Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Taishyr]

*to kill both of these two simultaneously, or to kill one and have China tank the overkill and summon out people to kill the remaining two.

Also beat 'em. Definitely a bunch of asses, but being a bit higher leveled than Cid going in I didn't need to grind.

[Sierra]

I tried tanking it out. Neither Meiling nor Tenshi survived even after grinding to boost durability. Do you just get lost a lot in the dungeon, or what?

[DjinnAndTonic]

Persona 4: Finished this two days ago. Good fun. I really enjoyed the game.

My favorite part was the pacing. The S.Links/day system is very inducive to getting things done quickly. And the S.Links did an excellent job of giving out good rewards for playing with the sidequest, and then the little stories of the S.Links themselves managed to be endearing, even though some of them were kind of stupid (Devil comes to mind). I maxed all S.Links in one playthrough despite the guide being stupid.

Fusion system was the highlight for me. It's really been streamlined since SMT1, and it improves on P3's system enough that I really feel enjoyed playing with it. Gotta catch'em all-with deities is fun. The skill inheritance is still randomized, which I can understand some people may not enjoy, but I found it to be a good solution for keeping the game balanced, but still allowing some freedom to create 'the perfect Persona'. I'm hoping that Devil Summoner Raidou 2 will streamline this even further.

Gameplay itself was pretty standard SMT fare, although far better than P3. Full party control, natural Endure from Maxed S.Links with the PCs at a time when randoms start becoming scary enough to actually start KOing your PCs, less PCs with nasty weaknesses at endgame... it just really worked well. Although, I was already fine with SMT-style battles.

Characters I've ranted on before, and the story I can't discuss without spoilers, so...

Music! Sure, why not? I found most of the tracks inoffensive, although the 8bit dungeon theme  could have been so much more... I particularly enjoyed the track "Heaven", which is one of the few pieces of music in a video game that I feel would work just as well as a standalone song. I found a version of it played live on youtube and with the extra emphasis on saxaphone, it really became a good relaxing piece to listen to outside of the game's usage.

Thoughts on the final bosses:

Bad Ending boss: Pretty good fight. I had switched out Yosuke for Yukiko at this point, so constant Mediarama made this fight doable. Decent choice for a ranked boss since it's -always- fought in all endings.

Normal Ending boss1: Really simple. Perhaps I was a bit overlevelled? The chain-style of the fight made the whole experience a little more challenging, but I only used one Soma total. Good duelist here, though. And a -definite- ranking choice.

Normal Ending boss2: I feel like this one should be ranked. And separately from other bosses, despite being somewhat related to them for multiple reasons. This boss is a bit more challenging and -extremely-  good as a duelist.

True Ending boss: Brutal, but Enduring Soul saved my ass when the ID came out. Otherwise, not too a challenge for a Final, but not particularly scary. In a one-on-one format, though... this boss is really High Godlike, mostly due to the durability, though the ID and formchain spoil a lot of other high Godlikes. The plot-ness at the end of the fight can safely be thrown out, and otherwise I can't see any problems with ranking this one, though she might be a bit too strong? I haven't looked at the numbers, yet, so it could go either way.

Really satisfying game. Every time I sat down to play it, I would be at it for like 7 hours, even though it felt like I hadn't been playing for very long. This is the best measurement of a good game to me. However... long game is long. I don't have enough free time to play games like this anymore.

Speaking of Long Games!

Eternal Poison: Started playing this. I haven't instantly taken to a character like this since Soul Nomad. Thage is ridiculously charismatic and interesting, and the main characters in her scenario are very compelling. The gameplay itself is fun enough, though I'm not sure how interested I'll be in the game after Thage's story ends and all I have left is to go through the same game 4 more times...

The cast makes for fun duelists so far, too.

DQ4: That other game that I play when I'm bored and I want to level things up. 2 Pieces of Zenithian gear down, and I've already lost interest.

[Captain K.]

PWI:  Tideborn area is lagtastic.  Accidentally happened upon the new Tournament Agent at the exact time to enter the tournament.  Ended up winning and getting over 4.5 million experience.  O_o

[Hunter Sopko]

The lag is pretty damn bad, yeah. The aesthetic for the new place is... neat, but entirely overdone. The town layout is kinda bad too, but eh.

[Taishyr]

Cid: I buffed Meiling's durability, and her equips are reflective of that. She is not offensively built at all. Her Mind's... 1200? Which was enough combined with her HP to deal with it.

I rarely get lost, honestly. I'm meticulous as fuck about mapping, but rarely get lost.

[Unoriginal]

PWI: Tried it out earlier as well, didn't get all that far as I was also refreshing myself on the new stuff at the same time.  And yeah, very very choppy in the new town, and it'd have been impossible to get anything done had I not been reminded of the shift key and it's ability to ignore a few dozen high level players on oversized mounts sitting on questgivers.  Would have gone back in later to mess around a bit more, but...


TF2: HEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAADDDDSSSSSS.   Worked on Demo achievements long enough to unlock the Targe, then the Steam servers popped back on for a bit and wound up getting the rest of the Demo unlocks fairly quickly after that.  Haven't tried the new Soldier stuff, but the ones outrunning Scouts with the new pickaxe and the arrow-speed rockets look nice as well.

[Niu]

FF13- Mircosoft must die. Due to Square being forced into squashing FF13 into XBOX, FF13 is now turning into a disaster. God, the game is becoming extremely one dimensional, thanks to Square cutting all the content the can cut so the game can fit into XBOX.
The actual game code has been cracked open, and how thing gotten dummied out or minimized is simply horrific.

Seriously, files between z031 to z104 all got taken out (and by the fact they didn't clean up the signs should tell you how last minutes are these cuts). And look at the file size distribution, we can assume over 50% of the content got removed. And as a fact, the game is ridiculously linear and lack of sidequests, and no epxloration at all. They way the water down the graphic is also vomit inducing. It is like downgrade Blueray video into rmvb and paste it into DVD.

UGGHHHHH, can someone nuke Microsoft already? They have turned something that could have lived up to the hype into a total nightmare.

[Hunter Sopko]

If what you say is true, Square's at fault too. They could have just kept the PS3 version the same and gave the shitty cut version on X-Box. No real reason for parity if the system can't hack it. But then they wouldn't be able to later release FF13 International.

[Grefter]

Shitty ports are shitty ports.  It is the company making the port at fault if they make a shitty port.

[Fudozukushi]

WoW- Finally trying to get Jon geared up. Have I mentioned how awesome the dungeon finder is yet? Because its awesome.

I still can get a goddamn run in even with that.

Really? Man, I stuck my mediocrely geared DPS ass in for a random heroic three times and had a group in less than three minutes.

Everyone on my server are assholes, and so are everyone in dungeon finder.  Seriously, I'm unguilded so I can't run shit, and my gear is damn near the best I can get without going through instances.  I hate everyone.

TF2: HEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAADDDDSSSSSS.   Worked on Demo achievements long enough to unlock the Targe, then the Steam servers popped back on for a bit and wound up getting the rest of the Demo unlocks fairly quickly after that.  Haven't tried the new Soldier stuff, but the ones outrunning Scouts with the new pickaxe and the arrow-speed rockets look nice as well.

Damn, now I have to reinstall Steam and TF2.

[Shale]

Shitty ports are shitty ports.  It is the company making the port at fault if they make a shitty port.

That.

[Niu]

If what you say is true, Square's at fault too. They could have just kept the PS3 version the same and gave the shitty cut version on X-Box. No real reason for parity if the system can't hack it. But then they wouldn't be able to later release FF13 International.

Square isn't completly innocent, yes. But I am more empathatic toward them, as porting to XBOX is more of a excutive idiocy than developmental crew fucking up. The developmental crews aren't very happy themsleves with the XBOX port as they have to extra work that actually undone what they did. And none of thsi mass would have occured if Microsoft had stayed away.

[Cmdr_King]

Personally I'd place the blame on Sony.  Making the PS3 so unsuccessful that releasing FFXIII on just one console was unattractive is squarely in their court.

[Ultradude]

Personally I'd place the blame on Sony.  Making the PS3 so unsuccessful that releasing FFXIII on just one console was unattractive is squarely in their court.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Personally I'd place the blame on Sony.  Making the PS3 so unsuccessful that releasing FFXIII on just one console was unattractive is squarely in their court.

I think I saw a by the numbers breakdown and to make the game's budget back, everyone who owned a PS3 would have had to buy two copies.

Still, it's a Final Fantasy game, it was never going to be good.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, Microsoft seems like the most innocent party in this by far. And that's coming from someone who uses a freaking Mac.

That said, ten bucks says this deleted content ends up being something I don't give a damn about anyway. ohnoez sidequests and overkill graphics budgets.

[Hunter Sopko]

Blaming Sony is also pretty stupid, honestly. Especially for that reason, because it becomes a massive circlejerkular console wank exercise. Do we then shift the blame to Microsoft for creating a console that can barely scrape triple digit sales a week in Japan? And so on.

In the end, it's Square's head office making a tough decision based on the climate of the game industry. Sucks for the dev team, but oh well. Thats life.

[Niu]

Yeah, Microsoft seems like the most innocent party in this by far. And that's coming from someone who uses a freaking Mac.

That said, ten bucks says this deleted content ends up being something I don't give a damn about anyway. ohnoez sidequests and overkill graphics budgets.

Even with the pesudo XS1 like progression? those dungeons that are nothing but straight line? And the ridiculous lack of the ability to revisit? .... I guess they cancel out, the areas are so boring you wouldn't want to go back.

[Excal]

Honestly, XS1's big flaws were pacing, attack animation length, and an unsympathetic main character.  None of these are givens from what you've mentioned so far, Niu.

[Grefter]

I am just going to throw it out there, if you are working with that much money and you can't make the game work properly on two different platforms you have just plain fucked up your budgetting, your development timeline and keeping control of the scope of the content of the game.  Essentially the management fucked up.  It isn't like Square haven't budgetting for and working with multiplatform releases for a few years now and honestly some of the ports aren't super bad for PC (thinking Last Remnant here.  THe game was bad but the port was functional if not heavy handed.  Worked about as well as Anachronox did and that was PC Original)

[Niu]

Honestly, XS1's big flaws were pacing

That.

Remeber the beginning of FF10 where you have littel control and just automatically got thrown here and there and you really can't dso anything?
FF13 is like that and a lot longer and with he dungeon you travel being far mroe boring.
It manage to make it not as offending by giving you a flashy battle system (something the game actually pulle dout decent) and the story hasn't get stupid, yet.

[Excal]

if by beginning of FF10 you mean everything until Zanarkand, then yes.  Yes I know exactly what you're talking about.  All of that extra stuff was basically just aftergame anyways.  More to the point, I am less than worried because a) the NA versions of Square games tend to be upgraded over the first offering in Japan, and we seem to be the beta for the International version, which is also on sale in Japan, but not here.  I mean, it could be different this time, but precedent seems to be trustworthy here.

[Monkeyfinger]

Honestly, XS1's big flaws were pacing

That.

Remeber the beginning of FF10 where you have littel control and just automatically got thrown here and there and you really can't dso anything?
FF13 is like that and a lot longer and with he dungeon you travel being far mroe boring.
It manage to make it not as offending by giving you a flashy battle system (something the game actually pulle dout decent) and the story hasn't get stupid, yet.

You're making FF13 sound pretty good.

[Cmdr_King]

Blaming Sony is also pretty stupid, honestly. Especially for that reason, because it becomes a massive circlejerkular console wank exercise. Do we then shift the blame to Microsoft for creating a console that can barely scrape triple digit sales a week in Japan? And so on.

*shrug* The argument can, and has, been made that nothing Microsoft could do would sell the 360 in Japan, not on the console development level anyway.  While securing a metric asston of exclusives might do it (see also ToV and its affect on 360 sales), my impression is that they absolutely pay out the nose in those deals and it'd be a massive money sink, and I doubt they'd make lasting gains to allow them to recoup their losses on the next iteration of the console.

Sony meanwhile has market share with the PS2 of, what, double all of their competitors put together?  Essentially the best selling thing ever, the attention of every company in the industry, a legion of loyal customers.  They then proceed to a finicky console that no one can program for, using devices they invented specifically for the system, essentially turning the entire affair into one giant marketting platform for their shiny new media format in fact, and then show up a year and a half after their next competitor at 50% over their price, which was sufficently high to already put a large part of the market out of their price range.  The ball was entirely in their court and they systematically did everything they could think of to screw the pooch.  So yeah, I'd say it's pretty fair to blame them for having a tiny fraction of their old market share.

Edit: Hell, I wouldn't be surpised if FFXIII's inflated budget wasn't influenced pretty heavily by Sony too.  Given the development cycle on the thing, they had to have started before the PS3 even launched.  Squeenix I suspect was under pressure to really milk the PS3's assets, and was banking on the thing matching up to the PS2 to make their money back.  It's certainly on their heads that they didn't scale back after the PS3 turned out to be a hilarious failure, but I very much doubt Sony is innocent in this either.