What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Yoshiken]

Downloaded and played through the English version of HATOFUL BOYFRIEND. Mostly because it looked like such a glorious trainwreck that I'd have fun regardless of how bad it was.
...And I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, the game is ridiculous, and it knows it's ridiculous, but y'know what? It's also pretty damn awesome. The standard endings are pure dumb cheese for the most part, with the odd "yes, we know nobody is taking this seriously" thrown in (LORD PUDI, GOD OF PUDDING)... and then you reach the endings for Shuu. And those are fucking crazy. And not in the "this is ridiculous" kind of way, but more a Higurashi-style, "Holy shit am I actually going to survive all of this?" kind of way. Then Anghel's ending, which is hilarious and batshit insane again.
Then the BBL ending, and holy crap I was not expecting this. This is the reason to play this. I was skipping through most of the text by this point (which makes getting the previous endings really easy!) and then suddenly jumped back when I noticed the textbox change colour. And.. the rest was seriously unexpected. Really well-written, outside of some translation issues, a solid story and some real character development. Definitely not what I was expecting from a VN about dating pigeons. :|
Also, the music is awesome. (Sample 1, Sample 2, Spoiler Sample)

So yeah, I initially played this because it looked dumb as shit and I thought it would be funny. Now, I'd actually seriously recommend it to people. It's awesome.

[Sierra]

Dragon's Dogma: Optional superboss beat, in offline mode so it didn't take a week. He dropped a weapon for classes I've never used. Beat again for better loots. Dropped same weapon. Okay, we're done here.

[Fenrir]

Jailbreak! Look, Duchess, this probably isn't the best time to get it on--well, okay, if you insist.

You know, either Capcom is really progressive, or just really dumb.

The latter.

(It was a rhetorical question, Cid. It's Capcom!)


Mass Effect 2: Re-finished.
This time Tali died... Honestly, I didn't really care that much. She's not bad or anything but she doesn't really fit with the rest of the crew.
I played with Zaeed in every mission (after playing with Mordin in every mission first time through) He's really the least important character in the game, but I liked his banter. Fun guy all around. He often agreed with my Shepard.

I went with a more sensible approach to conversations instead of just choosing the lower options all the time to get a ton of Renegade points. This is pretty cool, as it allowed me to see some things most players will probably never see (Shepard sometimes justified her Paragon actions for Renegade reasons, for example)
On the other hand, I didn't have enough points to choose the super duper Renegade or Paragon options. I would complain about this, but you know, this actually forces the player to make choices (Tali or Legion?) instead of just convincing everyone everytime by being incredibly nice/not nice. Probably not a bad thing.

DLC opinion didn't change much. Overlord and Shadow Broker are the best parts of ME2. Kasumi is allright. Arrival is shameful, a sign of the terrible things to come.


Mass Effect 3 (Vanguard, Insanity): Getting chased by slow reapers on the world map. Oh no! ME1 and 2 build reapers as huge uber 1337 enemies, and now I'm avoiding them easily to do some mining mini game. They have no control over the territories they've conquered, and it sounds like they're taking months to take over one planet. (Because it's the Earth, and the Earth isn't getting levelled in one second like Random Planet Number 287 because You The Player live on it)
When I got my ship back and talked to the new crew members, it seemed like two of them jumped on me to say "Hi. I"m a lesbian" and "Hi. I'm gay" so that Bioware could let me know they've really filled their quotas. Bioware, you were doing so fine with this, but you now have the subtelty of a sledgehammer.
I also got into a dudebro boxing friendly fight between the dudebro party member and my thin female Shepard. Shepard won because QTEs.
The ending can't be worse than all of this?

Fights are extra nice though. Shepard feels less like a tank and more like a human, enemies are more aggressive and use interesting strategies, and Charge is even better. I admit I kinda miss my shotgun.

I won't play the multiplayer forever, but so far it's decent. Not worth paying Xbox live Gold. (I got the PS3 version)

I'm actually really nervous about which party members will be playable. I'm assuming most of the ME2 cast is out, but they can't leave out Garrus, right? Right??


Spelunky: Finished the game once after about 220 deaths. Also conquered a spaceship and unlocked all the shortcuts.
Lots of things left to see.
The shopkeeper is Rob. Don't try interacting with him if you don't know what you're doing. Just... buy his things and quietly leave.
Actually, stealing shopkeepers and trying to get away with it is probably the best part of the game. I like stealing a jetpack, flying away, letting the shopkeeper jump around like a madman and getting empaled on spikes, then getting his shotgun from his bloody corpse.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Fen, Garrus has probably the best scene in the entire game.  It's entirely optional but you'll know when you get to it.

[VySaika]

FF Theatrythm: I've put together a team that has successfully killed three bosses in a single battle song.

Zidane - Ensures you handle the field song of the dark note, also has Sinewy Etude 1 and 2 for Str boosting the rest of the party.

Vivi - Doublecast + Fire/Blizzard/Thunder takes apart all of the non-boss monsters in a battle song pretty well.

Squall/Cloud/(and Zidane again) - Use Lionheart/Omnislash/Grand Lethal as soon as a boss pops up. The boss implodes. Also high Str on all three of them means they chew through non-boss monsters pretty fast. Vivi does the heavy lifting on those, but these guys defintaely chip in.

Sometimes they only get 2 bosses instead of 3. Gonna start futzing with the timing on summon sections, seeing if maybe skipping the summon will let me kill things faster on those songs.

Also, when I'm not playing chibi music games, I'm playing either Tales of Maj'Eyal(best roguelike I've ever played. If you liek them at all, play it), and the Quest For Glory series(thanks Gref!). In particular, just found out that the unofficial remake of QFG2 is compatable with carryover saves from QFG1, and will let you export into QFG3 just fine. I am very ^_^

[AndrewRogue]

Fenrir: Er. It really isn't surprising that Shepard can beat Dudebro in a fight. ME2 plot stuff means Shep is established as being quite a bit stronger then their body should indicate.

[Cmdr_King]

Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War- Been playing this, beat.  There's something likable about the game, despite being a bit braindead and absolutely draining map design.  So, characters because hey.

Sigurd- My Sigurd ended at like level 25 with something like 12 defense.  He didn't even see any action in C5 because I wanted to get him some money again before finishing the map but anyway.  So yeah, he fell off a bit late, but never bad.

Alec, Noishe- These are definitely the worst Red/Green Cavs in the series, unless they suck in FE2 I guess.  They ended up both getting killed by Aira while Sigurd captured the flag, didn't bother me in the least.

Ardan- Exists.

Azel- Game doesn't give you a Wind tome fast enough to really get use out of him, I felt.  You can get some milage if you really work for it but yeah.  But hey, Minor Fala is good for some kids.

Lex- Missed the hero axe.  He's still got some utility, mounted+canto and good at weakening stuff.  Ended up killing him to prevent a pairing.

Ethlin- Never got her many levels.  so uh mobile healer and not much else.

Cuan- He feels like the real jeigan here.  It's quite a while before he gets appreciable experience, and aside from adventures with holy weapons he's not great at killing things.  That I used him quite a bit for the first two chapters and only stopped because I was expressly trying to level up people (mostly lachesis) speaks to how little jeigandom matters in this game.

Fin- Lags a bit early, then gets hero lance and all is well.  Then tries to run away with it, but this is the sort of game you FAQ the fuck out of so we steal it and put it to better use elsewhere.

Midayle- His growths are pretty bad.  Hero bow is nice and all, but that's late, well after you'll have good opportunities to level him.  Basically father bait for Aideen.

Dew- ugh.

Aideen- Is a healer.  Is easy to toss a ranged staff on.  What more do you want >.>

Aira- Murder machine.  Sadly, this is completely irrelevant outside the arena because aside from the back half of C5 she'll never reasonably catch up to the action, mounted lord and all.

Diadora- Not bad really, AS of course is garbage but she's got the raw power to make that work to an extent.  Of course you hardly get her long enough to say so.

Jamka- This guy.  This reminded me of that time I took Rolf to Endgame and got the Double Bow.  You point this guy at problems and they go away.  Sadly, unlike Rolf he never gets any attack range except 2, so you can't have him clean out enemies, but good for problems.  Admittedly, he ended up snagging the Leg Ring.

Holyn- Aira minus basically.

Lachesis- why yes let's put that Elite Ring on a healer oh dear she's promoted into an unstoppable killing machine.  Second best unit of gen 1, and even then could easily have been number 1 with any holy weapon.

Beowulf- decided to suicide into Sigurd.

Levin Holsety- Because the game wasn't dead enough.

Sylvia- Needed that knight ring I didn't get.  Or the Legs.  Either way, FE4 map design really devalues dancers, which is a shame because they clearly had an idea they'd done this and tried to make up for it with 4 square dances.

Fury- More than any other character depends on how much money you want to spend.  Power Ring, that Hero Lance Fin tried to steal, profit.

Tiltyu- Cool concept, can't compete with horsepremacy.

Claude- Good at what he does.

Briggid- Not quite as economical or available as Jamka, but same basic idea.

------

Celice- Lagged behind the whole game, one of my last to promote (that whole seizing thing tend to get him behind the crowd, and he lacks the skill abuse that get most of the kids through the arena without trying).  Suddenly came into his own in the final chapter.  Sleep Loptians everywhere huh.  oh wait sorry FUCK YOU EAT TYRFING.

Lana- Starts game with ranged healing.  Yeah.

Lakche (Aira/Holyn)- It's like Aira, except she'll almost always be there in the thick of the action for the first couple chapters.

Skasahar- Not as good as his sister for various reasons.  Still plenty capable of murder.

Oifey- useful enough in C6, afterwards trying to get the kids promoted took priority.

Delmud (Lachesis/Fin)- Probably the least useful kid, doesn't really get any weapons or skills to let him reliably kill things.  Still, Charisma utility.

Lester (Aideen/Midayle)- Starts with that hero bow his dad needed thee chapters sooner.  Takes a while to get rolling still, strength can be an issue, but promotion fixes him right up.  That power ring he inherited helped of course.

Julia- Really good, surprisingly.  Starts weak, but fills a niche no other character really does until the holy weapons come around.  Benefits a lot if you put the Lightning tome on her as well, funny enough.

Fee (Fury/Levin)- gets for free all that inventory invested into her mom.  Aside from joining in the middle of an axe swarm, basically unstoppable barring really stupid placement until the last chapter, where she struggled a lot with the enemy peg trio for some reason.

Arthur (Tiltyu/Azel)-  quietly solid, didn't do a whole lot later but never useless.

Johan- Basically useless.  Oh hey you get a hero axe right after he joins oh wait he's still worse than Lex in a vacuum and faces stiffer competition.

Shanan-  So he starts right next to a boss with the Bargain ring as a drop.  Maybe this is a sign.  Yes.  Falls behind as units start to outpace him (as in have horses) but still a reliable way to draw enemies and make them murdered.

Patty (Jamka/Briggid)- Since I didn't make her dad Holyn with ill-gotten Hero Swords, didn't bother much.

Leaf- Not quite as good as Lachesis, but still solid.  I had a better weapon loadout on him though, so he ended up with this kill-stacked Killer Bow and things went quite nicely.

Nanna (Lachesis/Fin)- Not very good, but healing and Charisma.

Fin- Good for when you need him in C7, generally weaker than Oifay otherwise.

Aless- Workhorse.  As in I put 50 kills on the Mistoltin.

Leen (Sylvia/Claude)- Stats look more like dancers I'm used too, still has the same problem in that the game hates dancers due to horsepremacy.

Tinny (Tiltry/Azel)- See Arthur.  Despite his getting a horse, they still saw about the same use because by that point in the game you have holy weapons.

Faval (Jamka/Briggid)- Struggled with hit, but reliably made things dead and had dodge enough.

(Hol)Sety (Fury/Levin)- Because the game wasn't easy enough.

Hannibal- Wait, you can use him in combat?

Corpul (Sylvia/Claude)- Who cares about levels, C10 pretty well forces you into sacrificing a character and he fixes that.  Also I screwed up and had a scenario where I had to either kill Julia or let Julia kill Sety, so we used the thing twice in fact!

Altenna- Dragon-knightiest dragon knight to even dragon knight.  OHKOs mages or dies trying.  Ran into a few scenarios where she ended up guarding castles for some reason, worked well.

Anyway.  Actually talking about the game, is an over-ambitious SNES game, needs remake with modernity and all the chapters cut into thirds.  Or we can remake NES games and be overly stupid-faithful, that's good too.

[superaielman]

Tales of Graces: Finished the normal game. Fiddling with the future arc now.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Final Fantasy: Theatrhythm –

I’ve been playing the hell out of this game for the past week and a half or so. Got it on preorder and got my preorder bonus stylus which I’ve been using to play the game. It’s better than the regular midget stylus the 3DS comes with.

I used primarily a team of Cloud/Tidus/Cecil/Lightning to beat the early part of the game  which I thought was quite easy. The game ramps up pretty quickly once you get through the Basic levels though. I continued using that team to take on the Chaos Shrine, which is the place you can use to get new PCs. I fought a lot of the low level ones to get Rydia, Vivi, Ashe, and Locke. I definitely used Locke for his speediness and Vivi for his magic prowess, but it is abundantly clear that the main characters are better than the unlockables. I also unlocked Minwu and Cid but whocares/10, didn’t use either.

I then discover the mechanics for getting new characters and try to use it to try to get Snow. Each character you have to collect Shards to get, and I found a boss that dropped Snow’s Shard. The only problem was that that Shard was also blessed by Scar and had Kain, which naturally the game gave me first. I also got Sephiroth during this hilarious wheel spinning activity until eventually I got Snow.

But getting Kain was totally worth it because he starts1 HP! Owned by Jogurt. All is better now.

So anyway, I’ve been just working toward the hardest difficulty, which is uber-douchey, and catching Snow and others up. I also got Seifer, who has a quote of “I’m gonna tell ya ‘bout my ROMANTIC dream!” I love that quote so much. The quote section in general is very cute.

Overall it’s been a fun experience, even if I think they could have done aspects of the game better (better balance between the unlockables vs. the mains and made the unlocking less grindy) but it’s been a fun experience. I’ve overall liked most of the song choices aside from a couple, and I’ve grabbed a bit of the DLC. Cosmo Canyon is hard on Ultimate! ;_;

[Cmdr_King]

Yeah, whoever they got making these crossover spinoffs needs to figure out grinding =/= fun.  I should have more than two unlocked songs after 13 hours of play guys.

[Tide]

Japan is all about teh grindan. Don't you know? I heard DQ is a popular game over there.

Grandia 2 LLG -
Right so RICHARD and I talked about doing this a couple of months back and it was on the back burner a bit. This is one of those projects I intended on doing but never really got around to. Until now.

Ground rules are pretty simple:
a) No use of stat boosters. You can sell them but not use them
b) Random encounters are forbidden unless...
c) If the boss/forced fight in question proves to be too difficult/impossible, I can fight as few monsters as possible to make the fight doable. We're not 100% sure about this, but it sort of a rule similar to NEB's LLG in PS4. So if a fight proves to be undoable, the challenge won't be "over" so to speak and we can still continue the game.

Everything else (magic twinkery, skill books, items) is all fair game.  And with that it begins:

Dodox2 -
This is a forced fight on the way to the first dungeon. Nothing to report. Spam attack a few times.

Gargoylesx2 -
Another forced fight, this time up the tower. Their big move is Howl, which deals about 80 damage to Ryudo's 450 HP. I can't OHKO them, but careful reading of the turn gauge allows me to get a Tenseiken Cancel on one. Defending helps with the rest. Not hard at all.

DURHAM CAVE-
So there are lots of forced fights here when the gates shut. All the enemies fought below are forced essentially:

Crag Snakes - Have jokes for HP (280) and die to BURN in one shot. They have a lot of offense though. Also, POIZN which adds up and is annoying when the damage kicks in since it also slows you down on the turn gauge.

Frost Frogs - Scrub enemies. Weak to fire so BURN also one shots them. Nothing really remarkable about them otherwise.

Trilobyte - The "midboss"-like randoms. They have notably more HP (960) and take much more punishment than the above OHKO baits. Also, they inflict Sleep. Bad news? Yep. Luckily, there's a Sleep Charm so somebody can resist it. They are weak to fire too, which allows Burn to high 3HKO. One attack from Ryudo knocks them into 2HKO range essentially.

Minotaur- First official boss of the game! He's accompanied by 2 Trilobytes who can be pests by trying to sleep you. I get the entire team to focus fire on them first before moving on to the big cheese. Minotaur's main weakness is not having MT. As such, despite his double turning high damage, I am able to delay it by guarding with the right character. The big move is Tornado Horn, which does about 240 damage (2HKOs everyone but Ryudo) and it adds confuse, which is extra nasty. Guarding is really important for this as not to lose turns from the Confuse effect. He also has tons of HP (4200) and my offense is kinda inept, so I slowly chip him down and play defensively with items/guarding and edge out a win. I kinda get a feeling this is going to foreshadow a lot of problems later down the line.

Thoughts so far:
MVP - Millenia. Having the highest MAG is great for random smashing. Burns become OHKOs when she casts it, which greatly helps inside the Cave.

LVP - Roan. Has no damage and the Howl is pretty weak right now (80 damage to 280 from Millenia's Burn). I could pass the Chaos egg to Roan but since he has less HP and isn't that much faster, the loss in damage probably isn't worth it. His physical is even more worthless. Deals a whopping 19 damage from Critical when Ryudo hits about 100 >_>.

[Meeplelard]

Yeah, whoever they got making these crossover spinoffs needs to figure out grinding =/= fun.  I should have more than two unlocked songs after 13 hours of play guys.

I know the idea is CAPTURE THE FF EXPERIENCE!!! and all that...

...except FF games scarcely have you grinding, so its kind of a dumb thing.  And even the ones that do never have it to the extent of the crossover spin-offs (Duodecim being the worst about it.  Dissidia was bad enough, but Duodecim also made Cash matter, took away storebought Diamond Rings, and the Duel Colosseum was more efficient way to farm rare items than 000 storyline)

[Luther Lansfeld]

I'm just happy to have most of it done at this point; I'm going to grab the rest of the characters for giggles and then

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

And then you can actually play the game for fun.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Oh, I've been playing the game for fun for a long time. I just decided to challenge myself to make OPTIMAL STRATEGIES TO RECRUIT CHARACTERS I DON'T CARE ABOUT. Obviously a great use of my time.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

You just wanted to put hipster glasses on Yuna, admit it.

[Niji]

Chrono Trigger DS

SPOILERS AWAIT

Beat the Lost Sanctum story finally, lol the bit of obvious trolling at the end with the statues was fun WISH I HAD USED A DIFFERENT PARTY though ugh >.>

Ayla now my most leveled character since she is always in my party...


The upgrades in Chrono Trigger DS are just...so boss and the bonus dungeon XP is just so godly compared to anything but black omen abuse(which is limited to x3)

Learned some new stuff about the mechanics and.....yeah need moar speed tabs.
At least satus immunity actually prevents lock now yay! A BIT TO LATE but at least the 10,000 xp monster is an easy 2-3 turn kill now instead of 10 mins of poking it with attack for 8-24.

Going to farm the black omen then unlock the final hidden story arc, I hear you need to be 90-99 in order to even have a hope of beating/getting to the final, last boss. But on the other hand Mdef Speed,Str,Evasion and HP/MP is maxed on most of my characters already so...we shall see...it will probably be a "trick" boss though so actual stats will mean jack shit.

THEN I GET TO PLAY IT ALL OVER <3
Grinding the Monster battle system in game right now for the special secret items that sound like they will be interesting to have equipped!

[Meeplelard]

Metal Gear Solid 2: JUst met MR. PRESIDENT!  And then well...you know...

I do have to rage at this game for one little thing, and that's the stuff right after and before the Harrier.  The Harrier fight was fine, a notable upgrade from the MGS1 equivalent "Fighter Aerial vehicle with Anti Air Missiles" fight, mostly because there was a lot less waiting, but then MGS2 being better at MGS1 at combat related things, shock, awe, etc.


But then we have a section where a slight mistep = Instant Death?  Ugh, fuck that noise.  Instant Death related bullshit should not be in a game like this, at least a section geared around it.  Well, no, "don't trip bombs" is a completely fair thing because that's 100% your fault and the game is often good at warning you, and you'll maybe fail it once.

The "Snipe Bombs out" thing needs punting if only because you have to hit a MOBILE TARGET WITH A SHAKEY SNIPER RIFLE.  Ok, the Mobile Target wouldn't be so bad if one slight mis-time = instant death.  Was there really any reason to keep that in the game?  It doesn't make the game any harder in anyway that adds enjoyment, just makes things more frustrating.

[superaielman]

Graces thoughts:

Polish is fairly good. There is a fairly notable jump in polish between Abyss and Vesperia, and another one between Vesperia and Graces. I would've liked the shuttle earlier in the game, but oh well. 

Gameplay was fantastic. It can be as easy or as hard as you want- with IC, adjustable challenge, and controllable stat growth through titles,  you can really craft the experience you want.  Sidequests can sometimes be annoying, but the rewards are decent. You do not have to sidequest at all- game gives you enough titles- but it is nice if you are a completionist. CC system is a welcome change as noted, ToV's gameplay was definitely on the stale side.  I loved the gameplay, I loved the sidequesting. Don't really feel a need to write a ton about it. I did notice the amount of travel time you spend wandering back and fourth. Dungeon design was a mix of pretty and absolutely wretched. Tales has long (Aquaveil!) had bad dungeons.  Wallbridge and the Amarcian ruins were both amazingly bad for that. Special dishonor goes to the cocoon, which combines a vertical maze with boring puzzles. 

The translation seemed a bit off at points to me, but it was mostly Magic Carta and some skits.

Plot and characters were hit and miss. I liked the majority of the cast. ToG almost exclusively focuses on the cast, which gives them a ton of time to develop. Asbel in particular was excellent both as a kid and as an adult. The plot wasn't especially ambitious. It is pretty standard geopolitical fare with a couple of points I liked.  Plot stuff below.


Short version is that three countries are at war with each other. Richard wants to stop this. His rampage ends up uniting the three main countries together. Lambda mentions the need for a common enemy at one point, and that's exactly what he provided. I don't think any of the PC cast ever commented on that- the kindly king going nuts ended up averting a world war over resources.  The three countries have very different governments and resources at hand, so the clashes even make some sense. Stratha is a oligarchy, Windor is a 'kingdom' with very little direct control given to the crown, and Fendel is a brutal dictatorship trying to deal with a bad hand being dealt to it.  The only way they were going to be united is the Valkines getting zapped and that is what happened.

The first half of the game works for plot. Things get a little sketchy when you get the shuttle. ToG wanted the main villains (Richard and Lambda) to be sympathetic. For that to work, they had to use Emeraude to handle the villain duties in the second half. I didn't think it worked very well. There was also some eye rollingly bad NO THE HUMANS ARE THE DEMONS shit that was awful a decade and a half ago.   Thankfully this was not on camera long.

I haven't finished F arc yet.

Cedric rivals or perhaps surpasses Galen of Farseer fame for doucheness. It's amazing how much he fucks things up in spite of limited camera time.

Asbel- Thought he was fantastic. He grows up during the game, literally and figuratively. He goes through several stages of development (Bratty kid->Knight->leader). It doesn't really feel rushed either. his conflict with Cheria and Hubert after growing up is very good as well. Asbel made some poor choices and he pays for it.  He still has his funny moments later on- he may be an adult, but you can still see the goofy kid at a couple of points. (His skit with Cheria and Hubert after battle is great). Relationship with Cheria is quite good, then tails off after they reconcile during the Strahta arc. That holding pattern hurts Cheria a hell of a lot, see below.

Cheria- She is probably the weakest of the characters. She is stuck as a love interest and as the party mother. Boy, talk about unexciting roles.  She has her moments with Asbel, but is largely relegated to being support.

Richard- Solid enough.  He has every reason to be bitter and untrusting; Asbel really brings out the best of him as a character. Want to play more of the F arc before saying much, since he has a lot of camera time there.

Hubert- He doesn't really settle into the party until the Fendel arc.  He spends most of the early adult arc furious at Asbel and his parents (With excellent reason in the latter case).  He loves calling people out on keeping secrets and bullshit- he would've had a field day in TotA. He is right to suspect Pascal and Malik, but completely misreads their intentions.  Game nailed just how screwed up his relationship was with Asbel which is a bonus.  He is mostly played as comic relief, which is good with how seriously he takes himself.

Sophie-  Sophie is Sophie. She appears, she develops as a person slowly over the game, she deals with her past being a blank slate. It isn't anything groundbreaking, but she's good enough for what she is.

Malik- He's fine as a static character, and is surprisingly funny. His past was a total copy and paste effort, but ah well.

Pascal-  She was funny at points, but also loses massive points for the loli groping gimmick. She was there to provide some zaniness to the party, which was her strongest aspect.  She also was kind of the Pascal ex machina at points in the plot, but it's not a big deal I suppose. Her big reveal was handled pretty well though.

Party chemistry was helped immensely by the camera time and it being a group of peers. There was no Yuri or Jade who really dominated things, and all the PC's bounce off each other fairly well.

My overall thoughts is that there is some very good character stuff mixed in with a lot of generic stuff.  No idea what I'm rating it yet. I loved playing the game, and love a lot of the ideas they put in there.  Maybe an 8 or a 9- very likely the best Tales game I've played.

[Fenrir]

Fenrir: Er. It really isn't surprising that Shepard can beat Dudebro in a fight. ME2 plot stuff means Shep is established as being quite a bit stronger then their body should indicate.

In a fight, yes. In a regular boxing fights without any super lasers or super armor though? She's made out of paper compared to dudebro and doesn't even have any particular tricks.

ME3: Oh come on. Don't put a meaningless turret section like in every basic shooter.
I got

Code: [Select]

Garrus. Still no particularly great scene but I'm never going to battle without him.
Multiplayer is the most evil skinner box I've seen, with all that randomness.
Fights are still pretty fun though, at least when things start getting serious and jolly cooperation starts being essential.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Shep was rebuilt by Cerberus into the six-million-dollar Commander, not just back to normal specs. He's got cybernetic and genetic enhancements far beyond anyone else in the Alliance military. Might as well be wearing a red track suit.

[SnowFire]

Ys II Chronicles: Finished.  It was fun despite objectively having some pretty serious flaws from age. 

Gameplay: Random-smashing is WAY easier in Ys II; it's called "run in diagonals."  If you are running in a diagonal you are invincible, if you are going in a straight line the good ramming ship Adol will take damage.  I loaded a game of Ys I to see if I just hadn't noticed this before, and nope, this strategy seems like it will get you killed in Ys I.  As for bosses, mostly goddamnit it don't balance using subtractive Defense, damnit.  If you play a Metroidvania game and run around underlevel with bad gear, you'll do cruddy damage and get 2HKOed by everything, but you can theoretically win.  (And in fact the max lvl. 1 mode exists for this challenge.)  If you are underlevel in Ys II there's a decent number of bosses you just tink off and it's time to go level some more.  Third to last boss, Zeva, ended up particularly disappointing: I kept grinding trying to damage her at all, then realized I'd missed a new sword (which powers up your fireballs), then suddenly I was killing her too quickly with the extra levels + better gear.  She'd have been a great fight otherwise.  On the bright side, final boss was pretty awesome.  Actually managed to die to him the first time despite Elixir, and was still a good fight on the second go 'round.

Map navigation has the giant asterisk that a few "doorways" are practically invisible and required a FAQ to be cued into investigating there.  Ah old games.

Plot: Ys plot is so weird.  It tries too hard.  And it has some interesting elements yet mostly accidentally.  Instead it wastes time on nonsensical explanations of the puzzle of the day, similar to my complaint about Metroid Fusion.  I guess Zelda is the most comparable series here, and while Zelda plot is not generally hypable, it *usually* knows when to just not explain weird puzzle crap because it's a game.  Look, having a goddess statue write on special paper that there's a special anti-illusion mirror hidden by the dark forces in the ice ridge is just weird.  A Zelda game would just let you find the mirror, and then you could figure out that the door you can't get through must be an illusion, and then you can use the darn thing.  Similarly, what is this nonsense about magically crafting this special lava zone as a (totally ineffective) moat against demons?  Really, just have the ice & fire zones next to one another 'cuz, any explanation is worse that none.  (Who knows, maybe Ys Origin will have something incredible.)

Flip side, it did have a few bits that were neat, and even awesome.  I liked the Roo's Nest and the monster dialogue XSeed wrote.  And the Campanile of Lane was appropriately dramatic.  Wish more games knew when it was more dramatic to have no monsters.  (Weird that the final final area also was monsterless, when they had a perfectly decent excuse for there to be more monsters there.  And to abuse Time Stop some more.)

Adol being silent is still a bad idea, which shows most in his interaction with damsel in distress three (!) times, Lilia.  What does Adol think about Lilia?!  Who knows.  It's hard for sparks to fly when it feels more like a one-sided infatuation.  Still, I'd be fine with just having it stated that they're totes in love, in time for PLOT TWIST in the ending of it being... Adol & Feena?!  Adol spent approximately 0 time with Feena, come on, she was only damsel in distress once, Lilia totally has you beat here.  And the game never explained Feena's amnesia or WTF was going on in general with why the Goddesses lost power, but didn't really, but got captured or something.  Ah well.  More perplexing was the Ocaraina of Time esque "Sages" plotline, or in this case "Descendents of the Priests."  Nobody fessed up to being Fact's descendent!  Do we have enough?  Not that the priests DO anything aside from hand you a Shield & a harmonica, there doesn't even seem to be any magical cheerleading ritual to enforce the mystic seal or some such, where missing a descendent of Fact might matter.  Le sigh.  Also I guess Ys wasn't destroyed 700 years ago, but just blasted off into the sky because that's what the cool islands do.  Maybe more in Ys Origin, we'll see.

Music was awesome as expected.  Personal nods for best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmE-ERWGq6E&feature=BFa&list=PL83781B8B76E9A29A Palace of Destruction (Lower levels of the Shrine, Ys I)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teWi23cvKMs&feature=BFa&list=PL83781B8B76E9A29A Dreaming (damn mirror maze)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYROVcW5lGY&feature=BFa&list=PL83781B8B76E9A29A Ruins of Moondoria (Shame it's such a small area, but best to start the game with a good track I guess)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT8jlrsOHx0&feature=BFa&list=PL83781B8B76E9A29A Ice Ridge of Noltia

Ys: The Oath in Felghana (PSN): Whoa so Adol decides to travel the world with Dogi?  Okay that explains the random comment from Goban in the Ys II ending about "Oh Gobi's waiting for you too!" I guess.  Random thief who knocks down walls is bros with Adol, got it.  I guess they want a rotation of anime girls each game for the player to wonder if this will be the one for Adol's wandering heart or something.  Which it won't be, Mr. travelling silent heartbreaker.

[Niu]

Ys needs as much of Dogi's wall breaking as Adol's drowning. Without it, Ys is incomplete.

[Clear Tranquil]

Final Fantasy Chibis - Completed Series Mode. Currently working on improving my Scores in Challenge Mode. So far I have two S ranks, Eternal Wind and Sunleth Waterscape (Vanille vibes yaay~) and quite a few A ranks. I also scored a perfect chain for Fight with Seymour and another battle stage though didn't make the S rank for them yet. My team is coming up for L30 average, I am using Lightning, Terra, Shantotto and Cloud ^_^ So far everyone has had a turn as leader apart from Shantotto. The one Dark Note I've unlocked kicks my ass. I've been getting my character shards from Rhythmia flags, every other 500 points. I have 3/8 for Vivi (yaay~) Cid (meh - but apparently I need him for a Libra based Farming team) and Ashe (=()

I enjoyed reading about your experiences and thoughts on the game Ciato!~

Game is definitely very fun and addictive I find. The nostalgia, chibis, RPG elements, etc make it playable even for somebody who is poor with rhythm/sound and hand/eye co-ordination =) Maxxing out my characters will help me do better on Expert and Dark Notes I hope Levelling and setting them up with different skills and abilities has seemed to help me do better on Normal already at least~

[Meeplelard]

Metal Gear Solid 2:  Finished.

First off, let me just say the whole Naked Raiden thing was completely unnecessary.  Look, I get it; you want a section of the game where he person is defenseless and you have to rely on actual sneaking around...but we didn't need to see Raiden's ass the entire time.  Pretty sure the first one just had Snake with his shirt off, which I have to question why they went the extra mile.

Also, Final boss really needed to not have Burn status.  The fight has enough going on as is (especially with the weird sword controls, though I did discover a few gimmicks that helped make the fight more bare-able...also worth noting only ONCE did I die by damage; the other 3-4 were accidentally running off the ledge, and pressing Dodge thus falling to my death...), there's no reason to force you to dodge like a moron to get rid of progressive damage.  It stalls the fight, not so much makes it harder.


That said, gameplay was a dramatic step up from the original.  There was more you can actually do, actual ways to use Guns to avoid combat rather than promote it (shoot with M9 -> Wait for them to fall asleep.  Nice how you can hit any part of their body, and they'll be affected eventually), the actual combat didn't completely fail this game if it was forced (instead promoting you to avoid combat by making it clearly punishing), and boss fights definitely were better designed, as well as THE ABILITY TO AIM NORMALLY AND INTUITIVELY.  Though, the gauntlet of enemies with Snake was...not well crafted; combat is improved, but not enough to suggest something like that.  Also, I never used any of my C4 or mines or anything.

Plot...well...based on the first two games, I feel like anything before the last 2 hours in an MGS game is meaningless on plot.  Its all red herrings, random action movie stuff, etc. until the last 2 hours where there's the CONSTANT VILLAIN RAMBLINGS that FINALLY tell you what the hell is actually going on.  And based on that...well...

A. 30 Xanatos Pile Up much?  I don't have to explain this
B. Did we REALLY need all the philosophical nonsense?  Being philosophical doesn't make you game deeper if you're BLATANTLY TELLING WHAT THE PLAYER HAS TO THINK ABOUT.  If you want to be philosophical, be subtle about it damn it!  Especially since the game kind of answers its own philosophical questions in the epilogue with Snake's monologue.
C. Game is complicated for the sake of being complicated.  Yes, we get it; the Not!Illuminati have actually been controlling everything, even stuff you didn't think they were, and there was only one unexpected factor in the mix.  I know this is MGS standard for constant villainous reveals on top of other ones, but the concept here was simplistic enough that point A just comes off as meaningless.  As soon as that organization was mentioned, it became blatantly obvious "They are behind everything, PERIOD."
D. The whole "This was based off Shadow Moses Island incident!" feels more like their way of saying "Oh shit, we're just rewriting the plot and events of the first game in a different setting aren't we?  I know!  We'll say its intentional!"  Game gets points for a clever explanation, but I can't fathom that was all intended from the outset.  Someone mid development must have recognized what they were actually doing, and rather than change it, they came up with an explanation to justify it.


Also, I think not playing MGS1 in its hay-day helps this game because it means the RAIDEN DISAPPOINTMENT FACTOR makes me not give 2 shits.  Though from my understanding, that was entirely Konami's fault for how they promoted MGS2, showing nothing but scenes from the Tanker section of the game, implying "MORE SNAKE!" and then it actually being another character's game after what was effectively the demo.  Raiden himself wasn't a bad protagonist, truth be told, as I'm sure most of the hate for him stems from "NOT SNAKE "


Oh, and kudos for the game having a sense of variety in the OST.  While I won't say I LIKED the songs, at least this game knew that playing the same damn song in 5 different variants does not constitute as an OST.  Seriously, as I probably mentioned before, MGS1's final boss theme (of sorts) sounding almost exactly the same as generic grunts just...kind of loses all meaning, and gets tiring.  Nice to here at least different melodies.


So yeah, MGS3 is next, naturally, will probably start that up within a week or something.