Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Yoshiken]

FF3: Did the Underwater Cave, finding it via Sight - is not using a guide on FF3 okay? I know guides for finding places in early FFs are pretty common, but FF3 doesn't seem too bad for it. Getting the Air Knife lead to Thief Ingus killing things with ease. Temple of Time was a joke with that, and the extra armours helped. Cave of Shadows took two shots - changed to Dark Knight and got slaughtered first time due to lack of armour, then kept everyone the same until the end of the dungeon, where Ingus went Dark Knight for the boss.
Doga's Grotto. Gah. The enemies here are powerful but die easily, which makes my Dragoons, Luneth and Arc, tackle them with ease. (Arc was Knight for the first few runs.) White Mage Refia keeps everyone going with her 35 Lv 1 charges for outside of battle. I get to the end of the dungeon with everyone on full health and all of my best magic charges left on Refia... and then get owned.
Dorga/Unei for Godlike? Either or both. Ggh. Sure, ST wonders for the most part, but that OHKO damage of every element and a high 3HKO physical with double-turning is annoying. I lose two characters to Doga, generally, and then Unei SMAAAAAAAAAAASH. She just OHKOs with anything and still double-turns!
...Any tips, Meep?

[OblivionKnight]

Grind Moar. 

Specifically in class that provide high HP boosts on level gain.

[Pyro]

Jolee and HK are some of my favorite comedic characters in a game ever. Jolee's story morals being as funny as they were was freaking criminal. HK gave us meatbag.

[Meeplelard]

FF3 is less FAQ Bait than FF1/2 by a fair amount, since the game is generally better about directions, Airships being earlier gives you easier methods to explore such that you aren't running into randoms as much, and stumbling upon places by accident works well enough anyway.

The Dark Cave of FF3DS is honestly a joke; the "Use a Dark Knight!" thing is such a laugh cause there's really no reason to, they nerfed the dungeon badly and the gimmick (Splitting enemies) is a joke cause you one shot most of them anyway.  FF3o, splitting enemies were a big deal, so you were either using Dark Knights or things with Magic (this was a dungeon where Black Mage was great due to good resources and lots of status to stop splitting from happening), if you wanted to get through sanely.

You probably missed Fargabad for Cave of Darkness too, which is needed to make Dark Knights NOT SUCK for that dungeon.  Fargabad gives Ninjas some actual armors (Demon stuff), which allows them to be used there.  It also gives you access to a new Axe for your Warriors (slightly better than the Rune Axe on the Invincible), another Kikuichimonji for Dark Knights (and Ninjas when they join), and *2* Blessed Hammers for Vikings.

For Doga and Unei...honestly, never had trouble with them.  Then again, a few Side Quests are open.  Odin has been open since you got the Nautilus, Fargabad exists as I mentioned, which may net you some extra useful gear (though, using 2 Dragoons seems odd, frankly...), and Leviathan and Bahamut have opened up as well.  The summon Side Quests aren't really useful for the summons as much as the bosses are extra level each, more or less, and they all have some pretty sweet equipment along the way. 

While FF3 isn't total FAQ Bait, there's a lot of optional stuff and the game gives you all those Airships to promote exploration from a relatively early point.  Even back on the Floating Continent there were areas like Gyshal or that town before Medusa's Tower which could get you some extra spells and such earlier if you did a little extra exploring (Gyshal was especially big in FF3o, cause they use to sell Ice 3 there.  Granted, Ice 3 was a lot weaker relative to Fire/Bolt 3, and Red Mages couldn't use Bolt 3 back then either, so it made sense...yeah, there are a lot of changes between the versions, more significant and interesting ones than FF4o -> FF4DS if you ask me)

[OblivionKnight]

Speaking of which, you need to actually give us a Meeple rant about Barkley, Meeple!

(yes I read your earlier post - doesn't change things at all!)

[Dark Holy Elf]

The Dark Cave of FF3DS is honestly a joke

No, it isn't. <_< You just think that because you've played the NES version, which was sick. Cave of Darkness is still okay, can be outright good if you miss an optional area before it, as Yoshi's experience shows.

For Doga and Unei, no real advice. I definitely wasn't being OHKOed by anything but Flare/Holy when I fought them. Getting as much elemental resistance as possible may be a good idea, then, I suppose. Also, they only have 20k each so you can definitely hit them as hard and as fast as possible and get decent results, depending on your party.

Meep's right about exploring other avenues; at this point there's a lot of stuff to do. Be warned that many of them have a nasty boss at the end, though. The one I recommend doing immediately is heading to the start of the final dungeon (north of Amur) to get the Earth crystal jobs, since not only are they pretty sweet, but Titan goes down easier than Doga/Unei or the summon bosses. Though he's not as bad as in the NES version at least.

[Yoshiken]

Alright, figured I was missing some optional areas along the way there. The OHKO is probably due to my habit of underlevelling, and I know I wasn't OHKOing Cave of Shadows enemies - 2HKO, maybe, but that still gives them time to divide, and they dealt decent damage.
Guess I'll be FAQing some dungeon locations then. Want to try and finish this tonight so that I can finish it before I get CTDS. <3

[DomaDragoon]

The thing with Juhani is that even though she is a pussy *cough*, her voice is nice. That, at least, puts her ahead of Carth and Mission. Again, both pale when compared to HK, Jolee, and even Candy.

Brutal Legend: Beat. Hated the RTS, loved everything else.

Dissidia: I'll consider it beaten once I clear Inward Chaos. Got a randomly dropped Excalibur, huzzah!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The thing I like the best about KotOR 2? You know how Carth bothers you, but no matter how mean you are to him you still have to sit through his exposition?

You don't have to do that in KotOR 2. It is a system that should be used in all RPGs, ever, forever. Of course if you took all the character exposition out of FF7 you would have an entire continent of nothing.

I sometimes wonder if I am the only person on earth that likes Carth more than Juhani.

I mean, okay, Carth's whiny, that's basically inarguable, but he has at least solid reasons to be whiny and, when he isn't talking about his past, he's fine(sadly this is just most of his lines if you try to break into his dialogues).

Juhani tried to kill someone, wussed out after thinking she successfully did so, ran, was talked into not being evil when in fact she was always about as evil as, say, your average angry teenager, and proceeded to gain almost nothing in the way of personality from her quest(Which, incidentally, I never could get beyond the "Hey we just met this guy I hate let me talk about him still even after the point of no return." part.). She goes from generic lousy evil to generic lousy trying to not be evil, and to boot Bastila does a better job of the struggle idea in the same dratted game. Oh well.

The important thing is that Jolee and HK kick ass.

I can't hate on Juhani because she's too forgettable. It's like hating on, I dunnow, Legend of Dragoon PCs. You mention them and I think "who the fuck is that?"

Carth, on the other hand, doesn't get the hint that I dislike him and will tell me about himself at the earliest opportunity even if you tell him to fuck right off. People hate on Carth because they remember him.

[Sierra]

The thing with Juhani is that even though she is a pussy *cough*, her voice is nice.

Same VA as Jaheira, isn't it? First thing I thought of when I heard Juhani talking.

[Grefter]

Courtenay Taylor played Juhani, Heidi Shannon did Jaheira in all BG games but BG1 expansion (which would have been a handful of lines at most).  The guy who does Carth (Raphael Sbarge) I don't get the hate, the character is the annoying thing there and he has a bit of a bad streak of being typecast in Bioware games, but eh, he generally does a decent job, just gets the kind of whiny lines handed to him.

IMDB brings you this information because I had to check.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

SRWW - *Lowe learns Gerbera Straight.*

...

<_<.

[SageAcrin]

SRWW - *Lowe learns Gerbera Straight.*

...

<_<.

You have not yet begun to <_<. You do not have the Powered Loader.

As to Carth, you can basically just not talk to him and he looks pretty different as a character. You're just likely to because it has a sidequest(albeit not a large one) attached.

Mission...my first thought was "Oh it's that Tiefling from IWD2. Or maybe BG1 Imoen.". She's just a bit of a cliche as a character, although whiny isn't really my first thought, I can see it I guess. (At least her sidequest stuff concludes with "And he was a douchebag. I finally get it.".)

[Shale]

Later, you will remember that as the wussy Gerbera Straight.

[Grefter]

Nah, Carth won't leave you the fuck alone on Telos.  You get most of Carth's plot there no matter what the FUCK you want.  The dialogue in those forced scenes is pretty brutally direct and offensive at times as well, he just keeps talking though.

[SageAcrin]

Oh.

I assumed the game wouldn't actually force you into those, usually there's a blowoff option at the start that I assumed would work and a lot of those I triggered on my own initiative. Oh well.

[Fudozukushi]

Courtenay Taylor played Juhani, Heidi Shannon did Jaheira in all BG games but BG1 expansion (which would have been a handful of lines at most).  The guy who does Carth (Raphael Sbarge) I don't get the hate, the character is the annoying thing there and he has a bit of a bad streak of being typecast in Bioware games, but eh, he generally does a decent job, just gets the kind of whiny lines handed to him.

IMDB brings you this information because I had to check.

Raphael played Scorch in Republic Commando so he has that going for him.



F/uc: Finally finished off everyone's EX missions and unlocked VS BGM.  Zero Lancer's mission was a complete annoyance since I had to finish every other goddamn mission he had first including the 9k damage and 20-hit combo.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

He was also Kaiden Alenko in a pretty awesome subversion of his role as Carth. Whenever his past comes up, he's just like "it doesn't really matter, let's move on." And no matter how messed up it was (and it was pretty messed up) he's well enough adjusted that he's dealt with it. He actually won't go on about it unless you really, really push him. Somewhere on the Extranet, Kaiden is posting about how nosy Shep is and how he just wants to go his job, not talk about feelings and shit.

[Scar]

I can't seem to finish anything right now!

Just started FF12 for the first time, so yeah giving that a go.

So far so good!

Endless Frontier: Fighting T-elos and Saya (for the first time?) I guess that means I;m near the end'ish?
Who knows, my guys are mostly in the low 40s.

[TranceHime]

Avernum 5: This is all. Slardar destroys worlds and I'm loving it. Also, Rain of Ice is awesome. The AoE is very good. And convenient for smashing mooks to bits.

[Meeplelard]

Just started FF12 for the first time, so yeah giving that a go.

Just so you should know, while the gameplay fundamentally doesn't change (which is good if you like it!), don't get into the plot.  It seems cool at first, but then the game decides the plot shouldn't be developed and stops giving it to you!

I say this as someone who likes FF12 as well.

That said...

Blue Dragon: Beat Disc 1!  The Minigame at the end would have been so much better if they did standard First Person controls, where Up and Down are reversed (so moving down aims you up); that kept throwing me off.  That also cost me my first reset!

Zola also needed to have better Class levels, but we'll see.  From what I can tell, MP Scores vary significantly; Kluke in Generalist has more than double that of Zola in White Mage and even after Zola has leveled up.  yes, I checked equips.

I was going for the following builds before I noticed this:

Shu: Tank Fighter.  Mostly working off Sword Master, Monk and Sentinel, with either Sentinel or Swordmaster being my main one.  He's using mostly defensive skills with stuff like Counter Attack, Critical Up and Magic Sword in the mix.

Jiro: Speedy Mage.  Nixing Support Mage cause running 4 classes can be a pain; he'll be using Barrier Mage cause its stats > Black/White Mage.  He swaps to those two to catch up on Magic, and raised a few levels in Assassin for the Speed Boosting ability (I think even underleveled, Assassin beats like every class in speed, so it being stuck at level 9 shouldn't hurt!)  He's geared around getting more turns than the other mage, and trying to weaken things, getting that extra healing in, etc. 

Kluke: Powerhouse Mage.  She's going support and skipping Barrier for same reasons (though, I did start raising her in Barrier Mage some unlike Jiro, who got Assassin on that level.)  Basically, she's gearing around nuking things once she gets a turn, and its working pretty well!

Marumaro: offense oriented fighter.  Basically, Shu but using Assassin over Sentinel.  Does less damage, gets more turns, and he uses Charge Attack, so he can sneak in some extra damage as well.  Probably should give Charge attack to Shu cause he doesn't get much turns, but whatever, not finalizing things quite yet!

Zola: Attempting to make her some sort Paladin-esque type...with speed.  IOWs, Sentinel, Assassin, White Magic.  She uses the Speed boosting skill, defense boosting skills, and White Magic, possibly items too.  Probably hand her Swordmagic for that offensive push, or something, dunno.  I do know, however, that the lack of MP is making me think I might want to swap her role with Shu's or something, but the lack of Class levels means it'd be annoying to shift, especially since Shu's been nixing White Magic for quite a while, so...

And naturally, everyone's being raised in Generalist cause Skill+ abilities are awesome.

[Pyro]

Meep: Support mage is a godsend for damage mages, as it gets doublecast at higher levels.

[Scar]

IN FFXII is there any reason to chain attack other then getting better loot and sometimes life and other buffs?

Also, what do titles do and where can I access them?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

SRWW - tekkaman army jesus christ why do they have all those combos and why did they need subpilots and why are they so fucking cheap to upgrade AND WHAT THE FLYING FUCK IS WRONG WITH REACTOR VOLTEKKA

EDIT: Wait Gundam Astray also got an upgrade!

[Random Consonant]

Tales of Symphonia - Started.  Man, the Desians seem to have this aggrivatingly awful cartoon villain thing down.  Gameplay is inoffensive.

Also, man, these people are epic.