Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Not necessarily.  Ignoring the general principle of gameplay and story segregation, if you want to make a flashier attack and feel it's flashy enough to endanger your local laws of physics, you just make a point of defining the nature and limits of the phlebtonium powering said special attacks.

If you're going to bring segregation of plot and gameplay into the mix, there's no point in complaining about doughnut shaped maps in a first place, since they exist for pretty obvious practical reasons (flat map more convenient for player than spherical map, maps not wrapping around would be annoying when flying around).

Seriously. Play Civ4, the doughnut map plays totally different from the sphere map. While having an impassible area is good for having territory you don't have to watch, it's a pain in the ass for navigation.

[Niu]

TWEWY - Week 2, Day 6. What the hell is wrong with Joshua.

He can fly and shoot lasers. It is pretty rewarding to pull his attack chain longer to get the full screen beam.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

TWEWY - Week 2, Day 6. What the hell is wrong with Joshua.

He can fly and shoot lasers. It is pretty rewarding to pull his attack chain longer to get the full screen beam.

I know that! What I mean is "what the fuck this is so broken".

[Niu]

TWEWY - Week 2, Day 6. What the hell is wrong with Joshua.

He can fly and shoot lasers. It is pretty rewarding to pull his attack chain longer to get the full screen beam.

I know that! What I mean is "what the fuck this is so broken".

Isn't that a good thing. Plus, it won't make sense if he isn't broken.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

TWEWY - Week 2, Day 6. What the hell is wrong with Joshua.

He can fly and shoot lasers. It is pretty rewarding to pull his attack chain longer to get the full screen beam.

I know that! What I mean is "what the fuck this is so broken".

Isn't that a good thing. Plus, it won't make sense if he isn't broken.

I expected just "pretty damned good" from a partner, not "christ this is on crack". Not complainin', though.

[Twilkitri]

Rogue Galaxy:

Sadly, the Power Glove wasn't used to pick up the statue and throw it out of the way. And I had been looking forward to that. Aways past there and our path is once again blocked, this time unoriginally by a big ol' rock. Apparently said rock is 'too heavy' to push or throw with the Power Glove, so we make the next stop on our pilgramage of Zelda Items and get a bomb, which deals with the problem quite handily. Then we go on to get Toady, who can combine weapons in an unorthodox manner.

Weapon combination system has its ups and downs... On the plus side, you can analyse weapons once they've had their skill stat maxed and be informed as to what a good weapon to combine them with would be, and this information is tracked for you. It also tells you how many combinations you've found out but haven't tried yet, and whether you have the necessary weapons with maxed skill in order to make a combination, and even how many times you've done each combination if you ever wanted to know that for some reason. Unfortunately despite the log highlighting combinations you can currently make, it doesn't let you make them FROM the log, which is the natural progression of such. You have to note down which weapons are involved and then combine them manually through the Items menu. There are only ever two weapons in a combination, so it's not exactly a strain on the mind, but... unnecessary.

Furthermore, the suggested combinations are not the only valid combinations, which isn't so much of a problem in itself (aside from it paving the way for annoying secret combinations), but the results of unsuggested combinations aren't tracked in the log like the suggested ones are. It may be possible that the results from unsuggested combinations are randomised, but if they aren't there's really no excuse for this.

In any case, further along we found the next item on our quest, the Ice Arrows Freeze Gun. Which was lucky as we needed to freeze a waterfall to be able to climb it! Except, you know, you can't climb a frozen waterfall, so we ended up monographing it and climbing up those. Which begs for the question: Why couldn't we monograph the unfrozen waterfall, or failing that, that cliff face next to it? And extend that to monographing the statue and rock which blocked us off earlier. Oh you inconsistent puzzles you. Noting here that there are tribespeople in all of the areas that were blocked off this way and it's implied that they have no problems getting around. I suppose that it is possibly due to them being presumably allowed off the path.

Speaking of the Freeze Gun, it is atrocious in battle. Theoretically better than the Monography Shot but that has associated amusement value at least. And not only one shot per 'clip'.

In any case we finished up everything we had to do there and left for Zerard, the City Planet. My dream of an Ice Planet being next was shattered, although looking at the map of the Solar System Galaxy shows one possibility that may fit the bill.

Blithely ignoring what we were supposed to be doing we went touristing, and saw the magestic Rosencaster Prison which is completely inescapable! Then we encountered the overly disturbing MIO and her even more disturbing fanbase! And now we're escaping from Rosencaster Prison!

Battles here with underlevelled Lilika, underdeveloped-weapons Simon, and newly-purchased-weapons Jaster are not going anywhere near as blithely easy as the battles on Juraika were. Fortunate that I had built up a lot of healing items. It doesn't help Lilika that her Revalation Flow is being uncooperative.


Burning Strikes aren't as annoying as I was expecting which was a nice surprise. You get a reasonably large range of time to hit the button in and they're always the same combination, which is good because the combination appearing over the animation can make it hard enough to tell when to hit it let alone what to hit. Hopefully they continue the trend of only using square and cross buttons in the later levels of it.

[Sierra]

Comedic storytelling shouldn't be excused from being bad because it is comedic.

Just seconding this on general principle.

~

SoA: I have Pirates' Wrath now. Pity the bosses. The mook at Glacias went down in two hits (Zivilyn Bane took one). Speaking of which, very pretty dungeon there. The ice area was colorful and sparkly, the city hanging upside down over an endless void was cool just for being a city hanging upside down over an endless void. "When we can see the sky through the floor, we must have reached the bottom." Heh.

I can officially "go damn well anywhere" now. Naturally, we immediately took advantage of this to shirk our plot duties and go exploring. Time to see what's above those clouds! ...Turns out there's a lot of blue up there. Granted, it is extremely cool looking down on the whole world. Also, random skip. It's about time. I did have the White Map before this, but it wasn't as effective at shutting down encounters as I would've liked. Now? I want to get somewhere without fights, I just go over/under the map. Anyway, spent some time rooting out discoveries (there are still six or seven I've been told about but can't find, but topping fifty or so total is good enough for now), got those two moonfish I'd left behind (seems the game's just really finicky about where you stand), then headed back to Sailor's Island to stop for the night in preparation for returning to Valua.

Suddenly, Piastol out of nowhere. Yeah, this fight was probably supposed to happen a long time ago. I was told about the black spot thing way back around the time we first got to SI, but apparently I just never wandered through the corner of sky her ship likes to frequent. So yeah, two Pirates' Wraths and she's done. She got to use Wevli (feeble), Tempest Dance (just about 2HKO to Enrique, meh) and Eterni (whiff) before falling. And Vyse hit the damage cap overkilling her poor dog. Not very impressive, but there are, what, three fights with her? She's got time to improve.

Oh, some Wanted battles happened too. Mimic trio fight was pretty rough, had a couple resets because one thing going wrong = everyone but Vyse getting crushed. Much as I wanted to kill the Drilnos whore first, I had to make Anita top priority because Increm'd Anita Burst = everyone dies to a poke. It's an easy fight once just one of the enemies is dead, but surviving that long without my party being a complete shambles was a challenge. Which is good, because god knows the plot bosses don't have any of that going on.

I should take a moment to explain why I hate Drilnos so much. Now, randoms don't live long enough to make stat-downers worth using, and the spell never works when I really need it (I.E., bosses). This alone just makes it useless. The problem is that getting hit with it overrides any positive status effects you have on your PCs. I'd be fine with even this if the reverse also worked, but it doesn't. If you want Increm/Quika up again, you have to cure Drilnos and then recast your buffers, which likely takes two turns since you can't count on the turn order being consistent. Having negative status take priority is just obnoxious. (Same holds true for regen/poison, of course, but this is largely irrelevant because neither status makes much of a difference).

[OblivionKnight]

Cid - Driln/nos is generally useless from your end in character fights, true.  However, it's badass in ship fights, as is Sylenis/other spells.  So...kind of makes up for it?

[Hunter Sopko]

P3- 11/23. The school trip was kinda lame. I feel kinda bad for Junpei, but the scene needed either better writing or a better VA for Chidori. They also needed to do more with his powerup scene other than just punking Jin. The fight was awful though. She didn't even get a turn. The game just feels lost. It's like the writers just walked away.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

P3- 11/23. The school trip was kinda lame. I feel kinda bad for Junpei, but the scene needed either better writing or a better VA for Chidori. They also needed to do more with his powerup scene other than just punking Jin. The fight was awful though. She didn't even get a turn. The game just feels lost. It's like the writers just walked away.

It gets stupider still!

[Idun]

At the Port in DQ8. I have five hours now. Either I'm doing too much grinding in between towns, or the game is just long.

[Cotigo]

Phoenix Wright:  Day 2 of C4.

Ch. 3 really redeemed the game in my eyes.  I was actually amused by the antics of the characters ("What? You're trading me something I already own? But doing so undermines the very principles of the free trade market! For an adult, you sure are dumb.") and on the mystery side of the writing, the twists were far better revealed and more clever than Ch2.

I have my complaints still (ham-handed handling of Edgeworth's character in C2 for no other reason than so he can develop... into a different one dimensional tool, primarily), but the game's growing on me.

[Captain K.]

@NEB:  Defiance is nice, but it lowers your status resistance.  On certain maps this screws the hell out of you, notably the A ending battles.  Also, make sure to see the C ending at some point.  It's a bit better than B ending in my opinion and feels like the canon ending.

PWI:  Blademaster's about to hit 70, and cleric is 64.  Just got my last crafting skill up to level 4.  Damn that was expensive.

[OblivionKnight]

At the Port in DQ8. I have five hours now. Either I'm doing too much grinding in between towns, or the game is just long.

Game is long.  You'll probably log 50+ hours near the end (I had 90 or so, but I also had 20 in AtL1, so...)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I clocked about 60 hours myself. DQ8 just takes forever.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

PS1 (emulated): Laggy Final Fantasy Tactics.  Chapter One was a blast, Chapters Two and Three were typical FFTeasy, and Chapter Four looks back in C1 form.

PS1: Brigandine.  Always fun.  Incidentally, if I had Grand Edition, could I be playing this multiplayer with anyone here?

Wii: Wii Sports Resort.  Awesome, but boy are my arms tired!

[superaielman]

I... think? I know EPSXE has multiplayer, just never used it.

[NotMiki]

At the Port in DQ8. I have five hours now. Either I'm doing too much grinding in between towns, or the game is just long.

Game is long.  You'll probably log 50+ hours near the end (I had 90 or so, but I also had 20 in AtL1, so...)

Game takes longer between towns in the early going.  No question the game's long, but that part gets quicker as things progress.  If you're the type of person who has to explore every corner of the map (like me) take my advice and wait to do so until you get some faster modes of transport than your feet.  Main character also gets a spell that reduces the encounter rate particularly of lower-level enemies, so backtracking to find assorted treasure chests and whatnot is fairly painless.

[Glen Veil]

Vista and the emulator I've been using decided to stop cooperating with each other, so now since I'm feeling lazy about reinstalling/fixing it, I decided I'm going to amuse/torture myself by trying an all Gadgeteer challenge in WA XF level required classes only used when necessary, though I'm going to slightly cheese it and allow Labrynthia her base class OC.

It's been interesting so far, managed to complete both 1-2 and 1-3 by killing all the enemies.  Tony has game best damage right now(lol) and made a surprisingly good tank at the choke point in 1-3, though the level still took all 4 gems I had managed to buy, an inordinate amount of heal berries and all of Labrynthia's MP so now I'm right before 1-4 with ~6 heal berries in total and no money or gems. I foresee myself grinding for a bit to get enough cash to do the second part of 1-4.

I also noticed for the first time that Ragnar is present in Poliasha right after the townspeople are taken, which struck me as kinda interesting.

[Niu]

I clocked about 60 hours myself. DQ8 just takes forever.

Don't say that when you haven't try 9 yet. Prince made sure the game well take as long as possible to complete.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I clocked about 60 hours myself. DQ8 just takes forever.

Don't say that when you haven't try 9 yet. Prince made sure the game well take as long as possible to complete.

At least, it's not as long as DQ7? <_<

[Xeroma]

Prince? What is it with you and nicknaming japanese devs? [ie are you referring to sugiyama?]

[Niu]

Sugiyama is just the composer, how can he make the game loner??
Prince is Hino Akihiro. President of Level 5, director of DQ8 and 9. Prince is the nickname that sum of his coworkers that call him by.

I clocked about 60 hours myself. DQ8 just takes forever.

Don't say that when you haven't try 9 yet. Prince made sure the game well take as long as possible to complete.

At least, it's not as long as DQ7? <_<

Counting all side quests and the steps yo uneed to take to fight all hidden bosses in their max potential and all other stuff. It theoretically can be longer than the 7.

[Fudozukushi]

Mana Kehmia: Jess, Flay get.  Head desk at Jess.

Why the hell do I want to play Drakengard all of a sudden?

[Xeroma]

I got my DQ names mixed up. Blah.

I think he means just the main game Niu. Remember, DQ7 takes way too long to finish in just the main game, the game can be as long as it likes after factoring in sidequests as long as the main game isn't too ridiculous about it.