Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Dark Holy Elf]

It's impossible to have "self worth" for a support, it's inherently a team thing. <_< That said Pamela's support against ST attacks is the best except maybe Jess' and Anna's, it's just not by a very wide margin. Everyone else halves damage AND does something else (counter attack, get an instant turn, gain regen status). Nulling damage is better than halving it but the gap isn't huge, especially when you consider those bonuses.

Whereas Jess and Muppy have way better supports overall. Muppy's is only valuable against MT, but it's so much hugely better against MT that this is worth noting. It's 2.5 times better than Pamela's against MT. Jess' is better regardless unless she's being OHKOed (or it's a powerful ST attack and the party is already fully healed), since her healing will restore more HPs total than a single PC can prevent in damage.

[Sierra]

Man, Captain K., P3 > P4? I do not comprehend. Would particularly disagree on P3 having better pacing/atmosphere. P4 you have a solid goal that you pursue for most of the game. Slowly, perhaps, but this still makes a world of difference to me. And TV World struck a chord much more powerfully than Tartarus did. Every dungeon was focused around a specific character; I found all of them to excel at personality as a result, honestly, even though they're structurally not much different from Tartarus. The fog as a plot device also owns the dark hour (which...I mean, people turn into coffins? Really?) It starting to consume the town near the end was viscerally creepy, and the people in town actually getting used to it as time went on makes you wonder how much the eventual bosses might actually be right about some things. Personally, I don't see anything P4 doesn't do better than P3. Music...is a matter of style, I suppose, though I'll state once again that I hated P3's hip-hop angle.

For reference, Death only becomes available after you've gone to see Devil a couple times.

[Fudozukushi]

ToV: Despite playing this with my kiddie cousins, I had far too much fun.  Damn does Multiplayer make a game better.

[AAA]

L4D-Been getting really shitty groups lately. On the other hand, got Big Drag and Barf Bagged, which means I have only one Infected achivement to go! Which, naturally, is All 4 Dead, where you have to kill all 4 members as a Tank. Considering any halfway decent team can shred a tank in seconds, much less let him kill them all, the only way I can see this working is if I fight an absolutely terrible team, or get lucky on No Mercy 4 or 5 or whatever and knock them all off the roof. Not happening.

Zombie genocide total: Over 24,000

[Grefter]

On that note

L4D - Played No Mercy with Laggy today with bots.  Worked a bit better over the ocean than I expected it to (Server side lag was the big thing.... dodgey server).  We actually won as well which suprised me a little with the crazy lag we both got and the usual bullshit that happens to me on Advanced.  Was fun, but the game really isn't quite as charming with 2 people, no real voice chat options (In game voice chat is hell no) and frankly the lag does sap a little bit of the fun.  Still awesome fun and playing with Laggy was good since I like never do enough stuff with cool DL people.

[Excal]

P3

Generally still enjoying this.  Just finished the 9/4 full moon.  So far, I would like to say that while I enjoy the gameplay, the fact that so many of the assassination quests rely on getting lucky enough to find enemies is annoying.  Specifically, the golden enemies which are a pain in the ass to actually start a battle with.

As for characters, I'm generally loving Junpei a fair bit.  Though his recent plot twist is leaving me a little cold, mostly just because of the mindlessness of it.  That said, I am looking forward to seeing how they have him move forward next.  I am also pleasently surprised to see that Mitsuru is not the more knowledgable one in terms of interrogation.

On one last note.  I've come to the realisation that the main character is, in fact, a sociopath.  This amuses me to no end.  Between that and his becoming a Genius by watching a ninja flick with a robot, Shinji has truly become a goldmine of unintentional comedy.

[superaielman]

Is this the first SMT game you've played since Persona 1/really early SMT?

[Grefter]

Mana Khemia - Finally got back to this.  Chapter where I got Roxis and Anna.  Stuff.  Whatever, playing it.

[074]

P4: Beat Disco Eye in the Sky.  I would argue that it would be...pretty easily Godlike between doubleacting, good power, and some nasty tricks, but given that I've got the main at L75 and the rest at roughly L70...I might just be underleveled for the fight.

Now, need to see what I did wrong in getting Good End rather than True End...

[Rozalia]

ROTKVIII- Did a game playing as Zhang Ren of Liu Zhang's force in the chapter where you have to drive off Liu Bei the rebel scum.
Never again is all I'm going to say as Liu Zhang is by far one of the worst rulers to be under.

FF3DS - Got to the fire crystal where Salamander kicked my ass.
My current party is Thief, Warrior, Black mage and white mage. I'm starting to feel that choosing the thief was a mistake as there seems to be nothing good to steal, and he is reduced to item boy status in boss fights.

[Strago]

P4 - Magatsu Dungeon, just about ready to go fight Mr. Spoiler-Face. What are we calling him? Except SMT gameplay awakens all of my ridiculous latent desires to do insane grinding and powergaming. So I'm rounding out my roster to sort of a silly degree. Levels are 83 all-around, at least in my active party; decided to use the guys, since A) they work really well as a team (full buffs is mainly why), B) I had maxed all of their S. Links (Priestess and Fortune I didn't get around too), and C) I just like them all more than the girls. I expect to be fully and ridiculously overpowered once I finally hit the last boss.

Very fun game. I very much second El Cid's "hubba-whaa?" in regard to Captain K.'s comments. Longer thoughts once I've finished it.

[SnowFire]

Rozalia: Thief is fine, though I had second thoughts too after the Salamander flattened me.  Still, Thief steals elemental attack items, which rule in FF3DS.  You really don't have time to mess around with bosses, so every bit of extra damage helps, and often Thief / White Mage spamming items can help get better damage in - even if Thief does worse damage with the attack items than the real mages due to her low magic stat, it's probably still better than a physical.  FF3 is about the only game where I aggressively use attack items and don't feel bad about it.

On the downside, the Thief does get flattened pretty easily, and permanently lowers that character's HP due to the wonky way FF3DS deals with character stats (totally controlled by the class you're currently in...  except for HP.).  There is exactly one awesome item you can steal, and it's FAQ-bait- most bosses have crap to steal off them (and you don't have time to mess around anyway), but from one, you can steal the best spear in the game for a Dragoon.  And steal it only 3/4 of the way through the game, too, so it's extra abusive for awhile.  Apparently you want to get your Thief Job Level above 75 or so in order to steal it consistently, though.  I transitioned my Thief to a Dragoon so she could use the fruits of her own theft.

--
Meanwhile, as for me, I'm trying to start going through my PC backlog.  Oddly enough starting with FF7PC, now with fewer stupid grammar errors (reminded from the very silly debate on Sephiroth's damage from Week 3 - which now that I think about it is even worse than I was claiming, because I think the stat topic takes Seph's damage to the front row, which is also overstating his power.).  I seem to recall in chat a long time ago somebody did a NENENI challenge - No Experience, No Escape, No Items.  Anyone know how the no experience part got hacked in?  I think I could replicate it myself by simply setting everyone's levels to 99 but keeping their stats the same, but not sure, that might cause other effects to be wonky.  Anyway, I'm doing a fairly vanilla Initial Equipment / Somewhat Low Level playthrough (that is, try and run from almost all random encounters), but I'm not nearly hardcore enough to do the super-low-level playthroughs where you're supposed to win every boss battle with only one person alive.  Screw that kind of makework challenge, and I can always cheat by editing my save file anyway.

Current thoughts:
* Huh, Dyne doesn't suck as badly against IE Barret.  He starts double-acting at low health, which makes his damage somewhat scary, but ultimately it just means you cast cure a lot and then Limit him.
* Scene: The Turks at Gongaga.  Oh no, there must be a spy, how'd they know we'd be here!  Cloud: "I trust everyone!"  Well let's see, AVALANCHE and Red and Aeris all are pretty much ironclad to not be on Shinra's side.  That leaves...  a random robotic fortune teller cat that just joined, and a mystery ninja that attacked you in the forest.  Damnit, plot hammers, we're not supposed to think Cloud is dumb.  Oh, well.  One of the bigger howler lines of the game.
* In the same area, I'd forgotten how you could mess up the scene with Zack's parents.  I brought Cait & Red, and got "Huh, Zack, the name sounds familiar," and that was it.  Bringing Tifa & Aeris back didn't help, either.
* Final party thoughts: Man, thanks to IE you really are encouraged to use later characters like Cait, Vincent, and Cid who actually have a reasonable number of materia slots.  Not sure what I'll go with yet, but it won't be Cait (personal dislike of the character, I suck at Slots) and Yuffie has Clear Tranquil hax as an argument for her considering that my Restore and All materias are going to be woefully underpowered by the endgame.  Vincent's long range, which is nice, but Cid's Limits are better (especially in a low level game where surrendering control of a character to the AI is BAD).  Hmm.

[Captain K.]

You don't use thieves to Steal in FF3DS.  You use them because they have an insane number of attacks and better weapons than everyone for 90% of the game.

As for my P4 antihype - it's an opinion.  You don't have to share it.  P3 pushed all my buttons (okay, not the Lesbian Orgy button), P4 didn't.

[NotMiki]

As for my P4 antihype - it's an opinion.  You don't have to share it.

Excuse me?  Old people don't get opinions.  Now stop boring us with all those games you played in your glory days and, I dunno, go play bingo or something.

[Veryslightlymad]

NBA2k9:
Accidentally simmed the playoffs instead of playing them, so instead of winning the NBA Championship, I got eliminated by the Hornets in round two.
(Total bullshit. I -destroy- the Hornets when I play them.)

Offseason did not go well for me. Drafted three complete losers. Lost both players in my starting back court. Randy Foye I let go, because the dipshit wanted nearly 11 million per year, with 10% back, so by the last year he wanted over 14 million dollars. He's good, but honestly, I get most of my production from my front court, so he can go to hell. Mike Miller, despite asking for a totally reasonable contract that I immediately agreed to, decided to defect to the Washington Wizards for no goddamn reason. They probably offered him better than what he was asking for. Had to trade my point guard prospect I actually WANTED to keep as a plan B because he was a whiny dipshit. Had to trade Corey Brewer because he was ALSO a whiny dipshit out of nowhere. "Waaaaaaaah. I want to be the sixth man. Even though two other guys on the bench are better than I am, one of whom does the exact same thing I do, only better."

On the plus side, Telfair isn't much of a drop from Foye, and can be had much cheaper. I managed to turn Brewer into Acie Law. My dipshit point guard prospect became Jason Thompson, so I finally have someone tall who isn't Kwame fucking Brown. God help me, I signed JJ Redick, so I have a sharp-shooter off the bench. Seriously, God Help me, I signed BRUCE BOWEN for the season, and I feel so dirty. Art Simon, the defensive stopper I drafted last season jumped up a huge amount and is already higher rated than Love is, although I think the fucker wants to be named star of the team. Who the hell plays over 30 minutes a game and demands MORE MINUTES? Mother of FUCK, Simon.

Mostly because of Simon's huge development spree and the gradual development of Kevin Love, I'm actually a BETTER team, at least on paper, than I was last season. Somehow. I'm making this my last season as the Wolves, hopefully I win a championship, otherwise I dunno what the fuck. I'm getting sick of these guys. Although, I have about 9 million bucks under the cap, and I'll have even more next season, but NO key players on my team come off the books. I could, if I wanted to, sign a point guard or small forward in the 90 range, if any is available, and win a FEW championships in a row, but I dunno. I'm kind of sick of these guys.

[Sierra]

P4 - Magatsu Dungeon, just about ready to go fight Mr. Spoiler-Face. What are we calling him?

I dunno, no one's come up with a good name for that one yet. And congratulations, you're past my endgame levels!

[OblivionKnight]

I just call them person "The Killer"  >_>  There's probably something neat to come up with, but a lot of stuff that would work is a bit spoilery.

[Twilkitri]

SRWW - finished.

All good and dandy. Have to say, this was one of the better SRW experiences I've had in some time - but this may of course be coloured by the majority of my SRW playing recently being replays.

Top killers (at the opening of the final chapter) for nonexistant people who care about that sort of thing were Kazuma (107), Shihomi (86), Bullfog (67), Duo (64), and Ryoko (55).

My thoughts about new things-
Multicombo: This is really a match between being able to combo from non-adjacency (multicombo) and being able to combo in defence (regular combo). Multicombo's being able to turn around doesn't make an overly large effect on things. To be honest I'm not entirely sure which version is superior... Although in terms of battle animations, original combo wins hands down as when they were animating multicombo they went temporarily insane and had all the first attacks play a snippet of the full attack string instead of having a custom animation. This causes completely inane animations on occassion (Borot's arm falling off multiple times, for instance) and in general attacks that aren't particularly good to watch. Also as someone pointed out to me, only the final enemy gets the complete attack done to them but they only take half the damage of the first enemy.

Battleship Loading: I never found a use for this. The amount of times I put units back in the battleship full stop can probably be counted on two hands. I guess it's theoretically there for if you really really need it, but that's not a situation likely to come up.

Support Request: I never actually figured out how to do this. So I can't really speak much on the subject. Seems like it would have been nice with units that have good attacks that don't require will, but ah well. No great loss.

Dynamic Kills: I originally thought the hype for this was just WHOA MAN THEY'VE TAKEN SOMETHING THEY HAD SINCE SRW3 AND GIVEN IT TO A HEAP OF UNITS and consequently completely pointless but fortunately it was not, and it partially solves a problem SRW has had for aeons. No more cutting units to pieces and such and then the next second they're all back together for the damage report and then they explode afterwards. Now they just need to deal with all the attacks that do this sort of thing still anyway, not to mention that huge amount of non-lethal attacks that do the first two pieces.

Skill Parts being consumable instead of expendable: Not sure how much of a good idea this was. They did remove a bunch of skill parts that wouldn't mesh well like this, but still... I personally never took parts off people and moved them around, but I assume that some people did that sort of thing. Being able to stack up inordinate amounts of parts is really the problem here anyway, although that is partially mitigated by the removal of parts abusable by that as I said.

Hm... series I hadn't seen before.
GaoGaiGar: GGGG's moves are too flashy. Earlier GGGs' moves were superior. For that matter, Gai's original (helmetless) portrait was considerably superior to his later one ._.
I guess that having sets of units that all share the same current EXP is interesting in theory, but in reality the SRW EXP system results in it not really meaning a great deal.

Golion: Decent. Stock super. Not a great deal unique about it.

Tekkaman Blade 2: Apparently Tatsunoko somehow misplaced the memo that mentioned that the main drawing point for Tekkaman Blade was the Tekkaman Weapon Triangle because they gave everyone bizarre non-names in this one. Iver is decent with the flagrantly large area of her enemy-discerning map (there seemed to be quite a lot of enemy-discerning maps in this, as opposed to previous ones... are they making a comeback?) I guess, but Zommer and Vesner don't really do anything interesting. Also Aki goes from being a ranged character to being a melee character, which is somewhat annoying. Nice combo with Blade though.

SEED Astray: Need a 0079 offshoot series where they go crazy over GMs as much as they go crazy over Astrays here ._. Bunch of fairly disparate people here anyway, you've got a battleship, a melee guy, a ranged guy, a guy that pretends to be ranged but is actually also a melee guy, and a guy in a scrubby unit. I didn't care much for most of them except the battleship really.

Orgun: Fairly lame, really. Orgun eats energy like it's going out of style and whatsherface has nothing but accuracy problems for some reason.

FMP2: OH BOY IT'S TERMINALLY WORTHLESS CLOUSEAUX also they faithfully reproduce emo-sousuke which is not a good thing. Also they put in Southern Wind and not I Want To See You Again so I can only assume that they have no taste whatsoever.



I like how Nadesico Y pumps up the range of the graviton beam transmitter. I don't remember that ever happening before. Of course then later on you get to use the Nadesico Y and the Nadesico-C at the same time and have a flagrantly large range of operations for your aesties. I wanted to get the Eucharis, though... Also, they needed to get a combination attack. Also P-attacks.

Blade versus Omega was pretty fun. Too bad it only lasted two turns. The bit where you get to use Evil for a short while was another nice touch. I want to see more of these sort of things.

Not sure how much I care for them taking away the ability to swap the main pilot of battleships and so forth. Also in not being able to use specific skill parts on people that they aren't relevant to now, but will be later on.


So it seems that they take your favourites and kills off you in replays. That kind of ruins the majority of the point of replaying. I am aware they have done some new tomfoolery in this regard before anyone points it out. In any case, the game is too long for me to consider replaying it straight away.

Did some nice things with some bosses this time around. Early Gauron were probably some of the more tensest battles I've had in SRW in ages. They get pretty sad later on, though. OH NO TEKKAMAN SWORD USES VIGOR EVERY TURN *kills her in one*

[Shale]

Don't you keep skill parts? That seems bigger than kills.

Edit: Also, IIRC, Support Request kicks in when the character has the skill and doesn't have any regular support attackers available, but the total uses per stage are limited to the lowest skill level of anyone on the map who knows it. So if you've got two people with level 3 support request and one person with level 1, you get one support request in that stage.

[Twilkitri]

You don't get anywhere near enough skill parts per playthrough to make any sort of progress on giving every unit every available skills, so it's not really a sane target to strive for.

Support Request is available to people with the skill, not from people with the skill? That would explain quite a bit of my failure at figuring it out. I think that that way of it working is also considerably inferior to how I had imagined it working ._.

[Taishyr]

MK: Beaten, saw Flay ending.

...the game has issues. A lot of cute concepts and ideas are presented, and there's some style to what's done, but the game has some annoying issues in its execution. The slow start is a major contributor; while I was definitely not as put-off by this as NEB was, the sudden acceleration was surprising.

The battle system! Is rather cool in design, and a few PCs really take advantage in some ways of what it can offer (Roxis, Flay, Nikki, Jess).  Timing healing, charging for MT physicals or massive turn stall, or just flat-out playing with timed cards and turn order? Sure. Bosses don't monopolize on this -as- much, aside from Nitori (too lazy to look up non-spoiler name), but they still bring a fair level of threat to the table.  I'll get to how they did later; the other neat facet is team support, which isn't that impressive offensively but is rather broken defensively (replace a person and perform an instant action? MT healing? Complete immunity to an attack, protecting -the entire team- from an attack? All quite sweet).

There are, however, a few things that bother me about the battle/exploration setup.

1) Either wait through night-time or get into a lot of fights that aren't easy to run from just to backtrack through easier areas. I disagree seriously with MK Run being godly; it was annoying as fuck, often just ended up using Muppy's Change! to bypass them, because not being able to flee multiple times in a row got annoying as hell (for the record, it usually took me longer than 4 tries, so I don't know why everyone else could do it then). This is just... give the player the option to choose the time he's adventuring at if there's not plot/assignment going on there. That's all it would take, really.

Pretty much see NEB for the night setup, he phrased it quite well.

2) Put. All item creation. In the same room. This is not difficult. It is, however, frustrating to be running back and forth...

--to make an Aroma Materia you need Blood Clay/Fires of Hell/Fortune Ring or something like that
--so you go run to the materials creation room to make a Blood Clay 'cuz you just used your last one working on a different item, and lo and behold, you're out of the flower you need!
--so you run to the dungeon (running into issue 1 in the process) in which you get Dunkelhites, and after a while you grab about 5 and head back.
--You make the Blood Clay and go to make the Fortune Ring 'cuz you don't have it, make it, then run back to make a Fires of Hell!
--Fires of Hell requires... a Flame Ring/Auto Igniter/generic material. Flame Ring requires Canone Crystal/something/something, and would you look at that, not only do you not have an Auto igniter you don't have the Canone Crystal!
--so you head back...

It wouldn't be as annoying if they were adjacent rooms that lacked any lag. But they're separated by a semi-long hallway with some decent load times, thus getting on nerves after a while.

3) Grow Book. Okay, let's offer a unique setup for everyon- wait all the unique stuff's the skills (laid out in the same pattern) and the random stuff that costs way too much and is distinctively endgame. Ookay. Making it annoying to maneuver in and jump from one distant point to the other to the next to see what stat boosts you just got also doesn't help.

Characters/bosses!

Vayne: Plot makes him Infinite Magical Boy With The Irrelevant Idiot Ball. Whatever. Ingame, crowd-control/boss slayer (Overdrive + 3x the expensive move = massive HP damage), but fails against the physically resistant. DL-wise... heavy, Overdrive probably makes a lot of opponents twitch.

Jess: A compilation of every annoying theme from other games, made mildly amusing at random points but never where it should have been. Ingame, HEALING HEALING HEALING. Also abused Common Skills for me for knockback whorage. DL-wise, heavy - 3.0x kill point is something she likes, as it gives her even more staying power, and she can Seal some of the more dangerous opponents. Won't likely do well in Heavy but she'd devastate Middle, so.

Nikki: Oh wait sorry Jess didn't get all the annoying themes, Nikki got some too. Was less amusing about it, but she got handed the Smart Ball for Muppy which is nice. Ingame, speedster physical tank. Works. Gets crowd control and some interesting attacks, but... her skillset relies on monster drops, which, since you don't really see any of the right types at endgame... kinda sucks. DL, High Middle, lacks Vayne's punch but will likely piss off a lot of Middle with her speed/damage combo. I need to look at what she can do with the monster drops frankly before I consider her higher, but apparently she has reliable ID?

Flay: Is pretty cool, yes. Didn't strike me as well as he did NEB but enough for me to choose his ending, which was just silly as all get out. Ingame, is about knockback, pure and simple. Oh, and lightning damage, but mainly knockback. DL... Heavy. Being able to choose between physical or lightning damage is neat, his non-Charge Time skill has nasty knockback, and he can just generally control the speed of a fight, which is really really weird, but Buster Star + Screwdriver has potential?

Pamela: Unlike NEB, I abused Pamela in battle and liked her outside of it. In part this stems from... I think it was the C11 scene? In the Resource Center, about her bear. Still, I could definitely see not liking her much - she doesn't get much screentime to develop, even in her own Character Quests. In-game, NO BULLYING!. Also a pretty nice skillset outside of that with Kiss 2 Everyone/status attacks off pretty much everything. DL? Low Godlike. Appreciates 3.0x, since it lets her get off a lot of nasty stuff.

Roxis: Gets handed the Smart Ball a lot! This does nothing when the rest of the cast hates you and you hate them. This was... actually an effective way to handle that. In-game, MANIPULATION WERKS. Chrona Drive, Judgment, Retraction, Purifying... he controls the turn order brutally. DL... Middle. He's out of his element here, and while Chrona Drive's nice damage it's slow to the punch is my gut feeling on it. Granted, I'm likely underestimating him.

Anna: Plot Godlike, is an Annatoro. This sums her up to a T. Ingame... she's all about "haha I just got another action haha just got another action haha haha hahahaha hahahaha." Being able to pretty much flat-out abuse her speed is a nasty, nasty thing. DL, Middle. Doesn't get her supports, doesn't get SP regen from supporting, which means she's left with a pretty solid but not great skillset.

Muppy: Recruitment and his third CQ were awesome, otherwise he was just annoying/there. Still, the first two count for a lot! In-game, RANDOM SKIP. Given my Run luck, this was insanely important. Also one of the few people I didn't have to give two elemental attacks to since he already covered one. He -does- start slow, though. ...probably LVP since Change! was all I used him for, but for me that just shows how well the cast was set up. DL? Fuck if I've bothered to consider how I let Change! work, so abstain.

Bosses! Spoiler names used for everyone. Because I gotta be me.

RARR I HATE CHILDRENVAYNE AND FLAY: Ingame, gets some neat moments that really stick out, overall seems pretty effective at what he does. Battle worth? Wishes he had his support, but he's still decently effective - durability + good stun damage to get an opponent into Break. Probably a Middle.

Lady Shaggy & Her Pet Unicorn Scooby: Plot-wise, I adored Lady Shaggy. Just... it was obvious to me that she was just there for shits and grins, and she didn't bullshit her way out of it at the end which was awesome. In DL? A neat combo. Lady Shaggy summons her unicorn, Full Power Attack + Scooby Snacks make for some nasty times. If you allow her to summon Scooby, High Heavy, otherwise probably a Middle.

Skipping most the rest of them because they aren't anywhere near as plot relevant, I feel like I need to mention...

Nitori: Not a major plot player - comes up twice, and the second time's... spoilery. In-game? Almost killed me. Didn't have Roxis for the fight, spammed Timed Cards, watched as she got her turn... and turned them all to her cards. yep. That got brutal. DL, High Heavy; gimmick fighter, but does it well.

Nefertiti: Awesome in-plot, actually, but again, doesn't get enough screentime. Battle-wise? Limit boss of murder and death, especially since she doesn't care about the limit per se, she's good enough without it. Godlike, could easily champ with either form; first one's limit fighter, second one has better damage and a few nasty comboes to go with it.

Xorn mk. 2, pt. 1: Low Middle. Call Meteor is lawwwwwwl, though being able to spam it is funny, and he can live to see a string of them land, is my gut.

Xorn mk. 2, pt. 2: Godlike champ, but unrankable by plot. Wee, healing nullification! Yes, this almost killed me; he summoned four Despairs right afterward (no, the move isn't OPB.) Grand Cross just makes the combo even more brutal.


NPCs!

Zeppel: Kinda liked what little I saw of him until Ch. 12.

Vice Principal: Awesome.

Sulpher: Also awesome.

Principal: Muppy, CQ 3. That's all he gets, sadly, but it's all he needs.

Isolde: Awesome.

Everyone else: Fell victim to my complete and utter hate of C12. It's not worth ranting about, but... yeah, C12 made me want to kick the game.


Probably in my 6 range for rankings. Cute, but flawed.

[Grefter]

Mana Khemia - I fell really vindicated that the first thing I noticed as flawed in the game has come up incredibly strongly for the 2 other people in as many days.  Item creation in 2 rooms is fail and it really stands out because it is a new kind of fail that these types of games hadn't done before.

I am up to Chapter 6 and still enjoying it.  It is a stupid plot game and I will make fun of it forever for that, but yeah the gameplay is pretty solid.

[Talaysen]

Vayne: Plot makes him Infinite Magical Boy With The Irrelevant Idiot Ball. Whatever. Ingame, crowd-control/boss slayer (Overdrive + 3x the expensive move = massive HP damage), but fails against the physically resistant. DL-wise... heavy, Overdrive probably makes a lot of opponents twitch.

He can only use his best move twice before running out of SP, so he's not as good as you think.  I'm not even sure if he'd overkill by a 3.0x killpoint?  Maybe, but not by much.

Nikki: Oh wait sorry Jess didn't get all the annoying themes, Nikki got some too. Was less amusing about it, but she got handed the Smart Ball for Muppy which is nice. Ingame, speedster physical tank. Works. Gets crowd control and some interesting attacks, but... her skillset relies on monster drops, which, since you don't really see any of the right types at endgame... kinda sucks. DL, High Middle, lacks Vayne's punch but will likely piss off a lot of Middle with her speed/damage combo. I need to look at what she can do with the monster drops frankly before I consider her higher, but apparently she has reliable ID?

Nikki has much more spammable damage, and it's a good 2HKO off of high speed.  A bit too much for Middle, since she's not frail either, and has a durability/speed limit.

Also, you can get the monster items by using the Task Board.  I found that easier than trying to get them myself.

Regarding alchemy complaints:  While I agree that putting the alchemy in two rooms is dumb, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by writing down what items you need, so you won't be moving back and forth because you forgot X item.  It helps a lot.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Vayne has something like 1.4PCHP damage to me, so he should still have OHKO for Tai, just not as good.

her skillset relies on monster drops, which, since you don't really see any of the right types at endgame

Tal's right about using task board to harvest 'em, but I feel inclined to point out that the monster drops I wanted most of for endgame were the bear ones (which have both her best damage and ID), and there's a bear that drops 30 of 'em in the final dungeon, pretty common I thought. I just made a point of fighting bear-type enemies whenever I retraced a dungeon with 'em, before then.

And yeah, she's not Middle. 2HKO (with healer-killing options) even for your raised kill point + turn 2 ID + yay speed.

[Taishyr]

Fair 'nuff. I kinda lost track of what was even a bear-type monster after Living Forest, so I guess I didn't realize Owlbears were. That'd have helped. Still, yeah, that'd score her Heavy looking at the stat topic; I was mainly looking at her skillset minus those and thinking she had high 3HKO.

Also, Vayne -just barely- should have enough for three Chaos Devotions, no? (Ninja edit: No, I just had a SP+ on him) Either way he's got enough for Overrealm + 2x Chaos Devotion + Blade Pillar, which is enough. Against limit bosses he can throw an extra Blade Pillar in front just to make sure they're squishy enough.

And... uh... Vayne has 1.25 PCHP or so overkill to me that second turn with the combo I listed. So.

Anna's 3HKOing (damnit), Muppy's abysmal, Pamela's a staller, Flay... I haven't looked at Flay's damage yet. Nikki still pulls 2HKO but bearly I think, Jess is staller, and Roxis is weird.