Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Shale]

Star Fox Command: Going after the enemy command in the asteroid field...stage 6? 7? Around there. Beat most of the map, lost on my last chance at intercepting the last missile, called it quits for now.

SRW Alpha For Dreamcast: It works! I finally got a usable boot disc! now to figure out the character-select menu.

Painkiller: Started, played through a bit of the first level before leaving for work. It's pretty much as advertised: kill things, collect what they drop, repeat with more things to kill. Looking forward to the enemies getting good enough to get some adrenaline going, and maybe a few more colors in the palette.

[kokushishin]

DQV:  Finished. Nimzo was nothing compared to Psaro, Estark was a major pain though.  Plenty of stuff left to do (complete the last  T 'n T,  hope for drops/recruits, and I haven't even touched the casino much)  That and wait and see whether VI or IX makes it across the pond first.



Blazblue: True Ending get. 

[Strago]

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

Eh, I dunno. I've only played about an hour, but so far it just looks like a sub-par Suikoden II knockoff with a silver-haired-bishie protagonist and music pulled from a bunch of better games. It gets better, maybe?

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The beginning is just like the beginning of every Suikoden game:

BORING AS FUCK. But yeah, it gets better once you get on to the main continent. It's quite a bit like Suikoden II, but it replaces the total garbage protagonist with someone much better. Basically, it's Suikoden II with Shu as the main character and your strategist being the beardiest old man who has ever fucking lived.

[Fudozukushi]

Exit Fate: Fuck you Soth.

Also Bast Gunwood is still manly as fuck.

EDIT: Also how the hell do you call Danny boy bishie?  He looks like he got worked over with a shovel.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The hair?

[Strago]

Yeah, long flowing silver hair and a black trenchcoat sort of screams Sephiroth, does it not? Based on the general style and quality of art, I don't think he was intended to be quite so ugly.

[DomaDragoon]

Well, my sister and her family are staying with us for two weeks and they've co-opted the TV room, so I'm handheld only for the near future. Decided to take this time to get caught up with my handheld backlog.

Age of Empires: Played a little bit of the French tutorial.

Disgaea DS: Beat Etna Mode, will eventually get around to a playthrough with the Prinny commentary.

FF III DS: In the dwarven village, and really looking forward to getting the new job classes.

Platinum: Cleared the sixth gym, average party level is 43.

Retro Game Challenge: Finally beat Guadia Quest. After that, Haggleman 3 was a breeze.

[Bardiche]

WA:ACF: Got Jane in my party, next stop, Volcannon Trap. I forgot how incredibly cheap this game becomes if you get PS MP Repairs and sell them. I ganked one to equip on Jack, tempted to steal another two for sales and gimp Rudy's ARM... but trying to resist temptation.

I tried using Cecilia for offense this time around, but unless she hits elemental weakness her damage really isn't that impressive to me. Think I definitely prefer using her as Buff/Debuff fiend. Jack's awesome as always.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Jack is awesome, then gets progressively worse throughout the game until later, when he's more like a high-speed tank, and then at the end you get Laser Silhouette and he goes back to being a killing machine.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

VPDS - C4, battle 2. Um, these enemies fucking fail. They deal a lot less damage than prologue enemies -unscaled- (24 damage before Defiance. This is just mockable no matter what) and have about as much HP. What the hell happened here?

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Exit Fate- Jesus christ, Clint fucking destroys my party. Which kind of makes sense, considering he's armed with a high-caliber revolver and I'm trying to fight him using a sword.

[Fudozukushi]

Exit Fate: You want me to make FOUR teams!?  My best team gets 2HKOed by randoms.  Dear god the grinding I'm gonna have to do....

[Shale]

Up to the fourth level in Painkiller. Game is definitely fun, and the enemies got surprisingly competent for being a bunch of melee specialists in a game where your go-to weapon is a good shotgun. Still needs less brown.

Ys DS: Started. Woke up, presumably with amnesia (YS PLOT). Ran around town for a while. Failed to open treasure chests. Left town. Ran into walking trees WITH FURY. Got OHKOed. Next time, FAQ.

[Bardiche]

Exit Fate: You want me to make FOUR teams!?  My best team gets 2HKOed by randoms.  Dear god the grinding I'm gonna have to do....

IIRC only Daniel's team needs to fight a boss (freezing bitch, so best prepare the switcheroo skills), while the others need to fight some fairly easy randoms. Just put the Lawyer in one team, the knife-toting mage in another, then the experiment dude in another team and the last team should skirt by with Daniel as the team's healer. Just spam MT damage a lot against the randoms in that damage and they fall easily.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

VPDS - Reinhilde, you suicidal bitch.

[Random Consonant]

Ah, CotP.  The only game I can think of where the escort missions require you to protect people who are dumber than Rafa.

Oh, right, I play stuff.

LFT - 1x Agrias get.  Taking this rather slow, to be honest.

Also replaying SoM for the heck of it.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

At least, Gleipnir's Bonds trivializes that mostly (like... it does to a lot of things. Full MT status that stops action off high accuracy in a SRPG. lol ensues). What cost me the reset was mainly the fact that Reinhilde got critted once after GB ran out and I had no Fairy Tinctures to toss at her when Wyl reached her general vicinity (also not enough AP to drop in a Vali's Awakening and get the idiots to tink Wyl uselessly). I also dicked around a lot while the enemies -were- paralyzed, just dropping losers like flies, but not moving forward much.

[dude789]

To be fair, it's not so much the AI as it is that the battle system harshly punishes single units who are outnumbered. Also, since you're one the B Route, Phiona's Plume skill is pretty godly if you don't plan on using her. I think Chapter 5 B route allows one plume use before you get shifted to C Route, but you might want to save before hand. 

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

No, she is pretty impressively dumb. Staying within range of two enemies and not moving a single inch away before attacking any one of them with that range is very, very stupid. Auguste is even worse on paper, just staying still all the time, not even bothering to run. In practice, that might actually be a good idea when all enemies just want Reinhilde dead, but.

EDIT: And I believe using the Plume more than once per game will lead to C route (don't think the FAQs said otherwise, and I don't want to test it out, honestly). I don't want to diverge routes this time around (planned to go B the whole way), so I'll have to pass on that skill. The game sorta doesn't warrant that level of overkill durability anyway, although um wow, infinite auto-revival for three turns for your whole party is sorta broken as shit.

[Random Consonant]

To be fair, it's not so much the AI as it is that the battle system harshly punishes single units who are outnumbered. Also, since you're one the B Route, Phiona's Plume skill is pretty godly if you don't plan on using her. I think Chapter 5 B route allows one plume use before you get shifted to C Route, but you might want to save before hand.

It IS the AI.  ALL the escort missions I've run into force you to protect people who just sith there like morons.  ALL of them.  It is dumb, and it is why I stopped playing it.

[Magetastic]

You can use the plume a certain amount of times each chapter before you'll go down an ending. Also, once you're in the final chapter (5, I believe it was?) you can use the plume basically as much as you want, and you'll be fine. By then, the ending has been decided, I'm fairly certain. It's worth double-checking, but I'm 90% sure about this.

[Random Consonant]

You can use the plume a certain amount of times each chapter before you'll go down an ending. Also, once you're in the final chapter (5, I believe it was?) you can use the plume basically as much as you want, and you'll be fine. By then, the ending has been decided, I'm fairly certain. It's worth double-checking, but I'm 90% sure about this.

That's only true for C5 on B route, and even then, only up to twice before you get knocked onto C route.  On A route, you can't plume at all without changing routes (which is kinda the point).

[Scar]

Fire Emblem Wii: Micaiah is SOOOOOOOOOOO slow. UGH!

Other then that Ike's unit is freaking so overpowered it's not funny. Well it kinda is.

[Grefter]

Painkiller is pretty much like that the whole game Shale.   There is indeed a tad to much brown generally.

I still think the best level is 3/4 of the way through the game or so, think it is called Military Base or some such where you get chased by like 50 WW1 era equipped zombies.  It is so much fun.