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

[Luther Lansfeld]

I liked Suikoden 3's perspectives a lot. No comment on Odin Sphere, I don't play games that I think sound terrible (hi Meeple). >_>

[Shale]

I believe you there, I'm just saying that Gwen's story, as a self-contained tale, still holds together.

[Meeplelard]

I liked Suikoden 3's perspectives a lot. No comment on Odin Sphere, I don't play games that I think sound terrible (hi Meeple). >_>

In my defense for Odin Sphere, the game LOOKED pretty at Minimeet, and just about everyone was hyping it sans Trips at the time (well, I think Tal didn't like it too?) so uh, yeah, no precedent or something!

No, this doesn't excuse all the OTHER games I thought sounded bad but played!

[Pyro]

Clarification: In Velvet's story Gwendolyn aids her escape from the Ragnanival forces. During this scene Gwen pointedly makes sure to express to Velvet's pursuers that Gwen is acting of her own volition and in spite of her father's wishes. The point of this scene was actually to make more of a connection between Velvet and Gwendolyn, as this connection plays a role later in Velvet's path (Velvet is never seen again after this point in Gwen's path).

Gwen's path without this scene is a perfectly coherent story. It can be readily assumed that Odin put her to slumber because he had no choice in the matter after she killed a high-ranking general/noble. Had he NOT done so it would have seemed Gwen's actions were his own orders, or else he was giving his daughter free reign to kill whomever she pleased.

In summary there is no problem with this scene being in Velvet's path, as it serves a purpose there. It may flesh out Gwen's character a little more but there is nothing wrong with that happening in other paths at all.

Odin Sphere has one of the best mult-viewpoint stories I've seen in a videogame, if not THE best. Between the cohesion of the story and the rather badass timeline they give you, I find it hard to swallow it failing it for this one, perfectly excusable, reason.

[Luther Lansfeld]

That was general commentary.

[Shale]

Also, Gwen helping Velvet to escape was pretty well implied in when she killed the guy who was holding her prisoner, and the Ragnanival forces seeing her do it was implied by the fact that the Ragnanival forces saw her do it.

[Grefter]

Speaking of shit games the suck.

Suikoden Tierkreis - What not to do when designing side missions.  Dumping the player in the middle of a low level dungeon after a plot fight.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I imagine it would be a pain in the ass to balance, but if I'd done S3, the one thing I would have changed is split the chapters up more and make the chapters after the introductory stuff mutually exclusive. But I'm a big fan of not making the player sit through shit about characters he just doesn't care about at all. And then maybe as a new game + thing, you could play through all chapters the second time. But the first time, you'd have only a limited perspective on things, like your characters.

[Random Consonant]

Strange Journey - Whoo Sector H~.  Also, the Sector G boss is in need of dropkicking.

[Captain K.]

DQ9:  Finally decided to finish it, and did so at 92 hours lol.

Great game, albeit way too easy.  This is balanced somewhat by very limited resurrection being available.  Only Priest, Minstrel, and Ranger have access to rez, and it's the crappy 50% chance of success version.  Sage does not count, you don't get the class until the final dungeon.  Also, MP is a really important stat now.  The really good attacks cost huge amounts of MP, and most classes have very limited supplies.  Spirit Bracer for accessory MVP.

For the most part the story was good.  Nice to see a final boss with some actual motivation, and how it tied into the resurrection of the Gittish Empire.  A few of the vignettes were lacking, (cough, Zere Rocks) but most were entertaining.

Thoughts on the classes:

Warrior:  Barely touched it.  No comment.

Mage:  Good in the earlygame, kind of meh by the end.  Needed higher single-target damage at endgame levels.

Priest:  Probably MVP?  Great weapon selection, lots of all-important MP, Zing, and right before you get to the bosses that need it - Multiheal.

Minstrel:  Fairly good for a do-everything class.  Good mix of abilities that you actually use in battles.

Thief:  They wear heavy armor?  Okay, whatever.  Great speed and deftness make them steal monkies.  Stealing works about 25% of the time with an appropriate leveled thief, so that's pretty much what I did with one for 90% of the game.  They're pretty bad against bosses though.

Martial Artist:  Go first and hit things really hard.  What's not to love?

Ranger:  I ignored this class for most of the game since the internet said they suck.  The internet was wrong.  It's everything you like about Thief, but with good support spells in addition for boss fights.

Gladiator:  Slow, but hit hard and have the best physical damage skills in the game.  Quite useful.

Armamentalist:  Pretty decent party members all around.  Have the good support spells that you like from Mage, plus a surprisingly good attack stat.

Paladin:  Up there with Priest for MVP.  Insane stat boosts (+100 Resilience and 80 HP?).  They don't die to anything except magic - oh wait, they can buff that too.  Forbearance = broken.

Sage:  Unlocked it, but barely used.  No comment.

As for weapons, loved Staff (Party Pooper+Martial Artist=win), Spear has Thunder Thrust and Lightning Storm is pretty decent for an ultimate.  Sword kind of sucks, and Gigaslash/Gash are way too expensive.   Fans are a bit weak but the ability to make yourself reflect breath attacks will certainly come in handy.  Also has Hustle Dance, but there was always something else I would rather have my fan user doing.  Didn't use other weapons significantly, but think I'll try boomerangs next.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Updates are getting shorter because I am lazy. And skillsets are getting too big to post fully.

4-1 (Professional villains)

Clarissa: Nightstalker; DS OC, Elem/DS EQ, Widespread, IFF, Action Replay
Elayne: Nightstalker; SS/Enig OC, Elem EQ, Mage+25% IFF, Accelerate
Vin: Strider; Fant/Gadg OC, Sec EQ, Atk+25%

Lluvia has 172 speed, and when he gets a turn, he gives the other two turns, and Trueno uses said turn to one-shot someone. Not cool, with only 3 PCs, and 172 speed being quite fast.

Unfortunately for Trueno, he is vulnerable to Rob Turn. I deploy Clarissa, Elayne, and Vin for this battle, with Clarissa and Elayne as Nightstalkers to get the drop on the battle and give me two shots at Rob Turn via Turn Shift. From there on, it's a matter of spamming Rob Turn while attacking the brothers with Devastate and other attacks. Viento has high evade so physicals don't really work on him; the other two have high Def and Res which aren't nearly as potent.

4-2-A (Rupert and the river)

Clarissa: Emulator; DS/Elem OC, DS/Elem EQ, IFF, Widespread
Elayne: Emulator; Elem/Fant/SS OC, Elem EQ, Mag+25%
Levin: Martial Mage; Emu/SS OC, Elem/SS EQ, Widespread

Three bosses in a row with Rob Turn vulnerability? Sure, why not. I can't get too attached to this, though... anyway, Levin finally gets a chance to shine as we're finally facing human, non-undead, non-boss enemies, and decent numbers of them at that. 75% widespread petrify for all!

My setup here is pretty flawed for Rupert control beyond Rob Turn. I am able to nuke his MP, but he's still annoying because eventually Clarissa runs out of MP and I don't have either Debilitator or Mesmerise here, more fool me. Still, I manage well enough. It's made a bit trickier due to some bad luck with the status, so there are some nervous moments and a death or two, but nothing unmanageable. I still hate Sacred Slayers, incidentally. I always underestimate them until they are getting infinite turns.

4-2-B (showing off the tier 4 classes)

Three of each tier 4 class here, though none of the Emulators have new skills. Anyway, setup is pretty similar to the previous battle overall, dropping the boss-killing skills. Widespread Petrify and Exploit Weakness for all! Though, I do learn one annoying thing here; I had assumed petrified targets were always hit despite the listed hit percentage, but it looks like 0% still misses. Annoying, but fortunately this only matters for Extremists, and petrify still leaves them sitting ducks for Exploit Weakness beatdowns.

4-3-A (Paigoels and the offensive emulator skills)

Offensive emulator skills! Hell yes!

Oh, yeah, there's a battle here. Anyway, the paigoels have 1500 HP which is monstrous. That pretty much makes them bosses. Except you know what's not boss-like about them? Their petrify resistance. See you, losers.

The Zortroa have started putting Fantastica OC on top of their other tricks, and Slow Down is pretty annoying, but nothing that can't be handled. This map really needs more enemies to be threatening, seeing as they all have elemental and status weaknesses.

4-3-B (Chelle and the stealth stalkers)

Fuck Stealth Stalkers.

IFF Devastate and keep allies in range, blow them up. Elayne's is powerful enough to one-shot, even. I guess Clarissa's might be too if I shifted her to Elementalist but eh, not needed. I get lucky with the instant death, just kept some Revive Fruits on hand if need be. They hit pretty hard (3HKO damage, accurate) but nothing unmanageable. Petrify and weakness-nailing for the Zortroa, who are inept since they don't start close to their pets for once.

Oh, and Chelle? Vulnerable to sleep. 75% sleep is good times. Slow Down and Debilitate to make it all the harder for her to wake up, then beat on her with Devastates and Blast post-Fragile. Sleep is, apparently, a shockingly bad weakness to have. Who would have guessed?

4-4 (Professional villains times four)

Today's key to victory is: defence ignoring! Sacrifice and Innocent Blow are my friends, so Vin comes back out to play in place of Levin for this fight, as a Nightstalker. Elayne mostly plays support and healer. CLM Up lets Vin navigate all over the battlefield very easily, which helps her go up and kill the brother who is high up before joining the other two PCs. I take out the clones periodically with MT stuff but it's not really necessary, only the real deals to good damage.

[AAA]

Resident Evil 5-Like RE4, but worse in every way. To start with, the bosses are all terrible. Part of it is because they're all either extremely blatant "shoot weak spot" or "use ________ gimmick in room to defeat them". I know that RE4 sort of had that, but they mixed it up with straight on bosses, bosses that were more of a puzzle than a straight up fight, and bosses like Right Hand Man that were more based on survival. Another part is that the bosses had no real stage presence. With bosses like Salazar or Saddler or Mendez you had plenty of time to see them in cutscenes and radio conversations and the like. This made the bosses more satisfying. With RE5 it's just 'reach checkpoint, GIANT SPIDER OUT OF NOWHERE'.

One good example would be the different El Gigante fights in each game. In RE4 El Gigante had a big weak spot you had to expose to damage him, but it also had a big arena to run around in, some stuff to collect, the additional 'hey it's that dog' factor, and was generally a well-polished fight. RE5's El Gigante fight involves you manning a completely stationary turret and just holding down the fire button until it dies. But instead of one weak point you have to shoot 4 weak points to get at the major weak point and ad;kad;laha;dslghsadgh

The plot sucks too. RE4 plot was silly, campy fun that didn't take itself too seriously, RE5 is just boring plot plot plot that's some nonsense about magical viruses who use magical DNA to create super soldiers and also here's Wesker. None of it was funny or interesting. The only real high point was the utterly ridiculous plot that led up to the final boss, which actually felt like an RE4 boss and was possibly the high point of the game.

The gameplay isn't that great either. The basics are the same, but it suffers from drastically reduced inventory space and an AI partner. The inventory space did not need to be cut down so badly. There is no reason to reduce players to 9 spaces for weapons, ammo, grenades, healing items, etc. All it does is slow the game down while I constantly micromanage space and wind up ignoring stuff I might otherwise need or use because there's simply no space for it. The AI partner is hit or miss. It does a good job of aiming, though the reliance on bodyshots makes it blow through weaker guns too fast for my taste. But it hordes ammo for actual useful guns until forced to use it, uses healing items indiscriminately, stands around enemies with one-hit KO attacks and otherwise can't be trusted for most things.

One thing that bugs me is that it starts offering up zombies with guns. What this means is that you have to slowly go from cover to cover taking potshots at bullet sinks until they're all dead, and then you go to the next set piece with lots of cover and do it again. It's another case of the game slowing things down to a crawl and making it feel more like a shitty Gears of War knockoff than a Resident Evil game.

Lastly, the game just feels uninspired, like Capcom just coasted on RE4's surprise success. There's nothing that feels as exciting or as fun as the assault on the base with the chopper or the Right Hand Man battle or Giant Salazar Statue out of nowhere. It's like the game just sort of goes through the motions of making an experience that's sort of like RE4, but at the end of the day is nowhere near as entertaining.

I played the shit out of RE4 multiple times, but I could barely get myself to try out Mercenaries mode before packing it up. So, so very glad I did not play 60 bucks for this game.

[Pyro]

Dragon Quest 9: Just beat the damn spider boss and got the 4th Fygg.

Gameplay is traditional dragon quest. I am using the default party of Minstrel/Warrior/Mage/Priest. I haven't played around with class swapping, although I imagine it could be useful due to levels being gained fast in new lvl1 classes and being able to dump skill points in either cross-class skills (swords for warriors/thieves) or the stat-up laden 5th skill for each class.

I just handed my entire party Special medicines for healing because they were easy to alchemise and having full healing on everyone is a godsend. Still almost lost to the spider because it was bloody fast with decent MT damage and could gang up ST on one person. I was really behind on equips/levels though, and as I haven't played with multiple classes I figure I'm pretty underpowered.

Got owned to hell by some horse boss named Equinox in an optional dungeon. This was retarded because that dungeon's enemies were of the same type as I'm fighting now, but the boss was like three times more badass than the (not pansy) bosses I'm fighting now.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Speaking of shit games the suck.

Suikoden Tierkreis - What not to do when designing side missions.  Dumping the player in the middle of a low level dungeon after a plot fight.

Yeah, Suiko Tierkreis side stuff never gets better about this.

Seriously, if you're this willing to sit through tedious gameplay you don't care about for a half-decent story, you should really just suck it up and play Soul Nomad. The story's better and you might actually -like- the gameplay. For all that it's N1-ish, at least it has some depth.

[Rozalia]

The plot sucks too. RE4 plot was silly, campy fun that didn't take itself too seriously, RE5 is just boring plot plot plot that's some nonsense about magical viruses who use magical DNA to create super soldiers and also here's Wesker. None of it was funny or interesting. The only real high point was the utterly ridiculous plot that led up to the final boss, which actually felt like an RE4 boss and was possibly the high point of the game.

RE5 plot is so horrible it deserves to go into the pile of games capcom would rather not exist such as DMC2. Also as some smart alec will most likly call me out on saying just RE5 plot is bad I'd like to say RE0-3 have a good (Not a typo) plot that sets the setting and has good villains with huge presence in William birkin and Nemesis. *Raises Anti-ridicule shield*

WKC - Done with XP grinding. Now onwards to material farming!

[Shale]

FFTA: Yikes. After crashing and burning against the final (stupid no-reactions law), I went back to do some more missions, and eventually wandered into Brightmoon Tor. After not saving for two hours. And with a team that had exactly one offensive spell (Protometeor). Climbing the tower was fine; I just overpowered everything with Dual Wield and Sidewinder. But the top....the pain. The pain.

I did finally manage to win, though! And now I know better. Currently working my way through the Kings (I beat the first one in the first two hours of the game, then didn't touch the rest until now...it's like fish in a barrel), and building Frimelda up for Way of the Sword.

[Taishyr]

Brightmoon Tor: Starts easy. Then ramps up to "what the goddamn fuck?" and doesn't move from there.

I wonder if you'll get to The Final Challenge. (requires all 300 missions beat, which is easier than it sounds but) If you do, uh, I wanna be in chat to hear you bitch about it. <_<

[Shale]

Sadist.

And I probably will. 212 down!

[Fudozukushi]

StarCraft 2: Tosh is a badass.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

If I was to take one thing from RE5 other than Chris and Wesker themselves, it would be boulder-punching. It should be a bonus stage in MvC3 when you play as Chris or the Hulk.

[Shale]

FFTA2: Beat the final boss! Twice! Because somebody in the programming staff hates life.

To wit: When you beat the game, you are presented with a prompt to save your clear data. When you pick a file, the first thing you notice is the "Cleared!" tag appearing on it. Then you see that the play time, level and number of missions completed don't change at all. Yes, the only thing it does is to apply that "cleared" flag to the file. Anything else you've done since the last time you saved is lost. And if you wanted to write your clear save over a backup file instead of your main save, like I did? Yeaaaaaaaaaah. Oh, and after saving, it immediately kicks you back to the title screen.

Must kill.

Anyway, 8/10 game. Very fun, reasonably well-balanced class system, inoffensive, ignorable plot, ate 60+ hours of my life. On to the aftergame!

Oh, and Al-Cid sucks.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Mid C4 XF update.

4-5 (Final showdown with Rupert)

It's more Rupert. I approach him with the same strategy as last time, which is to Rob Turn spam him until I can get his MP down so I don't have to deal with his shenanigans. The swarms of randoms are a bit much for me to just leave alive, so I simultaneously work on killing them off, too. Fortunately most of them are quite frail.

Of course, there's a price to be paid for this, which is that Rupert starts getting ludicrous numbers of turns. At a certain point, trying to keep up with that proves fairly pointless, and I even let the various stat downs (Slow Down and Debilitator being the big two, but also Mesmerise) relax on him. I try not to let this happen until almost all the enemies nearby are dead, I just leave alive the High Cavaliers (since the HP is a bit much) and one Strider, which is low enough that I can use Heal to deal with any damage well enough. From there on, the usual Action Replay pounding away at the boss works quite well.

4-6-A (The end of King Tarrasque III)

One of the few Chapter 4 maps that actually has reinforcements, and the result is quite a slog. To be fair, this battle is harder than it should be because I forget to re-equip items, so I'm short on Revive Fruits. Anyway, there's a mix of Zortroa and jelly blobs at first, but only one jelly blob even has misery, so this is pretty simple to control. The boss himself is another matter. Granted, he's got nothing but a decent physical and Toxic Breath, but he's fast and has loads of HP. Only 3 move, though, so I kite him as much as I can while dealing with the other enemies. There are six Forsaken Mutants as support, and while only one has a truly annoying status (disease), it just ends up stretching the battle out quite a bit. I could write about my epic win which was in doubt right until the boss ran out of VP, but there's no real point since if I'd gone in with a real setup I'd have crushed this one.

4-6-B (Crazy for Katrina)

Lots of enemies with 500 attack and decent stats otherwise! And they're all status immune! (I bring Levin for this and discover this to my surprise, bit of a waste, but hey, he just healbots instead.) Of course, unless luck really goes against me, it's an easy enough way to carve my way out of. Exploit Weakness means 2HKOs are pretty common despite the high enemy HP here, Devastate nails whole bunches at once, and of course they're very good at damaging each other. I suppose Mesmerise is a pretty good option if control is needed, but I don't bother.

4-6-C (The Royal Knights are mind controlled)

Haha, the biggest rout yet. Eisen has two crippling weaknesses: sleep and gravity. I charge up to deal with him first, so he won't benefit from Crisis Rfx Up. Put him to sleep, hit him with gravity three times. From there on, I split into three, easily reducing each enemy to critical in 1-2 hits (one takes 3) with well-chosen elemental spells and gravity if needed. I only take two hits the entire battle, that's how silly things are.

4-7-A (Enter the anti-hero)

John Does! Eat Sanctify. The disease they inflict is annoying, so I make sure to have a few extra Medicines onhand, as well as two PCs with Engimancer OC, although I only bother to cure it after each wave.

This really only leaves the boss and his three pet John Does as worth worrying about. These John Does have quite a bit more HP than the others, so it takes 2-3 Sanctifies to kill. Charlton himself is very speedy, but I surround him, Slow him down, and then Action Replay Feeble Mind in his face until he can't do anything scary. Very fortunately Sacred Slayer OC makes him notably worse; Dark Destruction is an extremely scary attack (2HKO damage and 50% misery? Ew) but he generally prefers to use Fragile. Haha. A bit worried about form 2, though, since I won't have this luxury. Anyway, once he has no Feeble Mind there's nothing too scary here, I keep some debuffs on but don't have to be too religious about it since his physical isn't that amazing or anything. There's a bit of a scary moment as I have to heal disease and heal before he starts killing people but nothing too bad.

4-7-B (The Royal Knights are just idiots)

See two battles ago. Nothing about this battle is meaningfully different. Oh sure, the enemies have notably more HP and more long-range skills so I actually take damage this time, but I never actualy have to heal, Eisen still has 100% sleep vulnerability (before Exectrate), and elemental magic and gravity still combine to give me every type of damage I need to control this fight. The most notable thing is that one of the royal knights sits in a chokepoint and starts spamming long-range stuff at me, so I turn shift him until he moves out of the way. Yes, this battle is so pathetic I consider turn shifting an enemy a worthwhile use of my time.

ps don't use Command Critical against the royal knights

That does it for this update. Next up, we get to kill off some more villains! Including ones that make Ragnar talk. Always good.

[AndrewRogue]

So, from what I'm reading about RE5, its basically the same transition the series made from DMC3-> 4, minus the redeeming features DMC4 managed to hang onto?

[dude789]

Pokemon Platinum Wally Playthrough: I beat the E4 last night and it was fairly challenging. Cynthia, Bertha, and Lucian were still really challenging despite my team being slightly higher leveled than my previous teams. The rival battle was really easy. His levels were lower than I remembered and I swept his team with little trouble. He really makes a good measuring stick for how well you'll do against the E4. If you have trouble against him you'll probably want to level up some more because the E4 is a good 5-10 levels higher than he is.   

Aaron: This battle is pretty easy. Most of his pokemon were taken out without much trouble, but Drapion gave me some trouble because it killed Delcatty and I made a bad decision and sent in Altaria next who got 2HKOed by Ice Fang. I think Vespiquen took out some of my weakened pokemon as well, but eventually I sent in Magnezone who OHKOed it with Choice Specs boosted Discharge.

Bertha: This was a really exciting battle that came down to the wire for me. I fully expected Roserade to be able to sweep most of his team and that didn't go as well as I expected. Roserade started off well by OHKOing Whiscash. She sent in Gliscor next and unfortunately Delcatty's Ice Beam wasn't strong enough to OHKO it so Gardevoir had to come in and finish the job. Hippowdon was next and Roserade 2HKOed it but got Yawned and fell asleep after killing it. She sent in Golem and I used an Awakening on it. Golem used Fire Punch and left Roserade at about 8 hp unfortunately Hippowdon had caused a Sandstorm and Roserade was killed before it could OHKO the Golem. I sent in Gardevoir and just missed the OHKO with Magical Leaf which lead to Gardevoir getting killed off by Golem since it had already taken a lot of damage against Gliscor. I think Altaria was the one who ended up finishing off Golem. Rhyperior was her last pokemon so I sent in Gallade to use Close Combat. I use Swords Dance first and Rhyperior Earthquakes leaving me with single digit hp and once again Sandstorm finishes Gallade off.  At this point I only have Altaria and Magnezone left so I decide to take a chance. Altaria comes in and uses Earthquake which does less than a quarter of Rhyperior’s health. I send in Magnezone to kill it knowing that if Magnezone can’t kill Rhyperior, he will be OHKOed by Earthquake and I will lose. Fortunately, Flash Cannon boosted by Choice Specs is strong enough to finish off the Rhyperior and I beat Bertha with only Magnezone remaining.

Flint: Easiest of the E4 for me. Gallade is faster than Houndoom and OHKOs it with Close Combat. Rapidash comes in next and I send in Altaria. It uses Bounce so I use Dragon Dance and become faster than it then use Fly to avoid Bounce. Altaria sweeps the rest of his team with Earthquake except for Infernape who is OHKOed by Gardevoir.   

Lucian: I start out with Delcatty against Mr. Mime. Delcatty actually manages to win this battle but it got a critical hit and Mr. Mime was able to set up both Reflect and Light Screen. Gallade comes out next and requires about half my team to beat it because of the screen support. Altaria kills it with Fly once Reflect wears off and Lucian sends in Espeon. I send in Gardevoir and start Calm Minding. This steadily reduces the amount of damage from Espeon’s Shadow Ball until it gets a critical hit and kills Gardevoir. I send in Magnezone who resists all of Espeon’s moves and is able to kill it with Discharge. Alakazam is sent in next so I sacrifice Magnezone to revive Gardevoir. Alakazam has nothing that’s super effective against Gardevoir so all it does is use Energy Ball to hit Gardevoir for little damage. I buff up with Calm Mind about 4 times and finish off Alakazam and Bronzong with boosted Thunderbolts.

Cynthia:  As usual Cynthia provides one of the best challenges of the playthrough. I start off with Delcatty against her Spiritomb and manage to Toxic it and slowly wear it down but it ends up beating Delcatty while it is poisoned and its health is in the red. I send in Roserade next and while Cynthia uses a Full Restore I use Grass Whistle and manage to put it to sleep which lets Roserade kill it with Giga Drains. Togekiss is next so I send out Magnezone. It Aura Spheres Magnezone but Magnezone survives and gets in a good hit. Gardevoir finishes if off and learns through Trace that it thankfully has Hustle instead of Serene Grace. She sends in Lucario next and I have the least trouble I’ve ever had with her Lucario. I send out Gallade and it uses Shadow Ball which Gallade easily survives and I OHKO it back with Close Combat. Her big bad Garchomp comes out next and I shuffle pokemon around trying to figure out what can survive a hit against it. Unfortunately it can OHKO most of my pokemon so I decide to take a chance and send out Altaria. I Dragon Dance once and it uses Dragon Rush and misses. I use Dragon Claw and it does a little less than half it’s HP activating the Sitrus Berry. It uses Dragon Rush and fortunately misses again. It turns out that my first Dragon Claw got low damage variance as the second one is able to finish it off. Milotic is her next pokemon and I decide that Calm Minding with Gardevoir is the best way to deal with this. This takes three tries as each time it gets a critical hit once I have a few Calm Minds up. Eventually though I get all the Calm Minds set up and OHKO both Milotic and Roserade for the win.

As I said earlier I’ll probably do some of the after game but I’m not sure how much. I’ll probably end up doing full team evaluations later, but it’s been a really fun playthrough and it’s been cool to mix some pokemon  I’ve used before and some I’ve wanted to but never have used.   

[Anthony Edward Stark]

So, from what I'm reading about RE5, its basically the same transition the series made from DMC3-> 4, minus the redeeming features DMC4 managed to hang onto?

That's a fairly good comparison. While neither are necessarily bad games on their own, neither of them measure up at all when compared to the one that came before.