The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => General Chat => Topic started by: DragonKnight Zero on January 01, 2021, 06:26:55 PM
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Surprisingly, not starting off with yapping about Atelier. Well, only a little. It just sunk in I have a console capable of playing early Atelier. I lack the Japanese literacy to do so though and I hear the early games are kind of clunky and rough so not much incentive to seek imports.
Tales of Symphonia - The last rodeo
Thought I'd have nothing interesting to relate about a replay where I start with carryover titles, over 350,000 Gald, and 30 item capacity. But then proto-Flonne dies in 3 consecutive boss fights, twice while controlling her which is quite comical considering I got Friendship First on the previous playthrough (no allies KO'ed before a set boss fight). As well as Eternal Apprentice on the same one (and glad I never have to do that again unless I'm feeling masochistic). So she's very low-leveled for a while which is compounded by blazing through not fighting many randoms. Raine also dropped at the Clumsy Assassin and I managed to finish a later boss with Lloyd in the dirt too. This time around, I do the unicorn quest before unlocking the 4th seal which gives scenes that are new to me. Some of them are quite funny. "Pact, pact, pact."
I reach just before the first Tower of Salvation visit and its big plot reveals with a battle count of 124. This is noteable only because the last Training Manual entry requires 150 and a party member who won't be around for a while after the tower. Could have played it safe and grind them out and get some progress towards Berserker while at it. Go on for science and because how often am I really going to look at this point?
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Mega Man 5 - Continuing the weapon-focused playthroughs. This time, the required order of use was Gravity > Gyro > Wave > Napalm > Crystal > Stone > Charge > Star.
For the most part, the stages weren't too bad, or at least no harder than normal. Perhaps the biggest exception was Crystal, who's just a rough boss to buster. But overall, nothing I couldn't handle.
The Darkman/Wily stages get way tougher though. Most took me a few tries to finally get through.
Darkman 4 is just a boss, but beating it with essentially an uncharged buster (Gyro) is tough! He 5HKOs and requires good play to dodge.
Wily Fortress 2 features a tricky stage (lots of platforming over pits) followed by a tricky boss weak to Gyro. I get through eventually by managing to conserve ammo so I have just enough Gyro to win.
The boss rush isn't too bad relatively, I mostly just use up my weapons in order against their weaknesses. Takes a few game overs to get things right but it's fine. Helps that the Wily boss at the end is really easy.
But no, the big problem in this playthrough came at the very end, against the final boss. Oddly MM5 does not have what is normally considered a particularly difficult final boss, but... here's the deal. There are two forms, and both are immune to Gravity and Wave, so my first two weapons in order are Gyro and Napalm. Both do 1 damage to each form. And it is virtually impossible to hit the first form with Napalm without getting hit, because you have to get right in close and he can either shoot you in the face with a cannon ball or use a suction attack which pulls you into him for impact damage. The whole point of the fight normally is to keep your distance!
So, yeah. If I run out of Gyro I'm using Napalm here and I'm toast. Obvious solution is to not miss with Gyro when killing the first form (or maybe at most once). But there's an extra problem; on the way to the boss (which you have to redo if you die), there are a couple of enemies immune to Gravity who are too big to jump over or walk past, so either I have to kill them (using up substantial amounts of Gyro ammo) or take damage from them. I settle for taking damage. 6 each time = 12 total, leaving me with only 16 health to beat both forms of the final boss. And while the bosses aren't the toughest in the series, hitting them 56 times (since I'm only doing 1 damage) before I get hit 3-4 times (depending on what hits me) is rough! Final boss has cool music, though.
I eventually do it after 2 or 3 hours of trying. After 20+ times of reliably getting to the boss with only taking the two hits from the big robot enemies, I eventually let myself use the Switch Collection's load game feature to restart right before the boss, since I figure this is just saving my sanity.
Weapon thoughts:
-Gravity Hold is interesting and well-balanced overall. You only get 7 shots, 1-3 kill anything, you can fire it quickly, and it hits everything on the screen. Nukes problems with great accuracy, but limited ammo. In this playthrough I largely end up using it at the start of most stages, so RIP first rooms. Interestingly although it costs 4 WE, you can use it even if you only have 2 left, so getting even a small recharge is another shot.
-Gyro Attack is a respectable weapon, decent power, initially goes horizontally and you then can changes its direction to up or down at any point by pressing up/down. Don't slide after firing it unless you want it to go down! It's quite useful overall, good power and flexible, though the one per screen limit hurts.
-Water Wave is AWFUL, holy shit. In a series with bad groundcrawlers (Bubble, Snake) somehow this the worst one yet. You can't even fire it unless you're on the ground, it doesn't climb walls, there's a one-per-screen limit. It can cancel shots travelling low to the ground but that's about it. Lowish power too, often needs two shots to kill things. Gross. It also costs 2 WE per use for some reason, but this is a mercy since I use it up faster.
-Napalm Shot is another ground-crawler, a slow moving one. Great. But this one can be fired in the air, has decent power, and explodes when it hits something, so it's far far better than Wave.
The weapons past that point see only limited use.
Fire Emblem Three Houses - Mage playthrough done!
Everyone went Monk -> Mage pretty much.
Byleth: Enlightened One -> Mortal Savant
The face when your personal class is basically MS without Tomefaire. Anyway Byleth trained bows up to C as well for Curved Shot and to have a pegasus-killer. She didn't typically OHKO pegasi anyway, but the options were certainly nice.
Edelgard: Warlock -> Valkyrie -> Dark Knight
Probably should have gone straight to Valk first but my poor planning. Anyway she ended up with horrible speed but incredible defence, so she usually strapped on the Aegis Shield and accepted being doubled for hopefully not too much damage. Her res was really high too, but still, anything which could overwhelm her got pretty scary. tbh I should have gotten her a guard adjutant as well. On offence she had nothing overwhelming but a bit of everything, Hades and Lightning Axe and Raging Storm and Brave Axe all offered various power options even though her magic was only middle-of-the-road.
Hubert: Paladin
Frozen Lance'd things, used Arrow of Indra, used Rally Magic occasionally. He had good mobility and OHKO potential, though fell off a bit towards the end.
Linhardt: Bishop
He healed and occasionally used Warp or attacked, although he was magic-screwed so everything that wasn't healing didn't actually work as well as I'd like. Held the Stride battalion. The 11th PC.
Dorothea: Warlock -> Mortal Savant
Kinda got RNG blessed, had the best speed on the team as well as high charm and magic. Also Physic, Thoron, Meteor, Hexblade, got Black Range +1 quickly due to snowballing. Probably the overall playthrough MVP (certainly had the most kills).
Sylvain: Warlock -> Dark Knight
Lower magic, but higher speed than other mages. Gave him Vestra Sorcery Engineers so he'd have decent avoid (stack with Evasion Ring and Black Magic Avoid for +40 total), which allowed him to bait some things, especially when on favourable terrain. Also had Physic.
Mercedes: Bishop -> Gremory
A bit RNG-screwed and I didn't get her super-early. So she was primarily a healer but could still throw in competent enough damage. Also was my res-tank, with the Hexlock Shield and armour Annette adjutant.
Lysithea: Valkyrie -> Gremory
Luna is such a good troubleshooter for the mage team (she and Edelgard were my only really good options for enemies with super-high res). Between that, Dark Spikes, and high power, she had an answer for a lot of things, though really wants a range-booster of course, especially once I sent her back to Gremory (which I don't regret, 4 Lunas instead of 2 for lategame was crucial).
Marianne: Valkyrie
Didn't get her until Chapter 6 so joining with E reason kinda sucks, and she never did get Fimbulvetr, but Frozen Lance and Thoron are both great options, and another Physic user is nice too.
Constance: Dark Flier
Dark Flier is busted and whoever I put in it was destined to be useful. Constance also had good damage but shaky accuracy with her power spells (due to limited supports and Nuvelle Fliers having poor hit). Rescue was nice sometimes.
Hapi: Dancer
Was getting respectable stats overall but I ended up putting her in Dancer due to being able to get Move+1 relatively easily from her riding boon (could have used Marianne for this as well I suppose... they're pretty similar! But Mari does have Frozen Lance).
Jeritza: Only used as a 12th, never did anything besides use the Blessing gambit on others (survive fatal damage once per battle), which never ended up actually kicking in but did allow me to deal with the final boss much more safely.
The last two maps are probably the ones where the team was a bit weaker compared to a normal one, partly because enemy stats spike up so OHKOs (something mages are often good at) get harder, and partly because the monsters have anti-magic barriers so I had to poke a hole with a blessed weapon or gambit then barrage away before they recharge. Worked though. The two big Chapter 17 bosses were both pretty tricky, especially the moving one (Luna MVP), and the final had more durability when I couldn't shove lots of brave weapons down her throat. Even after all remaining my gambits and five Raging Storms I still had some more HP left to carve through, but fortunately Edelgard's defences were super-high so she could even survive a crit (+double, with Blessing) and Sylvain could almost null her hit on player phase, both of which helped. Still no full resets, so hey! Was fun.
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Super Mario Bros. 2 (All-Stars edition via Switch online)
Summoning Salt doing a new video reminded me that it's been ages since I replayed SMB2. Decided to give the All-Stars version a shot, never played that one before. Was gonna do all the stages (no warps) and generally try to avoid major shortcuts; we'll take the scenic route. I picked a random character for 1-1 then always advanced to the next character right in strict rotation (barring times I muffed up, I guess?).
Thoughts? Well, 3-3 is still a MASSIVE SLOG, I remember that. Sheesh is that a long level; while any one part isn't necessarily super-hard, it adds up over time. And... the world 5 stages are hard. Granted, this is a bit of an artifact of having a lot of practice on stage 6 & 7 thanks to how warps work in the NES version, and not much practice with stage 5, but still, sheesh. Didn't help I drew Toad for the jumping across waterfalls with flying fish stage of nonsense that Luigi mocks but Toad has to play the hard way. Yeah, there was some Switch emulator rollback abuse there. Also, is it just me, or are the Bob-ombs way less cute in the All-Stars version?
World 6 wasn't so bad even taking the long route for 6-3. Stage 7-1, same. 7-2... hrmm. I died once to the stage, once to the bird head gate at the end, but had 11 lives left going into Wart, so what could the problem be, right? Well. Um. Yeah, Wart wrecked me and easily crushed all of my attempts; this was having 3 life too (getting 4 life I seem to recall being really annoying on 7-2). I didn't even get CLOSE to beating him; maybe I fed him 3 vegetables once. While I clearly remember some of the stages well enough, I've apparently totally forgotten how to fight Wart, or he's tougher in All-Stars; that bubble spray just hits a huge area and blocks my attempts to feed him vegetables. I can feed him at point-blank range if I get a lucky guess on when he's about to open his mouth but that risks both getting hit as well as just ramming into him. Yowch. (I've got a save state for the fight, so I really have infinite lives, but was trying to play somewhat legit-y, which means getting sent back to 7-1 after you lose your last life on Wart! Ouch!) Moral is clearly Wart for Smash.
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So I blew through Mega Man 3 again. (not in one sitting) Rather than try to give highlights and lowlights, I'm using as an excuse to yap about the special weapons. Namely, giving my ratings on how fun they are to use. This is a completely subjective rating where I incorporate overall usefulness, how enjoyable it is to use, and creativity. Gimmicky weapons are seen as a positive. Scale out of 10 just because.
Needle Cannon: 4/10 Kneejerk is lower actually. But it has built-in autofire and low ammo consumption so that boosted my rating. Lacking in power though maybe I need to experiment more. Still, only firing forwards means it's dull to use and I may as well stick with the peashooter unless I'm feeling exceptionally lazy.
Magnet Missile: 5/10 There's a few sections where it's really useful and one of the few options for hitting enemies high up that Shadow Blade can't reach. Can burn through ammo really fast being able to have two onscreen at once. Has an annoying tendency to go after projectiles rather than the enemy firing them or miss on enemies with decently fast horizontal movement (like the bomb droppers or the ones that launch torpedoes from below) which kept it from a higher rating.
Gemeini Laser: 2/10 The gimmick is a funny one, I'll give it that. However, missing a shot reveals a lot of weaknesses. There can be only one shot on the screen at a time and you're unable to pause with any weapon fire onscreen (that doesn't change until Megaman 4) so you're very vulnerable while it's bouncing around. And if you're not reflecting it off surfaces, it becomes another ho-hum forward firing weapon. The satisfaction of making trick shots with the laser is enough to boost the rating, even more on a moving target. On pure usefulness, it would be a one or even a zero.
Hard Knuckle: 4/10 Being able to alter its vertical axis raises the fun factor and the usefulness. Packs decent power too. Slow firing speed just doesn't do it for me in most cases though. And it does seem to lack a certain oomph in a power weapon because of the firing sound being the same as the buster. Yes, I am lowering the rating because of this. Being able to smack Gamma in the head out of its firing line is a fun time though.
Top Spin: 5/10 Most of the rating is in the silliness and fun factor. Flinging Megaman around like some berserk ballerina is such a novel thing. Has it's uses in stages but the all-or-nothing nature of Top Spin can make it frustrating to use. Either it oneshots the target or the enemy is immune and Mega eats collision damage. So takes a lot of memorization to get the best mileage out of it.
Search Snake: 7/10 I got a lot of use out of this thanks to low energy consumption and the fact it scales walls. Deals with other ground hugging enemies quite well without the hassle of aiming. Less than ideal for enemies on the same horizontal plane; use something else. This also isn't a power weapon, barely doing more damage than a buster shot except on select foes. Robotic snakes are a more exotic form of attack than yet another plasma, fire, or weapon with pointy bits and the creativity of it also boosts the rating I gave it.
Spark Shock: 1/10 I wanted to give it a zero but it's very well suited to two of the bosses. The other bosses it hits weakness on, Shadow Blade also hits for the same damage. Sucks to be you Spark Shock. Spark Shock's issues are fairly well documented but I wanted to write about them anyways. It can only stun regular enemies, not kill. Thing is, a stunned enemy is counted as a weapon shot onscreen so you can't switch weapons after stunning one unless you move far away enough that it's no longer on the screen. Combine this with that this only fires forward; geez using this is actively detrimental when you hit something in front of you. It just creates the awkward situation of trying to work around that stunned enemy and now you can't switch weapons until the enemy is unstunned. Could try to zap flying or jumping enemies with it so they don't block the way forward. Or just kill them with something else or use Rush to evade them and not be a sitting duck. If it could be aimed in 8 directions like Metal Blade, it could have theoretical use to zap something so that it doesn't get in your path but what we got is such a letdown.
Shadow Blade: 8/10 5-way aiming (couldn't aim down with it), decent but not overwhelming power (so it doesn't overshadow everything else in the arsenal), low energy use so it can be used often. Many applications during stages. This is one of the few MM3 weapons that isn't a disappointment for use outside bosses. Ninja stars also have that cool factor going for them. I don't have that much else to say about Shadow Blade; it's the quirky, gimmicky, or awful weapons that inspired me to do this writeup.
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Brigandine LoR - Beaten as Shinobi, on Hard (first time playing Hard)
The biggest difference of Hard seems to be that the enemy does get better monsters faster, and scale into the later stages of the game better. The earlygame is pretty unchanged, near as I can tell, beyond the enemies being smarter about retreating after their monsters attack. I basically steamrolled the earlygame anyway, Shinobi have a super-easy path into Norzaleo and then Gustava during which they only rarely need to have more than 3 borders, and Shinobi have more than enough competent knights for that. The toughest part was taking over the centre of the continent which came later, when I needed to expand the border count to 5 and the enemy had done a decent job levelling up, but fortunately Shinobi had the tools to handle it.
Interesting nation, especially playing after MS. There's no one super-dominant knight in Shinobi. Nobody is as good as Stella, and certainly not Rudo. And despite having not played them, I feel pretty confident that nobody is as good as Eliza or Tim either. Instead, the nation has literally about half a dozen knights who could be the second best in many countries, or in the conversation for it. Some specific notes, detailing every character I got to tier 3 on this run:
Medessa - There's always a case to be made that the best knight is the one with the most magic pool, so here she is. 5 command range too, only one in the country. I just used her as a pure Saint, Area Heal is nice and there are worse things than having healing options (Cure, Heal) as needed. Divine Ray has enough oomph to kill things, though only range 2 is a downer, and Paralyze at range 3 is a neat trick other saints don't get. I do think that I probably should have reclassed her ASAP (she starts with Healer mastered)... you trade away some HP but getting another knight with Charm (Enchantress) or buffs/debuffs (Bard) is a big deal.
Toby - The other end of the spectrum, has the lowest magic pool of the nation's "good" knights (still above average), but has the best combat. His dodgetanking is insane (game-best Agi, +40 from class, buffs himself further with one of his attacks), and unlike many melee units, he actually has a decent 1-3 range attack, even in tier 2, so he doesn't need to worry about getting tied up on the front lines the way most melee knights do. Just so good, even without the ability to do super-high damage.
Della - Or maybe she had the best combat, IDK. Since the hard parts of the run came later she was actually around for most of them. Not as dodgy as Toby but still pretty darn dodgy, and just so flexible - range 1 nuke, range 2 coinflip status + decent damage, Double Movement to get where you want after it.
Sid - I think my biggest departure from Super is that I don't really see the appeal of Sword Master? It needs to use its buff just to match Assassin evade (still a nice option, mind), and it has no ranged damage or double movement. The range-1 high-damage move is nice but since it's not post-movement it can be a bit hard to use when you really need it (and you only get one shot, and it doesn't hit that much harder than Assassin's anyway tbh). Sid is still a very solid all-rounder with good stats everywhere, but never felt like he was challenging for the MVP. Maybe I should have made him a Treasure Hunter, especially since he'd be suffering through Thief during the easy part of the run.
Carla - Kinda like Sid, she's very generically competent in all stats (bit less Str/Agi, bit more durability/rune). I like her class more in tier 3 because Grand Wave is so good, though less in tier 2. It's funny how she's so clearly a better Emma on paper, but MS standards for knights are so much worse that Emma's in the running for #2 knight of her nation and Carla definitely isn't.
Reche - Project character but actually good? Again, benefits from early Shinobi being on the easy side. i dualled her with five levels of Enchantress followed by Bard, so she was basically a Bard with Charm and Frost (the latter mostly just saw use for getting kills and levels in the early going). Charm good, though. Loads of magic pool, good skillset. The squishiness was something to watch, though.
Jose - Worse version of Sid (he starts four levels higher and his only advantage is a bit more rune which will vanish), but definitely still respectable.
Sylvie and Scymerius - Gustava sure has pretty good defeat-bonus knights. They were filler but competent at it, both made it to tier 3.
Talia - She's the weakest ruler, probably (can't comment on Rubino vs her yet, but he seems better?). Still, there's a lot to like about her. Still has the second highest magic pool in the nation by a fair bit. Takes hits much better than most "mages" and having a 2-range breath weapon that hits decently hard AND is actually IFF is nice (meaning it's still useful even if she's hiding behind a bulky monster). After promotion, Area Heal and Holy Word are nice tools too, and she has the MP to use whatever she wants a lot. Just very flexible. That said, isn't a death tank the way many other rulers are, and I got burned for this once or twice... losing other knights is annoying, but it's extra terrible when it happens to a ruler since you auto-lose the battle and have no chance to win and thus reclaim any monsters they randomly leave behind.
In terms of monsters:
-This was the first run I used mandrakes a lot. I don't like their low move in tier 1, but the added status on all their stuff is a neat boon for a frontliner. No breath weapon, but a ST 1-3 move is still a nice option.
-Goblins feel quite buffed now with the third form. 1-3 post-movement lets them be centaur-like, and it has added status! Still inferior centaurs until then, of course, but there's no shame in that since centaurs rule.
-Titans... mm. Less impressed relatively. The last form gets a 1-2 line but unlike Talia's it's not IFF so it's just "hey this is what dragons and sea serpents have been doing since Level 1" and I don't think the cost is enough lower to justify it, especially with how bad the first two forms are relatively.
-I gained respect for Nightmare's push. It's something they can do on turns they need to move and is a great little repositioning option. You don't always want to push enemies, but fortunately Nightmares rarely want to attack otherwise, so it just ends up being yet another utility use for them. Such a great monster.
Such a good game, I'm starting to think I might have underrated it a bit.
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Hades - So good.
EDIT: Also, Zagreus and Thanatos are very much estranged lovers. Dionysus is the nice-cocked friend with benefits. Finally we have the egregiously gay roguelike I've been craving for all these years.
EDIT2 for the Greftars: https://twitter.com/KaiserNeko/status/1347850772273373186?s=20
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Fire Emblem Three Houses: Azure Moon
Finished. Sheesh Three Houses is a long game. I really wish that, similar to Bloodstained getting a classic mode, there was some sort of no-monastery and you'll like it option. I know Elf did that low-monastery run, but I found it difficult to avoid the honey trap of Optimized Between Mission gameplay, which helps stretch things out with lots and lots of dining-for-support conversations or the Sauna minigame yet again. Ah well. I did manage to get no less than 3 characters all the way to S+ for the last three missions, which I didn't come remotely close to in my more casual original run of the game, so the game does reward this a bit. (Felix got Bowfaire, Ingrid Lancefaire, and Annette Black Tomefaire.)
Final battle is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY_-H2Wg8WQ
Annoyingly enough, it seems that the sound isn't quite sync'd with the video. Wonder if there's an easy way to move the audio track 2 seconds later everywhere or the like? Ah well.
The infamous nastiest-ninja-reinforcement ever in the Azure Moon final did indeed burn some divine pulses, but is also kinda dumb. Like, given how Maddening is balanced, I'm not really sure what they were thinking. Almost nothing (maybe Flayn?) can survive 2x surprise siege tome hits, so it's "DP to staying really far back with only your dodgetank up front." That isn't actually interesting. (Or some sort of Retribution / Sacred Shield combo I guess.)
Anyway, characters / builds… were mostly pretty standard, really.
BylethM: Standard Merc - Assassin - Enlightened One, yawn. It's free and solid. Byleth was the only front-line normal swords user and this doesn't require any fancy training, meaning I didn't feel the need to branch out. And I'm always happy to have more free heals and the ability to fry Armor Knights. Despite his weak magic, got a decent amount of Levin Sword+ work in after Curved Shot Iron Bow fell off and to set up more linked attacks.
Dimitri: Cavalier - Paladin - Great Lord. Yep, nothing special here, except I gave Dimitri the Sacred Galewind Shoes from the DLC for +2 Move, a March Ring for +1 Move, and eventually +1 Move from A+ Riding. Got to skitter around on foot like he was a sprinter. Super Charm meant he landed some key Wave Attacks when getting mobbed by enemies (e.g. Reunion at Dawn, or Fort Merceus when you take out one of the reinforcement sides and foolishly haven't taken out the central units like I did.)
Ingrid: Pegasus Knight - Falcon Knight. I gave her the Knowledge Gem early so she got to Alert Stance+ really fast (C9 or so?). While her damage is tragic, a really good dodgetank that can also eat magic attacks is just essential on the last few maps which love their long-range mages. More than once I was able to send her off on solo missions to distract enemies I didn't want to deal with while the rest of the team mobbed the others, such as on the Enbarr city map where Ingrid could distract a bunch of Flying Demonic Beasts.
Felix: Archer - Sniper. Got MVP a lot, probably was the MVP. Felix qualified for Bow Knight, but I never ended up using it; Maddening enemies are just too damn fast, meaning that Hunter's Volley was just always better than a regular attack, even with a Brave Bow. I gave Felix a Boots and the Fetters of Dromi for total +2 Move and Canto, allowing the same kind of move forward, kill something, dance back pattern that Bow Knight has, and the Hit / Crit increase combined with picking between Iron Bow+, Silver Bow+, and Killer Bow+ depending on how much damage was required still killed damn near everything.
Annette: Mage - Dark Flier. Got Thrysus and eventually Black Mage Range +1 for super unfair strike from a zillion miles off then fly away shenanigans, great for aggroing enemies. Did some cheesy extra qualifications since DF bases suck so badly, notably Wyvern Rider / Fortress Knight / Warlock. While Annette's stats do not age well, the Weight -3 from training up her Armor was relevant for a nice long time to keep her speed from going completely in the tank. Practically never used Crusher or Dust, although did use Lightning Axe'd Devil Axes before then occasionally.
Ashe: Brigand - Wyvern Rider - Wyvern Lord. Even with Deathblow and Strength+2, Ashe struggles to get OHKOs, barring breaking out a Brave Axe vs. the frail. Thankfully, Seal Defense and Curved Shot / Deadeye make him fantastic for softening enemies up for a Hunter's Volley / Swift Strikes / Brave Axe / whatever, and hey, sometimes there are injured units that can be safely cleaned up by Ashe. The defense break effect was always pretty handy on monsters as well to make it efficient to chew through 'em. Like Annette, the stats let him down, but no unit in Wyvern Lord or Dark Flier is ever gonna be truly bad.
Dedue: Brigand - Wyvern Rider - Wyvern Lord. Yep, worked against the flying bane to get another WL, it wasn't as bad as I feared. Helps salvage Dedue's speed decently, especially in the midgame, even if the trick mostly stops working by endgame. For the most part, I didn't really need/use Brave weapons that much, but timeskip Dedue was definitely the exception: he needed the Brave Axe rather than Killer Axe / Silver Axe Smashes decently often, but his murderous strength made his Brave Axe kill way more stuff than Ashe, of course.
Mercedes: Mage - Bishop - Gremory. She got Caduceus and (very late) Black Magic Range +1, so could also do some ranged chip nonsense herself. Decent mix of a front-line chipper and a back-line healer; the fact she has an actual speed stat was very nice. Losing Bishop's bonus to healing when going Gremory was unfortunate though and was definitely felt in her Physics / Fortifies feeling a bit puny compared to expectations.
Sylvain: Cavalier-Paladin. Killed stuff with Swift Strikes Scythe of Sariel.
Seteth: Cavalier-Paladin. Killed stuff with Swift Strikes Lance of Assal.
Dorothea: Mage-Dancer. Her job was to have a Meteor tome out as often as possible and provide free linked attack bonuses, pretty much.
Marianne: Priest - Trickster - Bishop. She helped take up the slack on healing which allowed Mercie to do more front-line smashing, although she got to swing around a Levin Sword+ occasionally. Did indeed get to Beast Fang some cavaliers in the face on C19 and the like with Blutgang.
I did build Caspar so he could get the turn 1 win on The Face Beneath (didn't seem like something that would make sense to delay), so I guess he was the 13th character? Recruited him as late as possible in C12, ground up Deathblow and Fierce Iron Fist on him in aux battles / as an adjutant, then Mercie Ragnarok (backed by Gilbert as a defensive adjutant to ensure DK didn't horribly overkill her on the counterattack) into Fierce Iron Fist did the trick. But then it was back to adjutant duty for him.
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Hades - Beaten six times. I felt like I was at a major wall with the final boss then something clicked about the fight and now I've beaten it six times our of seven (and the one loss I was very, very close to a win).
Like everyone else has already figured out, this game is good. Not sure how much longer I'm gonna play it. I'm close to one reasonable stopping point but pretty sure I want to do more than that, just not sure how much.
Wild Arms 4 - Beat this again for my line counting project. It's still good. Everything seems easy after how crazy my last challenge run was, this time I still just banned Intrude/Slow Down and nah I generally know the game too well. Also the game gave me three Tiny Flowers from drops/steals, that kinda breaks the game.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Decided to download this for the PS4. Yep, frame rate is definitely a lot better!
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Octopath Traveller - Played, cleared all 8 character's stories, game has some annoying design decisions and the job system doesn't grab me quite as much as others but I still enjoyed it well enough to actually want to bother with the aftergame content.
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In SnowFire has become a crochety retro-gamer or something, I should probably add that I did eventually beat SMB2 All-Stars and Wart, and hadn't miscounted - 5 stages for everybody.
Cyber-Shadow
I had literally never heard of this game until the day before it came out, but it looked pretty cool - Castlevania III is to Bloodstained Curse of the Moon as Ninja Gaiden is to this, maybe (although there are other influences - there's one boss + music that is blatantly ripped from Metroid Fusion of all games, there's a few bits that are more Mega Man esque as well). I think this is the result of a minor Monkey's Paw wish after playing Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment, which was a cool platformer but a little too easy. "Can't I have something like that", SnowFire said, "but more difficult?" Well, here we go, and the Paw was not kidding about the difficulty part. It's still quite cool, but I'm not 100% sure I'll be able to beat the final stages, which get absolutely brutal. The game is generous in that there's essentially no penalty for dying, you just get sent back to the previous checkpoint, but just a checkpoint-to-checkpoint trip can be dangerous enough by endgame.
To go into a bit more detail... the music slaps, definitely one of the highlights. Jake Kaufman didn't write it but did produce/finish it and he only works on good stuff, and newcomer Enrique Martin does a fine job as well. Lots of tracks as well - all the bosses have their own themes, stages frequently have a change halfway through, etc. The story does one part quite nicely that is kinda my jam so far as far as what 8-bit stories are good at - that is, having an excuse to hide / not make explicit due to paucity of dialogue. Makes certain "hiding in plain sight" plot points easier to pull off. (Specifically: So, there are "synthetics" rampaging everywhere for the enemies you fight. And the health stations are computer terminals with options like "Automated Repair" to fix your health. And despite the protagonist calling himself "Shadow," the game itself is called "Cyber Shadow." And you eventually read about how AIs can be made of people that are their most focused desires. Yeah, the game doesn't explicitly say it - at least not yet - but you can put two and two together and sagely nod that yes, we're in a Blade Runner situation here, very cute, we're playing a ninja robot clone.) There's also the later-Metroid style plot dumps of "read computer terminals" which works well enough (as well as sense dead spirits or the like to talk to dead people, because we're a spiritual kind of ninja).
Anyway, to loop back to the difficulty... so the game starts off as a rather no-frills platformer, which is part of the appeal of retro games to me (less craziness going on, few options other than git gud). As you progress, you unlock more and more special abilities, and the game expects you to learn them and use them. e.g. you eventually get to parry (most) enemy bullets, and you better learn the timing on that - the parried shots deal tons of damage and the game starts introducing enemies that will throw a hail of projectiles at you, clearly expecting you to reflect them or get owned. So by Stage 8 or so, you're in practically a different game, capable of doing crazy double jump & triple dash nonsense. To prevent you from just dashing past everything at light speed, the game helpfully starts throwing spikes and bottomless pits and walls and other such things everywhere. I'm on Stage 10, the penultimate stage (Meka City Spaceport), and we'll see if my patience holds out - nothing like traveling on moving platforms around tons of insta-kill walls with flying enemies ready to knock you into them.
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Some random blather about my previous FFT playthrough as well as some more recent stuff.
Dogoula Pass: Accidentally killed everyone the first time when I wanted to steal some stuff oops. The enemies on the lower level bunched up for a MA Up Cyclops to nuke them all and a Lightning Stab and a summon dropped the upper level archer and wizard resulting in a one round win. Redid the fight holding back a little so I could nab an Oberisk and Crystal Helmet.
Bervania Free City: It just so happened that my Math Skill caster ended up on the rotation for this fight. I've played the game enough times that another session of Meliadoul's support sniping at me from the high ground didn't appeal so didn't bother to play nice. Nearly all the enemies helpfully moved to panels such the Height Prime Number Holy on round one smashed them good. Meliadoul survived the Holy bombardment and recovered through her auto-regen. Which suits me fine since I intended to rob her of her rare gear and don't want her dying to counter attacks. Maintenance on everyone and Threaten on her is a hilarious way of neutralizing her for theft attempts.
Tales of Symphonia: Disc 1 finished. It turns out that nope, I don't get to acquire the missing Training Manual entry. Thought I was on pace for Gung Ho title despite not trying for it but the last four required boss fights give a lot of EXP and I ended up a bit too high so gave up. Maybe I could have made it by letting Zelos die after getting nuked by Indignation but oh well. There was also one fight I could have solo cheesed but forgot to. Kind of irritates my completionist urges but not enough to restart the game over it. First time I've ever used Presea's Personal skill and wow, I've really been missing out. Free cooking ingredients over time is a helpful perk.
Didn't fight Sword Dancer 2 but I already know it won't disappear yet (contrary to what every last FAQ says). Found out by accident on a previous playthrough where I forgot to fight it and found it was still there at the start of disc 2.
Megaman 8: Loaded up my save where I've already beaten all 8 robot masters and took a crack at the Wily stages... oh no, not another Turbo Tunnel section. I'm not ready for the amount of rote memorization it will take. In spite of my grumblings, it isn't that bad before the crumbling platforms, yuck. Maybe at some point I'll put in the rote memorization to pass this and maybe I won't but not now.
Er, yeah, Dr. Wahwee. The voice acting didn't make as big an impression on me as the hype promised. Mostly because I could barely hear it. A combination of low volume settings and my TV having janky and worn A/V connections such that I'm generally only getting sound through one speaker at a time.
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In a mood to blather.
Megaman 8 again: Gave the jetboard Turbo Tunnel segment in Wah-wee 1 another 15 attempts. Got farther than before but still haven't cleared it. Still hate it.
Power Battle 2: I've had this unlocked for over a year but never bothered to try it until now. Fairly standard sequel with some enhancements to the formula from the first one. Seems to be harder than the first game as well but I haven't spent as much time with this to really claim one way or the other. no, I haven't 1cc'ed it yet, credit feeding to see the bosses.
Final Fantasy Tactics: Dusted off my FF5 team save that had been unused for years and beat another story battle. Feels weird finishing fights as fast as possible. Bartz/Galuf have worst compatibility with each other as well as Faris/Krile so things have a potential to get messy with support and healing.
Not that it matters to mention but this particular game I only stop to grind or do propositions when raising cash for equipment. So the skillsets are less developed than a normal playthrough. So even though gamebreakers like Math Skill, Blade Grasp, and Auto-Potion are technically allowed in Chapter 4, it's less likely the training to learn them will be squeezed into the rush.
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So my project for the year(?) is playing (or replaying) every single mainline Dragon Quest game.
Dragon Quest - The original! I played the Switch remake/port, which is based off the mobile version (which is in turn based off an earlier Japanese phone port which was in turn based off the SNES remake). I'm not sure if the difficulty of this version was tuned at all differently than the SNES/GB versions since it's been too long since I played those; anyway, this is a very streamlined version of DQ1. Finished it in two sessions I think, maybe it was one long one; I went against the Dragonlord a bit underleveled and got lucky. There's not a whole lot to be said about DQ1; it's a very simplistic game, and most of its enduring value is as an artifact of early electronic RPG history, but it's not actually bad as a handheld game timewaster at all.
Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line - Once again, I played the Switch remake, with the same provenance as DQ1's. This version of the game is definitely significantly changed from the SNES/GB version; the level curve is different, they buffed the prince of Cannock (even more), and the difficulty curve is also smoother. Nonetheless, it's still recognizably DQ2 at its core - enemies are notably more dangerous than most later games even with a stronger Cannock, and I had several full wipes and several more near-wipes throughout the game. The cave to Rendarak (Rhone in the old translation) is still brutally difficult.
Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation - Once again, played on Switch, where it's basically the SNES version without the annoying pachisi minigame. Good riddance IMO. Pretty standard run of DQ3 on the whole, but I used a Merchant as my main melee attacker to mix things up a little from the usual and they performed better than I expected. +Resilience personalities are, IMO, far and away the best to go with in this game (even moreso than Vamp IMO) - having lots of HP really takes the bite out of most of the game.
Dragon Warrior IV - Played the NES version this time rather than remakes! I still like this version of the game the most - AI allies don't bother me and I'm pretty good at manipulating the AI anyway thanks to tricks learned from watching speedruns. Bosses in the remakes feel much sloggier to me than this version, almost as if they overtuned them to compensate for manual control. On some level, I still find DQ4 NES to be something of a technical marvel for the console - it's honestly kind of embarrassing that most JRPG AI control schemes have not really improved on DQ4's model.
Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride - This one was played on DS. Finished it for the first time, though I'd played *most* of it previously. The hero married Nera and I fielded the family team against the final boss, who went down on the first try. Overall it was a pretty smooth playthrough and a largely enjoyable game, think I'd put it in the top half of the series for me? The level curve is weird since you keep getting new PCs even late in the game but they come with highish stats for their low levels, so catching them up isn't actually hard.
Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation - DS version, and it's my first time playing this one. Haven't finished yet, would estimate I'm about 3/4 of the way through the game? On the one hand I really like the narrative themes of DQ6, it's quite inventive conceptually with the whole real world/dream world split it has going. On the other hand I feel like it has the worst gameplay of the Zenithia trilogy with the weakest (mechanically) PC cast this side of DQ2. The enemies are similarly overtuned too (and this is accounting for the fact that the DS version cut all enemies' HP by 25%). The job system is poorly executed, and I think the DS version boosting EXP gain by 20% actually exacerbates this, since the level caps for job advancement in each area weren't adjusted in this version. (The mobile version does but I'm not playing that.) That said, I haven't actually been running into the caps for a while, so maybe it doesn't matter that much. But I haven't been intentionally grinding at all and, this far in the game, don't even have an advanced class yet. So the class system is too damn grindy.
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Disgaea 6 - It really is about time for N1 to stop with Disgaea.
The story and characters are again not as fun as before.
They cut away the weapon skills and a large amount of of the common jobs.
The transmigration system gut buffed so much that the equipment and item world mattered less than before.
And then there is the auto button that just do the grinding for you.
And then it became a loop of auto battle-transmigration-auto battle-transmigration till there is nothing left to do....
Disgaea is... not like this. Just... what went wrong?
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Niu: I think that was the mobile game leaking over to Disgaea 6, since autobattle was a feature there too:
https://www.4gamer.net/games/530/G053005/20210107033/
(hattip to Djinn for the interview link)
But yeah, one of those tricky traps, similar to how people complained about FF12 playing itself with gambits. You DO want to eliminate busywork... but... sometimes the busywork was what was guarding players from casually breaking the game, and if they do want to break the game, make 'em work for it.
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In other random comments...
* Yeah, I beat Cyber-Shadow, was just frustrated on one checkpoint-to-checkpoint travel, the rest of Stage 10 didn't turn out THAT bad. If you want a rough idea of the flavor of the later stages:
https://twitter.com/AngryangryD/status/1355075837440258048
If you cross those platforms like a normal person rather than a dash-spamming awesome cyberninja, note that they sink if you stand on them too long, and there are those helpful dudes who jump up in-between to intercept your jump and send you plummeting. Also if you're doing the dash strategy shown in the tweet, your dash only refreshes if you hit an enemy or touch the floor, so screwing up the aim on those dashes also sends you plummeting to your doom.
* Re personalities in DQ3 remakes, I'm not quite as sure as Reiska on +resilience necessarily being the way to go. It is definitely great in that raw HP is the most useful defensive stat, but trusty ol' more speed-is-always-better in Bat out of Hell / Quick is pretty busted too. Certainly it's handy for random-clearing, which is a pretty major part of DQ3. On the other hand, remake Baramos is a ridiculous roadblock, so I can see the argument for "anything that helps in that fight".
** Yeah, the final bosses of DQ5 aren't... that bad. Notably, Bishop Ladja is a lot scarier in his earlier boss form than the form at the final evil mountain, which just randomly goes down like a chump.
* Been going through White Clouds on playthrough #4 of FE3H, trying to clean out all the remaining unused characters. (Which I won't quite get.. Alois & Anna will still be "not part of the main team" at the end of this, but just them.) (EDIT: Oh, right, Gilbert too. Eh, using him for Weathervanes of Fodlan is close enough.) My comment will be... I do think Shamir & Catherine were "intended" to be recruited around Level 15 (=C7 or C8), which makes them serviceable-but-nothing-special (and Shamir doesn't grow that well), but whether it was an intended easter egg or just a whoopsie, increasing support to C+ (even when C+ doesn't exist as a support conversation level!) knocks that level requirement down to L9, and if you C4 recruit Catherine, wow, due to the way class mins work for a L7 character in Swordmaster. It's like force-feeding her massive stat boosters (+5-6 Strength, for a start!). Shamir also gets substantially better with a prompt C6 recruitment. I have never seen the C6 Death Knight be such a chump - okay, he actually DID get a Killing Intent crit and murder Catherine the first time, but post-DP and having the higher Luck Byleth eat the blow, a Rally Str (Balthus) / Rally Dex (Hapi) / Rally Spd (Ignatz) Catherine in SM could Quad DK with Thunderbrand for massive overkill damage (he actually died before the Quad even happening of course, just took 2 blows).
I had this thought in Azure Moon too, but the DLC battalions - specifically the 3x Nuvelle servant whatevers, and the various battalion rewards from the Wolves Paralogues (Leister Dicers, Timtheos Magi Corps, Mockingbird's Thieves, and Nuvelle Flyers) are just insane, and help devalue bothering to get to A Authority. All 7 of them are endgame worthy and are just C / B rank required, although I'll grant that the C-rank servant brigades 45 durability eventually becomes an issue. Especially handy in this playthrough as I have a lot of mixed damage threats (Trickster Yuri, Trickster Manuela, and War Monk Balthus notably, also Byleth to a degree - building more Mageleth but she occasionally takes a physical shot as well), and normally you're stuck with just Gloustcer Knights as a good P & M Atk battalion, but the DLC battalions help fix that a lot.
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Disgaea 6 - It really is about time for N1 to stop with Disgaea.
The story and characters are again not as fun as before.
They cut away the weapon skills and a large amount of of the common jobs.
The transmigration system gut buffed so much that the equipment and item world mattered less than before.
And then there is the auto button that just do the grinding for you.
And then it became a loop of auto battle-transmigration-auto battle-transmigration till there is nothing left to do....
Disgaea is... not like this. Just... what went wrong?
I played a good chunk of D6 JP and I mostly just skipped using the autobattle features. Just like with any Disgaea game, if you're not grinding, the story mode can actually put up a fight. Honestly, there were quite a number of fights that had some stellar map design that genuinely made me rethink the usual Disgaea strategies. Probably some of the best map design in the franchise. I like that the autobattle features are there for accessibility purposes or if I wanted to do a second run. But it rubs me the wrong way to see people complain about it... it's like when people skip all the cutscenes and then complain that a game's story sucks...
Regarding Weapon Skills - I kinda like that they removed the Weapon Skill system. Most of the iconic attacks have been made into Unique Class Skills for the various generics, which actually gives you a reason to use them this time, apart from aesthetics. I can understand people not liking the loss of unit customizability, but I like how this makes assessing an enemy unit in-battle a lot easier. You know what kind of strategy you need to use to handle them, without having to check their whole status screen. As a result of this, I think the devs were able to be more bold about the difficulty, since the game definitely put up more of a fight than any of the last 3 games.
I think in some ways, the Weapon Skill System was kind of a mistake from the beginning. While the Passive skills that got introduced in D3's Evility System did a lot to finally differentiate the generics, ultimately every Disgaea game has functionally had only 8 'classes' - depending on what Weapon type you chose to give any given generic. Stat differences and proficiencies flatten out fairly quickly unless you're doing a low-level/challenge run, so ultimately you're just left with which Weapon type a unit relies on (or being a Monster). D6 guts the customization but now there's actually 22 distinct classes worth using / battling. A big step up in my opinion.
tl;dr - Autobattle Option is good actually, game has the best unit balance and map design in the franchise; what I saw of the story seems pretty good but I'm gonna have to wait for the official localization before finally judging it since Disgaea localizations are (almost) always better than the originals
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Re: DQ3r personalities - speed is at least a clear second best IMO. In general I find speed is only worth twinking on classes that are already drowning in it, though, since turn order randomness is so extreme; and the class that benefits the most from twinking it (Martial Artist) benefits from twinking resilience *more* because otherwise its HP is problematic for Baramos. So I dunno. I'd agree it's at least an interesting tradeoff!
Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation - Well, the fourth Dread Fiend is down and I've got the last PC. Terry is ... honestly, there's no reason to ever use him in the DS version since he's almost certainly going to have the same class build on join as either the hero or Carver (since both take very well to Gladiator) and he's weaker than both by a fair bit; he *is* faster, however, which could be helpful I guess? I dunno. He's not terribly underleveled or anything; he's just underwhelming. On mobile he gets 5 more levels and 2 more mastered jobs, which would make him a little overleveled on raw levels compared to your team and a lot overleveled on class mastery (plus he has even more of an agility advantage from mobile version buffs!) so I'd say he's a far better PC there, since he can be immediately made into any one of your choice of Gladiator, Paladin, Armamentalist or Sage and he has the stats to be good at any of them (although, granted, his MP is a bit low for a caster).
In any event, I got to the final boss tonight, but there's absolutely no way I'm actually killing it at the levels I got there at. Think I'm going to just grind up to a level where I can have a much smoother fight. For what it's worth, I got to the final boss for the first time with a level 34 hero and my main party at rank 5 in their advanced classes, but it's not really a winnable fight in that state. The second phase in particular really wants you to have access to Disruptive Wave, since he will buff himself with Buff and Oomph and you cannot counter with Sap (he's immune); this requires rank 2 in the Hero class, which requires a mastered advanced class.
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Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation - Finished it now. I grinded until I unlocked the Hero class for, well, the hero, which took a fair while (I went from level 35 to level 43). Final boss wasn't terribly difficult with the extra levels, although I wouldn't say it was exactly a pushover still. My initial take mostly holds up: I loved the narrative and it might be my favorite plot of the middle trilogy, but I don't see myself replaying it likely ever since, unlike 4, it's not a quick and breezy playthrough. The poor tuning of the class system really drags it down - to unlock Disruptive Wave I ended up having to grind out about 125 battles or so over what I'd naturally faced over the course of the game.
Terry ended up being not useless, if only because he could be subbed in over the hero or Carver for a turn when they were at low HP at the start of a turn to allow me to keep doing damage while I healed (since Multiheal/Omniheal affect the non-active party as well). So that was nice. Didn't tackle the postgame bonus dungeon in this or 5 yet; I may come back to them at some point, but right now I want to move on.
Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past - To this, of course. 3DS version. Maribel is a stunningly useless PC in the early game; even when she does get Frizz she doesn't really get enough MP to use it freely at first. Anyway, this is going to be a mostly blind run too; I know the broad strokes of the game from watching Highspirits' speedrun grind back in the day, but that was on the PS1 version. Myself I only played up to the class change stuff unlocking, and that was also on the PS1 version like 20 years ago, so.
As an incidental comment, it's hard to understate just how important copious use of the party chat function in the later Dragon Quest games is for fleshing out the PCs' personalities. I find that they have something new to say after almost every little thing that happens; often (especially in 5) this meant party chatting on every new dungeon floor and after talking to every NPC in a town. So many little things that can be casually missed in these games that I'm now seeing because I'm taking time to stop and smell the roses. :)
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I've played a lot of Hades recently. Also Bloodstained. But sorry, I'm gonna talk about...
Zero Time Dilemma - One crazy Uchikoshi game per year, it's the law. I'm about 13 hours in.
To be specific I've gone through all the scenarios that unlocked after the initial execution vote. I've gotten ending symbols with a crossbow (Mira's backstory) and biohazard symbol (Diana gives the speech recorded in VLR).
I think this is pretty clearly the weakest of the Nonary Games so far, and the reason is pretty obvious, at least to me: the "game" that the game is about just isn't interesting. 999 had a cool setup with the bracelets making digital roots and how those could be used to escape and therefore how this influenced the characters to act. VLR was even better, Prisoner's Dilemma rules, I already hyped why I think that made the story work so well when I played it. In ZTD we're locked up by a psychopath who makes us make arbitrary and uninformed decisions.
The game's decision to have you essentially be blind as to where you are in the plot when you choose a scenario is interesting, though checking the flow to piece them together after is fun enough.
The game's new artstyle is quite a shift. Has any other trilogy changed artstyles so wildly between the games? Is this deliberate, so that the characters "feel" new to the new protagonists? (especially Clover in VLR and lots of people in this game). IDK. I will also say the new artstyle also kinda creeped me out for the first hour or so but then I got used to it.
The game keeps making me feel smart in that I keep calling twists and then not smart in that it tells me right after, so it's not like I'm calling major twists, specifically:
-Diana is the inspiration for Luna. Why yes I know my Roman mythological references. (I guess she also looks similar, though the new artstyle makes this almost impossible to tell, I definitely didn't recognize Junpei or Akane until the game told me their names.)
-Mira is a killer of D-Team in that one scenario in the C-Team execution branch. I mean she almost has to be because Eric is dead and Q is too small but her being revealed as a serial killer makes it even more likely, albeit still a lot of mystery there in terms of how she moved between zones. (Also, I have to say, Mira's backstory/personality reminds me an awful lot of a certain someone from AI:tSF... different specifics, of course, but...)
As is often the case for these games I am enjoying the characters. The gameplay is well... it serves a purpose I guess. The game got me to convert a number to base-13! Then the game went ahead and did it for me.
Current speculations:
-No clue who Zero is. The characters gave their usual thing that Zero is one of them and maybe that's true but I'm not convinced, wasn't Zero physically there with all of them at the start? I do wonder if he's Brother.
-There is definitely something up with Gab. What, I have no idea. Has someone jumped their consciousness into a dog? Is that a thing?
-Mira isn't actually dead in the ending where Eric flips out and murders Q, she's just in coldsleep. Ain't that the point of the pods?
-Also no idea who killed Junpei.
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Hades - So I've played this a lot since the new year. It's good! The roguelike model doesn't really click with me innately but Hades gameplay is enjoyable enough that I was down to put ~50 hours into this game, even if it's definitely a game that ended because I felt like I'd put in enough time than one that ended because I reached any sort of natural ending.
Favourite weapon was probably the spear since it struck a good balance between reasonably-high DPS melee weapon and great ranged options (especially the Achilles aspect which lets you choose whether to double ranged attack or ranged attack then teleport, that rocks), shield probably second. Bow/rail/fists are all interesting but flawed in different ways, sword feels the most underwhelming at base.
Getting all the different boons are also a lot of fun. Doom on special is usually good, Poseidon/Athena/Artemis have some good casts (tbh Athena is good top to bottom). I usually used the "deal 50% bonus damage to enemies with bloodstones lodged in them" so the casts which do that are a must.
Definitely a game which I could very much feel myself getting better and better at, both the third and fourth major bosses initially felt super-nasty but then I got to the point where I'd beat them almost every time, and even won on Extreme Measures 4 on my first try (which is the point I chose to put down the game, ain't toppin' that any time soon). The writing isn't precisely the reason to play it but it's better than nothing, ends up mostly being a story about a broken family trying to get together again and a father-son pair who are too stubborn for their own good. It works.
Great little action game, never stopped being fun, highly recommended.
Bloodstained - Got the PS4 version, yay less lag. (There's still some lag in the Tower of the Twin Dragons, but oh well.) Ran through again on Normal Mode, despite it being over a year I found my muscle memory for the biggest boss fights was still pretty good, so y'know the final boss took me only like 10 tries instead of 5 hours' worth. I beat the three optional bosses in the key rooms this time too; Carpenter seemed the toughest but then he got cheesed by Beast Guardian blocking his projectiles, Revenant got blown up by guns (I'm not a huge fun fan in this game on average, they're kinda slow for some bosses and they eat ammo too fast for randoms, but certain bosses do get owned and he's one), Millionaire's Bane wasn't too bad in general.
Then I played the game on Randomizer mode. Definitely an interesting idea (I've never actually played a randomizer before), getting the shards in wacky random order means way more time to play with whichever things you get ahead of schedule (Reflector Ray, Invert, Dimension Shift for progression tools in my case, the boomerang from Revenant for another notable one). Don't think I like what the randomizer did to the plot items though, in particular I never actually found the Zangetsuto so I couldn't actually finish the game. I'm not sure if the randomizer messed up and placed it the areas beyond which you need it, or if I somehow missed a secret (though I consulted a guide to try to find everything). Oh well, in my hunt for every last secret I found the 8-Bit Nightmare, a boss I'd missed on my previous runs, so he ended up being essentially the final boss and that was satisfying enough, he's pretty tricky. Fire everywhere.
Now playing as Zangetsu. Like Albus mode this feels stripped down and less fun than the main game, but man, those boss fights, still good. And Zangetsu being really fast-moving means he gets to them more quickly!
Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Yep. Verdant Wind this time.
Zero Time Dilemma - Progressed a bit more. Akane, do you look for random conversations to casually drop that you have 6 to the 10th power memorized? Nerd.
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Minor updated thought after reading my old comment: Hmm, I haven't used Jeritza seriously either. (I did his Paralogue & mini-quest but that barely counts.) So Alois / Anna / Gilbert / Jeritza. Well, if I ever do playthrough #5, it'll be S*lv*r Sn*w, so, uh, probably no to anyone but Alois there. Anna having no supports and also being bad = just why would I ever use them - to hear their voiced combat lines for crits if playing with animations on, I guess? But I already got that from her paralogue + CF Legend of the Lake.
I beat good ol' Reunion at Dawn (Deer version) w/ no casualties despite not stealing the Evasion Ring at Gronder 1 (grumble grumble Thief getting ganked) and Lorenz / Leonie / Lysithea / Raphael / Marianne being dead weight. Okay, the Nosferatu dodgetank build of Byleth is legit on that map. Byleth just needs to hold out long enough for a danced Claude to pick off enough enemies while cowardly hiding on the sidelines with Canto bowshots, and Nos is definitely a way to get there. Went ahead and shamelessly used Failnaught charges too, this is definitely the time to use it. I seem to recall somebody on Serenes whining about the number of charges of Nosferatu for such a build - well, in a map where Byleth is solo-fighting the hordes, this would be where you would expect it to come up, but Bishop Byleth still had some Nos remaining (single digit count, granted), so seems sufficient to me. Gronder 2 is next.
I will say in whining that Mage-leth is a very Monastery intensive build. For EO builds Byleth's skills don't matter that much aside from eventually hitting A Swords for Windsweep, but Mageleth kinda wants to hit both A+ Faith & A Reason, and that is a slog of a lot of sauna trips and faculty training. I guess I'd be hitting the Monastery a lot for a few extremely skill-intensive builds. Manuela might be the most greedy character in the game on this... starts way behind on training and wants tons and tons of skills and gets a lot from them if you want something better than "emergency Warp user". In a bit of a conundrum now as I just qualified for Mortal Savant, which helps on damage, but the speed cut from Trickster is notable and Maddening enemies are damn fast and I didn't grind up her lance rank + qualify for Peg Knight to get Darting Blow, so I risk stopping doubling enemies if I switch to MS, but she risks just being chipping / utility only by staying in Trickster. Decisions, decisions. And hell, if I was feeling *really* grindy, she might be the unit in the game that most wants an extra S+ rank Swordfaire - she badly needs the damage to one-round, and a mixed Mortal Savant / Assassin / Trickster build are all mixed damage threats that like an unconditional +5 damage rather than Death / Fiendish Blow's +6 damage to just one style. But that involves wailing away at an auxiliary battle Bishop with Renewal with a Training Sword or the like, or else waiting for so long that it hardly matters, so meh. (To really maximize Manuela, you also probably want to run Hanneman so she gets her damage boost off that support... run two weak characters, get a mediocre character! Get hyped. Well, I'm doing that anyway, although more just to use Hanneman for once. A rare pure mage with easy access to Hit +20, at least?)
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Re Elf on ZTD: Ah, cool. While ZTD is probably the weakest of the trilogy, that's a pretty faint criticism.
* I thought the conceit of the Decision Game was fitting for the story, at least - it fits in with Zero's talk about the role of chance and coincidences in the snail story, which gets echoed by a lot of the death traps. I do agree it's a lot more arbitrary compared to the puzzlier 999 and a lot less dramatic than VLR, but I suppose the arbitrariness fits Zero's point here.
* That said - I don't think this is even a spoiler, I think I've said as much before, although maybe look away if you're extra paranoid - Zero's plotline has... issues, so yeah, that's part of why ZTD is the weakest of the set. Just don't spend TOO much brain cells on the nature of Zero in ZTD. Unusually for Uchikowski, there's some just... either it's a plot hole or it's "narrative cheating" where what the player sees didn't really happen that way so as not to spoil what was really going on. Or maybe a little of both. That kinda ruins the fun of speculation a bit.
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Zero Time Dilemma - Beaten. Short version: probably the weakest game of the trilogy, but still very much worth playing. Better character work (and probably better gameplay for what very, very little that's worth) than 999 but worse plot. VLR remains the best.
It's a game I have a lot of nitpicks about, so let's get them out of the way first.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Mira and Eric a fair deal, but they just seem very... dropped/irrelevant late? Particularly Mira. She's a freaking serial killer and first of all she disappears for a significant chunk of the lategame due to being randomly killed by Zero on one major timeline (not getting a satisfying answer for either how/why she killed Junpei or why Zero killed her is weird incidentally) and then I guess we're supposed to shrug about her serial killing in the ending? How do she and Zero know each other? What's the nature of their agreement? What does Mira think about her role in this? I don't need all the answers, but I would like this to feel less completely dropped.
Game does some weird tone/pacing things sometimes. Eric threatens to murder everyone, then we take a five-minute diversion to talk about how the wards are all the same, during which Eric seems to calm down, then it's right back to "Eric threatens to murder everyone".
Mentioned already of course, but the narrative cheating of Q never been shown on-camera for some reason, and Sean/Mira/Eric never really talking about him (yes, they flashback to one instance of a man in a wheelchair being mentioned, that's not enough, sorry) makes that one feel like a bit of an ass-pull, which is a shame, because the game wants it to be the biggest twist. I feel like the writing had some idea that it wanted to misdirect who "Q" was but clearly didn't know how to actually pull it off in a satisfying manner.
I really disliked the scene where Carlos acts all weird and rapey as a cover for his plan. Plz don't. I'm not sure if the fact that it ended up completely pointless makes the sequence better or worse.
That out of the way, let's talk about the interesting stuff.
We've now gotten three spins on Zero, of course, in which a character makes a bunch of people play freaky escape game in service of some grand plan. In some ways, the first two are kinda similar to each other (unshockingly since Akane is Zero the 1st and a conspirator with the 2nd). Through experiencing multiple timelines, both found that this was the best way to thread the needle to the narrow goal of accomplishing their goal of not burning to death / saving humanity from Radical-6. Obviously what they did is traumatising for everyone involved, but both felt like they had to do it. Some ends-justify-the-means to be sure, but they're both very moral people in their own way.
Delta is recognizably similar to them, but he also comes off as far more of a malicious bastard. Unlike theirs, Delta's game is needlessly cruel. The deaths that occur in Akane's game mostly occur because Ace is a vile murderer (plus that one time Clover loses it). The deaths in Sigma's game mostly occur because it turns out Radical-6 is really really awful, and also Dio is a dick. But the deaths in Delta's game mostly occur because Delta seems to legitimately enjoy watching people kill each other, and killing them himself. Gatling guns, hydrofluoric acid showers, carbon dioxide poisoning, multiple bombs. The game itself encourages, demands, even, that its players murder each other while he watches. Are there some noble goals to what he does, as he states? Yeah sure. But the cruelty is also absolutely, 100% the point, driven home by such scenes as where he mindhacks Eric to shoot himself, or when he himself (literally) shoots the dog. He's a complete asshole. The game largely owns this, right down to its final scene where it asks the player whether they think Delta deserves to die. (My answer: I probably wouldn't shoot him in Carlos's position, both because it's not my place and because he'd likely be a very valuable ally in heading off this supposed nuclear catastrophe, but I do find him immensely detestable anyway. And to be clear, that's a good thing.)
Random other thoughts:
So Gab was just a complete red herring then, just a dog and nothing more? Huh. I... did not expect that.
I said this before, but I really liked most of the characters again! It's nice to finally see Old Sigma. And I was so here for Diana's despair, Eric's madness, Akane being the big manipulative nerd with a slight lovesick side. There wasn't really anyone I disliked. Junpei is mildly detestable as a person in this one (I definitely noticed that when the game needed someone to do something stupid or selfish, it usually relied on either him or Eric) but I mostly bought into why.
The morality of constantly killing your alternate timeline Marty McFlys is an interesting conundrum. I actually thought the Final Decision was pretty obvious (the versions of the characters who actually know about the nuclear terrorism and can take actions to prevent it are the ones who should survive), but the characters somewhat flippantly getting their other selves killed so that they can SHIFT at other points is a bit more questionable! Probably still overall justified for the same reason, but...
Good times.
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Persona 5- Beat. Posting just a short one for now because it's late, but I still want to make a record for myself for later of this. 8/10, mostly on the strength of giving you a lot more tools so it feels like you fucked up when things go wrong rather than the game just completely disrespecting your time.
Despite clearly having a fierce desire to be relevant, honestly nothing in the game quite has the same punch in that department as Adachi in P4. Now that IS sorta an unfair standard of course, but despite the strong opening act they never really quite follow up on the hardest-hitting themes of that portion and the parts they do follow up on feel a bit... milquetoast to me? Like, insofar as there's a cohesive, game-long message to the game it's essentially "the older generation has sold out the youth for social harmony and comfort" which... cool, but they also end on a literal note of "welp, the kids did the dangerous work and now it's time for the adults to take over... and undermine them and blunt the results".
... okay yeah no more words tonight.
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Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past - 50 hours in now and still enjoying it. In particular I really like the game's storytelling loop of going to an area in distress in the past, solving their distress, and then seeing how the place has changed in the peaceful present, and DQ7 has a different take on the overall concept compared to something like, say, Chrono Trigger by not having the overall scenario framed by a nebulous known future threat on the scale of Lavos.
DQ7 also plays it more vague with specific time periods, and has the heroes show up multiple times in the same places on different timestreams when islands are connected to each other, providing extra context to previous events and sometimes additional closure as well.
For example...
In Greenthumb Gardens, on the first visit, there's an unresolved plot thread involving tangled relationships between four characters in the town: Dill (the son of the town's mayor), Carraway (the mayor's gardener), Lavender (a young woman who lives in the town), and Cayenne (the mayor's maid). Carraway and Lavender are in love with each other, but Lavender owes a great debt to Dill's parents, and feels obligated to marry Dill as a result. Cayenne is in love with Dill, and is aggressively trying to break up Dill and Lavender and encourage Carraway to elope with her, so that she can have Dill to herself. Her machinations fail spectacularly for all involved, though; Lavender goes through with her proposal to Dill, and Carraway breaks off from Lavender and runs away from the village in shame because he isn't willing to disrupt the engagement. When you return to the island in the present, Greenthumb Gardens has been abandoned and fallen into ruin, but there's a new town to the east, "Wilted Heart", that was not previously there, overlooked by a nunnery, the Regrette-Rien Convent. Exploring both locations gives the implication that Carraway founded the new town, and the visit to the nunnery reveals Carraway and Lavender to be buried next to each other at the hilltop behind the nunnery.
Later in the game, when you solve the "Groundhog Day" problem in El Ciclo, the architect Pomposo is able to complete his grand bridge connecting to the northern island... which happens to be where Greenthumb Gardens and Wilted Heart are, so you get to visit both locations in a different past time. It turns out 30 years have passed since the hero's first visit. Dill and the son he fathered with Lavender are still living in Greenthumb Gardens, but Dill is revealed to be a deadbeat who has had to sell his father's house, his son hates him, and Lavender is nowhere to be found, having run out on an apparently loveless marriage. Cayenne is also still present, still pining after Dill, and still working as a maid in the new mayor's house; the hero finds evidence (by way of a callback to a DQ6 scene where a jealous lover of Port Haven's mayor attempts to poison his dog and frame his maid for it) that she's been secretly feeding the mayor poisoned food, and that Dill knew she was doing it, and the two are ultimately run out of town together.
Continuing to Wilted Heart allows you to meet Carraway, confirming he did in fact start the town there, and exploring the nunnery reveals that when Lavender ran out on her marriage to Dill, she went to the nunnery and lived out the rest of her life there; she died 6 months prior, without her and Carraway having interacted, though both seemed to be vaguely aware of each others' presence, Carraway never worked up the courage to actually go up to the monastery, and Lavender assumed that Carraway would want nothing to do with her after she ran out on Dill. This closes out their half of the plot, but I have a sneaking suspicion I have not yet seen the last of Dill and Cayenne...
It's absolutely a long game, I don't think there's any debating that; if I had to call out DQ7's greatest sin from what I've seen of it right now, it's absolutely the pacing of the intro, which is pretty long even on the 3DS version (which substantially shortened it), and makes for a pretty bad first impression of the game on PSX because a typical blind player will spend about 3-4 hours plodding around talking to all the NPCs and trying to solve the initial puzzle before they can even get to any combat. On top of that, PSX loading times after every battle are a bad, bad fit for a game like DQ7. But these are problems the 3DS version doesn't have, so yay.
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Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight- Got all the SLinks except Ryuji 8, so I'm calling it here.
On the whole I think I did have a better time with this than the P3 game, a mix of having a better sense of how to work with the system and P5 just having better remixes than P3 did honestly. I think this is also partly just P5 already having a stronger and more unified OST to start with. That said, visual noise with scratches is still an issue for me so playing on the higher difficulties is weird streaky misery at times. "higher" here meaning 'above normal'.
Still, pleasant enough and addressed a standing issue P5 has of not really letting the cast interact much with one another and Haru not existing. 6/10? I dunno, I'd have to cross reference the other game but that sounds right.
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Bravely Default II
It's finally out! I figure this is the closest we get to the "a new Final Fantasy is out" experience back in the heyday of FF8/9/10. Didn't play the demo so started totally blind last night. An American, an English princess, a Ye Olde English Knight, a Scottish drunk, and a Russian (?) must fight an evil German and Australian. Sounds like something out of Team Fortress 2.
* I note with dismay that Adelle, the less-chosen-by-destiny female of the party, has an immediate sidequest involving collecting ingredients for a new dish then being creeped out by it. I didn't play Bravely Second but they damn well better not pull an "Edea's personality becomes an obsessed glutton and nothing else" bit of nonsense, as that was one of the things that really put me off on ever trying BS.
* Can we just ban the plot device of "bad guys threaten to kill an unnamed kid"? I shouldn't overthink this short event that the writers clearly didn't think too hard about but it really doesn't cover Gloria in glory, and the day is saved only because the tone of the setting isn't that dark. Bad guys basically say "we are willing to murder people for funzies" with their threat and want an Artifact Of Incalcuable Power, and Gloria orders her loyal knight to surrender, and then he gets his ass beat (and is lucky that he isn't just flat murdered). Gloria is fine of course, don't need to sideline a main character, but gramps gets sent off to the infirmary. This is elder abuse. And it's not like Gloria is supposed to be some sort of pacifist. I should write some sort of take-that fanfic on AO3 where some mobsters roll up to an army base and threaten to kill some unnamed kids, and the army just shrugs and sends them a free tank and the soldiers bringing the tank all get clubbed by the gang. (Actually, this was already sorta done... by Monty Python.)
* You can tell the king's minister is evil because... gasp... he's raised taxes! Those damn tax-and-spend liberals. (Trails of Cold Steel 2 did this, too. Sigh.)
Good times!
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Re Elf on Zero Time Dillema:
* Yeah, ZTD's overall length feels about right, yet nevertheless some characters end up short-changed, Mira notably, and Eric a bit. (Mira does have a little bit of extra plot that isn't obvious - it's heavily implied she was the one who killed the doctor who was going to operate on Sean in Delta's story of the snail, IIRC. Although considering how much Delta liked poor Sean, it's surprising he wasn't inflicting even more sadistic torment on Mira in the scenarios.) Also Phi a bit - her plot is fine but she spends so much of D-team's scenarios dead or not in the party that she herself doesn't get to do a lot, which is too bad. It's nice that Q/Sean & Diana get time instead, of course.
* Some of the Q / Delta confusion is somewhat played fair (e.g. the team asking "who the hell are you" to Q and the rules not precisely applying to him in the same way), but others are definitely not. The puzzle in the study with the 9 portraits and the like definitely only makes sense if Q is the team member rather than Delta, for example. So I guess Zero stuck a solvable version of that puzzle for Q? Except the other characters should boggle at this then.
* Another minor issue I have with ZTD - and I suppose this is a limitation of the conceit it sets up - is that it seems to much more clearly embrace a multiverse, albeit with the idea that multiverses are only useful / controllable if stuck in a sealed environment with clear branch points. In 999, it feels much more like exploring possible futures and attempting to guide toward the one that works best for Akane. I *guess* Delta is doing something similar, aiming for a future where he doesn't commit any crimes but has merely been prepared to do horrible things in an alternate timeline and has a bunch of people armed with knowledge and abilities... except.. things like Delta and Phi being born, and then having clones sent back in time, clearly come from the initial branch point where Carlos-loses-the-coin-flip. Kind of muddies the waters on if it ensures that the timeline where no horrible things happen is really The One.
* Uchikowski for whatever reason wanted to do a darker and more horror-y game and was semi-freed from studio constraints, hence resulting in a crueler and less sympathetic Zero... but... even still, some of Zero's shenanigans are silly / stupid. The bracelets in 999 weren't actually armed / active except for Ace / Nine; the bracelets in VLR at least injected you with tranquilizers before killing you. Considering that the gas chamber scenario was time-delayed and everyone was put to sleep anyway, I have no idea what the point of waking people up in order to kill them horribly was - fine you gotta kill 'em to make the branching scenario, but just do it quietly in their sleep, and have the gas chamber nonsense be a fakeout.
* While on that note, it fits with the probability theme that Delta believes that killing a lot of people in the aims of killing one dangerous person, but... this is kinda crazy, I'm sorry, especially if Delta was born in like 1900 or something. Different circumstances lead to different results, it's not like if this religious fanatic lives they're guaranteed to start the apocalypse no matter what else is going on.
* Speaking of the religious fanatic - a lot of fans of VLR were disappointed that Brother didn't really come up in ZTD. Sure seemed like Eric or Carlos might have been related to that plotline but nope. Ah well, respect the need/desire to do something different rather than be a straight-up VLR sequel. Same with K/ Kyle not showing up.
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Hades - Completed the epilogue. Persephone is a clever mom.
The gameplay loop remains compelling, especially now that I understand the game well enough to break it open from the start. Coronacht is hilariously busted, range flexibility is by far the most important thing to have in this game and the bow provides obscene damage from any range with little to no strings attached. Aspect of Chiron in particular is just ridiculous, since it enables high-end, high-speed status stacking and high damage potential in the same token. Exagryph is almost as good, though it wants Aspect of Hestia to really shine (while Coronacht is honestly gamebreaking even at base. You REALLY have to work to make a truly bad build out of the bow, though it can be done; the rifle can be somewhat easily screwed up). Varatha ends up being the worst of the ranged weapons by default due to having shockingly low DPS potential, but range alone's way too good in this, and it has the best crowd control out of the long-ranged weapons, all while being very simple and intuitive, so I still like it a lot. Malphon is very dependant on Daedalus hammer upgrades to have any sort of range and works very poorly with anything Poseidon, but it has insane damage potential off good speed - it actually gives you the illusion that a melee lock isn't inherently crippling in Hades. Aegis... good lord, it's really awkward at base, but the shield block no-sells a lot of dangerous boss patterns and Aspect of Zeus is off-the-wall bonkers for offense and ranged crowd control. That may well be the second strongest aspect in the whole game (Aspect of Chiron being the first). And Stygius... oh, Stygius. Just so janky.
Tangentially, I really really like how the game treats non-heteronormative affections and relationships. I didn't expect I'd get a wholesome, gentle portrait of bisexual polycules from a fucking roguelike, but 2021 is full of surprises like that.
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Bravely Default II
Still pretty great. Up to the first "real" boss of Chapter 2. The bosses are a lot of fun. Apparently some of the reviewers complained about them being too hard or frustrating, but I see what the designers were going for: they want you to engage with the gimmick of each battle rather than just ignore it and win anyway. I will add the slight disclaimer that some of the "power" in the game comes from your equipment setups and you have to go into the battles blind, but... just restarting (which I'm fine with, I'm playing on Hard, that's my own fault) after knowing what statuses / elements to watch out for is pretty potent. The current boss I'm on has a Silence move, so quick, put on the Silence-blocking hats, the usual pretty much. Currently one wipe and one sanity restart after seeing what was up so it's not an onerous amount or anything.
* I thought I found an awesome combo for randoms, but I'm a little less sure now, or at least wondering if there's weird under-the-hood stats not displayed. My Adelle went Freelancer -> Beastmaster. Freelancer gets kinda garbo BUT learns an extremely good ability at JL 11, Body Slam, which costs 1 BP but just does a crapton of damage, at least for this point in the game. Beastmaster learns Spearhead, which is "this character has initiative unless you got back attacked" (which is hard to have happen, you can let enemies charge into you and miss your sword swing all day and Spearhead still works even if enemies get a BP boost). So Adelle just always goes first and flat deletes 2 enemies (or 1 really tanky enemy). Mages can also clear most randoms very well but you'll burn through MP fast if you're doing that constantly or at max power, so the free Body Slams are nice. Anyway, after mastering Beastmaster in early C2 (you master classes fast in BD2 compared to BD1, although in fairness mastering Freelancer speeds things up), I switched over to Berserker, and now suddenly 1/3 of the Body Slams miss? Same enemies too, it's not like I went to a different dungeon with dodgier enemies. Seemed a lot, LOT slower too. I checked the stats screen and yes, there was a slight Aim & Speed penalty in the new class, but it wasn't drastic or tragic or anything, just a ~5 point drop in Aim. Seemed too consistent to be a bizarre luck swing, too - I used this combo a LOT and it was very consistent before and very inconsistent now. Some hidden stat based off job level maybe?! I guess I could go back to my old setup but I don't like leaving JP on the floor.
* The old 60s TV show Mission: Impossible is a bit weird to modern eyes used to the Tom Cruise version. TV was a lot more... nice? ... back then, even the stuff for adults. Anyway the MI team generally didn't just murder the Nazis / terrorists / whatever they'd infiltrated even when they had a good reason to after infiltrating them, even when there was a stinger pre-ad break where it looked like they'd been caught doing some suspicious act and were about to get shot themselves (they'd probably talk their way out of it after the show cut back, rather than pulling their own guns). Which isn't to say that the bad guys wouldn't die; just the MI team would trick them into thinking that they'd all betrayed each other and the plan was in ruins and they should shoot each other instead, or otherwise abandon their evil plan. I guess they didn't want the team to be some sort of Call of Duty international roving American assassins, which is fair.
Anyway, BD2 seems to have some weird variant going on of this. (FE Fates Conquest had a wacky version too where whenever somebody was supposed to die, the narrative took pains to keep Corrin's hands clean - they'd beat them up nonviolently, then either the target would commit suicide (Rainbow Sage, Ryoma) or else Iago / Hans would roll in and kill them instead.) The party beats up a villain, and then a DIFFERENT villain rolls in and kills them, or they go crazy and commit suicide. I'm... not really a fan. Let Our Heroes make the tough choices, whether it be killing 'em or letting them live, rather than outsourcing it to other entities. (Okay, one of these deaths was actually still kinda cool dramatically so I'll spot you that one, just it still counts as part of the trend.) If you want to keep it clean, then the party can just choose to spare 'em, and figure out where to go from there.
* Speaking of the above, the game was also a tad... naive on one particular plot point? (End of Chapter 1 spoilers: Felt a bit like Ace Attorney Spirit of Justice, which simultaneously has an corrupt government yet one also mysteriously bound by defense attorney's discoveries. You get betrayed by the Prince in charge who has soldiers sufficiently loyal to go along with, essentially, "I'm gonna kill this person for the good of the state in front of lots of witnesses, then order the arrest of these other people for the crime." Fine. But then after Magic Happens and it's revealed he also killed his father the previous king... the soldiers hesitate and switch sides? Like, you were already on his team when he murdered an important person before, what's another body to the pile? Just stay cool and keep blaming everything on these outsiders. Or, alternatively, rewrite the earlier scenario to be one where the Prince frames the party out-of-view of his guards if the guards are honest and true and all of that stuff. )
* (Gameplay spoilers? Poison works on bosses!!1! Was pretty important vs. one particular boss that both made it so you can't productively default AND had a powerful parasitic healing move, so mustering up enough damage to take him down was non-trivial. )
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Bravely Default 2 - Just beat the first Asterisk boss in C1, pretty fun fight. The prologue honestly felt a bit stiff until the party got together and the game gave you the first set of jobs to play with, but once it did, the general breadth of the Bravely experience started coming together: putting Bravely Default in a CTBish (it has gauges like ATB, but the turnflow is very much CTB and the gauges are merely an aesthetic choice for the indicators in practice, which is very fine) setting felt weird at first, but once I got used to it, yeah, the game's just been a blast when I sit down to play. The Brave/Default system remains a very compelling, layered approach to turn-based combat and it's delightful to see even enemy randoms making very liberal use of the mechanic. Bosses also have more flexible Bravely/Default patterns than in BD1 (reminder: I never got far in Bravely Second because the writing annoyed me very fast, so all my comparisons will go straight to BD1). The new enemy counter mechanics do change your approach to fights to a degree, making setups a bigger part of the overall ethos in dealing with enemy formations and particularly bosses - including equipment, which is unusually potent even besides STATS in general being very significant in the damage formula and whatnot. I often spend a good minute or two just tinkering with equipment whenever I get a new piece, there's just a lot to put into consideration and I like that.
This said, navigation could be a wee bit more streamlined and I'm still not sure if I like random encounters being visible on screen rather than having the random rate adjustable to any degree you want, but eh. At least the game making enemies just run away from you when you're higher levelled enough chokes a good deal of the tedium in moving around and backtracking.
Writing-wise, eh. I'm mostly in the SnowFire camp in which some of the general ethos employed by the writers kinda irks me, though at least the game doesn't WANT to make any sort of hard-hitting statement. It's just kind of a fantasy story with insanely quirky visuals and a bunch of cliches employed inoffensively. But we'll see how far the game struts along these lines. I'm just glad Elvis isn't a womanizer as of now, since I like the lazy scholar with Scrooge McDuck language schtick he has. And Gloria is sometimes kinda badass? It's okay.
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Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past - Finished the game, final time was around 88 hours. On the whole I enjoyed it, DQ7 ends up being one of my favorite DQ games for plot/worldbuilding/setting/whatever you want to call it. It's on the weaker half of the series for gameplay but the setting was compelling enough to keep me interested, overall - the main problem with the gameplay is that it pretty much stops challenging you about halfway through (basically when you first get at an advanced class) and only really starts again with some of the lategame bosses and final dungeon randoms. This is a problem DQ11 also has to an extent (on baseline difficulty), but in DQ11 it feels better because you tend to be mixing up your tactics to respond to enemy setups more, whereas in DQ7 there's pretty much 30 hours of the game that you can just spam Scorch forever and win against.
I do think the game is a bit longer than it needs to be, yet much like the Lord of the Rings movies, there's not really any substantial part of the game that I feel you could cut without losing something valuable. Nearly every island plot ends up being relevant to the overall game in *some* fashion. The three I'd say are the least relevant ones...
- Ballymalloy, which has no relevance to the later plot at all and is pretty much just the establishment device for the party dynamic between the hero, Kiefer, and Maribel.
- Faraday also has little enduring relevance to the main plot, despite seeming like it should; the situation with the automatons is never referred to again outside of some easter-egg callbacks, and robots are never a relevant factor anywhere else in the world. However, Faraday also has what I consider one of the game's more memorably poignant emotional scenes (hint: E.L.L.I.E. and soup).
- The third and last would be Nottagen, which is basically just an excuse plot for why the Monster Meadows exists in the game world, but also is a much-needed segment of levity in what is otherwise a fairly dark game by DQ standards.
Anyway. Solid 7/10 game at least? I liked it about as much as DQ5, and DQ5 and DQ7 are both games that on some level I appreciate more for concept than for successful execution, but I think DQ5 executed just a bit better than DQ7 did. As we'll see later, DQ9 revisits a lot of DQ7's relative narrative structure, but is much more concise in going about it.
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King - 3DS version. Not far in it yet, so not much to say, and this isn't new territory for me, but I am once again reminded - even with the snappier menu performance of the 3DS version compared to PS2 - just how much slower of a game DQ8 feels like compared to everything before it. Admittedly some of this *may* be my emulator, which isn't quite consistently getting full speed on DQ8. But just... it's hard to really express how much slower movement around maps feels in 8 compared to previous games (some of this may also be the maps being larger relative to the PCs), and of course the large upswing in production values means battles play slower.
None of this, to be clear, is really intended as a criticism - it's just a much more chill game.
Dark Souls III - oh yeah I've also been playing this but don't have much of substance to say about it. I feel like it's a good game on the whole but it has a lot of little things which I understand to be series sacred cows but which, frankly, aren't particularly great design, but none of them rise above being minor annoyances. If I were going to compare it to another similar game I've played, I tend to like Code Vein more outside of the boss fights, which I will concede that Dark Souls III does better (and it's not close).
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Romancing SaGa 3- OKAY WE'VE GOT THIS.
Context: https://twitter.com/CmdrKing/status/1370851150841450503?s=20
So between this and RSMS, what I've learned is why SaGa Frontier is basically the best one. See, the Romancing SaGa games innovated a lot of those systems, in particular the selectable protagonists with altered quest availability. But both RS3 and RSMS basically treat that as having a unique opening then maybe some characters have a few odds and ends. SaGa Frontier changes the balance to have a lot more unique quests or alterations of quests scattered throughout and a smaller pool of universal options, leading both to a more distinct experience and more importantly making a deliberately short game since a lot more effort had to be spent on content not every character would ever see. Like even ignoring the extra 10 hours spent learning how to manipulate the system enough to beat the bosses in the final dungeon, there's a reason I paused my playthrough about 20 hours in and I was already ready to be done and skipped several endgame quests at 30 hours. Ha ha ha. Some of that is the system being rougher and less generous with procs to be sure, but only some of that.
For all of that it's not... like, bad. It's rough but mostly in the ways both any SaGa game and any SNES game are. 5/10 surely.
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I'm currently replaying Fire Emblem Awkening and Trials of Mana. Also beat Zangetsu's mode on Bloodstained, don't think I mentioned that. The new last boss was very, very tough! Fun though, in the usual RotN fashion. But of course this post is about...
Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Verdant Wind
In which Elf completes his support library. (Well, not the S supports.) Never done that for a Fire Emblem before, despite this game having more supports than most of the others. Manuela/Flayn probably wins the award for hidden gem this playthrough, Flayn's best support IMO.
Byleth: Pegasus Knight -> Brigand -> Assassin. Assassin is the best Swordfaire class, and the nice thing about doing that with Byleth is it makes the build cheaper (notice I was able to get both Pegasus and Brigand on her in a timely fashion, not always the case) and that you get to use Windsweep which is only rarely useful but quite so when it is. Stealth is cool, since it meant she could go where she wanted safely as long as there was a dodgetank in range (see below). That said the class is a bit lacking offensively with 0 str + swords being bad.
Claude: Brigand -> Sniper/Wyvern Master -> Bow Knight. A Bow Knight with high stats is always a joy and Claude's one of the best. Compared to his unique class, the huge extra range is nice, especially since Claude's gonna support most people in a typical VW run. Very versatile offensively, high power to slay things with Inexhaustible, enough speed to double, etc. Great at countering too, although his bulk didn't let him take too many hits at once. I had other people for that.
Ferdinand: Brigand -> Wyvern. Gave him Immortal Corps, because it's time to dodge! He got str-blessed so he could even do decent damage back, though there was another I used even more for that. Not much to say past that, dodgetanking is really damn good at this game, Ferdinand's personal + Immortal Corps is one of the most potent ways to do it. Had all the usual wyvern perks otherwise.
Petra: Brigand -> Pegasus -> War Cleric. Also insanely dodgy with her speed and Brawl Avoid. Even got her Alert Stance (not the plus version) but didn't end up using it because she was dodgy enough. Gave her Gautier Knights and never repaired it, when it finally got down to 1/3 health by Enbarr I slapped Battalion Wrath on her, gave her a few strength boosters, and watched her countercrit everything with Retribution. Kinda silly. Obviously Killer Knuckles need a lot more str to do this effectively than other weapons, and I don't actually have the objective highest opinion of the battalion skills (too finnicky and a bit risky) but it was fun.
Mercedes: Mage -> Sniper. Yep, you read that right. Magic Bow + Hunter's Volley = best magic damage in the game, even typically one-shots the juiced enemies of the final VW map. Has the usual Sniper problems of bad move but otherwise is actually better than the physical Snipers... after Chapter 16 anyway. Before then, you lack the Arcane Crystals to really power this build, which eats through a lot of them. Is rather terrible in the early Sniper phase.
Lysithea: Mage -> Assassin -> Mortal Savant. I did this build with Lysithea back when I was a newbie and went for Swordmaster instead of Assassin then. Oops. Assassin is so much better for her, because Stealth is a hell of a way to patch her game-worst durability. Later Soulblade stops OHKOing everything in sight, so it's a good thing MS exists so she can retreat to having long range nukes. Her kit's good at non-healing things as usual.
Marianne: Mage -> Valkyrie -> Dark Knight. So in early Advanced tier she felt like my best PC by far, Frozen Lance to OHKO anything with canto + Thoron for 6 threat range + Physic, hell yeah (helped by losing Mercie's Physic, of course). Her offence and relative threat range fall off but still a solid contributor throughout, as Marianne tends to be.
Hilda: Mage -> Dancer. She's basically the VW answer to dancer Dorothea, played this way. Support with Bolting, me likey. Also has high bulk so she could take hits even though she wasn't using swords to be dodgy. Move+1 came late (Chapter 21, I believe?) because rushing Bolting was more important, but did come.
Leonie: Brigand -> Pegasus -> Wyvern. Fun fact, every other member of my team was decided by my desire to finish my support library, but not Leonie: she was the free pick to make the team better. Great offence with either Point-Blank Volley or axe nonsense from a wyvern, good bulk, and when that falls off... guess what she ended up getting Alert Stance+ and with her high speed and Galatea I figured what the hell, I have enough Evasion Rings, third dodgetank time.
Balthus: Brigand -> War Monk -> Seteth got recruited. The low speed is just too frustrating for this build, he was clearly feeling very outclassed by Petra because he kept getting doubled, his personal starts falling off for physicals and he was always getting cooked by magic. I guess I could have stuck with him with a guard adjutant but y'know when Seteth joined up and beat him in every stat I decided I'd had enough. Useful PC early, though; +6 atk/def below half health is one of those things which really is strong out of the gate.
Seteth: Brigand -> Wyvern. Not having Reposition was a downer, but he got deal with squishies and cavalry well with Swift Strikes once he got that, and gave Leonie 10 extra damage by standing beside her. Don't have much to say about him, it's a pretty standard build.
Cyril: Brigand -> Paladin -> Bow Knight. The 11th. Point-Blank Volley is nice, especially in Part 1! The stats were not. Str and the durability both perenially needed work. He managed to stay on the team pretty well until Seteth finished his turn in Brigand then he got mostly benched for a while, but came out again lategame as deploy count ballooned. By then he had A authority so I gave him the A-rank Retribution gambit to make the dodgetanks better.
Flayn: Mage -> Bishop. Because I wanted more healing, she got to be my 12th rather than Balthus or someone else. Bishop actually gets enough Fortifies and Rescues to have things to do. Pretty bad outside those two tricks, but they're nice tricks. Gremory's probably better for her (she wants move more than Linhardt etc. does) but oh well.
Flayn 8 / Balthus 44 / Hilda 47 / Seteth 70 / Cyril 93 / Mercedes 108 / Marianne 123 / Ferdinand 139 / Lysithea 161 / Petra 179 / Byleth 185 / Leonie 190 / Claude 201
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BD2 - Just started Chapter 2, currently mastered Freelancer on Seth and Black Mage on Elvis. Gloria's nearly capping White Mage and Adelle's kinda coasting on some lower level classes, but she's less than a level away from mastering Vanguard if I care. Problem is she's currently deleting randoms from existence with Spearhead+Crescent Moon spam as a Berserker, jesus christ Spearhead is just bananas for your physical blitzkrieg setups at this point.
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Jo'ou: In response to your earlier comment, while you can't turn the encounters directly off anymore, you can just Ward Light your way past everything if you want. (Good ol' Breath of Fire 1 style "consumable item to turn off encounters.") That said, the game's XP isn't really that curved, so you can potentially fall really far behind par on level if you skip too aggressively. I've been getting Underdog XP for a long while and the monsters still glow red usually, and that's with not using many Ward Lights, so... I guess their expected XP curve assumed not too much encounter skipping. Thankfully "surprise" bosses are pretty dang rare, there's almost always a save point before 'em to use a tent at, so it's not like games where skipping encounters is important to go into the boss with full resources.
And yeah, the characters are pretty good, after their rough start in the prologue. But at least in Chapter 1 & beyond, most of the characters seem pretty clueful and mature, where the BD1 crew was just a bit younger / more naive / more carried away easily. And yeah, Elvis isn't a womanizer; if anything his issue is that he has the "slight cluelessness about people crushing on you" thing that Japanese main characters usually have. Especially appreciated for Gloria, since "naive princess does stupid shit because she's sheltered" is like a super common trope that would also make zero sense in her particular case, and they thankfully don't do it - she's perceptive, trained, knows what she's getting into, etc. Well after the prologue at least.
Bravely Default II
Remains pretty neat. Just finished up C4 & doing all the sidequests that opened up in early C5 + unfinished leftovers from C4... actually let me mildly complain about that first!
So BD2's treasure chests & sidequest rewards are generally terrible. That's fine for treasures (you learn to just ignore and have no stress about leaving some parts of the map untouched) and fine for character moment / plottier sidequests - hell, I don't need a reward at all for those, I'm fine if it's just some scenes & character development. I will whine, however, about the game messing with completionist tendencies by having really pointless and uncreative sidequests stolen from an MMORPG like "kill 10 monsters of XYZ type", and doubly complain if said monsters are from a "zone" I already cleared and beat a bunch already that don't "count" because I have to get 5 fresh hides or something. I was willing to spot the game early because you want some piss-easy sidequests to introduce the concept for the true newbies, but sidequests that are essentially "pick up glowing icons on the world map / in a dungeon" better have a somewhat interesting plot stapled to it, 'cuz it's rarely thrilling gameplay. FE 3 Houses has a bit of this too IMO, too many placeholder quests that are essentially "walk to person, walk to glowing icon on minimap, walk back, congratulations you are winner" where the glowing icon isn't particularly interesting and the quest never was upgraded to something "interesting" before the boss said ship it. Ah well.
Okay, moving on...
* Chapter 2: Pretty good. Villain's plot is very Silver Age comic booky but I respect that it's treated as just insane. The bosses definitely might go a bit overboard on the "haha we spoil XYZ", with the Shieldmaster fight in particular potentially taking FOREVER. Specifically, there was a demon helper in the backline that can heal at below half health... so fine, chip them there... but also immunes a ton of elements and such, so I had to have my typeless physical attacker build up BP for a deadly Body Slam chain, except ANOTHER demon has Dread, which immediately sets you to 0 BP. And Adelle was in a slow class at the time. If I could do it again, I'd have said screw the JP, stick Elvis back in mastered Black Mage to ignore immunity / absorption, and stick a Dread-blocker on my fighter. Ah well. There's also a random bit of horror toward the end of this chapter that was rather surprising and well-done I thought. You'll know it when you see it.
* Chapter 3: Definitely the best chapter so far. A few of the bosses just rolled over & died, but one boss fight was quite good (Spiritmaster & Swordmaster), and the plot was substantially more serious and well done than usual - fantasy Salem Witch Trials, but taken seriously and not as a joke, i.e. it's just horrible murder.
* Chapter 4: Did the developers like Trails in the Sky SC? Maybe it's just my imagination, any one of these plot elements alone would be fine, but C4 & late C3 has a few parts real similar to SC, what with a wacky anime squad going to places Our Heroes already visited to stir up trouble. (Also bad guy shows what a badass he is by fighting a dragon, Our Heroes survive a collapse from a great height by dragon transport, although thankfully not via falling onto it this time. Of course the difference is this is done at breakneck Chrono Trigger pace (ignoring the dumb sidequests) rather than thorough Trails pace, which... actually I'd rather they take the time to do some of these plots a little more fully? Speed is nice and all, but things like Halcyonia getting conquered then unconquered - you could easily spend an entire chapter on that if you wanted rather than 3 fights + a boss battle. They go more for the great man theory of history that it's all about the king instead. Also one of the mini-episodes doesn't make tons of sense but it doesn't linger on it very long so whatever. (Everybody gets kidnapped from Wiswald by an undead army, then unkidnapped and everyone is fine? Yeah that didn't actually happen, especially since Wiswald is supposed to have more than 50 people living there. Wish they'd just kept it at "crazy bad guy is in local dungeon and has kidnapped SOME people, no you can't talk to the other villagers for (reasons) but they're there" or something. Also, the most random source of someone quoting Agnes's signature line from Bravely Default 1.)
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Also, character builds so far:
* Seth: White Mage -> (Enough Freelancer for L9 / JP Up ) -> Black Mage -> Red Mage -> Pictomancer -> Spiritmaster -> Bard.
Although I'm not sure why I'm bothering with Bard so late, it does seem like a late bloomer class (you want the speed-up-other's-turns ability which costs mad MP, otherwise you're better off with Pictomancer debuffs) and mastered Spiritmaster has a busted 2nd passive that makes me just want to run Spiritmaster / WM all day for my support duties. Ah well, you never know, can't hurt to have Bard in my back pocket if it'll help some day.
* Gloria: Vanguard -> Freelancer -> Thief -> Berserker -> (enough Salve Maker for L8 / Thrust & Parry) -> Ranger -> Swordmaster -> Phantom.
Has run Heroics as secondary all the time, although used it a bit differently... Thief (pre-mastery) makes good use of high speed to spam Gift of Courage & items when not Godspeed Striking, say, while Neo Cross Slash is better than Swordmaster's skill set in general other than Flowing Stance but works nicely with an S in Swords. I'll just mention here for both her & Adelle that, at least when underlevel, Berserker's Bloody Minded passive skill (100% accuracy at the cost of some can't-be-fatal recoil damage) seems like a soft requirement if you actually want to reliably hit stuff, which you really do in a system like Bravely Default where you want a confirmed kill when going deep into negative BP. Also, despite being the best painter canonically, she's the only person I've not sent down the Pictomancer path! Curious.
* Elvis: Black Mage -> White Mage -> Pictomancer -> (enough Salve Maker for L8 / Thrust & Parry) -> Red Mage -> Oracle.
Oracle is a steaming pile of crap, I probably shouldn't have bothered, but maybe it'll have a really busted secondary? We'll see. It's insanely slow which kinda negates the benefit of the time magic stuff. That said, a mastered RM w/ Pictomancy secondary is pretty badass, although randomly Pictomancer's stuff doesn't count for Chainspell for some dumb reason. Oh well. Gaia Rod helps make Red Magic secondary pretty good for earth damage currently.
* Adelle: Freelancer -> Beastmaster -> Berserker -> (enough Pictomancer for L9 / Sub-Job BP Saver) -> Shieldmaster -> (enough Ranger for L6 / Counter-Savvy) -> Dragoon -> (enough Salve Maker for L8 / Thrust & Parry) -> Bastion -> (enough Red Mage for L7 / Revenge) -> Hellblade (?)
Sub-Job BP Saver is an insanely broken passive. Agree with Jo'ou that Spearhead is insanely good for randoms, and would use Adelle just to Body Slam twice off Miscellany, but once you get Sub-Job BP Saver, Body Slam is just STUPID. I remember comparing a double-weakness hit of a lightning spear off Dragoon vs. Body Slam, and Body Slam still did more damage (and throws in CTB Delay while you're at it) since the game is balancing thinking it costs a BP, but it doesn't. Could do similar tricks with other costs-a-BP skills like Pressure Point, Crescent Moon, or Minus Strike, I'm sure. Body Slam is especially cool since bosses don't seem to ever counter Miscellany, although some will counter any physical attack of course.
* Benched: Monk, Gambler, (Bard until very recently but I've not used Bard in serious boss fights). They just didn't sound all that compelling.
As a side note, something odd about BD2 is that your job learning actually SLOWS DOWN late-game. JP gain is essentially flat from start to C5 it seems, but early on you can stick the JP Up & Up / JP Up combo on lots of characters if you spend the time in Freelancer to master it and it's not a big deal to get 1.7x JP. Spending 3 skill slots on that, even for randoms, is a lot to ask later on. Of course, if you really want to grind JP, you can, but the game is in general generous enough about JP that it doesn't really seem necessary unless you're trying to max out Freelancer or something silly.
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BD2 - Just beat the Ranger asterisk fight, going into the Tower in Wiswald. The Ranger boss fight can be notoriously unstable, especially if you let the boss get a turn at full BP below 50% HP, and the support is pretty annoying... but Godspeed Strike and Neo Cross Slash to the rescue there, after I set up my buffs, Seth was dealing 4k per GSS under -resistance- (the boss resists Daggers, y'see), which is just gross. This said, because of the aforementioned instability, that took me two resets to really get it going, paralysis blockers are a very good idea there in general, especially since Quickflurry deals more damage to paralyzed units. Red Mage asterisk also got me a reset, but that was mostly me not paying attention. The status can be a bit of a pain there, but it's fortunately not hard to setup for it, be it via status healing items, be it via equips.
The writing seems to have gotten some steam as well. I like how the game doesn't dump the former asterisk holders into the void after their fight, and some of the reappearances got me to smile a wee bit (Bard in particular being an entertaining loser). Out of the main cast, Seth feels like the loser characterization-wise, just sorta generic. Gloria is very good - no-nonsense, duty-driven and very logical at what she sets out to do. Elvis is just goddamn likable and good-natured, all while having that thick Scrooge McDuck accent. Adelle... well, she's meant to be the girly girl out of the cast, and those moments are kinda eeeeeehh, but she has some good stuff going, mainly in her rapport with Elvis (the shoe sidequest is a pretty good example. Also, her first line after the Gambler asterisk fight got me smiling a bit as well, because she's so good at showing she's tired of that shit). The main thing, though, is that the characters definitely feel more adult and thoughtful than the usual, which makes sense given they're supposed to be, y'know, adults. Elvis is 35, the others are all in their mid-20s, so they actually do think things through and make logical connections. It's frankly refreshing in a sense.
Anyhow, my setups:
Seth - Mastered Freelancer/Monk/Thief, currently running Ranger with Thief sub-job. Ranger has a lot of damage and good speed, which lends well to running Thievery as a sub. Monk is a great earlygame carrier if you're willing to deal with the HP costs on their skills, Bare-knuckled Brawler also helps a lot with mitigating bad weapon affinities in just about any class you want and Pressure Point kicks ass. Freelancer... is all about Body Slam after Berserker asterisk, tbh, and Body Slam -is- really good, but not really "worth a full skillset slot" good. Thief is fucking bananas, though, mainly because of Godspeed Strike - granted, the speed also helps quite a lot. Thief just gets a lot of turns and this is important in BD2. Stealing sucks -ass- without farming setups I have no access to as of now, but if you're running Thief, it's because you want to abuse GSS and the speed.
Elvis - Mastered Black Mage/Bard, L6 White Mage, currently running Red Mage with Bard sub-job. Bard doesn't sound compelling at base, but I'll be upfront and say I'd be in SERIOUS trouble in half the asterisk fights if I hadn't run Singing in my setups. Stacking those full-party damage buffs and reductions really helps both blitzing through boss fights and surviving the necessary turns until my setups are ready to melt bosses down. Sleep and non-elemental MT damage also have their place in dealing with randoms. Black Mage... I'm frankly not impressed, MT really waters down the damage potential and the spells are EXPENSIVE (though the latter frankly isn't a big deal, with ultra-cheap Ethers and the MP regen passives, it's honestly hard to feel pressed for resources in BD2). Still functional enough and BD2 does a lot of specific damage spoiling, so you want multiple damage types waving around in your party. Red Mage seems pretty neat so far, covering elemental weaknesses Black Mage doesn't have and a more balanced stat spread, along with having a status game attached to its damage (and it also extends to a Black Magic sub-job if you care!). The healing not being MTable is a bummer, but it makes sense.
Gloria - Mastered White Mage/Black Mage, currently Red Mage with White Mage sub-job. White Mage remains borderline unskippable in BD2 and I setup Gloria for ultra-tanking with tons of HP equips and Res-based staves and shields. Offensively, she's kinda inept, but she's the lynchpin of my party just by virtue of keeping everybody alive.
Adelle - Mastered Vanguard/Beastmaster, currently running Berserker with Beastmaster sub-job. Spearhead, Crescent Moon and Mow Down mean she's my random-deleting button, no questions asked. Beastmaster capture is also super powerful, the damage is scaled upwards (Petunias with Aerora were dealing more damage than Neo Cross Slash -before- factoring in weakness...) and you can access status and debuffs you'd normally not be able to use with them. The chipping could be annoying, but Mercy Strike and Mercy Smash help A LOT with it, and it doesn't hurt Mercy Smash in particular is strong damage you can use just anywhere. Beastmaster is kinda busted, guys. Berserker has a lot of damage and axes are -powerful- (having an A in spears so I can abuse Spearhead with dual-wielding doesn't hurt either, and they're so bad at using shields that you don't really want to use those with them anyway), but the speed is a bummer. Vanguard has both damage and utility, which isn't bad - debuffs have been nerfed from BD1, but they're still pretty dang useful (I do -not- want to consider dealing with Berserker asterisk without Bard's damage reduction and Defang, for instance). She may be my offensive MVP overall as of now.
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Trials of Mana - Beaten again. Used the three people I didn't last time (Charlotte, Hawkeye, Duran), did the one route neither Amy nor I had done yet (Charlotte's). Fought the aftergame trial bosses but decided not to do Anise's stockade this time.
I also read that No Future has an item cap of three per battle and decided that sounded cool, so I decided to roll Hard but implement that. Might be trickier for some parties but I had lots of healing, so it mostly made me pay attention because three Cups of Wishes is quite a limit if I screw up. I only died to Harcypete, Zahnoa, and Machine Golems mk2 though a few other bosses came close certainly (Mispolm, Xan Bie, Zable Fahr, and Dark Lich off the top of my head).
Charlotte: Light/Dark (Sage). She's bad early because ST Heal Light just isn't worth much. Gets a lot better after class changed because the MT version is actually very good. MT sabers that are also attack buffs is pretty cool, as her late pickup. Doesn't have too much offence herself but that's okay. I was going to use High Priest but it sounds like Turn Undead got nerfed.
Hawkeye: Dark/Light (Ninja Master). So uh this is a very solid class. It's just "fine" at Ninja tier when the debuffs are ST, but once the MT versions come out to play, he can just start wrecking randoms. Stack the passives to make the jutsus stronger and watch the fireworks. Better yet, he gets passives which cause the jutsus to build CS gauge (up to 15% per target from Flame Jutsu, or 36% if you get the improved version and stack them, which I sadly didn't). As you can see when facing 3-5 enemies suddenly he builds gauge very fast indeed. Only downside there is all his CS moves have small hitboxes relatively.
Duran: Light/Light (Paladin). Tanks with Provoke and various passives which mitigate damage or make him stronger due to it. Holy Saber sees some occasional use too, although since it's only ST it only came out against bosses weak to holy and nothing else. Which, well, Zable Fahr, Gova mk2, and Dark Lich do all exist and two of them are among the better lategame bosses.
Generally this team was less physically gifted than my previous team buuut the sabers sometimes changed that, since I didn't have those last time.
Fire Emblem Awakening - Up to Chapter 19.
Fire Emblem 4 - Okay let's do this. Still clunky, but interesting enough and I feel obliged to actually beat this myself and show that I'm a true FE fan. As well as Thracia. FE1-3 have remakes so...... we'll see.
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Mo Astray -
I was reminded again how bad I am at plat forming game.
The wall climbing stage is especially rage inducing.
The spinning trap chamber boss fight is rage inducing.
The sky stage is rage inducing.
How fingers hurt is rage inducing....
But the aesthetic & story really made be persisted in playing.
I mean, the aesthetic is really really my thing. The whole lonely planet air and the game's of light in its general art direction.
The experience could be better if the OST can be a bit more exciting.
The OST is pleasant enough over all. But I don't know, it just felt to calm in general. Even the more fast paced boss themes felt that way.
The sky stage's theme is the only one that actually catches my attention on spot and gave some sense of excitement. (But damn the stage's design nailed me so hard with the music.)
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Streets of Rage 4- ran through on Easy. This is pretty satisfying all things considered, but I don't think I'm gonna obsess about doing unlockables and stuff. Just... yeah, this is such a perfect template for what these kind of revival fanservice games should be. Sprite work is excellent, I love how the new elements both mechanically and in plot play with the idea of remixing and building on the original, good music, just a good all around package. Not something I need tons of, but real good.
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Fire Emblem Awakening - Beaten again on Hard. Female characters only. I played the first half of the game primarily on the bus so reinforcements are kind of terrible but it's okay, most early maps either don't have them or you can avoid seeing them by going fast. Biggest exception being Chapter 13 which is definitely some nonsense and seems to exist to punish the player for trying to use unpromoted staff users or Olivia. Lots of things about the game do this honestly. This probably isn't a hot take but Olivia is the worst dancer in the series. (I ended up letting her die in Morgan's paralogue.) Second half of the game I played mostly at home so having a guide for the reinforcement nonsense helps a lot! Game has a very snappy pace, very few maps take more than 7 turns and you have so much control over the speed and such. That definitely remains a nice thing about it, it's such an easy FE to just get into.
Best units in some order were Robin (class changed to Dark Mage, Nosferatu too strong), Sully (just a big ball of stats, with high move), Lucina (class changed to Cavalier -> Paladin, ludicrous stat ball with high move), Sumia (Dark Flier, great stats early then fell off later due to poor str/def but Galeforce gives her nice utility towards the end), Cordelia (Falcon Knight, better stats than Sumia once her speed gets properly rolling, also Rally Speed and Rescue for utility), Tharja (Nosferatu is OP, not as good as Robin though), Kjelle (basically another Sully once she caught up), Tiki (invincible stat ball with 1-2 range, just breaks the lategame). Also used Cherche (good but has her weaknesses), Nowi (has moments of being early Tiki but the stats definitely aren't as good relatively, I dropped her midgame), Say'ri (she's fine, mostly Tiki's pairup partner but did enough of her own work to get Swordfaire), Anna and Maribelle (healers, with some bonus early Levin Sword combat goodness for Anna; Maribelle has issues early as mentioned but later can take one hit from most things). Storebought Rescue staves at E rank are certainly a thing all right.
Fire Emblem 4 - Beat Chapter 3! So far I have promoted Lex (Paragon is a thing) and Lachesis (was able to snag the boss kill to get her Paragon as well, then Heal gives her 30 exp a pop and her promoted class is really stupid). About to promote Aideen as well, and a few others are close. Sigurd is a ridiculous unit, no shock there.
Random thoughts:
-So the game opens with this neat opening scroll telling you about the game's political situation. I appreciate that. I don't appreciate the fact that the opening scroll is "Grannvale is ruled by Man #1 with the help of his son Man #2 and their advisors Man #3 and Man #4. Their political enemies are Man #5 and Man #6. There's also the high priest, Man #7. Man #8 is your protagonist, assisted by his friend Man #9. Taking advantage of the political situation, soldiers from Rapey Kingdom led by Man #10 are invading, threatening the castle of Woman #1 and taking her captive." This is not an exaggeration.
-God mounts/Canto are so dumb in this game. You just do so much moving from point to point, units without mounts can fall behind. When you're not moving towards things you sometimes face like 10 enemies at once so being able to hit and canto to safety is huge. And canto-users can even switch weapons after they kill something! Not as big a deal in this game as it would be in some others but still, c'mon.
-This game would be much better if it were faster. Even if you have to have the gigantic maps (and they sometimes do serve a plot/setting purpose), there's no excuse for how slow the "animations off" animations are. Enemy phases take forever to sit through sometimes. Also it badly, badly needs a Civilization-esque "move this unit to this square" feature so you're not manually moving 15+ units every turn even when no enemies are in sight.
-The pawnbroker system is so silly. Forget Manfroy, evil capitalists have taken over Judgral and it's a shame we never get to deal with them.
Lex: I just got this staff, but I can't use staves. Can I give it someone who does?
Sigurd: No. That staff is your property, and if you can't use it you deserve compensation for it.
Lex: I really don't need compensation, I can't use it and surely our army would benefit from its use. Look, I'll just give it to Aideen as a gift.
Sigurd: Completely unacceptable. If she wants the staff she must pay for it, at its market-determined price.
Lex: But I already got it as a gift from this village we saved.
Sigurd: I will pretend I didn't hear that you were part of something so... scandalous. Regardless, there will be no unauthorized gift-giving in this army.
Aideen: Okay. Apparently the market value of this staff is 10000 gold. So I give Lex the gold, and he gives me-
Sigurd: WRONG. The two of you do not have a license to make a financial transaction.
Aideen and Lex: ...
Sigurd: Lex, you must sell that staff to the registered pawnbroker. He will give you half its value, 5000 gold. Then, Aideen, you may buy the staff from him, at 10000 gold. Anything else would be illegal. Aideen gets her staff, Lex gets some money, and the noble pawnbroker who made the transaction possible is compensated for his invaluable contribution to our society.
I don't want to talk about how much money that pawnbroker has made so far. Eat the rich.
-While the plot is juvenile and regressive at points I do like the general feeling of Chapter 2-3 where Sigurd feels like he's doing the right thing but everything keeps getting worse anyway. I'd like it more if this was happening organically instead of it being the result of Evil Manfroy the Puppetmaster but it's still a neat feeling. I do like the scene where Sigurd rescues his friend and he's like "dafuq, why have you invaded my country" and Sigurd is all "just gimme some time dude, I'll make it right". (Spoiler for the next chapter: he gets his time, he does not make it right, and his friend ends up dead.)
-So uh this game has a cult dedicated to Loptyr who is kind of the Satan figure of the world. We learn from a village that if people are suspected as being members of this cult that they are burned at the stake, like some good ol' medieval witch hunts. How gross and barbaric, right? Only spoilers, this cult does actually nearly bring about the end of the world in this game so this basically means those witch hunts are actually objectively, completely justified? What the fuck. Someone did not think that plot point through.
I'll probably have more things to say about how absolutely awful the Loptyr cult are from a writing standpoint later!
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Elf: I think it's a general problem that comes up when you include religions that authentically worship an evil god. Which is something that fantasy settings do like to include, so... hard to entirely get away from. Obviously something a little more subtle like Final Fantasy X, where the religion is fighting an evil entity but in a really awful way while being dishonest about the true nature of the situation, is generally going to be a lot more interesting.
I'm not sure about FE4 in particular but I think your best bet in general is to either make it a small and insane cult (a la your average Cthulhu literature) that really is okay to kill because they're people who've made dark pacts for power or the like, or if you're going to have it be a proper religion, at least give them a respectable front that claims to be about love and justice and obeying whatever Bishop Manfroy says. That at least makes it properly awkward that random adherents are not necessarily bad people. Awakening had a bit of a similar issue with Grima's cult, but to Awakening's credit, it also includes clearly sympathetic characters like Henry & Tharja who seem to at least nominally have been part of Grima worshippers, albeit just due to where they lived. (To Awakening's discredit, it might still be correct to kill even nice-but-deluded followers depending on just how that sacrifice-Grima-worshippers-for-power thing near the end worked... yeah the writers shoulda just tossed that plot point out and forgot about it.)
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Bravely Default II
Finished! This game was awesome - I truly enjoyed it. (Just... harder to talk about the parts I like because they inherently involve spoilers, while the silly / dumb stuff I don't feel any shame in spoiling.) Worth mentioning that Revo's music remains great too, although there might have been a few too many remixes? Good for keeping it a "Bravely" series feeling game and BD1 nostalgia, but new stuff is cool too.
* As mentioned earlier... the main characters have a rough start IMO in the prologue, but they do find their strides and become really enjoyable overall. The secondary characters are mostly decent too, with the slight proviso that this is a standard heroic RPG and not a steely depiction of larger societies, especially in Prologue / Chapter 2 where there isn't very much time spent on characters who aren't directly leaders / enemies / plot coupon holders. The Chapter 1 / Chapter 3 towns are much better about this thankfully. I was annoyed in the already weak Prologue that it introduced 3 characters the game wanted me to care about without bothering to give them names, but thankfully at least one got a name eventually, which was nice. Also, there's one particular character who is just... I kept expecting their plot to be resumed but it wasn't. I can only hope/assume they're being saved for BD2-2, because their plot is left totally hanging, but I suppose we'll see.
* There's a part of the game that doesn't directly tell you what to do, and I did get mislead by my own theorizing a bit, but I eventually noodled it out. Don't FAQ it! That was a nice and rewarding feeling.
* The boss of C5 had awesome music, nice remix of a famous BD1 track in there too, but wasn't TOO threatening. The C6 boss, on the other hand, was extremely scary and I only barely hustled out a victory, although it'd have been easier if I'd known what to expect - although a lot harder if I wasn't using one particular class that spoils one of its main tricks ( Spiritmaster, which offers free partywide MP regen against boss that just loves to bust your MP). The final boss wasn't actually that bad; I think I was more threatened by the C6 final boss (which, granted, was done at ~8 levels lower), although maybe I didn't use one particular busted thing the game hands you late it'd have been a lot more legit (the final secret class - the way the final final can threaten you is with busting all your BP and denying you turns, but the final class gives you BP regen which is the most powerful ability to possibly have, bar none. That and good ol' instant death, which Spiritmaster still spoils.).
* Speaking of which, BD2 has a truly galaxy brain approach to one of its job system aspects. I wasn't really expecting to beat the final boss above, just poke it and see what it was like since I was still getting thrashed by some lategame challenges that open up that are the rough equivalent of the BD1 C6-C8 Eternian asterisk team-ups. But no, the final boss is actually easier, or at least approximately as difficult as, these team-up remix fights. Dafuq. This is like locking job upgrades in FF5 behind beating Shinryuu-level threats. And then making you grind some more to actually get the benefits! I dunno, maybe there'll be a postgame to use those abilities on. Maybe relevant for a NG+ too?!
* The obligatory slightly meta wanking / other dimensions plot from BD1 returns a bit in BD2, but... actually done fairly well, I think. Definitely has the cool thing where you're doing something and you gradually realize what you were Really Doing later on. (Spoilers, although not a huge one: So... there's a boat-lending lady where you have a seemingly not-through-closely thing where you go on crazy adventures while the system idles, and if you connect to the Internet, you get better rewards and they invoke the names of other BD2 players. And she claims the boats even work in a landlocked nation, where there's a will there's a way, etc. And her deal is specifically with Seth, who is established as a "sailor" from afar. You eventually realize that the "outer oceans" are literally other worlds, and when you get to visit another "island", you see the same kind of pop-ups for others helping out on your boating adventures elsewhere to help you out here. And yeah, Seth is an in-setting isekai protagonist, he wasn't merely from another continent but from a different world entirely. Cool stuff, certainly less silly than BD1's let's all power up across the dimensions to make a Spirit Bomb or something.)
* Random tidbit: So we're told early on about this big evil threat called the Night's Nexus, and then later on we learn a bit more about the nature of this threat and how it works and why... and then somebody says something like "Oh, so that's why it's called that." But... the explanation has only vaguely something to do with being a nexus but nothing whatsoever to do with night, so I wonder if there was some Japanese reference in the name that didn't translate.
If anyone is curious, the boss battles... big spoilers though. The plot is worth enjoying so definitely a only-watch if you're never going to play, or at least skip the cutscenes.
* https://youtu.be/PS5mhYyIqm4 (C5 boss)
* https://youtu.be/0VNC4x3TYJo (C6 boss)
* https://youtu.be/sG5ZiPN2AMU (final boss)
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Elf: I think it's a general problem that comes up when you include religions that authentically worship an evil god. Which is something that fantasy settings do like to include, so... hard to entirely get away from.
I think even simply not having the line about the witch hunts would be a big improvement. You can still have the cult be around, but change the framing to "There are rumours some people even worship the Satan figure. Sounds ridiculous to me, who would want to do that...?" As is, we're left with an uncomfortable conclusion that a practice that actually exists in real life and has killed hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people is something which the game, presumably by accident, is essentially putting forward as a good practice in setting.
Generally agree with your comments about Awakening.
In general I'm obviously not the biggest fan of massive cults of people overtly dedicated to the end of the world because I don't really find them all that credible. Obviously you can have an effective evil cult and/or religion in fiction and I'm fine with some awful people at the top of them, but they're a lot more credible if the rank and file are just ordinary people (complete with credible reason(s) for how they were recruited/radicalized, and there are plenty of possibilities!) instead of them being supervillains top to bottom. FFT works because only a small subset of the Shrine Knights are in on the plot to foment war and an even smaller subset are in with the "actually controlled by demons directly". FFX works because even the Grand Maester legitimately believes he is doing what's best for the world. etc.
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In general I'm obviously not the biggest fan of massive cults of people overtly dedicated to the end of the world because I don't really find them all that credible.
I mean that's basically what most Evangelical "Christians" are at this point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premillennialism#Dispensational_school
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Obviously you can have an effective evil cult and/or religion in fiction and I'm fine with some awful people at the top of them, but they're a lot more credible if the rank and file are just ordinary people (complete with credible reason(s) for how they were recruited/radicalized, and there are plenty of possibilities!)
You know which god you are paging with this.
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Ghostbusters The Video Game- Fin.
So I originally tried playing this when it first game out, but it might've been the game that melted my xbox or something? In any case I sold it off then never ran across a PS3 copy so anyway switch! That's a thing. Honestly the game takes a while to get you the basic tools so the early going is a bit sluggish, and the later parts of the game feel janky in that "we had to drop everything and ship so there's a missing level and a few cutscenes too unfinished to put in the game so we're just gonna warp from one boss fight to the next level just because.
Point being the game only truly fires on all cylinders in the Library level and I apprecaite the little writing trick they do here. While if I'm honest the game is rarely properly *funny*, in terms of building on the Lore and that end of things it is pretty successful. Kinda fan-wanky overall but some nice cute touches. I feel bad because on the whole I'm noticing mostly the technical flaws (the other big one is the sound mixing in this remaster is BAD, although it was always sketchy and they lean too hard on recycling the movie OST) and it's an overall decent game so... y'know? But so it is.
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Dragon Quest VIII - Finished main game. Good game overall, but it's hard to shake the fact that in most ways it's a worse DQ11, having also played that. The one place I'd say DQ8 solidly beats 11 is tighter writing, perhaps?
I dunno, I don't have a lot to say about DQ8 in general. I certainly have no complaints about it, besides the voice acting paling compared to 11's (but it was excellent for its time, certainly).
I'll do the Dragovian Trials later, but for now I wanna move on to the next one. Solid 8/10 game I think, in any case. I probably would have given it a 9/10 if I'd finished it years ago before playing 11, but DQ11 is a 9/10 to me and DQ8 is a little worse in enough ways that I can't feel comfortable giving them the same score.
Edit: After some reflection, editing in a few comments about DQ8 in the interest of not double-posting. So, yeah, on the whole I liked it quite a lot even if it mostly felt like it was a worse DQ11. I think my biggest complaint about it may well be that while it was a giant leap forward for the series in terms of presentation, I wish the game had more options, in a word - options to choose between classic or redesigned menus (on the PS2 version anyway; 3DS version uses classic menus), options to completely disable the added battle animations (3DS version allows you to double animation speed but not turn them off), etc. It's not that I don't *like* the animations - I'd likely turn them on for boss fights - but they make randoms take considerably longer for a game like DQ8 where you end up fighting an awful lot of them, and don't get me wrong - I *like* fighting randoms when they're engaging, and DQ8's were more often engaging than not - but having to sit through skill animations by the end of it was starting to drag a little, even on double speed. Similarly, with the menus on the PS2 version, I respect that they're easier for some people and think that those people should have the option to use them, but for me (who was already deeply familiar with DQ-style menuing from playing 1-4 and 7, in the era) they felt sluggish and cumbersome, even before accounting for the fact that the added screen transition which wasn't there originally adds several seconds of loading time every time you open the menu which accumulates rapidly over the course of the game.
Dragon Quest IX - Now I get to romp through this as something of a (premature) victory lap. Morag was surprisingly rude about turn order this time, and it dawns on me that real-world events have proooooooobably dashed any chance DQ9 had of getting a port/remaster anytime soon. (Coffinwell. Just... Coffinwell arc hits in a very, very different way in 2021, and I strongly suspect that a theoretical DQ9 remaster would have to substantially rewrite the arc there to not be found offensive to Japanese sensibilities about ongoing disasters, much like FFL1 in the SaGa collection on Switch deleted all references to nuclear power being to blame for the post-apocalyptic state of Suzaku's world.)
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Fire Emblem 4 - Beat.
An ambitious game and undoubtedly impressive for the time, let down by its writing being pretty poor and the gameplay often being too slow to be fun. Short form review:
What I liked: The detailed setting, where we learn about so many parts of the world and the people from them. The use of the large maps to tell a story, and the way they fit together to cover the continent. The ability to repair weapons (which for some reason vanished until FE3H). The love which went into crafting the individual bosses and their formations. The game auto-saving each turn. It's still Fire Emblem and FE is great generally.
What I didn't like: Glacial enemy phases even with animations "off". The pawnbroker system. Waaay too much time spent just walking across a map. The Loptyr Cult. How slow (but sadly useful/necessary) the arena is. Promotion being locked to the "home" castle. The combat forecast hiding key information (re doubling, etc.). The characters who matter being almost all men. Post-timeskip Lewyn/Forseti, what a sanctimonious douche. Gen 2's story in general.
No idea what it works out to as a rating (5ish?). I certainly respect it more than Shadow Dragon or New Mystery. Is it more fun to play than them? Yeah I dunno there.
I looked up a bit about pairing which mostly consisted of following advice that stated "Tailtiu + Lewyn good" and "make sure most couples include at least one person with Followup as a personal skill". It turned out pretty well!
Ayra + Lex: Gives Larcei and Ulster (too lazy to look up his canon name) Paragon and Vantage and great stats generally. They were held back by being infantry but very effective when they could see combat.
Aideen + Azelle: This one was accidental. Only good thing is the characters both get Pursuit, but Lester getting no bow inheritance makes him quite bad at first. I was ready to bench him but then wyvern country and the Brave Bow (gained right before wyvern country) gave him a niche and he ended up competent. Lana's got an A in staves, not much to say past that, could actually combat reasonably well after promotion if she ever saw it, which was rare.
Lachesis + Beowulf: Kids get Followup, not much to say. Both have Charm which is nice. Nanna is just quietly solid, good physical stats and sword paladin but also gets staves too randomly? She looks like she'd be a mage but no her magic growth is garbage.
Tailtiu + Lewyn: So Arthur joins in the first chapter of Gen 2 with Holsety, and he also inherited the Followup Ring which Lewyn was using. Good game enemies. Held back only by having 5 move at first, and then he gets a horse on promotion. Insane evade, high HP if he does take a hit, only certain formations in the final chapter could give him any pause. One of the candidates for gen 2 MVP obviously. Tinni unfortunately is just bad though (she'd be better with a Followup dad, but still not great?).
Erinys + Jamke: Fee having Adept/Accost off her high speed gave her loads of attacks, often murdering things in 6-7 hits from the Wind Sword. Since she flies she's easy to favour and make extremely effective. Ced is an all-around competent staff user, 6 move + B rank. I gave him the Barrier Ring so he could tank status staves, and Restore.
Brigid + Midir: Not sure how much this one even matters, the thief is gonna be the thief and Brigid passes down most things that matter to Faval. Perhaps the most interesting thing I thought of here is that Brigid + Alec would make Faval the best person to fight the final boss if you want to beat him without Naga (highest atk + Nihil).
Sylvia + Alec: Sylvia's husband doesn't matter too much given that the kids are a dancer and a staffbot. Anyway Lene is busted, FE4 dancer who can start with the Leg Ring. (Looking things up her replacement if Sylvia is unpaired might be even better, has to buy the Leg Ring but gets Charm, wow.) Cairpre is a filler lategame 5 move staffbot, gen 2 Claude without the res.
Arthur and Lene > Ares > other PCs in some order. Seliph turns into Ares lategame (mobile magical tank) but is clearly outclassed before he gets Tyrfing, the fliers are good, Nanna is good, Oifey is good, Leif is bad, Tinni and Johalvier were the worst PCs overall. No wait, Hannibal was, given I never deployed him and his castle defence neer ended up mattering. FE4 armour knights!
In gen 1, Chulainn died against the Agustrian calvary in chapter 2, that was tough so i accepted it. In gen 2, Leif got one-shotted by one of Ishtar's pet pegasus knights (with capped speed and Followup/Adept/Critical/Earth Swords) and I accepted it because Ishtar's formation is brutal in general. Also Ishtar having 100 hit against Arthur, despite having WTD is just funny.
Turn counts:
19,35,43,32,33,44(though I dragged this out to finish one pairing)
35,49,22,23,26,35
Total: 396
Sigurd 80, Lex 46, Ayra 42, Lewyn 38, Midir 37, Brigid 34, Finn 34, Alec 27, Jamke 27, Erinys 26, Quan 19, Beowulf 18, Azel 17, Lachesis 16, Tailtiu 16, Noish 9, Deirdre 6, Ethlyn 4, Chulainn 3, Arden 1, Dew 1, Claude 0, Sylvia 0, Aideen 0
Arthur 99, Ares 67, Fee 57, Seliph 47, Lester 36, Dermott 31, Leif 31, Shannan 28, Larcei 27, Julia 26, Altena 23, Ulster 23, Oifey 21, Nanna 19, Finn 19, Faval 19, Johalvier 11, Ced 4, Tinni 2, Lana 1, Patty 0, Hannibal 0, Lene 0, Cairpre 0
C in everything, Time: 57:13.
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Atelier Meruru- fin. Well, as finished as I plan to be, got A Rich Nation, which is sorta the default Complete ending as best I can sum it up.
I definitely felt travel and gather time really hard in the midgame, and it seemed like the options for mitigating all that opened up really late? buuuuuut, part of that is is because there's some ways to get the materials earlier but you have to know what facilities to build in what order to get them. In general getting lots of endings in a dry run feels super FAQ bait in a way most of the PS3 era games don't to my knowledge? Like, I finished the main quest in Ayesha really late too, but that was in part me fucking something up then getting really hung up on doing things meant to be done later/in between other activities because I missed a flag. In Meruru it's just... rather demanding most of the time.
Anyway so Meruru herself is a pretty simple character but she works, and I like seeing Totori here. Rorona feels like they finally nailed down how to do her, despite the obvious handicap.
Astrid is a goddamned supervillain jesus. It's weird to me the writers didn't seem to reckon with how bad she was until after the Arland games finished, hence her being uh written out of Lulua more or less.
... gosh this means I've played all the Arland games now. Neat.
6/10? 7? I dunno, I'll have to look at the listing.
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Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth
Short but fun indie Symphony of the Night ripoff. VERY short - like 5 hours including sitting through the credits, and that's with what I think was a completionist playthrough. It doesn't have quite all the random touches the real SOTN does from a budget, but as far as platformy combat? Good to go. The main gimmick is an elemental-shifting one which I was worried I wouldn't like, but it plays decently enough. The other gimmick is a very feast-or-famine health system - if you can keep your spirit levels topped off, you regenerate health rapidly, meaning you're basically invincible. If your spirit levels are not topped off, you can die very fast as you won't regenerate and enemies can hit for lots of damage and/or stunlock you. For the most part, the result is a game on the easy side (especially if you use consumable items), but it's not toothless easy, so sure, it's cool. The exploration is also very "nice" (in the sense of cluing in the player places they haven't been) if a tad uncreative - in a "real" big budget Metroidvania, you'd have lots of creative ways to unlock new sections and backtrack. Deedlit opts for the simple-but-boring colored keygates method, congrats you can go through red doors now. This meets the letter of a Metroidvania but not the spirit of one, as you should be getting the banana repellant ability to make your way through the banana jungle or whatever or other more flavorful excuses to open up exploration ideally. (Oh, I should mention that the third, less important gimmick is some archery puzzles as well as having a decent ranged option in pestering your enemies with arrows the entire game. Let's go for 4 gimmicks and say that "magic you just cast by pressing a button rather than some silly fighting game combo" is a gimmick. Kinda busted that one of the best spells, a homing light attack, is also gotten very early.)
Also... ladies, if your man is totally ignoring you, is semi-translucent, and seems to randomly disappear, that's not your man. That's... uh, you're probably trapped in some extradimensional magic labyrinth or something and that's just an illusion / reflection / dream / spirit / etc.? This is a rare game that would probably be improved if you removed almost all of the protagonist dialogue aside from simple nods & approval. Deedlit comes across as seriously clueless / in denial for some fairly obvious Something Is Up Here plot points from the start. I'm cool with letting the player noodle out the plot and thus avoiding the protagonist spoonfeeding the player the "answer" via dialogue, but just have her be quiet and make it seem like she's playing it close to the vest, aside from occasionally yelling Parn's name, rather than act like a surprised deer in headlights that she seems to be mysteriously fighting the entire Lodoss rogue's gallery again in some undisclosed location.
Anyway, enjoy one of the best old anime openings again (pls ignore the series it was the OP to was bad by all accounts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Ee6PJvek4
Bravely Default II
I guess I'll mention for the record I did beat the superboss team-ups (no extra grinding). They were definitely way harder than the final. Beating Dragoon / Spiritmaster / Oracle really broke the rest of the fights open as the Spiritmaster upgrade is broken as hell (FREE RESURRECTION AND BRAVE POINTS FOR THE ENTIRE TEAM?!). Kinda wish there was some post-postgame thing to actually throw the powered up jobs at other than "the superboss fights you didn't beat yet"? Oh well, not a huge deal, some of those fights were *legit* even after I got the Spiritmaster upgrade.
For some more final very spoilery BD2 thoughts for those who completed the game (or weirdos who like spoiling themselves) while it's still reasonably fresh in my head...
* So the character who I have to hope is being saved for BD2-2 is Edna of course. We don't learn anything about what caused her to hate humans - or, if she was just mind-controlled, how she ended up mind-controlled. And yet, even that simple rivalry, if unexplained, is dramatically powerful because Adelle cares. She's still an effective "presence" villain. I feel that the game dropped the ball a bit with the Night's Nexus. The interesting part about the NN was that it *was* a human originally before dunking its head in a negative vortex for ultimate power or something as villains are wont to do. Even if they are no longer recognizably human, I feel that playing up that aspect, especially in the final-final C7 fight of the Night's Nexus, would go far to helping spice up the NN. Make it so Inanna retained some core of themself, albeit insane, so that they could give her some more lines than just CONSUME CONSUME.
* While on the villains note... Adam is in a bit of an odd spot. When the party confronts him in C4, they essentially take him at his word that he's trying to unite / conquer the world, and have a standard hero vs. villain argument as such. However, what we learn later kinda works to make this seem less true? All we know early on is that Musa was "destroyed". But in C5, it's claimed that Musa was more like *annihilated*, with Gloria / Sloan / Orpheus essentially the only survivors it seems. Uh, this changes the equation. Same with Vigintio's plan for conquest of Wiswald essentially being "kidnap everyone and turn them into undead." There's CONQUER the world and there's KILL EVERYONE. The game clearly wants it to be "conquer" when thinking about Adam, but I think they needed to tone down the backstory stuff, then, which retroactively makes "honorable enemy" people like Lonsdale look worse if Holograd was literally committing some sort of genocide. Alternatively, if that really did happen, the Gloria / Adam conversation at the end of C4 needs to be very different - first off she should be smoldering with rage, secondly she can point out he's a hypocrite and that he doesn't really want to unify the world, but rather slaughter it. Either way can work but you gotta pick one. (Okay, you could also write Gloria off as a very VERY forgiving person, but that's even harder than the two options I mentioned to do right.)
* Also, Truff's plot feels... dramatically incomplete? By the rules of drama, if Our Heroes help out a hapless obviously unimportant person 3 times, the hapless person will surprisingly pay them back after it turns out they had the Amulet of Awesome or whatever. But nope. He just gets a happy ending, move on.
* This is more of a "nitpick" than a major complaint, but one of the plot threads is Gloria freaking out at the misuse of the crystals, and we find out later that they were essentially powered by Braska granddad (when BD2 suddenly decided to be Final Fantasy X!). Now, to be sure, sealing the Night's Nexus is a well and good use of the crystals, but considering the powerful, crazy things they do otherwise over the 3 years after the fall of Musa... this may not be a totally wild trade? Assuming it can be any strong-willed human and not just the Musan royal line or something, of course. Do you really think that there wouldn't be a single death in fetching water and building aqueducts and preventable heat stroke in 3 years in Savalon? Not a single death in 3 years from people freezing to death, or suffering some severe injury chopping wood for fires, in Rimedahl? These are some pretty major societal game-changers! While the Wind & Earth crystals were used pretty frivolously, it might actually be worth continually throwing people into the grinder to power these up considering the amazing results. I mean, how many people died in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge or the railroads? Lots! But it was sometimes worth it, right? (Yeah, the game didn't remotely intend this to be the moral, so like I said, a nitpick!)
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FF 9 replay- Up to disk 3 when you get the ship. FF 9 is one of my favorite games, which I had always attributed to the graphics, but the structure of the story on the first two disks is incredibly effective. "On the run" is a great way to keep the characters moving naturally in a way that doesn't feel RPG forced (other than the initial setup) and there's plenty of story fodder to inform character actions and development in a way that feels very natural as well. Character foibles and frustrating character aspects are well-capitialized on in driving the plot and eventually making the characters seem more well-rounded. The feel the early story at least is almost on par with the graphics for me and FF 9 has my favorite all time graphics. I also tend to love Mist based worlds and FF 9 capitalizes on that well.
And speaking of graphics, the level of work that went into their design really shines through. I've noted before, but I don't tend to like games with rotating cameras and attempts at getting more and more realistic because it's too much space for a the game designers to curate, so there's a great cost to having interesting random details because it's too much work to consider what those details might look like from all sides.
As far as a fairy-tale location setting and plot wise, FF 9 really hits of out of the park. And it needs to, because the battle system is horrible. Other than the novel method of learning (which I still want more from; the implementation feels like it could be better), everything was a basically a failure
---Battle Speed: Did they just not play the game first and see how this failed? Or did they just really hate Trance Kuja?
--Skillsets: Minus Dagger and Eiko, near everyone's just boils down to damage for the most part. Sure, there's other stuff, but it's often slapped with questionable hit rates or questionable durations (and many things are just pointless). It feels very rare to find a legitimate use for dipping into skillsets.
--Abilities: No real balance and a lot of cookie cutter fluff. Part of the lackluster skill learning implementation is that I just don't really care whether yet another character learns Anti-Blind or Add Status or whatever.
--Enemies: Are horrible! Although I guess it's better this way given that durable enemies would lead to battles that are way too long. Enemies are all horribly frail, and most of them have sad damage. Some bosses could be good, but their HP is so bad that they'll only get a couple of turns. Boss HP really needed to be doubled at baseline with a few exceptions (hey, throw in a 50% damage bonus increase as well).
At least Tantarian is kind of a fun fight (actually makes Thievery useful despite doing 25% of Zidane's physical. Also got use out of Focus that way when you finally have a chance to hit, Vivi's damage is very nice (especially if you've been hit into Trance, as I was this time).
---Trance: Again, did they not play the game first?
Taking a break now since I've gotten to where the game really slows down. That said, I did randomly find a printed chocograph location FAQ in my parents house, so I'm glad to have that physically handy for when I get back to it.
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BD2 - I beat this a couple weeks ago, but I keep thinking about the game quite a bit, so decided to toss in some random thoughts into the topic.
So, the game definitely feels rushed past the end of C4, with a bunch of weird omissions (Snowfire talked at length about the most glaring of them, and also about some of the worldbuilding holes, so I won't really delve into it, but it is pretty noticeable) and the feeling the game ends up kinda unpolished in a few fronts, but, in a sense, I actually feel the game isn't exactly WORSE off for it? The biggest problem with BD1 was that it dragged it out way, way too long in order to force its script twists in and the whole game structure suffered for it. In BD2, while there is the feeling that things sorta fall apart in the seams, the game actually respects the player's time a lot more and doesn't really want you to take the plot very seriously, which does a lot in building goodwill towards its end product. The writing ends up going for the short and sweet approach to close things up rather than doing a huge buildup and falling apart under its own weight - less ambition is something I've been appreciating more and more in most things I play and, frankly, BD2 ends up better for not being very ambitious in its writing, especially since the writers seem to know their own strengths (mainly making the cast overall pretty dang likable and reasonably memorable within the script scope). It's kinda like "what if Grandia 3 but the characters are actually likable and reasonably written instead of a raging dumpster fire" in that sense. Which yeah, that works for me.
Gameplay-wise, I feel the game gets way, way absurd in the power levels you reach late, but the way to power is very fun and layered, while the battle design makes you feel rewarded for reaching those levels (randoms are kinda rocket-taggy from the word go, but bosses are really fun and punishing if you don't know what you're doing and setup in BD2 is so, so important. This really hits my biases front and center). The game also offers insane replayability with scene skip, amazing NG+ options for player/challenge-friendliness and just overall variety to build a party, so I expect I'll replay this game a lot. Heck, I had to stop myself from doing so a couple times already.
Iunno, BD2 ended up being bigger than the sum of its parts to me, with a core gameplay system that can keep me coming back for ages and a baseline cast that I expected to hate, but ended up enjoying throughout just by being earnestly written. Probably an 8/10, which I frankly did not expect - though part of this may be just by virtue of the game addressing precisely my main complaints about the first game and scratching the horrendous weaboo shit Bravely Second dabbled in.
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Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark
Beat this a third time, this time on Hard Mode. Hard Mode's not too different, one extra enemy per fight typically. This was certainly much easier than my first playthrough on Normal since I'm so much better at the game now, I only lost once (rather randomly to the enemy marked on the aqueduct, I came in with the wrong setup on one PC and everything fell apart from there).
My main team was Kyrie (Marked/Warmage), Yates (various magic classes but mostly acted as the primary healer), Edelgard (Reaver/Templar), builds I've done before or close enough in Kyrie's case. The other three were more interesting (for me):
-Yuna, who focused on Vessel, a class I'd never used before. It's pretty neat? Hallowed Body gives it pretty high offensive stats and it gets a variety of utility attack spells (one with huge range, Earth Slash-style, a 5-range high-power ITE spell, and a high-power spell that hits a 3x3 square are highlights). Pretty MP-intensive so I usually fed her the Mana Stone, and had Manafont of course since it's hard to beat that as a low-effort MP supply. Her other skillset varied (Mender, Alchemystic, Princess most often)
-Bzaro. I'd never used him seriously before, definitely an odd bird who can slot into a variety of roles. Can't use armour but generally has the defensive stats of someone who does, so in true Fell Seal fashion I usually loaded him up with mobility. Anyway I mostly used him to leverage Polestar (14 MP buff spell from the unicorn monster family, Haste + Mind Up to him and all adjacent targets) which certainly does mean things to my mostly magical damage engines. Speaking of which...
-Angela, death mage and obvious MVP. I've been refining this sorcerer build with each successive playthrough and now it just feels hilariously OP. Endgame setup was Druid with Sorcerer secondary, Economy + Blood Magic + Mystic Shield. Blood Magic + Mystic Shield have stupid synergy, as Blood Magic lets you cast spells from HP (2% HP = 1 MP, yes Economy lowers those MP costs and thus HP costs) making your MP useless, but it still generates at 10 MP per turn, and Mystic Shield blocks damage at no cost to your offensive engine. Yikes? Druid is a sneaky good carrier, innate Mind Expert and its skillset while unassuming just adds so much versatility; the ability to doublecast things like healing, dispel, low-level attack spells (including bleed), and Panacea is amazing for e.g. the final boss once you're done destroying the battlefield with ~200 full MT damage every turn (doublecast allowing for 1.5x that at a massive HP cost). Equip appropriate statusblockers to deal with enemy counters, upgrading to the ribbon equivalent at the end of course.
This could be improved further by having support characters with Initiative + Quicken (turn shift) to get the engine started even faster, but that's certainly massive overkill for anything approaching the normal difficulty of the game.
For now I think the next playthrough will be a challenge one. SCC time? Possible! Everyone getting Item should make those reasonably possible (except Mender who gets trolled by Evade Attack of all things). But that's for another day.
Bravely Default 2 - Just finished Chapter 1. Bosses are fun, if long - I definitely need to refine my offensive builds, I feel. (Defence I can handle just fine). Thank god for poison because it has made my poor offence not matter as much. Otherwise this sure is a Bravely game, only being CTB makes everything better.
VVVVVV - I randomly replayed this for the first time since 2013, nothing really new to say about it, it's cool.
Phoenix Wright: Justice for All - After Zero Escape I was craving an Ace Attorney replay but apparently we lost our copy of AA1 and I wanted to play this one on the bus so sure, we'll skip straight to JFA, I'm cool with that. Halfway through Case 2. I really like this case; the first trial day just feels oppressive, but in a way that (since I've played it before and know the truths) feels very fair instead of relying on contrivances (e.g. things that the player mysteriously hasn't investigated yet or the judge being taken for a fool). It's a well-done frame job and it's difficult to crack!
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It seems I'm not as bad at Tales of Symphonia as I advertise myself to be. Ended up grinding out the one title that requires Raine dying in one fight. Some manipulation with traps and I had a Raine with 1 HP and Sheena, Presea, and Lloyd healthy. And I still needed to tell the AI to do nothing partway through because they were winning my chosen fight too quick. Used Purgatory Seal both to save on Life Bottles and also because it leaves the target at low HP to quickly get knocked out again. Got a unique win quote out of it too; not one that's likely to be encountered naturally since it requires a KO'ed Raine and a standing Sheena.
I still flubbed a plot fight that requires staying alive for a set time. Barely pulled through because Guts saved Lloyd from a would-be-fatal attack at 1 HP and everyone else was already down.
Will write about conquering the bonus dungeon another time.
FFT: Not going to do battle summaries for every fight but one had me giggling to do.
Poeskas Lake - I brought Mustadio. He made statues.
It's also the last time he really gets to shine.
scattered Gradius Gaiden ship thoughts:
Vic Viper - It's mainly there to be the legacy ship with the same loadout from the very first Gradius. It also fills the niche of possibly being the best for those who like to hang back and attack from afar. Laser's damage output tends to be consistent regardless of distance. Missile's ground crawling also is convenient when trying to focus on dodging; the other missile weapons generally take more precise aim.
Lord British - Something I haven't seen documented is how the Disruptor laser pierces everything except terrain. Boss trying to block shots with inpenetrable arms? Bzzt, Disruptor cuts right through. It takes full invulnerability to block. Disruptor's DPS is not that overwhelming and pointblacking with the Ripple laser does more damage when you can get away with it. Not much else to add at the moment; the lack of rear firing capability is already well documented.
Jade Knight - This seemed so cool reading the description of the arsenal. Then I found out the Round Laser nerfs the forward fire rate and that it takes getting close to stuff for it to hit. This can be hazardous once the suicide bullets start showing up. Boss fights tend to last longer with this ship as the Pulse Laser isn't overly strong; it's main benefit is not to be stuck with the Round laser in a fight that relies on forward firepower. Spread Bombs are the most damaging part of the ship's attacks and hitting with them is key to shorter boss fights. Awkward but also interesting to make use of. Plus the Spread Bombs have this fun factor even if they're not the tools of mass destruction of Gradius 3 arcade.
Falchion Beta - Gravity Bullet is so nice for quick boss battles. Takes a bit more alertness than other ships' lasers since they can impact on each other but so worth it. To balance out this power, this ship has the shortest range on its missiles. Auto-aiming sounds busted but in practice... well it sometimes like to aim at indestructible terrain and it also nerfs the forward firing rate like nearly every other Double type weapon. Also requires getting close to targets, moreso if there is debris around to distract the auto-aimed shot. When the targets are shooting back, it's quite easy to slam into a bullet by mistake.
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SaGa Frontier Remaster - this truly is a dream come true.
Blitz through the Asellus route. Trinity event is here, Furdo and science lab event is here. Nusakan can join too!
There is also new game plus that let you carry over everything! So mo more redoing the something over and over again! This is just great!
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Diving straight into the Saga Frontier remaster. Imagine accidentally saving after the point of no return and getting bodied by the final boss. Couldn't be me...wait no, it was me.
Still got 2 Sanctuary Stones, so time to GRIND IN THE FINAL DUNGEON!!!!!!
Maybe Annie and Roufas will spark some high end sword techs while we're at it. Triple Thrust is perfectly legit, but it'd be cool to see some others. Liza has the DSC already(and Sky Twister and Tri Dragon or whatever that is) of course. And Emilia is full on Gunmage with Light/Rune/Mind as options, and trick shot. Rouge rounds out the team, using Realm/Shadow/Arcane and I bought Reverse Gravity for him from Kylin because after seeing Liza slam monsters into the ground for so long he wanted to do it too.
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DQ9 - finished, still love it, and still love the aftergame's attempt to apply something resembling the Diablo gameplay loop to a turn-based JRPG.
The only thing that stops DQ9 from being unequivocally my favorite create-your-own-party JRPG on raw gameplay is how irritatingly "bad MMO grind" a lot of the class/skill unlock quests are. A remake that got rid of that crap would be pretty much perfect, or, alternatively, a new remake of DQ3 that backports the modern DQ skill point system into it would be equally good to me.
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Yasnooza - Complete. Main game was about 50-60 Hours although I had a ton of idle time, which inflated my Steam play clock to 120. The combat system feels like a modern version of SMRPG with its timed hits and timed defense along with some general improvements that overall make it less broke (stat buffs expire to start). At the same time though, there isn't a lot of depth in the system despite having a job class system (more on this later) and the overall difficulty is also similar with SMRPG in that it is generally pretty easy outside of maybe one or two fights. Some general strengths and weaknesses of the game:
Strengths:
- The game has a lot of charm. Exploration of the city space is one of the best highlights of the game. Unfortunately, there are only 3 city areas though, but each of them is very large, filled with lots of details and little locations to visit.
- The PCs are all relatively balanced, so you're free to use whoever you want mostly. Although an ideal comp will almost always have one of the girls in the team
- There are a lot of things to do in the game. IMO, if you like open world games, this is probably about as close as you can get to a JRPG while being open world. There are tons of side quests, tons of mini-games or things to do and explore around while having a general story-line for you to follow when you're ready.
- The story doesn't throw around a ton of convoluted terms and while being easy to follow, has it's own series of twists and turns. Kasuga in particular is a great Protag and reminds me a lot of SH2 Yuri. Adachi is also pretty good! I have less things to say about Han and Zhao cause they join fairly late, but even they have good substories. So the cast is pretty strong as a whole.
- Enemy designs are pretty fun which include everything from a Giant Roomba to stock Yakuza dudes.
Weaknesses:
- As a result of the open-world-ish structure, the pacing is all over the place. There are some Chapters where the number of objectives take like a couple of hours between some events to be done and a dungeon to explore. Then, there are some chapters where it is just one boss battle and the game progresses. As a result of the weird pacing, the game clearly expects you to explore the city scape at some point and participate in the myriad of activities so you can meet the new demands of a boss or dungeon.
- Despite its class system, there isn't a lot of reason to explore in different classes outside of the post game. Your stats scale with your job level, so you want to be in your primary job for about 75% of the time. The other 25% is to explore jobs to pick up carry over skills or for quick stats. Problem is that the carryover skills sometimes take 20 levels of that job before you learn it, which is about 1/2 the game or more. So you have to make your choices and stick with them. This is a very sharp contrast to other job systems such as FF5, FFT and even XF, where switching a job for a fight or two is way more reasonable and way more of a problem solving solution as opposed to hard grinding.
- Money is a huge determinant on the things you can do and is the underlying resource more than anything else. This creates this weird dynamic where understanding the business management mini-game is vastly more important than any other mini-game. You need money for equipment, participating in mini-games, continuing certain subequests, heck at one point, the game even needs you to *make* 3 million Yen.
- There are a lot of little polish issues that makes the game feel sloppy. For example, why can I only switch jobs at the employment office (this is another reason why the job system isn't great)? Why do I have to walk around the streets to get to the forge - can't they just be literally on the same level / beside each other? Why does the quick travel cost money (even if not a lot)? Why can't the inventory cap just be in battle instead of requiring a storage box? Why are there are so few save points inside actual dungeons?
Overall, the game has its fair share of issues but the experience and charm of the game is generally strong enough to carry the game through its completion. 7/10
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Saga Frontier Remaster- Is excellent as everyone else has said. The NG+ options are delightful and I'm really looking forward to Fuse's quest.
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All I'm carrying over with NG+ is credits and WP/JP gains. All teh rest is like...stuff I WANT to do over again. Sparking new techs, getting the equips as you go(even with Unlimited Credits I ususally don't just buy endgame gear from teh word go), etc. That is all the stuff that pleases my primate brain's desire for New Shiny.
But being able to carry over those resources is quite nice. Not having to do the full Gold Exchange Tango between Nelson and Koorong every time will be good. (I didn't do it at all for Emilia, and got around to it for T260 because Mecs Need Money).
Speaking of, I did my final dungeon grinding and beat Emilia's quest. T260 was up next(shoulda done Blue first so the money trick would be faster), and I'm actually using Leonard this time. Just finished Tartaros. T260/Leonard/ZEKE all have Maxwell Program, and I put Dragon Program on Leonard since he has the most WP. Gen/Mei Ling and sometimes Riki round out the team. Riki just kinda bumbled into Ogre Lord and well that form works JUST FINE. ZEKE picked up several good programs early, so he got benched for Tartaros. Riki will prolly be on teh bench for endgame. THOUGH tbh if I could slap the backpack on Riki I'd prolly do THAT and have Mei Ling benched. No mage, but with 3 mecs, Gen and a high end monster who cares? Alas, backpack is not a valid monster item, and Gen will usually have better things to do with his turns than toss items.
Oh, and for amusement, Leonard is currently packing the Lordstar. So he opens boss/miniboss fights with Braveheart and then starts Multi-Slashing for 3600 damage(before combos). "Scientist who cloned his brain into a robot body wields a legendary blade found in a dragon's lair to carve apart off-brand Constructicons." SAGA Y'ALL!
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SF1 Remaster- half way through. Blue, Coon, and Red are the only ones left.
Saving Red, my Favorite for the last.
Now carefully building my chars and carry stuff over to get myself prepared for the ninja super boss.
Though, is it just me or is the item drop rate much higher in Remaster? Farming Silver Gauntlet and Glenburn Shield has been so easy.
And yeah, Leonard is great. Being the type 6 means he can learn all the good program. Also has good base states and high wp. Especially the wp, arguably better than T260G thanks to that.
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Saga Frontier R - Blue still has a janky ending.
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SaGa Frontier Remaster-
Beaten the super boss version if Boss X.
Not hard. He can be spoiled with the right defense gears. But it had too much hp making the fight a slug. The status induced by Judgement X is also very irritating.
But it just doesn't have enough damage, except the damage spike that came at low hp. But that came way too late to matter.
But guns are definitely superior in super boss fight. Sword and fist may ran out of WP due to how long the fight is.
And then beat the cheat Ninja after that.
It is a fight of luck, SaGa style. Too much over kill damage that you pray he uses attacks that can be spoiled and not those couldn't.
Star Light Shower, Retribution, and Wind Blast back to back is just sick sick sick. And he always open the fight with TWO Snow Moon Flower, which is UGH UGH UGH.
He also has this weird Def spike in the middle if the turn where he gets stupidly tank and takes little damage.
That is his scariest trait. This guy had only like 70k or so hp at lowest enemy rank. So blitzing him away with two separate combo with Tower before he blitz you is like the only way to win. But during his weird Def spike, a 30000 damage combo becomes 8000. This is truly a test of luck.
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Trails of Cold Steel 4 - Well that was probably the strangest vengence ever planned.
Better than I was expecting but I think my expectations after CS3 ended up so low that almost anything would've been. Seriously Rean how are you so bad at this.
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Forgive my shameless plug. =P
Going to be giving away a few RPGs on Friday's twitch stream. https://www.twitch.tv/rpgamer (6:30pest)
Every Friday I play 21 different RPGs that are on a wheel, chat spins the wheel, and I play the game it picks. Fun concept.
The steam games are: FFIV, FFV, Shadowrun: Returns, Ys3. I'll ask a question, and first person in chat to answer correctly gets the steam version.
Come check out the stream and maybe join in on the mayhem by spinning the wheel too!
~
Other then that I am playing NieR Replicant and the game will not stop showing Kaine's butt cheeks. This game has some of the best music in a RPG. Still not really sold on Bronier, but everything else is wonderful.
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Bravely Default 2 - Chapter 4. Does this game have the most ridiculously epic random battle music of all time? Probably. Regardless, I am here for it. And also the sexy job system, now with superior CTB.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Swords only! I'll detail more about this later. Just beat Chapter 5.
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark
Decided to try an SCC. Rules are simple: only use one class where possible, no abilities from outside the class. AI-controlled characters are exempt of course. Plot PCs should all be placed into the class ASAP.
Unlike FFT, items are not tied to a class, so are legal.
Anyway I've decided to try Wizard. Cast the spells that make enemies fall down, take advantage of AoEs, try not to be hit too much, cry if I face anything with full elemental blocking or Evade Magic I guess. We'll see! I hire three generics (Hubert, Rune, Lulu) and also use Kyrie, Virgil, and Lana as my main six to start (Yates draws onto the main team later), though I rotate if I incur injuries. Playing on Normal (Veteran).
Rundown of battles so far:
Timber Road - I'm a little unimpressed with my offence at base, hopefully it'll improve as the Mind growth kicks in. Generally killing enemies in 4 spells. Abuse AoEs when possible, keep an eye on my health and enemy threat ranges and use my limited Potions when necessary to keep alive. The general strategy for this and most fights.
Alpine Woods - The enemies here mostly have elemental weaknesses, and the cliff near the starting point can prevent them from approaching. The unicorn has decent Res to slow my damage, the vangals die fast though.
Gyaum Tor - Slow methodical win. It takes a while but the mountain in the centre prevents all the enemies from rushing me at once, and I largely kite them, so no problems.
Highlands - Save Bzaro/Somier. All fire weak, enemies who cluster, and mostly go after my self-healing NPC guests. Easy peasy.
Scarred Summit - Probably the toughest fight so far, but a few of the enemies hanging back near the door helps a lot, so I can methodically gang up on the ones who do come forward and blast them to bits. Several of them are quite magically tanky, but not "survive six attacks" magically tanky.
Highlands Temple - Alphonse. Actually this is surprisingly easy, I exploit his lightning weakness and counter-magic puts in a fair bit of damage.
Yate's Cabin (1 injury) - Zombies. First injury here as I misjudge the zombies' offence at one point.
Resting Giants (2 injuries) - I let one of the dragons get off a nasty Zohl Beam on a lot of my team then get picked off by the harpies.
Yate's Cabin 2 - Save Anadine (2 resets, 0 injuries on winning run) - Having no healing or defensive options makes keeping Anadine alive a fair bit tougher than usual, and it's not the easiest thing to do normally. Timing my 3 potions on her and occasionally turning my back to the roof to distract the enemies up there (Katja and an archer) helps.
Azure Fields (2 injuries) - The vangals (tiger dudes) have good melee offence and I underestimate them, but otherwise not too bad. I realise pektites (mages with weak mdef) get bodied hard by Magic Counter especially if I set up AoEs for them, if I can afford to.
Banyan Span (1 injury) - That gunner who can cheapshot you at the start is pretty rude. Keep my distance from them thereafter, kill the enemies who come to me, eventually kill Mercier.
Ekhidna Falls - I now have access to healing Flowing Robe + Fur Cap. The one fight where I try out the healing setup. It kinda sucks, because I need to remove Magic Counter (which is sadly non-elemental), my power and durability both drop due to inferior hat, and the healing is honestly pretty awful (~15 base). Not to mention only people without Smart Casting can do the healing, which also means they don't master the class and get a stat hit. Yeah I was hoping for better numbers here, don't think this will ever be worth it. Anyway the fight itself is routine, enemies come to me so I wait first turn then smash. Only thing to be weary off is the first enemy with Magic Counter... just one so rocks help but this will definitely be annoying in the future.
Jungle Temple (3 injuries) - This fight's pretty tough, a Knight gets buffed with Def+ by the Druid and suddenly can OHKO my lower-HP wizards with Defensive Hit. The gunner at the bottom has Infused Edge so can do a lot of damage too, but doesn't move so I can stay out of their range until I'm ready to kill the last two enemies in the fight (the gunner + Antoine, the alchemystic mini-boss with Mystic Shield)
Thespeiros - Breather fight, Primus teleports some dudes into water and I clean up.
Caravan Trail (1 injury) - Mostly fairly easy, the bzzerks (siege ram guys) have bad MDef, the Pektites die fast to magic in general (and trigger magic counter). The zotzit (ball of bonus JP) uses Final Sting and does borderline OHKO, should have focused on it more I guess.
Oldebzar (4 injuries) - My entire right side force gets overwhelmed by the wizard, alchemystic (with Evade Magic! First appearance of that, uh oh), and warmage. My left side force overwhelms the two enemies there, revives Kyrie, and takes out the others at their leisure (alchemystic aside). Mercier buffs himself fifty million times but gets 2HKOed when I finally close in on him anyway (and Rebirth doesn't work in assassination missions, I learn).
Iirzk'tara Gorge (1 injury) - Mostly relatively simple, enemy types my team matches up well against.
Zzakander Spires (2 resets, 2 injuries on winning run) - Pretty rough... just so many enemies with Sleep Powder and that has potential to be awful. Along with me being squishy. Just takes a few tries to bait enemies at the right pace, on the winning run Katja stupidly uses Sabotage to throw herself into my midst, which kills the person she swaps positions with but also her shortly thereafter, and that's the fight.
Occul Cavern 1 - The tangrels (armored enemies) are very tanky and some respect for their ability to burrow underground and set up back hits with their push move needs to be kept in mind. Otherwise though this fight is easy since the enemies take some time to reach my starting point.
Occul Riverbed - Boss fight vs the earthwyrms. I'm anticipating some difficulty here but it's actually quite easy, hit each earthwyrm with Res Down then pile ice damage into them, stay out of lines with them so they can't Quicksand root -> smash me in the face. I stay on top of healing, kill the tangrels when they appear... not much issue really?
Occul Cavern 2 (1 reset, then 2 injuries) - You lose if Kyrie dies, and of course misjudging durability is a good way to die as wizards. Otherwise... there's an assassin with sleep, always annoying. I go up to escape via the western route, killing most enemies.
Baaz Island (4 injuries) - Ouch. The enemy sorcerer has Eruptor and does huge damage with normal attack spells after doing almost anything else, that causes some problems. Two enemies also have Mystic Shield to slow me down. Plenty of range from the enemies which makes this a bloodbath. I'm also starting to fall a bit behind the minimum enemy level here, even with my highest-levelled folks (about -2).
Desert Temple (5 injuries) - Somehow even more pain here! Dark II from the malcubi 2HKOs anyone who doesn't resist dark (Counter Magic hurts at least), sleep is obnoxious as always too. Maybe I should break down and buy blockers.
Phougamouth Bogs (1 injury) - I hire a fresh Level 17 wizard (Jelanda) for this one with how badly my team was beaten up in the previous. Relative breather fight, really only the final push against the birds with Magic Counter (rocks help) presents major challenges, and I'd have 0-injuried this if I hadn't missed a 98% fatal hit against one of them.
Strangled Cove (3 resets, then 2 injuries) - Save Katja. Equip Flippers on everyone to prevent cheesy water deaths. If the enemies decide to dogpile Katja as much as they can there's not much I can do since I can't really prevent it. If more of them go for me then I might just die because this fight is tough! I game over both ways before I'm able to string together a winning run. The assassin in the back has Evade Magic, but fortunately Katja picks her off once everyone else is dead.
Drakesmouth Seaway - Breather fight, everyone's weak to elements and I can take them out without too much issue.
At this point I learn that you can skip the Gelligh 2 fight if you haven't beaten the optional fight with Dolman and Mercier yet! Funny. I guess Septimus doesn't bother trying to assassinate you if you haven't been messing with his plans. So I go on and do the fight after and get wrecked. Feeling a bit underlevelled now for sure, so I figure hey, let's do that optional fight.
Resting Stones (1 reset, then 3 injuries) - Dolman not spawning with Evade Magic helps! Pretty tough but Bzaro chips in with healing.
Gelligh 2 - *dies repeatedly before killing more than 3 enemies* ......... I think I may have made a mistake.
(Yes, I still have the save file from before doing Resting Stones, just in case.)
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Saga- Done all seven quests and all of Fuse's new content. I didn't bother killing the superboss at the end of Fuse's path; just doesn't seem like an especially fun fight.
This was an absolutely fantastic remake. There isn't a ton of new story content in the original seven character's paths, but Fuse's path has a lot of new content and it is really fun. The polish touches were nice as well. I appreciated that they didn't try to rebalance the gameplay, but instead chose to mostly leave things as is, glorious broken and all.
Definitely worth the time and money.
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Saga Frontier Remaster - Couldn't beat Purple Shadow stage 3 trump card mode. I guess there are still mad man in the team to supply us with nonsensical super boss even after Koizumi took his leave.
God, making him use the trump card alone is hard enough, the overtly luck reliant slug fest after that is even more insane.
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Guys. Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut finally has a working English Translation.
It's fun!
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Dusted off an endgame Atelier Ayesha file to finish things with it and log Linca's ending. Did some battle grinding for weapons for people that still hadn't won them yet. Got everyone's strongest weapon other than Ayesha's which if one if had to miss one until going through Clear Game, her's would be the least hassle to win since she's always in the party. So it's probably for the best that I'm missing Ayesha's instead of, say, Nio. Turns out over a month of alchemy takes a long time to complete. Took even longer since I sold off most of my inventory before the last synthesis to raise cash for the clear data file and I was aiming for a strong base to start a Clear Game from. 15 minutes in the sell screen clearing stuff out. Very long time around the cauldron since I was fishing for effects on what I was making to fill in gaps in the Encyclopedia.
Poor Ayesha, going with Linca turns out almost as poorly for her as traveling with Harry in his ending.
Wanted to clear that off my list because I had acquired Final Fantasy X recently and wasn't likely to plug in anything else for a while. I already know the major spoilers and Atelier games have already exposed me to CTB combat. CTB is fun but I've lost most of my faith in Squenix. So I had trepidation and was prepared for something underwhelming and dully disappointing.
So far I've mostly liked it once I got into the rythym of the battle system. Early randoms have a lot more punch than FF6-8 and I was worried about HP in the early going before Yuna joins. Sphere grid is engaging even if it gets time-consuming and I can see how it can get grindy. Ability Spheres I always seem to run short on and maybe it's better to hang around a farm some extras if I have a chance. Up to Luca so randoms have mostly been use the correct character to OHKO things. Not really using Aeons much other than for the heck of it and to build up their Overdrives so that they're on hand for when I want to unload. Haven't had a Game Over yet, see how long I can keep that streak without a walkthrough to look up enemy attacks ahead of time.
I guess I can relate somewhat to early-game Tidus. In the sense of being clueless about where he's been dropped to and oh hey, cute girl. Cast has been alright, though not amazing. Although this may be because I've had a long time to develop an unfavorable bias against the game before I played it so grain of salt and all that. The sex appeal on display somehow bounces off me completely and I find myself not caring about shirtless men and buff athletes and Lulu's bustiness.
Ah yes, the gripes. Long unskippable cutscenes before boss fights just, urk. Ninja Gaiden allows skipping cutscenes and that was long before FFX was released. Mashing confirm does very little to speed things up either, only seeming to cut voiceovers short. To the game's credit, even their longer story stretches don't feel as Xenogears' longer stretches of doing nothing but advancing text boxes. There's blitzball. 'Eff blitzball. I already disliked it before the only required match was over for reasons that weren't connected to me losing. It's slow, it's heavy RNG based, the tutorial takes about a half hour to go through, and the required match has the player's team heavily out-statted. I got creamed 6-1 and I was just glad I managed one goal.
And because I feel like grumbling about it, the voice acting. Yuna's is so flat. It's actually not as bad as I expected it would be. Was only cringing at it about half the time. Sometimes flat works
Oh yeah, I took full advantage of renaming Tidus and the Aeons. Tidus got named Yuri: partly after Shadow Hearts Yuri (I wanted to play Shadow Hearts 2 more than FFX but it's so rare), part after that ice-skating anime, and part because Yuri can be used as a female name which fits for someone who's a cross between Meg Ryan and a jock. The parallel to Yuri on Ice was unintentional but oddly fitting since Tidus is a sports star in his world and the anime used ice skating as a setting (though that's not the main thing it's remembered for). Valefor gets redubbed Empreya, after the godbird from DQ8, which I've never played but know of thanks to the DL. Ifrit become Efrite because I'm putting on a show of being hip and intellectual and that's the non-Square bastardized original spelling. The lighting Aeon, when I get to it, shall be Geddoe: another character from a game I only know of because of the DL
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Tales of Xillia-
This is weirdly uneven for a Tales game. You can tell they were working under adverse conditions in how the final game came out, the way the themes ended up in particular feel a bit half-baked. Weirdly both-sides and kinda dips into "we'll get off Mako Power by discovering OIL" if you think about it too hard.
So... fans of this game will always tell you "play Jude, Milla is more of a replay option" but I decided to play Milla back in 2013 and like hell I'm gonna replay the first hour and a half of the game so here we are. Honestly though... okay.
Jude is the hero of this game in terms of narrative arc and the plot paralleling his character growth, and that's all fine. Like, Jude's a nice boy, I like him. But yeah, it doesn't land for me at all and I don't think getting the more thoroughly explained version of events to better set up his ideological conflict with Gaius would really change my opinion on that? Like, I dunno, just not feeling anything more than "good for you kid" for a boy's coming of age and discovering his ideological center, yeah?
So Jude's alright but I'm just not in a place where he's gonna be a giant favorite of mine. Milla is great to be sure of course. The very restrained way she has to weight her problems and internal conflicts while still being willing to make the call is presented very well. After that...
Elize is presented realistically which is neat but Teepo is... a lot. Sometimes a lot in an appropriate way like Elize and sometimes just... not the right choice.
Leia... sure exists.
Rowan is potentially a neat character and maybe if I'd tracked down his sidequests I'd have more to say but yeah, he's the sort of character that can easily sustain a sideplot if you give him one but they never really go there either.
Alvin... god. So a lot of Tales games do these traitor characters and that's fine but he jsut... doesn't add anything to the team dynamic because he's THAT detached from everyone for most of the game. Like, when Kratos pulls this shit he's also Lloyd's dad (literally and figuratively) and that dynamic shows through and makes you want him to get over his conflicted loyalties. Alvin... you might feel sorry for him eventually. That's about it.
The villains never entirely come together, but aside from Agria they do have some good scattered scenes and that's cool. On the whole one wise decision Xillia makes is by tightly focusing the narrative goals. While the theme gets away from the plot as it goes, the majority of the game always comes back to the same goal and simply making that goal closer or further away as needed for dramatic tension. And hey, taking out a military superweapon is a perfectly good overriding goal for a jrpg quest. So in that sense it provides a lot of room for Milla to exist and make the sorts of choices that define her while providing a series of moral quandries for Jude to temper himself with. So yeah they do give themselves some crutches to try and make everything work but a lot of it never lands and it's weird. Normally Tales games come together then fall apart by being too long, Xillia is a nice reasonable length but never really fires on all cylinders.
Well, okay. THe tag team boss fights tend to be pretty good. That's cool. But like, narratively... yeah, doesn't really get there.
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That's because Agria has GREAT SCENES everytime she's on camera. 100% of the time. Should be 1000%.
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Jenny LeClue Detectivu- Finished.
So the timeline doesn't add up but this has a similar vibe in presentation and feel to Night in the Woods, which is unexpected. It's a lot more conventional adventure game in overall content than that of course, but it has that same sense of bending game logic in order to reinforce the character's journey (although here it's Jenny growing as a character within the narrative by pushing back against her author. Well, aside from one or two sequences.)
It stops at a strange place in some ways although honestly ending there I think would have worked a lot better with the addition of just a small post-credits stinger of some kind. Honestly it could have been just about anything, but as-is the abruptness feels cheap rather than deliberate. At all points before then though? Yeah, I just like spending time with Jenny and seeing her struggle (and occasionally overcome) against herself like she does. Just a generally neat experience.
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FFX progress:
It's been steady. Haven't run into any walls on the required storyline. Seymour 3 did come close when I got annihilated by Cross Cleave on the first attempt but a change in strategy allowed me to win on the next one. I've had an Initiative weapon for Rikku since the desert which allowed me to safely (if slowly) explore. Lulu picked up an MP Stroll armor which became my main choice for randoms since I don't need to worry about watching her MP with it.
The further I go, the angrier I become with the encounter rate. Especially annoying is the Via Purifico. I don't have Tidus there so I'm forced to deal with the randoms when I'm just trying to find my way around and my Bahamut wasn't strong enough to oneshot formations with Impulse. Auron's "I hate this place" echoes my thoughts about it. Gagazet was a test of patience; I think I got attacked 25 times before reaching the next save point.
Funny enough, even with that many battles, I made it without a scratch. Most formations I could take out without the enemies getting a turn. The few times they got to do something, it was either absorbed by Ifrit (Grenades) or shut down by status. One time it was neither but it was a physical and Lulu dodged it. The mechs were a joke with three people with Steal.
I have no regrets sending Kimahri to learn Steal, Use, Reflect and Dispel. Then I sent him towards Esuna. Having a second Esuna caster is nice for my spendthrift ways. It does have a cost in his stat growth though. My understanding of the Sphere Grid has increased and how valuable it is to plan routes in advance.
Didn't worry about rotating everyone in for every battle for the most part. If I can end a fight in 2-3 moves, I'm not stretching it out for 7. At least, not until the AP gains per fight got high enough and fighting things that live long enough. I've not failed more than once against any storyline fight yet so I guess that's worked out OK. Thunder Plains was harder as Wakka wasn't one-shotting one of the flying enemies but I haven't felt walled for lack of stats. And with the high encounter rate, I feel little incentive to drag out individual randoms.
So yeah, the battle system is very satisfying to succeed with. The sheer frequency, not so much. Not as fun in the late game where bosses and even beefy randoms seem to immune nearly all of the status/debuff options that Tidus, Wakka, and Auron have. Despite my gripes, I'm enjoying the game enough that I can see myself finishing it and doing a replay. Just one replay though due to how irritating the optional stuff can get and I'd rather only do once ever. Like Wakka's Sigil or butterfly catching or the Chocobo racing. Then there's the grind to 100% the monster arena but that involves the fun battle system so I'm more willing to engage with that.
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Bravely Default 2 - Done. Final levels were 44-45, which flatlined a fair bit towards the end. Lategame felt pretty light on randoms? I admittedly didn't fight many in the (surprisingly short) final dungeon. Game clock was a bit under 60 hours.
Fun game! I felt the writing was mostly flat, some occasional moments with Elvis/Gloria and some decent stuff in Chapter 3 aside. The final boss isn't a complete embarrassment the way BD1 and BS's are but still doesn't have much going on, and as always I can do without Bravely's weird meta-nonsense.
But that's not why you're here; you're here for the Bravely job system. CTB helps the game so much, really opening up a space in boss design which was badly needed. Not to say the first two Bravely games didn't manage somewhat, but that well definitely felt mostly dry so I'm glad BD2 did something different, and certainly hard turning boss fights into a mess of turns and keeping you constantly on your feet was great. Randoms in the game aren't too interesting because you can easily one-round all of them after a certain point and the only question is how few PCs you can get away with devoting to random-munching while still gaining the JP in classes you want (or just not switching out of your boss-fighting setups) is the only question. But those boss fights, lots of good ones, and the job system is a joy to play around with. I feel like I barely scratched the surface of some of the cheesy things, but it didn't matter, everything I found was pretty fun.
There's a lategame job expansion but it's so late that there are barely randoms left to gain JP on, so I decided not to bother. Or rather, I lost one of the challenge fights, figured I'd go advance the plot instead, then by the time I thought I might try another I realized I only had one short dungeon left, so it was time to beat the game. The final boss was nasty this way! Now for Jo'ou to tell me how I missed eight cheesy ways to make them a joke. Actually I stumbled on one myself: releasing Mind Crush randoms at her and eventually after that she ran out of MP. Beastmaster the best to the very end.
PC builds, so read at your risk:
Seth: Bard, Salve-Maker, Thief in some permutation, for the most part. Some Phantom in there but I ended up not making much use out of it. Godspeed Strike is cool in boss fights, buffs are cool in general, and Salve-Maker is a great little support skillset. I actually initially had someone else with it, but I figured it would synergize well with GSS because both skillsets really just care about your speed.
Gloria: Beastmaster, with all the joy that brings. When it's not throwing cheesy releases at enemies, Beastmaster lends itself well to physical bruising (especially late where it can ACTUALLY HIT THINGS unlike so many other physical jobs), so she had at various points Ranger, Dragoon, and various other rando jobs to pick up passives (Hellblade which I gave up on, Phantom). Also was my early white mage but lol, that didn't last. Anyway Dragoon was my favourite secondary late, honestly just for Angon. You defaulted to mess with my braveblitz? Fuck you, you die now.
Elvis: Mage jobs. Black Mage, White Mage, Red Mage, Oracle, you name it. I wasn't very impressed with offensive magic in this game. I'm sure there are ways to make it work but I felt like I wasn't even coming close. Fortunately white magic remains excellent support. Sometimes you want to have healing that doesn't burn through X-Potions at a record rate, although honestly Salve-Maker is probably better overall. I actually made him a Bravebearer for the final boss just for the stat push since I realized I was using nothing but white magic on him so why not get better stats?
Adelle: Started as physical damage, ended up as tank. Vanguard, Berserker, Ranger, Swordmaster, Spiritmaster, Shieldmaster. So fun fact, Swordmaster + Indiscriminate Rage + Counter-Savvy is just ridiculous for randomsmash, six MT attacks on a turn 1 brave blitz (through in Multitask if you want, it's not really necessary). But Shieldmaster definitely deserves note for just how badly it can spoil or mitigate so many threats. Was huge carry in so many boss fights. Spiritmaster skillset was not one I used too often but uh it was very good in certain lategame fights.
I didn't really use Arcanist, Bastion, or Gambler (the last of which I got at the last possible moment, don't gate real content behind mini-games in 2021 plz).
I definitely felt like my power level fluctuated a bunch as the game went on. The last three bosses of Chapter 1 were all pretty tough, then my offensive engine started rolling. Chapter 2 bosses were still competent but now my offence was good, then in Chapter 3 bosses largely died pretty fast (though the duo one was still threatening). In Chapter 4 bosses get some big durability (HP, evasion) and some of them get some nasty offence so I felt challenged again. Chapter 5 bosses were largely pretty easy, then the big antagonist fights after that were both very rough for me. That said I never died more than once to any boss; there was nothing that tinkering with my setup and knowing a bit more about their counters couldn't solve. Cool feeling.
Music was great too, not that this is news.
Game is a bit exhausting and I definitely need a break from it, but I definitely think I'll revisit it at some point and try out more of that wonderful job system. With sceneskip. :)
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Beat FFX a while back. Only did a little bit of endgame stuff such as unlocking the quicker monster arena creations. Which was relevant; the pack of Three Stars and Stamina Tonics were what made my strategy at Braska's final Aeon work. Did not have a good way of dealing with the damned Yu Pagodas so ended up eating lots of Overdrives. Doubled max HP allows me to survive Ultimate Jecht Shot (I had blown my Talk uses early) and Alchemy enhanced Mega Potion lets me recover from nearly all the damage in one action. I started with 91 so was able to last long enough to reduce its HP to zero. He put up a real fight. I taught Wakka and Auron Quick Hit and even with 0 MP Quick Hits, the fight didn't feel free.
Didn't get that many of the alternate Overdrive modes. Only Wakka learned Tactictian. Only Yuna gained Healer. The guys all got Warrior. Conrade, Ally, Slayer, and Victor were scattered about with some but not all having access. (Wakka has the most at 7 while Rikku and Lulu are in the back with 2 possible Overdrive modes.)
Thoughts on my characters:
Tidus: Yuna's magical dream boyfriend sees frequent use thanks to high natural Agility, good Strength, and the time magics. Haste is godly for bosses until bosses start showing up that can dispel it. With the few extra Sphere Levels he had after learning Quick Hit, I Return Sphered him to the start and sent him towards Wakka's section. Managed to scrape up about 50 Strength for the final. He actually ended up with the lowest HP in my party. Magic Defense is atrocious and I decided his Magic was unsalvageable, not that his native skillset needs it but it means it makes no sense to teach him anything that uses the Magic stat.
Rikku: Speedy utility character. Was there to swipe stuff and Use things at key moments. Was one of the best damage dealers at "that' fight in Zanarkand since elemental gems were doing more damage than just about anyone else at the time. I'm generally conservative with consumables but there was ever a time to make use of them to end a fight faster, that was one of them. Almost never used her physical. Since her offense is item based, after learning Bribe I sent her towards Yuna's grid up towards Protect and Shell to give her something to do with her MP, grabbing Dispel and Reflect along the way. Bad Defense and evasion so she doesn't take hits well.
Wakka: The best at hitting things with physicals due to highest Accuracy and innate long range attack which is unique to him and no other character can match. Status effects are very welcome given how much punch FFX randoms have. Then the game goes on and so many things immune his status game. Good HP and Strength, decent Agility but not as good as the speedsters, has an actual Magic score, magic defense is terrible. I sent him towards Tidus' grid when he reached Triple Foul but I don't think he made it there with the few extra Sphere Levels he had. Scraped up about 50 Strength and a bit more speed for the final.
Lulu: In a twist on the typical black mage, she gets a good defense score and cast best evasion and magic defense. So she's decent at taking hits if they make it past her evasion. Her damage and defensive capabilities are valuable early but I found her low speed a liability in the later parts of the game. I rotate my party members often so Agility ends up the god stat for my playstyle. If she dies, it can really drag things down as it will be a long time with a character slot that isn't contributing to battle. She picked up Flare only at the last save point of the game and only because I didn't make the trip towards Dualcast so she sat out the last battle.
Yuna: The healer, duh. She's one of the most important people to keep alive during boss fights because no one else has much opportunity to learn recovery abilities for quite a long while. Many of my boss battles involve Hasting her and bringing her in only when needed. I tended not to use Aeons as meat shields. They were mostly there to Overkill bosses with overdrives and cheese randoms with their innate defensive traits. Some enemies have no way of hitting Valefor and bombs will never harm Ifrit, among other uses. Ended up with decent HP thanks to sending her towards Rikku's grod for a bit for Steal, Use, and the early HP nodes. Naturally, this does come at the cost of slowing down her White Magic development and she hadn't learned Holy when I beat the game.
Kimahri: I have no regrets teaching him Steal, Use, Reflect, and Dispel but I do think I could have planned things better. Ended up backtracking through the Sphere Grid more than necessary for what I wanted him to learn. Which slows down his stat growth. Besides Steal and Use, I mostly stuck to making him a second white magic user. Having a second character to cast various utility spells lessens the load for Yuna. One battle I got through mainly because I'd picked up all the Nul-spells for him. Would have been too much for Yuna to maintain Nul-spells and healing alone. And having two possible Esuna casters is better than one. Picked up Life as well. I don't want to ignore his physical attacks since he has Piercing weaponry but maybe I'm trying for too much with the Sphere levels I had to work with.
Auron: had a slow start. Kimahri had higher Strength than him to begin with due to the odd direction I went with the Ronso. He does surpass Kimahri (and everyone else) in Strength over time but early on, his only unique contribution is Power Break. Accuracy is awful and that low Agility means I'm less inclined to use him to dominate randoms. Like Lulu, he doesn't get a second turn in randoms often as I'll usually only pull them out to OHKO their specialty targets. At least the low speed synergizes well with Threaten, had I thought to use it more. Reached the end of his grid early along with Rikku. I spent his remaining Sphere levels in Tidus' grid, mainly seeking out more Agility as well as any extra Strength. Got to about 20 Agility for the final boss this way and maybe 65-70 Strength. Power Break and Magic Break see more use as more durable opponents are more common. Then bosses start to nearly always immune them and Armor Break takes over as the one I get the most use out of. picked up Sentinel just in time for when enemies with really strong physicals show up and I can guarantee him surviving them but not always other party members. So he's useful, just not in the same way that the faster characters are.
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Fell Seal - Beat the Wizard SCC. Here's the run-down from my last post, where I got stuck at Gelligh 2. Ultimately that proved one of three main struggle fights for the challenge, as you'll see.
Gelligh 2 (8 resets, then 2 injuries) - This battle has you start surrounded on three sides by three groups of two enemies. Two of the groups are a pair of assassins, the third is a werewolf + gunner. They all outspeed me, pepper me with status on turn 1, and the assassins unleash horrific damage on turn 2 (except the one with dual shields). If Kyrie dies I lose. Also when I kill two people a boss shows up.
I'm initially around Level 20 on Kyrie when I get here, with other PCs in the 14-18 range. The enemies are level 22. Eventually I decide to grind out a few more levels for everyone else, getting Kyrie to 23 and the rest of my main team to 18-22. This helps.
What also helps is optimizing my equipment more. Vigil Bands for sleep immunity (the assassins have AoE sleep) is the first change I make, but ultimately I decide that I can get away with lower magic than I'm used to (the enemies largely don't have huge res). I eventually settle on using Thunder Rods (the shield assassin resists all elements except lightning), Glasses (to help with reliability against the assassins... shield assassin is still a dodgetank though), and Sapphire Earrings (which block blind as well as root, which the werewolf sometimes uses, and bleed, which... we'll talk about). The last one is a pretty big pocketbook hit but whatever, I have money.
Strategy is to hope the at least one assassin group stays in an AoE first turn. With blind blocked they can't do that much useful turn 1, although the werewolf can still land various statuses and the gunner usually uses silence. 4-5 attacks are needed, hopefully two assassins die and I can retreat in the direction where they were. Septimus then shows up, keep staying on top of Kyrie's healing (other people can die if necessary), kill the remaining enemies as fast as possible. I don't kill the gunner ultimately, and take down Septimus. He has about 700 HP and counters everything with bleed (Sapphire Earrings to the rescue!). As long as he doesn't build up too much MP he doesn't do too much that's scary, mostly debuff my mind/res, though can punish me with Blood Nova if I group for AoEs, so I don't. Battle ends when Septimus drops.
Bardvig Aqueduct (1 reset, then 3 injuries) - Another Defeat Boss map, this time the boss stays back like a turtle. One of the enemies has Gadgeteer secondary and can push people into the water with a Springer, but I don't bother equipping Flippers because it's easy enough to position myself to avoid this. I'm split into two groups and the group on the northwest side does die, but the other persists, revives, and overcomes the enemies until I can lure the boss forward to his death.
Kapawka Jungle (3 injuries) - Another map where the water is dangerous. I go without flippers again and mercilessly target the Redcaps who can Flipkick me into the water from range 2. The Kawas can also push me into the water with boomerangs but positioning can mostly avoid that. Big elemental weaknesses on everyone here helps, but it's still a dangerous battle.
Godstear Wastes (1 reset, then 4 injuries) - Our introduction to Aeoths. These big guys will fire barrages every turn which take a turn to charge but deal big AoE damage. Specifically, big AoE fire damage. Molten Robes on everyone = they're useless. However, the rest of the fight is still legit, even before considering there's a bunch of hidden traps on this battlefield which steal your turns if you trigger one. Mostly another fight where I need to mostly stay back and let the enemies come to me.
Devilsblood Ascent (3 injuries) - There being 3 injuries here is a bit misleading; this is a rare battle you can use seven people in and with all my recent injuries I have to deploy Anadine who's still like Level 7 or something, obviously she dies during the fight. Otherwise, respect the enmeies who can counter ranged damage with Pounce (being at melee = they can't counter, so does being surrounded on all sides). Pektites return and die real fast as usual between low MDef and Magic Counter.
Mountain Temple 1 (1 reset, then 1 injury) - This is a tricky fight because the enemies have some nasty setups (lots of healing/support, Sniper Shot, a hard-hitting reaver, and a tanky bug with regen/reraise who you can't easily approach with melee because he'll push you into the lava). Fortunately, the enemies don't pressure too much; you have space at the start to wait and let them come to you. And doing this is very important, letting them walk past the bug and into my waiting death spells. I overextend just a bit on attempt 1 and die horribly for it.
Mountain Temple 2 (1 reset, then 0 injuries) - Raife and Grim Eye boss fight. Grim Eye's so weird, his skillset is mostly junk (sacrifice a big amount of HP to temporarily raise elemental defence by 25%, even the Wizard SCC doesn't care about this! ... and it's worse than it sounds, because enemies immediately waste their limited good potions healing him). The only thing scary about him is he can push people into the lava with his boomerang like a standard kawa. Raife also requires some respecting because if he does get to melee range he can do big damage with Infused Edge, get a kill, and Cleave to do even more nonsense. Otherwise not a very scary fight, bit with the Kyrie falls loss condition you do have to be careful.
Crossroads 2 - After Chapter 4 was so rude in general it's nice to get a breather fight. Bunch of demons, not too tricky, the one kinda scary thing normally is a full MT Grand Cross-style ability from the Overscourge but as it triggers up to six counters (each of which can add status!) it basically removes him as a threat after one use.
Illuster - Second apperance from an Aeoth, fire immunity (Molten Robe) returns. I stack it with dark defence from the Ebony Rod and suddenly very few things can actually do decent damage to me. Also easy.
Septimus/Secunda (10 resets, then 5 injuries) - This on the other hand is hell. The battle features Septimus (can instantly kill non-swimmers with Teleport), Secunda (instantly kills any wizard at melee range with her dual-wielding Infused Edge), two ranged attackers who can use One For All, and two bugs, one of whom has Adaptive Evasion and can hit for big melee damage, the other of which is the relative scrub of the fight but still not nothing. Two bosses, I lose one accessory slot due to Flippers, lots of ways for me to take big damage and die... definitely adds up! I generally try to target the vampire with dual guns first since s/he comes reasonably far forward turn 1 if baited properly. The archer usually needs to go next, although their evade can make that a pain. The Adaptive Evasion bug would be a good target since he both takes and deals a lot of damage, but since he becomes immune to magic after being hit by a spell (unless/until I physical him) this is often impractical. Occasionally I can bait him into using his AoE earth spell which gets him to take a bunch of damage back and that helps. Also, the more enemies actually bunch up for AoEs, the more that helps too. I usually end up trying to blitz Secunda at some point, with Septimus and the last bug being lower priority targets. Difficult to manage and pull off though. I end up doing the first tournament (Phoenix Band is a cool prize, one shot of Auto-Life) and gaining a few levels before I'm able to refine my strategy enough to win.
Raife 2 (1 reset, then 2 injuries) - I block fire and dark again to deal with the Aeoth (an Aeoth! At this time of year, in this small a room, localized entirely within the council chambers?) and the demons. This map's pretty simple on paper but my team is in tatters after the last fight so it's definitely the B squad on duty, and they do have some difficulty. But not too bad.
Primus (1 injury) - The most hilarious battle of the run. Primus is certainly competent enough, I have to equip Flippers once again lest he drown all of me, and that leaves him primarily using his AoE move Downfall, which does gravity damage.
Downfall is magic. It gets magic countered. For gravity damage. On a high-HP boss. Multiple times.
Two uses of Downfall by him and I'm through all ~1600 of his HP. He moved towards Kyrie's group at the west, the group at the east (including Raife) never gets to do anything. Which saves me the trouble of deciding if using Raife is legal or not.
Gelligh 3 (3 injuries) - I don't have too much to say about this fight. There are gyaums (the third tier tiger) who can Rally Howl to get some decent damage/speed to them and their allies, some knight with the lord skillset... it's not incompetent but not too notable.
Gelligh Foothills (4 injuries) - Weird fight. You start across a river in range of two ranged fighters who can do some pretty big damage. They don't move though, so run away from them and they become irrelevant. The immediate threats are an annoying druid with lots of damage/healing options and initiative, and also a unicorn-type enemy. Once they're dealt with and I survive that initial onslaught though I can mostly take the rest of the fight out at my leisure.
Raife 3 (11 resets, then 1 injury) - Well then.
This fight is competent enough normally, but is extra hard on this playthrough because it features a very rare enemy who always has Evade Magic, a Scoundrel/Ranger who can status and do decent damage. He's pretty physically tanky too; it takes Corrosive Bombs followed by anywhere from 6 to 10 attacks to drop him depending on who's landing the hits and how many back hits I get. Also, throughout all this, there's a bug in the back who will use the bulldrake full MT while sleeping skills, which slowly grind me down.
Setup is Glasses, status/sleep immunity on most people (I have three Amethyst Earrings by the time I win), and Plainwalker Boots for mobility. I end up not bothering with elemental defences.
The general strategy I come up with is:
-Lure Raife to hit at range 2 on his third turn (he always waits turn 1 then moves forward twice, with haste he gets there pretty quickly). Hopefully he uses a Warmage spell and I can counter it, usually I have to settle for him using a Marked skill though. Then unload on him and he dies. If he gets a turn at range 1 I lose, if an enemy heals him during this blitz I lose, so I mustn't spread my damage or let up. Fortunately, the enemies can't revive him (or any boss).
-Next up are the demons, one malcubus and one archafflictor. Both can be mildly scary with either damage or annoying status. Hopefully they bunch up a bit. Crucially, though, I want them to use both the good potions before I kill them - the scoundrel being left with one is a disaster. The werewolf will revive one of them when they die, no big.
-The vessel/healer can certainly be annoying, so when he comes forward I'm sure to kill him. Fortunately his durability is bad, just avoid Critical Rebirth.
-At this point there are three enemies left: the scoundrel, the bug who is slowly grinding me down, and the werewolf, who won't move until someone enters his melee attack range. DO NOT ENTER IT, his offence is scary as fuck. This is where I kill the scoundrel, having more people still alive now is a huge help for this of course. I have to think carefully about where to face so that he doesn't run back into the werewolf's melee range.
-Finally, kill the werewolf. He'll probably kill one person, no big. I have loads of MP now, two Locus spells trigger his reraise and a third finishes him.
-Bug dies last.
Occasionally the bug will have sleep immunity and this makes him easier, though he does now move forward. I don't manage to win on one of those attempts. I'm rather proud of the winning run though, while I do benefit from some AoEs I feel like I play really well and manage to only get 1 injury (plus Kyrie who doesn't count), which is crazy. I invariably use up almost my entire item supply.
Between fight attempts I do some randoms hoping for drops (I get a second Prism Rod, and two more Amethyst Earrings) as well as catching my levels up a little once again. I also try the second tournament but lose to the first fight.
But with that fight beaten, we're almost done!
Nervanzer Wellspring (1 injury) - Not too bad. Plaguestorm returns, once again Magic Counter does good work. This battle introduces the Abyssal Aeoth, the dark version of the original. Ebony Rods hard spoil this, though I end up not bothering on my two Prism Rod users, they can take half damage if they're actually hit which of course they usually aren't. Mostly routine.
Final battle (3 resets) - The Maw's a pretty tough cookie. 1340 HP, which isn't actually too much on paper, but he takes less damage (10%?) for each living ally. There are initially seven (eight really, but he kills one of them turn 1) and four of them are either hard to kill or come back. The boss uses Sacrifice to kill one of his friends turn 1 and receive every single stat buff, but never does that again. After that, the Maw's most dangerous move is Dreadmaw, a range 3 AOE which inflicts some statuses and also steals any buffs and gives them to the boss. Sadly, this includes my old friend Boon, so I actually try to get kills with my status immune folks and then don't put them near anyone else so this doesn't happen. Besides that the boss also has a range 7 basic physical. If he actually builds up to 30 MP (Dreadmaw costs 12) he'll use an AOE summon which doesn't do status/buffs but does do some nasty damage (150 or so). He only has 3 move so his scariest moves can be kited somewhat if necessary.
Backing him up are one aeoth of each flavour (I equip to get everyone to at least 50 fire/dark res, either Prism Rod + Black Robe or Ebony Rod + Molten Robe), and two viscerwyrms who will revive after 3 rounds. The one on the east side of the battle has Evade Magic so is absolutely not worth killing, the one in the back dies fast when I finally get there, but it's a bit of a trek and involves walking past every other enemy. The wyrms either use 10-range physicals (facing them is important, they're not negligible) or steal a bit of MP, even from their allies if nobody else is in range. When they reach 40 MP they summon a full-HP demon, so between their own revival and this ability the boss keeps gaining new friends, and hence recharging its damage reduction.
There are also one regular demon of each type. The harrower-type dies to fire magic turn 1, the Overscourge tends to get itself magic countered to death like the previous two, and the Malcubus... eh, is a bit magically bulky/annoying but manageable. The aeoths, I quickly decide, are not worth the time to kill.
Best-case scenario is thus the Maw having just three living allies for a mere 30% damage reduction, which isn't too bad. I focus on minimizing the bad things she can do, keeping my units alive (particularly the status immune ones, since they're so much better off against Dreadmaw spam), and killing her allies -> damaging her once the reduction is at only 30-40%. Not too much to say, it's a reasonably tricky slugfest to optimize and I have to use all my healing items of any sort, but I do pull it off after some refinements.
There's a second phase but getting it is either impossible on this SCC or at best requires farming rare drops twice, one of which is in the final battle itself. Noooope! I'm good with this ending.
Fun times! Final levels were 35-39 on my main six (Kyrie, Hubert, Rune, Jelanda, Lulu, Yates)
Compared to FFT SCCs you definitely notice the lower damage scale, Wizards were typically killing in 4-5 hits with Level 1 spells (so 2-3 with Locus, L2 somewhere in the middle) at most points in the game. Lots of managing turns and MP to get off the spells I needed. Magic Counter is great (unlike FFT), you can quickly take out certain enemies if you bait them into using AOE spells, and it even sends status back, too. Boon's nice for a little damage push, and Smart Casting's extremely helpful. I thought I might forgo it on some people for healing but it turns out the healing sucks, while Smart Casting is really useful.
It'll be interesting to compare how other classes do. I really have no idea.
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Hyrule Warriors 2 - Started this. Not much to say yet!
Laggy Fantasy Tactics - Replay time! Black Eagles theme team. Finished Chapter 1.
Byleth - Ramza's non-binary stats. Building as a White Mage/Squire, has Cure, Cure 2, Raise, and Reraise so far. Is the only person with revival and most of my trouble comes from when they die early, I should probably invest in durability passives.
Edelgard - Dragoon with Equip Axe. It's remarkable how effective this setup is as soon as you get axes, even off female PA it can do 77 damage without an accessory slot. Has Hi-Potion and Potion, should probably get Phoenix Down to have another, tanky reviver. Punch Art's also a thought.
Hubert - Time Mage with Don't Move (Banshee), Slow (Swarm, not that Hubert has that), and Reflect (Rally Res I guess). Also has Fire secondary. Working on Short Charge so I can use Short Charge Death.
Dorothea - Has Bolt and Bolt 2, going through physical classes to get Dancer.
Petra - Has been an archer and a thief with Charge, will eventually go to Ninja.
Fort Zeakden was definitely the hardest fight of the chapter.
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FFX: lingering thoughts and replay highlights
I still think i would have gotten more enjoyment out of Shadow Hearts 2 than FFX. But Shadow Hearts 2 is rare and FFX has very high distribution (and is thus easy to find) so that's how things landed. For where it falls in my personal PS2 RPG ranking, probably something like Mana Khemia > Wild Arms 3 > Disgaea > Final Fantasy X = Grandia 2 = Front Mission 4.
Beating the game took about two hours from loading at last save point to end of credits which is pretty much what I predicted. So it's not something I'll be doing much, maybe not ever again. Managed to tug at my emotions despite knowing what was coming, impressive.
Replaying it once, maybe not more than once though. It goes smoother now that I'm not obsessively using Lancet on every enemy out there to avoid missing blue magic. Some random highlights:
Pulled off a miracle win at the required Blitzball game. I was down 0-2 after the first half and decided I'd accept whatever the end result was rather than reset. Because that would involve more Blitzball and no thanks to that. Scored a goal with Tidus, then scored one with Wakka after he came in all while the Goers didn't score again. Thus ending the game with a 2-2 tie and sending it into overtime. RNG gave the Aurochs the ball at the tossup. Got the ball over to Wakka, got as close to the goal as I could manage, and took a shot under less than ideal conditions. RNG ruled in my favor blasting a goal through a defender and the goalie to score the game-winning goal. That felt good to win since I was ready to take whatever result I got.
Took several resets but I was able to shove the Chocobo Eater off the cliff. Took some doing since I didn't grind for Slow. It kept running out of HP first. Needed to look up the AI as well as some tight turn management to pull it off. Got my Key Spheres and after overkilling Sinspawn Gui (easy with a Seymour -ara spell) and the ones on the Moonflow road, have enough to open every Lv 1 Lock on the grid.
Got Attack Reels at Thunder Plains. (started the requisite tournament at Guadosalam but didn't finish until later) It's fairly hard to win right away. Damned Nimrook of the Al Bhed Psyches is such a wall with a very low leveled team. Tidus still had only one use of Jecht Shot per half and it's still just under an even chance to score at point blank. To my surprise, Datto was relevant to winning (hadn't found a replacement shooter yet) He won the dice roll with Nap Shot, putting the goalie into slumberland, allowing him or Tidus to score later. The AI wasn't able to penetrate my defense wall and goalie and I won that last game of the tourney 1-0
Seeing Attack Reels do triple-digit damage on normal defense is such a weird feeling. Against crowds, sometimes an MT Element Reels would be the more effective choice.
Didn't really realize how good I had it before the first time with Rikku and an Initiative weapon on her until I went without this game. Ambushed by 3 enemies, party is all under half HP before I can move. FFX randoms are scarily competent if left unchecked.
Got the Sun Sigil on my first visit to Calm Lands. I got a very encouraging result early which gave enough motivation to keep trying. Took several separate sessions of about 20-30 attempts per session. I got that magical run before I reached the point where I would have put it off for later. So Tidus' is the first Celestial I end up completing, long before he has the Strength to take advantage of Break Damage Limit. Just as rewarding is the feeling I never have to do this again. (unless I feel masochistic enough to replay the game and go for the Celestial weapons)
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Fell Seal - Templar SCC-
Looking at this class at a glance, they have a pretty good and self-sustaining skillset. It was interesting to see how all of the different abilities worked together.
Skillset usefulness in general:
Holy Chant - 50-60 Holy-element damage around the user in all directions. Decent but the damage is not that great and it uses 8 MP, which you want to save for Righteous Blade. I mostly used this against the Pektites, who massively resist physicals.
Soothing Chant - 50 - 60 healing in a plus around the user, including themselves. Useful because the healing is pretty limited otherwise.
Cleansing Blade - Magic damage that gets rid of buffs. Situationally very useful and high damage, but didn’t use that often.
Emboldening Chant - +ATK in a plus around the user, including themselves. I used this turn 1 of every fight with at least two people. Attack buffer with subtractive defense is great.
Righteous Blade - Huge Holy-element damage later in the fight - turn 2 or 3. Hits like a truck — became even better later when you encounter a lot of enemies weak to holy, who are oneshot by it even without buffing.
Siphon- an excellent MP manipulator in both directions because it both removes enemies’ abilities to do their turn 2 11-20 MP crap, but also allows you to use Righteous Blade on Turn 2 (as long as you drain at least 4 MP which you usually will). Excellent tool both to decrease enemy offensive output but to increase your own.
Rapturous Chant - Interesting skills. It allows you to heal both status and ~90-100 HP with everyone while sacrificing yourself with no Injury, usually used by a character who would otherwise just die (because Soothing Chant’s healing isn’t that great). I ended up using this a few decisive times to win fights where I was highly statused and out of Remedies, and it’s also pretty cheesy in the escape missions since you can just let Kyrie go to the exit and have every else use it and win without penalty.
Evade Attack - This ability made Septimus 2 pretty easy because it makes Secunda’s attacks pretty weak and the Vampire / Ranger strategies of One For All didn’t work as planned. Otherwise it was generically useful against Assassins and other high damage with basic physicals enemies.
Resilience - -1 turn on statuses came in really handy in a few fights, especially the wyrm fight and any fight that has traps / enemies that counter attacks with Root/Slow/etc.
Defense Expert - Templar is pretty tanky because of this!
Notable fights:
Early game was generally easy. I think the toughest fights in the first half parts were the second temple, the second Mercier fight (I thought I might have to reset just because I couldn’t reach him in his starting position because of Templar’s bad jump, but he came down), and the Baaz Island fight right before the third temple. A special shoutout, though, to the Wyrm fight, which was both pretty tricky but moreover REALLY FUCKING LONG. He kept Rooting me and I only have two range. He is resistant as fuck to physicals. And because my healing sucked, I had to dedicate a lot of turns to doing it. It took me 1:07 to finish the fight. I did not game over (thank god) but it was quite a trial.
I had a reset on the usually easy ship fight because the sleeping guy just slept in the corner and I had no range nor Flippers. Mistakes were made!
Septimus was screwed over by Assassins not liking Evade Attack. Amazing. The Aqueduct was very tricky for this team — I had three resets, but after turning the game off and coming back, I realized I should have been draining MP aggressively instead of being passive turn 1.
It’s very nice that Aoeths are weak to holy. It really made the fights with them a lot simpler than they could have been. Godeater Wastes was tough but not tooo bad.
The Mountain Temple 1 gave me a couple of resets and I had one reset on being thrown into lava, but nothing too bad.
I had the easiest Septimus + Secunda fight I’ve ever done! Evade Attack is spectacular there. Had a reset on Raife 2 just because I fell into a hole early and was never able to recover. Fuck Raife and Cleave. Primus wasn’t too bad.
The third Gelligh fight gave me a lot of trouble - I ended up having to duel down the Knight after most of my team was decimated — five Injuries, but I won on the first try!
Raife 3 was a nightmare. I think I had about ten resets. Had to lure him to a good spot and MP buff to beat on his evil ass. Also had to go grind to find a Catalyst to upgrade my Phoenix Down because it was just too frustrating without it. Only had one character left at the end, and six Injuries.
Last two fights were trivialized by the Holy weakness and Righteous Blade. 1 Injury on each but only because of lazy play, tbh.
Great fun!
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Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Oops! all swords!
Swords are probably the worst weapon type in FE3H. So what if... that's all I could use? Maddening NG of course, Crimson Flower. Turned out fine, albeit definitely harder than the mage-only playthrough. I decided ally-targeting magic is legal, but offensive magic is not. Gambits are fine of course.
Byleth: Enlightened One just to make the training easier. Hits hard, has good charm, gets Windsweep, but is infantry. Sword of Creator is unusually valuble because it and Levin Sword are the only swords which can threaten/attack at range beyond 1, so Byleth is clutch for actually reaching some other enemies early.
Edelgard, Petra, Ingrid: Wyvern Lords. No swordfaire blah blah blah but with that strength they deal almost as much damage as the swordfaire classes anyway. Anyway wyvern is amazing as always, Petra/Ingrid did the dodgetank and doubling thing while Edelgard just decided to have bonkers strength/speed (party-best) even for her so that was a thing. Not as good as axe wyverns obviously, but very effective. Best units overall, especially Edelgard and Petra.
Dorothea, Marianne, Constance: The magic swordgirl brigade, all with Hexblade/Soulblade. Marianne and Dorothea went Valkyrie then Mortal Savant, Constance was Dark Flier. Lysithea has Soulblade too but she's a later recruit with fewer supports and no Physic so I didn't end up bothering. This group also all gets Levin Swords which is nice for actually having ranged offence, and obviously Physic (for Doro/Mari) is great.
Ferdinand: Dancer. He was getting pretty horribly RNG screwed, fortunately it didn't matter too much! Was still able to dodgetank effectively in Dancer.
Felix and Yuri: Assassins. Yuri gets early Windsweep, Felix (recruited in C6 for Merc growths) just has some pretty killer stats. Yuri hovered around the 10th or 11th unit slot so ended up falling into a bit of a Windsweep/battalion (Gautier or Indech) utility role, Felix I did a crit build for which was semi-reliable. Assassin has great synergy with dodgetank wyverns since it's so easy to keep them safe.
Jeritza: Just standard Dark Knight, gets Heal and Restore and Darting Blow and Counterattack and Move+1 along with almost joining with Windsweep. He's got pretty solid stats outside of charm/luck but not getting Death Blow somewhat offsets that.
Manuela: Was mostly Dorothea's adjutant, but also came out to play as a Bishop with Warp on the last battle.
Balthus: Solid earlygame, then rapidly declines as others start doubling and he doesn't. I made him a Hero to do Defiant Strength->Assassin but he's dogshit as a Hero (who isn't?) and by the time I got to Assassin his stats had fallen too far behind to compete, oh well.
Linhardt: Some early Physic stuff but since that was literally all he could do aside from hit things for some laughable Steel Sword damage (granted! Did get 3 kills) he was destined to be benched once I got Marianne.
Highlights:
-Enemies with Swordbreaker, i.e. paladins and pegasi, are of course a pain to hit, mostly pegasus riders because they actually have good evade. Grounder is generally my best tool, but even then the accuracy/damage is shaky and pegasus riders in particular hit very hard back. Going for ranged hits and gambits, along with Windsweep, also helped. Chapter 7, 17, and 18 were arguably the hardest fights due to these enemies.
-Swords are bad at killing things, but they are better than most weapons at criticals! The Wo Dao+ has more crit (5, granted), less weight, and more hit than killer weapons, so it's easy to double with and fish for criticals, which given my offensive woes I was often doing. I'm not gonna hype this because it really does reflect how much more trouble swords have at killing in general, but hey, it meant I got to hear lots of crit quotes, and that's pretty awesome.
-The Rapier+ is another highlight sword weapon, and went a long way to making paladins not the problem they could be. It's accurate and pretty strong, extremely so against weakness. The mages could one-shot enemies if striking weakness, and others could double for good effectiveness. There's one from Hanneman/Maneula's paralogue and one from the pagan altar and both were passed around a fair deal.
-Sword combat arts are largely an underwhelming set. Wrath Strike is a bland and so-so power booster, Grounder is accuracy and anti-pegasus troubleshooting, for those who get nothing else. For unique ones... Felix has Sunder to improve his crit fishing if he can't double (pretty situational), Byleth and Petra have Bane of Monsters which is great when operative (if less impressive than some other anti-monster skills). There's also Haze Slice and Finesse Blade, neither of which I used. By far the best sword art is Windsweep (Yuri C+, and Byleth/Jeritza A), since it disables counterattacks, even if the attack misses, making it the best option for safely chipping certain bosses and tough enemies.
Linhardt 3
Ferdinand 32
Jeritza 34
Balthus 38
Marianne 59
Yuri 60
Constance 85
Felix 104
Ingrid 116
Dorothea 122
Byleth 150
Petra 181
Edelgard 212
Most under 200 battles, Edelgard 423 and Byleth 337. I forgot to note Petra.
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Sometimes I play FE3H, other times I play LFT and put FE3H into it.
Laggy Fantasy Tactics
Byleth - Basically just dual Squire/White Mage. Reaction was typically Dragon Spirit, support varied from DU / MDU / MAU / Short Charge, didn't really get a great move skill, so I mostly just used Move-HP Up. Later on they could use Excalibur to boost holy, except that I forgot it boosted holy until like the last three fights so I was using Excalibur + Chameleon Robe for a lot of fights, oops. White Magic and Yell/Cheer Up are useful support of course.
Edelgard - Axe Jump. This is very effective out of the gate with the first axe but it really doesn't age that well, and not just because Jump itself has charge time problems lategame. Increasingly just used defensive Punch Art skills later on, eventually swapping over to Squire secondary for the last few fights. So not great by the end, but effective from late chapter 1 to chapter 3 or so. Typical reaction was Dragon Spirit (I guess that's my crest of flames standin), support was always Equip Axe of course (except for Squire + Martial Arts at the end), move was Move+2.
Hubert - Black/Time mostly, with little stops in other mage classes... unlocked Calculator but didn't use it. Short Charge Death was the mainstay strategy on top of all the usual Time Magic shenanigans (except Meteor, didn't get that) and a little offensive magic. Reaction was initially Weapon Guard but later transitioned to HP Restore, move was ultimately Teleport (lots of time in Time Mage anyway).
Dorothea - A dancer sandwich. By which I mean she was a Black/White Mage earlygame, then a Dancer midgame, then a Black/White Mage at the end. It worked! Dancer doesn't do magic skillsets well so I gave her some defensive Punch Art and Martial Arts (or sometimes DU / MDU) for Charka/Revive when she wasn't just dancing things to death. She also used the fast-levelling of Dance to snag Move+3 (along with the Monk stuff), and used HP Restore as her reaction typically. As a mage at the end she ran Magic Attack Up for the most part, for usual wizard kaboom. Fire 4 does look an awful lot like 3H Meteor, so that was nice.
Petra - Ninja ultimately, with a bunch of Archer/Thief to get there. Charge, Attack Up/Concentrate (sometimes defensive boosts earlier), Abandon with Mantle for dodgetanking, Move+2. Nothing about this is surprising or unfamiliar. Works solidly as always.
I had two resets on both Zeakden and the Execution Site, then it was mostly clean sailing with the odd reset here and there... until Rofel and Kletian in the final dungeon, easily the two hardest fights of the playthrough. Long fights always got me overwhelmed so I had to tinker with my setup until I could pull off quick kills, which isn't easy with how durable these bastards are now and how scary their support is. How you know this isn't vanilla FFT (I mean, if the unironic axe use didn't tip you off).
I'm also playing Brig 2 (Tim, just promoted) and Hyrule Warriors 2.
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Hey yo, DL, it's been a while since I posted here, I've been playing X-Com 2. A lot of X-Com 2. X-Com 2 is good, you should play it if you like SRPGs.
Anyway, I'm trying a Commander run, because lategame on Normal turns out to be too much of a roflstomp. Also, because I am a huge dork, I built all permanent Wild Arms PCs in the character generator for my recruit pool. (This uh, might be a game where I turn out to be driven to make lots of stupid novelty runs a la Dark Souls.)
Day one goes pretty well! Game gives me Virginia, Clarissa, Emma and Carol (Reaper because backpack of death) for my first mission team. My starting region is Africa, and the region bonus for Africa in this campaign is Live Fire Training: all rookies sent through the Guerilla Training School promote to Sergeant instead of Squaddie. Holy shit that is an amazing perk to draw for your starting area.
Less good: Assassin draws regeneration for one of her perks. This is fuckawful to deal with on an opponent that likes to cloak and hide. R.I.P. Jack van Burace, scrubby sniper; bondmate Labby goes berserk and empties all her chaingun rounds without hitting anything; we barely manage to hold it together long enough to evacuate the mission VIP, and ultimately I savescum a little to avoid the timeline where Rebecca gets mind-controlled immediately before evacuating with no one left to save her.
(Generally I try to avoid savescummery, usually at most I will revert to a pre-battle save in order to completely reroll a mission that seemed cursed from word Go, but dammit, it felt like anyone who'd survived that far deserved to escape. And no, I'm not touching Ironman with a ten-foot clown pole, I've had too many instances of "Whoops, your dude stepped one tile too far while looking for a flanking position and pulled all the other pods, R.I.P. you for trying to take advantage of game mechanics.")
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Wild X-Com 2: Trying to train up heroes from the later two factions. This is rough because Avril spends half of her first mission locked in stasis by alien psychics. Game, please, I'm the one that's supposed to be memeing here. Similarly, I'm currently sending Kanon on every HP-boosting covert op I can get because she seems to spend almost all her time in the infirmary after getting shot/stabbed/exploded to 1HP. This, again, is a little too on-brand.
Expanding has been an ordeal, but Europe's region bonus this time is Tactical Analysis. Tactical Analysis is completely OP, so yes, thanks, yoink. Probably gonna hit the Hunter this afternoon so I don't have any interference for the Black Site mission. (I haven't even encountered the Warlock yet and I'm noooot in a big hurry to do so, since it seems like the later you meet them, they later they start getting buffed.)
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Fell Seal- fin! The Raife's last stand and the psuedo-final map are both chaotic nonsense that can get pretty frustrating, but the rest of the endgame is honestly in that hard to find fun-frustrating zone which is very cool. Honestly between that and the significantly higher emphasis on class balance, in several ways this is probably a better game than FFT in gameplay terms once it gets going? But the early game can definitely be a slog too. It's strange.
Last thing on the FFT comparison, I do appreciate how it handles the cast in terms of a) giving you story PCs early so you can play with the unique classes properly and b) letting them stick around and form actual character dynamics, something FFT's permadeath prevents.
Anyway so you can absolutely tell this was made by a small team that had to be budget conscious. The story here gives us a simple but distinct setting which gives the characters a sliver of morality to debate among themselves, which as noted works better when there's a stable cast dynamic. The tensions between factions (aside from Everyone vs Immortals) within the setting feels really undercooked, but the in terms of just being setting details for the cast to react to and have to grapple with they serve their purpose well. Like, the fact that the Kawa elders just... calmly listen to what Kyrie needs, makes sure she understands what they need from her, and her allies are all on board with being respectful and making the exchange cordial and productive is just not... how jRPG quests are structured! It's cool. Not amazing, but cool.
What I'm saying is you can tell this is written by nerds who played a lot of these games and understood the limits of their time and budget constraints. 8/10
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Wild X-Com 2, days 3 & 4: Hunter has been hunted. This was scary! I'm mostly still jammed on tier 2 equipment. Most of the beam research is done, but I have negligible funds to actually manufacture the equipment. The mid-game resource crunch is for real this time. It's a good thing I noticed you can double the mission timers, because that Avatar Project meter has spent a looot of time over twelve dots. Plenty of facilities to nuke and I just can't find a buffer in between plot missions where I don't have tons of people injured or tired.
Memorial time again! Perfectly routine mission, primary mission objective is complete, just need to mop up the last pod of enemies and call it a day. Let's toss some scanners around and see what we find? ...Oh. Oh, that's a sectopod. Okay, it's pretty far away, let's get everyone set up--oh, what's that? One tile of Dean's movement took him within enemy sightlines? Okay. Okay.
I freezebomb it, Tactical Analysis hits it, I toss out a mimic beacon, and it still gets enough actions to one-shot Tony* from full health with a crit. Then a lancer runs in from out of nowhere and one-shots Zed from full health with a crit. For fuck's sake, game. Then Zed's bondmate Clive goes berserk and fires pistol rounds into the sectopod until it explodes. Sometimes I'll savescum to reroll a mission that started out with someone getting pointlessly wasted, but late mission deaths feel more like part of a story. I do tend to keep them, unless it's a complete mission failure.
So yeah, we're into August and game is still scary as shit. This feels like the balance of fun vs. tense I was looking after Normal getting stomped in the endgame last campaign.
(*Because there are no dogs in this game, Tony was a robot.)
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XCOM2 is and remains one of the best games of the previous decade. I can't wait for it to get a real sequel. I also wish my PC could actually play it without hideous slowdown.
Brig- Been playing this again because it's fun. Also, best generic classes remain Treasure Hunter>Sniper>everything else>Saint>Champion>Cardinal. Champion's better at L20 than Saint, but oof to the first 20 levels of sadness.
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Honestly Champion's not that great even at 20, they get an accuracy push but that's about it? Their only skillset expansion is a range-1-but-no-movement skill on the literal worst class in the game at using those. Granted the accuracy is nice, so Saint arguably gets even less. I increasingly think Saints should all be reclassed to something else at 15 if not earlier - adding Brave Song or Frost/Charm to that skillset (and eventually even more) is a lot more valuable than sticking it out for Area Cure/Veil while having slightly better stats (mostly HP, since the Saint line is pretty good at that).
I think I agree with your ranking otherwise. Treasure Hunter and Sniper have ranged post-movement offence and that's just so good (Centaur is a top-tier monster line for the same reason). Of the classes in the middle, Viking is definitely towards the bottom (I'm not convinced they're above Saint), Assassin's probably somewhere towards the top, and I have a hard time deciding exactly where the offensive mages go since they range from real good to "welp, time to waste my turn moving" depending on the state of the battle. Also they're straight-up bad classes if you only have 3 command range, fortunately few natural mages do (Matthias and Frederico mostly... they have some filler use, but ugh).
Brigandine 2 - Beaten as Tim. Tim is so, so close to being the most sympathetic ruler by far; his criticisms of the other nations and their ideological prattle are generally on point. Then they add some weird eugenics bloodline fascination. There are no good guys.
Tim himself is a great unit but definitely suffers from the same thing Talia does where I sometimes overestimate his durability and insta-lose the fight because of it. He's better than Talia though because he starts at Level 18 and his personal toys are... if not outright better, then more flexible (in particular, Tim actually gets a great post-movement skill in Imperial Benevolence). Super high magic pool of course.
Ginger's probably the best of the offensive mages I've used... high magic pool, good stats, respectable starting level. Meteor Doom's a fun toy, and as always Charm is great to try to steal monsters if you can win without your attack mage's turn.
Alsin's solid, good out of the gate (high level, great strength, competent pool) but has a bad class (not easily fixed at his level) and 3 command range to hold him back a bit.
Sin's a fun pickup though he's a bit squishy for what he is - still, not gonna argue with Double Movement and good general stuff otherwise (pool in particular). Him leaving at the end was a bit of a rude surprise though, does make him in practice one of the most limited units in the game.
The rest of the plot-important tolks in this country are all pretty shaky, though I got a bit of use out of all of them.
Sylvie's great, sniper with high magic pool yes please. Starting at Level 9 really doesn't slow her down much. Noll is also very solid, pool not as high but not bad, and yeah I'm definitely on the treasure hunter train now, they good.
Other units I got to Level 20+ were Hazarov, Scymerius, Rensei, Leonora (I beat Norzaleo ASAP), and Iyona. Might be forgetting someone.
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Wild X-Com 2: Assassin assassinated. Warlock...warred against? Endgame looms. Or cowers more like, because even on Commander, endgame tech and Chosen weapons are just too broken.
Hitting life goals you didn't know you had edition: find sectopod huddle with a heavy mech and a shieldbearer next to a gas station --> Reaper attaches mine to sectopod --> Reaper attaches mine to mech --> sniper fires at sectopod from a mile away --> enjoy the fireworks and be amazed they don't crash the PS4.
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Wild X-Com 2: Fin~
Final mission party: Clive, Marivel, Avril, Yulie, Rebecca, Carol. Pre-final sabotage party: Clarissa, Kanon, Jet.
Some PC notes below. A couple odd class matches, since you can't choose with your early rookies. Some nicknames were random when I couldn't think of something more appropriate than what the game chose. I figure mostly these will be obvious (though Marivel's was randomly selected and absolutely perfect).
Wild Arms 1
- Rudy Roughknight: Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film, because I could never get a second Skirmisher.
- Cecilia "Lightning" Adlehyde: Specialist Colonel. Obvious healbot, except she got both of the overwatch upgrades and could basically just counterattack anything that happened by endgame until she ran out of bullets. And the Disruptor Rifle holds a lot of bullets.
- Jack van Burace: Sharpshooter Corporal. KIA by Assassin early in the run.
- Emma "Shrink" Hetfield: Specialist Colonel. Techie, frags robots, etc. It's a helpful skillset, but not one that I find exceptionally valuable for the final mission.
- Jane "Calamity" Maxwell: Sharpshooter Colonel. Lemme just take all these free pistol shots instagibbing every Lost on the screen, thx.
- Zed "Monster" Z: Grenadier Sergeant. I had a lot of trouble getting a competent Grenadier ranked up this run. Zed came out of the gate with amazingly promising stats and got overkilled by a random lancer crit. R.I.P., you goofy bastard.
Wild Arms 2
- Ashley Winchester: Also Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Film, couldn't get a second Templar.
- Lilka "Scratch" Eleniak: Sharpshooter Colonel. The B-team sniper.
- Brad "Not A Hero" Evans: Grenadier Colonel. Most of his ranks were from covert ops, because he got blasted directly into sickbay whenever I tried to use him.
- Tim "Shellshock" Rhymeless: Grenadier Sergeant. Mostly backbencher. Bonded with Gallows, which was one of those nice it's almost like the game knows moments.
- Aisha "Kanon" Bernadette: Skirmisher Colonel.
- Marivel "Dusk" Armitage: Psi-operative. Primary esper, the others saw relatively little use. I even built the psy lab earlier than usual this run, but it just takes so long to train someone up.
Wild Arms 3
- Virginia "Wings" Maxwell: Ranger Colonel.
- Gallows "Slim" Caradine: Sharpshooter Sergeant. Spent most of his time on the bench with Tim. Really off class selection by the game here, hard to be enthused about using him when I had cooler snipers around.
- Jet "Ecto" Enduro: Psi-Operative. Purely backup for missions where I didn't need a slot for anyone I was actively trying to level.
- Clive "Professor" Winslet: Sharpshooter Colonel. Oh hey, remember that bit above about cool snipers? That is Clive. Clive was good. Definitely the star of the last battle, hop to a platform and Death From Above Darklance kills for days.
Wild Arms 4
- Jude "Preacher" Maverick: Lategame pickup, tossed him into psi-lab because it was empty at that point and I didn't need any class in particular by then. Participated in one mission. Good for you, Jude.
- Yulie "Doc" Ahtreide: Specialist Colonel. Yulie was Cecilia mk. 2. Or Cecilia was Yulie mk. 2, I forget exactly. Both were great, and I usually tried to have one or the other in my party whenever injuries or fatigue didn't prevent it.
- Arnaud Vasquez: See Rudy and Ashley's entries. Should've been my second Reaper, but the game decided to give me some rando instead when I ran the recruitment op. Lame.
- Raquel "Intruder" Applegate: Ranger Colonel. Implacable + Reaper mode = really just Raquel's actual WA4 skillset. Definite closest match to source material here. Yo I'm just gonna take all the turns and cut all the dudes at once. Lategame highlight in the Gatekeeper mission: oh, right, this map is full of burrowed Chrysalids. Okay, Raquel, you just run out there and counter-gib anything that charges at you. Rangers are so good.
Wild Arms 5
- Dean "Fury" Stark: Ranger Captain. Late-ish recruit, definite C-lister.
- Rebecca "Spider" Streisand: Ranger Colonel, stealth variety. Key officer earlygame, but not gonna be in on our final mission as long as I've got a Reaper to do the job better.
- Avril "Ice Queen" vent Fleur: Templar Colonel. Templars are immensely satisfying to use. This campaign was the first time I'd actually got one to Colonel to try psionic storm. 100% worth the investment.
- Carol "Stiletto" Anderson: Reaper Colonel. Pretty comfortable saying MVP here. Just being able to scout out enemy positions in almost complete safety is a huge boon at any point in the game. Being able to mine enemy mobs or one-shot an Avatar with Banish is just a bonus.
- Greg "Crusher" Russelberg: Grenadier Captain. I'd say "B-team grenadier," but I feel like all of my grenadiers were B-team at best this run.
- Chuck "Mayday" Preston: Specialist Lieutenant. C-team healer.
Wild Arms XF
- Clarissa "The Kid" Arwin: Sharpshooter Colonel. Party kill leader.
- Felius "Timecop" Arwin: Specialist Major. B-team techie.
- Levin "Preacher" Brenton: Yeah, I know the game gave him the same nickname as Jude. I decided I didn't care enough to change either one, because both were entirely superfluous recruits that I only picked up so everyone would be accounted for.
- Labyrinthia "Capable" Wordsworth: Grenadier Colonel. Also needed a bunch of covert op boosts to get her rank up. Party-worst Willpower. I felt like she never got over Jack getting fragged.
- Alexia "Princess" Elesius: Ranger Major. The B-team Rebecca.
- Ragnar "Blitz*" Lebrett: Grenadier Lieutenant. Lots of bench time here, I barely ever had room for grenadiers this run. (*Come on, you know I had to.)
- Tony: Was a robot, but got schooled in superior firepower by a bigger robot.
i r dork
Okay, so that's done. Waffling on trying Legend difficulty. I want to take a break, but on the other hand, I could see getting brain-nabbed by the right theme if it came to me. XG/XS? Eh, cute idea, but I don't think the series feels that important to me. Suikoden? Eh, it's cool, but lack of canon last names for a bunch of peeps would probably bug me. ...Oh wait, Suicide Squad. Shit. I'm doing this at some point, aren't I?
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Maximum Rush has drawbacks, but it's better than anything else Saints have. The class's growth starts helping; in particular their STR and AGI both are pretty respectable lategame. It says something about how bad Grapplers are that they have a self attack buff skill and yet I rated an entire one knight from that line (Alsin) above 3/10. Assassin I like in theory but man. I've gotten to the point where I will convert any assassin L10 and below (Ann, Shuana, Diana) to Archer because their crazy high bases work so well with Archer skillset/growth. Kate and Dellah are just about the only Assassins I use in game for that reason. Jazz is a lost cause regardless due to rune problems and joining late and underleveled.
Vikings... Ginny is scary in spite of the terrible rune, accuracy and mdef because he hits so hard. He definitely requires a very specific setup (Halo/React) but it's worth the payoff; the offense can't be beat by anyone not named Rudo. As a whole the Viking line isn't great before L20 though and they're not good units outside of Ginny and Adieu.
And yeah, that basically sums up Tim's quest. I liked Sin commenting about how pompous the other leaders sound in the ending. The knights themselves are better than you expect as fighters; Noll/Iyona/Sylvie all stand out for that as noted. The flipside is that some of the plot knights are pretty bad and they are kind of short on knights to boot.
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Project Triangle- Saw the demo of this last weekend. There's a lot of promise on the gameplay front; the second battle when you refuse the Archduke's demands in particular was very well done and had good depth to it.
The writing for the heroes was somewhere between stilted and bad. Some of the villains flashed personality and character on their scenes at least, but the main heroes... oof.
In spite of that, I'm very interested in the main game. The splitting storylines do have potential to be decent even with the heroes being duds.
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Had some amazon gift cards so I picked up Mario Golf and Scarlet Nexus.
Mario Golf is fun....but also has some issues with multiplayer, as in...Speed and Battle mode are locked at 2 players max, which is hella lame. Also the RPG mode is fun, but super short. Beat that in one sitting basically.
Starting up Scarlet Nexus. This game seems fun. Will dive into it more Wednesday.
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Been a while since I've done an FFX post. I'm very far in the postgame at present with a 31/35 vicory rate at the Monster Arena. But the highlights I'm posting now are from way earlier in the maingame.
Won a Stonetouch weapon for Auron early. And for some reason, he kept winning the coinflip and landing petrify on high HP enemies. Ochus are terrible at the time they're first encountered. Gobs of HP, status ailments on all of its attacks, lousy AP for the effort to fight them. Auron kept making statues out of them. Iron Giant? Statue, like 4 in a row. Chimera? Statue. It was quite silly up until the Calm Lands when I switched over to Capture weapons for Tidus/Wakka/Auron in randoms.
Got rocked by Total Annihilation going for the Overkill. Only one left standing was Auron with about 200 HP. Sucks for you Seymour; it's not zero. Got the other two revived (so they don't miss out on AP) and finished him off with an Aeon Overdrive for the Overkill.
Spectral Keeper: Berserk Ward on Tidus + Provoke + Counterattack = Battle wins itself. I threw Protect on him and stacked a bunch of Cheer to reduce the incoming damage even more.
Nearly every boss from Spherimorph on drops uncommon Sphere Grid items. Felt good to nail Overkills on every one of them. Except for Yenke - 1 less Return Sphere isn't worth resetting over. Also, Kimahri's damage options at the time were meh so didn't have a means of guaranteeing two Overkills in the 2 on 1 story fight.
During the Jupiter Sigil grind, one League had me maintaining a perfect record of never getting scored on until the very last game of that League. CPU scored on me in the last game with under 15 seconds left on the clock. And of all the players it could have been, it was that snob Bickson of the Goers. Not that it mattered for the final outcome as my team was leading 6-0 but the timing felt like something out of a fanfic.
Didn't think I did that much grinding before Omega Ruins but Ultima Weapon was still a pushover. It got off one attack while I was getting everyone Hasted and acting for AP and I don't think it would have made it to a second even if I hadn't summoned an Aeon to crush it. Omega went the same way, just bigger numbers and again using an Aeon to deal the finishing blow for the Overkill. (wimpy US original Omega Weapon)
That single attack was a physical. Which missed. (evil laugh) Would need to go out of my way to see their attack animations. But Omega is also the one boss rude enough to not be near a save point that I wasn't inclined to take that chance. (Ultima Weapon? Mid-boss status. Or gate with HP)
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Belatedly, @Sierra, I was definitely amused at all the poor Wild Arms squaddies and their nicknames.
Fell Seal: Did a Gunner SCC. Easier than I was expecting given that the class has bad damage and no healing! Let's break the class down.
Enraging Bullet (range 8 physical with 50% berserk) is the money skill of the class. Since you have huge range, it's often very easy to berserk enemies such that their closest target is one of their friends. You can typically berserk 3 enemies on round 1, each wastes two turns AND does two attacks against their friends, and may even trigger some fun counterattacks too. I shouldn't need to explain the action economy of how this wins fights. Gunners generally don't have too much trouble whenever most key enemies are vulnerable to berserk.
Cripping Bullet and Silencing Bullet are more accurate (75%) than Enraging and last a turn longer, but their effects aren't nearly as potent, since enemies afflicted by these statuses still have valid actions like items or basic physicals. Still, silencing is 100% worth it against pektites (who have trash physicals and don't use items), and otherwise the see use to reduce the offence of berserk-immune enemies. They're also the most accurate statuses to apply, which matters for Opportunistic Bullet (see below).
Slowing Bullet is a decent effect, but at only 50% accurate it's often a backup option when other things are immuned, or if neither silence/cripple are useful, or just as a filler move on an already statused enemy (since statuses wears off with turns, this keeps them affected longer!).
Opportunistic Bullet is the main damage-dealing method. 0.8x + 0.5 * number of statuses on the target. Even one status lets it outdamage basic physicals, and if you let a few statuses pile up it becomes quite impressive indeed. Of note, Noxious Bomb and Corrosive Bomb provide 100% methods to boost its damage further (although they don't do damage and are only range 3 instead of 8), particularly Corrosive due to the def debuff.
It costs 14 MP so it can't be used turn 1, but most other gunner moves cost 6, so it can be used turn 2, and most turns thereafter potentially depending on your actions. It's the most exxpensive gunner move, so MP is rarely something to worry about and I'm not sure I ever used a Mana Stone.
Magic Bullet is highly situational, an MP-costing basic physical which deals magic damage. Only useful against enemies with much lower res than def since it doesn't add or exploit statuses.
Focus doubles the damage of your next turn. Since there's no tempo of adding statuses, it's really only useful on the rare times when you're out of range of any enemy (or at least any enemy you care about), but it does make those turns less wasted.
Their passives are Concentration (+20 hit... gunners basically never miss except against dedicated dodgetanks and even then not often, so this is great... never worry about equipping glasses) and Height Advantage (very situational since few fights let you use it, though a couple that do are reasonably tricky such as the second temple and the final boss... up to +40% damage). Their counter is Teleport Other, which has neat synergy with the rest of their build; if a melee enemy DOES reach you (which they have great trouble doing), you send them the hell away to a random panel.
Overall I found this easier than the Wizard SCC. Some of it is of course just having learned a few fights better (like how blocking blind and sleep both is a good idea against the Gelligh Septimus ambush), but I do think the SCC is legitimately a bit easier. The ability to hang back safely while your enemies kill each other is very powerful.
Notable fights:
Occul Riverbed (the earthwyrms) - Honestly everything before them was pretty easy, but they're certainly tricky! My base damage against them was... 8 at first, I was worried. Fortunately, piling on slow, silence (doesn't do anything, but...), Def Down, and Res Down makes for some mean Opportunistic Bullets, especially if I could pull off a back hit once they rushed out to attack. There are three of them so timing things well to blitz each one was the tricky part, since my supply of the bombs is finite and they're a big deal. They also have Critical: Haste which removes slow, although slow could then remove haste for one attack as well. 2 injuries but no resets.
Godstear Wastes: The first fight with resets (2). I blocked slow (Sapphire Earrings) so that I could safely slow the aeoths myself, but honestly, it's the humans opponents which make this difficult. The enemies start very far away, which might sound favourable but they can do a bunch of scary things at long range, such as buff themselves a lot (barrier is very annoying for my game) and worst of all there's a sorcerer with Initiative who always gets off one attack and can easily get off more, and with my shaky magic durability and no healing each sorcerer spell that lands is a devastating hit to my overall survivability. Had to find the right balance of aggression to push forward against the key enemies while not just getting horribly blitzed by the Warmage and Reaver.
Cataracta Citadel: 3 injuries but no resets at least. Gunners mercifully have innate swim, I block bleed and poison to be able to mess with the bosses safely and of course berserk is great against a bunch of enemies. I have answers to everyone here to varying degrees. Eventually Secunda does close in and do her big damage which I can't really stop but I'm able to keep those rare enough that I'm able to pull through and win.
Primus: He's got resistance to status AND he has a full-MT physical which spreads any status on him to all of my PCs. I still slow him (not sure this is worth it, but it works twice in a row on 25% so hey) and debuff his defences, get all my people slowed and debuffed myself, but I have Opportunistic Shot and he doesn't, so this favours me. 2 injuries but won first try.
Raife 3: It's tempting to berserk the werewolf who does massive damage to his friends but this is a mistake since it wakes him up and that's just one more target to deal with. I win the first time I leave him alone for most of the fight. The malcubus has a Ruby Earring (blocks berserk) and the archafflictor is innately berserk-immune (as they all are, sadly) but I can still berserk the scoundrel and vessel. Once the vessel comes forward a bit, I kill him with damage, which fortunately is quite easy (and the gunner ability to backload damage and then overpower his Critical Rebirth is great). Raife naturally can't get many turns once he's in close, but gets more than he did with wizards, so being careful with my HP so he doesn't kill anyone is important. The bug in the back is terrible as always (since he's basically a sorcerer, see my notes on Godstear Wastes) but eventually once I have control of the fight I can berserk the werewolf and that keeps him awake until I'm ready to kill him with Magic Bullet.
The Maw: Status and kill the various demons, status and kill the viscewyrms (status only lasts one turn on them, but berserk is still nice and I can Opportunistic them as well). A bit tricky because I never have high damage and it's a long fight, but taking the high ground so I can get bonus damage against the boss helps. I ignore the aeoths for the most part, eventually slowing them if they threaten to double. Statusing the boss and then using Opportunistic is of course an option, but again status only lasts one turn and it does transfer to me if I'm adjacent, good thing I never am. Not easy at all and I have four injuries, but I win first try.
Evade Skill is a big pain in the ass but not as bad as Evade Magic was for wizards since range 8 physicals can still put in work.
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Divinity Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition -
So I picked this up a couple of months ago after listening to it on WAFF and believe it or not, reading about DSP's misadventures. It sounded cool, so I bought it when it went on discount. I've been playing it for the past 2 months or so now. I did end up setting the difficulty Easy by accident. Mainly because DE gives you 4 difficulty options and I thought they were Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard instead of Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard. Doesn't matter too much because even on "Easy", the game is still fairly difficult. Listening to WAFF did spoil me on some cheese methods of dealing with some fights but some of the hardest encounters in this game are the ones that you can't really prepare for much because this game gives you a lot of freedom. And I mean A LOT.
The best way I can describe this game is that, it's like playing a computer operated game of Dungeons and Dragons. It's a game where the sky is the limit in how you want to approach certain engagements, building your character and of course, what quests you tackle. There's no "BUT THOU MUST" here. If you want to try to do something, chances are the game will let you. Want to set up an ambush with like 20 oil barrels before starting a fight? Go right ahead. Want to drop your enemies into instant death lava? Sure, why not? Want to kill this all around good guy in the town cause you're RPing as a scumbag? Okay, but now everyone around town will hate you. Because of this freedom for creativity though, the game will often put you in positions of disadvantage when you start fights - otherwise it won't have as much of a bite. So playing straight and honest here is tough. One of the more unique things is being able to move your guys when one person is engaged in conversation, so often times, scouting and prepping before the battle by casting buffs can put you on more even footing. You can even get the first strike in fights if you know there will be a fight by attacking while things are still neutral.
And that's just before the encounters take place. You have a lot of customization and character builds that you can do. With DE, you can also freely respec at any time so there's no reason to try different builds until you find something that works. The game operates on 10 school of skills and you can mix and match them as you please, as long as you have the skill points invested in the tree. Warfare, Huntsman and Scoundrel is the physical tree while Fire, Earth, Water, Wind, Polymorph, Necromancy and Summoning is the magic tree. If you want an all elemental caster, you're free to do that and be weaker at dealing damage, but having vast utility by being able to dip into 4 different spell types. You can also do the reverse and just be an one element caster trading your utility for much better damage. To the game's credit, both of these things will work and this is owing to the fact that it gives you a lot of choices on what battles you want to pick and choose. To compensate for a smaller number of schools in the physical tree, the physical branch tends to improve other secondary stats so even spellcasters might consider dipping a few points into them. Warfare improves all physical damage (so it can effect summons and spells that have physical components like Necromancy), Huntsman improves height advantage damage and Scoundrel improves Movement and Crit Damage multiplier. Your also allowed to choose certain passive skills every few levels as well as civil skills such as appraisal, persuasion and bartering. It's a really good character customization system that then gels extremely well with the creativity the combat system allows.
I think the only real downside I can think of is the setting and overarching plot. It's very standard fantasy fare with your elves, dwarves and lizards. However, what DSO 2 lacks in uniqueness of its setting, I think, it makes up for it with much sharper writing. The 6 main PCs all seem to be wonderfully well written and integrated into the game's main plot beats (I say "seem" cause I've only seen 3; the rest I heard about). None of the characters are insufferable. The 3 I have as my companions are all great and grow as you progress on their character quests. Even with the plot, it does something which I very much admire by throwing the player into different moral quandaries and asking the tough questions. For example, during the course of the game, you need to get inside a Magic Academy and to do so, you need to break a code. The game gives you the option of discovering the code by either helping Alexander, the big bad in the 1st arc and generally morally bankrupt person as he agrees to acts of slavery and torture OR you can help out the Sallow Man, a figure who is aligned with the God-King, the satanic figure in this world and often tricks people into a signing a covenant. They both want each other's head and they also both suck, but you're supposed to choose who you're going to help. Of course, since this is DSO 2, you can also kill both (like me), then get in through the obscure back door by doing teleport shenanigans. There are plenty of other dilemmas presented and while you may be able to skip them by doing the obscure 3rd option (since its DSO2), I do appreciate these scenarios. All of them of course, also tie back into an over-arcing theme of the game, which is super neat.
I'll probably have more wrap up thoughts once I'm officially done. I'm about 1/2 way through the last chapter in the game right now so I suspect maybe another week of gameplay. However, if you haven't tried this game and you like D&D, SRPGs, or good writing, I highly, highly recommend it.
Also before I forget - this is a definite DL casting game. Zenny is Trompdoy. Being damned to living eternally while making dick jokes all day is 100% Zenny.
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Disgaea 6- fin, or at least fin as I reckon it.
So you can definitely feel the budget on this. The recycling of the main boss in particular is very noticeable. The mechanics have some weird things that feel over complicated or not quite so satisfying, but the changes to how leveling works are so much more interesting (you just get exp on everyone you deployed at the end of a map) it’s hard not to say it’s a net win?
So the core premise is “zombie boy Zed trapped himself in an eternal Isekai loop so he can destroy a powerful god of destruction” and then shenanigans ensue. So the entire rest of the cast are very much specific takes on common other-world archetypes and overall this is probably the best cast dynamic since 4 and the most reliably witty it’s been since 1. I dunno that it’s a better overall experience than those games or 2 but yeesh it’s nice of them to actually put real thought into all this.
On the whole still probably 7/10, but on the high side
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Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid- blazed through story mode. Very much trying to be budget Netherrealm as a mode (mechanically it’s MvC), but I do feel like it gave you a better sense of how and when to actually deploy mechanics and play the game than those do which is cool. The budget is extremely noticeable, like yeah nah these folk have never made a full game like this before, but it’s quite competent within that framework. Not unlike Fell Seal in that regard, really, although I think FS is more like FFT in a good way than this is like Marvel. Still, as “for reasons unknowable sometimes I play fighting game story modes” experiences go I don’t have anything actually bad to say about this, just saw ways it could have been better.
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Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - Beat this.
This is the third warriors game I played. What I liked:
-Like other warriors games, it's cool that you can play as a bunch of different characters. Like FEW I appreciated that you can deploy multiple ones in a fight and switch between them.
-The core gameplay is certainly engaging, with major opponents being some of the better ones yet. Learning the various tells of the enemies and responding to the openings they leave is cool. I wasn't sure what I'd think about quickly using the various sheikah slate powers to exploit openings but it ends up feeling pretty fun. I liked how there were multiple versions of each of the boss-type monsters, which are different enough to keep you on your toes. The fights against the Ganon-type enemies late in the game are pretty great (and challenging, at least on Hard). Challenge level's in a pretty good place generally! And if you disagree there are many modes, including a harder one than I played.
My favourite characters to control were Mipha, Urbosa, and Impa. Link's decent too, same with both the bird warriors.
What I liked less:
-Aesthetically I definitely dug this game less than the original Hyrule Warriors. The character designs aren't as vibrant and the music is definitely more of a mixed back; some of it's quite good but I preferred the jammin' rock of HW1 (and FEW for that matter).
-Divine beast sections are awful.
-Aerial combat is pretty janky in general (a bit less so for the characters built around it), and jumping into the air by mashing dodge against a wall can be disastrous.
-I don't think this game is very good at making you care about map management (keeping bases alive and protecting VIPs) compared to HW1 in particular.
It's probably the weakest of the Warriors games I've played which is a shame because I think the core combat is probably the strongest. Still fun.
Dark Deity - I played this. Indie game which is a bit of a Fire Emblem clone Generally recommended, with some reservations.
The main reservations stem from the fact that the game definitely has a bunch of QOL issues and is a bit buggy at points. There's just a fair bit of random jank in there, so if you're gonna play it you probably just have to accept it. Or hope they patch away some of the more annoying problems.
Besides that it's Fire Emblem. Are you here for a large cast of characters with colourful designs, a support system (reminiscent of the modern games in that they're easy to build, thank god), and fun moment-to-moment SRPG combat? Because that's all here too.
Its biggest advantages over most FE games are that it has quite nicely varied map objectives and designs (defend, arrive, escape, time limits, etc.), and also that it has a pretty good take on permadeath where you don't actually lose the character if they die but they will take a random stat penalty (can vary between totally benign and something like 2-3 points in a major stat). You're told what it is immediately so you can still judge if you want to reset, but mostly I didn't. The system makes you care deeply about not losing people (which is important for the tension of FE imo), but also makes it easy to ironman without feeling like you've thrown all your investment for a character in the toilet. Another strength the game has is that, because the game knows that characters will be alive and recruited, the game is able to work a lot of them into the main plot in appropriate ways. There are still a few who basically do nothing but show up very rarely (outside supports - everyone has lots of those), but with a cast of 30 it's to be expected.
Game has a branching promotion system which is reasonably cool, although the slightly awkward thing is that once you hit a certain point in the game, literally everyone shows up and needs to be promoted immediately, and you have to make this choice in the middle of a cutscene (no delaying it). Overall though it's pretty fun. There are six main class lines, each with four branches at Level 10, then another set of four choices (independent of the first) at Level 30, so you get some say in how to build each character. Since you get multiple members of each class line you're free to try building them in different ways. IDK how balanced the choices are but they're at least reasonably interesting, with quite a few classes getting neat passives to play with.
The game does have some definite downsides. Aside from some of the buggy/QOL stuff... the main plot is definitely not great (in that it tends to lurch a bit from one moment to another a bit discordantly), though it does follow the usual FE fashion of at least fleshing out the characters well enough in supports to care (not 3H level of course). Can't say I was a fan of the music either. And the weapon triangle is replaced by an interaction of nine damage types interacting with four armour types which is a bit hard to keep track of and also results in a damage formula which is to complicated to manually calculate (damage projections still exist, but it makes it harder to know if I'm safely exposing someone on enemy phase).
I don't think it's one of the stronger Fire Emblems but it's still a good time.
Notes on some of the PCs I used:
Mages: probably the most impressive class line. 1-2 range is very good, and mages don't really pay for this... in fact they tend to have high HP so they just rule at enemy phase strats in general. All mages also all have the Phase ability (think FEH/FE3H Reposition), and two of their promotions can buff its range which is a bit silly. They also have a promotion which makes ALL their damage drain (only 1/3 health instead of 1/2, but Nosferatu be busted, yo), and a tier 3 class which features 9 move, a phase range boost, and an aura which boosts evade (self included?) which is just silly. They have other good options too and it's nice to vary up which you use somewhat so you cover different damage types. Alden and Sloane were probably my two best PCs; Alden has loads of magic/speed while Sloane is a bit slower but has lots of dex (accuracy/evade... yes this stat matters) and was a silly dodgetank. I also used Monroe who has game-best HP by a lot for... some reason, and Liberty.
Clerics: They can go either physical or magical. They tend to be quite physically tanky which is neat, but also slow and inaccurate so their offence is a little shaky (especially the physical versions) and they are pretty vulnerable to bad matchups. Still, being perfectly serviceable combat units who can also heal is also nice. Their tier 3 class of Phantom also deserves a note for being excellent: mobile, can't lose more than 49% of their health from a non-crit. I used four; Maren's probably the best of them with Live to Serve and stupid-high magic/speed like her brother, Lincoln's not as potent long-term but gets off to a great start (closest thing the game has to a jeigan), Samara has +1 move, and Vesta just has silly tanking (both defences above 40 by the end for me), for the ones I used.
Fighters: They're... okay. Actually I'm just gonna talk about Dragoon. Dragoon has high move, bad stats, but get a crit bonus for every panel they've moved. Fine fine, but not great since crits are only 2x damage in this game and their str is problematic. But then you get an accessory which can swap crit and power and suddenly a dragoon can use this and hit like a truck. And then promote to dragon knight and get even more move. As far as player phase builds go this one's the best, though I'd call this a more enemy phase-favouring game. I used Fenton for this build, and also used Alexa as an axegirl and she was... serviceable I guess, but one of my weaker units. They can shove, which is no Phase but it's fine.
Archers: This is an enemy-phase focused game so archers are gonna be pretty bad... but wait, they do actually hit very hard! I found Garrick quite useful out of the gate in particular. I don't think they age well if kept as archers though, I kept one on my team until the end (Caius) but he was easily my worst unit. Fortunately they can also go to the Strider classline and become very solid melee dodgetanks while having decent damage due to the speed + damage bonus on doubles, I used Maeve for this. Their special is Rally Move.
Rogues: Apparently they can be good melee dodgetanks as well but I was a bit underwhelmed, the only classline I ended up dropping entirely (though Cia was the last person I dropped, so I did use her for over half the game). Their special, Disarm, is also the worst; use an action to prevent an enemy from countering, but it's melee by default, meh whatever.
Adepts: Certainly the weirdest class line; every member of it has balanced str/magic and they can choose between some very different classes. Their special is Chain, a range 1 don't-move effect, pretty situational outside of one build. Their class choices include two mages (which broadly, aren't as good as the proper mages, but one of them boosts Chain's range to 3 at which point this is some Encloser level nonsense and it's quite useful, and they do eventually reach 8 move), a second is a physical melee tank with drain (not as good as mages, again, but hey), and a third is a spear-user which is basically like a FE4 gen 2 swordmaster: fifty billion passives boosting their damage and high evade. Plenty of fun. I used Aurima in the spear line and Thae'lanel in the thunder mage line - Thae himself deserve particular note because he has a killer personal skill which means he can't take more than 30% damage per non-crit hit, allowing him to use an otherwise squishy class very effectively.
Good game, will certainly replay it at some point.
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Brig- Did the two knight challenge with Mana Saleesia again. It was much easier this time due to preparation. MS is the hardest country to do this with by a mile due to both an extremely poor selection of knights and a high number of borders to defend. Every other country can get by with just four teams; MS by default has to use five teams.
Teams at the start:
Rudo/Katri, Emma/Selena, Kyle/Monica, Avril/Cyrus, Titania/Frederico.
So much of managing MS is not only knowing which knights to use, it’s knowing which knights to put where. Rudo’s team went to the southern Mirelava border, Emma went to Sedestoria, Kyle went to Alternia, Avril went to Galest and Titania went to Norbass. Attack plan is Rudo smites the pirates while my secondary teams chip into Guimoule and Gustava. Once I finish with the pirates I sent Rudo up north to finish off Tim and then attack into Norzaleo, leaving Shinobi and Guimoule for last. One of the biggest advantages of the two knight playthrough is that your knights level up very quickly. With MS this means you want to put a low level/bad knight with Rudo so you can force them up into competence. Last time I used Veyta which was a mistake (he’s good at even low levels); this time I pick Katri. Katri’s starting rune is irredeemably terrible, but she is an outstanding class so I suck it up and use her. I forced fed her kills until she hit level 20. The AI decided to help and kept on attacking her and Rudo so I got her up to Sniper in a few months. As soon as she hits sniper, I send her north to replace Cyrus. Veyta replaces her as soon as that happens. That gives me ten no worse than competent knights to use.
Emma/Selena was entirely built out to assassinate Eliza. They are both competent knights so this ended up working well. I thought about classing Emma over to archer but her base stats just aren’t good enough to be worth the hassle; her STR at L10 archer is mid 60’s which is unremarkable. You want to have a Temple Knight to be a hard counter to Eliza as well. Selena was as competent as ever. Sylvie replaced Selena when Rudo promoted as she joined. Kyle/Monica were the only team to not change the entire team. I put them in by far the most attacked town in the game (Alternia) and they have no problems holding. Kyle and Monica are two of MS's best knights and they manage to hold the fort down. I'm not attacked a ton here. Avril/Cyrus… hoo boy. I used Cyrus here out of desperation. He had slightly higher CP than Veyta who I was trying to level up via questing. Thankfully this team wasn’t attacked until I booted Cyrus for Sniper Katri. Sniper Katri’s rune is still bad but she’s a Sniper with badass STR; I can deal with it. Once Katri subbed in this team was fine; in particular she was able to kill Ginger without breaking a sweat.
Titania/Frederico quickly turned into Titania/Allen when I realized I didn’t have enough front line units. Frederico is just so bad on stats that even Ranger Allen was an improvement. Speaking of, Ranger Allen sucks. 420~ HP at L12? Get out. I had a half ass plan to dual him down knight and ranger, but I benched him instead when I got Seth from a quest. This was by far the team I used the least; they were the first on the bench for a reason. This was still so much better than the Largo/Frederico dream team from my last two knight playthrough. Grapplers are not only a liability due to gameworst frontline knight durability (No evasion+knockback means they take more damage) but knockback means that they’ll in effect be making it harder to kill melee rune knights. Two knights focuses even more than usual upon Rune Knight sniping; you just don’t have the power until very late to slug through a wall of meat shields.
Final teams: Rudo/Veyta, Emma/Sylvie, Kyle/Monica, Avril/Katri, Seth/Titania.
Aisha, Gilliam, Jaden, Cyrus, Largo, and Frederico were never used in combat. Allen was only used a few times until I replaced him with Seth. I got Durius, Seth, Alejandro and Ba’al via questing. Alejandro I would have used except that he joined kind of late and didn't have any weapons or armor for him. Seth was quite useful. Durius and Ba’al never got used.
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Finished FF3 Pixel Remaster.
So this is a really interesting remake, on the whole. It's not strictly a remake of the NES game, for all that it draws all of its presentational cues from that version; it's more like a hybrid of the NES and DS versions that, on the whole, hews closer to the DS version - I would sooner bill it as a demake of the DS version that reverts to the original NES version's writing. However, that doesn't truly capture the essence of what this version of the game is like *either*. So I suppose the best way to address that is to just dive into what this version of the game is like in detail.
First, the cues it does take from the NES version. The job unlock times are the same as they are on NES; you get Warrior/Monk/White Mage/Black Mage/Red Mage from the wind crystal, Ranger/Knight/Thief/Scholar from the fire crystal, Geomancer/Dragoon/Black Belt/Dark Knight/Evoker/Bard from the water crystal, Magus/Evoker/Summoner from the earth crystal, and Sage/Ninja from Eureka. The jobs all have the same equipment access they have on NES, which means that Warrior/Monk can't equip anything of note found later than the floating continent and thus get clearly obsoleted. Likewise, like on NES, Fighter/Monk have no special commands. Enemies all have their NES version attack patterns as far as I can tell; they don't multiact or do any of the different stuff they do in the DS version. Job level is de-emphasized as a stat like the NES version.
That's mostly where the similarities end.
Then you have the cues it takes from the DS version. Enemy packs are still smaller than the DS version (but not *as* small; 4-enemy fights were common but anything above that was exceedingly rare). Enemy stats are more like the DS version - stuff hits generally harder and has more HP all around. Equipment stats mostly all follow the DS version, though some itemcasts added by the DS version were not retained. The non-Wind jobs have much more in common with their DS version incarnations than their NES version incarnations - in other words, the original NES version's planned obsolescence of Wind jobs was retained, but all the later jobs kept their DS version enhancements. However, they're not exactly the same as the DS version either - they did some things that were wholly original. I'll just run down the job list and talk about what they did.
Warrior: Mostly like its NES incarnation: good on the Floating Continent, obsoleted as soon as Knight unlocks. Very slightly weaker than NES in raw stats.
Monk: Exactly like its NES incarnation: good on the Floating Continent, obsoleted as soon as Black Belt unlocks. Very slightly weaker than NES in raw stats.
White Mage: Basically identical to its DS incarnation. The MP progression is more or less like the DS version, which is markedly worse.
Black Mage: Basically identical to its DS incarnation. The MP progression is more or less like the DS version, which is markedly (and, for Black Mage, tragically) worse.
Red Mage: While it gets its upgraded spell access from the DS version, it's limited to its NES version equipment and thus falls off really hard.
Ranger: Basically identical to its DS incarnation; it retains the Barrage command from there with similar effect. All told it was a pretty good job until the part of the game where bows fall off dramatically. Arrows are non-consumable in this version, which is really nice.
Knight: More like its NES incarnation than its DS incarnation, but it kept some of the Agility nerf the class took on DS (not all). Doesn't get the token L1 white magic the DS Knight does.
Thief: I didn't use it much but it felt like it had combat capability closer to the DS version's incarnation in the midgame. Its lack of late-game equipment upgrades means it'll get relegated to the trash bin like in the original though.
Scholar: Basically plays like the DS incarnation except that it lost the token L1-3 spell access it had. It retains the DS version's doubled effects from using items, which I definitely got some mileage out of. Having no late-game armor options dooms it long term.
Geomancer: Plays more or less like its DS incarnation; Terrain has a 100% success rate and never backfires. Having no late-game equipment options dooms it long term.
Dragoon: More or less like its NES incarnation, which is good (the class took a notable stat nerf on DS). It tops out at Holy Lance which is a little weaker than other jobs' options. I can't remember if you can get multiples; if not that'll hold it back more since the Blood Lance drops off pretty hard in attack power. It has endgame armor access so it should be usable all the way. I never used the job myself (no, not even against Garuda).
Viking: Basically plays like its DS incarnation but has the stats of its NES incarnation. Provoke is now called Draw Attacks. I actually used one through most of the midgame as my second physical job along Knight and got a fair bit of use out of the command. Still offensively inept for the most part. It has the best HP growth if that's a thing you care about. It has endgame armor access and endgame-quality weapons, but physical tanking isn't really a valuable niche in endgame.
Black Belt: Plays more like its DS incarnation but not precisely the same; it took a bit of an AGI nerf from the NES version but is stronger than the DS class. They retain Boost and gained Kick, which they didn't have in either previous FF3 version; it's a basic MT physical that does around half the damage a basic attack would have done. This is actually pretty useful and all in all I'd say the job is better than it was; lack of late-game armor dooms it in the endgame though IMO.
Dark Knight: Plays ... more or less completely original. Statwise it has the same STR as NES and less AGI (but more AGI than DS). It retains its NES version equipment issues, being basically unusable before Falgabard. The DS version's Souleater is replaced by Bladeblitz, which does the same thing but doesn't cost HP to use (and doesn't hit as hard; it's basically a Kick clone). They also don't have their token L1-3 spellcasts from the NES version. Because of Bladeblitz, it more or less obsoletes Black Belt IMO once it's usable. It has endgame armor access and two Eureka weapons dedicated to it, so it's pretty much the clear second best physical job for endgame barring Ninja (after Knight).
Evoker: More or less identical to its DS incarnation in almost all ways; the only change is slightly more L8 MP.
Bard: Plays more like its DS incarnation, but not exactly the same (in particular, harp damage works like NES, which is dramatically worse). Song access is based on job level, and from reports on the forums, might be bugged. I didn't use one myself.
Magus: Statistically closer to its (stronger) NES incarnation. The MP progression is the DS version's except that its L1 and L8 MP were doubled.
Devout: Statistically closer to its (stronger) NES incarnation. The MP progression is the DS version's except that its L1 and L8 MP were doubled.
Summoner: More or less identical to its DS incarnation in almost all ways; the only change is slightly more L8 MP.
Sage: Similar to its DS incarnation, but it has full summons instead of evoker summons. Which, IMO, is honestly a downgrade, since this means it can't flex Odin's MT Protect or Bahamut's MT attack buff. Their MP progression is mostly the same as the DS version but they have a bit more L7 and L8 MP. Not worth using unless you like the sprite's aesthetic IMO.
Ninja: More or less like its NES incarnation, with the highest STR/AGI of all physical jobs and the ability to equip anything. It has worse HP growth than NES, but this shouldn't matter by the time you get it. Throwing shurikens is still the most powerful attack in the game by an order of magnitude; nothing else comes even close. Ninjas in PR have a throw command but Shuriken is the only throwable.
This is a lot of words to say that I liked this version of the game overall and it's probably the version I'll turn to for future replays. The rearranged soundtrack is EXTREMELY good.
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FF5 - I did a fiesta this year, natural on a whim. Rolled out a team of Dragoon/Time Mage/Chemist/Beastmaster. Just missing Blue Mage to have the most guide-dangit set of jobs in the game!
I played the GBA version because I've never actually used GBA Beastmaster on a Fiesta and that class is just... so much worse in more recent versions, between the nerfed Strong Fight, nerfed 25%HP releases, and bug-fixed Calm. It'll be interesting to see what the latest version does to them, I think that's supposed to release in around a month?
Some notes:
-Beastmaster has Control for randoms and a bunch of decent releases for bosses, though only being able to use one limits them. Highlights include instant death releases to kill Byblos (Page 32) and the fleet Gilgamesh (Aquathorn), Ronkan Knight to one-shot form 2 of Archeoaevis (the one with the real damage move) Yellow Dragons (25% HP) against Atomos and Exdeath, and my favourite, a Zu against Omniscient (50% HP because he's weak to wind). Beastmaster is incredibly underwhelming in bosses past that, but hey.
-I figured that Time Mage + Chemist is good excuse to do things at a low level. Once reached Ronka I started running from everything which didn't drop Chemist items. Still ended up getting to Level 24, most of the last few levels coming from the monsters-in-boxes in Moore Pyramid. There are way too many of those!
-Atomos was pretty scary. Even releasing a Yellow Dragon, the rest of my offence is so bad (Comet and Succubus Kiss were the only things doing more than like 400) that I had to use every Turtle Shell I had to do some semblance of damage before getting devoured.
-Since Time Mage was tied to Lenna the section of the game where she's gone was much nastier. Even the Gargoyles were no joke, and Melusine was an extremely long and painful fight, as I had zero Turtle Shells and Dragon Fangs left.
-Thank goodness for Meteor, the only reason final dungeon bosses didn't take a million years.
-Neo Exdeath was also an extermely long fight but had no way to threaten me outside of Grand Cross (which is funny, you'd think Almagest might be scary at Level 24, but Shell + double HP say nope). My offence was poor enough that I did see two, and the first inflicted Old on my only real damage-dealer... fortunately Meteor is one of the few magic attacks that ignores your level/stats, so keeps wrecking face just fine.
-I beat Omega very slowly with Calm + Trident (world 1 lightning spear) followups, with Chemist and Time Mage nonsense to keep me alive.
More detailed notes which are probably mostly of interest to me and a select few other nerds:
Stocked up to 25 potions before leaving for the canal/ship graveyard. More than needed (10 would be enough, probably) but it doesn't hurt to be safe.
Karlabos: Level 4. Used about 5 potions or so.
Siren: Level 7. I didn't bother with healing, accepted one death and threw two potions to finish the second time she went undead.
Magissa: Level 9. I broke my ice rod to finish her with no mess.
Garula: Level 10-11. Whip paralysis + high-def setup + healing staff = joke.
Liquid Flame: Level 12. Turtle him out of MP in the tornado form, then mostly use Gravity and a few Phoenix Downs to cut through the rest.
Karnak escape: I skip the final two chests. I get horribly unlucky with Iron Claw and miss my status attempts (running out of MP) so I have to break an Ice Rod to kill him in time. Oh well.
Ifrit: Level 13. Haste/Slow nonsense, plus releasing a Zu.
Byblos: Level 14. Released Page 32 sends him packing instantly.
Sandworm: Level 14. Time Mage Haste/Slow/heal turtle with a Zu to finish.
Cray Claw: Level 15. Equip lightning weapons, Time Mage heals a Tailscrew. Joke as always.
Adamantoise: Level 15. Equip Ice Bow from Cray Claw, use Time Mage turtling, release a Sand Bear.
Soul Cannon: Level 15. Break a Thunder Rod and followup with physicals on the Launchers, then haste/slow. Kind of a joke, he only gets off one Surge Beam and only barely.
Once I hit Level 17 in Ronka I stop fighting randoms. Level 17 gives everyone at least 400 HP, which I figure should be enough to beat everything left in the game. Maybe? We'll see!
Archaeoaevis: Level 17. Time Mage turtling, plus release a Ronkan Knight against form 2 to avoid Frost.
Titan: One reset when he MT OHKOs me. Break two rods and jump to avoid his death counter.
Manticore: Vulnerable to Stop/Slow and general Time Mage/Chemist turtling.
Purobolos: Can't be bothered with their nonsense, break rods three times and collect victory..
Gilgamesh: Typical Time Mage nonsense + cast Mute before dealing 4000 damage and he doesn't get to buff.
Tyrannosaur: Comet while Chemist heals.
Abductor: Stop and Gravity both work.
I actually fight Zombie Dragons in Drakenvale to try and get Dragon Fangs. I get seven of them, and also gain two levels in the process.
Dragon Pod: Level 19. Stop and Gravity both work.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu: Release an Aquathorn for Death on Gilgamesh. Had that failed... both can be slowed, Enkidu vulnerable to gravity, so I wasn't worried.
Atomos: Hardest boss so far for sure! He kills my dragoon Bartz first so I get a few turns of Haste, Comet, and Succubus Kiss (Maiden's Kiss + Turtle Shell). Once Bartz is about to be eaten I revive him and Atomos insists on either killing my Time Mage Lenna (unacceptable, she has by far the best free offence) or killing Bartz again, sometimes with double Comets. Very hairy. Eventually he kills both Lenna and Beastmaster Galuf (who had already released his Yellow Dragon for 5k). Revive Lenna, haste her again and finish before Atomos can eat Galuf. I used all six of my Turtle Shells and two Dragon Fangs (for Holy Breath).
Seal Guardians: Time Mage nonsense yet again, Hastega/Slowga, chip each one to a bit above their limit and then hurl Graviga after they take a turn and finish with whatever. Earth crystal I can cast float for and just mock.
At this point I go fight two more Zombie Dragons to restock to 7 Dragon Fangs. I also hit Level 20 in the process.
Gilgamesh: Level 20. Falls to standard Time Mage nonsense.
Exdeath: Hastega. Ether+Dragon Fang blocks elements. Elixir+Dragon Fang doubles HP (can survive Zombie Breath, not that I see it). Float stops Earth Shaker. Releasing a Yellow Dragon does 25%, otherwise a combination of Jump and Comet slowly chips him down, recasting Haste when Dispel counters come out (Dispel does not get rid of either of the Mix-based buffs I used).
Antlion: Back-row offence with Jump and a whip. This is the longest Antlion fight I have ever had, he lands several Discords quickly and I'm tickling him by the end; I have to use quite a few Hi-Potions!
Gargoyles: Beat on both Gargoyles until one of them uses Transfusion to sacrifice itself. Blessed Kiss (Maiden's Kiss+Holy Water) the other so it is berserked and can't use revive, though it also gets Haste which is unpleasant, so I release a Triffid to kill it at this point. Guess I didn't need Blessed Kiss.
Blitz the pyramid.
Melusine: Ugh this fight takes forever. In her fire- or ice-weak forms my only offence is Chemist Morning Star; in her lightning-weak form Dragoon can join in with Trident, and of course her physical-weak form is all hands on deck. I'm all out of Turtle Shells and Dragon Fangs so my options are limited, but at least Chemist can buff herself. ST Firaga or Blizzaga OHKO the other two (if they hit through Dragoon's Aegis Shield at least) so I have to revive a bunch, but I have enough Phoenix Downs.
I get the Fire Lash, Holy Lance, and Sage Staff as my first three weapons. At this point with my full party and Auto-Haste on my Time Mage I actually raid the Pyramid (Sage Staff is great here). The treasure chests alone get me three levels! Okay. Also enough money that I can afford Hermes Sandals on three out of four PCs.
Wendigo: Level 23. Block confuse with Time Mage/Chemist. Release a Shadow Dancer as first attack, otherwise just turtle and fish for damage with Holy Lance, Chicken Knife, Fire Lash, and Comet.
Minotaur: Both in the back row. Dragoon jumps with Partisan, Chemist uses Protect on herself then hits with Chicken Knife.
Omniscient: Time Mage casts Slow, then Comet until over 8500 damage dealt, then Beastmaster releases a Zu which hits wind weakness and does 50% MHP, dodging the limit range for a kill. Omniscient above his limit range does pretty close to nothing. Holy kills one person but that's fine.
Triton, Phobos, Nereid: Just spam the Magic Lamp, you can recharge it right after anyway.
Calofisteri and Apanda: Throw Meteors.
I fight the Dragon Aevises I encounter in the final dungeon; they're very common and my Dragon Fang stock rises to 11, which should be enough. I also hit Level 24, my final level.
Azulmagia: Release a Great Dragon, blitz with Meteor. Don't be Level divisble by 5.
Catastrophe: Float.
Twintania: Has a 700-damage Ice Storm (Resist Ice is PDown+Antidote, Ice Shield on Dragoon). Vulnerable to Stop once transformed.
Necrophobe: Take him seriously by mixing Death Potions (PDown + Dark Matter) to kill the barriers, then just revive to get through his physical stage.
Neo Exdeath: Slow the first form. Need Shell (Dragon Fang+PDown)+ Double HP (Dragon Fang+Elixir), can also mix to stop White Hole (PDown+Holy Water). Do the Shell mix last because it also adds Reflect which can ward off a stray Holy/Flare from form 1. Focus on killing Grand Cross part... to the extent I can focus at all when most of my offence comes from Meteor.
Omega: Resist Fire + Float shuts down most of his non-counter offence (just the odd stray Blaster and Delta Attack get through), I also use Dragon's Kiss for Heavy so that Maelstrom's not a threat, also stops all his non-Mustard Bomb counters in case I do see those. Calm + Trident attacks for offence, release one Great Dragon as well.
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Divinity Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition -
Completed. My final play time according to the save file was about 120 hours. Not a short game by any means, but there was obvious idle time. I'd say a lot of time was also spent on menus, especially with the crafting. I wish it was a little less cumbersome. I had like 100+ bottles and pieces of paper, which are needed to make consumables, but I just never bothered since it felt so clumsy.
The final major plot battles were all quite good! I especially enjoyed the Megaman-esque re-fights with the Red Prince as well as Dycedarg's Elder brother in the Black House. Speaking of, that quest conclusion is so powerful and I wish more games could do this. There's a set up they do where they make you choose to snuff out a candle to weaken the space goat demon but doing so means you effectively delete someone off the face of the earth. The first two times they do it, the stakes are relatively low. You feel bad for it, but you can accept them cause all three individuals are relatively questionable when you snuff them out. Then they do this gameplay shot (not a cinematic) and you realize the scale of what you're actually dealing with and what it means if you want to continue with this ritual. You can refuse of course, but doing so means that the space goat demon is still fully empowered and he basically becomes a giant stat stick. Like imagine the XF worm boss after he eats a baby, except he starts the fight that way and doesn't have to eat a baby. Thankfully, it's DOS2, so there are some cheese methods here if you want to employ them. I decided to go on with it, and felt so dirty about doing so since it was like trading away personal morality and doing it meant doing the one thing the game constantly warned you about possibly having consequences in the future. Love it.
Kemm and the Devourer fights were good too but not as good as the before mentioned two fights, which were probably the chapter highlights. I'd say most of Chapter 4 fights are really good although it's other side quests could use some work (that stupid frozen cellar...). Then the final fight is just a treat. It's a large scale massive free for all between 3 parties and quite tough. Apparently that fight can also pan out in multiple ways depending on whether or not you've made any previous agreements with other characters (like the space goat demon) or if you agree to the antagonists' plan. There's also some gray morality here because what the antagonists are proposing technically isn't all doom and gloom. It is a way to fix the setting of the world, but the principles and methods aren't the same and all throughout the story, the game has been forcing you to make tough choices often about the lesser or evils.
I got possibly the best ending. My OC became a god and rallied people to fight the evil monsters in the world. Arx became the central hub of the alliance and battled onwards. Fort Joy became a medical facility to help those with Source problems. Driftwood became the merchant centre to fuel the war with weapons, rations and other supplies. The Lizards and Dwarves became forefronts of the alliance. The elves were skittish - probably because I killed the mother tree and have a tenuous alliance with the war front. For my companions and allies:
- Red Prince: Became king of his empire and was a renowned leader thanks to his journey with me. His allegiance to the divine never wavered
- Fane: Became an explorer and documented his various travels. Never stopped writing and had a newfound appreciation for the world.
- Loshe: Went back to being a travelling performing/bard. Her performances were often about the divine.
- Tarquinn: Got bored with this world and apparently went to another plane at some point
- Gareth: Retired and disbanded the seekers. Continues to seek meaning for his life now that he has put down his weapon
- Han: Became a respected, high ranking general in the alliance.
- Almira: Settled down in a village with her lover, never joined the war. Charmed all those around her but it was impossible to tell if it was natural or because she was a succubus
- Malady: Observed the fighting from afar. Still awaits to call on the favor I owe her for being Divine.
All-in-all, a really great game. I can see myself replaying this but it will be a while considering the massive time sink. You can also play co-op with his so doing a DL group play would be highly entertaining. IMO, probably a 10/10 game but time will tell. The game play is top notch and the story is very solid given its somewhat stock fantasy setting. My main complaints are all relatively minor nitpicks. Could be a high 9 but yeah - well worth your time if you have some to spare and buying the next time it goes on discount.
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The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
Finished up Part 1. It was pretty good! Definitely better than Spirit of Justice, and throwing in Holmes Sholmes was definitely something to send the series in a different direction. I can see why people thought the game ended with a lot of balls up in the air, though - this is definitely part I of a set and ends on a pretty open note. I liked cases 1, 3, and 4 quite a bit, although case 4 has some notable loose ends that might make it either dumber or more awesome depending on how part 2 goes. Case 2 & 5 are okay, but I kinda don't buy some of the major ideas in them, but it's nothing as extreme as the silliness in some other PW cases. And Case 2 is basically something of an extended tutorial to how GAA handles its investigation segments anyway.
* The game isn't super difficult - it's around PW3 level difficulty in general. Granted, some of this is a byproduct of the cases making some degree of sense rather than some of the more bizarre moon logic incidents in the past. The game also doesn't fall into the trap of handing the answer to the player via dialogue before they're allowed to feel smart and present it, but if you investigate every item closely and are suspicious of any new dialogue attained via pressing the witness and/or new evidence received, you'll mostly be fine. There's a... I hesitate to even call it a puzzle, but there's lots of "group testimony" in this game (this is actually not the most fantastical element of the proceedings, by far) with this idea that you can notice one witness acting weird when another witness talks. However, this isn't the Apollo Justice "spot the panicking body part during a statement" thing; in every instance but one, the witness will make a noise and make a big obvious show of things. This caused me to waste some time early when I somehow missed this and kept futilely pressing other witnesses over every tiny change they had in their expressions in every testimony, thinking I was supposed to find something more subtle rather than just wait for something obvious with a big exclamation mark in the witness bar.
* Similar to some of the other more recent games, there is a bit of a shortage of involved characters / witnesses in some of the cases? Probably a side effect of the models requiring more animation than the old GBA / DS models. Case 2 & 5 could notably have been aided by one or two extra people to add a bit more chaos into the mix.
* The music is pretty good! The AA Chronicles version even lets you listen to some of the scrapped tracks.. good call, too, they picked the right versions to use, the unused versions are various shades of inappropriate-to-worse.
* There is still far, far, far too much rambling about believing in your client being the greatest thing ever. I get that this is a philosophical theme in the Ace Attorney games, but you really don't have to hit this point so damn hard, and it's not even that inspiring when it's best friends who are standing up for each other in Case 1 that inspires Ryunosuke so much? I mean, sure, standing up for someone for whom you know their character isn't weird. Oddly enough, it also combines this with the usual PW belief that "defending Actually Guilty people is bad and you shouldn't do it," which seems like it'd clash with the above, but at least it doesn't talk too much about that. Thankfully, this game doesn't do what some Ace Attorneys do and have long paens to the majesty of the legal system - all of the courts are varying degrees of flawed here (as they should be to make things interesting!), so yeah, good call on skipping that.
** This one is a bit spoilery, but to go into the "defending actually guilty people is bad" part more, the game acts like Ryunosuke is in Big Trouble in the third trial for his actions in the fifth trial. What, if a lawyer was defending a guilty person, would that be Bad Somehow? Lawyers are only for the truly innocent? Is this endorsing the system in Spirit of Justice where lawyers whose clients are guilty are also punished or something?! You realize that was in Khurain, not Great Britain, right? Even if it might be "disreputable", lawyers factually defend guilty clients and don't really suffer. Furthermore, in the third trial, Ryunosuke is canonically DIRECTLY APPOINTED by Lord Stronghart! He didn't voluntarily take the role or anything, and he couldn't possibly be complicit since he literally wasn't even in the country to arrange anything bad. To be sure, I can see people being itchy to frame him up for something stupid on pure racism grounds, but the idea that he's in trouble because the case was a mess makes like zero sense when he has about the best possible alibi of "literally being thrown into this shit as an outsider at the last second". If he's in trouble for witnesses perjuring themselves, then van Zieks should be in three times as much trouble. The carriage driver lied too, and that was a prosecution witness!
** As another related 5th trial spoiler, I have no idea why the court is all so fussed about Gina committing perjury in the 3rd trial. She's a teenager who was threatened by a powerful person. Considering all the crazy perjury that happens in AA games, this is pretty weaksauce. There's also a weird idea that Susato's little extra action in the 5th case was.. bad? Scandalous? Tampering with the scene? Come on, this was an emergency and the door was locked. This was a perfectly reasonable course of action, not criminal even remotely. She left it out of her description to the cops, sure, but heavens, she's a woman who saw a terrible event in the Victorian era, it was an attack of the vapours or something and it slipped her mind. Good luck proving otherwise.
* From the cast, Sholmes & Susato are both great, which is good since they're pretty much the most important and chatty characters other than Our Hero.
* Gina doesn't work that great and is the main miss in the cast (well, maybe Iris, but I think that's more my personal dislike than her being badly written or anything). She's escaped from the local tsundere reserve, and while her tsuny standoffish side isn't as over-the-top as some others (e.g. Franziska's whipping habit), they kinda forgot to give her some sort of positive qualities? I get there's only so much time to establish characters, but the game essentially acts like she's friends with the gang, without actually including much of her being friendly or helpful or anything. I get she's someone whose life runs on a healthy amount of distrust and fear of betrayal / abandonment, that's fine, but including at least a few small moments where she lets down her mask - maybe with Iris or something, idk - would have been nice.
* With a name like "Van Zieks", I really expected our prosecutorial antagonist to casually mention something about how he or his ancestors are actually Dutch or the like, which would make for a nice clash-of-outsiders.
* This isn't a complaint or anything, I know the reason, but it's vaguely amusing that Ryunosuke speaks perfect American English, while local leprechauns speak in Irish accents and gutter trash have working class British accents. Sadly, a Japanese-inflected English accent tends to get used mockingly by shitheads too often, so Ryunusuke has his r's & l's surprisingly straight on his first day in Britain.
* Random other spoilery speculation: So were cases 2 & 4 really freak accidents?! Considering that Asogi apparently had a guard to prevent him from being assassinated and was listed in the same group as the slain Dr. Wilson, that's a hell of a coincidence. Case 4 also had "The Lion's Pride" bookmark which mentioned James & Mary = James Wilson & his wife Mary? And the victim was apparently dead and clutching the book, but turned up alive at the hospital? And wasn't the wife of the cop acting like she was some sort of actor when run into in the street, quoting Shakespeare? The whole incident was so ludicrously unlikely that I do kinda hope it was arranged, although "bookmark designed to send wife into jealous rage at specific time" seems a bit of a stretch. Also, I have no idea why Gregson was "protecting" Mr. Benedict in case 5. I was assuming that Benedict was an informant for the government who'd been caught and turned to try to unravel the conspiracy to explain why Gregson was standing up for him, but the game never said that. Lastly, Jezail is still afoot from case 1. But if the British government really was working WITH Dr. Wilson, then I can't imagine her odds at the Shanghai consulate would be any good - they'd just execute her on the spot. I guess we'll have to find out what it was that the Japanese & British governments were planning, and who was trying to stop them and why.
Looking forward to part 2!
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FFX postgame: Almost Done
FFX's postgame (or rather, conquering the monster arena) plays so differently from the main game that it feels distinct. There are no long unskippable cutscenes (yay), there's no managing resources across multiple fights, certain equipment abilities that find use during the story are drop off a cliff in usefulness (such as Elem-Atk on weapons), and so on. Monster Arena creations are, with a select few exceptions, immune to status options that make up most of Tidus, Wakka, and Auron's skillsets which lessens their utility and variety.
Since I've taken so long to post anything about my postgame conquest, I've actually beaten all the Creations except for Nemesis which I haven't unlocked. I found I didn't really go out of my way to stat grind or farm items for customizing onto armor. When I beat Ultima Buster, my highest Defense character had 98 and it didn't matter anyways. Highest M. Def was 138 but the last time magic defense made the difference in surviving something, it was around 80-ish. Did acquire everyone's Celestial weapons and did refer to guides for info on the attack patterns of the Creations to make up for my lower stats. Won't go into detailed accounts for every Creation; that's a topic on it's own. Will make note of some strategies that saw a lot of use.
Sentinel Auron with Masamune; Stick Protect on him and activating Sentinel often has him surviving physicals that would kill anyone else. Sometimes needed to inflict Power Break through Banishing Blade and/or have Deathproof on armor to achieve this. Conveniently, he can obtain a non-random armor piece with Deathproof already so no dealing with customizing or random drops required. For fights with lots of single-target physicals (or entirely so), I kept coming back to this. Auron is uniquely suited to this because he'll get hit, then counter with a hit that is boosted in power because he just lost HP. This is something no other character has access to; another character with Sentinel wouldn't have the same impact. Sometimes used a variation for when a creation has overkill damage but it's all single-target. Haste Yuna (with auto-Haste once I had it) and keep her on revival duty with 1 MP Life, set Overdrives of non-Yuna characters to Stoic/Comrade, and use lots of Overdrives.
Let the Aeons handle it; No it doesn't always work such as Couerlregina and its guaranteed death Hyper Blaster or Neslug landing Armor Break so any followup hit is fatal. And sometimes, they lack the power to complete a fight by themselves. But there are times where my characters lack the defenses to deal with a creation's offense and the Aeons do have the raw stats to pound the opponent into pyreflies. Used for Malboro Menace, Vorban, Pteryx, One-Eye, Jumbo Flan, and Ironclad. There are some other fights where they play a role but most of the rest of the time, I forget about using them.
Power of 9999 and Attack Reels: Anything with under 119988 HP dies in one shot of this without the hassle of getting Strength high enough or dealing with defense.
Banishing Blade: Used guides to learn which creations are vulnerable to Breaks. Generally, they will have high resistance but not outright immunity which is where Banishing Blade has its unique capacity.
Quick Hit: The obvious tool didn't get used that much, mostly something I reach for when I'm dealing with a damage race. Found it important for Tanket, Fafnir., Catastrophe, and Neslug and was a convenience for other fights but not a necessity.
Power of 9999 and Pray: Only really sees use at Shinryu and Greater Sphere but were really good in these two fights. This is what allowed me to have Rikku solo Shinryu and is very convenient to have around for the Greater Sphere.
Hyper Mighty G and Auto-Life: Only really came out for Catastrophe (it's actions come in a set sequence) and Ultima Buster (everything it attacks with kills a character through sheer damage). I didn't even learn Auto-Life on anyone other than at Ultima Buster.
And some notes on fights where the above tactics weren't enough or were interesting in other ways.
Stratoavis: The only fight where the Defend command is an integral part of my strategy.
Chimerageist: Was about knowing what was coming up and having the frontline protected by the proper Nul-element status when it hit. Did this right after gaining airship travel so didn't have the raw stats to mindlessly crush it.
Abbadon: I specifically crafted Alchemy on a claw for Rikku for this. Shell on the girls made the difference in surviving the big magic nuke.
Fenrir: Confuseproof on the highest strength character was a must. With it and Protect on the strongest of Kimahri, Tidus, Wakka, there's not much Fenrir can do to this group decked out with Evade & Counter.
the super lizard - can't recall the name offhand: Used a few Antidotes since someone poisoned getting a turn and not curing it is bad and only had 3-4 Poisonproofs and not everyone has Esuna.
Nega Elemental: Not much it can do to a team protected by Reflect. Dispel if it casts Reflect on itself and use offense that doesn't trigger Ultima counters and it becomes routine.
Fafnir: Only fight where I used Auto-Phoenix and felt it made the difference between victory and defeat. Anywhere else, it can be convenient but didn't really need it or the creation can one-shot everyone with MT damage where Auto-Phoenix won't save anyone.
Earth Eater: This is the only creation where I get mileage out of Aeon Overdrives that don't finish off the target. Most times, the Aeon will be a sitting duck after using a non-fatal Overdrive and are at risk of getting mauled by the power Monster Arena creations have. But since an Earth Eater that's been knocked over only does damage with counters, if the Aeon Overdrive knocks it over, I can get the Aeon out safely for future use. Kimahri's Nova is the second-biggest source of damage to a standing Earth Eater and it's for this fight I wish I had trained his Magic stat more. This was a team effort between characters and Aeons. Aeons have raw power but not enough durability to win on their own. Meanwhile, the characters have cheap revival but struggle to inflict damage to a standing Earth Eater.
Th-uban: Rainbow murders the party but my Aeons are buff and one with 255 Defense and Shielding reduces it to about 200. Convergence will kill off an unlucky target with sheer damage. But it's single-target and characters have cheap revival (1 MP cost Life). So characters and Aeons need to taking turns absorbing the nukes while I reflect a lot of Flares to avoid the counter (which also maims the party at the defenses I had).
Neslug; Only fight where I used Lulu's Fury. I ended up using the girls for the "break the shell' phase. Yuna and Lulu both have access to 1 MP cost Dualcast Ultima so Trio of 9999 was mostly for gems from Rikku but it also made Fury with a Lv 1 spell a viable option. I had Copycat on Yuna and Lulu though that was overkill for the sake of overkill. It's not like they were in danger of running out of MP with their Celestial weapons when they came in with over 700 so Lulu using a 1 MP Copycat to mimic Yuna's double Ultima instead of 4 to use it directly is novelty.
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Great Ace Attorney: Adventure- Fuck the British.
Anyway GAA was conceived as one game that had to be split in half and most of the overarching plot reflects this, some more than others. That said this does a lot of work to establish overall themes, which are
A) how readily corruptible institutions are
B) Fuck the British
C) Fuck us for trying to be like the British
D) Being a defense attorney is just Judo
in some order.
Otherwise, Dance of Deduction is great, Susato is the best assistant full stop. Van Ziecks is ehhh even aside from the overt racism but he has time given the "this is one story split in half" element, so sure.
I think the Athena/Simon dynamic keeps Dual Destinies above this one but otherwise yeah, this is pretty great.
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NEO: The World Ends With You - I have finally completed my own wonderful record and at 99% completion. 100% should be done by this weekend.
What a blast, had been playing this none stop for the past three weeks. Worth the over decade wait, but still have areas that's left to be desired.
I am completely satisfied on the gameplay, music, and art style front. 10/10 in those areas. And the aesthetic in general has completely surpassed the first game. It is actually fund to come up with various ways to destroy your enemy in the flashiest ways possible.
The story, albeit good, is somewhat unbalanced, as they are trying to save everything for the third week and everything until then is a build up for that. So the story doesn't feel as motivating compare to the first game where each week have something that keeps your focused.
Lack of interesting side character/quests also is a step behind from the first game. Lack of interesting quests like the ramen sub plot or the mabusura somewhat killed that impression that Shibuya is a city that has its own inhabitant doing its own things. Which is a really a shame, they have some interesting NPC this time but didn't really use them.
Character wise, it is like the first game, very to the point, but didn't explore more past that. But it end up hurting the general impression more this time around, as the game clearly tries to cook up the drama with Ayano and then Kanon. But really didn't deliver much due to lack of characterization. Rindo and Fret's transformation would have more impression two if they can reflect together on their issue in week 2.
That said, compare to Neku, the problem they are trying to discuss this time through Rindo is much more relatable, and the character transformation makes much more sense. It really has that feel that everything fit into the right place after all the plot elements are laid bare after week 3.
Finally, has the singer making mistake in the songs a series tradition now? Satisfy had glaring singing mistake back then, and they didn't even fix it when porting it to Switch. This time it is Shibuya Survivor that contains some very obvious error, almost felt like they did it on purpose.
But Transformation has sounds like 200x better than before, so I won't complain.
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With 27 fiend species to go to unlocking Nemesis, I took a break from FFX unplugging the PS2 and plugging in the PS3 to take care of some Atelier loose ends. Like stat topic status tests. Unlocking Nemesis is a level of tedious busywork that makes uncursing shields look fast by comparison.
Silly Aeon names: Shiva is Elsa for the obvious character reference. Obvious to a more mainstream audience anyways so maybe not an obvious assumption here. Anima got renamed Galamoth (from CV: SotN) because my brain was having a hard time coming up with many skyscraper sized monsters. The Magus Sisters are now the Prismriver trio of Lunasa, Merlin, and Lyrica because I wanted to make a gratuitous Touhou reference.
I got a free Zamato. My compatibility couldn't have been higher than 75 either. To put it into perspective how unlikely that is, I had about a 7% chance he'd attack for free at all and then there was a 1/32 chance at best the RNG would roll high enough for Zamato. Super improbable outcome there.
When I finally taught Yuna Auto-Life and went into a fight to cast it, the first time the game froze up. This is not a common occurrance, even though it's a used copy. Don't think my FFX disc has frozen before. It's like the game took offense to the idea of me using Auto-Life. Incidentally, there was no problem the next time so seems like a freak occurrance. Which gets used in only one fight since my plan for Nemesis is to build up Yojimbo compatibility to 90 or more then pay him 2.1 million Gil and reset until I roll that 5% chance.
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Great Ace Attorney: Resolve- Okay I think collectively these are the best Ace Attorney games.
Ryunosuke has a clear, clean arc in a way none of the main protagonists over at Wright Anything ever got, and because of this he produces the sorts of Ace Attorney moments I absolutely love with regularity. Like, one reason I rate Simon so highly is he's really good at inducing the "both attorney's realize the wild speculation is spot on and start tag teaming to draw out the truth" state, and Ryunosuke basically learns how to do that on his own. This goes double in the last trial, where because what you realize is that Ryunosuke during the course of the two games has surpassed Kazuma in experience and ability, and seeing him so methodically lead the trial where he realizes it needs to go is great, and seeing him try to bring the best out of Kazuma is so much fun because it's such
a flip from the series norm.
The first game played fast and loose with case structure, which is one of its strengths, and the second game definitely continues that. However, while some of this is definitely the same "we're going to play with this to maximize impact or otherwise serve the needs of the story", some of it is also almost certainly artifacts of splitting the story across two games and/or the budget being slashed. I'd be curious to know if Case 1 was always intended or if they added it to help give it a "so the first game came out two years ago here's a refresher" function, and case 2 kinda reminds me of the DLC case in Dual Destinies, where you could slot it into the game no problem but cutting it didn't have any real repercussions to the story. And then of course Case 4 and 5 is one trial split up in a new way because... well I get it, honestly, it's hella long. It also removes the jury which is a SHAME because the jury was a fun mechanic, and the London Juror RNG accidentally inventing expert witnesses a number of years early was always fun. But again, I get it, because it needs to mirror the Backstory Case. That said, there definitely feels like an element of "we wanted some of this backstory to come up earlier but we didn't have time and money to build a case around revealing it naturally"
THere's a lot fewer case-specific characters this time, which... well refer to budget, but the new characters they do get in are fun. Gorey for life *nod*
Anyway yeah, I'll just be over here waiting for people to get through these now.
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Monster Sanctuary: A Pretty Great indie title that combines Pokemon and Metroidvania. Has turn-based combat that happens when you hit an enemy, so shades of Valkyrie Profile are mixed in too.
It has a 100+ collection of monsters to grab, each with a unique skill tree and build. I'm genuinely impressed how much depth they managed to squeeze into every mon compared to something like Pokemon or Yokai Watch. Each monster has their own field skill too that ties into the metroidvania-style exploration.
The big Djinn-bait part was of course the sprite designs, but the whole package seems like something that would be a hit with the DL crowd. They just announced free DLC for it too, so apparently the game is doing well. I do wish it had a less bland-sounding name, though.
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox
This game... I swear, Ys apparently hit puberty and became goth. It's so weirdly over-the-top and gothic and it feels completely out of place in this franchise. I can't really get over the tonal shift, but the new gameplay additions make for a smooth ARPG experience. Just started, but I'm vibing with it despite (or perhaps because of?) the off-putting style.
Dragon Quest VI
Stylistically opposite, but equally weird for its franchise. I watch Reiska play some of this last year and the strangeness of the story stuck with me, so I've been slowly poking at this one as well. Dream Logic is weird, and I do not envy the localization team who had to make this plot makes sense, given how much of the mystery seems to rely on the vagueness of the Japanese language. Finally got 3 party members, so I haven't seen much of what the game has to offer mechanically yet, but it's Dragon Quest, so it'll probably be pretty straightforward, but reasonably well balanced.
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Astalon: Tears of the Earth
Astalon's mechanically basically a metroidvania but its heart and soul are in 90s anime fantasy and rpgs. It's by the folks who did Castle in the Darkness, and it brings that same kind of idiosyncratic retro-but-not-like-other-retro design. some of the art is done by the author of Dragon Half, and you'll pick up some distinct similarities to music from FF4 and PSIV. I'm sure there are many other references in the game, but they're all really well-integrated. Nothing feels gratuitous or out of place. I love it. Mechanically it's excellent - you control one of three characters, each with their own skillset, and you swap between them depending on your exploration and combat needs. This works really well in the context of the game. The only letdown in the game is that the plot payoff in the end is a little weak compared to the groundwork that's laid. In any case, a game well worth your time if puzzle platforming is your deal.
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Ys Seven: On an Ys kick for some reason. Haven’t played one since 6, so I thought I’d dig into things after 9 seemed so fun.
Ys Seven is apparently the base engine for “new Ys” which actually has a whole adventuring party instead of just solo Adol, so it’s more up my alley. Currently at the part of the game where the shady merchant is deliberately jacking up prices on the medicine for a deadly epidemic ravaging the countryside… and that certainly hits different nowadays. Dogi literally has to be held back from punching the guy’s skull in, but honestly I was like “do it, Dogi. end him”. Why does my happy fantasy RPG not allow me the fantasy of beating up greedy capitalists?
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Banner of the Maid - Fin (about 33 hours?)
I first heard rumblings about this game in the FE community a year or two ago. I'm pretty sure that at first I completely ignored them because I hear maid and I assume it's pandering to maid fetishes. Which isn't really fair at all but that's what happened. Anyway it's not that, the Maid is in fact a reference to the Maid of Orleans, who apparently had supernatural powers. As do a bunch of other women in France circa the revolutionary war.
Writing stuff first: the core story concept is actually pretty cool, AU French Revolution where the Royal Family held onto power a few years longer due to magical powers, but Robespierre still comes to power and is a firm believer in guillotinin'. Cue a civil conflict in which legendary general Napoleon and his less famous sister (our protagonist, who spoilers has Maid powers) come to the fore. The game is held back chiefly by its translation being not good. It's... functional, in that the names are all correct French and usually you can mostly understand what's going on but a lot of scenes don't work as well as it feels like they should as a result. The game also does feel a bit incomplete at points, with some cool ideas that aren't actually developed or elaborated on.
Game's kind of got an odd ending too. You settle things with the main antagonist of the final arc in the second to last chapter. It would be an odd fight to end on because it's a bit plotty (reasonably well-done plotty, to be clear, but...). So they throw in one more fight which is basically an epilogue and it's one last "normal" fight which mostly establishes that a whole bunch of antagonists are still around and kicking and huh this is setting up a sequel I guess. And then the game just ends.
Haven't heard anything about said sequel yet. Would obviously play it, though, because the game's good. On that note...
Gameplay stuff: the core gameplay is recognizably Fire Emblem despite the FFT/TO visuals, there's a doubling mechanic and counters. There's also a weapon quadralateral which works quite well (unlike Dark Deity's messy attempt). Both class design and weapon triangle effects stack to the point where you really want a balanced team because good matchups are great and bad matchups suck; this also lets some middling characters find a niche just because there aren't many options for certain classes. Map design's... generally pretty good? Game's willing to throw in defend/arrive/escape maps along with your usual routs and boss kills, and the game has SRW-like bonus challenge objectives on most maps. There's terrain, the way the classes play differently from each other is fun, the skill system's pretty enjoyable (similar to Fates or Heroes before the latter transformed into word vomit). Heroic Attacks are also a neat enough mechanic adding some spice to the system, basically a limit break you can use once your morale gauge fills up with extra atk/damage, and also sometimes has other effects. Some commands can also consume morale to do cool stuff.
Like I dunno I can't say any one thing blew me away but it was still consistently fun throughout. Almost surely an above average FE on pure gameplay (and I don't say that easily!) though a bit weaker on the replay side probably since the roster isn't that much larger than the deployment slot count, the promotion options are limited, and not that significant, and the stats are non-random, so it'd be a similar experience each time.
Art's nice too! Music is pleasant but rarely stands out. Of the two FE-likes I've played this year I would generally recommend this one over Dark Deity, unless you love branching promotions and support conversations a lot (and there are worse things to like, so eh, throwing it out there!).
PC notes. I missed at least one PC so this list is not exhaustive! I hope you don't love good male PCs because there aren't very many of those.
Pauline: If I had to pick I might be inclined to rank her class as the worst one. Second worst move (and the only one worse has innate 4 range), iffy ranged options (there's a single 1-2 musket that I found). Pauline's pretty good anyway because of her ability to give the entire party 3 atk on the demand and decent enough all-around stats to make some tanking strategies work. The "heal 20% HP on a kill" skill is cool though, especially the times you can get your numbers high enough to one-round on enemy phase, makes her great at mixed tanking.
Lannes: On the other hand his stats are worse so yeah, take all my criticisms about the above class without the good points.
Dutheil: Uh he's even worse. His speed is heavy cavalry-level (see below), his atk is mediocre... I guess his defence is good but it's really not enough. His gimmick is he restocks weapon durability. I didn't really find this worth it but it might be for some playstyles. Keeps him out of the basement at least.
Nicolette: Bad start (promotes four levels later than most PCs so she's stuck at 4 move that much longer!), but quite good stats once she gets rolling. +4 atk/spd against higher levelled opponents stays periodically relevant forever and lets her do that one-round healing thing.
Murat: Light cavalry. In Misandry Revolutionary France, men are usually worse than their female counterparts. Murat is the biggest exception and easily the most useful male PC in the game. He has game-best speed and is in the most mobile class (7 move + a 3-move canto), and his personal skill is really good: effectively gives him +10 hit and +20 evade, and also buffs nearby ally sword-users similarly. Extra important given that he specializes in killing the dodgiest enemy type, but even aside from that he tends to be a great dodgetank. Damage isn't wonderful but that's okay.
Charlotte: Murat with better Atk but without the cool personal. So obviously worse but still a mobile speedster (with better offence even) and works very well in tandem with him.
D'Eon: He's a Jagen reference, and one of the worst ones I've ever seen. Joins at the start and is Level 5, but he's basically the same as Murat's Level 2 stats (Paline/Lannes are comparable too, just arrayed differently). So he's not even really much of a jagen. Then everyone catches up and his stats are just the worst in the game forever. LVP.
Adelaide: Okay now we can actually talk about light infantry properly. Dodgetank time! They get an evade boost innately, as well as two huge situational boosts: one when attacking from an enemy's side/back on player phase, and then one for the first combat of enemy phase after attacking on player phase. Adelaide is the best in class because her personal grants her a further 15 evade against enemies with more HP Than her (light infantry is the lowest-HP class, so this is almost everything). Really the only thing that stops her running wild over some formations is weapon triangle effects and the fact that later on enemy heavy cavs start sporting stupid hit on player phase. Really fast and decent Atk too, and midgame you get storebought 1-2 range at no power loss which is great. And then Canto. Yep.
Ernestine: Adelaide but balanced because of lacking the super personal. Similar otherwise but not as invincible. Still usually worth using but depends on enemy composition.
Cosette: A slightly different take on light infantry: lower move and without the dodgetanking, but innate 1-2 range. Cosette's personal essentially gives her an atk boost and results in someone who just has MEAN Atk+Spd (highest total in the game). So uh great offence and 1-2? Sign me up. She's a bit squishy (can dodge well with WTA and is okay against guns but bad against swords) but so what? Oh yeah and this version of light infantry also gets a very silly skill that gives her a second turn after a heroic attack, super useful.
Laure: I probably used her less than she deserved. She does join a bit underlevelled but her Atk is really high, like game-best? A bit slow for the class though, which does hurt. What really sells me on her is that her personal skill lets her buff both her own range and that of nearby gunners by +1 for one turn which on the already high range class is obviously neat. 4 range? Sounds good.
Therese: On the other hand, she sucks, worst female PC surely. Robespierre-approved anti-royal propaganda. She has Laure's low-speed-for-class combined with lower Atk than Cosette or Laure (in fairness, still pretty good). Just why use her when the other infantry are better? Oh and she's underlevelled.
Oscar: Heavy cavalry are what FE armour knights want to be: really high in one defensive stat, HP, and Atk, but bad speed and the other defensive stat (in their case, against guns). But they're better than armour knights because (a) great move instead of terrible, and (b) they get a passive early which reduces the damage they take from doubles. Really good when facing groups of enemies doing sword/cannon damage for tanking, kinda iffy the rest of the time.
Desaix: Just worse than Oscar, both due to lower Atk/Def but also due to missing a chunk of maps. Would potentially be really bad except this is your only option for a second heavy cavalry, so I ended up using them a bunch anyway.
Philipp: Odd PC. Like Murat and Charlotte he's light cavalry, but he uses rifles like the light infantry, which gives him more range. His class also gets a skill which expands range further, so this means he has 7 move (once he promotes... like Nicolette his promotion is late though), 3 range, and canto. So sometimes he's useful just to run in, plink an enemy to aggro it, and run out, breaking certain formations. Of course the key word there is "plink": his atk is bad and his speed is bad for his class (similar to heavy infantry).
Charles: Unpromoted unit with five maps to go yeah no thanks. Basically a Philipp clone if caught up. Second worst PC in the game?
Paulette: Artillery. Really different than other PCs, low move (but can take a second move instead of acting), and 2-4 range. Nice Atk too, but awful speed. Can hit hard, but is very vulnerable to things that reach her due to being easily doubled (her bulk usually lets her take one double-hit in a pinch). Still the ranged offence is nice, certainly more of a niche than most FE archers. And the ability to drop AOE stun on heroic attacks (50%, admittedly, but still) is gravy.
Lafite: Paulette but joins later/lower-levelled with worse Atk. Decent if you need a second artillery of course, but still forms part of Team Misandry Victims.
Aimee: The first of the two healers. They're good because "healer" really means "all sorts of utility moves". Choose your three favourites and go to town. The best of them include a 4-per-battle Dance, a +2 move buff, a 4 range Move-5 debuff, and a morale buff, in addition to the requisite healing options.
Eugenie: Utterly powercreeps Aimee and the only reason Aimee has a use is that often you'll want to use both! 6 move instead of 4. No other difference between them is gonna offset that, but Eugenie also gets a defensive buff command (which she can do on the same turn as something else) as well, just to rub it in. I don't know if she's the best PC but you hardly ever don't want to deploy her.
Lategame Super PCs: Are great and should be deployed in their small availability, both buff everyone around them in very noticeable ways just by existing (and themselves for good measure). But really not available enough to rate.
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ENDER LILIES:
Was good but not great. Very pretty game, good music, good combat, passable exploration for a metroidvania but kinda rote, weak plot that feels like a pale imitation of its obvious influences (Nier/Drakengard, Dark Souls). I really liked the difficulty and combat balance - every new zone and boss felt like a challenge, and all of your weapons and sub-weapons were situationally useful, and the game really encourages careful thought about which combinations of abilities are well-suited to a zone's combination of enemies or a boss' moveset. The plot is disappointing; you play as a pure and innocent girl, a priestess whose duty is to take on the burden of corruption in the world. And that's fine but it never develops into anything with any real depth or intrigue. Unlike Nier/DS, when you uncover the world's history during your travel, it's just kinda there. It's a tragic story but to me at least it didn't resonate emotionally. With a better plot and a little more subtle exploration it could have been great.
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Oh, shit, I didn't put anything here.
Hades- Fin!
So, Hades is *mostly* a master of being frustrating in a motivating way, which is nice. Honestly the only genuine flaw with the game I think is it's way too easy to create a crippling backlog in dialogs, even for characters who don't have conditions for showing up in the House (Nyx in particular is central to too many sidequests).
Everything else is really good? Yeah I don't wanna get too into the weeds on this post but I also felt like making some sorta marker here.
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Banner of the Maid - oh hey I also noticed this a couple years ago and didn't pay much attention to it (for different but probably also unfair reasons, the plot is a bit more grounded than I was expecting despite the premise, for instance) but turns out it's actually pretty decent for what it is. I'm not 100% of it squeaking into my top five FE experiences all things considered but it makes a decent enough argument to be there.
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Shovel Knight (Shovel of Hope)- Fuck this game.
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Bravely Default 2: Fin. I don't feel too much like taking on more trial bosses.
The game was good, with a few things holding it back from how great it could have been.
The game's selling point is the fun combat and it delivers. A CTB with the brave Default system is fun. Enemies use the system freely and it is a joy to unleash an offense blitz to head them off or a healing turn-around after they cry havoc. The flaw here is how opaque the turn system is. You can kind of see when things get turns soon but it is hard to figure what moves have recharges and so difficult to really develop a strategy around managing turns. Pity.
The job system is back and always fun to play around with. I always think the game should hold its cards a little closer to its cheat about class abilities you haven't unlocked to build excitement for discovering new things, but it is convenient for planning jobs. The game tempts you perhaps too much to increase JP gains with the Freelancer passives... There is already an incentive to sacrifice immediate power for the sake of more learning. Compounding that kind of removes a bit of the fun of actually combining those 5 passive slots. Its a player's choice but it is hard to resist... On a side note, Thief Godspeed strike is far too good. Enormous damage and it repeats!? Salve Maker is also still a king of healing and restoration. Too much better than any alternative really.
The equipment system was good and encouraged tradeoffs of weight, stats, and plentiful passive affects that were refreshingly consistent (hats resist status, shields elements, etc.) Figuring out how to best set up without violating the weight limit could be rewarding in its own way.
The game's plot was serviceable. Very standard save the world fare, with some mysteries thrown in. The game has that darker feeling than a lot of similar games. Wiswald... My god are the Red Mage/Ranger scenario some of the darkest/saddest stuff I've seen in an RPG. The Rimedahl section was also fairly tramatic too. The story wasn't as strong as 1 by virtue of not having that wonderful twist. They could have fleshed out some points relating to the crystals "normal" uses vs their seal use. It could have made for a more interesting plot than the generic world saving.
The characters were likable and fun to watch. Not deep, but the voice acting sold me on some of them. Gloria got her dutiful princess down with a good bit of flavorful character traits. Elvis is a lovable dweeb. Adelle is cool and has a great future when she marries Martha. Can't say I like Seth. Not sure what the point was with him as he just... Went along for the ride. He didn't seem to care about his circumstances.
The villain cast had personality certainly. I believe I enjoyed dealing with them all except for the three in chapter 4. That whole chapter felt off storywise... As if it didn't really belong. But the rest had motivations that made sense* and memorable scenes. The boss fights also had a good threat level and fun going on. And great music.
Music is fantastic and I especially enjoyed the exciting boss themes enormously. Including the one masquerading as the second halve's random battle music. The use of character themes in thr music feels like cheating to achieve the desired effect, but in a good way.
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Iconoclasts
Finished this, and it's great. This is a metroidvania (more or less) action platformer entirely made by one guy over the course of a decade. And it's brilliant. And it has the feeling of a game designed in 2008 because it definitely has some of the DNA of Cave Story and Iji in it. Art's stellar, music's fine, gameplay's good, puzzles of which there are many range from annoying to excellent but they're all fair, bosses are a real standout. The plot's where the game really excels, and there's a lot of it (and it frequently takes you away from being able to freely explore the map, which is why I think the game didn't make as much of a splash in the metroidvania circles). I don't want to say too much about it but it does a stellar job of worldbuilding, characters have unique voices and the dialogue's great, and the bad guys are detestible in the best way. Got to 100% in about 13 hours, including a cool bonus boss, a normal run would take about 10. Completionists fear not: no chests are permanently missable.
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Brigandine 2 - Beaten as Guimoule.
Fun fun; this is my fifth path now.
Eliza is extremely good, very likely the best non-Rudo knight I've used so far. Psychotically high magic pool (she could literally gain 0 ever and she'd still be roughly tied for #2 in her own country at endgame, but instead her growth is A-rank). Very accurate/evasive compared to most frontliners (but way bulkier than swordmasters or assassins). Offensively versatile due to the combination of a good physical and attack magic (with the MP to use it); I was impressed by how she can sit on the frontline and therefore actually be in range to nuke with Exablast in a way most Wizards can't. Post-promotion can occasionally pull silly things with React and the "hit everyone around you" move, too. Is locked to a crazy amount of red orbs so she doesn't like fighting blues, though.
Competent collection of support knights too. Darian is just generically solid in most ways; starts high levelled and competent. Biggest knock on him (and the Knight line in general) is that 4 move is a bit disappointing in a comparison with Eliza. Cain is a lower-levelled Darian who gets super-high rune later, so he actually made my final party. Low enough level but high enough Agi that you could probably get him over to Thief if that's your fancy? I didn't. Kate isn't quite as good on magic pool as these guys but Assassin is a better class and she gets there more easily than anyone else save Della. And Mu'ah is basically "what if Pluto started six levels higher" (same mildly below average rune, but otherwise competent Wizard), which seeing as Pluto is one of the contenders for the admittedly not-to-impressive title of #2 Mirelva knight, is pretty cool.
I wasn't super-impressed by anyone else but Diana (changed her over to archer so I'd have one, the stats are competent even if the rune isn't), Conrad (middle-of-the-road Knight with no real flaws), Sugar (solid enough other than her bad starting level/rune, 5 command's a neat bonus for a mage), and Patricia (slightly worse Sugar in a different default class but same basic idea) all saw decent use. Leanne's okay but 3 command on a mage is bad times so Sugar is preferable. Rose and Marcosias are mediocre filler but usable. Faye is terribad. Avenir and Vayne are bad but not Faye bad.
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia - Also replaying this, on Hard Mode (not a great idea with how rusty I was, I died 3-4 times to the tutorial fight. Ruvas Forest andn Skeleton Cave were also terrifying as usual). At Dracula's Castle. Game is still great.
Metroid Dread - I got the Morph Ball! If you're used to early Metroid you'd think this is early; it isn't. Not much else to say so far, this game is delivering Metroid goodness well. I have one complaint but I'll hold my tongue on it because the game still has potential to improve here, and it's not a big one anyway.
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Final Fantasy Legend- did this on and off for the last month or so, just did all of fourth world and the ending bits tonight. I played with extensive use of maps and such so nothing too fancy, did a two mutant, one human, one monster setup. Monster almost never worked right, didn’t settle into a usable form until world 2 and never managed to get ahead of the curve. One mutant ended up being fast utility and the other the mage, although honestly the game feels like by the time you can get a build truly up and running suddenly it’s the endgame and well, there’s only like 6 viable weapons anyway and only two are good on mutants.
Still a neat overall but experience, although I gather that FFl2 already adds a BIG thing later SaGa games had that I missed, being able to shuffle skills so they can’t be unlearned arbitrarily. Although I imagine I won’t play that until next year sometime.
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Metroid Dread - Just under 8 hours. 45%? I think.
Initial impressions: definitely in the conversation for the best Metroid game. You can definitely see the influence of all three of Super, Fusion, and Samus Returns on this game and if it doesn't quite take the best parts from each, it's not horribly far from it.
Controls are wonderful, bringing back the free aim of Samus Returns. Boss fights are generally great; they feel very Mega Man X-ish in that they'll probably mangle you a few times but the game expects you to learn and master them. They're generally a joy, and the best part, you respawn near them if you die, ready to dive in again, without the giant load times of transitioning between areas. The killer robot sequences are surprisingly enjoyable for what they are; there are usually a lot of ways to navigate them but they hit the right notes for the fear that they're supposed to inspire, vaguely reminiscent of the SA-X.
I don't think the small-scale exploration of getting through tricky areas is as good as Fusion's and I don't think the greater map is as enjoyable as Super's (the teleporters were a big mistake, IMO, losing some cohesion in the world... I'm not talking about their use for fast travel, that'd be fine, but how you're supposed to use them as part of the mainline progression, complete with their bad load times) but there's still a lot of smart design evident, making you puzzle where to go next while being clever enough that you're never really likely to get lost (generally speaking, the game knows exactly when to lock you in an area to force you to proceed). Apparently there's a bunch of sequence-breaking if you're into that. Remains to be seen if I will care (probably not).
My biggest complaint about the game is it is a bit slow-starting; a lot of the core Metroid goodness is always there but the initial plot is a bit uninteresting. Once the shit hits the fan around halfway through I started getting much more engaged with what was going on. And it doesn't hurt that most of the better boss fights start showing up then too. Story ends up... decent enough, there's one kinda cool plot development. Samus being reduced to almost-silent is a mistake though.
Obviously a game I'll revisit a bunch!
Also replayed Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (for the... fifth time?) and XCOM 2 (for the second). Against OOE I discovered that the "run fast" glyph is amazing against Death, always a neat feeling when you can make these discoveries. Game remains a joy. For XCOM 2, I definitely enjoyed the replay a lot, even if the game is a bit tiring and buggy at points, and makes me appreciate dual RN more than ever. But I definitely should have replayed it sooner than I did, it's certainly engaging.
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Did you use war of the chosen for the replay?
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I am currently playing video game right now is minecraft.
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FFX - It's finally over
Ground out the remaining captures, unlocked Nemesis, then pay off Yojimbo and hope it uses Zamato. 22 resets later, I land that 5% chance and have the Mark of Conquest. Nemesis will still be there if I ever decide to pursue an honest win but for now I just wanted it done and over with. Auron finally unlocked Comrade overdrive mode when I was nearly done with the capturing. Other than buying up the Music and Movie spheres and unlocking a few last overdrive modes, I am done with this file.
Rikku and Yuna have the most sphere grid coverage at the end, maybe pushing up to 70%. On the low end are Tidus and Auron who have traveled less than 50% the full grid, with the others somewhere in the middle. Rikku has the highest Strength at 156 though the top spot traded characters a few times over the quest to conquer the Monster Arena. I have farmed enough stat spheres to max out the big 4 core stats (except maybe Magic) but only placed around 20-25 by the time I was done. Only Rikku and Yuna hit 9999 HP by the time I beat Ultima Buster and stats stopped really mattering but everyone but Lulu has reached 9999 by the time Nemesis unlocked. As for my other stat threshholds
Magic: Yuna with 169
Defense: Lulu's 133
Magic Defense: Lulu at 160
Great battle system but the optional content can really be a slog. And given how tedious or frustrating the optional content can get, not inclined to replay this a lot, if at all. I suppose Expert sphere grid is very well suited for replaying the story content and trying out different builds that cover less than 25% of the sphere grid. Doesn't apply to my version though, just a side thought. After the fact, I realized I could have picked it up on PS3 but unlikely to bother.
Lingering gameplay thoughts:
Looking back, there are some things I realized after the fact. My Auto-shell placement was really awkward and I think a better use would be to stack it with Mag. Def + factors to really get the best mileage out of it, namely living through devastating magic attacks. I've already mentioned how I feel Kimahri is better off focusing more on Magic until he hits about 95-100 to max out Nova. Would have been better off giving my one Break Damage Limit customization to him to turn him into another dualcast Flare caster. Placing Auto-Protect and Auto-Shell could have gone better (no regrets about giving my one shot at Auto-Haste to Yuna). Auto-shell goes better on characters with a magic defense stat to speak of, not as useful on Tidus and him spending a very long time at 7 M. Def.
As far as status protection goes, one Confuseproof on the strongest of Tidus/Wakka/Kimahri is a must. Deathproof on someone with Sentinel (generally Auron) is also near essential. Enough Stoneproof to go around (5 or more) makes life a lot easier. Poisonproof is really good as well in the fights where poison status appears. Anything else is nice but not really needed. Either the status is attached to single-target physicals (Sentinel), the fight can be left to Aeons, attached to attacks powerful enough to KO who they hit anyways, or can be dealt with without much hassle. Unless intentionally seeking a win on Malboro Menace without Aeons, grinding status protection is almost always an unneeded time sink. Deathproof on most people is nice for Earth Eater but I didn't go out of the way for it; got lucky with armor drops in Omega Ruins while going through it.
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Cthulhu Saves Christmas
'tis the season. Playing on Raving, three bosses done (all wrecked me at least once). This seems like it addresses my biggest complaint with Cosmic Star Heroine, which is pretty cool - enemies (especially bosses) have way more of an identity. Otherwise it's more Zeboyd.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Did a CF run which I am calling the "Actually be a good teacher" run, the rules being:
1. If someone asks to change their goals, you agree to it. Don't touch their goals otherwise.
2. Assign the character to Advanced/Master classes which line up with their stated goals.
3. The dancer is randomly chosen from current team members who unambiguously want to be chosen (for my team, that was Edelgard, Ferdinand, Dorothea, Petra)
I can still use Instruct however I want, which is good because almost nobody requests to train authority (and I never saw anyone do so this run).
I mostly used the Eagles themselves. Honestly it's not too unusual a playthrough, but hey.
Byleth: Myrmidon -> Pegasus -> Enlightened One. I dunno, I decided to do something vanilla instead of overcentralizing like Wyvern Lord. Sadly Byleth had just got horrid stat growths anyway, like 25 str / 20 spd lategame? Blah. Good charm for gambits at least.
Edelgard: Requested axe/armour. Brigand -> Fortress Knight -> Armoured Lord -> Emperor. Sigh, well, y'know. First time actually using Edelgard's canon class. It's cute at least? And having an extra point of move on Fortress Knight is really helpful. Still does great things with Raging Storm and the super strength but not nearly as great.
Hubert: Requested pure reason. Mage -> Dark Bishop. Dark Bishoo's Heartseeker lets him Frozen Lance better than Warlock does at least? It's something. Cool array of offence but the 4 move and lack of faith stuff is a bit sad.
Ferdinand: Was going to go to cavalier stuff but then the dance competition came around, and he was the one randomly chosen. Fitting because he practically begs Byleth for it. Anyway, he never asked to train swords so his Dodgetank Dancer von Aegir game wasn't quite as good as normal, but still pretty good.
Linhardt: Priest -> Mage -> Bishop. Requested pure faith. Never changed his mind. Bishop obviously. If you've used him you've probably seen this build, Physic and Warp and Stride/Blessing. Sometimes the #11 unit who was benched, but other units had weaker points of the game (Bernie in Intermediate, Ingrid in Advanced) so sometimes not.
Bernadetta: Requested archery, then quickly changed her mind to lances/riding. Archer -> Paladin -> Bow Knight. Mostly a middling if mobile Vengeance bot with all the ups and downs of that until Bow Knight rounded her out a fair deal with expanded range and Encloser and Brave Bow use. Typically held Impregnable Wall due to her own bad charm and inability to benefit from Wall herself if already at 1 HP via guard adjutant, Blessing, or poison.
Dorothea: Requested pure reason to show nobles that magic isn't their birthright. Switched to pure faith late, but fortunately I was able to push her to Black Range+1 anyway. Mage -> Warlock -> Gremory. Definitely showed up the nobles, had 40 magic which is silly with her skillset, yay Agnea's Arrow one-shotting things as late as Tailtean. Probably the best overall unit despite 4 move in advanced being blah.
Petra: Requested swords/bows. Brigand -> Assassin. Pretty effective doubling/quadding stat ball, had over 40 speed where all but one other member of my team was low 20's at best.
Sylvain: Requested cavalry stuff then switched to armour stuff late. Brigand -> Cavalier -> Paladin -> Great Knight. Do not use Great Knight in CF, awful mobility in the last two maps. Very solid unit until then with Swift Strikes largely killing the same things as Vengeance but without the HP requirement, and good charm to land Raging Flames.
Ingrid: Requested pegasus stuff then changed to swords. I figured Falcon Knight was enough swords to count given her previous request. Pegasus -> Assassin -> Falcon Knight. Unfortunately wasn't able to get Alert Stance+ due to her poor decisions. Str was lacking too. But she was fast and later, mobile. One of my less useful units as an Assassin, but solid as Falco.
Hapi: Requested reason/riding then lances/riding. The one slight deviation I made from the rules is that once she hit C lances, I switched her back to reason/riding because her stated reason for wanting lances was for Dark Knight, but I could not see how going past C lances would help for that while she still needed Reason ranks. So obviously, Mage -> Valkyrie -> Dark Knight. Decent offensive utility with Banshee, Death, cheeses monsters both offensively (insta break with any spell, including debuffs) and defensively (Impregnable Wall, gg Sothis paralogue), has Physic and eventually Warp (though obviously not having faith as a goal slows that). Solid despite the authority bane.
All four Eagles women had around 150 kills, then a drop to the next highest.
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Been busy, so here's a catchup post of stuff of note.
Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster - Pretty much blew through this in two days; I mean, it's FF4. It's familiar territory. FF4PR for whatever reason halved the EXP requirements to level up across the entire game, so with the way FF4's exp naturally scales you end up 15-20% higher level at pretty much any given point of the game. There's some other little differences here and there of the QoL nature (arrows aren't consumable anymore for instance) but for the most part this game has a lot less mechanical changes compared to its original version than the first three PRs did.
Labyrinth of Touhou: Gensokyo and the Heaven-Piercing Tree - AKA Labyrinth of Touhou 2; it's now available on Steam, with English text built-in (taken with permission from the original fan translation). My thoughts about this game are ... complicated, to say the least, but the most succinct way I can sum them up is: sometimes, less is more. Compared to the original LoT, this game has a lot more everything - more content, more characters, an added subclass system, an added passive skill system, more grind, and a heaping helping of QoL. The subclass and passive skill systems, while conceptually neat, add too much complexity to a game that doesn't particularly benefit from it being there (and aren't well balanced besides). I finished what amounts to the original main game and its postgame so far - the original postgame is a really poorly balanced mess and nearly made me quit, but at least you can pretty much just powergrind past it to get back to the good stuff again. I do plan on finishing the expansion content eventually.
All in all I'd say the original game was better at what I wanted it to be, and Windows 11 fixed whatever weird problem the game had with running on Windows 10. Still, LoT2 isn't *bad*.
Super Robot Wars 30 - I was really enjoying this. It's not nearly as cohesively written as VXT (owing to the nonlinear structure), but it's good at the whole smashing robots into each other thing. It's probably the easiest game in the franchise - even on Expert mode I'm having little trouble. But IMO difficulty really isn't the point of a fanservice game like this (*glares in LoT2's general direction*).
I say "was" because right now Bamco seems to be having some real trouble getting the game to be stable after the first DLC patch, so I've had to put it on the backburner for now.
Etrian Odyssey Nexus - Started this up again; new file since I lost my old save for Reasons. Running Heroic difficulty with a Highlander/Pugilist/Nightseeker/Medic/Zodiac team. Uhhh, what's there to say? It's Etrian Odyssey but with a lot more content. Anyway, I finished 5 labyrinths so far with this team. It's working out fine.
Yakuza: Like A Dragon - This game is a lot better than I was expecting really, and my expectations were decently high given the hype. "Earthbound for grown-ups" is a pretty apt description of it in more ways than one - it has some of the same offbeat quirky humor quality (if aged up into Definitely Not For Kids territory), the game's Basically Everything is a pretty much unabashed homage to Dragon Quest (to the point even that Dragon Quest itself actually gets namedropped in the plot), etc. The mechanics aren't a direct rip though, best as I can tell, but I don't have a good handle on LAD's formulas or anything.
About the only flaw I'd say the game has is kind of inherent to its thematic nature: it's a game largely about Japanese men who exist in a generally very chauvinistic subset of society (the criminal underworld). To its credit, the game manages to actually be quite respectful of its female characters (IMHO; obviously I'm not quite the right gender to fully judge this) - just, owing to the overall setting and subject matter, there are so few of them. I'll go into a bit more detail in spoilersize text.
I'd estimate I'm about halfway to 2/3 of the way through the game at this point and there are precisely two significant female characters in the main storyline. One is the game's only guaranteed female PC; she's a bartender who worked for a bar operated by the guy whose murder sets off pretty much the whole plot of the game, and while it's not explicitly stated it's strongly implied that with his death, she transitions from simply being the bartender to essentially running the place herself. She is - refreshingly - absolutely not a shrinking violet, but rather more of a woman of action who refuses to be patronized. Also she's more or less explicitly stated to have the highest alcohol tolerance of the core cast. The other is the commander of the local Korean mafia and demonstrates herself to be quite capable (and ruthless) in that role.
There's a side storyline with a third female character (and second female PC) that is technically optional, but is the primary source of money in the game so it's unlikely most players will skip it; this third woman has no presence in the main storyline due to her optionality, but is pretty much the central figure of one of the game's most involved sidestories. Basically, she's the daughter of a successful businessman who inherited her father's businesses when he died, proved dramatically less successful than him and got scammed by one of her father's competitors. The guy who got murdered had been planning to bail her out, but on account of his murder, Ichiban gets roped into taking over the company and rebuilding it instead. In any event, beyond that, she's pretty much a standard dutiful office lady sort of character.
Ichiban himself is an absolute delight of a protagonist and I'm very glad that he's going to be the main face of the Yakuza franchise for the foreseeable future, though. Anyway, it's in the running for best game I've played this year, although I'm not sure it'll claim the title yet.
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Fell Seal- 7/10. Good overall game. An FFT variant with a lot of great polish points. Plot and characters were very well set up while moving relatively quickly. Basically all scenes felt like they had a purpose and were driving the narrative forward in some way. Character interactions were well done and the villain cast was nice and varied and interesting enough (although two Immortals felt conspicuously missing plot wise). I appreciated the unique art style, although I won't say I loved it. The injury setup was a great balancing mechanic, and there were a great number of core battle features that were enjoyable.
Early game battles really shined to me because it felt like you really had to pay anything to character placement in a way that you really generally don't in this type of SRPG. Creating chokepoints or preventing enemies from creating chokepoints felt really critical to taking control of the battle and it was really enjoyable. However, the game ruins this dynamic when nasty ranged status- mostly guns- comes into play. You don't have to worry about spacing at all when you can shutdown most of what an enemy can do from half the screen away. That nasty physical ranged status really needed a nerf. Had the game maintained the spatial balance better, it would have been an 8 /10. Guns in particular really needed either less range/tolerance/damage/status accuracy (not necessary all, but honestly could still be a phenomenal weapon/class even with all).
Very solid class system implementation on the whole. Spent most of the game constantly switching classes to maximize stat bonuses but I probably could have sat tight and just steamrolled things with more effective classes earlier than I did. Still was enjoyable messing with basically every class. Yates stood as out a great mage mixing together keys of several skillsets and pairing really nicely with Healer (Not sure anything else got Heal Up, which was great as is Counter Cripple). Other than ranged physical status classes, Warmage stood out as nasty class that you generally wanted to neutralize ASAP (also made Secunda a nasty boss).
Saga Frontier: 6/10. Played all paths. When I first played, I only did 1.5 paths, so effectively it was like a whole new game. Definitely more than the sum of it's parts. It covers a lot of fun bases with super quick pacing that doesn't get in your way. I will say that Monsters can make some great Jeigans. A few battles can unlock some very high stats and a decent enough attack move for them. They'll taper off come midgame, but definitely found them very useful early. The different ways the game plays with randomness is also a fun change of pace.
Brigandine 2- 8/10. Played ~3.3 paths (Stella, Tim, Rubino, a little bit of an effective Rudo solo with 2 Knights only on defense, an even lesser bit of Eliza's). Have probably watched Super beat all paths, some multiple times. Great to see the game randomly resurrected after all these years. The choice of the VP artist(s?) is fantastic and really makes the game come to life.
I'd love to be able to play with the AI in this game, because that is its greatest limitation. The AI keeps consistently making major tactical mistakes and loves to rush Rune Knights into the meat grinder and a good number of them are basically carved to death immediately. Mages are even worse as they are liable to not even get an actual action (although to some degree, there's a limit on what you could do with just AI there). There's so many potential features to play with compared to a normal RPG so that be so fun to mess with). For example:
--Enemy countries attack too little, with means that's it's easy for them to fall behind on EXP.
--Enemy counties don't focus enough on raising monsters via EXP questing. They'll start bleeding monsters and have nothing effective to replace with them, and the jumps in having some promoted monsters would be worth more than the equips.
--Which characters to use and where. AI tends to keep the same failing parties in the same location instead of understanding where there are matchups that might lead to more challenge.
And that's all before all the ways to play with AI in battle. Even just tightening up movement patterns could go very far.
Octopath Traveller- 3/10. Mixed bag. The game is playable enough, with a quick paced battle system that unfortunately sheds aspects of what made the Bravely systems really shine for me, which is the balance of mixing in offensive and defensive aspects as least semi regularly. I'd like it a lot more if this was the first game of this team, as opposed to the third coming after two more interesting battle games. Granted, I spent all game waiting for those defensive skills to be useful and then they throw the mage superboss class fights at you and you proceed to make to a mockery fo them.
However, there are two things that really drag it down for me. The less offensive one is the writing/characters. I really like the vignette concept, but I don't think the game fully capitalized on it. The world felt like an afterthought in a way I'm not sure I've ever seen before. The plot structure decision was just unfortunate and made the characters feel really disconnected from each other.
The more offensive issue is the tangle of character balance, character switching and levelling. Some characters have innate traits that are just way too desirable. Cyrus' Analyze innate is too useful and actively removing Therion from your party leads to unopened chests (which goes against RPG psychology in a bad way). The game wants to you to switch characters a lot. but punishes you for doing it. Either lose those great unreplicatable aspects (on two of the better skillsets at that) or have some characters fall behind (I primarily choose option 1; exploring the world map still gave the left behinds sufficient EXP for their chapters at least). This could have been balanced if at least the EXP curve was more forgiving. Additionally, only being able to change party in a tavern is a hideous design choice. 20+ years after Dragon Warrior gave you the wagon at that. It's sad that even allowing you to change members in town would be a massive improvement. Even just allow you to unequip items from members who aren't in the your party! This mess of design choices was constantly infuriating me, guaranteeing that the game never rose out of the bog.
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Dhyer: Interesting you thought Cyrus's passive was so good in Octopath. I personally considered it one of the weaker ones. GRANTED, this is largely because Scholar's skillset was extremely, extremely good for 80% of the game such that you'd want someone running it in your party no matter what, and Scholar job already comes with an Analyze ability that you can even throw some BP at to reveal more weaknesses.
Therion's passive... I get that psychologically, that one may have been a mistake due to FOMO. After all, just because the last 10 purple chests weren't worth it doesn't mean the 11th one won't have something insanely broken. That said, there's nothing that special in Therion chests unless you go diving the dungeons with Level45+. I made my peace with not getting every bit of purple treasure and it worked out. (That said, yeah, the speedruns sometimes go dive an optional L45+ dungeon with the reduce encounters passive on, make a beeline to a Therion chest, then teleport the heck out.)
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Super Robot Wars 30- Done! T is more cohesive and overall better throughout, but 30 does pull together in the end and have some cool moments. Great use of the Claw in particular. No one stands out as being quite as good as Domon, but y'know, Domon was silly. I think overall while the mission selecting was a decent experiment to try and loosen up the game... probably a net negative? I'm not sure what could be done to refine it, or maybe I just am happy with a strictly linear sRPG experience.
It feels a little weird to compare so directly to T just because that was the first SRW I'd played in like 10 years but... so it goes. Still good, does reinforce that I don't really need more than one of these a year at most.
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Dhyer: Interesting you thought Cyrus's passive was so good in Octopath. I personally considered it one of the weaker ones. GRANTED, this is largely because Scholar's skillset was extremely, extremely good for 80% of the game such that you'd want someone running it in your party no matter what, and Scholar job already comes with an Analyze ability that you can even throw some BP at to reveal more weaknesses.
Therion's passive... I get that psychologically, that one may have been a mistake due to FOMO. After all, just because the last 10 purple chests weren't worth it doesn't mean the 11th one won't have something insanely broken. That said, there's nothing that special in Therion chests unless you go diving the dungeons with Level45+. I made my peace with not getting every bit of purple treasure and it worked out. (That said, yeah, the speedruns sometimes go dive an optional L45+ dungeon with the reduce encounters passive on, make a beeline to a Therion chest, then teleport the heck out.)
The whole battle system is built around "breaking" all enemies as quickly as possible, so a passive that gives you automatic information on how without wasting turns becomes very useful. I agree on Scholar's skillset being great most of the game, but that just kind of makes it worse since Cyrus will always have the passive and the skillset. And yeah, Therion's is more psychological. The effect of chests tapers off, but if you are going to ram against the psychology of a typical RPG player, this struck me as the exact wrong way to go about it. Granted, I have little interests in using half the passives beyond chapter 1 (any of the "Summons"), so the ones that actually give a solid boon stick out even more.
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Bravely Default 2 - Started this, got up to beating the Beastmaster boss.
So far I can't say I'm very impressed by the changes from BD1! Weight is just a terrible level-as-godstat system that exists to arbitrarily screw over jobs (some of which aren't even good in the first place) and makes the durability curve even -more- wacky in the process, buffing/debuffing going to the Grandia 1-2 school of stack or GTFO while still being very temporary is bad enough and to make matters worse stacking doesn't even refresh existing durations so why even bother, having stuff counter random things arbitrarily and at random isn't an era of design that needed to be revisited (and of course just makes buffing/debuffing feel even worse), and honestly mixing CTB and BP is just a mess. And of course they seem to have actually fixed precisely nothing in the process. Sigh. I'm not angry, just disappointed.
e: *plays around with Beastmaster some, sics a captured minotaur onto another minotaur* well okay that's pretty decent i guess
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Got into that mood to do some Ancient Cave diving so tracked down Lufia 2 and did the legwork to aply the Frue Lufia patch. Frue Lufia is essentially a restoration. It restores content that is in the code of the retail release that doesn't get implemented such as a 3rd form of Gades for the endgame and several monsters that cast Mirror that didn't before. The enemy name adjustments are welcome, no more of the ridiculous Gorems, Seirans, and Hidoras among others. Also fixes the Ancient Cave item randomization so that it's possible to find helmets, shields, and rings in red chests after B9, So used a cheat code to unlock Gift Mode and went for it. Some notable defeats, because they're fun to document:
- Casting attack magic on an enemy I forgot used Mirror. While this didn't lose the battle by itself, it was enough of a loss in offense and action economy that it did end in total defeat.
- Not paying attention on B90 to enemy coloration thinking I was safely facing a Copper Dragon when it was in fact a Gold Dragon. It lived long enough to get a triple-turn of Stardust Blow, Zap, Stardust Blow and reduced the party to a smear.
- B77 Two Orochis (Orky in the retail release) Actually admitted defeat and Providenced out instead of fighting this group that was blocking passage. My instant death options sucked being only Perish and a lone Death Ball. I have no gear capable of striking dragon species weakness. My best source of lightning damage was Lexis' Bolt magic for 400 (to 2800 HP each). I also had no defense buffs to deal with their likely 8 attacks a round. (16 as there were two of them) Those are rather strong hits doing around 100 to a 350 defense character in the front row. Didn't like my odds at all.
I also stormed through the main game on occasion with the intent of applying acquired battle mechanics knowledge to cruise through. It's vanilla Lufia 2 difficulty so I disrespected the challenge level. The game seemed to take offense and many early boss fights sent at least one character to the floor and during a period where revival is limited/non-existent. Taking on the catfish at Lv 4 didn't turn out well (and a game over since it was still one character) Regal Goblin summoned a bunch of buddies and they ganged up on Tia. Tia gets gangbanged again at Camu.
Oddly, nailed Tarantula on the first try. I expected to get wasted challenging it at Lv 14 and being too cheap to buy status curing. Sure I spread out as much status protection as I could but there are unavoidable gaps. Guy got paralyzed early but recovered quickly losing only two turns. Tarantula only healed itself once and never summoned companions. Guy did get paralyzed again late but Maxim had the Fire Dagger and finished things soon after.
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Bravely Default 2 - Up to C5 now, feeling less salty about things now overall so I can mostly enjoy it as the fascinating and underthought mess that it is.
Seriously though what even are some of these job specialties.
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I'm super-behind on gaming in general. Part of this is good in that I decided to distract myself with Proper Book Reading At The Library & research, part of it is just pandemic stress though. So I have a whole ton of not-quite-finished games & replays. I guess some short comments are in order!
The Great Ace Attorney
Finished the first half, finished case 1 & started case 2 of the second game... then... just... stopped. I was liking the game quite a lot though!
Fire Emblem Echoes
I was doing a challenge run of Echoes With(out) Mila's Divine Protection. Oh no, all the Mila Statues have been cursed! Nobody ever gets to promote. Okay except Celica, who is a required promote. Additionally, I have to deploy the lowest "rank" classes, aka yes you're deploying your villagers, although it's up to me to break ties for the various level 1 classes to fill out the roster. Pre-promotes at rank 2 classes & above can't normally be deployed or recruited, although I spotted myself a minor cheat in letting myself recruit & use Valbar and Matilda for a bit (Valbar is necessary to recruit his pals, despite technically being a prepromote).
Anyway, it was a fun twist on things. It was mostly an excuse to try out one of the things Internet tier listers hype up which is a turbo-fast Killer Bow for Hunter's Volley in Chapter 3. The game is ABSOLUTELY not balanced around this and requires devoting most of your funds to setting this up, but if you do, it doesn't matter that's a tier 1 archer, they can still murder things incredibly hard, just like HV in Three Houses. There's some other odd quirks too - low range on your archers so they get outranged by enemy archers, no Sage/Priestess promotions for more healing, no Saints to undo terrain damage in the swamp, etc. I had nearly beaten Duma Tower with Celica's Team but my 3DS turned itself off or crashed and I never got around to finishing it. I'm quite confident her team can handle it, but the real test will be the final battle with Duma, especially since Alm never bothered to promote. We'll see, but I think the magic of stat-boosting fountains on Alm have covered me okay.
Fire Emblem Fates
I also started up a random Lunatic CQ run of this ages ago. It's not complete either and not very far along. (I only did Hard on CQ which was still more difficult than Lunatic BR or RV... frankly a lot of Lunatic's ideas are a bit on the unfun side IMO, but whatevs.)
Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster
It's cool (after you replace the default font). Started a run with 4x Red Mages, but I got bored and stopped around the Earth Cave. The XP curve is massively ubered in this compared to NES - the only bit of "grinding" I did was to return to the Marsh Cave for a 2nd dive once I could open the locked doors, and I still had Firaga / FIR3 for the Vampire, meaning he died screaming. If I return, I should probably download one of the mods that lets you turn off encounters entirely since it seems like that's the only way to get the game to fight back.
Brigandine II
I didn't play the original Brig. Anyway, it was interestingly different. I liked the game, although some of Dhyer's criticism above is probably fair. I almost completed it with Gustava, and basically I'm happy with calling it a victory (I took on the final boss with just two teams and not knowing I should conserve MP, he was one hit from death, he resurrected on his turn a ton of allies and put back up his shield which made it so that Endorian's blast didn't kill, I was totally out of MP at this point, RIP.) I did some of the Phantom Knight postgame battles for funzies afterward but they eventually became just grindy. I'm sure I'd win if I tried the final again with a full complement of 3 RKs, but precisely because I'm sure, not feeling a strong urge to do so.
My biggest complaint is just that I don't think there's quite enough differentiation between army styles. Let me first grant that too many blurry unit types in a game without a huge art budget is a problem, and I certainly got wrecked a few times by just not understanding what the enemies could do to me and how to maneuver around them during the learning curve portion of the game. But... all the factions play just a little too similarly in that even if you use unique Rune Knights, the mook support is just too flexible and shared among everyone. I'd like it better if each faction had a more sharply defined favorite army types, even if any faction could use any unit via some mercenary system or the like. Even if no units were added to the game at all.. there's 18 "base" monsters in the game. What if each faction only had access to 6 of them by default, and had to conquer other territory to be able to recruit the missing monsters? Or there was some stat bonus / discount for favored monsters? Stuff like Sea Serpents would be shared by Pirates & Norzaleo, Angels by Mana Saleesia & Guimole, Goblins by Ninjas & Norzaleo, etc. Or make it so that Elementals and Dragons and the like have to promote to the correct elemental theme of the faction - Norzaleo gets ice dragons, Gustava gets dark dragons, MS holy dragons... you get the point. As is, every team blends into the same too much.
Still, I'm interested enough that I do want to replay the game on Hard.
Fire Emblem Three Houses
I started a Maddening run of Verdant Wind awhile back, since that was my first route and therefore done on Hard. See my posts in February on this! Trying to complete more of my support catalog by using units I haven't used before. Anyway, it's still not finished. It's mostly complete (up to Fort Merceus) but I also randomly got bored and stopped. The main thing I'll add - dodgetank mage Byleth is still legit. I think I mentioned before it being good at Reunion at Dawn, it's also good for Legend of the Lake, one of the hardest paralogues - just boldly send Byleth forward on the right side of that map through the fog with the incredibly dangerous fast swordmasters, mages, wyvern knights, and archers. The Nos tanking pushes the swordmaster hit rate to around 50, which is good enough to survive for sure while also greatly wounding the enemies to set them up for the rest of the team.
Shin Megami Tensei V
Probably deserves its own post! I beat the first major major boss that sets up the first big plot twist at the Diet Building, then got SMT'd by a random enemy critting the hero in the next dungeon, losing a decent amount of progress. Kinda annoying that SMT5 picked the SMT3 model rather than the SMT4 model on main character death, but so it goes.