course he still went down in less than two minutes with pre battle shroud regardless but it's the principle of the thing!
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Well, in the case of FF13 bosses after a point, its clear they wanted you to actually do things besides just going "Stagger = Win"; almost every boss fight to that point reaches that. They needed to find ways around it, and Chap 11's boss having Anti-Chain Gauge tricks, and good amount of health is...well, basically just one way. Think of it as a hint to "You're going to need to try some new things out." God forbid the game tries to avoid being stagnant with gameplay strategies on bosses.
Its really no different than any XS2 Boss built to not die to one major Aerial Chain you've built up, but rather, forces you to actually consider when to time it and all that. Granted, I think XS2 started with gimmick ways around it like Albedo before FF13, but then FF13 doesn't let you change your party until much later, so the strategies you were adopting were "Get use to your new forced team."
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XS3 - Back to the trainwreck. Now we're supposed to enter
loligoth Fei's giant prehensile penis Abel's Ark or something.
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FE6 - Completed. I like the resolution of the story well enough, for all that I wish there had been one more major Gwen/Zephy scene in there. Probably wouldn't fit but oh well. I liked the fact that the Dark Priestess turned out to be not a mind-altering harpy like I had feared, but just a tool of a master. The PC cast is pretty fucking worthless but the game has some cool villains. Brenya is not in love with Zephiel! How utterly relieving (and sad that this is in fact relieving). Zephiel feels like a better version of the Van/Kato trope (driven to desperate measures by events in their lives) because his motives are a little less wanked on. He doesn't really even mention why he is so twisted and doesn't use it as an excuse to justify his behavior, which is nice.
FE7- Just to see kawaii Zephy-chu~~~
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The fuck, they put an escort mission in Resonance of Fate?
Fuck.
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The fuck, they put an escort mission in Resonance of Fate?
Fuck.
Have fun with that. The good news is, it's the only escort level in the game. The bad news is, it is also probably the hardest Chapter in the game. If you don't mind losing some of your Rubies, you can get to "select retry with Hero Gauge filled" to give the statue full health. And yeah, you have to cover the statue during the boss in case you were thinking you could just ditch it after walking through an already pretty nasty dungeon.
On the other hand, the fact that Rob is enjoying RoF is not something I am surprised by.
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FE6 - Hard Mode completed! First time doing this, third playthrough overall. Generally a pretty enjoyable experience, quite challenging. How FE6 handles reinforcements still needs to die, way too many character deaths were due to that and at a certain point I just started FAQing them because they annoy me. Otherwise good times. Overall MVP was probably Miredy despite being RNG screwed (failed to cap speed despite hitting Level 16 and on average capping it at Level 8 promoted, but oh well. Could just go anywhere and survive and hurt things badly with her ridiculous str/skl/def/HP and decent speed. No supports plus flight not mattering kept her out of the final chapter but still terrific.
Honourable mention goes to the trio of Shin, Rutger, and Fir, who frequently operated on their own along with Clarine since they supported each other to near invincible avoid and all had outstanding offence due to insane speed plus capped strength/skill in Shin's case and silly SM crit rates (90+), plus swords being generally cool in this game. Clarine was pretty darn RNG screwed on speed, HP, and magic which prevented her from being as good as normal but still an excellent part of this team for her utility and did eventually grow into her status as a terrific wall and enemy magnet, especially against wyverns and anyone with killer weaponry (since she nulled that).
Lance was an earlygame MVP who never became terrible thanks to supports and speed; Alan was meh but along for the ride as his buddy; Tate was massively blessed in Luck so she worked fairly well as a secondary flying tank behind Miredy; Gonzales had a terrible start but good if unreilable offence by the end, probably overall LVP of my core team due to the prepromotion woes though; Lilina filled a much-needed mage role despite her usual woes in durability and speed; Percival never quite excelled since he didn't have supports but he was still a great filler fighter with his base 20 str/spd and high durability outside evade; Roy is Roy and kinda sucked, and never came close to catching up because I couldn't spare a Hammerne use for the Sword of Seals. Igrene and Saul saw lots of filler use late (although Saul was frighteningly fragile until C Igrene and a Goddess Icon) but clearly weren't on the main team; Dayan, Niime, and Lalum all saw a little too.
Endgame maps... Chapter 23 (Brenya) feels a -lot- harder because the range of status staves are increased, and the ballista-users and wyverns who dominate the level of course have much higher stats and huge threat ranges. In particular killing the ballista-users opens their murderer up to berserked, which is kinda scary. Brenya herself probably has the best HM boosts of any boss (+7 mag, +4 skl/spd, def/res capped) but this isn't too relevant except for forcing some healthy respect of Bolting in the last push of the map. I found this the hardest of the endgame maps this time although 21 (wyvern swarms) and Zephiel's throne room were of course scary as always. Lost Astol in the latter because he got OHKOed by Fenrir, which made me sad. Total casualty count for the run was this nine. I got an A in Survival anyway. Glitch? A Tactics/Combat, B Power/Funds, E Exp (here's where all the deaths probably hurt) for the rest.
Kill leader was Rutger at 107, with Shin, Fir, Lance, and Miredy all close behind. Death leader was Lilina with 7. <_< Notably the Fir/Rutger/Shin trio never died, which is impressive given how much heavy-duty combat they saw, yay dodge-tanks in FE6. Lance had by far the most battles at like 250 because he did plenty of frontlining throughout the game, but especially early. Six battles (8, 9 [SCOTT!!!], 12x [GRERO!!!], 21, 21x, and 24) took over 20 turns, but none more than 25, while three battles (8, 21, 22) took over two hours, with Sword of Seals being the leader at 2:39.
Fun game, would play again but probably not any time soon. I like the competent enemies and some of the game's balance decisions (holy shit, things like bows and skill aren't jokes, def vs. avo as viable defensive strategies) though not all certainly, and it does have quite a few polish issues. We knew this though.
Devil May Cry - Mission 10 now. Shadows and Death Scissors both give me nightmares, good times. Griffon was quite competent on HM, I was surprised.
Dragon Quest 9 - I'm over ten hours in and am about to get job-changing. This game is quite slow, has basically no plot at all, and gameplay is vaguely there and nothing really unusual. Kind of a dull experience but hopefully being able to change jobs will give the game the spice it needs. Otherwise, zzz.
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Star Ocean 4: Beaten. General spoilers for everything follow.
Overall, I loved the game. Unlike SO3 which I was kind of indifferent to on the first playthrough and grew to love later, I liked this one the whole way through.
The gameplay was a step up from SO3's all around. Blindsides and Rush add a lot to the normal combat scheme without being overpowering. Overall difficulty was down from 3's (no MP death for starters), but it still felt like you had to work for most of your wins.
Characters:
EDGE
Very believable as a main. He gets thrust into a leadership role by virtue of being the only uninjured man available. He makes some good decisions and bad decisions as Captain. Then he makes a colossal mistake on alternate Earth and turns emo. But it's justified emo - he destroyed his home planet. That was the exact opposite thing from what he was trying to accomplish. He realizes he's in way over his head and not qualified for the position he's been put in. It's up to his friends to pull him out of his funk. Now they did probably drag on the emo-ness longer than they should have, but overall I didn't find it unrealistic for the situation.
In battle, Edge was surprisingly bad. The game seems to favor long-range combat overall, and he just didn't have the tools to compensate for that.
REIMI
Reimi was a pretty good Girl Friday. She took over leadership when she needed to and kept people focused on the mission. Someone complained about what she did on Roak as being bad, but in my mind it wasn't. She was trying to be strong to give Edge time to recover. And she knew about her built-in disease resistance - she had no reason to believe her body wouldn't fight off the infection on her own.
In battle, outstanding. Probably my MVP for the game. With Critical Hit bows, Critical Hit skill, and Focus, she was a crit monster. Pretty much always kept the bonus gauge filled with her around.
FAIZE
I see what they were trying to do with Faize, but they needed to give it more development time. His whole situation was far too rushed to work. He shows up on Aeos and immediately begins worshipping Edge despite having no reason to do so. He becomes disillusioned when Edge loses his will to continue, which is fine. Then he randomly falls in love with a girl he sees for all of two seconds riding by on a bunny. His eyes start changing colors when he finds out she's dead. This scene was hard to understand. I thought he had been mind-controlled by a Grigori until I read his dictionary afterwards. Anyway, he worked as a villain - he just needed more time to develop prior to that point.
In battle, he was on the weak side. But he gets Stone Rain early and that's a pretty godly spell.
LYMLE
Okay, here's the one people seem to complain about the most. But I thought she was an excellent character. The whole thing about her being 15 years old and stuck in a 6-year-old's body really lent a lot of depth to her. Admittedly, you wouldn't even know about the 15-year-old thing unless you read her dictionary entry, so I imagine a lot of people missed this. So basically you have someone who knows as much as a young adult does, but doesn't have the emotional maturity to deal with it properly. She's attracted to Faize, but doesn't know how to express herself. She draws protective wards on the ship, but doesn't realize she should explain her actions to Reimi. All in all a very fascinating character. And yes, they did overdo the "kay" thing. But that is pretty much how 6-year-olds talk so it's not that ridiculous.
In battle, she was very useful. Early multi-target healing is great, Firebolt spam like you expect from Star Ocean mages, and Hatchet Reel can do some sick crowd control damage. She was the only character I never removed from my party.
BACCHUS
Not a very good character, because they conveniently forgot he was a cyborg after his introduction. Oh look, we're in a prison cell. How about Bacchus walk through the wall like he did on the Cardianon ship? Hey, look a Grigori. How about Bacchus blast it with his super cannon like he did before? Yeah, his plot powers just evaporated.
In battle, very good. Like Reimi, he's a great ranged character. "Jumping" shots are stupidly useful. And the game continuously supplied him with new weapons and equipment, moreso than any other character. So he was always current on gear.
MERACLE
Not a really important character plotwise, and kind of annoying in general. Pretty much only good for getting things from talking to cats.
In battle, another close combat character which the game doesn't favor. Great at stunlocking though with the number of hits she gets.
MYURIA
I didn't care for her much as a character. Her whole "kill Crowe" thing was half-baked to start with, and she didn't really display a good reason for sticking around after her theory was shot full of holes.
In battle, useful, as all ranged/mage characters are in this game. Thunder Flare is the same great stun-locker it was in the previous game.
SARAH
I certainly wasn't expecting her to join the party. I have to wonder if her whole concept was changed during development. Her small status portraits look so beautiful and wise, and she sometimes says some really profound things. It's like they started to make her a smart character and then did a 180 and went dumb blonde with her. I didn't like her at first because of her voice and the ditziness, but she grew on me and I ended up liking her. And yes, I cried when she flew to save Reimi at the end.
In battle, it's kind of unusual for a game to give you a dedicated healer so late, but she caught up quickly enough. Great healing magic and not too terrible at close combat. Guess the closest analogy would be Rena from SO2.
ARUMAT
Blah blah I'm death you're all gonna die blah blah. Pretty terrible character. Albel from 3 was a much better version of the tough guy role.
In battle, the best close-combat character, due to his strength and durability. Diabolic Edge->Bloodstorm Revolution->Unholy Maelstrom is the bomb.
The only other character worth mentioning is Deputy Director Shimada, who gets the best comeuppance in video game history. "This meat isn't even cooked!"
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Item Creation was kind of weird. It was really easy to get recipes, but you couldn't do anything with them due to lack of materials. I'm sure there's some really broken stuff you can make if you farm rare materials from enemies for hours, but you're not going to see any of that on a normal playthrough. The only notable things I made were the Laser Scythe for Arumat and the ???? bow for Reimi which wasn't even that good.
Final boss was a decent challenge. I used Arumat, Bacchus, Lymle, and Sarah. No gameovers but I really had to work swapping back and forth between characters and juggling item and spell use. Great fight overall. Got the special endings for Lymle, Bacchus, Myuria, Arumat, and Sarah. Surprised I didn't get Meracle's, I did quite a few private actions with her.
The game did have some faults of course. Welch was horrible - whoever thought doing that to her would be a good idea needs to be shot. The cutscenes were way too long, especially during the middle of the game. Luckily the sceneskip function is much improved from the previous game so you don't get lost on what to do on subsequent playthroughs. And disc-swapping to travel to different planets is terrible in this day and age. I haven't tried loading the game to my hard drive; maybe that will alleviate disc swapping?
We'll see how well the game holds up in postgame and subsequent playthroughs. But right now it looks like it's going to be #6 on my top-ten RPGs of all time.
So anyway, the game is great and screw all of you who didn't like it. My opinion is better than yours. :P
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re: SO4
I actually really liked the game too. I just think its cast is uniformly terrible, barring Reimi's one shining moment and Faize/Lymle's (still creepy) nuanced relationship.
Yay Star Ocean. Now where's my Bluesphere remake, Squeenix?
NieR: Sad to talk about this in the same post as SO4, but NieR's story and presentation is damn amazing and I'm happy I skipped being social for an entire weekend to play it in one sitting. The first playthrough leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but throws a lot of the big important reveals at the player right at the end. Very satisfying despite some confusion and I'm mostly just impressed with how well the makers managed to introduce their concepts so fluidly.
Without spoiling too much, some of the bosses in the final dungeon's gauntlet really surprised me, as I hadn't been expecting that kind of twist. Unlike the final boss's twist, which was kind of expected from the very beginning.
Some spoiling: Apparently this game is a sequel to Drakengaard and you only find this out once you've played through like 4 times. I've never played Drakengaard so I'm not sure whether this is a point in its favor or not.
I'm definitely going to do a second playthrough as there's apparently a lot revealed there, but I'll probably just youtube the subsequent stuff. Game is fun, and very rarely repetitive, so I don't mind doing it a second time. A third time might be a bit too much.
Comments on localization: Awesome scripting, awesome voicework, and wonderfully self-aware.
Favorite quote: (after the big reveal) "Alright, can we just skip the part where you stand there with your mouths agape and get down to business?" -Really, the game doesn't try to force you to care about its story, but inevitably draws you into it anyway. This is pretty rare in most media, and especially in a game, so I appreciated it.
Forest of Myth section is the winnest of win. Go go text adventure making sense in plot. ^_^
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Djinn, if you've only played it once you really haven't played it at all. Get ready; shit gets real. Also, did you remember to read the Project Gestalt documents you got right before the end? I think the game is deliberately designed for yo to forget to read it.
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I did initially forget to read them, but I actually got so intrigued by the fact that they were missing from my inventory in the 2nd playthough that I loaded up the old save and read them this morning.
Didn't really answer enough questions on their own, I'm hoping there's more revealed on the 2nd playthrough as the terms that they were using in the documents just confused me more than answered many questions.
SPOILERS:
From what I can tell, everyone is a clone and the girls are androids who are raising the clones to turn the spoilers back into humans with the clones? I just don't know why they have all these clones running around in the first place and what the hell the black scrawl is and why past-yonah has it if the scrawl is what turns bodies into spoilers? Mostly bringing up these questions to make sure that they get addressed in the 2nd playthrough since some others I've asked about it didn't seem to think it was.
END SPOILERS
The 2nd playthru Kaine stuff is good so far. I've only done the opening scene there, but that was a lot of opening. More emotional than even the Emil scene, perhaps?
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Emil didn't really connect with me (the other three mains are highly entertaining), so that's an easy yes personally.
Arcanum: Argh what my saves deleted themselves why. ffffff. Yeah, maybe I'll pick this up again in a year or something.
Hero Core: Bashed through this in an hour or so. Pretty fun mindless shooting action. Hard owns my ass so bad, though. I can beat the plasma hydra and, uh, that's about it. I seriously need a weapon upgrade but cannot beat any of the other accessible bosses. Argh. Also Engrish mode for the win.
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https://docs.google.com/View?id=dgvmkf89_228fxgghgg3 (https://docs.google.com/View?id=dgvmkf89_228fxgghgg3)
Read this after you finish the game the second time. It's not completely translated but it really blows the doors off the game regardless. It spoils absolutely everything, keep in mind. It even spoils a whole ending that takes place after another ending.
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XS3 - Hey look it's Fantastic Unlimited Naked Yaoi Trifecta.
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Kingdom Hearts Re:coded- Fin. If you want a Kingdom Hearts game, with full NOMUUURAAAAAA and Disney worlds and crossover madness, just go ahead and skip this, go play Birth by Sleep or hold out for the 3DS game.
If you want a quirky and fun aRPG on the DS, go get this right now.
See, like Chain of Memories, Re:coded is purely setup for the next game with no independent story of its own, with lots of retread in terms of worlds and such from KH1. Unlike Chain of Memories, Re:coded does not have random derp moments in game design and is fun throughout, and its quirks work pretty well. I was particularly surprised at how well the genre shifts were handled, and the stat matrix (imagine if the Sphere Grid had the various grid spaces empty and you had to collect the actual stat ups and such, you're about 95% there) was a natural progression from Days' system. BbS style ability recharge really helped prevent any control issues, and truthfully I'm expecting the series to keep using that mechanic for the duration.
8/10. Lots of fun and no significant flaws.
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SPOILERS:
From what I can tell, everyone is a clone and the girls are androids who are raising the clones to turn the spoilers back into humans with the clones? I just don't know why they have all these clones running around in the first place and what the hell the black scrawl is and why past-yonah has it if the scrawl is what turns bodies into spoilers? Mostly bringing up these questions to make sure that they get addressed in the 2nd playthrough since some others I've asked about it didn't seem to think it was.
END SPOILERS
SPOILER
Black Scrawls are the navigation codes to Weiss. Not all human are suitable for Gestalt transformation, or should I say no human does except Nier. Eventually the program well get corrupted within the human and the Black Scrawl will surface on the skin. When that occurred, you are going to die in a pretty short time.
Black Scrawls is not what turned people into the Shadows, the mass produced copy of Noir did. And once the program becomes corrupted, the Shadows will lose its sanity, and the Replicants will have the Scrawls on their body.
The Replicants are mass produced to be the vessel for the Shadows when the appropriate time comes. The androids are the ones who manipulate the civilization of the Replicants so they stay in control. The problem is that the Replicants eventually developed will of their own. BTW, Replicants can't sexually reproduce, the Androids have to make new ones when an older copy died.
BTW, once the Black Scrawls appeared, there is no hope in saving that individual no matter what you do. So both Gestalt Nier and Replicant Nier are fighting for a lost cause since the very beginning. If you want to restore someone back to being human, you have to do it before the Black Scrawls become visible.
END SPOILER
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Human Yonah got the Scrawl by touching Grimoir Noir in the opening. As a result, her gestalt always develops it no matter what.
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Haven't posted much since the end of the year due to not having a computer with a real keyboard set up - so this might be a long update.
It isn't, though.
Magic: DotP: Got the third expansion and beat it, halfway through unlocking everything for the new decks. So far Equipment > Vampire > RB Caster for my interest in it - I like having creatures.
Hydro Thunder Hurricane: Bought as part of the end of the year sales on XBLA. Fun racing title, though the packages were irritating to get. I might pick up the DLC for this.
Castlevania HoD: Got the Legion DLC and have played the map a few times, beat it on Normal.
Cthulhu Saves The World: Had to wait until pretty much everything from the sale was downloaded before I could get this (cursed download cap from Rogers). Beat including the bonus boss. Really fun and would have definitely made my top 10 of the year if I had actually gotten to it in 2010.
Arkadian Warriors: Diablo clone, mediocre at best. But I beat it.
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More SRW because that's what I do.
Z: up to stage 51 ZEUTH, so it's once again a crop of stages I've never seen before.
48: A big slog, as I'd expect from any stage with three enemy MP Aquarions, but otherwise nothing special. Had to go back a redo a bit when I realized I'd misread the skill point and had to wipe out all enemies before killing the boss quickly. No big deal.
49: Hooooooboy. This is the showdown with Big Duo Inferno, and it's been merged with the final battle of Getter Robo for one hell of a fight. You start off with Roger vs. Alan one-on-one, and with Big Duo's HP regeneration you're not going to get anything accomplished there. So you turtle and wait and on turn three the rest of your party appears, while Alan calls in a bunch of Archetypes. Except your reinforcements start out halfway across the stage from him, and if you want that skill point you have to make the kill by turn four. That's one turn to move and another to attack. No time to build will. Which is a bit of a problem when Emperor Brai shows up after Alan dies and drops the entire Hundred Demon Empire right on your Will-less head. 20-30 enemy squads, most with leaders with 10K-plus HP, dropped right in the middle of where your troops are standing. There's not much strategy to it at this point, just a gigantic slog where you just have to outlast the bastards.
50: Overdevil time! What a weird damn fight. Weird enough, in fact, that it's worth not spoiling it for the people who haven't finished this route yet. Suffice to say it involves teleportation, a neverending stream of bosses, Aquarion deciding to parody G Gundam, and Sirius absolutely refusing to fucking die argh I hate him. Skill point's easy though, since there's no time limit. Just kill everything and then the Overdevil, which starts out most of the way across the battlefield so you don't have to worry about its Overskill screwing you up.
51: Once again I fall into Banpresto's trap. It's an easy fight with lots of Zeta Gundam bosses who still die easily enough, with some Turn A goons showing up later. I take my time wiping them out, confident that I'll finish within the six required turns....and Reuben shows up with a squadron of Leos in the opposite corner from everyone else on the map, with one turn left in which to kill him. I can't even reach him in one turn, and that's that. Next time I'm sending Renton down there and he can smash their faces in with Seven Swell as soon as they show up.
Advance Portable: Finished stage 8 Earth, having fun thus far. Trying to get all the secrets and kill all the retreating bosses that I can, in preparation for the lategame being a giant pain in the ass. So far so good. MVPs are Vysaga (piloted by Axel), Shining Gundam and Daimos.
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Make sure you get the 50 kills on Daimos.
That takes him from "okay" to "badass".
Incidentally it was the worst super in Advance original, probably. Go fig.
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Oh, he's already halfway there. I don't think it's going to be a problem.
Also, have I mentioned how much I love custom ace bonuses and wish the series as a whole would adopt them already? They're wonderful for giving characters unique abilities above and beyond what the skill system allows and I don't see why they haven't been used beyond OG games and AP.
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KH BbS: Played and finished, including the Final Chapter.
Not gonna do a major rant, just a quick small one covering the basics:
To be honest, I wasn't impressed...I was actually kind of bored with the gameplay a good amount cause despite being Proud mode with a lot of options..."Spam Attack, use some healing" got me through 80% of the fights. Felt most of the system was wasted; it was felt like the most repetitive KH game to date, and it didn't help that the enemy waves were massive, in a game where number of enemies isn't a big deal (its like polar opposite of Ninja Gaiden!), and you don't have allies like other KH games, so it just takes a while to get through.
Didn't bother with the Cpmmand Board; played it a little, and went "This is Mario Party...with a fraction of the fun value...screw it." I hear you get awesome rewards, but its hard to care when you're not having much issues with the game.
When the game did get hard, it never felt actually hard in a way that was fun, more just "Will the enemy be a cheap bastard?"
As far as writing goes...its so fake. The characters feel stale and tropetastic, or in Aqua's case, HAS NONE WHATSOEVER. Seriously, Aqua's entire character was basically being a Mary Sue Swordgirl, and that's it; she has no personality, her emotions feel to be forced to be whatever the scene required of her ("Ok, we need her to be upset now, so she'll be upset. Nevermind if she just witnessed something similar like this before, and sort of shrugged it off!" That kind of stuff.) For a friendship plot, they really dropped the ball by making it a solo RPG, cause the character interaction is minimal, and you really don't get a strong sense of the theme outside of when they jam it down your throat.
Its also a bad prequel. What do I mean by that? All the questions it answered...I wouldn't have asked prior to playing the game. The only questions I had related to KH1 or KH2 were generally stuff relating to Roxas and the Orgy 13, which KH 358/2 Days covered well. Here, they toss a bunch of stuff early on, and that's where all my questions came from. Prequels are suppose to help answer questions from previous installments, by setting a strong foundation, *NOT* add a bunch of useless info to pretend its superficially important, and then force tie-ins (Don't even pretend the Destiny Island stuff was anything BUT forced. I get they're trying to display parallels, but anyone with half a brain can see who parallels which character) to the later games, and...yeah. Oh, its not like Resident Evil Zero level bad as a prequel, but its not much better than FE7, as it doesn't really help the overall setting and plot of the series at all, more just makes things more confusing.
I could go on, but in the end, I'll just say it failed to be fun. Say what praises you want about it, I found myself bored and unimpressed. Defend the game all you want, it didn't succeed at the most important part of gaming, and that's "Fun Value." Not sure what I'd give it, but yes, despite actually liking KH games overall (Shut up about CoM, that game doesn't count), BbS just failed to deliver. The other 3 I had more fun in gameplay, KH1/2 had much better Disney Filler (You actually felt like you were playing a role in the story, and interacting with the characters, not just...kind of being shoe-horned into it...plus the stories you were in were generally a lot more fun), and 358/2 Days was a KH game with actual GOOD writing, and the intrigue there had me actually interested to see it the entire way through. BbS...was predictable, as the game was running off just tropes, only side stepping them to try and say "NO WE ARE NOT STAR WARS! SEE!? TOTALLY NOT!"
Parasite Eve 2: So...Aya set some guy on fire, fell unconscious, woke up, set some guy's gun on fire, and...you know, that's where I left off!
You know how I just said Aqua is a personalitiless character who exists to be a Mary Sue chick of sorts? Well, see, you could argue "She's female for the sake of being female" but I call bullshit on that, cause Aya's shows how you do that. Nothing about Aya's character requires her to be female; she's a genuinely asexual character in that regard. If PE1/2 had a "Choose your gender" selection, which only affected the character's design, pronouns, and some NPC reactions, the character would not be touched.
That's one thing I liked about Aya in PE1; she's female, but doesn't rely on female stereotypes to drive her character, most notably, avoids the "STRONG FEMALE LEAD WHOSE TRYING TO PROVE SOMETHING!" that they often have. No, she's just a duty driven character, and her gender is very much 2ndary. PE2 seems to follow that up well. I respect that in a character a lot more...
...oh, right, gameplay relate stuff. Its like Resident Evil spliced with an RPG...that's...uh...I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, as I hated old school RE gameplay, but splicing it with an RPG makes it tolerable so...oh screw it, how does "TOO EARLY TO TELL" sound?
Miles Edgeworth Ace Attorney Investigations: And after ranting about gameplay, lets go to a game series known for having atrocious gameplay, but being genuinely fun despite that! Yeah, I picked this up, played the first case and...well, all I can say is "This is an Ace Attorney game." That's a good thing, if you can't tell <_<
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Because NieR was so awesome, I've been picking at Drakengard (Cavia's -other- strange-as-hell game that relates to the backstory of NieR)... and I have very little good to say about it. Apart from "well, they've certainly gotten better at that whole continuity-of-story thing". Also, while NieR isn't the most amazing game in the world, it's signifcantly more fun to actually -play- than anything Drakengard has to offer.
The nicest thing I can say about is "I suppose it's only fitting having the main antagonist of a game with a party containing a pedophile and a habitual child murderer turn out to be a child."
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A man talking loli to boot. But anyway, to see the ending that is related to NieR, it'll require you to collect all the weapon in the game first before you can access that ending, which may take a while.
Also, you have to play the second game if you want to find out the real big bad.
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A man talking loli to boot. But anyway, to see the ending that is related to NieR, it'll require you to collect all the weapon in the game first before you can access that ending, which may take a while.
And then a rhythm game, out of nowhere. Best to just watch Ending E on YouTube.
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Just read The Dark ID's LP of the game. Far better use of your time.
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Just read The Dark ID's LP of the game. Far better use of your time.
I have been reading that concurrently with playing the game. I've had the game for ages just sitting on my shelf. I bought back in my "Square can do no wrong" phase of game-buying. Oh, to be that innocent again~
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Replaying SoM when I was 21 quickly disabused me of that notion.
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Playing FF8 quickly disabused me of that notion.
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I try to forget I ever played FF8.
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Playing FF8 quickly disabused me of that notion.
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Playing FF8 quickly disabused me of that notion.
But hey, at least Brave Fencer Musashi was good!
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Valkyria Chronicles
1st RPG for the PS3, Hey!
This game is hell pretty. I must have missed the memo that Vyse and Aika were in this game, but that was just a bonus of an Easter egg for me!
I'm right around chapter 3 right now. The game is gorgeous and fun. I needed to get away from WoW and Blacks Ops and I think this will do nicely.
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Playing FF8 quickly disabused me of that notion.
I'm not sure if this happened when I played FF7 or FF5; both those things happened around the same time.
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Really? Secret of Mana was your breaking point? Weak.
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Secret of Mana is one of the -worst ARPGs in the story of everything ever-. It's better than like Drakkhen and Dragon Slayer and -that's it-. Some of the shit they pulled with SoM regarding shitty mechanics and egregious hitboxes is Radia Senki-level failure.
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Yeah I pretty much have to second the "Secret of Mana sucks" sentiment. I'd be inclined to say it was my breaking point for "Square can do no wrong" too. I played FF1 and FF8 at about the same time and while I don't think terribly highly of them either, SoM was definitely the only one of the three I realised was bad back in the 90's.
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Secret of Mana is one of the -worst ARPGs in the story of everything ever-. It's better than like Drakkhen and Dragon Slayer and -that's it-. Some of the shit they pulled with SoM regarding shitty mechanics and egregious hitboxes is Radia Senki-level failure.
And yet, people will praise it to highest hell, saying its one of those "Titans" from the SNES era. Its a lot like FF4 in that regard, except FF4 feels more justified cause it doesn't fail on basic mechanical level. SoM i noticed had huge misleading hit boxes, and shit like "Ok, I swung at that bird about 10 times, its close to the ground, but I'm not getting any connection indicator? Even a "Miss" would be nice to know I'm at least AIMING at the thing!"
I know people say its a "revolutionary!" game and all that..yet it does nothing really ground breaking. At least FF4 was one of the first games to have a genuinely character driven story, SoM doesn't even have that much. and its not like it was the first to use an established battle system either; the only other game to use that style was Secret of Evermore, and it did it like 10x better (SoE at least didn't lie about hit boxes, and was a case where less options = better)
For the record, I use to like SoM, but...when I went back to in later years, it really failed at what I remembered. Yes, again, FF4 had a similar thing, except FF4's decline from "Greatness" per se was a lot more gradual, as it wasmore "Age keeps hitting it harder and harder", where as SoM was more "The Rose COlored Glasses are off, what's underneath is an ugly trash heap"
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I loved SoM, but it has been a very long time since I played it!
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I could go into a very long thesis about why Secret of Mana isn't the worst game ever created but I doubt it'd be changing a lot of minds, so I'll shorten it and say that Secret of Mana, despite its flaws, was a good game for the time partly due to the fact that you could easily play it with friends. There were few RPGs at the time that you could play with other people and it being one of those few tended to make it seem better than perhaps it was.
It was also incredibly bright and colorful which I think is why people might wax more nostalgically about it than other games. Oh and it had that Nitendo Power play guide thingamadoober going for it.
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I personally find that the emphasis on narrative makes RPGs far more satisfying as solitary experiences. SoM is pretty much objectively worse than SD3, the Quintet action RPGs, and especially Evermore in that regard. Music's great, don't get me wrong. And yeah, I did play the game multiplayer a bit back in the day, but it wasn't really as fantastic as some claim--the broken mechanics were still a huge problem, and I love me some buggy games. You can kill nearly any boss in the game via magic staggering. There isn't even a reason to stress grinding on enemies since this is possible.
Another issue is the fact that menus paused the action for all players. Considering how powerful magic was, sane players would use it frequently, and the fact that you're constantly using menus starts to take away the illusion of SoM's multiplayer mattering at all after a while: why should anyone control the sprite when a single player can just as easily pick her spells? Ultimately the multiplayer elements feel very tacked on, and there were many more enjoyable multiplayer games out at the time (they just weren't RPGs). Sure I'll give it props for being an early attempt, but i mean, nobody hangs up cave paintings in the Louvre.
Your mileage may vary of course.
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I...actually disagree strongly, Neph, on the Multiplayer aspect of SoM. My friend and I were playing it, when I actually liked ti mind, the game just ended up being the two of us arguing "Fight that guy" "No, lets move on with the area!" and its more restrictive since you lose the free range of movement you have in 1 player mode. Just cause its a rare 2 player RPG doesn't make it good, cause its multiplayer I found actually DETRACTED from the game, not added to it.
It says something that FF6 and FF9's half assed multiplayers were handled better, and they were really just "playing the same game with 2 controllers."
It was also incredibly bright and colorful which I think is why people might wax more nostalgically about it than other games. Oh and it had that Nitendo Power play guide thingamadoober going for it.
I will give you this much though. The game is bright and looks nice, so that could help cloud the nostalgic judgment.
Though, then you compare it to Chrono Trigger, which is even better visually in everyway...and has other redeeming qualities, INCLUDING how it stood the test of time, and still maintains a level of decency compared to modern games.
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While I am all for hating on SoM, mang that shit isn't even the worst Mana game, so yeah. I am going to jump on board and just note that bad multiplayer was still something fairly unique for an RPG at the time and still is something that can move a few units of a certian series that is all about Tales and then having horrible Tales told.
FF6 and 9 multiplayer were also implemented after SoM, I am thinking there is a reason it was included in FF6.
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It says something that FF6 and FF9's half assed multiplayers were handled better, and they were really just "playing the same game with 2 controllers."
Duck Hunt for Multiplayer win!
Puzzle Quest 2: Started clearing my gaming backlog by starting this. Chose the assassin because it's supposed to be broken. Hunting for polar bears right now. The game is Puzzle Quest 1 only without the exp/gold gems in the field. Pretty good so far.
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FF6 and 9 multiplayer were also implemented after SoM, I am thinking there is a reason it was included in FF6.
Unless I'm going crazy, that exact style of multiplayer was also present in FF5, which predates SoM.
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Multiplayer in a turn-based RPG has a veneer of utter pointlessness that co-op action gaming lacks.
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Drakengard: For anyone who thought P4's bad ending went too far on the "bleak for the sake of being bleak", Drakengard is pretty much built on this premise and that's its selling point. Stay away. Alternately, it's kind of morbidly fascinating to watch all these messed up people
trying to stop bringing about interacting with the apocalypse.
FF12RW: Not actually playing this anymore, but I stumbled across a group of my students playing this at the food court. I asked them what their favorite Summon Beast was and they said "Shiva".
Apparently she is popular with 8-year-olds. >.>;;
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FF6 and 9 multiplayer were also implemented after SoM, I am thinking there is a reason it was included in FF6.
Unless I'm going crazy, that exact style of multiplayer was also present in FF5, which predates SoM.
I only researched the stuff quoted, so don't look to me for fact checking there! Edit - It being in FF5 would be a reason to implement it in 6.
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So. As people in chat were aware, I decided to take Delibird along with me to the Elite 4 as my Lance slayer. Level 45 didn't cut it, so I leveled it up to 50. With his setup, he COULD OHKO the Dragonites! Woo. Anywho, here's the setup beforehand:
Delibird, L50, NeverMeltIce
Typhlosion, L43, Shell Bell
Murkrow, L43, Lum Berry
Machop, L46, Lum Berry
Electabuzz, L46, BrightPowder
Hypno, L45, Quick Powder
I tear through the E4 with ease. Lance is just the problem.
Gyrados is a OHKO with Thunderbolt. Next
So he throws out his L50 Dragonite first. I bit it the first time to Outrage spam, as Delibird was not fast enough to go first. The second and third times he missed TWICE with Blizzard and I never really recovered. Both times I at least managed to kill off this one, but died later on due to my rhthym being broken. Fourth time I managed to hit him right off.
Aerodactyl next. First time seeing him (2nd time through) he killed off most of my party before I realized what to do with him. Third and Fourth times just saw me sending out Electabuzz and Hyper Potioning until a beneficial situation allowed me to kill him off. The 4th he got Paralyzed his first attack, so bam, dead.
L49 Dragonite the first is where I bit it the 2nd and 3rd times through. Ended up being faster than Delibird, so he tore through my team. 4th time he got paralyzed the same way as Aerodactyl and I managed to slip in Delibird after a couple Revives. He couldn't move, bam, Blizzard hits, OHKO.
L49 Dragonite the second... well, luck is finally on my side on this one. Missed with it's first attack. Delibird hits with Blizzard. OHKO. Delibird is the Pokemon Champion.
UU pokemon rock.
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FE7- Oh Desmond. You are Straff Venture level bad at parenthood.
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Started WA4. Decent game thus far, certainly knows how to get on a roll quickly.
Brionac really feels more like "Special" Forces then an Elite Squad. And seriously, were they having that meeting in a small side office in folding chairs?
Jude: Acceptable.
Yulie: Too apologetic.
Arnaud: Awesome.
Raquel: Cool.
Died once to Jeremey because WTF DAMAGE.
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How am I supposed to
Dragon Age - Finish Origins. Game is a bit buggy there, lost all my gear to a bug because I was wearing Key to the City. It was just the armour and weapon I was using on my main though, so wasn't a big deal, I still had some upgrades to get so just rocked out with a shield, an axe I had put away to use until I should break my old sword/shield set and rocked Corruption that I had kept back at the castle. Gladiator styles, fuck yeah. Was fun but stupidly easy. A combination of respecialisation being available and how insane archery is makes the game pretty lol. I even made Sigrun a dual wielder just to see how big the difference was. Both are broken, but archery takes less time to be so (and Warriors can do it as well). Going to have to start up another game running around wearing only boots and gloves while dual wielding on a character called BIGGAYDISCO because this game lets you crank up the homoeroticism up to 11. Prolly be male dwarf Noble because fuck why not. I haven't played it before and it lets you break the game even more.
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Hypno, L45, Quick Powder
Is this supposed to be Quick Claw? Quick Powder only works on Ditto.
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Derp. Yes. My bad.
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Super Robot Taisen J- Finished. So, while every other aspect of the game is good, it has to be said; there is way, WAY too much Seed in this game. I literally took Nadesico over Archangel at every split and there's still, what, ten or so Stages devoted to Seed? Cripes. That Seed, at least in this game, is several steps below TALES RACISM PLOT!!!, isn't helping, but it's just not a terribly entertaining cast or villain set. I mean, at least Brain Powered and Zeorymer are crazy, not just racist asshats.
But like I said, everything else about the game is good. Well, except enemies. Enemies are terrible. Learn to hit guys~ But that doesn't bother me really so. Anyway, good things. I gather the series in general switched over to Favorites and all weapons running off a single upgrade bar sometime right after OG2 came out (well, not that OG can have Favorites, but anyway) and both are definite steps up from the spend-athon of before. Money is fairly tight, although doing Puzzle Robo helps (not that I'd do Puzzle Robo without FAQ in hand), but I think this is the game's attempt at balance. I mean, until the very end of the game, I was using over half my party (if admittedly good units like Dancougar, Mazinkaiser, and Blade) completely unupgraded, and while they had to make use of support defense and repair units, since the game floods you in both that's not at all a hindrance. Meanwhile, I immediately maxed out Granteed's defense, and quickly found that Calvina had hit double-ace status by Stage 10 and ended the game with over 700 kills even though I actually made an effort to feed other people kills. When Granteed hit full upgrade status, you had a super that took 6HKO damage from boss ultimates, had dodge rates above 70%, and soloed maps. Before getting the Dracodeus, even.
What I'm saying here is that the game isn't really balanced for proper use of upgrades and feels scaled to unupgraded units. That literally every pilot in the game gets some levels of Support Attack and Defense, and it all seems fairly overkill.
And that's why J is called an easy game.
So, unit hype. Favorited Originals, Full Metal Panic! and G Gundam
Granteed Dracodeus (Calvina, Melua)- Touched on this, but yeah. No grunt in the game dealt more than about 500 damage to her, and most bosses failed to do more than 2k. Silly awesome.
God Gundam- Domon sucks for a long time. Valor is weirdly late on his spirit list (I mean, this is DOMON KASSHU. Hot Blood should be the TOP of his list, not something he gets at level 25), and the Shining sucks hard. He gets three upgrades of course. God Gundam itself is solid, but kinda meh on weapon power. This is because his finishers are a separate upgrade, and those're solid. You never use them, because THEN he finally gets his combo partners...
Rising Gundam- I really wish Rain joined earlier. Rising's the best healbot in the game (lack of Resupply notwithstanding), with good stats and more importantly competent offense with excellent range. Since she does join so late, though, it's hard to get her kills (in part my fault though, since I immediately jacked her evade to "enemies ignore her" levels. Oops, overestimated J grunts again.), so really she hangs out, activates Love Love Tenkyoken, and fittingly smites bosses backed by Love'd <3<3
Nobel Gundam- So apparently there's just 2 good secrets in this game, and Allenby isn't one of them. She's easy to get though, and while she badly needed an ultimate besides the team attack (especially because that's range 1) her lower stats relative the other G Gundam units came to her aid as it meant enemies targetted her with single-digit hit rates. So she still snagged double ace status despite objectively being the worst unit I was using (supposing I hadn't upgraded the hell out of her of course)
Gundam Rose- Great in the midgame, thanks to being the first and for ages only targettable MAP. That said, his having a Real spirit list is detrimental, because he doesn't have a Real pilot's accuracy and badly needs some hellp on that end if you want use out of him; even Focus only helps so much for him. My #2 guy on kills, but not terribly good in the endgame.
Gundam Maxter- Chibodee hung around to get a few kills so he could eventually spam team attacks with George, which didn't work out too bad. I think he was my death leader though.
Bonta-kun- Yeah, I know the Arbalex or whatever is technically better. But hey, Bonta-Kun's got a little extra range, some non-ammo attacks, and the HP is irrelevant since nothing will ever target him anyway (you'll never see a double-digit hit rate against the bonta-kun). And more importantly is bonta-kun. In general though, neither of Sousuke's units have good finishers, making it sup-bar for endgame shenanigans. Flipside, nothing would target it, so it could hang around Granteed and trigger its support attacks, which is pretty handy.
Tekkaman Blade- If I'd upgraded it throughout the game, instead of leaving that for the final maps when I had infinite money, I'd probably be the best unit in the game. Pegas is a free Strike pool basically, so you can spam Voltekka MAPs and the like all day. Hung around with Calvina doing the support attack tango as well, just wouldn't have needed to if I'd used it regularly.
Dancougar Final- You don't have to be a good unit when you have 5 SP pools. Dancougar just is anyway. A finisher you can bloody snipe with is a hell of a thing.
Mazinkaiser FS- Mostly filler by the end, but always handy to have around. Good mix of attack ranges and not terribly Will dependant.
Boss Borot, Blue Earth- Healbots. Boss liked to die, but like that matters.
Yamato Nadesico- y'know, if I'd put any money or effort into the thing, it coulda been a front-line unit. I didn't, but it's cool that it's viable.
Archangel- Meanwhile I never gave the Archangel any attention. Fortunately, since I never took its path splits, teh pilots stayed well levelled anway. Unfortunately, they have no good support spirits. Bastards.
I used Mao, Kurz, and the other Mazinger healbots regularly but they never left the ship after initial deployment in the final chapters. Just not damaging enough to keep up without any upgrades in the end (and I didn't need much healbot duty by then for whatever reason).
I think I like this better than OG2, but not by a significant amount, so still 8/10 range.
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Tales of Vesperia- Question. Do a lot of the annoying sidequest convo chains shut off later? Or does only one special extra scene activate each time you go into a town? I kind of wanted to get all the major DL stuff so I could go through everyone and get a decent feel for them, but with so many items it seemed like it was easier to just go through the sidequest list, but a lot of them don't seem to be going off.
Grandia 3- Replaying this also for notes. Alonso respect down a tad (Shouldn't get same skill levels as the rest, or at least the rest on their earlier techs), although still not a Light (Although...even more so, still wouldn't have ranked!). Got 4 skill upgrades in about 2 battles once, which was amazing. Need to hit up the casino and see how easy it is to get SP restoring items since that will probably be a pretty big influence on how I'll end up seeing DL SP.
FF 13- And I beat this! Final score is 4/10. Will hopefully post a fairly long analysis this weekend, but don't particularly feel up to it now. I will say that despite being a bit overblown and unexplained, I really liked the ending.
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How far through are you? There is guides online that take you through most of it. Kouli specifically has a very comprehensive list of triggers for scenes, most of the time things that hold you up just need a random chance to trigger (for serious) at end game, if it is mid game stuff you are after, then I would just follow a regular walkthrough and it should cover you (most of them seem to be derived from Kouli's work fairly openly).
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Bonta-kun- Yeah, I know the Arbalex or whatever is technically better. But hey, Bonta-Kun's got a little extra range, some non-ammo attacks, and the HP is irrelevant since nothing will ever target him anyway (you'll never see a double-digit hit rate against the bonta-kun). And more importantly is bonta-kun. In general though, neither of Sousuke's units have good finishers, making it sup-bar for endgame shenanigans. Flipside, nothing would target it, so it could hang around Granteed and trigger its support attacks, which is pretty handy.
Lack of good finishers for both would be entirely true if not for Lambda Driver's nutsy damage boosts along with Prosuke having Soul. Arbalest's Boxer off a 1.5x extra punch (starts at 1.2x at 120 Will, rises linear by .1 until 150) at 150 Will (before factoring in usual high-Will higher damage and all) backed up by a 2.5x damage buff is actually shockingly mean. Even at 130 Will, I think Sosuke should be able to hold up in damage with a decent Super finisher, and he also sorta benefits from crazy awesome Will gains - Bonta-kun doesn't make nearly as much of the Will as Arbie does.
EDIT: Dunno if the boost applies to the FMP trifecta combo, that'd be kinda crazy if it did unless the combo's base completely fails.
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Boost does, base fails at low 4k though.
...it's still pretty good when Sousuke triggers it because oh noes EN costs on Arbalest, and the other two can er do damage because of it. It isn't great but it's worth noting.
Of course W had like 5k power on it IIRC. W FMP was funny. Too bad Falke was so bad.
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He didn't learn soul until the last map, so sorta a wash anyway >.>
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How far through are you? There is guides online that take you through most of it. Kouli specifically has a very comprehensive list of triggers for scenes, most of the time things that hold you up just need a random chance to trigger (for serious) at end game, if it is mid game stuff you are after, then I would just follow a regular walkthrough and it should cover you (most of them seem to be derived from Kouli's work fairly openly).
About to go into the dungeon in the middle of the map, but had started going back to the beginning stuff. You sure it was Kouli? No FaQ on GF, but he might have another site?
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http://ameblo.jp/koulinovesperia/entry-10347292825.html and http://ameblo.jp/koulinovesperia/entry-10343547508.html for Kouli's stuff. It isn't really formatted well enough for a proper FAQ, but it is a useful reference guide if what you are reading from another walkthrough isn't playing nice.
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Earthworm Jim HD: Played through this on an alternate account and beat. Fun, though I suck at Andy Asteroids.
Puzzle Quest 2: Beat a giant fat goblin, getting my butt kicked by a yeti.
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Thanks Gref. That would do perfectly (at least, you know, playing from the beginning! I guess the scenes still only kicking in a random could still be a very annoying contributor).
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Mass Effect 2 - finished
Was Paragon Infilitrator. Took Shredder Ammo as my advanced training to complement Disrupter Ammo and didn't bother with any of the others.
Very happy overall.
I can't really think of any complaints I would have had for ME1 which would still hold for ME2.
Not all sunshine and daisies:
- The Mako is gone.
- Mapping system is 98% gone, and the 2% that remains is almost useless.
- Paragon options get off-kilter at times. Paragon points for inciting a 'crowd' to murder a bartender? Paragon points for charming shopkeepers into giving discounts? Including setting three shops in one area up with advertisement to the effect of each one being your favourite in the area - two of which are directly across from each other.
- On the topic of Paragonity, I don't know whether it's because I started off with a heap or not, but in ME1 there were loads of Paragon options I was never qualified to take despite being as paragony as possible at the time while here I don't remember there being a Paragon choice I wasn't qualified for.
- Weapon choice goes from being horribly overwhelming to horribly underwhelming. Two options for machine-weaponry, two options for heavy pistol, two options for sniper rifle... five options for heavy weaponary. I didn't care enough about the weapon types I didn't have access to to remember how many were available to each but I suspect it was two each also. But on top of this, you don't really get any information about what the strengths and weaknesses of each weapon is without wielding it. The upgraded heavy pistol carries far less ammunition than the original one - it's supposed to be more powerful, but how can you really check? The upgraded sniper rifle has more than one ammunition per clip, but doesn't allow you to apply ammunition powers - I was still on the fance as to whether this was a deal-breaker or not when thankfully I got access to a unique third sniper rifle.
The submachinegun at least didn't seem to have any downsides compared to the machinepistol.
- Thermal clips for weapons with very limited ammunition (mostly the first sniper rifle)... I can accept the logic behind swapping to thermal clips in general, but in cases like this it seems to be not worth it.
- Instead of there being a bundle of meaningless reasons to explore the galaxy, you now have almost no reason to do it.
- Galaxy map is overly fiddly. Not a fan of missing the 'enter area' button and resulting in the ship moving far enough away from wherever that I need to move it back again. Not a fan of having to do different things to back out layers. Fuel is a nuisance and shouldn't be necessary. What happens if you run yourself out of fuel outside a system anyway?
Ended up losing Mordin sadly.
Golden Sun Dark Dawn - Entering Baria Temple
All the trendy people were playing this so it seemed like the thing to do.
Graphics are not as bad as I was expecting. The ludicrous new territory seems galling but maybe I just don't remember enough about GS1/2 and there was room for it. Encyclopedia system seems like a bad excuse to shove a bunch of nonsense words down our throats.
Super Robot Wars J - Just beat episode 10.
Making slow progress because I was putting most of my time into ME2, so may speed up now.
Think I will put Noal back up as my avatar because he is the man and all.
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Dragon Quest 9 - So I realised something over the past week: this game sucks.
I dunno. It feels like they carefully searched for all the things that made DQ8 worth playing and sucked them out of the experience. Charming characters? Immersive world map? Top-notch VA? All gone. The plot is reduced to something utterly laughable, nothing but those wonderful DQ fetchquests bounced off of not just a silent main, but a silent PARTY. Wonderful. I guess the gameplay is technically a step up but it's still basically worthless. I just got job changing and wow, what a disappointment, going back to Level 1 to change jobs = WTF when you can't even keep spells, just abilities. So the short-term benefits are nil and the long-term are questionable. Speaking of abilities, I keep being underwhelmed by them in this game. Buffs are somehow worse than ever. Singletarget Insulatle! A new weak MDef buff to go with the weak Def buff. I've tried to Sap every boss so far and not one has been hit. Woohoo. Of course healing and attacking things still works well at least, yay for that. The game's also too easy and far too slow, I am 11 hours in and feel like almost nothing has happened and this is compounded by the Xenogears-like text speed which I can't speed up (in a game made in 2010); the difference is Xenogears text was worth reading. I realised that this game pretty much just relies on having you jump through hoops (like quests) to keep up the illusion that you're actually doing something but after I raised five people to max tension to get some armour that raises my useless defence stat a few measly points I realised this game just isn't fun about it. If someone wants to tell me something this game actually does well that I'm missing feel free to tell me, otherwise I will probably put it down and, I dunno, maybe replay FF5 because FF5 seems to do everything this game does better unless you love mediocre item creation or something. Oh okay I guess its graphics are worse WOOOO SO HAPPY BETTER GRAPHICS THAN A TWO-DECADE-OLD GAME. I mean it even gets wallopped in music, the boss theme is probably the worst boss theme in an RPG ever. The best part is if I do put the game down and someone else decides to play this copy I'll lose all this progress because ONE SAVE FILE SO AWESOME.
At least Ragin' Contagion was cool. Glad I played far enough to see him.
(As for where I'm am, I beat Lleviathan and Abbott Jack and got job changing, not much past then.)
DMC - Second Griffon fight. I remember thinking this fight was weird and not quite understanding it, yet nevertheless beating it first try, on NM. Now it looks like I actually have to figure it out. Uh oh. At least Frosts are fun to fight.
Chrono Trigger! - It's been like a decade since I played this last, so I dunno, time to see it again through adult eyes or something! Fun enough so far, I'm about to duel a robot in a bike race because this is necessary to advance the plot. EDIT: Oh yeah, pro moment of the playthrough was forgetting to unequip the Berserker before the boss fight against Guardian, who counters you with MT high 3HKO if you attack him while both his cronies are alive. This gave the fight as a whole super-scary offence for CT. I still won but it was kinda close! Game's uh very easy in general. I'm going through the game pretty quickly, skipping many (though not all) fights that don't have associated dialog, so I'll probably be a bit underlevelled which will help.
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SRWL - Nice rapeface, Linebarrel cast.
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ONE SAVE FILE SO AWESOME.
Plz keep playing. As the board biggest? DQ hater, I love reading long rants about this.
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ONE SAVE FILE SO AWESOME.
Plz keep playing. As the board biggest? DQ hater, I love reading long rants about this.
You're a bad person. <3
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I have to agree that DQ9 was quite disappointing. It's probably my least favorite of the DQ games I actually finished. (4-9) If the game were challenging enough to warrant the class system I might have felt differently. I have been told that playing it "with friends" makes it more fun, but I can only see that making the game EVEN EASIER so I'm not buying it personally. That's looking past all problems with the plot, music, and post-game oriented structure.
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It's probably my least favorite of the DQ games I actually finished. (4-9)
Worse than DQ7? I find that hard to believe.
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It's probably my least favorite of the DQ games I actually finished. (4-9)
Worse than DQ7? I find that impossible to believe.
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I like DQ9 more, but then again I like DQ7/8/9 so my opinion is clearly quite weird.
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It's probably my least favorite of the DQ games I actually finished. (4-9)
Worse than DQ7? I find that hard to believe.
I really enjoyed DQ7 and thought DQ9 was mediocre. I think something about the pacing is off compared to the other DQ games.
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DQ9 is basically DQ3 upgraded.
As such it's not really a surprise that Elfboy doesn't like it, or that it doesn't appeal to everyone.
It's kinda a well done anachronism. With, everything that a good train implies as downsides vs a plane, as it were.
...though having said that hyping DQ7's pacing over DQ9 is baffling.
Edit:
Oh and Sap has a reduced rate against many early bosses but it definitely hits for quite a while. I was using it until I got job changes, IIRC.
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DQ7 has consistent pacing!
(Consistently slower than a rock rolling uphill, buuuuut)
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I actually really love DQ7, for the same reason I like Soul Blazer/Terranigma. I also enjoy plundering towns of items and DQ7 is almost all that. The battle system in 7 isn't great, but it isn't what the game is focused around, whereas DQ9 is.
Can't comment on 3 vs 9, haven't played 3.
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7 is my favorite, and 9 my second-favorite, so yeah, opinions and all.
9 is basically a single-player MMO. If you like MMOs, you'll probably like it. Otherwise no.
The maingame is really easy, no surprises there. The fun challenge-wise comes in fighting the Legacy Bosses postgame. Although I guess it says something if you have to go back to bosses of previous games to find challenge.
And yeah, you've been unlucky with Sap. It's pretty damned useful on bosses in the maingame.
I'm not going to try to defend the story. If you're playing a Dragon Quest game for its story, you're doing it wrong.
And yes, the music is horrible, no idea how they dropped the ball on that one.
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DQ9: Been experimenting with alternate methods to beat Mortamor more efficiently. Tried some tension-boosting, which works surprisingly well despite both Mort's right hand and head being capable of Disruptive Waving. Tried using Luminary Coup de Grace to stun all three body parts. It works, but it just takes too long to get the Coup (even with Luminary bonus, Combat Action Medal, and Hypercritical Fan). Then I noticed I had four Gringham Whips in inventory. Grinded a bit to get two of my four chars to Whips 100 so all four could use them. Seems to work pretty well - I was killing Mortamor in 6 turns instead of the 8 it had been taking with other methods. So now I'm taking a break to upgrade the whips a bit for some more damage.
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DQ7 has consistent pacing!
(Consistently slower than a rock rolling uphill, buuuuut)
...you know, I was going to call you out on it, but you are absolutely right. DQ7 *IS* consistent at its pacing, just in this case, that's not a good thing <_<
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I'm not going to try to defend the story. If you're playing a Dragon Quest game for its story, you're doing it wrong.
I could pull up some juicy quotes from gamefaqs if you're in the mood to lose whatever faith in humanity you still have.
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Not really defending the game (I found it good as a portable distraction, Elves and I fundamentally play portables differently though), but the single save file from a game in 2010 is uh just like Pokemon yeah? Anything with as much multiplayer little fiddlies and tons of variable data to store is going to be fairly restricted on a cartridge. Much like the other things you are bothered with the game by though, it only shows up tons of hours into the game, unlike Boxes for Pokemans and whatnot does. The game has to store the maps for up to a hundred dungeons you have in the randomised dungeon thing (not sure if the maps are procedurally generated or what exactly, didn't fiddle with it enough to piece together how they are likely generated). Those maps are able to be traded with people and stuff.
There is plenty of reasons DQ9 only has one save with the things that really break the DQ mould. Unfortunately these are things you aren't likely to really do without a group of people that like the game (I sure as shit liked the game and felt no compulsion to do the multiplayer thing for example).
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I wanna clarify that I did actually like DQ9; I was just disappointed by it because it lacked the depth it could have had.
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I actually really love DQ7
7 is my favorite
Whoa man opinions are WEIRD. Specifically, yours.
Hey, so, I play games.
ME2: I think I'm near the end? Every party member is loyal, and I think I only have one more PC judging from the character select screen.
Minecraft: lol
... Okay so mostly I play minecraft. It's awesome. It's Legos the videogame. How is that not awesome. You people just suck.
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Professor Layton and the Curious Village- So I figured I wanted to just hurry up and finish a few games I have laying around, so I started here. Ended up FAQing the last 15 or so puzzles, because honestly they were kinda dumb even without wanting to be quick about it.
Anyway, I wanted to check out the series because y'know, there's this game where it's being crossed over with awesome things. It's... a sharp contrast to Phoenix's style. There's barely any plot, and it's really set up such that 90% of the game is random things happening with 10% being Layton spelling it all out. The gameplay itself essentially uses classic brainteasers and variations thereof and at a few intervals tests to make sure you a) caught on to some of the common types and b) have been seeking out and solving the puzzles regularly. It's been a long time since I've seen a game take that approach, so it's entertaining enough as a novelty although I'm not sure I'd want to play the rest of the series worth of it. 6/10 material I think? Feels around there.
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Stop tempting me to buy Minecraft Zenny.
Puzzle Quest- Near the end, I think? I'm at the dark elf arena, ready to kick some golem ass. Already killed the giant ass green dragon, so everything else is cake.
The game is just so, *so* much better than PQ1. No randoms alone makes the game much quicker, and it gets rid of the grindy shit with equipment and spells. Assassin is pretty broked, but that's a small complaint.
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ME2: I think I'm near the end? Every party member is loyal, and I think I only have one more PC judging from the character select screen.
Just FYI before you do the story mission with "IFF" in the title, make sure you're ready to beat the game. It's not the penultimate mission, but after doing a few more missions a Bad Thing will happen. After said Bad Thing, you need to go through the Omega 4 Relay ASAP or more bad things happen.
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SRW Advance Portable: Stage 17, Guyana Highlands route so I can get Master Asia. Generally it's been smooth going. A few stages, like the Walking Stick, were a pain in the ass, and hit rates are generally lower than I'd expect them to be even with an EWAC bonus, but it's nothing I can't keep pace with - and when in doubt, I can just turn Domon loose on a map and let him roflstomp. Seriously, Shining Gundam is ridiculously good. And God Gundam should be turning up soon, so uh yeah.
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Parasite Eve 2: So I'm suppose raid a Motel for a Gas Can. I'm not sure how A is suppose to yield B other than dumb luck, but damn it, some NPC has stated its there, so its obviously there!
...SURVIVAL HORROR LOGIC and all that.
Bionic Commando Rearmed: Just beat area 8. For someone who never actually played the original (though I have watched entire play throughs of my friends doing it and such), game seems pretty fun enough, and the boss designs are at least creative. Yeah, they're all "There's some Bionic Arm gimmick here", but at least they're creative with what you do, so its just a case of trying to figure out what you HAVEN'T done with your Bionic Arm, and exploiting some creativity.
Game is also hard though, and the Bazooka makes it easy to accidentally kill yourself, which...is probably the only real way to balance such an overpowered weapon.
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The Rearmed bosses are a step up from the originals, at least. I love the original to death and it's a total nostalgia bomb, but the bosses were very feeble and repetitious. Rearmed did a very good job of rebalancing things. (There was no reason to use non-bazooka weapons in the original.)
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Yes there was. You didn't start with the bazooka.
<_<
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Had to choose between Resonance of fate or Valkyria chronicles this week in what game to get as while I have the money to afford 100 copies of each I'm a miser who doesn't like to spend too much. After much pondering the friend I was with became frustrated and told me to buy ROF and he'll let me borrow VC for as long as I want....Indecisiveness pays off it seems.
ROF - That bloody tri attack took forever for me to learn how to do. Looking at it now I have no idea how I found it so hard to do as it is quite simple really. Haven't used it much except against those two Sledgehammer enemies where it just reduced them to no threat at all.
VC1- Now this I'm really liking, Dave Wittenburg as Welkin is just perfect and the game is just beautiful in pretty much all areas. Though I swear I've heard some FF12 music on the battlefield but maybe there're two similier tracks.
Bosses are as I expected and generally good but the Giant tank frustrated me as my lancers were from time to time complete benders and kept missing everything.
FESS - Something tells me I'll be doing hard mode with ephy as on normal in the final chapter I'm basically curb stomping my way through. Cormag and Tana are just flying in and messing all their shit up.
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VC1- Now this I'm really liking, Dave Wittenburg as Welkin is just perfect and the game is just beautiful in pretty much all areas. Though I swear I've heard some FF12 music on the battlefield but maybe there're two similier tracks.
Bosses are as I expected and generally good but the Giant tank frustrated me as my lancers were from time to time complete benders and kept missing everything.
Same composer, so you'll hear that a lot. Also lancer accuracy hahaha.
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ROF - That bloody tri attack took forever for me to learn how to do. Looking at it now I have no idea how I found it so hard to do as it is quite simple really. Haven't used it much except against those two Sledgehammer enemies where it just reduced them to no threat at all.
Because the tutorials are kind of crappy in general. I had issues trying to figure out some of the other skills but I forget which ones now.
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The worst one is the Tri-attack. We had a demo of it at mini-meet and Xer was wondering what he had to do for a while before finally realizing it too. In retrospect, its not complicated at all. So yeah, this is the tutorial sucking.
I think Smackdown or Bonus shots also had me in for a loop for a bit before figuring out what the deuce was up with it.
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ME2: I think I'm near the end? Every party member is loyal, and I think I only have one more PC judging from the character select screen.
Just FYI before you do the story mission with "IFF" in the title, make sure you're ready to beat the game. It's not the penultimate mission, but after doing a few more missions a Bad Thing will happen. After said Bad Thing, you need to go through the Omega 4 Relay ASAP or more bad things happen.
Yeah that certainly felt like the mission I should put off doing until I'm sick of doing sidequests. So, when do I get that last party member?
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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.
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Battlefield 1943: Grinding away to get the 100 matches achievement and finish the game. Up to 62. Flying is fun, but everything seems to kill me a lot easier than I kill it.
Puzzle Quest 2: On my way to get parts of a hammer.
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ME2: I think I'm near the end? Every party member is loyal, and I think I only have one more PC judging from the character select screen.
Just FYI before you do the story mission with "IFF" in the title, make sure you're ready to beat the game. It's not the penultimate mission, but after doing a few more missions a Bad Thing will happen. After said Bad Thing, you need to go through the Omega 4 Relay ASAP or more bad things happen.
You get them on that mission.
He gets a custom weapon like Grunt does. It is stupid good.
Yeah that certainly felt like the mission I should put off doing until I'm sick of doing sidequests. So, when do I get that last party member?
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Finished Drakengard. YT'd the other ending paths because fuck this game. The story is delightfully messed up, but fuck this game.
Finished NieR twice now! Game needs less connection to Drakengard. True, it hardly has anything to do with Drakengard, but the game is worse by association with it and I wish I never knew that it was supposed to be connected.
Ignoring that, the 2nd time through was a breezy gaming affair and a bit of a tearjerking cinematic affair. The game has style if nothing else. I wish it was more DL-friendly because Kaine needs to inflicted on the DL.
Playing: Pokemon HG. About to destroy the Normal gym. Voltorb Flip is as awesome as advertised. I named my Dratini 'Angel' while I was still having fun with Drakengard. Now I regret that decision. Geodude and Zubat are not the earlygame smashers that I was expecting. Conversely, Machop is awesome right about now.
...too lazy to look this up, but can I catch a Pikachu anywhere in the early game? I just want one.
Playing: WAXF. Why won't you let me love you?! Everytime I try to come back to this game, something happens that just makes me lose all interest in it. This time it's "I can't not-kill these damn enemies and the game requires me to not-kill them, STOP RUNNING YOURSELF ONTO MY BLADES!" Mission 2-4. Argh.
Playing: Disgaea 3. Clearly the better SRPG in every way (may not be that clear). As usual, N1 is total Djinn-bait. 4th wall breaking storytime fun. Awesome item/skill descriptions. Geo Blocks are a neat upgrade to the Geo system. Magichange system seems interesting, though sadly not DL-relevent Q_Q. Almaz is the best punching bag, and somehow JYB just makes it better. DLC PC options look awesome. Maou Priere! <3 </Djinnfanboymode>
So far, the game is far superior to Dis2 narratively, but relatively similar mechanically. But Dis1/remakes probably edge it out narratively, though are still lagging mechanically. The new Evility system is a much-needed addition to a cast of generics and the more limited weapon options are also a nice touch to making the PCs feel differentiated. Not really a big fan of the Homeroom system and how limited it makes your party size compared to other N1 SRPGs, though. Reincarnation being necessary to unlock upper level skills is kind of annoying too since Mana collection is a pain for certain classes.
While they're definitely moving in the right direction by making skills purchasable/upgradable with Mana, it's a little annoying that they can't be unlocked through classic grinding at this stage. I think a combination of the two systems would streamline things a bit more (perhaps make the cost of skills decrease as weaponlevel/skilllevel are increased through grinding?). Well, Dis4 comes out in a month, so we'll see if they've improved!
Speaking of, how long does DLC stay available for download? I wanted to play the DLC for this game, but I won't be back in the states to setup a proper account until later this year. Does that kind of stuff ever just get taken down for good?
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The second playthrough of Nier is pretty impressive in how it drives home the theme of the story without changing any of the events.
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Pokeymans: Got my shiny Entei today. Managed to get max Attack and Speed after about 10 soft-resets. Sweeeet. Since this Entei has some actual usable moves, I'm going to try him out in the Battle Frontier.
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Lazy today, so just commenting at Djinn.
Zubat's only really good in-game because you can evolve it so early. Crobat at level 23 I believe it is destroys worlds.
2-4 was probably my least favorite XF map. Game gets considerably better once it's behind you.
Disgaea 3 > 2 in plot? Details! This sounds interesting.
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Yeah, Zubat's not an earlygame smasher (he's pretty underwhelming until Bite/Confuse Ray in fact), he's a midgame and even lategame smasher because WTF that speed + good damage + non-fail durability + Roost means no weakness besides psychic + Confuse Ray + Black Sludge and Fly is hilarious. I thought he was one of the best pokemon in the game, but yeah, not early.
Chrono Trigger - Beat Magus' castle! This games plays very quickly, it's wonderful. :) Enjoying the replay.
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Mass Effect: Man just flying around scanning planets for collectables gets boring, so I landed on Noveria and murdered hired goons with my fem-Adept-Shepard powers, then saved after I got in the car.
I probably shouldn't have picked Adept but oh well
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Lazy today, so just commenting at Djinn.
Zubat's only really good in-game because you can evolve it so early. Crobat at level 23 I believe it is destroys worlds.
2-4 was probably my least favorite XF map. Game gets considerably better once it's behind you.
Disgaea 3 > 2 in plot? Details! This sounds interesting.
Ah, okay, I'll stick with Zubat a little longer then. I'm nearing that level mark. No word from the pokegurus on Pikachu locations? I guess I'll have to actually look something up. *sigh*
I'm only like 4 maps into Dis3, so I can't comment on the plot. I just like the writing/humor/characters in 3 universally more than the relatively bland set from Dis2. Adell is just such a lackluster protagonist. And Tink/Yukimaru are... less-than-funny. Sure, Laharl and Mao are terrible people, but that's what makes it fun to watch them on-screen. (In Dis2's favor, Rozalyn is probably the most well-developed serious heroine character, but that's not why I like N1 games. If N1 wants to be serious, it would make another Soul Nomad.)
Apart from Mao, the heroine and the punching-bag character are also better than Dis2's. In a sense. Raspberyl is more amusing than Rozy was, though I suspect she'll have a less developed serious plot (and I'm okay with this!). Beryl's basic schtick is to take the Smug Rich Girl/Overachiever school-trope and flip it around such that everyone reacts to her as if she's a part of some Street Gang. The dissonance from this clash of tropes is a little jarring, but the game isn't taking itself seriously for this to be anything but amusing.
Almaz, the blue-haired hero-punching-bag fills in the role that Flonne and Tink pulled in the last two games, to give the snarkers someone to shoot down. This is probably my favorite part of the Disgaea dynamic. As often as you hear the kind of lines that Flonne and Almaz shout used in other JRPGs, it's nice to have characters smack them back to reality. Especially fun since I just finished Legaia 2~. Almaz's redux of the Flonne role is that he's literally being gradually turned into a demon while he's hanging around Mao, so instead of Flonne's perpetual innocence, you have Almaz catching himself thinking 'evil thoughts'. The English VA for him also works perfectly.
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Mass Effect: Man just flying around scanning planets for collectables gets boring, so I landed on Noveria and murdered hired goons with my fem-Adept-Shepard powers, then saved after I got in the car.
I probably shouldn't have picked Adept but oh well
In ME1 you get stupid powerful with them late because there's no GCD. They are way shitty in ME2 though.
Then again, I play Vanguard, which isn't the best either.
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Keep in mind that Golbat is a normal evo but Crobat is happiness, so it's not holy crap overpowered fora while after evolving the first time unless you want to run about in circles for a while maxing happiness. (Mind, I've done that before and it's shiny.)
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If you've used it since the first opportunity to get it, it should definitely evolve one level after reaching Golbat. If you've just picked it up recently and proceed to powerlevel it, you'll probably have to wait a bit longer.
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Disgaea 3 > 2 in plot? Details! This sounds interesting.
Personally have to disagree with this part. I found everything plot/character related to be too obvious a rehash of Disgaea 1.
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HoMaM5 - 4 maps into the second campaign and I am done with this. The camera is painful and annoying and individual things on the map are just not visible enough. It is not fun to play. The plot isn't even interesting enough to make me even trudge through it cheating like it had been for some of the other games or their expansions.
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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.
The trick is to take things slowly and pay close attention to everything around you.
Not really a big fan of the Homeroom system and how limited it makes your party size compared to other N1 SRPGs, though.
Homeroom expands later, it's just kind of small early on.
While they're definitely moving in the right direction by making skills purchasable/upgradable with Mana, it's a little annoying that they can't be unlocked through classic grinding at this stage. I think a combination of the two systems would streamline things a bit more (perhaps make the cost of skills decrease as weaponlevel/skilllevel are increased through grinding?). Well, Dis4 comes out in a month, so we'll see if they've improved!
Can't you just grind for mana? Later on mana potions become storebought too.
Speaking of, how long does DLC stay available for download? I wanted to play the DLC for this game, but I won't be back in the states to setup a proper account until later this year. Does that kind of stuff ever just get taken down for good?
Generally DLC stays up "forever". It's only taken down if it needs to be or if the servers just go down that would probably cause an issue too.
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Etrian Odyssey 3 - In B20F now. Been busy lately so I haven't made much progress in the last few days.
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Edgeworth: Just beat the 3rd case. That case overstayed its welcome and really didn't need that last segment, given how Edgeworth basically had the full scenario figured out to a point where he had the guy cornered, it felt like they just stretched it out as long as possible so you could see the FULL DEED IN ACTION!!!
It'd have made sense to go on that long if, you know, his initial expectations were in fact wrong, but they weren't...and even then, it was too long for a Non-Final Case.
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I just started Persona 3. I've dumped DQ7 to the side; recruited enough humans in RS where I don't necessarily feel like beating again anymore.
What I've wanted to mention is that the Scan in Persona 3 I do like. I do not like, however, wasting a turn to figure out the weakness of an enemy. P3 at least allows you to fundamentally experiment while waiting on the results to show. Scanning in other games I've played has never been a necessity. I was warned that it's an MT game, which is understandable from my play through of DDS (blegh), and I realize weaknesses play a vital role in turning the tide of battle. This is fine. The scan in this game, is fine. Postchat follow-up.
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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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Regardless, if it isn't fun then stop playing it.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - Played more. I am just blindly following the walkthrough at this point. I am honestly not sure how the fuck you are meant to know where to go between these towns. They don't mention each other or give directions. The walkthrough tells me to go there and the plot keeps flowing.
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Also playing Mass Effect.
The game is an interesting FPS/RPG hybrid, but it doesn't quite nail the system well enough to be buckets of fun. The characters are neat and fleshed out but not as enjoyable and well-written as the Dragon Age folks were. It's still a fun game and is devouring my time away, as is true for most Bioware games.
I used the default Male Shepard and have reached a very very high level due to doing buckets of sidequests before taking on the main story. I put the game on Hard so that it will at least scale enemies to my level to a degree. Using Sniper Rifles/Assault Rifles and generally cleaning the freaking house courtesy of being an unkillable monstrosity-unto-god once Immunity gets used. Seriously. 20 seconds of invincibility with a ~22 second recharge time. I'm sorry, were you enemies trying to kill me with these normally-OHKOing rocket attacks spamming into my face? Rejected. Silly awesome ability is silly awesome.
I like Tali the most out of characters? Nothing special by any means but her voice is cool.
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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.
They have a limit as to how long you can 1-damage smack bosses IIRC. Five hits?
At least I'm sure they did in PM1. I didn't mess with them as much in 2, so that may be different if you play that.
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Baldur's Gate 2 - Replaying (for realz) for the first time in what is the better part of a decade. Game is so much more enjoyable when you're not puttering around like a clueless idiot. Up to Chapter 5, cleared out a beholder lair and an illithid lair because they were there.
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Regardless, if it isn't fun then stop playing it.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - Played more.
Why do you hand people setups like this, Gref?
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Regardless, if it isn't fun then stop playing it.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - Played more.
Why do you hand people setups like this, Gref?
I lol'ed.
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Also playing Mass Effect.
The game is an interesting FPS/RPG hybrid, but it doesn't quite nail the system well enough to be buckets of fun. The characters are neat and fleshed out but not as enjoyable and well-written as the Dragon Age folks were. It's still a fun game and is devouring my time away, as is true for most Bioware games.
I used the default Male Shepard and have reached a very very high level due to doing buckets of sidequests before taking on the main story. I put the game on Hard so that it will at least scale enemies to my level to a degree. Using Sniper Rifles/Assault Rifles and generally cleaning the freaking house courtesy of being an unkillable monstrosity-unto-god once Immunity gets used. Seriously. 20 seconds of invincibility with a ~22 second recharge time. I'm sorry, were you enemies trying to kill me with these normally-OHKOing rocket attacks spamming into my face? Rejected. Silly awesome ability is silly awesome.
I like Tali the most out of characters? Nothing special by any means but her voice is cool.
Ah, shock trooper. Hardest to kill, most boring to play.
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Mass Effect: I beat an ice planet, killed a giant roach, and got a GARRUS sidequest so I know I have to do that one
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Regardless, if it isn't fun then stop playing it.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - Played more.
Why do you hand people setups like this, Gref?
I lol'ed.
I think this is why I like Grefter's rants. For all his rage, he truly loves games and just wants them to mature.
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Regardless, if it isn't fun then stop playing it.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - Played more.
Why do you hand people setups like this, Gref?
Because I like humor and I enjoy being suprised when people don't pick up on my jokes.
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Alternatively, Grefter just hates fun too.
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I've been playing Ghost Trick. Missile has the greatest character/portrait combo of all time. This game is fantastic and takes no shame in being a spiritual successor to Phoenix Wright, pun intended.
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Halo3ODST: Beat Campaign on Heroic. Spent some time looking for audio files, but I somehow missed one despite using a map.
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Bionic Commando Rearmed: Completed. Fun game, if the Albatross was kind of frustrating cause it was the kind of platforming sections I despise, that being the "Did you fail? If so, repeat this long sequence, involving moving platforms and what not!" Feels like a waste of time, the "moving platforms" is important cause it means you can't do it at your own pace but what the game allows you.
THAT ASIDE, my thoughts generally haven't changed since I last spoke. Good remake to a classic game I haven't really played ever (though I did see OTHERS play!) Also, I like how the Machine Gun in this game actually lives up to its hype. That thing was cruel, but fun! And nothing like finishing a game by hitting Hitler in the face with a bazooka, and watching his head explode...IN HD!!!
Disappointed they just called the "The Leader" instead of "Master D" though.
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7th Saga:
I blame this on Super and OK. We fought Monmo. I was dealing 7 damage with Wilme, 1 damage with Esuna. The boss has 750 HP, 1600 defense and 99 Resistance to all elements except Fire. Unfortunately, I only have 1 B Fire and it only deals 30 damage. He has immune to defense debuffing. Yakkity Sax plays as we all watch the failure. The plot twist is also a kick to the balls. I do believe this game has gone to the point of "unreedemable" in terms of quality.
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Mass Effect - Man I wish I could have a colony of Ko like that. Also Wrexquest so obviously like before it must be done, gonna try and cross the last Renegade point threshold before Virmire.
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Before I go to bed (I'll see it after, anyway):
How many floors are in Tartarus?
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256 floors if I recall correctly. You won't be able to access all the floors at once, so it is more of a different dungeon every block.
EDIT: Oh yeah, ran some WA4 for the analysis topic. I will note that I learnt a couple more shortcuts. Also did you know that holding X makes Jude climb ladders faster? Looks like I have more room for improving for the speedrun. I blame NEB for this.
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Halo3ODST: Beat Campaign on Heroic. Spent some time looking for audio files, but I somehow missed one despite using a map.
Missed one in the city or missed number 30?
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7th Saga:
I blame this on Super and OK. We fought Monmo. I was dealing 7 damage with Wilme, 1 damage with Esuna. The boss has 750 HP, 1600 defense and 99 Resistance to all elements except Fire. Unfortunately, I only have 1 B Fire and it only deals 30 damage. He has immune to defense debuffing. Yakkity Sax plays as we all watch the failure. The plot twist is also a kick to the balls. I do believe this game has gone to the point of "unreedemable" in terms of quality.
You're so naiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive~
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Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - Things happen more. People keep talking. Lots of people are dead because of the Eclipse thing! Shame that like it is only people without names. Couple of people you don't care about are dead. woooooooooooo
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When are you getting to the ominous confrontation with the big bad you probably never even heard of.
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Doesn't he still have to gather a bunch of PCs with no relation to anything first?
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I figure he's been doing that since the beginning of the game. This game sounds like Phantasy Star 3 Abridged without the "choose your own bangbuddy" aspect.
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I can't fathom you applying 'Abridged' to anything about GS3...
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PS3 is just that epic.
EDIT: For all that it barely has dialogue, most of the game is just aimlessly wandering around a world map ten times bigger than it had any right to be while being wantonly ambushed by tranvestite chicklets.
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PS3 at least vaguely told you where to go even if you generally got lost getting there, and stuff connected if you looked at it at an odd angle. This sounds worse
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Battlefield 1943 - Got the 100 matches.
Puzzle Quest 2: Beat. Overall, I'd give it a 8/10 or so. The removal of random encounters was a good addition, but I didn't bother to check if the quick fights gave the crafting items so if they don't then there are finite resources which is bad. The assistants were a lot more interesting and useful in the first one. I really liked that they introduced a way to reset your stats, even if I didn't use it. Oh, and Assassin is royally broken. High level poisons and the near-infinite Stealth/Strike combos made everything except the three "super-bosses" (Yeti, Dragon, final boss) pathetically easy.
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They give resources.
And I disagree about assistants being better in this version. All they tought you was a couple of spells, and you're pretty pressed for magic space as is in this game. The bonus you got in PQ1 was much more useful.
Dragon is freaking nasty, yeah. Endurance mode is easy till the dragon, and then he just completely rapes you.
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Halo3ODST: Beat Campaign on Heroic. Spent some time looking for audio files, but I somehow missed one despite using a map.
Missed one in the city or missed number 30?
In the city, but I found it now and got the Achievement.
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SRWJ - Continuing to chug along here. Currently wandering along the get every secret but Great Zeorymer path, since it means I'll see all the path splits that I won't be seing in the next playthrough. Roanne and his Buldy continue to keep up with the team due to lack of snipers, though I suspect next playthrough will involve more GGundam and therefore, Georges will take his spot. Only Aestis really showing up for use are Akito and Ryoko, but that's mostly because I'm giving the Brain Powered's a chance to shine this time. Currently on map 24, about to beat up a Behemoth.
Also, in the middle of comp upgrades, but far enough in that I've been able to get modern emulators to work, and have been muddling around with the DS SWRs. Haven't been hugely impressed with the casts so far, and may or may not do more work on them in the near future, since they're presently PC, and therefore competing with Civs, Dwarven Fortresses, and the like.
Fallout 3 - Moved a lot further ahead in this, at least when I've had the time and ability. Still mostly putzing around doing stuff, but have finally decided to advance the plot. Vault 101 is looking saner and saner all the freaking time, which is impressive since Vault 101 is insane by the standards of the previous games. Anyways, finally met up with the brotherhood and got the ability to wear power armour. Though, shame the guys out here have such crappy power armour. I mean, really? It's not that much better than the stuff I got from Reilly's Rangers, or even the stuff I get from those Talon Mercs, and it doesn't even boost my strength enough to cover it's own weight? Hell, doesn't even boost strength enough to let me cover the difference between what I'm wearing now and what it weighs? Ah well, at least the energy weaponry is showing up on cue, and is fun, even if not quite as much fun as a combat shotgun.
Currently looking for a GECK in order to save Arroy... wait, no. Wrong game. Right, gotta stop the FEV using madman in order to crush the Super Mutant threat to Cali... crap! This game's plot is giving me deja vu.
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Baldur's Gate 2 - Cheesing out dragons and staking vampires. This is the life.
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Mass Effect: I did sidequests oh man sidequests in Mass Effect that's impossible bro no seriously going to go beat game and install glorious Mass Effect 2
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HoMaM5 - 4 maps into the second campaign and I am done with this.
For what it's worth, I would argue that the third campaign has the best story in H5 original. (I can't really speak for the expansions, I've never tracked them down.) Can't offer any help with the camera, though.
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Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker: Decent DLC. The PC based dossiers are awesome.
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Fallout 3, finished. Ending was kinda cool, though the main plot felt slightly contrived in retrospect. Especially the final dilemma given that you are basically given the tool to solve it right before you get into the situation, given to you for that exact reason, and they even acknowledge they had done so by giving you a speech option that mentions it that results in "No, this is not an option," in freaking Fallout.
So yeah, ending failed it up, for all that the game itself was fairly fun.
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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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Silly Super, I said they were better in the first one.
Castlevania: HoD - Beat on Hard, thanks to the power of getting other people to do the work for me in multiplayer. Yay!
Super Meat Boy: 40 Bandages. World 4. 800+ deaths.
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SRWZ: Pain is spending two hours in a stage only to find that you're 8000 points of damage short of getting the SR point and have no way to improve, so you have to start from scratch.
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KH BbS FM- So the power down of the orgy coat man is true. Hell, none of the new bosses are as hard as the orgy coat man in the US version. The only reason armored Xehanort took longer is only because of his health.
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Does BbS Final Mix have the English voice track? I might just get that instead of an English copy. I'd buy the Japanese copy but Japanese Donald Duck makes me want to throw things. Like my PSP.
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Super Meat Boy: Unlocked The Kid. It took longer than completing all of Chapter 3 and 4 combined, and I got 400 additional deaths in the Warp Zone, but I did it.
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Man, Unknown Figure could use a nerf or three. Jesus F. Christ.
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I think the original orgy coat man is tolerable..... if he didn't have that Vanish+spam everything to death phase.....
Does BbS Final Mix have the English voice track? I might just get that instead of an English copy. I'd buy the Japanese copy but Japanese Donald Duck makes me want to throw things. Like my PSP.
Yes, Final Mix has English voice. Though, what is wrong with Yamdera's Donald? He literally is Disney's favorite Donal Duck?
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In my experience... he's TOO good. Hearing such a perfect impression of a voice you know that well speaking some other language entirely is just kinda weird.
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SRWZ: Pain is spending two hours in a stage only to find that you're 8000 points of damage short of getting the SR point and have no way to improve, so you have to start from scratch.
Or maybe not! Judicious application of Exhaust, paired with using my squads that still had the SP for Fury first to take advantage of the boss's lowered Will, shaved off just enough to kill the last battleship on a critical counterattack with Baldirosier. YES.
I swear, the corners I back myself into in this run are like playing my own custom version of Tsume Super Robo sometimes. It may be infuriating as hell, but goddamn if the triumph isn't worth it.
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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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Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - finished
Not going to bother to do any aftergame things. Ended up permamissing a world map Djinn so for all I know they may be blocked off for me anyway. The heck do they still use world map Djinn at all, let alone in a game where big swathes of the map become inaccessible.
Game was decent in general.
Too many puzzles which you solve just because they're there and end up being necessary to have solved to progress. Follow path up mountain, nothing there but vaguely astrology-based puzzles? Of course you should spend time solving them without even dialoguing about the path having apparently ended. It was completely obvious that this would cause flying rocks to come out of nowhere to provide a path down.
On a different tack, setting up the Lens. There is seemingly only one correct position for each of the controls to be in, which is automatically selected when you manipulate them. Why weren't they in this position in the first place then? It's not exactly a knowledge or skills roadblock, since you need to use all the skills necessary to get to the place in the first place, and the characters never researched what settings would be required or anything.
The ship is too slow.
The emotional response system is atrocious. I hit angryface at every opportunity for the humour value and a large proportion of the time the reaction to this indicated that Matthew had gotten angry at a completely different person than expected. When the reactions were making sense in the first place anyway.
I can only assume that the 'spell that solves puzzles' antihype is referring to Insight. Which just indicates what psynergy would have any effect on any active objects on-screen. And consequently only solves 'puzzles' which consist solely of 'use some psynergy on something'. Way to go. This does solve puzzles such as SLAP THE SUN TO REVERSE ITS ROTATION but puzzles like that are stupid anyway, and your other option there would be just checking all your different psynergy to see whether it was a valid target. Also the 'puzzle' where the guy wanted some sort of food, but that was designed to demonstrate what Insight could do in the first place and in the second place using it on people never comes up again as far as I remember, unless you want to see the seemingly random emotional state they're feeling and that they are valid targets for Spirit Sense.
I would say that the game is superior to GS2. Not sure whether it's superior to GS1 or not though. Regardless of the layers of roadblocks before you get the ship, at least everything is fairly nicely structured. After you get the ship things turn into faux-free-roaming chicanery similar to GS2 except that all the interesting places are locked off until you get a particular spell.
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GS: DD - Coincidentally just finished it also.
I don't really understand how you can say all that stuff above and say the game is decent, but we never really see eye to eye on games and look for different things in games, so eh what can you do.
The last ton of the game is more of the same. Random shit in the plot coming out of nowhere. No plot resolution for the very first things you do in the game. It is just a pile of nonsense to string together some gameplay. If you want my opinion on the game just check every other post I have made about it. At least for those I had something new to complain about. Here the only thing I could add is the slow boat, which yeah is just boat is slow like Twil noted.
The final boss at least finally had something put up a fight though! Go it! Going in directly after the fight with the villains was actually a bad idea! I should have just mashed attack on the boss before it because PP was actually an issue on this fight. I had to use a whole Psycrystal on Matthew because of all the Odysseys I had cast and there was revival required. Also the boss has damage, so healing is useful, there was even points where I wanted both MT healers on the field. To highlight it even more he has a move that can strip targets of all Djinn, so you have to swap people around as well (first fight in the game I ever did that on). Actually equipping Eoleo and Amiti properly instead of just using cast offs when I remembered to change their gear would have helped a bit. Muliple Djinn classes have better stat bonuses so might have made the fight more manageable. He is also probably still vulnerable to Summon spam. Generally taking the game more seriously would likely have made it fairly trivial, but hey playing fairly casually it certainly tried a little bit which is more than anything else in the game had.
So to lazy to do stat topic even super lazy mode on it. So someone else is going to have to play it (AHAHAHA take that bitches).
Short notes. Game sucked, has basic concepts of an RPG there, plenty of dialogue, stats, a combat system. It uses none of them for anything remotely any good.
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Mass Effect: Cool ending sequence bro, if the second game has less of the same Mako combat/exploration I will install right now who am I kidding I'm already installing
Thankfully they didn't lay enemy ambushes in front of elevators otherwise I would have died millions of times since apparently taking an elevator in enemy territory requires you put away your gun and stand there blankly.
Overall good game but man I lose time by buckets while playing this, it felt a mite too slow in the chaff parts, but what can you do?
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Halo3ODST: Beat Legendary Campaign co-op with my kid. For the most part it was pretty easy due to the different playstyles of my kid and I. He rushes headlong into combat and distracts enemies and I sit back and snipe with the Beam Rifle or Carbine. Highway was a bitch to get through though.
Only have the Vidmaster achievments and a few Firefight ones left to get.
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Mass Effect: Cool ending sequence bro, if the second game has less of the same Mako combat/exploration I will install right now who am I kidding I'm already installing
YOU ARE IN LUCK SIR
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I've been having internet issues where it goes on and off periodically all day, so that's made it a bit hard to play some of the online stuff I was doing (Castlevania, MNC, etc.) Argh.
Super Meat Boy: Beat, now starting work on the Dark World and extra levels. Generally speaking, I don't like hard games. I'm bad at video games. Things that are easy for the average person are hard for me. So the fact that I managed to beat this one may very well rank in my top 10 achievements in gaming... ever.
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GS:DD postscript -
I see that one of the areas that I complained about had already been complained about previously. Apparently I didn't meander far enough back in time while I was checking. Did not really see anything regarding the majesty of the specifics of the BELINSK INVASION PLAN which I had forgotten I wanted to complain about so I will proceed to do so.
So you need to invade Belinsk and you troop off to get advice from wise trees as has been touched on previously. And they tell you that yes there is a way in you can use. But you need to get an object from your original quest goal as has been touched on previously. Fine. But you need to be able to Slap to get this object, and earlier on your slapper left because they refused to take any part in dealing with your original quest goal. That's fine says the trees, because as happens often in Golden Sun there is an item you can equip to enable use of that psynergy. Okay. This item is -in Belinsk-. There is token discussion regarding the fact that getting into Belinsk is what you are currently having trouble with but then the trees change the topic and this is never resolved.
So your current goal is to break into Belinsk so that you can get the Slap Glove so that you can proceed with your original quest so you can get the item you need to break into Belinsk.
Except it turns out that a couple of guys in the next area have the glove somehow throwing out the whole problem.
Ghost Trick - finished
Generally enjoyable.
Interface is a bit aggravating because there are some puzzles which rely on you doing things while other things are happening, but other times while things are happening you lose the interface. I got held up a couple times because an action had occurred which took away the interface, with it being brought back partway into the action to allow me to further the solution but without me realising it had come back 'early'.
Missile is great as I believe other people have previously reported.
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KH BbS FM- Fought the Orgy coat man a few time.... I must say the nerf isn't enough. He didn't attack as relentlessly , but that is pretty pointless, as there is no increase in opportunity in attacking him. Also, the bullshit that is laser bits + split into four is still there, so the second half of the fight is as stupid as the original. The only thing that really matters is that you can dash your self out of his fishing hook... that's about it.
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ME2: Mordin Solus is my new professional rolemodel
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Just started up Mass Effect 1, because the talk has gotten me interested. Decided to just go Soldier. So far, finished the initial quest, and the game is interesting so far. What's especially getting to me is that you get the impression that Shepherd is, for all intents and purposes, going to be the same guy whatever you do, you just get to nudge him to indulge different aspects of his personality.
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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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ROF - Chapter 14 actually posed a challange. The whole game thus far has been "lolMGoverkill" but 14 finally posed a threat as the enemies hit hard enough and often in enough to actually threaten you.
VC - That Max guy is an idiot. The whole Selvaria thing was silly as I saw it as completely unneeded for him to do. Yeah he kills an army but loses his best general and quite a large amount of soldiers in the process. She is also in love with him so he is as the scene title says "Cruel" but also an idiot as letting such a women get away is criminal.
I do have however like his policy on tanks. If my tank which is the size of ten tanks was defeated, I too would build something the size of 1000 tanks.
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Sheppard is always the same kind of guy on the fundamental level of he is always the kind of guy that will join the military and become a leading role in the special forces, yes. The choices you make on the way are fairly drastically different at times. You can't make him into a big gay space pirate, but you can define what kind of commander he is.
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VC - That Max guy is an idiot. The whole Selvaria thing was silly as I saw it as completely unneeded for him to do. Yeah he kills an army but loses his best general and quite a large amount of soldiers in the process. She is also in love with him so he is as the scene title says "Cruel" but also an idiot as letting such a women get away is criminal.
I do have however like his policy on tanks. If my tank which is the size of ten tanks was defeated, I too would build something the size of 1000 tanks.
Yeah. VC utterly falls apart after the halfway point. The only decent part is the one with the Queen. Max is a retarded villain for many reasons, one of which being his fanboyism of General Vanderkaum's "I, Tank."
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Edgeworth: Beaten! Not much to say aboutt he game other than probably the best game in the series. Killing investigations and replacing them with something of actual substance rather than stupid goose chases is handy.
Though, I was spoiled with previous games cause they were considered replays by the game's standards, so scrolling through text was A LOT quicker; having to watch the game auto scroll is annoying for first time playthroughs, and stupid and I fail to see why its in the game.
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PQ2: Finished. Fun game. Mostly superior to PQ1, as has already been stated.
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ME2: I had to stop playing because I was busy with some calibrations
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Rozalia: Chapter 14 is generally considered a point where the game's difficulty spikes up. So if you've been cruising along and neglecting to do gun upgrades or just being lax on your play, it will make you pay for it. Still I didn't find the area too too bad after doing all the side quests. That may be because of the boosted levels though. Use the terminals to help mitigate it some.
And gamez
Wild ARMS 4 - Done again! See WA4 analysis topic, which is now completed.
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Pimping Around with Miles Edgeworth - Played a bit more of this since I have finished Golden Sun and I want to cleanse the pallet. So I play it on the bus and whatnot. Shut the game this morning because I don't need to deal with a giant pink badger wearing handcuffs and a TOUGH LOVE banner accross their chest that early in the morning. So after work I open it back up and it turns out to and old woman. I didn't need to deal with that in the afternoon. Kept playing anyway. Funny as expected. As amusing it is, games need less Wendy Oldbag anyway.
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Glorious.
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Disgaea: Etna Mode- beaten. Fortunately, the game gives you a ridiculously favorable map for the "high I'm a 30% boost in level and triple the HP over the immediately preceding boss" final, both in terms of support who is merely competent relative to immediately preceding maps and in a ridiculous geopanel option right near your spawn point.
So, Etna mode has one or two good scenes and a lot of stuff a) setting up the differences because Laharl is dead then immediately b) having serious business plot for Etna. As it's not really better or even DIFFERENT from her main path stuff, the whole thing is an exercise in pointless. It's also grindy, and I mean grindy by the standards of "I am playing Disgaea 1". See, the game is scaled for being half the length of the main game but only has about a third of the maps. Between that and having fewer special characters to work with (no Laharl, Flonne joins both relatively later and at level 5 (her boss form being level 22)) you have to make up a lot of ground with just playing maps over and over for cash to get good weapons to kill stuff in a hit or two with. Silly.
So yeah, 9 hours and at least half of that was just grinding. 5/10, fortunately doesn't matter because the rest of the game isn't any different so I can just ignore Etna Mode in its favor.
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SRWZ: Nearing the end!
52: Final step to getting the G-Bits. The challenge is to wipe out a map's worth of enemies in three turns, and then deal with another wave after that. It ends up being waaaaaaaaaay easier than it looks because (a) you start at 150 will; and (b) you get a full SP refill afterward. There were a bunch of Moon Race bosses I didn't bother with in the second wave, since they retreat when you smash Gym and there were MAP-spamming Frost Brothers to worry about.
Sadly, the Bits aren't worth much in Ex-Hard, as they cost a third of Garrod's EN and damn near half of Jamil's - and that's EN you want to save for Satellite Cannon. Oh well, at least Tifa's awesome. Oh, and Haman joined before this map and her Quebeley rules face. Good power, great dodge, she's got really high stats and Attack Again - oh, and a 1-7 P TRI with high power. Nice.
53: The final stage of the first ZEUTH path, and the throwdown with both Kazazami and the revived King of Vega. Easy enough. It got interesting when some battleships showed up late and halfway across the map from everything else, but they couldn't actually hurt anything and died without too much fuss once I sent some people over.
54: Hoooooooboy. This is the beginning of Gravionmageddon, and it was a nightmare at the end (viz. my posts from a few days ago). Tons of enemies to fight spread out over the whole map and a five-turn time limit means you can't wait for them to come to you. Gotta rush rush rush, while splitting the force enough to deal with stragglers. Luckily for me Eureka got that 100th Spirit Point that she needs to cast Zeal the turn before she needed to cast it in order to wipe out a wave of Butcher's goons, which saved my ass, but even then I managed to save in battle at just the right time to make the stage into an episode of Kaizo Puzzle Robo. Two bosses left (out of four, and no that wasn't fun to deal with), eight PC squads left to move. One boss at critical HP and one at full (~90K) with a barrier. I have one person left within attack range who can cast Fury. The boss at critical HP will regenerate its life if not killed this turn. After lots of trial and error with attacks and Exhaust, I find the right combination to kill the first and leave the second with ~4000 HP, which allows Baldios to kill it with a critical hit on the counterattack. Yikes.
55: Shockingly, this stage was downright easy once I stopped being stupid. You've got the Frosts and the Gravion big bad, both of whom can massacre you with MAP attacks if you let them. But provided you stay out of the Frosts' way and keep the Gravion dude's morale down, there's nothing particularly threatening here, even on Ex-Hard. Had to let the Turn A and GX enemies retreat instead of killing them for loots, but I took out all the Zeravire in four turns when the SR point is five, so woohoo for me.
Then comes the Zambot finale, and there's no force in heaven or earth that can make that difficult. Maxed out morale, single enemies, one battleship. Whatever.
56: SEED/Zeta finale. OH GOD SO MANY BOSSES. Still working on it, prognosis is for Seven Swell to be very valuable.
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ME2: Hi Jack, plz don't kill me. Also, Hammerhead missions were vaguely pointless but Hammerhead >>>>>>>>>> Ko bomb squad >>>>> the Mako
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Rozalia: Chapter 14 is generally considered a point where the game's difficulty spikes up. So if you've been cruising along and neglecting to do gun upgrades or just being lax on your play, it will make you pay for it. Still I didn't find the area too too bad after doing all the side quests. That may be because of the boosted levels though. Use the terminals to help mitigate it some.
I have pretty good MG so it was fine its just the sheer number of them meant they actually were threatening. I also was going after the shield guys and fencers first for some reason which didn't help. After a while I saw that the Assault guys were the true threat and the rest (lol at shotgun guys) were much less of a threat.
The boss (the turrets) also scared me as my MG did so little damage to them. Then I destroyed one of their shields making them blow up and I saw for all their hp they actually are extreamly frail.
I'm now in the last chapter (lol at the elderly man) and I've started to do some major upgrades to my guns. Fear my dozen barrels of power.
Edit:Just finished the game. I love the line Vash throws at the final boss "You were built for sermons not battle" when the final boss is made of iron and has massive amounts of hit points. Refreshing to face a final boss who is just a guy and doesn't turn into some freak to fight you. I can't remember any game that does that right this moment as 99% have the big bad turn into some random demon for some random reason.
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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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Last Story- I starting to feel I am playing game for the VA instead of the game itself. Not sayign the game is bad, it gives me this Growlanser in gameplay, which I like.
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Yu Gi Oh 5D's. It's a terrible plot, and a terrible concept (I mean, high speed motorbike card games, hell yeah!) but it's pretty fun to see how wacko a deck can be. Currently running a knights deck. Lots of warriors, few spells and traps. So far so good. Queen's Knight + King's Knight + Jack's Knight, add a Sogen and a Malevolent Nuzzler for each and I wreck through earlygame.
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Baldur's Gate 2 - Whee entering into ToB territory for the first time. Melissan looks COMPLETELY trustworthy. I'm sure nothing bad is going to happen.
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Chrono Trigger - Figured I should post here and mention that I beat this, for all that anyone keeping track of my thread on the discussion boards knows this already; did it a few days back. I think the game has aged pretty darn well (the script is the most glaring place the game shows its age, which makes sense given the space limitations) and I absolutely love this game's pacing. Seriously needs hype. Game time was 15-16 hours and I did absolutely everything, and the game always kept me interested. See, RPG players? Chrono Trigger is quite possibly the most revered game in the genre, and it doesn't need 50-odd hours and a stupid amounts of sidequests and time-wasters to be that way. Stop asking for shitty games and you'll actually see a game as good as this one more than once every couple years or so. </rant>
Anyway game is pretty cool, and replaying it was quite a trip. I hadn't played it in literally a decade, the longest I've gone without playing an RPG I give a high score to with the exception of Xenogears (haven't played that in 11 years!). Fun times.
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Please don't replay XG. There is a distinct possibility that I will in fact gouge my eyes out if you do.
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Dooooo iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
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He could also, you know, play something new! I'm not trying to point him in the direction of anything in particular, just saying <_<
That said...
Bionic Commando Rearmed 2: Got this today, beat the first stage, and...well, its nice to see the game is actually trying to be DIFFERENT and do new things, rather than "Its like the first game, but with different stages, and new power ups." I mean, SPENCER HAS A MUSTACHE!
Parasite Eve 2: So I learned there's this artificial garden thingy in the shelter and I'm suppose to head there. Still on track for best ending, it looks like.
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Please don't replay XG. There is a distinct possibility that I will in fact gouge my eyes out if you do.
Sounds like we have a thing to do!
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Fallout 3: Stubborn completionist urges kicked in, so I nabbed this a couple days ago. It's okay. Piss easy (I beat up a gang of super mutants at level five with a baseball bat. I, uh, really don't think things like that should be possible, game) and the morality system is simplistic and unbalanced to the point of being a bad joke, but I like exploring for the sake of exploring and it's an alright timewaster in that respect. Went for melee weapons/big guns because I'd not used either weapon type much in other Fallouts, focused on speech for non-combat skills and let everything else rot (this has largely failed to matter. Unbalanced game is unbalanced).
I have to admit it's kind of neat that this one's set in my backyard (yep, that's what a Metro station looks like, good old sound-absorbing barrel vaults). Still, that's part of the obstacle to taking anything in the game seriously: there's conceptually nothing wrong with moving the series to another part of the country, but they transplanted the traditional Fallout elements without apparently taking time to think about how or why that would happen in-context. Why are there so many fucking super mutants in D.C.? The Master's experiments happened in California. Why is the Brotherhood of Steel here? How'd they get here? They didn't seem expansionist enough to cross the country. It's like the design team decided these things were sufficiently iconic that they had to be there and just assumed no one would ask questions. I dunno, maybe this stuff gets addressed later. I'm not that far in. It feels like overreliance on established material, though.
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But we need Ciato's eyes! How else would she be able to read all the
nice horrible true... all the things we write about her?
Bionic Commando Rearmed 2: Played the demo. Looks interesting.
Lego Indiana Jones 2: Completed over four days. The addition of hubworlds instead of one single overarching world like the Cantina/College was a good move, I believe, but it came at the cost of much smaller levels and very few secrets in each one. I'd have to say this was the weakest of the Lego games that I've played.
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I was thinking of hunting for XG ... bad idea then? I didn't realise :-[
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Ciato just doesn't like XG and just very recently saw someone play through it.
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It's a running joke with me, don't take it too seriously. It has a good plot, I just don't personally like it.
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Ciato was traumatized by jumping in a dungeon with random encounters.
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Please don't replay XG. There is a distinct possibility that I will in fact gouge my eyes out if you do.
NEB if you replay XG I will give you a Lawfer plushie. <3
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If you can actually obtain a Lawfer plushie, something tells me he'd take you up on that.
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I'd also have to buy one for myself, truth be told. I'm not sure if we could even get Djinn to find one, though.
ON THE OTHER HAND, he's apparently never going back to the US, so he has all his life to search!
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ME2: Direct intervention is necessary
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Resonance of Fate: so my guns have four barrels each and seven scopes and I use two at once when I'm not bicycle kicking grenades at shit.
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See, RPG players? Chrono Trigger is quite possibly the most revered game in the genre, and it doesn't need 50-odd hours and a stupid amounts of sidequests and time-wasters to be that way. Stop asking for shitty games and you'll actually see a game as good as this one more than once every couple years or so.
Quoted for so very much truth.
I'm not saying, per se, that there's anything wrong with long games, some games in particular-Such as, say, Morrowind style exploration games, or Xenogears with it's story that it wants to tell-are perfectly fine as longer games.
But stop shoehorning long into everything in a pitiful attempt to justify your price tags. No one gives a shit anyways, so long as the base game's good, and you're making the base games not good sometimes doing it. Ahem. Don't add sidequests that have little to no impact, sure, but that's secondary, they don't detract(This is why FFX is still okay.).
But try to avoid as much as possible adding filler areas, grind points, superfluous animations without a way to turn them off or speed them(Bonus negative if they're things like walking to an enemy before attacking once, normally, with a sword, and somehow take a lot of time.), loading times before moves(especially this, and hilariously this is fixable with animation skip), loading times before battle(Sometimes less fixable), retreading a single area constantly, and especially, especially, especially the pointless interlude. When you fetch quest for a fetch quest is when I start getting pissed. Fetch quests are okay. They are a foundation of RPGs to a degree, and in many cases your entire main quest is getting a mcguffin of some kind. Just try to keep it down to a feeling of doing something you need to do to get on your way, okay?
At least really bad examples of it aren't common. Still, sometimes they're glaringly big(Diamond/Pearl, Sonic Chronicles, Legend of Dragoon, WA1/3/ACF) and even the minor examples that make you see a three-five second animation every time you go to do something that you can't skip get old.
It doesn't ruin things. But it definitely detracts. As near as I can tell, it does even if you don't think it matters...try to think about how many times a game has felt "fluid" or "fast paced", or how many of your favorite games ever don't strongly justify their length, if they have it. Glancing at the games rated 10 in the RPG ratings list gives a pretty good idea here; Probably the slowest 10 game I see is Suikoden 3, and Suikoden 3 might arguably be an example of getting every single thing right *but* being fast paced.
(For reference to what I'm thinking here, I was thinking FF6 had a surprisingly fast battle system, so I tried to figure out why... and realized it was because it has single/few second animations...and you can queue up actions while those short animations are going off. Why is a...what, 17? year old game more streamlined than anything in ages?)
Yeah I like to rant about this what of it. >_> My default mode of playing RPGs is with four times frameskip on! I like 'em fast. <_<
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But stop shoehorning long into everything in a pitiful attempt to justify your price tags. No one gives a shit anyways, so long as the base game's good, and you're making the base games not good sometimes doing it.
Sadly people do give a shit, though. A lot of people complained about WA4 being too short, for example. I totally agree with you though.
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Rephrase: There is a level beyond which no one really gives a shit. They'll complain if it's not as long as the game before it, say. But, at around 30-40 hours(Varies a bit) you're good. Even WRPGs, a genre known for much higher lengths than JRPGs, can get away with being 40 hours.
Before that it varies. But, length is generally secondary to quality.
If it wasn't, Xenogears would have vastly outsold PE. They came out around the same time! (Personally I also consider XG a lot higher quality. Not the point though.)
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Stone Cold Pimping Simulator 2.0 - Edgeworth continues to do his things. I am honestly frustrated with the chain of logic sometimes. It shits me having to make all the connections with 2 or 3 word pieces when some of them are things I just kind of assume are taken for granted, pretty much because they are blatantly stated in the dialogue. It is vastly improved over the other game in the series I have played though (so it is going to spoil me when I play the copies of the others I have). Also frustrating. Pointing to the mannequin as the hiding spot in case 3. There was just a ton dialogue about how they hid as the mannequin. Then POINT OUT WHERE THEY HID. Errrrrrrrrrr lost half my health bar going wtfwtfwtf I am supposed to work out where they hid instead of as the doll?!?!?!? Also dude hits you on the left hand side of the head with a sword which has stains on the left hand side of it while the guy in the suit had something in his left hand here and we have proven that the suspect was left handed. SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT HERE! Point out the contradiction! Thanks guys. I worked out that left is not right and this is the contradiction before you started dropping that kind of hint.
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But stop shoehorning long into everything in a pitiful attempt to justify your price tags. No one gives a shit anyways, so long as the base game's good, and you're making the base games not good sometimes doing it.
Sadly people do give a shit, though. A lot of people complained about WA4 being too short, for example. I totally agree with you though.
I think this just gets to a point that I rememebr Tal and I ended up discussing about. If a game is good, it's replay value is naturally high. You won't need to drop 100 quests on it to make it good (see FFT/WA4). If a game sucks, who care about those extras? Replay value should not be about length for the sake of making you keep playing the game.
So yes, I would likely be in the same camp here as well. Quality games that are short >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Shitty games that are long and terrible
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But try to avoid as much as possible adding filler areas, grind points, superfluous animations without a way to turn them off or speed them(Bonus negative if they're things like walking to an enemy before attacking once, normally, with a sword, and somehow take a lot of time.), loading times before moves(especially this, and hilariously this is fixable with animation skip), loading times before battle(Sometimes less fixable), retreading a single area constantly, and especially, especially, especially the pointless interlude. When you fetch quest for a fetch quest is when I start getting pissed. Fetch quests are okay. They are a foundation of RPGs to a degree, and in many cases your entire main quest is getting a mcguffin of some kind. Just try to keep it down to a feeling of doing something you need to do to get on your way, okay?
While there's a lot of DQ7 hate around here, what you mentioned here is exactly what it does right. It's a 100-hours+ of actually doing stuff. Battles are lightning-quick, with almost no animation at all. Fetch quests are important to the central plot, not just time-wasters. That's why the game feels so epic - you're completing a quest that's just so massive and isn't over in a cutscene or two.
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SSF4: Finished Arcade mode with all characters. Decided on HAKAN as my main. Started fooling around with him in online play. Not too terrible of a beginning, I just need to clean up my execution.
DQ9: Leveled up Estark and got all of his gear. Working on Zoma now.
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Andy stat topic convinced me to drop everything and play around with Dragon Age: Origins.
It's good Bioware dialog and world-building. Meh gameplay. And argh, Silent Main. It offsets this with the ability to make all the PCs run around naked. Yes, I'm amused by this.
My biggest complaint are the menus. They tried to be streamlined, but they just feel very unintuitive and every time I have to equip my PCs or navigate a shop menu, I want to just turn the game off. RPG fail. I suppose they could be much worse, but my general feeling of DA:O so far has been "ugh, all this GAME getting in the way of my interactive storybook."
Also... holy crap, are all the dungeons going to be as long as the Brecilian Forest/Ruins?
Pokemon Heart Gold: Yay! Zubat won the Pokeathelon for Speed! Good boy, Zubat!
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I disagree about DQ7 feeling epic cause of the quests. A lot of them involved revisiting places you've already been, too, which undermines the overall flow. Furthermore, the raw number of them didn't actually add to anything. There's a point where it feels less like you're accomplishing something, and more like they actually are time wasters. A bunch of those quests had almost no impact in the grand scheme of things, and then smoe of them felt just completely worthless from an RPG stand point.
I mean, why the fuck should I care about the personal life of two lovers who have this love triangle with this rich dude whose a total wimp? That was like a good half hour of NOTHING but running around town, and talking to people until you get what you wanted, and it added nothing to the game other than being pointless. It'd be one thing if the story arc there was actually interesting, but really it was a generic lovers quarrel.
DQ7 definitely fell into that range of "Too Much." You can say they were necessary, but I fail to see why the game couldn't do the same thing with only half, and have the same effect.
Legend of Mana was very similar to Dragon Quest 7 in this regard...except it had 2 major advantages:
A. A lot of stuff was optional. This made the game erally at your pace, and made it feel a lot less like it dragged. Didn't want to do something? You don't have too!
B. Even with all quests done, the game is still notably shorter. It can't be stressed enough; DQ7's quests weren't just numerous, they were individually long as well. LoM, the quests don't atke much more than a half hour tops, barring the final dungeon ones of the 3 primary quests. And there are quests that feel actually linked, so you do get a sense of accomplishment, not just "Ok, that's done, ONTO THE NEXT ONE!" with no end in sight.
If you're gonna argue about World Building as a central plot element...look at Terarnigma. The GOOD part of that game's plot is Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, where you're literally rebuilding the world. That lasts...what? 10 hours tops? And its actually kind of fun (the game just kind of drops the ball ENTIRELY on this and becomes a complete boring plot game that leads into a MAJOR TRAIN WRECK then into a "Congrats for saving the world, NOW YOU DIE CAUSE OF A STUPID TECHNICALITY! Wait, maybe you didn't die, CAUSE THIS PLOT POINT MAKES NO SENSE!")
Again, there's no justification for DQ7's length. If they wanted that many quests, shorten them then; length does not add to "epic" feel, half the time, it just makes you go "Man, I'm glad THAT'S done with."
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Pokemon: Soul Silver- Finished the Uber E4. Easy as hell until Lance. Without Delibird Buff and Sweep Swampert. Got lucky in that Garchomp didn't use Roar. He ended up taking Altaria with him in Perish Song though, but Manectric ended up OHKOing Lance's his Gyrados.
As far as Legendary Catching, got Lugia, Articuno, Zapdos and Latios so far. After the whole Sapphire experience with it, I ended up just throwing the Master Ball at Latios. The shiny gerbils made the decision easy.
Speaking of shiny, need to get a Shiny Stone to upgrade my Shiny Roselia.
Dunno how I think about the game, really. I enjoyed it, originally thought of it as a 7/10, but looking over both lists, it ended up in the 6/10 camp. The retread of Kanto was nice, but neither side really did a lot and catching interesting pokemon happened more on the periphery (Pokewalker, mainly) than in the game itself until after the first E4 fight, which... not great. E4 without relying on legendary cheese was good though. Should do that more often!
Will train up to fight Red and get the rest of the legendaries/starters, but splitting time with Legaia 2 starting now.
Delibird is still your god.
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Parasite Eve 2: So after doing Neo Ark, I wanted to go abck to Armory, made a wrong turn, ended up heading into a temporarypoint of no return and nearly swore cause I hadn't saved in a while...
Somehow muscled out against the boss, and am thankfully placed in a spot with infinite Hydra Ammo nearbye, so I think i SHOULD be good for at least a little while...just ugh to having to be put back into Neo Ark again. I just want to restock on Ammo and maybe head back to Dryfield to by an awesome shotgun, is that so bad :(?
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I think this just gets to a point that I rememebr Tal and I ended up discussing about. If a game is good, it's replay value is naturally high.
...
So yes, I would likely be in the same camp here as well. Quality games that are short >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Shitty games that are long and terrible
I kind of have to disagree with you here on the replayability. Some game genres don't lend themselves to replayability and are amazing. The number of times I have played Torment is due to how good it is, not because it is remotely replayable (ie one of the best games of all times is quite sufficient by itself on a single play through). Less extreme, ToV is a very good game, replayable it is not really.
A good short game is better than a shitty long game, yes. A good long game is better than a shitty short game as well. A good game with low replayability is better than a shitty game with high expectations of replayability.
So yeah good games are better than bad games. Wheeeee.
Also Djinn, as I said, I cannot vouch for any value in Dragon Age on console. Most things will be about as long as the Brecillian forest. Note that the four places you do there is the majority of the main plot though. Also they are deceptively long and feed you into doing optional side things a great deal when if you really want you can go very directly through the places.
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My biggest complaint are the menus. They tried to be streamlined, but they just feel very unintuitive and every time I have to equip my PCs or navigate a shop menu, I want to just turn the game off. RPG fail.
Going to wager you're playing on a console. The menus are very very very bad on a console.
I would bemoan this more, but instead I will simply say that now you dumbass dickbags know how it feels to use an interface that is so poorly optimized for your platform's interface.
I am absolutely still mad about Fallout 3, thanks for asking.
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ME2: Everyone's loyalty is mine, and I got a quarian, sweet
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PE2: Finished, got best ending.
Game's too different to compare to the first one, but its alright I guess. Nothing incredible, but didn't find it bad or anything. Also has the most competent military in a game I've ever seen...despite being completely on YOUR side with no strings attached.
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PE2: Finished, got best ending.
Game's too different to compare to the first one, but its alright I guess. Nothing incredible, but didn't find it bad or anything. Also has the most competent military in a game I've ever seen...despite being completely on YOUR side with no strings attached.
That last part really blew my mind. I waited the whole game for them to turn on me or turn retarded and neither happened. Freaked me out so much I hid under my bed, because clearly I knew nothing.
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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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Pimping 101 with Miles Edgworth - Up to the Adventures of Young Elfboy and Ciato. Ciato demands to be able to look into the mens bathroom through a window. Then they interrogate Shale about his bathroom activities.
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Also they emotionally abuse Yoshi.
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Dissidia: Finally cracked down and got 100% in everything...well, at least, in all Accomplishments and all Museum Stars. Stupid Shade Impulse.
The only things not quite done are "Finish Time Attack Mode with everyone" which I don't feel like doing cause its annoying, and "Max out accessory slots for every character" which...maybe I'll do cause its not that hard, I guess.
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I've been finishing up a few games so I can delete them to clear up hard drive space on my Xbox, so I did the speedrun of Monkey Island Special Edition and added another % of map completion to SotN. Also...
'Splosion Man: Beat the single player campaign after playing off again and on again for over a year. Have to agree with Yahzee on this one - the game would have been much better if it was 2/3 the length and the difficulty curve was more gradual. I have no idea how good the co-op is, but I'd give 5/10 to the single player, 6 if I was feeling generous that day. The presentation is charming, though.
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Baldur's Gate 2 - A chinchilla. Zeus would be so proud.
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Darkstalkers Chronicle - The Chaos Tower (PSP)- Once upon a time some people at the DL told me I would like Darkstalkers. More recently a persistent little bird kept tempting me with it and filled me in on some details about the series with the main draw being that it had not one, not two but at least three CT baits with a cool and interesting vampire man to boot. This luring included details on and links to visual aids of said CT baits. How could I keep resisting? Resistance was futile. It helped that the game was ridiculously cheap from Amazon over here. I couldn't wait so I went with express delivery so I would have it for playing this weekend too >.> Got it yesterday.
So far I haven't really done anything with it yet regardless ... except mess around with Haisen-Ko, B.B Hood and Lilith in Training a bit. I have no idea what I'm doing though so I'm going to take Meeple's advice and start out for the game proper (arcade/tower) by trying Demetri instead even though he's fugly in this game <.< I might also use easy mode with this too just for starters until I get more used to things.
Out of the CT baits so far I think I like Haisen-Ko and Lilith best. Haisen-Ko is purple and pink and dinky with a massive chainsaw for overthetop awesme craziness and Lilith's kick attacks are cute <3 B.B Hood ... well she would only be for when if I was feeling really, really savage I think. That's just scary.
On the otherhand Beautiful Memory and Appleforyou are kickass skill names >.> <.< >.> Oh, oh and the dog! =-(
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Blazblue: Continuum Shift - got, played around with. Finished story mode 100% with Ragna, went through missions with a bunch of people, played arcade with Tsubaki. Leaning toward her and/or Lambda as mains, but it's early yet.
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XS3 - OH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE.
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XS3 - OH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE.
You are SO right on there!
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Call of Cthulhu: Playing on Xbox, yes, I occasionally play things other than RPGs. Mostly inspired by Andy's ramblings about horror games and me trying to think of one that was actually scary.
Instead of thinking of one of those, I remembered this game, which was scary once, but was basically the definition of "I have to do this section 14 times, whatever narrative they were going for here is lost." Specifically, the opening Hotel escape scene. It is both the most awesome example of how to use gameplay in a scary manner, but also the most terrible execution of it in practice. The rest of the game is too buggy and slow to really mention. One of these days I'll beat it, but I've yet to actually bother past the Shoggoth, since the Hotel section is both the most infuriating, but also the most fun part of the game.
re: Darkstalkers
B.B. Hood feels more like Ciato-bait than CT-bait.
Pokemon: I've got like 3 badges and I still haven't gotten the tutorials on the interesting changes since RBY. I'm still not sure how to do anything with hold items and none of the new pokemon seem all that different from the originals. Also, I've had all of one doubles/partner/pairs/whateveritscalled battle. So far, the most focused-on new feature to the system has been APRICOTS~
Is this ever going to get interesting outside of "Yay, I caught a ferret!"?
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Comic Jumper: Beat. From the makers of 'Splosion Man (you may recall my mini-review yesterday on that one). Obviously the game isn't that long if I can beat it in two days. It's repetitive, but it has the trademark Twisted Pixel charm that made it worth playing. Little to no replay value, though. Probably a low 7/10.
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B.B. Hood feels more like Ciato-bait than CT-bait.
She's a cute (in the young, adorable way) little innocent girl if by design only. ANYTHING ELSE about the character is suddenly irrelevant, as far as CT bait goes, if they fill THAT role.
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ME2: So I'm all ready to go get the IFF and go into endgame when I try to install Kasumi/Overlord one more time and they actually install, so I suddenly have lots more stuff to do
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Is this ever going to get interesting outside of "Yay, I caught a ferret!"?
The ferret sucks, you go yay when you catch the fire-breathing dog.
Pokemon: Spent some time in the Battle Tower to get points to buy a Stone Edge for Entei.
SSF4: Got up to D+ rank with Hakan. Winning about 20% of my fights, which isn't too shabby for what is arguably the worst character in the game.
Blazblue CT: Started fooling around with this. Liked the way Jin played, so I beat Arcade with him and tried Score Attack, where I promptly got beaten by Super Saiyan Rachel.
Infinite Undiscovery: Bought this and Last Remnant (because Idunnie commanded me to do so). Kind of interesting. It's a bit difficult to juggle controlling different party members and yourself at the same time. Capell is a bit of a different take on a main, really wussy and just gets swept along by other people. The personal skill descriptions are hilarious.
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Is this ever going to get interesting outside of "Yay, I caught a ferret!"?
The ferret sucks, you go yay when you catch the fire-breathing dog.
There was a fire-breathing in dog in RBY... I was looking for things that weren't already in Gen 1...
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Color?
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From the context I'm guessing he's playing HGSS. And... HGSS has most of its worth in the aftergame. They did fix the gym leaders up from the original, so the maingame is less zzzzz, but it's still more about the lengthy and nicely balanced Kanto stuff.
And yeah, Gen 2 pokemon still aren't too hot in=game, although the ferret is one of the better HM whores in the series. RSE is really the only game where using older gen stuff isn't a better option, although Platinum isn't BAD about it like Diamond/Pearl.
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Yeah, playing HG. I haven't played a Pokemon since Yellow, and people kept telling me how different it was since the original gameboy.
But it feels so very much the same and the new features and tweaks to the battle system don't seem to be showing up much so far.
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In your case replaying the FRLG might have been better for that particular problem. That said, HGSS is more for series fans anyway, I feel. If you want a straight up good game, Emerald is your best bet. If you want something substantially different from the early games, but still pokemon, check out XD on the gamecube.
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Yeah. For differences, Gen3 or 4 would've been better and more of a change.
Decent Gen 2 pokemon... use the Pokewalker (or Safari Zone) to get a Murkrow. They rock, and evolve into pimps.
HGSS is more just kind of an update of an old game than something different.
I'm sure they'll release something like Star Sapphire and Royal Ruby eventually though, so... who knows?
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Black or White would be best if you want something with substantial differences, though that's not out in english yet.
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Well, I wanted to play Platinum, but out of the seven Gamestops I went to during DLC5, not a single one of them had it for sale... >.>;;
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KH BbS- Derived a No Heart perfect kill deck. God, his AI is stupid. Just set a few mine, and he'll goes into a evade mode and only spam a certain set of attack, making him stupidly predictable. Then get into Rhythm Mixer mode after a few mine to his face, then play a counter game to use Rhythm Mixer's finisher. His HP gets drained stupidly fast. His attack being weak didn't help much either. A highly boring fight I must say.
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Grandia LLG. Yes.
Rockbird (Justin 2, Sue 1) - Gets in one hit for 6 damage despite the fight taking four rounds. Is a worthy contender for the worst first boss ever.
Orc Chief + 2 Orcs (Justin 2, Sue 2) - Makes me use healing items! Firebreath is a respectable 3HKO.
Squid King (Justin 4, Sue 3, Feena 6) - According to test runs you get no more exp for killing body parts of multipart bosses, making this less of a nightmare. Use the Burn!/Burnflame items that have been piling up with Justin/Sue and have Feena spam Burn!. At this point the tentacles are almost dead and you can go to town on him. His attacks are scary (point blank Shockwave OHKOed Sue on a test run) but when he almost never gets turns...
Chang (Justin 5, Sue 3) (1 reset) - I get curbstomped. What do you mean I have to buy equipment sometimes on this playthrough
After the gear upgrade his punch combo is down to a 3HKO on Justin and 2HKO on Sue from the previous high 2HKO/OHKO, making the fight much more manageable. Tornado Punch is just a slightly worse basic combo and Spin Kick sucks unless your PCs are bunched together. Timely use of defend and liberal use of healing items takes the fight without much trouble.'
Ganymede (Justin 6, Sue 4, Feena 6) - Everything the boss has is physical so Diggin' completely trivializes the fight. After 7 stacks of Diggin' I just wail on him to win.
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RIIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!
You're alive!
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BBCS: I have shocking news: Score Attack is hard.
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ME2: Ran through Overlord and Kasumi, unshockingly Shadow Broker >>> Overlord >= Kasumi for worth, finally have just last stuff left.
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You can actually keep playing after you finish this time, FYI.
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VC - "Behold my man made Valkyria power which surpasse the original in every way! Of course the original doesn't have slug like speeds, is more powerful, doesn't turn you into a veiny freak and doesn't require several power generators to power them but......besides all that my new powers are better in every way!"
No Max they aren't. You throw away a real Valkyria who'd have done anything for you and replace her with this? What is wrong with you man? Then you tell me your mother died while you were a child and thus you are justified in your dick and stupid actions. No Max that is no excuse as such things happen to many people and they don't turn into the big pile of stupid you are. I have to say though that Faldio really didn't need to die with Max though, I mean why not just throw Max off and live? Reminds me of Mino dragon suplexing Andre Richardson off a building as he too didn't have the idea of simply throwing the bad guy off the roof.
Playing Selvaria's mission now and I have to say her soldiers suck hardcore and it really makes you see why Max invests in those giant tanks of his as his foot soldiers are completely useless. Interesting you face General Damon in these missions who while a jackass still trys his best to stop the imperials. Yeah the gas thing is you could say somewhat evil but I know if I was facing a freak who could take hundreds of bullets without flinching and took out tanks like they were nothing even in her human form, I too would use such methods. General Damon is no doubt a true Gallian hero 8-). That book "on the Gallian front" is just a work of fiction that sets out to discredit such a great man.
ROF - Plat gotten. Neverland was so easy I curb stomped everything with ease so tri ace should start upping their game on these things. 100% full scratch/stun with AP rounds is too broken.
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Halo3: Got the 7 on 7 Vidmaster achievement. Apparently my skill at Crazy King is inversely proportional to my skill at Slayer matches.
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Wild Arms 4: Finished. That was the most severely upbeat downer ending ever.
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Grandia LLG. Yes.
Shame on you for making Grandia bosses seem almost decent!
Kinda makes me want to relive 8th grade again and replay Grandia~
Also, good to see you again. Are you srsly engaged now?
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Wild Arms 4: Finished. That was the most severely upbeat downer ending ever.
It's the beginning of a long, slow downward technological spiral, too!
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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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WA4 - So, in a bit of irritation during an internet outage, (MEDIACOM SUCKS) I popped this in for a while. I realized I was still early in my game.
Earthbound Spirit has been the most dangerous fight so far, to where I had to finish the fight with Yulie dead. Jeremy 1 got mocked, as he went down in two Raquel physicals. I didn't even have enough time to build up to an Intrude.
I got to the Great Staircase, and decided to stick the Bad Omen badge on Arnaud just because.
I then proceeded to run into four Grow Apples. Arnaud went before three of them. Jude was able to steal a Grow Egg from one.
Going into the Great Staircase, my levels averaged 12. Coming out, they're 31/33.
Well, time to mock the rest of the game.
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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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The Witcher - plays like crap on my computer, but I dig the game's style anyway. Currently in chapter two, investigating things.
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ME2: Everyone lives, as it turns out suicide missions totally aren't THAT dangerous bro
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ME2: Everyone lives, as it turns out suicide missions totally aren't THAT dangerous bro
I don't mind that it was possible, but I thought it was way too easy and the choices too obvious.
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Vandal hearts flames of judgement: Nice to see that the main villain went to the Luca Blight school of tactics though he is a bit of an idiot when confronted about it. "These people think I can do no wrong so I could just lie and say this bandit is lying. Na I'd rather just admit it, fry the bandit and they throw a huge spanner into my plan by allowing the heroes to see I'm an evil dickhead. After all I am the greatest warrior alive!". Admittedly he did try to kill the heroes but it seems the flames of judgement have a 20 second cooldown before they can be used again which is fail.
Partywise everyone is simply to powerful that all the enemies get minced due to their lack of hp and lol worthy speed though Gren takes the cake when you get to mid game. Maybe it was due to me leveling his charge skill (Move at least 4 spaces and attack) but his speed leveled up from 30% average (Fail) to slightly above average (What?). This combined with gamebest hp which is at least double most characters and triple (!) the rest, best defence, high (second highest) attack that unlike everyone else can hit everyone around him, third highest crit chance and he unlike most characters of his type actually has a nice pool of Mp to use. His is also the best looking character in the game for having the good sense of being in full armour so he doesn't suffer the fugly artwork.
Yeah the game is one of those "stat ups when you do stuff games" but I've given everyone but the mage guy about equal kills and Gren is currently crushing everyone in huge way. In fact when he became a boss (no change in stats) he was 2HKOing my second tankiest character while I was 10HKOing him back (WTH!?!). Man is not called "Ten men Gren" for nothing I guess.
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Nice to see that the main villain went to the Luca Blight school of tactics though he is a bit of an idiot when confronted about it. "These people think I can do no wrong so I could just lie and say this bandit is lying. Na I'd rather just admit it, fry the bandit and they throw a huge spanner into my plan by allowing the heroes to see I'm an evil dickhead. After all I am the greatest warrior alive!". Admittedly he did try to kill the heroes but it seems the flames of judgement have a 20 second cooldown before they can be used again which is fail.
So it is Luca Blight again with all the same fail. Good to know that archetype is still written amazingly retarded.
Miles Edgeworth: Sleeping With Your Mother - So Elfboy joins up with Ciato on her investigation and then proceeds to take over the investigation entirely effectively. Why didn't the game switch PoV to Ciato?
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/French%20Cuffs.gif)
Oh I see, because French Cuffs flared that far out with cuff links that are clearly made of glass are absolutely dreadful darling. They really didn't need to be on both side of the cuff and they need to be about a quarter of the size. Also big shoulders are so 30 years ago. You are lucky you have the figure to pull off that waistcoat and it is real shame you ruin such well fitted sleeves on those puffy shoulders.
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No dissin' my fashion sense bro!
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Mario Kart Wii: In my first two races (not cups, but actual races) I got hit by a blue shell 4 times. F*** that. Obviously the series peaked at SMK/MK64, and everything since has just been a huge pile of cheap.
Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project: So it's Duke in a 2-5D sidescroller and he's rescuing women trapped by bombs and shooting pig cops in the face. It's like the classic Dukes and the 3-D Duke have merged. Surprisingly decent so far, I'm up to Chinatown.
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Grefter playing a PW game is the best thing ever.
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http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,2452.msg124552.html#msg124552
My first post about this over in the LFT topic. Moving it here.
Anyway, continuing with Cameo Alert!
Araguay Woods: Nothing much to report here. It's a bunch of gobs vs Chemist Hatbot, Grefter, Super and Andy. Splat.
Zirikile Falls: Business as usual here as well. Only thing of note is that Ovelia's Triangle hat gets broken before I can steal it.
Zaland: 1 reset. First try, run into a Pheonix Down spamming knight. Who retreats away from the action. And I can't leave the Wizards or Oracles alive, or they will kill me with fire and stick beats. But killing them does nothing, because it turns out an Oracle has Item too. Also, Andy got zombied, then killed off by a stick beat from an Oracle he had just killed who the knight revived. Second try, Andy is a ladies man and charms one wizard and one oracle into killing the other wizard and oracle respectively. Then he stabs the charmed oracle in the back becuase that's just how he rolls. Fight is just cleanup after that, don't even get to see what secondaries the knights are running this time.
Baraius Hill: No resets but only by the skin of my teeth. Hatbot is dropped by geomancer focus fire early, and Agrias, despite having Raise, chooses never to use it. Thankfully she does get Crush Punch to kick in twice for the ID, and the final Lancer dies when Hatbot's at 0 counter with 80ct. Luck was with me here.
Nobody else to recruit this time. Need to check up on who the next cameo will be.
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Djinn: Yes. And a pre-emptive no.
Grandia LLG:
Saki, 3x Private (Justin 8, Sue 6, Feena 8): HPs are in the 50-60 range. The scrubs get easily dispatched with some quick AoE blitzing in the start. Saki herself has Power Lariat for 40ish damage and some weaker attacks. Diggin', heal, be careful. Not too bad, takes a while and some items though.
Nana, 3x Private (Justin 8, Sue 6, Feena 8): Like the previous battle except Nana is terrible. Her yo-yo specials do something like ~10 damage. One of them is MT, oh no.
Mio, 3x Private (Justin 8, Sue 6, Feena 8): Mio has Balloon, which has entirely unpredictable targeting, usually hitting 1~2 PCs for 1 damage and POIZN+sleep. Stun Gun does 30+ damage and adds Paralysis. While the occasional poizn hit, Grandia Sleep and Paralysis are pretty unimpressive on their own, all three add up to a whole lot of turn loss to the point it's not impossible to see Mio lapping your party. Justin died at one point to POIZN after a barely survived Stun Gun hit. Poor Justin. Wasn't really close to a reset though.
Scrubs on the train: Skill Exp fodder. I do have one character death due to underestimating Sergeants though (39 damage Wave Cut? Ow)
Scrubs on the mountain: Sergeant parties. Easy to deal with when you take them seriously.
You can't run from End of the World randoms. Of all the places for Grandia to make sense. I get caught by one formation of sonic bats no matter what, oh well. There are a few forced fights guarding switches and such in End of the World too, culminating in...
Emerald Birdx2, Clay Bird (Justin 9, Sue 7, Feena 10) (stopped counting resets): Good grief. Emerald Birds have an AoE attack that does 40 to all and paralyzes and none of their other moves are very nice either. 265 HP is sadly not entirely trivial to this party, and I have a number of resets on the fight, one getting caught by a formation while running from the save point, and an absolutely infuriating one where I actually get stuck in the world geometry. I finally manage to ambush this formation and blitz two birds before they manage to kill anyone, then heal and mop up the last one.
Gadwin (Justin 9): yeah well
The randoms at Mt. Typhoon splatter non-Gadwin people if they get an ambush. This and the Emerald Bird fiasco finally make me upgrade from New Parm armor. >_> This is a very noticeable upgrade, reducing taken damage by ~20.
Serpent, Hot Head, Nice Head, Mean Head, Cool? Head (Justin 9, Sue 8, Feena 10, Gadwin 30) (1 reset): No points for guessing the MVP. The rest of the party has 62-77HP, Gadwin has 273. You need to either kill the Serpent (1000 HP) or its heads (423-800HP each)to win. Serpent itself uses 4Head Attack, doing 20ish physical damage to an AoE. Hot Head is fast and does 25 fire magic damage to a giant area. Cool Head uses Stun Gas, doing 0-10 damage to an AoE and causing paralysis. Mean Head's Killer Bite does negligible physical damage and causes moveblock. Finally, Nice Head heals all enemies for 100 every time it gets a turn. First time through I start slow, buffing myself up with Diggin', the works. I soon find out I have no way to cure moveblock and seemingly can't keep up with the healing with the dragon getting a whole lot more turns than I do. Oops. Second try, I blitz the Mean Head so I can't be permanently screwed. Feena gets Moveblocked though! I have no reason to care. Feena supports Gadwin with WOW!, occasionally healing herself with items, Gadwin does the damage, Justin and Sue can't keep up and die. Oh well. I take out Hot Head, bringing the hydra's damage output to levels manageable by Alheal. I resurrect Justin and Sue, then start grinding down the hydra. Cool Head falls, Nice Head falls and the Serpent dies.
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Viewtiful Joe DS: Yeah, found this cheap, yada yada yada. Its basically V. Joe with some stylus gimmicks used in place of Mach Speed (Slow Down is still there, and there's a variation of View Up too.) Not much else to say so far.
Soul Nomad: Up to Map 17 or so. ...yes, I started this...yes, I didn't tell most people...no, I'm not stealth playing it. I just don't want to bring it up in chat on grounds that SOMEONE is going to tell me SOMETHING about HOW TO PLAY THE GAME and I'm very much about "PLAY HOW YOU DAMN WELL PLEASE!" and hate it when people tell me "DO THIS!" and what not. I hope people catch this SUBTLE HINT!!!!
And no, its not stealth playing, cause see, I didn't post in this topic since I started it or something, so nyeh >_>
I will say one thing though:
Fuck N1 games with their "Any new unit that isn't plot gained starts at level 1" bullshit. Especially in games that start handing you new interesting looking units. Its a pain in the ass to have to buy one, and raise it from scratch, to see if its worth anything. Would it really be so hard to, say, have an option of buying a stronger unit for a higher price? Its especially annoying in a game like this where you need to use a lot of units and the instant you get a new Room to work with, you have to suddenly mix your teams up cause yo need to buy a few more level 1's to fill out spaces but need strong units to make the teams not suck.
That's one thing Ogre Battle does so much better than this; units you bought joined at a level somewhere near the recruited team. This meant actually using new PCs was viable and testing new team combos, etc.
Note this complaint does not reflect my views of the game as a whole, its just a simple "N1, seriously, fuck that shit, its STUPID AND NOT FUN."
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Soul Silver- So after some Legendary catching, I noticed that somehow I had caught all the legendaries thusfar with different balls. Arti- Dusk, Zapdos- Fast, Latios- Master, Lugia- Ultra, Ho-oh- Timer. So I've decided to continue the pattern and go for ALL legendaries with different balls. This'll lead to some hilarious things like having to catch Moltres with a *1 mult ball. Here's the plan as I laid it out:
Raikou- Quick Ball (Makes the most sense for the roamers)
Entei- Level Ball (The Blastoise I got from the copy of Fire Red I bought is closing in on 80, so best choice there)
Suicine- Net Ball (Already done!)
Moltres- Pokeball or equivilent *1 mult ball
Mewtwo- Great Ball (Hahhaahahahah this'll be fun)
Grouden- Heavy Ball (Makes the most sense here)
Rayquaza- Repeat Ball (I have one, but not sure it has to be one the file has actually caught, or just possesses)
Also, during some general collection in the Safari Zone today, I came upon a SHINY RATTATA! I tossed two balls at it, and neither even got to three twitches >.> It ran, and I was sad. Oh well.
Legaia 2- Met Kazan. Hahahahaha at the accent. The camp is wonderful.
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Soul Nomad
Fuck N1 games with their "Any new unit that isn't plot gained starts at level 1" bullshit. Especially in games that start handing you new interesting looking units. Its a pain in the ass to have to buy one, and raise it from scratch, to see if its worth anything. Would it really be so hard to, say, have an option of buying a stronger unit for a higher price?
Are you trolling?
Seriously, the game literally allows you to buy higher level units up to your Main Character's level.
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First off, that trolling comment was completely uncalled for and you know it. There's no reason you couldn't just say "You can buy units at the same level as your main" and leave it at that.
That said, the game is anything but obvious about this, so its not exactly easy to see. After being told about it by someone else, it still took me sometime to figure it out.
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BTW, the bought unit has maximized states gain per level you purchase.
Normal level ups don't grantee maximum states gain.
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There's no effective difference. Storeboughts compensate with slightly lower growths.
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No, the growth is the same. Sometime higher growth appear in normal level up because of the randomness in the normal level up state gain.
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I don't remember how, but taken on average, they basically even out (Storeboughts have levels where the stats don't gain at all, IIRC). There's no stat advantage either way, and I looked into that pretty heavily during game testing.
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First off, that trolling comment was completely uncalled for and you know it. There's no reason you couldn't just say "You can buy units at the same level as your main" and leave it at that.
That said, the game is anything but obvious about this, so its not exactly easy to see. After being told about it by someone else, it still took me sometime to figure it out.
I don't think it was a malicious question... I honestly thought you were being sarcastic. You were complaining about it so hard, I thought it was a roundabout way of praising the game, like "Good job, N1, you finally figured out how to cut out some pointless grinding".
I'm pretty sure that somewhere in one of the early tutorials they mention that you can purchase units up to your current level... Also, I would think that if it was such a game-breakingly bad design decision, that you'd have at least looked a little harder at the creation screen.
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He missed something in a tutorial, complained about it and was corrected, so we can move on yeah? Meeple wouldn't be sarcastic like that, he is not me.
Edit - I am for serious here, if you guys drag this out into an argument I will find you and punch you in the cock.
Might and Magic Clash of Heroes - This game is kind of fun, but a little RNG annoying at times. Not as good as Puzzle Quest at scratching that kind of itch, but it isn't a bad little facsimile for it.
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Paper Mario: Beat it.
The last chapter was kind of boring. For some reason I almost always find the final dungeon of an RPG boring. It wasn't to long though.
The Bowser fight consisted mainly of me using Ultra Hammer and Electro Dash and healing when needed. This is probably the most typical RPG boss fight of all bosses I've encountered. Granted, many bosses broke from the mold solely by not requiring me to heal at all, but still, couldn't they have given Bowser a gimmick that actually matter?
I went for BP most of the time. It turned out I went a bit to far on the BP love, but I didn't notice it until I maxed it out. Once I maxed out BP and replaced all HP+ and FP+ badges with actual HP and FP upgrades, I couldn't get any more BP. However, badges kept getting more expensive. Eventually, I had to look at what badges were actually effective against the current enemies and switch off those that weren't needed for the moment to free up BP. At this point I realized that I could have done that earlier and that way would have needed less BP. For some chapters I had badges equipped that were never used simple because I had a superfluous amount of BP. That's a level up or two that could have gone into FP instead.
I still think BP is the best upgrade though. BP and FP both let you do more stuff, but BP is more flexible. HP loses since that stat doesn't really let you do stuff and is therefore only increased on an as needed basis.
Both exploring and combat was fun. The battles were easy, but I still felt that the game rewarded me for using better strategy and optimizing HP and FP management. The environments are good looking and the various dungeons are simple, but with fun quirks.
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So for some strange reason I have been playing Soul Silver again.
I have a couple of legendaries, but I need some of the more difficult one to acquire still. I might need some help if anyone is willing later on today.
Legendaries I am missing.
Darkrai
Manaphy
Phione
Shaymin
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If you get yourself the original Pokemon Ranger, you can get Manaphy through that. Oh sure, requires playing the entire game, but basically, play that, then play one of the bonus missions. At the end of that, you get some sort of item that you can transfer to one of your Pokemon games (dunno if its applicable to anything outside of Diamond/Pearl though), which ends up being a Manaphy egg.
Once you get Manaphy, you can naturally get Phione.
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Why would I waste all that time when I could just trade with one of you and then after I have seen the Pokemon I can just go to the world trade center and throw a useless Pokemon up for the ones I am missing and some dummy will eventually send me what I'm missing.
That's how I got all my other unobtainable legendaries.
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Continuing on.
Zigolas Swamp: 1 reset. ShadowstitchShadowstitchShadowstich oh look 3/4 of my team is stopped. Well shit. And now Hatbot, my only reviver, has contracted a severe case of the deads. And now my last person is stopped too. And mustadio isn't doing anything useful. *reset* Take 2! Same setup but we manage it better. Mustardo decides to actually USE seal evil this time, and manages to stone 3 of them in short order, including one of the ghosts. That makes my life much easier. Hatbot is a priest now and spams cure around for damage, Gref and Andy get some shots in, and Super futily plinks arrows at skelitons for the small part of the fight he doesn't spend stopped.
Goug: 2 resets. Once again having issues with only one reviver and said reviver dying. Gref's been saving up Chemist jp from props to get Phoenix Down but isn't quite there. I end up spending some of that to grab High Potion, which does let me tilt the battle my way on the third go. Andy remembering how to dodge that time helped as well. Crystal farmed here, since Andy is using charge and all. Got him Charge+10 from one, but everything else turned into chests instead. Ah well, still worth it.
Not too much today, but eh. Slow, steady progress~
Team right now is Hatbot(Priest or Mediator, Counter Tackle/Equip Shield/Move+1), Grefter(Knight w/Item, Counter Tackle/Throw Item/Move+1), Super(Knight w/Basic Skill, Dragon Spirit/Equip Bow/Move+1) and Andy(Thief w/Charge, Counter/Maintenance/nothing). And this is the team I'll be using for a bit, as the next recruit isn't until Hal at Goland.
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Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project - Beat. Lived up to my (admittedly low) expectations. Decent time-waster.
Axel & Pixel: An adventure game by a European company with no dialogue and very little writing. The art style is very nice, not a big surprise given that it's about an artist (and his dog) who ends up in a dream world about his next painting. It was all right, but much too short and the minigames were aggravating.
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God Hand: Maybe some day I'll get to level 3, get wrecked even more by gay bodybuilders
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VC1- Just cleared mission 11. Still not loving the game being designed for a straight zerg rush, but it's still entertaining. Map 11 is especially obnoxious about it, since you need to scout rush and abuse orders to have a prayer of getting an A on it.
Selvaria DLC's been good. It makes Selvaria much better as a character, and makes that one obnoxious Gallian general that much worse. Though it's hard to argue with his logic in using gas, but eh.
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XS3 - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH WHY DOES THIS GAME EXIST.
Finally beaten this spurious pile of waste, by the way.
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God Hand: Maybe some day I'll get to level 3, get wrecked even more by gay bodybuilders
As it turns out this is exactly what Challenge 6 is, I totally beat it first try guys
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XS3 - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH WHY DOES THIS GAME EXIST.
Finally beaten this spurious pile of waste, by the way.
Oh man, that's it? I was expecting a full rant. You disappoint me.
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XS3 - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH WHY DOES THIS GAME EXIST.
Finally beaten this spurious pile of waste, by the way.
Oh man, that's it? I was expecting a full rant. You disappoint me.
I hate the game so much I don't even want to waste my breath with ranting about it unless I get very drunk.
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So yet one more reason I need to get Snow very drunk in Texas.
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You had -more- reasons?
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Grefter wants everyone drunk. For science, you understand. Any molestation that may or may not occur is also for science. Scientifically.
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It isn't molestation if they ask for it.
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Technically speaking you can't give consent while drunk. No matter how much you'd give sober.
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Technically speaking you can't give consent while drunk. No matter how much you'd give sober.
Somehow I trust CK on this fact more than anyone else.
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iirc CK works(or worked?) in a bar, so it makes sense that he'd know that for non-creepy reasons!
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Technically speaking you can't give consent while drunk. No matter how much you'd give sober.
Somehow I trust CK on this fact more than anyone else.
Strangely enough, you're still responsible for the things YOU do when intoxicated.
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You're also responsible for what people do if you GET them intoxicated (ie if I'm serving you at a bar, you leave utterly smashed, and then end up driving home on the sidewalk and kill someone, I'm also liable), so really it's just a big giant exception for rape.
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Rape laws vary quite a bit state to state. I imagine most states don't have an automatic intoxication = no consent rule (though of course it would be a factor for a jury to consider.)
As for intoxication, there are some states that allow you to use intoxication to relieve you of responsibility for your actions, but only for a situation where you were (justifiably) not expecting to become intoxicated, like if someone spikes your drink.
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Pokemon HG: Finally beat Gym Leader 4 whose name I already forgot. Bastard got me like 6 times with that damn Gengar-ShadowBall combo. I lost so much money on that... I had to grind my Zubat up to a Golbat so I could finally outspeed him.
Caught my Shiny Red Gyarados~
And now to take down some Team Rocket underground radio or something because it was making Magikarp into something useful. I honestly feel like I'm doing something wrong here. Seriously, Team Rocket should be commended for this~
I feel like I'm really underlevelled despite fighting pretty much every trainer from New Bark to whatever-tree-name-themed city I'm in now. Is this normal for G/S/C? Or is it just HG/SS?
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GSC and from my understanding HG/SS as well are naturally very low level games in the new world parts of the game Djinn. The Gym Leaders are also (notoriously for the series?) competent to boot. I wouldn't worry overly much. Just don't compare yourself to the crazy pokeman players because they be crazy bitches.
Edgeworth Has Sex With Everyone - Fun game, worse pit traps in logic than regular point and click adventures have though. Less pixel hunting. Net win.
Now on to the important parts.
Detective Gumshoe continues to be the best thing in these games. Edgeworth is great, but Gumshoe is amazingly relatable.
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/badd.gif)
Oh my this man knows how to dress with style, not necessarilly class and distinction but very nice. Only real downside is the tie is to bright to go with the dark shirt under than coat. Earth tones was a good choice, but something darker would work better really.
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/ugly.gif)
Really you are going to do that? You are seriously going to do Wolverine hair? Okay. You try that man. You do have the build to pull off a shirt open that far down, nice to see a totally manly dude like you shaves his chest though. I am not even going to dignify the coat with a mention. Cool popped collar bro.
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/glasses.gif)
Oh wow. Oh my indeed. You are going to wear those glasses in public and expect them to take you seriously? Okay I uh guess you can do that then.
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/underarm.gif)
Don't you point at me like that. Your dress is entirely inappropriate for what you are doing, that bleach job is extreme and if it isn't a wig now it is going to be in a few months time because that kind of extreme peroxide treatment does terrible things to your hair lady. Well done on your amazingly careful job on shaving those arm pits though. That must take an astounding level of dilligence to pull off every day. Ignoring how amazingly inappropriate that dress is for midday wear like when we first meet you in game, I have to respect your dedication to the getup, you prove quite formidable in your eveningwear. The full-length formal gloves do go well with the evening gown and the red piping is actually quite tasteful with the pattern on the front and the heart on the top of the glove (that we can't see hear while you are glorying us with your aforementioned pristinely shaven arm pits). A shame about the boa, you do need to accessorise with that getup, but that isn't really the first port of call I would go to when something as simple as pearls would do the job. They woudl certainly not scream out HOOKER quite like the boa and that collar do.
Again with the glasses though. You look like you are planning to do the worlds first piece of formal welding.
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/emma.gif)
Sigh. Emma. You continue to be a complete and total delight. Yes yes yes, there is excessive amounts of pink of course, but I can overlook this because personality makes up for colour here. Also she is a Scientist, colour coordination is optional with what science makes up for in raw sexy department. A three piece suit how marvelous. The coat being a lab coat only adds to the allure. Top it all off with a Cricket Cap and oh dear this is all working far better than it should. How can anyone pull off a horizontal striped tie like that? I can't even begin to put into words how fabulous you truely are. Rounding the whole outfit out with a nice messenger bag (OF SCIENCE!) and that badge and you have the complete package here ladies and gentleman.
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The only thing I can read from this is that mc has the best fashion sense in the Phoenix Wright world.
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In light of this excellent post, I vote we scrap the DL and start the RPG Fashion Show.
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GSC and from my understanding HG/SS as well are naturally very low level games in the new world parts of the game Djinn. The Gym Leaders are also (notoriously for the series?) competent to boot. I wouldn't worry overly much. Just don't compare yourself to the crazy pokeman players because they be crazy bitches.
Notioriously incompetent, you mean?
Although they did fix the two worst offenders from the original in HGSS.
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Djinn- basically, at the stage of the game you're at, enemy levels stop going up until Victory Road. So yeah, if you've been rotating the party they will have a bit of an advantage, soon they will bore you with their underlevelledness.
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Note that at one point, you're likely to think you are massively OVERLEVELED cause of how enemies at one point just stop leveling for a stretch of the game. From what I recall, the reason behind this was mostly cause there's a path split in terms of order of events, in that you can go east or west, and there's no indication which way to go first, so they wanted to make things "fair" regardless which path you choose first, so whatever you do second is going to seem really pathetic in comparison.
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And we finish out chapter two.
Barius Valley - 1 reset. First try, the knights go around breaking everyone's weapons. Starting with Agrias. This puts me in a spot I can't quite get out of, especially as one knight is throwing around Death Sentance whenever he isn't breaking things. Second try is cake, although the knights now break both Super and Gref's helmets. And Agrias's just for good measure.
Execution Site - No resets! Gaffy throws out a Night Sword, then Andy walks up and drops him into critical before anyone else gets to go. Sets the tone for the fight there, I keep things in control with Hatbot's Talk Skill and White Magic, while Super has his best map yet thanks to the Oracle crystal he picked up last map. Yin Yang does it's job, keeping threats locked down long enough for Gref and Andy to kill them.
Gate of Lionel Castle - 1 reset. Secret Fist rapes my people. ;_; Second try, I take Rubber Shoes off the Knights, giving them Defence Rings to stop the Death Sentance instead. It works, the archers focus fire on Super(who has Dragon Spirit), while Andy and Gref slowly kill people and Super swaps back to Basic Skill to Heal anyone statused. Hatbot heals through Gaffy's damage, and gets off a Mimic Daravon which gives me the breathing room I need to control the fight.
Inside Lionel Castle - 1 reset. First go, Quek uses Chicken Race to take Andy out of the action, while the knights gang up on Hatbot and kill him round one. I kinda can't recover from that, he's STILL my only reviver. Take two, I take the Defence Ring off Andy so Quek will throw Nightmare at him and Hatbot instead of Chicken Race. Sleep and/or Death Sentance is much more managable. I get lucky and Hatbot gets DS'd round one so the Knights ignore him. One MA twinked Cure 3 later, the Knights are both dead and we begin the long process of killing Quek(long because Gref seems to have bad or worst compat here). The knights both get back up, but both go right back down from another Cure 3, and Gref eventually chips Quek to death since he is insistant on keeping Andy locked down.
And chapter two is done. Looks like Hal is the next recruit, which means I'll finally get to field a full team of 5~
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Notioriously incompetent, you mean?
I think you are massively overestimating how well your average player handles things like Rollout Miltank, Shadowballing Gengarm a Steelix with a 5 level advantage over the previous 2 pokemon in the fight before you have decent Fire coverage and a fucking entire Dragon Gym that they haven't necessarilly prepared for (some might even go level up a Delibird to teach it Blizzard). The first couple of gyms may be complete jokes, but I can get behind that, it is a better introduction to the game than Charmander vs Onix was back in the day. There is more than a few non-negligible fights there that can throw newer/unexperienced players for a bit. We are talking the kinds of players that don't use TMs and are largely relying on self caught Pokemans here. You are looking at a level of play that is way below what you are used to dealing with Hinode.
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(some might even go level up a Delibird to teach it Blizzard).
;D
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In a lot of ways it's fair to call Whitney a puzzle boss, so it does depend a lot on what pokemon you pick up and how willing you are to play around. Morty's pretty solid overall, definitely a challenge if you're not hardcore into pokemon. Clair... has a legit argument for best gym leader in the series, but part of that is because of GSC's overall design, being low level and many of the other gym leaders being scrubby. HGSS does balance that out a bit though, Bugsy's Scyther is pretty scary now and Jasmine is much less "did you overlevel your fire starter y/n". Still kinda hard to level though.
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Notioriously incompetent, you mean?
I think you are massively overestimating how well your average player handles things like Rollout Miltank, Shadowballing Gengarm a Steelix with a 5 level advantage over the previous 2 pokemon in the fight before you have decent Fire coverage and a fucking entire Dragon Gym that they haven't necessarilly prepared for (some might even go level up a Delibird to teach it Blizzard). The first couple of gyms may be complete jokes, but I can get behind that, it is a better introduction to the game than Charmander vs Onix was back in the day. There is more than a few non-negligible fights there that can throw newer/unexperienced players for a bit. We are talking the kinds of players that don't use TMs and are largely relying on self caught Pokemans here. You are looking at a level of play that is way below what you are used to dealing with Hinode.
Shadow Ball was physical back in gen 2, so it was nowhere near as damaging as the one that Djinn just faced (although it admittedly lacks the embarassing achille's heel as well). The Steelix was dangerous by Steelix standards due to being overlevelled, but it's still a Pokemon with 30 base speed, subpar special durability, and glaring weaknesses to Water and Fire.
Whitney and Clair were genuinely competent, but they're still only 2 out of 8 gyms, while Falkner/Bugsy/Pryce dragged the average down a ton. At best you could argue that GSC is on par with RB for gym leader difficulty despite the latter's embarassingly primitive AI and moveset design, which is to say it's still the dregs of the series.
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SS- So further adventures today. Randomly decided to make runs on the postgame dungeons. Mewtwo first! Somehow I ended up catching it within 9 Great Balls, while Paralyzed even instead of slept! There's the ol' luck. Next I meant to hit Moltres in Silver Cave, but got turned around and ended up facing Red instead, which... I wasn't prepared for honestly. Barely 60'sish party and all. Just barely got past it by the skin of my teeth though.
Picked up Bulbasaur and Torchic afterwards, preparing for another Mt. Silver run again, then probably grabbing Grouden.
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Ghost Trick-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tstZfrt_NN4
Pretty much all you really need to know. 7/10 I think.
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Notioriously incompetent, you mean?
I think you are massively overestimating how well your average player handles things like Rollout Miltank, Shadowballing Gengarm a Steelix with a 5 level advantage over the previous 2 pokemon in the fight before you have decent Fire coverage and a fucking entire Dragon Gym that they haven't necessarilly prepared for (some might even go level up a Delibird to teach it Blizzard). The first couple of gyms may be complete jokes, but I can get behind that, it is a better introduction to the game than Charmander vs Onix was back in the day. There is more than a few non-negligible fights there that can throw newer/unexperienced players for a bit. We are talking the kinds of players that don't use TMs and are largely relying on self caught Pokemans here. You are looking at a level of play that is way below what you are used to dealing with Hinode.
Shadow Ball was physical back in gen 2, so it was nowhere near as damaging as the one that Djinn just faced (although it admittedly lacks the embarassing achille's heel as well). The Steelix was dangerous by Steelix standards due to being overlevelled, but it's still a Pokemon with 30 base speed, subpar special durability, and glaring weaknesses to Water and Fire.
Whitney and Clair were genuinely competent, but they're still only 2 out of 8 gyms, while Falkner/Bugsy/Pryce dragged the average down a ton. At best you could argue that GSC is on par with RB for gym leader difficulty despite the latter's embarassingly primitive AI and moveset design, which is to say it's still the dregs of the series.
What was Morty's Achilles' heel?
Also, Whitney did KO me once with the Milktank out of nowhere~
I'm playing without any guides at all. I don't even have a type advantage list, and I'm going basically off of memory from RBY from about a decade ago. I figure this is an appropriate challenge to offset the fact that I traded in all three starters from the beginning. I didn't even know there was a Ghost-type gym until I got there, so I didn't exactly have the appropriate pokemon levelled up. It just kind of surprised me how competent Morty was, considering all I had heard about GSC balance.
Current team:
Golbat (Lv29, was lvl24 when I fought Morty, subsequently became my MVP despite being crap until evolution)
Quilava (Lv26, was 23 vs Morty)
Croconaw (Lv28, was 27 vs Morty)
Bayleef (Lv25, was 20 vs Morty)
Dratini (Lv24, was 21 vs Morty, was my MVP before Morty)
ShinyRedGyarados (Lv30, replaced Slowbro, sits in the back of my team as my trump card)
Slowbro (Lv20 vs Morty, pretty much useless, but his Disable saved my ass against Gyarados' DragonRage)
Geodude (Lv18, was using him as a tank until Morty)
Furret (Lv18?, HM Slave~)
Machop (Destroyed Whitney with him and Dratini~)
ElectricSheep (Forgot its actual name, was using it as a warm body before better things came around)
Pokemon I've seen, but haven't bothered to catch, but look relatively interesting to use: Giraffe-thing (I don't even know what typing it has)
Abra (because I got one in RBY, but it took forever to catch and then forever to evolve and I just don't have that kind of patience as an adult~)
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I wanna say Morty could flat out not hurt a Hoothoot/Noctowl with Insomnia outside of Confuse Ray? Something like that. It relies on doing damage to Normal types through Hypnosis + Dream Eater combo, I seem to recall.
It was something like that. Basically, there was a few Pokemon who Morty could not hurt. It wasn't a case of "they wall him really well!" like most type advantages, such as Aron vs. Ruby/Sapphire Norman, he flat out had nothing offensively. Hoothoot/Noctowl, meanwhile, has Peck, which while not GOOD, is enough to beat the Ghost types he has.
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Heh. Normal immunes Ghost? Completely forgot that. I haven't actually used a Normal-type pokemon this entire game... >.>;;
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I think a bunch of Morty's pokemon have sucker punch but it has terrible PP and is easy to avoid due to it not working if the opponent doesn't attack. Bugsy is pretty nasty in HG and SS U-Turn and Quick attack are nasty when boosted off Technician and coming off of Scyther's attack that early in the game.
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Oh, right, Sucker Punch, THAT was his 4th move. Yeah, if you have Hoothoot/Noctowl with an adequate level and Insomnia (enough that he won't run out of PP using Peck, or whatever offense he has at that moment), open by spamming Growl or something until he runs out of Sucker Punches (only does damage if you use an attack on that turn), and then you basically can't lose against the Gengar.
Generally speaking, HGSS improved almost all the Gym Leaders across the board, though I remember Falkner being pretty bad still. Pryce gained a bunch of levels, Morty's "Achilles' Heel" aside, Shadow Ball is now really damned painful cause its special, Bugsy' Scyther has an actual attack now, etc. I don't remember what Claire got, but...I question if she really NEEDED anything beyond typical adjustments to the more modern system.
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Falkner and Bugsy were pretty easy, no resets there. Whitney was one reset mostly because Milktank surprised me and her Clefable got an awesomely lucky Metronome off on me, KOing my best special-attacker before I saw the Milktank.
I guess it would be easier if I actually looked up some game mechanics or knew what my opponent could do beforehand, but that's less challenging... and also defeats the purpose of having a handheld system.
I'm kinda shocked that the game didn't beat the player over the head that Normal-type pokemon resisted Ghost-type attacks... >.>;;
I'm not sure it's even been mentioned so far?
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well, Djinn, regarding Bugsy...
Scyther now has a 70 Power Bug Move at his disposal. He may not have been hard, but compare that to his GSC form where his big speceial move was FURY CUTTER, aka 10 power bug move that doubles damage each hit.
You can see why people now respect him relative to his Gen 2 form. Don't forget that his other two were still Kakuna and Metapod, so nothing stopped you from opening with, say, Geodude, spam Defense Curl, and then mock from there (I would ay use Rock Throw but think that might be a tad too high a level for Bugsy.)
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Don't forget that his other two were still Kakuna and Metapod, so nothing stopped you from opening with, say, Geodude, spam Defense Curl, and then mock from there
This still works in HGSS. (And I'd say Rock Throw is quite reasonable in both games, it's Level 11.) Even better, you can have overlevelled Onix from the earlygame trade do the same thing with much beefier stats.
Bugsy is far better, but he's still nothing amazing; as Djinn notes, he's still worse than Whitney or Morty despite his improvements.
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You don't even need Insomnia on your normal type vs Morty technically, it just makes things go faster, as the Gengar doesn't have Dream Eater even; its moveset is Shadow Ball/Sucker Punch/Hypnosis/Mean Look. A L1 Togepi with Extrasensory and Growl can wait out all the PP for Sucker Punchs and (eventually) Hypnosis and slowly chip away at his Gengar's HP. Any semi-competent Normal type who can damage his Gengar can easily beat him with a few Awakenings or some patience, I've 2HKO'd it with the L20 Spearow from the in-game trade for instance.
Falkner and Bugsy still aren't all that good objectively in HGSS, but the GSC versions were by far the worst gym leaders in series history, I completely stomped them both with my Hoothoot/Spinarak[/Togepi for Bugsy] team, all of whom are abjectly awful by any standards back in GSC. Pryce was pretty bad as well (easily swept by the worst Grass type in the game), but I'd at least have to think about him vs RBY Brock and a few others.
Also, Bugsy opens with Scyther in HGSS (for U-turn spamming), so you can't quite Defense Curl up against Metapod/Kakuna. Although really if you have either Geodude or Onix at a semi-competent level you don't need Defense Curl at all for that fight.
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Yeah, he opens with Scyther, which would make him quite dangerous if he had X-Scissor or something and not U-Turn. As is, the first thing he kills switches him out to Metapod or Kakuna so you can go as buff-happy as you want from there.
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Well, mostly just saying Bugsy compared to his original self is infinitely better. The fact that he's still not very good speaks highly of his self.
Soul Nomad: Map 39! Was gonna play til map 40 today, actually, but considering what the last map was, I figured it was just sensible to end one map earlier.
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Oh yeah, games.
FE8 - Only four maps from the end. Not much to say about this playthrough; it features MAINGAME AMELIA wooo yeah she's usable but not really worth it. Most of the rest of the PCs are pretty usual suspects: twins, Seth, Natasha, Saleh (definitely falling off now, was good for a while though), Colm, Neimi, Gerik, Cormag, Tana (stupid good as always), Tethys.
DMC Hard Mode - Mundus is a jerk. Coming pretty close now. I've made it through the whole game without using items (besides yellow orbs) and I'm certainly not giving up now.
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VC1- On mission 16. Skipping all the story bits, going to watch it all in one sitting once I'm done with the battles.
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Yeah, he opens with Scyther, which would make him quite dangerous if he had X-Scissor or something and not U-Turn. As is, the first thing he kills switches him out to Metapod or Kakuna so you can go as buff-happy as you want from there.
When I saw how much damage U-Turn did to my Geodude (or failed to do, rather) I didn't even bother with Defense Curl. He actually ended up doing more damage to me this way than he would've with X-Scissor, although that's just arguing two different shades of futile. Rock types simply wall the Scyther too badly for it to be good.
As for actual games, I haven't really played much for about a month now, guess that SRWJ stat topic kinda burned me out. Mainly been fiddling with assorted minigames and the weekly Layton wifi puzzles. I did catch a shiny Tangela in Soul Silver though.
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I ended up soloing the Gengar with Furrett because he couldn't kill the thing from full HP with his entire reserve of Sucker Punches, so basically anything Normal typed will outlast it eventually.
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Red Dead Redemption: Been playing a bunch of multiplayer (which is still irritating to me excluding the co-op) and started Undead Nightmare.
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SS- So went back to get Moltres. Not as much luck this time around. First attempt was 54 balls before he Struggled himself to death. Second try was ~15 or so before I finally got him with a Pokeball. Good times.
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So yeah we established that knowing the game makes the game easier. Kay. That wasn't the damned point. Yes Steelix is weak to water and fire. You know what you don't get in the game manual? A freaking weakness chart. Steel stuff is rare as hell when you get to it and it is overlevelled like a mother fucker. When you don't know weakness tables off the top of your head or that it is coming the story is something completely different. Cause you know what is kind of a slag to get in GSC until that point? Fire or water Pokemans. I hope your Starter didn't get munched by one of the two Supersonic/Thunderbolt/Sonic Boom/Thunderwaving Magnemites before it if you picked Fire/Water.
Perspective here and all. You might have researched everything out the arse and know all this stuff. The games certainly aren't balanced for it and some trainers definitely stand head and shoulders above the rest for less informed players. I certainly don't recall off the top of my head the kind of OMG reaction to anything from Emerald or Platinum as I have seen for that Miltank.
I kind of scoff at it being on par with RBY, since it had the difficulty curve all kinds of wrong and between Misty's bullshit Bubble Beaming overlevelled Starmie there isn't much that really puts up more of a speed bump other than Sabrina if you head there straight away.
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I certainly don't recall off the top of my head the kind of OMG reaction to anything from Emerald or Platinum as I have seen for that Miltank.
I didn't have a Steel type when I first went up against Norman in Sapphire. His Slaking got a pretty good WTF from me. Flipside, Whitney wasn't so bad as Machop kinda soloed the gym.
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So yeah we established that knowing the game makes the game easier. Kay. That wasn't the damned point. Yes Steelix is weak to water and fire. You know what you don't get in the game manual? A freaking weakness chart.
What's weird is that the RBY manual totally did have an in game weakness chart, with the usual Ghost vs. Psychic mistake there even (RBY GHost was IMMUNED by Psychic, not that it'd change much. It was obviously intended to be super effective given all the talk about it everywhere and later games but so it goes), and I seem to recall FRLG had one as well.
God only knows why later manuals decided to remove it, cause its a fundamental about the game.
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So it is Luca Blight again with all the same fail. Good to know that archetype is still written amazingly retarded.
Waited till I finished the game before I responded to this. On one hand he does actually care about his country so unlike Luca it isn't simply revenge (Unless you take it as him taking revenge on god). However him paying bandits to kill some villages (His own countrys villages) on the border to start a war and then planning to kill a whole country to jack their food kind of null any good points you can give him.
Anywho... Final boss took me 30-45 mins to beat not because it was hard or the boss has massive amounts of health but because everything goes so damn slowly. Animations of things are extreamly slow and after a while there starts being over a dozen units on screen meaning to goes even slower and slower.
The game itself is passable but not exactly great. Don't care all that much to talk about its gameplay, plot or whatever as the game just didn't leave a strong impression on me. I will say however that artwork is horrible.
Silent Hill Shattered memories - My day was completely free and I had brought this a week or so ago and didn't get round to playing it till now so in response I did it all in one sitting, now I like the silent hill games, yes even homecoming but this game was something else. I'm a bit tired to go in any great deal of length but I will say the plot twist was great as I expected something of its nature but not quite what actually happens. There was no combat but considering SH combat was never great and at the end of it the combat is never important its no big loss.
In short this is the best Silent hill to me personally and I look forward to future silent hills that are this good.
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God only knows why later manuals decided to remove it, cause its a fundamental about the game.
I was reading this discussion and was like "WTF? There is a type chart in the instruction booklet!" Then I went and checked my instruction books:
HG/SS: Nope.
Diamond/Pearl: Nope.
Platinum: Nope.
Leaf Green: Nope.
Couldn't find my Emerald instruction book. So yeah, this is kind of fail on Game Freak's part. I want to say there was a type chart on a separate sheet (not the instruction book) for one of the 3rd gen games, but I may be remembering incorrectly.
FR/LG did have the Teachy Telly pretty early which had that information, and there were Pokenav and Poketch apps that told you type comparisons also. But you didn't get those until later and could miss them entirely.
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You'd think that in a world that revolves around Pokemon battles, and on a device built for pokemon trainers, they'd just have those things as install base software.
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So yeah we established that knowing the game makes the game easier. Kay. That wasn't the damned point. Yes Steelix is weak to water and fire. You know what you don't get in the game manual? A freaking weakness chart. Steel stuff is rare as hell when you get to it and it is overlevelled like a mother fucker. When you don't know weakness tables off the top of your head or that it is coming the story is something completely different. Cause you know what is kind of a slag to get in GSC until that point? Fire or water Pokemans. I hope your Starter didn't get munched by one of the two Supersonic/Thunderbolt/Sonic Boom/Thunderwaving Magnemites before it if you picked Fire/Water.
Perspective here and all. You might have researched everything out the arse and know all this stuff. The games certainly aren't balanced for it and some trainers definitely stand head and shoulders above the rest for less informed players. I certainly don't recall off the top of my head the kind of OMG reaction to anything from Emerald or Platinum as I have seen for that Miltank.
I kind of scoff at it being on par with RBY, since it had the difficulty curve all kinds of wrong and between Misty's bullshit Bubble Beaming overlevelled Starmie there isn't much that really puts up more of a speed bump other than Sabrina if you head there straight away.
I'll also point out original G/S didn't have innate moves so saying a Hoothoot with Insomnia would work didn't apply back then.
I'd say Whitney stonewalled me more than Morty though. God damn you Whitney, you fucking bitch and your stupid cow.
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MvC3 baby.
Not sure whether to call Thor, Magneto and Haggar "TMH: Too Much Hotness" or "TMH: Two More Heroes (and a bad guy)."
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I'll also point out original G/S didn't have innate moves so saying a Hoothoot with Insomnia would work didn't apply back then.
But Morty was somewhat less threatening back then outside of the obvious hole; the most notable factor was that Shadow Ball was physical back then, so it did a lot less damage.
You also wouldn't use Hoothoot back in GSC, since Gen 2 Pokemon were overall pathetic. I mean, yes you COULD use Sentret if yo wanted...but when Ratatta is your alternative, and he's just better in every way you care about, whose going to bother <_<?
(and no, its not knowing the game. You can simply look at Rattata and Sentret's stats in game, and providing they're equal and there isn't a huge IV discrepancy, Rattata will be notably better)
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I remember Morty more for a mean Hypnosis/Dream Eater in Crystal than I do his Shadow Ball, although the latter was good enough to one-shot some lower-levelled stallers IIRC. He's a fairly different fight between the games since losing Dream Eater lets you wall him badly with normals, but his ghost-type blitzing is more potent in the remake.
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Viewtiful Joe Double Trouble: Beaten. Game is a V. Joe with an annoying stylus gimmick (cause the stylus is unresponsive on some commands), and watered down difficulty. Yeah, notably worse than the first game. Though, it does give you JOE VS. ALASTOR IN A MECHA FIGHT!!!
Soul Nomad: Map 45! Yes, stopped there cause another big plot boss just died...though "Big" this time is not to be applied in the literal sense, for those who are curious which boss it is.
Also game suddenly decided it should try being hard. I think these last 2-3 maps have had more difficulty in them individually than the entire rest of the game combined.
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Wait when did Meeple start playing Soul Nomad? I must not have been paying attention >_>
Darkstalkers - Chaos Tower- Defeated Arcade Mode with and unlocked all the endings for Demetri, B.B Hood, Hsien ko and Lillith. B.B Hood and Lillith only have one ending and Lillith's was sad :( I liked Hsien ko's endings best though B.B Hood's was awesme and funny in it's own right. Also I owned Jedah with Hsien ko during my second arcade run with her without having to retry and Donovan didn't even touch her <.< I came so close to defeating Jedah with Lillith on my first attempt against him with her period (if I hadn't mess up the timing of my Ex-modes I would have done it) :( Luminous Illusion is awesme.
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MvC3 baby.
Not sure whether to call Thor, Magneto and Haggar "TMH: Too Much Hotness" or "TMH: Two More Heroes (and a bad guy)."
Make sure to use Ugly Old Man Haggar for extra style points.
My own copy of MvC3 isn't coming until Thursday (Protip: Never order anything from Gamestop.com), but I got to play tonight at a guy's house. Mostly just random-selected teams. MODOK is the shit. Analyze Cube spam is awesome, especially when you Analyze Galactus. I did play Haggar quite a bit also... he's really really slow. Guess that's why they gave him the only invincible assist in the game to compensate. I want to learn She-Hulk, but I'll have to wait until I get in the training room with my own copy to learn her well.
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MVC3 for me as well. Maining Captain America, also fiddled with Ryu/Zero/Haggar as well.
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MvC3: Beat game a few times, twice at my friend's house using 2 random teams, once on my own copy using Dante/Amaterasu/Deadpool, getting Ammy's ending.
Teams used at friend's house were Morrigan/Chris/Captain America, and Chun-li/Zero/Spiderman, endings going to both capcom girls.
Also played a bunch of Vs. with him. Somehow, Sentinel has become a MEME among us, and now I find him awesome. Amazing what giving a generic robot voice to him does for his character, instead of being a silent loser <_<
Anyway, so far, I think I'm going with Morrigan, Zero, and either Spiderman, Captain America or Deadpool. I want to use Amaterasu and Dante but I don't think that's happening anytime soon as far as learning them!
...that is until Shuma-Gorath is released. Then I'm totally putting him on my team, probably in place of Zero.
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MvC3 baby.
Not sure whether to call Thor, Magneto and Haggar "TMH: Too Much Hotness" or "TMH: Two More Heroes (and a bad guy)."
Make sure to use Ugly Old Man Haggar for extra style points.
My own copy of MvC3 isn't coming until Thursday (Protip: Never order anything from Gamestop.com), but I got to play tonight at a guy's house. Mostly just random-selected teams. MODOK is the shit. Analyze Cube spam is awesome, especially when you Analyze Galactus. I did play Haggar quite a bit also... he's really really slow. Guess that's why they gave him the only invincible assist in the game to compensate. I want to learn She-Hulk, but I'll have to wait until I get in the training room with my own copy to learn her well.
Tron's flamethrower assist is invincible too. Doesn't lead to free combos unless you hit someone jumping though, so it's somewhat of a trade.
Haggar can be beast. down+C in the air is amazing and his ground normals aren't bad, you may want an assist help him get close to people though.
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One thing I have noticed about Haggar is that a lot of his attacks knock the enemy up a ways by bouncing them off the ground, which means a free hit with the pipe. The pipe owns. Also, I won a tight game by using X Factor to cancel directly in to the Final Haggar Driver, which was fucking clutch. Haggar owns.
Thor also rules. So my first two are set, just need a third. Someone who can move. Dante or Deadpool, looks like so far. Not liking Magneto; the shortened flight length really hurts his maneuverability.
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MvC3 a bit today~
Freaking Akuma is my best char so far, though i haven't managed to beat Galactus at all. I keep forgetting X Factor exists though, that may be part of my problem. <_<
Akuma/She Hulk/??? is my team right now. Still trying to figure out that third spot. Used Haggar, Chun or Zero seem like the most likely spots for it right now, but I haven't tried everyone yet.
Also, TO PSP. Still in chapter one, of course. Futzing with the new system is taking some getting used to.
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Having a character who has both flight and a beam thingy, like Thor or Iron Man, makes him a lot easier. Alternatively bash him with Haggar's pipe, for that is his one weakness.
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Pokemon HG: Fought Pryce. He actually managed to beat me once with his ridiculous Rest/Hyper Potion/Berries stalling game...
I think it should have been easy to sweep him, but the only element that I knew hit weakness on Ice-types was Fire, and all of his Ice-types were dual-typed to resist Fire. >.>;;
Actually, I still don't know what other elements can hit weakness on Ice, but whatever, he managed to prove a fun challenge with the handicap~
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Gate, for Galactus, since you mentioned her...
Chun-li's kick spam tends to work well. Actually, she makes a good Anchor, and should be saved as your last character if you try this, so you can pull out Level 3 X-factor and spam kicks like crazy. Of course, that one issue of "I keep forgetting X-factor exists!" plays a part in this, but...uhh...can't help you there <_<?
Also, remembering that he can't block means that big moves like Amaterasu's triple element attack, or Arthur's Dragon Magic are auto hits for some significant damage. Then again, just about anything is an auto hit on him, so I guess that's not really the point (its just a case of getting the move off and not taking damage. Projectiles and moves like I mentioned above tend to be better at avoiding hits)
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I've found alternating between magnum shots and throwing grenades with Chris works pretty well. When I got in a jam at the end I hit X-Factor, super jumped and unloaded the whole cylinder.
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Yeah Galactus is more competent than I thought from watching videos about him. Blocking is really important. It's easy to get caught up in attacking a giant target who can't block and then he punishes you mercilessly.
For those who haven't seen it, this is a really nice guide for the game with informative short videos about the characters:
http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Marvel_vs_Capcom_3
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Mayor President Mike Haggar
Step one: LAY SOME PIPE
Step two: LAY THAT PIPE CROSS SOME UNLUCKY BITCH FACE
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I myself I'm getting MVC3 on Friday so I brought a fight stick to play it with.... and what they say is true because at the current moment I suck hardcore as it is completely alien to me. I've been trying to get a hang for it on SSF4 and I'm having trouble even doing Corkscrew cross which is one of the simplest things in the world.
I'm going to stick with it (No pun) but something tells me the year'll be over before I get even semi decent at it.
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Yeah. I fail and got MvC3 too. I felt left out.
Only really had time to crack off a few games with my coworkers on my lunch break, though.
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It'll take less than that if you stay dedicated Rosalia. After buying a stick myself I got used to it in one/two months.
Getting MvC3 within the hour. :F
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Tactics Ogre PSP:
It's fantastic, though the item creation system needs some work... They really should have just automatically made the required items if you had the base items in your inventory.
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I switched to stick last year and it probably took me a month or so for it to feel comfortable. Overall it's good for your execution - you have to input moves more precisely/deliberately compared to mashing the dpad.
Finally got my copy of MvC3 yesterday. Wow achievements are easy to unlock. In just a few hours I got over half of them.
shibakevin on XBL if you want a game.
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Is a stick worth it if you have never had trouble distinguishing before a Z cut and a QCF on a normal D-pad? I kinda want to be competitive for once in my life (thanks to the glory of the Internet), but I dunno if that means for sure that I need a stick.
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Tactics Ogre PSP - It's fun, but everything past saving Sisteena I've had no real trouble with. A little frustrating. The game is very fast and smooth, and the art is beautiful though.
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MvC3 got! Played some arcade, some missions and some online with the Cap'n. Definitely liking my Trish/Super-Skrull duo, but I'm not sure who to toss in as a third. Dormammu has rockin' assists but I suck with him on point. Akuma with Gohadouken is a possibility.
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Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Beat the game with...a bunch of characters. Liking how a bunch of the newcomers play, really. Thinking about seriously using X-23 as one of my main 3, at very least.
Bionic Commando Rearmed 2: Just beat the Mines, which decided to have a song from the first game remixed. I was wondering if they were going to bother with that.
Namco x Capcom: So the power of 2 standard Japanese Super Heroes, a Cat Girl, a Luchador in a Panther Mask, 2 School Girls, a Hooker Bot, a futuristic failure beyond belief, a loli who seems to get a lot of panty shots, and 2 generic nobodies who are the protagonists of this game just to avoid showing favoritism took down a bunch of robotic mantises, a sword girl in Armor, 2 Waddle Dees, a Clown with a REALLY BIG HEAD, and a few masked samurai robot guys.
...if you can figure out exactly who is who in that description, congrats, you just wasted some of your life doing nothing important!
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Tactics Ogre PSP
NOOOOOOOOOOOO! They changed Warren's last name! Sad face or something.
At first I was super pissed they took away spears from Canopus...but then I saw what sort of monster they unleashed when they gave him bows to use instead.
Clear MVP ... in fact all of my archers kick ass.
I'm somewhere in chapter 4 right now. I'm sure I missed some of the new things they added, but I'm blazing through the game right now, so why fret? I can just go back once I beat the game.
The world needs more of the Ogre Battle series.
edit: Oh, I love that they added some tracks from the original game in this game as well.
Gawd I love this game.
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Is a stick worth it if you have never had trouble distinguishing before a Z cut and a QCF on a normal D-pad? I kinda want to be competitive for once in my life (thanks to the glory of the Internet), but I dunno if that means for sure that I need a stick.
not at all necessary. Since many people who play fighting games grew up on arcade versions, they tend to prefer sticks. But there's no evidence pad players can't compete. The best U.S. Zangief and C. Viper players use pads. (and the Zangief player can do 720s while *walking*)
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Tactics Ogre PSP
NOOOOOOOOOOOO! They changed Warren's last name! Sad face or something.
At first I was super pissed they took away spears from Canopus...but then I saw what sort of monster they unleashed when they gave him bows to use instead.
Clear MVP ... in fact all of my archers kick ass.
I'm somewhere in chapter 4 right now. I'm sure I missed some of the new things they added, but I'm blazing through the game right now, so why fret? I can just go back once I beat the game.
The world needs more of the Ogre Battle series.
edit: Oh, I love that they added some tracks from the original game in this game as well.
Gawd I love this game.
Shooters and casters are broken in this game. Melee? What melee? They really don't mean a thing unless you get Vyse or Ozma.
BTW, most of the new stuff is in L route, N route has the least.
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That makes sense, by most accounts the Neutral and Chaos paths are there just to mock the player for trying to take the cliche way out of moral dilemmas.
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BTW, a tips to you all. Dragons are AWESOME in this game. Really high states all around and you don't have to buy equipment for them. With about 30 level ups, they can tremple over Temple Knights fairly easily. Their only problem is that they are melee based and the magic casting ones are enemies only.
You also want to start catching dragons early, because how absolutely fucked up Deneb's recruiting requirement is. You need at least 3 of each race, including the hydra.
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I guess I'll be practising those motions on the specials for a couple of days then as I've heard it helps get used to pulling them off, then I'll switch to practising the combos themselves.
MVC3 - Completed a bunch of arcades. The characters I've used quite often are:
Wesker - I am currently quite bad with him so for the time being I'm pretty much doing nothing but Samurai Edge > Teleport > Basic attack > Tiger uppercut > L, M, H, S down > Switch > L, M, H, S left/right > Switch > L, M, H, S down.
The way I've written it out might make it seem long/complicated but it isn't really and is relatively simple.
I'm horrible but as I really like Wesker I'll try to stick with him.
Iron Man - Proton beam especially angled Proton beam is awesome but what the hell is wrong with his launcher? Its range seems to be near non existent.
Doctor Doom - Mostly used because he destroys Galactis with his hand blaster ultra.
Super skrull - Tenderizer can be added to the end of most things and you can chain any of his ultras/or even his launcher if close enough right after. Pretty nice.
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Grandia LLG.
Madragon (Justin 11, Sue 9, Feena 11, Gadwin 30): HPs are in the 60-80 range, with the exception of Mr. Invincible. Madragon is another one of those bosses like Ganymede with two parts that take shared damage and cannot be MTed. This will become a common theme during this arc. It has Burn! for 15-20 damage to a small area, a claw physical that hits MT for 40, Healer for 100 points of healing and uh...Flame Breath for never actually hits anyone even if they're in the visual range of the move. The claw is the only threat, obviously, and it gets nullified by a single Alheal from Justin or Feena while I stack up some Diggin's. Gadwin is equipped with the Chain of Gems, giving him a three hit basic combo. This, augmented by WOW! is my main damage. Justin and Sue chip at the beast with their comparatively sad strikes. It doesn't take too long for it to fall.
And that's the last fight Sue actually fights on this run. Final stats:
Level 11
65HP 32SP
9/4/1 MP
35STR 27VIT 43WIT 20AGI
Mace L8 Throw L6
Fire L1 Water L1 Earth L2
Sue consistently just has less everything than everyone else. Rah-Rah Cheer is serviceable healing up until Gadwin shows up at least. Still, a character slot that can stun enemies, do chip damage, heal and use items never hurts. Maces were built up to save her durability from the junk heap. Round Whacker actually saw use against the trash birds too. Actual attack animations with them are slowest in the game though, woo.
Twin Towers, solo Justin section again has a no run restriction. I have to fight two groups of horned toads, one in a room that is a clusterfuck of them and another in the Leen cutscene. They're just skill level fodder.
Massacre Machine (Justin 13, Feena 13, Gadwin 30): HPs are in the high 80s here. Another "two-part" boss. Burnflame does 15-20 damage to a big area, some kind of twirly attack does 20ish to all, Hurricane Mixer is 10(...)+reposition to a tube area. Can Healer itself for 200. So yeah, damage is really sad. Occasional Alheal takes care of things while the Gadwin Pain Orchestra feat. Justin administers the beatdown.
Massacre Machine 2 (Justin 13, Feena 13, Gadwin 30): This time with updated moves and 200 more HP. Howlslash is 20-25 damage to all, twirly attack and Healer are still there. Basic physical hits for 40ish, the new move is Body Slam. Which is like Hurricane Mixer with more range and 30ish damage. Still nothing really threatening but forces you to keep up on your healing since MM can easily lap the people hit by Body Slam on his next turn.
Gadwin leaves. Sadness.
Level 30
273HP 48SP
17/10/5 MP
98STR 40VIT 54WIT 27AGI
Sword L23
Fire L6 Earth L7
Absurdly overpowered, does not die. That's all there is to say really.
Gadwin (Justin 13): Justin enters the fight with 96 HP. Basic physical combo is 10x2 or so. Occasionally completely tinks after Diggin' stacks. Flying Dragon Cut is 45 damage, Dragon Cut is 55ish, Eruption Cut...8. Yeah I don't know. Anyway, stack Diggin', defend when a big move is coming up, heal accordingly in case you won't have Defend up for a big move. Critical cancelling won't work because crits straight up tink on him. Might just be the horrifyingly outdated weapon. Speaking of which, beating him up takes a while. So long that Justin exits the battle at 110 HP before level-ups.
Grinwhale, Lure (Justin 15, Feena 13): Lure spams Entice for 30ish damage to Justin and brings him to Grinwhale's melee range every turn. Damage is effectively nullified after Diggin' stacks. Grinwhale itself has Spew for 10ish MT damage, occasionally nullified after Diggin', Body Blow, which does 40ish(25) damage to melee range and cancels, and the terrifying Electric Shock, which is 45 MT damage + cancel. I have a rough start here as he loves spamming Shock and end up having to revive Justin once. Strangely he stops using Shock completely at one point, only resuming after Lure is dead. Justin defends if Body Blow or Shock is next, heals in an emergency, and beats up Lure with his free turns. Feena defends if Shock is next, stacks WOW! on Justin, keeps up the party's HP, and joins in the damage dealing with Burnflame when all buffs are up. Whale alone is manageable and eventually goes down.
Trent, Flower, Arm (Justin 16, Feena 15, Rapp 20): Party HP is in the 105-125 range. Trent's main body has 2200ish HP, both side parts have 1300ish. Trent either uses laughable physicals or casts Sleep Gas which is MT, accurate, and actually rather scary despite the usual lol grandia sleep sentiment. Arm uses area physicals for ~30 damage. Flower uses Flowerbeam, which despite its name is actually the strongest attack in the game so far: a whopping 65 damage to a beam area. Usually only catches one, but sometimes you get unlucky. I try playing defensive first. Several revivals later I learn this is a terrible idea, since you simply do not get the necessary turns when eating area attacks and sleep gas spam. Blitz blitz blitz with only the absolute necessary healing to keep Trent from getting turns, then! Rapp thankfully does pretty great damage, Sidethrow does almost 300 to all. Feena finally has the MP to cast Burnflare for a huge chunk of damage to the fire weak Trent, too. Justin uses Shockwave. After SP/MP runs out on the big moves, I downgrade to Burnflame spam. Eventually the arms fall off and Trent's main body can do nothing but defend and be target practice for fire skill ups.
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Lost Odyssey - I have had this sitting around for how long now? Over 6 months easilly. A huge chunk of it has just been doing end game side quests honestly. Last time I played I did the DLC dungeon and then died to the boss because instead of leaving and saving I went lol everything in the game so far has been easy and the game gave me practically be invincible skills. Yeah you need a specific setup to beat it so I died and didn't feel like the hour and a half grind through no save dungeon just to get all the loot again. So the disc sat in my X-Box for a while unplayed. Figured I would finish it off. Ending was easy because of sidequests, the game really goes out of its way to just curl up and die if you do them.
It was totally worth it for two things though. First we will make fun of the ending and then we will get onto the main event.
Okay so this whole game is about immortals and stuff. You get to a point where the final boss tricks you into coming to an area where you lose your immortality while you are there. But! So does he! Then some pointless drama happens with the mortal so OMG cannot escape. Then one of the immortals makes a heroic sacrifice to take down the bad guy and break the thing that will take the immortals back to their home world, but in the process saving the mortals. This is fucking RETARDED. Seriously.
You get to a point where the final boss tricks you into coming to an area where you lose your immortality while you are there. But! So does he!
the game pulls this shit in about the same time frame it took me to get from that quote to saying it was retarded. BITCH YOU HAVE A SWORD. GUT THE CUNT AND WEAR HIS HEAD AS A HAT. BREAK THE THING. EASY WIN.
Faarrrrrr more importantly though in my continuing quest for FASHION or somesuch.
First of all though lets establish something. Cooke dresses like a prostitute. Always. No matter what she is wearing.
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/dumb/hooker.png)
Now on to the fabulous outfits worn in the ending!
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/dumb/sedandcake.png)
First of all Sarah dresses like a birthday cake an Sed dresses like a pimp. These are acceptable although the cake is hideous and there is some issues with the pimp suit, pale blues and a red coat is kind of gross, but we can deal with that in the face of the what is to come.
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/dumb/schedule.png)
Kaim. I understand that you are a thousand years old, but you don't have to dress like it, you can keep up with modern trends. Powder coloured suits went out in the 70s. Powder Pink was never particularly attractive to begin with. Also what is with those frills? That isn't anything close to how a cravat is supposed to work, again with the clashing pale blue. Seriously though. Those frills. Nevermind. Onwards!
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/dumb/hat.png)
Yes Jansen, you are marrying something that wears a hat like that. No you can't back out now. At least your crazy long cravat directs attention directly to your crotch with its design (NOTE: Not long after this part we see the hookers Jansen hangs with sad that he is getting married. Thats right. He invited his hookers to his wedding. In another country. Fuck yes.) but it gets worse than the hat. Lets look at the train on that dress.
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/dumb/train.png)
Wow. So the train on the wedding dress is a big hoop with patterned lace on it. That just drags along the ground. You know what this perfectly represents? The insane extravagance of the royalty at play here. This is not a super advanced society. This wedding ceremony takes place in the open air court in Numara. That ground would have to normally be covered in dirt and dust. Enough that it would be fine in most circumstances, but sure as hell enough that if one were to drag a hoop covered in lace that the lace will be dirty brown after a few metres. Just pure obnoxious decadence on display here. Also it is a really fucking dumb idea for a train. Edit - You really have to see it in movement or just take my word for it, but the pattern you see there is totally all on the train, not seeing through to the patterned flooring.
I don't have anything much to say about the last party member's clothes, he is a king officiating as a priest or something, I don't quite get it, there doesn't really seem to be any organised religion in this setting and he has no part in the Numara government, it is just Ming that handles that shit, so I don't get why they need a big ceremony and can't just fuck like rabbits, but whatever. What I do have is an image of him doing a Nazi Salute, so go me.
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/dumb/HEIL.png)
Now for the big finale, time for a dance number.
Feel free to sing along! Link to the song here! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajNT1OO_45I)
(http://members.optusnet.com.au/grefter/dumb/fmp.jpg)
When you walk in the bar and you're dressed like a star
Rockin' your F me pumps
And the men notice you with your Gucci bag crew
Can't tell who he's lookin' to
'Cause you all look the same everyone knows your name
And that's your whole claim to fame
Never miss a night 'cause your dream in life
Is to be a footballers wife
You don't like players that's what you say-a
But you really wouldn't mind a millionaire
You don't like ballers they don't do nothing for ya
But you'd love a rich man six foot two or taller
You're more than a fan lookin' for a man
But you end up with one-nights-stands
He could be your whole life if you got past one night
But that part never goes right
In the morning you're vexed he's onto the next
And you didn't even get no text
Don't be too upset if they call you a sket
'Cause like the news everyday you get pressed
You don't like players that's what you say-a
But you really wouldn't mind a millionaire
Or them big ballers don't do nothing for ya
But you'd love a rich man six foot two or taller
You can't sit down right 'cause you jeans are too tight
And your lucky its ladies night
With your big empty purse every week it gets worse
At least your breasts cost more than hers
So you did Miami 'cause you got there for free
But somehow you missed the plane
You did too much E, met somebody
And spent the night getting caned
Without girls like you there'd be no fun
We'd go to the club and not see anyone
Without girls like you there's no nightlife
All those men just go home to their wives
Don't be mad at me 'cause your pushing thirty
And your old tricks no longer work
You should have known from the jump that you always get dumped
So dust off your fuck me pumps
Also I love that his chestpiece looks like it was designed by Picasso during his Cubist period.
But seriously the game was fun, the plot is dumb but generally inoffensive. The gameplay is broken and easy, but at least it has more bite to it than Grandia does, so it isn't total faceroll. It only gets horribly broken when you get Sed. Then you get the Aftergame which makes things worse. That is still a lot of game where it tries! Certainly worth a look if you have a 360.
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<3
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Dude's got some great fuck me pumps
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BUT YOU NEVER MENTIONED THE DOUBLE THONG. THE HAMMER PANTS. THE FLOWERY MAN SOCKS COMBINED WITH SLIP ON SANDALS.
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Went to a MvC3 tournament here in town. Did pretty well! I used Hulk, Shulkie, and Magfuckingneto. Went 4-2 overall, which I was happy with considering my limited playtime with the game. My She-hulk is shaping up nicely, but I need to find a replacement for Hulk.
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Catherine- Great visual! Aesthetic! Music!! But the rest is errrr. Tagging an action puzzle with a visual novel just don't feel right. If wasn't its suerperior stage design, this entire format can get really tedious. And the plot is something you'd expect from a second rated H game. You need more gas to pass a visual novel as fairly written.
......I should really just watch this game on Nico and only get the OST instead.
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BUT YOU NEVER MENTIONED THE DOUBLE THONG. THE HAMMER PANTS. THE FLOWERY MAN SOCKS COMBINED WITH SLIP ON SANDALS.
I have mostly ranted about how bad the regular battle outfits are months ago when I got up to the Funeral Clown sequence. Also everyone really had that covered.
Edit - Also BOOB WINDOWS. IN EVERYTHING.
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Grandia 3- Replay to suss out some DL stuff. Beginning of Melc Ruins. Ulf...can't really pick up his final skill until now (And...in-game use dictates that it kind of blows really badly in comparison to Flame Spike, which will be quicker, far cheaper, and similar damage at the start!). We'll see how much I'll end respecting this. Already know that Hect/Armaggedeon will take a big hit (although Hect at least still has the damage source in Heaven's Gate).
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I'd just like to chime in and say that Lost Odyssey's combat is exceedingly dull. Load times aplenty, random encounters that are ocasionally interesting but there are a lot of them and most are boring slugfests. The system had some potential but none of it felt utilized. After how great Blue Dragon's system was, I was sorely disappointed by LO's more generic and far less *fun* combat.
The plot outside of Thousand Years of Dreams sequences also sucked really hard. None of the characters were endearing due to a lack of consistent quality characterization (except Jansen), and seriously
FUNERAL. MINIGAME. WHAT. THE. HELL.
Mass Effect: Time to pick who dies. I can never proceed with such decisions so I've been sitting on the game and not advancing to ME2 like I should be.
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Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions: Started this up, cleared Act 1 for three of the four. Only missing Noir.
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FUNERAL. MINIGAME. WHAT. THE. HELL.
There was clowns. I don't know why you weren't expecting games.
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Tactics Ogre PSP
So...I'm in chapter four and now all these extra maps are starting to get tricky. Also, how to I get Diego to show up? I read the report, and I have seen him once, but he died real quick so I reset and I messed around abit...and now his scene won't trigger in that town...
What give?
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Mass Effect: Time to pick who dies. I can never proceed with such decisions so I've been sitting on the game and not advancing to ME2 like I should be.
Kill Kaidan. You can choose to either reassert or change Ashley's mindset but Kaidan is always the same no matter what. He's like a character that you recruit after their entire character arc has been resolved, but you didn't see any of it.
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GGs to Captain K and Shale this morning in MvC3. Keep practicing!
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I went from getting my ass handed to me by Xer to actually doing kinda okay in ranked matches - 3-1 against newbies, with my loss coming against some hardcore grenade spam from Chris. Now if only I could play more than four ranked matches in 90 minutes...
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MvC3 - Gotten the hang of Galactus now, slowly but surely working my way towards beating him with all characters. Akuma/She Hulk/Haggar is prolly my go-to team as a rule, though I'm passably good with Hulk/Sentinal/Hsien-Ko/Arthur/Zero as well.
TO PSP - In Ch3 Chaos. So far the single most dangerous enemy I have encountered was a male priest inside Coritanae Castle. Who had a lobber. And Field Alchemy 2. And just chunked BOMBS at me whenever he wasn't tossing 75hp healing items at his buddies. Decided to pick one of those up for myself, handing it to my Rogue. Her usefulness went up dramatically. Lobbers are awesome.
Overall MVP is still Canopus, who I've swapped to crossbows. The Finishing Move on those things is brutal. Cross shaped AoE, damage goes up with more TP. As Snow might say, yesiu.jpg. Turned Denim into a Dragoon, don't regret it one bit. Beasts and Dragons are nasty and need to die quickly, having someone who already hits like a truck be able to hand them thier ass is nice.
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Tactics Ogre PSP
So...I'm in chapter four and now all these extra maps are starting to get tricky. Also, how to I get Diego to show up? I read the report, and I have seen him once, but he died real quick so I reset and I messed around abit...and now his scene won't trigger in that town...
What give?
First part of the event must be done before Hedon Mountain. Read the report and go meet Diego.
When Vanisia Castle appear on the map, read the report again and go see Diego for the second time.
Then head to Quatriga for another event. Complete these two steps before actually enter the Vanisia Castle.
After clearing Vanisia Castle but before Hyme Castle, go meet Diego again.
Then head to Graveyard of Pirates and he'll join after the Crystal Corridor.
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Dragon Quest 6: Beat Murdraw. That second fight was a real doozie what with occasional MT 2HKO when there was no MT healing or full ST healing. I was lucky Zing went 2/2 for me. Carver is a TOTAL BEAST. The speed woes are offset by the initiative-ST damage move of O_o. Granted, it lowers his durability if he spams it, but it OHKOd even the nastier randoms and you can use it/not use it as needed for bosses. Dude was like 80%+ of my offense. Insane.
Other than Mr. SMASH it is a very generic dragon quest game. The two-world's thing is kinda neat but like every Dragon Quest interesting plot point ever it isn't really utilized effectively. Go go silent mains sucking. Always. At least the team as a whole has personality in this one, unlike DQ9.
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Halo 3(original): Beat Legendary Campaign co-op with my kid.
MvC3: 160 missions complete. Fuck Viewtiful Joe's missions.
Last Remnant: Playing this to cool down at nights after MvC. Neat gameplay, but this was apparently programmed by high-school kids in Comp Sci class. Load times are ridiculous, and random. Why does it take 2 seconds to save your game and 20 to load it? Why can't I run more than 3 steps before hitting slowdown while the game loads some more?
Critical Trigger timing is retarded, and also random. You can do the same timing on two crits and get too slow on one and too fast on the other.
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Tactics Ogre: PSP
I'm missing shit left and right. But it's okay! Because I can go back and fix all the crap I missed and messed up on!
Oh and I just want to say that Trajectory is the greatest thing they added to this game.
;D
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Last Remnant: Playing this to cool down at nights after MvC. Neat gameplay, but this was apparently programmed by high-school kids in Comp Sci class. Load times are ridiculous, and random. Why does it take 2 seconds to save your game and 20 to load it? Why can't I run more than 3 steps before hitting slowdown while the game loads some more?
Critical Trigger timing is retarded, and also random. You can do the same timing on two crits and get too slow on one and too fast on the other.
If your PC has good spec, sold your 360 copy right away and get the PC one.
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Waiting for Fallout: Dead Money to download so I can play that. 60% done!
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Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I did not know it was out on PC.
POKEMANS - Got seventh badge. Beat up Giovanni clone from team Galactic. Stuff. Rock Climb shits me to tears. So many HMs to drag around. I shouldn't have taught my Empoleon Strength, I should have given it to my transferred fire monkey starter so it can be an HM slave.
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Yeah, came out about eight hours ago. Fun so far, and decently tough.
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MvC3: 160 missions complete. Fuck Viewtiful Joe's missions.
This oh so very much.
MVC3- Currently at 94% trophy-wise only missing 320 missions and rank 1 trophy.
Currently team is X-23, Zero and Dormammu. Dormammu is there to add some hp to the team and Chaotic flame is just a pure badass move that punishs so well. Dark hole into Chaotic flame is also quite nice and currently as I suck my main source of damage.
I'm getting better with the stick but in a real fight I just lose my focus and my fingers wig out to the extent I can't even do those L, M low, H, S, air combos 100%. Hell I sometimes mess up dark hole somehow which is just lol worthy for whoever I'm facing. I'm also useless as Zero currently due to my panicky performance.
My stick layout is:
L_M_H
S_P1_P2
I'm still wondering how to to keep my fingers on them. I could either use 3 fingers and switch them to the bottom when I need to launch or I could keep my fingers on the top three and my thump on the launcher. Not sure which is best as I mess up on both currently anyway.
As for gameplay I don't really know any effective combos and I've no idea how to handle that troublesome Dante that 99% of people use. His attacks go aross half the screen so I've no idea how to get in on him currently. Dark Hole and Weapon X prime are like the only ways I can currently.
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Dante you want to play keep away with. Dorm or Arthur will destroy him.
Anyway speaking of things that came out today, anyone played Dragon Age 2's demo?
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Heh, played some MvC3 over the weekend. Settled on a team of Zero/Akuma/Amaterasu, mostly for the Crossover Super. Zero's fun to string together combos with, and I'm familiar with the old Akuma moveset - Ryu just seems a little too slow for me in this. Ammy is really fun to play with because her size makes her hilariously easy to dodge with, and she's fast enough to string together some nice comboes. That said, I was trying to learn Hsien-Ko 'cause she seemed pretty fun - seems like she's not a great character in the average match, but she's an amazing Galactus killer. ;p
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Still playing Yu Gi Oh, haha. It's quite fun actually. I tried to build a deck around the Charmers, but failed miserably. As a last ditch effort, now running an Exodia Deck, which wins me pretty often but is utterly shut down by anti-spell or deck cleaning decks. Card Destruction is still salvageable as I can return cards from graveyard to deck or hand, but out of play is no victory, unless I get three Defenders on the field and the opponent runs out of cards first. :(
Took a peek at the anime. Episode 93. The preview goes, "the card her parents were killed for"... oh god, YuGiOh, did you become more of a trainwreck since I was a kid?
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LFT- Chapter 3. Running an all specials team (Orlandu, Malak, Beo, Olan). Orlandu is going to be the MVP, his offense takes a turn for the stupid with a Defender in C3. Malak is extremely useful for Frog Bombing and not much else (Untruth still requires some setup), Olan is very durable and Galaxy Stop is solid. Beo is the same as FFT, though LFT tends to reward his skills much more.
I'm having way more resets than I did in my no direct damage file, which is all from being a slacker and not putting much effort into setups.
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MVC3 - Figured I was doing something wrong with flamy head and now I know. I wasn't using flame carpet one of his best moves which has improved my game massively.
"the card her parents were killed for"
Didn't you know that cards are serious business? As said in GX, card games have replaced Religion and is now as important as Business and Politics. In fact the police force is now equipped with fun police themed decks that they use to arrest you with.
In short in Yugioh cards are like influence as people obey you if you can beat them in children's card game, like guns and other weapons in if you defeat someone you can actually kill them if the card used is strong enough and finally they represent your being itself and what type of person you are as the cards match your personality and tastes.
Now that you know (and thats half the battle) you can buy yugioh packs at your nearest retail store for the low low price of $3.72.
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Ryu just seems a little too slow for me in this.
I strongly suspect that Ryu will come out to be one of the worst characters in this game. Just a feeling.
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Fallout: New Vegas.
Decided to start this up instead of a second playthrough of Mass Effect. Doing my usual diplomatic sharpshooter build, this time specialising in energy weapons from the start. I've since become a master of science in addition to sass talk, and seem to be decidedly pro-NCR, wandering the wastes with, alternately, a drunken caravaner who makes public drunkeness awesome, a First Recon NCR Sniper, and a robo-dog with a sixth sense for when kids fall down wells on the other side of the world map, and an extreme hatred of rats and all things that rhyme with them. Oh, and in which I put a junkie dog's brain. As a final touch, I belatedly realized that with a First Recon beret and the right jacket, my character looks an awful lot like Jamie Hydeman from Mythbusters. So, I've been going around the wilderness busting stuff up with a Plasma Rifle, a flamethrower, and an obscene amount of explosives in honour of that.
Major achievements of note, have managed to liberate Nelson almost by accident (was just trying to help out when I saw a few guys leave the nearby NCR base and I followed them. Shortly after this, shooting starts, and my sniper buddy whispers "Kill Them All", so I do. Also said hi to Marcus. Glad to see he's doing well for himself.
Managed to reach the Strip, where I have convinced one of the local mob bosses I am immortal, and have him running in fear of me as I continue with my plans to become God-Emperor of New Vegas.
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TOPSP - Chugging through this, just got to Chapter 4.
The good:
-Way better art. I really am enjoying the character design in the Warren Report. Status screen stuff is decent too.
-The music is very good!
-The retranslation has overall done the game favors, although it is a little too flowery at times like WotL.
-The battle system has been revamped to not emphasize levels as much (although they are still important) and has make random encounters actually fun.
-The classes feel more different from each other than they used to.
-Melee classes aren't completely boned in usefulness.
-The levelling system is way better (can't get much worse than original TO's levelling system) and everyone who participates in battles gets levels.
-The skill system is quite fun, although sometimes I feel like a few abilities are just dead obvious for everyone.
The bad:
-Renaming everyone. It is hard for me to remember new names for people who haven't played the original~
-The battle system is, by and large, is too easy, although the game has gotten steadily harder after the low point of C2.
-The biggest problem is new characters/new classes. Since each class has a level, when you get a new character of a different class, they start at Level 1, which means you have to drag them into several encounters where they can't do anything or rig randoms specifically for them. It is very frustrating and the one thing that confuses me design-wise.
-Not that this is specifically the remake's fault, but the story merge still bugs me. Wonder if it has been changed a little more at least to compensate for path?
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WoZ- Holy crap Holly. Thought I'd get a healing point before her, but no dice. Definitely going to get the L7 skills first it looks like. Probably would help if I'm just missing where it says buffs have worn off, since I just didn't realize it when the Magic Evade was gone and this is the first time it's really mattered.
Radiant Historia- Thanks to graphics straight from 1995, your best friend is a giant lobster. Translation could be worrisome (Really, "freaking?"), but only a few mintues in, so we will see.
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You've never heard someone say "freaking?"
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I'm sure he would prefer the more formal "getting their freak on."
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Started Radiant Historia, too.
Oh god, replayable bosses. Oh god, 2HKO on the very first boss you encounter. So far haven't seen much use from Guard Up actually affecting damage much, but maybe that'll come later... fun little game so far.
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Donkey Kong Country Returns: Actually started playing this about a week ago, midway through the Beach. Very reminiscent of the original DKCs, and one of the few Wii games I've played that I can say the motion controls aren't an irritant... yet.
Red Dead Redemption: Continuing my quest for Level 50 in multiplayer, up to 48 now. I finally found something that I'm good at in this game - horse racing.
Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions: Cleared Act 2.
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You've never heard someone say "freaking?"
If I hadn't, I wouldn't have minded because it wouldn't be a losery thing to say. Any half way passable translation would just make up a cuss word in place of using the lamest one they could think of.
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POKEMANS - So fuck Mt Coronet at the end game, that shit is way to long with no good way to get out and come back. I should have used Repels much sooner in that dungeon than I did. Also have enough masterballs to just lob them at legendaries, so whatevs, got a Quiet Giratina that can stay in a box. Went to get Mesprit and then it fucked off and the game told me off for not having a map marking app for my iPokeDS. So I went and got that, okay it is useless and I have no idea where Mesprit has gone. Yeah fuck you game.
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You've never heard someone say "freaking?"
If I hadn't, I wouldn't have minded because it wouldn't be a losery thing to say. Any half way passable translation would just make up a cuss word in place of using the lamest one they could think of.
They say it all the time in Dinosaur Comics.
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Fallout NV Dead Money: This came out without me knowing so I got and finished it. I quite enjoyed it even if it was so repetitive because it had some of the best character development in the game.
Sadly I couldn't save the women as I dealt with her before confronting the slimeball. Left the BOS guy to rot in the vault with his gold.
Then I get the bright idea of finally plating the game as I only need 2 trophies for it (Food one and break the bank). I leave and encounter some dudes////////////Freeze//////////. Okay lets go to the north gate of westside to buy some food. Next to the west gate//////////Freeze////////..............Goes in shop and buys food and then leaves///////////Freeze/////////............Fucking game.
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You've never heard someone say "freaking?"
If I hadn't, I wouldn't have minded because it wouldn't be a losery thing to say. Any half way passable translation would just make up a cuss word in place of using the lamest one they could think of.
Or "freaking" is typically the way you censor the f-word, and get the same point across without using it. Not every game needs to swear a lot to have a good translation, and some like to keep their ESRB ratings down. And wouldn't you know it, some people in REAL LIFE say "freaking" to avoid saying the F word in public.
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Grandia LLG. My memory may be off on some of the party level notes, fever is a bitch.
Milda (Justin 17, Feena 16): HPs are somewhere slighly over 100 here. Milda's physicals hit for 20x2 or so, Drop Kick is a bit of a joke, and Milda Hit hits for 85(!). I assume she can use Splitter but I never saw it. Diggin' up while you can in between the healing, reducing Milda Hit to a much more sane ~50 damage. Defend when you see an incoming attack on a PC. Beat on her when no defensive action is needed. Not hard, just takes a while.
Gaia Battler (Justin 18, Feena 17, Rapp 20, Milda 35): Central part can use POIZN gas for mighty 1-8 damage to an AoE around it. And Poizn, but I never saw it connect. More importantly it has Lightning for 40-50 damage to all, a solid 3HKO to all but Milda. Right Arm is weak to physicals and near-immune to magic and does some scrubby arm flail attacks for bad damage. Left Arm is the same as right, just reversed. Central part has 2500ish HP and arms 1000 less. I first concentrate on taking out right arm, then left, then the main body while easily keeping myself healed post-Diggin'.
At this point I ninja loot the three optional dungeons. This results my gear ranging from storebought in Dight to best axe in the game.
Gaia Battler 2 (Justin 19, Feena 18, Rapp 21, Milda 35): Each part has 1000 more HP here, but the offensive boost nicely negates that. POIZN gas tinks entirely most of the time this time but on the other hand I see Justin get POIZNed twice (easily taken care of with Cure). Lightning does 50-60 damage, inching into 2HKO territory on Feena. Right Arm can cast GrandHealer for 300 healing to all parts, woo. Left Arm's physicals have a chance to cause sleep. Same as before, just ever so slightly more threatening (not very).
Milda leaves.
Level 36
270HP 78SP
0/0/0 MP
119STR 51VIT 56WIT 48AGI
Sword L20 Mace L30 Axe L30
Gadwin remix, in a part where she's no longer god. Just very good at being a beatstick that is almost immortal.
Ruin Guard (Justin 20, Feena 19, Rapp 21, Guido 24): PCs have 130-140 HP. Including Guido. Damn your stats suck Guido. The main body spams Zap! for 50 AoE damage, occasionally taking a break to Healer one part for...100. *golf clap* Axe spams physicals for 30ish AoE damage, barely damaging past Diggin'. Boomerang is absurdly fast but the only thing it can do is cast Boomerang for like 10 damage to one. Ruin Guard has 4500HPs, the parts 2500 each. Honestly this is just a worse version of Gaia Battler. I do get some key skills here - Justin learns Midair Cut, Feena learns Alhealer, Rapp learns Burnflare, and Guido is using his mace-Sue level bad Sword physicals to learn Power Up, which is a nice buff on paper but doesn't get used in the next boss fight anyway. Oh Guido.
NANA SAKI MIO (Justin 21, Rapp 22, Guido 24) (2 resets): No Feena here, le sigh. I get utterly murdered the first time in. I learn three things from this: 1. Defensive play is not going to work here, they get way too many turns if you try to buff up. Many of those turns are used on debuffs 2. I really could use a storebought armor upgrade and some of those full status immunity accessories from Zil Padon. 3. Grandia designers are dicks for putting a disproportionately difficult fight in a point of no return area.
For those keeping track this is the third time in the game I buy gear.
Two hours later...
Okay so. Saki has 5000 HP, buffs herself with Speedy and WOW! and has Boom! for 40 AoE damage and various physicals, including the horrifying Max Lariat for 70. Nana has 4000 HP, a variety of status spells including Shhh! (now useless in the face of my Ribbons Talismans), Zap! for 50 AoE damage and some yo-yo attacks for either bad damage to a wide range or 30ish damage to cone area. Mio has 3000 HP, Stun Gun for 40 damage+Paralyze, Super Balloon for unpredictable AoE Poizn+Sleep, debuff spells like Cold, Freeze and Stram, and Alhealer+ for 200 HP restored to all sergeants. Worst of all, when all three sergeants are alive they can use Trinity Attack for ~60 damage to a very wide area on any of their turns. Yes, it doesn't consume all three of their turns. I have no idea what the activation trigger is, they always use it on the first turn though. I assume it's not at-will because they don't use it that much.
So as you can see status blocking is absolutely mandatory here. They still get an insane amount of turns if you let them with all of their AoE nonsense, so the only proper plan here is to blitz Mio. So I do MT stuff for turn denial and Alheal with Justin when necessary. This ends up in me getting caught with two Trinity Attacks in a row just a bit before Mio dies which is death.
Third try. Alheal is not good enough to waste turns on, it's time to bring out the consumables. Guido uses Mogay Bomb twice for good AoE turn denial, then acts as item boy to restore the party's HP/SP whenever they're even slightly depleted. He also has Bond of Trust to pass his turn to either Rapp or Justin when appropriate. I try his boomerang physical when I get the chance and shock of shocks - it's actually competent. Three shots that are accurate, fast, do decent damage and tie up a target for a good while. Mogayshot is also not bad for ST damage. Note to self, never use melee Guido again. Justin uses Shockwave, Burnflame and Midair Cut as appropriate for maximum damage/turn denial ratio. Rapp does the same with Discutter, Doppelgang, Burnflare and Burnflame. I get lucky with Trinity Attack, they only use it once at a start. I do manage to bring down Mio soon enough, which makes the rest of the battle fairly easy and I can do the rest without further consumable use. Once Nana goes down Saki just doesn't get the turns when locked down even with her +4 speed modifier - so I use her for skill training some wimpy attacks. Ah, vindication.
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Suikoden Tierkreis. ...what the hell does "Tierkreis" even mean? Whatever, ignoring that, I started this game, shit happened, now I have a big fat nerdy guy with an axe in my party.
Bionic Commando Rearmed 2: Beat the boss who has a friend named Randall. Yes, that detail is exceedingly important.
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SPOILER FOR TACTICS OGRE
Tactics Ogre: PSP
Uhm, is Catiua's Princess job supposed to be some sort of joke class?
Cause right now she is up to my parties max level give or take and she still blows.
But that is because her equipment and skills don't allow her to do anything good in a party. Cept heal from back row, with less heals spells to pick from.
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I think she has area of effect magic?
Also, please no spoiling the game I am trying to convince someone to play it >_>;;
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Suikoden Tierkreis. ...what the hell does "Tierkreis" even mean?
The Tierkreis are the zodiac in German. So Suikoden: Zodiac in English.
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so they have a Japanese word with a German subtitle? That's just silly! ...but also pretty typical for Video Game titles.
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Pokemon HG: 7 Gym badges! It took one sitting to go from 4 badges to 7, so Meeple was spot-on there about them not scaling up for a while.
I'm mildly annoyed at the gratuitous romaji of Sudowoodo. Seriously, the Japanese gave you English localizers an awesome Pokemon name "Pseudowood", and you felt the need to katakana-ize it into something that unwieldy? It's not even proper romaji, it's just a mess.
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POKEMANS - So I have officially gone on a Legendary binge, last dime I caught Giratina, this time I grabbed the awesome Mesprit, Azelf, Wingull and Uxie.
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The Prinecss class is only a 1/3 of the original. Princess is now divided into High Priest, Dark Priest, and Princess.
This was done to make Lord stand out, as now Lord has become omni magic potent class this time.
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Instead of lurking all the time, I'll post... some of the time.
Just a warning - I ramble on a bit, and my sentence almost certainly aren't grammatically correct. There might be some spoilers in here, if you care, I tried to avoid them though.
I recently completed Arc Rise Fantasia. I'll do a quick overview of what I thought.
The best part of the game, in my opinion, was the battle system. But only during boss fights. During almost all Random Battles, I just hit the autobattle button and healed afterwards. There were parts of it that seemed pretty deep. Both you and the enemy can give all of your turns to one person if you would like, but you can see what the enemy is going to do before you input your actions. So, if you notice that one enemy is going to take all the turns, you can focus on him and kill him before he does much, and then the enemy won't get any more attacks that turn.
Still, Randoms were mostly mindless. Boss fights were good! Some of the later ones required a couple of retries after learning what to do and what worked and what didn't. Sometimes they went on a bit long - I had a boss fight near the end of the game that went on for nearly an hour, if I died before killing him I wouldn't have gone back to the game for a couple days.
I did some sidequests, but not all of them. I did unlock almost all of the weapon secrets, though. I liked the weapon system, but it seemed deeper at first then it actually was. You just didn't have enough room to experiment with some of the cooler pieces, and I, personally, just stuck with basic ones like HP+. Other good ones I used a lot included Item Boost and Nullify Arm Force. I didn't even touch the white pieces - there might have been some good ones in there, but nothing jumped out at me as amazing.
Weapons themselves were also strange. You get one of the best weapons for L'arc, the Zweihander, fairly early in the game. I maxed out almost every weapon I got after that, but nothing seemed to compare. I did eventually change to the Fragarach just for the sake of changing, it was about as good, and gotten near the end of the game. Odd.
Magic was strange - It was effective in battle, but only if you loaded up your characters with the same elements. In a system that lets you pick your
characters magic from four elements, you would think that splitting up the elements between the characters would be the best option, but that's actually the worst choice - you want to make multiple party members cast the same spells to vastly increase their power.
The story was decent. It dragged a bit at times, but it was enough to make me curious as to what would happen next. Ending seemed a bit abrupt and I can see people not liking it, it did kind of come out of nowhere.
Voice Acting was hit and miss. Some voices were just bad. Sometimes the voices were good, but the emotion put into it was bad. Still, I was expecting a lot worse. I've sat through a lot worse (Baten Kaitos).
Final team was L'arc/Serge/Cecille. L'arc did lots of damage. Serge took annoying randoms with his AOE Excel Art. Cecille could contribute with AOE damage, or buff the party with elemental resists. Probably the worst member of the team, but still solid.
Overall I liked the game. There were problems, but I've enjoyed playing far worse games (and recently). I did finish it in just a couple of weeks.
I've also beaten Super Robot Taisen J and Golden Sun DS fairly recently, I'll post about them sometime later.
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so they have a Japanese word with a German subtitle? That's just silly!
Yeah! Don't they know the only language they're allowed to bastardize is English?!
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It wasn't called Tierkreis in Japan though, so it does stick out as a little odd, not that I object.
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Uhh, it is called Tierkreis in Japan.
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It is? My bad, must have been mixing up info from Suikosource. Sorry about that.
Edit - Tried finding old news posts, they are long dead, could have sworn when it was announced they were referring to it as something else, may have been a translated tagline?
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I should actually talk about games, since I think I've beaten three since the last time I posted here.
Mega Man X5 - Beat this. Played as Zero because X seemed quite unimpressive without secret-hunting (bleh) or using the super-armour the game hands you at the start (bleh!) so screw that, hit things with swords. Opposite impression of X4 funnily enough! Anyway this game is quite disappointing. Still quite playable, there's only so badly you can screw up Mega Man... but this game is pretty close to the MM7 tier of quality. It's not that it's an uninspired entry, it just feels so... hollow, despite the efforts to be different. Vapid dialogue (for series standards), poor polish, lives being utterly meaningless (continues do exactly the same thing as losing a life near as I can tell?), evidence that little effort went into balance, generally primitive graphics and poor sound quality. It feels like a game that is far older than it is, and I definitely don't mean that in a good way.
Stage design is generally fine, better than SNES MMXs even (which really kinda fail it up there). Bosses... what the fuck is up with the mavericks? I mean seriously, it seemed like every one of them I would make a lot of mistakes against and then win anyway because they are easy to just trade hits with and outslug. This is not Mega Man! Sigma stage bosses were another matter, much better. Black Devil is unshockingly the hardest boss in the game. Sigma rarely disappoints utterly, and yeah, I thought his first form was quite solid to face as Zero (don't think X would find him hard), giving me the second most resets of anything in the game easily (3HKO shockwave attacks are eeevil) despite the bad durability. Then the second form comes along and only takes me a few tries, which considering it's me and MMX this is very bad (only Kaiser Sigma rates as worse to me). Actually, the whole fight reminds me of X3; good first form then the ball dropped a bit on the second.
Devil May Cry - Hard Mode done! Excellent game, far better than X5 that's for sure. <_< The boss fights in this game are really just something else, and HM only makes them moreso. Brutal, to be sure, but still pretty much the best boss fights in like... all video games ever. Replay gave me new appreciation for when to use each gun in general; do wish there was a faster way between them but it's not the end of the world. Mook fights are quite solid especially those badass minibosses. Man, I love shadows. And hate them so much at the same time. Opinion of the game is up some, which considering it was pretty high already is quite impressive.
Fire Emblem 8 HM Eirika - Second time I played this. Blah blah unit info more for my memory's sake than anyone's actual interest:
Eirika 110 - MVP post-promotion and very good throughout. Very blessed on strength, the Seth support is stupid.
Seth 94 - Well y'know. Godly until the last three maps pretty much where he's pretty much a support bot, but that's fine; the Eirika support is stupid.
Tana 93 - Flies and kills everything.
Amelia 89 - I wanted to try using her without the tower; it's quite doable though a little tricky. Interesting enough, not objectively worth it but I pretty much knew that. Likely has the best lategame of the paladins but it's not by enough given how bad the midgame is.
Cormag 64 - Flyers are always good. Never used him on Eirika's route before, he's quite a ways behind the pegs there (mostly lacks the godly evade, though the prepromotion speed is also an issue but yeah, you really can't go wrong with a flyer, and he has good str and def at least.
Neimi 64 (died in C18) - Bad start, gets good. Died due to my negligence in C18 which isn't even a hard map, probably should have reset but screw it.
Ephraim 63 - Owns faces.
Colm 61 - Took a nosedive after losing Neimi, but still good due to that level lead.
Gerik 61 - I feel better not having axes rot in my inventory. Solid sword dude anyhow.
Innes 36 - Very solid at first, quite bad by the end, no real shocks here.
Saleh 32 - As above, except he has staves so he can transition into a support role.
Franz 32 - Wasn't getting the best stats (he really needs speed or he's just meh) but wasn't THAT RNG-screwed or anything, and is still probably the third best unit in the earlygame (well, fourth once Josh joins) except on maps where flight is awesome.
Joshua 25 (died at C11) - Good stuff, but not worth resetting over. Actually I pretty much only reset either when multiple people died or a flyer (besides Vanessa) since I didn't want to lose TWO flyers, they're too important.
Forde 21 - Good class, mediocre stats, same as always.
Artur 19 - Earlygame filler, works well enough.
Natasha 12 - Healers as always have trouble getting levels, Bishop at least lets her do decently against monsters though.
EDIT: Oh yeah and I am also playing Super Mario Galaxy 2. The game seems to fall into that "Mario sequel" trap that SMW and NSMBW do to me (and SMBLL but that's much worse) in that it seems far too content to coast on what the previous game in the series did and I don't think Mario works too well that way. I liked Galaxy, and this game is objectively good too, but part of me just feels like I'm going through the motions doing more of the same. I don't want to be too hard on the game, because there have been a few very solid levels in there; the game is far from just mailed in despite my above feelings.
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Tactics Ogre:
Possible Spoilers I guess!
Ok, so I beat the game. I didn't get the no Chariot title because I played around with it right at like the first battle or something. >_>
Anyways, beat the game. I went Law path this time, did not get the Lord class on that run. Denam was an Archer, as was Vyse in Ranger form and Canopus was using Crossbows since he was maxed in Bows. Oh yeah, Aloser and Lindl (what a dumb name) were there too. The 5 of them wreaked havoc on teams. The other people in my team usually were the White Knights, two of the four sisters and the blind guy who isn't nearly as good as he used to be. If 12 people are needed I usually bring jobs that are underleveled and they sit in a corner.
But Catiua not being able to use Bows anymore is a pain. Her equipment selection is horrible.
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Then I went and played around with the Wolrd system and collected some things I skipped in the first go around. I picked up Ozma and just got the Lord class. I got th first Diego scene all taken care of, but I still can't seem to trigger any other part of that event. I collected all the orbs I need for Deneb as well. The hire option is available in her shops, but I don't have any glass pumpkins.
I also went back and picked the Chaos path in that one scene at the beginning of the game. Seems ravness is only recruitable in the Law path as well. Killed her ass on accident first time through, whoops!
What else... oh yeah, I wish some of these archers would drop some better bows for my team. I am stuck with everyone rocking a Siege Bow...I really should get the +1 now that I think about it.
Characters are around level 26 right now. Still tons left for me to do! LOVE IT!
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Radiant Historia- 32 nodes gotten (just about where a 5th PC joins at the time). The game is nicely organic considering it's general structure which is good. Doesn't really pack a great bunch yet, but enjoyable.
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Fallout 3: So apparently the neighborhood I work in is destined to be overrun by firebreathing ants in the distant future. Hard to be 100% sure since the Fallout 3 Metro map matches up with the real one only as far as it's convenient to do so (real one has several more lines and vastly more stops, but hardly asking for more Metro tunnels in-game because oh god it's so boring walking through those) but a bit west of Falls Church station sounds right.
Anyway, I finished this. Lack of postage regarding the game between original "I'm playing this now" post and this one should say a good deal about my opinion of the game, but still, let's break down the myriad problems here. In fairness, I do really enjoy running around a huge, open world map just to see what's out there, and I was pretty damn thorough finding exactly what's out there because I'm obsessive and that's just my style. But once I had no choice but to actually do plot stuff, interested plummeted and I ignored the game for a couple weeks. Because the actual plot? Pretty much impossible to care about on any level.
I'm not really capable of not comparing this to New Vegas, which is probably unfair since New Vegas is fucking awesome and used the same mechanics but had the benefit of experience and the chance to make some refinements, but it really does highlight what's wrong with Fallout 3. The Capital Wasteland never really feels like a coherent setting. Most of the various towns and groups around the wasteland don't seem to have any tangible connections to the others, there's no real sense of conflict around you (except for slavers being dicks to people, I guess, but who are they selling all these slaves to, anyway? No locale you visit seems widely engaged in this particular economy), and more than any other time in the series you feel like you're wandering through an unrelated series of places and events. Sure, Three Dog's radio program will mention stuff that happens in various places, but largely just as a result of your actions. New Vegas, on the other hand, you know who the factions are and get suggestions of what they're about early on, even if it might be some time before you actually meet them. It makes a world of difference for making the player feel involved in a living, functioning alternate reality.
Reusing the Enclave and FEV is really the biggest misstep in Fallout 3's setup. They recycled the antagonists from the second game in the series with almost the same plan as they had in the second game in the series. There's no possible way it could have the same impact as they did in their previous appearance, especially since they are in a way kind of massive joke (sure, they have decent tech and a scary plan in FO2, but you guys still act like you run the world when you're all hiding out on a shitty little oil rig? Really?) Bringing them back as an ostensible threat ignores that and the fact that honestly they don't do much here (okay, sure, they kill your dad, but that's just Liam Neason phoning it in and letting his majestic voice do the work for him as usual. I was more upset about the deathclaws and your BoS buddy getting gunned down in FO2). You do get the eyebots roaming around spouting propaganda, but that's not the same as having an enemy force that's obviously trying to accomplish things (though in fairness, props to Malcolm McDowell here, he does nail a politician's vocal mannerisms). They're too placid and reactive to be taken seriously--they can't get any part of their plan accomplished without you, which I know could be said about plenty of other RPG villains, but in this case they apparently can't even hack a goddamn computer--and they just don't work as a source of tension.
This and the general blandness of your apparent goals (purifying the basin? I guess that's...a good thing. Are you also purifying the river that feeds it, though? Well, are you? Because I'd think that's kind of important) mean that my level of caring about the plot is nil. Which is possibly a good thing since I would've been more annoyed about the ending if I actually felt invested in things in any way. Spoiler tags for that, I guess. So I guess the writers really, really wanted to hammer you into a Heroic Sacrifice scenario. Nice job setting that up in advance guys oh wait you didn't do that at all you just manufactured a menace at the literal last minute and bullied the player into taking it. Bad form. "It's your destiny to get melted by radiation even though I'm immune to it and could totally save you." Thanks a LOT, Fawkes. Fallout games aren't principally plot-driven enterprises, I know--it's often at least as much about the world it happens in. But lack of the typical ending rolecall to show the consequences of your actions in various locations only serves to reinforce that we don't care about any of these places.
Mechanically, well, in most regards it's not that different from New Vegas, and I do still think it's fundamentally a pretty elegant fusion of traditional Fallout mechanics with shooter gameplay. Except for being stupidly easy, which is pretty glaring. I guess I could've notched it up to Hard mode, but eh, I feel like that shouldn't be necessary for a balanced game. Weapon degradation of course is stupider here. Didn't max your repair skill? Sorry, you don't get weapons in top condition. Doesn't matter a ton because see stupidly easy difficulty, but still annoying.
Dungeons, though? So tedious. As much as I like strolling about the overworld looking for things, actually exploring those things once found can be abject drudgery at times. The game's interior spaces are often just so dreary and monotonous. I don't remember this being a problem in New Vegas despite that game reusing the same wallpapers, largely because they generally had the sense to keep things brief there (there are exceptions to that, of course, but those generally benefited from atmosphere much more than any FO3 dungeon can boast). Fallout 3 locations just ramble on and on. Statesman Hotel I think was the most glaring offender. Jesus that must have been, what, two hours of crawling through the same ruined hallways fighting the same enemies? This is how not to design a dungeon.
Vaults, for example? Really disappointingly dull. There's a lot of potential for freakiness with these, but what we get is generally just "Yeah, it's a ruined place where people used to live but they're all dead now." You do get a few logs in some of the Fallout 3 vaults, but they largely just serve to make the same basic point of "Yeah, Vault-Tec is the most pointlessly dickish fictional corporation this side of Umbrella." The bit where you hallucinate the Vault 101 overseer for a split second got a jump out of me (since I beat the dude to death with a baseball bat), but that's about the only part of them that showed any character. New Vegas had a good variety of atmospheres with its vaults even if they all used the same basic design (34 was ridiculously tense with its constant radiation and ghoul attacks, another had ohshit ninja plant monsters...two were openly used as showcases for human malice, but in drastically different ways).
So I don't have too much positive to say about it in the end. I didn't hate it, because hey exploration and punching people's heads off, there is some fun to be had there or I wouldn't have scoured the map, which is worth something like an average rating. It's just so fundamentally broken on a storytelling level that nothing about the events that transpire within it are compelling. They inserted all the big-name Fallout presences and indicators they could think of because apparently the game just wouldn't feel Fallout enough if they didn't copy everything they possibly could, but they do it without either the flair or style otherwise exhibited in the series. Meh.
Random other stuff:
-Too many super mutants.
-Also super mutants are apparently cannibals now. Um...okay, why?
-Why was the G.E.C.K. in Vault 87? What possible use could it conceivably serve there? This isn't a vault that was meant to open up and repopulate the world. The only purpose of the site was to turn people into monsters. How does a G.E.C.K. tie into that research in any way? Presumably the developers just wanted it to be hard to find.
-A subterranean town of children holding back a horde of super mutants. I disbelieve.
-I hate that sickly green color that dominates the game's palette. New Vegas's bleached desert yellow is so much nicer to look at.
-Too many fucking super mutants.
-Did the Enclave even call itself the Enclave in Fallout 2? I didn't think they did. I thought they just referred to themselves as the government of the fucking United States of America, because that's what they thought they were. Enclave I thought was just a way for the game to refer to them or where they lived, a word the definition of which fits what they are physically and also highlights what a bunch of delusional megalomaniacs they are. Hearing them constantly self-reference as "The Enclave" only makes them seem that much sillier and nonthreatening for apparently not realizing either of those details.
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Then I went and played around with the Wolrd system and collected some things I skipped in the first go around. I picked up Ozma and just got the Lord class. I got th first Diego scene all taken care of, but I still can't seem to trigger any other part of that event. I collected all the orbs I need for Deneb as well. The hire option is available in her shops, but I don't have any glass pumpkins.
Each steps of Diego's recruitment occurs only in specific time frames. You might want to check my post in the previous page. He is really easy to miss.
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Baal (Justin 22): Oh joy a duel. Actually dangerous because Justin has 140 HP and Howlnado hits for 70. Boom-Pow at 60 and Zap! at 50 are not fun either given the Grandia turn system. His physicals get nulled half the time after Diggin' stacks which is the small blessing that actually lets me get an offensive game going. He also has Shhh! (blocked, thankfully) and Healer to heal 200 (less than a Justin combo). I defend when I see a spell coming, heal as necessary and get lucky with him never deciding to doubleact Howlnado.
I buy a fourth Talisman. So basically I run around blocking all status unless something comes up where I need another accessory. I no doubt will be missing status fun times boss specials can cause because of this so for those who want that kind of encyclopedic knowledge go make a stat topic. >_>
Guido leaves nooo.
Level 25
137HP 80SP
0/0/0 MP
88STR 48VIT 118WIT 90AGI
Dagger L19 Sword L10 Throw L31
Better than Sue as long as he has a ranged weapon I suppose. With a melee weapon? hahahahahahaha
Hydra (Justin 22, Feena 20, Rapp 23) (1 reset): Oh hell. So this is a recolored Serpent, my favorite boss. 4.5k on the main body, heads range from 1.7k to 3k. I decide to go after the heads for multiple reasons. Hydra's main body can Head Crash one PC for 70, Crackling for 50 MT damage and cast Vanish, which dispels all stat changes on everyone in the field. Hot Head is the same as ever, doing its 30 MT damage. Toxic(?) Head uses Poison Gas which does absolutely nothing to my party. Nice Head's Recover Gas heals...400 to all. Argh. Last, Pearl Head replaces Mean Head. Can't be that bad with status blockers, Mean Head was a scrub on damage. Pearl Head's attack is...Sudden Death. Which does exactly what it says. Talismans don't catch it.
What the fuck, Grandia?!
Okay once I get over the fact that there is a five part boss where one of the parts dishes out OHKOs on literally every turn it gets I gear up for the second attempt. I can't really go for ID block accessories over Talismans because negating POIZN is just too valuable in terms of turn economy, even more so with the strategy I'm using. I have two Revival Stones (auto-revival on death) and give them to Justin and Feena. I decide to game the turn system here by abusing a certain part of it - once a part of a multipart enemy reaches the "act" part of the ATB bar all other parts stop so you can't have nonstop spam. The idea is to knock back Pearl Head behind the other parts every time it is closing in on a turn. (And yes, I tried canceling the move entirely with Critical - it just doesn't work on the hydra). I open the battle by busting out the Slouch Weeds I've had for a while to itemcast Cold - dropping Pearl Head to -4 speed. I also use Smarna to itemcast Def-Loss for a quick -1 defense mod to all hydra parts. First to fall has to be Nice Head because I simply don't have the resources to deal with that kind of healing indefinitely. This takes some rather intense rounds as I have to juggle doing the big damage, not letting Nice Head get turns, not letting Pearl Head get turns, turn denying the hydra in general with MT, and dealing with Crackling + Hot Gas spam. Luckily Nice Head has only 1700 HP and thus falls fast. Bad news: Pearl Head has 2900 HP and Hydra wises up and casts Vanish to get rid of the debuffs. Sigh. Toxic Head is a real blessing here as its turns delay the others and do absolutely nothing. Pearl Head bites Rapp (sigh) and I have to waste valuable time to resurrect him. I do manage to kill it before it gets anyone else. (It might have gotten a second turn and wasted it on a Revival Stone PC? I don't recall perfectly) Rest is fairly simple though I have to use consumables to keep my MP high. Kill Hot Head, finish off Toxic Head.
Great Susano-o (Justin 22, Feena 21, Rapp 24): Recolored Ruin Guard. 4500/2500 HP. Honestly a joke after that last battle, not worth doing a real writeup for. Main body has Howlnado for 70 damage and the other parts just suck. Has Vanish to make buffing of questionable worth though. This will become a theme.
Phantom Dragon (Justin 23, Feena 21, Rapp 24): Recolored Madragon. 3800 HPs, 2 parts 1 body. Has Vanish. Loves spamming Crackling with both parts, had a hell of a time trying to keep up, used remaining revival stones and a ton of consumables. Maybe it has some kind of MP score because it stopped using it after I weathered the initial assault...it becomes a joke afterwards. Claw attack for 30ish to a small area, Fire Breath still never hits anyone.
Liete get. Having 3 PCs was getting just a bit painful.
BAAL, LORD OF TENTACLES (Justin 23, Feena 21, Rapp 24, Liete 30): PC HP is in the 120(Liete is frail)-150 range. Baal has 6000 HP, Gaia Tentacle has 7000. Killing either one ends the battle. All their attacks are physical but...Baal has Vanish. And a physical for 50, and Gaia Power to heal himself for 400. Tentacle has Gaia Strike for 70-90 + binding effect (like paralysis status without actually being a status effect, apparently). Worse, it has Gaia Fang, which does 80 damage to a large area around Baal and causes -2 to the defense of those hit. It can also heal itself for 700 with Hoist Heel. So uh okay. Lots of healing needed to keep up, yet I need to keep a steady offense to overwhelm the boss healing. Liete's Zap! proves quite wonderful here as it does ~250 damage to both very quickly and cheaply. Justin and Rapp use various physical techs, everyone but Liete uses Burnflare. I go through a ridiculous amount of SP/MP restoring items in my frantic race to keep up as well. I try to evade out of the way of Gaia Fang when I can - when I can't, I Diggin' once to have some parts of the party at 1 Defense mod and some at -1 - Baal will eventually waste a turn to cast Vanish in this situation. I have to res Liete once during the battle and cast a Resurrection spell with her on Rapp too, with a ton of other close calls. One thing that proves advantageous is that Baal and Tentacle are terrible at coordinating their attacks. Baal spends plenty of time moving around the battlefield because the tentacle wants to attack a different target than he does. Once they have been whittled down to 2000ish HP Baal starts spamming Gaia Power like crazy while the tentacle attacks - I decide to focus on a singletarget assault on the tentacle at this point. Victory.
Gaia Battler 3 (Justin 25, Feena 23, Rapp 25, Liete 30): 4500/2500 HP. A joke at this point, though it does have Vanish (oh for fuck's sake). Lightning does 60-70 damage, POIZN Gas has been replaced with Rust Gas which causes -2 Defense to an area, the arms are still bad...a breather after the previous fights. Edit: Okay it could have been good if Right? Arm had used Rayspread more than once. It was ~35 MT damage.
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I'm not really capable of not comparing this to New Vegas, which is probably unfair since New Vegas is fucking awesome and used the same mechanics but had the benefit of experience and the chance to make some refinements, but it really does highlight what's wrong with Fallout 3.
I fail to see why it is anything close to unfair. Bethesda isn't exactly an inexperienced upstart, they were formed in 1986 and pretty much have been making RPGs since then. They don't have hands on experience with the setting, but Obsidian isn't exactly working with Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Chris Taylor either, they have a lot of experience with the series, but the difference between Fallout and Bethesda's other works are fairly obvious and they didn't do much at all to take that on board. They are made with the exact same technologies and one is head and shoulders above the other as a Fallout game.
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Soul Calibur IV - Just got this recently since it was uber cheap, and the series has always been a popular mainstay for my friends and I. So far, haven't had more than a few hours to pop into it, but it's been enjoyable. Fortunately, most of the changes seem to be either positive, neutral, or ignorable.
Positive - I think the big thing I like that was added is the new soul crush system. Basically, it's like shield breaking in Smash Bros, except with two notable differences. If the person is on the ball, they get the option to pull off an instant kill move. On the other hand, it's not easy to pull off. My brother and I, in our little bit of sparring, have only come close to seeing it once. And just as defending too much makes it happen, attacking pushes you away from it. Finally, the story mode has a new system which allows for team battles, along with a switch button. Given how good team battles were in SC2, I'm really hoping there's a way to get team battles rolling in this game, because that would be grand.
Neutral - Still not sure what I think of the clothing damage system. Maybe if it didn't seem quite so random. That said, it doesn't offend me, and I have to admit, there is something neat about the idea of actually having your character reflect the fact that it was a tough battle when you barely win a set. Yoda also goes here, since he has that whole ignoring high attacks and throws thing going on. On the other hand, I'm not sure he has low attacks, and almost all of his attacks and all of his throws seem to involve him first jumping into the high hit box area (huh, never mind. While typing this my brother used a low attack with Yoda, so they do exist). Also, he seems to have more lag in getting his moves off, or finishing them. Ah well, time will tell.
Ignorable - The new character creation system. This is part ignorable, part bad. Then again, I really liked the NPC fighting styles in 3, and am sad to see that they're gone. I mean, the sword and shield had the best freaking move in the game with the whole tackle them and then pound them senseless move. Aside from that, the rest is pretty ignorable, seeing as it's mostly just moving weapon selection to main character customization (in addition to playing dressup, if you're so inclined. Aside from recreating the She-Link outfit, or having Taki dress sensibly, I think this will be ignored). As for character creation, the various clothing pieces now have stat bonuses that actually matter in combat, along with some inane skill system that involves setting skills using points granted by your outfit. Dressing like a Salvation Army reject for stat boosts, no longer just for MMO characters! Fortunately, VS still believes in having a mode where all of those stats and skills are ignored, so the whole thing gets labled ignorable instead of Bad.
The Cast: Is generally the same. Even the minor changes don't seem to create any huge differences, though the little I've played around with Cassandra suggests that she might be back on my team. The major change I have discovered so far is that Maxi feels better, though this could just be the fact that he's been changed enough that I'm not very sure what I'm doing with him any more. Maxi has always been the odd character where the less I understand what I'm really doing with him, the better the results.
All in all, feels like it'll be a worthwhile purchase.
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And if you want to shell out more cash, you can download Darth Vader too!!!
NOTE: Do not. Vader is just garbage and unfun to play as. He's a slow mighty glacier without anything that can really redeem it fighting style wise. Oh, sure, having Force Grip as a move in a fighting game is cool, but that doesn't justify it.
Frankly, to be honest, I felt the Star Wars thing was a total waste for bonus characters in SC4. So much COULD have been done, but Yoda and Vader feel poorly done, and Apprentice (aka he who was shoved in to just make Force Unleashed Sell More) is both hard to give a shit about, and stupidly handled. This could have been more forgivable if every character got access to a Light-Saberesque weapon, so you can make more fun custom characters, but alas, they missed THAT one. I can understand maybe going "It'd be silly for Mitsurugi, a samurai from hundreds of years ago, to use a high tech Sci-Fi weapon!", but seeing as you can easily work that away by saying "its a blade made of magical energy!" just to get an excuse for Light-saberesque aesthetic, that excuse doesn't really fly with me.
Ok, really, I'm more annoyed about the above cause it means I can't make an appropriate Fou-lu without a Light-saber looking weapon to go with him...
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I assume you mean not letting custom chars fight like Yoda. Not actually what I mean. What I meant was that in SC 3, you had a bunch of weapons that were similar, but not quite, the fighting styles of each of the main characters. So you had a katana style that wasn't Mitsurugi's Samurai style, you had a sword and shield style that wasn't Greek. That kind of thing. And those seemingly being gone is something I will mourn. Though not too much.
Suppose at some point I'll have to see if they had as much fun with the lightsabers as they did with Link's weaponry in SC2, though I'm not sure how they could. Hell, I'm not even sure what they'll do for joke weapons there.
As for Fallout New Vegas. Cid has done a fair good job of getting at my reactions on the Vaults in Bethesda's works. In Fallout 3, the whole thing felt dickish for the point of being dickish. Ok, granted, I suppose you could get some decent psych info out of them, but what kind of moron ok's doing highly lethal psychological testing on the last remnants of the human race, or at least the parts of it you're expecting to support your government in exile. The three I've been to so far in New Vegas, I can generally get behind the reasons why they perished (Vault 3 especially. After seeing that one log entry on the engineer's computer, I was, well, thorough and eagre, about slagging the current occupants with a plasma rifle), and the radioactive vault was nicely tense.
Still need to finish New Vegas, but having confronted Benny, I feel like I'm at the point where the endgame is being set up, which is nice because I'm eagrely looking forward to seeing how the second battle of the Dam is going to play out, and how New Vegas itself is going to factor into it.
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I assume you mean not letting custom chars fight like Yoda. Not actually what I mean. What I meant was that in SC 3, you had a bunch of weapons that were similar, but not quite, the fighting styles of each of the main characters. So you had a katana style that wasn't Mitsurugi's Samurai style, you had a sword and shield style that wasn't Greek. That kind of thing. And those seemingly being gone is something I will mourn. Though not too much.
Actually, my comment about the Lightsabers was more a tangent from the Star Wars comment and had little to do with your statement in terms of Generic Fighting styles.
And I was more just saying that for all the unique looking weapons characters can use, none of them get a Light-sabery weapons but the Star Wars characters...who can't be used to make customs out of. Its a silly complaint, of course, and one I don't really hold against the game, but I can still pine over it damn it!
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Seems perfectly reasonable to me. The ability to give Lyndis a lightsaber would be awesome.
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I felt the need to emphasize how amazing New Vegas is and how much testimony I get that it's so much better than FO3 as far as the series goes.
I almost want to replay it. Man.
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Dead Money just came out, there is your excuse.
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As for Fallout New Vegas. Cid has done a fair good job of getting at my reactions on the Vaults in Bethesda's works. In Fallout 3, the whole thing felt dickish for the point of being dickish. Ok, granted, I suppose you could get some decent psych info out of them, but what kind of moron ok's doing highly lethal psychological testing on the last remnants of the human race, or at least the parts of it you're expecting to support your government in exile. The three I've been to so far in New Vegas, I can generally get behind the reasons why they perished (Vault 3 especially. After seeing that one log entry on the engineer's computer, I was, well, thorough and eagre, about slagging the current occupants with a plasma rifle), and the radioactive vault was nicely tense.
I think one of the best things New Vegas did with this is show us a Vault that actually worked. Two if you count Vault 3, as I don't think getting overrun by raiders is really something you can factor in in advance.
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Worked? You mean one that was normal and wasn't undergoing some weird experiment even Weyland-Yutani and umbrella would look down upon.
Fallout NV - Plat gotten.
MVC3 - After getting some advice from people and looking at some sites I can now do some nice combos. Currently learning the corner combos as they are easier but looking at everything I might just replace one of my rushdown characters with a keep away because remembering all these imputs is hard enough but remembering those dozen or so combos for both my rushdown characters ain't happening.
I'm think of just learning one middle and one corner combo and just spam them. Not fancy I know but I've not got the greatest memory so it'll do.
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"Worked" in the sense that the residents didn't kill each other. It's Vault-Tec, you have to adjust your standards a little.
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Seems perfectly reasonable to me. The ability to give Lyndis a lightsaber would be awesome.
Well, its mostly that when I make characters, I try my best to capture their appearance as close as possible, weapons included. In Terra's case, I wanted a Light Saber for the Atma Weapon appeal, but alas, none such was there; had to settle for the Flame Sword (she's Sophitia's style.) I can't make an appropriate Fou-lu cause of the total lack of them and that's all he uses. There were a few others as well.
Though, lucky for me, one of Cervantes weapons sort of resembles Agni/Rudra from DMC3, so Dante could use that and I could thus give Sparda a Nightmare Style, so I don't have two clones! I was also lucky that Seung-Mina had a Halberd allowing me to make an appropriate Hrist...
Sadly, no true fist fighters (Voldo totally doesn't count), so I can't make, say, Gene from God Hand :(
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Tactics Ogre:PSP
Ten fights on the first floor of whatever it's called now...Palace of the Dead? Two Glass Pumpkins so far.
>_>
Gonna get this out of the way now so I NEVER have to do this again!
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Thank you, Final Fantasy 13, for the touching story of the flying, teleporting, telepathic, fetch-quest giving stone statues in an empty stone tower who fight a randomly aggressive Fal'Cie who hangs out there. As Vanille said, "we each fight evil in our own way." Perhaps you can don costumes and fight... crime, next?
Also it's nice that our alleged good-guys think that it's A-OK to, with no provocation, attack a NASCAR race and probably murder a bunch of drivers via crashes / actively carjacking them and tossing them into the road, while causing a panic in the stands that probably lead to more people getting trampled and dying. Just. What.
Okay these are both pretty out-of-the-blue and can't spoil anything since they are plot tumors grafted on that don't mean anything, but further rants on the real plot will require microtext, spoiler warning, etc.
Chapter 10
Okay, first, this level is way too repetitive and long. I compare this to Halo 1's Library - they flagrantly copy & pasted the same area 5 times and filled it with hordes of enemies. But more to the point, you're not really advancing the plot in an interesting way here. This is a giant training hall to fight crap in and grow stronger. Wouldn't it be more interesting to be forced to fight crap and grow stronger while trying to avoid death, or achieve an objective? Bah.
Next, rando-Cid for a boss fight and MOTIVE REVEAL! That is impossibly lame. I realize it's hard to do "sympathetic antagonist whom you must fight!" but this was just stupid, especially after your party offers to do nothing and says they don't really want to destroy Cocoon, but let's fight anyway. Saying that all those close escapes before were because the Cocoon fal'Cie and so on were helping is... interesting, and fits with Bart's reveal at the end of Chap 9->10, but also denies the desperate efforts of the protagonists somewhat. Meh. I'm also a little confused on how Cocoon l'Cie work - are their focuses more clear? Does Dysley just tell Cocoon l'Cie what their focus is? Because the whole game, it seems like the Focus is more a threat - you aren't actually mind controlled, you'll just turn into a monster if you don't take steps to finish your Focus. But Cid apparently knew exactly what he was supposed to do, and gets mind-controlled again in Chapter 12, so huh. Also, if Cid came here of his own free will, how'd he even know where to look? Only Dysley would have known where the Pulse l'Cie escaped to.
Fine, Cid was lame and at best should have been saved for Chap 12, but then we get to hack through a bunch more, eventually collect Bahamut, though I dunno how convinced Fang is of saving Cocoon yet. Then. Rando-portal to Pulse in front of us! I... guess this was arranged by Dysley as well? I have no idea what for, if so, as you don't get anything on Pulse that particularly convinces you Ragnarok is awesome. Moreover, while I'm not averse to going to Pulse, this feels more like putting the protagonists on rails again - not the graphical kind, but the plot kind, which is weird for our "Defier of Fate." Couldn't Our Heroes have just found a new ship and decided to head for Pulse of their volition to try and get rid of their brands? This would make the boss fight of Chap 11 make moderately more sense, as it'd be "get back to work you lazy bums."
Chapter 11
So. Cieth Stones. Kind of an odd choice for a way to do sidequests when there's a large current of "screw the fal'Cie" in the game's arcs. Just because a mighty magic being ensorcelled you to do a task doesn't mean that task is right, so picking up MORE of these tasks? Sigh. While I'm also nitpicking, I'm still not clear on what was so shameful that Vanille had to lie to Fang about. Considering Fang's plan was "raise hell and see if our memories come back from messing with Cocoon" if the goal was to save Cocoon, Vanille didn't do a very good job. I'm fine if Vanille was just confused / scared and panicked, of course, but I'm still feeling left hanging here as if there's going to be more explanation as to what the heck happened in the past.
That said. Pulse does something interesting, which I'm not sure I agree was the best narrative direction, but certainly has its own potential. This being the whole NOBODY IS HOME thing. The party members express some frustration at not finding anything at the very beginning of Chapter 11, but... but... nothing like the full-scale panic I'd expect from Vanille and Fang. Now. I wouldn't overly object to a Super Metroidish-take on the situation where you explore ruins yourself and come to your own conclusions with no need to talk about the obvious. Except, this is FF13, a game where everybody wears their thoughts on their sleeves and say things like "I realize I've been deceiving myself the whole time!" Plus, you DO get to see some of Vanille and Fang talking, and they only really do it about becoming Ragnarok centuries ago - and then leave unsaid any further useful information. But they don't appear to be particularly on-edge otherwise.
This... is... crazy!
First off, the Ark was described as being "like Pulse." And the Ark looked like a subway station in a lot of places - so trains, giant guard robots, high-tech labs, etc. Fine. Except the Pulse we find is a vast naturely landscape filled with monsters. Some more explanation of "here's what Pulse is like, guys!" would be appreciated. If, for the player, they decided that such an explanation would be boring and they should show not tell... fine, in most cases... except one like this where there's a major mystery afoot. Is finding no humans, let alone human settlements nearby, expected? Or did Pulse have giant National Park zones where it wouldn't be shocking for this to happen? Even if so, wouldn't the fact that the parts of Pulse we travel to that were blatantly manipulated by humans - like the mining stuff in the caverns - is also abandoned? If you're going to have a post human extinction world, milk it! This is Vanille & Fang's time to do plot stuff.
Temejin's Tower was an abomination. Really, this kind of fetch-questy dungeon is fine normally... except... when you are introducing an ENTIRELY NEW WORLD. And what we learn about Pulse are its telepathic statues of goodness whose power has been sealed by monsters who chill out in a bizarre tower that seems to have no purpose at all. I'd have been happier if this was ye old generic "ancient temple with artifact, go raid it to find ultimate power" you see in every RPG that needs an excuse for dungeons with sealed passages and monsters and such. And, again, Fang and Vanille don't bother explaining what the hell at all. What was this tower FOR? Why do we have to climb a tower to reach a town?! Yeah, RPG logic, but seriously guys, you can do better. Here, I'll show you. "This is impossible! There has got to be some people around somewhere. Or evidence of where the Gran Pulsians left to, and what calamity struck. Let's go look at this communications tower. There'll be SOME record there of what happened." Then run around finding keys and turning on power as per usual to explain the fetch quests, reach the bottom, and... hell. The party doesn't even have to find anything aside from a nasty monster lair. Just emptiness and no records and no piles of bones and a giant freakin' mystery.
Okay. Oerba. ++++ on the music here. And... you can investigate things and get more details! Why was this not in the game otherwise?! It makes me WANT to explore everywhere! In fact, they didn't need to make there inexplicably be only one route through town here. Since there's a sidequest here anyway, remove the blockages and let me explore on my own. I very much approve of the mood at least here, even if we don't see Vanille and Fang talk at all, except about Vanille's pet robot. I mean... this is a major sanity check here. Your hometown is infested by monsters and the people are GONE, not even dead in their beds. Let's see some reaction! If not right away, perhaps at the end. Which I'm still not entirely sure why we're going onto this bridge to nowhere, but we do, and...
...wtf. Barthandalus shows up again, on Pulse?! Why is he here? Narratively, I mean. Oerba is where Vanille's plot is supposed to get some advancement, not having the main plotline show up. It'd be like visiting Fran's village in FF12 with Fran being completely silent and then having Gabranth (Basch's foil) show up. Just bizarre storytelling here. More blather about "I'm fighting you and dressing up as Serah so do as I say!" Right. Not exactly the master manipulator here.
Also, I'm a little confused, though I think FF13 is too. So. Barthandalus's version of events: Serah's Focus was to gather a band of new l'Cie to destroy the world with (which she totally didn't do intentionally, but uh sure). Everyone else's focus is to destroy Orphan and thus Cocoon. However, Vanille talked to Serah, and Serah had the same dream as everyone else. Snow apparently knew this too, and had already figured out that Barthandalus must have been wrong - they all had the same dream. Cool. Except... the record at the end of Oerba seems to indicate that the Pulse Fal'Cie really DO want to destroy Orphan and Cocoon. Fine. But then why did Serah turn to crystal if she too was supposed to bring about Ragnarock? She certainly hadn't succeeded yet. Not willing to call it a plot hole yet, though I'd like to have seen a more coherent end-of-Chap 11 conversation for what our protagonists think - too many unreliable sources here (especially Bart), so there may be weird assumptions yet undone.
Also. Pep talk about making a stand and history recording them. Fine, though you're a little vague on the details of what exactly the plan is here...
Chapter 12.
More Cid plot. Where is this revive-> mind-control stuff coming from? This doesn't gel with Fang & Vanille's experiences, so I guess we chalk it up to Cocoon l'Cie bein different again? The mind control apparently doesn't even work in the one scene we see Cid-2 in. And is dispensed with quickly anyway. This is once more a pointless plot graft that means nothing.
Okay, see above about the "charge in summons blazing vs. NASCAR" thing. What. I thought the scene in Palompalum where Snow was shooting a machine gun into the air going "I'm a Pulse L'Cie who will kill you all!" in an attempt to herd the civilians away from Psi-Com - and thus save their lives - was pretty awesome. It'd be one thing, maybe, if Our Heroes attacked a military base outright, but a civilian event? What could they POSSIBLY hope to gain here? Stay in your darn ship and land it as close to Orphan as you can. If you get made by the military, then land somewhere far away from civilians for having your big battle. I'm willing to overlook a lot since RPGs require a lot of fighting so fine, no way to negotiate, you must kill 100 soldiers to advance, but this is just a blatant attack on civilians Luca Blight style. What.
Now. We are expected to believe that the Cavalry are a serious threat to Orphan. This better be a stupid lie from Bart meant to incite the party who foolishly fell for it. If all it took was a military team to destroy Orphan, then Bart could have gotten rid of it ages ago. Remember Chapter 1! This is a society that cheerfully purged an entire city at the government's orders. Just tell the army / Psi-Core to plant a big bomb at this strange entity that's been infected by Pulse (warp in a handy Pulse monster you have lying around if necessary). If this would work, then Bart could have been rid of Orphan whenever he wanted. I actually buy the idea that it requires Pulse l'Cie or Pulse fal'Cie to blow up something like Orphan as far as making Bart's plot make sense, but it looks like they're throwing that away. Also. It's not a big deal, but I'd be interested as to how exactly Bart is inciting the Cavalry to attack Orphan. Maybe I'll find out shortly, but while I can see "have Cid provide intentionally bad leadership to provoke a civil war," directing said war against Orphan seems tricky.
Furthermore. While the party was strangely blase about it, it did gain one very important bit of information on Pulse. That is, EVERYONE (seems to be) DEAD. Therefore there can't BE any Pulse invasion because there's no humans left on Pulse! You know the truth! Information is power! TELL EVERYBODY about this! It might be hard but this seems like an actual way to tone down Pulse-invasion paranoia, if people knew that a Pulse invasion was impossible. I'd much rather have my quest be "get to the television station and broadcast The Truth to everyone" then this mess that plays directly into Bart's plans. (Even if the Cavalry really can blow up Orphan, we only know that they might do this thanks to Bart, which should give everyone pause.)
Roche: "But you are l'Cie. Humanity will decide its own destiny!" WHAT. Roche was a Psi-Com villain. Since when is he "on our side" and "wants the same thing?!" The game has been willing to use villain-cam before to show us things the party couldn't possibly know. Therefore, if you want to evolve your villains, then *show it*. Last I checked Psi-Com hates us because Pulse is eeevil and we've been mind-controlled to raise hell on Cocoon (which... isn't far from the truth, maybe, given the archive we found at the end of Chapter 11? At the end of a random broken bridge by semi-accident?). Also, Psi-Com thinks Cocoon l'Cie are awesome (see Dajh). Siiiiiiiiiiigh.
Also. There's the narrative trick of having tons of Pulse monsters hanging around, ready to be unleashed at all. Fine, I guess this fits into Bart's plot, sort of, but we just got done fighting tons of mindless Pulse beasties. Wouldn't it be more interesting if we just returned to a straight civil war between humans while we tried to navigate the sides and explain the truth? It'd be a chance to talk with humans again, which hasn't happened in ages aside from Roche.
On the bright side. The Archlyte Steppe (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2-1VBxB3rA) would totally be a great overworld theme, if FF13 had an overworld. Dust to Dust (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad3vezqwGms) is also fantastic in context. The FF13 soundtrack still has the problem that about a third of the tracks are variations on the main FF13 theme, including these two, but whatever.
Conclusion: FF13 Chapter 10-12 flies off the rails as badly as some DLers think Xenosaga 3: Disc 2 does. So far at least, not done with Chap 12. If they had done the most generic plot resolutions possible after Chapter 9 it'd be better than this.
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Nah, FF13's plot screw ups aren't as bad as XS3 Disc 2, but only cause FF13 is not downright offensive about it. More generic bad train wrecking where its like "Do the writers have any clue where they are going with this? I mean...seriously?" rather than "hey, lets spit on a major religion by turning one of their icons into a robot with BREAST CANNONS!" I can overlook the former, and merely say "its bad".
It doesn't help that FF13's story was never really all that great to begin with, so by then, my expectations weren't high anyway; the plot was mostly there for visuals and some potentially interesting character work (which...granted, later chapters weren't very good at anyway, but the previous stuff had hope for it!) XS3...Disc 1 had some actually good stuff and ends on a "STAY TUNED FOR DISC 2!" note so you really are excited. I mean, they introduce a bunch of factors that you're curious about, Virgil's exit is a damn good scene, introduces us to Mizrahi finally and we can see him for what he really is, rather than what we were TOLD he was, and it ends with basically KOS MOS being her usual "All style, no substance" self in a nice flashy way (which is what she was good at.) Thing is...Disc 2 basically spits on all of that, and just turns into offensive stuff that even if you are someone who can overlook bad plot for gameplay, its hard to do so here.
Also, I agree about Archelyte's Steppe's music, and the fact that it IS a variation of the game's main theme just further emphasizes that it could have been an over-world theme (just about every other FF game did it...ok, FF8 didn't, using some generic elevator music that is utterly forgettable but lets not get into that. Actually, it really stands out in Dissidia's Destiny Odysseys as all the other games you're hearing their main themes during the maps...then in DO8, you hear Blue Fields and...yeah...)
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Final Fantasy 13 is Game of All The Years
My favorite completely pointless plot tumor you forgot is Rosch gets gunned down and dies in chapter 7 on camera. He presumably gets Bart-revived because uhhhh....
Also I can't wait for what you think of the finale. I'm still not even sure what the hell happened.
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Nah, FF13's plot screw ups aren't as bad as XS3 Disc 2, but only cause FF13 is not downright offensive about it. More generic bad train wrecking where its like "Do the writers have any clue where they are going with this? I mean...seriously?" rather than "hey, lets spit on a major religion by turning one of their icons into a robot with BREAST CANNONS!" I can overlook the former, and merely say "its bad".
Also, I have to add that XS3 has -the exact same issue of trainwrecking it out while not knowing what the fuck it should do with its characters while still being hugely offensive-, even moreso as a writing experience than a disrespectful spite towards the religions it draws its mythos from. I don't think people emphasize enough the fact that Xenosaga 3 has shit, shit writing, in an even more egregious level of pretentious dishonesty than TotA had, even if you completely remove any sort of religious/mythological retardation from it.
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Cid, apparently all those slaves get sold to Pittsburgh and Toronto's governments. You go to The Pitt in DLC2.
Also the green filter? Shitty. Install the Fellout mod to fix it.
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Radiant Historia - So, backtracking could stand to be made a bit friendlier and non-Stocke PCs could stand to be a bit better plotwise (or in Aht's case, shut up forever you stupid loligoat), but otherwise, 20 hours in and the game's great.
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FF13- Chapter 2. SHUT. UP. HOPE.
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Wait, super hadn't played FF13 yet?
Also, Snowfire's point-by-point summary of the FF13 plotholes is a rather fun read. If you clean it up a bit and expand it to something less casual, it could totally be a main-site article?
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super didn't get a modern gen Console until recently. Wanna say he was borrowing the 360 from Pyro for a bit to play ToV, and did something similar with a PS3? So yeah...
...oh right, I play games...
Namco x Capcom: So Klonoa/Gantz is about to join the main team! ...wait, no they aren't, THEY RAN AWAY! But we're finally going to get less earthly characters or something which means we should get some of the more interesting faces soon, right, RIGHT!?
(this didn't' stop them from giving us Hsien-ko and Felicia early mind you)
...I'm totally tempted to make an Abridged series of this game when I'm done. Due to the cast being easy to remember, I just need a game script to remind me whose around wear, and what plot points happen when and...yeah...any thoughts? (I'd be making a new topic for it mind)
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Soul U-mad: I saved everyone in the world, then I killed everyone in the world, cool story bro
Tales of Vesperia: I had to play this for like 9 hours so when I got to punch a hippie in the face I damn well punched a hippie in the face
Also I bought a PS3, ditched the 360 baked muffins, they are delicious muffins
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Tonfa: Good point. I... I did remember that weirdness when what's-her-face, other Psi-Com gal with the crop gets killed at the end of Chapter 9 thinking "Huh, we kind of have a dire named villain shortage now since Roche is also dead" but had managed to forget about it when he randomly shows up again for a boss fight. Huh. Yeah, that adds nothing.
Meeple & Jo'ou: Well, I think that XS3 Disc 2 was a bit rushed but basically fine, so hence you'll note my phrasing of "as some DLers seem to think." I'd say that my thoughts on FF13 are closer to Meeple's on XS3 - he liked Disc 1 and was disappointed in what came after, and I actually like Chapters 1-9 well enough and had hopes that seem to have been dashed. Obviously I don't have anything near the contempt that Jo'ou has for XS3 for either XS3 itself or FF13, though.
Also, Snowfire's point-by-point summary of the FF13 plotholes is a rather fun read. If you clean it up a bit and expand it to something less casual, it could totally be a main-site article?
It's currently written as requiring having played FF13 to make sense of most of it. I could rewrite it to explain what's going on more generally, but that would also be massively spoiling FF13, which meh, it's not THAT bad a game for me to basically anti-recommend (which is what I'd be doing if I laid out the entire plot so readers didn't have to play the game). It's also not even really plot-holes. Plot-holes are fine (Chrono Trigger has a bunch and who cares). It's bad plot. Characters are inconsistent with motivations set up before. Bizarre and illogical fetch quests are used when fleshing out a setting. Worst, it clashes thematically. If you're going to have a game about defying fate and commands from super-powerful beings, you need to have the characters do that, not follow the crumbs the Big Bad has set out slavishly. If they'd wanted to make a game about arranging peace and understanding between two warring houses, the characters need to have an opportunity to do this. Etc.
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You were all warned and you didn't listen to me yet again.
So when are you guys going to play Fallout?
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Disgaea 4- So, a former vampire tyrant who is now a total idiot obessed over sardines that is manipulated by his evil werewolf butler? Compare to Laharl I don't know which is worse. Though, I have wanted to ask this since Disgaea 3, Lamington, what made you think promoting Flonne to be the Archangel is a good idea???
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You were all warned and you didn't listen to me yet again.
So when are you guys going to play Fallout?
Well, maybe FF13 will have taught them a lesson.
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Pfffft, they haven't learned from the last bunches of piles of shit they have realised was shit either.
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The little I saw of the game FF13 looked promising. It's worth a shot. I'm in chapter two. The game is trying for speed, speed, speed. From switching points of view to twitchy, streamlined combat to surprisingly light on the dialog cutscenes, it's attempting to be more like a movie or action game than an RPG.
The actual execution of this is pretty terrible, though. Combat is 'streamlined' to the point that you only control one character, and it's just better to stick them on AI and let them auto target/pick the attacks anyway. There is very littler interactivity in battle, and that is a major strike against it so far. The plot has the same type of problem. You have to constantly read the datalogs to actually get the plot. The game is trying to move at such a breakneck pace that it doesn't do things like actually give you backround or enough details on the characters to make the story make sense.
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SUPER ROBOT TAISEN J
Finished! Quick overview on the units I used.
C. Brachium - Calvina (135 Kills)
- Decent, not amazing. Very durable, being both evasive and having good armor, along with its barrier. No range, though, which kinda sucks, and its finisher wasn't all that strong. Still solid.
Nadesico(Y-Unit) - Ruri (125 Kills)
- Excellent. Forced on every map, amazing targetted MAP attack, over 15000 HP, 5 Spirit pools. Also joins very early.
Layzner Mk.II - Eiji (108 Kills)
- Good, very dodgy, and quite strong. MAP attack was kind of useless, and he WAS the only one to die in the last level - he couldn't take a hit to save his life. Also, I think I would've preferred the Powered Layzner - This one had NO RANGE seeing as how it lost its missiles.
Zeorymer - Masato (106 Kills)
- Durable, and his MAP attack is amazing. Hades attack is also strong without needing many upgrades. Still, really inaccurate, and you have to go out of your way to plan to use the MAP attack, unlike ones such as the Nadesico's.
Aestivalis Akito - Akito (105 Kills)
- Earlygame - Artillery Frame support was solid. Then switched to the appropriate Melee frame for the situation. After getting Lunar Frame, stuck with that until I got Gai. Then spammed Double Gekigan Flare the rest of the game. Overall, not too bad.
Gundam Rose - George (104 Kills)
- That MAP attack is amazing. Mostly he used that a lot, and also sniped with Rose Bits. Fell off lategame and ended up not deploying him near the end, but he was amazing for midgame.
Combattler V - Hyoma (93 Kills)
- Earlygame king. That spirit pool later on is nice, too. Needs a barrier part to keep up tanking lategame, and then runs out of EN fairly quickly. Still good throughout the game.
Freedom Gundam (M) - Kira (90 Kills)
- Strike is trash. Freedom is good! His dodging is only pretty good, but his attacks are strong for a real and his MAP attack is quite good as well.
Nelly Brain - Yuu (85 Kills)
- Mostly untouchable. Solid enough support damage, enemies pretty much never targetted him.
Mazinkaiser - Koji (82 Kills)
- Strong, of course, but I actually dropped him and only used him on route splits. Nothing wrong with him, just wasn't exciting.
ARX-7 Arbalest - Sosuke (79 Kills)
- Lambda Driver makes his Shotgun pretty strong, and with Soul he can keep up damagewise. Decent, if not spectacular, real otherwise.
Baybull - David (74 Kills) and Buldy - Simone (29 Kills)
- I used them for quite a while. As soon as you get V-Max, Layzner Formation spam is AMAZING. It does incredible damage and is relatively cheap EN wise, and can be used three times in one turn. It still keeps up damagewise lategame, too! Just, the Baybull and Buldy are pretty mediocre units. The Buldy fairs a little better as a Sniper/Repairer, but the Baybull is forced to be a frontliner - a mediocre frontliner. Dropped after deployment slots started getting low.
Gundam Maxter - Chibodee (69 Kills)
- Eh. He was OK, and I mostly wanted to use the combo attack with Rose. I dragged him aroudn the whole game for it, and probably only threw it out once or twice - most of Rose's EN went towards the MAP attack. Also pretty fragile.
Voltes V - Kenichi (68 Kills)
- Solid enough Super. Combination attack with Combattler was always a strong option, and again, the big spirit pool is great.
Final Dancougar - Shinobu (65 Kills)
- Really likes a barrier part - makes him actually able to take damage. He certainly has no trouble dishing it out, anyway!
God Gundam - Domon (61 Kills)
- Dropped. Decent enough unit, though needing Max Morale for his best attack actually screwed me over once, when he lost 1 morale for an ally getting shot down (I believe so, anyway).
Hime Brain - Hime (58 Kills)
- Worse Nelly Brain. Combination attack was decent. Got replaced later on.
Archangel - Murrue (57 Kills)
- No Nadesico, but still pretty solid! Takes hits quite well, and has a respectable spirit pool, even with only three units. Guts is very useful, as is Strike. Forced, as well, so might as well make use of it.
Tekkaman Blade - D-Boy (57 Kills)
- Solid, with two lives. I probably didn't upgrade him as much as I should have, so he wasn't outstanding. Still a dependable unit.
Greimkaiser - Gale (40 Kills)
- I figured I might as well use him if I bothered to get him! Basically Baybull+, but without the combination attack. A solid unit, but he has no finisher. If he had a combo with Layzner or something he would be great.
Aestivalis Gai - Gai (26 Kills)
- Decent enough when he rejoined. His mech got like 4 upgrades in every slot for free a level after he joined, so he ended up massively overupgraded, seeing as how Nadesico was one of my favorites.
Iiko Baronz (Iiko) (12 Kills), Jonathan Baronz (Jonathan) (11 Kills)
- Untouchable lategame snipers, gave Jonathan a +3 Support Attack part and let them go to town. Excellent filler units, replaced Hime Brain and another unit when they joined. Both of them having a combination attack with Yuu kicks Hime completely off of the team. Very similar, Iiko has better Spirits, but Jonathan has friendship with Yuu.
That's everyone I used for any length of time. Game was fun, there were a couple spots that had me think for a second about what to do, but for sure one of the easier SRW's. Enjoyed it, and the english translation was good!
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The little I saw of the game FF13 looked promising. It's worth a shot. I'm in chapter two. The game is trying for speed, speed, speed. From switching points of view to twitchy, streamlined combat to surprisingly light on the dialog cutscenes, it's attempting to be more like a movie or action game than an RPG.
The actual execution of this is pretty terrible, though. Combat is 'streamlined' to the point that you only control one character, and it's just better to stick them on AI and let them auto target/pick the attacks anyway. There is very littler interactivity in battle, and that is a major strike against it so far. The plot has the same type of problem. You have to constantly read the datalogs to actually get the plot. The game is trying to move at such a breakneck pace that it doesn't do things like actually give you backround or enough details on the characters to make the story make sense.
In short: it hates letting you play.
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I'll see how it executes once you get job classes. Like most games with job systems, the combat is not good until you start unlocking things. I'm really more irked by some of the storytelling flaws. They are trying to make the game play fast, and that's cool! But you need to balance that with the need to effectively tell the story you're trying to present.
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Calling them "job classes" is an insult to games with good job class systems.
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FFXIII-
On Vanille/Fang -
*Vanille's "great shame" was simply her not telling Fang the truth about the past I think. In going along with Fang's plans to get their memories back or w/e even though Vanille hadn't really lost hers in some sort of misguided attempt to both protect Fang's feelings and in order to avoid having to fulfill her own focus of becoming Ragnarok, thus destroying the innocents of Cocoon she became inadvertently responsible for the fates of Serah and Dajh as well. Not completely though since Serah and Sazh take their own share of the responsibility (if Sazh had been watching Dajh properly perhaps he might not have wandered off) However if Vanille had told Fang the truth from the start Fang's main objective at that stage would have been probably been to try to get Vanille to fulfill her focus so she wouldn't turn Cie'th and since Vanille would rather become Cie'th than have innocents suffer any longer yeah. The same thing happened in the past before too, they were both supposed to become Ragnarok/destroy Cocoon (it's it that novella thing) but Vanille backed out and Fang was forced to become Ragnarok herself because she didn't want Vanille to become Cie'th. More or less Vanille didn't want the same thing to happen again so she hid the truth from people.
*Vanille and Fang were starting to/going to have a reaction about the state of Oerba from the view from Taejin's tower I think before Hope decided to give everybody a pep talk (as is his habit in the later chapters) I think it goes something like this -
"So what was Oerba like?"
Vanille "Well it was warm and green ... and all naturey!"
Fang "Yeah ... all around the Fal'cie it was flowers as far as the eyes could see wasn't it?"
Sazh "... view from here ain't so rosy I'm afraid"
*Vanille becomes subdued/quiet*
Lightning "You want to wait here?"
Vanille "No ... I have to see for myself"
*Vanille/Fang look*
*Fang says something about things being hopeless, about the whole quest to do something about their brands not working, Vanille is also ready to give up, Hope then grabs Vanille's arm and reassures her that they can still do it, that everything is ok and does his party pep talk thing* >_>
On NASCAR nuke -
*The "airship" the team used was actually the Fal'cie Minerva (Bart's pet owl) so we don't really know if they had control over the flying of it or not or whether they could only do what they could when they got there. In addition portals had already starting to unleash Pulse monsters all over Cocoon which was Bart's doing so Lightning and the others arriving with their summon stuff was more or less about them wanting to deal with that than wanting to slaughter innocent racing car drivers. If I remember right one of the characters even saves one of the drivers from something. Of course they probably were just making the whole situation worse over all indeed and playing right into Bart's "Pulse Invasion" plans but again I'm not sure if they had any real control of when and where they could arrive back in Cocoon.
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super didn't get a modern gen Console until recently. Wanna say he was borrowing the 360 from Pyro for a bit to play ToV, and did something similar with a PS3? So yeah...
...oh right, I play games...
Namco x Capcom: So Klonoa/Gantz is about to join the main team! ...wait, no they aren't, THEY RAN AWAY! But we're finally going to get less earthly characters or something which means we should get some of the more interesting faces soon, right, RIGHT!?
(this didn't' stop them from giving us Hsien-ko and Felicia early mind you)
...I'm totally tempted to make an Abridged series of this game when I'm done. Due to the cast being easy to remember, I just need a game script to remind me whose around wear, and what plot points happen when and...yeah...any thoughts? (I'd be making a new topic for it mind)
Go nuts. MNeidegard has a complete script FAQ of NxC as well, so you could use it for your needs.
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TO:PSP
Went on the road to Miami. Got ten more glass pumpkins before the battery died. Getting closer!
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Eh, I know I found the plot scenes at the start of FF XIII to be fairly effective. They get a decent amount of info across, and also have conflicts between characters. That said, don't have access to a copy right now, so I'll talk about what I do have access to.
Fallout: New Vegas.
Did a decent chunk of the Boomer quests today, and got my first set of power armour. Sadly, the game is a big ol jerk and does not let your buddies carry it for you. Also, ran in to Vault 11 (how the hell did it get out here?) which, while being a much more interesting place than the Fallout 3 Vaults, also reminds me as to why I really disliked Bethesda's Vault Tec as opposed to original Vault Tec. I mean, the original had the scientific study thing, sure. But it was for a few vaults to stay shut up to provide a control group against those who released back into the wild. I mean, the fact that there's all of these Vaults, but not a single Vault City says a lot (or, hell, even a freaking Shady Sands where the nearby Vault just gave up the ghost and people moved out).
Ah well, continueing to wrap up subplots until I'm satisfied and then I'll likely follow the plot to the SE.
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Eh, I know I found the plot scenes at the start of FF XIII to be fairly effective. They get a decent amount of info across, and also have conflicts between characters.
This, pretty much. Then again I was just fine with not understanding every detail about the setting at first and sorta trusting that eventually things would fall into place. Not really above reading a database for extra info in my own time either, goodness knows I did that in FFT and it certainly needs it to understand the political plot going on in the background (which granted, is probably less relevant to the main plot than FF13's).
I'm personally interested in FF13 just because its characters and their conflicts just seem far more to my taste than those in most RPGs. Not getting any "I've seen you from anime" vibes is good, as is clearly-defined characters interacting in a narrative without a silent main gumming the works. This combination feels kinda hard to find these days, at least in games that I might -also- potentially enjoy the gameplay of.
I've gotten too picky, probably. Time for more Megaman.
*replays Mega Man 9, to bring this back on topic*
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Suikoden Tierkries: I just learned there's such a thing called a "Magedom." This frightens me as it gave me the image of Mage ruling over a kingdom.
...now I'm curious to meet "King Mage" <_<
(yes, I know that tells you nothing about where I am in plot, so I'll just say I killed a giant worm.)
DMC3 Very Hard: Agni and Rudra are EVIL! EVIL I TELL YOU! EVIL!!!!!!!!!
...and I'm starting to get the hang of Nevan, which is coming in handy cause OH GOD ARCHERS!!!!
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OH wow, you just -now- learned about the Magedom? And yeah, it implies a kingdom that is ruled predominantly by (and its citizenry consists primarily of) mages. I don't know why that's scary, though...
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Not mages, Mage. Capitals are important~
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Radiant Historia
Picked this up after watching the Atlus stream. Pretty neat so far, wish the dialouge boxes didn't make the "schh" noise every time they passed, though.
RADIANT HISTORIA BOSS TOPIC INCOMING (to be abandoned)
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If it makes you feel better, I suspect that if my brother and a hand picked harem ran a country, it'd probably be a better place than the Magedon. Probably.
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Eh, I know I found the plot scenes at the start of FF XIII to be fairly effective. They get a decent amount of info across, and also have conflicts between characters. That said, don't have access to a copy right now, so I'll talk about what I do have access to.
Fallout: New Vegas.
Did a decent chunk of the Boomer quests today, and got my first set of power armour. Sadly, the game is a big ol jerk and does not let your buddies carry it for you. Also, ran in to Vault 11 (how the hell did it get out here?) which, while being a much more interesting place than the Fallout 3 Vaults, also reminds me as to why I really disliked Bethesda's Vault Tec as opposed to original Vault Tec. I mean, the original had the scientific study thing, sure. But it was for a few vaults to stay shut up to provide a control group against those who released back into the wild. I mean, the fact that there's all of these Vaults, but not a single Vault City says a lot (or, hell, even a freaking Shady Sands where the nearby Vault just gave up the ghost and people moved out).
Ah well, continueing to wrap up subplots until I'm satisfied and then I'll likely follow the plot to the SE.
Vault 21 doesn't count?
Anyway, Vault 11 is the best gaming moment of 2010, bar none. Great stuff, and a perfect example of good world-building. And unlike most vaults, it had an experiment that you might want to record the results of and wasn't just "wonder what happens if we constantly play a noise that makes people go crazy?"
Anyway, had Vault 11 played out differently they likely would have turned in to a Vault City but less assholish.
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If it makes you feel better, I suspect that if my brother and a hand picked harem ran a country, it'd probably be a better place than the Magedon. Probably.
I dont even know Mage that well, and I'd be willing to put money on him doing a better job.
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superaielman: You'll see, but the strategy is largely in the paradigm shifts. Considering the system I largely don't mind the most optimal damage-dealing combos being ready for you with how fast the game plays. The various paradigms are really about "control your AI allies in a halfway intelligent fashion" along with making each character quite unique, as they bring a different set of skills to the table.
Clear Tranquil: Fair enough about Vanille's worry. If she obliged Fang into becoming Ragnarok by her own mercy/cowardice that's interesting, though it'd be nice if they TELL US (and not in a novella!). As for the scene atop the tower, yes, but they don't talk at all inside Oerba, except when dealing with Vanille's pet robot (or the boss fight). Which is just bizarre. (As is not speculating about WHY this happened.)
As for l'Cie vs. NASCAR - no, the Pulse monsters start being released *after* Our Heroes attack. Their ship arrives, they jump out with summons at the ready and start wrecking havoc. The thing that really starts the panic is the television camera zooming in on Snow's brand when he jumps on the car, as everybody realizes that Pulse l'Cie have attacked. And what do you know, it really does turn into an invasion! If the goal is to calm the public down and not incite mass hysteria, which would play into Bart's plans, attacking a civilian event seems like a horrible way of doing it even ignoring the moral concerns. I'm really not sure what they'd have gained anyway even if the Pulse attack was already afoot - fly directly to Edenhall, if you insist on following Bart's orders while claiming not to.
Dark Holy Elf: For all the hate you hopefully skipped in that post, I still like FF13, and the characters are indeed largely an asset still. Well, at least Lightning, Snow, and Sazh are interesting enough. There's some plot stupidity they're currently mired in, but luckily that can't harm interesting characters TOO much, lest all Game Arts characters be less awesome than they are. Also agree with others that Chapter 1 of FF13 is certainly gripping enough, and I too don't mind reading some datalog entries for extra backstory.
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Finished Dead Money. Heavy foreshadowing for Ulysses in there. But it has one really great line I have to share:
"It's that PipBoy on your wrist, makes you soft. Tells you what to do, where to go, so you don't have to think."
Also the trolling with the gold bars was awesome. Worth a shitton of caps a piece but they weigh 35 pounds each. Turned on god mode to see how much it would weigh if I grabbed all of them, and it comes out to something like 1400 pounds.
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Query: Can followers come with you in Dead Money? Would probably run it solo anyway since that sounds appropriate from what little I know about it, just curious.
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Has its own set of recruits from my understanding. Some are related to the main story followers.
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They can not.
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Silent hill 3: Played through start to finish in about 4 hours (a bit slow I know). I really liked it and really can't see where people get that SH2 is the best game ever stuff. SH2 felt so incredibly lame and average that dare I say it, it comes out to me to be the worst Silent Hill game. This game for all that some people rag on it actually kept me interested while in SH2 I just didn't care about that lame ass James Sunderland.
Now a few things, correct me if I'm wrong here.
First of all whats the point of the little dream at the start? Now quite a few games (Most recent that comes to mind being PZ3) do these type of dreams/future visions but they tend to have a point. The one here has virtually no point as there is no plot, seeing of the main villain/monster and the area itself isn't even that important.
The Mall, subway and the wrecked building: Now a few things can easily be explained such as the monsters in the real world being summoned by the main villain to stop you or if you take Vincent's joke seriously they could all be innocent people that Heather sees as monsters and massacres which is always a fun thing to think about. Numb Body = Male children, Slurper = female children, Double Head = Dogs, Insane Cancer = Adult men, Closer = Adult women, Nurse = Nurse, Scraper = Order member.
The otherworld portions can be explained by the orders god being in Heather it can bring the curse of Silent hill to any location meaning even Portland which is far from Silent Hill can be demonized. However there is one thing that bugs me and that is unless you believe the monsters to be people there is a a very small amount of people in the areas you go to. Theres like two people in the mall which makes no sense as with it being a mall you'd expect more but nada the place is pretty much empty. You do find around 3 corpses in the subway but thats still too few people for my tastes.
Now characters:
Heather Mason: Even though she is a 17 year old girl she has more fire in her then all the other silent hill mains combined. She is a bit casual about the horrors of silent hill though which is a bit weird. Didn't take shit from no one and would have put a cap in Claudia's ass if not for the orders god.
Douglas Cartland: Wish he'd say just what monster he saw as it'd shed some light on what the monsters actually are as they could easily be like in SH2 where only James can see them and everyone else sees their own hell.
Besides his smacking down of the order in homecoming where he exposes them for the crappy cult they are he is extremely pointless here as you could take him out of the game and nothing would really change. Exists I guess so Heather can talk to a sane good guy.
Father Vincent: The insane goodish guy. Yeah he is a member of a cult but having his god summoned to destroy the world? Where is the money in that? You can't make a profit from that. I get the feeling he worships the order god as its a god he can know for sure exists but he doesn't want it born as he is sane enough to know he'd be one of the first to be killed. Also I love characters that do a lot of hand motions and voice inflections as there are always fun.
Leonard Wolf: Cult leader who was so insane that even his mad cultist friends thought he was just too bonkers. Not much can be said about this guy really except he is completely insane and holds the seal of Metatron the only thing he believes can stop his god from being born as he views himself as a knight who protects God.
Claudia Wolf: Disagreed with her father on his views so she had him put in a mental clinic ouch. Carries on that mad women Dahlia's plans to bring god into the world and yada yada. She apparently has powers which I've heard to be telekinesis and demon summoning which make little sense as all she has is a massive amount of blind faith in god and you never actually see these powers. Maybe its like in the movie where heavy faith in god protects you except here it gives you mad demon summoning skills.
Her eating of god was sick as she gulped down some weird monster baby from Heathers Womb that she had puked up and massively stupid as being the head of the order she should have known that birthing god in such an incomplete state wouldn't go well. Also oddly for all her know how she doesn't know her gods one weakness?
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Underpants Douglas is awesme~
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RADIANT HISTORIA BOSS TOPIC INCOMING (to be abandoned)
I've got stats for the first three bosses. Being the desert thief with the crazy 2HKO, the meh-ish bosses afterwards, too.
On Chapter 3, being a slow ass because I've NO TIME. :(
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Radiant Historia - Well I do believe shit has gotten real now.
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First of all whats the point of the little dream at the start? Now quite a few games (Most recent that comes to mind being PZ3) do these type of dreams/future visions but they tend to have a point. The one here has virtually no point as there is no plot, seeing of the main villain/monster and the area itself isn't even that important.
I would say that it was mostly a premonition of sorts of the part of her that was being brought back to Silent Hill. It's a rather complicated scenario that's left rather vague, much like the rest of the series.
As for Vincent's comment, I think it always falls back to everyone in Silent Hill or being affected by it sees their own monsters. The ones that Heather saw were likely due to Samael inside her.
(oh no Silent Hill 3 spoilers)
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Pinball Gold Pack -
Pinball Fantasies is the only one included which runs smoothly (aside from its menus, but... menus). Which is fine enough as far as I'm concerned as Fantasies nostalgia was why I picked it up in the first place.
Fish Fillets II -
I'm not sure I even managed to get through a third of the levels in this game without falling back on a walkthrough. Most of the later levels a video walkthrough. Ended up using a wildcard to skip one of the laboratory levels because the video walkthrough for it was around 8 minutes long, and they were sped up... could not be bothered. On the minus side that means I did not get all the starfish, but it's not like I had 'earned' most of them anyway.
Was really expecting an easy puzzle game, not what I got. The light humour was enough reason for me to play it but I am strange like that.
Super Robot Wars J -
Finished my patched playthrough.
Almost everyone I had available for the final level is now up to double-ace, plus a number of the people that I didn't have available such as Natarle. Only people I have on hand at the final without double-ace are Alan (single-ace), Waltfeld (single-ace), Lacus (single-ace), Iiko, Jonathon, Yzak, and the guy who doesn't count for only showing up halfway through the final. Props go to Alan for starting off at 0 kills this playthough and getting up to 71 despite the Black Wing's overwhelming lack of matching its in-show performance. Toya and Murrue both broke 200 kills.
Turn count was 483 which beats my previous of 497.
So now I have the Vorlent unlocked in case I ever want to use it. Giving it a lookover it seems thoroughly underwhelming, but considering my catastrophic failures at judging unit worth in the past I dunno whether I should trust myself on that. Either way I have no intention of replaying again any time soon.
Dialogue seemed a bit off early on, but this feeling faded as things progressed. Cannot say whether that is because the dialogue got better or because I got accustomed to it.
Etrian Odyssey 2 -
Up to floor 5. Not all that much to talk about currently.
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Radiant Historia - That sure is an ending bro. Spoilerriffic rant folllows.
Game's rough around the edges in some places. Stunning enemies on the field could be handled better, as could character interaction, and the difficulty could be more consistant and more challenging, for all that I'm not sure if I was actually overleveled much. I don't think I engaged in that much grinding, but at the same time I was fairly fight happy so who knows. Still, it's a fun system. Largely linear despite the premise but hey.
Plot's fairly coherent, and leaders fighting for land and power amidst the backdrop of a desertifying continent is a nice change of pace.
And now characters. Here thar be SPOILARS, so the more squemish of you may want to avert your eyes or something.
Eyes averted yet? Good.
Stocke: Stocke's pretty refreshing, gotta say. Intelligent, mature, anti-social but not so much that he comes across as a jerkass, works with the rest of the PC cast fairly well, knows what he's got to do and doesn't spend time bitching about it even if it means becoming a sacrifice to save the continent from turning into one massive desert and doesn't act shocked by the game's pretty transparent reveals. I guess one can argue that he veers a little too much into Gary Stu territory? Not sure how they expect anyone to buy the fact that the guy's 19 other than JRPG logic, though. Anyways, Stocke's a fairly good allrounder, which is nice since he's forced and everything.
Raynie: Largely there. She has her moments and her (brief) romantic subplot with Stocke could've been handled worse than it was but largely just exists as Stocke's subordinate #1. Has attack magic and POIZN (which actually works on most bosses! And isn't great) but the MP is pretty epic and the attack magic doesn't really take off until you get a good magic-boosting spear.
Marco: Largely just exists as Stocke's subordinate #2, more so than Raynie. The two have some okay interaction but eeeeeh. Is the healer, sorta. Once he gets his hidden skills he's good at getting randoms into position for someone else to apply MASSIVE damage and he's got a couple useful buffs, but healing spells are simply not that great in this game outside of Super Heal.
Rosch: Is Stocke's best bud, and is pretty good. He's loyal to his country but not aggressively stupid about it, gets on a fairly believeable angst train fueled by guilt and shock that he gets over in a reasonable amount of time and suitable application of friendly beatings, and is overall sympathetic, for all that he could've benefitted from more cast interactions. Is tank, but has pretty poor availability. More's the pity.
Aht: SHUT UP FOREVER YOU STUPID LOLIGOAT. *ahem* Aht is pretty bad as a character, not doing much but be annoying, whiny, and clingy towards Stocke. To make matters worse, she occasionally does this while being transparently cryptic and MYSTERIOUS LOL. To add insult to injury she's fairly decent as far as PCs go. Durability sucks but traps are pretty great for damage, for all that they're no good against immovable enemies, and she's a better healer than Marco, for all that that says little, and she is only a bit behind Marco and Raynie in terms of availability.
Eruca: Not very interesting, but not bad. Princess who wants to do the right thing but as some of the Bad Ends show she can be a bit overzealous about it. Is also partly responsible for the transparent MYSTERY babble but to her credit she actually tries to tell Stocke that he's actually her brother and the sacrifice needed to stop the desertification of the continent but nooooo Aht has to come in and whine and make the point be belabored even further the stupid loligoat grumble grumble. *ahem* Anyways, needs to insult her mother more. Also needs to insult Dias and Selvan more. Is (largely non-elemental) attack mage, but gets some other stuff, but the skillset needs some time to take off and the physical durability is epic. Godlike MDef but the game doesn't make you care about it.
Gafka: Is a Gutral, therefore boring. He even manages to be a pretty boring PC. Whoo.
NPCs! More spoilers!
Protea: Is a hilariously cartoonish bitch only out for her own power and wealth and gets *owned* by her "trusted" advisors in the Alternate History. Fun enough, and blatant powerlust is fine as far as motives go for a villaness of her level of importance.
Raul: Works as a reasonable authority figure in Alistel. He knows something rotten is afoot and who might be behind it, and is proven right in fairly short order, and does his best to put things right. Too bad we never learned the name of his secretary, though.
Hugo: Like Protea, Hugo is out for power and nothing but. The difference is that he's vastly more effective about it, whipping the people of Alistel into a religious frenzy in the Alternate History and very nearly conquering the continent. Of course the heroes being as awesome as they are reverse this trend and send the guy spiraling into a pretty epic breakdown.
Dias and Selvan: Can't really be judged seperately. Felt sorta poorly fleshed out? They're the power behind Protea and, of course, wind up betraying her out of some grudge against the Granorg royal family, but they never really explain what that grudge was. That you never got to fight Dias was also hella lame IMO. Still, their betrayal of Protea was pretty great.
Viola: Viola kinda follows a trope I hate. Fighting for the Alistelians who fought and died for Hugo's lust for power is fine. Fighting the guys who were trying to put a stop it it? Granted she was dying of an unspecified disease and wanted to go out by suicide by cop, as it were, but really, Viola, really?
Garland: Alright, but mostly there.
Teo and Lippti: Clearly want to help Stocke but are bound by DA RULES. Granted we do see actual reprecussions when they do break DA RULES so at least it's not terrible.
Heiss: Hoo boy. Heiss is the one behind everything, the war between Alistel and Granorg *and* the increasing desertification, as he killed the man (his brother, no less) who was supposed to perform it the last time around. His motivation? He wants to save Stocke from being the sacrifice. He thinks that the method used to stabilize the continent is incredibly fucked up (and the heroes agree) and that humans are too bastardly to be worth saving. The game doesn't try to portray him as anything other than a bastard drunk on despair who wanted to save his nephew from being sacrificed regardless of the cost, which is made clear in the true ending. Always nice to see such well-intentioned motives in a villain, for all that his actions are extreme (though again, the game doesn't try to pretend that he wasn't a bastard).
Game rates around an 8. Game's a little rough in places, like I said, but otherwise it's pretty great and people should play it.
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Took my MvC3 online, actually. About 50% win ratio, primarily playing Dante/Chris/Magneto. Fucking Sentinel, man.
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Get used to seeing Dante and Sentinel in virtually every match. They are the ken and Sagat of this game.
Underpants Douglas is awesme~
Heather's reaction to him at the start becomes a lot more justified thats for sure.
As for Vincent's comment, I think it always falls back to everyone in Silent Hill or being affected by it sees their own monsters. The ones that Heather saw were likely due to Samael inside her.
Yeah I've always liked that but what I just don't like is you never see other peoples monsters (Through their vision). I guess in a way you see the abstract daddy which is someone elses monster but that in itself is an oddity as why can you see them while no one sees yours? Then again all this only started in SH2 as everyone in SH1 can see them.
Getting SH The Room next because even though I've heard nothing but hate for the thing it looks interesting to me.
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I've run into surprisingly few Sentinels. More than, say, MODOK, but about the same as Spencer.
Dante is everyfuckingwhere, though.
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Barkley Shut Up And Jam Gaiden - YES.
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I've run into surprisingly few Sentinels. More than, say, MODOK, but about the same as Spencer.
Dante is everyfuckingwhere, though.
I've only seen one other guy play Dante. Sentinel, though, it's always that fucking alternating high/low lasers shit.
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My online experience is much like Shale's, few Sentinels but those Dantes are everywhere.
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A post I know at least one of you has been waiting for for a while now... (I hope you're not too disappointed with it)
Doma Does "Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble"
A little bit of background - I got this back in December from a man who shall remain nameless pending the lawsuit. I installed it and played for about half an hour before I took a break due to my computer imploding in upon itself (current status: after installing '98, the computer will no longer read any monitor, despite being able to do so though the entire installation). Partially out of fear that it was this game that destroyed my computer, I didn't install it on the replacement PC that I can get on about once every few days or so - until I said "screw it" and installed it anyway. Now, I'm not sure if there are multiple scenarios or branching paths or whatever, so I'll try to be a little vague in the plot details.
The title screen has nice music. I note that because there's very little audio through the rest of what I've played so far. I'm taken to a screen where I get to choose my "queen", the leader of the harem gang that I'll be building through the game. I really should have written down who I picked, but I forgot. I'll note it for the next post, but I do know it's the one who was talking about being "new".
I arrive at school and promptly begin my first tutorial in the fine arts of Taunting. And yes, your first thought was right - it's essentially insult swordfighting from Monkey Island. Unfortunately, there are apparently a few different pools of insults, so my taunt pool is still very small right now. After successfully taunting, I get my first lackey! I go through the introduction and learn two other minigames: Expose, which is deciphering a sentence through multiple choice words; and Fib, which is a cross between Liar's Dice and poker (I've still got RDRed on the mind). My team hits a snag when I run into some bad luck when trying to get a hall pass and I lose two of my girls to detention, but I get replacements a few minutes later so it's all good.
The story so far boils down to a stranger in town becoming the handyman of the school so he can mack it with the science teacher, but there have been accidents due to faulty items so he's been arrested. My girls are trying to find out what's going on, and end up stumbling onto a seductive new "adult game" that I need to learn. What is it? Will I need both hands to play it? Is that last question more or less creepy than what will actually be the truth of the adult game? Find out next time, in a few days when I get my next chance to use that computer.
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Hahaha totally worth it. I love this game. It is essential a game of Clue on a pretty epic scale. For everyone that likes boardgames you should check it out.
Merry Christmas, I believe I sent it around that time.
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MVC3- Played this online last night. Did well against Andy and Tal. I'm using a mix of Cap/Akuma/Ryu/Sential/Storm/Zero/Hulk/Haggar/Wolverine right now.
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Radiant Historia
Okay, now the constant switching between timelines is starting to aggravate me.
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Bioshock 2 - I killed Mr. Bubbles and became Mr. Bubbles, fear me
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Tactics Ogre:PSP
This is taking entirely too long to farm up 30 glass pumpkins. I MUST be doing something wrong or I'm farming them the super duper slowest way possible.
I have 17 so far and I have been trying since late Saturday (I haven't spent all day every day playing this mind you, but still!)
Jeez Louise!
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Hotel Dusk: 9:00-10:00PM. Love the story, hate the game. It's... just too utterly simplistic on the problem solving aspect. There's no feeling of achievement at all. Even Press X to Win games got more out of it. I wish I could be reading a book of this story instead.
Legaia 2: Just beat RAYGAR THE BRAVE and some silly monster. Maya is talking and fighting again, because she likes gears and fighting. The Raygar fight... mixed feelings. I can't say it was hard, even though I wiped twice. It was more... tedious? Nice tricks, with the resummoning support when both are taken down AND when he's at 25% or so HP. Didn't see the latter coming and got overwhelmed before I could rekill one of the supports. Not too frustrating though, so I'll tip my hat I guess for waking me up from the Press X to Win stupor AI2 put me in. Time to head back to Nohl and get some victory pudding.
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some silly monster
Don't you be talking about Slogar that way!
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To Random Con-
I always find Aht being an annoy loli goat to be quite funny. As despite her effort to prevent the BIG REVEAL, Stocke has already figure it out himself way ahead of the time. It is pretty interesting to see Stocke pretend to be unaware while observe the other's behavior when ever something about the BIG REVEAL is brought up.
But how can you say Gafka is a boring PC? No body does the gird shifting better than him. A ridiculous amount of entire role shifting, and that one broken move that shifts all enemy into one grid in the center. Then there is good hit count with none suck damage which is good for increasing the damage multiplier for combo, especially for immobile bosses.
As for Viola, her motive is actually pretty simple. 1. she couldn't bring herself to abandon the people who still bought Hugo's lies. 2. she know she'll die, so she intentionally fight Stocke believing she can use her death as a effective mean to cease all possible resistance from the remaining Alistelians.
Tactics Ogre:PSP
This is taking entirely too long to farm up 30 glass pumpkins. I MUST be doing something wrong or I'm farming them the super duper slowest way possible.
I have 17 so far and I have been trying since late Saturday (I haven't spent all day every day playing this mind you, but still!)
Jeez Louise!
This looks natural. There is a reason why people are saying recruiting Deneb is worse than VP1 A end.
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But how can you say Gafka is a boring PC? No body does the gird shifting better than him. A ridiculous amount of entire role shifting, and that one broken move that shifts all enemy into one grid in the center. Then there is good hit count with none suck damage which is good for increasing the damage multiplier for combo, especially for immobile bosses.
I think we're talking somewhat at cross purposes here, since I didn't claim he wasn't an effective PC, just the skillset takes a pretty long time to come into its own and before that point he's essentially Rosch with less physical durability but more speed. Every other character manages to be more distinct than that earlier.
As for Viola, her motive is actually pretty simple. 1. she couldn't bring herself to abandon the people who still bought Hugo's lies. 2. she know she'll die, so she intentionally fight Stocke believing she can use her death as a effective mean to cease all possible resistance from the remaining Alistelians.
Yeah her motivations were abundantly clear and I don't judge her too harshly for it but it still left a sour taste in my mouth considering she was actually a fairly reasonable character beforehand.
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You guys really should play Fallout.
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Dissidia 12- Despite the bullshit of item grinding all over again.... My Home Sweet Home and Someday Dream Will End is actually in the game!! YEEEES!!!
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Mildly annoyed that the store that I preordered Dissidia 012 from didn't give me my reminder call...
Guess I'll pick it up tomorrow and be the last one to the party after the entire game has been streamed on youtube/whereever.
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If getting a game 24 hours later than the internet bothers you so much, then maybe you should have remembered the date yourself~
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LFT: Blasting through the deep dungeon. Floor 1-2 were pretty academic. Rudivich's superfight was pretty tough. The boss not only had good support that took a lot of time to kill, he had offense to spare- and it's a good level for earth slash, which is his main move. I had a reset here, but it wasn't too bad.
Zalmo, ouch. He had good support (watch the hell out for the holy dragons) , and he had good offense. Everything's durable as well. I took this fight lightly and got my ass handed to me the first time. Came back, took it slower and managed it well enough. Bariten's fight was more annoying than anything else. Cid and Malak nuked most of the ninjas before they could do anything, and dance is completely worthless at this point for enemies. I did appreciate the damage dance triggering speed up for Cid a couple of times, though! Bariten himself managed to annoy the hell out of me with snipe, but it wasn't anything fatal.
Izlude himself was a threat on his floor, but only if he used his physical/breaks. Jump is a wasted action, as you can deal with it's damage or simply move the target out of the way. Had Beo and Malak work over the support with status while Cid mowed through them with damage. Izzy had no magic evasion, so Beo worked him over with drain in a hurry.
Funeral was worse than the Goblins fight. Even ignoring that Mimes can't mime dance/sing any more, those skillsets are just too damn slow at this point in LFT to be effective. Funeral himself wasn't a threat.
Setups:
Ramza
Squire
H Bag, Paladin Shield, Thief Hat, Secret Clothes, Setiemson. Guts, Draw Out, Blade Grasp, Defense Up, Move+3
Orlandu
Holy Swordsman
Excalibur, Genji Shield, Thief Hat, Genji Armor, Bracer. All Swordskill, Item, Speed Save, Attack Up, Move+3
Olan
Astrologist
Madlemgen, Thief Hat, Power Sleeve, Genji Gauntlet. Starry Heaven, Item, MP Switch, Two hands, Move+3
Malak
Hell Knight
Masamune, Masamune, Thief Hat, Snow muffler, Sprint Shoes. Untruth, Battle skill, Blade Grasp, Equip Katana, Teleport
Beowulf
Archer
Rune Blade, Venetian Shield, Thief Hat, Snow Muffler, Sprint Shoes. Charge, Magic Sword, Abandon, Equip Sword, Move+3
Ramza opens up every fight by using Masamune. He then uses cheer up and yell to keep things moving. He's very good in his Sacred Slayer role. Cid is my heavy duty damage dealer. Speed Up leaves Cid vunerable to some of the physical attacks that the others shrug off, but he has nearly 600 HP at this point and the extra speed adds up extremely quickly for him. Olan is a surprisingly effective attacker. I haven't been using Galaxy stop in the DD, since I wanted to get a reasonable feel for the challenge of the fights. He's a good item slinger as well. Malak is frog bombing, which is very good in the DD. Not only does it take out a target, it's instant and ignores all forms of evasion. He's also extremely fast, thanks to innate two swords and good base speed. Battle skill's to slow down a boss as need be, and dispel in a pinch. Beowulf is doing his usual DD ownage thing, with an extra bonus from LFT Archers having an awesome innate movement skill. I'd probably consider turning him back into a Temple Knight if the second Excalibur in the DD hadn't been removed. Shame, that. Beo had been running Counter Flood for most of the game, but it wasn't effective enough in the DD to make it worthwhile.
This team's all about getting the drop on things. Beo's my slowest PC at 12 speed unhasted. The team's so fast that any moves with charge abilities in large fights is rendered useless on the enemy side.
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Dead Money: Started this up, played an hour or so. Said hour contained two NPC conversations with a bit of me shooting radios in the interim. All of it was massively more intriguing than anything in Fallout 3. It's good to be back.
Also, I'm running around with Motor-Runner's helmet on right now because the game won't remove it from my inventory under any circumstances (and I can't toss it because it's tagged as a plot item). I'm sure one of the Fort McCarren officers were supposed to take it when I finished that quest and can only assume the game bugged out there, but hey, free DR when I'm not actually supposed to have any.
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RH-
Oh, okay, Eruca gets what amounts to Super Blink. Sure, whatever.
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Fallout: NV.
So, after having resolved the issues with the Brotherhood of Steel and the Boomers, I wander off to the Strip to finish a few side quests. With those done, I figure it's finally time to start the plot back up again. That Caesar bloke pleasantly discusses philosophy with me for a bit before I decide to see what's up with this chip. Then, I return, off Benny (less for revenge, and more because I know he'll turn on me later if I do let him live) and find out that yet another person wants Mr. House dead. Man, the guys friendliest to him are the NCR, and that's just because they haven't asked me to off him yet, not because they actually like him.
So, I stop off with the Brotherhood of Steel beforehand and ask to join, cause I've got this suit of Power Armour wearing out my back that I'd like to use, and in order to join I need to wipe out some skeezebuckets that pissed off one of my companions through corporate murder. I can dig this, yo. And this is where I leave off, headed to the Strip for Murder Death Kill Party 2181.
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Fucking WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
TO:PSP 30 Pumpkins farmed!
Time to make this witch my bitch.
I can finally go ahead and continue to enjoy this game!
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Dead Money: Started this up, played an hour or so. Said hour contained two NPC conversations with a bit of me shooting radios in the interim. All of it was massively more intriguing than anything in Fallout 3. It's good to be back.
Also, I'm running around with Motor-Runner's helmet on right now because the game won't remove it from my inventory under any circumstances (and I can't toss it because it's tagged as a plot item). I'm sure one of the Fort McCarren officers were supposed to take it when I finished that quest and can only assume the game bugged out there, but hey, free DR when I'm not actually supposed to have any.
Are you in a save started pre-patch? I heard that got fixed but wasn't retroactive.
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Fucking WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
TO:PSP 30 Pumpkins farmed!
Time to make this witch my bitch.
I can finally go ahead and continue to enjoy this game!
Congrat, and you shall find out how much she got nerfed.
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Hi everyone.
First of all, sorry to Super for largely ignoring the very nice attempts to keep contact. It wasn't the right moment.
Good to be back. Lately, I've been lurking 'What games are you playing' here, because hey, it's still fun. I thought I'd change my life completely in a few years, but nope. It's way better that way, honestly. You should live your true nature, even if your true nature is playing videogames in ridiculous ways and talking about it. I've nearly perfectly completed a "Very Hard No Allies No Combat Ten Charisma No Stealing No Resets" challenge in Fallout New Vegas, and trust me, it is 100% retarded.
I got a 360 (and a Wii, but it's collecting dust) Honestly, I always thought that each generation of consoles was better than the last, and this time it's no different. While there's a distinct lack of JRPGs, everything else seems to have gotten better. Since I played JRPGs nearly exclusively before and still don't mind the change, it's a good sign. Plus, you can't go wrong with either the 360 or the PS3 since they're pretty much the same thing.
Achievements/trophies are very nice. 1000/1000ing a game is satisfying, fun, makes you try new things and makes the game last longer. Everything is good as long as you can manage to ignore the more ridiculous/stupid ones (like those in Nier and Assassin's Creed) and to never go achievement hunting for the sake of it.
I'll probably talk about other games later, but right now I'm playing Dragon Age, Ultimate Special Deluxe Edition.
The main character is an archer commoner rogue dwarfess, and she's absolutely awful in combat. In fact, I immediatly switch to whatever mage is in my party to nuke everything in every battle. The beginning was painful since I started on the highest difficulty setting, I had to restart the first boss battle about 10 times. The battle system is kind of an imprecise mess but the mechanics are very good. Overall: nothing too impressive, but it's fun.
Bioware knows how to write good games better than just about any other game developer, but romance in their games is always the same, and it's starting to get creepy. Flirt with a character for hours and hours, then: Sex! You get an achievement, and speaking to that character again is pretty much useless. Wow. It's unrealistic, and it makes romance look both idealized and awful at the same time.
A -much- better and realistic approach would be to have sex happen near the beginning of the relationship, -then- true love blossoms as both characters talk with each other for hours. Then maybe, oral sex. Then you get the achievement. Ok, nevermind about this whole thing.
By the way, I'm going for both Alistair and Leliana.
I've just burned through 3 DLCs; they're a complete joke in this game, especially compared to Dead Money in FO New Vegas and everything in ME2. Oh well, the Ultimate Edition makes me not care.
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Hey, great to see you back!
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Indeedy.
I haven't played jack shit in like a week. :(
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Hi both of you!
I brought the dog back too.
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Hello person-I-don't-actually-know. It's good to hear that your attempt to completely change yourself was resolved with the realization that accepting who you are makes you into a better person faster than forcing a change.
Also, you have great taste in dogs and avatars.
Playing: Ar Tonelico
This game. THIS game. This... GAME! It started out kind of slow, but had a really nice setting and the Dives were an interesting fantasy-world-metaphor for tackling the concept of a sexual relationship without actually devolving into anime porn. The battle system was also really unique, though a bit too easy.
Then the game goes on, and the realization dawns that the exposition is never actually going to end. The entire game IS the setting. There's a plot trying to happen, but it's watered down with "we have to go look at THIS now". Overall, this is somewhat forgivable, but then the game crashes and burns its relationship metaphor in the most terrible ways possible, and there's nothing left to care about in the story, because paying attention to the story just makes me angry at the wasted potential of the Dives.
The challenge does ramp up a little bit if you're not power-levelling though, and I have to say that I'm actually really enjoying the boss fights and some of the randoms here at the end of Part II. So... there is that. Still... the game is working out to be somewhere in the 2/10 rating due to just how badly it destroyed its relationship metaphor.
Also, Aurica has one of the prettiest weird-as-hell character designs that I've ever seen, despite not really liking her very much as a character. (Misha totally wins as a character, but has the most horrifying weird-as-hell character design I've ever seen, so they even out.)
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Miracles happen if you believe in the heart that believes in America.
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Hi, Fenrir! Nice to see you back again!
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Miracles happen if you believe in the heart that believes in America.
Speaking of miracles... Fucking magnets. How do they work?
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Nice, Fenrir's back! Party time!~
Miracles happen if you believe in the heart that believes in America.
*Salutes*
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Fenrir's back!
Lock up your wives!
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Disgaea- Pringer X UGGGHHHHHH!!!!!! I don't want to GRIIIIIIIND!!!! God, and there is still Dissidia 012......
Ah, wait, Fenrir is back! Yay
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Nice. Welcome back, Fenrir.
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Man, next thing you know, ID will be back.
Welcome back, guy.
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Welcome back Fenrir, good to see you back and hopefully enjoying yourself. I hope even if you decided that you enjoy games you got something out of the time away from them. Time makes the heart grow fonder and all that. It doesn't really do much harm to give up the games for a bit and go live life a bit outside the box and so on, even if it is just to do the "normal" thing. Certainly hasn't done me any harm to give up a bit and take a corporate job and so on. Edit - That is to say, man you have been missed.
Dragon Age 2 Demo - I guess I may as well play all the classes. Think I have hammered out which class I will be playing as with what kinds of weapons and so on. Gods I obsess over this stuff way to much.
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I haven't played jack shit in like a week. :(
This.
Ah so it's the mysterious Fenrir of DL lore and legend that people (ok super) told me about in reverent tones. I'm in the same boat as Djinn. Nice to meet you and your dog~
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Are you in a save started pre-patch? I heard that got fixed but wasn't retroactive.
Yep. Just continued off my original game from November or so.
Hi both of you!
I brought the dog back too.
WHAT IS THIS MADNESS. Fenrir don't play Dragon Age on hard mode the first time through, it's bad for you. Normal is brutal enough. And yeahhhh the way sex winds up being the apparent pinnacle of DA relationships always kinda bothered me, largely because the game's banter is way more fun than watching underwear-clad character models grope each other.
Ar Tonelico is sometimes okay but mostly it sucks.
Accurate but needs more Lyner hate.
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Ar Tonelico is sometimes okay but mostly it sucks.
Oh yeah forgot to say, it is okay, you don't have to tell me I was right. I already knew.
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FENRIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^
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Ar Tonelico is sometimes okay but mostly it sucks.
Oh yeah forgot to say, it is okay, you don't have to tell me I was right. I already knew.
Well, they managed to make 2 more games for it, so I'm kind of hoping that they iron out some of the crap by AT3. There's enough interesting setup and gameplay mechanic unique-ness that I'd be willing to play it if they had a little less exposition, a less bland main, and actually utilized their sex metaphor without mixing it up with an awkward terrible scene about a girl who has to get raped every three months OR SHE'LL DIE... and then the game plays off the scene as romantic.
Yeah, if they can get rid of THAT, then I think I could enjoy AT2 or AT3.
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http://ar-tonelico.jp/at3/wp/wp_03_1280.jpg
That is what you are looking at in the future.
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Hmm... the character designs got significantly less interesting and there seems to be a lack of anything male in the entire cast... but it doesn't look outright offensive just from a picture.
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I can't be the only one besides Grefter who is excited for AT3's prime feature: Hold R1 + R2 + L1 + L2 and waggle to strip clothes off your lolirapebaitdolls. Wii, you have been outdone by the PS3 at last. At least until We Dare comes out. (search for it on youtube, European Ubisoft is fucking nuts.)
Speaking of oversexualized lolis: Hyperdimension Neptunia. One must build their list of jRPGs Niu won't play.
Never have I played a game and felt trolled from the very beginning to the scenes after the credits. Not in a way like this game's plot so awful like XS3 awful, but in a way of "we're just fucking around making this game. Don't take us seriously one bit." It's nice that NISA did the their best localization job ever and took the trainwreck beyond our feeble minds. The first scene features the Xbox chick making fun of the Wii for having small boobs because Microsoft represents America and we have giant breasts and cocks compared to the inferior baka gajins. The very next scene, we're treated to a very Ko balanced nurse into BDSM complete with CG and breast jiggle. Along the way, we try to reference as many video games as possible and it's not subtle about it at all. The great video game developer of Playstation land named Zack Unfair depressed about the unsuccessful GG12 (GREAT GREED 12?, YESZ!) compared to GG7-10 and his woes of GG13 development. They even make fun of Guilty Gear and Tales of Vesperia for the obscure references. They did a great job capturing the personallity of the game consoles well: Playstation 3 is a hardworking girl that does everything and totally tsundere for Sega.(?) Xbox 360 is a gamer chick that tries to get minors to play "zombie filled mall surviving simulator" and makes blog posts about pre-ordering "Hoop": Reach. Wii is a stuck up bitch who thinks she's better than everyone and swears a lot to hide her childish demeanor. It's quite brilliant if you get past the whole "everyone is an anime girl."
Too bad the actual gameplay is terrible because Idea Factory is Idea Factory. They're on the right track though. The true ending is straightfoward if a bit annoying, there's no stupid item synthesis that requires grinding randoms for 5% rare drops, and bosses don't randomly bust out a full screen OHKO attack. I didn't mind the idea of reactionary items once you level up enough, if you only you could heal outside of battle and the weakest PCs is the only character with revival for 80% of the game. Uploading images would have been nice if they could have been bigger. I'm glad I wasn't the only one to put Gutsman's ass on Purple Heart's ass.
EDIT: HOLY SHIT IT'S FENRIR
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Man, next thing you know, ID will be back.
Welcome back, guy.
This calls for the Final Countdown. *Nod* And welcome back, Fenrir.
LFT- Cleared most of the DD. Horror was a fantastic fight- no resets but lots of tension, etc. END was brutal. The trick to clearing it is statusing out the support as fast as humanely possible. You *need* to break/disable those knight's weapons. I stole them, but battle skill is probably more useful. Had a ton of resets of the fight. A lucky Galaxy stop resolving did wonders for sorting through all the shit.
I picked a very good team for the DD. Malak, Beowulf, and Cid are all in their elements in the DD, and Olan is as awesome as ever. I've seen (not really fought) the rest of the the END battles.
Ko loop can be bested without the math skill trick, but man. You need to use a super defensive setup and hope your various breaks/status skills don't miss at just the wrong time. You can also go low faith and stomp the shit out of the fight as well.
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Holy shit Fenrir came back everybody party.
Glad to see you're doing well, man.
SRW A Portable: I forget exactly how far I was last time I posted about this. Got the God Gundam, it's awesome, pretty sure I recruited Master Asia because Fuunsaiki hasn't joined. The last fight against Master Asia was an incredible pain - I was almost dry on SP and he was (a) extremely evasive and (b) able to cast Guts whenever he hit 40% health. Infinitely. I finally got a lucky hit with Shine Spark.
The level where the Nadesico decides to blow up my dudes was even more annoying than usual because it comes in the middle of a fight against AP's ridiculous Gespensts that I hate. I reset on that a couple of times before turtling my way to victory. Had to give up on any hope of killing Vindel for loot, though.
Anyway, now I'm on Grendizer's debut. All Dynamics present and accounted for, woohoo.
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Grandia LLG! The exciting finale.
A few notes first. Right here at the top of this update is the last time to buy anything in the game. This point of no return is obviously not announced. You get three dungeons with a ton of moneybags in them but nothing. to. buy. And very few stashing places for that matter. Grandia would be regarded as a ridiculously badly designed game if any of this mattered at all on a normal playthrough (it doesn't because you can't die)
Oh and you lose Feena for yet another extended period of time because what kind of scrub would rather have a full battle party anyway, right FF13? Also I wished to free you from those wings that torment you so. Mullen is almost Chaos Wars bad.
Mage King (Justin 25, Rapp 25, Liete 31) (1 reset): Body, Head and Wand. Body and Head share their HP, Wand is an optional target. 4500/3000 HP I believe. Body spams Howlnado for 70 MT damage every turn. This is very bad. It does Vanish away your buffs if you try anything other than damage and healing obviously because that is how lategame Grandia rolls. Head uses Atomic Shot that covers a quarter of the platform you're on. Sometimes this ends up firing at nothing, most of the time you're looking at 30-50 damage though. Wand mostly uses a scrub AoE physical for 20ish damage. Occasionally though it OHKOs a PC with GadZap (150 damage). First time through I die because I can't keep up with Howlnado once resources start getting depleted and there's the occasional Gadzap thrown in. I then reload, put on a few wind blockers, take 15 minutes to trek through the dungeon, and steamroll the fight. Oh and obviously the boss is right next to the save point but the game doesn't give you a path back once you reach the boss even though the dungeon gimmick is about new paths being created between platforms when you do stuff because that would be entirely too sensible and clearly defeat the true challenge of the game. Haha Grandia designers you sure got me.
Gaia Battler 4 (Justin 26, Rapp 26, Liete 31): 4500/2500HP. No this isn't hard even with a missing PC. Obviously this one has Vanish too. Of note, the sleep physical gets Liete once even though she's wearing a Talisman.
Mullen (Justin 26) (2 resets): Hardest beatable boss in the game !! I am actually serious, Justin has 150 HP and Mullen hits hard and is crazy fast. As a small mercy I have one auto-life Revival Stone left on Justin. First time in, I take hits in the face for 40x2 from his standard physicals and the rest of his skillset isn't any more merciful. I can't really chop through 3k HP fast so back to the drawing board we go.
I need to equip for defense obviously, but this leaves Justin sorely lacking in speed and I can't have being doubled on a regular basis. I swap out the Talisman for Hurricane Belt (+50 wit). This leaves me with +4 status resistance from the Spirit Shield. Which means Mullen can and will inflict Moveblock with any physical hit. Ah status resistance, you are almost universally worthless. This means I have even less offense, oh well. I hang with him for a bit and then make the grave mistake of trying to Defend through one of his specials. Protip: Never defend against anyone faster than you in a duel. The defend command fails ANYWAY (what), and I get tripleturned and die.
I decide to ditch my axe training plan and get the Spirit Sword for pure offense. This means I hit for around 250 with a combo, which aside from turn 1 Midair Cut is all the offense I will use in this battle. Well, I do cancel almost any special I can with Critical for 150 damage or so. With Mullen's speed this is often not possible though. So Mullen has physical hits, 5-20x2. One of the least threatening parts of his moveset and he loses the basic combo quickdraw to Justin, amusingly enough. Sonic Boom hits for 30-40, not worth cancelling since there are much worse things. Like Rising Dragon Cut, which hit for 70. Or Fireburner for 80, or Zap-All for almost 100. He also loves placing buffs on himself. When this happens I lay down one level of Diggin' to bait him into Vanishing it, which is a losing trade for him turnwise and means he can't get up to +7atk/+7spd or something equally ridiculous. Finally he can cast Alhealer+ for 300. This is really annoying but not worth canceling, while you are doing damage slower than he heals it is at least a turn he is not crushing your face with Zap All. Healing is done either with Healer or with Crimson Potions when you just need stronger faster healing. I lose the revival stone to a double turn but eventually manage to prevail and become the mightiest swordsman in all the land.
Nice of you to return for the final dungeon Feena, you've only missed half of this disc's bosses.
Gaia Trent (Justin 27, Feena 24, Rapp 26, Liete 31): It is almost unscaled from the original Trent, Flowerbeam hits for 100 I guess, woo. Oh and it has Vanish and the final dungeon boss gimmick, universal elemental resistance. Hooray for making even more battle options useless, now you can't do shit with magic. Sleep Pollen hits through Liete's Talisman a few times here, which means:
a) Talisman is actually +7 status resistance and Liete has undocumented status vulnerability for some reason
b) Grandia coding is fucked
I could buy either one.
Gaia Armor (Justin 27, Feena 24, Rapp 26, Liete 31) (2 resets): Scaled up Massacre Machine. 6500 HP. Standard boss gimmicks. Eye casts Gravity (-4 to -7 MOV on one, essentially makes them immobile), Vanish and Healer for 500. Body either uses various worthless physicals or Killer Tackles a pack of people for 80. I lose twice because of doubleturn Killer Tackle. Third time of the same gets the win, standard stuff, bait Vanish with one buff layer, use physical attacks, heal with the -MOV character.
BAAL, IS ACTUALLY A TENTACLE (Justin 28, Feena 25, Rapp 27, Liete 32) (1 reset): Four targets. Baal has 7000 HP and beating him ends the battle. Tentacles have 6000 each. Gaia Cyst has 4000 and is straight up immune to elements instead of just resistant. Baal has Seed Smash for 50ish MT damage, Grand Cross for the same deal except it sucks the PCs in front of Baal first, Gaia Tail for 40-60 to one PC and dispels their stat changes. And Vanish because ST Dispel with damage is obviously not enough. Right Tentacle uses pretty much every stat debuff in the game and can cast Alhealer+ for...300, I think. Left Tentacle spams a whole lot of mid-high tier offensive magic. Gaia Cyst spams Deathmark, which is a giant laser sweeping the whole room and does 40ish damage. First time in I get overwhelmed by all the damage and die in short order. Switching in an equipment set built for maximum magic resistance I head back in, and...surprisingly there's no negative status to be seen. Huh. One layer of Starlight Symphony both gives a nice boost and counteracts the stat-down assault as Baal will eventually use a turn to Vanish it. Damage is manageable when you roughly halve Left Tentacle's spell rampage and cancel Gaia Cyst every chance you get. Once Cyst is down (this phase takes plenty of consumables). I go after the main body, since killing the tentacles would just drag out the fight. It's fairly easy to cancel the main body's big hitters in this phase too. Not that bad despite first impressions.
Gaia Core (Justin 28, Feena 25, Rapp 27, Liete 32) (GAME OVER): There are two Mega Gaias and they spawn 2 1300 HP Gaia Tentacles every turn they get (unless there are tentacles on the field, then they either do that or order them to do combo attacks). I can't cut them down that amount of HP in any reasonable amount of time, so I have the main body slinging high end spells and Vanish (of course) at me, 2 Mega Gaias spitting out tentacles and 6 tentacles doing unspeakable acts to my party. Game Over.
Oh well, I am satisfied since I wasn't sure I would get to endgame anyway. Quite a few of the boss battles were a lot of fun to figure out/mock, and now I remember what an awful game Grandia is and will never touch it again.
And just for the record's sake, final party stats.
Justin
Level 28
163HP 76SP
46/39/23MP
111STR 58VIT 121WIT 53AGI
Sword L19 Mace L13 Axe L14
Fire L12 Wind L4 Water L15 Earth L9
Feena
Level 25
158HP 49SP
62/29/16MP
91STR 58VIT 103WIT 47AGI
Dagger L3 Whip L16
Fire L18 Wind L6 Water L17 Earth L11
Rapp
Level 27
164HP 101SP
46/35/15MP
103STR 62VIT 136WIT 127AGI
Dagger L20 Sword L14 Throw L26
Fire L15 Wind L2 Water L13 Earth L6
Liete
Level 32
145HP 65SP
83/58/30MP
87STR 62VIT 145WIT 63AGI
Mace L14
Fire L16 Wind L21 Water L20 Earth L21
Grandia 2 - Why do I do this to myself? There is a good battle system concept buried in here, I like the skill system in general. But the enemies have trouble even keeping me awake. Got to village of spooky eyes. A minor thing I enjoy is the Regional tab in shops, this would be brilliant and multifunctional in a RPG that used it correctly;
1. It alerts the player of items unique to that shop. Stock up.
2. It gives a little extra flavor to areas.
Unfortunately G2 botches the first part by only having consumables in there and the world does not seem like a coherent construct in any way, simply a collection of unrelated towns and dungeons. Oh well.
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Thanks a lot all. Yeah, life's good.
Tonfa, A Grandia LLG was part of the Fenrir summoning ritual. Good job. Are you going to do the same thing with Grandia 2? Please. (To be fair, Eye of Valmar would just infiniteturn your team, and he's early in the game)
Fenrir's Game of the day:
Resonance of Fate (PS3/360)
(http://2.im6.fr/0122012202884350-c2-photo-oYToxOntzOjU6ImNvbG9yIjtzOjU6IndoaXRlIjt9-fiche-jeux-resonance-of-fate.jpg)
Picture a game that can only be played with a 1000 buttons controller. One button lets you jump, one lets you shave, one lets you clap your hands, etc. Now, enemies are attacking you at the same time, so you die a hell of a lot at the beginning. Eventually you realize that you can easily kill enemies by hitting the 345th button (throw gas at an enemy) and then the 876th button (put enemy on fire) You now do that for the rest of the game and win everything.
Resonance of Fate is this. It is complex and shallow. It is hard to learn, easy to master. Not many games are like this (There's this and Unlimited Saga, from the top of my head), for one good reason: This is stupid.
Plot is a mess. No one knows whatever the hell they wanted to do here.
I still really like this somehow, mostly thanks to the -ridiculous- gun customization. I had a gun that was supposed to shoot in front, upwards and behing (meaning right back at the poor guy who's using it) It's too bad you can't see your retarded guns in game. BTW you can dress up your characters.
100% guilty pleasure game. You can even play it around relatives, unlike something like a Gust game!
El Cid: Actually I'm playing DA on nightmare, not hard.
I'm already level 11, having finished most quests in Derenim and currently looking for the sacred urn. My team of choice is Allistair/Morigan/Shale. Shale was a good enough character to replace Machiavel the dog, which is a rare feat. Great job at preemptively picking a cool username, Shale the DL guy.
You know what's the best part about that game? The font. The font is beautiful, it makes you by itself want to every dialogue option and read the 1345 pages of the codex, by itself. Replace it with, say, the Wild Arms 2 font, and the game loses at the very least 3 points right away on a /10 scale. I'm not kidding.
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-Holy shit Fenrir is back?- Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
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You know, I believe I beat this a few weeks ago and never stated that I did...so I probably should! If I already did...uhh...well, you'll see I did it again! Don't worry, no rant...at least, not a MEEPLE Rant, just a basic run down of thoughts (which I know I DIDN'T do.)
Soul Nomad: Completed. Not gonna bother with Demon Path cause Soul Nomad's gameplay just doesn't appeal to me that much, and the argument "You can grind to skip it" is basically equivalent to saying "Get rich so you don't have to work!" in real life. Basically, its a crappy argument, and while I won't DENY that the Demon Path may have good stuff, I'm not feeling the ability to actually care enough.
Though, while I did just say something negative about the gameplay, I will note that while I find it a bit yawn festy, given outside of a few rare maps end game, it doesn't challenge you, it wasn't offensive at least...outside of Terror Blaze which just pissed me off cause it was a clear case of the game just being stupid. Not so much the concept behind the move as much as the way the game ONLY shows the outcome of what happens to the leader, so it can say "Miss" and half your unit can still be killed. BEYOND THAT STUPIDITY, gameplay wasn't too bad, but I wasn't a fan of it.
Plot and writing...its N1, writing is what they do well. Phantom Brave proved they can do serious story telling at least adequately, so wasn't really that surprising Soul Nomad did it at least as well.
And a rare occurrence happened: A character actually living up to all the hype he got in the past! Yes, I'm referring to Gig; he's pretty awesome, really.
And I still refuse to believe that Endorph and Walnut are the same person!
And with that, I end it. Probably a 7/10 game or something.
Suikoden Tierkries: So King Mage is a pimp, and at least 2 of his wives are giving off "they're evil" vibes right from the start. Well, this clearly can't possibly go wrong! ...I don't know quite the nature of what WILL go wrong and when, but I'm sure its related to King Mage in some manner.
Also, apparently, I'm looking for Shark People.
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Miracles happen if you believe in the heart that believes in America.
This is very true.
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Unfortunately the heart of America was defeated by GRANDIA BOSS :(
It is a sad day for humanity
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Mega Man 9 - Beaten again. I was out of practice so I had quite a good number of resets on Wily. Like... despite the fact this was my 31st time beating the game, more than I've had on any one playthrough of any original-series Mega Man game that isn't 9. Did I mention MM9 has the hardest Wily in the series? Yeesh. Love it, though. Haven't decided if I'll chain-play this a few times or pick up something else. Leaning towards some chain-playing because seriously, 31 playthroughs? What a lame number to stop at.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Not too much to say here, I update about it in Backloggery more than I do here because I just... don't have a huge amount to say about it! Pretty solid obviously. Has a few flaws which bug me now and then (the most recent one: why is Bowser such a wuss in this game? Doesn't really build up to an intimidating final boss fight) but overall they're pretty minor and the game is fun stuff.
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Dissidia 012- I must say Ex-Revenge is a HORRIBLE feature. And I have mix feeling about nerfing the accessories and make the rule setting the focus of the tweaking. The the multiplier accessories are certainly more balanced now. Though, they kinda reduced the ex force but too much, making Ex-Mode quite pointless outside throwing in Ex-Burt. Thus making Ex-Revenge infinitely more valuable.... but Ex-Revenge is just too horribly broken that I really don't want to use it.
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Welcome back Fenrir, its what a year/year and a half since you last were on here (That I know about anyway). Good to see you.
MVC3 - Switched Zero out for Magneto, doing slightly better.
Also how so is it broken Niu? I'm not challenging you on this I'm just interested on what this new feature is as I haven't get up with Dissidia news.
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There is no more ex cancel and ex counter this time. Instead, it gets replaced by Ex-Revenge. If you hit ex-mode while getting hit, you'll not enter ex-mode, instead a time stop effect will occur, and in its short duration, you are free to pummel the opponent however you like, and the only way your opponent to stop you is by lunching assist at you.
Sounds balanced? No. As there are ways to extend the duration of the time stop, with a reasonable amount of set up, you can unleash like 4 of your own attack with your own assist, and with extended tweaking.... the result is just oh my god. Yes, the attacks can be interrupted by opponent's assist... but assist isn't 100% accurate and assist gauge isn't the easiest thing to maintain. You can even develop strategies on getting hit on purpose when the opponent's assist gauge is empty then beat them to death by Ex-Revenge.
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Dead Money: You know, as engaging in conversation as my super mutant buddy is, I really wish he would shut the hell up during exploration. My god, it's like he loops through the same collection of voiceclips on a minute-by-minute basis. Nooot going to be using him more than I have to just because of that, grows annoying very quickly. Mind, I don't really need someone else around just for survival purposes, so it's only a nuisance when he's forced. I maxed guns and energy weapons in the maingame and my PC is basically built to execute headshots, so while the resource scarcity of the villa can make things tense, I'm very well-equipped to deal with the hazards. The otherwise useless regeneration implant I wasted my money on in the maingame is actually a help here given the lack of non-radioactive food and places to rest.
I also seem to have come in with just the right stat/skill selection to get the most conversation out of the NPCs. Took pumping all the skill points of my first post-expansion level into medicine to get through to Christine, but still, totally worth it, glad I had enough already to make that possible. I found her, Veronica. Will endeavor to keep her alive.
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Bioshock 2 - As it turns out you make friends by not killing them, literally amazed
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Rozalia: It's been a lot more than that, actually. Three years?
El Cid, if God bores you, switch to Dog!
You won't keep your allies for long anyway. (Not a spoiler) I loved Dean Domino, personally.
Dragon Age: I fought some dragon. It didn't end well. I tried everything, bombs, poison coating, traps... Nope. Reminds me of Firkraag: There's probably some good trick to beating this dragon, but right now I'm just getting chewed. Bombs are pretty awesome in this game, it's the first time they failed me.
I got betrayed in Orzamar, and I wasn't expecting it... :( Male dwarves are disgusting in this game. Their beards disappear into their bodies whenever they're talking. Ew.
Game of the day: Divinity 2: Dragon Knight Saga (360/PC)
(http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/2808/divinityiithedragonknig.jpg)
Niiiice.
Divinity 2: Ego Draconis was released in 2009 and got overall mixed reviews. (Bad sign, as PGs have higher scores than average. There's an even worse sign: It's a sequel to a game called Divine Divinity) Larian, the german developer, changed the engine, tweaked a ton of things, added an expansion and released the whole thing for a lower price. The game got a great reception and was a smash hit in Europe, and it's not hard to see why.
The game kind of works like a 3D Diablo. Solo character, you're chugging potions all the time, you have big skill trees and can specialize in whatever you want. It's an action game, as movement matters and you can dodge spells/arrows and the likes, but it's no Demon's Souls. You can't even block with a melee character, you can only dodge. You can also turn into a dragon, which is a nice distraction but not too important in the grand scheme of things.
Unlike Diablo clones, there's a big focus on writing and quests. As usual in the best WRPGs, there's a ton of different and interesting ways to finish quests. In this however, you can mindread anyone for an experience cost. It's pretty awesome and often gives worthwhile rewards. You can expose lies, learn of passwords and secret passages, get skill/stat boosts, listen to useless trivia, you name it. I actually just ended up mind reading everyone.
Unlike something like Dragon Age (Which is SERIOUS BUSINESS), Divinity 2 goes all out. You get the ability to turn into a dragon, kill ultra powerful mages and archdemons from beyond time and space, acquire an island early on with a big tower in the middle and some magic levitating rocks on top of this, all in the beginning of the game.
I'd say that getting your own tower is the best part of the game; you have to choose between two alchemists/necromancers/smithies/trainers, and the ones you don't pick end up dying. The choices are never clear cut. (Arrogant and experienced alchemist or incompetent and desperate alchemist?)
There are definitely polish issues. Enemies never respawn until the expansion, so these large and beautiful landscapes feel extremely empty whenever you revisit. I believe that every female character has the same face; only hair and makeup make one differ from another. There's way too much action in the middle of the game, and way too much conversation in the expansion. Loot is generated randomly, and badly, so you never really care about treasure as much as you should. Fortunately, non RNGed powerful item sets scattered around the world are there to compensate for this.
Oh yeah, good graphics and lot of good humour too. Overall, it's really worth it. My favourite Xbox exclusive since ME2 isn't one anymore, easily worth something like a 9/10.
My archer had a rough beginning but got ridiculously powerful lategame. The final boss got 2HKOed.
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El Cid, if God bores you, switch to Dog!
You won't keep your allies for long anyway. (Not a spoiler) I loved Dean Domino, personally.
Man, I couldn't do that. But yeah, all the allies are pretty cool when you're actually talking with them as opposed to getting canned voiceclips chucked at you ad nauseum.
In the casino now. The sounds at the main door are...not encouraging. Eh. Let 'em come, the holorifle is extremely badass now that I've managed to repair it.
As for DA, yeahhhh, dragons are unrelentingly harsh. Nastiest enemies in the game, shock. Other than packing a lot of fire resistance and being geared up to win a war of attrition, there's not much to say. I don't think there's any easy way of dealing with them. Apparently people usually keep them tied down with Shale? But I lacked a Shale, can't comment.
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Welcome back, Fenrir!
I've been out of town lately and thus not playing much except some more DQ9 grinding. Got Zoma leveled up and got all of his drops. He didn't drop the last one until level 80, the cheap bastard. Also got another Alchemiracle, the Sol Invictus gauntlets. Woo, 30 defense, most useful gloves ever. </sarcasm>
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Rozalia: It's been a lot more than that, actually. Three years?
Oh really, I was sure it wasn't that far ago but my sense of time isn't the greatest.
Pokemon White: Couldn't give a damn about this game on the lead up to it but now its here I can't resist it, damn those pokemon. Just got my first badge, pokemon are:
Tsunami (Oshawatt) Lv13
Lillipup Lv 13
Pansear Lv 10
Slaves/Others I'm not using but are on me
Purrloin Lv5
Patrat Lv2
Munna Lv8
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Big Brain Wolf -
Mediocre Layton-alike.
At least one puzzle had blatantly incorrect instructions, dialogue had noticable spelling and formatting errors. At one point it started refusing to stay visible unless I ran it from within the Compatibility Troubleshooter. Seemingly lost one puzzle forever - you can reload old chapters, but loading the chapter it was in starts me off after it's no longer accessible, possibly I could load the previous chapter and re-end it and maybe it woudl continue from the start of the next chapter instead of just going back to the chapter selection, but I haven't tried this and I can't be bothered doing so - which you would really think is against the point of the genre, and especially undesirable when the game only has 60 puzzles in total. The 'training' exercises were boring and pointless and as far as I can see just put in to make getting hint keys painful as opposed to the Layton style of flooding you with access to hints.
Etrian Odyssey 2 -
Floor 8. Remembered that I wanted to complain about not being able to use my EO1 password, which I put down to the games being from different regions due to Atlus sucking.
Grandia -
Just lost the invitation to visit the ruins. That was highly uncalled for.
The battle system looks more complicated than I can believe it actually is.
The dialogue so far has generally been so dumb that I love it. Hopefully this stays the course.
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Oh it will certainly stay the course. The dialogue will only get more stupid as you go on.
Lego Harry Potter - I know next to nothing about Harry Potter. Hermione just set Snape on fire. I generally have no idea what is going on. I am playing this noting that I am not the target audience. Generally speaking it is pretty good. This is exactly the kind fo game I would have loved to play as a kid, there is nearly endless shit to get, it is pretty forgiving and it is an IP directly marketted to kids and the game actually gives 2 fucks about them. Good game that isn't meant for me. I will keep playing and see how it goes. Plan to write something about it.
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I guess I could use Shale's Stone Aura yeah, but I haven't gotten the other passive skills in that skill tree. Since I didn't consult guides, my skills are all over the place. This turned out well for Allistair (focused on sword+shield) and Morrigan (focused on Sleep/Horror/Waking Nightmare, ice spells and now healing), but not for Shale and the MC (useless rogue skills!)
I'll get a few levels and come back. Add Alistair as the ubertank and Morrigan asa pure healbot and this sounds like an alright plan.
Lego Harry Potter is perfect as a coop game even if you're not the target audience, if you have a girlfriend who's a HP fan, but I guess this is too specific. We... Even got all the achievements.
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From what I understand, the entire Lego game series is basically aimed towards that approach. Its a game that all ages, children and adults, can enjoy, etc. Its just there for simplistic fun and from what I understand, most of them succeed at that. Also generally parodying the product they're based off of for some amusing cutscenes without any actual dialog (I say this based off Lego Indiana Jones mostly, mind)
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Yeah the point pretty much was to go into a game in a genre that I can handle that I am not the target market for (so no Football Manager or the like) and see how I take to it. So far? Better than bad games of the genres I do like.
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Dissidia 012- Lightning turns to be pretty good. Has enough moves to cover all range decent zoning option. This makes her extremely good at indoor terrain. Just Cura makes a a bit broken. She can play this hide and seek while gaining brave, and combined with the suppressing the weak, she can make sure she is the only one that is gaining it while running around.
Yuna is some what tricky. It takes a while get a hold of the range her brave attacks covers. It often turns out longer or shorter than expected. Especially her aerial moves. But her HP attacks are all decent, except Mega Flare. All covers large range and serve counter offensive purposes.
Needs to test out Kain more. He seems to be those with awesome brave attacks but HP attack is some what errrr. Outside Jump of course, that move is unbelievably good.
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Wait, so Fenrir and Ko... aren't the same person? Well then. Good to see you back for however long, Fenrir, and don't feel too bad - between name changes and an attention span on par with most species of flies, I don't know who half of these people are.
In any case...
Toy Soldiers: A tower defense wargame with shades of third-person shooter. Just completed Chapter 4 by flying a Sopwith Camel and shooting down a bunch of red planes. Root beer was optional.
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Actually got to play games today, so Mass Effect 2
I have mother fucking Scotty. That is all.
Ok, that isn't all. I've managed to finish exploring the Omega system, and have found the two PCs there, so I have options now. I think I like the new skill system, the old one was a little wee bit ludicrous with all the options you had, and this one is more refined. I'm growing to love the new upgrade/inventory system as it's a clear upgrade over the one in Mass Effect. Finally, I still don't think I'm a fan of the ammo system, though I suppose it does a lot more to get you out of the habit of just getting comfortable with one or two guns and then using nothing else, and getting you thinking of what the benefits of each weapon is.
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Oh yeah.
ME2: Beaten. Good game. Almost certainly going to have to replay since the final decision is likely to have huge implications for ME3. Or at least it had better, none of the "It doesn't matter if you killed the council or not" crap.
Vast improvement from ME1. To address Excal's point: Ammo was almost never an issue for me, heavy ammo aside. Sure, I ran out of ammo on some guns but then that just made me switch to a different gun. Hell I didn't even have to use my SMG ever and it was more managing between Pistol/Shotgun/Heavy and then sniper rifles when I got them.
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All those years and I hadn't forgotten you, Doma. *sheds a tear*
Ammo wasn't much of an issue for me in ME2 even in insane mode, but I used a soldier. You can't just use the sniper rifle all the time though.
Which makes me realize that insane mode Adept must be crazy hard because of the ammo system, on top of everything else!
Anyway I killed the damn dragon in Dragon Age.
The battle system issues are starting to get on my nerves.
Shale and Alistair have both the same A.I. setting, but Shale rushes on to fight enemies while Alistair stays close to my character.
My archer, sometimes takes like one freaking hour to shoot a single arrow when I'm controlling her, and I have no idea why.
Alistair sometimes just doesn't want to use the skills I tell him to use either.
It's a mess. Oh well. I was warned, PC version is better.
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Started Radiant Historia.
DS died. Have not found my charger.
Just went to the bar and pwnd the cloaked man.
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Pokemon Black- Picked this up and played through a bit. Seems like a step forward and a step back at the same time. Interface-wise, no menu on the bottom screen? WTF? Who thought that was a good idea? On the other hand, everything, from text to battles, goes so fast that I haven't even turned off animations! Sweet.
Step forward and step back is how I feel graphically as well. Large, blocky pixels are ugly as sin. Feels like I'm playing an early PSX game. Some of the backgrounds are nice, though they can look awkward sometimes due to previously mentioned problem. Text borders on godawful as well.
Pretty much everything I plan on using seems to be getting a nickname. I'll be using it interchangably.
Picked Smugleaf as my starter. Patrat is awful, so it's Lillipup's (heretofore referred to as "Wigglepup". Would've been Wigglepuppy for full Ralph Wiggumification, but one letter short...) time to shine. Hits pretty good for an early Normal. Purrloin ("Poecat", due to black, Purloined Letter and the tail looking like the pendulum from Pit and the Pendulum). Poecat is okay, but I doubt it'll last, sadly. Rounding out my current team is Panpour ("Wonkey". Wonky water monkey).
Bianca is <3 <3 <3. Fun ditz. Rare to see those. Other guy is other guy. Team Plasma is hilarious and awesome. I'd say Hero was pretty dumb, but older woman inviting him up to her bedroom? I'd go...
First gym was a neat little twist on things, if still pretty easy. Poecat ended up in a buff/debuff off against enemy Lillipup, wound up getting it low before it got overwhelmed. Smugleaf finished it off. Wonkey wasn't leveled enough to take on Fonkey (Funky fire monkey), so Wigglepup just ended up Leering and SMASH as it kept buffing.
Team Plasma failed pretty badly, so puffy dream pokemon saved for now! Stopping there for the night.
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Whoever finishes Radiant Historia first needs to do an in-depth spoilerific review so I can get my fix, this game looks like everything I wanted Chrono Cross to be.
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You want a Niu review of it right now then?
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Bioshock 2: Stanley Poole is a douchebag, so he got bees to the face
God Hand: More games need that type of ending sequence, also 1.6 average literally worse than Elfboy
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You want a Niu review of it right now then?
I'd be willing to translate some Niu-ese for it, sure. The game just has my attention.
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Pokemon Black: OHMYGODTHENEWPOKEMONARESOCUTEIMGONNAEXPLODE
Last Remnant: Wow I am dying so much in this game. I feel like I'm doing something wrong, but checking some FAQs I don't seem to be. Bosses and rare monsters are just so ridiculously powerful compared to the randoms that there's no balance.
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You want a Niu review of it right now then?
I'd be willing to translate some Niu-ese for it, sure. The game just has my attention.
I DID just got my copy of Radiant Historia Design Material this Tuesday. If you can find someway to stop me from playing Dissidia, I am perfectly willing to write a fact center topic for it.
Last Remnant: Wow I am dying so much in this game. I feel like I'm doing something wrong, but checking some FAQs I don't seem to be. Bosses and rare monsters are just so ridiculously powerful compared to the randoms that there's no balance.
1. Spam item
2. If your characters are dying, let them be. And revive them with low hp and they are more likely to perform their big specials
3. Spam status move, if only to keep the morale in control
If you have trouble spamming the move you need, start controlling your skill set now make them stay small.
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Pokemon White: Just beat the third gym, love the way those Plasma goons sometimes scream plasma when they lose.
Pokemon are:
Revolver (Renamed Dewatt) Lv26 Water
Yorkshire (Herdier) Lv26 Normal
Pantsman (Scraggy) Lv26 Fighting Dark
Vulcanus (Durumak) Lv28 Fire
I have to say that Herdier for something you'd expect to be crap is actually pretty badass. Take down so early in the game means he curb stombs everything earlygame with ease without having to rely on weakness hitting.
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Radiant Historia:
Beaten, didn't get the special ending, will be going back for it.
Thoughts on it (Spoilerz):
Stocke is one of the best main characters in a really, really long time. To give you an idea, in one of the last scenes of the game, an enemy has one of his allies hostage, he just walks up, uses his stealth ability and more or less stabs them in the back. No dramatic fight, nothing, he really doesn't have time for anyone's shit and it's great.
Raynie and Marco do their job of being supporting characters without being offensive. Stocke also does a great job of bonding with them without immediately falling in love for Raynie.
Aht is loligoat and fails at life for most of the time because of her constant whining about things Stocke already knows and just tries to keep the truth from being said.
Gafka is kinda there but is interesting.
Eruca was a really great character too, her determination (in both stories) makes perfect sense.
The villains were really great too. Hugo seemed like he was going to be a much bigger player but got cut short. Dias and Selvan, while you never fight them (sadly) made impacts on the story in their own way too. Heiss... I wasn't really expecting that. The entire game I figured the wielder of the Black Chronicle was Selvan or something, then I thought it might be an alternate universe Stocke... which I guess is sort of what Heiss is.
The time travelling got better after a while, once I remembered it was basically just what Chrono Trigger did except with two timelines instead of multiple different spots. I really enjoyed the world, each different country felt very unique, with Alistel having what amounted to religious motivations eventually, Granorg going through a revolution and so on.
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Sweet! Radiant Historia review!
*reads*
...Awww. I was hoping for more examples of the Time-travelling bits.
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Dead Money: Finished. All the companions lived. Had major second thoughts about this once Dean told me the whole story, but killing him for something that happened two hundred years ago wouldn't have accomplished anything. Missed some Dog backstory apparently (I always kept God in charge) and some villa history, but eh, close enough to complete. Managed to haul out two gold bars and so much pre-war money that it actually totaled more worth in caps than the gold. Regaining my missing inventory once back in the Mojave proper? Took five solid minutes of acquisition messages. I wandered off and did chores while I waited (you can move around and do stuff normally while these messages are up--I just wanted to see how long it would take).
Anyway, pretty excellent. Villa exploration could be grindy at times since you're basically just killing the same enemies, but at least they're creepy enemies. Distinctive sound effects are key to making your enemies unnerving, I think. Although radios are more terrifying than zombie goasts, really. Finale was tense and took a couple tries (first time I stumbled a bit and needed a moment to realize I had to run the long way...and as a result ended up with a headsplosion right at the elevator door). Allies are all fun and the villain has note-perfect VA. Really impressed there. He's obviously completely insane, but so driven and focused that he makes it work for him. Apparently the voice actor for the part also played Wilhelm, George's bumbling boss in Seinfeld. I cannot reconcile this in my brain. It hurts to try.
Fair bit of breadcrumbing for later events in there, too. Looking forward to future installments.
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Mass Effect 2, have all of the new recruits but the convict so far. Krogan, by and by, remain awesome to a man. Ammo is becoming less of an issue as I'm going along as I'm adjusting to the system. That said, I'm finding the shotgun to be not that good, possibly just because it's my only weapon to not get upgraded yet seeing as I've gotten Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, and Pistol upgrades so far. Sadly, currently have no Palladium upgrades, which is bad as I've almost maxed my Palladium stores. But I'm sure there's something out there I'll get eventually.
The Anderson/Udina comedy hour is still gold, and I'm starting to dig the Paragon/Renegade trigger system.
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I perfer to call it the Hugs! =) or Set Bitches on Fire >:( system.
More accurate description, IMO.
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/me approves
I still haven't been playing any games. Instead I've been watching Dissidia Duodecim videos while waiting for the game to be released to the rest of the world~ Mainly ones with the Aerith assist (this is not biased at all, in any way! >_>) usually with Tifa as the PC. Been really loving the Tifa/Aerith duo from what I've seen. Prishe also looks a lot of fun (and she has CT bait stamped all over her too so I will definitely be trying her out for myself when I have the chance) and Yuna is just adorable (especially in her third alt \0/) Yuna seems to have a quite different/unique playstyle compared to most of the new characters, it's possible she is going to be the trickiest of the new characters to master (well out of the main six) I think the potential is there but it will take a skilled player to draw it out~
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Sadly, currently have no Palladium upgrades, which is bad as I've almost maxed my Palladium stores.
FYI, that bar is almost meaningless because you don't max out at a certain amount of mineral. It's a good idea to keep mining every huge vein you see just because when you think you're well stocked on a mineral a whole bunch of upgrayedds unlock and you're out.
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Dragon Age: Some kid gave me his grandfather's sword after I persuaded him that it will help in my glorious fight against the forces of evil. I immediately sold that shit to buy a gift for Shale: An amethyst. He liked it.
Whenever there's an active stat raising spell on a character, there's a big graphical effect. This means that 100% of the time there's a ridiculous big pink cloud following all of my characters, because of Song of Courage. This carries over in cutscenes, meaning that I can't take any of this game's cutscenes seriously anymore.
This would have been MUCH better in FF6: Blind your team -> sunglasses on everyone during the whole game. OR: Blind Strago, then solo the game with him. Ooooh yeah.
Finished the Darkspawn Chronicles DLC too. Nothing noteworthy about it, aside from the dog being named Barkspawn.
Game of the day:
Nier
Nier's the swan song of not-great people. Those guys focused on what they did best, and ignored the very obvious shortcomings.
Case in point, graphics. The ground textures are unacceptable:
(http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/27/1269219-nier_cultivate1_menu_super.jpg)
But the game has breathtaking scenery, like in Aire village.
(http://image.jeuxvideo.com/images/x3/n/i/nier-xbox-360-004.jpg)
I had unreasonable expectations after the beginning - It was simply amazing. Gameplay was, if not great, extremely varied and fun (It's usually a God of War clone, but there's a lot of magic available, there are elements of bullet hell shooters, Diablo and text adventures), music was perfect, graphics were lovely, storyline was very intriguing and unusual, bosses were great, etc. There are three levels of difficulty, I appreciated the challenge in hard mode very much, while easy is a cakewalk, as this should be.
Unfortunately, Cavia has a tight budget and lacks good writers. The entire second half of the game is a Zelda like gather-the-crystals fetchquest made of nothing but recycled dungeons (granted, you can visit new areas in said recycled dungeons)
Only the final dungeon is new, but that's where the story can't keep its facade and goes downhill. Cavia is made of trolls (see the other topic), they didn't make a game around an awesome plot idea, they made a game around the idea of deleting all your saves at the end. (and then Square Enix had them stay reasonable about it, I guess)
The ending is riddled with RPG cliches, including a nonsensical betrayal. Devola and Popola... I hate you. All your music too. You can then replay the game to get other endings (which I did), but that doesn't wash away the sour taste in your mouth.
Still, it is the journey that matters in the end, and I prefer the strange little Nier to mediocre games... And average games. Actually, I prefer it to a lot of great games too. Try it out if you want something different. I'd give it something like a 7-8/10.
PS: Dragons are to Dragon Age what Boars are to this game.
This should have been named Boar Age instead.
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I watched a friend play through the whole game and the only thing I liked was that unstoppable boar at the end. The gameplay seemed fine but beyond that everything was horrible especially those disgusting character designs.
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You mean people in a hardscrabble world look awful? No way.
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So…heard about this game when it won “best game design” at the Independent Game Festival awards. Decided to give it a try…
http://www.qcfdesign.com/?cat=20
First few times I played it, my reactions were “whatever, it’s just Mamono Sweeper without the minesweeper mechanic”. The more I play it, though, the deeper this game seems.
I remember someone once said that good design is a series of interesting decisions. And there are just a lot of interesting decisions within very simple mechanics. The core mechanics are that magic is in glyphs which you pick up off the ground, and you can carry three glyphs. You can’t drop glyphs, but you can permanently convert them into other bonuses (attack boost, magic boost, etc). This creates a lot of interesting decisions, like “do I convert this glyph to bonus”, “when do I convert this glyph?”, “do I pick up this good glyph now, and risk finding myself with three glyphs I want to keep, and thus nothing I can convert?”
And even in the done-to-death mechanic of leveling up there’s interesting decisions. You can level up all the way, but you’ll probably deplete your potion supply (and then might not handle the boss). Every time you level up, you’re healed to full and cured of statuses, which makes for all kinds of strategies.
(And then there’s religions, which are a bit messy and complex, but also manage to have a similar feel to them. “Do I want to worship this god at all?” “If I do, should I start now or later?” “Is it worth waiting to see what other shrines are on this map?”)
Overall, I’m impressed with the depth of strategy offered in a fairly simple set of rules. Not that heavy strategy in a simple game can’t be done (Go says hi), but I can see why this game won.
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Radiant Historia- Beat. 235/236, but that's missing only the nastiest optional boss node, and gets me all the epilogues/best ending.
RH:FFVII::TTGL:NGE
Which is a strange statement but sums up well how I feel here. Genre-redefining deconstruction works and and their reconstructionist counterparts. 9/10 by a great margin. Exactly the sort of RPG I'd like to play more often, I can only hope the game pulls a Persona 3.
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GOLDEN SUN DARK DAWN
Finished this around New Years, also.
Quick summary - Better then Golden Sun 1, worse then 2.
Golden Sun 1 was a game that came out at the right time. It got a fanbase of people who hadn't played RPGs before and the concept was new to them. It also did have some neat concepts in the Djinn and Psynergy outside of combat. The game also had no story, and the gameplay was pretty generic.
Golden Sun 2 was quite a bit better! Its story was still kind of bad at being consistent and giving you directions, but they at least seemed to try!
The biggest improvement was in dungeon design - they weren't simple, and were long, and I felt accomplishment when I finished a tough one. The difficulty was also a bit higher then the first game.
The DS game takes a couple of steps forward - Weapon Mastery is decent enough, as are multiple unleashes. Also, even though the reactions don't make much sense with the smiley face selection feature, it's still fun to be mad at everything or sad about everything.
It also takes a lot of steps backward. Dungeon design is more simple, "use this psynergy and you win" stuff. The dungeons are relatively straightforward, as well. Combat happens to be even EASIER then the first game, which is a feat in itself. The game also suffers from having a
complete LACK of bosses after you get the ship. There are none. None! You get all these new toys and nothing but ultra pathetic randoms to use them on before the end.
That's not even mentioning the story. They did seem to try to give the characters some personality! They succeeded slightly - Ivan and Mia had the personality of blocks of wood in the first game. The story jumped around a lot, but I've come to expect that of Golden Sun. But the biggest problem is that nothing happens. Oh, I mean, there's a couple of big events, and some fairly cool moments, but it just doesn't seem like much.
They didn't even really succeed on being a fanservice game, everyone wanted to see the old characters, to visit old places. They're mostly all alluded to, but it seems like a whole "You'll see them next game" kind of thing. Sort of a waste.
Forging happens to be even worse then Golden Sun 2, somehow.
Anyway, I didn't hate the game. Actually, I thought it was OK! I played through Golden Sun 1 and 2 not too long before this one, so I knew what to expect. And as a generic RPG it didn't offend me... It just could've used a bit more difficulty in both dungeons and battles... And a plot that went somewhere.
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Nier's character design is fine. He's an UOM.
But seriously, you didn't like the music?
I finished Leliana's Song (Another Dragon Age DLC)
This might be because I've largely ignored Leliana during the game so far, but I had no idea what was going on here. What am I doing? Who are these people? Why am I in a chantry all of a sudden? Who is that man and what is he doing in my team?
Then at the end Leliana doesn't kill her evil French arch rival because she's a good girl. Nevermind Leliana herself slaughtering of about thirty city guards right before.
The hardest battle in the game so far has been in this DLC: One dude and three dogs against your team. This took me about 40 retries, and then I just gave up and cheated by luring the enemies so that I could beat them two by two. Dogs > Dragons, it's official.
Ok I like doing those "game of the days". I could post them in their own topic, but they are seriously lackluster as reviews.
Game of the day:
Odin Sphere
(http://www.gameguru.in/images/odin-sphere-ps2-ss1.jpg)
Its funny how the most glaring example of "Good graphics, awful gameplay" is a 2D game on the PS2.
The whole game feels like an YS 1 cave:
(http://lparchive.org/Ys-Ancient-Ys-Vanished/Update%2010/1-Ys_update_9_image001.png)
Or alternatively, a bad Sonic clone, like Bubsy or Vectorman.
The point is, character sprites are big and action is fast paced. Sounds good, but you can't see in front of you. So you're going to be hit by attacks you haven't seen coming, all the time. You can't predict what enemies are going to do since you can't even see them. There's a very helpful mini-map on top of the screen, but after having played for 2 hours watching nothing but the mini map, I realized: This is stupid.
I'm not kidding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OWiN5XWcX4&feature=related
Duct tape cardboard all over your TV/computer screen, then play Streets of Rage without ever going up or down for a similar experience. By the way you also need to feed souls to some plants to get fruit and thus level up, and everything about it is so badly done I don't want to talk about it.
(http://nsa25.casimages.com/img/2011/03/07/110307094950396201.gif)
The beat them all mechanics never feel alright, either. For example, everytime you attack, you deplete a power bar. Once it's completely emptied, you're stunned for a few seconds. You have to stand still to recover power. This is supposed to prevent button mashing, just like DRMs prevent piracy. There's also a BIG focus on enemies using status attacks on you, which is always fun in solo games.
I didn't play past 10 hours, but I heard that the game becomes very repetitive after that point, with the same dungeons and bosses over and over.
Jesus. I could appreciate this game's qualities, but playing is such a chore.
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Radiant Historia - Iron Wall boss. Jesus christ what a troll. High HP, high Defence, and a move he spams that gives him complete immunity to damage... and sadly, I don't have Grapple on my Stocke. fffff
I can sort of see where the story is going at this point, but I'm holding out high hopes for at least a little bit of a twist, and there are some unresolved tensions just now that I cannot see end predictably... other than that it ends, of course, in Wholesale Slaughter of Evil Dudes. So far so good. Favourite characters are Marco and the Gunner, although the latter only by virtue of the amazing attack buff, and not so much for their combat prowess. Marco is a weird healer-ish type... I think? Great support character.
Stocke's forced and still a very strong MC. Just needs area heal and Grapple, and he'd be set.
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I rather liked Odinsphere's soul-eating plant powerup system. Though I agree entirely about your points on the inability to predict enemy attacks. It could just be that I have terrible reaction time, though. Whatever, Odinsphere's selling point was really nice graphics + competant story/presentation.
Radiant Historia: Bought 100% Legally With Money That I Earned Through Hard Work, to borrow a phrase from Nitori. It will be here when my friend from the US comes to visit me in April.
Until then, I just started this and I'm already digging Stocke as our brusque-but-reasonable main character. I also like the fact that while he's obviously supposed to be tough, they aren't playing him off as an archetypal bad-ass-I-have-no-feelings-other-than-Anger-Brooding-and-RAGE. In fact, in the third scene in the game, he mentions to his new subordinates that he actually has a person he considers his best friend and is willing to admit this. It's not much, but I kind of appreciate that they decided to throw this in so early. I was kind of worried from the comments about the game so far that he was going to fall too much into the forementioned archetype.
Literally just started, so I haven't gotten to play with the battle system much, but it seems like a simple, intuitive system with a lot of room for variety - which is basically my definition of a "Good RPG battle system". I will note that I was hoping that the PCs would have the same kind of row effects as the enemies, but hey, it's awesome anyway.
By the by, how many people are actually playing(have played) this game, it seems like a lot more than the usual 'New DS release' rush around here?
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RH got a lot of buzz, so a few more people picked it up around here for that. Beyond that it is a fun and interesting game so those who do play it tend to talk about it more. It probably isn't that much more than usual.
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Radiant Historia- Beat. 235/236, but that's missing only the nastiest optional boss node, and gets me all the epilogues/best ending.
RH:FFVII::TTGL:NGE
Which is a strange statement but sums up well how I feel here. Genre-redefining deconstruction works and and their reconstructionist counterparts. 9/10 by a great margin. Exactly the sort of RPG I'd like to play more often, I can only hope the game pulls a Persona 3.
Would you mind elaborate?? AS I really can't see the analogy here.....
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snip
I approve of this review.
Also, where can I get that Plants vs Streets of Rage game? That's got to be a hell of a lot better than Odin Sphere.
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Deus Ex: Invisible War-FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
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DMC3 Very Hard: Electric Bats are scary. Especially when used by naked women. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you obviously haven't played DMC3.
Suikoden Tierkries: So...a bunch of furries decided to join me, and then plot nonsense happened and OH DEAR GOD IS THIS PROGRESS I'M MAKING!?
If you have any clue what I mean by any of that, you're fucking lying, cause I sure as hell don't.
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Gref, Steam tells me that you too have DA2. Since I haven't actually been able to play yet, how is it?
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In a weird coincidence, my computer got fixed and returned the same day DA2 came out.
So, I just installed it and didn't get around to playing today. Go me.
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No idea how DA2 is Rob, because I live in a gaming ghetto they decided that it needed to be released midnight Wednesday the 9th. That is midnight leading into Thursday the 10th. So our release date doesn't line up with fucking any announced release date. I have no idea and am pretty pissed off about it right now.
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Nier's character design is fine. He's an UOM.
If you're referring to the main (in the west anyway) then yeah he was that bad. Hated that mask thing and the bottom half of his outfit was pretty bad but I could live with that. Its designs like Kaine's and the boys to a lesser extent that made me not like the outfits.
But seriously, you didn't like the music?
My friend bombed through the game in a few hours so I had to check youtube to refresh myself on the music as when you mentioned music I couldn't think of a single piece. Its actually not bad I'll give you that.
Pokemon White:
Revolver (Samurott) Lv38 Water
Yorkshire (Stoutland) Lv38 Normal
Vulcanus (Darmanitan) Lv37 Fire
Pantsman (Scrafty) Lv39 Dark Fighting
Zephyr (Archeops) Lv37 Rock Flying
Phantom (Galvantula) Lv42 Bug Electric
Picked up Phantom as my team lacks any sort of Electric and bug damage and I'm not regretting it as luck would have it the air gym was next so he curb stomped those flying pokes.
I'm really liking the fact that for the most part you don't need a HM slave to go around with you which means I can bop about with 6 good pokes instead of 5.
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Kaine's design is pure, delicious trolling.
And if your friend has only finished the game once he doesn't know shit. He probably even thinks he was the hero.
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Black: Switching over to Roz style writeups!
Indifflant (L25 Servine) Grass
Wigglepup (L25 Herdier) Normal
L27 Gurdurr Fighting
L27 Palpitoad Water/Ground
L29 Krokorok Ground/Dark
Glyphin (L23 Sigilyph) Flying/Psychic
Just got the Bolt Badge. My team is kinda pidgeonholing at the moment, but oh well. Like all these guys and thats most of the fun. Only really fears Flying at the moment. Too bad my only Rock move at the moment is on my Fighting mon. Should see if I can put one on something else. Can always switch stuff out as a gym demands too. I'm sure something else will come along that I HAVE to put on my team anyway. Might end up kicking out Joachim-mon if anything, but Dark is a pretty damn common type this time around.
Pokemon Musicals were... disturbing yet highly amusing. Needs moar monocle.
Game is overall starting to improve. Bianca continues to be awesome, and more interaction out of gym leaders is always good. The little mini-scenarios for each city are a vast improvement, as sad as that sounds. Cherin needs to stop being a little cunt, though.
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MvC3: Played like 20 matches against Meeple. I suck with Sentinel, and Haggar is totally awesome.
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I don't think I had ever seen you bash a game before, Captain.
That must mean something.
You need to feed that plant the dead soul of enemies so she can give you bombs or else you can't damage the boss at all. Just play regular Streets of Rage instead.
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Played DA2 a lot since I didn't have class yesterday. I'm about to on an expedition into the Deep Roads. I'm enjoying it so far in that it has basically given me a larger goal to work toward and then told me to accomplish it through a whole mess of side quests. Big change from the usual BioWare model.
So far Varric is my hero.
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Also enjoying DA2 at the moment. Not sure where a lot of the complaints I read are coming from. Game doesn't seem particularly dumbed down, and does seem to flow significantly better than DA did. Cast isn't as strong yet, though.
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"dumbed down" is a lot of the same stupid complaints ME2 got, like how it's not an RPG because party members don't get armor or whatever shit. Because you know, loot and inventory management are the two qualifying factors in whether or not you are playing a role-playing game.
Anyway, I've noticed that Varric seems to be getting really good, which makes sense since he is framing this story and all. Like how when Olan told the story in FFT he had total control over space and time and his dad was an unstoppable killing machine.
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Great, Rob. Now I'm imagining the fight with Olan and the thieves as really being a lot like Rafa and the Assassins, it just wasn't like that in the game because Olan didn't want the horribly embarrasing truth to be what everyone remembered.
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That's the fun of a framing story where the Framer is involved.
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I don't think I had ever seen you bash a game before, Captain.
I bash lots of games, they just tend to be ones that the rest of the DL likes. Like FFT.
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Bioshock 2: Well that endgame was oddly straightforward, at least I'm able to summon ninjas
Valkyria Chronicles: Vyse and Aika fell through a time rift and are now taking bullets for me
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TO:PSP
Got the two REALLY annoying characters. Now all I have to do is get the last four characters and I will have everyone that can join me, yay!
Two are in the neutral path and the last two are located at the end of that long dungeon.
My main team is all around level 29. I started a second team so I could get all the new characters up to my main team's level. The pirate is a beast, but I need a new gun for him.
Also, concerning that one chick that get three unique job classes...I could use some marks for her other two less easy-to-find job marks. One is stuck at lv 1, and the other is at lv 20. The mark you get through the story, yeah that job is lv 27 or so. Gotta find mobs that drop the other marks so I can level them and find which one I prefer.
Also, Denam with Exorcism is awesome.
Eventually I hope to find some better equipment for everyone, because the gear is starting to get old.
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Pokemon white: Took them long enough but finally a pokemon game with an actual ending and not a throwaway one.
Going to start on my aftergame/online team now and I've currently got:
Scrafty - I'm really liking the little guys typing so he is a must for me.
Archeops - Its good but its ability leaves me doubting how good it'll be at the end of the day so I might replace it.
Galvantula - Eelektross looks like a really nice option to replace my giant spider but I'm not sure. Eelektross has better stats everywhere but speed and has no weakness while Galvantula has not complete fail speed, is weak to fire and rock and its thunder attack is a near certain hit meaning its overall offence is slightly better.
Hard choice.
Darmanitan - Really liking him though I've not yet seen this zen mode.
That leaves two spots to complete the team. I was thinking of maybe Excadrill but then I'd have to run Tyranitar to make full use of him, granted Tyranitar isn't bad and it would complete my team. Those new dragon types might replace Archeops too.
Going to breed and ev train the above mons but while I've gotten what ev training is and it seems quite simple now I still have no idea about IVs. Could someone explain these to me and how I go about getting the above pokes with good ones?
Silent hill the room: This Henry guy is made of stone, the guy isn't scared of anything because his policy is to smack shit over the head with a steel pipe first and be completely unimpressed later. I must question him being locked in his apartment though.
Lets see:
The Room: Its soundproof somehow and all things electrical don't work o he can't call for help.
The Door: Its chained up with loads of padlocks from the inside preventing him from leaving. Now I'm no expert on breaking down doors but couldn't he kick it/break it down with a steel pipe? Hell he could shoot a bullet through the door to alert the people outside if all else fails.
The windows: He has a steel pipe, hell the pipes not needed he could just throw his tv through it/punch/kick/headbut/hip thrust/butt pound that thing to pieces but apparently its unbreakable because this thought never pops into Henry's head. A friend said to me that maybe its plexiglass but really? It just seems unlikely.
The broken wall: THERE IS A DAMNGOD HOLE IN THE WALL WHICH HE COULD SHOUT FOR HELP THROUGH! HELL GIVE IT A FEW KICKS AND HE COULD ESCAPE INTO THE NEXT DOORS APARTMENT, BUT INSTEAD HE JUST USES IT TO BE A PEEPING TOM?!? WHAT IS WRONG WITH MR HENRY?
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I think you need to remember that in the official Silent Hill timeline, in the year 2000, Henry Townsend buys a new shirt from Express Fashion. Yes. The most noteworthy thing he's done is buy a new shirt
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...............*Checks timeline and sees entry* Wat?
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While I haven't actually started it yet, I picked up Pokemon Black earlier today (chose it over White because there were many more copies and I felt bad for Black). So I'll be playing that for the forseeable future.
Toy Soldiers: Cleared the first campaign and unlocked the Kaiser Campaign.
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...............*Checks timeline and sees entry* Wat?
Henry Townsend is a very exciting person.
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Reshiram >>>>> Zekrom anyway, so go Black version.
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Suikoden Tierkries: Apparently, the develops pitied the players having to consider the idea of a certain countries continued, paradoxical existence, and thus decided through elements of the game itself, that it should be erased from existence, wiped from history, never to be talked about again!
...except they then remembered "Wait, shit, the heroes will recognize retcons within their own world cause that's an important plot point" so it didn't work out as they expected.
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I don't get the hate for the Magedom? I thought that whole section was pretty well-told.
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Pro-tip: Don't take anything Meeple says in these summaries seriously.
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Dude was a pimp who, like most pimps, could not control all three of his bitches. It happens.
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Pro-tip: Don't take anything Meeple says seriously.
Fixed that for you.
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Radiant Historia - Up to SH6 now. Game's gotten pretty difficult lately. Part of this is me being underlevelled but I imagine part of it is just the game not joking around.
Rank: Boar, Bear, Ballista, Boar, Bear
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Pokemon Black: Started this up. Holy crap, the girl trainer has short shorts. Chose the guy because I'm a guy. I get three Pokemon in a box and have to choose one, and my friends Meeple/MC and (insert DLer name here - seriously, any suggestions for the guy would be helpful) each get one as well. I choose Oshawott (which I plan on naming General) and get to battling. I have to reset once because I get killed by Tepig, but the second time everything goes according to plan and I win. And my friends rush off instead of helping me clean my room. Thanks, guys. Oh well, Mom doesn't seem to care and I leave my house.
And that's where I stopped.
Edit: Carrying on, since there hasn't been another post since my last one, for shame (/ignoring school/workday).
I head to MC Meeple's house to see her dad ripping on her for wanting to go off on her own adventure while being a preteen (if she is). So that's like... one semi-responsible adult out of how many? Yes, I know that the Pokeworld is at least an order of magnitude (with STAB) safer than our world, but still...
We meet up at Prof Juniper's Lab and get the Pokedex (though InsertDLerHere keeps interrupting) and start off on our adventure together (which was a nice touch). I catch a Patrat which I name Burns, and a Lillipup which I name King, and win the catching mini-challenge and then... holy crap VideoChat!
I go to the Pokemon Center which is now also the shop, good move there, save, and that's it for now.
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Woah woah, wait a second. I bought a new shirt in 2000 too!
Dragon Age: I know what's the absolute worst thing about this game compared to Mass Effect!
You can't be a douchebag!
In adventure games and wRPGs, unless you're really drawn into the game and the problems of its world, the amount of fun you're having is DIRECTLY proportional to how much of a dick you are. Being a nice guy is cool the first few times, but it becomes very repetitive fast. Finish some guy's quest perfectly, the guy's happy and gives you something, etc. There's no interesting writing in it, no particular fun, and after the 100th time no feeling of accomplishment anymore. Being a douche is often a lot more varied: Steal an unconscious man's gear before helping him, put poison in someone's drink, blackmail people, sell a kid to slavery, lie about being a doctor then do a half assed job and ask to get paid for it, punch a journalist because you've had enough of her disingenous assertions, etc.
In Dragon Age, every NPC has an approval rating. Be a dick to someone and the game will like you less. This affects combat performance and whether or not they stay in your team, so this is a big deal. The game has given hundred opportunities to mock Alistair, and I can't use them!! There seems to be a lot of quests you can miss if you're being too much of a dick, too. Which makes sense, but it's no fun.
Fortunately, you can use a team of assholes then not care about being a douche to NPCs, but you still have to be very nice to those team members of your team in private conversations. And that's not enough.
Gray Matter (360, PC)
(http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/9886/graymattercoverce.jpg)
The main character, a young magician named Sam, gets lost on the trip to London and finds herself near Oxford. She's broke and doesn't know where she'll sleep. Eventually she finds a big manor. A young woman, who claims to be the new assistant to the doctor living inside, is about to enter the manor, but she seems terrified by the manor. The heroine quickly scares the hell out of her then take her place.
Wow. Way to be a douche at the very start of a game. Great job.
Turns out the pay is good enough and living in the manor is nice. Sam stays there for a while, assisting Dr Styles, who lost his wife a few years ago but who's now trying to contact her in any way he can, thinking that her ghost might still in the manor. Sam's first job is to find 6 students to work on brain activities. Then the weird stuff starts happening.
Sam's a very nice girl overall, but she's a magician; the nature of the game implies that you'll perform a variety of tricks and deceptions on people throughout the whole game.
This is a standard serious adventure point and click game, but it's very hard to find one nowadays. The storyline is, as expected, intriguing and well written, though it never gets exceptional. Unexpected is how weird and kinda extravagant it turns out later on.
There's kind of a melancholy to the game, helped by the gorgeous still backgrounds and Oxford's architecture and style. Dr Styles (who's the main character in a few short chapters) is a broken man, his goals are desperate, and Sam's attempts to communicate with him often end badly.
(http://img859.imageshack.us/img859/4905/graymatterxbox36001.jpg)
Controls on the Xbox are strange. There's no pointing and clicking. Move the joystick and a wheel appears, highlighting the name of every item you can interact with. Simply select an item and your character will run to it and interact. This makes the game feel different and more accessible than every other game in the genre, as it completely eliminates pixel hunting. (and puzzles/enigmas aren't too hard) As far as I'm concerned, this is a step in the right direction (I hate being stuck in those games), but an awkward one. There's no pixel hunting in the PC version either, you can press a button to see which items you can interact with. But you're not forced to use it if you like this sort of thing.
Hard game to dislike if you're semi-interested in it. PC version is better.
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Dragon Age II: So I see the demo up on XBL. Sure, why not, I'll try it.
No, Electronic Arts, I do not want to register with your company just to play a damned demo. I also do not want to read a license agreement when playing a video game. I click Accept without reading it, in hopes that a lawyer will come try to sue me for doing something improper with the game, at which point I will punch him in the nuts.
I get to choose a character, all six of which look exactly the same. Well no, one's holding a staff instead of a sword. I choose Female Warrior, despite seeing no difference between that and Male Warrior.
A cutscene appears and I am talking to a "dwarf", yet he doesn't seem particularly small or bearded or anything else resembling a typical dwarf.
I am taken to a battle where I kill lots of zombie things with a mage chick helping me. This is moderately interesting. But wait! I am told this is all bullshit. So obviously the game does not want to be interesting.
Now me and my too-much-eyeshadow self am leading my mom, my sister who happens to look exactly like the mage chick I was fighting with earlier, and some wimpy guy whose class is Warrior, despite obviously not fitting the bill. We fight zombie guys every three steps. Except, combat is now much worse than in the intro. Hit detection is horrible. I find that the best way to hit enemies is to swing my sword at my comrades and the crappy hit detection will hit the enemies instead. Special moves kill enemies in one hit, but there is an enormous amount of time between being able to use them, despite the stamina bar thingy being full. It takes approximately one hundred normal attacks to kill one zombie, and you fight about ten at a time.
Anyway, this continues for far too long. I loot some bodies. Nobody seems to notice when blood has splattered all over their faces.
And then, I decide to try controlling some other characters. I control the mage chick, activate the targetting circle for her spell, and the game freezes.
Westerners need to give up on making RPGs, they're terrible at it. Rating: Ass/10.
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Pokemon Black: Actually haven't made much progress. Beat the first gyn, then traded my Tepig to my kid's game so I could start over and get the third starter. Unfortunately my kid picked the awesome smug snake, so I am stuck with the (admittedly cute) otter.
Last Remnant: Got to where I'm not dying constantly, so progress! I am now pointedly ignoring the story and doing quests in the desert instead.
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snip
I can't even begin to list the things wrong with this. I will just stop at my first statement. The fuck are you doing, playing RPGs on a console? It's a goddamn RPG, you want to be able to use a mouse and load mods, not dick around with a controller and be dependent on Xbox Live to let you play the game.
Woah woah, wait a second. I bought a new shirt in 2000 too!
Dragon Age: I know what's the absolute worst thing about this game compared to Mass Effect!
You can't be a douchebag!
In adventure games and wRPGs, unless you're really drawn into the game and the problems of its world, the amount of fun you're having is DIRECTLY proportional to how much of a dick you are. Being a nice guy is cool the first few times, but it becomes very repetitive fast. Finish some guy's quest perfectly, the guy's happy and gives you something, etc. There's no interesting writing in it, no particular fun, and after the 100th time no feeling of accomplishment anymore. Being a douche is often a lot more varied: Steal an unconscious man's gear before helping him, put poison in someone's drink, blackmail people, sell a kid to slavery, lie about being a doctor then do a half assed job and ask to get paid for it, punch a journalist because you've had enough of her disingenous assertions, etc.
In Dragon Age, every NPC has an approval rating. Be a dick to someone and the game will like you less. This affects combat performance and whether or not they stay in your team, so this is a big deal. The game has given hundred opportunities to mock Alistair, and I can't use them!! There seems to be a lot of quests you can miss if you're being too much of a dick, too. Which makes sense, but it's no fun.
Fortunately, you can use a team of assholes then not care about being a douche to NPCs, but you still have to be very nice to those team members of your team in private conversations. And that's not enough.
Sten and Morrigan actively approve of dickery. Morrigan likes it when you argue with her as long as you don't cross over in to belittling her.
Also, I don't think anyone but Zevran leaves just because you torque them off. You gotta make specific decisions at plot points. You can mock Alistair all you want, there's only one time he'll actually leave and the game is like "Hey if you do this he leaves, are you sure?"
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Pokemon Black: A lot of stuff to cover, and I'll try to keep it brief. I head into the first major town and see a gathering in the town square. Are we going to burn a witch because she weighs as much as a Psyduck? No, it's a cult. But since they only make announcements, don't threaten anyone, and believe in being a team, I'm sure they'll be perfectly all right. I mean, who ever heard of a Team being bad in a Pokemon game?
After the announcement, a boy named N battles me and is generally unnerving. Yeah, he totally wants me. So after beating N(iu), he continues on about listening to my Pokemon. Yeah, you... do that.
Heading on Route 2, I get a call from Mom. Yes, Mom, I'm wearing clean underwear. No, I haven't wrecked a tomboy's bike yet, I'll get right on it. Hmmm... the call is coming from inside the route?! Aah! She sneaks up and gives me running shoes, kind of like the Burger King of footwear. Along the way to Striaton, I catch a Purrloin which I name HelloKitty.
The first gym is all about learning about type advantages. Since I picked up a Pansear (named Grilla) before the battle, I manage to win on the first try. Yay me.
Team Plasma is evil. Wow, never saw that one coming.
A long list of Pokemon caught:
Munna - Freddy
Audito - Speaker
Roggarola - Reggie
Pidove - Bert
Woobat - Dr.Acula
Sawk - Tien
Tympole - Glenn
Timburr - Cray
King evolved and lost Pickup, so I dropped him from the team. I'm about to fight the second gym leader.
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I can't even begin to list the things wrong with this. I will just stop at my first statement. The fuck are you doing, playing RPGs on a console? It's a goddamn RPG, you want to be able to use a mouse and load mods, not dick around with a controller and be dependent on Xbox Live to let you play the game.
Why the fuck would you need a mouse to play an RPG? It's not a genre based around quickly locating targets on a map like an RTS is or anything. There have been hundreds of successful RPGs made for consoles, and last I checked even you liked some of those. Don't let the design team of Dragon Age 2 off the hook for making a shitty interface just because they only knew how to program for one platform; shitty design is shitty design. If they were too incompetent to make a good interface for the X-Box, they shouldn't have released it for the X-Box.
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That is actually a problem with DA1 more than 2. It is one of the reasons I don't reccomend it on consoles, the interfacing is just plain poor.
From my understanding in the sequel they changed the control scheme on 2 on consoles to play much more like an action game where you just direct the character and choose attacks where the PC version kept the more mouse oriented control scheme.
If it didn't work again though, certainly something you should hold against the game. PC version controls pretty well though.
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I can't even begin to list the things wrong with this. I will just stop at my first statement. The fuck are you doing, playing RPGs on a console? It's a goddamn RPG, you want to be able to use a mouse and load mods, not dick around with a controller and be dependent on Xbox Live to let you play the game.
Why the fuck would you need a mouse to play an RPG? It's not a genre based around quickly locating targets on a map like an RTS is or anything. There have been hundreds of successful RPGs made for consoles, and last I checked even you liked some of those. Don't let the design team of Dragon Age 2 off the hook for making a shitty interface just because they only knew how to program for one platform; shitty design is shitty design. If they were too incompetent to make a good interface for the X-Box, they shouldn't have released it for the X-Box.
You're right; there are RPGs that work on consoles. How many are isometric? Did you ever play the port of Diablo that was on PlayStation? What about the console versions of KotOR? We've known that you probably want to be using a mouse for, what, fifteen years? If it's a menu-driven game your life will be easier with a mouse and keyboard.
Lemme put it to you this way: I certainly COULD play Civ 5 with an Xbox controller. Doesn't mean I ever will.
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Plenty of RPGs work on consoles, but BioWare's offerings, which are more RTS than RPG where combat is concerned, are not among them.
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DA2's attempt to remedy this with auto-targeting on consoles is indeed a problem, but then again, when the PC version support mode you are the one at fault for buying a different form. Perhaps you would like to grouse about the Game Boy port of Mortal Kombat, as well?
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Nah, Game Boy version of Mortal Kombat was the first version where you could play as Goro. That by itself lets me overlook its wretched controls.
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Clearly the XBox version of DA2 could have been saved if you were able to play as the Dragon.
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Nah, Game Boy version of Mortal Kombat was the first version where you could play as Goro. That by itself lets me overlook its wretched controls.
Alternatively, the Genesis version of Street Fighter 2, where you switched between punches and kicks by pressing start.
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Nah, Game Boy version of Mortal Kombat was the first version where you could play as Goro. That by itself lets me overlook its wretched controls.
Alternatively, the Genesis version of Street Fighter 2, where you switched between punches and kicks by pressing start.
BUT THEY RELEASED A SIX-BUTTON GENESIS CONTROLLER JUST FOR THE GAME
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Eh, KoToR controlled just fine on the XBox. Played 1 and 2 and had no complaints. If DA has issues, then it's something wrong with the game, and not the medium.
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Eh, KoToR controlled just fine on the XBox. Played 1 and 2 and had no complaints. If DA has issues, then it's something wrong with the game, and not the medium.
I played KotOR1 on the Xbox for a while and just couldn't take it. It's partially because I played the PC version first, but the cursor and the menus drove me up a goddamn wall.
BUT THEY RELEASED A SIX-BUTTON GENESIS CONTROLLER JUST FOR THE GAME
I did not now that. But I'm somehow unsurprised that Sega's solution was that everyone needed to buy some new piece of hardware.
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That controller became pretty much the Genesis standard in the later years, and they added two shoulder buttons to make the Saturn pad.
Edit: 4,000!
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I forgot the three-button genesis controller even existed until this line of thought.
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Of course, KotOR was a turn-based game with fluid turns, rather than an actual action element, so targeting concerns mattered a lot less. Certainly less than the omni-present lag (disclaimer: I played on a 360, which from what I can tell is software-based emulation)
Considering how some fighting game players insist that it's sacrilege to play without a proper joystick, perhaps sega figured the rest could be just as easily suckered into superfluous hardware.
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It's not that you CAN'T play it with a controller, it's that the experience is just worse in every way.
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Pokemon white: Tried my hand at that breeding business starting with Galvantula as my first poke to attempt all this on. After many hours I got:
BlackTiger (Galvantula) Lv 60 Modest Compoundeyes (+30% accuracy)
Bug/Electric
Hp: 169
Attack:87
Defence: 95
Sp.Attack:194
Sp.Defence:83
Speed: 191
Thunder
Energy Ball
Bug Buzz
Volt Switch
Relying on STAB Thunder to hit the enemies for massive damage. Energy Ball and Bug Buzz are there to hit weakness on things that resist thunder and Volt switch is there to get Galvantula the hell out of there if needed.
IVs being:
Hp 24
atk 0
def 30
spA 30
spD 10
spd 31
Evs are:
Hp evs: 4
sp.A evs: 252
spd evs: 252
All that and it was only one poke!?! What the hell this is a long process, ev training and leveling up is easy but Ivs are a pain. Anyway the pokemon I have ideas on using are:
Scrafty: Those three punchs look like good moves for him to have but they are egg moves and I'm not to acquainted with the whole egg group business so I might pass on. Ability is also a hard choice.
Excadrill: Combined with Sand stream the thing seems to be an extreamly fast hard hitting killer. Stats are generally good but if I have him I then have to have...
Tyranitar: I'm guess IV wise I build it as 252 hp and atk? I've seen some speed builds where you focus on dragon dancing and then sweeping but I can't tell how effective that would be. I just want a Tyranitar that goes well with the team and isn't stuck doing its own thing.
The rest: Eelektross is the only other poke that I have interest at the moment. It seems like it could be quite versatile in a fight and it can be one of the hardiest things about.
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Radiant Historia: Beaten. 235/236 events (didn't beat the Master superboss)
Radiant Historia is a good game because every element of it manages to be at least above-average. The over-arching plot that focuses on jumping back and forth between two different time streams is unique and well-executed. The combat takes a gimmick (moving enemies) and runs with it quite well, making even easy random battles sort of like a puzzle to figure out "how can I do this efficiently?". The PC diversity in combat is also very satisfying, for all that items render some of the healers a little less noticeable. The game's art is enjoyable enough for a DS game, while the music is wonderful (Yoko Shimomura pulls off a great soundtrack). The characters are developed well enough, and even relatively minor characters are given backstories.
Good times.
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Suikoden Tierkreis: God damn do I hate the name of this game!
But more importantly, game is complete! naturally, A MEEPLE RANT!!!
Well, what's there to say about the game? Well first off, lets discuss the gameplay...
Its brilliant! I mean, you make a party of 4, put them in a formation based on a 3x2 panel, going with Medium, Long, and Short Range weapons! This is totally new and original! Oh, and then in battle, you give character commands, and they act once per round based on speed! But wait, the speed is slightly randomized, SO YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO PREDICT! That seriously blew my mind and I needed to plan everything wtih the worst possible outcome entirely. Screw consistency, relying on arbitrary lucky factors? Yeah, that's where its at! Oh, but attacking isn't the only thing you can do. YOu can DEFEND, USE SPECIAL SKILLS, USE ITEMS! If you want, you can also Run, but beware, it might backfire. Also, combo attacks exist for some parties. THIS BLOWS MY MIND!
As far as character diversity goes...well, plot related powers.m M You can only use 4, but you get a whole large pool of actions, and some are just flat out better than others! They're universally better than your physicals too...so why not spam them? Cause they cost this thing called "MP". That makes yo have to care about not using them! Yeah, who wants to use all their abilities? 4 is all you need! And some are support abilities too!
This is incredibly deep gameplay, and unlike anything I've ever seen. I wish more games were like this. Its totally badass and awesome. How can anyone argue?
Unfortunately...the plot is a different story. Ok, so the game starts off with you naming the main character. Cool, I guess that means a silent protagonist, right?
WRONG! He talks. He talks a lot! More than any other character! That...how dare they?! Do they not know immersion?!? YOU CANNOT MAKE THE MAIN CHARACTER TALK IN A jRPG! That's just wrong! What a horrible start right there. Now the game's narrative is ruined cause I can't assume the guy is an avatar with implied dialog, but he's an actual character. Fuck you, Tenkai Star of this game!
And then...the game starts off with some cryptic nonsense? What happened to "Go out and do stuff, you'll save the world eventually" plots? I don't want there to be mysterious stuff, I want a nice random adventure!
Ah, but the game didn't feel fit to be a jerk there. See, the main character wasn't the only character to be given a voice. No, it seems every character has a personality. They also show degrees of change and development. I mean, seriously, what the fuck? And they even have BACKSTORY, CHARACTER RELATIONSHIPS, and all that toher stuff that goes into characterization? God damn it, well, there goes all the fanfic potential of THIS game, seeing as I can't randomly fill in the blanks, cause there are none.
But back to the plot, ok, I can let the weird shit early slide, but...then it decides to tell me the game has a big religion. Ok, cool, maybe this will be neat. EXCEPT NO! THE RELIGION IS EVIL! AND YOUR TEAM IS FIGHTING AGAINST IT! I found this massively offensive. It was bad enough having Jesus on my team in Xenosaga 3, but now you're telling me that predetermined fate is total bullshit and we need to fight against it? What kind of sick moronic plotline is that?
...oh, right, Tales of the Abyss worked with it too. But TotA never said "its wrong!", they just sort of said "its there", and your characters did whatever the hell they felt like anyway. See? A big factor of the world being pointless and undermined. That's brilliant! Characters should not react violently to major world shattering crises.
Now, I could let this slide if they didn't feel the need to use the massively cliched, over used, out of left field MULTIPLE WORLDS nonsense. So now you're telling me to EXPAND THE SETTING and take things on a grander scope? So basically, now you're saying I can't even make ALTERNATE REALITIES cause the agme itself has CANON Alternate Realities? Geez, game, ruin any fun one can have with your plot why don't yo.
And then the villain. Making him show a degree of humanity? Trying to make him believable and almost sympathetic, yet still detestable and clearly wrong? Giving him...actual motives?
THAT'S ALMOST AS BAD AS THE MAIN NOT BEING A SILENT PROTAGONIST. Please, if you want to make the villain talk and be a regular face, then there's only one way to do it, and that's by making him a totally bland, baby eating EVIL!!! monstrosity. Haven't you seen Dragon Quest game? All their villains are like that, and that's a hugely successful series! Now look at Breath of Fire games. Myria and Fou-lu are both clearly NOT that, and thus must obviously suck, and BoF series is basically dead.
LEARN SOME HINTS KONAMI!!!
So god damn it, the plot is an attrocity and a train wreck. And don't get me started on making a Suikoden a WAR STORY...
The only saving grace for characters in this game is Beardsley. Very few scenes, no build up, and then you kick his ass arbitrarily in a big tower out of nowhere. THAT'S how you make a good character! No personality, no development, and no purpose in the story. Now if only they did this with all the other characters in the game, this could have been alright...
So amazing gameplay followed by the most offensive plot this side of Xenosaga 3, with a few alright tracks, this game gets somewhere around 7/10.
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*reads Meeple rant*
...I'm sorry I ever doubted you, man. ;_;
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I can't tell if he liked it or not. O_o
Black: Third and fourth gyms were way too easy. Hope they didn't peak at Gym 2. Current team is:
Herdier lvl 27 - damned good, STAB Normal is really good in this game.
Sawk lvl 27 - colossal attack stat destroys things
Lilligant lvl 27 - waited until she learned Giga Drain before evolving. And she gets the god powerup next level.
Boldore lvl 27 - not as broken as the above 3, but Rock Blast still wrecks things
Pansear lvl 26 - sucks, but I picked the wrong stone accidentally so I can't evolve him yet. Mainly use him for catching.
Dewott lvl 26 - kind of meh. May replace him with this Basculin I just got.
And just in case I forget to mention it later, reusable TMs is the greatest thing in Pokemon history.
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Perhaps it's something that changes based on starter, but I found a Fire Stone in the southwest corner of the Desert Resort (that's an area you reach from Route 4, to the west under the highway)
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Pokemon Black: At big city of the coolness and lots of streets, I find that poor little MC has had her Pokemon stolen and hooked up with some little woman with lots of hair. Way to go, MC. I rescue her Munna from Team Plasma, then go to the most unhygenic gym to date. Not that hard, though I was a little underleveled. I'm now in the Desert Resort place killing enemies and levelling up. Oh, and I too found a Fire Stone in the place that the Cmdr. mentioned.
Catches since the last post:
Sandile: Hook
Darumake: Rei
Dwebble: Zoidberg
Current team:
Cottonelle (L 20 Cottonee - Growth/Leech Seed/Razor Leaf/Mega Drain)
Grilla (L22 Pansear - Scratch/Bite/Dig/Flame Burst)
Freddy (L22 Munna - Psybeam/Moonlight/Rock Tomb/Hypnosis)
Bert (L23 Tranquill - Roost/Air Cutter/Detect/Quick Attack, Scope Lens)
Tien (L23 Sawk - Leer/Retaliate/Focus Energy/Low Sweep)
General (L24 Dewott - Tackle/Fury Cutter/Water Gun/Razor Shell, Mystic Water)
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I can't tell if he liked it or not. O_o
I'm pretty sure the rating he assigned the game at the end of the post is the only part of the post that isn't complete (and awesome) bullshit.
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Dragon Age 2: Still dicking around, getting coin up so I can go underground.
Generally speaking, I'm comfortable enough at this point to say this is to Dragon Age as Mass Effect 2 was to Mass Effect? Quite literally, in many cases (I'm looking at you, Dialogue wheel!) They've definitely taken everything they learned in ME1/DA1 and applied it to this game. In general, the gameplay is smoother and much, much faster. I still miss the overhead view, but I'm getting used to not having it.
PC cast is growing on me as they carve out their niches.
Honestly, enjoying the game a hell of a lot at this point.
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Pokémon White:
It's pokémon. I can't really think of anything that separates it from the rest. Oh wait...
(http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/7118/mustashedog.png)
Also don't pick the female trainer, unless you want to stare at this all game long:
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5665/1283741738355.gif
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So they finally got Dr. Seuss on board for Pokemon, eh? Awesome.
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http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5665/1283741738355.gif
Gods what the fuck. I was going to rock out as a chick because I wanted to feel pretty. That is not pretty.
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Nice to know what Japan thinks Pokeworld:USA looks like... right down to the stripperific clothes our elementary schoolers wear...
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Ephraim: Oh my god. What's his name? I might have to get this game even if I know it's the same game as always.
Dragon Age: Turned the werewolves back into humans (this means I side with elves?? What the?) and helped templars kill some mages (and one party member in the process) Fighting can finally become interesting again.
You see, after the opening of the game you have to go to four different places and do a series of quests there, getting allies from around the world. This seems to be about 70% of the whole game.
There's one problem: Enemies don't scale with you, and the four places are roughly equal in challenge (all adapted to a level 10 party that just finished the opening of the game, aside from a big ass optional dragon)
So the first place you go to is challenging enough, the second is kinda boring, the third and fourth are "You can auto battle everything even in nightmare mode". Bad design, here. Bad design. (To be fair, the Fade was nice at least, but only because it's a solo section and my main character is a weak archer)
The FF6 World of Ruin, for example, was handled much better (without having to add awful level scaling either); you take a look at Locke's dungeon or Fanatic Tower, get your ass kicked then choose to do some other things before coming back. As a bonus, these dungeons will feel like intimidating challenges to overcome for the rest of the game.
Also slept with Leliana. I don't want to have to break up with her or Alistair, so I'm not going to talk to them ever again.Sigh. I should never have left Zevran for some guy who's basically Chandler from Friends.
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I can't tell if he liked it or not. O_o
I'm pretty sure the rating he assigned the game at the end of the post is the only part of the post that isn't complete (and awesome) bullshit.
Pretty much <_<
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Ephraim: Oh my god. What's his name? I might have to get this game even if I know it's the same game as always.
Dragon Age: Turned the werewolves back into humans (this means I side with elves?? What the?) and helped templars kill some mages (and one party member in the process) Fighting can finally become interesting again.
You see, after the opening of the game you have to go to four different places and do a series of quests there, getting allies from around the world. This seems to be about 70% of the whole game.
There's one problem: Enemies don't scale with you, and the four places are roughly equal in challenge (all adapted to a level 10 party that just finished the opening of the game, aside from a big ass optional dragon)
So the first place you go to is challenging enough, the second is kinda boring, the third and fourth are "You can auto battle everything even in nightmare mode". Bad design, here. Bad design. (To be fair, the Fade was nice at least, but only because it's a solo section and my main character is a weak archer)
The FF6 World of Ruin, for example, was handled much better (without having to add awful level scaling either); you take a look at Locke's dungeon or Fanatic Tower, get your ass kicked then choose to do some other things before coming back. As a bonus, these dungeons will feel like intimidating challenges to overcome for the rest of the game.
Also slept with Leliana. I don't want to have to break up with her or Alistair, so I'm not going to talk to them ever again.Sigh. I should never have left Zevran for some guy who's basically Chandler from Friends.
I seem to recall the game scaling up some, though it spikes big time at the endgame.
If you took the options to make them both hardasses, you can just have threeways instead.
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Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne: Ice snake vs. ice snake in a prison, and every dude I know has a hat, unpolished (for today's standards) SMT best SMT
Okamiden: Glorious puppy cavalry, although man that chain to get Cherry Bomb again was pretty tedious, at least it had a MORAL, MORALS are important
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Dragon Age 2: Clearly a contender for Andrew's Game of the Until Mass Effect 3 comes out at this point.
Have acquired 50 gold with which to become partner in expedition too make the money.
Everything I say still continues to apply. Game is just a hell of a lot smoother than Dragon Age and flows fairly seamlessly from event to event. Fights are much faster and more enjoyable to watch. Still dislike the behind back view, but I'm used to it. They really should have kept it for PC.
Cutscenes, what with their slightly more dynamic angles and occasional character movement are a lot less tedious.
Characters are a bit weaker than normal, but they feel like they are falling into place? Character dynamics are pretty good. Do hope they do something with the idea of the characters living around the city. Good for general immersiveness, although could be done a bit better. Character reaction to the main feels a bit more realistic as well, which probably works decently with the Friend/Rival system which means you can get a PC to dislike you and not SUFFER for it. Do miss the camp though. Wonder if something like it will come up again?
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Well, the Hanged Man is basically your camp, just not everyone is there ALL the time.
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MORALS are important
Lies, all lies.
Pokemon Black: In Nimbasa City, I do a little exploring and find two stadiums with a single trainer in each. There's also a subway for battling and a battling instruction place, but I skip those for now. After all, MC suggested I go to the theater. Why not? I'd like to see their rendition of The Merry Wingulls of Windsor.
...
...
...
WHAT.
THE.
SPOON.
This has got to be in the top five crack moments in gaming. Hell, this makes XS plot seem rational and decent. I kid, of course. (Nothing can do that.)
After witnessing the soul-crushing WTF that is an otter wearing a top hat and glasses twirling a tennis racket for a paying crowd, I leave and see that MC and her dad are having a little heart to heart. Since morals (as stated above) are lies, I feel no shame in eavesdropping on a private conversation. MC's dad is upset with her lifestyle choices, which is a little disappointing because you're supposed to love your kid no matter... oh, you mean the "Pokemon trainer" choice. My bad. Boy, won't he be shocked when he finds out about Iris... I want to help MC, but since I'm a mute main (the only good kind of main, testify Meeple!) I can only sit idly by. Fortunately, a Gym Leader none of us have ever met comes by and convinces MC's dad.
I continue with the plot by heading to the Worst. Amusement park. EVER. I mean, seriously, it's got a giant Pikachu statue or tent or whatever, a roller coaster you have to get off and on and fight people to board, a single ferris wheel, and two staff members whose sole purpose is to cheer on the previously mentioned rides. That's it. I'm hear to track down Old Man Jenkins and his smuggling ring Team Plasma.
So I run into N(iu) at the entrance. Totally innocent, no way I could be suspicious of this. Sure, I'd be happy to have your help tracking Team... er, you can let go of my hand, N. Yeah, seriously, I think I just saw them over there. Oh, the Ferris Wheel? You want to ride with me in that cramped cart as we look around from the air. Um... is this a date? I'm flattered, but you see it's not you, it's me and I need to get my hair done and... I need an adult!
(I would like to take a minute to go through an explanation. You see, with Poke Black I'm playing near blind, knowing next to nothing about the area, plot, or characters. When I use DLers as nicknames for characters, I do it based on first impressions of the characters. Bianca was a young girl (MC) who seemed to me to be the most likely to be the rival (Meeple - I've named my rival in at least one playthrough of the past 4 gens Meeple mostly because I like saying Meeple. Meeple.). Cheren is boring, so he deserves no nickname. N... well, Niu/Neph/Nitori are the only N users I could think of, and he seemed to fit Niu better on the first appearance. I mention this now because I don't want to give people the impression that I think negatively of any of you or that the character traits that I mention or exaggerate in any way for the purpose of entertainment and snarkiness reflects the way I really think of you. The fact that N came across in this section extremely creepy is entirely due to N (and my utter lack of social skills and sanity), not Niu.
Oh, and if Iris has any more of a part in this game, I'm calling her Idun. Moving on.)
Gasp and shock! N is a part of Team Plasma! Not only that, he's the king. I didn't vote for him. He gets stomped, but lets the Team Plasma goons escape, then he invades my personal space and tells me to get stronger and that's he'll be the champion. Good for him. I save right before fighting the fourth gym leader.
New Catches:
Minicino - Bandito
Trubbish - Glad
Gothita - Visi
Current Team:
Cottonelle (L26 Cottonee - PoisonPowder/Leech Seed/Razor Leaf/Giga Drain, Miracle Seed)
Bert (L27 Tranquill - Roost/Air Cutter/Detect/Quick Attack, Scope Lens)
Freddy (L27 Munna - Psybeam/Moonlight/Rock Tomb/Hypnosis)
General (L27 Dewott - Tackle/Fury Cutter/Water Gun/Razor Shell, Mystic Water)
Tien (L27 Sawk - Leer/Retaliate/Karate Chop/Low Sweep)
Grilla (L28 Pansear - Scratch/Bite/Dig/Flame Burst)
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"I seem to recall the game scaling up some, though it spikes big time at the endgame.
If you took the options to make them both hardasses, you can just have threeways instead."
I don't know, the game got easier and easier even though I got nearly no equipment change. I guess games don't have to be as retarded as Oblivion about it.
From now on I think I'll just be a douche to everyone and then give infinite cakes (part of some DLC) to people to win back approval. This sounds far better. I just wanted to make the first playthrough feel more authentic.
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The game certainly gets easier, but I think that's a function of unlocking prestige classes. My rogue always started whooping ass after I unlocked Duelist.
And you don't even have to lose approval to make Alistair and Leiliana hardasses, if you do it through persuasion and not spite.
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MvC3: Hi there, Shuma-Gorath!
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MvC3: Hi there, Shuma-Gorath!
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MvC3: Hi there, Jill Valentine!
>_>
<_<
/me flees~
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*hits Gate with Chaos Dimension*
WASTE OF FLESH.
Everything begins and ends with Shuma-Gorath/Meeple!
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Apparently Morrigan has a unique win quote against Shuma. I don't want to know, but I'm going to get it anyway.
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Apparently Morrigan has a unique win quote against Shuma. I don't want to know, but I'm going to get it anyway.
I've seen it on GFAQs. All I'll say is that yes, it is exactly about the kind of topic you'd think a succubus (...who can produce tentacles of her own...) would talk about having just met a tentacle monstrosity.
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MvC3: Finished beating the game with all characters/unlocking all artwork last night. Only five achievements left to go, although I think I am cursed not to ever get 5 Ranked wins in a row. Had 4 wins so many times before losing the 5th.
Have to kick my kid off of Blazblue before I get to play with tentacles. :(
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Wild ARMS ACF:
So after around 3-4 years, I finally decided to finish the Abyss off in this game. Between the Ambushes and the annoying as hell warp lifts, I'm not sure which version of the Abyss is more infuriating. Probably this one, since WA3's is more boring than anything, although you can get it done and out of the way quickly. Anyway, the whole point of doing this was to fight FRUE RAGU in this game, so expect some notes about him soon enough so Neph can use him for the dungeon. As a sneak peak, this version of Ragu can quadruple act up to four times at the end of his active turn, each time hitting you with MT Non-elemental damage. It is basically the ultimate in dickery and gives him a randomized "I win" button in most cases since it deals around a 1000 damage each time and no one but the Sheriff Star'd PC is likely breaking 5000 HP.
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Apologies to Gref, since I still haven't gotten a chance to play more Dangerous Girls. Also an apology to everyone who actually likes reading my Pokemon walkthough, since this one may be a little sparse because I couldn't make notes through much of this.
Pokemon Black: Lots of stuff to cover, starting with the fourth Gym leader. With a lack of super-effective moves to use and a lot of weaknesses, I barely eked out a victory. Stupid electric flying rats. I head on to the next city, catching things and levelling and basically deciding it's time to start an overhaul of my team. I think I run into MC and the other guy a few times (and the other guy earns the nickname Grahf since he doth seek the power). I get Fly, backtrack and catch Victini, then fight the fifth gym (not necessarily in that order, of course). Clay goes down hard since I have two who hit his weakness, though I'm a little concerned about the minimal safety railings on elevators which go down hundreds of feet. In the forest, something magical happens - I catch Pokerus! Huzzah! The Prof outright hands me a Lucky Egg, too. Game's gonna get broken.
How you know this is the US edition of Pokemon:
-among the new pokemon are a trash bag and an ice cream cone
-side by side, a McDonalds joke and "nuggetaboutit".
-the gym leaders to date have been a set of waiters, some guy who thinks it's a good idea to have a gym full of honey, an artist, a model, a texan cowboy with chaps, and a jet pilot.
N shows up again, but he's still the same "I just want to be friends with Pokemon emo snarky whine", so it's not important.
Sixth gym gets utterly crushed by my newest addition (see below), though that's not what gets me - cannons? Really? I'm beginning to think that MC'd dad was right with the whole journey thing... Get surf, save for now.
New catches:
Ducklett - Psyduck
Karrablast - Alex
Deerling - Bambi
Victini - Victory!
Ferroseed - Acorn
Klink - Colonel
Joltik - Tweak
Drilbur - Mogu
Tynamo - Eel
Litwick - Lumiere
Elgyon - Scanner
Emolga - Rocky
Basculin - Grumpy
Frillish - Ursula
Cryogonal - Special
Current Team:
Cottonelle (L36 Cottonee - PoisonPowder/Leech Seed/Razor Leaf/Giga Drain, Miracle Seed)
Grilla (L36 Pansear - Acrobatics/Bite/Dig/Flame Burst)
General (L36 Samurott - Slash/Revenge/Surf/Razor Shell, Mystic Water)
Tien (L37 Sawk - Bulldoze/Retaliate/Brick Break/Poison Jab, Amulet Coin)
Tweak (L39 Galvantula - Signal Beam/Electroweb/X-Scissor/Slash, Lucky Egg)
Mogu (L29 Drilbur - Slash/Metal Claw/Dig/Hone Claws, Exp. Share)
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It is okay, I honestly haven't sunk much further into the game than you have. My understanding of the mechanics was far more flawed than it needed to be to get further than the town area.
Dragon Age 2 - I am still in year 4 (so second act of the game), I got a bug where I couldn't do Fenris' companion quest and it was kind of bumming me out, so I just restarted the chapter, only lost 4 or so hours of play, so no biggy. It wasn't because I like Fenris particularly much, it is just that I walked into it (Fenris area doesn't force you into his party like others do, so a scripted bit might be broken). So yeah catching up to where I had done. The reason I don't really mind was I got to do Aveline's character quest again which was fun and I get to do Varric's again which was absolutely fucking amazing. He decides to lie about it and say he was a cowboy. It is awesome.
POKEMANS Platinum - Same as above, but not a bug, just forgetting to save before I stopped playing for weeks. So um had to remember where the fuck it was up to and then recatch Mesprit/Uxie/Wingull/Azelf. Otherwise up to where I was before.
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Just finished Mass Effect 2, just have to say I love what they did with the final dungeon. Didn't have everyone survive, but I can see how that mechanic works. Wound up playing as straight Paragon, though if I go through the game again, likely to go Renegade.
That said, given it's gonna be several months before 3 comes out, I might give 1 and 2 another go before that happens.
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Wild ARMS ACF:
So after around 3-4 years, I finally decided to finish the Abyss off in this game. Between the Ambushes and the annoying as hell warp lifts, I'm not sure which version of the Abyss is more infuriating. Probably this one, since WA3's is more boring than anything, although you can get it done and out of the way quickly. Anyway, the whole point of doing this was to fight FRUE RAGU in this game, so expect some notes about him soon enough so Neph can use him for the dungeon. As a sneak peak, this version of Ragu can quadruple act up to four times at the end of his active turn, each time hitting you with MT Non-elemental damage. It is basically the ultimate in dickery and gives him a randomized "I win" button in most cases since it deals around a 1000 damage each time and no one but the Sheriff Star'd PC is likely breaking 5000 HP.
It's battles like these that make having FP Advance on Cecilia almost a requirement (or a Sheriff Star) and (near) Fire Immunity on everyone. My first turn was spent with Jane's Follow Me into Emma's Anti-Magic Zone and Cecilia's... Protect? Shield? Whichever one reduces Magic damage, I honestly forget which is which. You have a wide array of options to follow that up with, at least.
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You only really need Fire immunity on one PC. Your attacking PC should have the Sheriff Star and your 3rd PC will be defending more than half the time after you set everything up. FRUE Ragu is also the only time singular buffing is way too slow and the risk of dying is way too high. You need Protect on at all times due to his possible quadruple act. I didn't bother with Anti-Magic Zone; you can't cast anything else after it even though it reduces Ragu's offense. And you just deal so little damage unless you set up that it's worth the risk just running Protect.
I just Great Booster'd twice, casted Permanace, then played around with other buff spells such as Command Replay, Brave Seal and Holy Man Sorrow. OTD really only got me once; when I wasn't set up to block it. Afterwards, the damage it deals is survivable even with follow up as long as you're careful.
There's other ways of winning it though. Like abusing Full Carrots while Cecilia casts Cosmic Cog over and over. Whatever floats your boat.
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Anti-Magic Zone doesn't prevent things being cast, it just drops magical damage by 40%. FRUE Rags' biggest dick move is MT Dispel apparently, even though I never saw it... Yeah, I just went with Laser Silhouette Spam myself after Great Booster, but I assume that Rudy's Gatling Raid and Jane's Finest Arts would work just as well, especially after Fragile.
Still, as long as Anti-Magic Zone is up, one doesn't really need to worry as much about Ragu's big screw you.
EDIT: I will say this: while ACF's Abyss is far more confusing and maze-like than WA3's repetitive abyss, one really has to give it props for allowing Gimel Coins to be used within its confines. I don't remember completely, but I don't think you could do the same in WA3's Abyss.
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Pokemon Black: Been doing a pseudo-Hatbot challenge (flipping coins/rolling dice in lieu of Hatbot) and am now post-game. Virizion saved my life against the E4, especially since I didn't get token Uber. Post-game requires Surf all round, although I don't know where I'm going. Missed out on 8 Surfers in a row before finally getting one, which was replaced soon after. Now I have a Kangaskhan (named Yo Momma) as my resident Surfer, a Tangrowth with Cut and a Fearow with Fly - doing quite well on the HMs front, so currently exploring Challenger's Cave - have a Jynx using Flash, but able to relearn Energy Ball afterwards (I love reusable TMs!)
Also planning for VGC, and think I've finally settled on a team idea. :)
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Anti-Magic Zone doesn't prevent things being cast, it just drops magical damage by 40%. FRUE Rags' biggest dick move is MT Dispel apparently, even though I never saw it... Yeah, I just went with Laser Silhouette Spam myself after Great Booster, but I assume that Rudy's Gatling Raid and Jane's Finest Arts would work just as well, especially after Fragile.
My mistake then. I never bothered with it since it's just so unneeded elsewhere. Sort of just went with what the naming suggested. I imagine it's easier to pump Rudy for damage versus anyone else, although his drawbacks are lower HP compared to Jack and second lowest RES in the game. You also can't C-Replay a Gatling Raid unless you went Active versus Plus (whoo one battle where it's significantly better)
Still, as long as Anti-Magic Zone is up, one doesn't really need to worry as much about Ragu's big screw you.
Based on what I saw, I think Dispel may actually be a trigger. I never saw it outside of doing *very* specific actions. I'll find out soon enough once I start testing. The only other issue with Anti-Magic Zone is finding it, and getting Emma to keep casting it since it can't be Permanance'd.
EDIT: I will say this: while ACF's Abyss is far more confusing and maze-like than WA3's repetitive abyss, one really has to give it props for allowing Gimel Coins to be used within its confines. I don't remember completely, but I don't think you could do the same in WA3's Abyss.
This is sort of a thing they had to do for ACF's Abyss. WA3's Abyss only "good" point is that you can definitely get it done super quick. It's boring as hell and by far and away one of the worst 100 floor slogs there are, but if you're only interested in the Sheriff Star, it's easy to go in and get out. Can't say the same thing for ACF's. Hence it being more frustrating than WA3's. WA3's isn't so much frustrating as much as it is just boring. You can basically run on auto-pilot and get to the 100th floor.
GRANTED, ACF has a few other advantages such as warp lifts that go up and down 10 floors, versus the Abyss where it's a straight one way ticket down and no other way to travel. Plus it's 1 floor by 1 floor to boot. Personally, I think if you want to do a 100 floor dungeon type thing, it should be somewhat similar to Sphere 211. Yeah you can limit save points, but you damn well better make a way to go back up and down easy enough.
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I used Jack over Rudy because LS derives twice the benefit from great booster versus Gatling Raid, so I went that route for damage. Also it looks cooler, because hell if they gave Gatling Raid a cool animation.
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Ar Tonelico: I will finish this, dammit. Despite how much RH has basically stolen all my playing time.
I got through Aurica's ch2 and Shurelia's ch3. I have possibly already aired all my biggest complaints about Aurica's Scene Of Fail that managed to pretty much ruin everything the game was doing right up until that point, so today I'll complain about Shurelia's terrible voice actress.
I pretty much hate every decision made about Shurelia's 'inner character'. I mean, I understand that all people have weaknesses, including people with big responsibilities (like being the administrator of the Entire World), and I understand that a lot of people 'just want to fall in love'... But holy crap, when you set up the strongest female character in the world to not only look like a loli, but basically have her entire hardass personality be a front for 'all I've ever wanted was a hard dicking from the main male character', you're doing it wrong. Even if I didn't outright hate the message this implies, her VA does a horrendous job selling her 'emotional' lines. I'm guessing they hired her based on her amazing ability to sound disaffected for those early scenes where she's supposed to come off as a literal robot. Die in a fire, Shurelia. At least Aurica is tolerable if you ignore the one Scene Of Fail. I will say that Shurelia's cosmosphere equivalent was at least mildly amusing, and I liked how it FINALLY tied the cosmosphere nonsense to the main plot at the end and explained what the hell was going on all this time within the context of the fantasy world setting.
Anyway, I'm now working on Misha's ch2, and it's amazing how much the quality of the game jumped when the main heroine is likeable! For all that Misha's costume design is the the ugliest thing I've ever seen (at least she stops being a loli eventually, but the costume is still pretty terrible). Jack and Krusche are also far more interesting side characters than what's-his-name-paladin-guy and totally-not-a-sephiroth-clone Ayatane.
Just how different is Misha's ch3 from Aurica's ch3? Because I honestly don't want to sit through Shurelia plot again.
Also, I don't have the AT manual handy, but apparently that's where the origins of the Reyvateil race are, and it's kind of annoying that they never explain it in-game since it's kind of a big part of the whole world-building thing. What the hell -are- the RTs anyway?
Radiant Historia: Good game is Good. I like Raynie. Rosche's in-battle sprite is cool. The sidequests in this game are fun.
Currently trying to assassinate a Princess in Standard History, but I doubt that's good plan.
Trying to keep his bestbuddy from getting ambushed to death in Alternate History. Somebody died, but luckily he can time-travel. Only it seems like it's not important for him to time-travel in this particular instance, which has Stocke all ;_; .
Stocke is level 22, and I think I'm about to beat down Hugo. Possibly overlevelled? Should I grab some boss notes or did Pyro already get those?
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Ar Tonelico: Terrible shit
Hahahahahahah. I warned you about Ar Tonelico bro. I told you dog.
POKEMANS - I am totally about to beat up a lightning dude. I regret not using my sweet Geodudes this time now knowing that the final gym is a lightning one. Oh well. Alakazam has been shooting shit with Psy shit or Focus Blast where it is Steel. Got some X special stat buffs to try and just sweep with if I want. Taught my Machamp Rock Slide as well if it helps, but I expect fucking Luxrays to be totally lame and have Static shit that makes you paro for punching them in the cock.
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Eat lead the return of Matt Hazard: Brought this on Wednesday for three pounds to entertain me till Friday (today) where I'll be getting Yakuza 4 in my lunch hour. Game is more or less a Gears of war ripoff with one standout feature which is allowing you to select other cover while in cover to run to. This makes going from cover to cover a lot smoother and it looks better too.
The best part is the humour which is reflected in the enemy types which include Soak'em Commandos (SOCOM), Space Marines (GOW dudes), Wafferthins (Wolfenstein Nazis), Dexter's Darlings (Bond girl, Lara croft, Joanna dark). Story was also pretty funny and I love the main villain Wally Wellesley in all his crazy glory. Soundtrack was also exceptional but the gameplay let the game down and the levels dragged on and on and never seemed to end.
This game also makes me imagine Matt Hazard in Star Ocean 3 which would be awesome. No need to do silly objectives, Matt would simply blow all Luther's shit up.
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totally-not-a-sephiroth-clone Ayatane.
Are you implying Sephy makes a good mother?? Lies I say.
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DL gaming topic could use more Ar Tonelico posts: started Ar Tonelico 3.
Was this game before or after Atelier Rorona in Japan? I ask this because AT3 has a noticeable drop in aesthetics in comparison to Rorona. Maybe, the 3d models of characters standout in comparison to the pre-rendered background. I guess I prefer the cute cel-shading of Rorona better. On the plus side, AT3 runs on Havok physics! (just to get that titty bounce right I presume).
Gameplay not really good. I don't mind the barebones Tales-like battle system, it's just too easy. But wait, there's hard mode! However, hard mode makes the game too hard! I died in the first tutorial fight on hard because I was doing 1 damage to something with over 300 HP. Characters don't start off with special abilities, which makes all the vanguard characters the same outside of the small HP difference.
What the hell am I talking about? I'm not playing AT games for gameplay. Bring on the trainwreck Cosmosphere lolirapedoll plot. Sadly, Finnel's level 1-5 are extremely short and odd. I'm hoping I get to play though all of them properly later in the game. I'm holding off doing most of Saki's until I built up a good amount of DP: it looks like the cost of events went up and I want to make sure I get enough to complete one level in a single dive.
The M rating is completely stupid. The worst thing you get is bra n' panties and the word virginity. Giving a girl ice cream and cake, then asking her to strip is completely normal and not sexual at all. I mean, food is expensive as hell in AT. You better put out when I'm giving you this $2000 cake.
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Note to self, buy Ephraim a cake.
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I'm sure the M rating is for DLC scenes that make gay guys say "I've never been so glad to see a woman's breasts".
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Wait, there are breasts in lolitonelico?
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Dragon Age 2: I suppose I must do secondary quests before setting off for the Deep Roads? Seems that way at least. No biggie, as it will allow me to acquire PHAT LOOTZ.
Characters continue to grow on me. Pretty much all of them have displayed at least a couple of amusing banters, which works well enough for me. Generally speaking, Varric remains the strongest by far, but each has had their moments. Even Fenris, whose moments mostly consist of everyone calling him out on being DARK AND BROODING >:|
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Wait, there are breasts in lolitonelico?
They are few and far between, but they are there. That is WHY that comment came up.
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Dragon Age 2: I suppose I must do secondary quests before setting off for the Deep Roads? Seems that way at least. No biggie, as it will allow me to acquire PHAT LOOTZ.
Characters continue to grow on me. Pretty much all of them have displayed at least a couple of amusing banters, which works well enough for me. Generally speaking, Varric remains the strongest by far, but each has had their moments. Even Fenris, whose moments mostly consist of everyone calling him out on being DARK AND BROODING >:|
Yeah, the Deep Roads is a point of no return. There's another one later.
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CK, the DLC has even less breast, and it is so bad that'll you'll actually pay for it just to see how horrible it is.
Wait, there are breasts in lolitonelico?
There are, just not PCs.... wait, there is one character with breast that is playable in AT2. I guess Salavtore also count in AT3.
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Pokemon Black:
At the Pokemon League. I'd recap the previous few gyms and plot, but it basically boils down to intense smashing - heck, I soloed the whole of Gym 8 with a single Pokemon.Team Plasma is still being jerks, my rivals have fallen by the wayside, and it's going to be up to me to save the world.
New Catches:
Cubchoo - Coca
Stunfisk - Ackbar
Shelmet - Kibbles
Mienfoo - 1Superguy
Druddigon - Fou-Lu
Golett - Ershin
Pawniard - Cyan
Vullaby - Pinxit
Durant - Atom
Deino - Bahamut
Current Team:
General (L45 Samurott - Slash/Revenge/Surf/Razor Shell, Mystic Water)
Mogu (L45 Excadrill - Slash/Metal Claw/Earthquake/Hone Claws, Expert Belt)
Tweak (L51 Galvantula - Signal Beam/Electroweb/X-Scissor/Slash, Magnet)
Special (L52 Cryogonal - Flash Cannon/Reflect/Ice Beam/Recover, NeverMeltIce)
Tien (L52 Sawk - Bulldoze/Retaliate/Close Combat/Poison Jab, Amulet Coin)
HelloKitty (L17 Purrloin - Scratch/Growl/Thief/Sand-Attack, Exp. Share)
Any advice on what my 6th should be would be appreciated.
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Only the first three fights are BS on Hard. I turned it for Normal for those and then back to Hard and have been fine. I haven't even done any extra grinding (the new characters keep joining at higher levels!).
Sure, it's hard, but not impossible.
EDIT: Forgot to quote. Whatever, replying to At3 stuff.
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Pokemon Black: Finished the Dragonspiral Tower. Heading back to the Desert Ruins, hopefully I'll notice the fossils this time. My 6th spot seems to be rotating with whatever suits the needs at the moment with the rest pretty much set. Currently raising a Vanilite for the Dragon gym. Pondering a Elgyam for the E4, since all the Fighting mons have Rock moves, rendering Sigilyph a sitting duck. Also traded for some of the trade evos with someone in class. Conkeldurr's damn good.
Indifflant (L35 Servine)
Wigglepup (L35 Stoutland)
L40 Conkeldurr
L39 Krokorok
L38 Seismitoad
L31 Vanilite
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Finished Dragon Age.
The final boss looked absolutely impossible to me at first. The first phase is easy enough, it's just like basically every other dragon fight in the game. Then when he gets down to 50% HP he sends one thousand million grunts at you while breathing fire at your team from outer space, and you get overwhelmed in no time.
Somehow, the last time I played they didn't all chase me at first, sooo yeah. I got lucky. I still was doing nothing at that point but "Select character -> Drink potion, select another character -> Drink potion" and still lost Morrigan, Shale and 50 dwarves. Fortunately, afterwards it's back to regular dragon and it's easy.
I'm a bit disappointed since the game told me right away that this was no usual Blight and demons were acting strangely. I was waiting for the groundbreaking revelations. But no. This was regular Blight stuff. Whatever.
Alistair breaking up with the main character was absolutely infuriating to me. This guy's a joke! HE DOES NOT BREAK UP WITH ME. Hahah, well done Bioware. So yeah, I had him have sex with Morrigan then told his next wife about it (That last part didn't happen in the game, but I promise Isabelle did this)
Character rating:
Shield warrior: Best damage, best defense, ability to knock enemies back, and he even protects others from harm somewhat.
Archer rogue: Worse damage, far worse defense, attacks from a distance but this never really matters in nightmare mode. Becomes slightly more useful near the end of the game thanks to extremely high dextery / evade.
Mage: At the beginning of the game they have awesome damage, then they're about awesome status, then... Well, they're healing batteries. I guess I might not have chosen the best spells. I went with Necromancy / Waking Nightmare / Ice damage / Healing.
Golem: It's funny, Shale has a lot of variety but he's better used standing there and doing nothing. He's really not stellar with anything, except Stone Aura which turns every ally into Yuri Hyuga but makes him unable to act.
Onwards to Awakening.
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Only the first three fights are BS on Hard. I turned it for Normal for those and then back to Hard and have been fine. I haven't even done any extra grinding (the new characters keep joining at higher levels!).
Sure, it's hard, but not impossible.
EDIT: Forgot to quote. Whatever, replying to At3 stuff.
Yeah, it's calmed down after the first 4 hours, or when you actually buy and upgrade equipment. There's one or two regular enemies that can wreck the whole party in one hit but I found controlling Hikari easy to avoid damage. Now battles are wait for EX Purge and deal 1 million damage with Cakes/Cats/Syringes.
Anyways, I'm on the start of Phase 3. You start of in reyvaloli land, covered in cute teddy bears and rainbows. It's Grefter's dream vacation spot. Plot isn't exciting but it's still rolling with multiple personally disorders and Reyvatiel Joachim. My only complaint so far is while it's nice to have a bro in Tatsumi but then it turns out he's secretly the little girl from AT2. Niu, do I get anymore playable characters besides 3?. I guess that explains why I never received his ultramove so far. Though I'm probably overleveled, it's because I already blew 13000 DP of each Reyvatiel's Cosmosphere 1-4. Laggy taught me to keep my money low, so I've been keeping up buying $4000 snow cones and $6000 chocolate pies.
By far the best feature is the "Panic Button". Anytime your mom or girlfriend walks in the room while you're in the Cosmosphere, hitting the select button covers the entire screen with a weather map or other random images to give the idea that you're not playing a game of girls getting naked. Next time my friend pops in unannounced "Hey let's play some Dragon Age 2 (which is really boring the watch)", I can tell him "Wait until I finish writing down this recipe of BBQ Soda".
EDIT: Oh yeah, I finished Pokemon White. Hydreggion (faster than my Timid ELECTRIC SPIDER? hax) is a cheating bastard, somehow gets exactly the 4 moves that is SE against my entire team, so I had to blow through 20 Revives until he was out of PP. I like to think N's character was to satisfy the fangirls. With all the strange female ass fetish in B/W, they got to give the women their yaoi-bait.
My team was:
Emboar - lvl 51
Stoutland - lvl 48
Krookodile - lvl 49
Galvantunla - lvl 48
Lilligant - lvl 49
Zekrom - lvl 50
Emboar is a terrible pokemon; slow, no defenses and a horrible movepool. Wish I went with Smugleaf or Samurott, water pokemon are awful in this gen. Stoutland is decent but ends up being a Jeigan and HM slave with Strength/Surf (surfing on your sexy mustache dog has always been my dream). Krookodile owns 2 of the E4 for free, no EQ gave him damage problems when Crush is resisted. Galvantula has 90% Thunder of good speed/SpAtk, which is completely nuts. Liliigant has the most broken buff in the game and sleep powder, and nothing else! My Zekrom has awful IVs but he was forced into my party, replacing my level 43 Durant. It's not a good pokemon but the name is cool and it's a giant ANT so why not.
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There is something different about the blight, but it seems to all be in Awakening.
Dragon Age 2 - Stabbing some stuff. I am digging that this game does just seem to be the story of Hawke told really focussed. It could be about the different factions arguing over stuff, but it does just end up being about Hawke so far (into the final chapter). It works really well. It is a shame that yeah the gameplay is lacking. Not because it was dumbed down or anything, but because there is a lot of grindy trashy combat, much more so than the original which wasn't the best at handling that either.
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Man, between this, ME2 and Fallout New Vegas, they're putting a big chunk of the main story in the DLC now, instead of just small sidestories.
I've started Awakening and it begins with Isabelle running around killing darkspawn naked. Uhh kay. Saved vigil's keeper, then spent just the nearly all three hundred sovereigns I've acculumated during the main game on runes. This is great.
I gave Anders Crushing Prison, Mass Paralysis and all the glyphs, we'll see how it goes. Archers, meanwhile, went from worthless to MVP thanks to only one skill. So yeah, my main character's damage just kind of doubled. Maybe tripled.
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Archers are yeah pretty much broken in Awakening. It is a mix with the new skills being amazingly overpowered and you hit the threshhold for Dexterity where your defense is high enough that your are unable to be hit anymore (other than of Overwhelm). You can quite happilly run around with most of the party as archers and be almost unkillable.
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Grandia 2 - Finished. What Grefter said applies, it really does a decent job of making the player feel they did something to break the game rather than just press x to win, that's just how the skill system rolls. That said it goes on way too long for the feeling to last and is a chore by endgame. The plot is just laughable. Heart of Valmar was a nice scene capped by a freaky monster design I guess? Overall bad game but I don't feel like I wasted my time experiencing it.
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Pokemon Black: Beat the main game. I really like how I got to choose the order for the E4, that's one change I hope they keep. Probably the best handheld title yet in the series.
Championship Team:
Victory! (L50 Victini, Zen Headbutt/Flame Charge/Headbutt/Flame Burst, Expert Belt)
General (L51 Samurott, Slash/Revenge/Surf/Razor Shell, Mystic Water)
Mogu (L52 Excadrill, Sandstorm/Metal Claw/Earthquake/Hone Claws, Shell Bell)
Tweak (L54 Galvantula, Signal Beam/Discharge/X-Scissor/Slash, Magnet)
Special (L55 Cryogonal, Flash Cannon/Reflect/Ice Beam/Recover, NeverMeltIce)
Tien (L59 Sawk, Bulldoze/Reversal/Close Combat/Poison Jab, Amulet Coin)
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Castlevania Lords of Shadow: has its issues and could explode into MGS type overcomplicated Kojimaness, but otherwise very promising.
DQVI: Right about to take on the first big bad of badness.
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Okamiden: Protecting allies during 2D boss fights where they sit right in the middle of the screen is only easy because being tossed onto a puppy's back literally heals all injuries, also MAGNETISM as a brush skill means my puppy will one day welcome everybody to die
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Dragon Quest 9: The GUSTO!!! The PASSION!!!
Pokemon Black: The RANDOM ENCOUNTER RATE!!!
Last Remnant: The SIDEQUESTS!!!
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Dragon Age 2 - Finished. Yeah most of the criticisms about the gameplay for this are pretty spot on. You could probably halve the number of enemies and still have a bit to much. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Varric is definitely best character in the game. Just hands down owns shit and is a good dude. I was a little suprised at how much I liked Isabella and Julianna as well. Anders is way less fun in this game, but such is life. It is odd. Bioware finally did a story that is a character study when character writing is their strong point and they kind of dropped the ball with it.
Still a good game. I -think- I prefer the first one a bit more, but this one is very good. It is no jump from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2, that is for sure. I am actually having trouble thinking of quite the same side step in a pair of games they have put out in sequence or are related. It is... I dunno I guess Baldur's Gate 2 to KotORish in quality. The first is clunk, but big and does a ton of things right. The second is more polished and a better technically made game, but just doesn't quite have it all there.
Still not let down by the company in a long time. Will wait and see what they do with DLC.
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I was watching my friend play some more Dragon Age 2 but I'm sorry it's a 0/10 game here. I watched a sidequest where you're randomly killing about 100 guys named "Dog Lord" for some stupid reason. They're just guys wanting to lord over dogs, what did they do to you?! I mean, I get the picture after 10 or 20 but they really want you to eliminate every human being that you don't like on the planet. Granted I missed all of Act 1 so I don't get why so many people hate Hawke so badly.
One gripe I saw was when you level up, you should pour all your points into your core 2 stats, and you don't gain any health what so ever if you don't raise Constitution. So with a Rogue/Mage, you sit around with 100 HP the whole game while your 500 HP bulky warrior doesn't really do anything except take hits because his Dexterity and stamina is low. I kind of enjoyed the weird builds of DA1, like Arcane Warrior and dual wield/archer hybrids but DA2 seems to take that away from you. Now, I'm not the one playing, and my buddy is the type of person who will strictly follow what people on forums say or what a strategy guide reads.
I don't really blame Bioware for the change in gameplay. EA pretty much wants a casual game to nickle and dime gamers because Nintendo is still getting away with that shit and looks at all the money they have.
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You generally deal with not having scaling health by needing to control the combat better. That said only on rogues did I skip getting some constitution, mages dumped a chunk into it just to take hits a bit better. Edit - In combat outside of a few rare bosses even with no constitution my rogue could take a hit just fine anyway. The basic trash isn't threatening from single hits, they chip away at you. Bosses are threatening though. I had to respec for a 1 on 1 duel (optional) just because my rogue would die in 2 or 3 hits.
Warrior has the opposite thing, you dump some excess points into Willpower because after a point you don't need more HP, but more stamina is good. Similarly there is some talents to pick up that help greatly with the stamina problem. At least you don't miss all the damned time in this one because warriors get tons of attack from Strength.
Rogues just go apeshit on stuff in comparison.
There really is way to many enemies though. It is fun in its way because shit just kind of explodes, but I have no idea how anyone plays it on the hard modes. Gamefaqs forums seems to be full of people that assume you are playing on the hardest difficulty just to get a challenge. This does not seem like a game that challenge would be particularly fun to be honest.
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I know the PC rogue and Isabella both have talents that jack up their defense value a lot. Varric maybe not, but he should not be getting hit in the first place.
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Archers are yeah pretty much broken in Awakening. It is a mix with the new skills being amazingly overpowered and you hit the threshhold for Dexterity where your defense is high enough that your are unable to be hit anymore (other than of Overwhelm). You can quite happilly run around with most of the party as archers and be almost unkillable.
Yep. I refrained myself from using more than one archer from now on. But on the other hand, I respec'd the main character and put just about all of her stat points into dexterity.
It is crazy. I just stopped caring about other party members at one point because they didn't matter. Isabelle was doing about 400 damage on average while everyone else was doing between 30 and 100. 400 damage with a better attack speed too. And she could attack from afar, that means one or two free hits before the other team members could attack, and at that point the monster might already be dead. That and uber evade.
After 80 hours playing Dragon Age Origins and a few related DLC, Isabelle had done 29% of the overall damage of the whole team.
25 hours and a few expansions later, she had done 52% of the overall damage.
Who the hell did the balance here???
So yeah, I steamrolled Awakening and the two other expansions. It was especially weird, after struggling for the whole game. I guess this is what DA2 normal mode feelsl like. I did die against 10 golems at one point because the rest of my team died immediately and the golems were throwing infinite unavoidable rocks at me, but that's it.
The game's pretty alright, standard polished Bioware stuff. Much better than their boring Baldur's Gate. Battles could use some work.
Sustained spells are a great idea. Basically, the stat spells in this game cost max MP. You have to choose between a weak mage with 200 MPs or a super duper buffed mage with 50 MPs. (or more likely, something in between)
HP and MP fully healing after every fight is nice too, the only problem is that it makes fights more boring when you steamroll them. Fortunately, you can raise the difficulty in that case (until the expansion where even nightmare is a joke)
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Yakuza 4: Love this game already. Adding 3 new characters that play differently has added a new breath of life into the gameplay which is very welcomed. Only played as two currently (Finished Akiyama and midway through Saejima).
Akiyama Gameplay: Starts a little slow and then BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM IS NOW BROKEN TO HUGE HUGE PROPORTIONS. Lets see where do I start with his brokeness?
Triple dash kick: Running moves have always been trash because the running dropkick is a horrible move that is slow and easily blocked, has huge recovery frames and just doesn't do enough damage. TDK comes out extreamely fast and has a very fast recovery making it far better then that crappy dropkick.
Slash kick beta: Slash kick beta is in fact 14 kicks which you can chain into a triple kick finish, the second finish kick has guard breaking properties which makes the third kick unblockable. Normally this wouldn't be too broken but due to Akiyama's fast recovery he can then chain on top a slash kick beta followed by triple finish, slash kick beta, triple finish, you see what I mean.
But then you think "Yeah thats broken but surely only when its 1 vs 1 because dudes will attack you from behind right?". Well yeah that would be a problem but Akiyama possesses dodge combo+ meaning he can cancel any of his moves into a dodge which has a good number of invincible frames but one dodge isn't enough so Akiyama can cancel his first dodge into another meaning whoever is attacking is going to be missing.
Heat move wise Akiyama also possesses one of the finest around which is "The essence of loin reaving" which activates when enemies attack him from behind, meaning you own the first dude and then his buddy gets kicked in the nuts.
Weaknesses are he can't pick people up off the ground and his counter kick is trash in comparison to the mighty tiger drop but you know what? Akiyama doesn't care because his other skills more then make up for it.
Bosses faced:
Ihara: This dude is a standard enemy that possesses Kazuma's rising punch so he is nothing special. Spam triple finish kick = Dead Ihara.
Midorikawa: Has two forms the first of which (Gun form) is pathetic. The second is better but he still fails at damage somehow even with a CHAINSAW!?!
Daisuku: Slash kick beta > triple finish kick all day long. The Ai in this game just can't defend against that chain.
Saejima: Not finished but he starts horrible and is owned constantly. You go from raping as akiyama to being owned by crappy guards who will constantly interrupt your attacks and own you. Saejima has charge moves that have super armour on them but as the prison guards clubs negate super armour....fuck you prison guards, you and your negating clubs, more aggressive AI and huge numbers.
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Dragon Age 2 - Not anything new to say, but I can't really post anything about it in my other topic because Tycho at Penny Arcade covered pretty much everything I have to say about the game indepth on todays blog post. This is a good thing I suppose? Essentially if you are deeply invested in the narrative and setting then you can get something from it. Otherwise? It is a bit lacking.
POKEMANS Platinum - So beat the E4. Had a couple of resets on Cynthia while I got a feel for her team (um not knowing typings hurt there. So Spiritomb is Ghost/Dark? well shit that uh kind of made leading with Alakazam the first try not so great since I tried Psychic and then Focus Blast...). Anyway it ended up abusing the fact that Spiritomb couldn't touch my Scizor for shit. Swords Dance x 3 then essentially sweeping with Bullet Punch. Stupid but effective. Milotic took 2 hits to kill and Lucario I used Aerial Ace instead, but still wasn't really in danger of being killed. Even if I did lose Scizor I would have had 3 other mans to back it up, I was mostly just wanting to handle the Garchomp. OHKOing that with Bullet Punch made my day.
The other E4 were pretty much all handled by one or two mans individually.
Final party was
Empoleon - Surf, Ice Beam, Grass knot and Flash Cannon.
Machamp - Dynamic Punch, Cross Chop (PP worries in regular Pokemans made this useful), Revenge because um I didn't think of anything else to put in, Rock Slide, because it is awesome for 2v2 fights and kills fliers.
Alakzam - Psychic, Psybeam (see Cross Chop), Focus Blast and Shadowball. Shadowball sweeping the Psychic chick was good times (after an X-Spec)
Scizor - Bullet Punch, Swords Dance replaced False Swipe at end game, Aerial Ace and Nightslash or some shit, Dark move that I didn't use much.
Other two slots were HM slaves. Was a Noctowl and Infernape for a long time then when I got Waterfall and pissed off I swapped to Tropius and Bibarel.
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Dissidia 012- Pro Emperor players.... I begin to believe they must have some future seeing ability.
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I don't think DA2 is at all a bad game. It's still okay, it's just that it looks awful compared to it's predecessor, which was a great game.
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Certainly, I can just totally see where most of the criticism is coming from. It is just strange to see Bioware making these kinds of mistakes after Jade Empire and stuff.
Radiant Historia - How to Make Friends and Influence People: Chapter 1
Become a secret agent who has alienated people and has a chilled relationship with his only friend. Get an artifact that lets you time travel. Get Superhuman Strength. Friendship will happen organically after this.
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How's Jade Empire anyway nowadays Gref? I've considered buying it on xbox live, but I fear it might feel obsolete now.
Risen: Addicted to this. It's the kind of game where you start with absolutely nothing and very slowly get more power and influence. It's also ugly and full of bugs. Lots of options (you can focus on swords, axes, bows, crossbows, various magics, and a few side jobs like stealing and skinning animals) Everything costs money, even raising basic stats like strength)
I'm working for the bandits, and just recently bought armor. I'm not wearing rags anymore, after like 10 hours of playing! AWESOME. I've been a total douche too, which is always a bonus.
Game of the day:
Black Sigil (DS)
(http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Games/B/Black%20Sigil%20Blade%20of%20the%20Exiled/Bulk%20Viewers/DS/2009-02-11/blacksigil-13--article_blog_image.jpg)
Dude, this is a Chrono Trigger clone. This can't be bad, right? ...Look at the graphics! This can't be bad!!
Well, the guys who made this game noticed that positioning in CT didn't matter enough, so you can only move a little every turn. If the enemy is too far away, you just walk and can't attack this turn. Random objects on the battlefield and, unfortunately, other PCs and enemies, can block your path.
They also noticed that that the game was way too easy. They didn't make the enemies or bosses stronger, but they jacked the encounter rate up to absolutely insane amounts to compensate. This is worse than Tales of Phantasio, and about similar to caves in Pokemon Blue.
I stopped playing at the third dungeon.
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Jade Empire plays pretty much like you would expect honestly. It isn't as good as some of their other works, it is completely ridiculous as a martial arts movie as a game should be.
I would pick it up on Steam over the console version honestly. PC version came out a good while after the X-Box version (needed exclusivity contract to end) and it is well polished for it. Plays really quite well and will look much better. Might be cheaper? Dunno how much it is on X-Box live, but is $15 on steam for me.
Worth a look if you have time to spend on it. If you want an action styled wester RPG though you have plenty of European offerings that are good. Witcher should be better. If you want some Bioware styles though it fits pretty well.
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Ar Tonelico: Done and done. I may or may not play AT2. AT1 has some good ideas that could really work in a polished sequel, but I doubt that AT2 is really going to be a polished sequel. On the other hand, just playing the Misha path over the Aurica/Shurelia paths made AT1 jump from a 2/10 to a 4/10 game, so maybe the game just needs fewer Scenes of Fail to work.
Disgaea 3: Less buggy than anything else NISA has produced since Soul Nomad! The gameplay is better in some ways (still liking that characters are much more differentiated now), but worse in others (they've got like 6 different versions of the Item World now, that's starting to get a lot less user-friendly). The story is kind of in the same boat, in some ways, it's absolutely awesome and hilarious, but it's also relying really heavily on one joke: "Good is Bad, Bad is Good". The dissonance created by this is pretty amusing at times, but it can often devolve into nonsensical jokes that seem like they are supposed to be funny just because they are nonsensical. In general, it works out and the game harkens back to the Dis1 charm rather than Dis2, which I like. The story is just fun.
On chapter 4, just beat up some teachers. As a teacher myself, I found myself completely sympathizing for them instead of Mao and company. Also, why is it chapter 4 and I still haven't gotten a 3rd story character? Building Mao as a swordsman (with some Magic backup) and Almaz as a Spear-user, though he's spent some time as a gunner too before I bought Thieves and Gunslingers.
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Black Sigil
I used a code to enable battles whenever I wanted them and it made the game a lot more enjoyable. I don't understand how anyone doing QA could have said "Oh boy, battles every 3 steps, that's good!"
I'm not embellishing that and neither is Fenrir. It's really that absurd.
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Don't forget about the main character occasionally starting off battle with some random, unblockable, and sometimes crippling status after a certain early plot point for no sufficiently explained reason and ungodly slow ATB. Also some game-killing bugs if I recall correctly.
Black Sigil. It is dogshit. I think it might be from the same geniuses who brought us Mazes of Fate, so what do you expect. Could be wrong on that point though, haven't doublechecked.
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Black Sigil was made by a bunch of amateur programmers (Canadian programmers I might add!) who wanted to make a "classic SNES RPG" like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6. It was originally developed for the GBA but got stuck in development limbo for 5 years and had to make the transition to DS due to the extinction of the GBA.
We know how the game turned out.
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Dissidia Prologus: Just thought I'd note I played and completed just about everything in this.
Thoughts on characters, I guess:
Lightning: Interesting style swap with actual freedom regarding it (unlike Cecil where it was "you use one most of the fight, the other is there just in case you REALLY need something") and seems overall nicely balanced. Seems fun.
Kain: ...worst character in the Demo...by far. HP Attacks are junk, and his Brave Game is not Squall-level good to make up for it (and Squall's HP Attacks are better anyway.) His little Dash gimmick is vaguely pointless cause he can't really increase his combos seeing as you can recover long before he gets anything off. It didn't help that Cecil isn't a particularly GOOD assist either. His EX Mode seems worthless too; Lancet is ridiculously easy to avoid, and doesn't have any Baiting Exploitation factors like, say, Heartless Angel, to try and fake people out.
Warrior of Light: He was good in the original...and they decided to improve him because...? Seriously, he didn't need angled Shield of Light or Shining Wave that has vertical tracking. The addition of Aerial Dayflash is cool though, cause it was weird he DIDN'T have that to begin with, albeit, the whole "high Risk High reward" thing was well implemented with him, since yes, he was predictable, but screw up and you're really feeling it.
Garland: Lance Charge sending him into the air = bad. Seriously, why did they do that? The move is now hard to really use effectively, and doesn't seem to have any purpose and its not exactly a balanced change either; Lance Charge was a nice balanced move, now its just...awkward. Flare is a cool new HP move though; perfect Air compliment to Earthquake really.
Kefka: Best character in the demo. Kefka was already one of the best characters in the first game and he seems...better at like...everything. Well, Trine no longer follows you after converging in the middle, but seriously, if you're getting hit by Trine, its not going to be THAT part, since you'll have dodged well out of its trajectory by then, so that's an artificial nerf. Ultima being blockable is offset by its much better ranger, so its a horizontal shift. Otherwise, WWF is still ridiculously good, SSB is solid, Meteor is silly, and TTB now has an ACTUAL PURPOSE WHAT THE FUCK? Oh, and they decided to improve Havok Wing *AND* Forsaken Null...well, the latter may have actually needed the boost cause it was a huge "HEY, I"M WIDE OPEN. KILL ME NOW!" move, butt he former...seriously, did it NEED some horizontal tracking?
Sephiroth: Beyond one new brave move that basically clashes with his style, he's pretty much the same character overall. This is not necessarily a bad thing, cause Sephiroth was decent. The DEMO version of course lacks Heaven's Light, which makes it harder for him to use since now he has no way of defending himself from attacks from above. His new move...well, honestly, Sephiroth doesn't use Safe Pokes. I mean, yeah, the option is nice, but Sephiroth's all about being a melee zoner, fucked up as it sounds. He dominates meleers by outranging them, and generally has enough range that even when blocked, he can often get out before being punished (not entirely fail safe, of course, but he's better at it than other Melee characters). Don't see that move seeing much use, though I guess just having another option never hurts.
Jecht: ...I honestly have no clue. Well, no, I can tell Jecht Beam is something he REALLY likes cause its like a Free Energy variation (not as good as the NA version THANK GOD; that was stupid good), and gives him a quick, SAFE way to attempt HP damage in the air, though doubt it really helps him against, say, Emperor, since he's still too direct. Otherwise...I can't really tell; I guess he charges faster, and I think his combos are a little easier, though, lacking Aerial Jecht Blade in Prologus = :(
Cloud: WAAAAY better than he was. Ok, so he lost Fire -> Climhazzard -> Dodge Cancel -> Slashing Blow -> vOmnislash V5 combo. What did he gain? Aerial Double Cut so YAY SAFE POKE and potential mind games that come with it. Aerial Meteor Rain, so now Cloud has SOME RANGED OFFENSE while in the air. And Meteor Rain in general is just a lot better since "Run to the left" doesn't dodge it anymore. Oh yeah, Cross Slash has actual Range and Sonic Blade now has a vacuum effect, so Cloud can actually get in his Ground HP Attacks without relying on Block + Counters anymore. To be honest, while Cloud did need some form of boosts, I feel they may have went a bit too overboard on him, but eh, when i look at the boosts characters like Squall got (aka someone who didn't NEED to be boosted), I really can't complain about Cloud's case.
NOTE: I'm aware that moves that I say "characters lack" still exist in Duodecim, just the builds in PROLOGUS do not have them, and it stands out.
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Radiant Historia - I don't understand how travelling between split timelines lets them influence each other, but okay. I am cool with it as long as it continues to let me make friends and influence people.
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Ar Tonelico: Done and done. I may or may not play AT2. AT1 has some good ideas that could really work in a polished sequel, but I doubt that AT2 is really going to be a polished sequel. On the other hand, just playing the Misha path over the Aurica/Shurelia paths made AT1 jump from a 2/10 to a 4/10 game, so maybe the game just needs fewer Scenes of Fail to work.
Well, I would recommend AT2 just to see what would happen if AT has a main character who thinks and behave like a normal person, while his surrounding are still the same old AT failures.
AT2 ends up as a pretty surreal experience to me because of that.
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Ar Tonelico: Done and done. I may or may not play AT2. AT1 has some good ideas that could really work in a polished sequel, but I doubt that AT2 is really going to be a polished sequel. On the other hand, just playing the Misha path over the Aurica/Shurelia paths made AT1 jump from a 2/10 to a 4/10 game, so maybe the game just needs fewer Scenes of Fail to work.
Well, I would recommend AT2 just to see what would happen if AT has a main character who thinks and behave like a normal person, while his surrounding are still the same old AT failures.
AT2 ends up as a pretty surreal experience to me because of that.
So if I'm reading this right, AT2 is the only game in the series worth remotely anything, as AT1 is mindsex involving an idiot, and AT3 is just porn with underaged, flat chested girls?
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You can put it that way, yes.
Though, for AT3, to be precise, is masochistic flat chested loli porn.
But AT3 did finally reveal one thing to us, on why AT itself is such a total failure
The reason? The AT planet itself is an insufferable tsundere and the creator of intelligent life form is a total air head that is impossible to cure.
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You owe it to yourself to play AT2 because Lyner is not in the game. I couldn't finish it because of the game breaking bugs but I think it's enjoyable enough.
Though Niu's assessment of AT3 as "masochistic flat chested loli porn" is correct, just add more trannies. (as if Grefter needs more reasons to play AT) Though I'm curious about the whole planet is a tsundere thing.
What's the deal with this personality DLC pack for Harvestasha? I downloaded the masochistic persona for her so Aoto can have more lolis to whip but it doesn't say how it really affects the game.
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Yakuza 4: Took me a while to find his subquests but his part is all done now. He isn't as special as Akiyama but he has his good points. His attacks have such force they very easily ground/wall bounce enemies leading into his devastating heat moves that do HUUUUGGGGE amounts of damage (Some are like twice Akiyama's), being able to grab those fat dudes as well means they're reduced to just a big target. Weaknesses are of course the short rush combos, snail like attack speed and bad recovery on virtually all his moves which doesn't help as he has the worst dodging in the game.
In regards to his part of the game I have to say I prefer Akiyama but Saejima isn't too bad a character and his main substory really shows what kind of man he is. Oh yeah I also did the fighter maker sidequest and got Hideo Kojima to win the fighting tornament.
Bosses:
Saito: Look at me I'm a boss dude with an infinite loop that I may or may not decide to use. Of course the AI will never chain it enough to kill you but its frustrating when he does it twice or so and takes a nice amount of health with it. You also face this guy three times and pretty much every time he has loads of dudes who's job seems to be grabing you so Saito can beat the crap out of you. Why they gave a sadistic prison guard unique attacks I have no idea.
Kazuma: Yes Kazuma now sports a nice boss form in Y4. Oddly though his plot power is little Akiyama would rape Kazuma completely but Saejima who is a legendary fighter struggles massively as virtually all his atttacks can be tiger droped by Kazuma. Quite fitting I'd say as Saejima's first name is Taiga, his tattoo being of a tiger and Kazuma's counter move being Tiger drop. Took me a few trys to beat old Kazy as Saejima's lol attack speed really held me back.
Daisuku 2.00: Same deal except instead of spewing Sake he now spews FIRE! Still easy but holds up better against Saejima then he did against Akiyama.
The one eyed Wizard of the arena, Mad dog Majima: First boss that could be considered on the level of the Y3 ones which is good as its Majima we're talking about. Has overall less health but in return gained a new move in Knife hurricane which doesn't help much as its pretty naff unless for some reason you don't have the skill that allows you to block blade attacks which then it'll rape you. When in heat mode he becomes unhitable as Saejima is simply too slow and his recovery is so bad Majima is pretty much certain to hit his counter attack.
Pretty sad it takes this long to reach a boss that can put up a semblance of a fight. Y3 hit you with Tamoshiro (The third boss in chapter 3) who due to low level skills and the player no doubt still not fully familer with everything absolutly raped you till you got everything about his heat mode form down. In this game you just curb everything with ease which is disapointing.
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What's the deal with this personality DLC pack for Harvestasha? I downloaded the masochistic persona for her so Aoto can have more lolis to whip but it doesn't say how it really affects the game.
The DLC pack just alter some scene with that Kuso-Frame.
The DLC was produce due to a mysterious cult following of her, which involves a bunch of mashocists believeing getting abused by her and only her would be there greatest joy.
Really, what is with AT3 and the masochists?
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The first game in the series has people being raped as key plot points. I don't know why you are even remotely shocked that it got the S&M crowd interested.
Radiant Historia - I am still a bit confused. Time Travel doesn't work that way. It is okay, I don't mind, but could you have at least used some bullshit words like Synchronicity to explain it?
Game is good anyway. Just dimension hopping to effect the individual dimensions confuses me.
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Grefter: I'm pretty certain that they throw some bullshit explanation in for why the alternate realities effect eachother. Though I recall that even during that explanation, the two kids were like "...don't think about it too hard, it's just how time travel works, trust us, we know. It's not like -you- know anything about the arcane secrets of time travel so don't contradict us!"
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Yeah it is kind of
(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/35/104191539_ae48cd83dc.jpg)
It isn't a bad thing, that is really how to handle it. Just no hand wave at all here, just pure here is how it works, deal with it.
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judging by his hand motion, I'd be more inclined to believe he's a shocktor.
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He is the best kind of doctor, yes.
Edit - Ass Creed Bro - PC version came out. Playing it. Seems like they took notes from Prototype with some of the side quest stuff. This is not good. Prototype sidequesty stuff was way to grindy. It is hearkening back more to AC1 than AC2 with that kind of stuff. A shame. Oh well, will still do stuff.
Having missions to beat and then a special requirement to get full synchronisation and the ability to replay missions is nice though. Depends on how they do the missions though really.
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Jade Empire plays pretty much like you would expect honestly. It isn't as good as some of their other works, it is completely ridiculous as a martial arts movie as a game should be.
I would pick it up on Steam over the console version honestly. PC version came out a good while after the X-Box version (needed exclusivity contract to end) and it is well polished for it. Plays really quite well and will look much better. Might be cheaper? Dunno how much it is on X-Box live, but is $15 on steam for me.
Worth a look if you have time to spend on it. If you want an action styled wester RPG though you have plenty of European offerings that are good. Witcher should be better. If you want some Bioware styles though it fits pretty well.
I would, but... After buying two games on PC I couldn't run without severe lag, I'm not using the PC as a gaming plateform anymore. It is all my fault. But I just don't want to spend time/money learning how PCs work and what I should get and upgrade when I could just play some (technically inferior but still adequate) game.
(Vampire Bloodlines was still worth the pain)
I'm starting to like those European RPGs yeah, I think I'm going to play a few more before looking at Jade Empire. (Two worlds II?) They feel pretty different, somehow. They're like Fable but less user friendly / less dumbed down, and they reward exploration / attention to detail more than american/japanese RPGs.
Of the 300 something RPGs I've played, Black Sigil has the single worst encounter rate I've seen. True story.
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He is the best kind of doctor, yes.
Edit - Ass Creed Bro - PC version came out. Playing it. Seems like they took notes from Prototype with some of the side quest stuff. This is not good. Prototype sidequesty stuff was way to grindy. It is hearkening back more to AC1 than AC2 with that kind of stuff. A shame. Oh well, will still do stuff.
Having missions to beat and then a special requirement to get full synchronisation and the ability to replay missions is nice though. Depends on how they do the missions though really.
just fyi you need 75% synch to fully complete an optional plotline, anything after that is just OCD or for achievements
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L4D2- That was not an impressive beta, for all that the forest is a throwback to L4D1.
HoI2- Been playing as Nat China of late. I They're probably one of the strongest countries if they can survive the Japanese assault. Giant ass if there though, China has a horrendous tech disadvantage and starts with a massive amount of dissent. If you can trigger the fading sun event though... man. 3+ MP a day, a ton of resources, and the ability to join with the allies or axis for blueprints (which they need). You just have to build up your infrastructure and navy, and steamroll the world. I usually prefer the Axis, since A: you get a ton of cores on Siberia and want to fight the soviets and B: Nat china's got good ministers for paternal autocrat.
FF4- Stopped after getting Rosa back.
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Pokemon Black-
Scornake (L44 Serperior) Tackle (for chipping), Giga Drain, Leaf Blade, Coil.
L45 Seismatoad (Bulldoze, Drain Punch, Return, Surf)
L45 Krookodile (Scary Face, Torment, Dig, Foul Play)
L43 Conkeldurr (Retaliate, Chip Away, Rock Slide, Rock Smash)
L43 Vanillish (Mirror Shot, Acid Armor, Blizzard, Ice Beam)
L44 Victini (Confusion, Fire Blast, Quick Attack, Endure)
Definitely my E4 team. Finished Victory Road. Damn Durants are a pain in the ass. Will be leveling a bit, at least to 47 so Vanillish evolves. Yay Lucky Eggs.
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Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Beat this, and got 120 stars. Solid experience overall. It feels a bit too like its predecessor, but that's not really a bad thing, as I've mentioned. Still, the second of two similar things is never as magical, and I do think the second game makes a few mistakes the first didn't.
Improvements:
-Level timers. Doubt I'll ever care enough to speedrun this game, but I appreciate them anyway. Certainly a far better perfectionist thing to aim for than coin collection!
-A couple new powerups are pretty cool. Cloud Mario is the best, platform creation is just too much fun (although I dread the day in 2028 when hacks for this game appear and people make utterly stupid things that require it). Boulder Mario is also pretty neat, though a bit chaotic... it reminds me of the NSMB turtle suit.
-Challenge does feel up in general, at least for standard stages? Probably not bosses, or prankster comets, but just plain stages. There's a couple really nasty comet levels though, mostly in Special (Luigi's Purple coins AGAIN, the rolling ball purple coins).
-GIANT FIRE HIPPOS
Not-so-improvements:
-What the hell did they do to Bowser in this game? While the game has a few decent boss fights (Megahammer is probably the best), Bowser 1 is the biggest joke ever and 2/3 aren't much better. Never came close to dying against any of them. Let's not even talk about the final Evil Gaia-style battle of the game. I was pretty psyched when that one began because I figured maybe the designers realised Bowser had sucked and were about to give him a real final boss fight but argh.
-Also on the Bowser note... the last level. The last level of SMG1 was so perfect. Last level of SMG2 feels like it could have been any Bowser level just as easily. And that floaty flower just feels out of place. Probably the least memorable final level in a Mario game otherwise.
-I liked Galaxy's (and I guess SM64's?) thing where you collected ~6 stars from each major galaxy. SMG2 keeps you moving from galaxy to galaxy and I don't find myself nearly as attached to many of them as a result. I guess it's more like what the 2D games do but eh.
-Man 120 green-star collectathon? Screw that. Optional of course, I'm mostly annoyed because it sounds like there's one more decently challenging level but making you get 120 green stars to unlock it is just inane. Comet Medals was enough collecta-thoning for me, thanks.
-Lubba is kinda creepy.
Oh yeah, that token SM64 galaxy really shows how very far stage design has come since that last game. It feels so open, empty, and generally designed in an amateurish way... to say nothing of the fact that gravity that is always in one direction, all the time, seems so boring in a 3D platformer now. <_<
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Tactics Ogre PSP - Hatbot decided one day I should be playing this. So I did. Just made the first major decision and on the lawful path apparently. Game seems pretty big, so I bought a FAQ to avoid missing recruitment and secrets mostly. A little into Chapter 2 but not too far.
Resonance of Fate - Hard mode. I forgot how your early stuff is kinda bad. Also, they weren't kidding when they slapped Hard into the mode. It's amazing how much different that extra damage enemies deal end up making. I almost lost to gremlins in the first battle because you can't upgrade your guns and you have shit for charge time. My first official reset was against the Telsa Tortoise. Stupid thing as just too damn tanky that when it went after the wrong guy, everything kinda fell apart. Second time went fine. Now on Chapter 4 and escorting the damn statue. The enemies have increased damage. The statue does not have increased HP. This will be disastrous.
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Pokemon Black - Completed, along with post game. Team was
Conkeldurr Lv. 71 (Hammer Arm, Strength, Bulk Up, Stone Edge)
Seismitoad Lv. 70 (Surf, Earthquake, Supersonic, ...Forget the last move.)
Sigilyph Lv. 70 (Psychic, Air Slash, Thunder Wave, Fly)
Cryogonal Lv. 71 (Ice Beam, Reflect, Confuse Ray, Recover)
Eelektross Lv. 70 (Thunderbolt, Flamethrower, Acid Spray, Thunder Wave)
Durant Lv. 73 (X-Scissor, Aerial Ace, Iron Head, Crunch)
Conkeldurr was solid throughout the game, though never amazing. Wishes he learned Drain Punch or even Close Combat naturally.
Seismitoad was decent. Nothing spectacular (no Swampert, that's for sure) but he was servicable.
Sigilyph was very strong early on, but got worse as the game went on. Still pretty fast and with a decent movepool.
Cryogonal is the oddest thing. It's fast! It's strong! It takes special hits well! It has no movepool! It's physical defense may as well be nonexistant! Fun to use, though.
Eelektross was a pain to level, and the payoff wasn't that great. Still cool looking though.
Durant was amazing after he caught up, turning into a superfast OHKO machine with Hustle. Aerial Ace TM also made it drawback free!
Elite Four rematch, the toughest was Shauntal, but my team matches up poorly against ghosts anyway. The champion was kind of tough, too, though I can see easily setting up on his first pokemon and sweeping him.
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Pokemon Black: Currently trying to catch Victini with 6 Ultra Balls. Random Challenge means I have no sleep, although False Swipe TM helps. Must've tried fighting it at least 5-6 times by now.
In other news, I have no Waterfall HM and this is annoying me, since I've found every Plasma sage but one and ended up looking up the last - yeah, fucking knew it. Stupid waterfalls.
Still need to catch Volcarona, Kyurem, Tornadus and Landorus, then beat new!E4, Morimoto, Cheren and Cynthia before I consider the game done. No idea how Cheren compares to the rest, other than being easier, but I'll probably try catching Kyurem first so that I have some chance of actually beating some high-level opponents (since that's gonna be what I'm Master Ball-ing)
Current team is Tangrowth/Weavile/Absol/Boldore/Pelipper/Heatmor. Only the first three are at usable levels, and Victini probably won't help me here. Whoops.
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Dragon Age 2: Made it to Act 2 last weekend. Why you make me sad and have a notable bug, Bioware? Otherwise, dicking around doing sidequests before I rock out with the Arishok.
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DD 012 Prologus- Completed the very brief Story Mode and cleared Arcade Mode on Normal with all available starting characters.
Mostly agree with Meeple for character assessments. Personally I had the most fun with Kefka followed by Garland w/th Emperor assist which is what I was having the most fun with until I tried Kefka~ Probably did the best in terms of performance with Sephiroth though but that's because sometimes I had just had fun spinning Kefka round and round on the spot instead of paying attention to the fighting >_>
Breath of Fire III- Received this for my birthday =-) Currently preparing to enter the mayor dude's manor. Everyone is still at L1 because I wasn't sure what to do with them <_< Going to apprentice Teepo to the first Master now though and use him as a float until a better Master comes along for Ryu~
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Breath of Fire III- Received this for my birthday =-) Currently preparing to enter the mayor dude's manor. Everyone is still at L1 because I wasn't sure what to do with them <_< Going to apprentice Teepo to the first Master now though and use him as a float until a better Master comes along for Ryu~
I thought Playthrough 1 = Casual play, Playthrough 2 = DESTROY! DESTROY! NEUTRALIZE! ROCKET PUNCH! HYPER SENTINEL FORCE!!! TEN. MORE. YEARS!!! for you, so why are you worried about twink-ability or something <_<?
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SMTN: Hi Dante, you don't do anything when I stat buff or stat down you kthxbye
Hi Specters, you just kinda suck
Hi Pale Rider, I can drain all your MP and then you get stat downed, rely less on stupid Debilitate skulls kthxbye
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Dissidia Duodecim 012
Finished the 012 story mode. Brief character thoughts!
Lightning - Ravager has some good BRV attacks (The Water Ball, Thunder), as did Commando. I can see the use of Medic (Mostly baiting people to come towards you?) but I didn't use it often. Had trouble with her HP attacks.
Vaan - Solid. Has a lot of moves, and all of them are Ground/Air. I only got three of his HP moves, but they were all pretty decent.
Yuna - My favorite of the new characters. Shiva BRV in the air is lightning fast, seems as fast as Firion's Swordslash, and she has good range on a lot of other attacks.
Laguna - I can see him being good when you igure him out. It took me until the end of his chapter to even figure out how to use his Shotgun right, but he has a lot of cool moves like the Shield Grenade. Has some trouble with HP attacks.
Kain - Strong. Jump is really good. Attacks are a little slow. EX mode doesn't seem that great - all you get is Lancet, which isn't easy to hit with.
Tifa - Feints are obviously useless against the AI, but probably good elsewhere. Her basic Air HP is pretty good, and she does good damage as well.
How I would order the characters off of my (brief, story mode only) impressions.
- Yuna
- Laguna
- Vaan
- Kain
- Tifa
- Lightning
It was fun, though! I'll go on to do 013 later, probably.
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I thought Playthrough 1 = Casual play, Playthrough 2 = DESTROY! DESTROY! NEUTRALIZE! ROCKET PUNCH! HYPER SENTINEL FORCE!!! TEN. MORE. YEARS!!! for you, so why are you worried about twink-ability or something <_<?
I blame the strange talking creatures in the woods! >_>
I figure it will be nice for Ryu to have a little head start on stats though. Going to try not to worry too much about fine tuning characters otherwise <_<
Apart from possibly Momo >_> I would be worrying about Rei but apparently he leaves and the Teepo thing is obvious so yeah.
The full game of DD012 still hasn't come yet so it looks like I'll have the time to make the most of Prologus and play more BoFIII after all. I was still kind of hoping the game would somehow still arrive for the weekend but it was going to be a win/win situation either way so I'm not too disappointed =) Aerith is safe on my memory card *^_^*~
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If you want to twink a little bit then yeah don't worry about Rei, he will sort himself later, Level 1 Ryu through to Bunyan will get you a good stat start with Ryu to a fairly optimal build. If you want to power game then remember you can not use Peco to squat a low level character for skills from masters (I use him for Meryleep mostly personally. I let Deis ones come fairly naturally and he is useful if you want to learn everything from Ladon, but he doesn't have a ton of useful skills).
Radiant Historia - So I thought I was doing pretty good with talking to everyone and getting all the side quests. Turned out that the two I had got were like two of about 8 I could have had. Soooo yeah time to hit up Gamefaqs a bit to see how much there is. I don't want to have to talk to the same people over and over again at each plot point just to see if they have new quests. Game is still good, but yeah a bit more FAQbait than I thought it was.
How to make friends and influence people: Get the power to time travel, trick dudes into hitting on women.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - Ubisoft doesn't know the Bro Code. Hoes were chosen before Bros. Since that is the way it is being played here I am choosing to fill Rome with whores and make a super team of Assassin chicks. Also that is totally how Ezio rolls anyway.
Why in the fuck is Ezio's mother talking all of a sudden? In AC2 she goes into shock when her youngest son and husband are killed and never speaks again for the rest of the game. AC2 takes place over a span of 10 years or more. No talking at all. Now all of a sudden she is talking and helping Claudia (the surviving daughter) run a brothel.
I know this is taking place mostly in the renaissance so like this isn't super special amazing or anything, but man Ezio has a really fucked up relationship with women. He will sleep with anything that moves, but pines for his lost teenage romance in repressed memories. He has no problem with prostitutes or women with a reputation for getting around, but as soon as his sister who has been running the financial side of the Monterigioni estate for the last 10 years offers to run a brothel? FUCK YOU GIRL DISOWNED ON YOUR OWN. Even when the mother follows. Nope, you are just another asset now bitches. Spy on dudes for me, you and all your whores.
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Why in the fuck is Ezio's mother talking all of a sudden? In AC2 she goes into shock when her youngest son and husband are killed and never speaks again for the rest of the game. AC2 takes place over a span of 10 years or more. No talking at all. Now all of a sudden she is talking and helping Claudia (the surviving daughter) run a brothel.
The game goes off the idea that Ezio did everything in AC2, including feather collection, which apparently was enough to snap Ezio's mother out of her PTSD. Yeah I think they just decided having her still basically catatonic after...what, 30 years or more? Would be silly.
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I did the painful feather collecting, didn't remember her even talking, oh well whatevers! Still fails at bro code. Also dude her still being alive after 30 years is scary enough, she is like late 60s at youngest there. Also Claudia looks absolutely amazing for her age as well. High fives for not changing the skin from a teenager when it has been a long arse time.
Radiant Historia - Okay so I spoilared myself on this game a bit so mystery man causing mystery plague isn't a spoiler to me So Heiss threatens you. Then destroys his messenger. HUEG SPOILARS THAT HE IS VILLAIN GUYS. How to Make Friends and Influence People: Give dude secret for how to time travel. Threaten his life later!.
I am still in Chapter 1 so don't know why I feel compelled to post so much about it, it isn't like I have a decisive opinion on the game or anything, but whatevers. I really hope the Make Friends and Influence People jokes continue to be applicable.
EDIT - DISCLAIMER, GREFTER IS LIKING THIS GAME. GREFTER IS LIKING THIS GAME DO NOT WANT TO ARGUE GOOD OR BAD. ENJOYING ENJOY ENJOY GOOD GOOD GOOD.
Also this game probably has the worst see enemies on the field, hit them with a sword to get an ambush system. The timing on getting your swings to connect is pretty tight and has a delay in the swing, enemies move pretty fast and you can't see very far ahead. This is all topped off on you knock the enemies back and then RNG decides if you put them to sleep then you can get the ambush. That is a little nuts. If it like scaled with your level so it was easier to ambush (or just ignore) lower level encounters it could be kind of alright, but as is I can deal with it, but it is a little crazy.
Edit - Oh yeah other thing I wanted to say, I am kind of digging the starting party. Hope Stocke, Raynie and Marco party have all points covered I need. 2 characters with a lot of field manipulation is great. Only down side looks like it will be Raynie's MP.
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Apparently becoming an accountant is good for the skin. Tide oughta be looking pretty good in a few decades if this is the case. And if you become the madame of a brothel it's like a veritable fountain of youth!
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Etrian Odyssey II -
Beat the fifth stratum. I see that the player characters are going with short-term benefits over long-term benefits again.
At least this time they weren't put up to it by someone who really should have known better. Further the long-term benefits seem to be more just benefits over the status quo rather than the removal of detriments.
Is the sixth stratum going to be the-most-annoying-map-concepts-the-designers-can-think-of-ending-at-locked-doors-you-need-to-beat-superbosses-to-open again? Because if so I'm not sure I'm going to bother with it.
Grandia -
Sadly I have not made it much further in this for a variety of reasons, the one which is relevant today being that the game crashed as I was going through the underground passage beneath the church.
Is Grandia known for crashing or should this be considered a freak occurence?
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Grandia is indeed known for crashing; the PSX version is a pretty shoddy port apparently.
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I think it froze about 3 times for me in the 15~ hours I played it.
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Dissidia 012- Forgive me Ultimecia, for my foul words against you. Your danmaku nerf is indeed reasonable, you'll be too cheap if your danmaku work the it was.
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Just playing through the game, it SEEMED like enemies weaker than you were easier to stun, but I can't say this isn't just confirmation bias. Certainly not 100% or anything as you level.
That said, yeah, it's one of those niggling flaws RH has, fortunately you get a better tool for passing randoms if you want later.
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Etrian Odyssey II
Duuuude where on earth did you find a copy of that down here? No matter how much I have tried I couldn't track down a single game in the series.
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Pokemon Black: Beat the eighth gym. Party is:
Lilligant (Quiver Dance, Leech Seed, Giga Drain, Sleep Powder)
Basculin (Waterfall, Aqua Jet, Crunch, Double Edge)
Sawk (Counter, Brick Break, Dig, Bulk Up)
Stoutland (Strength, Surf, Fire Fang, Crunch)
Gigalith (Rock Smash, Rock Slide, Headbutt, something)
Cryogonal (Ice Beam, Reflect, Flash Cannon, Haze)
and I just got this hideous Bug/Fire thing called Larvesta that I must use because it is a bug that is on fire.
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Halo Wars: Picked this up since it was Platinum Hits and included all the DLC for free. Pretty fun. Beat the campaign on Normal difficulty. I would have to say the best overall unit is the Wolverine. Actually no, the best unit is the base turrets; those are awesome. My beating of the last mission was totally epic. I opened the southwest lock and had about 20 seconds left and no way to get troops to the northeast lock in time. So I hotdropped 5 ODSTs there and they managed to kill the enemies and open the lock with 5 seconds left on the clock.
Halo Reach: Also picked this up. They changed the controls from Halo 3/ODST. Epic fail.
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Etrian Odyssey II
Duuuude where on earth did you find a copy of that down here? No matter how much I have tried I couldn't track down a single game in the series.
As far as I know only EO1 came out here. I've seen it show up preowned in EB two or three times, but not recently. If you look it up on their site they have a utility to find which stores are closest to your postcode which have a copy. Never seen it in GAME or JB or department stores.
As for EO2 I ordered the US version from Play-Asia aways back (August 2009) and only fairly recently started on it. Doesn't look like they have any more available unfortunately. Doesn't look like they have any copies of EO3 either which is a bit annoying.
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Edit - Oh yeah other thing I wanted to say, I am kind of digging the starting party. Hope Stocke, Raynie and Marco party have all points covered I need. 2 characters with a lot of field manipulation is great. Only down side looks like it will be Raynie's MP.
Yeah Stocke/Marco/Raynie work pretty well. Stocke is just decent all-around with movement skills, durability, and passable damage. Marco has support skills/movement and later on Trans-Turn to contribute to offense, Raynie has rather good damage even before she picks up the G-spells, especially since she tends to smack weaknesses if you know them. Raynie is probably the weak link there, honestly. Aht and Eruca can serve her role better (although Aht can't pull it off against immovable enemies).
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Dissidia 012- Hmm, Ulty's damage isn't that great with Ex-Revenge, as she needs some charging before dishing out big damage. And Ex-Mode sucks in this game anyway, so there is no need for EX Guage then.
*Proceeds on to seal off Ulty's EX Guage with Force to Brave and equips a series of EX mode handicap accesories.
Yeah, constant 6.2 multipliers!!
*Sets up Jecht who has long attack duration for assist
Now the danmaku is much safer, and I can evade hunt with Hell's Judgement!!
Haha!! I can still play her aggressively after all!!!
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Is the sixth stratum going to be the-most-annoying-map-concepts-the-designers-can-think-of-ending-at-locked-doors-you-need-to-beat-superbosses-to-open again? Because if so I'm not sure I'm going to bother with it.]Is the sixth stratum going to be the-most-annoying-map-concepts-the-designers-can-think-of-ending-at-locked-doors-you-need-to-beat-superbosses-to-open again? Because if so I'm not sure I'm going to bother with it.
IIRC you need to beat uber "Get this team or die" superbosses before even getting access to the biggest part of the sixth stratum in EO2. I didn't bother with it even though I really love the games. (I couldn't beat one of those superbosses. Drake?)
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Pokemon Black: Finally started this, just got to the town with the first Gym. Chose Tepig cause he's a Flaming Pig, and thus more awesome by definition (no, I am not impressed by Snivy's Smugness, I'm sorry.)
Duodecim: In the middle of the 13th War! Some quick thoughts on the 6 newcomers based off story mode:
Lightning: More or less see what I said about her in Prologus. Not much different, though need to try out some of the moves she didn't have there. Looks like she might be a potential main for me.
Vaan: Easier to use than I expected with his weapon Switch Mechanic, which makes him neat. His non-swap attacks aren't bad, but he definitely improves greatly if you vary your attacks and make use of the Switch properties. Probably won't use him too much, but he certainly is at least interesting, and has at least passable HP Attacks.
Laguna: Ultimecia + Emperor + Physical Attacks = Laguna. Its a screwed up amalgamation but that's the best way I can describe it. He's fun to use nonetheless, which isn't surprising seeing as I liked how Emperor and Ultimecia played. The one thing I didn't like is how the Shotgun was not reliable as an Aerial Counter at all, and that was his fast move. This is later remedied when he gets aireborne Pummel, which is...the exact kind of close range melee move he likes, ie a fast move that's good at getting the person OFF him, so he can continue his range game (Terra's Blizzard Combo had much the same applications). May consider using him.
Yuna: With Terra being a good ranged character w/ some decent Melee compliments in vanilla Dissidia, Yuna is...basically the inverse of that. Good Melee Mage w/ decent Ranged compliments. Nice simple character who isn't ruled by gimmicks, but at the same time, isn't really taking up an already used Niche (Dissidia doesn't really have any Melee Magic users. Kuja was probably the closest, and he was definitely derived based off his gimmick than anything else.) I do hate the fact that her EX Mode offers no Visual changes to her model, cause it shows them being lazy. Was giving Yuna a design where she's holding Nirvana instead of her starting weapon really that hard to do? I mean, they made Ultimate Weapon-based Models for lots of characters in EX Mode as is.
Kain: ...my complaints stand about him before. Jump still has issues as anything but a counter-style HP Move, his brave game isn't strong enough to make up for it, etc. Also, I really do not want to play as him in a closed area, cause pretty much everything he does screams "I WANT OPEN SPACES!" Worth noting that looking up the attack move stats on the Dissidia Forums, his fastest move is 19 Frames. For a melee fighter...that's not exactly a good thing.
Tifa: REALLY shaky start. Her HP Moves are kind of awkward versions of Jecht's, her brave moves have poor range and are hard to hit with, and her Feint Mechanic is unintuitive. Then...she gets a few levels, and gets a lot better. Falcon Kick Burning Arrow is a nice "get in on the guy" move and the existence of Feints means she can use it safer than most people who have that style of move. Light Talon Attack Falcon Dive and Shoryuken Dolphin Blow are excellent compliments that let her deal with people camping above/below her, and Skrull Torch Rolling Blaze is just a nice easy to use HP Attack overall. Reminds me a lot of JP Kuja, only not nearly THAT extreme, in terms of the "really bad at low levels, gets much better once she gets a few attacks", given nothing can be worse than relying on the ORIGINAL Seraphic Star just to win fights (GOOO NA version for making Flare Star an initial HP Attack)
So...Lightning, Laguna and Yuna I can see myself actually using a good deal. Tifa seems to be in an iffy area, and will judge when I use her more. Vaan seems neat, but I'll probably pass on him, and Kain...no. Just...no...
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SMTN: I punched an angel in the shins and he stood there and TOOK IT
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Pokemon Black: Finally started this, just got to the town with the first Gym. Chose Tepig cause he's a Flaming Pig, and thus more awesome by definition (no, I am not impressed by Snivy's Smugness, I'm sorry.)
The only strike against Tepig/Emboar that I can see is that he's a Fire/Fighting starter. What a creative type combination, Gamefreak!
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Pokemon Black: Finally started this, just got to the town with the first Gym. Chose Tepig cause he's a Flaming Pig, and thus more awesome by definition (no, I am not impressed by Snivy's Smugness, I'm sorry.)
The only strike against Tepig/Emboar that I can see is that he's a Fire/Fighting starter. What a creative type combination, Gamefreak!
yeah, cause the Grass starter and Water starter also have such original typing themselves, right?
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At least you expect a starter to default to single-type. Hell, then there hadn't been a straight Water-typed starter since GSC.
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By that logic, Typhlosion is the most interesting Fire Starter, cause he's the only one who is NOT dual typed.
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Charizard's the only one who is Normal/Flying, so that'd be a tie there. Also Blaziken's typing was really original at the time!
Third fire/fighting in a row is all kinds of lame, I pretty much agree with Shale here.
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It's really be less lame if it was pure fire, or even Fire/Flying again. The whole third time in a row thing is the odd part.
For all that fighting is pretty useful as an in-game type. Again.
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3rd gen: Ooh, a Fire/Fighting type! That's never been done before, cool! And he's useful!
4th gen: Fire/Fighting again? And he outclasses Blaziken in every important way, so there's no reason whatsoever to use Blaziken now? Lame.
5th gen: Again? And he's one of the worst starters ever made? Psyduck.
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6th gen: Finally the massive fundamental starter shift to Dark/Psychic/Fighting, Fighting type evolves to Fighting/Fire.
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Ultimate trolling
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*Spoilers in the final bosses section*
Yakuza 4: Finished this yesterday and it was superb though it suffers from a decrease in difficulty which is bad as Y3 was easy itself and it was has lackluster bosses. Seriously 80% of the bosses are just upgraded generics that have more health and so little feature to slightly set them apart like super armour or an unbreakable weapon which is overall not that impressive as you'll beat them like rag dolls regardless.
Final bosses:
So the heroes bait all the villains into the open so they can have a manly one on one shirtless battle on a skyscraper because that is what manly men do. To the bait the villains Akiyama uses his 100 billion yen which is what 1 billion dollars, then to spit in the villains faces he blows the money off the top of the building making it rain money in tokyo. Akiyama's response to now being poor again? No problem I'll just make more, its not a hard thing.
Akiyama vs Arai: Akiyama is a kick dude, Arai is a kick dude, who is the supreme kick dude? Akiyama of course. His triple finish owns Arai like it does any other chump on the street. When Arai gets low on health he can counter with a powerful punch attack but sadly for him it comes too late. Not only is too late but Akiyama possesses the dodge combo+ skill meaning his counter is being evaded anyway.
Saejima vs Kido: Saejima is a punchy dude, Kido is a punchy dude, who is the supreme punchy dude? Saejima of course. Kido seems to have taken lessens from Mine (Final boss of Y3) as he fights much like Mine did however there is a vast difference between the two. Mine had 3 health bars to kido's 2, Mine had attacks with a good dosage of super armor while Kido seems to have none and if he does Saejima's attacks cancel super armour on most enemies any way and finally and most damaging of all Mine had super defence against heat actions meaning he took very little damage from them, Kido on the other hand like all the bosses in this game doesn't have that meaning a clothesline from Saejima can take like 80% of a health bar away from kido. Kido's pro is he can not be hit while healing himself but that pro doesn't outway the cons.
Kazuma vs Daigo: Kazuma is a Balanced dude, Daigo is a balanced dude, who is the supreme balanced dude? Kazuma of course. The plot leading into this fight is just stupid. Daigo is all like "I'd never think I'd have to fight you Kazuma and I know full well you're a man who'd survive a nuke being dropped on and you have the fighting ability to take on a whole army with just your fists but even though I'm outclassed several millions of times over lets have a manly battle to decide this". Daigo is as you'd think, completely pathetic. Nothing really special about him except his counter move which does trashy damage anyway.
Tanimura vs Munakata.........and a dozen elite riot police: Tanimura is a technical dude, Munakata is a cowardly dude, who is the supreme technical cowardly dude? Oh wait sorry these guys aren't mirrors of each other like the others.
This is the hardest fight and to put it clearly:
1: Tanimura is the weakest character in damage and health.
2: The riot officers have a lot of health considering how many of them there are.
3: Munakata is constantly firing very accurate bullets at you from the very back of the stage.
4: There is at all times at least half a dozen dudes attacking you from every direction.
5: If you try to evade Mukakata the riot dudes will grab you so their buddies can kick you to the ground and then proceed to beat the shit out of you.
6: If you try to beat the riot dudes by parrying and so forth Munakata will shoot you so you fall on the ground and then his bum chums will beat the piss out of you.
The ending sets it all up for a more violent sequel which I'll look forward to.
Dissidia 012: Only played the first chapters but it seems the plot is far improved and not stale as stale biscuits. It also has more kefka which is always good. Really liking Vaan and now that I've given him a shirt its all good.
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Legaia 2 – After 3.5 years of not playing OK’s copy which he forced me to keep, I am finally playing this!
Just for giggles I decided to torment our friend who loves justice and happiness by choosing the douchey responses that are given for each choice. I figured out pretty quickly that in general this maximizes hilarity so I continued doing it. I was punched in the face by Galvan for bragging about saving people (don’t see what’s so wrong with that…), I was punched in the face by Kazan for telling him I lied about the Aqualith’s importance to the town after recruiting him to help me (okay, that was pretty bad) and I totally mocked Bubba’s love for Elfin after calling him Bumble (Bubba punched me in the face in battle for that… OHKO :(). Sharon also punched me in the face for being excited about her joining, I’m not clear on why. She’s kinda cuckoo (or just an amazon pirate lady) but she’s hot so I keep hitting on her. Also UNLIKE ALL OF MY STUPIDLY NICE PARTY MEMBERS, Sharon kicked Kenjiro in the face like he done deserved. I was promoting this plan ages ago when he took Kazan’s powder and tried to make me do stuff for it. “How about… we just kill him?” But no, no one listens to me.
At first I found Maya pretty bad (general utter helplessness in plot, replaceable by a Barome in battle) but now that she talks she’s just eh. Sharon is way cooler. I love the voice acting, it reminds me of a bad kung-fu flick. Avalon is pretty awesome, he turned the world dark because of racism or something, I’m not sure but I think we need to kick his ass. Or have mansex with him. Cuz I sure as hell ain’t having mansex with Kazan. Lang’s pretty awesome because he never closes his vest so everyone can see his sweet tat, you’d think he’d want to keep it a little more hidden than “HEY GUYS LOOK AT ME I’M A MYSTIC”. I tried to peek under Maya’s dress to see her tat but for some reason she was angry about this.
Gameplay, well, Kazan Curry is sweet, Sharon is hax, Maya and Kazan trade off. Advtange Kazan for the sweet curry (and higher HP) but whatevs. Galea is awesome. Elfin was really hard and I don’t feel bad about SLAUGHTERING HER EAT IT BUBBA. Elliot and Marienne I’m ready to fight again. Those two are FUCKED. Oh yeah, and Bishop Doplin? Holy shit what a douchebag. The church is so nice in this game.
So uh, hopefully I get the giant guy soon. And hopefully he doesn’t punch me in the face. Because I’ll die.
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6th gen: Finally the massive fundamental starter shift to Dark/Psychic/Fighting, Fighting type evolves to Fighting/Fire.
I would laugh my ass off if they did this. As much as I agree with three Fire/Fightings in a row being too much, I would still laugh so damn hard.
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Pokemon White: Just started this up. Picked Oshawott purely due to the relative dearth of Water types in this game (big change from the usual for Pokemon) and named it Derpurai, thereby making a liar out of all the NPCs who will be spending the game telling me how much I love my Pokemon.
Not much to say yet, although boo to removing the auto-toggle for RunningShoes from HGSS. :(
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Pokemon Black: Beat the first gym! Don't you love how the game basically hands you an Instant Win Pokemon against the Gym regardless what starter you have? Its like they weren't even trying here. At least all those Rock Gyms required you to look for something that could win if you chose the Fire Starter (and actually level them up a bit), and Falkner...umm..er...ok, bad example <_<
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Tifa: REALLY shaky start. Her HP Moves are kind of awkward versions of Jecht's, her brave moves have poor range and are hard to hit with, and her Feint Mechanic is unintuitive. Then...she gets a few levels, and gets a lot better. Falcon Kick Burning Arrow is a nice "get in on the guy" move and the existence of Feints means she can use it safer than most people who have that style of move. Light Talon Attack Falcon Dive and Shoryuken Dolphin Blow are excellent compliments that let her deal with people camping above/below her, and Skrull Torch Rolling Blaze is just a nice easy to use HP Attack overall. Reminds me a lot of JP Kuja, only not nearly THAT extreme, in terms of the "really bad at low levels, gets much better once she gets a few attacks", given nothing can be worse than relying on the ORIGINAL Seraphic Star just to win fights (GOOO NA version for making Flare Star an initial HP Attack)
Meep, you for get to mention how good is Blizzrdga. For a melee fighter, Blizzardga is such a good long range pressure move+assist combo starter to the point of not making sense.
Dissiadia 012- Recently discovered the true brilliance of Knight's Spear. Don't ever engage close combat with Ulty near the ceiling now, the charged Knight's Spear can lock the opponent into a hit the ceiling loop as long as a ceiling exists. Which can lead a extended assist combo loop that involves even more ceiling hit or rape with Hell's Judgment.
I am seriously considering to move her up into one of my mains now.
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Pokemon Black: Beaten.
Overall, great revamp of the series. This was the first Pokemon game that actually felt like it was up-to-date; not something that could have been pulled off on the original Gameboy. Constantly animated Pokemon in battles, the visual effects outside of battle, CUTSCENES. Having an actual story was a great touch. The stuff with Niu was pretty lame at the beginning, but it really came together nicely at the end. Can't say more without spoilers, but the whole Elite 4 sequence was great.
By the way, smacked Reshiram twice (about 10% hp remaining) and caught him with a single Luxury Ball. (Just checked Serebii, 45 Capture Rate, no wonder)
Took me two tries to beat Niu. Second time I used level 39 Gigalith to solo his level 52 Zekrom. Managed to beat Ghetsis on the first try. Hydreigon was raping my team, then Sawk got a critical hit Brick Break on him. Bulk Up buffed Sawk against Bouffalant, then swept the rest of his team.
MVP of the main game was Lilligant. MVP of Elite 4+ was Sawk.
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FUCKING Hydreigon. Holy hell it's a beast. It manages to out-uber Garchomps as big scary things that sweep teams (or, because I have no shame, revive chains).
Well, that's a slight exaggeration, Lance's Garchomp is still more terrifying.
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Ditto.
E4 is pretty damn competant this time around and covers it's weaknesses well. Had to attempt it twice since I just ran out of resources. They seemed way more durable than they should be...
N's team was amusing though not that tough. Made tougher by accidentally sending my Ground pokemon to the PC for Reshiram. Oh well, still not difficult.
Hydreigon is a beast, yes. OHKO'd Vanilluxe with a should-have-been-expected Fire Blast, then managed to KO Conkeldurr along with the meatsack I sent in so I could Full Revive. Then Hammer Arm completely owned it. Woo 175/178 HP/Atk at L51. Otherwise the final's team was pretty easily owned by it, Victini, and Serperior. Final party, sans Reshiram:
L50 Serperior (Tackle, Giga Drain, Leaf Blade, Coil) 146/107/106/84/115/132. Miracle Seed
L50 Seismitoad (Bulldoze, Drain Punch, Return, Surf) 174/117/88/92/92/82. Soft Sand
L51 Conkeldurr (Retaliate, Chip Away, Stone Edge, Hammer Arm) 175/178/123/76/86/70. Expert Belt
L48 Krookodile (Scary Face, Dragon Claw, Dig, Foul Play) 156/138/96/64/85/113. BlackGlasses
L48 Vanilluxe (Mirror Shot, Acid Armor, Mirror Coat, Ice Beam) 138/118/99/117/104/95. NeverMeltIce
L52 Victini (Confusion, Fire Blast, Shadow Ball, Zen Headbutt) 180/128/128/136/104/115. Spell Tag
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Meep, you for get to mention how good is Blizzrdga. For a melee fighter, Blizzardga is such a good long range pressure move+assist combo starter to the point of not making sense.
Again, Niu, you fail to acknowledge that maybe, just MAYBE the person hasn't GOTTEN this yet? She's only level 25 or so; I have naturally not gotten all her moves.
Hence why this is what we call FIRST IMPRESSIONS. Not everyone just cheaps their characters to level 100 using EXP Tricks or cheating devices, you know.
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FUCKING Hydreigon. Holy hell it's a beast. It manages to out-uber Garchomps as big scary things that sweep teams (or, because I have no shame, revive chains).
Well, that's a slight exaggeration, Lance's Garchomp is still more terrifying.
Lance's Garchomp wasn't that bad. You have two ubers (one L70) who null ground, the option of Ice Beaming L70 Mewtwo, and it's kinda slow for a Garchomp (his Salamence was faster), which matters if you use fast disablers or Ice Beamers (and if you aren't using at least one of those for the freaking dragon boss, you're doin' it wrong). I don't disagree that it's scary, mind.
Cynthia's was definitely the one I remember fearing personally (it even hits weakness on that game's ubers, although I only use those in aftergames personally).
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Mostly been playing Crisis Core of late. Just got through the Junon sequence, so I have the Buster Sword, and am really just trying to get to the point where I can do the triple fusion before going on another mission blitz. Though the game is taking its sweet time, so maybe I'll just head back to the Missions now that I've got me a Buster Sword.
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Mostly been playing Crisis Core of late. Just got through the Junon sequence, so I have the Buster Sword, and am really just trying to get to the point where I can do the triple fusion before going on another mission blitz. Though the game is taking its sweet time, so maybe I'll just head back to the Missions now that I've got me a Buster Sword.
Triple Fusion? Pretty sure you can only fuse 2 Materia and an Item together at a time, never anything more. UNless you mean get the item slot open, in which case, I think that's unlocked through missions anyway.
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The Item is what I was thinking of. Dunno why I thought it was a third Materia. Probably because I have so damn many of the things.
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FF4 PSP- Beat the main game. It's FF4 GBA with better graphics/music and minus a thousand bugs or so. Ended up running a Edward/Yang/Twins team. The thunder/cat claw combo was still useful (Several enemies could be put to sleep, and those stupid evilmasks eat a 4x weakness to the thunder claw), and Yang's default claw already is anti undead. Edward is also an awesome randomslayer for the final area, hits weakness on a shitload of annoying randoms and is super fast. It almost makes up for the paper durability! Almost.
Going to clear the game with the rest of the team, then hit up the lunar ruins. Undecided if I'll play TAY or not.
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DO IT PUSSY
Radiant Historia - Oh man the opening to this sewer sequence in Standard History chapter 2 reminds me of Chrono Trigger 2300 AD sewer with the back and forth between the dopey leader and the minion. Not sure if it is intentional or not.
Oh hey enemies that spam MP draining, that is always fun. Oh look a pack of 6 of them. Congratulations on making me use the escape command a lot game. Oh you can fail a lot. awesome. That is fine I guess. Like it worked on the third try (had three turns in a row), but this game makes avoiding combat an absolute bitch. I think I am over leveled as well (nearly 30, thought end game was 50-60? I know there is like 6 chapters and I just hit Chapter 2... Raynie just got G-Fire). Getting lost in a game where enemies respawn when you leave a room and come back makes for lots of experience gain by accident.
Oh well whatevers, It doesn't kill the game, it is still generally fun and pretty decent. Just it likes to do dick moves (There is some more in this sewer level that is dickish, just been talking about it in chat and don't want to go over it more).
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SMTN - Yes Masakado I'm totally gonna protect the world now gimme gimme gimme my immunity to almost everything
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Risen: Finished.
Chapter 1 was mostly about Darwinian surviving (steal, hoard items, fight what you can handle and run from everything else), then meeting everyone, doing a ton of quests, stealing every house in the game and choosing your faction. (like FO New Vegas there isn't really a good one)
Chapter 2 was exploring the entire island.
Chapter 3 and 4 were pretty much exactly like fighting lizardmen in 3D Zelda games. Remember? It was really cool, but there were so few of them. This time it's more complex and interesting, and there are at the very least twenty thousand millions lizardmen in the game. I've done basically nothing but fight lizardmen for the last 10 hours or so. Sure, some lizards fight a bit differently, but still!
Good stuff. This is a very immersive game, especially since that, unlike just about every other video game, it never gets over the top. Attacking a boar and getting his meat, buying a frying pan after selling all the mushrooms you found on your travels, then cooking a meal with all that on a campfire. Selling meals to get a shovel and travelling all over the world for buried treasures. Getting a pickaxe, mining some ore, getting a seal from a blacksmith with that ore, heating the seal in a forge, striking it with a hammer on an anvil, cooling it then sharpening it to get a new sword. All of this feels great, without even having to be complicated.
The game obviously can't keep that up for too long, so its last part is not very impressive at all.
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Have you played Gothic 1 or 2 at all Fen? They are from mostly the same people and I believe the same people in charge (not same studio, same people, industry drama happened). I would skip Gothic 3 because it is a buggy mess that is nearly unplayable last I checked (there is a Gold version on steam which might be doable, but not spending more money on that fucking game). Gothic 4 just came out recently and is made by completely different people and has next to nothing to do with the series other than some basic system things. So it was basically an RPG using the same core principles of Gothic system that could have been called anything at all as a new IP.
Risen is pretty much them going "lol fuck you we will make Gothic 4 anyway" and doing the exact same thing as above, new IP, same old systems. Glad you enjoyed it, had heard it was pretty good. Can't buy it here, for some reason it got refused classification here in Australia (Sex? I dunno).
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood - Okay so there is honestly just to much shit to do in this game that unlocks so fucking little. The Shop Quest system is terrible. It is kind of neat to go collect stuff to unlock new armour, it is terrible that these are a jumble of random items that you can sell. It is horrendous that some of these are limited number items. So the best way to handle the system even with FAQing it is to hold onto all your items until you have done all the quests. By the time you have done all the quests you don't care about money. So there is a whole pile of sellable items that have no purpose other than to sell and you won't ever sell them. Fail.
Pretty much the game keeps up the trends set in the earlier 2 games. You can just go through the game, but if you go out of your way to collect things just to do a bit of collecting you will get most of the way through the game and be like 3/4 through the collection quests, so you may as well finish them off right? It unlocks the best armour in the game! Okay. So you do that. Then you get to do all the bullshit side quest crap that has like 1/4 of the polish of the rest of the game. Seriously the problem with like 90% of the frustrating jumps in the games is because it shifts to a dead fixed camera that you can't shift at all, if they didn't lock the camera in place you would be fine. Even normally when they want to show you something specific in the polished sections you can at least move the camera a little just to see around. The shitty jumps always glue it in place so you can't shift it. Not uncommon at all to obscure the character or the target jump. The worst of the worst is when it locks the camera in place for to long or to early, so you are trying to do a bit of climbing or jumping and you are just stuck looking at a platform you are either trying to reach or have just jumped off of.
I swear every single one of these games has had a really fun well polished starting act, then the further in you get the more you get parts where the camera just isn't right for a jump, or it jumps around at the wrong moment or some annoying bullshit that totally fucks up the platforming (which is the whole fucking point of the games is easy mode parkour platforming). The worst ones are the bits that they haven't play tested particularly well because they are optional. So frustrating because at least on PC you are looking at 8 digital directions to make your jumps, if the camera isn't right you need to start your run up from the right spots or your guy will gleefully leap to his demise.
The do special shit to get full sychronisation I think is still neat, but massively overly punishing in points where it is poorly coded. Fun fact, there is missions where the condition is something that you meet at the very end of the mission, some of these are broken and don't reset if you die or restart from a previous checkpoint. "Don't get hit in the flying machine" Oh okay, get hit? Crash land and retry. lol no u failed dude redo the entire level agin and try to do it rite this tiem nuub. Nah fuck you. There is more than a few missions that do this. It is totally illogical and highly frustrating when it is something simple but you fuck it up the one time you had to restart because you got spotted (don't get detected! FUCK THAT!), lol no sychronisation for you biatch. Every vehicle mission does this. Vehicles control like shit.
There is two in particular that had me swearing for a good 10 minutes straight that were bullshit and not caused by the above.. One that is "Don't touch the ground while trailing this guy". easy as, you just stick on the rooftops. Oh hey at the last bit? There is a rooftop that you can easily jump off on accident. It is just before the end of the mission. Awesome. The other one was easy as fuck, use your assassin bros to kill your targets, that is fine. It was a don't get detected by fucking anyone while trailing a guy mission. A damned long one at that. There is guards all over the shop and going in blind you won't have much idea of where they will patrol and your target keeps moving. So you need to learn the level a bit. So yeah, I used my assassin dudes, they killed things with throwing knives SYNCHRONIZATION FAILED. Um okay. CHECKPOINT. Yay saved with it failed, half way through a long arse mission that has 3 more stealth sections to get through. Nah fuck that. That mission was pretty awesome. There is a bit where if you follow the guy like you do everyone else you get put into a cutscene and then as it ends he walks back the way you are straight into your face MISSION FAILED WHY DIDN'T YOU KNOW HE WAS GOING TO DO THAT. It is easier to just walk around the side, such total bullshit.
Also the puzzles for the Subject 16 puzzles I swear just get more and more batshit crazy with what you are supposed to remember and what you aren't. They are at least worth doing this time if you are somewhat invested in the plot.
So yeah, it is just like the other games. If you want parkour check the old ones out. If you are invested in the story then hey you will probably keep buying them (which is uh bad honestly, there is a lot of really smart references, but it is all leading up to some Matrix level eye rolling). I know I will be buying AC3 because I like climbing things and stabbing dudes.
I just wish instead of putting in some new fancy shit that is dumb as fuck (HORSE BACK ASSASSINATION WOOOO) they would just either polish up the jumping engine a bit better or making sure all the key places you interact with are working as intended, because this shit HAS to come up in QA, because you feel them playing the game once, let alone over and over during QA. They are always in the last quarter or so of the game, so it stinks of crunch time get it good enough and ship it out instead of polishing it to make it a great playing experience. As is the games are fun fun FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK fun fun FUCK FUCK FUCK okay I need a break. I suppose I should try one out just doing barebones run, but that isn't really my style.
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Demon's Souls: Ooooooooh yeah.
Started out with a Royal for RP purposes(not powergaming I smwear!) Tutorial is the freaking tutorial. It's not difficult until the Vanguard smashes your ass. Which he did, despite clearly missing. And it was the damn vertical attack too, so I could SEE it miss. Dammit.
Death 0: Being three feet away from the Vanguard's Axe when it lands isn't far enough. Not really counting since death in the tutorial is inevitable...
Well, whatever, time for Bolateria fighting. Gotta keep things slow and steady. Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary, clear the ramparts, open up the first shortcut fight and beat the red-eyed knight my first time playing. YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Now that's a nice boost. Hahahaha, go manipulating level geometry! Continue forward, I choose to go the safe route of saving Orstrava, and get both a Knight Shield and Winged Spear as drops for doing so. Too bad my Strength's too low to use either, damn. I make the area safe for mah buddeh and get the useless telescope. At the boulder trap, I someone manage to hit myself with it despite standing a good way aways again. I hope this doesn't become a running theme. I don't bother to brave the dragon's nest because hahaha, hell no to that. Open the boss door and second shortcut. The little Phalanx pieces go down easy to magic arrow or soul arrow or whatever I feel like calling it.
The Big Legion Phalanx isn't too difficult. I run out of firebombs, but magic can carry me through. Once all his helpers are gone I just turpentine up and burn him. And finally I can level my stats.
Decide to go to Stonefang tunnel. I have enough Strength to use the Winged Spear now, and it's nice against the enemies here. On the downside, to do that I underlevelled my magic so I just barely miss out on killing most enemies in one hit. Go through the level and stuff. I open up the first shortcut and go meet Blacksmith Ed. Upgrade my spear and head back up the lift, I see an item and roll and..... miss and die by falling damage. Really!? REALLY!? My first death is to falling damage? And not even respectable place either, just plan me being an unlucky dumbass? ARGH.
Death 1: Falling off the lift near Blacksmith Ed like a dumbass.
Alright, back to the level blah blah blah. Kill shit, rage at the Fat Ministers for doing too much damage for fatasses and get to the boss. Also I see that at least three people have died on the lift leading to the boss because they didn't take things seriously. I'd laugh but at least their excuse is that it's nearly Doom 3-level dark.
Boss is Armored Spider at the end of a tunnel. It's kind of safe to play a range game against him, and as a Royal I do have a magic game! I slowly chip him down to about 150 HP left, when he decides to breath fire down the tunnel. I die because my spell couldn't hit him because he drew back or something I don't know it just killed me nearly instantly.
Death 2: Armored Spider breathing down my neck and everywhere around me.
Bah, head back this time I won't overuse my magic and have to turn it into an attrition battle. Also I'm actually going to melee a bit. Except when I get into melee range I suddenly forget the controls and waste a bunch of time and healing items staring at the oxymoron of a giant spider covered in armor. I head back down the tunnel to play it safe, only to be followed by a flame breath again. But this time, I live! Then as I'm in the middle of using an item I DIE! Oh joy, random hit detection from an attack it's impossible to see detail in.
Death 3: Why can't I escape bad hit detection? Armored Spider mark 2.
Head back, actually kill him this time. I head a bit deeper into the level to get a crystal gecko and some more ore before returning to the nexus. I'm about a thousand souls away from leveling again so I choose to go kill Red-Eyes again.
Demon's Souls is a humbling experience. Also I really hate bad hit detection.
Death 4: The red-eyed knight's spear extends an extra foot out in front don't you know?
Ugh and I just had my body back too... I head back kill him with great vengeance then go level up. I also upgrade my spear a bit more, changing its leveling pathway too.
Total Deaths today(not counting Tutorial): 4! I reckon this will be on the low end.
Total Deaths... total: 4! I'm not including the tutorial in counting ever again.
Next Time on Demon's Souls:
Not-Fudo: Why did you name your character the same as mine?
Fudo: Hahahaha!
Can Fudo conquer the nearly bottomless pit? Will he let the score with the red-eyed knight stand at 2-1? Will he let the score with the lift settle at 0-1? And when will be the first time he rolls off a proper bottomless cliff? Find out next time on Demon's Souls!
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I don't see why Risen would be banned, it's tame compared to something like Fallout New Vegas.
I heard about Gothic, will get those the next time I buy a new PC since this one can't handle Minesweeper without crying. Now I'm mostly looking forward to Risen 2, which looks great (Pirate theme! Probably not a bad 360 port anymore! And you get to fight this: http://www.rpgfrance.com/dev/medias/images/galerie/risen2/risen2-8030311.jpg (http://www.rpgfrance.com/dev/medias/images/galerie/risen2/risen2-8030311.jpg))
Mass Effect 2 Arrival: Weakest ME2 DLC by far, it feels as lazy as DA DLC.
The story has several of those incoherencies you see in weaker RPGs (Solo only all the way even though it makes no sense during the second halfGoblez's hand syndrome, enemies not killing you when they get the chance and instead putting you in a prison for no reason, easily escaping from prison) This DLC is supposed to bridge ME2 and ME3, but there's nothing here that hasn't been seen in ME2's ending.
SPOILER?
The ending scene is:
Harbringer: "So yeah Shepard, if you haven't noticed we're really going to come invade your planets soon, srsly."
The only good part is a Renegade trigger where you just kill the main baddy before it finishes talking.
Environments are very bland, futuristic offices you've already seen a million times. Gameplaywise, it's still ME2, so I don't feel ripped off. There's one plot fight where you're supposed to lose against a ton of enemies, but you can actually survive and get an achievement for that. That part was great.
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I don't see why Risen would be banned, it's tame compared to something like Fallout New Vegas.
Don't try to understand why things get refused classification in Australia, it is pretty much a dice roll.
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New Vegas: Completed. Did the NCR path. I am amused at the talk your way to victory option basically being <Bluff> Just as planned!
May try another playthrough at some point in the future. Likely an Explosions/Melee/Stealth type chick for the House/Yes Man endings, and then a big Brawler for the Caesar ending.
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Ass Creed Bro - These games continue to be stupid. I mean I enjoy them in there way as I have stated plenty of times. Seriously though, so many bad design decisions go into this. There is a credit sequence at the end of the game that is unskippable as far as I can tell (Escape brings up the menu...). You can keep playing after the credits. The credit sequence I think ended up around 20 minutes. With music turned off there is no audio. Just 20 minutes of white text scroll on a black background. Good thing I had IRC and my DS to keep me occupied.
Going back to the stupid though, the plot just keeps doing all the same old tricks in the book. It is big propaganda stuff that is all pretty old hat and stale. Deus Ex did it more over the top (smaller scale, but more over the top). Illuminatus! did it best, because humor is the best way to do it. When I am talking about it doing all the same old tricks, there is a sequence at the end of the game where the main character loses control of his body. Yeah it does the Final Fantasy 7 thing. Right down to you pushing buttons that changes nothing but slowly makes you go through the motion. Worse than FF7 though, in that when Cloud is going to kill Aeris you have been mashing X to get through dialogue and it is pretty obvious you are back in some semblance of control. Here it is in the middle of a cutscene. So OH NO I DON'T HAVE CONTROL OF MY BODY! Errrrr are you going to move this along game? Bored bored bored. Oh he moved. Ooooohhhhh it was because I mashed the buttons. Um okay. Then after stumbling around you get to the end of the sequence THEN it says PRESS ANY BUTTON and the inevitable happens. Yeah, it is dumb. Really really dumb for a game that is so well researched and has so many smart references thrown in. There is clearly smart people that care about the subject matter working on the games. They just serve no purpose in the main narrative. It is all just window dressing. Fun window dressing that they do absolutely nothing to hold your hand through! I like that, I can appreciate it. Still, so very very dumb.
Favourite points of the game.
Dagger of Brutus, you get this with the Armor of Brutus. It is the strongest dagger in the game. When you fight with it enemies get more likely to run away. It has unique kill animations that are pretty much universally brutally stabbing dudes multiple times. If it is only stabbing ones you twist the knife to just completely wreck dudes. There is one where you stab upwards through the chin into the skull with a reverse grip, then step away from body pulling the blade horizontal down towards your waste. Nice.
You can kick enemies to make them drop their guard, this makes BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK LOL guys much easier to handle and less boring. It also means you can kick bosses in the dick until they die. Nice.
In the "Congrats for paying for the game" DLC they sort of go "Oh hey Leonardo da Vinci liked dudes", I guess that is kind of neat. A little out of left field (far from a new concept of course. Just in a game about stabbing dudes in the neck his sex life isn't really a priority), but it is nice to see in a really mainstream piece of media. Bonus points for him sort of bashfully coming out to Ezio and the response being "lol whatevs bro he (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Leonardo_da_Vinci_025.jpg) is pretty sweet match for you". That is pretty good.
The Crossbow honestly is just way to good. The whole point of the game is that you can use Hidden Blade to kill dudes on the sly. Crossbow is functionally a ranged Hidden Blade. You have toooons of ammo for it. I don't know if it was a good decision to add it, but it is damned useful.
Down sides.
Jumping puzzles still suck at times due to bad camera and shit. I think there is less problem ones than in AC2 or at least the ones you come across are a bit more responsive than the worst in AC2. Both were way better than AC1 generally speaking.
Disarming dudes with your fists isn't nearly as effective as it used to be. This is better balance. I don't know why they did this though since this series is anything but balanced. Especially since they introduced execution streaks where you just kill one dude and keep murdering dudes until someone hits you (which you can parry and instakill dudes during). It is weird. It only really applies to heavy armour dudes or spear guys for things you fight a lot, you just have to taunt them first, so whatevers on that front. You don't seem to be able to do it at all to the new more rare regular enemy, the Papal Guard who are supposed to be the best of all classes, they block, run super fast have armour and have a gun. So you just shoot them in the face, problem fucking solved.
There is enemies in that "Grats on buying the game" DLC that dodge everything. Not block. Dodge. So you are back to the old sit there until you can counter them to death zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Okay dude decided to attack now here is 10 seconds of murdering the 20 douches that attacked. Bad encounter choice. Seriously they will side step you when you have them backed into a corner. It is annoying and dumb.
Things that were in AC2 that are still awesome.
Stabbing stuff is still fun. Knife is still the most fun weapon to use.
The fact that the game is seriously mostly just a super easy 3D platformer. This specifically coupled with the fact that you can hire hookers. They come in a group of 4 and surround you, preemptively distracting guards. It is like you are a Renaissance Megaman who learned Whore Shield. I will miss this feature when you inevitably play as Desmond.
I uh dunno. I really can't defend them anymore. It is very much a try it out and see if you like it phenomenon. It is very much a game about spectacle more than actual game.
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Disgaea 3 being awesome.
Master Champloo explains his apparent psychic abilities to Almaz!
Almaz: (Master!? This is the monologue inside my head!)
Champloo: (Hyahya! I can communicate with ingredients through their heart! There is nothing I am incapable of!)
Almaz: (But I'm not an ingredient…)
Champloo: (Fool! Everything has the possibility of becoming a delicious dish!)
4th-wall-breaking and the sobering reminder that technically, anyone can be eaten... all in one line~
I <3 you, Disgaea.
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FUCKING Hydreigon. Holy hell it's a beast. It manages to out-uber Garchomps as big scary things that sweep teams (or, because I have no shame, revive chains).
Well, that's a slight exaggeration, Lance's Garchomp is still more terrifying.
I'm not the only one who spammed that then? Rocky Helmet and Fake Out with revival spam are hilariously cheap.
As far as I'm concerned, Random Challenge was completed yesterday when I got bored of grinding to beat Cynthia/new E4/Morimoto and just said 'fuck it, I want to start training for VGC'. Started transferring HG Pokes, including a load of Dittos in the hopes of getting an all-31 IV Ditto. Turns out, only one of them has ANY 31 IVs. Oh well, it's a start! Current team is looking quite odd - in testing via PokeSav, it's done decently, although I've not gone up against a Trick Room team, so cutting Tornadus from my team might not be the greatest of ideas, unless I'm replacing it with either Liepard or Mienshao.
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Pokeymans: Racially Insensitive- Beat Adler. There's still Morimoto and Cynthia, but at this stage I at least feel qualified to comment on what I was using.
Final team:
Shaymin (L67, Serene Grace, Serious, Air Slash/Magical Leaf/Growth/Synthesis)- Did you know Air Slash is hax on something as fast as Shaymin? Yeah.
Tornadus (L52, Prankster, Adamant, Air Slash/Fly/Crunch/Agility)- I don't seem to have any good TMs to use with Prankster, which is too bad because it's cool conceptually. Didn't do much at all in the aftergame as the level may indicate, but did his fair share for the first round of E4.
Krookodile (L60, Moxie, Quiet, Crunch/Outrage/Earthquake/Cut)- since he thought it'd be cool to replace half his skillset for no real reason in the UE4. Anyway, obvious uses throughout the game, helped by the relative lack of water routes. Didn't actually participate in the aftergame, but I thought he might prove more useful than the other lower levelled guys and stuck the Exp Share on him once Shaymin's hax got going.
Reshiram (L63, Turbo Blaze, Timid, Dragon Pulse/Dragon Tail/Flamthrower/Fusion Flare)- The odd thing wasn't that the offense was great, it's that even with the ten level disadvantage Reshiram was straight outslugging some of the E4. The durability is apparently good despite being in Gen Rocket Tag.
Kyurem (L76, Pressure, Hasty, Glaciate/Dragon Pulse/Ice Beam/Endeavor)- Kyurem is so obviously incomplete and getting an upgrade in 'Grey' that it's kinda sad. That said, the raw levels and slightly-below-Uber stats made it a great for tanking and letting me revive when I needed to. I actually did the E4 in two runs, getting enough levels for aforementioned Hax, and Kyurem did better there honestly (for all a strong Ice Beam was helpful a few times here)
Cobalion (L54, Justified, Modest (... well that explains some things...), Sacred Sword/Realiate/Iron Head/Swords Dance)- Tank! Fighting attack! Not a lot else!
And things I dropped, in order of how long they stuck around chronologically.
Carracosta (L51, Solid Rock, Naive, Strength/Dive/Surf/Waterfall)- Skillset ate some nerfs in the aftergame, when I wanted to condence down my HMs in favor of more ubers (because the aftergame has an instant 10 level jump over the E4. Dude.) Notably lost Rock Slide. Anyway, pretty good actually, reliable throughout the game and one of uh two water types I even saw. Despite the pretty bad BST and particularly terrible speed.
Celebi (L57, Natural Cure, Rash, Grass Knot/Recover/Nasty Plot/Leaf Storm)- Celebi played the role of my trump card uber for the E4, since Reshiram is acquired immediately before the final bosses rather than before the E4 as per usual. Pretty good at it actually, Gen 5 is pretty light on Bug y'see and... well you can guess what happened when Celebi wanted something dead. Dropped in favor of Shaymin because Skymin is cool.
Stoutland (L45, Sand Rush, Hasty, Strength/Crush/Rock Smash/Work Up)- Really good... riiight up until the E4. He's not really BAD then, just... his damage more or less caps once you get HM04, and while the stats are a good mix of power and durability the inability to his weakness well gets worse as you go. E4 having both Psychic and Ghost helped him stay useful then, but he dropped in favor of Reshiarm for the final battles.
Darmanitan (L42, Sheer Force, Jolly, Fire Punch/Hammer Arm/Belly Drum/Flare Blitz)- fire ape is strong. Damage machine of death, here, and looking over the movesets almost certainly better than the Fire starter. Dropped in favor of Cobalion once I got towards the end and thought "Oh yeah, I'm going to use FIRE DRAGON"
Serperior (L42, Overgrow, Gentle, Mega Drain/Leaf Blade/Grass Knot/Flash)- The 8 gyms are... utterly stacked against a Grass starter. Having no off-type movepool to speak of makes it that much worse. Smugsnake is perfectly valid in a vacuum, and grass is fine once you get to the end of the game (as seen with me replacing him with... a grass, who was replaced by.. grass), just doesn't work well in the interim.
Tranquill (L29, Big Pecks, Hardy, Air Cutter/Roost/Detect/Fly)- fly whore. Replaced by superior flying type.
Liepard (L27, Unburden, Serious, Fake Out/Pursuit/Hone Claws/Cut)- So I figured a dark type would be cool. Liepard just doesn't have the offense to cut it. dropped for Krookodile.
Panpour (L11, Gluttony, Naive, Scratch/Leer/Luck/Water Gun)- basically required to complete the first gym. Dropped in favor of... y'know I don't even remember. I think I just dropped it around gym 2.
Game... has its strengths, and there's a good flow to it. On the other hand, the aftergame is pretty halfassed, which I guess I should expect in the debut games for a new Gen, but it's worth saying. People say it's a revamp, but I don't really see it. Some good design choices that were long due (experience scaling, toning down on HM requirements, shrinking dungeons a bit) but nothing exactly revolutionary. 7/10, same general area as HGSS.
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Read Super's post and frantically searched to see if I somehow missed FF4:PSP's release date. I did not, so I have to assume he is playing a version from a distortional rift in the frabic of time and space.
Or a Jpn copy. >_>
Either way, props to that guy.
~
So...I spend a lot of my time at my gfs house. She does not have a bunch of rpgs, but she mentioned that she tried playing FFX a long time ago, but could not get far in the game. Something about that genre not being her style. The two fo us enjoy playing games together. Whether it be Donkey Kong of New Mario bros or even Black ops. I thought I might try to see if I could get her to play a RPG with me, but as you all know the multiplayer RPGs are few and far between. But there is a series that manages to have some sort of multiplayer option available, and I figured I might as well try so...
Tales of Symphonia: Man the early dialogue in this game is cheesy. I haven't played this game in forever. I seem to recall it being easier with one player too! At least she is enjoying it, I think!
For now, she is 1st player controlling Lloyd. She thinks I have this rain man-type memory for every rpg I have ever played. That is only the case with all those SNES rpgs. The PS1 and beyond games are all fuzzy since I only played them once usually.
I am controlling Kratos for back up healing and making sure we have a large selection of life bottle readily available. Raiine is zipping through her MP in no time. I need to find a way to reduce the cost of her spells. Kratos will serve as a nice reminder of how Zelos plays, because there is no way I am keeping Cam Clarke in favor of Zelos Wilder. The dude should remain as awesome as I remember him. He wears PINK for Gawd sake.
The two of us managed to get all the way to Asgard, but we missed the next part of the story so we have to backtrack to that one port town to continue our journey. She still insists that I know exactly what I am doing. Ha! We did get to stock up on some nice gear in Asgad though. I wonder if the two of us will beat the game...
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Man... of all the Tales games, you choose like the worst one that isn't Eternia?
At least hit up Abyss or Vesperia. They both have multiplayer support. (Of course, this means avoid Legendia like the plague. Not only is it generally worse than Abyss/Ves in every way, but no multiplayer!)
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The Japanese version of FF4 has English language options, so you could import it or something. Or just wait a couple of months.
Also you don't remember stuff about games you have only played once? Not even with the visual cues? That has to be awesome.
Radiant Historia - Okay so that sequence where you look for document proof that you were stabbed in the back at the start of chapter 2 Alternate History, that was pretty cool.
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Scar: PSP japanese version automatically plays in english when you load it into the PSP. It's pretty awesome.
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The main problem with multiplayer Tales is that someone is not playing for 80% of the time, (and that both need to like the storyline, I guess)
I'd say that the best RPG to play with a girlfriend is really Pokemon, both players going through the game at the same time. But you need to get two copies of the game. And she WILL hate you, however, if you beat a boss at the same time you die against him.
A close second runner would be Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Really fun and well made co-op action/RPG grindfest. It's even available on every gaming console of the last generation (Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox)
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I think FFT is pretty romantic myself.
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Tales co-op battles are REALLY fun, though. And really, you should be playing Tales for the battle system anyway. (And maybe the skits.)
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Man... of all the Tales games, you choose like the worst one that isn't Eternia?
I fail to see what makes Symphonia or Eternia worse than Destiny. And frankly, I find both better than the original Tales of Phantasia and the GBA version (reports claim the PSX version is MASSIVELY BETTER, but I'm frankly skeptical about that for a number of reasons; I'm not saying it ISN'T better, but the amount people hype it...dunno...)
That said...
Duodecim: 9 out of 10 "Destiny Odysseys" done. Not much to say otherwise.
Pokemon Black: Oh look, finally they stopped hurling nothing but Patrats, Lillipups, and Feline-Poochyenas at me! About time I met this game's Pidgey <_<
...on a Non-Meeple playing note, my sister is playing through Okami and just beat Orochi Mk2. Yes, she's that far into the game, what's YOUR excuse (for those who haven't played the game)?
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To Gref. What I meant to say is that for all those SNES games I can pretty much recite the dialogue of almost every scene since I played them so many times. Some newer RPGs fall under this category too like the Suikoden series.
But most of the newer RPGs were one and done runs with me, so my memory is hazy at best trying to remember everything about the games. Like for ToS I can mostly remember every characters personalities for the most part. Stuff like how Presea is going to sound all stoic and emotionless and how Regal is a superb chef. I also remember some of the more memorable skits like the one where Zelos comments about Sheena's ta-tas. I know who the final boss is and what not, but there's a few gaps I don't remember until I hit that point in the game. Like that whole granny-monster scene...I was like "Oh YEAH!"
But FF4 comes out in like 20 days to the states, so I will just wait to buy it. I am super broke right now. The new sprites look awesome though!
And I liked most of the Tales series. I very much enjoyed ToD, must have been the talking swords! (Oh yeah...and Leon >_>;;) Abyss is my favorite and I have yet to play Vesperia, but if she enjoys this title enough I will buy that too since she owns a 360.
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Demon's Souls: I wasn't paying attention to my deaths or playing in general too much today.
Death 5: Red-eyes fighting is now 3-2 in my favor.
Death 6: Blocking a weapon larger than you isn't possible it seems!
Death 7: Ugh bloody hell, I died before the boss and lost about 7k souls. I died uhhhh... bah, it's all kinda the same blur from here out...
Death 8: Sometime
Death 9: Probably
Death 10: Likely
Death 11: ARGH HOW DID I DRAW TWO OF THEM AT ONCE BLARGH DEAD. Dammit, I lost another 7k souls because of that.
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I thought Tempest was the consensus worst thing ever for Tales purposes.
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It was so bad they disowned it from the series, so yeah. Most likely.
I prefer Phantasia to Eternia myself, but it's a small gap and I do think Symphonia is better than both. They're all notably worse than every subsequent game with an english release, though. (Haven't played Destiny. Anyone have a copy they want to sell me~?)
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Nothing says "I love you, significant other" like playing Hoshigami together.
As for what I'm playing:
Plants vs. Zombies - Started to clear out the old Live Arcade backlog by choosing a game at random, and this won. Beat it, now playing minigames and fiddling around with the Zen Garden. The game is fun. Unfortunately, thanks to sales, since I started this I've added eight more games to the backlog. Curse you, total lack of restraint!
Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron - Just got off Hoth. This game has a very bad habit of shutting down my PSP - it's done it four times in two separate cutscenes. Thank goodness they're skippable.
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VC - I totally just took over that base camp, and here comes FRANK WEST- oh, it's not Frank West, game ruined
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Resonance of Fate - Hard Mode:
Finished chapter 4. Protecting the statue was challenging enough. In particular, the second room before the boss? That room is death. I had something close to 6 resets due to the statue either breaking or someone takes critical scratch damage. Eventually, I had to bust out the Motolov Cocktail+ which let me kill two of them in one hero action and injure the other one pretty bad. This then let me take on the boss with the statue at half health. Non-surprisingly, the boss ends up being easier than that stupid room as one Rob mode run with incindinary rounds pretty much full scratch it. Now on Chapter 5 and grindin for HEXes and money,
Tactics Ogre
Around midway through Chapter 2. My new classes like Beastmasters and Terror Knights being at level 1 makes me sad :(. So I am also grindan here to get them to a usable level.
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*shrug* Destiny and Phantasia have enough remakes that they've actually outshone Symphonia at this point on gameplay. And personally, I think Phantasia -still- holds up as one of the best Tales games for plot (though Vesperia certainly beats it). YMMV, but in general, Symphonia just seems like a sad place to start with Abyss and Vesperia available.
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Yeah Scar I mean simple things like dungeon layouts and whatnot. I play through games once and on replays even after a long while still remember things like where all the nearby treasure is. Not perfect memorisation of things. Just going through and knowing how everything is going to play out generally. Playing a game through again and being genuinely suprised by them has to be pretty fun.
To be fair something I didn't like at all then I would probably have that happen I suppose. So the next time I play throgh Great Greed it is probably going to be like new, but most things, not so much. I can think of things that I didn't really enjoy playing but have reasons to remember that it has happened with though.
Not being condescending, I do think it is pretty good to have that. It means you probably don't obsess over stupid shit nearly as much as I do (which is a whooooooole lot).
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I think Phantasia -still- holds up as one of the best Tales games for plot (though Vesperia certainly beats it)
Top really doesn't have much plot though. ToP just offends less people because it spends too much of its content on fetch questing instead consatntly throwing out bad writing like ToD2.
Take out all the fetch questing, ToP really has very little righting and very little development. (which is also why ToP has so many side story novels and supplementary)
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Symphonia might be better overall than some of the preceding games (And that's a pretty big might), but man was it ever worse for when it actually came out. Even the battle system was...well, basically just worse than Reid.
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I think Phantasia -still- holds up as one of the best Tales games for plot (though Vesperia certainly beats it)
Top really doesn't have much plot though. ToP just offends less people because it spends too much of its content on fetch questing instead consatntly throwing out bad writing like ToD2.
Take out all the fetch questing, ToP really has very little righting and very little development. (which is also why ToP has so many side story novels and supplementary)
I...can't believe I'm saying this, but I pretty much fully agree with Niu on this. ToP's plot is better than most Tales games merely cause its simplified to the point where all the screwed up nonsense Tales games toss at you doesn't apply there.
I will note though that what little is there isn't half bad. Dhaos is, at very least, even with only the SNES version into account, and no supplemental material, an original villain concept for the time and still one rarely done in modern days; its rare that we get a villain who by the end, you're meant to sympathize with DESPITE him clearly being the enemy, and even the characters feel that way. Usually the "Pity" villains are just "awww, they had it so hard, can't yo feel sorry for him? Its not his fault he went insane!" No, in Dhaos' case, we have just a genuine mis-understanding brought on by the heroes own stupidity, and the game suggests it COULD have actually been resolved by talking it over, just no one bothered to try.
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In the Palmacosta Human Ranch...
Wow. All I need to say is...
INFERIOR BEING!!!!!!!! *splat*
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I rented Homefront last night just cause. I was expecting a sort of like Red Dawn tribute game, and I thought that would be fun to waste an evening on (kind of like watching Red Dawn).
Well, more than anything I was shocked by how primitive the game was. I mean, it's pretty, but that's about it. You'd think a game based on street-to-street urban warfare would have like, destructible terrain and a physics engine worth a shit, right? Nope. Not only are explosives totally useless against stuff like above-ground swimming pools and chicken wire fences, but you can't even open doors on your own. Fucking doors!
Weapons are shit; there's like a whole mess guns but really, there's four: single-shot rifle, burst-fire rifle, SMG and SAW. The grenade throwing animation, though? It's so ridiculously funny that it was worth the two bucks just to see. You pull the pin and then sort of lob it overhand, but not so much with a throwing motion as a "pushing it forward at your enemy with an open hand through the air" motion.
The characters are of course awful, and not in a sort of tongue-in-cheek GTA way where they're parodies of someone or anything. There's just "angry dude who might be part Mexican but maybe not" and "black chick who gets weepy when someone dies." There was also an older black dude who said he was getting too old for this shit. He died first.
But yeah, what I was really shocked with was the disparity on the technical end of things. Stuff like lighting effects and shit? Those are amazingly well-done, top of the line shit. But the game world is less interactive than it was in Half-Life 2.
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I think Phantasia -still- holds up as one of the best Tales games for plot (though Vesperia certainly beats it)
Top really doesn't have much plot though. ToP just offends less people because it spends too much of its content on fetch questing instead consatntly throwing out bad writing like ToD2.
Take out all the fetch questing, ToP really has very little righting and very little development. (which is also why ToP has so many side story novels and supplementary)
I...can't believe I'm saying this, but I pretty much fully agree with Niu on this. ToP's plot is better than most Tales games merely cause its simplified to the point where all the screwed up nonsense Tales games toss at you doesn't apply there.
I will note though that what little is there isn't half bad. Dhaos is, at very least, even with only the SNES version into account, and no supplemental material, an original villain concept for the time and still one rarely done in modern days; its rare that we get a villain who by the end, you're meant to sympathize with DESPITE him clearly being the enemy, and even the characters feel that way. Usually the "Pity" villains are just "awww, they had it so hard, can't yo feel sorry for him? Its not his fault he went insane!" No, in Dhaos' case, we have just a genuine mis-understanding brought on by the heroes own stupidity, and the game suggests it COULD have actually been resolved by talking it over, just no one bothered to try.
It's a valid point, but honestly, I don't think it's contradicting anything I was saying? Just because ToP has a -simple- plot, it doesn't mean it has a -bad- plot. In contrast, ToS has a pretty clearly -stupid- plot, and trashy characters (for all that I love them anyway because I'm a masochist).
But really we should all just play ToV and pretend like the Tales series started there.
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ME2: Arrival:
Shadow Broker >>> Kasumi =~ Firestarter > Arrival, since Arrival's final confrontation is literally the lamest out of all of them and only getting to use Shepard. Still pretty alright for what I paid for it
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It's a valid point, but honestly, I don't think it's contradicting anything I was saying? Just because ToP has a -simple- plot, it doesn't mean it has a -bad- plot. In contrast, ToS has a pretty clearly -stupid- plot, and trashy characters (for all that I love them anyway because I'm a masochist).
ToS' plot I will not defend worth anything; it sucks. FF10 did pretty much the exact same plot and did it infinitely better, so we KNOW its a flaw of the game and not the core plot idea here (someone DID claim ToS' plot was doomed cause of its core ideas, just FF10's existence makes it really hard to sell that claim)...
but I honestly don't think the cast is THAT bad. Ok, its got its share of failures, but then what game doesn't? Even ToV and all its amazing glory has probably one of the worst Villain Casts in the entire series, for example.
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ME2: Arrival:
Shadow Broker >>> Kasumi =~ Firestarter > Arrival, since Arrival's final confrontation is literally the lamest out of all of them and only getting to use Shepard. Still pretty alright for what I paid for it
Have you played Overlord? It ended up being my favourite thanks to the music, ending and lower price. (I can't say I ever cared much about Liara though).
I think I'd go with Overlord > Shadow Broker >> Kasumi >>>>> Arrival myself, with the first three being worth it. Firestarter was free so I can't really rate it alongside the others.
Brütal Legend: Stacking was so good that I bought this and Costume Quest.
There's definitely a good atmosphere here, but this doesn't feel like a good, big, 60 bucks game. The overworld is empty, the side missions are kind of boring. It's easy to see why Schafer now only does 15$ XBLA/PSN games.
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Insert Overlord where Firestarter was since I can't remember the name of things, it's where it is due to some bad Hammerhead gameplay~
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Pokemon White: Just got the fifth badge. Team's around L31 range at the moment.
Lenora's been the only gym leader of any note thus far, as I wasn't willing to raise a Rock or Fighting type just for a single gym and both her Pokemon were pretty good for the time (even now, wild Herdiers do shockingly high damage with Take Down). Had to sacrifice multiple fodder Pokemon to absorb the opening Intimidate and double-power Retaliate, plus to use an Awakening on Dewott once. Next best would be... Elesa I guess, just for forcing me to add an electric immunity to my team to cover a weakness. The other three just got steamrollered without doing anything notable.
Oshawott's speed is a bummer especially since I got a -speed nature, but Shell Blade (75 power, 95 acc, 50% defense down, Water type) is insanely powerful for a L17 move. That, combined with being my only Pokemon who could take an unresisted hit for a long time, meant it was practically carrying my whole team pretty much up until I caught Scraggy and evolved Pansear. Throw in early Grass Knot and Dig for coverage moves and a recent upgrade to Scald for STAB and you get a pretty solid, if not amazing performance for a starter.
Pansear flat out sucked at first. It had crap defenses, only slightly better offensive stats, and relying on 30 power Incinerate for STAB was awful. Still, it provided desperately needed anti-Grass coverage, which I needed with an early team of Water/Grass/Electric otherwise and constant fights against Cheren, and my only other alternative was Pidove. The payoff was being able to evolve it as soon as it hit L22 for Flame Burst. Movepool was limited early on but eventually got good, I'm currently running Bite/Dig/Grass Knot for coverage. I'll phase this out for Chandelure eventually.
Blitzle provides Electric STAB and an Electric immunity, both of which plug some holes in my team otherwise. Shock Wave at L11 is nice, since most Pokemon are still using 40 power moves at that time. Its defenses are absolutely abysmal though; prior to evolving I had to give it an Eviolite so it could take even one non-resisted hit without crumpling.
Petilil gets Leech Seed + Sleep Powder by L10, which is really awesome for using (though not so much for catching it <_<). It's a bit of a project with subpar defenses + crap speed before evolving, but the status keeps it useful instead of being crap like the elemental monkeys at least. Lilligant now is really awesome, with 110 SpAtk + 90 Speed, the now 75 power Giga Drain, and one of the best buffs in the game in Quiver Dance (+1 Speed, SpAtk, SpDef) to abuse with Sleep Powder.
Scraggy has a really badass offensive typing (Dark/Fighting) that's pretty good defensively as well. I got Shed Skin on mine, which along with decent defenses meant it can use Rest pretty effectively. The L39 evolution is late, but it isn't even close to feeling like a liability right now, especially now that I passed the Eviolite onto it ever since Blitzle evolved.
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Demon's Souls:
Everything is just such a blur. I've broken 30 deaths and stuff. Probably most of those on that bloody cliffedge. Nut kick to whomever thought fighting enemies that move like lightning and hit like trucks on a ledge barely big enough for you was a good idea.
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Duodecim: Beat the 13th war. Nice they actually took the time to alter the game's ending credits, both musically and with scenes, rather than simply show the same scene but add in acknowledgement to any Developer Differences between the two games. I also noticed that most of the games had their theme songs played, even though they were obviously going for an ending motif...FF1 and FF2 are obvious exceptions, FF5 PRETENDS its going to start with its theme song but does the "Dragon Spreads its Wings" section anyway...no clue if FF11 has a theme. Well, FF3 I'm not sure but it sounds like Eternal Wind played there which I THINK was in FF3's ending SOMEWHERE, but whatever; FF3 was always the one part of the medley's ending I never really remembered playing ni the home game so there you go.
...yes, I did have a pointless rant about nothing, what about it? Well, ok, I might as well say this:
Team used for Not!Shade Impulse: Terra, Firion, Squall, Cloud and Warrior of Light. On Hindsight, I should have used Onion Knight, so I could have had a full 367 group, and Firion fits in due to the Wild Rose thing being big for Terra/Cloud's stories, so I could have had SOME sort of theme but whatever...
Why those 5? Terra was my primary main in Dissidia, and well, that aint changing, Squall was one of my primary back ups. Cloud and Firion I've played a lot with, and have considered them being secondary mains as well, so of the 10 heroes, those two seemed obvious. Warrior of Light...uhh...well...that was kind of "oh whatever."
...ok, fine, how about that I always like to use Main Characters and such, even when the game doesn't require it, and even when I DON'T like the character, and when it comes to the 13th War, Warrior of Light is the closest thing to a main character (granted, its main in the loosest sense possible, but he's really the only character who you COULD make that argument for.)
...granted, in the 12th War, I feel I CAN safely say Lightning is the Main Character. Where Warrior of Light just got a little extra emphasis here and there, and was the group leader, Lightning actually felt like the central, prominent figure. Her story was the primary plot, she's the leader, etc. Not to mention Vaan and Yuna's stories were really just subplots dealing with other characters, and Laguna's story doesn't really qualify as having a plot, its just him being lost and being awesome about it.
...ok, now I'm done.
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Back To The Future The Game Parts 2 & 3 -
Happily, while part 2 was in the same era as part 1, part 3 wasn't. Seems like part 4 will be going back at least part of the time, however.
Unhappily part 3 was almost devoid of puzzles. The first third of the game, outside the opening, is effectively just talking to whoever you have access to and exhausting the conversation possibilities, and after stopping talking some event will happen which will provide someone else to talk to.
I do like the setting for part 3 at least and hopefully there will be more gameplay involved in its section of part 4.
Part 2 had a more standard amount and level of puzzles, and was fairly enjoyable. The final showdown was a vast letdown compared to part 1 however, done in one move which was also the most obvious one possible. Part 3 did at least have a more difficult final showdown, for all that it wasn't anything close to part 1's either.
Etrian Odyssey 2 -
Well, the only quests I have left at the moment are ones which are related to the final stratum, which I have decided I will not be bothering with, and ones which need me to grind up classes I haven't used at all, which I really don't feel like doing. So I am now finished up with it as much as I intend to be.
I can't really think of much to say about the game as a whole. Was entertaining. Purple FOE system is annoying. Map arrows are the best thing since sliced bread. NPCs seemed to have considerably better characterisation, although that may just be me having forgotten any the EO1 NPCs had.
Grandia 1 -
Up to West Misty Forest. Things progressing fine. Game crashed again during Herb Mountains.
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Radiant Historia - How to Make Friends and Influence people: When you are a pair of little kids first become Uatu the Watcher, then give a dude the power of time travel, now trick him into helping a guy learn to grow coconuts. As his reward give him a gun that he can't use. Congratulations at saving the world, maybe you will learn to take a hint next time.
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As his reward give him a gun that he can't use.
This is kinda funny in hindsight.
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Pokemon White- Advice for anyone looking to start this up in the future, don't start up in April, August, or December. Unless the month is nearly over.
*shakes fist at Hail routes*
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Naturally I just ordered a copy.
Maybe I'll start it and then skip the clock forward to May, for less hail and more White Forest trainers.
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Yeah, I have to say the season thing is my least favorite aspect of B/W. I nearly went insane trying to figure out how to get the things on my itemfinder in Icirrus City last month.
Halo Wars: Beat on Heroic. Got all the Black Boxes, working on getting all the skulls now.
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Hey, seasons was fine.
When I thought it was a week or ten days.
Who the hell sets it to a month? Who the hell assumes a playthrough of an RPG will take more than a month? Let alone four so you can experience all of the seasons? Or is this a very, very fucked up form of replay value?
Oh well, small hiccup.
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Demon's Souls: Hey, I actually remember enough to make something resembling a detailed post.
So, I've defeated three of the Archdemons, the first three bosses of Boletaria and the first boss of Valley of Defilement. This means it's time to grind for no real reason! I grab one of my Archdemon souls to go and get a spell that will shorten farming time and... it takes 3 spell slots. I have 2! And it'll take like 6 levels to get the next one. ARGH. *hour or more of farming later* alright, have the spell and... 200/155. I DON"T HAVE ENOUGH MP TO CAST IT ARGHBLARGHZARGH! *MOAR FARMIN* This wasn't worth it, at all!
Bah, whatever. I pull out my heavy armor and bow to prep for the Valley. See, the second part of the valley is a massive trudge through a poison swamp that prevents you from rolling or even moving at a decent pace. So I have to play a range game and hold out on small islands that certain enemies can attack the entire diameter of. Good thing the armor is... decent. Mostly taking it since it has poison resist on it. This doesn't stop me from being poisoned a dozen times though.
Things go fine since I'm cautious and stuff. There was a little difficulty with a giant enemy but my Second Chance miracle(revive with half HP when you take fatal non-fall damage!) saved me. Yay it. Other than grabbing a nifty weapon and unlocking a shortcut I didn't meddle around too much here. Too risky. So on to the boss!
The Dirty Colossus is a dull boss. It's weak to fire(which I really don't have any of but eh, that's what dropped enchant items are for) and isn't that threatening. It's melee attacks are slow and not that damaging despite--like all bosses--having limbs larger than you. It can also attack you with flies, which are more annoying then threatening(they stopped me from casting the GET MORE SOULS spell ARGH) Anyway, he's easy and I win. Yay.
Like all of the Archdemon fights, the final for Valley is a short jot to the boss. It's also the only thing I'd say resembles a spoiler in the game but whatever. The Archdemon is just... pathetically easy. Not as much as some other things, and in this case if his AI wasn't set for a specific reason he'd be more threatening. But, I win yadda. Also Plague freaking hurts. It's damn near impossible to resist hell...
With all the Archdemons down, the final boss is unlocked. But first, MORE GRINDING FOR LEVELS. Also went and grabbed two more Colorless Demon's Souls for no reason. And killed Satsuki's Black Phantom. The jackass. Also I'm screwed out of Pure White World Tendency for Tower of Latria goddamn.
Once other things are out of the way, I head towards the final level. The first obstacle is the Three Hero Phantoms who... actually managed to kill me. Then again I was in Soul Form and had about 300 HP so eh. Second try I get them all along with the gecko nearby. I clear the way up to the Blue Dragon, then head all the way back to the end of the second part in order to level up some more.
I set my gear up to test how the BD's defenses will work. 150 an arrow, pretty damn well. But still, I load up to 200 arrows just in case before trying again. He flies away once you damage him at his first spot, so I heal up since I don't know what's between here and there. Nothing it seems, so I lengthen the time it'd take to kill it since I need to lower my health to deal damage to it. But eh, I eventually succeed! Whooooo.
Then I don't fight the Final Boss because there's other stuff to do! Grinding mostly. I get the Soulbrandt sword after a lameass duel. He attacked twice the whole time, I only did 16 damage a hit. Hahahahahaha. Now it's time to farm Colorless Souls and Pure Black World Tendency. Stay tuned.
Or not.
Once things are finished, it'll be time for a ~~~BOSS REVIEW~~~
-
Radiant Historia: Taking my time with this. Still enjoying it thoroughly, but it's not one I seem to be able to play in long bursts. I'm still really liking how all of the story pieces fit together. Marco rocks.
Rhapsody DS: Picked this up 100% Legally and finished it in a sitting. Ledgem is cute and worth the price of admission alone. I wish it didn't take 5 chapters to get him. The game is significantly less embarrassing (to me) when the Songs are in Japanese. It does, however, crack my friends up. Downloaded mostly as part of any exercise to show someone that games are a lot more than FPSes.
Nanashi no Game: Also, 100% Legal. Also trying to show that games can do some creative things. If you don't know what this is, it's literally The Ring as a video game. I would rate it highly for creativity in how it utilizes the "Cursed Game", but it utterly fails thanks to the Shittiest Controls Ever. Like, I thought 360 Dragon Age was cumbersome... but this, this game makes Suiko4 Sailing look like an intuitive, highly-tuned piece of precision equipment. Goddamn, Nanashi no Game. Anyway, it did some neat things like how in one early section of the game, there's an 8-bit portion of the Cursed Game where you're trapped in a looping 4-exit maze and to escape you have to always use the exit marked with flowers. Later on, one of the doomed characters is trapped on an endless looping subway car, taunted by a ghost, and the solution is to finally jump out of the exit marked with a white flower (death still occurs, but it was a neat way to end the torment). If only the controls didn't suck, I could recommend it to people. But as-is, it's just an interesting blip in the Survival Horror genre. Interesting, if not entirely -fun-, detour.
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Downloaded mostly as part of any exercise to show someone that games are a lot more than FPSes.
I have to ask, how would someone in Japan get that impression?
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Phillipino friend. He doesn't play games at all, so that's his impression from his American friends.
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This is a guy in Japan? The Japan that had to cordon off areas in shopping centers because of the number of Dragon Quest 9 playing loiterers?
Dude needs new eyes.
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Actually, now I'm curious - are stories like that actually true, or just an urban myth? On the one hand, DQ is nowhere near the most popular game series in Japan (it gets crushed by Mario and Pokemon for instance, not that there's any shame in that) and I'm quite used to people exaggerating the popularity of games that are more popular in Japan, so it wouldn't surprise me a lot of it is made up. On the other hand, I hear it often enough to give it some credibility, and it's possible that DQ fans are just crazier than fans of other big video games.
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I posted an article in Misc. Links a while back about it. Yes, it's true. To my knowledge, DQ is the most popular series in Japan. Pokemon may beat it, but I'm fairly certain Mario doesn't. DQ just has a nonexistant overseas following while Pokemon and Mario fare well worldwide.
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but I'm fairly certain Mario doesn't
Sales-wise, it does easily.
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Dragon Quest just has an overwhelming majority of adult fans. It's the best-selling game in Japan for people out of school. Mario and Pokemon are certainly more widely-spread in sheer number simply because there's no stigma against children playing video games. Dragon Quest is pretty much known for single-handedly selling systems to adult fans who will never buy another game for it. Because it's socially acceptable. At least, that's the explanation I get from my co-workers who were playing DQ9.
It's notable that Dragon Quest isn't exactly a shining example of innovation in games either. His primary exposure to games was still FPSes.
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Dissidia Duodecim- Reached Tifa's Chapter. Finally making some solid progress on this after constantly chewing away at Prologus until it yielded up a Tifa opponent for me to defeat so I could unlock Cloud and finally get the achievements tied to him too. This was after one hundred and seventy three battles of Tifa -not- showing up >_> I ended up having to play through the arcade on Hard with six out of the seven starting characters after all before she finally showed her face and after all of the tosh about not wanting to use Kain I finally had to ... and it really wasn't as bad as I was expecting <_< Which is weird since I wasn't that impressed with him on Normal mode. As for the game proper I spent quite a bit of time messing around in quick battles trying out different characters and the Aerith assist before finally starting the Story mode. I feel like I've got a good handle on playing as Lightning, Kain and Yuna now whereas for Vaan and Laguna it's still a bit too early to tell. Tifa's run should also be interesting since I haven't touched her at all yet. Hopefully I'll be able to unlock Prishe soon too. I want to try her out before I finally decide on a main out or two out of the new characters and then I still have to give Terra and Shantotto a decent work out to see if I still want them for mains and who out of all the characters is going to get fifty six levels by exchanging the accessories from Prologus at the shop >_> I'm also kind of tempted to use the Emperor or Exdeath because of videos/topics I've seen on their potential with Aerith~
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Demon's Souls: Used my last Demon's Soul woooo. Also I died because I thought having 75% health when fighting an enemy who does more than that would be a better idea than lowering his aggro range. Bah.
Also I can't get all the rings ARGH.
EDIT: Oh, wait, I still haven't gotten the Lava Bow yet either.
Also I figured out where to get Sticky White Stuff. Wish I could have smeared that on my weapon earlier.
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Bionic Commando Rearmed 2: Finally finished this game, after playing it gradually. Game gets rather cruel in one of the late maps for Bionic Arm Platforming, really testing your skills and maneuverability with it.
Game is different enough to not just feel like "Bionic Commando Rearmed but with new stages", and as such, I can't say its strictly superior or inferior due to these differences, but the game is nice, decent 2D Platformer, and probably something people who liked Bionic Commando should look into getting.
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Dissidia 012- So, I finally decide to try Exdeath...
*chose Gilgamesh as the opponent
*Goes EXmode and EXburst
*Sees the text in the window
Okay, I totally didn't expect them to throw that in.
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It's notable that Dragon Quest isn't exactly a shining example of innovation in games either. His primary exposure to games was still FPSes.
Is this a joke?
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It's notable that Dragon Quest isn't exactly a shining example of innovation in games either. His primary exposure to games was still FPSes.
Is this a joke?
Why would it be? The FPS genre gave us Deus Ex and Dragon Quest is fucking Dragon Quest, the Game of Reheating and Reserving.
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From a more objective view...
Look at modern gaming. There's a shit ton of FPSes out there, and the biggest games are stuff like Call of Duty, Halo, etc. There's a few stray Non-FPS Action games like God of War which are big, or some sand box games. To find mainstream genres that aren't that, you basically have to look at the Nintendo Consoles, which have the Nintendo First Party games like Marios, Zeldas, etc.
Now, there are big jRPGs, the raw amount of big jRPGs compared to the raw amount of FPSes...really, a statement like "he's mainly been exposed to FPSes" is not a big statement.
As far as why Dragon Quests are popular, I believe I heard one reason is that people in Japan feel attached to the series cause it started jRPGs and they refuse to let go of it cause of tradition and respect or some such. As a result, it jades their perspective of how good/bad a game is. Its kind of like how when a new Legend of Zelda comes out, all the Zelda fans rush and buy it, and then its suddenly BEST GAME EVAR!!! for a few months until the hype dies down and they go back to their old favorites (whatever that may be), but will still hold dear that this game was indeed phenomenal. At least, this is the case for the big releases like Twilight Princess (unsure about the "lesser" ones like any Portable Zelda games. I figure Skyward Sword is going to get the same amount of hype as TP though)
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Pokemon White Power Edition: I finally have a Completely Legitimate Copy™ of a Pokemon game. Weird, I know. Anyway, I picked Snivy at Hatbot's insistence, and although the art staff gets several million points for style, as far as combat goes I've been entirely underwhelmed with him. Or possibly her, I can't remember. Either way, Snivy's attack is naturally low, and even lower because I didn't notice it had a Calm nature (-attack, +SPDef) until I'd already downloaded my Victini mystery-gift. So it's completely outclassed on offense by everything on my team that isn't Audino, although it's only a few levels from picking up a special/Grass attack, which'll help.
Game's pretty easy so far - nice of them to hand you whichever monkey you'll need to steamroll the first gym leader - but I like how quickly you can put together an elementally varied team. Water, Psychic, Rock, Ground, Flying, Electric and Dark types this soon are a nice mix, if only because the Rock, Ground and Flying ones aren't from G1 anymore.
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It's notable that Dragon Quest isn't exactly a shining example of innovation in games either. His primary exposure to games was still FPSes.
Is this a joke?
Why would it be? The FPS genre gave us Deus Ex and Dragon Quest is fucking Dragon Quest, the Game of Reheating and Reserving.
Huh, I agree with Rob here. How strange. Well, when he's right, he's right.
I like DQ and all, but yeah, it's not that innovative. At its best, it's polished nostalgia. It did popularize some landmark RPG conventions, but that certainly what I was trying to introduce to my Philipino friend. Hence why I was trying out more weird DS games like Rhapsody and Nanashi no Game with him.
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Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song - Started playing this at the recommendation of Tal and Jim. While confusing at first, I'm pretty cool with the idea now that Jim has explained a lot of these things to me.
Started as Jamil. His intro quest was done with only two battles, and they were each cake, since he learned both Impact Lunge and Cutting Slash or whatever it was. In any case, cake. Recruited Aisha, recruited Barbara, let Dowd go, got Sorcerer and Hermano to fill out my party for the time being.
First order of business: quest over in the Yassi Caves. Bought Barbara Move Silently to go with her Lurk, and I've only needed to fight once in here so far. With any luck, I'll be able to keep my ER down enough to get everything done. Hermano learned Impact Lunge in that fight, which is a shame since I won't be using him when other characters become available.
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I like DQ and all
what
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but I'm fairly certain Mario doesn't
Sales-wise, it does easily.
Bzzt! Not even close. This is data from VGchartz.com for the first 10 weeks of sales in Japan for each of the following games:
843,123 Super Mario Galaxy
721,828 Super Mario Galaxy 2
3,474,680 Dragon Quest VIII
3,887,903 Dragon Quest IX
3,546,530 Pokemon Diamond and Pearl (combined)
3,003,570 Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver (combined)
4,507,127 Pokemon Black/White (combined)
Dragon Quest and Pokemon are very comparable in terms of popularity, and Mario isn't even remotely competitive.
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How did innovation even get into this conversation. Point is, dude is currently in Japan. Thinks all games are FPS. Clear data stating otherwise all around him. The ??????????????? part of this is the only factor where DQ comes in..
Also you can find plenty of non-action mainstream games on systems other than the Wii. Just because the Wii has like 3 on it doesn't mean they are the only mainstream games on the others.
This isn't mentioning how well things like Civilization 5 still sell. There is mainstream genres that aren't action. They just don't get nearly as much hyper focus or advertising presence.
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Dragon Quest and Pokemon are very comparable in terms of popularity, and Mario isn't even remotely competitive.
Depressing stuff, man. Depressing stuff.
Look at modern gaming. There's a shit ton of FPSes out there, and the biggest games are stuff like Call of Duty, Halo, etc. There's a few stray Non-FPS Action games like God of War which are big, or some sand box games. To find mainstream genres that aren't that, you basically have to look at the Nintendo Consoles, which have the Nintendo First Party games like Marios, Zeldas, etc.
Dragon Age 2 just moved its 3 millionth unit, and that game is mainstream to the point of it being detrimental. Oblivion is probably, in all fairness, a sandbox game, but it moved a lot of hardware in its time. There's WoW and Civ 5 and the Fallout games on PC. MvC3 is huge right now around here. Yadda yadda. There's a lot more big games that are not FPS that you are skipping over here.
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but I'm fairly certain Mario doesn't
Sales-wise, it does easily.
Bzzt! Not even close. This is data from VGchartz.com for the first 10 weeks of sales in Japan for each of the following games:
843,123 Super Mario Galaxy
721,828 Super Mario Galaxy 2
3,474,680 Dragon Quest VIII
3,887,903 Dragon Quest IX
3,546,530 Pokemon Diamond and Pearl (combined)
3,003,570 Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver (combined)
4,507,127 Pokemon Black/White (combined)
Dragon Quest and Pokemon are very comparable in terms of popularity, and Mario isn't even remotely competitive.
I see your "bzzt" and raise you one in return. 3D Marios fail at sales in Japan pretty hard (and even in North America lose pretty decisively to 2D Mario). So, we stroll over to 2D Mario and we see...
DS New Super Mario Bros. 5,187,000
Wii New Super Mario Bros. Wii 4,281,869
While we're here, it's worth noting that a couple other DS games sold comfortably more than any DQ:
DS Brain Age 2 4,865,000
DS Animal Crossing: Wild World 4,654,000
And this is just sticking to games released in the past decade. The best-selling DQ game ever is pretty much a tie between 7 and 9 (aside: oh man, that does not help my respect for people's tastes) but Pokemon and Mario have certainly hit greater heights in the past which DQ doesn't even approach.
GB Pokemon Red/Green/Blue 10,077,000
GB Pokemon Gold/Silver 7,961,000
FC Super Mario Bros. 6,810,000
(Sources: NSMBW is from VGChartz, which I don't like to rely on since they're not known for being trustworthy, but I did find several other sources confirming that Japanese sales of the game topped 4M, so in this case the numbers at least seem plausible. Other figures are from a quote from Famitsu found here (http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Famitsu_Best_selling_video_games).)
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It's notable that Dragon Quest isn't exactly a shining example of innovation in games either. His primary exposure to games was still FPSes.
Is this a joke?
Why would it be? The FPS genre gave us Deus Ex and Dragon Quest is fucking Dragon Quest, the Game of Reheating and Reserving.
Huh, I agree with Rob here. How strange. Well, when he's right, he's right.
The joke was that anyone would even remotely associate Dragon Quest with innovation enough for them to be mentioned in the same sentence.
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I like DQ and all
what
Well, it's not like it's a favorite, but DQ4 and DQ8 feel like they justify their existence, if not their popularity. Toriyama vomit aside.
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For the record, here's the best site to go to for Japanese game sales since roughly the PS2 era started:
http://garaph.info/gamesearch.php
For instance, we can see that NSMB DS (http://garaph.info/softwareindividual.php//gid/241) is over 6 million now, because it's *still* selling a couple thousand pretty much every week since release, and more during December.
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Demon's Souls: Screw you Tendency!
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Parasite Eve The Third Birthday: Got this on release day and finished it quickly as the game is criminally short (5 hours or so) and after enduring that horrible plot I have to say Toriyama needs to get fired/demoted for his pathetic writing. The amateur plot holes are just inexcusable. I can overlook plot holes if there was some thought into the story and the writer just got overambitious and everything is a silly mess as in all that text its easy to make a mistake but Toriyama doesn't have that. Its a simple story and yet he gets some of the simplest things wrong.
Lets see the ones I can think off the top of my head.
1: Its a wedding and yet the guests are all outside locked out of the church except the big bad who is inside chilling out on bench enjoying the proceedings. According to the game Aya didn't know the big bad at that point so why is he in the church when her "friends" aren't?
2: So Aya is getting married yet no sign of Daniel, Rupert and the rest of her friends she'd trust with her life? But those other dudes she knew for all of 10 seconds (and the villain she'd never met) can attend? Makes no sense.
3: Who hired the Swat (!?!) team? Now this while kick starting the plot is overall a minor detail however it most simply be addressed. Even a throwaway line in the datalog such as "Ark corp hired them to kill Aya in revenge as their army of super soldiers were too crap to do the job themselves" would have done perfectly. Instead nothing so why did they do it? Some like to spin the big bad did it but he was a good guy at the time so that doesn't fly.
4:Hunter "boss" Owen. That cut scene at the end of chapter 2 seemed to set him up for a big scene and then *POOF* magically dead and never seen again or referred to.
5: Cray's daughter.
Then for the simply retarded bits:
1: TIME TRAVEL
2: THE TWISTED
3: THE HIGH ONES
4: KYLE
5: EVE
6: THE WHOLE ENTIRE ENDING
--------------------------------------
Now for the non crap bits.
1: He actually explained why Aya is now suddenly so weak and it wasn't the memory loss.
2: Maeda is looking good and I get laughs out of his rapist like dialogue and voice. He is also now Japanese Dr Klamp.
3: Gameplay while generic for the most part I found funner then most games of this type for some reason. Not sure why.
The bad outweighs the good by quite a large margin which is a shame as I really wanted the game to be good. PE2 wasn't exactly a masterpiece and it received a fair bit of slagging off but I quite like it personally as it isn't offensive and it makes complete sense for the most part. Third Birthday is just jibba jabba.
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DS New Super Mario Bros. 5,187,000
Wii New Super Mario Bros. Wii 4,281,869
So noted. I think we have established, however, that the popularity of Dragon Quest in Japan is somewhat more than an "urban myth".
============
Blazblue CS: Hmm, lots of changes to characters compared to CT. Jin is much harder to combo with. Arukune's curse mode takes a long time to activate (but on the plus side, his distortions are much better). Noel is just... bad. But then there's Tager. Wow, he's so much better than the first game. His moves just flow together now like buttah.
Spent 2.5 hours trying to beat Unlimited Hazama on Normal with Noel. Finally (after getting in a fight with my wife over my yelling) just gave up and restarted on Beginner difficulty to beat him. I feel emasculated. :(
Radiant Historia: Started. Feels a lot like Avalon Code, minus AC's aesthetics. Graphics are terrible, GBA quality at best. But knocking enemies into each other for combos is highly amusing.
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So noted. I think we have established, however, that the popularity of Dragon Quest in Japan is somewhat more than an "urban myth".
No, we have established that the idea that Japan loves DQ far more than any other series is indeed, an "urban myth". So if there is indeed insanity surrounding the buying of DQ games (which I still suspect may be exaggerated), the interesting question is why DQ and not demonstrably more popular video games?
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So noted. I think we have established, however, that the popularity of Dragon Quest in Japan is somewhat more than an "urban myth".
No, we have established that the idea that Japan loves DQ far more than any other series is indeed, an "urban myth". So if there is indeed insanity surrounding the buying of DQ games (which I still suspect may be exaggerated), the interesting question is why DQ and not demonstrably more popular video games?
The particular audience it panders to maybe?
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Well, I won't pretend it doesn't amuse me to paint DQ as the game of choice for obsessed otakus while refined, tea-drinking gamers possessing the virtues of patience and restraint prefer New Super Mario Bros. and Pokemon.
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So noted. I think we have established, however, that the popularity of Dragon Quest in Japan is somewhat more than an "urban myth".
Did anyone actually say this? >_>
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So noted. I think we have established, however, that the popularity of Dragon Quest in Japan is somewhat more than an "urban myth".
No, we have established that the idea that Japan loves DQ far more than any other series is indeed, an "urban myth". So if there is indeed insanity surrounding the buying of DQ games (which I still suspect may be exaggerated), the interesting question is why DQ and not demonstrably more popular video games?
Probably because a game like New Super Mario Brothers can be played by people of all ages and appeals to a huge generation. Dragon Quest games, by and large, and not played by adults I would imagine, so the turnouts for Dragon Quest-related events tend to be much more overwhelming.
Basically what I'm trying to say is adults don't really care if a new Mario game is released, they'll buy it whenever they want to, whereas a Dragon Quest fan will probably want to be there right away to buy it, leading to the "Dragon Questapalooza" we see in pictures all the time.
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Parasite Eve The Third Birthday: Got this on release day and finished it quickly as the game is criminally short (5 hours or so) and after enduring that horrible plot I have to say Toriyama needs to get fired/demoted for his pathetic writing. The amateur plot holes are just inexcusable. I can overlook plot holes if there was some thought into the story and the writer just got overambitious and everything is a silly mess as in all that text its easy to make a mistake but Toriyama doesn't have that. Its a simple story and yet he gets some of the simplest things wrong.
This is an understatement. After reading the supplemental material, I can say 3rd Birthday is bordering CC level failure. In that things sounds even dumber when you try to explain it.
Toriyama needs to be fire, SERIOUSLY.
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Hey look shut the fuck up who even gives a damn GAWD
Minecraft - I HAS A DOGGIE. MY DOGGIE HAS A HOUSE. I LIVE IN A LAVA TOWER. YOU LOSE I WIN.
SC2 - In the past 4 months, I've gone from straight-laced Bronze Leaguer to a borderline Gold-Plat leaguer. I win pretty consistently when placed against Gold leaguers, and win sometimes against Plats but lose to them (especially when their team rankings imply that they're better than plat). Still, not quite there. Improving my macro game is going to be the next step. But more importantly, I have more points than Eph.
You hear me?
MORE.
POINTS.
THAN.
EPH.
That makes me better. QED Shut the fuck up.
-
SC2 -
4GATE
4GATE
4GATE
4GATE
4GATE
4GATE
WSSSSSSSSS
I'm sorry, I can't understand what you're saying.
-
So anyway. This whole thing was in reference to http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/09/dragon-quest-ix-2/ this article. Not urban myth. Article. With images and external links providing evidence. There was a distinctly visible phenomenon surrounding Dragon Quest 9 in Japan.
Radiant Historia - How to Make Friends and influence people. Need to convince a friend? Time Travel to an alternate history and convince them in the alternate reality, that way they will have no choice but to follow your demands in this one.
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Dissidia Duodecim- Main scenario 12 completed. Tifa's chapter was fun as expected, rolling, kicking, punching, glorious fiery/icy fun. Interesting choice of elements for her, fire and ice =) Didn't do anything with her feints though. Nonetheless didn't have too much trouble with her fights expect for one Yuna manikin I ran into when Tifa was on L11. The manikin was also on L11 and I had to defeat it within a time limit to get KP. She used a summon on me that kept decreasing my bravery =( Eventually after much trying I managed to get her and obtain the KP. Moving on I blitzed through Chapter 8 to the finale with Yuna as my main. Party order was Yuna, Tifa, Lightning, Laguna, Vaan but I mostly just stuck with Yuna and fought tournament style (apart from one round robin where I also used Tifa) until the final fights where I was forced to use everyone. Vaan's fight was ok despite me not having used him for ages, Tifa's was quite a breeze really and Yuna's was a complete and utter breeze, joke of a fight where I built up BRV to 9999 and severely punished and overkilled that irredeemably evil fiend of a villain. I had way too much fun with that. The game decided to mock me afterwards though because Laguna's fight was hell. Many retries and much frustration later I eventually resorted to spamming Ragnarok Buster beams to the face in the hope this would eventually pay off and not long after it did.
With that out of the way I thought I was home free because of having more experience of playing Lightning than Laguna but no the game decides to throw a L39 opponent at me when Light's only L24. So it ended up being another poke fight with Razor Gale spamming. Thankfully this foe was easier for me to predict than Laguna's and it didn't take as long to win despite the level difference. I still made a couple of mistakes but in the winning fight it was epic because I'd managed to whittle down his HP to 300~ when I slipped up and he managed to launch an assault. Since this had always resulted in painful death before I was expecting the same ... and then after a blink I suddenly realized Lightning was somehow not dead so I made her jump like crazy and managed to pull of Lightning Strike for a win, breaking BRV in the process for an overkill. Thinking on it I think Light only had something like two digit HP left >_>
Also did the Prologue for scenario 13 and unlocked report 8. Did Shantotto's event to unlock and buy Prishe in the PP Catalogue~
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Yeah, Nintendo games seem to be games that sell over time while everybody buys DQ day 1.
Nintendo prices never seem to go down.
Lowest prices on amazon for new copies:
NSMBWii (2009): 36 dollars.
NSMB (2006): 24 dollars
DQ9 (2010): 25 dollars
DQ8 (2006): 8 dollars
Pokemon Diamond (2007): 21 dollars
Pokemon Emerald (2005): 180 dollars (The fuck?)
I guess you should check amazon.jp instead, but yeah.
Edit: Actually, costs are similar in Japan, except DQ8 which costs a lot but can be bought for a very low price used. (unlike Nintendo games)
Anyway, I liked Tales of the Abyss' gameplay well enough but couldn't stomach the game because of the plot and characters. I started skipping all of it later on but it felt like I spent 80% of my time skipping story and travelling between places and 20% actually fighting, exploring dungeons, etc.
Is Tales of Vesperia more of the same in that regard?
Costume Quest: Awesome. Gameplay is nothing great and the game is extremely easy though. The game gives Earthbound vibes, but it's less edgy and more childish. I finished both the game and the DLC in two days. Watch some youtube video and you'll know if the game's for you, I guess.
Might rant more about it later.
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Pokemon Racist Edition: Just beat the 2nd Gym Leader, now I'm hunting Plasma
Beam cronies in a forest.
Marvel vs. Capcom 3: I just beat 18 MODOKs in a row. While its definitely something that FITS Capcom, I'm still vaguely shocked they made this an actual, genuine event.
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Anyway, I liked Tales of the Abyss' gameplay well enough but couldn't stomach the game because of the plot and characters. I started skipping all of it later on but it felt like I spent 80% of my time skipping story and travelling between places and 20% actually fighting, exploring dungeons, etc.
Is Tales of Vesperia more of the same in that regard?
ToV tends to be better about that. Lack of sceneskip in the 360 version is unfortunate, but it has a pseudo-sceneskip in that you can hold down some button combo and rapid-dash through text. But the plot and characters are actually pretty decent so I wouldn't suggest doing that. There is a reason that Yuri (at the least) is pretty universally liked and respected as a main character.
Also the combat system is far superior to TotA. An ACCESSIBLE and diverse skill system that relies on equipment teaching skills ala FF9. Also the Dog is a godlike so play it.
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together:
Sometimes I feel that fighting in this game is kind of like chipping away at a stone wall... just tedious. But the strategy aspect of it is in play due to a variety of difficult battles and the plot is competent enough. Also I am about to recruit a fourth sister and have a complete set. And then comes the Fivesome ohhhhhh yeaaahhh.
In seriousness, I have to dink the game over it's crafting system. Buy 99 of Item A, which is used to make item 12 of item B and 12 of item C. Then you use the Item B to make 4 of item D, and fuse 12 of item C to get 4 of item E, and then you use 3 of item Z to make an item X. All so you can improve a single bow by a (admittedly RATHER significant) attack value. Oh and all of those IC's? You have to do them one at a time. And the final product may have a 33% chance of failing so you BETTER save before going through with it (why even have a failure chance if you can just save&reload to get around it?) Yeah. TO Item crafting is retarded.
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I wouldn't say ToV's plot is actually very good. This is somewhat hidden behind the main character cast being likable and well written, as well skits being actually AMUSING again (its now back to ToS standards of about 50% are there for humor, 50% are there for adding a little something extra to characters, instead of being 10% humor, and 90% of the latter, and the latter this time are less "reiterate the last plot scene over again just for shits to remind you what you're doing". They also have voice acting, which you'd be surprised how much that makes skits more enjoyable)
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To Pyro: TOPSP item crafting was built with its sole balancing measure being hoping it drives the player to tedium enough to not bother. It's uh not very good design.
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ToV's main villains are bad, though some of the earlier villains (Yeager at least) are interesting. The fun part about ToV is seeing Yuri and Flynn's differing perspectives on solving the (admittedly-poorly-planned) machinations of the main villains. Rita and Estelle round out a really good cast, and even the less-amazing PCs bring -something- to the dynamic.
I would also argue that TotA at least has a good set of mains in Luke and Tear, and hopefully Fenrir at least got far enough into the plot to see how they were developing before skipping everything... >.>;;
re: Dragon Quest:
Clearly everyone in Japan buys DQ on the first day so that they can finish it before the DQ PLOT SPOILERS are all over the web.
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Luke and Tear are good leads! Problem is basically the rest of the cast across the board outside of Ion and Dist. >_>
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To Pyro: TOPSP item crafting was built with its sole balancing measure being hoping it drives the player to tedium enough to not bother.
So like all item creation ever then.
I've started TO too but I'm really too early to say much about it. Otherwise I just finished another MMX8 replay.
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To Pyro: TOPSP item crafting was built with its sole balancing measure being hoping it drives the player to tedium enough to not bother.
So like all item creation ever then.
TOPSP's IC takes that to its logical extreme. Fortunately, it's also 100% ignorable, as even bothering with it at all snaps the game like a twig. It was balanced with IC not being used at all.
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ToV's main villains are bad, though some of the earlier villains (Yeager at least) are interesting. The fun part about ToV is seeing Yuri and Flynn's differing perspectives on solving the (admittedly-poorly-planned) machinations of the main villains. Rita and Estelle round out a really good cast, and even the less-amazing PCs bring -something- to the dynamic.
Yeah, there are some half-decent villains in ToV, but the primary faces are awful. in Yeager's case, though, he's pretty bland until his very last scene which puts him all his motives into a whole different perspective. Its a neat touch, and well done, just of course the issue is if you don't get to that scene, it is really hard to understand the hype (well, ok, he's got a unique accent at least), as he comes off as a generic scum-bag otherwise.
I would also argue that TotA at least has a good set of mains in Luke and Tear, and hopefully Fenrir at least got far enough into the plot to see how they were developing before skipping everything... >.>;;
Yeah, I think most people, even the TotA haters, agree that, at very least, Luke and Tear are well done. Just TotA has an issue of having far more questionable characters in its cast. I mean, of the primary PCs, the worst ToV PC is...Judith, I guess? And that's more a "by default" thing of the other characters being better, rather than her actually being bad.
Flipside, as has been shown in the past, Anise is...less than popular...to say the least. TotA does have the Fun Master admittedly whose pretty cool, but ToV's not without its good NPCs (Flynn comes to mind) so yeah.
...and I just realized that Flynn and Ion are pretty much each game's respective counterparts. They both basically serve the role as being a foil for the main character, and they're both actually pretty good at their job too (Flynn I find especially impressive, cause DESPITE having a majority of CLICHE SHONEN RIVAL traits...he manages to subvert the trope rather well by sidestepping some of the major plotholes these types, regardless of where they started, fall into. I think the best example is how they handled in the inevitable duel later in the game)
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Dissidia 012- Can't decide who to use for Assist anymore. Aerith, Jecht, and Cecile all works well with Ulty..... Now.... should I go on and grind the Labyrinth or go back to grind Disgaea4....
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TOPSP: Up to Chapter 3. Just recruited Ravness.
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Dissidia 12. Just picked this up, only played Lightning so far, and she seems fairly intuitive. Haven't played enough to really get a feel for the changes yet, though I do like the assist system. Am currently hoping there's a way to get that Prologus character without having to purchase something else.
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By far the best new character in Dissidia 12 is Lightning. Medic forces the extremely passive AI to actually start attacking, instead of reading button inputs and counter -> punish. I tried some Ad-hoc party multiplayer but it was too laggy to be playable. I did encounter one (bad) Kain player who just hit the [] button the whole time (Jump). Otherwise the game is overall much better improvment since the AI has a less equipment/accessory advantage over you and battlegen handled so much better that I don't need to spend over 100 hours getting level 100 equipment.
Fallout New Vegas: Completed with the NCR ending. Generally felt, while still the asshole government that they are, that they are the wasteland's best chance of civilized recovery. Plus, most of the NCR NPCs were voiced by Liam O'brian, superior to the Legion voiced by Yuri Lowethal. Even playing WRPGs you can't escape the two most overused voice actors ever.
I found Fallout 3 to be a better "fuck around" game, which higher spawns and more stuff to kill while roaming the wasteland but New Vegas just had more content, better character builds (I went with a heavy armored shotgun wielder first time), and a higher exp cap which is still easy to hit level 30 when you have about 20% of the game to go.
Of course, the big problem is still crashing. I was lucky to get the game going for 2 hours straight without once crash. I didn't even run any major mods. Speaking of mods, any major overhaul mods like FWE for New Vegas yet? I might try that on my next game when I go melee/unarmed for the independent kill everyone ending.
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Yeah, I think most people, even the TotA haters, agree that, at very least, Luke and Tear are well done.
Tear's only done well if they meant to make her a super-bitch hypocrite. If they did, well, good job to them!
Demon's Souls: Finished. Final thoughts when it's not possible to count the hours to until the sun rises on a one-fingered hand.
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TotA discussion needs more Jade hype. Really though, surprised Fenrir didn't find someone in the cast worth paying attention to. Anise aside, the central cast seemed to be what most people liked about the game.
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Thanks! I might get it sometimes... Definitely not right now though. Strange that the one series that needs sceneskip (just not for people like me, but for NG+ too since there's a big focus on it) is the one that still doesn't have it.
I think I did see most of Luke's development but not Tear's. I was something like 60% through the game? The game's a blur no. To be honest, I had never really cared about Tales characters/plot before, so I just couldn't stand them in such high doses.
I didn't really like Jade mostly because his main character trait right when I stopped playing seemed to be not being able to shut up about phonons.
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ToV for the PS3 has sceneskip (as well as oodles of bonuses and such) but was never translated into english. I think Tales of Graces has sceneskip too but I'm not sure.
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And now I'm on to Vaan. The reports system is interesting, though the fact that it just chucks you straight into chaining bosses, even if they're Lv1 chaining bosses, who have summons and supports at a time when you have no summons, and are plot blocked from supports is annoying. I suppose it would be less so if I had ever played as the character I'm forced to use. Ah well, an issue for the future.
Just find it neat that they kinda brought back the FF2 keyword thing for that.
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FF4PSP- Cleared the lunar ruins, beat the superboss for the hero shield. Would've been an easier fight if the game coughed up the dragon claw earlier *MUTTER*. Oh well.
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By far the best new character in Dissidia 12 is Lightning. Medic forces the extremely passive AI to actually start attacking, instead of reading button inputs and counter -> punish. I tried some Ad-hoc party multiplayer but it was too laggy to be playable. I did encounter one (bad) Kain player who just hit the [] button the whole time (Jump). Otherwise the game is overall much better improvment since the AI has a less equipment/accessory advantage over you and battlegen handled so much better that I don't need to spend over 100 hours getting level 100 equipment.
Wait, you found Lightning's Medic USEFUL? Funny cause that's the form I use the least against the AI. So much more efficient to just attack and blitz the crap out of them. Lightning is a strong Rush Down character, and if you want to force them to attack you, just use Waterga.
And Battlegen was NOT what made Equipment Grinding in Dissidia hard; don't kid yourself. If anything, you tend to get casually enough of what you need to get something, and it was generally easy to get whatever you needed unless it was "EX-burst this guy" for any of the Orbs (Crystals weren't too bad cause they had much higher rates), and it was really easy to raise your Battlegen Drop Rates (Sunrises and Moonrises never break), but generally, the Orbs were "Break opponent" which easy if you got any Level 100 gear (Ultima Weapon is actually a very easy to nab thing, and everyone can use it. Hence why its recommended when you want to grind for level 100 stuff. Fighting level 100 opponents, you can get the hardest rates up to 25%, and you can do the requirements multiple times per fight.
Now what WAS hard was getting the OTHER specific items since that required lots of Duel Colosseum fighting. This includes the lesser weapons.
And the AI rarely has an equipment advantage over you in the main game in the first game. Heck, often the AI will be a level whatever opponent using really shitty gear in story mode. Distant glories and Inward Chaos were the exception; but Distant Glory enemies were like level 70s tops? Which being lvel 100 more than completely offsets, and Inward Chaos was MEANT to be tested after you did a lot of grinding, so yeah.
...yeah, sorry Eph, but really everything you said just doesn't really make any sense here <_<
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ITT people with different opinions are wrong.
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As someone who actually got 100% inventory in the first game, I think I can safely say that no, Battlegens were NOT the issue when it came to making high end weapons. He's right in that getting high end stuff is a pain (especially if you don't know how to get Ultima Weapon), but its all the other stuff involved in making weapons (The Non-Battlegen Material, and the equip needed, cause an equip is ALWAYS needed <_<). Its less an opinion at this point and more of a casual remark from someone who very obviously didn't get much of this stuff and is making random assumptions.
Generally, when Battlegens were what held me back, it would require a few fights (from Quick Battle no less) and then I was ready. Contrast this to missing one Opal or something, which could garner at least 15 minutes in the Duel Colosseum just get enough of whatever Elixir or be lucky the item appears outright.
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I'm sorry I didn't calculate the exact time it takes to get enough materials to upgrade Squall's Revolver into the next tier. Maybe if I set the game on data install and AI to 2 instead of 1 so they might walk a little closer to me to hit me, I might shave off 44 hours and I'll have all the exclusive equipment for 6 characters! I'll save an additional 31 hours if I pick Yuna and only use Mega Flare (well it, works on Chaos and Golbez, my 2 worst matchups but otherwise I hate playing as Yuna).
Math Math Math Math Math Math~
Edit: YES, it is a casual assumption. I'm not a database of Dissidia knowledge. All I remember is that it took me more time that it's worth to get equipment. I forgot the AP grind is just as bad until I learned about the lvl 1 Chaos trick.
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Eph you must install the Meeple OS to communicate with Meeple, y/n?
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I found Fallout 3 to be a better "fuck around" game, which higher spawns and more stuff to kill while roaming the wasteland
Man, that's exactly what made me so sick of the game. So. Many. Super mutants.
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Yeah, I got a little tired of them. At least with humans you can have them wear shit, but every super mutant master looks the same.
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I think in New Vegas I killed 3 Nightkin for Super Mutants and that's it. The Super Mutants on Black Mountain aren't even hostile. I don't get that. Yeah, I did use Lily as my primary companion. (fuck yeah ugly old lady!) but I didn't see any reputation for Super Mutants in the game.
Compared to Fallout 3 where I used a mod where I encountered a Bethemoth every 15 minutes.
I tried Dead Money. Terrible. Why do they feel the need to take away your equipment and put some artificial difficulty by making your use shitty weapons? It wasn't good in Operation Anchorage and The Pitt. Ghosts aren't even interesting enemies. I pretty much have to pour all my Sierra Madra chips into Stimpacks. Right now I have 0 chips and 10 HP with no other way to heal. Oh god the traps. It's like I'm playing I Wanna Be The (Fallout) Guy.
I am playing on Very Hard though, but still I rather fight deathclaws as long as I have my Fatman and Anti-Rifle than fight these things with a pistol and stabby spears. Got my 5 extra levels and my knockdown shotgun perk though.
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FO3 breaks the cardinal rule with its random encounters: You get badly penalized for levelling up.
Bethesda!!!
The game wasn't pretty after level 21 with all the Feral Ghoul Reavers and Albion Radscorpions for a speech/sneak/melee/explosives character. (Not to mention the deluxe super mutants before)
NV's uber enemies felt better and scarier (better deathclaws. And cazadores) while FO3's were bullet sponges. Might just be me being a fan of the game though.
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Demon's Souls: The final write-up maybe.
So as I start down the painful, painful path that is the NG+, I look back with dread on various things I'll have to do over, and mild excitement over other things.
Boss Rankings because hey why not? Listed from hardest to least hardest, along with a few non-boss enemies that are pretty much boss-like anyway. Also RPGDL rankings because I find it funny that one of the easiest bosses because of his AI pattern also makes Godlike because of that AI pattern.
1: Old King Allent, 1-4: Fitting that the final boss be first for once. The guy is a bastard, his attacks vary between physical and magical, ranged and melee, fast and HOLY SHIT HIT HIM BEFORE HE KILLS EVERYTHING. He also has a very, VERY nasty trick in Soul Sucker, where he kills you instantly and DROPS YOUR LEVEL. If it wasn't so easy to dodge... sorta, it'd be even worse. And like most bosses he as a goddamn fat sack of HP. Makes Godlike because of it all. Prepare to see that a lot.
2. Red-Eyes Knight 1-1: A basic enemy you encounter in a rather out-of-the-way place in the very first level. The Red-Eyes Knight will smack your little bitch ass apart faster than you can shout BULLSHIT. You see, the Red-Eyes Knight is normally found in the third part of world one. Ah, you ask, that doesn't sound too hard? Well it wouldn't, since enemies get harder stat-wise the deeper you go, so Red-Eyes Knight 1-1 would be weaker than them. But then I say, you can only get to 1-3 after you beat an entire different world. That's right, they stick an enemy that normally exists in an area after an Endboss fight in the first stage. And it's the hardest type of Red-Eyes too. They're divided into three types, sword&shield jokers which hit like little girls and have no range, big honking Claymore bastards who can kill you in one hit on a backswing, and spear&shield bastards who can attack while they're guarding and have a dashing attack which hits about seven times in a row followed by a giant SCREW YOU final hit which would overkill you at full HP but they want to make your last sliver of health a painful thing. Bluelike the first time you fight him, and Heavy the time you're "supposed" to fight him.
3: Dragon God, 2-3: With a name like Dragon God, anything less that top ten would be a farce. Dragon God is a gimmick fight, but my build was not designed for his gimmick, so I died about five time trying him. The goal of the fight is to pin his ass down with giant spear-launchers, but the path is blocked off by debris and the Dragon God's desire to turn you into a smear on his finger. I didn't have any range to hit the debris from what little safe havens there are, and my weapon blew for damage and the debris is remarkably resistant to magic. But still, I won! Unrankable due to his gimmick.
4: Maneater, 2-2: Maneater isn't too hard of a boss really, his attacks are telegraphed, he doesn't hit hard, and you can even damage his tail and lower his movepool. So why is he so hard? You're on a pretty damn narrow strip of land(which is larger than the various other paths you cross in the level) and one of his attacks is a tackle that can knock you off pretty easily. Also there's two of them. Unrankable.
5: Black Phantom Heroes, 1-4: A trio of Black Phantoms at the start of 1-4. Aggroing all of them at once is easy, grabbing one at a time is hard. Combined they'll wreck you damn easily as they're a bowman, heavy infantry and speedy infantry. Also the heavy can break your gear. Separately, only the heavy is difficult, as he has a shield that's all but impossible to guard break, and it's hard to take the bowman out while he's lumbering about. Heavy is Heavy, speedy is Middle and bowmen is Light.
6: Armored Spider, 2-1: Is a joke but I'm a coward who hides away and gets roasted by bad hit detection. Melee fighters can wreck him in less than a minute and ranged fighters have a freaking hittable zone. His health and damage both suck, but he can slow his targets and stop casting with webs! Light, which is goddamn depressing.
7: Flamelurker, 2-2: Pure fire damage and a goddamn lot of speed can take you far. Unfortunately, not far in the league, but who cares. The magic vulnerability is what I used to beat him after only one death. Still, he's a tense fight, and him getting faster and more aggressive when he's already one of the most relentless bosses his harsh. Makes Heavy, but being pure Fire damage stops him from being Godlike.
8: Satsuki the Jackass: Is a jackass. He's not hard or anything, but in his BP form at least he can one-shot you with any hit and heal himself to full when he gets low. And he has a lot of health. Makes a boring Heavy but Heavy he is.
9: Adjudicator, 4-1: Like Tower Knight, Adjudicator needs to have a lower part damaged first for melee to actually damage him. Unlike Tower Knight, this is hard as hell since the area is cramped, the camera zips around like mad and he can kill you in one hit. Ranged guys can try and play there game again, but unlike Tower Knight, Adjudicator's ranged attack will drag your ass down to melee range. Also his HP is a fat stack, just like him. Makes Godlike, since he's basically Tower Knight+.
10: The PENETRATOR, 1-3: The Penetrator is a boss whose difficulty is entirely dependent on whether you want NPC help dealing with him. If you do, he's pretty easy. If you don't, prepare for the goddamn pain train as he rams his Penetrating Sword through you time and time again. With the way his sword glows I think he used Sticky White Stuff on it as well. Just to put into perspective how much damage this guy does, the NPC help you get takes 54 damage from this guy's PENETRATE. Doesn't sound like a lot, but that same NPC only takes 13 damage from the Blue Dragon, the same Blue Dragon that can OHKO you while your 100% flame block shield is up, and you have 100% health and possibly even fire reduction armor and spells. Ball lightning Godlike.
11: Old Hero, 4-2: The Old Hero is a tense fight. He is blind, so he swings about randomly until he gets attacked, then he brings out the pain. If he gets you in a bad position, it is easy to get rocked. This fight is easy to do a no-damage run on, since taking damage is quick to fatal even for this game. Only makes about Heavy though.
12: Storm King, 4-3: Part gimmick fight, but can also be done straight. Storm King is flying(auto-heavy), has a bunch of support that needs to be killed off before he's even damageable(and they are his spawn, so they're legal) and when he actually comes down to fight, his attack is nigh-unavoidable, does good damage, and unleashes more minions that need to be killed before he comes back down into damage range again, where everything repeats. So how does a melee character in-game beat him? With the Storm Ruler, a super-powered sword that splits the sky asunder and wrecks the shit out of everything. The spawn die in one hit, and he'll die in about 10. Yup, 10 hits, and you can't chain these attacks together. He was a fat stack of life to shield him. Go giant flying manta ray, Godlike for you!
13: BP Lord Rydell: He's an interesting guy to be sure, his melee attacks are part-magic so can go through most shields, and his pole gives him good reach. At low HP he gets a pretty big defense boost, and like any BP he's a giant ball of HP. Makes a slightly interesting Middle at least.
14: Fool's Idol, 3-1: Discounting the revival trick, Fool's Idol is one of the frailest and least damaging bosses in the game. It wouldn't take more than five rounds to deal with her, and she spends so much time not attacking that healing isn't a problem. The real problem comes up in her gimmick, which is anytime after she gets attacked she teleports away, summons a bunch of identical clones and throws a bunch of paralyzing traps all over the area. The clones attack is less damaging then the real Idol's, but there are a lot of them, so it adds up. Get caught in a paralyzing trap at a bad spot and kiss your ass goodbye. Can probably skirt her way into Heavy due to her tricks.
15: Tower Knight 1-2: He's big, he's bad, his shield is bigger than some other giant bosses, but like so many bosses he can be pretty easy. Going melee on him is a recipe for disaster since you have to hit his feet and knock him down before you can actually do real damage to him, all while he's trying to crush you with his giant shield or stomp you or stab you. So, what about the range game? That's where the magic spear attack comes in and dammit if it doesn't hit hard. Easy 2-3HKO off of that, and it's pure magic so you will take damage even with a shield up. Makes Heavy because he can scrub melee fighters so easy.
16: Garl Vinland, 5-3: Oh Garl, you're so damn badass but like I alluded to earlier your AI stops you from being a threat. But that same AI makes you a Godlike. Garl is stuck always locked unto you with his shield in front(making him pretty much invulnerable to arrows, melee and magic) but won't pursue you beyond a certain point allowing you to bait him like little else. The Dark Silver gear makes him nigh-invulnerable to magic, and the Brandt means any hit on you will be the only hit he needs. It's the heaviest item in the game, requiring 36 strength to use one-handed and he does use it one-handed, except when he wants to murder you some more and two-hands it. Oh, and what's worse, he can riposte too, sticking that damn thing straight through you making even baiting him a difficult task. And it boosts his resistance to poison and plague. And he can heal! Healing that isn't effected by his armor and returns a fair amount of his truck of health.
17: Executioner Miralda: Miralda's a joke, even in her BP form. She hits kinda hard, and rolls a lot and rolls into attacking, and her armor is the best all-around female set, but she doesn't have a shield or anything special about her. Still, hitting hard and moving fast means she can play in Middle a bit.
18: Dirty Colossus. 5-2: Another boss with a fire weakness and bad attacks. At least he can do actual damage, and the fly swarm is better than leeches, since they'll stick on you until you get hit by fire damage while also stopping spellcasting and healing and stuff. Still weak to fire, and gets weaker to it the more it gets hit, but... yeah there's no upside other than decent physical defense. Sticks around the Middle mark.
19: Leechmonger, 5-1: Ugh, leniency on the game's part? Or trolling? Either way, leechmonger is a joke, his attacks suck, his HP blows and he's even weaker to fire than Phalanx. The leech status is crappy despite being unique to him, but stopping healing for a round on a DL target might not be too crappy. Either way, I use that too much, but Leechmonger mongers in Light. Oh yeah, it can heal itself too, but its slow and over time, heals for crap and only uses it when you're out of range. And it leaves it wide open. Haha.
20: Phalanx, 1-1: The first boss of the game is aptly enough a joke. Despite being covered in shields which reduce damage and it being impossible to level-up before-hand, he's still piss easy. See, he has a horrible, horrible weakness to fire, and 1-1 gives you a ton of fire items to use against him. But despite being an absolute joke, his sheer damage potential is really high, just good luck seeing it. Probably scrapes Middle because of the damage+non-fire protection.
21: BP Selen Vinland: She's aided a lot by the fact she's in that damn swamp, but she's so concerned on getting her spells off it's easy to go through this fight without a scratch(other than poison). At least her melee attack ignores shields, whoopee. Light.
22: Old Monk, 3-3: Hahahahahahahahaha, oh god do you suck. Then again, this fight is ridiculous anyway. Like, he sucks so bad that I was running in a circle for a straight minute looking something up online and didn't get hit once. His damage is ass, only dealing about 1/10 a SOUL FORM lifebar, which means only about 1/20th a normal lifebar, and he's pathetically frail. Homing Soul Arrow can deal some decent damage, but it's a goddamn limit and despite their name are stupidly easy to dodge. A Light, if it wasn't for the fact that his whole fight is some bizarre gimmick which actually means this is Unrankable.
NPCS: The following NPCs you all have to goad into attacking you(with one exception) by attacking them for some % of their HP first, so their HP scales are odd.
Orstrava of Bolataria: The one exception, as he as a BP form that can be fought. Anyway, despite probably being the nicest NPC in the game, Orstrava is a complete joke in combat despite his decent gear. The Rune Sword allows his attacks to be magical, and the rune shield reduces magic damage, but neither make up for his terrible stats(save his abnormally high HP). He was only doing around 40 damage to basic enemies at one point, 40! I was doing more at level 1! Languishes in Light. Until NG+++++++ where the scaling of NG+ means his damage is fixed and his health is now higher than most bosses.
Old King Doran: THE MAN. In order to fight him you need to halve his HP, then pray he doesn't murder you instantly. His damage output is massive, and is partly magical as well. He'll get a lot of attacks in a row due to his stamina boost, and his armor makes him take tiny ass amounts of damage. I was doing about 80 with a backstab to him. He has 1223 HP after being halved. Yeah. Sits with the pantheon in Godlike.
Biorr of the Twin Fangs: Remember that NPC help I was talking about earlier? Well, here he is. With insane defenses, offense to match it, and even some ranged ability with a crossbow, Biorr is the Godlike man and don't you forget it.
Patches the Hyena: Ain't he trustworthy. Patches aggravates really fast, so he only has about 90% HP. Not like it'd help him, since he's piss-easy if unpredictable. His shield is constantly healing him, and his spear allows him to attack with it up. But still, he doesn't have that much HP for it to be effective. Fails in Light like a loser.
Sage Freke, the Visionary: He's a mage you get the first attack on. Light.
Yurt, the Silent Chief: Yurt can be fought in two different places, one of them is more dangerous but gives you more free hits in on him. Either way, despite being fairly resistant to bleed/poison/plague due to his armor he's not much of a threat. Despises being in Light but can't help it.
Saint Urbain: I killed him in two hits. Light.
Yuria the Witch: Yuria nooooooooooooooooo! You're too damn nice and adorable to be killed but alas. Anyway, another mage you get the drop on but gets mad faster. Light.
Mephistopheles: You really though you could kill me bitch? Another joke fight, but uh... at least she can do fire damage? Light again.
The others and nameless guys aren't worth the words about them beyond being OHKO fodder.
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ITT people with different opinions are wrong.
Yeah well, Neph, you smell! My opinions on the other hand are always right!
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ITT people with different opinions are wrong.
Yeah well, Neph, you smell! My opinions on the other hand are always right!
http://objection.mrdictionary.net/go.php?n=4908941
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RS:MS - Started the Faerie's Grove quest and the Oh, Mummy! quest. Tried to finish said Oh, Mummy! quest and got my ass royally handed to me.
Party is Jamil/Barbara/Hawke/Sif/Myriam. I think I've been in... Maybe five battles over the course of the game? Man, I'm probably still in ER 1 or something.
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If you run out of stuff to do, do the quest Valhalland Monsters. You can repeat it in later ERs as long as Sif is in your party (though you can only do it twice early before the bosses become too tough to handle).
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Pokemon Racism: In the Ground gym. Game is generally easy, even when I'm breaking in four new Pokes for variety's sake after three areas with the same basic team. Progress will be slow for a bit until I replace the charger I lost over the weekend.
Also, I finally caught a legendary - Victini. I have never gotten one before. Every time I fight the bastards, the part of my brain that says you're always supposed to kill Pokemon bosses takes over and I never remember to use a ball until it's too late. Hell, in Sapphire it didn't click until a month after I'd finished the game that I could have captured Kyogre.
Anyway, he's pretty awesome and I eventually benched him to stop him from sweeping half the people I fight.
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FO3 breaks the cardinal rule with its random encounters: You get badly penalized for levelling up.
Bethesda!!!
The game wasn't pretty after level 21 with all the Feral Ghoul Reavers and Albion Radscorpions for a speech/sneak/melee/explosives character. (Not to mention the deluxe super mutants before)
To be fair, the Reavers, Albinos, and Overlords weren't included until Broken Steel, and then only because they knew 10 more levels of just the standard baddies would be piss easy. I didn't have a problem with any of them during any point (save getting two Overlords in the Planetarium when going to get the radio dish) thanks to the Dart Gun. So freakin' broken.
In a related topic:
Fallout NV - Dead Money: Over the past few days, played through this. I have to agree with Eph in that the taking of equipment was a real pain, and I didn't really like how much they used the collar mechanism, but I didn't think it was that bad. The rewards are definitely worth it.
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Finished the Twelvth cycle in Dissidia, now working on the 13th cycle. Amused by the fact that it's the world map from FF1, though a little changed in order to work here. Right up to having ruins in all of the places where the towns used to be. The fact that it all seemed familiar until I recognised the ruins of Corneria and it all clicked was especially nice.
As for characters.
Lightning may be my most effective of the new characters, though I honestly enjoy Yuna and Laguna more. Something about their attacks is just really satisfying, up to and including the fact that a lot of Laguna's attacks involve blasting things with a miniature spaceship. Am trying to remember if his EX Burst involves, at some point, him surfboarding on that same miniature spaceship.
Aside from that, generally a good job with the new characters. And I do like how generally staying on the ground feels a little bit more viable now, as opposed to the first game where it was pretty rare to sit on the ground.
Also been fiddling around a bit with the Museum now that I have it unlocked, and it's good to see that these are also still generally good and still chock full of refences. Also nice is that the story modes tend to sync up decently well between the new and old stuff, along with a nifty looking timeline scene reviewer.
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Fallout NV - Dead Money: Over the past few days, played through this. I have to agree with Eph in that the taking of equipment was a real pain, and I didn't really like how much they used the collar mechanism, but I didn't think it was that bad. The rewards are definitely worth it.
I think the difficulty depends a great deal on what kind of weapons you specialized in in the maingame. I had maxed guns skill and was easily able to get through most of Dead Money's combat with just the police revolver. Not much in the way of energy weapons or explosives to be found, though (there's the holorifle--which is outstanding when repaired and modded--for the former, but ammo for it is scarce; maybe I didn't pay much attention to explosive weapons because I never used them, but I really only remember finding an endless amount of mines).
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Demon's Souls- Legaia 2's tedium was getting at me, so I switched over to this. Started as Soldier. Fun game so far. Aside from the required tutorial boss death, my first actual death came at the hands of the Red Eyes Knight in 1-1. I totally see where the hype for them comes from. Mrf. Hopped off to watch something on TV, will continue in a bit.
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Demon's Souls- Legaia 2's tedium was getting at me, so I switched over to this. Started as Soldier. Fun game so far. Aside from the required tutorial boss death, my first actual death came at the hands of the Red Eyes Knight in 1-1. I totally see where the hype for them comes from. Mrf. Hopped off to watch something on TV, will continue in a bit.
Then you get revenge on them in 1-3 with Northern Regalia and Hyper Mode. Then the 1-1 Knight still gets you because that is Demon's Souls.
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Legaia 2 - Hoooly crap Avalon is crazy. He wants to destroy everyone in the world but himself or something. Bonus points for saying the word power 26 times during the final sequence.
Legend of Dragoon - Dart discovered his primary competition for Lavitz's heart, and it ain't pretty. He is bishier, more well-dressed, and way richer than Dart. *sulk* I might be stuck with Shana...
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Demon's Souls- Phalanx beaten. Woot. Ended up with 5.5k souls before using any of the item souls I got. Died twice. Once to the first blue eyes knight in the level when I just tried going around him and found out hey, fog is not a barrier and got back attacked. Second time was right after when I had a firebomb dude explode a bunch of barrels around me. Got my souls back both times. Rest of the level went pretty well. At Soul Level 14 at the moment. Probably heading to 2-1 next.
Really enjoying the game. Just the right amount of difficulty. Haven't been this engrossed by a game in a while.
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Legaia 2 - Hoooly crap Avalon is crazy. He wants to destroy everyone in the world but himself or something. Bonus points for saying the word power 26 times during the final sequence.
Legend of Dragoon - Dart discovered his primary competition for Lavitz's heart, and it ain't pretty. He is bishier, more well-dressed, and way richer than Dart. *sulk* I might be stuck with Shana...
Going through the rest of the Ranked games alphabetically or something?
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Dynasty warriors 7 - *Sheds tear* They at last after 20 or so games finally did a decent job with the story mode and people say the video-game industry is in decline. If Koei can succeed at doing something right for once then there is hope for everybody.
I've done Shu and Wei's story as I'm saving Jin for last and I don't like the Wusers. Its nice to see that they stick to the story and don't go into the bullshit the other games go into like in DW5 where Shu wins at Wu Zhang plains and then somehow Wu and Wei are both destroyed in the process. The Wei story in particular was better as in the Shu one they keep harping on about benevolence.
Favorite battle so far is the battle of He Fei simply for the quotes the enemy soldiers make during it. The Wusers shit their pants at seeing Zhang Liao tear their forces to shreds. Speaking of Zhang Liao he is broken to the extream having both a crowd clearer and boss killer special with one of the best EX attacks in the game.
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So (the other) DW7 is better then part 6? The last one I really enjoyed was 5 on the PS2 so it has been awhile.
Also, how is the multiplayer?
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Legaia 2 - Hoooly crap Avalon is crazy. He wants to destroy everyone in the world but himself or something. Bonus points for saying the word power 26 times during the final sequence.
Legend of Dragoon - Dart discovered his primary competition for Lavitz's heart, and it ain't pretty. He is bishier, more well-dressed, and way richer than Dart. *sulk* I might be stuck with Shana...
Going through the rest of the Ranked games alphabetically or something?
Haha, no. Just playing random crap I feel like I'm 'missing'. I think WA5 is next. Or MK2. >_>
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Desktop Dungeons
No clue what I do to unlock the last two monster classes, or the mystery dungeon on the far right. For now, just doing the 2-boss dungeons with a variety of classes, and doing Gauntlet mode whenever I get built up to max gold. (I'm up to level 15 gauntlet. Version number v015, as I'm sure that probably makes a difference).
Classes for Gauntlet...up through level 13 I was using Human Warlord. I realize now that Human is significantly worse than Gnome at killing the boss (+40% damage maybe...which is only 1.2x as much damage. Compare that to going from 4 mana potions to 8 mana potions, increasing mana by 1.6x or so).
The theory behind Warlord is that it's consistently good early on, and can often manage to kill higher level enemies. Know what else is good early on, though? Sorceror. Mana Shield is like...a constant +20% damage. They start with 15 mana. And any glyph at all they pick up at level 1 will be better healing than any other class gets with the healing glyph. Good at boss killing too, thanks to the +5 mana (and occasionally they'll be able to use the healing...but on Gauntlet mode most bosses will OHKO so you need fireball or protection from killing blow).
Also started taking interest in Thief, seeing as...ok, so they effectively get 10 mana potions instead of 4, and they get an extra bonus drop for each of their stats (so among other things, +1 max mana, +10% damage, +10% health). Their endgame is really strong, just...they're not particularly good at getting there.
Religions...usually Pactmaker if I can get it. No attacking restrictions, and +10 mana is really good. Dracul is also decent...although there's no reason to rush into it early, as the only essential bonuses from the religion are pretty cheap, and the artificial level bump early can suck, as can early HP drops. Jehoria is...fine on normal-difficulty maps, but on Gauntlet level 15 it just tends to backfire (can't use reraise or first strike? Boo). The bonuses aren't that big, though--probably the best one is scrambling all the enemy types at random; past that it's some small damage buffs. Mysteria Annur...hey +15 mana, and a few ways to buff magic damage; that's pretty awesome. Do not touch it unless you already have fireball. The rest of them are pretty bad (although not awful if you're in one of those mono-typed dungeons).
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Legaia 2 - Hoooly crap Avalon is crazy. He wants to destroy everyone in the world but himself or something. Bonus points for saying the word power 26 times during the final sequence.
Legend of Dragoon - Dart discovered his primary competition for Lavitz's heart, and it ain't pretty. He is bishier, more well-dressed, and way richer than Dart. *sulk* I might be stuck with Shana...
Going through the rest of the Ranked games alphabetically or something?
Haha, no. Just playing random crap I feel like I'm 'missing'. I think WA5 is next. Or MK2. >_>
Another thing: The next game on the list would be LUFIA 1, which would never happen.
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Halo series: Achievements achievements achievements. Up to rank 45 in Waypoint, which is a damned lot.
Blazblue CS: Got the frue ending.
MvC3: I should not play this after playing Blazblue. I keep trying to Barrier Burst.
Radiant Historia: Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to set fire to my own city.
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Brütal Legend: Finished.
So yeah. This game is famous for being an RTS disguised as an action game. (because nobody likes RTS. Me neither honestly)
RTS battles could be a pain, but there aren't really a ton of them (like, 7-8?), there's always a new toy to play with in every one of them, they're never too difficult even on the hardest setting, and there are a lot of action missions between them. In general, the game manages to be extremely varied all the way through, so it's a blast.
Side missions were kinda repetitive and mostly easy, but honestly they're the best part of the game because you could drive around in a great environment, listening to some good metal music. I knew nearly no metal music and the game got me interested in a few bands.
The inevitable big sandbox collect-a-thon serves the same thing. There are like, 120 dragon statues to find, 10 garages, 12 hidden mytho, 30 hidden jumps, etc etc. You get no indication of where it is, but as an excuse to roam around it's good enough. I'm glad I wasn't OCD about it though, else I'd hate the game right now.
Anyway, the game didn't take itself seriously enough. It feels too much like a standard generic cartoon, and this clashes way too much with the metal atmosphere.
I never cared much about any character but Jack Black and the side mission dudes. BTW, there is a big plot twist about the main badguy at the end and I didn't understand -anything- about it. It's like, some ancient hero dude was sent in time, in the past, maybe in the future, and he sealed some main bad guy. He's also my father, and like him I was sent in the past. Or alternate dimension? And now, the main badguy is completely different, but perhaps the same? My girlfriend, my mother and my arch-enemy's girlfriend might be three, two or one person, I'm not sure.
Whatever, the enemy gets decapitated -> Feel-good ending
The talk about Okami makes me remember about it - It's the game I've actually bought (on PS2) that I've played the least of. Meeple isn't kidding about the bad intro. I realized I didn't really want to play through something very similar to a 3D Zelda with so much cutscene boredom. I probably played some RPG instead and I've never picked it up again.
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In response to Scar DW7 goes back to the charge system so it now plays like how DW5 did but it still has things like skills from DW6 and a few other things such as seals.
The multiplayer is conquest mode only and be done both offline and online. Conquest is just loads of missions so if you're starting it from scratch with a buddy its quite good however if you've already done it all then you're essentially doing just skirmish levels.
Did the Wu story and while I dislike all those Wusers I have to say I now really like Sun Quan. He knows he is a coward so strives to become the most badass coward alive which he achieves as he owns the mighty Zhang Liao by having his allies block both Liao's weapons and then stabs Liao in the chest killing him which was as Liao himself said "Excellent".
Then in the ending:
*Sun Quan Picks up his extreamely well endowed wife*
*Walks towards a dozen of his male commanders all the while giving a good hearty laugh*
Sun Quan: Men, let us enjoy this.
*Men cheer*
*Roll credits*
......Well they do say Wu is all about Family, love and shar....Wait a minute. Liu Bei and Cao Cao both die in their ending while failing in uniting the land but Sun Quan lives and then has a sex orgy to celebrate?
Best version of Sun Quan ever.
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Namco x Capcom: HOLY SHIT ARE GUY/GINZU GOOD AT BUILDING UP SUPER GAUGE.
Baby Head/Awesome Mummy got stunned which is the first PC I ever saw stunned and took him forever to recover. Other than that, he seems pretty good as a tank and uh...well...
He has a Falcon Drill Punch. I think its safe to say he's the BEST BABY EVER.
Captain Commando's allies are so much cooler than he himself. Honestly, Captain Commando is a generic stock lamer super hero, his allies consist of a generic Ninja whose awesome cause he's a generic Ninja, a BABY IN A MECH, and an Alien Mummy Dual Wielding Knives that wears a baseball cap backwards.
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Brütal Legend: Finished.
I need to get around to playing that, I sort of just watched my brother play it. Even though you don't do Metal much Fen do you at least know some of the awesome voice work people involved? A good chunk of the characters are voiced by hard rock legends.
For reference, This guy (http://www.videogamesblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/brutal-legend-judas-priest-rob-halford.jpg) is voiced by this guy (http://www.bonereader.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/rob-halford.jpg) from Judas Priest. Also note that Rob Halford is gay and this shocked the metal world at one time.
Also the doctor guy was voiced by Lemmy from Motorhead which is pretty much the most awesome thing ever. Lemmy is amazing and I recommend you check out some Motorhead if you enjoyed some of the music in the game.
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Yep! The main problem is that those characters feel like cameos (despite Ozzy Osbourne's amount of lines) while the main characters are voiced by regular characters.
The Killmaster (Lemmy) kind of disappears out of nowhere while the Baron (Rob Habford playing as himself here) appears out of nowhere at the same time.
I thought he was just the same guy who had just shaved, for a while.
I'll go check Motorhead out. Man, there were too many bands I didn't know about at once for me to discover them all.
I mostly noticed Racer X, Ozzy and Motley Crue (And whoever did "Kill the orcs", obviously)
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Pokemon Black: Oh dear god battle subway is even worse than the previous incarnations. -,-
Running a VGC test team of Archeops/Tornadus/Chandelure/Reuniclus that were legal-hacked in, ended up running into a team of something/Haxorus/Salamence/Garchomp and got murdered. Now I've switched Reuniclus for my own Haxorus, but only because I don't have access to Pokesav and can't edit in the awesome that is Mienshao.
Was reading on Smogon about someone missing 4 times in a row with a 99% accuracy move. Apparently they are more likely to find two shiny Pokemon in a row than have that happen. Hax Subway. ;(
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If you liked Motley Crue and Ozzie then definitely check out Motorhead, old school rockers all round.
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SRWZ2: It has begun. Finished stage 1. Shiiiiiiiiny. Worlds ahead of Advance Portable, and that was already impressive. Judging by the number of reinforcements that crop up in a three-turn mission, the designers are intent on keeping players on their toes.
Now, melee mode or range mode for Blaster.
......yeah, like that's a tough choice for me.
For the muffin-inclined, HEN 6.35 runs the game fine, and requires no reflashing - it's one of the semi-signed homebrews, and runs without hardware mod on the official 6.35 firmware.
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Dissidia 012- Dress up Laguna in his knight costume, controls Kefka, turns on Shuffle and Boogie.... This is just too amusing.
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Ocarina of Time: Been replaying this lately because I don't have a 100% complete file on my N64 version. Forgot just how short the Shadow Temple was (and infurating - went up the ladder near the Ghost Ship and had to go back through the whole damn dungeon to get back there.) Bottom of the Well is still the creepiest thing ever, and I always forget about the tunnel under the central room in the Water Temple. Sheik is as subtle as a sledgehammer on a replay, yet I remember being fooled completely when I first played the game. Hunh. Can't be bothered with the Biggoron's Sword just yet - but nearly at endgame, so guess I might have to soon. >.>
Pokemon Black: More Battle Haxway~! Actually managed to survive a fight against utter insanity earlier - Garchomp/Hydreigon/Salamence/Kingdra. And somehow, my non-Haxorus'd team beat it, despite Haxorus being my anti-Dragon Poke. Not complaining. Record is still something like 20 fights on Super Doubles, current run is at around 10. >.>
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Sheik is as subtle as a sledgehammer on a replay, yet I remember being fooled completely when I first played the game. Hunh.
That's because Zelda had never had anything resembling a TWIST up until that point. If you weren't taking things at face value, you were doing it wrong. But yeah, ZELDA PLOT.
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Radiant Historia - Up To Chapter 5 Alternate History. Fun stuff.
Mass Effect 2 - Playing this on Insanity. I was having fun with this. I have done a few missions fighting YMIR mechs without much cover in a row. Now it is less fun.
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Z2: Took the Japan path at the first split, and am now on Celestial Being/Dancougar Neo. Every single SR point has had a three-turn limit so far, but none has been especially tricky. You just can't waste time, but beyond that it's just a matter of taking care of business. SP isn't as rare as it was in the first Z, so you can actually keep spirits flowing, especially with the low turn limits.
Dai-Guard is awesome. All three pilots start with HP restoration spirits, and you need them all because, true to the show, the Dai-Guard is held together with scotch tape, spit, prayer and MANLY SPIRIT. Its armor rating in the first stage is 200.
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RS:MS
Tried to finish the Oh, Mummy! quest. Cannot, as it doing its Song of Souls twice in a row is enough to kill my entire party.
Reload to an earlier save. After looking through the guide to figure out what I should try doing (I can't do Valhalland Monsters again, as I turned it in at ER2 and for some reason won't let me pick it up again). Dropped Hawke, recruited Gray for all of ten seconds before dropping him, and then picked up Claudia. My party is currently Jamil/Barbara/Myriam/Sif/Claudia. Also managed to swipe a Dinosaur Egg, but I get the feeling I'm missing something important in the Jelton Plains.
Also, what can I actually DO with this egg?
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You can sell it for cash money.
Jelton Plains have some caves you can spelunk into for random treasures, but they're mainly there as the route to Pyrix's home. If you feel like learning some new techniques, he's the best enemy in the game to practice against, since you don't die when he drops everybody's HP to 0. Just keep an eye on your LP.
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Mass Effect 2 - Playing this on Insanity. I was having fun with this. I have done a few missions fighting YMIR mechs without much cover in a row. Now it is less fun.
Have fun with zombies.
Which class for Shepard? I'm tempted to replay ME1/2 on insanity as a vanguard soon.
Risen: Replaying to get achievements and try new things. It's great, I basically got to a whole new place with a ton of sidequests I couldn't do as a bandit last time. Including a really cool murder mystery quest.
The way classes work is that every character starts the same and has access to (almost) everything, but factions have small advantages:
- Only bandits can get level 10 axe/sword, other characters can only go up to 7. Bandits get the gamebest armor too.
- Members of the order can master staves instead.
- Only mages can learn magic. (and it's awesome)
Needless to say, members of the order are vastly inferior. OMG staves! They're supposed to be the dedicated scroll users (Scrolls are one-use magic), but they don't have a particular advantage related to that.
Older game:
Breath of Death 7
(http://zeboyd.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/smallcave.png)
This was supposed to be some oldschool (Mostly Dragon Quest) RPG parody, on XBLA (/PSN?)
I didn't really want to buy this, but it only costed one buck.
Humour was really, really weak. The game is as funny as a T-Shirt with "Epic fail" written on it. I think I remember smiling once during the whole game, but that's it. Honestly, the less said about it, the better.
What was surprising was the gameplay, as there were a ton of neat additions to the regular turn based DQ formula. In fact, it felt about as far from DQ as it could be.
- HP is fully restored after every battle. Only a few MPs are restored, depending on how fast you killed the enemies. Normal attacks aren't enough to kill enemies, obviously
- Every levelup, you get to choose between two things. Do you want for example, +30 strength and +30 magic or +30 HP and MP? Big damage against one person or low damage spell against a group? 10 MP and 50% success rate, or 30 MP and 100% success rate for your espace spell? +1 hit to your regular physical attack, or a big stat boost? etc etc. A lot of those choices are very interesting and there's no way to change them.
- There's a combo meter that looks similar to FF13? Everytime you attack, the combo meter raises, you deal more damage, your status has a higher chance of working etc. Some skills reset the damage gauge (Finishers, or, unfortunately for the player, the better healing spells) Some multi hit attacks raise the gauge faster, but often do lower damage overall.
- Every enemy gets more powerful every turn. This really forces you to be on your toes all the time, but unfortunately it kind of ruins defensive skills.
- There's a set number of random encounters in every dungeon. No random encounters afterwards (but you can still fight some to level up if you wish)
- Everything is insanely fast paced, there are difficulty setting and a score attack mode. (the lower your level, the better your score)
The gameplay is tight and demanding, like uh... Shadow Hearts 3's.
I think it's clear: Great game if you like RPG gameplay. Horrible if you don't.
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You can sell it for cash money.
Jelton Plains have some caves you can spelunk into for random treasures, but they're mainly there as the route to Pyrix's home. If you feel like learning some new techniques, he's the best enemy in the game to practice against, since you don't die when he drops everybody's HP to 0. Just keep an eye on your LP.
In order to unlock Pyrix early you have to do Mt. Scurve. To unlock it go to the bar in Rosalia and talk to people. You need Climb lvl. 3 to get to the top. This is a good idea if you haven't done it already because you can get a decent helm you can sell later (or immediately) for lots of cash.
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Sheik is as subtle as a sledgehammer on a replay, yet I remember being fooled completely when I first played the game. Hunh.
That's because Zelda had never had anything resembling a TWIST up until that point. If you weren't taking things at face value, you were doing it wrong. But yeah, ZELDA PLOT.
Someone hasn't played Link's Awakening. But yeah, in general they aren't exactly trying to be subtle.
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Vanguard has a pretty steep learning curve, as a lot of it is based on ping-ponging with charge to get in shotgun range and using it's shield heal to stay up. Doable but I wouldn't make my first playthrough as one an insanity game.
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I'm playing through Insanity on ME2 as an Infiltrator. As long as the enemies don't get too close (which is near impossible thanks to the Cloak) I'm fine. Then again, I have a knack for a Sniping game, so it might be a bit different for me. Also, enemies on more than one or two sides just obliterates you, I find. (Thank you Ms. Thief's loyalty mission. *sigh*)
Also been playing Duodecim. Currently through both the 12th and 13th cycles, and doing the storebought story alternating with the labyrinth. I like what they did to the colloseum, feels more enjoyable when there's an actual endgoal, something to explore, scaling challenge, and different requirements for the fights than "beat up person x"
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Older game:
Breath of Death 7
I think it's clear: Great game if you like RPG gameplay. Horrible if you don't.
Cool. Now go play Cthulu Saves The World. $3 and more awesome RPG gameplay.
Trails in the Sky: Generally a fun game although it could benefit from faster combat. Enemies are starting to get a bit too easy, but I DID have one wipeout to a plant-monster that spams area damage/sleep right around itself... really my own fault for ganging everyone up on it and the game is VERY lenient about deaths... it allows you to restart from the beginning of the fight and the game's escape command is 100%.
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Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days- So, Axel mode (from a fresh save, naturally) is a clear step up from Etna mode. The level curve has fewer sudden jumps, there's considerably less serious business (and what's there is expanding on Axel's background, which is fine since it wasn't the focus of Disgaea 2 unlike Etna's serious business plot), and while there is some grind to it (lack of good special characters again), Axel himself is a good unit and there's more maps with good cash drops. That said, the map design isn't quite as good as the main game's, with the occasional "uh let's just toss enemy boost x3 on here", though small maps mitigates this at least. The penultimate map is also just... why. Game Over and Encroach I get, and Invincible prevents you gaming the map, though there had to be a better way of doing that, but why No Lifting? You can't even access that part of the map, and it gives you no recourse if the enemy does walk right past you (since it will, every enemy but the boss will head straight for the door Game Over area rather than attack you). Beyond that, the writing felt tired as often as not; they really stuck with one note for most of the story, and don't really do a lot to amp things up as you go.
Improved, not really good, 6/10 range. Not that it has any affect on Disgaea 2's overall score.
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I finished Mana Khemia a couple years ago ago, and I liked it enough to pick up the first two Ar Tonelico games. I started the first one, but stopped playing it about halfway through, but I started them again recently and finished them both.
Just a warning that there might be some spoilers in here.
The first game is... alright. It's really easy to break, which is bad when the combat is as boring as it is. Also, the last phase of the game has way too much backtracking. There were also some systems I barely touched (enhancing your songs, outside of, like, putting reduced MP cost on everything), I'm sure there are some effective things you can do with it, but getting Lyner ridiculous ATK pretty much wrecked the game. Some parts were enjoyable, though! Aurica Route.
The second game is quite a bit better! It's still pretty easy, but the battle system is way more enjoyable. The hardest boss fight for me was Jacqli Robo, which is around the third boss fight! The final had a lot of status and I didn't have many status curing items, but still wasn't too bad. Characters were more likable then the first game, mostly because Croix is not Lyner. I ended up at level 56, final team was Croix--Luca, Shun--Third Reyvateil. The plot was understandable, and most of the characters were likable. Luca Route.
They weren't bad games! They don't exactly leave me jumping out to play the third one, but the second left a way better impression then the first.
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Dynasty warriors - Finished all the storys and the Jin ending is pretty nice though I feel sorry for the three kingdom guys as it seems like after death the likes of Guan Yu, Zhang Liao spend their time in hell fighting each other. Yeah I'm sure its a visual thing but it sure looks like they're in hell fighting each other.
Jin Kingdom is one of the worst ideas ever however. Nobody on the Jin roster is actually part of Jin, they're all late era Wei officers mostly. I mean why would Xiahou Ba a Wei loyalist who fearing Sima Yi's power joined Shu to have them get rid of Sima be part of the Jin kingdom? Also the new characters for the most part are good choices such as Deng Ai though I don't agree with his design and the fact he kills people with armbars but some of the choices are terrible. To begin with they added in Guan Yu's fictional son which is bad in itself but then they feel the need to include said Fictional son's fictional wife too? What?
Also where is He Man the devil who shoots across the stars and who by the power of the way of peace has the POWER! For that matter where is Lu Kang, Sima Wang, Dong Tuna, Dong Chao and all the other great officers of the time.
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SRWZ2: Stage 9, the first unified level (albeit with different PCs depending on your path) since the second stage. And it's a bastard, too. The first real boss of the game, another three-turn SR point, lots of Dimensional Beasts, staggered reinforcements - I like it.
The Gundam 00 battleship is hilarious, incidentally.
Edit: And how could I forget? Getter is AWESOME. Good stats, loads of damage, and so very well animated. Need to pick up Blocking for Ryouma. He'll be getting most of the kills because his ace bonus is brutal too, even if it takes 150 will to kick in.
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ME2 - Okay, so fuck Horizon, that mission is just shitty. I have no idea how you are meant to handle the 2 Scions with the Husks at all. I just cheese it by sniping the Scions from the doorway with powers where they wouldn't wake up, then the husks don't spawn. The fight after that I turtled through after a couple of tries. Allies died. I could shuffle around in cover picking guys off pretty much at my leisure then piss bolt around to restock ammo between waves, this was fine. Fuck Collector Guardians. One was behind cover and would drop a shield straight after the other one dropped. Had no chance to even shoot him. It was easier to just wait it out and let him be possessed by the Harbinger and kill him that way. The Praetorian can go get fucked, but it always can. Honestly not much change between Normal and Insanity for those shits though.
Contemplating training Grunt up to have Squad Inferno ammo specifically just to fight Husks with. This whole mission probably would have been easier if I had built up to Squad Warp Ammo instead of picking a third point in Tactical Cloak. It also would have been easier if I was playing Paragon and had the third Heavy Weapons upgrade from Zaeed's mission, would have given me the Cain then. Not sure what I would have used it on (probably the Scions which turns out to be a waste if you don't mind cheese), but having it there is always a huge help.
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The first game is... alright. It's really easy to break, which is bad when the combat is as boring as it is. Also, the last phase of the game has way too much backtracking. There were also some systems I barely touched (enhancing your songs, outside of, like, putting reduced MP cost on everything), I'm sure there are some effective things you can do with it, but getting Lyner ridiculous ATK pretty much wrecked the game. Some parts were enjoyable, though! Aurica Route.
Misha route is where all the likable characters ended up. In addition, besides Misha's appearance, she's generally considered the better-written heroine.
Also, no Scene of Fail where you learn that you can set your calendar by Aurica's Rape Schedule... and then the joyous scene where Lyner gets to become her new regular friendly neighborhood Rapist. ...uh... Spoiler.
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Horizon is the hardest part of ME2 insanity by far, but it's not like the rest of the game is a joke afterwards..
Cool. Now go play Cthulu Saves The World. $3 and more awesome RPG gameplay.
Actually, I just recruited Santa Claus.
The game's pretty much Breath of Death 7 + as expected. I really do love the new insanity status in this game (drops enemy defense, change their character sprite, may make them a lot stronger). And poison is actually useful!
The main problem is that it's tiring to see Cthulu get trivialized again and again everywhere, and the whole game is that.
Character ratings (with my builds)
Cthulu: Worst character in the game, and he's forced. He has some alright ST damage.
Sharpe: Best ST damage. His magic could have been good, but I don't think he could ever compete with October. Good against bosses.
Dacre: Pure healing battery, worthless against random monsters, probably great against bosses.
October: Pure mage; Great MPs, uber strong magic, and she could have been even better. MVP.
Umi: Umi's a hybrid, she has a little bit of everything. Right now she has all the water boosting equipment stacked on her and she spams Flood. Works.
Paws: Useless, except for that skill which makes every enemy insane.
My main team is Cthulu + Umi + October + Paws, but every character, even those dead or not in the party, get full exp, so there's a lot of freedom. More games should do that.
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Horizon is the hardest part of ME2 insanity by far, but it's not like the rest of the game is a joke afterwards..
The fight at the end of the derelict reaper is pretty tough too.
But really, I have a lot of praise for the raised difficulty in ME2. It's none of this usual bullshit you see in RPGs where everything is the same but numbers are bigger (fuck you Star Ocean). They gave enemies actual new abilities and immunities and such.
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"The fight at the end of the derelict reaper is pretty tough too."
Yeah. + The Overlord final boss, and that bitch in LotSB. But really I had something like 50 resets in that one battle on Horizon.
The difficulty is great. But while making every enemy a threat by giving them protection is not necesserily a problem, it does make adepts really shitty.
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every character, even those dead or not in the party, get full exp, so there's a lot of freedom. More games should do that.
Definitely agree with this. It always seemed ridiculous that a character could live for 99% of a boss battle, then OMG DEATH COUNTERATTACK KILLS SOMEONE and they don't get experience? What the hell? (Especially WTF-worthy since someone who spent the entire battle dead then was revived right before the killing blow apparently does remember the battle).
I read about the mechanic where enemies get stronger with time and I was kinda curious how it worked out in practice. I know the game's lead designer claimed that he implemented that to torpedo the strategy of "just heal off whatever they do" which can be a bit of a degenerate strategy... but I'm kinda concerned it will create a "just blow them up with as much damage as possible, anything else is suboptimal" which... could be seen as more degenerate. Really depends how it's implemented! Still something I'll probably play if I get a 360.
Tactics Ogre - Chapter 2 Law. The early battle against the necromancer dude was pretty nasty but nothing has been especially tough since. Still quite fun, I am a sucker for FFT-likes for obvious reasons.
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Pokemon Affirmative Action Version: 3rd Gym Beaten!
Game seems to go out of its way to try and make Gym leaders have some plot relevance, rather than just kind of sit in the corner and be all "I'm a boss!" and do nothing else <_<
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Last Remnant: Wow. Emma and Conqueror cutscene was amazing. It's rare that you see that kind of quality in a videogame.
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Pokemon Affirmative Action Version: 3rd Gym Beaten!
Game seems to go out of its way to try and make Gym leaders have some plot relevance, rather than just kind of sit in the corner and be all "I'm a boss!" and do nothing else <_<
Some are pretty amusing though.
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Trails in the Sky:
Continues to be a generic RPG, but I really don't care and am thoroughly loving it. Character interaction? Check. Humor with a well-written/translated script? Check. Combat system that is engaging enough to keep your focus and allows for interesting customization? Check. Encounter control? Check. It doesn't break any new ground but by god does it do things right.
Lacks sceneskip and has too many damn missable things (more games need to mimic RS for a solution to this), but damn if this isn't an enjoyable RPG. Kind of like a Tales game but with a traditional RPG system. Also the way it builds NPC characters is really cool. Every villager has their own personality and many lines that reflect it. For example if you talk to a shopowner in Bose you can learn over the course of your stay in that town how she feels about her husband basically abandoning her in the city to keep up a shop while he tries to help solve some of their former home's issues. Then there are vacationing old people reliving their more glorious days, young lovers who start up a relationship, and so on and so forth. All the NPC lines get changed whenever you trigger a plot point, and the number of lines allows for them to actually have memorable stories and characters. It's quite neat.
Not that the main cast doesn't get any loving. They really, really do. The game does characterization and interaction like a champ.
Combat could stand to be faster, but if you don't feel like fighting randoms you can abuse Joshua's great speed and the 100% perfect flee command to avoid them. There are also "Orbments" (i.e. materia) that allow for encounter control. The game allows you to ambush enemies in the field for full party CTB initiative, too. Game is a bit easy but there are several fights that can challenge you and I've had a few gameovers to various powerful encounters. The game is extremely forgiving with retrying and will let you do so WA4 style. It has an option to lower the difficulty after multiple retries, should you so desire to use it (doesn't really need it though).
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RH- Beaten and finally bothering to post something of a game summary (Still need to do that for FF 13 and ToV). Game overall probably a 6/10. I liked it, but it didn't resonate as much as I would have hoped.
Plot: It really, really coalesced well near the end (And ended up answering enough questions that it covered what seemed to be some of the previous glaring plotholes, although there were still a good number at the end). Something definitely didn't fall into place with the main villain. I would have loved to have seen some of the other dead-end pathways explored a little, but see how that would have been a logistical nightmare in terms of setup. Still, very good job taking a quirky concept and making it work. Might have been a bit better if I felt the core 3 characters (in terms of screen time) really had any depth to them.
Battle System: Not much to say here, other than this was pretty solidly outlayed. I would have really, really loved to have a few more PCs to play around with, but I just half expected that because same team as RS and because a game about teamline jumping generally has great reasoning to throw more PCs at you. And hell, they didn't even bother to make Gafka relevant, so they wouldn't really need to do much with other PCs.
Sidequests: I normally hate this sidequest style, but unlike XS 2 and ToV, it at least makes enough sense here to be excusable. Using time-traveling to fix various people's issues makes a lot of sense even if the execution was off. The game really, really needed you to be able to jump to any particular node.
Music: Only mentioning this because it gets a lot of love. The soundtrack is good. The soundtrack is about 10 songs. Narrow down any RPG to it's best 10 songs, and the soundtrack will look a lot better!
End thoughts is overall very solid game, but I just would have liked to seen it expanded a bit more.
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My brother ruined one of my Ps3 controllers so I had to get a new one, meh I can afford it even though I just lost my job. After playing co-op DW7 for a couple of hours the game freezes, well it happens I'll just turn the system off and put it back on. Wait a sec why isn't it reading the game? Could be the system files so I check them and they are corrupted so I restore them and still nothing. Guess I'll be buying a lens cleaner but considering the bad luck I've had lately I doubt it'll work.
*Signs* Maybe I should trade the thing in considering all the problems its had and I've had to fix. Annoying s I wanted to use the money to get the currently lackluster 3ds.
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TOPSP: Chapter 4 now. Man, if Archers were even more broken in the original TO, I don't think I want to know how overpowered they were. Considering the fact they are by far the MPV class of the game for the first three chapters. Maybe that's why FFT archers got nuked or something. As is, you could run a party with nothing but archers and it probably wouldn't give you any issues.
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Desktop dungeons:
Various stuff I haven't reported, like unlocking and beating the story mode; beating up through Gauntlett level 16. But mostly the folloing hilarious situation happened:
In DD you learn pretty quickly not to anger the gods; if piety goes below 0...you're pretty much dead, most of the time. I managed to get -1160 piety (yes, negative. Yes, four digits) and still won. (Transmuter, Earthmother, Factory. I got stoneskin at level 1, too. And the funny thing is? It kept triggering after I went negative).
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TOPSP: Chapter 4 now. Man, if Archers were even more broken in the original TO, I don't think I want to know how overpowered they were. Considering the fact they are by far the MPV class of the game for the first three chapters. Maybe that's why FFT archers got nuked or something. As is, you could run a party with nothing but archers and it probably wouldn't give you any issues.
They nerfed the Ninjas so they can't carry bows for a reason.
It was really fucked up when we had bow using Ninjas running everywhere over the map.
They really should take out the cross bow from the winglings too.
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SRWZ2:
I'ma just leave this here.
http://i56.tinypic.com/fp79mr.jpg
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I wish I knew who that was or what that references. =(
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It's a character from the the first SRWZ, and provides hope that the awesomest original ever (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDljO7gjY6c) will be back in Z2 part 2.
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I cracked open the ps3 and sorted the misaligned drive but still nothing on disc reading. Ps1 games don't seem to work either meaning its looking like the laser has up and died on me which is just frustrating. I've had half a dozen problems with Sony's black monolith but as they were mostly software problems and I have backed up data they have been easy to fix and a mere annoyance. A laser failure is very annoying and it means I'll have to open the thing up again which is never a nice thing for me to do.
Think I'll go play some SMT1 and hope I don't screw myself out of an ending.
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I read about the mechanic where enemies get stronger with time and I was kinda curious how it worked out in practice. I know the game's lead designer claimed that he implemented that to torpedo the strategy of "just heal off whatever they do" which can be a bit of a degenerate strategy... but I'm kinda concerned it will create a "just blow them up with as much damage as possible, anything else is suboptimal" which... could be seen as more degenerate. Really depends how it's implemented! Still something I'll probably play if I get a 360.
As far as random battles go, ressource management makes the system pretty interesting. I died a few times by being too careful with MPs (Running low on MPs -> You only spend a few MPs on a particular battle -> Enemies get progressively stronger and end up owning your team)
You could just fight 30 random battles at the beginning of every dungeon then not care about ressource management, but that's like owning Pokemon by soloing with your starter then finishing the game with a Master Ball'd Legendary.
You don't need to hold back against bosses so they don't really get interesting, yeah. There are still a few tactical choices involved:
- Heal or damage? If you heal too much, you die, if you don't heal enough, you die too.
- Buff or damage?
Roughly in the middle of Cthulhu however, you get a pure healer + stat buffer who solves both of those questions, and every boss afterwards gets steamrolled. This fortunately does not happen in BoD7.
Edit: That mechanic has another positive effect I forgot: There's no random variation whatsoever. That could get boring in other gamesbut here thanks to this mechanic, it's perfect.
So yeah anyway, I did finish the game and the "superboss" (what a joke)
I'll probably try Highlander mode soon (You're only able to use one character, but you get a ton more exp points)
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Desktop Dungeons: What have you introduced me to, MC? I've been on this thing all damn day.
Happiness is a Halfling Berserker in the Library spawning next to a Taurog altar.
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It's a character from the the first SRWZ, and provides hope that the awesomest original ever (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDljO7gjY6c) will be back in Z2 part 2.
Ok, yeah that original is pretty boss, but I don't get what that old man has to do with it.
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He mentored Rand, the Gunleon's pilot. Everybody thought he was dead in the first game, but apparently not so much.
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FF4 TAY- In Yang's chapters. It's been pretty good so far. They've tweaked FF4's system a bit (Bands, moons) but by and large it's the same gameplay engine. The story's about what you would expect from more FF4, though it's amused me at points. I definitely dug Calco and Brina as PC's in Rydia's story, for example.
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Desktop Dungeons: What have you introduced me to, MC? I've been on this thing all damn day.
Don't blame me, blame the IGF! They're the ones who awarded it "best independent game design of 2010" (take that: Minecraft). If not for them, I never would have played it. (And really: you should blame my GDC roommate Irene Berg--if she hadn't been presenting the awards, I might have gone to another event instead).
(But yes, it's getting to the point where this game is harming my health because I stay up too late playing it).
Happiness is a Halfling Berserker in the Library spawning next to a Taurog altar.
*snort* well then. Uhh...just remember not to take Mageshield. >_>
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Legend of Dragoon -
Dear diary,
Life is getting complicated. Lavitz seems to be trying to shoehorn me into dating Shana, which only means one thing.
HE LOVES ALBERT MORE THAN HE LOVES MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Shana is not a sugar daddy, so there's no way in hell I am dating her. I've been telling her "I think of you as a sister" a lot so maybe she'll get the picture that I don't want to have sex with her. Maybe I can join Emperor Doel's harem instead. Lavitz frustrates me.
~
This game is so campy. So much awkward teenage drama and an undercurrent of sweet sweet mansex. Shana is really really really useless and cries too much; did she have to twist her ankle AND get dizzy on two occasions AND be bitchy and declare her independence? I agree with Rose's sentiment about her. I love that I fought a dragon and a thing that lives in a volcano that was used by Winglies but Yuffie (Drake, a guy who renovates ruins for maximum trolling) is the hardest boss so far. I'm pretty sure he had lower plot power than Kongol or the prison guard guy, but plot power seems to have little correlation to actual gameplay worth. Kongol was an embarrassingly bad boss fight. I just fought Dominatrix Man in the Arena and got plot-killed and some random martial artist joined my group.
I enjoy the gameplay well enough, it's not spectacular but not terrible. It's a little like a less forgiving Shadow Hearts with way-too-long-animation-times on spells. Graphics are PS1-era, music is okay.
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ToV - TitS
1. Main heroine Estelle who knows how to physically fight
2. Male lead who is a very charismatic dark haired pretty-boy. Girls fall for him and he is himself kinda girly. Is more cold-hearted than your average RPG main.
3. Play put on by the characters with a little bit of a 'twist' so to speak.
4. portable crystal-powered remnants of an ancient civilization let you do magic
5. Little girl named *ita who studies said remnants. Is cute. Forms a sisterly relationship with Estelle
6. Estelle and dark-haired lead stop by cliff face at ocean and talk about how beautiful it is and how they hope to continue journeying and seeing new things.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I'm enjoying TitS so I can see why another game would want to borrow from it (and ToV characters are unique and interesting enough to make the comparisons mostly superficial)
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A game with a female lead whose acronym is Tits... hm....
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A game with a female lead whose acronym is Tits... hm....
Pyro is talking about ED6 Sora no Kiseki
The main character is also called Estelle in that game and one of your main physical fighter.
Though, what I would argue is that Joshua should be consider the heroine instead of Estelle. His girliness surpasses all other females in the cast.
Dissidia 012- Gilgy is an awesome assist for Sephy, why didn't I notice this earlier? A great way to bring the fight back to the floor and easy follow ups after HP attacks.
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Portal 2 - I haven't finished it yet, but this game brings me pure refined joy. This is the shit I love. I can't even tell you if it is better or worse than the first one. It is less concise, but I love it. It just makes me happy.
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Grandia - finished
Generally enjoyable. It had somewhat overstayed its welcome by the end however.
Not really a fan of the dungeons. Found it very easy to get lost, especially in some of the overland ones.
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Portal 2 - I haven't finished it yet, but this game brings me pure refined joy. This is the shit I love. I can't even tell you if it is better or worse than the first one. It is less concise, but I love it. It just makes me happy.
Oh, wait, damn: that's out already? I haven't even preordered it yet!
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Dissidia 012- I can now effectively have Sephy chain Iyai and Nagiharai into Gilgy's Hurricane. Now, thanks to Hurricane's long duration, I actually have enouh time to throw in another HP attack. This is can be very very sick if combined with Alexander or some fast brave regen set up or with the HP damage to Brave ability.
This also seals off opponent's emergency assist evade, consider Hurricane stretches upward for a long distance.
I guess I can try this with Zdiane too. This trick can be much natier than Emperor's Meteor or Holy or Both set.
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Came out on Tuesday mc.
After it has had a bit of time to mellow, I think that some of the puzzles are not as well directed to the player as those in Portal 1 (the time outside the testing chambers is much more is probably the cause of this), but still, it is well put together. I have forgot how long Portal 1 took me first play through, but I am pretty sure this one is longer in single player, this might make it wear out its welcome I suppose. Will see. It still brings a smile to my face anyway.
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My computer cannot run Desktop Dungeons without overheating. Seriously?
Chtulhu saves the world: Highlander mode is kind of easy and boring actually, so I don't think I'll bother much more. I went up to the second town. Mage Cthulhu >>> Fighter Cthulhu
Risen: Got every achievement. Being a mage who wasted no points on weapons in the earlygame continued to be broken. It's like playing an FPS where every enemy is as fast as you, has no ranged attack and goes down in 1-2 hits. (maybe 3 if you're unlucky)
Great game, should have been called Torchlight. Dungeons are very dark, but you can live with that and pretty much explore without too much trouble. After a while however, you end up being curious and using one of those 50 torches you've found on your travel.
Now you can watch those great lightning effects, pretend to be Indiana Jones and see slightly better! They don't serve much purpose, but they help the atmosphere immensely.
Torchlight: I've tried starting the game a few times, but I can't decide between the mage and the archer girl.
'Splosion Man: Cleared 2-6. This feels very much like most modern 2D platformer; the action is basic (there's only one button), the level design is punishing, there are tons of checkpoints, and the environments feel like they don't ever change. Great fun, too bad about that last part.
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A game with a female lead whose acronym is Tits... hm....
Pyro is talking about ED6 Sora no Kiseki
Man, thankfully Niu chimed in with this, because I was having a hard time trying to figure out how I was going to figure out this TitS acronym using Google Image Search.
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I'm doing the image search anyway.
Desktop Dungeons: Beat Normal with the first 12 classes, and have the next three unlocked. Did the level 1 Stoneform thing with the Wizard to beat the factory. Nothing like going from level 1 to level 6 against a level 9 Animated Armor.
Sadness is getting Super Meat Man (which is totally not an infringement on anyone else's intellectual property) down to *1* hit point and then losing. Seriously, WTF? I swear the creator must be using some kind of computer algorithm to make enemy HP/damage totals as precisely annoying as possible.
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Here we are, yaoi overlords of the uniiiiverse~
Legend of Dragoon~
So Fruegel has Al captive, and Lavitz is going into a lover's rage and Dart's all ;_; but we go save him anyway. Another person emits creepy yaoi overtones -- this time it's Fruegel. He says "We just need your body!" which means that Albert has to both endure a threesome involving Fruegel, who is like 8 feet tall and 300 pounds overweight, and his UNCLE. This is getting gross, man. So we go through the dungeon and fight some monster. Shana and Haschel have a conversation about how Dart and Lavitz 'share a bond between men that women can't understand'. Are you for realz man.
So we go and save Albert after fighting fatass again and Dominatrix Man comes and steals his Moon Gem or something. Lavitz dives to save the gem and Dominatrix Man ruins his shit and
ALL HOPE IS LOST IN THE WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORLD! When true love dies angels cry. We go back to Seles and hide underground and Albert says "Not only was Lavitz a great soldier, he was a great "guy"." Um, I don't know what that means but Al is a little weird. We decide to storm BLACK CASTLE with its crazy strobe lights. Black Castle is the stupidest name for a castle ever. Doel is trying really really hard to be a SUPERVILLAIN and it's just sad. Like half the town hates his guts, if he were a good Dominatrix Man slave evil emperor he would ruin those people's shit. So we sneak in the castle, we are introduced to the conservation of happiness principle ("Happiness will inevitably breed someone else's unhappiness" wtf emos), we fight KONGOL, I waste all my MP on him because it's funny to see him take infinite damage to my attacks, and then........... ELEVATOR THRONE. Hells yeah, Albert definitely wants that.
So Doel is a friendly guy, right? He's all like "You remind me of my brother Carlo 20 years ago..." and I'm thinking either he's going to lament on how corrupt he's become or talk about what a fool Carlo was but he goes straight for the jugular "a bloodstained corpse in front of me!!!" and then we fight.
Doel is hard, man. He hits Al for like 400 damage with a MT magic. No shit, that hurts. Apparently I didn't see his awesome ST damage move, which OHKOs Albert. :( Albert, your magic defense fucking sucks.
So Doel bites it and he's all like "You must save the world from Dominatrix Man...................." with sad music in the background. I'm not sure what emotion they are even trying to elicit here, the "wow you are a tool" emotion?
Disc 2 begins, and Dart begins the healing process inside the comforts of the Black Castle and possibly on the elevator throne.
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To this day I'm not sure how that game got made.
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Here is a transcript of meetings involved I found online one time.
Sony exec: HOLY SHIT FINAL FANTASY 7 IS SELLING LIKE A MILLION COPIES AT RELEASE MINIONS WE NEED MORE OF THIS SHIT. Dude that made Super Mario RPG, we need you and a crack team to make this game.
Super Mario RPG Guy: Did you say crack!?
3 years later
Super Mario RPG Guy: HAY GAIS THIS GAME HAS A TOWN WITH 1000 DOORS, BASK IN ITS GLORY. ALSO I HAVE BIG NEWS FOR YOU ALL, I LOVE PREOP TRANNIES WHO ARE INTO DUDES. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO that is some good shit we got on that Sony money. Okay time to make a shitty action game and have nothing else against my name on the internet.
That is pretty much how it went down.
Portal 2 - Finished. Final puzzle frustrated me. Probably should have put it on the back burner until tomorrow, but yeah final puzzle. Final boss does suffer from similar problems as the original of ergh where in the fuck should I stick these portals argh arhg arhg where is this thing i am supposed to pick up.
Generally speaking the game isn't nearly as good at cluing you in to where it wants you to go as the original was. It is still quite enjoyable and a lot of the puzzles are good fun in single player. Some serious bonus points for the snippets of dialogue continually coming back and being referenced, even small aside things coming back up in the final sequence is good stuff.
The new mechanics with the gels are pretty fun and good. Stops it from being rehashes of puzzles from the first game.
At the end of the day, the design is probably inferior and the execution is probably inferior. The step down is not very huge at all. It largely comes from being a bit longer so it isn't quite as punchy as the original (but has to be to make up the price difference, even with the multiplayer). We are not talking nearly as big a gap between Portal 1 and Portal 2 as there was between Dragon Age 1 and 2 (which were both good also, but Portal 1 is absolute excellence) The writing is still really good and a lot of fun, but there is more characters in this one, so it isn't Glados being the show. I like the new characters but Glados is still better than all of them, so it is just Glados upstaging them.
Turrets continue to be pretty much the cutest things ever.
So yeah if it is good and you liked portal you should probably pick it up sometime. If the price tag is daunting then I say continue to be daunted. It isn't that the game isn't worth the price of admission, but this is a game that will age just as well as the original did. It is well made and should stand the test of time. Valve isn't going anywhere and the price tag will drop do a level people will take to. I don't think there is anything overly much that you need to be on the bandwagon for this one. It isn't coming out with a new Halflife episode or with a great new team based shooter to play. We likely won't even be seeing a big CAKE IS A LIE! type thing again or even listening to Jonathon Coulton songs again and again all over the internet.
That isn't to say there isn't a nice song at the end of the game. It is nice and pretty well done. I just don't think Portal 2 is going to be quite the big cult hit that the original was. Hey I could be wrong, but whatever, that is just the feeling.
It has been an interesting couple of years for Valve. They are continuing to make quality products, but some of the sheen seems to have been tarnished with Left 4 Dead 2. I don't quite understand it really, it is mostly just a people are dick bags issue, but it isn't a simple PR issue that I see a way for them to address. From the looks of it though they are doing the sensible business thing and just going lolz whatever bro, you keep buying the games anyways. Considering the issues seem to be that they "sold out" somehow (by becoming hugely successful??!?? Like... they had been for like a damned Decade before people turned on them?) this response doesn't seem to be doing more than provoke the people that have a stick up their arse about them at the moment.
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http://ca.kotaku.com/5793543/the-people-are-panning-portal-2
People seemed to be pissed off about hats. Can't say I care.
I'm more concerned about Rockstar. Exclusive missions if you buy the game at a specific store, available later to anyone for a price? Argh.
ME1: Vanguard on insanity. I'm getting torn apart by everything, neither my shotgun nor my magic skills seem to do much damage. I'll do a few side missions before going to one of the big 3 planets.
By the way, Shepard is now a black guy with blonde hair.
WARNING: He's canon.
Torchlight: I decided playing on Very Hard + Hardcore mode, so choosing a character matters a lot less now. Hardcore means that death is permanent, so the game is turned into a Diablo style roguelike, pretty much. I went up to level 3 with Martha, a vanquisher who's gone too close to death a few too many times already.
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Romancing Saga - Taught the party a whole bunch of skills and proficiencies. Since I'm still in ER2, I decided that I'd go around and go for Mining and Harvesting, just to make some money and get materials early. I'll still be spamming Lurk/Move Silently, but no more retreating until I'm sure I'm in ER3.
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To this day I'm not sure how that game got made.
I think it was made for awkward sexual innuendo due to horrible translation. I can't believe I've never played this before.
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Mass Effect starring Wesley Snipes Shepard:
I've decided to make every bad decision in the game. I make as few allies as possible.
Wrex will die, as will anybody but Morinth and Zaeed in ME2!
I'm betting this will have extremely minor repercussions in ME3!!
It took me five playthroughs to find some cohesion in the sidequests! Awesome.
Usually it was all "Get access to the world mapanalyze every planet and get a hell of a lot of sidequests from a bunch of different people at the same time" Then I might have gotten back to those sidequests but by then I had what they're all about and why you care. I only knew that I needed to go to the planet Iliamus in the Gemini Beta system or whatever. (NOT THIS TIME THOUGH, I'm doing sidequests one by one)
Speaking of which, I love how all the directions given in this game are "Go to this planet, in this system, in this galaxy".
Guys, check out right now the incredible lesbian orgy going on on Earth, in the Solar System, in the Milky Way!!
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Pokemon: sabdajksbgfdsjkghbajfkgfh. VGC dates haves been announced - I've been planning my team for about 2-3 months, but I've now started my actual team creation. PokeSav is apparently legal but I'd rather not rely on it just in case they've made some changes to the hack checks from last year.
Cap'n K: Care to go team discussion-ing again? Was pretty damn useful last year and there's a LOT more to consider this time round, what with it being an entirely new metagame. ^^
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To this day I'm not sure how that game got made.
I think it was made for awkward sexual innuendo due to horrible translation. I can't believe I've never played this before.
You were too busy playing Tales of the Abyss and hyping Maestro MolassesXAnise yaoi.
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POKEMANS - Okay so the first gym made me its bitch harder than Gen 1 Charmander starter first play through. It is a fire guy, okay, so I will lead with this new level 10 Panpour I have. Lillipup gets lead with. I 4HKO with all my moves. It goes first. It uses Work up twice and 2HKOs me. I can't beat that without losing a Pokeman and half another. Potions are a losing trade. Kill it and go into the level 14 Pansear. It is 4 levels higher than anything else I have. It leads with Work Up twice. What in the fucking fuck is all I can come up with.
Sooooo I go okay, I will go grind I guess. I leveled up the wrong pokemans?!?? I dunno. So go grind out one level on my Lillipup and Panpour and then just want to die inside because you can only level on things between Level 5 and 7 and that takes a fucking eternity. So fuck that. Try again.
Work Up x2 was just bad luck. Twice. Easy win this time, especially knowing not to lead with the Panpour and waste type advantage. I sacrificed my Snivy (Pimpmaster) and my Lillipup (no name, regretting this) but that was mostly me being lazy.
Turns out I did level the wrong Pokemans, because Purrloin would be capable at Sand Attack spam cheese. Which would have made my response to the over levelled pokemans rape even more of a Gen 1 response than what I did.
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Cap'n K: Care to go team discussion-ing again? Was pretty damn useful last year and there's a LOT more to consider this time round, what with it being an entirely new metagame. ^^
I'm not participating this year due to some IRL stuff, but I'll be glad to help you with your ideas.
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VVVVVV - Beaten
I'm missing three trinkets, one in the Tower, one which requires you to avoid a bunch of checkpoints so you can die and go back to a specific one, and one in the dark blue area which I didn't end up finding an entrance to. However the game is not compelling enough for me to consider it worth redealing with any of those areas to collect them.
1580 deaths all up, 307 of which were in Veni, part of Doing It The Hard Way. I would hazard that the majority of the rest were in other rooms in DITHW.
Generally fun. Couldn't really get used to Viridian's momentum.
Persona 4 - Started
Have not really reached any gameplay yet so not yet much to say. Some of the things in the manual seem to be steps backwards from P3 but I'll see how things go when I get up to them.
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Portal 2: haven't finished it yet (I've gotten to red, blue, and white goop), but I'm growing less and less happy with the overall game design.
It's getting more and more of what I'd call Half Life 2 puzzle design (i.e. Trash). You know, stuff like "lets jump between a series of criss-crossing pipes; no portals." Was not fun in 2004 and is still not fun, sorry Valve. Or the ones that have caused me the most trouble: find the one single wall location which will fling you to the next door in a dirty outdoor environment where it's not clear where to go next. It's not like there's a fancy puzzly portal sequence, just "find magical wall tile. Place exit there. Jump from high location into entrance. No other technique will work: stop being creative!" I got so frustrated with one such room that I checked the internet...and I have a policy of avoiding FAQs my first time trough a game; if I break it, it's usually an indication of a game I'd give 5/10 or less (Koudelka's an exception that still gets 9/10, mostly on the strength of voice acting and plot; so there's still hope). And also some general polish issues; not HL2 bad where I got stuck in geometry several times, but like..."shooting this tile only makes a portal 30% of the time" or "you can't actually go through this portal: there's an invisible wall." Granted, never on a tile needed to solve a puzzle (maybe that should've been my hint).
Glados has been pretty good, of course, but her lines are diluted. Not just by other characters, which I don't mind. But...there's much more of a feel of gameplay-cutscene separation. Oh, you completed a chamber? Here: have a voice clip. Not as much of the Glados taunts you as you're working through a chamber.
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All of this is 100% valid. This is why I don't think the game will be as huge a cult success and can easily wait for price drop before purchasing. I still do think it is a game worth playing sometime though because the good things there are still good.
The find place to put portal areas are flavour areas and the game suffers for the restricted design. It all comes back to Portal 1 works really well because it is tightly executed and so short and compact. Portal 2 is everything bigger and it doesn't make for better.
I still have to do multiplayer, I have hopes that the bot test chambers are more akin to the original main game puzzle sequences.
Edit - POKEMANS - So yeah I don't know what it is but I am just not really into this at the moment. I dig the improvements that were made, but some of the early pokemon distribution is pretty dull, get your first badge and there is like 10 Pokemans so far? That restricted roster really does show doesn't it. Having two of those 10 Pokemans be generic Normal types is probably some of the problem. Both of them getting dark attacks is pretty wtf though. Sup game, I heard you didn't want people to use Psychics, so I filled your game full of Dark attacks olololol. TMs being reusable, even with one TM so far from the first gym shines through as good good good good good. I now have more tools to work with immediately. The daycare being right after the first town is kind of cool as well I guess.
On the other hand, I know it has been stated before, but the entire second screen being filled with WiFi stuff is amazingly stupid. Seriously, fucking fail interfacing. Terribad to an astounding degree. Platinums little bunch of apps weren't super useful, but at least I could get Pokemans health gauges or something right there without going into menus. At least it has a clock and battery meter in a good spot though.
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Welcome to Pokemon menu fail, population every game in the series. It gets better, too. When you get the Dowsing Machine and switch it on, the entire bottom screen turns into a radar for hidden items. Which is fine as far as it goes, but hitting the menu button? Just switching the machine off and takes you back to the wifi screen. It takes another button press just to bring up the menus, and then you have to turn the machine on again after you're finished doing whatever you brought up the menus for.
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ME1: Got the overpowered shotgun from the spectre shop and a few levels from fighting turrets on foot.
The gameplay is now what I expected from Vanguard gameplay: OHKO an enemy with Carnage, Lift another, Throw a third one, run to him then punch him before he gets up (which makes him fall down again), then shoot him while he's down with the shotgun. It's great.
I bought the Pinnacle Station DLC because I'm a ME whore. It's really not worth it, probably even worse than ME2's Arrival DLC. The concept is definitely alright, it's very similar to an arena in a ME universe basically.
But it's not balanced at all (especially for insane mode), the hardest fights are the ones that rely on pure luck, you get ambushed by enemies appearing from nowhere (that doesn't happen anywhere else in the game), and that one dude keeps repeating the same lines to you over and over and over. And Shepard acts like an idiot. I lowered the difficulty to finish the DLC because I was getting too frustrated, and usually I don't do that.
Torchlight: Martha is level 14.
Why is she still alive?? If this is very hard, I don't want to know what normal is. To be fair, the fight with the sisters did scare me.
I guess making an archer tank does help. I put about only 2 points in dexterity and 3 points in armor every well, and I spend all my money on buying and powering weapons to compensate. (After all, there are something like 10 armor slots and only one weapon slot) Right now I'm relying on traps, they are a bit underpowered but fun. Really looking forward to being able to buy respecc potions on a constistant basis.
Torchlight is really well designed for an hack/slash loofest, I find it more fun than Diablo 2 and Titan Quest right now. (And Fallout Brotherhood of Steel!!) The console interface seems more suited for this kind of game.
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Welcome to Pokemon menu fail, population every game in the series. It gets better, too. When you get the Dowsing Machine and switch it on, the entire bottom screen turns into a radar for hidden items. Which is fine as far as it goes, but hitting the menu button? Just switching the machine off and takes you back to the wifi screen. It takes another button press just to bring up the menus, and then you have to turn the machine on again after you're finished doing whatever you brought up the menus for.
That last part would be my main complaint. The Dowsing Machine in B/W is really good, but the fact that you have to cancel out of it everytime you want to go to the menu is annoying. I wouldn't mind re-activating it, except that you have to cancel it then *THEN* press Menu again to open the menu...its an annoying inconvenience.
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Welcome to Pokemon menu fail, population every game in the series. It gets better, too. When you get the Dowsing Machine and switch it on, the entire bottom screen turns into a radar for hidden items. Which is fine as far as it goes, but hitting the menu button? Just switching the machine off and takes you back to the wifi screen. It takes another button press just to bring up the menus, and then you have to turn the machine on again after you're finished doing whatever you brought up the menus for.
That last part would be my main complaint. The Dowsing Machine in B/W is really good, but the fact that you have to cancel out of it everytime you want to go to the menu is annoying. I wouldn't mind re-activating it, except that you have to cancel it then *THEN* press Menu again to open the menu...its an annoying inconvenience.
One big complaint I have is that they didn't keep any of the ease of use additions from HG/SS, like toggling running and sending a GTS trade notification to your Wii. I know they were developing HG/SS at the same time as B/W, but this stuff seems like common sense. Also, I am not sure how far Meeple is in the game, but once you have lots of items the fact that Pokeballs, held items, and general use items are all in one bag again gets incredibly annoying. This is not something that should have been reverted.
I do love the changes to mechanics, though. And Audinos. Personally I thought the story was terrible, with good intentions but bad executions. Pokemon fans will appreciate any kind of change apparently, but I liked it better when I was just trying to get 8 badges and fought some gangsters on the side. Oh well. It's still probably the best game in the series.
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I guess making an archer tank does help. I put about only 2 points in dexterity and 3 points in armor every well, and I spend all my money on buying and powering weapons to compensate. (After all, there are something like 10 armor slots and only one weapon slot) Right now I'm relying on traps, they are a bit underpowered but fun. Really looking forward to being able to buy respecc potions on a constistant basis.
Torchlight is really well designed for an hack/slash loofest, I find it more fun than Diablo 2 and Titan Quest right now. (And Fallout Brotherhood of Steel!!) The console interface seems more suited for this kind of game.
Traps are pretty great. I coasted through most of the game just by virtue of those. Machinegun trap I want to say was the most reliable, but it's been a while.
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Yu-Gi-Oh 5DS Decade Duels: Now, when I start playing a new game, especially a trading card game, I don't expect to win right off the bat. I do, however, expect to be at least somewhat competitive. This is not the case in this game. The AI in the preliminary tournament is so unforgiving that I couldn't even get a quarter of their life points before I lost each of my duels. The menus are ugly and hard to read, and I couldn't even stop to see what my opponent was doing. Wretched game.
Crazy Taxi: Played through Arcade and Original modes. Fun, a bit hard to control, and I can't manage to do any of the special moves they say I can do.
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Portal 2: complete.
The last three hours or so were a lot smoother than the escape from "the fall" or whatever it is. Just...a lot of clean white test chambers which got the gameplay flowing much better. (Although I did have one puzzle spoiled for me. I heard someone talking about needing to get blue goop on turrets. Apparently sometimes people get horribly stuck there).
Hm, probably somewhere in the range of 6/10-8/10 on my scale. Miscellaneous observations....
1. Final boss felt easier than Portal 1's; I did not die, or ever really struggle to pick up a core.
2. Sometimes the game quantizes portal placement; almost like portals must be on tile A or tile B and nowhere in between. Kinda weird.
3. At a lot of times, I felt like the game was saying "look, look, we have a higher budget this time!!" Like when test chambers are being assembled in front of you. It honestly felt pretty frivolous.
4. The plot felt pretty forced at times. Like...this time when you enter the boss chamber, it's a cutscene that you can't win; and then this time we go straight into coreswap mode...followed by a cutscene you can't win. And then the third time you don't go straight into coreswap mode. And for all that I feel that Portal is by far at its best when you're doing test chambers rather than atmospheric stuff, the plot reasons behind "wait, test chambers, now? Really?" were often pretty thin.
5. Male characters? In my Portal? Blasphemy!
6. So umm...what ever happened to the ending of Portal 1? Because Portal 2 certainly seems to retcon it.
7. The moon? Really? Really, really? I have so many scientific objections, like travel time and breathing. At least they set it up with the whole "white goop is moondust" stuff.
8. I'm not sure I understand Glados at the end. So...she says it's easier to not kill Chel. Ok, but she had a perfectly good opportunity to just...let Chel go out into space. So...maybe that part was a lie and she has warm feelings towards Chel--the song at the end would certainly indicate as much--but then she's telling Chel to leave and not come back, which kinda contradicts the warm feeling theory.
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Okay I am only doing this because I am a giant nerd and I love talking about stuff with the Metroid types. Not defending the ending for the game
There is a secret area in all the find tiny white tile to portal to section where you find out that Glados is the wife/assistant/whatever of Cave Johnson and that if he dies before they can computerise his brain he wants her to run the facility in his place. So at the end where Glados talks about having been Carolyn it is reference to that. She does have feelings for Chell as a person and whatnot. She says she has deleted all of Carolyn's personality, but clearly that is up for debate.
It is fairly contrived, but the series really is refuge in silly nonsense.
And yeah as far as I can tell Portal 2 beginning is a total retcon. There might be something in the comic that I haven't read? Really hard to be sure.
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There is a secret area in all the find tiny white tile to portal to section where you find out that Glados is the wife/assistant/whatever of Cave Johnson and that if he dies before they can computerise his brain he wants her to run the facility in his place. So at the end where Glados talks about having been Carolyn it is reference to that. She does have feelings for Chell as a person and whatnot. She says she has deleted all of Carolyn's personality, but clearly that is up for debate.
It is fairly contrived, but the series really is refuge in silly nonsense.
That's a secret area? I thought that conversation was forced. But regardless, what difference does that make? Carolyn doesn't exactly have a great track record for ethics herself. In fact, earlier in the story I had assumed that Carolyn *was* Glados, rather than just being a part of Glados' psyche. She certainly displayed the same lack of sympathy for test subjects...and she was manipulative enough to get Cave Johnson to bequeath the company to her.
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I could be mixing up areas, I played pretty late at night.
Altogether not much difference at all, but it is mostly the gap between a human without many moral qualms and an AI with absolutely none.
Presumably when you are dealing with Glados being influenced by Carolyn a Human there is a need for some kind of human interaction. Once she has been purged (... kind of) there isn't a need for that and testing on a pair of robots for the rest of eternity is sufficient.
Pretty much it all comes down to Glados isn't completely inhuman. She is fully capable of doing illogical things. She doesn't want to kill Chell, so she doesn't. Then she lies to herself about it being easier to do that. She lies to herself about having totally purged Carolyn (as hinted in the song). Self delusion and all that fun human stuff that we are really good at.
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Desktop Dungeons: Finished unlocking all the options. The three race/classes are alternately awesome and irritating. Although they do let you do some cool stuff like beat Super Meat Man at level 6 and Iron Man at level 7 (did that with the Gorgon).
O_o at the second boss of Lothlorien. I don't even want to see the third one.
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Desktop Dungeons: Finished unlocking all the options. The three race/classes are alternately awesome and irritating. Although they do let you do some cool stuff like beat Super Meat Man at level 6 and Iron Man at level 7 (did that with the Gorgon).
O_o at the second boss of Lothlorien. I don't even want to see the third one.
Second boss is best taken down with physicals (thanks to that 25% magic resist, but also Wizard does well with physicals if you get some relevant 2-3 mana glyphs, due to the -1 mana cost class skill).
Final boss...well, just don't do my mistake, and go "Berserker spawning next to Taurog?? Kick ass! I'll worship Taurog and convert all my glyphs!" (Such a strategy won't end well; trust me).
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PS3 is back and running after much DIY on my part. I replaced the laser but then I got hit with a drive problem for my troubles, to my delight though it just wasn't put in properly so I easily fixed it. So I then turn the thing on seeing that games work again and try signing in online to be shown the word /ERROR/ on screen. I quickly get scared as I might have somehow damaged my PS3 in my DIY but after looking online its just some server problem. Meh I'm just glad the things working at this point.
DW7 - Got all seals, 57 sworn allies, 8 max bonds, all weapons and all stages cleared. Took me freaking (I use the word all the time online) forever.
DDS1 - I popped this in while waiting for my laser and wasted (With ease) the Lord of flies second form. I really need to just complete this so I can move on to DDS2 hard mode and waste that green fat tentacle tits.
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Legend of Dragoon, Anal Fisting Edition -
So Albert tells us about his experiences in being trained in the spear with Lavitz and then he meets this girl he had a crush on who has turned into a giant bitch. Weird. Haschel and Dart are all like "OMG, MY MOTHER IS NAMED CLAIRE" "OMG MY DAUGHTER IS NAMED CLAIRE" and Albert's like "What the fuck ever dudes, statisically speaking there are 550000 women in the world and 4% are named Claire it's probably a coincidence". I think Albert is a geek, he just pulled out stats on the morons.
So Dart gets his Dragoonin' stolen while travelling, so we have to chase the perpetrators and kick their asses. We get an obnoxious child in our party and she and Haschel hang out. Then we talk to Princess Lisa, who tells us her family has been acting weird, and we gain entrance into the thieves' hideout. Princess Emille, the obvious doppleganger princess, is a total heathen and a genuinely terrible actor. Maybe her dad is possessed or something, he seems to not care. We go kick some Geireich (Hashcel's student) ass and then we get a couple of great lines. Kongol saves us and Meru's like "I guess Kongol's attracted to you, Dart!" followed by about two minutes later of Geireich saying "I am glad to ... receive your fist, Master..." Ummmmm....
So we get the Dragoon spirit back and find some dude in the cave, but we still have to prevent Dominatrix Man from getting the Moon Dagger! So we save Emille and then we fight Lenus. Lenus was pretty hard but Dragoon Dart red-field magic and has fire physicals = boom dead Lenus. We then go on a boat where shenanigans ensue, Rose trolls Shana by saying she is thinking about Dart, Meru tries to cause a rift between Shana and Dart, and Albert is nerdy. Haschel has modestly dumb flashbacks about his daughter who he is a giant dick to. So we get hit by a PHANTOM SHIP, this has never happened before in an RPG. The ship dweller ghosts seem to like Shana and hate Rose. Terrible taste in humans if you ask me.
So we fight some bosses and hard random encounters and go back to the town with the stupid king. Turns out he is just indeed a total fucking moron. Albert sits on the bed with Emille and I realize he is a) attracted to girls and b) better in every way than me. This sucks, I should kick him out of the party. Or just USE MAGIC ON HIM AND HE'LL DIE his mdef is sub-kongol. So we go into a Water Cave and kill Lenus again or something. Then... we head to beautiful theocracy land, where there is a huge library, and again Albert nerds out. It's kyute. Rose checks out my hometown, Meru is a WINGLY SPOILERS AND SPOILERS WINGLIES ARE GIGANTIC DICKWADS. This game needs more Dominatrix Man.
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Ciato you are making Legend of Dragoon sound far more enjoyable than it is~
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Halo series: Milestone 50 in Waypoint. I know few of you play the games but it's a massive accomplishment. I'm wearing the stupid bug helmet on my avatar just because of how hard it was to unlock.
Radiant Historia: The thaumatech fight was damned hard, and it looks like this spider is going to be difficult also. I think I may be under leveled (Stocke is 30, Raynie and Marco 29, everyone else is lower), but grinding is dull in this game and I am loathe to do it.
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I think Ciato missed the WOLF side quest which is perhaps the first time Shana is even remotely useful and hey she's kind/gentle with wolves and kids and stuff! Then this all falls to pieces and she goes and fails forever shortly later~
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I miss Ciato doing Journal Entry style stuff personally <_< >_>
Duodecim: Finally beat Feral Chaos in Story Mode 000. by which I mean I finally reached him and beat him; he wasn't trivial, but the fact that I had a slightly underleveled Prishe and a HUGELY underleveled Yuna didn't help, as did the fact that the normally useful Scintilla is kind of pointless on a guy who guard breaks with damn near everything making Sephiroth sort of fail...it was basically "Firion and Terra" as my only viable choices <_<;
Also beat the Distant Glory re-vamps; not sure if they're requirements for Feral Chaos, but I did them anyway!
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I think Ciato missed the WOLF side quest which is perhaps the first time Shana is even remotely useful and hey she's kind/gentle with wolves and kids and stuff! Then this all falls to pieces and she goes and fails forever shortly later~
Huffing animal fur to get high does not equal being gentle.
Also, Ciato springs good memories. Keep up the good work, girl.
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Desktop Dungeons:
Just beat Gauntlet level 19. Thing is? The boss was Super Meat Man (a boss I had previously dismissed as unbeatable on high level gauntlet). And I beat him without using any health or mana potions. I'm really liking the Ironshield+Transmuter combo for Gauntlet purposes. Granted, Monk+Dracul+Platemail could also swing those kinds of results, but that requires three things to spawn.
When Transmuter+Ironshield stops cutting it, I'm actually wondering about Thief+Ironshield or Bloodmage+Ironshield.
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POKEMANS - So got to the second Gym and then promptly went to the forest to load up on good pokemans that the game throws at you in the third town. Yeah I think like 3 of the things I kind of plan to use for the whole game are here and on top of that one of those was a coin flip between Timbur/Sawk depending on which got the better nature.
Back on the Portal conversation Met, I sat down and read the Portal comic (link to it in game under Extras, is available online), looks like after escaping at the end of Portal 1 that Chell is picked up and put into stasis thing you see at the start of Portal 2.
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Traps are pretty great. I coasted through most of the game just by virtue of those. Machinegun trap I want to say was the most reliable, but it's been a while.
Yes, I'm loving the machinegun trap. More range, and not resisted by half the enemies, unlike the fire trap.
Explosive arrows are excellent against crowds too. By now I'm putting every stat point into defense and am still dominating the enemies. (granted, it's an offense oriented game where you can die even if you're still dominating the enemies, even if you're focusing on defense)
It's too bad the shared between files chest is limited in this game. I was starting to put every item that's unique or part of a set into it, just because it's neat.
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Yes. I always wanted to save stuff like that just for style points but found my capacity to do so ultimately more limited than desirable. Shame.
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I think there is mods to expand the shared stash on the PC, at least there is ones to add extra regular ones so as long as it isn't hardcore you can just swap bits and pieces in and out.
General rule of thumb though is to plan your next character and store stuff for them or just stash the good bits of your old gear so you have items to work with on hardcore if you are going to do the same character type after being killed.
Also not sure if it has been patched out or not, but when I was playing the most threatening enemies in the game were the poison shooting enemies Fen, they were quite capable of one shotting characters even on easier difficulties when I was playing (think they were kind of bugged in a similar way to Blinks were in Diablo 2 for the longest time, individual animations hitting more times than intended or something).
POKEMANS - I got to the big city. I have bitched in chat about Patrats/Watchogs, but this bears repeating, whoever decided to make Rattata series even more dickishly threatening needs to have their face kicked in. Fast Dark type attacks pretty much completely kills anything Psychic or Ghost. For everythign else there is Superfang just to ruin your day. Seriously a 60 power 100% accuracy move at level 6 is good. Dark typing is ridiculous early game because it is pretty much unresistable. 10 levels later you give it another 20 power and make it have a chance to drop defense. Looking at the rest of the skill set it is probably the best straight attack skill it gets (Super Fang is Super Fang). It is better than both Hyper Fang and Slam, the last two attack moves it gets. I also note that it gets Confuse Ray later on just to make fighting them even more annoying.
This is complete and total bullshit.
Lillipup on the other hand is also pretty amazingly brutal, but one I can actually respect. Yeah it gets Bite/Crunch issues as well, but 2/6 levels later which goes a decent way to make it less frustrating. Lillipup is just a legitimately threatening and solid Normal type though with nice stats to work with not terrible stats and a bullshit skillset designed just to grief the player. Respect for early Takedown, not a great move, can miss, but keeps you on your toes.
So you have those two and then throw in Purrloin. WHAT UP PSYCHIC? I HEARD YOU LIEKD TO BE USEFUL lol not this tiem.
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PokeWhite: Finished the aftergame a while back. Finally got unlazy enough to write about it.
The Elite 4/endgame sequence was actually kinda neat this time around. On the other hand, the huge jump in levels in the aftergame is really stupid. Going from L52->64 with nothing in between? What the hell, Gamefreak. It can provide a challenge I guess, but of a really stupid kind. There's really nothing interesting in this particular aftergame until you get to the superbosses at the very end, who are competent in a balanced way.
Pokemon-wise, Scraggy picks up Hi Jump Kick at L31, which is game-changing. 130 power/90 acc is just insane, and with STAB it's like having a super-effective hit against anything that doesn't resist it, and between (STAB) Crunch and Rock Slide it can hit most of those super-effectively too. Dark/Fighting was an amazing typing before that, with favorable matchups against almost half the type chart (including 3/4 of the Elite Four), so with HJK Scraggy easily became my best Pokemon up until Zekrom, and it was still a pretty respectable #2 after that. Probably overall MVP across the entire game.
Litwick is... objectively not worth it until the aftergame. Being stuck on stage 1 of a 3-part evo line until L41 really sucks, even with Eviolite patch up the defenses a bit, especially for something you don't get until past the fifth gym. At least you can feed it a Dusk Stone to basically skip the second stage, plus you can feed the ice gym to it later on. On the upside, 145(!) base Special Attack helped it get OHKOs on rematch Caitlin's Metagross and Bronzong where lesser Fire-types would fall short, plus Ghost/Fire is a really good typing against Alder's team. That, and it's a freaking ghost chandelier Pokemon.
Rufflet/Braviary manages to be even more ridiculous, coming in right before the eigth gym (and you need to do some minor sequence breaking to get it even that "early") and not evolving until level 54. What a joke. Still, there was no way I was going to pass up a red white and blue eagle Pokemon that fights for its friends and pierces the heavens while carrying a car, so I sucked it up, exp share'd it until Victory Road, and then fed it every Rare Candy I had saved up. At least it has good stats and moves, plus it was my only Pokemon that could hit the Fighting E4 guy's Pokemon for super-effective damage.
Zekrom is boring but effective. 680 BST, dual STAB that's nearly unresisted, an ability that barely matters in-game, and a bunch of second-tier coverage moves all add up to a legendary that's really good at slugging but doesn't do anything particularly interesting.
Working on 50 traded Pokemon to get the second master ball right now, since that doesn't take much time, just check in every day to see if my trade's gone through. That and trying to get a Nidoran F from the Dream World, which is as dumb as advertised.
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Portal 2: Played and beaten. Was generally pretty good for puzzles and I got a kick out of GLADOS and The Idiot. Not worth the high price tag but a fun romp nonetheless.
Trails: Beaten. This game was a fun romp that developed it's cast well. I've mentioned before that this is pretty cookie-cutter in substance but makes up for that by cranking up style and execution to 11. This remains true right up to the major plot of the game, where a lingering question gets answered and all the character and emotional buildup throughout the game is cashed in for magnificent effect. The only down side is that now we have to wait more than a year for future installations.
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Portal 2: Yeah, what Pyro said. he did most of the playing, but yeah. I actually thought the ending was fantastic (Marked improvement from portal 1 there).
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Last Remnant: Disc 2. Fuck Gates of Hell. Nuff said.
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You want to prepare like at least two revival only squad for that fight.
Forget healing, let them get kill and quickly revive is actually a way to go.
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You want to prepare like at least two revival only squad for that fight.
Forget healing, let them get kill and quickly revive is actually a way to go.
It takes forever to kill the gates of hell that way though. What that means is there's plenty of time for luck to screw you over. Your retarded union AI will eventually position itself just wrong, resulting in every union you have eating a crit hellfire or something and your entire party wiping - or close to it, anyway, and if you're down to 1 union or something you won't claw your way back, since the boss attacks 3 times per turn.
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Still on Yu Gi Oh, Reverse of Arcadia. After graduating from an Exodia deck, I now employ an Airknight Parshath deck. It's... actually quite fun to use, despite my aversion to Fairy-types. It has a definite weakness in the lack of destroy effects, so if the enemy brings out strong monsters to the field, my options to deal with it are limited and few. That's actually worrisome.
I kind of want to try and get a fun Spellcaster deck going, given spellcounter racking should be prrrrrrretty easy and Tempest Magician can really dish out some pain. The only problem is this booster pack format refusing to give me Spell Power Grasp cards. :(
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I had been running three squads of five: combat-oriented (Baulson), magic-oriented (Rush), and hexes (Loki). I ended up dropping the hexes group for a healing-oriented one. I just kept all three squads with enough AP available for Kiss of Life at all times and did fine. He still managed to kill Rush's group once despite the +4 flame def accessories I had on Rush, but I was able to recover before it got out of hand.
BR 76 going into disc 2. That's probably high, but I loves me some chainin'.
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Legend of Dragoon - Fin~ Pretty fun game overall, I think Dart is pretty shitty for a main and I wish I could have tossed him from my party. Oh well, PS1 game. I like the Disc 3 plot stuff and the beginning of Disc 4 developing the Wingly culture. I think the game does a pretty good job of breaking cliches until the end where you have ZIEG and Melbu who are kind of walking cliches. Still has some fun plot twists. I really liked the Albert backstory with Doel and Carlo in the final dungeon, you see a very different point of view from what you've been presented the entire game. The biggest problem I have with the game is that it tries too hard to compensate for people being crappy at additions and as a result has pretty terribad bosses toward the end. The last Virage is a bit of an embarrassment, as is the three person boss in the Law place. I like the law changing thing in the law place, it's very cute (if tedious). I didn't like fighting all the bosses with my really shitty PCs, it was very long and slow. Another thing I liked about the game was that... even though Rose's identity was obvious for a long time, it still blind-sided me because I was expecting something cheesier and less dark.
In conclusion: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH ALBERT MARRIED A GIRL!
:)
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=)
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Pokemon - Seriously, stop have a 100% hit rate with 85% base accuracy moves after you have been hit with 6 accuracy stat downs.
Edit - Also for the Ciatos the term you are looking for is "Grew a Beard (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBeard)"
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You want to prepare like at least two revival only squad for that fight.
Forget healing, let them get kill and quickly revive is actually a way to go.
It takes forever to kill the gates of hell that way though. What that means is there's plenty of time for luck to screw you over. Your retarded union AI will eventually position itself just wrong, resulting in every union you have eating a crit hellfire or something and your entire party wiping - or close to it, anyway, and if you're down to 1 union or something you won't claw your way back, since the boss attacks 3 times per turn.
True, a lot more set up for proper zoning is need for this tactic to be applicable. Ranged healing+decoy+arranging turn order on who comes to heal first and who attack next and what not....
Though, damage shouldn't be hard to come by. Having enough morale boosting item in stock and stay in critical state consistent enough should allow the commands for big moves to be frequent enough.
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Super Mario RPG- So when I originally played this back in 2001 or so, I go to a point where I felt like I couldn't make jumps and shelved it, and ultimately lost that save file somewhere down the line. I think it was in Barrel Volcano.
For whatever reason I replayed it, and thusly actually finished this time.
The difference between then and now, aside from having a controller, is two key points; I read FAQs and thus know what timed blocking is, and the DL exists and I know what Geno's skillset does. I've totally been underrating him, because the game isn't even scaled for Geno Boost honestly. This is true on both ends, the game both is low damage to start with so doubled defense laughs things off and doubled offense largely removes the only thing originally holding your offense in check (the relatively small shared FP pool) from consideration, meaning enemy durability is approximately that of cheap toilet paper.
The chapter bosses try to be tricksy enough to deal with this, but with doubled defenses you can really grind out the nasty one and the rest you just have entirely too much time to figure them out. Smithy is weird in this regard, 8000 HP should actually be respectable even with Geno Boost, but his suicidally unbalanced defenses lead to about the highest damage figures seen in the game. Ah well.
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Pokemans - Okay so the big building that was being a bitch gave me Exp Share. I guess that was worth it.
Also I love how the NPC in the city that you can talk to asks what Monkey you have so that they can give you the evolution stone tells you to think carefully before using the stone because it will slow down the rate at which the pokemon will learn new skills. This is generally pretty good advice (first thing in game I can think of where it gives you a nod that things learn skills earlier if you squat levels!). It is also pretty awesome that it tells you this for Pokemon that stop learning skills after you evolve them (http://www.serebii.net/pokedex-bw/516.shtml). This seems to be the MO for this generation. It fixes many things, clues you in on all sorts of stuff. Half of it is great but it is all veiled behind blatant lies and falsehood.
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Torchlight: Died during the endgame. I don't even know how, my HPs just immediately went from full to 0. I had so much defense and resistance to every element it was ridiculous. The electric and poison attacks from those dangerous Medea looking monsters weren't even close to OHKOing before.
In short: BS!!!!!
Oh well. Don't know what I'll try next playing this game. Maybe a destroyer, as they have more HPs, or an alchemist with Hardcore turned off.
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Pokemon - Seriously, stop have a 100% hit rate with 85% base accuracy moves after you have been hit with 6 accuracy stat downs.
Edit - Also for the Ciatos the term you are looking for is "Grew a Beard (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBeard)"
LoD The After Years. Whatsherface and Shana bitching that they're big gay beards and Albert and Dart resolving their TRUE FEELINGS. Then they pull the mask off of Melbu and reveal that he was in fact Zeromus all along or something and generally proceed according to fanfic written by 12-year olds but hey at least Albert and Dart will finally be together.
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Don't forget Lavitz reviving for love triangle tension.
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Torchlight: Died during the endgame. I don't even know how, my HPs just immediately went from full to 0. I had so much defense and resistance to every element it was ridiculous. The electric and poison attacks from those dangerous Medea looking monsters weren't even close to OHKOing before.
In short: BS!!!!!
Oh well. Don't know what I'll try next playing this game. Maybe a destroyer, as they have more HPs, or an alchemist with Hardcore turned off.
Those particular enemies do ridiculous damage that is not in scale with the rest of the game. They have mods specifically for them. Also watch out for the last boss, he's fairly difficult compared with the previous bosses as well.
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Edit - Also for the Ciatos the term you are looking for is "Grew a Beard (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBeard)"
/me likes this!
Dissidia Duodecim- Finally cleared 000 story mode. I used Yuna, Prishe, Shantotto, Lightning and Terra to defeat the end boss there. Yuna, Prishe and Terra were L100, Shantotto L88 and Lightning L90 or so. Yuna, Prishe and Terra all also had Lufenian equips. Yuna was my starter and Terra was my anchor, Yuna/Prishe and Shantotto/Terra for OTPs, Lightning failed horribly >.> She did have horrible equips though (then again so did Shantotto) <.< Yuna managed to take off half of the opponent's HP by herself, Prishe and Shantotto removed a decent chunk each, Lightning a tiny morsel which left 28'000~ HP for Terra to finish off and land The Final Blow!
(oh and Ultimecia was the assist chosen by the game to help me in the fight, she helped a lot with Prishe)
I also did a bit more of the Labyrinth afterwards. I now have 27% complete there and uhh ... I'm not sure what I want to do next. I've been using Yuna/Prishe as my mains in the Labyrinth with Terra/Lightning filling in when required~
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Talking to my sister, she pretty much forced me to get back to playing Advance Wars: Dark Conflict. Got through a few more missions - I can see why she was hyping the story/characters now! - before going back to my trusty old Pokemon Black.
Stopped breeding for perfect IVs since I'm going to legal-hack everything I need to do it a lot quicker (I want legit Pokes for the tournament, but I don't care how I get them, so legal-hacks for parents seems to be the best approach.) Went and blitzed the E4 with a Lv 100 Scizor - surprisingly harder than I was expecting, probably due to my lack of Choice Band - before going back to the Battle Haxway to grind for more BP so I can get that CBZor that'll make things go so much quicker.
tl;dr: GRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIND ;_;
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SRWZ2: Stage 31 now. Still perfect on SR points, but this level is a bitch. I'm supposed to clear the stage in five turns but it takes four of those five just to reach the boss with one character, and another turn to get two more people there. That's not enough offense to take down 40,000 HP. Back to the drawing board, I guess. My reinforcements show up after Godmars kills a bunch of enemies, and there's got to be somewhere I can park him where he'll kill enough to get them there earlier.
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TOPSP: Almost done! Only Hanging Gardens left. Stupid 20 floor dungeon.
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Did you already beat Hell's Gate?
I still need to venture into the Hanging Gardens myself, but FF4:PSP just came out...and yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah... I think I will mess around with that since that 100 floor dungeon has beunrt me out in TO:PSP.
I'm somewhere around the 30th floor or something. I needed a break.
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Dissidia, managed to beat the 13th Cycle. Was generally impressed with the 12th cycle and all of the new characters introduced in it. And the 13th cycle is pretty much the same as before, except the new Party mechanic actually lets you have multiple people at the same time, which is awesome.
After this I went to try out the Laberynth, which... is apparently a great way to get some items, but the Exp gains are crap, and the Calender bonuses don't apply. Really? Does this game honestly need more grind? Man, with the Duel Colloseum I could, with the bonus, level a couple of characters thirty levels in an afternoon if I wanted to just push them, and get a wide variety of opponents at the same time without having to set anything, or sit through story. Oh, and get some items too, just cause. Here it feels like in that same amount of time I'd get one character about ten levels, if that. So... I'm probably just going to use Squall and the starting section of 000 Story Mode in order to get everyone up to where they actually have move options because having to fight dozens of battles to get to Level 4 is idiotic when I can just have four characters sit around and do squat and get there in three battles.
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I did Hell's Gate in the original, no way in heck I am doing it again!
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I did Hell's Gate in the original, no way in heck I am doing it again!
That is the Palace of the Dead I assume? If so, you'll have to do it if you want to save the life of a certain old astrologist in the download content.
So... I'm probably just going to use Squall and the starting section of 000 Story Mode in order to get everyone up to where they actually have move options because having to fight dozens of battles to get to Level 4 is idiotic when I can just have four characters sit around and do squat and get there in three battles.
The easiest way to grind level is to fight lv.99 Chaos in the free battle mode. And tweak your own original rule into that the higher the enemy's level over you, the higher your starting brave, then proceed on OHKO Chaos. And you fight him three time at once so you can gain some AP at the same time.
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I did Hell's Gate in the original, no way in heck I am doing it again!
That is the Palace of the Dead I assume? If so, you'll have to do it if you want to save the life of a certain old astrologist in the download content.
So what you are saying is "Fuck that noise". That said Ciatos do not have a PS3 so no DLC for them anyway unless something has changed for PSP downloads from when I last read about them (Also DLC for portables? Really? Like right now? Before ubiquitous wireless connectivity? lulz)
POKEMANS - I got a fire monkey thing. I caught some more to make sure I get one with a Nature I like. I keep forgetting to actually check their natures and what they do. So my box is filling up with Fire Monkeys called Flamingo.
I am kind of at a loss, because there is a bunch of mans I want to use because I hear they are kind of alright. They all are like the same damned typing though and leave gaping holes in my offense. I don't know what to do. Do I just grab myself a Sigilyph and call it a day? I will have to work this out.
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Sigilyph would be awesome in any other Pokemon game. In Gen 5 though, it's merely okay, due to an abundance of anti-Psychic and anti-Flying mons enemies carry. I used one during the mid-game and it was technically decent, just... underwhelming since it seemed EVERYTHING hit it's weakness.
For example: the Fighting E4, every one of his pokemon carries a high power Rock move. If you want a Psychic, you might want to wait for an Elgyham. I should have used that instead. You do want at least a Dark and a Fighting that is not a Scraggy though (Scraggy is still weak to Fighting).
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Sigiliyph makes an excellent Fly whore. I used mine until the end of the first E4 battle. It's really competent, and especially powerful when you first get it.
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I am not doing a 100 level dungeon to get a Level 2 PC.
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why not ciatos i thought you were a fan of this gaem
Blue Dragon - Holy shit what is this picking this up again? Well I finished Disc 1. Wheeeee.
Edit - Sigilyph will honestly probably get like half its levels from Exp Share because the anti-psychic shit in this game is pretty nuts, but that is fine. I need something that can Fly and I want something that can use Ice Beam when I get it and a competent Flying skill (until Acrobatics?). I can probably deal with it not being overly crash hot. I just need some kind of Pokemon that isn't Ground or Fighting that I like.
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I did Hell's Gate in the original, no way in heck I am doing it again!
That is the Palace of the Dead I assume? If so, you'll have to do it if you want to save the life of a certain old astrologist in the download content.
That said Ciatos do not have a PS3 so no DLC for them anyway unless something has changed for PSP downloads from when I last read about them (Also DLC for portables? Really? Like right now? Before ubiquitous wireless connectivity? lulz)
PSP DLC does not require PS3 though.
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So last time I looked was wrong. That is fine. Now there is still the reliance upon wireless connectivity with the PSPs small writable memory. Whatevers though, if people will buy it then they can sell it I guess.
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i am a graduate student now not a 15 year old like i was when i did the original's 100 floor dungeon
grefter what should i play now
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Desktop Dungeons
Beat all of the dual-boss dungeons with all classes. Dragon in the Factory and Gorgon in the Crypt were some of the nastier challenge points. But there's also classes that just...seem to struggle in general, like Vampire and Crusader in a lot of dungeons. (Vampire's weird; they start very weak, and end pretty strong. Gotta get over the "must leave unexplored tiles" instinct, though--unexplored tiles are really bad; explore everything at level 1).
In the Gauntlet, up to level 27. Still using Elf Transmuter rather than Human Transmuter just because I'm...not losing, so I may as well use the character with more versatility until I start losing (and then I can crank up the power). I do wonder a little bit if unlocking all the store items is actually a good thing, as it reduces the frequency of some powerful common items. Then again, Crystal Ball rocks, and it's 36/47, buyable BLUDTOPOWA glyph I can totally see myself using, and that's 35/47. I've yet to come across Ring of the Battlemage, but...yes please, and that's 41/47. Yet to come across Orb of Zot, but...goddamn; that would be good if it only hit one target (47/47). So...the big common items I'd be looking to increase the probability on are Venom Blade, Platemail, and Mage Plate, which are 23/47, 24/47, and 25/47 respectively. (And occasionally Soul Orb, which is 8/47). Hmm...I might run some calculations on those later to see how much the probability could actually be increased....
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i am a graduate student now not a 15 year old like i was when i did the original's 100 floor dungeon
"Things an RPG has to understand to be a viable moneymaker" for $600.
grefter what should i play now
I'll field this one, Gref.
The answer is always Deus Ex.
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Desktop Dungeons
Beat all of the dual-boss dungeons with all classes. Dragon in the Factory and Gorgon in the Crypt were some of the nastier challenge
I didn't find Dragon in the Factory too bad, namely because Animated Armors lose a level of death protection whether they're on the primary or secondary side of a knockback.
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i am a graduate student now not a 15 year old like i was when i did the original's 100 floor dungeon
grefter what should i play now
Go finish Mana Khemia 2 you insolent whelp.
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GTASA:
*crash plane*
*crash plane*
*crash plane*
*ragequit*
Batman AA:
Got the objective to leave the asylum, pretty solid so far
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So last time I looked was wrong. That is fine. Now there is still the reliance upon wireless connectivity with the PSPs small writable memory. Whatevers though, if people will buy it then they can sell it I guess.
TO's DLC are all free though.
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That is even more puzzling then.
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Re: downloading on PSP
Gref, isn't that what memory cards are for? Sony loves the little buggers.
Re: what Ciato should play/me opens Ciato's Backloggery
/me chooses random category
Hmm... Megaman X3.
Re: what I'm playing
Dynasty Warriors Gundam - Cleared all levels, but still have to go through about ~18000 more kills for that last achievement. Will grind it out some day. Instead, I moved on to...
Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 - 24 hours in. Cleared all Official Modes, plugging through Mission Mode with Domon, AKA Captain My Voice Gives Me Super Strength.
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Re: downloading on PSP
Gref, isn't that what memory cards are for? Sony loves the little buggers.
All 256 Meg of the default one yeah (if that?).
Also Ciatos should play FF:MQ next.
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The original PSP release had 32 megs, actually!
They've crept up to 4 gigs now, presumably where they'll stay.
How Sony thought 16 gigs on their download service only device would work is beyond me, though.
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All 256 Meg of the default one yeah (if that?).
Also Ciatos should play FF:MQ next.
They do come in bigger sizes and aren't that expensive. I know I got one of my 4GB ones with earbuds for around $40 about a year ago. Although that's like $85 in Aussie Fun Bucks, so I can see your point too.
How Sony thought 16 gigs on their download service only device would work is beyond me, though.
Obviously people would delete their games once they're done playing them. I mean, the only other possible option would be to shell out lots of cash to get more memory cards and... oh.
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Did the Go even have ports for memory cards? I don't see where you'd fit one with the cell phone pull down controller design.
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They do not. That 16 GB is all you're ever gonna see.
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Yeah, apparently they failed at doing math and thought that eight games at once would be enough for anyone.
After all, it's not like you can *carry* more than eight UMDs or anything right.
Wait.
FF6 Eviltype:
I'M DOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEE~
Super Robot Taisen Z2 Hakai-Hen:
Stage 32/33 intermission.
Some thoughts...
Good:
-Pretty. In many ways, even better than Z1. Much better at representing original art styles(often for humorous effect, see Godmars floating around like a brick but having elaborate particle animations on hit), pretty much all of the new animations are great, etc.
-Squad system loss isn't nearly as bad as expected. Seven pathsplits would have made squads annoying at best.
-Has a lot of Z's good points like generally good map design with a lot of thought put into it and generally well balanced mechs, etc.
-Has some pretty damn good mixes of songs. Though, I'm not fond of a few(I miss the old version of the song they use for SEED. The faux guitar sounds amazingly bad in it. Otherwise though.).
BAD:
-mother fucking DUMB MAP DECISIONS OUT OF NOWHERE. 95% of the time maps are designed well. 5% they pull something out of FE6. Bosses that never move with time limits for the SR Point? Yeah those are great. Things like taking out Thymylph's battleship only to have him reappear in his mech....about thirteen squares away, for no reason? On a strict four turn time limit that they don't mention this mech appearing in *and* say the battleship's death is the win requirement? Oh sure. Etc.
It's like almost always good and then something PISSES ME THE FUCK OFF once in a while. It's disconcerting and a little hard to plan for.
Also, the game's a little more samey on design. People complained about Z1/@3 masteries being mostly rush and I didn't feel it, but Z2's is "Rush to X" so much it surprises me when it's not. Badly. (Slightly related annoyance: Accel being expensive despite this and despite no squads. C'mon guys, stop making me lose all my low amounts of SP just to even have a chance at a mastery.)
-Mech design has similar weird hiccups. Every mech with Repair is utterly awful...except the battleship that's often forced on you that can't attack at all, which is pretty tanky. Why would you use any Repair mechs? Some mechs often feel completely out of place bad because...as far as I can tell, no one really adjusted them well for a non-squad game, leading to baffling things like Orguss having less damage than the entire Gundam Wing cast, and no real compensation for it. 90% of the mechs are good, then about 10% are utter trash you will never use. A few make sense thanks to their relative plot suck, but...
-Base system is amazingly primitive. Single tier status weapons, PP based skill system, and that's it. You know which game did that last? OG1. (Ignoring AP and SRW Gaiden DS. Both are more primitive but remakes have some reason for it.) Where's swapping units in your battleships like J and W, the last non-remake non-squad games, had? Or Combo attacks, or W attacks? Where's battleships supporting with non-deployed characters? Where's a new system(No, suborders don't count. Well, they do, but they don't add to strategy a whole lot...)? Why is this game so simple?
In summary: Good game, lot of little things that annoy me, would be surprised if I end up finding it as good as Z1. Very much enjoying it anyways though and looking forward to the next game.
Still hope they fix some of that next game though. It isn't as if they're not fixable issues.
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Actually, PSPGo uses something called "Memory Stick Micro" which means you can't use the same mem sticks you might have for non-crappy PSPs, but at least you aren't stuck with just that built-in 16 GB.
Edit: Niu, they put the TO DLC from the JP version on the disc for the NA/EU releases I believe.
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Desktop Dungeons
Beat all of the dual-boss dungeons with all classes. Dragon in the Factory and Gorgon in the Crypt were some of the nastier challenge
I didn't find Dragon in the Factory too bad, namely because Animated Armors lose a level of death protection whether they're on the primary or secondary side of a knockback.
Hm, I know about that effect, but I suppose I didn't abuse that as much as I could have. (In retrospect, I should have done more "hit low level enemy into high level AA, let the low-level enemy regen, and repeat"). Mostly, in general the factory is a place where you run out of resources (even if you're level 9, you probably need some regeneration tiles to kill a level 5 animated armor). And Dragon takes a lot of resources (to regen to full). It's a map with lots of magic resist (and Dragon's main damage will always be magic; no adapting; yeah, knockback into wall isn't magic, but I didn't realize that on my first couple attempts). And...the Factory has the single greatest use for fireballs...which dragons can't use.
Anyway: Gauntlet, up to 31 or so. I have switched race, but switched to Dwarf, not Human. If the boss is dealing less than 135 damage to me, I'm probably winning anyway, but I got frustrated with a couple situations where I just couldn't take a hit from the boss. Definitely lost at least one fight I could have won as Elf (against Tormented One) but Dwarf feels generally better at these levels.
Probably my most amusing win, though, was Dwarf Transmuter vs Gharbad The -Whoa. My class/race is obviously terrible here, but the map happened to have Crystal Ball, BLUDTOPOWA, and CYDSTEPP. 2x2 is 3, according to DD (thats how it stacks two instances of"double mana regen"), but a reraise every three tiles outdamages the boss regen just fine.
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TOPSP: Done. The last battle was somewhat challenging. At least the first part. Until I saw those Shiny level 4 Field Alchemy Orbs. The second fight was a much bigger downer. That dungeon in general needs fire.
Not sure if I want to do the after game. It looks like the enemy units keep getting stronger but your equipment is stuck at a certain level unless you like to wait for drops. And fuck.dat.
Anyway, fun enough game, but time to move onto something else I suppose.
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Wizard of Oz- Picked this back up for at least another 5 seconds. Got the L7 skills and went back and fought Holly. Wouldn't have won without them, and it was still close. At one point, everyone but Lion was dead, but then she used two missed DreamLands in a row.
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Welcome to Holly. She's a total bitch and Elfboy is insane(ly badass) for beating her without L7s.
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Desktop Dungeons
The following amusing situation happened:
I was a level 10 Dwarf (10 is max level, Dwarves specialize in HP. To put things into perspective, there's actually a boss with less HP than I had). I was at full health. I went to attack a level 3 enemy, only to see the word "DEATH" which is a caution warning the player that the enemy is going to kill you on their counterattack.
I scratched my head and wondered how this was possible. Turns out I had angered Binlor a lot with spellcasting. Each time you anger him he subtracts 10% from your defences. My defences were about -250% by that point. Wheeeeee!
(Totally won that one too, even though the boss was a Wraith).
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Picked up VP2, somewhere in chapter 3 so far. I fail forever and ever at combos and targeting specific parts. I dread the day the game decides to stop letting me kill randoms by mashing every attack at once or hiding in bosses blind spots because I will probably start dieing horribly once that happens.
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Picked up VP2, somewhere in chapter 3 so far. I fail forever and ever at combos and targeting specific parts. I dread the day the game decides to stop letting me kill randoms by mashing every attack at once or hiding in bosses blind spots because I will probably start dieing horribly once that happens.
That never happens. VP2 looks far more sophisticated than it really is.
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Shining Force 3 Part 1 - Started this yesterday, am now on a train.
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Are you Selphie.
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No but you are some random guy who tagged along for shits and giggles and surely won't leave five battles hence.
And you're probably gnawing on Yakumo.
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I'm not random!
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But we're not in Part 3 yet! Spoilers mang, we don't want to give the game's surely incredible plot away.
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Not like anyone will ever play it in non-moonrune language in the next five years or so.
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Well, SF3's story is amazing..... until part3. It taught us the lesson on how easily a game's plot can be destroyed.
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Don't we learn that from at least one game a year anyway?
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GTA4 - Finally finished this playing it on and off probably for nearly a year now. So that last mission can go get fucked. Drive somewhere zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Shoot some dudes zzzzzzzzz chase a thing on a bike zzzzzzzzz jump the bike onto a chopper lol controls fuck up and camera spazzes the fuck out. Try three times, give up and look up stuff. Some dude on Gamefaqs mentions something about it being a frame limit issue, with settings turned down so the game runs decently on a modern decent PC the frame rate goes up and the the game actually responds to your clicks worse during timed events, it wants to be running around 30 FPS to work. Not sure if it is true or not, but I turned on shadows and added Space as an extra jump button instead of just using the Mouse. That worked. Then oh god chopper control bit I haven't flown a chopper for like 6 months, I have no idea what to do anymore. Fudge my way through it at least. Get up to the last boss dude and there is guys that shoot at you I wasn't expecting (HOW DID HE KNOW HE WOULD CRASH LAND A CHOPPER ON THE ISLAND?!???), so uh killed them with shotgun because I was cycling through weapons, then suddenly police! Errr okay what the fuck ever. I shoot the boss with the last 5 shells I had loaded in the shotgun and then panic scrolled to something not shitty. Shot him with an RPG to win.
Game is no where near as fun or good as San Andreas. If they stop making GTA games like this and go back to that I will be much happier. The controls are worse than San Andreas (HOW IN THE HELL) and there is numerous graphical, optimisation and all round performance issues with this port. It is really pretty much terrible on the PC.
Edit - Oh yeah while I hate on mass marketed games
POKEMANS - Something else to bitch and complain about! I am leveling Munna a little so it will live decently long while I use it to catch Victini (just a few levels to make it a bit bulkier). This is when I realised it would cover my more pained offensive typed gaps, I might still pick up Sigilyph to have a Flyer anyway, just have to get a Magic Guard one. ANYWAY, Munna and things to bitch about. I just got to the level it learns Imprison. Here is what Imprison does. It prevents the enemy pokemon from using any skill that the user of Imprison has.
Wow. That is an awesome move guys. Other than shutting out Imprison itself it can shut out up to three other moves at a time. From the entire move pool of Pokemon. That is awesome (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/terrible). Ignoring all the obvious things like how low the odds of the opponent having the same skills as you do on Munna and whatnot, it straight up has half the PP of Disable, which is not a great move but is at least guaranteed to have any damned use at all.
Here is the really huge thing though! Is when looking it up to bitch about I realise that this isn't even the first gen to have the move. What in the -fuck- Gamefreak?
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Imprison is a strictly doubles(/triples) move, and not an in-game one at all. You can use it to do stuff like get rid of Protect (one of the best and most widely used moves in doubles) or protect your Rayquaza from enemy Ice Beams.
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Not like anyone will ever play it in non-moonrune language in the next five years or so.
Nah, translation's almost completely done. I think they've got one area in the final chapter of the last game left to insert.
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I suspect that's what it'll take them five years to close up.
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Shining Force 3 Part 1 - Snow ingloriously countergnawed a boss to death. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
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Should I feel proud?
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Yes.
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/me does so, I guess.
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Tactics Ogre - After only two resets the entire game leading up to this (not to say the game was easy by any means, there were certainly a few really good fights that I won first try + the game generally maintained a pretty consistent level of challenge), I have run into major trouble against the boss fight in Heim Castle.
Valkyrie Profile - Replaying this, sorta rushing. I'm recruiting everyone and doing all the dungeons ('cept Caves of Oblivion, because screw them). Banning myself from using the major defensive cheese and will do the same with the Creation Jewel to give the game a fighting chance but overall I am still crushing it. Arngrim/Lawfer/Jelanda party. Hel Servants nearly killed me though, not enough Union Plumes and I forgot how much waaay better they were than any previous boss. Although, the fight lasted something like 9 rounds and I never saw them use magic? It was very weird, huge fluke if that's just luck.
Anyone (Captain?) know if there's some trigger to them using magic? Not that it really matters much since it's all a flavour of high 2HKO (well, I think Poison Blow is OHKO) regardless.
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overall I am still crushing it. Arngrim/Lawfer/Jelanda party.
See that's the problem, you need a worse team. *Nods.*
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Llewelyn/Badrach/Grey challenge run. Make it happen.
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Grey is way too good for that team. He needs to use Jayle for that.
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Jayle is the awesome good fun times. There is so much bouncing. Jayle >>>>>>>>>>> Grey. I vote for Jayle/Llewelyn/Archer Valk/Neimi party. It is pretty bad for PWS as well from memory. Think you can get someone alright in last slot (great magic finisher for randoms with Llewelyn with Heat boosting accessory?)
POKEMANS - I hit up Nimbasa City. I walked around a bit. Then N walked up to me and told me that Team Plasma went this way (?!?!? Didn't this guy already make it abundantly clear that he is working with them? Maybe it is just to the player where he is introduced in battle as TEAM PLASMA N with the big Plasma splash screen...), then says hey bro lets get on this ferris wheel. Then he says NO JOHN I AM THE PLASMAS. Shock. Then he helps Team Plasma escape by getting in a battle with me. Then he loses and says the only way to stop him is to get all eight badges and beat him at the Pokemon league.
I didn't even know Team Plasma were in town, so if their plans are to win by confusing me, well their first plan worked and their second one is looking up as well. Why exactly would I be worried about a total chump winning the Pokemon league? Why do I not hospitalise him right now, I clearly have the pokemon that can dislocate all his limbs while all his are defeated. Alternate non-violent solution, tell Professor Juniper who clearly has ties with the Pokemon League, or tell one of the Gym Leaders who has taken an interest in me for no particular reason? Let the Pokemon league guys know that this N douchebag and Team Plasma are gunning for them and to call the cops on them and ruin their shit. I don't understand why in the fuck this seems like a good plan and why he straight up tells you it. Mission accomplished N, you have me thoroughly baffled.
WoW - I am weak and wanted to see some things. They did some things I swore black and blue they needed to do to make this expansion good (daily dungeons are now not a daily thing, you can do 7 a week to full benefit). So... I don't know what this means now. My life was better having quit the game, but I still haven't seen the things yet.
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Play hard mode, ban bonus EXP and the store, start every chapter with a party of Valkyrie and three level 1s.
Challenge!
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...so pretty much a normal run for me?
Look I forget to buy things and am indecisive about bonus EXP and like changing things up okay.
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Play hard mode, ban bonus EXP and the store, start every chapter with a party of Valkyrie and three level 1s.
Challenge!
The store is fine. Levels aren't that important. It's treasure chest items and item creation items and items given by Freya that are the real power. (Well...that and Guts+Auto Item).
The DL-legal playthrough I did like...8 years ago was decently challenging, for instance (nothing but storebought items; I don't think I allowed myself any skills, either--no survival on mages!!1 Granted: I did use accessories).
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I remember Elfboy's playthrough of the "completely arbitrary restrictions". something like No Weapons unless they were Odd Chapter Storeboughts (so Reiter Pallasch would be fine, but Valkyrie Favor would not be), no Guts/Auto Item, among a few other bizarre things? The thing I remember most was that he was compiling stats for every enemy in the game (after a point) for the topic, and in Chapter...7?, he made the comment "You know its a sad day when Lyseria is the 2nd best enemy in the entire update" or some such.
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Ahhhh beautiful memories of updates of those runs through.
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Just play Easy mode if you want something resembling challenge in VP. No Lawfer and no Creation Jewel makes it the hardest of the three modes. Irony, thy name is VP.
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I think Elfboy's run did allow Guts, actually. I know we reached a consensus that I had the more "interesting" playthrough (in terms of challenge) and certainly Elfboy had worse equipment than me, so he must have been more lenient somewhere else (probably skills).
Anyhow: Desktop Dungeons--just got to Gauntlet level 40 in epic fashion. First attempt at 39, I was against Tower of Goo, I had Spiked Flail (50% knockback item), and the poison glyph, and...I just played things wrong. I needed to leave a roww of blocks near the boss to smash him through, and I kept absent-mindedly blowing up nearby blocks. I had poison and didn't begin chipping and poisoning as early as I could have. I was 8 gold short of buying a key item. I didn't use potions slightly earlier (when there were still nearby blocks to blow up, making physical attacks worthwhile). I would petrify an enemy just to have a knockthrough block, which I realized only at the end is less mana efficient than knocking into empty space and fireballing. And despite all this I was close: the boss had about 20-30 HP left (out of 938).
Next attempt, got the Spiked Flail again (this is a rare item I usually don't see) but otherwise generally weaker equipment, and was against Lord Gobb (overall better boss) and I narrowly won. Not that I didn't make some minor mistakes (like...Transmuters heal when they destroy a wall; I only found out today that this works with Spiked Flail. And I was using this combo against the boss, but I should have also used it against low level scrubs near walls to heal without mana). But minor mistakes aside, it's nice to get a real feeling that I just improved, that I executed much, much better than last time. Also gives me a good feel for how far I could go with this strategy (Gauntlet level 39 Lord Gobb is like...Gauntlet level 55 Jogurmander or Medusa or Iron Man. And like...Gauntlet level 70 Nine-Toes...).
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I certainly don't recall reaching that consensus! <_< >_> My playthrough was better because it made Fenrir a total fucking badass. (Though not as good as Wraith. Nobody was as good as Wraith. Outside the SG, which the playthrough... was not balanced for.)
And yeah, Guts was banned, as were all reaction abilities and anything which blocked status, and Angel Curios/etc. So were attack items and MT healing items. Anything which diminished enemy uniqueness or allowed them to be bypassed. was seen as bad. It was pretty darn fun but it is part of the reason I felt due for normal playthrough.
No idea about the Hel Servants possible-AI-weirdness, VP experts?
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I know there was something you allowed that I didn't...hmm...maybe using Union Plumes in-battle? (Items are not DL legal!)
And I raise your competent Fenrir with competent Akhetamen. (I think he may have been the hardest boss on my run? Fenrir was decent too, FWIW)
No idea about the Hel Servants.
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Not sure about the Hel Servants, been a *long* time since I played. If it's not in the Bestiary I dunno.
Oh, and Grefter:
Azelf (Imprison/Protect/Detect/Explosion) tends to wreck anything that isn't a Ghost. But yeah it is kind of an ass move overall.
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I definitely remember Elfboy stating that his strategy for fighting Wraith came down to "Lenneth survives, solos fight from there." If Guts were allowed, that would not be the case, as he'd otherwise could have just done "reset until he gets lucky on Guts, restore team!"
(He was constantly swapping characters, so Lenneth was naturally massively overleveled, hence why she would live but no one else would.)
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Yeah, items were allowed, so long as they weren't attack items (mostly because they're stupid earlygame) or the MT healing items (because they make MT not matter).
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I definitely remember Elfboy stating that his strategy for fighting Wraith came down to "Lenneth survives, solos fight from there." If Guts were allowed, that would not be the case, as he'd otherwise could have just done "reset until he gets lucky on Guts, restore team!"
(He was constantly swapping characters, so Lenneth was naturally massively overleveled, hence why she would live but no one else would.)
Yeah, we both did the constantly swapping characters.
Wraith for me was "must kill in two turns", I think; no in-battle items so soloing was not possible. Party was something like Lewellyn (with one-hit bow) Arngrim (possibly with one-hit sword?), probably a mage with Mystic Cross, and...probably bow Lenneth to get the hits higher? I do know that Lewellyn was absolutely required for one of the mass-kill bosses.
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Desktop Dungeons: Dammit, MC. I have a job!
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Don't you work at home? Disconsider that. >_>
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Shining Force 3 Part 1 - A boss got owned by sleep. Then Snow decided it was a great idea to gnaw on a fuckoff demon and got thrown into the river for his troubles.
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Seems like I give you a neverending stream of joy, surprises and unwanted tears.
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Who knows. We'd need to get to Part 2 where you gnaw on Hal to get a definitive answer there. Having Julian be a wandering whore that gnaws on everything amuses me more than the game's actual dialogue, at any rate.
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... >_>
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Lenneth couldn't just solo the fight because Wraith has high-accuracy status. There was some juggling of reviving versus not as his AI changed at different HP levels. Also she didn't just survive because she was somewhat overlevelled (which alone wouldn't have been enough), she was also the only person who could half lightning at that point.
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... >_>
I just roll with what the bot and my feverish imagination give me.
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KH BSS: Done. Finished Ventus' story, then went back and finished the final chapter. This was a really sad ending :(. But oh well, the game is fun while it lasted. It's really short, so it's quite possible to finish it in a day if you wanted to. But it's also easy to get burnt out playing the same thing three times essentially. Rating still stands at a 8/10 I think.
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Desktop Dungeons: so...there's a bunch of very rare, expensive items that give big bonuses but significant penalties. Wicked Guitar, Berserker's Blade, Magician's Moonstrike, Terror Slice. I came close to using Magician's Moonstrike today (which gives +15 MP but drops attack to 1)...but still didn't. The boss was Tormented One, which made physicals a really bad plan, so at first glance it seemed like a no-brainer. But...I had Blue Bead, and unexplored areas that might contain more low-level enemies to trigger Blue Bead (whee, +1 mana on kill) and by the time I was done exploring, the Tormented One was dead from the fireballs I'd fired while wandering around. (And with that: there goes Gauntlet level 41).
Annoying night for Gauntlet, though: Binlor just wouldn't spawn (50% chance). Both times he did I won, but....
On the other whacky items...tested out Wicked Guitar. It can kill you (so you see "safe" and then die from guitar feedback). At high levels it's unimpressive: increases damage by 20% but you take 20% of what you deal, which ends up pretty even. Probably good at low levels except that surviving counterattacks from higher level enemies was often the hard part at low levels. Terror Slice might be the best of the lot, but you do need cydstepp or it's worthless. Berserker Blade just seems bad (set max mana to 1, attack+50%). Fine if you're worshiping Taurog, but I'm not convinced worshiping Taurog is...worth-it, most of the time. Taurog can enhance your physicals, but so can magic (often better than Taurog). Magician's Moonstrike is...fine, occasionally; probably would have used it if the fight had gone on longer in my specific situation...but it didn't.
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It's been a good day for me.
WoW - Managed to get the PvP achievement for the current holiday. I have an Arcane Mage with no PvP gear. This is a huge success for me.
BvS - First, I obsess over Hanafuda. There is a trophy you can obtain by getting all 5 Brights in a single round. Summertime SUCCESS!
Candyween. A BvS "holiday" that is very expensive to run if it's not the last day of the month. My main finally got the Smile For The Camera achievement. SUCCESS!
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Replaying Fallout: New Vegas. This probably would be GotY if ME2 had come out a month earlier. Or at least have to scrap it out with Civ 5.
Instead of guns, this time I am using explosives as my main combat skill, because the Grenade Machine Gun is hard as fuck and the Grenade Rifle makes me feel like the Terminator. I have made it to Freeside so far, with only moderate difficulty.
I think this time I want to use my favor to become a member of the Kings. And also be a cannibal.
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Desktop Dungeons
So...I just realized I'm right on the borderline of Dwarf becoming bad in Gauntlet again. I just got to level 45, which means most bosses deal 243 damage. After the defence bonus from Hardiness, that gets reduced to 182. Without items, Binlor Dwarf caps out at 185 HP.
Now, the "without items" line is important: a bunch of items buff durability. And depending which (if any) of those spawn they could help a little or a lot. Which makes the Dwarf ceiling pretty fuzzy.
Interestingly, I'm simultaneously not far off from another big border: if I need to spend 10 mana on healing between boss hits, then it's less mana efficient than fire magic. (243 attack bosses push me into 9-and-sometimes-10 mana range just to heal one boss hit with Transmuter).
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Parasite Eve 3rd Birthday: Started this up, beat the tutorial mission!
...and the game is getting shelved for about another week! No, its not really the game's fault so much as its finals and I'd rather not get too involved in something new; mostly starting it up to make sure the game was fine and I didn't get a defective copy or something.
Namco x Capcom: So I just got the guy from Dig Dug to join me...and Drak apparently was allowed to be killed like 4 times because the game doesn't' let a boss die if he's got any sort of role in the following plot scene. I have to question why they didn't just do a "If Boss is dead, advance plot in fight" scenario, rather than making it a pure turn related thing. This resulted in me on 2 separate occasions going "Wait, I DIDn'T kill the guy? Is my attention to detail really that bad?" and then MAKING SURE he died on hte 3rd attempt and going "Oh...he's still alive..."
To the game's credit, for all its brokeness...they at least restricted bosses from giving out EXP multiple times from this LITERAL PLOT ARMOR of being able to kill them multiple times, so uh, go them?
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VP2: As if the swamp dungeon wasn't whorish enough, the developers decided to have the palace of venerated dragons or whatever be even worse. POIZN trap room and enemies that revive with wide attack ranges in narrow fields, finally started to feel like I was getting the hang of the place when right after placing a stone on the first dias I get into an encounter only to have an enemy that barely survives a combo ohko my entire party. Great. currently muttering curses at the developers for their sadism while contemplating when I'll feel like booting up my last save from 2 hours earlier before that happened only to subject myself to this stupid dungeon again.
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Phantom Brave- Got to lower my average RPG score clearly, so I'm playing this. 30 Minutes so far, clunky as shit.
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Those particular enemies do ridiculous damage that is not in scale with the rest of the game. They have mods specifically for them. Also watch out for the last boss, he's fairly difficult compared with the previous bosses as well.
Torchlight: Yeah, I guess I got killed by a lightning attack critical or something. Stupid.
I just replayed as a destroyer, still on VHHC, currently in the fire prison. My plan is to keep all the teleportation scrolls + teleportation quest for right before the final dungeon, get a ton of levels and stomp on the final boss and dark zealots. We'll then see how I'll then survive the aftergame (Hint: I won't)
Great class. Entropic Aura, Stampede and Titan Stomp are fun. I'd use Shadow armor more, but it turns the screen into an even bigger clusterfuck.
'Splosion Man: Finished. Loved it, just the right amount of difficulty. (I never could finish N or Super Meat Boy...)
Instead of guns, this time I am using explosives as my main combat skill, because the Grenade Machine Gun is hard as fuck and the Grenade Rifle makes me feel like the Terminator. I have made it to Freeside so far, with only moderate difficulty.
I never could find enough explosives in that game to main them. I was serious about it too, my character was pretty much only focused on Barter and Explosives. I had never relied on melee weapons and small guns as much as here, which is stupid.
(Explosives are still great for disabling melee enemies)
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Not even when you get a flamer/Incinerator going? I thought there was a decent supply of ammo for those.
POKEMANS - I haven't played this for days. I should go do the Electric gym I guess.
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I know I wound up with thousands of units of spare flamer ammo by the end of the game, and I even used the incinerator a fair bit early on before I got a good stock of energy weapons.
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The new patch made direct hits from explosives much stronger and typically better for crippling limbs, important for the only 2 noteworthy enemies (cazadors and deathclaws). It was disappointing that a direct hit from 100 explosive skill Fat Man did 35% damage to Deathclaw Alpha Male. I never had a problem finding missiles or frag grenades but 40mm grenades are harder to find for the low-mid game. Melee is a good supplement to explosives, you don't need high INT, PER, or LUK so you're free to boost STR, AGI, and END to max, even boost some CHA so I can make Boone already solo harder than he needs too.
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Shining Force 3 Part 1 - I now have a penguin. That is all.
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Pippen~?
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Collect them all!
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Dead Space: Shooting limbs off simulator, feels pretty average since the controls feel a little sluggish. Gotta go poison something huge
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Nitori are you an Ewok X-Wing pilot
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Bleed and die yub yub?
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Yub, yub, Snow. Yub yub (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx3rSNzOAMM)
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Yub Yub,
Commander General Supreme Commander.
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Yub yub this. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAwQDwGelT4)
Anyway, just got the Xbox back so I'll be back to DW:Gundam 2 fun.
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This thing had a SECOND SEASON? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLt0GaIBMIs&feature=related)
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Resonance of Fate: Hard mode - completed.
General thoughts? Hard mode changes quite a few things with just a few minor tweaks. Adding 1.2x more damage and durability goes a long way into making basic enemies obviously better, although there's still some bits and pieces of AI holes to take advantage of. For all that it's called "hard mode", it might as well be Hard for only the first two chapters, Chapter 4 and the last few chapters of the game from Chapter 14-16. All other chapters not included on this list are relatively unchanged for the most part. The biggest changes:
- Chapter 1 enemies are very tough. Without any customization, your base guns barely have enough firepower to take on even lowly thugs.
- Chapter 1 Tar Man is a nasty nuisance with his healing. I actually used the arena to level up a bit so I could get up to charge level 4-5 to deal decent damage at once.
- There's a room in Chapter 2's dungeon that's extremely annoying. Luckily under Hard, this is simply annoying and not "extremely fucking painful"
- Chapter 4, statue is almost guaranteed to be destroyed unless you use up some AP ammo in that second to final room
- Chapter 14 enemies have pretty good KOing power (4HKO after 28% resist or so). They also have enough durability now that 47 charges on a M.Gun is not enough to full scratch. You either need Hollow Point++ or dual wield to do it
- Chapter 16, final boss has a 2HKO and is fast. Several other enemies rooms are extremely nasty (particularly, there's one with a tank and a Goliath that is extremely nasty).
The best status condition I imagine as the difficulty goes up is immolation. It actually *powers* up if you link Fire boost terminals. As an example Final boss takes roughly 6k damage a sec when immolated. Under the hardest difficulty, he takes 44k. It's possible to 2HKO him back as a result.
Probably not touching the game for a while now. Sunk 180+ hours into it, but it's been good fun. The one thing I am sad to say is that I did not know you can cancel and rotate the shooting order a triangle attack until after watching a video :(
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How are you supposed to protect the statue in uber hard NG+10 mode?
Edit: Good lord, anything is possible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy3f7_-3Qes
Torchlight: Your pet is fleeing. Your pet is fleeing. Your pet is fleeing. Your pet is fleeing. Your pet is fleeing.
I'm in the final dungeon, owning dark zealots with Seismic Burst. Now that the destroyer has an awesome cheap long range skill, I think I can safely say the other two classes are obsolete in hard modes.
By the way, boss versions of dark zealots are terrifying.
Skills are now:
Frost shield 9
Seismic Burst 1
Entropic Aura 1
Adventurer 10
Armor expertise 10
Martial weapons expertise 8
Treasure hunter ...4?
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Pokémon Black - After The End, meandered over to Black City
Team when starting the E4 was Mienfoo (temp), Klang, Vanilluxe, Krookodile, Jellicent, Emboar. All level 48.
Currently at 145/118 in the only dex that matters.
The majority of the 3D effects in the game were reminiscent of the incidental 3D effects they used sometimes in Grandia, just showing off mediocre 3D for the heck of it. We are truly living in the future.
So I've arrived at Black City and found it to be deserted. Another notch to the Belt Of Bad Ideas for Nintendo, assuming that people starting new games and finishing them ludicrously quickly is in fact the only way to reverse global resident entropy as I currently understand to be the case.
Game was generally enjoyable.
BttFtG Episode 4 - Finished
Still more railroading than I would have preferred. The model citizen requirement also had a particularly annoying 'puzzle' to beat that took three times longer than necessary.
The story is going places I approve of at least. Hopefully the final episode won't let me down.
Game was generally enjoyable.
Hector: Badge of Carnage Episode 1 - Finished
Going to say that the promotional materials I saw for the game did not exactly give me an accurate impression of the game. But I didn't see too many. So my misexpectations are really my own fault. Seems strange that Telltale are backing the PC version though.
Gameplay is mediocre. Overarching storyline is reasonable, but in general the local storylines are also mediocre. I'm not sure whether I will bother getting the subsequent episodes.
Also the animation doesn't seem to even attempt to lipsync with dialogue which I found quite distracting.
Game was generally mediocre.
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Desktop Dungeons: ok yeah, definitely time to jettison Dwarf from Gauntlet play.
In order to survive at this point I need a durability buff above and beyond Dwarf Binlor; just a small one, like +10 HP. Earthmother doesn't really help; 50% of the time she'll spawn a glyph that can be converted for 10HP, but the other 50% she won't and this loses Binlor's on-worship +5 HP. Items usually do help: there will usually be one of Troll Heart or Pendant of Health, since both are extremely common.
But there's an extra catch: this assumes converting all glyphs except ENDISWALL. The problem being that boss durability is so high that regen games are critical, and these often lean on APHEELSIK or BLUDTOPOWA. The one exception being uber items like Crystal Ball and (for Transmuter) Stone Heart, but these are rare, and certainly Crystal Ball supports all strategies.
I hit a situation today where I had the option to go physical (Crystal Ball and Fine Sword...but I'd have to convert BLUDTOPOWA). I took the physical option thinking "I may as well make my potions worthwhile". So...I maybe got 200 extra physical damage from that. But...when I went back and did the math, Crystal Ball BLUDTOPOWA fireballing combines for 20 damage every two tiles, and the physical setup was doing 21 every five tiles. On the bonus 200, Elf would give extra mana: 4 more per mana potion, and some more from the higher max; so...three or four extra fireballs there (120-160 damage from that) and in this case I also had blue bead, so I could convert some of my health into mana by killing low level monsters with first strike, which I was reluctant to hit this time because the damage I'd take wasn't worth the 1 mana. So the argument "I should use my HP and Health potions as that's 200 damage right there" can be almost entirely countered by "go Elf; get almost 200 bonus damage in fireballs; who needs potions?" (Not so much with my mid-match decision when it was too late to go elf, even though going physical mid-match was still the wrong choice, but next time...).
Granted I did win this last run despite making the wrong choice to use my physical resources, but it was epically close, ending in me buing Dancing Sword for first strike and even then only barely killing. (I'm pretty sure I've never bought Dancing Sword before on a Gauntlet run).
We'll see, though. I might find that as soon as I roll Elf, I'll be littered with maps with platemail and stoneheart and I'll be shaking my fist.
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Torchlight: Died against Aldric. Noooooo
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Really? Ooh, you're so not ready for Ordrak then.
Last Remnant: finished the six base battles. Now I'm stuck at the Ladies of Bloody Alice quest, and things just aren't going my way. Guess I need to go stat-grind a bit.
Radiant Historia: final area. I was expecting some really clever motivation from the villain for why he's doing things. My years of playing RPGs should have taught me better.
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Wizard Of Oz- Fuck you forced touch screen usage. Final fight, almost had Oz down. At least had a passable store of MP left; did need to MT heal, but everyone in the battle was at base speed, so no issues there. But....accidentally hit flee, I auto lose a turn, he doubles MT, 2 PCs dead and I'm basically no longer in any position to win.
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I'm not playing The Witcher II... But I did Pre-order it today.
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Dead Space: I always gotta be crazy don't I, cool enough RE4 in space, final boss is underwhelming past the bit where you shoot it while entangled
Radiant Historia: Gotta teach Stocke a trick, have him jump through a flaming hoop
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Tell me you are going to play Dead Space 2 Nitori. I want to hear about your self performed eye surgery.
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Final Fantasy 4: Complete Collection
- Finished both FF4 and After Years.
Final FF4 Party was Cecil/Kain/Edge/Palom/Porom.
- Cecil is of course good, and certainly better then Kain and Edge. He's also forced.
- Kain is... kind of ok? I mean, he's not awful until Cecil's weapons get way stronger then his, and I suppose you could give him the Avenger or something like that. Actually, he was usually the one to get Hasted/Berserked.
- Edge is decent. He's got damage, at least! Steal was never used once but maybe there is a couple OK things to steal. Throw is good at a couple spots. Defense/HP is bad also.
- Palom is good! He learns all the good spells like Quake quickly. However, a lot of the later game bosses counter Black Magic, which makes him kind of bad against them.
- Porom is Rosa -700 HP. Yup, that sums it up. If you want two white mages she's an option.
But yeah, original FF4 is original FF4. It's a fun game but probably running entirely on nostalgia.
Now for After Years! I've actually played through this once before with a friend, so this is a replay.
After Years, in my opinion, does character development better then the original FF4 (Not that it's that hard, but!) The segmented part works, though it sucks not having a full party for a large portion of the game. The game is more difficult then the original but very beatable. Grinding is not necessary but not a bad idea either - the games auto battle makes this easier. Challenge Dungeons are fun to run through once, but not to grind like 9 times looking for items that will get outclassed 30 minutes into the last dungeon.
The tales are a mixed bag, some are fun (Edge, Palom) whereas some aren't that great (Edward, Porom). The final chapter is the best part of the game and the longest. Final team was Ceodore/Palom/Ursula/Leonora/Zangetsu.
Ceodore was solid. He starts off weak - his HP is low for a frontliner, and his magic is kind of bad. He ends up with "good enough" HP and useful buffs like Shell and Haste. He's also really fast.
Palom was great late game, after Dualcast. Dualcast flares = 16K out of almost anything, which is kind of amazing. At first he is slow as dirt, though, and has a poor spell selection. After Quake(again!) he starts to pick up, and Flare makes him great.
Ursula was decent. She's a good candidate for being berserk/hasted, and the Queens Whip I bought in Palom's tale gives her like, 5 more attack, which is good for a while. Tenketsu is a solid special move, Chakra is kind of replacable by X-potions. Her band with Ceodore is great, it's fast and strong.
Leonora is a decent White Mage. I never grinded enough for her to get any black spells worth using other then Stop, which is decent. Learns her spells late, you would probably be better off with Porom or Rosa.
Zangetsu was used because a friend of mine wanted me to. He's... surprisingly usable. He's not GREAT, but he ended up better then I thought! Blitz was like 3K damage to all enemies, which is pretty alright, he can use the Fire Scarf, and Shadowbind is good too. His HP is bad, though, and he could really use more variety, and he's certainly no Kain.
Anyway, the game is fun! I have no idea why but I really like After Years, even if it's probably not that great a game, but I really enjoyed playing it.
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Starcraft 2:
So...after not playing for two weeks (and being a mostly 2v2 player to begin with) I come back and...proceed to lose every 1v1 game I played against a DLer.
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Radiant Historia: And done. Final levels were Stocke 53, Raynie/Aht 50, Marco/Gafka 49, Rosch 47, Eruca 39.
Went into the final part at 201/236. I did all the sidequest stuff except for those relating to skill books. Only character I found all the skill books for was Marco.
Fought Kefka with Raynie and Marco since they were default after swapping Chapters. Managed to win on the first try, though I was getting rather low on items towards the end.
Overall game was good, not great. The story was fairly solid overall, except (as mentioned previously) the villain's motivation was horribly RPG cliche and not interesting at all. Stocke is a great main as far as being levelheaded, although he does come off as a bit dull since his main schtick is thinking about decisions a lot.
The combat system was not terribly exciting. There was some strategy to it, but for the most part there isn't a whole lot to "discover" in it past the the first chapter. The big problem is that so many moves are near-worthless due to the way defenses are calculated. Most multi-hit moves have such pathetic multipliers that there's very little reason to use them at all. Even for the purpose of building up a high combo count, you could almost always get more damage by using strong single-hit moves instead of multi-hit moves in a big combo. The one interesting thing I discovered very late in the game is that "air" moves are actually useful. The falling down hit is 25% of the damage of the move that strikes after the air hit. It only uses the multiplier of the final hit though, so again you want a high multiplier move rather than a multi-hit move.
Also, the encounter system was George Takei. I have to have my sword fully extended and strike you with the very tip. You may or may not stop moving randomly.
Characters:
Stocke: Surprisingly not-overpowered for a main. Could do everything, but no single thing as well as other characters. His magic is passable, but unfortunately the ingame weapons tend to be All Physical! or All Magical! Not a lot of balanced weapons to fit his playstyle.
Raynie: Don't make the mistake I did and try for attack power on her. She is a mage, not a fighter. Pump up her Magic and let her go to town. Poison Break is a great move, poison won me so many fights. Almost nobody is immune. Even parts of Kefka can be poisoned. Poison Blast is even awesomer. I'm fairly sure it does magic damage rather than its listed physical damage.
Marco: He doesn't do much except not die, and that's sometimes important! Had one of the few non-Turn Break arts worth using early on, which is ha ha, I laugh at your pathetic damage. Also Guard Rise and All Recovery are great moves.
Rosch: Pretty bad at the beginning, especially with his horrendous speed. Gets better later on and has some great single-target damage. As well as ONE MILLION hit points.
Aht: Most unbalanced character in the game? She's either Godlike with the ridiculous damage from her traps, or nigh-useless when fighting enemies that can't be pushed around. Later on she gets Cross Star though and is useful everywhere.
Gafka: Qigong Wave. I guess he has some other moves and stuff, but Qigong Wave. Oh yeah, Qigong Wave.
Eruca: Horrible when you first get her, then she gets some sick MT damage. But unfortunately she's in your party so little she'll always be underleveled.
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So yeah, neat little game, but no contender for best game on the DS (sorry Cmdr King). Reminded me a lot of Riviera actually. Any of the same people work on the two games?
EDIT: And what exactly was the point of having a World Map that you (almost) never get to use? Having to retread through completed areas (and sometimes bosses) to get to whatever city you need to be in to finish a sidequest is a huge deduction for the game.
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FF6 Eviltype- Just finished up the Magitek factory. It's pretty fun, and definitely a step up from FF6 normal type. There are some bumps along the way, but Sage has done a good job fixing and altering it as need be.
VC2- Started this. In February and just saw a Valkyria in a cutscene. Not much to say about the game so far, other than a boo for no saving in battles and a yay for a variety of mission objectives.
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Plating a lot of games this month as PSN is down.
Bayonetta: Great game and I have no complaints with it, combat is the best I've seen of this type of game and unlike those other games Bayonetta has a huge amount of variety in its enemy list.
Plat wasn't too hard and it was very enjoyable and thats worth something as there are few games I can tolerate playing playing three times in a row.
Dynasty Warriors 7: Best DW to date which Koei will hopefully build well on instead of doing their usual tactic. Plat was easy but grindy so not much joy involved at the end. Mains were:
Zhang Liao: C3EX is the best EX attack without question as it turns Liao into a Speed demon who dishs out huge damage and is virtually untouchable. Also because he is THE ZHANG LIAO, you know the guy who scared Wu so badly he basically became a demon to the Wu people and required being shot in the Junk (A mans only weakspot) before he went down.
Zhong Hui: Do the enemy not value their officers? Then maybe they shouldn't be sending them against me! Why people hate him I really don't know. "But he sounds so obnoxious and arrogant" I hear the haters say forgetting that this is what Koei were obviously going for, hell he has a unique convo with Yuan Shao to show how even the massively arrogant Yuan Shao considers him too arrogant.
*Cough* Anyway got sidetracked. The Flying swords are pretty broken and his Specials are easily comboed making him the 3rd/4th best fighter.
Heavy Rain: Didn't care for Ethan too much as he was quite boring to watch, Madison had fan-service but she felt unimportant, Scott was an overweight ninja who was immune to gunfire and thus was badass but the best guy to me was Norman Jayden the FBI man. His parts featured the most fights and the crime scene parts were great for what they were but what really makes him the best is his interaction with Carter Blake who is a policemen who'd properly beat the crap out you for speeding. Plat was easy but the constant replies weared me out a bit.
Batman AA: Doesn't disappoint. The thing I heard at some points back when it was released was about fights in hard mode dragging out but that must have been those complaining people not having a grasp on how criticals activate. With them even 10 goons are laid to waste in under a minute by Batman.
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Shining Force 3 Part 1 - Alright game you've made your point I'll promote people.
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Do I get to ubergnaw.
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You're still floating in the river. Maybe we'll see in Part 2.
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You'll eventually have to play part 3, you know. Also, is the game, you know. Actually good?
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Hells yes
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It's decent.
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Is it worth bothering with Saturnmulation.
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Eh sure. Saturn emulation is shockingly painless if you have a decent comp anyways. And if you don't then at least the crappy one I'm using beats N64 emulation.
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So yeah, neat little game, but no contender for best game on the DS (sorry Cmdr King). Reminded me a lot of Riviera actually. Any of the same people work on the two games?
Nope. Radiant Historia, like its name implies, shares staff with Radiata Story.
Riviera is by Sting, a part of Dept. Heaven Series, which includes games like Yggdra Union. Knight of Nightmares, Gungir and so on.
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Desktop Dungeons:
Well...back to elf, and I got a couple dungeons that were simple enough for elf, but probably would have failed for Dwarf. Both Gharbad the - Whoooah fights with CYDSTEPP. One where the regen bonus was APHEELSIK, so the extra mana mattered: having three or four attempts to land the 40% status on Ghabad helps a lot. The second one I...didnt have a regen buff. I just...had enough raw mana and item resources to kill without regen.
This is pretty relevant, as it shakes my worldview a little. Winning without reegen cheese? I didn't think this was feasible. I'm now wondering about using a different class that's really built for blowing up bosses without needing regen (like Bloodmage). Bloodmage should normally be able to deal, what, 800 fireball damage without regen if you can Binlor to level 10? At Gauntlet level 50 that's enough to kill...uhh...only Medusa. And Gharbad if you have CYDSTEPP and enough HP resources to use your bloodmage mana potions....
Ok, so maybe it's not such a great plan after all....
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Really? Ooh, you're so not ready for Ordrak then.
He summoned 4 dragons who swarmed me right when my shield died.
I'm going to replay this with the same character, but not on hardcore mode.
...Maybe?
I don't consider this time lost anyway, this was always fun. But I get tired of casting the shield every twenty seconds.
I'm now in summer holidays, playing video games for two months while my girlfriend still has classes. Life is truly unfair.
Mirror's Edge: Tutorial of doom. Controls are unintuitive at first, but it gets fairly awesome past the first level. I'm trying not using weapons at all, because it feels right (and because there's an achievement, yeah. Shut up)
Game of the day: Final Fantasy 4 heroes of light
(http://image.jeuxvideo.com/images/ds/h/i/hikari-no-4-senshi-final-fantasy-gaiden-nintendo-ds-008.jpg)
Awful game. It's supposed to be oldschool
Read: FF1 dungeons, FF1 plot. But the battle is different. While it is standard turn based stuff, every action (attack, any magic....) consumes one or two crystal thing, and you get one crystal thing back every turn. Sounds kinda interesting, but it's not. There's no resource management and the game is only slightly difficult when it arbitrarily splits your party, so every battle is a bore. Even the classes are boring.
I just don't see any point to this.
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Tactics Ogre - Beat this! Quick review time.
Story-wise, I think the game does something very neat with the pathsplit at the end of chapter 1. I went law route so I'll talk only about that for now... I also really liked the stuff at the end of chapter 2. And Lans has one really solid scene with the other Lans somewhere in chapter 3-4. Unfortunately the rest of the plot in the later two chapters isn't really worth talking about, and there aren't exactly many compelling characters, and the endgame plot is really stupid. Basically the game's plot is FFT without FFT's good parts. It had potential at least, and I don't come away from the game thinking "wow that sucked" but despite its flashes of promise it's not a game for which story is the reason to play it.
Gameplay is quite solid of course. It's a small thing arguably, but I really like how you could scroll over enemies to get damage projections even when they were out of range, helped you choose where to move and streamlined everything. It makes the core gameplay great. Class system is okay though I wish there was more reason to crossclass. New classes starting at Level 1 is a terrible, terrible idea and pretty much singlehandedly lowers the game a point, obviously its worst feature. The game's mechanics felt borderline impenentrable and at times a bit glitchy (I still don't think Lion Dance, Misery, or Anatomy/etc. actually do anything, at least on units with Strengthen) which is unfortunate but the great damage projections make up for this so it's okay. Also, not sure what they were thinking with a 14-floor inescapable final dungeon with virtually zero plot. C'mon guys.
Despite the flaws it's a very fun SRPG and certainly rises above the uninspired efforts of the genre. I'd put it #3 in that style of SRPG behind FFT and WAXF but that was virtually inevitable unless the game blew my socks off or was a complete disappointment.
I finished around Level 24, 45ish hours. Did almost nothing optional until right before the final dungeon where I cleared that forest area mostly so I'd have enough money to have Blessing Stones for the final dungeon. If I'd been better at the game this wouldn't have been necessary of course, and even then it was arguably overkill; the final dungeon wasn't especially hard. Granted I apparently missed the final boss' best move. Party was 3 archers, 1 vartan, 2 knights, 2 warriors, 1 ninja, 2 clerics, and 1 dragoon. Played around with others, so... class reviews~
Archer: Everyone knows this is the best class, right? Not too much to say, most battles being "defeat boss" made them even better than they would be otherwise (which was already MVP-potential), their offence is frequently range ~10 and they have a much more generous line of fire than most other ranged options. Great damage, Tremendous Shot for even more when needed, and for some reason they have great evade, so they aren't even liabilities on durability like other offensive classes. 3 move is the only complaint. Accuracy in rain was also bad earlygame but this totally goes away for some reason. Objectively I should have used more than three probably.
Warrior: Archer with more durability but only 1 range. Obviously that's a losing trade (it can be hard to attack the enemies you want to attack), but they're still competent, and their counters hurt enough to be noticed, especially towards the end. They don't do much besides hit things, counter things, and use Field Alchemy when hitting things isn't called for, but they've got the stats at least.
Wizard: Not impressed here. They're like archers with worse damage (especially right after being revived), worse range/targetting freedom, and waaay worse durability. They have some limited multitarget later and some status but I don't think this excuses the wretched durability which I found quite a hindrance.
Cleric: Kinda like wizard in that the durability sucks, but they can generally stay further back so this isn't as much of an issue. Still, I'd say their job could be served well enough by items (although money in this game can be an issue) except... Major Heal. And especially Mother's Blessing Major Heal. This can often negate half a dozen enemy actions in one fell swoop and is just amazing action economy. There's also Exorcism, which while not great that often is invaluable in a few fights (especially since you can't move through the panels of stilled undead. WTF?). Lacking offence sucks, but Boon of Swiftness gives them something to do when you for some reason don't need any healing at all. Probably the class that feels third most useful to me, although I'd never use more than two (one serves fine for many battles, even).
Rune Fencer: Sorta suffers from the same curse as some versions of the FF red mage. Heal is nice for range but it's not nearly the upgrade Major Heal is, and they're just a bit too close to the real mages in durability. Kinda the worst of both word between the pure mages and knight, it feels like.
Knight: And this would be the already-alluded to #2 class. Knights are durable bastards - physical, magical, status, you name it. Kinda like LFT knights in this regard. They're slow, but they get in enemies' way and make them waste attacks, while providing ranged healing so they can stand where they need to stand and abuse Rampart Aura to protect others. And hey, they can counter, so they contribute a bit more on offence than they otherwise might. Just all-around good stuff, Knghts + Archers feels the easiest way to dominate the game.
Terror Knight: Really didn't use this one much, but wasn't too impressed by what I did see.
Berserker: Goes for the lower-durability, higher-offence mold than warrior... which isn't really a great idea on a frontliner, and then they make it worse by Berserk being generally not as good as Mighty Impact (it could have been, if we'd been allowed to target empty panels, but as is it is often difficult to hit the enemies needed). Pass.
Dragoon: Oddball. Great to have when fighting beasts or dragons, since the slayer skills just do amazing damage. Subpar warrior wannabe otherwise, but not so large a downgrade (in particular, durability is fine, unlike a few classes just talked about) to really make you suffer, so I certainly enjoyed using one.
Ninja: Now we start getting to the classes who are gained kinda late and struggle a bit as a result. Still, ninjas are pretty handy. The extra mobility is nice, and the damage is great even if the katana masteries are horrid for anything but ranged options. Ninja spells are... I dunno, overall, but Decoy is good when you finally get that. Could be great if they'd actually had good evasion instead of shockingly bad, as is the durability holds them back in many fights.
Warlock: Can't say I was interested in a wizard clone that also had the underlevelled problem! Maybe if it had had 4 move...
Swordmaster: Swordmaster seems to have a lot of potential but the durability is just too bad, even worse than Berserker is no good. Preempt is great and certainly their selling point, but you just generally don't want the Swordmaster wading into the front lines enough to abuse it. I guess there's potential with knockback but even then too many enemies are immune and ranged enemies will carve the SM apart. Lion Dance sadly sucks and the healing one is kinda useful but not enough to excuse the other flaws.
Ranger: 4 move archer. Or 4 move ninja with less bad durability. Underlevelled though, not really worth it.
Anything that joins after this point: Do not want.
Feels like the balance could overall have been better but still fun enough.
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Valkyrie Profile - In Chapter 8! I am not using reaction abilities or Angel Curios (shock) this playthrough, or the Creation Jewel, and am not religiously fighting everything like I have on every previous playthrough. Does make things a bit more interesting. I died once to Wraith since he OHKOed my party despite lightning defence, BExped Valkyrie to avoid this happening again. I've also died once to Fire Elementals spamming Flame Banner in Citadel of Flame and a double-possessed Haunt since I really, really screwed up a fight in Celestial Castle. Laziness woo. This has been quite a quick and casual playthrough (I'm still under 14 hours, nearly done) but it's been a fun enough romp.
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"New classes starting at Level 1 is a terrible, terrible idea and pretty much singlehandedly lowers the game a point, obviously its worst feature."
Wow, really? The original game didn't have that. I wonder why someone thought that was a good idea, the rest of the game seems improved in every way.
I found the beginning of law path about as neat as FFT gets, but that was a long time ago.
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Was gonna say I don't remember that being in the original, so yeah, I have to question WHY...
The only logic I can think of is promoting the idea of keeping characters in one job to have an FF3 Style Job system, where the option to change is there if you don't like the results, but its more beneficial to stick with one Job the entire game (Contrast to FF5 style of "Swap as much as you want for fun Party Dynamic!" that FFT uses.) The original game didn't really penalize you for swapping, but at the same time, gave no incentive to change either; it was just kind of "ho hum I think I'll change this guy for shits", or alternatively "Ok, finally got my *insert Job here*, now I can stop using *insert Job Pre-Req here* and move onto that!"
Doesn't sound like they made a wise decision in that regard, cause there are so many better ways to do it, as "Start at level 1" is always stupid unless its a game where levels are meaningless, but then that just begs the question "why have levels at all?" If they wanted the FF3 "Stay In Job Longer" thing, there must have been a far better way to go about it then "BACK TO LEVEL 1 LULZ!" Doesn't have to use the Job Level system that FF3 had (which...thinking on it, why DID FF3DS have Job Sickness? They made JLevels matter a lot more than in FF3o, so that alone would be an incentive to stick with one Job for the long term), but I'm sure there's someway that doesn't make changing jobs look undesirable such that the "experiment!" option is still there.
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To be fair though, most enemies scale to your party's level and you get bonus EXP for using more than one of the same unit, so it's fairly easy to grind up new classes if you wanted. I agree that they should have joined at a higher level though, maybe half the average of your current class pool? Great game though, one of my favorites ever.
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Really? I thought enemies had fixed levels in story battles just like FFT. Now that I think about it though I'm not certain where I got that impression. Regardless, obviously anything that requires grinding is pretty much a "just for fun" option in a game like this, which makes it disappointing that latejoining classes are such suboptimal choices for efficient play.
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They were probably hoping that people wouldn't try to just blitz through the game and dip into the sidequests/optional battles. This would theoretically allow the player to dip more time into various jobs and experiment around is my guess. As is though, yeah. The most efficient team to play with are a group of knights/white knights/knight variant + archers. Some of the other classes are sorta neat, but they come in way too late and are just not worth the effort. Story characters with unique classes get hosed especially hard, even if said unique class would be pretty cool.
Also, I play games. Sort of.
7th Saga:
Done. Let us never speak of this atrocity again. While I tear out the rest of the my last shreds of hope in the world, I will be beating Super up with a shoe.
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Wizard of Oz- Huh. Didn't touch the game right after losing to Oz, turn off, reset, save now has the same items I did after losing despite not touching the system for a second afterwards...
Phantom Brave- Chugging along a little. Battles improved a little, although with the tougher battles it still feels like it's fighting against the turn limits and not the enemies to a large degree.
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which...thinking on it, why DID FF3DS have Job Sickness? They made JLevels matter a lot more than in FF3o, so that alone would be an incentive to stick with one Job for the long term
Because like everything else in FF3 remake it was a half done good idea of a remake. Oh lets remake this game. lets not think about it and make it a direct copy of FF3. Fucking stupid bullshit is the result.
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Desktop Dungeons:
So...the game threw a series of softballs at me. Like...Gharbad vs Orb of Zot + CYDSTEPP. I finally got to pull off a move I've been theorizing about for a long time, though--that I should not convert WONAFYT as soon as I find it, because I might Binlor to level 10, and then be able to use it to summon the boss if I haven't found them yet (potentially getting more value out of regen spaces--in this case I had poison fireball prepared so yes: it really mattered).
The one hard fight came at Gauntlet...54, I think? I got to level 10 with fireballs and BLUDTOPOWA while about 1/4 of the map was uncovered, and the boss was Tower of Goo! Perfect! And...it was still damn close; like, I needed some shops to win.
My shop priorities have definitely shifted around, though. It's gone from "just about everything is good" to "usually I won't have enough stuff to spend my money on." Dancing Sword is almost an auto-buy now, and I used to just ignore it. Scouting Orb likewise I nearly always buy just to improve regen tactics (not to mention, finding key combo pieces), whereas before I'd only buy it in specific circumstances because it technically doesn't do anything. (I still have yet to bother with Stone of Seekers, though :/)
On a sidenote overall I'm finding Elf Binlor less...fun than Dwarf Binlor. There's just...often not very much calculation to do when you're doing magic damage. Either you're beating regen or you're not. Burst kills are generally just "Figure out how much mana you have after potions; that equals X spells that deal Y damage; does X*Y kill?" It's a lot less dynamic than physical setups, which just have more variables and moving parts.
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Really? I thought enemies had fixed levels in story battles just like FFT. Now that I think about it though I'm not certain where I got that impression. Regardless, obviously anything that requires grinding is pretty much a "just for fun" option in a game like this, which makes it disappointing that latejoining classes are such suboptimal choices for efficient play.
Enemies do have fixed levels unless you grind too much, then they scale. Or so I've heard. I don't think I've ever outlevelled the enemies yet...
Also, you don't get bonus EXP for using more than one of a class. That class just takes more of the EXP pool. Lower level classes also take a larger share. This does make levelling new classes easier, but the rest of the party will be getting less EXP so there's no net gain.
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which...thinking on it, why DID FF3DS have Job Sickness? They made JLevels matter a lot more than in FF3o, so that alone would be an incentive to stick with one Job for the long term
Because like everything else in FF3 remake it was a half done good idea of a remake. Oh lets remake this game. lets not think about it and make it a direct copy of FF3. Fucking stupid bullshit is the result.
Eh, honestly, Save Points (or should I say, the complete lack there-of) and Job Sickness (though, Job Sickness I did find irrelevant for a good part of the game cause the stat losses were so minor) are the only poorly planned ideas in FF3DS if you ask me. Things like "Black Belt really sucks" for balance are at least understandable when you consider they were trying to completely re-balance 20 some odd jobs to all have a long term purpose, so there are going to be hiccups along the way.
...though thinking on it, they didn't fix FF3 Equipment Display screen nor mention elemental resists anywhere. Heck, they even REMOVED a feature from FF3o where while the game would at least tell you "Magic Power Up!" when you equipped a magic boosting weapon; wouldn't say by how much, but its a step in the right direction. FF1/2 (originals anyway) have an excuse of having no equipment that offered such bonuses, so this was the first time they had to deal with Passive Bonus equips like that. Go figure they REMOVED that little thing in FF4 for some unknown reason. Much like how FF7 beat its equipment screen with a nerf stick after FF5 and FF6 decided to have really good ones that showed you just about everything being altered stat wise...especially insulting since in FF7, just about all Weapons have some passive bonus to Magic, you just wouldn't know this cause of its "barely above FF4 equipment stat display" screen.
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I say this as someone that didn't play FF3o. I found the first couple of hours of FF3 remake to be completely and totally obtuse and unapproachable. This was by design. This makes the game terrible.
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Desktop Dungeons
I beat Matron of Flame at Gauntlet level 57 O_O (dealing over 1800 damage).
Sooo...the big thing I learned from this is that BLUDTOPOWA + Crystal Ball is actually an amazing combo; way better than I previously thought. With fireballs it deals 10 damage per tile; compare to the 3.33 damage per tile you deal if you only have one or the other. The weird thing is that superficially the combo doesn't seem that good. Normally, you regen 1 mana per tile. Either of these items on their own makes you regen 2 mana per tile. Awesome, right? Both of them together make you regen 3 mana per tile. This seems disappointing; 3? Not 4? Lame. In reality it's amazing: boss regen pretty much cancels out with 1.5 of mana regen per tile. So...with only one or the other, 2-1.5 = 0.5 practical mana, and with both, you get 3-1.5=1.5 practical mana. Triple the amount!
To give you an idea of just how good this is...normally the poison glyph is just better than BLUDTOPOWA. It deals almost 50% more damage per tile. If you already have Crystal Ball, however, suddenly BLUDTOPOWA is the better glyph. If you have all three, it's almost to the point that it's not worth the mana to poison the boss, your damage is just that high. (If your max MP is less than or equal to 16, casting poison is like a 5 mana fireball instead of 6 mana in this case. At 17+ max mana it gets more worthwhile, mind: 14 damage per tile instead of 10).
EDIT: of course, as soon as I post that something even nuttier happens. I beat Frank the Zombie at Gauntlet level 58. Frank being the boss I dismissed as not sensibly beatable above Gauntlet level 20 or so. Effectively the same combo, just swap out Crystal Ball with the even rarer Ring of the Battlemage.
This is actually making me consider Human over Elf. The problem with Human is that it's 100% worse if CYDSTEPP isn't on the map, and if APHEELSIK is the regen booster, then Human and Elf are basically tied.
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Banjo-Kazooie: Beat. I have to say, I was not impressed. Wonky camera, fiddly flying/swimming, not nearly as much personality as I expected, levels were at least a bit too small, the bloody engine room, stupid quiz... it's certainly not a bad game, but not one I'd recommend.
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Rare's games age badly in general. Banjo Kazzoie/ Tooie, Donkey Kong Country, Perfect Dark...
I remember getting Jet Force Gemini three or four years after its release and I couldn't believe how objectively awful it was.
Torchlight: STARTED VHHC AGAIN. This time it's going more smoothly since I'm focusing on Titan Stomp and not using the shield all the time. Currently in the second to last dungeon.
Edit: "I say this as someone that didn't play FF3o. I found the first couple of hours of FF3 remake to be completely and totally obtuse and unapproachable. This was by design. This makes the game terrible."
The whole game is like that really (Actually it becomes worse about it) but I wouldn't have it any other way personnally.
(Still dislike FF3DS for butchering the job system though)
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I remember getting Jet Force Gemini three or four years after its release and I couldn't believe how objectively awful it was.
Whereas I still think of it as the only shooter I've ever actually enjoyed, and really enjoyed playing it again late last year.
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http://www.load.to/8QUZyniByu/Tyrian_2000__1999__Eclipse_Software__-_PC_Windows_Setup.rar
Here is a shooter. Play this shooter. It is free now. It is a good shooter.
Pokemans - Holy shit I have 5 badges. I have Fly. I have nothing that can fly. I should really have got that Sigilyph.
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Tyrian is pretty awesome, yeah. It's not a traditional difficulty-oriented shmup, though I'm sure someone has played the entire huge thing long enough to 1cc(But it's huge and does have some cheapshots.). But it's sure as hell fun despite that.
SRWZ2:
Completed.
General thoughts earlier have held up; The game has good main PC balance, terrible secondary PC balance, map quality and especially SR quality all over the place, good base systems, no new additions worth mentioning whatsoever, and is pretty.
It's still pretty good when it's good. 8/10 game? High 7/10?
Currently been mucking with Desktop Dungeons some(I blame Metroid. It's neat enough) and trying to figure out what I feel like playing next. Probably need to get back into Pokemon.
Want to play more Metroid Prime but my wrist got injured again when I was lifting something heavy and it needs a few more days. :(
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So stuff, finished KH:BBS a while back, generally fun game, though it did get a bit tiresome by the third character, totally played Aqua first and had no clue what was going on in the end of her story which was loldumb on my part, also did the mirage arena in Aqua's story after I finished the main game, which while not terrible for most of the rounds got gruesome by the last two, decided I wasn't enough of a masochist to try the two secret bosses of lolspamcureyourselfwhileIcontinuetocomboyouto1hpwithnochancetorecoverlolol.
VP2: God dammit, I feel like i could have potentially really liked this game, except that the level designs just kind of pissed me off and getting certain accessories for skills is faq bait, and which characters have better moves is faq bait and more faq bait and blaaaaaaargh. Also there is like 3 different copies of each type of accessory in the game which if you are too lazy to sell off like me makes it so you have to sift through like eleventy billion copies of junk to find the one type you are looking for, though that's my own fault for being paranoid of selling some random rune/color combo that may have been needed or something. I may or may not come back to try the after game at some point in the distant future, just having to deal with three stages of "your entire party can be poisoned through immunity if you make a wrong jump hope you brought 50 dews!" can just go die and pretty much removed any enjoyment I was getting at the time for this playthrough.
Currently debating with myself on what to play next.
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Shining Force 3 Part 1 - Fuck Harpies.
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I still want to play that... why the hell hasn't anyone translated all three scenarios yet!?!
Also, I played that Goldeneye game for the Wii. It is Gawd awful. they took out all the fun modes from the 64 game, kept the shitty 64 graphics and gave you a golden controller as compensation. I was horrible.
~
Tales of Syphonia: We got to the second world! Yay! That means one thing and one thing only for me. ZELOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He is still the man and has had my GF saying, "Oh lord," a lot. He still gets a smile out of me. Plus he came just in time, because the cast is pretty dull until you get him. Sometimes Raiine shows emotion and Lloyd is just annoying, but other then that everyone is kinda bland. Sheena helps, but she comes late. Zelos just delivers a much needed adrenaline shot to the cast and everyone acts off his character from then on.
I think we have to take Presea home or something like that. Also, something that annoyed me and I was just reminded of it after getting Zelos again is his victory voice gets really low and you can hardly hear what he is saying. It bothered me when I played it before and it is sure to bother me now.
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I still want to play that... why the hell hasn't anyone translated all three scenarios yet!?!
They're almost there! Scenario 3 is 6/7ths done.
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Hey Random, you run into any particular technical problems getting ShF3 running? I ask because I tried to play it a while back but the emulator skipped through all the text as though some button were jammed in turbo mode. Could never figure out why this happened. (I know, SHINING FORCE PLOT, but dammit, if I'm going to play something, I want to know what's going on.)
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None whatsoever. The intro text skips but I assumed that was just due to some combination of button pressing. Only problem I've been having is some minor graphical issues, but that's because the emulator I'm using is crap.
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X-Men Arcade: Played and beat this. Infinite continues and total abuse of powers made it incredibly easy. I can see why it was popular back in the day, but now... well, actually it's still good for a beat-em-up.
Super Meat Boy: Got the True End. Hooray for me!
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Banjo-Kazooie: Beat. I have to say, I was not impressed. Wonky camera, fiddly flying/swimming, not nearly as much personality as I expected, levels were at least a bit too small, the bloody engine room, stupid quiz... it's certainly not a bad game, but not one I'd recommend.
Personally, I still enjoyed BK even now. The camera was never really an issue for me. My biggest complaint was flying. And I thought the level sizes were just right. Where as in DK64 and Banjo-Tooie, the levels felt way too big for their own good.
Oh right games, I started playing Chrono Trigger since everyone told me to go play it after Super's massive weapon of doom. Just got to the End of Time. Will play more later.
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None whatsoever. The intro text skips but I assumed that was just due to some combination of button pressing. Only problem I've been having is some minor graphical issues, but that's because the emulator I'm using is crap.
Out of curiosity, which emulator? (Would rather deal with the occasional graphical bug or skip than a textless game.)
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Torchlight: Started on VHHC again as a destroyer, this time with a bigger focus on Titan Stomp. Things definitely die a hell of a lot more quickly. Right before fighting dark zealots, I went in one of Hatch's side dungeon, a fire prison clone...
NOOO WHY DID MY HPs GO FROM FULL TO 0 AGAIN??? THERE WASN'T ANY GOBLIN ARCHER!!
Restarted on regular Very Hard mode (a character is not erased when he dies) with one of the worst builds you could possibly make: Melee vanquisher with a focus on strength. I've died a few times against Brink already. It felt good.
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None whatsoever. The intro text skips but I assumed that was just due to some combination of button pressing. Only problem I've been having is some minor graphical issues, but that's because the emulator I'm using is crap.
Out of curiosity, which emulator? (Would rather deal with the occasional graphical bug or skip than a textless game.)
Cassini/GiriGiri. The site that has the translation patch also has a copy of it, but assuming you have a better comp than mine I'd use SSF instead.
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I still want to play that... why the hell hasn't anyone translated all three scenarios yet!?!
They're almost there! Scenario 3 is 6/7ths done.
Shale, when they finish, could you please send me a link or PM or something. I've been raging to play that game for almost half my life now.
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Actually, it looks like the info I checked was wrong. According to the official translation site (http://sf3trans.shiningforcecentral.com/) (as opposed to the behind-the-scenes forum I was checking), the first pass through scenario 3 is done. So click the "official translation site" link and go nuts.
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VP2: God dammit, I feel like i could have potentially really liked this game, except that the level designs just kind of pissed me off and getting certain accessories for skills is faq bait, and which characters have better moves is faq bait and more faq bait and blaaaaaaargh. Also there is like 3 different copies of each type of accessory in the game which if you are too lazy to sell off like me makes it so you have to sift through like eleventy billion copies of junk to find the one type you are looking for, though that's my own fault for being paranoid of selling some random rune/color combo that may have been needed or something. I may or may not come back to try the after game at some point in the distant future, just having to deal with three stages of "your entire party can be poisoned through immunity if you make a wrong jump hope you brought 50 dews!" can just go die and pretty much removed any enjoyment I was getting at the time for this playthrough.
Palace of the Dragon, I assume. Yeah, it's pretty infuriating (though I hated the swamp more, personally). The game doesn't pull BS like that again with dungeons, at least. Otherwise:
-You don't really need to go out of your way to get certain accessories unless you're being obsessively completionst. VP2's not really hard enough to demand that for the sake of progressing. Most everything you need will generally come through normal combat.
-You don't really care enough about money in VP2 to bother with selling accessories, from what I recall. I don't remember it being much of an issue or accessories being worth a lot of cash, at least.
-Inventory bloat...yeah, that's a thing. No getting around that one.
-The best VP2 party is Alicia/Rufus + two other people. It doesn't really matter who as long as they're not mages. Full archer party will generally see you through, really.
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Actually, full archer party is -the- way to go in the maingame. Equip the 2x ranged damage sealstone, twink your archers elementally, 2HKO Odin with Phyress.
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I'd give credit to having a Heavy Warrior in the team to be honest. They're good for soaking up damage, and if you can pull of an Soul Crush Chain, they're excellent characters to hit on the end.
Plus some bosses like to resist elemental damage which can hurt Archers a bit; just having an extra hard hitting character in the mix doesn't hurt.
Though yeah, generally speaking, Alicia+Rufus+2 Non Mages (Ideally at least one Archer) is the way to go.
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VP2
If you like insane amounts of micromanagement, you will crush it beneath your iron heeled boot.
If you do not micro manage or otherwise make the system weep, then it will laugh over your broken corpse.
So far as I can tell, not much middle ground here.
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I ran the whole of VP2 generally just using story PCs, only using Einherjar when there weren't enough story PCs to go around. This included using lots of Light Swordsmen and at least Lezard as a mage. It was only hard during the earliest dungeons, really. And I tended to have a lot of fun using the dash system for positioning advantages. It made the game into a mild challenge.
It's not quite -that- polarized, it's just very breakable.
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I play games~
Pamela's Big Adventure Trinity Universe: So I figured I should play this before I have to return it to Tal.
...holy crap this game is hilarious. Also, a really solid ARPG/TBRPG hybrid system. Kinda VP-ish.
Storywise, the original characters actually mesh really well with the crossover characters. This is a first. Currently playing the Dog King path where you recruit Etna, Prinny, and Pamela from Mana Khemia. This is the best group ever.
Pamela: You really shouldn't be so scared of me. Just think of me as a cute immortal girl mascot who's a little transparent and likes scaring people sometimes!
Prinny: *scared* Dood, but PEOPLE can't do those kinds of things! Ghosts should just talk to ghosts!
Pamela: Don't be so ghostist~
Yeah, it's really silly and tropetastic, but it's fun~
The fast-pace of the battle system really makes it easy to just keep playing for extended periods of time, and reminds me a bit of Mana Khemia mixed with VP. The game feels worthy of a stat topic, though I don't know how unique the characters will be at endgame given the Ability system. Still, weapons and managraphics and finishers seem to be unique, so that should be something. And hey, 4/9 of the PCs are already ranked~
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...holy crap this game is hilarious. Also, a really solid ARPG/TBRPG hybrid system. Kinda VP-ish.
It's not really an ARPG at all. It's a TBRPG with a timer. That is completely different.
It's not really like VP at all. It's Legaia 2 with a timer. That is completely different.
and Pamela from Mana Khemia Atelier Violet.
fix'd
The game feels worthy of a stat topic, though I don't know how unique the characters will be at endgame given the Ability system.
I was planning on doing one but never got around to it. Probably some time after you return it to me.
All of the characters' combos are unique in the sense that they have differing mults (and sometimes use differing attack stats) and they all get four passives. Other than that they don't really have much.
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Oh yeah I play sstuff too.
Tactics Ogre PSP - Finally recruited Deneb. Can get back to finishing the plots now.
Ar tonelico Qoga - Finally got to phase II. Still find the gameplay okay but mostly everything else is bad. <3 Symbol of the Wind though.
Black Sigil - Got cursed and my sword stolen. ffffantastic
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - spoilers i am trying to escape from a room
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - Chapter 1. Need to go to Ravennue to DETECTIVE it up.
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Final Fantasy 13: Chapter 13: 1.3/13
Man, I am lazy. Part I of my Final Fantasy 13 rant was written in February! And now it's the middle of May! Time flies. ( http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,5556.msg125334.html#msg125334 for a recap.) I had this mostly written awhile back but just needed to finish it. Seeing the reports of Square-Enix's huge loss in 2010 thanks to the disaster that was FF14 ( http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/05/13/0535227/Square-Enix-Facing-Big-Losses-For-2010 ) prompted me to finish this up. Part I covered Chapters 10-12; I'm ranting about Chapter 13 and some general unfinished points the game raised in Part II.
Before I get going, I should first state that on the whole, I enjoyed the game. I liked the battle system, which is a big deal - combat was consistently fast and fun, and they mixed things up nicely. I'm willing to give some credit to *parts* of the plot, the music was great, and the graphics were beautiful. So, good. Hell, I enjoyed Sands of Destruction, a game with ultimately a less deep battle system and far more plot problems (prolly a 6/10), so FF13 at least merits a 7/10.
I'll add that, like some other friends of mine have said, FF13 seems to be hated on for some bad reasons. I'd also say that the game this is most reminiscent of is FFX, despite walking in expecting to find an FF7 remix. Similar to FFX, the character customization is pretty much illusory. You only get party member choice for the last third of the game, and there's not really much exploration or sidequesting, and the game doesn't notably speed up once you know what you're doing (unlike say FF6), so the replay value is pretty much nil here. It's not great for FFX either, but at least I can imagine interesting challenges / handicaps for FFX, plus there's more world to explore and enjoy, rather than just watching plot scenes again. This is something I'd hold against the game far more in my younger years, but considering I've never replayed FF5/9/10/12 either, it's not so bad. So yeah, I don't consider the very linear progression of the game a big deal, or the super-linear dungeons. Your average RPG is super-linear as well, you just get the illusion of options by being able to wander to the wrong spot on the map rather than the town you're supposed to go to, or, if they're feeling really nice, other towns that won't advance the plot until you go to the "correct" town. So yeah, not a big deal.
Also, I don't buy disliking the game because of Snow or Hope, the two characters who seem to draw the most hate. They're fine. Without venturing into spoilers, if the game has a weak spot in the main cast, it is most definitely Fang and Vanille. Vanille is secretly the new main character for the last quarter of the game, or at least should have been, and rather than stepping into the role Celes-style, she just kinda stays the detached observer floating with the plot rather than driving it. This... is a big problem.
Getting into the bad... well. There's really just one bad, and it's a doozy. I play RPGs largely for at least one of good characters (Game Arts games) or a good plot (FFT, FF12), preferably both (FF10, SH2, Suiko3). And man does FF13 drop the ball on plot from Chapter 10 on. Shockingly little happens in Chapters 10-13, yet it still manages to be really stupid. An impressive feat. If they'd taken the most generic route possible, it'd have been better.
Here there be spoilers.
Chapter 12 - the last bits
Okay, Snow's NORA crew shows up. This makes absolutely no sense that they'd be in the right place at the right time in such a fashion - what were they doing on Eden? How did they know where Snow was? but whatever. This is the kind of plot hole I don't care about because they needed to find an excuse to check up on these guys again - narratively they needed to be included somehow. That said, the coolest way they could think of for them to help was to open a gate? You can do better than that.
A whole bunch of soldiers turn to Cieth! So Roche's band was a bunch of Cocoon l'Cie? Given intentionally failing missions, or is this due to Orphan's hypothesized instability? Also not sure I approve of having the transformation be instant. This is horrifying. Make it be like Resident Evil with a full 10 seconds of piteous moaning before switching to BRAINS mode.
Roche is on our side after all! But might fight us anyway! Because! Okay, fine, this actually isn't TOO bad at this point after they've already switched his motivations, but meh. They needed to show what he was up to in Chapter 8-10.
Chapter 13
And... what. The Cavalry turned into Cieth? Huh? Were they all l'Cie too? Or turned into l'Cie when they attacked Eden then given hopeless Focuses?
Blatant last dungeon vibes here. But that doesn't make any sense- or rather, it does if we were trying to get the "bad ending." Orphan is where we'd go if we WANTED to turn into Ragnarok and eliminate Cocoon. The actual quest is to save Cocoon, ne? We have no guarantee that Barthandaelus is there, and moreover, no reason to think we can actually really defeat him yet, since he's just cheerfully shrugged off the first two fights as playthings. There are still two hard quests, and both seem to be being ignored - A, stop the civil war and mass panic, and B, get rid of the brands so that we don't turn into Cieth. It sure looks like we're attacking Edenhall / Orphan right now to blow up Cocoon, so I kinda doubt we're really succeeding at A, and the quest to get rid of Pulse brands made the most sense on Pulse, where we could theoretically have researched the issue, or at least talked to a Pulse fal'Cie. Except that quest got ignored. I'm totally fine with this, except that this means that the party is going to turn Cieth after they fail to blow up Cocoon, and I doubt FF13 has the stones to do a Shadow Hearts 2 ending. Alternatively, they explain how their focus was something different after all, but with no Pulse fal'Cie available, I dunno how they're going to sell that. Sigh.
Orphan's Cradle. We're apparently trapped here. I'm glad that the Cavalry "destroying" Orphan was a ruse, although a bizarre one and one that makes Our Heroes look worse for not seeing through it. Was it really necessary to use them anyway? It still doesn't make much sense, since it seems becoming a l'Cie in the first place is fairly rare.
Next up. In general it's not good to think too hard about why monsters are in location X in an RPG, but it's notable here. Doesn't Bart WANT us to get to Orphan and blow it up? Why does Snow have a daft line about "they sure don't want us to get there" or the like? The "reload from save plot dump text scroll" provides an explanation, and one I actually kind of buy, but it's the type of thing I'd really like if they brought up in game! According to it, the goal is to get us to "lose" a battle, then become Ragnarok in fear / desperation / etc. This is a neat evil plan! Reminds me vaguely of Alucard's game overs in Symphony of the Night that suggested that he reverts to normal vampirism. But it's really something that could have used an explanation of since is the first we've heard of such an effect, and the characters never discuss the possibility in-game.
Right, final confrontation time. Difficulty on the final series is actually pretty tough, which I approve of. I do NOT approve of "surprise we took away your ultimate grinding area and any treasures you might have missed by zapping the final dungeon!" Seriously, WTF. I guess it was an excuse to go side-quest in Pulse which I probably never would have bothered with, but the Pulse baddies drop significantly less CP then the re-fightable subbosses which each drop 20,000-30,000 CP a piece in the very last section of the final dungeon. Nice way to give people an easy way to grind if the final boss gives them trouble - if and only if they saved at the second-to-final save point rather than the final savepoint. Bah. Anyway the final did kill me repeatedly until I grinded a bit + got some better equipment. Also Instant Death on a boss in a game where main's death = Game Over is kinda annoying, but I sort of respect wanting to discourage too stally strategies.
Plotwise, fight 1->fight 2 is fine. It retroactively makes Bart's antagonizing the party make sense, although I'm unsure how much credit to give the game designers for this. It was so bizarre for Bart to lecture the party to do his will AND for Bart to attack the party. If Bart IS Orphan in a sense - that Bart must die for Orphan to be born, and then for Orphan to die - then he was just baiting the party the entire time into killing him. That's kinda cool. The party still gets the mark of shame for fighting Battle 2 at all with Orphan, as at this point they truly have walked entirely into Bart's plan, no excuses, this was obvious from the beginning, sigh.
Form 2->Form 3... now here's where things fly off the rails. In an especially frustrating manner, since FF13 flirts with SEVERAL interesting idea for a satisfying final battle / ending, and then discards them. So, as a reminder, after you win the fight, Orphan emits another burst of energy and knocks you all back. Then starts basically torturing our narrator Vanille and trying to taunt her into becoming Ragnarok. Fang offers to become Ragnarok again to spare Vanille... Which is a MAJOR BETRAYAL of everything the party stood for, including Vanille herself, who has decided that she loves Cocoon and thinks the "war" between Cocoon and Pulse was stupid. The game also implied that Fang had resolved this after collecting Bahamut, although Fang never really said "fine, I'll save Cocoon" herself, so sure.
Now, I'm still sort of okay with this, but it makes me pumped to kill Fang now. Everyone is still knocked back from the earlier blast. Fang starts transforming. At this point, I'd be totally cool with the final boss being Fang-Ragnarok. You must kill her before she can kill Orphan in her rage and doom the world. That would be pretty badass. END ONE POSSIBLE SOLID FINAL BATTLE. Okay, carrying on. After Fang starts doing this, in an instant, the rest of the party becomes Cieth except for Vanille. I'm ALSO fine with this. It means that the Pulse fal'Cie which made Lightning / Sazh / Snow / Hope really WAS trying to save the world and stop the war (FAILED), while the Pulse fal'Cie that empowered Vanille and Fang wanted to break stuff (ABOUT TO SUCCEED). That makes a lot of sense and solves the question of whose focuses were what.
So the Cieth start mindlessly beating down on Fang. Fang begs Vanille to run. Now if they wanted to do the uber-dark ending, I'd be cool with this! Your characters mindlessly save the world as monsters by beating up Fang and making her back down from the transformation as she realized in horror what she's done. Your PCs then wander looking for people to kill, while Vanille alone is left to run back into the world knowing the horrible truth of how the world was "saved." Very Lovecraftian. It'd be a massive kick in the nuts since your party did pull an uncontrollable stupid by coming to Orphan's Cradle in the first place, but this is still a valid place to end. Alternatively, if you want to do Cloud / Sephiroth style badass duels, I always do like the duel among former friends. Vanille alone challenges a hesitant Fang-Ragnarok, say. Fang is confused and much weakened to be fighting Vanille herself which is why Fang-Ragnarok would be beatable at all. END ANOTHER POSSIBLE AWESOME FINAL BATTLE. Still ends with Vanille the sole survivor, which is probably too dark, but it's legit.
So, if you want to do a badass fight but with happy ending potential, kill Fang, save Orphan, figure out something. Get Orphan some psychological counseling or something. Hesitant as I am to recommend this, maybe even go fight the Maker (= God) via some asspull about how this will cure Orphan's madness, if you don't want to fight Fang. But nope. We're going to choose the least appropriate battle 3 of the final sequence possible.
Back to FF13 recap reminder. Vanille is in tears, stands her ground, and then... the rest of the party goes back to normal for some reason. Because they're heroes. This kind of devalues everyone else who became a Cieth, but eh, it's late, this isn't totally unreasonable. There's something pushing them forward, a new focus or something? But what was their old focus? How did they fail it? For that matter, what is their new focus? It's kind of implied that their old focus was to blow up Cocoon after all, but hold that thought, 'cause it's about to be implied false. Also we never ever *talk* with a Pulse fal'Cie in the game so I'm totally in the dark for motives on switching focus.
Our heroes also talk Fang back down. Meh, but okay. It would be a gameplay-related kick in the nuts if you're used to using Fang to have "surprise! Can't use her anymore," I'll grant.
Then...
......then....
..............you kill Orphan anyway in another boss battle for no damn good reason.
what. what. WHAT. Battle 2 wasn't so bad because Orphan attacked YOU, self-defense instinct, the battle stopped without you "killing" Orphan anyway, etc. Battle 3 is explicitly picking a fight with Orphan, with some yammering about him being poison in Cocoon's heart for so long. No, no, no, no, NO NO NO NO NO. Plot FAIL. This was the entire thing we've been trying to AVOID THE ENTIRE GAME. Reality is breaking down outside because of Orphan's flickering influence! How the hell does killing Cocoon save it? Do we have a Plan B? What the HELL? I liked FF13's plot angle of "for once, your quest is to NOT kill something" rather than the usual "kill the Dark Lord, save the world," and we just threw that away without the narrative realizing that we now have fallen heroes.
Anyway, we "win", which depowers Cocoon. And causes a mega-disaster or something of Cocoon starting to fall from Pulse's sky (Cocoon looks like a moon from Pulse). How many people are killed by this? Who knows. Then Fang & Vanille together become Ragnarok. The combined Ragnarok then, rather than blowing shit up, basically saves the world in a very nebulous way - creates a giant crystal pillar for Cocoon to rest on as it falls from the sky and freezes it there. The endgame shows ships coming down from a presumably devasated / deserted Cocoon onto Pulse. But there was ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO THINK THIS COULD BE DONE. This wasn't a "bad guy just blew up the world, we need to improvise right now!" deal. This was "We just blew up the world!" Give me some assurance they knew this wouldn't kill everyone first before we do something like this in a fit of pique. Compare this with, say, Alex & Luna escaping from the Goddess tower after it blows up, because well magic. She is a goddess after all, and it was an unplanned emergency. I understand that narratively you don't want to "spoil" your twist by having the characters discuss on camera the cool plan, followed by the cool plan happening. But if you omit that step, then I want to be able to assume that they were able to CREATE this cool plan in the first place. Considering the clashing emotions and ideas on what to do with Orphan just before, no, this was Fang and Vanille just getting a divine revelation that summoning the ultimate power and becoming Ragnarok might be a good idea or something. Oh, and the other PCs lose their brands, uh, 'cause. Since we don't know anything more about Pulse l'Cie, I can't judge this plot element for plausibility... but again, what was the focus Light / Sazh / Snow / Hope failed? And what was the new one? They comment on how Cocoon looks thoroughly destroyed, but I thought that was the old focus, and... screw this. I like not spelling out foci for me explicitly but when I puzzle through it you have to have at least one answer that makes sense. Multiple answers is fine, 0 answers that make sense are not.
So. Sighhhhhhhhh. We blow up the world 'cause and probably kill a bunch of people off-screen. Go us. Or something. Damnit. I still blame "Vanille" characterwise, because I feel she should have steered Chapter 11 and for that matter Chapter 13 more than she did. She's the one who doesn't have amnesia and knows something about what Pulse was like. She easily could have plot-dumped interesting information, or made a stand somewhere, but just kind of floated along wanting to save Cocoon, but ultimately FAILING. Sigh. Sigh.
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Some other holistic plot notes:
I liked the worries expressed earlier about how to deal with enemy soldiers, and Sazh wondering if it wouldn't be better just to turn himself in and die. This expands to the populace's fear of Pulse later on... except the characters don't really ask themselves that question. It's solely part of the villain's mwahaha speeches. i.e. "I will drive them into a frenzy of fear where they'll tear each other asunder." I would really like for the PCs to address the issue somewhat, too, and think abuot it! The closest we get is them wondering if they'll have to fight through some more guards in Chap 9, and dismissing it with "Nope, they're fanatics for Primarch Dyseley." How do you fight fear? Oddly enough, Pluse l'Cie killing everyone is not really going to help a point about "Pulse l'Cie aren't evil and nothing to fear!" But maybe there's no choice. Deal with the issue! struggle with it! Even if the ultimate conclusion was "Crap, there's no way, we're just going to make thing worse, but we have to keep fighting," that'd be okay. Shame. Your characters never really try and stop Barthandelus's fear-mongering either - the NASCAR sneak attack being the worst example of this, of course, but even otherwise, they aren't really trying to spread their own propaganda about being no threat.
Barthendelus's motive: Nobody in the game other than Bart ever talks about the Creator other than Bart. The closest is the Pulse archive found in Oerba, which obliquely mentions the Creator stepping in personally to bail the world out of a catastrophe... which raises an interesting question, is Bart intentionally trying to make a catastrophe to get the Creator's interest? "God only shows up in emergencies, so let's make one?" The game never addresses this, or lets your party found out any more details. Sigh. So we have no idea if God is evil, or if God is good and Bart had a Lezard-to-Lenneth style of attracting his attention, or what. This whole plot thread was lame anyway. They should have stuck with simple "immortal's cynicism." "I've been around thousands of years, tasked with helping humanity, and I've come to despise you all and hate my job. End this farce." Keep it simple. I can buy that.
Eidolons: I can't take credit for this as an original thought (Tonfa pointed this out), but some of these scenes felt misplaced. Lightning's was unarguably the best one, and a great scene regardless - Lightning chewing out Hope as slowing her down and being useless while struggling along, watching a giant magic rune appear, and having the proper "this cannot be happening" deadpan response. Makes sense in-game, too, this is the Eidolon saying "it's not safe to travel alone, idiot." Snow & Fang's were fine. Sazh... okay, it appears at a major plot point for Sazh, but it's clashing to have "woo hoo, fire motorcycles!" directly into "suicide attempt." They should have killed the usual "yay I won!" drive-around there. Hope and Vanille's were plain misplaced. They both occur for no damn good reason during angst-sessions on Pulse. Hope needed to have his be in Palumpolom - there was even a giant fleet of ships to unleash an Eidolon on to help make that escape a bit more plausible. Vanille... well, I've already complained about how they handled Oerba, but Vanille needed to get hers in Oerba along with more interesting plot revelations than what actually happened in Oerba.
Pulse: I already ranted on this in part I, but I'm going to bring it up again. What did they want to do with Pulse?! I still don't know. I can only assume this was intentionally withheld for sequel-fu, but they don't even give us good vague hints at what went wrong here and why everyone is dead. Or if everyone is dead. Wandering around Pulse again while leveling up for the final, I found a random Hope / Vanille scene which was kind of interesting in that Vanille once more praises the value of lying... oh, Vanille. You could have been Citan. Instead you were more like the NPC who knows the cause of the world's suffering but sat in his hut waiting for the heroes to arrive to tell them about it, but never do anything about it in shame.
vs. other Final Fantasies: FF13 is so weird. I think both it and FF12 are 7/10 games, but for radically different reasons. FF12's villains actually made sense, for one. FF12 felt like it made a living and breathing world as well, while FF13 kind of skipped out on this (even if for semi-understandable reasons). At least I got to know FF12's world better, at least. FF13 is at least probably better than FF5 - they both have solid gameplay, but FF5 has an actively crappy plot, although at least a semi-consistent crappy plot. FF5 has more "blah" characterless characters too, while at least the full FF13 cast has some solid potential.
Off the cuff ranking: FF6=FF10->FF7->FF8=FF4->FF12->FF13->FF9=FF5->FF3(DS)->FF1?
Since I've finished FF13, I've also finished Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings, Alpha Protocol, and Radiant Historia. Should probably review them as well some time. The super-fast turbo version:
FF12RW: 7/10? But a high 7. It's fun! And Vaan and Penelo have *character*, and lines, and are authentically the stars of the story! Weird! In fact the whole cast is fun and has character, and the game has a fairly solid adventurey plot too. It's just a little weird that the gameplay is VaanCraft the RTS. And that literally every tune in the game is taken from FF12.
Alpha Protocol: 7/10. Also fun. Is Deus Ex with modern technology. The plot... is fun enough, but really doesn't work if you look at it closely enough, but this tends to be true of most spy fiction. Also, I can't imagine not playing the game stealthily. It becomes a bad Halo knockoff if you charge in guns blazing, but sneaking around and CQCing people out Solid Snake style never gets old.
Radiant Historia: 9/10. Some minor niggles here and there but great battle engine, great plot idea, pretty good characters. Pretty much agree with Random Consonant's plot dump of thoughts on the characters - wish they'd done Viola or Dias / Selvan a little better, and the Big Villain has one rather notable hole in their plan - but whatevers. Damn fun.
Playing Secret of Monkey Island special edition on PC, Valkyria Chronicles "I'll finish it this time" edition on PS3, and Metroid Prime on Nintendo DS at the moment. Oh and more StarCraft II, of course.
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FF12? Good plot? I like the game, and while it had a great story, but the plot jumps ahead with such randomness, leaving so many details out for the player to figure out/make up on their own, that it's hard to call it good.
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Uhhh I'm pretty sure it's actually Hope who reassures Vanille about hiding the truth in that scene too so yeah >_>
Edit: Here's the scene again -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rqCGGWbm4A
Yeah it's Hope who praises the virtue of it >.> Vanille was doing her "pull stuff out of thin air in an attempt to cheer people up/reassure them" thing again, then when she sort of questions it/refers to the consequences of it, Hope steps in with the reassurement/encouragement there <.<
I will also add that it is Vanille who asks/questions if they are really doing the right thing in the final chapters, again being ushered forward by others/the pace of the circumstances/plot (need to recheck exactly which scene this is in though) and later she is the one most reluctant to leave Rosch behind/enter Orphan's Cradle, only for Sazh to put his arm around/behind her and guide/move her forward wherein the door then closes behind them >.> Even later still she is about to give up or something saying something like "I can't do this! All these Cie'th were people once, like us" only for Hope to chime in with a cheerleader routine again saying that's what Barthandulus wants us to do, he's trying to get to us, we can't let him/we can't let him win, etc, etc. Perhaps she could have done more there sure but she didn't do nothing.
There's also one major difference between Celes/Vanille and that is the quite prominent role Vanille has in the ending, even being the focal point (along with Fang) for the camera when it zooms in for the very end of the ending. That role in FFVI, goes to Terra. Another similarity there is that Vanille like Terra has a sort of face off/stand up to the final boss thing which again is something Celes doesn't have irrc.
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/me reads comments.
People take their vidya game way too seriously.
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FF6 Eviltype: Finished, killed the Czar dragon at L40. Team is Terra/Edgar/Setzer/Gau. I had tons of fun with the game- it makes FF6 stand up to the nastiest things you can throw at it, including quick/ultima spam. Will probably go back to VC2 or FF13 after this.
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Good to see the rest of the FF13 rant. I mostly agree with the assessment, with the exception of not enjoying the battle system much until chapter 9ish. Sazh-Vanille sections were OK but the rest of the 2 person parties were just abominable after getting to use 3 PCs for a short while early on.
Rhapsody DS: Beaten. Would have been a nice light romp but
<RichardHawk> It's kind of awesome but then its generic cave fetish goes so far it actually has a generic cave eat you while you are exploring a generic cave and then you have to get out of two generic caves to find another generic cave.
That is no exaggeration. Dungeon design sinks it back to average, and it only gets that high because it has already mapped minimap and autobattle.
Dissidia 012: Got all the labyrinth gear.
Ys Seven: Beat up the flame dragon. Boss design just isn't matching up to the standards of Felghana or Origin, though the music is equally amazing.
Naruto UNS2: Flashy shallow fighter for PS3. Provides fun 2P so mission successful.
Yakuza 3: I found some shady scientist in a back alley that hooked me up to a virtual reality fighter. Now I know how to use brass knuckles.
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FF12? Good plot? I like the game, and while it had a great story, but the plot jumps ahead with such randomness, leaving so many details out for the player to figure out/make up on their own, that it's hard to call it good.
FF12's plot was good when it was THERE. Which is to say, everything up until Raithwall or so. The plot sort of dies alongside Ghis, and doesn't pick up again until...Arcadia, which unfortunately there, its now degraded to "Madman wants to rule the world, he has a mad scientist henchman, STOP THEM!" with even cliche shit like "YOU'RE THE CHOSEN ONE!" with the Occurria and all that.
I don't think a game suffered as much as FF12 from simply dropping its plot, let alone as early as it did, as FF12 did. Cause all the stuff early on actually had potential to some cool stuff, but the game decided to just say "screw it". I understand why from the developmental side, but that doesn't change the fact it still happened (it just makes the developers more forgivable, NOT the game; if a game fails at something, it fails at it.)
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Torchlight: Near the end of my rogue vanquisher playthrough.
I rely exclusively on Needle arc spam + a few regular attacks to get MP back (I found a very fast +12 MP/hit weapon) I've died about 25 times already. Stab looks weak, Venomous Dirk is underwhelming so far, I need to level it up some more.
Hamstring looks really fun, because it makes the main character pretend she's a plane. Actually, the biggest downfall of this game is that she's not saying "I'm a plane!!! Woooooosh!!" whenever she's using it.
Unfortunately, it's based on dexterity and magic, and I almost only have strength and defense. Sigh. Why magic. How does this even make sense. I am running around pretending that I'm a plane like an idiot. What's magical about it.
Outland: So derivative and yet so good.
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Limbo: Beat it. Was vaguely unsettled through the entire time I played. I guess I'd recommend it, but I know I'm not touching it again.
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Last Remnant: beat the Eldritch Dragon. I don't want to skip the Fallen because I could get all quests complete if I beat him. But my stats are so bad relative to my BR that I don't know if I can.
DQ9: I love when Legacy Bosses are weak to the primary element they attack with. Go go Fire Fource vs Orgodemir.
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Good to see the rest of the FF13 rant. I mostly agree with the assessment, with the exception of not enjoying the battle system much until chapter 9ish. Sazh-Vanille sections were OK but the rest of the 2 person parties were just abominable after getting to use 3 PCs for a short while early on.
Given how badly Sazh and Vanille synergize overall, I'm surprised that they were the only two person party you could stand at a point. Also, as usual, fail SE at having that bad a bomb of a fiscal year despite all the high selling properties they have.
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Wanted to address SnowFire's post some moar! :)
"Also, I don't buy disliking the game because of Snow or Hope, the two characters who seem to draw the most hate. They're fine. Without venturing into spoilers, if the game has a weak spot in the main cast, it is most definitely Fang and Vanille."
Fang doesn't get hated/is forgiven because she's badass/cool/the best PC in the game or something (actually believe it or not though I have ran into at least one vehement Fang hater) >.> ) Vanille actually does draw a lot of hate because of voice acting issues/moans/being used as blatant fanservice in general with the skirt shots/battle shots/Heca thing (her VA actually said in an interview that Square Enix directed her to act that way in battle/etc too <.<) but gets forgiven/liked by some people because ... uhh I don't know really ... I just know I'm not the only who likes kooky characters like Vanille! I suppose part of it is because she's a lot more plot relevant/important than most of her sister stereotypes in the other FFs (the spirited young girl/kid type) She also visibly shows a variety of different emotions like anger/frustration/sadness/tears/guilt/etc compared to them rather than just being so damn happy all of the time, there's reasoning behind Vanille's facade early on. Eh I suppose I just identify there. She's also the second best PC in the game or something! *nods* (arguably the best for the final boss even and the best there is for Long Guis and some of the missions) *nodnods*
Briefly going to bullet point cover other stuff -
*In regards to Snow's daft line irrc there's another one with Hope that you can get while you're running around if you have him in your team in the final dungeon where he basically says something like "If we destroy Orphan, Cocoon will fall and we'll have completed our Focus right?" The game/other characters seem perfectly ok with this! >.>
*Pulse grinding - Fight more turtles! :P Seriously though Pulse has a number of grinding/training/farming spots even without farming/factoring those in, the Behemoth at the start of the Steppes is one, the Behemoth/wolf creature just outside Mahabara on the Steppes is another, Mahabara circuit looping is a third. The Cactuars are also supposedly good though I never tried those for grinding myself. On my own FFXIII replay I had all Stage Nine roles maxxed for everybody and 999'999 CPs in hold (then again I did abuse the Growth Egg and Adamantoise/Long Gui farming there too <.<)
*Haven't you heard the one where it was actually Pulse himself who branded all six of the characters!? Seriously according to the Ultimania that's how it goes. According to the novellas it was the same Pulse Fal'Cie who branded Light/Sazh/Snow/Hope at the beginning (Fal'Cie Anima) that also branded Fang/Vanille hundreds of years ago too (but it's true form was actually Pulse!?)
If you still want to try and puzzle out exactly wtf was going on in FFXIII then there's some entertainment to be had in the novellas if you haven't read them already. They and the analects do provide some filler and help fill out the characters some (it should have been in the game in the first place but yeah - well at least the analects are there)
*Vanille/Fang gave themselves up to save the people of Cocoon. It was not the shell or the corrupt society that they wanted to save/that had to be saved but the innocent people. A lot of people were saved and given the chance to start a new life on Pulse (with Vanille/Fang holding up the pillar to prevent Cocoon crushing them and the rest of the team) Though I wasn't entirely sure whether or not Fang actually really cared about any of this or she was just doing it because that's what Vanille really wanted (the novellas shed some insight there at least and another interesting insight is Fang's thoughts/feelings on Dajh/the Euride Gorge scene, she isn't really as heartless as she seemed there, she was just putting her first priority, Vanille first and she couldn't afford to show softer emotion towards others like the former (or at least thought she couldn't)
True Vanille/Fang and the others didn't manage to save every single person. Neither did Cloud/Aerith and the FFVII team at the end of FFVII for example though. Meteo/Meteorfall still killed plenty of people though despite the intervention of Holy/Lifestream eventually managing to control it and heck the Lifestream even compounded the issue of Geostigma spreading in Edge/etc later. FFVII also sort of had the DEM copout too in that Aerith was responsible for guiding/manipulating the lifestream to Holy's aid from the beyond (according to Square Enix/Compilation canon) and saving the entire world (mostly) =P She also pulls all sorts of crazy Cetra powahs in the movie/novellas too even down to down right creepiness/kookiness when she causes phones to ring all around Midgar to summon people to the church for healing) when initially in the game we were led to believe she wasn't all that powerful being only half Cetra (then again it was Hojo who said that) >.>
*Fang!Ragnarok/Vanille soloing the final boss - Ironically enough Vanille is actually probably the best PC for the final boss proper being able to Poison it in addition to applying other debuffs, then either totally cheese it by summoning and drawing out Gestalt + Chain Cannons while Poison does it's job to take off 50%~ HP while Vanille is sitting there in complete safety, quickly use an Elixir when the summon is gone, restick Poison and then do it again to finish off the remaining HP or for those who don't have/don't want to use an Elixir just using Poison and heals to outstall the rest off the fight. Alternatively just outstall it with Poison/healing the entire fight or Poison it and finish it off with a good old fashioned beat down as Poison does it's work and adds to the damage/HP depletion in the process. This isn't even touching Mistilteinn abuse. Poison/Gestalt and/or Poison/stall abuse is best for low spec/underpowered parties though. For the second form well ... it can be instant deathed with Vanille's Death when it's staggered. No, I'm serious. This actually is possible. Alternatively wtf hax aside she can beat it down with Death*COM for damage and/or Mistilteinn abuse in general (ok I guess that also falls under hax <.<) Finally I would have also been down with Fang!Ragnarok as the final boss too but yeah it probably would have peeved off people who had been using her as one of their main PCs until then (I'd decided to be a non conformist or something and use Vanille/Sazh/Snow instead of FLH/LFH >.>)
/me reads comments.
People take their vidya game way too seriously.
Just when it comes to CT baits ;-)~
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I hope I am not the only one amused by what appears to be a GIANT SMILEY in the middle of the spoilertext.
Valkyrie Profile - Beat this again. I had some trouble with Fenrir(!!!) but the other two endgame bosses were chumps. Had much more trouble with Genevieve, but part of that was my fighting her before getting the Dinosaur or Cromrea (incidentally, I've been underrating the Cromrea, great boss-fighting weapon and was a large improvement over the Elven Bow in particular). Of course I refuse to cheap Fenrir out, I had one person with freeze immunity and I don't use any of the game's OHKO-bosses bullshit.
Game's pretty cool, clocked in at a bit over 15 hours this time. Really like how you can do it at your own pace, good stuff. Fun battle system, even if I have to hold at least one hand behind my back now to get any challenge out of it.
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I mostly mean the part where they're slamming Hope for "being an asshole" for "playing" Vanille or something. If that's CT bait then uhh. UHHHH. These are 14-year-old kids, bro. Sis. Whatever.
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What the ... I thought you were referring to the comments made by SnowFire/myself both >.>
I hope I am not the only one amused by what appears to be a GIANT SMILEY in the middle of the spoilertext.
I was amused!
Dhyer - Eh Sazh-Vanille/Vanille - Sazh aren't that bad. You have the best SAB in the game and the best SYN pre Stage 9 Crystarium (which is when Hope finally picks up Haste) though I suppose that does depend on whether one prefers having an offensive based SYN early on or a defensive based one (I prefer Sazh's early Faith/Brave/Haste/En element spells to Hope's early Protect/Shell myself) so one can liberally apply debuffs/buffs on the enemies including early Deprotect/Deshell/Imperil/Poison on the bosses they face before going to town with them. Upgrade Vanille's Belladonna Wand for improved debuffing (and use Sazh's Spica Defenders/Buff Maintenance weapon if desired too, one thing Vanille/Sazh do have is interesting weapon selections) and abuse her as a pseudo Commando with Undermine (SAB/RAV) to both debuff enemies and solidify/hold the stagger/chain bar (sooo much better than the Slash and Burn set the game gives you with Sazh's COM >.>) before switching to RAV/RAV to stagger and finish enemies off re elemental abuse vs elemental weaknesses (especially niice once she gets Imperil for Deshell/Imperil double pain doses!) The Belladonna Wand is also part of the Buff Duration synthesis group with accessories too which is nice. Alternatively as a healer she picks up stuff like Cura/Esuna/Raise/Curaja earlier than Hope does and gets the Healer's Staff (with HP bangles for High HP:Power Surge) early on. Granted I didn't know/understand/figure out the half of this the first time I ran the game though! So yeah those sections were a bit challenging compared to others at first (they were a complete and utter breeze on my replay though especially having realised Vanille/Sazh aren't meant to be played the same way as other duos >.>) Perhaps the Vice President just figured it all out earlier than others but!~
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Oh, no, I was talking about the YouTube comments. Video games is srs bsns to rage over on the internet and discuss the morality of a 14-year-old telling a girl it makes him happy when she smiles when the girl has UNDERLYING FEELINGS OF LOVE, except this is a Japanese game so all males are super dense.
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I feel like that JRPGs should probably be written by robots, because love does not compute to them, and thus there would be no hair-pullingly awful love stories.
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CT: My reference was mostly in that, while it get somewhat obscured in the later recruits due to FF6 allowing you to pick your party any way you want, Celes is the one who drives the plot in the World of Ruin. Everybody else has their own problems, and Celes runs around whipping them into taking another shot at Kefka. The FF13 party is stuck enacting the Bad Guy's plan, and the character who has the most knowledge about what the hell is going on, as well as an avowed new mission to save Cocoon, is the one most in place to stop this - Vanille. Instead, the party drifts along. Again, if the writers were really tied to that plot sequence, feel free to have Vanille's efforts to derail fate fail! But I'd like to have seen her try more. And I like the *idea* of Vanille - the perky girl stuck in a bad situation who secretly knows the whole plot from the beginning, but tries to manipulate everyone to not re-enact the bad ending and to run off and "neglect" their duties to blow stuff up. She just needed to have taken the lead in defying the villain's plan rather than enacting it in the last quarter of the game.
Turtles would still have slaughtered me utterly. Except for maaaaaaybe Vanille Death hype if I somehow survived the opening attacks. I hunted some Behemoth Kings mostly that had some support - I think they were new Mahabara, yeah. Even still, that formation gave 7,000 CP or so? The minibosses at the end of the final dungeon gave 20,000 CP +.
Haven't heard the alternate Ultimania theory about the source of the brands, but uh. Nothing in the game about that, so will have to chalk that up as a possible weirdness. Just knowing "Bob did it" doesn't actually help - I want to know WHY Bob did it, and what the... okay, microtext: I want to know what their foci were. Or have valid guesses. If it was Anima who gave all 6 of them their brands, then how come only the Cocoon 4 failed their old Foci and became Cieth? Were they different foci after all?
Re Fang/Vanille giving themselves up for the people of Cocoon, I buy that. The problem is that they just got done putting the people of Cocoon in such dire straits in the first place by killing Orphan. And the idea of Ragnarok even being capable of such a feat is nowhere supported earlier. This is closer to if Aeris had decided to summon Meteor herself to wipe out Shinra, but also tried to evacuate the people in the slums to minimize collateral damage. Does the game want to make the case that the Cocoon fal'Cie were so evil as needing to be destroyed even at the cost of half the world's population? Apparently so, but we never hear the party talk about it in those terms.
Interesting comments on the final boss. I originally went in with a Light / Snow / Sazh team based purely on character worth, but after dying horribly to Form 2's "80% your max HP damage!" after Stagger attacks, switched to Light / Snow / Hope for better healing / debuffing. Vanille does sound pretty handy, and of course Fang is kind of broken, but meh at using them. (I did use both of them on Chapter 11 at least, figured that they deserved to be in the party the whole time for Pulse.)
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I feel like that JRPGs should probably be written by robots, because love does not compute to them, and thus there would be no hair-pullingly awful love stories.
Yeah, but you'd still have this:
(http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/7217/robotcw.gif)
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It would actually be an interesting swerve to see a game have two characters just hump for funsies.
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CT: My reference was mostly in that, while it get somewhat obscured in the later recruits due to FF6 allowing you to pick your party any way you want, Celes is the one who drives the plot in the World of Ruin. Everybody else has their own problems, and Celes runs around whipping them into taking another shot at Kefka.
You just openned a huge can of worms and now you're going to eat a Meeple Rant!
You may want to check again, cause all Celes does is whip Setzer into shape. Sabin was very much looking for his friends (GAME OPENLY STATES THIS), and its implied Edgar was on his way to doing so as well before he got side tracked by a more immediate, localized crisis (Kefka was more looming threat that had to be taken care of eventually; Figaro was in an immediate crisis which could NOT be held off, there's really no question which takes priority in the situation). Edgar even brings up Kefka's name without Celes so much as even implying her actions. Ditto Sabin being the one to bring up Kefka's name when Celes is there; Celes just says "I lost hope, but now I know everyone is alive!"
Gau was also stated to be "Training to fight Kefka." It really was just an excuse to shove him back on the Veldt, but the nonetheless, there's a reason he's so eager to join.
Furthermore, Celes didn't even set out to fight Kefka; she set out to find her friends, most in particular Locke, acuse she thought she was alone. She didn't even know Kefka was behind anything on the Solitary Island, just that the world was in a shit state, but maybe some of her friends are out there (Kefka's name is not brought up until Albrook in the WoR. Cid doesn't mention Kefka at all, and Celes has no reason to realize Kefka's being a god like figure. Half of Albrook was basically saying "This is what's going in in the world!")
To say Celes is the driving force..is an exaggeration. She just starts the WoR, and nothing more; she's a stop gap PoV character cause someone needed to start it. She's not the ones telling everyone "WE MUST FIGHT KEFKA!" seeing as I illustrated several characters had that in mind anyway and some were even working directly on that (Sabin got hit by an IMMEDIATE crisis just as an excuse to prevent him from being a "Free Recruit." Gau was just an excuse to put him back on the Veldt); it really is not fair to say "Celes gets all the credit!" seeing as she just started it. FF6 treats it as a group effort, and not Celes' doing.
I could go into detail, but Celes is not the main of the WoR at all, nor is she a driving force. She just starts it. It doesn't get obscured in the later parts, its downright denied; Celes only has two more scenes before the Tower, and that's Gau's Father sequence (which several characters get, and is 100% humor toned), and with Locke, where she says 2 lines consistnig of 3 words total! Worth noting that despite Celes being a forced character in this scene, Locke comes to "lets defeat Kefka!" without Celes so much as saying anything anything but his name.
So Celes is just a convenient starting point; she doesn't get the credit, nor focus, and thus can't really be considered the driving force Game doesn't say "She's running around recruiting characters!" More like she was just the first, and everyone is working together as they join. She's not whipping anyone into shape...Setzer aside.
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Meeple: Fine. Replace "Defeat Kefka" with "Find everyone, bring them back together again, and make the world a better place, which will probably involve killing Kefka." Yes, Edgar and Sabin were already willing, but Celes is the one who actually finds them. You're correct that I was thinking of the Setzer case, but it's easy to assume that similar conversations with Cyan / Terra / etc. to get them back on their feet are similarly driven by Celes. Except that they can't be in-game because you might have left Celes on the airship, so you have generic party dialogue instead.
FF6 is a game in the SNES-era without as much dialogue as I'd have liked in the WoR probably due to budget / cartridge storage concerns. Celes is the character you start controlling, and the *party as a whole* runs around trying to make the world better. Thus I assume that Celes is doing this, in the same way that you can assign Cecil credit/blame for some of the party-as-a-whole's actions in FF4. To be sure, I'd probably have expected a bit more on a later-gen system like customized dialogue based on your party which would make it easier to tell... but whatever.
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CT: My reference was mostly in that, while it get somewhat obscured in the later recruits due to FF6 allowing you to pick your party any way you want, Celes is the one who drives the plot in the World of Ruin. Everybody else has their own problems, and Celes runs around whipping them into taking another shot at Kefka.
I think Nintendo Power actually labeled the World of Ruin like that, hyping Celes being the driving force of the 2nd half of the game (and Terra for the first half).
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Except that...she's not? Look at the Falcon scene; its Setzer who says "we have to find our friends" and Edgar who goes "right, first things first!" Celes just goes "Hey, a bird! Lets follow it!"
To say its Celes whose driving these conversations...I can't say I agree. If you look at many of these scenes, characters like Cyan and Relm just join cause "hey, you're here! I'll tag along with you guys!"
And again, Sabin was not talked into it by Celes; he had the idea FIRST. We start with Celes, but Sabin's been traveling around looking for the others. Its kind of a noteworthy factor cause it proves Celes wasn't the only one with that idea, and the only reason Celes has all the dialog with Edgar is cause "She's forced, Sabin is not; cut back on space." (do you really think Celes should have more dialog with Edgar than Edgar's own brother, otherwise?)
There isn't much in the way of Generic Dialog. In fact, if you want a "canon" way of looking at things, Celes recruiting everyone doesn't realyl fit, but rather, something more like this does:
Cyan: More got really into his charade; seeing the team just was a "Yeah, probably a good moment to stop this nonsense"; notice how the team doesn't say anything other than his name to him, and "These Flowers are beautiful." Granted, if we add implied dialog, the only thing that needs to be said here is "Cyan, we're fighting Kefka, wanna help us out?" He'd be all for that without any sort of convincing, for a number of reasons. I'd argue Sabin is a better character to do that here than Celes, cause Sabin has at least some connection to Cyan.
Gau: If they made a scene involving recruiting him, Cyan and Sabin would be the ones to do the talking, not Celes; they're the ones who have some remote connection to him. Celes wold be...kind of random.
Terra: Celes in the first scene, sure, but she fails miserably there. The second scene, Terra came to on her own, and that's kind of the point. The fact that she gets to the top of the Tower without even going to Mobliz once shows that Celes had nothing to do with Terra's own personal resolve.
Shadow: Whoever you think canonly fits beating him in the Colosseum; the only character Shadow has a connection with doesn't really fit here, oddly, but so it goes. To say "ITS CELES!" without any back up though other than "SHE'S RECRUITING PEOPLE!" doesn't really fly here.
Relm: No one in particular, though Celes barely knows Relm so I'm not sure why she'd be the one here? (Terra, Locke, maybe even Shadow? Sure, they'd fit, but Shadow aside, they're stretches, and in Shadow's case, it'd be a bit OUt of Character other than him maybe talking about Interceptor.)
Strago: Blatantly shown that its Relm who smacks sense into him
Mog: Plotless, doesn't really matter; if not recruited in the WoB, he actually just kind of forces his way into the team
Umaro: Recruited by mog
Gogo: Less plot than Mog. LESS. PLOT. THAN. MOG.
Locke's about the only one I'd concede was Celes, for obvious reasons; to say "Celes is driving the conversation!" just cause she started it...I dunno. Seeing as its Edgar whose shouting "Lets attack Kefka's Tower!" in the initial assault scene, and not Celes, I'm really questioning the validity of "CELES IS DRIVING THE CONVERSATION!" The only person she openly recruited was Setzer, and the only person I'd give her credit of optional ones is Locke (I'd credit her for talking to Terra, but she failed miserably in the recruitment there.)
I think Nintendo Power actually labeled the World of Ruin like that, hyping Celes being the driving force of the 2nd half of the game (and Terra for the first half).
And I'm pretty sure it doesn't, actually. I know the players Guide doesn't either (just checked it!); what it says there is just intro to the Solitary Island going "Celes needs to find some direction in a world lost!", and it just talked about how "Cid and her are the only survivors!" I remember reading the NP stuff a lot and it just says "Celes awakens a year later, blah blah blah."
Neither hypes the WoR as Celes' story, but just her as a starting character, which is really all she is, and all the game treats her as.
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I never took that scene as Celes having nothing to say but Locke's name and more him already knowing what she was going to say and being on board. Cause he's never the kind of character who needed prodding to help others, and all.
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Snow fire rant
I don't know this will make everything sounds better or worse to you.....
Here are some spoiler explanation:
The whole soldier turned into Cieth is just Bart invisibly turns them into l'Cie and speed up the timer to the max.
The whole final battle portion of the plot to the ending can be summed up as: "fal'Cie=Etro has divinely intervened"
She miraculously turn the PCs back to normal and miraculously crystallize the Ragnorock so the Cocoon can be held in place.
As for the gods, if you do more Pulse mission and unlock more fragments, you can see what is going on with them. But then, even those told you less than a quarter of the truth and no reason were given on why fal'Cie=Pulse and fal'Cie=Linse vanished from the world.
Though, fal'Cie=Barthandelus was misguided to believe he is looking for the missing fal'Cie=Linse (but he kinda acknowledge that possibility too). What he is really doing is to open the gate to the Invisible World so that Bunibelze can to the another side to kill Muin. Just that no one know Muin is already dead but fal'Cie=Etro, who witnessed Muin's death. And during the final battle, the gate to the Invisible World was opened slightly, thus giving fal'Cie=Etro, who is in the Invisible World, a chance to intervene.
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argumentum ad ignorantiam all up in this bitch
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Just the type of response I'd expect from a DIRTY POLITICIAN
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Niu: Interesting. Thanks for posting, but... does the extra information ever say what their focuses were? And how Light/Sazh/Snow/Hope "failed" them? I can buy "Etro" turning them back, but if the goal really was to blow up Cocoon, they were about to succeed it, not fail it, when Fang started transforming... It'd have been nice if they'd explained that in game, and given motives to the various names...
Meeple: Well, we've both played the game, so there's no disagreement of fact here, just of interpretation. You're looking at the trees. And you're right that there's no particular reason to think that Celes somehow "took the lead" in saying "Let's go bet a Striker in the Colleseum and browbeat Shadow into joining us!," or many other actions the party takes individually. I'm looking at the forest. Sure, Sabin and co. are willing to go fight Kefka again, but Celes is the one who *actually finds them* and joins up. I personally assume Celes's mark on everything the party does in the WoR. Is there customized recruiting dialogue to support this for characters after Setzer? No. But I see the general "WoR quest" as Celes's thing since she's the one who starts it with "let's go find my friends (and save what we can of the world)". I have already freely admitted that this is to some extent only implied and thus arguable due to SNES limitations.
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Niu: Interesting. Thanks for posting, but... does the extra information ever say what their focuses were? And how Light/Sazh/Snow/Hope "failed" them? I can buy "Etro" turning them back, but if the goal really was to blow up Cocoon, they were about to succeed it, not fail it, when Fang started transforming... It'd have been nice if they'd explained that in game, and given motives to the various names...
We never find out on what their focus is. And they turn into Cieth in the end simply because their timer is out of the time.
But what we do know is fal'Cie=Anima, who made the PCs into L'Cie, is really really pissed at Cocoon. All of the fal'Cie in Pulse actually never gave a damn on what Cocoon is doing but Anima, who got offended by Bart when Bart was salvaging some natural resources from Pulse.
Also, the previous war ended the same way like this time. fal'Cie=Etro intervened by reverting Fang into human, froze her Brand, and turn both Fang and Vanille into Crystal, then puts fal'Cie=Anima into suspend animation.
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It would actually be an interesting swerve to see a game have two characters just hump for funsies.
They do all the time. Off-camera. And they never bring it up 'cause it ain't no thang.
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It would actually be an interesting swerve to see a game have two characters just hump for funsies.
They do all the time. Off-camera. And they never bring it up 'cause it ain't no thang.
Also they slip out and fight crime as a superhero team.
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Desktop Dungeons.
So...I had been operating under the assumption that there were six deities, and then wondered why it felt like I kept going five or six attempts in a row without seeing the deity critical to my strategy (three deities spawn per map). Turns out, I never bothered to count: there are nine deities total, making the chance of Binlor on any given run 33%, not 50%.
Speaking of which, I decided to check just for sanity--I had been thinking there were 10 glyphs. Nope: turns out there's 13. So...if looking for one particular glyph with a character that comes with an extra pre-set glyph, the chances are not 50% as I previously thought (6 glyphs on the map, 2 fixed, so 4/8) but rather 36% (4/11). Damn.
Up to Gauntlet level 66. But I feel it's going to be time to quit soon (or get a better strategy). It's getting to the point where regen fighting gets me 600 damage under decent but unspectacular circumstances with a lot of regen tiles remaining, burst fighting with Elf gets me another 400, and that's still well short of killing most bosses; even low-HP bosses like Nine-Toes have 1000 HP now. On the plus side, successful fights are once again often in the range of being close calls where lots of little decisions matter. Except Gharbad vs CYDSTEPP.
I did try human once (the race where the theory goes that regen fighting gets more damage per tile). Of course, the glyph that makes human worthwhile didn't spawn, and...I found myself rather not impressed by the race. Now that I know I can expect the CYDSTEPP glyph 36% of the time I'm liking it even less as an option (and really less than 36%, because a regen buffer like poison or BLUDTOPOWA are still required, and leave one less glyph slot available, so...more like 3/11 which means 27%).
Mmm, yeah, I definitely feel I'm leaving the realm of sane reset numbers with percentages like that.
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I personally assume Celes's mark on everything the party does in the WoR. Is there customized recruiting dialogue to support this for characters after Setzer? No.
Well, actually, there *are* some unique lines of dialog in the script that only play when Celes is in the party. Unfortunately, the extent of the difference between the line when Celes says and when a generic party member says it is that when Celes says it, it has her name in front of it, while there's no name-tag at all on the generic line. At least this is the case for Sabin and Edgar's recruitment (which is amusing since there's no way not to have Celes in the party at those times).
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You can recruit Sabin without Celes in your group. Not Edgar, though.
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So reading FF13 spoilers, I find out that FF13's plot is stupid and makes no sense without painful supplemental reading that doesn't explain shit.
So reading FF13 spoilers shows exactly the things I had been saying about it. Cool.
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I personally assume Celes's mark on everything the party does in the WoR. Is there customized recruiting dialogue to support this for characters after Setzer? No.
Well, actually, there *are* some unique lines of dialog in the script that only play when Celes is in the party. Unfortunately, the extent of the difference between the line when Celes says and when a generic party member says it is that when Celes says it, it has her name in front of it, while there's no name-tag at all on the generic line. At least this is the case for Sabin and Edgar's recruitment (which is amusing since there's no way not to have Celes in the party at those times).
Celes also gets a unique line of dialog if she's in your party when you recruit Locke (its an actual added line to the scene, not a "Generic vs. Non-Generic" line.)
Fact is, FF6 shows it could have had moments where it has Celes get specified dialog, but didn't do it. I don't think its fair going "The WoR is Celes' journey!"; she got the ball rolling, nothing more. Again, look at the Falcon dialog. Everyone is saying "We have to do this!" Its not Celes driving everything, its a clear group consesus.
You say "But Celes found Sabin, SHE ACTUALLY FOUND HIM!" Umm...that's actually kind of a flawed argument cause when two people find one another, they find each other, especially if they were both looking for one another. Celes just happened to be the one lucky enough to NOT get stuck holding up a building. How is she "Finding Sabin" when he was looking for her too?
Honestly, your entire argument hinges upon something isn't even necessarily true. FF6 was hit by SNES limitations, but this isn't one of those cases; Celes having unique dialog for every character recruit would just not fit in some cases (Cyan AND Relm both come to mind), and to say "ITS HER QUEST!" just doesn't fly; the WoR is an ensemble by nature and its always been treated as such, and its the sole reason some people proclaim FF6 "Has no main character." If Celes were indeed its focal character, why does she fade away practically completely never to regain that spotlight after you get the Falcon? And why is the Falcon scene having Setzer and Edgar talking about finding friends if this is Celes' quest? If this was "her mark!" I don't think the game would have made her fade away into obscurity, and even with generic dialog, you'd think they'd have had her name brought up like "Celes is recruiting everyone!" or some such. FF6 never suggests such a thing; to give Celes all this credit for just starting the WoR (cause someone had too) is not realistically fair. She's not a focal, she's not a driving force; she's just a starting point.
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Dissidia Duodecim: Downloaded and started. In the third chapter now. Game's reasonably entertaining, but I wish they hadn't made HP attacks such a damn crapshoot. Acting-wise, Kefka is the highlight thus far, even if he is just ripping off Mark Hamill.
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Dissidia Duodecim: Downloaded and started. In the third chapter now. Game's reasonably entertaining, but I wish they hadn't made HP attacks such a damn crapshoot. Acting-wise, Kefka is the highlight thus far, even if he is just ripping off Mark Hamill.
HP Attacks are a mixed bag. Generally speaking, knowing when and how to use them is the way to go, though there are still some issues with the AI regardless cause they are cheating bastards.
Some things that alleviate the problems are that some characters get Brave -> HP Chains (basically, master a Brave attack, get an HP Link up that can be used directly with the HP Attack. When you time the HP Attack varies on each move; some you finish the entire combo then press Square, others you press it before the final hit, etc), some characters use gimmicks to get their HP Attacks to hit (Ex-death and his counters, for example) A few others can actually do some genuine Brave -> HP combos with custom link ups, like Squall can do (with good timing) Thunder Barret -> Blasting Zone.
There are a bunch which are "Fire and pray"; ideally you use these to punish bad blocks, but alas, its not as good against the AI which sometimes just cheats with dodges.
And yes, Kefka is easily the best part of Dissidia (both parts) for writing and acting and such <_<
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Oh, that's what mastering your attacks does? I'm still pretty far from enough AP to do that at this point.
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Oh, that's what mastering your attacks does? I'm still pretty far from enough AP to do that at this point.
Mastering your skills do two things:
-Lowers the CP needed to equip it. This might not seem like a big deal, but once you start hitting CP limits, it makes a huge difference (and yes, you do gain CP as you level up. Level 100 characters have 450 CP, for reference); for attacks, its pretty much always halves the CP Cost. For support skills, its...all over the place.
-If the skill has a yellow Diamond on its name, that means mastering it leads to a new skill. For Attacks, this pretty much always means a Brave -> HP Chain. For support skills, its usually "learn some extension of that ability", like "Speed Boost+" is just an upgrade of Speed Boost, or "Disable Counter Attack" is learned from Counter Attack.
Note that all Brave -> HP Chains require to be equipped like any other skill; you'll see what I mean when you get them.
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I've already hit the CP limit with Vaan, actually - I can't equip Torrent without stripping out some other skills. So I can definitely see how that would help.
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Chrono Trigger: Up to the Ocean Palace. Been streaming this as I play with various people (Super, Meeple, OK and Trancey are the usual suspects). If you have Skype, you're free to join me as I play through it. I haven't really been paying attention though so I've done awesome things like walk into a fight with my entire party at 1 HP, then promptly wipe.
A couple of screen shots for your viewing pleasure:
(http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/1659/ctbison.jpg) (http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/1659/ctbison.jpg)
(http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/3153/ctlaggy.jpg) (http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/3153/ctlaggy.jpg)
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There are a bunch which are "Fire and pray"; ideally you use these to punish bad blocks, but alas, its not as good against the AI which sometimes just cheats with dodges.
The AI never does anything physically impossible, so if the followup fails it just isn't an airtight link.
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There are a bunch which are "Fire and pray"; ideally you use these to punish bad blocks, but alas, its not as good against the AI which sometimes just cheats with dodges.
The AI never does anything physically impossible, so if the followup fails it just isn't an airtight link.
It does the physically improbable though; people have noted the AI RELIABLY does things that most humans could not do remotely reliably. One example is dodging a near point blank Level 3 Great Attractor; humans can TECHNICALLY do this, but most won't be able to pull it off. The AI? Probably manage it 7/10.
And naturally, "Mind games" does not apply to the AI, as its never actually surprised.
Now granted, there are exploits that work on the AI that won't work on the human, cause its patternized and such (AI tends to get tripped up by Meltdown Level 2 + Holy (Combo) pretty well, doesn't work nearly as well on a human), but really, this just emphasizes that HUman Combat =/= AI Combat, hence why "Vs. The AI" tends to be ignored. It proves little one way or another.
Granted, "The AI Cheats" is something that applies to most Fighting Games like this. They'll pull off stuff that no human can, be it physically impossible stuff (pulling off charge moves when they clearly were NOT charging. SF2 AI Guile's Flash Kick is the probably the most iconic (and the most offensive) example of this), or having some inhuman telegraphing skills making them capable of blocking you no matter what minds you do (I am told that MvC3 Very Hard tends to do that), etc. Of course, this is offset by the AI generally always being exploitable once you know how (how exploitable and how easy to exploit varies from game to game), in ways that a human wouldn't fall for, so the AI is always BEATABLE, but its never a good replication of human combat, for these things.
Why do I specify fighting games where the "AI Cheats"? Cause for Action games, generally you are NOT the same playing field as the enemy, so the things are weighted heavily from the get go, and the key there is figuring out how to use that to your advantage, work away your disadvantages, etc. RPGs, unless the game is really stupidly programmed (I was told it was proven by hackers that the AI DOES cheat in Hoshi, as the RNG IS skewed in their favor; this...would match my experiences, for all that yes, it could still be psychological), the AI is usually bound by the same laws as humans are, even wtih the RNG, and the RNG favoring the AI just tends to be "your luck sucks", not the AI cheating (you remember the bad luck more than the good luck cause in things like FE, one bad crit from the enemy can completely screw you over after hours of work of getting a lot of awesome RNG moments in your favor, that 3% Crit hitting will be remembered, and that "AI CHEATS!" mentality kicks in.)
In Fighting Games though, AI has access to all the same stuff humans have IN THEORY, but then certain factors kick in from programming that do not kick in with humans, such as human reaction time generally won't be as fast as the AI (though, this is partially offset by humans having a much deeper draw of reactions to choose from, so they'll do some really un-conventional shit to get out of scenarios the AI would never use.)
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Mirror's Edge: Finished Chapter... 5? Love this game so far, wouldn't mind it to force me to do more crazy walljumps.
Torchlight: Finished. Took me around 85 deaths. The final boss was weird. Somehow, the best strategy to use against him is to just smack him like every random boss, run around after he summons its 4000 dragons with Hamstring, wait until he sacrifices them all for... God knows what reason (this doesn't seem to heal him, make him stronger, or anything?), then smack him again. Repeat for half an hour because he has ten million HPs. (and because melee vanquisher is really bad) Fun game, could use some balance.
Outland: In the sky. This is probably the best game on XBLA, honestly. "Platformer with Ikaruga's mechanics" is as good as it sounds, level design and boss battles are top notch.
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Yeah, blocking in situations where it should be nigh-impossible to reliably predict you is the hallmark of fighting game AI. Play Soul Calibur 3 on hard or very hard sometime, and marvel at the AI's ability to guard all your attacks but punish your feints, even if they look exactly the same at the point where you'd have to hit the button. Or to start ducking a sixtieth of a second before a throw would connect.
Anyway, finished Vaan's chapter and the first set of Report scenes. Fighting Zidane with Kuja was a giant pain in the ass - see above re: bullshit dodging.
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Heavenly sword- Tried this. 1P beat em up with lag and some truly horrendous controls in the shooting section? I'll pass.
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Started back up on a few games in celebration of finals being over.
Working through The Witcher, just finished Lakeside. Fun plot, great sense of narrative and fantastic VA pretty much top to bottom, particularly Geralt. What I particularly like about it is that you're forced to make choices and pick sides, but the options you're provided with always reflect not only the complexity and all-around unfairness of the situation but also that Geralt gets it. Combat could stand to be more interesting, but it's just as well for me that it isn't. Game's choppy as hell on my poor PC.
Also finishing up WA4
Started P3: the Answer. Having a main that's not quite so overpowered makes poor choices by the AI rather frustrating, but I like how the story, such as it is, is shaping up.
Desktop Dungeons: played this a little bit, got bored. I think that perhaps mc and I have diametrically opposite views of what makes games fun. Dealing with limited resources ain't bad, but crunching numbers for overall effectiveness bores me.
The Fool's Errand: Curse you, Sun's Map!
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What I particularly like about it is that you're forced to make choices and pick sides, but the options you're provided with always reflect not only the complexity and all-around unfairness of the situation but also that Geralt gets it.
You'd almost think RPGs could have role-playing in them or something.
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Shining Force 3 Part 1 - Beaten. Second-to-last battle is mildly puntworthy for all that the game gives you an out there, but otherwise game is pretty much decent so far.
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RPGs have plenty of role-playing. What's different in this case is that you're role-playing someone who's cool.
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Huh. Bought the Witcher 2 this afternoon, but the damn thing won't install. Getting the following message after the install bar sits at around 2% for five minutes or so:
Feature Transfer Error
Feature: Required Files
Component: Data
File: E:\data2.cab
Error: Data error (cyclic redundancy check).
Anybody who knows anything about computers have a clue as to what's going on, here?
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My sister and I have started a play through of Pokemon Ruby using only grass types. It's been pretty interesting so far. There aren't that many grass types in the third gen, but we looked over the ones that were available and decided that a team of Breloom, Sceptile, Vileplume, Cradily, Tropius, and Shiftry would give us enough variety to get through (if we wanted to bother with trading we would have brought over a Lotad and Ludicolo would have bumped Cradily or Tropius.) We're about to start that large route that leads to Fortree City. The most difficult fight so far has been Maxie who took 4 tries followed by Brawly who took 3. Flannery and Norman also provided good fights.
The biggest problem with Maxie was his Golbat. At the time we had a Nuzleaf, a Gloom, a Breloom and Grovyle. Wing Attack 2HKOs all of my pokemon except for Breloom who gets OHKOed and it outspeed's everyone except for Grovyle. The first fight I was completely stunned by how much damage his wing attack did to my team, but after I lost I was able to develop a strategy. Breloom's offense was so good that he could beat Mightyena easily, and he could take out Camerupt with some help from Gloom. Since the fight takes place on a mountain, Nature Power turns into Rock Slide so my strategy was to have Grovyle Screech Golbat and take off some of it's health with Quick Attack so Nuzleaf can finish it off with Nature Power. The second attempt, Mightyena gets put to sleep by Effect Spore so Norman switches it out to Golbat and it takes too much for my team to take out Golbat. I get him, but Camerupt is able to take out the rest of my team. Third attempt, Screech misses twice and Wing Attack critical hits Nuzleaf. Fourth attempt, everything goes smoothly and I'm able to take them all out.
My main problem against Brawly is that I didn't really have enough of a team for Leech seed to stall him out well especially because Nuzleaf was really unhelpful for that fight. Also, Grovyle has a defense lowering nature so every pokemon in my team had really shitty defense. First time fought him I forgot about Machop's guts ability and paralyzed the Machop and wondered why Karate Chop was one shotting everyone after only one Bulk Up. Second Time Machop used too many Bulk Up's early and I wasn't able to deal damage quickly enough. The third try was pretty close and I was able to have Nuzleaf live long enough against Makuhita for Leech Seed to kill.
Flannery and Norman both came down to the last pokemon but I knew that they would both be close fights and I never felt like I had lost control in either of them. Roxanne was easy because of the type advantage, and Shroomish had evolved to Breloom by Wattson so he was able to Mach Punch the Magneton.
Overall, Nuzleaf, Shroomish, Grovyle and Oddish were all pretty close in usefulness, but Breloom is easily the most useful now that he's evolved. Grovyle was surprisingly bad for a while, but he's been starting to come into his own by being faster than everything and Leaf Blade means that he has good damage. Gloom has been solid but desperately needs a better attack than Acid. Nuzleaf struggled until the Bullet Seed TM, but is now a useful if not awesome member of the team. He knows Fake Out which is nice for getting extra Leech Seed/Poison damage and Nature Power is pretty helpful, but his stats are pretty meh. I'll probably give him the upcoming Leaf Stone and have Gloom wait until I get dive. Cradily is pretty bad. He's difficult to kill, but he can barely hurt anything. He can take out opponents with Toxic and Ingrain, but that's really boring.
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Heh, cool. I did a Flying only run last year in Emerald, and Wattson was a royal pain. Once I got Salamence it was all over though
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Portal 2: Was good. Vaguely inferior to Portal 1. Haven't finished co-op with Ash yet, though.
Billy vs Snakeman: Ash was playing time based Facebook games and I have been watching Naruto while at work. Double whammy. Its still okay.
Vindictus: I deeply wonder how a certain company I work for succeeds when they have competition like this.
Dragon Age 2: My laptop is a fucking bitch. Into Act 3. Dragging a little bit, but still decent. Character plots needed to be tied tighter to plot.
Mass Effect 2: Insanity run. Jedore took like, 30 tries. Fucking Krogan.
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Front Mission 4: Skype replay. Currently ongoing on Mission 8 or something.
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Dragon Age 2: I don't know. Despite being able to talk, Hawke is without a doubt less developed than most silent mains. He's pretty much the WRPG equivalent of Matthew in Golden Sun:
Respond everything with :) or ;D or >:( or ???. What Hawke actually says is irrevevant, because the dialog is so rushed and boring.
Other PCs are equally just as bland (hurr hurr Varric makes more dwarf jokes). Having Fenris and Anders in the same party is nothing but a whine fest: "Mages are bad!" "No! mages are being oppressed! Free the mages!" Isabella is a pirate and must act like one and I have no idea what Merrel's point is besides "HAVE A BLOOD MAGE". Reminds me of your party members in Golden Sun.
Gameplay is at least flashy, quick and fun. Building your characters in the early game allows some different party synergy but in the end you get enough skill points to master all the good skills while you don't bother with the rest, kind of like class building in Golden Sun.
Then there's all the stupid fetch quests you have to do. None of which actually ties into the main story but you find your self doing it anyways, cause you need the money for more stuff! Just like in......Golden Sun? <_<
*runs from Grefter*
Fallout New Vegas: Honest Hearts - Automatically better than Dead Money since you can at least bring some of your weapons (75 lbs exact) and it's more wide open exploration like Point Lookout. The new weapons are a bit lazy (more reskin pistols and armor) and perks require too much of the shitty Survival stat. Oh well, another 5 extra levels and I'm practically maxed out on all my major combat skills.
Currently have an Indian following me around and won't shut the fuck up. The game won't let me dismiss him either and I'm not on hardcore mode. Yao Guais are actually threatening since I didn't take my power armor and shooting their legs doesn't seem to slow them down. I don't know really much what's going on so far but it's decent DLC so far.
Weather mods will fuck up the scenery there. Day/Night cycles are messed up and the water is green, like mutant green.
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From what I recall, the water in southwestern Utah is a pretty weird color, to be fair.
Either way I'm sad that I wasn't the one who got to massacre New Caanan.
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So Finally beat FF4 from a GBA cartridge I forgot I ever owned, not much to say other then fuck that games back attack rates, everything else about it was pretty much forgettable.
Picked up some more games on my way home from work, upon letting Hatbot decide I should play Disgaea 2 first.
Disgaea 2: This games dialogue amuses me. Also tossing people and making towers is strangely fun.
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Shining Force 3 Part 2 - So a useless fatass healer tried to put up a brave face but then people were like bitch please. Then we went through a cave and rescued a ninja chick who is probably still a better ninja than Ryu Hayabusa. Then the useless fatass healer got eaten by worms and nobody cared.
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Finished Honest Hearts. Great for exploration in particular, some fun fights, and the Survivalist journals show that Obsidian has a knack for writing evocative pieces using only text.
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Devil May Cry 3 Very Hard: Beat it as Dante.
Not much to say on highlights, its about what you'd expect of a DMC mode called "Very Hard". Beowulf was notable for being really hard, and taking a good number of attempts, and Vergil 3 remains one of the best fights in the series; I probably wouldn't have beaten Vergil 3 if his AI didn't fart a bit near the end using only some of his basic moves instead of his advanced ones (as in, the moves I could dodge and punish more reliably due to more practice!), but whatever, I'll take it!
Arkham, meanwhile, raises the bullshit meter up. He actually beat me with PIXEL RAGE AT ONE POINT; its just frustrating, not fun, and a very poorly designed fight overall...really gives off DMC2 vibes, cause its a fight that promotes "Sit back and spam guns" ...in a game where Guns are NOT an overpowered ranged weapon of doom so...uh, yeah. Doesn't help that the only way to melee him is with DT, which is fine...except they REMOVE DT for the 2nd half of the fight due to a quirk in the system. Not to mention a lot of ways you take damage is from shit you just can't see, due to camera angles, and how his attacks actually BLEND IN with him, and you can't even tell sometimes if he's attacking, moving, or his general proximity.
Easily the worst designed fight in the game (much like how The Savior is easily DMC4's worst designed fight.) This fight and the GOOD ones just establish what makes DMC boss fights work, and that's how you generally mix up how you do things. You actually feel like there are opportunities for genuine melee to get in damage, and otherwise, Guns work as a means to keep chipping (and potentially build up DT), and you slowly feel like you're learning the fight and its nuances. The good fights like Beowulf, Vergil, Nevan, etc. in DMC3 Very Hard all gave me this feeling of "ok, I'm slowly getting the hang of this!" combined with getting a feel for how much damage I'm taking. Arkham? Damage was both inconsistent, and a lot of cheap bullshit deaths, and I could never tell if I was improving or just getting lucky.
(for the record, I did the entire game with no items, sans Arkham, who after about 3 and a half hours of failures, INCLUDING several ridiculously close ones, I just said fuck it and Vital Star spammed him.)
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Trinity Universe: Lots of good things about this game. Character diversity isn't one of them, sadly. DL-wise, there's some uniqueness from their starting mana and weapons, though. Also, DL-legal Prinny is always notable!
The best part of the game is probably the character dialog and how surprisingly well the crossover characters work together with the original cast. I also highly approve of the dungeon design - simple, short, timed, good reward-vs-risk, and best of all: Hunting Points. I do like being able to clear out random encounters and then explore without the nuisance. That little bit of control makes the entire dungeon process much more rewarding.
After a lengthy debate in chat, I will admit that the game is too breakable to really get much out of the battle system unless you impose your own limits to get some challenge. I think if the game didn't hand out level-ups like "Have You Been Saved?" pamphlets, there might be more to praise. I hear that Neptunia is a lot like this, but with a more interesting battle system. I may actually try that.
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Bangai-O HD: Played the demo. It's not remotely as terrible as Spirits, but I still can't fathom why anybody would buy it when the N64 version is so easily emulated and actually a game instead of a collection of gimmick maps.
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Shining Force 3 Part 2 - So a useless fatass healer tried to put up a brave face but then people were like bitch please. Then we went through a cave and rescued a ninja chick who is probably still a better ninja than Ryu Hayabusa. Then the useless fatass healer got eaten by worms and nobody cared.
You don't like the healer much, do you. What will you do when you get Gracia in part 3?
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Shining Force 3 Part 2 - So a useless fatass healer tried to put up a brave face but then people were like bitch please. Then we went through a cave and rescued a ninja chick who is probably still a better ninja than Ryu Hayabusa. Then the useless fatass healer got eaten by worms and nobody cared.
You don't like the healer much, do you. What will you do when you get Gracia in part 3?
Cheer because I got a better healer? I dunno.
Edit because I feel like I need to elaborate on this: Part one I had three healers by the end of Chapter 3. Part 2 I don't get a second healer until sometime in Chapter 4.
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Bangai-O HD: Played the demo. It's not remotely as terrible as Spirits, but I still can't fathom why anybody would buy it when the N64 version is so easily emulated and actually a game instead of a collection of gimmick maps.
Because it's legal? Because some people's computers are old enough to be able to post on GameFAQs themselves and can't run N64 emulators? Because they're stupid?
Granted, I haven't really tried any Bangai-O game, so I'm not sure how similar they are.
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Okay all of those are good arguments, it's just that the sequels being so stripped-down from the original makes me angry.
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FM4: Tide just got the Minotaur arms.
This was quite literally me when it happened: http://www.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/126331_o.gif
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Shining Force 3 Part 2 - So we found Snow washed up downriver and then he proceeded to gnaw on Hal. Of course.
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That's so fitting.
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Okamiden: Just completed the Lunar ruins.
It is generally a decent follow-up to Okami, but is inferior in quality. The areas, for example, are roughly the same as what was in Okami, but the graphical quality and freedom of exploration are highly limited. In short it isn't as pretty and there isn't as much to do.
But given how Okami was a fantastic game, Okamiden can be a downgrade and still be decent. The characters are endearing and the Celestial Brush is still as cool as ever. Combat is too easy but that is par the course really.
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Fallout New Vegas Honest Hearts: About as captivating as the title suggests. I like some general ideas and concepts about it, but overall it was kinda boring. Not as boring as Broken Steel or anything, but I can't say I felt invested in anything but the logs. I liked Dead Money a lot more. The Burned Man is not as - OH GOD GIANT CAZADORES!? WHY??
Outland: Finished. Great, A+, will play again, etc. All the bosses are crazy.
Mirror's Edge: Finished. Nice. It is all about a perfect atmosphere at first, but this gradually goes away as the suspension of disbelief becomes hard to maintain, fast. (plot concerns + enemy incompetence)
Removing the Runner's vision (that makes every object you need to use, like gutters, flash red) is wonderful, I suggest doing it immediately after the prologue. With the runner's vision on, you're just following a linear path the whole game. Without it, well... You're left alone. The game throws some Impossible Tasks at you all the time, then after much trial and error you complete them anyway. It takes some effort, which makes it like real parkour unlike, say, Assassin's Creed where you can climb Burj Khalifa by pressing up enough times (which is still great in its own way, mind)
Which reminds me of the most hilarious part of Assassin's Creed 2. Some monuments are just impossible to climb in the early game. There's just no way. I've tried. The main character just can't jump high enough.
Then he meets this uber assassin girl, who teaches him basically this: "So, erm, instead of jumping normally... You need to jump higher" Then he can jump higher and climb everything in Italy. Awesome.
I don't think I'll come back to do time trials in Mirror's Edge. They're good on paper, but they require perfect memorization of every level more than speed. Replaying on hard sounds fun though. Later.
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FF4:CC
FF4: Beaten. Missed the spoon this go around. Oh well. Kain still lacks damage, but is a better tank then Cecil. I just gotta give him his real end equipment from his trial. I do not understand how Square could have thought the Holy lance was a viable end game weapon for Kain when Edge and Cecil are like 90 points higher with their respected gear. It's dumb Square.
Interlude: Beat? This was utterly pointles. I was expecting something better honestly.
TAY: Uhm I beat all the chapters, but I saved over Ceodore's tale on accident. Whoops! I guess it did not matter since they used the levels from Kain's chapter anyways.
Oh and the Cock summon is awesome in this game.
So I got to the part where I can finally pick my party. Kain is going to make the cut, as will Edge. I would like to include Cecil for tanking purposes as well. That leaves two spots in the back row. Golbez seems overpowered, so I don't want to intially use him. I could sub out Cecil for now since he is a veggie. I think I want to use a new healer. I may also try to find some boomerangs and throw Edge in the back row. That would leave a front row spot open for a new fighter. I might level up Edward for now since I have so many healing items to waste.
So that means...Kain, Edge, Edward...and two others for now. I like a pure physical team. Bruisers ftw!
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FF4: Beaten. Missed the spoon this go around. Oh well. Kain still lacks damage, but is a better tank then Cecil. I just gotta give him his real end equipment from his trial. I do not understand how Square could have thought the Holy lance was a viable end game weapon for Kain when Edge and Cecil are like 90 points higher with their respected gear. It's dumb Square.
In what way is Kain a better tank than Cecil? Cecil can actually takes hits for allies (which goes well with tanking, contrast to Kain's jump which would serve better on someone frail cause its AVOIDING damage), and has better defensive stats across the board. There's no real way you can argue Kain is a better thank than Cecil.
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His stats are better then Cecil's. He has an extra multiplier which makes him have better defense. It's simple math.
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Except that's not how FF4 Defense works.
The Multiplier is an EVASION multiplier, and FF4 Evasion is really bad (Magic Evasion is a little better cause it works against status moves and generally moves that hit less times); Cecil has more raw defense and that's all that matters for taking less damage. FF4 is just stupid and puts the multiplier next to defense, but in truth, it should be placed next to evasion.
FF2 and FF3 did the exact same thing (the Multiplier is "How many hits you can dodge in a single attack." FF5 naturally just removed the hit system altogether, hence why FF games since have just used more conventional evasion methods), only it was listed more logically. So no, its not "Simple math"; its more like "FF4 CC still hasn't fixed that little idiocy of display."
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Pokemon Ruby Grass Type Challenge:
Currently leveling up to level 45 before heading on over to victory road. Everyone is fully evolved and movesets are coming together. As expected Winona was a good fight although part of it was due to misplays on my part. I though she her team was Swablu, Pelliper, Altaria, and Skarmory so the starting Swellow caught me off gaurd and resulted in losing Shiftry earlier than I would have liked. Lileep easily the MVP of the fight. He Toxiced Altaria and was able to stall it out despite Dragon Dance and was able to tank Skarmory's super effective Steel Wings while Leech Seed killed it after Gloom got taken out by a luck crit.
Liza and Tate weren't a problem at all. I had dropped Rare Candy's on Lileep so I wouldn't have to level him so he had evolved to a Cradily and he Toxiced both Solrock and Lunatone. Breloom got outsped and OHKOed but, Sceptile and Shiftry were able to take the two out while Toxic helped chip.
Maxie 2 was much easier than last time. Crobat's Air Cutter still hurt, but it was a 3HKO on most of my pokemon instead of a 2HKO and in the end, it couldn't take out 5 pokemon (I have a Zigzagoon for HMs).
Wallace was pretty easy as well. Milotic took out a few Pokemon with Ice Beam, but Cradily got it with Toxic and Shiftry was able to get its health low enough that it started spamming recover while Toxic took off more and more of its HP.
I'll probably be done with the game soon and then I'll post the E4 and final pokemon evaluations.
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Also playing through Honest Hearts. Wandered around for a few hours, looking for odds and ends for the Dead Horses. Apparently I need five lunchboxes but there are only three lunchboxes in the building what.
Yeah, it's so-so thus far. Less story than Dead Money and nothing's a significant threat to me. ("Giant cazador" is scary just because, well, giant cazador...but it seemed like they couldn't cross the river, so I just sniped them.)
EDIT: And seem to be about at the end now. I'd just go knock it out already, but I think I missed one of those logs (that counter that tracks the survivor caches you've found? Stopped at four or five). So I port around the map to see if there are any undiscovered locations and I do see a couple when I jump to the Southern Passage, one due north of the bridge, the other due northeast. When I start to move towards them, the game bugs out and they disappear from the compass. ffffff. I'm not sure if it's giving me phantom signals or if the compass is just wigging out and arbitrarily making things invisible (I could swear it's done that a couple times during the expansion, though). Anyone happen to remember the survivor cave locations? I can at least run the names against what I've got marked already.
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Shining Force 3 Part 2 - Man, the Elbesem Temple needs to invest in a better security system. Also PROMOOOOOOOTIONS.
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Cid: This happened to me in this expansion, and FO3: Point Lookout too.
The caches I missed were outside Angel Cave (Exit the cave from the back side, then it's hidden near the cliff. There's no log here though) and above the Red Gate (You'll have to climb)
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Fable 3 - So this is pretty awful. At least it is more streamlined than the previous ones I guess? A generic experience pool is honestly an improvement. But this being Fable they stopped calling it Experience, they just gave it a symbol that they refer to it as (Guild Seals I think it says in dialogue?). So I am going to call it The Statistuc Formerly Known as Experience.
You start the game, your brother is a douche, you have a love interest :o Oh hey there is a riot :o Your brother is a douche and is going to kill them all :o Okay so he makes you pick between killing your love interest or the leaders of the riot, that douche :o Now that means you are a hero because people call you a hero often enough :o You get some gloves that let you set things on fire, this is a certain sign that you are a hero :o You run through some sewers and get teleported into your own special pocket dimension for heros :o This means you are a hero :o So you go to another village to start a revolution because you are a hero :o They don't believe you though :o So you have to go to a place to get a special item to prove that you are a hero :o You get that so it means you are a hero :o Then you do some other stuff to make a town join your revolution and you are proving that you are a hero :o
So yeah it is still Fable. I throw fire at stuff and it dies. At least they made the dancing in front of people and shitting in their face have more effect (you get The Statistuc Formerly Known as Experience for it).
It is good to be a hero. Especially knowing that later on in the game the easiest way to win is to be insanely evil for 10 minutes to get a ton of cash and then donate the money to the kingdom's treasury (ie yourself) so you can save everyone through the power of gold.
Fable 3 sends some very amazing mixed signals.
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Do we get a series of very special analyses on it like we did on GS3?
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Last Remnant: Woo, I beat the Fallen! Did some skill grinding to get Cachexia for Loki and Leshau, but they never had it come up as an option in battle. But Baulson just clobbered him with repeated Heaven's Doors for the win on Turn 9. Now I can get on with the game.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: Tried this out since everyone in chat was playing it. Fairly generic roguelike, nothing really notable except a large variety of classes and races. Compared to other Roguelikes it's got an increased emphasis on food, decreased emphasis on lighting. Best character so far was a Draconian Ice Mage, who died on level 6 to the twins. Killed one and almost killed the other, when he zarked me for 17 damage with an Ice bolt. :P
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Do we get a series of very special analyses on it like we did on GS3?
Frankly, there isnt enough game to really analyze at all. It's amazingly short.
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Pokemon Ruby Grass challenge: Beaten, E4 was pretty difficult and a couple of times I had to spam Revives and Full Restores to get by. Final levels were between 46-48.
Sidney: Easy. Breloom and Shiftry took advantage of the fighting weakness with Sky Uppercut and Brick Break respectively so he was pretty simple. Vileplume also saw a lot of use and took out his Shiftry and Cacturne with Sludgebomb. Easiest of the E4 by far.
Pheobe: She wasn't too bad either. Shiftry dealt with her team really well. The only roadblock was her second Dusclops which has Ice Beam. It was able to take out Shiftry, but the rest of the team took him out, and I revived Shiftry to deal with the rest. Between Pressure and Spite I ended up using a lot of PP for some crucial moves, but I had a couple ethers in stock.
Glacia: The first real challenge. The first Glalie got stalled out by Cradily. She sent out the Sealeos next but Breloom was faster and OHKOed them with Sky Uppercut. Unfortunately Wailren was faster and OHKOed Breloom with Blizzard. Sceptile weakened Wailren with Leaf Blade and Shiftry was able to take it out with the help of a Blizzard miss and a Critical Hit Giga Drain. The second Glalie wass the big problem. At this point, the well of remaining pokemon was running dry and Glalie could OHKO everyone. I didn't have enough pokemon left to have all the faster pokemon chip him down so I ended up spamming revives until it ran out of Ice Beams. Not the most elegant strategy, but I didn't have a ton of options remaining.
Drake: Not to bad. Toxic stalling took out the Salamance, and Sceptile did a lot of damage with Dragon Claw. Cradily and Sceptile did most of the heavy lifting in this battle.
Steven: Ugh. Probably everything that could have gone wrong in this battle went wrong. I know from the Winona fight that Skarmory walls my team stupidly well. My only real way to damage him is Leech Seed and Breloom gets outsped and OHKOed by Aerial Ace. My plan was for Vileplume to put it to sleep so Breloom could quickly come in and Leech Seed it. Unfortunately, Sleep Powder went either 2-5 or 2-6 and both times the Skarmory woke up on the second turn and OHKOed Breloom before it could use Leech Seed (one of these times it also got past a confusion check). Eventually I was able to paralyze it with Tropius's Body Slam and apply Leech Seed. Cradily was the pokemon out when Skarmory finally fainted and unfortunately, this prompted Steven to send out Metagross next. This was bad news because my initial plan was to use the rest of Steven's team to rebuild my losses from Skarmory. Metagross could either OHKO or 2HKO all of my team and no one was above half health so I was effectively heal locked. I got lucky with Meteor Mash missing a few times, but those misses were cancelled out by critical hits later. I ended up having to stall out Metagross's Meteor Mash and Psychic PP with Tropius. The rest of Steven's team wasn't two bad, but those two pokemon were just ridiculously difficult to take out with this team.
Overall for difficulty
Steven>Maxie>Brawly>Winona=Glacia>Drake=Phoebe>Flannery=Norman>the rest.
Final Team
Sceptile Leaf Blade, Dig, Dragon Claw, Return: I wasn't to impressed with Sceptile. Early on in the game he was just way to frail and his offense consisted of Quick Attack and Absorb for what seemed like way to long. He got better once he learned Leaf Blade, and he ended up fairly solid at the end but I had high expectations for him early and he didn't meet them until later.
Breloom Sky Uppercut, Strength, Bulk Up, Leech Seed: Shroomish is solid but not outstanding, and he dominates for a while when he evolves to Breloom. That attack stat is seriously nuts and he does a ton of damage even without a good STAB move. Probably the best random slayer and Sky Uppercut was the most damaging move the team had in the end. Unfortunately, he stinks against gyms. He's not fast enough and getting outsped and OHKOed was not unusual. Grass/Fighting is a putrid defense type which didn't help things.
Shiftry Faint Attack, Giga Drain, Brick Break, Fake Out: Seedot is almost worthless until Bullet Seed. I don't know what it is with 3rd gen and having a bunch of pokemon who start with no attacking moves. Looking over his moves, he doesn't get a completely reliable attacking move until level 31 where he gets Faint Attack. That being said, Nature Power ranges from solid to very good in use and gives him surprising versatility. Nice TM variety helps as well. Well rounded stats made him never feel like a liability and Fake Out was always nice for some free Toxic/Leech Seed damage. MVP of the E4 and is probably the MVP of the play through as well.
Vileplume: Sludgebomb, Petal Dance, Moonlight, Sleep Powder: Was stuck with Absorb, and Acid for a really long time, but despite this the offense was never bad. Sludgebomb is great damage when you get it and he felt consistently the best option against an opponent who didn't resist his attacks. Granted, awful coverage meant that this wasn't the most frequent thing but still very solid.
Cradily Earthquake, Strength, Confuse Ray, Toxic: Lileep is really boring to use. Toxic stalling with him is a viable strategy, but that takes a long time and generally isn't worth it against random trainers. The problem is that Toxic stalling is all he has till he evolves. His attack is wretched before then and his best attacking move he learns by leveling up is Acid. Cradily is a significant improvement especially in Attack where it goes from really bad to average. Really helpful for most gyms for stalling out the Leaders strongest pokemon, but Grass/Rock isn't as good a defensive type as a originally though. In particular the Steel weakness came up more than I would have expected.
Tropius Razor Leaf, Body Slam, Fly, Steel Wing: Really bad. Slow and with hideous attacking stats. Good defense stats, but Grass Flying is a terrible defensive typing. Only use in the E4 was paralysis from Body Slam.
Final Notes: Overall the challenge was pretty interesting. It was most difficult at the beginning and end which isn't that surprising. You don't get a whole ton of choice for what pokemon you get to use, but the pokemon themselves are fairly diverse. I was surprised at how little status the team used. Cradily and Vileplume were the only pokemon with dedicated status moves and Breloom was the only one who learned Leech Seed. It looked like in 3rd gen they tried to start diversifying grass pokemons' role so they weren't only there for status. Unfortunately, they didn't give grass pokemon enough strong moves to solidify them as powerful offensive threats, but gen 4 would fix this with moves like Energy Ball and Power Whip. If you want to try a single type challenge run through I would definitely do some research first. Make sure you can get a couple pokemon early so you aren't stuck with 1 or 2 for most of the game and make sure that there are at least some pokemon who you're legitimately interested in using. It is a lot of fun to see how restricting yourself to one type changes up the challenge of the game so I'd recommend trying it if you're a fan of the pokemon games.
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FM4- Beat this in under 20 hours on the replay, did everything but Darrill's final sim map. I am so psyched about playing FM5 sometime. Mmm.
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Went to a small Pokemon tournament in Bristol on Saturday! It went... well, pretty terribly, actually. Kept a log of the day, so this is written from notes from that.
At about 7am, having had about an hour's sleep (because mine & my friend's teams weren't finished), we phoned my friend, Tim's, mum who was meant to be driving us there. "Oh, I've got other plans, can't do it."
...WHAT.
Cue journey to train station to get there for 8 so that we can get to the tournament by 11. wut.
So we spend the entire train journey trying to finish our teams. We've made a lot of changes because there's a lot of stuff we can't RNG well (hi egg moves!) and we're PokeSav-ing what we can because fuck it we don't have the time to EV train. We had a 45 minute walk waiting for us at the other end, which'd get us to the tournament for 11.10 - registration was meant to be at 11.15, eep!
At 9.45, we both needed one more Pokemon, but were having no luck getting them. We pretty much agreed to ignore them for this tournament - there's another in two weeks, we'll get them for that - and just clone Pokemon that the other person was using to fill our team. ...Except Tim forgot to change the party size on PokeSav, so they never got cloned. SIGH.
12.15, and we're sat at a table waiting for the tournament to start. We used their plugs to charge our DSes, trade over our Pokemon, fill in the last space on our teams and then fill in teamsheets and sign up. We finished around 11.55, and they'd told us they weren't starting until... about 11.45. They still hadn't started now. Mrf. Not complaining too much.
Ended up talking to an awesome guy there about random strategies, and he began panicking when I told him about Flying Gem Tornadus' power - apparently he didn't know what the Gems did, so my idea that most people here weren't going to RNG were pretty good.. until I was told about the guy on the side table being Rees Hamilton, last year's UK Champion. Siiiiigh. So much for that.
So Tim's team is pretty effective at what it does, but he's not the best of battlers. My team's not bad, but it's missing its best answer to Trick Room. So what happens?
Yeah, I wind up in a group with 2 TR players, Tim ends up in a group with Rees and one of his friends. Ouch.
My first match, I come up against a pretty obvious TR team, with something like Cofagrigus/Jellicent/Amoonguss/Conkeldurr/Terrakion/Reuniclus. I lead with Mienshao/Landorus in a hope to stop him setting up. First turn, he manages to Protect the (obvious) Fake Out from Mienshao, while Landorus stops his Cofagrigus moving with Fling @King's Rock. Next turn, however, I can do nothing but double Rock Slide while he sets up TR. My Landorus is put to sleep shortly after this while his Cofagrigus sets up a Calm Mind, before hitting Mienshao with Shadow Ball, activating a Sash. Amoonguss finishes it off with a Giga Drain, while Landorus gets hit hard by Shadow Ball. I bring out Scrafty, and Landorus is killed while Scrafty is put to sleep - only to wake up again thanks to Shed Skin. My last Pokemon here is Vanilluxe, which manages to get a Blizzard in before dying, while Scrafty finishes the Cofagrigus with Crunch. He brings out a Conkeldurr, and it's gg from there. He wins 3-0.
Second match, I see Bisharp/Musharna/Conkeldurr/Amoonguss/Bouffalant/Hydreigon and automatically assume TR again (Musharna/Amoonguss much?) This time, I decide to go on the offensive and lead with Mienshao/Volcarona, running into a Bisharp/Musharna lead instead. Huh. I decide to Fake Out the Musharna while hitting both of his with Heat Wave, and all goes according to plan while Bisharp hits Mienshao, activating a Sash. Next turn, Volcarona Bug Buzzes, nearly killing the Musharna, while Mienshao Protects himself from both opposing Pokemon. Hah! Finally, another Bug Buzz and a Drain Punch see his two fall, although not before Volcarona is hit with Sucker Punch. He proceeds to send out Bouffalant and Conkeldurr, who quickly hits Mienshao with a Mach Punch and watches it fall - Bouffalant, on the other hand, hits a Protecting Volcarona. I send out Scrafty, knowing Vanilluxe is fucked against either of his, and hope I can kill Bouffalant before bringing in Vanilluxe. I somehow manage it, although not before Volcarona falls to a double-team and Scrafty is hit by a Drain Punch. Vanilluxe comes out and me and my opponent talk for a while, both considering our moves for a while, before I see my Ice Beam go through. Scrafty and Conkeldurr Drain Punch each other, and I sit back in relief - was really expecting Vanilluxe to die there, but now I stand a chance! I hit him with another Ice Beam and Drain Punch, only to watch Vanilluxe fall to a Drain Punch just afterwards. Now this is close. Scrafty's on about 70 HP, while his Conkeldurr will definitely die in one more hit. I have no clue if he has the strength to KO, but I know I'm faster. Mach Punch: leaves me on 23 HP. Drain Punch for the KO!
Unfortunately, the guy I beat won against the guy I lost to. Since both of those won their games 3-0 and mine was 1-0, I got knocked out. Siiiigh.
Tim, on the other hand? Goes into a group against Rees and one of his friends. Worse yet, he should've won both games, he said, but made a mistake in each. We even ran calculations on it afterwards - turns out, he actually would've won if he hadn't fucked up. Wooooow.
So, all in all, it was an expensive training session. The official tournament isn't for another two weeks, and hopefully we'll both be fully prepared by then - I know my team can survive if I have all the right Pokemon in place (although I'm still changing it up from the one I ran at this tourn) and Tim knows he can win if he doesn't screw up. Should be interesting!
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Fable 3 - Okay this game made me feel incredibly depressed. At least it wasn't from digging up a condom this time like in Fable 2.
So I go along with the plot to catch the Monorail (with 2 tracks, so it isn't an actual Monorail), it is suspended along the roof of a big cavern. The monorail kind of explodes and crashes. The grizzled war veteran buddy character that essentially has raised you, mentored you, taught you how to fight and helped find everyone that has joined up with your rebellion immediately jumps up and says you have to go save these people. He pries open the locked grate that is in the way with his sword. Then in spite of his established Claustrophobia he builds up the will to get in the cramped elevator and go down in to the bottom of the cave system with you to help you fight off the Hobbes (goblins) which seem to have caused the crash. You fight a bunch of Hobbes at the end of the gauntlet of them and you get a scene where you are told that your fight with the Hobbes will be remembered for time to come and unlock more skills.
I guess this means I am a hero :o
Just how much this depresses me cannot be really put into words. I am in awe of Walter. Seriously Fable 3 actually has a character that I like and for more than just being voice acted by John Cleese (who awesomely shills stuff on the online store every time I go into the menuHero Pocketspace Dimension. And people thought Dragon Age was bad). However it keeps telling me how awesome I am while he does all the hard work and real heroics. If the game went full blown Suikoden route with it I could almost take it as an affectionate parody. As is though it just makes me sad.
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Sounds like they took a page from the Japanese Anime storytelling method. If they say it enough times in the show, that makes it true, no matter how much evidence to the contrary.
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It isn't that the character isn't doing heroic things (if you choose the Good options, I don't even want to think about how terrible this plot is if you are a douchebag). It is that there is other characters doing far more heroic things that have an established history of doing heroic things. Bonus point for them being labelled as hangers on in the established history of heroics.
So very depressing.
Edit - And this is also noting that the game has established that you need to get followers otherwise the revolution cannot succeed. Presumably so everyone else can do all the work while you act as a figurehead, working entirely unrelated jobs for riduculous wages (preferably in towns that you are supposed to be working on saving from starvation), buying up all the local property and industry while doing sidequests to garner the support for middle class citizens who contribute to nothing other than the bourgeois economy one at a time. Standing on the necks of giants to become king.
I really need to stop thinking about this before I shoot myself.
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Sounds like they took a page from the Japanese Anime storytelling method. If they say it enough times in the show, that makes it true, no matter how much evidence to the contrary.
It's also how politics and sportscasting work.
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To be fair, the game establishes that the leader of the revolution can't be some random dude, so everyone kind of wants the main character (brother/sister of the actual king) to be a hero.
Evil path makes absolutely no sense though.
Last Remnant: Disc 2. This is the most SaGatastic game, even more than every SaGa game. The mechanics are seriously messed up - I can kind of understand the rationale behind them, but I don't see how Square-enix can think that there can be mass appeal to them.
You control a whole lot of characters in battle, each with their own equipment, skills etc. They're grouped in unions, groups of 3-4-5 that all share HPs. at the start of every turn you have access to a few different options (use physical skills, use magical skills, heal, heal other teammates, etc) but you're never really sure that the options you want will show up. Your unions can interrupt enemy unions and vice-versa, but this is very hard to plan. The most difficult battles have reinforcements out of nowhere and uber status of doom.
Ultimately, strategy can only get you so far in this game. What you really need is Bigger Numbers, from equipment, stats, skills.
You can only equip the main character, every other character will upgrade naturally by asking you stuff after battle "Give me that gold ore please". There are about one million enemies, one billion item drops. Even forging your own stuff is difficult, you have access to about one thousand weapon/armor recipes which all ask for specific items. There is no in game bestiary so you pretty much have no idea where to search.
You can harvest a ton of items in a ton of different places too.
So yeah. This is overly complicated. But just fight a ton of stuff, harvest tons of items, take some notes of everything you're doing, and you should have no problem right? WRONG! THIS IS SAGA!!
When you fight enemies, your battle rank increases. Battle rank is the enemy's level basically, this has just about no influence on your team.
In a SaGa fashion, you only get good skills and stats if you fight strong enemies, and get next to nothing for fighting grunts.
So basically, if you fight too many grunts, your battle rank will increase a lot and your team will be a lot weaker than the enemies in the long run. So yeah, avoid every random enemy, fight only bosses and uber randoms, or you'll sacrifice the long term for the short term. What is the point of having such an elaborate loot system then? And guild quests that ask you to kill X amount of enemies? I don't know.
Fortunately, there's a lot of leeway. You can pretty much play regularly and still finish the game, but you'll have a really difficult time for seemingly arbitrary reasons, you will feel like you'll completely miss the point of the game, and you can pretty much forget about beating the uber version of the final boss. (not that you could even have access to it anyway, it's worse than VP's A ending or Suikostuff) OR: Play with a faq, and feel like you completely miss the point of the game too! OR: Play the game 20 times and learn stuff on your own. It's the way it should be, but it's no fun. And you still won't unlock the uber final boss without a faq, really.
And battles take way too long.
Somehow, I still enjoy playing it, but every game over is even worse than losing a character in Hardcore Torchlight.
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Disgaea 2: Beaten, game was a blast, generally enjoyed every bit of it minus Tardo being plain and generic next to the rest of the cast. Only gripe with the game was the expected quip about how Adell's parents are the two demons BECAUSE LOOK AT THOSE TIES did not happen.
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The fact that they didn't feel it necessary to point this out to the player was the best part.
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Last Remnant: Disc 2.
Got suckered into getting the 360 version? It is basically a beta for the PC one which has a number of important fixes like redoing the BR calculation in a way that actually gives you benefits for fighting scrubs, autosaves/save anywhere in general, selective disabling of unit commands and removing the leader cap. I enjoyed the game and its ridiculosity enough to beat every superboss, The Seven and The Lost are even more nightmarish than the frue final. and I still need to do NG+ on Hard, sell off all carryovers/spend all the money, and then use the trainer to bump the party size cap to 25 from the very start
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360 has save anywhere, unless you mean during battle.
While you can hamper yourself with BR, it's by no means an impediment to beating the game. It just makes the sidequests/optional bosses harder. I linked multiple enemies through the whole game and am still doing fine.
While Bigger Numbers certainly do help, I find that strategy gets you pretty damn far in this game. It is FAQbait, but the FAQs for the game suck, and the wiki is hard to use as well. This is the kind of game I'd love to spend 6 months writing a guide for, if I had that kind of time to spend. Still, I didn't start looking at FAQs until I was halfway through the game, and I managed to get all the missable triggers without one. The luckiest one was where you have to agree with the female knight in Melphina three times to get a quest.
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The luckiest one was where you have to agree with the female knight in Melphina three times to get a quest.
Actually that is the one quest you do not need to do to unlock the real final boss. (wiki check - oh, only applies to PC version). Therefore it is best to agree with Roberto (unless you're on 360).
I know people have mentioned not being able to save between the army battle and the boss in base battles on the 360 version, I thought the game did not have save anywhere based on that. My bad.
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Ar tonelico- So, the game ends when you've shut down the tower and finished the two cosmospheres, right? They do for me.
Yeah, not bothering with Phase 3 (beyond a token amount to finish up cosmospheres). Game just doesn't inspire me to go completionist on it.
Anyway, so I actually played half this game back in uh... 2003? Way back when it came out. And played the rest in the past week. So I don't remember things like how the game started or the like. That said, the final climb through Platinum Garden and Catwalk, like so many Gust efforts, was considerably harder than the rest of the game, largely because gimmickier enemies started showing up. The final boss sequence was similarly more impressive than the rest, although this was partly because I'd managed to make Jack really frail and he sorta exploded to the Satellite Beam.
Is naive idiocy how harem mains are normally written? I assume so, and writing Lyner that way really holds back the game because he actually evens out as downright cruel because of it. It's mostly a pity because if they'd stepped back from the cliche for five minutes and had him evolve through the game, it would have been pretty awesome. As is, call it a 6? It's interesting enough but the flaws really can't be ignored.
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Yes, 360 version. PC certainly sounded nicer, especially the leader cap removal. Can you believe I can only use 6 leaders? I don't know why they don't just patch the 360 version. Must be japanese culture not being used to this. Sounds like they added a save between the base battles, which is also a really good idea. I just lost against the racist albino crazy cat, and I don't want to do the whole thing again.
Strategy and trial / error only got me through one particular battle. Otherwise I either won or got completely crushed every battle. You do have to not act like an idiot in battle, but otherwise there's just too much randomness involved, I feel.
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Last Remnant: Disc 2.
Got suckered into getting the 360 version? It is basically a beta for the PC one which has a number of important fixes like redoing the BR calculation in a way that actually gives you benefits for fighting scrubs, autosaves/save anywhere in general, selective disabling of unit commands and removing the leader cap. I enjoyed the game and its ridiculosity enough to beat every superboss, The Seven and The Lost are even more nightmarish than the frue final. and I still need to do NG+ on Hard, sell off all carryovers/spend all the money, and then use the trainer to bump the party size cap to 25 from the very start
Have you tried White Conquer yet?
That said, I wonder why didn't they include Blue Rush as an optional too...
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The 6 bases are cool. One big boss with 5 unions to defeat.
Too bad you have to endure those pointless battles before each of the bosses. Especially since you can't save between battles. Actually during those filler battles I just input my commands and then go away 10 minutes, failing every QTE, not that it matters.
Albino cat was bad enough, since he could OHKO one union every three turns or so. This is bad. Really bad. I split up my unions (instead of using 4 unions with 5-5-4-4 characters, I used 5 with 4-4-4-3-3 characters) and ended up beating him after careful use of the revival spell (interruption is a pretty big deal here) and strategy (basically, go after the mages first) At that point I did every sidequest available because fighting 5 other similar battles sounded like too much for me. Turns out those bosses get even more h4x.
Fish was easy. I don't know what the hell was wrong with him.
Toad thing wasn't too hard either, but all his grunts were annoying and he had that crazy insane Galaxy spell that does huge damage to everyone (fortunately, he had the decency to only use that once)
The twin sisters basically used Galaxy every three turns, and could waste the turns of 2 unions (by engaging them) every turn. This makes killing the grunts much harder to do. Fortunately, by having all my characters focus on those annoying mages I could kill all of them on the first turn. The battle would have been a nightmare otherwise.
Young was ridiculous. OHKO one union per round + some splash damage to other unions most of the time? WHAT? I wasted an unbelievable amount of herbs reviving everybody everytime. This battle is a good example of how you can feel like you don't have control over battles (It's hard to tell who's going to be interrupted by the boss, and harder to tell who will be damaged by Brawl's splash damage) but still can win by playing carefully anyway. Nice.
Old was pure support for this better than average grunts. I just sent Jager to tank the damage from the warriors while everybody else handled those FREAKING MAGES! Smooth sailing from there on. Near the end of the battle he starts getting crazy and murdering anyone who dares attempt to touch him, but he's really already over at this point. (not that this would have been too difficult to handle)
Cyclops? Bitch move. I'm ashamed of you, SaGa guys.
My unions are:
Jager + 3 grunts: Unions of Big HPs. They can all use item arts (including revival), but they're mostly good at tanking and doing big physical damage.
Emmy + Caedmon + 2 grunts: Union of Big Damage. I send it wherever I want things to die.
Irina + 3 grunts: Union of Healing. It's Irina. I have her on standby, ready to heal anything, most of the time.
Glenys + 2 grunts: Union of Filler. Tries to stay away from difficult enemies, can sometimes heal.
Rush + Two grunts: Union of Awesome. Rush is GOD. He can do anything.
I don't even have any attack magic user anymore at that point.
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Parasite Eve 3rd Birthday: Up to Chapter 4. Nice that it opens up with signs that Aya may be back to her old self again, though still early. Also, yay for a random toss in from a PE1 character out of nowhere!?!?
Marvel Ultimate Alliance: in the middle of the Atlantis stuff. I tried Captain America and Wolverine's missions, but it doesn't seem feasible at my levels once I get to the boss due to time reasons, so I'll probably go back at higher levels and such.
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Front Mission 4 Replay: Done. Used a dual Minotaur arm set up for Darril's squad, which lead to massive amounts of pain for the AI. Nothing like eating an 8000 damage counter attack. In general, this replay kind of reinforced how bad Luis is. His default computer set has a grand total of +2 AP upgrades.
Super Mario RPG: Attempt Marathon replay. Got to Bowser's Keep on day 1 and finished it the next. Laggy and Eph were all like, "use Mallow and Bowser!" So I did, and made the last dungeon around 2x longer just for the final boss segment. Came back with Mario/Mallow/Geno default to win. This type of playthrough is fun since it suddenly makes the game hard. Axem Rangers were very damaging and Black's 550 HP felt like it took ages to wear down. Knife Guy and Grate Guy were near impossible unless you use Bowser. Bundt required an extremely lucky miss to win. Probably won't do it again for a bit, but yeah. If you want to make you SMRPG run more fun, try it.
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I still can't believe there's a challenge that makes Knife Guy and Grate Guy top tier.
I haven't been playing too much recently since the defeat of Tactics Ogre. I finished VP, think I mentioned this already though? I replayed Metroid Fusion, 1:02 since I'm a bit rusty. Why haven't you played this game yet? Fix this. Also dug up Mega Man Powered Up and went from 80% challenges completed to 96%. All I have left is the Wily boss rushes, which don't appeal to me because having to redo the Yellow Devil each time (who I can perfect but he takes ~3 minutes) = no. I also tried to pick up Oilman and beat his HM quest but argh. Oilman is such a puny.
Not sure what's next.
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Don't forget Bowyer also has MT 2HKO to the whole party. I also wiped once to Exor. If you had even lower levels than me, as Sage said, Corona is a MT wipe if you're not boosted at all (it is otherwise, just a very high MT 2HKO). If you want to watch it and missed a part of it, most of it is recorded on my ustream channel page. No sound though!
Also Chrono Trigger: Played more of this. Stream with Meeple, NEB and Ciato on Skype. Got to the part where there's a bunch of optional stuff to finish, so nearing the final stretch as I understand.
And of course, a stream shot to commemorate:
(http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/9571/ctlaggy2.jpg) (http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/9571/ctlaggy2.jpg)
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L.A. Noire: Surprise gift from my girlfriend. Made it to the golden butterfly case. I think I screwed it up.
What I really like about the game is the way the game allows you to fail. Read Gref's rant basically. Since I love the idea, I've removed every external clue the game could give me. (Like the music stopping if you have found every piece of evidence on the crime scene. Let me miss stuff) Not really to make the game more difficult but more immersive.
The game's really that good and revolutionary, honestly. It's a hell of a lot harder to tell what the game wants you to say however (unlike in Phoenix Wright), and it's not as immersive as it should be though. The worst example, unfortunately, is the first interrogation in the game. (Clovis Galletta) I was supposed to tell her she lied by showing something that.. didn't quite prove she lied at all. So yeah, instead I trusted her and asked her a nice question. She went into a violent rage and said the interview was over. Huh.
It gets better.
Last Remnant: Completely, utterly crushed by the Fallen. I guess I need to grind. I removed Irina and added Duke of Ghor into the team. BR 62.
Mario Galaxy 2: 52 stars already. Easy and fun enough except everytime I have to waggle.
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Okamiden: So I'm going to a cave to kill a big snake. Twice. Okami did this plot point first and better... Which is a refrain I can use for the entire game, sans maybe chibi-partner interaction at a few points. This is a rather lackluster sequel that hasn't added much of anything. Fans of the original are better off replaying it, I think.
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Last Remnant: At the end. Unlocked Absolute Conqueror, but he is rather hard. So back to grinding.
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Shining Force 3 Part 2 -
superDonhort left the party. Good riddance.
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Persona 4 - finished.
Initially got Bad Ending (ver. no-deaths). Subsequently looked up the requirements for True Ending. Have to say that some of them are kind of unintuitive.
Despite knowing who the killer was from here across the entire playthrough, I cannot say that I ever saw anything that would point towards them? Seems almost like you aren't supposed to know and just have to guess based off the conditions set up previous to the question, which do strike off most options to be fair. Wonder if I would have gotten it initially or not if I had played up to there without knowing.
Ending to the final happened somewhat strangely. After two characters had been removed, Yukiko revived one of them with no apparent effect, but then on the next lot of removals Yukiko was removed... and so was the character that had been revived, which made for a somewhat strange scene since they were not on the field. Next turn the main was removed anyway, but I find it hard to believe that that was supposed to happen that way.
Managed to at least start all slinks this time. Aside from plotslinks, maxed Chariot, Empress, Magician, Hermit, and Priestess. Cannot say I think much of slink-based evolution as opposed to plot-based evolution.
Expected to max more that that because I was not expecting things to go into autopilot after Magatsu. Annoyingly I redid the previous dungeon for fetch quests before running through Magatsu in the one p-day, so I effectively failed those quests as well due to this.
Things which are annoying:
Being restricted to two-handed swords. I am still bad at timing swings right with them. It doesn't help that I fail to comprehend the requirements for Player Advantage as I have hit enemies from behind without getting it and hit enemies from the front with getting it (without Emperor active). Was also hit with Enemy Advantage a fair amount after missing and being hit from the front, which assuming is a penalty for failing to connect, is all the more reason to not be happy about the situation. Plus I assume that being stuck with one weapon type is what caused the physical elements to be combined, which I am not really a fan of, mostly because it resulted in there being multiple physical skills which previously were differentiated by being different elements but now have no obvious difference from each other.
The partner AI is kind of dumb at times. I observed it using multitarget skills which were effective against particular enemies but repelled/drained by other enemies on the field numerous times. Chie also insists on using Mabufu/Bufula on enemies which aren't ice-weak despite her physical skills being more damaging. No-one with buffing skills ever seemed to use them either, although I am fine with that from a gameplay perspective. Not the biggest fan of P-buffs.
On the plus side, unless my memory is failing me, I seem to recall the P3F:A partner AI suffering from a crippling fear of using healing skills when below half SP. That doesn't happen here, so that's either an improvement or nothing at all depending on how my memory is. On the flipside of that, the P4 AI appears to have nowhere near the critical predictiveness of the P3F:A AI. Or possibly just critical rates were reduced. Seems like there is still some amount of psychicness built into it though.
Continuing on regarding the AI, what happened to the AI tactics? In P3 we've got Act Freely, Knock Down, Attack Fallen, Full Assault, Heal/Support, Conserve SP, Assign Target, Same Target, and Stand By, whereas here we just have Act Freely, Full Assault, Conserve SP, and Heal/Support. Also Direct Control if you're insane I guess. To be fair, some of the P3 tactics were useless, but these included Full Assault, which is still available, and Conserve SP is only useful for stopping Chie from wasting her time with ice. Actually, Full Assault is less useful in P4 than in P3 because most people don't have anything to do apart from assaulting, whereas in P3 they could all use items. Anyway. My main problem is that, assuming that Stand By causes people to go into guard mode and not just stand around as I don't remember, there are a number of times when I would have liked to have used it in P4.
I don't like that the people following you around in dungeons are just decorations, despite never using the split up functionality in P3 when I wasn't forced to. I don't like that in certain dungeons I can turn around and find that no-one is there as they have all got stuck on dungeon architecture aways back. I don't like the numerous times I rotated the camera to see down a passageway and then it snapped back into a position unusable for that after releasing the button.
I don't think the Goho-M/highest floor system makes any sense compared to the terminal system.
I don't think being forced to use ID skills on enemies to see whether they repel it or not is a good idea, for all that a good deal of ID skillusers are resistant to the type of ID they use.
Things which are not so annoying:
Slinks having optional romance late >>> Slinks having mandatory romance midway.
Slink reversal system was seemingly removed as well? I never had any slinks go into reversal, and some of them were left for some time.
In summation, P3 is better.
SRWL - Up to episode 9.
Started replaying this for some reason. I guess due to having watched Macross Frontier?
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You're complaining about the AI but you say you would need to be insane to use direct control? I do not comprehend. Why would you not want to control your characters if you don't like the way their AI is set up?
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In general, the partner AI operates the characters better than I could. I only really take issue with regressions and inconsistencies.
Direct control would ruin what I have come to consider the Persona Experience. Do P1/2 have partner AI?
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P1/2 are traditional turn-based RPGs with full control over everybody.
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Diablo 2: Randomly came across my game pack complete with cd keys the other day, so am losing myself in this for a week or so as a nostalgia prep to tide me over til d3. Decided to roll a sin who will most likely be some sort of trap/venom hybrid, which while probably not the best build for single player pve reminds me of my favorite wwtrapsin from back when I did play, so it'll work despite the fact that coming across the runes for a chaos will probably never happen.
Finished Act 1 normal last night, got decently lucky with some early charm drops that all added 1-6 damage of various flavors, which sort of made up for my lackluster drop of claws, finished the act using two claws with only added poison damage. Also had 3!!! set pieces drop, though early game sets are crap, though I am using the belt set that dropped because belt drops hate me otherwise. Also got through with 0 deaths despite running into several nasty packs of cold enchanted and champion annoying shaman dudes that revive people packs. Did have a close call on Andareel, in retrospect I should have brought two antivenom potions instead of one.
Now starting chapter 2 where my newly acquired shadow servant will be abused and whipped into tanking hordes of lightning enchanted bugs will I stand behind her going "oh ho ho ho" like a sadist.
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3rd Birthday: ...wait, seriously, that's the ending already?
...I knew it was short, but GOD DAMN I wasn't expecting that. I figured the game would have been twice as long as it was. Oh well, I suppose they expect you to replay it several times or something which...I might. Ranking system and feats give you an incentive to try and replay.
Overall, fun little game. There were some annoying moments Gameplay wise like any section with Rollers were annoying, and that one part with the Reaper you need to Laser was a bitch cause that stupid cage just screws with EVERYTHING if he cages one of your laser guys, and its easy to screw up. Otherwise, pretty fun.
Plot wise...I'll be honest? It wasn't nearly as fucked up or bad as people made it out to be. No, it wasn't amazing or anything, and yes, it is kind of "what the fuck?" inducing, but beyond explaining how one thing led to something drastically different, it honestly works well enough. The stuff not explained is typical fridge logic "Shrug, move on." This is not like Chrono Cross where the game starts contradicting itself by nature as you try to piece things together; its more just...really weird. I guess its fucked up in the sense of how bizarre it is, but it honestly is not THAT atrocious or anything.
And frankly, the plot twist at the end was a nice way to just go "No, all of you people who think we completely ruined Aya's character...you're just 100% wrong." I say this cause people first off:
A. Totally mis-understand Aya from the first two games as is. So many people just go "OMG ACTION GIRL! Bad Ass, Tough as Nails, DOESN'T"T FRAID OF NOTHING!" Umm...er...no? Aya is a normal person; she shows fear and is afraid of things, but she's at the same time trained (like any decent cop would be) to not be overcome by it. She's just duty driven, so she acts based on what she thinks needs to be done, not cause of some personal emotional drive or "I NEED TO PROVE SOMETHING!" She has a job, whether its an official thing or something she morally feels she needs to do, and she's getting it done. Oh sure, she's an exceptional person in terms of genetic make up, but mentally and emotionally, she's just a normal person.
B. The situation is completely unlike what the trailers and such made it out to be. This happens all the damn time and I love it when people jump to conclusions and are wrong because of it! The twist at the end basically says that they could have done whatever the hell they wanted and you can't claim its out of character due to its nature, because...well...
Its not Aya at all, its Eve. When last we saw Eve, she was like 10 years old, and thus completely unlike what we've seen. She's also not combat hardened the way Aya is, so coupled with amnesia/identity crisis, it makes perfect sense that she'd crack under pressure. Now, why Aya had to get herself shot, I didn't quite get that; I can formulate theories but there are some uneasinesses based off it, but again, nothing to the same level as Chrono Cross
Unless of course 3rd Birthday has source material that adds fucked up shit to the nature of the game. If there is...this just proves one thing:
2nd Tier Canon Material should be ignored. Yes, Outside Source Information is "2nd Tier Canon." The logic of "If its not in the game, it does not need to happen" goes strong, and there has to be SOME reason it wasn't incorporated. Its possible that shit wasn't incorporated cause...they realized how screwed up it was and it wouldn't work well into the plot, but they liked the idea too much, they held onto it in some manner and went "hey, how's this for the explanation" OUTSIDE of the game? Seriously, people who take source material stuff a little TOO seriously need to think about things better; the simple logic of "If its not in the game, it doesn't need to happen" goes WONDERS with saving plots that these materials completely kill. Chrono Cross' Balthasar shit is a prime example of that; CC makes no hints of that kind of nonsense AT ALL, suggesting he's nothing more than a passive observer; therefor, IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE SO.
THAT SAID...overall, unsure what I'd give the game. Its certainly flawed, and its length is a bad thing in this case, cause while being short isn't so much bad, it definitely reaches that point of being TOO short, and if it was a little longer, some things could have been fleshed out some. Still, a decent game overall, so I guess 6/10.
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Act 2 normal beaten, this assassin loves me, 4 uniques dropped, the first being an ethereal armor that is now basically making my merc a beast tank who even lived through duriel. Also got the amulet that boost max fire resist along with giving a hefty sum of it by itself, suffice to say act 4 demons will not be causing me as much trouble as they should once I get there.
The other two pieces were vendor trash due to being weapons that aren't claws, but I did luck out and also got two pieces from a set for my belt and boot slots, which while it is a low level set not named siguns(I think that's what the op low level one was called?) the bonus is providing me with a hefty attack rating bonus which means I can actually hit stuff with my still mediocre weapon set, not that I should have to be doing that too much longer since I picked up a meditate merc to fuel my selfish 0 int investment self.
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Meeple: I think the issue people take with the twist is more that unceremoniously killing off the heroes of the previous game pisses people off in general. Sure, Aya probably has to be dead for this plot to work out, but there's a gap between being dead and being killed during your wedding by government agents even though they were unambiguously on your side throughout the series. See also people's opinions of Chrono Cross endgame.
Twil: Only one S.Link in Persona 4 can reverse, Moon. It basically involves telling them to go kill themselves, and while I never tried it, I don't think you can fix it afterwards.
I think some of the AI changes were because the game mechanics are slightly different. Knock Down in particular just doesn't work the same way and wouldn't really be as useful. This doesn't explain the lack of a Healing option, though.
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Persona 4 - finished.
In summation, P3 is better.
Quoted for truth. And yes, you didn't need direct control in P3 because the AI was so good. So the AI being so much worse in P4 is a bit curious.
Last Remnant: Finished. Absolute Conqueror wasn't quite as bad as I thought, though I still had a couple of close calls.
Overall, 8/10 game. It's very clearly a SaGa game despite not having it in the title. But it has some changes over the other SaGas which make it far more tolerable. Notably full healing after battle, which goes a long way towards making battles enjoyable.
The story is pretty generic and lame:
"Hey Dave, my sister just got kidnapped, drop what you're doing and help me find her!" "Well, even though I am the leader of this city and currently engaged in a civil war, I will forget all of that and help you. Despite never seeing you before."
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"Howdy mister! Welcome to our city! Take a look at our Remnant that protects us! We sure would be screwed if something happened to it!"
Next city: "Welcome to our city! This Remnant protects us all from danger! I sure hope nothing ever happens to it!"
And so on. But in spite of the actual story, the worldbuilding and atmosphere were quite good. The visuals were very evocative and I loved how the towns were populated with lots of people who *didn't* feel obligated to hold conversations with the main character. You could see them going about their business, shopping, talking to each other, etc. I also thought the character/race designs were good, with the exception of the Sovani. Their squashed faces and awkwardly attached lower arms just seemed unnatural and out of place with the rest of the races.
The combat system was a bit daunting at first, but once you figure out how things work it's very cool. You're basically a battlefield general. You can give orders to the units, but they resolve them in their own way. Looking at the minimap can give you a clue as to which units to send where to get that critical Interception or healing. For all that it was unintuitive, it worked.
The out of combat gameplay was rather streamlined also. Instead of having to micromanage so many units, you just take care of Rush and the rest upgrade their own stuff along the way. Of course you can not-so-gently nudge them in the right direction. Rearranging unions was rather cumbersome, especially once you got a large number of formations to sift through. But you didn't need to do it very often.
The game did have some major issues. First of all, the ridiculous load times. Luckily that was alleviated by installing the game to hard drive. The cap on leaders was rather dumb. With the large number of leaders available (both plot and generic), there was no reason to have soldiers included at all. And of course the entire game was massive FAQbait - and the FAQs for the game are terrible. Like I said earlier, I'd love to spend about six months writing an awesome FAQ for the game, but I have other games to play. :(
My final party for the boss was Caedmon, Rush, Glenys, Leshau, and a soldier in Rune Ring 3 formation. And Baulson, Blocter, and 3 soldiers in Blizzard 1 formation.
Character notes:
Rush: I kept him 1-hand + shield for the whole game. Concentrated on Mystic arts. After I made the Aqueous Shield(+4 to both defenses), I found out a neat trick. Put Rush in a union by himself and give him a + phys defense and a + mag defense accessory, and he's nigh-invincible. Granted his AP is terrible, but he can still use Vivification Tincture to run around and revive other unions.
Baulson: MVP. Massive HP, massive damage, access to both types of healing.
Caedmon: Gets hyped on Gamefaqs, but I didn't find him particularly special. He has high stat caps compared to other characters, but if you don't max stats that doesn't mean anything.
Blocter: I only started using him near the end because I thought Wonder Bangle would be useful. It's not particularly since it only autoheals you at the start of next turn rather than just immuning statuses. Still he is good in both defensive stats and that's useful in and of itself.
Emmy: I used her after she arrived for most of the rest of the game. She was pretty good but her HPs never went up much and I ended up dropping her because she was just too much of a liability.
Loki: Used him in the midgame. Actually wasn't too bad for being a Badrach. Early Hexes is quite useful.
Leshau: Loki++, although lacks healing. Massive parameter bonus!
Jager: Also did not live up to Gamefaqs hype. Supposed to have massive HP and damage, but wasn't that special. I didn't want to drop him because he stole all my best accessories, but I made the tough call at the end.
Glenys: I barely used her, but her skills were high due to passive skill boosting, and she starts with great gear. Basically replaced Emmy since she does the same thing but a bit better.
Torgal: Used a bit in midgame when I started experimenting with different setups. Not too shabby, but should have used him from the start of the game if I wanted to do it right.
Pagus: Barely used, along with Wyngale when I toyed with the idea of getting three Commanders. Stopped when I realized how long that would take.
McGrady: Generic leader with healing go! Damned good at the beginning of the game, I hated to let him go.
Anyway, fun game if randomly infuriating. First enjoyable SaGa since Final Fantasy Legend 2.
======================
Dungeon Crawl: Did pretty well with a Hill Orc Berserker, until I got mobbed by a Centaur herding a group of yaks.
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Meeple: I think the issue people take with the twist is more that unceremoniously killing off the heroes of the previous game pisses people off in general. Sure, Aya probably has to be dead for this plot to work out, but there's a gap between being dead and being killed during your wedding by government agents even though they were unambiguously on your side throughout the series. See also people's opinions of Chrono Cross endgame.
I suppose that makes sense, but I see people bitching and whining about stuff like TIME TRAVEL and such in a game that's all about rewriting the past.
Generally speaking, though, the point you brought up is nowhere near the same level of bullshit Chrono Cross had, which is basically spitting on everything Chrono Trigger did, then putting it together in some loose bullshit manner that only makes less sense once you realize how the game basically starts to contradict itself.
Though, one thing it has in common with Chrono Cross is the "why is this a sequel?" aspect. 3rd Birthday probably could have worked better as its own separate game, thus not having to worry about attachments to certain characters and such, but then they went "hey, lets revive the Parasite Eve series, and with that, the characters write themselves!" and ti was kind of an easy way out. 3rd Birthday doesn't really deal with the themes of the earlier games (that being Aya vs. Genetic Freaks of Nature), and the characters are so distant to their original selves in how they are used (while not necessarily out of character), it really gives off this feel that they made an original game, but couldn't think of a way to sell it, so just sort of shoved an established series on top of it, and twisted (no pun intended) some of the plot points to fit into the continuity.
But I don't see how its plot is as screwed up as Chrono Cross', which not only is so fucked up on its own, it more or less completely screws with Chrono Trigger itself by nature, adding bullshit and finishing plot threads that were left open in CT. 3rd Birthday's screw ups are more just screwed up on its own merits; they do nothing to play any effect on PE1/2 other than being set in the same timeline.
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Persona 4 - finished.
In summation, P3 is better.
Quoted for truth. And yes, you didn't need direct control in P3 because the AI was so good. So the AI being so much worse in P4 is a bit curious.
Counterpoint: Ice Break and Marin Karin from Mitsuru. :|
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Yeah, from what I've read Third Birthday just doesn't have enough plot to be worse than CC on that front. CC's just the go-to example for "sequel that kinda really pisses off fans of the first game"
And bullshit to all claims of P3 AI being good. It's adequate, by which I mean it only gets you horribly murdered 15% of the time. It only works in fights where you're already firmly in control of the battle (in general because everything that can hit weakness on you reliably is already dead/didn't show up to the fight).
But for something that defeats the entire point of a turn-based game, it could be a lot worse.
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Oh, regarding P4 S. Link reversing nonsense...
I got the one with bitchy NPC girl related to the Basketball team to be reversed. It basically just involves saying "That was mean" to her in one instance, and she overreacts. You can fix it by simply talking to her during free time at a later moment, and apologizing or something.
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Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.8.0 character file.
1122726 Estara the Demonologist (level 27, 139/139 HPs)
Began as a Kobold Summoner on May 28, 2011.
Was the Champion of Sif Muna.
Escaped with the Orb
... and 3 runes (of 3 types) on May 29, 2011!
The game lasted 15:35:49 (150378 turns).
Estara the Demonologist (Kobold Summoner) Turns: 150378, Time: 15:35:50
HP 139/139 AC 24 Str 10 Exp: 27/864866 (108)
MP 43/43 EV 40 Int 21 God: Sif Muna [******]
Gold 6814 SH 22 Dex 25 Spells: 13 memorised, 7 levels left
Res.Fire : + + . See Invis. : . K - staff of energy
Res.Cold : + + + Warding : . . b - +2 robe "Nuyqoufize" {rC++}
Life Prot.: . . . Conserve : + S - +1 elf buckler {AC+3}
Res.Acid. : . . . Res.Corr. : . m - +3 helmet of Cocytus {Dex+4 Int+3}
Res.Poison: + Clarity : . D - +0 cloak of Starlight {rElec rC+ EV+4 Stlt
Res.Elec. : + Spirit.Shd : . E - +0 pair of gloves "Shraiv" {rPois rC+}
Sust.Abil.: . . Stasis : . z - +2 pair of boots of the Assassin {+Inv Dex
Res.Mut. : . Ctrl.Telep.: . H - amulet of conservation
Res.Rott. : . Levitation : . Z - ring of Robustness {AC+8}
Saprovore : + + . Ctrl.Flight: . V - ring of Quhyasel {rF+ EV+4 Dam+1}
^_^
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So I bugged Laggy into making a Super Laggy-o RPG. Laggy agreed and I am in the process of playing it.
General changes:
- Time blocking made much earlier. Laggy and I agreed on changing the time frame so that it's neither too early or too late, but more in between. Will test this in new hack
- No more buyable Pick Me Ups! Well they can be bought for 2 frog coins. But so far, it hasn't been an issue. And I doubt it will be one.
- Buffs to spells and characters. Mallow now starts being able to OHKO Spikeys. Mario's fire orb has been buffed and you can do pretty solid damage with it (in particular, it puts Croco down earlier)
Bosses/Enemies:
- Laggy only really changed enemies of World 1. Most notable, BOWSER now deals 6 damage instead of 1. The Terrapins do 2 instead of 1
- The Sky Troopas have 15 HP or so. You basically want to use Jump
- Hammer Bros. deal more damage.
- Drain deals more damage
- Croco is largely unchanged outside of double acting (still badass though)
- And here's where the hilarity start. An excerpt from chat:
BELOME
[21:59:13] <%Laggy> lolol
[21:59:44] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> holy shit
[21:59:45] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> 22 damage?
[22:00:11] <%Laggy> ...
[22:00:11] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> ...
[22:00:12] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> Laggy
[22:00:13] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> WHAT
[22:00:14] <+ErikoKirishima> lol
[22:00:15] <+Ephraim> ...
[22:00:15] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> did
[22:00:16] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> you
[22:00:17] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> do
[22:00:17] <+Ephraim> gj
[22:00:22] <%Laggy> Well now I know what that flag does.
[22:00:28] <+Hello-BlueRabithedralWaddleDee> What happened?
[22:00:32] <%Laggy> lol
[22:00:37] <+Ephraim> Sleep Sauce more like OWN sauce
[22:00:41] <+Pinkie_Pie> Laggy you got something right
[22:00:47] <+Hello-BlueRabithedralWaddleDee> No, seriously, I missed the stream.
[22:00:53] <%Laggy> Sleep Sauce
[22:00:56] <%Laggy> "zzz"
[22:00:56] <%Laggy> *33*
[22:00:58] <%Laggy> *OHKO*
[22:01:09] <+Hello-BlueRabithedralWaddleDee> ... >_>
[22:01:10] <%Laggy> 40 to Mario
[22:01:11] <%Laggy> I see.
Apparently, Laggy increased the spell's mult with a flag, causing Sleep Sauce to do stupid amounts of damage. Also double act Lick without blocking deals 44 damage total, which OHKOs both Mario and Mallow. However, I managed victorious! Then onto the next boss!
BOWYER
[22:25:05] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> ...
[22:25:08] <%Laggy> ...
[22:25:08] <%Laggy> lol
[22:25:08] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> WHAT the fuck
[22:25:16] <+Ephraim> arrow to the face
[22:25:19] <+Ephraim> *32*
[22:25:37] <%Laggy> oh man
[22:25:41] <%Laggy> you're not going to like what' scoming
[22:26:25] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> Laggy
[22:26:27] <%Laggy> lol.
[22:26:29] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> I just got quadrauple turned
[22:26:32] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> please explain
[22:26:40] <%Laggy> He has a triple physical
[22:26:42] <%Laggy> <_<
[22:26:49] <+Ephraim> wut
[22:26:50] <%Laggy> I don't REMEMBER boosting his attack!
[22:27:09] <+Meeple_Gorath> that damage seems way too high for someone who multi acts
[22:27:13] <%Laggy> see Tide this is why i have you
[22:27:18] <%Laggy> so someone can gloriously wipe so I know what to edit.
[22:27:34] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> Bowyer is the new NECRON
[22:28:20] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> ...
[22:28:22] <%Laggy> oh my.
[22:28:23] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGY
[22:28:28] <+Ephraim> raggy
[22:28:30] <+Ephraim> raggy
[22:28:31] <%Laggy> So Bowyer is kind of a badass
[22:28:36] <+Meeple_Gorath> what did I miss?
[22:28:42] <+Meeple_Gorath> I see Geno dead
[22:28:59] <%Laggy> >.>
[22:29:22] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> ...
[22:29:23] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> Laggy
[22:29:26] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> you gave him
[22:29:28] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> OHKO potential
[22:29:29] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> hahaha
[22:29:33] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> This is so glorious
[22:29:34] <%Laggy> well
[22:29:36] <+Hello-BlueRabithedralWaddleDee> *overkill potential
[22:29:38] <%Laggy> I thought Lightning Orb sucked
[22:29:38] <+Ephraim> better grind moar
[22:29:44] <%Laggy> then I checked "ITD" on it to see what it would do
[22:29:45] <%Laggy> now I know.
[22:29:47] <%Laggy> :D?
tldr; Bowyer is insanely badass and not really beatable at level 6. Will await further adjustments from the Lagbeast. Also, I was joking, but current version Bowyer is basically beatable only by the following strat:
[22:10:40] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> Laggy
[22:10:47] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> if I have to buy Rock Canides to beat Bowyer
[22:10:51] <+Tide|LaggyisSumoSanta> I am blaming you
[22:10:51] <%Laggy> lol
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Yeah, from what I've read Third Birthday just doesn't have enough plot to be worse than CC on that front. CC's just the go-to example for "sequel that kinda really pisses off fans of the first game"
I'm pretty sure that was the idea. The guy who was in charge of Chrono Cross fucking hates people in general.
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I really don't know how to it when comparing 3rd Birthday with CC.
CC is trucking itself up by trying to explain itself when its whole foundation is self contradicting.
As for 3rd Birthday... it just builds itself on top of Deus ex Machina. Then trying to feed you explanation and resolutions that is also Deus ex Machina in itself... so I guess 3rd Birthday end up less fail by admitting they are not trying to pull any reason behind the plot?
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Last Remnant:
I find Jager and Caedmon decent. Jager has monster HPs, good item arts and Beowulf (which he uses about as much as everybody else uses their other skills) Caedmon has a really powerful regular physical attack and decent skills. Duke of Ghor is kind of disappointing though.
I still can't beat the Fallen. BR 85ish, I believe most people have maxed non HP/AP stats (Leaders have ~1300 HPs, generic dudes ~750), but their weapons suck. I don't know if I should focus on upgrading their weapons or keep fighting in the Ancient Ruins. (I'm fighting on the first level since I can't beat Holy Servant and most Great Demons groups)
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Last Remnant: Finished. Absolute Conqueror wasn't quite as bad as I thought, though I still had a couple of close calls.
Overall, 8/10 game. It's very clearly a SaGa game despite not having it in the title. But it has some changes over the other SaGas which make it far more tolerable. Notably full healing after battle, which goes a long way towards making battles enjoyable.
What system did you play it on? I bought the 360 version, but I couldn't get into it. As a big fan of SaGa Frontier and SaGa 2, it interests me in some ways, but I'm curious as to how best to approach the game. The learning curve on the battle system is kinda ridiculous and I'm not sure what I should concentrate on first to get into the system. Also, BR means that experimenting tends to make things harder...
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What system did you play it on? I bought the 360 version, but I couldn't get into it. As a big fan of SaGa Frontier and SaGa 2, it interests me in some ways, but I'm curious as to how best to approach the game. The learning curve on the battle system is kinda ridiculous and I'm not sure what I should concentrate on first to get into the system. Also, BR means that experimenting tends to make things harder...
360. Really just play the game, you'll figure out things as you go. The only kinda bad thing you can do is link multiple enemies into fights, since it raises your BR too quickly. But even if you do that the game is manageable, just harder. Oh, and save constantly, you will die a lot in this game.
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BTW, which optional boss is the Fallen? I can't recognize thanks to the translation.
Is it the Lost Remnant (silver/orange)? The Being Known as God (red/green)? Or the Demigod (red/blue)?
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WA5: playing this because WA4 was one of the best RPGs ever made (see: reality) and I wanted more of the same. It's not bad, really, but it seems like it's taken a few baffling steps backward for the series.
On the plus side, I still really like the hex combat, and I'm not especially offended by the plot or any of the characters. (For reference, I just finished the first plot battle with Nightburn.) Maybe it's because I just played Dragon Age 2 and am thoroughly sick of brooding anti-heroes with dark pasts (Fenris being the most grating example), but Dean doesn't even bother me. That said, why does Intrude cost 75 FP? I've been waiting to go all Raquel on some punks with Greg, but now I don't even see why I'd use him at all.
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Intrude's still pretty good even at 75 FP, to be quite honest.
Otherwise I agree with pretty much every word in your post. Hope you keep enjoyin' it.
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The Fallen is the one related to a sidequest. You have to beat him early or his quest disappears, and he uses Armaggedon (Auto game-over) on turn 10. Forgot his color.
Super Mario Galaxy 2: 122 stars.
I like the two galaxy games, and they should be better than Mario 64/Sunshine (They're linear instead of free roaming, for once), but I don't know. There's just no tension anymore, for some reason, and that was a big part of Mario. Maybe that's it.
In any case, mastering the long jump in both galaxy games is like mastering Luigi in SMB2. Godmode!
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WA5's Intrude benefits particularly well from a Reinforce (I think that's what the FP Up hex is called) coupled with either the equip that gets you 2-5 attacks per turn for a whopping 10 attacks if you get particularly lucky (and I'm not sure whether Rebecca's attack skill can stack with it :V), or the Double Cast one which does quite good damage and you should be able to Intrude again on your next turn.
I played WA5 before WA4, so I honestly found nothing wrong with the way WA5's system works, and thought WA4's system was a little limited at first blush. I definitely enjoy WA4's specialised charactermore than the freeform characters you get in WA5, though, but that's because I like characters having specific roles over jacks of all trades who you can mold into your preferred niche.
That said character skills still help a little there, though most seem to just favour physical attacks.
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Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse-
Decided to stop being a bum, play games obtained for free by leeching from hard working citizens of poorer countries.
So, 3-2 is easily the best episode among the telltale games. Quirky, all the new mechanics are kinda cool, and the puzzle logic really makes a lot of sense as you just play around with the tools you have.
3-1 and 3-3 are solid, the humor is firing well and while there's the occasional dead end puzzle, it's usually overlooking something rather than moon logic. This is pretty much true of every first and third episode in the series.
3-4 is doing pretty well right up until the final act. There's some really easy to miss stuff before it, but the final act just... is annoying.
3-5 doesn't work at all. The villain doesn't play very well, the logic of half the puzzles is way out there, and it's not terribly engaging or funny. Exception goes to the spores: they were definitely a highlight for Sam & Max-iness throughout the season.
Pretty solid, but early installments were definitely stronger than the finish.
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ahhhh Pokemon tournament in like 4 days and I finished planning my team last night still have to try and catch half the fuckers with perfect IVs and EV them and PP Ups and oh dear god why ;_;
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3rd Birthday related text
I'd personally just like to know what the Swat guys were doing. Were they the local swat team celebrating Aya's wedding in a unique fashion but some idiot loaded real bullets, the umbrella corporation afraid Aya would go after their genetic freaks next or is Toriyama just a really shity writer?
Also why were all the guests outside the locked church while the final boss chillaxed inside? Why is Maeda a creepy pedo rapist now, why was Hunter "Boss" Owen suddenly killed for no reason and why were *rambles on*. Good read as always but I think you're being too kind on the game.
Star Ocean the last hope - So I crush 4 wings queen with ease and then procede to face 6 wings. Of course in true Star Ocean tradition the game freezes wasting 5 hours I'll never get back. Sad how Tri-Ace bonus area's aren't scary due to their enemies but the likelihood of it freezing on you.
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Super Laggy-o RPG version 1.01:
New changes:
- Timing change. It's still more strict than the original, but it feels easier to me, which is good. I've been informed GENO BOOST is also much harder to time.
- Special changes; Geno Boost no longer self targets and is now 8 FP instead (more prohibitive early on)
- Level up bonuses adjusted. Laggy changed it so that there's no ideal bonus anymore.
Bosses:
- BELOME has Aurora Flash in this version. I wipe 5 times before winning. Laggy will change this to the less deadly LIGHT BEAM
- BOWYER's offense is still competent but downgraded slightly. Lightning orb now dispels. Bolt deals 0 damage (...), which Laggy will look into. He still has triple physical and double acts which makes him scary for offensive output.
- CROCO 2. Laggy derps and forgot to account for starting Geno Boost. Proposed change: Steals your items at the start
- PAUNCHInello; more constant Sandstorms would make him scarier. As is, his last phase is the deadliest, but still managable. Laggy intends for buffing. I shall find out what he does in the next edition.
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I'd personally just like to know what the Swat guys were doing. Were they the local swat team celebrating Aya's wedding in a unique fashion but some idiot loaded real bullets, the umbrella corporation afraid Aya would go after their genetic freaks next or is Toriyama just a really shity writer?
Also why were all the guests outside the locked church while the final boss chillaxed inside? Why is Maeda a creepy pedo rapist now, why was Hunter "Boss" Owen suddenly killed for no reason and why were *rambles on*. Good read as always but I think you're being too kind on the game.
The SWAT thing is the only thing not really explained. The others? I don't believe Aya actually knew any of those people BEFORE becoming a CTI Agent, so that aspect sort of falls through if so; I'd have to check again.
Maeda was*ALWAYS* a creep in that regard. Half of his plot in PE1 was about him being obsessed with Aya. Where do you get Pedo from though? Aya is what you call an "Adult"; the game even says that physically, she's a woman in her early 20s. Either way, Maeda had some sort of obsession with Aya in PE1; 3rd Birthday gave us voice acting, so it just comes off that much stronger.
Owen being killed? Explained easily: The nature of Overdive. It changes the past, the game makes this clear, and it can change the past in ways that are not directly related to events. That's kind of the whole point of the game's journal entries. You change one event, then a whole bunch of others change too, both before and after, though the game makes it clear the only events that CAN change are ones after the Twisted Emerged too, hence why everything starts off at that date regardless. Its all about Time Travel plot, and heck, the game is a Time Loop story somewhat, just something changes slightly each time (hence why all of Aya's Missions are Overdived from the first day.) This really isn't a hard concept.
Basically...no, there are explanations there, just people tend to ignore them. The SWAT thing was the only thing not said, and that's probably cause its factors unrelated to the game, dealing with the fact that 10 years occurred between PE2 and 3rd Birthday. This basically says that the series could use a bridge game to describe this factor, but that's really the only thing not explained well.
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The SWAT thing is the only thing not really explained.
How about Maeda correctly guessing the name of the race of the badguys?
Maeda was*ALWAYS* a creep in that regard. Half of his plot in PE1 was about him being obsessed with Aya.
Yeah but at least the dialogue was not quite that rapey if thats a word. Now he says crap like "I bet your tears taste so sweet" all the while Aya smiles makes me think Maeda has transformed into Dr Klamp.
Yes I've heard the whole he was shy and couldn't speak properly thing before but I don't buy it personally. Not to say I dislike Maeda and his rapist voice at all of course, always gives me a chuckle.
Where do you get Pedo from though?
Just that scene where he talks above Eve and says something like "Your DNA in a nubile young body" with the little laugh at the end.
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Rozalia, I think you ask the wrong question.
What I found to be the most ridiculous among the plot is how the hell the SPOILER made through the gate when you.. well, just killed him?
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Fable 3 - Finished. So yeah they killed the only good thing in the game. So fuck you game.
Lets keep a running tally of the pimps that were killed.
First up Major Swift
(http://images.wikia.com/fable/images/e/e2/MajSwift.jpg)
A pimp that was rad and they killed insanely cheaply after 2 or 3 scenes. Largely the reason you have any military backing in your revolution.
At the end of the game, they kill the real protaganist of the story.
(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100720064306/fable/images/thumb/8/8a/Capture.png/149px-Capture.png)
Walter. He is the one that finds and persuades the various leaders to join the revolution. He is the one that overcomes a crippling prior fear to help you rescue a ton of civilians. Overcoming this fear of enclosed spaces is a recurring thing with him. When you go to Aurora and find out that !Nyarlathotep is going to eat the world he is the one that gets infected and with the darkness and knows exactly what is at stake (the main character gets pulled away to their pocket dimension to be spoon fed this knowledge by a blind seer). Then you get to the end of the game and he gets posessed and heroically sacrificed for fuck all reason (!Nyarlathotep just goes NO ONE EVER ESCAPES, possesses him and then you straight up kill him). Game over. Staches killed.
Then I get told how I am awesome because I made all the hard decisions and saved the country. PRO TIP: The hard decisions were don't be a tyrranical douchebag to get money because I owned all the kingdom and fuelled the treasury with property taxes. Hard decisions dudes. Another key decision was deciding not to ban alcohol everywhere, this lead to 95% of the population being perpetually drunk and vomiting in the streets (what the fuck, if I knew it would lead to that I would have left it being taxed to hell and back. This country has bigger problems than Otherworldly terrors if this many people are this alcoholic and that unable to hold it).
All the while I got some pimping wings for being such a benevolent ruler with choices like, do I accept a bribe from a known criminal or do I leave him locked in a cage to starve to death without taking his money to aid the kingdom? Starving people to death, like a good person does.
Other fine options, rebuild an orphanage or turn it into the first legalised brothel? Because it is entirely impossible to you know, MOVE THE ORPHANAGE OUT OF THE FUCKING INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT and maybe even legalise prostitution so that you can control and regulate it.
There is a bunch more, but I am to pissed off at the game for killing Walter for fucking nothing.
Oh wait here is one. I love the voice acting. That is cheating though because they have Simon Pegg, John Cleese and best of all Stephen Fry (who is great to listen to be a petulant douche). On the massive huge gigantic downside? Listening to John Cleese shill for DLC every 15 minutes. Anyone who thought it was bad in Dragon Age hasn't seen shit. Fully voice acted by one of the most talented comedic voice talents shilling a store full of probably 30 or so pieces of DLC tons of which you will just go whatevers at if you don't care about playing dress up any more in a game that honestly has a pretty good array of costumes for free. Oh hey there is some DLC you don't have, you should go check it out bro. Thanks John, I can live without it. Like I could live without it the last 70 times you mentioned it.
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If I were to describe Fable 3 in a word, it would be "dumb."
The game is, at it's core, simple-minded. There is nothing but a perfect idea championed by perfect people or reprehensible, self-serving acts proposed by heartless monsters. At no point will you ever be slightly mislead and every character will fall all over you to help you, because it's not like they have any other goals of their own to stop them.
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Holy living fuck.
I just started downloading the Duke Nukem Forever beta.
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Super Laggy-o RPG version 1.011
More changes:
- Croco 2 is now competent. 1 reset. (Steals items moment he is damaged. Triple acts the lower his HP gets. Has Weird Mushroom to own people who run out of offense.)
- PUNCHInello is now pretty nasty. You want Thunderbolt around in first phase and boosted attacks in the last to get rid of him quick. Triple Punch with Vigor Up + Mezzo's bombs = ow no
- Stench now has a randomized chance to ID
- Lakitus now have CORONA because Laggy
- Booster...well let's just say Laggy buffed Loco Express. (That is to say Loco Express deals 48 damage to Bowser after Fear and Boost. It is basically OHKO anyone. The only good news is, this seems to be a limit move. And Booster himself isn't too durable)
- KNIFE AND GRATE GUY...uh...scarily competent that I decided not to use Boost to win but consumables since it's faster and lets Geno get buffed. Still a pretty tough fight. Bowser is king though. (Knife guy double acts, has some spells now, but still crappy damage. Grate guy remains relatively the same. The big thing though is that if one dies before the other, they will use Knock out, a MT move that deals 9999 damage on their second turn alone)
- CAKE; okay, this version of this fight has the Chefs opening with physicals that deal 100 damage each. That is not a typo. The actual fight with BUNDT was pretty simple. But that opening caused around 8-10 resets before I *finally* got a winning run. Due to the scarceness of Pick me Ups, not having people die early is pretty important. Laggy is supposedly going to change this however.
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Rozalia, I think you ask the wrong question.
What I found to be the most ridiculous among the plot is how the hell the SPOILER made through the gate when you.. well, just killed him?
Maybe. If you're talking about the final boss then I just ran with it being one of those fights were the bad dude says that it didn't count and he is going to do what you were trying to prevent regardless.
Streets of rage 2 - Got this for free on PSN+ and I played a ton of people online and I am disappointed. 95% of people are Blaze users and can't handle the power of the PIPE or a Bare Knuckle (Get the Car!) to the face.
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Holy living fuck.
I just started downloading the Duke Nukem Forever beta.
Friggin' game entered development before I could drive and my computer still won't run it.
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Rimshots to the left, please.
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Yu-Gi-Oh!, doing it competitively now. Deck I'm running is as follows:
EFFECT MONSTERS
Gambler of Legend x 3
Abare Ushioni x 3
Time Wizard x 1
Arcana Force I - The Magician x 1
Dice Jar x 3
Snipe Hunter x 3
Roulette Barrel x 1
Sasuke Samurai #4 x 2
Morphing Jar x 1
SPELLS
Cup of Ace x 3
Second Coin Toss x 3
Dangermous Machine Type-6 x 2
Swords of Revealing Light x 1
TRAPS
Dice Re-Roll x 1
Tour of Doom x 1
Fire Darts x 3
Fairy Box x 2
Lucky Chance x 2
Paths of Destiny x 3
Bad Reaction To Simochi x 1
The result? Coin tosses, coin tosses everywhere. Do I win? Well, when the enemy often puts out enough offence to almost OTK me... no, not quite. Is it FUN? Hell yes it is.
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WA5: Got my sixth party member. I have the monowheel and explosive bullets, so I guess I can go around opening locked chests from old dungeons. But that doesn't sound like much fun, and I'm anxious to hurry up and fight some non-scrub bosses, so maybe I'll skip it? I actually like doing the puzzle boxes well enough, but I don't feel like exploring for them, so I might FAQ their locations.
P4: Can the exotic "urban" transfer student make a life for himself here in rural Inaba? Only time will tell in this wacky teen murder comedy!
(http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/9128/persona4sshot1.jpg)
So I finished the first dungeon and got Chie her persona. I thought peachifruit was exaggerating when she made the joke about how "Yosuke will now die for you" but nope, it turns out that's how friendships actually work in-game. Once I finally had freedom to do what I wanted with my after-school time, I had no clue what to do with it, so I just went to the library and studied. There's no reason to let your grades suffer just because someone you know is about to die, I guess.
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Holy living fuck.
I just started downloading the Duke Nukem Forever beta.
Friggin' game entered development before I could drive and my computer still won't run it.
I'm pretty sure that guy who predicted the end of the world just had his dates wrong since DNF comes out on 6/10.
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Shining Force 3 Part 2 - Suddenly, another penguin! Also more harpies. Fuck harpies.
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Desktop Dungeeons v0.21
Unlocked the new dungeon and class, taking the fastest unlock path.
So...when you make a fresh install, all enemies are set to 70% stats.
I...pretty much did not die en route to unlocking the Boss Hive. And sure, by the end you've got like...Assassin in Crypt with 100% statted enemies, but even this wasn't too bad; Assassin's non-poison skills have risen in my eyes given what I now know about the level-up steamroll.
I have to say I'm quite enjoying the boss hive; I might try to beat it with all classes. Changling is also very fun to play; adds a whole new dimension.
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Pokemon VGC: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3448885 <-- Warstory is posted here.
For those who aren't willing to read, I lost Rd1 to someone who did relatively well, because I was playing too defensively on the whole (and also should have picked Vanilluxe, haha.)
Might enter another tournament that offers tickets to Worlds, but I doubt I'll have the money, so looks like my VGC 2011 is over now.
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Aw, sorry Yoshi. :(
But for the record, I did warn you that playing defensively does not work in VGC.
Star Ocean 4: Beat the solo Colosseum with Arumat and got up to Ashlay in Teams, but he's a bit tough right now. Working my way through Cave of 7 stars, currently on the 5th floor. Being able to leave and save between floors is wonderful for a Star Ocean postgame dungeon.
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Well, it wasn't so much defensive play as just... Protecting at completely the wrong times.
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Cave Story - picked this up at random. Fun little game. Beat it for the normal ending, currently battling my way through Sacred Cave. I appreciate the utter sadism it takes to design that first bit with the spikes. Lets you know where you stand.
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InFamous: Resumed playing this. Was introduced to Alden. Shot bitches in the face with lightning. Remains fun.
BlazBlue Calamity Trigger: Wolf Butler. Hell yeah. Also Platinum who is... something. CS2 patch is messing me up something fierce though. They took away my BnB for Hazama ;_;
MvC3: Taught Super to respect the HOUTEN- er... BIONIC ARM.
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Avatar Legends: Indie game for XBL. Basically RPG Maker + simple real-time combat and multiplayer, and starring your
Mii XBL Avatar. Pretty good for a $3 game.
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Super Laggy-o RPG: version 1.012
Laggy removed the MT ID from KNIFE GUY and GRATE GUY. They're still plenty deadly and Knife Guy triple acts if Grate Guy dies. You should definitely get rid of him first since he also has LIGHTNING ORB and terrible MDef.
Cake...well uh...Chef's physical has been reduced, main part of Bundt hasn't changed all that much. And then...RASPBERRY. Second attack it hits me with: Corona. Bowser solo time. Until Cake kept using Lulla-bye --> Spells from triple acting and killed Bowser :(. Laggy will readjust again.
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Fallout NV Honest Hearts - Still a laggy mess even with all the latest patchs but thankfully my save file seems to have stopped increasing in size as it stopped at 10Mb.
The Burned Man seems to be a pretty cool guy though its doubtful you'll be able to take him back to NV though which is a shame as I'd love some Legate vs Legate action. My money would be on the burned man as his pistol "The light in the darkness" packs quite a punch and Lanius is a close combat fighter.
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Last Remnant: Managed to beat Holy Servant at BR 90, but the Fallen was still slightly too difficult at one point. I could have won after 10 or 15 tries, but I stayed to grind on Ancbolders until BR 105. A few hours later, I went back to town and everyone except Rush upgraded to uber weapons of awesome. The Fallen went down easily, then the Fiery Gates, the Jahna Royals, the Eldritch Dragon, the Conqueror, the Cyclops Standard Model, the Idols, the White Conqueror, the Enlightened Seven, the Lost and the Absolute Conqueror. Phew. None of these took more than one try and the Lost went down in 2 turns.
Yep. I only have the absolutely ridiculous dismantler achievement left to get.
LA Noire: Disc 3.
The quality of the game is improving as the novely wears off. Nice.
New Super Mario Bros Wii: The game looks nice and innocent, but everything is made to make players hate each other. I finished the game with a friend, trying to be as much of an asshole as possible. Pick up Luigi and throw him in lava, pick up a barrel and throw it at Luigi, get all the power ups all the time just so Luigi can't get them, block Luigi when he's trying to jump, stomp Luigi, eat Luigi with Yoshi then throw him in a pit, run as fast as possible so Luigi gets stuck in a wall, etc. The best part is that "doubles" minigame where you can steal someone's turn. This serves no purpose whatsoever, it's just gratuitous. This game is so much more than NSMBDS, and probably the best game on the Wii (speaking from a Mario vet though)
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Fallout NV Honest Hearts - Still a laggy mess even with all the latest patchs but thankfully my save file seems to have stopped increasing in size as it stopped at 10Mb.
The Burned Man seems to be a pretty cool guy though its doubtful you'll be able to take him back to NV though which is a shame as I'd love some Legate vs Legate action. My money would be on the burned man as his pistol "The light in the darkness" packs quite a punch and Lanius is a close combat fighter.
The Burned Man's base DT is 50. I don't think there is anything in the entire game that could kill him except for the Courier.
Let's not even get in to the possibility of reverse-pickpocketing power armor and morphine on to him. Would push it up into the low 90s.
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Yep. I only have the absolutely ridiculous dismantler achievement left to get.
*high-fives*. Nice job raping the game.
EDIT: Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Turbo Hyper Third Strike New Age of Heroes: Fooling around with the changes. Hakan has fast jabs now; I just have to remember to use them since I'm trained to ignore them. Also holy shit at the frame advantage on Dan's normals now. If he gets you in the corner and you don't have an invincible wakeup move, you're fucked (i.e. Hakan).
Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure: I have five ponycorns in jars. I friggin love ponycorns.
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Super Street Fighter 4: WE Promise This Is the Last One, HONEST!: Yeah, downloaded this too, played through as Evil Ryu and Oni.
Evil Ryu is...exactly what I expected, which I'm not sure if good or bad, but regardless, if you played with him in the CvS games or in SFA3, then you pretty much know what you're getting. I just wish he didn't have Shungokusatsu as a Super cause it feels like saying "Just use EX Moves" cause the move has such limited applications. Its also a pain to pull off, and would have prefered something less...Akuma...
Oni is...umm...er....I was hoping he was just teasing the notion of another Shoto without actually being one (kind of like how Gouken did)...I was wrong. He's just another Shoto. Hadoken, Shoryuken, Hurricane Kick, and then a few unique things to make him not a clone, but nonetheless, he felt like playing the same damn character again.
Its more insulting here than Evil Ryu because Oni is suppose to be kind of a new character. Evil Ryu, you knew what you were getting, and feels like they were trying to get in Metsu Goshoryu (which was fun to get to use again!) in some manner, but regardless, Evil Ryu was an already established character, so the question there is more just "why him?" if anything.
Oni is someone who pretends to be new (I mean, he's totally NOT Akuma <_< >_>), so was a chance to come up with some cool stuff. Instead, its just like a 7th take on a Shoto, and kind of annoying as a result.
Haven't had a chance to use the 3rd Strike Twins, will get to them...eventually.
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inFamous 2: A strange beginning as you get used to Cole and Zeke's new voices and scratch your head wondering why they bothered. Opening sequence was... dunno. Needed to let you use your full arsenal from the first game and not be a tutorial. Oh well. Now that I'm into the game itself it's pretty good. You've got pretty much everything at the start except for the storm and rockets (that'd be broken as hell). Game should take off soon, feels like.
Used a coupon to get a free $20 PSN card. Grabbed a smattering of DLC including Platinum for BB:CS, Knives for Scott Pilgrim, some LBP stuff and a SHEEP MAN avatar. Sexy.
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Dissidia: Finished the 12th cycle, on to the original plot. After the length of the first set of chapters, Cloud's is rather stunningly short.
Professor Layton and the Curious Village: Played and beaten, 120 puzzles solved. Great game. Lots of style, very engaging and the puzzles are rarely unfair (although there are a couple of hints/directions that are annoyingly wrong). Will definitely play Diabolical Box soon, and Layton vs. Phoenix Wright MUST be translated. Please?
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999: Got the ending symbolized by a certain fireman's tool. Junpei you foolish fool of a fool. Still, good stuff, as plenty of speculation still live over who did what... though I'm pretty sure my general suspicion is correct even if the details of who did certain bad deeds might be off. Spoilerish thoughts: Ace >>>> Seven > Lotus >> Dead captain dude > Dead Number 9 dude > Somebody else > Clover-Santa-Junpei-Akane on the suspect list. First off, dramatically, the nice older gentleman is the 'shocking' culprit, so these days he's kind of obvious as the dramatically interesting one. Secondly, the game is actually making a pretense at realism from the speculation the characters make about who could have arranged this and why, and large amounts of the cast are plainly too young to have arranged such a venture, unless their billionaire parents were in on it too. Only Ace / Lotus / Seven seem to be adults. Also, everybody ignored Zero's statement that "some of you are already familiar with the Nonary Game", so um yeah. Anyway, Snake went through door 3, and Clover assumed Seven + Santa (2+7+3). But Santa is a violently unlikely culprit- the loudmouth show off is always all bark, no bite - so um yeah. Clover was also crazy so if anything her bloody rampage disproves them as the real culprits. Clover / Akane is stupid... but... Ace / Number 9's collected bracelet works (2+1+9), or Ace and his own Zero bracelet also gets through 3 (2+1+0, ignoring that Zero can probably cheat wildly). Plus Ace has always been the one to play the good guy, "sacrifice" himself, and say "I trust all of you" etc. He also took Lotus aside shortly before Junpei got slashed... 1+8+0 = 9, or for that matter 1+8+9=9, so yeah.
Silly quote of the game: "Do you know Japanese? No? Well, san means three!" Uh, dude. My name is Junpei, this over here is Akane Kurisomething, and several of us have crazy hair colors. I'm pretty sure we're speaking in Japanese right now.
Anyway, good game. Recommended for all that the puzzles could be better designed - your characters speak up too much, so just picking everything up and following orders works most of the time. But plot is still interesting. I do like how the characters don't just blindly accept the crazy situation they're in and wonder about crazed multimillionaires with nothing better to do than set deadly puzzles up - I am entirely willing to accept bizarre situations if the characters wrestle with what this means and try to MacGuyver cheat some, even if it ultimately fails. See game below for a prime example of how not to do this right.
Metroid Prime: Finished. ~5:30 roughly, 51% item collection, for all that items other than Energy Tanks were irrelevant (had one bar of the "top" meter- so 11 tanks I think?). Kind of ambivalent. It was definitely a good game! But it definitely does feel like this is a Metroid designed for people who like Metroid-style combat, and I have to say that I'm not really one of them. The boss fights toward the end of the game ended up frustrating, but I respect that they were balanced aggressively - it's the choice between Super Metroid style "you have the durability to puzzle out how a boss works and defeat their gimmick in your first playthrough" vs. "Yeah, your first few attempts are going to be learning how this boss works then dying followed by a real run." The second approach to game design does give more challenge on replay, I'll grant. Still, screw you, Nightmare. Only managed to beat him once he got into a constant loop pattern in his "ram Samus to death" phase for some reason, but that was after ~13 deaths. A case where "challenging" is not always equal to "fun."
Fusion is also bizarrely linear. Known fact and all, but I guess they want you to uncover all the items before you get the cheaty equipment? Seriously, WTF with constantly locking all the doors. SA-X is a non-trivial boss fight, and since all the sectors that aren't Sector 1 are locked, if you didn't pick up enough energy tanks I guess you're just screwed. More generally the game locks the path behind you really often, which is just bizarre. That's the equivalent of not letting RPG characters level up. It's fine if there's a really good plot reason, or it's a temporary condition that really means "there is a tough puzzle ahead and yes, you must solve it to advance and it is doable now, hence why we are locking you in."
Music was generally terrible - weird, I don't recall Zero Mission having that problem. Fusion didn't have any sequence as cool as Metal Gear Samus from Zero Mission either, so Fusion felt kind of a step back from Zero Mission. Huh.
Also, what happened with the script to Metroid Fusion? I like the *idea* of Metroid Fusion, but this is a game that would seriously have been better if they'd gotten rid of *every single line* of text after the intro. Really. Nuke it all. It's not like plot's the thing anyway; why graft a terrible and nonsensical script on that spends all its time fussing over stupid gameplay details? It'd be like if 70% of the dialogue in Lufia II / Wild Arms dealt with the puzzles in dungeons, and attempted to upgrade it into plot. It's something blatantly nonsensical, so why draw attention to it if you're not going to make it make any more sense? "Selan: Sorry, Maxim, the King of Paracytle ordered me to betray you! You were doing too well in solving the Sinistral's puzzles that they were afraid of your power. They sent me the new tool you need to solve this upcoming puzzle anyway, but I can't tell you where it is. I've hidden it up ahead and you can't ask me anything more as we explore. Once you find it, you can use it to trigger the blue switch and open the way forward to Amon's trap." Buh?!
On the bright side, as noted, I like the *idea.* The infected suit thing is just plain cool, and a bona-fida excuse to mix up Samus's power set more than usual, for all that they didn't really take the opportunity. (One of my friends really really hated the idea of ice missiles. I can't agree at all, and wish they'd done *more* mixing up the default weapons from Super Metroid, really.) That's another annoying thing about the data room plot - aside from being dumb, see above (Samus has an ancient hyped up Chozo spacesuit, as noted in Zero Mission / Super - since when can the Federation help at all with it?!), it'd just be plain cooler if Samus was constantly slurping up X and stealing their mimicking powers for herself to get new abilities. Oh, well.
BlazBlue: This is the first fighting game I have bought, ever. Always played other people's copies of Smash / other stuff, and the only fighter I put really serious time into was Smash, because I can't be bothered to memorize the exact timing of down down semicircle quick reverse B A to unleash super move X. The awesome music was what sold me, really - odd that people nommed some of what I feel to be lesser pieces in the Music Tourney (though still decent!), but yeah, some of the stuff is really good (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnzYHqGwHV0).
Anyway, I bought Continuum Shift, but the GameStop clerk gave me Calamity Trigger. Uh, free rental, sure! Plot was actually fun. Sure, ridiculous, it's a fighting game, but they did a good job of making characters with lots of reasons to fight each other and ham it up. Since this is an RPG site, they were able to sell power differences a lot better in a fighting game, I felt, too. Overpower a character in an RPG and they just OHKO everyone which is no fun; balance them as normal and they feel like "just another boss." It's especially tricky for duels, since you can't control evasion / blocking at all in an RPG duel, which tends to make them attack / attack / heal fests. (I'd propose Suiko III "you don't have to win" fights where winning results in a plot cutscene of losing is about the best compromise you can have, and even that has issues.) Always using Unlimited Nu-13 for the final boss, and occasionally spicing in Unlimited Rachel for when she's serious, was pretty good at generally selling that Nu-13 / Hakumen / Rachel >>> the rest of the cast.
Have a ton of plot questions on the more serious parts of the plot - I actually wrote them down! - but will wait for Continuum Shift plot before asking 'em. Speaking of which. Went and traded Calamity Trigger for Continuum Shift, and... what the crispy shit is this. No more throw button? Right stick no longer maps to pre-input special moves? Geez, thanks for screwing over people who don't want to have to memorize and learn a ton of, for fighting game noobs at least, rather difficult to perform sequences. I really enjoyed BB:CT's Smash-esque controls for at least some specials to help ease into a character, but this is going to severely nuke my capabilities for characters with more complex moves (i.e. not Jin. I can at least do quarter-rotations!). But more importantly nuke some fun factor, since not consistently getting a move to execute is meh. What were they thinking on getting rid of functionality they already had?! Sigh. (I hope there is some way to map the right stick to moves after all and I eat my words. But I'm not seein' it.)
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Shadow Hearts: Back to playing this, now that I'm not training Pokemon teams. Still preferring it to SH:C, honestly. Picked up the save having lost to Wugui2 last time (Yamaraja: War, to be precise) and had to beat the boss at the end of the trials again. Derp. Gave everybody Leonardo's Bears and smashed Wugui, haha. Interesting plot stuff happens, and now I... forget to save before fighting another Yamaraja entering Kuikai Tower. ._. Beat him with relative ease, thankfully. Got completely lost in this place and was tempted to FAQ at one point, before suddenly remembering that I'd ignored a platform earlier and got through it from there. Beat the Badger thing and Dehuai with absolute ease - Zhuzhen's magic is OP as fuck, and Yuri is a Yuri. Margarete's.. well, kinda there. Aqua Edge was used, I guess. She also spammed items.
Then, drop Margarete for Alice and fight a Dehuai2 (Yamaraja: Calamity (or however they shorten it)). This fight was annoying, not for being a difficult or spammy fight, but just because of Crimson Flame. No idea why, but it was causing my controller to rumble constantly until the next time something caused it to rumble, which was usually Yuri's attack. That made timing the Judgement Ring on Alice/Zhuzhen really awkward if they came in between Dehuai's and Yuri's turns, since I could barely hold the controller for 10 second without my hands going numb. :|
Anyways, with Dehuai down, more plot and cutscenes, and then a mini-dungeon in Bistritz. Heh, predictable as hell, but fun! Also, didn't know who the Valentine in SH1 was, so that was good. :P Pretty solid character from the looks of things, too! Back into a tower and I reach the top. Win the fight there and then Alice enters the Graveyard - now this is the part where I am a moron. Went into the fight against Fox Face and he used an HP->1 move. My instant thought was "Either he's nearly dead or it's one I can lose to plot!", ignoring the ACTUAL FUCKING PLOT FIVE MINUTES EARLIER. Needless to say, his next attack killed me and I Game Overed. Derrrp.
Important part, though, is that I'm enjoying playing this a hell of a lot - even more than I enjoyed SH:C (which, honestly, while it had good moments, I find to be a little overrated.) Solid gameplay, challenging bosses (sort of) and an amazing cast, all coupled with an interesting plot. ^^ (As a point, plot was probably the one part I really felt SH:C slipped up, apart from challenge obviously, haha.)
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No more throw button? Right stick no longer maps to pre-input special moves? Geez, thanks for screwing over people who don't want to have to memorize and learn a ton of, for fighting game noobs at least, rather difficult to perform sequences. I really enjoyed BB:CT's Smash-esque controls for at least some specials to help ease into a character, but this is going to severely nuke my capabilities for characters with more complex moves (i.e. not Jin. I can at least do quarter-rotations!). But more importantly nuke some fun factor, since not consistently getting a move to execute is meh. What were they thinking on getting rid of functionality they already had?! Sigh. (I hope there is some way to map the right stick to moves after all and I eat my words. But I'm not seein' it.)
While the loss of the Right Stick quick-attacks sticks, you can have easy specials/throws in beginner mode, and it's not default, but you can go into the button input menu and set a button for Throws when outside of Beginner Mode.
That said, I will never be able to do Bang's Astral without it being really really gamed. Double HCB in the air? Go away. CS is also FAR more picky about precise inputs compared to CT, so be prepared for that.
WA4 - And I've gone back to banning my nephew from my room, due to him saving over my file AGAIN. Dammit.
So, start of game. Blah blah blah, Tony1 almost kills Jude, but Arnaud manages to Evade tank him so I don't have to use any items. Not that I couldn't spare them - I restarted my file where Mariel was L100 in ACF, so I started with 50 Heal Berries and 33 Revive Fruits, among other things.
Blah blah blah, learn Force Arts, go get Raquel's WOMD named Lombardia (transfer data~), which has about 3350 ATK to start. Then I go get Raquel. Blah blah blah, I go back to the previous dungeon to grind for Mind Recovery (Yulie/Raquel combo that restores 40 MP to everyone) and Hi-Material (just 'cause). While grinding for those, I manage to run into two Grow Apples (Raquel, strangely enough, got the first turn before ANYTHING against the first, and Arnaud knew Shut Out for the second). Then I run into a Greater Beast. My character levels average about 24 and it's level 80 OSHI- it's 2HKOed by Raquel when she can actually hit the damn thing and spent most of the battle using Dispel. I have Jude Mystic a Lucky Card and use a Gella Card, so I wind up with everyone getting 100K+ EXP and 60K Gella.
Slow Down is broked, as is Shut Out.
At the end of the Great Stairway, so I get the fun of going through the White Orphanage. Again. Woo.
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Dissidia: Finished the 12th cycle, on to the original plot. After the length of the first set of chapters, Cloud's is rather stunningly short.
Well, part of this was because of how the first game handled "Overworlds". Everything was map based, and it used this DP system which rewarded you based on how many you ended with and blah blah blah. In Dissidia, they were also focused heavily on trying to give some sense of equality among the 10 Heroes (barring WoL who they gave a little extra emphasis on), and so they had to keep everyone having roughly same number of plot scenes, etc.
Also, the 2nd half of the story (which use to be called Shade Impulse) was A LOT longer than the final section of the 012 story. Its still a good deal longer, though its cut down notably, and naturally takes advantage of the new party system (use to be "Choose one of the 10 heroes, play through that section." Shade Impulse was split into 3 full sections and a 4th 2 map tease that was basically 10 low level opponents then the final boss.)
The 013 story is also worsely written than 012, cause they were focused more on the whole fanservice thing than telling a story, and several are mostly just immensely abbreviated retellings of the character's story from their home game, now with voice acting.
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The Burned Man's base DT is 50. I don't think there is anything in the entire game that could kill him except for the Courier.
Let's not even get in to the possibility of reverse-pickpocketing power armor and morphine on to him. Would push it up into the low 90s.
As far as I know its impossible to pickpocket him unless some mod on the PC allows you to. Tested it myself and he instantly turned around and started talking.
The fight wouldn't be quite as clear cut as you make it out I think as Lanius does have near three times Joshua's HP and his sword can cause knockdowns meaning with luck he could win. Of course Lanius can barely scratch Joshua so he still takes it.
Rorona: I fear I might not be able to max out everyone but I worry too much. Currently using Sterkenburg as the dudes a murdermachine.
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Broken Sword Director's Cut - Finished
I had somehow gotten the impression that Broken Sword was supposed to be an A-grade series. This seems to be yet another of the endless line of sticks the wrong end of which have picked up by me. Game was fairly good, but nowhere near the top end.
Complaint stream time:
Nico's segments don't really seem to have any relation to the main meat of the game. If I'm understanding things correctly, they were added for the DC version. Maybe they relate more to some other game in the series then, but even if that's true it doesn't make them a good addition.
George is a jerk.
So there's a character who early on seems like they are going to be a major character. Then they fall completely off the radar for the majority of the game. Then they show back up near the end for 1.5 shocking twists! except no why are you trying to shoehorn this person back in.
So I'm trying to figure out what to do at an area and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do. So I fall back on the in-game help and it's all like hey, there's nothing you can do here yet, why are you not off doing this vastly more urgent thing. Said thing had been alluded to previously but nothing had ever implied that it was urgent. So I meander on over to the area relevant to that and there doesn't look like there's anything I can do there? So I randomly try interacting with an item I have tried interacting with previously, which is clearly a futile endeavour as the last time I interacted with it one of the people in the area was unhappy with my attempts at such and they were still around. So it turns out that this was what I was supposed to do as they did not even care this time around despite there being no reason for this to be the case.
So as a result of my interaction with said item, George waits until nightfall. Clearly this was the most urgent of urgent things. On top of that, once things start happening George turns out to be completely ineffectual and the day is saved by almost completely unrelated means. Great.
The endgame is pretty woefully basic and pointless. The final click especially. What, there is one single item on the screen I can interact with whatever will I doooooooo and it is not some sort of climactic item that the player will get satisfaction from initiating personally or anything. Also romance out of nowhere.
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Shadow Hearts: Spent yesterday getting Yuri back. Literally did nothing else. :)
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The Burned Man's base DT is 50. I don't think there is anything in the entire game that could kill him except for the Courier.
Let's not even get in to the possibility of reverse-pickpocketing power armor and morphine on to him. Would push it up into the low 90s.
As far as I know its impossible to pickpocket him unless some mod on the PC allows you to. Tested it myself and he instantly turned around and started talking.
The fight wouldn't be quite as clear cut as you make it out I think as Lanius does have near three times Joshua's HP and his sword can cause knockdowns meaning with luck he could win. Of course Lanius can barely scratch Joshua so he still takes it.
I think his sword has to overcome your DT to knock you down, cause I've never seen it happen to me.
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Twiklitiri: Pretty much. I chatted with a friend about the extreme WTF nature of the SHOCKING PLOT TWIST about a character who's uh showed up like twice, and apparently in a bizarro move that character had their screentime cut from the original PC version? I'm not sure whether it was a straight screwup, or there wasn't room, or there was some kind of "artistic" Lucas-esque revision. But yeah, they traded Nico plot for getting rid of scenes developing said character - apparently you're supposed to have a long conversation with him at the chapel where he tries to warn you off the case - so the plot twist ends up utterly botched. Since they took out the characterization and development. Nice one, guys.
That one incident you're referring to was pretty random, yes. No way at all to guess that mind control rays had touched said guard in the interim.
As a side comment, the only way George's plot makes a smidgen of sense is if he is a bored dilettante with nothing better to do than travel Europe and the Middle East solving puzzles in his spare time. Which is fine. Except there's a puzzle in Damascus where you're scraping for money. Wut. Didn't we just fly out here on no notice, and don't we have plans to fly back to Paris? ...sigh.
Agree that the game's finale was incredibly disappointing. Both a plot and a puzzle failure... they could have come up with way better puzzles. As for the plot, either there is mystic nonsense that exists in the world, or there isn't. There is nothing in the game that you see that is actually supernatural before the finale. So... if this is just crazy old rich people, then whatevs, no need to track them down, let them have their big ritual archaeology party in a mine. Why are we murdering them? OTOH, if this sword is for realz and will give mega-charisma and world domination to he who holds it... I dunno, you need to SELL this idea somehow. It didn't seem to work in the past! George & Nico don't talk about this with the urgency required I feel.
On the bright side I liked how everybody has their own personal response as George shows off his smeared tissue paper to everyone, or anything else in your inventory.
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Working on a Godhand "kick me" playthrough on normal. With the moves you unlock on a clear game it's been pretty easy. Easier than beating the game on hard by a longshot.
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Started and finished P3FES: The Answer. Verdict: Kinda disappointing, but the bosses were fun. Also, Metis is terrible and I dislike being forced to use her.
Aigis was better off without her.
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Pokemon Black (yeah, just calling it by its actual name for once): Just beat Gym 4 and did some trainer fights outside of town. I should make more progress on this game or something.
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Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando - Beat. Good game, better than the original in almost every way.
Suikoden Tactics: Started this up.
-blah blah creatures as weapons blah blah blah I need a drink
-Hey look, it's Chibi-Snowe!
-And Lazlo... the f***?! He talked?!
-Snowe, you f***tard, listen to the nice man.
-Get first party, and oh look, it's the guys on the cover... and Walter. He's a dead man walking, isn't he.
-Clear the fight, new chapter. That was fast.
-Hey, it's Sigurd and Hervey. Hi, guys!
-I nearly get wiped out in my first real fight, but just barely win with two people left.
-Why is Jerry Lawler shooting at me?
-Hello, Marlon Brandeau, the Falcon Rune, and someone I don't recognize. I'm sure glad nothing bad's going to happen to any of you.
And that's all for now.
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I think his sword has to overcome your DT to knock you down, cause I've never seen it happen to me.
Never read anything about that myself and I can't find any info on the matter. I'd test it myself but I'm sure some PC player will pit them against themselves on youtube soon anyway and we'll see then.
Infamous 2 - Anyone who says Infamous 1 is better then 2 is mad pure and simple. Most fun I've had in a sandbox game and the mission maker is great. Yes it has its limits but with the era we're in I'm sure they'll add in much more in the future to expand it.
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Now Playing: Fantasy WWII on the Not!European Front: Featuring the LGBT Army!
So yeah, I started up Valkyria Chronicles finally. Really good game all-around. Scouts are overpowered for completing most mission objectives, but I'm okay with this. It's nice to have an SRPG that -doesn't- require you to defeat all enemies on every map as the standard every now and then.
Up to chapter 10 and amused how my army keeps getting canon homosexual recruits to join up. No Don't Ask Don't Tell policy in Not!Europe it seems.
I actually like Welkin. He's got some anime trope-ness going on, but overall, he actually feels like a real person, if a bit too nice at times. He and Alicia actually make a cute couple and have some semblance of chemistry, which is more than I can say for most games. The voice-acting definitely helps. The game has really nice presentation in general. The political story gets highlights in the main plot and lots of details in the newspaper articles. The character development seems to have taken a page from Suikoden and added investigative profiles for each of the generics, and the main cast gets little optional side-stories that take the form of "Interviews" with the war correspondent. All skippable if it feels too -ANIME- for you, but nice for people who care about the units they're using. My only gripe on the character front is that there's too many major ally characters who aren't playable. I'd like Captain Varrot or Lt. Faldio to actually get in on the action. It would have been cool at least on the rescue mission inside the big city where both of them were around and it was an emergency situation. No, instead we have Welkin running off to fetch his squad first. Bah!
I'm calling this now: Isara is Dead Bro Walking. (Dead Darcsen Walking?)
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Beat it on normal, so Godhand "Kick Me" on Hard - up to stage 4. Nothing in those 4 stages has been even close to as hard as the carnival bros, and frankly I don't think anything will be, outside demon Elvis, great Sensei, and that one stage near the end where you get ganged up on by 8 dudes, one of whom is Tiger Joe possessed by a lvl 4 demon. ...oh god that's gonna be hard...
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Music was generally terrible - weird, I don't recall Zero Mission having that problem. Fusion didn't have any sequence as cool as Metal Gear Samus from Zero Mission either, so Fusion felt kind of a step back from Zero Mission. Huh.
Fusion is several years older than Zero Mission, so it can't really be a step back. GBA sound is usually pretty bad and it was especially so early in the system's life, so yeah.
Also I literally never even noticed doors locked behind you in Fusion, which is probably a testament to a different style of playing the games!
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Pokemon Shading: The Dark one: 7 Gyms down!
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SRWL: Picked this up again now that I can play it on an actual DS. Finished stage 22, recruited Ken and finally unlocked the full 10 upgrade slots. Game is pretty darn stylish now that it moves at a full framerate. Pretty darn easy too, even without really bothering with the partner bonuses.
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Infamous 2 - Got the good ending as evil paths in Infamous just involve a lot of blind murder which I dislike. The final battle while easy was just how I like them as the whole city including your enemies start bombarding The Beast to slow him down enough so you could activate the RFI. The Rebels having a navy was a little odd but it added to the scene as they attacked The Beast from land and sea.
SPOILERS
A shame they kill off Bertrand though. The man had major flaws and as he himself said the lures of Satan had consumed but I feel after he became a superhuman that could transform into a giant pile of shit he truely thought he was doing things for the good of mankind, transforming some people into monsters was to him merely a way to control the people so he could better protect them. Also him dying means we miss out on Bertrand going toe to toe with The Beast to protect Humanity.
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Finished LoH:TitS abotu a week ago, started off a tad slow but managed to pick up at the end, am now cursing the fact that I must stare at Xseed like a kitten in hopes that the other two games in the trilogy get localized.
Working on TOPSP, on chapter 3 Chaos path. Apparently in my attempts to not be a jackass who kills innocent people I have brought myself to kill a pregnant woman and an old lady, I feel like a jerk. Employing a deathsquad of three Archers and Canopus who all tend to just kind of murder shit. Backup is MC as a Two hand sword wielding warrior, he just kind of walks wherever and does what he pleases, occasionally getting a chance to hit something when they're dumb enough to walk in range and not be dead from arrow spam, a berserker whose job is basically to just spam mend leaves on himself, two enchantresses for physically durable monster control and a cleric. Did use to have 4 archers but decided I should try other classes, so switched on to ninja, who basically gets to hide in a corner because low level class and lol frail. This games balance is something.
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SRWL: GAAAAIIIIIKING ZAAAA GUUUREEEAAAATO
For all the recycled content in L, I do like how the game breezes through the story elements we've seen before. You get Kotetsushin Jeeg as soon as Old Jeeg joins, Gaiking and Godannar wrap up in the 20s...they don't beat around the bush with this stuff.
Well, except Destiny.
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Magic 2012: Came out today on 360, played for like seven hours straight and beat the campaign and got all the achievements. Yay for fun!
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To: SRWL
Re: Stage 26
I'm sorry I said you were easy. Please never do that again.
Sincerely,
Me
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Koichi is a goddamned idiot like that.
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Pokemon Black: Finished the main game!
And now for some thoughts!
I guess I'll work away the things I don't like first:
-Using nothing but Gen 5 Pokemon. While I understand they wanted you to use different ones, Gen 3 and Gen 4 did a good job of doing this by having a large number of the newcomers around (especially early on), but still had a few of the older ones in the mix. Taking away all of the Old Pokemon means that some expected typings like Rock/Ground don't exist, and its kind of annoying. It was nice always knowing that Geodude, Abra, etc. were available in case you were afraid of being overwhelmed by new Pokemon, and wanted a few steady strong characters. Furthermore, it promoted them making too many new Pokemon (this is the biggest Generation to date, and there's really little reason why it had to be), many of whom feel like they exist just cause "well, we need something to cover this niche!" Its clear they started running out of ideas when they started making Ice Cream and Candle Pokemon, as its obviously "Umm...we need an idea" "Hmm...Vanilla Ice Cream is good...hey, lets use that!" "Ice Cream Pokemon? Ok."
-Pokemon names. The past games all had far better and more amusing names. They were generally a lot more memorable, and filled with cute puns that helped make them so. Here, the names feel so...generic, and lacking any sort of word play half the time. Sometimes, they feel like direct translations. I understand it was a new localization team, but I went out of the previous games having no problems remembering names and associating designs. Here, I can't say the same thing...and no, I don't study Pokemon extensively and this generation is an exception; that usually happens AFTER I finish the game.
(Mind you, there were some bad names of Pokemon in the past games. For example...I still hate the name "Garchomp" <_<)
-Innate Skillsets. I mostly bring this up cause too many Pokemon have Taunt, Protect, Embargo, etc. Basically, useless shit you should never see outside of serious competitive play with very niche uses. Why do I complain about that? Well, using those 3 examples, Taunt and Embargo are 95% of the time wasted turns that basically say "Why don't you just give me the win?" and make some potentially remotely challenging fights bigger jokes than they should be. Protect is of course just a huge nuisance in the sense of "HA NOW YOU DI-*Protect* OH fuck you". Now, I will acknowledge that one boss had Toxic, I believe, and Protect actually works there cause it works with another move! but when you're beating up Shelmets in the wild, its just a time waster, and wastes PP, in a game where wasting PP outside of the E4 basically translates to MORE time wasting as its just "Walk back to the Pokemon Center."
-Encounter Rate. Pokemon Encounter Rates have always been a bit annoying, since you could get into an encounter by merely turning...but Gen 5 really made it stand out, cause i felt the encounter rate was higher. so many times I would win a fight, then I'd so much as turn (sometimes the wrong way) and an encounter immediately...yes, that's right, an encounter WITHOUT TAKING A STEP. This wasn't once or twice, but more like once or twice per dungeon. That paired with Wild Pokemon often being unevolved with assy EXP and the combined nuisance stalling skillset shit mentioned above, it makes Repel spam even more annoying.
-Dowsing Machine. Ok, more accurately, just the whole "You need to turn this off to access the menu." Seriously, they had a nice convenient Dowsing Machine (though HGSS's was pretty good too admittedly) and ruin it with that bullshit. There's no excuse for that other than being randomly inconvenient.
-The Starters. I've ranted about this before; no excuse for the uninspired (gameplay-wise) shit they pulled there.
So...what good things are there about the game?
-TMs are handled much better. I felt they limited who could learn what but maybe that was what I tended to use. Regardless, being able to use TMs over and over again at first sounded broken, but it works well enough especially since it means enemies can be fought on more even ground late game when they're hurling a their TMed to hell Pokemon at you. It also gets me out of that mindset of "Do I really want to use this now or wait?" The one thing I don't like that it does is kind of defeats the purpose of naturally learned moves, outside of "They learn this early."
-Finally recognizing people are not a fan of HM Whoring. Lowering it down to only the original 5, while keeping Flash a TM (ala Gen 4) and no real Out of Battle Purpose (yay learning Dark Dungeons are NOT FUN, and abolishing them and similar shit entirely), and making HM usage generally optional for special goodies is much better than the old "YOU MUST USE CUT TO GET THROUGH HERE WASTE A POKEMON SLOT!"
-Handling of EXP. Giving bonus EXP for killing a Pokemon of higher level makes raising lower level Pokemon so much easier, and promotes experimenting more!
-Plot. Ok, the plot isn't great or anything, but the fact that the writers actually sat down and tried to come up with something other than "Madman tries to rule the world WITH POKEMON!" and then incorporated it throughout the game, even as far as dealing with Gym Leaders and such (as well as making them actual characters, not just spontaneous bosses) to the point of the final boss actually being relevant, not just "CHAMPION OUT OF NOWHERE WHO WANTS TO TEST YOU HA!!!" ...well, it shows there was actual thought put into it. Game actually had a sense of EPICNESS in the last parts! Epic Plot sections...in Pokemon...ITS CRAZY I TELL YOU!
-An actual theme worth noting. If you try to find a theme in Pokemon games before it, you'll draw a big blank. This game having a genuine theme that's identifiable, and holding to it, and for like the first time ever having MORAL AMBIGUITY in a Pokemon game...seriously, it deserves props if only for at least effort. Granted, your trainer is still basically the ultimate Mary Sue of the world, but whatever.
-Reshiram's Existence FIRE/DRAGON TYPE FUCK YES I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR TOO GOD DAMN LONG! He's actually the reason I bought Black Version; despite how I was picking the Pig as my starter (He's a flaming pig, how could I say no? It also makes it that much more insulting that he ends up so boring :( ), and planned on using Victini (whose the reason I bought the game when I did; not passing up an easy promotional! Since he's the reason I GOT the game, I figure I SHOULD use him)
-Victini's existence. Oh hey, a Promotional who is a unique typing, and does cool stuff, and is still cute! I decided that once my starter fully evolved, I was doing something I never did in any previous Pokemon game, and punting him, and declaring Victini my new starter! I do not regret this decision, for all that yes, I'm aware that a 600 stat Promotional with good skill and 2 useful STABs is a bit wrong, shut up, its my way of playing!
-Pacing. once I actually got to playing the game, it started moving a lot faster than other games. Each town had a Gym for the most part, less bullshit Cave Dungeons, and trainer infested routes were generally shorter (though not gimped on gameplay), it made the game just far more fluid. Also, NO SURFING ROUTES doesn't hurt.
-Battle Speed. Plays with the above, fights just animated and moved faster than Gen 4 stuff I felt; I don't think I could possibly go back to playing Diamond after this (which I intended to replay for...whatever sake.)
New Stuff that apparently can play an effect but didn't matter to me cause of when I played most of the game:
-Weather system. Apparently this can be a bullshit thing but I found myself never caring so whatever!
Yeah, I left stuff out but shut up, I can't just remember anything! Anyway, its a good game to the series and all that. Honestly, I always felt Black/White came out too fast after Heart Gold/Soul Silver, being MORE entries on the DS, to get out just before the 3DS...but the game does not feel rushed at all, and that's really what counts. Quite the reverse, it definitely shows more effort than any previous Pokemon game.
At Comic-con, someone who imported the Japanese version of the game basically said that after Black/White, it comes off as "This is going to be the very last 2D entry in the series, so they were trying to go all out in every sense of the word!" and compared it to FF6 in that regard...and yeah, I can totally see what they mean. I'm not sure if I consider it the best Pokemon game ever, but...its definitely a good one, and doesn't feel like its lacking something the way Diamond/Pearl did (HGSS brought the series back up to standards...assuming Platinum didn't do it first, and from what I understand, it may very well have!)
So...8/10? Something like that.
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Starcraft 2
So...Laggy convinced me to do my 1v1 ranking matches. For those who don't know, I'll happily 1v1 friends, but I have no particular desire to beat up random anonymous people on the internet. So...Laggy told me to 6-pool every match except roach rush Terran: I wouldn't waste too much time and I'd get ranked.
I am now an undefeated Diamond in 1v1 Ladder. Wtf.
(To put things into perspective, I don't think I've never won a 1v1 against a DLer, and plenty of DLer are ranked a division or two below me).
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Cheese is tasty~
You'd be surprised how good it is (6-pool, proxy barracks, cannon rush, etc.) and how well it works on high ranked people.
(or...not surprised, since you just, uh, did it >_>)
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Magic 2012: Pretty cool. It's been *years* since I played the game, so getting used to the new mechanics. Actually there's not that much that's new. More like they assign a specific name to every single creature ability that's ever been printed in the past. Oh but what the fuck did they do to Regenerate? It's so stupid now. Might as well call it Pre-generate.
SO4: Replaying on Earth difficulty to work on achievements/battle trophies (hi, Faize). In the Cardianon mothership now.
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Valkyria Chronicles: Finished this. The battle system really impressed me with its unique take on hybridizing shooters and SRPGs. In general, the gameplay is very FE-like and that's generally a good thing for it. The story is just kinda there, though it has enough 'Hey, that's cool' moments to keep my attention. The gorgeous cel-shading certainly helps the spectacle.
The characters are what I enjoyed the most, despite them all falling neatly into their tropes. I feel like most of them still acted like -people- and not even the 'generic' PCs felt like faceless fodder. Welkin in general did some nice things with his "oddball" personality, and I liked how he and Alicia actually got together in an organic way. Not a timeless romance-of-the-ages, but a simple and non-forced admission that they are the kind of people that would fall in love like that. In contrast, I recently watched a bit of the anime and I'm so happy that game-Alicia is not that screeching distrustful harpy-tsundere from the anime. Holy crap you people missed the point of her character.
Largo is freakin' awesome. Let's get violent for vegetables.
I played the Edy Detachment DLC and it managed to pack more tropes in one mission than the entire rest of the game had in 40 hours. Impressive.
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L.A. Noire: Finished. Liked a lot of what they did, and bought the Rockstar Pass. The main issue that stays during the whole game is how it alternates between serious investigation/ great character work and Rockstar humour (during optional parts)/mass murder. The game is also a massive open world without anything interesting to do inside ever (as opposed to Assassin's Creed)
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: Pretty much a better Assassin's Creed 2, like New Vegas is a better Fallout 3. Great. The rewards (... I guess. I don't even know what it does) for doing special stuff during story missions (Not getting noticed by enemies for exemple) are welcome. I'm in Chapter 4 with basically already everything available right now. I even have Altair's Sword, Bartholomeo's Axe and Claudia's Knife. The guild challenges make the player try each of Enzio's ten gazillion weapons, which is nice since they're all overpowered. Enzio is an unkillable uber monster of doom. He has also already bought all of Rome.
The beginning section with Desmond and Lucy was cringe worthy. It got better once I could H4X0R everybody's emails and realize that Desmond is left out. He's just the bland test subject the others are using, and kinda ignoring. I hope this never changes.
Monster Hunter Tri: Wow, I really was expecting better combat from this game. You know how, in most action games, there's one really slow w/ high power hammer/axe weapon? Yes, the one you don't use. In Monster Hunter Tri, every kind of weapon is that. Except the really weak sword / shield, and the gun. I'm going with the gun.
This is a game that's more about preparation than fighting, which I find worse in most cases. Oh well.
Super Mario Galaxy 2: Getting those emerald stars. I should consider that a cheap way to add replay value (mostly since they're only available after collecting 120 stars), but I'd have absolutely loved them as a kid. This gets a pass.
Pokemon Black: What, the white uber thing is fire typed? Argh.
Team is Fire pig / Dog / Leech Seed Whore / Tadpole / Hermit Crab. I used the cat too, until he turned into... That.
What to say, it's still same old Pokemon. I've spent five hours in the music hall already. I can't get the Stardom music out of my head.
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Pokemon Black: What, the white uber thing is fire typed? Argh.
And the Black one is Electric typed. You'd think it'd be the other way around with the whole Angel vs. Demon style rivalry (...in the form of Dragons) they were clearly having the two take on as well.
Frankly, Fire/Dragon's a pretty neat typing. Its a rare case of a Dragon type who is not weak to Ice. Being Dragon means the Water weakness on the fire side is covered too. So it just has to worry about Ground, Rock, and Dragon. It also has this neat factor that the combination of Fire and Dragon attacks is neutral to almost every Pokemon (Steel is the only thing that resists Dragon...and its weak to Fire. Heatran is a dirty cheater who decided to be a Steel type w/ Flash Fire, thereby mocks the combo), and he has a STAB on both. Mostly a neat thing for competitive, but the combination does mean he's got steady offense regardless of what he fights in game too.
Electric/Dragon feels kind of...eh. Its not bad, so much as the typing do little to help each other out directly, so its more just the two typings compounded, they only "Cross" at Electric, which both resist, so its more just "laugh at Electric MORE!!" Electric being a rather neutral typing overall doesn't really help much in that regard for resists, though it does add only one weakness (Ground) so its not bad. Contrast this to Fire/Dragon where the two actually cover some of each other's weaknesses.
At least its neat offensively; if nothing else, Electric can hit the one thing that resists Dragon (Steel) for Neutral, rather than being resisted.
Yeah, its total theory-crafting and no clue how those two end up in the meta-game. I can't imagine either are genuinely bad though, given they are pretty standard Uber builds.
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Infamous 2: Spoilers for evil path.
Did the poor Evil ending for the game which is shockingly harder then the good as Nix is somehow tougher then The Beast and that red doctor Manhattan wannabe is useless as shit. Then the killing of Zeke was so sad even evil murder Cole doesn't want to do it. Then the beast is all like "Hey Cole I'm tried of killing millions of people so why don't I give you my power so you can do it" which is bullshit and only happens so they can pull off Cole=The Beast.
The ending is so bad Infamous 3 should be you playing as Kessler and beating sense into evil Cole.
Rorona: So this game is 12+ on box but contains a character that is both a pedophile and a rapist of women. What? And people don't stop this crazed sex beast because its the victims responsibility to stop it happening. What? Oh Japan ::)
Still Loling at randoms as Sterkenburg does 300ish damage on average while randoms have 100-150 hp.
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Rozalia: Seriously, dude. Watch the spoilers. Good thing I already beat it (Good ending). I like the dumb shit to be a surprise, at least. Zeke is my bro, as usual. I actually liked Kuo a lot, even sympathized with her at the end despite myself. Nix was meh. Freeze rockets are totally broken, as is the Ionic Vortex. Too bad you have the Storm for like, no time at all. Liked that in the first game. "Easy Going" was a hilarious scene, and the side mission with all the street performers was easily the best in the series.
Have to say, wondering why the fuck they even bothered changing Cole's VA when it's trying so hard to sound like the original. Yeah, they tried to turn him into a snarky/sarcastic action lead with incredibly mediocre results ("With a dry, cool wit like that, I could be an action hero!") but still, the original could've done that fine. Heck, they made a big deal about the HUGE CHANGE too when original Cole wasn't too far removed from that either. And they must have done the opening scenes first in single takes, because I almost thought they changed Zeke's VA as well before his voice fell back into it's normal range...
Misc stuff... is it sad I found all but 11 shards before gaining Blast Shard Sense? Kinda annoying it doesn't tell you how many there are this time around until you're almost done (Started telling me at 290/305). The Dead Drop mechanic was hilarious in this game. Also amused I got so frustrated finding the last Dead Drop I needed when it was in one of the most obvious places (south central mansion).
Onto spoilers...
That whole plot twist of John being the Beast makes Kessler's plan fucking retarded and pretty much makes the plot of the first game pointless. So many fucking questions. Was John still the Beast in the original timeline? If so, did the activation of his powers do the same thing? There was no mention of a plague there either. Seriously, I want to deny funding to whatever pre-school the writers recently graduated from. The only reasonably good moral choice you had to make in the game was the final one, and it would have been much better if they hadn't flat out told you which would lead to the good and which would lead to the bad ending.
The opening sequence needed NOT to be a tutorial, and give you all the powers you had in the first game, or at least the basics. Pretty much ruined what it could have been. Final battle was also way too goddamn easy. I actually got the "Finish What You Started" combo trophy on Kuo, because it was so much easier meleeing her than shooting.
Some nice connections to the first game at least. The Dead Drops changing based on your actions were nice (Dead Drops in general were/are always interesting).
At the heart of it though, at least the game is fun as hell to play. Just as fun as the first game. Can't decide which I like better. The plot of the first game structures the power gains better and paces it more evenly. The second game feels so much shorter, and half the NEW POWERS are almost useless (while the other half are totally broken. See: Freeze Rockets), and again, you have the Storm again for maybe 5 seconds before the game ends. Not that you NEED it with Ionic Vortex. Second game has more varied enemy types and they're generally more competant, but lots of them have only one reasonable way to beat them for most of the game. Rocket spam isn't what it used to be too ;-;
Oh well. If you liked the first game, definitely pick up inFamous 2. Just started a Hard playthrough so I can do the Evil route for Platinum.
EDIT: Most of the supervoucher stuff was useless. Didn't find a need for the Lightning Hook, used Electrocution Grenades all of once. Though, I did use the pimp 24k Gold Amp skin the entire time.
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Chrono Trigger:
Finished last night on Skype with Meeple and Trance. Mmm...it's not a bad game, but I don't think it aged that well. I wasn't in love with it, but I can see it being pretty innovative at the time. I haven't dug deep enough into the game to consider how balanced it was, but I will agree that the game makes good cases for you to carry different parties and to use almost everyone. Frog is kinda the exception though (see: Elfboy analysis), since he kinda trails from the moment he is no longer forced and never really catches back up. Ayla's really awesome for stealing a bunch of random stuff on the Black Omen and the game is easy. Nothing wrong with that. I wiped a few times due to not paying attention (whee fighting randoms with everyone at 1 HP) and a couple of gimmicky fights though. It's a 7/10 or so? Possibly higher like an 8. But yeah.
Next game that I should play but haven't. Some choices: SH2, Suiko3 or PS4.
Super Laggy-o RPG:
Up to Nimbus land and fought Birdo. Laggy buffed the enemies to hell and back and Birdo is now even scarier than before. She had a borderline OHKO unblockable without boost in the original. Laggy's version of Birdo packs instant death, triple acting and the egg spitting move basically buffed. Her unblockable got weakened a bit I think, but the triple acting puts this basically into clear overkill territory.
Also fought MEGASMILAX who had Petal Blast and was basically an annoying status whore. The fight got down to the wire though since I ran out of FP and the only who could do any remote damage was Mario. I emerge victorious in one go regardless. Laggy's unhealthy obssession with Pirahna plants continues.
PS to Laggy: Chewys are NOT vulnerable to Sleep. I just checked myself with a Sleepy Bomb. You may want to change based on the things we discussed about because as is, they are massively OP for randoms. 105 damage Mega Drains + 70 damage physicals + double acting and sleep counters = lolwat.
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Phantasy Star 4, stream it, enjoy
If only we could hack a Gryz, Seth, Hahn, Alys party in for Tide to use.
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Sorry about that Sopko, I usually mark them so I have no idea why I didn't mark those.
That whole plot twist of John being the Beast makes Kessler's plan fucking retarded and pretty much makes the plot of the first game pointless. So many fucking questions. Was John still the Beast in the original timeline? If so, did the activation of his powers do the same thing?
I think its the usual thing that if you try to fix things through time travel you just make things worse. I assume Kessler wanted to activate Coles powers several years before the beast activated his but he didn't count on John who he didn't know was the beast being there
Could have been a different dude in Kessler's time as they do look slightly different.
His powers seem to have been much greater Kessler's time as he cracked the moon and all
There was no mention of a plague there either.
The Plague was handled badly in both games as it just pops in at the end of 2 and is a dropped subplot in 1. Also I'm sure they say the plague was caused by Sasha in 1 but then suddenly it was Radiation?
The opening sequence needed NOT to be a tutorial, and give you all the powers you had in the first game, or at least the basics. Pretty much ruined what it could have been.
Yeah it was all pretty underwhelming. Made no sense why you didn't at least have rockets.
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Dissidia Duodecim: Finished Cecil's path. The non-Cloud quests are pretty much the right length, so yay. Cecil's pretty fun to play as, especially after he learns Paladin Force so his light side has a decent HP option. Been playing a lot of Labyrinth too; my last run made it to the second Cloister of Jobs before I found an exit and built a Cottage. I've built up a pretty good haul of gear, including some 40+ power weapons, although I'm not deluding myself into thinking by level-30 PCs stand a chance of finishing the thing anytime soon. I'll settle for making it to the end of the Cloister of Rivals.
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Super Laggy-o RPG:
(http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/8426/nolaggyno.png)
Wasted 2 hours of my life trying to beat Laggy Jinx, who I swear is probably unbeatable level 16 or lower unless you abuse Rock Candies (I also used a red essessce because Laggy > thou or something). Bombs Away does 435 Super Mario RPG damage. Even MAGE BOWSER was doing 36 damage tops. Randoms aren't too troubling if abuse SLEEPY TIME, a completely worthless spell, in vanilla. Valentina was no problem with herp derp AI. SHREDDER SHREDDER SHREDDER LIGHTING ORB while Mario does 400 damage fireballs.
I was up to Barrel Volcano until ROCKS froze the game. Don't know if he fixed it yet, but I should have time to stream more this weekend if my ISP isn't retarded.
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Magic 2012 - Some obviously deranged guy accused me of cheating because I got my life over 60 in a campaign battle. I am crying. I was playing Vamp deck against Merfolk deck, and had a couple of black life-getting artifacts and the flying creature that gives 3 life when an enemy discards or loses a creature. The game was basically giving me life hand over fist. It's strange because I've hardly gotten to use much lifegain with the Vamp deck so far - I usually rely on the +1/+1 counters and creature destruction.
The Blue/Green deck is crazy with the land - by turn 7 my opponent has 6 land. I have 16.
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I think you only had 41 when I messaged you. :p
Magic 2012: Close to the end of the campaign, but got stuck trying to figure out the challenge below Karn. Fun fun trying to figure out which cards the AI won't force you to discard. Finally beat it though.
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Super Laggy-o RPG:
Fought Czar Dragon and the Axem Rangers. Wiped to both at least once.
Things Laggy is a fanboy of:
- Bowser
- Pirahna Plants
- Fireballs
- Coin Trick
- Jinx
Czar Dragon is extremely stupid. That first form has a ton of damage and durability. There is one move in particular that is a guaranteed OHKO on people (Storm? Or was it Blast?) and he double acts, leading to revival stupidity. Also, the Helios now have *much* more HP. The saving grace though is that they at least take a turn to charge up their attack. The big issue is how fast your FP will drain taking them out since all the big damage moves cost an arm and a leg in FP. Second time around, I bring in Bowser, because everyone else gets OHKO by previously mentioned moves, but because Laggy is Bowser fanboy, Bowser can take a hit. Fight goes smoother overall since Bowser is awesome at absorbing damage whereas everyone else fails hardcore. Zombone on the other hand didn't put up as much of a fight. It did have 100 damage Screams (what), better physical damage and SANDSTORM so he can rape you though.
Anyway, time for AXEMS after I refresh and buy some items. Problem 1 with this fight: Laggy has upped the durability hardcore. Pretty sure Yellow has around 2k HP now. Problem 2: When all 5 of them are together, things are pretty bad. However, as people die off...things somehow manage to get worse as Laggy gave them all limit powers. Problem 3: You can't use MT to thin them out because 3 of the 5 counter with painful stuff. My first run attempt went for MT and got overwhelmed. Second attempt, I ran after Black, then Pink and Green at the same time, Yellow then Red. Then I got pwned by AXEM RANGER BATTLE HEAD because Laggy gave it double acts on recharge turns. I ran out of FP and no one had any damage because its physical durability is also ass high. Welp.
EDIT: Axems beaten. I had to go out and buy a Crystalline and Power Blast, because Geno not being able to boost himself is a huge drawback. Also, the changed timing makes his specials suck ass and he's not good at anything else. Mallow has no physical durability so Toadstool and Bowser was the way I went. With that in mind, Laggy made is such that the best order to take down the Axems is something along the lines of Green, Yellow, Red, Pink, Black. Black is still dangerous but doesn't power up. Red gains Shredder and double acts, Yellow gains double acts and Body Slam hurts like hell and is much harder to block. Green powers up his defense the moment someone dies and he has massive MT damage. Pink's bad too, but I dunno. Like Black, she doesn't power up so I tackled her close to last. Anyway, with FP available, AXEM RANGER BATTLE HEAD died pretty quick. I see Laggy is all about MAGE BOWSER.
Also fought Jinx and won. Laggy is a Jinx fanboy. Bombs Away deals 279 damage after blocking (558 without) and he quadruple acts at low HP. With Vigor Up, everything he does is pretty much a OHKO with Fire armors. Pretty much going to agree with Eph that his third form is not beatable at level 16.
Incindentally, due to the randoms requiring more specials and general stinginess because you are much much more likely to run out of FP, my Jump is now stronger than 18 FP CRUSHER (PS Laggy: Buff Crusher some more).
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Phantasy Star 4, stream it, enjoy
If only we could hack a Gryz, Seth, Hahn, Alys party in for Tide to use.
You can, but every time a party member joins or leaves it sets it to the default values.
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Magic 2012: Had some matches with the Cap'n tonight - got pretty badly beat on most of them, though I got a really lucky draw and won once with Gideon's equip deck. It was fun, though sadly it'll be a while before I get to play again since little bro had commandeered the Xbox. Still need to unlock a few cards for the NeoElfElf deck and Koth's Stone deck.
Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2: Cleared all Mission Mode story missions, which basically equals beating the game. Still have some missions to do to complete it.
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Yes, draws were either really good or really bad. Two Steel Overseers by turn 3 = damned hard for you to deal with.
About halfway through the Archenemy campaign. Archenemy matches tend to be really lopsided one way or the other. You can usually tell by the first turn or two who's going to win. Especially since the computer loves to get the 2 free land scheme on the first turn.
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999:
After Axe ending: Heh. I was not expecting that. But sure. Seems clear enough what's really going on here.
After Sub and Knife endings: Okay, so now it's even more obvious, for all that they're trying to make me think character X is suspicious, I'm not buying it.
After Safe ending: Oh it's *on* now. Totally badass plot twist in there and the characters don't mention it at all. But how can they sell that, if that implies what I think it does?! Let's see.
Halfway through True Ending: What?! Okay... I guess that makes sense... but what about... wait.
After True Ending: This game is fantastic.
I can geek out with nitpicks and ending analysis, but not sure - has anyone here other than Tal actually played 999? And he hasn't finished it yet. So not much point at the moment. Suffice to say 999 demanded to be finished on Saturday despite my usual policy of only playing the DS in transit, and then thinking about 999 and reading developer interviews and the like consumed much of the rest of the weekend.
So I'll make this simple. Do you own a DS? Do you have good taste? Are you okay with an interactive novel basically, albeit one that tells a tale that wouldn't really work in a normal novel? Then go buy Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors right now. The game has an audacious plot that is best experienced, so I don't recommend reading much else about it for fear of spoilers. I will say that the gameplay was on the easy side for my tastes, but better than than frustratingly hard. If you screw up a puzzle repeatedly, you will get more and more clues, so the only way to really screw yourself over is by not pixel-hunting well enough, and the game is forgiving on this.
Man, between this and Radiant Historia, the DS is going out with a bang of awesome games. Rating? 9, of course. Out of 9.
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Also, Cap / Doma: Are either of you on Magic the Gathering: Online? Or just the 360 versions?
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Just the 360 version. Quite literally the only MtG I've played in about 10 years.
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999:
I can geek out with nitpicks and ending analysis, but not sure - has anyone here other than Tal actually played 999?
Come at me bro
PS: play 999
PPS: play Ghost Trick
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Same as Cap, only substitute "10 years" for "ever". I've always been more of a collector than a player. I wouldn't rule out getting me involved at some point in MtGO, though it would have to wait until I get a working PC first of course.
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Also, Cap / Doma: Are either of you on Magic the Gathering: Online? Or just the 360 versions?
Whereas I've been damn tempted to start on MtG:O lately. Might have to seriously look at that. >.>
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Uncharted 2
It's been sitting in its case for a while. I figured since I owned a PS3, though, I should eventually take a peek at "the best" of the ridiculously high budget heavily scripted offerings.
I'm going to be using some technical jargon here; look up Autonomy/Relatedness/Competence if you haven't read the psychological theory.
The climbing seems really bad. It's bad on Autonomy--there's always one true path for climbing, and the only trick is finding it. It's bad on Competence--it's so unclear what surfaces are climbable and what are not that I end up jumping at lots of walls and looking like a dork. Hell, there was one time when a gate that was supposed to open didn't, and I had to get myself killed to restart the scene properly. They do, at least, make some effort with Relatedness in this category; your allies seem impressed with some of your climbing.
The shooting seems pretty solid. It's good on Autonomy--I've had success with all five of running up to someone and punching them, hiding behind a concrete block and popping up to shoot them, hiding behind a concrete block and blindfiring, stealthing behind an enemy and performing a OHKO, and running around in the open with guns blazing. Different strategies work better depending on the situation, of course, but often several strategies are pretty good. (And when they enforce only one strategy it's usually pretty bad). Competence it's also good on (I strongly suspect some autoaim shenanigans).
The two weapon system I'm...not yet sold on for a 1-player game; I honestly spend most of my time doing ammo management--like "let me put down my main gun for a moment, pick up this one, empty it of ammo, then switch back to my main gun". The one that really annoys me, though is "oh, there was an ammo pickup and a gun pickup right next to each other, and I picked up the gun, not the ammo, because they both use the same button. Damnit! Now I dropped my high-ammo gun -_-." Two weapon system is, I'm sure, great for multiplayer, but it just clashes with the psychological hoarding tendency of players in a one-player.
And...well, honestly, I think I'd like the game more if the main character was female, or if I liked the first supporting female (Zoe). That's more personal taste, though--maybe I should look into the new Tomb Raider--supposedly it's taking a lot of lessons from Uncharted 2 >_>.
The cutscenes and scripted events are "cool", of course. I say "cool" rather than "good", because they're pretty light on character development, and much more about the explosions. But, y'know, nothing wrong with explosions.
Overall the game is...solid. The combat gameplay is good enough that it'll probably rate in at 6/10 or 7/10 on my scale if it continues the way it has (decently high, might even play it a second time, but I'm not expecting it to become a long-lasting favourite).
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<3<3<3 You really need to play more bad games.
Puzzle Quest 2 - Been doing this at Hal's because I can throw it on easy and only pay attention to it half the time while chatting on IRC or IRL. Templar is actually better than I expected. Turtling class that can use Defense as offense? Nice. Scales better with gear than anything else in the game I think, which is pretty rad.
Still not as good as Assassin and Poisons are still way to good (this is on PC so poison stacking is nerfed).
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Uncharted 2
Ok, so they stepped it up a bit with the bad climbing puzzles (making them slightly less bad). It turns out that some of the temples in Tibet are actually gargantuan clocks with perpetually spinning gears that you have to clamber over if you want to get anywhere in the temple. Who knew? But from a level design perspective: I approve. The game has finally caught up with the early 80s by inserting moving platforms! It still fails hard at autonomy--there is only one true path--but at least they get a bit of competence, a feeling of "yeah, I got the timing right!" (even if the timing is pretty easy).
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If playing Uncharted 2 makes you want to play TOMB RAIDER, you'll be in for a surprise. (gasp Tomb Raider sucks). Really, listen to Grefter, play more bad games.
Dead Rising 2: I picked this up at a sale. (PS3 version, PC doesn't run). Characters are completely unoriginal: disgruntled main character who only cares about his daughter, annoying female sidekick who suppose to have morals and principles, the sexy evil chick who wants to screw everyone over for more money (ignoring the thousand of zombies), and the black man who lets everyone know he is black by carrying around a pimp cane and sunglasses. But who cares, you're in a mall! You have 72 hours to go kill zombies! Have at it.
...if you didn't have so much stuff to do. There's a pretty strict time limit on doing story quests, and with no real fast way of moving around unless you carry 8 glasses of beer (mixing beer + beer = speed boost, what?) Featuring a level up system, the game is pretty bad on level 1, and slowly gets better as you get more health, inventory slots and recipe cards. Weapon crafting is fun and creative enough and the game throws many rooms where you it gives you the right items to make a custom weapon. However, the game disencourages goofing off with the time limit, and weapons really only exist to take out the bosses in the game. However most bosses are too easy if you just run over to the gun shop and stock up on shotguns and rifles. If you're luckly enough, you'll find one of the heavy machine guns that kills everything in 10 seconds. Fighting with melee weapons however is a bad idea; the controls are often too unresponsive and the bosses have invinciblity frames where they can attack you. Don't even get me started on taming the circus tiger.
You can start over from the beginning, keeping all experence and weapon cards, so each time the game gets a bit easier. The biggest thing they DON'T carry over into a new game is the shortcuts, which makes exploring 10x easier but it's introduced too late in the game to make a lasting impact. Note I did not play Dead Rising 1, so I don't know if the gameplay changes are for the better or worse. At least from what I see Chuck doesn't run like a stick is up his ass like Frank the whole game.
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Dissidia: Finished Squall's quest. It's a lot more entertaining if you take it as a tongue-in-cheek parody of everything that made FF8 retarded that wasn't Rinoa. "I'm not alone, even though I'm a loner and hate people! I'm fighting alongside my friends, just on a different continent. Of course that makes sense, you just have to-- never mind, chapter's over."
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Just going to point out that Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is actually not a bad game, Eph. Though it doesn't have Tomb Raider in the title, so you may well be right after all >_>
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Dissidia Duodecim- Final Battle/Light to All scenarios are all done. The Epilogue was a decent workout. I chose Terra, Warrior of Light, Zidane, Tidus and Bartz as my team. Terra has already been L100 for a while so I decided to work on extra levelling for the others (they were all either late level twenties or early thirties from the experience they gained in their own scenarios/etc) and I ended up maining Bartz. I had a ton of fun with him. I also used Warrior of Light and Zidane during some round robin party fights and Terra near the beginning some too. Terra is adorable on the story map, puzzling whether she spend all her KP before the battle, the thought of everyone having time to chat/have fun and if the moogle would let her fluff him ^_^ Fought Chaos with Bartz at L51 (and he levelled up after each stage of the fight) Was Chaos supposed to be a joke this time? I don't remember him being this easy in the original Dissidia >_>
So I have done all of the scenarios for the twelfth cycle, the thirteenth cycle and the 000 story mode (aside from the Shantotto/Gabranth dungeons) I think I'm done with this game for a while now (I still have a lot of reports left to do, the extra dungeons, the Labyrinth to finish/etc but going to play another game/s first) =-) The world map was a good inclusion I think, I had fun running around it, opening treasure chests and spamming the attack/jumping animations of characters~
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Breath of Fire III- Thanks to Sage's advice in chat I managed to catch the rest of the trout I needed for equipment from the Manillo merchant. Once I had Teepo kitted out with a Silver Knife, Iron Helm and Waistcloth I took him around and levelled him up some, on man traps and things to start with then for a change of scenery I went back up Mt Glaus. Fun times were had when I saw the effect of the Silver Knife vs the undead on the zombies in the cave at the top. Teepo is apprenticed to Mygas so I've been trailing back and forth to pick up skills here and there too. Teepo is L9 now and he has all Mygas skills up to Typhoon. I am planning to use Skill Ink to give the Mygas skills to Ryu and then to Nina or someone later.
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SRWZ2-1: Beat this a few days back. On the whole, Sage summed the game up a few weeks (months?) back: pretty and polished, but almost no innovations at all on the gameplay. Since I have nothing to add to his overview/review, I'll just make whatever random comments I feel like instead.
S.R. points are quite welcome compared to the past few handheld SRWs that didn't have them. Stage 20's point in particular felt like a real accomplishment; I started the stage assuming I had no hope of getting it, only to realize after a few turns that I had a real chance if I played carefully enough, and ultimately managed to just barely scrape through. Some of the criteria felt kinda dumb to me, but they're purely optional so I don't think they merit any serious criticism. I ended up getting 44/49 of them on the first run, making an attempt to get them all (well, except stage 23) but not resetting if I missed up.
I have only two real complaints about the game. First is that dimension beasts are way, way, way, way too overexposed; it felt like the game threw them at you in every other stage, regardless of whatever show's plot was being featured. I guess I can understand it in the sense that they are by far the most dangerous faction for enemy grunts so spamming them makes the game more interesting, but the SEED-in-SRWJ level saturation meant that in the end I just got sick of seeing them. I wouldn't preferred that Banpresto just make some of the other grunts more competent and laid off on all the damons instead. The second is that support characters are absolutely awful in this game and have no hope of competing with the dozens of main characters (one of whom even resupplies!) for a deployment slot. I think this might have set a new low for the series.
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To be fair, Support characters can be levelled -very- easily.
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SMT:N - just started playing this a few days ago. Got up to Matador! This...is going to take some doing.
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Shadow Hearts: Rapidly approaching the end of this. I think I have access to Neam now. Game has a lot of flaws, but I think I still prefer it to SH:C.
Edit: Party is broken, healer and broken healer. By which I mean Yuri, Alice and Halley. Yuri is just ridiculous with attack boosts and healing available, although only being able to fuse once in a battle without SP healing is annoying. Alice is just a generic healer, except now she has Gospel which is utterly stupid. Halley has ridiculous amounts of healing and can do damn good damage as well. wut.
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Broken Sword 2 Remastered - Finished
Decent.
Limiting the inventory items you can talk about does cut down on wasted time but it also makes the hilarity options a little jarring.
Not really a fan of the fixed position objects, mostly the mop on the boat. When there is a guy patrolling the boat don't just stand there with a mop like an idiot, Nico, put it down your pants already. Also in that segment it is a bit annoying that once you get onto the boat she decides to fall back to her regular walking pace rather than her quicker movements on the dock.
Have read at a number of places that Emily is supposed to be a ghost. As far as I can see all the reasons provided could be explained in other ways and that being the case raises problems which wouldn't otherwise exist, but purportedly Revolution have confirmed that it is the case. Whatever.
Game doesn't have the automatic area exit that BS1DC had for some reason, which is disappointing in general and very annoying in the island 'maze'.
Broken Sword 3 - Finished
Decent.
Quicktime events, sometimes without much in the way of warning: annoying. Special honours go to the segment which isn't strictly a quicktime event but George stands around telling Nico that they have to hide and she has finished doing so aways before he is finished talking, whereas you get limited time to do the same because he won't move until he's done.
Crate shifting puzzles, overabundance of: annoying. Mostly because he has to rest every square pushed/pulled. And some of them require shifting crates fair distances.
Stealth sections: annoying. Particularly in instances where it isn't clear where you're trying to get to.
GOG doesn't have Broken Sword 4. This could be seen in any number of ways.
Slowly meandering through my SRWL replay, midway through episode 25 currently.
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Shadow Hearts: Rapidly approaching the end of this. I think I have access to Neam now. Game has a lot of flaws, but I think I still prefer it to SH:C.
For all that I really enjoyed SH1 (packed full of Koudelka goodness), I find it odd that you like it more than SH:C? Care to elaborate?
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Shadow Hearts: Rapidly approaching the end of this. I think I have access to Neam now. Game has a lot of flaws, but I think I still prefer it to SH:C.
For all that I really enjoyed SH1 (packed full of Koudelka goodness), I find it odd that you like it more than SH:C? Care to elaborate?
Iunno, I just never really got into SH:C. It started off really slowly, and I never found myself caring about any of Gepetto, Karin, Lucia, Blanca or Kurando. Contrast to SH where the villain feels threatening throughout the whole game (and isn't just some random face-heel towards the middle/end) and the whole cast (except maybe Margarete) is at least plot-relevant and have some nice backstories/reasons for fighting.
Don't get me wrong, I think SH:C is a great game - amazing script, some nice characters in Yuri/Joachim/Nicolai, and the setting is carried out really well. I just think SH1 does a lot better on the whole.
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I'm blanking on Keith's backstory too. Thoughts along the lines of rando invisible guy joins my team yaay?~
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Mass Effect 2- Got this at last and after a bad start its getting better. After an hour at character creation I ended up just using a character code from the internet, class is the walking tank Sentinel on insanity.
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I'm blanking on Keith's backstory too. Thoughts along the lines of rando invisible guy joins my team yaay?~
He was bored.
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I'm blanking on Keith's backstory too. Thoughts along the lines of rando invisible guy joins my team yaay?~
He was bored.
AND INVISIBLE.
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Super Laggy RPG: Just got the first star. I've had 2 resets so far, first was in the opening Bowser fight because I stumbled right into the trap Laggy set for players too familiar with the game. Second was a Random fight in Bandits way against 2 K-9's and a spiny. I wasn't paying attention and Mario's hp was kind of lowish. He got taken out quickly and Mallow couldn't salvage the fight by his own. As for bosses, Hammer Bros were surprisingly difficult and I would have been in trouble if I had fewer mushrooms because Hammer Time 3HKOs. Mack and Croco weren't too bad but I think I was slightly over leveled for both and levels make a fairly noticeable difference in the game so far. I was surprised that Mallow didn't one round the Shysters in the Mack fight, but I guess they're different from the normal Shysters. It's a good thing that Mack didn't call them out to frequently I was pretty low on FP at the end of the fight and Drain hurts.
As for the characters, Mario's pretty much the same as always and Mallow's unarmed physical is a lot better. Mario's hp is a lot better than Mallow's but I think that's more because Mallow's hp was lowered. Mallow's still good though because Thunderbolt is fantastic, especially now that I've got the timing down on it.
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I'm blanking on Keith's backstory too. Thoughts along the lines of rando invisible guy joins my team yaay?~
Hm, true, forgot about him.
(That said, I also forgot both Blanca and Lucia existed at first when writing the SHC list, so...)
Still, 3/8 having personalities is somewhat worse than 4/6, especially when the villain's considered as well.
As it goes, I think one of the main differences in opinion here comes from the fact that I played SHC before SH1.
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As I thought yaay rando (bored) invisible man :P Keith was a solid PC though probably in the top three or four dependiing on people's varying Alice/Halley respect. Too bad for Margarete /Zhuzhen. I think for SH:C it was probably more about trying to have a wide range of relatively diverse/interesting PCs to play around with ( Lucia exists as fluff/CT baits as a dancer w/th shiny and sparkly supports ;-)) and character development ended up suffering as a result (or was at least more noticable as opposed to a smaller cast) I suppose it depends on how much the individual enjoys the battle system whether that trade off was worth it or not.
Breath of Fire III- Wandering around after the Volcano. Both Garr's home place and the Junk Town have plenty of new shinies for buying but I'm not sure what I want to do there yet. The ones in the Junk Town are expensive but might be worth it. I seem to have been managing fine with just the basic equips I've managed to pick up/buy/found lying around though. The boss fight in the Volcano was easy despite consisting of three opponents. I had a L19 Ryu/L18 Nina/L17 Garr, Ryu had resist fire armour, Nina had the Fire Ring and they all had flame shots ... yeah. I went to town w/th Ice Breath and Mediate/Ice Blast with some Focus/Double Blows from Ryu to finish things off later. The old man's status didn't stick either but I think I might have still had a Dream Ring and stuffs on from exploring the lighthouse. Either that or I was just lucky. Current status Ryu L19, Nina L18, Garr L18 (Momo L13, Peco L1) Ryu has been with Bunyan since L1, Garr has been with Bunyan since he joined, Nina got the scrub skills from Durandal and has been with Yggdrasil for four or so levels (she also has the Mygas skills from Teepo), Momo is with D'Lonzo but hasn't really been levelled under her yet, only once I think. Been enjoying the game. Training Beyd was also fun. He won his duel. I want an uber Beyd~
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How weird. I start thinking about MtG again and notice people are talking about MtG:O.
Does that platform actually get decent use?
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I'm blanking on Keith's backstory too. Thoughts along the lines of rando invisible guy joins my team yaay?~
Hm, true, forgot about him.
(That said, I also forgot both Blanca and Lucia existed at first when writing the SHC list, so...)
Still, 3/8 having personalities is somewhat worse than 4/6, especially when the villain's considered as well.
As it goes, I think one of the main differences in opinion here comes from the fact that I played SHC before SH1.
I can kinda see preferring Albert Simon to Kato as a villain if I really, really squint, but the implication that Halley and Zhuzhen have more personality than Karin is an opinion I never dreamed I'd see. I won't defend SH2's filler cast as being anything but (frequently unfunny) filler, but SH1's is the same way, and SH2's core cast wins very solidly to me (including Yuri 2 being notably better than Yuri 1!).
Anyway, 360 get, games from con get. So even before being whipped into Super Laggy RPG I have loads of stuff to play! So far I have played about an hour and a half of two games.
Radiant Historia seems really cool so far. It's going to need to step up the challenge to hold my attention, but there's potential there and the story presentation has been very solidly enjoyable so far. I was kinda worried that Stocke would be "cool" like Ryudo but he's actually a refreshing and highly enjoyable main, good stuff.
Bayonetta is insane. It's a bit early to make any comments of significance about the gameplay besides that I dig the witch time mechanic and the loading screen practice (randomly awesome idea there) but WTF to the game's general cutscenes and sense of style. This isn't WTF in either a good way or a bad way, just... WTF.
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Also, Cap / Doma: Are either of you on Magic the Gathering: Online? Or just the 360 versions?
Alright, I'll bite. Getting this tonight. :)
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Ｔhe Story of the Last Promise- Finally!! I can finally put down this god damning shota killing permadeath RPG!! Thank god this is finally over. Screw this game and the garbage that is known as Image Epoch. I should really just by the OST instead, the music really is the only pleasing thing in this game.
P.S.- For those who wonder why I even started on this game in the first place, it is because the game was drawn by a very renowned yaoi artist, thus by the virtue of yaoi, I have to finish this game. But fuck, why is a yaoi artist hired when the game is outright killing the shota!? The mental damage is twice as hard!
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So I had been playing Symphonia until one of the remaining GC controllers just stopped working.
Poo.
So, I bought Tales of Vesperia and Mass Effect...and Uncharted 1 for the missus.
No Vesperia for the PS3 annoys me, especially because of all the extra stuff added to the PS3 version. Grr.
I just met Flynn in ToV. Yuri seems decent. it's always nice to play a MC that doesn't annoy me from the get go. Karol on the other had.... you know I just hate little kids in RPGs. I'd like to play a game where adults run the story.
Oh, that's where Mass Effect comes in handy. It fits that description very nicely. I'll be borrowing my GFs 360 for the time being until ME is completed and then go back to Vesperia when our shifts correspond better.
I have no idea what I am doing in ME and I can't decipher shit! I press the button each time I tried and it says I failed and I waste whatever it is I use for those things. I did not read into any of the job classes, so the regular Solider class is what I started with. Lets see how bad I screw up my 1st play through with no guides!
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This isn't WTF in either a good way or a bad way, just... WTF.
Welcome to Bayonetta. You'll never quite figure this part out either <_<
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Dissidia Duodecim: Beat the 013 story. Argh to Chaos. Fuck you, normals that go through my normals and clash with my HP attacks. Fuck you worse, HP attacks with super armor and ridiculous tracking (hi, Divine Punishment!). Fuck you to death, undodgable teleport spin doom attack. Also, I'm a moron for picking the stage BRV boost panel. But I finally killed him, so yay!
Also, I spent half Chaos' plot scenes thinking "man, that VA kinda sounds like Keith David but I can't place him. Who the hell is it?" and then the credits rolled and it was Keith David. Facepalm.
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I forget if Duodecim has it, but the original game, after beating Chaos the first time (in a scenario you may be ridiculously overleveled depending on how you approached Shade Impulse), Selphie actually would tell you exactly how to deal with ALL of Chaos' Moves. don't think the properties of his moves changed, especially since fighting Chaos practically doesn't exist outside of 013 Storyline anymore and Quick Battles, but here's what I remember...
Brave:
Claw Swipes: Block. Pretty straightfoward.
Wave of DOOM!: Dodge. Blocking it staggers you, though the move isn't really painful, just annoying.
Spin Attack:Block Repeatedly. The move seems to guard break cause it hits so many times and is a projectile (Thus doesn't stagger him), but actually isn't it, you just need to continually follow up. It is Melee too so you can't dash through it either. Note that a lot of defensive HP Attacks are great against this move; WoL's Shield of Light is a prime example as it blocks the entire thing *AND* is insured HP damage on him.
Dive Kick: Dodge or Block. I think Blocking staggers you, but he doesn't follow it up, and you can recover out of it fast enough; if you're in air, it tends to put him at a disadvantageous scenario for anyone with good camping (Hi Bartz!)
Teleporting Shoryuken: Just dodge 3 times. Its basically like fighting a Hell Vanguard.
HP Moves:
Divine Punishment: stand still (or just fall if in air) until the...6th? flame, then dodge the swords that converge in the middle. If you can dodge them, you likely have avoided the attack. It takes time figuring this move out. Note there are some moves that completely MOCK this attack. Terra's Tornado is the most famous example, as it blocks the entire first part AND punishes him before he fires the last part, as he does not have invincibility frames during it.
Flamethrower of Doom (forget its name): Attack him before he fires it; he's vulnerable to EVERYTHING while charging it, and its charge time is ridiculous.
Demon Dance: Dodge multiple times. About the only thing you can do is learn the timing; basically, dodge whenever he teleports, ideally to the side.
Scarlet Rain: Block the Meteor Part, dodge the HP Damaging Fireball. Like Divine Punishment, some HP moves can actually trivialize this attack, and block the entire thing, though some require better timing than others (Terra's Tornado works for example)
Utter Chaos: Dodge the sword slashes as best as possible, though don't fess if yo screw up. What matters is not being on any of the circles at the end, so RUN OFF THEM. Its pretty easy to dodge for most characters not Ex-death.
Chaos' fight is really more intimidating than it is hard but most of his moves have some way around them and the key is figuring it out. After that, its more a case of "don't screw up" though there are some bullshit things like Divine Punishment being completely arbitrary if its going to hit you with the flame pillars or not (I still can't quite figure out how it determines that. It'll only happen if you're moving, though, but how much seems completely arbitrary)
Frankly, I find Feral Chaos a much stupider fight if you ask me.
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I just met Flynn in ToV. Yuri seems decent. it's always nice to play a MC that doesn't annoy me from the get go. Karol on the other had.... you know I just hate little kids in RPGs. I'd like to play a game where adults run the story.
Karol is almost a parody of little-kid RPG heroes, honestly. He's incompetent but he seems to think he's actually the hero of the game. And Yuri and the rest of the main cast beat this terrible terrible idea out of him. I say "almost a parody" because it's clear by the end of the game that he's had enough development that he's supposed to be likable and sympathetic (your mileage may vary on that, but at the very least he becomes 'competent').
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HP Moves:
Divine Punishment: stand still (or just fall if in air) until the...6th? flame, then dodge the swords that converge in the middle. If you can dodge them, you likely have avoided the attack. It takes time figuring this move out. Note there are some moves that completely MOCK this attack. Terra's Tornado is the most famous example, as it blocks the entire first part AND punishes him before he fires the last part, as he does not have invincibility frames during it.
Demon Dance: Dodge multiple times. About the only thing you can do is learn the timing; basically, dodge whenever he teleports, ideally to the side.
With Divine Punishment, just stop doing anything once the screen announces it, and there's a noticeable lag time after the flames come in before he actually starts doing anything. It's not very LONG, but it's noticeable. Use that to dodge away and start beating on him with Brave Attacks.
As for Demon Dance, the timing for dodging is as soon as you see him on the screen (sometimes this won't happen, but usually it does) you dodge towards him. That will propel you upwards, and give you the perfect positioning for almost any attack when he finally finishes. Also, the ceiling cap is so freaking high in that stage, that you don't need to worry about it screwing you unless he does this move two or maybe even three times in a row. >_>
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Mass Effect 2: Finished with everyone alive, how is this hard? Besides the escort part its all pretty clear cut who you should choose. Used Legion&Jack for the final boss and gave the base to TIM for all his hard work because the way I see it can only turn out a couple of ways.
1: Like a surprising large amount of human supremacists he is actually a giant piece of shit (Reaper in this case) that strings humans along so they can kill all the other Reapers.
2: He really hates all aliens except when it comes to sexy time so when the Reapers have been dealt with he backstabs you and attempts to wipe out all Alien life with some kind of Giant killer human shaped robot.
3: He uses the Collectors seeker swarm to kidnap humans so he can upgrade them to Bio mutants/Cybermen.
4: He is actually an alright dude and uses the tech to own the reapers and then retires to earth as his job is done.
Glad I chose this over Dragon Age and ME3 seems like its going to be a day one buy for me.
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Mass Effect 2: beaten a few times now. Vastly prefer it to Dragon Age 2; squadmates are much better (Varric and Aveline are kinda bland but likable in DA2, and pretty much everyone else is utterly noxious), combat is more fun (since DA2 systematically ruined most of the virtues DAO's combat had), and Insane forces you to play attentively without falling back on fake difficulty. Has issues with its cover system implementation and a few other things (quality of main plot, stupid mining minigame, poorly-conceived response limitations by current Renegade/Paragon score that end up stupidly incentivizing min/maxing your score instead of roleplaying) but not really worth complaining about at length.
Call of Duty 4: beaten in an afternoon out of morbid curiosity. I sorta liked the original CoD back when it came out, maybe I'll like this! Well not really because it's the exact same game. Everything you do has been scripted for you; this is a game where nothing interesting can ever happen. The only value I got out of it was laughing at how the game avoids naming any real locations for your generic Arab-extremist enemies to inhabit (we're deploying you to THE CAPITAL CITY, etc.).
Shadow Hearts: Covenant: just got Kurando, on my way to fight Terada. My first playthrough was all about killing everything with physicals (Yuri/Kurando/Joachim/Karin, arc rage, etc.) so I'm gonna try benching Kurando and Joachim to focus on magic instead, maybe something like Yuri/Karin/Blanca/Anastasia at least. I keep wanting to put Gepetto or Lucia in there but every time they fail to go first against randoms I bench them again, so. Maybe I'll use some seals of speed or something later to make Lucia usable? Also I like Blanca and Anastasia better than either of them anyway. I should have gone with an FAQ this time, because I messed up the trading sidequest again and Idar Flamme took like two hours. Bosses are all jokes; I think Lenny's boss form threatened me more than Veronica's, Rasputin's, or Nicolai's did.
Super Laggy RPG: just beat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02omFeTHX1c) the Hammer Bros., who killed me a couple times. Might have been easier if I'd waited till level 3, but am I really going to play a difficulty hack just to powerlevel?
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Also, Cap / Doma: Are either of you on Magic the Gathering: Online? Or just the 360 versions?
Alright, I'll bite. Getting this tonight. :)
Snowflame on MTGO. What's your user name?
IMPORTANT PROTIP: Much like real life, do not just crack packs to get your initial collection going. Really. Don't. Packs are far more valuable for draft, so if you really want to get an organic collection, then I recommend drafting a lot. It hurts on MTGO more than real life because on MTGO, nobody ever has a reason to have more than 4 of a card (since you can use those 4 cards in all the decks you like), and compulsive drafters sell all their cards in excess of 4 to feed the habit, so there's a severe glut of commons and uncommons for recent sets. I recommend that if you go to trade, search for "Cardbot" or the like; that's a reputable bot that has decent prices. You can get an absolute ton of commons and uncommons at prices from 2 cents to 10 cents easily this way. I'd be more than happy to give you for free anything I have in excess of 4 as well. Anyway, I recommend starting out with just drafting / playing casual cheap decks to make sure you're cool with the interface, and only invest in money cards if you think you like MTGO.
There's also some fiddly bits about stops that don't exist in real life as well. I recommend stopping on: both your Main Phases; Your Declare Attackers / Declare BLockers; enemy Beginning of Combat / Declare Attacks / Declare Blockers; and Enemy End. Set a stop during upkeep as needed (say, you have a tapper you want to turn off lands / opponent mana creatures).
As another warning, this doesn't come up that often, but MTGO's habit of keeping track of every single trigger makes some decks more annoying and less fun to play. A classic example: Opposition. In real life, you tap your 8 tokens during your opponent's upkeep and say "your lands are all tapped" and the turns fly by until they find some instant-speed disenchant or the Oppo player wins. On MTGO, you will get the honor of making the 8 individual tap actions every. single. turn. Same with infinite combos that are unwieldly to get going - you get to play out every step, over and over. Flip side, the "keep track of all triggers" thing means you will never miss optional triggers ever again short of a misclick, as they will be obvious.
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SLRPG: beat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl6oafCE9s0) Croco. I forgot to buy armor back in town, so surviving the turns once he starts double-acting was tricky. After a couple tries I figured out that you can just wait till then to stun him with a Fire Orb and get twice the effect from his lost turn.
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Breath of Fire III- Awesme kitty is back and even more awesme! Now I just have to decide the third member of my team~
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MtGO stuff
Ack, didn't get a chance to get it the other day, since family stayed longer than expected. Will get it tonight, and will almost certainly be Yoshiken. =P
Thanks for the tips - was planning to mostly play draft anyways, since it's probably my favourite format and I don't get enough chances to play it where I am atm.
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I may consider hopping on MtG:O as well. Maybe.
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Breath of Fire III- Awesme kitty is back and even more awesme! Now I just have to decide the third member of my team~
Too bad Nina isn't a kyute little girl anymore!! ;_;
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Regarding MtGO, a few questions I have that I couldn't find in my 3 minutes of searching on GameFAQs and the Mothership:
1. Do you start off with any cards, like a starter deck?
2. Is there any way to get completely free cards, such as them giving out one booster a month or something?
3. If I buy non-single real-world cards (i.e. boosters or prefab decks), is there a way to transfer them to MtGO?
4. I noticed that there's an option to buy your MtGO cards and have them send them to you as real-world. Is that available worldwide, or is is U.S. only like the Rewards?
5. Do they have the Un-series?
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Regarding MtGO, a few questions I have that I couldn't find in my 3 minutes of searching on GameFAQs and the Mothership:
1. Do you start off with any cards, like a starter deck?
2. Is there any way to get completely free cards, such as them giving out one booster a month or something?
3. If I buy non-single real-world cards (i.e. boosters or prefab decks), is there a way to transfer them to MtGO?
4. I noticed that there's an option to buy your MtGO cards and have them send them to you as real-world. Is that available worldwide, or is is U.S. only like the Rewards?
5. Do they have the Un-series?
1. You pay 10 bucks for a M11 booster (to be an M12 booster in a month or so, I'm sure), 2 tickets (ticket = 1 dollar in in-game currency), and "over 300 Magic Online cards." ( https://accounts.onlinegaming.wizards.com/ ) I believe this post has the exact contents. ( http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75846/25288009/Planeswalker_pack_lists ). Considering the booster + tix is 5.50, I would not expect the 300 cards to be worth 4.50 - it's probably more like 2 dollars worth of commons & uncommons.
2. As already noted, you can get extremely cheap cards no problem for non-chase commons and uncommons. Outright free? Well, there are some players / bots who have free "take some, do not abuse system" policies, but these tend to be bottom of the barrel commons. There's also a "player rewards" program. While you get the most points for playing in tournaments, you do get some points just merely from existing and playing casual games. You can trade enough points in for things like alternate art cards. Occasionally, everybody logged in from DATE to DATE will get a free card because of some promotion or event as well.
3. No.
4. You'll pay more for shipping, but yes, it is not US-only. Also, it is on a set basis only. (aka you can't cash out a tiny collection - you can only say "Give me all of Scars of Mirrodin" so that somebody isn't driven insane assembling your exact collection. That means one of each and every card.) And if it isn't already obvious, then when they ship them to you, the cards are subtracted from your online collection.
5. No, except for alternate art lands. Would not translate. How do you adjudicate "Gotcha!"?
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Mass Effect....
Ok, so is there a reason why the game hates me? Sometimes these surveys are real easy to punch in. Other times, even when I am quick with my button smashing the game won't let me survey things. It's starting to annoy me.
Why did they make using the survey function so......irritating?
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Snow: If I have access to a healthy player base locally for actual, competitive card flopping, is there any particular reason to actually use MtG:O over one of the testing programs (Cockatrice, Apprentice, MWS, etc)?
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Mass Effect....
Ok, so is there a reason why the game hates me? Sometimes these surveys are real easy to punch in. Other times, even when I am quick with my button smashing the game won't let me survey things. It's starting to annoy me.
Why did they make using the survey function so......irritating?
You'd rather go back to ME1's mining technique?
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The inability to physically beat your opponent for using Jitte.
As someone that has played multiple times on both PC and X-Box, honestly not sure Scar, I don't recall having problems with surveying back in ME1 on X-Box, but it has been a very long time. I do remember the minigame being stupid. I also remember with surveys specifically it isn't a big deal, you can just survey again afterwards anyway, so whatevers was always my response to when I fucked it up. The game hates you because mining is fucking boring. Edit - This is ME1 Zenny I think. He is talking about the mini game when you actually find a mineral deposit (ie same fucking mini game you do for everything in ME1)
POKEMANS - Every plot sequence that has involved Ninjas is fucking stupid and should be cut from the game. Seriously, this is a Pokemon game and I am hating on it for being to plot heavy. I appreciate them shifting up the formula a little, but this is entirely inferior to RBY plot functionally.
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Oh. I thought he just needed to probe moar.
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I am playing Mass Effect 1.
It's like...press X. So I do and then I fail.
I AM PRESSING X!
But getting mad doesn't help me at all.
Ah well. I'm sort of a completionist. I guess I will to snag all these surveys and the ones that don't work I will have to walk away from...
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Maybe you were actually pressing Y?
Chrono Trigger (played 100% legally, I promise) : So... literally hadn't played this in over a decade, and hearing some music from it randomly made me want to pick it up again. It has been a great distraction from the responsibilities of moving! Game is as awesome as I remember it, despite TORIYAMA. Also, upon nerding out about it in chat, I managed to break Zenny's sanity for a bit - always a plus.
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So I started playing Ghost Trick. And met Inspector Cabanela.
Now, I just met Snow in person for the first time, so my standards for fabulousness have been significantly raised in the past week. But Cabanela is FAAAAAAAAAAABULOUS.
Also, the game's awesome, contain your shock. Love the gameplay, love the writing, love love love the art and animation, chuckle consistently at the Ace Attorney references.
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Scar, that stuff has less than a second per button press. Unless you have quicker-than-cat-like reflexes, just stick to one team, and convert everything old/you don't use into omni-gel and slap it on everything you come across. You're unlikely to run out. Also, increase your hacking skill, if possible. It raises the time allowed to press buttons by a bit per level, if you still want to do that.
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Memo to whoever translated Ghost Trick: The past tense of the verb "lead" is "led". Not "lead". ARGH.
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Does anybody want a copy of Puzzle Agent 1? I got a copy for free from buying Puzzle Agent 2 and can hand it out to someone on Steam. Minnesota accents! An evil puzzle conspiracy! Snow!
Snow: If I have access to a healthy player base locally for actual, competitive card flopping, is there any particular reason to actually use MtG:O over one of the testing programs (Cockatrice, Apprentice, MWS, etc)?
Apprentice, last I checked, was kinda dead as the codebase was frozen and the people weren't even updating the card sets right. I could be wrong. As for the others... well, depends. I'd argue they're in general less fun, as they don't (shouldn't) contain copyrighted art and other perks. No rules enforcement can go either way - when playing random people, it is very refreshing to not have to explain the rules to them on why yes, this really works. Against friends, that's not an issue, but keeping track yourself has its benefits and its drawbacks. You'll forget stuff, but some other complex actions won't require spelling out every time, so.
The biggest arguments each way:
* For MWS and friends: Cost. If you want to test expensive decks before building them, you can go nuts on freeware. MTGO will set you back. While I'll hype the ability to build cheap casual decks, chase cards cost only somewhat less than their real life counterparts, so they're still pretty expensive.
* For MTGO: Drafts. If you want to get drafting experience whenever you want against people who will play for real (because money is on the line), then MTGO is the place. Attempting to draft with random people on the Internet over Apprentice / MWS / etc. is a massive failure from all reports - even if the technical side can handle it, expect people to randomly leave. You can also play random people whose level of assholeishness will be somewhat limited by things like "getting blocked" and the fact that you don't really need to talk with random people to play a game.
Incidentally, just got back from playing my first games of real-life in Magic in... years and years. Cube-drafted some after work and build a ridiculous fast red deck. Beat 4 of the other drafters all in 2-0 victories for me, and only had 2 match losses. One was a very close loss vs. RGW Zoo where all the games were close to the end, 1-2. The last was more an infuriating match since this cube, unfortunately, had Chaos Orb. It was errated to be "merely" 2 mana for 1: Destroy a permanent, flip a coin, destroy another permanent. Of course my opponent won the flip, and yes, 3 mana: destroy 2 permanents is absolutely batshit insane. And unfun. Meh. (The other game he won he got off Tangle Wire -> Armageddon, which still would not be a concern normally, except my beatdown plan was Genju of the Spires rather than my hand. Bad choice in this case. The game I won he cast Balance and still lost, so yeah.) Fun deck, anyway. Grim Lavamancer, Stigma Lasher, Something Dragonlord (RR 2/2 Level up dude), Ball Lightning, Hero of Oxid Ridge, Siege-Gang Commander, lots of burn... good times.
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Memo to whoever translated Ghost Trick: The past tense of the verb "lead" is "led". Not "lead". ARGH.
Don't loose your temper, Shale.
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Yeah, nothing to get upset about even if that is a rediculous typo.
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FM5: Just getting started. I think I like the basic setup of the gameplay less; it doesn't seem to do the split team system of FM4 and brought back FM3's weapon level system. Plot is... well, the translators did a good job, it's just very Japanese as far as dialog/feel. I am not going to complain about a free English patch for a game with as much dialog as FM5!
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Yeah, nothing to get upset about even if that is a rediculous typo.
lol i c whut u did thar
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/me commits murders.
It wouldn't be nearly as annoying - not like PW didn't have the occasional typo - if they didn't also overuse the word.
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Maybe you were actually pressing Y?
Chrono Trigger (played 100% legally, I promise) : So... literally hadn't played this in over a decade, and hearing some music from it randomly made me want to pick it up again. It has been a great distraction from the responsibilities of moving! Game is as awesome as I remember it, despite TORIYAMA. Also, upon nerding out about it in chat, I managed to break Zenny's sanity for a bit - always a plus.
Speaking of which, I played it for the first time vicariously through someone who hadn't before recently. Game's still got it despite its age, which is pretty impressive. Most older games have trouble hooking people, if nothing else than because there are a lot of small, user-friendly features we take for granted now (auto-save/suspend and scene skip, for isntance).
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SLRPG: finished off (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL6q5tR5Ht4) Mack. 13 damage drains on Mario took him down, but Mallow's mdef is good enough that he can pretty much handle Mack on his own. Dog's up next.
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Mass Effect: regardling the survey function.
I figure it was just a couple of them and I have gone back and cracked most of them, but one still won't register me inputting the correct 1st button for some reason. I will chalk that up to a bug or something...I dunno.
Ah well. in other news I blew up a base and I lost a member of my team. Oh noez!
Reminds me of a Transformers quote...
"Prime told me there would be days like this!"
"And you didn't believe him?"
"I do now!"
*cough*
Meaning, I knew the mechanics of the game due to everyone and their mother telling me I need to do things a certain way or I could lose teammates, but I figured I wouldn't let them die.
I won't say who died, but I guess its normal for this to happen on yer first playthrough of the series?
I'm making Shepard a goody goody in the first run. I will see if I have enough tolerance to make a second go around afterwards.
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Breath of Fire III
Mini game fail? I am at the part where I have to collect ingredients to make something to eat for the mayor in Parch. I got the shally seeds and the Horseradish easily enough and then went to the Coffee Shop (I'd decided to leave the fishing for the mackerel till last because I thought it might be the most frustrating/time consuming/difficult part but I now think I was wrong there >_>) I ran into something horrible <_< I am having issues with the well mini game. The main difficulty for me as a deaf gamer is finding it hard to judge and react to the sound of when the water is landing/etc. I have a hearing aid for the ear that is still relatively useful but even with that and the volume on my PSP turned up I am struggling to react on time. Of course the battery in my hearing aid also decided to die and that really was that (my other ear is useless basically and my "good" ear doesn't cope well without the aid) Even with the PSP volume turned up to max I'm not picking up any sound (unless I like hold the PSP all the way right up to my "good" ear but yeah >_>) It just wasn't working and as if to compound this point PSP needs charged light started flickering to boot >_> If that wasn't a sign to take a break I don't know what is. I am feeling kind of frustrated/upset here - but I don't want to totally give up :)
Too bad Nina isn't a kyute little girl anymore!! ;_;
:__;
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Would headphones help?
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Breath of Fire III
Mini game fail? I am at the part where I have to collect ingredients to make something to eat for the mayor in Parch. I got the shally seeds and the Horseradish easily enough and then went to the Coffee Shop (I'd decided to leave the fishing for the mackerel till last because I thought it might be the most frustrating/time consuming/difficult part but I now think I was wrong there >_>) I ran into something horrible <_< I am having issues with the well mini game. The main difficulty for me as a deaf gamer is finding it hard to judge and react to the sound of when the water is landing/etc. I have a hearing aid for the ear that is still relatively useful but even with that and the volume on my PSP turned up I am struggling to react on time.
As a huge fan of the game words cannot express how angry this makes me. These kinds of mini games really need visual cues for this very reason. Especially since it is a randomised number of button presses for the well to reach the bottom, I think it is between 6 and 12 or so. Without resorting to just random chance (pick a number like 11 and keep trying that?) or working something out with the PSP volume stuff I think you might want to try to get a hand from someone else, because the game straight up isn't going to place nice for you and give you the help you deserve :(
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Thanks guys :) Wow that is amazing Grefter. I tried the counting to eleven thing and it actually worked! Even after finding another battery for my aid I found the counting thng was what still worked best because of the distraction of background noise/etc messing up my senses (and also I can't really keep my PSP up at max in case of disturbing other people in the house but the headphones helped with that at least) It's still possible to mess up the game even with the counting if you lose track of your numbers or aren't pressing the buttons fast enough but the important thing is it does work :) I practiced with this method for a while and as a result I now have waay too much vinegar :P
It turned out I hadn't saved after getting the Horseradish earlier so I had to go and get that again too but no worries now all I need is the fish (Nina hit 300~ on a crit with her physical while fighting in the Horseradish place which was fun) ~
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Ew, that sucks for gaming to be deaf. I have a similar problem since I'm colorblind and almost all puzzle games make their blocks look too much alike except for the color.
Star Ocean 4: Up to the part where *temp* leaves. Working on Battle Trophies and quests before I continue with the story. Up to 30% total Battle Trophies, with *temp* leading at 57%.
Resonance of Fate: started. This... really doesn't feel like a tri-Ace game at all. If anything it feels like something Final Fantasy team would make. It's not bad, mind you, just totally not what I'd expect from tri-Ace. Just finished Chapter 2.
Dwarf Fortress: Saw Hal playing this at Con, and decided to try it. It's pretty impressive in how many micro-details it covers. But not really my type of game since I'm not into micromanaging. I will say that it's a hell of a lot better than Minecraft.
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RoF does one tri-Ace thing in particular from the get-go: it lays of every mechanic at the very beginning, tells you to go hog wild, and assumes you will figure out how to best use them eventually.
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RoF: Now I am playing dress up with my characters. This game is FABULOUS.
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RoF: Now I am playing dress up with my characters. This game is FABULOUS.
If that wasn't enough everyone gets a second outfit later. Of course they continue dressing like hipsters.
Anyway, Amazon had Red Alert 3 on sale for $5. It is a RA game and those are usually fun but more importantly it was only 5 bucks and it stars GEORGE TAKEI.
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Decided to play through all the Xenosaga games, despite what I've heard from here!
Anyway, I've finished the first two.
XENOSAGA 1
- The game was alright. It started really slow, but when stuff started happening it was interesting. A lot of technobabble early on especially, and that could turn off some people.
The combat system was OK. It was simple, but not too hard. There were a couple rough spots (The boss of the Cathedral Ship was pretty challenging), but the hardest spot in the game in my opinion was the Song of Nephilim. Not any boss in there. Just the flamethrower randoms. I wiped to them once, and decided to just grind out a couple levels.
Speaking of randoms, they weren't worth fighting. Maybe that's why I was underleveled, but it took way too long. So I ended up abusing that 100% run rate whenever I could.
Overall, the game was alright. Worse then other RPGs I've played, but not unbearable, and the story WAS interesting to see where it would go.
Final team was Jr, chaos, MOMO. Jr. was solid, there were times when ranged physical was really nice, and times where it sucked to have no magic basic attack. chaos was... alright. Just alright. MOMO was kind of bad early on, but usable later. I've been sticking with this team throughout.
XENOSAGA 2
The game starts out much more interesting, in my opinion! Some of the early cutscenes are cool, like the robot car chase. Also there is music this time! MOMO's subconscious was a pretty tough dungeon for being so early on, but I did enjoy it, actually.
The bunny quests were pretty annoying. I only ended up doing a couple. Actually, I haven't really been doing many sidequests in this series at all, or really opening many segment files. I've done a couple, but I don't go out of my way.
Boss fights are pretty entertaining, but man are they long. I'm SURE they could be made faster, but I'm sure I didn't min-max. I did do things like casting Aura Sword or whatnot on my party members to up the elemental chain, so I did alright in the end.
Randoms are, once again, not worth fighting after a certain point. However, this time, a lot more of them are blocking your path and are un-walk-throughable, so you're forced to. Each fight is 10 minutes. I don't mind randoms being threatening, but when they respawn so quickly, it's kind of frustrating.
The plot focused on Jr, which I liked! Shion seemed to have been made about five times worse in this game, in the first she was... kind of annoying, but alright. In this game she's just a jerk.
They introduced too many characters! Stop introducing them! You have enough!
Anyway, the game was... again, alright. It did some things I really liked (Even if it's simple, I like that NPC's have different text depending on whose in front) and others I did not (Randoms.) Also, the skill system was kind of dissapointing.
We'll see how they close up the plot in the third game. I don't think it'll end well! Maybe some series could give a satisfying conclusion with this many villains, but I don't think this game can.
Also I can't kill anyone they always get away, or we're beat up after a boss fight. It doesn't bother me but it happens a LOT.
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Xenosaga 1 and 2 are generally regarded as not bad. Xenosaga 1 just hasn't aged well for a number of reasons. Xenosaga 2...most of the hate for that, if any, comes from its battle system (which I liked) where the game actually tried to be more team-centric instead of "KOS MOS SMASH!!!" like the first game had, and some random encounters just take longer than they need too as a result.
Its Xenosaga 3 that's the one people snipe at. Ridiculous plot aspects that are sometimes downright offensive, combined with a cheap, lazy battle system and the game is insultingly easy at times...yeah...
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Finally got started on MtGO!
Entered an M11 draft, manage to get foil Leyline of the Void and Reverberate while building a pretty nice Red/Blue deck around Chandra's Spitfire/Fire Servant - a Reverb, a Bolt, 2 Lava Axes, a Fling and 2 Combusts helping along the way. Oh, and Destructive Force, for all that I never hit the 7 mana to play it.
First round, I come against a White/Blue flying aggro deck. It was.. odd. Game 1, I use up a Mana Leak to stop him overpowering a creature with Armored Ascension, only for him to play Angelic Arbiter next turn, effectively locking me out.
Next game, I throw the Combusts in and don't need to mulligan, got an early lead by Unsummoning something of his and then going in repeatedly with a Scroll Thief. Managed to get both Fire Servant and Spitfire on the field, only to run into the Angelic Arbiter again. Nothing a Combust can''t deal with! 3rd game was as simple as getting a few early hits with an Augury Owl, followed by Fire Servant -> Lava Axe next turn -> Bolt for the win.
Second game was Blue/White/Red weenie deck and... I got murdered, plain and simple. At one point, I was sat on 5 lands with Destructive Force, dying in two turns from what's in hand. Drew the land on the first turn, not on the second. ;_;
Still, got 2 packs for that, and am now entering another!
Snowfire, I blame/thank you entirely. :D
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Xenosaga 2 pretty much rides entirely on the combat system, if you enjoy that you will like the game (CATHEDRAL) if you don't you will hate it. The plot is just straight up suffering from second installment syndrome in that it can only really start new plot threads and not resolve any if you have a terrible writer that needs to go OMG TWEEEEEEEEST in the final installment. Shock horror the game has a terrible writer.
On the other hand even if you enjoy the combat system, the GS System side quest thing can pretty easilly turn people off as well, because seriously, some of those things are fucking stupid.
XS2 definitely gets a whole lot of love from around here. The hate definitely stems from XS3 specifically and the way it taints the actual good sections of the plot from 1 and 2. Plenty also comes from XS1 from people with taste, but you know, people have to fail it up pretty hard.
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Ordered a new computer. It'll take some time to get here and be set up. It's pretty low end, but it should be good enough to play some stuff, like MtGO. I'll hold off until the 12 release, though.
Faery: This is a mediocre turn based RPG centered around mythological creatures and places. They seemed to believe that it was good enough to spawn a sequel, since the first game ends with "to be continued". It's not. Beat it.
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Mass Effect - Beaten
Not bad. I think I'd prefer if I made Shepard a bad ass instead of a goodie two shoes. In the end one of my crew died and uhm...I am not sure if I got the canon ending.
I might replay this dunno. ToV is waiting in the wings.
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DQ9: 100% Items collected. That doesn't include wardrobe items though; still have a long way to go on that.
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Renegade Shepard is indeed better.
Resonance of Fate is both complicated and simple like most Tri-Ace games, and the atmosphere kind of fits I thought.
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: Finished, nearly 100%. Still a more polished Assassin's Creed 2, the best game in the series, something fun to play if you haven't really seen next gen games yet. We all know the plot will be awful later on in the saga, but at least for now it's allright.
Near the end I managed to connect headphones directly to the 360, and they really enhanced the experience. Seriously, just climbing stuff and riding around with your horse with headphones on = Mind blown.
Got another game that could really benefit from headphones:
Rez HD: Very experimental, got maybe too much hype but it's a wonderful experience worth playing once. (better with headphones) This is a trippy game, but you can't relax at all as it's a very offense oriented on rail shmup at its core, and the penalty from getting hit is severe. Still, I beat it and I suck at those games, so it can't be that bad. The game was at its best during the first four stages, the fourth boss being the climax of the game. Then it gets all 2001 Space Oddyssey.
Half Minute Hero Super Mega Neo Climax: A 360 remake of the PSP game. I'm in Stage XV.
It's made of about 60 full RPGs where you have only 30 seconds to beat the boss. Fighting is automatic and super fast (about 2 random battles every 3 seconds on average), you get levels at an insane rate, time pauses in villages and you can rewind time for a fee (that gets pricier the more time you use it) Each RPG has its own particularity, like a 5 seconds fetchquest where you have to get some axe or something. There are allies, branching paths, equipment you get to keep between levels (unlike levels), and two titles per map you can get by meeting special requirements.
Honestly, it's priceless for any RPG fan. I love it. It's not really a parody, just a ridiculously super fast RPG. The game is really easy, but there's a lot of fun from replaying each RPG to try and get a better score. (10 seconds 45 in stage 12 is my best)
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Plant vs Zombies- At 4-1. It's pretty fun, and the challenge has ramped up since 3-5 or so.
FM5- Okay, the new link system could very cool. It's based on weapons instead of character- IE your fist user sets melee weapon L, and will automatically attack if you're in range and have LP. Definitely neat, will see how plays out with assault weapons.
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KH: BBS- Played some more Aqua mode. Magic Mirror boss was a fucking AWESOME battle. Also Command Board gave me earlygame Ragnarok and Meteor Shower. Let's see how this goes...
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Radiant Historia - In Chapters 3 (not a typo, for the non-players~).
This game continues to be very enjoyable. The writing is not perfect but it's certainly telling a fairly unique story and doing so in quite an effective way. Gameplay is solid despite a couple nagging flaws (there's a general lack of epic-feeling boss battles, if no shortage of moderately tough mini-bosses against various formations of soldiers and the likes. Also, the game seems to really not want you to use PCs who aren't Raynie or Marco). Battle positioning and turn order stuff and bunching enemies up to nuke them, again it is fairly unique and solid and fun. Generally keeps me engaged even when it's easy, and it generally isn't -too- easy (I've come close to dying a couple times) if not overly hard.
Bayonetta, meanwhile, is proceeding along nicely enough though I am focussing more effort on RH, not so much because Bayonetta is bad (because it's not! Quite an enjoyable experience even if it has some occasionally questionable design choices involving its main character) but because I'm just digging RH that much.
Also watching Grefter finish Ciato's playthrough BoF4 (which was stopped shortly before Fou-Lu's Tomb), which is funny because he is a completionist and she is very much not, so we have been subjected to lots of make-up completionism. Also I and II were the most randomly awesome boss fight ever before 2004 gave us Hippopressor and Cathedral.
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Glad to hear it, MC50. The Xenosaga series is one of the rare attempts to do something really epic in video games, and while it doesn't *entirely* succeed, I seriously appreciate the attempt. There are some parts of the setting I think are done quite well and interestingly, at least. I also like Xenosaga III a whole lot as well. There are some stupid twists in there - as the rest of the DL will remind you - but no less stupid than what I've grown used to accepting in any other RPG, so I was more willing to enjoy the parts that were good. XS3 also isn't entirely a pushover. I'll take fast, fun, and on the easy side (XS3) over slow but more challenging (XS2). At the very least bosses in the first half of the game can take a hit, so I'd find myself swapping in back-row members after depleting the MP of the front line and the like.
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Did a New Phyrexia / Mirrodin Besieged / Scars of Mirrodin draft on MTGO, and 3-0ed it. My first draft since Ravnica (not counting the Cube Draft on Thursday). Granted, each match was won 2-1, in fairly exciting games, but since I feel I had a rather underpowered deck, I am still eminently happy with this. I didn't find any real bombs, but a consistent R/G deck still goes far, along with some canny decisions on blocking, when to save Myrs to cast a 7 mana spell, and screwing over Infect with my Melira / Melira's Keepers I drafted. Even won one game via concession when my opponent realized he'd be decked from his card-drawing and my ability to jam up both the ground and air while gaining life. The deck in the finals had a lot of broken stuff in it - Hero of Bladehold most notably - but I managed to squeeze out the wins anyway. Fun times.
10 Forest
6 Mountain
1 Copper Myr
1 Iron Myr
1 Pristine Talisman
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Ezuri's Archers
1 Crush
1 Glissa's Scorn
1 Wall of Tanglecord
1 Razor Swine
1 Hexplate Golem
1 Trigon of Rage
1 Vital Splicer
1 Tangle Mantis
1 Burn the Impure
1 Blisterstick Shaman
1 Tangle Hulk
2 Mutagenic Growth
1 Glissa's Courier
1 Spine of Ish Sah
1 Alpha Tyrranax
1 Maul Splicer
2 Melira's Keepers
Relevant sideboard:
1 Chancellor of the Forge (never sided in. My first pick. Bad idea, not very bomby compared to common 7 mana stuff like Hexplate Golem + RRR in mana cost, ow.)
2 Carapace Forger (sided in vs. a fast poison deck just to get some dudes on the board quickly despite like never achieving metalcraft)
1 Ogre Resister (never sided in, but possible - another tanky mid-range dude.)
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Dark Holy Elf: Yeah, it's a little surprising that Raynie & Marco are core party members in both histories. If I'd been in charge I'd probably have tried to mix it up more. And S/R/M is an entirely solid party you can go through the entire game with. That said, traps are hax, so give Aht a shot when not fighting screen-filling enemies. Eruca... yeah, she's a glass cannon later, but she starts off as kind of just glass. Rosch has his uses too, for all that he's in your party rarely - there's at least one fight I found him damn near indispensable in.
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Oh, I don't mean to say that the other characters are worthless, it just feels like the game designers made it a bit too easy to just roll the main three as much as possible - certainly to this point I've had worse results whenever I've used anyone else, partially due to that level differential that quickly opens. This may change if anyone but those three starts really sticking in the party longterm I guess. The other characters do have uses but clearly have some skillset catching up to do. (e.g. the first-tier traps are certainly good for some fights, but I wouldn't call them hax due to the setup needed with turns that could otherwise be bunching yet another enemy up... they're still useful, but if they had, say, 20% less damage than they currently do, they'd be near worthless despite still being game-best damage).
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Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: Finished, nearly 100%. Still a more polished Assassin's Creed 2, the best game in the series, something fun to play if you haven't really seen next gen games yet. We all know the plot will be awful later on in the saga, but at least for now it's allright.
Near the end I managed to connect headphones directly to the 360, and they really enhanced the experience. Seriously, just climbing stuff and riding around with your horse with headphones on = Mind blown.
I dropped a decent chunk of change on some nice headphones not too long ago. The Witcher 2 is likewise amazing with a good pair of multi-channel headphones. It makes Left 4 Dead actually really goddamn scary, too.
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I am mostly doing stuff in BoF 4 because it is a thing there to do, so you get subjected to hours of fishing because I go oh what can I do now, there was some fishing to do.
Notably I haven't gone out of my way to get a Culverin or get 2 Firangis for Scias and Ryu. It is interesting to see only single hit weapons in use (and interesting to note how terribly the game even bothers to balance them, what up plot item being worse than storeboughts by a sizable margin). But hey it is just a thing to do
POKEMANS - I am up to victory road. woooooooo
Magic 2012 - Picked this up because so much Magic talk at the moment and hey I fucking love Magic. I don't like the challenge puzzles as much this time. A few to many so far have involved knowing what you are going to get on a draw to win, which is fine as a puzzle, but cuts back on the feeling of being able to look at that situation and pull out a win just by having good situational analysis and comes down to clutch oh hey stars aligned you got a win!!1
Archenemy on the other hand? Holy shit I fucking love this. I wish I wasn't playing the green deck for it so much (only a few cards left to unlock in it though...) and had saved the White equipment deck for it. That specific deck (Gideon) was amazingly abusive when it was the opposition. Had a draw that I just straight up conceded on Turn one. Scheme of draw three cards and reveal them, put lands in play and others in hand. They drew 3 Plains. Played a plains, so first turn had WWWW available, dropped a Kor Duelist, Trusty Machette and equipped it. GG right there. That shit is straight up abusively good.
That deck on the other hand was hella fun to run through the regular campaign with, won many a game by stalling out and then blitzing them down. The decent availability of flying in the deck goes a long way.
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Yeah, wait until they use Introductions Are In Order and drop a 12 mana creature on the first turn. Archenemy is alternately amusing and infuriating.
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I think I can handle 12 mana creatures better than double strike rapists. Seriously I fiip flop between unending rage at Double Strike and amazement at how much fun it is. It is probaby my first introduction to it that that made me hate it so much (Read beatdown deck in Kamigawa that my brother played against, couple of creatures with it just effortessly tore through him unti they played Savage Beating (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=43506) when I come from this crazy world where Relentless Assault (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=205271) was an amazing rare. Not the most pleasant introduction to a mechanic.
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So RA3 has finally just said fuck it and discarded all pretenses of realism. And I realize now this is what I always wanted to to do. Trained attack bears teaming up with speedboats armed with tesla coils that sprout mechanical spider legs to walk on land facing off against destroyers that have tank treads to cross land and helicopters armed with freeze rays (which do NOT stop... the pain). Saying "fuck it" made this game awesome.
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Magic 2012 - Picked this up because so much Magic talk at the moment and hey I fucking love Magic. I don't like the challenge puzzles as much this time. A few to many so far have involved knowing what you are going to get on a draw to win, which is fine as a puzzle, but cuts back on the feeling of being able to look at that situation and pull out a win just by having good situational analysis and comes down to clutch oh hey stars aligned you got a win!!1
You just don't have enough faith in the Heart of the Cards, Gref.
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Back To The Future Episode 5 - Finished
On the one hand, had somewhat more variety location-wise than the previous episodes had had, on the other hand was noticably shorter.
Was a bit annoying that they threw out the happy medium direction which the previous episode had implied they would be going in, but was generally enjoyable. The standoff puzzle was a little too contrived, though.
Ending was amusing.
Super Robot Wars L - Finished replay 1
Grolier managed to explode some support units with his MAP but whatever I've beaten him cleanly before.
Happily managed to avoid getting Ken this time.
Sadly barely managed to raise Godannar!Kouji's kill count due to the team autobalancer constantly putting him into slots which wouldn't get sortied.
Not a great deal to say.
Suikoden 3 - Played through Geddoe chapter 1.
Not sure how much I care for the battle pair system.
Generally good in general so far.
I remembered the duel triangle backwards and got one-hit-killed by Guillaime ;_;
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POKEMANS - Finished. So the ending is amazingly stupid. Like I had bitched before about how the plot gets really stupid when there is ninjas involved? Well apparently the whole part after the Elite Four is made out of ninjas. You beat the E4 and then Captain N beats the champ. So instead of fighting you there he wants you to come to his castle instead. So he summons his castle around the Pokemon league (which true to form is in he middle of a mountain range). I mean this completely as I describe it. He summons an ornate multistoried castle out of the ground that completely surrounds the entire Pokemon League area. You go inside and a Ninja tells you that Captain N wants a fair fight. They heal up your pokemon and give you some free healing items lying around (and an Ultra ball!!!). From there you go through a gauntlet of capturing a legendary, fighting Captain N and then the SECRETLY EVIL BAD GUY. You can't save between any of these points, but they do heal you.
I love how dumb this is. There is a castle that is underground, surrounding the headquarters of the Pokemon League. It can surface at any time. No one as noticed it. It has been there for over a decade at least because it is where Captain N was raised as a child. That is some serious dedcation to pointless theatrics that Team Plasma has. Also hilariously SECRET EVIL BAD GUY rags on Team Rocket and Galactic because they drew to much attention to themselves. Seriously dude? You just had somone affiliated with you summon a villain castle out of the ground. You make a habit of going around town to town stealing pokemon after having big demonstrations about how making Pokemon fight is evil. You are a fucking pot and you are blacker than the case of this game.
So the serious pokemon plot? It is fucking stupid as fuck. Not because the concepts that they are bandying around are bad (is making pokemon fight a good thing? Can you just agree to disagree over massively varying incompatible ideas? Both of these are pretty decently challenging questions to be asking in a kids game). It is the execution that is fucking horrible here. You know what would have made this work perfectly? THE NORMAL POKEMON FORMULA DONE COMPLETELY STRAIGHT LIKE NORMAL. Just introduce and address the plot points! Leave the rest of the game as is. It honestly would work really well and would be more likely to engage the target audience with these very questions instead of "Holy shit Captain N just summoned a castle". You can actually talk to kids without talking down to them or shaking fucking keys in their faces. THey played through your whole Pokemon game. I think they are either invested in it or not reading it at all. Get with the fucking program.
Overall it is another Pokemon game. The interface is terrible and while highly polished there is a million and one quality of life issues that is completely down the toilet still. It gets Pokemon Game out of 5 stars.
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POKEMANS - So the serious pokemon plot? It is fucking stupid as fuck. Not because the concepts that they are bandying around are bad (is making pokemon fight a good thing? Can you just agree to disagree over massively varying incompatible ideas? Both of these are pretty decently challenging questions to be asking in a kids game). It is the execution that is fucking horrible here. You know what would have made this work perfectly? THE NORMAL POKEMON FORMULA DONE COMPLETELY STRAIGHT LIKE NORMAL. Just introduce and address the plot points! Leave the rest of the game as is. It honestly would work really well and would be more likely to engage the target audience with these very questions instead of "Holy shit Captain N just summoned a castle". You can actually talk to kids without talking down to them or shaking fucking keys in their faces. THey played through your whole Pokemon game. I think they are either invested in it or not reading it at all. Get with the fucking program.
This is not a problem exclusive to kids' games! Though honestly, a lot of games might be better if they shed the pretense and just shook the keys harder (works for DMC).
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Indeed it is not just a problem in kids games, but as a franchise specifically targetted in that space I wanted to ensure that I was presenting my critique specifically in that frame work, if only to avoid having "It is a kids game" thrown back in my face because I have certainly used it in discussion before regarding things that I see as flaws in the games or other people's arguments about the franchise. Edit - okay touchpad, you can read that bump as a click on Send. I still get to finish that sentence off properly though
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I dropped a decent chunk of change on some nice headphones not too long ago. The Witcher 2 is likewise amazing with a good pair of multi-channel headphones. It makes Left 4 Dead actually really goddamn scary, too.
Man. Can't wait to play Witcher 2. I believe it's getting a 360 release in fall or something.
Half Minute Hero: Finished just about everything. It's amazing how well handled both the romance and final dungeon were, considering they last respectively two minutes and five minutes.
Still a really good game, only 10 bucks. I was really disappointed by hard mode though. The only difference is that time doesn't stop in villages. Wow. That's like calling "Active" in Final Fantasy/ Chrono Trigger Hard mode and "Wait" Normal mode. Really lazy.
I got Infinite Undiscovery. Surprisingly no one ever talks about that even though it's a Tri-Ace game. Let's all find out if the name "Infinite Undiscovery" makes any sense in the context of the game. (SPOILER: No)
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Dissidia Duodecim: Finished Chasm of the Rotting Earth in Confessions of the Creator. That was long and annoying. But I got 1600 KP! Gambled an eight-fight chain, quadrupled it with two KP bonuses, then picked up the Silver Cup to re-double that. So I should be set at Moogle Shops for a while. I'm using Firion and Warrior of Light as my main fighters (L100 and 85, respectively) while powering Tifa, Kain and Gilgamesh up from the low 40s in the other three party spots.
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I dropped a decent chunk of change on some nice headphones not too long ago. The Witcher 2 is likewise amazing with a good pair of multi-channel headphones. It makes Left 4 Dead actually really goddamn scary, too.
Man. Can't wait to play Witcher 2. I believe it's getting a 360 release in fall or something.
Half Minute Hero: Finished just about everything. It's amazing how well handled both the romance and final dungeon were, considering they last respectively two minutes and five minutes.
Still a really good game, only 10 bucks. I was really disappointed by hard mode though. The only difference is that time doesn't stop in villages. Wow. That's like calling "Active" in Final Fantasy/ Chrono Trigger Hard mode and "Wait" Normal mode. Really lazy.
I got Infinite Undiscovery. Surprisingly no one ever talks about that even though it's a Tri-Ace game. Let's all find out if the name "Infinite Undiscovery" makes any sense in the context of the game. (SPOILER: No)
I would be surprised if the Witcher 2 got a console port considering how the director spent so much time talking in interviews about how consoles were holding modern PC gaming back, and the engine works so well because they didn't even bother considering console ports.
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Plants vs zombies: Finished the maingame. Pretty solid game and a cute concept. I like how the minigames were thrown into give level variation. Not much else to say, may or may not do more modes.
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It's already confirmed Rob.
That director likely doesn't care that much anymore now that he has all that money. (Microsoft badly needed another console exclusive for the 360 at this point)
I believe the interface was made with a controller in mind too?
There's not much to Plants vs Zombies after the main game I found, except trying to survive as long as possible classic tower defense style. Hint: Use those purple plants that shoot in all directions.
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The basic strategy for survival mode is pretty simple- sunflowers in back, tallnuts with pumpkins in front, your choice of firepower in the middle. I'll fiddle with it a little more, but I don't think I will put too much more time into this one.
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While this strategy works extremely well for the main game, Plants vs zombies actually does get pretty complicated if you want to get far enough in survival (well, far enough for the achievement. Don't know if the other Plants vs zombies games had something similar)
Sunflowers need to be in the middle since the back is too dangerous (and you'll likely want only about two of them after one point), I preferred spike floor to tallnuts too.
One thing that makes planning a strategy easier is that anything that can only damage one enemy at a time becomes obsolete fast. And Offense >>> Defense since you can have pumpkins.
Fun game, by the way. I don't get why it was so successful, but hey.
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In Endless, you should accumulate a fairly giant stock of sunpower, so it's not the end of the world if back-row sunflowers are briefly taken down by digger zombies. It's considerably more expensive if ~350 sun Wintermelons die to them. I also find it entirely worthwhile in Endless to get 2 Magnetshrooms in the middle - while they kind of stop being effective once the true hordes start pouring out around wave ~20, they can severly screw up both the digger and the ladder zombies.
I think the spikeweeds go without saying - you Just Die to Zombonis without them, since they crush Tallnuts. Usually went with two rows of Spikeweeds, actually, but there's something to sticking Tallnuts behind htem anyway. Tallnuts are certainly worthwhile on the water at the very least, since Spikeweed isn't an option there.
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Those purple things with pumpkins are better in the water, seriously. They do so much damage.
The best part about Endless is not even playing the game, but drawing a grid and figuring out what would work best.
Very specific question some Ogre Battle fan might answer:
I have the original N64 version of the game, and I remember it being blurry as hell. This really was a major problem. I never ended up finishing it. Does anyone know if the Wii Virtual Console version is less blurry?
I like those Ogre Battles, at least the concept. I wish they focused more about fighting and less about massive micromanagement. I might rush through OB64 again as an evil bastard who basically only uses generic units and doesn't care about liberating cities instead of capturing them.
Alpha Protocol: Felt the urge to pick that up again.
This time I managed to kill Conrad in Rome. Best part of the game here. Both the concept and the execution are priceless!
Basically there's this boss, a pragmatic and professional fifty year old man, who's supposed to fight you at one point in the game (Rome) and flee after 3/4ths of his health are gone. (Then you meet him again in the final part of the game and finally kill him, unless you join the bad guy)
But if you carefully push his buttons by trying as hard as possible to be everything he hates (making jokes all the time around him, talk about sex, kill everything during missions instead of being stealthy), and if you gather enough intell about him, you can just completely humiliate and piss him off so much he just goes nuts and fights to the death instead of fleeing. Even if it's against everything he stands for.
This is great and I think FF7 would have been better if Cloud could have bombarded Sephiroth with jokes about Jenova, allowing the player to kill him in the midgame. Making Rufus the final boss.
Anyway, I've been putting stat points in melee and it's incredibly effective against bosses so far. Less against generic enemies. It's the opposite of stealth. Marburg and Sis went down so easily. Use CQC active skill -> Get close to the boss -> Mash B -> Dead boss. I heard pistols are even more powerful though.
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Fenrir: I'd dig up screenshots on the VC and see how it looks. I don't recall OB64 being too terrible in that regard though.
And what purple things in Pumpkin, Fenrir?
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*checks* Gloom-shrooms.
I usually put 4 of them in the water, right in front. Tons of damage to everything!
You can check fullscreen screenshots on the VC?
It's an usual problem with N64 game, but it was particularly bad here (maybe because there's a lot more 2D than in most N64 games?)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruq8Kn8OGRA It looks pretty much the exact same to me.
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Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals - Holy shit, why am I not emulating this game. Not because it would play any better, but I could screenshot the amazing things. The President of Percelyte is fucking amazing. He is pretty close to RICHARD, like a mix of the mythic one and the real one. He works in a "Mansion" which is totally a castle. He has a desk and a chair. The desk is made out of stone and his chair is a throne. His office is a big open room with a huge fountain behind his desk and water running down either sides of the steps. It is amazingly opulent and glorious. I wonder if the Japanese version has him as a King or if he is a PRESIDENT there also.
I am totally spun out at the effect that compressing the Lufia 2 story is. I mean in some times it is pretty weird. It looks like Guy and Selan are both from Percelyte (Guy's girlfriend is there at least)? Maxim is like from the next town over which has Tia and Lexis in it as well as the egg dragon(???). That is... really short order there. On the other hand, mixing up the amazing thief plot with the Ruby Apple plot is pretty cool and works really well (that is where I am up to). Also turning the thieves one of the thieves into a woman and making them a couple is pretty good.
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It's already confirmed Rob.
That director likely doesn't care that much anymore now that he has all that money. (Microsoft badly needed another console exclusive for the 360 at this point)
I believe the interface was made with a controller in mind too?
No, it's definitely a mouse interface.
Still, it makes me happy that the Witcher guys now have a game successful enough they can make a bunch of money by selling out. They earned it.
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Grefter: Yes, he was President in the JP version too.
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Bit Trip Runner
Man, beating world 1 of this game was murder on me. I mean yeah: I've done speed runs and stuff, but the way I work is that I'm always slightly inconsistent--I might nail a hard jump 60% of the time, but I'll also fail really really easy jumps that nobody should fail like...5% or 10% of the time. So...1-11 was just total murder being "hey, here's a really stupidly long stage where you can't make any mistakes". Also, the thing about speed runs is that I can practice the whole run, even if I trip up; yes, I won't be saving that run, but I can still keep going and figure out where all of the problem areas are. As opposed to "yes, I'm farther than I've ever been and...oh damnit! Troll game!"
Speaking of, I feel like this game has too much emphasis on memorization. Especially on the 1-Boss level "hey let's drop this obstacle right in front of you".
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Radiant Historia - So uh this game is very good.
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Tekken 6: Beat Story Mode! It was inoffensive outside of that one bridge stage where you can randomly die if you're hit the wrong way, and Alisa can die too with no way to rbing her back, and the boss basically demands you have Alisa cause you get swarmed by enemies on EVERY SINGLE SIDE and...yeah...
That said, plot was...uhh...Fighting Game Plot!!! quality, though to its credit, it never gets facepalm level stupid, nor does it ever degrade to trainwreck or get eaten by its own convolutedness. Just a story of "Jin Kazama starts a war, go stop him. Oh yeah, you have Amnesia just cause Lars is a bad ass and there needs to be SOMETHING holding him back!" with a silly twist in there just to explain why he's bad ass and...ok, why am I analyzing TEKKEN PLOT, I don't know. I guess I can say "it makes sense, but still of typical Fighting Game Quality!" which is to say "Not good" <_<
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*checks* Gloom-shrooms.
I usually put 4 of them in the water, right in front. Tons of damage to everything!
You can check fullscreen screenshots on the VC?
It's an usual problem with N64 game, but it was particularly bad here (maybe because there's a lot more 2D than in most N64 games?)
Yeaaaaaah, you weren't kidding. With some spikes in front of them, they kicked ass. My basic strat for survival is two rows of spikes-gloom shrooms-Magnets-freeze pumpkins, with cherry bombs as needed. I will say, god *damn* that kicked some serious ass.
Survival's fun to hash out. The roof will be unpleasant, though- goddamn bungee zombie assholes. Just finished Night (hard).
Front Mission 5: Just got to the carrier/ship base, so seven-eight maps in or so. The new link/friend fire system is goddamn chaotic madness, and I love it. You do have to be careful about how you set your links, or you're going to take some serious friendly fire damage. The money system is as stingy as ever, with the cavet that arena use/abuse is extremely easy and what you should be doing to keep your gear in shape. It's way easier/quicker than doing sims for cash, so I approve.
Story's picking up some, we just had our first plot death and there's been lots of dialog. The game is very philosophical about war and the damage it inflicts. FM4 was two disparate guerrilla conflicts set against a geopolitical struggle; this game is entirely about soldiers and fighting. I miss the splitpath nature of FM4 and the really good party interaction, which doesn't really occur in 5. This makes sense within the theme of the story and gameplay (Everyone but Walter and your mechanic can be removed from the team and replaced, making everyone generics.), but it still is a downer. The other downside to the story is that I haven't played FM1-3 and am missing a ton of the back story/plot, which is a shame. I may have to dig up a FM wiki/FAQ and read on the plot I missed.
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Resonance of Fate: Chapter 6. I wasn't sure before because it was early in the game and I was giving it a chance to get better. But these game mechanics are complete ass. There is no balance whatsoever. You're either raping enemies or they're raping you. Critical Condition is one of the stupidest, if not the stupidest mechanics in the history of video games. Getting into critical condition is pretty much game over, even against crappy randoms. In the earlygame, it's pretty bad since you have so few bezels. But they let you shoot hats off enemies to regain them and many enemies can be killed without scratch damage first. Then you get farther along and you're facing five guys with machine guns and no breakable body parts. It takes a minimum of two actions to kill them (one to scratch, one to kill), during which time the other four outflank you and rape you with automatic fire. You can't regain bezels fast enough to continue to use hero actions. And then for some reason when your bar is fully scratched, you lose *all* your bezels instead of just one.
And then in Chapter 6, they take away one of your party members. Yeah, fuck you game.
It got to the point where I even tried running from battles, which is something I pretty much never do in RPGs. But that's even worse, since any damage you take/bezels you lose in that battle stay in that battle, so you're permanently crippled until you can get to an inn (which are few and far between).
I want to keep playing to see the story. Vashyron is so perverted that he's awesome. But I don't know if I can put up with the gameplay long enough to get through it.
tri-Ace, why did you do this? *sob*
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Magic 2012: Playing against the AI on Planeswalker difficulty to unlock cards. Strength of Stone is surprisingly competent. It gets bashed on forums, but it's got a nice mix of creature destruction, artifact destruction, and big numbers.
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Wee games and stuff, beat Tactics Ogre PSP, decent game, seems like it has a ridiculous amount of optional stuff to do, which I may or may not come back too. The unit balance could have been better, archers are stupid good, ninjas once they get steelstance are basically one man deathsquads etc. Despite that the only thing about the game that really made me go ARGHJKLFJSJFL WHY would probably be the crafting system, which deserves save scumming to the fullest.
Picked up KH Re:CoM a bit ago because hey maybe I can actually understand the prologue to KH2 if I play it! Two worlds in and I'm practically ready to just drop the game and say forget it. While I'll give them the card system being decently unique, god damn is it annoying to randomly get stunned by an enemy you can't see who somehow counter/played a higher card. It would probably be tolerable if I was better at sleights but my play style has always been more on the lines of conserving resources and fuck if doing that doesn't completely clash with said playstyle. Best strategy for bosses requiring running around doing nothing but dodging attacks until they run low on cards to sleight with is pretty dumb.
So with that I've decided to finally start TotA, which should be inoffensive since I liked the last tales game I played, minus the fact the localization team decided to not record voices for the skits, but whatevs.
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Actually, CoM is almost completely unnecessary for understanding KH2's prologue. Here's what we learn in KH:CoM:
-Introduces Namine; no, you don't actually learn anything about her.
-Explains why Sora is in the egg thingy (Just assume "A wizard did it" and you can move on from there.)
-Explains what happens to Riku and King Mickey within that time frame (KH2 more or less summarizes it well enough. The only thing left out is seeing Riku develop from basically being pushed around by the villains to him just sort of giving them the finger and kicking their asses, which is actually not half badly written...actually, Riku's side is pretty well done overall, just requires going through Sora's boring as hell mode first.)
-introduces Orgy 13 but in a way that's basically "they're cryptic evil guys." By extension, it also explains where there are only 7 of them in KH2.
...yeah when it comes down to it, that last point is really why KHCoM exists. Having to fight all of the Orgy members in one game, some of them multiple times, could be a bit excessive, so they basically used KHCoM to deal with half the characters then, and have an excuse to write them out of the plot before KH2 happened.
Frankly, if you want a game that actually bridges KH1 and KH2, and actually shows a semblance of significance, 358/2 Days is the one to play. Shows you what actually happens in the year between the two games, and from Roxas' point of view, so we actually learn about the Orgy 13 from the inside, and the game is not badly written to be honest.
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Put another way, the remake of Chain of Memories really needed a "skip to Riku mode" option. It deals with the gameplay in a very different (and superior) way, and doesn't feature Sora being an idiot the entire game. Well, at least the original CoM did, I don't think they changed THAT in the remake though.
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So what you are saying is that they had to make an entire game to introduce a bloated and overwritten story point that could have been handled with four characters but because Nomura had drawn 13 pretty dudes he needed an excuse to use as many of them as possible because no one tells him "No this is a terrible terrible story you are making". Good to know. Hooray lets all celebrate overengineered stories! Here is hoping for another new one coming up in the next 5 years so we can all be suprised when it sucks just like Xenosaga did. Sadly Baten Kaitos looks to have lost all its steam, so the only thing really in that space is really old guard stuff (Warhammer! Comics, Star Wars EU, etc) and KH is just an exercise in wheels spinning to make as little ground as possible while making the same game again.
Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals - This game is clunky as fuck and the Tanbel mines are insaney punishing for fucking up. Maybe I should like pay attention to what I am doing sometime.
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Except that Days and BBS both have better plot/writing and less Sora than KH1 and KH2, so honestly I think I the series is clearly progressing in the right direction. KH3 just means more SORA plot.
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KH1 is solid enough on it's own, honestly. It deals extremely minimally in the stuff that makes KH story such a trainwreck later on and it's generally enjoyable fluff. Not to mention the completely unexpected downer ending is awesome.
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Except that Days and BBS both have better plot/writing and less Sora than KH1 and KH2, so honestly I think I the series is clearly progressing in the right direction. KH3 just means more SORA plot.
Um...BbS writing is not better quality than the mainstream series. The game barely deals with the Disney thing on the same level as the other games (ist just kind of "its Disney, its there!"), it lacks a remote sense of actual characterization (I still can't figure out what they were aiming for with Aqua. Her actions, personality, and general thought process just change between scenes, its like they said "She's a chick!" and just sort of wrote her however the scene needed her to be), there's no real flow in plot, etc. There's some good stuff, but I can say the same about KH1 and KH2, and both games didn't suffer from the Polyphonic story-telling style (that didn't help BbS at all, cause they really wasted it and kind of missed the point of that story-telling style structure), and the Disney stuff actually fit.
I mean, in BbS, the trio felt just kind of there in Disney Worlds, rather than actually participating in the stories (well, ok, Vent's side felt a bit more traditional KH, but even then, so its notably better), and the filler drags.
I could go on, but while I can understand people who BbS' gameplay, its plot and writing is not better than the mainstream stuff, and frankly, there are many cases its inferior.
Also, I see nothing wrong with Sora in KH1 and KH2. Its Sora in KHCoM that's the atrocity. That said, he probably shouldn't return in KH3, for the same reason Yuri shouldn't (and thankfully didn't!) return in SH3.
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KH is just an exercise in wheels spinning to make as little ground as possible while making the same game again.
Except that Days and BBS both have better plot/writing and less Sora than KH1 and KH2, so honestly I think I the series is clearly progressing in the right direction. KH3 just means more SORA plot.
So they introduced a character and a plot arc then made a bunch of games that do not address said plot arc. So... yeah. That is the definition of your plot not going anywhere.
These spin off games not featuring Sora so that nothing important happens so the core series is not overly impacted is the very heart of the problem (and didn't even work in KH2 because even though people say nothing much happened in CoM you still start KH2 completely fucking lost! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPiEQyUkHyg)).
So yeah, better writing or plot in a spin off game does not mean that your overall plot is going anywhere.
EDIT- CLARIFICATION TO AVOID BLEEDING VAGINA/ANUS SYNDROME. DO NOT GET BUTT HURT BECAUSE I CRITICISE SOMETHING.
Prefering the spin off games is fine, liking KH plot is fine (if a sign that you might be retarded). You can like whatever you want. You can prefer the plot from the spin off games regarding Organisation 13. None of that impacts the way that the narrative has been told in that the first game is there, it is in canon and is the start of the story and sets in motion such gigantic impacting plot points that cannot be ignored unless you want to go on the scale of writing a Lovecraft story and then spinning it off into Strawberry Shortcake canon without ever addressing the looming elder gods about to eat your world.
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Uncharted 2: finished. Not much to add over my previous assessments. Turns out there was only one temple in Tibet that was actually a giant clock full of gears.
Some really high durability mooks. Not sure how I feel about these, as the number of viable attack paths seemed narrower (running up and punching them didn't work so great. Dancing around them shooting is not all that advisable either.
On the other hand, towards the end the game was good at getting me to use the high power low ammo weapons (which made quick work of high durability enemies).
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Covenant: finished (again). Still really like that NG+ is a Shadow Hearts-series plot point. I actually didn't remember that you can power up Yuri's fusions from his Personal menu until I was doing optional content at the very end; it had vaguely bothered me that I was accumulating all these Souls and not doing anything with them, but eh. Apparently it wasn't that big of a deal. Remove the first ten fights of the Man Festival and it would be decent. The rest of the aftergame quests are okay.
Dark Seraphim was trivial. For some reason I remember that fight being harder, and Solomon wasn't any better (seems to exist to show just how broken your new Dark Seraphim is). Solomon's Trials could have been a great way to include some truly challenging optional bosses that would have made full use of all your new optional stuff, so I kinda wonder why they're not. You get so much power but nothing worth using it on. Oh well!
FFX: never played the International version before, so I'm going to try playing with the expert sphere grid. I've usually made Kimahri into a clone of Tidus or Rikku, so maybe I'll have him follow Lulu instead this time. ESG is strange; I just took a detour with Tidus and now he's twice as durable as anyone else. Anyway, reached Kilika's temple.
SH1: started it, got through the cannibal village. Then I kinda decided combat wasn't as much fun in this game, so I quit and started
SH3: instead. Got through Johnny's solo dungeon at the start. The stock system already makes the game more fun to play than SH1. I remember abusing Hilda's cheap attack spells with the Magic Mind's Eye a lot back when I played this on console, which was also fun. My party for that run was strictly Johnny/Mao/Hilda/Ricardo, so maybe I'll try using Shania a little this time? Maybe?
Portal 2: $25 price-point on the sale today was low enough for me. I'll probably start it sometime tonight.
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KH is just an exercise in wheels spinning to make as little ground as possible while making the same game again.
Except that Days and BBS both have better plot/writing and less Sora than KH1 and KH2, so honestly I think I the series is clearly progressing in the right direction. KH3 just means more SORA plot.
So they introduced a character and a plot arc then made a bunch of games that do not address said plot arc. So... yeah. That is the definition of your plot not going anywhere.
These spin off games not featuring Sora so that nothing important happens so the core series is not overly impacted is the very heart of the problem (and didn't even work in KH2 because even though people say nothing much happened in CoM you still start KH2 completely fucking lost! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPiEQyUkHyg)).
So yeah, better writing or plot in a spin off game does not mean that your overall plot is going anywhere.
EDIT- CLARIFICATION TO AVOID BLEEDING VAGINA/ANUS SYNDROME. DO NOT GET BUTT HURT BECAUSE I CRITICISE SOMETHING.
Prefering the spin off games is fine, liking KH plot is fine (if a sign that you might be retarded). You can like whatever you want. You can prefer the plot from the spin off games regarding Organisation 13. None of that impacts the way that the narrative has been told in that the first game is there, it is in canon and is the start of the story and sets in motion such gigantic impacting plot points that cannot be ignored unless you want to go on the scale of writing a Lovecraft story and then spinning it off into Strawberry Shortcake canon without ever addressing the looming elder gods about to eat your world.
I understood what you meant. Yes, the KH series is spinning its wheels on its main plot. My point was that I don't think anything would be helped by continuing its main plot. I think it would just make the series worse. Sort of like GS3, only the GS series doesn't even have any decent spin-offs.
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If you need to move on to another plot you resolve the shitty plot threads. It isn't hard. YOu make Orgy Scissors 61 have taken over all Heartless because they are super powerful. Plot finished. Move along.
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Terraria: i can no longer distinguish man from ore i may try to mine you and smelt you into a precious bar
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Too bad about OB64. It's weird how it looks worse than OB even though both have 2D sprites.
Captain:
Things are only going to get worse if you start running away from battles, unfortunately.
I used pretty much the same strategy for the whole game (Optional dungeon aside) and it worked ->
1) Dual wielding machinegun Hero Action (try to target two people, jump right before the end to get some more time)
2) Another Hero Action to kill those two people (pistols or grenades)
3) Tri-action to do all that again in only one turn
4) More Hero Actions
You should only do Hero Actions always. And once grenades become storebought, use them to get a ton of levels.
Really, the game is shallow. It's about dominating enemies, uber combos with dual machinegun, dressing up your characters and customizing ridiculous guns.
Alpha Protocol: Finished another playthrough, got every achievement except Crime Buster (-> joins with AP at the end of the game) No idea how to get this one, every ending forces me to run away on the boat.
I didn't know you could join Sung's assassin at the end of the game, it's pretty great.
The game is more balanced than I remembered, any build focused on at least one weapon can get through. (Except Sabotage, but Sabotage is cheap so it's easy to see it as a support skill) Stealth's a good help in every boss fight, and no weapon feels overpowered. You'll have a lot less trouble though if you have armor and accessories focused on defense, at least for boss fights. Defense matters a lot.
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Plants vs Zombies: Got the survival achivement. The bungee blocking and magnet plants were critical to winning, since it stopped the obnoxious back row attacking zombies from wrecking my sunflowers. Unlike every other survival mode, I was very hard up for sunshine here, due to the way the bonus plants (double sunflowers) increase in cost for each one you have on the field.
FM5- Just beat the defend the base/megatank mission. Fantastic mission, both in design and challenge. (Mission 13-14? Last one in the Camobia arc). This is a really, really well put together game. It fixed a lot of FM4's design flaws and does a good job tying the entire series into one overarcing plot. I so don't blame Square for not porting this one- the amount of text in the game is staggering, and you really need to play the earlier games in the series to appreciate a lot of the plot.
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FF4TAY: So I already read the plot spoilers and decided I was ready for some awesome.
First we meet young Ceodore (who is apparently named after Golbez, whose real name is Theodore, but Cecil decided "No, you need to be named after me too because my brother is dumb"). As virtuous as he is brave, young Ceodore is truly a paragon of what the son of the great King Cecil should be. Unfortunately, he has Mr. Jealous cramping his princely style and saying bitchy, aggressive remarks like "omg you're so incompetent, no one cares that you are a prince". Look, you better be happy my dad is a character from an After School Special or else your ass would be getting knocked down. (This is why you can't give free speech to commoners.) So I go through a cave, being condescended by this jerkface and then they abandon Ceo. I am about to get harshowned by a Sand Worm and then my Super Saijin plot powers kick in. Mr. Jealous gives me a speech about how they just put me through this trial to test me and I'm not a real knight. Was this supposed to be heartwarming or does this guy need to be thrown off the airship?
Then we meet Cecil and Rosa. Some bad shit is happening on our castle so Cecil makes sure that the bitch stays home, even though she went with him with him TO THE MOON and can wield a bow like no one's biz. So I walk around for a bit and save some girl and raid my own treasure chests or something. For some reason there is still a big throne in the bottom of my castle (??). I'm sure this won't come up later. My ho stalks me and Cecil reluctantly lets her back in.
"The white mage who serves as Baron's queen and a steadfast, loving support for Cecil. Her heart goes out to Ceodore as he enters an emotionally turbulent time in his life."
—Game Description
You know, I love that Rosa's entire bio is defined by her two closest male characters. Thank you Rosa for being an inspiration to feminism everywhere, even in this new era.
SPOILERS!!!!! if you care
Other than the little I've played, I know that DARK KAIN KIDNAPS ROSA. ZOMFG ROSA IS KIDNAPPED and there is more mind control. Also Edge has to fight his parents again because God hates him. Kain is like 35+ and still holds a 18 year long grudge because he wanted to bang a chick and it manifested into a dark side? Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
I mean, SPOILERS, Kain betrays people. He also steals a crystal.
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Resonance of Fate: Chapter 6. I wasn't sure before because it was early in the game and I was giving it a chance to get better. But these game mechanics are complete ass. There is no balance whatsoever. You're either raping enemies or they're raping you. Critical Condition is one of the stupidest, if not the stupidest mechanics in the history of video games. Getting into critical condition is pretty much game over, even against crappy randoms. In the earlygame, it's pretty bad since you have so few bezels. But they let you shoot hats off enemies to regain them and many enemies can be killed without scratch damage first. Then you get farther along and you're facing five guys with machine guns and no breakable body parts. It takes a minimum of two actions to kill them (one to scratch, one to kill), during which time the other four outflank you and rape you with automatic fire. You can't regain bezels fast enough to continue to use hero actions. And then for some reason when your bar is fully scratched, you lose *all* your bezels instead of just one.
It goes without saying but I assume you've been customizing your guns? The game is pretty obtuse about it so not only should you always check if you have the most up to date gear, but also if you're using the best type. There's a pretty big difference early on between 40 charge speed and 50 charge speed for example. I'm not sure how you're going about it, but Chapters 5 and 6 are some of the easier chapters in the game. If you've beaten Chapter 4, you're likely not hitting a bump until Chapter 14 or so.
At Chapter 5, you should be able to get around 70-80 Charge speed along with 25% Acceleration on your weapons. Your machine gun in particular should also be able to fit the drum attachment on and paired with the Magazine case at all times. This will give you a 27 clip Machine Gun with an option for ammo that can greatly increase the damage you do. The area where you need to go also has a bunch of fire weak enemies, so if you can, link that fire terminal up and spam Motolovs if you're really struggling to pick up a few levels. If you're still taking too much damage, start using more physical damage resisting accessories. Enemies have some targetting patterns; they tend to aim for the person with the lowest overall defense first unless someone is very close in range. You can use that to your advantage.
In battle, make sure to store your charges once you start gaining levels; you'll need it to deal good damage. On one Hero Action, you should be able to scratch up to at least 2 enemies. Also, unlike what Fenrir's saying, my assumption at where you're at is that you may be using too many Hero Actions and blowing way too many bezels. Try and see if you can snipe away some of the enemies first before rushing in with a Hero Action. Once the enemies start getting too close, Hero Actioning away is often a good call. Some enemies also have flaws. Like dogs for example only attack at melee range. If there are platforms in the stage, try to set up your Hero Action so you can jump on top of the platform. You won't be able to get dual machine guns until the next chapter, so you're going to have to wait it out if you want to use Fenrir's typical battle plan.
Once you get used to it, the game's pretty simple.
EDIT:
OH RIGHT GAMES...
Super Laggy RPG - Done. I'll create a post regarding my final thoughts on it, but Laggy already knows most of it.
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I officially made it to the 10th floor of Tartarus. I think I'm moving pretty damned slow, because I haven't finished any of the special requests, and it just feels like I haven't done much. There's only so much I can fit into a day, but I was blessed by two 10,000 lucky fortunes over the course of a week I believe.
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Plants vs Zombies: Got the survival achivement. The bungee blocking and magnet plants were critical to winning, since it stopped the obnoxious back row attacking zombies from wrecking my sunflowers. Unlike every other survival mode, I was very hard up for sunshine here, due to the way the bonus plants (double sunflowers) increase in cost for each one you have on the field.
Ooh, which one? (The Survival: Endless achievement is different in different versions of the game; the PC version is only 20 waves; XBox and IPad are more like 40 waves).
I'm not a huge fan of magnets; they're fundamentally single-target, so they become weaker and weaker as answers at higher levels. (Unless you're gold-farming, in which case yes: gold magnets are great). Umbrella Leaf plants are totally worth it in this mode, though yes (which is weird, because they usually suck).
As for sunshine...you might as well just get the sunshine you need on the early rounds. Seriously, be aggressive with sunflowers. The first minute or so of this video demonstrates how it's done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GClKWyNeOso
And that's how you hit 9990 sun by about flag 4 or so. (Don't pay too much attention to the rest of the video--it's not a very good build because it doesn't have Umbrella Leaf plants in the back and I would argue it mis-places its Winter Melons and should...probably play at least one Fume).
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I usually just stuck with four-six sunflower plants. And yeah, I just had to clear 20 waves.
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"The white mage who serves as Baron's queen and a steadfast, loving support for Cecil. Her heart goes out to Ceodore as he enters an emotionally turbulent time in his life."
—Game Description
You know, I love that Rosa's entire bio is defined by her two closest male characters. Thank you Rosa for being an inspiration to feminism everywhere, even in this new era.
She's the original queen has the plotless, foolish tag-along girlfriend. You didn't expect that change did you?!
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I was hoping?
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For a game published in 2008, yes. Yes I hope we all did and should.
LUIFAS - So Tanbel mine gets even more stupid with a rhythm mini game that gives no visual cues when to start the actual rhythm part of it, thus defeating the entire purpose and even if you use the voice acting as a cue it changes for each set of jumps when they are coming, that was amazingly terrible. So now I have retrieved Jaffy from the mines he will make me a Ruby Apple for a rich guy. I really dislike this change in plot. In the original Maxim totally cheats this rich guy because the rich guy is a dick and Tia goes WTF?!?!??! in the remake Tia is the one that suggests it and Maxim needs to be talked into it. So... Maxim just lost what little character he had in the original. lulz.
Anyway, now that I have done Tanbel Mine I unlock the Sphere Grid clone which looks okay and have to head on to Tanbel Mine. Lexis warns me now about poisoning enemies in the mine. Thanks Lexis, you are looking out for us. Nevermind that this mine also has enemies that can inflict Sleep which is amazingly brutal in this game. Wheeeee also recruited Guy. He is just this Guy, you know?
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She is also like 35 instead of 18, so maybe she developed a personality in those 17 years?
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The funniest part is there are people who will adamantly defend Rosa as a likable, well written character and all that. One of the excuses is "Since when is being a kind hearted, forgiving individual a BAD THING!?"
My response? When it comes at the cost of being competent or independent in any sense. If that's your only character trait that's NOT related to banging the main character, there's something wrong.
If nothing else, Yuna proves you can have those "positive" traits of Rosa without having to sacrifice other qualities.
...oh, right, I play games too!
Namco x Capcom: So I'm in the Infernal World again, split into three parties. Party #1 had an actual "fair" fight cause the only AWESOME unit on my team was the male Ninja Duo.
Current map? Has KOS MOS, Ryu (who has since become broken due to EX Tatsu), Silph, Female Ninja Duo, and Rose at very least...yeah, this map doesn't really stand a chance at all.
DMC3 Vergil Mode Very Hard: Just beat Nevan.
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In the end, Rosa just doesn't get enough screen time to develop much.
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Which is pretty sad seeing as she's the female lead in FF4, and thus like the 2nd or 3rd most important character in the game among the good guys.
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Rosa gets kidnapped, which is embarrassing. Cecil is a problem because he is misogyny man. "Hey bitch, get back in the kitchen, Edward you can fight with me though."
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So after much whipping from the toro, I have beaten SMT Nocturne. Normal mode of course because I am not masochistic. Got True Demon Ending, fought the finals at level 86-87, which Tai says is frankly underleveled for them. After getting my entire team OHKO'd by the first final's uber attack(yay endure) I believe him. Managed to bring it back though and got a good pattern down to slug them out.
Other then that, we've been playing a bunch of Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3. For this game, I largely have only one thing of major note to say: what kind of crack is the Reborns Gundam on!? Seriously that thing is absurd. Best C4 I've seen yet having range AND damage to spare, I'm pretty sure the C2 is an unblockable grab(even if it's not unblockable it's still incredibly easy to boost cancel from). Yes, a *USEFUL* C2, I'm as shocked as anyone. The C3 is great, the square string is solid, air and ground musous are good...oh yeah, and it's combination musou shreds officer HP like little else. I'm just amazed.
Outside of the Reborns, the cast has it's ups and downs from the last game. I like most of the other new mechs(I may not like Gundam Wing, but I'll grant that it has some fun mech designs), but the Turn A and Infinite Justice, two of my favorites from DWG2, both feel worse then before. Much worse in the Turn A's case. There is also the interesting note of mechs like the Hamrabi, the Turn X and even the Guncannon being full mechs in this game instead of generics. They get varrying results though. Turn X is a powerhouse and one of my new favorites, while the Guncannon...well, full mech or not it's got so much suck you'd think it was a weapons grade vacuum cleaner.
On a final note for it thus far, I'm still somewhat annoyed at the inclusion of Schwarz Bruder...but not the Shadow Gundam. He's just running around in the Burning. Haven't checked DLC for the game yet, and dunno if I'll plunk down the cash for the Shadow even if it's available. But it still kinda irks me to have a pilot in the game without thier mech.
Also playing some DW7 of course. Not much to say besides for Yue Ying possibly being my favorite char in this game. Entirely for her musou. Cracks me up every single time.
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Those levels aren't too low, you can survive the big attack by using War Cry / Debilitate / Rakukaja; you can spam that + healing whenever he goes all "PH34R" since you get a free turn before his uber attack.
Lost Odyssey: The lost Final Fantasy. I'm surprised by just how much it feels like FF7/8/9/10. Yeah, I know, same team, but still. Everything about those games applies. This one is maybe a bit more melancolic.
Storyline so far has some of the best (dream sequence) and worst (That scene where you first meet Mack and Cooke, right before fighting a few guards) writing in the entire RPG genre! Also: Queen Ming's dress? Really?
Bosses gave me a lot of of trouble so far, I'm pleasantly surprised.
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Final Fantasy 4 The After Years - Kain's Revenge
So Rosa and Cecil wander around and run into Cid. Cecil and Cid have a manly conversation and we go kill some bosses. AND BY KILL A BOSS I MEAN GET HARSHOWNED BY A BOSS. We have Ceodore snooze chapter and then BAM ow the Zuu killed me. Rosa got Doomed and it was all over. So Rosa is useful after all!
So bad shit happens, Cecil sends Rosa away so he can defend the castle like a manly man, and then we pan to Ceodore. The ship is raided by something and BIGGS IS DYING BAWWWW. Biggs is an asshole, why do I care. So we have a dramatic scene with Biggs, he tells me what to do again before he dies (does he not get the chain of command), and I am all alone.
UNTIL THE HOODED MAN SHOWS UP!!!!!! He saves Ceodore's life and then he realizes that he must be related to Rosa, their eyes are so similar... their bodies are so similar... the way he brushes his hair across his face... the way he rests his hand on his hip...
And that's how Ceodore got an STD.
More seriously, he doesn't recognize me, we travel together, he says cryptic shit like "I have no name anymore... I abandoned that long ago." Ceo lols. I steal his equipment and give it to Ceo. We go to MYSTIDIA and hear about A DRAGOON IN MT. ORDEALS but we ain't got time for that shit, bro. We go through the Devil's Road and then get to Baron, where we get kicked out. And then we have to... omg.... go through the waterway to sneak into the castle. Have never done this before.
So Kain figures out who I am (ZOMG) and now I am controlling him.
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I always thought Rydia was the main female character in FF4? She certainly has more screen time...
Rosa's just the love interest. (...not that this is a good excuse for Rosa to have no personality, but...)
God why are we talking about FF4 plot. (Ciato plz keep journaling TAY, it's hilarious)
GAEMZ: Replayed Chrono Trigger. Beat it once. Good times. Final party was Ayla-Robo-Frog because they have the least to do with main plot threads and it's funnier that way.
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Terraria - mine lava with lava to make more lava
Aquaria - i wonder if there's more swimming levels
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Final Fantasy 4 The After Years - Kain's Revenge
So Rosa and Cecil wander around and run into Cid. Cecil and Cid have a manly conversation and we go kill some bosses. AND BY KILL A BOSS I MEAN GET HARSHOWNED BY A BOSS. We have Ceodore snooze chapter and then BAM ow the Zuu killed me. Rosa got Doomed and it was all over. So Rosa is useful after all!
So bad shit happens, Cecil sends Rosa away so he can defend the castle like a manly man, and then we pan to Ceodore. The ship is raided by something and BIGGS IS DYING BAWWWW. Biggs is an asshole, why do I care. So we have a dramatic scene with Biggs, he tells me what to do again before he dies (does he not get the chain of command), and I am all alone.
UNTIL THE HOODED MAN SHOWS UP!!!!!! He saves Ceodore's life and then he realizes that he must be related to Rosa, their eyes are so similar... their bodies are so similar... the way he brushes his hair across his face... the way he rests his hand on his hip...
And that's how Ceodore got an STD.
More seriously, he doesn't recognize me, we travel together, he says cryptic shit like "I have no name anymore... I abandoned that long ago." Ceo lols. I steal his equipment and give it to Ceo. We go to MYSTIDIA and hear about A DRAGOON IN MT. ORDEALS but we ain't got time for that shit, bro. We go through the Devil's Road and then get to Baron, where we get kicked out. And then we have to... omg.... go through the waterway to sneak into the castle. Have never done this before.
So Kain figures out who I am (ZOMG) and now I am controlling him.
If I recall, doesn't the age of Ceodore and the gap in time between FF4 and TAY suggest that Rosa was running around with a baby in her most of the game? Cause that's kinda fucked up.
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I always thought Rydia was the main female character in FF4? She certainly has more screen time...
Rydia has more PARTY time, but less screen time. Rosa is definitely a more prominent player in the game's plot. She is introduced before Rydia, and the time Rydia has early on is offset partially by this, as well as all those scenes related to Tower of Zot, where Rydia is MIA and Rosa's being her usual useless DiD self. Rydia kind of loses all plot significance after she saves the team from Golbez in Dwarf Village with the sole exception of the "WAAAH! STOP DYING EVERYONE! IT HURTS!" "...Rydia, you don't even know who this Ninja guy is." "SHUT UP! ITS SAD TO SEE PEOPLE DIE!" "...how come you never whined about this before?" "CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!" "oh ok" scene after Edge gets fried by Rubicante. Really, that scene can be summed up as "Shit, Rydia doesn't have any other scenes where she does anything between now and the end of the game...lets force this little speech here cause its kind of in character or something!"
Really, adult Rydia is like one of the most pointless characters of all time in terms of plot. She has one cool moment, then sort of fades away from the plot for like ever, and becomes basically a pure Gameplay Tool from here on in.
I think the thing that really sells the scenario is when the two characters leave the team. Rosa becomes the goal of the game for a good while, Rydia is kind of forgotten until she rejoins. Both are absent for equal amounts of time after their initial joining. Really no question whose the female lead when you look at it that way.
If I recall, doesn't the age of Ceodore and the gap in time between FF4 and TAY suggest that Rosa was running around with a baby in her most of the game? Cause that's kinda fucked up.
From what I understand, they sort of fix that in FF4's new interlude by saying Rosa has gotten recently pregnant in that little short sequence, so its "17 years since that interlude."
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Bah, more Pregnant Female Warriors, I say! Ayla did it! Selan -could have- done it! The coolest character in Grandia 3 was a mom! Pregnant women clearly kick-ass. Rosa would actually be a lot more impressive if she was able to fight on the moon while dealing with morning sickness. Sure, low-gravity/oxygen strenuous exercise while he was a fetus would also probably explain why Ceodore is 'a bit special', but really, he was doomed from the moment Cecil was his father, it doesn't reflect badly on Rosa.
(...no, I'm not actually defending Rosa's character with this argument)
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The interlude has Rosa getting knocked up about a year or two after the end of FF4.
Edit: FM5: The survival sim is really addicting once you get into the swing of it. Cool concept, but I am avoiding it for fear of losing my life to playing it over and over.
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I think the Japanese version had her knocked up during the game, the American changed it after after they realized "Okay, that's kinda silly." And the Japanese version retconned it.
OH.
I forgot to mention.
The game has two amazing options. One to TURN OFF THE ATB GAUGE (and replace it with NOTHING!) for the frue FF4 experience. (Seriously???) And one to turn off the cute little portraits by people's names to, presumably, appeal to the frue FF4 experience as well. This is like the very definition of catering to the crazy nostalgia people. Yes I want to make the battle system actively worse and the game less pretty. Why do you ask?
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Bah, more Pregnant Female Warriors, I say! Ayla did it! Selan -could have- done it! The coolest character in Grandia 3 was a mom! Pregnant women clearly kick-ass. Rosa would actually be a lot more impressive if she was able to fight on the moon while dealing with morning sickness. Sure, low-gravity/oxygen strenuous exercise while he was a fetus would also probably explain why Ceodore is 'a bit special', but really, he was doomed from the moment Cecil was his father, it doesn't reflect badly on Rosa.
(...no, I'm not actually defending Rosa's character with this argument)
Ayla was pregnant? When did that happen?
That said, FE7 Louise is pregnant with Klein.
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Bah, more Pregnant Female Warriors, I say! Ayla did it! Selan -could have- done it! The coolest character in Grandia 3 was a mom! Pregnant women clearly kick-ass. Rosa would actually be a lot more impressive if she was able to fight on the moon while dealing with morning sickness. Sure, low-gravity/oxygen strenuous exercise while he was a fetus would also probably explain why Ceodore is 'a bit special', but really, he was doomed from the moment Cecil was his father, it doesn't reflect badly on Rosa.
(...no, I'm not actually defending Rosa's character with this argument)
Ayla was pregnant? When did that happen?
That said, FE7 Louise is pregnant with Klein.
Some people interpret her BURP at the end of... Dino Lair? Reptite Lair? As the early signs of morning sickness.
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So basically, a random fan-in that has no real basis behind it, just people assuming something out of nowhere, just for the sake of adding a random factor to Ayla that has absolutely no precedent behind it?
UM, ok then, moving on...
Missed this before but...
I think the Japanese version had her knocked up during the game, the American changed it after after they realized "Okay, that's kinda silly." And the Japanese version retconned it.
Its implied Cecil and Rosa have been sleeping together for sometime. Just the US version had to censor it cause...well...original US translation didn't want ANYTHING remotely suggestive for sex, death, etc.
I forget if later versions of FF4 in English have the reference but I know the term (at least when it was fan translated) had Rosa saying "I'm coming to your room again tonight" early on.
Of course, it is possible to sleep together without her being pregnant, so it doesn't really change anything one way or another, though it does further submit that Rosa just exists to be Cecil's Bitch.
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"In the new re-translation in Chrono Trigger (DS) there seems to be subtle hints that she is in the very early stages of pregnancy, commenting that upon having a child or being killed, Also, Ayla expressed concern over the small size of Marle's breasts, worrying that they weren't sufficient to give milk to children; this exchange was censored in American versions of the game."
I guess if it was in the Japanese version that's fine but we'd have to see parts of it to confirm something like that.
It seems that the part where she pukes after Azala has more to do with her being drunk than her being pregnant, though.
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Portal 2: well.
Story's good, voices are good, and the new gameplay concepts (colored goop with various effects, portable barriers, portable funnels) are all great.
My complaint is, broadly, with the difficulty. To begin with, Portal sometimes used non-portal-able sections of wall in some places to make the puzzles work. Portal 2 sometimes uses portal-able sections of wall to make the puzzles work. Instead of a room full of surfaces you can portal and an open-ended search to figure out how to solve the room's puzzle, you're in a room where there's only three little patches of surface you can use your portal gun on and so it's immediately obvious that you'll be using those. The end result is that it's like someone went through the game with a highlighter.
This alone wouldn't be such a big deal if the puzzles were still hard, but they're not. That itself wouldn't be such a big deal if there a wealth of advanced maps and alternate, more challenging chambers to go through, but there aren't any of those. Those were a great idea in the first Portal, letting the main game seem kinda easy while keeping challenge in for those who wanted it; what happened to that? It seems like we have to rely on internet map-makers for that stuff instead now. So, that's kind of disappointing. I love the concepts they've introduced here, but I feel like I barely did anything with them. I'll play some co-op tonight, maybe that will improve things.
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It seems that the part where she pukes after Azala has more to do with her being drunk than her being pregnant, though.
But how else will things get blown out of proportion in weird ways!
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Aquaria - shoot lasers at tigerfish, reach international waters, fuck shellfish
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Lost Odyssey: Got Sarah.
The balance between immortals and mortals is hilariously one sided, just like in Suikoden Tactics!
Mortals get skills by leveling up (like FF4 characters)
Immortals learn skills from accessores (like FF9 characters) and can learn any skill from any mortal, too, by selecting one of those skills and fighting in the same battle as the mortal. They have better stats and auto revive after a while (like Lenneth)
Would you rather have a character with:
- White magic
OR a character with:
- Every kind of magic
- Better stats
- Status immunity
- A passive skill that restores 10% of max MP whenever the character defends during battle
- Auto revive
- etc etc
In battle, I'm always using my 4 immortal uber gods of allmighty power and a varying weak, pathetic underlevelled peon that's only there to make me leech off his skills before I'm throwing him away again. There's just no challenge in the game anymore.
This fits two central themes of the game, I think:
- Immortals are just better but need the mortals to survive.
- Cooke and Mack suck. Seriously, never sing again you two.
Dreams are still well written and all, but they start reminding me of VP cutscenes. 90% of the time, that new character is going to die in 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, the less said about the rest of the story the better.
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Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 - I take back what I said about the Turn A and Infinite Justice being bad. They just needed thier C6 attacks to become good again. Or decent in the Turn A's case. Having a fantastic C6 still doesn't save it from having both Moonlight Butterfly and Throw A
'NadeNuke nerfed massively. For the IJ...well, it's money move in DWG2 was the C6 as well, though it did like the C3 and C4 at times and they feel worse now(same moves, just...they seem weaker). The new C6 is a good 360 clearer, while the old one was a wide line clearer. I think I prefer the old one, but the new one is objectively just as good, just plays to a different style. Latteral trade there. (Note: I may end up liking it more, haven't actually PLAYED the IJ yet. Just watched Tai play it alot)
Thoughts on what are probably my favorite mechs right now:
ZZ Gundam: This rocks. The double zeta's a powerhouse. Strong line-clearing C4, grab C3, and a ground musou that is best decribed as a Giant Fuck-Off Laser...immediately followed by a second one just because that's how Judau rolls. IMO, easily one of the best non-combination musous in the game. Has an argument to be flat out the best ground musou thus far. Only drawback is that it's a slug. Except if you doubletap the dash button it turns into a plane which moves very quickly and eats up less thruster then normal dashing. Yeah, the ZZ can basically do everything.
Qubeley: Specifically Haman's version of it. They actually slightly changed some moves between the Qubeleys now. This thing is fun for one reason and one reason only: lightning fast officer killing. Zero Range Shot + Chase Drive means that very few things can survive even two shots of her dash charge(she throws something like 5-6 funnels out in front of her in a tight fan. If you're right on an officer when you do it, you can hit them with most of all of the funnels. The aforementioned parts sharply boost the damage on *each individual funnel*). The Mk2(Puru Two) has a similar dash charge that actually focuses the funnels on one point, which should in theory be better for officer killing, but I find it harder to hit with. Anyway, the rest of the Qubeley's game is...alright? Good musous(the ground one is good for getting people off you when you're surrounded, the air one moves you forward quickly so good for escapes), and there's nothing glaringly bad about the other moves, just not great. Still, that dash charge.
Burning Gundam: Domon has become a kappa. Spin spin spin~ that is all he needs to do. Magnetic Field + Square Drive and you will seriously never need to use anything but his C4 ever(except maybe on higher star maps on hard. Then you might need his musous from time to time. Maybe). He has a really nice C6 too...except there's no reason to ever use it. Sure, more damage then the C4. Worse coverage, slower to come out, doesn't last as long, can't be used defensively. They really needed to switch those moves. What the fuck were they thinking making Burning Slash Typhoon *better*? It was already one of the best C4s in DWG2!
Turn X: SHINING FINGEERRRRRR!!!! That is all.
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Final Fantasy 4 The After Years - Finance is Hard, I Wanna Go to the Moooooooon
So Kain meets with Cecil and it's kinda awkward and then he find Ceo again. (Fuck!) So we then go through a cave, Ceodore 'falls down a hole' while trying to escape from the creepy creeper Kain and Kain jumps down with him. So much for the grand escape. Kain reveals he wants to kill a dragoon from Baron or something, blah blah his past haunts him.
NOW WE CAN CHOOSE SCENARIOS! Cool!
So I pick Edward, figuring maybe it would be short and inoffensive or something. Boy was I wrong.
The first thing we establish is that Harley, Edward's secretary, is much more competent than him. "Hey we are in debt, we owe money to like the entire world." "I KNOW BUT I JUST WANT TO PLAY MY HARP AND THINK ABOUT MY GIRLFRIEND I BANGED FOR A YEAR WHO DIED 18 YEARS AGO AND TALK ABOUT WHEN MY FRIENDS WENT TO THE MOOOON AND HOW I MISSED IT" and then he fangirls over Cecil. So we have dreams about Anna. C'mon, this is pathetic. Harley is way hotter than Anna anyway, she's got the hot librarian thing going on. Anyway, we figure out that Ed doesn't get much respect in the world, everyone calls him Your Highness like a prince. It's almost like they recognize that he is incompetent and very unconcerned with actually ruling the country.
So anyway, a meteor falls and Harley goes to investigate it. In classic Edward fashion he wants to come to shirk away from all responsibility help Harley with the investigation, but she is like stfu. Edward tries to sneak out of the castle but he takes guards. Bardsong is terrible. OMG I LOVE USING NOTHING BUT THE ATTACK COMMAND. If you find pushing X a lot thrilling then you'll love Ed's chapter. I have to express how much fun it is to play with the three guards who have no skillsets. It is like the best idea ever A+++++++.
So we find Harley and come back and Cecil is revealed to want exclusive access to the meteor or something, so Edward and Harley go to see him and brings flowers. How sweet of him. We go through a lot of caves and then... HARLEY FALLS SICK WITH DESERT FEVER . SERIOUSLY?! She is even laying in the same bed as Rosa. Seriously. Edward gets the guards to stay with her, which establishes who the real monarch is. So Edward has a flashback to Anna and Tellah (sigh...) and then he in goes alone and gets the Sand Pearl (why send the king/prince for this job??), which can only be gotten on a Full Moon so you have to waste Tents on getting to the full moon. Oh well. So Ed goes back and SAVES THE DAY and then we go to Baron and see Yang, who is also visiting Cecil. His boat gets mysteriously crashed. I wonder who did that?!?!?
So we meet with Cecil and he's acting weird, being all formal and forceful about their interaction (although he could possibly be kinda normal, it's not over the top or anything.). Edward calls him "My Lord" which establishes who is the bitch and who is the butch in this relationship. Edward is very sad that Cecil is possessed and left SPY FLOWERS where he overhears E. Cecil plotting with a woman to take over Damcyan (like that's hard). THE PLOT THICKENS.
While Cecil possession is way too much like the FF4 plot point (wow, so shocking for this game!), it makes sense. Baron is clearly the most powerful country around and mind controlling the king again feels logical enough.
WHO SHOULD I PLAY AS NEXT?!
Porom, Palom, Edge, Yang, KAIN, and Rydia are the choices.
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So I finished Bayonetta a few days ago. For a while it didn't look like I'd beat it before RH, but hey, it is a fair bit shorter.
Fun fact: I totally didn't notice that you could buy witch hearts (max HP upgrades) until the last three chapters. Whoops. This probably made final Jeanne needlessly, punishingly hard, but it's all good fun.
Overall it's a pretty solid game, and it's easy to see the Devil May Cry 1 and God Hand in the game, which makes sense considering the director. Of course, considering those were already my two favourite action games, this is a good thing! The game has great random enemy design in general; all of them are distinct and you do fight them in rather different ways, which is nice. Definitely a pretty big deal to me. Bosses are interesting enough, they're sort of God of War-ish from what I've seen of that game, but with a better combat system. I generally enjoyed most of their fight designs. Overall they're decent on challenge but the checkpoints are kinda unnecessary in some cases, oh well. Nothing HM can't fix I'm sure. The last Jeanne fight (as mentioned) and Temperantia (second major boss) were the ones I had the most trouble with, but all of them were at least competent except perhaps Fortitudo (first boss, whatevs), and Balder (kinda disappointing but oh well). Incidentally, since I suck at this game and die a lot, the only two non-stone awards I got outside the prologue where against those two bosses (bronze and SILVER!!! respectively).
I really like witch time and I think it's immensely stupid that the highest difficulty does away with it, but it's not the first time that a highest difficulty setting would do something lame. Hopefully Hard is cool, for all that I'm more likely to replay Normal first and deal with all those damn stone awards taunting me. A few fights in Normal stripping you of Witch Time is fine since it made them extra hard (gold Grace and Glory oh shiiii-) but yeah. The mechanic really rewards watching and learning enemies which is pretty much the best part of the genre to me anyway!
The game is amazingly over the top which is always fun. LUKA is pretty great, definitely one of the game's stars in his goofiness. The plot in general is very silly; taken seriously it would probably be pretty bad, and it does devote a bit too much time to said plot (ludicrously long cutscenes around the last two chapters or so in particular) but ultimately sceneskip says this doesn't matter too much at worst, and I enjoyed the silliness enough to watch all the cutscenes anyway. Otherwise it's... yeah. Action zaniness taken to yet another level. I wasn't expecting a game to so blatantly top DMC3's "ride a motorbike straight up a tower then use it as a weapon" sequence but this game very, very much does. It also manages to integrate more of its over-the-topness directly into the game itself which is pretty fun. Also DID MY HAIR JUST EAT A BOSS?!? The game is also clearly hardcore trolling monotheistic religions with the whole "you are a WITCH and you summon DEMONS and you kill ANGELS (also the final boss is God, only female for an EXTRA level of trolling)" but unlike say Xenosaga I come away from this unoffended because it's so blatantly doing it for giggles and not to say deep things about religion and philosophy. Your milage may vary of course.
Aesthetically, while I have some predictable qualms about Bayonetta's design, I think the design of the angels is pretty excellent, and otherwise the game is certainly pretty. Musically... it's a bit of a mix. On the one hand, I think the game shows decisively that "Fly Me to the Moon" is not well-suited to be a battle theme. On the other hand, that track that plays for the last stage the archangel boss fights is just perfect as an example of what game music does well: really sets the scene beautifully for "yes I am going to beat this guy this time!" while still sticking within the musical style the game has adopted.
If the game was going to have loading times, then I think the game came up with the greatest loading screen ever. I doubt I'd have wanted to practice much otherwise but a little practice time while loading is just perfect, as is showing you the various combos. The game is fairly polished in general (e.g. the tutorials for the skills you purchase).
The game has an array of nagging weaknesses which keep it from being amazing to me, since in principle it feels like the game could have been my favourite in the genre to date pretty easily! Not to dwell on the negative to long, but they are:
-The game walks a fine line with the whole fanservice thing and sometimes it just gets embarrassing. I can deal with it when it's fitting in with the whole "This game is stupidly over the top" thing but then you get things like "hey guys let's watch Bayonetta pole dancing in the ending credits" which is just ffffffff.
-The game feels cluttered. Most of this can be ignored but it's kinda annoying: if you're going to have a crazy-high number of attacks that you can perform, do we really need like six different weapons as well? And the shop is so crowded I managed to miss something that was disproportionately important; mostly my fault but still questionable design there. The menus also felt a bit crowded and unintuitive (so I mostly ignored them!).
-Varying the gameplay is cool and all and sometimes works well when it's short (e.g. the FPS sequence in chapter 15). However, the highway and space harrier are places the game falls very, very flat. The former is the worst stage in the game and the latter would steal that mantle except Final Jeanne is awesome. The former is ultimately inoffensive, just exceedingly dull, while the latter... needed to be half the length or have twice as many checkpoints. I actually used my one and only item against the space harrier boss after a couple deaths, not because I couldn't win with perserverance but because I just wasn't enjoying it. I don't even MIND redoing large parts of stages upon death (I mean I think having three lives a la Mega Man is pretty optimum) but not while playing a goofy sub-genre sequence which is definitely not the reason I'm playing the game. Also barrel rolling making the screen spin is -idiotic-.
-And finally, it's ultimately minor but the game really didn't need to default to "no" to almost every choice. Be less like Suikoden 5 please.
Anyway, the game is probably somewhere in the general ballpark of an 8/10 to me, I kneejerk it a bit below DMC1 and GH due to the above flaws but it's still very good despite my objections. Pretty easy to see where the hype comes from.
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Ciato, Edge's tale is probably the best one. Your choice if that means to save it for last.
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Play Kain next.
Bayonettas!!1-- Because I beat it when I was at Elfland I suppose I should say that mostly what Elf said but on Very Easy so I am totes a million times bettern with silver stautes all over that shit omg. I also didn't see those witch hearts in the shops, but they might not have been there on easy? Not like the game needs to be any easier on Very Easy I mean. The Pole Dancing in the credits didn't offend me so much, I am pretty sure it was their way of actually showing the Mo Cap person doing their actual motions that were used for combat and put them in a slightly more normal setting.
The overall exploitative nature though yeah bugs me to hell. I guess it was funny sometimes how far they stretch it?
On the other hand, I loved the music. I love Fly Me to the Moon and think they actually had a pretty good version of it that they used, the one time they tied it in to the actual plot was actually pretty good (although Bayonetta didn't have the strongest singing voice). They just play the song OVER AND OVER AND OVER which kind of kills that cover. Hasn't really impacted the other versions of it I love though.
MEGAMANS X - So I played this also on super easy lamer mode. Got up to Wily 3. The checkpoints broke me. Beat that hard platforming section that they did nothing to make super easy on super easy lamer mode? Died to the boss? Okay you go back to before that. That is cool. I soldier through that while swearing like a sailor (apologies to Elves and Ciatos for that. Not to Mages though. They needed to hear that. It was an important life lesson.) Get to boss rush. Nope. Not happening. Ragequit after trying to do Blade Man a few times. I just can't get through 8 fucking bosses on that health bar. It is not happening.
Gods I hate boss rushes in main games.
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Breath of Death VII: Picked this up on Steam. Man, hard mode does not dick around. By midgame, 90% of enemies are faster than every member of your party, and they hit hard enough that the SaGa-style "full HP at the start of every fight" system is no guarantee that you won't get wiped out in two rounds. Luckily you can save anywhere. Anyway, just recruited Erik. LE BRAINS!
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Infinite Undiscovery: In the beginning. Ok, watching videos of the game made it seem completely awesome, but I'm already starting to see the problems.
- Why is the lock on icon so big and so red? Sometimes I can't even see properly what the enemy is doing because I'm targetting him. WTF? And there's no way to not target enemies, unfortunately.
- No satisfying way to evade/block enemies beyond just moving away. This game needs a roll button, better guard and more agressive enemies.
- Connecting with other PCs is clunky. I knew about it but it's worse than I thought.
- You can get your first sidequest by talking to one of the prisoners at the beginning twice. Archaic game design here. (this is just an example)
Yeah. I'm a bit disappointed. There's no particular saving grace either, as plot/characters/setting are pretty much stock JRPG with nothing interesting going on, unlike some other Tri Ace games like VP or RoF.
Lost Odyssey: Disc 3. The plot thickens and the party splits up! (Which is fine here) The music gets really good too.
There's still a lot of nonsense though, which doesn't really work for a big realistic game with voice acting. Like, two ten year old kids stealing a train, two other people stealing another train 10 minutes later in the same station, the bad guy's evil laugh being used as a plot device, etc.
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Playing Resonance of Fate makes me want to play Infinite Undiscovery again. RoF makes IU look damned good by comparison.
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FM5- Finished! Really good game.
The good:
Changes to the link system, including friendly fire. The entire system's more flexible, which is good! Gameplay definitely toned down some of the broken of FM4 and generally tried to make things interesting with more customization, a rougelike dungeon where you get upgrade points for wanzers and rare gear, and letting you recruit pilots so you can build your unit how you see fit. The story is pretty good, it tells the story of one main's rise through the military, leading to the elite anti terrorist group. Game's challenge is generally even and solid throughout. The arena (while cash grindy) way less of a fucking pain in the ass than FM4's cash system.
The bad: FM5 definitely suffers from lack of characters. The story itself is fine, but Walter doesn't have much personality. For that matter, the only characters worth noting are Lynn, and Hector/Randy to a lesser extent. You don't get a group dynamic like FM4 had because you've only got a few plot characters. The main missions *reaaaaaaaaaaaallly* needed to give you more money, the game literally tells you to abuse the arena for cash. Sloppy design there. On that subject, I never felt the need to actually change pilots. Your starting six team is quite good enough, and while you can rotate, there's no real benefit to doing so. Eh. The translation was also really literal at points. I am not going to hold that against either the game or the translators, since fan project and it was a massive undertaking.
My complaints are generally pretty minor with the game. It's very fun and definitely encourages replay. NG+ and hard mode? Score.
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Playing Ogre Battle for the SNES (and by playing, I mean jumping around with various downloaded save states so I can finish it in a few hours). Got to the part where you recruit Rauny, and she's being pursued by Ares, some bandit sent by her fiancee.
Ares: I was sent by Baron Apros, your fiancee. "I'm crazy about her, I can't live without her."
Rauny: I'd rather die than go back there.
Ares: Let's see if you fight like you talk! The Baron did say "dead or alive." Hah, hah, hah!!
Ew. Is the necrophilia implication intended or is that just poor localization?
Anyway, the game is still an eyesore, but at least I've got a better idea of how it works now to help Neph with some hacking.
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You can't be distracted by dressing up your characters in Infinite Undiscovery though.
Granted, I admit have given Capell the skirt he eventually gets for the rest of the game.
Lost Odyssey: Oh my god, AWFUL theme song. I want to listen to Tears of Blood now. Why is Jansen humming this, of all people?
I must say that I didn't suspect the bad guy to be the bad guy in that game at all, UNTIL I saw that he had a massive house with a beautiful garden. I'm hard-wired to think that rich = evil in work of fictions!
Cooke is a bit disturbing. She's a 10 years old who behaves like a 10 year old, but who has a distinctively mature face, and wears heels and a miniskirt. ...Yeah. There's worse in other JRPGs, I guess.
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Considering how the leader of her people dresses, Cooke is still very conservative in dress...
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Ew. Is the necrophilia implication intended or is that just poor localization?
I replayed OB over the last couple weeks (for PSX, though) and was struck by the shoddiness of the localization in general. Also by the fact that oh my god did they really steal the ewok chant from RotJ's finale for the ending theme? They did.
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BoFIII- Final dungeon has been relatively easy so far. Chimera was a complete joke boss who failed to even take out/put a dent in Nina (also Nina War Cry x 3, Ryu Focus > Focus > Super Combo - 3000~ damage, Rei Weretiger - 1500~ <.<) >_> Just defeated the Dragon Lord. He also failed to take out anybody <_< I am currently saved back in the room with the beds. Team is Ryu Lv42, Rei Lv38, Nina L39. They were my highest levelled characters before entering the dungeon (36, 31, 33) but really I just like them =-) Besides I am saving the real CT bait broke/smash for the replay (though the game did force her yet again to get rid of the plant thing blocking further progress in the dungeon) :P
(oh yes Ryu's Kaiser is gloriously OP - picked Infinity/Trance/Radiance for the first time vs the boss in Ryu's dream which resulted in this and ... yeah >_> Focus > Focus > Super Combo - almost 4000 damage (OHKO?) ;o)
Yaay for more peeps playing Lost Odyssey!~
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Chimera is actually the source of many resets for new players in BoF3 due to Paralyze Tail. Getting a highly accurate Paralysis move out of nowhere slamming you and in BoF3, Paralysis is considered death ala Petrify in many games To make matters worse, I think it ignores Kaiser and Tiamat's status immunity (especially bad in the latter since Paralyzed Tiamat/Behemoth/Mammoth = Instant Game Over. Yes, even though Ryu doesn't actually die in Dragon Form -_-)...
But that's really the only threatening thing he has, so if he never uses, its a pretty safe fight.
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As someone who sucked at BoF3 (as in: 3+ resets on the squids on the Black Ship) AND saw Paralysis Tail, Chimera was still a joke!
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Considering how the leader of her people dresses, Cooke is still very conservative in dress...
Well I'm glad, because she's 10!
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Cthulhu Saves the World: had some trouble with Ape Princess (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTgsdHLY-r8) until I realized that Kraken ignores defenses, so that's an easy way to knock the dogs out of the fight early. This was the first boss that took a couple tries. At first I tried blinding the dogs instead, but my blind strike wasn't always taking effect and I really needed to spend Umi's turns on healing anyway.
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Considering how the leader of her people dresses, Cooke is still very conservative in dress...
Well I'm glad, because she's 10!
This.
Poor Cooke hardly has a role model in terms of fashion sense from her own family members either :P
Play Lost Odyssey Ciatos? ^_^
Huuh. I think Chimera might have used Paralyze Tail once or something but I either used Cure on it or it was on someone unimportant for the fight (like Nina after all the buffs/debuffs were up >.>) Well considering the amount of damage Rei and Ryu were putting out ... also Slow/Speed Down worked on this boss (I had Nina cast it during the start of the fight while Rei started with the Speed Ups) so between this and tossing up the War Shouts Nina wasn't entirely useless for the fight either (everyone was getting Ex Turns so I think it was the Chimera just didn't really have time to threaten with status really) <.< NEB yeah I remember those. The game was blabbing something about moving up the ship and I was like ... wait ... what ... oh crap. Bad reaction times there. I managed to win but it was touch and go for a bit while there were two of them around, there was healing a plenty, revival and then me cursing the rest of the fight because after managing to take one out (Focus > Focus > Aura abuse with Warrior!Ryu whee) the remaining one wouldn't use Multistrike during the remainder of the battle and instead just spammed Blizzard and the rest of it's ice/water arsenal until it ran out of it AP ... then it sometimes used base physicals ... and spells with no AP! (failed to cast) I'm not even sure Multistrike is worth it now (got it later from something else) but I really wanted it then >.>
So ... final boss was also a joke. I think I broke the game too hard with my hammer despite not even trying -that- hard :P I even went easy on her too; no dragon form with Ryu, no Weretiger for Rei, all humans the entire fight~
Full recap of final/overall thoughts on the game later.
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I played the first 30 minutes. Been lazy lately.
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Lost Odyssey: Started! Not much to say beyond that, other than "Sky Volcano" and "This game thinks its a Final Fantasy" (I mean that in a neutral sense, mind.)
Gargoyle's Quest 2: Randomly decided to replay this cause...I could. Beat it! I did have to just password past the forest cause I hate that level, and I was boring those watching, and the game gets more fun after it cause you GET NEW ABILITIES and that level is a stupid filler level that is longer than it should be and GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
...but it was still fun besides that.
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Final Fantasy 4 The After Years – Girls Stay in the Back
I asked people who I should play as, and the vote was for the stache, so I played as Yang! Yang has an overzealous, excitable daughter named Ursula. He is a killjoy and doesn’t want to train her, so she runs off. Meanwhile, we find out that Cecil has been acting crazy and Yang is in total denial about this. OMG CECIL'S TOO NICE AND PERFECT TO DO SOMETHING BAD!!! We go to find Ursula on a mountain and she is kicking the ass of some evils and she is investigating the meteor on her own. Probably not a good idea, but whatevs.
This section seems to have better gameplay than the last; Ursula is a very fast, kind fragile PC and Yang is quite tanky. The three monks are kinda boring, but they are generics. Ursula once she gets caught up is quite good because of Kick’s charge time. Kick takes an extra turn to charge, but because Ursula is so fast it is actually worth using on her. So we explore and find out bad things are happening, we have a sequence where Yang and monks get slowly backed into a corner in the crystal room while the women stay behind (this has never happened before), the crystal is stolen, time to go to Baron and bitch at some dudes.
The boat gets attacked! So we land on an island. In what seems like at least the fifth time in this quest, Yang tells his daughter she can’t come with him to find fuel and he gets lost so she goes anyway. This part is infuriating because it keeps switching between Ursula and Yang except every time it switches back to Ursula, she gets thrown in the back. Which is obnoxious because she’s the best physical PC in her group. This happens DURING A BOSS FIGHT which made me angry until I realized it was a plot fight. So we kill the turtle boss thing with weakened special which made it slow. Yang realizes his daughter isn’t a total putz so he agrees to train her.
The highlight of the story is the reappearance of the EX-KING OF FABUL, the sexer of Yang’s wife and the power behind the throne. I thought the Duke Consort was a suspicious fellow when I met him, but in the flashback to Ursula’s birth, he’s wearing a crown! OBVIOUSLY, HE IS THE EX-KING. Still ruling even after 17 years and banging Yang’s wife for life.
Overall this story was better than Edward’s even if it has Cecil fellatio much like Edward’s. I think every man in this world wants Cecil to make them his bitch or something, geez. And I even liked the guy in the original game. The quest emphasized that speed is much more important than in the original game because Ursula 3-2’s the world and it is awesomesauce. Definitely going to use her later.
Next is the brattiest brat in the whole world, Palom aka Blue aka Marza the Sorcerer!
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OPP (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xGuGSDsDrM) 4 life
Lufia 2 Remake - So I am sick of fighting Gades. Up to what had better fucking be the last fight with him. They take away all your characters but and like double his fucking damage. So dodging his shit is a pain in the arse and hits for 3HKO damage. Fuck this fight. It is like the fifth one or so in the game so far? Seriously overkilled this fight. I suppose that means I should be able to dodge the attacks fine right? Yeah except for the new ones or the one where the animation changes to coming from the opposite side of the screen at the last minute almost at the time you needed to be dodging from the left, so it just fucks you over when you can't dodge any more.
I should put this another way. This is a Lufia 2 remake, so the target market is people that liked the original. The overlap between fans of the original and people with amazing reaction times is pretty fucking low. Previous fights just honestly lets you tank through it just fine. Now it is raep tiems.
Breath of Death - Got the vampire chick, dungeons in this are frustrating. So many branching paths that don't head anywhere , but hey want to check everywhere for chests right? Edit - I dont meant this in that they are dead ends, they are branches that loop back on to the main path, which is awesome for when you are going back and forth checking paths for chests. If you lose track of where you are it is pretty easy to walk around in circles for a while or to just miss a branch that actually goes somewhere else from the main path.
Then enemy formations are fucking enormous 6 enemies? ergh. Yes you can AoE them down and stuff, but it is just really draining to go through long winding dungeons and then have huge trash clears. Restricted number of fights in an area is a good thing. Wow that number of restricted fights is fucking huge though.
A lot of the less conventional things in the game are really great though! I do look forward to more stuff like this, but it is a real slog to chew through the content.
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Mario Vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem - Up to 5-1+, S-11+, X-1.
Spent most of my gaming time recently on this. Decently fun.
Plus mode sounded like the least possible interesting use of my time and I just played through 1+ to see what the plus mode DK and minigame were like, yet I have somehow since meandered halfway through the main and special levels.
Have not looked into the expert levels yet for some reason.
Also started on Puzzle Agent 2, but haven't progressed particularly far. The person who decided to make a puzzle based on coin values but described the coins using US coin nicknames and didn't include the values in the image needs to be slapped.
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Hahaha man you should totally visit there. Getting asked for a Nickel and just sort of having to stare at the person is a great experience.
SLRPG - Okay, so started this. Died to Terrapins. Restarted this. Got up to Bowser, he killed me with Big Bang like 5 times. I gave up one round and used regular attacks instead of Jump. Okay that makes him not counter with Big Bang.
So then I died after 2 fights with Goombas, packs of three and no idea how to do timed blocks. Learned that and save state spammed my way through to Hammer Bros. Much Save state abuse followed. Beat them.
I still really am not comfortable with the timing on timed hits. Your attacks are normally fine, they are as you are connecting or swinging most of the time, they feel pretty right. The timed blocking though? Ouch this just feels so completley disconnected and unresponsive it is not funny. I take back all my jokes about Eph sucking at timing.
Thus starts someone playing SLRPG who has never played SMRPG before. Expect many stupid statements and WTF faces.
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Hahaha man you should totally visit there. Getting asked for a Nickel and just sort of having to stare at the person is a great experience.
SLRPG - Okay, so started this. Died to Terrapins. Restarted this. Got up to Bowser, he killed me with Big Bang like 5 times. I gave up one round and used regular attacks instead of Jump. Okay that makes him not counter with Big Bang.
So then I died after 2 fights with Goombas, packs of three and no idea how to do timed blocks. Learned that and save state spammed my way through to Hammer Bros. Much Save state abuse followed. Beat them.
I still really am not comfortable with the timing on timed hits. Your attacks are normally fine, they are as you are connecting or swinging most of the time, they feel pretty right. The timed blocking though? Ouch this just feels so completley disconnected and unresponsive it is not funny. I take back all my jokes about Eph sucking at timing.
Thus starts someone playing SLRPG who has never played SMRPG before. Expect many stupid statements and WTF faces.
This is going to be glorious. I honestly kinda agree with the comments on timed blocking being a bitch, and that's coming from someone who actually is good enough at timing to reliably timed block most things even in SLRPG. But timed blocking is one of SMRPG's worst problems in terms of design - both in that it's important enough that taking it out removes a significant part of the system's paradigm and in that it's just bleh design at best. Kind of a catch 22 going there.
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Final Fantasy 4 The After Years:
ONCE I KILL CECIL, ROSA, YOU WILL BE MINE!!!!!
Hahahahahahahaahahaahaha. No way. He did not just say that.
FOLLOWED BY
"I've reserved a front row seat for you, Rosa.... Now watch as Cecil dies right before your eyes!"
That's a great way to get a girl to love you, you charmer you.
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Breath of Death VII: finished on Normal. Teamwork and Regenerate+ helped make short work of the final. Might go through again on Hard and fight this optional boss I've just read about.
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Final Fantasy 4 The After Years:
ONCE I KILL CECIL, ROSA, YOU WILL BE MINE!!!!!
Hahahahahahahaahahaahaha. No way. He did not just say that.
FOLLOWED BY
"I've reserved a front row seat for you, Rosa.... Now watch as Cecil dies right before your eyes!"
That's a great way to get a girl to love you, you charmer you.
I dunno, -I'd- certainly be attracted to someone who put Cecil out of my misery.
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Final Fantasy 4 The After Years:
ONCE I KILL CECIL, ROSA, YOU WILL BE MINE!!!!!
Hahahahahahahaahahaahaha. No way. He did not just say that.
FOLLOWED BY
"I've reserved a front row seat for you, Rosa.... Now watch as Cecil dies right before your eyes!"
That's a great way to get a girl to love you, you charmer you.
I dunno, -I'd- certainly be attracted to someone who put Cecil out of my misery.
This is Rosa though, so it changes things dramatically. Did you not forget just how her entire character is "LOVE ME CECIL!", despite how its very clear that he DOES love her?
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At least there's some science behind it. If you kill someone and coat yourself in their blood, you will smell enough like her old mate to fool her in to having sex with you. Six of my murders and four of my sexual encounters are attributed to this.
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Lufia 2 Remake - This fight continues to be fucked enough that I am just going to spam Retry + until I win. The game lost all respect I have for it now. Edit - Okay so it only took one. Guess I was just a touch below a HP threshhold that makes it far more manageable. Dekar saying that his bikini is also kind of getting the game some respect.
SLRPG - This on the other hand is being far more balanced and fair than the above pile of bullshit. I still don't know about timed blocks. Croco was kind of ruining my shit with the Bomb, but once I knew to expect it then the fight was fine, just kept everyone above 15 health and it wasn't a problem. Can you even block everything in the game? If so the timing for some attacks is pretty fucked up. Mack on the other hand I am pretty sure if I wasn't save state abusing could have been beaten second try (there was one point where Mallow got down to 4 HP and Mario got down to 1 that I think I save stated to not die). Otherwise Mack is pretty easy honestly. Shysters aren't rape face randoms. None of the randoms this play session have been particularly bad (they aren't as rough as 3 packs of Goombas chained one after the other at level 1 without knowing how to block...). Overall so far I have done a bit of grinding with Jump when I went to new areas to get a feel for the randoms mostly, but otherwise am still matching the suggested levels even.
So other than some sanity check shit that the original game fails, this hack is holding up pretty well for someone with no knowledge of the game. I expect it to break down next play where if I am reading the walkthrough properly I will be fighting Bowyer soon.
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I'm highly interested to see how you manage the hack due to the timed blocking failures and not having played the original. How are you building your PCs so far?
Also, for your timed block question: only physicals can be time-blocked, and not even all of the physicals are blockable. Magic is unblockable by default. Also, once you reach Tadpole Pond, the storebought items and Frog Coin items may interest you. Items in SMRPG are hilariously overpowered, and SLRPG makes you actually -care- about it.
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DW7 - So...it would appear that giant stick really IS strategy. Yue Ying's musou is fantastic for keeping a combo going on an officer. I'm honestly really impressed. Square string into C5(a launcher) -> air attack string(three hits followed by a knockdown, followed by diving down after the enemy and popping them back into the air a touch) -> musou(giant stick beat that hits in the air and launches them a bit higher) -> return to step 1. Repeat until either out of musou uses or you drop the combo. Staff is a much better weapon then I initially gave it credit for, which pleases me greatly.
On the other hand, while I *can* pull off the above combo...doing it reliably is another critter entirely. The camera is your worst enemy here.
Touhou Oddysey - Tai got this working on the laptop while he was out, so I restarted this finally. Had to stop playing a while ago since...it just stopped working on my desktop for unexplained reasons. Anyway, just beat Alice. She wasn't bad at all, only killed Cirno and Rumia, though she did really chew through my sp reserves. Patchy for fight MVP, the healing doll would not have been killable without Silent Selene.
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Considering how the leader of her people dresses, Cooke is still very conservative in dress...
Well I'm glad, because she's 10!
To be fair to Dhyer, that queen has more revealing clothes than Seth, who pretty much dresses like a prostitute. This game is ridiculous.
I'm doing endgame sidequest stuff.
So what's new, skillset-wise? Immortals have 12 slots. (Three slots give access to every kind of magic, so even mages have a lot of slots to spare) There's:
- Resistance to every element
- HP+30/20/10%
- MP+20/+10%
- MP regen (With those last three on I can use the most powerful magic available every round without losing any MP)
- Atk +
- Def +
- MDef +
- Auto barrier
- Auto protect
- Auto Scan on every enemy
- Gold x 2 for everyone
- Skill points x2 for everyone
- More items after battle
- Ability to equip two accessories (What)
- +3 slots (WHAT)
- +5 slots (WHATTTT)
Mortals, who don't have access to any of this, pretty much have no purpose now. Maaaaaybe Jensen and Sed, but that's a stretch. I just have all of them defend in battle most of the time.
One of Kaïm's battle quotes was something like "Only the strong survive".
Yeah. This kind of "omg I'm badass lol" quote goes against everything Kaïm stands for, according to the dreams. That's what happens when you hire multiple writers and no one has any idea of what everyone else is doing.
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Uh oh I wouldn't say that to Seth's face Fenrir! ;) Better watch out for Sed too :P
Jansen would be awesme in battle if it weren't for his ridiculous spell charge/casting times with Double Cast. Oh well I found him pretty useful earlier in the game~
I think for DLC there's an optional dungeon where it's possible to get accessories like "Reduce Casting Time 3" and "Instant/Turn 1" cast but I never got around to doing that. If I ever get round to setting up net access for my 360 I might >.>
Cooke is quite evasive and w/th Reduced Casting 1 + 2 she casts spells as fast as the immortal mages. This means Double Cast aside she is probably a better mage by the end than Jansen since she can just equip an accessory w/th Black Magic 7 giving her access to most black magic including some high level spells, meaning she is simply able to outpace Jansen with a wide variety of White and Black magic. I think~
(granted Jansen -does- hit quite hard with nukes and thanks to his unique 2 accessories ability would be able to equip more accessories than her for Spirit/Compo spells too which would give him quite a lot of variety as well especially with the ability to cast two spells at once ... toughy. Speed or power/variety!?~)
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Patchy for fight MVP
I found this to be pretty consistently the case until the good physical cannons showed up (hi Yuugi) since they have the added benefit of not dying to a sneeze.
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I wouldn't either!
But seriously, Seth's clothes: http://images.wikia.com/lostodyssey/images/3/37/Seth-01.jpg
It's easy to forget them because Ming's clothes are a lot more ridiculous!
Even the shy guy of the team (Sarah) shows a lot of cleavage.
I already bought the DLC (It costs one buck instead of ten now) , I'll definitely mention what I find..... Wait, doublecast? *goes level Jansen up*
Jansen's alright right now because his damage is comparable to that of the uber girls. He just lacks any MP regen, and his durability is a lot worse, (which matters against bosses but not against random battles) He definitely was MVP of the earlygame
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Jansen is very usable during the times you are levelling him to learn his skills. He is not Mack who buffs people and then just stairs at the fucking wall. Cooke would be usable if a third mage was really desirable. Three people spamming barrier moves is overkill though. You did find out that the barrier skills are broken right? They are. Not much in the game will completely destroy them in one hit. 0 damage all the time bro. Honestly I found throwing Sed in the front row was the best decision when you aren't learning skills from the mortals. He has the HP to tank well enough and adds nicely to the GC. ThePCformerlyKnownasPrince is also pretty usable for the same reasons, but I would rather someone else have his swords than him, so Sed it was since he keeps up with the equipment curve.
DLC has a Slots +20 or 25 skill or some stupid shit. I did the DLC dungeon, it is pretty long and boring. It is pretty much the Bahamut dungeon from FF8. I died to the final boss. Read about it being hard and went eh I have steamrolled all the other "hard" stuff at the end of the game, why not go for it. Progress in dungeon lost because he is a puzzle boss. zzzzzz fuck that and went and finished the game.
How am I handling SLRPG without knowing timed hits? Save state abuse until I find it. For most other things a walkthrough has me covered. I am building characters towards being I am only level 5, build what. I took a rank in all the stat choices with Mario so far and an extra in Magic. The physical stat was chosen at level 2 because shit was hitting like a truck and I had no armor. So you know, I just wanted the Def. Mallow has been Magic and 1 HP buffer. I will probably take 4 or so HP boosts over the course of the game and then Magic out the arse on everyone.
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Oh right dem barrier skills are smexy indeed. I'm not entirely sure now why I was more than three mages anyway. Probably a CT thing. Well for Jansen's case he was my most favourite character in the game and I just like him so >.> Looking forward to reading what you have to say about the game's remaining content Fenrir. Grefter is awesme. This is all I have to say~
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Patchy for fight MVP
I found this to be pretty consistently the case until the good physical cannons showed up (hi Yuugi) since they have the added benefit of not dying to a sneeze.
Speaking of...
Hi Yuugi! Join my team plz~
Wait...what do you mean you want to fight first. There was no boss icon here. Well, okay if you insis...
...um why are you OHKOing Meiling...and Remi...through Reimu's barrier...ohgodthatsmyface...
So yeah, fighting Yuugi did not turn out well. Got her to the stage where she uses Knockout In Three Steps, which I think is somewhat impressive considering she was OHKOing someone every time she got a turn. A few more levels and a good plan for her and I think I may have a shot.
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Yeahhh, more often than not recruitment will be done in true Gensokyo style: beating the crap out of someone until they're your friend somehow. Most recruitment fights are fairly harsh if tackled at the first opportunity. I want to say Yuugi had some elemental weaknesses, but memory escapes me (probably ice since her main gun is fire? It's been a while. She definitely has crap MDEF as a PC, so that's something). I'd check my file, but I forget how to run the damn thing.
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Jansen's really the highlight of the game yeah. I think I like Kaïm more because of the dreams but that's it.
Sed and Tolten have really bad durability right now. Seth's HPs = 5000. Sed's HPs = 2000. And she has elemental resistance/absorption. The mortal tank actually has less durability than the immortal mages right now, and that's probably not going to change. (On a side note, I like the durability difference between Kaïm and Cooke. He's like... more than 10x more durable. Not the kind of thing you often see in RPGs at equal levels)
I abused those cover skills with Cooke in the earlygame right now yes, but they're kind of weak right now. I still haven't gotten the lvl 7/8 spells though.
Optional boss is a puzzle boss = :(
Just got the big ship that looks like a shoe. There's a lot of optional stuff to do but I don't know where to look!
I'm still not sold on how immortality is bad for you, which is an obvious theme of the game. The game only shows how being an immortal among mortal is awful (fair point) But i can't imagine that Kaïm's potential future with Sarah would have been that bad (had they not met Evil Eyebrow Dude, again)
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Final Fantasy 4 The After Years – Evil Always Wins, Because Good is Dumb (Except When Evil is Also Dumb)
So we’ve got three chapters to talk about, and so little time!
Palom is a bitch. A bitchy bitch bitch bitch. He is a smartass to the Elder, is not dignified at all when sent to help out the Troians, and is generally a jerk to everyone. I like him. He acts like someone who is a early 20’s prodigy; someone who hasn’t quite learned to temper his ego yet, but has a good reason to be a little snooty. Even if he has silly girl hair.
So we climb the tower with Leonora and the two of them have some funny dialogue. Also wow Leonora is terrible.
So Troia gets attacked by evulz and Leonora wants to defend the crystal. Fine, but what she does is pretty clever. They steal the crystal and escape from the temple and warn us to get prepared for the magnetic cave or lodestone cave or whatever. This is a pretty solid tactic for dealing with soldiers and stuff, so I give them props for that; they can't wear their big bulky armor or wield weapons? Woot. So we travel through the cave and REFIGHT THE DARK ELF! AW YEAH. Died once, realized I had Slow, and then raped him.
Palom turns himself to stone again to try to keep the crystal from the bitch who attacks them, how original. Leonora saves him and the evil takes the crystal. Lame.
Porom's is next. They add a bit of character depth to her (the twin sister of a lazy prodigy, she is afraid he will surpass her and forget about her) after a silly flashback or two, I barely remember either of them, we kick things’ ass or something. Palom is a pretty good mage yo. Porom goes to get Kain, who is obviously not actually Dark Kain, and then we take him back to defend against crystal thieves!!! And then he steals the crystal. Plot twist, don’t let Kain near a crystal.
I think these two are probably my favorites so far; Palom and Porom are both characters that had room to grow because of being five in the original and I think they are fairly well done. I also like their art.
Next is Kain’s. This quest sucks ass, and not just because it’s about Kain. All of the enemies are piddling and easy aside from the one boss on Hooded Man/Ceodore’s. DARK KAIN is commissioned to steal crystals after fighting too many easy fights on Mt. Ordeals and fighting more easy fights in the Devil’s Road. Gahhhhhhhh, who designed this Kain killing things sequence, Scar?
Meanwhile, the Hooded Man and Ceodore continue their quest to elope (by this point Ceodore has fallen for Kain and will make sweet forbidden love to him, time to write a romance novel) run from the Baron soldiers and they see that Dark Kain is coming for the crystals. We travel to Damcyan quickly by climbing rocks. Ceodore falls off and Kain has to save him except Kain collects all the treasure chests instead and then insults Ceodore. Yes, just what he needed, to have lower self-confidence. Meanwhile, Dark Kain is cackling evilly at the thought of MURDERING CECIL. OH YES, I will murder Cecil and I will have sex with his wife and it will be fabulous! Fabulous! (He’ll be so pissed when he finds out that his turban-wearing side has already found a replacement.)
So Dark Kain attacks Edward and Edward releases a bomb on him. Except it doesn’t work and Dark Kain kidnaps Rosa while laughing like a maniac. Dark Kain is straight out of a Saturday Morning Cartoon or something (aside from the creepiness of wanting to have sex with a woman right after he murders her husband violently) with all his evil laughter and stupid lines. Hee hee hee …. Hahahahaa. I have Rosa now!! Yessss!! So he heads back to Baron with her and the crystals.
On Cid's airship, Turban Man, Cid, Eddie, and Ceodore rush to save the day or something and once they get to Baron the Hooded Man and Dark Kain fight. You mean the Hooded Man is Kain?!!??!!!??!!?!??!!?!!!?!!!?!?
OMG!!!
So Kain gets a spear back and kicks Dark Kain’s creepy crazy ass. He accepts Dark Kain as a part of himself and turns into a Holy Dragoon. Because of this acceptance, Ceodore edges far far away from him because wow you are fucked up man. (But he’s so pretty….) He is almost bishie enough to consider using in the final dungeon.
Almost.
So we meet E. Cecil and he greets us warmly, especially Kain. ESPECIALLY KAIN? Oh come ON. I guess he loves his cute crystal thief with prettiness.
And the quest ends~
Time to play as ninjaz!
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I'm not at home right now, but for those of you who are, Old World Blues is up on Steam. Get it if you like robo-scorpions.
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Final Fantasy 4 The After Years – Evil Always Wins, Because Good is Dumb (Except When Evil is Also Dumb)
There are so many Kains and Cecils and Hooded people in this description that I was thoroughly confused. Time to go play Kingdom Hearts because I think it may have less hooded figures in it!
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Cecil doesn't exist; he's been replaced with E. Cecil. And Dark Kain and the Hooded Man have fused into yaoi bishie man. Life is so much simpler now.
And yes, this plot is as nonsensical as it sounds.
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The real twist is that Kain is just Cecil's second personality. That's why his only ability that is worth using keeps him off the field for most of the fight.
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Cecil doesn't exist; he's been replaced with E. Cecil. And Dark Kain and the Hooded Man have fused into yaoi bishie man. Life is so much simpler now.
And yes, this plot is as nonsensical as it sounds.
And I didn't even see any mentions of Golbez, who could only increase confusion due to his penchant for wearing cloaks and being genetically related to Cecil.
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What the fuck Ciato. Gods you are terrible at this.
REFIGHT THE DARK HOLY ELF! AW YEAH. Died once, realized I had Slow, and then raped him.
Fixed that shit right up for you.
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Jansen's Doublecast: Prepare to be suckered. Actually, wait, you bought the DLC and I think that has a fucking No Charge skill to make the canyon split of balance that much worse? That might actually make it worth it.
Seth's clothing at least looks like a modified gladiator costume.
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I was thinking school girl or modified peasant blouse to have a plunging neck line and cut off at thigh length, but I guess that works. I got plenty of use out of Double Cast at end game. it took both the charge reduction skills, but it was possible to get double casts of the strongest elemental spells off. Also more barrier is good barrier.
Lufia - Got up to Gratze Kingdom. They have put the flower girl plot in Gratze Kingdom. This is taking a bit of mental gymnastics to get used to. Will they put the Ruby Angel in here as well? Time will tell! I would have guessed they might have dropped it if they hadn't have had Bertie and Bootie in before.
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What the fuck Ciato. Gods you are terrible at this.
REFIGHT THE DARK HOLY ELF! AW YEAH. Died once, realized I had Slow, and then raped him.
Fixed that shit right up for you.
... it took me more than a few seconds to get this. Clearly my training in DL corruption/life skills is not yet complete (or something) :P
Have fun with the ship that looks like a shoe Fenrir :) I remember the vehicle control in LO being kind of awkward but at least you can use the ship for ice!smashings to get closer to some areas of the coasts that you couldn't before and then drop into your sub from the ship and get to in land lakes/etc and get to dungeons/villages you couldn't get to before~
Breath of Fire III-
Endgame statistics/final boss recap -
Ryu (L42)
Seeking Sword
Spiked Gauntlets
Dragon Helm
Dragon Armor
Titan Belt/Titan Belt
(HP.AP: 243/180/Power: 335/Defence: 222/Intelligence: 142/Agility: 52
*18 Dragon Genes
*Shiny Ryu innate spells
*Bone break
Skill set up- Focus, Super Combo, Double Blow, Sirocco
**
Rei (L39)
Slicer
Spiked Gauntlets
Sun Mask
Force Armor
Speed Boots/Titan Belt
(HP/AP: 194/78/Power: 245/Defence: 201/Intelligence: 96/Agility: 75
*Shiny Rei innate spells
*Weretiger
Skill set up- Counter, Multistrike, Mighty Chop, Demonbane, Shadow Walk, Myollnir, Blizzard, Inferno, Typhoon
**
Nina (L40)
Beryl Rod
Spiked Gauntlets
Silver Tiara
Holy Robe
Wisdom Ring/Wisdom Ring
(HP/AP: 132/247/Power: 148/Defence: 178/Intelligence: 259/Agility 52
*Nina innate spells
Skill set up-War Shout, Influence, Cure, Barrier, Shield, Resist, Sanctuary, Meditation, Magic Ball, Mind Sword
Final Boss- She didn't really manage to do much as mentioned before, she was more or less a joke. While I was setting up the Speeds with Rei and other buffs w/th Ryu/Nina I saw her physical attack, a MT elemental spell, Evil Eye (which missed) and Venom (which I promptly had Nina use Cure on for status recovery to Ryu/Rei with her next turns, also shoring up their healths in the process) Once Rei had stacked the Speeds on his self, Nina and Ryu my team all starting EX turning not just Rei, Shield was up, Barrier was up and once Nina got the War Shouts going it was time to go to town. As I mentioned earlier though I didn't even use the real broke on the final with no dragons/Kaiser/Bonebreak or Weretiger abuse. I stuck to Focus > Focus + Super Combo abuse with Ryu, Shadow Walk spam and the odd physical from Rei while I kept Nina on standby for healing from the odd times the final time got a turn. I saw more base physicals (which missed) another MT elemental spell and finally she started using Holocaust, I thought oh crap here it comes but then it didn't hit as hard as I thought it was going to. By the end of the fight her turns were so few and far between I thought the speed advantage I have here is rather silly I can afford not to worry about healing/defence too much and even had Nina get in on the action with Meditation X 2 and Myollner. She only got to do that twice in between Ryu/Rei turns before the final went down though~ The final's offence remained more or less fail right to the very end (well she did manage to reduce Rei to ~5HP with Holocaust once yaay!? Except I'd been skimping on the healing by then and Rei wasn't at full HP in the first place >.>)~
The moral dilemma at the end storywise was interesting and did make me think a bit. I think I saw where the final was coming from and I did feel a bit bad about sending her down. Are she and her sister really ded? :( Also was Peco always the tree or did that somehow just happen while I wasn't paying attention?
Garr ;__;
Thanks to Sage, Meeple, Grefter, Snow, Trance and super for all the advice/information/general help and encouragement they gave me with this game. Thanks to Ciato and NEB for the encouragement and comments too :) I really enjoyed it despite there being three mandatory for progress sound related puzzles in the game~
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The ships controls are not so much awkward as the ship takes so long to do anything that you have forgot what you are doing, why you are holding or a controller or that you are even playing a game before it actually gets anywhere or does anything.
SLRPG - Beat Belome with a 60ish super jump. Oh wait slow down haxorz. Mostly getting a feel for Super Jump and how it works (and contemplating Super Suit for broken). that uh one shot Belome. So I saved that state for later and loaded and earlier one to fight him for reals. He was still pretty easy. Rats are also easy. Laggy is numbing me into a false sense of securom.
Also there was a treasure chest that screamed a love heart at me. That was a thing.
Generally speaking I am building up Jump a lot, Mario does not attack. He Jumps. I am overlevelled because I ran into rats when I didn't have to because I have enough Flower boosters in my inv to regen Flower points that I feel it is a waste not to grind up Jump. Hits for about 100 at the moment.
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So what should I do next - optional BoFIII stuffs/break it harder with my hammer, finish SMT: Nocturne/Lucifer's Call, start Tactics Ogre, start Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2, buy FFV or torture myself with FF2?~
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I vote SMT3 or FFTA2~
Started a bit of Bahamut Lagoon on a whim. Looks to have some really neat ideas. I wonder if I'll ever run out of Square SNES RPGs I Should Have Played Ten Years Ago? I still haven't tried Rudra no Hihou.
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Play Lucifer's Call next - much cooler name.
Also, don't buy FF5 - emulate FFVa!!!!
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Play FFTA2, it's a good game.
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Play the TO remake, it's a good game!
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So what should I do next - optional BoFIII stuffs/break it harder with my hammer, finish SMT: Nocturne/Lucifer's Call, start Tactics Ogre, start Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2, buy FFV or torture myself with FF2?~
I'm gonna throw my lot in with FFV supremacy.
Legend of Legaia - Been playing through this again.
Going through Rim Elm was easy enough. Save Mei, get a Gimard, get the Point Card, done. Didn't buy a Survival Knife because I can get one for free in Drake Castle.
Ground up to L5 getting Gimard to L9. Went through Drake Castle without using any items, and wound up getting to the Throne Room bedroom with red on both HP and MP. At that point, one unguarded Tail Fire would've given me a game over, but I was feeling gutsy. Haven't run away at all so far.
Get to Mt. Rikuroa, and the game switches to Noa. With her first battles, I go fight the Black Pueras first, freak out when I find they're immune to Tough Love for some reason, and then just smash their faces in with Rushing Gale. Terra was free healing, so I took advantage of that fact and killed everything there.
Mist came, blah blah blah, I hurried through until Terra joined my party so I have infinite healing works. Picked up a free Nail Glove for Noa kind of on the World Map, and Rikuroa was pretty much straightforward and forgettable on Noa's side. Get to the Genesis Tree, switch to Vahn.
Wind up halfway accidentally grinding here trying to get Vera as a spell, because healing without items is awesome. Doesn't matter, as Vahn only wound up being level 7 when I go up to fight Caruban. Speaking of, he went down in one Gimard spell and two Tempest Breaks... In fact, Noa, being a level lower, was successfully competing in damage against a L9 Gimard spell. What the hell.
So, Noa gets Terra on her wrist to be more awesome, and we go back through Drake Castle. Yawn, boring, got the Platinum Card, and then other chests I couldn't before getting Noa. Marketplace was cool, got a free Fighting Robe for Noa and ten Healing Shrooms. Left.
Went to Biron Monastery, and just mashed through there. Got Gala into my party, and holy crap did I seem to forget that he's almost useless. Four art blocks after spiriting until level 8 or 9 is terrible. Took a detour to get Gimard for Noa and Theeder for both my good characters, and then went into the West Voz Forest.
Wind up accidentally overleveling in here due to the sheer factor of Nighto not wanting to be shoved into Meta, despite Vahn having an Ivory Book equipped. Also got Vera for Noa in here, which far extends my dungeon survivability. Did I mention that Vahn's Vera is L9? Mei's Pendant is awesome.
Biron Monastery explodes, Gala leaves and comes back, and then we go through East Voz Forest. Gizam is surprisingly a lot easier to shove into Meta and Terra. The double Viguro fight winds up giving me an honest-to-god reset - then I stick the Ra-Seru Egg on Noa, and everything is peachy again. Ozma hatches, but fails to fix Gala's uselessness right away.
Went back to Biron, and bought Gala all his armor. Ran out of money for the other weapon upgrades and some armor, but oh well. I then noticed a trend that characters don't get clothes until after they get their Ra-Seru. I try not to think about this too much. Go over to the Mist Generator - trying to get Gala caught up on spells is nightmarish. He winds up getting his fifth art block trying to get to the second floor in any space of time of sanity while getting all the chests, at least.
One elevator, and I get a free sword for Vahn to make up missing out on buying him his new weapon. Awesome. Gala FINALLY picks up Vera here, and then upgrades from "Complete Useless" to "Healbot". Solo battle with Songi was... A lot easier than I remember, and has probable cause to make me think that Gala has a somewhat legal claim to the Mettle Ring, as useless as it is. (AP Gain Up 1 is still not that useful).
I then go back to the Biron Monastery, heal up, and buy leftover equipment upgrades. Go back in the Mist Generator, climb down, and then promptly hand Zeta his ass. Gala's damage was so poor that I just relegated his turns to Healbotting, while Vahn and Noa did all the damage. For a Noa with seven art blocks, I noticed that Super Javelin did just as much damage as a Frost Breath/Mirage Lancer with an extra hit. Super Javelin is also cheaper on AP, so I stick with that.
Current levels are... Either 12/12/11 or 13/13/12, I don't have my game playing right now, but the next part is going through the Ancient Wind Cave to the Seccubus Islands.
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Final Fantasy IV The After Years - Because I Block Out Good Gameplay, Apparently
So I forgot that I did Rydia's quest already. Hers is pretty fun. You have four PCs. Rydia, who doesn't have Summon because of evulz but still has Black Magic, Luca who has Big Throw (a row ignoring thing), Calca, who has random attack spells/status, and Brina, who does random nice things like healing, status healing, or Protect/Shell. At first glance, I thought Calca was quite a bit better because he was doing a lot of damage to randoms sometimes, but once I fought the Evil Wall and Brina used Curaja and Esuna randomly I realized that she was better for bosses since Calca just used status magic.
Item supply was a problem in the dungeon because I was poor and didn't have many Phoenix Downs and Calca and Brina die a lot. No reliable healer doesn't help either. Evil Wall was very fun. I only had one stone curing item and Brina was dead from the start, so... I died. I revived Brina and healed her, which helped a lot because she can heal for mass damage occasionally as well as cure stone occasionally. Calca hit the boss for like 80 three times out of his like 30 turns. Golfclap for him. The fight was very long due to not having great damage, but it was manageable.
The second thing we do is go in a cave to get some item. We encounter a boss there who is very interesting. If you cast Fire on him you die because he uses 1200 MT damage on you. He does this anyway normally, but you have time to cast Blizara on him before he does it and stop it, so that's what you do. I died to him like three times before I figured out that you need to properly plan Rydia's turns so you can cancel his evil before he kills everyone.
This story doesn't have a plot. Summons are enslaved to the evulz, THE MAN IN BLACK appears randomly, Luca is cool, etc. I love that her class is Shop Hand instead of Princess like Ursula (Ceodore starts as a Prince as well).
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The shoe ship is hard to navigate but that doesn't matter too much!
I got the absolutely ridiculous Slot + 10 and "Immunity to every status ailment" accessories. Got every special treasure, found every pirate, finished Tolten's sidequest (then gave the sword to Kaïm. Sorry), found every dream.
9 seeds missing only. I don't think I'll bother unless some guy tells me where every skill left in the world is or something. (that would make little sense though)
It's too bad sidequests are of the Chrono Trigger / Shadow Hearts variety instead of Final Fantasy. (You get access to a ton of optional areas lategame with uber equipement, the bosses and enemies there being very weak) All those skills are overkill. Bosses with 5x more HPs and damage would still be reasonable.
BoF games have boring aftergame most of the time.
Nocturne is good, but how far from the end are you? I think it might be hard to get back into.
I'd say, play FF5 if you want a light game and TO if you want a serious game. FF5 is very light, and TO is very serious. Both are good games! Play FFTA2 if you really want to slowly build an army of uber gods of battle (though it isn't as good as Lost Odyssey about that, I'm afraid)
There's no reason to play FF2 if you haven't played those and have access to them!
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Front Mission 5- Hard mode. Jesus christ, Hard mode. FM5 itself is a reasonably challenging game, though you can crush it later once you get a handle on the system and smartly set your skills. Hard mode is just a goddamn struggle to survive in every battle. I've never been pressed this hard in an SRPG once I got good at it; the jump in challenge is comparable to the jump from FE8 to FE10. The enemy gets much better gear, there are more enemies, and they go from standard SRPG AI to kick your fucking ass in mode. You need to stick together and very smartly position your troops just to avoid getting overwhelmed the offense. It's been a blast so far, and I can't wait to see how crazy the later missions get.
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finish SMT: Nocturne/Lucifer's Call
This. :)
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buy FFV
The story's pretty crappy, but it has the best gameplay of the FF series. So depending on if you are a story or gameplay person you may like it.
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Hard mode is just a goddamn struggle to survive in every battle. I've never been pressed this hard in an SRPG once I got good at it.
And this ladies and gentleman is why you should play X-Com.
My vote is for FF5. There is a bunch of people playing it in Chat for a challenge, so now is a good time to jump on the bandwagon as there will be plenty of good reliable help around. Edit - Also FF5 is glorious for the smashing. Forget about doing it on a replay, it will just happen first play through.
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I'll echo the FF5 support, just cause its a decent game worth playing at least once.
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Blazblue (both games): Been grinding some achievements out. Beat Hell difficulty arcade mode on both games with Tager. Unlimited Hazama > Unlimited Nu, but Nu is certainly no slouch. She was doing 43-hit combos on me *without* distortions. Talk about some serious hangtime for Tager. The achievement names in Calamity Trigger are so much more clever than the ones in Continuum Shift.
Dungeon Crawl: Been playing a lot of this lately. Best character so far was a Hill Orc priest of Beogh. Got to depth 19 of the main dungeon with my army, then fell down a shaft to depth 21 (leaving the WAAAGGH behind). Got killed by an Orc Sorcerer who refused to acknowledge me as the Messiah and swarmed me with summons preventing my movement.
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Hmm... thinking on it. Yeah, FF5 is perfect for CT. It has adorable little girls who talk to animals and you can make everyone in your party a Dancer. CT-bait if I ever heard it.
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Nocturne has ADORABLE Jack Frosts and Pyro Jacks and Pixies and (not so adorable) BUTCH PIXIES, though.
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SLRPG - Not much progress today, got to Rosetown and bought some stuff. Forest maze tomorrow.
Lufias - Okay so it got to fucking stupid again. Earlier the game made you go into the Ancient Cave, it was okay, it was just 10 levels and you kind of steam roll through it okay. Later on they make you go back and it is 15 or so levels and they have another fucking cock blocking boss battle where stuff hits to fucking hard. I think I have levelled off the summons as much as I did in the dungeon itself trying to kill Idura. Things inflict status that halves your damage. Your item pool is massively reduced and entirely at the whim of the RNG because it is the Ancient fucking Cave. Things don't hit hard, but they hit very fast and a lot of times. Hard to dodge as well. Bullshit bullshit bullshit. Edit - and another case where one use of Retry +, giving 5 more levels was the difference between painfully stupid and manageable fight. Goddamn.
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Strange. I stopped playing that Lufia because things were getting sub-Rhapsody easy and I was just incredibly bored, the ancient cave being a sad shadow of its former glory. I just kind of gave all the attack gems to one character and never used anyone else. Everything exploded and bosses lasted 5 seconds. Did you do that? (I don't remember if you get to keep gems in the cave though)
LO: Temple of Enlightment -> NOOOOOOOOOO!
Wow, I take it back about optional dungeons all being easy. This one has monster enemies and monster puzzles. I spent like 6 hours in there, then checked a faq, figured out it was all hopeless, gave up, went back to it the next day then completed it . Now I'm trying to find my way back.
Since experience works like Suikoden, one battle = one level up. My immortal characters went from level 50 to 85 in that one dungeon. It's not even a big dungeon! It's just evil.
Doublecast is... excellent with those passive skills that reduce casting time.
The DLC dungeon looks... disappointing so far.
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That is the problem, fights go from "enemies can only do 1 damage to you" to these two specific fights that were a boss 3HKOing me with attacks I couldn't consistently dodge in a long boss fight and this one which was summon spamming with nearly unavoidable and unremovable paralysis which halves your damage. 5 more levels and I easilly had the HP to make the former easier to deal with (Real issue with that fight is the hit boxes on some of Gades attacks are stupid big) and in the latter gave me the offense I needed to be able to manage the fight. For perspective, the Idura fight that I was just raging against I spent 15 minutes on trying to dodge and slowly kill him and the summons. With 5 more levels it was a 30 second fight because so much less of it was spent on the defensive.
In all other cases? Game is stupidly easy, like I was confused for a while why anyone would ever bother dodging.
Edit - So the prince and princess of Bound and Gratze just got married. Talk to the priest after the wedding and it turns out it was Pvt. Pyle. Now if you know Full Metal Jacket fairly well you should be creeped out.
A few of these problems would really be alleviated if the game had any consistency with when it decides you have been hit and to make you invincible. There are times where you can get hit and knocked down and the game will happilly lay into you for 5 hits (or in the Gades fight, just straight up hit you 3 times for that 3HKO damage). In others it will go into it straight away. It is inconsistent and thoroughly annoying. Specifically annoying on the Gades fight was the lava surrounding him. If you touch it you can pretty much write off half of your health because it will hit you 4 times before your invincibility frames kick in.
Which leads to another stupid thing in the Gades fight. Jumping off the platform does less damage than his attacks. There was distinctly attacks that it was a better idea for me to jump off the platform and just be invincible for them than actually try to dodge the giant fuck off boulders he was shooting at me or the second hand when he smashes down with both hands one after the other.
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Yes the game was not well balanced. Sometimes substractive defense works, but definitely not here.
Gades was BS indeed, but I guess other bosses were too busy dying for me to notice their damage. I stopped at the tank.
LO: Finished. Sweet ending I guess. They didn't go with the obvious annoying morality ending, blah blah we were not meant for this world let's all go back.
The bad guy was really lame though. And I still don't really know what exactly happened to Kaïm's daughter. It's weird.
So, Gongara actually just pushed her off a cliff? Then she somehow survives but later gets sick and dies because of a completely unrelated sickness? Huh.
I still need to finish the Backyard and DLC dungeon, but I'll do those later.
The DLC dungeon is basically one place where everything went wrong because of a mad scientist and you can find some notes showing why (It's a lot like Resident Evil, Bioshock, etc), you keep going down for a lot of floors, there's no savepoint and there's apparently an uber optional battle at the end.
It's also kind of lazy since it's the same room repeated 30x.
The game got less close to FF near the end with the sidequests and general lack of challenge. Still, I give this game a rating of Alternate FF/10. It's pretty clear that it's made by the same team with a *relatively* lower budget.
Ms Splosion Man: 1.9 Go? Wow.
It takes some time to adjust. Remember: Hysterical hyperactive girly girl mindset.
Already great.
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FONV: Old World Blues is finished. Gref and anyone else with taste should play this immediately. It is awesome.
This plays more like Point Lookout in that you just get cut loose in a new area without getting your shit stolen or anything, and there's lots of stones to turn over. The writing is top-notch, and it really captures the old super-science sci-fi film feeling.
Favorite line? Probably the Courier's "looks like this place got tag-teamed by a pair of Fuckbots."
Favorite character? I thought it would be Dr. Borous, until I met Dr. O (Rusty Venture).
But then? I met the toaster. The toaster is my new favorite and he is a toaster.
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I bought it as soon as it came up on Steam that I could see, think we had a couple of days delay for some reason. Will play it when I get back to my run through again.
Fenrir, the boss in particular is the one after the tank. Stopping after the tank is pretty justified. That was also a stupid boss fight, but not for difficulty. Also of course it could have just been I was RNG screwed on a bunch of things because lol boss in the Ancient Cave.
Just got Artea. For some reason he is Neo.
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Favorite line? Probably the Courier's "looks like this place got tag-teamed by a pair of Fuckbots."
The intro has a lot of Words but it's okay because most of them are hilarious (and barely anyone can refrain from adding an exclamation mark after SCIENCE).
Anyway, just explored a couple areas so far. Oh hey what's that miniature deathclaw oh god where are my HP?!
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SLRPG - Beat Bowyer without much trouble. Beat Punchinello with some fairly abusive save state usage to get timed blocks in where first time through would not normally happen first time through (bomb from nowhere attacks okay react). A few save states just to use Psychopath just to check HP values (lols someone is totally using it Laggy). Jump is still Mario's best damage for now I think, need to fish how much I can comfortabley get with Super Jump without being save state/slow down abusive, think it is 12ish which put it at about the same power as Jump was for me but with so much more effort. So meh. Imagine Mario will change things up a bit when I get more accessories and don't want to wear Jump Shoes anymore. Geno Boost timing is honestly pretty fine when you know where it is. Might grate more if you were used to different timing, but for me? Meh easy as. I still miss it sometimes, but that is just when I haven't used it for a while on trash.
Saving up Frog coins for Scrooge thingy to use with Peach. Might change that later of course or just change plans but that is how things are going. Chain pulls of 3 packs of Goombas with no armour and solo Mario still hardest thing in the game due to not knowing timed hits.
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FONV: I just killed the man who invented Cazadores.
FUCK YOU CAZADORE ASSHOLE.
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OB Neph edition: Just got Brunhild. It's been a pretty fun ride so far, though it's pretty beta and there will have to be balance changes. It's been really fun so far.
FM5- Just beat the oil rig on hard mode. The game's gotten a little easier, but if you misstep you are going to pay and pay bad.
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Final Fantasy IV The After Years - Because I Block Out Good Gameplay, Apparently
Ciato, remember to keep Rydia with you later on, so you can get the summons back later on.
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I didn't plan to get the other DLC after Honest Hearts... Damn. 20 less bucks.
Infinite Undiscovery: A giant red bear named Gustav joined my team.
I want to like the gameplay and get into item creation, but it's meaningless unless you do some self imposed challenge. The gameplay is broken at its core, like Fallout 3 / New Vegas (Games about ressource management where your companions have infinite health and ammo. Don't worry NV, I still like you, but be less stupid next time)
The basic healing spell heals 30% max HPs and costs 5 MPs. 5 MPs is -nothing- at the beginning of the game, and this will get more and more ridiculous as the game goes on (since that healing spell stays as good, while the MP pools get larger and larger) The only way to die is having NPCs fuck up or having bosses OHKO, pretty much.
I think I'll play solo or without healers next time. (on harder modes) I'll just smash things and not worry right now, and leave crazy challenge + useless item creation (Oooh yeah, writing books. I want to write books) for later on.
Every cutscene in the game is:
The main character is a nice enough musician, but everyone treats him like shit because he looks like the legendary Sigmund, a hero, and doesn't save exactly as many baby seals as him. They treat him like shit in various different ways. This is every cutscene in the game. I'm guessing he will have some "character development" later on and realize he should be "less of a coward" even though it's everyone around him who's batshit insane.
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Really, if you aren't saving baby seals, what are you even doing with your life? A musician?! What do they contribute to society? Buncha hippies. Fall in line, work for the community, get a haircut, be more Japanese.
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You seem to miss Japan already.
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Radiant Historia - The recap!
It's a strange game, but I mean that in a good way. I think it's a pretty rare example of a game that does almost everything well, but nothing in a way I find outstanding. I can't really think of much like it. Maybe it's this generation's answer to something like Phantasy Star 4 (or, if I belabour the time travel point, there's always Chrono Trigger!). This isn't bad at all, I've just gotten too used to going back and forth between games that excel only at plot or gameplay besides a few favourites (okay, I lie, aside from Suikoden I just play the ones with good gameplay these days <.<).
On the gameplay front, Radiant Historia takes a pretty simple gimmick (the ability to push enemies around in various ways) and runs with it rather nicely. It keeps randoms consistently fresh and exciting as you have to find ways to deal with them efficiently. This is fun! You get new moves (which affect the strategy here) at a pretty good clip for keeping things fresh, although it is arguably a bit slow early on? My main complaint there was probably more that it took ages for PCs besides the main three to be terribly relevant + around for a long time, though.
Battle design was generally quite good. I think there was a lack of good boss battles early but around midgame this changed in a big way. Even before then there's a few surprisingly interesting fights against elite enemy soldiers and the likes (basically suped-up-randoms) but then chapter 4 hits and oh god that Thaumachine time to actually form a real strategy! The Spider that followed not too long after was also decent albeit in an incredibly straightforward way. Ultimately I think I only had resets on two bosses (Thaumachine and the last boss before the final) but I felt challenged often enough. The game also started having some pretty good randoms which can beat you around if you don't take them seriously, especially if you get ambushed.
The game does the usual Grandia/etc. thing of "hit enemy before battle to get advantage", something I'm kinda neutral on. Takes a little more patience sometimes because you may have to hit them multiple times. Whatevs, I guess it's different at least and I can't really recall being annoyed by it. I'd say this decision would make encounter control suck but the game gives you a way better version of that anyway about a third of the way through. Props to it for that.
Storywise, hmm. Not really what I expected? The game takes quite a serious tone and sets out to tell what... would be a fairly generic if enjoyable, almost Suikodenesque war story spliced with the impending doom of the world. I say "would be fairly generic" instead of just "generic" because, of course, the whole time travel business. Although it sometimes caused a few plot points to feel a bit convoluted as time travel is wont to do, overall, I thought it was handled well. It certainly gives the game's story its own unique flavour and that's something I appreciate a lot. So you have a modestly creative story that's in a style I enjoy (it doesn't wallow in the tropes of the genre I find distasteful) and even if it didn't blow my socks off at any point I will say I generally found it quite solid.
Cast is also fairly generically solid, though they do vary a bit here. None of them get quite as much character depth as I'd like (it's not the type of story that stops to have lots of character introspection). Stocke is, of course, the highlight. Sporting more depth than most of the cast, he also manages to just come across as a generally cool and competent guy. He makes his share of mistakes (especially in some of the bad endings!) though on the whole has it fairly together for an RPG main (which fits with his age and profession). He's not going to be my favourite main given that, yeah, he is reasonably straightforward, but he's still very well-executed and generally plays his role well, balancing nicely the competent special agent personality without falling into Gary Stu cliches or spouting faux-badass lines at every turn like some of that type.
Rest of the cast is... hm. I do like the main villain. His setup is generally good stuff, Miang-ish even. I felt they fell maybe just half a step short of convincing me about his motivation (Stocke bought it more than I did, but... I guess that's fair, given the situation) but only a half-step; they did a pretty good job with him. The other major villain (who had me pretty convinced that he was the main villain for most of the game) was a very effective douchebag and I do like his type, although he's not quite as good as another similarly-motivated villain from a game I've played within the past year! Not too much to say about the rest of the villain cast. I kinda wish Dias and Selvan hadn't gone out as total morons but oh well.
Other PCs! Rosch is the favourite of the non-Stocke crew, with Eruca, Raynie and Marco also working fairly effectively. Rosch kinda gets less important in the back half of the game but he's very important and quite well-done in the first; the game totally had me buying his and Stocke's relationship which is crucial to both characters. Gafka... had real problems existing. Aht was a bit annoyingly clingy, but at least it's reasonable for someone her age. It just felt a bit unnecessary, since it was also spliced with her keeping a secret or two too many. So those two are certainly the game's weak points cast-wise, but hardly fatally.
Aesthetically, well. Visually the game is pretty straightforward and I have few comments on it. The music deserves a bit more note as being quite good almost without exception (I do like Alistel's theme in particular), though it is a pretty small soundtrack so occasionally it feels a bit repetitive.
Cast gameplay comments! Note that I missed almost all of the optional skills.
Stocke: Stocke's big thing is pushing enemies wherever you need them to be while having generally pretty solid stats. He plays a pretty crucial role in randoms because most everyone else is worse at this job, although non-Stocke parties would be workable. Otherwise, against solo targets he uses Air Assault, and he has a bunch of decent healing moves. G-Fire gives him some damage, but that's super late and even then not amazing; generally you will use someone else as your cannon.
Raynie: Once you get that first spear that boosts MAG a whole bunch, Raynie settles into her role as that cannon. She gets plenty of elements to play around with. Her optoins besides the main spells feel kinda limited, but whatever, you need someone to kill the things everyone else groups up. Outclassed by Eruca eventually (but temporarily) but even then you might want to go back to her for having the best durabilty of the high-offence types.
Marco: Marco is this weird kinda support dude. Sure, he gets healing, but it's not too special because of items. He gets some battlefield control (in particular, Grapple, which Stocke misses) though low power means he's not the first priority for using it. But... mostly, he is about a couple neat buffs, and Trans-Turn. Trans-Turn makes up for his own skillset/damage failings, since it's dirt cheap, and lets you pass other turns to Stocke and your cannon. Since his durability is okay, he's a solid choice for a third for much of the game. EDIT: Oh yeah, All Recovery is really great and hard to replace against the final boss, that deserves note! Got pretty lucky by using Marco there.
Rosch: It's so hard to form an opinion on Rosch, because the dude's never around. Literally does not exist for almost the entirety of one of the game's two halves means he's really underlevelled. Since his speed is bad I didn't feel like I was missing out on a huge amount either. LVP.
Aht: One of the three choices for party cannon and generally felt like the weakest of the three. Traps are quite problematic because a lot of critical enemies can't be pushed into them which makes her near worthless. Even when they can be, against randoms, it's inferior because you'll always get one less enemy... more damage tends not to make up for this. Of course, she's quite good against the bosses that -can- be pushed so I could see her use rising with knowledge of upcoming bosses. Outside traps she doesn't really have anything that excuses the bad durability, best healer probably but see Marco about that.
Gafka: Well, he certainly wasn't fixed in value as the game went on! Initially just bad, Stocke with a bit higher power/HP but minimal pushing ability is not what you need for a third at all. Then he gets Quigong Wave and becomes serviceable since uh that is a really powerful physical move. He also gets some GT pushing abilities which have uses, especially Echoing Impulse for the grouping effect. But Wind God Strike. Oh my god, that move. Missable, but with it he just becomes MVP in randoms period late. Less versatile against bosses though clearly.
Eruca: Cannon! Eventually. Just bad at first. But once she actually got a spell besides that non-elemental garbage she started with and her magic lead on Raynie opened up she became really good. Some decent GT spells mixed in there too even if "let others group things for her -> G-Frost rapes" usually felt like the best strategy. And then there's Trans-Turn in case you don't need her own tricks! She outclassed Raynie pretty badly despite the latter's advantages late... then she vanishes for the last two dungeons and only returns just in time to be useless for the final boss! Oh well.
Final party was looking to be Stocke/Gafka/Eruca but then no Eruca meant Raynie drew back in, and Marco was a better fit for the bosses at the end so he drew back in then, and so ultimately my final party is what I predicted! But at least it ended up a more interesting cast than I was anticipating.
Final time was about 28 hours, endgame level 50-53, game gets... I'm still waffling between an 8 or a 9. As I said initially, it's not a type of game I have an easy time rating, so I'll have to chew it over some.
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Trails in the Sky- Is good. Recommended. I want to rank Olivier and make Sage write about him.
Not much to say, since I intend to write a proper review and all.
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Mario vs DK: MLM - Finished
The ending for plus mode was pretty bad, and the prize for trophying all levels wasn't worth it. Still generally enjoyable.
Puzzle Agent 2 - Finished
I like how there didn't end up being any closure regarding the missing persons. And if that postcard is supposed to be a sequel hook, it isn't a very hooky one.
Fine in general. Overly short. The first was also overly short so this isn't a step back at least.
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You missed all of Marco's optional skills? That is a real shame, I think a few of them are actually pretty easy to get and square control goes far on him (also speed buffing accessories on him are fantastic and let him really shine. Not just for the control options, but it just gives you even more options with Transturn). Not shocked to still see him be a solid party member though. He is probably the one that benefits from them most honestly and they are the simplest thing and come so early. Aht's would be far more decisive if they weren't so late.
Raynie's optional skills are pretty much entirely worthless to her yeah, G-Skills 4 Lyfe yo being core skills for her was a good choice.
So glad that you enjoyed it all the way through though Elf. Also internal consistency! So important in story telling. They do it and it is awesome.
Edit - SLRG - True fact about how this played out. Booster drinks Toadstool's tears. So I decide that Booster is Laggy because he drinks your tears. Then Booster and Bowser make out. I see. Edit 2 - Okay, so Bundt's mechanics are as entirely impenetrable as expected. Fuck you SMRPG this is a terrible boss fight. Laggy working with it is cute, but this is terrible as a core fight given how little explanation you have to work with. Blow out the candles. Okay. How? Space. Edit 3 - Seriously? Basic physicals was the only way to do that? Fuck you game. Fuck you in your stupid fucking face. Edit 4 - Okay cake beaten in a knock down drag out shit fight because I refused to restart the fight after blowing a ton of resources on the second phase of the fight. Mallow died. I needed to save state abuse a bit to get blocks. Cake wanted to gang bang on Bowser. Could have won fairly easilly if I used a Pick Me Up or a MT healing item, but haven't used any yet and was wondering how far I could get without them. Investing in HP has been a good choice so far on Mario, Mallow probably needed some more but I for some reason was trying to salvage Thunderbolt into being anything but the weakest of trash clearing skills. Another level (I am overlevelled) will get Shocker and then I imagine the M.Atk squatting will really be helpful, but more HP now would be better.
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Cthulhu's Angels:
A fun retake on Cthulhu Saves The World with good setups and strategy requirements. Generally found it to be sufficiently challenging in both randoms and bosses on Normal. The humor was a little better, but it's still a gameplay game that thrives on deciding how to customize your party and how to develop strategies for defeating enemies. I do like the PC dynamics, what with the Slow/Frail MT cannon, the Slow but durable healer/buffer, the fast glass cannon, and... the fast durable fullhealing/self-buffing PC with good damage. Yeah Molly is pretty MVPish no matter how you cut it.
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I get Marco's optional pushing skills, but not the other two. I didn't find them super-useful because hey you can always Trans-Turn to Stocke and have him push for more damage (besides Grapple) but they had uses if I wanted to save time/MP/didn't care about damage/etc. which was often enough.
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inFamous 2: Got a Platinum trophy in this last night. Evil ending is muuuuuch easier than the Good one, even on Hard. Has it's moments, but Good ending was better. Glad I finished it up to free time for Catherine on Tuesday~
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FONV Old world blues: Finally after the meh performances of the previous two dlcs we have what is in my opinion a first class piece of content 8-). There is like an hour of talking at the start if you enjoy listening to the mad scientists voices like I do and don't just read the text but its all cool.
In the end I took the really nice option by proclaiming that I was the mighty Dr Mobius and ordering the other Scientists to surrender or face death from Scorpion related injuries.
Though I did steal Mobius's Mentat stash so I don't think the happy ending is going to last long ;D.
Demon's Souls: Got this at last as everyone raves about it all the time as the best game ever because its so hard and all that jazz. I quite enjoy these types of games thankfully so its actually lived up to its hype thus far though the horrible character creation and the useless armour in the game stop it from being a personal fav.
Oh yeah I'd like to mention I did end up purchasing Nier little while back as it was cheap and you guys and few others had such a high opinion of it when I said I didn't like it a while back. After playing it myself I'll admit that the voice acting and story are top notch especially on New game +, the music is good but some tracks are too overused, the game is too easy and the puzzle elements, item and combat system of the game are complete crap. I finished it four times and my final verdict on it is: Yeah its alright :D
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TotA: Currently at the poin where the airship is just a ship because the order people are jerks. Fun game, but needs to be renamed Tales of Forced Romantic Tension.
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Beats Tales of Invisible Ship Forcefields, I guess...
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Tales of Fancy Men Who Show Mid Drift?
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FF5 FJF challenge: Beat! Ended up abusing return on Neo Exdeath until I got the magic lamp shoat to work and petrify the damned Almagust part. But hey, I was dealt Time Mage as my Water class, so abusing Return is entirely legit! (Magic Lamp spam, on the other claw, probably isn't. But hush.)
Knight with Rapid Fire, TM with Equip Sheild, Ranger with Rapid Fire and Dancer with Time was my final team. Dancer was also packing the Man Eater and 2 equips that boosted chance of Sword Dance.
Knight for game MVP. Smash shit -> win was always a viable strategy. Especially after BRave Blade came along. Hooooooly shit did that thing clean house.
Ranger...for game LVP, outside of giving Rapid Fire. That changed after Yoichi Bow came around(yay crits) but before that, ANIMALS was the best thing Ranger had going.
Dancer for most bipolar character. Dungeons with lots of undead? Damn near useless except as the item whore or backup Time caster. No undead around? Generally very solid.
TM is of course TM. Lots of cheese, no damage whatsoever between when rodbreaks stop being great and getting Meteor.
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Congratulations Gate! Also to Tal, Hal, Yakko, and any other Fiesta participants who completed their runs. Been a lot of fun hearing about your playthroughs.
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SLRPG - Beat Axem Rangers. They hit way to hard and that was a crazy hard fight. I was like WTF the whole time. Only Axem Pink wasn't really threatening. I got lucky and Green Ranger didn't use heaps of status. One restart happened partly because Red used Shredder. Next try he didn't though, so could just kill the Zord pretty well. Poison Gas is awesome win. So anyway, finally won. Then went and got Frying Pan for Peach and found that I hadn't equipped the new armour that I had spent a bunch of cash on. So that is why they hit so damned hard. My own fault. Think the fight should generally be pretty fine balance wise now.
On the other hand, back to my hating on original SMRPG? 5 enemies taking turns one after another takes way to long. mega zzzzzz fight during those moments. On the other hand in original SMRPG it sounds like they die in like 2 seconds, so lol whatever.
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Actually Axem Rangers are the hardest fight in the game in the original (minus optional super boss).
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Old World Blues: Just started but so far is really good. A little bit too much dialog at the beginning but the crazy robot scientists are hilarious (also lots of COCK jokes Grefterlolololol). There's a glitch where my character won't level up. Seems to be caused from mods at the moment so I have to wait for an update for them.
Also dog powered machine gun.
DOG POWERED MACHINE GUN
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Actually Axem Rangers are the hardest fight in the game in the original (minus optional super boss).
Funny, as I never had any problems with Axem Rangers ever. I always felt Yaridovich was the hardest fight in the original game...by a fair amount.
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Actually Axem Rangers are the hardest fight in the game in the original (minus optional super boss).
Funny, as I never had any problems with Axem Rangers ever. I always felt Yaridovich was the hardest fight in the original game...by a fair amount.
Yaridovich was the hardest for me too, but I had trouble with the Axem Rangers my first time through the game. (this was before I realized that raising stats other than HP, Defense and Magic Defense is worth it in RPGs) On replays I find them incredibly easy, though. I also had trouble with the cake.
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DOG POWERED MACHINE GUN
Yes. There's a mod for this that ups its DPS to something like 450. It's a brutal weapon even if you don't meet the strength requirements. Most of the OWB weapons are pretty solid, actually. Sonic emitter is relatively low power and slow, but some of the add-on effects will auto-kill certain enemies (definitely robo-scorpions, at least) and anything hit by the knockback effect is almost certainly getting shot to death before it can stand up again.
Anyway, just finished this. I loved Dead Money for the NPC cast; Old World Blues has that going for it as well as being a heckuva lot more fun to explore. Anyone who enjoyed New Vegas at all should check it out. The NPCs are immensely entertaining, so naturally I took the ending that doesn't involve killing any of them--though I did reload an old save and massacre everyone later, just to see the different material in the ending. Man, you feel like a dick for doing that, even though all of them are incompetent and extravagantly insane. Also, Dala has a teddy bear in her inventory. Hah.
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I'd say that the Axems are the hardest boss if you don't go in with knowledge of who can do what and take them out accordingly, while Yaridovich can make you work regardless of knowing what to do.
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I had no problem with Yaridovich, but that's probably because I used Mallow extensively and Mallow wrecks him.
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Nothing wrecks Yaridovich. Even his lightning "weakness" isn't much of one with that stupid MDef. Knowing the defensive timing for Geno Boost is the best weapon you have in that fight, though.
Not sure who I found the hardest boss in SMRPG, but all three of the names floated seem like the only really logical candidates to me. They're kinda different styles so I can see having more trouble with different ones depending on how you play RPGs.
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It wasn't even difficulty I was negatively commenting on (they are floating at about a pretty standard level for noteworthy fights in SLRPG anyway). It is time their turns take. Because this being SMRPG and this apparently even being a hard fight, you can't just get up and walk away for slow enemy turns either. 5 enemies going in a row is painfully boring. If they are hard just because of the first few turns where all of them are up though that is cool. I was very much on the defensive there due to previously mentioned stupidity so this just prolonged the animations. My understanding is that they don't have much HP, looking it up individually they don't appear to, so unless I am misunderstanding the damage curve in SMRPG itself that stage of there being 5 people spamming attacks doesn't last super long.
On the other hand in SLRPG damage curve with those HP values I think I would have one shot three of them with Boosted Poison Gas.
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DOG POWERED MACHINE GUN
Yes. There's a mod for this that ups its DPS to something like 450. It's a brutal weapon even if you don't meet the strength requirements. Most of the OWB weapons are pretty solid, actually. Sonic emitter is relatively low power and slow, but some of the add-on effects will auto-kill certain enemies (definitely robo-scorpions, at least) and anything hit by the knockback effect is almost certainly getting shot to death before it can stand up again.
Anyway, just finished this. I loved Dead Money for the NPC cast; Old World Blues has that going for it as well as being a heckuva lot more fun to explore. Anyone who enjoyed New Vegas at all should check it out. The NPCs are immensely entertaining, so naturally I took the ending that doesn't involve killing any of them--though I did reload an old save and massacre everyone later, just to see the different material in the ending. Man, you feel like a dick for doing that, even though all of them are incompetent and extravagantly insane. Also, Dala has a teddy bear in her inventory. Hah.
I am really impressed with Ulysses' voice acting from what I heard in OWB. He did a pretty good job conveying the character we know nothing else about.
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SLRPG - Beaten now. Game is great right up until the end. Then Smithy 2 happened. More on that later.
Bowser Castle is huge and takes forever. Trash trash trash that is unavoidable and you do because it gives you two of the ultimate weapons, mega snooze. Boomer has what feels like way to much HP, just does nothing but sap your resources, then you are healed and FP is restored for Exor so that is fine. Exor is much easier. Multipart boss just after everyone has learned MT damage moves other than Mario? yeah easy mode.
Factory is a bit eh. The randoms are manageable (I just ignore them mostly personally. I still finished around level 21). The manager gauntlet was neat and finally hitting a boss that punished spamming MT was nice and caught me off guard. Simple trick but a good one. Smithy 1 was a good fun fight. I was expecting Sledge to ignore Def Up and it does not which was a little disappoint.
Up to this point pretty much everything I had problems with in the hack were derived from SMRPG mechanics. Timed blocks being terrible. I understand Laggy has changed them a bit to make the timings tighter, but their presence honestly just fucks everything up that could be much more finely balanced without them there. The timings are to tight in SLRPG, but whatever, the timed blocks timing is just so random and stupid that it is frustrating and annoying and that was not from SLRPG and the real problem is that it is really up in the air if an enemy can or will use attacks that you can block. It is stupid, bullshit any annoying. It could fuck right off and the game would be better for it.
Some fights just take way to long because of enemy animations. You fight tons and tons of randoms in single encounters sometimes. Here is a pack off 6 dudes. Thanks, oh I didn't AoE them all down in a turn time for me to have a nap but lolno you can't because 1/4 of the attacks need you to be there to block. See above complaints.
So anyway, Smithy 2. Fuck that fight. You go through Smithy 1 having a pretty good time. Then Smithy 2 spams the fuck out of instant death. lol hope u saw it coming bro. So that chews up your buffs. So that means you either need to pack a fuck load of buffers (actual first time I would complain about that! Other fights don't need them! Smithy 2's damage is just so obscene you need those Crystalline) or know in advance about it. I mostly got through the fight by abusing Red essence for Phase 1 and just loading save state if he went overboard on Magnum the second time he went to Tank. Speaking of Tank. It acts. A lot. One time it acted 9 times in a row. Spammed shots at a few people, then just straight up killed 2 people with magnum, then healed for 500. So I revived. Then it acted 5 times, Magnumed 2 people in that and healed for 500 again. yay so awesome. So then I revive again and pray that stuff doesn't go to hell. He 5 acts again. Load load load load load. Fuck that fight and fuck that phase.
Anyway won when he decided to spend some more time in Status mode which for some reason looks like a letter box. Then it was far more manageable. Noting that I didn't have any status resist equip on. Just you know, it wasn't killing 2/3 of my party while severely damaging the survivor every single turn.
If I had felt like going through Smithy 1 I am pretty sure it would have been very beatable with swapping a couple of accessories, drop Ghost Medal and Quartz Charm for some stuff, probably throw Peach to the dogs relying on Lazy Shell to save her and go Coin Toss and Safety Ring on Bowser. That should have made it much more approachable and whatnot. Still don't like that kind of thing second chain in a boss fight that doesn't heal you and takes away your stat buffs. Fucking obnoxious.
Character balance is generally pretty good. Bowser is of course awesome, Peach is very useful, I could have swapped her for someone else, but eh it is nice to not have a sausagefest party or something. Mallow is really pretty good once he gets going. Thunderbolt is probably a bit on the weak side, but whatever. Geno I didn't use much but I know he would be fantastic if I had. I think if I could boot Mario I would have a hard time picking between Mallow and Geno. Geno would probably win because while status healing is awesome, it is cheaper than Boosting items.
Mario on the other hand honestly is fucking terrible. Seriously I don't even know where the fuck to start to not make Mario terrible in this last part. His only saving grace is that if you have been grinding Jump (for wicked Bowser ownage) then Jump is cheap. Lazy Shell is passable damage, but is late. Neither of these things is particularly impressive at all. Way to much in the last portion of the game is immune to fire/jump or in some randoms have enough MDef that while Poison Cloud would still take a decent chunk out of them, Jump was not touching them much at all. Seriously I think the biggest benefit Mario had going for him all game was Coin Toss. ID immunity and giving me more cash. Amazing. In the Factory he was there to do generic supplemental damage (that anyone could have) and be the designated item thrower because everyone else was doing something else useful.
Done. happier now that it is over. The hack is really good, but I think the end game kind of took it out of me. A few to many knock down drag out fights starting with Yaridovich and then popping up all over the place. Game would have been awesome if Knife Guy had been the final boss. Just end the game there. Knife Guy stabs you in the liver and you bleed out.
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Final Fantasy 4: The After Years – Edge, Fulfilling His Time-Honored Tradition of Being a Bloody Corpse
So where did we leave off. Oh yes, Edge’s quest. So we play as NINJAZ! I find the premise of a ninja kingdom a little ridiculous but this is really an aside. A girl ninja, a baby ninja, an old ninja, and a fat ninja. Most of it is pretty uneventful other than learning that Porom has high Passive Perception and pwns baby ninja several times, seeing through him.
Then we get to Edge himself. The good thing about Edge is that he is such an egomaniac that he doesn’t giggle over Cecil like a fangirl at a Justin Bieber concert, so this is a refreshing change of pace. Edge’s decision making skills are still less than stellar though, which is why he goes to the Tower of Babil. Alone. In the event that he runs into anyone who uses magic ever or anyone who can physical three times (getting through Blink) he is fucked beyond reason.
Fortunately the ninjas reappear to help me, so I have help! Edge is probably the best of the ninjas, which makes me strongly suspect I will never use any ninjas ever. We climb the tower and then have this sequence.
Fat ninja: Hey, bro, this chick’s crazy, she killed lots of monks, let’s stay away.
Edge: *charges to her, attacks*
*Rubicant and parents reappear to tell Edge what a toolshed he is being*
Edge: *continues charging*
The party gets predictably owned and we have to flee from Ifrit over and over. Edge runs into the airship deck assuming there would be an airship there, gets trapped by the Mysterious Girl, and then leaps off the balcony hoping an airship would appear because it did before! Edge has a hunch that everything is happening exactly the same as it did 17 years ago. I applaud his ability to uh pick up on the fact that this game reuses its plot points. Very meta, FF4TAY, very meta.
So we land in Rydia’s loveshack and Edge hits on her because it’s the cool thing to do. AND THEN…. THE MAN IN BLACK APPEARS!!! !!!!! 111!1!
So we have successfully completed all the scenarios!
Or not. Next is Lunarian’s quest, where you play as FuSoYa and Golbez. I don’t have much to say about this quest other than OW BOSSES OH MY GOD I DIED AGAIN. However, I discovered that Slow is the bomb diggity after a while and that made things easier. Still not lovin’ the randoms that cast MT OHKO Breath. Died like nine times total?
So anyway, after that diversion of death and player suffering, we get to saving the world or something. There are two major things going on. Edge, Rydia, THE MAN IN BLACK WHO IS TOO COOL TO TELL US HIS NAME IS GOLBEZ, and Luca. We fly around the world getting owned by Summons, especially Ramuh oh my god, while Ceodore, Rosa, Eddie, and Kain confront E. Cecil. We go to Eblan Castle and it is on fire. Edge tries to duel Ifrit one-on-one, dies horribly. Rubicant revives him and then kills him again because he thought it was funny I guess and then spits on his corpse. Edge somehow gets revived by the power of parental love and then we (by we I mean Rydia and Golbez) kick Ifrit’s ass. We wander for a while, fight Titan, and then go to the castle. So a team of Rosa, Ceodore, Golbez, Kain, and Edge fight another MYSTERIOUS GIRL. Edge, bringing back memories to the final dungeon of FF4, spends most of this battle as a corpse on the ground while Golbez hurls magic, Kain prances in his pretty outfit, and Rosa and Ceodore try to keep the world afloat.
Now we head to… the moooooooooon! What exciting adventures await us there?! (There is still the Moon changing mechanic though~)
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I am kinda surprised you had much trouble keeping Edge up. He's actually... really good in TAY. My playthrough was just him and Yang turning the game's asshole inside-out.
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I completely agree, Edge is amazing in TAY. He just... has everything. Fast, high physical damage, high HP(!?), amazing equipment selection, seems like every chest in the last dungeon is an upgrade for him, good MT damage eventually (!?!?!?).
Though, if he finished his chapter fairly low level I could see him being bad, the best thing to do is probably just kill off the other ninjas when they rejoin and let Edge get all the EXP.
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Defense Grid- Been improving my scores in this. It's a nice, relaxing game to play.
OBNeph: Just got Fogel. I've gotten four pumpkin items, two blood kisses, one each of the undead staff/ring, and no dream crowns. Princesses are still awesome in this game, the MT holy damage is SMAAAAAAAASH and the clerics/Rauny make excellent princesses. I'm really looking forward to other people playing this and getting feedback.
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Yeah, I kept the other ninjas alive and I didn't go item hunting in the penultimate chapter, so I didn't really get any good stuff for him. I basically did the chapter as quickly as possible so I could use the PCs I actually wanted to use instead of Golbez ~ It's not so much that I had trouble keeping him up as much as that he didn't really do anything when he was so I thought it was pointless!
Edge is quite good now that he has the crazy good magic spell but he sure as hell wasn't against the Mysterious Girl. I've been running ten people in the final dungeon and he is one of the best in the B party. (Which is Cecil (now that he's better), Rosa, Edge, Golbez, and Kain.)
I am bitter over Kain being a solid PC, personally.
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I completely agree, Edge is amazing in TAY. He just... has everything. Fast, high physical damage, high HP(!?), amazing equipment selection, seems like every chest in the last dungeon is an upgrade for him, good MT damage eventually (!?!?!?).
Though, if he finished his chapter fairly low level I could see him being bad, the best thing to do is probably just kill off the other ninjas when they rejoin and let Edge get all the EXP.
Also, itemcast haste, itemcast protect, and itemcast blink. I did level-cap him and his ninjas from his CD, because it was one of the few I bothered to do (the time limit made it interesting), though.
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What is the level cap, btw? I am a pretty minimalistic player, so... didn't hit it.
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40 in character chapters, I think 45 in the second part, and then it gets steadily raised as you beat certain bosses at the end until you hit 99.
Coming in with a level 40 Edge and Yang totally ruins this game's shit.
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I am really impressed with Ulysses' voice acting from what I heard in OWB. He did a pretty good job conveying the character we know nothing else about.
I pretty much expect that kind of quality from New Vegas VA, by this point.
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40 in character chapters, I think 45 in the second part, and then it gets steadily raised as you beat certain bosses at the end until you hit 99.
Coming in with a level 40 Edge and Yang totally ruins this game's shit.
I bet it does. I started the final dungeon with a bunch of Level 25 PCs and it was balls-to-the-wall hard.
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I am surprised that Ciato said nothing about Odin smashing Cecile.
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I honestly forgot about it!
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DQ9: The game finally stopped trolling me and gave me a Fire grotto with S-rank monsters. That only took, oh, about half a year. So now 100% defeated monsters and all quests completed.
Twin Blades: So I'm a lesbian nun who shoots zombies with a revolver. And then I commit suicide because I can't bear to be apart from my dead lover. This is writing genius.
Resonance of Fate: NOOOOO, Cardinal Pater! I did LOVE YOU!
Tekken Bowling (free on Ipad and Iphone!): I am much better at this than actual bowling.
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You bought Twin Blades too? Huh.
I played a bit of the survival mode yesterday, so I have yet to see the glory of the story mode. Gameplay is ridiculously simple, but engaging enough.
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Bought it last week when it was on sale, but got stuck at the second boss because I couldn't figure out which weapons to use (color-based puzzle and I'm color-blind). Saw you playing it last night so I figured I should try it again. Finally stumbled on the right weapon order (explosion -> flamethrower -> ice) to proceed.
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There are bosses in story mode? That would make things better.
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Catherine: Played to the 3rd day. Fun game, if a bit rage inducing even on Easy (well, after the first boss at least). Mostly due to iffy controls. You're moving so fast you're never sure if you're gonna climb up or drop off sometimes. Bosses are pretty fair in the ways they can screw you over. Most of the time it's just a matter of figuring out the puzzle in time. Seems like the game will fly by though, honestly. Figured there'd be more interaction, but still early.
Jonny is a bro. Totally need to switch over to him. Orlando (current avatar) is cool too, just not me. Jonny forever.
Both girls have their plusses and minuses so far. Game totally needs an Erika ending though. ::Nod nod::
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I don't know if it was me sucking or the demo being wonky or what, but when I tried it out it was damn near impossible to climb onto a block if you managed to get Vincent turned around (so his front is facing you thorough the block).
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Lost Odyssey: Up to the 2nd town in the game and all that.
Call me a sap, but I nearly cried at the first dream sequence the game gives you (the one with the girl at the inn.) Actually, I find those sequences just well written in general.
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Call me a sap, but I nearly cried at the first dream sequence the game gives you (the one with the girl at the inn.) Actually, I find those sequences just well written in general.
Best parts of the game.
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Oh yeah I play games.
Final Fantasy V Advance - Did the four job fiesta. White Mage / Summoner / Beastmaster / Samurai. White Mage and Summoner kind of crush the game so I ended up finishing at level 32.
Cthulhu Saves the World - Been playing this on Insanity. It's, um, insane! About on par with earlygame Cross Edge hard mode / earlygame Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne hard mode in terms of difficulty, except... doesn't drop off as much. Up to the volcano now, but first getting shinies from the Ice Cave.
Record of Agarest War - Up to the second gen now. Gameplay's decent but has WAY too many randoms. Pretty much ignoring everything that has to do with plot since it's kinda bad.
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Lost Odyssey: Up to the 2nd town in the game and all that.
Call me a sap, but I nearly cried at the first dream sequence the game gives you (the one with the girl at the inn.) Actually, I find those sequences just well written in general.
Daawww ^_^
Yeah LO did make me get rather watery too a few times both with the dreams and in terms of plot scenes at times. I even got teary at the happy! scenes because I am a really big sap when it comes to stuff like that. Join the sappiness club! \0/~
(the game can also be tear inducing in another fashion as well though so watch out for that one - wonder if the game will claim another victim there >.>)
Marvel vs Capcom 3-
Picked this up on the fly when I went on a wild random shopping spree last week. For £13.99 I couldn't resist. Also I had to fulfill my duties as a Hsien Ko fangirl some time. Not to mention a certain someone gnawing down all my defences and constantly laying out baits relating to the game until I finally submitted! :P Well I don't play much fighting games so it is a change of pace from my usual. It seems different from the rare fighting games I have played in that I can't just button mash bulldoze smash my way to victory to clear the game which is a good thing I think. I have to work at winning, learning how to use moves, guard and so on. I can only become a better player for it :) My friend was very patient with me on this and has been helping me through tough situations.
First team was Ammy/Morrigan/X-23 and this wasn't too bad for me. I managed to clear arcade mode relatively easily with these three but then I was using the Very Easy! and "Highest!damage" modes because to begin with I just wanted to clear it all the times required towards getting enough points towards unlocking new characters to play with. So I did this until I unlocked them all the way up to Hsien Ko at least :P Even then I still had to think some about incorperating some functions like tagging with characters, team combos/supers etc by the end especially for the arcade big boss. I will confess I did do fair bit of button mash for bulldoze smash during these first few rounds too though. As a result sometimes things happened like a character glowing red and apparently becoming more powerful and I had no idea what I just hit to cause it <.<
Next I decided to SAVE the EARTH with Team CT, Gate and Snow. This time on Normal difficulty with Medium damage. Yeah this did not go well. I couldn't really manage this for the life of me for a while. The team ended up getting their asses kicked a lot. Whenever I did manage to make any progress it was down to Snow!Tron being awesme and finishing off most of the rounds I did clear solo - MVP! Then I came to one fight I totally roadblocked at and ended up calling it quits for that night. Talked it through with the friend some and learned about X Factor so next time I played I managed to do better, incorperating that and I also tried to make better use of assists and supers which also seemed to help. Finally after much practice Team CT, Gate and Snow managed to make it to the big boss and in the end they managed to SAVE the EARTH ... after it was already destroyed several million times over :P Again I was given advice on how to deal with this and once I started incorperating guarding into the boss fight it became much easier :) Still screwed up some however and as a result ended up finishing the fight off with an epic!CT solo (she SAVED the EARTH!!!)~
(thanks to everyone for the game recommendations earlier, I am going to be working on those too soon :))
Edit: Team CT, Gate and Snow are now much better at saving the earth ... or at least at getting to the final fight for it. Galactus is still a pain even though I've been trying to guard at the right times as much as possible. I'm not very good at it. After the earth was destroyed several million times over again :P Hsien CT ended up with the win for the second time running despite my best efforts to try to avoid this since I wanted the Hulk/Tron ending. Oh well. Gustaff Fire is awesme by the way. It has really helped a lot since I've started trying to abuse it as much as possible~)
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Lufia 2 Remake finished - I like what they have tried to do with the narrative, they really streamlined it so it isn't so sprawing and dispersed around the world. It helps back the Sinistrals up as a credible threat because they actually pressure people and places more than once. Lots of stuff was put together in ways that make a lot of sense and it was told relatively well. It is a shame the source material is a bit stale at some points. I love love love how much more effort they put into the Erim/Iris and Maxim relationship. It actually makes the core story of the series have some legs to stand on. A shame about the rest of the series olololol. It is still complete and total fluff of a plot, but at least it isn't so clunky anymore.
Character stuff was generally pretty good even if everyone was pretty much a walking stereotype, but the game never really tried to be super deep or anything so that is fine. High points were Neo (Matrix) Artea and Dekar ultimately pulling a Goku from DBZ at the end of the Namek stuff. Not because they were good but because they got a laugh that they actually did that shit.
Final boss terrible as advertised, but I didn't really get as much slowdown as I did in some other areas of the game. I did get instant killed by something I am not sure how the fuck to dodge a few times and anyone but Maxim can't actually fight the boss so uh, okay. Still he was generally doing 1 damage a hit to Maxim (omg 40 with the magic damage rings!!) and only took so long to kill because he spends half the fucking fight either air juggling you for pitiful damage or flying out of range.
Oh well, game done. It was okay and I am glad I picked it up. next game pulled out of the bag was Etrian Odyssey.
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FF4 TAY-Good to see Edge has the same level of sense and impulse control as ever!
OB Neph- Finished this. Go play it! Neph needs feedback on this, and it's a fun attempt to rebalance the game. Things to possibly do: Alter bosses, change items, maybe fix bits of translation.
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Heh, been a while since I posted.
Banjo-Tooey: I'm going to go ahead and say it - I found B-K to be superior in every single way save one - the fact that they let you know how to get the Jiggies. That's not to say that this was a bad game, just a very mediocre one.
CSI - Deadly Intent: This, on the other hand, is a bad game. I liked it, but it was a bad game. It's weird that for all that I think Telltale is the greatest gaming company currently making games that are released relatively on time, there are at least two series they do I think are bad despite liking the source material (this, and Wallace and Gromit). Conversely...
Back to the Future: The Game - About a third or so (I think) of the way through Episode 2. I really like this so far despite it being fairly easy and thinking that the original trilogy movies were mediocre at best with a few good moments. Still have to download the last episode.
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Blazblue CT: Beat score attack mode. I originally tried Tager, but got frustrated trying to beat Unlimited Niu with him. So I switched to Jin and used the ice car -> throw cheese which worked great up until Unlimited Ragna. For him, I had to play super-defensive and just throw ice while dodging his distortions. Now I never have to see that accursed mode again... until the next game.
Also doing decently in the online mode with Tager. Still have the grindy achievements left, but I'm up to level 18.
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Lost Odyssey: Beat Disc 1.
Really didn't expect a sequence like that in the game, though it only really got me at the funeral, mostly cause I felt like I could relate to the characters in question having been to funerals and all, and done something parallel to what they did. They conveyed it actually rather well the kind of emotional tension going on during a funeral, I felt, rather than just going "its sad, lets move on." Plus most games don't even HAVE full funerals (I think it says something that Leo's Funeral in FF6, is a rare case of a genuine attempt at a funeral, and is the only other instance I can think of offhand...and that scene was mostly a superficial "aww, how sad" moment.)
Also, game has gotten notably easier suddenly. An extra character, and a lot more skills to play around with makes a huge difference; I'm fine with this though cause the first dungeon's difficulty banked heavily on the resource management aspect, which I wasn't fond of during a point when you're still trying to grasp the game basics. Its made a quick recovery at least.
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You have been to funerals with clowns as well? The next 2 dungeons are the last of the hard ones if I am remembering the sequence of events correctly. After that the game kind of gives up and curls up and dies. The Forest is a bit of a breather, then it tries again but I think the next dungeon isn't much harder than the Forest once you know the enemy kill priorities (there is a lot of status being bandied around). One after that is straight up hardest section in the game I think. Then the game curls up and dies as you have learnt to many skills on your Immortals.
Dragon Age 2 - So I had a game of this going on Easy mode face roll as a warrior just before I went on holiday. Loaded it up yesterday and saw some new DLC advertised. Wondered when that came out. Seems it came out yesterday. Good timing. Bought it and finished it. The plot there is actually pretty interesting, but uh being able to do it in chapter 1 is a bit baffling given a plot power thing. Oh well, not bad.
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Aquaria - The sun god is a fish, that makes sense
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Catherine: So bipolar... Finished what will probably be my first run through. Might play the game again though. Should at least try Normal.
From the point I last checked in, the stages got progressively more frustrating, and the story just didn't support the effort needed for them. Not enough stuff happens during the days leading up to the finale, though Catherine does prove to be creepy and sexy, and everyone at the bar is fun to be around.
Then you reach Day 7. Hoooooly shit this was what I was hoping for the whole game. Yeah, some Xenosaga-length cutscenes here, but it was all golden. Some of the most promising things didn't pan out the way I hoped in the end, but it was still great and made up for a lot. Even the levels that come after this were the fun brand of difficult rather than the obnoxious brand thusfar. I had a blast. If only the whole game was this enjoyable.
I will say this though. Seriously. The game needs an Erika ending. Maybe it's one of the other ones...
Got the Normal Lover ending. Spoilers:
Relatively satisfying. Lots of handwaving though, especially with regards to Catherine. At least Vincent is enough man to admit that whether she was real or not it was still intent to cheat and therefore wrong. Just feels like he's forcing the issue too much, you know? I guess it's kinda convenient that Erika was there for Boss's confession and Orlando and Jonny were also having the dreams, but... uh... shouldn't they be dead, or something? Or I guess they're saved since Vincent won before they could die. Probably the case.
Poor Jonny's unrequited love, but screw you dude, she's mine. I still can't tell if Katherine was cheating or not either. Her reactions during the scene where Vincent confronts her about Steve totally shout 100% lying, or at least hella dodgy, even if the Steve thing didn't pan out specifically. I guess it doesn't matter now.
I was reaaaaaally disappointed Boss didn't turn out to be Nyarlie. That was such a nice setup too. They almost shouted it from the rooftops during that scene, but I guess they didn't want to follow through with it. But really, I gotta hand it to them, that scene restored my faith in the game. So damn awesome. Erika ending could easily stem from that! C'mooooon DLC if one doesn't exist. The confessional voice being Astaroth was a nice touch though.
Otherwise, I don't quite know what to make of it. Lots of really solid ideas that shine in places and are overshadowed by questionable creative decisions and a lack of substance in most of the story. I guess they didn't want to overload the game with stuff since it's meant to be replayed, but the game HAS scene-skip. I'd call it a 7/10 game at the moment. Will contemplate more once other people finish.
I reaaaaaally should have had a separate save file before the final dungeon to try for some alternate endings, if possible. Derp derp derp.
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Wait, Hunter, you really thought Nyarlie is the big bad??
I thought they made it pretty obvious from beginning that Ishtar is the real big bad, with Ms. Venus and all that.
And I suggest run a few more cycle for good endings, if just to find out what had turn out for the waitress.
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Wait, Hunter, you really thought Nyarlie is the big bad??
I thought they made it pretty obvious from beginning that Ishtar is the real big bad, with Ms. Venus and all that.
And I suggest run a few more cycle for good endings, if just to find out what had turn out for the waitress.
Oh they make that quite clear later on. They don't even really mention any of the mythologies before the end, and given Persona's penchant for using him, coupled with Boss' own wording during the scene, led me to believe that to be a possibility. The whole Babylonian thing was made clear though, as I said. Just disappointing, as Lovecraft is always fun and totally fits here. I can totally see the whole Ishtar/Venus thing now though, it's not readily apparant up to there though. I'll probably play again for the True Freedom ending.
EDIT: Trisha. Ishtar. I got it now. Ahahaa
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Makes sense you feel that way about the Boss. But I think they utliamtely trying to aim for a more comedy feel in the end, especially you are down the Katherine route. So the Nyarlie probably won't fit the direction they are heading for. But then, he does make perfect sense if you are in the Catherine good end.
And I wonder you catch this or not: Ishtar/Ms. Venus is also the person inside the confession chamber.2
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And I wonder you catch this or not: Ishtar/Ms. Venus is also the person inside the confession chamber.2
The game explicitly said that was Astaroth
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Dive Kick: Dodge or Block. I think Blocking staggers you, but he doesn't follow it up, and you can recover out of it fast enough; if you're in air, it tends to put him at a disadvantageous scenario for anyone with good camping (Hi Bartz!)
It's a guard crush now. I haven't tried Precise Block much but I would guess it would leave you both staggered.
Mostly running around 000.
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Started up another game of Catherine on Normal. Past Stage 3, got two Golds and a Silver before turning back to Easy. Just not feeling it for effort, really. Aside from the first question that is always the same, I ended up picking all Order choices, so I'm gonna try and max out the meter for Order to go for True Lover, Normal Freedom and any other ending I can get with it.
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MvC3 - Cleared Arcade mode with Morrigan, X-23, Hsien Ko, She Hulk, Ammy, Tron, and Chris so far. Also been using Deadpool and Chun Li but haven't got their endings yet. Ammy and Deadpool have been a blast to play as so far, managed to pull off some combos with them and Hsien Ko/Tron are fun too especially with swing/Gustaff Fire. Also kind of fond of Shulky~
Final Fantasy 5 Advance- Thanks to Nitori, Sage and Random who helped set me up with this. Started and am doing the Four Job Fiesta. I was granted Black Mage for my first job. Game was relatively uneventful up until the Water Crystal boss with the Black Mages burning, freezing and shocking everything left, right and center before hand but Garula was a real road block for my L10 team. Was it legit to smash an Frost Rod over it's head? I eventually lost patience and did so after row changing and Potion w/th Fire spam failed to work for numerous reattempts (well first I left the dungeon and went back to towns to explore a bit finding the Frost Rod in the process so some characters were L11 and not L10 when I got back to Garula =/) The Water Crystal job unlocked from the FJF is Summoner :)
(I also have a back up save in case it wasn't legit to break the Frost Rod in which case I'll redo the Garula fight and hope to get lucky with a Blizzaga casting on Attack or something >.>)
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TAY: Just beat up Rubicant. That goddamn cursed ring I got randomly in one of the early chapters has been a lifesaver against bosses. Rubi got owned so hard by fire absorbs in that Edge duel, to the point where I just turned on autobattle and waited for the fight to end.
The fire scarf's an awesome armor too.
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Realm of the Mad God - Fun free game. reminds of old NES games with it's graphics, but online and free and evil like Diablo. You die, you start over at level one.
League of Legends - Just got Goku...er I mean the Monkey King!
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Etrian Odyssey - Got up to Fenrir, then was over extended when I tried to lure it forward away from the other wolf things up the back and died horribly. I think I need another level or so and a chance to rethink some strategy. Overextension there taught me some good lessons anyway. Level 13 is probably to low for it. Fenrir went first and one shot my fighter (fuck trying to remember the exact spell of Landshneckt at 3:30 in the morning). 70HP taking 93 damage physical is ouch. Was manageable after Guardian and Immunize were up, but yeah I think another level or two will go far. Maybe doing some gathering on this level will help also.
I have straight up no fucking clue how people do this game without killing FOEs early with Poison and stacking two flavours of defense buffs on threatening stuff. There is randoms that are still fully capable of one shotting my Bubsnickt that aren't even FOEs (Warbulls), so yeah.
Also not the kind of game I have the patience to map things out myself, but it is a pretty cool idea and I have some fun copying down the maps at the start of each level. It is fun like tracing things was back in high school art kind of. Gives you a feeling for the level up front which is always nice.
All of this does suggest that Trancey is absolutely insane.
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FF4TAY - Finished. The second half is awesome, can't even mock. I will post more later, but I am done~
Why is this game good... I just played it to mock it. WAHHH!
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Catherine: Dunno why I avoided the forums. Not like there was any real danger of my getting spoiled here.
Anyhow. Beat tonight. Got the True Lover ending.
Could largely mirror Sopko's statements, with a little more statement of satisfaction and less about frustration of the puzzles. I don't think the lack of substance was as bad (although could definitely have been fixed) and that the game did push itself forward well enough. Probably the biggest change I would have made is built a little more onto the conversation chains/required a bit of Persona-esque walking/social link talking (not exactly, just taking some queues from it) to build more into the days.
My other, biggest, gripe is that they flubbed some on the portrayal of the Vincent/Katherine relationship. Where it started made sense, but it should have opened up a little more.
Honestly, and I always hate to say this, the game would probably have benefit from being just a little longer in every spot but the gameplay. A little more time on the characters and conflict was all it really needed.
I'll do something a little more in-depth.
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FF4TAY – Final thoughts ~
So this game is a thing. Let’s tackle the game in two parts; before and after the moon.
The game is pretty uneven in plot writing and gameplay alike before the moon. It definitely has its moments (Ceodore is a generically likeable main character, I like the father-daughter stuff between Ursula and Yang, and Palom and Porom have both been written into interesting enough characters, and Luca is cute.) I’m not exactly praising the plot here or anything but I definitely think the game has some good plot ideas even if they aren’t very well executed. Because of the overarching ensemble cast, the characters don’t get much time to be developed.
Now for the recurring characters (twins don’t count). You definitely get the impression fairly quickly that Cecil and Rosa at the very least seem to have moved on with their lives and are convincingly parent-like; Edge’s personality paints him as a younger man than he is but you can chalk that up to him being a life-long moron, I guess. Rydia has no personality at all again! Yang plays a very different role as well, it’s not bad.
The two glaring problems in the cast are Kain and Edward. I ranted about this extensively during my initial posts, but I am going to emphasize how grossly out of place these two feel in a game that was written to be 17 years after the original. Both of these dudes have issues that should have been resolved years earlier and while they would fit in a sequel that was immediately after the game, they don’t here. So you have Edward blathering about his girlfriend who died 17 years ago which is completely inappropriate considering how long he knew her compared to how long she’s been dead. I remember I had a friend in university whose fiancé died in a car accident. For about a year she went through a terrible time, but eventually she got a new boyfriend and moved on with her life. Not that she totally forgot him or anything but it wasn’t something she dwelled on. Edward basically seems totally unable to move on with his life over what amounted to a teenage fling. He is embarrassingly neglectful of his duties as a leader and basically seems to sit around with his thumb in his ass instead of being a leader.
Kain is pretty terrible because he also can’t get over his teenage love interest. He separates into two and his evil side does evil stuff!!!!!! It is really lame. Turban!Kain is just this ultra-mysterious douche (omg “I don’t have a name… I left that behind years ago.” Loooool) and is a bit of a Mary Sue. They fuse and he becomes a HOLY DRAGOON oh yeah. Bleeehhhhh. The fact is that he has been spending the last 17 years wandering and being all :( because some girl banged his best friend instead of him. Get the fuck over it man, you are like 37. The game also likes to drool over Cecil (and Yang to a lesser extent) a bit too much for my taste, but I guess he is a world savior or something?
For gameplay, you can definitely see the imprint of a good battle system but you only get glimpses of it. Too much solo stuff and overpowered characters and Edward’s chapter which you mash attack a lot in. Edward’s chapter is again terrible because EDWARD HAS A SPECIAL ABILITY BUT LOL HE CAN’T USE IT BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE POTIONS. Siiiigh. Dark Kain stuff is just terribad because it is easy and solo and stupid. Rydia is probably my favorite gameplay-wise, there’s a couple of really neat bosses.
My favorite quest is probably Palom’s because the Dark Elf is kinda fun to fight and Palom himself is a hilarious ball of bitchiness and acting like a bratty prodigy.
Porom’s is okay but once you go to the present it does lose steam because of Mt. Ordeals crap and DARK KAIN.
Edge’s is interesting, you get to choose scenarios ~ Playing as the ninjas is pretty fun and then them all meeting up again is fun. I liked the Tower of Babil. Edge himself is very silly and I enjoy that.
Rydia’s is all gameplay~ Good gameplay too.
Ceodore/Kain’s is okay as long as it’s not being really easy and you don’t have to play as Dark Kain or have Kain plot.
Yang’s has URSULA! And shows off that speed actually works in TAY~
Lunarian chapter is just really hard. It has a lot of competent randoms and some good bosses. Golbez/Fu are good PCs but bad shit’s going down, so it’s hard as fuck.
The second-to-last chapter has Edge, who spends most of it dead, Luca, Golbez, and Rydia. The plot is pretty minimal but you kill Summons and shit. Ramuh totally ruined my shit and it was very sad. I was possibly underlevelled, I didn’t do any side stuff which is why Edge was not very good apparently (he looks very good if you collect items specifically for him, lazy). Stuff happened, we fought Odin, Cecil was awakened, he turned into a zombie, we flew to the moon.
So overall, this game has pretty campy plot with glimmers of goodness scattered in and gameplay with potential but not much execution due to unfortunate party choices. The game has an amazing auto-battle feature which doubles the speed of everything including summons and is just generally very solid at helping you wipe out things quickly. Speed works and you are allowed to switch between characters and charge times both exist and are shown on the ATB gauge. So basically the game is ATB in its most evolved form if it is utilized properly. Unfortunately it hasn’t really been tapping into said potential. I think the game gets a fairly mediocre score if it judged based on this point.
So we get to the moon and we have full character choice, which is pretty amazing. There is a pool of about 12 PCs or so that I consider quite worth using; Ceodore, Ursula, Porom, Palom, Rydia, Rosa, Kain, Edge, Yang, Luca, Gekkou, Izayoi, Golbez at the very least, I could maybe be argued a couple of others? Cecil is fine once he becomes unzombie and isn't too underlevelled (or wasn't for me), I ended the dungeon at like 43-45?. I decided on Ceodore/Ursula/twins/Rydia because of sheer fangirlism and Rydia because she’s an awesome Summoner babe.
I actually have very little to say about the final dungeons; there is about 10 minutes of plot for about 18 hours of gameplay and most of the scenes are certainly solid enough for what they are, which is FF4 fanfiction and teenage romance. Okay, that wasn’t very flattering but they are fine. The great thing about the final dungeons is the huge like xobox amount of bosses to use the shinies you slowly collect along the way. You can switch characters and stock up on stuff every few floors, which is where I drew the DDS2 comparisons. Just… you actually care about being able to switch because a lot of the PCs are unique compared to one another.
I’d say approximately half of the bosses are competent; there are 11 in the penultimate dungeon and 18? required bosses in the final dungeon. I like the game because it definitely feels like different characters are MVP and LVP throughout the dungeon. Ursula gets stupid good once you get Minerva and Godhand just because she is so goddamn fast, mages are always solid but Rydia gets passed once I got Dualcast, white mage is always useful, and Ceodore played an important role in surviving boss fights while being able to Haste himself and heal himself effectively. I generally thought Ceodore and Ursula were better as time went on, whereas the mages devalued a bit, especially Rydia because the final dungeon didn’t emphasize multiperson randoms as much as the second-to-last dungeon did. I ended up smashing all of the optional bosses; Omega was probably the hardest overall, but Ceodore with white mage setup (robe/staff for max healing) won the day. Ceodore was MVP against all the optional bosses as well as the final boss for his variety and HP and higher defenses than Ursula. I definitely like that Ceodore is genuinely a mix of Rosa and Cecil instead of mostly just Cecil redux.
One really great thing about the final dungeon is how the old school bosses (it has four bosses from FF1-6 minus 4 in the final dungeon) are pretty true to their original forms (but tweeked to fit a different battle system, Twinheaded Dragon does things besides physical to not be totally spoiled by Blink, etc.). For example, Omega walks around and has Surge Beam, the counter confuse, Thermal Ray (Atomic Ray is the name in this game). Except they gave him a death counter. Fuck you, TAY! Doomgaze runs away like a bitch, and Shinryu hangs out in a box. Overall, of the cameo bosses, Ultros, King Behemoth, Iron Giant and Kraken were probably the best. Lich and Ghost Train were kind of bad.
The superbosses were all entertaining. They were very hard but fair. Shinryu is a very funny case in that if you can survive the first two tidal waves he is easier than Omega but the key is that survival. Ultima Weapon is solid because it gives you Ultima Weapon, which is awesome and makes Ceodore better than Ursula probably~ Rydia was dead for most of those fights since I had Dualcast which makes Palom better. Sadly it is very late (have to beat Doomgaze) but the fights he has it he rapes so much. Also, so much death countering in this game. So rude.
Final boss was not a bad boss, but slapping Slow on him makes him a bit wussier than some of the others.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that this game, in its second half and on the PSP is:
-Aesthetically pleasing – I like the character art and sprites a lot, especially the twins and Ursula
-Gameplay is very solid, an evolved form of ATB which utilizes its strengths: has charge times on the atb bar, has speed that works, and allows for character switching (which most of the series does to be fair)
-Character balance is pretty good (at least to a certain point, there are some pretty horrid PCs like Harley) and you have a wide variety of characters to choose from in the final dungeon and have freedom to play with a range of teams
-There is new music finally!! YAY!!
-Has varied, fun boss design and tons of bosses to use your broken equipment on, which is pretty cool compared to a lot of games which don’t let you play with your tons quite enough
-The series fanservice bosses are cool if a little random.
-The plot barely exists. There are a couple of worthwhile scenes (I kinda like Ceodore/Kain even if I can’t help but giggle due to bad fanfiction writing, and the Leonora/Luca rivalry over Palom scene is very cute)
-So I guess what I’m saying is that the second half of the game is like DDS2’s second half but with a better battle system and more character choice.
I think the game also does a pretty good job of making the game not about Cecil, which I was afraid it would. Having him possessed/zombied makes it easy to justify him not playing as major of a role as he could have, and I think this is a good thing for the game. Cecil is actually not very important to the plot at all. Also I think he’s the worst of the five old final dungeon PCs, which I think is amusing.
So overall, the game is much better than I was expecting once you hack through the campy and at times insufferable FF4 fanservice.
First half gets a 4/10 or so, second half gets a 9/10 or so. This balances to around a 7, because second half is more important. I wouldn’t recommend the game to those who don’t like long dungeons, because the dungeons are very long. But I think if you can endure a few hours of FF4 fanservice and questionable design decisions you will find a very pleasant gameplay game, so I’d recommend it to anyone who likes ATB or FF4 or DDS2’s final two dungeons.
That was rather long! But at least I am not Meeple.
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Also Kain is no longer a in the lightweight division!
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Grandia ReDux: So somebody made a KAIZO Grandia hack. Yes, take probably the easiest RPG ever and make it difficult! Sounds retarded but amazingly Grandia's gameplay isn't as outdated as most PSone RPGs. There's some questionable decisions in the hack: huge SP costs, reduced damage in all of Justin's skills, unuseable level 3 magic due to increased costs and chances of being RNG raped (29 lvl 3 MP for Feena at 30 levels of each type of magic? wtf). PC remain mostly the same stat-wise, exceptions are a huge HP buff to Rapp (as in 100 more HP), and Guido with awesome stats! Aiel approved hack.
Of course bosses are the highlight of the hack. Wiped to Mio 3 times due to RANDOM STATUS on her normal attack. Treant (first boss disc 2) is completely insane with super fast sleep attacks and overkill OHKO damage. Lord's Ghost has 100 damage staff whacks followed by DragonZap (aka you die), I had to rely on Milda OHKO the staff after an attack boost, def-down on the boss, and counter all on the first turn. As a silly easter egg from Grandia 3, you can fight random Desert Lords with 7k HP (can come in groups of 4) with 400 damage physicals and unbreakable physical defense! Early versions of the hack you can just Dethsword them but even with 145 SP cost it was deemed too broken and was removed in a revised patch.
Also replaying the game made me realized that Feena is more retarded than Justin. Once an independant adventurer turns into a clingy whiny bitch. It's unbearable.
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Blazblue: For some reason, I seem to be stuck in a rut. I am getting slightly better about predicting jump-ins (I beat one Hakumen entirely on the idea of being patient, waiting for him to jump, and then nailing him with 6D), but I still have a long way to go before I can consider myself tournament-viable.
Frequency and Amplitude: I haven't actually played these yet, still looking for my extra memory card, but I am psyched. I do remember playing the hell out of the demo for Amplitude, and they were only $3 each at Gamestop, so... Score!
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Also Kain is no longer a in the lightweight division!
Yeah, the game lost 1/8th of a point for that.
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/me waves @ Ciato ^_^
That was a great post, I enjoyed reading it all! >=) I didn't know there were cameo bosses! I want to fight those. Dualcast, Summoner Babe funs, lots of different PCs with lots of shinies to use vs lots of different bosses looks awesme to me. I also approve of auto battle and speed for fast forwarding fights if I want. It probably means the very long dungeons aren't quite so painful random encounter wise because you can get them over with as quickly as possible if you want. Also being able to switch in and out different PCs to try different stats/abilities/equipment/tactics or strategy is good for keeping it fresh and not boring >=-)
I am glad that you like Ursula and the twins best, also that they turned out to be quite awesme PCs too! I am sad Rydia still doesn't have a personality but at least yaay she is still an awesme Summoner Babe!?~ I am also glad that Cecil and Rosa aren't too bad character wise this time. This means the game probably isn't torture. I am seriously thinking about getting it now! Thanks :)
FF5a- I decided to refight Garula because I wanted to keep my Frost Rod. Turns out turtling the fight works for that battle too. The reason it didn't before is because I was just spamming Potions and had forgotten about the Defend command >.> After the Wind Crystal I started using my shiny new Summoner job with my characters but first I needed some Summons to use so I bought Chocobo, Sylph and Remora. I think Remora was a trap though. It doesn't seem to do anything. Then thanks to the advices of various peoples I was able to go exploring some and pick up some very nice shinies before Karnak/Fire Ship. First was Tycoon Castle where there were shiny Elixirs and a Healing Staff. None of my characters could use it though. There was also FF5!plot, well still it was a sort of cute scene between sisters. Next up was Walse and a fight with Shiva. She was a hard fight to begin with because my characters were all only L11 still and she wiped me out a few times until I had fine tuned my strategy some. At first my team was three Black Mages and a Summoner, then I tried two of each and finally I ended up with one Black Mage and three Summoners. This worked! Black Mage hit weaknesses to do the damage with fire spells while triple Sylphs from Summoners combined to keep everyone's health topped up while doing bonus damage as back up support =-) Constant Slyph spam from three sources prevented Shiva from managing to take control of the fight. One character did fall once but once I'd taken out her remaining soliders I was able to use a Phoenix Down and heal everyone up from there. As a reward Shiva was obtained after the fight and this was to prove very useful to have available in the future.
Finally I went to Karnak. There was plot stuffs. Stocked up on supplies after and then entered the Fire Ship and went to town. At first I was having great fun spamming Shiva for massive overkill damage on entire groups of enemies at a time but after getting a bit into the ship and finding some treasure chest shinies I became lost and couldn't figure out where to go next to proceed. Since the random encounter rate was high and I was spam happy this eventually meant I ran out of MP and Ethers/Elixirs to restore it with >.> I was tired by this stage and due to tiredness and frustration I ended up getting wiped out when I wasn't paying attention. I waited until the next day before trying again. Next time through I bought some Mythril Knives from Karnak before heading back into the ship so my mages would have some form of non Chocobo spam offense for the enemy type that immunes elements in there. I also bought some new armours and hats, selling old stuffs as needed to get the money required. Stocked up on as much Potions as I could too and an extra Phoenix Down. Back to the ship where I ended up getting lost again <.< I was alot more conservative my resources this time though and I eventually blundered into the room with the save point in it. Thankfully saved and used a Tent/Cottage to fully restore everyone. Next room was also kind of confusing to me and it took a while to realise there was a second platform that my character was able to step onto to and push the levers from. As a result there was lots of fighting and resource drain here too. I was all out of Potions/Hi-Potions, Ether and Elixirs by the time I figured out how to proceed but hey at least there was an Elixir in the treasure chest in the room. Went back to use the save point anyway and then proceeded forward again. The Fire Ship boss also took a few attempts. Doing heavy damage to it wasn't an issue, characters staying alive long enough to do it was. On the winning attempt Lenna was able to get the breathing space needed to get in the final Shiva required to end the fight though. Solo Lenna for the win, everyone else was ded. I was advised in chat that there would be a healing pot in the next area so not to worry about it though. A friend had clued me in the other day that there was an Elven Mantle in Karnak Castle too. I decided to do my best and try and grab all the treasures while escaping from the castle. I nearly managed to get away with this too. I did indeed manage to grab all the treasures, Shiva was so so useful for clearing random battles asap and for the monsters in a box! too. However I got a bit lost while looking for the Elven Mantle and had to back track some. Once I'd obtained it I rushed to exit the castle with only seconds to spare but as I made it outside with only a few seconds to left I ran into a scripted forced encounter which I thought was just another soldier at first but which turned out to be an Iron Claw in disguise! I wasn't prepared for this sub/mini/pseudo boss fight and as a result my reactions weren't as fast as they could have been. So by the time I summoned Shiva my escape time had emptied to 0.00. I nuked the boss with my summon and then the game nuked me and everything exploded~
I was able to grab all of the treasures and beat all the enemies including the scripted fight with time to spare during the next attempt at escaping Karnak castle though. Since during the rerun I knew exactly where to go for everything and Shiva made all the fights a joke so yeah. I came out with two and a half minutes left on the clock with lots of shinies as a reward =-) Also upon checking the menu when I was back in town I discovered I had suddenly amassed over 30'000 GIL so I bought even more shinies at the stores. My Fire Crystal Job is to be the Ranger. I'm still using Black Mage/Summoner/Summoner/Summoner for now though since I don't have access to the crystal shard for Ranger yet.
Edit: I have now been to Crescent Island and the Black Chocobo Forest. Picked up the remaining Fire Crystal Shards so now my team is currently Ranger (Bartz) Black Mage (Lenna) Summoner (Galuf) and Black Mage (Faris) I also had a Fire Ship but now I have a Black Chocobo to fly around on~ Is it possible to get back to Walse and try and grab the basement treasures there at this stage? About the jobs it is ok to switch all three characters between all the jobs I have been allocated by the Job Festa to master Job levels for secondary abilities for everyone to work with right? As long as I have at least one type of each job for fightd at all times it doesn't matter who is currently what I think~
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TAY: Just beat Omega. Knowing about his weakness to thunder physicals would have really fucking helped! Oh well. I beat him down with Meteor and Fuma spam.
FF13: Finally found this disk. I'm up to the start of C4.
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ToTA: Just beat Van for the first time, Tales plot, you so silly. I continue to fail at combos, with the highest one being 58 after I got stupid lucky just mashing attack chains and everyone else managed to sync up just right somehow. I must say, the whole "ALL OUR ENEMIES FELL INTO BOTTOMLESS PITS, CLEARLY THEY MUST BE DEAD" logic got a good laugh out of me. It's a fun Tales game with lol for plot, not much more I can really say.
League of Legends, so as much as I hate to admit this, I've had TWO Coop vs ai games this week in which the entire rest of the team failed so hard that they were negative vs bots, then ragequiting soon after and causing a lossed game, too which all I have to say is my faith in humanity has just been lost...again.
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What's yer LOL name Glen?
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Glen: I have games like that with somewhat disturbing frequency. I mean, I'm not good by any stretch of the imagination yet, but I can usually handle my own. But it typically starts with a super bad player having issues and ragequitting, then the 4 vs 5 just sort of snowballs.
Weirdly, this week seemed to go better than most though, with some absolutely killer Veiger's and the like. Sad that Leona will be rotating off though, as I was really digging her.
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Scar: Same as my forum name here without the space.
Andy, yeah, she's a fun hero, but not quite up to par when you vs players since her ult is a bit too easy to sidestep unfortunately :-(. Personally been playing alot of Ori/Rumble lately, both are tons of fun, but I'm pretty bad at the former, which is pretty understandable since she's one of he harder heroes to play I think >.>.
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OH, guess I should add the perspective for the bot games, I typically only play them for my FWotD, my record for bot games was something like 90 wins 0 losses before this week <.<. I'm used to people not being great by any means, but these players...were special, you would think if someone dies by diving a bot at their tower they would think twice about doing it 4 more times....nope.
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Glen: The tanky CDR build seems to mitigate that somewhat, but I'd actually have to play vs people to test the build I was suggested. You mainly focus on being an assist tank to murder people in your lane. Then typically engage with W -> E -> Q -> R. It is pretty cool. <_<
But yeah, I can understand that. I'm not great, but I tend to learn pretty quick. I'm even down to 1-3 deaths a game, typically, and this includes some aggressive/risky play. Hell, spent most of last night as Leona at like, 25% health harassing bots >_>
Then I overreached vs a Trundle and met the other 3 bots. ;_;
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Talking about TAY, I've played through the game twice (Once on Wii with friends, once again on the rerelease on PSP).
Character thoughts both times, if you were wondering!
TEAM 1
- Edge
- Rydia
- Luca
- Porom
- Edward
- Edge is probably the best character I've used in either party. He has offense, he has HP, he has magic, he has Itemcaste Haste and Blink. He has SMOKE. Smoke is amazing. He's great. Excellent equipment selection, too. He can even use stuff like Godhand, which is found early.
- Rydia is solid enough. Leviathan gets used a lot. Bahamut is way too late to see much use but he's good too.
- Luca is... mediocre. She's not bad or anything! She just didn't really impress. Good HP and good equipment, but that's about it.
- Porom is a solid enough White Mage. Dualcast is nice but way late, as was said. Spent most of her time buffing, instead of healing, because...
- Edward is more then enough for healing. By far the biggest surprise, I'd say he was the second best PC in the party. Instant 4K heals for everyone! Phoenix Downs for everyone! Oh yeah, MULTITARGET BLINK BAND with Rydia. As for Bardsong, there are worse ways to waste turns. You might get MT Haste! Protect/Shell isn't bad either. Hide even helped against Ahriman, and beats death counters. Edward Hides, everyone elses timer runs out, MT Phoenix Down. His biggest problem is getting him out of that level rut he's almost certainly stuck in.
Second Team (PSP) was
- Ceodore
- Ursula
- Palom
- Leonora
- Zangetsu
- Ceodore starts off a little slow, but he is really good eventually. Twin Rush is an excellent Band, his White Magic is good, and he is fast. His lower HP is a bit of a problem early on, but doesn't matter much later.
- Ursula is similarly good. Tenketsu is a good substitute attack, Chakra is usable. But really, she's strong, she's fast, and that band is again very good. It charges quickly and doesn't cost much MP.
- Palom starts off slow too. His speed is low early on until you get equipment to fix that, and it takes a little while to learn spells like Quake. But when you get Quake and similar spells he becomes amazing. Dualcast is late, again, but really good, making him pump out 16000 damage a turn.
- Leonora is... She's OK. I didn't level enough to get any actual Black Magic besides... Stop and Osmose. Now, Stop is actually really good! But it's probably not worth the slower White Magic learning.
- Zangetsu is... Well, he's not great. But he's not as bad as I was expecting! I was expecting him to be awful, especially after his pitiful performance in Edge's chapter, but he has a few things going for him. He gets a strong MT Lightning spell, and his INT is actually higher then Edges. And... Human Kite stops Valvalis Spin! Yes! ...OK, that's about it. He's not good, but he wasn't as bad as I thought.
But really, the character balance really is pretty good outside of some (Harley).
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I'd play TAY but I think the Wii price still hasn't gone down. I'd love digital downloads but:
Digital -> No used market -> Prices don't particularly need to go down to compete -> BS
Why is the FF5 locked class challenge so popular here nowadays? It definitely sounds fun in any case (but I've already done Bartz/Butz/Bart/God solo before)
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snip
Wow, someone used Ceodore? I've always found him to be amazingly shitty.
I always wished I could put four people in the front, though. Edge/Yang/Ursula/Cecil would wreck house.
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http://www.letsplaying.com/lets-playing/FF5FF/index.php
For Fenrir. This is why.
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Cecil is the one I think isn't very good. Ceodore has the same stats basically except has good White Magic... and Cover isn't as good in this game as it is in the original.
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Fenrir: Grab the PSP version, it should be down to 20ish euros and that version is better.
Ceodore's better than Cecil. The white magic is useful enough (Mostly haste and Curaga in a pinch), and he probably has better overall stats. Cecil is only usuable in the final dungeon as well which sucks, since it means he will be underleveled.
I just beat up Ultima weapon myself. Going to finish this run up and then post thoughts on the game.
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The option to make him into a semi-competent second white mage with a staff and robe is cool. Did that vs. Omega.
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Cecil is the one I think isn't very good. Ceodore has the same stats basically except has good White Magic... and Cover isn't as good in this game as it is in the original.
One cover isn't that good. Two covers means that you can make your white and black mages never take physical damage, which is awesome.
Haste is okay, but once I get the Masamune I usually just let Edge do that cause holy fuck does he get that on everyone fast.
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It's still an advantage to have Ceo with it. I used Ceo/Edge/Rydia/Rosa/Urusla, and that is probably the best team in the game. Granted, some of that is Edge/Urusla being your main fighters, so Ceo/Cecil's spot should more be used for support. Cecil is pretty underwhelming in general compared to Ceo/Kain until his stats pick up. I think he's better than Kain at least by the end due to equips. Cover I didn't find useful- physicals either slaughtered you or weren't worth paying attention to from bosses. Randoms tended to get blitzed.
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I think physicals in that game are too nasty (on bosses and some randoms, at least) to make that strategy as viable as you are hyping. Blink allows two hits to go without taking any damage and Haste means he can cast Blink a lot!
(And Edge's Blink weapon? Is extremely late... you get it with like two bosses left...)
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I miss the days when we were just making fun of TAY. =(
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Discussion of games is pretty terrible in the Games topic, I know.
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Seriously.
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I miss the days when we were just making fun of TAY. =(
The person playing a sim dating game is about the last person on earth to make comments there.
Speaking of! TAY: Finished. Enjoyed it, will do a wrapup post in a bit.
TAY: The PSP remake really helped. It was just a damn pretty game, and polished in nice ways (YAY auto battle). It was a slow starter, as the early chapters had a lot of repeating due to the episodic nature of TAY beforehand. For the second half of the game, you are stuck on a moon and it's more or less straight combat. I already liked FF4 combat, and TAY made some balancing choices (Nerfing speices/elemental weakness, balancing gear) that improved it. It also made buffing more viable in general, and the challenge is quite good outside of a few stinker fights and the Lord Dragon.
The story is more FF4. The writers didn't take it seriously from all the in jokes and nudging, so I'm perfectly content to do it as well. I liked some of the character work (Palom and Porom) off the top of my head, but for the most part... yeah. It uses the established characters. The ending is just hilarioiusly over the top. That said, props to the 'main' villian for who they controlled/how they approached it.
FF13- Start of C4, I believe. Game is stunningly pretty and the gameplay's gotten way better with jobs. I am trying to not dislike the cast (Outside of hope, fuck him. He is being made as obnoxious as possible as a plot element), but man it is hard at points. We'll see how it turns out.
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I miss the days when we were just making fun of TAY. =(
Etrian Odyssey - Beat Fenrir (take THAT Mr French man). Yeah working out what you need to do to kite him made that fight way easier. I do really like the way the game makes you handle FOEs sometimes. Work around them a fair bit, but by the time you are ready to beat the boss you should have handled them as well. It is pretty neat honestly and works better than it sounded like they would (I was honestly expecting Persona 3 Death style stuff which is mega zzzzzzz implementation. Randomly an end game enemy will pop up! Booooorrriiiiiing). So yeah Stratum 2 and you pretty much lose absolutely all progress you have made. Immunise and Guardian both are fantastic assuming the randoms don't kill you before they even cast of course.
So back to a bit of grinding. Went to B1 again and went to the secret area. Rapier is good to get. Complete and total faqbait though. Huge congratulations to anyone finding that area without using maps.
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I think physicals in that game are too nasty (on bosses and some randoms, at least) to make that strategy as viable as you are hyping. Blink allows two hits to go without taking any damage and Haste means he can cast Blink a lot!
(And Edge's Blink weapon? Is extremely late... you get it with like two bosses left...)
Edge gets Mirage at the very start of the game? I don't really need itemcast blink for him.
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It's a pretty notable advantage to be able to cast Blink on other people, though (if you're being blitzed physically, you want to get Blink up on as many people as possible). This isn't to say Ceodore is better than Edge, but it is an advantage he has, and certainly relevant in a comparison to Cecil/Kain.
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Lost Odyssey: Beat Disc 2. You know what's annoying? When a game gives a hint that you're suppose to take quite literally in battle, but the nature of it makes it sound like a plot event of some sort. Had me tripped up in that last dungeon for a while. I guess if I had Treasure Analysis skill on (which I took off cause, well...I never use Steal since its so unreliable, why the fuck do I need to care about Treasure?), I would have figured it out faster so its partially my fault in this regard.
Other than that little nuisance, my only gripe with the game so far is that I have 7 PCs and 4 of them are pure mages, and the 5th is STILL a Mage, just with a Semi-Competent physical (meaning he can do something almost resembling damage without MP. Its not that mages are bad or anything, just I'd like SOME variety in the front lines rather than Kaim/Seth.
I know, there are two more physical PCs, I just was hoping they'd appear sooner rather than later.
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Bastion: I asked Xeroma if this was worth $15, and he said definitely. He was right. I love the weapon variety and upgrading, and rebuilding the Bastion is fun also. Plus you get to smoke weed and go on acid trips. I am actually not kidding about that.
Hunting shards right now, and have mastered two of the Proving Grounds (crossbow and scattergun).
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Indeed Meep, especially since I consider the physical characters more useful as well just due to being lower maintenance.
Mack is honestly pretty terrible other than buffing people (which other people can do better due to having more HP and MP regen and so on). Having a bad physical is totally a liability when mages can spam magic with impunity and get more damage out of it than either of his options. When you have to use him you can pretty much get by spamming Gamble and do better than anythign else he would do with his turns other than buffing. I honestly just had him defend when I was using him.
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FF5a-
Picked up the Walse, Jachol treasures and Ramuh. Fought Sandworm, went through desert and into the Town of Ruin. Plot stuffs. Went to Tycoon Meteorite and fought a turtle. More plot stuffs. Airship get. There were more plot stuffs at Bartz's hometown (went there via Black Chocobo) and Tycoon Castle. Once I'd finishing wandering around progressed to the floating ruins. There were cannons and a boss. All of the fights were easy. Went through the ruins, picking up treasures and eventually made it to the second save circle/final area. Fun boss fight. I lost once because I wasted time hunting through my inventory for Phoenix Downs when one character fell and it turned out I didn't have any left. The boss revived itself too which I wasn't prepared for. Second go at it went smoothly, everyone was able to stay alive and kicking through both stages of the fight thanks to Ranger deciding to spam Nightingale. Used spells/summons vs the target's first form and Chocobo as my main offence during the second (gogo Fat Chocobo!) >_> Also used Attack/Aim with Ranger equipped with the Dark Bow + Power Armlet and Attack with Lenna equipped with the Main Gauche~
Earth Crystal allocated me the Chemist job.
/me has Black Mage, Summoner, Ranger and Chemist, breaks game
(well ok I have to get a fourth PC again first but sshh~)
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Woooow. That team is pretty damn brutal.
Just got the earth job myself in my second run. Leaving my team at Knight/Red Mage/Geomancer/Chemist. This was almost looking like the lategame would be a challenge. Then, well, chemist.
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Ranma 1/2 RPG: Yes I know that's not the name. But whatever, you know what I'm referring to. The best feature about this game is the ability to save anywhere at anytime >_>. Given my awesome work schedule this is incredibly important. Just got up to the village and rescued Akane.
I am mostly playing this because I've been on a Ranma 1/2 high recently. Guess I will get BOSS STATS while I'm at it. KUNO WILL REIGN SUPREME IN THE DL. You just wait.
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Super: No PSP!
Xer: Oh, I see. Hum. Nice, but it looks like it actually really gets easier as it goes on. You can also have either a really easy or a really hard time depending on your luck, but that's also part of the charm I guess (Thief/Berserker/Bard/Dragoon team ? Still not that hard perhaps)
Grefter: Oh yeah, EO is good stuff.
The game is unforgiving as you can really end up with a really shitty team. (But that's not going to happen to you) That's my main problem with EO1, a ton of skills are just awful and there's no way to know which ones. EO2-3 at least let you reroll your awful characters with minimal losses.
I never really had that much problem with the game though. Kill monsters -> Sell drops -> Dudes can sell you new shiny equipment -> Upgrade -> Victory, whenever there's trouble with an alright enough team. This works if you're not in the optional uberdungeon.
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FFT - Replaying this, about halfway done. It's awesome. More details on the playthrough can be found in the metagame thread if people care.
FF13 - This was going very well until it got sidelined by FFT, and being sidelined by FFT when I'm in an FFT mood? Is not a bad thing.
Overall impressions of the game so far are generally positive. I have two main complaints, so let's get them out of the way first:
1. First two hours of gameplay are boorrrring. I get that there's a plot justification for it, but they could still have tried a little harder to make things interesting. As soon as you hit Chapter 3 it's night and day, there are paradigms and roles and the game starts quickly expecting you to use them properly or die.
2. Main character death = game over. This is stupid and makes utterly no sense. Really disappointing. (Interestingly, the other design choice I was really apprehensive about, only having direct control over one PC, actually works perfectly in practice given the pace of the battles; it's like an ARPG in that regard.)
Okay a third kinda maybe: this doesn't bother me on a first playthrough, but on a replay I could see getting a little annoyed with the lack of choice in terms of who I control? First playthrough it's a great way of the game to force you to experience different people.
Otherwise, it's... clearly a very ambitious game. Both the gameplay and storytelling style are quite different from most things I've experienced previously. I really dig the storytelling style and like most of the characters quite a bit - I think it's great how they aren't all just lovey-friendly with each other and there's very visible friction between most of them. They're in a very tough spot with different ideals. I'm also liking how the story clearly starts in medias res (gameplay would have been boring before this) and how it fills in the past at various points. Fun stuff. It's a pity it sounds like it comes off the rails a bit later but for now I really appreciate it over generic RPG cast mark 23. Gameplay is pretty fun, and again, unique. We'll see how I feel about it at the end of the day but it's certainly keeping my attention for now.
Also, it's all story and gameplay, none of that exploration or minigame or time-waster sidequest nonsense. I can deal with those sometimes but I really like the pace of this; like MMXCM.
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LA Noire- Finished this last night. Pretty good, but it's glaringly obvious that huge amounts of content were cut. The transition in the Arson cases wasn't too bad, although I have to say it was so silly in the third case talking about being an investigator for an insurance company. Put another way, I think they should have had something SLIGHTLY less silly as a profession in that first case.
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FF13: Start of chapter 5.
It's a mixed bag. The game has a very good core system and the storytelling does try to be ambitious. It's stunningly pretty. The gameplay is also extremely neat! I just am really enjoying the hell out of combat with a full team. I don't mind that it's very linear either. It even sold me on the lack of control. It's like OB, you don't micromanage every single action, more direct the flow of traffic. This works brilliantly and is probably what FF12 wanted to be.
I am going to rant more about the cast here (Even though I am enjoying the game) because man they deserve ranting.
Oh my god. The cast. No. Hope, okay. He's supposed to be an insufferable, unlikable twat. It's not a character type I like (or even tolerate) in the slightest, but I can see putting him in. He's a kid and has growing up to do and gives someone for Lightning to bounce off of. He just is so goddamn obnoxious that I want to strangle him every time he speaks, then watch his ghost mom bitchslap him so hard that he returns to the living so I can strangle him again.
Vanille is pretty eh. It's pretty clear something is up with her and she knows far more about the Le cel stuff or whatever (or big ones running the world), but other than that she's mostly been the token cheerful girl. She's not terrible and I reserve judgment there, we'll see. Frocobo's okay. Snow... Snow is dumb. There's no other way to put it. Tonfa called him Seifer, which strikes me as a little unfair. He's dumb as a sack of bricks, but he's definitely a parody of the good hearted but moron main character (JUSTIN) that is common in older RPG's. Most of the anger at him is pretty misdirected, just my god. He is *dumb*. Lightning, I'm not sure what to make of. She strikes more of a chord with me than most of the cast does, and she's got some development. She is just such a raging bitch. Like oceans of raging. It's impressive.
I see the direction and what they want to do with the cast, but it doesn't do any good if the PC's are so unlikable that it interfers with the story. Elfboy made the point about them clashing and not working together like a typical RPG party, and that's true. I just am already ready to slap half the cast silly whenever they speak.
Story's a garbled mess so far, though I should probably sit down and reread all the bios and synaposes. That would help some.
Also, the amount of time you go with having just two PC's is inexusable. The reasons for splitting you up into two groups of two in C4 rivals Lufia 2's 'I kicked the door to this shrine and it's jammed' for general what the fuckery. Give me a full party and let me really tinker with the gameplay, damn it!
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The game does not respect you enough to let you do that.
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Lost Odyssey: You know what this game needs? A boss fight against a huge train with a large cannon on it while your characters are standing on ANOTHER Train, trying to outrun that train, while trying to catch ANOTHER train...
But its not like THAT will ever happen. Nope! Not at all!
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Fuck fuck fuck FUCK. Why do you people have to be so fucking POSITIVE all the time?
Phantom Trick - Holy shit guys. Like Candian guys, not everyone else who has played this and told them to play it. You guys need to play this. Why didn't I play this as soon as I picked it up? This is great.
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TotA: So after I spent so much time in that one sidequest to play matchmaker for Cecile, game does that, the writers in this game seem to have some sort of extreme npc hate >.>.
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Fuck fuck fuck FUCK. Why do you people have to be so fucking POSITIVE all the time?
Phantom Trick - Holy shit guys. Like Candian guys, not everyone else who has played this and told them to play it. You guys need to play this. Why didn't I play this as soon as I picked it up? This is great.
(Assuming this is "Ghost Trick.") Game owns. It's a little hard to hype up since it's an adventure game and there are moments that are way too easy to spoil that are major sellers. I wish Capcom would make more games like it.
Missile is the greatest video game character of all time.
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Fuck fuck fuck FUCK. Why do you people have to be so fucking POSITIVE all the time?
Game sucks shit, bro. EZ.
There. Better?
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I do my best to be a force of negativity anymore!
Speaking of, though. With Catherine done, I'll hold off a bit on a second playthrough which means I need a game to play. Since I've been on a mood to snark on jRPGs, I figure I should play one again. Just not sure which one to actually play. Don't really want to do a replay of anything right now, but I only think I have unfinished PSX era RPGs. I needs a suggestion.
I could always just finish DA2 and snark on elements of wRPGs for a bit, I suppose.
LoL: Don't like any of the champions this week.
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Hey, I post in this topic too! Sometimes...
Anyway, started the FF5 FJF. Got White Mage for the first crystal, and stopped right after getting the water crystal and my second job, Time Mage.
Been fun. Didn't need to resort to the crazy madness of USING A FREELANCER. I am true man, damnit. Currently level 11.
Hardest fight was...honestly, probably either Galura or MAGISSA. Magissa just...spammed Drain, which hit every time, and killed in one hit. Forza also hit around 50% of my life, depending on random variance, so Protect+Healing was the name of the game. Also didn't help that I kept missing with my FLAIL character. And my other characters. I think I seriously missed about 20 times in a row. Took forever, but I won. No resets! Yay!
Galura I didn't break the Frost Rod on, or it would have been easy. His multi-acting became a problem, as he liked to focus characters, which made his HP-leak kind of scary. Thankfully, backrow Heal Staff Lenna for the win.
I'm still going to be a completionist and get everything in the game I legally can (so I'll miss half the Genji equipment), including all the summons.
Now to grab loads of rods and commence the rod breaking fun. Prepare to die, Liquid Flame. Don't think there's that much important to grab in the flaming castle, IIRC, except the one dagger and an early Esuna.
Kind of sad I didn't get BERSERKER. I think I'm heading towards a bunch of frail magey-classes, so far.
Really surprised by how much I just remember from the game without refreshing my memory, and only having played it last...god, when FF5a came out, so 3 years ago? If I actually updated the rankings stuff, I'd have to up it's rank!
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Devil Survivor 2- Good game. The characterization is much in this game, even if the character design is a bit less appealing.
And having a Hitler vs. Stalin like route split is also pretty refreshign compare to the traditional L vs. C
The battle, now, I can see they arte trying to balance the diffculty against the tweaks we the players have access too, but doing so by giving enemies broken tweaks isn't really the right way. It usually dwells down into who can attack first to get the kill in.
But then, I'll overlook that since the Septentrion fights are actually interesting.
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Yeah I meant Ghost Trick, goddamn I need to not post just before I pass out for the night.
Also of course you shouldn't take my post seriously (I would hope neither of the people actually playing FF13 were because I just spent a portion of time with them both enough to remember that nothing is ever serious). If you are enjoying something then more power to you. Play things that you like. Just remember that it means you have horrible taste.
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Lost Odyssey: So the game has suddenly decided to shift from being "Main Character IS EVERYWHERE THE PLAYER IS!", and instead decided to focus on...multiple characters at a time. Wow, didn't think the game would pull that, though I can hardly complain, as its nice when a game actually, you know, acknowledges that the Main DOES NOT HAVE TO BE EVERYWHERE for the story to progress.
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Bastion: 100% vigils completed. It's weird how some of the proving grounds are ridiculously easy while some require very specific setups. Dual pistols seems to be impossible without Dreadrum activated. Maybe tomorrow I will stop fooling around with the game and actually finish the story.
Oh, and I also have homing rockets. Boomshakalaka.
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And FFT for iPhone just popped. Time to not accomplish anything with my free time for the next few weeks.
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FFT - I Hatbotted two sets of classes for each character, they can only use abilities from those two classes. Lord Hatbot was pretty nice to me. Got Knight/Mediator, Time Mage/Priest, Geomancer/Squire (so, a Geomancer with Move +1), Geomancer/Samurai, and a Lancer/Chemist. I decided for the sake of giggles that Ramza would not be the Geomancer/Squire. I'm at the end of Chapter 1 right now and about to bash in the face of a sister-murderer. Dude pisses me off.
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Fuck fuck fuck FUCK. Why do you people have to be so fucking POSITIVE all the time?
Phantom Trick - Holy shit guys. Like Candian guys, not everyone else who has played this and told them to play it. You guys need to play this. Why didn't I play this as soon as I picked it up? This is great.
(Assuming this is "Ghost Trick.") Game owns. It's a little hard to hype up since it's an adventure game and there are moments that are way too easy to spoil that are major sellers. I wish Capcom would make more games like it.
Missile is the greatest video game character of all time.
So I just read that the director of Ghost Trick is tje sake dude that directed the Ace Attourney games. I'm sold.
Incidentally, I discocered this while reading the PW wiki entry on Missile. Coincidence.
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Ghost Trick is totally awesome. I'm still stuck at the lights-out sequence in the prison, but once I get my DS back, those Ghost Recon jackasses are going down.
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FF5a- Just received control of the submarine. Two interesting fights while in the Barrier tower. One while fighting the Monster! in a box for the Gold Hair Pin. Three of my characters wiped leaving Lenna to spam Titan like no tomorrow in an attempt to overpower the fight with a sheer bumrush. I didn't want to risk losing Lenna too in the process of trying to revive/heal up other characters so I just went gung ho with Titan spam and hoped for the best. Amazingly all incoming physical attacks from the enemies for the rest of the battle whiffed so Lenna was able to hang around long enough to get in enough Titans to finish the fight off. Yaay evasion. I was so glad because I hadn't found the save circle at the top of the tower yet >_> The second fun fight was vs the boss at the top of the tower. Straight away it used Comet spam and managed to off Faris before the battle had even started! Unfortunately I was out of Phoenix Downs after using them all the rest I had in stock after that last fight so again I just had to hold tight and hope for the best. Lenna got down to business with the Titan/Bio spam while Ranger used Attack/Aim/Animals and Galuf healed with the rare Hi Potions I had left, then twiddled his thumbs for while. This lasted until the boss sucked Faris in and used Comet spam again. Lenna went down this time leaving only Bartz and Galuf to try and finish the fight off themselves. It was looking bad and soon after managing to get in a few more Attack/Aims my Bartz was both slowed and down to his last digits of HP. Galuf was slowed too. This was looking very bad ... then I suddenly remembered the Drink! command existed so I had my Galuf toss back a Speed Drink, Goliath Tonic (doubling his HP to 1800~ yaay!) and Power Drink. It was up to Dancing! Chemist to save the day. A Sword Dance, a few more attacks and another Sword Dance later it was all over. Gogo Dancing Chemist~
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FFT - Okay so it lags on the iPhone 3GS for anyone looking at picking it up. I can deal with it, but whatevers, thought it wouldn't hurt to mention.
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FF5 FJF:
Just got the Earth crystal.
Since last time, I went to Karnak, where I believe I have now hunted the Wild Nakk into extinction. Dungeon was fairly easy - Rod-breaking = win. It's been the best part of Time Mages so far. Liquid Flame was...easy. Ice Rods = death. Got NINJA from the Fire Crystal.
Man, Ninja is MVP. Seriously. I never noticed it in other games, but...Ninja is badass. Scrolls are awesome - you don't use them normally (boosted summons or black magic work wonders), but the damage output is insane. Randoms went from taking forever to being done in a single action. Insane. The speed and long-range weapons are excellent overall, and I have been getting so many drops that I now have plenty of random stuff to throw.
Also went and slaughtered Shiva and Ramuh, for no other reason than I want ABP.
Library was easy. Rod-break = dead bosses.
Scrolls + Rods = dead Ronka Ruins bosses.
Ninjas and the advent of rods have made this a breeze.
Got DANCER from the Earth Crystal. My mighty ream is White Mage/Time Mage/Ninja/Dancer. It is epically awesome.
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1CCd Subterranean Animism on Normal, about 2 weeks after finally 1CCing Mountain of Faith Normal. I may try UFO next since I'm on a roll, but...eek.
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Digital Survivor 2- Yamato is a really poor Hitler. Before being extremist, he felt liked a short sighted dumb ass. The Stalin equivalent despite being shallow, is actually somewhat likable with his resonable hotbloodness.
But then, the Kaworu eqivalent beats them both.
The Alice with the loli cons fight isn't as impressive as I thought. It felt liek the Lucifer fight in the first game, just easier.
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Lost Odyssey: Disc 3 is totally finished.
I'm kind of at awe of this cause it doesn't FEEL like I've played 3 discs...but then my play time is 30 hours, which seems reasonable for a Disc 3 of 4, so uh...I guess the game is paced well, and moves fast, and thus doesn't feel as long as it is?
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Bastion: I was going to write a super-negative review to appease Grefter, but I can't really do it because this is the game of the year so far. Great gameplay, great story (and told in an offbeat manner), and great music (very Firefly-esque).
This is one of those games where you totally lose track of time while playing. I'd say to myself, "I'll go to bed after I do just one more Proving Ground" and then you look at your watch and it's two hours later.
The only real complaint I have is that there's only one savefile.
If you have an Xbox, there's no reason not to scrounge up $15 for this game. Also coming to Steam August 16th. LOL if you bought a PS3.
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Tactics Ogre: Okay, I need to find a way to get my troops past Ravness without her blockading the way with Rampart Aura and raping all my mage units because they don't have the jump to travel via the righthand-side of the map. I could use some tips here.
Edit: Nevermind. Ended up beating that stage by having two Knightsblockade the staircase, keeping all my mages back, and slooowly wait on the melee enemies to approach the bottom of the map while I sent the archers up the rightside. Not sure if Rampart Aura was actually doing what I wanted it to, but having extra tanky healers never hurts in an ugly slugfest.
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If you have an Xbox, there's no reason not to scrounge up $15 for this game. Also coming to Steam August 16th. LOL if you bought a PS3.
Unless you're me and have an XBox but can't use XBLA. Which is why I plan to get the game on Steam. I hear very good things.
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Etrian Odyssey - Okay I don't think this game can make up its mind. The first few levels are amazingly brutal and the game does some neat kind of unique things with getting you to run away from FOEs and having a boss that it is best to kite away from his adds so that you divide and conquer.
The next segment of the game gives you a quest that is pretty much "Okay grind up to level 30 now" on a level with a healing point. The maps have amazing shortcuts so you can kind of rush through the whole stratum with impunity. The randoms are far less threatening due to expanded skillset, FOEs are pretty much just speed bumps compared to previous stratum's (like there is randoms that were more threatening on B4 than the FOEs are here) and the final boss is off in a room by himself.
Not that I mind, it is just a strange shift.
Also Thor is just fucking mean when fighting Cernunos. Oh a boss that summons enemies. Okay MT Lightning spell OHKOs them and hits his weakness. Slow clap deserved there. I shouldn't have bothered Immunising or Defendering and just gone for attack buffs.
Edit - This means nothing of course. It just means that the optimal builds you see floating around Gamefaqs are pretty fucking amazing for what the game has to throw at you.
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Tales Of Phantasia (Advance) - Finished
So I had been looking forward to kangaroo-related hilarity but that only actually shows up once in the game. Tsk. There is a fair amount of off translationing going on (sometimes it seems like lines were translated completely absent from the context they were going to be used in), but on the whole it reads reasonably well enough.
Battle system is not as bad as I seemed to remember it being from the SNES one, but still pretty annoying. Most annoying things offhand include: Up+attack at further than extreme close range to the enemy doing a jumping straight up attack, which I don't remember ever being useful at this range, rather than closing distance and doing an upswing as I had undoubtedly been intending; automatic dash back to starting position kicking in at the least opportune times and almost never being useful anyway (aside from that it results in your party still considering you to be standing back over there and they don't meander over, but you could put them on Stay mode anyway. Will grant that that would be horribly annoying to have to do all the time though); that you can move through other enemies during auto-move if you shift the target to an enemy behind them, but you can't move through them youself if moving manually.
Some of these may be fixable with particular items equipped - I didn't bother trying with the Technical Ring or so on, and even then the Technical Ring is gotten ludicrously late - but that means the situation is worse.
Also, unless I missed something, not being able to turn the whole party around without shifting everyone around in the formation (and then you need to put them all back afterwards).
Game crashed a couple of times and I was afraid that it was going to kill my save like BoF1GBA but it didn't, thankfully.
Suzu is garbage (although to be fair I only ever had her in the active party before she got any passable weaponary or most of her other skills).
Did a couple missions in Let's Go Arche but the whole gameplay concept there doesn't seem that interesting to me so I decided not to bother with it.
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Yeah Etrian Odyssey games aren't really all that hard once you figure out how to break them.
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Catherine - Blitzed through this pretty much. The gameplay bugged me and it took me awhile to figure out why. The game puts too much emphasis on speed and reflexes and not enough on solving puzzles. There are a few places where the focus is on puzzles but they are pretty rare. The plot's interesting at least.
Anyway, probably a low 5/10 overall.
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - Finally got around to finishing this too. Don't think I'm going to bother playing the entire game again for other endings because the gameplay really isn't that good. Oh well.
Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls - Grim Circlet quest is stupid. Game's pretty fun but I've spent so much time trying to get the stupid Grim Circlets to drop and it's getting really frustrating.
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FFT - "Man, I've played LFT, that game is not bad challenge-wise if you don't powerlevel like a bitch, I'm sure Balk 2 will be no prob- OW OH MY GOD DID THAT TIAMAT JUST HIT ME FOR 300 TWICE?!"
And naturally, buying equipment to block these elements would take having foresight or something, which would just be dumb.
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Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden: Putting off playing some longer games, figured I'd hit something short that'd been waiting a while. I'm kind of surprised I don't remember this being more of a thing here, because mechanically it's very much a DL sort of game. Evadable random encounters, CTB with a speed stat that actually matters, everyone has their own unique inputs so it's never just mash attack to win, and heck, they lifted the combat menu right from Wild ARMs. The only real problem is that it's just so easy (which I guess you could alleviate somewhat by dodging randoms; I fight everything).
Of course, that's not really why anyone plays it anyway. They play it because it's Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden: Part 1 of the Hoopz Barkley Saga, and has all the insanity those three subtitles would suggest. This game treats Space Jam as a pivotal event in human history. Normally anything so obviously ridiculous isn't my style, but the fact that no one told the cast how ludicrous their world was and the characters treat everything with deadly seriousness makes it funny enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome (it's only in the 4-6 hour range anyway). It also made me realize I like Eternity a lot more when it's in an actual game.
I could never decide how much of the savepoint messages was trolling and how much was genuine. Some of it has to be for real because they have to be some degree of JRPG fanboy to even know what Growlanser is and yeah, again, combat menu lifted straight from Wild ARMs.
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Tactics Ogre: Up the middle of chapter 3. It took me a while to get going despite having the game for quite a while now, because I wanted to research the system beforehand and found the sheer quantity of skills/spells/equipment overwhelming at first. It took several days of research before I got fully comfortable with my long term planning.
Thoughts on classes so far:
Knight: Tanky healer who can heal almost as good as a Cleric since healing magic is stat-indepedent. Great anytime the game gets rough, which happens pretty often. I made Denam a Knight to help ensure that he stays alive at all times. Also ended up converting my initial Cleric into a second Knight since it buffed up her durability massively while still letting her heal HP just fine.
Warrior: Solid filler units. Lack of anything long range if you don't use a crossbow kinda sucks, but Mighty Impact keeps them relevant.
Archer: The range on bows in this game is completely absurd, and the damage's not bad either. Even with low base movement they're dominant on assassination missions, making the hard ones bearable and the easy ones a total joke. Using two right now, quite possibly the only two generics I'll be using consistently by endgame.
Vartan (Canopus): See above, plus flight and 5 base move. Well, I ended up trying out Crossbows with him, since I heard they had really good finishers. The AOE on the first one is indeed pretty nice, but I don't think it was worth giving up his starting L2 Bow with its immediate, if less useful, finisher. MVP by far until I got Ninja levelled up, and has a good chance of retaining that title for the full game.
Wizard: Magic can hit a lot of physical enemies really hard, even ones who barely get scratched by weapons. That's more than enough to justify a deploy slot, though the frailty can be troublesome at times.
Cleric: Healing magic being stat-independent hurts their value quite a bit, as Knight and Rune Fencer can handle HP healing just fine. That leaves their niche as... status healing, Exorcism, and the occasional Major Heal. That's enough to merit a single roster slot from me, but no more.
Rune Fencer: Not impressed so far. It's a Red Mage-type class who's kinda lousy at everything except healing, which is passable. I've got Ravness now, so we'll see if her pumped up stats can make it more impressive. If not, I'll switch her over to Ninja.
Ninja: Getting it mostly caught up in levels was a pain, given that most random battles have very limited deploy slots (making it harder to compensate for a useless low levelled PC) and/or monsters who take way too little damage for me to bother grinding against. The payoff, though, was well worth it: amazing damage output, good speed and movement. The fact that they don't need finishers at all means I can switch unique PCs over to Ninja and benefit from their high stats/RT/starting skills and not have to worry about low weapon levels.
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Mana Khemia - I am playing this. I must say I am impressed and surprised by the depth of combat and overall level of difficulty. Bosses, in particular. Nice to see a game that gives you tons of superpowerful options, then sets the game's difficulty to a level where you actually need to use them.
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The save pump rants are harvested from some of the finest forum posters they could find: I don't believe they wrote them.
Also that battle menu is clearly from Estopolis (Lufia, if you are a BAKA GAIJIN). If you would spend less time playing your Call of Duty and eating burritos maybe you could manage to learn that.
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Wow, wait. Nerds hate on burritos now? Goddammit internet nerds, you're making the rest of us look bad.
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Wow, wait. Nerds hate on burritos now? Goddammit internet nerds, you're making the rest of us look bad.
One of the fuel pumps hates on them because INFERIOR WESTERN AUDIENCES do not realize that Pocky is the ultimate gaming snack.
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Well, Pocky is a far superior as a gaming snack to burritos. Far less messy.
Certainly not down with burrito hate in general, though.
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Fajitas > Burritos. Of course, both > tacos.
Been playing a bunch of emulation stuff for the heck of it. The fast forward on VBA goes at about 10000%. Cool.
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Fajitas have their advantages but most places serve them on hotplates which completely overcook the tasty meats within. A burrito is basically an infinitely flexible delivery system for any combination of meats, beans, peppers, and sauces, and comes in any size necessary for the occasion.
Though yes, not suitable for consumption near electronics.
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Well, Pocky is a far superior as a gaming snack to burritos. Far less messy.
Certainly not down with burrito hate in general, though.
Man, fuck that. You know how many Pockys you'd have to eat to equal one good sized burrito? Like thirty.
This is ridiculous anyway; the best gaming food is whiskey- one handed, self-contained, gets you drunk:
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Well yeah, that's why you don't try to make a meal out of Pocky. I'm just also not interested in eating meals, especially gooey ones, near electronics.
FFT - Finished the replay of this, it's awesome, you know this.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Seems fun enough. Combat is a bit improved from SotN but still could certainly be better. Otherwise the game is... a lot like SotN. Worse music I guess. We'll see.
FF13 - Chapter 6 now. Game continues to be pretty solid on most fronts.
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NEB is not a man who takes risks, I see.
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games
Play VVVVVV.
I've been playing a lot of things lately. Been focusing on Touhou a lot, making big progress and improvements at general Danmaku-ery.
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Oh yeah that reminds me, I've played videogames recently haven't I.
Edgeworth Investigations - Won't say too much about it. It was a good game. Felt like many things were an improvement over previous games (the logic system was neat, and I felt that most of the puzzles were easily solved without an FAQ. There was... one bit in Chapter 3 that I had to tardguess and reset my way through but I don't recall what it was, and Chapter 5 had a couple moments that weren't head-desk worthy because the puzzle was hard to figure out, but because depending on how you looked at it there was technically more than one answer. Still, it's a definite improvement over PW3, which as I recall I got fed up with enough of the puzzles that eventually I just started FAQing my way through the game.
VVVVVV - Neat little platformer. Beat it, got all the shinies. Certainly worth the dollar or whatever I paid for it during the Steam sale. Also, $%@# getting those two shiny trinkets in the Space Station part 2. If you've played the game you know exactly what I mean.
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Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Seems fun enough. Combat is a bit improved from SotN but still could certainly be better. Otherwise the game is... a lot like SotN. Worse music I guess. We'll see.
Wait, you mean you actually started this game without me pestering you constantly about it? Let alone within only 2 months as opposed to 10?
...who are you and what have you done with Elfboy!?
On a different note...
Lost Odyssey: So Disc 4 kicks in and basically, its side quest mode time! Well, basic ones like "run around town doing odd jobs to get random items" but hey, I got me a better sword and a nice Gaia Ring, so that's something. Also learned that no matter how generic the item in the Auction House is, they are all one shot items gotten from areas that you can't revisit. This has to be like the most awesome thing ever in a video game. Permanently always suck in jRPGs, so having a fail safe for them to allow you to get the items is just awesome. Yes, I know there's still a few exceptions, but they're easy to find such that simple exploration beyond doing the VERY BARE MINIMUM to get through the game will get you them.
Also, nice to learn that Double SP relates to the entire battle, not just the character that has it equipped; makes skill slot manipulation that much easier! And skill+3 and skill+5 stacking = ^_^
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I've been playing a lot of things lately. Been focusing on Touhou a lot, making big progress and improvements at general Danmaku-ery.
I've been focusing on all the Touhou games Xer's not playing <_<
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Catherine: Great Movie, would watch again. I especially liked the parts where it pretended to be a game.
In all seriousness, I found the twitch-reflex puzzle parts to be pretty exciting on the harder difficulty levels, but it gets old/frustrating after a while. Notably, the Rapunzel mini-game was the same idea, but without a time limit and I found it much less enjoyable.
I -really- enjoyed the plot and it should be applauded for taking the subject of a sexual relationship seriously without devolving into porn. The Order Path was pretty intriguing and I can't wait to play the Freedom Path. The only real issue is that the game LOVES symbolism and has no idea how to be subtle about it. Catherine strikes me as Persona 4 if the creators were like "You know, I just don't think the symbolism in P4 was OBVIOUS enough. Let's fix that." I really dug the voicework, too. Particularly Orlando.
Plants vs Zombies: Now that I have played this, I have been reminded how much I love Tower Defense games.. and I want to play ALL of them now. Every Tower Defense game. Ever.
Lost in Shadow: Very stylish game. And that's it. It left no lasting impression other than "ooh, how novel and pretty."
Elebits: I hated this game.
Team Fortress 2: Well, I gave it a shot since it's all free now... it turns out that FPSes still aren't my thing. Though I can definitely see how it's enjoyable. Game seems well-balanced.
Okami: I tried multiple times to play this game, but something always got in the way and other games were played instead. In fact, every game besides Catherine on this list is the result of my attempting to play Okami at Meeple's suggestion.
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Mana Khemia - I am playing this. I must say I am impressed and surprised by the depth of combat and overall level of difficulty. Bosses, in particular. Nice to see a game that gives you tons of superpowerful options, then sets the game's difficulty to a level where you actually need to use them.
This is way belated, but what part of Mana Khemia is proving hard?
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Lost Odyssey: ...right, I'm suppose to be doing the Eastern Ruins now, aren't I? Well, looks like I should start doing that!
*gets about half way, calls it quits*
This was after more arbitrary side questing mind!
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Cthulhu Saves the World- What SNES games wanted to be. Fast, efficient, gives the player something to think about without having to spend hours analyzing the entire system to get good results. 7/10? It has a strange dichotomy where it both wore a little thing as certain elements were obvious novelty yet still a little too short and lacking in satisfaction.
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Mana Khemia - I am playing this. I must say I am impressed and surprised by the depth of combat and overall level of difficulty. Bosses, in particular. Nice to see a game that gives you tons of superpowerful options, then sets the game's difficulty to a level where you actually need to use them.
This is way belated, but what part of Mana Khemia is proving hard?
Randoms at night and a coupla bosses. I mean, they're not hard hard, but they're 'you have to play well if you want to win' hard. Think the trickiest boss was Tony and Renee during the fighting tournament, when you're missing Flay and Jess. At that point, if I recall correctly, there's no MT healing available, common healing magic sucks, and even X Potions or whatever they're called don't fully refill you, not to mention them I *think* being a pain to make at that stage.
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I thought MK1's bosses were generally quite solid aside from a bad patch early on (Chapters 2-4 or so weren't great) and maybe a bit of a letdown towards the end. Randoms... don't especially agree with, except at night, and something about fighting randoms at night bugged me.
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Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet:
Too little too late! The game was original and cool back when it was announced, now it's lost in the sea of other similar games. I'd be fine with this since the Metroidvania + twinstick shooter is mastered and the graphical style is still great, but it's too easy and short; and it costs 15 bucks instead of 10 like it should. (Unless there's some inverted planet or something and 200% completion to get)
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I imagine a game design that can be summed up as "It's more efficient and less annoying to just sit there and wait for time to pass" is not going to agree with you much, NEB? At least for me the nighttime bonuses on randoms jumped the gap pretty far and went from "randoms mean nothing" to "randoms outstat you so bad and you have to go all out on every fight", which is not really optimal in Mana Khemia.
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At least for me the nighttime bonuses on randoms jumped the gap pretty far and went from "randoms mean nothing" to "randoms outstat you so bad and you have to go all out on every fight", which is not really optimal in Mana Khemia.
It's doable once you get your back row SP regen boosts, but yeah. More than them being hard, randoms are tough to avoid at night, and MK is not a game where you get much out of extra fighting.
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I imagine a game design that can be summed up as "It's more efficient and less annoying to just sit there and wait for time to pass" is not going to agree with you much, NEB? At least for me the nighttime bonuses on randoms jumped the gap pretty far and went from "randoms mean nothing" to "randoms outstat you so bad and you have to go all out on every fight", which is not really optimal in Mana Khemia.
Yeah, my objection is probably something along those lines. It's not something I'll defend too hard, but yeah, despite enjoying challenge in RPGs, I never was a fan of night combat in MK. Jim's point is also probably quite relevant; there are times when I don't want to fight randoms, and at night they're hard to dodge and punish you for trying to avoid them since they're more likely to ambush you (hitting the wrong button due to trying to jump or whatever) and I don't really feel like being punished for that.
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Plants vs Zombies: Now that I have played this, I have been reminded how much I love Tower Defense games.. and I want to play ALL of them now. Every Tower Defense game. Ever.
Play Ninjatown! It has ninja cookies! And ninjas with cellphones.
Blazblue CS: beat normal and hard Legion mode. Go go Unlimited Taokaka's down+D in the air.
Dungeon Crawl: Found red Dragon Armor on floor 2. Found an Ice Beast on floor 3. FFFFFUUUUU
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Play Defense Grid. It's pretty and has good voice acting!
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Etrian Odyssey - Okay so Floor 11 was pretty easy. I cleared it out when scouting it out. Only reason i didn't just save at the Geowhatever and go to the next one was inventory space. I forget it is limited sometimes. Anyway, go down there OH GODS CURSE FROM FROGS is scary when you see it first just after using Allslash on 3 enemies. Didn't kill the Landshark that used it, but was close. Of course it was followed up with a Physical, but hey, almost lived! Floor is pretty under control now that I know it is coming though.
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Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet: Finished.
It was as short as expected. It looks like the game developers removed all the filler that was in the game, unfortunately. I like filler! There weren't enough things to shoot!
The game will be worth it once the price goes down.
Props to the final level for being innovative and really damn scary. About as scary as Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 or Baron Von Blubba from Bubble Bobble. Seriously. You're stuck in a dark dungeon with a lantern and horrible things lurk in the dark, tentacly things try to steal your lantern and electrical things make the power of your lantern run out.
Ms Splosion Man: Roughly halfway through.
Game of the year so far! 2D Platforming heaven. Perfect flow, numerous checkpoints, difficulty without being cheap or relying on precise jumping.
I like the humour but it's hit or miss and won't age well though.
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Tactics Ogre: *watches Haborym get himself killed before any of my units get close to him*
Well, some things haven't changed. Time to work up a plan.
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At least this time you have Chariot!!!
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Well, in fairness Ozma refusing to attack him in L does make things a million times easier. Sadly he still got killed by the ~3 enemies on the righthand side anyways.
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Finally got to play Dragon Age, having heard so much about it. Might have to buy this, it's kinda amazing. I picked the anti-Rob (City Elf Rogue) and went on a slaughtering spree in a nearby palace. Nice start. Haven't seen much of combat, so hopefully that'll be interesting enough, but the character interactions are amazing, and I'm loving the things I've heard about some party members. Hm.
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FF5a- Finished World 2. I am just trolling the game now >_> Randoms in Exdeath's castle were a breeze more or less, even the likes of Yellow/Red Dragons if they were supposed to be a threat at all well they were easy. Carbuncle was easy, I didn't even know he had form change. He used Cura once I think, some mid level elemental spells earlier or something but other than that fight was over fast and I wasn't even trying. Did the Gilgamesh/Excalipor thing just for fun (and to rock out to Battle on the Big Bridge yo) Lost to Exdeath once because I thought it would be fun to try and finish off the end of the fight with most of my characters zombied and then Krile got zombied and it was game over <_< For the win I amped up the pain some to end the fight quicker, Carbuncle for reflect on all allies, Mix + Elemental Power, MT bounced Lv5s off all my characters to do 6000~ a pop to Exdeath, Ranger!Krile chimed in some with lucky Rapid Fires from the Hayate Bow. Yeah I had fun with that fight.
Earlier Guardians were an interesting/fun fight and Gil Turtle had me roadblocked for a while trying to figure out how to break the turtle but thanks to a handy link to a Mix list from a friend I eventually managed to take one out (Mix = double HP, Haste, Protect/Shell/Regen from Dragon Defence (and Reflect but), multiple level boosts, Float to deal with Earthquake which I added after actually managing to win one fight thanks to other boosts but ended up being wiped by the death counter at the end >_> Enhanced durability Golem abuse, full revival/healing from Mix, etc - for offence my Ranger was doing 500~ 500~ 1000~ 1000~ w/th Rapid Fire using that shiny, shiny piece of equipment known as the Elven Bow after the level boosts from Mix and my Chemist did some shiny damage with Sword Dance! too thanks to the Dancing Dagger =) After that though I was mostly out of Dragon Fangs for mixing and decided doing the whole Gil Cave thing wasn't really worth the effort over all since Gil hasn't really been hard to come by anyway. I just wanted to take a turtle because I own them in FFXIII <_<
Did some JP grinding and mastered some jobs in Bal castle before heading for Exdeath's castle so yeah the Gil really racked up there in any case so =)
Edit: (and it turns out I hadn't saved - I went ahead to scout out Tycoon castle in World 3 but I must not have saved afterwards, either that or my saved game was acting funny because apparently I hadn't hard saved since F8 of Exdeath's castle - yaay for save states though~ Refought Exdeath yet again and had some fun with Double HP/Elemental Power + Holy Breath this time. Rocked out on Battle on the Big Bridge again before hand too. Also got to see some Vacuum Wave spam from Exdeath! He has offence no way!?~)
Vital Statistics!
Krile LV36- Black Mage mastered, Chemist mastered (yaay Galuf), LV5 Summoner, L2 Ranger
Lenna LV36- L6 Black Mage, L5 Summoner, L4 Chemist, L3 Ranger
Faris LV36- Black Mage mastered, Ranger mastered, LV5 Summoner, L2 Chemist
Bartz LV36- Ranger mastered, Summoner mastered, LV6 Black Mage, L4 Chemist
Playtime - 31.40
Gil - 211'529
Currently Krile, Lenna, Faris and Bartz are Black Mage, Summoner, Chemist and Ranger respectively (changed jobs around some for the rematches with Gilgamesh/Exdeath)~
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LFT- Chapter 4 of my challenge run.
<2011:08:04:>[21:27:02] > Thief/Monk
<2011:08:04:>[21:27:02] > Chemist/Knight
<2011:08:04:>[21:27:02] > Oracle/Ninja
<2011:08:04:>[21:27:02] > Squire/Summoner
<2011:08:04:>[21:27:02] > Geomancer/Mediator
Each character can only use those jobs/skills from those jobs. Plot fights haven't been easy, but I also haven't had a ton of resets outside of zodiac demons. That said! I tried the C4 rare fights and got absolutely slaughtered, so ouch. I'm up to Meliadoul's fight now.
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FF5 4JF
Aaaaaaaand finished up the Pyramid of Moore in World 3, and ran around grabbing stuff.
Game actually had some semblence of challenge for the Exdeath fight...and that's about it. Still fairly easy. Randoms are a bit tougher now, since some of them actually survive a single Ninja scroll (2 usually wins, though!).
MVP is still Ninja, but the others are catching up. Time Mage has Quick, so once I get Meteo, things will crash. White Mage is good - I got the Sage's Staff, which will make Holy awesome once I get it. Dancer is...status immune, though I will attempt to turn it into an offensive beast.
Picked up the Chicken Knife, as well as Sage's Staff, Sasuke's Katana, and Assassin's Dagger from the Sealed Temple. I also can FINALLY STEAL!!!!
Intending to finish every sidequest I can - going to have think a bit about set-ups, but...Time and White should see me through most of it.
As will cheese. Yay for Carbuncle dropping status immunity in the curing phase.
Ninja's got Sasuke's and the Assassin Dagger, Dancer will eventually get Chicken Knife with a Sword Dance set-up, and White Mage/Time Mage don't give a shit about equipment, honestly.
Lost track of the number of rods/scrolls used. Definitely over 100 in both cases - Equip Rod is awesome as an accessory when your characters lack damage!
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Finally got to play Dragon Age, having heard so much about it. Might have to buy this, it's kinda amazing. I picked the anti-Rob (City Elf Rogue) and went on a slaughtering spree in a nearby palace. Nice start. Haven't seen much of combat, so hopefully that'll be interesting enough, but the character interactions are amazing, and I'm loving the things I've heard about some party members. Hm.
I recommend doing all the origins once. They're all, by and large, pretty good. The Dwarven Commoner is probably the best, though. Hard as fuck.
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Dwarven Commoner is pretty good, I found it very satisfying. If you want to power game then the Dwarf Noble is head and shoulders above everything else with the ability to buy and sell items to a character in the capital at cost.
Etrian Odyssey - About to fight Cotrangl, I think my bus ride will be spent exploring the area behind violet doors though. Levelling a Ronin to 20 for the quest and going to max out the ID Iai strike purely to try and one hit kill Golem next time he is up.
Speaking of Golem, so glad I learnt Erasure on the Troubadore. For serious, fuck people that say you want Survivalist for that last slot. I miss the damage potential and some of the support skills. I would miss Relaxation so much more. Holy shit it makes this game so much better. Dungeon trips mostly being limited by inventory instead of MP reserves with the added bonus of not having to haul around piles of MP restoration.
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Randomly started up Suikoden 5 again for reasons I still haven't quite figured out. Just felt like it I suppose.
About to get the castle, been trying to use different peeps then before this game. Which will sadly mean no Belcoot or Cathari later on. I will give Richard a shot though.
Quick question for anyone who remembers the game better then I do: what do you need to do to start training up Royal Paradise? Is it seriously "get all basic skills to A" like the guide vaguely suggests? That...will take awhile if so.
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Quick question for anyone who remembers the game better then I do: what do you need to do to start training up Royal Paradise? Is it seriously "get all basic skills to A" like the guide vaguely suggests? That...will take awhile if so.
Yes. Zerase recruitment is the earliest you can get it if you want to burn Group SP.
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Yeah, I've never been able to afford Royal Paradise myself. Not enough grindin'. (Which says something because my replay party was capable of doing 5-digit damage total per round reliably.)
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Well, this is a new game+ run, so I have a rather large amount of party sp sitting around. Maybe I'll shoot for it.
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Oh yeah, I'd imagine that makes it doable!
Also be sure to get it on Roy!!1
Okay, at the max level Roy can get it to, it barely does anything, especially since his other skill is locked.
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Yeah, I've never been able to afford Royal Paradise myself. Not enough grindin'. (Which says something because my replay party was capable of doing 5-digit damage total per round reliably.)
Dealing fweem-level damage in S5 is more about the ruenslotsomg! *Eyes Miakis.*
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/me examines shiny words
/me twitches
Must ... resist ... fiending~
CLearly Gate should use Norma, three rune slots/multiple hits/shiny crits/CT baits. Or Killey crits up the wazoo *nodnods* Also hat~
Edit: Well with Norma there is always Ernst for even more game breaking fun and circus themed shenanigans too!~
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FFT- So apparently, the multi-player-only items just...aren't available on the iPhone port? That's shit.
Guess I'mma have to use the save editor. YOU HAVE FORCED MY HAND.
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About to get the castle, been trying to use different peeps then before this game. Which will sadly mean no Belcoot or Cathari later on. I will give Richard a shot though.
Yeah, uh... Richard's Parry rate is ridiculous. If it wasn't a magic attack or endgame enemy, Richard probably wasn't taking damage. I didn't even get into the broken side of runes on characters.
The Game - I CAN'T WIN.
Jokes aside...
Blazblue: Continuum Shift - For some reason, I think I've hit a skill cap. I just don't seem to be getting any better, no matter how much I practice.
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LoL: Eh. Just ranking Champs I've used at this point in terms of "How well they seemed to work for me." Keep in mind I suck at this game and suck VERY badly at a couple of the champs.
Amumu: 9/10. Beastly. Just generally beastly. Sticky Bandage for Eternal Godlike Champion.
Cassiopiea: 7/10. Very mean, but I could never quite get a handle on her damage output vs Champs.
Garen: 5/10. Not bad, but also nothing special to me. One of the first Champs I played though, so that could change if/when I play him again.
Heimerdinger: 6/10. Seemed pretty good, but the turrets honestly annoyed me. Too location dependent.
Janna: 9/10. Very versatile support. And pretty much every single ability she has is cool.
Jax: 1/10. I dunno what went wrong here, but I couldn't do shit with Jax.
Katarina: 4/10. I didn't do terribly thanks to her Q, but I also couldn't get particularly impressive results with her either.
Leona: 9/10. Sexy. Also fun with a competent partner, as you can almost guarantee single target kills it feels like.
Malzahar: 6/10. Katarina+ for me. Still couldn't get him to function as well as others did, but did decently enough.
Master Yi: 5/10. My dash ended me in range of death way too often =(.
Mordekaiser: 8/10. Very metal.
Morgana: 9/10. I dunno why, but I seriously had a blast playing her.
Nasus: 7/10. Siphoning Strike is hilarious shit, but I'm still not quite sure how to use his Ult right.
Nunu: 6/10. Seemed okay. Not really my cup of tea though.
Poppy: 5/10. Enjoyed her a lot, but that dash is such a pain in the ass.
Singed: 8/10. Trollol. Run around spewing poison, throw bitches everywhere, etc.
Sion: 1/10. See Jax.
Sivir: 9/10. Ricochet is seriously hilarious.
Tristana: 7/10. Fun, but not really engaging.
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FF5a- Following in OK's footsteps in picking up the shinies. Though I went for Magus Rod/Yoichi's Bow/Assassin's Dagger from the Kaza equips. Been to Mirage/Phantom Village too. Hermes Sandals/Auto Haste for everybody! =-) My Summoner gets Air Knife for enhanced Syldra abuse. Black Mage gets Magus Rod. Chemist gets Dancing/Assassin's Dagger and Ranger gets Yoichi's Bow until I max out Chicken Knife. Game continues to get curbstomped. Mellusion was a borderline 2HKO - Firaga was doing 9999 when bounced off my team >_> It was doing 7000~ even without boosts. Absolutely curbstomped Mellusion, I don't think she even managed to move let alone do anything threatening <_< Pyramid of Moore was long dungeon, long dungeon is long. Think this is around where I got bored/gave up/got distracted from the game when I first played it years ago but I had my boots on this time ^_^ At least the premise is interesting, Egypt/Pyramids/Mummies/Scarabs/etc.
Epic Battle Fantasy 3- Fancied a challenge so started this off on Epic! mode. First time playing but I think it'll be fun. Just continuing to wander through the forest at this stage. Defeated the first two bosses/boss type enemies. Giant Slime was relatively easy though Lance did end the battle on 1HP. Land Turtle was something else. It ended up an Epic! Natalie solo since Matt and Lance went down near the begining of the fight and I didn't have any revival. At first I tried keeping Natalie's HP near full and then curing poison, hoping to eventually be able to go on an offensive when she was in good condition and not poisoned but this was starting to turn into a heal lock fest since the turtle just kept on repoisoning her so eventually I just alternated between heals and Fire when HP was relatively high instead. Easily finished off the Land Turtle this way. Natalie is <3 Should I teach her Kyun this early? She has enough AP to go for this or a choice from some other shiny looking abilities too~
(and yeah having fun so far though if I had one complaint it would be that the characters sometimes keep running in one direction through several screens of town/dungeon even though I'm not pressing in -that- direction/anything >_>)
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Yeah, uh... Richard's Parry rate is ridiculous. If it wasn't a magic attack or endgame enemy, Richard probably wasn't taking damage. I didn't even get into the broken side of runes on characters.
The Game - I CAN'T WIN.
To be fair, nothing that might actually conceivably kill you can be parried (the game's few competent bosses use entirely magic and unblockable physicals). Granted, there is rather little in S5 that can conceivably kill you. "I CAN'T WIN" sums it up.
EDIT: Parrying is still kinda useful, but it's more about free counter damage than anything else so you can take out ranged attackers while the melee types damage themselves on their own turn. Just... said melee enemies are not dangerous at all, since any remotely durable character in the front row (read: anyone with at least chain mail class and up to date armour... possibly leather in some cases) can sponge them.
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Natalie is <3 Should I teach her Kyun this early? She has enough AP to go for this or a choice from some other shiny looking abilities too~
(and yeah having fun so far though if I had one complaint it would be that the characters sometimes keep running in one direction through several screens of town/dungeon even though I'm not pressing in -that- direction/anything >_>)
Kyun, as a limit move, is generally just useful for Bosses, but at lower levels, you'll be seeing limits more often than higher levels. At level, say, 9... After she takes ~150% of her mHP in damage, she'll have a limit available. At level 30... It takes closer to 500% mHP in damage... At least, according to the formulas. While Kyun can be RIDICULOUSLY useful for Bosses, you also have to consider other utilities and what kind of elemental weaknesses you're dealing with on your enemies. (Edited from chat, since I don't know if you saw it there.) I'd say make sure that Natalie is doing well with Healmore/Revive first. Buffs are awesome, since they modify your stats by a percentage after equipment is taken into account, making earlygame items particularly useful for quick buffs.
Also note you can change the turn order for free in-battle. I spent the first half of my run through EBF3 without realizing that.
If you're making sure to get the medals, there's a few treasure rooms that open up. Specifically, a treasure room in the forest for 10 medals gained, next area takes 20, and so on and so forth. Make sure to get these, as they're very helpful. Also, chests are hidden all over the place. Did you get the few behind the item/weapon shops in the village?
And remember, running away is free and 100% successful. Always. Even in boss fights. If you're getting in over your head (or you want free turns to use Lance's Scan like you should for the Bestiary Medals), just run away and reprepare yourself. The only downside is that enemies full heal since they're not removed from the map, but that's not a big loss, right?
And... I can't even guess what your move problem is, aside from maybe Firefox not being the active window all of a sudden while you were moving.
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I'm aware that the game has no challenge. Just wondering about epic skills because "ooh shiny". And sorry CT but suggesting I use KILLEY of all people has just lost you points. <_<
Meanwhile, up to Lelcar. Running with Richard/Prince/Lyon/Kyle(forced atm, normally Zweig)/Viki/insert random person here(currently Zerase).
Was using Zegai for a bit, may swap him back in so I can have him duel Childrich for me later. Prolly won't stick with this team completely, rotating people around is fun and all. And being New Game+, I have the monies to keep multiple weapons up to date to allow this.
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And sorry CT but suggesting I use KILLEY of all people has just lost you points. <_<
I don't get it =D
Thanks again for the info dump Magic. I'll make sure to keep it in mind for later :)
Edit: Oh yeah Famed Mimic Gogo (!) is it possible to win this fight legit? I kept managing to get it to the stage where things get serious and then Gogo hulked out on me, there was Meteor spam, lots of KO!, pestilence, petrification and Odin's voice coming out of nowhere (what's that all about?) :o I've managed to survive the initial onslaught of OTT Meteor spam through some Chemist abuse but only one character was left alive at the end of it and things went pear shaped from there because while I was in the process of reviving peeps the boss did Meteor spam again >_> I did eventually go with managing the fight the plot/scripted way after stealing a Gold Hairpin through save state abuse but yeah just wondering if it's actually possible to win through fighting proper. Nice to see FFV still has it in it to make CT eat some humble pie though =-)~
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It's possible. That Odin part is a bit of a glitch - he wasn't meant to fire off 3 Meteors in a row, so he'll do that, spout some other stuff, fire off a few more spells, then loop around again. Basically, once you drop him down by...15k HP or so, he'll do that (the "uncultured boors!" part). So you need to bypass that. Using non-counterable skills works wonderful for beating him (reflect on characters, cast spells on self). I forget what classes you have, but it might not be easily feasible (I like using Chemist to turn Gogo into a dragon type, then Jump with dual-wielded Dragon Lances to kill him).
On my own notes - ready to conquer the great Phoenix Tower, and that...is it before the Void.
Am I crazy enough to try to use the Thief Knife to steal everything possible before then? Maybe!
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LFT: Started this up, just beat Barius Hill. It's a lot of fun so far especially now that I've been getting more and more abilities so the changes have had more time to become apparent. It hasn't been too difficult yet mostly because I haven't been showing the game any mercy in the setups I've been using. I've been grinding a fair amount but focusing mostly on one or two classes for each character. Right now my setups are Ramza as a monk with Guts, male knight with Equip Bow and Charge, male summoner with White Magic, female wizard with a little bit of Time Magic, and thief with Charge. I also have a Red Dragon who I use when part of the team is doing propositions and I'll probably end up using Agrias. All of the units are useful in different ways. Game hasn't been too difficult but there have been some close calls. The Dorter Battle at the start of chapter 2 was close and some of the randoms have been challenging.
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CT: Because Killey is an asshole and I do not use characters I find annoying. Especially in games with so many choices.(Exception: people who have Unite attacks with those I'm already using may get a pass no matter how much I dislike them.)
Lelcar beat. Probably the most annoying warbattle in the game there. Too small, no room to maneuver, easy to get locked into fights when an enemy retreats...into a wall they're already right next to which makes you immediately engage them again. Or worse, when the same happens to you after losing(accidentally caught by someone who has WTA on you, etc).
Didn't get any further though, because Kier had to go to bed. And S5 has officially become a spectator game for him, he wants to see all the plot scenes and such. I am amused.
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Lelcar beat. Probably the most annoying warbattle in the game there. Too small, no room to maneuver, easy to get locked into fights when an enemy retreats...into a wall they're already right next to which makes you immediately engage them again. Or worse, when the same happens to you after losing(accidentally caught by someone who has WTA on you, etc).
Seconded with fire. Glad to see the little one is developping a good taste in RPG plots, though!
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Radiant Historia - Loligoat sees plot devices.
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On the plus side, Snow has reached the peak of the pandering in Radiant Historia. It gets better from here on.
Beat Catherine a second time... I was very disappointed in how little changes from playthrough to playthrough. Not a game worth replaying, just youtube the endings.
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Tactics Ogre: Ultimately I managed to get Hobyrim (whose new name I have an unfortunate tendency to parse as Hoborim) by basically rushing Ravness forward as quickly as possible into healing range. This involved feeding having Vyce feed a magic leaf to my Cleric for turn 1 Boon of Swiftness on her, plus a fourth PC to feed her a magic leaf as well to ensure she had enough MP to cast Heal II on the stupid guest.
I'm running three Ninjas on 12 man maps right now, which honestly feels kinda gamebreaking. A solo Ninja doesn't have enough offense to OHKO anything except for squishy enemy types like mages and can't really make good use of their hax mobility because they die easily if ganged up on. Three Ninjas have enough offense to kill just about everything and help cover each other somewhat, so they can just run rampant. I can use Speedstance for extra defense at the cost of speed, since building up TP is trivial enough for Ninjas and they hardly need finishers for offense. There've been a couple of maps like the middle Barnicia fight where they climbed up the walls immediately and, along with Canopus, literally killed the boss before anyone else could even get in position to attack save a couple of weak indirect spells from Sherri.
Getting Ranger caught up on levels was sleep-inducingly boring, but Knight Commander suprisingly was actually surprisingly easy. Ozma's base stats and starting skills were hax enough that she could singlehandedly solo random battles at Tynemouth Hill for big exp, which got her caught up in only a few battles. That leaves only Katiua left to get caught up... ugh, pretty sure she can't solo randoms like Ozma did. I think I'll just do that in C4's many sidequests, since she can heal just fine even at low levels.
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Lelcar beat. Probably the most annoying warbattle in the game there. Too small, no room to maneuver, easy to get locked into fights when an enemy retreats...into a wall they're already right next to which makes you immediately engage them again. Or worse, when the same happens to you after losing(accidentally caught by someone who has WTA on you, etc).
Seconded with fire. Glad to see the little one is developping a good taste in RPG plots, though!
This is easy as hell to explain. Two words. Georg.
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Finished FJF today.
Man, fun times.
Plowed through things pretty well. Phoenix Tower was the worst of the randoms, since I had to fight them, but even then, they weren't too bad. Bosses were varying shades of lol (Twin Tania) to respectable (Neo Exdeath).
MVP was Ninja. Just...sheer dominance in randoms and excellent in bosses. Made things so much faster. Scrolls kill every random in 1 hit until midway through World 3 (like right after Moore Pyramid). Throwing other weapons works wonders too, especially Shurikens. The ability to smite randoms in 1 hit falls off in World 3...and then Ninja is still the best at randoms due to speed and Smoke. Also had the most HP of all my classes! Wooooo 1600 HP still getting killed by Almagest without Shell. Used Bartz as a Ninja with Time, for the fast Hastega and Quick'd item-tossing. Really should have left the Rift and stocked up on Fumas (which did 6500 to bosses), but eh...I had perfectly good legendary weapons to throw (...which were only like 3000-3500 damage).
Next place...White Mage. White Mage was definitely the solid overall class, who's secondary was useful on any other class in any other situation. Had the most consistent damage near the end with boosted Holy, and Equip Rod gave them good damage all the way before then (curse Holy being so late!). Healing Staff was excellent to keep everyone alive without MP use. Used Krile as the White Mage because of the adorable costume, with Equip Rods as a secondary. Rod breaking is awesome, even at the end, as it was my only source of elemental damage outside of the Ninja scrolls, and the rods did far more, especially vs. weakness.
Time Mage was definitely the class that started out with no use but breaking rods...which is still awesome, as breaking rods is awesome! Got so much more useful when spells started picking up, like Hastega, Quick, and Meteo. Rod breaking was still in full swing even then, especially vs. Movers and anything elementally weak. The use of Hastega for bosses should go without saying, and the variety of status magic was great (lol Twin Tania). Used Faris as my Time Mage, with White secondary. Also, SECOND MOST HP OF ALL MY CHARACTERS YESZ. Quick-Meteo spam was vital for getting past Neo Exdeath's solo-part crazy double-act stage, as this was not a durable party by any means, and Quick was also great for recovering from epic fails.
Dancer was LVP, but still useful. Second-fastest class, and Ribbon's are awesome - seriously a vital player vs. anything with status, like Neo Exdeath's Grand Cross. Sword Dance was my highest damage attack, averaging 5000 or so damage (yay Chicken Knife!). The class-worst durability was awful, but the speed and damage and utility (any secondary was useful in this spot) were nice. The Sword Dance boosters were a welcome addition in World 3. Lenna was my Dancer with White as a secondary. LVP overall, as I said, but was always helpful to stand in for something when I needed it (items, healing, damage, etc.).
Hardest boss was probably...Exdeath/NeoExdeath. Not having loads of status protection means White Hole was oddly scary, and he really made me focus on getting Shell up one-by-one at all times so I could survive his magic. Vacuum Wave also killed Lenna in the back row without fail. Neo Exdeath...was mostly about trying to survive the heavy assault of Grand Cross/Almagest/spam he'd use. Shell was a necessity there, as no one could survive Almagest without it. Respectable - made me use several Elixers.
Necrophobe was decent, if only because the damage early on could add up - but came under control fast.
Saddest bosses...a lot. Twin Tania is awful, unless you fight it legitly. But when I can cast Banish on you and kill you? Fail. Catastrophe wasn't any better (lol AI loop if you have a reflected, floating party member).
Fun times - think I'm going to do a runthrough where I just smash it to pieces and go totally completionist. Time to experiment!
SEXUALLY!
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Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues: Got yesterday, beat today. Best of the DLC so far, same praise as everyone else ETC. I started the DLC wanting to use the Holorifle and energy weapons and stuff, but it was only when I got to 100 Energy Weapons that I got an AX and pretty much solely relied on it with a few exceptions. One of which was beating the Legendary Bloatfly with the Holorifle. Kinda cheesy, so when I fought the Giant Robo-Scorpion I just charged in an axed it to death. Didn't even need any stimpacks.
Anyway, gonna go collect the last of the loot sometime later, then go play Explode the Fiend.
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Dwarf Commoner is the best origin story in DA? Huh. It's the only one I've seen yet. I figure that nearly no one chooses it at the beginning of the game.
Ms Splosion Man: Finished, got every shoe. Weird final boss.
I'd like to play the multiplayer levels, but unsuscribing from Xbox live Gold sounds like a nightmare. I'm not getting online multiplayer until I can choose to cancel it via the dashboard.
Cthulhu saves the world: Finished Highlander mode. I said that it was a joke, but it all changed in the zombie village. Cthulhu's angel on insane mode was a lot easier. For reference, Highlander mode is: You can only use one character in battle, but you get 4 times as much XP (that's shared to everybody), enemies have normal stats.
Mage Cthulhu was kinda competent at the beginning then trailed off later. He was a balanced character.
October was similar, with much more damage and much less durability. Everything dies if she gets one turn, but that doesn't happen often enough.
Umi got glitched, I didn't use her at all.
Sharpe is GOD, except his resources are limited. MVP against every boss, who could also beat a random or two.
Mage Paws was surprisingly competent in the volcano, but that's it.
Ember and Dacre were both utterly useless.
Starting Cthulhu's angels, now in the spaceship:
October is doing all the damage, setting everything in sight on fire since the beginning of the game.
Elona is... being a paladin, for some reason. Heal, and cover October. The game got a lot easier once I realized her Defend command allowed her to use that.
Dark Umi is a faster October with a lot less damage, right now.
Zombie catgirl is not contributing much to the team. She's another warm body, I guess. (I know, it's not, it's a cold body)
Bastion: Rescued the singer.
I'm loving everything about this.
Radiant Historia: Chapter 3.
Addictive game with an interesting storyline. I like how the main character's best friend, who's wearing a massive armor and a robot arm, joins his team and doesn't look like he's ever going to betray him. I hope I'm not wrong guys.
But plotwise, Stocke has activated godmode right at the beginning of the game. THAT MAN IS DOING A TOOL ASSISTED RUN THROUGH HIS VERY LIFE WITH SAVESTATE ABUSE. And until the inevitable twist, there's nothing stopping him, so the stakes are very low. This spoils all the fun of that juicy political intrigue!
Sidequests are handled awfully:
1) They're all fetchquests, don't expect interesting enemies
2) Once you can actually finish the sidequest you've probably forgotten everything about it, and the sidequest descriptions in the menu are awfully vague so you have no idea what to do.
3) It's hard to tell which node you need to use to have access to the location of your next destination. Every path closes off all the time in this game.
But the game is really easy so far anyway, so sidequests don't matter. I just want to have that "Cleared" node in the book!!
Infinite Undiscovery: Disc 2, less than 9 hours into the game? Huh. The main character is wearing a skirt now so it's not a problem.
Michelle now has 1300 MPs, and the 30%HP healing spell still costs 5 MPs. I think the uber 100% MT healing spell costs only 70.
Game is still stupid but fun. Sidequests are even worse than in Radiant Historia, they're all vague, there's just no indication of them in any menu and sometimes you have to talk to an NPC twice to get them. Woooo!
Team is Gustav/Michelle for the rest of the game.
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RH does get harder after the very easy start, for what it's worth. And yeah, sidequests seemed kinda lame (well, I enjoyed a few), but they're very ignorable.
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Blazblue CS: Beat Score Attack with simple mode Tager. Only Unlimited Hazama gave me trouble. He's so fucking random. Every time you figure out his pattern, he does something he's never done before.
SO4: Won 100 class 100 bunny races. Was actually pretty easy once I figured out the proper button-pressing rhythm. Kept a seperate savefile for Temp, and am continuing with Arumat to work on some achievements.
Bastion: Almost done with New Game Plus. I turned all the gods on, but it's still not too hard with the right upgraded weapons. This would be a good game for challenges, like use only X weapon for the whole game. Needs more savefiles for that though.
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What is this strange character thing? The avatars of destruction exist outwith battle!? :P
Seriously though Gate didn't know there was a sore spot there my bad. To be fair I've only played Suikoden IV/V and don't know Killey from any of the previous games. If there is history there oops. Well I'll agree he isn't the most likable of sorts in V either and is also a pain in terms of recruitment but also to be fair I wasn't paying as much attention to plot/character while replaying and was only thinking battle wise >_> Killey is an ass yes but in my hands it was in terms of being a major annoyance to enemies with regular powerful criticals <_< Well again this was just because it was a replay, I was more familiar with the recruitment process and I wanted to be different/try out lots of different types of character combos though. Just wasn't really thinking I suppose. Also rambling.
Thanks OK! I've really enjoyed reading all your recaps of FFV as well including the character/job summaries. Kind of sad that it's over. Congratulations on completing the FJF =-) I am impressed you managed to complete it before other people including me despite starting it later ;o
Used Krile as the White Mage because of the adorable costume,
/me approves of this
<(^^)>
Epic Battle Fantasy 3- This is getting quite fun indeed and starting to enjoy it quite a bit now. Defeated the boss at the end of the forest. Wasn't too difficult, boss was just a bit of an HP pillow. Matt/Natalie had limit bars full before the fight began so they were able to utilise those. Lance's filled up during the fight and it was fun watching him use his for the first time. Natalie ending up getting to use Kyun again later too after taking some damage through the fight and then the boss felled her in one blow of 400~ damage >_> (used her limit again after reviving her with an item) Lance was also able to use another limit later which ended up finishing off the fight =-) Mostly just kept buffs/debuffs going through the fight while Natalie healed the team up a lot with Heal More while the boys went on the offence~
Then I went back through the forest/to town and found treasure chests I'd missed. Completed/collected rewards on some quests too~
Here are set ups so far -
Matt
Equipment - Captain Hat, Casual Shirt, Gaia Axe
Skills - Tremor LV1, Nettle LV1, Drain LV1, Quick Slash LV1, Wind Slash LV1, Unleash LV1, Protect L1, Temper LV1, Fright LV1, No Legs LV1, Attack LV1, Cleaver LV1
Natalie
Equipment - Nurse Hat, Whitemage Dress, Crystal Staff
Skills - Lucky Star LV1, Fire LV1, Thunder LV1, Ice LV1, Heal LV1, Heal More LV1, Bless LV1, Purify LV1, Revive L1, Shine LV1, Attack LV1, Kyun L1
Lance
Equipment - Soldier Helment, Army Jacket, Heavy Claw
Skills - Snipe LV1, Double Shot LV1, Flameshot LV3, Plasma LV1, Plasmawave LV1, Medipack LV1, Scan LV1, Lock On LV1, Debilitate LV1, Attack LV1, Oblivion LV1
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Krile the WM is SO CUTE!!!!!
Fire Emblem, Oscar Crushes the World Again Version -
Just killed Petrine, the evilest evil to ever evil. At least she's just crazy and not in love with Ashnard.
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CT, Killey in S2 is pretty much exactly like his S5 self just with less screen time. The only thing that justifies his existence is that he's got some of the highest twink potential due to passable stats and 3 rune slots w/ no restrictions, and yes, its annoying that a wanker like that is a good PC in *2* games.
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I like him for his spiffy Red Mage outfit.
Grefter! Fashionista the Suikoden K's today! Why bother going in order?!
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The only person who can pull off a red trenchcoat name is Carmen.
Etrian Odyssey - So up to the Floor 21 to 24 area. I um kind of don't see how to actually proceed? I might have been looking at maps way late at night and missed a door or something. I can see elevators, but I haven't got a quest to fix them...
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The only person who can pull off a red trenchcoat name is Carmen.
Amen.
Radiant Historia - Got to C2 on both Alternate Hearts and Standard Hearts. Apparently now I have to kill a princess while saving Elfboy's rough Italian lover from fotzenpolitiks.
This game is so insane and I love it. It's kinda easy so far and the sidequests are very obtusely organized, but otherwise good stuff.
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Tactics Ogre: *Tries out L6 Crossbow finisher for the first time on a poor unsuspecting boss*
O_O
Welp, Canopus is back to being my clearcut MVP.
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VVVVVV
That 8-bit music! Holy crap!
Yeah, yeah, it's a somewhat challenging 8-bitish platformer with decent level variety too, but the music...the music....
Probably not for everyone, but if you're the kind of person who thought Mega Man 9 was one of the best releases in the past few years, then you should really pick this up.
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Dissidia 012- Feral Chaos go boom. In hindsight I should have remembered that Yuna needed better gear but Mega Flare still ate most of his HP.
Yuna- summons and doesn't afraid of anything
Kain- extremely tough to set up (on the slow side, positioning/space etc.) but very satisfying to hit with.
Laguna- still not sure I have the hang of, really.
Vaan- probably need to use more
Gilgamesh- hilarious, and Zantetsuken EX mode was awesome the one time it came up.
Tifa- don't quite have her feints down, and not as 'lol combo you died' as JECHT, but quite fun and easy on the eyes.
Prishe- similarly, pretty much need to reset everything after mastering all the various branches, but atatata.
Lightning- SANDAAAAGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
Feral Chaos-Smash puny humans
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Killey himself is a jerk, but his hat is the best part of the Suikoden series.
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Bastion: Finished.
This was a fun little action-adventure game romp with a lot of well-executed ideas. The interactive narrator is something that is quite amazing to see in action and I hope more games utilize such a feature in the future. The world building (narrative) is strong, even if the world building (gameplay) isn't. The characters are fleshed out through the little sidequests in rather fulfilling ways. The combat is fun thanks to the bevy of options you have, and how polished the game is in letting you play with those options (you can freely change past weapon upgrade and level-up choices anytime, for example). The actual combat is a little too lenient but the game has challenges you can add to get more out of the difficulty curve if you so desire.
In general it is a fun romp, and the very last stretch of gameplay is something I think everyone who likes games should see. Very well implemented dramatic scene with gameplay integration. It is massive spoilers but deserves mention.
In the end you can choose to save your traitor friend from bleeding to death after he gets betrayed by the people he had sided with. If you do choose to save him, The Kid picks him up and carries him on his shoulder to the end of the level... while being attacked from all sides by enemies. After a while the enemy attacks begin to subside, until you see all of the enemy warriors simply standing in a line to either side of the path to the exit. When one lone soldier attempts to fire an arrow at you, he is smacked down by his nearby allies. It never says so but the respect shown here by the otherwise purely antagonistic Ura is palpable. A damn good scene.
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RH does get harder after the very easy start, for what it's worth. And yeah, sidequests seemed kinda lame (well, I enjoyed a few), but they're very ignorable.
I do want to see how some sidequests get resolved (especially those with dead ends, like Rosch's romance), otherwise I would have just completely ignored all of them like in Infinite Undiscovery. Hum. I'm not sure I can blame the game for being more interesting in that regard.
Nice that the game is going to get challenging at one point, the battle system shows some promise.
I finished Bastion too.
I went with the choices the narrator agrees with. This would be the extra bad ending I guess. The one that's not tied to an achievement!
Finished every proving ground except the one for the bazooka-thing (I didn't have enough money to upgrade it by the end of the game)
I'm not sure I like the way challenge is handled, as this kind of limits your options. (Short range seems completely out of question for once, which is weird for action oriented combat) Good old "hard" and "the bastion must die" difficulty would have been fine with me. I'm still going to try a second or third run through with every idol activated. (of course)
My main weapons were the machete and the musket. The musket has the best feel, and the machete had the great poizn damage.
Another great download title, worth your money.
The most particular aspect is how the game doesn't give storyline/plot in any other way than the narrator speaking. There are no cutscenes, you're just going through the game while the character comments everything you do and give details. The narrator having a deep, enticing voice and coloring his talk with his own point of view and interesting figures of speech. The man looks like he has seen it all, and obviously likes to tell stories.
Infinite Undiscovery: I think it's the first time I've really noticed english voice acting being awful. (aside from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAtC1SzWSXg, but I didn't play that)
Got Vic. I really want the game to be over with so I can go to the seraphic gate, select higher difficulties and skip every cutscene.
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Defense Grid- Got the Master Strategist achievement. The hardest maps were the stupid green tower ones.
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Killey himself is a jerk, but his hat is the best part of the Suikoden series.
It's like they put a cowboy hat through a knife sharpener!
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Etrian Odyssey - So yeah this game was a reminder that this is the kind of RPG I grew up on and cut my teeth. It worked way better than I expected to honestly. Respect there. It pretty much begs for a FAQ though if you don't want to spend an inordinate amount of time wrestling with it.
Final boss was cute. Wiped to it pretty horribly first time in going blind. Having discussed scripts for enemies with Tal earlier this week (not about him) and having seen action lists for the super boss I realised he debuffs you if you have 5 or more buffs rolling at once and then next turn is going to be Cyclone. So dropped my Protector. Thought that was a poor choice at first when I went durrrrr I can't run Relaxaing and Immunization at the same time, so I lost a chunk of damage from Smite. Then the boss cast 900 HP regen (which is significant) and was happy because I had Erasure. Score. Killed it second try, was a few close calls. Boss used Cyclone without it being a punish that would have really hurt if I hadn't been on Boosted Immunization at the time (lol 4 damage to Landsknecht). MP worries were close to kicking in, had to use a couple of Hamao!11 for MP since I didn't have any Amirita on me since I had coasted on Relaxing since MP pools were big enough and enough points sunk into it around Stratum 2.
Good game and I had a lot of fun. Not sure if I could be arsed with the aftergame. It looks pretty good if you don't mind FAQing some more, but I kind of think that of the whole game, so whatevs. I just have a pile of other games I want to play. EO2 is going to have to be emulated by the looks of it, so I might do some reading up on it now and think about party make ups and stuff. Otherwise it is back to Ghost Trick in a more dedicated capacity.
That says something for EO hitting some really primal beats with me if it pulled me away from Ghost Trick so effectively.
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Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Finished this.
This was my third Castlevania game completed (after SotN and Dracula X) and I daresay it was my favourite overall. The game is very similar to SotN but feels like it makes a couple notable improvements. The biggest, certainly, is that the game isn't piss easy. I actually died two or three times to most bosses in the second half of the game (everything from Death onwards, basically), and sometimes to randoms too, and generally felt like I needed to learn how enemies fought in a way that I... really didn't for any previous Castlevania games. This helps the game's enjoyability a fair deal. The game also generally felt more polished than SotN as well (item menu was organised and far less cluttered, souls felt better executed than spells).
Otherwise it's a solid experience but falls notably short of exceptional. Dracula's castle is, as always, fun enough to explore and combat is... decent, but still a bit clunky at points (as usual, hitstun time is too large). It was fun to tinker with the soul setup although some of them being random drops was a little questionable. Weapons... had some variety but usually there was only two or three choices at any point, max. While the pistol is hilariously weak, I did enjoy using it as a way to get some chippy regen in when combined with the Succubus soul, which is cute. Otherwise that Ascalon sword you can buy midgame is brutally powerful and I mainly used it for the rest of the game unless I wanted something with more reach.
The plot barely exists and the game has sceneskip which is a mercy, but the one plot twist the game goes for is executed well enough and that's really all I can ask for. (I knew it ahead of time. It's still kinda cool.) I'm not sure why Yoko even exists and Soma's girlfriend is predictably boring but have no problem with the rest of the small cast in their limited roles. I liked the touch on the bad ending where Soma turns into Dracula, is confronted by Julius, and does an EPIC WINEGLASS TOSS but I am easily amused by such things.
Music is the game's only real main step back from previous Castlevania games I've played. Not that there aren't still some solid tracks but overall it's certainly less impressive. GBA sound system as always never helps here.
Not much else to say I think? Game isn't too long which is fine. Got about 94% of the map uncovered, there were a couple notable things I never found my way past. So it goes. 7/10, 7.5/10 region or something. Not likely to replay any time soon but not something I regret playing even for a moment.
***
Final Fantasy XIII - Reached Chapter 11, which feels a good enough point for a midgame rant on the subject. Short form: the game feels poised to be my favourite RPG I've played in the last couple years. It's pretty much exactly what I've been looking for from the genre.
Gameplay is... interesting. I'll say right off it's not necessarily playing to my personal biases, so I don't think it'll quite reach the uppermost tier of RPG gameplay to me. Still, it doesn't fall too far from it, and darned if it doesn't feel completely different from anything previous, which is pretty great. I really enjoy the paradigm system and all the on-the-fly job switching. The game is obviously very caringly designed since most fights are tough; you have to stay constantly on your toes and failing to pay attention certainly can kill you. While there are probably highly defensive strategies which will beat all but the toughest fights fairly effortlessly, the game's ranking system strongly beats you not to do that, and to walk a tightrope to get past all your challenges with the highest rewards possible. I love when games expect me to play efficiently so this is great.
Role- and character-balance is generally good stuff. All the PCs feel quite distinct and you can accomplish pretty different things by assembling different parties once you have that option. Even before then, though, there's a lot to enjoy in how each team plays and feels differently. All the roles feel like they have a clear purpose which is pretty great; there isn't really a scrub job. I like sentinel the least on average given my offensive approach but there are times when it is incredibly important.
Much is often made of the game's slow start. To break it down... yes, the first two chapters' gameplay (which lasts around two hours) is pretty bad. There's some plot justification for it but I definitely felt there could have been more effort here to keep things moving along; giving Lightning some of her AMP powers in battle might have been a help. That said, ultimately, FF13 gameplay minus paradigm shifts isn't going to be especially intoxicating regardless. For me, the writing of this part of the game made up for this flaw but it certainly is there.
But once chapter 3 comes along? Gloves very much come off and by getting paradigm shifting you're quickly expected to use the system to fight back. From here on the game pretty quickly assumes the fun it has kept until my point in the game. There are still periodic tutorials but they're on less fundamental things (eidolon battles, three-way fights, weapon upgrading, etc.). The only thing the game "holds your hand" in from here on is forcing a party leader and party (though the latter is forced by plot concerns and you tend to have 2-3 parties so you do get to see everyone) which doesn't particularly bother me since it does change who that leader is to give you a taste of controlling all the roles. One can argue the ability to fully choose your own party should have come a bit earlier but... I'm not sure I particularly agree. In general, outside those first two chapters, I found the gameplay progression has been paced quite well.
Oh yeah, and lest I forget, how this game handles resets is probably the best thing ever. While the game poses a challenge, it will never undo lots of your work, will save your setup, and even has sceneskip for when said reset is a boss. There's even a "restart battle" option like XF, for all that I've only actually used that once.
Writing is, in general, very solid. I really enjoy FF13's cast. They're quite a flawed bunch (largely because they're all going through some very emotionally trying times) and this leads to some very fun interactions. I pretty much like them all to varying degrees - Lightning puts on a callous, violent mask to deal with her anguish and has to grow out of this; Snow is a hopeless romantic and a fun deconstruction of an overly optimistic "hero" (the scene where his facade cracks in chapter 7 is great fun though); Hope is driven by understandable circumstances to abominable intentions and generally acts the way a confused and somewhat bratty 14-year old would; Sazh has a very fun plotline surrounding his own fate and that of his son and how this leaves him without hope compared to even the other party members. I've enjoyed Vanille quite well too so far although there's clearly still some key stuff left to come with her. Fang is probably the weakest PC (which... makes sense, she generally has had things better than them) and she still has her moments and is quite likable, so yeah, very good cast.
The overarching story is told well enough for quite a while, giving the characters plenty of situations to bounce off each other in fun and deliciously antagonistic ways. Their struggle against the world's delightfully Orwellian government is also quite entertaining. I'm still digesting the chapter 9-10 plot twists, and am... generally okay with them, although I thought Dysley was a bit too over-the-top evil. Not my favourite scene.
The writing isn't perfect - I generally feel most of the eidolon scenes have tended towards overly melodramatic or questionably paced (e.g. why does Sazh decide to turn his guns first on Vanille and then himself AFTER the two talk it out and then have the Brynhildr fight?). But it's gutsy, and certainly far above the RPG norm. Even if it screws everything up from this point on (and the possibilities are very clearly there for the last parts to not live up to the early parts' promise) it has still done its job on this front.
Pacing is exactly what I want in an RPG. Good plot, good gameplay, and fuck everything else. Ohnoes it is highly linear, like all my other favourite games. This just lets it be very focused on what it does well. I can't even imagine this game if it wasted lots of time in towns or something like that; it'd completely lose the atmosphere it has of you being hunted enemies of the state. The only "complaint" and it's not much of one is it does limit how much I can play at one time since the gameplay is pretty heavy in terms of being actually mentally demanding, and the game gives you little rest from it, unless it's for some rather heavy writing. I am fine with this.
Other comments can probably wait! Oh yes, visuals are extremely pretty, but we all knew to expect that, I hope.
***
Star Ocean 4 - So I saw the first scene of this (someone else was playing) and it is terrible. No other impression of the game yet (so don't take this as larger criticism than it is), but dang; that is exactly the kind of tropy nonsense that makes me appreciate when games like FF13 come along.
***
FF5 Four Job Fiesta - Gilabot seems intent to make me a Gate clone. Just got the black chocobo, team so far is Knight/Time Mage/Ranger. Knight mocks the wind-only section of the game pretty badly and generally is the preferred job even after that, although TM brings some nice utility especially against bosses (who so far can all either be slowed, stopped, or demi'd... usually two of the above). I died a bunch in the Library because I was Level 15 and was too lazy to grind up to 16 before doing the dungeon so if a Page 64 struck first and opted to use L5 Death, I was sadfaced. THIEF would help here clearly! Fortunately it's easy enough to avoid giving Page 64s turns outside the ones who show up to start off battles. No resets or even any especially close calls otherwise; Karnak escape was perhaps the easiest I'd had it since Two-Hands attack spam uses almost no time.
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Wild Arms XF replay- Up to 2-4. I'm not using Sacred Slayer because I felt like I spent too much time in it last playthrough.
I have a Geomancer with Dandelion Shot OC, an Engimancer with Elementalist/Fantastica OC, a Strider/Sentinel with Fantastica/Secutor dabblings (Drop Kick + Sentinel is neat, so I'm working on getting those 8 points~), Secutor with Halberdier OC which is working on a mastery of Secutor, the Gadgeteer/Exavactor who is currently an Engimancer for IFF healing, and the sixth PC is either Levin or Labby as an Elementalist hybrided with their original class. Ragnar is off the team due to being too wanky.
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FFT- so I see the port still didn't do anything to make Rafa smart enough to stop shoving her face directly into enemy swords.
I think I'm just going to use the editor to turn someone into a Dark Knight and go to town.
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Xenoblade - Shulk is a silly name
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Trine
This game has style.
Not really sold on the gameplay, in that it's all physics-simulation based and stuff. I mean, I am enjoying it, but I don't think I would be if it were actually hard.
The Thief is hillariously OP right now. Fire four arrows at a time! Bearing in mind that almost everything PCs can do deals 1 damage per hit, this is just a 4-damage shotgun, and brutal at close range. She was probably outdamaging the melee character by at least a 2:1 margin, if you manage to hit with all four arrows. Of course, the Thief also has a grappling hook, which makes her a top choice when platforming too.
The Knight...feels very satisfying with the sword; does the whole Smash-Bros style swing the sword from back to front and front to back so it's AoE when surrounded, and you can sword attack in midair, and you can move at full speed when sword-swinging. I'm pretty sure the Thief still wins combat, but they're on seperate HP bars so it's worth using both. What's more useful for the Knight is the Shield, which lets you block things like fireballs spammed by the level. Just unlocked the hammer weapon for the Knight which seems to deal quite a bit more damage, but takes away a lot of the things that made the Knight cool (attacking in midair, fast attack rate, shield, full movement speed when attacking). Still, damage is damage.
The Wizard basically can't fight. I mean, if left alone and told to kill a bunch of enemies on a lower platform, the Wizard will mop those up, but a single skeleton in the Wizard's face makes the Wizard cry. The Wizard is mostly useful in platforming; conjuring boxes and planks to walk on. By extension, whenever I need to tank some damage in the world like spikes and fireballs, Wizard is the obvious choice; Thief and Knight HP should be preserved for actual combat.
But mostly, this game has style. It's generic high-fantasy done very stylishly.
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Thief is pretty amazingly broken, I think it is nearly possible to beat the game without using Knight or Wizard at all. Combat against swarms can essentially come down to paniced click spam on her and you will probably come out victorious. Glad you are enjoying the game, I found it a pretty fun little platformer.
Etrian Odyssey 2 - Why did I start this up. I was just installing an emulator and giving it a fiddle. I haven't got far, but rolled up a party. Ronin, Dark Hunter (hear they are broked), Gunner, War Mage and Hexer (broked). Was going to use a Protector, but figured I could just role an entirely different set of characters this time to give them all a look. Fiddled with drawing the map on level 1 and stopped because I was supposed to be asleep by then. Mouse controls are a bit iffy to simulate the touch screen, but oh well, that is kind of expected since you make them interface differently ideally.
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Haha, that is exactly the team I used Gref. Tons of offense but be warned, entire team is made of paper. Durability is not a thing you will have. Still, did well enough for me so it's hardly a bad team. You'll just have to play a completely different way then you did in 1. Which...was the entire point of the team for me, and sounds like it is for you as well.
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I've used the same team, but dropped Whip Dark Hunter for a Beast later on since she was really useless. Ecstasy is awful and bears are nice.
Cthulhu's angels insane mode: Stuck against Spoiler in the water temple. 45 000 HPs, full healing, MT death on turn 7-8. Unless I'm missing something, I might have to grind a lot (more than 10 minutes, which is what I needed max against the other bosses) Any ideas?
Bovinator was also impossible until I figured out you could seal his machinegun skill.
Pokemon Black: Beat the 8th gym leader, caught two legendary pokemons so far. Current team (PH34R):
(http://www.pokebip.com/pokemon/pokedex/images/gen5_general/500.png)
(http://www.pokebip.com/pokemon/pokedex/images/gen5_general/508.png)
(http://www.pokebip.com/pokemon/pokedex/images/gen5_general/537.png)
(http://www.pokebip.com/pokemon/pokedex/images/gen5_general/558.png)
(http://www.pokebip.com/pokemon/pokedex/images/gen5_general/598.png)
(http://www.pokebip.com/pokemon/pokedex/images/gen5_general/629.png)
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(http://www.pokebip.com/pokemon/pokedex/images/gen5_general/508.png)
I see the Eph is strong in this one.
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(http://www.pokebip.com/pokemon/pokedex/images/gen5_general/537.png)
100% Gate approved.
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FF5 4JF (Knight/TM/Ranger/Dragoon) - Beat world 2.
This team is... interesting. On the one hand, it's pretty great against bosses. Pretty much -nothing- isn't vulnerable to at least one of Slow, Stop, gravity, or Sleep (via Sleep Sword) so I can generally wreck them. X-Death is the biggest exception (you can slow him, but I lack the means to effectively do so) but he's not very impressive anyway due to Hastega letting me run circles around him and every other boss after Atomos. The team is similarly very good against most "big, tough" randoms.
On the other hand it's a pretty awful team for crowd control. My only multitarget is BEE SWARM (lulz no), and the ST damage generally isn't amazing (although it's quite high at the start of world 2 when Comet is new and shiny) so it takes ages to cut through lots of enemies. Moore and the pyramid were both quite painful with their formations of 4+ enemies. Not painful as in "I'm going to die" because that's seriously not much of a risk (PC deaths are extremely rare, Haste/Slow/Stop shenanigans and a Heal Staff keep almost everything under control), but because it just takes a while.
General setup is Knight with Two-Hands to do big damage (lots of elements to choose from, though evade is a concern), and everyone else uses Time Magic, although Ranger at least has kinda-competent physicals. Starting to pick up Rapidfire but I don't think the skill is amazing on non-Freelancers. (It's only situationally better than Two Hands, for instance, on Knight, near useless on Time Mage, and for everyone else potentially kicks out Time Magic.)
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For serious? The whole reason I bought Pokemon was Stoutland and the fact that it is so Fenrir.
Bastion - It is like good and stuff. I am a little frustrated with how bad I am at the repeater challenge course. I needed to upgrade the gun and learn to use auto aim to beat it. I am sure my brothers could do that without using auto aim.
Edit - Being awake made Machette trial very doable. Bullhead Trial can fucking blow me. Sure get hit by 2 or less enemies. Maybe when they don't clip through you and hit you in the back.
Edit 2 - I am really loving this game. I am swearing at it a lot though. I just did all the Reflections thing (first time through? more of them maybe?) you get from using the Hookah which gives you the main characte's backstory while fighting waves and waves of monsters. It is a pretty cool set of fights right up until the last 5 set of reflections where they decide that lol healing is for pussies and don't give you shit between waves. I adapted pretty well to dodging around the place a ton. I was mostly hindered by my attachment to the Breaker bow when I should have kept packing the Musket I had just got (or upgraded the Bow instead of the Machette like I had just, second draw speed would help hit and fade tactics a lot). Kind of brought it on myself with weapon choice, not that I would have known what to expect walking into it.
It caused a lot of swearing and not at the difficulty, entirely on the falling down holes in the floor where I was not expecting them to be in the bottom right of the area or clipping on the building near the top part. Still cool fight, glad I did it. Worth it for the longest I Can't Believe It's Not Ron Perlman monologue so far.
Edit 00000000120301939414 - Oh yeah this as well
Etrian Odyssey 2 - The first floor can blow me. Explore a bunch of stuff! You can't leave! Fuck you game! That is seriously terrible given EO randoms at level 1. Then I ran into the clearing where you can rest on floor 1. Well played game. Well played. You actually got me to smile again after the brutal raping you had given me with Hedghogs that 2 shot me.
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Part of why I went for the Brave Blade there, Elf. Knight using Brave Blade rapid fire is competent faux MT, and still let's the knight bring a shield to the party. Knight and Ranger both handing out rapid fires was cleaning most randoms up in 2 turns or so. I assume you grabbed chicken knife though, so Ranger's gonna be your only really competent rapid fire spam.
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Nah, I got the Brave Blade (which is one of the reasons I was annoyed with the pyramid; I usually run from everything there). Game gets more smashed starting now.
Kinda not impressed with Rapidfire as MT (its damage decays to quite poor, particularly against formations with a back row, and it's unreliable) but it gets the job done. I may switch back and forth between it and Two Hands as suits my fancy (the latter does well when neither defence nor evade are in the picture, though yeah, no shield).
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2 Hands also doesn't have to worry about hitting dummied targets though that's likely to come up in all of one fight.
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I've had fun with Chemist/Chicken Knife + Rapid Fire and Ranger/Yoichi Bow + Rapid Fire spams~
Final Fantasy V Advance- Ending get. Had to fight the final four times because first time I forgot about stealing/taking screen captures for Gilgabot/FF5ForFutures. Second time I managed to steal a Ragnarok but ended up overwriting each screen capture each time I took a new one. Third time somehow messed up the screen captures while fiddling around with them in my pictures (kept the clear game data w/th the Ragnarok previously though) Fourth time sorted!
Final boss was haha Chemist + haha Summoner + haha Rapid Fires. I ran Krile w/th Chemist/Rapid Fire + Thief Knife/Dancing Dagger/Chicken Knife, Faris w/th Black Mage/Summon, Lenna w/th Summoner/Mix and Bartz w/th Ranger/Rapid Fire + Yoichi's Bow. Goliath Tonic/Dragon Force/Golem/Carbuncle/Phoenix are all seriously OP and shiiiny~
By the end of the fight the fourth time I fought it my little Chemist and Ranger were pumping out some serious damage after I'd fully bulked them up with Dragon Force to make the fight go by quicker. A critical hit on a base physical was doing 9999 from my Ranger even (who also happened to be berserked from Grand Cross >_>) Chemist was doing 3000~ per hit w/th Rapid Fire on the front row targets (Chicken Knife) >=)
I managed to tie up all the loose ends in the game before entering the final dungeon including finally defeating Gogo legit/proper (again serious Mix abuse and the end game summons were really, really useful there) so all there is left to do is fighting Omega/Shinryu (both of whom I accidentally ran into and had derrrrp time on) and post game stuffs. I also stole and held out for rare drops quite a bit so the inner kleptomaniacs/OK's should be satisfied (Gold Hairpin/Odin's Protect Ring/Dragon Lance x 2/Titan's Gloves/Thief's Gloves/Kaiser Knuckles/Tinkebell/Genji Gloves/Genji Armour) Also ended up with three Elven Mantles and four Ribbons from treasure huntings/etc =D Thanks again to the peeps who helped me through this one. Much appreciated =)
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Trine: complete.
That was a bit of an anticlimactic final boss, in that there kind-of wasn't one.
There was kind-of a final encounter, though--and sure, I guess it makes sense that their final encounter would be platforming--stick with the gameplay you've been doing. But it was time-pressure platforming, which they haven't done before, in a level with no mid-way points (which means that if a character dies, you can't use them for the rest of the level unless you start over) and it was troll-game design (there's an evil spirit flying around spawning stuff to mess up your jumps; makes sense thematically but it's obnoxious). Not a fan.
Unlocked the flaming sword for the Knight, which is a pretty good upgrade--feels like about double the damage, which I had never done because the prerequisite is so worthless (add a 5% crit rate...yeah, no).
The final wizard spell is kind-of ridiculous. Sure, floating platform. Floating platform which you can just chain (with some difficulty, it must be admitted.
Usually I'm not particularly enamoured by a completely generic high-fantasy setting, but I do find Trine charming. I'm not sure I can pin it down fully, but there's definitely one area that I noticed once I thought about it....
Trine isn't misogynistic. The first playable character happens to be female (she also happens to be front and center in the CD artwork). Her clothing isn't ridiculous. And...it's not like her storyline is built around being female--she's not there as a love interest. The other characters react to her actions (they don't like her initially because she steals stuff) rather than her gender (a lot of games would at very least have some unwanted comedically-awkward flirting).
Granted, it's not like there aren't two male PCs, a male narrator, and a male king rounding out the rest of the cast. But still, I'd like to see more characters like her, particularly from western developers.
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FF5 Fiesta playthrough - complete!
In the end, no resets on anything aside from Level 5 Death in the library. Leviathan actually came closest, as due to a bug (which I wasn't aware of until triggering it), he can counter with Tidal Wave multiple times against Meteor. 1600 MT damage at that point is nasty. Fortunately I was able to recover using Quick+revival, and physicals from there make him a chump.
Neo X-Death... well, I actually had to form a strategy against him! Odin slices and dices the back (not necessary, since the back isn't that scary, but it's free from Magic Lamp). Catoblepas missed the Almagest part, so I hit it with Old instead. This works incredibly well, cripping its damage and speed utterly (no more K
Oing low-HP classes). I also blinded the physical part with the Darkness Bow, then generally took the battle to pieces with Quick/Meteor. I used Elixirs for all healing/MP healing since I'd built up a bunch, but I didn't need to heal much... only Almagest ever dealt damage and I only saw it twice. Grand Cross, which I saw once, also managed to instant death someone, but no big. Actually very easy but at least it took some research.
Anyway, thoughts on the classes!
Knight - Early on, awesome. Once randoms start having tricks like evade/def to deal with spamming A (mid-late world 1), they fall off, but they get another spike with the fire- and ice-elemntal swords which let them hit lots of weaknesses. Then comes the Brave Blade! Except for early world 2 (where Comet matched) and post-Meteor, Knight was my best source of damage, be it with Two Hands or Rapidfire. Also, Equip Shield was the natural choice for Time Mage secondary later on, since they don't benefit from much else and an Aegis Shield is huge for durability. Oh, and the Sleep Sword rapes a shocking number of bosses (Atomos and Melusine being the two most notable).
Time Mage - MVP by far. Subpar against randoms until you get Comet, at which point it's "well lets give Comet to everyone who isn't 2-hands knight". Late on, Meteor plays a similar role, smashing everything to pieces. But of course it's their support spells against tough enemies and bosses that make them really shine. Slow, gravity, Stop, Old... almost every boss is vulnerable to at least one. And gravity allowing inexpensive 3HKOs on 25000 HP Landcrawlers certainly sticks out as emblematic of what happens to beefier randoms. Haste, Hastega, and Quick are all amazing for turn economy. Float spoils some offence, Teleport makes some dungeons more pleasant, Return erases any enemy hax such as ambushes. MP isn't really a concern (I sat on two dozen Elixirs and Ethers at the end of the game) unless you use Quick+double Meteor on everything. TM itself, aside from being my only Gold Hairpin user, was also my only staff-user (Heal Staff is pretty great for most of the game, Sage Staff destroys the Great Trench).
Ranger: Didn't ultimately contribute too much. The Dark Bow is a nice way of inflicting blind on a few things (66% hit rate, ignores evade/mevade, pretty badass) and evade-ignoring elemental physicals are solid for a while in worlds 1-2. Back row compatibility is nice, but it comes with lower HP and no shield, so not that nice. Rapidfire is a neat enough capstone but not ultimately that great for me since it's a bit weak on all but super-weapons, and doesn't justify kicking out Time in most cases.
Dragoon: Dragoon does one thing only, and that is be a tanky carrier for Time Magic. There are worse fates, but clear LVP. Quick + Jump is decent damage if I actually want to direct my offence, at least (otherwise Quick+Meteor is more effective of course).
As mentioned, the team lacked true MT, a flaw that was most pronounced in the great forest of Moore and the pyramid. Later on enemies tend to come in smaller groups annnd Meteor + Brave Blade Rapidfire is so good anyway you'll forgive their randotargetting. But that's my only real complaint, besides the usual Fiesta faults of a lack of good healing/Shell and having to use obviously subpar carriers late.
Fun times. Will do again next year if they run it.
EDIT: Oh yeah, final levels were Lenna 38 everyone else 39.
RE-EDIT: Game was about 21 hours in length. I did mostly everything (didn't do Gogo's dungeon, is the biggest thing. Also didn't beat Prototype, Gil Turtle, or the world 3 superboss duo, but if I'd been willing to break lots of rods I could have taken the former two at least.)
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Lost Odyssey: About to go the final dungeon.
I am probably massively overleveled and I know exactly why:
The Temple of Enlightenment. I didn't even finish it mostly cause its the exact kind of dungeon style I don't like (arbitrary path changing puzzles that you can easily lose track of), and I gained like 17 levels alone there. I did get all of Cooke's skills, at least, and all of Tolten's...Tolten's being a lot earlier than expected and...seriously? That's all he has to offer?
Did a few other side quests by accident and such, which included getting an Accessory that gives you immunity to all 4 big elements (...cause HALVING all 4 wasn't broken enough), and Slot+10.
...and here I thought SLot+5 and Slot+3 existing AND being stackable was broken, but I spoke too soon <_<
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she also happens to be front and center in the CD artwork
Having trouble pinning down the exact art you are referring to, there sems to be a few cases on a GIS and I can't find a copy of the disc without digging super deep, but I assume it is a variation of http://www.gram.pl/upl/news/20100610181158_i.jpg this image?
It looks like there is actually a few different boxes out there for Trine, only one of like 4 or so variants really had a noteworthy patch of Male Gaze to it (Thief is a shapely woman though, so silhouettes do show it). One has a bit of leg showing. Lower thigh and calf. That is all. Which is saying something with you know the normal stuff (http://imag.malavida.com/mvimgbig/download/tomb-raider-anniversary-3439-1.jpg).
And yeah final level is a bit of a dick move. Achievement for doing it on very hard without anyone dying. Argh. The game screwing you over is essentially them trying to use the party's own tricks against them, now sure how satisfying that is really though.
And Meep, yeah Slot skills are silly. Blue Dragon uses the same thing (SHOCK same team etc) but kind of has it a bit more under control. Of course you trade some of the plot focus for a whole ton more throwback gameplay. Blue Dragon doesn't go to quite the same degree of broken as well. (Have I mentioned that I kind of like Blue Dragon in the last week? You guys should totally play it sometime. It is alright)
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And Meep, yeah Slot skills are silly. Blue Dragon uses the same thing (SHOCK same team etc) but kind of has it a bit more under control. Of course you trade some of the plot focus for a whole ton more throwback gameplay. Blue Dragon doesn't go to quite the same degree of broken as well. (Have I mentioned that I kind of like Blue Dragon in the last week? You guys should totally play it sometime. It is alright)
I have already played Blue Dragon, so your recommendation is meaningless!
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XF- I'm in the past~ Current team is:
-Clarissa the Nightstalker with Dandelion equipment and Fantastica OC. She basically runs around and buffs people at high speeds with an occasional offensive burst from Sacrifice or Howling Shot if needed.
-Felius the Extremist with Halberdier OC, Secutor mastery stuff (att+%25, their axes, etc), and Berserker EQ. I'm not sold on Extremist really but I wanted to use one. Upper Hand for Godlike.
-Levin the Elementalist with Martial Mage OC/EQ. So close to that mastery! Then I will change to Emulator.
-Geoff the High Cav with Engimancer OC, IFF, Fantastica OC. The high HP of High Cav works solidly with the short range Engimancer OC.
-Melinda the Gadgeteer with Excavator OC and Engimancer OC and IFF. She serves as the party healer for the most part. Excavator OC is quite useful for the many ditzy moments when I forget to reequip items on her.
-Leland the Berserker with Strider OC, Sentinel EQ, Def+%25, Fantastica OC. As you can tell, I <3 Rush. Strider OC offers him the targetting versatility necessary for the weird movement patterns of Berserker.
Game's been fun. There've been a quite of epic moments, like the time where I thought I was going to lose the critical people and escape map (2-4) by one turn and then a Sentinel pushed my almost-dead PC into the gate with Heavy Strike. That was pretty amazing. The last battle with Samille and El Jackson was pretty epic too. I got great use from the MP transfer move on Nightstalker! If I used Sacrifice El Jackson would have just killed Clarissa, so instead I MP transfered to my High Cav. So Clarissa and Felius lined up so they could Formation Art El Jackson while Geoff hit him with Devastate over and over. (My other three PCs were so dead and I'd used all my revival.) El Jackson's kinda a jerk.
I'll talk more about plot later.
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Lost Odyssey: COMPLETED! And of course, for a game like this, how can I NOT Meeple Rant!? As usual, spoilers and such, read at your own digression etc. Making the text small to mask spoilers and what not when its actually applicable.
What's there to say about the game...well...the game from the get go gives off a Final Fantasy feel. Even before you press a button, something about its presentation and style just feels like its a Final Fantasy game. And truth be told, outside of how the game lacks usual Final Fantasy conventions like Summons, Moogles, general spell names, etc., it...never really gives it up. Given I've compared Blue Dragon often to Chrono Trigger (with the "Using FF5's Job System instead of Combos"), its not shocking that a more traditional style game from them resembles Final Fantasy. OF COURSE, the real reason is "it has a lot of the old Square Developers, most notably Sagakuchi and Uematsu." The game really comes off as "Final Fantasy: We FOrgot to Give it a Number."
To take it a step further...well, you know how Xenogears was initially going to be a Chrono Trigger sequel, but it deviated so far from the source material, they realized it really CAN'T be a sequel anymore, but liked what they had, so they just made an entirely new game from there? Or alternatively, how Devil May Cry spawned from the Resident Evil franchise in a similar manner? Well, Lost Odyssey feels like that, just in this case, its "FF6 Prequel." No, I'm not kidding; there's a lot of things that made me think of FF6's setting, plot, etc. and "Wow, this game could very well be the War of the Magi if you change a few minor details, like saying Immortals are Espers" and what not. Now yes, the way the game is NOW, it clearly isn't, and its not trying to be either, I'm just saying it feels like Sakaguchi planned this story a while back as an FF6 prequel, but never got off the ground, so turned it into something new since, well, he's no longer with Square-enix, it can't be related to FF!
Due to this, Lost Odyssey is summed up nicely as being a traditional style RPG that manages to have its own unique touches, which is basically how most FF games pre-FF11 sold themselves. I say Pre-FF11, cause FF11 was an MMO, thus different genre, and FF12 and FF13 are NOT traditional, for better or worse. In general, Lost Odyssey succeeds at this too, and it proved that yes, there is still room in modern gaming for a jRPG that doesn't try to be NEW AND EXCITING!!!, but goes back to older standards, while trying to not just be another bland generic entry in the genre.
The one gripe I have about the gameplay is, well, difficulty. Now part of this is because I did do Temple of Enlightenment with Double EXP which gave me oodles more EXP than is healthy, so I had Kaim and Seth with 9500+ HP end game, and Ming and Sarah with 5k+ (they all had Max HP Up 3 and 4 equipped mind. Fun fact? I never found Max HP Up 1, and I ONLY just got Max HP Up 2 before the final boss. yeah, almost completely ignored Cubic Music Boxes, cause i was too lazy until the end of the game to grab a pen and paper), which kind of destroyed the game. Though, I can tell that wasn't the only thing, cause the general boss damage just wasn't doing enough to break through all the cheese my Immortals have.
Game has way too many good defensive skills. Between a bunch of random nullifying moves, random absorption abilities (as in, get hit with physical, there's a chance it'll heal you instead of do damage!), some skills that COMPLETELY NEGATE THE BIG 4 ELEMENTs, a "Survive hit with 1 HP!" ability, etc. This wouldn't be so bad if your skill slots were more limited, by which I mean they only gave you Slot Seeds to boost this. However, the game gives you Slot+ Abilities, which really ramp it up. Now, I don't mind that these exist, but rather, THEY STACK. If the game just said "Best one overrides previous one!" on Skill Slots? That'd be fine, as yes, Slot+10 is cruel, but its also from a side quest, and its more than enough by itself. The fact that Slot+3 and Slot+5 can be used at the same time gives you a net gain of +15 Slots...that's like more than you'll ever need, I was shoving random filler skills on for the shit of it cause I didn't know what I wanted.
Actually, that's one of the reasons its so easy in general; skills stack. Max HP Up 3 and Max HP Up 4? Oh hey, now I have 182% of my original max...and you can still use Max HP Up 2!
In fairness...the game is too easy partially because of the system implemented and how easy it is to exploit, not necessarily cause enemies suck. So if you did put restrictions on the game, like "only use the best of a current Parameter Skill" and what not, the game may actually fight back. I suspect to make it HARD, you'd need to do some really big restrictions, though, there were shades of potential competence as while more Immortals felt...uhh...Immortal, the Mortals did have points where they'd die. Not often, mind, mostly because you'd only use Tolten in the front row, so the other 4 were all protected by GC usually, but that's something.
Actually, Kaim and Seth being your two big tanks and immortals in itself is what adds to this. Since they're not taking that much damage after a point, your GC value never drops, so your back row characters almost never take damage outside of a few bosses who have good GC Raping capabilities, who'd then fire off MT damage.
That said, the difficulty is really my only major gripe about the gameplay. The game starts off well and good in this regard, as through Disc 2, game is actually not that easy. The First Dungeon especially puts up quite a fight, though mostly a resource thing there. The following dungeons aren't "lul" worthy, like Sorceress' Mansion has enemies with nasty ST damage, and defensive gimmicks that made you actually worry about survival at times, what have you. I'm told people have trouble with the Black Cave, but I didn't find it all particularly noteworthy, though probably last dungeon that actually tried to fight back?
I think best way to put it is Lost Odyssey's difficulty is FF6's if you started with Floating Continent, Kefka's Tower, Fanatics Tower and Phoenix Cave immediately, and got progressively easier until its...basically FF7. Really, because the game just gets progressively easier, I'm thinking its a case of "Enemies aren't weak, you're just too overpowered" so uh, yeah, make of that as you will!
NON Difficulty things however? Well, I liked how it distinguished Mortals and Immortals; yes, Immortals were just far better, but I felt that was 100% intended especially given the final boss and they wanted to make it as obvious as possible. Mortals didn't feel worthless though, as they could still DO STUFF in battle; I'll get to that when I assess characters individually. Its very much like Phantasy Star 4 how the "Big 4" are clearly better than the other 5, but the 5th PC is by no means worthless. It also did a good job making Physicals and Magic good, as well as having good buffs. One thing I felt was a waste was a lot of the status magic. I used a few status spells throughout, saw them miss, and just went "ok, fuck it, I'm just winning with damage." I DID use Sed's Magic Seal on a durable random in Grand Staff #1, mostly cause Shadowus is annoying, and I had his AI more or less figured out, so why not screw him over (Magic Seal is basically like FF6 Runic, except it targets the enemy, rather than being a field effect, and lasts until the ENEMY activates it and thus is just better...and yet, you still probably will rarely use it!)? Either way...Status felt worthless cause it doesn't do much. Go figure, status can be a bitch in this game when hit with it, especially Seal on one of your mages.
...then you get the Angel Guard and suddenly your Immortals just mock status, so now Status is a wasted turn beyond "Oh no, my Mortal might be weakened!"
There's a few little polish things that aren't major, but would have been nice. For starters, while game does tell you Magic speeds (if are misleading at first until you realize the "1" does not mean "will be cast this turn"), it doesn't tell you Skill speeds, which is annoying. To be fair, game is nice about charge times cause you can always cancel the charge on the following turn and change your action entirely if things get out of hand, so you're not committed to it, and it doesn't cost MP until its actually USED, so no harm there. Also, Immortals should be able to cast Healing magic regardless of if they have the skill equipped out of battle, so long as they have the ability learned. Its basically saying "spend the extra time to equip Level # White Magic on Seth, have her use MP, go back and take it off." There were a few filter options I kind of wanted or would have preferred the game filtered somethings differently (eg "Elemental" for Rings should take into account ANYTHING with an Elemental feature on it, not just the basic rings), but just having an Item Filter in itself is a godsend when your inventory, skillsets, etc. get so freaking large, and more RPGs need to have it.
I guess I'll just say that the difficulty issues aside, the game is just well polished and well handled on gameplay fronts.
SO WHAT ABOUT PLOT!?!?!
Well, plot can be summed up as "evil guy wants to take over the world, Immortals who lost their memories must team up with a few friends and STOP HIM!" Oh sure, there's more to it than that, but its a very simple plot with a nice easy summary. I remember Yahtzee once said he liked FF6 because its plot could be summarized "nicely onto a pamphlet", and I feel that's the case of Lost Odyssey; it recognizes that a simple base-line does not mean you can't have an in-depth, decently written plot. Is it the greatest thing of all time? No, far from it, but its an engaging enough story that never gets too confusing that handles its faces its well. The plot twists aren't OMG AMAZING, and are kind of predictable, though they aren't cheesily handled either, and the game just kind of treats it as they are, not "WE MUST MAKE A BIG DEAL OUT OF THIS!", instead focusing areas that matter more. That's about all I'll say; its nothing special but competent enough.
One major thing Lost Odyssey has going for it that, again, reminds me of FF games (FF9 most specifically in this case) is that while having a clear Protagonist (Kaim), it was NOT afraid to shift focus away from him at times and let other characters get limelight. You know...the way a story SHOULD be? The main character does not have to be the CENTER OF ATTENTION!!! all the damn time, nor does he have to witness all events. At first, yes, it seems like this is going to be "ALL KAIM ALL THE TIME!" but as more characters appear (Immortals especially), the game takes more of a focus of "This story is about the immortals in general, not just Kaim...Kaim's just the guy you're playing as most of the time." He's still the main of course, but it gives chance for us to see the game from OTHER perspectievs. It doesn't do it quite as much as, say, FF9 which changed characters on a whim, but it does it enough (most particularly, Disc 3) that it helped.
It stands out since there are too many jRPGs that fall into this trap of "THE MAIN CHARACTER MUST BE EVERYWHERE!!" and that's part of why jRPG stories tend to be questionable, especially when said protagonist IS SILENT. Lost Odyssey is not the best example of a game that defies this, but it does a good enough job to say "Kaim is the main, but we aren't reliant on his existence to move the story along."
NOW FOR CHARACTER ANALYSES!!!
First off, a blanket thing that needs to be said for the game at large. The cast as a whole has one big thing going for it and that is, with the exception of Cooke and Mack, THEY'RE ALL ADULTS. Well, ok, Tolten might be a teen, but I'd assume he'd be like 19 at youngest cause game treats him as a young adult, and him being younger than the other adults plays into his character. So it avoids a lot of jRPG cliche and tropetastic characters. Cooke and Mack are actually children, and they actually FEEL like children, not just based off design and "Remember, they're kids!" like, say, how FF4 treated Palom/Porom. This factor is nice since it means the characters act like rational human beings, so we don't see "yet another dumb idealistic teen who wants to see the world" or the alternative "a teen who hates himself and everyone around him but will slowly learn to appreciate things!"
If you've ever seen me rant about FF12, one of the things that annoys me is how the fans partially ruined the game's plot. See, Basch being the main would have been awesome because "30~ year old War vet as a main" is NOT a conventional thing in jRPGs and its something new and fresh, but Japanese fans bitched and moaned and demanded their TEENAGE MAIN CHARACTER and thus, we got Vaan (I don't hate Vaan, but seriously, he's a walking cliche.) Well, Lost Odyssey just said bollocks to that, and gave us adults. Yes, being immortal and 1000 years old, they kind of HAD to do that, but with the whole "He lost his memory!" plot device, they could have easily gotten away with a bullshit "regressed to a teenager mindset!" and kept him looking physically 16 or something cause hey, immortal, doesn't age! They didn't however, and I respect the game more for that.
THAT SAID, ONTO THE INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERS!
Kaim: He starts the game off being a bad-ass immortal who doesn't really speak much about 2 words cause he's a jackass. He's really completely unlikable in the early game, but I feel that was intended; yes, its kind of like being an Emo Teen, except here its more like he's just trying to get his job done, doesn't care about sentimental things, etc. Then he gets his memory back, remembers he has a daughter and wife and suddenly becomes a totally different person. Now, he always remains calm, rational, and duty driven instead of emotional, but he clearly lightens up...A LOT. The sudden change actually is explainable too, unlike say, Squall's or Ryudo's. He isn't afraid to show a sign of weakness, or crack a smile, or show sympathy or whatever...its like he's actually showing signs of BEING HUMAN! Yeah, ended up liking him in the end; he was something different and while at first he gives off bad vibes, he ended up decent.
IN BATTLE!? He's your Tank Immortal. He hits hard, takes hit well, has ass for MP and...well, he's basically a staple in the front lines. Gets job done well and that's all you care about, really likes if you don't mind micromanaging rings to constantly hit elemental/species weaknesses. Also, He's married and has an established love interest before the game begins as a result, which is rare as fuck. basically avoids sappy love story tropes with Sarah as a result, cause they've already BEEN through that.
IN A DUEL!? ...fuck if I'm interpreting Immortals in a duel.
Seth: So, second character introduced, and she's also an Immortal, who also lost her memories! The instant "THESE TWO ARE OBVIOUSLY CONNECTED IN SOME WAY!" thing aside, Seth is how you do an optimistic, cheerful, free-spirited character WITHOUT making them massively energetic. Granted, she's also got a loose temper, but only seems to lose that with Jansen. She worked as an early foil to Kaim, as Kaim's more like "Whatever, lets get this over with" while Seth was more like "Oh, this is going to be a fun adventure!" She's also a former pirate so there's that! She's a pretty static character throughout the game truth be told, but her personality is well established early, and its the kind that based on her past lifestyle, wouldn't change much, so yeah. Also, props to Seth being the "martyr" in the game, not Kaim. It makes more sense that way too. Everyone but Seth had something strong to hold onto in that world that they wouldn't want to give up. Seth did have her son Sed, HOWEVER, it was in a state where Sed clearly didn't need her anymore, being an adult whose been living fine without her those 30 years, and much as they want to be with each other, they can be parted. Its sad, but compare it to Kaim/Sarah who had their Grand Children that DID rely on them, and Ming who had a genuine lover, they were clearly more grounded in this world, so Seth, both with her higher anger levels, and less attachment to the world, made the most sense to take the silver bullet for the others.
IN BATTLE!? She's your speedster character...and your second best Tank. yes, that's right, the "Thief" build character is your 2nd best tank in the game, so she's basically the other Staple in the front lines. Really, Seth and Kaim tend to do the same actions, its more that Seth does things first, Kaim hits enemies harder, and Seth has more MP to expend, but isn't as tanky. Being an immortal makes her a staple in general.
IN A DUEL!? ...see Kaim...
Jansen: In short? A better version of Edge in terms of personality. There is NOTHING redeeming about this guy; he's a pervert, he's incompetent, he's easily swayed by money, and he's a wimp who gets beaten up by a female (namely Seth). Apparently the only thing he's good for is 'having connections' that Gongora claims, but we never actually see, and...yeah, he's just there to be an idiot basically...which is his charm, cause he's very clearly the comic relief in the game, and a good one as he actually remains entertaining, and they never really break from his general speech pattern too, so he was written consistently. Furthermore, he gets into a believable, genuine relationship with Ming THAT ACTUALLY GOES SOMEWHERE. Its not a case of "yeah, they're going to hook up", the game actually shows them confessing their love to another and ends with their wedding. Its a nice "from rags to riches" story that's actually believable...in that fictional way...and the fact they weren't afraid to be direct about Jansen's relationship with Ming allowed it to evolve.
IN BATTLE!? Early game he's frail as fuck cause your GC drops too quickly and that's the only thing that protects him, and he doesn't have much resources. Then you get Relax, which can be given to him via a Circlet, and suddenly his MP woes are mitigated significantly (not that MP Healing is hard to come by in items.) He's your offensive Spell Caster, and has more HP than Cooke, so giving her Black Magic accessory doesn't obsolete him. He also has stuff like Factual Analysis innately, Steal which you probably will never use, and Double Accessory is of course nice as it allows him to be more flexible than other Mortals.
IN A DUEL!? Probably Light. His good stuff has way too high charge time and he has no way to mitigate that, and the fastest stuff (the "us" spells) I can't imagine is all that good one on one. He has status but I'm not sold on their status rates. He also has like 10% HEALING...which is only 10% cause of his god awful durability.
Cooke: I don't how old she is suppose to be, so I'm going to say she's 10 years old cause she reminds me of my sister whose the same age! That said...she's actual 10 year old girl. She's smart and mature enough to understand what's going on, but only on a basic level. She doesn't try to butt-in and pretend she's more than she is, she lets the adults do the talking. She only acts like she's in charge around Mack, her little brother. Her looking up to Seth as a role model was a nice touch, as "hey, an awesome female pirate captain! I want to be strong like her!" so she's constantly cheering her on whenever she beats up Jansen and such. See, THIS is how you handle a "young but mature" character. You don't make them act ultra polite and going "I'm sorry for my brothers idiocy" and pretend they are equal to adults like they did with Porom in FF4, you just make them show a degree of comprehension and show they understand their place. To add to this, just some of the way she acts in battle, like yelling "BOOM!!" when casting a spell further cemented "yes, she's still a 10 year old girl." She's mature, yes, but she still has that innocent mischievous, wants to haev fun, etc. aspect that children generally have.
IN BATTLE!? Team White Mage. Now yes, this is kind of pointless with Immortals, and how you can hand White Magic to others, but when you consider she has Angel Heart, Reduce Casting Time, and Casting Support for Mid-Game MT damage smash, she's good for filling that extra role, despite her game-worst HP. Her spells come off fast, she has the MP to support them, and she keeps you alive while Sarah and Ming can take more integral roles. So yeah, decent "pure healer" character.
IN A DUEL!? Light. Divide isn't really helping her as its too slow (thankfully still turn 1!) and with Game Worst HP, she's relying on turtling and stick beat downs. yeah, that's not getting anywhere fast.
Mack: So naturally, being the 7 year old (yes, I decided he's 7, DEAL WITH IT) little brother of Cooke, he's going to be all HYPER ACTIVE IMMATURE BRAT WHO YOU WANT TO WRING THE NECK OF!? ...except not, cause Mack is NOT Palom. Mack is more the depressed little boy whose been through hardships despite his age, but is trying his best to deal with them, but being young and inexperienced, he doesn't know how too. Like Cooke, the big thing he has going for him is he actually feels his age. He's not just "another kid" but he comes off as genuinely younger than Cooke, and a lot more naive. One scene that stands out to me is in the Cirmson Forest. Mack says he went there cause he wanted to see Mom, and Cooke responds with "Mom's dead, Mack, we can't see her ever again." He says he knows, but its clear he hasn't fully accepted that his mother is actually not coming back until later. That seen really displayed how Cooke is already grown up enough to understand the harsh reality, while Mack is stuck in his own innocence that allows him to deny the harsh truth, despite knowing its nothing more than denial.
IN BATTLE!? ...why is the 7 year old boy more durable than half the cast? Yes, I know, gameplay balance and Mack was suppose to be the "Red Mage" of the team, given his attack is JUST high enough that he can do something approaching damage with Ring Support or using one of his physical skills, his speed is on Kaim's level, and he has MP and magic to support being a mage, but is clearly worse at it than specialists. He's also your source of Spirit Magic, thus main MT damage for a good part of the game, and has buffs. He sort of ended up in my final party by accident only cause it was his turn in the cycle, and I thought the final dungeon would be, you know...a dungeon. Not that Mortals actually play a genuine role in the final boss fight.
IN A DUEL!? Well, he has healing though I forget how good (you tend to never use it cause its just worse than White Magic), some buffs, and probably okish damage. I dunno, Middle? he has notably better durability than other Mages so he's got something I guess!
Ming: The Calm, attractive, rational Queen of Numara whose immortal, and a proper noble, thus contrasting the commoners (or in Jansen's case, A CLEAR BUM) the rest of the team is. She doesn't leave much of an impression, but she's hardly bad, just...I dunno how to say it. I will say however props to her for actually being OPEN about her relationship and intrigue with Jansen. No denial, no subtlety, and no shame; she's accepting that yes, she's fallen for this bum, but mostly because he's so different from everything else, and she can see the decent person he is underneath. Plus he adds excitement to her life. The fact that she openly kisses him at one point and blatantly confesses her love puts her far above most other "exists for a love story" females. I guess I like her but I can't really explain why!
IN BATTLE!? Immortal Mage #1, so she exists to nuke things, and heal your team. Her MP almost matters at first, though you teach he Relax, and she can last a while...then your MP gets too high for MP costs and you have plenty of MP Healing...then you get "Auto MP Restore" and well, now she's never running out of MP ever, even if you spam High end Composite Magic! Yeah, she's another staple in your team, cause well, immortal.
IN A DUEL!? Immortal, and one who REALLY relies on what you allow, so a big "OH GOD NO" to that.
Sarah: Kaim's wife from the past and still his wife to this day once they reunite after that catastrophe! For the most part, that's what she exists for. She's sort of like Rosa in that regard, except has a few notable advantages on Rosa...mostly she's not a major insult to feminism everywhere. Yes, Sarah is pretty standard in how she acts like a "sweet kind woman" and is smart and all that...even has a diary which was actually a cute way to allow her to remember Kaim but still have amnesia, and is a nice twist to the usual amnesiac always starting from scratch, like Kaim, Ming and Seth did....but her being female is never a negative factor of her character. She comes off as the "Team Mom" figure at times appropriately enough, as well as the team's encyclopedia at times (which makes sense given the circumstances), but she never once goes into a "DiD" moment barring when you first met her, and that was too surreal to really count and totally not a standard one. She was an actual adult female.
And since I covered all 4 characters of this group, I feel I need to highlight one thing:
The family formed by Kaim, Sarah, Cooke and Mack. I honestly thought this was very well handled as they actually FELT like a family, and they all needed each other. Cooke and Mack is all that is left of Kaim and Sarah's daughter, who they lost 30 years prior, and thus kind of fills the void, while Kaim and Sarah are there to be parents for Cooke and Mack. The way Sarah would actually be worried and protective of them, with the occasional loving embrace, and Kaim's "pat Mack on the head for encouragement" as well as the moment where Mack makes a major screw up, and Kaim reprimands him, but only by saying "You really had us worried" with an obvious tone of anger, but not actually taking it any further...yeah, felt like a genuine family. The ending only further secures that where Kaim and Sarah are just watching Cooke and Mack play and have fun at the beach, smiling at them, etc.
IN BATTLE!? ...see Ming. Really, she's literally Ming who joins later, thus with less skills initially (she catches up quickly) and SLIGHTLY HIGHER MAGIC POWER! Honestly, they should have given Ming at least SOME stat difference other than the slightly lower Magic compared to Sarah, like one girl should have had more HP or MP, while the other more Magic? Something to make Sarah not look flat out better than Ming BUT ONLY SUPERFICIALLY!!!
IN A DUEL!? She's a Ming Clone, so see her.
Tolten: Starts the game off as a noble who apparently fully accepted the disbanding of his own monarchy into a republic cause...we're not sure, I guess we're to assume he just has no interesting power. Then gets used by the villain, and re-instates the Monarchy and...well, ok, won't get into full details, but basically, Tolten is like Edward without the survivor's guilt nonsense. He's a person who clearly has no interest in ruling and has been pampered his entire life, so he knows nothing of how things actually WORK, and is easily pushed around. He slowly grows a backbone, and slowly recognizes "I'm in this position, I can't change this fact, I better actually take some damn responsibility." He always sounds like a spoiled brat granted, but that's mostly the VA. He's also a nice contrast to Ming in some regards. Ming is like him, a ruler of a country, but she's experienced and knows exactly what goes into this, and understands she needs to take risks and make some really hard decisions. Tolten...is basically hoping everything is given to him on a silver platter, and that he can get away with just being a Puppet Ruler, slowly learning "no, that's not how things work", as being a puppet ruler = he's expendable, and well, that is kind of what happens!
IN BATTLE!? LVP overall. His Attack is just too low despite getting really strong weapons early, and he really needed the 2 Accessory ability, if only cause GOD DAMN does he get some awesome unique stuff. I guess he gets points for "Royal Equipment" that allows the Immortals to learn a lot of the broken goodness he gives (even if Auto Barrier and Auto Shield are kind of meaningless when a character HAS THEM INNATELY, and thus serve no purpose other than to give him those abilities...) Guess he deserves points for being only Mortal who can null elements, and will probably be the highest survivable character due to being able to equip Max HP Up 4 Accessory, Persistence ability, and a few other defensive tricks. He's not USELESS, but he clearly feels game worst.
IN A DUEL!? I guess he can take a few hits and Power Hit might be good damage, but I'd need to look at averages. His accessories if you allow them (cause technically Immortals can use them too) are a nice boon and good for spoiling.
Sed: Basically exists to be Tolten's foil. Instead of being a young, stuck up spoiled brat, we have an experienced, worldly BAD ASS pirate whose also a technological genius. He was kind of introduced a little too fast though. He's mentioned in Seth's dream sequences once, then suddenly he gets mentioned out of nowhere ON DISC 3, and very shortly after, we meet him. I understand they wanted emotional build up for Seth and Sed's reunion, but they could have noted him earlier in the game, and made Seth have that extra motivation. That said, he's just a fun guy in general. His relationship with Seth was kind of awkward though but then againthe guy is in his 40s and calling his mother who looks to be half his age "Momma", so I'm pretty sure that was intended. Tolten even goes out of his way to say "Don't you think its weird a man of your age is using that term!?" The way he interacts with Tolten was just fun too, what with Sed not giving Tolten any respect but Tolten is determined to earn it, and then in the ending, its Tolten whose encouraging Sed to move on, while Sed's basically given up. Granted, the reasoning was because "Tolten is younger, so he's withstanding this better" but still, the fact that Tolten was the one holding Sed up instead of the other way around was quite a contrast. Also, Sed has a GUN AXE. Yes, I mean similar to the original Black Power Ranger; its a big rifle that has an axe attached to it. Thankfully, its used logically, as its clear its primarily a Gun, and the Axe is just a compliment ala a Bayonette's blade, so its just there if he runs out of ammo (which he never does, so we never see him USE the axe.)
IN BATTLE!? Sed is actually a really cool idea that would have been brilliant if the game was harder. His weapon seems to ignore any back row penalties (actually, are there back row penalties? I could never tell!), but he's a tank and could easily go in the front lines. So what's good about this? He has Taunt. Shove him in the back row, taunt an enemy with dangerous ST damage, suddenly you have a tanky character taking the hit for the team WHILE benefitting from GC Defensive Bonuses *AND* your GC doesn't lower. Really need concept...pity you never really care. Thankfully, Sed ahs other things, mostly notably, best Item Boy, with all those item buffing skills, best passive PC cause of DOuble SP/Gold/EXP/Loot, *AND* he has Auto Barrier and Auto Shield, allowing Kaim and Seth to be EVEN TANKIER (this isn't as broken as it sounds, as Lost Odyssey has 2 levels of defensive buffs, so this is just level 1. You can still stack Level 2 ON TOP of that, of course, though I think it just overrides the previous buffs.) unlike Tolten, his damage didn't suck when he attacked physically, so he felt like a genuine 3rd physical damage dealer...and he's almost as fast as Seth. If I actually cared about that 5th slot, I'd have seriously given him consideration for it.
IN A DUEL!? Some High Middle. Given Special Accessory, he's got access to the Angel Guard which gives him Status Immunity, and given he's decently tanky, he can probably slug fest a good deal of middle.
And lastly, done entirely in spoiler tags cause by nature, its hard to talk about him without being a spoiler:
Gongora: Ah, yes, the antagonist. Props to the game for trying to throw us off early on by making him not seem like a bad guy, and doing an actual good job of making him almost seem like a victim of the senate's assumptions...then the Tolten stuff kicks in and it diverts slowly, such that by the end of Disc 1, its clear he's obviously the bad guy. From here on in, the game just throws subtlety out the window, and goes "This guy is evil, he's immortal, and he doesn't have amnesia so he knows more than the rest of the team!" He's not a well developed villain or unique or anything like that...but he still does the role fine. Why? Cause he is clearly a threat, and its clear he's just a corrupt bastard who became mad with power. Easy to see how too. The other 4 immortals all had something to hold onto, or before they got that, some kind of perspective in life that allowed them to just move on and not care about power. I recently saw a claim that a villain doesn't have to be elaborate or in-depth to be well done if they're just trying to come off as "Generic Evil", they just need to be a genuine threat to the team. Gongora fills that role well enough. He's nothing special or anything, but he's hardly bad, so..."adequate" I guess <.<?
That's it for characters. Other things...well, Music is Uematsu stuff and there's some good stuff in there (Boss Theme, Grand Staff 2's theme, Final Boss Theme, and Overworld all come to mind)...its a notable improvement over Blue Dragon's which was mostly forgettable.
Oh and of course, there are the dream sequences. I...really don't have much to say about this other than them being really good. Well written, plays to your emotions, music playing in the background often helped establish the mood, and entirely optional! Its exactly how "Back story Padding" should be done. Its not important, but its nice to learn tibits of Kaim's 1000 year life (or in some cases, Ming and Seth) that have NOTHING to do with the main story, more just show the stuff that Kaim has been through, both the good and bad. They do a good range of "genuinely sad and melancholy" to "bittersweet." I say Bittersweet cause there's very few that can be considered 100% good, as by nature, the good ones are just fleeting moments in Kaim's life, and further establish his nature, as while the world around him changes everyday, he is completely static.
So overall? Game's probably an 8/10. It was a much better game than I expected, and a good experience overall; the difficulty in the latter half is its main weakness, but otherwise, it doesn't really have any notable flaws. At worst, its "problems" are that it isn't EXCEPTIONAL in areas, just merely good.
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Stoutland is the reason I bought the game too. It's great.
Pokemon Black: Finished the main game, dropped my fire pig starter for the uber legendary. The league was the same as usual; fairly competent but ultimately not able to handle the 675 items I've stocked during the main game.
The plot twist at the end was stupid but I've seen worse. Oh, and I caught the legendary Reshiram with a Quick Ball during the first turn. What a loser.
Post game kicks in and sounds like a lot of fun. Suddendly everybody is lvl 65. I've tried using strategy again but it spectacularly failed; you really have no options but weakness abuse in the mid to aftergame. Status is too unreliable, stat boosting is useless because you die in 2 hits, etc.
I think I've already said it, but it's the same as every other Pokemon game with extremely minor changes.
- Psy types don't dominate anymore! Nice.
- TMs now have infinite uses but they still don't see that much use anyway.
- There's an item that doubles exp. I'm on the fence with it. On one hand it requires too much annoying micro management (I can't not use an item that gives that much more exp, sorry), on the other hand it allows you to use a ton of other pokemons without ever being too underveled. (or just powerlevel your own pokemons, but that's boring)
- I feel that pokemon design is the one area where the game has drastically changed (For the better) There were a ton of pokemons I wanted to use in that one, and that has never really happened in the earlier generations.
I mean, look at Bouffalant and compare to say, Tauros. Holy shit. This character design has a lot more ... hair. And originality? But mostly hair.
(No, really, I do feel pokemon design has improved)
Bastion: Finished New Game + with all 10 idols on.
Intimidating task, but not that hard in the end even for someone who's not that good at action "roll all around the place and sometimes attack" gameplay like me. (Devil May Cry games always give me awful ratings at the end of every level!) Too many options, too many powerful drinks, no real bosses, and a wonderful shield. My best weapons ended up being the carbine and the good old musket.
From Dust: Fully finished.
An excellent introduction to god games!
You're some kind of god that can pick up and drop sand, lava or water. You do that to help tribesmen build villages, pick up artefacts and broken powers, and eventually go to the next level. Do not expect those people to want to settle down in a nice safe place; oh no. These people are crazy and always go to more dangerous places. The last level is inside the crater of a volcano! Props for the sheer audacity of wanting to build a village in a volcano. No props for making my life a living hell.
It was a really simple game overall, that still offered a lot of interesting challenges. Sometimes I stopped to look at the wonderful landscapes I had created. Good times.
Infinite Undiscovery: Vermification!
I'm only playing the game at night, when my girlfriend can't see me looking at those cutscenes. They feel shameful even compared to pokemon plot.
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Jansen: IN A DUEL!? Probably Light. His good stuff has way too high charge time and he has no way to mitigate that, and the fastest stuff (the "us" spells) I can't imagine is all that good one on one. He has status but I'm not sold on their status rates. He also has like 10% HEALING...which is only 10% cause of his god awful durability.
All status rates are 100% (from the PC side at least), it's just a immune check. Also, Jansen has double cast, so double cast the slow stone spell and you have 100% fatal stone turn 1. Status problem in game is that immunities are pretty random and there's no way to check. Stone for some reason is one of the spells that at least can hit a fair amount of enemies (As opposed to say...Fear), just normally takes two applications to be good.
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FF13 - Back in the saddle with this one! Progressing through chapter 11's main plot, trying to decide on a party. At this point I feel like I'm definitely going to use Fang (Deprotect/Deshell has rounded her out into a great Saboteur, and her strength is monstrous) and Sazh (Haste is that gooda). Still trying to decide who my third will be (will be one of the medics for obvious reasons, but they each feel like they have their own ups and downs).
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What are the rules for this FF5 challenge that's making rounds?
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Basically, you get assigned one random job from each crystal. You must always use at least one of each job you have been assigned so far (or as many as possible, when you have only 3 PCs) but can switch around who is who and use crossclass skills from any of those four jobs.
More information here. (http://www.letsplaying.com/final-fantasy-five-four-job-fiesta-2011/)
Runs until the end of August if you want to participate "officially" (and there are some people donating money based on number of completions IIRC, so if you're interested and think you can finish in less than 2 weeks you might as well).
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While waiting for UMvC3 I've been trying to get that near impossible (to me) trophy for doing 320 missions out of 380. At the mo I've finished all of Hulk's, Spencer's, Hagger's and Taskmaster's with about 260 in total completed.
Still hopeless with the stick and don't seem to be improving at all, my stick motions have improved greatly but I feel my button tapping hand is doing something wrong. Its hard enough for me to call assists in mission mode and impossible in an actual fight for example. Maybe I might just have low dexterity :'(
Out of the old characters I'll be using in UMvC3 will most likely be Taskmaster as I love the simplicity of his moveset, no fancy stuff but he gets the job done and thats what I like. I've heard the changes in Ultimate will benefit zoners which is great news.
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Sage Staff destroys the Great Trench
Hahaha, yes! I'm not sure if you realized it, but as a magical damage weapon you can use it with Rapidfire and gotten 4 hits of full damage, which is completely ludicrously awesome in that dungeon.
Didn't realize there was a charity involved with the 4JF until now. Bit too late for me to participate, especially since I'm knee deep into Tactics Ogre already, but I'll try to remember next year. I'm starting to get the itch to replay FF5, though... maybe when I'm finished with TO, I'll revive one of my crazier ideas that I never actually went through with.
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Did not realise that about Rapidfire magic weapons (though yeah, checking the BMG, they lacks the "apply command modifiers" step). Haha, that would have been funny. Also didn't realise that it (and the Apollo Harp) was randomly ITE unlike most magical weapons.
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... why did I not know this sooner!? :P
Good to know for another run/future reference at least :)
Really enjoyed reading the Meeple rant (yes I read it all >_>) Meeple. Really covered it all quite well I think :) Glad you enjoyed the game so much. Cooke is indeed ten and I think you're probably right on Mack being seven and probably on Tolten's age range too. I used to know this for sure but I forgot! >_> Also I think Jansen ended up redeeming himself through his actions with the bird, his relationship with Ming and the way he fought back against the villain in the end :)
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I recommend Vanille as NEB's third but oh who didn't see that coming!? :P~
Early Imperil for removing chain/elemental resistances, Poison for bypassing damage resistances too and for low speccing otherwise tough enemies like Juggernauts/Behemoth types/susceptible missions including the last/Long Guis/etc (with Poison/Gestalt hax using Hecaton/Chain Cannons especially) Good for the final boss too. Early Curaga as MED which is also useful when spending a while in Chapter 11. Granted proper Curaga spam requires being in full control of her =P
Equips wise she has the Belladonna series for mad debuffing skills and can be synced w/th Belladonna/Malboro+ Watchman's Amulet/etc for Increased Buff Duration too or the Healing Staff/Mistilteinn series synced w/th HP Bangles (Iron/Mythril) for High/Low HP :Power Surge for the mad healing/damage/etc boosts. Mistilteinn isn't till later though.
Might as well run down the other characters while I'm at it!
Snow- Best casting times -ever- Spellflinger Snow =D Not obvious or especially noticable with this until he's properly kitted out though. With the likes of Tier 3 Feymark (Save the Queen level) he becomes a rapid fire chain machine. This is more of a post game deal though. Otherwise just hits like a mack truck and tanks like one too =-)
Best Sentinel, a solid Commando and unlike Fang starts with a solid Ravager tree too. Important for chaining/triple RAV (Tri Disaster) purposes!
Equips - Power Circle for strength and Feymark for magic speccing. Umbra/Paladin are decent for low spec Sentinel stuff too.
Lightning- Excellent Ravager. Second best casting times in the game. As leader w/th Axis Blade + Auto Haste + ATB Advantage/First Strike + ATB rate+% factors and as both lead/AI with Edged Carabine + magic speccing she really shines :) The Edged Carabine series will definitely be her best in the long term though as it carries weight all through Tier 3/her ultimate weapon stage too while the Axis Blade/Enkindler will lose it's syc/synth perks~
Equips - Edged Carabine for magic and Gladius for physical speccing (i.e Shaolung Guis/physical resistant enemies) Axis Blade/Enkindler for Tier 2 synth group speccing.
(there is more to Lightning than just being an excellent RAV mind but well this is just assuming primary/default only roles here - I can cover secondary role stuff later if you want =-))
Hope- Defensive based SYN from early w/th Protect and Shell. Also picks up the bar element stuff relatively early too I think. Compared to say Sazh who picks up the En element buffs to begin with in addition to early offensive based buffs like Brave/Faith and Haste. YMMV as to which type of buffs you prefer. Solid Ravager gaining access to all elements to play around with up to their highest levels. One of the two best Medics in the game especially once he also gains access to Curaja~
Equips -Hawkeye
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Really enjoyed reading the Meeple rant (yes I read it all >_>) Meeple. Really covered it all quite well I think :) Glad you enjoyed the game so much. Cooke is indeed ten and I think you're probably right on Mack being seven and probably on Tolten's age range too. I used to know this for sure but I forgot! >_> Also I think Jansen ended up redeeming himself through his actions with the bird, his relationship with Ming and the way he fought back against the villain in the end :)
Oh, Jansen redeems himself for earlier failures, that's for sure, I more meant that "There's nothing redeeming about him" was a reference to his personality, cause even at the end of the game, he's still the same goofball.
Afterall, in his very own wedding, he's like "Ok, so this where we kiss, man I've been looking forward to this, its a big moment, I can't screw this up in front of everyone, ok, here it goes!" rather than just going ahead and romantically doing it. Ming kind of chuckles it off naturally.
Shows us that, for all that Jansen has earned a sense of dignity and a minimal level of respect from his friends (as opposed to none at all)...he's still Jansen.
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Finished Tactics Ogre PSP. The Hanging Gardens were pretty dull, especially I never succeeded in knocking any enemies off despite having Tremendous Shot and a Knockback crossbow. :( Not sure what I was doing incorrectly there. At least the dopplegangers in the final fight were kinda interesting, much moreso than the original game's version.
The class/levelling system in the remake is absolutely horrible; not only that everyone joins at L1, but also that you only get experience at the end of fights, so no punching high levelled allies for tons of easy exp. Otherwise, every change to the core gameplay system is on par at worst and a huge upgrade at best. World in particular is a really cool idea for a branching storyline game like this, much better than New Game+. Some of the optional stuff (crafting and rare drops, for example) are pretty lousy, but I'm not inclined to penalize a game for optional stuff that's easily ignored by anyone besides completionists and powergamers.
Aside from however much WORLD I'm interested in doing, there's also CODA, with the last episode's plot/dialogue in particular sounding really intriguing, from what I've heard. Episode 1 should be easy enough, but Episode 2... :|
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but also that you only get experience at the end of fights, so no punching high levelled allies for tons of easy exp.
While this would have sped up the process of catching people up (in other words, it would slightly have ameliorated what everyone already agrees was a huge design mistake), I'm actually very glad they did this how they did. It's nice not to have your gains in battle tied to things like "did I miss or not", "did I get in range or not", and finally "did I draw out the battle with needless actions or not".
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I refuse to give the game designers any credit for that when instead they put in stat-boosting/usable item tarot cards to manually collect and slooooooooow levelling skills. :/ I've certainly dragged out battles for a few extra turns to finish collecting tarots and find myself spamming unnecessary healing spells for that slight boost to Augment Light in the meantime.
I also think you do get extra exp for hitting stuff and the likes, it's just a really small amount and spread out amongst all classes.
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Early Imperil for removing chain/elemental resistances, Poison for bypassing damage resistances too and for low speccing otherwise tough enemies like Juggernauts/Behemoth types/susceptible missions including the last/Long Guis/etc (with Poison/Gestalt hax using Hecaton/Chain Cannons especially)
Imperil doesn't remove chain resistances, but elemental resistances also lower chain gain. Not sure if that's what you meant, but figured I'd just make it more clear even if it is what you meant.
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Re: TO: I agree with NEB here. EXP per action is pretty stupid design so I'm glad they got rid of it. The only real problem with the levelling system is new classes starting at level 1. If you want easy EXP for lower levelled members, it's actually easier than normal SRPGs since lower level classes get more of the EXP share and they don't even have to do anything. Just have your other units wipe a random map and profit. I'll take this over having to smack a high level enemy over and over with a low levelled unit (which might miss or get killed) any day.
But optimally they would just let classes start at a reasonable level.
You do get EXP for hitting things but it's really really small. Like 1 EXP per hit or something stupid. Killing gives a good amount more and then clearing a map gives an even larger bonus. Generally the first two are nearly negligable.
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Persona 2: Innocent Sin - Looking for a demon taxi. The rare demon spawn rates in this game are atrocious. I hope they fixed that for the remake because seriously.
Touhou 13: Ten Desires - Managed to clear this on Normal. Youmu is OP. That is all.
RefRain - Also cleared this on Normal. Quite a fun game! People should try it!
Bastion - This is actually pretty fun so far. Haven't gotten very far though.
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I refuse to give the game designers any credit for that when instead they put in stat-boosting/usable item tarot cards to manually collect and slooooooooow levelling skills. :/ I've certainly dragged out battles for a few extra turns to finish collecting tarots and find myself spamming unnecessary healing spells for that slight boost to Augment Light in the meantime.
I also think you do get extra exp for hitting stuff and the likes, it's just a really small amount and spread out amongst all classes.
Huh, funny, I thought tarot boosts were pretty trashy and was always disappointed when an enemy dropped one instead of treasure since I always wanted more money.
Dragging battles out for skills/exp is just lame, I feel (not a judgement on anyone who does this, I just personally find it unappealing). I suppose you have a point that the game still allows you to do it but overall the effect is, at least, extremely minor (except getting L2 in weapon skills a bit faster perhaps?). Of course I'm all about efficient play in general so such avenues just aren't going to appeal to me, but I did appreciate that TO gave you full experience (which is far more important than anything else earned from battle) regardless of the speed you win, and I do think it's a legitimate advantage the game has over, say, FFT.
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LFT challenge run: Finished. C4 was the hardest chapter in the game. It pushed me without being 'slam head into wall' hard. Hardest fight was Balk II, as I didn't have any way to blitz him. I won that fight by DSing my entire team, breaking Balk's weapon (100% due to a vanish mantle), and killing the chemist. At that point, it was my status outracing DS, since I got maimed in a hurry when it wore off. Altima and another dozen fights in the chapter gave me trouble, but Balk's the only one I had more than one or two resets on.
Ramza (Thief/Monk). I kept him in thief the entire game. He was an earlygame damage god, and kept that edge until mid C3. Thief's got shit PA, so I stuck him with daggers. He really trailed off hard in the end due to knifes not really competing in damage, but he was good enough early on. Also! Secret Fist is hilariously useful even late- ITE is fucking awesome against tank units in C4, and it shuts down monsters hard. I used steal a couple of times late for snazzy shields, and that's mostly it. He was a monk in C1, and switched to thief as soon as I mastered everything.
In FFT: Oof. This would be a SCC Monk with +2 move and secret hunt. God did thieves blow in vanilla. Much worse off.
Female Knight/Chemist- As awesome as you'd expect. Knights dominate early on, chemists are always good. Probably my MVP, as both are very good skillsets and the two classes have excellent synergy. I ran her as a chemist as soon as guns appeared- the range on guns is too awesome to ignore, plus breaks and guns mix well. I used Knight a few times for the tanking, but that's it.
In FFT: Maybe not MVP. Battle skill would have weaker, but it's still an FFT Chemist with a backup skillset and shields available.
Male Squire/Summoner- Yuck. Having this character be male left me mostly using him in squire, as the MA just wasn't good enough to justify Summoner. Moogle was useful early, and Golem was awesome. It's my first time using it in LFT or FFT, and man. The physical immunity was a godsend, as was it baiting the AI effectively. Most of the time, my Squire just yelled/reraised the team as needed. Excalibur gave him a nice speed boost too. Probably the LVP though.
In FFT: Would have kept him in summoner. Lich is useful against bosses there and FFT Squires suck. I think he would have been better in that version.
Male Ninja/Oracle: FLAILS. Flails are the story of the day here. Early on, he hung out in Oracle and grabbed skills. Silence song was good early on, and I used blind a few times as well. Never did get much use out of his FFT money skills like paraylze, but oh well. Life drain was useful at points as well, but even on Zodiacs it never really outdamaged flails. My god, those things. He picked up when flails got available. Even with Ninja taking a very notable nerf to PA, Flails are crazy enough to make up some of that gap. I would've killed for equip armor or concenrate on this setup, but oh well. He was my best boss fighter due to the offense.
In FFT: Better. Ninjas were nuts in that version, and Yin-yang is useful in both.
Female Geomancer/mediator: Talk skill was useful straight through. She had quite solid physical offense due to a Knight of Ice setup. When that trailed off in early C4, I turned her into a Geomancer with equip gun, which worked just fine.
In FFT: Probably worse, Laggy did improve talk skill.
Man, did I miss Holy sword in this playthrough. Early C4 was a slog just due to everything having mantles and a lot of shields floating around. Also! Man, math skill would have helped tremendously too. Being able to open a fight with slow or don't move really does help control the flow of a fight- my hardest fights in C4 are where enemies start in your face and rush you. Meliadoul, Elmdor (no resets but I got lucky), Balk 2, etc.
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FF5 FJF mark 2 complete. Knight/RM/Geo/Chemist is a boring team, so took me awhile to dredge up the interest to finish. Final was...basically "buff to high heaven against Exdeath, laugh as Neo Exdeath fails to do anything remotely threatening." Grand Cross hit DOOM against my RM and Geo at the same time, which were the only deaths. Final levels were...42 for Krille, 41 for Bartz/Ferris and 40 for Lenna, I believe. Hope I get some more fun classes next year.
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Etrian Odyssey 2 - This game is pretty frustrating after the first one. I mean the first one seriously lacked some quality of life things in it, but it gave you pretty broken tools to work with. This one they have given you a ton, but it is like they have taken it as an excuse to take away a whole ton of shit that lets you get up and running.
I literally run on zero sum cash flow. I have new gear that I don't realistically have any way of affording without grinding like fuck (on Floor 5). Treks into the forest barely pay for themselves between revival, healing and paying for teleporting. Revival is kind of expensive, but it is going to fucking happen in a game where enemies can realistically 3 or 4HKO you and come in packs of five. I can deal with that if I just have some kind of income. It is like the killed your main methods of profit because Geopoints exist, you could completely and totally abuse them if you could actually do any goddamned gathering. At the cost of gathering skills with their absolutely dirt cheap return on investment? Yeah that isn't happening. Also because they exist the randoms in the early game are much more brutal than they were in the first game. I know the first game is rough. The randoms from floor 1 weren't still taking off a fifth of my health when I was on the fifth in that though. Mostly because you still had to trek through the whole dungeon to get back to fifth. This time because of that it is like they justify enemies being completely unforgiving and FOEs while being killable make for a nearly unsalvagable dive down (lol or you could piss away 500 bucks which is about as much as I have ever held at one time on Nectar).
So anyway I trek through floor 5. Figuring I will port out about halfway through, things go swimmingly. I get the flowers I need for a quest. There is a shortcut up ahead that will pretty much open up the whole floor from the Geopoint. I get bum rushed by yet another FOE. I do kind of like how they are making you dodge patrols and stuff this time more. It is reminiscent of the first two floors in the original which I was saying that was pretty cool to. This one loves to put them around blind corners which I am not so cool with. For example. FOE from the second floor was just around a corner that I couldn't see yet just after I ran away from a raptor. lol back is against a wall. can't escape. Total party wipe that was entirely unavoidable on a FOE who's entire point is that they are entirely avoidable (walks in set patterns that are easilly predictable... if you can see them which I had absolutely no way of doing in this case).
This is my unimpressed face.
Also, the strafing? Adds less to the game than you would think. It literally can cause you to be backed into unescapable corners that you would be able to get out of if you didn't strafe. It is straight up a trap that gives no real net gameplay benefit wrapped up as a quality of life bonus.
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Imperil doesn't remove chain resistances, but elemental resistances also lower chain gain. Not sure if that's what you meant, but figured I'd just make it more clear even if it is what you meant.
Yeah thanks Tal :) That's what I meant yes~
Did anyone clue NEB in on Sacrifice/turtle farming/points of no return yet? Elfs should be aware that the final dungeon has points of no return with some unique oppurtunities vs various enemy formations (which change and are lost as the dungeon progresses) to fight/use for stuff to sell for monies/catalysts for upgrading/CP farming. Specifically the Sacrifices/Sanctum Templars for the formers and enemies on the whole for the latter particularly in the final area before the inner sanctuary/final bosses. One of the best places in the game for mass CP gains there especially with the Growth Egg =-) Some of this is only really relevant if you're going for All Achievements/ the Platinum trophy though. So if you're at all interested/curious there at all might be worth keeping some backup saves around to experiment with. There's also the Immortal a sub/mini boss of the Centaurian type guarding the way to some nifty accessories and a very rare item (the only one of it's kind to be picked up in this way/obtainable as a treasure even and from a very limited stock on the whole~) which people tend to miss out on if they don't know about it/aren't fully exploring the dungeon. Worth being aware of at least :)
(Edit: oh yeah it will also be possible to access portals to return to some previous locations from former chapters (Pulse/Eden) soon after the start of Chapter 13 in case you were interested at all in doing more missions/getting your revenge on stomping turtles/etc too at some stage =-))
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MvC3 - Just got the plat 8-). I'm now satisfied and can move on to Ultimate.
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Xenoblade - Dunban get naked and becomes a better aggro tank than the character with 2000 more HP and 300 defense. Clearly OK had a development hand in this game.
I picked some dumb looking thing named Riki (why do all awful looking characters are named Riki?). Well, probably can get away from not using him. It doesn't have a cool british voice like everyone else.
Also ARMOUR GODDAMN IT EUROPE WHY DO YOU SPELL THINGS FUNNY?! ME ONLY UNDERSTAND AMERICAN! (Yes. DQ8 was pretty much the same way but it was used in almost a comical way)
FF5 4JF: I got Knight/Mystic Knight/Dragoon/Ranger. Time for some Rapid Fire Spellblade. Just like in normal FF5, except with one Dragoon doing nothing but spamming !Animals!!! I started World 2 but slowly the game is boring me. I'm aiming for the Brave Blade so I can't run from enemies and without rapid fire my only MT is !ANIMALS!!! Rod breaking is stupid, so I'm just grinding enough levels to auto attack everything.
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Imperil doesn't remove chain resistances, but elemental resistances also lower chain gain. Not sure if that's what you meant, but figured I'd just make it more clear even if it is what you meant.
Yeah thanks Tal :) That's what I meant yes~
Did anyone clue NEB in on Sacrifice/turtle farming/points of no return yet? Elfs should be aware that the final dungeon has points of no return with some unique oppurtunities vs various enemy formations (which change and are lost as the dungeon progresses) to fight/use for stuff to sell for monies/catalysts for upgrading/CP farming. Specifically the Sacrifices/Sanctum Templars for the formers and enemies on the whole for the latter particularly in the final area before the inner sanctuary/final bosses. One of the best places in the game for mass CP gains there especially with the Growth Egg =-) Some of this is only really relevant if you're going for All Achievements/ the Platinum trophy though. So if you're at all interested/curious there at all might be worth keeping some backup saves around to experiment with. There's also the Immortal a sub/mini boss of the Centaurian type guarding the way to some nifty accessories and a very rare item (the only one of it's kind to be picked up in this way/obtainable as a treasure even and from a very limited stock on the whole~) which people tend to miss out on if they don't know about it/aren't fully exploring the dungeon. Worth being aware of at least :)
(Edit: oh yeah it will also be possible to access portals to return to some previous locations from former chapters (Pulse/Eden) soon after the start of Chapter 13 in case you were interested at all in doing more missions/getting your revenge on stomping turtles/etc too at some stage =-))
At this point I'm not doing any more optional stuff until after beating the game. Do I need to keep save files somewhere anyway?
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On a Clear Game save, for some reason, you can't access a good deal of the final dungeon (basically, anything outside of the big teleportation pad thingy.) This means that the overall best spot to farm for cash and CP is gone for good, and yeah, you have to keep a save BEFORE the final boss.
If you go there clear game save, you can still access everything up til Eden (so that Adamantoise will always be there), and there's the one room with the 7~ Sacrifices which is good, but inferior to the other mostly due to the way you respawn them (something like the best spot involves merely walking a bit off screen and coming back. This requires you to constantly leave and come back.)
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Yeah each prior area of the dungeon progressively disappears as you proceed through it defeating the plot bosses, etc (you can't for example return to the area with the Immortal/extra area with the accessories and items in it after beating the section/plot boss there proper) My best advice/recommendation would be to keep a backup save in the very first area of the final dungeon/cradle where there are a couple of packs of Sacrifices roaming. One of those packs (which is as Meeple noted incredibly easy to respawn) is an excellent/prime source for drops for cash (it's practically as good as the turtles - granted turtles are much better for CPs though especially Long Guis ;P) The fight is also much easier to handle/blitz over and over than the turtles to begin with too (well if you're trying to defeat Adamantoises without using instant death that is) The best spot for CP specifically in the final dungeon proper is as noted vs the enemies in the area before the set of final bosses (without spoiling anything in the area before everything goes all white ;p) - something like 60'000 CP a fight with the Growth Egg/Double CP accessory or something? (I will admit I never actually used/needed this spot for CP in particular since I used instant death spam/cheese with Vanille vs the Edentoise for mass net CP gains instead on my first run and had maxxed out on everything via early Long Gui farming on my second >_> <_< >_> - but it is there incase you are running into any problems vs the final bosses and or other fights/need to train more or something but don't feel like going back to Eden) Again best advice is to keep another back up save incase you need/want to bother with that either. So yeah keep a couple of back up saves for different stages floating around if you want =)~
(this isn't really that much of a big deal if you don't care about/don't want to bother with it sorry if I'm making it seem that way - there are always turtles post game, they will always exist in some form as a main source for cash/CP and at least you have your Stage 10 Crystarium to play around with there =) Sacrifices are just a good way of building up a float/stockpiling cash towards Tier 3/ultimate weapons and accessories before hand)
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Madden 12- Played the demo. So...shiny.... must resist buying it... *Preorders game* Fuck.
LFT- Just playtesting the rare fights now. Hardest so far has been the pig fight in the swamp.
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SO4: Postgame stuffs (Earth difficulty).
I missed the Astral Caves on my first playthrough. Wow does Meracle's Burning Claws make a massive difference in the difficulty of Seven Star Dungeon. Beat Gabe, with some difficulty.
Beat Ashlay for the first time, and then enough times to make monster jewels from him. Made a super-dee-duper Laser Suit.
Went through half of the Wandering Dungeon. Haven't farmed Fol yet, so I only had enough to buy one tri-Emblem from Santa. Also found Meracle's rare claws. So guess what? IT'S RAPING TIME
Went back and fought Gabe's second form, and totally wrecked him. Got Meracle's beat Gabriel in 10-minutes battle trophy, but it was more like 5 minutes.
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FF13 - Finished! Final time around 50 hours, final levels around... everyone very close to finishing their primary grids, just a bit short. My main attacker (Fang) had a high-level tier 2 weapon, everyone else had maxed L1s, and I had accessories generally between Level 6 and 11 on the first tier I had them available in. Final team was Fang (leader), Lightning, and Hope.
Already had a big part of the rant so far, so let's wrap things up, shall we? FF13 is certainly an excellent overall game, and slides quite nicely as my new third-favourite game in the series (after I so briefly promoted FF5 to this honour!).
Story-wise... unquestionably, the game comes off the rails a bit towards the end. This is a shame, because I think if the game had been able to keep up the really good stuff it did in Chapter 1-9 it would have been an easy 10/10. The first half of the game has, as I've mentioned, some top-notch character work, and a slew of really good scenes as they deal with stress and come to realisations. Plotwise I think this part of the game is excellently paced and generally have no major beefs with it. Highlights, though...
-I do really like the cocoon four, as I have mentioned before. Snow is a great parody but also at times a genuinely interesting character. Hope is a great portrayal of a confused and angry teenager. Lightning and Sazh both have stories that clicked for me, and are fun personalities.
-The scene where Snow's facade cracks he breaks down about the deaths his actions have caused is great.
-I also liked most of the Hope/Snow stuff surrounding this. Loved how Snow kept setting Hope off until the kid snapped. Loved that Hope then used his ravager powers in plot, loved the -emotion- of the scene in general. Actually in general, I think chapter 7 was my favourite part of the game plotwise.
-I enjoyed how Sazh wrestled with the idea of turning himself in for Dajh. Leading up to that, I liked how Sazh's plot connected with the rest, and how his motivation explained his until-then cryptic remarks about how he hated being an enemy of Cocoon (and hence Dajh) so very much.
-Lightning's development was very solid. Sure, she's fun opposite Sazh at the start, but there was some excellent stuff with Hope: how her need to use anger to fuel her survival contrasts with his; how by setting the kid on an unsympathetic, violent path she realises her own flaws and then tries to save the boy.
You'll notice I say less good things about Vanille and Fang relatively; I do regard them as the weaker members of the cast but I don't dislike them; Vanille in particular by far my favourite of the "energetic, happy young woman" trope Final Fantasy so loves (though at 19, may be too old for the trope anyway?) because of the delicious darkness that lurks behind that happiness. Fang is more just generically likable though certainly in no danger of being a Mary Sue. Hard to say much more definite there though, there isn't enough really good solid character scenes for her.
Once you hit chapter 10 and especially 11, though, it feels like they just ran out of budget for scenes, since there are far fewer of them, and many feel somewhat poorly explained in terms of what is going on. There's still some good plot stuff there but the narrative doesn't always do a good job of letting it unfold. I don't mind having to think a story through and talk it over with people (something I've already done a fair bit of) but FF13 obviously goes a bit far here and could certainly have stood to clarify things. It reminds me of Xenogears a fair bit in its latter stages, which means some of it is unsatisfying and there are plenty of gaps and plot holes, even if the overarching plot is generally a satisfying one. FF13 is probably a bit more frustrating due to the loss of character work though, which was overall better than Xenogears' in their respective first halves.
Specific complaints... I definitely felt that the Pulse setting was underused, especially for Vanille and Fang's development. Both of them feel like they were supposed to get more scenes than they did. One moment, Vanille reveals she became Ragnarok! Okay, this is kind of a big deal! Pretty shortly thereafter, this turns around and is a lie. This could have been awesome with more buildup (like Vanille's previous lie about becoming a l'Cie along with the rest), but as is, it just doesn't work as well as it should. Instead chapter 11 feels very empty with Taejin's Tower in particular being a plotless hard-to-swallow mess of a roadblock.
Chapter 12 in general is probably my least favourite. The PCs no longer really debate their course of action at this point, which is a real shame since there are several, very different avenues open to them, and the conflict with Rosch (dude you were dead) definitely fell flat. In general, this part of the game continued my simply wanting more out of the game's plot and its previously fun character interactions. There's just so little beyond what is minimally necessary.
On the other hand, there's still certainly some good stuff lategame. Perhaps my favourite part is Dysley's transformation into a magnificent troll. I didn't care for him initially, but ultimately he ended up as a very solid villain. Has several great "just as planned" moments towards the end. "You guys go to Orphan's Cradle to stop the cavalry... ahaha just kidding, now you're trapped here! Also I made them all zombies because I'm a jerk." "Okay guys now I'll kill you since you obviously won't complete your focus... ahaha just kidding I was Orphan all along you fools have triggered DESTRUCTION". In general he did a good job of showing up and taunting the hell out of the PCs, and unlike most villains who do that it actually MADE SENSE for his plans.
I also liked the disconnect between his motives actually being quite noble (if, uh, involving a lot of death, but they're still pretty noble the way Luc's or Kato's are) and him being a complete pile of shit on a personal level, treating individual human life as refuse and making the PCs' lives a complete misery. That feels like a disconnect you usually don't see to often?
It's a shame the rest of the villain cast is basically worthless. I liked both PSICOM colonels initially, funnily enough, but Rosch is worthless after he randomly comes back from the dead, and Jihl gets an unceremonious exit before she can really make good on some of her fun potential. Oh, there's Cid I guess, if you can even consider him a villain. He's fine in his minor role, although his C12 resurrection-then-death is... bizarre. If another respectable trolling moment for Dysley.
I quite liked the ENDING stylistically (using Ragnarok's powers to save lives instead of destroy them is very fitting with the game's theme) although it's a bit unclear as to when the PCs came up with this plan so it could have been a better execution, to say the least. PCs just needed to talk so much more endgame! It is frustrating! However, I thought some of the scenes in the middle of the final battle were a bit of a mess; I'm still not quite certain what they were shooting for between the two Orphan fights. I like to think I'm pretty open-minded for plot interpretations but it's really hard to explain what happens there in the context of the characters and surounding events. It's either an extremely weird mindfuck (which... I wouldn't put past the game, but I'm not especially sold on it) or seems irreconcilable with the scenes both before and after. Oh well. If anyone has an explanation for it I may have missed I would like to hear it, but I'd be surprised if there's one that isn't some level of writing fail.
Gameplaywise, on the other hand, it really only gets better as it goes along. This game's randoms are just so much fun, they keep you on your toes throughout and going for those 5-stars are just so much fun. I actually had much more trouble with the better randoms (Humbaba, Adamanchelid, Dagonite packs, Wladislaus, never mind the stuff you're obviously not meant to fight in chapter 11) than any bosses who I generally felt were not too bad - in particular, no form of the main villain and/or final boss gave me much trouble. I never had multiple resets on any boss fight besides some of the eidolons (which always felt like walking a tightrope to beat, good balance there) but had several multi-reset fights with (individual) better randoms! I could probably have avoided most of this with a more defensive approach but fuck that, that's no fun and the game even rewards my efficiency so yeah.
I may have lied earlier; the way FF13 rewards good play may mean it does play to all my biases after all. Sure, CTB will always be my one true love as far as traditional RPGs go... but damned if FF13 doesn't craft easily the best realtime RPG battle system ever. This is like what every ARPG and ATB game wanted to be. It requires (at least on the default battle speed) a furious pace of thinking out your actions and strategies and the main reason you can't control anyone is you don't have TIME, but you do a great job of controlling them indirectly. I still enjoyed having control of my Saboteur because I felt that afforded me the greatest number of tactical options ("e.g. fuck you guys, YOU are getting Fogged). Synergist controlling would be my next pick (and I did switch to Sazh leader for a few fights) but Hope's role as most fragile PC made this a little less appealing.
The crystarium offers more choice than the sphere grid due to multiple role trees (which is good), and has a cap on grinding (which... appeals to me, but I'm not sure it's objectively good design for those who like grinding). On the other hand I dislike how you can't choose which nodes to get along a certain path. Probably not a big deal, just ruins some potentially fun builds on replays/challenge playthroughs. Also advancing it is definitely slower than it had to be.
The game had several gameplay mechanics which I didn't really care for (eidolons felt like a bit of a mess since I never bothered to grasp what all their different attacks did; -sols I feel are kinda degenerate pseudo-gameplay skip options though at least you can only pull them out rarely due to availability. Hilariously the game apparently gives you more if you suck at it! Which... makes a lot of sense). Fortunately these are both pretty easy to ignore. The game has a crafting system which seemed a little obtuse at points but overall proved an okay diversion I guess. Not really a fan of these but at least I was able to get a handle on this one eventually. It felt very cluttered though I understand the reason for doing this (the beasties you fight drop lots of different parts).
Might as well talk about the PCs in-game!
Lightning - She's pretty solid. Definitely goes downhill a bit towards the end as her Medic becomes much more of a "well it can kinda help sometimes" instead of being a bona fide healer; there's little doubt to me that you want one of Hope or Vanille as such. She always plays her niche of doing any type of offence well. Early on this is just amazing as she actually has comparable attack in both to the specialists, but later on she's clearly beaten. I did end up using her as my third most important PC just to play a bit of a backup role once Sazh dropped out of the party, though on reflection Snow may have worked just as well. Probably has a case for overall-game MVP as I think some consider her (though she wouldn't be my pick offhand), for all that she's only an average choice later. She's the second best Commando at least because the dudes don't bother to pick up Faultsiphon.
Fang - Because Fang feels like that MVP. Sorta the opposite, at first she's only average: a respectable Commando, but kinda subpar at her other two roles... except slow is genuinely very cool so maybe not that much. But then as time goes on, she just gets really freaking good. Her strength soars way higher than anyone else's AND she gets the important commando skills, so she's by far the best at that role and you want one. Her saboteur skillset blossoms, eventually even getting Deprotect/Deshell, so she's at worst tied for best at that, and you want a Saboteur so badly since like everything save two bosses can be stat-downed and stat-downs are AWESOME. Oh yeah and she can do a decent turn as a sentinel; not as good as Snow due to HP but more than good enough. Past a certain point she was the only PC I felt I couldn't consider removing without making my party clearly worse. But at least she dislikes physical-immunes!
Sazh - Sazh is a pretty interesting case. I possibly overrate Haste a bit but I do like it a lot, and also think the offensive buffs are very potent (mostly the En- spells, Brave/Faith are a more modest boost). Sazh provides these. I generally found his indirect increases to party offence more than made up for his other roles which are... bad. COM/RAV off party-worst overall offensive stats. He's not too far behind at first, but it definitely gets worse as the game goes on. Then in C12 Hope gets his unique buffs (save Vigilance which is kinda cool but not enough) and he gets shown the door. I did find him one of the best PCs until then, though; favourite parties at various points until C12 were Lightning/Sazh/Vanille, Lightning/Sazh/Fang, Sazh/Fang/Vanille, and Sazh/Fang/Hope (order irrelevant within each party). Note how he's always there? Yeah. Just made 5-starring battles and chewing through bosses before they could get scary much easier.
Hope - Bad HP, but pretty great otherwise. Might be the best Ravager due to his super-high magic. Likely the best medic. Vanille's not too different here, so the real reason Hope draws in to the party is of course that he also gets the Synergist role. I just praised offensive buffs, but the defensive are great too. For a while, once I felt I could safely drop Vanille due to Fang picking up Deprotect/Deshell, I was quite happy to use both synergists, but once their skillsets overlap more Hope is the clear winner because great RAV/great MED is a lot better than mediocre RAV/mediocre COM. Low HP at least makes the decision worth thinking about, though... and until he gets the offensive buffs his contribution to party offence (and hence 5-starring) is a little shaky, for all that I certainly pulled him out in fights where I badly wanted Protect/Shell then.
Vanille - Deprotect and Deshell and Imperil are so awesome. Stack them with En-spells, quadruple your damage. Great medic too. See above, I think she is quite comparable to Hope, and the only reason I used Hope instead of her late is because her main role competition (lategame Fang) is much better than Hope's (lategame Sazh). Might well be the most important PC until Fang gets Deprotect/Deshell(/Imperil) though it's hard to say for sure. Always maintains a unique niche in statuswhoring at least thanks to Poison and Death, for all that I haven't fought the enemies which make these really useful. Deprotega and Deshellga I also did miss sometimes.
Snow - Snow's main niche is HP (and Ravager casting speed apparently, for all that his magic is too low for this to feel abusive, though he IS a great choice for quickly staggering things probably). This isn't too bad a niche especially if he wants to taunt everyone and play sentinel. Naturally, my playstyle emphasises offence over defence, though, which largely left Snow by the wayside, and Fang can generally assume his role well enough if needed; she's not good at it but for me at least, she was acceptable seeing as it wasn't a role I spent a majority of my time in. He's kind of a subpar Commando despite Lightning-level strength due to late Blitz and no Faultsiphon, which feels a bit weird but I guess it makes sense since the women emphasise killing things and he emphasises not dying. In hindsight he may have served me comparably to Lightning for a third, though - I'd have traded off some offence for better chaining and his Sentinel may well have served me better than Lightning's medic (unsure, would have had to test). So... better than I thought since I felt he was struggling to find a party slot for a while.
It's overall not a badly balanced cast (though it might risk being a bit unbalanced at individual POINTS) and pretty fun to chew through what with all the role paradigms and whatnot. There's even a lot of stuff I haven't yet really considered (secondary roles which are... actually pretty interesting potentially despite the lower role level) which is fun. Game does a great job of making a cast which feels distinct while fundamentally having similar tools to work with. I have basically nothing but positive things to say about the game's role system, with its 6 jobs that all manage to feel very useful.
Aesthetics-wise, awesome visuals and music which is a mixed bag (solid enough, but then you get things like the final dungeon battle theme...) but generally decent. I don't have a strong opinion on it.
Polish-wise, generally good. The ability to restart outside a battle (including upon death) is wonderful and I'd love to see more games do this given that it allows games to be much more challenging without kicking you in the crotch should you die. The game's minimap takes steps so that you won't be lost and know how to advance the plot, which I approve of, since I no longer play RPGs to put up with garbage like getting lost. And the fact that all PCs get full CP out of battle is great; it allows you to switch PCs as the circumstances dictate, and/or experiment with parties, without being fucked over for this. There are some flaws here, though, such as the saving system which defaults to a weird slot and caused me to accidentally save over some locations I wanted to keep. Game needed to save paradigms when you changed parties, somehow. Too many points of no return as others have also alluded to.
Game gets a 9/10. It... just feels very overall complete, and in general respresents a lot of what I'd like to see more of in the genre. It has real innovation; it has bold writing, it avoids the tropes of the genre I dislike, it doesn't waste my time. I don't think it's for everyone; crazy people who love their non-linearity and towns and roleplaying (haha yes RPGs lack roleplaying, is is funny but true and they are better for it) obviously aren't going to care for it. For me, though? It's all things I want, none of the garbage I don't. Great stuff. I thought Radiant Historia was good but FF13 is clearly better at most everything. Miight even be a 10 but I'm definitely not willing to annoint it that without a lot more mulling it over; how badly do its lategame writing problems hold it back? Ultimately, where does its gameplay fall compared to other greats? etc. 9 will do for now.
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*Shakes fist at you kids and your having fun and liking stuff*
Suprised at nothing about Chapter 10 map stuff but yeah otherwise? You covered pretty much everything and I -still- don't understand. You pretty much like all the stuff where I was massively turned off by it (the lack of towns/roleplay and linearity are not problems for me personally). Glad you liked it and obviously purchase absolutely justified at this point.
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FF13-gasm
... you're weird.
Anyway, it's good to see someone else with a positive opinion of FF13, but the amount of praise piled onto its plot and characters is baffling. I can almost reconcile the praise for the characters, since you -did- seem to like Sazh, Light, and Snow the best, and they seem the most worthwhile, but the praise for the presentation feels off. I'm just going to chalk it up to us never liking the same things, but when I saw the Ch7 Hope/Snow emo-rage-scene, I was getting Xenosaga-level narm.
Generally agree about the points on the gameplay though. The cast was well-balanced and unique in their builds; and jobs all felt useful and distinct. Also, I really appreciated the way the game was linear/easy, but rewarded good play and didn't bother with things like getting lost or restarting from the beginning if you die.
... you're still weird. Seriously, FF13 > RH?
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FF13-gasm
... you're weird.
Anyway, it's good to see someone else with a positive opinion of FF13, but the amount of praise piled onto its plot and characters is baffling. I can almost reconcile the praise for the characters, since you -did- seem to like Sazh, Light, and Snow the best, and they seem the most worthwhile, but the praise for the presentation feels off. I'm just going to chalk it up to us never liking the same things, but when I saw the Ch7 Hope/Snow emo-rage-scene, I was getting Xenosaga-level narm.
I can't speak for FF13 in particular, but Elfboy always seemed to have a knack to be able to like characters even though they're not -likable- off a gut feeling. That's something that's often hard to reconcile in literary theory and appreciation.
EDIT: Also, -of course he's weird-.
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FFTA2 - Just started this. It's cute. Seems very plot light.
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FFTA2 - Just started this. It's cute. Seems very plot light.
Got past the intro? Congrats, you've seen 70% of the game's genuine plot!
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FF13-gasm
... you're weird.
Those who fanboy over VPDS, glass houses, etc. :p
Anyway, it's good to see someone else with a positive opinion of FF13, but the amount of praise piled onto its plot and characters is baffling. I can almost reconcile the praise for the characters, since you -did- seem to like Sazh, Light, and Snow the best, and they seem the most worthwhile, but the praise for the presentation feels off.
I'd definitely elevate Hope to that group, but aside from that, yeah. Presentation... yeah fair. I won't defend it later (as seems obvious) but I thought it was very good for a long time.
Bear in mind I liked Xenosaga-level "narm" (which I'm interpreting as characters being highly emotional) a lot more than much of the DL (the big XS3 Virgil scene is chalk-full of it, and I love that). The difference is I thought Xenosaga characters are pretty terrible most of the time, which is a crying shame.
Can't think of much RH ultimately does better than the game, as I said! <_< I like RH, but it's dreadfully unambitious which is going to hurt it against any really high-tier games (i.e. anything you consider a 10/10 or close to it).
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It's either an extremely weird mindfuck (which... I wouldn't put past the game, but I'm not especially sold on it) or seems irreconcilable with the scenes both before and after. Oh well. If anyone has an explanation for it I may have missed I would like to hear it, but I'd be surprised if there's one that isn't some level of writing fail.
This one of those "fal'Cie=Etro divinely intervened" moments that you don't have to give much thoughts about.
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I'd count the things that aren't writing failures, myself. Faster.
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Elfboy. Still has atrocious taste.
Also, mind that I haven't actually played the game but did watch a friend play through some of it, but "The game doesn't waste your time?" What? Whaaaaaaat. What.
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Still really just playing LoL. Continuing the levelling climb. Try to get at least two games in with each free champion on the week.
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Deus Ex- about five hours in. Don't feel like I've even scratched the surface yet, but I sort of wandered around Detroit looking for shit to steal and/or investigate. So far, this game is... actually really good. They even solved the "stealth kills are super godly" problem that Assassin's Creed and Alpha Protocol had by tying them to your energy charges, so you can only do so many of them at once (though they do come back over time).
Also when you knock out a dude or dart them instead of killing them? Eventually it wears off, rather than lasting forever like in a lot of games. Was interesting when I was in a firefight and the guys who I had darted or knocked out when I was trying to be sneaky woke up and started shooting at me from the other direction.
It would seem that, despite being published by Square, they had literally no input on this game, which explains a lot.
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Grefter: SMT Strange Journey.
I gave another chance to 360 games I didn't like. They didn't deserve it!
Sacred 2: Followed a build guide this time.
Awful Diablo-like. There's no respecc potion so you better not screw up your build. After playing for one hour you've gotten all the attacks you're going to use for the whole game and they aren't going to get particularly more interesting. Plot, characters, settings are generic western fantasy with elves. Combat is very simple smash-smash-heal potion.
The game is extremely non linear for a Diablo like. Like in Fallout games, the main quest is a very small part of the game and the game world is huge. or That... would actually be good if exploring led to interesting locales or interesting sidequests. In here this only makes the main quest seem short and unbalanced.
As an alternative to a MMORPG, this is probably awesome!
Both Halo 3 and Gears of Wars 2 (both played as couch co-op games): Gameplay is a hell of a lot worse than Mass Effect 2. Cutscenes get skipped like they were FFX-3 cutscenes.
Both games use a really limited weapons system. There are a ton of different weapons lying around that you can pick up, but you can only have two or three available at once. This is now used in a ton of games, but I don't really see how it's a good idea. In fact, it's a terrible idea that's killed all my motivation to play the damn games. The weapons all feel balanced and similar and boring too!
Call of Juarez 2: Bound in Blood is the same game as Halo 3, without that annoying mechanic (and with a western setting I don't care about) I fnished Call of Juarez and I'm not getting past the first level of Halo 3. This is how bad that idea was.
Gears of Wars 2 is worse because its characters are so big and so sloooooooow. Gears of Wars 2 is Little Money: The game.
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I found playing Gears to be like playing Soldier in ME1. Cause you know I kept going back to ME1 for the gameplay!
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Deus Ex- about five hours in. Don't feel like I've even scratched the surface yet, but I sort of wandered around Detroit looking for shit to steal and/or investigate. So far, this game is... actually really good. They even solved the "stealth kills are super godly" problem that Assassin's Creed and Alpha Protocol had by tying them to your energy charges, so you can only do so many of them at once (though they do come back over time).
Frankly I'd say stun was super godly in AC2.
Speaking of Assassin's Creed 2! I bought it a week ago and finished it last Saturday. Haven't gotten around to posting because meh effort and other assorted paragons of laziness. Anyway, game is good, really good, generic praise and such and so on. Controls are just so ass though, UGH. Like any good person I died more times to randomly launching off a building then dying or missions failures etc. Also the endgame fights ranged from "this is pretty cool" to "OK, don't the abstrago guards have guns when even Ezio does(sorta)?" (Does anyone care for spoilers for a year and the half game? Well, there's a thing.)
Sooo, in order to get the taste of good game out of my mouth(because it's just such a nasty feeling!)
Record of Agarest War Zero: Despie practiclly being pilled as innuendo and near porn and all that, it's remarkably... tame, save the female outfits. Those... those are something else. Anyway game is just.... generic and mediocore in it's existance. The dialouge is just so stiff I fear it'll break itself apart or something that makes sense.
Gameplay is... good, really good. Positioning is very important for setting up combos to flatten enemies, going for Overkills gets you more materials for the glorious synthesizing crap. And lord is there a lot of extra grinding-type things. So, very much. There's EXp, Gold, Item Enhance points, Item Creation Points, Party Points(which are used to directly increase stats on your party members, so you can actually cap one characters stats stupid early, and they cap at 100 but that's crazy talk.), there's also.. Technical Points which can be redeemed for prizes at another place. So... much grinding. But at least the battles are fun! Though there are so very many of them. I've only just gotten all of the haremettes in the party and I think I've fought more battles then there are in the Main Quest of some some other TRPGs. And I'm not even close to done.
And for a random rant--difficulty. The game starts out stupid-piss easy with enemies dealing single digit-damage to you. Then the battle before you get your sixth party member the enemies are suddenly capable of killing your tankier characters in a single round without you being able to do shit. Only the existence of moronic enemy AI helps you, and hinders you if you feel like using the game's auto-battle feature for some dumb reason. Things don't let up from there, bosses are HP heavy assholes and once again can kill off the tankiest character with his little minions help. Then the third bosses minions become immune to physical damage at low HP(well, technically they avoid all avoidable physicals, but at the time the only unavoidable physicals I had were the Limit Break type attacks), have high enough Magic Defense that even the dedicated Mage has a hard time hurting them. And they can combo with the boss good lord. Then those minions become regular encounters in the next set of battles. Hahahahaha!
Also for further hilarity, early on I got a consumable HP boost. It said small boost, so I used it on the Main Character Seighart thinking it'd be like a 100 HP boost or something. It was 500, which is more then some character's HP maxs now. At the time he already was the tankiest, and with that he had more HP then the next top three combined.
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Djinn: So... did you play FF13? I mean, I can respect knowing you won't like it from a distance (I don't like Persona 3 from a distance!) but if anything, I'd think you'd enjoy over-the-top Narmy scenes from some of your other tastes.
That is one thing about FF13; it is very much an "operatic" type game since with so few NPCs to play off of, and often times little plot updates aside from "still running for our lives from the government!," the characters are very talky about their internal journeys of self-discovery. Sure, it's not realistic for somebody to just declare to the world "I've realized that I've been the one fooling myself this whole time!," but hey, it lets the audience in on things. Again, pretend it's a play or an opera and they're soliloquizing it up. It certainly works better than the characters saying nothing and stoically fighting onward. (For all that they give this a try in Chapters 10-12 in parts where they shouldn't....) I respect the style, and would probably have used it myself for the above reasons - you want to draw your character conflicts and evolutions with a big, vibrant brush due to the lack of secondary characters or other good clues to show this more subtly.
It's just amusing at how vastly different this is from FF12, a game which played its character emotions and thoughts close to the vest. Ashe was not the talky type who needed to constantly reassure herself "Hey guys, here's what I'm doing and why, and I have doubts about this other thing, but we're going forward!" You get to find out what she was thinking through her actions. I think both game's style worked in each game, but can see others disliking one or the other.
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I played FF13 in Japanese, and watched a few select scenes on YouTube in English if I didn't catch all the particulars of a scene. (It also exposed me to Vanilla's Kiwi-English... unfortunately.)
I liked the initial setup of FF13 and I thought it was doing some interesting world-building, until it basically shoved all of that off a destroyed bridge and the plot devolved into a nonsensical mess around Chapter... 5? Also, Hope was just annoying enough to miss that "so annoying Djinn finds him funny" level, which ruined a lot of Snow's and Light's scenes for me. Basically, it was a lot of wasted potential, which is the worst thing I can say about a game. And the Narm level never got to the point it was really funny.
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It's just amusing at how vastly different this is from FF12, a game which played its character emotions and thoughts close to the vest. Ashe was not the talky type who needed to constantly reassure herself "Hey guys, here's what I'm doing and why, and I have doubts about this other thing, but we're going forward!" You get to find out what she was thinking through her actions. I think both game's style worked in each game, but can see others disliking one or the other.
One style actually gives you some small amount of credit for being able to figure out how people think and shit. The other is the opera Fry wrote.
Best example? That fucking scene where Vanille and Sazh make camp and she draws a privacy line. He wakes up and she's crawled across it. Now, most people can figure out what that means, but the game thinks we are dumb enough Sazh has to explain it aloud.
"Your lyrics lack subtlety! That makes me angry!"
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I actually even like ME1's soldier gameplay more than Gears of Wars. The shotgun rules.
Fudo: Really, with Ezio's final fight being the way it is, all is forgiven.
Speaking of lack of logic:
Sacred 2: I just declared a giant rat an outlaw. Other rats attacked him as a result. (on a side note I'm deleting this game from the hard drive)
Radiant Historia: Stocke attacks Heiss because he's an asshole and learns some uber vanish move.
Then he goes back to standard history, gets an order from Heiss (assassinate a princess) then tries to follow it! Stocke, I'm disappointed.
With the uber vanish move Stocke learned from Heiss I've started avoiding every random battle in the game. We'll see how it turns out. I'm currently right in the middle of Rosche drama in both histories.
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Tactics Ogre: Recruited Yuria, and decided to train her up just for the hell of it, since I like her sprite design. Shaman looks like her best bet on paper, but I didn't feel like raising yet another fragile mage class up from scratch, so I opted for Archer instead. This way she could at least contribute while accumulating SP, and a flying longbow archer certainly has her uses with this game's completely absurd bow ranges.
I blitzed my way through all of C2 Chaos and most of C3 Chaos in under two days; assassinate leader missions are a joke now that my team's loaded up with crafted elemental weapons. Bayin gave me a scare when he lost 60% of his life from a single archer shot at the beginning of the fight, but my Ninjas rushed in and started killing/attracting attention fast enough that he thankfully never got hit again. The VLF guest trio all started with terrible equips and spells that I had to replace to ensure their survival, but Cerya started with a Culnikronne, Wyrmscale equips, and the Salamander summon spell. O_O
I don't feel like redoing C4 at all and going for C3 Neutral would screw up Arycelle's loyalty, so there's not much left for me to do in World. I'll probably start trudging my way through the Palace of Neverending Zombies for the stupid Warren quest sometime this weekend. See you guys in a few weeks. :/
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Deus Ex 3 - Rob, I know you have used it. How fucking weird is the frame on the Revolver? For something with an item description mentionign the sturdy frame on the revolver you would think it wouldn't have nearly as many moving parts to it. There is a reason more modern handguns have the cylinder be the part that moves around when working with the gun rather than having the cylinder be solid and in place and have the frame of the gun move to open it up. That thing must be so fragile. Would think twice about using one that you even just got from knocking a guy out since they apparently drop it straight to the ground.
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Zork Grand Inquisitor - Replayed
Bought a legitimate copy from GOG and thought I could do with a replay. Sadly it did not live up to my memories, but was still pretty entertaining. Probably I saw it as better during my previous playthrough because I had played Nemesis shortly beforehand that time.
Currently have no intentions of buying a legitimate copy of Nemesis.
Wasn't I supposed to be playing RTZ... do I even still have my current save around anywhere.
Dragon Quest: The Hand Of The Heavenly Bride - Finished (minus anything postgame)
I was really enjoying the game until the wedding, then that was downgraded to generally enjoying the game.
The wedding itself reminded me of PSIII's first wedding, although it wasn't quite as bad as hey are you going to marry your fiancée or this woman you've barely spoken to. The main at least has a vaguely good reason for marrying one of the women he's barely spoken to this time.
Following that plot says to go south for more plot so I go east instead to look for non-plot things only to find plot. And find that pregnancies in DQ apparently take place solely over a couple of days. Then everything halts for a while and I miss out on whatever it was I was supposed to be doing in the south (after visiting there later on, it seems like there wouldn't have really been anything to do there anyway, but at the time this was quite disconcertening).
So there is a scene during this where a statue you want to have is shown being taken away by some shady characters for shady reasons. So obviously the main goal once you get control back is to try and follow the trail of these shadies, right? No, they just effectively disappear from the storyline completely (technically, you can go back to the tower where you saw them previously and they're there, but since they're still saying the same lines as they used to say that may be an oversight - and either way, the concept of a trail to follow is nowhere to be found (if you assume that that is an oversight one other minute possibility is that the cave near Coburg, which used to be inhabited by shady characters but is now inhabited by corpses, was inhabited by the same shady characters and the statue was taken from them, but there is nothing to indicate this - plus the people who end up with the statue have no reason to go out of their way and kill for it (unless you assume that they found out that the main was looking for it - whereas previously he was indisposed - and decided they didn't want him to have it - man this is building up towers of assumptions), although there isn't any reason for them to end up with it in the first place).).
Instead you should follow the Zenithia plot and eventually find the statue in a completely incongruous place.
Then the statue is unpetrified by random act of god despite the group needing to exhaust a Stolos's Staff to unpetrify the previous statue - and despite there being another Stolos's Staff available shortly afterwards in Precaria. That you were going to need another Stolos's Staff or something like it was another implied ongoing quest that was just thrown out with the bathwater.
Now take your wife back to people (outside Gotha) who should care that you have been reunited and find that none of them do - there are even generic characters who act as if she was still missing. In fact outside of her own comments she is barely recognised to still exist by the rest of the game in general. I could actually see that as being necessary if the staff thing had been done, because then you might never get her unpetrified, but since it wasn't - that pretty much shattered the whole reason I had been playing since the start of that segment.
Speaking of incongruous places, if/when you eventually visit the place where the first statue was found, you have to wonder why the heck the group ever went there in the first place. Talk about off the beaten track.
The auction site also seems to be in one of the most inaccessible places ever. No wonder it seems to have gone out of business by the time I got there. I find myself wondering whether it's possible to get there during the second segment.
It's a shame that you eventually get access to 4+ humans, which for myself resulted in monsters effectively being relegated to being heal batteries and a last-chance backup party. I assume that there are monsters who would be better to use than Bianca/Madchen, but that's not how I roll. Never ended up using Sancho or Tuppence - I find myself wondering whether there even were any 'extra' characters you could get aside from Tuppence.
so how about them vehicles (zenithia castle and the zenith dragon) that only allow you to access one new location each eh
Speaking of vehicles some of them are far too touchy about how far away from rough terrain you have to be before you can use them.
All up it's better than DQ4.
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Street Fighter 3: Never having played this before due to arcades dying by the time this came out, I can see why it never caught on. The controls are ridiculously unforgiving. The shotos control fairly well, but the grapplers are horrible. I'm pretty good at 360 motions, but this game does not recognize them worth a damn.
Got the beat 55 trials achievement out of the way before they patch the stun glitch.
SO4: Working on battle trophies in preparation for getting Lymle trophy 100. Have Edge, Meracle, and Lymle over 50% now.
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Ghost Trick - Completed.
Man, what to say. I did not enjoy this game at first. This mostly stems from a dislike of the gameplay (which never really changed, just became easier to overlook). Yes, the genre sucks at this in general as far as I'm concerned. However, at least in Phoenix Wright, the main focus of the gameplay connected directly to understanding the plot: puzzling out what about testimony didn't fit with events, which is helpful since the plot/writing is why the game gets played. Ghost Trick just throws arbitrary puzzles at you (and you're pretty much at the mercy of what things have "cores" and how the designers decide to make screwy physics behave) which is just a drag. Huh, guess I care about connecting plot and gameplay sometimes after all.
Enough about gameplay. Now, while the core writing is intriguing enough from the start, it's not really enough. Earlygame has a bunch of problems (having to avert one person's death three times in 4(?) chapters started to feel painfully repetitive even narratively, never mind feeling like an excuse for more 'gameplay'. Also the slapstick comedy of those prison guards was terribad, I really hope that was something cultural that works better in Japan). But once Jowd enters the picture the plot starts getting... very interesting. Just a brilliantly-told mystery really. The game never does humour as well as Phoenix Wright, but damned if it doesn't spin a yarn that had me absolutely hooked towards the end. So clever with some of its plot twists, and just wonderful style. Very likely better than any Phoenix Wright case as far as serious plot goes. Put it this way: despite my dislike of the start of the game I now want to play it again to look for things which connect in clever ways to plot later in the story.
Beyond that, it's really hard to talk about what the game does well without spoilers - I could use spoiler text but honestly, those of you who have played the game probably know exactly the things I'm referring to, and those who don't have no business reading them. So I won't.
It's not an amazing game overall (the flaws I've mentioned certainly drag it down) but one I'd recommend, and I certainly wasn't expecting that in the first half of the game.
(Okay, I lied, some spoilers after all to get some opinions out there mostly)
I liked Sissel's motivation... aloofly trying to solve his own gnawing mystery instead of playing hero. Sooo fitting with the personality we'd expect from who he turned out to be! In hindsight the "I've forgotten how to read!" moment should have been a blatant givaway he wasn't human, but I didn't really process it at the time. Favourite character is pretty easily either Sissel or Yomiel, who just was a wonderful villain, from a convincing reason for how he turned bad to a convincing reason to how was redeemed to some really effective scenes as a menace in the middle (favourite moments are when he (optionally?) catches Sissel trying ghost tricks in front of him, and when he manipulates Kamila towards the end). Most of the major characters were solid; the stinkers were all mercifully minor and gone by around a third of the way through the game.[/quote]
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I don't see any missile hype. You are a terrible person~
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Missile is far inferior to both Sissel and Yomiel!
EDIT: Of course I am almost obligated to like the cat more than the dog.
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I give up. I will never be able to predict accurately what game elves will enjoy at all. I am just at the point where Jowd shows up and I thought Doctor Thaddeus Venture as a disco pimp that dances like Michael Jackson would be a pretty big draw card. Also honestly I have enjoyed Snow the prison guard bouncing off stonewall Zenny prison guard a fair bit.
Now I will say that Jowd is making things far more interesting and the gameplay straight after he hits the scene is the absolute pits.
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NEB hates the game? Grefter recommends it? I really need to play Ghost Trick, it sounds like.
Also "Stonewall Zenny prison guard?" What. You calling me gay.
I ain't gay bro. This penis is for the girls yo.
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Not that they make -use- of it.
Also, there's no exclusivity clause regarding your ass either.
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Tactics Ogre: I just bought Starfall and Wisplight from the first shop in Palace of the Dead/Hell's Gate and... I'm kinda underwhelmed. All my physical attackers currently outfitted with light-elemental weapons are one-shotting (usually overkilling) all the undead, while Katiua can only 2HKO with Starfall, which means the insta-Exorcism effect not nearly as awesome as it could be. Wisplight is a bit less damage when focused, mainly due to Ravness/Valkyrie having a lot less magic power, but with a much shorter range as well.
Meanwhile, my archers are "stuck" with air-elemental bows (range 9!!) since I can't craft a light-elemental one, but they're arguably my best PCs anyways in this dungeon because about 1 in every 3 maps thus far starts you off at a huge height advantage, meaning they can rain death upon pretty much the entire battlefield from their starting position. And on the maps where they actually have to move, they can use Double Shot to turn into long range Ninjas after just a bit of TP buildup.
On the upside, their attacks aren't doing much less damage to the non-undead in here... which means light magic probably isn't getting the damage bonus aganist undead that light-elemental weapons do. Sigh. The weapon/magic balance in this game is so lopsided, and it doesn't seem to change until you hit super-high levels. Elemental weapon users get such absurd bonuses from the elemental augment skills too, I think my Ninjas all got over 100 base power per hand from equipping a +1 Augment Light accessory.
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Grefter: Uh wait you are surprised that the pimp character was a bigger draw for you than for me? Really? Really? (I mean, I like him well enough, but yeah.)
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Wild Arms 4 - Fourth playthrough finished. I did this as kind of a LLG (forced fights only, but no Monopoly Gourd shenanigans or anything like that). WA4 doesn't LLG well because bosses give so much exp, I finished about 6 levels lower than normal. This still made a few fights harder certainly, I had resets on FIORE + ASIA and Hauser. Guardian Chimera, Super Soldier, and Prototype Gear also stood out as competent. Not much else to say. Game took me a bit under 10 hours, so I am Tide mk 2. Jump jump accelerator!
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Deus Ex 3 - Rob, I know you have used it. How fucking weird is the frame on the Revolver? For something with an item description mentionign the sturdy frame on the revolver you would think it wouldn't have nearly as many moving parts to it. There is a reason more modern handguns have the cylinder be the part that moves around when working with the gun rather than having the cylinder be solid and in place and have the frame of the gun move to open it up. That thing must be so fragile. Would think twice about using one that you even just got from knocking a guy out since they apparently drop it straight to the ground.
Top-break revolvers exist, but who would use them? They're like the only revolver you can jam.
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Deus Ex 3 - Rob, I know you have used it. How fucking weird is the frame on the Revolver? For something with an item description mentionign the sturdy frame on the revolver you would think it wouldn't have nearly as many moving parts to it. There is a reason more modern handguns have the cylinder be the part that moves around when working with the gun rather than having the cylinder be solid and in place and have the frame of the gun move to open it up. That thing must be so fragile. Would think twice about using one that you even just got from knocking a guy out since they apparently drop it straight to the ground.
Top-break revolvers exist, but who would use them? They're like the only revolver you can jam.
Vash the Stampede used one!
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Yeah, a Mateba. Italian revolver, rather rare. Design was too complicated for a revolver TBH.
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So that's why everybody calls Togusa an idiot for using one.
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FFT A2- Finished. So, we all know this is basically FFT without plot. Thus, we will analyse it as such.
Good Stuff
Laws. Yeah, Laws. They work exactly how they should in a video game; following the law gives you concrete benefits (A permanent bonus throughout the battle, plus added loot after battle) while breaking the law a) removes these benefits and b) gives you a clear but surmountable disadvantage (losing the ability to revive). Judge loot was invaluable at several points in the game, while no battle gave me a loss because I'd broken the law aside from one of those 'uphold the law and win' fights (although one came close), but definitely made me work harder.
Class Balance. Well, that's not entirely accurate, since class matters less in FFTA2 than the race. And the race balance is pretty good. while some races have more good classes than others, every race has viable endgame setups, and the difference tends to be how hard they are to get going rather than how effective they are.
Bad Stuff
Weapon system. Ugh. Look, I understand that ability access is how you balanced your class system, but making it so damned easy to miss out on valuable equips because you happened not to get extra for particular ingredients is pretty bloody annoying and really messes with that whole "race balance is pretty good" idea. I dunno, it works but I really wish there'd be more in the way of failsafes, making items available in shops after passing checkmarks and that kinda thing, y'know?
Weird Stuff
But basically this means the game is a real grind at times, and in a very skinner-box kinda way. "dammit, I want [dualwield/doublecast/why hasn't I unlocked Ninja yet]" *faq* "... welp, guess I better stop the main missions and grind for 20 battles now". The trouble is, the game wasn't hard when I didn't have a 20 level advantage. There just come a point, about 20 hours in, where the game can't realistically fight back against you, and it's really in an easily preventable way on the design end. On the other hand, since this is really the player becoming very powerful rather than the enemies being particularly weak, there's a certain amount of satisfaction to it at least.
Why do so many named PCs join at the very end? This highlights the grinding thing, because they're about the same level as endgame enemies, and thusly even more useless than a late joiner in a cross-class dependent game should be. Kinda sad.
So I dunno. I played over 55 hours of this game in the space of 8 days, but I don't feel confident calling it more than about a 7/10. Lots of good ideas that don't really come through when you look at the total design of the game.
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Time for an Epic Post of SCROLL PAST THIS.
Record of Agarest War Zero or "how gaming gave me back problems"
Last time I finished collecting my party and--actually I never said I did that huh? So I did and... Well, now's the time to actually talk about the party and fashion and other related things. BUT FIRST! Vague mechanics talk.
Break: Break is a bar that when it drops it massivly lowers an enemies defense for the rest of the combo. Becomes imperitive for getting Overkills. Your guys have Break bars too but they're so huge that I got hit by an attack that did more damage then the combined max HP of my party and the bar was only at like 60%.
Overkills: Happen when you deal enough damage past zero to hit their max HP again. (IE, doing 200 damage to an enemy with max HP of 100 will be an Overkill). Overkilling gets you a guaranteed item drop which you'll need for glorious FARMING ACTION. Your guys can be overkilled too but I have no idea if it does anything since nothing seems to happen.
Extended Area: Each character and enemies later on have... uhhhhh, glowly points extending. Placing allies on those points allows you to use them in combos. This allows you to pull the slugass characters up way ahead in turn order.
Now, let's get unto the carrots of this meal. Actually make it celery.
CHARACTERS!
Sieghart: Our dull as dishwater Captin in the armies of the light and other generic responses. Y'know, dull as dishwater doesn't mean much since all the germs and stuff are quite fascinating nut then again I'm a day away of shoveling rotting garbage to becoming a germaphobe. Mysophobe too but that's completely unrelated. Uhhh, where was I? Oh yes, Sieghart. Like any good man he actually dresses not-too-awfully. (http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/Fudozukushi/Record%20Agarest%20War/sample-bc20347ad42ba49654bba7d12878a119.jpg) I think it's actually a rather nice outfit all told, but I'm playing this game so obviously my senses are shot. So, uh, Sieghart, he's a PICK-YOUR-CLASS type protagonist while every one else is stuck with whatever. This means he's going to be the king of versatility. I choose the mage-fighter path because it sounded neat even though I always do terribly with such types in games. Lo and behold it turned true because magic blows for damage early on. On the other hand, he got a spear--despite me making sword choices, but whatever--and spears kick ass. His LIMIT BREAKU attack--since I have no idea what the real classification is--hits hard and in a 2-swaure diamond area(and multi-square attacks are kinda rare) and debuffs all of an enemies stats. Pretty much the lead-off attack for a chain of them. Also he recently got an... I'm gonna say Attribute since again I don't know the correct classification, that massively boosts anyone's AP(what they need to attack) whenever they're in his Extended Area.
Eugene: Resident ladies man and general pervert and other generic stuff. Despite this he has the most personality of anyone so, go him? Least has the good sense to realize that all the girls want Ziggy, or something. Otherwise he spends most of his time trolling Linda(below) in ridiculously more insane ways as things go on. On the fashion front--why am I doing this?--he's not as sane as Sieghart but isn't as bad as any woman. Combat-wise, he's a generic fighter-type focusing more on power and HP then speed but not too much. His LIMIT BREAKU is probably the worst since it's only affect is that it MAY get a crit, and I have no idea if I've even seen a crit.
Fredelinde (Linda): Generic female officer serving under Sieghart who is madly in love with him and everyone but him knows this. Nevertheless, her constant back-and-forths with Eugene give her something resembling a personality. And she doesn't try to assault Sieghart outside of training for some minor slight like those abominable tsunderes. So what I'm saying is she's probably my favorite despite genericness. Then again everything's generic so it's not like saying generic--OK I'll stop saying generic. Generic. Anyway her outfit is--like you'll see with all the women--hilariously useless for a soldier and pointlessly fanservicey. Seriously, look at that! (http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/Fudozukushi/Record%20Agarest%20War/0443ec5c3d9339e2862c76aff8b0b06f.jpg) It's depressing. But not as depressing as it being in the top half of female clothes of the outfits so far. Uh, let's see combat, COMBAT! Yeah, anyway despite not wearing armor in sensible areas, Linda is a front-liner and uses Spears so that makes her good. Especially since I wanted another front-liner and all I had were mages or mage-fighters that were completely invalidated by Sieghart. Her Extended Area also has useful spots for when she attacks. Her LIMIT BREAK does piss-all damage but lowers enemies VIT so it's usually second in the chain.
Minmel: Mysterious MacGuffin girl who loses her MacGuffin powers as soon as you meet her and loses her memory because of that. Whoooo. This causes her to be childish and clingy and makes her terrible choice in clothes even weirder (http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/Fudozukushi/Record%20Agarest%20War/sample-e49298b63e58538293ee3fc829008d6e.jpg). Why is she barefoot? WHY? Uhhhh, anyway.... COMBAT! Her Extended Area is generally weird and her combat approach is also weird. She's supposed to be a mage-fighter type, I think, but neither are strong enough to be worth investing in both at once so I just made her pure combat. Which isn't too shabby since she uses Scythes which was pretty good. Also pretty much the only one who can capture monsters because her LUK is easy to increase. Her Limit Break heals her when she uses it, something I always forget. And it's Dark-element. Surely mentioning that doesn't mean it won't come back to bite me in the ass later.
Alice: Pink-haired(which means I automatically like her despite any massive flaws) elf girl who... well the common attitude of elves currently is being haughty assholes and she's not so... yay? As the first pure mage she's your taste into early-game mages being terrible. Despite literally pumping every stat point on level-up into MAG she's doing less damage then the physical attackers. On the other hand, she heals more health with the basic healing spell then Sieghart has Max so that's something. As a mage her Extended Area is spread out far in front of her. And her limit break--not like she'll ever get to use it--is another, actually the only other one that damages in an area. And it reduces INT! Now, clothes-wise, she's uh, well not too bad. (http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/Fudozukushi/Record%20Agarest%20War/sample-567f0dab94576411079dab6807efd1f3.jpg) Since at least as a mage she can sort of ignore heavy things like armor. And heck, in the gallery's little comments it's mentioned she doesn't need armor because of... well you'll see.
Gallios: Grumpy old dinosaur man who fights with two spears at once. Despite being such a ridiculously awesome concept he falls into the same trap as Tunnel Rhino and Wheel Gator in that he doesn't live up to his potential. He's also not a robot. I think. As befitting a dinosaur he pretty much dresses like the Hulk and doesn't have a shirt. And he has black skin instead of green. And black pants. So really he's not like the Hulk at all. Well maybe Grey Hulk. So, in combat, he's what you'd expect. Big, strong and slower then a fall in comic books. Benifits the most from Extended Areas. Also his own is a T-shape to his sides and back so something. His Break Limit is basically just a bunch of strong hits.
Cal-Vina: He's... there. Really, not like everyone is swimming in personality but really his entire existence is "Routier's(below) older brother and can't cook". Well, at least his clothes are actually, well sensible. But despite his appearance he's another mage-fighter hybrid heavier on the mage. And he can't get INT gains like Alice and his other stats are bad. But since he's your sixth party member and you're only other choice is someone who probably is better once magic becomes less terrible. Well I would have dropped them anyway and words.
Routier: Cal-Vina's shy younger sister. I haven't actually used her since she came lower level then him and was pure-mage, with more of a healing role. At that point I only had one heal spell and hadn't really needed it and Alice did fine. Her outfit is, well the best of the girls by a longshot. (http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/Fudozukushi/Record%20Agarest%20War/341624ecf83fba7ed3636bc9dbe63c58.jpg)
Tetora: Cat-girl who dances a dance which purifies evil from the land. Also wears this. (http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/Fudozukushi/Record%20Agarest%20War/sample-d6e5b3fc248679c905668706c9bd2145.jpg) I'll let you all aghast at your own pace.
Sayane: Winged girl who cannot fly and--what? Tetora is incomplete? Well so's her outfit and until that fixes itself we're on to THIS (http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/Fudozukushi/Record%20Agarest%20War/6dea9ef6fde45762a21b813868d5c155.jpg). Sayane here has the.... not-unique trait of getting lost easily. Because being on the wrong end of the continent is endearing or something. As for her outfit--because FLOW--well she at least is old enough to wear something like that, I guess. Combat-wise, I didn't use her much because more mage-fighter and she used knives which suck.
And that's that! Or something. There's a bunch of NPCs, but frankly they've shown up in less scenes then I had before THE EPIC QUEST started. Though it's vaguely amusing how evil-looking one of them is, complete with "we're better then humans!" Only to be shot down by mentioning the gods are better then him haha.
Well, now that we're done with our celery sticks and the fresh taste of water is in our mouth, time for a drink. A long, hard drink.
So when we actually did last leave off, Linda joins our crew and the next set of fights before our destination is against those DODGE EVERYTHING AT LOW HEALTH bastards and a bunch of DODGE EVERYTHING NEARLY ALL THE TIME cat-girls who are unrelated to the cat-girl in the party. Despite the annoying of them, our group presses on to Bethesda Fortress, where we will make our stand against the Oblivion Crisis and prevent a shitty game from shipping. Or so I wish. Instead the armies of the Dark are attacking and it's up to us to put them down because why not.
Anyway what follows next is a series of three battles in a row(Which the game is actually nice enough to give a big old window explaining this and informing you to probably not save over your file. YAY no longer being burdened by memory cards!) The first fight starts off with everyone out of position and enemies with more health outside of bosses. Despite that I get through with minor scratches. Good thing too as the next fight uses your HP totals, and if anyone is KOed they'd have been gone. The second fight and all the enemies have double the health of the last fight, ouch but I still get through it unscathed. Third fight is the boss, he's a hard-hitting bastard, but he has one weakness. His strongest attack--or so--does dark damage. Minmel absorbs Dark naturally I learn, and he full-heals her. I then manage to both off an Overkill on him from Full HP. YEAH!
So with the Dark routed for now, our party can go back to it's normal quest of fetch-questing. And again I'm reminding of bitter memories of Oblivion. So we go to the forest which leads to the elves. Along the way meeting a second-generation(oh yeah, there's two generations and stuff)heroine which immediately makes things creepy. We also meet a cool tree. But that's the tree-lover in me talking. Anyway, the forest is a dungeon dive, enemies are tough but manageable. In my search for loot, the battle loads up and SWEETGODWHATISTHAT! A 3x3 tile monster in a random encounter named: Giant Cock. Well at least one person had fun on this project. So, despite making me scream like this one giant baby I know, the GIANT COCK isn't that hard and I think I get an Overkill. Or I get an Overkill on the second one I encounter because if you forgot this was in a random encounter! YEAHHHHHH! So anyway, at the end of the forest I'm ready for the inevitable boss-fight and... nope, nothing. So it's gotta be at Elf village. Nope. Huh. Well it'll probably be at the end of the next dungeon--NO HAHAHAHA THERE IS NO NEXT DUNGEON JUST BOSS! The brother of the tutorial boss in all hilarity. Anyway, he has tough back-up, hits like a truck and all the bad things. I finally get him in position, everything's going well, the Lreak Bimits are going off he's near death and--OHGODWHYISMINMEL HEALING HIM OHSHIT HER"S IS DARK ISN"T IT CRAPCRAPCRAPHELIVES--four of my party die and I barely scratch out the win. Christ.
I head back to town to revive--because that's how things work, full heal after battle but not revival. The costs for reviving everyone actually puts me in the negatives for cash. CHRIST. And the revival item only costs 500 compared to the 1,000+ for town revive. UGH.
So, bucking up, the next dungeon of fetch questing GO. Oh look, more 3x3 enemies and it's a goddamn Dragon. OK, hard, but mangable and I get Overkills every time I fight one. Until I fight two at once. ARGH! OK, still miraculously survive that! Rest of the dungeon goes smoothly, except when a SURPRISE FIGHT! Causes Sieg to have to tank a 3x3 enemy and a normal one for three turns while everyone else fails to kill a single slime. Joy.
So at this point, I return to town to collect stuff and do stuff. Mostly farming, LOTS of farming. So much farming that I'm actually hoping to be able to cream the boss badly.
It's another multi-stage battle. Both battles have bosses. OUCH. The first boss isn't too bad, but at the end two Minmel and Eugene are low on life, and so going into the next battle they're primary targets for the boss. Who's a stupidly fast asshole, who recovers health and generates the SP needed for LIMIT BREAKING without doing a damn thing. he also has a giant AP growth. But by using Minmel as their prime target, they've drained themselves and left in a bad place. I take out every minion but one and get Minmel up again. Next turn I get everyone in position, but--things are a bit hazy here--things aren't as well as I want them. I'm confident I could beat the boss, but I wouldn't get the rewards for everyone(and Now I remember the one minion left would have meant I had the time to do that). So, by my past tense you can tell something bad happened. Well, remember way before when I mentioned the Break bar on the PCS and how huge it was? Well, this boss is why I learned that. He wiped out four characters. At that point I couldn't win so just let the Game OVER happen. By letting the boss pull off the same move as last turn. The one that required large SP and AP. Oh boy.
So, take two, if the enemies keep to the same pattern I can do this! They do, targeting Minmel for gross overdeath. But--BUT! One enemy is in a different position, ONE. It completely changes my plans, since the previous grouping was too damn optimal. The battle turns into a goddamn slogfest, with reviving characters to use as sacrifices to take the brunt of the death COMBO. But eventually I fuck up badly. Actually I don't so much fuck up as the boss somehow manages to get the first turn over Sieghart despite him never using any AP for turns(AP determines your order during the attack phase). But I can actually recover from this, but not fast enough and Minmel gets taken out of the battle. This is the end of it, I load up everything I have. I kill the bastard--even getting halfway to the Overkill--and breath a sign of relief.
After that is the usual parade of victory with powering things up and claiming farming stuff.
Eventually... uhhh... let's go with yesterday I go around to doing all the story events and stuff.(I had been playing for 12 hours and it was 5 in the morning after I beat the bosses christ). This is where Eugene is finally starting to shine as so many events were just him trolling Linda. So, so much trolling.
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It isn't so much a top-break revolver though as a revolver that twists open vertically. It is just strange. Regardless I don't seemhow even antop break revolver is of particularly noteworthy sturdy construction compared to a revolver with a single piece frame.
I don't find the pimp the big draw card. Not in a game with a solid built 40 year old dude with a wicked beard and a secret past of being way to smart and nice. Oh and he is an artist. I would go gay for Jowd.
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DX3- I have a silenced assault rifle that fires guided bullets and it's not even my favorite weapon (that is a refrigerator). Currently fighting my way out of one of those kooky capsule hotels. This game owns.
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Tactics Ogre: *Cursed Bow drops*
... it's like the game wants me to break my Archers even more.
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Radiant Historia: Chapter 4s.
Game got difficult, especially with that battle against one thaumachine that summoned a few voltorbes. Fortunately, my incredibly underlevelled party seemed to be the best suited for the job: Rosche could 2HKO the bombs with his column attack and they only self-destructed two turns after being summoned. Ayt laid electric traps and Stocke pushed the thaumachine right into it when they weren't busy healing.
The duel against Garland was pretty ridiculous too, ultimately pure mage Stocke (after pushing Garland to the back row) did the trick.
Great boss theme, by the way. The Edge of Green.
The plot is a little less fresh right now on the other hand.
Infinite Undiscovery: Near the end. I think.
After some research I've discovered that there's a max HP+20% book in this game. You can farm the ingredients for this book and get an infinite amount. Max HP, that way, is 2 199 000 000. (While max displayed HP is only 99 999) Utterly ridiculous.
Near the end of the ant dungeon I opened a trapped chest. My main character and my healer got petrified, only my bear was left. Unfortunately, bears may take up two character slots, but they can't use items. FUUUUUU... Lost 30 minutes.
Devil May Cry 4: Halfway through on normal difficulty.
Incredibly beautiful game.
I mostly suck at it, but I'm starting to get better. I even got an S in one mission... Amongst all those other Cs. My only other experience with the series is DMC1, where I only played on normal, spamming the shotgun like crazy and having countless resets against a giant spider.
The grappling move, doublejump and thrusting slash are pretty overpowered, I'm mostly using those when I'm not trying to show off. (So basically only against bosses) The guns, meanwhile, are awful.
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Wizardry 5: I have no idea how I got on a kick for this. Watched a bunch of terrible VLPs for it, then decided to play it for the hell of it. I am L9 or so, and am on the third floor right now. Game is as unpolished as you would expect from a early 90's SNES port of a PC game, but I still enjoy it.
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*reads up
My dear Mugen... when did Fudo sunk that deeply into the depth of netherworld?
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It is all developing as we have foreseen, Niu.
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*reads up
My dear Mugen... when did Fudo sunk that deeply into the depth of netherworld?
See, you start to get all crazy when you pump out things like NaNo. See weird things, hear weirder ones. Then one time, the voices, they make a lot of sense. You won't be needing that foot, or sense of dignity after all. And then they get you on the pyramid scheme. I wanted the Sphinx dammit!
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Fenrir: Yeah, that Thaumachine is a good and fun fight. Didn't have as much trouble with Garland personally but I could certainly see how a few levels would make the difference there, not one of those joke duels you often get in RPGs certainly.
My only other experience with the series is DMC1, ... having countless resets against a giant spider.
Sounds like everyone's DMC1 experience ever.
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Saints Row 2 - Criminal Laggy is too awesome for my computer
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BoF1: Replayed this while streaming the entire thing for chat's sake! I learned after beating 90% of the game there were equips that RAISE encounter rate and I was using a few of them throughout...oops <_<;
Metroid Fusion: Started this up spontaneously. Got to Area 3 after beating some giant snake boss.
BoF2: See BoF1? Yeah, now we're doing that with BoF2. Not much outside of early game GRINDING!!! has been done.
FF3 (NES): More streamingness, just beat Garuda. Showed off what happens if you fight Garuda WITHOUT Dragoons. I think someone else can speak for me here <.<
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BoF1: I learned after beating 90% of the game there were equips that RAISE encounter rate and I was using a few of them throughout...oops <_<;
...That explains a lot. Is there any documentation anywhere on which equips these are?
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Gown and the SageML. Both only work on the party Leader though. Given when you're likely using these, this explains why Tower of Karma and the Krypt seem to have stupid high encounter rates.
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Madden 12: Picked this up at the madden release. It's fun (Though the interface is on the clunky side) and it's just goddamn pretty. Playing the Redskins in franchise mode- Grossman throws too many picks, my RBs are injury prone, and my defense constantly has to bail me out. In short, it is pretty accurate.
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I'm knee deep in some Tales of Vesperia action right about now.
Yuri is an interesting main. he isn't aggressive, or annoying. He does not have any glaring flaws and he is easily likeable. On the other hand, he is rather plain sometimes, but if that is my biggest complaint about him...I can deal with it. I slapped on a black pimp hat. That boosts his coolness factor considerably.
Also, the scene with the magistrate was pretty shocking and well deserved. JUSTICE!
Estelle has some crazy defense going on right now. She serves as healer, back up damage dealer AND tank? If Yuri wasn't so easy to use I might try to run around as her, but people would probably die a lot if I did. *whistles*
Repede is good, but damn those flying monsters. The AI just does not get it.
Judith is fun to use also. Still not sure about her motives though...
Rita is interesting. MY GF plays as her when she wants to jump into the game. My advice is to SPAM SPELLS AND PRESS B! It works!
Karol is a character I don't care for too much. I enjoy the moments he has with Yuri enough, but eh...
Raven is the comic relief. I love comic reliefs. I hate archers though...
Everyone is likeable enough. The battle mechanics are fun and I have something around a 40 hit combo as a max so far.
I bet I'm missing a crap ton of secrets though. I just went to sleep at a random Inn and learned a move with Yuri. I did that somewhere else and learned one with Judith.
I just finished the desert and now I;m in some magical fantasy town that does not age I think? I dunno.
This game is so awesome. Multiplayer RPGs ftw~
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I hate archers though...
I hate you. Go away :(
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Radiant Historia: Finished the duels.
After losing a little more than half HPs, Garland uses his second buff and starts dealing strong 2HKO damage every round. Stocke just couldn't keep up with that at all in my case. I had to do a ton of damage + use a Turn Break at the right time to win.
Infinite Undiscovery: Finished.
Least threatening looking final boss ever.
(http://img.online-station.net/_news/2009/0204/23383_inf42.JPG)
Good lord.
On the plus side, I think he acted like a jerk because of Ethereal Queen, if I understood everything completely. Those optional bosses are finally starting to become relevant to the main story!!
A few endgame fights gave me resets, but I had done absolutely 0 item creation / sidequests, and my healer hated me and often refused listening to my orders (because I didn't give her tea and let her die too many times or something). And she was being overall dumb. Still, fun enough fights for me.
I'm going to play on higher difficulties before passing judgement on the game, but it's not stellar. A real rushjob. Could have been fantastic, but wasn't.
Gustav is the best character in the game. He's a giant red bear voiced by a human, and it shows. Just imagine a normal human being saying "GROAAAR". Hilarious. This really enlightened every single battle in the game after I got him. It's at times like this that you realize how voice acting has enhanced the RPG experience.
The moment you've all been waiting for, and I'm sorry to disappoint:
The game never explains what an infinite undiscovery actually is.
My own guess is that it's a reference to the title itself. There's an infinite number of people who haven't discovered what the hell "Infinite Undiscovery" means. There you have it.
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Holy shit, the last boss of Infinite Undiscovery is Vigoro from SoA with a new haircut?
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Yes.
The new haircut being long purple braids.
BTW he's a god.
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Now I want to play this game.
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Well I'd hope so. If you look like that and AREN'T a god, I want to know how you survived childhood.
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Presumably by showing people your abs.
"THIS is a structural wall!"
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Ghost Trick - Finished. Last few sections had gameplay in the toilet. Was still fun to watch, but late night almost finished game want to stop and sleep got me using a walkthrough.
Still gay for Jowd. Pimp MJ was more rad at the end also.
I am torn now, I want to lend it to my mum and sister to play, by the gameplay really suffers when it stops being about funky Tim Burton Machines (forgot actual name, comedy option. Alternate choice was Von Neumann Machine, but that may have read as an actual mistake). Might see how the sister toughs it out.
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Bera is not a god. The real god who created the IU world is Yuno.
But Yuno got fed up wuth humanity and want to leave this behind, and he let the strongest human back then to take his post, who is Bera.
But Bera found himself got cheated. Instead of having sovereignty over human, he got locked up in the moon and force to be human's man servant for eternity.
The result is what we see in game, he tries to destroy the moon and replace human that were created by Yuno with his own creation.
I.Queen supposedly has a role in this too. But they cut her off as they couldn't find a place to fit her in.
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Deus Ex 3-
Well, I'm just about done. Game's doing a damn good job of engaging me so far; I feel like my decisions on augments and methodology both have meaning to them, and they don't always show what it was right away. Sometimes it's further down the road, when you're not expecting it. The environments are impressively large, and more than anything else, they feel more like actual cities or factories or offices, rather than "levels." Lots of things to explore and find, with rewards both tangible and intangible.
Weapons are all kind of suited to a specific thing, and you are of course free to augment yourself for more carry space so you can use more. Stuck mostly with the 10mm and the combat rifle, though I carry a sniper rifle for emergencies and a revolver for maximum coolness (and exploding bullets). The only design decision I really question is the battery recharge, where only the first recharges on its own, making expanding capacity mostly useless. All in all, even augmented all the way with dermal regeneration you can't just walk head first into a firefight, you have to think ahead and use your augs, the environment, and surprise to get the advantage against a group.
Plot is standard Deus Ex conspiracies, also loaded with foreshadowing of the first game. The hobo in the Detroit basketball court explaining literally the ENTIRE PLOT of Deus Ex 1 to a crowd was pretty goddamn hilarious. I realize that everyone has an angle and you can only trust your handler and your chopper pilot because it's fucking Deus Ex, but still seeing how everyone's plotting unfolded was, as usual, quite enjoyable.
Boss fights are tough but doable once you realize you should use the environs against them. Tried to take the first guy head on for a while before I started trying that and it worked like a charm. Also once you get the lift strength augment you can start using refrigerators as giant moveable cover while you throw barrels like Donkey Kong, which is fun.
All in all, unless they totally blow the whole thing in the last half-hour or so, I would say this game is a solid GotY contender. It is a game that actively tries to engage you in the gameplay itself, the metagaming that is using the limited amount of upgrades on a larger pool of available augments, and the game's plot. I recommend it unless you have taste equal to or worse than NEB's.
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Dammit, I don't have money for a new video card. Must become employed.
Dissidia Duodecim: Picked this up again on vacation with the DS still missing, beat the Labyrinth finally. Good lord, Demise takes forever. Oh well, got all four L100 labyrinth sets, now to smash Confessions of the Creator.
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*Makes it to floor 98 of PotD*
Wait, no plot scenes? ... oh crap.
*withdraws to make sure*
*goes to Heim*
*Cutscene: Coda Episode II begins*
...
*slits wrist*
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????????????????
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I have the restart Palace of the Dead/Hell's Gate from scratch to get Warren and continue this godforsaken postgame quest.
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Disgaea 4 - There are damage projections.
Mind status: blown
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I have the restart Palace of the Dead/Hell's Gate from scratch to get Warren and continue this godforsaken postgame quest.
TO aftergame sounds like the spawn of suffering and disgust.
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The World tarot system is pretty cool, letting you go back to various points in the game and make a different choice. There are some annoying quirks with the implementation, mostly when you get to chapter 4, but on the whole it's much more convenient than NG+ would be for a branching path game. You don't have to redo all of C1 and C2 to go from Chaos route to Netural for instance, just the last two fights in C2 Chaos.
It's just Coda episode 2 that is soulsuckingly tedious, since it forces you down a dungeon that's clearly designed exclusively for those Japanese gamers who want infinite grind sinks.
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and yer reward? Two brand new level 1 characters!
WooooT!
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Been replaying DDS2 so that I can review it for TTA. It's.. surprisingly easier than I remembered, actually. It's amazing what prior knowledge does to this game. Earth spells are the most broken fucking thing ever - I'm currently in the Power Plant, and pretty much everything is just falling apart against it, even the few enemies here that aren't weak to it. It's a shame the boss I'm on immunes it, because I'm kinda struggling on that laser gate. >.> It doesn't help that I haven't been using Roland this time round, so I'm conveniently using everyone that the right gun can hit weakness on, and the left gun's Barrage is the most disgusting thing ever. Potentially 130 damage to an average 120 PCHP? Oh okay then.
But yeah, really enjoying this on a re-run. The gameplay is interesting - randoms have that right level of challenge and variety that makes them tolerable (at least, up until the Power Plant - fuck Alilats) while not being a dull grind - and I'm loving the plot. I'd totally forgotten about the Tribvhana stuff, for example, and that third fight against them is an absolutely amazing scene.
I never really noticed just how bad some of the graphics and animation could be until now, though. Some of the facial expressions are really odd, and attack animations look really awkward in some places - Argilla's is the best example, in that she attacks, then just stands facing the floor for a short moment until the enemy actually seems to get hit by it.
But yeah, on the whole, I'd forgotten how good this game was. <3
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The horror of Argilla's breasts takes some time to creep in.
Bera is not a god. The real god who created the IU world is Yuno.
But Yuno got fed up wuth humanity and want to leave this behind, and he let the strongest human back then to take his post, who is Bera.
But Bera found himself got cheated. Instead of having sovereignty over human, he got locked up in the moon and force to be human's man servant for eternity.
The result is what we see in game, he tries to destroy the moon and replace human that were created by Yuno with his own creation.
I.Queen supposedly has a role in this too. But they cut her off as they couldn't find a place to fit her in.
Huh, interesting! I knew they cut a lot from this game.
Yuno isn't in the final version, the final boss just cryptically and casually mentions "i got uber power from her". Since his huge castle gave Seraphic Gate vibes I just assumed he was talking about I. Queen.
They still technically do call him a god though (and you get the deicide achievement from beating him) I guess it got to him.
Radiant Historia: beat the hell spider. I liked using Aht's traps against bosses :(
Lvl 32 Stocke, 28 Marco and 26 Spoiler. That seemed like an awful party for that boss. That MT attack kills Spoiler and badly injures everyone else.
Strategy: Spoiler lowers the boss' attack and raises Stocke's, trans turns to marco who Area Heals twice when the boss uses MT (which is all the time), then everybody trans turns to Stocke who spams Power Wave when given the chance.
Dungeon Siege 3: Really small game for Obsidian. It's short, graphics suck, story is mundane...
Great gameplay makes for one of the best couch co-op games on the 360 but I doubt it's a great singleplayer game. Fine by me really.
It controls like a standard hack and slash ARPG, but: There are no items of any kind and no healing spells (only health regen spells) Upon their death, enemies sometimes give either health or mana restoring orbs, but that's it. Using normal attacks raise MP by a huge amount. Characters have two stances, like shield+sword and 2Hsword, each with their unique spells. You can upgrade skills in different ways, etc...
It sounds great and the execution is not bad at all. There are a lot of canon fodder enemies to ensure that you don't feel challenged too much. (on normal at least) I went with the pyro girl.
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This time on Record of Agarest War Zero. Lose, deceit, and learning!
Last time I got rocked by a boss rush. Yay. This time I'll be rocked by a single boss! Because there's only five battles between the last one and the next. And the boss is... the REVENGE BROTHER who now has POWER! Power enough to kick my ass pretty badly. GAME OVER 2 goooo! Alright, that wasn't even close, so I go and beef myself up a bit. New sword for Eugene, giving Alice a group heal spell and using a bit of Part Points to increase stats a bit. Attempt 2 goes, well almost good! To the point where I actually had everyone alive at the end. Yay! After battle rewards show me that getting level 25 gets me the next Tier of Limit Break things. Which for nearly double the cost in AP and straight double the cost in SP are there! I've only seen two at this point, and they're probably not worth it.
After this we get some plot discussing how attempting to bargain with dark forces to save your own hide is a fantasy staple. Or it's played straight whatever.
To the next ADVENTURE! Where we learn that Sayane's bad sense of direction comes from her being ambidextrous. Because it's not sprite mirroring at all. And on that tangent, the graphics for this game are so schizophrenic. The field graphics are PS2-quality, sprites the same, but the character portraits during talking segments have that simulated breathing effect which gives me a headache.
And to adventure! Where I learn that the first boss in that rush has already become a normal enemy. Giggity. Wait, gigity is reserved for the Devil Tentacle enemy. So, giggity there! It's a kraken anyway. At this point the game is finally breaking even with Enhance Points, instead of taking a dozen battles to upgrade the smallest thing, it now takes only two to upgrade something middling! So, I clear up this dungeon, but by that time it was tv time, so I checked to see if the final event was a boss fight or just a normal event. It's a boss fight. Again the boss has more HP then everyone on my team combined and frankly almost more then my damage record. Plus there's high-HP minions. This'll be fun.
Oh right, there's also two of them at once. FUN! IT"LL BE FILLED WITH FAMILY FUN!
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Disgaea 4 - There are damage projections.
Mind status: blown
What?? You played D4 and the first thing you talkee about is NOT sardines? Blasphemy! Have you no respect to his higness!?
Huh, interesting! I knew they cut a lot from this game.
Yuno isn't in the final version, the final boss just cryptically and casually mentions "i got uber power from her". Since his huge castle gave Seraphic Gate vibes I just assumed he was talking about I. Queen.
They still technically do call him a god though (and you get the deicide achievement from beating him) I guess it got to him.
Well, you are not wrong to guess on I.Queen. She supposedly participated in the mass. Just her related plot got cut even mroe than Yuno did.
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So I decided to start a Four Job Fiesta playthrough of Wild Arms XF, inspired obviously by the FF5 thing. This is possibly a bad idea because
(a) XF more often expects you to use certain jobs to overcome obstacles, and
(b) XF is much harder.
But I've never turned down a crazy challenge before! So yeah, I can only use one job from each of the four unlock points. I'm also only using plot PCs this playthrough because I leaned so heavilly on generics last time. I decided TONY counts as legal to fill a slot. Because Tony is awesome.
Anyway, as my first job, I got Fantastica. No damage for me!
1-1 (road): Trivial.
1-2 (gatehouse): Formation Arts let me kill the boss. Fantasticas are actually really good at these (1.1x power before defence due to their L5 ability, 1.5x damage after defence due to their armour).
1-3 (Poliasha) [1 reset]: I try to fight this fairly and get annihilated, no shock. So I actually make use of Object Attack and run away exactly like you're supposed to.
1-4-A (prison stealth): Not much to say here.
1-4-B (prison rescue) [5 resets]: After trying and trying to win this with just Fantastica I eventually give up. Not reasonably doable with no way to blitz and no way to heal the villagers. I allow myself to use Dandelion Shot and things get easy, Rob Turn Slow Down Rob Turn Rob Turn on the boss.
1-5 (jelly blobs): I let myself use Elementalist so that this doesn't take years.
1-6 (Samille and El Jackson) [1 reset]: As above, since I want some sort of ranged attack for the cliff. I still lose once due to making an error and no revival and El Jackson being a big jerk. TONY is awesome here.
1-7-A (collapsing shrine): Pretty easy, go up the side with the Elementalists because they die quickly to bell physicals/formation arts.
1-7-B (Levin rescue) [5 resets]: Again, I don't think this is doable with just Fantastica. It's almost impossible for Levin to win with just four berries and mediocre damage. Maybe if I'd bought a lot of gems, but I'd saved between the last fight and this and couldn't shop. Eventually I give up and let myself use Elementalist.
1-8 (Magnus) [1 reset]: Careful, careful. Using nectars lets me not get destroyed by the boss but I still have to be careful since he hits pretty hard even to near-full VP.
At this point, I get my second tier of jobs! Obviously at this point I badly need more damage, so maybe I'll get Sentinel which provides it! Or Sacred Slayer and its amazing healing/utility! Or maybe Geomancer and its decent attack/durability! Nope. Excavator. I am getting trolled. :( I can haz mobility!
1-9-A (detector): Well at least I can do this map without cheating! Yay Excavator!
1-9-B (Mathis) [1 reset]: So. While I rag on excavator some, it does have one neat trick, Switch. Mathis is borderline indestructable due to 550 res and Hard status. However, Fantastica's Feeble Mind can drop his MP to, then Switch can kill him by switching his HP and MP. Yay! One reset as I get blitzed during setup by his speed.
1-10 (Rupert): Okay, last playthrough I mocked the hell out of this battle. It got back at me this time and I almost lost. I can kinda see why it's easy; if you don't hire generics you only have 3 PCs! Anyway, some strategy errors reduces me to soloing the last two enemies with Clarissa. Slow Down + Feeble Mind + Switch kills Rupert, who has no skillset for this fight.
1-11 (puzzles) [2 resets]: Excavator's a good choice for the puzzles anyway, though I do screw up and lose once. Against the fairylights at the end, I die once because they're so fast and my offence/durability is poor, especially split up. Play it more carefully not letting myself be swarmed and it's fine.
1-12 (paigeols): Rush, Slow Down, Feeble Mind to take out each paigeol one at a time, then Switch to kill them through their godly defences.
1-13 (rhinos): Combination Arts! Yay! Suddenly slingshots (excavator weapons) become useful due to being able to activate CAs at 5 range. Game-changer! Not too much to say about this battle, other than I surround and protect anyone who gets petrified, since I have no way to heal it, all my ranged options mean the gremalkins aren't too scary.
1-14 (town defence) [4 resets]: Well. Not only does this battle repeatedly kill me, but it takes a long time to do so as I'm able to slow the enemies somewhat but never totally stop them. Eventually I give up and use Elementalist, my usual bailout class! This gives me the offence I need to win. Though I still get one last reset. Slow Down really helps with buying time to kill the hateful Geomancers, good position helps blocks berserkers, Rush helps me get in position while doing useful things.
1-15 (zombie invasion) [1 reset]: Brutally long fight, I pack nectars for the first time since 1-8. The first few enemies get killed by Slow Down then combination arts, and are easy enough to take out one or two at a time, healing as necessary. Then comes the swarm of nine. On the winning run I camp on the cliff and systematically nuke the MP of the elementalists (the sentinels can't climb up), then kill them with Switch and take out the sentinels with slingshot combination arts. Highlight of the fight was using Switch on my own PCs to regain MP after I'd neutralised all HP damage threats.
1-16 (Black ARMs) [1 reset]: Tricky fight to control. Stronach can be baited into attacking PCs pretty easily but most of his men prefer to go after townsfolk who die in 3-4 hits. Like the more infamous prison fight there's a particularly frail old man and a sentinel who likes to go after him, so slowing her down is key. Still, lots of fronts to control, and I do almost lose until I realise I can heal each townperson once with Switch! Pretty awesome. It's not perfect due to 3 range but Rush does help. Anyway, close fight but it means chapter 1 is done!
***
I also started Blue Dragon. Not much to say so far, still early. Except that Shu is poised to break records for stupid RPG mains and that's not something I say lightly.
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When Tai was playing Blue Dragon and chatting with me about it, he felt the need to say "Shu shut up" so often he just started abbreviating it to SSU. Also MSU for Maromaru shut up, but not quite as often. So...you're probably not far off there. Have fun!
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Grief Syndrome: Because I am a fangirl.
A fun little game (very short) that mostly caters to fans of Madoka by having good sprites and attack animations. Spoilers of bosses/character combat styles abound obviously. The initial runthrough is rather trivial to be honest. You have lots of lives to lose to enemies, and a little experimentation yields some nasty character stategies.
Homura: Range is always good. Ranged explosive damage is even better. Being able to make a virtual walking wall of booming death is even better still! Yeah once you get the jump-cancelling thing it's just a matter of mashing buttons and watching the advancing wall of fire eat up anything and everything in the way. And for added benefit the arcing attack starts off behind her and so offers her some protection from backstabs. Time stop is a great special attack for either offense or defense. Freeze time, move out of a tight spot while laying down a barrage, laugh at enemy attempts to do harm. As the Lap # gets higher and the specials can be used more often, a whole wave of durable enemies can be nixed without ever risking harm. Nasty. She has the lowest number of lives, but who cares? On the higher laps she is probably the best PC. Owning Elly (one of the hardest bosses) for free is just icing.
Kyouko: Fun fun fun. The variety of chainable melee attacks combined with amazing damage means she can dance around the screen slaughtering enemies in rapid succession. Her special skill sucks quite horribly, although it can be moderately useful in a swarm situation on account of laying down a temporary shield so she can focus on one half of the wave. Downs aerial enemies with stupid ease via the downer slice special, and can control enemies that she doesn't just kill by her forward special slam. Surprisingly poor on high level runs due to needing to get up close and personal with increasingly OHKO-happy and durable enemies.
Madoka: Is kind of boring to play but stupid powerful. Her damage with charged shots clears normal enemy swarms with trivial ease, even on higher level runs. Her special is amazing at dealing damage to a small area around her for a short period of time, and deals TREMENDOUS damage to big bosses (which is 4/6). Good number of lives so she can take hits, but she really shouldn't be since she is a ranged fighter and doesn't have to risk getting close. Even if she does, her special can lock up enemies nearby her while giving her plenty of time to charge one of her arrows, which has the added bonus of flinging every single enemy it pierces all the way across the screen. Just... fairly uber. Only real weakness compared to Homura is dealing with Elly, I think. It's a small boss and the massive number of attacks from every direction that can't be dealt with via arrow spam makes it difficult.
Mami: TIRO FINALE. I guess she has other moves, but they suck and do crap damage, serving only to either get you through randoms or reposition enemies for TIRO FINALE. I think her best normal attack is one that blasts enemies away from her. Her best non-special damage is the charge attack that basically acts as Homura's regular instant-activation attack. The special itself is a little cumbersome and only to be used once enemies are in position. This can be a problem on the higher levels as it typically involves a lot of moving around close to enemies so she can blast them into corners for finale'ing.
Sayaka: Lots and lots of lives. Girl almost never dies, which I suppose fits canon pretty well. She is uber-short range and fairly fast in attacking. Not as good as Kyouko in that regard however, and the range is MUCH worse. She works quite well early on when her massive durability and rapid attacks can let her tear through enemies, but once they start getting durability and damage on higher level runs she is fairly screwed. She has to charge enemies to do damage, and they tend to have longer range than her with pretty much everything. If you're talking runs where enemies just kill you outright in a hit, then that massive number of lives gets eaten up pretty fast by swarms of enemies.
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I've wanted Marumaru to shut up more times than Shu and I only got about 5 minutes past where Marumaru shows up! So...just wait until you see him.
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So today I beat Mountain of Faith Extra, and then beat UFO Normal. Only took 3 and a half years of playin' Touhou to do it.
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Hahahahaha, christ the bosses are going to be even harder then at first glance. How the ell did they manage that? You'll see. or actually you won't since no one probably cares whoop whoop whoop.
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I've wanted Marumaru to shut up more times than Shu and I only got about 5 minutes past where Marumaru shows up! So...just wait until you see him.
According to Tai, Marumaru does in fact shut up somewhat later, while Shu just gets worse and worse. I'll be interested to see what Elf thinks of the cast come endgame. <_<;
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Hahahahaha :P
Yeah I probably should have warned Tai about Shu before he started playing Blue Dragon. I remember being bothered by Shu too but I must have blocked out quite how bad it was. I only made it as far as Marumaru's village myself before my 360 exploded in self disgust (well no my hard drive/saves from my old 360 were corrupted in the process of trying to transfer everything to another 360 and as a result I lost all my Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata and SO4 saves ... >_>) :P
Epic Battle Fantasy 3-
Saved after the Pyrohydra. For some reason this boss was waaay easier than the Kitten Ruins one. Superior equipment/skill levels and choices perhaps? I had three or four resets because of typical Epic mode enemy hax (like 12'000~ critical damages on a team with no character having that much HPs to start with =() and also because I wasn't prepared/ready when the boss starting summoning random enemies to the fight when two of it's heads went down (though I should have been, game has done this often enough already <_<) Other than that though I went to town with Fright/Cleaver and Kyun/Pulse abuse from Matt and Natalie with L4 Swordbreaker/L5 Darktooth (yaay Pulse counters) equipped vs the light/holy elemental head, then Cleaver and Kyun/Judgement abuse w/th L5 Heaven's Gate/L5 Seraphim equipped vs the dark elemental head. Lance contributed in general and for the fight overall with Ion abuse, Flare/Bind as needed and Unleash abuse on individual heads as required. He was equipped with Deep Blue L5 (yaay counters w/th random Flood abuse~) On the winning fight though between the MT Ion and random Pulse/Flood counters from Natalie the fire elemental head also lost a significant amount of HP while I was in the process of beating up the light and dark ones. Enter Lance's Shockwave for doing solid damage vs two heads at once. Shockwave is a skill that I don't remember using much though I wanted to but kept forgetting to do so. However it was put to good use here. At the end of the fight after the light head was down and the dark one had lost a lot of health I used Shockwave to keep the two remaining heads (dark and fire) within similar HP thresholds. Then once I judged each target's HP was low enough I used Matt's Cleaver to finish them both off at once in style. Yaay!~
Kitten Ruins boss on the other hand had me into double digit resets and I still haven't been able to figure out exactly why. Perhaps it had something to do with the kittens/invisible cat hax ;-) I didn't find Natalie's Thunder based staff in the Ruins until after I'd already finally managed to defeat the boss though. Maybe that would have helped in making it easier if I'd found that staff earlier and not later while backtracking for stuffs :P
I've heard evil things about the final boss so I better be really prepared there too (tempted to use up all the stat boosting items I've been stockpiling/hoarding and also to blow all my cash on a lot of Hamburgers/Pizzas >_>)
(oh and while in the process of getting through/exploring the Volcano dungeon fun times were also had when Natalie did 40'000~ while hitting weakness with a Judgement critical and then shortly afterwards surpassed herself further by doing 80'000~ with the same while fully buffed off her light/holy boosting staff vs a debuffed light/holy weak enemy *dances* This game is fuun times when stuff like this happens >=)~)
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One choice. ONE GODDAMN CHOICE!
Goodbye liver.
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Coconuts and eggs? Why didn't I think of that before.
Fucking hippo dicks are HUGE.
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So I decided to start a Four Job Fiesta playthrough of Wild Arms XF, inspired obviously by the FF5 thing.
Have I mentioned that you are awesome and have given me a new idea to play with in XF? Who cares if its a bad idea?
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(http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/4236/ss0012.png)
FINALLY.
Second run through Palace of the Dead took less time than I thought it would - I went from floor 41 all the way down to 115 on Saturday alone (note that this is ~45 stages, not ~60). All those elemental weapons I'd crafted/accumulated were pretty overpowered, especially the light-elemental ones, so most of the fights were fast and easy. It's just the sheer number of them made things hopelessly dull and monotonous. I also took the time to make sure I got Winged Boots and Sidhe Shoes this time around, since I was aware of how many stages had steep vertical terrain/narrow platforms hanging in the middle of nothing/large fields of mold that bogged movement down to a halt. Incidentally, the exp from this dungeon is amazingly terrible. I started out with a full team of L35 classes. After essentially two runs to the bottom, I ended up with... level 37 classes, and about half of that exp came from the 3-4 plot battles. That's pathetic.
The lone geniunely difficult fight was the final one, floor 115, where I had two resets thanks to the game's infamous guest AI. GODDAMN IT WARREN, YOU ARE A SQUISHY WIZARD! STAY AWAY FROM THE BIG OGRE-LIKE BOSS GUY AND THE DOUBLE-DAGGER WIELDING DOPPLEGANGER AND CAST YOUR SPELLS FROM A DISTANCE!
Only six battles left in Coda, from what I've heard, so I'm pretty close to being done with this game. I might fiddle around some with of the classes I haven't used thus far in random battles, maybe get a few easy-to-get classes/monsters to finish out my class roster (Wicce and Divine Knight are out, though). I got Ji'ygla's Bow from floor 114, so maybe I'll level up to 41 to check out how overpowered the full set is.
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Infinite Undiscovery Hard Mode Solo: Going to the castle in the earlygame.
This is not going to be a strict solo run since I'm trying to get the "Get everything" achievement (this allows me to know the game well so I can handle soloing on the much harder infinite mode later) But it's pretty damn close, I just remove all of my allies' equipment, spells and skills whenever I have to use them.
In the first village I buy ingredients to raise Aya's Cooking Level. (the game uses Item Creation)
Straight away I find a way to get infinite money (get two red berries, one blue berry, make 100% juice, sell and repeat) extremely fast. Just raising IC to a satisfactory level gives me enough money to buy 99 30% healing potions. The game is already broken and I don't even feel like I have done anything. I think I'm going to limit myself to 15 healing items of a kind at a time like I was playing some Tales game because right now the game isn't even trying. Bad Infinite Undiscovery.
I believe that my self imposed challenge will eventually need more letters than high end FFX challenges to be balanced.
Radiata Stories Radiant Historia: Chapter 6 already. Uber plot boss from the beginning of the game (and his blue clone) was a wimp.
I LOVED the "Marco goes crazy and kills everyone" bad ending. Marco? Really? Marco???
Dungeon Siege 3: Lvl 22, in the industrial city. Still a blast to play, but the storyline is really boring for Obsidian. (save for the passive aggressive robots in the industrial city)
My character is now a FF dragoon, and surprisingly this means she actually does a ton of damage!
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Don't fuck with Marco!
Infinite Undiscovery: also playing this, albeit on Easy difficulty because I'm trying to get all the retarded achievements related to situation bonuses. Just hit Disc 2. Story is surprisingly interesting.
The game is easy to break with item creation, except that it's not. You can make fantastic weapons to tear enemies up, but armor is never very good. So you can still die if you get swarmed by a lot of enemies. There are lots of long-ranged and magic enemies teamed up with melee types, which is pretty clever design.
Also Fenrir, get Edward and Eugene to IC 3, then make Smiley Charms for mass profit. Then when they get to level 4, make horseshoes instead. $$$$$$
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Record of Agarest War Zero, or how my knowledge of manipulating transplant lists came in handy.
When we last left off--by we I mean I, by which I mean the royal we--I had just gotten a sneak peek at a dual boss with more combined HP then every boss combined. Combined. They have 40,000 HP combined--so 20,000 each because I'm patronizing you--and their three minions with 2,500 each. Fun. So, my first goal is to go and grind up enough Enhance points to upgrade all my equipment to it's max. Unfortunately there's a weapon that takes more EP to upgrade to level 2 then I get in a fight and it increases from there and I have other things to enhance and bluh. Eventually I upgrade everything but that weapon and go out for a test run against the bosses--after I fuse one of them in the Monster's Guild and see it only has 2,000 HP normal of course. It uh... well, doesn't go well just seems like an understatement. The little minions move faster then Sieghart or Linda so they get the first tunr, and since they combo with the Golems they manage to kill off Sieg before he even gets a turn. But this is a LEARNING experience so it's OK! Revive Sieg go after the minions, get'em nice and low and MISS MISS MISS OHGODNO. They--all of them--have the Willpower abilities that make them have perfect Evade against physicals and magic when at 25% or lower HP. And that means 500 HP, which is more damage then can do in a single hit(most attacks are multi-hit here). Hahahahahahaha, I don't manage to kill even a ONE of them before I get creamed. Oh yeah, they can also heal themselves to full. And it's group healing!
So, after a bit more something, I go for attempt two. I've boosted Sieg's agility enough now that he can go before the minions. I don't actually have him attack though--I'm doing this to boost everyone else's AP. Sieg gets killed again, I kill off two minions and revive him. I kill off another minion, and eventually put my new knowledge to use and have Minmel use her LVL2 Limit Break to don't act/don't move one of the bosses. Because they're actually a normal enemy remember? With one down, I can promptly wipe the floor with the other and win! Yay!.
Now for more glorious plot stuff and.... w-what? Why is it different then the GLORIOUS TRUE END guide? Uhhhhhhh...... no, no I refuse to believe that the very second choice in the game could have ramifications this goddamn far into this. Ughhhhhhhhhh, finish that, and oh-look, the event that's supposed to be before the trainwreck and would have let me fix everything showed up after! FUN FUN! Oh gods and I saved after and.... oh GODS I'M GONNA HAVE TO FIGHT THE BOSS AGAIN TO FIX THIS. Game off, crying and liver failure go. Game on, boss kills me because I screw up my positioning. Take 4, I win--with a better time then before honestly. I create multiple saves to safeguard and... ugh it's the wrong scene again! What why is this screwing up?.... oh, oh god no. The scene I want will only happen with enough points for one girl but because of my second choice I don't have enough of. So I can only get it after the event I don't want yet.
Que an hour of manipulating damn near everything to even myself out with the GLORIOUS TRUE END guide. I have to screw myself out of a bonus dungeon in order to even this out. DEAR GOD why do you hate my liver? it's been ever so kind and pious.
Everything becomes an annoying blur--except fighting the Golem bosses as normal enemies a mere two fights after beating them, and they had more 3x3 square monster back-up. And... oh yeah, the Golem boss was the last guardian of the MacGuffin item, so the first generation is coming to a close. Just one last boss to go. He's after another multi-stage battle and once again he.... well he has more HP then the individual golems but not by much--23,000 for those not-curious. he's also that brother revenge guy. Also he has a Limit Break that doesn't cost SP so he can spam it every turn and it has a huge attack radius and frankly it's no surprise I had more Game Overs to him then every other Game Over combined. Hilariously, when I actually defeated him, I took him out before his minion cover. Because he had been killing my guys so much I had enough Sp to unleash everyone's LVL2 Limit Break at once. Har.
So, with him down, the end of Generation comes I pick Sieg's wifu--Linda in this case because you can check what the offspring gets in town and that pairing was the best. After hilariously stupid things, Sieghart and all three brides are forced to sleep. Wait, what? Gods, I pity the poor fool who was using them because you can cripple yourself so badly for the Second Generation.
Probably why the start of the Second doesn't actually have a Save Point until after a gauntlet of new--not actually tough but losing my best character and another solid one for wankers makes them hard. Speaking of new characters...
Leonis: Is a wanker. He's stuck with daggers and frankly if I hadn't been randomly making things at the blacksmith he'd have sucked more then he does. And this was the best possible choice for him too, since the only other options were dagger&staff but terrible stats, or staff and pure mage. I do not want more mages. His extended area is also crap, while Sieg's could position his entire part with decent balance, Leon can't. And his Limit Breaks are crap too, his first is single target and can only land a crit, his second is the stat-down but getting to it is a pain since lol 100 SP. Except I saw it twice because everyone was dying so hard because he and Niel suck.
Niel: Eugene's son, somehow. Uses guns, somehow. Summons those wooden training dummies for his second limit break, somehow. Is also a wanker.
So, like I subtly eluded to the Second Generation leads off with a battle and Leonis is the perfect age for JPRG fightin and Captainin it seems as he now leads Sieg's old unit into battle. Joining him is Alice--who as an elf hasn't aged--Cal-Vina who also hasn't aged and why hasn't he ugh I thought you'd be less lazy then this game. Oh well, oh hey new face and ABUH? Eugene actually aged? And he's still a Lieutenant for some reason. Ah, that's right, Cal-Vina actually isn't human... No one else has aged either so... something.
So with great difficulty I beat the first two fights and set off to spend my huge amounts of consumables upgrading things because I do have a lot. Then I don't. I also blow 1/3 of my party points to boost Leon because he's a STR-less wanker. Dodgey, but STR-less.
So after I used so to start another paragraph, actually before that, before all of them, I went and started the next even and got the first of the Second Generaction harem-ettes. Woo-hoo? Apparently she was actually mentioned--but not seen--in the first generation as her father wanted her to marry Eugene. This won't be awkward at all!
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DX3- Well, I would have liked if the ending you got was more involved in its selection than a last-minute decision, but DX1 was that way too. Other than that, pretty great in how they tie a lot of innocuous things back to the final reveals. World building was great, though I felt some of the character building was a touch lacking (namely Megan). Not that big of a deal, as the events are, after all, far bigger than any individual person.
Some of the cuts that had to be made for disc space and time were sorely missed (I can see, from the size of Detroit and Hengsha, why the Upper Hengsha and Montreal hubs were cut, though I curse consoles for necessitating it). All in all, though, the game did a great job of drawing me in and getting me involved. Looking forward to a new Thief on this engine.
All in all, an awesome game you should play if you have taste.
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XF Fiesta playthrough log (Fantastica/Excavator), first half of chapter 2.
I synth a bunch of +1 equips with my new item scope, mostly MAG-boosting slingshots, ATK-boosting bells, and EVA-boosting badges.
2-1 (kappa): Strong enemies here, but I take them on in small numbers at a time so they're manageable. Long fight so Nectars are a must. Berserkers come forward and die. Tony enters the swamp to bait the grapplers, who are pretty tough but also die. Then I move everyone forward to the island to start dealing with the main force, luring a few then picking them off with slow down and then combination arts. A bit tricky, but mostly fine once the striders and grapplers are dead.
2-2 (sentinel switches): I allowed myself to use sentinel here for fairly obvious reasons. Two sentinels and Tony fairy the three excavator/fantastica types upwards, who proceed to kill everything with combination arts and healing items, except for Sharp who bites it to good ol' Feeble Mind + Switch. The sentinels are tanky enough to take down the reinforcements without too much difficulty, though Devastate is certainly potentially scary.
2-3 (meowsery): I'm a bit careless here and lose a few PCs, but overall, not too bad, the usual combination art approach generally works, and in fact isn't interfered with much by misery!
I get my third job, which is Berserker. On the one hand, YAY DAMAGE. Great synergy with Rush, too. On the other hand, synergy is otherwise kinda bad, since they're poor at both formation arts (due to spears only being able to activate the three-man variety) and combination arts (due to having issues get in position). And they don't have much damage on rough terrain until Valiant. We'll see.
2-4 (gate of hell) [3 resets]: Everyone knows this is the hardest map in the game, right? I don't deploy Tony, he's just a liability. Clarissa/Ragnar/Felius as berserkers, Excavator Labby, Fantastica Levin. The first two sentinels are easy enough to drop into critical. Slow Down on EVERYONE, then sneak past, watching out for the possibility of Heavy Strike off the bridge (which happens once). Elementalists hit very hard. Never be in range of both of them. Feeble Mind to get them under control, after Slow Down of course. Rush helps a lot for a variety of things (Slow, Feeble, and the berserker charge moves to get in position). Once everyone is behind all the enemies, drop an elementalist into critical, Rush + Slow Down the reinforcements while escaping. In the end not too bad but a long battle where strategy needs to be executed pretty much perfectly.
2-5 (sentinels) [1 reset]: My offence is low so I decide it might be worth it to turn on the gravity pulsar. This is stupid. I'm never doing it again. It quardruples everyone's weight, but the enemies have ludicrous VP (500ish) so it hurts you more than it does them despite their heavy armour. I could have won anyway but only after wasting lots of valuable items (potion berries and revive fruits both still cost a notable amount). I do the battle again smartly, mostly involving combination arts (majority of team in excavator for those slingshots!) and it's fairly easy.
2-6 (Asgard): Fantastica = single best class to have for this fight. Slow Down is the second best skill you can have here. Feeble Mind is the best. Apply them, and laugh.
2-7 (Rupert 2): First person who tries to argue this is Rupert 3 due to the prologue counting gets punched in the mouth. Anyway, SLINGSHOTS dominate here again! The enemies prove somewhat troubling and I do lose a couple PCs, but yeah, 5-range post-movement attacks kill off all the generators before the enemies can do too much that's bad.
2-8 (plot fight): Is a plot fight.
2-9 (Elensia escape run): Haha, three best classes possible for this map probably! It'd be interesting to see how some other combinations handle it. Berserker mobility is what it is, Excavator is #2, Fantastica is a bit slower (Levin is mine so that he can keep up some) but Rush is wonderful with Berserkers. Charging Thrust from 8 range 2HKOs all the sentinels at the end, so I'm able to rout the enemy with my three rushed Berserkers.
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Finished Coda episodes 3 and 4 today in Tactics Ogre. The last battle in episode 4 was pretty fun, a slugfest against all 8 Dark Knight Commanders + a bunch of Templar Knights, with plenty of dialogue from special characters. It's a shame they locked it away behind a forced PotD run in Coda 2. Didn't get much in terms of loot besides a novelty Supple Whip, but I'm basically done with the game so it doesn't matter.
Lord Denam managed to exceed 999 attack per hand at some point around L38, despite "only" wielding Brilliant Daggers. He has less dex than Vyce and Ninja Hobyrim and much weaker weapons than the latter, so I'm not sure what's going on; maybe Lord just has a hax attack stat multiplier somewhere.
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Don't fuck with Marco!
Infinite Undiscovery: also playing this, albeit on Easy difficulty because I'm trying to get all the retarded achievements related to situation bonuses. Just hit Disc 2. Story is surprisingly interesting.
The game is easy to break with item creation, except that it's not. You can make fantastic weapons to tear enemies up, but armor is never very good. So you can still die if you get swarmed by a lot of enemies. There are lots of long-ranged and magic enemies teamed up with melee types, which is pretty clever design.
Also Fenrir, get Edward and Eugene to IC 3, then make Smiley Charms for mass profit. Then when they get to level 4, make horseshoes instead. $$$$$$
Don't worry, the worst achievements related to situation bonuses are on disc 1.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say that I'm also playing without online vouchers. I love them and all, but they make IC too easy!
Smiley charms are still an option now. -> :)
Anyway, just got Gustav, level 18. The game is still pretty easy so far, aside from those monsters who have uber HP and don't flinch. (ogres, bears...) I did get a few game overs.
The compulsive achievement is a nightmare, but I'm not giving up so far. We'll see how this goes... There are a lot of games I've played where I've gotten every achievement but the most retarded. (Nier, Last Remnant, Shadow Complex...)
Devil May Cry 4: Mission 17.
I mostly suck with Dante but he seems to have ridiculous attack power. Game overs are a thing of the past. I'd still like to have Nero more.
Like in DMC1, Dante's weapons get progressively both cooler and less practical to use. I'm sticking with the sword and the shotgun. I believe this is the first piece of fiction I've ever seen that starts with serious plot and ends up with comedy. This is weird.
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But if anyone was going to do that, would it not be Devil May Cry?
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It is good to see that Fudo is enjoying himself in the dark depth. Soppy, I must say this is better than I have expected.
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It's quickly becoming one of the only games in town. The population boom is to be expected.
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Fudo needs to write more things on these forums because they are glorious to read. :)
Oh yeah, more DDS2 happened. Well, not much more because, when I last posted, I was against the last machine gun gate thing. I had to grind a little to learn Zionga/Bolt Flare, but that completely trivialised that boss, and the next fight was.. hilariously easy, despite nobody having any fire spells whatsoever. >.> (Apparently, hitting the normal Nagas for weakness with Terazi and then spamming damage against the Raja Naga is enough to beat him. Oh, and having status healing/revival on Cielo.)
But yeah, after that, EGG Mk 2 comes, and oh gods this dungeon whyyyyyy. I'm struggling to kill half the randoms, since this is where DDS2 decides that enemies don't need normal weaknesses any more, they can be weak to things like Death or Guns. So I struggle to kill Hraesvelgrs and Baphomets and have to grind for a while anyway because Argilla was the only one who had electric skills before this dungeon. Sera is now close to learning Bolt Flare/Zionga, but does have Mazio. So, naturally, I try going against Vritra.
Turn 1, he criticals and nearly wipes my party. Urk. Full-heal and throw out a couple of attacks. Turn 2, he Gelid Torrents into a double freeze into mass critical into game over. Siiiiigh.
Yeah, I need to grind for Mazionga at the very least. Preferably more than just that. That said, I recently got both Ghost Trick and Vandal Hearts as an early birthday present, so might be putting DDS2 on hold yet again.
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It is good to see that Fudo is enjoying himself in the dark depth. Soppy, I must say this is better than I have expected.
There's no place for IF/Compile Heart to go but up! Honestly though Agarest 2 and Neptune mkII don't look too bad? Niu, I need your professional opinion here.
Xenoblade - So the stretch of Valak Mountain, Sword Valley, and Mechon Fortress is a welcome change from dungeon, 100 sidequests, dungeon to dungeon, dungeon, dungeon. PLOTZ got more epic though. Is the Pretty White Hair Guy™ going go all ToV Duke on me? Dickson goes from random old man to old man that knows everything but won't tell you shit? Is there potential for a love triangle with sexy robot girl and bird princess?
Can't really bother to care anymore cause the next MYSTERY town just dumped me another 100 quests I have to do because I need them for the aftergame. Naked Dunban no longer solos things and with every heavy armor upgrade Reyn looks more and more ridiculous. Going to wait for an extensive FAQ.
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A New Beginning - Played
Reasonably entertaining. Early on is a bit gratingly anti-nuclear, but loosens up on that a bit once there are characters available to villainise. I liked the comic-style cutscenes, but they had a tendency to desynch.
The puzzle with the red & yellow plugs broke on me, which was annoying. Two of the counters ended up counting one more than they were supposed to, so it wasn't possible to get to the desired setup. Conveniently, this was one of the puzzles which they added a skip button to. Hm. Didn't ever need to use the skip button on any other puzzles.
The IKEA Antenna puzzle. The last components for the antenna are stunningly inane. Game, it does not improve matters for you to call this out yourself a number of times.
Irritatingly, the game started crashing close to the end. Generally I could progress past whereever it had crashed after bringing it back up, and thankfully it autosaves reasonably often for the continue function, but there was one point where it kept crashing over and over. Fortunately there was something else I could do at that point, so I did that instead, and after having done so the initial action I had been trying to take no longer caused a crash.
Game decided to throw back to Fate Of Atlantis at one point and stopped displaying Bent's sprite. I put up with it until the following chapter, and then I killed the game and brought it back up, whereupon happily the sprite came back. Even if it hadn't come back there were at least no doorway mazes to deal with anyway.
Not very impressed with the way the game handles Salvador's actions. In Oslo he probably kills Dr. Braun, given he has the guy's hair and there is blood on the floor where he did whatever it was he did, yet you're allowed to just leave to go fetch Bent despite Salvador being ludicrously obviously not Dr. Braun and having been accosted by security just before. Then near the ending of the game he kills a bunch of people in the power plant, but when he and Fay die shortly afterwards Bent is all just 'TWO PEOPLE JUST DIED HERE' with Salvador getting off scott-free (in a manner of speaking) again.
I particularly like how this event is used as evidence that nuclear power plants are dangerous. Because one guy kills a bunch of people there and then sabotages it to melt down, and a woman sacrifices herself and him to prevent this, nuclear plants are dangerous. Certainly doing a good job at conveying your message there game. Maybe evidence that the emergency flood controls were put in the STUPIDEST POSITION EVER.
I could go on for a while about dumb things that happened, so I will change tack and talk about how the twist effectively invalidates the events of most of the first half of the game and has left me unsure as to what the reality of the situation is. I would really need to play that part again, but I have no intention to at the moment. Oh well.
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It is good to see that Fudo is enjoying himself in the dark depth. Soppy, I must say this is better than I have expected.
I'd say enjoy wasn't the right word but it's not like else much fits with how much time I've spent on this game.
Fudo needs to write more things on these forums because they are glorious to read. :)
Now I'll write for two egos!
There's no place for IF/Compile Heart to go but up! Honestly though Agarest 2 and Neptune mkII don't look too bad? Niu, I need your professional opinion here.
Up is certainly a direction they wanted something to go.
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It is good to see that Fudo is enjoying himself in the dark depth. Soppy, I must say this is better than I have expected.
There's no place for IF/Compile Heart to go but up! Honestly though Agarest 2 and Neptune mkII don't look too bad? Niu, I need your professional opinion here.
Xenoblade - So the stretch of Valak Mountain, Sword Valley, and Mechon Fortress is a welcome change from dungeon, 100 sidequests, dungeon to dungeon, dungeon, dungeon. PLOTZ got more epic though. Is the Pretty White Hair Guy™ going go all ToV Duke on me? Dickson goes from random old man to old man that knows everything but won't tell you shit? Is there potential for a love triangle with sexy robot girl and bird princess?
Agarest 2? Well, if you can tank the X-Edge, Agarest 1 and the zero. Then Agarest 2 should make no difference to you. It really is just the same formula over and over again. of course, to a loyal Netherworld minion, make no difference equates to a purchase without a second thought.
As for Neptune. Ignore it. It is also the same formula, but it actually has something outside the typical Netehrworld bad quality. But you can't really appreciate it unless you follow Japanese game blogs, 2ch, and other industry news closely. IF goes all out on their trolling act in this game, and the personified game blogs are just so wrong.... just you'll probably not get it.
Also, spare the white hair pretty boy, he stays on your side. But that should also tell you who is not.
It is good to see that Fudo is enjoying himself in the dark depth. Soppy, I must say this is better than I have expected.
I'd say enjoy wasn't the right word but it's not like else much fits with how much time I've spent on this game.
The very response I am waiting for. If you are putting up with the Netherworld even you are not enjoying it. It means that the world below has finally got your soul.
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Epic Battle Fantasy 3 - Epic Mode - Final boss cleared. The fight wasn't too bad. I didn't prepare as much as I could have done, didn't bother with buying extra Pizzas and stat boosting afterall, some equipment wasn't maxed, etc. So there were a few resets until I picked up a feel for the battle but yeah nothing too bad, nothing like the hard time the Kitten Ruins boss gave me. The final boss fight became a lot easier to control when I decided abusing Auto Life, particularly for Nat but on other characters too when needed/possible was better than prioritising Regen and trying to keep everybody fully buffed like usual. Regen served it's purpose for most of the game but yeah Auto Life was better here. I did get Regen/buffs up when I could but yeah for the most part focused on getting/keeping the Auto Lifes up this time. Otherwise Nat abused Kyun when it came up which was five or so times over the course of the full fight. Kyun is so excellent/OP, I love that skill. MVP is Natz with it for sure ;-) Nat also used Healmore when/as needed too. Yeah she didn't really get to go on the offensive in this fight. Sad panda. Matt mainly focused on using Power Metal near every round for crowd control and the back up healing, exploiting Cleaver for mass critical damage on the boss proper when Kyun buffs/debuffs were up. Lance mainly served as main offence and general item boy when needed, abusing Tera Drill when possible (i.e when I judged it safe to hold off using Dispel for a while, allowing the target to keep it's buffs up for a bit) Unload after Kyun, MP restore items, Double Shot, Pizzas (ended up with all three of my Pizzas used up by the end of the fight, funny thing is I didn't use any Hamburgers >_>) etc. His counters were nice to have again too, was good to see them when they showed up (he really helped me out with certain fights over the course of the game thanks to those) =)
(also had Matt/Natalie use Nettle/Toxic to stick/restick Poison over the fight as needed as well, while Poison wasn't quite as OP vs the final as it was against some other enemies/bosses it still helped~)
Set ups -
Matt
*L30/All skills maxed
Blizzard L4/Dragon Killer L5
Mage Hat L5 (resist ID aww yeah)
Genji Armor L5
(Resistances - 50% ice/50% water (50% thunder/50% stun w/th Dragon Killer) , 50% earth, 50% syphon/silence, 50% death
Natalie
*L30 All skills/maxed
Nimbus L5
Cat Ears L5 (resist ID aww yeah)
Pope Dress L5
(Resistances - 50% fire, 50% ice, 50% water, 50% dark, 50% holy, 100% doom, 100% stun, 50% death)
Lance-
L30 All skills/maxed
Deep Blue L5
Officer Hat L5
Officer Coat L5
(Resistances - 30% fire, 30% thunder, 50% water, 80% dark )
Fun times (I tried other stuffs equip wise at first like the Ninja Cloak/Red Jacket for Matt but as mentioned before not everything was maxed, also since some of the resets were down to mass ID hax from the final I decided to go with Mage's Hat/Cat Ears for headgear at the expense of giving up full dark/holy protection from Nat's shiny Pope Hat*)~
Edit: Thanks muchly again to those who helped me out through this one.
Currently just fiddling around with my old file. After defeating the final/ending get I reloaded and set out to get the Slayer/100'000~ Damage trophy. Picked up this one vs a dark weak enemy at the Kitten Ruins by having Matt use Fear to lower it's magic defence, then buffing Natalie's magic attack and having her abuse L5 Black Hole off L5 Obsidian vs the fully debuffed dark weak enemy =D Result 243'724 damage! Then I decided to do it again even although I already picked up the medal from that result because hey that was fun and I liked that shiiiny damage~ Result 380'641 critical damage !!
Afterwards went to the shop and worked on maxing up a whole bunch more of equips with the result I went from 800'000 Gold to less than 80'000 =( Still have quite a bit of equipment left to max too~
Oh for anyone else who has done this, if I decide to do a new game+ is there any penalty for carrying everything over? I'll still be able to raid all the chests/do all the quests again and get more stat boosting items/etc? =)
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XF Fiesta playthrough log (Fantastica/Excavator/Berserker), second half of chapter 2.
2-10-A (enter the Zortroa): Generally pretty easy fight that mostly serves to let you know how the Zortroa operate. Back to 3 excavators / 1 of the other classes / Tony. Slingshot combination arts for everyone.
2-10-B (Chelle and King Tarrasque III) [1 reset]: "Nobody can die" makes this a bit tougher than it would be otherwise, the KING criticals Tony at a point I don't expect and death ensues. Otherwise, not much to say about it. The king is immune to Switch (as is Chelle) and has regen, so he's pesky to kill with his defences, but Slow Down and combination arts serve everyone well enough. Mostly a matter of watching out for enemy attack ranges, and with slingshots, this is easy enough to do.
Lefas Corner, buy +2 equipment (same stuff as always: ATK-boosting spears and bells, MAG-boosting slingshots, EVA-boosting badges).
2-11 (Fairylight swarm): Tricky one, but not one that kills me, though it certainly comes close and drains a few key items out of me. Close quarters and the fairylights are very fast even before Quicken, so I get beaten around a lot. Follow Around lowers MAG but luckilly for me they mostly use it on the wrong people, and even if they hit the right it's not as bad as it could be because I only need it for whoever finishes the combination art.
2-12-A (desert): The Martial Guard here has pretty decent stats and comes at you in three waves; the second provides the most test. The map is flat so Berserker gets to shine more than in previous maps, though it's not perfect because a few of the enemies are quite evasive. Fortunately, not a very long fight which limits some of its challenge.
2-12-B (pale ogres): Kite, kite, kite! Pale Ogres have monstrous physicals, but only 3 move. I have 5 range with slingshots, so abuse can happen. Sleep is dangerous, but the enemies don't use it quite as intelligently as they can and I get a bit lucky with it. The Zortroa here are ineffective due to hanging back. Traps... I can't do much about (don't quite remember where most of them are) but they're not too bad; Shut Out is an annoyance as is cHP/2 damage (rounded down). The gella trap is the most annoying since it robs me of about 1500 gella, but not too big a deal.
2-13 (damnations): lol this map. I guess it is Edna's idea of a clever trap, but lol. Possibly the easiest "real" fight in the game, I take no damage. Badly outranging the enemies is just overkill.
2-14 (paigeols): More clever Edna traps. I guess this map is less terrible than the last (enemies have ranged magic damage!) but still. One of the paigeols does reach a leypoint but he doesn't have the HP to sustain much of a magical beating.
2-15 (Strahl Gewehr puzzle): Second and final "stall point" of the chapter as it absolutely, 100% forces Dandelion Shot. See regular playthroughs.
2-16-A (Clarissa and Alexia): So Alexia is apparently bad when you ban all her sexy Royal Fencer stuff. It makes sense, these are supposed to make up for her late jointime. The archers at the start still aren't too bad (I mainly use formation arts). Mages are a bit more tricky but some range-watching keeps the worst under control. And Slow Down, of course.
2-16-B (rescue): Certainly the harder map of the two, I eat through several revive fruits here and this map would be quite monstrous for this challenge if it included a loss condition of Alexia/Clarissa's death (which it probably should, to boot!). Ultimately despite my efforts both do die from the ambush (Clarissa almost makes it) but I'm sure I could have prevented this. Otherwise, the battle is a very long slog, so I'm sure to bring Nectars. Some hairy moments and as mentioned, some revival definitely gets played, but the combined force of slow down, Switch to help with taking out the High Cavaliers, and the usual combination art nonsense (with some berserker thrown in) takes care of things.
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Afterwards went to the shop and worked on maxing up a whole bunch more of equips with the result I went from 800'000 Gold to less than 80'000 =( Still have quite a bit of equipment left to max too~
Oh for anyone else who has done this, if I decide to do a new game+ is there any penalty for carrying everything over? I'll still be able to raid all the chests/do all the quests again and get more stat boosting items/etc? =)
No penalty at all. All the chests have what they had in them, you can keep all your gear/items, and can even choose to be able to break L30. Medals are game-saved instead of file-saved, so you could start a new file on Easy if you wanted. The last treasure room, however, requires ALL the medals gained.
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Entirely too much Dissidia Duodecim lately. Randomly got back into when I wanted to play something actiony that wasn't musou.
I've discovered that apparently the characters I'm actually best with are Firion and WoL. So Prishe joins the growing list of secondaries, with Vaan joining as well(though he was never a main of mine at all).
Also, today alone, i've had two JUST AS PLANNED moments while playing.
The first: using Bartz, I acccidentally hit square and use Ragnarok Blade. Despite the fact that I wasn't intending to attack at ALL, much less use that particular easily dodged one, the enemy dodges right into it and dies.
The second and better one: Using Gilgamesh! Just threw his Missile HP attack on to give it a shot. It's not great, but funny, so I use it. The stage is World of Darkness Omega. So what happens? Well, I throw out a missile, the enemy dodges, the stage picks that exact moment to change form...depositing the enemy right in front of the still moving missile. Boom and victory. Just. As. Planned~
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FFTA2 - Beat the game! It's fun but marred by a few flaws, like its slowness and its skill building/weapon acquiring system. The combat is fun enough otherwise, even if the game was fairly easy even on hard mode. It gets bonus points for having an all-out main female villain who isn't a space flea nor shares the spotlight with other villains (like Miang).
The game is like FFTA1 except with all of the incredibly stupid things about the first game removed, like the laws, the weapon stealing, and the horrid horrid storyline. I think this makes the experience enjoyable enough, but it really doesn't stand out as a game. However, I do love me some SRPGs, so it gets a higher score than it would if it were just a regular RPG that was pretty unimpressive in most ways. Probably 5-6/10.
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Record of Agarest War Zero: Where the Bunny-girl costumes are more concealing then common outfits.
What last we left off we were discussing my ability to never start paragraphs with varied openings. And there was probably a game there too. With girls. Lots of girls.
Dana: Looks like a physical attacker with less actual STR and ATK then Minmel. Actually she looks like a--well stripper is an overstatement really, and she's supposed to be a blacksmith apprentice of all the stupid things. Also will probably never see use.
So with our 8/9 haremette introduced and--wait, 8? Am I getting ahead of myself? No, right, that fairy-thing was shown earlier but not recruited. So, uhhhh, our goal! Go meet the ~MYSTICAL BLACKSMITH~ forger of artifacts and get his latest works. So of course the first battle on the way is a 4-pack of 3x3 monsters yearning to pound Leonis into a crystal. Because your guys become crystals when they get KOed. No, really. So, now I'll sort of talk about how Leonis and Niel wank some more before going off on some other random tangent when I should instead add a paragraph break. So, Leonis! He's kinda bad. Sieghart was my best character and Leon is... still probably the best but not by the gap Sieg was. Daggers suck compared to anything but especially spears, his Extended Area is wonky as hell and can't synergism well with anyone. Leon's skillset is, well lopsided as hell. Because Skills are everything and even affect... well I can't even say basic attacks so I'll say attack typing, you want a decent spread of Skill-Slots. Sieghart had 4 Skill-slot-types. I think. Leon, really only has two. Two that once again, don't synergy well with others. Niel's slightly better as one of his two types can be combined with anyone and the other, well it's the same as Leon. Bah! And the worst of this, is that Leon doesn't have Sieg's ENERGY willpower which boosts the AP of anyone in his Extended Area when it's his turn.
But Alice does have Energy now for some crazy reason.
OK, so now I'm gonna be centering my party around Alice. Except she's kinda slow while Leon's the fastest character I've had even if he was stripped NEKKED. So, after making new items and blowing half my PP on her, Alice is now the fastest character! And has 500 more HP because I had that item!
And those enemies that become immune to avoidable physicals at 25% health are back with more health then ever! Also Leon has that ability now but it's useless because anything that gets him that low can kill him anyway!
Plot, plot, maker of magical macguffins doesn't have the macguffin. Shock? Clearly evil boss-guy doesn't care, sends us to front lines because armies of dark are attacking and blah. Get there and evil boss-guy reveals himself as evil. After introducing the guy who I said couldn't get more villainous-looking got more villainous-looking. His new default sprite has its ARMS CROSSED! Now, while I say these dudes were clearly evil, that's really from the player perspective. To all in-game characters they've been unfailing polite and reserved and frankly if GENERIC wasn't powering so much wouldn't really come off as villains until this scene. Heck, it's taken them... uhhhh... I'm gonna say 18 years at least to pull what they pull off so it's not like it's some five-second betrayal or something. So after watching the entire NPC-force get horrible things done to them, it's finally fight time. It's another multi-part battle--with the first fight having Leonis display his mad AVOID skills by getting hit by 2 of 30 attacks--with the twist being the second-final battle being a plot-fight. I'd say guess against who but it's not like I gave any NPC names, or know any. So, he has 55,555 HP and deals nearly all of that in damage to poor deserving Leonis when he attacks. Hilariously I thought Leon might live to counter because he activated the 25% no-hit thing and that's probably what saved him from being hit for over 55,555.
So, after that, plot, plot, plot. Fairy-girl joins and the haremettes are officially 8/9! And Niel leaves because he is too big a wanker. I'd celebrate, but my only choices to replace him are the blacksmith stripper and fairy.
Fairy it is.
Apli: Fairy-girl, older then old since she's the catgirls 4x-great-grandmother. I don't even know if I should wonder how any of that works. Is a rebel for her kind because she goes against the common grain of the fairy-folk by not being a secluded bitch or slave"familiar". In battle she's another mage, and frankly with all the 25% no-physical enemies about I need another one. On the big upside, is she plays at that game too, having the same 25%.
So, I head in and start the next dungeon a bit. I get a plot scene of the evillest villain transforming into generic JRPG boss-monster and then I turn the game off because it's time for Deadliest Warrior.
Next time on Record of Agarest War Zero!: I probably recruit the last haremette and weigh the pros and cons of her because she has the most clothes. Also probably some hilarious overkill boss.
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CK: I dunno, I'd have expected that from a crazy indie RPG that suddendly everybody in the DL loves, not a big mainstream title.
Granted, Bayonetta exists.
DMC4: Stuck during the boss rush because I still haven't learned how to properly beat bosses after three fights. I blame camera angles.
Radiant Historia: Finished (the ending was ridiculous with next to no sidequests finished), faqed for four hours to do some sidequests, got owned by the superboss.
This game is unique and interesting thanks to a neat concept, but if you think about it more than one second it just really doesn't make sense at all. This is the usual problem with time travel stories, except here it's 1000 times worse. And I usually never notice plot holes! Fortunately, the game avoids clichés and pointless character interactions, and has a great main character that steals all the plot (for all that he'd probably be annoying in real life)
Gameplay's great except when you're fighting giant spiders. Fuck giant spiders.
I was annoyed by how the game forced Raynie and Marco in my team all the time so I used them as little as I could. My main team was Aht / Stocke / Rosche or Eruca.
Stocke: Red mage. Not the crappy FF3 red mage. The good, FF1 level red mage. Stocke can do nearly everything rather well, he's the best character in the beginning and middle of the game and starts to drag a little later on.
Aht: MVP. Aht starts rather awful but has great damage through traps, which works nicely with Stocke. Then out of the blue she becomes the only viable healer of the group. Bosses with status are owned by Polaris. + Gamebest speed.
Raynie: Pure black mage, nukes things after everybody has moved.
Marco: Starts as the healer of the group, then becomes... Kind of useless as he just stops learning healing spells. I suppose you could use all your MT stat boosting spells then use nothing but Trans Turn with him and he'd be a decent ally, but that's boring.
Eruca: A lot like Marco, less healing but more utility. Then she just disappears at the end of the game, unfortunately!
Rosche: Waaay underleveled, compensates with monster durability. Rosche can move enemies around but he's not as good as Stocke about it, with his lower speed. Otherwise he does various shades of pseudo MT physical damage, which can be useful here and there. Decent if you're underleveled like I was, bad otherwise.
Gafka: I honestly never gave him a chance until Wind God Strike, which was too late.
Infinite Undiscovery HMSNV15HIM: Beat Disc 2.
Vesplume Tower was where things started to get serious. Capell solo has difficulty handling more than 3 soldiers at once (even crappy soldiers), but I'm getting better. Worst comes to worst, he has an HP regen accessory so he can just run around for two minutes if things get awful and the last savepoint was 20 minutes ago. I still got a ton of resets in that place.
Especially to Kron, AKA Megabitch. This is some giant eye boss with paralysis (= Instant Death to me) and two wolves. The wolves are weak to earth and the boss resists it. Things went so bad that I contemplated adding earth damage to my weapon to kill the two little whores faster even if this meant fighting the boss for five minutes. Eventually I learned how to beat those things properly though (by immediately owning one first with Cutting Gavotte, for once)
Moments later I was up against Dmitri, AKA UBER Megabitch. He's a boss archer with six archer girls on his side (= Stunlock), paralysis (Again??), and some plot boss doing his own stuff on one side of the battlefield that can hurt you if you get close to him. AND he can summon 3 uber soldiers at once at low HPs.
Fortunately, he's weak to earth. I went into full crafting mode (Atk boost, Def boost, Hit boost, Paralysis immunity, earth damage for 10 minutes) slaughtered the girls with Cutting Gavotte, then pounded him with Cutting Gavotte + Slashing Cannon like a madman. I did so much damage to him that he was dead before his reinforcements came to me. KNEEL! I AM GOD!
... Then I beat the 3 other guys by running away for a while.
This challenge is fun but I can't see myself trying it on infinity mode, honestly.
Dungeon Siege 3: Finished. Lots of tough fights at the end. The balance between our two characters was perfect.
This might be the best couch co-op RPG I've played, but that genre is starting to become a rare breed. Other people like playing on the Internet more.
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Record of Agarest War Zero wherein Fudo is a liar. But not for reasons related to this game.
Last time, I predicted that I'd be facing an overkill boss and getting my last haremette(my?). So, to do this we continue diving into this dungeon! And then we're at the end! Meanwhile in NPC-land the last stronghold of light is under attack by the forces of darkness. I'd care, but if it falls Niel will probably die so yay! Though at least we get to here the hilarious reasoning of the big bad villain wanting to cover the world in darkness to even the playing field between God and Man. Since the gods of this setting are totally dicks I'd be totally fine with this. So, dungeon end and.... another dungeon? Ugh, and it's the same one that I went into to search for MYSTICAL BLACKSMITH which is why we're here so fine. We're coming in on a different path, and I'm encountering forest spirit monsters here in a mountain range. I wonder why that bothers me more then wolves and werewolves and such in these places. Ah, whatever. So, I slog my way through the battles to reach the Mystic Smith, and I see his giant-ass sprite. This here is also when I realize that all 3x3 square monsters use 3D for their appearance. Weird. So, uh, plot, the game tries to encourage that an enemy type that's been playing second-fiddle in threat since the first generation is somehow worth a damn.
So the fight starts, there's two of them--the same amount at the final first generation boss. And the enemies are the same as in the first second generation fight, without even any casters even. So of course it turns into a SURPRISE FIGHT! and my formation is ruined. So, I set myself up, kill one of the two and wait for the next turn. So of course on the second turn they outspeed my guys and kill off 5 of them, leaving only Apli alive. I still stand by that these guys aren't a threat, because even though I blow half my revival items I do win. Sure, they can kill most of my party, but even one alive is enough!
So after my thrilling victory, more of them show up in cutscene form. Since one of them in cutscene meant two in battle with 4 minions, this means the 3 in cutscene form means 6 with 12 minions! So I'd say that's why the Mystic Blacksmith tells us to run because we're outnumber and doomed. At least until GUNSHOTS RING OUT! And Niel jumps to our rescue! And scares all of them off by having Leonis' unit appear off-screen and bluff them away. This would have been more effective if it wasn't Niel and if they had actually said that Leon's unit wasn't accompanying them. Oh well, it's fair enough. But that's not enough for cutscene power, so we still have to run because the villains are coming to take the artifact and we still can't take them out because this artifact isn't fully powered or something despite being able to destroy the prime artifact of Generic menacing name. So Leon and co run like little girls because mostly the group is little girls who are older then dirt. This leaves the Mystic Blacksmith to face off... against the two villains who were present at the last stronghold of light. Ah, well, that doesn't bode well for Alice's father it seems.
So, the party meanwhile has to slog through even more battles to reach the dark side of the continent to meet up with the final haremette who can supposedly help unlock the true power of the Sword Artifact. It has a frankly hilarious name that I've forgotten half of so dang. Also Leon uses a Sword in cutscenes despite being a daggers man. Sieghart did this too, but he at least at the tutorial battles to use a sword, and a sword is in his normal artwork. Meanwhile Leon has no weapon in artwork, just two sheathes. Weird.
So, uh, yeah! At the end of the mountain range, the Mystic Blacksmith gets... sealed or killed or something since he disappears in a flash of light and hell if I know how his race is supposed to die. The villain there with the unique model transforms into a generic model and I wonder if I should be scared he's stronger or weaker. Back at the party, Niel says that he's only dumb because Eugene is dumb, and the generic soldiers all talk about how awesome Sieghart was and how much a cheapskate Eugene is. Hilarious.
At this point I see the world map has cut me off from all the northern territories. This won't have any deadly ramifications at all. We head over to the closest town, which actually has a different background appearance then every north town but the exact same shop NPCS. That's also when I realize that none of the store NPCs have visible ears. The deadly ramifications hit as I realize how much I'm now cut off from smithing materials. So much so that I cannot make the accessory that grants AP recovery+. ASRGH!
Right, so, time for another bloody dungeon. At this point I'm low on time so I don't check out the obvious sidepath, and instead move straight for the event as I see it. There I meet the last haremette, who on closer inspection doesn't actually wear the most clothes it's just that her skin is eggshell white so I thought she did. So, as yet another not-elf, she's also apparently so old she knew the Mystic Blacksmith back before he was imprisoned which was about the early stages of man's time on the planet. Spiffy, why are they all so old? So, she knows a secret path to wherever it is we're going and joins us to do so. Also joining us is her small army of chickens. So that we may feast on their eggs and fleshy chicken meat.
Shernini: Yet another battle-mage type with daggers and oh-god why must I suffer? It takes more to raise any of her stats then it would Minmel, and all of her own stats are lower.
Decimal: A rooster and the only NPC I give enough of a damn to name.
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Fenrir, re RH characters:
First off, a note that being less underlevelled makes everyone but Stocke/Raynie/Marco notably worse. I think they're probably the best 3 PCs but it's hard to pick an MVP in this game.
Stocke: Definitely lags late, though G-Fire if you get it is a great pickup for him. I'd assume you didn't, though.
Aht: In the second half of the game I found items better for healing than techs anyway, so I found that aspect of her pretty worthless. I guess if you run all the time they're actually a notable pocketbook hit?
Raynie: As you said.
Marco: That boring strategy is indeed how you use him (plus he also has Grapple, which Stocke misses) and he's quite effective. He's a notably better Trans-turner than Eruca due to better stats, availability, and Grapple. That said...
Eruca: Once she gets G-Frost, she definitely has the best damage by quite a ways even at a level disadvantage, which is nice. Too bad about the whole leaving thing; her window in which she is good is too small, for all that until she left I figured she'd make my final party.
Rosch: LVP by far if you ask me. The definition of total overkill durability, needed a cover move or something.
Gafka: No hype for Quigong Wave? One of the only good physical attacks for raw damage. He can push multiple people around at once which is pretty cool. Definitely a late-bloomer, though (WGS is a huge spike up), and even then not very impressive for the last few largely unpushable boss fights, though the best in randoms.
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SSF4AE: Working on miscellaneous achievements. Got Hakan up to C rank in AE (already had it in Super). I'm winning ~30% of my fights, which I'm fairly content with. Would win more if I wasn't so bad at flowchart Ken/Ryu. If anyone with Super catches me online hit me up to watch replays. I have some very hilarious ones.
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- Stocke did get G-Fire right at the end. The final dungeon has this nasty habit of making unavoidable crystal enemies respawn all the time everywhere, I got a lot of levels there. I think Stocke's level against the final was 50.
- Aht's availability is actually not bad at all, especially compared to Rosche, Gafka and Eruca. Once she joins in both paths it's pretty much for good, IIRC. She's just underleveled at first, but that's still during the easy part of the game. Right now she's only one level behind Stocke (who always gets all the exp)
Those 300 MT healing items cost 1500 gold, that was just waaay too much for me, considering how often I used Aht's big MT healing spell. I did probably outfit too many people for a regular playthrough, but I still couldn't afford accessories! And the game likes to switch your team all the damn time.
Polaris is invaluable too. I only saw a status go through it once in the entire game.
- I noticed Eruca's good damage, but I always had her either casting support skills, switching turns to Aht so she could heal more, or being dead. She's my overall LVP honestly, she's only good against the optional boss. Raynie is about as competent with much more durability and more elements (Thunder's especially good since there are A LOT of giant robots everywhere but no giant lava monsters in the game!), and Marco is better at giving turns to everyone else.
- I can easily see Rosch as LVP, but if you give him a chance he can shine when you don't expect him too. He reminds me of DDS Heat.
That thaumachine battle early on is a good example, I also found him very competent against those unmovable crystals. The durability didn't feel overkill for me, because Radiant Historia is the kind of game where you can still rely on good ST healing later on. (Durability matters less in games where MT healing is everything)
Still probably not worth it yeah, objectively.
- Gafka's probably decent if you use him well, but he's just impractical most of the time. I really disliked the fact that he has neither simple move skills nor Trans-Turn. Wind God Strike is awesome but so late.
Aaaanyway...
Radiant Historia: 100% finished.
I had to grind for a while to beat the "optional superboss", but not -that- much. My final levels were 58 (Stocke) /57 (Aht) /52 (Eruca)
I gave everyone massive sleep resistance, then abused all those awesome items I collected during the game:
- 1000 MT healing
- Revive with 500 HP
- All three PCs take 0 damage from two attacks
That last one is awesome because the four clones only have ST damage, and often waste times trying to put people to sleep or lowering attack power. I had four of those items, they allowed me to beat two of the four clones without much trouble. lol at the rest of the battle.
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So Record of Agarest War Zero, where every paragraph begins with so.
So, when time permitted us a break we were on the verge of... actually we were slogging through yet another dungeon. First I double-back to grab some loot before heading further in. Wherein I run into the Jumbo Cock's successor palette-swap the Garuda. Or is it recolor? Whichever. He's backed up by the next level of annoying fairies who absorb darkness because why not. Also he's so blazingly fast on the attack turn that he gets first strike and can promptly initiate a combo that kills anyone unless Leonis gets lucky. Anyone else just gets overkilled... but really the only ones that can be hit are Leon, Minmel and Eugene. And then on a sidepath I encounter two of them at once along with four fairies. Fun! Deadly! Not a minor drain on resources at all! More fighting, more sidepaths and... a Forbidden Tome? SQUEEEEEE! Clear out the rest of this stupid dungeon, open up the south path, go back to town.
So, the Forbidden Tome, it allows you to create a marionette at an Alchemist's Shop in town. Now, a marionette in this game is not some simple puppet, well it is, well, simple in one way at least. So, what a marionette is, is a character. One you've lost. So, for a low low price of more money then I actually have ever had I can get Sieghart back! Which would be yay! Sorta. The problem being beyond making me liquidate too much crap to pay for this, is that my team is almost synergized well right now. Plus it kinda feels more like their story or something. Consistency! Anyway, a bit more on the character front, Leon has a willpower that gives him SP on his turn, inherited from Linda. But compared to her it gave him 15 Sp to her 25. Until I relized it's actually a differnt willpower that gives SP to everyone in his Extended Area. Which would be useful if it only gave SP when they got their turn while Alice's Energy gives everyone AP on her turn when she's usually first or second to move. On the flipside, that also means Leon gets his EX skills like lightning. And on another not, magic has become useful for something beyond chip damage and healing! Just only in combo magic which I could never use because Alice was my only mage until Apli.
So, it looks like the next town has an Event over it, and there's yet another dungeon after it. I go to the town expecting some free scene when actually it's another battle series. So then I remember that the dungeon I see is probably a bonus dungeon. There I am proven right as I trade attack turns with enemies and manage to barely kill some of the 3x3 squares. Luckily, they have the materials I need to make the best daggers for Leon. And I'm getting high enough in level to start promoting. Where I promote everyone but Leon and Apli. That I use anyway. Actually I do have enough items to promote everyone... Uhhh, anyway, promotion boosts AP--to the point where everyone is now near equal with Leon--gains stats, gain new skill slots. All the good things. In the dungeon I also manage to find the acessory with AP++. That'll be fun to enhance.
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Disgaea 4: DAMAGE PROJECTIONS *hallelujah chorus*
That is all.
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Stocke blows ass. He brings so little damage compared to the major heavy hitters (Eruca, Aht*, Gafka) and doesn't have any powerful healing or support to make up for it, while his enemy movement skills are too limited. I definitely do consider him the shitty kind of red mage and I spent a lot of the game wishing I could switch him out, even when availability issues were keeping a bunch of the later PCs out of the picture.
Raynie's even worse, so sometimes having to use Stocke felt like a lesser evil worth living with - yay for him I guess? But whenever more than one of Rosch/Gafka/Aht/Eruca was available, I found myself yelling at the game "pleasePLEASE let me use two of them and marco." Even when those characters were terribly underleveled due to being unusable for 10 hours, I'd have gladly dropped Stocke for any of them.
*Even in boss fights where traps can't be used, Aht can help out your damage significantly by racking up combo hits with dancing death. You're not strapped for MP in this game so the high cost doesn't matter, and something like Quigong wave nukes so much harder with those little knife hits to help build it up.
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Record of Agarest War Zero, where the day is not spent, it is wasted.
So, when we last left off we had a vote to decide that I should start all paragraphs with something else.
Wellity wellity well, my last fight that I couldn't actually finish because of... things... had me facing off against two new 3x3s at once. Going back to that same place after the sudden shutdown caused me to refight yet another giant squid. Yeah. Clear out, more and more of this dungeon. Eventually on the last battle I fight it's against 3 3x3s including another new one. Oh yeah, it wasn't the Black Dragons I didn't mention by name before, it was the next color change of the giant wolf line. And ooooo, he has an Overkill item that'll get me a title and riches! So, seems an ideal place to grind, and yet another new 3x3 shows up, a Sandworm. After my usual tactic of exhausting all my AP on one target leaves him at full health, I realize that he absorbs Earth damage which Leon's daggers have and what my finisher combo is. Well, at least all the other runts die somehow! So, I actually get enough SP saved to unleash Alice and Gallios' combo EX which barely allows me to kill it. So, results screen comes up and... 400% bonus? What in da heck? Well that promptly finances a spending spree. After I get new stuff and stuff I head back to hunting the worm for more delicious grinding and to try for its Overkill item. Those of you reading this who have a brain might have thought getting a huge bonus like that meant something about the monster difficulty if you actually knew any of the game mechanics. So, after the next sandworm promptly reintroduces me to pain and having 5 guys dead, I unleash the fury and win. Then kill another barely as well before getting scared. Leon and Apli are promoted and it's go time for the big story fight!
Wellity wellity well, it seems the first fight is against yet another new 3x3. I am able to do just enough damage to get them in a full combo, and because they position themselves so badly I wipe them out and all their support in two turns, getting a fat bonus and going into the next fight with topped health. Not that the health helped. Oh right, anyway the story reasons for the story fight were monsters were attacking a village for some reason. Now after defeating them we're still running away and run right into Senior Good-NPC-turned-Evil. Now, I know you're sick of reading how much more health bosses have, but this is frankly the first real boss fight in the Second Generation except not really since you have to survive until the start of turn 4 and that's difficult. What was my point? Oh yeah, 44k something health, hits like a truck on steroids on steroids on acid on prancer. And he has three of those 3x3 naked giants who I can't kill in one turn anymore. And Eugene's sword heals the boss. Yippy. So, after spending about half the day fighting him--Saturday, I think--I finally survive! With 4 guys dead! Booooo. After a couple.... well dozen sounds about right, retries I eventually do a full party survive. But, but on that fight I come so close to killing him I can taste it. So, it's time for a grind. And to think I was worried promoting would make this fight easy.
Wellity wellity well, I grind rather a lot, get everyone the next armor tier I wanted, upgrade some stats and levels a bit. I really want Eugene and Gallios to go before the naked giants so they get Agility boosted like mad. So, in uhhhh, well take anything below 12 is just wrong so... take 13? In the first battle I somehow manage to not kill a giant in one turn and frankly do worse on the easy battle. But come round... battle 2 with mister menacing black cloak, and it's on! This time I take out all three giants before the timelimit and my complete stupidity regarding position screws me! I could have had it too. So, the next fight is a bloody mess, but the next next one? Oh boy, is that exciting! I manage to pull off everyone's 2nd EX at once, along with Alice-Gallios combo, and Leon's 3rd EX which is frankly more powerful then every attack I hit him with before I used it. I actually used it last, since I finally realized the Break Bar is... front-loaded? Uhhhh, well I'll say that using the 3rd EX first then launching combos, and launching combos then EX would have both broken the Bar. But, by using he EX last, it is the one getting all the damage bonus from the broken bar.... which is basiclly the opposite of how I've been using them until this point. Granted, that wasn't a bad idea in first generation since nothing short of bosses wouldn't be broken but... uhhh... oh right, non-mechanics stuff.
Wellity wellity well, I get so much EP for this fight I have more of it then Gold, and all my characters gained five levels. Getting Leon the sweet-ass willpower Unleash All! Which he will probably never use. Spiffy. After battle cutscenes happen and... are the exact bloody same. UGH. I put effort into this! Give me at least a single different line! Whatever, party still abandons villagers to their fate to save themselves but villagers don't die because that would be consequences.
Wellity wellity well, After that mess... another dungeon.... UGH! And the closest town is at this point completely across the landmass so it's kinda a pain to get over there. The new dungeon is... a swamp. In any other RPG this would be some sort of a pain in the ass, but not here! It's only a pain in the rear because the enemies are too weak because of all my shiny levels to pose a threat and I'm getting docked into 75% bonus for A-ranks. Dungeon of boring done, more travel, beac-scene where Decimal continues being the best NPC as he beats the shit out of Shernini and Niel, and yet another goddamn dungeon.
Wellity wellity well though, it seems mister slighty-more-evil-in-appearance-as-a-villain is here! Time to kick his ass and JKFGAF, he has two giant rot dragons backing him up. And as they fly my best combo magic can't hit them. And they probably absorb dark like their maniac master so... crud. But frankly this is actually the far easier fight despite this big boss man getting right in our faces. he's just so concentrated on killing Minmel and missing Leon with his few group attacks that I wipe out his minions and have enough SP and AP for another barrage of the Leonis kill you special! This of course occurred on Turn 4 which was the cut-off for the last fight.
Wellity wellity well, it seems victory is actually mine for real! As I only get a 105% bonus and the jerk is laying facedown in the dirt and--ohwait he's up. I'd say this was cheating but frankly I bluntly say words that mean a thing. So, Decimal continues his trend of being a stone cold badass and distracts the jerkface and dodges better then Minmel while the party... well Niel shoots the ground and black mist just sorta engulfs mister grumpy-face while the party beats feet and wing and claw. And then there's a dungeon! Which I was too broken at the time to do because ARGH real monsters attacked me. And then Fire Emblem was in my dream for some reason.
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FFTA2- This really just makes me want to play FFT. Guessing I'm 60% of the way through the game now (Just got Hurdy, and more importantly Parivirs. Although not seemingly any of Parivirs damage moves)
TO PSP- This really just makes me want to play FFT, but just switched back to A2.
Brave Story- This just makes me want to play anything else. Not like I've seen a battle yet, but the intro does not bode well.
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Big combos don't really do that much more damage unfortunately. I know, I've used Ayt against the final boss to get something like a 70 hit "brilliant" combo. (Aht still rocks)
Weird to have such different experiences with PCs, I'm guessing getting skills or not has a big influence. I had to use Stocke's healing a lot, might have to do with levels.
Anyway, my view is the best. Obviously. By far. Aht > Stocke >> Marco > Raynie > Rosche > Gafka >> Eruca.
Infinite Undiscovery Hard Mode Solo Blah Blah: Beat Vermified spoiler. I tried using only Capell and Aya, but Aya acted like a moron. How dare you disappoint me, Aya?? I gave you a +500 ATK enchantment!!
After a few tries I realized I was playing solo precisely to avoid having to deal with bad ally AI I can't control, so I put the bear in my team and auto-won.
Capell's skills:
Slashing Canon is now worthless.
Cutting Gavotte is the skill I always use all the time against everything, and I'd still use it more than the others even if it had the highest MP cost in the game.
Reginleif is kinda useless but fun in that "DEATH FROM ABOVE" special way. I like welcoming enemies with its shiny 6000 damage.
Eternal Refrain is just plain bad, I don't know why I'm still levelling it up. It costs 7x more MPs than Cutting Gavotte, does less damage, takes a long time to charge and a long time to execute. It's only good at owning foes who try to run away.
SMT Strange Journey: No fusion challenge.
This was an awesome challenge in Nocturne because it completely changed the game, here it's going to be a lot less interesting. But hey, I love Strange Journey, that's at least a reason to pick it up again.
I had forgotten a few cool things about the game.
I also like how enemy analysis works. Each demon has an analysis bar. For every round of fighting against or with a kind of demon, this bar slowly raises and you regularly get more info on him, the info being displayed on the DS lower screen. At first you don't even know what he looks like (every demon appears as the same blue mess-thing at first), and in the end you know his skills, weaknesses, alingment, etc etc.
The regular battle theme in this game is magical:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3YcANVqmIM
The beginning of the theme is... bad. Too loud and grating. The second part is mundane. You really don't notice the battle music most of the time, honestly.
BUT during those few times where you're fighting very difficult random enemies, those critical times where your next choice means life or death, the battle lasts long enough and the theme suddendly goes into OMG EPIC mode. Everything clicks and you feel like you're fighting Magus for the first time, again. But it's only a random battle!
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Monkey: Um, Air Assault. It's quite a lot better at boosting followup damage than combos are. See Fenrir on that one. Against immobile bosses your best bet is Marco for Trans-Turn/buffing, Air Assault with Stocke (he's forced) -> Raynie/Eruca magic. Granted, Air Assault doesn't work on the final (though does work on other immobile bosses). I won't defend Stocke much there. EDIT: On second thought, I will a bit. Stocke with MAG-boosting sword does perfectly capable damage with G-Fire, which he has picked up by then probably.
RH is really another one of those games where buying items is much more important than equipment! Kinda like BoF5, it's much more important to skimp on the latter. Even Area G-Heal (at 150) can't really compare to the 300 MT item, while the 100 MT item often suffices. Or ST stuff of course. You can argue Aht saves you money but I don't buy it, since I could use e.g. Marco instead of Aht (or whoever) and never buy armour for them and they'd still be more durable than Aht was, so I'd save a lot of money there. Marco is even better because you don't need to buy offence upgrades for him either, Trans-Turn is awesome like that. The dude could pretty much fight with initial equipment.
I think both Aht teams have notable flaws compared to Stocke/Marco/Raynie. (You're stuck with Stocke, so I'm not going for Monkey's theorycraft.) If you kick out Marco you lose Grapple entirely and only have one PC who can push enemies anywhere but back, which is a greatly reduced ability to gather things up. If you kick out Raynie you lose a shit-ton of damage against anything you can't use traps on, and a fair bit of damage against randoms in general.
Part of the problem here is Aht's speed; unless you twink Stocke, you're going to have her with 2 turns in pre-emptive attacks, which sucks because you can't actually do much with the second. With S/R/M, Stocke gets 2 turns, so you get three turns for pushing (possibly all from Stocke unless you're happy saving a little MP to get Marco's inferior damage) and then you hit 4 enemies with a big blast. With S/A/M before Aht learns Push Assault (which admittedly makes her a bit better, though is still limiting), you typically can't do better than "lay trap, push two enemies into it, use some weak damage move on top of it". Even lategame, there's no reason to use Aht in randoms because you have Gafka. Wind God Strike -> big Raynie/Eruca damage is the obvious best strategy (and yes, Stocke is the worst here, although he can use Air Assault in the middle). If you could push an enemy out of the centre with Stocke, then lay a trap, then use WGS, then you would use Aht instead of the other two girls, but you can't.
Main three (unsure on order, need to think about it) > Gafka > Eruca > Aht > Rosch. The main three is the best party, Gafka is in the best party when you have WGS, others are have small windows. Like Fenrir, my view is also the best.
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Ok!!!
*Crazy Fire Emblem tier discussion mode to defend Aht*
Aht makes great use of those HP+ rings, while other characters have basically no use for it. (except Eruca, but you don't want Aht and Eruca in the same team) Her durability isn't much of a problem because her availability is great. Unlike some other characters I know, she doesn't need things like speed boosting accessories because she's so incredibly fast that it is apparently a problem!
(Edit: Her durability isn't as bad as the stat topic suggests because she has a -30 HP weapon there)
Aht gives you much more control over the battle thanks to her speed (You'll see bosses get doubleturns or tripleturns on people not named Aht), especially if you have Marco potentially using Trans-Turning on her. Aht's healing costs basically nothing since you're showered with MP healing items. (while those great HP healing items cost a leg and are more rare)
You have the choice between an awesome, sexy team with traps (!!), more stealing opportunities and uber shiny equipment, or a team with crappy equipment that runs a risk of running out of items and money every now and then, and who has to constantly go back in time to restock.
Non-Aht teams have more difficulty dealing with status too, which is why I'd use her even against bosses that can't be moved around just in case. Marco has MT status recovery, but that's useless if you can't use skills, for example. Aht's Polaris is much better. And she has so much speed she still get more turns than the others even if she spends one turn every few rounds to cast it.
I'd say that Stocke/Aht/Marco is the best team (traps are far too awesome and go extremely well with Stocke/Marco) for most of the game, except against bosses that can't be pushed around where you're probably better off with Stocke/Aht/Raynie for the damage. (or you can stay with Stocke/Ayt/Marco if you're lazy, because you cannot die with this team, and an offense oriented Stocke is not that bad)
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F-Zero X: Fad. This game is so hilariously evil. Currently on Standard, I'm not sure I will be good enough at the game ever to get past this. >_>
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Disgaea 4: Up to chapter seven, which claims it's the final chapter but obviously isn't. Notably better than Disgaea 3 just for having a much more entertaining lead. Cast in general is amusing enough (outside of Emizel, who whines a lot and aspires to blandness once he stops whining), which is about all I ask for with these games. Plot is Disgaea plot and mostly serves to remind me how warped concepts of the afterlife really are, so less thinking more grinding. Heart's Cannon is pretty fucking broken, on that note. Free attacks at the end of a combo equal to the number of people participating in the combo? Uh. The chapter three through five bosses all proceeded thusly: "Damn, the boss lived through a full-party combo." *Cue repeated Heart's Cannon activation and massive overkill* "Oh."
Really, though, the highlight so far is encountering a random enemy named ZARDOZ.
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Fudo you....
Soppy, words cannot describe my joy. I'd he is a far more loyal believer than you now!
The regular battle theme in this game is magical:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3YcANVqmIM
The beginning of the theme is... bad. Too loud and grating. The second part is mundane. You really don't notice the battle music most of the time, honestly.
BUT during those few times where you're fighting very difficult random enemies, those critical times where your next choice means life or death, the battle lasts long enough and the theme suddendly goes into OMG EPIC mode. Everything clicks and you feel like you're fighting Magus for the first time, again. But it's only a random battle!
Between "Faithfully in Fear" and "An Honour Worthy of that Name", which one you think works out better, assumign the fight lasts long enough for whoel track to play out?
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Maybe, but let him happily play through GoCIV 7 times before you make that call.
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Fudo you....
Soppy, words cannot describe my joy. I'd he is a far more loyal believer than you now!
Fudo is no mere follower! He is a leader. Sometimes over cliffs. OK over a lot of cliffs.
why are there so many cliffs in my path...?
Maybe, but let him happily play through GoCIV 7 times before you make that call.
If I knew what that was I would gladly do it!
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Fudo you....
Soppy, words cannot describe my joy. I'd he is a far more loyal believer than you now!
Fudo is no mere follower! He is a leader. Sometimes over cliffs. OK over a lot of cliffs.
You only get to say that when you have renounced your life to the Netherworld, which you can start by climbing the 100000 floor of Spectral Tower 2. Or try to track down and purchase all the out of print limited editions of the Neverland games for the past decade. Then you have to start on Netherworld's mass produced dating sim products and "I can't read Japanese" does not serve an excuse (a certain anime on Shinsengumi is a good place to start if you have problem on this area).
After you have done all this, you can finally claim the name of Mugen and reign as the high king of the Netherworld.
Maybe, but let him happily play through GoCIV 7 times before you make that call.
If I knew what that was I would gladly do it!
You heard him Soppy!
Now, who has an ISO, send one to Fudo!!!
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Infinite Undiscovery: Beaten. Amusingly enough, I ended up with the exact same set of achievements earned as Fenrir. Apparently we both thought that 20 down strikes and IC Writing level 6 were bullshit.
While the game was kind of meh initially, I ended up liking it more and more as it went on. Capell is a really refreshing main character. Very believable, and it was interesting to see the way he dealt with being stuck in the role he was in. Also, reading everyone's Title 1s when Evil Capell surfaced was creepy. The humor was mixed in at just the right amount - it wasn't just downright silly like Radiata Stories. Also really loved the ending.
Gameplay-wise, it wasn't spectacular. A bit more in-depth than Radiata Stories, nowhere near as good as Star Ocean. I found little use for the MP-using skills. They're nice enough, but take forever to level (I don't think any of my characters hit level 2 in any skill throughout the game). Dancing Rhapsody is serviceable enough that I never felt the need to rely on skills.
Healing requests were pretty bad. Because *everybody* responds to a healing request, not just characters that have healing spells. So your party members spam 100% healing potions on you like they're infinite (ooh, maybe that's where the title comes from!). And you're forced to use this method, because the item menu itself is so clunky that you don't want to be using items with Capell.
The split between normal and "secondary" PCs seems fairly strange. The secondaries have skillsets just like primaries, and can even be in parties that aren't led by Capell, so splitting them out was just pointless.
What I did like about the battle system was how Capell was a real bard-type character. It was frequently more effective to have Capell playing songs to disrupt the enemy/buff allies instead of just rushing in and slashing things. Loved the 100% immune to magic song against magic bosses. 8-)
Item Creation was much more transparent than in the Star Ocean games, which means considerably more open to abuse. For example, before the final dungeon I made Gustav some claws with 3500 attack. The next strongest weapon for other characters that could be made at that point had less than 1000 attack. Yeah, I think that was worth two character slots.
Final party was Capell, Aya, and Gustav. Last bosses weren't a problem with the amount of ICing I did.
It's a 6/10 game, but I'll give it 7/10 for making me enjoy it.
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Dungeon Crawl: So I'm playing a Minotaur Monk. I'm in a sewer, and the kobolds there drop several runed swords. I pick them up and read a Detect Curse scroll. They're all uncursed, so I start wielding them to see if any of them have any useful properties.
An uncursed short sword of distortion.
Crap.
Distortion is the effect where I can't unwield it without taking massive damage or getting banished to the Abyss. Both of which are pretty much instant death for a character at my level. So I'm stuck with this thing.
But it turns out, distortion brand does a crap-ton of damage! Plus you occasionally get instant kills when the enemy is devoured by a hole in reality. Well, I guess they're kills... you get experience, but Trog isn't giving me a message about being happy with the kill...
So I continue on through the dungeon, kicking massive ass with this short sword. Then the unique Louise casts banishment on me and sends me to the Abyss. Remember all those enemies I "killed" instantly by sending them through a hole in reality? They're here. Including the uniques. Game over.
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Don't make me choose Niu, I love them both. But the second one is more consistently great, while the first one is bad then really awesome.
Captain:
And you even made all your characters vermify too! I did reach Writing level 6 this playthrough because books are the quickest way to make money right now. Silvio is my money printing machine, I press A every few seconds to get more cash.
You can forbid allies from using items by going to the item menu and pressing... Y? The same way you stop Rena from using attack spells all the time in SO2. You can keep them for the boss battles that way. (not that I ever remembered to do it)
Nice avatar. Are you planning to try the harder modes and / or the Seraphic Gate?
Infinite Undiscovery: Beat the spider boss. This sounded like the hardest part of the solo, so I'm glad. Uber IC equipment + Atk+500 enchantment > Things. I did have a few resets in this hellhole though.
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Well, I did this playthrough on Easy after starting on Normal and quitting (got pissed at the retarded save every prisoner achievement). So I still have to do a Normal playthrough before I can do Hard. I was thinking about just starting over on Normal and getting Compulsive and everything else out of the way. And leaving a mysterious 31-point gap in my Achievement log.
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I'm more with Fenrir here than Dark Holy Elf. Yes, at the absolute endgame, the MT 300 healing item is pretty awesome and you should invest a lot of money into them (though I'd argue that having someone in your party with MT free healing is still a benefit). But for the entire rest of the game, equipment is excellent - notably investing in 3 Bishop Studs for every character early makes a lot of the multihit nasties considerably less scary. I usually feared fights like "6 soldiers" more than "1 badass" and defense buffing was very important for the former type of fight. Super Heal was also useful.
Re Aht defense antihype, that's certainly a problem early with her, but she gets the Giant's Cloak fairly fast, which makes her physical defense merely suspect rather than bad. And yeah, to be clear, by equipment I mean "armor and accessories." Marco was an obvious choice for Madre Blade / Gaia Blade / etc. since he cared far more about the HP boost than the damage cut. I think this is a case of you not doing the sidequests - I found the sidequesting fun myself and it helps Aht & Eruca way more than everyone else. You said you didn't get the advanced traps - they are pretty much insane. Don't get me wrong, Gafka WGS -> G-Frost will kill the enemies nice & efficiently, but so does X Star Trap -> Stocke positioning. (Don't forget that he also gets the fire wall explosion off his sidequests so you can often get more than just one enemy.) I'm not going to quibble much with different ways to chop random enemies in half on turn 1. So yeah, I have no idea what you mean by "losing a fair bit of damage against randoms in general" vs. Raynie - Aht kills 'em just fine and for less MP. Don't get me wrong, Aht is situational, but when traps work, she's clearly top tier, and when they don't work, she's not dead weight. This is fine by me.
I usually used one of two teams toward endgame - Marco / Raynie is the "safe" team especially for bosses, and Aht / Eruca is the "kill them all now" glass cannon team. Aht / Marco was also perfectly serviceable, as was Gafka / Eruca. Rosch kind of loses out in the endgame since his area damage stuff is less relevant when forced-Stocke has that as well by endgame, Eruca has true MT, and Gafka gets WGS for a better positioning game anyway, but he was certainly far from useless earlier. So yeah, I thought the balance in RH is pretty great, actually. I actively wanted to use all my party members and they all had useful things they brought to the table. Probably something like
Aht (traps work) > Marco = Eruca (endgame she's around for) > Stocke = Raynie = Gafka (endgame) > Rosch (midgame) > Rosch (endgame) = Gafka (midgame) = Aht (traps don't work) >> Eruca (midgame).
You can see that for the midgame I used a lot of the basic main party, but everyone else did catch up, and it's a tight ranking by the end. (Stocke is probably the only character who goes down in value a bit, as his revival is less important by the end once revival items are comparatively cheap.)
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Mmm, good ol' debates. I suspect this deserves its own thread by now.
Aht makes great use of those HP+ rings, while other characters have basically no use for it. (except Eruca, but you don't want Aht and Eruca in the same team) Her durability isn't much of a problem because her availability is great. Unlike some other characters I know, she doesn't need things like speed boosting accessories because she's so incredibly fast that it is apparently a problem!
Yeah, you can buff her HP of course. Granted, it'd take two accessory slots to match e.g. Marco/Raynie durability, and they could use those two slots to match/beat her speed. I was kneejerk overestimating how large the gaps were in both directions.
Looks like my complaints about Aht's speed were a little suspect, looking at it; it's not too hard to get Stocke faster than her, and his overall stats are good enough that he can afford a bit less durability without it being a problem.
Of course this also invalidates your whole point about her speed letting you control battles, since others can match her while she covers your HP (as you suggest she does. I agree).
You have the choice between an awesome, sexy team with traps (!!), more stealing opportunities and uber shiny equipment, or a team with crappy equipment that runs a risk of running out of items and money every now and then, and who has to constantly go back in time to restock.
Stocke + Marco (or Eruca) is already two thieves effectively. I don't exactly need a third. If you aren't running from everything in sight you don't run short on cash for good items, trust me. I even finished below the stat topic levels and ignored most sidequests, so it's not like I grinded or anything! You're also really exaggerating Area G-Heal vs. other healing options; it's only 60 points better than Area Heal, 50 points better than the 100 MT healing items which are almost free, while it's 150 points worse than the uber healing items which I could easily afford enough of for bosses (you don't heal in randoms).
Non-Aht teams have more difficulty dealing with status too
Polaris' resistance doesn't seem that incredible to me (I actually thought it was 20% but not sure where I got that idea now; guess it could be better?). I used Marco with status resistance stuff (since he doesn't need offence or durability anyway!) and used Area Recover if things really went south. Final's the only boss with good enough status that I found this especially useful anyway.
I'd say that Stocke/Aht/Marco is the best team
I strongly disagree as a kneejerk, but... let's see.
Randoms, and bosses which are largely multipart affairs (RH has plenty of those!):
Before Raynie gets G-spells: It's got a case, though I'm skeptical (Aht is fairly underlevelled here, and immobile enemies throw a wrench in its offence more than S/R/M).
After Raynie gets G-spells: These do the same damage as traps, but you don't waste the action pushing a group of enemies into them, giving you an extra target per round. Raynie is clearly better than Aht here.
After Star Traps: It's really a matter of damage vs. targets, now. Spells target one more character, traps do more damage (provided speed-twinked Stocke). It's worth noting that if you want to target one less enemy with S/R/M, you use Air Assault after the first two pushes and suddenly G-spell damage isn't far from Trap damage, though does still lose. And the usual concern of immobile enemies. Feels like a push, honestly.
After Wind God Strike: Best party is Gafka and someone who can deal big damage to the group he collects, no contest. As mentioned, you can't reliably trap the centre, so Raynie or Eruca is a better choice.
Mobile solo bosses: Yeah, probably, except for the part of the game between G-spells and Star Traps. This situation pretty much negates all the weaknesses of traps, besides incompatibility with Air Assault (which closes the gap certainly, but traps still generally win outside the aforementioned point in the game).
Immobile solo bosses: I can't see it at all. This team lacks the Regeneration buff, so right away, Area G-Heal is matched by Regen + just plain Area Heal and the team does't even win healing like it should. Never mind the offence is just lame; Stocke x2 is worse than Stocke+Raynie, and Stocke x2 + Aht is way worse than Stocke + Raynie x2. There's S/A/R as an option, but... compared to Aht Marco offers the magic buff and the flexibility of Trans-Turn, while all Aht can do is slightly improve your MT healing on turns where you aren't willing to shell out the cash. Defence buff is probably better than Polaris too, especially since Marco can cover status with Area Recover (which works better requires precise Polaris knowledge which we lack; regardless, status isn't so common as to lend this much weight, and if we FAQ the game we can prepare for each boss with blockers anyway).
This is making me reconsider Aht vs. Eruca, though. Eruca's damage is just so damn high in that window right before she leaves lategame. I sorta figured this was worth more than Aht's spiky performance against mobile solo bosses but now I'm not sure.
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That said, how about Marco for best PC? Four people have commented on RH parties in this thread and the only thing we've all agreed on is we seem to be assuming Marco in many parties. Trans-Turn off good stats (i.e. not Eruca HP) and availability really lets him do everything without having to worry about his own stats, and fit most any party. You need to add someone with good damage, but there are plenty of options for that (Raynie, Eruca, Gafka, Aht w/ traps), and as soon as you do he pretty much has their damage.
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Eh, unless you need the separation for your own notes, I don't see it disrupting the thread in the slightest.
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I can get behind Marco as best PC, because he doesn't die. In this game, that's important!
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Dungeon Crawl: So I'm playing a Minotaur Monk. I'm in a sewer, and the kobolds there drop several runed swords. I pick them up and read a Detect Curse scroll. They're all uncursed, so I start wielding them to see if any of them have any useful properties.
An uncursed short sword of distortion.
Crap.
Distortion is the effect where I can't unwield it without taking massive damage or getting banished to the Abyss. Both of which are pretty much instant death for a character at my level. So I'm stuck with this thing.
But it turns out, distortion brand does a crap-ton of damage! Plus you occasionally get instant kills when the enemy is devoured by a hole in reality. Well, I guess they're kills... you get experience, but Trog isn't giving me a message about being happy with the kill...
So I continue on through the dungeon, kicking massive ass with this short sword. Then the unique Louise casts banishment on me and sends me to the Abyss. Remember all those enemies I "killed" instantly by sending them through a hole in reality? They're here. Including the uniques. Game over.
Distortion's unwielding damage isn't too massive-generally fatal only if you have sub-40 HP IIRC(Basically, unequipping Distortion is the same as hitting yourself once with it, IIRC.). And in general, the uniques showing up there are...not too big of a problem at early levels, because a Executioner could have shown up and ganked you instead. You've hit on why I think Distortion weapons are really really strong...you just have...to, you know. Not want another weapon. At all. Even if it's an artifact. Because otherwise it has a 15%~ chance of abyssing you.
Which as you saw can gank you. The Abyss is an unfriendly place that I've had kill people with multiple runes in hand before. Rarely, but...
More of an issue with blunt weapons that can't carve corpses. Now *that* is a problem for non-necromancers.
(Incidentally, Distortion and Elec are the only flat-rate damage effects on weapons...well, and Pain but that's based on your Necromancy skill. As such they tend to kick utter ass with small low damage fast weapons. Like short swords!)
Dungeon Crawl: yeah I just finished my seventh ascension(Orc Priest, now with exactly one randart[Edit: Wait, two. FORGOT THE BOOTS OF SLAYING how could I forget those.]! That could have been outclassed by a good cold resistance normal shield-wait I forgot to look for one of those argh...http://pastebin.com/DkFjphgM http://pastebin.com/KmMRrwpE for the morgue that I babbled incredibly in the notes of.). I need to play something else I think.
That and TF2(with a short break for BoD7/CSTW/few other FPS) are all I've played for the last two months. >_>
On the upside getting a clear with a damned Troll is something I'm genuinely proud of. That took *entirely* too much theorycraft to get a workable one.
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Speaking of RH: My DS came back! Yay! Now I can pick that up again! And Ghost Trick! And my EF EXCEED replay!
Just as soon as I find the charger.
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MASSIVE RH POINTLESS DEBATE WOOOO.
Yeah, you can buff her HP of course. Granted, it'd take two accessory slots to match e.g. Marco/Raynie durability, and they could use those two slots to match/beat her speed. I was kneejerk overestimating how large the gaps were in both directions.
Looks like my complaints about Aht's speed were a little suspect, looking at it; it's not too hard to get Stocke faster than her, and his overall stats are good enough that he can afford a bit less durability without it being a problem.
Of course this also invalidates your whole point about her speed letting you control battles, since others can match her while she covers your HP (as you suggest she does. I agree).
Wait, didn't you say that getting items mattered more than equipment earlier? You'll need some money to get those accessories.
You're backing off, but that's okay. I'll agree about being able to afford both equipment and a reasonable amount of healing items. (this is still far from having infinite 300 HP healing) This does invalidate the point about Aht's insane speed letting her control battles, and we have Aht with potentially roughly the same speed and durability as Marco and Raynie then.
Ok!
Stocke + Marco (or Eruca) is already two thieves effectively. I don't exactly need a third. If you aren't running from everything in sight you don't run short on cash for good items, trust me. I even finished below the stat topic levels and ignored most sidequests, so it's not like I grinded or anything! You're also really exaggerating Area G-Heal vs. other healing options; it's only 60 points better than Area Heal, 50 points better than the 100 MT healing items which are almost free, while it's 150 points worse than the uber healing items which I could easily afford enough of for bosses (you don't heal in randoms).
You might not always have Marco in your team, and using Eruca to trans-turn to Stocke so he can steal is just awful. Really.
Stealing does give you money (not that awesome, but always nice) AND it also nets you neat items from bosses, like the best studs. The stealing rate is pretty low; this is almost like FF9, where I would have certainly LOVED to have someone other than Zidane to steal things.
"Only 60 points better than Area Heal" sounds bad until you realize it's 150 vs 90 healed. There's a world of difference here. If you have Marco and Aht in the same team too, Marco can switch to Aht instead of using his own Area Heal, to heal even more.
About money. You still save a ton of money by using Aht. You can use that money to:
- Fully equip both Marco and Raynie (so you can switch at will between, say, S/A/M or S/A/R)
- Buy A LOT MORE of those great healing items (Aht can use them too!)
- Buy some equipment for Aht (obviously) so she and Stocke can beat the optional arena bosses.
- Buy equipment for Gafka so he can beat his difficult optional boss battle.
- Order a wheat beer in a pub and reflect on how worse your life would be without Aht.
Polaris' resistance doesn't seem that incredible to me (I actually thought it was 20% but not sure where I got that idea now; guess it could be better?). I used Marco with status resistance stuff (since he doesn't need offence or durability anyway!) and used Area Recover if things really went south. Final's the only boss with good enough status that I found this especially useful anyway.
I don't have numbers, but I've only seen status get through Polaris once, and I used the spell against almost every status oriented boss. I could have gotten lucky!
About Aht vs Marco. Comparing Aht to only Marco for status healing is not necessarily the best way to debate (I'll say more later), but I'll play along.
The main problem is that it's hard to get good, reliable status resistance with accessories. You can't just give Marco a ribbon and call it a day.
- First, those slots are used for speed boosting items if Marco wants to match Aht's speed. Let's not forget that!
- Second, there's like only one status resistance item that protects against every status, and it's late and weak (+2 against everything) Most other accessories only protect against one status. Restarting a battle just to switch accessories is a pain too, just use Solaris to make everything better.
- Third, I had everyone loaded with sleep resistance items against the optional boss and the status still had a crazy success rate (This might be because it's an optional boss, I'll give you that)
- Fourth, those accessories cost money. See my earlier point. Fully equipping your team AND buying speed boosting accessories AND buying a bunch of status resistance accessories AND buying a ton of items is starting to be a stretch.
Before Raynie gets G-spells: It's got a case, though I'm skeptical (Aht is fairly underlevelled here, and immobile enemies throw a wrench in its offence more than S/R/M).
After Raynie gets G-spells: These do the same damage as traps, but you don't waste the action pushing a group of enemies into them, giving you an extra target per round. Raynie is clearly better than Aht here.
After Star Traps: It's really a matter of damage vs. targets, now. Spells target one more character, traps do more damage (provided speed-twinked Stocke). It's worth noting that if you want to target one less enemy with S/R/M, you use Air Assault after the first two pushes and suddenly G-spell damage isn't far from Trap damage, though does still lose. And the usual concern of immobile enemies. Feels like a push, honestly.
After Wind God Strike: Best party is Gafka and someone who can deal big damage to the group he collects, no contest. As mentioned, you can't reliably trap the centre, so Raynie or Eruca is a better choice.
Mobile solo bosses: Yeah, probably, except for the part of the game between G-spells and Star Traps. This situation pretty much negates all the weaknesses of traps, besides incompatibility with Air Assault (which closes the gap certainly, but traps still generally win outside the aforementioned point in the game).
Immobile solo bosses: I can't see it at all. This team lacks the Regeneration buff, so right away, Area G-Heal is matched by Regen + just plain Area Heal and the team does't even win healing like it should. Never mind the offence is just lame; Stocke x2 is worse than Stocke+Raynie, and Stocke x2 + Aht is way worse than Stocke + Raynie x2. There's S/A/R as an option, but... compared to Aht Marco offers the magic buff and the flexibility of Trans-Turn, while all Aht can do is slightly improve your MT healing on turns where you aren't willing to shell out the cash. Defence buff is probably better than Polaris too, especially since Marco can cover status with Area Recover (which works better requires precise Polaris knowledge which we lack; regardless, status isn't so common as to lend this much weight, and if we FAQ the game we can prepare for each boss with blockers anyway).
Now hold on a second. You're only comparing all of Aht's qualities to the best options available: Is her healing better than items? Is her damage always uber compared to Raynie? (at least you didn't say Eruca) Is Polaris as good as Marco's MT status healing?
Let's use that logic on Stocke:
Stocke is worthless. His stealing doesn't matter because Aht can steal too, his damage is awful compared to Raynie and Eruca, his healing is awful compared to items (and Aht) He's the best person for pushing things around in the earlygame.... Then Marco gets better because he can push left, right and back, and Trans-Turn to Aht or Rosch to push forward. (or Stocke)
In truth, while he looks bad here, Stocke makes for a really good jack of all trades in game. (Unless you're MF) Similarly, the sum of all of Aht's qualities makes her the MVP. (or at least better than freaking Eruca, dude)
That's why I won't nitpick about everything here.
I'll mention a few things though.
- Regenerate only works once a round (worthless if your team is fully healed, inferior if your team is hurt and you want to use a lot of healing in one turn), is weak and needs to be cast every few rounds. It just stops being useful after the earlygame.
- Did you know that Star Traps target two panels? So, either Aht gets an additional turn whenever she uses a star trap instead of a trap, or Stocke pushes his enemies into two traps at once for uber damage.
- Wind God Strike actually works well with traps. You CAN target the center... But you can also target one of the 3 of the squares surrounding the center and have Stocke push enemies into it in a single round.
- Raynie gets G-Thunder kinda late, you want it against thaumachines. She gets G-Ice even later. This is not significant, but she never gets G-POIZN or even regular POIZN (there was at least one boss is weak to Aht's poison trap)
- We're not FAQing the game. We're real men (and women)
This is making me reconsider Aht vs. Eruca, though. Eruca's damage is just so damn high in that window right before she leaves lategame. I sorta figured this was worth more than Aht's spiky performance against mobile solo bosses but now I'm not sure.
Eruca is really made of tissue paper (she dies all the time), she only has one element and you can pretty much forget about fighting the final boss with her.
Gafka's clearly worse too. He is extremely one dimensional, his one big damage move can often be hard to use (unless you have Aht!), Wind God Strike can't compare with all that Aht brings to the team.
Both have a level disadvantage compared to Aht.
That said, how about Marco for best PC? Four people have commented on RH parties in this thread and the only thing we've all agreed on is we seem to be assuming Marco in many parties. Trans-Turn off good stats (i.e. not Eruca HP) and availability really lets him do everything without having to worry about his own stats, and fit most any party. You need to add someone with good damage, but there are plenty of options for that (Raynie, Eruca, Gafka, Aht w/ traps), and as soon as you do he pretty much has their damage.
To be fair, Marco's in most parties because he goes well with anything, with pushing skills, not awful durability and speed, and Trans-Turn. You wouldn't pair Raynie with another character with no pushing skills for example. I'll agree that he beats Stocke.
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I think it's about time I took a break and played a game where I'd be lucky if the hours counter reached double digits.
Star Wars, Force Unleashed 2--haha just messing. Record of Agarest War Zero, where the cha-cha-boogie is dead and buried.
When we last left off... honestly it's kinda of blurry when that happened since I'm pretty sure I've broken 100 hours I just can't tell because there's no easily visible clock. So, uh, I was... done with a dungeon? Was I starting one? Uhhh, well there was a dungeon! Some sort of underwater cave. There were some zombie dragons and stuff and some really great daggers dropped from the next tier of catgirl. All dat AP. And finally! A new town when we're done! No longer do I have to travel to the other side of the half which is actually not that far from a direct line because we're supposed to be skirting the enemies main force but keep running into them anyway. Not stockpiling northern resources continues to bite me in the ass as I can't make half the next tier of weapons.
So, after getting lost in a magic mirror it's time for a glorious plot scene that for once doesn't actually have a series of battles or dungeon or anything! It just has Minmel betraying the party and forcing us to use Shernini and her under-leveled pale butt. Granted I had another pair of the daggers Leon was using but they weren't enhanced so small wonder it's a supposed-to-lose battle. Minmel is actually probably the worst of these since she can just spam her first EX to fully heal herself. Fun.
Grind time! I can do this, I want to do this. I want a reward! I didn't get any gold or EP because it was a solo battle. So, tag in Shernini and go for grind. Which fails hilariously since it takes like three fights to level her and it's so boring so go tactics! Too bad the cutscene before the fight is 2 minutes if I'm on Skip, jeez. So, try 2 somehow manages to go even worse because of the normal thing of me being a dumbass. So try 3, this is it, I boost up Leon's SP high enough for him to pull out his 3rd EX, Gallios and Alice can do their combo, everyone else can do something, and most importantly, Leon has Unleash All activated. I attack with my combo, it's looking good, by the time Leon's EX gets ready to fire the Break Bar is Broken and.... HOLY HELL GO UNLEASH ALL. Leon does over 60,000 damage and Overkills Minmel getting me some swanky new loot that's a scythe which crap. So of course my glorious victory doesn't get me anything but those items and not another even sentence change bluh.
Some more optional things were Shernini explains why her elf-type and Alice's type are at odds because Shernini elves were made to be selfish douches by the gods. She explains this by acting bothered around Alice and Leon all day and getting him to chase her at night because he's worried. Hilarious.
Next plot fight go! Round 2 with mister-good-NPC-gone-bad! Wait, no, that's later... oh yeah, first even before that space which has that fight there's a battle series against... a slightly boosted naked men and barely boosted somehow-supposed-to-be-a-big-deal-generics. Who go down in two rounds and give enough EXp that Shernini could promote to Poultry Princess if I could use items between battle series when I can use items in normal menu. So, round 2 is a big old boss with.... two more of those fodder generics. He has a decent chunk of health--most I've seen actually-but uh.... well I finish the fight in one turn so he's really just a giant wanker.
So! Back to Good-bad-NPC! Another example of things going to hell. Like the previous-only-actual-beatable-boss he only has two stupid generics for help. At this point I actually defeat him in two turns and the battle ends before I finish off the last useless minions. Minmel--oh yeah she stole the artifacts and is here handing over the artifacts to him because she doesn't want her ~friends~ to get hurt--decides nooooooooo! And switches sides again. NPC-flipside runs away. Minmel splits into two people for some reason and her second person drops the shocking revelation that the gods are dicks that created Minmel--actually named Mimel but misspelling's my thing--and that Minmel pushed her power unto Sieg to not sacrifice herself. But Sieg was already dying so whatever. Also Minmel's evil twin ate all the artifact's power and runs away to... kill the supposed main villain? I dunno, she doesn't seem to have much purpose beyond be useful to the big bad super-dark god who treated her like a daughter as he tossed her away because the dark god who made her was making a mockery of life. Or something.
Uhhhhh, optional scenes gooo? MAx out haremette affection! Oh YEAH! .....wait, why am I happy about this? I mean, I know my life's that empty, but experiencing happiness over something I was hand-held through? Have I really dipped that far down? Was I always that low? The darkness is all-consuming, but I want the light! SAVE ME!
uhhhhh, where was I? Optional dungeon show up, nice, strong enemies including ones that actually give me 300% bonus for fighting. And Minmel's new scythe gives a lot of AP. And there's nice new armor that gives equal AP but actual defense, four-digit even!
So, I make a quick run at the next plot area and.... wait... this is the bridal choice isn't it? Ughhhhhhh, back to the hidden dungeon I go! The spirally dungeon dungeon....
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I've missed stealing twice, maybe three times so far. The rate really isn't that low. Maybe against bosses, but theycould just have, y'know, Stealing Protection or something. Also, a lot of enemies don't even have anything to steal. In RH if it gives the message there is nothing to steal, it's not lying.
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Crawl: How's this for a randart?
Amulet of Surprise (Clar, +Rage, rF+, rC++, MR)
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man I'd kill for just clarity/rF+
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Magetastic: Yeah, it's easy to steal from randoms and hard to steal from bosses. (who sometimes have more than 1 item)
SMT Strange Journey No Fusion: Sector C.
Honestly I find this really easy so I have trouble caring that much. Should have tried a 2 people playthrough instead maybe? Hopefully this gets harder later on.
Infinite Undiscovery Hard Mode Solo: About to go to Castle Valette. I'm getting the vouchers to get everyone up to max level IC but won't use them to get better equipment/items until the SG.
Honestly Captain, restarting on hard then on infinite might be less of a pain than getting Compulsive. Just saying.
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Crawl: How's this for a randart?
Amulet of Surprise (Clar, +Rage, rF+, rC++, MR)
i don't think that in all those runs I've seen one that good. Naturally you will die within a few floors before most of it's boosts become notable because that's how Crawl rolls.
Granted, for my money I'd take the Cloak of the Equator randart I got on my Merfolk, but overall it's not as good, just not on an amulet slot.
c - the +3 cloak of the Equator (worn) {rElec rF+ Str+3}
(You bought it in a shop on level 4 of the Orcish Mines)
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MASSIVE RH POINTLESS DEBATE WOOOO.
Er, just checking, but you are actually enjoying this right? Because if so there's no real reason to continue. I can't tell; INTERNET TONE and all that.
I'll respond to the actual post of your content later, don't worry!
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Yes. (Hence the part about drinking beer and stuff)
We're in the DL anyway, etc.
I have actually liked discussions about FE9 tier lists a lot more than the game. (not too much though. I'm not too crazy)
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Bit the bullet and ordered Radiant Historia! It should be here sometime next week, hopefully before the weekend =D I am also the type of gamer not to do everything, go out of my way to do lots of sidequests/get the best equipment/fight extra battles for levels/skills/monies, etc on my first run of a game (unless a game is FAQ bait in itself, wherein I end up finding out/doing lots of extra stuffs while FAQing to find out about puzzle solutions, how to progress plots, etc for things that aren't obvious, well the same usually goes for/happens if I am asking for/other people are helping me through instead of a FAQ too so >_> ) prefering to just go straight through it for the story. Also I'm not usually really the biggest fan of stealing !(unless it's FF5/has savestates) and would really prefer not to have to do/rely on it if I don't have to. Should be interesting to see how this goes then~
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Wait, didn't you say that getting items mattered more than equipment earlier? You'll need some money to get those accessories.
You get quite a few in chests actually. Quick glance through a FAQ... yeah, Spd+3, Spd+5, Spd+8, Spd+10... scattered throughout the game. They all looked "on route", nothing sidequesty.
(I will add that I didn't find speed as valuable as you, but I don't want to say anything definitive without more testing. If you say Aht's speed is that good, then to me it suffices to show that other PCs can match her if she's playing catch-up on HP.)
You might not always have Marco in your team, and using Eruca to trans-turn to Stocke so he can steal is just awful.
*shrug* Stocke is forced, which already covers your thieving duties most of the time. (I don't steal that much. Something to keep in mind when I say I didn't have money trouble... if there are lots of goodies from stealing that I missed, it must be even easier to afford good healing.) If you want a second thief, you have three choices - Marco, Aht, or Eruca. This doesn't seem like it's scoring any of them many points, seeing as there are three candidates for the role and it's not a great role to start with.
The main problem is that it's hard to get good, reliable status resistance with accessories. You can't just give Marco a ribbon and call it a day.
- First, those slots are used for speed boosting items if Marco wants to match Aht's speed. Let's not forget that!
- Second, there's like only one status resistance item that protects against every status, and it's late and weak (+2 against everything) Most other accessories only protect against one status. Restarting a battle just to switch accessories is a pain too, just use Solaris to make everything better.
- Third, I had everyone loaded with sleep resistance items against the optional boss and the status still had a crazy success rate (This might be because it's an optional boss, I'll give you that)
- Fourth, those accessories cost money. See my earlier point. Fully equipping your team AND buying speed boosting accessories AND buying a bunch of status resistance accessories AND buying a ton of items is starting to be a stretch.
re the points here:
1. This is pretty valid. Of course, Marco doesn't need durability (Gaia/Madre Blade) or offence (Trans-Turn). He can probably afford, say, two Sky Drops and the Spd+10 armlet if we're talking endgame.
2. I'm definitely going to reiterate that despite my eschewing of both Polaris (except for an experiment with it where it failed to block status <.<) and statusblockers on 2/3 of my PCs that I barely even noticed enemy status attacks until the final boss (Alistel arc boss has an okay one I guess but he's after Sky Drops anyway, which are chapter 5, actually not that late).
4. Sky Drops cost 4000. This is "might as well be free", way less than most endgame equipment. Most of the rest are even cheaper, if you care.
Now hold on a second. You're only comparing all of Aht's qualities to the best options available: Is her healing better than items? Is her damage always uber compared to Raynie? (at least you didn't say Eruca) Is Polaris as good as Marco's MT status healing?
Nah. I am comparing Aht to the Stocke/Marco/Raynie team at all times, except for "holy crap Gafka demolishes randoms with WGS even if underlevelled". If they happen to usually be the best options available then they're better PCs. If not I don't understand what you're getting at.
- Regenerate only works once a round (worthless if your team is fully healed, inferior if your team is hurt and you want to use a lot of healing in one turn), is weak and needs to be cast every few rounds. It just stops being useful after the earlygame.
Regenerate heals 40 HP per turn (for 6 turns, quite a good duration actually). This is enough to close the gap between 90/100 and 150 which you are so fond of (okay, there's still a tiny difference. This is more than made up for extra HP regen offers on turns where you don't need to MT heal but do have some residual missing HP). Basically it makes all your healing 40 points better (unless you're using multiple MT healing moves a round which is grossly inefficient), than heals an extra 40 to everyone who ISN'T healed, each round.
Did you know that Star Traps target two panels? So, either Aht gets an additional turn whenever she uses a star trap instead of a trap, or Stocke pushes his enemies into two traps at once for uber damage.
(I'm aware, yes.)
The problem is that the limiting factor on Aht damage isn't the number of panels she can trap or the number of turns she can get, it's the turns everyone ELSE gets to gather enemies and push them onto traps. Pushing things onto two star traps is just overkill, most will die to one. If this were a game like FFX with lots of big tough randoms star traps would be uber, but randoms instead look like "here are 4-6 enemies who are 2HKOed at best, just have enough HP to deal with weak MT options".
- Wind God Strike actually works well with traps. You CAN target the center... But you can also target one of the 3 of the squares surrounding the center and have Stocke push enemies into it in a single round.
That on the other hand I did not know. So the strategy is Stocke push enemy out of centre, trap a panel beside it (also traps centre), WGS? If I'm misunderstanding please clarify.
Still, it doesn't matter. Both strategies murder everything mobile in a single round (WGS->Air Assault->G-spell is so gross, like 600-700 damage or something even before the fourth attack; randoms don't have that much HP typically). The biggest threat to any Gafka-centred endgame sweeping team is immobile enemies, and Raynie is much better at picking them off than Aht is.
- Raynie gets G-Thunder kinda late, you want it against thaumachines.
In the first thaumachine fight, the real threat is the exploding guys who you can't trap. By the time you fight Thaumachines again (or Granorg armour dude), Raynie should have G-Thunder.
- We're not FAQing the game. We're real men (and women)
If we're not, then I start peppering any lategame Aht notes with "if you actually find her optional skills". Did I mention Marco/Raynie aren't reliant on optional skills to be badass?
Eruca is really made of tissue paper (she dies all the time), she only has one element and you can pretty much forget about fighting the final boss with her.
Yeah, I was thinking about this today, and I agree (although Aht is closer to Eruca durability than to anyone else... this doesn't matter if you think Eruca needs to twink speed to compete of course. I don't, you do, blah blah). I realise more and more I have some fondness for Eruca because I used her with Gafka for total destruction but now I realise that's way more about Gafka, and while Eruca makes the shiniest numbers they aren't necessary and now that I know she leaves I regret not letting Raynie get more exp during that time. So yeah, ready to admit I was wrong there.
Gafka's clearly worse too. He is extremely one dimensional, his one big damage move can often be hard to use (unless you have Aht!), Wind God Strike can't compare with all that Aht brings to the team.
WGS is better than anything Aht does, ever. It is better than anything ANY PC does, ever (in this game I mean). If he had it the whole game, or even half the game, we'd be talking Nina4/Ursula randomsweeping absurdity here. One-rounding all mobile enemies off 2-3 actions (and even softening the immobile ones!) is that good.
He doesn't have much else. However! When the best team is S/R/M, I nod to the fact that there is a point in the game where Gafka, even if you haven't used him before or gotten any of his other skills, is -clearly- the optimum party choice. This never applies to Aht. Unfortunately for all but the best PCs, "I do a bunch of things decently" is not as good as "I do one thing really, really well" in a game like this. WGS, unlike most sidequest skills, is also really thrown in your face, IIRC.
I'm not really interested in a Gafka/Aht debate past that. I will freely acknowledge that if you're looking for someone you can use all game in your fixed party, Aht is a better choice than Gafka. But until you convince me that Aht > Raynie or Aht > Marco, we're stuck with a situation where Gafka is more useful in my eyes (and you should have little trouble seeing why even if you don't agree). So let's focus on those arguments.
To be fair, Marco's in most parties because he goes well with anything, with pushing skills, not awful durability and speed, and Trans-Turn.
Which is why he's the best. He steals everyone else's best attributes (which notably means all of Stocke's since he's forced) and has a few of his own (grapple, def/mag buffs... healing I guess!). It's like Gogo if Gogo had effectively great stats (since he can dump offence and not suffer) instead of game-worst. Even if there were some overcentralisingly good PC otherwise that would make Marco only a bit behind, since the optimum team would now be Stocke/Marco/Citan Uzuki or whatever (with a big gap between Marco and #3). Since there isn't, he's the man.
Whew, kept this post under 10k at least. <_<
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Sengoku Basara 3: "Hmm...I feel like there's this game I bought...that isn't a MUA game...that I haven't finished...what game was that?
...oh, right, lets fuck with Japanese History: The Musou Game!"
Anyway, finally finished Ieyasu' story after putting the game off for...reasons not completely related to the game. Probably doing Date Masamune's next.
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I'll start with WGAYP first.
Infinite Undiscovery: Finished Castle Valette.
That was a lot easier than in a "non solo" "non hard mode" "non 15 healing items max run"... Probably because I did the shop upgrade quests this time, and probably because Capell has a lot more levels.
I'm going to roll all over the final boss tomorrow. Just you wait.
RH:
You get quite a few in chests actually. Quick glance through a FAQ... yeah, Spd+3, Spd+5, Spd+8, Spd+10... scattered throughout the game. They all looked "on route", nothing sidequesty.
(I will add that I didn't find speed as valuable as you, but I don't want to say anything definitive without more testing. If you say Aht's speed is that good, then to me it suffices to show that other PCs can match her if she's playing catch-up on HP.)
Everybody wants these speed accessories though, and the best ones are very lategame. The best storebought ones are only Spd + 5.
*shrug* Stocke is forced, which already covers your thieving duties most of the time. (I don't steal that much. Something to keep in mind when I say I didn't have money trouble... if there are lots of goodies from stealing that I missed, it must be even easier to afford good healing.) If you want a second thief, you have three choices - Marco, Aht, or Eruca. This doesn't seem like it's scoring any of them many points, seeing as there are three candidates for the role and it's not a great role to start with.
Any thief will get you some points (not too many, but it adds up), because less thiefs means wasting tons of turns in those boss battles if you want to get those items.
1. This is pretty valid. Of course, Marco doesn't need durability (Gaia/Madre Blade) or offence (Trans-Turn). He can probably afford, say, two Sky Drops and the Spd+10 armlet if we're talking endgame.
2. I'm definitely going to reiterate that despite my eschewing of both Polaris (except for an experiment with it where it failed to block status <.<) and statusblockers on 2/3 of my PCs that I barely even noticed enemy status attacks until the final boss (Alistel arc boss has an okay one I guess but he's after Sky Drops anyway, which are chapter 5, actually not that late).
4. Sky Drops cost 4000. This is "might as well be free", way less than most endgame equipment. Most of the rest are even cheaper, if you care.
1 Very lategame, unique, and he doesn't reach Aht's speed. (though close)
2 YMMV then, I don't have excellent memory of who has what, but I've been annoyed by status on a few bosses. (spiders too right?) Paralysis mostly, some poison, fear.
3 Only +2 to status resistance though, which sounds pretty low.
Nah. I am comparing Aht to the Stocke/Marco/Raynie team at all times, except for "holy crap Gafka demolishes randoms with WGS even if underlevelled". If they happen to usually be the best options available then they're better PCs. If not I don't understand what you're getting at.
I'm saying that it's a brutally unfair way of seeing things since you're comparing her to everybody else at once, and I'm using Stocke as an example as he's worse than either Raynie + Marco at everything.
I'll use your method with a simpler easier example:
Let's take a standard FF1 party of Knight/Monk/Black mage / White mage.
Let's consider Red mage compared to this team. Red Mage's physicals are worse than Knight's, he's worse at using black magic than Black Mage, and worse at using white magic than White mage. Wow, the only thing he has is a very small durability advantage over the mages, but you don't get hit often if you're the 4th in battle anyway.
So basically red mage is worthless, 1/10
This is proof by contradiction, since RM is awesome. Instead; you should compare what he brings to the table to each character individually, not to the whole team at once.
Regenerate heals 40 HP per turn (for 6 turns, quite a good duration actually). This is enough to close the gap between 90/100 and 150 which you are so fond of (okay, there's still a tiny difference. This is more than made up for extra HP regen offers on turns where you don't need to MT heal but do have some residual missing HP). Basically it makes all your healing 40 points better (unless you're using multiple MT healing moves a round which is grossly inefficient), than heals an extra 40 to everyone who ISN'T healed, each round.
Enemies don't always use the same move, they don't always hit you with a 150 MT move all the time. They might hit one character for 250 damage, try status... They might also get a doubleturn. 40 HP healing every round is just inadequate in that context and just wasting precious Raynie turns.
"Using multiple MT healing moves a round is grossly inefficient"
Using an expensive 1500$ healing item (because that's the only other alternative) in one turn instead of casting healing spells in two turns is grossly inefficient, especially if your team is fast, and especially if you have to do it often.
The problem is that the limiting factor on Aht damage isn't the number of panels she can trap or the number of turns she can get, it's the turns everyone ELSE gets to gather enemies and push them onto traps. Pushing things onto two star traps is just overkill, most will die to one. If this were a game like FFX with lots of big tough randoms star traps would be uber, but randoms instead look like "here are 4-6 enemies who are 2HKOed at best, just have enough HP to deal with weak MT options".
This is only true at the beginning of the game, not in the endgame where those traps become available. Hell, even my overlevelled aftergame Aht can't kill some of those robots in the final dungeon, with only one Volt Star Trap panel.
- Wind God Strike actually works well with traps. You CAN target the center... But you can also target one of the 3 of the squares surrounding the center and have Stocke push enemies into it in a single round.
Still, it doesn't matter. Both strategies murder everything mobile in a single round (WGS->Air Assault->G-spell is so gross, like 600-700 damage or something even before the fourth attack; randoms don't have that much HP typically). The biggest threat to any Gafka-centred endgame sweeping team is immobile enemies, and Raynie is much better at picking them off than Aht is.
It matters because it makes Aht about as viable as Raynie about dealing damage after WGS becomes available, when you implied that it made her worthless.
If you're using Gafka there shouldn't be a lot of remaining immobile enemies after your initial combo (or else Gafka's probably not the best option)
In the first thaumachine fight, the real threat is the exploding guys who you can't trap. By the time you fight Thaumachines again (or Granorg armour dude), Raynie should have G-Thunder.
You do kind of want to beat the boss fast as he keeps summoning the exploding things until he dies. (Thankfully Rosch is awesome for this, and it's the only moment in the game where he shines)
- We're not FAQing the game. We're real men (and women)
If we're not, then I start peppering any lategame Aht notes with "if you actually find her optional skills". Did I mention Marco/Raynie aren't reliant on optional skills to be badass?
Not that hard to find, while knowing what bosses you're going to find requires you to be a psychic. But that's a point.
I'm not really interested in a Gafka/Aht debate past that. I will freely acknowledge that if you're looking for someone you can use all game in your fixed party, Aht is a better choice than Gafka. But until you convince me that Aht > Raynie or Aht > Marco, we're stuck with a situation where Gafka is more useful in my eyes (and you should have little trouble seeing why even if you don't agree). So let's focus on those arguments.
As far as I'm concerned, Aht's way better than Raynie because the damage they deal is very comparable (Aht's usually better but unpushable enemies give Raynie the edge) and Aht brings a whole lot of other useful things to the table (Being the gamebest healer, Polaris, saving money, etc) while Raynie has basically nothing but damage.
This is like Pent vs Karel in FE7, Karel has better stats but Pent has so many other things going for him that he's better. (even if you can use elixirs instead of staves to heal!)
Using your method I should put Raynie below Gafka but honestly this doesn't work well with me.
To be fair, Marco's in most parties because he goes well with anything, with pushing skills, not awful durability and speed, and Trans-Turn.
Which is why he's the best. He steals everyone else's best attributes (which notably means all of Stocke's since he's forced) and has a few of his own (grapple, def/mag buffs... healing I guess!). It's like Gogo if Gogo had effectively great stats (since he can dump offence and not suffer) instead of game-worst. Even if there were some overcentralisingly good PC otherwise that would make Marco only a bit behind, since the optimum team would now be Stocke/Marco/Citan Uzuki or whatever (with a big gap between Marco and #3). Since there isn't, he's the man.
What's weird with this is that you're focusing completely on Stocke/Marco/Raynie. Marco being good with other characters shouldn't matter at all, but you mention him being in everybody's best party as the proof makes him good.
(And I'm assuming you're using Gafka with Raynie and not Marco, right?)
That aside, the argument works yeah. (Though as far as I'm concerned, that overcentralisingly good PC exists and is called Aht)
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What games are you debating, 2011.
Any thief will get you some points (not too many, but it adds up), because less thiefs means wasting tons of turns in those boss battles if you want to get those items.
What? Two PCs should be more than enough to steal (heck, one is). If you're devoting all three turns a round to stealing you're seriously dragging out a boss fight and the steal rate is probably too stupidly low to be worth it. That is like FF9 steal (which is terrible). I actually thought RH stealing was quite a bit better, maybe I got lucky.
Come to think of it, Aht's horrid steal damage means you're dragging out battles more just by using her for it instead of Stocke/Trans-Turn to Stocke.
Only +2 to status resistance though, which sounds pretty low.
33% resistance, two of them is 66%.
(re the spiders, I don't believe the first has any status. Second and third have poizn, which Regen kinda makes a mockery of anyway.
This is proof by contradiction, since RM is awesome.
If by "awesome" you mean "most likely the second best class, but a distant second". If you didn't mean that, maybe you just like red mages more than most!
Anyway, I'm not comparing Aht to individuals like that, but rather the Stocke/Raynie/Marco party and arguing she doesn't force either of them out. It was a pretty broad deconstruction of why I don't think Aht really threatens to be in the best party. I'm quite happy to focus on the one-on-one comparisons though.
Enemies don't always use the same move, they don't always hit you with a 150 MT move all the time. They might hit one character for 250 damage, try status
And in both those situations you just mentioned, Regen is piling up a little healing if you weren't yet at full (and we certainly won't always be at full). If you're using a turn on ST healing, then Regen might (gasp) save you money because Super Heal is so late, and regen might let you use G-Heal when 150 isn't enough but 190 is (also Trans-Turn can make that 230 unless the person who needs healing is Marco!). It can similarly let you use the 200 healing item instead of the 500 in some cases. Obviously I'm not going to hype this personally, but since you were apparently short on cash...
Using an expensive 1500$ healing item (because that's the only other alternative) in one turn instead of casting healing spells in two turns is grossly inefficient
No, taking one turn to heal instead of two is more efficient and you should do it unless the fight is easy anyway (at which point we don't care what we do except possibly for save time). "$1500 for an extra turn" is awesome in a tough fight and an excellent use of your money. Can you imagine an item that acted as FF Quick for $1500? Broken. But using Healing Fruits in a situation that calls for them is exactly that good (just you can't benefit from this as often). I'm utterly baffled that you think otherwise.
As far as I'm concerned, Aht's way better than Raynie because the damage they deal is very comparable (Aht's usually better but unpushable enemies give Raynie the edge) and Aht brings a whole lot of other useful things to the table (Being the gamebest healer, Polaris, saving money, etc) while Raynie has basically nothing but damage.
Raynie doesn't force you to take a turn to push enemies into her damage. If you have four turns to start the battle, Raynie will be able to hit 4 enemies (probably; depends on formation). Aht will be able to only hit 3, and that's assuming you twink Stocke/Marco to be faster than her (or she has a useful Push Assault, which she doesn't even learn until chapter 5ish). Even if there are only 3 enemies, the extra turn is still costly, since with that extra turn Stocke could be using Air Assault to up the big Raynie blast by 45% (which doesn't quite match trap damage, but it's close). This is a pretty darned big difference, especially given how situational Aht's raw damage edge is (nulled by immobile enemies, missing star traps, or the point in the game between G-spells and Star Traps).
None of Aht's other advantages amount to much of anything. Polaris' value is questionable (I certainly found Regenerate much better, bosses use damage way more than status). Saving money is moot because you have enough anyway, you'll at worst just be a few points short on def compared to Aht's team due to neglecting armour a bit (which... has Aht, and thus has a much lower def value to start with). And anyway, without Regen, Area G-Heal is only 10-20 points better than other healing + Regen unless you're using it twice for some (inefficient!) reason.
It gets even worse if my suspicions are right and RH speed is notably worse than you're hyping. Then we don't even care about matching Aht's speed while Aht's accessory slots are weighed down matching Raynie's HP. Actually, honestly, I suspect the best accessory strategy is to jack up your cannon's damage, anyway.
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What's weird with this is that you're focusing completely on Stocke/Marco/Raynie. Marco being good with other characters shouldn't matter at all, but you mention him being in everybody's best party as the proof makes him good.
Well, think of it this way. I think Raynie is better than Aht, you think Aht is better than Raynie. Let's assume for a moment that the truth is that they're exactly equal! Then the best party is (Stocke [forced], Marco, 50% Aht, 50% Raynie). At this point Marco is obviously better than either girl (feels wrong to call Raynie a "girl", but canon RH ages are stupid). The situation remains the same if the two are merely close.
Now, you're right, of course: if S/R/M (or S/A/M) is the obvious best party then Marco's advantages over other PCs decrease. Note that when I first threw out an inequality I said I couldn't rank the top three, due to my firm belief in this party! However, watching arguments made by people who believe such earth-shattering beliefs as Aht > Raynie made me realise that Marco would be more overall useful since he's going to be in the "best" party almost regardless of playstyle and how other debates turn out.
(And I'm assuming you're using Gafka with Raynie and not Marco, right?)
Yes.
Using your method I should put Raynie below Gafka but honestly this doesn't work well with me.
Nah, not necessarily. Remember that Raynie is around and kicking ass (great PC for a while after she gets that first +mag spear, even) before Aht joins. You might choose to argue this is worth more than Gafka's lategame dominance even if you think that Raynie deserves the bench as soon as Aht joins. Maybe.
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Deus Ex: So apparently there's a lot of cardboard boxes in the future.
Going for a pacifistic, semi-sneaky playstyle. I'm skipping hacking because my kid's going that route on his file. But the game seems to expect you to hack way too much.
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WGAYP:
Infinite Undiscovery Hard mode solo: Finished (Circle strafe the first bosses of the Underwater Palace, Regeinlief the last ones. Win), started the Seraphic Gate.
Turns out that going solo into a postgame dungeon on hard mode with no prior experience turns out to be difficult. Who would have thought?
By the way, this is the laziest Seraphic Gate ever. Wow. You know palette swap enemies? How about palette swap dungeons too? PALETTE SWAP EVERYTHING. (This is still fun)
Physical attacks are useless by that point, I started spamming Grinn Valesti -> Eternal Refrain. The first floor was crazy hard, and I had to hug the wall and use Giant Sword of Doom Regeinlief to beat the lame ogre boss after a few tries.
Utterly lost in the desert, I ran into SPOILER, and completely butchered him because this is a forced solo battle and I've been playing solo for the entire game. This is like soloing FE9 then running into the dark knight. Anyway, he came with absolutely ridiculous equipment and I stole all of it.
Now everything in the SG dies in 1-3 hits, I'm way more durable, I've explored the Port Zala part of it and I'm level 97.
At that point I found the best strategy in the game. Get ready for it. Allright.
You long press A to use Grinn Valesti. Then you long press B to chain Grinn Valesti into another Grinn Valesti. You wait one second and start again.
Debate:
I'm ready to drop it now since we're getting sidetracked, haven't really played the game enough to go too in depth, and we're in that "well, we're just playing differently. my way of playing is better" phase. (I'm more of a "Don't make sacrifices if you don't have to and are still winning easily and handily" guy)
This was fun (Marco is better than I thought, Aht is still best obviously)
Zidane is horrible at stealing, the worst thief in the world, but the things you can steal in FF9 are just really shiny. Not Chrono Trigger Panel shiny, but still.
There are some RH bosses (Including one of the Dias battles where you fight 2 uber knights and two beasts) where I wanted to steal items, and actually had to not use Stocke's turns at all because he was doing too much damage to the boss compared to Aht. I guess you wouldn't do that, but the item was good!
Fighter's obviously the best in FF1 yeah, something like F/F/F/RM or F/F/RM/RM being the best team.
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Yeah fair enough. That was good fun.
Now I can probably concentrate my WGAYP in catching up with my XF challenge log; I'm up to 4-4 now but have no updates since the end of Chapter 2, shame on me.
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Disgaea 4: Beat the main game today, gonna plug away at the aftergame but with Tales of Xillia in the mail since last week, I probably won't be focusing on just that.
This game's probably my favorite Disgaea. The writing was a nice rebound after how bad 3's was, the gameplay mechanics saw a nice number of improvements[monsters don't suck anymore! damage projections! Cam-pain stuff!], the cast was good, the graphics actually look like something resembling a PS3 game, and the music was good. The serious plot was kinda eh, mostly hurt by the actual villain being kinda lame. But that doesn't matter, because this game has a lot of great comedy moments[C6 in general, that one scene in C9, etc; etc;]. Solid 9/10 for me, maybe 9.5? Not 100% sure, but I enjoyed it a lot and didn't really feel like playing anything else the whole time.
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Bastion: Fun little ARPG. Definitely absorbed me for a day then I beat it, then started NG+ immediately then realized I was being irresponsible with time. My only complaint is that the game early on emphasizes finding a weapon synergy that fits your play style, then in the last few maps goes "Whoops nevermind" and forces you to use the big smashy cannon or the other big smashy cannon to deal with some enemies (unless you're playing without handicaps, in which case the game is too easy to care anyway). My combo of Machete + Musket was great for dealing with most situations except for those giant eyeball spawning things wherein it became useless. To be fair I didn't toy around with any of the other combinations that might have worked (Hammer + Rifle? Hammer+Repeater? I don't know how good the Hammer is for dealing with enemy regen on hard mode though, even with both damage upgrades) before going for the big guns, so maybe this isn't as big of a flaw as I felt, but it was pretty disappointing. Also, for a game that emphasized weapon synergy that much I think it would have been neat to have more Armories scattered within levels.
Still, aside from that it was a pretty good game. Did a pretty good job of using the narrator to tell the story throughout the game, and though there were no cutscenes pretty much at all I was pretty well absorbed. Apparently there's some new content in NG+ so I'll probably at least do one last run through. Yeah. I'd recommend it for 15 bucks, and definitely recommend it when it goes on sale during the next Steam "Buy tons of games you'll probably never play" sale.
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Also finished Disgaea 4. Final boss was pretty meh. Could've been a terror if he'd decided to spam his one tech (it overkilled Val the one time he used it), but instead he spent most of the fight chasing around my star mage and failing to kill her with standard physicals. Wonder if he's scripted to only use techs when he can hit a crowd or something.
Anyway, good game. Largely seconding Xer, with more disdain for the plot--any story outside of "Val takes over the Netherworld" dives headlong into wallbanger territory even by Disgaea standards. Valvatorez is pretty easily the most entertaining main the series has had, which lets the game coast through some of it, but after the last couple chapters of "Humans are irredeemable jerkasses," ad nauseum I just wanted to punch some N1 writer in the face. Game was much more endearing in the first portion, villain is an emo wanker who seriously sounds engaged in a life or death struggle with constipation anytime the emo overtakes him.
But whatever, it's Disgaea, you play it for the cast and for griiiind. And the cast is pretty fun, primarily Val and Fenrich. Val'd get boring pretty quick if SARDINES was his only gag, but he's deadly serious about everything--even when he shouldn't be, and when everyone else realizes something's crazy--and the voice actor really nails just the right amount of melodrama (AXEEEEELLLLLLL!) All in all, it's a pretty satisfying step up after the mediocrity of Disgaea 3. Not likely to convert anyone who wasn't already a fan of the series formula, but I was in the mood for some mindless SRPG smash and this amply filled the bill. Geopanel setups are largely still BS, but I admit to getting a laugh at how appropriate the C6 themes were to the plot of that chapter. Plot/gameplay fusion! In Disgaea!
Desco for MVP, incidentally.
Postgame can wait for a while since I think Lonesome Road comes out this week (unless it got delayed again and no one told me), though I started a new cycle out of curiosity and...android class unlocks with 10,000 mana? What.
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Buying a 150 euros new PS3 from a friend. Life is beautiful.
I canceled my 360 Dark Souls preorder to get the PS3 version. Take that, Xbox live and your crappy way of subscribing.
Strange Journey: Beat Horkos. Love how the guy summons pigs in battle to eat them the next turn.
The game is such a guilt trip all the way through. The story writer must have been depressed.
Infinite Undiscovery: Got a holy grail.
Some of those achievements are really going to take a long time. Not as long as GET EVERY ITEM IN THE GAME, but still. Get 99 999 999 fol? Ugh.
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Just started Wild Arms XF. Only three battles in, counting the prologue, so there's not much to stay, except that Tony's facial expressions are freaking awesome.
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Time for the recap of chapter 3 of XF-fiesta I suppose~ (Fantastica/Excavator/Berserker so far).
oh boy easy part of the game
3-1-A (Zortroa on the river): Combination Arts are kinda boring sometimes, y'know? The monsters here have quirks and I mostly just ignore them. Of course, my damage isn't exactly impressive, but nor is enemy offence here so amazing that I can't get things done. HP Down, Mag Down (just don't use that character as a finisher), and poison exist here but none of that is too bad.
3-1-B (Forsaken Mutants): Jerks. Pretty good stats and they have that healing thing going, Feeble Mind + Switch is a good way to eliminate them but Misery makes this a bit harder. Still nothing too bad.
Storebought +3 equips!
3-2-A (Clarissa/Alexia map #2): Easy. Lots of flat areas for Alexia to do Rush Charging Thrust tricks.
3-2-B (Chelle 2 and the myconids): Lots and lots of enemies here. Same strategies as usual (Rush Charging Thrust and lots of combination arts) deals with things. Confuse is kinda scary but nothing too horrible. Slow on the bosses, CA them to death.
3-3-A (Chelle 3 and infinite CSP): Potential Eggs for everyone. Slow then CA the kappas to death. Repeat for Chelle. Lots of CSP yay! Felius gets Vailant here which is pretty cool.
3-3-B (Weisheit 1): Can't lose this one!
3-4 (Guardian shrine - outside): Why does the game seem to love pairing things Fantasticas and Sentinels? AUTOCRIT BUFF ON CLASS THAT CAN'T CRIT yesz.
3-5-A (inside): Aw yeah it's another 4x weight device and again they gave the enemies super-high VP to be funny. Enough trolling, game. This is the toughest map in the chapter so far; enemies have quite good damage and there are a fair number of them. No special strategies though, just a matter of making sure the hard-hitting sentinels and elementalists don't destroy me and respecting Grapplers' abilities to get turns.
3-5-B (Katrina 1): aw yeah I can do this one legally. Not much to say here; the demons are solid individually but do a poor job of swarming me and the terrain works to my favour with its flatness and my range.
3-6 (Samille, El Jackson, and Shut Out) [1 reset]: Tough one, kinda surprised I beat it first try. No dispelling the wall, so all I can do is throw things over it. Berserker is pretty useless here (I keep Alexia in it for CSP though). Feeble Mind is the power move here to control the elementalists and I watch to make sure I don't carelessly move into range of several at once. Just careful positioning really. Some of them have MP regen (fortunately El Jackson isn't one) so those I try to blitz with CAs instead. Switch can finish off the MP-killed.
New jobs! Emulator. Well, goodbye game, it was fun. Like last playthrough, I won't be using randoms to get them skills because the class is already stupid enough without that.
3-7 (Samille and El Jackson 3): Not too bad, CAs get around most of the defensive tricks. Some nice damage here and I do lose a PC but easier than the last fight, which feels unusual.
3-8 (evil Royal Knights): Emulator doesn't really offer much yet, but this fight is still very easy. CAs for everyone. I have two different PCs in emulator than the previous battle.
Storebought +4 equips!
3-9 (nightstalkers with status): I get so lucky with enemy status rates here, which helps a good deal! Anyway I want to learn some Emulator goodies for people so everyone does some downloading; I focus on getting everyone petrify, and 2-3 PCs misery and sleep. Poison and disease I don't care about. Before I can do this, Feeble Mind spam eliminates the main threat of the Nightstalkers, though their physicals aren't awful or anything. Slow Down helps as well since I'm dragging things out. The royal knights themselves... better than last fight and I lose a PC or two. Plenty of Revive Fruits in this battle but I win.
From here on I mainly use Clarissa and Levin as Emulators, Labby as an Excavator (to neutralise the slightly problematic speed), Ragnar as Fantastica, and Felius/Alexia as berserkers. Everyone has Fantastica OC, Emulator OC, and Arts Support ('cept Alexia for the last); non-berserkers have Excavator EQ. Other fillerish skills vary.
3-10 (Asgard returns): Grab Electrigger for everyone and Dangerous Matter for some. Undead get petrified and shattered, great times. Asgard gets hit with Misery and Slow and blitzed with Electrigger, though predictably he does take some people out with Barrier Fist anyway since I can't really control that.
3-11-A (jelly blobs): Stall point since I need some way to get around, so Extremist for all (I don't use Alexia so she'll pick up more valuable Berserker CSP; must get Valiant... ) Petrify and hit with slingshot.
3-11-B (Weisheit duel): aw yeah gravity boss even better idea when Felius has Valiant.
3-11-C (Weisheit 3): Well he actually tries now, and does manage to kill someone (or was it two someones?), but between slow and an opening volley of gravity he's not too bad at least.
3-12-A (Asgard's last stand): Misery, Slow, Electrigger to death.
3-12-B (more Asgards): More Electrigger. It's not that scary off non-Emulators (still my best damage) but it gets the job done.
3-13-A (rewind~) [1 reset]: Tricky little fight, but Levin in Excavator can make it there in time with others to run interference for him. All those robots!
3-13-B (Weisheit 4): Ow, this is hard. Electrigger kills the robots just fine, but Weisheit himself is really good on this map. Slow helps, but he's very durable (immune to gravity this time) so CAs are really all I can do, and his turns break that up nicely. He does a pretty good job of gutting my party and eats through my limited revival and eventually it comes down to me delivering one final 40-damage Electrigger with my final PC while he has a Rank of Death targetted on her. Haha.
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WH40k: Space Marine just revolutionized the action genre. Rather than hiding behind cover and waiting to heal, you heal by sawing someone in half with your chainsaw sword.
Yesssssss.
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Radiant Historia Get! Awww yeah. That was fast!
(... it was there in the post this morning but as luck would also have it I have to go out/am having a long day out, typical >_>)
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Replaying FFX to try and understand why people actually like it. (By which I mean "reviewing it with notes from a friend who says it's one of his favourite games ever".) It says a lot about the game that I've spent as much time Blitzballing since it was unlocked as I have carrying on with plot. Just got past Operation Mi'ihen and.. it's better than I remembered, but still not amazing. The gameplay is still either stupidly slow or stupidly unbalanced, depending on which one you choose. (Either you switch in every character in the majority of battles and each battle takes several minutes just to do three attacks, or you don't and get screwed over when you're limited to specific parties/weaknesses.) The voice-acting was one of the things hyped by the person I got opinions from, which I find hilarious, since the voice-acting in this game is worse than pretty much anything else I've heard that isn't the opening hour of Grandia II. (For reference, I've just played DDS2 which, in comparison, is one of the greatest sources of voice-acting ever, although I'm not sure if that says something bad about FFX, good about DDS2, or both.)
Thankfully, I'm finding the pacing of the game is still one of the best I've seen in any RPG. Each section flows nicely into the next, in such a way that there's a good deal of gameplay but it doesn't become repetitive or drag on for too long. Gameplay-focused RPG fans should almost certainly love this game, but I'm still not understanding why anyone who plays for story or characterisation would think it's a good game. The characters are beyond ridiculous - a replay is reminding me that the only characters I like are the well-played comic relief, the over-the-top badass and a couple of mostly unimportant characters. I did, at least, start to like Seymour a little more, but I'm sure that'll be destroyed when he actually becomes a villain. >.> (That said, totally forgot about the whole "Pretend you didn't see it!" conversation re: Operation Mi'ihen.) The plot, on the other hand, is just dumb. Everyone just casually accepts Tidus' "I'm from Zanarkand!" thing - regardless of wanting it to be true because of Chappu, Wakka has literally no genuine reason for believing Tidus but still does. Obviously Yuna is relying on Jecht's stories, so that's fair enough, but everyone else.. uhh.. Also, given how religious Wakka apparently is, shouldn't he absolutely hate Tidus upon meeting based upon what he presumed was a joke about being from Zanarkand? >.> Rikku even warns him about that, and Wakka's exactly the sort of person that warning should apply to.
Anyways, I'm still enjoying the game more than I initially did, I think, but I absolutely do not understand how it's considered one of the best FFs ever, let alone RPGs on the whole. I think it's a kinda average game with a lot of flaws - mostly good gameplay elements but mostly bad storyline elements.
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Er, most people don't accept Tidus' "I'm from Zanarkand", instead assuming he's suffering from Sin-toxin-related amnesia. (Even Wakka, who clearly -wants- to believe Tidus, seems to harbour this, when he lures Tidus to Luca with "maybe you'll see someone who recognises you"). They may humour him out of pity, but they clearly don't believe him.
Otherwise most of your plot things are just opinions ("ridiculous characters", etc.) which you're entitled to but you should hardly be shocked when others don't share them. Personally I think the FFX cast is waaaay more fleshed-out and human than most RPG casts, and has little trouble demolishing any previous FF game in this department besides 7.
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DDS2 has voice acting?
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Er, most people don't accept Tidus' "I'm from Zanarkand", instead assuming he's suffering from Sin-toxin-related amnesia. (Even Wakka, who clearly -wants- to believe Tidus, seems to harbour this, when he lures Tidus to Luca with "maybe you'll see someone who recognises you"). They may humour him out of pity, but they clearly don't believe him.
Otherwise most of your plot things are just opinions ("ridiculous characters", etc.) which you're entitled to but you should hardly be shocked when others don't share them. Personally I think the FFX cast is waaaay more fleshed-out and human than most RPG casts, and has little trouble demolishing any previous FF game in this department besides 7.
Wakka believes him pretty damn quickly - as a thing, the first confirmation that Tidus is Jecht's son comes on the boat to Luca (specifically after the stop at Kilika) yet Wakka makes reference to him being from Zanarkand on the way to the Kilika Temple. As for the character statement, it was more in regards to, say, Kimahri, who has no point other than to prevent Yuna from falling down the stairs, or Lulu, stereotype extraordinaire. (I know FFs aren't exactly amazing on characterisation in general, and I can see why FFX would be considered best out of the series, on a perspective of "Gameplay is better, characters/storyline are no worse" but I can't see the hype in comparison to non-FF RPGs.)
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No, Wakka WANTS to believe him, cause of this concept:
If Tidus really is from Zanarkand, and Sin was the reason, there's that chance that Chappu didn't actually die, but was sent to another world, and thus a chance they can see him again. Its a delusional thought of course, and Wakka himself sort of acknowledges this, but its that sense of denial that he wants to believe something that ridiculous cause its a nice thought.
The only person who believes Tidus is Yuna. I don't think Wakka actually believes him so much as, being the nice guy he is, wants to believe him, but knows too well that Tidus can't possibly be who he says he is.
Also, worth noting that from my experience barring a few specific fans, Lulu and Kimhari are generally regarded as the two weakest characters in FF10 for a reason, so you singling them out...well <_<
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(I know FFs aren't exactly amazing on characterisation in general, and I can see why FFX would be considered best out of the series, on a perspective of "Gameplay is better, characters/storyline are no worse" but I can't see the hype in comparison to non-FF RPGs.)
Yeah, I'm really not seeing this "Final Fantasy is below average for RPGs in general at characters/storyline" argument but to each their own. (Actually the only series which I think decisively beats it is Suikoden, but a few others are roughly on its level, and then you have the Grandias, Fire Emblems, and Tales of the world which are clearly worse, to say nothing of the RPGs which don't even really try at them in the first place such as Pokemon and most 8/16-bit RPGs.)
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This makes me want to know what games he's playing because it makes me feel like I must be missing a whole bunch.
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We talking Final Fantasy now, or 1997? Cause Final Fantasy now is like when my dog had a stroke and even looking at it was depressing.
I mean, you can barely consider the pre- and post-VA games to be the same games, since reading and listening to spoken dialogue is so very very different.
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/me liked Lulu >_>
Wasn't she like the bitchy witchy type except not really? I liked when Lulu whipped Wakka with her tongue. I enjoyed the banter/snark there. Also Lulu's sisterly relationship with Yuna and the way she first was with Tidus like an protective sister =) I liked the story with Lulu with the bitter/bittersweet stuff about her tragic past with Chappu and as a young Guardian, about the past she shared with Wakka there also and the desire to move on there for them to build a new life/future there but feeling the guilt/regret and the way that also kind of came out in her attitude towards the way she treated Wakka/others at times. I was interested in the growth/development here and the way her issues were resolved.
She was my favourite FFX female initially I think? I thought she was as cool as Auron in her own way ;-) My final team was Auron, Lulu, Yuna~
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Personally I think the FFX cast is waaaay more fleshed-out and human than most RPG casts, and has little trouble demolishing any previous FF game in this department besides 7.
Which is part of why nobody should take your opinions on characterization, plot, or anything even remotely related to writing seriously at all. Stick to gameplay more, you embarrass yourself less.
HEY LOOK THERE'S MORE THAN SNARK AND PERSONAL ATTACKS.
Bastion: Wow did this game draw me in. Way more than I expected. Going for all achievements, which isn't really that big of a deal if you use the big guns (the hardest achievements are beating the arena areas with all 10 idols (hard mode) activated), but I'm going to try to do it without resorting to the Mortar / Calamity Cannon. After multiple tries at the first "Who Knows Where" level with the Machete + Scattergun, I decided to switch it up with Ciel Hammer + Rifle. Turns out the Hammer does do enough damage to cope for regen, and with leechaide (potions heal less, each attack deals drain damage) actually ends up working better than the machete despite the machete doing damage over time. The rifle is nice for doing lots of damage in a short burst, but with the combination of enemies randomly blocking ranged hits and enemies randomly turning invincible after being hit, it's not as great as it is without the idols activated. I'm thinking Machete + Hammer might be a better combination overall. I haven't toyed around with the other weapons at full upgrades though, in fairness, so something may work out better, but the big guns aside everything else strikes me as really bad for hard mode. The spear doesn't offer much and the pistols are easily the gameworst weapon, but the repeater and flamethrower could be cool with the right complementary weapons, but I can't think of anything offhand that works well with one of the other weapons.
For normal levels, though, Machete + Scattergun is still the best combo I've found. Machete offers constant healing while the scatter gun keeps everything from overwhelming me. I'm thinking maybe the Hammer + Machete might work well against the last couple of levels if I'm really trying to not use the big guns.
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I suppose this is where you tell me that FF4 and FF6 totally had the best plot in the series before the later games ruined it. Or are you not saying that because you know it would just lead to people mocking your opinions on writing?
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Which is part of why nobody should take your opinions on characterization, plot, or anything even remotely related to writing seriously at all. Stick to gameplay more, you embarrass yourself less.
Its funny you talk about "embarassing yourself less" when the very nature of this statement makes you look bad in every conceivable way.
From a more begnin, critical stand point that actually gets things done...
This statement is just you being an jerk and you know it. Its completely uncalled for, and there's nothing to be gained from it other than
"hur dur you're a moron, now I feel good for calling you one" and you know it. There was absolutely no reason to make a statement like that, and you know better.
And before you say "Rob said the same thing, why is nobody sniping at him?" no, he didn't. Rob, while controversial as his opinion may be and how he stated it almost like a fact, never once put down the person in question he was responding too. It comes off as confrontational, sure, but he at least showed he knew his limits.
Your statement, however, is completely uncalled for, and you'd be best to reconsider saying shit like this again in the future. I don't care WHAT you think, I think its safe to say most people are not fond of that shit, let alone the person you're saying that too.
(Yes, I know, this is a case of "drop it everyone", but I feel someone had to say SOMETHING. I don't intend to continue this thing on any longer than it already has.)
TO KEEP THIS POST TOPICAL:
STreet Fighter 3rd Strike: Beat the game with Ryu, Ken, Ibuki, Yun and ALMOST Q and would have done the latter but had to leave my house for something and didn't have time.
Played a bunch of multiplayer matches too. I can see why Chun-li is considered so absurd. Just using a few basic strategies with her made her feel dominating.
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FF1 is clearly the high point of the series. No dialogue before or since has met the standard set by "I, Garland, shall KNOCK YOU ALL DOWN!"
Anyway, on the subject of FF...
Dissidia 012: The first Feral Chaos down, the level 85 one. Slowly working through 000 mode, will see how the next Feral Chaos works out. Also working my way through Labyrinth, have it over 50% done now. Next roadblock is...Rivals 2. Which means more Feral Chaos. Joy.
Top 5 team is probably...Firion, Warrior of Light, Yuna, Cloud, Prishe. In roughly that order. Somehow Bartz, Squall and Onion Knight have dropped off of my best chars list entirely, for which I'm kind of sad. I have just recently FINALLY figured out how to play Shantotto, but no idea how good I am with her yet, time will tell.
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I would definitely say FFX almost certainly does it better than all of FFII, the original FFIV, FFV, FFVIII and FFIX's non Zidane/Garnet/Vivi cast.
FF1 is clearly the high point of the series. No dialogue before or since has met the standard set by "I, Garland, shall KNOCK YOU ALL DOWN!"
Alternatively this works >_>
I have just recently FINALLY figured out how to play Shantotto, but no idea how good I am with her yet, time will tell.
/me approves of this~
Let us know how that goes :)
Also no Radiant Historias for CTs afterall yet, DS r ded :(
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FONV - Lonesome Road: Is linear as a Half-Life game, but it makes sense in-context. Anyone playing this is probably doing so for Ulysses, after all. There's only one place the road can lead and they want to make sure you know it. Dude sounds like Death and there's this distortion on the edge of hearing that makes talking to him feel just a little off (a lot about the Great Divide is just the right kind of bewildering; it would be easier to find a level floor in the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, for example, than it would in any of the surviving buildings here). I can't really call him crazy--if anything, he has a better grasp of reality than most people you've met here. That's really the problem--he exists under constant affliction of knurd status and is bent on sharing it with you.
Currently entering the Cave of Abaddon. I'm sure this will turn out to be a cheerful place.
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Lets all take Zenny completely seriously and get huffy about shit. Now lets never play Fallout or Planescape: Torment!
Deus Ex HR - I haven't posted updates on this enough. Got up to Singapore.
WoW - I relapsed.
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FONV - Lonesome Road: Is linear as a Half-Life game, but it makes sense in-context. Anyone playing this is probably doing so for Ulysses, after all. There's only one place the road can lead and they want to make sure you know it. Dude sounds like Death and there's this distortion on the edge of hearing that makes talking to him feel just a little off (a lot about the Great Divide is just the right kind of bewildering; it would be easier to find a level floor in the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, for example, than it would in any of the surviving buildings here). I can't really call him crazy--if anything, he has a better grasp of reality than most people you've met here. That's really the problem--he exists under constant affliction of knurd status and is bent on sharing it with you.
Currently entering the Cave of Abaddon. I'm sure this will turn out to be a cheerful place.
I am legitimately afraid of tunnelers. Thank Alvis for flare guns.
E:
And before you say "Rob said the same thing, why is nobody sniping at him?" no, he didn't. Rob, while controversial as his opinion may be and how he stated it almost like a fact, never once put down the person in question he was responding too. It comes off as confrontational, sure, but he at least showed he knew his limits.
Damn, that's some serious misreading of me on your part.
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Might as well toss in another XF update. I'll play other games eventually I promise.
4-1 (Tormenta Triad): Well they kill one person. Slow Down Lluvia and Feeble Mind blitz the one who casts the big damage spell, Slow Down everyone else and they can't do much of anything after that. Hilariously they will waste turns on the combo move until you kill one of them.
4-2-A (Rupert 3): Slow Down, Feeble Mind and Switch deal with Rupert well enough, Petrify spam deals with everybody else. Not much to say.
4-2-B (lategame classes): Nightstalkers and Emulators aren't as scary as Nightstalkers who are also Emulators! So yeah, this isn't as hard as 3-9. Extremists are pretty notable dodgers but slingshots are accurate enough to hit them once petrified.
4-3-A (paigeols): Damage emulator spells. Enemies go emo. Most of this fight is just dragging them out of the enemies while taking care not to go down to the damage of the enemies. Not too bad since the enemies are spread out.
4-3-B (Chelle 4): Great Excavator fight! This would be painful for lots of classes (any team that lacks Excavator or to a lesser extent Enigmancer would have its hands full with non-IFF Exploder Gems to do damage here probably. Anyway, I do, so it's not so bad. Instant death is still painful to be hit with but at least I can drop most of he enemies in a couple hits.
4-4 (Tormenta Triad 2): Weird one. Three-man combination arts 2HKO them, but not much else scratches them. Even Valiant is a bit limited here since I need to be doing damage for it to kick in! Either CAs or a three-panel Charging Thrust allow it, but this isn't a great map for the latter. Lots of enemies means lots of turns and the bosses do hit pretty hard, so this is a bit of a tricky one though I do pull through.
4-5 (Rupert 4): blah blah Slow Down Feeble Mind Switch, usual Rupert strategy. Do it before taking out much of his support. This is kinda cheesy but so it goes! Once he's down to no MP I do kill off a few more of his support mostly for CSP (or lulz).
4-6-A (King Tarrasque III 3): Can I combine numbers like that? Anyway, Tarrasque is weak to wind and vulnerable to sleep. He's still a massive pain to finish off with hard status and stupid res, and there are lots of vermin to deal with in the meantime. They fall to a mix of emulator madness (damage and petrify), as usual. Petrifying the misery blob is also key.
4-6-B (go crazy? Don't mind if I do!): Mostly a luck-based fight, and I have pretty decent luck. The enemies hit hard and are status immune (besides their initial status) but if you can keep some PCs protected it's not bad.
4-6-C (royal knights): Emulators lol at this fight, gravity three-shots everyone including Eisen, sleep works 100% on everyone including Eisen. Sometimes I can mix up damage to get 2HKOs instead of 3HKOs but it's not that important anyway.
Two updates to go~
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Wank wank. tl;dr. Be less long winded, Meeple.
NEB: LOL FF4 writing. I would probably say FF6 does have better characterization/plot than FFX but that's largely because NOSTAAAAAALGIA and I'd probably be less charitable to its writing if I replayed it sometime. The series as a whole really ain't that great for writing, FFT aside.
EDIT: Sorry, wasn't irreverent enough. Yawn => Wank wank.
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-- 4-3-B (Chelle 4): Great Excavator fight! This would be painful for lots of classes (any team that lacks Excavator or to a lesser extent Enigmancer would have its hands full with non-IFF Exploder Gems to do damage here probably. Anyway, I do, so it's not so bad. Instant death is still painful to be hit with but at least I can drop most of he enemies in a couple hits.
I'd include Elementalist in that list. I had no idea Excavator could excavate Invisible Stalkers, and did fine with "Mage with Elementalist OC blasts a 'volunteer' with high Magic Defense standing next to a Stalker." Since they only arrive 1-2 at a time, if you heal aggressively, you should probably be fine... although I suppose in a 4JF runthrough you won't have Labby's Revive, so an instant death blitz might be problematic. But eh, then just equip revival items instead.
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I am legitimately afraid of tunnelers. Thank Alvis for flare guns.
Man, fuck those guys. Little bastards shouldn't be able to hit that hard. (Also who is Alvis.)
Anyway, finished now. I went with the regular "Let's not be mass murderers today, mmmkay?" talk for Ulysses. Which sorta immediately backfired because shit man I can point nukes anywhere I want? "Bye, Legion!" is what I would've liked to say there, but I couldn't really just redirect the damn things after talking Ulysses out of it. So I let 'em blow up where they were and ran. No aftergame bonus area for me, alas. It's okay, I got plenty out of the game already.
Better than Honest Hearts (not hard), on par with the other DLC, I'd say. NV adversaries have plenty of presence and having the arc solely built around one works pretty well. Will have to run the endgame to get the other endings at some point (well, maybe not Legion. Don't think I could put myself through that) and that's a wrap for this one.
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Mage with Elementalist OC blasts a 'volunteer' with high Magic Defense standing next to a Stalker
You need Widespread for that.
Though yes, Sacred Slayer + Elementalist/Emulator would indeed work. It'd just hurt some (though you could use the right spells to help, e.g. wind on Levin).
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I think Rob's on to something I haven't really considered. No VA makes games feel like their own media, while VA makes them feel more like movies. And that's like a kid trying to wear a tuxedo.
El Cid: So was the bit with Ulysse satisfying?
Infinite Undiscovery: More SG. Hard as hell with only one character! Fun!!
Some bees IDed me, so I dwelved deeper into item creation and forged a wonderful 100% status protection accessory. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to protect against ID. Oh well. Just stay the hell away from bees.
I got some Anti-magic greaves at the same time too. Anti-magic is just that. Immunity to magic.
Soon enough, I fight Gabriel Celeste. Guess what, Gabriel Celeste is a pure mage. (and he looks completely fucked up) I'm just staying there while freaking Gabriel Celeste is trying to impress me with his shiny pyrotechnics.
He has only two attacks that can bypass magic immunity, and he can only use them at low HPs: Empress Massacre Redux (Lots of damage, but you can avoid it easily if you only spam Grin Valesti and run) and Critical Flare or something (RUN!!!). I only saw Critical Flare twice, and the first time it just killed me almost instantly.
Deeper into the dungeon (my god are dancing swords and larvas annoying) I run into some giant turtle thing boss, who's fast and can easily 2HKO Capell. That's... bad.
To get by without grinding or completely breaking the game, I farmed a ton of armalistas, atlantis minerals (+ dragon fangs) and forged the best equipment for Capell at that point.
I know have: Very high attack/defense, HP/MP regen, status immunity, magic immunity!! PH34R! Ethereal Queen is still going to destroy me.
Capell is level 144 now.
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I think Rob's on to something I haven't really considered. No VA makes games feel like their own media, while VA makes them feel more like movies. And that's like a kid trying to wear a tuxedo.
They're almost definitely not something easily compared. When you are reading something you can decide how a line is to be delivered. When you add VA, you are seeing how someone else decided a line should sound. Compare reading a play with seeing a play. Different experience there.
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Voice-acting also means that every single line is very explicitly going to be perceived as dialogue by players. RPG textboxes are frequently lengthy enough for players to essentially parse the text as prose, but that's not going to happen with voiced lines. Diction that sounds fine in prose can come off as being awkward or unnatural when used in voiced dialogue, so scriptwriters need to take much more care with their writing.
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It also has more "moving parts." You have to factor in both acting and direction, as well as technical issues like sound quality, on top of the writing everyone has to keep an eye on.
You can cover up a lot more when you can imagine lines being read however you want. When you have someone else telling you that, yes, "My name is Lightning and I can only destroy but your name is Hope so you give us hope" is to be taken 100% seriously, no doubt about it, it goes beyond normal bad to a very special bad.
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Clearly all games should follow the Record of Agarest War example and have no english dub. Just nothing but glorious NIPPON!
Speaking of glorious NIPPON! Record of Agarest War Zero, brought to you by the same people behind Record of Agarest War!
When we left last off.... I was almost done with that donus dungeon? Yes, that was it. Bonus. So, only one fight left, gotta be a big bad.... and it's less threatening then half, no all the fights I've been through in the dungeon. Jeez. The final reward is.... a new sword for Eugene, some new armor--probably the armor I want, either that or trash--and a nice new accessory that really boosts Alice's MAG. So then I learn that I've actually been able to go to the north half of the continent this whole time and promptly fall into a rage coma. Mmmm, coma.
When I return from my coma, I've accomplished all the kill-titles and gotten the missing blacksmith items. Which are all terrible now. And I can make new skills! None of which I really want. So, uh, let's do this thing! Scarred Mountains go! Shernini bride choice go! Fight-fight-BOSS FIGHT! It's against Obvious-Evil-NPC again. This time he's only brought one OHGODIT'STHEHUGESTTHINGYET! And it has more HP then the boss! But I'm level 80 and these chumps are level 60! And this is a SRPG! And I slaught Evil_NPC so badly that I actually manage to break the 1,000,000 damage mark! Then he gets sealed away because the plot-sword which Mila used to revive herself actually has power left.
Then I get sad.
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Disgaea 4: According to the guide, I am but a few maps from completing the main story. The cast has really gelled now and I dig the dynamic. Individually, none of them are very solid, but Valvatorez and Fenrich have great chemistry, and the other 4 make a great rabble when they gossip and/or get excited about story events as if these things don't actually concern them.
Was particularly pleased with the whole 'classic monster movie' theme that Dis4 is focused around - in a world where Zombies are normal denizens, the only proper way to imitate a cheesy zombie movie was to create the A-Virus! Don't let any idiots bite you, idiocy is contagious.
The serious plot doesn't really exist much, but there's a few solid character subplot moments. Also, I like the usual Disgaea-style paradigm-switching. A common theme in games these days is that "Humans are Our Own Worst Enemy"... and the Disgaea viewpoint of that is "That's terrible, won't SOMEBODY think of the Demons!? It's THEIR job to be Our Worst Enemy, now all these demons are unemployed and there's overpopulation and Prinny pollution and shit."
I will echo previous thoughts on the plot though, everything plot-related after "Val takes over the Netherworld" is -really- rough around the edges, though there's a few awesome jokes in there at least.
Although I don't really like the sardine joke. But it -is- pretty amusing that all of the Episode Previews devolve into a lecture on sardines. I'm honestly quite impressed that there's so much sardine trivia in the first place.
Character thoughts:
Valvatorez: Solid main, far more engaging than any of the previous Disgaea mains, though I liked La Pucelle's Prier and Soul Nomad's Gig better. Except for the way that they beat the sardine gag into the ground, he pulls double duty as an awesome serious and humorous character. His hyper-seriousness manages to work as comedy gold when the others play along, though he can get a little dry during the serious scenes. I honestly think that's more a weakness of the overall plot, as his serious scenes of his character subplot are quite engaging.
Fenrich: Great snarker, and the primary reason why the rest of the cast works. Also gets lots of gay jokes with Val, and it's obvious that N1 had fun with those and used it to poke fun at yaoi fangirls, which is always a worthy cause.
Axel: Not quite as much fun as in Dis2 PSP's Axel mode, but his chapter 6 appearance really made it work. Very humorous, but nothing serious at all to temper it, so sometimes his jokes fell flat.
Fuka: Prinny Newsie Cap! Rides on that for a good half of the game to me. Once Desco joins, she starts working the "LOL 9th Grade Girls are shallow and stupid" parody and getting ridiculed more, which worked for her. Her serious plot wasn't really ever addressed in a serious way, which actually has me feeling really sorry for her, but I suspect that they'll get to it in the ending sequences.
Desco: Really cute character, thought she'd be annoying, but I'll be honest, the 4th-wall-breaking Final Boss jokes -still- crack me up. Probably more than they should, so I'm admitting my bias here.
Emizel: Weak link of the cast. Tends to handle all the necessary 'character development' bits so that the better characters can act awesome. Has a few amusing things happen -to- him, but he's just okay on his own.
Angel of Avarice: Pretty much a one-shot gag character. She plays her gag straight, but it's the other PCs' reactions to it that make it work. Has serious plot! I like her more than Emizel at least.
Villain cast: Gag villains were AWESOME, fake villains were decent, real(?) villain is painful to watch (pretty much the one good thing Dis3 had going for it). Still have a chapter left, so I'll reserve judgment here for now.
Gameplay: I want to talk about this, but I'm tired of typing! More next time after I've beaten the game and done the GRIND for the Post-game content. This time around, you actually get a "True Ending" for doing all of the Post-game content so there's some more motivation there to get it done quickly. Highlights: DAMAGE PROJECTIONS are win, Grinding is still complex but more streamlined than Dis3's, Story/Generic PCs getting more unique is awesome, The Cam-Pain HQ board is really freakin' fun. Storymap GeoBlock Puzzles are generally good, though random-map ones are bullshit. Heart Cannon is broken, but Broken is why I love Disgaea-style Grinding. Currently level 300ish. (And yes, that's waaaay overlevelled for the final chapters.)
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You can cover up a lot more when you can imagine lines being read however you want. When you have someone else telling you that, yes, "My name is Lightning and I can only destroy but your name is Hope so you give us hope" is to be taken 100% seriously, no doubt about it, it goes beyond normal bad to a very special bad.
Please please please tell me you're paraphrasing that.
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FF13 - Not very far, but Snow makes me laugh. He's such a big dork (I do have a bias toward really dorky characters like that).
I would rather like to get out of Chapter 2 though. Definitely feels like one of those games that you'd keep a save file when the gameplay actually starts.
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You can cover up a lot more when you can imagine lines being read however you want. When you have someone else telling you that, yes, "My name is Lightning and I can only destroy but your name is Hope so you give us hope" is to be taken 100% seriously, no doubt about it, it goes beyond normal bad to a very special bad.
Please please please tell me you're paraphrasing that.
She does make analogies regarding the two of their names like that, but pretty sure they're in two totally separate scenes. The Lightning thing is where she reflects on her past and what changing her name to Lightning (its not her birth given name, but one she took on after a point in her life. Game states this in her bio, so not a spoiler), and just what kind of implications it means. The Hope thing, she uses that as a means to inspire him and talk him out of a depressing state he's in.
Could be wrong, but pretty sure those two scenes are isolated.
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She puts them together in the Odin scene. Would you prefer I used "MOMS ARE TOUGH" as my example?
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I don't think Wakka actually believes him so much as, being the nice guy he is, wants to believe him, but knows too well that Tidus can't possibly be who he says he is.
Also, worth noting that from my experience barring a few specific fans, Lulu and Kimhari are generally regarded as the two weakest characters in FF10 for a reason, so you singling them out...well <_<
Wakka quite clearly does believe him, though. At worst, he is at least completely ignorant of a faith that he is otherwise completely devoted too at this point. I can't really see any justification in his character for fully accepting what he perceives to be a joke about his faith unless he doesn't think it's a joke.
And yeah, they're the weakest two playables, at least. In a cast of seven (plus a villain), having 2-3 very weak characters (and then the villain) isn't really a good move. Half the cast is awful? Wow.
Yeah, I'm really not seeing this "Final Fantasy is below average for RPGs in general at characters/storyline" argument but to each their own. (Actually the only series which I think decisively beats it is Suikoden, but a few others are roughly on its level, and then you have the Grandias, Fire Emblems, and Tales of the world which are clearly worse, to say nothing of the RPGs which don't even really try at them in the first place such as Pokemon and most 8/16-bit RPGs.)
I'd personally say FFs are about average, actually. Nothing terrible, but nothing amazing. (I'd say better examples are easily available in Persona (and most SMTs for storyline, at least), Mana Khemia, Suikos, Shadow Hearts, FE8-10, BoF...) That said, I think FF8 does relatively okay on character, except for a few weak links. (The weakest links just unfortunately happen to be the main two characters.) I'd say FFIX does amazingly, FFVI has some real highlights (and a few weak characters is less of an issue in a larger cast) and FFIV even has its moments. (And I'm sure FFV/FFT are good from what I've heard, although I've not played FFV and barely played FFT.) I also give FFX less credit since it comes later, so should really be avoiding the mistakes of previous instalments, not expanding on them. >.>
(As it goes, I know I'm different to most in liking FFIX, but even seeing the flaws there, I don't see how those same flaws then get completely ignored in FFX. It does pretty much everything FFIX does badly, and then triples those problems.)
And with regards to what Rob said, I stopped playing FFs once FFXII was the most abysmal piece of shit I ever had the misfortune to buy (and I've got the Elektra film on DVD), and everything I've heard about FFXIII has made me want to hate it. So, I'm pretty much counting FFXI as the end of the series or something. >.>
I'm totally agreeing on the VA thing too. FFX's VAing is horrible, and it really hurts the quality of the game, to the point that I wish it had none. And, now that I think about it, I can't think of a game that has VAing outside of major scenes that I've actually enjoyed the plot/characterisation of. (The most I can think of is Mana Khemia, where I spent most of my time skipping lines.)
Idly, I'm really interested in keeping this debate going, since it highlights the supposedly good elements I should be looking out for. As I said, this review was meant to show me what I missed in FFX, since I thought it was a pretty bad game compared to others in the series. (For reference, I'd say: FF9 > FF6 > FF7 >>> FF4 > FF8 > FFX-2 >>> FFX > FF1 > FF2 > FF3DS > FF12.)
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Are you limiting it to just jRPGs? Cause I can think of a ton of examples but they all don't have to jump through translation and localization hoops on top of dealing with corporate control being in a totally different cultural sphere.
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Oh, I've just more experience with jRPGs. I've not played anywhere near enough wRPGs to judge that side of things, but they always seem to be more about characterisation and less about (RPG) gameplay from what I've seen.
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El Cid: So was the bit with Ulysse satisfying?
They did a very good job characterizing him, but that's not really a surprise at this point. There is a palpable air of weariness, despair, and suppressed rage about him that suffuses the entire expansion. I almost feel it was too easy to talk him down at the end, though. It's hard to believably write someone changing their mind about something that drastic and even Obsidian's not always up to the task. Going back to fiddle with the dialogue tree, there's apparently several things that can shut him out of all rational conversation, but they're pretty easily recognizable as such. I guess it's possible to have missed the things you need to know to change his mind.
Curiously, the Courier Duster (unique apparel) you get after finishing it adopted the NCR symbol for me (evidently this varies in accordance with whichever of the four endings you're in line for). Actually, most of the conversations with Ulysses seemed to assume I'd sided with the NCR, despite the fact that for all the expansions I ran off a save just before dealing with Benny wherein I hadn't formally sided with anyone. Proooobably based on the fact that over the course of the game I helped out a lot of individual NCR citizens (because their government regularly wasn't in a position to do anything for them) and Legion was kill on sight. Whatever, I'm obliged to finish out the other endings wearing Ulysses's duster anyway.
Randomly: what the heck is up with the locked doors in the Temple? I can't see any way to get in there. Ulysses doesn't have a key and they're not pickable. The possibility of missing out on loot that I have no need of, so bothersome.
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I found that Ulysses, when we finally met, was kind of a deconstruction of what we heard second-hand as well as the PC. No matter what path you take, he follows you on it and he learned all the wrong lessons in doing so.
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That's good to know. I'll definitely pick the last pieces of DLC in the next few months.
Infinite Undiscovery: Bunch of achievements.
I spent a lot of time getting Capell's optional skills, and they both suck. Oh well.
Enemies are starting to become ridiculous (Those crossbows!!) so I started giving Capell some steroids. He has 50 000 max HPs now, he can have 72000 with the materials I currently have, but I'm waiting some more.
The giant turtle was completely ridiculous. The DEF stat is completely useless against 20 000 damage.
Fortunately, it had a 2.5 weakness to earth.
I gave Capell water immunity, earth weapon and 30% more earth damage, he could 7HKO the boss with Grinn Valesti. Strafe around him, Grinn Valesti, GTFO to heal because Capell has almost no HPs left at this point. With water immunity the boss could only deal damage at very close range, so that was that.
It's funny how the "unseeing" status work. Since your character can't focus, you can't target enemies, so it's a bit like manual mode. This makes the game so much better. Unfortunately, this is only a bad status that wears off after a while.
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Fenrich: Great snarker, and the primary reason why the rest of the cast works. Also gets lots of gay jokes with Val, and it's obvious that N1 had fun with those and used it to poke fun at yaoi fangirls, which is always a worthy cause.
If at the misfortune pf Emizel you mean. The yaoi fangirlism of the entire female cast only continues to expand none stop. By the time of DLC content, Emizel has been, ironically, traumatized to the point he swore not to marry a woman.
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Record of Agarest War Zero, where the effort is just like Who's Line points just not as valuable.
When last we left off, the second left flank fell to the Galfrost's 4th cavalry assault. We recouped the 83rd anti-infantry wing to delay them despite being ill-equipped. We bought the time we needed with lives, but were able to prep the 12th Dragoons and 19th Anti-Cavalry to press them back. Without their primary cavalry force, Galfrost's forces were thrown into disarray and we broke through the front. But Altioch would have none of this, and sent their dragon-riders and Black Knights to counter. Crashing through friend and foe alike, the Altioch troopers completely butchered the front lines.
Wait, no, I killed some stupid wanker. Dang. The above was gibberish and made more sense. So, more generic fights and we're then fighting off against Good-NPC-gone-EVIL! Who's such a joke at this point that I kill him on the first turn with nothing but normal attacks. Yippie. Afterwards we kill him! Or seal him or something because it's kinda inconsistent. And then the path splits. Seeking loot, I go and grab the northern stuff, then I head to the western stuff without saving because the enemies are scrubs. So of course I run into the one enemy here who isn't a scrub. A recolor of those stupid dragon kids who were with the golem assholes, I gleefully smile as I notice his utter ass of 20,000 HP(Leon and Gallioss have more then that!) accompanied by scrub allies. So of course the thing again as the 25% haha-no-hit-for-you willpowers and outspeeds and outdamages me so badly on the first turn that it kills off Leon and Eugene. Then I notice it's level 90. Fun! So, despite that setback, it gave me enough SP to launch three, well actually two since it'll probably absorb Alice's light, EX Skills. Minmel's of course somehow does in the ballpark of 40,000 damage because why not. And then I get a 900% bonus because the thing was so high level! Yay!
So, terrible and useless loot gathered, to the next Event fight! Against the Good-NPC-made-evil-that-had-a-unique-sprite-that-became-gneric-but-was-actually-unique-again. So, this time he has the back-up of a gernic evil sprite guy of the same class who's not named and is thus a joke. And once again I kill the Good-NPC on the first turn and play cleanup on Turn 2. Also the Good/Evil-NPC has less Hit then leon has Avoid. Swanky! Had. This time the party lets him survive for whatever reason! Maybe because his reasoning was so dumb? Yes, I'll go with that and... why is there no Event marker? Nothing on the worlp map either. Oh, it's like that forest and the new path opens a path to.... that stupid fort that ended the first generation. Huh.
Another Battle Series! Our first fight is against Mila, who suddenly feels like being evil and wants to kill Minmel. Wait, before that actually, it seems Alice's Father is alive and well after all! And has been fighting with the Big Bad Bad Guy this whole.... time. Like, it has to have been at least a month in-game by now. Yowza. Anyway! The fight! Utterly ruins my formation so badly it's hilarious! Also is a joke since I still have levels on her and her dark-mist help! They-despite being 25%-no-hit-assholes are nothing and frankly she isn't much either. I basically dick around but manage to kill her with little effort.
So PLOT! Mila decides to self-destruct and take all of us with her! Minmel wants to stop her by sacrificing herself! Leon wants to stay to also sacrifice himself because they're connected! Everyone else wants to stay because I'm on the TRUE END and thus the power of friendship reigns! And thus did Mila not-explode but die anyway. Except she really didn't die and just fused back into Minmel or something. But she mentions she'll see Minmel in hell for some reason.
And then the Big Bad shows up and taunts us like he's a threat or something or that we've actually met him before. He's so not a threat that I piss away the first 3 turns in the fight doing nothing but healing and reviving(I forgot that it was a battle series so half my guys were low health) and still managed to Overkill his useless ass from Full HP. And I get the Funky Chicken as my reward.
Oh yeah he had two minions that died but who cares.
So since I can't ever have a victory, he's not actually beaten! So Minmel summons Mila from inside her and kills him. Then Leon stabs him. Then he's not actually dead because he has PLOT ITEM!
And then the High God of Light thinks looking down on the planet is a good idea and powers up the forces of Light or some crap and Alice's Dad lives!
And then the game ends.
Yes, really, it ends there with the Forces of Darkness beat into a retreat but not actually dead and the Characters themselves actually say that is' not over except the game ends anyway because this is a prequel.
And the Plot Sword gets renamed to Oathsworn.
But that's not all! Since I unlocked the glorious TRUE END! I can go to the bonus dungeon! Told by the oracle-chick who actually isn't in the second generation at all. To get there I have to fight five battles and--haha no, I'm done.
Or am I?
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Fudo, hopefully your goal with this game is completely fill out the item list, instead of just simply beating the Boundary Space.
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Fudo, hopefully your goal with this game is completely fill out the item list, instead of just simply beating the Boundary Space.
As long as there's no missable shit from bosses or New Game+ only stuff it's possible.
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FFX ... Auron is good, Yuna is good, Wakka is good, Tidus ... grows up and matures over the course of the game, he really develops/grows up/etc a lot so he isn't bad per say. As noted/pointed out by others Lulu and Kimahri are the weakest links (but as I also mentioned Lulu is still more well done/fleshed out/developed than some might think which is more than can be said of some of her stereotype/counter parts in other FFs for example VIII's Quistis - I would definitely say there is more to the former than the latter yeah) (Kimahri also > Quina)
FFIX Vivi, Zidane and Garnet are good, Freya and Amarant are the weakest links, Steiner is ok but he doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, Eiko is also ok and perhaps the fourth most plot/story relevant /important of the core cast after Vivi, Zidane and Garnet but that might just be CT bias talking :P I would also argue that again she is one of the more well done/fleshed out/developed examples of her particular stereotypes/FF counter parts but yeah biased. Even if we count Eiko that still leaves three characters who really aren't that important on the whole/the grand scheme and who could be removed or changed without it really effecting things all too much.
As for FFVIII Yoshi ... well the thing there is that Squall and Rinoa actually -exist- which is more than can be said of the rest of the core playable cast who basically stop existing/cease to matter for all intents and purposes after a certain stage. I might not particularly like Squall and Rinoa much as many don't but I can acknowledge that they are still the most fleshed out/developed of FFVIII's core cast for whatever that's worth. They are constantly in the limelight, hogging the screentime, they practically always exist and make sure we never forget about it. People actually -care- about them, sure the caring for the most part might be in a negative way of the has people frothing at the mouth in rage variety but the fact that they are able to effect people to such an extent emotionally means that in terms of strong/remarkable characters whom people are actually able to remember probably means they are successful and the best/strongest of FFVIII's core cast in that sense. Well ... and Squall/Rinoa being the only real stand out members of FFVIII's cast, the only ones who exist and actually still matter for all intents and purposes, the game's main story/plot, character interaction, development/growth etc ... really speaks volumes for the overall quality of the game itself I think. Considering Squall/Rinoas fleshing out/development/growth isn't exactly well done either compared to other games ... but at least it still exists :P
At the very least FFX definitely deserves to be above X-2 I think (unless it's a personal choice of battle system >>> all/something like that there~ )
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I don't think Wakka actually believes him so much as, being the nice guy he is, wants to believe him, but knows too well that Tidus can't possibly be who he says he is.
Also, worth noting that from my experience barring a few specific fans, Lulu and Kimhari are generally regarded as the two weakest characters in FF10 for a reason, so you singling them out...well <_<
Wakka quite clearly does believe him, though. At worst, he is at least completely ignorant of a faith that he is otherwise completely devoted too at this point. I can't really see any justification in his character for fully accepting what he perceives to be a joke about his faith unless he doesn't think it's a joke.
And yeah, they're the weakest two playables, at least. In a cast of seven (plus a villain), having 2-3 very weak characters (and then the villain) isn't really a good move. Half the cast is awful? Wow.
Yeah, I'm really not seeing this "Final Fantasy is below average for RPGs in general at characters/storyline" argument but to each their own. (Actually the only series which I think decisively beats it is Suikoden, but a few others are roughly on its level, and then you have the Grandias, Fire Emblems, and Tales of the world which are clearly worse, to say nothing of the RPGs which don't even really try at them in the first place such as Pokemon and most 8/16-bit RPGs.)
I'd personally say FFs are about average, actually. Nothing terrible, but nothing amazing. (I'd say better examples are easily available in Persona (and most SMTs for storyline, at least), Mana Khemia, Suikos, Shadow Hearts, FE8-10, BoF...) That said, I think FF8 does relatively okay on character, except for a few weak links. (The weakest links just unfortunately happen to be the main two characters.) I'd say FFIX does amazingly, FFVI has some real highlights (and a few weak characters is less of an issue in a larger cast) and FFIV even has its moments. (And I'm sure FFV/FFT are good from what I've heard, although I've not played FFV and barely played FFT.) I also give FFX less credit since it comes later, so should really be avoiding the mistakes of previous instalments, not expanding on them. >.>
(As it goes, I know I'm different to most in liking FFIX, but even seeing the flaws there, I don't see how those same flaws then get completely ignored in FFX. It does pretty much everything FFIX does badly, and then triples those problems.
Since these two games are its logical contemporaries, I am going to inquire about FF8 and FF9. I think liking MK's plot better than FF is just something I totally disagree with since I thought the game barely had a plot (and its women are atrocious PC-wise), and as much as I like a couple of games in the Breath of Fire series, I've never thought of them as being plot strong.
For FF8, what characters do you like? Most of the PCs barely have screentime in the way FF8 is written, and the two characters with all the screentime is Squall and Rinoa. Do you think Irvine is a good character? Why?
FF9 has characters like Eiko and Amarant, who fit into the same complaints you have about Lulu and Kimahri. Eiko is a child who doesn't act anything like a child! And I'm not even sure why Amarant exists in the story other than to be Zidane's shounen rival or something. I also feel like Freya is roughly on terms with Lulu in terms of characterization; someone with a smidgen of plot but not too much depth (also is a grrrl or something). I'm going to put forward the argument that those three characters roughly cancel out Lulu/Kim (I don't really agree with this, I think Amarant is horrible instead of boring, but we'll just say this, also sorry CT for Eiko hate! Oh and Quina is just thrown in the trash.)
Do you think Vivi is better than Auron? Zidane or Tidus? Garnet or Yuna? Steiner or Wakka?
If you would actually quantify what the heck you are talking about maybe arguing with you about this would be easier.
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How does one put FFX-2 above FFX in character work? FFX characters develop, have strong identifiable personalities, etc. FFX-2 characters do not. Rikku is just a hyperactive character with voice acting, Yuna is but a shade of her FFX self who has some major out of character moments (no, "Tidus rubbed off on her!" is not an excuse. If it was, we'd have seen more of that in FFX; Tidus helped broaden Yuna's viewpoint of life and removed her from the "Yay Yevon!" view point), and Paine is just Female Squall. She doesn't develop, has no real connections with characters, just exists to foil Rikku in the grand scheme of things.
And yes, Rikku was in character based off of FFX, I won't deny...the difference is, how she was handled. FFX, Tidus and Wakka compliment Rikku nicely, there's actual chemistry there. She doesn't have this with Yuna or Paine, which alone turns someone whose fun into someone whose annoying.
And no one in the FFX-2 cast is remotely comparable to Auron. Not saying Auron is the GREATEST THING EVER, but he's one of the stronger characters (developmentally speaking) in FFX. Yes, there's Leblanc for NPCs, but they're pretty much just a one joke wonder running gag.
And yeah, agreeing with CT on FF8. Squall and Rinoa are the only characters with a remote sense of development, be it good or bad. Quistis stops having ANY character work once you get out of Balamb Garden, Selphie's entire characterization is just "I'm on sugar!" The Trabia Garden thing SHOULD have been a moment to actually develop her and show off a more serious, calm side that's internal, but instead we get treated with the Orphanage. Irvine..."SNIPERS ARE A LONELY LIFE!" and then...uhh...what's he do after that? Oh right, PROVOKED THE ORPHANAGE SCENE!!! Zell has an identifiable personality, but geez if he's not meaningless. The Balamb sequence could have been a moment to show Zell's truly heroic, good qualities rather than the Hot Tempered blow hard, but instead, he's just forced there for the sake of consistency with plot ("Hey, this is my town, I want to make sure my folks are alright!")
The thing that FFX has going for it that FF8 doesn't either? Its love story actually kicks off early and progresses throughout. Say what you will about how good/bad it is, this is far superior to FF8's where Squall is doing his best to ignore Rinoa the ENTIRE GAME, even to the point of wanting to leave her for dead (not cause he hates her, but because there's far more pressing matters. This was actually a commendable leader decision seeing as THEY WERE FIGHTING A WAR. His friends just were being idealistic fuck-tards who were all "YOU MUST SAVE RINOA! SHE'S ONE OF US!"), and then EVERYTHING regarding Squall's development is THROWN AWAY for an out of character shift into "Rinoa's Love Sick Puppy" and she's unconscious for the majority of Disc 3, and some of the scenarios are ridiculous (RINOA IN SPACE!)
Now look at FFX. Yuna and Tidus hit it off almost immediately, and the game even shows the "love at first sight" thing with a tease line of "Hey, don't go getting any funny ideas, ya?" "No promises there big guy...but what if she comes onto me." At first, yeah, its more "Tidus is impressed by Yuna's talents, and wants to meet this hyped summoner", and Yuna is more intrigued by the Jecht factor, but...its clearly going into something stronger. When we hit the Make Out scene, there has been a lot of POSITIVE interaction between the two, such that when Tidus abruptly kisses her, she's fully willing to reciprocate because its what she wants as much as he does.
Furthermore, FFX doesn't take back seat to its Love Story, but is complimented by it. The game still stays on its main path, and the lovers are more just part of what goes on. Contrast this to FF8 where 75% of Disc 3 is "WE MUST SAVE RINOA!!!" That's literally it. This is not an exaggeration; the reason they go to Esthar is get Rinoa out of her coma. The reason they go into Space is to get Rinoa out of her coma. The reason Squall jumps out of the escape capsule like a moron? Rinoa. Reason they break into a high security prison of sorts meant to hold a Sorceress? Rinoa. The game does hurl a big lunar crisis at them, but in the end, until you actually get into Lunatic Pandora, just about everything is "Rinoa. Rinoa. Rinoa. Rinoa!" Yes, FFX has a lot of "Yuna. Yuna. Yuna. Yuna." but unlike Rinoa, Yuna is INTEGRAL TO THEIR SUCCESS. She's the Summoner, she's the key element. Rinoa is completely meaningless as a plot device in that regard until late Disc 3 where she's revealed to be a Sorceress.
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Meeple, are you disrespecting Leblanc? The backrub scene is truly a pinnacle in RPG writing.
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Meeple, are you disrespecting Leblanc? The backrub scene is truly a pinnacle in RPG writing.
I see your Backrub scene and raise you a laughing scene?
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100% agreement with Meeple on FFX's love story. I hear Tidus & Yuna's romance disregarded as random all the time and just can't see what people are talking about. Possibly Zidane/Garnet aside it's the most believable romance in the series and serves to make the ending of the game even more tragic. Even otherwise horrible moments like the laughing scene are somewhat made up for because they contribute to this plot thread in ways that don't interrupt the epic.
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I watched someone play through all of FFX-2 recently and can definitely say while on the surface, Yuna, Rikku and Paine don't seem to have a lot of depth to them, if you pay a lot of attention during the story scenes (and completely ignore Brother...) they're actually incredibly deep and I don't feel that saying Yuna's actions are "out of character" are correct at all. I also think saying "FFX-2 characters do not have strong identifiable personalities" an untrue statement, though I have a funny feeling arguing about that is a waste of time.
It's very clear that after the events of FFX, she had the weight of the people of Spira on her shoulders because she was expected to stand up and be some sort of beacon for where the people were to go. She didn't want that kind of responsibility, so she tried to pull herself out of the limelight. Of course, she was more or less forced back into it, but she eventually decides to do things her own way and not just get led by what her faith or the people's faith feel she should do.
Why am I typing anything up about FFX-2? Oh well.
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Joe Jones - You Talk Too Much.
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I replayed the game recently myself, Neph, and I whole heartedly disagree.
Here's the thing...Rikku has no depth. You cannot argue this. Her ENTIRE character is just being a hyperactive girl who never evolves beyond that. She never actually does anything noteworthy for plot, she's just...there, and meant to contrast Paine. There's nothing. Right there, that's 1/3rd of the characters done.
Paine isn't deep at all. Yes, there's the backstory stuff, but that does nothing for her. She has a moment of reflection, but she's the same character from start to finish. She doesn't actually change, we don't actually get any real insight for her beyond "tragic event of 2 years ago", and there's nothing. You can say "She's deep cause she has some emotional moments cause the music and voice acting says so!" but in truth, these moments do nothing for her. I see nothing in her as far as genuine sense of character work at all. I guess she's equivalent to an FF5 character in an era where that's no longer remotely viable; you can't get away with some back story and a personality. Can you seriously say that's on the same level as someone like Auron whom we see his entire past (the relevant parts anyway), he actually carries a significant aspect of the team, etc.?
Heck, even Lulu, which most in this topic agree is one of the weaker characters in FFX, exhibits more than Paine. She has all the same stuff, and we get a good deal more insight on her character (see her talk with Tidus in Guadosalam.)
So that leaves Yuna. What's the depth in Yuna's character? No, she's not trying to "get out of the limelight" like you claim. Difference between "get out of Limelight" and sort of just ride it out, which is what she did in the latter. She took her celebrity status as something of what she was, and Lulu reinforced this by saying "You are Yuna, the High Summoner that defeated Sin. Do no forget this, and remember, people will try to use this part of you", but she didn't try to shrug off responsibilities. She's constantly reminded of this, so its kind of impossible for her to do that, and Yuna's not someone whose in denial to think she can do that.
Branching from that...where's her depth? Her entire character is actually running around on this small chance of Hope that her lover could be alive. As it progresses, it...sort of drops this point entirely, going into "oh, it wasn't him, but some ass prick who looks like him and loved a different summoner 1000 years ago", and now we're just "Save the World!" again. The "I think your plan sucks!" is out of character, mostly cause Yuna would not say that.
Its like how when Linkara went out of his way to say Dona Troy, under no circumstance, would use the term "Retarded", let alone play off it with "Re-Todded" in countdown. I can't see Yuna being pushed to say "your plan sucks." Oh, but its great cause she shot down a plan that was similar to what she went through, so its forgivable, right? Not really. And thing is, Yuna acts kind of like a subtle bitch at other parts of the game, which is further out of character.
I don't see this "a lot of depth' thing. It feels strongly like "Search hard enough for something, you will find it" literary part. Yuna comes closest, and even then, there's not much. Yuna's character is summed up as "I want to see if my boyfriend is still alive, but I still want to help bring peace to Spira!" That's the extent of her character. They don't actually build upon those factors much either, but rather, more just constantly remind you of them. Compare this to FFX where Yuna's on a mission and consistently moving forward, and her mission keeps getting challenged along the way, and we see her overcome them and become stronger (or alternatively, are indicators of her strength) as she goes on. THAT's how you reinforce a character point. Its not just going "I want to see you!" every few scenes, but actually establishing just how strong the character's resolve is. I felt no actual growth in Yuna in FFX-2, where as there's a good deal of it in FFX.
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I see. Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree since I see a lot more depth than you want to claim. Of course, since you're so sure you're right, there's no point in me arguing with you!
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FFVIII's writers didn't care about anyone but Squall and Rinoa. If you believe entries on Wikia, the design documents talk about how they were worried other characters would "distract" from the two of them so they downplayed them/made them comic relief (which is to say, characters we hate more). Because you see, they were so sure they had a sure-fire hit everyone would adore with Squall.
This is how dumb FFVIII's writing staff was. Not only in specific (Squall is a little bitch) but in general- you can't assume you've written this one single character who is so great that absolutely nobody will not be enamored with them. It's the same mistake a lot of retarded anime garbage makes, and I guess it probably flies in Japan better than elsewhere, but it's still dumb.
This is why Disc 3 is about nothing but saving Rinoa- the writers only cared about anything as it related to the two of them. Nothing else has intrinsic importance at all.
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So if that really was the mind set, rather than giving us characters who could help the relationship along, either by giving us parallel scenarios, foil situations, etc., they just said "ok, here's 4 character who exist purely for gameplay, now EMBRACE THE AWESOME LOVE STORY!"
...seriously, what the hell? I pray that's not actually what happened, and it was more just multiple brainfarts in execution, cause how could someone actually believe that a love story only works with 2 characters and a bunch of comic relief characters?
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They were concerned the player would get "distracted." Like they would detract from this amazing, perfect character they had created and the hole he wants to put his dick in.
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SaGa Frontier 2 replay - going through this. I'm following Zack Keene's Odds and Ends FAQ for the timeline, so I just finished the first At The Mines, and the chart so far looks like this:
(1220) - Gustave Born
(1227) - Gustave Exiled
(1227) - Departure From Homeland
(1232) - Gustave 12 Years Old
(1233) - Gustave and the Blacksmiths
(1235) - Gustave 15 Years Old
(1235) - Wil's Departure
(1236) - Desert Megalith
(1236) - Reunion
(1238) - Infiltrate! Alexei Gang
(1239) - Shodown! Alexei
(1239) - Mother's Sickbed
(1240) - Conquest of Wide
(1242) - Gustave and the Pirates
*(1244) - At the Mines*
(1245) - Father's Sudden Death
(1246) - Beyond Grand Valley
(1247) - Tycoon Wil
(1247) - Landing
(1248) - Battle of Buckethill
(1248) - Gustave's Reunion
Everyone is overpowered as hell, Cordelia cleaves faces in with Cannonball + Spear -> Wide Swing. Narcisse and Wil have a focus on Spell Artes, and Tyler held on to some steel things for a while, but I switched back when I remembered how much I liked Hybrid Artes.
Terraria - WHY ARE YOU SO ADDICTING.
WoW - Brewfest time. Is fun.
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Psychonauts:
Up to the Milkman Conspiracy.
At first I was quite liking the game; even though it's 90% 3D platforming collectathon just like every other 3D platforming collectathon (and that's not a great formula to begin with) there was something that I found appealing. I'm starting to actively dislike this game now, though. I've used FAQs a few times now, because I didn't want to go through the BS of "figure out the random thing you're supposed to punch". The game has actually crashed on me. I've had a door glitch in such a way that I couldn't figure out how to fix it, and just jumped off the edge a couple times so that I'd get kicked out of the level. Speaking of which, lives, they're a resource in the game, and they feel antequated; maybe I should be resetting after any death--number of lives is the one part of my durability I can't just heal back. Not to mention, a lives system that matters and where your life total can stick with you in a game with dumb deaths (like rolling off a cliff accidentally).
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Persona 2 IS - Picked this up earlier then I thought I'd be able to. Putzing around in Zodiac now, just spread the rumor about the second floor so this should be fun.
What will also be fun is the 2 Luck Sources and 2 Vitality Sources I got from the casino. Less then an hour in there, I happen upon a 100K reward from the slots~
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While we're at it (and since Yoshi brought it up) I wouldn't say FF5 is much up to snuff when it comes to character work either. Only Galuf, Gilgamesh and Ghido (and this coming from the Advanced version) really stand out at all I think~
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While we're at it (and since Yoshi brought it up) I wouldn't say FF5 is much up to snuff when it comes to character work either. Only Galuf, Gilgamesh and Ghido (and this coming from the Advanced version) really stand out at all I think~
The retranslation, to me, always smacked of trying to give characters to a game that had almost none.
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Everyone is overpowered as hell, Cordelia cleaves faces in with Cannonball + Spear -> Wide Swing. Narcisse and Wil have a focus on Spell Artes, and Tyler held on to some steel things for a while, but I switched back when I remembered how much I liked Hybrid Artes.
Oh? Then shouldn't you be trying to enter Duel in every fight possible and have Cody pasting everything dead with Jewel Strike?
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Oh? Then shouldn't you be trying to enter Duel in every fight possible and have Cody pasting everything dead with Jewel Strike?
Team battle is used more often early on just so multiple people can get stat-ups, rather than just one.
Also, on a strange note, the combo to Jewel Strike is Stone-Water-Backslash-Backslash. The combo to Water Hammer and Lawnmower is Stone-Water then Backslash-Backslash. Take a guess at which she likes using more.
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Yuna is good
Disagree. She's pretty much the pinnacle of incompetent female characters. People argue she's strong, but her entire strength comes from her willingness to sacrifice herself to defeat Sin. As an actual character, she's 100% reliant on everyone else, doesn't ever make a decision by herself over the course of the game, and ends up being hyped as a strong character based on one action that, in the general scheme of things, is more likely to just be an out-of-character plot device.
Tidus ... grows up and matures over the course of the game, he really develops/grows up/etc a lot so he isn't bad per say.
Majorly disagree. Tidus doesn't grow up, and he doesn't develop. His entire personality remains the same, the only thing that changes is his understanding of the world he's in. (That said, this is one of the things I'm going to seriously reconsider and think on on this playthrough (which has been kinda delayed lately, argh.)
(Kimahri also > Quina)
Also disagree! (Or, more, they're not really comparable since they're very different characters. The relevant comparison to Quina would be, say, Wakka, since they're clearly designed as comic relief and not a whole lot else. (And yes, Wakka is clearly better than Quina, on merit of actually having relevance in plot.))
Steiner is ok but he doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things
Disagree majorly. Steiner's possibly the most developed character in the plot with the exception of Vivi. Steiner and Beatrix's love story is pulled off amazingly, and Steiner's development from blind loyalty to actually following his own thoughts on things while fulfilling his duty is gradual and really well carried out. (Also trusting Tantalus as a part of this, but that's less relevant.) But yeah, Steiner is far and away one of the most developed characters in FFIX.
Eiko is also ok and perhaps the fourth most plot/story relevant /important of the core cast after Vivi, Zidane and Garnet but that might just be CT bias talking :P
Agree on the last part of that. :P Firstly, Steiner as I said above. Secondly, Eiko doesn't really develop much at all, for all that she has some plot relevance. There is some development, sure, but not a huge amount, and nowhere near as much as Steiner or Freya, IMO. (As it goes, I think Freya/Amarant actually have a fair amount of development - they're weaker than half the cast, but I'd say they're better than Eiko/Quina. I'll go into Amarant's development later in the post.)
I might not particularly like Squall and Rinoa much as many don't but I can acknowledge that they are still the most fleshed out/developed of FFVIII's core cast for whatever that's worth. They are constantly in the limelight, hogging the screentime, they practically always exist and make sure we never forget about it. People actually -care- about them, sure the caring for the most part might be in a negative way of the has people frothing at the mouth in rage variety but the fact that they are able to effect people to such an extent emotionally means that in terms of strong/remarkable characters whom people are actually able to remember probably means they are successful and the best/strongest of FFVIII's core cast in that sense.
Different argument entirely, but yeah, the issue I have with Squall and Rinoa is that their love story isn't really a love story. Squall doesn't gradually grow to like Rinoa, he just completely ignores her until she falls unconscious, at which point he obsesses over her. It.. literally doesn't make sense, and is just bad writing. (The characters I actually like in FF8 are Irvine and Selphie, who are the cocky/hyper characters done well.
At the very least FFX definitely deserves to be above X-2 I think (unless it's a personal choice of battle system >>> all/something like that there~ )
Mostly is, yeah. I can't stand much of FFX's character development anywhere ever, and X-2 at least pulls off half of it relatively well. (General viewpoint on X-2 is that anything in the present is bad, anything in the past is decent.) But yeah, I really love the FFX-2 battle system, and I'm really not a fan of FFX's for the reasons in my original post.
For FF8, what characters do you like? Most of the PCs barely have screentime in the way FF8 is written, and the two characters with all the screentime is Squall and Rinoa. Do you think Irvine is a good character? Why?
I like Irvine and Selphie, and I think the plot had potential, if it had avoided some really dumb moments. Irvine and Selphie strike me as a relationship done right (which is funny, given FF8's main characterisation.) (Idly, I'd compare Lulu/Wakka to Selphie/Irvine, except the latter actually makes sense in terms of character/plot, whereas Lulu/Wakka really really doesn't. Which is funny, since that's something I liked on my first playthrough, but a replay shows it's actually pretty weak.)
FF9 has characters like Eiko and Amarant, who fit into the same complaints you have about Lulu and Kimahri. Eiko is a child who doesn't act anything like a child! And I'm not even sure why Amarant exists in the story other than to be Zidane's shounen rival or something. I also feel like Freya is roughly on terms with Lulu in terms of characterization; someone with a smidgen of plot but not too much depth (also is a grrrl or something). I'm going to put forward the argument that those three characters roughly cancel out Lulu/Kim (I don't really agree with this, I think Amarant is horrible instead of boring, but we'll just say this, also sorry CT for Eiko hate! Oh and Quina is just thrown in the trash.)
Main thing with FFIX is that every character begins as a cliche and ends up being an actual character. Amarant does just start off as the typical rival who is worse in every way and is.. basically a generic Lone Wolf. Ends up actually giving a damn about people, thanks to the scene in Ipsen's Castle. (I'm not really defending Amarant here, there's definitely not a whole lot to go on, but there's still something, which I think is as much character development as Lulu and Kimahri get between them.)
Do you think Vivi is better than Auron? Zidane or Tidus? Garnet or Yuna? Steiner or Wakka?
Vivi. Zidane. Neither. Steiner.
Vivi is possibly my favourite character in any game, except for maybe Kefka. He's got some amazing character development, he's a really likeable character (even people who don't FFIX generally like Vivi, and I can't ever remember hearing of someone who doesn't), and he's generally just one of the most complex and well-written characters in any game. Auron, on the other hand.. he's an interesting enough character, but I don't think there's any development there - it's implied that all of his development came from backstory, but we don't see anywhere near enough of that to make an impact.
Zidane vs. Tidus is solely down to development and likability. Zidane has his moments, but I find he's generally just a cocky, laid-back character, and I always like that type. Tidus is bratty and annoying and I can't think of a moment in FFX where he was speaking and I didn't mind. >.> As for development, Tidus grows to understand a world, as far as I can see it. Zidane actually grows to understand himself instead.
Garnet and Yuna are just the same characters in different circumstances, I think, and I can see how some people would like them, but as I said earlier, I prefer character development over just acceptance of a difficult circumstance. It's one thing to say "This character is strong" and another to say "This character is doing what they feel they have to do." I respect the first one in writing, but not the latter.
Steiner and Wakka are kinda different, kinda similar? But yeah, on the whole, again, I just think Steiner develops more. That said, Wakka is one of the better ones in the FFX cast, and this isn't quite as clear cut as the first two choices here.
I'll reply to the rest later but I'm not really up for discussion today, heh.
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Catherine: Started this, played through the second (non-tutorial) nightmare sequence. Started on normal since I start everything on normal but maaaaay wind up restarting since I'm sitting at two retries left after the torture chamber. Not sure of my disposition towards the game given Vincent's options for female companionship seem to be clingy and possessive or freewheeling void of responsibility oh wait she's clingy and possessive too. I dunno, it's early still, hopefully Atlus can give us more than that, and the fact that the attitude about women here being rather regressive will turn out to be more a result of Vincent's POV and Vincent being kind of a dope (it's not like the men come off much better). The game is admirably unsettling, I'll give it that.
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Disagree. She's pretty much the pinnacle of incompetent female characters. People argue she's strong, but her entire strength comes from her willingness to sacrifice herself to defeat Sin. As an actual character, she's 100% reliant on everyone else, doesn't ever make a decision by herself over the course of the game, and ends up being hyped as a strong character based on one action that, in the general scheme of things, is more likely to just be an out-of-character plot device.
Okay what. Yuna never makes her own decisions? Did you like, play the game half-asleep or something?
Yuna decides to become a summoner. You can argue given who her father is there's some expectation placed on her, but she could still have abandoned that destiny had she wanted.
Yuna decides to have a crazy blitzball player claiming to be from Zanarkand as one of her Guardians.
Yuna decides entirely how to handle Seymour's proposal, and later to expose him for the murder of his father and to bring justice to him.
Yuna decides to threaten her own suicide to save her friends when they are captured in Bevelle.
Yuna decides to chew out Mika after his big reveal.
Yuna decides to fight against Yunalesca rather than go through with the Final Summoning.
While her decisions are shaped by her interactions with Tidus and Auron, they are very much hers.
You're free not to like its execution but "pinnacle of incompetent female characters"? The FF series alone has produced Rosa and Rinoa who would mock that statement, never mind a gaggle of other terrible RPG love interests (Shana, etc.).
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Steiner's possibly the most developed character in the plot with the exception of Vivi. Steiner and Beatrix's love story is pulled off amazingly, and Steiner's development from blind loyalty to actually following his own thoughts on things while fulfilling his duty is gradual and really well carried out. (Also trusting Tantalus as a part of this, but that's less relevant.) But yeah, Steiner is far and away one of the most developed characters in FFIX.
Name one line Steiner said without looking it up.
I'm not asking for exact specifics-just one line *vaguely*. I'm curious here. Bonus points if it's not comedic relief and/or if it's not involving another character shining notably, just him.
I can recall Zidane's actions-for better or for worse, though I don't hate him as a main. Eiko. Vivi. Beatrix's end of that love story you mentioned, but not his(Or rather, I recall it being generally a vague comedic skit that ran off Beatrix being oblivious and Steiner being unable to talk fast. I suppose that's more remembering uh a skit that could have been done in any number of RPGs with any number of characters.). I recall more of *Amarant's* few lines than I do Steiner's. Freya I barely can recall specifics of but I recall her at least having a plot arc that was strongly and unsharedly her's. And Quina is a blob of mascot memorable blobbyness. But I'll be damned if I can recall a single line Steiner said. His general character, yes. Other people mocking or talking to him, yes. But not him. In four playthroughs.
I'm curious if this is me or not. Hence the question about the lines. Is this actually in the game, or just in your own head?
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I'm gonna question how Selphie/Irvine makes sense while Wakka/Lulu does not.
yes, Lulu was in love with Chappu, but that's part of why she didn't recognize how she felt for Wakka, but regardless, she was very clearly close to both of them (as well as Yuna.) And the two have spent a good deal of time together AFTER Chappu's death anyway, such as for example, they both were already on a (failed) pilgrimage before that. Its not something that just sort of sparked mid game, but something that was happening throughout their lives, and Tidus kind of put Lulu on the spot, combined with her seeing Wakka give it his all at the Blitzball tournament. Its more like she's starting to acknowledge Wakka's finer points and is moving on from her lost loved one in Chappu, and Wakka himself was clearly improving as a person, being less stupid and blind about things.
Selphie and Irvine...where's their interaction? Yes, they were kids at the orphanage together...which Selphie COMPLETELY FORGOT, and to Irvine, it was more "hey, a kid from my child hood!" and not an actual love interest (contrast this to Wakka and Lulu who have been close their entire lives. I think the only time they were separated for an extended period of time is implied on Lulu's first Pilgrimage.) He does a few nice things for her, but them "ending up as a pairing" is kind of just there.
See, with Wakka and Lulu, they have the advantage of obviously a lot of history together, so there's plenty of room to "fill in the gaps" based on your own imagination, the game gives us all we need to believe why they can end up together. Want more? Assume its stuff that happened throughout their lives.
Irvine and Selphie DO NOT have this. There's a good like 10 year gap in their lives where they were separated, and you can't seriously believe Irvine is going to have any attractions towards a girl he knew when he was 7 as he does when he's 17 (especially since Irvine is the token "lecher" of the crew and hits on all woman, so its not like "oh, she's cute!" is going to work either.) Add in Selphie not even remembering Irvine...and actually ignoring him outright for a good part of Disc 1 (this...isn't so much hate as much as Selphie being absent minded. He's hitting on her, and she's in her current "TRAINS!!!!" state of blissful oblivion)
I...really don't see how Irvine/Selphie can be considered a 'well done relationship' when there's really so little there. I mean, the only thing that really hints at this from my recollection are that Irvine goes out of his repair the Quad for Selphie (which felt more like "see, Irvine DOES have redeeming qualities as a person. He CAN do nice things without being stuck up or having ulterior motives!" more than actually promoting a relationship) and the Ragnarok scene of "...I just got the scary image of Selphie flying this thing yelling 'whee!'" "Yeah, and with Irvine by her side watching intently!" *go up to the bridge, that exact scenario occurs*...which came off more as self aware humor ala the Disgaea scene where Kurtis calls out Gordon doing something ridiculous and Gordon is doing exactly what Kurtis said (only it was, you know, actually FUNNY in Disgaea)
...ok, I suppose there's the ending, but the ending is suppose to be a summation of the characters, kind of. Without actual growth in either character, Irvine and Selphie being together just comes off as forced, and even then, its more like the two of them are being playful buddies with Quistis, whose the Straight figure in the trio, rather than an actual relationship.
so...yeah, I really have to question how Selphie/Irvine is a well done relationship.
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Quick response before I actually go back to playing this game, haha.
NEB, as I said, the most relevant decision I could remember, the one to become a summoner, is made before the game begins and is never shown as far as I remember. Whether it's a sense of duty or what would be an out-of-character moment if it were shown is unknown, but given my general memory of the game, I'm leaning towards the latter, whereas I imagine most would go with the former. I've always just seen it as a plot device that the game never really challenged, though. Tidus.. I see that as more personality than strength (and a generic personality at that.) Yuna also decides to have Rikku join her as a Guardian less than 5 minutes after meeting her, and it's almost entirely because Tidus says "She's a good person!" Whether that's a willingness to accept people or a reliance on/trust of Tidus, whatever, it ends up going against Yuna's strength. It's either an unrelated trait or the complete opposite of character strength. Seymour, honestly, I don't remember much of that, but "I'm not trusting this guy who wants to destroy everything" doesn't exactly strike me as a hard choice for any sane person to make. The suicide thing is an obvious bluff and, let's face it, it's not exactly strong to make the noble sacrifice if you know full-well that it's not a sacrifice. That whole scene is essentially "Yuna saves her friends" and nothing more. It's not threatening to anyone, it's not any strength on her part, it's just an escape to the situation. (And one that doesn't work particularly well in the long-run, might I add.)
With Mika... Honestly, I've already discovered that I barely remember that scene. Maybe it was the fact that I didn't think much of Yuna before that or something, but I really don't remember anything particularly special happening in the conversations with Mika. And lastly, Yunalesca, I mostly remember being everyone's decision, but again, might be wrong there. Vague memories of the game, there's a reason I'm replaying it, etc, etc.
Sage: First thing that comes to mind is Steiner's internal monologue on the way to stealing the Supersoft. Might be slightly paraphrasing it to save time/memory, but it's essentially:
"Why am I here, helping these bandits? Because I'm protecting the Princess. Yes, that's right, I'm fulfilling my duty. Duty? But.. that doesn't explain why I'm here. Has the Queen forgotten about her? No, no, I'm sure there's all a good explanation for this. It'll all be explained once we reach Alexandria."
Obviously not the whole development, but just one scene from it. We then get the scene where we fight Beatrix, and Steiner insists on helping the Princess over the Queen, and eventually develop into the scenes with Beatrix (not the love letter one, the Protecting My Devotion section, where he insists on protecting both Alexandria and her, which is the safe ground between duty and personal feelings). The 'quoted' section, though, is mostly his transition from "blindly loyal" to "questioning loyalties", and is probably the first major development - there's some smaller scenes before this, but not a whole lot (and mostly Vivi-related, heh.)
Quick response. "Quick". Honest.
Oh god Meeple posted too, no, I'll respond to that later. FFX playthrough now. ^^;
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Yuna making the choice is never shown. What IS stated is both how Yuna came to the decision on her own and how Wakka/Lulu were initially against it, but she went through with it anyway.
This is illustrated first when Tidus learns of the Summoner's fate, and how both Wakka and Lulu stated they were initially shocked at her decision and against it. Later, Yuna's sphere has her saying how she was happy that both Wakka and Lulu were against her decision, just because it was a moment that illustrated how, despite how they didn't agree with her, they really did care about her.
Sometimes we don't have to see the event, but we can deduce things based on what is told to us. Its pretty clear Yuna came to the decision on her own; whether because she wanted to go off on a journey (though...she did travel across half the world already with Kimhari to go from Bevelle to Besaid, so I highly doubt that's the reason), the whole "follow in father's foot steps!" thing, or whatever the reason, not fully established, but either way, it was HER decision, and its not exactly a small one, and it was even challenged by those she deemed as siblings.
And...you're understating what it means to take action. The scenario Yuna was in was very delicate, and just her going through with something like that proves she had the strength of will. She's not strong in the sense of "I can kick your ass!" but rather...well...lets quote FF10 itself, shall we?
Lulu: Yuna's strong. She will overcome anything.
Tidus: Strong? I dunno...it seems more driven if you ask me.
Lulu: She's driven because she's strong. When a weak person is pushed, they break.
Yuna never breaks, everytime she's challenged or something stands in her way, she stands to meet the challenge in her own way. You don't have to be this ultra badass to face up to challenges with aggression. Sometimes, merely standing your ground is strength. The Mika scene IS immense strength. She's being challenged by all the Maesters at once, for rather major crimes, and yet, she still has the gall to say "ONE OF YOU IS EVIL AND DEAD!" Oh sure, things don't go as planned, but that's nothing to do with strength. She still managed to summon up strength to say something that can be deemed as treason (even if true), and she's fully aware of the consequences.
Yuna's strong cause she doesn't back down and she's willing to act upon it. That's what people mean when they say "they're strong." Contrast this to, say, Rosa who sort of sits behind Cecil the entire game, or gets kidnapped and requires rescuing. Rosa's not a strong character for this reason. Heck, the one time she DID try to act (early game, she tries to follow Cecil cause she's worried), she only managed to get herself sick and bed ridden, requiring that Cecil save her when she set out to save him.
Yuna...has a few "rescue" moments, but they're minor by comparison; mostly the Blitzball stadium one is the ONLY case where she was actually captured. THe Weddnig? That was her trying a gambit of a strategy. Put herself in a scenario that would insure she gets close to Seymour so she can send him. It didn't work out, no, but that's not related to strength, and she wasn't actually in trouble...quite the reverse, she was the only one WHO WASN'T and that's why her "I'll kill myself!" bluff could actually be applied.
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"Why am I here, helping these bandits? Because I'm protecting the Princess. Yes, that's right, I'm fulfilling my duty. Duty? But.. that doesn't explain why I'm here. Has the Queen forgotten about her? No, no, I'm sure there's all a good explanation for this. It'll all be explained once we reach Alexandria."
Funny things.
A: I didn't recall that. It exists, because I looked it up to see it, but I still don't recall it at all. I mean, after I read the script version I recall him having a monologue there...
B: It's Steiner's longest set of lines in the game. Apparently, by a lot.
C: You've more or less got it right, except somehow it rambles three times as much.
D: As near as I can tell it is the only set of lines of it's kind where he really questions himself.
E: The "questioning" is doing exactly what he does all game, in the end. Protect princess over other priorities. Like he's been doing the entire time.
And this is glaringly ridiculous when I read it from the script's over-viewing the plot perspective. His first lines in the game are being ordered to protect the Princess. The last line in the game is him talking about protecting the queen that was the princess. It is all he ever does. Small wonder I didn't remember anything he says-he never says anything else. I am going through the script for laughs and the amount of lines that have the word "princess" in it are hilarious. Holy shit.
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Given the alternative we usually see (which is to say, FF writers being bad at writing romance plots) I think the Irvine/Selphie pairing is better off for not really being in the game. I'd consider it a point in it's favor.
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Deus Ex 3 - Rob, I know you have used it. How fucking weird is the frame on the Revolver? For something with an item description mentionign the sturdy frame on the revolver you would think it wouldn't have nearly as many moving parts to it. There is a reason more modern handguns have the cylinder be the part that moves around when working with the gun rather than having the cylinder be solid and in place and have the frame of the gun move to open it up. That thing must be so fragile. Would think twice about using one that you even just got from knocking a guy out since they apparently drop it straight to the ground.
Top-break revolvers exist, but who would use them? They're like the only revolver you can jam.
Ever hear of the Dardick tround? The revolver in HR is basically a Colt and Dardick's forbidden love child:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardick_tround
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FFX: Okay, aftermath of Operation Mi'ihen, and the scene where Kimahri first talks! I'm.. at least liking the Sphere Grid again - I actually kinda liked the Sphere Grid most of the time, although I'd forgotten why, haha. (It's because I'm a total sucker for collectibles and completion, and that's exactly what this feels like.)
Isaaru is.. possibly the most simple character imaginable. Strangely enough, it kinda works for him, but it still kinda bugs me at the same time. Hm.
Argh, Cloisters of Trials. As much as I like puzzles, these just bug me. Probably because they take about 10x longer than they should, I don't know. Just something really bothers me about this, for all that I like the concept. (This really should have been a top-down thing of just moving blocks or something, though, and not a "spend ten minutes running back and forth collecting spheres".)
...wait, what the hell. What is up with Tidus dancing in the background of random scenes? XD
...My god, Shelinda is a bitch. Hundreds of Crusaders die and her only response is "Well, guess they should have followed Yevon!"? I mean, seriously, this game has more than enough subtle digs at organised religion, did it really need something so blindingly obvious as this one? Wow. I'm.. somewhat impressed, honestly.
Right, just up to the Moonflow crossing. This is the slowest the game's progressed in a while, and that's still good - honestly, the pacing of the game is one thing I simply cannot find fault in, and my perception of the game has improved based on this alone. As it goes, I think the characters are better now than I used to, but I still don't think too much of them. That said, keeping an open mind, so hopefully will see changes later in the game. For now, I'm way too tired to continue, but hey, at least I spent all of today on actual gameplay and not just Blitzball!
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She's pretty much the pinnacle of incompetent female characters.
CT do you have a copy of Grandia 3? Can you lend it to Yoshi if you do? So much lol to be had.
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Run-DMC - You Talk Too Much.
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I always kind of found it interesting that the crux of Yuna's power was to call upon other characters/ghosts and having them fight for her and be her meat shield while doing nothing.
Just saying.
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I always kind of found it interesting that the crux of Yuna's power was to call upon other characters/ghosts and having them fight for her and be her meat shield while doing nothing.
Just saying.
Well, a summoner as a general does make sense.
Breath of Death: Amazingly fun. I have three characters and I'm going through an underground mountain passage right now.
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If I could summon meatshields to do all my fighting in an RPG, I would too.
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Yuna has minions. Yus~
Whew huge ass FFX debate. Don't really have time to get in to it for now because I am playing Radiant Historia and NEB/Sage/Meeple have been covering responses very well for the most part (I especially agree with NEB/Meeple's comments on Yuna~)
Pay attention to the respect the Rhonso have for Yuna too Yoshi when you get to that point (Meeple already provided Lulu's words as a quote for referencing Yuna's strength/inner strength, there will be another example with this later) :)
Briefly I will cover this one thing though. Umm ... doesn't Yuna also let Rikku join them because she knows/suspect Rikku is her (SPOILERS!? *cousin*? (SPOILERS!?) Sure a willingness to accept people (why is this necessarily a bad thing?) and/or trust/whatever in Tidus might have been part of it but Yuna is not dumb (she does usually have her reasons for going along with things or not as others have noted) I'm sure she had her own personal reasons/thoughts/feelings being a part of it too (in her decision there) such as she suspected/knew who Rikku was (I don't remember the scene/whether or not it was explicitly stated who Rikku was then but yeah):) (thus she would have her own family related stuff to draw from there) Remember there was some downtime where Yuna was with the Al Bhed in Luca too. For all we know Yuna was filled in on some stuffs by them there~
(that's the way I've always went with taking it at least~)
Radiant Historia - Prologue done. Saved after getting the ability to go to Historia/use the White Chronicle. Also I has teh Mana Crystals~ I have been enjoying the game up until this stage. It feels like a lot has happened in such a short space of time (or it might just be the fast pace of it) but I am not that lost yet. Except for not remembering the name of Stocke's boss exactly/properly >.> I have to make the decision whether to continue to work for him or to go with Rosch. I'm thinking Rosch. It doesn't exactly bode well for the other guy when I can't even remember his name properly >_> Besides from what I do remember he seemed kind of suspicious/a suspicious chappy! Playing the game blind and primarily for the story as I noted I might do earlier so yeah it'll be interesting to see how that goes/where it takes me :)
I really like Stocke so far! Though I had to officially say Stocke is not NEB/NEB is not Stocke before I sat down and started the game for real! :P Liking him though yeah. Raynie and Marco I don't have much of an opinion on yet though I think I currently like Marco slightly better. Carrying around stuffs in case people need help/healed seems like a CT/CT bait thing to do! :)
Also I have to go back and see if I can get the shinies I missed getting earlier due to the game tormenting/trolling me by not letting me have then them (gave Stocke the Charm I did find and bought two more for Raynie/Marco after equipping Stocke with the armour I found at the inn and selling his default one)~
Edit: Oh yes - I unfortunately (fortunately?) don't have Grandia 3. I remember being all excited for it pre/early release because the battle system looked interesting (also from the reports the DL gave on it) but then the UK/EU thing happened again and I ended up forgetting about it.
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Catherine: Yesterday's attempt proceeded thusly:
-Encounter giant demon baby.
-Die a lot.
-Mute TV because oh my god, no more.
-Die a lot more.
-Restart game on Easy and overwrite previous save with extreme prejudice.
Really, Atlus, what.
I should note that I really dig the musical selection here, incidentally. Beethoven! Mussorgsky! Holst! All pretty great choices so far.
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If I could summon meatshields to do all my fighting in an RPG, I would too.
Well, it's very different from every other summon portrayal in games.
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It feels a bit truer to what a "summon" would do, instead of being mechanically identical to a black magic spell. I'd argue the only reason it took the series so many games to implement it was due to the limitations of technology initially, coupled with inertia by the PSX era.
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FF8 certainly felt like it was what they wanted to do but couldn't really float under the limitations of the technology.
Summons technically take hits for you and are essentially the entire focus of the gameplay system...but in ways that feel...I don't know, like "Well, that didn't work. Let's try so and so." ideas. It's hard to imagine the GF implementation was the first idea the coders of FF8 had, as opposed to something that evolved.
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Infinite Undiscovery: WOW, Ethereal Queen is cheap. And sacrificial dolls are useless. Since dodging is out of the question and I only have one character (yes, I'm still doing the challenge) the only solution seems to be numbers going up. Numbers going up is good.
I already have enough ingredients for 100 000 Hps and can get some more dragon fangs if necessary.
Everything else in the SG is now easy (except crossbows) and I think I have every item needed for compulsive. This took far more farming than necessary, but gave me a shiny lvl 207.
Gabriel Celeste and Ethereal Queen are really cruel jokes on the main character in this game, for spoilerific reasons.
What a random jerk move. Wow.
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FF8 certainly felt like it was what they wanted to do but couldn't really float under the limitations of the technology.
Summons technically take hits for you and are essentially the entire focus of the gameplay system...but in ways that feel...I don't know, like "Well, that didn't work. Let's try so and so." ideas. It's hard to imagine the GF implementation was the first idea the coders of FF8 had, as opposed to something that evolved.
I don't know, I think it's hard to imagine that a lot of FF8 was anything but the very first idea someone had, because (as was the case with deliberately marginalizing most of the cast) anyone who looked at it objectively would say it was a bad idea.
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Infinite Undiscovery: WOW, Ethereal Queen is cheap. And sacrificial dolls are useless. Since dodging is out of the question and I only have one character (yes, I'm still doing the challenge) the only solution seems to be numbers going up. Numbers going up is good.
I already have enough ingredients for 100 000 Hps and can get some more dragon fangs if necessary.
Surprise to hear that. I.Queen's physicals isn't that hard to dodge. Southern Cross and Accused both have start ups, and Angel Lawcite is pretty slow.
Unless you don't have status immunity against lock status and got tied don by Accused's start up. I really don't see I.Queen's physical to be very intimidating.
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Tales of Xillia: POLISH IN MY TALES WHAT IS THIS.
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Penultimate Fan/Exc/Ber/Emu XF update~
4-7-A (Charlton 1): Not a terribly hard fight. Charlton can be rocked pretty badly by Feeble Mind, and even before then he'll waste some turns on Fragile instead of the far more dangerous Dark Destruction. You do have to rout the fight at least, and John Does are powerful enough to be annoying, but nothing too bad.
4-7-B (Royal Knights 2): As with last week, sleep and gravity leads to lulz. Get used to this.
4-8-A (Chelle finale): Stealth Stalkers again, Detect again. They're more durable, they get instant death off, I petrify them back so fair is fair. Chelle... What would I do here without sleep? Probably just die. Debuffs are one turn on her. She still manages to kill a couple people since I had no way to really null her out (it's possible to box the team against Predator Barrage but that slows down the approach to deal with the obnoxious status whore Forsaken Mutants and her normals still hurt enough. But yeah, sleep her, nuke them, take things apart from there.
4-8-B (Piedras Blancas): Slow Piedras, surround him and action replay gravity spam! Heal when needed, his offence ain't too special. Kill the mutants as they approach before they get in range to be eaten, using either weakness-hitting spells or Petrify.
4-9-A (Tormenta Triad 3) [4 resets]: Um, ow. This fight's hard, man. The tormenta triad have a crippling status weakness which wrecks their devious teamwork strategy... unfortunately it's Rob Turn, so I don't have it. This is like their first fight except the strategy I employed there (MP-bust Trueno) doesn't work so well because he has MP Regen. I try once but it's a pointless waste of turns and get mostly wiped out by random spells from the plentiful, unkillable support in the meantime.
So I decide that I'll just go for the kill on Lluvia (who has low res) to stop the doom strategy. 3 more resets making this work. First time I get overwhelmed pretty badly. Next two I'm able to drop Lluvia, but still get wiped out thereafter. MAG-boosted spells from the brothers do high 2HKO damage, OHKO anyone after revival. As soon as I'm down to three PCs even infinite items (which I don't really have anyway) I can't heal as fast as two brothers and six clones can kill me, and though some of them start out of range on turn 1 they close pretty quickly.
Slow Down on Lluvia, then beat on him with CAs. I try to heal somewhat but it's a tight balance between maintaining offence. I take out Trueno second with Valiant-enhanced damage as they bring down Alexia, which proves very helpful. Once two are down the battle is basically in hand, though the final toll is 9 Revive Fruits (over half of what I have), a bunch of Potion Berries, and all but two PCs dead. Yikes.
4-9-B (Tormenta Triad finale) [1 reset]: Much easier. Still not easy! Anyway, giving too many turns to the brothers after one is dead = bad. Giving even one turn to the final brother = bad. After a slight error costs me one reset, I try again, poisoning Viento and intending to leave him to last so he'll die of poison even if things go awry. It proves an unnecessary precaution, as the turns fall out such that I take him out anyway. Otherwise, the usual strategy of "get them all as low HP as possible before killing any" works well enough, CAs to chew into them and chippy spells to finish.
4-10-A (Katrina 2): As the previous battle mostly. This battle kinda bores me outside the end which isn't that bad. Katrina does shockingly high damage off shockingly high speed but Slow Down and 50% sleep keep that under control, and 5HKO Feeble Mind means she doesn't take long to die anyway.
4-10-B (Clysmian 1): It's vulnerable to physicals or something. I mostly use gravity anyway, same idea as Piedras. The support, in both this battle and the previous, is a bit too easy to pick off with Emulator nonsense (petrify and weaknesses, both work although their healing can mess with the damage some).
4-11-A (Charlton 2): Ah, much less bad with six PCs, so I can actually surround him to stop the summon strategy. Still nasty to get under control. CAs help since they trigger fewer counters, before finally getting him trapped. Slow Down, etc., the usual works here although he has no real weaknesses to exploit.
4-11-B (puzzle): Is a puzzle. I meant to check if gems could activate the switches but forgot, oh well.
4-11-C (Charlton finale) [2 resets]: This reset count probably shouldn't be taken too seriously because I know exactly how to win this without them but chose to give the "fair" fight a try anyway. It didn't really feel especially doable, with no way to kill the John Does (Sacred Slayer, Sentinel, Extremist), no way to effectively cure disease and heal faster than once per round per PC (Gadgeteer, Enigmancer), and no ability to get in range of Charlton super-quickly (High Cavalier, maybe Grappler and/or Nightstalker?), this just isn't doable. I get diseased/killed and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
Of course since Black Corrosion's range is 20 instead of, say, 30, the coward's route brings victory.
And that does it for C4.
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Tales of Xillia: POLISH IN MY TALES WHAT IS THIS.
And stupidly user friendly too!
Who are you maining? I assume Mira?
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Yeah, I picked Milla.
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Yeah, I picked Milla.
Then please be forgiving to Alvin. It is easy to believe him to be a total ass in her route.
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Niu:
I tried again, but her using Seraphic Law in the middle of a Grinn Valesti = Dead Capell before being able to move.
I... could try beating her with only the most basic regular attack, not chained to another second regular attack or anything, I guess. But that sounds painful. One error and I'm dead, and I'd need to hit her about 1000 times.
Not to mention that getting back there takes 15 minutes.
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I would be incredibly amused if Niu was talking about the ease of evading attacks that were completely changed in the NA version...
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Radiant Historias- Just reached the Sand Fortress in Alternate History. Last event in the Standard History was the merchant one and I'm supposed to head for the Sand Fortress there as well! I think. Also I did go back in time and do the man in the cave thing in Alternate to change the poor guy's fate and received a shiny for it but then I needed to proceed through the plots again from the mines >_> So I reset. I'll do it again when/if a more suitable Time Travel node appears (hopefully soon) Not much of an update here because I want to get back to playing but briefly - wow Shadow was a fun boss!
First real competent fight in the game I think? I didn't go into the fight on full MPs and after Power Wave and Frost/Thunder spam from Stocke and Raynie they were soon both at 0. I thought I could do the rest of the fight with physical Attack spam/physical blitz down with Marco's Heal enough to keep the team going before his already depleted MP ran out <_< Needless to say this didn't really work well because first POIZN. I thought ok poison seems kinda nasty in this game (had been using Raynie's Poison Strike on the crab) but I can still handle it, I have some anti poisons left, Marco can heal, Raynie can use those .. arghh he poisoned Marco now. There was worrying about/hoping I wouldn't run out of anti poisons then ... what the hell was that? Did he just Stone Marco!? Wow. Shadow was turning out to be a real status fiend. Did he use Paralysis too? I think he might have but not sure now. It didn't hit at any rate if so. Luckily I'd made sure to buy at least three of every different type of status cure available from the shop earlier in the game >_> So I was able to depetrify Marco =) The last straw came when Shadow managed to successfully heal himself and ended up with a chunk of his HP back. Time to stop playing around CT. Herbal Tea time. Back to to skills/magic with Magic Boost spam. Regained control of the battle and finally won. After all that nobody levelled up from the fight =(
I did reset and redo this fight because I was curious if I could get more EXP from it. Restored MP before going in this time and made gratuitous use of Push Assault (keeping Shadow out of the heal circle) Power Wave and Frost/Thunder off Magic Boost. Even threw in some Fire from Stocke there. Marco comboed in to the others with physical attacks when he was done buffing. Shadow was effectively blitzed down this time but still no go on the levelling up. Marco came close but no luck!
My team is Stocke (L14) Raynie (L14) Rosch (L12) Stocke has Silver Edge, Silver Cape, Charm, Charm, Charm, Raynie has Bronze Spear, Silver Mail, Charm, Seed Ring, Charm and Rosch has Iron Spear, Silver Mail, Charm, Charm and Breeze Armlet. Marco is in reserves at L13 and his equipment isn't very up to date and he has no accessories!
Character wise as it is now - Stocke > Rosch (sexy beast!) = Marco > Raynie. In battle hmmm ... Stocke = Raynie > Rosch = Marco I think. Stocke's versatility/variety of moves seems hard to beat, he really gained a lot of skills fast. On the other hand really starting to dig Raynie's offence with magics~
Stocke/Raynie/Rosch is currently my go team for randoms. Grave Tuck and Gull Swing are smexy~
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I don't know, I think it's hard to imagine that a lot of FF8 was anything but the very first idea someone had, because (as was the case with deliberately marginalizing most of the cast) anyone who looked at it objectively would say it was a bad idea.
I could easily believe that FF8 is the result of many, many situations where the original plan wasn't working and they either had about five minutes to come up with a fix or they didn't care enough to spend time thinking about it.
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From what I understand, the original concept for displaying the Love Theme was to have an FF7 Love Point system where your choices to other characters affected Squall's interaction and eventually relationship with the females, and it was meant to last the entire game (instead of exist for one silly scene), but was ultimately tossed aside for some reason or another (possibly cause it would take too much time to program something like that?) in favor of just going SquallxRinoa.
When you look at Quistis' early game stuff, it...really makes sense. She's hitting on him, plays an actual role early game, etc. then once Timber Arc starts, she fades from existence beyond a few stock lines here and there and one instance of self reflection. Also supported by how Selphie's initial scene in Balamb Garden can have Squall either being nice to her or being a total dickwad, the latter of course being actually in character.
...so yeah, I think Shale's theory hold's true. They probably wrote the entire Rinoa stuff, and then just sort of said "the concept isn't going to work, fuck it and drop the Selphie/Quistis arcs, we'll just make this SquallxRinoa!" and sort of forgot to compensate for Quistis or Selphie's characters in any sort of way (beyond "Selphie is a sugar obsessed freak")
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From what I understand, the original concept for displaying the Love Theme was to have an FF7 Love Point system where your choices to other characters affected Squall's interaction and eventually relationship with the females, and it was meant to last the entire game (instead of exist for one silly scene), but was ultimately tossed aside for some reason or another (possibly cause it would take too much time to program something like that?) in favor of just going SquallxRinoa.
Well, that's something FF8 has going for it. At least it didn't turn out to be a friggin' dating sim.
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Well, I didn't say that'd be a superior product!
But if you have an idea and drop it, you kind of need some sort of compensation, especially if 2 of the characters interactions, development, etc. is HINGED HEAVILY UPON THIS.
Yeah, lots of games are made better by deviating from their original design. Xenogears was going to be a CT sequel, but deviated from the original source too much, so rather than keep making it pretend to be something its not, they just adjusted the story to be its own original story...
...and while I am not a fan of Xenogears, I will admit they did at least a half decent job shifting gears (no pun intended) in that game. Yeah, some minor tells still exist, but that's no big deal. Its not a major thing like "entire characters get dropped cause their original development had to be tossed aside, and we were too lazy to come up with a replacement idea!"
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I honestly wouldn't have even known it was intended for that purpose if the Internet hadn't told me.
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Well, plenty of things like that happen! You don't recognize what's going on until someone tells you, then all the tell-tale signs just start standing out a lot.
I mean, DMC being originally a Resident EVil game comes to mind. Wouldn't have guessed that, then I read about that, and suddenly all the obvious signs are there. Bad Camera angles, exploding island with jet flying out of it in the ending, monsters have resembling features to a lot of RE Creations (Marionettes could easily pass as Zombies), crap load of Emblem-related advancements, "You Are Dead" game over with some enemy specific fatalities...
...yeah, all this stuff is easy to miss if you don't know better; once you DO know it, it starts becoming obvious. Not so much a bad thing, mind, more just kind of something you start to notice.
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Catherine: "Baby With a Chainsaw has appeared." I don't think you can hear that kind of thing outside of an Atlus game.
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Starjewelled
Playing this online 2v2 a lot.
Psychonauts
Yeah, after my significant annoyance at some of the flaws, I've barely touched it since. This might end up being one of those games that "I'll probably finish someday."
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Effort games post, since I realized I haven't been talking much in here of late!
FF13: Stalled on this one due to classes. It's an interesting game to play, but requires time and energy to really sit down and play.
Defense Grid: Playing this a ton. The high level gameplay's been very absorbing. It's less about winning and more about maximizing resources and damage in a small area. It rarely pays to make long, looping maps and instead rewards tight formations of towers where you are always hitting the aliens. I'm top 100 or so on all the DLC maps. My latest success was breaking top 200 in forge, which required lasering most of the last wave. Fuck that final wave of Mantas- there has to be near 100 flies there. I usually have to use three fully powered missile towers, which is an insane waste of resources.
Breath of death 7- I'm up to the dungeon where Erik joins, just after the second savepoint. The game is delightful to play. It's a pretty entertaining homage to SNES and NES RPG's in both style and humor- the game is one long inside joke. I find it particuarly entertaining because it pulls so much of it's style and visual cues from dragon quest. Gameplay is extremely well balanced and fast paced- a modern take on those classic titles. Take fucking note, Dragon Quest: You can have 'inns' and 'churches' for the old school feel without having to make them be the only source of healing and saving.
Sara>Lita=Dem>>>>>>>>Erik for worth so far? Lita's lack of speed is really starting to hurt, as are randoms taking a notable jump in damage and durability at this point. Sara just has the best physical in the game, and a couple of good damaging skills plus healing. Dem is a solid tank and has good boss fighting skills. Lita is kind of slow/frail but has MT physicals wihch are godly. Erik sucks. Slow, not especially damaging, but durable. Pretty much an old school fighter, on other words.
Madden 12- Bought this because well, the Packers won the super bowl. It's Madden in all of it's pretty, noisy glory. I'm digging it.
Wizardary: Heart of the Maelstrom (5)- Entirely a nostalgia thing. I beat this in a couple of weeks around the time Hurricane Irene hit.. It's an old school dunegon crawl complete with nonsensical spell names and awful polish. A couple of things stood out, though:
A: Class balance is decent. You end up using every class to some degree due to the way the promotion system works, unless you get very lucky with bonus points at the beginning. I think Ninjas may well be the worst class in practice in the game- They seem to be worse than thieves at detrapping things, and they are *really* hard to get due to the alignment and stat point needs. The FF1 style equipment gimmick is very useful for item space, but otherwise blah. Heavy armor constantly outpaces them.
B: Game is tough but not grindy. This surprised me. If you follow the general path of the game with the clues you get, you should be in reasonable shape to fight most things. Granted, getting the silver mail from the thieves den made the game much nicer in that regard- free healing makes randoms tough without having to constantly keep track of your limited healing resources.
C: Thieves are remarkably competent fighters thanks to a couple of good bows late. Granted, those bows are pretty uncommon and they can fall behind at points. The Sylvan bow is solid if you get it, and has excellent range.
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You are almost at the end with Milkman Conspiracy (which you are right, it is a damned shame the gameplay is off the rails there because as a concept it is so damned good). I can't really provide any motivation though because the Meat Circus (next and final level) is straight up terrible and pretty much universally disdained.
Also you guys are seriously still going on?
Personally RE: FF8 the dating sim? I don't see it. Not at the point where they started doing much of anything that mattered anyway. Quistis arc at the start of the game is pretty clearly a setup to a piece of character development for herself (lol that went far) and for Squall. It establishes that he is very clearly not looking for a relationship and that he is a complete and total twat who brings armies of men to tears who dreamed of having had an amorous 18 year old teacher. It is part of what shows how much Squall has really changed when he loses his shit and decides to run along train tracks while giving a chick in a coma a piggy back ride and then later jumping out into space to save someone who should have lost huge portions of brain functionality due to oxegyn deprivation in space.
There is just way way to much of FF8s core story for that to work properly. Now it isn't particularly good, but FF8 isn't so dysfunctional that going from point A to point B makes no sense at all. It might be stupid as fuck (lol u 4got cuz of gfs gais) and pointlessly melodramatic (the whole fucking game), but it isn't so off the rails that it didn't do exactly what they set out to do with this one, which was to tell a focussed love story in the Final Fantasy style. Which is to say it is stupid as fuck and pointlessly melodramatic. THEY LOVE EACH OTHER ENOUGH THAT THEY GO ALL CARTESIAN AND WILL THEMSELVES BACK INTO EXISTENCE FROM THE END OF TIME and their friends as well I guess.
You know which FF does do it though and it is honestly pretty terrible in? FFX. Where you get that awesome organic relationship thing built up that is all lol no Tidus and Yuna is canon because making cutscenes for each of the chicks is a waste of money and this is the way the plot flows. But then at the end of the game you get a special scene depending on which girl you have the most points with! yayyyyy cohesive plot and meaningful choices.
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But if you have an idea and drop it, you kind of need some sort of compensation, especially if 2 of the characters interactions, development, etc. is HINGED HEAVILY UPON THIS.
So then they never had anything in mind at all for Zell and only slightly more for Irvine? Sounds about right.
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I liked the Meat Circus, but then again I liked the whole game. If you don't like Milkman Conspiracy there's nothing else to see and too many other games to play, really.
999: Addictive game, I think I'm halfway through it. I think I just can't be that excited by that kind of story anymore (Think horror movies like Saw or Cube without the stupid torture porn), but this is still pulling me in.
I'm mostly going to bitch but the game is really good seriously:
I figured, the main character has most likely 9 hours left to live, why not live those 9 hours with that girl. You know who I'm talking about. You probably deserve it, little guy. Find solace and redemption in breasts. BUT this was a bad mistake, as the game hit me with multiple "She's 30 years old so she's supposed to be really old" scene. This deserves a :( smiley, and I'm not using it lightly.0
And I hope there's a good reason why every character in the game is extremely knowledgeable.
Things seem to point to n°1 being the bad guy so far, but I might be completely wrong! (I hope so)
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Find solace and redemption in breasts.
Man, this made me laugh.
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Meat Circus after Milkman Conspiracy? I thought you had to do the Conspiracy just to get into the asylum.
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Dissidia 012: Beat Confessions of the Creator finally. True Feral Chaos was a thing, but I managed. Yuna supremecy here, combination of small stage, large enemy and the AI having trouble dodging megaflare even on large stages made megaflare spam a winning strategy. Equip accessories to increase wall rush HP damage, a Safety Bit and Smiting Soul and a solid booster acc mult going, and things went fairly smoothly. EXP to HP helped as well.
Will prolly put this down for awhile again now, especially as I have P2IS.
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Niu:
I tried again, but her using Seraphic Law in the middle of a Grinn Valesti = Dead Capell before being able to move.
I... could try beating her with only the most basic regular attack, not chained to another second regular attack or anything, I guess. But that sounds painful. One error and I'm dead, and I'd need to hit her about 1000 times.
Not to mention that getting back there takes 15 minutes.
Well, the trick is to attack her when she is attacking or chanting her spell. If you see her charging Angel Lawcite, get close to her quickly, and when she shoots, you use Grin Valesti. The jump will evade all the shots and you can have a clean hit on her the same time.
If you see her chanting for spells, you can just smack her with Levantein Bash
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Good taste on 999 Fenrir. Should dig up my giant set of recollections and finish it someday. I had the same thoughts as you did at the point you're at, FWIW.
Minor not-really-a-spoiler gameplay tip: If you can pick door 2 voluntarily ever, don't. FAQ up a decision tree if you want to see why; there's a path that forces you into 2, if you'd like to see what's behind every door. Don't feel too bad about FAQing up a decision tree in general, though if you pay attention / have a bit of good luck it shouldn't be TOO hard to figure out which routes have more possibilities. Specifically (more possibly too helpful) if you see more text in a scenario then a previous replay, you are on the right track. Should be really obvious since you're skipping text like crazy and it suddenly slows down to new text speed. Of course it's more subtle if you got the extra text before and are now missing it that this playthrough is probably not optimal. That said, whatevs, I got the main "bad" endings first and it worked out fine for me.
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Bastion - Standing still pyro murders all the birds, all of them, all of them that ever existed and will exist
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Radiant Historia- End of Chapter 2. I did scout ahead a bit but I was tired and not taking it in properly so I quit for the night. About to get Rosch and Aht back in my team I think. Stocke is L20, Aht is L16 and Rosch is L14. It could be worse!?~
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DQ5: I really wish this weren't a Dragon Quest game. With the way the plot plays out it had the potential to have a really interesting main character, but then they made him silent for no reason other than pigheaded tradition, which is the same reason Dragon Quest games do anything else that's stupid, and we instead get an almost totally character-focused game except the character it's focused on never reacts to anything. Argh.
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Bastion - Standing still pyro murders all the birds, all of them, all of them that ever existed and will exist
Aaaall the birds, eh?
I wonder if that's true for the 10-idol 2nd arena. *Goes to try.*
EDIT: Holy shit the flamethrower is awesome. Hey Kappa get the upgrade that makes it do burn damage for a little bit and put on some leechade. Shit is whack yo.
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DQ5: I really wish this weren't a Dragon Quest game. With the way the plot plays out it had the potential to have a really interesting main character, but then they made him silent for no reason other than pigheaded tradition, which is the same reason Dragon Quest games do anything else that's stupid, and we instead get an almost totally character-focused game except the character it's focused on never reacts to anything. Argh.
I think CK said it best that if DQ5 were a Final Fantasy, it'd be one of the best plots in the genre, but just being a Dragon Quest ALONE kind of kills its credibility on many levels in that regard.
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So after that I played through the second run of Bastion. Beat the arenas. The flame bellows ended up probably being the best non-BIG GUN weapon in the game. Also there's not really any additional content in the NG+ aside from 10 idol mode, a new special skill and two changed lines of dialogue. Which was kind of disappointing but 10 idol mode was difficult enough to keep me drawn in so whatevs. Realize I didn't get the achievement for completing every memorial item but I could care less since I did the impressive ones.
Also, now that I have something on topic to say and I've said it, LOL oh my god you all really should just be embarrassed. This argument is bad and you should feel bad. DL at it's best.
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Catherine: And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a dozen beautiful demon wives, and you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
True Cheater end. Yes. Will wrangle what other endings I can from my endgame file, possibly make a Law run through for the rest (since it seems simple enough to bash through the game on a replay) before commenting on the game in general.
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I followed your advice at heart and got horribly stabbed, Snow. :p
Replaying immediately of course. Damn.
OK: http://i.neoseeker.com/ca/999_conceptart_LVnNw.png
Edit: Got spoiled just searching for this image on google :(
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I think CK said it best that if DQ5 were a Final Fantasy, it'd be one of the best plots in the genre, but just being a Dragon Quest ALONE kind of kills its credibility on many levels in that regard.
It kind of does. Any other game, I'd at least have noticed all the crazy unique stuff the plot was doing. But it took almost 18 hours for me to think, "wait, this is DQ and the plot has potential! What the flying fuck?"
And it wouldn't even have to be an FF. Take this story, plug in a talking main, have anybody better than the Legend of Dragoon team write it and boom, you've got at least a cult classic.
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Bastion - Standing still pyro murders all the birds, all of them, all of them that ever existed and will exist
Yeah, flamethrower is a great weapon in general, but especially for the armor piercing.
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Shockingly, I've felt that most of the Dragon Quest games after... 2? had some potential for plot that was completely wasted because it's a dragon quest game. IV's got the whole chapters thing, VII has like the coolest plot premise ever (A tiny island is the only thing in the world! Wait, what?), and I really wish the opening act of DQIX was a bit longer because it's a nice setup, plus stalking around NPCs as their guardian angel has a certain coolness.
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DQ6 of course had the split world thing like Chrono Cross, but didn't explain jack shit about it, and it even had a neat little twist regarding the intro...but again, "its Dragon Quest" sort of spoils any sort of resemblance of maknig it decent cause the execution is that dreadful and it puts it on such a bare minimum level.
Say what you will about Chrono Cross' plot and its convoluted fucked up nature and everything, at least it made an EFFORT to explain its Split world shenanigans and all the shit surrounding it. Oh sure, everything about that may have been a lost cause given the direction they were taking, but at least they put a semblance of effort into it. DQ6 just sort of said "ho hum its there because...it is."
And DQ3's potential was...uhh...basically, its entire twist is "HEY GUYS! ITS A PREQUEL!!" There's nothing remotely interesting beyond that. Its a macguffin driven story that goes nowhere, then when you beat the alleged villain, the game shoved on an extra whole world map section that, from my recollection, has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE REST OF THE GAME, and basically exists to link DQ3 with DQ1/2.
...so yeah, DQ4 is about where the "wasted potential" thing kicks in. DQ8 as usual is a freak cause it at least made some use of its potential (actually, its plot wasn't even half bad. its issue, of course, is that the plot takes FOREVER to actually manifest itself)
And yeah, it didn't have to be Final Fantasy so much as I believe when CK said it, he was more acknowledging that Final Fantasy, being the other big jRPG series, tends to have at least have a decent level of execution to make its shit work. You could insert stuff like Wild ARMs, Tales series (...when its acknowledging stuff exists BESIDES Tropes...), Suikoden, etc. and most of them could have pulled off DQ5's plot in a way that would be rather strong and memorable...
...basically, interesting plot put into the worst possible series to make it clear, and its strong example of how Good Ideas are completely meaningless without a decent execution to go with it.
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Radiant Historias- Chapter 3 - Alternate History. Rosch in Despair. I seem to have gone as far as is possible along this path without returning to the other timeline. I'd been having fun though steamrollering my way forward to the frue ending and progressing plots. Ran with Stocke, Aht and Raynie for the 3 x Shadow and Auto Defender/Astellian grunts x 2 battles. Managed to steal 3 x Seed Rings and 2 x Horn Charms overall. Raynie kept dying to Blizzard/Frost spam in the latter fight and since I was worried I was going to run out of revival items I eventually decided to just leave her down until Stocke and Aht had taken down at least one target with move skill/trap combos. Once done I revived Raynie and she fell at least once more before the other soldier was taken out but once that was done I was able to gain proper control over the fight. Aht kept HPs out the danger zone with Greater Heal, buffed Stocke with a Might Herb, scanned for weakness and poked things, Stocke abused Fire and Double Slash, Raynie got Regenerate back up then spammed Fire. Poison Blow didn't work vs the Defenders =( Stocke/Raynie's Fire didn't seem to do much to them either despite their weakness there (buffed Double Slash is where it was at/damage)
Currently Stocke L23 (Sorcery Epee, Hymnal Cape, Charm, Charm, Charm) Aht L20 (Custom Knife, Silver Cape, Breeze Armlet, Crystal Charm, Bishop Stud) Raynie L22 (Magic Spear, Silver Mail, Charm, Leaf Ring, Charm) Time to return to Preparing a Meal !(fetch quests bleh) ~
(Poison Blow did work a treat vs the Shadows though as did Polaris vs Paralysis spam =) Other stuffs ... hmm Bear was scary (one reset) until I realised that yes he could be pushed so move skills and traps made relatively short work of him. Aht was L17 ... 18? The level she learns Bomb Trap at~)
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Breath of death- Finished. It's a well balanced, fun fan game that mixes the right amount of gameplay and silly plot. It's a very short game (Four-five hours) but it feels well paced anyway. Donno if I'm going to jump straight into CSTW yet or not.
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RH- After Rosch's Fury. Time travelling to get the materials to fix the "equipment" Game feels roughly around the halfway stage? Still enjoying it on the whole though there is stuffs which feels rather repetitive at times (and not just from doing it over >.>) Also needs more Boss =D
Still haven't decided on a permanent team yet. I really wanted to use Rosch but now I'm not so sure. I was kind of going off the idea since I haven't been able to use him for ages but seeing stuff like "Iron Wall" and "Guard Down/Steel Lance" kind of put me in the mood again >_> Most recently been trying out Eruca with Stocke/Marco/Eruca (fights have been taking a while since Eruca has no damages - and uhh neither does Marco really/not much) ~
(Rosch probably doesn't really get to use those moves proper but still >_>)
I miss Raynie/Aht for damage (+ speed) Pushing/moving enemies together for crowd control Fire/etc spam or setting up/triggering multiple traps at once is fuuun~
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Picked up some cheap games during the XBL sale this week.
The Path of Go: obviously reading Hikaru no Go will make me awesome at this... Or not. I can't even beat the first guy after the tutorial. Where's the horsie guy that can jump over other pieces?
Might and Magic Clash of Heroes: pretty good! It's like Ogre Battle MotBQ fused with Tetris. The sprite colors are a bit unforgiving on my poor colorblind self, but it's fun so far.
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Ico HD remaster:
This is the same game, with only a facelift to sell it again. But honestly? Ico is one of my favorite games ever, and one I enjoy replaying even though I remember the solution to all of the puzzles. This game is a study in how a video game can build emotions or feelings in a player though gameplay and style. The lonely atmosphere of the castle, combined with the need to keep the Shadows from dragging Yorda away makes one feel empathy for the bond between Ico and Yorda. And gameplay elements reinforce this. In the beginning it can seem a little odd to have Ico grab Yorda's hand and run around with her, but it becomes more natural as you solve more and more puzzles with her. There is also the fact that the game forces you to distance yourself from Yorda when solving some puzzles, and the way it uses Shadow ambushes at some of these times leads to a paranoia and a desire in the player to keep the two of them together. This too establishes an empathy with their bond! And the game capitalizes on a player's feelings toward that bond magnificently towards the end.
One new thing worth mentioning is that upon a replay the hieroglyphs that made up Yorda's/some of the Queen's speech are properly subtitled. Not a big deal but it's nice to see what Yorda is really saying.
(Playing the game really reminded me that the castle and Keep is not all that complex when you consider it is the world of an entire game. It's just very well used space )
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XF: fourth playthrough complete.
Time to wrap this up.
5-1 (a man and her golem): The golems here are pretty tough but obviously fear Electrigger. I lure Asgard over and he wipes out people, then revive them on the other side and go after Weisheit. Cheap but hey, it works. Weis is vulnerable to gravity again unlike the desert form which speeds things along some as I have pretty good luck with it, Slow Down and playing hide-and-seek works well enough otherwise.
5-2 (Gate Victims): CAs are a pretty good way to deal with these tanky little buggers. They are fast and have lots of annoying status I can't deal with too well, but Revive Fruits make this simple enough.
5-3 (bird): Bird is anti-physical this time, which pretty much means more CAs and Electrigger. After the gravity has done its work. I take out any demons who get annoyingly close. This battle always feels like it should be harder than it is, but I guess it's mostly a warmup round for...
5-4 (final boss) [1 reset]: Tough but manageable. CAs mean less teleporting which certainly helps, and they're my best offence here. Form Shift is the best thing ever, if it weren't for her wasting turns on it I'd certainly have lost the second time too.
Stage one of the fight is the toughest. Katrina will use 2HKO elemental magic (3HKO to Clarissa, high 2HKO to Alexia) and always chooses the best one, and it's GT so no bunching up. The demons constantly threaten and annoy from all sides, with 4HKO (6HKO to Clarissa) magic and 3HKOish Hard Smashes if they actually get in range. Keeping up with healing is important, keeping the boss in Slow Down even moreso. I mostly focus on killing the demons (leaving a couple trapped stragglers in the back) with elemental spells and petrify, though I do chip in CAs and Electrigger to the boss as well.
Once she drops below 3600 HP I finish up the remaining demons besides a token straggler, break her shield and start attacking her again. She gets faster and faster which makes things a little trickier, but on the other hand she stops using elemental spells, just attacks and Shrine Maiden Glancer. Reviving is easier since revived people don't immediately die to GT damage, though they still do immediately die, and it costs her less and less time to do it. By the third phase, the only reason I'm able to keep afloat of the battle is because she occasionally wastes turns with Form Shift, and even Materialise (the summoned guy is annoying but I slow him down, don't need to worry about cover due to CAs). Again, recast slow down as much as possible, etc. Victory obtained with only two PCs left as Valiant-boosted Alexia does the finishing blow. Hooray!
Thoughts on the fiesta classes...
Fantastica:
-Fantastica OC is great. Everyone had it, everyone used it. Rush enables several abilities at range, notably including Slow Down, the best boss/tough enemy control spell. Feeble Mind also neuters some bosses. Invoke is mostly worthless but decent early when I used basic attacks more.
-Bells are decent overall weapons at first due to 2 range and okay stats at everything but later I wanted either more atk or more mag/range.
-Badges are great for Formation Arts, which are terrific early though quickly go obsolete later. They'd have been better if spears weren't so finicky at FAs.
-Zone Effect is a handy little passive buff/debuff which I often set but didn't go out of my wy to do so.
-Arts Support is generally around 15-20% more damage with FAs and CAs, and this is obviously great in a playthrough where my offence often centered around one of the two.
-CSP Up made mastering Berserker and learning Exploit Weakness faster. That's something.
-Object Attack is lulz.
-Stats are overall okay and unremarkable.
Overall: Oh man bosses would have been much scarier without them! Second most valuable class to the playthrough which is unshocking.
Excavator:
-Excavator OC... well, Switch is nice for finishing off some MP-killed enemies. In&Out extends item resources which is nice because I had to use a lot of them due to no Sacred Slayer and weak offence! Detect owns Stealth Stalkers. Not a very good OC but having Fantastica pulled it up a little.
-Slingshots are good stuff. Decent MAG and great range, the best weapon for combination arts pretty much. There's a reason I used them so much. Eventually mostly dropped them for more MAG, though.
-Shoes are decent, light equips with fairly good Def (depending on height) and evade, nice enough to pick up with Excavator equipment.
-Almost all of their support abilities suck. They slightly extend your finances and resources but I don't really care.
-5 move and climb is certainly useful, and the reflex is decent. Outside their lack of useful abilities, a decent carrier at least... like the other classes they look better with Elementalist/etc. banned.
Overall: I underrated excavators a little (used to consider them one of the worst classes). They aren't great but I did appreciate their mobility, slingshots, and occasionally the OC.
Berserker:
-Berserker OC has a move buff which is sometimes handy (move tends to pay for itself, climb is when it really pays off), Charging Thrust which is quite potent, and Sonic Boom which is nice for mobility. Both of the latter two basically need Rush so I'm glad I had fantastica.
-Spears have decent stats, but the difficulty in using them with FAs was a huge bummer seeing as I had badges and Arts Support. I'd have considered using something else but they're needed for the Berserker skills. On the other hand, hitting two enemies sometimes is handy.
-Headgears suck. FA resistance! oh boy
-Move and Heal MP is a handy enough resource stretch, though nothing worth hyping.
-Exp Up is decent longterm, but I never actually set it. Penetrator is lol.
-Move Up is good in theory, but I never use it because if I'm mastering Berserker I want...
-Valiant is pretty awesome! It's difficult to count on because enemies gang up on people (often not who you want) and since I lack non-self healing I often need to heal at low HP (or go for a last glory attack then die) but the damage buff is just huge, and applies to everything that does non-zero damage against gravity (including Electrigger and CAs). Nice.
-8 move is nice though largely balanced by the straight-line thing. Overall stats are solid.
Overall: Not one of the better classes even with Rush to help them out, but Valiant is sometimes just so good. Weird case.
Emulator:
-The OC is stupid, nothing new here. With Exploit Weakness, Electrigger and the elemental spells are incredibly powerful. Petrify, even at 50%, is great. Many bosses are vulnerable to one of the big emulator tricks such as sleep or misery. Everyone gets this, everyone sets this.
-Bombs were my highest-MAG weapon, and thus important for having stronger attack magic and CAs (although if I just cared about CAs I'd use slingshots for range).
-Pocketwatches I mostly ignored due to the lack of special property and low def/eva (though def gets better later in the fight), though I maybe should have invested in them for their res in certain fights.
-Action Replay is a handy offence booster sometimes, especially with bosses.
-MP Recovery is a slightly better Move and Heal MP, same comments apply.
-Exploit Weakness is an awesome damage buff, obviously. A must-learn for any of my former Emulators who wanted to set up shot in other classes.
-Conserve MP keeps the class a great carrier even after that, Emulator spells are a little pricy and this lets me use them more.
-Speed is a bit low, but the other stats are quite great, decent MAG and HP in particular, while still maintaining 4 move.
Overall: Still the best class in the game, it largely kept the lategame to be much easier than it could have been. The rare battles where its tricks aren't much good (such as the Tormenta Triad!) are its main downfall, and also unshockingly where I had the most difficulty.
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Solatorobo: Red the Hunter - Picked this up yesterday. I've already dumped almost eight hours into it without realizing it. It's quite fun. Already up to chapter six, and all the extra quests are quite varied and interesting. I haven't had to grind for cash yet at all, and grinding for EXP is worthless if you have any sense of DODGE, since all levels-ups give are more HP. All the power comes from mech customization, so the real thing to keep an eye out for is the P Crystals.
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Sengoku Basara: Chicks with Guns make things explode. Also, I have sided with the East.
SF 3rd Strike: Beat the game with Q! I officially hate myself.
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999: Finished, got every ending. Good, gripping story, but many elements don't seem to make sense, and fanservice is still obviously a problem in videogame stories.
Worth playing but don't think about the game -too- much like I did. Unless someone can answer my questions.
Spoilers:
I was right about the killer! As soon as the game showed that, I figured out that Zero must have been Santa. I guess I was half-right about that.
Questions:
- Why did June disappear in the ending?
- What was Guy X thinking? What the hell was the point of putting Snake in a coffin and stealing his clothes? Did he have another N°2 bracelet?
- Who killed the Captain, if Ace doesn't go to room 1??
- Who killed everyone in the sub ending? Was Ace just playing dead?
- When MC goes into Chaotic Evil mode to keep June with him and go through door 3... Why do Santa, Lotus and Clover feel threatened? People are not forced to enter doors.
- Clover killing everybody with an axe? Really?
Got a PS3, played a bit of Demon's Souls. Not really hard yet aside from the first boss (You're supposed to lose to him but you can win) and red eye knight. Chose a knight, but will probably restart as a thief or something.
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/me gnaws on Mist Spider with L31 Stocke and L26 Aht
Mist Spider is slooow compared to Crush Bear, to the extent both PCs get the drop on it (this may be due to equipment factors set up earlier since I speed twinked so Crush Bear wouldn't be such double trouble~) at the start of the fight. As such with Mist Spider going third every round regardless of whether Stocke or Aht is down one is able to revive the other each round because so far Mist Spider has only ever been taking out one PC at a time (and sometimes Stocke survives an assault while guarding) So it's slow, it's susceptible to Poison, it's attacks are apparently ST only and both PCs have the round advantage. This ... may actually be doable with an overadbundance of items/revival and the time/patience to wait a slow win via Poison out. Stocke has innate revival at least and he doesn't always die straight away either while he's guarding on full HP. I could fork out on buying a bunch more revival items, tag team loop revival spam with Stocke/Aht and wait till Poison does it's job. Is it/the shiny for reward worth it though?~
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Am I the only one for whom the spoilercode doesn't work on these forums? (Haven't seen it used at all recently outside Fenrir's post. No harm done, I just scrolled past, but I can definitely clearly read it.)
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Doesn't work for me either.
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Works for me just fine. Might have to do with your browser maybe?
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It's okay for me too (light grey on the white text for this version) It might have something to do with the theme used too.
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Oh right, I did change the theme I was using a few months back, that could be it.
I still recommend using the [ size=2pt ] [ /size ] tags instead, though!
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Solatorobo - Help this game is eating my life worse than WoW can.
In all seriousness, this game is pretty fun. If you want a challenge, well... Look somewhere else, but the gameplay remains fairly varied and interesting a lot. I've only had a handful of game overs, all but one related to "Beat this duel without getting hit!" challenges... Of which I've only found 3 in the game so far.
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Yep, it's the theme. I am keeping this one because it makes the forums run way faster. >_>
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Edited.
You're all super spoiled though.
Demon's Souls: Chose a wandered this time.
Beat Phalanx, then got cocky and tried to beat that dude with red eyes. Lost after removing half of his max HPs. (pretty nice!)
It's already a 10/10.
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Fenrir, re 999:
-I was right about the killer! As soon as the game showed that, I figured out that Zero must have been Santa. I guess I was half-right about that.
Showed that what? And yeah, amusing guess, since I considered that character to be among the least likely to be guilty of anything of the bunch.
Questions:
- Why did June disappear in the ending?
The ending ending, or the other endings? The ending ending, Aoi & Akane ride off in their own van they grabbed first, and the ending stops there. You can assume that everybody met afterward and lived happily ever after, or whatever you liked. (The game's creator has said that he sees Junpei & Akane as never meeting again since Akane is a gigantic indirectly murdering criminal who wouldn't risk hanging out with the people she kidnapped.) The other endings, there's severe reality failure as Junpei doesn't find Sudoku in time, and thus young Akane burns to death, and thus the potential of there being a normal Akane in that timeline disappears.
- What was Guy X thinking? What the hell was the point of putting Snake in a coffin and stealing his clothes? Did he have another N°2 bracelet?
Guy X was kidnapped and drugged by Akane / Aoi before the game even starts. He never does anything except be there for Ace to kill. As for the coffin switcheroo, there's three takes:
A) Akane wanted to murder the 4 people who kidnapped her & the others, except make Ace do it, because that's how she rolls. So Snake was there partially since he wouldn't recognize Ace but Ace would recognize him, and she figured Ace to be paranoid enough to try and off Snake. Once that was done, if real Snake had just shown back up again, then the whole Second Nonary Game would have been derailed - Ace might blab too much information, people will realize something even screwier than they thought is going on, and the chances of Junpei reaching the Sudoku terminal in a proper Nonary Game would go to 0. But she didn't want to kill Snake, so kidnapping + a coffin worked to put him out of the picture for awhile.
B) Snake was in on it the whole time. He was at the facility with Aoi / Akane and is smart, so it is pretty implausible he wouldn't immediately pick up on what was going on. So he was a third conspirator, albeit a less active one.
C) Akane was just running with the potential she saw 9 years ago. She found a totally crazy plot that would work and just did it because she happened to know via cheaty possibility examination that said crazy plot, well, will work. (This answers a lot of questions about the plot, mind.)
- Who killed the Captain, if Ace doesn't go to room 1??
You found a minor plot hole that happens when there are lots of possibilities of who-goes-where. The only possible suspect is that Clover killed him - revenge at "Zero," followed by robbing his body for the message that Junpei finds in the Safe ending. I believe that Lotus says something along the lines of "Clover locked herself in one room and refused to talk to us" so yeah, she was in Cap's room and killed him. It's a bit out of character but it's a pretty good patch. (The metagame answer is "Not having Cap die if you pick Room 6 will leak way too much information in the Knife ending you're not supposed to have figured out.")
- Who killed everyone in the sub ending? Was Ace just playing dead?
Ace, and yes. This was my confirmation that Ace was the killer - I did Axe ending first (after which I strongly suspected Ace), then Sub. Junpei panics and checks neither Ace nor Santa's bodies, just Clover's. Since Santa dies in the Axe ending, I figured at the time that pretty well confirmed Ace as the killer.
- When MC goes into Chaotic Evil mode to keep June with him and go through door 3... Why do Santa, Lotus and Clover feel threatened? People are not forced to enter doors.
Because if the doors had worked differently Junpei has possibly signed their death warrants? Suppose that the set of 3-7-8 doors were one way trips to the final set of doors (1-2-6-9). If the team had split up, then there'd be 6 people to figure out a good combination (no more Ace / Snake / #9). Junpei's way means that the remaining 4 might not make their way through the last doors, and that the 2 who remained were possibly abandoned forever with Ace.
If you want to nitpick this possibility, the better question is why everyone else doesn't take a deep breath, pull Junpei away from the door, tap enough bracelets for the door to open, then wait out the timer and prevent anyone from entering. Let the doors close, then resume the previous plan. Of course, when you consider that 2 of the people are Santa / future-June-who-is-seeing-if-this-might-work, they're kind of cool with whatever, so actually it makes some sense that they'd shrug and give it a try.
- Clover killing everybody with an axe? Really?
Never the ones you expect, eh?
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Disgaea 4: Beat all of the Bonus Battles through Asagi and Pringer X. Also beat Kurtis. Looking forward to the Zetta battle, but my Desco is only level 3500, so there's no way I'm beating it without some grinding. ...any suggestions for levelling past this point? Mt Ordeals 4 just isn't yielding enough EXP for this to be efficient anymore. What's a good strategy for collecting Statisticians?
I want Pringer X to join my party. Also wins for best Valvatorez scene.
Since I'm nearing the end of my Disgaea 4 playthrough, I decided to continue to catch up on my N1 backlog!
Zettai Hero Project: The Unlosing Ranger VS Darkdeath Evilman:
With a title like that, how can you go wrong!? But yeah, Nippon-Ichi does a Roguelike. Grinding + Dungeon-crawling. Also, making fun of super-heroes for 40-odd hours. So far the writing is a huge step up from Disgaea 4, so I'm digging it. The gameplay is fun in a mindless sort-of way, though I realize that this isn't my usual genre. Still, it's good.
Jamestown: Fuck yeah, Bomber-type is awesome. Played this with 3 friends and loved every second of it, I want to beat all of the challenges now!
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Still 999: Wow...
"Showed that what? And yeah, amusing guess, since I considered that character to be among the least likely to be guilty of anything of the bunch."
As soon as the game confirmed that Ace was the killer, I thought that Santa was Zero. This just fit perfectly.
I figured it was Ace because:
- He's old, but not old enough to not be a killer.
- He names himself Ace, he's n°1, but seems like the most average guy in the team early and midgame. He never does or say anything particularly awesome, so his ace-ness must come from somewhere else.
- When you have to go through door 4 or 5 at the beginning, him and Clover are the only ones that can't go with you no matter what, leaving him ample time to do evil stuff without you looking. And I wasn't suspecting Clover too much because she was very young and related to Snake. Turns out this was a wrong clue but it led to the good guy.
- Similarly, I didn't buy the sacrifice. It also allows him to avoid Junpei (or anyone else, for that matter) and is soon revealed to be meaningless.
"The game's creator has said that he sees Junpei & Akane as never meeting again since Akane is a gigantic indirectly murdering criminal who wouldn't risk hanging out with the people she kidnapped."
Wow. I get it, Sudoku is scary, that's not a reason to be such amega bitch to Junpei. "Consider this a privilege: I'll make you go through hell, be on an emotional rollercoaster, flirt with you like crazy/imply that you're my soulmate then leave you forever after you stop being useful to me"
And Alice is supposed to be the ice queen?
"Guy X was kidnapped and drugged by Akane / Aoi before the game even starts. He never does anything except be there for Ace to kill. As for the coffin switcheroo, there's three takes:
A) Akane wanted to murder the 4 people who kidnapped her & the others, except make Ace do it, because that's how she rolls. So Snake was there partially since he wouldn't recognize Ace but Ace would recognize him, and she figured Ace to be paranoid enough to try and off Snake. Once that was done, if real Snake had just shown back up again, then the whole Second Nonary Game would have been derailed - Ace might blab too much information, people will realize something even screwier than they thought is going on, and the chances of Junpei reaching the Sudoku terminal in a proper Nonary Game would go to 0. But she didn't want to kill Snake, so kidnapping + a coffin worked to put him out of the picture for awhile.
B) Snake was in on it the whole time. He was at the facility with Aoi / Akane and is smart, so it is pretty implausible he wouldn't immediately pick up on what was going on. So he was a third conspirator, albeit a less active one.
C) Akane was just running with the potential she saw 9 years ago. She found a totally crazy plot that would work and just did it because she happened to know via cheaty possibility examination that said crazy plot, well, will work. (This answers a lot of questions about the plot, mind.)"
This kind of requires Melchior-from-Chrono-Cross crazy insight, but I guess this works. She's like Stocke from Radiant Historia with infinite tries to reshape history except it's all in her head.
Another problem arises though:
Seven was shown to be a conspirator too. He tells Junpei that June died during ye old horrible event. Then when Junpei says to him in the ending "Wait... She didn't", I remember him saying "Woops, guess I'm a conspirator too LOL", or something like that.
Yet how did he become an amnesiac? Was he just an awful actor that Akane thought the only way for him to do his part was to not know anything, so she just cheated to know just how much she needed to hit his head to do it?
Or did he just not have amnesia? What was the point of faking it then?
"You found a minor plot hole that happens when there are lots of possibilities of who-goes-where. The only possible suspect is that Clover killed him - revenge at "Zero," followed by robbing his body for the message that Junpei finds in the Safe ending. I believe that Lotus says something along the lines of "Clover locked herself in one room and refused to talk to us" so yeah, she was in Cap's room and killed him. It's a bit out of character but it's a pretty good patch. (The metagame answer is "Not having Cap die if you pick Room 6 will leak way too much information in the Knife ending you're not supposed to have figured out.")"
Nice!
"If you want to nitpick this possibility, the better question is why everyone else doesn't take a deep breath, pull Junpei away from the door, tap enough bracelets for the door to open, then wait out the timer and prevent anyone from entering. Let the doors close, then resume the previous plan. Of course, when you consider that 2 of the people are Santa / future-June-who-is-seeing-if-this-might-work, they're kind of cool with whatever, so actually it makes some sense that they'd shrug and give it a try."
If Junpei just enters the door alone or only with June and Santa, he's just supposed to explode. He has no weapon and cannot threaten anyone.
Granted yeah, the people who entered door 3 are Junpei + the 3 conspirators (Seven, June, Santa). Lotus and Clover should have put the blame equally on them all though, not just Junpei.
I guess you could say they just panicked, but what happened to n°9 2 hours earlier must have been fresh on their mind.
"- Clover killing everybody with an axe? Really?
Never the ones you expect, eh?"
I get the idea but honestly, she just seems too young, too girly to pull off killing all those people with such a heavy weapon. Especially since she just became crazy and being crazy makes you a worse killer.
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Disgaea 4: Beat all of the Bonus Battles through Asagi and Pringer X. Also beat Kurtis. Looking forward to the Zetta battle, but my Desco is only level 3500, so there's no way I'm beating it without some grinding. ...any suggestions for levelling past this point? Mt Ordeals 4 just isn't yielding enough EXP for this to be efficient anymore. What's a good strategy for collecting Statisticians?
I want Pringer X to join my party. Also wins for best Valvatorez scene.
Reverse pirate on F100 of a high rank item. They can be found on F20 and on a low rank item as well but are more rare. You only need to get one to start, so if you don't have any levelled up items you could just reset on F20 until you get one.
After that, stick it on a weapon and use the duplication bug to create copies of that item. Then combine the statisticians together and repeat until you have 4800. For efficiency, I suggest duplicating 8 times, combining those innocents and putting them on a weapon, duplicate it 8 times again, etc. until you get a stack of 300, then duplicate 16 times until you have 4800. You can get more of that if you want, but 4800 is the max for one character.
For how to do the duplication bug, go here: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/995078-disgaea-4-a-promise-unforgotten/60425711 . Method 2 is faster.
Also make sure you pass all the Stronger Enemy Bills when you're running Ordeals 4.
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Catherine: Finished this, knocked out all the endings out of stubborn completionism since it's pretty quick to make another run when you can skip half the game. Not a whole lot of point to seeing anything but the True endings, mind. Catherine True is best for sheer amusement, Katherine True notable for making a whole lot of random comments about Erica throughout the game crystal clear for the sake of context. She must've had a helluva doctor.
Pretty decent game. Challenge on anything other than easy mode is straight up brutal, but it's worth at least soldiering through easy. Game is very good at instilling a sense of dread, mortal or supernatural. Girls worked out better than expected from initial impressions. Not that great a sense for what Katherine's all about beyond Vincent's girlfriend, but OHGODPREGNANTSORTLIFEOUT is a pretty understandable reason for being pushy early on. She is also admirably straightforward and mature about breaking up. And I approve of her figuring out what was going one before being told about it. As for Catherine, I figure what she is is excuse enough. And she is good at her job. Vincent of course is fairly dopey milquetoast, but you can't win 'em all.
Prologue/epilogue were totally pointless. "This is what our game's about and this is what's going to happen in it." Okay? We're playing it, we're gonna find that out anyway. Yes, I've read all the spoilers attached to the narrator. They still didn't need to be there. Oh, and props to the game's musical selection, of course. Just when you thought ES was the only game crazy enough to play Chopin for the last battle.
Guess I'm obliged to play Assassin's Creed 2 next because the brother got it for me last Christmas and I'm seeing him next month.
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Radiant Historias- Standard History Chapter 6. Just hit Skalla. Wow two chapters/stretches without Rosch and Raul/frue shenanigans/Elm tsundreness/etc on the alternate path. Instead we have Erucas yes. Eruca is finally shaping up to be more cannon than glass. Holy Arrow is love though I admit I did a double take after spamming it and then realising all Eruca's MP was gone :P Have her currently set up with Solid Slugs/Gold Dress/Thaumatech Orb/Horn Charm/Horn Charm =) Been running two teams still Stocke/Eruca/Marco and Stocke/Aht/Raynie. Thinking of perhaps giving Stocke/Aht/Eruca or Stocke/Eruca/Raynie a whirl soon. Mostly been using Stocke/Eruca/Marco for the last while and would bring out the second team again (I used it for both Hell Spider and Palomides/Gardner though I did run S/E/M vs the latter first, then reset and went for the blitz assault with the second team for the hell of it :P) but obviously using/building up Eruca as much as possible in case she disappears again ;-)
Getting the armour for Stocke from defeating Mist Spider was soooo worth it in the end. It didn't even take that many revival items afterall because I discovered Fire spam worked a treat vs spider. For some reason it reaally didn't like Stocke's Fire especially after I'd jacked it up by boosting Stocke's MAG with Pieti Edge and Crystal Charm and with Aht tossing Magic Up herbs when she had time between reviving Stocke. Combined with the Poison damage whittling away and adding up over time Fire really did do a grand job here and I ended up only have to use eighteen revival items. Had to use Stocke's Resurrection on Aht a lot too though and also had to have her do more item girl duty and restore his MP the odd time as well. Near the end of fight once the Mist Spider's HP hits a certain threshold it starts using Speed Down which is haha vs jacked up Aht speed and gives time to buff up finish and finish building another mana gauge or two (used Stocke Turn Shift + Aht Lucky Breath + and Stocke Turn Break abuse earlier in the fight too) whereupon I did a mad dance thing with Aht speed + Change + Turn Breaks abuse ^_^
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Catherine: Finished this, knocked out all the endings out of stubborn completionism since it's pretty quick to make another run when you can skip half the game.
Speaking of completionism, have you completed the Babel?
Since I'm nearing the end of my Disgaea 4 playthrough, I decided to continue to catch up on my N1 backlog!
What? No DLC? Tyrant Arc and Fuuka Arc is waiting.
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NIER: Lingerie models trying to kill me, two things that I would not prefer to go together
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2010 GotY Japan right there.
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RH- Eruca G Frost get! Awww yeeah ^_^ Definitely cannon now. Glass cannon is definitely fulfilling her potential and making up for lost time with waay more cannon than the glass/dying of earlier~
Why was getting the armour for Stocke/beating Mist Spider early so worth it? Well this is probably old news though I don't remember people talking about it offhand. Moirae Manteau combined with defensive based accessories turns Stocke into an all purpose wall who tanks like a champ. He's taking single digit damage from randoms and compared to the other PCs he really mocked Hell Spider's Death Grind. It's kind of broken for this stage of the game. Maybe.
Skalla was a treasure trove of shinies for upgrading my PCs with. Shadowrun Dress for Eruca get. Also Witch Spear for Raynie and Death Dagger for Aht >_> Buildswise Eruca and Stocke I've already covered, magic and defence twinked respectively though Stocke also has a whopper of a magic stat thanks to Pieti Edge, only currently beaten out by Eruca with all my best magic boosting accessories <_< Too bad Stocke doesn't get more spells other than Fire to exploit this with. Perhaps later? =)
Raynie I've also been mag twinking. Aht I magic twinked earlier, speed twinked recently but I'm having this odd inclination to try out something totally different with her CT style soon >_> Marco I've been bulking up with the HP rings and shiny heavy armour like Gospel Armor in an attempt to make a sort of durable healer/support character but I've also thought about just trying to make him faster. He doesn't appear to have any obvious stat strengths. Magic is better than Atk but ... no attack magic!
Sidequests I've still barely scratched the surface of. Policy so far has been not to really go out of my way for them but if they are almost directly in the path of where I'm going/returning to for plot reasons and/or they are practically staring me in the face well then I don't look a gift horse in the mouth ;-)
I might change the way I've been doing sidequests soon but I don't know. It depends whether the final is really a challenge or not either way!~
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Catherine: Finished this, knocked out all the endings out of stubborn completionism since it's pretty quick to make another run when you can skip half the game.
Speaking of completionism, have you completed the Babel?
Given the teeth-gnashing frustration that was my brief attempt at playing the main game on Normal, I figure that can wait 'til someday when I really have nothing to do.
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Demon's Souls: Games opened up, giving access to 5 main areas.
World 1 has instant kill dragon roaming around and me having to run around helplessly, and a pack of dogs, maybe the hardest enemies to handle in the game.
World 2 is easy but has a completely crazy boss fight.
World 3 has humans with squid heads. They ring their bells and I'm owned. I lost two times before being able to kill one (and it's the first enemy I see)
World 4 has, as the regular random enemies, skeletons with crazy mobility rolling around like they're at the Olympic games.
World 5 has the least safe layout ever. It's a wonder why my character is not dying, every second. As a bonus, rats and strange spiders that can poison and give the plague.
Beating one of those seems unreasonable at first, but world 2 gives a lot of stones, so I could forge some great falchion and shield fast enough. Then... Well, you get used to the challenge and surprises.
I got my first multiplayer experiences in World 4.
- One guy summoned me in his game. He followed me around like I knew what the hell I was doing. After a lot of dead ends, we both beat the boss together. I gave him an S rating because he was cool and we ruled.
- Then I summoned another guy, a really powerful pyromancer. I got jealous, then he got OHKOed by the boss. Not a problem as he's the easiest boss so far, in melee combat.
- Then a player invaded me. (trying to kill me) I ran to the beginning of the stage, and saw him. We both looked at each other.... We both knew I had already lost. Then he started to use some potion and put some stuff on his dual swords. WAIT WAIT WAIT I start attacking, feeling fully protected behind my massive shield. Big mistake here. The last thing my character sees is his adversary bowing to his victim.
This was great, I'm going to do that to everyone in Dark Souls. And we'll all be pathetic newcomers, not just me!
I still don't know how I'm supposed to learn magic.
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Demon's Souls: Games opened up, giving access to 5 main areas.
World 1 has instant kill dragon roaming around and me having to run around helplessly, and a pack of dogs, maybe the hardest enemies to handle in the game.
World 2 is easy but has a completely crazy boss fight.
World 3 has humans with squid heads. They ring their bells and I'm owned. I lost two times before being able to kill one (and it's the first enemy I see)
World 4 has, as the regular random enemies, skeletons with crazy mobility rolling around like they're at the Olympic games.
World 5 has the least safe layout ever. It's a wonder why my character is not dying, every second. As a bonus, rats and strange spiders that can poison and give the plague.
Beating one of those seems unreasonable at first, but world 2 gives a lot of stones, so I could forge some great falchion and shield fast enough. Then... Well, you get used to the challenge and surprises.
I got my first multiplayer experiences in World 4.
- One guy summoned me in his game. He followed me around like I knew what the hell I was doing. After a lot of dead ends, we both beat the boss together. I gave him an S rating because he was cool and we ruled.
- Then I summoned another guy, a really powerful pyromancer. I got jealous, then he got OHKOed by the boss. Not a problem as he's the easiest boss so far, in melee combat.
- Then a player invaded me. (trying to kill me) I ran to the beginning of the stage, and saw him. We both looked at each other.... We both knew I had already lost. Then he started to use some potion and put some stuff on his dual swords. WAIT WAIT WAIT I start attacking, feeling fully protected behind my massive shield. Big mistake here. The last thing my character sees is his adversary bowing to his victim.
This was great, I'm going to do that to everyone in Dark Souls. And we'll all be pathetic newcomers, just not me!
I still don't know how I'm supposed to learn magic.
Didn't know the PVP servers were still up.
You need a high enough intelligence stat to have slots. Go talk to Freke's Apprentice in the Nexus. He's sitting on the wall in the area behind... I think the Valley Archstone? Miracles are from the guy sitting in the area near the blacksmith. You'll need a Catalyst to cast spells and a Talisman for miracles. I know there's a Catalyst in 1-2. Good luck with the dragon run.
Meanwhile I will have a post about my deaths in Dark Souls sometime soon!
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Since I'm nearing the end of my Disgaea 4 playthrough, I decided to continue to catch up on my N1 backlog!
What? No DLC? Tyrant Arc and Fuuka Arc is waiting.
That hasn't been released yet...
This was great, I'm going to do that to everyone in Dark Souls. And we'll all be pathetic newcomers, just not me!
btw that's out so you should get on that. I.e. bring it on.
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Dark Souls - I died. Nine times. Harder than Demon's Souls so far.
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Since I'm nearing the end of my Disgaea 4 playthrough, I decided to continue to catch up on my N1 backlog!
What? No DLC? Tyrant Arc and Fuuka Arc is waiting.
I normally don't do DLC anyway, but yeah, I'm living in the States now, so it's no available here yet.
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Well, the European server is up at least. Dunno if there is only one worldwide one. I hope so.
About magic... I think I'll forget about it alltogether, but it's nice to know. I've already spent all my money on vitality and stamina.
I've invaded someone else, we both seemed to be newcomers. He was doing more damage and had some magic, but I could roll around. We both were on the defensive and couldn't keep each other from healing. Eventually I made him bleed with the falchion (a slow poison), and attacked relentlessly without guarding to recover stamina faster. He died, I got my soul back, I felt good, then guilty, then good again.
Just rescued Yurt (I'm already spoiled), getting to the boss.
I'm dropping this as soon as I get Dark Souls BTW Tal. Probably monday or tuesday.
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What was originally supposed to be a post clearing up my thoughts about Record of Agarest War Zero instead turned into that plus what was going to be Star Wars Force Unleashed 2. Except I beat that in four hours and started Batman Arkham Asylum. So after getting about halway through that in a day and going to sleep immediately after then picking up immediately the next day then getting to the final boss fight on Sunday but not beating it then because of time then on Monday the time I could have had to beat it was taken by TV right after I woke up. So of course the sane among you would be wondering what was so important at 7 AM or whatever and I laugh at thinking I woke up that early since I woke at 9:30 PM. Then Tuesday was a wash. I beat it Wendesday, barely, but was crippled with sickness with which I've only just now recovered. Just in time to start Dark Souls. So without further ado... a thing!
Record of Agrest War Zero The Finalish Thoughts. No, this deserves its own post later. Much later.
Star Wars Force Unleashed 2: This game, is short. Obnoxiously short. Like, if I paid 60$ for this--or paid at all--I would have returned it. And I've like, returned only one game ever in my life. The game is fun and all, better then the first for combat since everything isn't as stupidly durable, but it's just too damn short to give much of a damn. And the Dark Ending is even dumber then the first game's, which is impressive.
Batman Arkham Asylum: A good game I was really, really bad at. Predator was fun, freeform I was just so terrible-bad at it's not even funny. Most bosses were dumb. Good story and at. Etc.
Dark Souls: Nine times eh? I'm at...
Let's see: Asylum demon, Tauros demon, falling in pits twice, wasting all my Estus fighting the black knight that I can't survive the gauntlet over to his position, dragon, black knight, Capra Demon, Capra Demon. Huh, nine too. Freaky.
The game itself just has this completely alien feel to it compared to Demon's Souls, which is... something.
Anyway, I rolled myself as a Knight with Master Key gift because apparently you can't get it anywhere else. Since I watched the other run through the Undead Asylum--because unlike Demon's Souls this game doesn't even bait-and-switch you being alive at the start to give you hope, no, you start off as an undead monster and you'll like it dammit. I actually kinda sorta knew what to expect and how to fight the boss! Who in the grand tradition of bosses is a giant fat bastard. But this time I get to plunge my sword into his face! After I don't and get brutally killed. Dark Souls! Rematch I actually win though. Spiffy.
The bonfire and Estus system is very different. I've yet to make my mind up about it--I suppose I will once I figure out if I can kindle two bonfires at once. But having limited healing that refreshes at a bonfire and the inevitable death but revives all enemies is certainly a thing.
Tauros Demon I again fail to sword to face in time and die. Second time goes swimmingly though. Then the half-second warning before the dragon fries because I wasn't at full health because I was out of Estus and didn't want to fight the annoying gauntlet to get back here happens. Giggity.
So I snipe that bastards tail off and get me a Drake Sword! With over twice the power of my normal sword.
So then of course I must confront my hatred of tight paths over deadly drops and rats and giant boars and giant scary guys at the top of towers. Except maybe that last one. Finally find a blacksmith! Except I have no upgrade materials. But I find one immediately! And get something to boost the healing of the Estus flask! And find the next boss! Who I cheese by outnumbering with NPCs! Then I find and fight the fourth boss! Who kills me so fast I can barely recover my bloodstain before he kills me again!
Clearly I need to brave the Valley of the Drakes first.
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Honestly, I found that a good healing system is one of the only little things missing from Demon's Souls, I'm glad they changed this.
One other thing: Change the boss music to Drakengard's music. Like, Ninth Chapter Above Ground against the Armored Spider. Wow. I guarantee 120% more deaths against bosses on average due to people panicking.
Anyway, I beat the maneaters and stole Yurt's helmet. I look awesome.
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Dungeon Crawl:
8086140 Emmie the Imperceptible (level 27, 193/193 (194) HPs)
Began as a High Elf Conjurer on Sept 30, 2011.
Was the Champion of Vehumet.
Escaped with the Orb
... and 15 runes on Oct 6, 2011!
The game lasted 19:51:35 (214006 turns)
http://pastebin.com/cqNJ6kF5
http://pastebin.com/cmPNWSQB
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Sengoku Basara 3: Magoichi shoots things, they explode. She shoots more things, they explode more. She gets a gun with 500+ Attack and 4 accessory slots, bosses in the final level just sort of freeze to death!
...this makes more sense if you've actually played Sengoku Basara...maybe...
Keiji Maede is next it seems, no clue what to expect with him...except a lot of delusions of grandeur...
Wild ARMs 4: Replayed and finished. Games about as what I remember it...which is a good thing because I had pretty high respect for it as is!
A few things to note about this replay though.
First off, I banned Intrude...entirely. Why? Because I abused the fuck out of it my first game, I wanted this game to make me use the other characters more than just filler until Raquel got her first turn! As such, instead of fights being "Raquel gets a turn, everything dies", its "Raquel gets a turn, one hex worth of enemies die!" ...barring those situations where Evil Blossom/Exorcism was set up to kill things and then sometimes, I didn't notice the lack of Intrude. Generally, my respect for Raquel is...unchanged. Even though I didn't get a Tiny Flower until the Railroad tracks (instead of Wunderweltrum due to insane luck on my end my first playthrough)...which I know is still early just more reasonable, she was still just what I remember. A nice strong cannon!
Respect for Yulie is up. I was healing a lot more than I expected and Revive came in handy. Further, Material kicks ass if you actually get a turn on an elemental hex with her. There's also more enemies than I remember being vulnerable to Sanctify, albeit, not QUITE enough to earn it hype, more just make it not negligible.
Respect for Arnaud down. He was performing well for a good part of the game, but then after a point his offense sort of became lacking until he gained Hi Blast and by then, I was mostly using him to get turns for the sake of more Hi Gems, which I guess is a use. He was still great for bosses, and wasn't useless, just I definitely that yes, I can justify a full point ranking between Raquel and Arnaud. Even with taking Intrude out of the picture, Raquel was good at what she was, I expected Arnaud's use to jump up but actually it just highlighted ways to make Yulie and Jude useful.
One thing that stood out to me was Arnaud's complete lack of MT damage. Raquel has Evil Blossom/Exorcism (I got Exorcism right after the train, and don't regret it), which are quite potent. Yulie has Material and Jude has Mystic. Arnaud, unless I'm missing something, doesn't have anything. This isn't a big deal early on but later in the game, it started to stand out. Furthermore, I noticed the game throws more Anti Magic enemies at you. To his credit, my respect for Jump is up, so there's that!
He's still probably 2nd best character overall in the game, I'm just not sold on him being in running with Raquel anymore.
Jude...for a while, yeah, he's what you expect. Though in fairness, I didn't realize until late that Ley Points strengthen their opposing elements, which would have improved him a little, as I was using a lot of Mystic Gems which had varying effectiveness levels. Furthermore, in hindsight, he could have been even better if I gave him that first Tiny Flower, cause DEAR GOD does Mystic improve dramatically with that. As the game went on, he got gradually better...and in the final dungeon? Clear MVP. I totally didn't see this coming. How did I make him this way?
First off, Bee-lined to Rapid Attack. With that, Cat Paw, Tiny Flower, and focusing entirely on Attack in his ARMs, Jude's damage is actually pretty good and can OHKO a good amount of enemies (not as reliably as Raquel mind), and of course he has range and doesn't worry about fliers. Furthermore, due to Rapid Attack and his speed, he's getting A LOT of turns. I know Tiny Flower on someone fast feels counter intuitive, but giving Jude that Extra OHKO potential on his physical and Phantom Line is a nice boon.
Next off, Mystic Hi Gems. These things were ripping apart the final dungeon something fierce. This is why I cared about Arnaud getting those Gems. Jude standing on an opposite Hex could One shot a lot of enemies with Mystic using a Tiny Flower, often things that survived were ones that resisted the damage or ones standing on a hex that resisted it. And even when he's not OHKOing, its enough damage that anything following up can kill. It was shockingly effective.
My end levels were 44-47, which is about 5 lower than what my first file was, so um, yay?
Oh, one last thing:
Anybody who claims WA4's theme is Kids vs. Adults needs to be punched. That's a GROSS oversimplification of the theme to the point where its insulting and completely misses everything. Yes, the game's theme deals heavily with Kids and Adults, but it deals with it on so many angles that to just say "Kids are good, Adults are bad, lulz!" is simplifying it for the sake of making the game look bad. Do you have to like the theme? No, of course not, but if you're going to dislike it or put it down, at least have enough respect to recognize what the theme actually is.
And yes, I intend to make a FULL RANT on the game's theme at some point...but not here.
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Shut the fuck up Meeple.
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So, I know not many people play Minecraft here, but recently I've been playing a parkour map made in the game. It's pretty fun though I'll admit a large portion of the fun I've derived from it is breaking out and exploring the wiring of the place. I found it interesting enough to link here so deal with it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=45uX3JsDfkk
Download in the video description. Requires 1.8.1 and I have no idea if it works on the 1.9 pre-releases.
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Might want to avoid this if you care about Dark Souls encounter spoilers!
Dark Souls: Ten back-to-back deaths tends to blur things. Or would if each and every one of those deaths wasn't from the exact same thing in pretty much the exact same way. The Capra demon is the biggest cheapest son-of-a-bitch I've faced in probably ever which... given the company here isn't saying much but I still have my kevetching to do! His boos room is freaking tiny--fast roll covers a good portion of it end-to-end--so of course his attacks hit 9/10s of the bloody area. And they're so damaging blocking is useless, and if you do magicly block one the super-fast second swing will get you. If you even get that far because as soon as the fight starts he opens up with an actual unblockable attack that lays you flat. by the time I got up he was winding his combo. So, clearly I have to roll around but ha! He has help. In the form of two extremely fast moving dogs who just love to get in your way and allow the Carpa to kill you.
Also I figured out you can have multiple kindles. Yay!
I made the run to the boss so many times I could actually go without damage... But it was still useless because in the closest attempt I had I still burned all five of my flasks and using two rare Humanity to increase my flask size then lose'em again on the bastard was just not something I wanted to do.
So, I went elsewhere. Next to the blacksmith is another place that the other showed me, so after literally only beating the guardian monster for this location because the blacksmith was nearby to repair my weapon, I got to moving in. I go and fight the next black knight and kill him for a nice soul reward. The enemies in this area are a bit tricky, and they love to ambush. I also fall to my death trying to get to another bonfire, when I'm supposed to attack the wall instead. Yippie. This is kind of a weird place for one too since the bonfire near the blacksmith isn't too far away. Normally I'm starved for these things, so whatever.
Next area has a bunch of giant stone soldiers. Who despite being made of stone are giant and can thus actually move. And they cast a slow spell. Goody. But I eventually managed to clear the area and get a full armor upgrade. Yay, maybe it will help with the Capra--haha no. So, I continue along and meet the boss. Who I promptly die to because I'm an idiot. And on the run back I completely screw up one of the enemy ambushes and am now down another 10k souls. And if it's not clear the first 10k lost were from Capra. But whatever, I get back to the boss, kill it, and have a merry old time over its corpse! Unwilling to go any further, I grind a bit and upgrade my armor.
After this I deciede to return to the wonderful Undead Aslyum to... pick up an inferior shield and trade some stuff with the crow. As I am a fatass I can barely make the jump. So when I don't I find the stash of goodies I never saw before. Then find out there's apparently a graveyard filled with death behind Firelink. Well, more death then usual as a bunch of skeletons pull themselves together to have a very good go at your entrails and don't feel like giving you any reward for killing them. Anyway, when I successfully get back to the Asylum I successfully die horribly as the floor in the area where the Asylum Demon was drops out and before I can even recover from the fall damage stagger the new Stray Demon boss kills me. And sends me back to Firelink.
Getting back I avoid the mysticlly restored floor and touch the fire and try fighting it for real only to somehow be hit when it breaths flames when I'm behind it. Bah. I leave and go and kindle the closest bonfire to Capra and have a Round 50 or so.
Which he wins faster then usual. Goddamn. OK< so trying to tank this isn't working despite one of the prime points of Dark Souls being armor should be a viable choice to fast-roll. Except here. So I lower my armor to allow the fast roll--learning I actually had lighter armor that was actually more defensive then my starting gear... and have a Round 347. This time I actually win and have horrid shouts of joy and terrible thoughts of doing unpleasant things to its rotting corpse. And my reward is.... a sewer key.
The game doesn't hate you, it hates everyone.
I'm not going into a sewer without preparation. I go and upgrade my armor until I can'ts no more. Kill the third Black Knight. Somehow kill the red dragon(I'm still not sure how that happened....)-unlocked two more NPCs at Firelink including the pyromancer. Who was actually in the opening area of the sewers but eh. Find out the Miracle guy's maiden has arrived to do whatever now. Now he won't offer miracles but I don't care.
Going into the sewers when I actually leave the beginning kitchen area and approach some nice treasure I become intimidatingly acquainted with the insides of slime anus. It promptly becomes friends with the Drake Sword and death.
So of course the next part is swimming with the things. And they give no souls because why. After them is a door where the Master Key proves useful for once and actually gets me something. I think. A Bonfire! Which I kindle because I know I'll be in here a while. So, heading further in, past the giant rat, to more rats, so many rats. Get a key for later. Find out I can actually headstab the giant rat and go to do so only to miraculously fail and have to run away and slip down the slope into who-the-hell-knows. Where I begin my carrier of wandering aimlessly by wandering into some sort of giant frog who spits plague or something. Who dies in one hit and gives 300 souls. This'll be farmtown for a while I see. So a bit further in and my returning to human form comes to bit me in the ass as I get invaded by someone. Only to actually pull off the miracle of miracles and win. Precious Humanity!
After killing probably 30 frog-things I finally get a second ring--Black Eye, no wait Evil Eye. Restores HP on enemy kill YES. I go a bit more and find the vendor who sells... OHTHANKGOD the storage box. I was sick of scrolling past a dozen swords and worthless helms. He also sells armor that's better then my +++ gear of course. But will it beat ++++ because one of the slimes dropped what I needed? Probably but screw it. This is cheaper and the newer armor doesn't boost Poise anyhow. I find my way back to the Bonfire and quit because the next thing I see was the Boss door and I'm tired.
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Anybody who claims WA4's theme is Kids vs. Adults needs to be punched. That's a GROSS oversimplification of the theme to the point where its insulting and completely misses everything. Yes, the game's theme deals heavily with Kids and Adults, but it deals with it on so many angles that to just say "Kids are good, Adults are bad, lulz!" is simplifying it for the sake of making the game look bad. Do you have to like the theme? No, of course not, but if you're going to dislike it or put it down, at least have enough respect to recognize what the theme actually is.
Uhhh. What? I'm not sure what exactly you're complaining about, but kids vs. adults is kind of indisputably a theme in WA4. *A* theme, not *the* theme for sure... but the game is not really subtle about this. So not sure what you're getting at with "oversimplification." As a reminder, this is a game where a bunch of teenagers fight a bunch of twenty-thirty-something super soldiers by noting that the twenty-somethings ruined the world for today's kids. The twenty-somethings were of course ordered around by 100-year old greybeards who are selfish hypocrites and thus even eviller. Sympathetic adults like Hauser, Gawn, and Jude's mom all have shady pasts that they're dealing with.
To be clear, this is fine. While I have my problems with such a theme in the abstract of course, I'd argue that WA4 at least embraces it well enough, and it fits the setting - the previous generation ruined everything and did evil crap, but hope remains in the future by those untainted, etc. In fact I'd even argue that it's probably done well enough to be a credit to the plot, unlike some of the other thematic angles which fizzled out (Lambda's motives! The war criminal stuff!). But it's definitely there - the theme "actually is" the hopeful kids of tomorrow vs. the compromised old remnants of a world at war.
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tl;dr Shut the fuck up Meeple.
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Y'know, if you can't resist the temptation to make rude, worthless-to-the-discussion-at-hand "shut the fuck up" responses, you could at least have the decency to direct no more than one to a given post.
Snowfire: I'll let Meeple defend his own post, but I will say that
it deals with [the theme] on so many angles that to just say "Kids are good, Adults are bad, lulz!" is simplifying it for the sake of making the game look bad.
is spot on. I don't disagree with much you say in your own post, though, so I get the feeling this may be more a matter of miscommunication than actual disagreement.
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GrimGrimoire: Finally got around to starting this one. (Yeah yeah, I haven't finished ZHP yet, but PSP is such a hard system to play on reliably...)
RTS play is decent. I like the units and balance, but the maps take so. freakin'. long.
So far the thing I like best is how amazing the spritework looks. Vanillaware is doing its thing well. Second to that is the plot itself, which is actually a really fun "who dunnit?" mystery story, though it has little impact on gameplay, which may be a turn-off for some.
My main complaint is that the gameplay and story/characters have basically nothing to do with eachother. If there was more... relatedness in the game, it'd be one of my favorites. As-is, it's an enjoyable distraction while I wait for Disgaea 4 DLC. ^_^
tl;dr: Nippon-Ichi, let me give you more of my money~
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Demon's Souls: Too many posts, I know, but...
I have this hat.
(http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l704mehDtk1qbzf0vo1_500.png)
BTW, Rank Old Monk.
He summoned a pretty good player in my game and the battle lasted for ages. The guy died because his armor was too big and he could't roll around. (I could run away to heal easily, he could not) I put a lot of pressure on him after he tried throwing fireballs at me, dead guy.
Naturally I tried old monking the same thing to someone else. But that person died to the squids and I got the hat.
I also beat a pro who invaded my game!! I AM GOD. *falls down a bottomless pit ten seconds later, dies*
He was rolling around everywhere, and nuking my defenses with a greatsword. After a while he started using a spear that was doing crap damage but completely destroyed my equipment (Crazy. Thankfully broken can be repaired easily, but not inside the battle) I ran the hell away to restore my weapon and put some sticky white stuff on it (ew) I then used a weaker mace that he destroyed too. This lasted for a while, then he got cocky and reequiped his greatsword, I switched to the falchion and hacked away a few times. He panicked, tried to run away, I backstabed and win.
I also brutally murdered two innocent players like they were civilians.
Is there a faster way to do an emote action than pressing X for a few seconds? I tried bowing but I'm not sure my adversaries could see it before disappearing.
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There can never be too many posts about Demon's Souls. Also the only real rank is Red Eyes Knight.
The emote thing... uh, well it's only one button press in Dark Souls!
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Snowfire: I'll let Meeple defend his own post, but I will say that
it deals with [the theme] on so many angles that to just say "Kids are good, Adults are bad, lulz!" is simplifying it for the sake of making the game look bad.
is spot on. I don't disagree with much you say in your own post, though, so I get the feeling this may be more a matter of miscommunication than actual disagreement.
I was gonna do this, but I did just make a big mega rant about the theme of WA4 and displaying my point there, so I think its better you just go there and look at that.
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Dark Souls: I have upward of 20 deaths. I'm doing something wrong and not sure what. According to Tal, I should not be battling skeletons or undefeatable scythe arm ghosts yet immediately following the Undead Asylum. So that may be it.
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So I just finished Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.
Wow, this game was really good! Fourth Castlevania I've played and by far the best.
Let's start with the obvious: challenge! The game is certainly quite tough, but in a very fun way. Going save point to save point in a stage is typically not trivial, and bosses, aside from that scrubby first one, are brutal, but very well-designed for the most part. About the only one I found at all frustrating was Eligor, and that was mostly because it takes too long to kill off all his legs and those crossbows before the final stage which I found very unpredictable/difficult to dodge, but it was frail enough to item-spam through, so eh.
But even aside from that, the game's gameplay was a notable improvement on previous games. The glyph system worked really well. Weapons not only felt more varied and interesting than in past games, but they integrated them nicely with spells, and as a result I found myself actually using a wide variety of different attacks to deal with enemies. My biggest complaint was that I'd be constantly switching between them by going to a menu... and about ten minutes after I realised this was going to be a problem, the game handed my the glyph sleave. Awesome. Granted, I did sometimes wish for even more glyph slots as I certainly did end up having to do some menu-swapping, but in general it worked well enough, and three sleaves is a pretty good number so you're always one swap away from any give one at any time.
The game also fixes another of my main gripes with Castlevania, the large hitstun from previous games. Combat felt much more fluid and fun than any previous games.
The game is the most linear of the Metroidvanias I've played, which doesn't bother me at all of course, but it's there. I like it well enough, it breaks the game up into pretty manageable chunks, though I did appreciate the return to the big epic-feeling castle at the end. Quests and stuff... a bit too much rare item farming but otherwise fine, and they at least make the townsfolk personalities memorable. Overall not a terribly important part of the game anyway.
Plot doesn't exist much. Not really great when it is there, but it has sceneskip for when you inevitably die to a plot boss for the second, third, fourth, and twelth time.
Music is solid enough, but I can't remember too many standout tracks. The first section of Dracula's castle is probably my favourite.
The game isn't perfect. My chief complaints are the amazing Castlevania tradition of keeping a decent chunk of the game hidden behind a FAQ-bait requirement (yes, I could probably have gone around destroying walls to find the two villagers I'd missed. Not really my idea of fun, though) and the lack of documention about the glyph unions (the game doesn't really reward testing them because keeping your hearts full = more monies).
Will definitely replay this though. Aw yeah Hard Mode, sounds delicious.
Glyph notes...
Confodere (rapier) & Secare (sword): I liked these, and often held one of each. They could be spammed very quickly and generally were optimum damage against any boss I could stand in place and hit, even beating out weaknesses. Slash also seemed like an incredibly common weakness to boot. Rapiers were faster but swords are stronger and have overhead, so it's nice to have access to both.
Hasta (lance): Seemed like a crappier rapier. Yes, a bit more attack and a bit more reach, but losing the mad spammability = meh.
Falcis (sickle): Used this some to pair with magic when I wanted slash damage, since its slowness is less big of a deal when not spammed. Kinda abandonned it as time went on and just stuck with the swords though.
Arcus (bow), Culter (knives), and Ascia (Axe): Magic generally felt better for range. I guess these do slash damage, but if I wanted that I could close to melee and do huge damage. Did get some use out of the first bow, but then the second had a pretty bad firing direction so screw that.
Macir (mace): Oh look, after fifty million slash weapons we get hammers, which actually have a different damage type. Pretty great for things they hit weakness on, and I used them to complement spells if I was expecting to want blunt damage in particular. Also quite damaging, though slow, so not optimum at raw offence... except against Dracula who you have to jump to hit anyway. So yeah, dual hammer beatdown was all the rage there.
Lapiste (stone fist): A bit more range than the hammer. Not wonderful, but I liked to pair it with...
Nitesco (laser): Range is awesome, and the hits really add up, and you can launch it and move backwards while still facing forwards which has plenty of use. Very solid magic attack.
Ignis (fire): Didn't like either of these much. Found the three flames to be very weak. In theory it's fine at short range, if I'm there why not melee spam? Most things weak to fire were weak to something else anyway (often light).
Grando (ice): Only got the upgraded version. Decently damaging area of effect bomb-type move, and destroys the sand shark boss which is nice. Didn't use it too often but it was quite handy at times for that large coverage.
Fulgur (lightning): Again, only got the second version, but you get that really early. Homing damage is nice (oneshots frail enemies), and great underwater where it hits weakness on everything. Pretty undamaging when it doesn't hit weakness (so basically worthless unless the enemy has 10 or less HP) but there's enough things to make it feel useful.
Luminatio (light): Duh, you're fighting the legions of darkness, so of course you face lots of light weakness. That pretty much make these useful by default. Even the first version, which has a laughable MM5 Power Stone-like trajectory, is useful due to this. Second version with its homing is pretty great and managed to displace physical spam against two bosses!
Umbra (dark): Well, correspondingly, element concerns make this one less good. Still, a few things are weak to it, and the homing trajectory.
Custos (Cerberus attacks): Felt like Lapiste but for slash. Serviceable enough, but you don't have it for long, and since swords are faster they have less of a niche.
Magnes (magnet): I really liked this one and thought it was a shame it wasn't used a bit more, but I guess they wanted you to use other glyphs and fair enough. Just really liked the spice it added to some of the platforming and I'm glad they used it against bosses.
Volaticus (Nina2 cosplay): Obviously pretty awesome, and not just for platforming. Pretty much owns Dracula's first form since it both easily dodges his fireball attack and causes him to always use it. Hovering while you unload damage can also be fun times.
Stat boosts: I didn't find the defensive ones worth it, offensive ones were pretty good for all that I only really used them late when they were very inexpensive. My loss.
Arma Custos (Cerberus head): Really great strength boost as your HP drops, doesn't take long to beat the strength buffer.
Summons: I didn't use them a huge amount, but I did like the owl one for some free added damage, Beat-style.
Since the game tracks my element use, it's easy enough for me to note that slash > blunt > light > lightning > ice > dark > fire.
Think that's about it!
So yeah. 9/10 game or so? Pretty high at that? Really impressive, one of the best games I've played this year and certainly my favourite Castlevania. Challenging, well-designed platformer with shades of Megaman in it = obvious Elf-bait.
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I was totally inspired to finish the Order of Ecclesia based on Elf talking about it in IRC. Had slept on killing Dracula for a year or two because he was so damn hard. Now in hindsight I realize he's not that bad once you learn how to dodge the easy attacks and potionspam through the rest.
I don't have much memory of the rest of the game since it's been so long since I played, but I gravitated toward the heavy physical damage - got a lot of use out of macir and falcis - I had a pretty simple minded approach, just using whatever attack worked best and would kill enemies quickly, changing my loadout if a particular glyph was more effective against a certain enemy. I seem to remember spamming fulgur against one boss.
Will sign off on liking the challenge, most of the previous metroidvanias were just a little bit too far on the easy side. Here, you actually had to worry about dodging attacks from bosses and finding strategies to fight enemies. I actually didn't have a problem finding the missing villagers if I recall correctly - my OCD about getting 100% on every map was probably what did it. I'll probably mess around with the boss rush and alternate character mode, but I have no interest in hard mode shenanigans.
also, hi.
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Hi.
Thank you for being what you are. You've saved my life a few times.
Magnes (magnet): I really liked this one and thought it was a shame it wasn't used a bit more, but I guess they wanted you to use other glyphs and fair enough. Just really liked the spice it added to some of the platforming and I'm glad they used it against bosses.
Did you unlock the training dungeon? It's entirely built around Magnes. It's hidden somewhere inside Dracula Castle (along with the usual optional super dungeon with some armor you don't need at the end)
Hard mode is great because every enemy attack does 60+x damage (IIRC) so absolutely everything is threatening and you need to avoid it all. The Ruvas forest earlygame is particularly brutal, but the game never really becomes easy anyway (unlike in Portrait of Ruin where you get overpowered armor) Then there's Hard mode lvl 1 which is just ridiculous (I beat this without healing items, which is probably my best gamingz achievement) Ignis is actually really good against a lot of enemies here. (either because they're big or because you can afford getting to really close range and kill with 2 Ignises)
Blackmore's music was great. (but it didn't work as well against Eligor)
Demon's Souls: Beat 4 archdemons, smacked Old King Doran a few times to get awesome weapon (that I can't equip yet)
My usual process is : Invade another player, get his soul, die in the most retarded possible way, repeat. Such a complete egoistical waste of manpower, but what can you do. I've died quite a few times against players this time though, and to the same guy twice :( (He promptly mocked me with a PM)
Mephistopheles appeared, and asked me to kill a few NPCs for a reward. I looked at my helmet, I looked at my armor, and realized I had become Yurt. So I started hunting them all. I went to Ed to forge some new weapon, but he had disappeared. A glitch, they said. Whatever. This allowed me to not feel guilty about checking a faq for Yuria. Mephistopheles attacked next, but that was expected.
I got an awesome PVP ring afterwards, which is starting to make me regret starting as a wanderer with his crappy stats. Oh well.
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M&MCoH: Apparently I'm liking this game as I spent over 30 hours on it in the last week. Near the end of Aiden's section of the campaign.
Dark Souls: Started. Am playing a female cleric. Extra heals is handy. Not too far yet, got as far as the Taurus demon. Am dying considerably more than Fudo is.
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Am I the only one who apparently failed hard at choosing where to go in Dark Souls? <_<
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perhaps you're not indecisive enough?
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I'm pretty sure there is no planet on which I am not indecisive enough.
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Dark Souls: I have upward of 20 deaths. I'm doing something wrong and not sure what. According to Tal, I should not be battling skeletons or undefeatable scythe arm ghosts yet immediately following the Undead Asylum. So that may be it.
Hahaha, I can barely handle the skeletons. You poor, poor man.
Dark Souls: Started. Am playing a female cleric. Extra heals is handy. Not too far yet, got as far as the Taurus demon. Am dying considerably more than Fudo is.
I'd contest that if I didn't lose track of my deaths again.
Am I the only one who apparently failed hard at choosing where to go in Dark Souls? <_<
And this is still when you have an obvious goal.
Now more glorious Fudo Dark Souls posting. With all the despair that entails.
Dark Souls: Last time I saw the boss door. Turns out I was wrong, but more on that later. First more glorious sewer exploration! Except about five minutes in I get invaded again and I swear the guy was a PVP twink since his attacks did 1/3 of my not-inconsiderate life with each hit. Dammit.
So, I go around and slowly begin killing the giant rat. Which requires Plunge Attacks that require navigating half the sewers to do. Only to learn I could have arrowed him to death with like 50 arrows. Oi! This opens up a new path where I run into another mage enemy and his army of rats... Kill them and find more upgrade material. I also notice the area where he was is about the size of a city block so I correctly deduce this to be the boss room. I finish exploring the sewers, then go on the look for a new ring that the other gave me a tip about. Waaaaaaaaay, back at Darkroot Basin where giant butterflies are deadly, I opened a secret path but didn't pursue because the enemies--weak though they were--were scary. So I head down this path and pick up a shiny new ring that pretty much doubles my Poise. Unkillable me go!
Back to the Boss. Who's such a horrifying giant bastard I'll let you all experience it for yourself. 25k souls though! That's a couple of levels! And this opens up the gate to.... Blighttown. Now, if the name wasn't a dead giveaway then I'll actually explain the sheer horror of this place by saying its similar to an unholy combination of Valley of Defilement(both parts) and Tower of Latria 2. My first foray doesn't even get that far because the new giant enemy knocks aside my shit enough to send me flying off the platforms. Twice. Once I get the upper hand I start thinking about getting a new shield, and the next best one is... in Blighttown. Ha.
As I slowly whittle down my non-Estus supplies praying for the bonfire, I find it and don't bother with wasting 2 humanity to kindle it. I search around for a ladder looking for that shield and instead find a rickety bridge that nearly kills me a dozen times. After the bonfire is a new breed of fire-breathing dog, fire-breathing spider flies and some sort of giant leech squid thing that doesn't do anything. I slowly make myself down to the swamp--because I said Valley 2 dammit--where poison even more horrifying then Demon's Souls and there's tons of mosquitoes coming to prick you and I'm completely out of Estus. Luckily the second bonfire is close and this time I do spend two humanity to light it. So of course I get invaded a scant five seconds later after I throw on all my poison resist gear. By the time I get back to the bonfire and change, she comes rolling up.... stark naked with a two-hander and shield. I promptly kill her in one combo. And get four humanity out of it. Spiffy.
I explore the swamp some more, find all the treasure and the shortcut out of here and... die to a double-helping of the pig bastards. Actually that death took place before the kindle. Well, whatever. I go through them again and open the shortcut up through New Lando(Where Alex's go to die to ghosts) to Firelink where the bonfire is now out because the Firekeeper is dead. So I can't upgrade my Estus again argh.
Back in Blighttown, I make it to the boss outer reachs, but doing so has left me with all of 5 Estus. Mainly because I spent 5 of them on one enemy who I'll let you all experience for yourself as well. Instead of heading back like an intelligent person, or getting help from a summon sign like an intelligent person(one of the signs being from the other player who just invaded). I head inside. Where I get a nice cutscene depicting a horrible fire spider-fly with a naked chick sticking out of the top. As I wonder why there is suddenly sexy the boss fight starts. It actually gos well since I'm almost prepared for this! Except I run out of Estus as she's on her last fraction of health! ARGH. The next five attempts are all variants of bullshit--including the one where she literally has nothing left in her bar but yellow left since yellow is the color for what damage was done. When I finally beat her it is glorious! I head in and ring the second bell and open up Sen's Fortress. I also light the next bonfire and level up my sweet self.
I take the long, long trek back and investigate the Fort. The NPC out front is gone, and two steps in I activate a trap. Then two snakemen who don't take a whole lot of damage and I can't stun them with my hits. Thankfully my Shield is now awesome so I can handle them. Second room in the Fort is filled with swinging pendulum death traps so I run away like the scared little girl I am.
Sometime along the way I get the brilliant idea to try fighting the Hydra. I can handle the minions in the area decently enough after all! I can't even land a hit before I'm a bloody smear. Luckily my skirt power allows me to reclaim my body and run away with minor damage. Minor only being 2/3s of my life gone after blocking the attacks with a 80% Magic Absorb Shield that still knocked off all my Stam. So, OK, I'll check out what's after the Moonlight Butterfly. Nothing except another item to give to the Blacksmith. I can upgrade my shield to different paths now!
So instead I go and fight some guy I could have fought so long ago who reminds me of Biorr. He's stupid easy and his path opens up... right next to the Hydra oh dangit.
Now I have no idea where to go because Sen's is too unbalanced it seems and all the other places scare me.
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Oh man. The "non-linearity" gets worse? Craaap.
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Hahahaha, I just looked up how to fight those ghosts and it is brutal.
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You're surprised? Dark Souls is a game about punching yourself in the dick.
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Speaking of which...
Demon's Souls: The final boss was such a final dick move. He has an attack that steals levels, in a game where you pretty much can't reset.
I died two times, the second time losing three levels (=90 000 souls), the 20 000 souls I had at that point, 15 minutes of progress, a bunch of herbs, sticky white stuff, and sanity. -> Ragequit.
Tried NG+, 1-1 is as expected not hard, especially with that overpowered Soulbrandt, the shield that blocks everything, and 40 Stamina. Slimes were getting OHKOed with their shield raised. I won't play much right now because Dark Souls is next. (Hopefully, in 2 days)
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WAIT
Ashley Riot is Keifer Sutherland
(http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/3/31815/961642-vs_1_super.jpg)
(http://thepeople.fr/wp-content/uploads/jack-baeur-kiefer-sutherland-fin-de-la-serie.jpg)
Ok we can go on.
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"I am the reinforcements" does kinda sum up 24, from what I know.
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Final Fantasy 7 - So Barret is glad we don't have to purchase ammo in this game, because the dude wastes it like mad. So I am climbing that tower with the plate support and I hear the machine gun fire the whole time. He probably fired 300 bullets at least. Plus firing at the sky after Sector 7 was destroyed used another 50 bullets.
My favorite part so far is Rufus. "So dad tried to rule the world with money, I will rule it with FEAR."
I want to shake Tifa for saying it was her fault that Aeris was kidnapped. Girlfriend, that bitch's been getting chased by Shinra forever.
I'm trying to date Barret currently. I have a hardon for ecoterrorism.
I am in Junon. Did the CPR game, which is terrible.
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Deus Ex: Saved Malik by emulating the Flash - I sprinted around and punched people while scarfing down candy bars.
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Soo, been replaying SH2 recently, started out semi obsessive compulsive over beating boss fights with perfect ring victories that comboed them quick enough to get a few turns bonus, soon realized that this is not SH3 of the stock system and bosses that die before they get turns if you set things right and that I was just making things harder then they needed to be. Have mainly been using a party of Yuri/Karin/Jaochim/(Geppeto pre Russhia/Ana post Russia). Will probably be subbing out Joachim with Kurando soonish since I think one of the upcoming bosses is going to be dark elemental. I'll probably be shot for saying this but I actually feel like Gepetto was the better mage then Ana, but mostly because I abused equipping proper dolls and using the combo magic that bosses were weak to with him or something, also having to waste a turn with Ana in some battles irks me ever so slightly so yeah. Oh right, currently
sneaking through Hobo's Lab acting snarky vs Demi Gods.
Also through a potential lapse of proper judgement decided to pick up VP: Lenneth because I could. Just got to chapter three and am amazed to find myself enjoying it quite a lot. It is basically everything that I actually liked about VP2, without all the horrible horrible design decision that makes me want to burn Tri Ace in fire tacked on. (Seriously screw you and your retarded 3 dungeons damn near in a row with unblockable poison areas Tri Ace) The fact that I don't have to worry about attacking enemies from every conceivable obscure angle with random obscure attack sets to get that one item out of 5 to learn an ability, but only after equipping said items even if it won't result in a good current equipment setup for that character, is a HUGE HUGE plus. I honestly have no clue why they added that system after playing (a port of) the original. So back to the actual game, kind of regretting the decision to play on normal since I got lucky or something and got that shrine girl who basically comes with that 600 attack staff in chapter 2. I kind of feel bad for the randoms, because when Bow Lenneth isn't soloing an enemy whilst producing eleventy billion gems and a chest, whichever mage I feel like having in the party is instead just oneshotting them all at once. Game just needs a bit of difficulty and it'll be set. So yeah, totally enjoying this game and am now narrowing my fire burning anger down from all of Tri Ace to just whoever in Tri Ace decided on design change decisions for VP2.
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VP1 hard mode is actually easier than VP1 normal. I'm not sure how they didn't notice this in development. The thing with hard mode is that einherjar all join at level 1...which isn't actually a disadvantage because it means you can stack emerald bracelets/bracelets of zoe (I forget which one does HP) on your new recruits and have them come out with grossly boosted stats once they catch up to everyone else. Which is really just a matter of throwing some party XP at them. Hard is also a much more fun playthrough of the game for having more lategame dungeons, I think (also more options in the Seraphic Gate, Normal blocks you out of some areas there). Normal has a few dungeons that Hard doesn't, but I seem to recall there's not much in the later chapters of Normal.
For what it's worth, I tend to think VP enemies only start getting competent around Lezard's tower in chapter four.
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Yes, Easy is hard, Hard is easy. Mainly due to not having all the skills in Easy like Attack/Magic Pow. And no Lawfer. :)
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Normal Mode gives you more EXP to offset the less dungeons, so you end up the same level for the most part. The Bracelet of Zoe thing isn't what I'd say makes a big deal in VP1 to be honest for the modes, more so that Hard Mode gives you so much good stuff (or easier access to it) that Normal Mode doesn't.
The early Creation Gem/Jewel is one such example.
Honestly, though, without a FAQ, Normal Mode is easier than Hard Mode. the stuff that makes Hard Mode easier requires knowledge about the game. That said, Easy Mode is still probably the hardest. For starters, one thing Normal DIDN'T lack was PC options (outside of maybe Lyseria, who isn't a big deal due to the nature of VP Mages), Easy mode you miss both Lancers I believe meanwhile. Its also lacking in some key dungeons as well which lead to good stuff (Normal mode gets Creation Gem/Jewel eventually, Easy mode cannot IIRC since it can't do Lezard's castle.)
Yeah, there's a reason I call the 3 modes "Complete" "Casual" and "Butchered" for obvious reasons.
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You're surprised? Dark Souls is a game about punching yourself in the dick.
I expect dick punches but everything before was a nice light fondling compared to this. Except Capra Demon.
Dark Souls: Where the rock don't stop. I mean that literally by the way.
So when last I left off I was returning to the Undead Asylum to fight the Stray Demon and get the treasure behind a locked door I got a key for that isn't worth it. Felt like going back to the ol'starting cell only to find it guarded by the fourth Black Knight. Who soon became the fourth dead Black Knight. The starting cell has some shiny new loot in the form of... some stupid doll. Yippie.
I head back to the First Bonfire and move around my equipment a bit. If I equip different gauntlets and Havel's Ring(Equip Burden UP) I can get the fast roll in my armor! And since Evil Eye will be worthless in this fight... Fights, really. Along my path of six deaths I try out the one Pyromancy spell I have. Increase damage for taking constant HP damage. A lot of constant HP damage. Not worth it since the bonfire isn't kindled I only have 5 Estus. Fights range from "what you were expecting to move?" to "You think 1/10th life remaining is close?" until I eventually manage to figure his pattern enough to win with four Estus. Sweet sweet victory gives me a Titanite Slab and 20k Souls. SPIFFY. And of course the bigger reward, never needing to come back here except to trade with Snuggly.
It's around now when I looked up how to deal with New Londo stuff and promptly decide that Sen's Fortress would be a better idea because I'm not that suicidal.
It certainly is an idea. The swinging pendulums of doom are actually not all that scary damage-wise. The enemies actually hit harder--shock, including the next snakeman the snakewoman who shoots lightning and wants to eat your head. I slowly make my way up this place, rationing my Estus as best I can because I know the bonfire is all the way at the end. It's hard, real hard since the enemies hit hard and the rocks don't stop. Thankfully I'm enough of a tanky bastard that I can be crushed by the rocks--giant boulders really--and be barely inconvenienced.
Further and further I head up, past arrow traps that nearly kill me from full health, past pendulum traps over strips if land barely big enough to walk across, and the shining sunlight of the roof is reached. Whereupon the sunlight is blocked by a giant hurling giant flaming balls at me. So of course this is the area where the bonfire is. Right off a drop no sane person would ever think to make. I use the last of my Estus to ensure I have enough health to survive the drop and light that glorious bonfire. Then I blow my two humanity to kindle it.
I rush upstairs and find and kill the bastard hurling giant firebombs at me, because he can't respawn, and then go check out the nearby merchant. Who of course sells armor that's completely better then my upgraded stuff even though I just boosted it all up at the bonfire because Sen's Fortress gives a fair bit of upgrade material. Also sells other armor that's various degrees of there. But mostly I want what the game calls Onion Gear. I head downstairs and get the key required to open up the shortcut to the start of the fort, then take the shortcut which just so happens to land you right next to an enemy with another enemy sniping at you.
Since I have the bonfire I want to start getting the many secrets of the fort. To do that I manipulate the boulder falling path and decide that racing them would be a good idea. Where it promptly knocks me into a pit. There goes that living. After a time, I get s shiney new lightning spear after killing... a thing, I also get crushed twice more, get a headfull of spikes and find the most pointless slightly-secret yet, I'm ready to take on the boss! By throwing down a summon side to help some other poor fool. It actually doesn't take long to get summoned, or die as though I tanked the boss's attack for stamina damage it sent me flying back about 50 feet and off into the great dead yonder.
Take 2! This time to summoner gets knocked off into the bright green yonder. Take 3! I don't even know how the summoner dies this time. No take 4, so I go and solo it on my first attempt. No, multi-person wins won't count so there loses don't go! even though they should count more
After the battle but before I get my Soul reward I grab the mysterious ring of light and get molested by gargoyles again. And I am now in the fabled Anor Londo. I make my way to the first bonfire--prekindled woo hoo--and spend my delicious soul reward which I'm not actually sure I received all of. I test out the waters here, the enemies are big and tough and give out 500 Souls. Money. Also there's another thing...
But by now I'm booted off and get to watch the other play. This reveals to me the location of even better armor and other weird things.
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Gotta say that Hard Mode is totally harder than Normal Mode in VP (at least maingame); most of the harder dungeons and bosses are HM-only, and HM doesn't really give you anything NM doesn't (except Lyseria!). Easy Mode may well be the hardest but I've never played it. Really don't see what is supposed to make Normal Mode harder than Hard.
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It is harder if you go into it aiming to do stuff that one rounds bosses and stuff, but yeah generally speaking Normal isn't so bad. It doesn't have any of the bosses that can overkill your party. Think the hardest boss is Fenrir? Edit - Outside of the final of course. Edit 2 - and that is because you haven't really had to worry about status before then on Normal.
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I think what it comes down to is Normal is easier in terms of raw combat while Hard mode is easier in the sense of just breaking the game to pieces. Like was said, Seraphic Gate aside, Normal gives you most of the essentials for the main game Hard Mode would give you.
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I'm not sure what's supposed to make Hard Mode easier as far as breaking the game goes. I mean, you can one-round Fenrir with a HM-only item, sure. But heck, as far as game-breaking goes, the thing standing out to me notably is mc's note that C ending Freya is notably easier to beat on Normal Mode because of the Phoenix Feather (Angel Curio, but breaks only 10% of the time) from a NM-only dungeon. Otherwise, all the real game-breaking stuff (whether defensive like Guts/AI/AC or offensive like the Creation Jewel and Attack/Magic Pow) are available on both NM and HM (though not necessarily EM -_-).
Hel Servants and Wraith being HM-only pretty much irrevocably tilts challenge in that mode's direction, never mind that you will be lower-levelled (which certainly makes up for any Emerald Necklace or Bracelet of Zoe shenanigans), and that HM dungeons have much harder puzzles/platforming, and much better enemies on average. (Even some NM dungeons get upgrades on HM, like those beholder-type enemies that get added to Lost City Dipan).
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Blue Dragon - I'm about eight and a half hours in. Game's okay... plot pretty much embodies why one shouldn't pay attention to plot in most RPGs but whatevs, not like it gets in the way too much. Shu and Marumaro are both total morons though.
Otherwise the game very, very much wants to be FF5; the game's class system is virtually identical. Well, it gives you three skill slots instead of one, which is certainly cool and an improvement! It also doesn't force you to re-equip when you monkey with your classes or skills in any way (though flipside, all classes equip the same stuff, which makes for fewer decisions... still think I'll take the trade). Battle system-wise, I do like the addition of the gauge that lets you decide how long to charge things, although the control for it feels a bit unresponsive? Maybe that's just me. Regardless, I like it.
The game's randoms have been pretty terrible as far as challenge goes. Bosses have pretty interesting design though, so that's a plus.
I can't say the game's as enjoyable as FF5, though. I wasn't sure why, but then recently I looked at the game clock and I figured it out. I'm eight and a half hours in, as mentioned but I've only fought four bosses and generally don't feel like I've played that much of the game. Animations are also a little on the slow side which I really only complain about because randoms are so easy that it feels like animations are the only thing slowing them down. Mostly, though, I just regret this game's pacing. With this type of job system it'd be great if you could just breeze through the game but that doesn't really seem possible, just not that type of game.
Yeah, Elfboy complains about pacing in RPGs, sky is blue, etc. Still, game is enjoyable enough to keep at it!
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Gotta say that Hard Mode is totally harder than Normal Mode in VP (at least maingame); most of the harder dungeons and bosses are HM-only, and HM doesn't really give you anything NM doesn't (except Lyseria!). Easy Mode may well be the hardest but I've never played it. Really don't see what is supposed to make Normal Mode harder than Hard.
It is entirely possible that my perspective is skewed due to playing Normal first and knowing how to break the game before going into Hard more, now that I think of it. VP folds like an origami master if you approach it with some advance knowledge.
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Oh yes, absolutely. Even if you don't read about the game between playthrough 1 and playthrough 2, just the knowledge gained from the first playthrough will trump any difficulty difference I think. If you do read about the game-breaking stuff... better get the enemies a blindfold and a cigarette.
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M&MCoH: beat the campaign. Pretty long considering this was originally a DS game. Multiplayer looks like fun, but I have other games to play before I delve into that.
Dark Souls: beat the Taurus Demon. I didn't realize I should be trying to block his attacks. I figured something that big would just smash through my blocking attempts but apparently not. Used my winnings to buy the Force miracle. Comes with 21 uses... Hmm... Maybe I can use that to run through the area with the ghosts.
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Glad to see more people are playing Order of Ecclesia. I'd be totally down for a sequel to that, too. Best combat and play control of the series, and great weapon balance. (Only Hasta / Culter / Arceus really felt truly terrible.) I like mixing up the usual castle environments of Castlevania with lots of outdoor ones, too. Pretty much agree with Elf's take on the elements and the glyphs; I think I used the Falcis line more, to the end of the game, pretty much. Secare / Confodore absolutely had their place if you can get in close, but Falcis does enough damage from a safe distance that you're still 1-2HKOing a lot of enemies and doing it safely. Also agree that Magnes was great fun, and wish that I didn't feel bad setting that as a "movement" option rather than a stat boost / summon. Luckily it seems that the designers of Harmony of Dissonance agreed, as Shanoa has perma-Magnes there. It's great fun dodging Beelzebub's flies and moving in to rapier spam him with Magnes.
Speaking of which, games. Probably behind on this.... though not by THAT much, been doing a lot of reading in the subway.
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow Julius mode replay: Fun and fast. Stuck on Death at the moment, forgot that he's pretty badass in DoS.
* Bat Company: Still pretty tough, especially if done early. Gave up trying to mess with Yoko / Al against him after a few deaths and just used Julius, who can double jump kick / slide to safety as well as toss axes.
* Gergoth: Great fun, fight even if not THAT difficult. Totally a Julius boss, so used Yoko this playthrough and still won due to dodging his pattern well.
* Speedy time-stopping knife dude: Another fun fight that I know his pattern too well now. Could use pretty much whoever, even Alucard.
* Mirror dude: Totally slew me easily the first time I tried, left because memorizing patterns / careful Bat placement is screw you, came back after Dario2 and killed him before he ever hopped back in the mirror again with Ice spam from Yoko. Uhh that's one way to do it.
* Dario2: Tried solo-Julius on him this time. Was easier to dodge than I recall, Julius worked fine. (Easy way is to hit his weak point for massive damage with Yoko Ice of course.) Fun, but no I'm not going to try and Alucard him out if I ever do this a third time.
* Death: Ow ow ow. Very much a "don't get hit" boss. Not that amazingly hard to dodge but you lose life fast when you screw up.
New Super Mario Bros. DS: So I chased around a tiny Bowser, then fought him and a big Bowser, and I beat up the small Bowser, but then Bowser hit me and I got small, then I ate a mega mushroom and got big and jumped on Bowser, true story.
Vaguely amused that it really is the Princess in each castle, but she's just moved to the next fallback castle every single time rather than having her buddies everywhere with "But our Princess is in another castle!" Or transformed Kings, etc.
Castlevania: Harmony of Despair PS3: Running this with super / Ephraim / Xeroma mostly, and occasionally AndrewRogue / Namagomi. Maining Shanoa, backup is Alucard. Great fun, though I definitely recommend getting a big group and doing it together if possible - all your drops are shared across one account, so even picking an off-character means you can potentially uber yourself for earlier stages. Definitely more fun to suffer through the early stages together with others doing it for the first time as well, which isn't likely online where you have crazy people who grind drops. We're getting close to being done, though - we've beaten Chapters 1-6 Hard as well as Chapter 8 Hard. Astarte on Chapter 7 Hard has uncanny luck like forcing disconnects of Eph / Me whenever we fight her, and she's pretty badass anyway.
Shanoa is just a ton of fun to control, especially when Magnes points are available for fighting. Fulgur (Lightning) is her safest option and still does good damage despite being homing. Ignis, if all three bolts connect, is her best damage. Don't use Nitesco / Grando that often, although they have their place. Nitesco can block vision so it's not entirely safe, and Grando is the best damage option at long range, but is much less likely to hit than Fulgur.
Alucard... eh. Apparently Internetz hype is that he sucks, which I can see for those who grind a lot - Alucard is entirely equipment drops based. It does mean he's really fast to get up to speed at least. Unfortunately the damage is just not that great in general. He does have one trick, though... Jewel Knuckles style weapons, like in SOTN, have an *insanely* fast attack rate. Actually even better than SOTN's. So Alucard is all about sneaking next to an enemy then rapidly punching them out. This is downright good vs. bosses that stay on the ground, too (So Chap 1/4/6/7*). In fact he's downright better than Shanoa vs. Dracula - Drac has a "charm females" attack, and Alucard punches out Form 2 frighteningly fast. (The giant demon from the SOTN prologue Richter fight.) Pretty much solo'd Form 2 on our Hard Mode Chap 6 playthrough, actually. Chap 7, Astarte, Alucard theoretically has the same punch spam... except then he falls prey to Astarte's "charm males" attack. :( Still arguably better than Shanoa, who is stuck with Nitesco as the only thing that causes any damage to the elemental-resistant Astarte, and Nitesco blocks the view of her next move.
King Arthur Collection: Tried like 15 minutes of this when I was in the mood for a strat game, had picked it up for 5 bucks on Steam awhile back. Utterly non-impressed, though, the combat system feels like Total War if nothing happened. Dudes stand next to each other and fight, slowly, to the death. No dramatic morale breaking cavalry charges or the like. I guess there's supposed to be spells & stuff flying around the battlefield later to make it interesting, but meh.
Cthulhu Saves The World: Just started. Challenge level is pretty good on hard. Sense of humor is... very... yeah, feels like a fan-made game still. Oh well! Wish it was more "let's take Silly Cthulhu and make a classic JRPG" rather than "let's take a classic JRPG and apply a dab of Cthulhu names." Seek out the (monster infested) Shrine of Heroes 'cause that's what heroes do? Yeah, that's a Dragon Quest IIIesque plot pretty much. We'll see, I suppose.
Ghost Trick: Just started this recently. Okay, the game explicitly introduces the note then is like "whoa no time to read it," fine. An excuse blatantly created to stretch out plot revelations, but fine. However... what does my body look like?! I want to investigate my death, right? Let's do some elementary forensics here, starting with "is there a giant bloody mess in my chest like a shotgun shell exploded there." There sure doesn't look like there's any such wound, but maybe this is artistic license to not amp the game's rating up? I'd at least like some comment from Our Hero, who even possessed his own body briefly. This will make me want to throw a penalty flag later if they try to pull some "twist" with my method of death.
Otherwise, hurray, totally arbitrary rules about what can and can't be possessed - or which handle allows me to possess things - means that gameplay exists that involves tormenting random dudes so that the can-be-possessed objects get moved close together while I ignore the similar looking nonliving objects that can't be possessed, um, 'cause. Cool! I'll take it.
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Persona 2 Innocent Sin- Why didn't anyone make more games like this? I mean... this is one of the rare legitimately interesting stories. The setup would be utterly unique if this game didn't have a second half. They could take on crazy, conspiracy theory sorts of legends and they work utterly because that's the central premise, off the wall crazy beliefs are made real because people believe them! The world changes so fast that your characters spend most of their time just trying to keep up. And yet, at the heart of everything is, indeed, your characters and their actions. Everything begins, and ends, with a selfish crime anyone would have committed given the circumstance. Simple motives with complex consequences.
That said of course, the game does suffer from what I can only call gameplay pacing. There are just a lot of times the game stops dead through a combination of how acquiring and using a new Persona works as well as the basic dungeon design. However, in a key improvement from Eternal Punishment, the game basically hands you fully functional personae at a few points, and this really cuts down on the time spent getting up to speed, or such is my memory of EP. As well, and I have to assume this is PSP-specific, the whole system feels a lot faster, and setting up auto-actions and letting a battle play out is pretty painless. It's reminiscent of playing PSIV except there's more incentive to use combo attacks.
Magic-immune enemies still stop the combat cold though.
I also wish the game wasn't quite so dungeon crawler, because the cast is great and having more interludes of them just... being together would have been lovely. Still, what's there is nice. Of course, this could be because IS is the shortest Persona game by a notable margin from what I can tell, so there's just fewer events to put that stuff into.
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Dark Souls: beat the Taurus Demon. I didn't realize I should be trying to block his attacks. I figured something that big would just smash through my blocking attempts but apparently not. Used my winnings to buy the Force miracle. Comes with 21 uses... Hmm... Maybe I can use that to run through the area with the ghosts.
Try and grab the Fire Keeper's soul before you go running for the safety of the world above.
Dark Souls: Where fun and profit are always together.
When I last left off I was going to head over to Darkroot Garden to get some spiffy new armor. But to do that I need 20k souls to purchase a key to open a door to let me in. Thankfully the guards in Anor Londo give 500 souls a pop so I get it decently fast. I head back and buy what I need and head to Darkroot. Actually I don't as on the way out of the Fort a blade knocks me down into the muck with the four Titanite Demons make their home here(the giant headless guys next to the blacksmith in Undead Parish for anyone). Thankfully that one ring I found allows me to negate their advantage of the arena being a sludge-filled NO-MOVE FOR YOU place. So my first thought is to escape since I don't have the bonfire near the blacksmith up. Except when I think I'm safe up above a ledge that takes a ladder to get to, I get distracted by my kittey jumping on top of the house front door and it turns out there's a snakeman following me and I DIE. But I get my revenge, my sweet, sweet revenge! It just takes another death because I get ganged up on. Again. But I come out of it with four new Demon Titanite!
So, I go and open up to the forest of SCREW YOU where enemies come three at a time and you can't target half of them! Lost of souls though. 1000 was the lowest and these guys respawn too! Yippie! I go further in, make sure not to cut myself off from the Covenant, and grab the armor I want and one I don't want. I see that spending 17k souls on half the Onion gear was a waste as this... Stone? Why is stone tougher then processed metal.. Well, let's say it's magic stone because actually that fits the setting. So, from this point on I pretty much start pumping my Endurance to boost my equip burden so I can wear this stone gear because it has 54 glove def compared to the Onion's 34. So yeah. More Poise too! I don't bother with the boss because I wanna tackle someplace else.
This place happens to be New Londo Ruins. Land of ghosts and other assorted scaries. Wait, scaries isn't a word? Screw you firefox. So, the ghosts that have been talked about time and time again! In order to actually fight them efficiently you need to actually prepare. One way is by magic or magical weapons neither of which I have at all. The second is to become cursed, the status effect so awful it's like your back in Soul Form in Demon's Souls again. And it can apply again and again... Hope you enjoy having 1/8 your max life hahahhaha! So, the third and frankly only sane method is to rely on an item that employs a temporary curse effect with the debuff part. You get a lovely start of all of two of these if you can actually find them. The next best source is to buy them from a merchant for 4000 souls apiece. And ghosts don't give souls. Actually instead they have a low chance of dropping more of the item. Never have I been so glad to have my gold serpent ring.
So the ghosts! After all my mild preparation of hitting a pot are... not really all that threatening damage-wise to me. Yay being a tank. And the lightning spear messes them up good too. I grabbed the third Fire Keeper's soul--+3 Flash yay!--and head inside. Where the ghosts reveal their next trick of attacking while inside walls and actually showing off a damaging attack. After enough putzing around, I find Ingwald of Ingward or Ingor or something who proceeds to not do a damn thing. I look around some more for where I'm supposed to go. Turns out I can't actually go anywhere deeper here yet. Joy of goddamn joys.
UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Run run run away. Bah, at least while I'm here I can go meet that thing in Blighttown, so I head there. Mosquitoes are still a pain. But that Rusted Iron Ring proves its worth by allowing me to run through the swamp! I agonize about not being able to find the mysterious wall in Quelagg's Lair until I find it. Then I don't make any mistake and go and light the secret bonfire with awesome scenery nearby and get my Estus to +3. I head down deeper past the weak normal bonfire and head to the next boss.
Ceaseless Discharge. If that's not a name I'm not sane. Just think giant human without arms but instead about a dozen insect claws that are all on fire growing out of his back. Also think how painful being on the end of that's gonna be for anyone who's not me. The first two tries go... well messy would not be undescriptive. Third try goes beautifully as I only get hit once. Beating him opens up the Demon's Ruins by draining the lava lake. This also makes it safe for the giant tree roots growing down here for some reason. Unfortunately this is not safe for me at all because this is the Demon's Ruins so they feel the best way to show how much they hate you is to clump 7 Tauros Demons together. Yep.
And a Capra Demon or 7 as well. OH HOW I ENJOYED TEARING THE FIRST LIMB FROM LIMB AND SHOVING ITS PARTS INTO ITS MOUTH AS I LAUGHED AND LAUGHED AND LAUGHED.
Ahem. So, the Tauros Demons here are actually probably stronger then the boss version. Also they're immune to lava. But the area is big and wide and they're patterned as all hell so it isn't hard to wipe them out. Intense, but not hard. And my reward is... 8400 souls. And a bunch of stuff in lava that kills me in seconds. Because I tried.
So, since I am no longer feeling up to challenging anyplace. mainly because nothing left here I can actually challenge or something, time to do Anor Londo for real. After the Elevator ride you're presented with no clear path. But thankfully a helpful orange sign directed me up the precarious beams atop... the church? Where I get assaulted by some sort of Assassin's Creed Assassin. A lot. Including when I have to walk over the rafters that are smaller then my waist. Yay being a tank. Getting through here opens the way to... the main castle I guess and the bottom part of the church. Where I learn the monk guys are actually mad painters.
No, really.
I get some slight leg armor upgrade(my Equip Burden still too low for stone) and make my way to the castle. Two large guards attempt to stop me. I stop them. Three Albino Gargoyles gets what's coming to all molesters and get knocked off into the abyss. Seriously, they can't fly except to attack. But the fourth and fifth gargoyles get away with their sin because they have archers who feel like shooting goddamn lances at me. Death Count rise. Head back, take them out safetly. Learn the only way to progress is over increasingly narrow stripes of land with two archers sniping me. I can't even block these because they knock me back so far. Like off the edge when I get to the top and think "THEY EXPECT ME TO ATTACK THEM UP HERE!" because there's no place else to go. So on my next life I barely, barely make it because damn those are thin. Seriously, get a goddamn spear before you do this people. Thankfully the next bonfire is right after. With good buddy Soliare to do nothing.
So, this place is kind of a maze and it's populated by Silver Knights(who I mistook for Black Knights until they respawned) who aren't all that tough and give 900 souls a pop. I run into the Onion Knight and after killing three more Silver Knights he gives me the useless Tiny Being's Ring. Because 1/40th more HP is going to be the gamechanger here. I also find the newest blacksmith, a titanite demon who drops his pole and two Demon Titanite and Havel's Armor which is even better then the Stone but so heavy that I can't wear it and fast roll even with the Havel's Ring. But because I've been pumping my Endurance so much I can actually wear the armor without the Ring. Well, Except the Shield because it requires 50 strength to use.
I open up the two shortcuts and fight the Grand Giant's in the area before the boss. Basiclly just even bigger versions of the guards I'd been killing at the start. Just with an extra AOE and healing spell. No biggie. I actually tried to get summoned for the bosses... but then I realize everyone is probably just running straight to the fog door because they don't want to waste resources on the giants.
Now, the boss, well bosses... Are amazingly goddamn cool, with AWESOME MUSIC and the fight is so damn intense I was actually out of my seat fighting them. Also because the controller is kinda wonky and somtimes freezes up and has me run in circles and I really didn't want that to happen on this fight. So my fights... well the first time goes amazing. I kill one of them, get his item, the second one is dying, last bar of life and.... CHEAPSHOT! UGH. Second time I get like one attack off before they kill me. Now the third time... oooooh baby that was a DREAM. I actually took the part where they double-teamed me without a single Estus use. So I was over-zealous in healing for the single, but I managed it. 30k souls and plot progression.
Kneeling before the mighty Princess's breasts, I receive the Lordvessel, allowing me to travel to any Fire Keeper bonfire. Hell's yeah. I join the Princess's Guard Covenant because I'm sick of Way of the White and head down back to Darkroot to deal with that boss.
The Great Gray Wolf Sif is.... not much of a challenge after the mystery duo above. Using Havel's Armor probably didn't help him/her. I get m Abyss ring and head back to Demon's Ruin. Because I think it'll protect me from lava for some reason--it doesn't.
After that I go and do something involving Anor Londo a blue stone and fighting three guys without any healing. To gain... a thing.
So I return to New Londo and can actually progress now that I have the Lordvessel. There's now a floor! And solid enemies! And the Phalanx for some reason! And a Titanite Chunk--time to upgrade my spear!
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Radiant Historia- Alternate History Chapter Six. Granorg "Turning of the Tide" Saved before the boss. Almost caught up with where I am in the other history now. I have 49.38 on the clock and I never want this game to end~
Hence I am in the habit of fighting bosses with a variety of teams before moving on. Not always such as if there is extra plot scenes/a fair bit of dialogue before hand but it is something I've done a fair bit throughout the game.
Already beaten this particular boss with my standard party of Stocke, Aht and Eruca. Now doing it with Stocke, Rosch and Gakfa! Then inclined to do it with Raynie and Marco as second and third since Marco hasn't received a work out in a while. Probably finish with Stocke/Aht/somebody to grab the shiny from the boss again too =)
I settled on Stocke, Aht, Eruca after using it for a long stretch from Chapter 4 to Chapter 6 Standard History including for desert treks, the forest and the Holff Ruins so yeah lots of fighting going on. I used Stocke, Rosch, Raynie for a while after returning to AH but also tried out Stocke/Aht/Rosch and Stocke/Aht/Gakfa vs the SF boss. Once a Eruca joined in Alternate History too however I couldn't resist switching back to my typical blitz down party!~
(haven't really used Gafka much honestly apart from when he was forced very early on with Aht, against aforementioned SF boss and for his dual to learn the Strongman tech)
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Edit -
Interesting observations about speed. With my Stocke, Rosch, Raynie team Stocke was getting double turns. Against *SPOILERS* (current boss) Viola turn order is kind of odd. With Stocke, Rosch, Gafka it goes Viola, Stocke, Auto Defender/Auto Defender, Rosch, Gafka, Viola, Stocke, AD/AD, Rosch, Gafka, Viola, Stocke, etc (Viola gets a turn in between Rosch and Gakfa during the third round) With Raynie and Marco turn order goes Viola, Stocke, Raynie, Marco, Viola, Viola, Viola, Stocke, Raynie, Auto Defender, Marco, Viola, Enemy, Stocke, Raynie, Enemy, etc. I don't get it. Something seems off. Viola seems to get an awful lot of turns here unless all three enemies are all actually just attacking all at once during that first round and I'm getting confused by it :P *SPOILERS* With Stocke, Aht, Eruca vs the grunts in Granorg Aht goes first and wipes out a bunch of stuff with Cross Star (no pre-emptive strike and no speed boosters)
(other random observations about the boss fight Gakfa dies because I forget to use a MDF+ Herb on him - this is because he only has 32 base MDF! Since I am twinking his ATK with the Bestial Soul. Raynie runs out of MP to use G spells before the fight ends with the Stocke/Raynie/Marco team - Auto Defenders take a while to go down and I end up finishing them off by transturning for Stocke turns and G Fire spam, why does Stocke have more MP than all the girls anyway~ Perhaps I should have twinked Raynie some for MP instead of full on MAG twink (she has La Tormenta from the Thaumaton boss steal, Sable Larme and Eruca's accessory lineup for a total of 164 MAG~)
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(random musings)
Though I've been a bit puzzled by some of the skill choices PCs have received later on. Mostly recently Aht picked up Air Assault which I believe is an ST launch skill (I admit I haven't used Air Assault much with anyone) Why does she need an ST launcher when she already has an MT launch skill in Cross Star which not only crowd sweep OHKOs your average Astellian/Granorgian grunts (like the Astellian Officers in the current chapter) but takes a solid chunk out of slightly more durable stuffs like thaumatons (allowing Stocke or Eruca to follow up with GT/MT stuffs in Heat Blade/Judgement with extra GT/MT hits added on from the drop due to the MT launcher =)? Also Eruca learns Push Assault after the boss. Yaay?
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Statistics currently if anyone's interested (before boss) -
Stocke L54, Aht L52, Eruca L50, Gafka L43, Marco L49, Raynie L51, Rosch L43
Stocke
Pieti Edge
Moirae Manteau
Rook Stud (DEF/MDF +10) x 3
HP - 520 MP 215 ATK 108 MAG 113 DEF 145 MDF 139 SPD 38 LUC 37
Aht
Glaux Dagger
Giant Cape
Crystal Charm (MAG +6) x 2 Thaumatech Orb (MAG+5, MDF+5)
HP - 360 MP 180 ATK 74 MAG 165 DEF 78 MDF 106 SPD 49 LUC 36
Eruca
Vega
Fortune Gown
Thauma Charm (MAG +10) x 3
HP- 348 MP 206 ATK 53 MAG 157 DEF 51 MDF 144 SPD 37 LUC 52
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Dark Souls: beat the Taurus Demon. I didn't realize I should be trying to block his attacks. I figured something that big would just smash through my blocking attempts but apparently not. Used my winnings to buy the Force miracle. Comes with 21 uses... Hmm... Maybe I can use that to run through the area with the ghosts.
I didn't know you could block his attacks either. I just dodged them.
Also, where did you find that miracle? I haven't seen anyone selling magic at all...
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Dark Souls: beat the Taurus Demon. I didn't realize I should be trying to block his attacks. I figured something that big would just smash through my blocking attempts but apparently not. Used my winnings to buy the Force miracle. Comes with 21 uses... Hmm... Maybe I can use that to run through the area with the ghosts.
I didn't know you could block his attacks either. I just dodged them.
Also, where did you find that miracle? I haven't seen anyone selling magic at all...
One of the starting guys in Firelink sells miracles, the one standing with the shield and mace. You have to bug him a lot to do it though.
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Also the blacksmith guy in the dark waterfront area near the beginning sells a couple of Sorceries.
And for the record, Force push does not affect those ghosts - at least not when you're uncursed.
Oh! I forgot to tell about my controller woes. My wired controller was having trouble with RT and RB. Nothing like standing there and not attacking to die against a crappy enemy. So I switched to the wireless 360 controller. Now remember that Dark Souls has no pause feature. "Please reconnect controller.". Dead batteries, dead character. :P
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Yes, CK, yes. This is weird. They both always have the same expression!
Vagrant Story: Got this from the PSN store, replaying. (Front Mission 3, too)
This is starting to show its age, but it has some charm. I'm doing a crossbow game with no magic or break art use. I'm not switching weapons, just keeping the same one like last time, because switching weapons is so horribly boring. Wheee.
Right now, after the third boss, I'm wondering how we ever had trouble with this game. Ashley is the crossbow god, who seems to cheat and get nearly unlimited infinite turns while his enemies are stuck with a crappy ATB system. I've only died once because I've underestimated random enemies and fought them with 100 risk.
Sydney is really lame. Wow.
Dark Souls: Yessss.
Female barbarian, because mages were a bit useless in PVP last time. Picked the key. I beat bull head on the first try!! ... By throwing 2000 fire bombs at him. I then went to the blacksmith, saw the thing in his basement and ran the hell away. Seriously. No.
The game feels so lonely compared to Demon's Souls and its Nexus. (Granted, this all went to hell with one particular character)
Anyway it's an improvement in every way. Atmosphere, graphics, music are a lot better. Enemies are more agressive, attack in crowds, use more tricks, don't let you run away, etc. Etrus Flasks solve the severe balance issue Demon's Souls had, as I thought. The luck stat isn't here anymore. Being a human isn't much better than being a zombie but you kind of want to be a human anyway because zombies are just disgusting. The way status attacks are handled now is a nice little touch. Battles are still tight, with perfect level design, etc. I love it. GOTY, definitely. There are very few games I could be more involved in.
I'm only worried about the limited use invasion items.
I've only gotten the message writing item recently, looking forward to being a jerk by writing a message about some shiny treasure near a bottomless pit.
About 10 deaths so far.
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You can get a permanent invasion item but it's obtuse as all hell. There are other ways to invade though...
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Castlevania: Harmony of Despair: Go figure, I ended up grabbing this for the PS3 thanks to pressure from Super, among others. Have to say, glad I did. Game's fun, with an interesting mix of Classicvania and Metroidvania, with the added element of multiplayer making things interesting--even if I keep getting lost. Played around with a few characters, so I actually have a good idea of how some of them work.
And by 'a few', I mainly mean "not Belmonts". Dunno why I've been avoiding them. Maybe I'll try a bit later on that front.
As for character evaluations:
Alucard: Yeah, I can see people saying he sucks, if we take fully ground characters. He's fairly solid, however, and from what I can tell, QUITE hard to kill; shields are a very nice defensive boost, he's got a rather quick slash with one-handed swords, and Mist Form is a good dodge against less lengthy attacks if you can get the timing down. Can't use a lot of the heavy weapons, but what he has works. Skills take forever to power up for him given how often scrolls seem to drop, so that might be another sticking point. I'd rate him as a rather tanky, but generally useful fighter type.
Soma: As far as physical types go, he's a lot harder to use than Alucard. Gear's there, but you don't get shields with him--though I've been tearing things up with a Bhuj as of late. Axe specials are good for wrecking things in particular. Souls...are a completely different thing, though; low drop rate, and it's not like AoS/DoS where your souls are fairly competent from the get-go; Soma needs an INT boost to make those be competent. Also, lot of the early Bullet Souls you get are just awkward to use, at least unless you get lucky and get a Flame Demon soul, or later on a Nova Skeleton. Probably one of the better characters once he's built up, but holy crap that's some grinding. And boss souls never drop. Ever.
Oh and Soul Eater Rings cost 200k apiece.
Yoko: Oddly enough, she's the only character I managed to beat Drac with. She's very limited, but what she has is solid. Three spells, but those three will wreck most things' days; Blue Splash for crowds, Holy Flame for ground-based smaller targets, and Holy Thunder to wreck most bosses. Doesn't really like the lack of a divekick for some situations, but she's very easy to boost--weapon and spells are all she has, and those level up via Mastery. Her slight mobility disadvantage aside, she's a force to be reckoned with.
Charlotte: Holy hell, and I thought Soma started slow. Charlotte's an extremely slow-starter, and it's painfully so with her; her weapon's based on how much you absorb. What you can and can't absorb seems to be hard to determine, and is a random chance based on the spell, even. She does get better starting options than Soma, though, to compensate for the fact that she -really- can't melee worth anything at the outset. Absorption's a guaranteed block against projectiles, though, and that's worth noting. Like Yoko, no divekick, which makes mobility around large enemies a pain.
I'd comment on Shanoa, but Snowfire already covered a lot of what there is to say for her.
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You can get a permanent invasion item but it's obtuse as all hell. There are other ways to invade though...
Hm, gonna have to look this up.
Are there any downsides to invading this time around? I didn't do it last time because of world tendency bullshit.
I got invaded by someone a few days ago. We had a pretty cool fight. I lost though. I kind of suck at melee characters and it's too hard to actually use magic and even worse in PvP. Maybe getting something besides an 8 shot fireball spell would help...
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Outland: Saw this on Extra Credits and was like "Metroidvania with Ikaruga gimmick? Why yes, I -did- just get a hard-on."
Awesomely fun, not overly difficult, but that could be because the downslide breaks everything. Really tight controls. No complaints - it is what it advertises. The music's a bit repetitive, though. Still, EC hasn't steered me wrong yet!
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You can get a permanent invasion item but it's obtuse as all hell. There are other ways to invade though...
Hm, gonna have to look this up.
Are there any downsides to invading this time around? I didn't do it last time because of world tendency bullshit.
I got invaded by someone a few days ago. We had a pretty cool fight. I lost though. I kind of suck at melee characters and it's too hard to actually use magic and even worse in PvP. Maybe getting something besides an 8 shot fireball spell would help...
Sorta. You can't heal yourself with Estus(actually as any Phantom but invaders probably have it worst). I think invading successfully gives you Sin which I frankly have no idea whatsoever about other then it makes you a target for the Blades of Darkmoon Covenant.
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Sin is when the player you invaded uses an item after the battle to rat you out. This puts you on a targeted list for players in Darkmoon Covenant (which is probably where serious pvpers will flock).
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Titan Quest - I felt like some Diablo clone since Torchlight 2 hasn't manifested itself yet. Goddamn this fails at being remotely engaging. Like I didn't play it long. All the animations are terrible and floaty, nothing has any real impact. After having to watch the unskippable intro movie twice (once to install the game and then once for the expansion) I was hoping for some interesting gameplay. Nope. Click on stuff until you level up. Picking up items requires you to be pressing Alt to even tell when something goddamned drops and combat has no sense of connection between your character and the enemies.
This is a very super shallow genre. The sense of feedback from combat is actually really important, especially early on when you don't have the loot traps to suck you in. This is entirely unfulfilling. You click on stuff until you level up and hope you realised you can't pick up or see items until you press Alt (nice that tooltips don't mention it) then you level up. OH HEY MAKE CHOICES FROM ALL THESE MASTERIES. Do you know what any of them is? Nope. Hope you pawed through a manual or have 20 minutes to look through them all.
I picked Warfare. I got a stacking damage buff that keeps going up as I attack stuff. It wears off in about 2 seconds.
Boring. Stopping now. I am sure it improves later on, but at this rate it is not worth my time or energy when I could be playing more Torchlight if I wanted light stupid roguelikes or just go to Diablo 2 again and spam Teeth for an hour on a level 1 Necromancer. It might be pathetic, but at least it feels like you are damned well doing something in Diablo 2.
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Titan Quest never really becomes good. I stopped about 20 hours in and I had an uber ranger.
Dark Souls: Beat the Capra (?) demon. Simple enough after killing his pet dogs. The gargoyle... wasn't.
I don't really know where to go now. The forest, I guess.
PS3 controller sitting on my thighs -> R2 is pressed -> Uber attack against NPC priest dude that can absolve you of your sins. I mashed the power button but it was too late. Had to kill him when I restarted the game. Hope this won't screw anything up. I bought his book at least. (The three biggest sinners playing the game are priest women!?)
Bought armor from the first shopkeeper, and traded my axe for an halberd, then got it up to +5. It's really good. Really high damage, long reach, but if you miss with it you waste a lot of time. Nice concept.
Still no invasion, I assume that everybody is dead. Getting humanity through the normal game seems a lot harder than in Demon's Souls.
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RH: just got to Granorg on the SH route. Very fun game. Stocke is clear MVP this early in the game due to having left/right/push/air assaults, and just general stat superiority over the others. Rosche is alright, I like his row/column moves, but he's slow enough that hsi turns aren't synched up with the others like Stocke/Rainie/Marco are. Had Aht for just a short bit, but didn't use her at all. The horrible equips she starts with made me reluctant to use her there.
As an amusing note, between RH and P2IS, I am slowly being broken of my "use normal attacks to conserve MP" habits. Slowly and painfully.
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Dark Souls: Beat the Capra (?) demon. Simple enough after killing his pet dogs. The gargoyle... wasn't.
I don't really know where to go now. The forest, I guess.
PS3 controller sitting on my thighs -> R2 is pressed -> Uber attack against NPC priest dude that can absolve you of your sins. I mashed the power button but it was too late. Had to kill him when I restarted the game. Hope this won't screw anything up. I bought his book at least. (The three biggest sinners playing the game are priest women!?)
Bought armor from the first shopkeeper, and traded my axe for an halberd, then got it up to +5. It's really good. Really high damage, long reach, but if you miss with it you waste a lot of time. Nice concept.
Still no invasion, I assume that everybody is dead. Getting humanity through the normal game seems a lot harder than in Demon's Souls.
There's no real "way" to go, you can honestly go and fight one of the Lords first if you want to. But you are kind of directed towards the Depths/Blighttown after beating Capra.
That is why I unequip my weapon anytime I go near NPCs.
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The depths/Blight town? Hum. The Master Key made everything confusing I guess, I don't know where I should/can go anymore. Other people: Don't pick the master key.
I just know I'm in the catacombs here and I don't want to be there anymore, right now.
I also have access to the Valley of the drake and I don't want to be there either. Same for where that hydra is.
I see you had a lot of trouble with the Capra demon, but blocking + Strafing worked fine for me really. I beat him on my first try without ever trying to roll, with standard equipment, a good shield and an Halberd+5.
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I see you had a lot of trouble with the Capra demon, but blocking + Strafing worked fine for me really. I beat him on my first try without ever trying to roll, with standard equipment, a good shield and an Halberd+5.
Any time I blocked I got my shield knocked away. Even with the highest poise I could stack the dogs would keep me stunned long enough for the follow-up swings of death.
The rematches are Pure and Utter Sweet Revenge though.
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Still no invasion, I assume that everybody is dead. Getting humanity through the normal game seems a lot harder than in Demon's Souls.
Rats drop Humanity items if you really want it.
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Dark Souls: A whole days play for no gain.
When I woke up... whenever, I had a few things I wanted to check off a list.
1. Buy the ugliest set of armor ever.
2. See the fat roll.
3. Defeat the Four Kings.
Despite accomplishing all of these things all the failure just made it so empty. Mainly because the armor is ugly as sin, the fat roll is embarrassing(and not in the funny haha way) and the Four Kings are boring.
First, in order to actually afford said armor I wander off and grind a bit of soul. Overshoot hilariously then curse how I have to move to buy the ugly-ass thing. Then behold! For the exact same weight as before I'm nearly 80 Defense higher! Yayyyyy! Since I don't feel like going after the Four Kings yet I head back to Anor Londo to look at the stats for Boss Soul items. Specifically the shields. Now, the Eagle Shield's had a good run, but I feel I need some shinier. But first I actually get a summon for O+S! I do the summon job of distracting S until phase 2, but the summoner doesn't do his job and heal while I'm on my last fringe of health. So when S is down to is last bar I die. ARGH. So while I'm grinding in Anor Londo while waiting for the Summon I get summoned again! By a guy who didn't need my help at all since O was nearly dead by the time I entered the room! The guy barely needed my help but not like I was gonna say no to 15k souls for no work. On the 3rd summon(yay!) I actually got to do something and survive! It was all in good fun too.
So after a good hour has passed I level up and upgrade my stuff and make one of my new shields, making me Captain America in the process. Or am I Taskmaster? Now I think is the time to go and fight those Four Kings! Except I don't even make it to their door because I get ganged up on by 5 enemies at once and spears can't crowd control at all. But whatever! I make it the next time! And after a two minute run down stairs I fall into the depths of the Abyss. Where I damage-race the Four Kings because that's how you do it. And my continued streak of losing on the enemies last bar of health rears its ugly-ass head again. Attempts two and three don't go any better, the only thing of import being that you lose 1 humanity even if you recover the bloodstain. But on my fourth/fifth/whateverith run down a titanite chunk drops! Then another! I can upgrade my spear... twice! Oh yeah, sweet +5 trophy goodness. Four Kings don't have a thing on me now!
Elevated by my newfound glory, or actually possibly before it, I decide to go knock the hydra down a few heads. I somehow win by only killing 5 heads because I used a plunging attack on one head because of glitchy physics. My reward is a dragon scale)for a weapon I don't use anymore or a Covenant I'll never join) and a caster ring(for my heavy melee guy). Oh, a set another set of Knight armor in a location far harder to reach then the Elite Knight's armor. Logic!
I then contemplate my choices, and decide to go to the Painted World. It's not all that painted though, more like Early Current Generation. Despite not being all that big, the place has a bunch of hidden passages and twisty mazey stuff and the best enemy ever in the form of a skeleton stuck in a spiked wheel that rolls at you. Also the worst enemy in the form of some harpy hags who love to spam their bullshit grab for 7/10s of MY life. Also the Hopilites retarded cousins.
So after a pain of meandering through harpies I get to not-the-boss who's a poison/bone dragon like the one I never killed in Valley of the Drakes. He never manages to hit me. So after another ambush and a door I couldn't open I reach the boss! Who I can happily ignore and run past because she doesn't want to fight. Neat? Least I got some EXP.
So I mess around with Covenants a bit more and fail to get summoned for O+S for about a long ass time and figure I should make my choice regarding the Lordvessel. I make the dull choice because it's not like I'll PVP and the souls for selling are... crap. ....OK, even if I won't PVP going Darkwraith would have been so much better. Bah. Whatever. This opens up three newish areas. So first I head to the Duke's Archives, where crystal is the name of the game. Well the first game are two new giant boars whose heads become my own. But eventually lots of crystals, and those mage guys who give out a paltry 800 souls on death and respawn and can zap away 4/5s of my lifebar with their melee. Seriously?
So I continue inwards and upwards to my horrible demise which turns out to be a planned demise as I wake up in some half-metal cage. After respawning the only enemies I see, I eventually notice the snakeman outside the cell who conveniently has the key. So my resulting jailbreak has the guards put on some awful music and unleash some sort of blue snake-squid to hunt me down. Also to hunt themselves down as well it seems since the snakemen run the hell away from them. I don't know why since they're piss-easy. And down on the ground-floor my not-good buddy Logan has gotten captured again. I don't think there's anyway this is actually psychically possible but whatever. I head up a nearby ladder and turn off the abortion of a sound and get the exit key. Heading all the way back up, I learn there's actual ladder combat and snakemen have a distinct advantage in it. But can they fall off as well as I can!?
So, the rest of the Arcvhies are a pain in the ass as enemies are always sniped at you and the souls are crap and it's all an identical maze. But eventually I surpass the maze and find a great green field and giant white/purple cave of crystals and about a dozen of those crystal golems from around the hydra. Except these ones are stronger and give off 800 souls(REALLY?). Also the magical gold golem who spits out Onion Knight's Daughter when I kill it(No, really). I case the Crystal Cave a bit then decide it's not worth it. I go and upgrade and level and bust out my second new shield. Backing the highest base Stability in the game, the Greatshield of Artorias. I'm taking about half as much stamina damage with this bad boy.
So then I get summoned for round 4 with O+S alright! This time we go the manly way and fight O second. But all three of us this time are ballers and we kick his giant golden ass of awesome! Mmm, mmm souls.
Hmm, I somehow have three humanity, so I kindle the closest bonfire to Crystal Caves. Now, let me tell you about the Crystal Cave. Actually I won't because I'm cruel and it'll make me feel better knowing you all suffered blindly.
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Had Aht for just a short bit, but didn't use her at all. The horrible equips she starts with made me reluctant to use her there.
Fun fact that I didn't find out about until the end of the game >_> Once Aht gives you the ability to find hidden objects/chests there's a dagger that can be found for her back in Alistel in one of the upstairs rooms (Heiss's?) which gives ATK +12, MAG +18, Speed +5. The speed boost is most noteable and would have been nice to have early on. My endgame Aht with MAG +85 from the Glaux Dagger doesn't really care I don't think <_< Might be worth it to pick it up early Gate though for forced stuffs in the other history though I'm not sure/don't remember if it's better than Aht's storebought stuff there =)
(probably especially useful if you haven't found/aren't buying the speed boosting accessories yet)
I only found Rhapsody while I was back in Alistel during endgame stuff so yeah sadness~
**
Stocke is probably my overall MVP too I think. Assuming early/forever Moirae Manteau of course (and the stat edge/etc earler that Gate mentioned)
Speaking of Radiant Historia saved back in time after the AH final boss. Still to fight the from back in SH proper (scouted ahead/back a bit the other day >.>) Stocke L60, Aht L59, Raynie L58, Marco L55, Rosch L52, Gafka L52. I believe I still have one dungeon left to do so it'll be interesting to see how final levels proper turn out. I'm curious as to how Gate's levels will wind up. I actively avoided randoms during the first half of the game only really fighting them when I blundered/ran into them and when building Rosch levels up a bit so. Trying to get a feel on whether to allow characters their entire skillsets in the DL or not =)
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Yeah, got the Rhapsody early. I went poking around for hidden chests for a bit.
On that note, more RH. This time doing the AH route...pretty much straight from "rescue Rosche" up until the node that FINALLY opens up in Celestia. Used Aht during the section here since I had the Rhapsody for her...and you know what? I regret doing that. Maybe it's just this area, but the randoms are either movable and weak enough that you don't need traps to kill them quickly or immovable and actually durable. Aht is nothing but a liability agianst the latter. Also the boss had two movable opponents that weren't actual threats and I mopped up easily(with traps, of course). And then two immovable ones that were pains in the ass with MT attacks and tankiness and again she is dead weight. I'll give her a go again later when she has more then just "trap one space" going for her, even once she gets MT healing she'll be useful. But damn the girl practically defines slow starting characters.
Paused at the node there to do some sidequesting.
Oh yeah, before I forget, what do the Fire Pact and Death Pact special items I picked up do? Skill scrolls for another char?
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Yes Gate. It's a bit obscure, though. If you see an unusual, seemingly pointless place, make sure to come back later to check it out.
Dark Souls:
The woman in the sewers sells humanity for 5000 souls too. Probably not that much endgame.
Anyway, I thought that the catacombs were where I needed to go next. (and confused them with the sewers) So many resets here. Skeletons don't give souls, and come back to un-life as long as you don't kill the necromancer nearby. Usually he's not too far, and like bosses he's completely gone from the game when you kill him, but this was still hard as hell.
Ultimately, during one run, I ran like a madman avoiding every skeleton, saw a shiny item down the scariest well I've ever seen, and made a few last jumps, going deeper and deeper with no means to go back.
Down there was... a blacksmith!? And enemies that completely raped me in two seconds. But I still managed to turn that Halberd +5 into a shiny Fire Halberd. It is overpowered.
So after another "No. Fuck it. I'm not going back there." moment (this really happens a lot) I went back to where the capra demon was and ran through the sewers. Easy enough with a fire halberd, until big boss of doom. How the hell are you supposed to beat him normally?
So... Blighttown. It's like the Valley of Defilement from Demon's Souls except worse.
I won't lie, the framerate drop makes it unbearable, it's like playing a PC game. Playing offline here helps a lot.
I got up to the swamp, saw the spider lair, then no. Screw this place. I'm leaving.
I still got a ton of upgrade items from the worms in the swamp, so my weapon is now a ridiculous Fire Halberd +5. I also grabbed a whip and will level it up to pretend I'm a Belmont.
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Dark Souls:
The woman in the sewers sells humanity for 5000 souls too. Probably not that much endgame.
She has a limited stock.
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The procession of Chu-Chu avatars is making me want to play Xenogears again. *shakes fist* CIATOOO!
In other news: FFTA2
Going to make an all-Moogle and Nu Mou team to see if they're any better when not compared to gamebreaking Viera/Hume/Seeq classes.
Flintlock sucks. Goddamn does it suck. Why would you do that to me, Square? Don't you WANT me to like Moogles?
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Wait, what? I would never have an XG avatar, nor endorse anyone playing XG ever.
FF7 - Went on a romantic date with Barret. At least, if your idea of romanticism is having a giant black man hovering over you telling you not to date his 7 year old daughter you creepy pedo followed by him machine gunning fireworks because they 'pissed him off'. Then I learned not to trust the mascot character. It's a hard lesson in life to learn.
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Sengoku Basara 3: Tadakatsu's Kanbe route is hilarious. Dude just cannot help but screw up everything he touches.
Djinn: Moogles and Nu Mou only? Sounds like All Juggler, All The Time. Smile Toss is so broken. Especially with 2 jugglers, both with Charge as thier secondary. Smile toss back and forth, building enough MP to unleash Ultima Charges as soon as either one gets a turn. Not to mention moving anywhere on the board they please to do it. I'd personally call Juggler more broken then any single class Humes get, though Moogle doesn't have enough other good options to be better as a race.
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Wait, what? I would never have an XG avatar, nor endorse anyone playing XG ever.
FF7 - Went on a romantic date with Barret. At least, if your idea of romanticism is having a giant black man hovering over you telling you not to date his 7 year old daughter you creepy pedo followed by him machine gunning fireworks because they 'pissed him off'. Then I learned not to trust the mascot character. It's a hard lesson in life to learn.
So you came?
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Dark Souls is dark: Where you can become a mushroom.
When I/we/us/Kevin Bacon last left off he was cursed for the first actual time. That's where those two purge stones bought a lifetime ago come in handy! Except they don't and we go visit Ingward to get the cure from him. Except he's a big smelly jerk who after defeating the Four Kings just blathers about heading to the surface. So I return to Firelink, and pay the Humanity price to remove my curse because we're dumb. So instead of going to seek revenge we go back to Anor Londo to fight O+S some more. And grind in the meantime. Two summons this time, one success, one failure because the summoner though getting next to the charging SS was a good idea.
So I go to Blighttown to go help out the Onion Knight. Then I go back to challenge the Crystal Caves again. I think. My mind's kinda murky... uhhhh, anyway, take two against the boss while following the instructions the other gave my goes poorly. Again. And I'm cursed. Again. Luckily I have three purging stones.. wait, three? Oh yeah, I visited the female undead and Oswald. Ha, the highest sinner is lower SL then I am... Uh, anyway, time for take 3. Going against the wondrous advice that's gotten me killed and cursed twice, I actually learn the boss's obnoxiously simple pattern and kill him without fuss. Whoopie.
2/4ths of the way done, I decide to return to the Demon Ruins, only to see the Capra Demons actually do respawn for glorious slaughter-death-kill. LOTS of SLAUGHTER-DEATH-MURDER-BUTCHER-MASSACRE-KILL. And two Tauros demons respawn and some sort of fat pot cat statue thing and a bunch of obnoxious worms and an oddly soon placed bonfire. Seriously? Was that one hall of Capras so difficult that it requires a bonfire after them? Hahahahhahaha! Also I kill Kirk again.
So, I throw down some summon signs for the boss. First summoner gets killed before she even clears the entrance. Dammit. Second summoner takes too long to go through, but he rocks pretty hard and we waste the boss. Third summoner gets distracted by e Darkmoon guy coming for his head twice(same guy even). I was frankly useless in the fight except as a second target and surprising the hell out of the guy as he ran away by keeping up with him in my fatso armor. Oh yeah, I can now fast roll in heavy armor. Oh yeah. We kill the boss easily again. Then after an hour of no summons I go and effortlessly kill the boss.
Further in is another bonfire and another boss. And further up is a pointless shortcut. I revive to human and summon Solaire because he's a bro and I should be able to join Warriors of Sunlight if he survives the boss. Who goes down easy again because Solaire tanks him while in lava. Spiffy. Except rumors were wrong and I still can't join. And I'm too high level for any boss now it seems argh.
So I head for the dear dark Catacombs. Where I'm so grossly overleveled I can two-shot the skeletons. So imagine my surprise when someone invades me because I'm still human. I win, because the guy had the bright idea to try two-handing his weapon against someone with heavy armor and shield and spear in the end.
Then I die by screwing up the jump to the blacksmith.
Then I beat the boss in seven attacks because I'm too overleveled for this area.
And the Tomb of Giants is nearly as dark as the Abyss. Which is impressive because the only light in the Abyss is from you, the Four Kings, your bloodstain, the bonfire and Keethe.
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Mmm yeah agreed on the randoms Gate though I mainly only used Aht for utility with Steal/Items early (the little goblin dude things have Might Herbs if I remember right and my Stocke hadn't picked up Steal yet) Which boss though? This one -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6KH9kXfhU4
(Forest Bear?)
Bears contrary to appearances can actually be pushed so worth keeping in mind for future reference - and glad you did give Aht a chance at least! :)
**
Yes Gate. It's a bit obscure, though. If you see an unusual, seemingly pointless place, make sure to come back later to check it out.
I know where to redeem the skill scrolls and stuff for Raynie and Marco (though haven't done so since Resist Boost/move skill), Aht (haven't redeemed any yet!) G man's (just Strongman) and Rosch (just the one tied in with the story so far) but beats me on Stocke and the other character. The first five are pretty obvious though especially since Aht and Gakfa's can basically be done enroute during the plot (Aht's Wandering Soul can be completed while doing plot stuffs endgame as well) I think and of course Rosch's first couldn't be more obvious :)
The final dungeon is giving me more levels than I expected thanks to the puzzle enemies and the respawning crystals. I know which crystals you mean now Fenrir. At first I thought it was the white ones in the final dungeon in the other history and I was wondering how I couldn't fight them haha :P
**
Edit - Wow just wiped horribly to the final's third form w/th my Stocke/Raynie/Rosch secondary team. Characters kept getting cursed and then eventually everyone was hit by MT Curse and Stocke's healing/Raynie's Regenerate couldn't keep up with overall damage being done alone without item backup especially not when the boss followed up by inflicting MT Poison. Finally 2/3 of my team was wiped out from a Dark Matter + Aftermath combo (Rosch survived on 11~ HP >_>) and Rosch couldn't hold the forte all by himself. Evil~
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Dark Souls: making some progress! Found the Undead Parish. Beat the armored boar after a couple of tries. Actually managed to beat the black knight in the church, which is the first one I've been able to beat. Found the blacksmith and upgraded my mace to +5, because Gygax is an amateur. Killed the magician after several tries. Fought the gargoyles and died, but they actually weren't too bad. So I go back, turn human, summon Solaire, apply lightning to my mace, and completely devastate them. Ring that bell!
This whole thing is so scary I just want to crawl into a bird's nest and curl up in the fetal position. WAH!!! Oh, I'm back in the tutorial area. That's just the thing to relax me: some easy enemies to kill and... OH MY GOD THEY'VE DISCOVERED FIRE
I can't beat any of the black knights in the asylum, so I go back to the Undead Burg. Finally find what the basement key unlocks, so I go get mobbed by thieves and finally find the Capra demon. Yeah, that's pretty annoying. Think I'll do that later.
So I go back to the asylum to grind, because I want to buy the thing that opens up Darkroot Gardens so I can make my mace holier than thou.
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Radiant Historia. Ending get. Went with the Stocke/E/Aht blitz down/mage/magic defence tanks team ftw. E blitzed with G Frost, Aht supported with Polaris, Lunatic and Area G Heal/healing skills and items, etc throwing in some damage with Cross Star when free and Stocke acted as odd job man w/th buffing items/etc throwing in Power Waves and G Fires as needed too. Ending made me baw even though I knew it was coming. Still just a giant sap like that >_> A lot of the stuffs near and including the end was sad. Final thoughts on everything after I've done the sidequests, post game and stuff.
Final levels Stocke L64, Aht L63, Raynie L62, Marco L58, Rosch L56, Gafka L56, E! L51~
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Dark Souls: making some progress! Found the Undead Parish. Beat the armored boar after a couple of tries. Actually managed to beat the black knight in the church, which is the first one I've been able to beat.
That's actually a Heavy Knight.
I can't beat any of the black knights in the asylum, so I go back to the Undead Burg. Finally find what the basement key unlocks, so I go get mobbed by thieves and finally find the Capra demon. Yeah, that's pretty annoying. Think I'll do that later.
KnightS? Oh right, there's supposed to be an Archer one isn't there...
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Black knight/Heavy knight, whatever. He was a bit too busy trying to smash my face in with a mace to tell me his name.
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I, on the other hand, am 100% stuck on both available bosses: Bell Gargoyle and Capra Demon.
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Black knight/Heavy knight, whatever. He was a bit too busy trying to smash my face in with a mace to tell me his name.
Hey, you don't want to be confused if/when you start farming things.
I, on the other hand, am 100% stuck on both available bosses: Bell Gargoyle and Capra Demon.
If you get desperate you can always go human and summon Solaire for the Gargoyle.
Dark Souls: Instead of the usual paragraph rant I accomplished less then piss-all so you get a bunch of hyphens instead.
-Found the fourth Knight ring. Whoopee for increasing bow range.
-Saved Dusk. Found out I have too low Intelligence to do any spell ever.
-Bought all of Petrous' Miracles.
-Joined Darkmoon.
-Got summoned by some guy in the same abomination of armor as I am to fight Darkmoon phantoms in the Darkened Anor Londo. We prevailed because the first guy could barely hurt us with backstabs, the second was AFK and the third was off in nowheresville and DCed.
-Wasted too much time trying to get summoned for anything.
-Tried Humanity farming, didn't get a single one. Didn't try hard though.
-Braved Tomb of the Giants. Was wrong in saying the Abyss was darker.
-PATCHES!
-Saved RheaReah. Killed Petrous. Gained two humanity. Maybe want to kill more spite-filled NPCs to get more humanity.
-Noticed mispellings between NPC names.
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CT, glad you stayed with Aht :p
Andrew, tips: Buy items from the blacksmith to upgrade your favourite weapon/armor to +5 or less and these bosses should be less difficult. I suggest an axe or an halberd if it's available at that point.
To get more souls you can use the undead or soldier souls you find lying around (that's their only purpose). Or you can get the items you need from those knights in the church (the difficult ones, yes)
Get 2 humanity points and you can become human at a bonfire, then kindle it to get 10 healing flasks instead of 5. This is the best use of humanity in the game so far.
I find the only way for the game to not be scary is to be scarier than the enemies. I do that with the armor set that was next to Ceaseless Discharge (no jokes about moms, please)
I've played for like 5 hours today and feel like I've accomplished basically nothing but beating two bosses. I don't know where I should go next. Maybe the place the bells opened. I feel like I'm sequence breaking everywhere I go.
Still a lot of fun though. The best thing about it is the level design, the whole game is just one big, cohesive, intimidating, trecherous, vertical place with no loading times. (unless you're trying to get back to the tutorial area) There's no minimap, there couldn't even be one, and it doesn't feel like it's missing at all (for all that I get lost all the time in Blighttown)
So guys Sakuraba (Tales & Tri-Ace music guy) made the music for this game, uh. It doesn't feel like him at all.
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Blue Dragon - So I beat up a bunch of robots who I'm sure won't be back later, and brought down what totally was hyped by the plot as a final dungeon. Evil Purple Bill Gates escaped though. Please switch to disc 2? Guess this game has a lot of epilogue.
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I, on the other hand, am 100% stuck on both available bosses: Bell Gargoyle and Capra Demon.
If you got the Gold Pine Resin from the house in Undead Burg (need Residence Key or Master Key), you can apply that to your weapon during the fight to do massive damage. You should be able to kill the first gargoyle by the time the second gets into position to attack you.
Almost all the early bosses are weak to lightning, so it's a really useful item (but you only get three early on).
Also equip the Hollow Solider Shield if you got it as a drop - it has a nice fire block rate.
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Trinity Universe: Breakin' the fourth wall~
Finally getting back to Kanata's story, though I keep wanting to stop and try out Valkyrie path to play with Flonne and Mr. Tension Gauge.
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Get 2 humanity points and you can become human at a bonfire, then kindle it to get 10 healing flasks instead of 5. This is the best use of humanity in the game so far.
To add unto this, the bonfire near Andre the Blacksmith in Undead Parish is a REALLY good spot to kindle. Hell, I might even say it's the best one to kindle.
I find the only way for the game to not be scary is to be scarier than the enemies. I do that with the armor set that was next to Ceaseless Discharge (no jokes about moms, please)
I've played for like 5 hours today and feel like I've accomplished basically nothing but beating two bosses. I don't know where I should go next. Maybe the place the bells opened. I feel like I'm sequence breaking everywhere I go.
Sen's Fortress. Balls are gonna drop.
So guys Sakuraba (Tales & Tri-Ace music guy) made the music for this game, uh. It doesn't feel like him at all.
Holy shit. :psyduck:
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FF7- Four resets to the Demon Wall. I've been playing the game pretty damn casually so up to this point I wasn't taking things very seriously. And then I got slapped around like a bitch. Unequipped a bunch of Materia and set up for Barrier-All and Haste-All and PHYSICAL GOD AERIS AW YEAH. more seriously, rolling double sixes on Dice and Bahamut helped a lot.
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Cap: Thanks for confirming that. I was kind of wondering, since I think I saw something about Lightning being good against pretty much everything in a loading screen. Was gonna try it on my next boss attempt.
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DS: A long, painful trip to Blighttown only resulted in one green titanite shard before I got tired. But that was enough to put the power of Jeebus into my mace. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go smash the shit out of some skeletons.
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and PHYSICAL GOD AERIS AW YEAH. more seriously, rolling double sixes on Dice and Bahamut helped a lot.
!!!
... oh. Don't get me all excited like that Ciatos! :P ;-)
**
(PC SPOILERS for unwary Gates maybe)
@ Fenrir - Well I wanted to give everyone a fair chance without factoring/trying not to factor personal bias into it (Aht is an obvious CT bait, Eruca turned out to be one too, less obvious there though some might have predicted it)/ and or just using my favourites all the time for this first run of the game and I did manage to use everyone/feel that I did give everyone a fair workout more or less (Marco might have gotten the short end of the stick/probably was the least used but that's because I want to save mass Turn Shift abuse for my typical crush the game type replay ;-) - though I confess I did sometimes exploit something similar w/th Aht/Eruca + Aht speed + Change + Turn Breaks MB abuse >_> I tried not to overabuse this combined with Aht's traps but yeaah fun times~) and for a judgement call/etc too =) Yeah either Marco or Gafka were my least used though I've been trying out Gafka more now that he has Wind God Strike. Next time I playthrough though I am going to use all the traps I want w/th lots of Turn Break abuse too =D
WGS + Cross Star/WGS + Electric Trap are a couple of combos I've been experimenting w/th most recently w/th the Gafka/Aht duo (if you trap a spare panal off the right hand side from the middle w/th Electric Trap vs the likes of the thaumachine/thamatech enemy types inc the ones in the final dungeon Gakfa will trigger it when he follows up w/th Wind God Strike for a pretty awesme/spectacular end to the battle ;o)~
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She did have Deathblow and a Power Wrist and Counter-Attack! It was pretty awesome, but I just felt the need to point out that Dice and Bahamut and Climhazard did the majority of the damage. Not really Aeris's fault that she had to use Phoenix Down every other turn. <_<
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Dark Souls: Wherein progress is stomped by horrible, irredeemable failure.
When last I left off I accomplished so little I couldn't even meander a terrible paragraph out of it and had to resort to my good friend the hyphen. Me and him are bros, like how I wanted to be a bro with Solaire but couldn't because Summons dried up and the game bugged out and killed him. After I took an hour to farm 2 humanity because just leaving the Painted World prevents the NPC Invader from spawning even if the boss is alive. So, after my stupid farming session I followed the instructions to save Solaire to the letter by spending 30 humanity to open up an alternate route into Lost Izalith where I'm supposed to kill some bugs and if I kill them he survives. Except as soon as I open the shortcut he's standing there all hostile. What the hell game.
Lost Izalith is a stupid place with stupid jerks. Except Onion Knight, again. At least I'm on target for saving him it seems. Also got the Red Slab. The Bed of Chaos is a dumb boring boss.
So the only thing left is Tomb of the Giants and joy of joys I now have a head parasite that generates light so I can use my shield. This of course doesn't stop me from being reamed by two giant skeletons. So I run down, again, wave hi to Patches and go in deeper. Meeting the new enemy the skeleton-dog-men things and suddenly being surprised by another Black Knight. Find the second bonfire and go human to fight another NPC Black Phantom Paladin Leeroy and get Brandt's dumb cousin.
On to Nito! First of the dead made up of a mountain of corpses and sadly the easiest boss I've fought. So now I can endgame! And endgame farm! Like farming those baby skeletons in Tomb of the Giants for 40 solid Humanity in about an hour. And get the Divine and Enchanted trophies. And farm more chunks from Kiln enemies. And get Black Knight Armor!
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Sengoku Basara 3: THE POWER OF LOVE WILL CONQUER ALL!!!
As in, yes, I did just beat Keiji Maede's quest, going the East route
Next up appears to be...uhh...some chick with a bow based on the opening CG.
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Sengoku Basara 3: Tadakatsu's Kanbe route is hilarious. Dude just cannot help but screw up everything he touches.
Djinn: Moogles and Nu Mou only? Sounds like All Juggler, All The Time. Smile Toss is so broken. Especially with 2 jugglers, both with Charge as thier secondary. Smile toss back and forth, building enough MP to unleash Ultima Charges as soon as either one gets a turn. Not to mention moving anywhere on the board they please to do it. I'd personally call Juggler more broken then any single class Humes get, though Moogle doesn't have enough other good options to be better as a race.
Smile Toss seems like it's only awesome with that combo, which is late (Nice before, but nowhere as good) barring me getting bad luck on access. I haven't seen anything with Ultima Charge yet (Also, 8-10 fights in Tinker. For multiple PCs. Ew). We'll see if it beats out Recharge for access, since I'm about 70% of the way through.
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Before that point, you probably use high level black magic spells with Smile Toss spam? But realistically Smile Toss is key in any effective Moogle setup, it's the only racial ability that's standout for them.
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Guardian Heroes: Never got to play the Saturn version, so I bought it for XBox. Fun little game. Beat the Story on Normal with Ginjirou.
I noticed Shale bought it also. Anyone else want to get in on some multiplayer?
DS: Beat the Capra demon on the fourth try. But my gear was pretty good at that point (Divine Mace +3, Elite Knight's Armor +8, etc.). I think a lot of the frustration comes from people with the Master Key getting to him too early. He's actually really far along if you follow the non-sequence-breaking flow. But yes, his room is way too small.
Went into the depths, fell down a hole and got cursed. AKA, game says, "You're not being fucked enough already; have some more!"
Tried several times to reach the NPC in New Anor Londo that removes curses. The ghosts themselves aren't particularly difficult. I 2HKO them with my weapon. But they attack at such odd angles/hide in walls and floors/attack you from the side of bridges where you can't attack them back without falling off... I just gave up and went and farmed in the Asylum to buy a Purging Stone instead.
Back in the Asylum, I lured out one of the Black Knights to the large room where the bonfire is. I was slowly whittling him down when for some reason the Elite Knight aggroed on me and came up the stairs to join the fight. I figure I'm screwed, but I just play defensive. They actually hit each other with their attacks! The Elite Knight killed the Black Knight, then I finished him off. Score!
In the Catacombs now, which is actually really easy. Until you get to the drag-racing skeletons. That part is just a little bit ridiculous.
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Cap: Capra Demon himself is easy. Its the dogs that are the devil. Fucking dogs.
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Metroid Fusion: Played and finished this. Final time (according to the game) was 5:00 with 55%.
Game's decent enough, probably would have been moer fun if I played it on the actual console instead of an Emulator thus meaning KEYBOARD FAILURE MOMENTS up the wazzu.
Elfboy can tell you more about some of my more interesting failures...if there were any.
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Before that point, you probably use high level black magic spells with Smile Toss spam? But realistically Smile Toss is key in any effective Moogle setup, it's the only racial ability that's standout for them.
Oh, for that purpose it's not bad at all, just really needs time for full potential (Also similar to Haste if using Illusionsts instead of a Black Mage, which I overall find to get more mileage out of. Although if I had half MP...).
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The curse healer requires a humanity to cure the curse. I'd rather keep my humanity and spend my souls thanks...
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DS: Beat the Capra demon on the fourth try. But my gear was pretty good at that point (Divine Mace +3, Elite Knight's Armor +8, etc.). I think a lot of the frustration comes from people with the Master Key getting to him too early. He's actually really far along if you follow the non-sequence-breaking flow. But yes, his room is way too small.
You can't Master Key to Capra(just things that make Capra look like a little girl.)
Today was goddamn crazy, but none of you will know why until uhhhh....
....
....
when you'll know why. Dammit that's so dumb...
Real Dark Souls Starts Now, The: So, with all Four Lord Souls obtained and the Final Boss unlocked, it's time to fashion and save what I can! Fashion: Raw, Crystal and Chaos! Save: no one goddammit! Whrrryyyyy! Bah.... Great Hollow was dumb and boring. Ash Lake is the prettiest dam place in a game full of it and the only reasonable place to farm the Clams for Twinkling Titanite but who cares anymore. Since I don't feel like screwing with Gwyndolin, I just go and fight the final boss.
So, Gwyn, totally deserves his own paragraph! Except not really since he wasn't all that hard. He's relentless as all hell, which would be a problem for characters not built like a goddamn tank so... yeah... Game end, Fire Linked.
NG+ GOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Enemies give about 4x soul, hit harder(kinda difficult to quantify how much harder though it's not as severe as Demon's Souls it feels. Then again I have actual armor and health in this game so whatever. So I start off my parade of manliness by killing the Asylum Demon as he drops down. Getting me a big fat hammer of useless. This also means you get the key from the Nameless Knight instead.
So, back at the empty Firelink of sadness. I head into Undead Burg and see if my theory holds water.... and yes, yes it does. You can beat the Belltower Gargoyles before you beat the Taurus Demon. Or so I fully learned some two hours after I made my way to the Parish bonfire. Then on the egging of others I went and got delicious revenge on the Stray Demon! Despite having 20 Estus+5 I still nearly lost a half-dozen times! Hahahahahaha!
Now... sometime later today/tomorrow something special will be coming up. So very special. Mwhahahahahahaha.
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Dark Souls: Playing nonstop whenever I can. This game is huge compared to Demon's. I kinda miss the simple & easy invasions, I've only been invaded 3 times so far. Everything else is better.
Let's see...
- Fortress of Sen (Fudo was right)
- Anor Londo (Wow. Nice flamboyant gothic style guys. Never thought I'd walk on a arc boutant thing, whatever you call them)
- Painting (Beat a completely invisible boss on the first try!)
- Dragon covenant (= Run from the hydra)
- Izaleth (Wow)
- Sif (Not too hard after all that)
The trap near the end of Izaleth is the most terrifying thing in the game. When I looked at where I nearly fell down, I stayed frozen for a while.
My chaos halberd and lightning spear are maxed. I pumped Vitality and Endurance to about 30-35, and now am focusing on strength to equip those ridiculously huge shields with huge damage reduction. I tried going with a very slow setup (one with the fat roll) but didn't really have any success with it, so I kept the suit I got near Ceaseless Discharge.
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Dark Souls: Up to death eleventy billion.
I feel kinda poorly kitted out compared to you all. One +2 Axe and that's it. Anyhow, I am down in Blighttown. I have found Spider-Boobs. I am not doing much damage to Spider-Boobs. I believe we may be at an impasse.
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Clearly you should switch weapons and use your sword.
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Radiant Historia- Meandering through/fiddling about w/th post/clear game/optional stuffs. I have 221 nodes clear on the Story/Chronicle record w/th Stocke, Marco and Gafka's optional skill/story nodes left to complete which would give a total of 224/236 nodes clear. I know one of the remaining nodes must be for the optional boss fight/the conclusion of the Final Trials but I still seem to be missing quite a few nodes otherwise and I have no idea where they are. Probably time to bring in a FAQ proper I think like CK mentioned something about "A Journey's End" being particularly obtuse to get/find otherwise :P
Also I read somewhere about a "Hermit Pierre" This isn't going to screw me out of the best/full ending proper is it? Since I never ran into this as I automatically saved Claire when I found her >.>
Also Gurl Stats (because why not?~) -
(taken at L67 - these are base stats without equips)
Raynie L67
HP - 665 (!!!)
MP - 149
ATK - 58
DEF - 48
MAG - 98 (!!)
MDF - 37
SPD - 50
LUC - 46
Aht L67
HP - 538
MP - 245 (!!)
ATK - 58 (!?)
DEF - 47
MAG - 86
MDF - 97 (!!)
SPD - 71 (!!!)
LUC - 49 (!?)
HRH L67
HP - 489
MP - 296 (!!!)
ATK - 57
DEF - 53 (!!?)
MAG - 131 (!!!)
MDF - 151 (!!!)
SPD - 52 (!)
LUC - 48
**
HP - Raynie > Aht > HRH
MP - HRH > Aht > Raynie
ATK - Raynie = Aht > HRH
DEF - HRH > Raynie > Aht
MAG - HRH > Raynie > Aht
MDF - HRH > Aht > Raynie
SPD - Aht > HRH > Raynie
LUC - Aht > HRH > Raynie
(stand out results bolded with exclamation mark fun)
Interesting results to say the least ... Factoring in equipment choices is where the real difference must lie in the end though and why despite having the highest base DEF HRH's defence tend to looks bad when everyone has equipment on since Raynie/Aht have better options for DEF+ armour =/ Also why both Aht and HRH end up having higher MAG than Raynie because Glaux Dagger and Freikugal Mercy have higher MAG boosting than La Tormenta >_>
(Edit - Oh wait I forgot I also have Rosch's skill node - that's 225/236 =D)
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After a little thought, a little confusion, a little message board and the like, I escaped Blight Town and made it back up! The Firelink Shrine keeper is dead ;_;.
Seeing everyone else at this point in the game apparently had good gear, I went back and upgraded. My axed is now a Raw Battle Axe +3. Hoorah.
Went back and recollected a bit of gear I had missed out on. Killed the Knight in the tower. Killed the Headless Statue.
Made it all the way back down to Blight Town and will attempt to engage Spider Boobs again.
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Hermit Pierre is permanently missable, but has no relation to any endings or the like. As I recall, it actually blocks you off from proceeding in the story until you fix it anyway, just it's known as the only bit of the game you can actually never see.
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The something special is still being cooked up, so until then, have boring!
Dark Souls, Revenge of the Ornstein: I like Ornstein. So I will become him. Gonna need 24 Str/Dex and 18 Endurance.
So start a New Game as a Warrior with Master Key. Actually avoid the boulder this time! Also the first Hollow Soldier I kill on this playthrough drops his damn Hollow Soldier's Shield. WHY! Asylum Demon goes down like the pansy he is and off to Lordran anf Firelink. I collect everything in Firelink, which means playing RUN AWAY with the skeletons because they aren't worth fighting. I pick up two soul eatss the Wing Spear and Zweihander. The Binoculors aren't worth it. Since I actually have the Dex for the Spear I switch to that before going to New Londo to get the Fire Keeper Soul and die. Actually I may have done that first. Well, whatever!
Inside the Undead Burg things die, chainmail armor is still useless, the Black Knight is a pansy with a decent shield. Taurus Demon only gets one hit on me while I'm laddering it up. I get the Drake Sword again, and manage to bait out Hellkite easily enough, and hit the Sunlight Alter bonfire. Sunlight eh? Err, anyway, kill the tower Black Knight and Hellkite is bugged/not bugged and not appearing again so whatever forward. Head to Andre, take out the Titanite Demon with a ton of arrows. Pick up Wolf Ring and Elite Knight's Armor and kill another Black Knight. So and kill Havel and get his ring so I can medium roll with the Elite Knight's Armor.
Then I go and get summoned for the Gargolye 11 times. Yep, 11! 1 was a failure, and halfway through my numbers I got invaded by yet another Japanese PVP twink(Smough's Armor? Really? Then again I saw a summon sign someone with Ornstein's Armor so eh.) And of course I somehow get backstabbed while behind hir.
So, with enough boss kills I get my Warrior of Sunlight Covenant up! Oh yeah! So when I finally go and fight it for real(after I test out my shiny new orange self of course) I summon another Sunlight guy and Solaire. We BRO IT UP. Sure, I can solo this, hell I practically did for one of my summoners, but you gotta BRO IT UP. Also I've maxed out all my equipment as possible.
Down in the lower Undead Burg, I get setting around for round 2 of the summon fest and more revenge against Capra Demon. Evening up the odds kicks a hell of a lot of danger out of his fight.
Also I randomly die to the fire-on-a-stick hollows because I was running around bored waiting for a summon.
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Dark Souls:
Beat the four kings and spoiler dude below the tomb of giants. (cheap bastards)
Getting to the end... It's really overwhelming.
Front Mission 3:
I never did Alisa's path, so why not.
Somehow I got kinda nostalgic, despite not really loving the game at all. I believe this is the "modern" 199Xcity setting I really liked. Same thing with Persona 2. I just wasted one hour surfing on the internetz. (and cheating to get passwords, yes. REVENGE)
I remember the main character being annoying, but wow. He is a completely unlikeable, annoying idiot, I have no idea why he's the main character of an JRPG. Part of this comes from him being a spoiled brat, so I restarted the game to name him Louis-Armand Neufchatel. This is still no excuse.
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I never could beat my first playthrough of the game. After like 35 hours I gave up. >_>
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Hahah. You still spent 35 hours with him:
(http://www.spriters-resource.com/psx_ps2/frontmission3/kazukitakemura.png)
(I like how the character designer bothered to draw one normal face, one happy face, one sad face and three angry faces. I think this says everything.
But he should have went with five.)
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All of them should've been angry faces imo.
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Kazuki is the best hero ever.
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DS: This game should win an award for abuse of the Havok physics engine. I can't decide what's worse: the giant leeches, the giant rats, or the giant piles of poop.
Finished the Catacombs. Pinhead died really quickly - had no trouble tracking him after teleports. Also joined the Gravelord Covenant, because it sounded like an amusing way to PvP. Except that after burning my Eye of Death, not a damned thing happened. No invasions, no extra souls, nothing. Bleah.
I did get invaded by a hacker though! He couldn't even fight worth a shit, but he was totally immune to damage so I couldn't do anything. Then he sends a message taunting me that I can't hurt him because he's level 300. So yeah, how are you able to invade a level 31 again?
Next, I turned human and summoned Solaire and another player to fight the Gaping Dragon. Great-looking boss design, by the way. So I die the first time. Go back and try it again. He's almost dead, then he fucking one-hits me. And dies at the same time. I get the key, but neither of us get Sunlight Medals. :( Mind you, this is because my Gravelord Sword Dance should have killed him instantly (10 hits of ~340 damage), but he kept jumping over it!
Now I can go to Blighttown! A place I've spent plenty of time already. ::)
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I did get invaded by a hacker though! He couldn't even fight worth a shit, but he was totally immune to damage so I couldn't do anything. Then he sends a message taunting me that I can't hurt him because he's level 300. So yeah, how are you able to invade a level 31 again?
Reasons I can think of:
-Gravelord actually worked correctly for you.
-You had a Dragon Scale and got invaded by someone hunting for it.
-You were in the Forest Hunter... forest where the PVP level restriction is removed.
-hax
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FFTA2: Yeah, I'm basically running a Smile Toss team, but generally abusing the hell out of Fusilier gun ranges. Also, using Luso and Adelle since they're required so much, so I have backup frontline options too if missions gets really annoying. Animist status-ing is also pretty awesome, but I wish I could make their statuses more accurate. My Nu Mou are working towards Arcanist/Sage, though I've got one as a Beastmaster to get Luso and Adelle Blue Magic. (What? I like Blue Magic.)
Clan Tournaments are terrible with this team. Luckily Auction House abuse has my team decked out in high enough powered equipment to handle them somewhat sanely. I'm way overlevelled for where I am (lv28-ish and I just got Cid back), but -still- the Clan stuff is a pain.
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RH: Finished chapter 1 in the standard history, nearing the end of it in alternate history. The boss in the sand fortress section completely wiped me out on the first run. Next time, build up Mana Bursts before starting that fight.
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Radiant Historia claims another victim! Mwahahahaha! >=) Wait what ^_^
Welcome to the club Shale!~
I don't remember that boss but good luck next time. If Rosch was available I was probably using him though.
Radiant Historia - 234/236 nodes clear get. Fought the Final Trial/Master and lost horribly. Was using Stocke/Raynie/Marco (since game defaults to this when switching between time nodes) L74, 71, 68 w/th best weapons and shiny armour, King Stud, Queen Stud and Rook Stud for Stocke, Thaumacharm x 3 for Raynie and high tier HP rings for Marco (inc the Venus Ring steal from Hugo) Managed the first fight (not surprising considering levels) but the second fight was eviiiil. The little dudes started off with four turns and kept getting four turns in a row then five then seven then they were getting in eight or I think even nine as the fight progressed. Once they managed to Sleep all PCs at once and abuse multi turn damage to take out PCs it was over. Unlike Mist Spider/Guardian's Speed Down the Master's House and the Master x 4's Speed Down seems to have an apparent and painful effect >_> Even w/th Aht/HRH my work might be cut out for me! Best bet might be Stocke/Aht/Marco? (well depends on if Divine Protection blocks status or not) ~
(oh and thanks again CK~)
Edit: Nvm won w/th Stocke/Raynie/Marco (gave Marco the Noah's Amulet - which is the only piece of status resist gear apart from an Emerald that I have >.>) - Raynie and Marco still died quite a few times each though! Also every one was still put to sleep quite a few times each though Marco not as much as the others but at least every body didn't get Sleep locked this time! It was also a long fight (I ran out of all my big MT healing items - Healing Fruit x 6 and Medibranch x 5 - by the end of it - I also used quite a few Divine Waters and the big ST healing items like First Aids and Tourniquets, Aht/Stocke stealing a mass of those over the course of the game sure came in handy =), Marco's S and Area G Heal was also useful in the fight and I also used stat ups/downs like Magic Herbs, Magic and MDEF Downs - also Guard Down and Might Up+ on Stocke once so he did 1600~ with Dead Fencer - Raynie's Frozen Hell only did 64 damage though (!? -without boosters) So the fight was won now to try and crush it Aht/HRH style ^_^~
Edit 2 - Won w/th the girls (Aht L72, Glaux Dagger, Clergy Raiment, Thaumacharm x 3, HRH L68, Freikugel Mercy, Luminous Dress, Thaumacharm x 3) first try but w/th not so much crush as usual at least not I started bringing out Aht's traps later on after weakening them w/th Eruca's Burst Light to start w/th which was a double edge sword as it enabled all four of the little dudes to stick around and wreak havoc for a while until I eventually ran out of patience and whipped out a Flamestar Trap which finished one off fast, then soon after a combo of Flamestar Trap, Firestorm and Burst Light finished off another two and the fight was in the bag from there. I will say this though either Polaris is as stupidly good as advertised or magic defence also factors into status success rates because despite having no status resist equipment at all Sleep worked much, much less on this team w/th Polaris up. Polaris seems to have really helped me a bunch of times through the game as well =) Not so much respect this fight though for the through the roof and sky high magic defences of Aht and HRH at least not in terms of taking damage because they took heavy damage and did their fair of share of dying from Master's magic spams regardless. Then again I didn't use Lunatic much or use the stat up/down boosters this time. I'm still curious as to whether Master's damage is perhaps non typed afterall though.
Now to do this fight one more time for now breaking out the really cheap/broken stuffs like Divine Protection and Shield/Shield Herb+ Herbs, speed maxxing + Turn Breaks + Change, go and defeat the "final" boss at least one more time for the Golden Ending and to collect my final node clear then I think I'm pretty much done with the game apart from level maxxing and collecting all the remaining rare/ultimate equips I don't have yet, blowing all my money on the best store bought gear and mass stocking up on the best items, etc, etc, stuffs like that for sheer novelty's sake ;D
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He's a modified Red Cap who gets an STR boost on the middle row and hits twice, so pain results if you let him act freely. I squashed him with turn cancelling and Right Assault the second time around, and am now in C2 on both timelines. Just got a little instruction in stealth from Heiss, which was interesting.
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SRWZ - Started, got up to the end of Stage 11.
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Arkham City: WE ARE LEGION. Wasn't a particularly tough boss fight, but it wasn't a gimmick boss and it had plenty of style, which puts it above most of AA's bosses. Game is pretty fun and there's no reason not to play it if you liked AA at all (and if you didn't, shame on you). Also:
"You have one missed voicemail."
"You have one missed voicemail."
"You have one missed voicemail."
How the heck did Joker get my number anyway. I love that he uses it to drone on like a neglected, needy BFF rather than do anything dangerous.
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Dark Souls: Revenge of the Vengeful.
While I and you, keep getting the ring-around on the somthin somethin, I've done nothing but go and get summoned for bosses! I have over 200,000 souls at SL 35 and, ha, 34 liquid humanity. I can level up to 50 I'm pretty sure. And yet I have no desire to spend any of it.
Also people are really bad at Gaping Dragon for some reason.
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Been doing the same thing, albeit for the purpose of collecting the offensive Miracles from the Warriors of Sunlight. I'm hanging out in front of Quelaag giving free sunlight medals to everyone. Praise the Sun!
I can now hurl bolts of lightning like Zeus. As soon as I get Great Lightning Spear I figure I'll start leveling again.
Also spent time exploring the Great Hollow. Got to Ash Lake once, then got my lights punched out by a giant mushroom before I could reach the dragon.
Gaping Dragon is... mostly easy. Still has some bullshit stuff. Like stunlocking you with his tail. And running away to the back of his lair where the giant waterfall of death is.
Quelaag is really easy, as long as you don't get greedy. Hit, hit, block for a bit, repeat.
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Batman: Throwing People Over Railings for Fun and Profit
So this time there aren't just random maps to the Riddler trophies--instead you find and interrogate his informants spread throughout everyone else's forces. This is cool because I was always wondering, "Does the Riddler actually go out there and paint all those damn question marks himself? Does he stroll up to Joker HQ and say hey guys, I wanna go in and wander around for a bit to leave some prizes for Batman?" Apparently not, he bribes other people to do it for him. Now I just wonder how much these guys complain when he tells them to climb on top of a church and stick a giant neon question mark up there. His VA still wins, of course. Such a smarmy jackass.
Anyway, Joker fight. He's one dude amongst an army this time, but it's still a much better fight than he got in AA. Helluva lot harder too, especially if you're like me and really fail at mixing up strategies when there are different types of enemies involved in a mob. Died a couple times and survived on an invisible sliver of life at the end. Pretty much every type of standard mook, a Titan goon, a giant one-armed Russian with a hammer, and Joker--like twenty dudes coming at you at once. Also there are trains running through the room. Yeah. I'm just glad there were no gunners (I guess it's no fun for Joker if someone else just shoots Batman).
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RH: I've been playing this on the bus to and from work every day, and since that ride takes about an hour, I'm finally making progress! I'm in C4 of the alternate history, C3 of the standard. The thaumatech boss at the start of C4 absolutely murdered me, but it's my own fault for taking a party of physical bruisers, including one underleveled one. Still, ow.
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Been doing the same thing, albeit for the purpose of collecting the offensive Miracles from the Warriors of Sunlight. I'm hanging out in front of Quelaag giving free sunlight medals to everyone. Praise the Sun!
I can now hurl bolts of lightning like Zeus. As soon as I get Great Lightning Spear I figure I'll start leveling again.
Also spent time exploring the Great Hollow. Got to Ash Lake once, then got my lights punched out by a giant mushroom before I could reach the dragon.
Gaping Dragon is... mostly easy. Still has some bullshit stuff. Like stunlocking you with his tail. And running away to the back of his lair where the giant waterfall of death is.
Quelaag is really easy, as long as you don't get greedy. Hit, hit, block for a bit, repeat.
I probably have enough to get the Great Spear but my Faith is a puny 10 so I can't do anything.
Gaping Dragon's tail is kinda crap(LOOK AT IT HITTING THROUGH YOUR SHIELD WHILE FACING HIM!) but I could chop that off in three hits so it wasn't too big a deal. I could accept when the Channeler is still alive and making a nuisance out of himself. But when people charge up to the bastard's face? Then they're just asking for it.
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The C4 thaumachine is pretty much that one boss.
Blue Dragon - Why is it that only minigames can kill me? Anyway, storming another of Evil Purple Bill Gates' mechanical fortresses (how many of these does he have, anyway? Dude needs better hobbies) after his latest bout of epic trolling. Life is good.
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Blue Dragon - Why is it that only minigames can kill me? Anyway, storming another of Evil Purple Bill Gates' mechanical fortresses (how many of these does he have, anyway? Dude needs better hobbies) after his latest bout of epic trolling. Life is good.
But he wouldn't be a proper Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain if he did something else BESIDES Scheme and make elaborate evil fortresses!
Wild ARMs 5: yeah, screw playing this game in secrecy or something, cause there's no point or something or...wait, why am I saying that? Anyway, just met Elvis.
Why am I replaying this? Cause no one else does or something, and I was talked into doing it for that reason alone or something. Scene Skip makes this game a lot easier to play or something.
Street Fighter 3rd Strike: Beat the game as Alex and Remy! How did Alex end up being to my playstyle? IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!
Tried Twelve, but that...didn't go over so well. Why does he suck so much? WHY!?
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The C4 thaumachine is pretty much that one boss.
It killed me like five times, then I did the RH equivalent of level grinding, which is fighting four extra battles. That led to Raynie learning G. Fire and suddenly the fight got much, much easier.
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Yeah Aht (Electric Traps)/ Raynie (Thunder/G Fire) and Rosch or Gafka are probably the best bets for the fight. I wasn't at a high enough level for the G spells for anybody myself and I was rolling with Aht and Rosch to build their levels up some (each time Rosch and a certain other character in the other history joined was the only times I really went out of my way to fight early on) Got wiped the first couple of times because I didn't know what to expect (exploding bombs in the face~) won on the third attempt after building levels a bit more and Rosch picked up Cross Spike~ So he was whatever level he learns Cross Spike at, Aht was low twenties and Stocke was probably creeping over to the higher side of mid twenties though I don't really remember there.
Well done on getting past it Shale :) Went in with Stocke/Rosch/Gafka first I assume (physical bruisers~)? Probably not impossible to win with it eventually but takes some what more effort than other teams no doubt.
Fun vid (inspiration!?) tiem~-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpCZDEKx-3A
I would like to level up high/really high to L30+ on fight every and everything mode/CtREplay style and absolutely curbstomp the fight with a full on team blitz down in a revenge run or something next time through but instead I am thinking of doing a solo/duo run! >__>
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Blue Dragon - Disc 3.
Okay.
Now, I'm not really an expert on this subject, but I'm pretty sure when you're trying to talk someone out of committing suicide, you should emphatically not do any of the following:
(a) call them selfish
(b) yell "Shut up!" at them
(c) turn the conversation to yourself
(d) snidely remark "If it were me, I couldn't imagine giving up. It's just not me, I guess".
What. The. Fuck.
This follows right on the heels of a ham-fisted scene in which Shu learns that "giving up is actually okay, when giving up means running away to fight another day" (which really isn't giving up by any definition I'm aware of) and in general the words "give up" used about 400 times in the space of an hour. Shu has officially snatched away any hope Marumaro had of winning "game's worst character".
On the plus side, Nene remains awesome!
On the minus side, I still can't come close to dying unless it's to a mini-game. According to a certain FAQ I am about a dozen levels underlevelled too! (FAQs. But even accounting for that, I suspect my levels have to be on the low side.)
Despite this I am still enjoying the game well enough, but damn if it isn't trying to spit on all its tremendous potential of FF5 + some notable system improvements + large amounts of polish + the only well-done traditional world map outside DQ8 + Eternity (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUjxPj3al5U). :(
Y'know, I don't think I've yet talked about...
Final Fantasy 4: The After Years - About done with the "bad" half of the game, which is all the various character quests. They are hit and miss. On the one hand, Rydia's quest is pretty awesome, with some pretty tough fights (one of which is quite creative, in fact). Edge's is also amusing for ninja wackiness, as is Palom because Palom is a bitch. In general the mages get more interesting dungeons/fights (Rydia, Palom, Porom). Yang's is tolerable from a writing standpoint, which is better than I expected, although its combat sucks. Edward's, though, is just terrible, featuring not only combat involving Edward and three completely generic soldiers (about as exciting as you'd guess), but incredibly stupid plot involving Edward pining over his 17-years ago girlfriend and the epic return of DESERT FEVER. At least its last 10 minutes are decent as they actually advance the main plot! Currently doing Kain's, which has gameplay that makes me want to beat my head against a wall but is at least short (apparently). The game's quite playable in that FF4 way, moves quickly and all that. Though I'm very much looking forward to finally being able to kiss boring fighter-only parties goodbye.
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SRWZ: Well Stage 20 was pretty rude at first but it ended up getting cleared with not much fuss and bother. Go figure.
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NEB - ... it went there? Wow. The more I read/hear about Shu/BD plot from you, Tai and others the less inclined I am to give the game another chance and actually play past Marumaru's village. Do you think on the whole it's worth suffering through for the game play/battle system on the whole then? Or is it more a if you have other games play those first dealie (I have a feeling some of the scenes like above would make me angry and that's not good >_>)~
Devil May Cry 3 - Saved at the start of Mission 3. I somehow managed to defeat the first boss without dying. What. Had to use two items though. Scored an A on Devil Hunter Rank for the first mission and a C for the second. This is my first time playing DMC. I have no idea what I'm doing~
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I haven't updated progress on Dark Souls, nor have I made much. So highlights.
Bell Gargoyles: Defeated after I learned I could summon Sun Bro to help. Sun Bro perished in the fight.
Capra Demon: Defeated after approximately 30 or so deaths. He is not the boss. The room, the dogs and the camera are the boss. He is just an add.
Bell: I rang it.
Sewers: Lulz curse was fun to learn about.
Gaping Dragon: Pretty easy fight, but I found that, sometimes, when he takes flight, it is just inevitable that he is going to land on you. But, provided you don't have bad luck with that, he's simple as hell.
Blighttown: Fuck Toxic. Also, had to walk out after realizing my +2 Battle Axe was not cutting it.
Chaos Witch Spider Boobs: Again, felt like a boss where my real enemy was the camera. Also, if she did her jumping lava spit at a certain range, you would likely die regardless of action you took, it seemed.
Darkroot Garden: GOLEMS! *shakes fist*
Moonlight Butterfly: Great atmospheric fight. Plus, I killed a butterfly with an axe.
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Castlevania: Harmony of Despair- Finished all the levels in some form (L10 was mostly being pro and letting Eph fight the boss and using the shortcut though!) It's Castlevania mugen, as it attempts to mash up several games worth of characters into one multiplayer platform. Game balance is on the whole good (Soma feels like the clear best and Maria feels like the clear worst, but other than that...), and it makes creative uses of previous stages and bosses for the game. I will say, the game could have used another SotN level or two, but oh well. Glad the DLC gave us a couple of stages of that (SoTN underground and the intro to the castle respectively).
I've mained Julius and Soma, played simon a little as well. Favorite stage is... 9, I think? Fun boss and SoTN is cool. Least favorite is 1, kind of boring and has a few annoying jumps.
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NEB - ... it went there? Wow. The more I read/hear about Shu/BD plot from you, Tai and others the less inclined I am to give the game another chance and actually play past Marumaru's village. Do you think on the whole it's worth suffering through for the game play/battle system on the whole then? Or is it more a if you have other games play those first dealie (I have a feeling some of the scenes like above would make me angry and that's not good >_>)~
Blue Dragon is, as I said, a good filler game. So its basically something you play between games if you want something simple and inoffensive, and aren't looking for a "masterpiece ."
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DS: Getting summoned for bosses inexplicably dried up. So I decided to get on with the game. Cleaned out Sen's Fortress top to bottom. Wow at Covetous Gold Serpent Ring.
Damage notes for whoever decides to stat topic this:
Lightning Spear miracle with 30 Faith versus:
Gaping Dragon - 275 damage
Quelaag - 201 damage
Iron Golem - 185 damage
Titanite Demon (Sen's Fortress) - 184 damage
Undead Dragon (Painted World) - 274 damage
Priscilla - 214 damage
Sif - 215 damage (soul level 41)
Stray Demon - 231 damage (soul level 45)
Although the number isn't high versus Golem that is a huge chunk of his HP. Dragon is also supposedly weak, but he has a ton of HP.
Also I found the best player message in the game. In front of Quelaag, someone wrote "Imminent chest..."
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CT: The game apparently has a hard mode as free downloadable content. If I were going to recommend the game to people I would generally suggest they check that out. The gameplay is good, but it's wasted on how incredibly easy the game is, so unless you're in the mood for an incredibly easy game which you can smash to bits with an (admittedly fun and well-designed!) class system. Story is what it is. More rants upcoming later, of course... it has some things going for it (Nene) but generally, see Meeple. You can mostly ignore it and it is rarely actually offensive (the last hour is the only time that did it for me, which surprised me because I thought Blue Dragon was way too light-hearted to be offensive).
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Dark Souls: Finished. The final boss was relentless, I only beat him by trying to always have a stalagmite between him and me. It felt kind of cheap, but you know, it was still hard, and using the environment to beat the last boss feels like a fitting end to this game.
The ending is crazy, I'm off to read some item descriptions to get the game to make sense, then I'm going to restart as a sorceror.
I've learnt that all my invaders were actually NPC invaders, so I've had absolutely 0 online play aside from invading a few dudes myself. Sad! I think they need a third game in the "series" to finally really get the gameplay done just right, but for now this will do.
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SPOILER WARNING: You are also an NPC.
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Aren't NPCs supposed to be invincible?
Anyway, the first boss, Taurus, just backstepped into a bottomless pit.
The Bowser law applies; Bottomless pits, like time, kill everything.
I could mock him, but that wouldn't be really fair. I've done the same thing dozens of times.
The sorceror class rocks. Bought some spells from the dude in prison so I have 60 Soulthing charges and 12 SoulthingGa charges. This is a lot of charges. I've beaten the dark knight on the first try, killed a few giant skeletons, while still not having gotten a single level.
Only died about 4 times so far.
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You're still alive, right? So far, so good.
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DS: Getting summoned for bosses inexplicably dried up. So I decided to get on with the game. Cleaned out Sen's Fortress top to bottom. Wow at Covetous Gold Serpent Ring.
Damage notes for whoever decides to stat topic this:
Lightning Spear miracle with 30 Faith versus:
Gaping Dragon - 275 damage
Quelaag - 201 damage
Iron Golem - 185 damage
Titanite Demon (Sen's Fortress) - 184 damage
Undead Dragon (Painted World) - 274 damage
Priscilla - 214 damage
Although the number isn't high versus Golem that is a huge chunk of his HP. Dragon is also supposedly weak, but he has a ton of HP.
I'd actually be more interested in your Soul Levels, but, hmm, not exactly a clinch amount of damage. Looks like not spending points in Faith was a good idea.
Also I found the best player message in the game. In front of Quelaag, someone wrote "Imminent chest..."
Heh.
I've learnt that all my invaders were actually NPC invaders, so I've had absolutely 0 online play aside from invading a few dudes myself. Sad! I think they need a third game in the "series" to finally really get the gameplay done just right, but for now this will do.
Lucky you. I get my ass invaded by Japanese PVP twinks all the time.
Dark Souls: No guts, no glory, no humanity.
I HAVE DONE IT! I HAVE BECOME ORNSTEIN!
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Soul levels were 31-38. Kept it low for summoning purposes. Raising it now so I can get enough endurance to ditch Havel's Ring. What's a good level to be for getting summoned for O&S?
Dropped into the Painted World since the wiki didn't make it sound too hard. It was hard. Considered not fighting Priscilla and just running... but her tail was so inviting... She beat me a few times before I figured out her attack pattern. Luckily she doesn't have many hp when you do hit her.
Guardian Heroes: Unlocked all the characters. Still need to see the two bad karma endings.
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Soul levels were 31-38. Kept it low for summoning purposes. Raising it now so I can get enough endurance to ditch Havel's Ring. What's a good level to be for getting summoned for O&S?
I've gotten utter crap for summons at 35 and 41. 3 summons over 6 hours over two days. I saw significantly more signs at 36 then 41 though. Hell, my 60 SL first character had gotten more summons... Even when he leveled into his mid-70s.
And I became Ornstein solely for the fight.
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Batman: In Which There Is Death, Death, Death
Maingame completed. Unexpected final boss! I figured he'd be in there somewhere since one sidequest clearly suggests someone with such abilities, just...not as the last boss. Beats the heck out of the mutant Joker gimmick fight Arkham Asylum ended with, though. Also did not call the real Big Bad here, less because you kick his ass midway through the game and more because that would make this basically the plot of Batman Begins, which I didn't think they'd do. They did. Hugo Strange is a pretty solid adversary, at least. Very strong Big Brother act at work, someone who's just as crazy as any of the inmates but able to get away with it due to a position of authority. Good use of obscure villains there. Admirably thorough job of scouring the rogues gallery in general, really--pretty much everyone of note gets some face time here outside of Scarecrow (who was prominently--and awesomely--featured in Arkham Asylum, so that's okay).
Am now scouring the world map for Riddler trophies in the postgame, and being glad that there is a postgame in which to do so because man that's a lot past a point of no return in the maingame. It is seriously addictive collecting these things once you start to figure out what kind of tricks they want you to do, and there are hundreds of them. They really make you exploit every tool at your disposal.
Game's strengths remain primarily those demonstrated in Arkham Asylum: combat feels exactly how Batman deals with things (exploit stealth as much as possible; guns will rip you in half so don't give them the chance; a veritable machine in hand-to-hand combat) and an obvious love for the source material demonstrated in the considerable effort made in bringing Gotham to grimy, demented life. Added now are better boss fights, and extensive sandbox opportunities for when you just feel like flying around the world map being a detective and knocking out sidequests. So yeah, very enjoyable game, definitely recommendable.
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Finished up Ghost Trick. Great game. Play it.
The game is on the easy side in general, just because there are only so many things you can do. I'd have liked it if there was a "Hard" mode where you get a ton of unhelpful red herring actions you could perform with various objects to make it feel more rewarding to figure out a solution, rather than "I tricked every object I could and moved through all of them and won." However the puzzles were *cool* even if easy, so I don't care that much.
Plot, characters, and dialogue remain the selling points, of course. Unlike DHE I liked pretty much the whole game. Think they struck the right balance between seriousness and the necessary ludicrousness required to set up some of the puzzles and freak deaths. (Energy restrictions, bro. Can only keep 2/3 of the spotlights on at once, them's the rules.) I also liked how they kept doing... hmm, don't think there's a term for this, but "additive" plot twists. It's not the same question of "Who shot me" with updated guesses; the plot keeps moving with revelations that build on previous ones yet change the interpretation of events we've already seen.
I didn't quite guess the main plot twist, though I was in the general vicinity at least. Lynne believing she was Cabanela at first was a nice warning that you can't trust your initial impressions of who you are. So I was definitely prepped for that possibility. I also seriously considered the non-human angle considering just how utterly clueless Sissel is about the world and Missile's existence as a useful ghost, but couldn't figure out who it'd apply to, so discarded that. Oops, although one minor plot oddity is that Yomiel is able to move Sissel's dead body - plausible, sure, he builds his own body out of spare parts later and can certainly manipulate his own dead body along with random other stuff, but definitely put me off the scent since that spoiler was 'alive'. Although I really should have recognized that the spoiler popped out of the same bag that Yomiel had been carrying. Anyway, I was not really expecting the redemption of Yomiel, but I did think that the big time travel reset everything would be to 5 years ago to save Alma after how much the murder machine device got hyped. My guess was also that Sissel was Alma, since she always appeared silhouetted - super suspicious whenever this happens. Nice red herring, at least, since she appeared to be the main dead character "unaccounted for" and might have died close enough to Yomiel's presence... for all that there'd then have to be some explanation for what happened in the intervening 5 years.
In the minor nits department, how old is Kamila anyway?! She's a roommate with a rookie police detective so I assumed that she was of a similar age - 21 or so - and just short. Plus, she's asked to come over to the Chicken Kitchen at 10:00 PM, which presumes a driver's license in most settings. But the game seems to act like she's way younger than that. On the same note, I find it hard to believe that Lynne didn't know about the murder machine. She was investigating Jowd's case, right? She should be intimately familiar with the scene of the crime, since Jowd claims he only swapped out the gun. I guess you can argue her memory was still screwed up from being dead for a brief time, but it turns out that everyone actually seems to have their entire memory restored on being alive again - it was just Yomiel that explains why her memory was fuzzy of earlier. Also, not really a nit, but amusing that the blue-skinned country wanted to kill Lynne for knowing too much. She didn't even know that Yomiel was killed by Temski! They'd have been fine, no need to have assassins taking potshots right next to police vans.
No surprises as to my favorite part of the game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4X_DMcjYaI&feature=related). The Yomiel vs. Cabanela reveal, of course. Badass. I loved that the puzzles were to save their lives without Yomiel noticing, as well, since he'd just kill them in a different fashion anyway if he knew. If anything I was hoping to have to go up against him again as the game went on, not that I'm complaining about the betrayal->redemption plot path he ended up on, just because it was a delicious twist on the game's system.
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Blue Dragon - Thank heavens, the game is actually trying. I'm at the final dungeon (?). Beat some badass T-rex boss who has EYE LASERS because why not. Also is about 4x average speed. I decided to give all sidequests the finger because the game needed to get some challenge somewhere, and yeah, as a result the final dungeon is a big step up! Level ~36 right now.
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Dark Souls: Plot so good you have to work your ass off not to find it.
I finally got O+S summons woop woop! Sure they're at 3:00 AM! And the first was getting summoned into a NG+, but summons! Except there were invaders! And the first one was a big jerk spewing toxin! And the second one literally lucked out and killed the host while he was on his last shred of HP and the boss door was right there! And some weird crystal/ice sorcery neither I nor the other have seen!
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how old is Kamila anyway?! She's a roommate with a rookie police detective so I assumed that she was of a similar age - 21 or so - and just short. Plus, she's asked to come over to the Chicken Kitchen at 10:00 PM, which presumes a driver's license in most settings. But the game seems to act like she's way younger than that.
She's pretty young, yeah. The only reason she's living with Lynne is because of Jowd's arrest - given Lynne's trust of Jowd, she obviously refused to let Kamila just get taken away and offered to look after her instead or something. Plus, she quite clearly couldn't have been driving to the Chicken Kitchen, since she was walking through the park to get there. It just seems that Lynne needed Kamila to go there more than she could worry herself over potential danger at that stage.
On the same note, I find it hard to believe that Lynne didn't know about the murder machine. She was investigating Jowd's case, right? She should be intimately familiar with the scene of the crime, since Jowd claims he only swapped out the gun.
She was looking into the case, although it's not clear quite how much she knew. Given that almost everyone involved apparently thought Jowd was responsible for the shooting, it's possible that Lynne didn't know the information that only Cabanela and the pigeon-guy knew.
The Yomiel vs. Cabanela reveal, of course. Badass. I loved that the puzzles were to save their lives without Yomiel noticing, as well, since he'd just kill them in a different fashion anyway if he knew. If anything I was hoping to have to go up against him again as the game went on, not that I'm complaining about the betrayal->redemption plot path he ended up on, just because it was a delicious twist on the game's system.
I absolutely loved how they played that as though Cabanela were a villain, which was something I thought they'd pull for ages, and then quickly turned that around again. Also, hunh, how does Yomiel react if he sees things moving? I never got that loss, although I did take Cabanela out with a bowler hat~
Oh, yeah, I play games too. Practically finished FFX. (Reached BFA, can't be bothered to grind so his sword slice isn't OHKOing Tidus/Yuna/Rikku.) The less I say about this game, the better for everyone here.
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FF7 - Complete! Will blather more about it later when I don't have an exam to study for.
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SRWZ - cool upgrade you got there Setsuko
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"who did nothing when my mother and I were callously dishonored!!!"
"Why do you cry, Jilia? That person wasn't your father"
So I guess Luca does (rather obliquely) refer to what happened with his mother. Unexpected.
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Yaay Ciatos~
Thanks NEB, Meeple. After talking it over with Tai some and NEB's latest post sounding promising with regards to challenge I've decided to do a solo character run if I do play (which might be after I'm finished with Radiant Historia and DMC3 but Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and Tactics Ogre are also options so) Tai suggested Jiro (since Kluke isn't always available or something) =)
Devil May Cry 3-
Mission 5. Played around with Trickster L2 and Air Hike vs the flying blood demon bat things at the start. Dashing up surfaces, around in different directions and hiking up high to blast the demons with mah guns from a far was fun ^_^ Having great fun with the game in general so far really though Mission 3/Cerberus was a bit frustrating. Game picked up after that though as I started to get a grasp on the mechanics of stuffs =) Gigapide in particular was some nice stress relief after the previous boss. Ironic as the Cerberus weapon itself hurts Gigapede badly (and is also great fun for doing spinning ice wheel things with!)~
Seriously I really like the Cerberus weapon though. Probably because of my affinity with the ice element/ice elemental stuffs/characters but yeah. Going to play around more with the game later. Didn't save after getting Air Hike/defeating those blood demons because there's other stuff I want to try and I didn't have much time to play this morning~
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Hmm, Blue Dragon Hard Mode Solo first time through... Tempting...
Dark Souls: My extreme sorceror has 7 or 8 spell slots, 50 int and base other stats. I'm starting to raise his vitality because he can't take hits from anything.
I've finished Anor Londo and am trying to beat the four kings to get spoiler covenant. This is not working well, so I'm doing everything else I can right now, like the painting, Ash lake, Ceaseless Discharge, etc etc.
Playing as a sorceror is about as difficult as playing as a melee character, except he overkills most bosses. Smough and Orstein were so easy! A lot of regular enemies are pretty difficult to take down, but the invisibility spell really helps getting past them.
I've tried protecting the forest from other people with the cat ring, and haven't won even once. So far, sorcery is awful in PVP. Every spell is easy as hell to dodge. I can have a pretty badass enchanted weapon but that's about it.
I've also invaded another player and used the chameleon spell to turn into a giant moving urn. Such a cunning plan, but the urn is seriously slow. That other player disconnected before I could get to him :/ We'll see how this goes once I get unlimited invasions, world! Muhuhahahah!
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Try turning into a tree while protecting the forest.
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Dark Souls: The waiting game has never been so oily.
So, as I wait for the patch to hit and make scaling(and thus the Dragon Slayer Spear) useful, I have instead decided to do another new character! Instead of doing something productive like cut through all the bullshit stalling last week's ~magic~.
Meet Bobstein, Ornstein's third cousin twice removed. A pyromancer by trade, the poor boy just does not have any talent at all for leveling up. Poor Bobstein will be stuck at Soul Level 1 the entire game/until I get tired of him. Poor Bobby was actually out to quite the odd start, as he saw the big white door in the watchtower and got scared. So he went through another door, which led to someplace even scarier! But his lucky club and running like a madman got him safetly to a little bonfire in the Undead Parish. Seeing a blacksmith, Bobby thought it would be neat if he had something to reinforce. But poor Bobby never had a Hollow Soldier's shield drop. So instead he went and met Mister Rickit and bought himself some shiny spells! And after killing some nasty ghosts and getting a super-special soul, he suddenly decided to go take a swim in some putrid water. Oh Bobby. But don't worry, some homeward bones will save him!
So after his delightful trip down super-drown-lane, bobby was feeling bold! But bobby being bold was a bad idea, as the big old boar felt like ignoring Bobby's shiny new Hollow Soldier's Shield! Well, Bobstein gritted his awkward teeth and CHARGED in and burned that sucker down. Then went and killed three Black Knights. And Havel too for good measure! It sure was tough beating on that rocky armor with just a simple spiked club, but boy was it worth it!
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One of the top ten pvpers (on Xbox version anyway) is a level 1 pyromancer.
As for myself, I finally got to O+S. The part with the archers was pretty cheap of the game. Whereas the rest of the game felt like you could outthink it, that just was a slogfest. Luckily once you do get past it, the rest of the level is cake.
Tried four times to beat O+S and failed. Primarily due to the people I'm summoning sucking ass and dying 30 seconds into the fight. It actually doesn't feel like too hard of a fight though. I might actually beat it if I remember to use my crystal ring shield.
EDIT: 5th time's a charm, with two allies that actually knew what they were doing.
More damage notes for Lightning Spear at Faith 30 (soul level 46):
Smough - 256 damage (had one hit of 359, not sure why it was more)
Orenstein - 35 damage LOL
Smough 2 - 127, with one hit of 159. Apparently he has some kind of weak point, but I don't know what exactly I was hitting to get that.
Ceaseless Discharge (SL 49) - 181 damage
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1cc'd Ten Desires. Only moderately behind the times!
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"One of the top ten pvpers (on Xbox version anyway) is a level 1 pyromancer."
Isn't he only good because he invades new players then crushes them with overpowered equipment?
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RH: Nearing endgame on both sides. The Executioner fight was fun – he crushed me a few times when I tried to go for attrition, including one total BS loss where he was at 10% health before tripleturning me and just killing my entire party one by one. Then I decided “screw attrition,” burned three straight Turn Breaks on setting up a 10-hit combo composed of one Grapple and then an endless loop of Air Assault → G. Fire that destroyed both knights. A similar strategy made mincemeat out of the souped-up thaumatech soldier in the standard history. Went back and got “At Journey's End,” which was hilariously out of nowhere for both Raynie and Stocke.
I've still got a few sidequests hanging around that I may head back and do before I march out to war. Which reminds me, is it ever going to be reasonable to fight that gladiator-bear in Cygnus? Even with my current equipment Stocke and Aht don't live very long against that monstrosity.
Edit: Okay, I killed the bear with poison and long sequences of "Stocke heal, Aht set trap, bear attack, Aht heal, Stocke knock bear into trap, repeat." What's nex....OH GOD THE PAIN
Character assessments, since I haven't really talked about them at all:
Stocke: Does damn near everything. Prototypical RPG main.
Marco: Damn, that's some good utility. Trans-turn, HP and status healing, good tools for moving enemies around without burning TT. His damage is even reasonably okay with a good sword!
Raynie: G. Fire. SMASH. She does nothing else useful except the odd Push Assault, but has awesome ST damage. But not as awesome as...
Gafka: Holy crap. Now THAT's damage output. And combo numbers too! Sadly not both at once, because Musou's damage is awful, but hey, it got me a 44-hit combo once and that's pretty cool. And his best damage hits a full column, which is pretty neat.
Rauch: Permanently underleveled, but not terrible now that his equipment is up to snuff. Aside from the durability (which isn't even that great), he seems cursed to be unexceptional.
Aht: Casts Area G. Heal out of battle. Traps are useful when I need 100% poison, other times I'll just hit things with G. Fire and skip the positioning shenanigans.
Euruca: I haven't used her in like seven hours. She's got G. Frost now, so I guess that could be useful if I don't have Raynie!
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"One of the top ten pvpers (on Xbox version anyway) is a level 1 pyromancer."
Isn't he only good because he invades new players then crushes them with overpowered equipment?
Well the thing is, there's a lower limit on invasions but not an upper one. So at level one he can invade literally anyone in human form. So he gets new players, new game++ players, everything. Since he doesn't level up, he's fairly limited by armor weight. It's a combination of Fog Ring cheese and skill.
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It turns out Suikoden II is still awesome. Also turns out that among things, L2 Canopy Defense and double-beat runes are broken. hurray!
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RH: Nearing endgame on both sides. The Executioner fight was fun – he crushed me a few times when I tried to go for attrition, including one total BS loss where he was at 10% health before tripleturning me and just killing my entire party one by one. Then I decided “screw attrition,” burned three straight Turn Breaks on setting up a 10-hit combo composed of one Grapple and then an endless loop of Air Assault → G. Fire that destroyed both knights. A similar strategy made mincemeat out of the souped-up thaumatech soldier in the standard history. Went back and got “At Journey's End,” which was hilariously out of nowhere for both Raynie and Stocke.
I've still got a few sidequests hanging around that I may head back and do before I march out to war. Which reminds me, is it ever going to be reasonable to fight that gladiator-bear in Cygnus? Even with my current equipment Stocke and Aht don't live very long against that monstrosity.
Edit: Okay, I killed the bear with poison and long sequences of "Stocke heal, Aht set trap, bear attack, Aht heal, Stocke knock bear into trap, repeat." What's nex....OH GOD THE PAIN
The second optional arena battle is just "spam poizn wing until it hits, then round-robin revival until it dies" if you -care-. I did and got the game's strongest robe for Stocke early, but you may not care. If you have at least 40 Holy Waters you should manage, though! But yeah, those things always will OHKO you until like near-endgame levels, but it's 100% ST and it's vulnerable to poison. So yeah, there's that.
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Yeah, I just beat it with POIZN/Curse cheese. Yaaaaaay?
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Well, I just used Gospel Armor instead of the Moirae Manteau, but sure why not. Those bosses are basically beatable nearly regardless of your level due to cheese.
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Bear is weak to Ice so Ice Traps should do a serious number on it and Frost Star trapz should absolutely destroy it, possibly even one shot in a two trap trigger (Star trapz can cover two panels - so big ass enemies like bears and thaumatech types or enemies which take up more than one space on the gride like heavy Granorgites, etc can be double shotted in one with one move skill for fun biiig numbers ;)) if Aht is set up w/th Promised Knife/Glaux Dagger (stolen from the Alistel Officers in Granorg), Crystal/Thaumacharm x 3 and endgame levels (it works vs Special Thaumachine only with a different element instead - Aht: Volt Star Trap > Push Assault (I used Change so she could do this herself for the lolz) > ded - so why not~) Perhaps by endgame levels Aht is also fast enough that bear doesn't get to go first anymore either (turning the turn order in your favour and thus breaking it's multi turn/combo shenanigans - which while on the subject is where speed/twinking and/or Change abuse comes in handy for the game's ultimate super boss if you care~)
Bear is also vulnerable to sleep Shale so you could have used Sleep Traps in addition to Poison Traps if you'd preferred/didn't want to go for the damage =) I didn't have the sleep ones when I first defeated it (and Aht had only just gotten the poison ones from Bodyguard) so I just banked on Aht speed + status wing items instead but if traps have more accurate status might be worth playng around with on my replay (solo/duo game) Then again I didn't know the fight was weak to ice first time either so >.> You probably already know this but multiple trapz in a row for/from combos work so long as the first trap is triggered before more are laid so for example Aht trap > move skill > Aht trap > Aht trap > Aht trap > etc (Change abuse wheee~) does the trick~
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The way I usually dealt with spiders in the end was getting the buff/debuff items going then exploiting Aht speeed + Stocke/Eruca speed + Change abuse + Aht/Eruca Turn Breaks to combo build then Attack/Cross Star w/th Aht, G Fire w/th Stocke, G Frost w/th Eruca and Dead Fencer as a finisher w/th heavy combo damage. I didn't have Aht's Dancing Death for ST combo building though and I kind of wish I'd done sidequests during the story to get it now since apparently a Dancing Death > G Frost combo double's G Frost's damage w/th triple damage if Eruca is buffed~
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Borderlands: Just beat the arena boss. I'm level 14 berserker right now, playing with Yakko/Xer/Nitori at the moment. borderlands is a lot of fun, so yay.
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Dark Souls, Steinfest 2011:
Ornstein: Actually decided to do something other then wait around for summons. Go and make myself a nice new Fire spear! Because O is too resistant to lightning. So, just check which spears I have and... where's the Winged Spear? Oh, right, I used, to-my-knowledge, a unique weapon to make the Dragon Slayer Spear. Giddy. So, that means I have to use the Pike. So, head down tot he Demon Ruins to kill Ceaseless Discharge--die once then succeed. Slay the Taurous army. Don't feel like dealing with Kirk yet so I just head down and die by Capa mobbing. Half the stamina/health/armor and 7 stability down means I can not play like my first character. Whatever, recover, lure the capras out with my bow, kill them, lit the bonfire, go and grab the Ember.
Off to the catacombs! Which go strangely pleasant, so naturally I assume I'll mess the jumps to Vamos up... nope! All's fine here! So then skeleton wheels... nope, the Fire Pike +7 reems them! Though Black Knight out of nowhere had me worrying. So then that just leaves Pinwheel to cheat my ass. No! Despite reducing me to like 50 HP I kill him/her/it! That Rite of Kindling would be so useful if I had a need for Estus ever. Which is actually now. Huh. Well, no desire to brave Tomb of the Giants, head back home!
Summons, summons, summons, loads of summons and loads of invaders. Only one invader actually manages to pull their victory off successfully(and then only because we were fighting the two Royal Sentinels before O+S) and even then he was one hit away from death. Other invader highlights include dying at the same time as the summoner, killing me with a lightning shotel but then getting backstabbed to death, NOT USING A SHIELD, and the final one getting the business end of the pike because I could actually stand behind the summoner and hit them because it is long. And bonus points for that last one being another shotel jerk.
Also I broke 1,000,000 souls saved up! That's enough to straight double my Soul Level!
Bobstein: Unlocked the farmer's forest. Can't kill Pharis. I WANT THAT HAT. So I'll upgrade my stuff and use magic weapon. Next time.
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In terms of actual electronic games, Battle for Wesnoth, and a little bit of Civ 4 and Europa Universalis 3.
In terms of games played on an honor system over an electronic medium, Magic the Gathering.
In terms of magnificent edifices to human achievement played, nay, experienced in person, which might be called games in the same sense the Platonic ideal of a tree is, itself, a tree, Dominion.
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Captain: Huh. So you could be a new player, try your hand invading with a cracked red eye orb from the beginning and draw a lvl 700 uber character? Are you sure? I heard those guys are lonely.
Dark Souls: Finished as the sorceror. I got a ton of cheap spells lategame, the boss of the tomb of giants was still tough.
I think I got the plot: (Massive spoilers ahead. You guys should save this somewhere because you'll just be confused by the ending, really, and this could help you... If I'm right!)
There is a massive war going on between the "Dark side" (dragons, serpents) and the "Fire Side" (Gods like Gwyn, Nito, etc)
As seen in the intro, dragons ruled the world at first. Then heroes of the fire side appeared:
- Gwyn
- The witch of Azelith (who became the bed of chaos boss)
- Nito
- The furtive pygmy.
The first three owned the dragons. Then the age of fire started ,as Gwyn became the official guardian of The Big Fire Thing.
Pygmy didn't do jack shit, though. In fact, a prophecy appeared, telling that the pygmy's descendants would pwn Gwyn and start a new dark age of humans. (Looking back, the dragons might have invented the prophecy)
Gwyn got paranoid as hell and locked all of pygmy's descendants (including the main character) in a prison.
One knight, probably working for the dragons/serpents, then released the main character to send him on a killing spree against the people who locked him up with seemingly no good reason. And also because he might think he could end this tyranny and start a new age of humans.
Meanwhile, Gwyn and all his friends naturally try to murder the hell out of the main character. If all goes according to the plan, MC kills everyone and leaves, he becomes some dark lord. The fire disappears. MC was probably manipulated into thinking humans would rule but really dragons+serpents own everybody. Bad ending.
Gwyndolin and Fraampt are clever bastards though, and threw a wrench into that plan. They thought they could manipulate the MC, too. So Gwyndolin created Gwynevere, pretty much the only really friendly figure in the whole game (with large breasts), to convince MC to try igniting The Big Fire Thing. Well, if he does that, he burns alive, the gods have won, and a stronger age of fire starts. Bad ending.
What I still don't understand is why normal people can become hollow. Among other things.
TL;DR version: Life sucks.
So this was fun... And I'm still not tired of it. Will restart as a priest soon. Or as a pyromancer?
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Captain: Huh. So you could be a new player, try your hand invading with a cracked red eye orb from the beginning and draw a lvl 700 uber character? Are you sure? I heard those guys are lonely.
That's what I've heard anyway. PvP is pretty fucked up in general though because of the server crap. In the meantime, here's an amusing video. I thnk this guy is ranked number one right now.
Dark Souls PvP - Big Hat Logan visits Kiln of the first Flame
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQfA3WhFUzQ
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Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song - So, SO much done.
Assassins' Guild was cake.
Wiped many, many times to Jewel Beast Lair pillars, but I beat all four and the fixed encounter down below. So happy~.
Got my ass handed to me SO hard by the Silver Dragon when I went to try fighting it again. Ow.
Not sure what I'm supposed to do at this point. There's so many options it makes my head spin.
EDIT: And Jamil has unlocked the Rogue class. Win~.
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Captain: Huh. So you could be a new player, try your hand invading with a cracked red eye orb from the beginning and draw a lvl 700 uber character? Are you sure? I heard those guys are lonely.
That's what I've heard anyway. PvP is pretty fucked up in general though because of the server crap. In the meantime, here's an amusing video. I thnk this guy is ranked number one right now.
You're on the 360 right Capain? I've read there are guys using hex edits and other terms I don't understand to cheat like little bitches.
There is a massive war going on between the "Dark side" (dragons, serpents) and the "Fire Side" (Gods like Gwyn, Nito, etc)
As seen in the intro, dragons ruled the world at first. Then heroes of the fire side appeared:
- Gwyn
- The witch of Izalith (who became the bed of chaos boss)
- Nito
- The furtive pygmy.
The first three owned the dragons. Then the age of fire started ,as Gwyn became the official guardian of The Big Fire Thing.
Pygmy didn't do jack shit, though. In fact, a prophecy appeared, telling that the pygmy's descendants would pwn Gwyn and start a new dark age of humans. (Looking back, the dragons might have invented the prophecy)
Gwyn got paranoid as hell and locked all of pygmy's descendants (including the main character) in a prison.
One knight, probably working for the dragons/serpents, then released the main character to send him on a killing spree against the people who locked him up with seemingly no good reason. And also because he might think he could end this tyranny and start a new age of humans.
Meanwhile, Gwyn and all his friends naturally try to murder the hell out of the main character. If all goes according to the plan, MC kills everyone and leaves, he becomes some dark lord. The fire disappears. MC was probably manipulated into thinking humans would rule but really dragons+serpents own everybody. Bad ending.
Gwyndolin and Fraampt are clever bastards though, and threw a wrench into that plan. They thought they could manipulate the MC, too. So Gwyndolin created Gwynevere, pretty much the only really friendly figure in the whole game (with large breasts), to convince MC to try igniting The Big Fire Thing. Well, if he does that, he burns alive, the gods have won, and a stronger age of fire starts. Bad ending.
What I still don't understand is why normal people can become hollow. Among other things.
TL;DR version: Life sucks.
So this was fun... And I'm still not tired of it. Will restart as a priest soon. Or as a pyromancer?
Oh boy, time for all sorts of spoilary words! I haven't had a chance to talk to a certain someone yet, so I don't have the full story on some things though. So, here's how I see things...
Age of Ancients, only dragons. Then Fire comes and causes contrast in the world. Nito, Witch, Gwyn and Pygmy find their Lord Souls within the Flame. The Pygmy's Soul is different though, unlike the others Fire Souls, his is the possibly titular Dark Soul. They all band together and fight the dragons with Seeth and succeed, ending the Age of Ancients and starting the Age of Fire. The three lords congregate near Lordran, while the Pygmy's descendants humanity spread across the world.
Time passes, the children are birthed and such, Quelana is exiled from Izalith, Gwyn's firstborn the War God is expunged from the annals for some transgression. Priscilla is born and locked away because the gods are fearful of Lifehunt. Around this time, the Lord Souls begin to lose their luster(possibly because of the Pygmy?) The Witch of Izalith attempts to recreate the First Soul, but fails, spawning the Bed of Chaos, the Demon Firesage and all other demons. Quelaag and Quelaan escape from Izalith but are still caught in the corrupted energies of the Bed and are mutated. The Old Fire Arts are forgotten, and the exiled Quelana's pyromancy in the Great Swamp is all that remains.
With one of his oldest allies gone and his own power waning, Gywn departs to link the First Flame and restore the power of Lords. His Knights split into two groups, the Silver Knights who would guard Anor Londo and the Black Knights who would follow him and combat the demons en route to the Kiln. He splits portions of his own Lord Soul off and hands them to Seath and the Four Kings of New Londo. Gwyn makes it to Kiln, but it's unclear to me if he succeeds or not. I'd wager he failed but the game makes mention of both ways so mmm. The Black Knights are incinerated in the First Flame, becoming wandering spirits and Gwyn becomes the Lord of Cinder.
Without Gwyn around, Kaathe begins making his moves, he offers power to the Four Kings, they accept, but they grow greedy and arrogant and turn away from Kaath's plan. The Sealers of New Londo, fearing how great the Four Kings are, flood the city and seal them in the Abyss. Gwyn's firstborn returns to Anor Londo to visit his father's tomb and vanishes again.
Now for some bizarre speculation. Around this time, Gwynevere leaves Anor Londo with the God of Flame. Without his sister to maintain hope in Anor Londo, Gwyndolin makes an illusion of her to maintain things and rule instead. Gwynevere's handmaidens are taken by Seeth(or offered to him by Gwyndolin) and turned into the blue-snake-ocotpus mistakes while he slowly grows mad making efforts to research immortality.
Outside of Lordran, humans begin to be branded by the Darksign(because of the Fire Keepers?). While not dangerous at first, they eventually become Hollow and mindless and dangerous. So the Undead are corralled (most possibly by Thorolund) to the Northern Undead Asylum to wait the end of the world. An old legend, passed down by the family of a Nameless Knight of Astora, tells of a Chosen Undead who would make their way to Lordran and succeed Lord Gywn.
Or so Kingseeker Frampt says, but Kaathe instead offers the opposite, that instead of being Gwyn's successor, you are the Pygmy's successor and are being used by Gwyndolin/Frampt to maintain the Age of Fire, while Kaathe/Pygmy want to usher in the Age of Dark.
Now, the Age of Dark, it immediately seems obvious that it's the Age of Humans y'know? Kaathe straight tells you it is. But no, I think differently, it's not the age of humans, but the Age of Undead.
-The DARKsign brands the Undead.
-Serpents, imperfect dragons, are symbols of the Undead.
-The Darkwraiths steal Humanity from their foes.
Now, in the end, was Gwyn restoring the First Flame to stop the Age of Dark out of fear? If so, fear of losing his own power? But he certainly lost that when he became Lord of Cinder, and he gifted away portions of his own for others to use, and the Four Kings had to have been Human if Kaathe wanted to use them. And if he had succeeded, that would have meant sacrificing himself. Unless Linking the Flame doesn't cause that and meaning the Chosen Undead survives.
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RH: Home stretch. The story hangs together pretty darn well now that I know the Big Twist. Heiss is total hax, though. I just get to travel through time and use Mana Bursts, he can rewrite my memory and raise the dead? Haaaaaaaaaaaax.. I'm at the Four Guardians node now, tried the superboss battle but got destroyed.
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Blue Dragon - Completed. Final time 38 hours or so, final level 45... generally everyone was around Level 30 in one class and 15-20 in two more, though it varied.
The final dungeon's major bosses (eye laser dinosaur, pyro dragon, giant robot, finals) were extremely challenging! I definitely had to make good use of my various classes/skills and the charging-attacks systems which are core to the gameplay. This was pretty much exactly what I was hoping for when I decided not to do any sidequests. Challenge-wise, the game starts off terrible for randoms and okay for bosses, but the bosses get worse over time, as most of the ones on disc 2 and all the ones on disc 3 before the final dungeon are terrible. Personally this makes it very hard for me to enjoy a game which I'm definitely playing for gameplay and not plot, so I went straight into the final dungeon, and yeah, generally had a great time. The final dungeon is about 7 hours long which is nearly a fifth of the game, and not only has the aforemntioned good bosses, but also some solid randoms which actually required me to form strategies for the best way to deal with them! So good. I really can't stress enough how this is the most enjoyable part of the game.
I've mostly talked about the gameplay already. The system is good, and pretty much remains so throughout. Only nine classes, but really, it's more than enough; I think Blue Dragon and FF13 have proved to me that games going for 20+ doesn't really add much; it's closer to clutter if anything. I appreciated that the manual included what all the skills were so I could form plans without consulting the internet. Class balance could be better just because Black Magic is stupid for most of the game (and still great at the end) but isn't terrible, most classes have a use certainly. The game strikes a pretty nice balance between levelling up in a class for stats and levelling up in different classes for their awesome skills (and Generalist levels let you expand your skill slots in a nice way). Good stuff.
Character/plot stuff is of course less good. Shu was a pretty unlikable main at best, not really the most endearing of the "idiot main" trope and I rarely adore those anyway. The Suicide Counseller Shu scene which I've already ranted about firmly cements him as my least favourite talking main character since the last Xenosaga game I played, though. Marumaro is the other obvious offender, just rather loud and annyoing most of the time. Better than Shu because he's ultimately harmless and the Zola crush is cute. Jiro and Kluke are both pretty dull overall (Jiro is "the smart one" but isn't really that smart anyway, Kluke is pretty bland outside the love triangle silliness which is kinda funny). Zola's the best of the PC cast and this owes entirely to the last half hour of the game where they do some neat things with her. Would have been hilarious if she were the final boss! Well, even before then, she facepalms and Shu's ability to do stupid things and dive into trouble, and I approve of that too.
Of course, Nene is the highlight. Basically, Nene's only real motivation is to see people suffer because it is funny. This guy has immense magical power even before completing his Xanatos Gambit (which incidentally is pretty cool), commands literally thousands of combat robots and multiple mobile battle fortresses. He could kill or enslave millions of people whenever he felt like it. Instead he chooses to:
-annually send in a "land shark" to destroy houses of a village randomly once a year
-sends tsunamis at the world's largest city... which sounds boring until you realise that the tsunamis come from giant cubes of water which he has float in the sky for a week before crashing into a tsunami just to taunt the citizens.
-encase one particular town inside a magical forcefield, then give the townsfolk a controller that will let them take down the barrier... and then bury that in an underground factory just below the town guarded by killer robots.
-plant a tree that eats people in a town square, have it eat about four people per year, and plant other killer trees to lock people in this town
-afflict a town with a magical storm that freezes them, still sentient but immobile, should they ever step outside, and lets them know about this.
This isn't even going into the ways in which he trolls the party specifically which are also masterful. However, his trolling of the party serves a purpose. What he does to the rest of the world, though... there is no rational gain for him to do any of it, he doesn't extort or expect anything from the citizens of the world. He just has too much time on his hands. For a fluffy game like this, definitely my type of villain.
*spoilers I guess*
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I have decided that the game's plot makes more sense if the entire third disc is Shu's fever dream as he lays dying after being crushed underneath Nene's mech at the end of disc 2. I mean, let's review what happens after this:
-Shu somehow gets his magical powers back for a flimsy reason!
-Shu teleports himself and his entire team to a random location.
-Trees that eat people.
-Entire rest of party also regains powers for flimsy reasons.
-World gets sawed in half.
-Robotic dinosaur with eye lasers.
-Parakeet-type thing turns into giant super-weapon.
Uh huh. You must admit, my theory makes more sense than what actually happened!
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*end*
Visually the game looks nice enough despite the limits of choosing Toriyama as your character designer (nice monster/robot designs as always). The world map in particular looks very nice indeed. Musically the game is excellent, I definitely dug the 70's/80's rock influence evident in the soundtrack. Eternity is obvious but most of the mechanical dungeons and the final bosses stand out as also having good music.
I think the game ends up as a 6/10. It felt headed downhill but then the final dungeon comes along and saves it, totally justifying that good class system. So in the end, we have an excellent class system, some weak writing, and a game that is generally fluffy but quite polished and enjoyable enough otherwise. Pacing could be better, but it also wasn't as bad as I feared.
Class notes...
Swordmaster: Once I realised that Charged Attack worked with this it certainly got a fair bit better! Tends to be a little unimpressive without weaknesses to hit, but good when it can hit those. Mow Down's nice too. Not as powerful as Black Magic due to the much more limited multitarget and a bit less damage, but still good.
Black Mage: Obviously the overall best, smashes things in the face. Great damage of all varieties: ST, MT, GT. Elements helped more than hindered until the final dungeon, and even then, very little really walled the entire set (just one particularly memorable enemy I think). Smashy smashy. Also had Extracta and Regenerate MP, which meant you had infinite MP even without hurting your pocketbook.
White Mage: Also awesome, the Zephyr spells are great multitarget healing, as is the option of Double Item. Shina even lets it get in on the attack magic fun, and regen's a decent buff.
Monk: Charges so it can punch things. Attack Amp is also great, although forcing charging makes it situational. Good attack and Battle Essence lets you spread that to other classes, too, and has the counter skills... probably the best physical class overall?
Assassin: Long Range and Double Attack are both great investments for a physical setup, though a bit late and physical setups are more complicated/weaker as already mentioned. However, everyone loves Ninja Swiftness. Speed for everyone!
Guardian: Generally felt like the least useful class because enemies until the final dungeon didn't have the offence to make it feel worthwhile. Such is the nature of tanks. By the final dungeon, class levels for stats were a bit too important so I couldn't change my mind and start putting it to great use. Oh well, Max HP+25% is obviously a great skill and doesn't even need that large of an investment.
Barrier Mage: Apart from some grinding purposes, it's not great, although Shielda and Shella (mostly the former) were nice against the endgame bosses who didn't get too dispel-happy (looking at you, Ultimate S.).
Support Mage: Good stats overall, Quicka is great, Attack/Max HP buffs were also nice, Slow destroyed bosses until they started immuning it late disc 1. Doesn't provide much for randoms but Quicka is so important for the final bosses.
For my own builds... everyone had up to Black level 4 because it's so good at mowing through randoms for most of the game (and Extracta's nice). Everyone had their default job as their highest-level. Otherwise, Shu was Swordmaster with some Black/Monk/Guardian. Jiro was White Mage with some Black/Barrier/Assassin. Kluke was Black Mage with some Support/Assassin. Maru was a Monk with a fair bit of White/Black. Zola was Assassin with Black/Monk.
FF4: TAY and an FFX replay are now my focuses.
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DS: Got bored with my main character, so started a new game with a Sorceror. Holy fuck this is easy. Granted, some of this is due to familiarity with the game. But yeah, 30 shots of ranged magic with more buyable early is just insane. Just freed Griggs, now I need money to buy all of his goodies.
Also trying the Master Key, and it's strange. Why does it work on the Residence lock where the Gold Pine Resin is, but not the Residence lock where Griggs is? Still, early access to Blighttown is never a bad thing.
Advance Wars DS: Felt like playing this. Finished up a campaign with Nell/Rachel/Olaf. Only need to do one more with Jugger/Kindle/Hachi to get all the backgrounds (minus the one for 300 trophies). Speaking of trophies, up to 245 out of 300.
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Dark Souls: Not really sure if I'm making progress or not. Just kind of wandering. Have rung both bells. Sen's Fortress seems like a later thing though. Beat Pinwheel in Catacombs, but scared of Tomb of Giants. Went past the sealed door in Darkroot Forest and dicked around with those guys. Found Darkroot Basin looking for a way up. Killed the dude with the bone club and got his ring. Encountered the Hydra and threw up my hands. Went back up to Darkroot Forest, got past the guys, encountered Sif. On the way back, noticed Alvina and joined her covenant (losing my one with the Priest guy back at Firelink). Think I can kill Sif with gear pretty close to my current gear.
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FF0- So.... just a few minutes into the game we see this tactical nuke going off in the name of Ultima Bomb. Then a couple of chapters in we discovered that l'Cie are actually walking nukes. And then when we thought we couldn't possibly get any more cradles, Alexander goes off.....
Just how the fuck this continent stayed in one piece???
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I like when the plot summaries in games make no sense if you're not familiar with a bunch of in-universe jargon. It tells me when something is really poorly-written. I swear to Alvis that Final Fantasy games are one step from referring to war as "Clabaghadrij" just to make it sound exotic.
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FFTA2 - This one has been in the works for ages. Done pretty much all the side missions up until the end of the game, no interest in finishing off whatever is left.
DQ4 - Started this up. I really like how much they polished this up to be of fairly modern quality with stuff. Then they still have people walking in place all the time and I have no idea why in the fuck.
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DQ4 - Started this up. I really like how much they polished this up to be of fairly modern quality with stuff. Then they still have people walking in place all the time and I have no idea why in the fuck.
Because if they didn't, Dragon Quest purest fans that make up 80% of the people who play these games would BITCH AND WHINE and boycott the series.
I mean, look at what happened with Dragon Quest 8.
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I suspect "8%" may be closer to the truth than "80%", though they are loud and obnoxious and generally need a punch to the face.
FF4 TAY - Doin' the subterrane with a Rydia/Rosa/Edge/Ursula/Goblez team, will probably sub Goblez out for Cecil when I get him. I just beat Scarmiglione. Golbez obviously the MVP so far, like the good little jeigan that he is. Edge and Ursula are coming along decently, though I do have to agree that Edge is quite bad in the first part of the final chapter. The charge times on summons limits them, but a black mage is still great to have, as Bio is instant damage that is (for now) much better than what fighters manage, and Stop is great. Palom vs. Rydia (vs. both) is probably an interesting debate, as is Porom vs. Rosa (vs. Edward I guess, but I'm thinking MT Phoenix Down can't make up for Haste/Blink/Shell/Reflect/Dispel/Holy except in verrry specific parties).
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Edge fanboy. =)
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uh oh ciato just called you super
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Stuff
Daaaaaaamn!
Dark Souls: So yeah, I restarted as a priest.
I'm trying to be human most of the time this time to see some of the hidden stuff like NPCs helping against bosses. It's hard. I'm trying to have a faith build to join the "Praise the Sun" guild (by the way, I always give a +1 rating to "Praise the Sun" messages), but other stats are much more important at the beginning of the game. There's not much of a point to more healing when you can't do damage and die more often by being overwhelmed than by not having enough resources. Other spells are mostly useless so far. Mace weapons don't sound too good compared to, say, halberds or spears so far either.
Anyway this is over since i have access to Blighttown larvas.
Divine Axe +5 and Spiked Bat +10, soon.
So far I have been invaded by NPC phantoms in the depths and Blighttown (near the fire)
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My advice for Priest is don't put points in Dex at all. If a stat starts at 8, just leave it there. Part of what's wrong with my build - too many points spent covering trash stats. Faith actually doesn't seem to improve healing much, oddly enough. You will want to get 30ish Faith at some point, because Wrath of God is That. Damned. Good.
There's only a total of four NPC invaders, although Kirk shows up in three different locations.
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Edge fanboy. =)
:-* You rang?!
Edge starting fast or slow depends on how much you do on the world map before going to the moon. Golbez starts gaining HP very late (L55? something), but the bigger problem is that he doesn't have the shiny status magic. The defense is nice though!
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Golbez feels extremely jeiganish due to the whole "3000 HP when everyone else has half that or less" thing, along with getting a big head start on attack magic. Obviously the lack of status magic (mostly Stop is the one I find to be really paying off right now) is a downer but he's too good otherwise (even badly beating the other mages at speed for a while). I definitely see him unimpressing later on though.
The game glitched out and gave me a God Hand that nobody could equip! Quitting and reloading the game fixed that, but that was kinda weird.
FFX: As mentioned, replaying this. I'm up to Luca so far. Not much gameplay in the early going, and what's there is pretty easy, but it's enjoyable enough in that FFX way.
Writing is still just as sharp as I remembered. Highlights so far are the mindscrew that is Sin's attack on Zanarkand, followed by the general feeling of loneliness after Tidus arrives in Spira (basically up until he meets Wakka). I enjoy earlygame Lulu more than I remember, she is just incredibly harsh. She and Wakka have some pretty great scenes together, and I like how their respective pasts (as well as Yuna's) define their relationships with the weirdo who shows up claiming to be Jecht's son from a long-dead city. The game has some excellent world-building stuff too, with the ever-present Sin; the Kilika sequence is quite powerful (particular hype for the scene where Wakka explains why the world plays blitzball). Tidus' flashbacks and dreams involving Jecht are also always effective. Nothing really too new here, but yeah, game's good.
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Edge fanboy. =)
:-* You rang?!
Edge starting fast or slow depends on how much you do on the world map before going to the moon. Golbez starts gaining HP very late (L55? something), but the bigger problem is that he doesn't have the shiny status magic. The defense is nice though!
I am immune to your kissy faces.
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If you think Wrath of Gods is good, you're going to love the sorceror, Captain.
I honestly find it pretty average, since it only gives me 3 shots of.. About 2 times the damage of a normal divine axe physical attack. It's easy to use but it sure doesn't help much against bosses.
I'm in Anor Londo right now, with a Divine Axe +8. I got every spell from Rhea and Petrus but they're still not very impressive. The cleric feels like a merchant , he has a bunch of utility skills but ultimately his stats are going to suck if you want to get a few good spells, and this isn't going to be worth it.
Tranquil Walk of Peace IS great, but it doesn't seem to have too much of an effect on bosses.
Even after my third playthrough in a row I've spent a lot of times just watching the scenery.
Front Mission 3: Realized that my first time through the game I didn't even realize different armor sets gave different skils and that you always had access to that. And I thought the game was dead easy especially compared to FM4. Wow.
So I restarted to try soloing the game. First two battles are a joke, then there's a crazy one where I was forced to use friends as meatshields who could give me repair kits, even if I never had them fighting. (I think I'll continue tu use them as meatshields if they're forced, but no repairs)
Thankfully after that battle you get access to the item shop + simulation battles, so I can truly start soloing. I'm currently grinding, getting skills (right now, 2 ROFUP 1 + 2 Zoom 1) and trying every kind of weapon. I'm probably going to stick with the default shotgun + melee combo for now, and stay the hell away from rifles.
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Did you play FM5, Fenrir?
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It's more about crowd control than boss damage. You can run straight into the room with all the Cthulu critters in the Archives and take them all out in one shot.
DS: Crystal Caves was not bad at all; I've seen that snow falling on platforms trick in another game. Had several resets on Seath due to trying to cut off his tail. Finally gave up on that and just threw lightning bolts at him. The range on the bolts is slightly more than his maximum range on the breath laser, so he couldn't even touch me. (note: 208 damage on regular lightning spear versus both his forms).
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Nope Super, I'd really like to but my current PC couldn't possibly handle it.
Captain: I dunno, those abominations never felt like a threat to me. You get that miracle late, at a point where the biggest threats are powerful solo/duo enemies that get killed in two or three hits from it rather than a bunch of weak enemies. This miracle would have really helped in the Catacombs, New Londo and Undead Parish I guess...
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It is pretty amazing. I'll be in Scotland in december and can give you a memory card that lets you play burned disks!!! <_< yeah.
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Wrath of God is supposedly pretty good for PVP bullshit. Controlling your character? Ha!
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Persona 3: FES: The Answer. Got through the Heartful Cry Colosseum battles, finally. Had to grind a little and specifically fuse a Siegfried with Repel Elec for the first, specifically fused Thanatos for the second, and just did some grinding for the last, which is remarkably easy when you fully heal every time you leave a dungeon. (Did fuse Horus for the third fight, although it wasn't amazingly relevant past having Resist Slash, when Thanatos had Null Slash.)
Now on the final fight for the first time, totally expecting it to be easier than the multitude of fights I just went through, so.. prepared to be horribly surprised, I guess?
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FF13 - In Chapter 4 currently. I just kicked the shit* out of Odin.
*died like three times and barely won
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*Soon, FM5!*
Dark Souls: Farm for eye of deaths finished.
I've gotten a lightning club and it's so much better than a Divine Axe in every way, even with 45 faith. Wow.
I don't know whether I should farm souvenirs of reprisal from harpies or get them from fellow players. I've really gotten my ass kicked in PVP before, and this build has no vitality, and the guilty are probably all powerful. Hum.
FM3 solo: Wow, why did I do this?
You get almost nothing from pilot levels. In fact, I've already reached the max level before getting access to the first shop.
Weapon levels get you very slightly more damage, and I don't think it does give anything else.
Skills? So far they almost never activate, and I have only 4 slots.
In short, I'm playing with one character instead of four with nearly no advantages. (I can pretty much forget about platinum medal rewards, too) Hope I'll get far but I'm not holdinf my breath.
So I had done a few other battles using the others as meatshields, nothing too bad, maybe two or three resets per battle.
Then the cute police officer joined -> I had 5 people in my team -> I got to choose which ones I get take to battle -> I was forced to only choose Jean Louis.
The real challenge began here, but I still didn't have access to a non-item shop, and this battle was against 4 opponents with missiles, + 2 with machineguns), including three freaking helicopters!!
This felt hopeless but I still tried. Slapped a missile on Jean Louis' mech (their accuracy laughs at helicopters) and went to Fukushima (um...) to rank missiles up to D*.
Gave Jean Louis one missile reoading item, two repair kits. His skills were 2 Zoom 1 + 2 Skill Up 1.
I get to one border of the screen and 2HKO the 2 helicopters with missiles. At this point I've already used both repairs and think I'm as good as dead.
But the tank comes slowly and gets enough missiles to the face before being able to act. One mech comes nearby, one missile hits his body then a shotgun blast finishes him off. There's only one last mech, a missile hits his only useful arm right away. For some reason the last helicopter just sat there and watched me wreck his friends. I guess Irvine was in that helicopter. Great FM/FF crossover there guys.
I have so much luck.
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Dark Souls: Farm for eye of deaths finished.
I've gotten a lightning club and it's so much better than a Divine Axe in every way, even with 45 faith. Wow.
I don't know whether I should farm souvenirs of reprisal from harpies or get them from fellow players. I've really gotten my ass kicked in PVP before, and this build has no vitality, and the guilty are probably all powerful. Hum.
Weapons that scale with stats don't scale properly. Supposedly that's being fixed in the next patch. So yeah, lightning weapons are going to be much stronger in the meantime.
I'd farm from the harpies.
I just hit 100 hours in this game and not even close to beating it lol.
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They need to make the fix a rather drastic change then. I wonder how far they'll go
"I'd farm from the harpies."
You do see fun people in PvP though:
http://www.youtube.com/user/sansviedotcom#p/u/28/qHO0dNC8HAQ
Nice avatar. I was guilty of having dropped a "Nice view" message in front of her painting in Anor Londo, way back then, before seeing her.
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Incidentally, "Try holding with both hands" has been the highest rated message I've encountered so far. :)
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Dark Souls: Haven't had much time for gaming lately, but I'm actually kind of stuck.
I have defeated the following: Taurus Demon, Capra Demon, Gaping Dragon, Moonlight Butterfly, Chaos Witch, Bell Gargoyle and Pinwheel.
I have found access to the following: New Londo, Tomb of the Giants, Valley of the Drakes, Darkroot Garden (behind the sealed door), Darkroot Basin, Sen's Fortress and Demon's Ruins.
The main problem seems to be that, as I am now, I just really can't handle any of these areas. I made reasonable progress in Sen's Fortress (but have brickwalled with the Titanite Demons in the lower areas) and I made it to Sif (who my currently mediocre weapon is not going to be enough against). I explored a little bit of New Londo but gave up because of annoyance, but it looks like that's my best bet for any sense of forward progress at this point.
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Subtle.
Andrew, you should definitely go to Sen's Fortress.
The lower area is entirely optional, I always leave the titanite jerks for later in the game.
You might have missed one door somewhere else.
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Man. I totally, clearly, obviously did not need help.
(Thank you!)
I think my split Str/Faith (with some wasted stats elsewhere earlier) is starting to negatively impact me. I'll go back to scouring Sen's Fortress though.
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Devil May Cry 3- Man Vergil just trolled me by totally owning the Mission 11 boss effortlessly -__- That was an awesme cut scene though. As Mission 12 was in general really, very awesme. Getting to be in Demon Form the whole time racing through the areas to the goal while owning the crap out of randoms with the sheer power of it all was really fun. I had a blast. Made up for and was sort of a reward for clearing Mission 11. I'm still not entirely sure how I finally managed to defeat the boss there. After many continues there came a fight where he just sort of stopped doing much/going into his crouching form and I somehow managed to avoid the stuff he did do and land in enough hits between times to eventually end the fight. Whew.
Being too stubborn to use Vital Stars probably contributed a lot to the number of losses/continues I had there though >_>
Mission 12's boss was wow. Just. Wow. Totally unexpected but still great and yet not so much at the same time (my heart wasn't really in it for beating this creature - which is partly why I lost a few times probably, first time I lost because of I was taken a back by the sheer randomness of it showing up the way it did) Some finale though especially with the Vergil stuff after. Wow ^_^~
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Heh... I could give you more tips, but I'm not sure you want to hear them!
Str/Faith is not necesserily bad at all as long as you put some points into vitality, you get good miracles later and can use a shield with high pose. This should work really well with, for example, the lightning spear gotten from the mimic in Sen's Fortress and the gold trimmed equipment behind Ceaseless Discharge in the demon ruins.
Worse spoiler (written in an even smaller font): Try looking for the bird's nest in Firelink Shrine. You need to use the elevator and make a leap of faith.
Anyway,
Dark Souls:
I've gotten the 10 souvenir of repraisals, I tried farming harpies while invading guilty players whenever I could.
Turns out that you can pretty much forget about killing people with Gwyndolin's ring, but using the blue eye stone doesn't always put you against strong players. So I've invaded people in the Painted World over and over, and have gotten 8 souvenirs from other people and 2 from harpies in the end. My success rate was about 7/10, and I even tried not to be too cheap against solo players who didn't use the invisible ring (being cheap involves Tranquill Walk of Peace + Wraith of God spam). So yeah, pretty good.
So now I've become a sunbro, I only need two other sunlight medals to become Super sunbro, but I haven't had much luck. I've had two boss fights in one hour of waiting, against Ornstein / Smough, and both times my host died against giant Ornstein.
I've also gotten the Wood Grain Ring. So obscure, and so good.
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SRWZ - Yay dead overpiggy. That stage was pretty silly overall.
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10D Extra: beat. Now if I could only somehow manage to get through PCB Normal...
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Deus Ex: Finally got around to finishing this. Great game overall, although it's not the genre of game I typically play. I really liked how all the augments were useful. You can play a variety of ways and still get through the game. I beat the game with no hacking or armor upgrades, and got the Pacifist achievement. In fact, I even beat the bosses non-violently (stun gun versus bosses 1 and 2, takedown versus 3, emp grenade versus 4). On the minus side, enemies were dumb as fuck and only one energy bar recharging was annoying.
Dark Souls: Got to Gravelord rank 1, then killed the Gravelord. It's like poetic or something.
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LA Noire: Picked this up at the minimeet game store run, loving it. Just finished "A Marriage Made in Heaven." The style is just amazing and I've never played GTA so the open-world gameplay is pretty fresh to me. Not a huge fan of how FAQbait the interrogations are; every time a witness says something, you have to pick between trusting it, disproving it with evidence and "doubting" it without actual contradictory evidence (basically a HOLD IT! from Phoenix Wright), but sometimes it seems like you have evidence and then the dialogue after you make the "lying" choice changes things up a bit so what you thought you had doesn't fit anymore, or makes it so you do have something that fits when it looked before like you should just lean on them with "doubt". Luckily it takes more than missing a few interrogation points to botch a case completely, so the whole thing is just annoying.
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Funny enough, you can back out of a Lie accusation if you just cancel from the evidence screen, meaning you can see what Cole says (he has a few stock "this is bullshit" phrases) and then decide if you should go back to Doubt. If Doubt is selected and wrong though, well, you just fucked it up.
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FF13 - Chapter 7. Playing as Fang/Lightning/Hope currently.
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That is damned helpful, really. Most times the tough choice has been between doubt and lie, not truth and doubt/lie, so just pick "lie" first if the statement smells like BS and see what the lead-in looks like. Nifty!
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Dark Souls: Iron Golem beaten. Sif beaten.
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Also a useful tip is to look at the stats Rockstar has available if you have access to online stuff. If the "chose correct answer after using points" percentage is in the 90s then it's probably either Truth or Doubt, if it's low it's a Lie with tricky Evidence.
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Uncharted 3
Got this as an unexpected loaner because my father picked up it, Arkham City and the new Madden on sale. He went for Batman first, so I had a crack at this one.
And already finished.
This feels like the shortest of the Uncharted games, or maybe I've just gotten better at them? In any case, not a long game, but certainly a very fun one while it lasted. I think it's the weakest entry in the series. The character beats are still strong and after three games, I certainly care about Drake, Sully and Elena, and the villains are actually the best so far by a fair margin. The plot, however, feels like a retread (even reusing some sequences) and it doesn't have the pitch-perfect pacing Uncharted 2 boasted.
Gameplay-wise, it's Uncharted. Tight gunplay and platforming, linear path. Melee combat has been improved. 8 or 8.5 game compared to Uncharted 2's 9.5 and Uncharted's 8.5 or 9.
The expanded co-op options look interesting (including splitscreen ^_^) so I'm hoping those pull it back up into the 9s.
Would consider multiplayer if others have it.
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Devil May Cry 3- Mission 15. Only five or six more story missions left to go I think :( Thanks to Meeple for the tips on Mission's 13's boss. Worked a treat 8-) Such a difference compared to the resets/continues I racked up there before >_> I has a new shiny now (the fifth melee weapon) Is it worth using? Well I've been using it a bit already. Seems ok!
Think I'm going to experiment some more with weapons, finish off the secret missions (well at least as many as I can until either they are done or I'm tired of them/want to continue the plots <_<), look for any blue orb fragments/break any statues I might have missed, etc soon. Haven't really decided whether to do this before or after the next boss though~
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Dark Souls: Finished the game as a priest, restarted for one hour to see the last two miracles and get the "every miracle" trophy. (Can't say I'm impressed by those particular miracles, after seeing sorcery)
This was the hardest playthrough so far, but PVP was a lot easier. Granted, I haven't tried many weapons with my melee fighter.
I've played this game for 120 hours so far... Can't believe I've played Dragon Quest 7 for that long...
Pyromancer is next, he will NG++++ into oblivion and get the last three trophies. Then, hopefully, I'll try a starting equipment Depraved playthrough!
FM3 Solo: Still struggling.
Usually enemies are dumb as bricks so they never chase and I can just missile spam from afar. Missile ammo is not infinite though so I have to choose which enemies I need to kill first and which I can handle at a closer range with a shotgun.
I have four item slots, 50% repair costs 1 and a missile recharge costs 2, I usually go with a combination of both. (Missile x1 + Repair x2, or repair x4)
Just about every victory is close so both of those choices matter a lot.
My default wanzer has one accurate arm with both weapons tacked on him, and one crappy but durable arm with a shield to protect the rest of the body. This is all very heavy though, so the body takes a massive hit in HP. But it doesn't matter -too- much, as if the much less durable weapon arm dies it's gameover anyway.
Sometimes I just forget about missiles alltogether to get more HP/movement and handle everything with the shotgun. This mostly happens when I have to fight a bunch of lesser enemies.
Yes! Strategy in FM3!!
Man, I keep thinking this game must be SO EASY with 2 characters, and you're given 4 of them!
Right now I've just gotten to the first shop that sells grenade launchers.
And I've decided that I can't take it anymore. NO MORE KAZUKI. I'm just going to solo with Miho from now on. I believe this changes nothing about the game (every character is the same right?), but I'll have to grind a bit to get her to Kazuki's level first.
There was one fun and particularly hard battles against 6 foot soldiers (who tried to enter 6 inactive mechs with machineguns, which was very easy for 4 of them) in a very narrow place. Fortunately all these enemies REALLY liked getting to close range before attacking because hey, it's easier to aim or something. So I could just equip a giant axe.
After much experimentation I just whichever parts had the highest HP, a melee weapon, a shield, and 2 Max Repairs. MC had Stun Fist x4 equipped.
I was attacked by four mechs at the same time, while two foot soldiers tried to enter the last unused two ones. (But all those mechs fighting got in the way)
Stunning enemy mechs bought me enough time to use those repair items and last for a while. Once my mech was about dead I just ran away and jumped into another one. Muhuhahah, so cheap.
Outside of insane luck I doubt there's any other way I could have beaten that battle.
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Dark Souls:
Started with about no knowledge of game or Demon's Souls except balls hard. Extremely disappointed you cannot invade people on your friends' list. No trolling Tallychu is an automatic minus 2 points from the score. I picked Bandit because it was the only class that starts with an axe, cause hell yes. Unfortunately, the game is unplayable with random input lag. It's one thing to have input lag, but to have inconsistent input lag. Literally about 11 deaths were because I hit the attack button to attack only to stand like a dunce, and THEN attack right after the enemy slashes my guts out. Fighting with controls, it's like I'm back to the NES.
I only got invaded three times. The first invader used some poison spell and lagged all over the place. Nitori you can't play this game! The second invader was pretty bad and killed him in three hits. The final guy pushed me off a cliff because I couldn't fucking see. I have the brightness on the max setting, contrast on my TV up and the Depths continue to be not visible.
Oh and the biggest fuck you was this item called fire keeper soul. IN THE FUCKING MENU it says using it increases the effectiveness of Estus Flasks. So I use it? Nothing fucking happens; you lose your item. Turns out you need to turn them in to this obscure-to-find character in firelink shrine but you get no goddamn notice of them being there. Sonic 2k6 makes more sense than this game.
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Out of curiosity, are you on PS3 version? I have not experienced that input lag myself, although it is supposedly getting fixed in the upcoming patch. Then again, I also have considerably less trouble in Blighttown than other people report. So obviously I am just more awesome than the game.
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Devil May Cry 3- Mission 15. Only five or six more story missions left to go I think :( Thanks to Meeple for the tips on Mission's 13's boss. Worked a treat 8-) Such a difference compared to the resets/continues I racked up there before >_> I has a new shiny now (the fifth melee weapon) Is it worth using? Well I've been using it a bit already. Seems ok!
Beowulf's primary use is the raw power weapon. You use it when you want to do as much damage as possible in as few hits as possible. Killer Bee (the dive kick) is a good way to get in on enemies, and in swordmaster, it gets projectile and AoE based attacks to add some variety.
It also has Air Hike, so it still has utility. For DT, Beowulf has the highest defense boost, IIRC, making it handy for just SURVIVING in those slugfests as well (and DT'd Beowulf hits hard as hell anyway.)
I personally like using Beowulf a fair amount, but then, DMC3 is a very "use what works for you" style game, so just go with what you're comfortable with.
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Out of curiosity, are you on PS3 version? I have not experienced that input lag myself, although it is supposedly getting fixed in the upcoming patch. Then again, I also have considerably less trouble in Blighttown than other people report. So obviously I am just more awesome than the game.
PS3, yes. Things are way worse in Brighttown. Huge drops in FPS and input lag = many deaths. I had about 13 humanity and 20k souls stocked piled until an ogre knocked me off the cliff. Managed to see my bloodstain, only to get swarmed and killed by fire dogs. OHKOing fire dogs. POIZN swamp was just boring. Ring of Evileye kept my health up with the endless spawning bugs. However, I did beat the boss on the first try, with the power of goon squad. Apparently sorcery has some fuck up shit to deal so much damage compared to axes-to-the-face. The two people I summoned kill it in 10 seconds. Some creepy ugly freak asked me to join his Covenant so I did and got more pyro power, and I don't even have the item to use it.
Right now, I can barely keep interest in this game until they fix the input lag. Everytime I'm on a roll, I get fucked over by lag and lose 30 minutes of progress.
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I picked Bandit because it was the only class that starts with an axe, cause hell yes.
Pyromancer starts with an axe.
I've seen enough people complain about input lag yeah, but this has only happened twice to me (PS3 version)
Namco Bandai reaaaally isn't in a big hurry to release patches in the US & Europe either.
Disconnect from PSN in Blight town for slightly less headaches.
My pyro is in the depths and just rescued the dude who's going to make my life better. I've upgraded my own hand to +2. (just like in real life)
Fun class, I like the suit, throwing fire from the hand (with various graphical effects), the smell of burning flesh, etc. I've also equipped a rapier, they feel pretty much like spears with shorter reach, lower damage and faster speed.
Edit: I also named him after the guy who burned down my gym.
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Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin:
So...I get up to fighting the Whip's Memory, lose a bunch, do some of the portraits, get the Jet Black Whip...
"A weak whip weapon that is implied dark elemental gotten right after a boss...GEE I WONDER WHY THIS EXISTS!"
...get my ass kicked again. Do another portrait, get Holy Mail...
"An inferior armor to something gotten blatantly in the open before, implied to resist Holy damage...GEE, I WONDER WHY THIS EXISTS!?"
And so I go cover some odds, ends, and then save my ga-*game freezes*
...fuck, ok, I didn't lose much progress since my last save, right?
"Save Data is Corrupt. Save file deleted."
...>_<
That covers what happened in my first file rather well. So I have to replay up through what was already a 90% completed game basically. I would have just stopped playing right there and then if not for the fact that the game is fairly short, and its quick to play, and by nature, a replay will be a lot faster given I know what's good, where to go, when I get what, etc.
Turns out I got better luck on drops this time, though I did grind a bit for a Europa's Dress cause I was pissed I lost that awesome equip before.
...so all that mumbo jumbo out of the way, yeah, I finished the game. Started it at Minimeet where Shale lent it to me (by the way, your other files were completely untouched. It was only my file that got deleted, so your progress is still there), finished rather quickly.
Not much to say about the game other than that it was a good entry to the series. Maybe the best of the ones I played even, but I feel I need to replay Aria of Sorrow to fully make that assessment. Feels better than Symphony of the Night overall if only because it actually fights back and thus gets less monotonous. I will state I despise the first Pyramid cause it basically makes Johnathon nigh useless due to all the Ghosts, so it compromises the Dual Character system given you're basically soloing that with Charlotte. Also the boulder traps were stupid. That was the only part of the game I really didn't like. Everything else was well handled, and also I can say that its ABOUT TIME they found a way to incorporate a Belmont style character in the game without making it a Bonus Mode NOR compromising the gameplay *eyes Circle of the Moon* so yeah, go Johnathon or something. Charlotte of course was just a unique character with enough
competence to add to the gameplay, so all is good.
Favorite part of the game was probably the Richter Fight. I'm a sucker for "Rival" style fights, where its a duel between two characters who have similar fighting styles and such, mostly because I feel that's where these kinds of games really illustrate their gameplay at their finest, not relying on gimmicks or anything like that. In any event, hard fight that was actually well made and often I could tell my losses were due to screw ups on my end, and its a fight where there's very little lenience for screwing up, even with a weakness weapon and a resistance armor.
So yeah, good game. Better than I was expecting. I expected a decent game, and got something notably better. 8/10 or something? Dunno when I'll get to Order of Ecclessia...probably sooner rather than later.
Oh, I DID try both Richter Mode and Sisters mode. Richter Mode is...meh. Its basically the SotN thing only now you have full access to Sub Weapons which really doesn't add much cause the Sub Weapons aren't worth much, with Maria added in just for the DUAL CHARACTER aspect, even though she seemed kind of pointless outside of areas that openly require two characters. Not worth much.
Sister's Mode...while not exactly my cup of tea, I give them props for trying to find a FUN way to incorporate the Stylus. It at least leads to something DIFFERENT in the game, at least, and does nothing to actually detract from the main game like, oh, I dunno...QTE Stylus Events everytime you beat a boss that when failed, has the boss revive and requires you to beat them AGAIN until you get the event right...but its not like a game a would ever do THAT.
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Yeah, I went back to firelink shrine and got the pyro glove. I upgraded it to level 6 and suddenly I'm doing 500 damage fireballs. Uhhhh, I haven't put any points into INT; something is very wrong here.
I ditched my axe in favor of the Zewihander. Strong attack downs practically everything. Suddenly I have the urge to find some extreme heavy armor and go Garland on everything.
Is there any recommended place to go after you ring the two bells? There seems to be 5 or so areas open to me and with no fast travel I really don't want to get stuck in an area where I cannot escape.
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Oh, I DID try both Richter Mode and Sisters mode. Richter Mode is...meh. Its basically the SotN thing only now you have full access to Sub Weapons which really doesn't add much cause the Sub Weapons aren't worth much, with Maria added in just for the DUAL CHARACTER aspect, even though she seemed kind of pointless outside of areas that openly require two characters. Not worth much.
I'm guessing you did Normal mode, or are unearthly good with Richter. Maria isn't pointless because she has the advantage of "not dying" and "killing them." Richter's advantages are speed (useful on Normal mode I guess when you're cruising?) and holy-typed damage, while Maria is a lot more precise in her maneuverability and kills things extremely dead with her birds. The flame birds + electric cats were pretty darn awesome specials, too.
But yeah, Portrait of Ruin is pretty good.
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I said I tried Richter Mode; I didn't say I finished it. I got bored with it fast because...well, see what I said. SotN Richter Mode wasn't any fun and this didn't feel any better.
Only "Extra Belmont Mode" I had any sort of fun with was DoS' Julius Mode, cause it actually felt like something different. Richter Mode in this game feels like a more restrictive version (in a way that detracts from fun) of the Main Game.
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Yeah, I went back to firelink shrine and got the pyro glove. I upgraded it to level 6 and suddenly I'm doing 500 damage fireballs. Uhhhh, I haven't put any points into INT; something is very wrong here.
Pyromancy doesn't scale with INT, or any stat, just with the glove level.
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Castlevania extra modes generally fail to garner my interest at all, personally. HEY GUYS YOU CAN PLAY AS THIS MUCH MORE SIMPLE CHARACTER BUT IT'S OLDSCHOOL or something.
I started OoE Hard Mode, and just beat the forest. God, that place was badass, totally lived up to the hype, the first two screens were nightmares. Third was pretty easy by comparison since medusa heads are much easier to dodge than the goddamn bats with their annoying trajectory and the random, all-over-the-place Winged Guards. I swear, one of these days I'll play a Castlevania that will make me understand Medusa Head hate. Maybe.
FFX - About to go do the Bevelle raid. This game is the stuff. I have swapped the roles of Lulu/Wakka (needed some L1 Key Spheres), Yuna/Tidus (needed some L2 Key Spheres) and Auron/Rikku (needed the Teleport/Friend Spheres from Bikanel). Things are interesting so far, Black Mage Wakka is MVP aside from aeons most likely. Aeons I relied on as a bit of a crutch for a while even though Yuna had no sphere levels (and hence the aeons had gimpy stats) because my team sucked, but once Yuna entered Tidus' grid their strength went into super-ridiculous mode so I stopped using them for physical attacks because seriously, that's just broken (Bahamut will break the cap with his physical the moment he joins, guaranteed). This will limit them a bit, though their overdrives are more than ever the only way to overkill tough enemies (this playthrough gimps the overdrives of most PCs due to them running off weaker stats). Lulu's Deathtouch weapon was very helpful in Home, as was cheesing enemy AI (the Guado want to silence her!). Tidus is not doing a very good job as a healer, but he still has decent strength from spending some time with Kimahri... this won't last. Too early to really pass judgement on my new Auron and Rikku.
I also beat FF4 the After Years with a party of the classic team, replacing Kain with Ursula since screw Kain. Team thoughts...
-Edge and Ursula are both very solid fast fighters, although Edge is slightly superior overall due to being able to hit flying weakness and, later on, his awesome itemcast weapons (before then, he has Shadowbind, which is actually useful in this game what the hell), although Ursula does have her advantages in slightly better speed, ability to hit holy weakness (not as common as flying, but notably useful once or twice), and maintaining damage against fire/ice/lightning weakness better.
-Rydia is pretty great overall, Stop is good stuff and Quake/Leviathan are both really good attacks once they get rolling. Sylph is great backup healing and reflect-piercing early, falls off later though. MT Break is fun. In general she really picks up mid-dungeon with Quake/Leviathan/Break and the Assassin Dagger, which raises her speed to not too far below the speedsters, and falls off a bit towards the end as MT fights get rarer and status immunity finally becomes common. Still has a decent argument for MVP though.
-Rosa has early Haste/Blink/healing, obviously this is very good. Bows are solid for a long time in randoms, Holy helps late, but mostly she's about being awesome for bosses. Arise is also a great late pickup, obviously.
-Golbez was extremely good and overall MVP during the time I used him, which was the Subterrane dungeon. Great in all stats, especially damage and HP, but he does lose that as time goes on. I dunno how good he'd end up feeling in the end, though I'm confident he'd be better than...
-Cecil. Man, what the hell. LVP by far of the people I used, it's not even remotely close. He doesn't even pass Edge in HP until late and never builds a reasonable lead, due to a level disadvantage, his white magic is basically worthless. All he really has going for him is Cover/Auto-Cover but it doesn't feel like TAY battles conspire to make this terribly valuable, all he really does is reduce your need to cast Blink by 1. ps his main competition (Ceodore and Kain) can actually just, y'know, cast Blink. Kinda surprising and embarrassing, I think there's probably at least 10 PCs (the other five I used, Palom, Porom, Kain, Ceodore, Yang) who are just indisputably better than him and that shit is fucked up after how good he was in FF4o and the way the plot continues gushing over him in this one.
Overall it's a game that is hard to rate. Final dungeon is very, very obviously the highlight (kinda like Blue Dragon!) and the only real reason to play the game. Plot has glimmers but overall is about what you'd expect from an FF4 sequel and has some really trashy bits like SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR DEAD GIRLFRIEND FROM TWENTY YEARS AGO EDWARD ahem. Gameplay is great late but does feel like it could have been just a bit more interesting (boss designs are decent but nothing really floored me), still you gotta love that level of polish and challenge. Still a game I want to replay at some point. And by "replay" I mean starting at the start of the Subterrane when you get partyswitching, or possibly right before since the Mysterious Girl showdown at the end of the earth arc was pretty badass.
I never did beat Shinryu (or finished off Deathgaze, but I saw no reason to hunt him down when I had no reason to get Dualcast, did make him run away once so whatevs). Nobody on my team had high enough HP to reliably survive Tsunami, and while I could probably win eventually with a basic strategy of "get fortunate and survive opening round, put party back together and start spamming Shell", things just never turned out that way. A few extra levels would make it more reasonable, or just using someone like Yang. Final boss was decent but only decent, I had more trouble with Bahamut (and also liked that fight's design more, his support was just perfect), as well as Omega and Ultima Weapon but I suppose that's to be expected. Lots of love for the bosses in general, no real shock there.
Game's probably either a 6 or a 7, could have been better if it were just the last quest but so it goes. Final levels were 59-64 (screw you Cecil), final time in the last quest was 17:30 with all other quests being 2-3 hours.
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Pyromancy doesn't scale with INT, or any stat, just with the glove level.
Well, some of the pyro spells scale with humanity, but yeah. Pyro is pretty broken right now.
Doesn't look like I'm going to have time to finish Dark Souls before Skyrim comes out, so I'll post my thoughts now.
This actually filled the need for a type of game I've been wanting to play recently: a single player game with MMO elements. The combat system is great; I love that each weapon has its own attacks, for all that I didn't experiment with them much. The aesthetics were outstanding, and I couldn't believe how seamlessly you could move from area to area. I would barely even hear the disc drive run. As I mentioned before, I did have a bit of slowdown in Blighttown, but not as much as other people reported.
So what's wrong with the game? Despite being a single-player game, it wants very badly to be a multiplayer game. And the multiplayer aspects are complete ass. You can only summon or be summoned by players within 10 levels of yourself. And since levels range from 1 to 700-something, you really have no idea if you're the right level for a particular boss's summoning or not. Not to mention levels are largely meaningless anyway.
And that's if people the correct level can even find each other in the first place. Demon's Souls had one server. Dark Souls has ten, and they're randomly assigned. So the end result is that you do a lot of waiting for coop, and invasions just tend to fail altogether (wasting your invasion items I might add).
Oh, and did I mention the message system? If you see a helpful message, you can give it a positive rating. Or a negative rating to some guy trying to trick you into jumping off a cliff. Except the rating displayed is the sum of the absolute values of all positive and negative ratings. The only way to find out if a message is actually helpful or harmful is to waste an attunemnt slot on the Seek Guidance miracle. Yeah, fail.
Other than the multiplayer, the only other major problem is how faq-bait it is. And the Anor Londo archers, which is just plain cheap.
Overall, it's an 8/10 game. I think it could steal quite a bit of Skyrim's thunder. Skyrim has a tough road matching the visuals and combat of this game.
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Oh, and Eph, Sen's Fortress by Blacksmith Andre is the next place in the story progression.
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Beat PCB. Only took since 2008.
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LA Noire: Finished the traffic beat. Almost perfected the last case - all clues found, and missed on the last question in interrogation. On to homicide!
Side note: Cole Phelps sure does kill a lot of guys.
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Having been to both the 25th Anniversary Zelda Symphony and Distant Worlds in the last couple of weeks, I've had this desire to replay every Zelda/FF now. So, starting up an old challenge of mine: complete every Final Fantasy I-X, X-2 and XII within the space of 6 weeks! Playing most alongside a friend who's considering Distant Worlds next year (so, atm, FF6 is slow progress.) Started this on Monday~
FFI: Went with Fighter/Black Belt/White Mage/Black Mage. Never used a Black Belt before and OHGODTHEY'REINSANE. Spent some time grinding near Pravoka before going to Marsh Cave because fuck Marsh Cave. Still got stun-locked into hell and had to retreat out again and grind some more. At about Lv 14, I finally beat the place, swept Astos, got the TNT, went to Earth Cave and took out Vampire in two basic attacks - yay Black Belt for doing 300+. >_> Got the Rod, died on Lich. Heading back there again now~
FFVI: Started this one again, forgot some stuff but managed to get through Mt. Kolts with relative ease and reached the Returners Hideout. Got the Genji Glove because I wanted to see how the text changed if I refused to help, then went through Lete River. Died on Ultros once because I forgot to put Banon in the back row. Got to the path-split, went with Locke. Swept through South Figaro, Locke died in the first fight after getting outside. Siiigh. Went through with a dead Locke to the healing spring, fought TunnelArmr, died. Currently saved outside that cave.
FFIX: Just about started. Got through the play getting something like 80% approval. Stole the Mage Masher from Masked Man pretty quickly too, so I've better equipment than average atm. Struggled a little on Plant Brain - forgot how brutal FFIX early-game could be - got through the fight, but not until I'd used up all my Potions and Hi-Potions. Currently saved outside the Ice Cavern.
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FFVI: Started this one again, forgot some stuff but managed to get through Mt. Kolts with relative ease and reached the Returners Hideout. Got the Genji Glove because I wanted to see how the text changed if I refused to help, then went through Lete River. Died on Ultros once because I forgot to put Banon in the back row. Got to the path-split, went with Locke. Swept through South Figaro, Locke died in the first fight after getting outside. Siiigh. Went through with a dead Locke to the healing spring, fought TunnelArmr, died. Currently saved outside that cave.
You do realize that Duncan's house to the east of the cave has beds yo can sleep in for free for full healing, right?
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Presumably he did not. Not unreasonable, I didn't realise this my first time or two (don't recall which) through the game either. It is somewhat out of the way, and screw world maps.
That said, on a different game's note, being impressed with Black Belt on a team that has Fighter feels a bit off to me!
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Being impressed with any PC on a team that has Fighter feels a bit off.
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That was the general thrust of my comment, yes.
EDIT: Of course you neglect the possibility that it is perfectly valid to be impressed by a PC on a team with a Fighter. If that PC is another Fighter.
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Badumpisssssssssssssssssssh.
In fairness, you can also be impressed by Thief. Impressed by how fucking -awful- he is.
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It's probably not the original FF1. I know I tend to forget the others because I like the overpowered fighter.
Pyromancy in Dark Souls feels meant to compliment melee builds while sorcery is the real pure mage option, that's why pyromancy needs a lesser stat investment (only a few points into attunement instead of attunement and intelligence)
On the other hand, you have to spend souls upgrading your hand, there are a lot of enemies who resist or are immune to fire and make that entire skillset useless, and you get way less spell charges. It is still pretty damn good.
Right now I'm doing everything before entering Sen's Fortress. I have a katana +7 (I like them more than rapiers) and a Hand +12. I can blaze through the game now... But I still don't know how to get some of those treasures in Blighttown. Ugh.
Meanwhile, my Miho in FM3 is becoming a goddess of grind. F rank in missiles. Let's see how far I can go.
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Presumably he did not. Not unreasonable, I didn't realise this my first time or two (don't recall which) through the game either. It is somewhat out of the way, and screw world maps.
That was my fault for wording it like a moron, and I do apologize for that (to Yoshi, naturally); I meant it to be informative and not sure why I said it in a rather snide way.
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Getting through FF12, period, in 6 weeks sounds like a pretty impressive achievement to me. I think I completed that over the course of ~4 months or so.
On that note... thinking about it, how fast do these games take to replay? Not speedrunning - which can be slower in real time anyway due to dying on bosses and reloading a bunch - but just going through quickish and knowing where to go while not skipping much.
FF1 - 15-20 hours?
FF2 - ??
FF3 - 20-25 hours? (Only know the DS version though.)
FF4 - 10-15 hours
FF5 - 15-20 hours
FF6 - 20 hours
FF7 - 20 hours
FF8 - 20-25 hours
FF9 - 20-25 hours
FF10 - 25 hours
FFX-2 - ???
FF12 - 60-75 hours
Would be my guesses, but curious to hear Yoshiken's final report in 6 weeks.
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I'd think FF7-9 would be notably longer than FF6 just due to the fact that battles take longer due to animations, plot scenes are lengthier, etc. I do know FF7's in-game clock is NOT 100% accurate, as it took me 3-4 hours to get through Midgar in real life time (this was in roughly one sitting), but the in-game clock claimed like 1 hour and 15 minutes.
FF10 I can't imagine being 25 hours. The cutscenes alone take quite a while given you can't skip all the dialog, they're more involved than anything beforehand, and there's lack of scene skip.
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You can beat FFX-2 really fast if you don't care at all about the plot (you shouldn't).
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You can't sceneskip FFX, but you can speed the cutscenes up notably by cutting everyone off midsentence. FFX being slightly longer than anything previous but not remarkably so sounds about right.
I do know FF7's in-game clock is NOT 100% accurate, as it took me 3-4 hours to get through Midgar in real life time (this was in roughly one sitting), but the in-game clock claimed like 1 hour and 15 minutes.
That sounds like a bit of a fluky incident, or a glitch in your copy (or something from the PC version?). The FF7 clock has always being reasonably accurate for me, and was again when I watched Ciato's playthrough this year. I'm not saying the clock has no inaccuracies, but I've never detected anything despite watching for these things (I frequently play games for an hour at a time, and notice if the game clock doesn't line up with real life... hi Wild Arms 3), so I'd imagine any inaccuracies have to be either small (less than 10-15%) or rare.
Hm, now I find myself strangely tempted to try what Yoshi is doing except replace FF12 with FF13. It'd have to be some time when I have way too much free time though, since... even though I'd shoot for figures lower than what Snowfire is proposing, it's still going to be an average of 15~ hours per game (maybe a bit higher) times 12 is 180 hours which is over 4 hours a day... yeah, I really can't imagine when I'd have that free time. Maybe an August-September if September ends up bad for work! More likely I'd stretch it over 3 months.
On the other hand, screw playing FF4 a fifth time, it does not deserve that. FF8/FF9 I'd say similar things about except at least I'd be able to see if they've aged less terribly than I suspect they have.
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He's playing Dawn of Souls. L14 sounds about right for beating Astos; whereas it's way too high a level for the NES version.
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On the other hand, an excuse to replay FF4:TAY squeeeeeeee.
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...Aaaaaactually I was playing FF1o. I just always overlevel like a bitch in early-FF1 because I fucking hate Marsh Cave.
As for Black Belt, the damage was insane at the point I was at, although yeah, Fighter did catch up over the next dungeon, and stayed on par for rest of game.
For the times, I fully expect FF2 and FFX-2 will take minimal time once I start playing. I plan to glitch out FF2, naturally (as though there's another way to play FF2~~~) and it's a pretty short game. FFX-2, I'm skipping all optional stuff, so it'll just be abusing the shit out of Pray to survive the early-game, with some Songstress grinding to get me late-game shenanigans. (X-2 is surprisingly difficult when played without optional stuff!) FF3 is shorter, for all that it'll be DS version. It's only really the early-game that's a challenge in FF3, and Garuda, and those aren't so bad with the right setups. (Except Garuda. That's tolerable with the right setups. Bloody Garuda.)
Anyways, progress~~
FFI: Complete! Got lost a couple of times, haha. Mostly finding places to land the Airship and figuring out where to get the Fairy. I always forget small parts like that. Had some trouble on the final dungeon too, so spent some time warping out whenever I was in trouble to heal up and save the experience. Eventually said "Fuck it" and went with a run where my White Mage died on Lich. Naturally, that was the winning run. >.>
FFIX: Going through the Ice Caverns now. At least this game gives you a nice stock of treasure! You damn well need it in the early-game. :(
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Oh yeah, I didn't notice the level comment. Yeah, overlevelling will help Black Belt more than other classes in general.
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On the other hand, screw playing FF4 a fifth time, it does not deserve that. FF8/FF9 I'd say similar things about except at least I'd be able to see if they've aged less terribly than I suspect they have.
Dooooo it. I want to watch them. =)
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And the vicious cycle of Elfiato gamewatching/playing continues.
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I'm pretty sure trying to convince Elfboy to playing FF8 and FF9 makes me a bad person.
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Actually convincing him to do it would make you a rad person, though. And guarantee your passport to the fifth circle of hell.
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Dark Souls:
Completed Sen's Fortress and Anor Londo. Fortress was pretty cool outside of running past the guillotines with lightning dudes shooting lightning bolts that do 1/4th health even blocked. I didn't even know about the lower sections with the titanite demons. I always died when knocked off the edge. I realized I had to kill the nuke thrower before fighting iron golem. I tried going in as human for a change to summon some bros but I get invaded almost instantly by some jackass who's semi-transparent with a flaming giant sword. Got facestabbed. Never change lagstabs. Realized a lot of bosses are easy when you're up in their face, just have to dodge their grab attacks.
Anor Londo was another pretty cool place, lots of optional treasure you have to fight for and well spaced out bonfires. Then came this fucking section after you pull a switch:
There's 2 giant stone knights and about 6 lightning imps, then you you have to dodge these two assholes firing spear arrows that kill me in two hits. Block and the momentum sends you flying off the cliff. Complete and total fucking bullshit. Die once and you have to kill all those assholes again. You basically need to run like a madman and make two pixel perfect rolls to dodge the spears from the right archer and hope he jumps off the cliff. Took me around 14 tries.
The boss wasn't any fun either. Dark Souls fights aren't really meant to be 2v1ed. So naturally they put 2 bosses in one room and expect you to beat two life bars. I get the feeling the game wants you to summon phantoms to help. I tried summoning sunbro and as tanky as he is, he doesn't really do much damage and against 2 bosses that can take 80-90% of your health in one attack you better be perfect on your dodging. I tried again with Sunbro and another internet phantom and I died in one hit to one of the silver spearmen. My next attempt in summon I get griefed by another dark phantom using some invisible cheese and homing spells. Finally my last remaining humanity I killed all the enemies up to the boss, and summoned two internet phantoms. One of them was flipping around like a ninja, using fireballs that were doing 700 damage. He had an golden aura around him. Sunbros are the bestest bros ever.
After beating the boss I realized that there was a blacksmith, took my Zewihander and make into a Lightning Zewihander+3 and suddenly I'm doing double the damage. Killed the Hellkite Dragon in 3 hits. I want to use some good medium armor with good poise but everything puts me into >50% equip load. Maybe if the onion armor wasn't so heavy I would totally run around in that.
How do I become a Sunbro? I've done around 6 or so Co-op runs when I help kill the boss. My faith is only 14. I have access to the Sunlight Altar, but I don't get any button impromt. I'm currently in the Chaos Convenant to unlock the shortcut (to save Sunbro, of course), but when I'm done there it's totally Sunbroing to grind for some souls/humanity.
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It's 50 Faith - (5x number of bosses you've helped other people kill). So sounds like you need to be summoned twice more. Then you can join at the Sunlight Altar.
Skyrim: Pretty good. Playing as an Imperial with a magic focus. Although lockpicking is also fun. I wear robes and shoot dual force lightning like the Emperor.
Level 4, cleared out the Barrow, now in Whiterun.
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DQ4 - So I wasn't going to do the cash grind in Taloon's chapter. Then I was reading around the internet to just understand how it works (because I like to understand systems and how to break them). So the internet says "Buy 99 Cautery swords!!!!!!" which is pretty close to answering the question "How do I make a million dollars in two weeks?" with "Pick up 2 million dollars!!!!!".
So anyway, Cautery Swords do not in fact mean dick to making cash in Taloon's chapter. The correct answer is noting the fact that you sell items at your newly bought shop for 50% profit. So in fact the answer is "Buy items from shops, sell them at your shop for a ludicrous mark up then purchase as many items as you see fit". Cautery Swords do not even factor into this. Steel Broadswords or even just Astrea's Abacus will make you plenty of money. Given the time frames it took me to actually GET the Cautery Sword I would have made money cap and buiyng 99 of a bunch of stuff just using either of those items depending if I felt like leaving Endor or not.
Cautery Swords are damned useful for making a ton of cash in one hit though. They are a question of time efficiency depending on just how much cash you want to make in Chapter 5. The answer to the question of how do I make a bunch of cash to transfer over in Taloon's Chapter very fast is not "Buy 99 Cautery Swords though" since buy/sell profit ratios are exactly the same no matter what items you use.
That said, if you have Cautery Sword unlocked? Yeah you can make a lot of cash off it pretty quick. You just spend a long arse time actually unlocking that shit, so it is by no means the fast way to do it.
Started Meena and Maya chapter. Nice to see the chapter about 2 chicks still doesn't pass the Bechdel test within a few minutes. Chapter about 2 chicks? Yeah all about chasing after a guy for killing their father. Lets see if we ever get some dialogue between them just about stuff.
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Dark Souls:
Finally my last remaining humanity I killed all the enemies up to the boss, and summoned two internet phantoms. One of them was flipping around like a ninja, using fireballs that were doing 700 damage. He had an golden aura around him. Sunbros are the bestest bros ever.
Hahaha, that was entirely possibly me since I have that same setup.
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Bahamut's normal physical attack - 16000
Bahamut's overdrive - 3500
Sign you're doing something right with your FFX playthrough. (Yeah, not using aeon physicals for maingame opponents.)
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Alternately, Elfboy should play all the Ivalice games in 6 weeks. FFT/Vagrant Story should be quick just from experience... FF12 is a slow one, so that'd take some effort to do quickly. FFTA/2 have lots of bonus missions you can skip. FF12RW would actually be a new experience for the Elf. I'd pay to see his kneejerk reactions there.
Playing games~
FFTA2 (surprise surprise)
Moogle/Nu Mou team is having issues, so I let a Viera and Luso into the main team so that I can actually kill things. Running a Moogle Knight, 2 Juggler/Time Mage Moogles, Sage/Time Mage Nu Mou, Bloodprice Summoner Viera (of course), and Paladin/Blue Mage Luso (eventual goal is Magick Frenzy Illusionist Luso). Adelle is a Dual-Wielding Ninja for when she's forced. Go go Auction abuse!
Plants vs. Zombies
Hey I finally beat the main adventure mode for this. Awesometastic ending song, better than Portal. I feel like I should have beat this sooner, but due to phone changes/false starts/playing on other people's systems/restarting to show the game off to friends, I'd never actually beaten it. Now that I have, I'm playing with all the mini-games and Zen Garden trying to buy all the cool stuff so I can play it again. Best part of the game are the bios for each Plant and Zombie unit. Tower Defense games... I <3 U.
Makes me want to replay Crystal Defenders! (Hey that's ALSO an Ivalice game that Elf should play!)
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I'm pretty sure trying to convince Elfboy to playing FF8 and FF9 makes me a bad person.
Aren't you already a super villain?
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Alternately, Elfboy should play all the Ivalice games in 6 weeks.
Given that there is exactly one game in the Ivalice series I know I like, and would be utterly stunned if I ended up enjoying more than half of them, I don't think I'll be doing that.
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I veto watching FFTA1, FF12, and VS.
Meeple: No, I love sugar, sunshine, and rainbows.
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Hey, watching VS is probably perfectly fun. Everything the game does right without slamming into the learning wall.
Watching FFTA or FFXII is of course identical to actually playing them.
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Having watched people learning the game, no, no it is not fun.
EDIT: Well, watching the block puzzles was okay. The combat, though? Ha. Ha. Ha.
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Hey, don't blame me for trusting you to actually figure out the system better than 95% of players.
That said, obviously you should instead marathon Kingdom Hearts games *nod*
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If you want to watch someone who knows it play it then I am down for that >_>
Edit - Not that I can vouch for it being particularly fun to watch even if I avoid the equipment grind that I enjoy.
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I don't want to watch it ever. >_>
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Skyrim: I am walking through the wilderness so I can get to Hogwarts. Then this cat-person assassin attacks me without provocation. Upon killing it, I find a note on its body saying there is a contract out on me. This is awesome.
I have also gotten far enough with a certain group to have developed a problem with body hair. Also awesome.
I have yet to actually fight the first dragon yet because I am too busy doing sidequests to bother with plot progression.
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FF13 - Almost have a full party, yeah yeah~
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I tried going in as human for a change to summon some bros but I get invaded almost instantly by some jackass who's semi-transparent with a flaming giant sword. Got facestabbed.
<3
To beat the Anor Londo archers, run to the one on the right, he'll switch to swords, then the rest is easy. It's worked everytime for me since the 20 resets first time through.
I've been really inspired by Dark Souls PVP videos.
- Attacking with the dragonslayer bow in the crystal cave to make people fall in bottomless pits
- Hiding behind enemies then using the trident special attack to boost them
- Vase vs Vase fights
- Going near NPCs to make the invaded player attack them
- Equipping the same equimpment as an NPC and going to his exact point to throw people into confusion
- Etc
I've gotten every pyromancy spell with the dude who burned my gym, they look nice but they're not helping in PVP.
Decided to restart again a fifth character as a pure melee character who's going to collect and be able to equip possibly every item in the game, and with 14 int for chameleon. Started as an archer, bows are pretty slow and bad right now, crossbows look great though. (but more expensive)
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SW:TOR- Okay, BioWare. You have won. I've played a lot of games and I can say that I have finally played an MMO that is actually better than WoW. It does this by basically being KOTOR but online and you and your friends can play together, which is exactly what I wanted it to be.
I'm going to play a Smuggler at retail, so I'm not playing one now even though the Smuggler is Bender. Instead I made a Jedi cause that's like... at the end of my priorities. And even THAT is awesome as fuck.
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Page 108 of the Games topic, time to talk about Suikoden!
So in other news, my best friend Crystal had gotten her prize possessions (the 6 Suikoden titles that were released in the States) stolen from her about 4 years ago. Today, she retrieved them from the thief at swordpoint, literally.
Also, there seems to be a Suikoden Let's Play Megathread going on over at SA, and there hasn't been a page of it yet that hasn't bashed SuikoTierkreis. Honestly, while there certainly -is- a lot to bash, I'm kind of sad that no one seems to have noticed that it actually has a good plot and a well-rounded, likable main character. Suiko3 also seems to be getting lots of bashing for being -different-. *boggles*
Since these two events have coincided so nicely, Crystal and I picked up Suiko1 to play along with the LP. Currently at the "whoops, killed Odessa" part. Sad, should have taken stat notes.
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Pretty sure there are 7 Suikoden games released in the states actually!
Anyway, the type of Suikoden fans who bash 3 (who incidentally are scientifically proven to be awful human beings) also dislike Tierkreis for exactly the same reasons, IT IS DIFFERENT. All games in the series can and must be judged by how much they are trying to be Suikoden 1-2. I'm surprised you haven't run into these people before.
They're less common than they used to be but still no less frustrating.
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There were only 6 four years ago!
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See I'm assuming your friend was badass enough to have invented time travel.
You disappoint me.
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Djinn and disappointment pretty much walk hand in hand. </mean>
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*backhands Snow* No dissing Djinn when he is encouraging Suikoden playing.
HoD: Up to 50 kills on Astarte (The vast majority of these are local coop, so more like 140 in practice), still no Miser ring. On the bright side, I finally got a berserker mail! I got two in a row in fact. Hopefully that luck will extend to miser rings.
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If his friend was cutting bitches to get back her Suikollection, I think she'd hardly need encouragement -anyway-.
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Pretty sure there are 7 Suikoden games released in the states actually!
Anyway, the type of Suikoden fans who bash 3 (who incidentally are scientifically proven to be awful human beings) also dislike Tierkreis for exactly the same reasons, IT IS DIFFERENT. All games in the series can and must be judged by how much they are trying to be Suikoden 1-2. I'm surprised you haven't run into these people before.
They're less common than they used to be but still no less frustrating.
They're definitely there, yeah. Someone tried to question how I could possibly like Tierkries more than Suikoden 2, and I gave my reasons (not gonna get into why), and he's like "THAT'S ALL STUPID!"
Its amazing how people will defend WEAPON FORGING!!!! as a hugely innovative, amazing system and how "fun" it is looking for hammers (...cause checking a FAQ to find x location of y hammer to make your weapons suck less is such a huge quest?), and fail to understand how someone can say that its not really that good. I'd get into specifics but yes, I do think Tierkries using FF3 Style weapons > Suikoden forging. Now if Suikoden forging was like WA3's...
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I think I've seen DL Suikoden time travel plot before >_>
FF13 - Almost have a full party, yeah yeah~
Ciato is Snow? =)
Devil May Cry 3- Finished/Normal Mode cleared. After a few close fights and lots of getting my ass kicked over and over I eventually managed to keep a good run going against the final boss and won =) My set up was Trickster L3, Ebony/Ivory, Kalina Ann, Rebellion and Beowulf. Pretty much stuck with Beowulf as the weapon though and made good use of Trickster to win the fight. No items used so I received an S rank for Mission 20. My first one of the game, I so happy/Quina ^_~
Mission 19 ... Yeah. Screw trying to be fair there. He doesn't deserve it, as a character or as a boss =P I managed to get him into the second half of the fight a few times without using items and eventually decided after always running out of continues that managing the first half of the fight was good enough. He is cheap in the second half, very cheap. Maybe as cheap as SO3 Freya =P Deserves no mercy~
I thus finished off the second to last boss with the Holy Waters I'd hoarded through the game - all two of them >_>
It is probably possible/not impossible to defeat this boss without items eventually but I didn't have the patience for it at this time and just wanted to clear the game. Perhaps one day I might suffer through an eternity of continues and win this fight through sheer luck or something. I don't even want to think about it on harder difficulties though.
Nevermind, back to Mission 20 was awesme. Oh and I has shirtless Dante~
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FF13- Chapter 11! Playing as Lightning, Snow and Vanille are supporting me~ Why is this game not a straight line anymore, haha~
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It actually still is, just with large spaces. Like a string of ass beads.
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A lovely metaphor for how most games are designed.
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The unfortunate thing about the Suikoden Megathread is that the guy doing it seems to loathe Suikoden 2 as one of the worst games ever, but I suppose we'll see what happens.
I've been playing the translation of Langrisser IV recently, it's a pretty neat game.
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SA, bashing things. Pick two.
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The unfortunate thing about the Suikoden Megathread is that the guy doing it seems to loathe Suikoden 2 as one of the worst games ever, but I suppose we'll see what happens.
I've been playing the translation of Langrisser IV recently, it's a pretty neat game.
Isn't Langrisser 4 for Saturn? I'd be interested in trying that out!
Also, S2 doesn't really deserve the hatred, for all that its pacing isn't very good. Did a fair bunch of things to move the series forward+has a strong plotline. I -really- wish its translation didn't hurt the writing so badly, since writing usually is half the reason to play a Suiko. Even S3, whose writing also suffered a fair bit from translation (not very nuanced) pulled off some great lines in general.
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Nanami is the fucking worst. Loses 3 points for her alone. End of line.
Speaking of LPs, the BT LP is coming up on one million views, I noticed today. I was recently accused of using my "cult of personality" to rally "no-name posters" in a vote. It was very silly.
also: Skyrim! I'm not very far but the game has so far captured being high in the mountains, because it's freezing cold in my house and on my TV, it is white enough it kind of hurts your eyes in 1080p.
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Cult of personality? BT LP? Whut?
Plants vs. Zombies: My Zen Garden is the envy of all who see it. (2nd Life playthrough)
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Cult of personality? BT LP? Whut?
I assume the Battletech LP on SA.
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The best LP. I'm in this time, which is cool. Line is fucking long and a half.
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The unfortunate thing about the Suikoden Megathread is that the guy doing it seems to loathe Suikoden 2 as one of the worst games ever, but I suppose we'll see what happens.
I've been playing the translation of Langrisser IV recently, it's a pretty neat game.
Isn't Langrisser 4 for Saturn? I'd be interested in trying that out!
Also, S2 doesn't really deserve the hatred, for all that its pacing isn't very good. Did a fair bunch of things to move the series forward+has a strong plotline. I -really- wish its translation didn't hurt the writing so badly, since writing usually is half the reason to play a Suiko. Even S3, whose writing also suffered a fair bit from translation (not very nuanced) pulled off some great lines in general.
There was a version for Saturn, but this one is for PSX.
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Langrisser 4? Neph, May I ask what is the build of your team? What what route you are planning?
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FF13- Chapter 11! Playing as Lightning, Snow and Vanille are supporting me~ Why is this game not a straight line anymore, haha~
Yaay~
Early Imperil/ga, Poison/ga, Deshell/ga, Deprotect/ga + Curaja are the bestest. Vanille also gets Fog/Pain Chapter 11 I think =)
Oh and STEELGUARD!!!
Need any help with equipment/weapon choices for enhancing roles/etc just ask =) Haste type and atb advantage/initiative accessories are worth noting if the lack of a SYN is seriously hurting at all but otherwise liberal use of SAB/Curaja and STEELGUARD should be fine. There are shrouds for bosses if needed/you have any left too~
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RH- Aht/Stocke solo/duoish. Started this while thinking about which new games to play. L4 Stocke vs Granorgites isn't working =( There are options -
*Try using Rosch as a decoy/bait to give Stocke more breathing space to do stuff - he has more HP before KO than Raynie/Marco! (they have 1HPs >_>)
*Level up =(
*Switch to a LLG w/th team until Aht joins
*Use Raynie solo/duoish instead until Aht joins (she has magics!/probably does moar damage than Stocke)
*Hope I get lucky and manage to sleep two targets at once w/th my sole Sleep Wing via Change shenanigans/letting Marco or Raynie be useful before they fall.
Edit - Bah Raynie doesn't even -have- magic yet. Silly mes.
*Need better healing items as well - Soothing Balms aren't cutting it =(
Edit 2 - Wow. A combination of 5 + 6 would have actually worked if more Healing Herbs or something had been there. Forgot about the Healing Herb in the mine. Picked that up. Finally managed to sleep two Light Granorgs at once w/th Left Assault > Sleep Wing. Power Wave > Healing Herb > Power Wave for the remaining front liner (Power Wave is a 2HKO w/th L4 Stocke + Custom Sword/Charm x 3 >_>) Then I was heal locked by the archers/middle enemy =( Managed to somehow get in a Poison Wing in between Soothing Balms then an Attack later to finish off the middle enemy at least but the archers finished Stocke off =(
Edit 3 - Yaay. Lazvil Hills merchant sells First Aid Kits + Sleep Wings. Sleep Wing success x 2 with a well placed First Aid Kit, Power Waves, Healing Herb and Poison Wings/Attack won it~
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I gave Lightning a Start: Protect accessory for one boss. Snow has Protect/(working on Shell) and doesn't have a problem having one crappy Synergist equipped because one of his roles is basically unused. So I have a plan for P/S if I absolutely need it. I tried controlling Vanille instead of Lightning, but I wasn't very good at it. Too much having to be a healer! Or something. Though there are certainly times when I'd like to control the healer a bit more.
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FF Challenge~
FFVI: Complete! Spent a loooooong time playing this the other day (and when I say long time, I mean, like, 20 hours, which is the longest I've ever played a game in one sitting. >.>) Got through the Sabin sequence easily, blitzed Narshe, taking out everything in the tower defence sequence. Took a team of Celes/Edgar/Sabin/Locke to Zozo/the Magitek Factory and actually managed to beat the boss in the minecart first try, despite usually having some trouble with it. Oh, actually, lost to Ultros in the Opera House once, thinking on it. Turns out, my party was killed completely by Tentacle, heh. Honestly, not much to talk about here for a fair while until.. I think one loss on AtmaWeapon and then WoR~
Got Sabin back, lost once to Tentacles before getting Edgar back, lost once to Dullahan before getting Setzer back. Went straight to grab Mog and Moogle Charm, then fought the Niteshade before grabbing Gau and the Niteshade Rage. Got Terra by using Charm on Phunbaba, then got Gogo. Attempted Kefka's Tower, but Mog's team got destroyed by the first set of randoms, so went off to train a little against bosses. Took out the dragon in Narshe, then got Tritoch and Terrato along with Umaro. Went to Zozo and grabbed Cyan because there were no enemies with Moogle Charm. Also took out a Storm Dragon along the way. Went and got Shadow as well, then beat DoomGaze by sheer chance. Decided I'd raid the Ancient Castle for items and Odin, then finally went back to Kefka's Tower. After getting through to Atma with Gau's team, I saved and healed up, Charming bosses along the way until... oh. Celes/Gogo/Setzer vs. Inferno. This fight was BRUTAL. Took 13 tries before I finally won by getting a little luck and some VERY conservative play. (Spamming X-Potions with Celes/Setzer while Gogo managed to hit the main body with Charm on the first turn~) Goddesses didn't prove a problem for the two teams with Charm, while the third took a little grinding and some electric immunity to beat. Kefka himself, I lost to twice. First time, I got to the third form, where both Gau/Gogo Charmed the healing section, allowing the offensive section to absolutely destroy me because I was hideously underlevelled. Second time, I took out both hands in the first form before the head, meaning the Quake final attack was enough to kill me. Third time, I made sure to take out the head first, second form wasn't a threat, third form had both parts Charmed, and the final is never a threat with Charm. Whee~
FFVII: Started this~ I'm used to speed-running FFVII, so I'm currently sitting before the Sample fight at 1:45 on the in-game clock. I should be out of Midgar in about 2 hours, which means I'm slightly behind my average time overall. (Yeah, I record FFVII times because I keep doing HDINS challenges.)
FFIX: Had to gain an extra level or two, but managed to beat Black Waltz #1. Got through to Dali, but didn't get much time to play, so just got everyone to go back to the inn and saved there. (In other words, about to go underground to find Vivi~)
On the whole, I'm very slightly ahead of schedule. Basic idea is that I need to beat two games a week, and I started this last Monday, so managed it just in time by beating FFVI yesterday. Having started FFIX and FFVII means I'm ahead, yay. (I actually feel more comfortable having started a few games than being further in one, since the intro sections tend to be the biggest time-wasters.)
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VP: Lenneth beaten, restarted on hard midway through because I found out I accidentally screwed myself out of the A ending sequence in the first playthrough. Palace of the dragon can go die for reminding me of Silmerias version, for all that it wasn't actually bad in this game. Only dungeon I found terribly annoying in this game would probably be the fire shrine place, that first room was just stupid and then those stupid evady bugs that like to get the jump on you and focus the mage just made me sadface.
Final party used was bow Lenneth, Aelia, Arngrim, Shiho. Bow options kind of made me sad towards endgame, but whatever, Lenneth had ridiculous mults so it didn't matter too much, it was fun building pws chains and seeing how big Aelia would hit for at the end, for all that the Mystic Cross great magic was just stupid and did more damage(in mt!).
Did a run through the seraphic gate, switched out Aelia for Lucian and Arngrim for Brahms, still kept Lenneth in bows, because high hit counters are pretty and swords don't add to the glory as much. The party was pretty lulzy, Lucian and Brahms could knock out like 30 crystals when I timed them right, PWS combos were a bit tricky because I would go Lucian first and Brahms second, because Valkyrie was the only one who could fill up the meter in the third sequence so I could get the Mystic Cross GM version to hit for even dumber amounts. Probably not the most efficient sequence out there, considering relative weapon power but whatever Lenneth mults means everything is alright~, though I did drop it accidentally on more then one occasion because I didn't get Brahm's button imputed fast enough. Midway through I came to the realization of how broken VP twinkery is. Why yes I'll take that elemental walling status immune self reviving party.
So after much cheesing of Seraphic gate bosses which cheese themselves with their glorious glorious overkill, I completed a tri-ace game without raging. Feels good.
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The unfortunate thing about the Suikoden Megathread is that the guy doing it seems to loathe Suikoden 2 as one of the worst games ever, but I suppose we'll see what happens.
I've been playing the translation of Langrisser IV recently, it's a pretty neat game.
Isn't Langrisser 4 for Saturn? I'd be interested in trying that out!
Also, S2 doesn't really deserve the hatred, for all that its pacing isn't very good. Did a fair bunch of things to move the series forward+has a strong plotline. I -really- wish its translation didn't hurt the writing so badly, since writing usually is half the reason to play a Suiko. Even S3, whose writing also suffered a fair bit from translation (not very nuanced) pulled off some great lines in general.
There was a version for Saturn, but this one is for PSX.
Oooooooooooh even better. PSX emulation is simpler for me. Should look for it.
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DQ4 - Okay so I am glad that after playing through a chapter of Alena who was a strong female who wanted to buck the trends of the patriarchy and take care of shit herself when they finally give her a voice it turns out she has brain damage like Meredy does in ToE. She speaks like a (kind of insulting) stereotypical Russian trying to use English that they are unfamiliar with. There was some of this in her chapter from other townspeople, but far from most of them. So yeah she can't even communicate in what is presumably her native language.
That and you know, she is also just kind of stupid. Although I will be fair to her. When I woke up first thing in the morning and found out I had to do the conveyor belt puzzles in the dungeon to recruit her I did audibly groan. Ergh to early for that. At least it wasn't a teleport maze.
Torn as to who to use as a party. Sofia, Alena is obvious. I was planning on Kiryl and then whoever, but eh. Borya seems to not be able to equip shit, so not sure if he is worth the trade off of eventually getting Oomph! and I feel no particular affection for Maya. I guess I could just use Meena? Go for healer overkill? I really would like to be able to stand using Taloon in combat. If his random stuff was just on attack I might be inclined to tough it out without a mage in the name of pimpstache, but he has done it when I was trying to use items (Cautery Sword use, might count as attacks?), so unsure on how much I can tolerate it.
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Langrisser 4? Neph, May I ask what is the build of your team? What what route you are planning?
I'm going down the A route first, I'll probably do B then C.
Landius is an Archmage (I thought magic got really nerfed but once you get the good spells, wow)
Ricky is a Serpent Lord (who dabbled in Magic at one point so he has a few spells)
McClaine sucks (but is also a Serpent Lord)
Angelina is my Dragon Lord
Shelfaniel is ah... I think I made her a General to get to Princess? But she was a Shaman before that.
Serena is my Paladin/Marshal
aaand Ranford is a Knight Master.
I really like the balance between all the characters so far, though I wish Angelina could go a bit more often.
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Torn as to who to use as a party.
RAGNAR, BITCHES.
Seriously, magic is so ungodly horrible in DQ4 that Ragnar is the best fourth option for randomsmashing and non-buffing turns in protracted battles by default.
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So what you are saying is to use Taloon because pimpstache. Duely noted.
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Dude, I said Ragnar is the best fourth option. Who do you think is the first?
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>__>
Wow @ Yoshi. Wow. Hardcore. I like my sleep way too much to do the same though!~
Oh and glad Glen finally enjoyed a Tri Ace game. Yay Shiho =)
I gave Lightning a Start: Protect accessory for one boss. Snow has Protect/(working on Shell) and doesn't have a problem having one crappy Synergist equipped because one of his roles is basically unused. So I have a plan for P/S if I absolutely need it.
Oh excellent!~
I tried controlling Vanille instead of Lightning, but I wasn't very good at it. Too much having to be a healer! Or something. Though there are certainly times when I'd like to control the healer a bit more.
=)
Yeah this is definitely more interesting once Vanille gets some actual damage with Death/Commado secondary role. Even Hecaton can be fun for Quake/Gaian Salvo on staggered groups beforehand too. Vanille eventually winds up roughly the same as Lightning in terms of durability too though not exactly sure when/where that happens, so they are both very useable as leaders =) Have fun with Army of One, etc when you get them!
Are you doing missions? There are chocobos~
RH- Aht get. She is L3 and came with Steal, Weakness Scan (!!) Polaris and Electric Trap already learned. Need to level her up some, get Rhapsody, get Life Robe and steal some stuffs. Still haven't decided if I'm doing a soloish or duo game yet exactly. Shadow was L4 Stocke, Poison abuse, Bram/Hertz redux was moar poison, Granorg Defender and company was sleep the two archers, Power Wave + poison/attack abuse for the rest w/th L5 Stocke. Panther x 2 was moar sleep/poison/attack w/th L6 Stocke. Interesting note is the Light Granorgs with the Granorg Defender seemed more resistant to sleep than the ones at Alma Wing since Sleep Wings refused to work on them but maybe that's more down to the inconsistentcy of status wing items in general? Regardless they have been very useful so far.
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Dark Souls: Used the master key to bypass Gaping Dragon, beat Quelaag and Iron Golem, now farming shards (+souls) from larva.
I'm using a huge sword, dropped by a dark knight, with this character. Arngrim would be proud. The sheer weight of the weapon makes the game feel very different, as each hit needs to be carefully planned, but almost every normal enemy dies in 1 or 2 hits and bosses in 8 or 9.
Front Mission 3 Solo: I think I'm stuck. Against freaking Jose!
(http://img3.lln.crunchyroll.com/i/spire2/04172008/9/a/4/2/9a4284bee72370_full.jpg)
I might give up. Just... Too many enemies attacking at once, two of them having shields and one of them being an helicopter. I feel like I've tried every combination of weapons.
Edit: Beaten. Phew. I had to go with missiles + melee on one arm, shield on the other, and manipulate both AI and RNG at the beginning of the battle. Also, I had to run up to Jose in the middle of enemies to beat the battle, going against all logic. (this allows taking out both the helicopter and Jose in the first round, leaving only two tanks and two machinegun wanzers) Even the aggressive enemies can be really dumb.
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Langrisser 4? Neph, May I ask what is the build of your team? What what route you are planning?
I'm going down the A route first, I'll probably do B then C.
Landius is an Archmage (I thought magic got really nerfed but once you get the good spells, wow)
Ricky is a Serpent Lord (who dabbled in Magic at one point so he has a few spells)
McClaine sucks (but is also a Serpent Lord)
Angelina is my Dragon Lord
Shelfaniel is ah... I think I made her a General to get to Princess? But she was a Shaman before that.
Serena is my Paladin/Marshal
aaand Ranford is a Knight Master.
I really like the balance between all the characters so far, though I wish Angelina could go a bit more often.
I see.
My recommendation is that use only one Serpent Lord. There really isn't that much map that makes them useful. I would suggest you make Ricky a mage too.
If you you get both Landi, Shalfaniel and Ricky all into Hermit. You can't believe how much easier that makes the game with three Again user.
Shelfaniel needs to become Sword Master to be Princess, and whether to class change from a Summoner or a Mage is really up to personal taste. But I highly don't recommend this. As this cripple her MP a little, and you don't want that we you really want to cast Again all day. Though, Princess being able to cast both Teleport and Again certainly is tempting.....
I recommend going a all mage route with Unicorn Knight as your physical class if you really need some physical states on her.
Landi is a better choice to build up a mage with physical states, assuming you can tweak his initial MP high enough with Hermit in the right class change grid. You might have a chance to let him class change into physical class twice and still becomes a Hermit with enough mp.
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DQ4 - Okay so I am having to rethink this party thing. Marquis De Leon is pretty much unbeatable without RNG luck. I can handle him just fine until he casts Ice Breath turn after turn. People floating around 14-16 was just straight up undoable. Came back with Kiryl. 3 healers. My damage output is pathetic here (alena hitting for like 20ish). Still just ruins my shit. Okay, look stuff up. Kiryl is a level away from learning Kabuff. That makes the fight far more manageable. Oh whoops, 4 or 5 turns of 50 MT damage (Sometimes 65 thanks to Sizzle!) in a row, what do you mean I couldn't keep up? lol i totally wanted to get turns where i could attack and not have even alena healing with herbs.
So was contemplating having a bitch fit. I assume I am missing something. Decided to do the grind thing because I don't give a fuck at this point. Grinding at Zamovska because hey, just because I can't beat the boss doesn't mean I can't handle the trash in the next area! So grinding in there, it occurs to me this morning oh hey maybe there is some frost resist gear I missed. I remembered there was Fur Coats. Those might do the job, it makes some sense. Look it up online, nothing suggests as much.
Back to grinding. I figure 18 is the goal. It should just be enough to bump up HP to make incoming damage less threatening and increase my damage enough to be able to do fucking anything. I can't imagine trying this fight with randospeed in full effect. Thank fuck for my stupid grinding earlier getting me Meteor Bracelets for everyone.
While I am having a bitch fit though. Grinding in Zamovska really reminded me the thing I absolutely hate in DQ games. See because my guys are dying to random Thwacks from Hoodoogurus (Whatevers I can handle randoms with ID) I have to revive with some frequency. I wish to fuck I had Zing. Not because I want in battle revives or anything. I want it because I fucking hate talking to priests in DQ games. They have that really long opening text scrawl that takes for fucking ever and DQ is one of the few games pressing Accept doesn't speed up the text scrawl. So out of habit it is pretty easy to accidentally pick the first menu option. Everyone in the game suffers from this really, but Priests are special. See everyone else you just hit Cancel out of whatever the fuck you were doing. Keep mashing Cancel to proceed dialogue so you don't make the same mistake again. Priests are the only dudes in the game that doing this will turn your fucking game off. Possibly without saving. Now this isn't something that happens often or anything (once per DQ game probably if it has been a while). The reason it shits me is it means every vistit to a priest is something I have to pay attention to, otherwise I might turn my game off by accident or just waste time saving 2 or 3 times because their menus are shit and their dialogue is just that bit to long to feel laggy and shit.
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Friendly reminder: that series sucks.
Yes, it has individual decent games. Everything they do well, it always feels they do well in spite of their series.
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What I remember doing at that point was going to the town of Riverton in the south, selling like 50 Cautery Swords hoarded from chapter 3, and then buying a bunch of overpriced equipment. Checking a faq, you can buy Dragon Shields (-25 damage from fire/cold-type breaths) for 7100 each, Dragon Mails (-20 damage from fire/cold-type breaths) for 5200 each, and Dragonsbane for a whopping 15K.
Now, the downside to this is that the games expects you to do this quite a bit later so the randoms in the sea near Riverton are nasty and required constant rotation of 7 PCs to survive at that point, but at least the exp was good. Also this was a high point for the gameplay in a sense, since I had to resort to far more elaborate battle tactics than anywhere else in the game. Or the whole DQ series, really.
Just about everything about resurrection in DQ games is horrible, from Priests to Zing to everything in between. Also buying stuff used to be really tedious in the old games, they didn't improve it to acceptable levels until 4r or 8 I believe.
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i warned you about dq
i told you dogg
Anyway at some point Nara or Meena or whatever her name is eventually learns a spell that halves all elemental damage but I can't remember at what level you're supposed to get it. At the same time also you say magic sucks but I remember being able to beat that fight using Main/Alena/Kyril/Borat around level 14 so uhh maybe you want to give that a try.
Edit may or may not be 14. I may be getting DQ4O and DQ4R confused. Seriously just delete and play something better. This is coming from me.
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Insulatle is ~L29. I don't think Grefter is willing to grind *that* much!
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DQ4 - 2 levels and a lot less ice breaths did the job very handily. Learnt Zing after leveling after the fight.
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I remember sap helping tremendously there, but yeah that fight is difficult.
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I can't remember DQ4 details anymore, but I remember having a tough time with a fight when I had forgotten that I was supposed to use one of the plot items to Silence the boss so he didn't just kill me all the time. It's not that boss, is it?
Anyway, picked up WA:ACF for when I'm not Suikoden-ing with Crystal.
Found this book in the town where the party joins up for the first time after the intros:
"How can I become stronger? Is it by remaining righteous? No, I don't think so. If you increase your numbers, you will become stronger in no time. In other words, form a faction. Don't get down. It is very effective and the quickest way. A faction...or call it a party. Once a party is formed, you are immediately stronger with the combined traits of each member. This guy has a great punch. Tat guy is popular with the ladies. This guy's relative is an influential politician. Anything goes. It's very important to respect everyone's unique power! A strong party understands each other. Yes! I like what I just said!! While I'm on a roll, I'm going to add one thing. To understand each other also means to be accepting of one's flaws, as well as one's good traits. I would even recommend having each member anonymously write down flaws and openly discuss it afterwards. You will find that there is an abundance of words to describe flaws. It will be an ugly discussion for sure. Heheheh...be angry people. Anger can make one stronger, especially for those who want to get strong quickly."
In the LP that I'm playing along with, the writer pointed this out:
"This book amuses me, and is the best video game in-universe explanation for why people should form a party I've ever read. It's basically saying you should have a large party so everyone in there is bickering constantly, making them angry so that they'll release that anger on the enemy. Works for me."
...and it amused me so I had to share.
Hey Zenny and Snow, let's form a party! (Zenny can be the Princess and Snow can be the Mute.)
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Djinn: The boss you're thinking about is in chapter 4. I don't recall him being too bad but I can see it.
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That is Balzack 1 and he is doable without it, but has Full Heal.
Just did Balzack 2 and ran out of MP on Kiryl, but one shot him. So much HP. that said, he has less than the Marquis and can hit for as much, but needs to be loaded into two RNG spells instead of having almost all his damage loaded on to one spell. Given up on the party full of bitches. Just going to use Kiryl since apparently not having Kabuff is fucking retarded.
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Halo Anniversary: It's the same damn game. Entirely. Yes, the graphics are sharper. But the physics are the same so the characters still move all herky-jerky. Still no guide marker to show you where to go on the bland maps. Skip buying this unless you're a Waypoint achievement whore like me. Oh, and the new Waypoint is terrible too.
Skyrim: I have so much to talk about that I kind of don't want to talk about anything and let you just experience it yourself. But in summation: drinking contest, poking my nose where it doesn't belong, prison break, dwarven ruins, OH GOD RUN AWAY, what does this lever do, stop trying to kill me I only have five bounty, so many mages, boom headshot.
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Order of Ecclessia: Some random Ice Bitch in Water got stabbed with rapiers a lot then died.
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Where as I on the other hand only have this to say about Skryim.
I went to the Magic College. The first teacher warns against the dangers of magic going in uprepared. I suggest maybe we should learn something practical for the first lesson, so they teach a basic warding spell.
Second mission we go to an excavation site and the same teacher says "Hey look around for magic items" then I get stuck in a cage trap because I picked up an enchanted amulet "Why don't you put it on and see what it does?". Then I can knock down a nearby wall and get attacked by a bunch of undead. Ultimately it ends in finding a device that may have cause massive earthquakes years ago and someone tells me that I need to stop shit from being fucked up in the future because of finding this.
So yeah. Worst College ever.
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RH- Managed to defeat Fumble and friends with L3 Aht (Rhapsody, Life Robe, Fang Charm x 3) - Aht speed + sole shroom + poison Fumble + poison/stall + plenty of healing items + attack/heal (heal/heal after Stampede) + attack/attack or attack/heal on doubles. As a reward Aht levels up ... once, yay? (the bonus/free First Aid Kit is nice I guess) Stocke meanwhile is L10 after doing stuffs in the other history (need to find a way to defeat Pealzan there)~
Also I think I found a glitch or something? It's possible to fight Fumble and see the scenes with Aht there as Stocke/Raynie/Marco while looking for the Rosch brigade. It's even possible to get the Fresh Meat w/th S/R/M but it doesn't carry over between histories =(
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Fate/Extra: Up to week 4. Playing with Caster on easy mode. Not saving her for NG+ will be a mistake if I like the game enough to replay it, but I wasn't sure I'd be willing to do so and still aren't.
Gameplay is... okay. The near-total guesswork involved when the game only gives you one of the enemy's acts earlygame is pretty scary, especially with earlygame Caster, but every random enemy save one that I've seen thus far either has a clear preference for one of the three actions (attack/break/guard) or a really obvious pattern, so it's not necessary to play the entire game with a notepad by my side. It's clear that the battle system improves a lot with more skills and code casts learned, making the whole thing less of a crapshoot in the face of imperfect information, so I'll resolve full judgment on the system until later. Admittly it also helps that this'll mean not having to melee everything to death with a pure mage PC. <_<
Only one reset on randoms thus far - the extra healing fountains are a total godsend for Caster. Early on, they meant I could safely grind without worrying about my healing item count. Midgame, I can take advantage of Caster's magic selection afford to spell-spam anything new and completely unfamiliar to oblivion, then heal up and repeat until I get a decent number of viewable actions. Bosses have been much scarier though; Rider took 3 tries to beat and Archer killed me 4 times. Caster was a relative cakewalk, but Vlad the Impaler sounds like he'll be a nightmare at the end of week 4.
Characterization has been the clear highlight of the game so far. Caster has been consistently entertaining in her wacky, Magical Amber-like fashion, definately enough to put up with the earlygame scrubbiness. A lot of the enemy master/servant interaction has been great thus far, especially Dan Blackmoore and Robin Hood (who rules for being the first Archer in the whole damned series who actually uses a bow primarily and for being, well, Robin Hood). Talking to the NPCs is really neat in this game because they have new lines every single in-game day, and quite a few of them have storylines that progress over time if you keep checking up with them. Sadly the deathmatch format of the plot means that the number of NPCs drops over time, but that also increases the poignancy of some of the lines.
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Are there multiple instances of the same class in Fate/Extra? You're talking about playing as Caster - I assume having Caster as your Servant? - but also fighting Caster. I thought Archer EMIYA was in Fate/Extra as well, but you're saying Robin is the Archer.
From the sounds of it, it would have better better as a pure VN. Of course, then it would never have been officially translated, like the original. :P
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Given the basic format (single elimination tournament with something like 6 rounds) and their only being 7 standard classes, some doubling up is inevitable. The PC has a Saber, Archer, and Caster to choose from but even discounting that I believe there's two other casters, two lancers and two berserkers or the like.
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F/E isn't FSN, there's multiple servants of the same class present.
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So F/E takes place -after- the Holy Grail 'tournaments'?
Also, wait... two -Lancers-? There's another Lancer famous enough to make it into this series?
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*research* Okay, we have.
2 Sabers PC Empress Nero, Sir Gawain
2 Archers PC Presumably-Emiya, Robin Hood
2 Casters PC Tamamo no Mae, Nursery Rhyme Incarnate
2 Lancers Cu Chulainn, Vlad Tepes III who is not a vampire in Nasuverse
2 Berskers Lu Bu, Arcueid Brunestud
1 Rider Dame Francis Drake subtly implied to ACTUALLY be Elizabeth I
1 Assassin Li Shu Wen in his younger years
So I was off. There wasn't a third Caster!
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What is it with the FSN universe and genderbending?
- Atelier Totori: Year 4. Fun times. This game is generally superior to Rorona in all respects, and I liked Atelier Rorona to start with. I miss the workshop slowly being populated with the items you create, but the constant plot scenes make up for it. The combat is actually fun and feels more natural than 1's clunky excuse for a battle system, although the Alchemy Items are still super-awesome, they don't break the game like they used to because you REALLY need them to pull out wins against the many tough boss-level fights in the game.
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What is it with the FSN universe and genderbending?
My understanding is that when Nasu wrote F/SN, he wanted King Arthur as the main character's Servant. The character designer wanted to draw a girl.
Everything since has flowed from there.
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What is it with the FSN universe and genderbending?
My understanding is that when Nasu wrote F/SN, he wanted King Arthur as the main character's Servant. The character designer wanted to draw a girl.
I should add, after they change Arthur to a girl, the original designed got applied to Gilgy.
In other words, how Gilgy looks right now is how Arthur suppose to look like befoer getting gender bent.
So F/E takes place -after- the Holy Grail 'tournaments'?
No, F/E is a totally different parallel universe and does not connect to general nasu verse in anyway.
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The original plan was to have a female main character named Ayaka Sajyou (http://"http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Sajyou_Ayaka#Sajyou_Ayaka"), with a male King Arthur in the "Saver" class as her servant. At some point in the development process they decided to flip the genders of the two leads to make it more like a conventional dating sim/VN.
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Playing Chrono Trigger again. Reminding myself just how ruddy fun the whole thing is. Just reached Mount Woe.
Ultimate Marvel v Capcom 3. Decided to pick this up. Helps that a) I'm currently enjoying the Avenger setup movies, and it has Phoenix Wright. Right now I'm finding Phoenix to be a real trick to learn how to use, since he's so very odd. But the fact that he has his "Going to win the trial" music override the background whenever he manages to get into Turnaround Mode, and his hyper moves are all awesome is making him satisfying to use even if it does require a lot of learning.
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Ultimate Marvel v Capcom 3. Decided to pick this up. Helps that a) I'm currently enjoying the Avenger setup movies, and it has Phoenix Wright. Right now I'm finding Phoenix to be a real trick to learn how to use, since he's so very odd. But the fact that he has his "Going to win the trial" music override the background whenever he manages to get into Turnaround Mode, and his hyper moves are all awesome is making him satisfying to use even if it does require a lot of learning.
I notice an "a" but no "b" follow up. I call shenanigans on this entire post as a result!!!
...seriously though, Phoenix Wright is the single most unique, gimmicky character in the game by far. His basic idea is get 3 pieces of good evidence ASAP, using Maya, assists, advancing guards, etc. to keep the enemy off him (don't be afraid to use Maya's Steel Samurai Hyper in Investigation mode; its easily blocked, but it keeps the guy tied up quite a while, which is the main reason to use it.), and get to Trial Mode ASAP. From there, use Trial Mode as a zoning character (its actually a pretty good one), until you get that opening for Turnabout Mode, then kick ass.
(ALTERNATIVELY, go Turnabout mode, then swap him out. Turnabout Mode, like all other buffs, has its time stop when used as an Assist, and it gives a RIDICULOUS boost to his "press the witness' assist)
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I average about two "Go see the priest -> Don't save the game -> Choose to stop playing" horror stories per Dragon Quest game I play.
FM3 solo: Somehow there was an even more difficult battle waiting for me right after the Jose one.
I'm against one crazy guy in a super uber mech and 5 of his pals. Fortunately after a while I realized that if you get lucky when you hit him he goes even more lucky and start attacking at random. So I just missile spammed his face (god that took a long time) while he slapped his best friend.
After a few easier battles, I met... The third shop in the game. Joy. I love shops so much. I need money, so I need a bit of grinding. I've already reached the max weapon level in the game (It goes A->B->C->D->E->F->S) I doubt you can even get beyond D or E playing the game normally.
Dark Souls: In Anor Londo.
I've started paying more attention to the music, I like it. The entire soundtrack is made of one prologue theme, one ending theme, four "hub" themes and seventeen boss tracks. Just about every boss has an unique track, and there's about every kind of boss track (except a rap one), but most are of the "OMG RUN" variety. And the bosses I panicked against my first time through are indeed the ones with the craziest boss theme (Bell Gargoyle, Four Kings, Iron Golem..)
I like the final boss theme more than before, but this really would have fit a slower boss like Bed of Chaos more.
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- Atelier Totori: Year 4. Fun times. This game is generally superior to Rorona in all respects, and I liked Atelier Rorona to start with. I miss the workshop slowly being populated with the items you create, but the constant plot scenes make up for it. The combat is actually fun and feels more natural than 1's clunky excuse for a battle system, although the Alchemy Items are still super-awesome, they don't break the game like they used to because you REALLY need them to pull out wins against the many tough boss-level fights in the game.
Instead the workshop gets slowly populated by Chims ^.^ .
And items do break the game. It's just more backended and obscure. Of course, if you don't break the game with them the superboss will break YOU.
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Skyrim: level 25. I have four Daedric artifacts. I am a bad person. >_> <_<
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I've seen a lot of actors do voicework in games, and I think Saints Row 3 just beat everyone. Holy shit, awesome.
Burt Reynolds as Mayor Burt Reynolds. "I will never, EVER disappoint Burt Reynolds. NEVER." Says the PC.
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Played Sonic 4, which was decidedly meh. Bosses became more an exercise in tedium as the game progressed. Why did someone think anything about the Labyrinth Zone needed to come back?
Then played Limbo, which was decidedly less meh. It's basically a set of atmospheric physics puzzles, but it's very good at being quietly unnerving. Worth picking up from PSN/Steam/X-box Live/whathaveyou.
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Obligatory pimp for Sonic Generations if you don't have that yet.
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Wild ARMs 5
- Playing this for the first time.
Currently up to Mt. Chug Chug. Won the first Nightburn fight, but failed at the duel miserably with Mountain Dean, and I wasted all my Hi-Fire's on the first boss fight.
Team (Lv. 32-33)
- Chuck (Moon)
- Avril (Sky)
- Carol (Sea)
- Greg (Sword)
- Dean (Mountain)
- Rebecca (Luck)
I swap in when necessary.
I'm at least enjoying the battles. The world map is now actually tolerable with the wheel. The story is, well, OK. But the game is enjoyable enough.
Guess I'll switch Dean to Sword or something and try the fight again >_>
In the mean time, I've beaten Xenosaga 2, 3, and the .Hack GU series. I'll post some thoughts sometime later on.
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the .Hack GU series. I'll post some thoughts sometime later on.
I trust the terms Sakaki and Fail will be connected somewhere in there.
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I've seen a lot of actors do voicework in games, and I think Saints Row 3 just beat everyone. Holy shit, awesome.
Burt Reynolds as Mayor Burt Reynolds. "I will never, EVER disappoint Burt Reynolds. NEVER." Says the PC.
That is cool, but in Skyrim I just beat Optimus Prime in a fistfight.
In other news, the College of Winterhold was so impressed by my ability to throw Hadoukens that they promoted me to Archmage. I am also wearing Dr. Doom's mask to cover my hideous scar.
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I am also wearing Dr. Doom's mask to cover my hideous scar.
Must make a funny codpiece.
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I've seen a lot of actors do voicework in games, and I think Saints Row 3 just beat everyone. Holy shit, awesome.
Burt Reynolds as Mayor Burt Reynolds. "I will never, EVER disappoint Burt Reynolds. NEVER." Says the PC.
That is cool, but in Skyrim I just beat Optimus Prime in a fistfight.
In other news, the College of Winterhold was so impressed by my ability to throw Hadoukens that they promoted me to Archmage. I am also wearing Dr. Doom's mask to cover my hideous scar.
Burt Reynolds and Hulk Hogan rode hoverbikes with machine guns with me.
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LA Noire: Took 'em a while, but Rockstar finally made a game I can give a damn about. Apparently all they needed to do was make a period piece where the protagonist isn't a criminal for once. Had a big dumb smile plastered on my face all through the intro. Of course, given I am wholly incompetent at reading people, I expect to see CASE FAILED a lot in interrogations, but hey, it's still cool.
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Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2- Just recruited Adelle. I'll probably be using her. So far I think I'll be keeping/building up Luso/Adelle/Walu/Zac and possibly the moogle~
I want to recruit more Viera, Nu Mou and other cute stuffs ^_^
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LA Noire: Took 'em a while, but Rockstar finally made a game I can give a damn about. Apparently all they needed to do was make a period piece where the protagonist isn't a criminal for once. Had a big dumb smile plastered on my face all through the intro. Of course, given I am wholly incompetent at reading people, I expect to see CASE FAILED a lot in interrogations, but hey, it's still cool.
Yaaaaaaaaaay more Noire hype.
I repeat Cmdr's advice to me: If you think somebody is lying, choose the full-on "lie" option and listen to what Cole says. He has some stock "bad choice" lines that get reused throughout the game, and if you hear one of those, you can use B to back out of the evidence menu and then pick Doubt instead.
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I'm also terrible at reading people (Duh, I'm male) and I did fine in LA Noire.
I reached the pinnacle of my entire gaming life in Dark Souls yesterday.
In the catacombs, you can find some spiky bridges that can't be crossed. Find a switch, the whole bridge turns around and you can pass.
So anyway I invade one guy, ignore him and rush to the switch. I use it, and can now go to the bridge, where I put some shiny mysterious item. I go back near the switch to hide; that way the invaded guy can't see me, but I can see the bridge.
The guy slowly kills the monsters one by one, then eventually finds the bridge. There is a shiny item on it. Obviously, he goes there and picks it up. It is a dung pie. I make a mad rush to the switch, activate it, and the guy falls to his doom.
Things just don't get any better than this.
On the other hand, FM3 solo is too hard. I give up.
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I reached the pinnacle of my entire gaming life in Dark Souls yesterday.
In the catacombs, you can find some spiky bridges that can't be crossed. Find a switch, the whole bridge turns around and you can pass.
So anyway I invade one guy, ignore him and rush to the switch. I use it, and can now go to the bridge, where I put some shiny mysterious item. I go back near the switch to hide; that way the invaded guy can't see me, but I can see the bridge.
The guy slowly kills the monsters one by one, then eventually finds the bridge. There is a shiny item on it. Obviously, he goes there and picks it up. It is a dung pie. I make a mad rush to the switch, activate it, and the guy falls to his doom.
Well now I'm sure someone's shit-faced.
Fenrir would it be gay if I said I love you man?
Atelier Totori: Made it to Frontier Village. For all of a few technical complaints the series of scenes that followed were surprisingly powerful. I even choked up a bit. The game's focus on the Helmond family pays off in that a player develops a stronger attachment to the sisters. Vastly superior to Atelier Rorona in that regard.
While I have never much liked the time system, Atelier Totori isn't TOO strict on it, and making things to rip open a new one in bosses is a lot of fun. Combat in general feels like it flows better than in Atelier Rorona, but that could me just not having unlimited MT kill-em-all items that turns every fight into a one turn affair! Not that the alchemist in this one isn't magnificently broken when she needs to be. Go go gadget multiacting! Go go gadget nigh-invicibility! Go go gadget overkill!
The games STILL needs the Mana Khemia/Atelier Iris 3 battle system. Why the hell did they ever get rid of that? It was freaking great.
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RH- Started this. Fun battle system, and the main character is such an attractive man. Life is good.
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The guy slowly kills the monsters one by one, then eventually finds the bridge. There is a shiny item on it. Obviously, he goes there and picks it up. It is a dung pie. I make a mad rush to the switch, activate it, and the guy falls to his doom.
*slow clap*
I haven't had a chance to play the new King of Fighters yet, but wow is the package impressive. Not only a four-CD music compilation, but the instruction book is 85 pages of full color.
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RH - finished. Excellent game, ending manages not to be a complete cop-out despite ample opportunity for such (although the "true" ending is pretty disconnected). Final boss chain was pretty easy except for the second phase of the last battle, which killed me once through status spam before I decided to just unload a bunch of Turn Breaks on it. It got one turn the second time around. Two entries missed on the Chronicle, one a bad ending for the Euruca's Ring sidequest and the other, presumably, for beating the optional superboss who I hate.
Sonic Generations - started! Awesome stuff. Classic and modern Sonics both play really well, I freaking love the music, and while the main acts are pretty short the challenges add a hell of a lot of variety to the mix so far. Finished the 16-bit-era main stages and am working on clearing out as many challenges as I can before taking on the Death Egg.
Edit: Also, apropos of what we were talking about at the minimeet, Sega's community manager apparently said that if Classic Sonic had gotten lines, the "only choice" for his actor would have been Jaleel White.
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Bought a used PSP 2000 for myself today because I am full of hate. Going to pick up Fate/Extra up nearer home because the store down here didn't have it.
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Sonic Generations - started! Awesome stuff. Classic and modern Sonics both play really well, I freaking love the music, and while the main acts are pretty short the challenges add a hell of a lot of variety to the mix so far. Finished the 16-bit-era main stages and am working on clearing out as many challenges as I can before taking on the Death Egg.
So, they -finally- learned how to make Sonic levels not tiring?
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Generations is, indeed, pretty good. They seem to have remembered the point was "HAULIN ASS, GETTIN PAID!"
I feel it should have had Urlke voicing Sonic though.
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In the middle of week 7 of Fate/Extra. Caster really gets rolling as your resource pool (both magus MP and servant MP) improves - after a certain point I stopped bothering with random enemy attack patterns and just used Shockwave 2 on everything, then spell-nuked them in the two stun turns. The passive skill that regenerates 30 MP after every battle is a game-changer for her, and Bestial Sky->Frozen Heaven easily OHKOs every random except for the Nephilim and Moby Dick, who die within two turns anyways for large quantities of exp. On easy mode I can easily keep going from healing fountain to healing fountain, but even on Normal you could make use of the MP healing formal wear with a bunch of storebought master MP items and keep the spelltrain rolling.
Vlad ended up being a lot less scary than I feared; he was only 4HKOing with his non-skill attacks, so I had more margin of error than I was anticipating. Vastly improved magic damage meant he went down much quicker than Archer did, as a boss. This was the weakest week in terms of storyline, unfortunately; Vlad himself had some entertainment value just due to how over the top he was acting, but Ronnie was just lame and couldn't die soon enough.
Assassin had some of the most interesting mid-week arena activities, but ended up being an incredibly favorable match-up for Caster, one I actually won on the first try. A guaranteed non-attack on move 1 for safe buffing, a Noble Phantasm that didn't kill at full health (turns out it's 90% gravity) and is used in extremely predictable fashion (only on move 2, several turns in-between), no damage-dealing skills besides his Noble Phantasm... his regular attacks hurt, but I could keep those under control with spells, and in-battle MP healing meant I had plenty of magic.
Lu Bu, on the other hand, was an absolute nightmare to face and racked up double-digit resets (I didn't keep count), despite waiting on 2 of every 6 moves. He could use Fallible Bow just about anywhere, anytime, for 1300 damage to my 1700 HP, which along with a mispredict on *any* other move meant death. This meant he could kill me on literally every single turn, leaving me no margin of error whatsoever throughout the battle. The need to constantly keep HP high limited the amount of MP healing I could afford to do which limited my offense as well. Oh, and his Noble Phantasm did 3400+ damage, meaning I *had* to use Aphotic Cave to block it to have any chance of survival. His NP pattern thankfully is a dead giveaway that he's using it on a specific turn (at least if you check the JP wiki beforehand so you know what to look for...), but I still had to use Aphotic Cave on every single unrevealed turn to ensure survival, which meant lots of wasted MP. The only saving grace is that it's OPB, so once I got past that turn I didn't have to worry about it anymore.
Oh, and because all of the above wasn't dickish enough, Battle Continuation means that the fucker doesn't even die when he is killed the first time. >_< Thankfully I was warned about *that* beforehand, otherwise I would've eaten another reset just when I thought I had the battle won.
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Makes sense. Berserker never dies when killed *nod*
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Actually, based on message board posts it's (apparantly) even worse than I thought. From what I'm reading, the auto-life is a random chance of activating when he dies, rather than a single guaranteed instance like I thought. Some people are reporting that he revived 8+ times in a single battle, which would be beyond insane.
I'll note at this point that if you kill him on, say, the second move in a round, he immediately gets back up for the third move and keeps on attacking. So you can't get any "free" attacks in after the auto-life kicks in, unlike in some games.
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Orcs must die: That they must. I've beaten five or so levels. It's a fun tower defense game, though I could do without the button mashing side of it.
FF13: Chapter 6, with Sazh and Vanille right now in a forest.
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Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia: Beaten! I stubbornly beat all bosses (at least after a point) without items thereby making the game far harder than it needed to be. I blame the DMC mindset!
First half of the game is decent enough. Then you get to Dracula's Castle and...well...damn, great stuff there. Definitely in running for best game in the series, at least. Hard to really find anything notably wrong with the game and it does plenty of things right.
Sengoku Basara: A pirate just let the Western Army win the war. This is the first path I took that had a Western Army Victory. Gotta love how subtle the game is with good guys vs. bad guys in that its not at all.
More seriously, I do appreciate how they made Motochika a Western Army character, but made him actually sympathetic and understandable, thus likable. Yeah, he's WRONG, but you only know that purely because of dramatic irony, and things he clearly doesn't know, so you can still side with him even though you know you're letting "Side of Assholes and Whiners" win over "Side of PEACE, LOVE, AND BONDS OF FRIENDSHIP!"
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Fate/Extra - Caster route. Finished week 1. First boss was kind of predictable so lols were had. Didn't even get to use its Noble Phantasm.
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KoF13: Completed story mode. Unlocked all characters, and beat Arcade without continuing. Btw, there's a special gallery picture for beating the game with Billy, Hwa, and Raiden. Fatal Fury bros for life!
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LA Noire: Wow, Roy Earle is a sack of shit. Doucheshirt really was a harbinger of things to come.
I seem to pick up more information from tone of voice than from expressions. Which is probably unsurprising.
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Final Fantasy X - Finished the zany playthrough! That is all the characters were banned from activating any nodes in their own section of the grid, and in general only got to play in grids least like theirs (and Kimahri's if needed). A lot of characters took a while to get started (Wakka/Lulu needed L1s from Mi'ihen Highroad, Tidus/Yuna needed L2s from Macalania Woods, Auron/Rikku needed Teleport/Friend Spheres from Bikanel) but it's okay, early FFX can be NSG'd reasonably enough at worst.
Tidus: Pretty much an experiment failure. I sent him around Kimahri's grid while waiting for the L2's to open Yuna's. Terrible idea, he was way behind on learning white magic (got Holy literally the encounter before the last battle). Wasn't unsalvageable because even behind on it, WM can be really useful, and eventually his magic got high enough to do okay work with the -ga spells (Black Magic Spheres) but certainly not great overall.
Yuna: Banned aeon physicals after she started into Tidus' grid. She did the second half of Tidus, then teleported to the second half of Auron's, then the second half of Wakka's. This is great for str and she actually approached "real" fighters. Also 1 MP Quick Hits with Nirvana for ~11k damage endgame is pretty great.
Auron: Rikku's grid, which is kinda short, then the second half of Tidus'. Super-fast, Quick Hitting machine. Gets a 1 MP Cost weapon too which also helps. Not much to say here, was basically a better version of vanilla Rikku outside lacking Mix, though his own overdrive actually remained useful unlike Tidus/Wakka/Lulu's.
Wakka: Lulu's grid for almost all the game, bit of Yuna's at the end. Generally solid enough. He went through laggy points (right before -ga spells was the worst), but frequently had lots of damage. Lancet fixed up MP problems.
Lulu: Tried to be Wakka. This doesn't work very well, because part of what makes Wakka good is his accuracy, which is almost entirely base stats and can't be replicated. Also being up-to-date on Wakka's abilities feels really important, kinda like with white magic. She had her moments (the best were using the Deathtouch weapon to cause mayhem from Bikanel to the Calm Lands) but overall not one of the more useful PCs.
Rikku: Auron's grid, then late Wakka's. Spent the entire game trying to catch up to Auron in strength and got passed in speed. Breaks do have some uses though she was late to the party with them. Alchemy weapon and Use are decent as always, as is Mix.
Fun fun. Final dungeon was a weird thing, I had a couple resets here and generally struggled a bit with some of the randoms, then promptly killed Jecht before his third turn (First Strike -> Haste -> Nirvana Quick Hits mostly). Still trying to figure that one out, but I guess he lacks evil counters, MT stone, or Bad Breath!
I still love this game. Story does some really great things, I think it is almost undoubtedly one of my favourite games in the genre for story, and one of the few games that has a story this good that also has great gameplay. The game does have flaws of course (swapping people for exp is annoying, no sceneskip is a product of the time but still sucks, challenge a bit inconsistent) but overall it's just amazing stuff. Now I want to play it again.
So with that out of the way, I really have no idea what to play next. Anyone feel like offering suggestions?
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VVVVVV - Picked this up off Steam yesterday since it was only $1.24 and the demo was fun.
This game is short, but I guess I get what I pay for... And by short, I mean three hours to save all of the crew members, collect all 20 trinkets, and save everyone. I got to the Secret Lab, unlocked all the songs unlocked at least most of the other modes, and... I dunno, I think this game would be pretty good to replay. Said replay value is really high, and there's a lot of trophies one can get for different things - and they're actually HARD. I assume Master Mode would be just as hard.
Ended the game with about 1050ish deaths. I need to work on that number.
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Thanks guys. Unfortunately I haven't really found any other fun way to kill people in Dark Souls. It's all downhill from there.
Well, I've stayed near the bonfire in the Painted World. Whenever the fire runs out, it means I'll get invaded in a few seconds, so I just run straight to the beginning of the dungeon and try greeting incoming invaders with a THIS IS SPARTAAAA kick to immediately throw them off the cliff. This hasn't really worked well though!
I've also tried Gravelord cursing, which sounds great on paper... Basically you use a rare item that dramatically boosts enemies in the world of other players. Just a dick move. You'll also leave a mark in their world, they can touch it to invade you. If they kill you, the whole thing is cancelled, if you kill them, you get another one of those items so you can do it all over again like the crazy madman you are.
This is all very cool but in practice I've used those items like 10 times and have only been killed by regular invaders everytime. I haven't seen a single invaded dude complain. And this seems to be a common complaint.
There's been a patch that fixes exploits, makes the entire game overall a whole lot easier and does a few neat things. (You can buy twinkling titanite!!) Overall it's definitely not a bad thing IMO, it's more accessible but there's still a lot of challenge to be found, this is still game of the year for every year, etc. I don't think I've ever played a single game for that long in a short time, seriously guys I'm fanboying more than NEB about FFX here.
(BTW NEB you'd probably like breath of Death 7 / Cthulhu saves the world for the battle system. I'm not too crazy about them myself (don't care about writing or the retro fad, and the dungeon design is dreadful) but they're still worth it)
Grandia Parallel Trippers:
Procrastination can apply to videogames too. The definition of procrastination is playing grandia Parallel Trippers when you should take your PS2 back from your closet, get FM5 and play it instead.
So far:
"What's my name?"
" -> Yuuhi"
No. Yuuhi is a terrible name. Erase that shit.
" -> Bob"
" That's right! My name is Yuuhi!"
Fuuuuuuu
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So with that out of the way, I really have no idea what to play next. Anyone feel like offering suggestions?
Why not start Lost Odyssey?
Dead Rising 2: Oh yeah, I've been playing this. Just got Katey her first Zombrex (not including the one you get in the intro.) Tried to fight Leon, but promptly died. At least I have an idea of what to do!
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So with that out of the way, I really have no idea what to play next. Anyone feel like offering suggestions?
No love for Portrait of Ruin?
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Yaoi yaoi yaoi yaoi~
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Order of Ecclesia Hard Mode: Finally went and finished this. Dracula, being based around single big hits of damage (unless you massively screw up vs. bats or fireballs), doesn't actually change that much, so he wasn't so bad - drank ~7 High Potions, which is acceptable. Blackmore, Death, & Eligor I used a single Super Potion on each, whatevers. Still fun times, though I wish the final section of the keep post-Cerberus had been larger, and you had more areas to abuse Volacticus on. Yes it's broken but give me some large open-air type place I can ruthlessly rain destruction from above on, at least once.
Cthulhu Saves The World: One of the best Dragon Quest games ever? ... I think I would have preferred a great Cthulhu game, but whatever. I have to wonder if there isn't a Farmville-like addiction to such battle systems, as it's been done a billion times before, but CSTW cuts a ton of the crap out of DQ combat / dungeons. The dungeon design is still terrible, but there's an encounter limit, so you can get lost and it's doesn't devolve into a total slog. (Well. Insane removes the Encounter Limit, but I played on Hard.) Dungeons are still a bit too long in general, but oh well.
Anyway. Seriously, see first sentence. This is DQ style combat done right. Stalling strategies are temporary ploys to get some buffs off and get back on your feet, not a viable long-term option. Tanks have a role to play, thanks to the Defend command drawing attacks for tough characters (and becoming "Dodge" for frail ones who are then less likely to be targeted), so Defend -> Toss a heal on the defending character is a valid strategy. The average combat goes fast, and you have a strong incentive to *use* your cool skills by not making MP a terribly limiting factor. And the level-up choices are, in general, pretty well balanced, for all that the common stats vs. HP/MP choice is almost always better to take the stats. (They needed to bribe you with more HP/MP.) Also, once you pick a direction, splitting your focus is usually a bad idea, so you need to pick, say, Speedster Paws vs. Mage Paws, since flexibility never matters (and if it did, you could do it by replacing a character with the right build from the reserve anyway).
On the downside... meh at a lot of the fanficcy dialogue and plot. Yes, it's supposed to be silly, but it's also lame some of the time as well. I don't want to call it lazy - there was a ton of stuff to write even as is for a 2-man project - but couldn't there just have been plain *more* in some of the plot scenes? A lot of the characters are supposed to be funny merely by virtue of existing. Sorry, that doesn't cut it. "lolz it's the goth necromancer with an Addams family reference for a name!!1!" Who just shows up and joins. This is... pretty much true for everybody not Cthulhu / Umi / Paws, and even Paws just has one mini-plot arc in which he does something. This might be acceptable with more funny dialogue to let you get to know the character, but this only really happens for Umi. Umi has the simplest "idea" - anime sea chick inexplicably in love with Cthulhu - but hey, she runs with it and makes it funny. Sharpe is just lame. October COULD have been cool - you totally SHOULD have a cultist in your party - but she never really does anything. Paws was okay but minor. Dacre was lame - I approve of old man hype, but he also gets a "lolz join up for no reason!!1!" after which he does nothing. Ember, well, he's really late and does have one funny line, so I'll forgive him. ("Thanks for saving us from the dragon, oh horrifying hero! ...uh, wait. What's that scaly thing behind you?" Ember: "Nope, just a big pink dinosaur here.")
More generally, the plot is more Dragon Quest than parody-Lovecraft, which is a shame. "Go to the Shrine of Heroes, uh, 'cuz, and find a random holy sword, who will randomly join your party?" I see. It would be one thing if it was attempting to parody this more, but it feels more like they're just playing it straight. "Yup, here's your obligatory Ice Cave." This isn't fun. Fighting the 3 Heroes of Light who've found the 7 sacred crystals? Now that's fun! The best plot arc by far was the Innsmouth bit -> Magitek Marsh Foundry, which properly played with what I'd expect from comedy Cthulhu. Oh well. At least the battle system was solid throughout.
On that note. Pretty much stuck with the initial 4 the entire game. Physical Cthulhu, Physical Umi, Physical Sharpe favoring Wind Strikes rather than bothering to try and get a high-Hit regular physical, MT boom October. I used Paws in one fight, and it's an interesting idea for a character, but he doesn't bring the turn 1 damage I wanted. He's got some tricks but you want immediately relevant tricks in CSTW. Dacre I thought was even lamer than Sharpe, so I only used him in 2 boss fights (Don't want healers vs. masses of randoms that need to be cut down on turn 1!). Shoggoth (boss of Water Shrine) has MT POIZN, and he has Cure Condition + Heal All, so that's what the doctor ordered. The superboss quartet would slaughter October too easily, and her ST damage wasn't good enough (I'd taken an Uber Void over an Uber Dark Blast), and getting Regen + Healing + Team Buffing was too helpful. Might be the right choice for Azathoth as well, but I killed him pretty easily on the first try, so didn't need to experiment and try. I never used Ember; he seems like he'd be great in a normal DQ where you want to conserve MP, but he joined way too late for me to care about that.
Anyway, decent. I wish the designer had waited another week before releasing it to add more plot and dialogue, considering the obvious time spent on a really well-balanced battle system, but oh well. Going through Cthulhu's Angels on insane now, where I see Molly gets a lame "lolz I am so awesome" intro with no plot. Sigh. At least October / Elonalinka / Umi seem amusing this time around.
Trauma: Got this on sale from Steam. Don't bother. The game is half an hour or so, which would be acceptable... except it doesn't do anything, or tell a story. Shame, because it has a nice mood. You just get weirdness, but it's pointless weirdness, so meh.
Currently going through The World Ends With You on the DS. Such a weird game. I'd expect to hate a game about invisible hip teenagers shopping in Shibuya with ultimate power on the line or something, except it's actually pretty compelling so far. I actually like the characters I've met so far, which is an achievement considering my initial skepticism. Only nitpick... and it's a potential nitpick, at that, too... (End of Day 7 spoilers. So Shiki was impounded as Neku's most precious item? Okay, nice backstab from a plot perspective, but... she's not his to take. What happens for the guy who's a mountain climbing fan and likes Mt. Fuji the most? Or somebody whose most important thing is God?! You can't just zap them for a week, even if they win... of course it's possible that this whole setup is a giant lie and Shiki was never going to be revived in the first place, in which case, bravo. Oh well, just wanted to mention this nitpick. )
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DQ9 - So me being me after 4 I didn't feel like moving on to the unknown that is 5 and I had flashbacks to everything I hated in what I played of 6. Checked my DS games and while I have some good stuff to play (999), I felt like an RPG. Soooo... I updated my PSP to play TitS, but PSP isn't so great for taking to work to play on the bus. Started this up.
Then it was Metal Slime week on DQVC and I only noticed on the last day. So I played until I got to Bloomingdale and am currently using Gold Mail alchemy to get cash to buy Metal Slime equipment. Partly because hey just completely breaking the game is a thing I can get behind I guess, but mostly because it is a very very easy thing to do on the bus or just in general down time.
So that makes 2 DQ games in a row I have done stupid pointless cash grind in just because. Up to 99 Gold Mail now so infinite moneys.
It was actually less frustrating than I had expected to start off in Bloomingdale than to wait until you proceed the plot to Batsureg so you can do Ear Cozy loop to get the capital needed to make equal profits using Gold Mail. I do believe I got to this point in about the same time frames it would take to grind through to Batsureg (don't have a boat yet) to start Ear Cozy. It is probably slower overall (since I still need to you know play that part of the game), but it does get me broked shit earlier which is kind of the fucking point.
Sadly because I got so wrapped up in this I haven't started TitS which I wanted to do when I wanted something more than just filler stuff.
I did remember what I liked about DQ9 at the time though. It is again, purely a case of wanting that kind of old style RPG. I kind of put up with the stupid shit to at least fill that niche. I should really be playing Blue Dragon for it, but eh. Ultimately there isn't enough new RPGs coming out to fuel the needs for them, let alone enough coming out to have these kinds of throw backs. So guess you kind of have to roll with the punches of them not fucking polishing them properly.
DQ9 itself is at least polished off some of the rough edges that were present in DQ4.
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Snowfire: I don't believe the plot directly offers up the explanation, but there are indeed other motives at work there.
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Yaoi yaoi yaoi yaoi~
I see Ciato is suggesting you play Planescape: Torment as well. Should totally do it.
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Snowfire: Honestly it's not really that close to DQ gameplay, it just looks that way. In DQ you pretty much never use magic against randoms because resources are scarce, bosses are all the same a war of attrition against doublecasters where you hope to god that they won't use dispel + the big multitarget damage move, random speed won't kill you and the Resurrect spell will work.
Cthlhu/BoD is all about MP restoration after every battle, you need to use just the right amount of offense. Boss battles are uh... Not that interesting, but different, since they get better every turn. Just crazy damage races.
Grandia Parallel Trippers SOLO:
Yeah, turns out you can solo, why not, it probably would have been boring otherwise. I'm using Yuuhi/Bob solo (Turns out he's Bob in the status screen and Yuuhi everywhere else), at least this guy won't leave like Sue. Every Grandia character is there but I don't care, I'll only use our crappy extremely generic new game character.
So the battle system is a lot like Grandia's (On a Gameboy color? Nice) ...... WITH CARDS (Noooooooooooooo)
Thankfully that era where adding cards in RPGs seemed like a good idea is long gone.
Anyway there's no cancelling actions so this is friendlier to solos than other Grandia. You can delay actions to inflict more damage (this is worthless unless you're trying a combo with other characters if you're not misanthropic)
Everything costs MP. Using an attack will consume MPs and restore a little back, skipping turns will just restore a ton. You have a ton of different elements, the usual Grandia ones + melee ones (smash, shot, slash, stab, etc etc) Enemies have varying resistances against every element, and one character's skill with an element levels up if he uses that element multiple times during battle.
Lategame I'll try focusing on more than one element (since I know that element will get walled at one point), but right now I only care about fire. "Burn!"
Each character can equip 6 cards. Cards are things like "Burn lvl 5!" "Shot lvl 3", etc. You get to choose one of these skills every turn, and often earn cards by defeating enemies.
You can also combine cards to create new better cards.
Sooo anyway the beginning was easy enough until I ran into these three powerful enemies that each dealt 40 damage to my ~220 HP characters)
I removed all of Sue's and Feena's cards, and synthetized all their cards like crazy. I had gone from Burn! lvl 5 to Burnflare lvl 37, which hits everybody for a whole lot damage. Now I first strike -> OHKO everything and cannot be stopped.
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Fenrir: Yes, that's why I like CSTW style way better. Not sure why you say that it's not DQ combat - the resulting strategies are totally different, but at core it's still turn-based pick-a-move-at-start-of-turn with DQ-esque stat rules. It's polishing the annoying edges with revival not being random, speed not being random, having one simple type of consumable potion, punishing excessive stalling strategies, not forcing you to buy teleport items, etc.
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It probably has more yaoi than LO as well >_> Can't think of much in LO :(
FFTA2- My clan is starting to take shape nicely though not without road blocks along the way (currently stuck at Flowsand Lord, just lost twice) Luso is L19, my team is L18 avg in general. Mainly been using Luso, Adelle, the default Viera, the default Bangaa, the default Nu Mou and the default Moogle still. I'm also using a Bishop Bangaa from Clan Mates and I have more bangaa, hume, Nu Mou and moogle extra in reserve. With Tai's help I've managed to roughly thrash out some long term set ups for the characters I'm using in the main. Luso's going to be a Hunter so he's currently working on Archer so he can unlock it, Walu is usually a Fencer with Green Magic as support but I currently have her back in Green Mage learning Shell, Zac (default Nu Mou) is Black Mage with White Magic as support but he's not being used for the boss, my default bangaa is currently a Gladiator and the moogle an Animist but I changed back to Black Mage for the boss. Adelle is currently in Soldier and has mainly been switching between Thief/Soldier for the skills. On the advice I've been given I've been thinking about Blue Mage for her but also might be leaving her in ATK boosting classes a bit longer to go towards her unique class later. Perhaps also some time Ninja or in Fighter if she can use it =)
My final team is hopefully going to be Adelle, Penelo, Walu, another Viera (maybe), Al Cid and Luso/Cid/Gria girl (maybe) - though other characters I don't know about might also join later and make me change my mind~
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at core it's still turn-based pick-a-move-at-start-of-turn with DQ-esque stat rules.
Well, plenty of games use that type of battle system (Breath of Fire 1-4, Phantasy Star, Wild Arms 1-3, etc.). A few of them even manage to be good games with good battle systems! I don't think the system is inherently flawed, just DQ tends to do a bad job of it for all the reasons Fenrir lists. There was nothing wrong with this back in the NES days, NES games do lots of things wrong. DQ just continues to keep the same mistakes for the sake of nostalgia or something similarly idiotic.
Cthulhu looks/sounds pretty good (I don't really care that it's not faithful to the mythos) and I'll pick it up at some point.
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From BoD, the system is a good one and well worth checking out about. lol to caring if it is faithful to the mythos. That is like the last thing that matters to an RPG where you play as Cthulhu.
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Hey, it only took me like a year and a half, but I finally finished all of Eternal Poison! Opinion didn't really change, but obviously I liked it enough to go through all 5 paths. Heaps of a potential with a lot of glaring flaws; lots of style, but the lack of polish on the battle system is unforgivable because it would be so easily implemented (Also serves as a good way to never have VP:DS lack of numbers be rendered completely inoffensive). That said, I'm sure that they ran out of money (Certainly seems like each plot thread had several parts that they just didn't have time to write. Ashley's path was especially glaring here).
Final battle and spoiler chapter were cute if only because they somehow made summoning actually have a purpose (Less cute was the slog part, but at least they boss did have a scary attack). Was disappointed in the ending, but I had heard that in the end Thage was supposed to destroy the world or say that everyone played into her master plot or something.
Just for fun, in game rankings off the top of my head. Some of these of course are seriously foggy since it was a year ago.
Thage: 8.5. MVP. Smashes shit up, and is hard to damage. Little bit docked because if someone can damage or status her, you're depending on items to heal.
Raki: 5.5. Eh. I guess not needing to equip 7 is a small bonus. Didn't feel as good at anything as you'd expect.
Retica: 7. Bows+Healing.
Ashley: 8. Great healer, surprisingly good at attacking.
Reyna: 6. Starts off really solid, but she's the only character in game who basically starts off at core competency (Gains no weapon or skillset worth anything really).
Glynne: 4.5. Holy crap, single damage type? Yeah, he has magic, but really can't make much use of it. Reyna has the same damage type with far superior range.
Olifen: 7. Only hero to feel overall outclassed by other special PCs.
Logue: 5
Marie: 7.5. The smashing.
Levatte: 7.5. Heals forever, ton of buffs for leveling.
Rondeminion: 7.5. Crushes things absurdly, but don't expect anything at all outside of melee range.
Duphaston: 5. Eh. Surprisingly lackluster. Can do a bit of everything, but nothing well at all (MT is kind of bad, Healing is mehish)
Alexei: 4. Gets a point just because if you drag him around long often in the right chapters, that 100% Fracture will be awesome at taking down some bosses.
Ares: 4.5. Okay fighter. Gets spears, is fast, and is lackluster. Competent enough though and fills a few holes that may be needed.
Irina: 6.5. Retica minus. Bow users are always a solid choice.
Velnor: 6.5. Range+Accelero. Bow users are always a solid choice.
Komori: 7. Best Merc? Only one I used in every chapter. Buffs for leveling, early healing, passable magic, solid physicals of two types.
Vivian: 6. Doesn't have the range of skillsets Komori has, but the damage is pretty great. 3 of 4, I believe.
Yuri: 6.5. Indispensable on 2 of 4 paths, but Levatte and Ashley make her a bit irrelevant. Better usage than Komori on Thage/Rondeminion.
Stein: 5.5. Solid magic, eventually gets Cure 2. Does need some levels, but he's not...
Nena: 1.5. Horrible everything. Speed is trash, HP is trash, damage is lowest for mages I think, she has no healing, no buffing. Her niche is...late kind of crappy MT damage? Her whole score is derived for potentially being a warm body early, but she's auto dropped whenever the 7th PC comes along.
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To be clear I don't think -anybody- is complaining about CSTW not being true to the mythos (well, see name of the game!). My complaint is that 80% of the game is a Dragon Quest RPG that happens to include Cthulhu, and 20% of the game is a parody-Cthulhu plot that happens to involve DQ dungeons. I'd like it more if those proportions were reversed - less "defeat the dragon in the volcano level", more "Sorry about trying to kill you, Lord Cthulhu!" from cultists.
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KoF13: Somehow managed to get six wins in a row in Ranked. That makes this the first fighting game where I've managed to get a "win 5 in a row" achievement. Unfortunately this game also has a "win 10 in a row". Fuck my life.
Skyrim: finished the main Thieves Guild questline, but still have to do all the small jobs to get them back to their former glory.
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Saga Frontier - Lute's quest, glitchless speedrun. Beat in 2:51. Party was T260 (2 IonCannons for offence), EngineerCar (tank w/ backpack), Thunder (Dullahan w/ GroundHit), Hamilton (gunner w/ Shield), Rouge (VictoryRune, Implosion, MegaWindblast). Trashed Spriggan quite thoroughly, which was my revenge for losing to him last week.
There's a hell of a lot of time saving I can do. I spent too much grinding trying to get Thunder to Dullahan, I could probably do it faster. Better yet, use King Sei, since the Mizukagami is nice but not essential and Sei practically has a free shot at Dullahan due to his incredible base HP. Not sure if running two monsters is a good idea or not (could also drop one of the mecs, their offence isn't incredible even if they have great durability). I probably overkilled the amount of stuff I got, but I was a bit worried after losing badly last time. Major improvements to the run from last week were the Shield spell, the Dullahan form, trading up a gun and selling the HyperScale, and doing the Koorong Caves to get an AngelArmor and lots of money (but no dicking around with Mt. Mosperiburg, for instance, or recruiting lots of people I didn't need).
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Star Wars: The Old Republic - Beta played today. Did the first planet on Smuggler and Jedi Knight. It is pretty much WoW without 7 years of polish. Better than WoW was at release, but that is to be expected. The plot is Bioware stuff and generally pretty decent. Lots of VA is different for an MMO, but the VA tends to just be middling. Cinematic's VA is great though, but the two I saw were Jennifer Hale and Kevin M Richardson acted, so that is pretty much expected to be great. Lots of random voices that you go OH it is them! Most of them are Bioware regulars, but you don't hear them all in the one game that often (Cam Clarke!)
Combat system is very WoW. Enemies are less strong and come in larger groups while soloing. Haven't done a Flashpoint to see how the low level instances are, but eh.
So it is what it is. Pretty much everything I expected. I will probably play it for a month and that is it.
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Grandia Parallel Trippers Solo:
Reached the fake ending.
I thought I was pretty much screwed at one point, as my character progression pretty much hit a wall. The only way to boost stats is through extremely rare stat seeds and two equipment slots. Getting levels only increases HPs! My favourite cards had reached the max level (50) way back in the second dungeon.
Enemies, especially bosses, were getting a lot better, a lot faster.
Fortunately I got stat boost spells soon after, the Def / MDef boosting ones being especially useful.
Then I got Protect (Immunity to physical damage for about 5 turns) and Veil (Immunity to magic damage for about 5 turns)
Yeah... I even have a status immunity accessory... What a joke.
Maybe Protect and Veil don't stack, at least?
BTW, just about anyone with a character portrait in Grandia 1 joins in this game.
Because everybody thought the only thing lacking from Grandia 1 was the possibility to have Gantz / Tentz / Java / Rem in your team. (i'm sure you all remember all of them)
Unfortunately you can't use a Nana / Saki / Mio team because the terrible main character is forced and there are only three character slots.
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LA Noire: Done with homicide. A little disappointed the cases generally followed the same beats, but at least vice looks more interesting.
Is it just me, or is Donnelly basically Pete Postlethwaite in videogame form?
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Ciddy, Civ5 is ten dollars, talk me out of buying it.
Orcs must die!: Fliers are following the grand tower defense pattern of being a royal pain in the ass.
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SRWL: Finally picked up and finished this after not playing it since getting my DS back. I missed the arrival of Mazinkaiser to save Michel and never deployed him again. Argh. Final was remarkably balanced for a handheld SRW - even with buffs up his MAP did a number on my team, and the constant flow of pretty-good reinforcements combined with the infinite MAP works make you deal with him quickly or pay a high price. Solid game design there.
Ghost trick - Also picked up and finished this, finally getting myself unstuck from the prison escape. Awesome game. A bit on the easy side once I got past the escape (which I was stuck on because I kept trying to get him up the stairs, not realizing he could go straight into the ducts and the minor detail that Japanese game developers don't know what a bullet looks like. Somebody said that the plot manages to continually upend itself by adding to what came before, rather than wholesale overwriting it, and that's true. It's really good writing, although I totally called the twist on Sissel's origins. Ray's origins, now, those caught me by surprise.
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: This finally arrived in the mail, only two weeks after release! Screw you, Best Buy. I beat Arcade with Phoenix Wright and went 1-1 on XBL. Still have to figure out which of the newcomers to learn.
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Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep- Finished Terra's path, just opened up the Secret Ending, so about to head into that.
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Grandia Parallel Trippers Solo:
BTW, just about anyone with a character portrait in Grandia 1 joins in this game.
Because everybody thought the only thing lacking from Grandia 1 was the possibility to have Gantz / Tentz / Java / Rem in your team. (i'm sure you all remember all of them)
Unfortunately you can't use a Nana / Saki / Mio team because the terrible main character is forced and there are only three character slots.
Rem is adorable, so I approve.
Also, how are you playing this game? Just in Japanese? Or is there a translation out now?
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Ciddy, Civ5 is ten dollars, talk me out of buying it.
Super what are your thoughts on digital heroin.
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It's perfectly legal, and #1 pharmacist recommended!
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Yeah Djinn, there's a translation patch.
I don't remember Rem from Grandia 1 but I don't like him here. He made me go through a horrible minigame!
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Breath of Death VII- Cthulhu's better. The core system is the same, but there's several critical differences. a) no teleport b) Way less equipment variety c) shorter quest, meaning fewer skills. So this means, among other things, you have a lot more pointless fighting on the world map, the level up options often don't mean a whole lot because your equipment only supports one build (though at least the skill upgrades are still meaningful), and there's not a whole lot of skills to start with, so you get fewer of those choices.
Like cthulhu, there's potential here for clever writing that's too often wasted. This is probably for the best, because unlike Cthulhu the times it does do stuff it's simple lampshade hanging that's fairly dry. It's just a less absurd situation. Ah well. 6/10 range, it's still a quick playthrough that's easily holding your interest throughout.
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But... Cthulhu costs three times as much!
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Dead Rising 2: So I fought a guy on a chain saw motorcycle and hit him in the face with a Fire Axe ducttaped to a Sledge Hammer...
...then I fought some Hippie Vietnam War Vet Guy wielding a broken glass shard, which I fired lots of bullets into his face...
...yeah, this is Dead Rising alright <.<
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Star Wars: The Old Republic - Beta played today. Did the first planet on Smuggler and Jedi Knight. It is pretty much WoW without 7 years of polish. Better than WoW was at release, but that is to be expected. The plot is Bioware stuff and generally pretty decent. Lots of VA is different for an MMO, but the VA tends to just be middling. Cinematic's VA is great though, but the two I saw were Jennifer Hale and Kevin M Richardson acted, so that is pretty much expected to be great. Lots of random voices that you go OH it is them! Most of them are Bioware regulars, but you don't hear them all in the one game that often (Cam Clarke!)
Combat system is very WoW. Enemies are less strong and come in larger groups while soloing. Haven't done a Flashpoint to see how the low level instances are, but eh.
So it is what it is. Pretty much everything I expected. I will probably play it for a month and that is it.
Jennifer Hale is the female trooper, btw. So if you like her you probably know what class you should play.
Anyway, I'm a little farther than you and I thought I'd mention that combat doesn't stay WoW-simple for long. They start introducing more and more variety in enemy abilities, so you start seeing enemy packs that are formed along group lines- a dude might be melee and another ranged, and the latter might have a CC skill while the former has disruptive AoE swings, for instance. While they might not have as much visual variety they are generally a lot more interesting than the average WoW mobs.
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...then I fought some Hippie Vietnam War Vet Guy wielding a broken glass shard, which I fired lots of bullets into his face...
Looked more like some 90s grunge kurt cobain ripoff to me, especially with the green shirt
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Saga Frontier - Lute speedrun again. Improved time by over an hour, to 1:43. A bunch of route improvements, and in particular I didn't bother with the Koorong caves or two separate visits to Scrap (which means doing Shingrow without T2, but apart from now needing to dodge the bats, things weren't too different). I dropped EngineerCar because while mecs are easy to make supertanks, they're hard to get any form of damage in the constraint of a speedrun, so there's really no need for more than one tanky backpack user. King Sei was a huge improvement, since he can get Dullahan so easily. Thunder absorbed Silf from a SpearValkyrie (68% chance) so I ended up making him into a Shrieker (reasonably tanky, good mage) which got the job done... not as well as a Dullahan but was much easier to get. Silf and GroundHit combo with each other in both directions, which was handy. Hamilton didn't get TrickShot this time (did get Bound), so she suffered a bit due to worse inexpensive damage (and also TrickShot can activate DeathSynthesis regen), Rouge lacked LightSword this time, both had less HP, but same basic approach worked. Spriggan was tough but quite doable this time.
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KoF13: Gasp, am I actually almost good at this game? I'm still bad at the fancy cancels, but I'm stuffing people with my good footsies/counters. Currently #84 ranked player. About a third of my losses have come to the guy ranked number 5. And I'm not even too terrible against him once I beat his Kensou. Damn that character is hard to fight.
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The cancel system allows for silly stuff, it's just about knowing what goes into what. For example, Takuma has all kinds of bullshit he can do by cancelling Zanretsuken[forward,back,forward+A or C] into his command grab[hcb+B or D]. The command grab gives you enough time to link it into crouch C, into whatever special or super you want.
Now that my net is less assy I can actually get online with this game on 360, we should play sometime. It might still be kinda laggy though, DSL net :F
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Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep- Finished frue final. Didn't expect the secret chapter to be that short. Frue final sort of disappointing, and I can't remember enough of KH lore to fully recognize everything in the end (though I'm at roughly 90% I'd say). Mostly what happens to Aqua afterwards.
Game hovers at either 6 or 7 depending on my mood. Best KH gameplay yet!!!!!111 Plot... not so much. Playing through the three routes wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so damn similar. Well constructed within the KH universe, but... not the best presentation.
Magic Mirror is easily the coolest boss fight I've seen in a while though.
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DQ5: With Ghost Trick, SRWL and RH all wrapped up, this is the latest long-abandoned playthrough I'm picking up to fill time on the bus. Finally killed Bishop Ladja, got the asperthingy and Sun Crown, and am heading for Nimzo. Randoms in Mt. Zugzswang continue to be incredibly annoying, but Ladja himself was pretty much a protracted joke.
Batman: Arkham City - It's really good, contain your shock. Not firing on all cylinders out of the gate quite like Arkham Asylum did, but it's still a premiere Batman simulator with great gameplay, atmosphere and acting. What flaws it has in immersion I blame on Penguin being a poor substitute for the Joker as a primary villain, and the Catwoman segments being non-skippable and extraneous to everything. Hopefully that won't be a problem much longer.
Also, I need to see if there's a way to turn down the radio chatter, because argh is it getting repetitive.
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Penguin's out of the picture before terribly long. Catwoman segments are often very short (and I think there's all of four of them...five at most). If you notice a way to turn off WMOOK in Arkham, please tell me. EDIT: For what it's worth, they did succeed in making Penguin a vicious bastard. Still no substitute for Joker, though.
AC doesn't have any individual segment that's quite as outstanding as AA's Scarecrow sequences, but it's consistently a better game regardless.
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:( I was unable to get Civ5 on sale.
Orcs must die: Loving this. It's brilliant in a completely different way from defense grid. Defense Grid was about resource management and smartly upgrading your towers at the right time. OMD is a straight up gibfest that either lets you godmode with your main character or smash everything with traps. You get full price for selling things and there is no real reward for holding onto resources the way DG's compound interest system worked. Both are however fantastic takes on the tower defense genre and are worth playing.
I'm up to the bridge right now, just got Paladins as a unit.
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@Super: I don't consider not getting Civ 5 much of a loss. Between the base design and the mod community, Civ 4 is still better in basically every way, and if you have a PC capable of running Civ 5 decently you can run the really amazing mods on full size maps without running out of computer resources.
Anyway, got Skyward Sword for my birthday.
Completed the first flying sequence despite not knowing how to gain altitude, which was REALLY annoying, but that's on me for not paying attention to the instructions. The mine cart level was a mine cart level, which was REALLY annoying and actually the game's fault, because seriously, fuck mine carts.
Everything else has been amazing. I can't decide if the timeshift shenanigans beat out the atmosphere and creative puzzles of the water temple (yes, the freaking WATER TEMPLE) for my favorite sequence.
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The mine cart level was a mine cart level, which was REALLY annoying and actually the game's fault, because seriously, fuck mine carts.
You don't get to say that without beating Taz-Mania for the Genesis at least five times.
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The mine cart level was a mine cart level, which was REALLY annoying and actually the game's fault, because seriously, fuck mine carts.
You don't get to say that without beating Taz-Mania for the Genesis at least five times.
Oh. Oh. No. Why would you remind someone of Taz-Mania. WHY? People actually BEAT that?
I reiterate, FUCK mine carts.
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DQ5: Beat. Nimzo was...worst DQ final I've seen? Only occasional doubleacting, and all his MT was owned by Insulatle. Things only got dicey because I forgot to give Son a prayer ring and he ran out of MP. Final party was the main, hitting things with the Dragon Staff, a Golem, alternating between charging power and whacking things with a Metal King Sword, a Slime Knight, spamming the Sage Stone, and the son/hero (who never actually did anything hero-y in the storyline, did he?), whacking things with the Zenithian Sword, acting as my Insulatle battery and occasionally using Multiheal/Kazing. Not that I needed them against Nimzo.
Overall....6/10? Low 7? Playable enough in the DQ way, but the plot has enormous potential, nearly all wasted.
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Okamiden: started this, defeated a huge frog, and saw two "THE WORLD IS BEING REVIVED IT IS VERY PRETTY AWE AT THE PRETTINESS!"
...well, they got one part of Okami's spirit right, at least! Not much else to say beyond that.
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Now that my net is less assy I can actually get online with this game on 360, we should play sometime. It might still be kinda laggy though, DSL net :F
KoF netcode is not too shabby thankfully. About 75% of my fights are fine, 20% have slight input lag, and 5% are unplayable shit-fests. Like you do the movement for a fireball and see your character duck, stand, duck again, stand, walk forward slightly, punch.
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Good to hear after how bad XII's was. Now I just need to decide on my team members properly..
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@Super: I don't consider not getting Civ 5 much of a loss. Between the base design and the mod community, Civ 4 is still better in basically every way, and if you have a PC capable of running Civ 5 decently you can run the really amazing mods on full size maps without running out of computer resources.
Eh, I like Civ 5 a lot, but I don't think it's really a question of better or worse. They're different enough that the type of game I feel like playing is what determines which one I play. I play V when I want to fight some wars, because I think that hexes and no stacking makes it a lot more fun.
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Yeah, not really a fan of Civ4 wars here. What mods do you hype anyway, Bobbin?
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Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn is my favorite, but playing it is hell on the machine I mostly have access to these days.
(Disclaimer: I've played Civ 5 only briefly due to 1. disliking it and 2. not usually having access to a computer I can run it on; when I did have more regular access to that PC, however, I still pretty much exclusively went back to Civ 4.)
Fall From Heaven and its derivatives are also excellent. I'm not normally a fan of epic fantasy, but the gameplay is worth it.
I like the Legends of Revolution UXP for a relatively light mod that allows me to play decently-sized maps. History of the Three Kingdoms is another great one for that, and the Legion mechanics are great.
Planetfall scratches my Alpha Centauri itch better than actual Alpha Centauri.
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Dark Souls: Finished. The final boss was without doubt the easiest boss in the game, easier than Pinwheel, easier than the tutorial boss, much easier than the bonewheel room the the catacombs (if I got a legit death, it was from that room). Block his first attack, parry the second, and stab him for 800 damage. Repeat 5 times. Completely predictable. If his grab was faster, it would have been scary.
Hardest boss was probably Capra Demon. Poizn dogs makes the fight 5 times harder than it needed to be. Four Kings and Bed of Chaos are gimmick bosses. Seath is owned by curse resistance. Nito is a joke; didn't need divine weapons here.
The real difficulty in this game is dealing with the environment, narrow passageways, archers, bonewheels, input lag and a terrible camera. This game has some of the best designed areas (Anor Londo, Duke' Archives, Catacombs) and some of the worst areas ever in a game (Lost Izalith, upper part of Blighttown, Tomb of Giants).
Combat is sweet and rewarding when you beat an enemy or boss on your own and co-op is fun. I'm not into PvP until they remove/nerf the ninja flip ring. Way too many havel armor users moving like a thief, complete with impenetrible poise and defense. They fixed all the other broken equipment.
Overall, I think the game is a 7. I think a mandatory install would have fixed all the lag and framerate issues and no friend co-op is lame.
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Named my first post-release minecraft world "So lonely and sad" and had the seed the same thing. Spawned me in an area absolutely fucking full of wolves (which you can tame). Either wolves are way more common post-release or this game has a sense of humor.
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So I think I can sum up the difference between Arkham Asylum and Arkham City now.
In Arkham Asylum you play as Batman while he navigates the cramped corners of an asylum that has been taken over by the inmates, forced to confront both his greatest enemy and his own deepest fears.
In Arkham City you play as Batman and can make him punch a shark right in the face.
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Ceaseless discharge is easier than the final boss if you know the way to insta-kill him. Both are pretty hard if you don't know the trick! The final was probably my hardest boss honestly.
Grandia Parallel Trippers: NOOOOOOOOOO
I'm up against the final boss and I can't lose. My two accessories bring me physical immunity and status immunity. I have some magic that gives me magic immunity for like 5 rounds.
Problem is, the final boss can't lose either. He has monster defense and his arm casts Allhealer every turn.
Tried a bunch of strategies like using Cancel Sword, changing accessories, etc, nothing works.
I have max level and max stats already.
I don't even know how you're supposed to beat the punk in a normal game without using the missable End of the World. Anyone played this?
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The mine cart level was a mine cart level, which was REALLY annoying and actually the game's fault, because seriously, fuck mine carts.
You don't get to say that without beating Taz-Mania for the Genesis at least five times.
Oh. Oh. No. Why would you remind someone of Taz-Mania. WHY? People actually BEAT that?
I reiterate, FUCK mine carts.
I think I beat Taz-Mania at least a good ten times. I was eight and hopelessly bored.
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Next up on the DS: Knights in the Nightmare. And wow, this game has so many insane systems going on you could tell me N1 made it and I wouldn't bat an eye. Breakable weapons, charge-to-prepare attacks, sure, whatever, been there. Danmaku attacks in a real-time-with-pause tactical RPG? Enemies chosen by slot machine? Battles won via tic-tac-toe where you pick a square by murdering things? Breakable PCs? Now you're dealing with someone who needs therapy.
Also, I played and beat Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. Fun game with excellent writing, but there's a bit too much rehashing from the first one, in terms of both plot and puzzle themes.
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It wasn't made by N1 Shale, it was made by Sting. You might remember them from Riviera or Yggdra Union.
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Koudelka: Fun little game. Enjoying myself, but that may be because I'm getting ridiculous amounts of drops. Not that I hear it would be that difficult otherwise. Just the right atmosphere, moves along well, the writing isn't terrible and the voice acting barely manages to avoid being distracting. Stopped after fighting the reflections of the party, which I understand is the end of Disc 1. Woo
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Fate Extra
Boss reset tally.
Shinji: 5 Resets
Dan: 0 Resets
Alice: 2 Resets
I am now at the pathsplit. Harkan is unsure as to what to do!
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I am now at the pathsplit. Harkan is unsure as to what to do!
This is my shocked face. Really.
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I've beaten Yggdra Union once and Unlimited Saga seven times.
Yet I've tried going through Knights in the Nightmare three times and it was too overwhelming.
The craziest mechanics.
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Fate Extra
Boss reset tally.
Shinji: 5 Resets
Dan: 0 Resets
Alice: 2 Resets
I am now at the pathsplit. Harkan is unsure as to what to do!
Your choice is basically between allying with a (more or less) established character and fighting two original enemy Servants or allying with an original character and fighting two established enemy Servants.
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It wasn't made by N1 Shale, it was made by Sting. You might remember them from Riviera or Yggdra Union.
Never played Yggdra Union, and Riviera wasn't nearly this nuts.
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It wasn't made by N1 Shale, it was made by Sting. You might remember them from Riviera or Yggdra Union.
Never played Yggdra Union, and Riviera wasn't nearly this nuts.
See, that's your problem. Play Yggdra Union
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Saga Frontier - Down to 1:33! Not sure how much more work on this I'll do, but yeah. Had a little bad luck finalising my monster forms, but this let me round out my gun/magic skillsets. TrickShot + two Dullahans = gg.
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One quick KitK question: There seem to be arbitrary restrictions on aiming attacks in certain directions depending on a unit's position on the map. Is there any particular rhyme or reason to that?
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I thought all units had innate restrictions on which directions they could face in KitN?
Wild Arms ACF: I want Emma as a permanent party member already! Damn you, game, give me back my Blue Mage! Currently in Court Seim for the first time, not exposing Calamity Jane's secret to her father. Fast Draw grinding is less work than I expected. It seems the moves gain lots of exp when you use them against something high-level. Speed Fang just hit level 5. I'm really digging the PS system in this game. I think more games should try a more flexible equipment system based on levels-as-equipment-points.
Other things: Holy Snap, Paw is doing a LP of Cthulhu Saves the World~
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/paw/lppaw/33270-lets-play-live-cthulhu-saves-the-world
I know what my next game project is going to be!
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One quick KitK question: There seem to be arbitrary restrictions on aiming attacks in certain directions depending on a unit's position on the map. Is there any particular rhyme or reason to that?
To force you use more job classes by limiting the the direction they can face. And only two job classes can actually move.
Though, the game usually stoop in to this: Phase 1, move your units into ideal location. Phase 2, replace all units with Priestess and spam the light staff attacks. It shouldn't take over 6 phases by this point to pass a stage once the priestesses unleash their broken onslaught.
I've beaten Yggdra Union once and Unlimited Saga seven times.
Yet I've tried going through Knights in the Nightmare three times and it was too overwhelming.
The craziest mechanics.
It looks like it is overwhelming, but in reality 80% of those mechanics you can out right ignore it. Priestess spamming will provide you solutions to almost everything.
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To force you use more job classes by limiting the the direction they can face. And only two job classes can actually move.
Though, the game usually stoop in to this: Phase 1, move your units into ideal location. Phase 2, replace all units with Priestess and spam the light staff attacks. It shouldn't take over 6 phases by this point to pass a stage once the priestesses unleash their broken onslaught.
Huh, would've been nice if they mentioned that facing restrictions in the tutorial then. Anyway, up to stage 13, enjoying the game rather a lot now. The multitude of weird mechanics don't really add up to depth, but they do make for some fun fights. The plot is....uh....there, but got better once the battles started having something to do with the cutscenes.
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So with some bonus money we weren't expecting to have, I grabbed KoF13 and a used copy of FF13(as well as NOCTURNE. They had a used copy of freaking Nocturne there, nearly mint. Snagged that for the collection, so if I want to play it again I won't have to borrow DJ's copy~).
And of course with these new games in hand I proceed to play RSMS instead. <_<; (I had just started it before the whole "you have to leave the house for a week" thing, so wanted to get back to it.)
Using Jamil as my main. Further then I've ever gotten before! Made it to Event Rank 11 before picking up the Ailing Emperor quest...then by the time I made it out of Twinmoon Temple I was ER14. So many battles. Was intending to recruit Farah, but...apparently Jamil, being the one main she has any plot relevance to, is also the one main she won't join up with. -_-
On the subject of Jamil and plot relevence, did the Assassin's Guild quest with him...and let's just say that I didn't keep his buddy from the beginning around. Which made that quest interesting. Not really sure what to do now, though something was said about pirates in Melvir so maybe I should go check that out.
Team is:
Jamil - Foils and Pyrology. Was fantastic early, then...just stopped learning new techs for a long time. Which was irritating. Finally picked up Blitz and his Cutting Lunge is starting to form The Scissors and The Stallion quite often, so he's redeeming himself.
Aisha - Seems like an obvious PC for Jamil. Using Bows, Terrology and Bewitchery. Was...very much the weakest PC for a long time, but finally picked up a couple of spamable bow skills as well as Wave of Life and now she's solid. Not great, but solid.
Barbara - My dedicated mage, who has some random martial arts because why not. Wizard class atm, for moar magic damage. Aerology, Hydrology, Demonology and Cosmology are her areas. Blood Curdle makes randoms cry. "Yeah, you three combo that guy. I'll kill his buddy in one spell on my own~"
Sif - Picked up a couple of nice Greatswords early, so swapped her over from 2H Swords to that. Castle Knight is her class, and in Defense mode no less. She's usually the other half of The Scissors with Jamil, thanks to Running Slash. Basically...hits things, has gallons of HP and deflects alot. It's the latter that makes her so good.
Hawke - Was using Foils for awhile when I wasn't sure I was gonna keep him. Recent swapped over to Scimitars/Hand Axes(Imperial Marine class), and haven't looked back. Just managed to scratch up the money for that really nice scimitar from a shop in Yeoville I think, which he's slashing ass and taking names with. My weakest PC overall, since he's also the one I kicked out whenever I needed to recruit someone for a specific mission. Obviously with Cutting Lunge, he forms the last leg of The Stallion and occsionally The Scissors in Sif's place.
Highlight of the game thus far: Scorn going down like a chump to 3 Vortexes activating on him in consecutive turns. And by being really insistant on hitting Jamil(who had Self Immolation up) with Hellfire. I went in expecting a nasty struggle and wound up with AI derp and luck making it an easy win.
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Dead Rising 2: After recognizing I was at a plot mission with MULTIPLE destinations and wasted a lot of time, I said fuck it, and just decided to do as much as possible for EXP...and Luz decided she hated me for accidentally hitting her a few times while busting up zombies and refused to talk to me, so I killed her, THEN reset. Bitch. So anyway, level 20 now and about to do the Motorcycle vs. Train sequence!
Okamiden: Just beat a Giant Nekotori Fish, and just restored another Guardian Sapling and OH GOD THE SCENE ITS SO PRETTY!!! It also required doing the EXACT SAME THING YOU DID FOR THE DAMN SAPLING IN OKAMI. Look, I can understand reusing elements from the previous game, but come on, this is downright identical to what Okami did. This is past "cute nod" and is now just downright being lazy!
...you know, its funny, I need to constantly remind myself that DR2 and Okamiden are both made by the same company. On one hand, Dead Rising 2 is a serious, very adult oriented game with a dark sense of humor at times, and gameplay that doesn't take itself seriously at all. Meanwhile, Okamiden is about as fun family friendly as you can get, and has an incredibly playful atmosphere about it...and isn't afraid to throw some serious, dark "holy shit I can't believe that was in a game like this" moments. You really can't get more opposite than these two games when it comes down to it...
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Same publisher, different studios. S-E released both FF13 and Nier, and they couldn't be much more different if they tried (because Nier is a good game, for starters).
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So with some bonus money we weren't expecting to have, I grabbed KoF13 and a used copy of FF13(as well as NOCTURNE. They had a used copy of freaking Nocturne there, nearly mint. Snagged that for the collection, so if I want to play it again I won't have to borrow DJ's copy~).
They must be in season, because I saw no less than 3 used copies of Nocturne while I was in NJ.
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Arkham City: Is it me, or is the "firearms jammer" gadget more of a "stand there and let people shoot you" gadget?
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Halo Anniversary: finished the co-op campaign on Legendary. Yeah, this might have been a great game ten years ago, but it's not now. Combat has evolved, this game hasn't. 4/10
KoF13: finished arcade mode with all the teams. I sill like my Art of Fighting team, but some other characters I like playing are Mature, Elizabeth, Billy Kane, Hwa Jai, and Clark.
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Arkham City: Is it me, or is the "firearms jammer" gadget more of a "stand there and let people shoot you" gadget?
It's not permanent. It buys you a moment of surprise to run up and punch someone in the face while they reload their gun. I generally just used it when I saw in advance that a mob with guns was in the way of somewhere I needed to get. Hide, use it from a distance (the range is pretty generous) on a couple of them. Makes it a little easier to assault a large group in open areas that are tough to completely stealth through (although I feel like this came up more while hunting Riddler trophies). You're right though, the short duration makes it likely someone'll pick up the gun and fix it before you're done with the fight.
Much more useful is the weapon-breaking combo, if you don't already have that.
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Saga Frontier - Beat Asellus' quest, rather underlevelled, with the amazing team of Ildon, Rei, and RedTurnip (also Cotton). Had something like half a dozen resets on Orlouge partly due to having no statushealing (so Selection was fffff) and partly just due to being underlevelled. Oh well, at least being underlevelled made MysticalChange very impressive.
Order of Ecclesia Hard Mode - I was sorta iffy for this on a while (still am really) because it improves dungeons a LOT but doesn't do very much for the bosses. I've gotten all the boss medals so far mostly because I could, because they were exactly the same bosses I'd already mastered (oh no they do slightly more damage). This is quite unfortunate since I think bosses are where the games are strongest. Fortunately I have now gotten to the two midgame storyline bosses and they were both much improved, and a lot of fun! Perfected the first after some practice, at least, currently at the second.
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I'm not talking about it wearing off, I'm talking about it just not working. I select the jammer, hold LT and RT, and Batman just stands there while mooks shoot automatic weapons at him.
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Grandia Parallel Trippers Solo: Stuck against the final boss. His attacks are wimpy, but he has monster HP, defense and healing and I can't ever dream of outdamaging him. Feena solo seems to be out of the question since I chose an accessory over her End of the World spell of uber damage and the boss is immune to Time Gate.
Wonderswan SaGa: A FFL1 remake. There's a translation patch for this too. Ah, nostalgia. I'm looking forward to instantkilling God with a chainsaw again. (hope this wasn't removed)
I'm going for a challenge here too, an almost mutant solo. I'm saying "almost" because I'm also using a monster, and monsters are as bad as I remember. It's like I'm playing with Orlandu and Jogurt. Monsters make Kogoro look like a stat god. (They might be decent if you know everything about the game)
My mutant is great, she just 2HKOed a major boss. The main problem is that, again, after any battle she can randomly forget her uber badass MTOHKO Eruption of Doom spell to learn, say, Poison Resist.
Edit: OMG God has an earlygame cameo!
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Fenrir: You should actually name your SaGa team members "Orlandu" and "Jogurt" and post screen caps.
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I can only name them ORDU and YGRT unfortunately. 4 letters names were the norm back then!
I'll do a quick stat topic to show you the strength of monsters:
Ruth
Mutant
HP: 363
Str: 26
Def: 32 + 21
Agi: 36
Mana: 74
Armor: Raises defense to 99 (by 99?)
Cold Air: 344 ice damage, hits a group
Thunder book: 400 thunder damage, hits a group
Magic Staff: 425 fire damage, hits a group
Psiblast: 150 psychic damage, full MT
SMG: 33 physical damage, hits a group
Saber: 101 physical damage, ST
Poison / Stone resistance
Bob
Monster
HP: 126
Str: 16
Def: 21
Agi: 14
Mana: 9
Bite: 13 physical damage, ST
Poison Fange: 100% poison, ST. Enemy loses 6 HPs every turn.
Weakness to ice damage (...)
Can eat meat to turn into an equally crappy monster with different skills.
I've read you can have endgame monsters in the first world though!
Edit: WAIT WAIT I JUST ATE MEAT GOTTEN FROM A BOSS... This is going to be awesome...
...... 150 HPs... 20 damage... Weakness to fire...
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Fenrir, why are you getting excited at SaGa 1?
And yes, God still dies to chainsaw.
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Fenrir, why are you getting excited at SaGa 1?
And yes, God still dies to chainsaw.
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I'm not talking about it wearing off, I'm talking about it just not working. I select the jammer, hold LT and RT, and Batman just stands there while mooks shoot automatic weapons at him.
I never actually tried using it while dudes were already shooting at me. Blame the long wind-up time. It's really only good for goons you're about to attack, not goons who are already attacking you.
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SRWJ
/me EYES G. Gracodeus
Well, uh, not entirely sure what the game plans on having me fight to justify getting THAT but the last few maps have been such cakewalks that I'd welcome the change.
Granteed/Arbalest/Tekkamen Blade, Layzner team/God Gundam, Kaiser/Great/Borot and the Aestivalis squad(the girls and Akito anyway) are the four "teams" I usually split my forces into to handle maps. Actually really likeing how well the first three support eachother, especially after I slapped Hit and Away on D-Boy. I did get Bonta-kun, but it's hard to say no to Lamda Driver so I used it a bit for the lulz and went back to the Arbalest.
Oh, and the Granteed(now the G. Dracodeus) and the Layzner Mk2 have both been full upgraded. Picked the S ranks on all terrains bonuses for both, of course. That predictably took them both from merely dominating to just plain silly(at least once V-MAX kicks in for the Layzner).
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SRWJ
/me EYES G. Gracodeus
Well, uh, not entirely sure what the game plans on having me fight to justify getting THAT but the last few maps have been such cakewalks that I'd welcome the change.
Yeah, it's pretty much like that the whole way through.
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Yeah, see Grefter.
(http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/93/awesomevt.jpg)
Ouch.
So yeah this was the original FFL with good graphics, there's nothing changed. All the BS is kept, but at least God isn't turned into Gackt.
I like it because it's very fast paced (I finished it under 5 hours. It felt like Half Minute Hero at times), the world is great and fun to see, and in general the game doesn't care about making sense or adhering to the usual RPG rules. It has that weirdness only older games can pull off. There is no balance in this game ever, but I guess that's part of the charm.
I might try a human SCC. I like buying my stats instead of earning them from battle.
Oh yeah I also finished earlier:
Orc & Elves (DS):
It's a first person game, but because it's turn based, combat feels a lot like a roguelike, believe it or not. It's fast paced, pretty fun and very short. Battles are "Mash A" but you have a lot of different long range options, and you're expected to gobble tons of potions all the time to survive. Health potions, stat boost potions, regen potions, invisibility potions, doubleturning potions, etc etc.
I do not believe this is very healthy. The main character probably dies soon after the end of the game.
I think the Doom team made this game. If you press A against suspicious walls you'll find secret rooms with ammo and like ten potions.
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Okamiden: Just a beat giant statue! That fight was cool outside of one factor:
No way to heal Ink outside of abusing items, which I've been trying to avoid. It really stood out as a fight that they forgot to accommodate the differences between Okami and Okamiden. In Okami? That'd have not been a problem due to Ink Regeneration. Here, you don't have that. Bosses before this would often have occasionally spawning goons you can trash for a Ink power up, which was a good compensation factor, and you could argue Resource Management except you're using a lot of resources due to the nature of the game, and this is not a short fight.
Dead Rising 2: Just got Katey her 3rd Zombrex. I literally got it to her last second, cause I tried to be ambitious and save 4 people just before giving it to her. I managed to succeed though due to some screw ups, it was damned close. In fairness, only one of the 4 were saved initially since I was that rushed, but...DR2 is a lot more forgiving about this, so simply "turn around after plot scene", and the 3 I missed came within range.
I also discovered PROPELLER SERVBOT HEAD. This is a freaking awesome weapon just on style merits alone.
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FFTA2- L38 Luso, 42~ hrs logged, 93 Quests Completed, 20 Clan Members, 18 Areas Controlled, 17 Clan Privileges including Bonus AP 3, Speed ^5, Power, Agility and Luck ^4, Regenga, Debuff Resistance 3 ... I have a Ranger w/th Mirror Items + Item Lore, my three Viera have all just mastered Blood Price ... Plot? What plot? Oh yeah "Seeking the Stone" was the latest there~
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One of the best clan privilages, and one I bot got early and used often, is one that doubles your MP regen. Can't remember exactly what it's called or how to get it, but it lets non-viera casters actually, you know, do stuff. Though having 3 BP Vieras, you're prolly past the point where it would be useful.
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Thanks Gate. Worth keeping in mind for future reference =)
Yeah not sure if Tai mentioned it. He might have though. He's given me a lot of information/help/advice on the game in general. Like the way to obtain Bonus AP 3 which I've mainly been rolling with~
Have mainly been using physicals/items with most of my team until recently although I do have one Nu Mou dedicated to Black/Time with Turbo MP. He's been fairly useful and used quite a bit so MP Regen might have came in handy there =)
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Meant to comment more on my team/characters. Luso after spending some time in Fighter and Thief/Ninja for stats is back in Hunter currently w/th Precision as a secondary. Not sure which secondary I'll stick to yet for his final set up though. Adelle did some stat work in Fighter and Thief earlier and is now settling into her Ninja + Fighter/Blue set up. Cid is a Master+White Monk, Hurdy is going to go Juggler/Bard (working on Thief abilities for Tinker > Juggler), my main Nu Mou and my Seeq has been mentioned, my three Viera are going Assassin/Fencer w/th Green Magic, Summoner w/th Red and Sniper w/th Spellblade respectively. I also have two Grias, both with solid speed and strength who are working on their Raptor stuffs until I obtain the Ravager class. I have a bunch of random moogles, Nu Mou, bangaa and humes as extra (they all have a decent amount of abilities mastered each although I haven't really used any of these units in battle except for one moogle I used quite a lot before Hurdy joined)~
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Mirror item Rangers are more than enough to completely shatter the game. Rangers are *dumb*
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Fate/Extra
Lil Ronnie: 4 Resets. Had to utterly memorize the pattern.
Julius: 2 Resets. Fairly easy.
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OoE hard mode - This mode has caused me lots of deaths, but of late (since beating the second spoiler boss) there has been less death. Then I got to Death, and he killed me with death, a lot. So I equipped the death ring so I could bring death to him faster but that only meant even more death for me. I have seen to his death, mind, but I wanted to get the Death medal, which involves seeing his death without being hit, so of course there's no downside to using the death ring. Aside from a seeing my own death even more often.
Yo dawg.
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Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword- I... don't really know what to feel about this game.
So the zelda series since about OoT has been mostly about playing with new tech, and thusly Skyward Sword is the wii-motiest thing ever. And really, this is the game Nintendo wanted to release like 5 years ago. You use the wii features for everything, and they really let you do more than just be a party game. Love was poured into making this game THE Wii game.
Unfortunately, they also got so caught up in that that the actual design of the game started to bow to making up stuff that was all wii-happy. One of the things you can make your sword do is be a dousing rod, and wave around in Look mode to point you in the direction of your current objective. So what they did was, before every temple up to where I am, stick in a bunch of fetch quests in the immediate vicinity to detect and chase after with your dousing sword. Has it just been too long since I played a Zelda game? I really don't remember the fetch quests being this intrusive before. In between dungeons and the finding of dungeons, you do a lot of flying around to collect treasures and sidequests. controlling your bird is pretty fun, until you have to start climbing again because at that you point you have to wave the wiimote up and down like a madman to flap up. It makes a weird kind of sense, but it's fucking exhausting crossing from one end of the map to the other.
The combat actually works pretty well. Swordplay is fairly responsive (although crossing from one side of your body to the other confuses the thing, which is bad since several enemy types read your sword position and block based on that) and using the nunchuck to shield block is pretty intuitive. unfortunately, and completely unrelated to the wii thing, shields have durability in this game. If you don't perfectly time a shield block, it takes damage, and it don't take much to break the things. You can upgrade them, but in the interim I got so paranoid about shattering a shield I just stopped using it. This exacerbates the real frustration I've been having with the game; basic mooks are disproportionately hard. Like, to kill a basic skulltula, you have to charge up an energy shot, do a horizontal slash, stab it's weakpoint to knock it off the web, hit it precisely in the head during a charge to knock it down, then quickly lock on and do a fatal attack (downward stabbing motion with wiimote/nunchuck). At the point in the game where I'm at now, basic goblins have started using electric swords, meaning that if I attack and am in any way blocked, I take a full heart of damage.
Yeah, this game starts you off with 6 hearts... because it'd be borderline impossible with just 3.
For all that, I think this game more than any of the others (that I've played) really sells itself on style. This world just... is. It works on its own rules and I really enjoy being in it. But actually playing the game is goddamned exhausting.
I dunno if I'm gonna stick with it or not.
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Arkham City: I am happily paying five bucks for purely cosmetic costumes because fuck yes Neal Adams Batman.
Edit: And you can't use the costumes until you're on a second run. Noooooooooooooo
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Money well spent.
DQ9 - I am trying to do the level 15 Warrior quest. THis is fucking stupid.
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SaGa remake Human Solo: The beginning was MUCH harder than Mutant almostsolo.
Then I realized in the second world that humans have a cap of 99 in every stat instead of 255 in this game (I guess this was a bug, as it was still shown as "99" in the menu) so my human would have turned very crappy very fast, and not in a fun way.
So I dropped this to do a Tactics Ogre Single Class Challenge.
The vanilla game is already pretty difficult, how tough can this challenge be?
(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5863/archerrs.jpg)
.... Not very...
I've just finished the first Chapter 2 battle, and gave everybody a great bow.
Oh, and the main character is a ninja with a bow.
I remember Chapter 1 being difficult, but I just stormed everything with no resets and no deaths here. It's like that arrow rain scene from the movie 300 except enemies don't use shields to protect themselves. I didn't get hit once during the Chapter 1 Final Battle because I could shoot from one end of the battlefield to the other no problem.
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Haha. Amazing.
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Clerics/Exorcists SCC. Do it.
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Arkham City: I am happily paying five bucks for purely cosmetic costumes because fuck yes Neal Adams Batman.
Edit: And you can't use the costumes until you're on a second run. Noooooooooooooo
Dunno about whichever ones you got, but I was able to use the Batman Beyond outfit during free roaming after beating the final boss (load up endgame save, wander Arkham at will to clear up whatever sidequests you didn't knock out before the point of no return, basically). So not quite second run...but close.
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It's "after clearing the game" so yeah that's probably right. I didn't realize there was a postgame mode.
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So I dropped this to do a Tactics Ogre Single Class Challenge.
The vanilla game is already pretty difficult, how tough can this challenge be?
(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5863/archerrs.jpg)
.... Not very...
Don't ever change, you rascal.
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Finished Atelier Totori.
Atelier Totori is not a game that captures you with a deep plot or combat system. The music is decent but not memorable outside of one or two tracks. The game is fairly mediocre outside of two aspects: The gorgeous character designs and the constant barrage of new stuff to make.
Because lets face it: You don't play a main series Atelier game looking for an epic RPG story and combat, you play it because KEKEKE NEW STUFF TO MAKE. "Now I can make a Dimension Egg with so many aspects it will let me quinta-turn things!" and so on. From the beginning of the game to the end of the game you aren't often without some new toys to make or improve with additional skills. This is the draw of the game.
Atelier Totori isn't completely incompetent when it comes to plot, it's just obviously secondary. The story of Totori's search for her mother, the effect said search has on her family, and the growth she undergoes over the 5 years of the game... these plots are worth paying attention to. It's just not quite meaty enough to serve as a driving force for playing the game. The characters are entertaining in a shallow way but for the most part don't have any significant depth to them outside of Totori and her sister themselves. Gino is the carefree young swordsman who 'wants to become a great adventurer!', Mimi is the arrogant tsundere aristocrat, etc... The fact that these characters look great due to the wonderful character designs doesn't do much for the character depth. Fortunately the game isn't too ambitious with it's less interesting characters due to being an Atelier game and not having a main plot!
The combat system is simple enough. Totori is the PC with the skillset, other characters can hit things and take hits for her. When Rorona joins she adds another PC with a skillset, which is probably overkill given just how good that skillset is. Alchemy items can do everything from healing and doing damage to debuffing enemies and making you invincible to god turning you into a god damn quinta-turning monster. It isn't quite as nuts as Atelier Rorona, where you could easily mass produce an item midgame that would MT kill everything you would encounter, but it's still pretty damn awesome. Atelier Totori bosses are more impressive both visually and gameplaywise than Rorona's bosses, and at least one or two managed to catch me off guard and give me a game-over (or at least send me back to the home base). Not to say that Atelier Totori is a difficult game by any means, but at least it tries SOMETIMES.
The item creation in Atelier Totori is addictive, really. You explore and gather items to serve as base ingredients, all of which have certain traits to them. Then you get to go about synthesizing new items with those ingredients. Each of those mentioned traits has a 'cost' associated with it, and every ingredient you use has a 'level' associated with it. When you finish the synth you get to decide on what traits to pass to the finished item, and you pay for this with the sum of the 'level' of the ingredients you used. There are some other complications, but this system works rather well to make you think about HOW you are going to synth things instead of just WHAT you are going to synth. It is a fun system for having you make decisions about what you are making. The Item Creation in Totori is probably the most fun I've had in any Atelier or Mana games.
Which really is all I have to say in recommending this game to people! Do you like Atelier series item creation? If you do then you have already played this game and I have nothing further to say.
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Fate/Extra: Beaten. I had one reset on Gawain purely because I got Gil-level cocky and tried to get away with using storebought healing items only, even though I had plenty of full healing ones. The final boss was surprisingly wussy, in large part because the game gives you 3-4 of his moves every turn for absolutely no effort instead of the 2-3 you get with Matrix E. Needless to say I steamrolled that fight on the first try.
Overall, I'd say the game's plot is ... decent. I never got bored or wanted to bang my head against a wall over plot stupidity, but nothing really impressed either. Definately a game where the characterization was more interesting than the main plot.
Planet Puzzle League [aka Tetris Attack DS, minus the Yoshi chars]: Oh dear god stylus control is just ridiculously superior to the d-pad in a game like this, it's like the difference in playing an RTS between mouse+keyboard vs a controller. I tried it out for one moment and now the old-fashioned method just feels hopelessly sluggesh by comparison.
I do miss the old music/sfx though, the game's not quite the same without Raphael the Raven's constant cawwing. :(
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The music is decent but not memorable outside of one or two tracks.
The music is amazing you get the hell out. :(
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DQ9 - Did Bowhole. Accidentally ejected cartridge while carrying around bunch of stuff in pocket. Last save at Swinedimples. The fuck is wrong with me.
So starting something else.
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FFT - Celdia's Complete Patch
Downloaded this, played through chapter 1 and Dorter 2. Don't know if I'll play any more. I enjoy the classes, I like alot of the concepts, but so many of the design decisions make me want to rip my hair out. The last few fights have felt more "rocket tag" based then even vanilla FFT(which is not my prefered style of play), the lack of univeresal access to gained JP up so job building(to unlock and play with the new classes) is horribly slow, and now I get to the next set of equipment to find that the clothes upgrade gives innate Gained Exp Up. Which...is exactly the opposite of what I want. My clothes units are already surpassing my armor units becuase of Gained JP Up from Training Vest, I don't want them to end up higher leveled as well. Especially since from what I've heard enemy levels scale to yours(I would assume based on your highest level people? Dunno exact mechanics here), and my team is already getting high 2HKOd by basically every enemy, so I don't want to put an even BIGGER gap between the enemies and the armor units that are supposed to be my frontliners.
Mostly it's just that the playstyle the patch encourages and the playstyle I want to use are two ENTIRELY different things. It's like my gripe about the TO remake. Don't give me a ton of interesting classes that I want to mess around with to see which ones I want to use and then punish me for doing that.
Short version: I have been SO fucking spoiled by LFT. <_<;
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SaGa remake Human Solo: The beginning was MUCH harder than Mutant almostsolo.
Then I realized in the second world that humans have a cap of 99 in every stat instead of 255 in this game (I guess this was a bug, as it was still shown as "99" in the menu) so my human would have turned very crappy very fast, and not in a fun way.
The cap isn't 99, it's more like 100~ish because you can still use stat potions to break 99 when the stat is 98. But yeah it's no longer 255. Plus there are equipments that boost the stat. Well I'm assuming you're referring to SaGa2 remake, anyways.
WiZMan's World
Cooler game than I thought. Eventually have to end up grinding for a bit, because bosses are pretty damn painful. Elemental weaknesses are a big deal, I think it's like x1.75~x2.50 damage to target if you hit weakness. Really enjoying the Homunculus Fusion system, but only because ~*~lol monster girls are hawt~*~ or something. The plot itself is kind of typical "i'm a wizard and do stuff" plot but it's Jaleco making an RPG, what the heck do you expect, the gameplay is at least solid! Looking forward to more~
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The music is amazing you get the hell out. :(
I will grant you that it is of generally good quality, with some tracks (FLauchtraut battle, Peaceful Ruins, Op/Ed) approaching very high tier indeed. Definitely a positive aspect of the game! But doesn't exactly floor you either.
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SaGa Frontier, fun with monsters- BABY UNICORN KING SEI THE BEST~ SQUEE SQUEE!!
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Dead Rising 2: I think I reached the game's equivalent of overtime mode. Just unlike DR1, its not a whole extra mode, just "GAME DIDN'T END WHEN YOU EXPECTED IT TOO!" On the otherhand, if you so muched as checked the case report, you'd see the game had more cases than could be alotted during that time, so its hardly a spoiler.
Okamiden: LIGHTNING VILLAGE ONI ROCK BAND. That is all.
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SaGa Frontier, fun with monsters- BABY UNICORN KING SEI THE BEST~ SQUEE SQUEE!!
It's more of a My Little Unicorn, really.
FF4: TAY:
Halfway through Depths.
Currently need to level because it turns out that TAY is actually hard enough to require your levels to be above 45 on more than a few black mages. (Twinhead Dragon managed to die...on my second to last possible action, on the first try.) Awwww I was hoping I could beat the whole thing at low 40s thanks to a lot of swapping and good equips... :|
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KoF13: Got enough achievements to finish unlocking the Invitation picture in the Gallery. Have about six more arcade playthroughs to finish getting the rest of the illustrations.
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Three resets vs Week 6 Berserker so far. 4th attempt on hold because of battery dying and no plug nearby. Being able to spam out magic endlessly vs randoms made me a bit arrogant, it turns out, and my inability to correctly predict ARROW'D is messing me up.
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Koudelka: Just beat this. Awesome game. Drinking scene was amazingly done, the VAs somehow perfect in their imperfection. Just a tightly made game, does what it needs to do and keeps things moving and I'd even say manages to stand the test of time despite the battle system. Really good times. Highly recommend people play this if they like Shadow Hearts.
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FF13: Chapter 8. In going back and reading the games topic, I realized that every time this year I got into FF13 I had a family member died. Soo yeah if granddad or an uncle croaks on me day after tomorrow, I am taking a sledgehammer to the damn game and deleting my file. (Actual game commentary later, still thinking on it.)
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Saga Frontier - Beat Blue's quest, using five swordsmen! Yes, the silliness. Blue himself was weaker at swords than the rest (has some trouble getting a good ST move late) but made up for it with LightSword ShadowServant Triple Thrust (so sextuple thrust) or something similarly silly. Hell'sLord was pretty hard because I wasn't using any of Blue's abusive strategies and was a bit underlevelled and Blue only had 4 LP (sword playthrough requires Asura -> Blue is a sissy in that stat), nothing else in the game was really (well once I PsychicPrisoned Kylin so he didn't win instantly). Also so, so much Deflect. It is glorious.
Order of Ecclesia HM - Finally beat Eligor without using items. And perfected him for good measure. All medals get except Dracula's.
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Enchanted Arms- Started this. Game is kind of endearing despite it's obvious shortcomings. Maybe it's because I'm sort of MST3K'ing the playthrough as I go along though. Either way, the game seems to be sort of self aware of it at least, making it sort of entertaining.
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Wild Arms ACF : Finished this recently while reading the LP for it. Really fun game once you get past the slow beginning. Randoms were somewhat challenging and the really gamebreaking stuff wasn't -too- easy to get. In fairness, I -was- following an LP, so I played with most of the broken stuff as soon as it was available.
I was particularly a fan of the Personal Skills equipping system. More games need to try this point-based equipment thing. Really balances a lot of things well while giving the player lots of freedom to experiment. Want to see this done with slightly-more-traditional Equipment types. I miss the Holy Parasol ;_;
Enchanted Arms: Started this with Sopko. I probably like it more than him, though the battles are a bit slow. I find the voice-acting to really sell the dumb humor scenes so far. Also, the character designs are wonderfully ridiculous and the game loves to actually use color despite its more-realistic (comparative to more recent colorful RPGs) character and background models.
Also, I learned a new word: supercilious... as in "Your cold, supercilious eyes turn me on, professor."
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I know that word because it was on the Tech Specs of the Transformer Hook in the 80s. I asked my dad what it meant and surprisingly he knew!
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FFT - Celdia's Complete Patch
Downloaded this, played through chapter 1 and Dorter 2. Don't know if I'll play any more. I enjoy the classes, I like alot of the concepts, but so many of the design decisions make me want to rip my hair out. The last few fights have felt more "rocket tag" based then even vanilla FFT(which is not my prefered style of play), the lack of univeresal access to gained JP up so job building(to unlock and play with the new classes) is horribly slow, and now I get to the next set of equipment to find that the clothes upgrade gives innate Gained Exp Up. Which...is exactly the opposite of what I want. My clothes units are already surpassing my armor units becuase of Gained JP Up from Training Vest, I don't want them to end up higher leveled as well. Especially since from what I've heard enemy levels scale to yours(I would assume based on your highest level people? Dunno exact mechanics here), and my team is already getting high 2HKOd by basically every enemy, so I don't want to put an even BIGGER gap between the enemies and the armor units that are supposed to be my frontliners.
Mostly it's just that the playstyle the patch encourages and the playstyle I want to use are two ENTIRELY different things. It's like my gripe about the TO remake. Don't give me a ton of interesting classes that I want to mess around with to see which ones I want to use and then punish me for doing that.
Short version: I have been SO fucking spoiled by LFT. <_<;
Hello there! I was informed it wouldn't be out of place to reply to this here. Someone brought up your post in IRC so I thought I'd see what was said. First off, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy CCP further. I've been getting some very different feedback since I started hearing opinions from DL's members on CCP and you all take things into consideration with FFT that I never even thought of. I would like for my patch to reach to a larger audience and be fun for everyone to play, but I realize that's technically impossible. That doesn't mean I can't try to modify for a wider player base though. I appreciate any and all feedback, positive, constructive and negative. That said, let me try and explain why some of what you ran into happened in the first place.
Things like the Gained Exp Up clothing existing is because I got my hands on pretty tools for editing equipment and I let the possibilities run away with me. I tried to throw just about everything onto some piece of gear just to DO it. Equipment is undergoing modifications as I continue to update and any suggestions - be it RSMs on gear to elemental Str./Weak/etc or even HP/MP balance - are VERY welcome. I'm usually the first to note that I have very poor skills when it comes to balancing things for my patch (just look at Loremaster) and the more help I can get, the better. As for enemies scaling, if the ASM hacks I'm using are working right, the enemy units should be limited to shop-available equipment no matter how high of a level you go. I would hope this would limit some of the gear scaling problems found in other hacks where overleveling makes the game virtually unwinnable, but if their stats just plain being higher is the issue more than gear then that's something else I'll have to take into consideration. I don't find myself with a lot of time to really sit and play my own hack from the start to the end to get a good feel for the difficulty curve of differing playstyles. I just work from what feedback I get from playtesters on FFH and that's a fairly limited bit of information. Getting people to post about the hack is like pulling teeth sometimes.
If you had other specific questions I'd be happy to address them. I don't lurk around here as much as elsewhere but I'm always a PM or post away over on FFH and I'm usually logged into IRC (irc.esper.net #ffh) most hours of the day even if I'm AFK. If anyone else has given CCP a try and has questions or suggestions, please let me know! I'm trying to make something that's fun to play, no matter how you approach it and the more people that show me how they look at it, the better it will be in the end. ^_^ (How many times did I just repeat myself in that whole post? -_- )
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I'll probably play a bit further eventually(started playing FF13 and that has absorbed my time quite neatly), since getting to where propositions open up will fix my jp concerns quite neatly. Though I would note along those lines that my biggest suggestion would just be "throw Gained JP Up back on Warrior, or do the LFT thing and give every job innate Gained JP Up." That mitigates the problem of not getting to take many actions during assassination fights, and lets you catch up anyone who's fallen behind in a single random.
As a note, I do like the idea of various gear giving RSM abilities, or having elemental resists/strengthens/weaknesses, etc. I just think that JP up or EXP up abilities on gear is a very bad idea, since it makes it harder to keep your team about the same level of ability(and actual level, in exp's case). And when the enemies are packing high grade offense, this means that anyone who's fallen behind is likely to get killed fast while your people who are already stronger race to finish the battle before the timers run out...resulting in them getting even stronger while those behind get no chance to catch up.
Oh, another random note. Is it just me or do you have Jump priced as more valuable then Move for the most part? I know move+1 is 100 while jump+1 is 80, but I swear you have the Ignore Height ability at more expensive then move+2, and on a harder to unlock class at that. Also the ignore height ability comes with move-1. MINUS ONE. I would never use that. Ever. Especially not for the price. Also, the jump+1 shoes seem more expensive then the move+1 shoes. Do they do anything else, or is it just jump being valued more?
EDIT: oh, is there anywhere else I should be posting these observations? If you liek to have notes on your hack all in one central place or something, I'll be happy to make my posts there instead of here.
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The innate Gained JP Up idea may well make it into the next update. I hadn't thought of it before and it does seem to be a nice easy fix to a lot of complaints surrounding JP.
Re: Move vs. Jump - This is very likely just me not paying attention to costs of things or changing items and skills around without modifying their costs when I do it. Going back to what I said before, balance is not my strong suit nor has it been something I've focused a lot on yet. That will come with the final polish I put on the patch when I feel like everything else is where I want it to be.
What few notes I've posted are over on the FFH forum in the CCP subforum which you can get to here: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?board=60.0 The Master Guide is a half-broken WIP. I'd have better resources for players available if I weren't so burnt out on my own project. -_-
Also, apologies to everyone else for the potential derail of my posts. I'll try to keep any other posts on CCP out of here and in its own thread somewhere. If there is a specifically appropriate place for that, please let me know.
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We have a Forum dedicated to game design and modification (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/board,24.0.html) that I'm certain you'd be welcome to make a post in to try and encourage other people to give feedback at.
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We generally don't care much about derailing conversations here, so long as they aren't derailing into flamewars. But yeah, if you want to open a thread up in the game design forum here, you'll probably(eventually) get more feedback then just mine.
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So, picked up the PSP version of Disgaea 1 a month or so back, along with some other games. Up to chapter 5 atm, dear god this game hates it's player, storyline geo setups just love to stack things against you starting from early game even >.>. Normally not so bad, but I seem to have unintentionally allowed like 3/4ths of my non storyline characters fall behind somehow to the point they are like only 2/3rds the level of storyline enemies <.< So after I notice that I figure it's time to slightly boost some crappy equipment as an excuse to grind those people up in the item world, floor 9 of first item, impossible level~, I have no Gency Exit, great.
So, taking a break from that and playing the PSP version of Persona 1 instead. BEST SHOP MUSIC EVER. Ahem, anyways, took four or five gameplay hours but just beat the first boss. General thoughts are HOLY ELEMENTS BATMAN. Kind of digging the whole positioning and attack areas thing. Talking to monsters is also amusing, and potentially a decent way to end a battle that's turning to crap fast. Currently maxed out everyone's initial persona because honestly there was not reason not to spam skills since you couldn't use SP fast enough before getting it restored with a level. Managed to find 3 persona fusions I liked right before the boss, Quetzalcoatl for the main, Jack Frost for Maki, and some other dude for smug bitch, err Emmy, who I'm kind of wondering if she was a trap since not only does she like the same weapons as main, but she seems to like Ice Persona just as much as Maki, so the overlapping is kind of lamish, but oh wells. Kind of wish I could dump Nate because he's a lamer but whatever. Totally looking forward to when matt hits 20 because I'm pretty sure I saw a person he had best affinity to that learns Medigola already, which just sounds sexy.
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Order of Ecclesia - Beat Hard Mode.
Sort of an inconsistent HM as I already touched on. What they did with damage and adding some enemies makes randoms waaay better in certain early spots, most obviously the Ruvas Forest and the Skeleton Cave, but as time went on the difference became much less noticeable. Bosses felt largely untouched except a few who are now disproportionately challenging compared to the rest (story boss #2 and Death, mostly... yes, there's a Castlevania game mode where Death >>> Dracula, wtf is this). I'm not really complaining because the improved boss fights were great fun and generally show off what I already liked about this game. Still a bit of an odd experience, not as overall consistent fun as the original NM playthrough, but I'm never going to complain about games offering up multiple difficulty modes.
Glyph-wise the main thing I did differently this playthrough was I tended to just use two of the same arm glyph almost all the time (with the exception of my old standby of confodere/secare anyway). To some extent this is a bit frustrating since it meant more accessing the menu (only three attack glyphs instead of six) but it seems to pretty clearly lead to a better performance. I actually used Ignis this time since people insisted it didn't suck, and indeed it doesn't, for all that it is still one of the trickier ones to use effectively and goes pretty obsolete when you get Nitesco, but there's not much shame in that. Umbra was the one I really didn't manage to get much out of, on the other hand.
Collected all the boss medals! This was a pretty fun diversion and did make up for some of the bosses being unchanged. Of course the bosses who were already hard took plenty of tries. Glyphs used for this...
-Anthroverta: Confodere/Secare (also I perfected him on the first try which convinced me to try for all the medals <.<)
-Giant Skeleton: Macir
-Crab: Macir
-Maneater: Luminato
-Rusalka: Vol Confodere
-Goliath: Vol Confodere/Secare
-Landshark thing: Vol Grando (this boss kinda sucks)
-Story boss #1: Vol Confodere/Secare
-Story boss #2: Vol Luminato
-Wallman: Super secret strategy
-Blackmore: Vol Luminato
-Death: Nitesco. SCYTHES EVERYWHERE~ at least Nitesco clears them out while attacking.
-Eligor: Melio Ascia for the bows, Lapiste for the knees, Melio Falcis for the head. Ended up using the glyph union against the head even though I don't like them normally, because his HP is low and he has a nice alternating pattern between making you dodge and just sitting there.
-Drac: Drop HP to singledigits with pre-battle use of Dominus. Use Melio Macir for battle. Volacticus destroys form 1, Arma Custos' ridiculous boost combines with Death Ring for a surprisingly quick clear on form 2, which is good because I never found a highly reliable way to deal with dogs -> Destruction Ray without taking a hit.
Speaking of Volacticus, I saved some sidequest hunting (I don't do them all, just easier ones) until after getting it so I could enjoy abusing it in levels. Good times. Not too much left to do with this game... maybe I'll FAQ how to get those optional areas or something.
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You got away with Vol Luminatio on Blackmore? Impressive, I always felt it just doesn't kill him fast enough for what's a straight damage slugfest. Of course you apparently also medaled him and I never learned his pattern well enough to consistently dodge, so I suppose if you do, you can kill him with whatever.
Death is pretty intense, I certainly Potion'd my way through it. Used double (vanilla) Luminatio for him which also helps clear out the scythes, but Nitesco is probably more damage at the cost of worse vertical reach.
Actual reason I'm posting, though: Volacticus vs. Drac what?! I think I tried that twice, and Drac just gets pissed off and nukes the screen until you stop. Which is a shame since Vol certainly would be awesome vs. Drac if you can get to the otherside a la Albus mode, but how'd you pull it off? (And agree it's a shame the game doesn't give you more areas to abuse Volacticus in, since it's great fun.)
The side quest areas are pretty hard to miss if you were religious about testing walls. Just take the bottom right exit in Drac's castle. There's a breakable wall somewhere beyond Blackmore IIRC, break it and then explore the bottom of the castle. That said I didn't find the Ancient Cave all that appealing since they absolutely scream out for Refectio abuse, which is boring and slow, and then cause lots of cursing when you get caught and die anyway after carefully nursing your way through. Training grounds is all right though, fun Magnes times.
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If you use Volacticus against Dracula, he'll hit you with a big purple flame attack, but it appears wherever you are when he snaps his fingers, so if you move forward after taking to the air he'll miss you, leaving you free to smash him in the face. This lets you easily fly over his fireballs, and the best part: it resets his pattern so he'll never use anything BUT fireballs. It's pretty much a free ticket to form 2.
EDIT: regarding Blackmore, he always feels like he dies pretty quickly to me regardless since it's hard to actually miss him. The reason I like Vol Luminato is you can just fire them in the air and be confident they'll hit, so you can focus all of your mental effort to just avoiding his attacks.
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LA Noire: Hot hot insurance claim investigation action.
--Wait, is that a Hudsucker Proxy reference in the ledger? That is a Hudsucker Proxy reference in the ledger. Awesome. Also apparently the crew of the Enterprise finally got tired of Barclay so they dumped in the past and now he sells morphine or something. Something tells me I should have been paying more attention to the throwaway names in this game's ledgers and correspondence.
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TitS - This game confuses me. Using [] instead of " is kind of creepy as fuck until you work out how they are using it. Maybe not use it so much in translation I it isn't a character in your font set yah? Whatevs though. Up to chapter 1 and did some grind on this mob on the way to Bose that dropped some accessory I couldn't find what it did in a quick google search. Skull Pendant gives ID protection for the record. Now I know and have plenty of septim. More on the game and it's systems when posting from a computer.
Grind only done because it fit in with other activities bein done at the same time. Mobile games lend themselves to it. Short low focus activity. Not done to break game so much as to be playing it.
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FF13 - Highly enjoying this. Got up to where you get SNow back and it's now a Snow+Hope section, which just sounds like an emotional trainwreck waiting to happen(for the chars, not me. I like them, but I'm not THAT invested in them~).
Plot wise: A bit heavy on the tossing out words that send you scrambling to the datalog, but otherwise fine. Whoever's calling the shots in the sanctum is clearly the badguys, dunno if the fal'cie(sp?) are or not, but leaning not. Most of the soldiers and such you're taking out...honestly, nothing wrong with them except they drink the kool-aid and are fully invested in the sanctum's policies. Whole bunch of people who probably aren't badguys just fighting for the wrong reasons. Cocoon seems to be an even MORE fear/hate/blame based society then our own, which is impressive. Something goes wrong, find an enemy to blame! Chars are...honestly, none of them bother me. These people are stressed beyond belief, of course they're not being entirely rational. Everyone's got thier reasons for acting like they do, and they're all good reasons(Snow and Lightning haveing the least good reasons. Lightning is just emotionally crippled and doesn't know anything besides violence, while Snow is a manchild who refuses to grow up. I can still accept that because the game doesn't try to pretend that these are not problems).
Gameplay wise: It's breezy and "turn your brain off and play" right now, I look forward to getting into the real meat of the game when I get the whole party together and have options. Simple but works well for the speed at which it plays. Which is FAST. Even the worst fight has taken me like a max of 3 minutes, and those are the slogs. Continues just punting you right back to before the fight, with a chance to access your menu to change up paradigms, works excellently. I'm not afraid to play around with options instead of just playing it safe, since if I lose it doesn't take me out of the action long. Eidolons are the only part of the game I don't care for so far. The eidolon battles are annoying and using them in battle is...confusing. I've decided to just sort of treat it as free damage and not sweat the details.
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Batman : beat the sandman. Pretty neat boss, even if they totally botched the voice. And I finally unlocked the second Riddler hostage on my way up. That's a weak deathtrap, Edward.
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@Glen Veil: Disgaea 1 has balance issues compared to later entries in the series. One of the better strategies is to simply power-level one PC (usually Laharl) and use the rest of your characters as Throwing tools. So don't worry so much if they fall behind in levels. Once Laharl reaches a high enough level that you can raise the enemy level, the other PCs catch up with little-to-no grinding. At least, that was how I tackled it. The same strategy does not work so well in future Disgaeas.
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Batman : beat the sandman. Pretty neat boss, even if they totally botched the voice. And I finally unlocked the second Riddler hostage on my way up. That's a weak deathtrap, Edward.
Collecting the Riddler trophies that unlock the deathtraps is way harder than the actual deathtraps.
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The Riddler being more about Riddles than deathtraps? Hey what a concept, I could use a little fuel myself and we could all use a little change.
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Yeah, I'm not saying they should be big boss fights, but maybe something more brain-teasing than playing the shell game with X-ray vision.
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My early access for SWTOR started today. Anyone else planning on playing?
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I'm also playing Celdia's Complete Patch for FFT.
I didn't notice the "Rocket Tag" problem too much in the beginning, but it definitely doesn't have the tight mechanical balance of LFFT. Then again, neither did the original. I feel like the initial balance is on par with FFT's except that Homemakers seem much more useful than Butlers. (Also Butler should totally be an end-of-job-tree class and simply the best there is.) Once Mystic Knight and Loremaster are unlocked, the balance gets considerably worse because those classes do indeed have a rocket tag flavor to them; their damage is twice or more what anyone else is doing.
Also, what is the point of the Ghaele? It seems like an inferior, MA-dependent, MP-dependent equivalent to the moderately MA-dependent, non-MP dependent Champion that you have to spend six levels in to unlock it from.
Despite these balance issues, a "total class replacement" patch like this is really neat to see and fun to play around with. I hope you continue to balance it, Celdia, and you've certainly come to the right place to get feedback for the balancing stage! :)
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"The cap isn't 99, it's more like 100~ish because you can still use stat potions to break 99 when the stat is 98. But yeah it's no longer 255. Plus there are equipments that boost the stat. Well I'm assuming you're referring to SaGa2 remake, anyways."
I was actually talking about the SaGa 1 remake, but I'll get around to play the SaGa 2 remake at some point.
Well, it looks like I can forget about doing a SaGa 2 Human solo right away. :(
TO Archer SCC: Well, this is a hell of a lot harder than it seems!
I'm in the middle of Chapter 3, I think I've lost about 8 people.
The enemy AI is too good:
- It tries to kill you instead of waiting until you're in their attack range like morons.
- It tries to kill the weakest characters.
That's about it, but it's better AI than every SRPG ever. I think.
Obviously I don't have resurrection. Oh, and in the Snes version you can't do a hard save between consecutive battles. It's like not being able to save before Angry Wiegraf in FFT.
Archers have kickass damage and range, but they don't have the H4X evade right away, and they're at a big disadvantage on a lower ground level. In most battles I try to find a place where they have a relative height advantage and snipe everybody from there.
Fortunately it feels like things are starting to get easier. Hopefully I don't get to fight Aloser once again, she's such a monster.
NO CLERIC SCC.
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Radiant Historia - completed
I finished this æons ago but I thought it wouldn't take me anywhere near as long to finish FFTA2 as it has(n't) ended up taking me, and decided to wait until that point before updating anything. Consequently I've forgotten pretty much anything I had to say about it. One of these days I will write a post where I don't complain about forgetting about things!
Anyway, I remember it being pretty good all up.
Floatbomb armour and status stage of final were evil. So was the superboss but that was to be expected.
Not a fan of the more abstract crosspath effects. Especially the ones which go back in time.
Have recorded that I got 216 of the nodes legitimately. Don't remember which ones I wouldn't have had done. I think there were a couple skill items I didn't find which would have blocked off some, and there was the one regarding Raynie with the horrible preconditions (and I think that was required for another node later, so that's another one).
Wasn't expecting what happened in the best ending to happen.
VC Super Mario Land 2 - completed
Still easy
VC Kirby's Dream Land - completed
Actually harder than I remembered. Gameovered against Whispy Woods! (on Extra. 4-damage Gordos ;_;) (Meanwhile Extra Kracko Sr. is a scrub. Go figure.)
VC Metroid II - completed
3:05. Still entertaining. Still needs a remake.
VC Mega Man I - completed
Still decent. Enker/Wily were easier than I thought I remembered. Now they need to skip MM II & III and go straight to IV & V.
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 - completed enough
I don't like the law system. I don't like how laws are fixed and you can't cycle dumb ones off. I don't like how the enemies don't have to obey laws, even enemy clans, for all that the way the law system is set up and how enemy units never revive other enemy units you wouldn't really notice any difference if they did have to obey them. That's probably enough about the system in general.
I don't like the 'Harming the Weak' law. It tends to be forbidden in battles where it's impossible to win without harming the weak, because they normally have the enemies lower levelled than all your units and they normally have to be harmed. Ignoring the fact that you can harm them all you want with reaction abilities without it breaking the law because that is stupid and has to be an oversight.
I don't like the 'Swimming' law. It says that entering a water tile is forbidden, which is a lie, you just have to not end up in one. Stupid law making me make people walk carefully around water so they wouldn't go through it.
I don't like the 'Libra' privilege. The manual says that you will get it as a bonus if you play with FFTA in the GBA slot, which is a lie. I even loaded it up to make sure that it was working. But mostly because they made me think I was missing something useful and it really, really isn't. It's vaguely okay in battles where there are likely to be traps set up initially and the law is impossible/nigh-impossible to follow.
I don't like having to go through the airports to get from one continent to the other. I particularly don't like how they default the take-flight option to 'no', often forcing you to have to reenter the airport.
I don't like how they ruined the use of the house in Loar.
So I finished Brightmoon Tor 3, and trotted off to take The Final Quest. I was unhappy to find that the game was conducting the same speedhax chicanery here that it had been pulling throughout the Tor. I was especially unhappy midway through when this resulted in 4 members of my team, including both my item users and my phoenix user, suffering bad karma before any of my units got a turn. The remaining two members did not last too long faced with that. Well, I can tell when I'm not wanted - that's enough for me.
Sadly I didn't record how many missions I completed legitimately. I know that most of ones I needed to look up the preconditions for needed me to get other exits from that one mission, which I consider to be a somewhat daft mechanic. I don't remember whether they all needed that or not.
Ended with six item slots left in the bazaar. Not sure how many of them I had made that needed to be remade and how many of them I hadn't made at all - I know there's at least one I hadn't made at all, and I think I had made at least three of them before.
Another thing I didn't like - after beating the game and being offered the chance to save clear data, I took the obvious route and saved clear data to the second slot, all unbeknowing that unlike 99% of everything, FFTA2 just marked whichever save was selected as having beaten the game. The second save at this time being one I had accidentally made aways back, which was far away from being in any position to have beaten the game. So I got to rebeat the game in order to get to mark the main save as having beaten the game :DDDDDDDDDDDD
Game was fairly entertaining all up.
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I have just completed two games within like one day of each other. As such, I must do the logical thing and directly compare...
(http://www.totallygn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/dead-rising-2-box-art.jpg)
to...
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/614T80%2BXnLL._SL500_AA300_.jpg)
They are both sequels that came out around the same time, to games that both came out around the same time, made by Capcom. CLEARLY THEY SHOULD BE DIRECTLY COMPARED TO ONE ANOTHER AS A RESULT!!!
First off...lets start with the protagonists of both. DR2, you play as Chuck Greene, a celebrity motorcyclist who is a father of a young girl. After Frank West of DR1, whose really one of those "Kind of a stuck up douche, but not actually a bad guy" characters, Chuck Greene is surprisingly likable as a human. The guy is just a father who wants what's best for his daughter, even if it means risking life and limb to insure his daughter gets one more day of life. His motives for actually going ahead with the story are simple; he got framed for doing something HORRIBLE and wants to clear his name. He's not a complicated or deep character, but he's likable and realistic. He doesn't feel like a Video Game cliche. Oh sure, he has action movie one-liners (Villain says something like "You'll never catch me alive!" only to fall off the rafters onto a buzz-saw and get sliced in half. Chuck Greene responds with "I saw what you did there.")
Really, its more that its nice to play as someone who while still having those "bad ass" qualities of an action hero, but is not actually a cliche ridden super guy, just a father willing to go the extra mile.
Okamiden, meanwhile, you play as the son of the hero of the first game! So you're a puppy. I...uhh...lets just be blunt:
CHIBITERASU IS THE MOST ADORABLE PROTAGONIST EVER.
Seriously, just look at him. How can you not want to hug him? He's got the same personality and temperament as his mother...which is fine cause hey, actual character! He barks, growls, howls, etc. Honestly, he's exactly what you'd expect out of a character named "Chibiterasu." He also shows large amounts of emotion and lot of potential tear jerker moments related to him.
So whose better? Likable father figure with cheesey oneliners or one of the single cutest things to ever be directly playable in a video game...really, there's no contest here.
But what about the game openings?
Dead Rising 2 opens with Chuck Greene on a motorcycle with dual chainsaws attached to it, riding through zombies, in Not!Vegas. Then has to barrel through a bunch of zombies after the contest to save his daughter and get to the safe house.
Okamiden opens with an explanation of the backstory, followed by Issun ranting and meeting Chibiterasu, followed by several other Okami cameos.
...yeah, those openings are totally similar. So lets move onto MOOD AND TONE!
Dead Rising 2 is your typical zombie apocalypse. Zombies have broken out, kill them, rescue people, find the conspiracy. You do this by using whatever you can find as a weapon ranging from baseball bats to guns to park benches to servbot helms...and sometimes a combination of these things! Chuck Greene can also put on a dress if you're so inclined. All the characters sans Katey are adults, and Katey is very clearly treated like a young girl, who loves stuffed animals, plays video games, etc. She even has a scene where she hides under the couch because "The bad guy appeared." Otherwise, Chuck's two allies are both adult females who are strong in their own right (They both had DiD moments but those were exceptional circumstances not related to their incompetence. And Chuck Greene himself got into some binds as well), the villain consists of a stereotype pimp black guy obsessed with money, and then there's old security guard dude whose just there because a safe house should have SOME security ok, really, he's the REAL villain of the game, albeit TK is still the final boss but by then the situation has shifted so dramatically, it was more just built up to be "Chuck finally gets his chance for payback" as well as setting up Stacey as the implied future Step-Mother of Katey.
Okamiden is a game where you play as a puppy teaming up with children younger than the FFTA cast, running around restoring nature! There's lots of humor, the dark stuff comes off as lighthearted, and...ok, if you've played Okami, you know exactly what to expect.
BUT THEN WE HAVE GAMEPLAY!!!
In Dead Rising 2, you beat up zombies and psychopaths. You have time limits to do things. You save people and get EXP. You then smash a zombies head against the pavement, and grab a sledgehammer and beat up more zombies. Then you grab a Paddle and a Chain Saw, and create the sacred forbidden weapon of THE PADDLE SAW and murder everything around you. So basically, FUN HAPPY MINDLESS SLAUGHTERING!!!!
Okamiden, you run around beating up demons, solve puzzles, draw pictures in order to solve these puzzles, and buy stuff at shops.
So yeah, those games are basically the exact same thing, if we ignore...well...everything! I mean, you can run, jump, attack, and blow things up with bombs. That's close enough as far as I'm concerned.
BUT WHAT ABOUT GRAPHICAL STYLE AND VISUALS!?
Dead Rising 2 looks like something from a Western Zombie movie, with realistic looking characters, western themed city and attire, and takes place in what is basically a Las Vegas clone, in modern times.
Okamiden uses classical japanese ink style art, to represent Feudal Not!Japan, in a cartoonish manner.
...I want to pretend these two are very similar, buts it quite literally impossible. You cannot get more different art style than "Game trying to look realistic" and "Okami" really.
MUSIC!?
Dead Rising 2 uses random rap and rock lyricals for bosses, and then nothing but elevator music otherwise. IT does however have the most important song ever! That song of course being...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KUQLAInPZ4
(yes, that's DR1, but its the exact same song in DR2)
And really, isn't that all that matters?
Okamiden uses classical Asian style music, with some themes reused from Okami. Ok, not really reused so much as songs are half original themes and half songs from Okami. By which I don't mean half of the songs in the game are from Okami, I mean the SONG IN QUESTION is often Half original, and Half Okami. To illustrate this point, listen to these two songs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1YRu2pqK3g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkQpJl6FwoY&feature=related
That said, the music resembles Okami very much albeit lighter in tone in general. Okami music is good, so this is good too!
...but really, Okamiden doesn't have the important Dead Rising theme, and really isn't that ALL that matters!?!?
...
SILLINESS FACTORS ASIDE, time for a quick rundown of both games in a more serious manner:
Dead Rising 2: Its Dead Rising but improved in everyway. Combo Weapons > Camera Gimmick, better controls, more likable cast, the Walkie Nonsense is handled infinitely better (This cannot be stressed how significant it is; the whole "YOU CAN'T DO SHIT BUT RUN WHILE LISTENING TO OTIS!" in DR1 was one of the worst things ever), Survivor AI is now COMPETENT, and game is a little more logical about its plot. See, DR1's plot was "Zombies exist because Americans are fat!" Kind of ridiculous. DR2's is "Zombies exist because some people are trying to get rich off it!" Its...a little farfetched but at least it shows logical sense, since "Motive for Money" is just an easy safe haven.
...honestly, the rescues alone deserves its own attention. Dead Rising 1, characters would often stupidly run into walls until you changed their route so they'd go around it, and if caught by one zombie, they were locked down until either you saved them or you were lucky enough to have another survivor with a weapon that would bail them out. Dead Rising 2, not only do they follow a far more logical path (run around objects instead of through them), but if caught by a zombie, they'll shake them off and either run immediately, and escape them (Even if they're swarmed by an army), or if they have a weapon, smack the zombie first then run. To give you an idea of how different it was...
DR1: Oh, I can carry this character! Sweet, that makes it sound much easier!
DR2: Oh, I have to carry this character. That's going to slow me down.
Also, having Wheel Chairs was a huge help, letting you transport survivors WHILE barreling zombies. Honestly, if there is one that makes this game worth playing over the original, its just how much they improved it. Oh sure, everything else in the game is better too, but this stands out the most by far as the most frustrating thing about DR1 was rescuing people, especially multiple, because of how stupid the AI is.
Okamiden...is kind of the opposite truth be told. Its Okami but worse in almost every-way. To be fair, its kind of expected. DR2 is on the same console as DR1, and was definitely made with the Dragon Quest mindset of "Take a game, then improve upon it to make a better game for the sequel!" Okamiden was clearly made with the idea of "Okami would work really well on the DS, but the game isn't going to fit", so they made a watered down version instead. And honestly, if you just LOOK at the game, its clear they were aiming for a "Okami-lite." Just the fact that in Okami you're playing as a sun goddess saving the world from baby eating 8 headed dragon, while in Okamiden, you're playing as a newborn puppy (whose the son of said goddess) basically going on an ADVENTURE with a bunch of children to save some in-determinant evil...yeah. Its not just Chibi too. Look at all your allies:
Kuni: resembles a child version of Susano.
Nanami: Young Otohime.
Kagu: Young version of the Queen of Sei-an (name eludes me)
Kurow: Kid Waka
Manpuku: Is a fat kid who actually is an original design, but seriously, HE'S A FAT KID WITH FLAMING HAIR.
That's really the best analogy for Okamiden. The immature spawn of Okami, and it feels like it was intended as that, and thus, they played to this fact by making the game just come off as more playful, lighthearted, and younger. Granted, Okamiden still had some moments that it actually outdid Okami on. Mostly notable is basically a lot of the final boss related stuff. Ok, sure there was no big emotional power up scene but it still had a near tear jerker moment related to one of the characters namely Kurow. The fact that the game actually not only had a child die, but DONE IN BY THE MAIN CHARACTER HIMSELF, and there was no catch to the scenario? Holy shit that's unexpected. What I think is best is the game actually goes out of its way to reinforce what it did in that scene, basically to avoid the "There's a chance we didn't see something!" by essentially going "no, its for real. That did just happen, and we are not reversing it."
This isn't a bad thing, so much as just illustrating you can't go into Okamiden expecting the 2nd coming of Okami. You go into it expecting an Okami style game that wasn't aiming to be as good as the original, just a decent fun experience, which is really all I could ask for.
SO which game is better? Honestly, they're about equal. Yes, DR2 did improve upon everything from DR1, while Okamiden was worse in just about everyway barring a few exceptions...
But what that really says is that Okami >>>>>> Dead Rising 1. Dead Rising 1 wasn't bad so much as clearly unpolished and ambitious. They were trying something new and had a lot of kinks to work out; Dead Rising 2 just addressed like all of them and very well at that. Okami was a ridiculously well done game that following up that is really hard, merely having a game that actually got the spirit of Okami right and was still a fun adequate experience is enough for me, even if its a very clear step down.
So in short...
Dead Rising 2: Liked Dead Rising 1? Play this, ITS BETTER! Never played Dead Rising 1? Skip it and just play this, you aren't missing much. Played Dead Rising 1 and hate it? Umm...this depends on WHY you hate Dead Rising 1 before I can suggest playing it.
Okamiden: Liked Okami? This game is probably worth playing, but don't go in expecting the same level of satisfaction. Its a nice casual follow up to Okami, but not much beyond that.
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(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/614T80%2BXnLL._SL500_AA300_.jpg)
Obligatory dawww! ^_^
CLEARLY THEY SHOULD BE DIRECTLY COMPARED TO ONE ANOTHER AS A RESULT!!!
CLearly!
Chuck Greene can also put on a dress if you're so inclined.
Aww hells yes.
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Floatbomb armour
wut
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I don't know whether you're confused by my use of nonstandard terminology or by my lack of competence.
In case it's the former, the internet says that the proper names are Thaumachine for the armour and Clockwork Thunder for the floating deep sea mines (although the attack he brings out more with is called Float Bomb so).
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Batman: Holy crap, a predator-mode boss battle! I'm kind of surprised it took a game and a half for them to think of that, but it worked really well. Good times. Now I'm back in the steel mill and beating up goons left and right. Should probably try out the freeze-bomb at some point, and I need to wrap up the Zzasz and Fragile Alliance sidequests.
Also I punched out the Mad Hatter, but let's be honest, nobody cares about him.
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@Djinn: That's pretty much what I've been doing, mainly focusing on Larharl and Etna for Slaughter, the point decided to level some other people was after failing that stage where Larhal gets his stats nerfed, Etna wasn't quite beefy enough to tank the focus and a spear user I missed kind of just one shotted my cleric who I thought was safe. Definitely plan to come back to the game, just needed a minor break after that item world whorery.
Persona: Got that Persona with Megidola, stuck it on Matt, he now ohko's shit that doesn't absorb reflect or null it~. Just picked up the pocket mirror thinger at the forest in the west side of the city, everyone is around level 34ish except for Nate because he's 29 and sucks. Matt is still using the level 18 persona with Megidola because seriously, it does more damage then the level 30 some persona's even >.>. He is starting to turn into a bit of a glass cannon though because said persona has an assload of weaknesses, which is amusing because he has the most hp >.>.
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Ah, Persona level balance~
Yeah, keep that CHARIOT Persona - it's pretty brutal for the whole game. Also, there's a level 18 JUDGMENT Persona (Halo in the PSX version, think it's...Phaleg in the PSP one?) that's an insane healing/defensive Persona. Move that CHARIOT Persona (Vortek in the original) to people to help them level. Also, for Mark, get the level...22 SUN Persona (Sumi - it's like the Gemini twins, IIRC) to level 8 and delete it for an awesome weapon (his second strongest in the game, boosts some stats, etc.). Other good low-level ones...anything with MT damage is pretty brutal >_>. Nate does need a good one, though, as his starter is fairly crappy outside of the support skills. Get the level 23 MOON Persona (I think it was 23...might be lower), originally Remy, as well - it's a great defensive Persona, and you can drop a rock on it to give it an offensive skill (I suggest a MT Zio skill if you can). There's a couple other great ones, but yeah - level of Persona has so little to do with worth - the skills make a huge difference, as do the defensive parametres.
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Good to know I still fail at names forever and ever~. As for Nate, I think I actually got him that persona, but didn't think to give it a decent spell with a rock. So instead I mostly just have him shoot stuff with his machinegun of op mtness that is slowly starting to put out decent damage. And at worst he at least spits in the face of those status spamming randoms by reflecting their shit back at them for me~. He's mostly behind right now because he's the only one who hasn't gotten a persona that just rapes a particular group of randoms like all the other characters have had at one point or another. Spamming shoot and none mt spells, note so good for xp :-(.
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I don't know whether you're confused by my use of nonstandard terminology or by my lack of competence.
In case it's the former, the internet says that the proper names are Thaumachine for the armour and Clockwork Thunder for the floating deep sea mines (although the attack he brings out more with is called Float Bomb so).
Pretty sure it's the former, most people I've talked to consider that one of the best bosses in the game (often enough the best).
Saga Frontier - Beat T2's quest with a party of T2, EngineerCar, PzkwV, Fei-on, and Riki. It was going to be Slime instead of Riki so it could be a party full of people I'd never used all the way to endgame before (excluding T2 obviously, and speedruns in EngineerCar's case) but by the time Slime joined Riki was dramatically better in every way (owing partially but by no means entirely to him a lucky MagicHeal pickup) so yeah, too bad for him. Anyway, Fei-on and PzkwV were not very good, while EngineerCar was pretty great. No surprises there. GenocideHeart was much, much easier this time now that I knew the game better (in particular, having monsters with multiple armours equipped); no longer even sure he's the best final boss (has some pretty darn crappy filler moves, as well as probably the lowest durability of any of the finals), though Carnage is certainly extremely rude.
PCs I still haven't used to endgame: Annie, Dr. Nusakan, Silence, Rabbit, Slime, Suzaku. Only two of those at most should come at much surprise!
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"The cap isn't 99, it's more like 100~ish because you can still use stat potions to break 99 when the stat is 98. But yeah it's no longer 255. Plus there are equipments that boost the stat. Well I'm assuming you're referring to SaGa2 remake, anyways."
I was actually talking about the SaGa 1 remake, but I'll get around to play the SaGa 2 remake at some point.
Well, it looks like I can forget about doing a SaGa 2 Human solo right away. :(
SaGa1 got a remake that wasn't on the Wonderswan?! What is this.
But yeah you probably should just forget about doing a solo anybody in SaGa2 DS because while a bunch of stuff got unchanged I think some of the bosses actually got more competent.
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Who is better for Saga finals?
FF13- Chapter 10, just beat the midboss of the dungeon. Double Sab owns the world so far; slow+defense down buffs tend to result in horrible things happening and Raines was no different.
Using all three girls at the moment. Randoms took a large step backwards in challenge from C9 but that is okay; the last fight before Bart I (Four astronauts+rever) was one of the hardest battles in the game. Enjoying the hell out of the combat system while the story is breathtakingly bad in both execution and writing at the moment. Thankfully the game is mostly ignoring plot to focus on shiny combat.
Edit: This is one of those games where it's worth separating characters and plot when you discuss them. I have some serious problems with the PC cast, but I can see why people like them/what they were going for. The plot on the other hand has been bad from the start and has only gotten worse. The scene with Raines in C10 nicely encapsulates it- You have an NPC that had next to no dialog or plot impact get rolled out as something we should care about. The NPC's and villains in this game outside of a few exceptions don't have the camera time or structured plot around them to have any value. The game sacrificed the plot to focus on character interactions and setting up their personal stories, rather than the world at log. The datalog attempts to remedy this, but that doesn't cut it with me.
Also, what the fuck. Vanille's VA is *awful*. I'm not sure if it's technical issues or the VA just completely flubbing her lines, but it stands out in a game that had exceptional production values.
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PCs I still haven't used to endgame: Annie, Dr. Nusakan, Silence, Rabbit, Slime, Suzaku. Only two of those at most should come at much surprise!
I always ended up using Annie for Emelia's quest because just the amount of exposure time she has there makes her end up functional. Also, Nusakan is the obviously competent one there. And I always used Rabbit in Red's quest because he's cute/unique there. In general though, that list is pretty much the dregs of SaGa cast (if you add in Rei, Ildon, and RedTurnip).
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Well I already used those three for the lulz. Also Lute and Fei-on if we're talking about dregs! Rabbit suffers from being compared to BJ&K (hi I am Rabbit with a free supply of PowerCures) but is otherwise fine, Nusakan suffers from being compared to Mesarthim (LifeRain > game) but is still decent. Annie, yeah, usable on Emelia's quest, but I've only done that once and no way was I turning down the ability to use the unique (half-)mystics who don't suck.
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FF4: TAY:
Completed...mostly, still planning on going back and killing the three bosses I didn't kill in the final dungeon.
Final levels of 52-55, Ceodore/Ursula/Kain/Rydia/Leonora final team(Fuck your "Curaja", who needs that. I have X-Potions.).
General thoughts...well, it's an odd game with surprisingly more to talk about than expected. I think it hashes out as a 6/10 game.
On the one hand, there's the plot. Or: OH GOD THE ENTIRE PLOT OF FF4 IS HAPPENING AGAIN NOW WITH SUPERFLOUS GREEN HAIRED GIRLS BEATING ON PEOPLE AND STEALING SUMMONS wait now the moon's falling because of THE POWER OF EVOLUTION which apparently drives people insane and causes them to create clone armies of green haired mind linked girls to assault everything they used to hold dear. also apparently the myriad facets of evolution allow you to create FF1 through 6 bosses, but no original ones besides the final. huh. how about that.
On the other hand, within that, the whole concept could be worse. The plot reads like mediocre fanfiction made into a total conversion hack-but, not actually *bad* fanfiction. The distinction is that the character work usually is bland to good (with one hiccup in early Edward, though at least it wasn't out of character for him to be that pitifully stupid) and that new characters aren't bad by and large.
Also, two things tend to make me excuse it: One, to judge by things like the developers room(which seems kinda small...) and the fact that it was episodic with multiple episodes coming out in a month originally(if I read that right), it kinda had restrictions on how much polish it could have, and two, the fact that it manages to better the source game it's a sequel of in plot. Basically I respect it's technical limitations about as much due to that, if I understand this right.
I'm not defending it, overall, though. It's not good on plot, much like FF4 is not. But it's probably a bit better.
Gameplay...again, the game plays like a big total conversion romhack, and this is where it shows more. A few FF4 dungeons are *not* reused(higher floors of Babel, Giant of Babel, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh), but they're definitely a minority. On the other hand there's a bunch of new dungeons, including Challenge Dungeons...which have very hit and miss designs. Sometimes they're basically FF4 dungeons, sometimes they're not good(No...no, the impact crater idea was not good enough to make me do versions of it three times). Sometimes they're lazily phoned in things like Yang's "Hold up while sleeping" Challenge Dungeon, sometimes they're Edward's actually neat-if impractical to repeatedly do-Challenge Dungeon.
Even within recycling, there's a lot of variance-Sometimes the dungeon is FF4's final, which you retrace twice as an intro dungeon and a final in Lunarians chapter, and is generally kinda fun for what it is...Sometimes they're redoing waterfall cave. Twice. urgh.
The mainly consistent thing is the actual gameplay, though. About half the additions and all the old characters but Cid are usable to good, which is about 15 out of 21(I believe)-not too bad. Out of the ones that suck, at least they had coherent ideas except for Harley, who may have been a victim of time constraints.
Enemy design tends to be FF4+bigger skillsets+2x damage and durability, which tends to be great, and some of the gimmicky CD bosses tend to be fun. Final dungeon has a lot of fun boss designs too, though they have so many bosses(like 30 in that chapter?) that they start to hit the limits of FF4 mechanics for how much different you can make bosses. At my low levels, several fights seemed impossible and a few others took surprising strategy. It works in that regard.
Also shoutouts to built in frameskip autobattle. Extremely good idea that needs to be in more games.
AND NOW, RANDOMLY COMPARING CHARACTERS BECAUSE I LIKE FF4 GAMEPLAY TOO MUCH(for some mysterious reason)! The only place you'll see someone say more about Zangetsu's gameplay worth than *flush*!
In the order I got 'em:
Ceodore: Hey look it's one of the interesting new character designs, where you put Cecil and Rosa in a blender and see what comes out.
Ceodore has three real phases in the game-1 to 20~, 21~-44 and 45+.
That is to say, from L1 to L20 Ceodore is *amazing*. He picks up healing at intervals as regular as any of the White Mages and heals about as much per shot(a bit less, albiet, and with less shots), and hits things harder and takes hits better.
Then he drops off a cliff in the middle as you realize that A: His HP relatively sucks for a tank build, and B: He takes a while to get above Cura, and C: His Cura scales worse than a real White Mage. He functions, for a while, like Cecil/Kain with far less HP and less damage and uh Protect/Shell...?
Then he picks up his good buffs and Curaga in the late 40s and his niche is back, albiet weaker than it was before. He worked extremely well for me at my pitiful levels by that point, because he can and will live through things that will flatten any other healer at those levels. This is nice. Also he gets Reflect/Protect/Shell which are great on a secondary character.
Nothing wrong with his equips either, Awaken got used a few times but probably less than most abilities(needs less charge time so I can heal with it). Pretty good, albiet weird.
Cecil: Hey look, it's FF4 Cecil, except...uh, everything's working against him except one thing. Let's count the ways, shall we?
-He is utterly crap until Depths. At which point he's L40. Which was...average for me...who was using everyone in the cast and trying to keep levels down on purpose. For anyone *sane* he's underleveled badly.
-There are multiple heavy armor/holy sword users now. Namely, Ceo and Kain.
-Ceo and Kain have more strongly defined niches. Specifically, Kain is better than Cecil at what he does(*everything he does*, unless you really value Cover), while Ceo has better healing.
-Holy Sword focus is flakier in this game. Excalibur is good when you get it...at the start of Depths, which is roughly 40% of the way through the final dungeon. Ragnarok and Ultima Weapon are excellent...but Ultima Weapon is notably not a Holy Sword(so Golbez wants it too), and Ragnarok is, from all accounts, on the hardest boss to beat(I didn't bother trying Atma/Shinryu/Omega yet, disclaimer).
Now, this hits Ceo and Kain...but, Holy Lance is actually pretty good in this game, 140 power and flying/holy seems to hit a lot of enemies hard(Deathgaze was the most notable, or "Ha ha 10k jumps".). Cecil's fallback is...axes. Which are about as good on raw power...but don't have the good element and cut off shields. (he still may be the best axe user. sadness.)
So you've got a character with good stats and equipment who somehow is fairly useless.
Except he does have one secret upside. You see, there are Bands in this game, AKA CT combo attacks except...uh...no, that's basically it. They're useful in one of four cases:
A: The token roughly .6 repeating per chapter good Band before endgame.
B: White mages who deal crappy damage up until the final bow unless they're in a combo. (This does very very little for Rosa, more for Porom who at least gets upgraded Twincast, and...I think it's actually best for Leonora, need to test Particle Bomb at endgame though. I know the Palom/Rydia/Leonora combo actually did the hands down most of any combo for me at around 20k with a fairly decent charge time, though.)
C: Kain combos, because Kain is the best at everything.
D: Cecil combos.
Cecil gets Trinity Crusade with Kain/Rosa for one of the highest damage values I saw out of Band testing(17kish), Twin Drive with Yang(which seems to be 5-6k and fast enough to justify it, which is okay), Vibra Plus with Ceo(which I think unfocuses against multiple targets, the times I used it against crowds got respectable MT damage but I've heard reports of it slamming hard into the damage cap against bosses), and Double Pressure with Golbez(MT ...para? stop? with no charge time at all, seemed to work pretty solidly.).
Does any of this save him? No probably not, but at least he A: Has some point, and B: Has good raw stats as well. This will put him above some people I will talk about...
Cid:
uh...Cid's horrible.
How bad? How about half average speed before equipment(which he doesn't get speed boosting versions of)? How about axes/hammers which are all twohanded at endgame? How about no good point in the chapter he's a part of *or* the final chapter? How about no less than four other people better at using axes than he is, and three better people at using hammers? How about not even being all that special on HP, and gameworst Spirit/Int so that he can get smacked harder by magic?
He's bad.
Rosa: Kinda boring. Statistically best white mage with lousy combo attacks(Doesn't matter once you get Holy. Which of course I haven't yet.) and good everything else. Her vs Porom is "Rosa is slightly better until about three or four bosses from the end, then Porom mauls Rosa with Doublecast, unless you don't give that to her.". Blessing is kinda neat(low MP healing!) but otherwise she's basically standard.
The Hooded ManDark KainKainHoly Dragoon KainThe Turbaned Man EL HOMBRE DEL TURBANTE:
Well, let's see.
First, there's the vastly superior turban Kain. Who basically kicks ass: End chapter equipment in Ceo's chapter, basically just a generically good tank in Kain's...rather shortish on raw gameplay...chapter. The latter is probably the worst point for any Kain or Kain derived being. I cannot believe I just typed that sentence seriously... at any rate he gets the chapter's token one decent combo(with Ceo...who he gets two later good Bands with as well...) and generally is pretty solid. The only reason not to abuse his awesome is because you want to break later Kain more. He doesn't need it.
Then there's Dragoon "I cut myself while having wet dreams about Rosa" Kain. Who is for no good reason better than the vanilla flavor, though this is mostly due to positioning and levels. Still, that's worth a ton-in Porom's chapter he makes the Challenge Dungeon go from HELL to doable thanks to his great equips/levels and he's basically perfectly capable of soloing things the other times you get him. Which is good, as he's soloing things the other times you get him.
Finally, there's Holy Dragoon Kain, who gave up his Turban for power, a dark path indeed. Sadly, it worked. Depending on when you upgrade him his HP ranges from "great" to "jesus christ why are you matching Yang on HP" and holy swords is a nice pickup. Blink and Haste(which he always has no matter his level at transformation) is a wee bit more major than anything else he gets, not that Esuna's bad either.
So basically he's Cecil+. Oh and Jump can be twinked this game thanks to Rapid Ring 3/4thing charge times if you get it(or the v2 halving it but tail drop plot. The v1's at least just Challenge Dungeon plot.). Yeah he's kinda stupid good...
Rydia:
Earlygame she's randomly L15 and starts with Stop and Ra spells, which randomly makes her the most durable character in her team for a short period, and makes her basically the person that's killing everything.
Then for the rest of her chapter she doesn't get better, until the Challenge Dungeon decides to randomly force her levels to 40 in order to clean it out. mutter.
Generally speaking, Rydia functions like a Black Mage that A: Works better at lower levels(thanks to fixed summon pickups; In particular, Leviathan's very reasonably fast, and Mist Dragon's not bad either.), B: Doesn't have to worry about MOOOOOOOOON (and can still take advantage of Black Magic+ moon phase), and C: Is fundamentally boring. Obviously I used her because of that A thing, though. I mean Palom wouldn't have gotten Flare until like the final two fights or something at my levels. <_<
Luca:
Cid, now with twice the magic stats(still bad), less HP and Attack(not enough less to really matter), 1.5x the speed or something(still bad, but this is a notable improvement), and Minerva Bustier(which is basically tailor-made for Luca).
Unlike Cid this is actually pretty usable, though not especially good. Bonus points-she's bloody great in Rydia's chapter, where A: She's the tank, and B: She gets access to a 55 power weapon like halfway through it(just walk out of the Sealed Cave after two minutes or so in and toss some Ore at the axe you just got. Voila, 55 power axe.). She also gets times where, you know, the ability to equip a shield *matters*. stupid Cid.
Calca:
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh well in Rydia's chapter he can slooowly do less magic damage than Rydia. Or status maybe. Or you could say fuck it and have him use a Dancing Dagger instead. Dancing Daggers are pretty good.
In final...well, the dolls get a really nice set of unique equipment, albiet as *very* late rare drops. And get Final Outfit's 30/15/+10 to all stats, which is shiny.
...that makes Calca still a very bad HP fighter who has a by-now *very* bad skillset. Calca isn't redundant, unlike many TAY characters that have issues...he's just hopeless.
Brina:
Well, she has all of the traits statistically Calca does, except even worse Strength and Stamina. And the same equips.
And a skillset. That...consists of randomly casting one of: Cure through Curaja MT, 20% MHP MT healing, MT Protect/Shell/Haste/Blink with a moderate charge time.
Both in Rydia's quest and in final, this gives her a use, unlike Calca. She's fairly good mindless random-bashing healing, MT Blink/Haste are good things, and her poor stats get augmented a lot by Final Outfit. With the uberdrops she's probably outright good(150 power dagger and armors with better defense value than Adamant), and even without them she's at least not awful thanks to Final Outfit/Assassin Dagger giving her a very fast turn to get to her healspam. It's okay enough, though not better than Edward as I initially thought it would be.
Yang: Yeah he's pretty awesome.
Generic clothes? Surprisingly good lategame. Claws? Multiple good options. Twinking? Fun fact; An Adamant Shield doesn't slow down Monk damage. (this is twinking by FF4 standards) Stats? Basically awesome, including gamebest HP(I think, though this probably varies. I'm pretty sure Golbez at L30 has more than Yang at L30...) and good stats overall. Focus ignore moon for some reason? Sure. Cover Counter is actually vaguely useful? Again, sure.
Yeah, he's pretty awesome. Simple, but.
Ursula:
Yang with FAR less HP, notably less Strength/Vitality...and a more useful skillset, including free heals(not that great), Tenketsu's random "normal physical or hit weakness/ignore defense(I think) or big explosion 2x damage(I think)" which is actually good for a short charge time. Also way more speed. Also Minerva...which...matters less than it should, as Brave Suit actually has better bonuses than Minerva(just...Brave Suit's available to half the cast. So Minerva still matters). Also access to a back rank attack if you get the Queen's Whip.
So basically she's comparable to Yang. And both are really good. Go fig.
Palom:
Uhhh Rydia that relies only on one skillset, gets the spells fast enough to at least vaguely keep up with Rydia in the endgame, and gets a crack at Doublecast. If you give it to him. Which, you may not.
He's pretty simple. Marginally worse than Rydia/Golbez unless you get him that, at which point he's better but not unmitigatedly. Simple.
Leonora:
Oddball. She functions a lot like Ceodore, in a way.
That is, during the earlygame she starts out (at L3) with Cure/Esuna/Raise. Gets Cura at normal levels. Picks up...lousy damage L1 spells as well. Picks up Stop at L30. Actually is pretty good for this stretch!
Then she uh stops getting spells for a while. Well, I mean. There are spells gained. They are all white magic status spells. That are worse than Stop. Picks up...L...2 black magic at mid-40s. Takes until like 45 to get Curaga, at which point she stops *utterly sucking*...but the other White Mages pick up Curaja notably earlier than her(which you want for the final battles. Not that I had it~), and Arise/Holy *way* earlier. Especially Holy. Which she gets at 70.
So basically she gets a good status but has worse healing gains later to make up for it. This makes her awful until she FINALLY gets Curaga, not as good as the other healers until she FINALLY GETS CURAJA, and then she...still can't do damage as well as them until L70, but at least Stopping randoms is actually good and at least the bosses do enough damage so that this isn't as pitiful as it is in FF4.
Basically she's not actually abysmal but she's got problems. Ultimately she's the best white mage, especially if you give her Doublecast, but that eventually is L70. She's interesting as a design, at least.
Edge: Really good.
The dual-wield weapons generally tend to be better(The best boomerang actually raises a stat holy shit), the ninja unique equips are nice(Flame Scarf, in particular, is just awesome for being a Cursed Ring without the downsides and with good stats), he has well balanced stats, his MDur isn't pitiful anymore, I think higher end Ninjitsu is relatively better than the old ones used to be(though having said that...they're later), and he gets ST healing(which matters during his chapter, at least. X-Potions rule this irrelevant in the final chapter).
Oh and he can toss stars for 5k, which is nice. And cash is not very much of an object in the final dungeon. (If it becomes one equip the Gil Band on someone. I mean he's not tossing 50k Shuriken at randoms, but...)
I mean he's kinda weird, but he's good. In fact if Gekkou didn't exist I might take him over all three of the other ninja put together...
Gekkou:
The best axe/hammer wielder? Likely, actually. Better speed than either of the others, ninja equips are good enough to compete with Minerva(he gets a crack at Brave Suit, like Yang does, but even if he doesn't the Scarf's still good in a different way), and Shuriken, again, mean potentially high damage for bosses.
And Blast is...probably a better skillset alone, even off his poor magic stats, than Luca and Cid get. I mean, it's 3k damage against a Malboro! That...probably owns "I'm not a generic physical with range, honest" Big Throw and...whatever you call the thing that is Cid's special.
I'll let you know when any of this matters. But in all seriousness, he's good enough to actually be used. And for once I don't feel like an Axe/Hammer's two handedness is actually wasting much...
Izayoi:
Pretty solid in Edge's chapter, thanks to having both the decent generic ninja Heal Pill, the power of Ninja ST Curaga and Ninja Raise, and the fact that Edge's chapter doesn't make the weaponry in it *too* far apart for raw power.
Utter trash after that. As in, very nearly as bad as Harley. ST healing and revival can entirely and VERY reasonably be replaced by items, leaving you with a character with mage weapons(albiet, those suck a lot less than FF4) and Frost. Which...is not a lot of damage and takes forever to get to boot. Still it makes her better than Harley? I guess. Yeah don't use her after Edge's chapter...
Zangetsu:
OLD MAN POWER. You kinda want Zangetsu to be good, conceptually, old guy with the power of human kite. Unfortunately, he uh is basically meant to be a mage type...that relies on Jump for most of the game. Now granted, Jump seems to ignore row, so he can be used. "can be used" is not a glowing assessment, as he's not particularly good at anything physical, and his magic stats-for some reason, the highest of the Ninjas IIRC-can't be used with anything notable until the 40s.
Basically he hits harder than Izayoi with everything, is more twinkable thanks to Adamant Shields at least being usable with *his* best weapon(Izayoi uses bows if you're sane), and er...uh...not much else. He's pretty bad. He's not much during Edge's chapter either, which is a pity.
Tsukinowa:
er he's Edge except worse at everything but speed.
He does have gamebest speed though, and at least his equip choices aren't horrid or anything. Uh...he'd...be worth thinking about if Edge didn't exist, but he does. Yeah. On the upside he has the whole "Second best character in Edge's chapter, probably" thing going for him, mostly because he's so damn fast early on. It levels off somewhat later, and equips make it level off more though. And he basically has no skillset. Unless there's some good steals I haven't heard about. Which there aren't.
Porom:
Bla bla healbot marginally worse than Rosa until she gets Doublecast if she gets Doublecast at which point she's better. The only notable thing here is that, unlike the Rydia/Palom dynamic, Porom would probably just be better than Rosa at equal levels. You're not likely to get those equal levels, thanks to Porom being one of the two worst chapters for EXP and Rosa starting out at like L30. But if you did...yeah.
Edward:
Hey look it's a healer that runs off cash.
Hey look it's a final dungeon that will give you 50k for one fight. Which you can boost if you want.
Edward gets kinda inflated by the final dungeon's cashflow. He's pretty good in his own chapter-his damage isn't as low as it should be(Edward's mighty scrub army is special), and Bardsong, which mostly not worth hitting enemies with, is a good support skill for free Protect+Shell/Haste and for free heals.
In the final chapter though, it's all about the Salves. Which gets you Curaja level healing and MT revival. Which, when you consider he can avoid telegraphed attacks with Escape(Hide), well...that's actually pretty good. Especially since he can buff too. Unreasonably good? Probably. Can sub for a White Mage? Surprisingly, yes! Can he do damage with his physical? Weirdly enough, his 98 power ultimate does good damage(because it hits weakness on every monster subtype). So yeah he's...oddly good. Go figure...
Harley:
This space reserved for someone that doesn't suck.
Or, see Izayoi and remove Frost and the useful period during the respective chapter. Yeah I'm sure they had more planned for her and just ran out of time. Or at least, I really hope so...
Golbez:
Hey look it's someone that can wield *everything*. And who is a black mage.
Golbez is a weird bastard. He has a tighter version of the curve that Ceo has(which in turn is a tighter version of the curve Leonora has).
That is, he is stupid stupid stupid good when you get him and you need him to be this good because his chapter hates you and all you stand for. Ga spells? 2971 HP? At L30? Yes please.
When you hit the final chapter, his stupid good weapon range and the fact that he has Ga spells and 2971 HP still shine very well! Until about L45 or so...where all he's gained from there is Quake. And he's...still good! Because he's a black mage with heavy armor and above average durability for a black mage and good physicals for randoms and etc.
I gather he starts getting HP again at levels past what I beat the game at, which would make him good again. That and he gets Ultima Weapon. Which I didn't get. But. In general he's really good anyways, so who cares?
So yeah that's babbling for you, have fun. ^_^
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Skyrim: Finished the Companion and Thieves Guild questlines. Mostly just clearing up my random questlog at the moment. Oh, and I started the Dark Brotherhood questline. The leader of the Dark Brotherhood locked me in a cabin with three other people. She told me I wasn't getting out until I killed someone. So I killed her. Surprisingly not only does the game let you do this, it gives you a special quest for it: "Destroy the Dark Brotherhood!". So I went to their hideout and killed them all. My reward? 3000 gold. Not worth it. Reloaded an older save so I can get the achievements for their questline.
KoF Orochi Saga: Finished all the challenges and unlocked everything in the gallery. Also beat KoF 94 with the AMERICA team. Wow they suck Hell yeah, America is the best country in the world!
Advance Wars DS: Finished Hard Campaign with Kindle, Jugger, Hachi. So I now have all the wallpapers except for the one for 300 medals. Of which I'm up to 255. Grinding time.
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Hey now, Heavy D! was a fun and only kind of low tier character in KoF98!
*ignores how Brian and Lucky are both bottom tier*
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Oh, they're much worse in '94.
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Batman: Past the point of no return, and hey how about that the game finally remembered what the plot was supposed to be about. It's a Christmas miracle! Also OH GOD MACHINE GUNS EVERYWHERE.
Spoilery hypothesis: Hugo's "master" is either Ra's or Talia. Master plan to exterminate the criminal scum blighting the land? And run from Wonder Tower, when we saw that the League's first attempt at a foothold in Gotham was Wonder City? Yeah, that's not subtle.
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World of Warcraft: Been healing again. It is weirdly hard to remember you yourself have a lifebar, sometimes.
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That is because it isn't near the other health bars in 5 mans. I hear from my brother who uses default UI that it is a good idea to select to use raid frames in 5 mans and pull out raid frames to heal with.
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Castlevania OoE - Beat the two optional dungeons on HM. I actually liked the Large Cavern more than the Training Hall. Cavern had a pretty fun set of fights (not sure how the regen issue Snowfire described would come up, at that point you have enough items that you can heal between fights non-obnoxiously if you chose). I decided to do it without items which mostly meant lots of Death Ring and the right moves. Found the second to last room the hardest by far (the one with one of each of the big armoured soldiers that are the dungeon's signature), as the boss and its slash weakness went down hard to Death Ring Arma Custos Melio Confodere spam after a couple resets of adjusting to his pattern. God you can pile up such ridiculous damage with that, it's glorious. Otherwise, generic hype for several fights where Volacticus could be put to use.
Training Hall had some Magnes stuff which was great, but not really enough and/or some of it wasn't interesting. I really wanted to see more mixing Magnes with combat a la the Giant Skeleton boss fight and this place didn't really provide it. The rest is kinda eh, platforming in OoE isn't terrible but it's not really a great reason to play the game, I get better stuff out of playing Mega Man.
Also replayed Mega Man 8. Dr. Wily caught me off guard, definitely one of his tougher incarnations. Not much to say otherwise. I decided to throw all my upgrades into the buster this time because I remember reading something on GameFAQs hyping that a while back. It does do pretty nasty things to the Green Devil but otherwise it felt like a pretty meh investment, special weapons are too good in MM8 so the buster has too hard a time playing catchup in most places, I guess.
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TITS - Almost up to Chapter 2. I don't know if I am really slow or the side stuff really pads this game out, but it is really lasting.
I think all Elfboy posts should end in an extra paragraph that just say "Also Mega Man."
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FF13- Game went from super plot heavy to being dumped in another world with zero direction. The change of pace is cool, so no complaints from me. Just focusing on missions right now- even after hours wandering around doing them, I haven't maxed out my current grid yet.
*Booooooooo* on the game for not dropping more money from bio enemies, on that note.
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Gref: I'll have to try that. Otherwise, I wish groups would take "I haven't played in a few months" as a reminder about any particular fight mechanics I need to know about. While I can piece it together, I'm a little slow and sometimes that's painful! >_>
Honestly though, just need to heal a dozen or so more instances. Implementing everything all at once is kind of difficult and I find myself forgetting something in every fight.
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Legend of Mana: So this happened once I picked up the Lp for it. The game does some interesting things I like so far, cluttered with a whole lot of bullshit. The labyrinthine crafting, pet-raising, farming, and mana-map-making systems remind me of some of the worst aspects of Saga Frontier, while the open-ended sandbox quest system and terrible translation remind me of some of the BEST aspects of Saga Frontier. Coupled with the graphical style and the ability to recruit monster pets and mechs, the whole game has a more polished Saga Frontier feeling to it, yet still remains notably less enjoyable than Saga Frontier.
Named my main character Asellus because shut up.
Best quote so far: "Pirates have both good and evil otters in their hearts!"
Unlosing Ranger vs Darkdeath Evilman!: Still plodding along on this. My PSP doesn't get much playtime. The game continues to deliver some good lines and excellent fourth wall breaking, and there's a decent rogue like in there too. The usual NIS grindiness is a lot more obnoxious in this title than I like, though. Getting constantly booted back to level one, even retaining some stats, is just kinda annoying, particularly for the 60-floor bonus dungeons and such.
Bizarro Earth is the best setting. I think its where Desco comes from.
I just recently convinced The President of the United States, leader of the entire world, not to nuke Japan for great justice. 'Japan' is his meek subservient wife.
Yeah. Don't worry, even the PCs point out that this obvious social commentary is a bit too 'on the nose'.
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Batman: climbing the tower. Found a crapton of Riddler stuff on the way up, along with one riddle solution I have no clue how to get at properly. Superman could! I can't. Anyway, now I have to take down eight armed guards without a vantage point to hang from, which is a very refreshing challenge after abusing the hell out of inverted takedowns all game.
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I'm pretty sure you have to be airborne to scan that trophy properly, yes. Climb as high as you can, jump off, glide until you get it in sight. Being far from the tower is more important than height, I think. It's a pain, but at least this is the only time the game pulls that on you, and there's no practical penalty for falling in the attempt.
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LA Noire: Finished. I can't help but feel like I got an alternate Bad End or something, but I guess it wouldn't really be noir if it weren't a halfway victory at the end. Also it would take more audacity than apparently even Rockstar has to end the game with the protagonist living happily with his mistress. They're so straightforward about the fact that he did cheat on his wife that I don't know what to say. Cole Phelps is an incredibly earnest square and tremendously flawed at the same time. I approve so much.
Game had its ups and downs, but I enjoyed it. Homicide was the low point, because I liked the cases more when they weren't so obviously part of a pattern and I just have no interest in serial killer stories. Not to mention it's a downer when you realize none of the people you arrested actually did it. It was always pretty easy just to bask in the fortiesness of it all, though. As always, I applaud Rockstar's attention to detail in building a physical environment to play in (this was about the only thing I could approve of with GTA). Also, one of the more fun things to notice throughout the game was seeing all the reasons people might have to lie to a cop even when they aren't actually the culprit.
Loaded up free roaming after the end to knock out a few trophies. Did it in vice mode of course because I wasn't caring what I hit with the car at that point (well, I tried to avoid hitting people; even in plotless postgame, that doesn't feel right) and if anyone deserves the trauma of Cid driving, it's Roy Earle. "Good thing we're not doing this in my car." Dude, we left your car wrapped around a telephone pole five miles back. That'll teach you to be a smug bastard at my funeral! I have to wonder exactly how much carnage you have to cause for the $47,000 fine achievement.
~
MM9: I'd forgotten these games could actually be hard when you don't have them memorized. Lot of death here, especially on Wily--form 1 sucks, but the first few times I didn't have the right weapon for form 2 due to using in on the boss rush and I have no idea how you're supposed to dodge form 3's spark attack. Had to redo the whole castle just to come back with an energy tank. Ugh.
Galaxy/Splash/Hornet got bustered. Tornado probably could've been too with some more effort but ugh, going through that stage again (the rain area kept killing me. Although it was still less egregious platforming than Plug Man phase block sequences). Concrete Man was brutal and easily capable of killing me even when I went in with the weakness weapon. Jesus, dude.
Appreciated all the weapons having some utility use for once, instead of say just one being able to destroy blocks. Fairly minor detail but a nice touch. Black hole bomb easily got the most mileage for that.
~
BoF4: It was on PSN and I haven't played it before so why not. Started this up yesterday, stopped after recruiting an Ershin. Or 2x Ershin I guess. Cute character intro there.
Town chief: "Sorry strangers, we can't let you through."
*POV monster approaches*
Town chief: "Nope, still can't let you through!"
*POV monster draws closer*
The Cid: We get it, game, a monster will attack, we'll kill it, and then they'll help us out of gratitude.
*A walking trashcan barges through the door and introduces itself via extreme closeup*
The Cid: ...Okay, I didn't call that one.
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Yeah, I love that scene.
the whole game has a more polished Saga Frontier feeling to it, yet still remains notably less enjoyable than Saga Frontier.
Probably has something to do with replacing Saga Frontier's fun, high-stakes gameplay featuring a party of up to four different races with... a bland solo ARPG that you could probably beat in your sleep.
I mean, I even still enjoy LoM quite well for what it is, but yeaaah.
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LoM plays much better with a planned out map. It is FAQbaitish, but it at least maximises your potential things to do. It is not shocking that it can generate such differing reactions in people. Layout your map badly and you have no mana around so gear levels stay low.
Poor gear progression in an ARPG is mega snooze.
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Yeah there's something seriously wrong with Legend of Mana. In Saga Frontier you just try things randomly and it often kinda works in the end, in LoM everything is more obtuse than in Unlimited Saga so you just ignore everything and still win anyway because only the final boss can be hard if you don't play on crazy aftergame mode.
Grefter is right, crappy treasure chest syndrome really makes exploration boring. Here every item you get is synthesis stuff you never use, like "Skill", "Watermelon", "Green Alloy" " or whatever.
By the way I didn't understand the SaGa remake thing? SaGa 1 is on Wonderswam, SaGa 2 on NDS, I played the first one and am going to try the second at some point.
Tactics Ogre: In a game with no hard save between battles, the final stretch of the game terrifies me. I think I lost 5 archers in those last few hard but obviously easier than endgame battles.
Dark Souls: Holidays justify playing something like Dark Souls again. I'm trying to get the last trophy. (Kinght's Honor, get every unique weapon) but I don't know which weapons I need. The list is huge. I'd do a challenge right now, but I believe I know too much about the game right now. In any case, I suck at PVP now with the crazy competition.
Soma Bringer: Diablo clone for the DS. Not bad, loot is well handled, but the Diablo clone genre isn't really the most interesting genre.
So this game has more story to bring some variety, this doesn't work because the story is like a Tales of story and it only ever gets in the way. Thankfully, cutscenes can be skipped.
Levels give you stats (easy to use) and skill points. Here in this game, skill points can be removed and put into another skill anytime you want with no cost. This sounds really cool in paper, but in practice you just do the same thing everytime you switch a weapon (skillsets being very weapon dependant): Remove every point from the now obsolete weapon skill tree, put them into new weapon expertise to double damage, see what's the best damage skill and put points into that too, then put every point in passive skills. This might not be the same with a different class? I chose the ridiculous brute as a battler. He found some 2hand legendary hammer of doom, and he has an "Even more elemental damage" max level orb on every piece of equipment. The passive hammer skill, on top of doubling his damage, gives him more accuracy so I ignore Skill and put just about every stat point into strength. AND he has a very fast and inexpensive Double Strike skill.
So yeah, things die. You get 2 really good ally AI in this game, but I hate ally AI in ARPGs (always being out of my control and STEALING MY KILLS) and I'm bored with really easy games so I just ditched them. Everything is still pretty easy so far, but going solo makes the weaknesses of the game more apparent. I'm in Act 3.
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Yeah, I love that scene.
the whole game has a more polished Saga Frontier feeling to it, yet still remains notably less enjoyable than Saga Frontier.
Probably has something to do with replacing Saga Frontier's fun, high-stakes gameplay featuring a party of up to four different races with... a bland solo ARPG that you could probably beat in your sleep.
I mean, I even still enjoy LoM quite well for what it is, but yeaaah.
Well, I was specifically noticing that the Pet system reminded me of Saga Monsters, how you can get nearly any enemy in the game, and how the Golem system worked by piling on equipment for special stat boosts. And the main Pc's versatility seemed like a Human analog while the guest pcs come prebuilt like mystics. Add in the graphic style, sandbox quests, and the hilariously bad translation, and it just became impossible not to think Saga constantly.
I enjoy the style in general, but it needed a little more flexibility with the map system. Also an 'undo' option.
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Fenrir: Doesn't the PS1 version have saving in-battle? Can you not just save at the beginning of each battle on an extra save file or something?
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Djinn: I'm not arguing that the two games have similarities (more than I remembered, even! Haven't played LoM in over a decade). I was just expressing why I feel that SF is the clearly more enjoyable game, an opinion you seem to share.
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FF13: I had... a lapse. *Eyes autohaste accessories and nearly finished grid for C11/all missions done for now* Must resist more chocobo digging/missions.... must...resist...
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Batman: Beaten! Well, sorta. I still have to clear out the sidequests and whatnot. The last boss came completely out of nowhere and was pretty well done. The last twist....eeeh. Would've been better if they hadn't botched the storytelling that justifies it. It's there, but very easy to miss and still doesn't mesh properly with what happens in the last fight. Catwoman's last mission was crap - she's made of paper so naturally every damn thug in Arkham has a machinegun now, and the final boss is the evil twin of Batman's predator boss. It boils down to "fuck strategy, just wait for him to isolate himself somehow and punch him over and over and over. You win." And you do all this while wearing a version of Halle Berry's outfit, which just adds insult to injury. Anyway, I've got control of '70s Batman now so life is good again. First order of business is the third Riddler hostage.
Edit: I forgot to mention the redeeming feature of Catwoman's last chapter. Having the boss quote Jack Nicholson as Joker? Gold.
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KoF13: Finally unlocked all the gallery pictures, including the 2 DLC characters. So many playthroughs of Arcade mode. :'(
Also, check this out (NSFW):
http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/193/0/d/epic_king_of_fighters_doodle_by_mancomb_seepwood-d3nfi5l.jpg
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Oh right, EX Kyo came out today. *goes to nab*
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LFT: doing a two player runthrough with the sprog.
My chars
Ramza: Current plan is eventually head to Samurai, because I love that class far too much. Guts can stay the secondary because really Guts is solid. May use Monster Skill for the support to help out the monster PC.
Female Priest: Going to use White Magic and either Black or Summon. Generic mage and healbot because Kier doesn't want to handle the healing.
Monster: once we get Boco, we'll start using a monster in the 5th slot, prolly recruiting some good ones here and there of different types so we have options.
Kier's chars
Male Monk: He wants to use HULK SMASH, so I suggested Two Swords Monk. He likes this idea. Doesn't know what he wants for a secondary yet, but he has time to play around.
Female Oracle: he thinks the oracle class is ^_____^ so wants to use one. Current plan is Item secondary, possibly with Talk Skill every now and again(when we need to get a new monster).
About to do Dorter 1. Had our first reset on Sweegy. Bad luck with bombs can really just cause a reset there no matter what you do.
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Catwoman's last mission was crap - she's made of paper so naturally every damn thug in Arkham has a machinegun now, and the final boss is the evil twin of Batman's predator boss. It boils down to "fuck strategy, just wait for him to isolate himself somehow and punch him over and over and over. You win." And you do all this while wearing a version of Halle Berry's outfit, which just adds insult to injury.
It gets worse: if you try and take the goons out first? He gets more. Most fearsome superpower ever, infinitely respawning machinegun mooks.
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Oh and CapK, you know who the last DLC char is right? Mr. Karate. You're totally gonna main him right????
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Most likely. Regular Takuma's decent, but his lack of reversal options leads to getting trapped in the corner (at least with my half-assed play).
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FF13 - Complete! Moving on to RH next.
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Legend of Mana: complete! I followed a walkthrough/LP so I think I managed to do everything in one playthrough. I really liked the weird setting, though the terrible translation hurt it at times. (and other times made it awesome)
Final boss was decently challenging. Though the reasoning behind fighting the Mana goddess managed to be more random and unexpected than even the rest of the game, which included random Pirate Penguins and teapot-shaped golembots.
Silent mains still suck.
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You play LoM hopefully for the pretty art and music. That's pretty much what sells the game and what brings me back to it. Otherwise, there's better ARPGs out there.
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You play LoM hopefully for the pretty art and music. That's pretty much what sells the game and what brings me back to it. Otherwise, there's better ARPGs out there.
The world-building (not the "place the lands here for mana levels" kind) is also fairly interesting. The history on how the Seven Wisdoms came to be is a nice read.
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FF:TA2- Wrapping the main story up. Did the Ritual but doing more quests before heading to the final fight. The Ritual was fun, the boss managed to take out two of my best PCs, a Viera with Ultima Masher and Adelle. Hurdy with Smile Toss managed to the save the day, giving extra turns to Luso and my Viera Summoner for damage/healing. The optional Incubus boss from one of Adelle's Heritor sidequests was also fun. Got thrashed the first time since I didn't give Adelle the weapon given to me at the start of the battle (hey I'd just given her the dual wield teaching weapon before the fight <_<) >_> In general though Ultima Masher, Smile Toss and Dual Wield are fun fun fun. Smile Toss is such a great ability. I looove it~
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Batman: down goes Deadshot. The Bat-forensics on display were absurd, of course, but that's the point. Good fun. Now I guess I'll do some more secret-hunting and hope to come across either the Watcher or an Identity Theft victim.
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FF13- Beat the C11 boss. Went back to hunt shiny turtles. That is such a cute gimmick boss, and remarkably easy for the rewards you get. Gotten two platinum ingots and a trap... thingy. The money and CP (40k) is nice, but the ultimate weapon upgrade item is the real price.
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Persona 1) At the final dungeon, random frequency is starting to feel a tad on the high side for all that my party doesn't really feel threatened much anymore. Will probably play take a break before I go on to do the Snow Queen plot thinger.
So for the break in between persona plots I'm planning to do a replay of LoD(This is totally not so I can do a memory refresh for Sharanda hype in the dungeon nosiree >.>) Should turn out interesting since I've tended to avoid using her in past play throughs because of her lame physical <.<.
Also planning to mix in LFT with that since why not. Planning to run Pimp Ramza and all Females built close to whatever Wild Arms character I name them. Planning to use a party of Kanon, Marivel, Virginia, and I guess Anastasia for the last person. Planning for Kanon to be a Ninja/Thief, potentially with Charge secondary and bouncing between the two classes depending on if I want to go on a stealing spree or something. Marivel will be an Oracle/BlackMage, Ginny is going to be a gun toting Chemist/Summoner. Anastasia I'm slightly on the fence on, if I do her I'll be using a filler until I get Meliadoul, who I'll rename and then just use her in her base class with White Magic. As for Ramza, I honestly have no clue what I want to make him >.>. Currently leaning Samurai with Guts or something? I have no clue, mostly just established with myself that I MUST RESIST the urge to be lazy and whore out with Mime Ramza.
So yeah, got up to Dorter 1, highlights include Kanon being mvp and killing shit with her fists because I stuck her in archer before bows were available, finally getting a crossbow only to do less damage~ Me being an ass and killing Delita over and over/using him as bait. Oh, there is also Marivel the accumulate spamming black mage, so yeah, pretty much early game going ons.
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Ciato: I'm playing the Snes version. I could use savestates but I'm trying to play like it's 1996. (No one would allow this to happen nowadays)
Soma Bringer: uuuh in some volcano.
My main got even more broken and the game got even more mindless. I got a passive skill that increases attack power the less attacks you have assigned to buttons. So I know have only the big damage move equipped, not even the normal physical attack anymore. So I'm eating mana potions like I'm breathing air, but I don't care because I've got pretty much unlimited money at this point.
Dark Souls: Got the last trophy.
Sly Trilogy:
Sly 1 is still really good. I think the others will end up disappointing me, since I really liked the Crash Bandicoot style of the first one, but we'll see.
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Ninja Gaiden 2: Chap 3 complete. you know, I was thinking bosses were better in this game until THIS bullshit. Its fine outside of the spawn that come out of nowhere IN THE MIDDLE OF ANOTHER ATTACK at any moment with no way to predict them, and they have idiotically good homing such that dodging them is not conceivable. That alone made the fight poorly designed. I was able to figure out how to avoid everything else, but the spawns? No.
Sonic Colors: Oh look, a good sonic game! That said, 4 worlds down.
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Mario Kart 7 - It's pretty cool. Seems generally slightly improved over Wii (I'll go into more detail later), which is to say it's certainly a solid game though not vying to be the best in the series. It's kinda sad how easy I find these games nowadays; I've sunk about 5 hours into the game and already beat everything on 150cc. That said there's certainly still a fair bit more to do.
Cthulhu Saves the World - A bit over 3 hours into this, just beat Nyarlathotep. Playing Hard Mode. I'm enjoying this quite a lot, it makes a lot of design decisions I heavilly approve of. Healing HP after battle is something I'm an ever-increasing fan of, as is not penalising dead PCs on exp (and in this game, MP regen) and letting you save anywhere. The game's quirks of increasing enemy damage with time and total non-randomness also work well to create a positive experience gameplaywise. It's not perfect - in particular, early HM felt a bit poorly-balanced at points, as there are random battles that I'm pretty sure you just CAN'T win (barring very good luck) but saving anywhere means this isn't the end of the world, just unsatisfying. Writing-wise the game is more fun than I expected (granted, the expectations were low), the game does parody fine so far. And it's fast! No sceneskip (that I've noticed?) but you can mash through both scenes and battle results as quickly as you'd like. So yeah, this one's promising.
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Though the reasoning behind fighting the Mana goddess managed to be more random and unexpected
I assume you skipped Pokihel's long speech to Nunuzac.
BTW have you read the credits carefully? It contains the answer why is this game so SaGa like.
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Cthulhu - Fun fun. Just beat the water shrine dungeon. Well, the writing feels like it has declined fairly sharply since the first ~3 hours (Dacre joined for... what reason? In fact, what was the point of that quest?). Also I still hate world maps, thought I'd share. Despite that I'm still enjoying this a lot. The game has gotten a bit easier with more tools to play with (it's probably fair to say each dungeon has been easier than the last for randoms, although it's a gentle decline and seems to be levelling off) but that's okay, it's still great. Saga Frontier fans should play this because it's another rare example of rocket tag battles done right, really good stuff. Bosses are fun enough but randoms are the real highlight, which makes for better gameplay than those that do the reverse.
PC thoughts so far...
Cthulhu: Went through a stretch (mostly Paws' dungeon) where I was quite annoyed he was forced, but has improved since then mostly due to stepping up his MP regen a lot so he can at least spam his best stuff. Still kinda lacks a niche, but at worst he does a bit of everything (ST, GT, insanity, multihits, finisher), including Protect to ensure October survives to see a turn. (Plotwise, the best character of course, gets most of the best lines.)
Umi: Umi's weird. Surprisingly strong fighter... not on Sharpe's level (though faster ever since the Warp Trident) but good, and all her attacks add good status (which is great). Downside of her as a fighter is that all her attacks are one hit and singletarget. She also has decent GT/MT magic options and some healing to round her out, as well as great unites (Girl Power and Call Kraken have been really useful). Too bad about the durability, but she's often in the party anyway.
Sharpe: Hits single targets so hard (even before his Str+50% buff). Wind Strike stings, has multihits which sting almost as much, and a crazy finisher (saw it do 9000 to Shoggoth). Also tanky and can use Protect when his ST damage isn't needed, and his MT magic backup is... serviceable although it went through a horrid stretch before its recent upgrade. How good he is in randoms varies by how much you want ST (Sharpe rocks) vs. MT (he's okay) vs. GT (ew) but he's a staple for bosses (even has MT Haste!).
October: Slow as fuck, but brings the GT/MT pain like nobody else when she finally sees that turn. Great MP lets her often do the lion's share of damage in randoms, and has generally been second to Sharpe against bosses (currently swapping tomes from fire vs. randoms to elec vs. bosses). She's not guaranteed a party slot for either, but she's good.
Paws: Weird PC design here. Fast, but not great on damage (GT's fine, but ST and especially MT are lacking). Can draw well into random-mashing teams when I want GT. I like him in boss fights, though, because Regen All is great, and he also act as a healer when need be, while still being able to drive up the combo rating when it's not. Weirdly tanky for a PC who doesn't get Protect (this might be a jeigan-y thing).
Dacre: I could see him surpassing (perhaps even far surpassing) Paws as a boss-fighter, since he also gets Regen and just picked up his first buff (defences) as well. For now, the bad speed and no damage has made me favour Paws against bosses. Laughably worthless against randoms, October speed with no offence at all! Hahahaha.
Oh yeah, add "all PCs get full exp even when not in the party" to the list of good design decisions this game makes.
It'll be interesting to see how this changes as the game goes on.
I'm also playing Mario Kart 7 (a lot), but there's less to say about that, currently working through Mirror Mode GP.
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Batman: cleaned out the museum for Riddler stuff, bashed my head against advanced AR training for a while before deciding it's stupid and can die. Still trying to figure out how to break wooden walls when they're above my head. Hoping I don't need an upgrade from AR training for that.
Bastion: Hey, I own this! I kinda forgot about that. Got through the first six areas. Good fun, great style. Using the hammer and bow.
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Dacre has a reason for joining, although it's not really clear until the Cthulu's Angels mode. But yeah, it's fairly random in the normal mode of the game.
Dacre is the one who sealed Cthulu's powers, but was driven insane by it. IIRC, he went to the water shrine to do it, which is why he's still there, wandering around.
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Batman: cleaned out the museum for Riddler stuff, bashed my head against advanced AR training for a while before deciding it's stupid and can die. Still trying to figure out how to break wooden walls when they're above my head. Hoping I don't need an upgrade from AR training for that.
You do, for one of them. You get a grapple upgrade from doing I think four of the AR segments. The first four are comparatively inoffensive (comparatively. The later ones are horrifically frustrating, and the only thing they get you is an achievement). The upgrade's needed for the Riddler trophy in the underground area. You know the one. I assume the other one giving you trouble is the one in the tunnel in the steel mill area (the ceiling trophies gave me the most trouble too). Apparently Batman can't jump and use explosive gel at the same time, so you'll need to move a platform in there to get some extra height.
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Oh, I did the basic four right off - Zzasz would have been way more annoying without the grapnel boost. This is the "pull out of a divebomb and thread a path between a glass ceiling and a near-invisible fence, then turn a corner that has two banners hanging from the top that fail you if you so much as graze them" set. And if there's only an achivement for them , then yay.
Edit: It's not just one particular area; I've seen....I don't know, a half-dozen, maybe ten places around the game with a weak wall above head height, and I don't know how I'm supposed to break the things. Can't spray explosive gel above arm's reach, can't glide-kick without a goon to lock on to, can't punch while balanced on the tightrope, and none of the gadgets seem to have enough force to break them, even a boosted batarang. I initially thought I needed the three-clawed Batclaw, but that's the one gadget they dropped from Arkham Asylum.
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Yeah, there's no real reason for caring about the rest if you already have the grapnel boost.
Personally think the one that makes you fly through the steel mill tunnel (which, you know, is ground level) is by far the worst of the lot.
EDIT: Ah, those. If you fly straight at them, Batman will automatically shift into a flying kick if you're on target. And there's at least one concrete wall that requires you to make floating ice platforms and pull yourself forward with the batclaw to get close enough for explosive gel.
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Ninja Gaiden 2: Just beat a giant Water Dragon by standing on a platform and firing arrows, jumping whenever it seemed he was going to do an attack. Why do I get the feeling the recommended strategy would involve some elaborate melee shenanigans and swimming and running on water that would take twice as long to do?
Sonic Colors: Completed! Not much to say other than it was a good game overall and generally lived up to its hype. I will say that it was at its worst when it tried to be a classic style Sonic game. Not that it was BAD when it did this, just the other parts of the game were notably better. Thankfully its well balanced overall for this kind of thing, so its only annoying in the few stray long stages.
Also, Mach Speed Bosses are fun! If you had told me this after I had watched the Sonic 2k6 LP, I'd get you committed <_<
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FF13: Almost finished. wanted to post this now in case I don't finish it today.
There's a lot to say with FF13, both positive and negative.
The game starts off with several nominally unconnected stories. It tries to start off with a bang with several points of view, as one group is breaking out of a train leading them to a purge/ethnic cleansing, while another is a rebel group who is trying to fight the baddies. My problem is (and this will be a recurring theme) is that the actual plot flow is awful. They jump around way too quickly and rely on flashy scenes and the party's interaction to tell the story instead of showing what's going on. I think this is partly a budget limitation and partly a choice, but regardless you don't get much actual information about what the hell's happening outside of the datalog. I don't mind the lack of towns and a world map, but it does lead to a very disjointed feeling world. The settings are stunningly pretty and the music's fantastic, but you don't actually develop any real connection to it due to the way the game is sliced up.
The entire game has this problem. It chooses to focus instead on interpersonal dynamics of the split up parties and their conflicts (Hope/Snow, Light/Snow, Vanille/Sazh). The actual main story suffered tremendously- said 'story' is you moving as fugitives from one part of the world to the next with no real connection to the places or events. The plot from C1-C9 is entirely about setting up the six character arcs of your party (five in effective, Fang has zero development until late). Everything else is window dressing for this. Calvary in particular stands out as a mess- you have one-two scenes with Snow and Fang together, then they completely drop off the face off the earth until late. Raines, Rosch , and EVILBOOBS all fall victim to this. You just don't interact with/don't see them enough to give a flying fuck about the characters. The actual plot after C9 is amazingly awful and falls off the rails into nonsensical land, but oh well. The datalog is not a substitute for plot and writing, and ultimately the game's plot falls into the bad range due to this.
In some way I think the game would have been far better off if they had chosen to ignore the story entirely and just make it a nameless, faceless dystopian government instead of the plot they set up. The later plot isn't worth talking about, it's bad. See: C12 boss, C12's intro, etc.
While the plot is largely a mess, the character arcs were an ambitious attempt to build up a real group of strangers into a party of friends and allies. I appreciate the effort and thought put into it. That said, the actual writing did not meet the challenge a lot of the time. Hope was miserable for the most part, and Lightning wasn't much better. The entire cast did mature and grow into respective roles, and tried to be very cohesive as far as building a team goes. It just wasn't good enough for me to justify the intense buildup period and the way the game kept them split up for ages.
There is one scene I am going to call out in particular, and that is around the time Sazh gets his summon. To start with Sahz's entire arc was a fucking mess. He goes from happy to sad to happy in literally a matter of two or three game scenes. The way the game just offhandily brushes it off afterwards in C9 is awful writing. What really pisses me off though? That entire scene right before they're captured. 'Faking' a suicide like that is not powerful writing, it is an awful appeal to emotions and completely cheapens both him and Vanille as characters. The game cutting away and going 'haha nope fakeout' a few minutes later is appalling and offensive. THEN as stated above, they just completely ignore that and pretend it didn't happen? fail. No matter how little I like hope or Rosch, this was by far worse. What a waste. The added pile of shit on top is the way the game generally references things and interactions afterward, this scene isn't. It's just an attempt to use a very serious concept for shock value and then doesn'te ven bother to correctly use the fallout from said scene to do anything. Fuck off FF13. The villains have absolutely no redeeming value and are literally just addons to give you something to fight instead of a generic PSICOM soldier. Haven't finished the very end plot, don't especially care since my opinion of the plot can't get any lower.
Gameplay is excellent. It moves at a breakneck pace and streamlines a lot of the normal shit in RPG. Dying has no drawback, saves are plentiful and you even can sometimes jump formations after you die and revive. It tends to push you pretty hard as far as damage/etc goes. The game heavily favors offensive, blitzing builds. Medic is only useful if the randoms are extremely damaging/you're fighting bosses, SENT is largely a dead zone for use, syn is outclassed by sab/damage classes. I don't mind though, it's gameplay I found appealing. Even paragrims were a ton fo fun, let you bounce between the classes as needed and encouraged you to be creative with party build. The gameplay takes off once you hit C9, and C11 lets you do missions/get really powered up if you so wish. Even if you do level, fights will kick your ass if you're not smart about setups/equipment. It's the best normal RPG battle system I've played in years, and the best the FF series has had since at least 6.
The biggest drawback by far of the system is the way it splits you up. you have a full team by the end of C3! Combat is fun, you're getting the hang of the gameplay and then whoops, nope! You split off into two person teams for several chapters. FF13 combat being fun is directly proportional to the number of PC's you have. I find the decision to split up the cast into two person teams mind boggling, especially a team where you have no good commando. It's a terrible choice and hurts the game overall, but oh well.
Fang is the best PC in the game hands down (Best commando+has Sab). Cast was largely well balanced outside of Sahz having bad stats. There are tons of small bad polish issues (Main character death=game over, no 100% ID blocker, etc) but for the most part they are managable.
All this negative ranting though? It doesn't matter, the game is *so* much fun to play and so addictive. I will forgive a game much for combat this good. It's failings were at least ambitious in scale and effort, and outside of the aforementioned spoiler text it's nothing too terrible. Likely an 8/10? It taking way, way, way too long to get going and some truly miserable plot elements hold it back.
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I still have not a single clue what you people find engaging about that gameplay.
That said on the plot thing in tiny text.
When characters get their Summon/Eidolon/GF/Aeon whatever the fuck they are calling them this time they are supposed to resolve all the dischord and worry the person has in their personality. It isn't particularly obvious in Snow because he got it so early, but if you reexamine the characters you do see it. After they get their summons they are almost universally more focussed and content to follow the path set before them by the Falcie.
So that is all well and good except it means that thing where you talk about character development is lolno. They didn't develop, they got fixed by magic. Which is one more giant fuck you to this game.
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Bastion: Up to what the game claims is the final area. Upgraded all the buildings, got a bunch of Vigils for cash. Game is still loads of fun with loads of style. Going with mortar/spear as my primary weapon combo, and have cleared five proving grounds. I should be able to get a sixth once I upgrade the pistols again, and after that...uh...not sure what's within reach. Definitely not the machete, fuck that place, and the cannon is bullshit all around. Repeaters, maybe?
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Cthulhu Saves the World - Beaten. Game time was about 13 hours (pretty short but no shocks here), levels were about 41. Also beat the optional superboss(?) at about Level 35. Bosses got less interesting as the game goes on, I settled on a party of Cthulhu/Umi/Sharpe/Dacre, open every battle with Regen All then pile on more buffs while Sharpe/Umi buff themselves and tear into the boss, with Cthulhu either using Protect or adding damage depending on the type of fight. Siren's Call to call down an unholy blitzkrieg at the end. The fight against Dem at least puts a ripple in this in that you pretty much have to use Siren's Call earlier and there's a time limit effectively, ended up using the Cursed Sword there and dealing with improved offence throughout so I could blitz him better. Final's not bad exactly, things would have gone badly out of control in a couple extra turns probably, but still felt like a predictable affair. The maingame bosses leading up to the final were bad on the other hand, especially Dagon of the "I'll waste all my turns summoning if you kill my support, btw said support is OHKO-bait". Oh well.
Randoms were pretty much a joy throughout. Against my expectations they started picking up again; the last three dungeons were considerable steps up. Deep Ones were especially painful opponents. For a while I tried to MT mow everything down but after I got Death I switched to ST destruction using Death, Wind Strike, and Cthulhu's HP-Bane-enhanced Dark Strike (or whatever else in case of resistance). GT options got way worse as the game went on, not enough more damaging than MT (and there's almost always at least 2 groups) and much less damaging than ST.
Lategame PC notes~
Cthulhu: Still goes through points where I kinda wanted to bench him. He's generally not as good a fighter as Umi/Sharpe and the magical side really doesn't seem to keep up although I stopped trying to build for it. Anyway his damage was a bit spiky with vulnerability to both HP Bane and darkness and at worst he offers Protect, as always. At best, he has great offence and gets the best combo finisher.
Umi: I kinda admire what they did with Umi, she has everything. Great enemy control, great physicals (although they need some setup in the form of insanity, status, or a turn on the str+100% self-buff), decent MT magic, good speed. She might be MVP but her durability is awful, worse than the mages. Still generally worth working around. Oh yeah, and Siren's Call is kinda broken, but at least it's restricted. Totally great for bosses, randoms depends on if you're going MT or ST.
Sharpe: Continued to do exactly what he did all game, and do it reasonably well. His MT magic takes a dive but otherwise, still smashes things, Wind Strike could OHKO some reasonably durable and very annoying randoms late.
October: Queen of MT damage (double-boosted Void is sick), and once she gets Death she's queen of ST "damage" in randoms, too. Of course she's slow and on the fragile side. Doesn't offer much for bosses besides Girl Power and Fragile.
Paws: Man, I kinda figured he was a bit of a jeigan. Just gets bad as time goes on. I have no idea what his niche is supposed to be; Dacre totally steals his healer role, he isn't nearly the fighter Umi or Sharpe are, and I don't even want to talk about his meagre attack magic options. I guess he has stun or something (though only the ST version is accurate), you could probably do some cute things to bosses with Fragile/Paralyse/Stun Strike or something.. And uh he's fast! I probably didn't build him as well as one could but still.
Dacre: I predicted he'd surpass Paws and indeed he did. The various hymns, not to mention his regen being much better, push him ahead, which was expected. Less expected was the fact that there are no super-fast bosses late so either Slow Strike or Speed Hymn can reliably get him to go before most. Also, Holy was a pretty nice pickup, the MT version made him part of the MT blitzing team and he actually had some use in randoms after all.
Ember: Very tanky, so if your goal is "have Cthulhu and two other PCs attacking" then he's your man dragon for protecting everyone. Also has some not-bad but quite limited MT physical damage, and otherwise doesn't do much. Well, Volcanic Aura during a brief window where Fireball is decent damage for both October and Cthulhu.
Dem: Didn't use.
There's not too much to say about the game that hasn't already been said. Its gameplay is fun and obviously has some love put into it, even if there's some tinkering I'd do with the enemy balance at points (although I assume it's balanced for a more casual player on NM while HM is just multipliers, may be part of it). The game has lots of good design decisions. HP healing after battle, MP regen tied to battle speed, saving anywhere, enemies who are tough enough to demand you think about how you face them.
I just wish the writing had kept up... at first it felt like a very fun parody of RPGs coupled with the utter silliness of Cthulhu trying to be a hero and some fun fourth-wall breaking. Later on it just feels like it's going through the motions and what little writing there is is just an excuse for gameplay. Instead of parodying a Dragon Quest it becomes one (with way better gameplay, and freakin' Cthulhu replacing instead of a silent main, and faster cutscenes, and... okay, it's better than Dragon Quest). Dacre's joining pretty much sent up huge warning signs of the problems, it doesn't really recover from there.
There's some polish concerns as well, though that can really only be expected from a game made by a devteam of I believe three. Most things to do with equipment (the shop screen, the equip screen, the fact that there's no indication of which weapons you have multiple copies of) felt a bit awkward and dated. There are occasional typos. But generally, nothing too major here. Dungeon design is quite maze-like, which I don't really have a problem with but I can see how some might. World maps as ever annoy me more, I don't have the patience to explore them fully so it felt pretty random if I found those little optional dungeons or not.
Not sure where this one ends up being rated. 7 or 8 probably, it's quite unique and I'm still not sure how I compare it to high-budget, writing-heavy games which it resembles not one bit. What I know is I will come back to it at some point, probably play Cthulhu's Angels at the very least.
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I still have not a single clue what you people find engaging about that gameplay.
It can be engaging if you care about getting 5 stars after the battle. A lot of the fight in the later half of the game required much planning to get a high score. The problem is that you have to care about 5 stars grade to begin with....
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Mass Effect 2: Completed. No DLC done.
I am way overdue on completing Mass Effect 2, but I figured with the third game coming out I'd polish it off. The game is very typical Bioware RPG, only less RPG and more shooter. The game deserves credit for continuing to improve the formula by voicing the main character (and voicing him well), but if you don't like Bioware games you should still stay the hell away from this.
The core of the gameplay is like any other game of this type: You have a main quest you start off and you gather elements to complete that main quest. In this case, the elements are explicitly your party members and their loyalty rather than 3-4 random artifacts. This upgrades the tradition of fetchquests into one of straight up character arcs, with two for each character. Between these and the fascinating individual conversations that each character has, the cast of the game comes off as lively and diverse. From Mordin's cold and calculating yet surprisingly personable self to Jacob's straight man, everyone adds something to the cast. My biggest comlaint is that cast interaction is comparatively limited due to most of the interaction occurring with the main character. This reduces the chance for the varied personalities to shine through, but it doesn't change the fact that talking to your crewmates is a blast.
Mass Effect 2's gameplay feels more like Halo than any RPG I have ever played. With that said, the combat is too much on the simple side really, with almost every fight boiling down to "get behind cover, pop up to headshot things whenever you can". It is surprisingly easy to die in the game, as a few seconds of concentrated fire has you down even if you built up durability buffs and so on. But being behind any cover makes you... pretty much invulnerable as long as you aren't being hit from the sides or behind, and it is very rare that you will find yourself under crossfire. Enemies don't use tactics like flanking and so on, so I found that the most pressing fights were against the mindless zombie-like enemies that came at you to perform physical attacks. With that said, the actual enemy variety was sufficient, just not the enemy tactics. I was also pleased to see that enemies don't spam instant-win moves that own your face like the stasis fields in Dragon Age and so on. Status is strictly a PC->Enemy thing.
I mentioned that the game improves upon traditional Bioware games with the main character, but I didn't mention that a lot of that comes from the Paragon/Renegade action system. Sometimes during conversations you can 'interrupt' someone to perform a nice (paragon) or not-so-nice (renegade) action. One in particular that stands out was during a team member's loyalty mission, when a mercenary captain was talking about how he had a bead on all of your team members, a renegade interrupt had Shepard pulling out his gun, his team mates immediately taking cue, and shooting a crane load down behind the mercenaries, blowing it up while the squad-mate's gunfire took down the remaining mercs, leaving only one very shit-faced Salarian to face you. Other than this interrupt system (which sees use very frequently), the speeches and lines that are given to the main are good no matter whether you play Paragon or Renegade. I always vastly preferred this "tough guy" vs. "Nice Guy" approach to the "Baby Eater" vs. "Saint" morality systems that litter WRPGs nowadays.
All in all I enjoyed ME2 a lot. There aren't any particularly dumb gameplay elements since the quests systems don't have you going around in a stupid rover all the time anymore (Hot&Cold resource hunting isn't required too a great extent, you can max out research projects without doing much at all). I really enjoyed ME2 and I hope that ME3 can deliver in kind.
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About Cthulhu: The world map is really simple and small especially compared to the dungeons. Only the endgame with the flying dragon is annoying but there's like only one hidden dungeon + the Sem battle then?
Paws was very useful for a while as the guy who goes first then makes every enemy insane to swipe randoms in one turn with October / Umi. Then IIRC Cthulhu got some equipement that automatically did that anyway? But yeah he seems like a character who could only be useful in another game. Maybe.
About ME2: That's why people like the vanguard class since it gives you a lot more power but forces you to take risks.
Bioware games are weird, now that I've seen them using their same formulas a few times they're starting to feel more like JRPGs. Choices have nearly no gameplay consequences! Weird dating sim elements!
They use the most generic western settings though.
Tactics Ogre Archer SCC: One failed attempt that took me an hour. I think I'm going to grind a little in the hell's gate.
Soma Bringer Solo: Last chapter. My guy is still broken good.
The problem with the plot is that every cutscene shows a new random way soma can be used. Soma = magic = force from Star Wars. Every scene is "omg he can use soma to power up some weapons!?" "he absorbed the soma from her body!?" "he used soma to create a doppleganger!?"
This is really the worst kind of serious story there is.
King's Field (Japan): Wanted to see what the guys who did D_____ Souls made before this.
This got some hype for being uber-omg-hardcore and this is usually my kind of game, but this didn't grab me. It's a first person action RPG where you just have to explore a big dungeon. Combat is just never exciting, not even in a hard way (the game's only hard at the very beginning), exploration is just not that interesting and level design is not good/varied enough that you can get by without a map unlike D_____ Souls. (there's an in game map I checked all the time like I was playing some Metroid)
Sly Cooper 1: Finished the game and all the crazy time trials.
Sly 2 really looks it ruined everything so far, but this might change.
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Bastion: Finished! Cleared the repeater and pistol proving grounds before tackling the final area, got the "Beginning" ending. Great game. Will definitely do NG+ sometime soon.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to listen to "Build That Wall" about eighty thousand times.
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Paws was very useful for a while as the guy who goes first then makes every enemy insane to swipe randoms in one turn with October / Umi. Then IIRC Cthulhu got some equipement that automatically did that anyway? But yeah he seems like a character who could only be useful in another game. Maybe.
This is what I used him for in randoms throughout the game. I remember the gear you're talking about, but that works automatically, doesn't it? There are some enemy formations that you really don't want to be insane, so using Paws gives you the ability to choose. I valued that a lot.
For bosses I built him to have a really strong basic physical. Having that durability and speed in theory could have made him the ideal potion boy, but that never came up as a real use in practice.
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RH - AH4 currently, did all of SH up to end of C6. Fun little game. Using Rosch and Raynie currently.
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Turning all enemies insane seemed to result in death a bit too often for my tastes. Not to mention that 3 good MT attacks tends to work for about as much damage as sanity swap + two good MT attacks. (Not quite as well, because October is ahead of everyone else on damage.) And it doesn't carry the risk. Still I'm not surprised you can make it work.
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Meeple is playing FF3o, using DLers' names for his generics. As a result, five-second sketches of his current party:
Knight: Gatewalker
Summoner: Talaysen
Shaman: ClearTranquil
Magic Knight: Pala-Djinn
(http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u137/DjinntoTonic/FF3KnightGate.png) (http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u137/DjinntoTonic/FF3SummonerTal.png) (http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u137/DjinntoTonic/FF3ShamanTranquil.png) (http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u137/DjinntoTonic/FF3PalaDjinn.png)
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I still have not a single clue what you people find engaging about that gameplay.
That said on the plot thing in tiny text.
When characters get their Summon/Eidolon/GF/Aeon whatever the fuck they are calling them this time they are supposed to resolve all the dischord and worry the person has in their personality. It isn't particularly obvious in Snow because he got it so early, but if you reexamine the characters you do see it. After they get their summons they are almost universally more focussed and content to follow the path set before them by the Falcie.
So that is all well and good except it means that thing where you talk about character development is lolno. They didn't develop, they got fixed by magic. Which is one more giant fuck you to this game.
It plays itself for you, leaving you free to make some vague decisions. It's why NFL Head Coach comes out with a new box every year while NFL Football had one game one time and then everyone realized it was a bad idea.
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Now if you'll excuse me, I have to listen to "Build That Wall" about eighty thousand times.
I ordered the soundtrack but it hasn't come in the mail yet. :(
Skyrim: Finished nearly everything you can do without starting the main quest, so I finally started the main quest. Dragons actually spawn now, so it's species-extinction time! Highlight so far was killing an Ancient Dragon and an Elder Dragon at the same time.
Oh, and the level 100 lightning spell makes me happy I specialized in lightning magic. So much DPS. <3
Castlevania OoE: Started Albus mode. This was a preowned copy with Albus already unlocked, so I didn't realize at the time I wasn't actually supposed to be playing Albus yet. But what the heck, I am muddling through it. Albus is stupidly powerful - except when he's not. Like against the Giant Enemy Crab boss. Currently fighting Eligor.
Castlevania Judgement: Beat Story mode with everyone. Which apparently means I now have to do it again. Granted it's pretty fast so not that big a deal. Golem is so frickin kawaii, I love him. DO NOT WANT.
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I think I'm on the last boss battle for Disc 2 in FF13. I died after 6 minutes-ish, also have a headache from "hardcore gamings" the past few days. I'm liking FF13, but going into that battle made me realize I need Diversity, which I nixed in the semi-difficult stage before this. .. Man I have a headache. Going to bed. My gamerfu is weak.
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This was a preowned copy with Albus already unlocked, so I didn't realize at the time I wasn't actually supposed to be playing Albus yet.
Hah! "I get that this game has next to no story... But can someone explain why I am fighting myself!?"
Tactics Ogre is a bitch, I forgot that the Hell Gate gives no exp. The souped up golden monsters are too much for my super archer team to handle, sadly.
Anyway, I'm considering doing a Star Ocean 2 solo while I still have a lot of free time. I don't remember much about the game and don't plan to use any faq. Just trying to survive on my own, getting wasted by randoms and thinking writing horrible books with IC will maybe somehow get me uber armor at one point, then littering my inventory with junk items that restore 9% max HPs at the cost of poisoning the character who uses it. Going mad then starting stealing EVERYBODY in the world in the hope I can get some gamebreaking item in the process to get past that boss I can't beat.
So yeah. This actually does sound great to me. I'm thinking using Bowman, Dias, Opera, Ernest or Precis. (I've never used the later three) Any idea?
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Precis sounds the best. Especially with the voice!
bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack bang BANG attack
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More like BARRBARRBARRBARRBARRBARRBARRBARRIER!
IMHO Bowman and Precis are the best for soloing the game.
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Haha, I was wondering how Albus Mode would handle that midgame boss.
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Batman: Freed the fourth hostage (props for the rescue method there, it was both intuitive and nicely cinematic) and finished up the Acts of Violence missions. Think I'm going to leave the game alone for a bit, since cleaning up the remaining Riddler trophies is getting more and more fiddly, and I still can't find a damn Identity Theft victim. So it's back to...
LA Noire: Started the first homicide case (lipstick murder), and got into questioning the husband before I had to get ready for work. I like how they're developing Cole - like Cid said, he's definitely an "earnest square", but he's also completely full of himself in a way that plays off that. And it's a nice meta moment to realize that of course he thinks he can catch any killer and win any shootout, he's the friggin' player character.
Speaking of shootouts, I also cleared up a few street crime cases. Nine down, 31 to go.
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Haha, I was wondering how Albus Mode would handle that midgame boss.
The crab or Eligor? They're both fairly predictable, but they do so much damage that you can't make many mistakes.
Skyrim: Collecting words of power before I smacketh some more dragon ass down.
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The actual Albus fight, I figure.
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Snow has it.
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Started Skyrim. It is highly addictive in the manner of "Oh, I'll just see what's over that next hill." It is not a world of striking personalities (even followers just get a couple lines to establish a semblance of personality) or cultures (backstory =/= depth), of course. I'm presently ignoring the plot in favor of exploration, to be fair, but I've concluded Bethesda's writers are merely calculating machines, approximating humanity from vague description. But it looks gorgeous and is fun enough for mindless hack and slash. Or setting people on fire and running, which is my preferred strategy. It's been pretty successful so far. I am not sure how feasible multitasking is, so I'm just focusing on murdering things with magic.
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Warning, murdering things with magic gets really fucking boring while melee scales pretty well with levelling and trends towards more dynamic and fun fighting. Dual Wield looks pretty fucking stupid though.
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Warning, murdering things with magic gets really fucking boring while melee scales pretty well with levelling and trends towards more dynamic and fun fighting. Dual Wield looks pretty fucking stupid though.
It is, god is it ever stupid.
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Think I'll try with Precis then.
I don't want to create a new giant pharmaceutical conglomerate that acts as the major evil company in Star Ocean 5, by buying one trillion poison pills from them.
OOE Albus mode doesn't pretend to have a story, unlike uh... Sisters mode in Portrait of Ruin. So they just put the same bosses in there.
By the way I'm just going to throw that here. Albus NG+ speedrun in 12 minutes. (2 minutes being wasted on giant enemy crab)
I don't believe any glitch was used, it's 100% legit and ridiculous:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJb0GGFquBk&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJb0GGFquBk&feature=related)
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Tactics Ogre is a bitch, I forgot that the Hell Gate gives no exp. The souped up golden monsters are too much for my super archer team to handle, sadly.
Fenny, if you -really- need to grind, there's Training... but then, that defeats the purpose. =P
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Dark Holy Elf, re Cthulhu: Mentioned it in chat, but there's still another set of optional superbosses. There's also one other optional dungeon which it sounds like you missed, the Astral Cave... but it's balanced for before Ryleh, it felt like, so maybe not much point in doing it. It does have one of the more awesome rando-bosses on style points, possibly better than the Fire Whale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=209WscWjcPo
I also agree that the game seriously stopped trying in the script for Dacre / Ember's plot arcs, but I will give credit to one of Ember's lines. Something along the lines of:
Villager: "Thanks for saving us from that monstrous red Dragon, Mister! ...uh.... who's that?"
Ember: "Just a big, pink dinosaur here."
Otherwise, yeah, :( at becoming a Dragon Quest rather than parodying one (or better, parodying Lovecraft).
I don't believe any glitch was used, it's 100% legit and ridiculous:
It's Normal Mode Albus at lvl. 255. And I bet it's a TAS from that perfect a teleport / dash. The creator can have a sticker for teleporting through the game quickly, but not really that impressive an achievement.
With that said, the combat is too much on the simple side really, with almost every fight boiling down to "get behind cover, pop up to headshot things whenever you can". It is surprisingly easy to die in the game, as a few seconds of concentrated fire has you down even if you built up durability buffs and so on. But being behind any cover makes you... pretty much invulnerable as long as you aren't being hit from the sides or behind, and it is very rare that you will find yourself under crossfire. Enemies don't use tactics like flanking and so on, so I found that the most pressing fights were against the mindless zombie-like enemies that came at you to perform physical attacks. With that said, the actual enemy variety was sufficient, just not the enemy tactics.
This. I mean... the supremacy of using cover and quickly moving from cover to cover is "realistic", where realistic = realistic for WWII infantry tactics, and as we know all future combat is frozen in time and some echo of WWII combat. And... I don't know about "very rare" that enemies would flank and get crossfires; it happened occasionally, which was great. "Crud I'm tied down by these guys in front holy crap I am taking damage from where noooooooooo." Nicely done reflection of how suppression fire can work, and your team can do the same thing to the enemies. So yeah, good intentions here, but the real problem is that cover is just too damn godly. I guess that was intentional considering how even one hit can interrupt shield regeneration, but... meh. This is the future, right? A lot more of the cover should have been destroyable, or had durability ratings, considering you're shooting future weaponry at what is in general improvised cover and not future bunkers. (As a side note, dropping the waist-high walls everywhere in wildly inappropriate situations? I realize your game works better with cover, but I'd like for it to TRY and have some more realistic settings.) Failing that... assuming as a gameplay thing they wanted to make cover invincibility to normal fire so you can regen shields, have GRENADES and Grenade launchers all over the place, then. Yeah, another blast from WWII, but how awesome would it be to see the grenade bouncing in and you realizing that it's time to find new Cover, NOW? A very few enemies use something like this, but not enough. There aren't very many proper open-air areas; sure, the sniper rifle is already good, but some big wide open fields with restricted visibility but no cover would be interesting. (I really liked one of the random screw-with-the-Blood-Pack missions where you DO actually get to see some distance off and fight enemies far away, but that's not common.)
Choices have nearly no gameplay consequences!
Yeah, this annoys me a bit. Choices that have no impact only go so far. I thought that ME2 had manned up and just imposed an ME1 storyline when I played it and they didn't prompt me for too much backstory about my actions in the not-played ME1... but... nope. If Ashley / Kaiden have identical roles in the plot, and the Council is going to ignore you and stick their head in the sand no matter whether it's human dominated or not... then... how much influence did you have? Like, it's cool that they're porting those decisions over, but it's also not cool for telling a coherent story, because that requires that all those decisions didn't really change things TOO much.
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Cover based shooters have serious problems!
Yes.
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Warning, murdering things with magic gets really fucking boring while melee scales pretty well with levelling and trends towards more dynamic and fun fighting. Dual Wield looks pretty fucking stupid though.
It is, god is it ever stupid.
I like how one of the two weapons just disappears when you put it away in third person mode. You just kind of shove the thing inside your abdominal cavity or something?
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So I bought Serious Sam 3 from the Steam sale, and shockingly, it works on my ancient Geforce 7900. It looks like Quake 2, but it runs! Smoothly enough for me to get up to the first Kleer Skeletons, even! (On which note, I think I missed the shotgun, because (a) I found some shells but not the gun itself and (b) they wouldn't make me fight a bunch of Kleer with a pistol, would they? Right?)
Now hopefully my new card will get here today and I can play the game properly, but still, props to Croteam for optimizing their shiny new engine to run playably on the minimum specs.
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Shotty is on stage 2. The game wants you to rip their heads off on stage 1. This becomes less practical when you start fighting more of them.
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I guess it's a way to get the christmas achievement, at least.
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Warning, murdering things with magic gets really fucking boring while melee scales pretty well with levelling and trends towards more dynamic and fun fighting. Dual Wield looks pretty fucking stupid though.
It is, god is it ever stupid.
I like how one of the two weapons just disappears when you put it away in third person mode. You just kind of shove the thing inside your abdominal cavity or something?
It fuses into the first one on your hip. Of course you'll only realize it when you turn into a werewolf, because your left-hand will still be equipped for some reason.
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Recettear: Kinda late to the party here. Awesome little Item Shop simulation game. It's a lot like Atelier Non-Iris, except replace "Item Crafting" with "Item Pricing and Customer Levelling". Also, the dungeon-crawling aspect is all Ys-style ARPG instead of the various turn-based systems from the Atelier series.
And... yeah. That's it. That describes the game completely. I guess it has a funnier translation than most Atelier games? (Affirmations! Yayness~)
Turns out I'm really addicted to this style of play. I should drop this and pick up Mana Khemia 2 instead.
Darkdeath Evilman VS The Unlosing Ranger!:
Most terrible quote from this sitting: "I'm not responsible for anything, man! Except maybe bruising her uterus! OH!"
Chapter 7's boss fight involved picking up random green shards and tossing them into the giant boss's hard-to-see nostrils to get him to open his mouth so I could walk inside it, do a shot of 4HKO damage and then get crunched, and spit out at the beginning of the level to start all over again.
How the HELL was I supposed to figure that out, game?!
Anyway, Mana and Kyoya win for most amusing/terrible characters in the game so far.
Saiyuki: Journey West:
So far it's an awesome little SRPG, very much a Chinese-flavored FFT-meets-BoF2 affair, only with a pretty damn awesome translation. I ended up stalling my own playthrough when I got bored at a doctor's office and read -really- far ahead in the LP I was playing along with. ( http://lparchive.org/Saiyuki-Journey-West ) So now I'll probably never finish it.
Too bad, it's a really interesting game DL-wise, too. Someone should stat topic it if they're feeling the need to stat topic something cool.
Also... has anyone else played/heard of it? I'm curious about DL-ers' opinions on this one because it seems like something the DL would have latched onto as tightly as Brig/OB/FFT.
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I bought it, played it...I think until Cho Hakkai joined? It was five or so battles. Anyway, hated it for reasons I can't remember at this point, returned it and got Grandia instead.
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Darkdeath Evilman VS The Unlosing Ranger:
Okay, NIS America. This has been a long time coming. There's just these FEELINGS I have to get off my chest.
Quite simply, you're the best. The only one for me. If NISA was a beautiful woman, and I didn't have an easily-jealous abusive girlfriend, I would marry you. You're smart, you're witty, your gams look amazing - the whole package! You really know how to please your customers and make me want to throw money at you. You're like the World's Best Prostitute, only you really "get me, y'know?" So you'd be like one of those prostitutes in the movies who marries some rich guy to 'take her away from it all', only it's really presumptuous to think that she needs HIS help and... uh...
Look, all I'm saying is: Keep doing what you're doing. Don't stop. Faster. Harder.
Your Ever-Loyal Customer, d00d,
Djinn
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I remember back in the day the IRC channels I frequented touted it as FFT+++ and I sort of rolled my eyes and went "That is nice, if I had access to either of these games I might care".
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i remember some kid with like 2 posts making a thread here about how saiyuki is awesome and should be ranked
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I played some of it, thought it was kinda bland, boredquit, went to do something else.
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FF13:
So, the plot railroads you for 30 hours, then explodes off the tracks and becomes the most non-linear thing in the universe? Make up your fucking mind, game.
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Non-linear to me means make-your-own-plot, or a whole bunch of plot hooks of which you can solve problems in a number of ways, stuff like that. FF13 Chapter 11 is a whole ton of sidequests, sure, but it's still not really non-linear, more like "have some optional battles." Pretty much all the sidequests are variants of "kill a tough monster over there somewhere" anyway and the plot excuse for doing them is horrible. (Why do we want to fulfill long dead l'Cie's quests? Aren't we trying to escape our own quest? Do we have any reason to think these quests are important or still relevant now?).
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I think in this case 'non-linear' is meant int he sense of "given no clear indication of what the fuck you should be doing".
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If you want to advance the plot, you can always follow the orange indicator arrow like you do in the rest of the game, so I can't really agree with that complaint.
(Why do we want to fulfill long dead l'Cie's quests? Aren't we trying to escape our own quest? Do we have any reason to think these quests are important or still relevant now?)
Well... no, they aren't. I would strongly suggest the quests are not canon. Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with an excuse for more gameplay should people want it. It's far from the first game to have blatantly non-canon optional content (Xenosaga, Disgaea, etc.). I think putting it in C11 is arguably a shame because players can lose out on the tightly-balanced lategame combat which is brilliant, but in theory there's nothing wrong with choice, and I know some players probably would have liked the option much earlier.
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Oddly enough, I hear that official word on Disgaea Optional Side Content is that it all happens in canon (not counting the Alternate Ending-paths, of course).
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KoF13: Got my 100th online win, with something resembling a 50% win rate (100 wins, 106 losses). I may just grind out the rest of the 300 matches by surfing the internet while I let people beat up my characters. No way I'm going to get the 10 ranked wins in a row. I've had 8 wins in a row TWICE, but there's too many good players online now.
OoE: Tired of Albus mode, so I started a new game with Shanoa. Apparently Albus is running around naked, because even with crappy gear Shanoa takes a fraction of the damage that he does. Currently killing things with fire (glyphs).
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Tsukihime: Akiha True/Normal ends get. I learned her body is nothing like a man's.
Decent path all around although it is hard not to get irritated at some of the idiot plot. Seriously, if people would just TELL Shiki things, we probably could averted everything bad that happened.
Confused as to why Roa was like he was on this path as well. A 'Teach Me, Ciel-sensei!" segment sort of addressed it, but not in a really useful way. Did explain away a few other questions, though.
Ciel next, I guess.
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Feel the opposite of Elfboy; FF13 was much overdue to stop railroading you so hard. You can condese the first eight chapters of gameplay into a couple of hours and lose nothing on the gameplay front (And I could care less about the story).
There is absolutely no reason for it to be as on rail with literally everything as it is (Hello CP cap and forcing your party apart for a huge section of the game). The sidequests can be ignored if they aren't your thing.
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Skyrim: I ran into the plot more or less by accident and now there are dragons tooling around the world map. They're not much trouble to deal with but it is kind of a nuisance when I'm out sidequesting or exploring and the game's all ninja dragon up in my face. I should probably visit more towns and actually unlock more sidequests, actually, since...I've got a collection of undroppable quest items blocking up my inventory from dungeons I found and explored at random. I would love to get rid of this crap. Side note, I wish there was a more elegant way to switch spells/equipment. Slows combat down to have to dive into a submenu every time I want to swap in something else.
Is there a level cap? I kind of assume it's 50 since there's an achievement for hitting level 50.
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My new video card works like a charm. Not only does it mean I can play games that require hardware from the last four years, it's also gotten rid of the random crashes I've experienced since upgrading to a 64-bit OS when playing anything more graphically intensive than The Binding Of Isaac. So it's been PC game central at my house since yesterday, mainly in the pursuit of Steam holiday achievements.
Serious Sam 3: Beat the first level. Gorgeous game now that it actually has textures.
Jamestown: In this game you play as a British convict in the colonial age who sets out for the New World to earn glory and redemption in the battle against the savage natives in the name of the crown. Except the New World is Mars, you're fighting with laser-bristling spaceships, and the savage natives are War-of-the-Worlds Martians - Martians allied with the hated Spaniards no less. Oh, and it's a danmaku game.
So. Awesome.
Atom Zombie Smasher: Neat little strategic puzzler. Feels pretty stacked against you before you get the mercs, but once you have them on your side, it's a lot of fun.
Magicka: A Diablo-like with an actually distinctive gameplay system? And shotgun humor? And characters who sound like the Swedish Chef? Hell yes I'm in.
And Yet It Moves: Cool idea, finicky gameplay. Couldn't quite beat the fourth stage. Will try again in hopes of reaching the gift-pile achievement at least.
Orcs Must Die!: Mouse control makes this game even better, and it was already awesome.
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If you want to advance the plot, you can always follow the orange indicator arrow like you do in the rest of the game, so I can't really agree with that complaint.
You're right, but the difficulty spike in Chapter 11 from previous chapters is absolutely inexcusable. They practically require you to do grinding to kill anything which is just mind-boggling to me.
Now, I had already done some grinding for money earlier on so I was able to catch up rather easily, but the fact that you can run out into the Steppe area and get mobbed by monsters almost immediately who can pretty much overwhelm you is... I don't know.
Maybe it's the game screaming USE YOUR SENTINEL or something, but it seems like a rather ham-fisted way of doing so. Maybe my experience isn't typical either, I dunno.
EDIT: I will also say that it isn't so much "given no explanation of what to do" but more "Here's an enormous new place without any real conversation... AAAAAAAAAAAAAND GO!" It just seemed like I was playing a completely different game all of a sudden with the way it drops you onto Pulse with very little ceremony (yes yes intro CGs but still) after all the more-or-less hand-holding it had done up to that point.
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Neph: Just ignore the sidequests. The difficulty spikes if you keep doing them, yes, and will render the rest of the game too easy for challenge. But you can advance the C11 'plot' just fine skipping them. (C11 & C12 are reasonably difficult anyway, but not undoable.)
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Skyrim: I ran into the plot more or less by accident and now there are dragons tooling around the world map. They're not much trouble to deal with but it is kind of a nuisance when I'm out sidequesting or exploring and the game's all ninja dragon up in my face. I should probably visit more towns and actually unlock more sidequests, actually, since...I've got a collection of undroppable quest items blocking up my inventory from dungeons I found and explored at random. I would love to get rid of this crap. Side note, I wish there was a more elegant way to switch spells/equipment. Slows combat down to have to dive into a submenu every time I want to swap in something else.
Is there a level cap? I kind of assume it's 50 since there's an achievement for hitting level 50.
The best undroppable quest items are the ones that bug out and never turn in. Goodbye 50 pounds of inventory space, I didn't need you at all!
It's not 50, more like 80-something. And it's less an hard cap and more like that's when you get every Skill to 100 and can't level them anymore. Or something.
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Level cap is 81 I believe, due to skills being maxed out.
Quest items do *not* weigh anything. So if you can't drop it, it's not hurting you. Other than being in the way when you're scrolling through things.
Also, Cid, are you using the Favorites menu? It's much faster than the regular inventory menu. Unless you just want a quick "swap from setup A to setup B button". Which would be nice indeed.
Skyrim: Killed the big boss while wearing the skins of his relatives. Life is good.
Only have to do the Civil War questline, get married, and then burn every Hold to the ground and I'll be done with this game.
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You're right, but the difficulty spike in Chapter 11 from previous chapters is absolutely inexcusable. They practically require you to do grinding to kill anything which is just mind-boggling to me.
And I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you on this. The only enemies that fall under your distinction in the Archelytte Steppe are King Behemoths, and Adamantchelids and co. The latter are ridiculously easy to avoid the game makes it pretty clear "YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSE TO FIGHT THESE THINGS. RUN AROUND THEM. THEY DON'T CHASE YOU AND YOU CAN'T PRE-EMPT THEM! THESE ARE AFTERGAME ENEMIES!!!" (as if the size wasn't a dead give away. Worst case scenario? You fight one, get slaughtered, and then never fight it until much later.)
So really its just King Behemoths who yes, are bad asses, BUT you can avoid most of them pretty easily, or get them in Triple Fights/Pre-emptives. Either method works for killing them early, albeit doesn't make them trivial, but then, its about using the Battle System, Paradigms, etc. Not being "herp derp win."
Everything else, between the wolves, goblins, those spiny guys who are damn near impossible to hurt before breaking them, etc. are all pretty reasonable to take on in your first attempt. And the bonuses in Chapter 9 to stats from the Crystarium, as well as the CP you gain, are pretty large step up relative to previous levels, IIRC, so you get your stats up to speed pretty fast.
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That is all well and good, but they are the first thing you see on the Steppes, the first enemy in the game that you actively need to avoid, give absolutely no in game warning that these ones are not meant for you after you have already fought like 3 kinds of Behemoth, are all over the fucking place and block the path in some places.
Hindsight is all well and good but that chapter introduces itself terribly with that, no context and a horrible map.
I recommend getting you weapons up to rank 2 Neph. It makes that place much more doable. The obtuse item leveling system also of course makes this piece of advice just as experience driven as the above though.
Also note the advice about following the arrow and the fact that one of the zones (Steppes again from memory) the arrow point northwest and you actually need to go northeast all the way around to get there. If you follow the arrow directly there is a path with two King Behemoths you need to bash through (for some chest and a dead end) ^_^
don'tknowwhaturtalkingaboutnothingrongwiththechapteratall
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You're right, but the difficulty spike in Chapter 11 from previous chapters is absolutely inexcusable. They practically require you to do grinding to kill anything which is just mind-boggling to me.
Didn't find this to be the case at all. Actually, I thought the previous area was quite a bit harder than the first part of Pulse. Perhaps I was overleveled as a result.
EDIT: I will also say that it isn't so much "given no explanation of what to do" but more "Here's an enormous new place without any real conversation... AAAAAAAAAAAAAND GO!" It just seemed like I was playing a completely different game all of a sudden with the way it drops you onto Pulse with very little ceremony (yes yes intro CGs but still) after all the more-or-less hand-holding it had done up to that point.
This, however, I agree with. The pacing in FF13 was just terrible. :P
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That is all well and good, but they are the first thing you see on the Steppes, the first enemy in the game that you actively need to avoid, give absolutely no in game warning that these ones are not meant for you after you have already fought like 3 kinds of Behemoth, are all over the fucking place and block the path in some places.
Hindsight is all well and good but that chapter introduces itself terribly with that, no context and a horrible map.
I recommend getting you weapons up to rank 2 Neph. It makes that place much more doable. The obtuse item leveling system also of course makes this piece of advice just as experience driven as the above though.
Also note the advice about following the arrow and the fact that one of the zones (Steppes again from memory) the arrow point northwest and you actually need to go northeast all the way around to get there. If you follow the arrow directly there is a path with two King Behemoths you need to bash through (for some chest and a dead end) ^_^
don'tknowwhaturtalkingaboutnothingrongwiththechapteratall
Die once to a king behemoth, think "maybe I shouldn't be fighting them head on."
Is that so hard? Especially for a guy who plays a ton of WRPGs, which do that kind of thing all the time?
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Context is the important thing here.
10 chapters in. Then the game pulls that. Kind of enemy you have fought multiple times, not some big unique skinned thing. Just looks like something that was a random trash thing in earlier chapters. Shit in the forest chapter you HAD to fight them to get through the dungeon.
That and yeah WRPGs do it as well and sometimes it is pretty terrible in them also.
I am not saying it is bad that they are there or that you should be able to curbstomp them mindlessly like you can the rest of the game. Just someone going "Holy shit what the fuck mang those things are gonna rape you a new anus in your lungs and they are everywhere!" in one of the many pointlessly painful cutscenes in that chapter. You know, you could do it with one of the Pulse natives who have absolutely dick that is interesting to say about pulse until the end of the chapter. It was a completely dropped opportunity to give that chapter some badly needed focus and direction.
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The forest analogy fails for one very big reason:
In the forest, they were narrow, straight pathes and it wasn't obvious that you could (if you could at all) avoid enemies. You ran in a straight line and just accepted things as they were.
Archelytte Steppe, its a big open area with lots of room to run around. You can blatantly see that you can run past a King Behemoth by just staying far away from them.
Furthermore, if having played older games of the series wasn't enough, I'd think the name "King Behemoth" when you fight one should be an indicator that they are stronger than previous foes. And how often do you fight enemies that are notable upgrade in OTHER RPGs that are just new palettes of previous crap? I reference the Strato Avis of FF10's Monster Arena...which is the exact same scenario. You've fought a bunch of these birds, game doesn't hint "THIS GUY IS TOUGH!" anywhere until you actually fight him. Just because its the monster arena doesn't mean you will immediately associate him as being much harder than anything else. If you win, good for you; if you lose? Oh, that sucks, go to the save point behind the guy, heal, and then shell out the negligible cash needed to fight him again.
"Context is key" indeed. In that the context you gave for why its bullshit fails for the lone reason that its not the same scenario at all. If the King Behemoths had stood right in your way, and you couldn't avoid them barring some fancy movement, you'd have a point. They are clearly not like this. To just say "Then FF13 pulls this!" is just a hand waving of what really is happening and that there are ways to deal with it.
Basically, exactly what Monkey said. You fight one, realize how strong they are, die, then just avoid it next time. Given FF13 offers no actual penalty for dying, this isn't exactly something major to complain about.
And truth be told, the "Plot scene warning" thing I'd find no more useful than first hand experience. How many RPGs warn you about this shit before hand, and you go off and face it anyway? I dunno about you, but the Desert Lord in Grandia 3 was warned about, I went off and fought it my first time anyway, and got my ass kicked. It wasn't the game's warning that hinted "STAY AWAY FROM IT! IT WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!" but rather, the fact that I fought it and slaughtered my team effortlessly. Basically, I get the feeling that most WOULD have fought a King Behemoth even if the game warned you about it, due to that Overconfident "I'm that awesome!" feeling many gamers have.
And its especially so in FF13, where there's no penalty for dying, so why not test your luck?
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My Forest example fails because the example shows exactly why it is bad? The fuck? Did you even like take in the whole thrust of the post?
The paradigm is completely shifted on you and there is nothing telling you that this is so. Suddenly there is a big pallete swap of an enemy you have fought before. Now you shouldn't fight it! Now you can run away! Now the game didn't even say anything about it!
Now this AS A FIRST IMPRESSION is bad. So what I am saying is that GOING OH MAN YOU TOTALLY SHOULD HAVE HANDLED THIS BY X Y OR Z to someone who is dealing with their FIRST IMPRESSION who has had NO CHANCE TO LEARN THIS could have benefitted from the GAME GIVING YOU THE CORRECT CONTEXT.
Yes you don't need the game to tell you that you will have trouble fighting them. But if the game gave you some fucking context then when it shifted off being on a rail where you have to or at least probably should fight all the enemies you see then it would be an improvement.
Just because you don't need something doesn't mean it is bad design choice to have it.
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Yeah, the way FF13 handles dying, complaining about being killed by a single, avoidable random is really weird. Have we really reached the point where we get offended by this? Not to mention you are warned, as soon as you get to Pulse, that there's some scary-as-shit wildlife here.
I actually thought FF13 handled it basically perfectly, because I know I was pumped when you fight King Behemoths and especially the Adamanchelid later in the main plot.
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Yeah, the way FF13 handles dying, complaining about being killed by a single, avoidable random is really weird.
This. Really, I love it when games give you a preview of coming attractions, and it's hard to interpret the 30 seconds you waste getting your ass handed to you and then reappearing in the same place as anything but.
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Quest items do *not* weigh anything. So if you can't drop it, it's not hurting you. Other than being in the way when you're scrolling through things.
Way for them to display weight! Bloody hell, just means I'm way overstocked on potions and soul gems then.
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Yeah, the way FF13 handles dying, complaining about being killed by a single, avoidable random is really weird. Have we really reached the point where we get offended by this? Not to mention you are warned, as soon as you get to Pulse, that there's some scary-as-shit wildlife here.
I actually thought FF13 handled it basically perfectly, because I know I was pumped when you fight King Behemoths and especially the Adamanchelid later in the main plot.
Oh, I absolutely agree. I've died probably 30-40 times so far, probably more, and I'm glad the retry thing is there to let you avoid fights like that. It isn't like it's the first time the game did something obnoxious and stupid and I'm sure it won't be the last.
A lot of my problems probably stemmed from being under-leveled and not remembering to switch to another leader who had more health than Hope did.
The pacing issues have been noted and that's pretty much my biggest problem with the whole thing, I think. The monsters themselves are surmountable or avoidable, it's just the sudden 180 in the way the game handles the storytelling combined with the monsters that I think raised my eyebrow.
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I never grinded in FF13 and never had many issues. I mean yeah i died but nothing that wasn't either avoidable or beatable.
RH - Complete! Very good game, ends quite strong, very satsified.
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Skyrim: 1000/1000. Complete, or as complete as this game gets. My last achievement was Master Criminal, and I did it with themes relating to each Hold.
Minor Skyrim spoilers if you care:
Whiterun: Home of the werewolves. So I turned into one and feasted on the corpse of the guy who stands in the plaza and preaches all day.
Falkreath: Famous for their graveyard. So I summoned a dead warrior from Sovngarde and reanimated the corpses of townsfolk I killed to fight for me.
Markarth: General mayhem in the Dwarven Museum.
Dawnstar: New home of the Dark Brotherhood. So assassinating time!
Riften: Home of the Thieves Guild. I pickpocketed everyone in the Jarl's palace until I got caught, then assaulted a member of the Guild.
Winterhold: Home of the mages. My specialty. Shinkuu Hadoken'd everyone with Lightning Storm.
Windhelm: Awfully cold and dreary here. So I froze a guy solid and then thawed him out with a flaming sword.
Morthal: Terribly nondescript here. So I livened things up with the Storm Call shout. Which by the way is by far the best shout in the game in terms of usefulness and entertainment value.
Solitude. My home city, so I got to do everything here. Storm Call, corpse reanimation, had my husband fighting for me, and lots and lots of Lightning Storm.
Great game, had a lot of fun with it overall. I think I see the main difference between JRPGs and WRPGs here. A JRPG makes you play the game more than once to experience different story paths. A WRPG lets you do everything at the same time. I am a level 54 Werewolf/Archmage/Master Thief/Assassin/Thane/Legate/Dragonborn. And probably a few more things I forgot. Red Mage eat your heart out.
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Great game, had a lot of fun with it overall. I think I see the main difference between JRPGs and WRPGs here. A JRPG makes you play the game more than once to experience different story paths. A WRPG lets you do everything at the same time.
This is very wrong. Very very very wrong. You really shouldn't be making conclusions on the genre based on Oblivion/Skyrim, since they're almost not RPGs at all.
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Sonic Adventure 1: Beaten.
Game hasn't aged that well, as someone playing it for the first time now. Its not horrible or anything, but I struggle to say its anything above average at this point. It had a lot of cool new ideas for the series that clearly got fleshed out in later entries (Homing Attack and using that as a platform gimmick is a neat touch, and Sonic Colors at very least utilized this pretty well), and the multi character thing was done cool too. That said, it really shows its age. Bad camera angles, the fact that it starts at Auto Camera instead of Free really makes things annoying (and didn't know there was a Free Camera mode until late into Sonic's Chapters; allegedly the Dreamcast version didn't even have Free camera), atrocious voice acting (...which actually adds to some of the hilarious charm <.<), loose controls ("bad" is a bit much), some really wonky physics, etc. Then again, it was the first 3D Sonic Game from my understanding, a launch Dreamcast title and all that, and it was an attempt to be the Mario 64 of the Sonic Franchise.
And honestly, Mario 64 doesn't seem like it'd hold up too well by today's standards either, but I wouldn't know, having not played any 3D Mario after Mario 64.
The character thing was neat barring one exception that I'll save for its own section. Sonic was straight forward 3D platforming only with emphasis on speed, Tails had the cool flying gimmick to make you cheat stages, but at the same time stages were designed that you could still easily die. Knuckles...ok, some of his OUt Of Stage stuff was dumb (mostly finding that freaking Silver Statue >_< ), but they were trying something different, and the character has a very "Free Range" feel about him. Amy...uhh...ok, she's kind of meh, but tolerable. E102 was brainless "Blow stuff...then blow it up again" with time limits...this was a god send after what I went through with the character I played before.
...Then we have Big the Cat. Oh god what the fuck were they thinking with this character? He's an original nobody (the other 4 animals all existed before this game, and E102 was basically there because "Token Eggman character, but we want him to be a good guy, so it can't be Eggman himself.") with one of the most generic designs ever (A FAT CAT! WE'VE NEVER SEEN THAT BEFORE), awful Voice Acting (and not mockably so. Its just downright bad), pure comic relief WHO ISN'T FUNNY, and the single worst gameplay in the game by a long shot.
See, when I think "Sonic the Hedgehog", I think "Speedy Platforming." All of the other characters sans Amy get this point across, and at least Amy gets the "Platforming" part down, and being chased, there's still some emphasis on speed, in a different way. Then we factor in how the minigames are basically Boarding (ie going down inclines REALLY FAST), Bumper Cars (ie smashing into things REALLY FAST) or Pinball (ie being launched at things REALLY FAST), and the game definitely remembers "SPEED IS IMPORTANT!" Then we haev Big the Cat whose entire thing is FISHING!!!
...you know, one of the slowest, most patient, most leisurely activities you can do? The one where you don't control things entirely, but rather, your opponent (The fish) does? This has got to be the single worst thing you can add into a Sonic game. Its completely unfun, clashes with the rest of the game, and it has easily the worst controls of any level. Oh yeah, the last level has a potential screw over point where if you drain the water, you could actually be completely unable to finish the level without restarting it entirely. Given lack of visibility in Water, its very easy to miss that the frog is there.
There's seriously know excuse for Big's chapter. If the idea was cool CONCEPTUALLY, and just failed at execution, I'd be more forgiving. That happens all the time. The fact that they put this in the game, however, means someone thought "hey, this is a great idea!" and went along with it, and didn't bother to think how it completely clashes with everything else in the game. I can't stress how much worse Big's chapter was than everything else.
Before someone says "Meeple, you're a BoF fan! How can you hate fishing?" I can show you differences:
1. BoF fishing 99% of the time is completely optional. Only times its required are BoF1's P. Fish (BoF1 doesn't count as a minigame), Shisu in BoF3 (only once + however many times you fail...no one defends Shisu in BoF3), and one part in BoF4 which can be skipped if you do one of two other requirements (Fishing is most effecient method to continue plot, mind but some hate it, so the fact that there's alternatives is nice.) Sonic Adventure has a WHOLE CHAPTER OF NOTHING BUT IT.
2. BoF2-4 fishing is a lot more consistent and controlled than Big's. When a fish bites in BoF2, it bites. When a fish nibbles in BoF4, you react and it bites! IN BoF3...I think it worked like BoF2, but can't remember offhand. Sonic Adventure? The frog you need to catch can nibble at the bait for like 5 seconds, then release it. You can't reel it in or anything because it hasn't actually bit the lure. Yes, I know, REALISTIC!!!!!...
...but REALISTIC is exactly what games should stray away from in gameplay. Especially in a game where a Fox can fly by spinning its tails around like a helicopter, or an Echidna can glide using its spines like a Hang-glider.
3. No Camera Angle bullshit. This cannot be stressed enough how much fuckery got me with Big's.
So yeah, fuck Big's Chapter. If they really wanted to put it in the game, they should have made it an optional side chapter mini-game. That would have been fine. I'm sure some people actually liked it, and its the best of both worlds. Having to play Big's to get to Perfect Chaos is just stupid on every level.
Speaking of Perfect Chaos, he was ok for a final boss, outside of the fact that in his 2nd form, his Danmaku fireball move, if it hits you once, seems to easily lock you into a bunch of hits indefinitely, because he spams it. This is just poor design. I know each hit is suppose drain your time due to Rings, but there's no reason you should be LOCKED making the move almost instant death. That, and really, game? After having a THEME SONG POWER UP moment in the first form, you throw generic "Kaiju on the Rampage!" style music for the 2nd form, when all that changes are some of his attacks? The song in the first form wasn't amazing or anything, but it did sell the whole "FINAL BOSS!" thing. The 2nd song is just "now we're boring."
So...yeah, game was alright outside of Big's Chapter, but nothing special. I'll get around to playing Adventure 2 at some point.
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I think I see the main difference between JRPGs and WRPGs here. A JRPG makes you play the game more than once to experience different story paths. A WRPG lets you do everything at the same time.
I dunno. A game can't really do the latter without giving the impression that your decisions don't really matter. Which may be the case in Skyrim, I couldn't really say yet since I'm busy with explorer mode.
Quest items do *not* weigh anything. So if you can't drop it, it's not hurting you. Other than being in the way when you're scrolling through things.
Way for them to display weight! Bloody hell, just means I'm way overstocked on potions and soul gems then.
Yes. I just cleared out all my inventory to figure out where the extra weight was coming from (since evidently it wasn't plot items) and it turned out I was hauling around eighty pounds of healing supplies. This...is a bit more than I need for normal circumstances.
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Skyrim: Warp to giant camp, watch mammoths fall from the sky. Skyrim can be a mite buggy at times. Although, all my alchemy/smithing materials disappearing I think was just the game being a dick. I had 'em all stored in barrels at the college, figured it'd be a safe place since I was told that was my room. I drop by to pick everything up and move it to the house I bought and nope, all vanished. Here have five carrots instead. fffft.
Anyway, guess I'll wrap up the Companions quest already. I'm assuming there's no real downside to lycanthropy since getting it is attached to a major quest and I get the impression the game isn't the sort to have you make choices with serious consequences.
Also apparently I'm the bear patrol now. When do I get my stealth bomber?
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Anyway, guess I'll wrap up the Companions quest already. I'm assuming there's no real downside to lycanthropy since getting it is attached to a major quest and I get the impression the game isn't the sort to have you make choices with serious consequences.
Only if you count losing the "Well Rested" bonus when you sleep in a bed as a serious downside.
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Pfft, like I ever sleep. Glancing at the game stats, my PC is averaging about one hour of sleep per day.
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Pfft, like I ever sleep. Glancing at the game stats, my PC is averaging about one hour of sleep per day.
I went over a hundred real-life hours without in-game sleeping. Or something that makes sense. I only know this because I had the Black Hand note in my inventory and that was practically one of the first quests I did.
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Binding of Isaac: I finally got Satan's Room to show up! And I jumped into the pit to the next level on reflex. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Edit: It was a great run, too. Shoop Da Woop with the fast-charge bonus, 99 coins and 99 keys, +speed/power/range buffs. Lost focus after that moment of idiocy, though. At least I unlocked Cain.
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Great game, had a lot of fun with it overall. I think I see the main difference between JRPGs and WRPGs here. A JRPG makes you play the game more than once to experience different story paths. A WRPG lets you do everything at the same time.
Chiming in on this too since I just played Legend of Mana, which uses the Skyrim-style "DO ALL THE STORYPATHS!" option, and Mass Effect (and probably all Bioware WRPGs, though I haven't played them -all-) which takes the "DO ALL THE REPLAYS!" option.
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Skyrim: 1000/1000. Complete, or as complete as this game gets. My last achievement was Master Criminal, and I did it with themes relating to each Hold.
Same, though Platinum and not nearly so exotic an endgame as yours. Just some Hailing Sithis and things were done.