Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

[Fudozukushi]

Dark Souls: Revenge of the Vengeful.

While I and you, keep getting the ring-around on the somthin somethin, I've done nothing but go and get summoned for bosses!  I have over 200,000 souls at SL 35 and, ha, 34 liquid humanity.  I can level up to 50 I'm pretty sure.  And yet I have no desire to spend any of it.

Also people are really bad at Gaping Dragon for some reason.

[Captain K.]

Been doing the same thing, albeit for the purpose of collecting the offensive Miracles from the Warriors of Sunlight.  I'm hanging out in front of Quelaag giving free sunlight medals to everyone.  Praise the Sun!

I can now hurl bolts of lightning like Zeus.  As soon as I get Great Lightning Spear I figure I'll start leveling again.

Also spent time exploring the Great Hollow.  Got to Ash Lake once, then got my lights punched out by a giant mushroom before I could reach the dragon.

Gaping Dragon is... mostly easy.  Still has some bullshit stuff.  Like stunlocking you with his tail.  And running away to the back of his lair where the giant waterfall of death is.

Quelaag is really easy, as long as you don't get greedy.  Hit, hit, block for a bit, repeat.

[Sierra]

Batman: Throwing People Over Railings for Fun and Profit

So this time there aren't just random maps to the Riddler trophies--instead you find and interrogate his informants spread throughout everyone else's forces. This is cool because I was always wondering, "Does the Riddler actually go out there and paint all those damn question marks himself? Does he stroll up to Joker HQ and say hey guys, I wanna go in and wander around for a bit to leave some prizes for Batman?" Apparently not, he bribes other people to do it for him. Now I just wonder how much these guys complain when he tells them to climb on top of a church and stick a giant neon question mark up there. His VA still wins, of course. Such a smarmy jackass.

Anyway, Joker fight. He's one dude amongst an army this time, but it's still a much better fight than he got in AA. Helluva lot harder too, especially if you're like me and really fail at mixing up strategies when there are different types of enemies involved in a mob. Died a couple times and survived on an invisible sliver of life at the end. Pretty much every type of standard mook, a Titan goon, a giant one-armed Russian with a hammer, and Joker--like twenty dudes coming at you at once. Also there are trains running through the room. Yeah. I'm just glad there were no gunners (I guess it's no fun for Joker if someone else just shoots Batman).

[Shale]

RH: I've been playing this on the bus to and from work every day, and since that ride takes about an hour, I'm finally making progress! I'm in C4 of the alternate history, C3 of the standard. The thaumatech boss at the start of C4 absolutely murdered me, but it's my own fault for taking a party of physical bruisers, including one underleveled one. Still, ow.

[Fudozukushi]

Been doing the same thing, albeit for the purpose of collecting the offensive Miracles from the Warriors of Sunlight.  I'm hanging out in front of Quelaag giving free sunlight medals to everyone.  Praise the Sun!

I can now hurl bolts of lightning like Zeus.  As soon as I get Great Lightning Spear I figure I'll start leveling again.

Also spent time exploring the Great Hollow.  Got to Ash Lake once, then got my lights punched out by a giant mushroom before I could reach the dragon.

Gaping Dragon is... mostly easy.  Still has some bullshit stuff.  Like stunlocking you with his tail.  And running away to the back of his lair where the giant waterfall of death is.

Quelaag is really easy, as long as you don't get greedy.  Hit, hit, block for a bit, repeat.

I probably have enough to get the Great Spear but my Faith is a puny 10 so I can't do anything.

Gaping Dragon's tail is kinda crap(LOOK AT IT HITTING THROUGH YOUR SHIELD WHILE FACING HIM!) but I could chop that off in three hits so it wasn't too big a deal.  I could accept when the Channeler is still alive and making a nuisance out of himself.  But when people charge up to the bastard's face?  Then they're just asking for it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The C4 thaumachine is pretty much that one boss.


Blue Dragon - Why is it that only minigames can kill me? Anyway, storming another of Evil Purple Bill Gates' mechanical fortresses (how many of these does he have, anyway? Dude needs better hobbies) after his latest bout of epic trolling. Life is good.

[Meeplelard]

Blue Dragon - Why is it that only minigames can kill me? Anyway, storming another of Evil Purple Bill Gates' mechanical fortresses (how many of these does he have, anyway? Dude needs better hobbies) after his latest bout of epic trolling. Life is good.

But he wouldn't be a proper Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain if he did something else BESIDES Scheme and make elaborate evil fortresses!


Wild ARMs 5:  yeah, screw playing this game in secrecy or something, cause there's no point or something or...wait, why am I saying that?  Anyway, just met Elvis.

Why am I replaying this?  Cause no one else does or something, and I was talked into doing it for that reason alone or something.  Scene Skip makes this game a lot easier to play or something.


Street Fighter 3rd Strike: Beat the game as Alex and Remy!  How did Alex end up being to my playstyle?  IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!

Tried Twelve, but that...didn't go over so well.  Why does he suck so much? WHY!?

[Shale]

The C4 thaumachine is pretty much that one boss.

It killed me like five times, then I did the RH equivalent of level grinding, which is fighting four extra battles. That led to Raynie learning G. Fire and suddenly the fight got much, much easier.

[Clear Tranquil]

Yeah Aht (Electric Traps)/ Raynie (Thunder/G Fire) and Rosch or Gafka are probably the best bets for the fight. I wasn't at a high enough level for the G spells for anybody myself and I was rolling with Aht and Rosch to build their levels up some (each time Rosch and a certain other character in the other history joined was the only times I really went out of my way to fight early on) Got wiped the first couple of times because I didn't know what to expect (exploding bombs in the face~) won on the third attempt after building levels a bit more and Rosch picked up Cross Spike~ So he was whatever level he learns Cross Spike at, Aht was low twenties and Stocke was probably creeping over to the higher side of mid twenties though I don't really remember there.

Well done on getting past it Shale Went in with Stocke/Rosch/Gafka first I assume (physical bruisers~)? Probably not impossible to win with it eventually but takes some what more effort than other teams no doubt.

Fun vid (inspiration!?) tiem~-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpCZDEKx-3A

I would like to level up high/really high to L30+ on fight every and everything mode/CtREplay style and absolutely curbstomp the fight with a full on team blitz down in a revenge run or something next time through but instead I am thinking of doing a solo/duo run! >__>

[Dark Holy Elf]

Blue Dragon - Disc 3.

Okay.

Now, I'm not really an expert on this subject, but I'm pretty sure when you're trying to talk someone out of committing suicide, you should emphatically not do any of the following:
(a) call them selfish
(b) yell "Shut up!" at them
(c) turn the conversation to yourself
(d) snidely remark "If it were me, I couldn't imagine giving up. It's just not me, I guess".

What. The. Fuck.

This follows right on the heels of a ham-fisted scene in which Shu learns that "giving up is actually okay, when giving up means running away to fight another day" (which really isn't giving up by any definition I'm aware of) and in general the words "give up" used about 400 times in the space of an hour. Shu has officially snatched away any hope Marumaro had of winning "game's worst character".

On the plus side, Nene remains awesome!

On the minus side, I still can't come close to dying unless it's to a mini-game. According to a certain FAQ I am about a dozen levels underlevelled too! (FAQs. But even accounting for that, I suspect my levels have to be on the low side.)

Despite this I am still enjoying the game well enough, but damn if it isn't trying to spit on all its tremendous potential of FF5 + some notable system improvements + large amounts of polish + the only well-done traditional world map outside DQ8 + Eternity.


Y'know, I don't think I've yet talked about...

Final Fantasy 4: The After Years - About done with the "bad" half of the game, which is all the various character quests. They are hit and miss. On the one hand, Rydia's quest is pretty awesome, with some pretty tough fights (one of which is quite creative, in fact). Edge's is also amusing for ninja wackiness, as is Palom because Palom is a bitch. In general the mages get more interesting dungeons/fights (Rydia, Palom, Porom). Yang's is tolerable from a writing standpoint, which is better than I expected, although its combat sucks. Edward's, though, is just terrible, featuring not only combat involving Edward and three completely generic soldiers (about as exciting as you'd guess), but incredibly stupid plot involving Edward pining over his 17-years ago girlfriend and the epic return of DESERT FEVER. At least its last 10 minutes are decent as they actually advance the main plot! Currently doing Kain's, which has gameplay that makes me want to beat my head against a wall but is at least short (apparently). The game's quite playable in that FF4 way, moves quickly and all that. Though I'm very much looking forward to finally being able to kiss boring fighter-only parties goodbye.

[Random Consonant]

SRWZ: Well Stage 20 was pretty rude at first but it ended up getting cleared with not much fuss and bother.  Go figure.

[Clear Tranquil]

NEB - ... it went there? Wow. The more I read/hear about Shu/BD plot from you, Tai and others the less inclined I am to give the game another chance and actually play past Marumaru's village. Do you think on the whole it's worth suffering through for the game play/battle system on the whole then? Or is it more a if you have other games play those first dealie (I have a feeling some of the scenes like above would make me angry and that's not good >_>)~

Devil May Cry 3 - Saved at the start of Mission 3. I somehow managed to defeat the first boss without dying. What. Had to use two items though. Scored an A on Devil Hunter Rank for the first mission and a C for the second. This is my first time playing DMC. I have no idea what I'm doing~

[AndrewRogue]

I haven't updated progress on Dark Souls, nor have I made much. So highlights.

Bell Gargoyles: Defeated after I learned I could summon Sun Bro to help. Sun Bro perished in the fight.

Capra Demon: Defeated after approximately 30 or so deaths. He is not the boss. The room, the dogs and the camera are the boss. He is just an add.

Bell: I rang it.

Sewers: Lulz curse was fun to learn about.

Gaping Dragon: Pretty easy fight, but I found that, sometimes, when he takes flight, it is just inevitable that he is going to land on you. But, provided you don't have bad luck with that, he's simple as hell.

Blighttown: Fuck Toxic. Also, had to walk out after realizing my +2 Battle Axe was not cutting it.

Chaos Witch Spider Boobs: Again, felt like a boss where my real enemy was the camera. Also, if she did her jumping lava spit at a certain range, you would likely die regardless of action you took, it seemed.

Darkroot Garden: GOLEMS! *shakes fist*

Moonlight Butterfly: Great atmospheric fight. Plus, I killed a butterfly with an axe.

[superaielman]

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair- Finished all the levels in some form (L10 was mostly being pro and letting Eph fight the boss and using the shortcut though!) It's Castlevania mugen, as it attempts to mash up several games worth of characters into one multiplayer platform. Game balance is on the whole good (Soma feels like the clear best and Maria feels like the clear worst, but other than that...), and it makes creative uses of previous stages and bosses for the game. I will say, the game could have used another SotN level or two, but oh well. Glad the DLC gave us a couple of stages of that (SoTN underground and the intro to the castle respectively).

I've mained Julius and Soma, played simon a little as well. Favorite stage is... 9, I think? Fun boss and SoTN is cool.  Least favorite is 1, kind of boring and has a few annoying jumps.

[Meeplelard]

NEB - ... it went there? Wow. The more I read/hear about Shu/BD plot from you, Tai and others the less inclined I am to give the game another chance and actually play past Marumaru's village. Do you think on the whole it's worth suffering through for the game play/battle system on the whole then? Or is it more a if you have other games play those first dealie (I have a feeling some of the scenes like above would make me angry and that's not good >_>)~

Blue Dragon is, as I said, a good filler game.  So its basically something you play between games if you want something simple and inoffensive, and aren't looking for a "masterpiece ."

[Captain K.]

DS:  Getting summoned for bosses inexplicably dried up.  So I decided to get on with the game.  Cleaned out Sen's Fortress top to bottom.  Wow at Covetous Gold Serpent Ring.

Damage notes for whoever decides to stat topic this:

Lightning Spear miracle with 30 Faith versus:

Gaping Dragon - 275 damage
Quelaag - 201 damage
Iron Golem - 185 damage
Titanite Demon (Sen's Fortress) - 184 damage
Undead Dragon (Painted World) - 274 damage
Priscilla - 214 damage
Sif - 215 damage (soul level 41)
Stray Demon - 231 damage (soul level 45)

Although the number isn't high versus Golem that is a huge chunk of his HP.  Dragon is also supposedly weak, but he has a ton of HP.

Also I found the best player message in the game.  In front of Quelaag, someone wrote "Imminent chest..."

[Dark Holy Elf]

CT: The game apparently has a hard mode as free downloadable content. If I were going to recommend the game to people I would generally suggest they check that out. The gameplay is good, but it's wasted on how incredibly easy the game is, so unless you're in the mood for an incredibly easy game which you can smash to bits with an (admittedly fun and well-designed!) class system. Story is what it is. More rants upcoming later, of course... it has some things going for it (Nene) but generally, see Meeple. You can mostly ignore it and it is rarely actually offensive (the last hour is the only time that did it for me, which surprised me because I thought Blue Dragon was way too light-hearted to be offensive).

[Fenrir]

Dark Souls: Finished. The final boss was relentless, I only beat him by trying to always have a stalagmite between him and me. It felt kind of cheap, but you know, it was still hard, and using the environment to beat the last boss feels like a fitting end to this game.
The ending is crazy, I'm off to read some item descriptions to get the game to make sense, then I'm going to restart as a sorceror.

I've learnt that all my invaders were actually NPC invaders, so I've had absolutely 0 online play aside from invading a few dudes myself. Sad! I think they need a third game in the "series" to finally really get the gameplay done just right, but for now this will do.

[Shale]

SPOILER WARNING: You are also an NPC.

[Fenrir]

Aren't NPCs supposed to be invincible?



Anyway, the first boss, Taurus, just backstepped into a bottomless pit.
The Bowser law applies; Bottomless pits, like time, kill everything.
I could mock him, but that wouldn't be really fair. I've done the same thing dozens of times.

The sorceror class rocks. Bought some spells from the dude in prison so I have 60 Soulthing charges and 12 SoulthingGa charges. This is a lot of charges. I've beaten the dark knight on the first try, killed a few giant skeletons, while still not having gotten a single level.
Only died about 4 times so far.

[Shale]

You're still alive, right? So far, so good.

[Fudozukushi]

DS:  Getting summoned for bosses inexplicably dried up.  So I decided to get on with the game.  Cleaned out Sen's Fortress top to bottom.  Wow at Covetous Gold Serpent Ring.

Damage notes for whoever decides to stat topic this:

Lightning Spear miracle with 30 Faith versus:

Gaping Dragon - 275 damage
Quelaag - 201 damage
Iron Golem - 185 damage
Titanite Demon (Sen's Fortress) - 184 damage
Undead Dragon (Painted World) - 274 damage
Priscilla - 214 damage

Although the number isn't high versus Golem that is a huge chunk of his HP.  Dragon is also supposedly weak, but he has a ton of HP.

I'd actually be more interested in your Soul Levels, but, hmm, not exactly a clinch amount of damage.  Looks like not spending points in Faith was a good idea.

Also I found the best player message in the game.  In front of Quelaag, someone wrote "Imminent chest..."

Heh.

I've learnt that all my invaders were actually NPC invaders, so I've had absolutely 0 online play aside from invading a few dudes myself. Sad! I think they need a third game in the "series" to finally really get the gameplay done just right, but for now this will do.

Lucky you.  I get my ass invaded by Japanese PVP twinks all the time.

Dark Souls: No guts, no glory, no humanity.

I HAVE DONE IT!  I HAVE BECOME ORNSTEIN!

[Captain K.]

Soul levels were 31-38.  Kept it low for summoning purposes.  Raising it now so I can get enough endurance to ditch Havel's Ring.  What's a good level to be for getting summoned for O&S?

Dropped into the Painted World since the wiki didn't make it sound too hard.  It was hard.  Considered not fighting Priscilla and just running...  but her tail was so inviting...  She beat me a few times before I figured out her attack pattern.  Luckily she doesn't have many hp when you do hit her.

Guardian Heroes:  Unlocked all the characters.  Still need to see the two bad karma endings.

[Fudozukushi]

Soul levels were 31-38.  Kept it low for summoning purposes.  Raising it now so I can get enough endurance to ditch Havel's Ring.  What's a good level to be for getting summoned for O&S?

I've gotten utter crap for summons at 35 and 41.  3 summons over 6 hours over two days.  I saw significantly more signs at 36 then 41 though.  Hell, my 60 SL first character had gotten more summons... Even when he leveled into his mid-70s.

And I became Ornstein solely for the fight.

[Sierra]

Batman: In Which There Is Death, Death, Death

Maingame completed. Unexpected final boss! I figured he'd be in there somewhere since one sidequest clearly suggests someone with such abilities, just...not as the last boss. Beats the heck out of the mutant Joker gimmick fight Arkham Asylum ended with, though. Also did not call the real Big Bad here, less because you kick his ass midway through the game and more because that would make this basically the plot of Batman Begins, which I didn't think they'd do. They did. Hugo Strange is a pretty solid adversary, at least. Very strong Big Brother act at work, someone who's just as crazy as any of the inmates but able to get away with it due to a position of authority. Good use of obscure villains there. Admirably thorough job of scouring the rogues gallery in general, really--pretty much everyone of note gets some face time here outside of Scarecrow (who was prominently--and awesomely--featured in Arkham Asylum, so that's okay).

Am now scouring the world map for Riddler trophies in the postgame, and being glad that there is a postgame in which to do so because man that's a lot past a point of no return in the maingame. It is seriously addictive collecting these things once you start to figure out what kind of tricks they want you to do, and there are hundreds of them. They really make you exploit every tool at your disposal.

Game's strengths remain primarily those demonstrated in Arkham Asylum: combat feels exactly how Batman deals with things (exploit stealth as much as possible; guns will rip you in half so don't give them the chance; a veritable machine in hand-to-hand combat) and an obvious love for the source material demonstrated in the considerable effort made in bringing Gotham to grimy, demented life. Added now are better boss fights, and extensive sandbox opportunities for when you just feel like flying around the world map being a detective and knocking out sidequests. So yeah, very enjoyable game, definitely recommendable.