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

[Grefter]

Branching out to grab other stuff is pure postgame side mission stuff.  If you just want to get from start to finish you are just fine sticking wih the main skillsets for characters rather than branching out into ones that you won't use.  You will get more stats from one end game node than you will from picking up all the ones on the way to get a shitty little skillset for another role you won't use.

Besides to use Sentinel properly you need to watch the screen.  That isn't what I would be playing FF13 to do.

Edit - Chrono Trigger - I have actually been playing the DS version of this while going to and from work while playing the abomination.  This is possibly part of why I am so harsh on FF13 because CT is superior in every way that I care about.  Seriously great game to replay and the updated translation is nice, doesn't change much but just makes the dialogue a bit better really (and has people drinking actual alcohol).  Character names in order of recruitment were Hello, SATAN, Satan, satan, S4T4N,Satan (with some accents on the As I can't remember which ones) and Stan.  Mostly done so the dialogue goes absurd and because I wanted to call Magus Stan just to make the dialogue even more surreal which only works with everyone else called Satan.  (Note this is from someone who has played through the game 10+ times at any given point, I need something to keep me occupied during the same conversations).  I am up to The Fated Hour with just the Trial part of the Rainbow Shell side quest left to do and then it is whatever those extra things that were added for the DS version and the Black Omen to go.  Actually trying a few different parties than normal and for all the Heal Beam hype I have seen I am not overly impressed.  Currently it heals for 250.  Slurp Kiss heals for 450 with an underlevelled Frog.  For about that much healing I could just be throwing Lapis with anyone and Cure Beam is a good 150 HP weaker than third tier Potions (X-Potion?  I don't think the are called that).  Some other stuff I could go on about, but eh.  It is Chrono Trigger.  It still holds up as a great game.  Not big on depth but compelling with a fun, albeit pretty easy, combat system.  Very much greater than the sum of its parts, mostly because of the high level of polish gone into the game.

[Meeplelard]

Pokemon Soul Silver: Whitney is an RNG Cheating whore.  No, I don't mean "The AI Cheats", I just mean she was much harder than she needed to be cause RNG kept rolling in her favor.  Seriously, Stomp flinched Onix 6 times in a row...then Allure said he couldn't attack...2 more flinches from Stomp...finally gets a turn! ...Screech Misses (85% accuracy remember.)

I did say screw it and used a few items on her, cause geez, that level of hax was just obnoxious.  Even more insulting was when the Miltank finally died, her Clefairy (which she swapped out of), uses Metronome...SURF!!! Onix dies.  Out goes Quilava, Metronome...AQUA TAIL!!!

...seriously, that's gotta be some of the worst luck I've ever had in a Pokemon game.  The Miltank finally died when I swapped Onix out (to get rid of Attract) when it started using Rollout, carefully manipulated such that Gastly could squeeze out one turn for Curse, then it died.  Quilava managed to outslug the Clefairy thankfully, especially since it decided to MIMIC EMBER AND USE IT, so yeah.  Still, ugh, harder fight than it needed to be.

Granted, having Magikarp still part of my team didn't help, but I should be able to work that away soonish...I hope...

God of War 2: Just got the Golden Fleece.  This game could really use Boss Health Bars.  Its just nice knowing just how much damage you're doing and what not when you're attacking, so you can judge what's effective and what's not.

[Tide]

Resonance of Fate:

Got this with my three games of doom (Pokemon HG and ToV). Booted it up because it looked cool. This game can be described in the following ways.

In one word: Unbalanced

In a more descriptive manner: Shoot some dudes

Longer and more meaningful description:
This game is such a Rob game if Rob enjoyed JRPGs. Cross Valkyrie Profile 2 except add guns and you pretty much have RoF gameplay in a nutshell. There's no soul crushes or anything like that, but there is a Hero Gauge (hereby referred to as the Rob Gauge) where you are invincible and run down a line and shoot some dudes. If you run out of Rob meter, then you become weak and feeble and you die in like 3 hits. Where as before, things will take at least 6-7 hits to kill you since they have to completely drain your Rob meter.

As much as I tell myself that this game shouldn't be fun, it is strangely satisfying. And fun at that. Maybe its because you're shooting some dudes. Maybe its because I liked VP2, I dunno, but the concepts actually come off pretty well together and there's enough thinking to do in every battle due to the way the system works.

See, the Rob gauge is used for both offense and defense. You only take Recoverable damage (called Scratch in game), from most enemy attacks (that I have seen anyway. Not that far in). However, if the amount of scratch damage you take reaches up to your maximum HP count, then you will lose meter from the Rob gauge. You can't restore it unless you kill something or break some parts, so you have to effectively manage this. The concept of using Scratch damage before using direct damage is also kinda neat. Scratch damage has the advantage of being able to pile up in bulk a lot faster than direct damage. But just like on the PC end, scratch damage doesn't kill the enemy. Your direct damage is puny, unless you use thrown items which are limited in supply early. So you often have to consider where you want the PCs to be and to make sure that the Scratcher deals as much damage without sacrificing too much of your Rob gauge.

Oh also, the graphics are damn nice. Yes, the flips and jumps and various running and gunning shots they make actually looks cool.

As for story and plot, most of it so far has just been doing various quests that the guild requires you to do. You typically have one main mission quest and then a bunch of optional ones which you can complete. You don't have to complete the main mission immediately. In fact, you can screw around endlessly if you want to >_>. It's a little freerange in that sense (although still Linear since there doesn't seem to be any branching paths yet). Vashryon is a pretty cool and laid back guy. Zephyr is kinda emo. We don't know why! But he is. And Leanne is the girl who is basically learning the art of gunplay from Vashyron and Zephyr after being rescued by them. That's pretty much it. Will see if opinion lasts over time.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

To clarify: it's not that I don't enjoy any jRPGs, it's that the genre is mostly stagnant and I don't see a future for them. And also that they're usually terribly written.

[Crystalgate]

Eien no Filena: Beaten it. I can't really recommend this game.

It starts out rather quirky with the main character being a cross dressing gladiator as well as having two prostitutes as party members. The skill system resembles that in SaGa games, you can equip up to three different weapons and the skills are tied to the weapons. You get access to healing skills by equipping a healing kit which takes up a weapon slot.

Unfortunately, the game goes nowhere. The skills are in theory flexible, but what really matters is how much damage they do and somewhat by how much they cost (weaker skills are more efficient in terms of Damage/TP). Multi-target skills are few and deal crap damage and since there's no magic system, anything that deals damage is dependent on the Attack stat. Skills that inflicts status misses more often than they hit and that's against enemies who are defeated with 1-2 hits anyway. Basically, the game managed to make battles even less strategic than most other 16-bit era games which is quite a feat. Actually, you do want to give the closest equivalent of a mage character long range skills (Crystal weapon skills) since she's going to be parked on the back row, but that's it as far as strategy goes.

The plot starts out quite well and manages to do quite a good job with emotional scenes. However, soon the game slows down eclipsing with a "light the six magical lighthouses. Oh, and you already passes all of them on your way here, so this means backtracking, a lot" quest. Additional emotional scenes are blundered. Then at the end Necron's younger brother appears.

Random battles are ridiculously frequent and 80-90% of all boss fights are Black Devils who conveniently shares a sprite. You spend about half the game with just two party members. The latter could be due to this game being based on a manga or something. On the other hand, I doubt Filena in the manga stuffed the Sword of Filena into the backpack ten minutes after obtaining it due to finding a better sword in a store.

This is a shame really since the game easily could have been much better. Fewer, but tougher random encounters combined with skills with additional effects being more accurate would already have helped a lot. The writers did do a good job with the story at the beginning so there's no reason they couldn't have done a better job later unless following the manga somehow restricted them.

[DomaDragoon]

It starts out rather quirky with the main character being a cross dressing gladiator as well as having two prostitutes as party members.

FFX-2: Paine Edition? >_>

Pokemon HG: Started this up this morning. Party is Caterpie (Margarine), Falcon (Pidgey), and TikTok (Totodile). Decided that I'm going to go with pun names for all my Pokemon this time.

Borderlands: The result of a drunken one-night stand between Diablo 2 and Fallout 3. I'm on the mountain on my way to the vault. Nothing can possibly go wrong. L 35 hunter focusing on Sniper Rifles.

[Sierra]

DMC3: Boss Ruuuuush. Why did I have the most trouble with Nevan redux there. I don't know. Anyway, will probably finish this up today.

Lady or Shadow Dante for easiest boss in the game? I dunno, it's a tossup.

[DjinnAndTonic]

FF13 in Japanese: Well, this oughta be fun. Chiaki hasn't played it yet, so I bought the game and we're gonna give it a go. Hopefully my Japanese is good enough to keep up with the story and I'll be able to make meaningful commentary on that. I popped it in today to test that the secondhand game worked and it was easy enough to following the opening bits and the battle system seems pretty self-explanatory so far, so hopefully Chiaki can help translate anything I don't catch.

Initial impressions for posterity: Shiny? The graphics don't really impress me as much they probably should. The character designs work fine so far, though I've never actually seen the 2D artwork that Nomura must have drawn for them. Scenery so far is Zanarkand mk II.

Snow is an idiot, but I like the archetype so far. Hope's mom seemed badass and should have been a main character. Lightning and Sazh just felt kinda there.

I think it'll be interesting to see how they develop into the things that people have been talking about so far.

I like the battle theme at least.

[Crystalgate]

FFX-2: Paine Edition? >_>

Nope, the prostitutes are properly dressed.

[Yoshiken]

Heart Gold Hatbot Style:
Okay! Whitney's Gym was FUN! Basically blitzed the entire thing with OnixTide, who ended up at stupid levels as a result, with some backup from Carthsnake, surprisingly - Glare is amazingly useful. <3 Miltank fell to that strategy after PAAAAIN. See, my Onix was faster than it, unlike Meeple's, but Attract really screwed me over, so I decided to turn her strategy around. Headbutt -> Flinch works from Onix led to... ohsomany Milk Drinks. argh. Eventually took me switching Onix out after getting three Screeches in to remove Attract, healing a bit while Ephkarp got killed and then switching back for Headbutt lols.
On from there, I... got caught up at the Pokeathlon. For about 6 hours. Man, that thing is addictive! So much fun~
Anyways, from there, went off to get Sudowoodo. Forgot to save and only had 3 Pokeballs, so it was Glare -> chip with Bite/Poison Sting. Carthsnake eventually died, but it was on barely any health, so switched in Smashzee and hoped for the catch. Got it on the 3rd. Stelowoodo didn't get put into the party, though - dammit, Hatbot.
Off to Ecruteak now. Can't help laughing at the trainer who goes "Look how terrible it is when your Pokemon are asleep!" and then proceeds to face my Insomnia Smashzee. His Drowzee was a level higher, still got owned, yay~

Current Team:
 - Lv 21 OnixTide
 - Lv 16 Carthsnake
 - Lv 16 Elftini
 - Lv 12 Ephkarp
 - Lv 16 Smashzee
 - Lv 5 Togepat (named after someone on a different site)

[Scar]

So I'm kinda mad right now.

I got all my pokemon onto my Diamond cartridge and I was ready to start trading them all over to SS so I can finally start that game up, when I noticed I couldn't seem to find my Latios.

I had purchased Ruby right whe it was new and used my Masterball on him because I freaking hate running pokemon. Well, I also picked up Emerald because it was super cheap and used and I wanted to get Latias as well.

Seeing as how I just beat Emerald and I had also caught Latias recently, I was happy I had pretty much all the Legendaries I could catch without using cheat codes.

But, now I can't seem to find Latios in any of my games and it is quite infuriating. I see that he is registered in my Diamond Pokedex so I must have traded him over already, but he's no where to be found!

Son of a bitch!

~

But yeah, looks like I am going to have to start a NEW game in ruby or Emerald just to get Latios again. Kinda lame, but whatever! Also, to anyone that may know is there any way to catch all these legendaries that aren't in the games or will I have to result into using a cheat or AR code or somethign to catch the likes of Celebi, Darkai, Giratina, Regigigas, and all those other silly pokemon?

[Cotigo]

Mass Effect:

Side missions are boring as hell (WTF game, making me search 4 colonies of monkeys just to place the one I need to find in a goddamn dungeon?  Egh) but yield good items so I guess that's a plus.  Finished up Feros, moved on to Noveria.  Just about to go find a way to still get Paragon points while getting out of the base after talking with the Synthetic Highlights exec and... the elevator glitches.  Way to piss me off, game.

Game keeps bringing back KotOR flashbacks, some good some bad.  The plot keeps reinforcing the "It's the same Universe as KotOR!" conspiracy theory with the Asari nonsense and the gameplay keeps reinforcing it by having my allies get stuck on walls halfway back through a dungeon.  -_-  I really like the game but it does so many things to just piss me off.

EDIT:  Also, am I not supposed to be able to use my Electronics/Decryption skills to skip over the stupid hacking minigame without having to waste Omnigel?  The game implies so but attempts to do so have yielded nothing.

KoL:  Started ascending again, finished up Oxycore Turtle Tamer.  Moved onto Oxycore Disco Bandit.  Saved up a bunch of turns for mysticality day since why not play on a stat day, and... find that I not only don't have a ten leaf clover to get my Epic Legendary Weapon, but the hermit isn't selling any today either.  Son of a bitch.  I am not questing with nothing but a goddamn disco ball and only being able to get accordion thief buffs for 5 turns.  Oh well, guess I'll just bide my time til rollover.

[Sierra]

DMC3: Done. Final Vergil is harsh. Gave Bloody Palace mode a go on a whim and made it to 1199 before dying (guess who put a stop to that? Fucking Beowulf).

Apparently something special happens if you kill 100 enemies during the credits? I killed 99. Dammit.

How long is Vergil mode?

[Xeroma]

It's the same stages as Dante. Vergil plays completely differently though.

[Magetastic]

Is it really that hard to kill 100 demons? I know that I cut it decently close, but uhh... the only real problem with it I can see is if you haven't learned mob control or aren't very good at boss killing slaying.
Anyway, yeah. Vergil mode is a different opening scene, and then same stages, but COMPLETELY different playstyle. Though... I still need to beat it, myself. >_>;

[Sierra]

You probably missed the part where I suck at the game. Didn't know the kill count mattered for anything until I checked a FAQ afterward too, so I was really just screwing around.

[Magetastic]

Ahh, yeah. That could do it. Easily. >_>; (the not knowing part, I mean) Well, it's nothing that's actually too special anyway, so don't feel bad about missing out.

[Meeplelard]

Vergil mode is identical on stages, yeah; it has 0 plot though outside of the intro which is basically just some stuff that happened a little before the game related to Vergil, then no plot scenes after it.  Vergil also starts with all his weapons he'll get throughout the game, though, not all upgrades.  Its...best you just try him out and see; he's a different enough character to give a go at DMC3 again compared to Dante.

For the 100 Demon kill...
You want Kalina Anne and Agni/Rudra at least.  What style...I forget, I think Swordmaster works?  Beowulf is good too.  Agni/Rudra just cut through things quickly, and Kalina Anne tends to one shot the demons, while having splash damage as well.  Beowulf comes in handy against the Hell Vanguard.

Getting 99 is trivial, the hard part is 100 cause its a Hell Vanguard vs. the 99 basic demon failures you're fighting before that.  This is where Beowulf really comes in handy cause it can dish out damage like nothing else.

Getting 100 Demons with Vergil is a joke; its basically "Spam the Flash Slash from Yamato" until the Hell Vanguard appears, then "Beat the shit out of him with everything you got", pity you get no bonus points for that.

Regarding the extra scene, its...going to be wasted on you El-Cid.  It exists purely to help tie DMC1 and DMC3 together.  It'll make little sense to you if you never played DMC1.

[Hunter Sopko]

Sapphire: Just finished the third gym, it was no match for the combined might of Marshtomp and Shroomish. Replaced the Beautifly in the party with an Electrike, just to get an electric in there. Been a pain raising it, but the stats are starting to go up in a better way with the Macho Band on it. On the other hand, I used it to win a Coolness contest. Grabbed Rock Smash and getting ready to move on though.

[Captain K.]

But yeah, looks like I am going to have to start a NEW game in ruby or Emerald just to get Latios again. Kinda lame, but whatever! Also, to anyone that may know is there any way to catch all these legendaries that aren't in the games or will I have to result into using a cheat or AR code or somethign to catch the likes of Celebi, Darkai, Giratina, Regigigas, and all those other silly pokemon?

You're in luck with Latios, check the bottom of this page:  http://www.serebii.net/heartgoldsoulsilver/legends.shtml

Celebi will be a wifi event soonish.  Giratina and Regigigas are available in Diamond.  You're screwed on Darkrai - there's already been a Diamond/Pearl and a Platinum giveaway for him, not going to be any more in the near future.

HG:  Chuck was actually fairly difficult, as in handed me my first loss in the game.  My usual strategy of sleep everything dangerous doesn't work on Primeape.  Ended up going with an unorthodox method of beating him using my lowest leveled pokemon who were all weak to the attacks used by Chuck's.  Yeah Onix versus Poliwrath for the win.

Jasmine was fail despite me not having ground attacks on my team.  Magnemite ate Embers from Magby, and Steelix doesn't like Surf from Croconaw.

Pryce was even bigger fail.  Piloswine ate Surf and died, and Dewgong had no attacks that can do significant damage to a water type.

Team is currently Magmar, Onix, Weepinbell, Togetic, Croconaw, Dunsparce.

[Bardiche]

There's savefiles available for Pokémon Pearl to get Darkrai, as well as Arceus, Shaymin and more. If you don't mind traversing Ye Olde Pirate Seas, you could get them by transferring from Pearl that way.

[Scar]

Oh wow, Captn K yo just saved me a boat load of time! Much appreciated!

and also, how do you get a savefile for a DS game?

[Rozalia]

Shit, seriously? I know most people I know have SS, but I figured there wasn't that much of a split. (Possibly because I'm a Phoenix, and by extension Ho-oh, fanboy, though.)

It seems a lot more people want SS for some strange reason because when I talked to some people I know who don't yet have a copy they all said they'd be getting SS. When I asked them why most of them replied with "lugia rocks", not in those exact words of course.

Pokemon HG - Pokemon are (Not including failish filler) Sandshrew L19, Quilava L21. Just got my second badge.
Rival oddly didn't give me any trouble....well he beat me once but that was because he crit with watergun TWICE! damn bastard.
One thing thats bugging me is the move "Dig", Sandslash can learn it and I remember it trashing Lance endgame but is it actually any good?

Its current moves are Swift, Defence curl, Poison spike and Rapid spin. I think I'll keep Rapid spin as I know those guys online just love throwing those statuses at you but the rest of the moves seem safe to get rid of right?

[Meeplelard]

Pokemon SS: Did nothing but beating up trainers, minor backtracking for MOAR POKEBALLS, and...uhh...stuff...yeah, nothing significant, go me!

[DjinnAndTonic]

I haven't beaten a Pokemon game since Red, but when I beat that one, I actually took the time to get all 150 pokemon in my dex. And it was really unsatisfying that I didn't even get a congradulations message or anything.

Out of curiosity, I'm wondering if future Pokemon games actually reward the player for collecting all 5 million pokemon or so?