Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

P4- I are the suck and lost to the second boss in Yuki's castle. Well Chie was still alive ;_; Why did I pick Normal mode again? I'd severely depleted my item stock by the time I got to the boss, oh well. Also what's with these camera angles? Other than that been enjoying the game so far, it's fun~

The camera angles are always sorta problematic, you just get used to them. For the second boss, you have a couple choices: either get a couple levels or get Resist Physical from Slime so you slap it on another Persona. You -really- don't want to be severely underlevelled, regardless: Level Is The God Stat still applies in P4, although in a less extreme manner than P3, and the earlygame difficulty curve is a wall.

Also, Yukiko is soooooooooooooooo not the archetype she shows at first. She gets a lot better, and is one of the funnier members in the party (although it's hard to compete with Teddie, who just steals every single scene he's in). EDIT: *Flees from Nameeple.*

EDIT: Right, I also play games.

PoR: Weapon grinding finished. Wow, that was actually pretty fast, took half an hour to master the Cross -and- the Javelin at the Dark Academy. Unlocked Nest of Evil, going to bash heads at Gergoth because I need to deliver the final blow to it with a BLANK BOOK. Hooray, busting out the calculator for a Metroidvania. Thank god that boss is a worthless, worthless loser otherwise.

TWEWY - Still at the same point I was, although I've done some fighting. Elephants must die. Also, I got the Loligoth Bat pin from something. Niu told me not to evolve it until I get a second copy, though. =(

[Ultradude]

*lalala rarely noticed the camera angles*

MP3 - Bryyo finished for now, though I'll have to head back once I get lots of delicious upgrades. Mogenar gave me a reset - I screwed up the first Phazon Shoes phase and didn't have the health to finish it out at the end. I'm certain that it's possible to not get hit once, but that's not something I see myself doing against any boss ever. Other than that... nice to be blasting Space Pirates instead of amorphous interdimensional evil, though the complete clear out of the Thorn Jungle section by any enemies ever was surprising - I at least expected some wildlife to move in.

Now at Elysia. Skytown is awesome - city of interconnected floating islands with steampunk technology. This is awesome. Granted, things trying to kill you when you use the rails can be a bother, but the enemies have been cool so far, and quite killable with the Boost Ball I just got, even though it's not the best method. I love having options.

[Excal]

FFX - Mostly just been tooling around with the aftergame.  Kept a save file so that I can give the final dungeon a real shot later on, but for now am wandering about filling out the Monster Arena and picking up celestials and loot.  Getting fairly close to getting Nirvana and Masamune ready to go, and Godhand shouldn't be too hard after that while Caladbolg is already good to go.  Which will just leave Onion Knight, World Champ and Spirit Lance, all of which sound like they're going to be a pain and a half to get.

Advance Wars - I've decided that I'm going to play/replay the entire series.  So, worked my way through the first one fairly quickly with a Andy/Grit/Eagle final party.  Sadly, Eagle accomplished a whole lot of nothing outside of being Meteor Bait thanks to his really expensive units.  Grit also managed it, which kept his rockets out of play, though he at least got some licks in with his Artillery.  So pretty much the entire job of winning the fight was left to Andy, who accomplished it with a mix of Infantry, Artillery, and Tanks, and just kept up the cheap unit spam.  Despite having the bulk of his army clumped in one spot in order to fight properly, he never once got Meteored.

The second game is proving to be interesting as it's the one I've never played before.  The national bosses are annoying thanks to the fact that they ignore the usual rules for creating units (ie, don't need cash and can act on the same turn) but everyone since the first has at least allowed me two COs.  Which has let me pair up Max and Grit, as well as Andy and Kanbei.  Just starting the Green Earth missions, and they're looking to be a fair step up over what came before.  Not least of which comes from the fact that Hawke is the first Black Hole CO who manages to be equal to my COs, if not slightly better.  Haven't looked at his skills in AW2 yet, but I know he stacks up well in AW:DS.

[Captain K.]

Retro Game Challenge:  Beat all the games in Story mode, unlocking the Sound Test.  I used cheats on most of them to finish quickly, although I did beat Haggleman 1 straight through without using a continue or cheats.  Do we have a Guadia Quest stat topic?  Need one.  Still can't beat the damned Red GameGuadia, pact or no.

Grandia II:  Started.  Just got Roan and !Elena.

[Twilkitri]

Etrian Odyssey - Floor 26

Well, the boss of the last stratum was an improvement over the previous strata bosses as one would hope, but it still didn't really have anything in the way of challenge. Considering my team is level capped and won't necessarily be getting any better weaponry, the boss of this stratum may have something on this front.

Speaking of level cap, 70 is far too low considering both the amount of available skills and that I reached it near the top of the previous stratum. Not to mention that it doesn't appear to be stated in the manual that there's a level cap at all, let alone at what point it is. I guess it's there so as to give the Retire command a reason to exist? This could easily have been solved by just dumping the Retire command. Not really in the mood for retraining people.

[Yakumo]

I'm sorry, but if you hit the level cap at all you are way, way overlevelled for the maingame in Etrian Odyssey, which probably has something to do with the way you feel about the challenge.  I forget exactly how high levelled I was but I think I was only in the early forties when I finished.  I know I wasn't even close to the cap.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

TWEWY - Beaten. Kitaniji was pretty sad, but I pretty much went gameplay skip on him by fighting the bastard on Normal at max level. Keep the stylus at the edge of the touchscreen while Velocity Dash reams him, lather, rinse, repeat. That would be a funky battle against normal levels, though - or Hard Mode. Ending was really weird, too.

VPDS next, because I want something considerably more mindless and less stylus-intensive right now. >_>

EDIT:

VPDS - C1. The first plume scene was... um.

* EmoFeathers uses a feather.
<BigStahnCosplayer82> rarr power
* BigStahnCosplayer82 solos battle.
<BigStahnCosplayer82> blarg ded
<EmoFeathers> NO NO DEADY
<BigStahnCosplayer82> No can do, it's in the script. Tell the pastry girl her scones were awful, kay? ;)
* BigStahnCosplayer82 dieds.
<EmoFeathers> DO NOT WAAAAAAAAAANT
<UnnecessarilyArchaicHugo> Um, what happened here?
<EmoFeathers> IT WASN'T ME KAY HE DIED BECAUSE OF THE STRAWBERRY PUNCH
* EmoFeathers has quit IRC (ragequit AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH)
<UnnecessarilyArchaicHugo> what the fuck

Impressively, the actual in-game dialogue isn't much longer than this quibble. I see where Elfboy's issues with the writing stem from already, this is ridiculously rushed. On the other hand, the gameplay is inoffensive so far. They probably should have used the linear 2D graphics system for a more elegant gameplay transition, though, since the way the graphics work, juggling and OTGing is rather cumbersome. Hard to distinguish the correct heights for proper juggles.

[Twilkitri]

I'm sorry, but if you hit the level cap at all you are way, way overlevelled for the maingame in Etrian Odyssey, which probably has something to do with the way you feel about the challenge.  I forget exactly how high levelled I was but I think I was only in the early forties when I finished.  I know I wasn't even close to the cap.

I don't remember doing much in the way of grinding without a good reason? Granted it is my memory talking, but the game doesn't exactly have the most enticing battle system.

It is also possible that my definition of a good reason does not completely coincide with yours.

[Captain K.]

I'm sorry, but if you hit the level cap at all you are way, way overlevelled for the maingame in Etrian Odyssey, which probably has something to do with the way you feel about the challenge.  I forget exactly how high levelled I was but I think I was only in the early forties when I finished.  I know I wasn't even close to the cap.

QFT.  You're massively overleveled.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

VPDS - Second map of C2, Aullewyn Fort route. So far, my suspicions were confirmed as of now.

While I'm still scratching my head at the heavily digest nature of the writing (wait, the sisters kill a peasant who surrendered and then "MERCENARIES FEND FOR THOSE WHO CAN'T FEND THEMSELVES" out of nowhere? What the), the gameplay is something I actually sorta dig. The nature of the beast is very setup-heavy, which runs in the face of straight efficiency, but I appreciate the idea in its own terms - especially given how heartily the game rewards you if you play by its tenets. The SRPG aspect is indeed primitive, and I honestly can't defend that (it's particularly noticeable when you're fresh off more sophisticated SRPGs, as NEB was, and I'm not out of my own share regarding that either).

On the other hand, it has saved a lot of grief by sticking with KISS (dunno how elegant this system is, if at all, but the general workings feel very intuitive and smooth to me), and I do enjoy the flanking-laden mechanics, rewarding positioning and baiting. Doesn't hurt that those same mechanics are rather flexible when you account for range. On the other hand, the game still has the problem of being rather easy so far. Sure, I get flanked by a mob of mages and Wylfred explodes like a primadonna, but that means "ho-hum, Union Plume time" rather than "ohshit reset reset". It says something that my resets come from sub-optimal Sin harvesting rather than getting mangled. Oh well, not like I was looking for frustration today.

And the plot hasn't done anything embarassing, at least, in spite of the non-sequitur narrative. It feels like they at least try to keep some semblance of honesty with the premise (Wyl isn't painted in a particularly sympathetic light, for an example. Them keeping the somewhat desolate themes of VP1 also pleases me, although the game's writing does no justice to the potential this idea had. That, I will hold against this game until the end). But we'll see.

[Twilkitri]

Etrian Odyssey - About to start Floor 27

Fighting without getting experience gets on my goat, so I retired my alchemist for a new one as he didn't have a particularly good distribution of skills and I wanted to see what sort of bonus retiring gives off. For future reference, it gave off a massive six points; so very worthwhile. To be fair, I took all his equipment off beforehand, and that may have some effect on things.

Did not feel like going back to the current area straight away with the new recruit so I did the Ankh-collecting quest instead which didn't take very long as I had marked them all down while going through that area earlier. Then ended up going back to floor 26, wherein I had previously finished going over the lefthand hall of warps near the opening room and was about to start on the right.

In the end, after doing the Ankh quest and finishing mapping Floor 26, with no grinding, the new alchemist is now level 41. Keeping in mind that I had to run from every battle involving an Ironcrab as I consequently now had no way to do non-negligible damage to them. This doesn't prove anything, especially since I will grant that this floor was ludicrously long with all the warps compared to most previous floors, but it does leave me wondering whether we're talking about the same game.

[Fudozukushi]

Exit Fate: The difficulty for this game is all over the place.

[Bardiche]

Exit Fate: The difficulty for this game is all over the place.

Finished that game. It becomes a massive joke once you get some of the clearly more powerful characters and spells.

Re-playing WA:ACF right now. Marriage~

[IhatethisCPU]

Had to find an avatar that wouldn't spoil Tranquil.

Growl: HoW Clear.

Not bad, although I want to play Growl Gen and can't because my PS2 doesn't play CD-ROM based anything nowadays.

Notes:
Melvina > Fanille > Krious > Rufus > Randall > Sherris. Also, the worst and second worst characters fates annoyed me. One's still alive after end-game, and the other didn't explode painfully enough to make up for the fact that his character consists entirely of flaws. Seriously.

Not sure what to play next, so ideas would be helpful.
 

[Yakumo]

I'm sorry, but if you hit the level cap at all you are way, way overlevelled for the maingame in Etrian Odyssey, which probably has something to do with the way you feel about the challenge.  I forget exactly how high levelled I was but I think I was only in the early forties when I finished.  I know I wasn't even close to the cap.

I don't remember doing much in the way of grinding without a good reason? Granted it is my memory talking, but the game doesn't exactly have the most enticing battle system.

It is also possible that my definition of a good reason does not completely coincide with yours.

It's clear that your definition of a good reason doesn't coincide with mine.  I was able to finish the game so clearly I didn't need to do any more grinding than I actually did, after all.  The closest I ever really came to grinding was abusing the gather point close to the beginning of the fifth stratum for cash so I could afford the good weapons and armor.

Retiring in EO1 gives a stat boost based on the class the character was initially plus the small skill point gain.  I hear it's better in the second though I never really got far enough in it to find out.

[Talaysen]

I hit the level cap in EO1 for a few characters as well.  I assume the people who didn't cap ignored quests or actually switched parties at points or something.  Or skipped randoms/FOEs.  Or didn't fully explore the floors.  I dunno.  It's definitely not unreasonable to cap levels in the maingame at all.

EO2's retire is a lot better, yes.  It only halves the character's level instead of resets to 1, and I think the stat/skill boosts were higher.  It also raises the level cap by 1 if you retire at the character's current level cap, but that's not really done in the maingame (well, you can retire at 70 in the maingame but will likely not get back to 71 before the final, even with exploring everything and doing quests and such).

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Been playing a lot of ToV, actually. It's very nice to have a main character who's not a fucking retard. Sometimes vigilantism is the only way!

[Niu]

VPDS next, because I want something considerably more mindless and less stylus-intensive right now. >_>

Wait, you didn't do another day??

[Yakumo]

I hit the level cap in EO1 for a few characters as well.  I assume the people who didn't cap ignored quests or actually switched parties at points or something.  Or skipped randoms/FOEs.  Or didn't fully explore the floors.  I dunno.  It's definitely not unreasonable to cap levels in the maingame at all.

EO2's retire is a lot better, yes.  It only halves the character's level instead of resets to 1, and I think the stat/skill boosts were higher.  It also raises the level cap by 1 if you retire at the character's current level cap, but that's not really done in the maingame (well, you can retire at 70 in the maingame but will likely not get back to 71 before the final, even with exploring everything and doing quests and such).

Nope, I did every quest and tended to have almost full if not totally full maps.  The only thing I can think of is that my team was less resource intensive, so I didn't have to repeat sections of a strata very often.  I mean, I'd have to leave but generally I would explore a couple floors at once, so the next time I could just make a beeline for the exit and get to new stuff.  Maybe if you had to leave and come back a lot or something, that would add up to more fights and more XP?  I really don't know what else could cause that.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

VPDS next, because I want something considerably more mindless and less stylus-intensive right now. >_>

Wait, you didn't do another day??

Started it, but I'll bother with TWEWY aftergame at a later point, because the game was generally a very intensive experience and I wanted to give it a break. Will come back to it.

VPDS - C4. Holy hell this game moves fast. Lieselotte freaking rules as a PC, and is yet another possibly fascinating character who gets swallowed by the digest black hole that is VPDS writing. Rush things less, dammit.

EDIT: ALSO THE CREEPY AS FUCK TWINS ARE TWELVE YEARS OLD WHAT THE HELL

[TranceHime]

Nope, I did every quest and tended to have almost full if not totally full maps.  The only thing I can think of is that my team was less resource intensive, so I didn't have to repeat sections of a strata very often.  I mean, I'd have to leave but generally I would explore a couple floors at once, so the next time I could just make a beeline for the exit and get to new stuff.  Maybe if you had to leave and come back a lot or something, that would add up to more fights and more XP?  I really don't know what else could cause that.

Harvesting resources from FoEs and having to come and go a lot in order to get a lot of the nicer items does cause a little (at some cases, large) edge in terms of EXP gain, since the random battle experience DOES add up. As Talaysen mentioned, it's not at all crazy to have some L70 characters. Hoarding money by having gathering whores or incorporating gather into your characters or even having a Divinity/HG Troubadour tends to cause surges of EXP at times as well.

EO2 handles this a lot better with Retire, I recall finishing the game at around L88? Way overlevelled, yes, but I wasn't purposefully grinding as much as I was abusing the shit out of HG...

[Clear Tranquil]

*nods @ Snow* Yeah I grinded a bit for Steamy!boss. I was hardly making a dent in it when I went in and ouch pain so I decided to train for Chie's Rampage Drive and Yuki's Agilio. Rampage Drive really helped a lot and on my winning attempt Yuki did good damage on her spare turns from healing to the boss w/th the Flame Vow equipped too. I waited till one of the minions was down before doing anything but healing with her though apart from her first turn. Yosuke spent the first half of the battle delketing enemy buffs and the second guarding for his life. Why? I was sooo close to winning on my first attempt after getting Rampage Drive when suddenly the boss pulled off a double with Fatal Spark and his other MT skills, thanks to 1!More because of Yosuke's weakness. Fun.

Decided to focus mainly on the social links of my family, my party members and the Fox. Apart from that ... I'll see how it goes. Yuki is growing on me yeah. She doesn't mind bugs!? That a girl.

Bleh I hate grinding. I have decided though that since SMT/Persona games are cheap that as in Nocturne I'm just going to be cheap right back and do what I can to crush the game ^_^

Oh yeah my party is probably going to be Souji/Chie/Ted/??? - Yosuke or Kanji? I really like both the guys =-(

[Fudozukushi]

Exit Fate: More of you need to be playing this.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

*nods @ Snow* Yeah I grinded a bit for Steamy!boss. I was hardly making a dent in it when I went in and ouch pain so I decided to train for Chie's Rampage Drive and Yuki's Agilio. Rampage Drive really helped a lot and on my winning attempt Yuki did good damage on her spare turns from healing to the boss w/th the Flame Vow equipped too. I waited till one of the minions was down before doing anything but healing with her though apart from her first turn. Yosuke spent the first half of the battle delketing enemy buffs and the second guarding for his life. Why? I was sooo close to winning on my first attempt after getting Rampage Drive when suddenly the boss pulled off a double with Fatal Spark and his other MT skills, thanks to 1!More because of Yosuke's weakness. Fun.

Decided to focus mainly on the social links of my family, my party members and the Fox. Apart from that ... I'll see how it goes. Yuki is growing on me yeah. She doesn't mind bugs!? That a girl.

Bleh I hate grinding. I have decided though that since SMT/Persona games are cheap that as in Nocturne I'm just going to be cheap right back and do what I can to crush the game ^_^

Oh yeah my party is probably going to be Souji/Chie/Ted/??? - Yosuke or Kanji? I really like both the guys =-(

Wow, you grinded a lot. I never had Agilao with Yukiko for Shadow Kanji, I got there at L23 with a Rakshasa for Phys Resist and managed from there. I'd recommend you to go with Yosuke - he's probably the best non-Souji PC, due to a good stat spread and nice utility. Wind is also probably the best element in-game as well. Don't forget to try Tentarafoo on midgame enemies, there tend to be a lot of formations in the next couple dungeons where enemies get hit by it 100%, and those get utterly trivialized by it. However, you can go with whichever party you want. I prefer Yukiko as my healer for the midgame due to her resource depth, myself. By the way, don't forget to fight the optional bosses in the areas you already cleared, they give pretty cool equips and aren't very hard (in fact, the one that could give you trouble should be trivial for you by now).

[Talaysen]

Nope, I did every quest and tended to have almost full if not totally full maps.  The only thing I can think of is that my team was less resource intensive, so I didn't have to repeat sections of a strata very often.  I mean, I'd have to leave but generally I would explore a couple floors at once, so the next time I could just make a beeline for the exit and get to new stuff.  Maybe if you had to leave and come back a lot or something, that would add up to more fights and more XP?  I really don't know what else could cause that.

My team wasn't very resource intensive due to having Relaxing, but I did make a habit of leaving often just to save.  Generally after every floor or so.  I also had Divinity up for most of endgame, which probably helped with it.

---

Devil Survivor - Middle of Day 6 now.  Did the fight for BEST PC but he didn't join yet.  Sadness.

Spectral Force 3 - What is this I don't even.