Author Topic: What games are you playing 2014?  (Read 213998 times)

Dhyerwolf

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2625 on: November 23, 2014, 05:50:23 AM »
Oh yeah, also going to try a status setup and see if that has luck. Some Withering Ripple+some MT specials (and maybe some Vampire status).
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Dark Holy Elf

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2626 on: November 23, 2014, 06:16:59 AM »
You can neuter that fight by slowing down Qada so that he goes last each turn, and having a Spiritmaster twinked for speed, so that you can respond to each Fire Bane with an elemental immunity buff. Be warned that he can use Fire Bane as often as every other turn, so you'll want either two Spiritmasters or a Performer to ensure you always have the needed actions. But yeah, that should lock down the entire fight, outside the first turn I suppose? That's somewhat RNG reliant since they're all the same speed. Still whatever, reload save at worst.

EDIT: You can also one-round the fight with raw offence but that requires considerably more setup.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2014, 06:19:07 AM by Dark Holy Elf »

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Dhyerwolf

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2627 on: November 23, 2014, 07:11:12 AM »
Yeah, that's the strat I was going to try next (Or am in the middle of trying. Closed it up for the night in the middle of the fight to regain some SP for abuse). Status wasn't cutting it.

That said, as bad as some of these fights are, I can't imagine going at them without the staff special skill (which I don't think you use, IIRC).
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SnowFire

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2628 on: November 23, 2014, 07:30:36 AM »
Dhyer: That's the fight I whined & asked about back in August, if you want to check the archives.  Ephraim covers the offensive style of winning that fight.  It is definitely one of the hardest fights in the game, certainly harder than the final for me, and pretty well demands some kind of specialized strategy / setup.

Personally, I won that fight the lame style: I checked my DS every night or so and input a few more commands using SP until I hit -1, then put the DS back in sleep mode.  Another way to win on turn 1!  (I was reading books at the time for my commute, so didn't miss the DS too much.)

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2629 on: November 24, 2014, 01:03:08 AM »
Did I mention I was playing Warframe?  Been playing a lot recently.  I mostly main Valkyr but use Saryn for Archwing stuff because no shields in space is a bad thing.  I recently unlocked all the planets and got the Saviour of Uranus award.  Because that's the joke.

Grefter

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2630 on: November 24, 2014, 02:23:12 AM »
How healthy is the game now?  I still kind of miss it, but probs more for the Laggy games than the game itself.  I loved it in beta, but lots of progressive iteration away from design I liked.
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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2631 on: November 24, 2014, 03:09:49 AM »
Pokemon Colosseum beaten. The final boss was really scary due to level creep, being ~5 levels above the penultimate boss who in turn had ~5 more than the preceeding enemies. His Slaking could OHKO Raikou with Crush Claw after an X Attack while not taking significant damage from anything I could throw it. Thankfully the AI is kinda dumb so his ally Machamp finished him off with Earthquake before the Skill Swap Slowking could come out, which would've been REALLY scary. Rest of the team (Scizor, Salamence, Dusclops) was not exactly chopped liver, either.

Colosseum story mode's short length and weird level curve make it feel more like an experiment or test run than a proper RPG. You start with an L26 Umbreon and L25 Espeon, the snagable Shadow Pokemon start at L30 with all three stage Pokemon starting at tier 2 (and even some two stage lines), while the main game ends around L48-50 (depending on how many optional battles you go for) - it all kinda feels like you skip the first half of a normal-lengthed game. The high starting levels and lack of a move relearner also mean that moves you'd normal take for granted in other games are impossible to get in Colosseum, like Leech Seed on Jumpluff.

The double battle emphasis and catching Pokemon during boss battles are novel twists on the usual Pokemon format, albeit ones that XD later refined into a much better RPG. Colosseum's most enduring novelty is that the playable roster consists about 90% of gen 2 Pokemon, with just a few gen 3 mons mixed in. This is a welcome change from Johto, where gen 2 Pokemon are often obscured and largely overshadowed by their gen 1 counterparts. Oh, and there's an infinite Pokeball glitch that's pretty hilarious in practice.

Some thoughts on the Pokemon I ended up using:

Espeon: Irreplacable earlygame MVP, as I mentioned previously. Low physical durability gradually became a problem later on, but the offense was still priceless, getting more turn 1 OHKOs than anyone else by far. The lack of an Alakazam (or any other Psychic, save Meditite) makes the late Psybeam/Psychic pickups sting less in this game.

Jumpluff: The lack of Leech Seed and Stun Spore really suck, but it's both the fastest and most accurate sleep move in the game by a significant margin, not counting Yawn users, especially in a game where every single catchable Pokemon has a non-typed recoil move to potentially suicide with. The completionist in me wanted to snag every Shadow Pokemon to make things more interesting, so Jumpluff was a must.

Quagsire: Water and Ground are priceless types for the story Mt. Battle sequence, while Shadow Pokemon lab was filled with Rain Dance+Thunder spamming Electrics that come before the Earthquake TM. Quagsire thus filled valuable type niches before ultimately being phased out after I caught Water and Ground types with significantly better stats.

Suicune+Raikou: Rain Dance+Surf+Thunder ahoy. Gen 3 Surf doesn't hit allies but only does half damage to each target, so the damage boost from Rain Dance matters more than in singles-based RPG. Raikou's speed makes it ideal for Thunderdancing, which is good because its movepool is pretty barren otherwise. Suicune's Aurora Beam is valuable in a game where Ice Beam TMs are hard to get, and the durabilities on both mattered a lot since it's harder to play type advantages perfectly in an all-doubles game.

Flygon: Starting as a L43 Vibrava means you skip almost the entire painful NFE phase for this evo line for once, plus you get the Earthquake TM almost immediatly afterwards. It's pretty clearly the best Ground type in Colosseum (alternatives: Quagsire, Gligar, Piloswine) which helps its case for that TM, in an all-doubles game where Earthquake naturally dominates. Luckily Protect is storebought, so I gave it to Espeon/Suicune/Raikou so Flygon could safely use EQ with any partner out. Crunch/Dragonbreath/storebought Fire Blast gave it some respectable options for Ground resists/immunes.

Skarmory: Last minute filler addition, mainly to get a Ground-immune with better damage/durability than Jumpluff for battles where I want Flygon to use EQ more than just every alternating turn.

My copy of Alpha Sapphire's supposed to arrive tomorrow, so I'm done with the game for the time being. Colosseum's postgame doesn't sound all that interesting on paper, so who knows if/when I go back and pick it up.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2014, 03:11:39 AM by hinode »

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2632 on: November 24, 2014, 04:37:40 AM »
Suikoden 2 finished.  Impossible to get the good ending because I didn't trigger an obscure event early on (Thanks, Clive), but so it goes.    I enjoyed the game, but didn't feel like it was a masterpiece or even much better than the first game (which I also liked).  So many dull areas with tons of knights you just spam auto-fight on...  Luca Blight was the best character, and the story lost a lot of steam when he died. The thing that really struck me about this game and the original was just how cheaply made it feels, in part due to the shoddy translations.  It's still a neat experience in spite of this, and I do look forward to 3 whenever I get to it.  I just hope the 108 stars guide I use doesn't fail to tell me about a critical thing I have to do next time.

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2633 on: November 24, 2014, 04:48:34 AM »
On the upshot, Suikoden III has very few Stars that can be permanently missed (in fact, I believe the set of 7 you can fail to get due to a poor decision are the only ones).  Also Suikoden III has lots of other stuff going for it, but anyway.
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Captain K.

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2634 on: November 24, 2014, 06:29:09 AM »
How healthy is the game now?  I still kind of miss it, but probs more for the Laggy games than the game itself.  I loved it in beta, but lots of progressive iteration away from design I liked.

It's pretty damn solid now.  Occasional bugs but nothing serious.  But it is nothing but grinding - story is all but nonexistent.  But very stylish grinding indeed.

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2635 on: November 24, 2014, 09:12:04 AM »
On the upshot, Suikoden III has very few Stars that can be permanently missed (in fact, I believe the set of 7 you can fail to get due to a poor decision are the only ones).  Also Suikoden III has lots of other stuff going for it, but anyway.

Specifically, only if you repeatedly answer Yes to the prompt of "Do you really want to do this obviously bad and unheroic thing" can you permanently miss anyone, to my knowledge.

Suikoden 3 > other Suikodens, anyway. The pairs system was dumb, but at least you get a lot more versatility out of your characters due to skills and such. Also no silent main!
« Last Edit: November 24, 2014, 09:14:28 AM by El Cideon »

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2636 on: November 24, 2014, 08:04:45 PM »
I like the unite system personally, but I wish it communicated movement to you better than it does.  There is a whole chunk of the system there that you kind of learn by feel, but that seems like it takes a long time to do.

Also the benefit for getting all stars in Suikoden 3 is an extra chapter, which sounds really substantial but really isn't.  Having beat the game multiple times, I wouldn't eveni bother with it again unless it had been a few years since I played.  The plot plays out the same whether you got all 108 stars or not.
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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2637 on: November 25, 2014, 01:37:41 AM »
I don't remember, does the unite system do anything aside from forcing you to have three guys autobattle?

Dark Holy Elf

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2638 on: November 25, 2014, 01:47:48 AM »
Healing items could only be used within a pair (but could be shared), and Kindness Drops hit both people in a pair. Otherwise, "forces three people to auto-battle" (but you choose which three, and what they do depends on what their partness does) is pretty much it.

I don't think S3 did the best possible job with it necessarily but I think entering commands for less than six people is a net positive, and I am happier with what S3 did than what S4 or what Tierkreis did: a game where you recruit dozens of PCs is better served by a large party size.

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Grefter

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2639 on: November 25, 2014, 02:09:06 AM »
Some of it is that restriction that breeds choice.  You can just jam a caster and a melee person together blindly so you can always use your rune, but that isn't always the best idea.  Pairing up a caster with a defensive character means your defensive character will likely sit in the back lines doing nothing, which is presumably not what you want your dude in heavy armour doing(Song of Madness overwrites this behaviour).  Pairing them with someone aggressive puts your caster right up amongst all their enemies shit.  Most of the time you will be fine, but if there is multiple enemies they will surround your front man and then end up in range of the caster.  This applies even more so for Archer characters.  They have skills to boost their range that if they are with someone aggressive will be wasted because they will run right up to the enemy.

So there is a trade off there, you can pair archers with casters and they will snipe while your caster casts.

Pairing people with high movement lets them both get out of range of magic more often (happens surprisingly more than you expect if you don't use Holy Dash!) and seems to give you a bit more flexibility with how your pairs behave.

At theend of the day though it never really pays off because skills like Repel or Swing are still so effective at low ranks that they are nearly always worth taking over Holy Dash, it is a Suikoden game so it is still pretty easy, even if you can work around it, Fire Runes are still pretty universally weaker than Lightning ones are (Thunderstorm is stupid) and most damning of all nothing in the game tells you how any of it fuckin get works.  Movement and positioning is actually quite strictly defined, but nothing shows you how or where it is broken up (I think just from feel that the battle map is actually a bunch of hexes) to how 138 MOV translates into that.  Most of the time players just see Movement as a restriction on the number of swings they can take round 1 and that is it.  Which to be fair is pretty much all base line movement gives you.  Increasing movement doesn't give you much more, but it does do something.
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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2640 on: November 25, 2014, 02:19:31 AM »
Hahah yeah, I don't think I've ever actually known that, and I've played Suikoden 3 like three times.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2014, 02:21:40 AM by Fenrir »

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2641 on: November 25, 2014, 02:23:27 AM »
I would note that last time I talked with Elf about it I am pretty sure I came out of the discussion not sure if I was seeing patterns where there wasn't really any or not.  Having just finished a play through recently I am pretty confident in them, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter at all because even if they are there they go unnoticed by huge portion of the playerbase.  A system that no one uses that no one knows about functionally doesn't exist.
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Dark Holy Elf

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2642 on: November 25, 2014, 02:45:35 AM »
Quote
(I think just from feel that the battle map is actually a bunch of hexes)

This is absolutely the case. Once you realise this and get a feel for it you will pretty much see the grid.

I basically agree with all your comments there. S3 has a kinda cool movement/positioning system which is somewhat obscured from the player and he or she doesn't need to know it anyway, so yeah it is largely irrelevant unless you want to be a stupid nerd about it. I obviously do.

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Grefter

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2643 on: November 25, 2014, 03:31:37 AM »
Well if you want to nerd lord over it, the thing I like most about it is that because it works on a grid, the strategy battles also work like the regular battles, both on the macro level and the micro levels, but you have less direct control of them on the micro scale and on the macro there is more restrictions on the space of the battlefield.  It is that which really drives that the system is full of very intentional design decisions that are completely lost on the player because they actively avoid presenting it to them.  It makes for the game in the series with the most interesting and thought out strategy battles having portions of its cool factor hidden from it, not to mention it is used so incredibly sparingly that it feels entirely under utilised.

Hands down the game that pushes the envelope hardest in the series (other games that break series norms are breaking them in very industry safe ways) and is simultaneously the game I don't think pushed the envelope enough.  I assume they didn't go as far with it as they did because series fans are incredibly defensive and resistant to change, but ultimately the Suikodrn community outside the DL is still but hurt about S3, so they may as well have gone all in.
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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2644 on: November 25, 2014, 03:41:38 AM »
Introducing Suikoden 3: The Golden! Bringing all the things you wanted to the game but the developers didn't have time for! New plays, new events, and brand new ending! Actually battle at night! Refined gameplay mechanics! Have actual control over your PCs! And a new character that everyone likes and is good at everything and may or may not be the cause of the whole thing!

Enjoy events like Hugo joining the band with Toppo, Nei, and Shabon and learning to play the guitar in 3 days! Go to Geddoe's yodeling recital! Spend Christmas with Chris!

Coming soon!

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2645 on: November 25, 2014, 04:08:07 AM »
Going back to the original whine, Suikoden 3's recruitment is vastly superior to most other Suikodens due to 1 thing: no time limits.  Go ahead and make recruitment weird & obscure if you want (it generally isn't in S3), but don't make it so if you don't re-check every town after every event you can permanently miss a character.  You can lock yourselves out of recruits in S3, but it's always by screwing up dialogue choices / war battles / duels.  You never time out any recruits to my knowledge, unlike S2 / S5, both horrible offenders.  So you can advance the plot guilt-free you didn't talk to the entire world again.

S3 also had a reasonably useful detective, which was nice, unlike S5, where Oboro is the world's most incompetent detective.  Gee thanks for telling me I can recruit person X, I could guess that already from the fact they had a portrait...

(if I had to complain about 1 S3 perma-miss, it's Ayame.  Lose the meaningless duel and she doesn't join?  Whatever game, ninjas make no sense.)

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2646 on: November 25, 2014, 04:30:25 AM »
Introducing Suikoden 3: The Golden! Bringing all the things you wanted to the game but the developers didn't have time for! New plays, new events, and brand new ending! Actually battle at night! Refined gameplay mechanics! Have actual control over your PCs! And a new character that everyone likes and is good at everything and may or may not be the cause of the whole thing!

Enjoy events like Hugo joining the band with Toppo, Nei, and Shabon and learning to play the guitar in 3 days! Go to Geddoe's yodeling recital! Spend Christmas with Chris!

Coming soon!

Also he rides a skateboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OThgYAgng18

Hunter Sopko

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2647 on: November 25, 2014, 04:40:16 AM »
Damnit. I can't believe I forgot he rides a skateboard.

Meeplelard

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2648 on: November 25, 2014, 05:04:46 AM »
Curtain Call: I've unlocked most characters I think.  Ok, I know I'm missing a handful but a majority of them are unlocked!

I will probably get the DLC characters after all that...maybe...though US not getting Krile is kind of bullshit even if I don't really care about the character, and glancing at her skillset, she's not very good.

She's a Mage, but caps at Bluff and doesn't get any unique Limits.  She gets all the Aras and Agas sans Aerora (which sucks anyway), and naturally learns Meteor (massive damage when you hit a benchmark on a BMS), and gets Mana's Paean 2.  She also has high agility.  Doesn't sound so bad, right?

Well compare that to Vivi.  Vivi lacks Krile's speed, but instead gets Dualcast over Bluff, all 3 levels of Magic Up instead of Mana's Paean 2, Fire instead of Thunder (lateral shift, depends on song, etc.) Tornado and Doomsday instead of Meteor (which can be taught via a scroll anyway.)  Furthermore, if you want to talk twinking, stats aren't that meaningful since Crystarium can be used to cover that.

To say nothing of Shantotto who has everything Vivi has outside of Tornado alongside Bluff (only character who gets Bluff and Dualcast) and Ancient Magic.   Both Vivi and Shantotto are characters that can be gotten for free (I think Shantotto is even a potential default pick), Krile you have to spend money on.

She's probably better than Vincent though, who gets a bunch of defensive/agility based songs, only one of the Magic types (Fire)...unless you want to count Aero spells which are AHAHAHAHAHAH, and Satan Slam, a Limit.  Yep, totally worth spending money on THIS guy!  At least Krile looks competent if she were a free character, Vincent's just flat out embarrassing for someone you need to spend money on.

...why yes, yes I did just go on about Krile's worth in Curtain Call (with some Vincent mockery) because we can't buy her and how she's not worthwhile, what about it?
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Dhyerwolf

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #2649 on: November 25, 2014, 08:18:52 AM »
BD- The evil battle is down. No SP was actually even used in the fight. Just the standard "get absurdly lucky with turn order." I was especially lucky in that Qada must have hit the outside range of random variance and on turn 1 went before my faster defensive setups. I made some tactical misplays, but still insane luck. I hate that the fight can cause so many resets such on randomness of the first turn (Hey, if Qada goes right before Mephilia, you have absolutely no choice but to use SP. Even everyone Defaulting still doesn't help if Qada goes first (well, I guess maybe with the Templar passive. That may have worked too with a little grinding).

...into the nightfall.