What games are you playing 2014?

[VySaika]

Bravely Default - Really appreciating the polish in odd places this game has. Adjustable difficulty in game(started on normal but finding it too easy? Jack it up to hard! Started on hard but this one boss is murdering the fuck out of you and you don't want to grind? Slide down to normal, then back up after the asshole is dealt with). Encounter control not as a skill but as a part of the basic system both in letting you turn encounters off entirely or just turn them down, or even get more if you're looking to grind in a certain spot. Starting with the Scan equivalent and it works on everything including bosses, and anything you've scanned before you can check the weaknesses of again. Adventurers blatantly telling you when a boss is coming up, and also providing a resupply point if you need more items deep in the dungeon. I don't even mind the lack of tents/party healing items, since if I need more MP I can just buy ethers.

Just finished the Fire Crystal area, picked up the last of the sidequest jobs from there as well. The bosses are fighting back a lot more, which is fun. Randoms still mostly roll over and die, but they can be dangerous if I let them get turns.

Plot and Chars are nothing special, but not offensive either(for the most part). Gameplay alone is shaping this up to be...probably 8/10 material, could go up to 9 depending on how much fun I have mixing and matching class abilities. Could drop down to a 7 if the plot takes a nosedive into the actively bad.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Played SotN over the past couple of days because I have it on XBLA and it's been like five years or so.  I'm realizing now that weapon progression feels very off.  There's a lot of weapons with interesting effects but, for the most part, they are effectively given to you all at once, since the inverted castle has no gating mechanisms.  They really needed to introduce more gimmicky weapons in the first castle, I think.  The elemental swords are about as "out there" as weapons get in the first half of the game and I think that's a shame.  It's a good game but I think it would be much more enjoyable if your weapons didn't play basically the same for the first half of the game and then suddenly it gets crazy.  That's one of the things that the Metroid games did much better, you start getting different beam functions much earlier.

[Sierra]

SOTN is unbalanced in sooo many ways but weapon availability is definitely one of the wonkier ones. There's a lot of quirky, cool-sounding stuff that you can pick up in the second half of the game, but there's really no compelling reason to actually use most of these items once you've hit on one earlier find that has the most efficient combination of attack power and speed. It feels like a waste, you know?

~

BG2: I can punch through adamantium. Bite me, Logan.

Tried fighting Kangaxx before hitting Spellhold. It went poorly. Last time I could just throw Minsc at him, but this time I have no rockheaded Imprisonment-immune berserker to hold his attention. So the only apparent plan was to distract him with summons while I pelted him with Minute Meteors constantly. Because Kangaxx takes 1 damage from like everything, I ran out of meteors before he ran out of HP. Oh well, will have to come back later with more meteors. I can get by without his nifty ring for a while. Basically everything I engage in combat explodes instantly anyway.

Wait how do the apprentices in the mage stronghold know Dimension Door. You can't get that until you're like level seven! I was saving nations at that level! Just how long does someone have to stay an apprentice in Amn, anyway? This place is such a drag.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

SOTN is unbalanced in sooo many ways but weapon availability is definitely one of the wonkier ones. There's a lot of quirky, cool-sounding stuff that you can pick up in the second half of the game, but there's really no compelling reason to actually use most of these items once you've hit on one earlier find that has the most efficient combination of attack power and speed. It feels like a waste, you know?

That's my sentiment exactly.  I think if the inverted castle was gated off similarly to the start of the game, or you started seeing the more niche weapons in the first half, I'd have a lot more of a reason to use it.  Makes me wish there was a hacking community for PSX games that extended beyond FFT.

[Grefter]

I don't think the weapon curve takes to much to resolve really in SotN if you can accept that it is going to be inherently broken.  Take the weakest quarter (maybe a third?) of stuff from the Clocktower onwards and mix it starting from the Normal Library onwards while moving the Shield Rod to the inverted Clock Tower instead of the normal Colosseum and you will be doing an okay job.

You could totally have taken Kangaxx.  Thing to always always do, Helm of Vhailor lets you cast Simulacrum.  Simulacrums can use items in their quick item slots.  Scrolls of Magic Protetction are rare and super valuable and will make one person at least immune to Imprison.  Scrolls of Protection from Undead are cheap and plentiful from Temples.  Scrolls of Protection from Undead make Kangaxx ignore that person as a target.  This should give you all the tools you will ever need to beat him in any party.  Magic Protection can be used just fine on more than one person.  If you are going to send someone within 30 yards of Magic Protected party members you will want to have Death Ward on them because Wail of the Banshee will be cast periodically (Spell Protection: Necromancy also works but is more niche).

DDS2 - So finally pushed through and finished this, been sitting on the final dungeon for a couple of weeks now, but it turns out it was shorter than I was expecting.  Layer 5's force you into human form section got a ragequit late at night with getting 2 party members charmed by Vanity on a Kingu being my first two members.  Just fucking rude.  Shit like that and enemies that have multiple hitting MT physicals (random number of hits...) critting really shows the volatile weakness to the combat system.  It has some interesting potential with unique things it throws at you with caring about party turn order and conservation of actions of when you want pass with someone or do something else to eke out an extra minor useful action (may as well throw a healing item here because I have a press turn that I am going to waste otherwise because next person will kill enemy anyway).

I don't really have to say anything about that though because there is nothing new I can really add to the discussion here that hasn't been said before other than noting that now having finished it, I still definitely fully capable of seeing why I hated the combat system so many years back when I played DDS1, it is craaaaaazy high swing potential and I have been wiped by the likes of a Narasimha going on a crit spree a couple of times tonight, but they are the exception rather than the norm.  It is an interesting experiment and one I am glad they did, now if they could just stop imping it that would be great.  Even as they scale it back in the likes of Persona series of Strange Journey it keeps being not so great.  Oh well!

What I really loved though is as always the visual design.  I continue to dig the aesthetic they use even with the humans (they are very clean and while very samey at times, the costume design is always impeccable).  The final boss is just great.  You finally get to the centre of the sun to meet "God".  It is a giant floating brain.  Then when Seraph starts talking to it it unfurls both lobes like a pair of wings and envelopes the part in a pocket dimension while revealing an art deco style head that is the bottom half of a face with a prayer wheel for eyes.  Then as you get into a fight with Brahma it is an endless pillar with 5 of these art deco prayer wheel heads that you sort of distort around in space as you defeat.  Just so great.

There isn't much to say other than it is interesting seeing the Shin Megami script done to the exploration of Buddhism as a personal journey.  Before I mentioned that I thought the game could have dropped Serph and just had Gale as the main protagonist, but that was me reading it like a standard narrative instead of SMT style exploration of a theme through the same singular story that they keep using.  They didn't need Serph really, but they did need Sera and Sera did need to merge with something (become one with her own creations) and doing that with Gale wouldn't have worked so well.  So Serph can survive the cutting room floor for now I guess.

Something that I really think Atlus do that is somewhat unique is they are really the only studio I can think of that seem to approach video games in a particular way that some artists seem to.  They are the only studio that I can think of that as a whole really push this one style and theme so constantly while trying to sort through something.  Like Francis Bacon did series preoccupied with death or Andy Warhol on mass production, Atlus are all about exploring as many different things they can through this lens of the end of the world, distorted reality (Whether it be another dimension or a virtual one or both at the same time), all myth being real and coexisting and humans making bargains and choices throughout all this. 

That isn't to say there isn't other people in the industry that do that kind of thing, but they are more auteurs rather than a collective company (your Miyamoto, Sid Meier, Suda 51 or Warren Spector types), they do often investigate a broad range of topics through their various games, but it is specifically (at least marketed as) their vision rather than a large encompassing thing that goes beyond them.  It is far more personal to them as individuals and transcends company for some of them.

Nor is it to say that there isn't companies that reiterate previous concepts and go over them or reuse stuff over and over.  Bioware and Blizzard both cop flak for this (undeserving at times I think, reiteration and repetition in your works is a sign of progression in your piece sometimes, does give your public a sense of safety/familiarity sometimes, establishes a brand or style and sometimes you do just have a similar plot structure) and I have already talked before about how I really enjoy the fact that Gust seem to be constantly trying to experiment with small individual things each game, shifting up their focus from game to game to experiment the different things.  None of them have nearly the same all encompassing drive to this one "style" that Atlus have in their Megami line.  It transcends visual style, gameplay elements and even narrative, it is sort of this all encompassing framework to view various themes and ideas through.

They have been doing it for nearly 30 years now and have run it through so many different iterations even just in the last 10 years where we have seen high school slice of life, dating sim, Noir detective story set in WW2, DDS's overarching examination on the nature of modern existence and Buddhism (if I had to pick a theme it would be wrestling with the concept of reincarnation in a modern scientific world).

What I really look forward to seeing is what they do when they decide they are done and move on to something else.  Persona 4 feels on the cusp of moving on maybe and Catherine really feels like it could be the first off shoot of really breaking that mold (it is still clearly the same style, but the formula has changed.  It is significantly more personal.  It could be just an examination of relationships but they change up the formula so much that I do think it is something legitimately different).  I need to get around to it.  SMT4 did come out though, so they clearly aren't done (and there is always going to be a business element to it), but here is hoping we get more things from these people that are interesting and different now that they fall under Sega's umbrella.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I don't think the weapon curve takes to much to resolve really in SotN if you can accept that it is going to be inherently broken.  Take the weakest quarter (maybe a third?) of stuff from the Clocktower onwards and mix it starting from the Normal Library onwards while moving the Shield Rod to the inverted Clock Tower instead of the normal Colosseum and you will be doing an okay job.

Oh, I totally get that SotN is going to be broken because the game is hella easy.  I just think that they jam the vast majority the fun weapons into the very end of the game and don't give you many before that.

[Grefter]

Yeah we are on the same page, I mean you could do it without modifying attack power of weapons to try and balance it by like giving Crissaegrim -10 attack power or anything boring like that.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Xenogears - Kislev. In which the game decides it needs to intersperse gears and fighting into a game which, as Fei observed, did not need more gears and fighting.


Hour 12: The section opens with several main plot scenes. There is some stuff with Sigmund. I'll withhold judgement since this dude does have, like, one more scene after this, but he's always a weird character to see. He's barely in the plot and we hardly get any sense of him. I remember that he's Rico's dad apparently and this is barely touched on at all. Blah. Anyway the important thing here is that he's taking assistance from some mysterious military force... kinda like what's going on in Aveh! It's not clear at this point if this force is the same as the one in Aveh or different, although it's certainly no major surprise when we learn they are in fact the same. It's somewhat amusing that not only is it the same organisation, but the same person giving the orders in this case.

Finally we refer to Fei for the first time in a while. He's having a dream which doesn't have much meaning the first time through, but has a lot of significance on a replay. In it there are three versions of himself: a young child watching a video of himself playing with his mother over and over, the adult Fei who is confused by the spectacle he sees, and a very evil-looking adolescent version of himself who interrupts them both and tells Fei to GTFO. Some pretty clear symbolism for the Fei backstory here.

Okay, now for boring stuff. Fei wakes up in Kislev, where he has been imprisoned. A bunch of thugs round him up so we can have a manliness contest (I think one of them is a woman, but XG sprites make it hard to tell~) because apparently those are all the rage in this world. We also meet Rico. I have... remarkably little to say about him for now.

Apparently everyone wants Fei to fight things, since a woman named Rue Cohen shows up and tries to recruit him to fight in the gear battling arena. He basically tells her to fuck off, as he's pretty fed up with fighting at this point. I can't say I don't sympathise here. A bunch of thugs may have been able to force him into this nonsense but political types have nothing on him. She even promises him a place in the Kislev military instead of prison if he succeeds. She probably has no idea what a terrible piece of bait this is.

We meet Hammer. Hammer's in general one of the brighter spots of the Kislev arc, since he gets some quite funny scenes. He is an admirably pushy little salesman, and for some reason he has been promised freedom if Fei can earn his. He tries to push Fei into the gear competition as well, blathering about living in luxury with all the power he can want, and Fei just goes "... is that all? Are you done?" I must say I do like how Fei just cuts through Hammer's bullshit here; he's not kidding around, and it will take a plot contrivance to change his mind.

Citan then appears! I guess that qualifies. Of course, Citan being here isn't contrived at all, as following Fei is his job, after all! He finally succeeds where Rue and Hammer failed, luring Fei with a promise he made Bart: to look after things if Bart should fall. Well, Bart is gone. Memories of those happier times with Bart do resonate with Fei and he agrees, he has to hold to his promise.

We also meet the Gazel Council, in a cutscene as Fei sleeps. Man these guys are dicks. Their first scene and they're already talking about purging the Lambs, oh boy.


Hour 13: Now that Fei has agreed to become a battler, we get a lot of that. There are three days of gear battles. I kinda like this minigame... when played against other players anyway. In this game it's very straightforward and easy. Which, well, is fine, I don't need a mini-game in the way of my plot. It still eats a fair bit of time. Fei is given Weltall to use, which is no shock as earlier scenes (and Citan's musing) make it clear that Kislev wants to gather data on him using it (though exactly what data is left vague IIRC).

There are some complications to these days of battling, which concern setting up the next dungeon. On the first day, Fei battles one of Rico's flunkies, who triggers a bomb (?) on Weltall. Fei is almost killed and lies injured in the prison clinic. Two of the flunkies then meet that night in the sewers, and we watch as a red-soaked point of view murders both of them. The next day, Fei is cleared to continue onto the next round, as wouldn't you know it, the two murder victims were the other two competitors from his side in the draw. Convenient. I'll say more about this later.

Anyway, Fei finishes up his battling, winning through two more days. After that, Rico confronts him. Rico says that Fei is suspected of the murder of his flunkies, because the flunkies set the bomb for him on day 1. Fei doesn't like being suspected of murder, so he tags along with Rico as they go to investigate the sewers. I still don't have much to say about Rico.


Hour 14: Sewers. Okay, okay, Xenogears gameplay. For the first time since the Stalactite Cave, we actually get a decent chunk of it at once. They are tring some things like "you can't target sharks until they jump onto land" and "this dude counters deathblows" but none of it is very interesting. I guess I can derive some small pleasure in trying to work out whether I can afford to use non-deathblows on randoms and still kill them in the same amount of turns but objectively this is just really terrible. Systems where you lower your power now to get more later = go jump off a bridge plz.

Rico is a horrible, horrible PC, getting instant doubled by Citan, having like 60% of his HP, and taking way more from magic (though hey a bit less from physicals!). This is despite my leaving the Speed Ring on him when Citan makes the best use of it, probably. (Citan swipes his Power Ring S instead.)


Hour 15: We finally track down the boss of this place, Redrum, who has apparently been doing the murders. One neat touch, though: you see things through Redrum's eyes several times in this dungeon... through a green haze, when the murders of the Rico flunkies were through a red one. On my first playthrough I don't think I caught the significance there, but yeah, it's pretty clear that we actually go off and murder the wrong monster. Citan feels strangely bad for Redrum and even stays back alone to bury it, which is also a nice touch.

Speaking of which, Redrum is a pretty good boss in theory whom I steamroll every playthrough; this time is no different.

As we leave the sewers, we get a second scene with Emperor Cain, and it becomes more clear that Citan's job includes tracking Fei. He also reveals Fei has "awakened" three times (Lahan, Vanderkaum, and... hint #3 as to who the real murderer is...). The scene ends with Cain announcing that the council has ordered a "Purge". We cut to Elly and her troops, who have just received their orders to participate in this mission. Elly isn't happy about this, and is visibly on edge throughout the scene, alternating between being nasty to her subordinates and apologising to them as she struggles with what's going on. She finally reveals to her troops that she's just not happy with genociding humans. We learn that her troops, as third class citizens, are sympathetic to this view (huh, these guys are much nicer when they're not all drugged up) but are surprised to see it out of an upper-crust elite like Elly herself.

Anyway, the battle arena stuff gets wrapped up, Fei beats a bunch more dudes. Right before the final battle, Wiseman shows up! He wastes some time by blathering about YOU CAN'T BEAT STIER BECAUSE MASS IS IMPORTANT AND HE HAS THE MOST MASS don't give me this bullshit when Rico/Stier are such bad PCs and then challenges Fei to a fight because fucking everyone does this in this world. I am all ready to just throw a brick at Wiseman for being a waste of space, but after the fight Fei asks him who the fuck he is and what's going on?

... and holy hell, Wiseman gives him an answer. Thank goodness. We learn a fair bit about him here, and about Fei's past: he tells Fei about how his mother died when he was young, that his father was an officer from the flying kingdom of Shevat, and that Grahf coveted Fei and fought his father. He actually tells most of the truth here, though doesn't reveal (of course) that he is actually Fei's father or that he is fused with Grahf. That he doesn't reveal the second is obvious - I wouldn't expect him to - but the first is odd. I guess because he knows he's Grahf he doesn't want to risk Fei finding that out and thus shattering his psyche when he realises this means Grahf is his father, kinda? Still yeah, this is another one of those scenes where "holy shit Xenogears just revealed a lot of key stuff instead of sitting on it for longer", good to know. Hammer sends off the scene with some comic relief, blathering about "what the hell just happened" while Citan and Fei discuss things.

The final battle with Stier happens, it is easy like all the rest. Rico accepts his defeat gracefully and continues to be boring. After this we finally get a scene which hints at something more from this bland character, as he heads off to Stier resolving to "get him, myself!" We later learn Rico's gear, in a later fight, "malfunctioned" and crahsed into the kaiser's box seat. What connection do these two underdevelopped characters have?

But meanwhile, the plot is trying to catch up! We see Elly and her troops again, as they have been ordered to participate in the purge of Kislev. We also meet Dominia, who is something of a rival to Elly, a fellow female officer. The two are rather obvious foils and I'm surprised I never noticed: Elly is a first-class citizen who feels bad for the Lambs, while Dominia is a former Lamb herself who has risen up and will have no mercy for those that her commanders have ordered her to take action against. Dominia reveals that the plan is to essentially detonate a nuclear reactor, destroying most of the city and rendering it uninhabitable for years, something she has no qualms about. And so the stage is set for the wrapup of the Kislev arc and for Elly to finally make her expected jump to the PC side...

[Fenrir]

FF2 Yattaf solo: Finished. Emperor died in 3 hits.
The easiest challenge.

I was surprised to see that fists, swords, daggers, staves, spears, axes are pretty much the same thing. No sword supremacy at all in this game. So it's obvious that you should go for the cooler weapons, i. e. staves and daggers.
Shields are perfect evasion vs lower damage. You just really don't get hit anymore with one. You can also achieve that by just training with a shield for a while then not equipping the heaviest shit you find.
Bows are kinda lame. Front row shield, back row double shield seem like much better options if you want some defense on your mage.

Toad and Teleport were still pretty much near 100% multitarget instant death for the rest of the game.
Fire, blizzard, thunder are the same spell. Fire hit more weaknesses.
Scourge sucks. It's also the same spell but gotten later, and basically nothing is weak to poizn.
Holy sucks. Its big thing is that it relies on spirit rather than int. No one has more spirit than int unless they're roleplaying a white mage or something.
Flare is kinda stronger than the basic spells, but gotten too late to really be worth it.
Ultima sucks unless you're overleveling to hell, or are soloing. It was the strongest spell by a very small margin in my game.
Berserk is the "Now I kill everything in one hit" button.
Haste is like Berserk but worse. Both can be used together for fun results though.


FF1 Anniversary Yattaf solo: Black mages are girls.
I tried a red mage before but he took no damage from anything + did less damage with spells than with physicals. Black mage is a more interesting challenge.
Early on most enemies kill you really really fast and you have to put them all to sleep, then pick them one by one (With physicals or fire/thunder) Incidentally that's how I killed the pirates.
Then you get the multitarget spells and ^_^

[Dark Holy Elf]

I was surprised to see that fists, swords, daggers, staves, spears, axes are pretty much the same thing. No sword supremacy at all in this game. So it's obvious that you should go for the cooler weapons, i. e. staves and daggers.
Shields are perfect evasion vs lower damage. You just really don't get hit anymore with one. You can also achieve that by just training with a shield for a while then not equipping the heaviest shit you find.
Bows are kinda lame. Front row shield, back row double shield seem like much better options if you want some defense on your mage.

Most of this sounds pretty much correct. Swords do get quite a bit better than other weapons late, though, as Defender is pretty great for an evade boost (lets you use heavier shit, mostly, while still maintaining crazy high evade... probably doesn't matter on a solo as with even more levels you probably just dodge everything armour can protect you from, and you no longer care about armour which resists status since you just use a Ribbon on your one PC), and Excalibur/especially Masamune are quite a lot stronger than other weapons at the very end.

Still fun to read about as always!

[superaielman]

Fenrir: PSP version of FF1, or PSX?

FF1: Playing this, PSX versions. Thief/Monk/WM/BM team. Thieves are terrible. They are more than terrible, they are White Mages *with no magic* till you get Rune Blades at the end of the Elfland arc. Monks are also total garbage during this timeframe. There were entire random battles where my white mage did the most damage. This is just beyond pathetic.

Marsh Cave was really easy. I got lucky (I think PSX version made running easier which helps tons) and was able to run from almost all the randoms. Wizards were also cake. What was *not* easy: getting to the Marsh Cave with enough resources to beat the Wizards. It took me several tries (augh) because my team was completely inept against randoms without Black Mage clearing things. Thieves are sub Edward and need to burn in eternal hellfire.

Just got to Melmond. went to Crescent Lake for a Buckler. Party level is 10 right now.

[Sierra]

BG2: Spectator, you are the best beholder ever. See you in Throne of Bhaal, buddy!

[SnowFire]

I'd just like to say that I totally caught the red sight / green sight hint when I played Xenogears.  Fun times, I really wish more games had the balls to give you a murder mystery and have the PCs "solve" it and let the player in that they weren't really right.  (Even if Redrum probably was a threat anyway, so it's not like the PCs are super unsympathetic.)  It's one of XG's more random arcs that ends up having a very very nice touch.

Remind me, was there any particular reason that the Gazel Ministry wanted to do evil shit in Kislev?  I had vague recollections that it was because they feared the Kaiser or something, but from what Elf said, Kislev is also influenced by Solaris, so dunno.  They just stick on their villain hat?

[Cmdr_King]

Because Fei is there and manifesting as Id.  Remember, the reason they're all dead is because of Grahf, and later scenes very deliberately use Id's sprite to represent Grahf at his "triggered a ~95% human depopulation event" genocide peak.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

There's also some vague explanations used about how the Ethos are using prison gear battles for nebulously defined "experiments" if I recall.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, the purge is ordered explicitly because Fei/Id is there and the Gazel want him dead. It doesn't succeed in large part because the other major villains do not share this motive.

There are clearly experiments on people going on in Kislev (by the Ethos/Solaris) and certainly lots of weird mutations (Rico, Redrum, a weird random NPC you meet in the sewers), and gear battling does seem to be tied into this but yeah the details are annoyingly not really specified.

[Captain K.]

Bravely Default:  I just fought Jay Leno and then he became Gandalf.

[Fenrir]

I was surprised to see that fists, swords, daggers, staves, spears, axes are pretty much the same thing. No sword supremacy at all in this game. So it's obvious that you should go for the cooler weapons, i. e. staves and daggers.
Shields are perfect evasion vs lower damage. You just really don't get hit anymore with one. You can also achieve that by just training with a shield for a while then not equipping the heaviest shit you find.
Bows are kinda lame. Front row shield, back row double shield seem like much better options if you want some defense on your mage.

Most of this sounds pretty much correct. Swords do get quite a bit better than other weapons late, though, as Defender is pretty great for an evade boost (lets you use heavier shit, mostly, while still maintaining crazy high evade... probably doesn't matter on a solo as with even more levels you probably just dodge everything armour can protect you from, and you no longer care about armour which resists status since you just use a Ribbon on your one PC), and Excalibur/especially Masamune are quite a lot stronger than other weapons at the very end.

Still fun to read about as always!

Thanks!

Yeah I didn't notice the evade boost from the Defender since it's not mentioned in the description. (unlike the main gauche's)

Status only hit me earlygame really, the ribbon wasn't necessary. I don't know what's the status defense stat but it was probably Insanely High endgame. Physical attacks similarly never ever hit.

The final dungeon dropped a ton of ribbons, I went through it extra quickly (Didn't even find the masamune) and got 6 ribbons out of it.

By the way, the added content to the Anniversary Edition (Not Soul of Rebirth) is really terrible. You're not missing anything.

Oh yeah I forgot a few spells.
Blink, Protect, Shell: Useless here
Cure: Also useless
Aura: I got it to level 6 and haven't even seen it do anything
Osmose: Ethers > This

Oh I also need to mention the hilarity of one of your party members randomly speaking beaver. FF2 is amazing.


Super: PSP version. I have ethers.
Fira on everything, Blizzara on Astos. He went down in 3 turns.
Marsh Cave was intense but it looks like they vastly reduced the encounter rate. I only died around 6 times? Didn't use in dungeon saving (too cheap really)
Anyway I'm really thrilled to open all these chests full of equipment I can't use
Edit: SILVER ARMLET OMG
How can an armlet protect that much

[superaielman]

If you think the Silver Armlet's amazing, wait until the Ruby Armlet and protect ring. Your black mage will dominate Chaos with his mighty physical!

Also you got lucky. The Marsh Cave's encounter rate is really streaky- I  am playing the PSX version and had next to no fights in it this time. The Earth cave more than made up for this.

FF1- Just beat Kraken. Had a few resets in the castle of ordeals because thieves fucking suck.

[Sierra]

BG2: Onward to ToB. Nalia why do you have two different voices now. I don't understand what's happening.

Greater Whirlwind Attack is so amazing. I mean, monkspawn's pretty amazing under normal circumstances! I regularly toss out like thirty damage a hit, get four strikes a turn, and basically never miss. Clearly I needed to be able to bump that up to ten attacks a round, right? I mean, it's all of one round a day you can do this, but seriously nothing's living through that.

Gromnir's speech is pretty great. He's 100% right but you have no reason to listen to him because he's a paranoid twit who is only kind of coincidentally accurate with this particular accusation and ultimately just makes the person he's trying to accuse look better by being a nitwit. Worst townie ever.

[Niu]

There isn't much to say other than it is interesting seeing the Shin Megami script done to the exploration of Buddhism as a personal journey.  Before I mentioned that I thought the game could have dropped Serph and just had Gale as the main protagonist, but that was me reading it like a standard narrative instead of SMT style exploration of a theme through the same singular story that they keep using.  They didn't need Serph really, but they did need Sera and Sera did need to merge with something (become one with her own creations) and doing that with Gale wouldn't have worked so well.  So Serph can survive the cutting room floor for now I guess.

A slight correction. It is Hinduism they used here, not Buddhism.
This is also why they used Brhama instead of Vairocana Buddha (which is already in SMT's rooster) as the last boss.
The reoccurring theme on the unison of the both sex is also something rooted from Hinduism.

[Grefter]

Fair point, my knowledge of Hindu stories are pretty shallow at best and I am also used to Megami Tensei using various things interchangeably enough to not focus excessively on where they come from so much as what they are doing.  The various theologies and myths tend to be trappings used to explore a broader topic, so I really should broaden it to Reincarnation than a specific religion.  That it sounds like they go the trappings fairly thematically consistent is worthy of note, but is expected level of polish from these guys at that point onwards.  They may have sparse plots at times and some missteps in gameplay but setting and flavour is always incredibly slick.

Edit phone auto correct to Megamo Tensei.  Would play.

[AndrewRogue]

Dark Souls

28: Snakemen are surprisingly durable. My rapier seriously does no damage outside of backstabs. Good lesson.
29: Messed up the first fireball platform by missing the stairs.
30: Boulder spitter switched back to the outer stairway at an inconvenient moment.
31: Clipped by a pendulum.
32: Clipped by a different pendulum on the same bridge.
33: Surprise elevator shaft while fighting a mimic.
34: Rolled off a cliff while fighting Iron Golem.
35: Holy shit torch hollows at the Undead Asylum do a fuck load of damage with their charge.

And since I haven't actually really clarified what I've beat...

Dead'd

Stray Demon: Lulz.
Taurus Demon: His archers have killed me more times than him.
Bell Gargoyles: Sunbro too good.
Capra Demon: Fuck you and the dogs you rode in on.
Gaping Dragon: You scare me, but now you are dead.
Moonlight Butterfly: One of the best tracks in the game. I almost always feel bad killing you. That's why I let Witch Beatrice do a good bit of the murder.
Quelaag: I have no idea why Maneater Mildred takes so little damage from fire.
Sen's Fortress: I finally let Iron Tarkus solo the Golem. That was way funnier than it should have been.

[Clear Tranquil]

Lightning Returns- I might be over confident but I think I'm going to be able to get three more main story missions wrapped up by the end of the fourth day. I already have Noel's done and am working on Snow and Caius/Yeul and am about to head off to initiate Sazh's Memory/knowledge/hindsight/etc from the JP version is serving me well even though I'm playing on Normal now~

[Twilkitri]

9.03m - went through

It's definitely something you can go through. I think that anything it made me feel was just due to wishful thinking with regards to the concept rather than anything within the piece itself, though. Disappointing, but it's not like it was expensive (and the money supposedly goes to charities).



Titan Attacks! - gotten up to the final, dropped

Space Invadery style game that's pretty fun. Until you get to Titan, and there's far too much stuff happening to comprehend and I'm reminded of shoot-em-ups and why I don't play them.

Managed to get to (what I assume is) the final and got beaten fairly handily. Replayed the game from the beginning with more skill so that I had a bunch more upgrades by the time I got to Titan, eventually managed to get to the final again and got beaten pretty much as handily as before. I had full shields going into the level both times, and there's no other way to increase your defence, so I'm not bothering with retrying.

Good times while they were good times anyway.



Zen Bound 2 - played through the first tree, dropped

Seems pleasant enough throughout the first tree, then in the second tree they go and drop statuettes on you which require you to wrap in particular ordering so that you don't block parts of them off with your rope. Nothing wrong with that if that's what you're looking for, but it's not what I was looking for. :shrug:



Considered playing the Steam version of Phantasy Star 2, but I ended up deciding that I couldn't be bothered mapping everything out again. Mostly due to memories of that terrible expanding-basements level. And playing with someone else's maps might as well be throwing out half the gameplay, for all that I did that with PSg2.



VC Super Mario Deluxe - played through Original 1985

I game overed a couple dozen times, but I guess I can say that I've beaten SMB1 now. If it counts to be playing a version where you restart from the same level after game overing.

Eventually I figured out that the trick is that you need to walk 90% of the time and only run 10% of the time, whereas later games have conditioned me to run 90% of the time and walk 10% of the time. It's still difficult to bring myself to not hold the button down after realising that, unhappily.

I hate the physics in the game so I see no reason to look into any of the rest of the modes.