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

[Hunter Sopko]

Sapphire: First off, woo! Caught a Shiny Roselia while leveling my Numel.

To Lilycove, just wandering around and getting pokes/items though. Got Skarmory and Camerupt completely caught up though, so I'll probably run those two plus Manectric, Swampert, Lombre and Gardevoir. Ninjask and Shroomish can sit on the sidelines for now. Will probably make a few Safari Zone runs before really moving on.

[074]

Sakura Taisen V: Yes, I got this.  Don't judge me.

Chapter 01 complete.  Synopsis of characters and gameplay so far:

Shinjiro Taiga: Nephew of the hero in previous games, Ogami, he was sent there in place of his uncle, who was requested and expected.  Personality in part is potentially defined by the player.  Notable actions performed so far in this playthrough that are not plot-required:
-Complimenting his commanding officer on her appearance within seconds of meeting her (and her introducing himself as his superior officer, even)
-Being distracted from his current funk by Sunnyside's japanese-style garden.
-Refrained from staring at his commander's breasts or stroking her hair.  Instead admired her clothing.  On her.
-Being way too enthusiastic about service in the Star Division
-Creeped out Sagitta by smiling way too much for one period of time.

Combatwise: Has initiative.  Is unremarkable otherwise, so far.

Mr. Sunnyside: MAIN MONITOR TURN ON!  Uses gratuitous english.  Randomly has a japenese garden at his mansion in New York.  Accused of violating child labor laws.  Like a boss.  Your boss.

Gemini Sunrise: Energetic redhead from Texas.  Has a massive thing for samurai and hot-bloodedness.  Keeps a horse in her apartment.  Is a janitor.  Wears a paper-thin disguise as a horse-riding samurai vigilante who hunts down bank robbers and then almost gets you arrested.  Hilariously easy to get good results for, it seems.


Sagitta Weinberg: Angry black lawyer woman.  Hates Shinjiro.  Really hates Shinjiro.  Also thinks Shinjiro is a prepubescent boy.  Creeped out by constant smiling.  Also, pilots the black robot.  I kid you not.

Combatwise: Crappy trust bonuses are bad enough.  TAKES FOREVER TO TAKE A TURN.  Base stats imply she's a tank, and her attacks have a decent range (reminiscient of spear users in SRPGs normally, with a decent radius-AoE attack for her special) but trust bonuses can change that easily.  LVP for now, may change in later chapters pending on potential trust bonuses.


Subaru Kujou: Other Japanese person in the group.  Dislikes Shinjiro because he's not Ogami.  Really hard to read.  Refers to herself in third person in the translation.  Is walking death, or something, to boot.

Combatwise: Well-rounded base, and then I ended up getting a chain of good trust bonuses for her.  Best ATK in the group, alongside her attack pattern (wide-area radius around her.  This is insanely good.) and movement (She can phase through enemies, and likely obstacles, with her robot.  As if she needed more bonuses).  The only real problem is that her special has obnoxiously short range.  Clear MVP as of Episode 1.


Ratchet Altair: Commanding officer in the Star Division.  Is potential victim of perverted things that you can do.  Wears a blue suit.  Expects you to be a good soldier.  Her robot has throwing knives.  A lot of them.

Combatwise: Has range and speed.  Her other stats are definitely subpar, but those two are solid.  And then drops out two turns into the first battle.


Commentary on the battle system later.

[Meeplelard]

Pokemon: 6 Gyms down, as is Mahogoney town done.  Got a few trade evos with my sister.

Team is currently Quilava (if this was ANY OTHER GAME, he'd be Typhlosion, DAMN YOU JOHTO LESSENED LEVELS!), Steelix, Scyther, Murkrow, Gyarados, and Grotle.

...oh, yeah, forgot to say my friend traded me a bunch of level 1 starters from other Gens (Torchic, Squirtle, Marshstomp (yeah, he leveled it up a bit, he isn't sure why either cause he has a Swampert elsewhere) and Turtwig), decided this would be the best chance to make use of Turtwig, so went with it.  Also cause I fucked up my Weepinbell, giving it two HMs, making me have to decide between STABs and...ugh, MOVE DELETER DOESN'T SHOW UP FAST ENOUGH!  ...ok, fine, I've also used Weepinbell too many freaking times, so good change of pace!

(still gonna need him leveled up for catching Entei though!  Raikou's already asleep.)

[Hunter Sopko]

Sapphire: Did the Safari Zone real quick. Managed to clear everything in 5 tries. Woo.

[Yoshiken]

Hatbot Heart Gold: GRIIIIIIIIINNNNNNND.

Archer, lol. Anyways, off to Mahogany and through the Ice Caves. During this section, I catch a Swinub and a Jynx. Both end up in my team, replacing AndyKhan and Laggyfetch'd. Welp, I didn't have Fly for long there, did I? Anyways, I push my way through the trainers in Clair's gym and get destroyed by her several times, then go off training. South. Over the ledges.
...
So, I now have a long walk back to Blackthorn. To kick it off, I catch a Gligar, though, which replaces Tonfa! It's 5 levels higher than he was, so this is good news. It can't Fly, though. =/
Once I hit the Ice Caves on my stroll back to Clair, I decide to train. Everything other than Shalequeen dies pretty quickly, and Shalequeen expends almost all of her PP killing randoms and reaching Lv 40. Yay!
So, off to fight Clair. Shalequeen hits Gyarados with a Thunder OHKO, and then Glen Seel dies in one Dragon Pulse to the Hell Kingdra. Fine, I'll cut to the chase and send out Shalequeen. Body Slam, oh, dead first. DAMMIT. Time to send out Psykappa~ so I can heal up Shalequeen. Send out a lot of weaklings in the hopes of lowering stats, they all get owned, Shalequeen eats another Hydro Pump. Reset.
Time to buy items? Time to level up something other than a Nidoqueen? Probably. What am I gonna do? Buy items and hope I can get paralysis on a Body Slam! >.>
Current Team: (As usual, unrecognisable names are from other friends/sites.)
 - Lv 23 Jynx (Tukari)
 - Lv 21 Swinub (Alida)
 - Lv 13 Psyduck (Nitori~)
 - Lv 24 Gligar (Terajin)
 - Lv 40 Nidoqueen (Shale)
 - Lv 24 Seel (Glen Veil)

[TranceHime]

Dear lord it's been a long time since I last posted. Mainly due to drama going on someplace else.

Etrian Odyssey 3:

I'm doing a mini event thing for this game. It is quite nice so far, I am liking the atmospherics greatly. I have tried out one of each class and I must say I am enjoying the destructive power of warriors a lot more. Also lol Ninjas. Still mapping out the first floor of what I assume is the first labyrinth, as there's a 1F and then an R1F.

[DomaDragoon]

Spent most of yesterday abusing glitches gaining levels in Borderlands, so I'm now a L61 Hunter with a freaking badass bird who 1HK0s pretty much every opponent. Other than that...

HG: SuperCow wasn't so super this time. Whitney used up her potions before Milktank came out, and I hit it with PoisonPowder and outlasted it after a few Sand Attacks. Now I'm taking part in the Pokeathalon and losing at everything.

[Yoshiken]

BWAHAHAHA. Quick update from the previous one. Went training in Dark Cave, caught a Lv 25 Wobbuffet which replaced the Jynx. Went and fought Clair with this. OHKOed the Gyarados with Shalequeen's Thunder, then Wobba's Quick Claw failed to kick in, but Kingdra missed, so... DESTINY BOND. Easy win with Body Slam paralysis h4x from there. <3
Off to the Dragon's Den or whatever they call it~

[Clear Tranquil]

Huh I've personally found SEN very useful for taking the heat off Vanille when she needs to stay on top of healing. Snow's helped me recover from a lot of critical situations <3 Maybe it's because I've only had Cure and Cura for most of the game and more recently Curasa but not Curaja but yeah.

I've mainly used RAV/RAV/COM, MED/SYN/SEN, SAB/SYN/SEN and RAV/COM/COM but recently I've started using Tri-disaster (RAV/RAV/RAV) which seems to fill the stagger gauge like mad. Even though I only have a Tier II weapon for Vanille (apparently I don't have what I need to upgrade Snow's weapon =-() I'm still five starring most of the randoms in Chapter 12 thanks to that. With ambushes all but that freaking turtle that otherwise falls through the floor. That can't be ambushed and it probably wouldn't have mattered if I could have gotten the drop on it anyway. I wanted that darn treasure though!

PSICOM's baby was a piece of cake when I decided *not* to stagger it. Tireless Charge again once Sazh put all the buffs up, had to switch back to Protection from time to time but yeah. Eventually did stagger it once it's HP was low enough.

I'm saved before the second encounter now~

[Monkeyfinger]

Sentinel is for groups of 5 or 6 competent randoms who kill almost anything they're smart enough to gang up on, not for bosses. They tend to be tough enough that you can't blitz them and take the heat off with quick kills, so you need to stall and set up buffs under the protection of a sentinel.

Lightning/Sazh/Hope is the boss fight party

[Luther Lansfeld]

PW3 SPOILERS!
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Phoenix Wright 3-2. Complete! Ron DeLite is wonderful. Dessie is pretty hilarious too (and surprisingly irrelevant overall), but otherwise I am not a terribly big fan of the case. Luke isn't bad but I don't think he's close to the most compelling villain because he is so bloody obviously the villain and I don't find him especially endearing otherwise.

Problems:

1.  I find blackmailing due to blackmailing someone else a really improbable reason to kill someone. The game never bothers to make the connection of why this was so important to Luke that he was set up an elaborate murder/framing plan in order to kill Kane Bullard.

2. "WHY WOULD HAVE THE KILLER POSSIBLY PRESSED THE BUZZER?" I mean, really? Godot and the Judge both seem confused about this to the max despite the fact that it is really really obvious that framing is occurring. Phoenix acts like it's a big secret, like someone PRESSING A SECURITY BUZZER to frame someone is really shocking or something.

3. Godot is a total moron. I get that maybe he's supposed to be totally bloody incompetent but I feel that it really ruins the dramatic effect of going against the prosecutor. I feel like Ron was the best prosecutor in the case. And then Phoenix. And then Luke. All of the constant incessant blathering of meaningless garbage is also really irritating; it's not funny and it doesn't contribute to the case. It feels like his dialogue just stuffs up the actual content of the case. I feel like, regardless of their intentions with Godot that he fails to make an impact on me at all other than "Can this dumbass stop talking now?"

Maybe this isn't a problem, but I think I may have missed something: What the hell happened to the Sacred Urn anyway? Did Ron steal it at some other point in the day or something? If this wasn't explained I think that that is a problem too.

The case is also really easy and the hardest part is not the murder trial itself.

Overall I didn't really enjoy the case all that much, I felt like the murder mystery was much less interesting than 3-1. Also, the conclusion doesn't satisfy me in any meaningful way because figuring out the case was so easy, as well as the fact that you aren't standing against someone who can actually prosecute. >_> Give me Winston Payne back, at least he doesn't blather~

Next is 3-3, which hopefully will be better~

THE MAN BEHIND THE BENCH WAS... THE IMPOSTOR.

[Pyro]

Lightning/Sazh/Hope is the boss fight party

There is a distinct lack of debuffing in this party. Deprotect/Deshell/Imperil are Godlike for boss fighting.

[Meeplelard]

Lightning/Sazh/Hope is the boss fight party

There is a distinct lack of debuffing in this party. Deprotect/Deshell/Imperil are Godlike for boss fighting.

Yeah, that was the first thing that stood out to me in that team.  A "Boss fighting team" that lacks Sentinel I can see, a Boss FIghting team that lacks Saboteur = wait what?

[Hunter Sopko]

Sapphire: Finished Mt. Pyre, spent about a half hour/45 min or so trying to find a damn Chimecho. Not a total loss though, as I leveled my team up pretty hardcore. Ready to move on from there at least.

[Meeplelard]

God of War 2: Trying to beat that Lava Minotaur in Atlas.  I'd have beaten him by now if...

A. Game didn't randomly decide to make me jump off the wall instead of side jump like I intended, cause fuck Wall Climbing controls
B. Copy of the game and my PS2 didn't not get along, such that when I die in this area, sometimes I go to an indefinite loading screen forcing me to reset the game, and just getting the game to load is a chore in itself!

Ugh, seriously, though, that fight just isn't fun.  Those Lava Minotaurs are bland "HIt, dodge back" style fights, then they throw that gimmick rock throwing section which just stalls it more.  I understand trying for a unique challenge, but anything in God of War relating to "Climbing Walls" pretty much automatically equates to "not fun" as far as I'm concerned, since it only slows the game down.

[Yoshiken]

4 1/2 hours later, and I have a Ho-oh. Fuck that fight. On a better note, though, got Adamant first try, so am gonna make it a Phys. Sweeper, most likely! (Sorry about the luck there, Cap'n. ;))

Off to transfer some stuff from Diamond, with help from a friend, before tackling the Elite Four. Team hasn't changed, outside of Glen Seel gaining a few Rare Candy levels and going up to 33.

[Twilkitri]

Rondo of Swords -

Slowly making my way through. I would just like to add to my previous complaints that the zoom out function is thoroughly useless, which I forgot to mention at that time.

Also it turns out that you _can_ cancel errands if you go into a map and then retreat. That's great. If you're going to allow errands to be cancelled via a stupid method, game, why don't you let them be cancelled via a friendly method. I'm just afraid that there will be maps where you aren't allowed to retreat, so I'm going to keep using both save slots regardless.

Also looks like people that get killed off get off without falling into Hurt status if you retreat, which is just bizarre. It is seeming more and more like the game was built to be retreat-whored.



Railroads -

I don't think I've said anything about Railroads yet. I put it on to have a break from Rondo and OH GOD WHY DOES IT KEEP CRASHING

Oh I see, there's an update for it OH GOD IT DID NOT HELP

Internet says to patch the executable manifest to mark it as allowing large memory addresses. On the one hand it has not crashed since I did that, but for a variety of reasons I have only played it the once since I did that, so I may have just been lucky that time.

Good fun in general at least. It is missing some of the charm of Railroad Tycoon such as the bridgebuilding animations, but it's fine.

My trains tend to have some problems with routing... One train refused to run directly down a track without going through a loop that started halfway and ended up back near the beginning each time. This was all single-tracked.
Another time I was scrolling past a town and saw a train coming up to it which wasn't supposed to be there. The track in queston ended in this town. The train just drove off the end of the track, disappeared, and ended up back at the station it started from. At which point it went straight back to this town instead of the place it was supposed to be going to which it had a clear path to.
The double-tracking system feels more complex than Railroad Tycoon's, but I've never played either on any mode where multiple trains per track is a problem so I may have missed out on some subtleties of Tycoon's way of going things. But when I double a set of station lines and part of the track coming in to the station, and slap some cross-lines between them, what I don't expect is for a train - which is already on a line to a free spot in the station - to cross over onto the other track, delaying a train which was on that track, then immediately cross over back onto the first track. I am sure that I am probably doing something wrong here.

During my most recent play I abused double-tracks to segment my railway into a number of mini-railways instead of attempting to use them to optimise traffic, and that seemed to work fairly well, at least.

[AAA]

Quake 1-Yes, I have not played this game until recently. Beat in about 3 days. Short, fun game.

As primitive as it is, this game is wonderfully designed and programmed. It's simple, fun, and to the point. Weapons are good, monsters are good, stages are challenging and interesting, and even the terrible D&D fanfiction after every episode adds a funny touch. It's just a good game, plain and simple. It's a shame that Romero and Carmack eventually split up, because between the two of them they made some of the best FPSs ever made...and then went on to make Quake II and Daikatana. Just blows my mind.

I guess I'll give the mission packs a try and then I'm done

[Grefter]

Design may be law but John Carmack sits on a Throne as the right hand of God.

[Dark Holy Elf]

AAI:ME - Hell yes the cast of 5-4 ruled. Not as technically good a case as the first two, but still fun and sets up a hopefully epic 5-5. Game in general seems to be sliding nicely between JFA and T&T.

[Luther Lansfeld]

PW3-3- This case is f'ing sweet.

[Rozalia]

Pokemon HG - Reached the building before the E4 and Lance. My team is:

Ho-Oh Lv45
Magnezone Lv45
Typhosion Lv45
Sandslash Lv43
Gyarados v46
Scizor Lv34

I don't believe I'll have much of a problem with such a finely tuned team.

[Taishyr]

FFXII: I got to Archades! This town is stupid. Insert witty editing of comment here.

Thus far, character worth: Al-Cid > Fran's face > I guess Balthier/Basch/Ashe vaguely aren't objectively terrible >>>>>>>> dung >>>>>>>>>> everyone else. Gameplay wise...

well, I deliberately ignore the main plot 'cuz it's stupid. Sorry. I really really really dislike the plot, Ashe was obviously supposed to be the main yes but then Vaan got shoehorned in and the entire thing is just discombobulated and shitty. This means I mainly just do all the marks first and try esper fights and go kill shit instead of advancing plot, so I've got endgame level HP going into Draklor Labs. Yeah.

Pretty much using all six chars, cycling in-out so levels stay about equal. Basch/Penelo get the Sword/Shield combo (currently Diamond Sword/Shell Shield/helmet/Shielded Armor/Bubble Belt), Fran/Ashe get Zodiac Spear/helmet/Shielded Armor/Bubble Belt, Vaan/Balthier get Fomalhaut/Silent Shot/helmet/Shielded Armor/Bubble Belt. Bubble/Protect/Shell/Haste trivialize a lot of fights.

[DomaDragoon]

HG: So Sudowoodo doesn't like water, boo hoo. Gets caught rather easily and becomes my new 5th/6th Pokemon, DramaMajor. Took part in the Bug-Catching Contest, and caught a Scyther (Magus) but didn't even place. Played a couple of Pokathelons, and in one of them, I didn't finish last! Yay! Now in Ecruteak right after getting Surf.

[Luther Lansfeld]

PW3-3 -- Victor Kudo is my hero. He is like Wendy except different and still awesome. I'm doing the Day 2 investigation right now, I am hoping to get back to the trial soon~