Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

When did saying something can't reproduce sexually means they reproduce asexually?

Jesus fucking christ, I can't explain it any more clearly. If a species reproduces with a partner, they reproduce sexually. If they don't do that, they reproduce asexually, unless they can't reproduce at all, in which case they are sterile.

It has always meant this, pretty much since the advent of modern biology.

[Shale]

Niu: It's problem of emphasis. "Can't reproduce sexually" implies "they reproduce asexually instead." "Entelexia can't give birth to other Entelexia" would have been a far clearer way to put it.

[Taishyr]

Given I think Chinese uses different terms there (might not?), yeah, understandable confusion on my end. Shale's phrasing does work best.

Touhou Odyssey: Floor 17, beat up floor 16 boss/Flandre/Mokou. Only need to recruit the person guarded by FOE 3rd Vangeezer

Current opinions:
Rank 1: China, Patchy, Chen, Marisa, Ran, Orin
Rank 2: Reimu, Komachi, Alice, Yuugi, Yukari, Suwako
Rank 3: Youmu, Tenshi, Nitori, Sanae, Eirin, Suika, Yuyuko
Rank 4: Sakuya, Iku, Remilia, Rumia, Aya, Mokou
Rank THE STRONGEST: Wriggle, Minoriko, Cirno, Reisen

Rank What The Goddamn Hell Is Wrong With You: Flandre

Okay, new additions first aside from Flandre.

Suika: Rank 3. Good MT slow, even if off bad-ish damage. Good ST damage that becomes terrorizing when she buffs. Isn't fire elemental, which helps distinguish her from Yuugi, as does the magic tankiness. But... slower to get absurd damage, so Yuugi stays above her.

Yuyuko: Rank 3. MT ID 100% accuracy + huge damage on one attack! Solid ID on the other two! ...frail and slow and off of not-Patchy SP pools and elementally reliant! ...mrf.

Orin: Rank 1. Makes randoms -cry-. Doesn't bother going onto the team against bosses, but Blazing Wheel/Needle Hell is good enough to nuke a random pretty well. Cats Step would be useful except the damage is shit and not buffable as easily as Chen's.

Yukari: Rank 2. Hi, MT buffing. Hi, MT GIVE EVERYONE ELSE A TURN. Yeah, Yukari's wrong. Has Paralysis+Speed Down as well, so.

Mokou: Rank 4. This is arguable, but the damage... well, it relies way too much on her MAG stat, which means against high MDEF she's boned. And that's too common now. Still, on low MDEF she devours.

Eirin drops a rank because the damage is just kinda miserable outside of a ST that relies on low MDef and an expensive MT attack that does about average damage. Still a solid tank mage, but mainly used on bosses now.

Aya drops a rank because the damage just doesn't seem to keep up. Maybe I'm building her poorly.

Reisen joins Tier THE STRONGEST because those stats make her attacks usually fail to even puncture defense. FAIL.

Suwako -up- a rank because that paralysis lasts like two-three turns. This is shiny awesome.

Flandre gets her own rank. Not because she's bad! Objectively, she's... rank 2? But those drawbacks. Holy goddamn shit they make her annoying to use. The damage is shiny, really really shiny! But the drawbacks. ;_; Requires a custom team to even make quasi-good use of her, which makes her hard to rank. Should be okay against bosses, at least.

[Niu]

So.... what exactly is the offspring of 2 Entelexia if it isn't one?  Do they birth humans or ... what?  This really isn't making much sense at all.  Entelexia are Bodhisattva?  It is a sense of being in tune with the Aer? 

Also of course the cake analogy didn't work, it was a joke which is why I said so.  This would be the time where a smiley would be appropriate, but I am not going to do that.

And yeah CK, the response is understandable, it is all very human.  But that doesn't make it right or the whole thing justified, it is the whole damned reason I am shitty with the game for just rolling over and accepting that oh yeah this is totally all the humans fault that Entelexia turned into a giant world threatening tentacle monster in space.

But you haven't give a legit reason on why it is not entirely human's fault.
All the Adaphagos in the sky right now were from Gelyos era and they end up like that excatly because Gelyos human were super evil.
Really, how are you going to defend Gelyos human after everything they done? Every single tentacle monster up there was a result fo their action.
Blaming Entelexia for not working with human after that does not work, because all the Adapahgos were born already by that point.

Also, Entelexia didn't pick on the humans after the pact and no Adaphagos were born during those 990 years. But you can't defend the Empire right now when they out right betrayed Elucifer. Blaming Elucifer for being a naive idiot for trying to defend human and ultimately gave Alexei a chance to fuck with Zaude should be better blame if you want to accuse Entelexias.

And the offspring of two Entelexia parent? Whatever genetically similiar to the parent, but lacking the trait to process and digest Aer. That trait does not pass on genetically, and it is the only deciding factor on whether you are an Entelexia or not.
For an Entelexia, only that trait matter, rest of your genetic information means nothing. It can be my evil sister with three heads, but as long as it has the trait of processign Aer, it counts as an Entelexia.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

WAoO - Doing Io's second and third fight at L10 made it a lot less trivial (fighting him at L13 with all the party with high-end equips for the time was kinda >_> in the first playthrough). I still like the subtleties in the ratio system far too much.

[superaielman]

DQ5- I picked Debora as my wife. Mages suck ass in this game (Nera/Flora out) and Bianca is bland (out). Went with her, and she comes with a slightly improved version of Falcon Earrings. Score.

[Cmdr_King]

With the exception of Alexei's "...oh shit, I fucked up BIG TIME and was COMPLETELY WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING" reaction that leads into Part 3, I think we can safely agree that Part 3 is completely worthless to ToV's plot, as its paper clipped on...poorly...and mostly exists just cause Namco doesn't know how to make things short, likes to stretch things out, and why not throw in the elemental spirits just for shits!?!?!?

...much as I like ToV, I'm seriously struggling to think of something GOOD that came out of the 3rd section.  Well, the Yuri/Flynn duel was there...but that could have been placed anywhere, so long as it was shortly before the final dungeon, so I really don't think that counts.

Well... there's two things it does interestingly.

1) Others may disagree, but making Alexei a bum who ends up completely screwing over the world then dying works for me.  It feels more karmic that way.

2) Gives a stronger foe to rally the world around.  While, yes, some tweaks to the story could readily make Alexei such a thing, given his setup of popularity and trust within the empire it's more believable this way.  As for why this is desirable, considering that the game is really built around the meaning of Justice and how people have to make it for themselves, giving the PCs the chance to be the catalyst to lasting change to the status quo feels like the right move.

Obviously there's other reasons (Tales is really married to earth-shatting plots, the third section lets them throw out a lot more meta-series references and world structure) but those are more tradition of debatable merit rather than actual story functions.

Grefter: Yeah, meant to touch on that.  That the game treats humans as 100% in the wrong doesn't gel with the rest of the game (the party are not the sort to take shit lying down) and really, really should have been handled differently.  As you point out, the Entelexia being dickheads about the whole thing is counterproductive, even if on the whole their position is understandable or justified.  Nevermind that it's pretty much You Can't Argue With Elves which is way, way overplayed, and an annoying trope in like every case I can think of.

[Twilkitri]

SDGGGW -

Doing 90% damage to the Qubeley through a single smack to the face with a spiked ball is highly satisfying. That's what you get for being so ludicrously overdurable in SRWs, Qubeley.

Remodelling the Braw Bro to the Zeong has given me an extra unit slot due to the size reduction, so I bought Shiro and threw him into a Core Fighter. My intention it to level it up enough to remodel to Guncannon as there are a number of unit plans I need a Guncannon for.

The next map is brought to me by the Hi-Nu Gundam and the Nightingale.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Grefter: Yeah, meant to touch on that.  That the game treats humans as 100% in the wrong doesn't gel with the rest of the game (the party are not the sort to take shit lying down) and really, really should have been handled differently.  As you point out, the Entelexia being dickheads about the whole thing is counterproductive, even if on the whole their position is understandable or justified.  Nevermind that it's pretty much You Can't Argue With Elves which is way, way overplayed, and an annoying trope in like every case I can think of.

Not to mention they allowed the entire story of the Empire's founding to be basically forgotten and turn into a fairy tale. Usually stuff doesn't turn in to vague allegorical stories that only exist in the Oral History if people who are actually there make sure it gets explained correctly. AT LEAST write that shit down.

[Scar]

FFXII

Tried to go into Feywood a tad early. Got my shit rocked hardcore!

Good times~

[Pyro]

Grefter: Yeah, meant to touch on that.  That the game treats humans as 100% in the wrong doesn't gel with the rest of the game (the party are not the sort to take shit lying down) and really, really should have been handled differently.  As you point out, the Entelexia being dickheads about the whole thing is counterproductive, even if on the whole their position is understandable or justified.  Nevermind that it's pretty much You Can't Argue With Elves which is way, way overplayed, and an annoying trope in like every case I can think of.

The game does touch on this. Pharos being a douchebag almost earns him a filleting courtesy of our stab-happy hero. Only when he finally gets down off his high horse and actually tries to be constructive does he actually start to get what he wants. Also the party does not take that shit lying down indeed. The final confrontation is basically them throwing that very shit in the face of the villain before pounding him into the ground.

GTA4: Nico is a more interesting main than Tommi Vercetti, I guess. Other than that it is very standard GTA stuff.

[NotMiki]

Niu: It's problem of emphasis. "Can't reproduce sexually" implies "they reproduce asexually instead." "Entelexia can't give birth to other Entelexia" would have been a far clearer way to put it.

The simple phrase you're looking for is "Can't reproduce."

[Shale]

They do, though. They just give birth to normal humans. Somehow. Don't look at me, it's Tales plot.

[Cmdr_King]

Not humans per se.  From Niu's phrasing, it seems that any living creature in the world can become an Entelexia under the right conditions.  Presumably two Entelexia would have to be of the same species to reproduce in any manner?  Or maybe the, uh, process does change them biologically enough that it stops mattering.  It could be either, really, they are fairly literally a mutant race spawned by magical radiation.

[Random Consonant]

Tales of Symphonia - Um.  So apparently our band of idiots learns that the main bad guy has set up an impressively convoluted scheme to ressurrect a goddess.  Said scheme involves executing Grand Theft Mes and having a bunch of half-elven pseudonazis run around ruining shit while running a church to help brainwash the masses while two halves of what seems to be the same world are competing over what seems to be the only wad of mana available in some bizarre variant of keepaway or something.

This is mildly trainwrecky, yes.  But I do love me some trainwreck.  Up past the Temple of Darkness thus far.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

And again, a much better solution? "Female Entelexia are rare and all of them were killed in the war, so that sucks." God damn it, Bamco.

[Niu]

Not humans per se.  From Niu's phrasing, it seems that any living creature in the world can become an Entelexia under the right conditions.  Presumably two Entelexia would have to be of the same species to reproduce in any manner?  Or maybe the, uh, process does change them biologically enough that it stops mattering.  It could be either, really, they are fairly literally a mutant race spawned by magical radiation.

Maybe I should put it this way.
Entelexia is not the name of specie but more of a status.
Whatever creature that "acquired" the ability to process Aer in their own body is considered Entelexia no matter what they are.
If they originally are creatures that can sexually reproduce, sure, they can still do it. But the trait of processing Aer is not a trait that can be genetically passed down.

[Grefter]

So it is either a state of being or a recessive gene that is ... incompatible with most partners genetics.  Whatever we can deal with that.  So what the hell else turns into them though?  Are they monsters that suddenly become sentient?  What happens to the offspring that can't metabolise aer?  Do they have shorter life spans or are there... sentient beast like creatures out there that we don't know about?  That is a bit more disconcerting as well.  Why is there not an entire society of these second class mutants that they could use to leverage the human empires into playing nice?  But yeah anyway.

I don't have to demonstrate HOW this wasn't the humans fault, just show how the Entelexia didn't help the situation.  They did fucking NOTHING for so long, they were the ones with the knowledge, the power and the influence and they sat on their fucking hands.  Apathy is death.  Doing nothing is just as much cause for blame.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

But the trait of processing Aer is not a trait that can be genetically passed down.

THAT makes a lot of sense. A gene that can't propagate itself at all. There's a reason the common cold is a more successful virus than Super-Ebola. Bamco just keeps digging themselves deeper holes with these stupidly convoluted explanations.

[Grefter]

I was just going to let that lie to be honest that is not how evolution works and whatnot.

[Meiousei]

Got my PSP...so currently aside from practicing Dissidia with CoD and Ultimecia (with less extent on Cecil), I'm playing the SMT Persona. Since I was so busy contacting though... >_> First official boss battle was fun! Oh well, at least I got Reiji and I have Snow Queen started on a different save.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Xenosaga 13-

1. The music is U.SaGa and Sigma Harmonics combined, it really makes me feel that I am playing another game
2. Snow must die
3. Vanilla would have worked well if she is a big bad, too bad she end up just as another sweet girl with uninteresting back story.
4. The first 2/3 of the plot is so incredibly Shonen Jump, in a very bad way.
5. If I heard the term "mamoru" one more time......
6. Snow must die
7. It'll be a lot funnier if they just turn Hope into a harem main. Things is already funny if you look at what happened out of context.
8. What is the point with the summons when most of them are gotten two chapters away from the last one? Oh wait, since you are forced to control Lightning 70% of the time before chapter 11, you can't use anything but Odin anyway.
9. Snow must die
10. On the other hand, if only chapter 11 can happen faster....
11. Snow must die

Well, at least now I'm pretty sure I know who my favorite character will be.


Star Ocean 4: Playing on zOMG Hard mode on a whim. Sightouts are fucking impossible now. I'm still too lazy to bother translating anything that anyone says that doesn't have voice-acting. I might actually try item creation on this playthrough though.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I was just going to let that lie to be honest that is not how evolution works and whatnot.

The writers really needed an editor or something. Someone to say "Hey, can't you come up with a simpler explanation?"

[superaielman]

DQ5- Near the end of gen 2. Don't have a ton to say on this one right now. It is solid enough.

[NotMiki]

But the trait of processing Aer is not a trait that can be genetically passed down.

THAT makes a lot of sense. A gene that can't propagate itself at all. There's a reason the common cold is a more successful virus than Super-Ebola. Bamco just keeps digging themselves deeper holes with these stupidly convoluted explanations.

I, uh, really don't think convoluted explanations are the big problem with Tales games.  Incredibly stupid setups are.  The best explanation for why whatsisname the bad guy in ToS is doing what he is doing won't make what he is doing, as a tactical matter, any less silly.

The big problem with Tales games is that they keep creating worlds with problems so extreme that the status quo as it exists just doesn't work (see especially TotA).