Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Also yeah Djinn that is hax, more that my eyes were popping out at the amount of gaming you've been apparently steaming through lately though ;)

Eh, it's a slow week in Japan. All my kids are graduating and I don't have a lot of lessons to plan. But I'm still required to go to work, so I can't vacation or anything. Seemed like a good time to game.

BTW Djinn. Don't use Meuria and Lym. Their spells boost enemy rush gauge waaay to fast and lack the healing prowess that Sarah has at the same time. Well no, you can get around it with Lym, but Meuria is definitely no. Especially if you want to do the after game. Also, Reimi is a must. Turn on Concentrate+Berserk+Critical and go spam Ibarane+Yumihari+Aratsubame, and you see things just explode and dies. Oh, Yumihari destroys things in Rush Combo too. And don't get fooled by Benishigure and Mitsutsuki, despite good damage, those boost enemy Rush Gauge by too fast. Fine, Mitsutsuki is still usable due to how it ties up the enemy and make good start for Link Combo.

Hey, thanks for the advice! I may actually play around with the aftergame now. I really hadn't been intending on it, but now that I know to pay attention to the enemy's Rush Gauge, it might become a slightly more strategic game.

A pity about Meuria, she is by far my favorite hooker-mage character to use. I'm a mage-whore in ARPGs.

7th Dragon:

DS run (IPD) - Grinding for Deadblack.

KAIZO!!! run with the RPGDL -
The gang so far!

Yours truly [ みつなり, Samurai ]
Tallychu [ Tal, Princess ]
Nitori [ にとり, Princess ]
Tonfa [ トンファ, Knight ]
Dune [ Ko, Fighter ]
Taishyr [ Tai, Rogue ]
Jo'ou Ranbu [ Snow, Mage ]
Xeroma [ Xeroma, Samurai ]

Still have space for 8 more.

Can I be the Healer? Females always get to be the Healer - but *I* want to hold the power of life and death in my hands! There's male options for Healers, right?

-Djinn

[Hunter Sopko]

7th Dragon:

DS run (IPD) - Grinding for Deadblack.

KAIZO!!! run with the RPGDL -
The gang so far!

Yours truly [ みつなり, Samurai ]
Tallychu [ Tal, Princess ]
Nitori [ にとり, Princess ]
Tonfa [ トンファ, Knight ]
Dune [ Ko, Fighter ]
Taishyr [ Tai, Rogue ]
Jo'ou Ranbu [ Snow, Mage ]
Xeroma [ Xeroma, Samurai ]

Still have space for 8 more.

I be a generic fightar1!!1! Lo on INT hi in STR!@

[Bardiche]

Bardiche, the Greatest Mage to Ever Walk the Earth?

[Shale]

Super Robot Wars K: Woo fun. Up to stage 5. Mazinger easily wins the award for most surprisingly crappy unit thus far, although apparently it gets better (Mazin Power and Daishirin Rocket Punch around stage 17, and a further upgrade where it gets Iron Cutter). Godannar, Gaiking and Jeeg are crushing things nicely in its stead, and the Gainer characters look pretty badass.

[Talaysen]

SO4 crap:

I never found building up the enemy's rush meter that big of a problem if you just pay attention.  Once they hit rush, just run around while it wears off.  Usually if the person you're controlling is the one that boosted it that much, they'll only chase you and your other three people can just wail on the guy anyways.

Doesn't work on randoms of course, but if randoms are lasting that long you're doing it wrong.

Only maingame here, of course.  I imagine postgame stuff is totally different.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

AT2 - Jesus Christ, these writers desperately need to get laid.

[Niu]

I am surprised you haven't give up on that Snow.

Luther for Middle? - Hmmm ... sure why not. He can be blitzed pretty effectively even without IC. Peppita has Power Dance hax, Maria, Adray and Sophia all have Power Up. He can be soloed well by most of the cast as well.

At last! Someone agrees!!

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I am surprised you haven't give up on that Snow.

Luther for Middle? - Hmmm ... sure why not. He can be blitzed pretty effectively even without IC. Peppita has Power Dance hax, Maria, Adray and Sophia all have Power Up. He can be soloed well by most of the cast as well.

At last! Someone agrees!!

Why would I give up? The game doesn't suck, it's just egregious.

Also, I'll start agreeing on Luther for Middle hype when you start hyping Van for Middle too. Has the same issues and none of the speed. <_<

[OblivionKnight]

To be fair, you could argue that neither of them have appreciable (objective, numerical) speed, and thus are both average. 

Granted, that's no fun >_> 

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Well yes, but that's not the point. I just wanted to mildly annoy Niu. ^_^

[Niu]

Also, I'll start agreeing on Luther for Middle hype when you start hyping Van for Middle too. Has the same issues and none of the speed. <_<

My van respect is not high though, better than Lucy yes.
Van at least have couple hi-ougi that are actually, well, hard to dodge and have enough passive-offensive melee to keep him going.
Lucy? His Strong Attack is just.... Maria out run Perfect Symmetry without Bunny Shoes, and I'll fell ashamed if Insanity Prelude can get me over three hits. And his small attacks are among the most predictable and is easy guard Aura Bait. My Lucy respect would be higher if Guard Aura isn't so broken.

[TranceHime]

KAIZO 7th Dragon

New additions (request) -

DjinnAndTonic [ Djinn , Healer ] (Every class has 2 male and 2 female choices)
Hunter Sopko [ Soppy , Fighter ]
Bardiche [ バーディシュ , Mage ]

Where Ko is an UNBALANCER with an Axe, I decided to make Sopko a swordie who capitalizes on the IMBA Element Follower. And Attack Kill and Blood Sword to synergize with Rogues.

[Meeplelard]

MK: Finished the first free period of Chap 2!  This game is moving slowly, mostly cause of port issues *sighs*  Guess that's what I get for gambling with the PSP version or something.

ToV: Just got to the Nor Harbor.

[Monkeyfinger]

Also, I'll start agreeing on Luther for Middle hype when you start hyping Van for Middle too. Has the same issues and none of the speed. <_<

My van respect is not high though, better than Lucy yes.
Van at least have couple hi-ougi that are actually, well, hard to dodge and have enough passive-offensive melee to keep him going.
Lucy? His Strong Attack is just.... Maria out run Perfect Symmetry without Bunny Shoes, and I'll fell ashamed if Insanity Prelude can get me over three hits. And his small attacks are among the most predictable and is easy guard Aura Bait. My Lucy respect would be higher if Guard Aura isn't so broken.

Don't forget that there's nothing in TotA remotely comparable in power to an R8 Orichalcum weapon, which is considered among dedicated SO3 players to be the noob's twink.

[Talaysen]

Van at least have couple hi-ougi that are actually, well, hard to dodge

wut

I didn't find any of them hard to dodge at all.

[Crystalgate]

Final Fantasy XII: Went back to this game and did some optional quests. Just got the spear of arbitrary treasure skipping.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

SO4 crap:

I never found building up the enemy's rush meter that big of a problem if you just pay attention.  Once they hit rush, just run around while it wears off.  Usually if the person you're controlling is the one that boosted it that much, they'll only chase you and your other three people can just wail on the guy anyways.

Doesn't work on randoms of course, but if randoms are lasting that long you're doing it wrong.

Only maingame here, of course.  I imagine postgame stuff is totally different.

As a general rule, the further you get in to the game, the more room an enemy's attacks take up and the further they go.

The solution is to be Bacchus and go nuts. His dash attack stunlocked my way through killing Gabriel.

Bacchus stunlocks anything.

[Lord Ephraim]

L4D with Trips:  Sucked massively, except when I was the Tank and I managed to incap 3/4 survivors and knock 2 of the building during No Mercy finale.

RE5 with random people/board8 guys: Awesome

RE5 with AI: Sucks

That's all about that.  Note how fun it is when two people count all the stupid MGS4 references in the game.  I'm disappointed in the lack of cheesey dialog, that part of character that made Leon great.  Speaking of which, what the fuck Leon isn't even playable in Mercinaries, instead you get alt costumes of 3 people.  Lame.

MadWorld:  It's not a pure beatem-up.  It's a puzzlem-up.  The trick is figuring out the more obtuse way of killing people.  The commentary is awesome.  John DeMaggio and that guy from "Whose line is it anyway" brought out their best voice.  Sadly, the game has the same stupid camera angle as GodHand.

[Clear Tranquil]

Ok picked up Enchanted Arms, Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata (Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata were part of the two games for £20 stack so eh why not) I don't expect ES to make much sense but the characters look pretty and the battle shots from the box neat enough.

[superaielman]

*Whips* Go buy MMXCM as well, slacker.

[TranceHime]

KAIZO 7th Dragon:

I will do my next recording soon enough... But I don't quite know who to take.


GUILD RPGDL (so far!)
Yours truly [ みつなり, Samurai ]
Tallychu [ Tal, Princess ]
Nitori [ にとり, Princess ]
Tonfa [ トンファ, Knight ]
Dune [ Ko, Fighter ]
Taishyr [ Tai, Rogue ]
Jo'ou Ranbu [ Snow, Mage ]
Xeroma [ Xeroma, Samurai ]
DjinnAndTonic [ Djinn , Healer ]
Hunter Sopko [ Soppy , Fighter ]
Bardiche [ バーディシュ , Mage ]
11/16

Tai already wanted in, so that leaves 3 more possible spots for my next video. If you're not in Guild RPGDL and want in on the next video, let me know and tell me the class you want:

Fighter / Rogue / Mage / Samurai / Healer / Knight / Princess

[Excal]

There is a shocking lack of knights in your team Trance.  You should fix that.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Finished Lufia 3 during a very long, boring workday where I probably could have been doing something fun or productive... but that's not the Japanese way. The Japanese way is to suffer through the pretense of seeming endlessly busy. Because Attendance is more important that Effectiveness.
</rant>

Egg Dragon is cool. I love it when my reward for a ridiculously long sidequest and accompanying battles is a playable character, even if once I have them the character is extraneous. This is also why I *heart* Nippon-Ichi postgame... and why I suffered through Eternal Sonata's side/postgame.

Straight up, though... the dungeons in this are ridiculous. It's painful.

I like several of the things going on in the battle system (9-member party?! fuck yeah! Mousse's AI-control being offset by granting an extra turn? Also good!), but randomly-generated dungeons of this length need to die.

The Spiritual Force system was kind of interesting for being unique. And I liked the number of characters... and Milka being the only non-Sinistral character to make it into all three games was kind of cool in that "I like continuity" way.

Yeah, I just spent a lot of time on it, so I'm trying to be positive, but it was just a forgettable experience once all is said and done. All in all, with some polish, it could have been really good, but there were a few too many bad design choices off-setting the mildly interesting parts.

-Djinn

[Yoshiken]

Tai already wanted in, so that leaves 3 more possible spots for my next video. If you're not in Guild RPGDL and want in on the next video, let me know and tell me the class you want:

Fighter / Rogue / Mage / Samurai / Healer / Knight / Princess

Ooh, could I be a Rogue? ;o  I don't really care about being in the video, I just always like the Rogue classes. 

[AndrewRogue]

Trance, I shall heroically take up the mantle of knight or rogue