Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

[Hunter Sopko]

DQ8- Just kicked Marchello's ass. I liked the whole "No, Rhapthorne, you's my bitch" part of the whole thing. Way to go Guv. Not that Rhapthorne wouldn't have found a way anyway. So glad to be nearing the end of this game. Despite how much I like it, it's just felt like a slog all the way.

[Meeplelard]

FF2 PSP: Just saw the Dreadnaught fly off, which means I lose Minwu soon!  Before that, I got the Staff of Light which is incredibly hax (+50 Int, Agility and Spirit and better power than the Mage STaff? HOLY CRAP!), also you get ass loads of gil from this due to selling Beserk Tomes and such.  The Arcane Labyrinths go much faster when you don't do puzzles, for all that Wizard is still a pain; don't think I'll ever have to do Wizard again though, since it looks like its only really useful for Minwu's weapon.

So anyway, so far so...OOOOH! FF13!

Final Fantasy 13: Just got to the first "WOULD YOU LIVE TO SAVE!?" prompt.  Happened about as early as expected, figured it'd be a good stopping point cause its late.  So far?  Game's style FF7 like only jacked up about 20 notches in terms of action.  Also, I can already see why Niu was calling Snow a moron, for all that he hasn't done anything really stupid yet, the potential to go down the path of idiocy is exceedingly there.

Battle system...despite controlling only the leader, its rather engaging, and yeah, actually feels like Auto Battle on the Allies may add to it cause of just how fast paced it is.  May be a first that a Non-ARPG feels justified in having forced AI PCs, but well, we'll see how things turn out.

[Niu]

Good to see you understand, Meep.

I found that Karol's not too bad if you keep in mind that a) he's not a standard fighter, don't try to chain his Artes like he is (Mighty Charge is generally more workable) and b) Really, he's a pocket healer/support mage at heart.

My impression is that Judy is very aerial and has incredibly technical timing on her everything, so basically she's for insane people who are really good at these games.  So yeah, best off not using her.

That said, you... might be far enough for Light Magic to show up.  Once you get that you can control Rita quite painlessly.  Even if not, spamming Fireball is actually viable for human control in general, even with Heavy Magic.  Worth getting a good setup on her and used to her timing early, since once Overlimit Rita Spam is pretty well the boss fighting strategy of choice in the back half of the game.

Rita is very usable after you have Rhythm and Wonder Symbol. Spamming low level spell is quite easy at that point. And once you have some alternate arts with magic combo, everything is even easier. Fire Ball->Eruption or Rock Break-Riot Horn are the most handy things.

And... you can actually Karol, just his combo style is about mopping enemy on the floor instead of fighting them when they are standing.

[Excal]

Three random comments.

The first is vain fist shaking at Meeple.  Though, honestly, I'll get around to playing FF XIII some day, since it looks interesting.

The second is a note that while under the influence of Berserk Staves, Roy's ladies are far, far more vengeful than Minato's could ever dream of being.

And third, as odd as it may seem, Growlanser 2 is the story of a boy and his robot.  This has also become my game of choice when just randomly hanging with Elf and Ciato (as opposed to D&D sessions with them and others) due to the snark value the game provides.  Got as far as a random catgirl ambush, which has killed me.  Expect a more comprehensive post later, as Wein's World needs to be more fully mocked in front of a large audience.

[Twilkitri]

Front Mission

Played through the UCS path.

I think that the plot flowed better than the OCU path, although it does rely on you having played the OCU path first rather heavily. It's somewhat aided by being far less follow-the-dots-across-the-island than the OCU path. Kind of stalls at the end, however. Also random movie around a third of the way in. I don't remember the OCU side getting a movie.

Because interface complaints never get old, I will append to my previous ones annoyance at the slowdown that happens while scrolling through the Buy list in shops. Especially since 99% of the time anything you want to buy will be at the bottom, and you can only see what items are new in the Buy list and not in the Setup list. And scrolling through the setup list can take any scrolling you throw at it despite it bringing up a picture of your whole wanzer with the equipment you currently have highlighted whereas the Buy list only shows the individual piece of equipment.

Also perturbed that two thirds of my save slots are now filled with essentially useless clear saves. Theoretically I could not care about them I suppose but that risks missing out on some actual point to playing a newgame+ that I'm not currently aware of.

[Shale]

EF2: Point of no return. I'm wandering around taking down wanted monsters before jumping in. Just dealt with Monster O (the final one), who was a total pain in the ass. Not because he was strong - nobody died at all, which is unusual - but because he has the best block strength in the game and is some kind of freakish ultra-heavyweight. Dear God was he a pain in the ass to juggle.

[Ultradude]

WA2 - So how long until this game actually provides something in the realm of being a challenge?

[Meeplelard]

WA2 - So how long until this game actually provides something in the realm of being a challenge?

...challenge? In a PS1 WA game? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!!

[Ultradude]

WA2 - So how long until this game actually provides something in the realm of being a challenge?

...challenge? In a PS1 WA game? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!!

Good to know that I'll get to enjoy watching Brad nuke the fuck out of things for a looong time.

[Taishyr]

Take on Ragu ASAP! There's challenge! ... kinda. >_>

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Even though she played to two of my turn-ons at once, that mom who totally telegraphed her death in FF13 deserved to die for what she did to her son. It's like she wanted a daughter so when she got a son she just pretended he was a chick, and that's fucked up.

Also, hilarious black guy stereotyping. Good for you, Japan.

[Dark Holy Elf]

XS2 - Pretty sure I could have done over 2x Level 4's max HP in a single chain there. Maybe 3x? Yo dawg I heard you like taking 1000 damage per hit so I cast Thunder Sword on everyone so they could hit your thunder weakness while also hitting your slashing/piercing weakness. <3 elemental chains.

Anyway, subconscious domain is excellent, has some of my favourite scenes in the series (most of the Jr./Albedo flashback stuff is pretty golden, they do a good job of building Albedo up as a total nut). The series is as schizophrenic as ever on plot, though. Shion is completely insufferable to me now given that I know her bitchiness is never really going to be addressed beyond everyone going "we love and trust Shion she is so smart and works so hard" wait she doesn't do ANYTHING besides whine and be a bitch and be stupid. At least SC domain lacks much Shion. On the plus side I like Canaan a bit better than I remembered (fuck you XS3), while he is boring much of the time some of the deadpan lines he delivers are pretty funny.

Gameplay is what it's all about, finding that perfect balance between preparing (stocking and occasionally buffing), healing, and actually attacking in randoms is a lot of fun. Been paying pretty close attention to who works best in which randoms now, which does help a fair deal. For the most part, for instance, I liked Ziggy/MOMO/KOS-MOS in much of the SC domain (hard hitters, and there's some notable fire/slashing weaks in there for Ziggy to prey on, while MOMO with an appropriate sword ether cast takes out the near-physical immune golems effectively), but then switched to Shion/chaos/KOS-MOS for the infected URTVs (weak to both thunder and aura and frail enough to reward chaos and Shion's quick kills, while KOS with Thunder Sword cast is mean), and then finally the traditional MOMO/Jr./KOS for the boss so I could sword everyone (sadly that party is usually pretty hard to argue with for bosses unless fire is your go-to element). I do need to try to fit attack ethers into my plans more often but I find it a bit awkward.


FE11 or whatever - 17x. The manaketes in Altea Castle where insane on H3. 21 speed what the fuck.

Sedgar has definitely paid off now that he has good enough stats to actually be a Horseman again.

[BaconForTheSoul]

FFXIII initial review- About 3 hours in

Characters
Snow: Honestly, FF male leads all annoy me.  Snow/Van/Tidus are all annoying jackasses.  Snow is no different.  So far, he might actually have been as much harm as good.
Lightning: Feel like I could like her, depending on the path they take her down.  She definitely gets style points and points for being an FF main that doesn't think anything through.
Token Black Guy: Agreeing with Rob here... this guy is THE stereotype for black people.  He's like the token comedic black guy, the token hip black guy, the token hiphop black guy, and every other token black guy rolled into one.  That said, he is decent comic relief so far.
New Rikku/Spazzy Orange hair chick- The hyper energetic (jailbait?) character.  Unlike Rikku though, she might have something actually going for her in terms of substance.  They've dropped some foreshadowing so we'll see how that goes.
Whiny Son- Okay I get it, your life sucks.  But why is a kid who was willing to fly one of those crazy contraptions willing to let his mom go off alone because he didn't like guns?  You fail kid and so far you're annoying.

So... 3/5 characters I'll end up liking so far probably, not awful considering FF male lead is typically an auto 0/1.

Battle
I must say... I'm not a fan of the auto AI, but it's working so far.  The real issue is how well it'll work once we actually have more than 1-2 moves each.  Everything has been so easy so far that I haven't looked into it much, but I haven't leveled/gained skills/anything yet... which will get old real quick.

Plot
I feel that I've just passed the long intro phase and I don't wanna spoil anything.  Besides, I'm largely undecided on how I'm going to like it.

Effects
THIS GAME IS FUCKING PRETTY.  I've played 10-12 PS3 games and they all look like shit compared to this one.  Plain and simple.  The music has been underwhelming, but not awful so far.  Nothing that I remember hating, but nothing that I remember loving.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Sadly, I think the Jerry Bruckheimer Black Dude is somehow also the best character. Lightning is like they took all the awful Renegade options from Mass Effect and then made a character out of them. Snow is like anti-Albel, instead of thinking he's the villain, he goes around calling himself the hero, but not in a way with panache like Balthier did. The hyper chick makes me want to choke her eyes out of her sockets, and Ladyboy deserves to die by inverted crucifixion.

Bruckheimer Black Guy got major points when Ladyboy was bitching about his father didn't care about him because he couldn't go on vacation with him and his mom, and Black Dude told him off.

[Grefter]

Token Black Guy: Agreeing with Rob here... this guy is THE stereotype for black people.  He's like the token comedic black guy, the token hip black guy, the token hiphop black guy, and every other token black guy rolled into one.  That said, he is decent comic relief so far.

Let me know if he ends up being killed off.

Picked up FF13 to play next week on my week off work.  Got stuff planned for most of this week.

Darksiders - Finished this.  The ending sucked as much as expected.  Snooze final boss.  Romg the douches that are douches betray you so you betray them right back and cause armageddon to summon the other 3 horseman and then there is no resolution and you can't really tell what the fucking point was and everything was failfailfailfailfail.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

He hasn't even screamed "BOOTY!!!!" yet, so I don't know if the Japanese are THAT up on their black guy stereotypes. They tend to be about 30 years behind us, so he's much more likely to eat a plate of chicken and waffles and then hop in his Caddy and head to the dojo for some Kung Fu.

[Meeplelard]

I love how people completely forgot that "Token Black Guy" is completely Non-standard to the jRPG Genre in and of itself, and for this reason alone, Sazh kicks ass (even if he's a walking Hollywood Stereotype)

Anyway...

FF13: Just beat Garuda Interceptor.  Game's been fun so far!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I love how people completely forgot that "Token Black Guy" is completely Non-standard to the jRPG Genre in and of itself, and for this reason alone, Sazh kicks ass (even if he's a walking Hollywood Stereotype)

Anyway...

FF13: Just beat Garuda Interceptor.  Game's been fun so far!

I'm not laughing at the fact they're using a token character, I'm laughing at how the Japanese are doing it second-hand.

[BaconForTheSoul]

I love how people completely forgot that "Token Black Guy" is completely Non-standard to the jRPG Genre in and of itself, and for this reason alone, Sazh kicks ass (even if he's a walking Hollywood Stereotype)

Anyway...

FF13: Just beat Garuda Interceptor.  Game's been fun so far!

I'm not laughing at the fact they're using a token character, I'm laughing at how the Japanese are doing it second-hand.

The guy does a mini moonwalk while shooting badguys with his gun held sideways.  He IS win.

[Idun]

I am not too sure if non-standard makes the matters any better. I saw his "token-ness," in trailers and quite frankly am not surprised.

Playing SO First Departure on the PSP!
Need to get back to Kingdom Hearts 358/2.
Gunna beat Lost Odyssey soon, I swear~
Last Remnant currently has a 2/10 rating so far for super fail.

[Cotigo]

ME:  Cunnilingus Shepard is a Spectre, and I think I've finished most of the quests now.  Maybe it's just me but a lot of the lines so far seem to be the same between the paragon and renegade paths.  Not all of them, mind you, but enough that I was worried that the game had glitched for a little bit.  I suppose, thinking on it, most of those are where it's irrelevant what you say anyway because the scene can only go one way (council hearings, etc.)  Didn't take Wrex in to deal with Fist because I'm pretty sure it net me more paragon points.  Gonna finish up the citadel and then find the Asari jit.  Not going to finalize a party juuust yet, but she's going to have to be pretty good for me to swap out either Ashley or Wrex.  Garrus and Kaiden are waaaay less useful now that I'm a not-Soldier and actually have some biotic/tech skills.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Garrus is still awesome, just not so much. Overload and then sniper rifle pretty much owns.

[superaielman]

ToV- Just beat up Zagi again. Loser, etc. Want to finish the game before really commenting, though I will say that ToV needs to put less puzzles in the dungeons. It was doing so well up to Hercles!

[Hunter Sopko]

DQ8- Finished this today. Started it April 2007. Glad to finally be done. Liked the ending. 69 hours all told, felt like triple that. Every step of the game felt like a slog, despite liking the game as much as I did. 8/10 all told, but it was a coinflip between 7 and 8. Might have been a 9 if not for the slog.

BoF5 next!

[Niu]

WA2 - So how long until this game actually provides something in the realm of being a challenge?

Anglomois... WA2 has his most ridiculous incarnation.


.hack//link- I don't know why I am still playing this, but torture is not enough of a word to described how mass up this piece of my sister's dirty shit is. They don't even allow us to think they are wandering AIs to make everything that happened is not true......