Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Shale]

No, there is no overstatement at all. There is nothing Nomura has ever made that was worth the six cents of raw materials that it takes to make a DVD.

On balance, I say Kingdom Hearts was more than worth it. The overarching story he came up with is crap, but he's responsible for the entire project, not just the parts centered on insufferable fifteen-year-olds.

Also, he directed Advent Children, didn't he? Again, shitty story but fun anyway.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

...........I don't know I should be horrified that you are trying to say that Nomura is no worse than Kitase or be mad at you that you think even Subasekai worth less than 6 cents.

Oh, he might be worse, but the percents are so high that it makes no difference. Nomura is, say, 99.998% godawful, whereas Kitase is 99.999% godawful. The difference is indistinguishable.

No, there is no overstatement at all. There is nothing Nomura has ever made that was worth the six cents of raw materials that it takes to make a DVD.

On balance, I say Kingdom Hearts was more than worth it. The overarching story he came up with is crap, but he's responsible for the entire project, not just the parts centered on insufferable fifteen-year-olds.

Also, he directed Advent Children, didn't he? Again, shitty story but fun anyway.

Again: I can't fathom actually paying money for that. I would, and have, played it when someone has a copy that I can play for free, but actually parting with any amount of money for it is inconceivable.

And Advent Children is tripe of the worst sort.

[Ultradude]

It's very pretty tripe at least, not that you need Nomura involved to make things shiny and full of people fightin.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Poképlat - SNEASEL

Also, I handed that XP Share to Riolu. Curse you, Sage.

[Meeplelard]

Also, he directed Advent Children, didn't he? Again, shitty story but fun anyway.

Actually, that last part sums up a lot of Nomura's work.  Thing is, Nomura "shit" is just kind of bad, instead of being flat out offensive like, say, Vincent May Cry.  You end up shrugging it off, and looking at the good parts, assuming there are them. 

Even Dissidia falls into this, and he didn't really direct it (he was in charge of the project, but was mostly hands off, basically being the guy who just confirmed or denied ideas, outside of the artwork which was more or less entirely him.  Sounds like Arakawa did most of the actual work.), so yeah.

Generally speaking, Nomura's one of the few guys in Square who sounds like he has his act together still.  Yeah, he can't write worth shit, but he still knows how to make things fun, and knows how to make use of "The Rule of Cool." Supposedly, Advent Children's entire action sequences was based upon the logic of "Does this look cool?  Yes?  Then use it! I don't care HOW unrealistic it is, people won't give a shit if its cool!"  which...actually is true in many cases.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Well, his first problem is assuming that I like Final Fantasy 7. The one part I thought I liked, Rufus' methods, I was completely wrong about.

[Fudozukushi]

MK2: Ugh, I seriously have to play through Ulrika's path to unlock the TRUE ENDING?  If I don't then Raze's ending is seriously the worse fucking thing I've ever seen.  I didn't even fight that goddamn dragon that hogged up half the opening movie time.

Anyways "final" was pretty respectful.  That Light Phantasm thing was a neat trick that can really screw things up and and the free attack on any character who gets BREAK(which he can do rather easily) is pretty damaging.

Anyways, started on Ulrika's path and OMG the annoying.

[Sierra]

Hey Fudo, about how long did it take to clear Raze's path? Just curious.

MK2: Chapter 4, in which Ulrika foments armed rebellion. Of course, nothing significant comes of this. Hey, if Muppy can hold the principal hostage and get away with it, what do you expect? A few random details, some of them not news, but whatever:

-Zeppel needs to ditch the 'stache. It doesn't suit him at all. Now he looks spineless and sleazy.

-Marta is just waiting to be avatared by Soppy. CAPITALIST PIG and all.

-Why does everyone in the school have a goddamn furry fetish.

Anyway, spent some time synthesizing pretty much every item available up to a rating of 100. Made sense to get it out of the way now since all this stuff will be components for later items. Time-consuming, but it's very easy once Pepperoni learns Gift of the Earth. Ulrika should complain about him less--he does probably around 75% of my synthesizing.

Still pretty underwhelmed by the cast. The character concept for Chloe has to have been "Lezard with boobs," which is okay, but everyone else inspires apathy.

[Niu]

Yeah, he can't write worth shit, but he still knows how to make things fun, and knows how to make use of "The Rule of Cool."

Now, that is an understatement. It is not Nomura can't write worth shit, but its he can't write at all. He just come up with certain plot threads and have a certain poor writer to write...... no, I'll take back that statement. That writer is actually somewhat competent when he is not writing for Nomura. This only explain how disastrous and salvageable Nomura plot is. To be blunt, the only thing he can do worse on this department is to hire the CC writer.

[Fudozukushi]

Hey Fudo, about how long did it take to clear Raze's path? Just curious.

34(or so) hours.  Could have cut that down by an hour but there's a synth item that goes into damn near every "endgame" item and one of it's ingredients is a bag drop.  And You're even lucky if you get one.

[DjinnAndTonic]

On Nomura:

I kind of like the idea of Heartless and (non-Orgy) Nobodies. Yes, I realize that they are mindless RAWRGH villains, but I like the idea of fighting metaphysical evil conceptually.

Yes, Sora and the rest of the original characters are bland... even by early SNES standards, but I care enough about the KH worlds that it's interesting to see how the Heartless and Nobodies are destroying them. I'm also intrigued to see what is the NEXT metaphysical concept we'll be fighting (Unsouls or something like that? Sweet.)

The actual plot... and the multiple incarnations of Sora/Riku/Kairi... are pretty horrifying, though.

I'll put up with it for the cool Mook designs, though... And the Disney filler ^_^

Actually, none of this may even be related to what Nomura himself contributed to the KH series... I don't know who was in charge of coming up with the enemy designs....

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Yeah, he can't write worth shit, but he still knows how to make things fun, and knows how to make use of "The Rule of Cool."

Now, that is an understatement. It is not Nomura can't write worth shit, but its he can't write at all. He just come up with certain plot threads and have a certain poor writer to write...... no, I'll take back that statement. That writer is actually somewhat competent when he is not writing for Nomura. This only explain how disastrous and salvageable Nomura plot is. To be blunt, the only thing he can do worse on this department is to hire the CC writer.

I've always wondered if the guy who wrote CC was still alive. He had such loathing for humans that I figured he killed himself when his MESSAGE!!!!! about the ebil of humanity got ignored.

[Niu]

For some reason, he is still around and soemwhat popular among the fans.

Actually, none of this may even be related to what Nomura himself contributed to the KH series... I don't know who was in charge of coming up with the enemy designs....

Nomura drew all the enemy designs himself.

[Xeroma]

CC writer moved on to rape the Mana series Rob. No idea what sort of evil plan he's up to now.

[Ultradude]

Nomura drew all the enemy designs himself.

Obviously, Nomura should just stick to being a character designer. Or monster designer, if he's gonna put MOAR BELTS AND ZIPPERS on every human character.

[Meeplelard]

Yeah, he can't write worth shit, but he still knows how to make things fun, and knows how to make use of "The Rule of Cool."

Now, that is an understatement. It is not Nomura can't write worth shit, but its he can't write at all. He just come up with certain plot threads and have a certain poor writer to write...... no, I'll take back that statement. That writer is actually somewhat competent when he is not writing for Nomura. This only explain how disastrous and salvageable Nomura plot is. To be blunt, the only thing he can do worse on this department is to hire the CC writer.

Ah, ok, so Nomura doesn't write the plot, he writes the synopsis, and hopes someone else can make sense of it, got it!

...yeah, its no wonder he was usually related to character/enemy designs until only a few years ago.  I will still give him a lot of respect for saving Crisis Core from being another VMC though.

[Clear Tranquil]

Going back a bit I didn't have Trumpeteer for the killer's dungeon and didn't have too much trouble vs randoms there. Apart from Glorious Hand,  that thing has a crap load of HP. Indeed out of all the ultimate personas I only had Yoshi for the frue final but not w/th his ultimate skill. I may even have just managed w/th all the usual stat ups/downs/healing from Souji + Yosuke + Teddie w/th Soma abuse >_>

Enchanted Arms- I underestimated a certain witch. Thought the fight was going to be easy. Even w/th the God weapons + skills she still gives me a hell of a time. Bah I didn't want to go for the ultimate weapons/optional dungeon but it's either that or griiiiinding.

[Yoshiken]

Hm.. I'm using Yukiko/Chie/Naoto which means... well, the Glorious Hand isn't an issue, that thing just goes down to a Mudoon, but... I think I'm using the most frail team possible. >_>

[Clear Tranquil]

... Mudoon works?  

I used Naoto too, she was owning everything else with Mind Charge w/th her default spell + the upgraded version for the frue final dungeon.

What goodies does the Glorious Hand give? I had no trouble with the hands in Heaven and they gave good stuff.

[Yoshiken]

18k Yen. =P And the usual 1 Exp and a Chest Key. >.>

But.. no, the trouble I'm having here mostly comes down to the damn evil bear things. I recently had one run where I opened a treasure chest, Shadows jumped out of the box, got ambushed by 3 bears and a tree (Valuing Nyogo! I remember the name of that one!) and... I proceeded to take 3 Megidos and Game Over. asddgfh.

[Twilkitri]

Rogue Galaxy -

Beat Ghost Ship Xxtreme. With that I think I'll wrap up my playing of it for now.

For completion I still need 9% hunting record, 100% insectron, and 3% revelation flow. I was going quite well with the enemies in the GSX until they punked me out with one that only appeared on three floors, and I am not going through the whole thing again.

All up, it was a fairly awesome game provided you don't require an especially great storyline, falling to a merely fairly great game in the latter third/aftergame. Well worth it.



The Great Decider has decreed FFX-2 for next, but that will be overridden with FFX-1 as I have not played it yet.

[Yoshiken]

Persona 4: Finally reached Ameno-Sagiri!
...Died to his eye laser followed by Agneyastra. Killed nobody other than Souji. Dammit.

[OblivionKnight]

(Ma)Rakukaja and defend are your friends there

[Clear Tranquil]

*Equipped a Patient Collar on Souji ASAP as insurance

[Sierra]

Anytime an enemy charges something, for the love of god set the full party to Defend.

EDIT

Also, MK2 chapter five or six or something. Winter break, whatever. Still kicking myself for not picking Hard mode. But hey, I actually had to heal someone on a couple of the last chapter's bosses. That hadn't happened since way back in chapter 1, when I only had Ulrika and Chloe.

I have so many abilities to buy and nowhere near enough AP for it all. This is totally the opposite of MK1, where I was usually just waiting for nodes to unlock. Out of curiosity, what determines the HP/SP upgrades in this game? Do they just kick in once a PC's acquired a certain amount of raw AP, or what?