Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[kokushishin]

DQV (DS):  endgame, although I've mostly been doing the T'nT boards to rack up gold and gear.  I'm pretty content with a Golem but there are some other notable dorks I could hope to pick up.   

[Magetastic]

Frue end get.  Now to get (mildly) bloody vengeance on the game, as it totally deserves it.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Xenogears: Slogged through the 12-hour cutscene with interspersed boss fights and finally got to the endgame for the second time in my life. The story was slightly more comprehensible this time around. Finished up all the 'sidequests' like the Lighthouse and Duneman area. It was nice to finally have some gameplay again. Saved at the beginning of Deus, then went ahead and beat the game again for kicks.

Reloaded my save and now I'm working on evening out everyone's levels and equipment for Gear stat testing. It may take a while to actually get it done though as I have a 2-week vacation to America planned and then I have to switch apartments upon returning to Japan (gah! Moving!)...

Sigh... this wasn't supposed to be such a huge undertaking...

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Yeah, Cid, super stimming someone to death is hacks. The only indication you get that it works is that you take damage a few minutes after using one (first -3, then -9, if I recall). If you have the awareness perk or just know how much HP an NPC has, you can divide it by 12 and super stim them to death. It's cheap as hell.

There's a great FO2 mod I've played a number of times I'd like to recommend you try later. Does some fun stuff, even though it has the unfortunate side effect of making the SAD almost impossible to get in to. Does fun stuff with combat balance where guns do astronomical damage (the Jewel of the Wastes will two-shot Horrigan and one-shot most everything else) but changes the magazine size of all ammunition to 1. So where you previously found 20 shotgun shells, you now find one, and you better save it for when you need it because it will blow the fuck out of anything you shoot it at. The Jewel of the Wastes, by the way, has about two dozen rounds in the entire game world.

[NotMiki]

VP2: just hit chapter 6.  As someone who inexplicably loved all those scraps of plot in VP1 hinting at, y'know, stuff, this is indescribably cool to me.  Also, game is pretty.  Gives SO3's final dungeon a run for its money.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I hope you have that Shiny Rupture on Phyress.

[NotMiki]

Now why would I be using Phyress when she can't wield Greatswords?

More to the point, why would I use her when her battle quotes are so annoying?  And on a related note, are there any Greatsword-wielding einherjar that aren't insufferable?  (I got Aaron, Adonis, Ehlen and Roland, kept Roland, ditched the simpering prettyboy, bad Shredder knockoff, and...Aaron.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Now why would I be using Phyress when she can't wield Greatswords?

Because archers are better than Heavy Warriors? >_> The level of elemental twinking you can pull off with archers is really sick.

EDIT: Not to say Greatswords are bad. Just the endgame bows are very good, and archers get the attack skills to put them to good use.

[Shale]

Archers get the best regular-game weapons, the best skills and the best potential for sheer destruction with Psychosoma. It's not like light and heavy warriors don't have good points, but if you're going to say there's only one class worth using, that class is Archers, full stop.

[NotMiki]

don't have any Shiny Ruptures, I'm afraid.  My archers have Serstine-whatchamacalits...wait, they just got new gear from the plot.  but anyway.  I do see the value in using Phyress, but as I said she annoys me, so I use Millidia instead when I want a second archer (which is a shame because her attacks are servicable but not particularly impressive).  I'm not too concerned with twinking; I barely ever bother to optimize anything outrside boss fights and the game is still manageable (thank you, Rufus).

EDIT: I may have missed something here; what are the good parts of light warriors not named Alicia?  I kinda figured they were designed to be better at hitting small targets than anyone else, but that's not been my experience by a long shot.  Granted my game strategy has been optimized for button-mashing

[Dark Holy Elf]

Speed and keeping things tied (so you don't lose energy), but you can accomplish this with good timing on your other attacks. Also, they're good at airing/downing things generally.

In theory anyway. In practice I mainly used archers and plot characters. <_<

[NotMiki]

As with SO3, I'm finding there is a fantastic depth to combat strategy.  As with SO3, I'm mostly ignoring it in favor of more simplified techniques.  In this case, set the attacks that are most likely to hit enemies of any size and give good return on energy, and mash away.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

don't have any Shiny Ruptures, I'm afraid.  My archers have Serstine-whatchamacalits...wait, they just got new gear from the plot.  but anyway.  I do see the value in using Phyress, but as I said she annoys me, so I use Millidia instead when I want a second archer (which is a shame because her attacks are servicable but not particularly impressive).  I'm not too concerned with twinking; I barely ever bother to optimize anything outrside boss fights and the game is still manageable (thank you, Rufus).

Oh, Millidia? She learns Flame Shot really late. And it's not really about difficulty, because the game's very ill-suited for handling the amount of twinking VP2 allows. Heavy Warriors are okay enough, and their weapons make them worth using, although I still favor archers in the maingame (better weapons, better skill, and they translate best to the "mash away" play due to tying things up so easily).

Light warriors, as you noticed, are rather poor in practice, but at least they own mages. >_>

EDIT: Also, you really highlighted one of the things that disappointed me with VP2. They had a base with fantastic potential for depth, but it just doesn't pan out in practice due to things exploding to the broken. The tactical possibilities end up being more bothersome than interesting, and you end up with VP1 battle system with movement as a novelty, which is... not what VP2 gameplay seemed to aim for.

[Meeplelard]

FF12: Been playing this.

Things I've done!

First, spent a while on Cerobi Steppe resetting a lot just to get that damned Ribbon!  I eventually got it, and yes, its worth it; status immunity is such a nice perk in this game where Status can be a below the belt trick.

Went out of my way to get an Ultima Blade through the Bazaar.  Why?  Cause Basch could use a weapon better than Ragnarok and its ARGH WHY IS RAGNAROK SO PATHETIC FOR ONCE aspect, and figured that's the best I'd get my hands on without pulling my hair out getting that 1/1000 ZOdiac spear.  So I spend a good while getting the necessary things, get the Ultima Blade!

Then its off to Pharos Subterra, to find that damn Seer!  30 Minutes in...
"You received 1x Ultima Blade!"

...a strong sense of Futility comes over me ;_;
Upside, I got most of the other rare items.  Didn't get the Duelling Mask cause it refused to spawn, but did get the 2nd Circlet, Ribbon, and Lordly Robe.  I also learned that Maximillian is still a better armor for Masamune than Lordly Robe despite the Magic >>> Strength edge; Strength just matters for Katanas that much more than magic, so the damage comes out the same, *THEN* Maximillian has that nice firm Defense edge.

Kicked Shadowseers ass naturally.

then Tonfa whipped me into facing Hell Wyrm finally...so I did...
...and he was pretty tame.  First off, lacks damage to really be threatening!  I eventually stopped micromanaging equips cause I knew if my health was > 4000, I'm fine, and my healing was set up so that Curaja was always going off before I dropped below that.  Also, you'd think 9 million HP would take forever...but actually didn't take that long given the style of the game.  MAYBE YIAMZAT WILL BE REASONABLE!? (no)

So...still gotta work on Zodiark and Omega Mk 12, and I'll have completed everything outside of Trophy Finds (which seem like too much of a chore to be worth much; I've killed like 7 out of 80, and some sound like a pain just to find), and the 50 million HP freak of nature who I'm purposely NOT fighting now so we have some PreDLC4 Amusement on Skype <_<

[NotMiki]

Mm.  I wonder what the game would be like if light fighters could hit things reliably, heavy fighters couldn't, and archers dealt damage like mages?

It's worth noting that VP1's balance also breaks down after a while, though of course along very different lines. (Thank you...Bahamut Tear, was it?  the uber-greatsword with 3 swings?)

Although any game that can create a character so statistically pathetic as Badrach and make him actually worth sometimes using has to be doing something right.

[Meeplelard]

Bahamut's Tear wasn't that uber in game, though it was hardly bad.  1200 Power is good, but doesn't really stand out, though the +30% Special Damage was certainly nice (admittedly...only ARngrim had a PWS mult worth a damn to really make use of that.)  Being available the same time as Gram made it merely solid instead of uber, and Valkyrie Favor was stronger (though lower Attack Trust?) for other Swordsmen, in addition to Crimson Edge having been around for Lance users since Chap 5 or so.

Violet Forge always felt like a better weapon relative to its time; same power as Bahamut's Tear, and same gimmick, though hits once, but its relatively a larger power boost compared to other weapons at the time.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Gram was way hard to get unless you were doing a bang-up job of keeping Odin happy. Bahamut Tear definitely stood out as supremely badass to me on a first playthrough, clearly the second best weapon to fall into my hands, best being the Dinosaur. Of course, in VP1 it really did depend on what weapons you get. Elven Bow, Dinosaur, Crimson Edge, Glare/Icicle Sword, and Gram are all varying degrees of obscure/missable.

As far as VP2 goes, Snow makes some points on its flaws, but... I think they do go a bit deeper. When people do NG+ plays it's not really about better comboing... at least, not the way you'd expect. The game boils down to "cheap the game out so enemies don't get turns for things that aren't Soul Crushes". The enemy attack zone was implemented extremely poorly and this ruins high-level combat. Low-level combat is about making things explode, which is accomplished via setup rather than combat itself (sealstones, skillz, accessories, weapons, releases...) and enough evidence in this topic shows the power of button-mashing there.

I did enjoy the SG, granted, but I'm not sure how much I can objectively defend that. I guess the way my tactics reshaped themselves as enemy stats changed was pretty interesting.

In VP1, I paid far more attention to the details of comboing. Probably due to the fact that there was no Divine Time Giver and every hit counted so that you could get the best Soul Crush chain possible. I found that neat. In VP2 Soul Crushes basically don't matter (you hit 100 way more easily and they do much less damage than normals anyway) so a lot of the depth here was lost.

[Clear Tranquil]

Tales of Vesperia-Finished. Nice ending. Really liked the take that they came up with for the final, not often you see something like that. Good ending there too. Both forms of the final fight were really quite easy though despite the fact I never really did any synthesis through the game (Limit Trio/Quartet, healing items, limit bottles, that's about it) I didn't even have to be cheap and use my limit bottles so Rita could over limit after over limit Violent Pain >_>

Finished the story in just under fifty hours though I think I had some run time in there somewhere.

Sooo much that I didn't do like mass costume collecting (I only have two extra costumes and they are both for Judith, go figure <_<), battle arena, Dog Map. Yes I missed the dog map ;_;
Thus plenty of replay value there for me or even just sheer playability value for someone that likes to do everything in a first playthrough (that'd take a while but hey!) Given that and how much I enjoyed the characters/skits it's a high score game, haven't decided on an exact score yet though.

Just wandering around now, trying to find all the fell arms. My guesses as to where they might be have been accurate so far ^_^

Planning to do a replay in crush mode sometime where I completely and utterly break the game with synthesis and other things but first I have to do that with SO4 plus replay that for the stat topic. Have a few files I should tie up on other games as well. Mrmm.

[Twilkitri]

Breath of Fire V: Finished

Blarg they ruined the ending

And on top of that half of the ending was pretty much incomprehensible. Sadness.

Purity was increased to 1 part in 2048. I doubt that this unlocks enough for it to be worth playing again straight away, especially since I have 20-odd other things lying around to start on.

Was pretty great all up. Some interface problems, such as being unable as far as I could determine sell things directly from the locker, having to bring them into your inventory first, causing whatever you swapped it with to lose all its associated skills and have to be re-setup. Height differences being all over the place near the end of the game causing the distance you think you have left to be out of whack is somewhat annoying as well, and makes me wonder whether there were sections cut out.

Game seems a bit long for one that's so replay-focused as well.

[NotMiki]

BoFV is one of those games that gets a lot shorter in practice in replays.  If you don't do Kokon-Horay and do have decent weapons and a little bonus XP stored up, it won't take longer than 12 hours tops, even including newly-unlocked areas.

[TranceHime]

Fire Emblem 8 Girls:

The outcome of that predicament I had back in Ch.7?



With more  enemy reinforcements from both above and below, was diminished to



This lonely pair of cavs retreating to the fort to regenerate their HP.

I trudged and finished Ch.9 and stopped there for the while

[Meeplelard]

BoFV is one of those games that gets a lot shorter in practice in replays.  If you don't do Kokon-Horay and do have decent weapons and a little bonus XP stored up, it won't take longer than 12 hours tops, even including newly-unlocked areas.

12 hours?  That's about how long the game is on a FIRST playthrough <_<;

Replays, you can typically blitz the game in like 5 hours without much effort, even doing some of the new areas.

[Sierra]

Five hours sounds insane to me. My first time beating the game took about twenty, and I'd guess replays usually hit 10-12, as Miki says (I tend to insist on finding everything, and party XP is going to be saved for Kokon-Horay runs even if I don't tackle that dungeon on a given playthrough, so it won't make the main game faster). Given that the maximum D-ratio bonus you can get for playtime is by clearing it in under eight hours, I think five would take a conscious attempt at a speedrun and some serious work to pull off.

Anyway, game does undeniably take much less time on a replay. As for unlockables...some scenes are accessed by replaying it regardless of your D-ratio, while some do require your D-ratio to be past a certain level. I wouldn't know which is which.

As an aside, I've noticed the placement of some enemies, and the enemy types, being a little different on successive replays, so I think that may be affected too.

[Shale]

Crisis Core: After spending hours trying to get Genesis's final scene for the Genji Armor, or a properly timed Octaslash for the Shield, I got them both in one run while killing time in my hotel room over the weekend. Go me. Also got the Soul of Thamasa, which let me switch to Magical Punch for my main damage, since it doesn't stop working when my MP gets too high. Costly Punch is great except for the part where going over the HP limit means my damage drops to about a fifth of normal. 78% mission completion.

[Meeplelard]

Wait, is that how Costly Punch works? I knew it had a flaw, but I was never able to provoke it.  I ended up using Magical Punch for Minerva anyway, though, cause I'd rather expend MP to deal with the bitch than HP, cause even the slightest miscalculation on your HP can get your reamed by Judgment Arrow (where as your MP is fucked regardless against Judgment Arrow, and you're likely going to chug an Elixir ANYWAY to get around it.)

...and I wish I can remember the name of the AP version of Magical Punch; I think its Hammer Punch?  Just wondering cause it bugs me that I can't remember <_<