Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Bardiche]

Meeple why do you play a game you don't like?

[Meeplelard]

Cause MK in and of itself isn't that bad (as evident by the score I'm giving it), just the PSP PORT SPECIFICALLY is atrocious.  However, by the time I decided the PSP version was absolutely atrocious (this is about when I got hit with my first game freeze, which happened right before a save point in a longish dungeon) I was over halfway into the game, and MK's early game sucks ass anyway, so I figured I'd just muscle it out.  Again, its not the game that sucks, its the particular port that does.  I'm told MK PS2 actually is has GOOD polish; someone even noted in chat that its ironic that the PSP version's biggest flaw is its polish cause the PS2 version's polish was one of the stronger points.

[Tonfa]

This, however, does not explain beating ;_;.

[Magic Fanatic]

God Hand:  IT'S BEATEN, HURRAY!  Now to go through the game again with a Kick Me Sign, overpowered moves, and to beat arena challenge 51 before I start stage 1-2.  Currently, I'm at a standstill against mission 45 or 46, I don't remember which right now.

Current set-up:
Jab of God -> God Straight -> God Hook -> God Uppercut
T:  Haymaker of God
X:  High Side Kick 1 (going for 3)
2T:  Charge Punch 1 (God Charge Punch is expensive and useless compared to Fist of God)
2S:  God Breaker
2X:  Invincible Fist
Roulette Attack Special Mention:  Crescent Kick - Two orbs; Man-to-man; 900 Power.  Saved my ass SO many times.
Next up to buy:  Mach Speed Jab 2, Mach Speed Jab 1, Fist of God, High Side Kick 3.


BvS:  Okay, only one character is without a Polar Star now.  I feel awesome.  In other news, two out of three of my characters have a Foam Launcher, and same for a full F-Rank set of awesome (Tinfoil Helmet, Tinfoil Breastplate, Tinfoil Machinegun, Tinfoil Buckler, and Regalia).  Wil also managed to get the Mister Roboto bloodline somehow!  Just a shame it doesn't look like it loops.


Next up:  Losing weight with DDR, Treasure of the Rudra, and a whole slew of other games I have that I haven't beaten (Suikoden III, Tales of the Abyss, Lunar SSSC and EBC, another replay of Legend of Mana, starting up WA with a few cheats to get Ashley by a few areas without gaining EXP, maybe Vagrant Story if I can go out and find another PS1 memory card for cheap.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

MK - Chapter 2 begins! Hey look synthing is even easier than I remember being.

[Clear Tranquil]

Infinite Undiscovery- Yay beaten. Final levels Capell L53, Aya L53, Michelle L50, Rucha L53. Final boss took five attempts, won on the fifth. Winning fight was especially interesting since I had to do it with a controller on the blink, yeah batteries decided to start dying.  So I kept getting the Pause menu and "please reconnect controller" messages >_> I was finally on a winning roll though and throw me if I was going to give up then. Fight got a lot easier once the final's barriers were down and little shadow sub bosses stopped running all over the place too. Capell had to double as a third healer for this fight three or so times when the boss managed to kill all three allies with big AoE damage. I actually managed to do this without getting a game over in the process because of Capell dying whilst trying to take care of the other party members unlike previous attempts. Navigation fail issues and no pause on enemy attacks whilst in menus =(

Controller went into it's final throes during the ending and credits so that took a lot of button mashing, waiting and patience to get through. I actually got ready for the day during the time it took <_< It frittered up pretty much completely during the scene after the credits so I said screw it and ran across to the garage store to pick up some new supplies of batteries >.>

Changed the batteries, watched the rest of the scene and saved clear game data. Seraphic Gate am goal!

Going to switch to a party of Capell, Aya, Michelle and Komachi for the post game/replay I think, I'm definitely tired of Rucha now. She's no Meru or even Peppita.

Aya's Raven Venom is win <3

I'm probably going to through a real lot of batteries for SO4 >_>

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

This, however, does not explain beating ;_;.

That is just Meeple hating himself.

[Taishyr]

Mrf, Andrew.

Once I'm fully on summer break (which will be by noon tomorrow, by hook or crook) the first thing I'm doing is locating MR4 and starting a new file there.

Why you do this to me.

[Shale]

SRWK: Hey, Van got level 2 Attack Combo. So much for this game.

[Grefter]

WoW - Everything through to Auriaya dead.  Working on Hodir next.  I approve of the difficulty of the instance, but I do worry about the speed we are making through it even still.  Oh well.  If I get bored I can quit, yay.

[Dhyerwolf]

Meeple why do you play a game you don't like?

Voting rights!

[AAA]

I'm so glad those days are long gone.

System Shock 2-Totally saw the plot twist coming. Other than that haven't had the time to do too much, what with the usual end of semester crunch at college. Gonna upgrade Strength to 4 once I get back to where the nodes are, that extra inventory space is a godsend and I use my wrench all the time anyway. Powered Armor rules.

Kind of annoyed that I only get two upgrades per weapon, sort of makes Modify a waste of time. I have a nice backlog of unresearched items because apparently the other 2 laboratories don't carry fucking Sodium, of all things.

Speaking of chemicals is that what the beakers I've been finding are for?

[Magic Fanatic]

God Hand - HOLY CRAP YAY.  I just beat Mission 51.  Thank you Invincible Fist!  Also to note, I did not have the Yes Man Kablaam for this, so the conventional strategy was out.  I had to use Zen Revival and Enlightenment to keep going, but...  Oh god, it feels so good to beat it.  Now to go on to stage 1-2, get my Kick Me Sign, and go through the game with that.

BvS - It's not my destiny to get Tiny Bee Pistols this week, it seems.

[Shale]

SRWK: Finished stage 24-2. Huh. Those King Gainer levels were actually pretty punishing. Especially because I let the Overfrozen Gainer and Sara get a turn each without noticing they had Move Twice and level to A-Combo. Pain. Then I let the Overdevil use its map. More pain. So then I crushed its face in with Valored Triple Spin Storm, and was grateful that the game doesn't have repair costs.

[hinode]

That's Double Spin Storm, actually. Triple Spin Storm is... well, just wait until you see the move that that was rolled into.

[Niu]

Going to switch to a party of Capell, Aya, Michelle and Komachi for the post game/replay I think, I'm definitely tired of Rucha now. She's no Meru or even Peppita.

I'd recommend Toma for practical purposes. Also, begin to tweak for Aya's MP, she eventually gets one ridiculously powerful but costy move, and you sooo want to be able to spam that.

[TranceHime]

The Dark Spire: Magic is so broken.

Well, things start to die when you get Susurrus Fatalis up to a point! >_>;;

"Undead is dead."

>___>;;

[Yoshiken]

FFVII: Magic-Only File: Surprisingly hard! ...For FFVII.

Barely had the MP to beat Reactor #1, and then had one Ice from Barret left when Airbuster fell (on the 4th attempt >.>). Still, after 15 speed run attempts (without saving), it's nice to finally be able to waste time and get Cloud picked by Don Corneo. =]

[SageAcrin]

I'm so glad those days are long gone.

System Shock 2-Totally saw the plot twist coming. Other than that haven't had the time to do too much, what with the usual end of semester crunch at college. Gonna upgrade Strength to 4 once I get back to where the nodes are, that extra inventory space is a godsend and I use my wrench all the time anyway. Powered Armor rules.

Kind of annoyed that I only get two upgrades per weapon, sort of makes Modify a waste of time. I have a nice backlog of unresearched items because apparently the other 2 laboratories don't carry fucking Sodium, of all things.

Speaking of chemicals is that what the beakers I've been finding are for?

Yeah, saw it coming too. Later stuff...not quite as much, game doesn't have a deep plot but it's sorta neat.

Powered Armor is only good for a bit, then you get Moderate/especially Heavy Combat Armor and 10-20% more damage reduction for 8 Minutes and then no damage reduction starts looking worse. (Heavy takes 6 Strength but eh, worth it anyways, BrawnBoost Implants last much longer than Powered Armor.)

Unless you have really high Maintenance or Electron Cascade. But the latter's broken.

Modify up to 3 is like 20-odd Cyber Modules and lets you mod everything in the game at least once. There's some auto-mod items but there's like six in the game. So you can fully mod three things or you can pay 20 mods and mod everything fully. <_< It's not too bad, it's just scrubby as hell past L3.

(Edit: Also of note, Modifies in general have a +10% for first mod/+25% for second damage bonus that can be easy to miss, and some of the mods have serious ammo cost impacts. EMP Rifle halves the cost of shots IIRC, Laser Pistol is like 1.5x ammo capacity on an Energy weapon and then 2/3rds energy consumption per shot. Couple other weapons get halved ammo consumption too.)

Ah, I'm not the only one that ran out of Sodium.

Beakers can be moved into a pile of worms. You will get worms from this. Worms are ammo. Yes.

I need to do a games post, but too tired right now to sum up both DE and SS2. >_>

[Clear Tranquil]

http://www.gamestation.co.uk/PS2/RolePlaying/~r415632/Mana-Khemia/

 

[Scar]

Suikoden: DS

Characters are more generic then CC scrubs!

I'm rolling with the MC (Scar), Roberto, Asad, and Jale. Not because they are better then the other lamers in my army, it's because they areno better or worse then anyone available. Most people have one way or another to inflict 4-5 hundred points of damage on a turn. Monsters and bosses don't do hardly enough damage for me to even need a healer, yet.

I'm lv 27 right now at the camp of the Furious roar. Rawr!

Story is decent, it just seems they went sUpEr out of their way to have this game have nothing in common with other Suikoden titles. And that in itself is the biggest selling point in the franchise. The Tablet of Destiny has been renamed for Pete's sake!

[Twilkitri]

SRWK - Finished.

I had been told the game was longer than it actually is so I ended up in the final map without an especially optimised team. Still barely managed to make it through but only because COBOL was laying into Mazzy for some reason instead of doing sane things, especially since he could barely damage him.

Top killers as before the final map were Tetsuya Kouji on 190, Kouji Kabuto on 181, Kira on 131.

I am unsure how much I care for the partner system. They didn't really give the secondary unit enough reason to exist with just supporting and hp/en regene, especially since it's counterbalanced by disallowing combo attacks and rendering you more vulnerable to combo attacks (although I guess that may just matter to obsessive reload-on-explosion people). I guess it makes some amount of sense from a strategic view in the sense that you need to be consider whether killing one machine in an enemy unit is worth unlocking the other's ability to combo, but this is never really used.

K's version of combo attacks is a tad broken, but the fact that you use ammo/en equivalent to the amount of enemies you hit kind of kills them for some units. A lot of units also have their combo attacks on weapons you wouldn't normally use otherwise as well.

Unit Accuracy and Evasion as separate stats... was that the case in W? I can't remember that ever being the case offhand actually. In any case it pumps up unit full-upgrade costs without any real payoff as unit fullupgrade bonuses are still being pretty lame. At least the terrain option still A's everything instead of having you choose one only.

Terrain rankings are vastly more effective than I can ever remember them being. On the one hand this is something that has been needed for ages. On the other hand it plays havoc with my unit selection style. I am divided as to which cause is more worthy.

I played through without looking at secrets lists in order to give myself the more authentic experience that would have been had if it hadn't taken forever to get here. Looking through a list it seems I didn't manage to get any. None of them look particularly scintillating anyway.

Serieses...

SEED Destiny was mostly the same as SEED. Not really sure what I was expecting there. Yzak and Dearka fail more than usual.

Stargazer had a pretty theme. Also had a pretty nice combo attack. Really needs a bunch of extra EN and range though.

Gainer, King Gainer is pretty awesome. I have trouble seeing most of the rest of the units as much more than scrubs though. King falls off a bit later on also.

Fafner were decent and nicely varied.

Virtual On units are ugly.

Zoids Genesis was another set of nicely varied units. It is also the cause of annoyance when the majority of them are B in space yet all the enemy grunts from the series are A in space. And then the Biovolcano is also B in space. Any case it has healers, resuppliers, melee dodgy, melee tanks, long range, MAPpers... Seijuurou has a 6-range combo attack when I believe the highest any other unboosted combo attack has is 3, unfortunately it isn't a post-movement attack.

Mazinger Z is J Combattler. It's there. It has no reason to be there. It's pretty awesome anyway. As I understand it it gains a reason to be there in replays. I have trouble considering this as good enough.

Steelgod Jeeg units tend to be pretty awesome. I think that Steelgod Jeeg may be the most powerful attack in the game. A shame that Jeeg's number never came up so I didn't get to see it upgraded. They are a tad on the fragile side in the instances that they manage to get hit.

Gaiking was pretty good. Somewhat overly energy reliant however. Not much point having so many combination attacks if they all eat up so much energy. Used Gaiking The Great once, when all three of them managed to be on the map at once and Raiking and Barking were out of energy and close by. Didn't seem overly spectacular.

Dangaioh is J Combattler again. Powered!Gil is there, but he's not doing anything that he did in the story, and the only possible answer I can see is that this is supposed to be after the series and completely ignoring the fact that Dangaioh was effectively destroyed by the end. Also I deem it the height of pointlessness that they split Dangaioh up in the final attack then rejoin without actually doing anything while split up. That's certainly not a waste of time at all.

Godannar... Tetsuya is awesome and all, but he's active in the first season for one episode and then in the second for three or four. Meanwhile the Dragliner team get a heap more screentime. Yet we get the G Gunner/G-Zero Gunner and not the Dragliner. Tsk. To be fair I'm not sure how the Dragliner could work with the partner system since it works in completely the opposite direction, but... Also they needed to have the units from the ending >_> Also, Twin Drive Godannar is horribly animated aside from the in-cockpit segments. What the heck happened there.

Gun x Sword led to that horrible map where you have Van on his own against a unit inordinately more powerful than him, and I had to get him equipped with an apogee motor and barrier and then play run away amongst the most defensive terrain you can find that's not in range of the enemy's highest-power attack while saving a lot. I guess Dann is reasonably good when not thrown into things like this however. Eldora is decent but kind of slow... can't say much for the other units.

With regards to the originals, Levrias is kinda scrubby and the Seriuses are overly scrubby. Selcurius is not much of an improvement. Solvrias somewhat makes up for it but it looks like a big beetle. Sheldia is ugly also.

[hinode]

Unit Accuracy and Evasion as separate stats... was that the case in W? I can't remember that ever being the case offhand actually. In any case it pumps up unit full-upgrade costs without any real payoff as unit fullupgrade bonuses are still being pretty lame. At least the terrain option still A's everything instead of having you choose one only.

The mobility stat had no impact on accuacy in W and most recent SRWs. Mech accuracy as an additional stat was an addition in Z that they included here in part to let you invest some cash to help mechs with accuracy issues, and in part to make the FUB even more expensive and impractical.

Zoids Genesis was another set of nicely varied units. It is also the cause of annoyance when the majority of them are B in space yet all the enemy grunts from the series are A in space. And then the Biovolcano is also B in space. Any case it has healers, resuppliers, melee dodgy, melee tanks, long range, MAPpers... Seijuurou has a 6-range combo attack when I believe the highest any other unboosted combo attack has is 3, unfortunately it isn't a post-movement attack.

There are a ton of Zoids with range 2-6 non-P C weapons, actually. Murasame/Mugen Liger, both Lanstags, Sword Wolf, Deadly Kong... the list goes on and on. Irritatingly the one Zoid whose pilot has Hit&Away is one of the few that doesn't get a range 6 C weapon.

Oh, and there's one PC Zoid with an A in space... the secret unit that requires a combined 150 kills on Kotona and Re Mii. Nice kick in the teeth there, Banpresto.

Mazinger Z is J Combattler. It's there. It has no reason to be there. It's pretty awesome anyway. As I understand it it gains a reason to be there in replays. I have trouble considering this as good enough.

That was a 4chan lie, there's no Mazinger plot on replays either.

Used Gaiking The Great once, when all three of them managed to be on the map at once and Raiking and Barking were out of energy and close by. Didn't seem overly spectacular.

Gaiking the Great has SSSS ranks and 8 move naturally, plus a 6800 SSAS finisher. The EN costs are beyond rediculous though, so it's generally not usable aside from one big hit against a boss.

Gun x Sword led to that horrible map where you have Van on his own against a unit inordinately more powerful than him, and I had to get him equipped with an apogee motor and barrier and then play run away amongst the most defensive terrain you can find that's not in range of the enemy's highest-power attack while saving a lot.

You don't need to win that fight. <_< Well, unless you're going for the GxS secret. Van gets trashed in that fight canonically, although I won without any major difficulties myself.

[Shale]

I beat the Woo fight mostly unscratched, but that was because I had absolutely ridiculous luck dodging his finisher - four or five times in a row at ~50%, I think? I had a high-performance radar on Van anyway, so at least I had a range-4 attack to abuse him with on my turns.

[Xeroma]

Woo is nothing, put a long range radar on Dann and spam invincible every turn. He dies fast.