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

[Monkeyfinger]

Am I the only person here who liked the story of Arthas the paladin slowly losing his shit? It's really not cliche either, at least in Blizzard games and similar fantasy stuff characters like Arthas tend to stay squeaky clean.

[Cotigo]

Beh, it's basically the plot of the Star Wars' Prequel Trilogy.  Maybe it was kind of neat back then but the whole "slow descent to the dark side" thing's kind of old hat at this point.

It also doesn't help that the writing itself is just shit.  The dialogue is terribly stilted.

Also:  Speak, fool.  No one orders ME around.  Tread lightly.  Frostmourn hungers.  Speak, fool.  Speak, fool.  No one orders ME around.  FOR THE LICH KING.

[Luther Lansfeld]

S3: Did Hugo as the FC because I dunno why. I am stupid. Just beat the army battle with Yuber, Albert, and Sasarai.

Also, a complaint: The unwinnable fight before? Stupid as fuck. I have to either wait ten turns or lose 3 units and I'm just sitting here defending because I thought that was what you are supposed to do but it would just be NOT SLOW AS FUCK IF I JUST DIED. Grah.

[Shale]

My blood cries out for the vengeance of my people's blood, which can only be made up with at least twice as much blood, or maybe three times as much blood, like if you went to hell, and it was full of blood, and that blood was on fire, and it was raining blood, and maybe that would be enough blood. Eh, but probably not.

[Excal]

Two games getting priority right now.

Shadow Hearts 2

Going fairly well, managed to reach Asia, and have apparently found where Hojo worked before Shinra hired him.  Also found evidence that no matter where he works he's got a thing for, ummm...  mixing things with dogs.  At least he's not the creepy necrophile.  Karin has actually managed to pleasently surprise me recently, after her chat with Yuri.  And...  Anastasia continues to exist, which is more than most people can claim, Joachim mostly just being a foil for Anastasia at this point, Gepetto just being random old guy who knows stuff, and Blanca generally being either the Littlest Hobo or a jerkass anime main depending on if you get to hear what he's saying or not.

PS. Kurando is a dork.


SRW@ - About 2/5 of the way through the game, currently sauntering through the Dunbine intro pathsplit.  So far as I can tell, their Aura Barriers null beam weaponry, which is irritating because this path gets three separate Gundam casts, which are lacking in the non-beam weaponry that can also hit flying types.  From the looks of things, I'm about to get the Eva's to permanently join, and then on to SRX and Macross stuff, which should be fun.

Also, only have about 15 Exp points right now, and am doubting that I'll be able to get the real ending on this playthrough.  Oh well, will give me an excuse to play the Super Robot version in the future.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

That's not good, but it beats "I WILL DO WHAT MY KING SAYS EVEN IF IT IS RETARDED AND WRONG".

Uther was fucking awful. Fucking AWFUL that way.

Anyway, they've framed up Arthas as pretty much always being a tool, no matter what. Back before he was a completely-obvious evil overlord, he was a nancyboy who would try to fight Varian Wrynn and get his ass kicked.

[Grefter]

As much of a complete and total whiny douche Arthas is he is soooo not a girlier version of Luca blight.  Remember Luca's plot is "mummy got raped by badnits and daddy wouldn't do anything about it   I HATES YOU DADDY AND REALITY!!!!11".  For all Arthas douchery he at least has the fall back that he was being telepathically influenced by one of the most powerful beings on the planet and made bad choices in a rock and a hard place scenario in the lead up to his fall.  He has you know, plot there instead of PIGS PIGS PIGS BURN HATE STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID.

BoF 4 - Up to the rescue Cray from the castle and realised I hadn't bought the Treasure Ball, thinking about restarting.  Would let me fish at the fishing point I missed as well. 

Mana Khemia 2 - This uh honestly this isn't very good, but I am kind of having fun.  Ulrika's path.  Pepperoni is Snow and only continuing to be more Snow as time passes.  Up to Chapter 3.  Not sure what I find so not very good though.  It executes some of the finer gameplay irritants out of the way with the resource gathering system (O BUT WAIT FUCK THE MINI GAMES.  Just like I called it when it came out, I -hate- these things, shock horror that I know my own tastes!) by just pouring alchemy components all over you.  If you can get something you probably have like 10 of them at any given time outside of a few random ones that can be store bought  (Night-In-Grape being the prime example).  I am not sure, I guess it is the way a few to many recipes are locked out early due to some items just not being present.  Clearwater being the one that is really bothersome early on.   Lots of Ice weak enemies but can't make Ice Bombs, required ingredient for a fair few recipes that would be nice to have.  First place it turns up is apparenty Storebought in Chapter 3 if I am reading things correctly.  I am sitting on a bit to much AP and haven't really had any chance to make enough stuff to spend it on.  Finally have all 5 characters, but don't even have more then 4 or so things on Enna's Grow Book, kind of annoying.

Geting support system earlier is muuuuch better so the gameplay is better than MK1.  The plot is just sort of meandering around trying to crack jokes all over the place and they really don't connect at a funny:unfunny ratio.  They improved the gameplay, but I am having issues understanding why this had to exist.  I guess having no sympathetic characters in a character driven game can do that?  Raze' path doesn't look any better though.  Wooooo douches being douchey.

[Shale]

Bayonetta: Oh right, I was playing this. Balder was easy, got gold on the first try with some piss-poor dodging and missing both "dodge!" QTEs because the timing is really narrow. Final chapter, though? Not cool. Huge giant boss enemy with many parts is fine. That worked great with the earlier Angel bosses. That plus a constantly shifting camera angle and attacks that blend into the background? Not so great.

[SageAcrin]

Girlier *origin story*, Grefter.

For all his faults, he probably manages the ultimate style as well.

(That's also kinda not fair to Luca, he was a bastard son and orphaned because of that until he was convenient to have around, or something like that. Such things make you bitter and kill-y. Arthas, ultimately, could have avoided becoming evil by having fucking balls.)

Am I the only person here who liked the story of Arthas the paladin slowly losing his shit? It's really not cliche either, at least in Blizzard games and similar fantasy stuff characters like Arthas tend to stay squeaky clean.

Frankly it was better than Warcraft 2 plot, sure, but...

Honestly Blizzard does cliche alien plots way better. That's sorta sad, but SC had your snarky generic human heroes, your honorable noble tough aliens and your "Gut everything that gets in our way" aliens and fundamentally I never felt any of the cliches done badly. Then there's Kerrigan, who went from sappy love interest to snarky asshole to *major* snarky asshole as a villian and amused me a ton during BW due to that(Queen bitch of the universe line goes here).

It also had Samir Duran, whose general existence and plot is entirely trolling the player.

Compared to that you have cliche paladin that goes evil and cliche elves that are assholes but are THE LAST HOPE and you have undead killing things with now evil Arthas. Arthas was, relatively, amusing, but in comparison it reminded me of being amused at Edmund Duke being an asshole. *Shrug.*

So it tends to get hit by comparison to that. It tried to be gritty high fantasy type crap instead of amusing jackassery and it wasn't really the writers strengths, was what it felt like.

[Luther Lansfeld]

(That's also kinda not fair to Luca, he was a bastard son and orphaned because of that until he was convenient to have around, or something like that. Such things make you bitter and kill-y. Arthas, ultimately, could have avoided becoming evil by having fucking balls.)

I don't really know about Warcraft III, but I'm pretty sure Jillia is the bastard child, not Luca. Luca watches his mother get raped by bandits hired by people from Muse and Jillia is the result of that raping. Luca hates his father because he didn't do anything to stop it or something. He ran away instead of helping the mother.

[Grefter]

Well yeah if you are going for backstory then both are princes that trained a lot in fighting for whatever reasons.  One trained as a paladin and one trained as a tremendously retarded douchebag.  Sooooo uh.

[Meeplelard]

Yeah, Luca was the legit child.  He openly says to Jilia in game "Why are you sad? He's not your real dad anyway!"  or something along those lines when Agares (or whatever his name is) dies.

That said...

Resident Evil 5: No, didn't buy the game, just realized there was a demo and figured it'd be enough to say "Should I sink money into this?"

...wow, I can already see the problems relative to RE4.  The controls are so unintuitive, for starters.  RE4's took some getting use to, but that was more just "New system" type scenario.  The buttons themselves made sense once you adjusted to the game, which you could do pretty easily, and getting use to the sensitivity, etc.

RE5, I still couldn't remember which was shoot, which was knife, which was "Action" etc.  It lead to a lot of accidental fuck ups that didn't occur in RE4.  Also, the inventory change on the spot is annoying; I don't care if it makes things "more intense", if you're gonna have on the fly equipment swapping, do it Mega Man style or something, not "Scroll through inventory while enemies kill you."  Also, having "Equip" above "Use" for Healing items is incredibly stupid.

The partner thing just adds complexity that we don't need, leading to "Wait! I wanted that item, I didn't want to use the assist button there!"

...yeah, this convinced me to not spend money on it, glad I tried to the demo first!  If someone lends me the game, maybe I'll play, but I can definitely see its worse than RE4.  I know, just a demo, but RE4 didn't give me negative vibes when I played that demo; didn't interest me, no, but the demo didn't show off anything particularly WRONG.  RE5...does...especially compared to RE4.

That said...

Darksiders:

Narrator: When we last left our hero...
War: ...don't call me that...
Narrator: FINE.  When we last left our DICKISH JERK OF A MAIN CHARACTER...who still looks like a saint compared to Kratos...
War: Thank you.
Narrator: He was going to do some gimmick nonsense to release a Gate Guard from his curse.

War: So I have to go to these 4 marked locations on this map while this red hue is covering the screen, and do stuff there?
Watcher: That would appear to be our current goal.
War: I smell cheap means to force out more gameplay, but lets get this over with.
*First room*
Tutorial: WAR CAN KILL ENEMIES WITH AN AERIAL COMBO IN THE SAME EXACT WAY AS GOD OF WAR, BUT HE'LL HANDLE LIKE DEVIL MAY CRY 4'S NERO! KILL 5 ENEMIES IN THE AIR BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT!
Watcher: Oh fun, you get to fight in a cheap rip off of Devil May Cry Secret Missions, aren't you the lucky one?
War: Wait, I can beat the shit out of them as much as I want on the ground, so long as the last hit is in the air?
Tutorial: Uh...I guess?
War: ...*does exactly that, passes*
Tutorial: Stupid loopholes!
Watcher: That looked pretty fun, we should do it again sometime!
War: No.
Watcher: Why not?
War: You're just sitting on the side lines eating your Demonic Popcorn, while I'm doing all the hard work.  Anyway, onto the other three, I hope they're...
Tutorial: YOU CAN KILL ENEMIES WITH THE AUTO FUCK YOU BUTTON IF THEY'RE WEAK! STRONGER ENEMIES WHICH IS 90% OF THE OTHER STUFF IN THIS GAME MUST BE STUNNED FIRST! KILL 50 ENEMIES WITH THE FUCK YOU BUTTON BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT!
War: ...so its just like God of War?
Tutorial: No! Its NOTHING like God of War!
War: How so?
Tutorial: ...you don't have to quick time event once the enemy is in "you kill them" now stance...
War: ...well, I guess that's SOMETHING.
*War succeeds*
Watcher: You're getting pretty good at this!
War: All it is was "Press one button at right time".
*next area*
Tutorial: I HAVE NOTHING USEFUL TO SAY! JUST KILL A BUNCH OF GUYS BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT!
War: Ok...and shut up Watcher, you are not to say anything after I succeed.
Watcher: You're not fun.
*next area*
Tutorial: THIS AREA IS COMPLETELY UNORIGINAL! JUST BEAT UP MORE GUYS!
War: *Sigh, he succeeds* Ok, back to the Guardian...
Guardian: I'M FREE!!!!!!!!!! *Walks away*
Watcher: How anticlimactic...

*War travels onward through a destroyed highway and city and such, some Vulgrim talking may or may not have been applied here*
War: Man, this high ways sucks; nothing but generic weaklings and...
*Large demons appears out of nowhere from opposite side of highway, throws a car at War*
War: ...oh you have GOD to be kidding me.
Large Demon: BLAAARGH!!!!
War: A miniboss, how predictable...
*War wins, proceeds onward*
War: Hmm...there is vile self-righteous pricks afoot...
Watcher: What do you mean?
*War points up to a bunch of angels flying around*
Uriel: Ok, HELL GUARD, have you found anything?
Angel Guy #1: Bunch of demon!
Uriel: ...ok, have you found anything USEFUL, like how we can get to the destroyer?
Angel Guy #2: Umm...not really...say, how many of us are still alive anyway?
Uriel: As many as the plot requires.  Anyway...wait, I smell something...not of the WHITE CITY or the BLACK DEPTHS...
Angel Guy #1: Its clearly one of the Horsemen, I mean DUH.
Uriel: NO! It can't be that...BUT WE WILL FIND IT ANYWAY!
War: FUCK! They're onto me! Better do something big and actiony to get away...
Watcher: Wouldn't stealth be a better idea?
War: Pfft, stealth is for pussies! I'm FUCKING WAR!
*War proceeds to jump through a window, tackling an Angel flying on an Angelic Griffon, throws said Angel off the Griffon, uses the Griffon as a new mount*
War: HA! Now I can FLY to Tiamat's lair!  I don't know how to fly this thing, so we'll just let this be a stupid gameplay gimmick section akin to that Pegasus Mode in God of War 2 spliced with Devil May Cry 1's Shooter section! ...wait, did I just say...FUCK!!!
*cue boring ass gimmick section that's exactly as mentioned above, lots of Angels and Demons die*
War: God damn, is this thing over ye-...
*Tiamat tackles War and the Griffon, knocking him to the ground, conveniently just in front of the dungeon where she is*
Watcher: AH! I see Tiamat isn't being very welcoming of visitors today, I see...
War: Do you...exist to do anything but have snide sarcasm and random "Over here" statements?
Watcher: Would you prefer a little blue fairy that reprimands you if you take 5 seconds to do a 6 second job?
War: ...right, on with the sarcasm!
Watcher: Oh, right, anytime THIS symbol appears, you can call me for random assistance.
War: Do I ever have to listen your advice?
Watcher: Technically...no...
War: Good, now to the dungeon!
*in the dungeon, War finds a COOL CRYSTAL SWORD*
War: New weapon already? And there's no strings attached? Cool! And it shines, so clearly it must be awesome!
Tutorial: THIS SWORD MUST BE GIVEN TO RANDOM STATUES TO OPEN UP DOORS! WAR WILL WIELD IT BEFORE THEN! NO IT IS IDENTICAL TO HIS CHAOSEATER BEFORE THEN SO THIS IS LITERALLY JUST A GLORIFIED KEY!
War: ...god damn it...
*War does that, nothing interesting proceeds to happen afterwords*
War: OH COME ON, this is the first real dungeon in the game, SOMETHING interesting should happen...
Tutorial: BOMB ROCKS CAN BE THROWN AT LARGE OTHER ROCKS AND EXPLODE! JUST DON'T HOLD ONTO THEM FOR TOO LONG!
War: ...I guess that's something...though, this almost feels like I've seen it somewhere else...
Watcher: *coughORCARINAOFTIMEBOMBFLOWERScough*
War: You say something?
Watcher: As a matter of fact I did, but you probably don't care.
War: You're learning!  Oh look, another one of those Crystal Sword Key thi-...
*Large plant devours War, Quick TIme Event related escape*
War: What the fuck was that? Seriously...I can't even classify what the hell just happened...
Watcher: Oh just blow it up...
War: Hey, that's a great idea!
*Bomb Rocks it, grabs Sword*
War: You know, this dungeon feels like its missing something...but I can't put my finger on-...
*Block Pushing Puzzle appears, if a short one*
War: ...why, Council, WHY do you allow such things to exist?
*War grabs a Map*
Watcher: Now all you need is the compass, boss room door key, a new inventory item, and green tights, and you're set to save the world.
War: Good thing my goal is merely to RESTORE THE BALANCE, that's totally different, right?
Watcher: Only if you want it to be.
War: Speaking of treasure...
*Insert Legend of Zelda "You got an item" here, the dramatic variant*
Tutorial: YOU GOT THE CROSS SHURIKEN BLADED THING! THIS IS TOTALLY NOT A BOOMERANG RIP OFF CAUSE YOU CAN CHARGE IT UP AND HIT 5 ENEMIES WITH IT!
War: HA! Ranged combat, here I come!
*Rest of the dungeon is uneventful, if still lengthy, some of the rooms involve Tiamat fighting that Griffon for NO DISCERN-ABLE REASON, with one exception*
War: Big open room with no puzzles, a full healing chest to the left, this seems almost suspicious.
*Mega Man Boss intro: THE JAILER*
War: ...oh great...a large hulking bruiser who spawns weak minions that has clear weak points I'm suppose to use my bladed weapon to exploit.  Well, better make the best of this!
*Gameplay segment over, including the "Press B to finish boss" factor, little guy pops out of the Jailer, looks around for War, who just pulls a Snake Neck Crack on him...and by neck crack, I mean "rips guys torso off"*
Watcher: Lets just skip to the boss right, shall we?
War: Works for me!

*Boss fight*
Tiamat: HORSEMAN! What are you doing here!? I didn't know the council was TAKING SIDES! Or did Samael buy your services!? In which case...perhaps we could strike a deal!
War: (I need to think of a bad ass way to say no...come on, think of one...THINK...I GOT IT!) YOU WOULDN'T LIKE MY TERMS! (Man that was awesome!)
Tiamat: ...YOU WILL DIE HORSEMAN! *screeches in annoying fashion* YOU REGRET NOT ACCEPTING MY OFFER!
*Cue boss fight involving Bomb Rock, Cross Boomerang, elementalizing Cross Boomerang, lots of fireballs, a Quick Time Event attack related defense, involving either War getting fried, or him falcon punching Tiamat away, and explosions*
Tiamat: NO! How could I be defeated!? I AM ONE OF THE CHOSEN!
War: Yeah, whatever, NOW TO KI-...
Watcher: NO! Rip her heart out while she still lives! IT MUST BE BEATING!
War: ...oh, right. *Rips out Tiamat's heart*
Watcher: Oh wow, that thing is coursing with power, no wonder Samael wanted it!
War: Why don't I just keep it and use it for my own?
Watcher: Cause that'd be too logical for plot progression.  Anyway, back to the gameplay!
*War gets a Health upgrade from beating the boss!*
War: While I appreciate the upgrade, is there anything we WON'T rip off?
Watcher: Just jump in the teleportation portal and head back outside

*outside*
Vulgrim: WELCOME STRANGER!
War: Oh, its you...
Vulgrim: Ah, Stranger, you seem to be in a pickle.  Without your feathered friend, stranger, you cannot escape.
War: And?
Vulgrim: Show me that heart, stranger, and I'll give you a bargain to go anywhere you've already been UNDERGROUND.
War: Cheap teleportation mechanics for easy world traveling, just for showing you a heart? Ok.
*Shows Vulgrim heart for one second, puts it away*
Vulgrim: Eheheheh, come back ANYTIME!

Narrator: THIS EPISODE IS DONE! STAY TUNED FOR NEXT EPISODE: Watch Us Rip off Games Even More!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Well yeah if you are going for backstory then both are princes that trained a lot in fighting for whatever reasons.  One trained as a paladin and one trained as a tremendously retarded douchebag.  Sooooo uh.

Also one of them killed his father for power, the other because he liked the orphaned kid they took in as much (not more) than him.

[hinode]

Honestly Blizzard does cliche alien plots way better. That's sorta sad, but SC had your snarky generic human heroes, your honorable noble tough aliens and your "Gut everything that gets in our way" aliens and fundamentally I never felt any of the cliches done badly. Then there's Kerrigan, who went from sappy love interest to snarky asshole to *major* snarky asshole as a villian and amused me a ton during BW due to that(Queen bitch of the universe line goes here).

It also had Samir Duran, whose general existence and plot is entirely trolling the player.

Compared to that you have cliche paladin that goes evil and cliche elves that are assholes but are THE LAST HOPE and you have undead killing things with now evil Arthas. Arthas was, relatively, amusing, but in comparison it reminded me of being amused at Edmund Duke being an asshole. *Shrug.*

So it tends to get hit by comparison to that. It tried to be gritty high fantasy type crap instead of amusing jackassery and it wasn't really the writers strengths, was what it felt like.

I'd also suggest that Blizzard is better at writing villains than heroes, and Starcraft has more bad guys. Every Terrain faction in Starcraft consisted of a bunch of assholes except for Raynor, the Zerg speak for themselves, and the EldarProtoss are run by a council of jerks until the Zerg take over half of Aiur and they grudgingly agree to finally support Tassadar's plans. Brood Wars, which has better plot than the original Starcraft IMO, consists mostly of four different villain factions (Kerrigan, Mengsk, the UED, the new Zerg Overmind) slugging it out with Kerrigan manipulating the Protoss and Raynor/Fenix to accomplish her objectives.

Warcraft III, by contrast, has three factions (Humans, Orcs, Night Elves) that are supposed to be good guys, so you have to watch a supposed hero(ine) like Tyrande act xenophobic towards the Alliance and Horde for half a campaign instead of unrepentent assholes like Mengsk or Kerrigan who at least have some charisma/personality while backstabbing their way to the top.

[BaconForTheSoul]

SC2 definitely goes back to more good guys though.

Mengsk and Kerrigan are still asshats 95%of the time, but most of the supporting cast is now likeable people and a lot of them see a lot of screen time.  (I'd go into this more, but can't without spoilers.)

[Crystalgate]

Dragon Quest VIII: First went trough the world in an attempt at unlocking as many places as possible. I then realized that the first content I should unlock is the Argonia Bazaar since that will unlock the most alchemy recipes and did that. Dhoulmagus is going to wait though until I've done almost everything else I can do prior to fighting him.

[Dark Holy Elf]

XF 3-person playthrough complete.

5-4 (final boss) (2 resets)

Not as bad as I'd feared, but certainly one of the hardest battles in the challenge. Both resets stemmed from a failure to get control of the battle, which is to be expected, I suppose. In the first, I let Shut Out lapse when the boss had around 4000 HP, she escaped, washed herself of all her stat downs, and came back and destroyed me together with her cronies despite my attempts to control her again. In the second, I got the boss down to second phase but then got overwhelmed by her support. Both problems were easy enough to solve.

Final party was:
Clarissa (Emulator): Had a large level lead on Levin, and 20% elemental resistance is cool. Had Devastate for crowd clearing, Sacred Slayer to use her deep MP reserves to give others turns (as well as Heal/Fragil), and Debilitator because someone had to. Widespread, IFF, Enigmancer EQ for notable supports.
Elayne (Elementalist): Did most of the damage, twinked for every bit she could get more or less. Devastate was the attack of choice for this, though she also had Sacred Slayer OC for all the same reasons as Clarissa. Support skills were most of the Emulator stuff (Action Replay, Conserve MP, Exploit Weakness) as well as IFF and Accelerate.
Vin (Geomancer): Odd choice given she hadn't spent much time there, but Shut Out and the armour are both godsends here, so it was actually a fairly easy one. Nice MP stat for a physical class never hurts. Also had Strider and Fantastica OCs (for obvious reasons), as well as Atk+25%, Aim+25%, Secutor EQ, Accelerate, and Attack & Heal HP (the last was basically filler, but it did actually see some use. Maybe).

Anyway, the basic strategy in a nutshell, is:

(a) Contain the boss with the three main stat downs as well as Shut Out (or she may teleport away and return with the benefit of her HP-boosted speed), and start depleting her HP. Do it quickly so as to prevent being swarmed by the randoms, who start chasing you after a few turns.
(b) When the boss puts up her shield, ignore her and go hunting the demon servants. Rush'd Devastate for all. A couple of the demons get trapped behind the firey chasms on the battlefield, which is great, since they can be ignored. I don't feel like fighting another wave of reinforcements; it's unlikely I have the resources for that.
(c) Break the boss' shield and continue the same strategy as (a). As her HP drops her speed rises and she gets more and more turns (by the end she's quite fast even under both stat downs) but with Debilitator her attacks are only 3-4HKOish, with maybe a 2HKO on Elayne if she goes for elementals. So it's easy enough to stay on top of healing since she has nothing instantly fatal like most other bosses.

Straightforward enough, I think. There isn't really much to add that can't be inferred from the setups themselves or the general notes. The demons themseleves are actually quite scary, probably because they actually swarm you instead of being easily picked off one at a time (or circumventable entirely) like in every other battle they exist. Hard Smash hurts a lot, especially after Fragile, and the elementals can smack the generics very hard and are quite competent in general. Mesmerise deals with the physicals, though, and Rush Devastate takes several out in a short period of time.

Fun fact: The final boss is immune to Replace. I actually had some plans surrounding this to lure her further away from her support but they didn't pan out.

Anyway, done! A few levels higher than normal due to only using 3 PCs (66 Elayne to 62 Clarissa, plus Levin who was in the mid-high 50's), and much faster than my normal playthroughs, at around 40 hours. Nice to know that figure can be brought down, though I did skip a fair number of scenes and ignored randoms and searching entirely of course.

Rough breakdown of class usefulness on this playthrough. Similar enough to normal but having three people does shift things around a bit:

Broken: Emulator

Far and away the most useful class from mid Chapter 3 on. Very, very little doesn't have an elemental weakness (hi, range 6 Exploit Weakness means 1.5x damage 300+ power = death for all), electric weakness, or status weakness (including most bosses), and to top it off it has game-best MP by far (hello, Turn Shift) and Action Replay. Oh, and 4 move/3 climb and one of the highest HP scores in the game because its innate skills didn't make it a good enough carrier. Allowed me to keep up with the crap the game throws at you late and come out with only 7 resets total in the second half of the game. And this is without random battles to beeline to all its skills ASAP.

Excellent: Elementalist, Sacred Slayer, Enigmancer

I should rant about this later, but magic has a clear leg-up on physicals in an efficient XF playthrough (not being a slave to the hit stat is the main reason, but more range and more available multitarget are also important). Elementalist provides the two pieces of firepower needed to power magic classes, while Enigmancer provides a good carrier, a great support skill, and a nice skillset (Devastate and Dispel alone are amazing). Sacred Slayer provides what is probably the best L7 skill in the game, and a broken OC.

Good: Fantastica, Secutor, Strider

Secutor is the physical answer to Elementalist, but the EQ comes later and the OC isn't as good, along with the inherent weakness of the physical side of things. On the other hand, shields are badass. Fantastica is all about the OC but the OC is that damn good so it has to make it this high on the list. Strider also provides a terrific OC (every skill in it except Trail saw significant use) and is an important part of physical twinking due to its Aim boost.

Decent: Extremist, Gadgeteer

Extremist has evade twinking which is good, but Mesmerise provides a more proactive approach. It also has Debilitator for bosses and some situational awesome otherwise. Gadgeteer has a more resource-intensive Heal, but it is more versatile at least, although nothing in its toolbox makes up for Turn Shift.

Situational use: Grappler, Berserker, Sentinel, Geomancer, Nightstalker

Grappler provides Accelerate which is a fairly nice boost to your turn count for little investment, and the OC has some interesting repositioning uses, although it's not a powerful class otherwise. Berserker is the go-to class for mobility, has Quick Step as a cool buff, and high stats in general although was rarely a main choice for me due to my magey party. Sentinel is the early 300-power physical move and maintains use later because it hits things into pits, plus it has the heaviest armour for Drop Kick (too bad the EQ skill is so hard to get) and Forcefield is situationally cool. Geomancer has an awesome EQ for dealing with elements, and an OC which is situationally great and needs to be ignored otherwise. Nightstalker is useful in those rare battles where getting turns quickly at the battle's start is really important (i.e. the tormenta triad) but doesn't have anything else to recommend it in a small, resource-conscious party.

Least used: High Cavalier, Excavator

Although I had a few people pick up High Cavalier's OC, I never actually made meaningful use of it. It deserves to be much higher in normal playthroughs but the entire skillset suffers in a big way when resources get twice as tight. At least the terrific HP helped visibly in one battle. Excavator has mobility which is cool on paper but rarely worth the tradeoff in offensive and defensive stats, and mostly obsoleted by Berserker/Geomancer anyway, and the rest of the skills are garbage outside the too-situational Switch.

Whew. Not sure what I'll do with the game next time I pick it up.

[superaielman]

L4D2- New mutation: Infinite machine gun mode!

4/5 expert clears on that note. Just need Dark Carnival.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Warcraft III, by contrast, has three factions (Humans, Orcs, Night Elves) that are supposed to be good guys, so you have to watch a supposed hero(ine) like Tyrande act xenophobic towards the Alliance and Horde for half a campaign instead of unrepentent assholes like Mengsk or Kerrigan who at least have some charisma/personality while backstabbing their way to the top.

I was never really under the impression that the Sentinel Army was supposed to be heroic. Furion and his druids? Yes. Tyrande and them? No.

Anyway, I'm playing SC2 because I heard the campaign was fun and I figure that if I give it a month, people will start coming out with those adventure-y type maps with all the triggers. I never did manage to track down that goddamn epic SC1 map based on Dune again.

Anyway, the mission where you take a giant robot covered in guns and rampage through a city destroying everything in your path? I will not lie, I achieved full sexual arousal.

[Fudozukushi]

Warcraft III, by contrast, has three factions (Humans, Orcs, Night Elves) that are supposed to be good guys, so you have to watch a supposed hero(ine) like Tyrande act xenophobic towards the Alliance and Horde for half a campaign instead of unrepentent assholes like Mengsk or Kerrigan who at least have some charisma/personality while backstabbing their way to the top.

I was never really under the impression that the Sentinel Army was supposed to be heroic. Furion and his druids? Yes. Tyrande and them? No.

Anyway, I'm playing SC2 because I heard the campaign was fun and I figure that if I give it a month, people will start coming out with those adventure-y type maps with all the triggers. I never did manage to track down that goddamn epic SC1 map based on Dune again.

Anyway, the mission where you take a giant robot covered in guns and rampage through a city destroying everything in your path? I will not lie, I achieved full sexual arousal.

Better hope Blizzard lifts that stupid "top 50 maps" or whatever shite then.

Ragnarök and Roll!

[BaconForTheSoul]

Blizzard is also taking down maps that use "trademarked" products.

If they hold true to this... 90% of non Dota WC3 customs would not exist.

People enjoy bitching about B-Net 2.0... I fail to see how most of the features are a problem, but the custom map issue does suck.  There are two sides to this.

Point: Customs are a "bonus" to the game so Blizzard can do what they want.
Counterpoint: These custom maps are NORMAL PEOPLE FOR NO PAY creating incentive for people like Rob to log onto Battlenet... thus helping Blizzard.  Why Blizzard would stifle these people is silly.  (I mean fuck, think how many people still play WC3 just for Dota.)

[Shale]

Bayonetta: Beat normal. Final boss is still a festival of bad design, including the part where there's an instant-death vortex sucking you in and the only wya to figure out where Bayonetta is relative to it is to estimate where the center of the screen is, because the camera decides focusing on the vortex is more important than showing you the player character. Genius.

Luckily, the ending makes everything better. INFINITON PAUNCH.

Started hard mode, it is hard. Torture attack trial...against Gold Grace & Glory? Dick move, game.

[Cotigo]

Blizzard is also taking down maps that use "trademarked" products.

If they hold true to this... 90% of non Dota WC3 customs would not exist.

People enjoy bitching about B-Net 2.0... I fail to see how most of the features are a problem, but the custom map issue does suck.  There are two sides to this.

Point: Customs are a "bonus" to the game so Blizzard can do what they want.
Counterpoint: These custom maps are NORMAL PEOPLE FOR NO PAY creating incentive for people like Rob to log onto Battlenet... thus helping Blizzard.  Why Blizzard would stifle these people is silly.  (I mean fuck, think how many people still play WC3 just for Dota.)

Adding to that, if it weren't for Footmen Frenzy, to this day I still would not give a shit about RTS games.  And now I'm sitting here playing WC3 and enjoying it. 

So, yeah.  Custom maps.  Stop being stupid about them, Blizzard.

[Pyro]

Kudos to NEB for completing the XF challenge. That sounded fun and I enjoyed reading it.


DQ9: Beat the maingame. The final dungeon was crushed beneath the heel of my team. The three midbosses averaged a two-turn lifespan. Party was Troubadour (Fans/litheness)/Fighter(Swords)/Mage(Spellcraft/Paladin skill!!)/Cleric(Spears/Cleric skill). Strategy was a simple use of Egg on and Psyche up with the fighter to get up to 50 tension and Oomph/Sap to unleash devastation in the form of a Falcon Blade Falcon Slash every two turns. Quite reliable boss offense. Randoms were kinda durable because only the mage and fighter had decent offense.

Plot is Dragon Quest plot. Which is to say at points it is interesting (Marion) but not explored very well. Not having ANY regular chars other than Stella made for a more boring adventure in that regard though. The punnery was amusing but didn't make up for the lack of a story with actual characters to frame it. The NPCs could be neat but appeared and disappeared with one use.

Gameplay comments on classes and stuff:

Troubadour: I kept her fast and made use of Egg On regularly. Healing is useful in this game because you don't get MT healing until right at the very end. Had Zing and Midheal. I took her down the Fans route and was sorely disappointed. It was a very weak path with few if any decent skills. Breath reflecting would be nice if more enemies used them like in DQ4 or 5.

Fighter: RAR PHYSICALS. Gave her Psyche Up by spending a few minutes in Martial Artist but other than that was a pure fighter. Swords and the fighter unique skill tree. Didn't get much use out of Gigaslash because Falcon Blade Falcon Slash seemed to be more reliable offense for bosses. Always going last sucked, but hey. Swords are a good weapon type as they do nice damage and have the Falcon Blade/Slash combo, which is badass with Oomph.

Mage: Was just a source of MT offense and using Accelerate for bosses. I stored skillpoints because I didn't feel like going down Wands much, and had enough where I moved her around between classes for a while and got 100 SP. Then I dumped it into the paladin skillset to turn her from a horribly frail creature into the most durable member of the party (or about tied with the Fighter). In boss battles for most of the game I had her use Accelerate/Sap along with items and maaayyybe some offense magic if the boss had a clear weakness.

Cleric: Healing. Battery. I also gave her Spears, which made her the de-facto metal slime killer when she got Thunder Thrust (the auto crit move). She was of course invaluable both for dungeon spelunking and fighting bosses. ODDLY ENOUGH although I kept on pining for Multiheal throughout the game, I only got it like right in the middle of the final dungeon, and I used it maybe once because none of the bosses threatened me with MT damage at that point. It's kind of strange, but outside of Zing I think I could have been better off for most of the game by synthing Special Medicines (they are cheap and heal as much as Midheal)... Well, don't argue with the healer anyway. I'd have liked Kabuff or Kazing on her. And Multiheal I'm sure is useful against aftergame stuff.

[Captain K.]

DQ9:  Best Buy event was pretty weak, only got 4 new tags that I didn't have from the week before.  Which means I'm going to have to play the beginning of the game 11 more times (on my second copy) to get up to 30 guests on my main file.  Fuck you Japan.  Did get a different t-shirt though!  And Estark's map.  He seems a bit tamer than Zoma - more MT, but no ridiculous physicals.

As for fans, they are rather weak in the maingame.  The breath reflecting comes into play more with the Legacy bosses.  Several fans also have nice added abilities.  Attribeauty has metal-cutting property, so that + Fandango = dead Liquid Metal Slime.  And the Critical series of fans increase Coup de Grace odds.