Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Clear Tranquil]

Cheers Gref, Snow.

Roan is the best non-Millennia mage in the game, so drop him a decent Mana Egg for good measure.

Cool. I've been running him as my support/healer/item tosser with Dash and the increased item speed support skills while Millenia/Elena nukes things with Burnflame/Burnstrike but moar power would not be unwelcome. I'll probably let him play around with the Mist/Gravity Egg next time I play. Unless I run into another Eye of Valmar like boss I probably won't need to keep him as a dedicated healer/support then. Or I can set the bot up as support, or something >_>

The egg setups, you may just play as you want, easy game is easy and you can MT OHKO randoms until like the last dungeon with twinked midgame spells.

Yeah, I've been noticing that in the Hein Mountains with Elena Burnflame MT fun =D

 

Also, this will hugely matter: elemental boosts -stack-. Abuse this for great justice and instant L4s.

.... NIICE~

Granas Cathedral. Finally. Eye of Valmar section felt like it took forever. Gref was right about the boss fight itself. It definitely tried. I'm ashamed to say it took me six attempts, I won on the sixth. Levelled Zap + Intelligence + Zapfire Chant + Burnstrikes + Alheals from Millenia and Roan and w/e from Ryudo and Mareg worked a treat. My mistake in the earlier fights was trying to focus an all out assault on the Eye with Burnstrike pressure and whatnot but leaving the other targets about always caught up with me. Having only one reviving item didn't help either. Plus I wasn't twinked enough. Upgrading the spells, Ryudo's FTS,  Millenia's support skills + Dash for Roan helped a lot. Ryudo was only L21 so I might have been a bit underlevelled there, dunno. L25 heading into the cathedral.

[Veryslightlymad]

I played an online version of duck hunt, but quickly grew bored of it.

All these years, and I only JUST NOW realize that different color ducks are worth different point values. I never really paid attention before.

[Cora Meliamne]

Void quest, right?

Yep. Or as some others call it. "The Dungeon of Scrappy."

[Idun]

Still in C136. I believe clocking 16 hours at this point means I'm obviously sucking or I've let my game idle excessively; it's easy to get distracted from a game with a high encounter rate, little benefits after peaking a certain level in both mantra transformations and stat levels. Perhaps, I've let the game idle for 2 hours or so. I wish it had pause. Once I finish using my creative abilities to make a coupon book, I'll focus harder on DDS. I hope to beat it before next Wednesday so I can move onto something else.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

At least DDS1 is short. There's not a whole lot of other positive things to say about that game, though.

[superaielman]

SO3- I was wondering why I put it down. *Gets an obnoxious fairie to guide him through an annoying duengon* Ah yes, the memories come back.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

At least, you get to see Roger suffering there.

EDIT: Just another heads up for CT: once Tio joins, she'll be basically your best mage until endgame, and she's also the best PC to twink for speed. Do -not- neglect that for her, since it's a big part of why she's the MVP hands down. The rest of her MVPness comes from Lotus Flower, though. Level that up fast and well.

[Captain K.]

Actually it's possible to miss the Roger suffering entirely - I missed it on my first playthrough.  Gets you a slightly different ending!

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Well, yes, it -is- entirely optional. But might as well wring something good out of that dungeon if you can, it -is- sort of a pain in the ass (and it involves FAILMEENA PLOT to boot).

[Bardiche]

Over the past few days I've grown rather fond of replaying my old Suikoden games. Just started Suikoden 4 a while ago, and got Ted. I wonder if there's a mage more fragile than he is?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Half the mages in Suikoden 4 want to have a word with you.

[DjinnAndTonic]

At least DDS1 is short. There's not a whole lot of other positive things to say about that game, though.

I disagree. Switchblade-Armed Demons are pretty freakin' sweet.

Also, DDS1's battle system works pretty well. I like the 'mainstream RPG' version of the SMT battle style. Shame about the horrible balance and insane cost of skills later on, though.

>.>;; And I kind of like how the characters develop as it leads into DDS2...

^Good traits listed in order of importance.

[Bardiche]

Compared to Ted I find their durability godly.

I'm trying to use the same sort of teams each game, by combining a fragile mage with heavy physicals.

So for Suikoden 1, I had:

Gremio, Viktor, Pesmerga
Tir, Futch, Luc.

Suikoden 2 was:

Viktor, Futch, Pesmerga,
Riou, Tir, Luc.

Suikoden 3 was:

Hugo (FC) + Fubar
Geddoe + Chris
Sgt Joe + Sasarai

I got creamed so hard on that one. Hugo tried to nuke, but killed off Geddoe instead, and most his magic did 1 damage. ffff. So Sgt Joe cast Mother Ocean, Chris and Hugo beat on the orbs and at the end, all I had left were Sasarai and Chris. Chris killed the boss just as Sasarai cast his last Kindness Drops. Damn TER reflecting my magic in my face all the time, I was oblivious until I lost Geddoe and Sgt Joe.

Suikoden 4 must be:

Lazlo, TED, Chiepoo and Snowe. Last time I used Ted I kept healing him with whoever I'd also brought along, I just don't remember anymore.

Suggestions for teams to use to beat the final boss of Suikoden 5 are welcome.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Compared to Ted I find their durability godly.

Check their stats. Most of them have similar defense scores and Ted has higher HP than them. He's definitely less frail than the likes of Jeane, Katarina and Konrad, just off the top of my head.

EDIT: Also, if you want heavy physicals in Suikoden 4, replace Snowe/Chiepoo with Kika or Mizuki. For Suikoden 5, for that particular combo, Zerase, Eresh, Josephine, Killey, Jeane and Levi come to mind for frail mages. Fighters... Cathari, Miakis, Shigure, Norma with three rune slots, maybe Belcoot and Richard, but Belcoot and Richard aren't good for twinking. Those immediately come to mind here.

[Bardiche]

Maybe it's just a matter of when I use them. Generally I ditch all Mages once I get Ted and use no one but him as a Mage. Still, the rest of the Mages don't feel that bad yet to me. Whatever.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

It honestly doesn't matter. All Suikoden 4 mages die to a gentle physical breeze.

[074]

MB:AC -- Okay, so I've played this.  Starting to figure out that I'm decent with Warakia, both Arcs, and Sion(Somewhat).

I still suck, massively.  And am tempted to sink $15-20 into a gamepad to alleviate part of the suck.

[NotMiki]

Since it may be a long long time before I ever get a chance to play this game (and because I was such a fan of DS1), requesting more details in general. But especially want story spoilers on how it connects with DS1 and how the battle system differs (if at all). Also, what demons are you using?

Are there any non-Raidou human PCs?

Combat is generally improved, though fundamentally the same.  Raidou's still the only PC, but you get to summon 2 demons in combat instead of one, which is a lot of fun.  You have infinite ammo now, but demons have to cast spells in combat to give your ammo elemental properties (and you have to take time to reload).  Biggest difference, MAG is now a shared MP pool between Raidou and all his demons, and can be replenished by hitting weakness on enemies.  Raidou's sword customization now uses gems instead of demons, and there are three different sword types, each with a different special attack.

As for the plot, it is a very direct sequel, and a number of the characters, a lot of the places, and even a good chunk of the music are almost directly from the first game.  Without saying too much, the plot goes in more of a traditional Japanese horror direction than the first one, and as far as I've played, it's been a good sight creepier than the first one.  It features a rural town and its denizens (to great effect) as well as more familiar Tokyo locations.

As for demons, I fastidiously use everything, but my favorite so far is Yoshitsune.  Tam Lin and Ippon-Datura are also pretty cool.

[VySaika]

Nama: Gamepad helps me a whole lot, so. Also, if you play emulated stuff alot, it might be a good investment anyway.

MB:AC - Well, the more I play, the more I think I'm better with Akiha then with Shiki. Will have to netplay more with both of them to find out for sure. Also, tried Ciel for the first time. Good lord even I can access her easy broked. -_-

[Tide]

Twink challenge meets Tonberry King. OW.

Having killed 400+ enemies, Everyone's grudge does 7800 damage. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeah. Oh and Tonberry King's IT'S SHARP is instant death (9999 damage). Anyways, an hour of frustration later, he is dead. Hardest boss to date? Quite possibly

[Meeplelard]

FM4: So I beat an Elsa map and...go right back to Darill?  Uh, ok, sure, that works or something, except that Darill's team is so much weaker than Elsa's right now, mostly cause Zead is so much better than Ines (there are other things like Latona > stuff, but the most notable factor is Missiles >>>> Grenades, Zead's really good at missiles!  Ines sucks at like everything right now)

[Sierra]

Bioshock: "I want to take the ears off, but I can't." If Nitoris wrote poetry, the result would surely be Sander Cohen.

[Clear Tranquil]

It's not like S4 is difficult or anything >_>  I used Ted with Snowe/Lazlo/Kika myself and really things died too quickly to worry about healing. There was a period where Snowe died to a sneeze while I levelled him up in the final dungeon but eventually all was good~

S5 what Snow said, Norma also doubles as an effective enough mage if you choose to play her that way too. It all depends on just how much abuse you want to give the game really. The Boost/Double Edge/Power rune combo makes a fighter frail but it also makes their damage nuts, if you have enough of them practically everything can be overpowered. On my replay I ended up with Miakis/Norma/Killey/Lyon/Prince as my main team, rotating between characters for the final slot. Kyle/Georg are favourites but I also enjoyed using Shigure, Sigari, Zweig, Lorelei, Viki, Zerase and Jeane. I had both Miakis and Norma with Boost/Double Edge/Power for the final as well as having those power up type runes spread amongst the other characters. I did 9999 damage with the formation blanket attack Elegy (I think it was called) <____<

If you want to play fair and don't want to have a full team of twinked fighters, only perhaps one or two then you're going to want to keep them healed up/alive for the final. If you're using Prince/Lyon then their combo magic can be used for MT healing iirc. Add in your mage of choice, your main fighter and fill the gaps from there. Bring reviving items into the fight and stick on a rez rune just in case.

**

Snowe - Excellent. Tio is CT bait too, I didn't know she was a dancing type <3 So yeah, got her set up with Zapfire Chant, Intelligence and another lightning boosting skill with the Chaos Egg for Zap! abuse currently. Lotus Flower is L3 or so. I noticed her stats yeah and boosted them further with equipment. All's good~

Super - Gonna take Roger along for DL purposes?

[superaielman]

Hell no. I kicked the little twerp out of my party.

[Clear Tranquil]

*nods*

You can pick up Adray soon, if you want. You'll get him in the end anyway regardless of what you do though.