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

[Ultradude]

SRW Alpha 2 - Two levels each of Ibis and Zengar routes.

Ibis is, as I was informed, preeetty underwhelming early on - good thing Altairion is an awesome fucking mech. Kincaid is a beast in the X-1 though, and Umon is actually pretty damn competent. Zabine's a dick and leaves later on so I'm considering teaching him Support Defend, giving X-2 to Umon, and making Zabine into Ibis' personal meatshield until he leaves all while laughing at his misery.

Zengar is brutal, though the lack of range is a pain and he will need some SERIOUS EN upgrades as soon as I can manage. His tanking isn't as good as I'd like either, though having Great Mazinger and Gaiking around make things a bit easier seeing as how they're both powerhouse supers at this point with some good support units coming with them - not that they'll all be working together all that much with Zengar's tendency to rush after Kukuru.

[Grefter]

Sniper Rifles (or whatever the beam of light that keeps OHKOing me is) are BS and I kinda wish I had built Ashley towards them instead of Shotguns so I'd be able to counter it. 

Sniper Rifles tend towards being a bad investment in ME.  Their use is to restricted because so much of the game takes place in enclosed spaces (and the AI just isn't great with them).  Counter sniping is better handled through creative use of terrain for outdoors sections and getting in close to the barricades (taking out everything on foot grants a ton more cash and exp up front and is quite doable on Normal difficulty outside of early game Geth Armatures and Destroyers) or the few actual forced on foot encounters with them being a problem in most situations you can normally get their attention and pull back to a more covered position.  Some at least will follow which lets you thin the numbers.  Snipers don't tend to one shot you and their threat factor goes down a lot when they are alone or only one of them can take a shot at you without the backup to clean you up.

Edit - To clarify, on the Mako sections if you dance around the fortifications you can get almost all the time you need to recharge shields and just generally use hit and run tactics all you want.  Armatures by themselves are not to hard to handle, but they tend to come with backup.  There is one particular set of missions where you have to take out geth bases in a few systems and near the end here is a part where a mothership comes in with 2 Destroyers and an Armature with assorted trashier Geth that come to mind.  This tends to be one of the earlier missions I have done.  Can clear up to that part with just a pistol and guerilla tactics.  At that point Armatures will strip your shields instantly if you mistep and Destroyers do a fuckton of damage with hitscan weapons (one of the only Geth to do so!  And one of the only realy competent enemies with them) that just mow you down so fast it isn't funny.  That tends to be where you run back to the tank.

[Shale]

LFT: Started, did the first fight. Lucked into a set of four generics who all have good faith, good brave(ry), or both, so I've got Ramza, two Squires, a Chemist and a Wizard at the moment. Nothing too different from regular FFT just yet, but I'm already loving innate Gained JP Up.

[Hunter Sopko]

BoF5- Started. Picked up all the party members, but stopped with a temp save. I had to restart pretty quickly (nearly died in the first danger room), but I chose a SOL Restart instead of Restore by accident. I've been getting a ton of SOL scenes, so I'm sort of glad I did it. It's nice so far. Once I got used to the combat system it was fun.

My one complaint is that the game is too damn dark. I already keep my TV on a pretty high brightness, I had to turn it up even more to make sure I saw anything in this game. In contrast, I had no problems with games like Silent Hill

[Cotigo]

ME:  Oh all that trouble I was having was because I was playing on Hard mode to make the intro mission less boring.  Ha ha.  Yeah OK things make a lot more sense now.  Got Liara, going to go do some side missions and then Noveria next.

[Meeplelard]

BoF5- Started. Picked up all the party members, but stopped with a temp save. I had to restart pretty quickly (nearly died in the first danger room), but I chose a SOL Restart instead of Restore by accident. I've been getting a ton of SOL scenes, so I'm sort of glad I did it. It's nice so far. Once I got used to the combat system it was fun.

My one complaint is that the game is too damn dark. I already keep my TV on a pretty high brightness, I had to turn it up even more to make sure I saw anything in this game. In contrast, I had no problems with games like Silent Hill

There's a lot more SOL Scenes than you'd think, some of which are...completely random.  Generally, they exist to keep the game from spoiling itself, so as you unlock more of the plot, the game will reveal points earlier (in this case, for a simple example, you probably saw the scene with Bosch and Zeno, where he talks about wanting to move up in rank and show's that; we don't know this side of Bosch until later on the train, so the game would have "spoiled" that early if we didn't see that.)
As far as random ones go...there's stuff between Ryu/Lin/Nina that I didn't understand why it was an SOL...may have to rewatch these scenes though.

Just noting that if you like the SOL stuff, it might not hurt to replay the game once you've finished it.  Replays do go by faster even with new areas unlocked afterall (transfering over equipment and Party XP makes you kind of SMASH the early game, let alone the new shiny Dragon Blade available.)

[Hunter Sopko]

Problem with it is that even if you SOL Restart from the very first moment you get control in the beginning, you'll STILL get the SOL scenes unlocked by restarting for the entire rest of the game. I'm aware there are more based on stuff like D-Ratio, but just reporting what I've seen so far.

[Grefter]

That would indeed do it Zenny, it doesn't take much more damage over normal to turn snipers into retarded brutal taking out all your shield and a chunk of your health as well.

FF13 - Just finished Chapter 6 and I am still not seeing the appeal at all as chat has copped today.  Lightning is still being shown as Bitchy McBitchBitch, SHOCK VANILLE PLOT TWIST ROMG DIDN'T SEE THAT TELEGRAPHED A MILE AWAY (Note, it is still being implied/beaten around the bussh and not outright stated yet), Sazh continues to be the only person worth anything and still totally relatable (saw some stupid tears about why did he try to run away at the start if he was there to fight anyway?!?!??!? on Gamefaqs, but that is Gamefaqs and you know, full of stupid not taking into account that this is a pretty logical response to "what the fuck have I got myself into" situations and then hey he is there, so he fights).  No Snow scenes today!  So no Fang or Cid either.  Hope is there whinging and being kicked around and just generaly kind of mind fucked.

For the record, if Eidolon's are supposed to like help guide people mentally or whatever and find inner peace, if you are going to pull that shit you could tell us.  And even with that it doesn't change the fact that Lightning is bitchy bitch bitch and kept flip flopping over her choices before she got Odin anyway.  You can't do that shit before AND after and expect me to have any fucking respect for the character.  She is setup as GRIM DETERMINATION YO and she has no fucking conviction whatsoever but that doesn't stop her from spiteful jabs at people and making them second guess all the shit they are trying to do.  "You told me you are getting married ON MY BIRTHDAY?  WORST BIRTHDAY EVAR!"  Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch.

[Yoshiken]

Persona 3: Finally got round to continuing this, having put off a Baten Kaitos stat topic before the end of the first dungeon, yesiu. Met Mamoru, who is freaking awesome. Got Aigis and Koromaru, who are both pretty awesome - Koro's annoyingly weak with both his magic and physicals, but I'll still use him for DOGLIKE. Gonna be starting PC S-Links soon!
Since I'm not gonna be able to finish all S-Links during this run, any specific ones that're good to finish? Gonna try doing Yukari's, Mutatsu's, the old couple's, Yuko's and Mamoru's, at least, and I've already finished Kazushi's.

[Clear Tranquil]

Tales of Radiant Mythology - Wow Luke is a prick to Tear. Favourite Tales characters so far are Arche, Tear and Rutee. Raine is growing on me, the Orphic Maze ruins section was hilarious. I definitely like her moar now that she's deigned to join my party more often! I find myself quite drawn to Kratos and Lloyd/Chester/Reid/Stahn are all likable enough. Oh and Garr's pretty cool. Leon is another prick but kind of stylish to fight as. I want to use Tear ;_;

Sticking to the Warrior class for now. I started out with that, switched to Fighter for a while later and then back to Warrior for more levels. Been running it for a while, I like axes ^_^

FFXIII I want to get this because Vanille seems like prime CT bait but if she's not that good in battle I guess I can wait (and Grefter makes me think waiting for a price drop for FFXIII overall might be a good idea) >.> Guess I'd probably like Sazh and Hope as well with Lightning being the least CT baitish but eh =/

[Ultradude]

SRW@2 - Two more of Ibis. One of those was Daitarn 3, Daimos, and Roux and Four piloting Zeta and ReGZ against a bunch of Crossbone enemies. Daitarn is still super-tanky as always, and Daitarn Hammer stands out as an awesome weapon - 3200 power, 1-5 range, no cost. Daimos pales in comparison, with more morale requirements to do any good, and not as much range OR tankiness, though it does have the barest hint of actually being able to evade. Not making up for the durability though. Zeta is once again a very nice unit, and Roux's not a terrible pilot; ReGZ with Four is good backup. The enemies on that map weren't all that bad, except for the boss, Giri - Daitarn and Zeta made short work of him using the regen spots to their advantage though.

The next map teamed those guys up with the Crossbone crew and Ibis. Daimos ended up just sitting back and watching everything - including Umon in a grunt unit and the battleship - being more useful than its frail ass. Not that being out-usefuled by the Mother Vanguard is all that bad. Got some more kills for Roux, Banjou, and Ibis, and Kincaid is still tearing shit up in X-1.

[Hunter Sopko]

Tales of Radiant Mythology - Wow Luke is a prick to Tear. Favourite Tales characters so far are Arche, Tear and Rutee. Raine is growing on me, the Orphic Maze ruins section was hilarious. I definitely like her moar now that she's deigned to join my party more often! I find myself quite drawn to Kratos and Lloyd/Chester/Reid/Stahn are all likable enough. Oh and Garr's pretty cool. Leon is another prick but kind of stylish to fight as. I want to use Tear ;_;

The best scenes are ones involving Arche and Reid interacting. My favorite is still the one where he eats her cooking.

[Grefter]

FF13 - So Chapter 7 finished.  It takes from Chapter 1 to now to get a full party again.  Fuck that shit.  So full party combat system gets better or something?  I still pressed X until I won.  This is all without using the Upgrading system yet (would probably make it much easier if you know what to use where for optimal levelling, I know there is a good strategy for end game upgrading so you should be able to milk a decent amount from stuff so far.  Nothing much has changed.  Lightning is still being bitchy and then resolving all tension the next scene and then making up some more the next.  Snow apparently had a bunch of stuff happen off camera that hasn't been fully explained yet, just implied (what the fuck exactly happened between him, Cid and Fang?  You see one scene with them implying that they want to help and him being too retarded to get it then bam, 2 chapters later with 0 scenes at all you are instantly friends and Fang is helping you with... no back up it seems?).  A few chapters without Sazs/Vanille 2 player team is nice gameplay wise, but that is like winning a kick in the balls instead of 2 kicks in the balls because you go other party gameplay instead and no Sazs plot which is majour lose.  Fang is alright and hey finally big reveal about Vanille brought forth, SHOCK SHE IS AN EARLY BRENDAN FRASER MOVIE WITH PAULIE SHORE IN IT.  I actually didn't expect Fang to be as well, but so it goes.  What else is there.  Hmmmm nope, nothing else really new.  Chat continues to be barraged with streams of hate spew.  Lightning really really pisses me off.  Snow continues to be stupid but understandably so, the good guy version of Seifer continues to hold up.  His Romantic Dream is to Save Everyone.  So how does he go about doing that?  In the most stupid ways possible.  Just like Seifer (HEY GUYS I HAVE A ROMANTIC DREAM I WANT TO BE SORCERESS KNIGHT SO I WILL JOIN UP WITH THE EVIL SORCERESS AND NOT SWAP SIDES WHEN THERE IS A GOOD OPTION AFTER THE OLD EVIL ONE WAS DEFEATED AND NOW I WILL FLY AROUND IN A FLOATING BATTLESHIP AND BE A VAGUE THREAT TO THE WORLD.  ROMANTIC. DREAM.)

Hope is still hope.  His dad actually looks pretty pimping and has a sweet pad before spec ops go and ruin it for him. 

Oh yeah the disconnect between in gameplay power and plot power is really weird in this game.  Because the whole Shiva is a 2 chick motorcycle thing -comes up in cutscenes- but is completely ignored where it would you know be useful.  So instead of gameplay and plot segregation it is more like there is AWESEOM FX and plot segregation.

Oh and I have to take it back about Lightning throwing away her gun at the start of the game.  Apparently her sword is also a gun and no one corrected me on this.  Of course I should have known that she had a collaspable sword/assault rifle (?) that just makes sense.

It seriously is frustrating and annoying to play.  The gameplay problems I have covered fairly fully at this point, but plot, well it is really character driven and you can see quite clearly I hate most of the cast or they have no actual character whatsoever other than "This person is in this situation, they respond generically".  Fang looks like she won't be shit?  So that leaves Vanille still to have anything remotely close to a character to show up.

For anyone thinking about not picking it up, look for some gameplay footage videos before my bile sways you one way or the other.  This game is specifically designed in every minute way to piss me off, so I am going to be very loud and vocal about this one.  Edit - On this point I cannot stress how important internal consistency is to me, the split between the actual plot and WE CAN TOTALLY HAVE A WICKED CUTSCENE HERE LOL WE CAN IGNORE THAT PEOPLE CAN LIKE FLY AND HAVE MAGIC HORSESLOL FOR THE REAL PLOT is really incredibly grating to me.

If all you can find is Japanese videos, note that the top option on the battle menu is the auto attack option.  I know there is plenty of good resources of that since Split Infinity has a visual walkthrough up for that version.

[Meeplelard]

Oh and I have to take it back about Lightning throwing away her gun at the start of the game.  Apparently her sword is also a gun and no one corrected me on this.  Of course I should have known that she had a collaspable sword/assault rifle (Huh??) that just makes sense.

If you check her weapon descriptions, they specifically call them "Gunblades."  At least FF13 takes a slightly more logical approach to them, just saying "Weapon that can swap between Sword and Gun" making it some sort of elaborate, high tech, one handed musket, which while still kind of silly, is better than the "Hey, its literally a Sword that has a GUN FOR ITS HANDLE SO YOU CAN DO BOTH AWESOME AMIRITE!?"  Basically, at least Lightning can use hers like a freaking Gun, instead of just "EXPLOSIVE SWORD!!11!1"

[Shale]

LFT: I have to worry about monsters killing me what the hell is going on.

Up to Dorter. Ramza's a Knight, the rest of the party is Squire/Archer/Wizard/Priest.

[Random Consonant]

Yep, isn't it great?

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Hope is still hope.  His dad actually looks pretty pimping and has a sweet pad before spec ops go and ruin it for him. 

His dad, unfortunately, only shows up once, and you have to check the Codex to figure out what happens to him (not that your characters would know that).

[Grefter]

I was bothered by the fact that they tied him up so that the military wouldn't think they were aided by him, then they get saved by the military and he just gets left there, so he will be presumably purged like everyone else who has come in close contact to the L'Cie, but that is logical and internally consistent so I assume that doesn't happen.

And Meep yeah it tells you in a description against an item that you have to actively look at to know that when you are on a screen where you are most likely to be actively checking the stats of the item and not the description.  Just the fact that it was all there in the game and no one pointed it out when responding to all my other nitpicking suprised me.

[Rozalia]

I noticed it but it didn't seem important to mention as she hardly uses it. Also:

so he will be presumably purged like everyone else who has come in close contact to the L'Cie, but that is logical and internally consistent so I assume that doesn't happen.

Datalog says he wasn't purged because the Cav guys saved him. Thats pretty much all you hear involving Hope's dad. Sad as I quite liked him.

<Spoiler involving minor character. Doubt anyone cares but just incase>

FF13 - Final bosses second form is fricking powerful however for some strange reason he isn't immune to poison.....yeah I beat down 6 million health with poison, surely one for the record books. Final form is more or less a plot fight so it wasn't a problem.
Ending was a bit whack all round but you know what stood out to me? Where the hell is Hope's dad? Everyone else gets a happy ending and then when Hope believes its going to be his turn, nothing.

[Talaysen]

FFXIII I want to get this because Vanille seems like prime CT bait but if she's not that good in battle I guess I can wait (and Grefter makes me think waiting for a price drop for FFXIII overall might be a good idea) >.> Guess I'd probably like Sazh and Hope as well with Lightning being the least CT baitish but eh =/

Vanille's decent in battle, just the Sazh/Vanille combo you're forced with early on is terrible.  Her early debuff skills are quite good and she's got good magic damage.  Really, no one in the game is bad in battle, just certain combos work less well than others.

Though she's not one of the people in the "optimal" team I've found, but she is one of the people in a team I found that's better at dealing magic damage, which might be useful at some point.

And I think the game is more your style than Grefter's, but yeah go look up some gameplay vids or something since those should give you a good idea of how the gameplay works.

Top option on the battle menu can be switched between Auto-Battle and Abilities, so it may not ALWAYS be Auto-Battle, but that's the default so it's more likely.

---

Final Fantasy XIII - Up to Chapter 11 now, still liking the game.  I do find the gameplay generally engaging, because I actually input some of my commands to fit the situation.  The AI only takes the current state into account when choosing actions (and doesn't always seem to select the best ones even then), so it's sometimes less efficient than actually doing it yourself.  I am kind of tempted to move battle speed to Slow to give me more time to input commands but I think battles would take too long then.  Will deal with it if it becomes a problem later I guess.

[Grefter]

OH it changes the top option to Ablity if you switch that in the menu?  I had assumed that it just changed the starting position of the cursor to maintain the logical flow of the menu rather than swapping spots.  Edit - meaning Auto, Ability, Technique, Item is a fairly logical menu flow.  Swapping Auto and Ability kind of shifts it a bit off balance.

If you pay attention then I guess attacking that is done with one click and then picking a target is the autobattle playing out if you want to watch movies and be sure.

[Shale]

LFT: Grefter is a one-man army. He nearly won the Sand Rat Cellar battle by himself, OHKOing basically everybody on the field with awesome Zodiac compatibility and ridiculous PA. Damned noble-kidnapping communists!

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

SRW@2 - Two more of Ibis. One of those was Daitarn 3, Daimos, and Roux and Four piloting Zeta and ReGZ against a bunch of Crossbone enemies. Daitarn is still super-tanky as always, and Daitarn Hammer stands out as an awesome weapon - 3200 power, 1-5 range, no cost. Daimos pales in comparison, with more morale requirements to do any good, and not as much range OR tankiness, though it does have the barest hint of actually being able to evade. Not making up for the durability though. Zeta is once again a very nice unit, and Roux's not a terrible pilot; ReGZ with Four is good backup. The enemies on that map weren't all that bad, except for the boss, Giri - Daitarn and Zeta made short work of him using the regen spots to their advantage though.

Zeta Gundam is kinda meh in @2, actually. No competent ALL and unimpressive weaponry/stats? No thanks. Kamille is a great pilot, though, so you should at least find a decent mech that makes use of those stats to slap him into. Daimos is actually a very good unit, though: twink it up for Mobility, it actually dodges and Kazuya's Sword Cut levels let it cover some more evasion. It also gets like three new moves, and it's a wonderful, cost-efficient P-move whore. If you feel the lack of ALLs is a problem, you can fix this by setting up an ALL-friendly subleader: I put Gundam Heavyarms as the ALL whore subunit for Kazuya's squad and it worked wonders. Don't undersell it. Daitarn's also a good unit. Don't find Roux terribly awesome as a stand-alone pilot, but Four is rather efficient - Four in the F1 Gundam, off that ALL, does quite well against randoms.

The next map teamed those guys up with the Crossbone crew and Ibis. Daimos ended up just sitting back and watching everything - including Umon in a grunt unit and the battleship - being more useful than its frail ass. Not that being out-usefuled by the Mother Vanguard is all that bad. Got some more kills for Roux, Banjou, and Ibis, and Kincaid is still tearing shit up in X-1.

I twinked the -hell- out of the X1, since Kincaid's Kouji-level melee is too good to let it go to waste and basically no other Real mechs can put it to good use. Be sure to FAQ the X1 upgrades, since they'll bring Kincaid's melee to full usage. Cape form is better at range and randombusting (yay 6 range shot-based attack), but capeless form has a finisher and will end up superior at P-whoring once you get Wire Attack. If you do twink the X1's weaponry, you'll end up using the capeless form in the lategame. Also don't forget to FAQ for the Hi-Nu Gundam requirements: they're not hard, but you don't want to miss out on one of the game's most awesome Reals. Also, being out-useful'd by Mother Vanguard says absolutely NOTHING - Vera and the MV are complete badasses, and you totally should twink it for evade. *Nodnod.*

[Nephrite]

Or give her the Shield Block skill and make it super tank.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I did both -and- Nine levels of Prevail. Overkill durability is overkill.

EDIT: Although having the Guardian Dogs in the last stage have like 4% hit rates on Vera with a full HP Mother Vanguard was funny.