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

[Grefter]

Alternately, Psychonauts is $10 on Steam and is highly likely to be reccomeneded if it is on sale by those in the DL who frequently use Steam.  I can vouch for the quality of the PC port, it is pretty solid.

Puzzle Quest 2 - Is Puzzle Quest.  Assassin is broken.  It is a bit slower than I would like, especially on the rare occasions where the enemy is chaining turns.  Had a fight with a Ghost where I didn't get a turn for nearly 2 minutes, which is pretty boring when I am just waiting for it to die to poison.  Ghosts just have a skillset that promotes more free turns though, so they are the exception to the norm.  It wasn't threatening that whole time so there seems to be a lot less LOLBULLSHITANDYOUDIE than the first game had which is nice.

[metroid composite]

Touhou GFW:

how do I stop sucking? Is there a trick like UFO's "get the reds"?  I'd like to 1cc Easy....

[SageAcrin]

Freezing shots gets you shot power, bombs and more points towards lives. The more shots(and the bigger the shot), the larger these gains are.

Freeze a LOT more.

Otherwise, no. This game is hard, Hal did not 1cc Easy first try, Alex rammed into Normal multiple times before clearing. Game's lower difficulties are evil.

Lunatic meanwhile is kinda like running IN Lunatic with five lives on instead of seven. You don't quite get enough resources not to memorize the entire thing into the dirt and be bemusedly bored by it, but you can't really call it *hard* hard. (I've gotten to Stage 3 midboss on Lunatic now after half a dozen or so good solid tries.) Go fig.

[Bardiche]

Romance of the Three Kingdoms X.

Decided to start a new game yesterday. So I started Xiao Bei, and then I captured two other cities. Got two prefects there, and I'm all cools. Then this Shi Zui upstart starts attacking me all the time, even though my archers are the best in the country, probably!

Decided to go FUCK IT after the eight attack and launched a full scale STOMP war against Shi Zui.

Result:

I now have nine cities, and executed the entire Shi family line. Oh, and I gained eight new vassals.
That'll teach them to mess with me. Now to hope my Alliance with Liu Bei will hold so I can focus on crushing the Yellow Turbans while juggling internal affairs.

[Talaysen]

I didn't clear GFW Easy first try even with continues, if that gives you any indication of how hard it is.

[Xeroma]

Touhou GFW:

how do I stop sucking? Is there a trick like UFO's "get the reds"?  I'd like to 1cc Easy....

http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=9950 You could see if my replay could help? GFW is a lot about getting down the timing for how long it takes for Freeze to charge. Memorization helps, but isn't necesarry on Easy. Little things like "if you see the enemy charging up an attack start charging a freeze" also help.

Also bomb more, Perfect Freeze is a fucking awesome bomb.

[Dhyerwolf]

Lost Odyssey- Just freed Sed. Now there's a PC that I didn't find predictable! This was the part of the game that I saw a demo of ages ago before the game came out and made me think that magic had like a 25% hit rate and was atrocious! Don't specifically have a lot to say other than generally still finding the game enjoyable. Very good at spreading out plot and battle stuff. Actually, everything I said in my last post a few weeks ago re: the game's strengths and weaknesses definitely feels like it's holding very true.

[Glen Veil]

Feel like I don't post enough so yeah,

FF9: At the end dungeon, still do not like the story, will just leave it at that. However the battle system leaves a better impression then initial memories, with the characters being generally well balanced and yet at least somewhat diverse in roles, which is more then can be said for most ff games I've played.  Haven't actually played for a few weeks because I got a sudden urge to play DotA out of nowhere.

So I find my WC3 discs and visit the DotA Allstars site, to find out, find out that there was a falling out and one of the creators branched off and developed League of Legends, ended up downloading that instead since it was free and since I apparently misplaced my CD Key for WC3 anyways.  Played LoL for about two to three weeks, got my summoner level to 21, taking a break because it's a pain that you have to unlock champions by playing countless games, generally happy right now with my ~55% win ratio considering I had to relearn two new sets of heroes for each of the subsequent weeks I played.  I also got the distinct feeling that while I was busy trying to unlock all the champions to get a better feel how they played, that a majority of players at that level had simply unlocked one or two that they liked and were filling out their rune pages for the in game stat advantage.  The actual DotA style game play is still a blast, just started feeling I needed a break because the design of LoL is more so that of a grind if you're not willing to shell out actual money to unlock certain things quicker as a convenience, which if you choose to do actually makes it more expensive then your typical council game, yeah, not happening.

So in my decided break from grindyness I decide to start...FF12, sometimes my mind scares me.  Played the game once before, got about 70% through I want to estimate? Never got around to finishing it for some reason or another.  Just finished yelling about how Basch was alive at whatever that town is called.  Did all the hunts up to this point, took two tries for the first elite mark, ended up going through about 50 potions, after which I question my judgment to do them as early as possible, but whatever.  The second mark I manage to beat after running away once because of a bad start, second time I manage to set him up with blind silence and slow and just whittle him down slowly from there with way too much running back and forth with Balthier as the lead and spamming cure while Vaan and Basch whale on it for piddly damage, though at least Basch broke triple digits, poles are awesome.  Idly considering farming a bit in that one room with endless skeletons in the mine because I distinctly remember having money issues later in the game and I ended up making like 10k both times I went into the mine because of that room.

BoF4,  Haven't played, it's not like it's a bad game, I would definitely put it above average, it's just that I keep getting distracted by other games >.>.

[Sierra]

Nier: Yeah, had this on the shelf for a couple weeks. Not in a gaming mood. Anyway, just finished ending B. I totally expected the game to be all "Then Kaine goes off and dies somewhere lololol" for this ending. Instead I got Emil's bouncing, disembodied head. What.

Apparently I have to get all the weapons in the game for ending C. Bah. I already bought all the ones I could find near the end of this run, just because I noticed that collecting them all counts as one of the game's achievements and I had a ton of money so, hell, why not? But somewhere out there is still something I don't have, I think. Well, I didn't check the crazy junk shop kid, but I think he only upgrades them, not sells new ones? I'll be annoyed if I have to go dungeon-crawling to find something, since 99% of dungeon loot is random, useless crap. Oh wait. Please tell me I don't have to do any fishing for whatever's left.

[Dhyerwolf]

Lost Odyssey- Yes, I posted about this about less than 6 hours ago! However, seeing Sed's skills in battles actually felt worth posting about. First, Gun-Axe!...that he can't use as an axe. Kind of blows all it's coolness points immediately. And yes, Tolten is right, you can't say "Momma" when you are the game UOM. However, letting it slide for his skills:

Auto-Barricade and Protect or whatever you call them? Pretty awesome, since those feel like they cut damage about 40% casually and I'm not sure they wear off (Or at least...last a damn long time. If they wear off, worse for boss battles)

Double SP?! Well, this also seems awesome, but less so when I realize that it felt like keeping up with Immortal skills has always been too easy. Also, they gave Sed's skills crazy high SP costs and then...highly ramped up how much SP enemies give you (Random groups are giving 12; The last boss the four mages fought, which was a solid challenge, gave 10). Unless double SP effects the number that shows up on the screen after the battle ends. Which I'll likely figure out now that Seth juuuust learned it.

Double EXP?! Would be awesome in many games, but Tolten was at level 33 when Sed was a 35, and gained two levels before Sed gained one (Which so to say that I've not gotten the vibe generally in the game that EXP is horribly useful).

DOUBLE ITEM?! And we have a winner! Items in this game are kind of stupid. They are either far better ST healing (1000 versus like...300 off the weaker cure spell and maybe 600-700 off the strong one. However, items get stupid speed and the stronger the spell, the slower it is. So much better healing and much faster) and do maybe 50-60% of spells of the same power, but again, with ridiculously better speed. Of course, no Sarah or Ming to learn it yet and get speedy smash, but Double Item is definitely the best learnable skill so far I think (And he also has item effect up!)

Also, horrible, horrible song alert! Game, I like you, NEVER DO THAT AGAIN. That was one of the worst RPG songs I've ever heard. Also, Jensen started the game by visiting whores, has already gotten Ming completely shitfaced, said they just make out with death impending and now is starting to get bashful when they accidentally almost hug? This is as stupid as when they try to paint Ming as a good character and expect me to to take her seriously given the inanity that is her outfit.

The denizens of lower town in Ghotza...well, felt like they well proved why they were probably stuck in lower town. Response to 2/3 of their town's complete annihilation and the fact that they are now basically trapped in an inescapable icy hell was generally one of indifference (or the more sensible choice, heavy drinking. Somehow indifference was the far more common choice).

Stopped playing the game when I had both my controller's batteries crap out and finally figured out that's that what happened there. Also, realized that the game must have the lowest random encounter level in an RPG ever. Running through the backstreets of Uhra, I got through several screens before I was definitely sure that this was even a dungeon!

[Dark Holy Elf]

DMC2 - Beat mission... 14? The one with the DMC1 cameo.

The game is frustrating because it's such an extreme case of one step forward and two steps back. There's lots of good enemy/boss ideas in this game but most of them are trivialised by the fact that even handguns tie mooks up now and some questionable accuracy on enemy attacks. (Also one or two bosses who can't deal with long range at all, the firey minotaur dude was the worst offender here.) Oh yeah, not that I really care, but maan, they dropped the ball on plot here. It feels like I'm seeing about half the scenes, which might be intentional to get me to play Lucia's path (fuck replay-only plot) but just feels unpolished. I have about zero sense of Dante's personality this time around as a result.

Game's still fun enough, and again I do need to hype the fact that this game does platforming and environments better than other games.

[Talaysen]

Nier: Yeah, had this on the shelf for a couple weeks. Not in a gaming mood. Anyway, just finished ending B. I totally expected the game to be all "Then Kaine goes off and dies somewhere lololol" for this ending. Instead I got Emil's bouncing, disembodied head. What.

Apparently I have to get all the weapons in the game for ending C. Bah. I already bought all the ones I could find near the end of this run, just because I noticed that collecting them all counts as one of the game's achievements and I had a ton of money so, hell, why not? But somewhere out there is still something I don't have, I think. Well, I didn't check the crazy junk shop kid, but I think he only upgrades them, not sells new ones? I'll be annoyed if I have to go dungeon-crawling to find something, since 99% of dungeon loot is random, useless crap. Oh wait. Please tell me I don't have to do any fishing for whatever's left.

I don't think fishing gave you one.  Just check an FAQ for the ones you missed.

[Twilkitri]

Little Big Planet -

My brother had me play through the majority of this with him (after he had beaten it solo previously). Fairly enjoyable, although I don't care much for the floatiness of the controls, and the auto-layer mechanics seem to hate me.


Final Fantasy X -

Went to pick this back up, found that I had no memories of what any of the sidequests I was currently doing were, went ahead and just beat it instead. Yuna/Doublecast/Flare/1 MP Cost destroyed worlds.


ICO -

Started on this. Just passed the gates having been closed on us.

[Meeplelard]

For what its worth, Elfboy, Lucia isn't so much replay only as much as extra mode out of the gate that you need to put in a different disc for.  I seem to recall that I deleted my DMC2 data and I was able to play Lucia mode immediately anyway.   To get the "most" out of the plot, though, you basically need to know exactly which chapters correlate with which ones (Lucia has a little more than half Dante's, so yeah, much shorter campaign, and the correlation is obviously not 1 to 1 as a result), which requires a guide or remembering exactly where plot scenes fall...which requires replaying the game anyway...

I would say "Try Lucia mode" except Lucia's differences from Dante are so minimal.  They're there, but it honestly feels more like a tweaked version of Dante than a whole new character.  Basically, think Mega Man vs. Protoman instead of X vs. Zero scenario.  Granted, that also involves playing more DMC2, which I don't suspect you care enough about to do, so I'm not sure why I'd say that in the first place!

(For the record, Lucia's plot doesn't make DMC2's plot much better.  The plot is still "Random evil corporation guy wants to revive demon with artifacts, GO KICK HIS ASS!")

I do agree that DMC2 had a lot of neat ideas, but the execution just kind of missed it.  A lot of DMC2's conventions are in the later games, just refined and polished much better after all, so the idea was definitely there.

[Scar]

Found my PSP adapter so I was finaly able to charge up that damn thing and play it again.

WA:X Hate hate hate, even after this long hiatus I am stuck on the same battle and can't seem to pass it. I guess I'll have to faq it, but regardless it's a fucking stupid fight. Don't kill anyone, get three mobs at low life AND then rush to the exit where reinforcements are....

WHY!?

It wouldn't even be an issue if there wasn't a turn limit, but there is, so it's fucking stupid. I rememeber why I stopped playing this oh so long ago.

FFT:WotL - Started up a new file because I know I missed a fuck ton of missbale gear, and well...I am a completionist for these types of games. At around the den of thieves fight trying to get a calculator so I can cheese my way through randoms. Frogging everyone is fun. Thank you CT times 4.

MMX:CM - This game is fun, in some sort of way. It seems like a very aged rpg for a post 2005 game. Anyways, just got Zero back and Spider did some shenanigens with his arm, but the gang is all together...so that means it's time to back track and get gear and explore crap I missed.

I haven't used Ciinnamon at all, so I think she will be in the front lines when I go back to old places...to test her out or whatever. I barely ever use Massimo, and Marino (most awesome name EVER) isn't too impressive right now. I still haven't found any real good sub weapons yet. I guess Heat Haze is good, but...

I'm giving all my WE gaining items and force metal to X.

Team usually consist of X, Zero and Spider cause that Ace of Clubs is awesome.

[superaielman]

MMXCM came out by 2004 at the absolute latest; I remember trying it right after finishing FM4 and quitting ToS in disgust. *Checks* Yeah, September 04.

[Scar]

Word? Shows how much I pay attention to the title screen!

[Crystalgate]

Dragon Quest VIII: Beat it and got the normal ending.

I focused on hit-all skills with the hero and Yangus and that made random encounters much faster than usual. Even at the black citadel I could end about half of them in one round. Being over equipped due to alchemy (that's despite not getting the armors from the casino and not having Jessica actually equip the Gringham Whip) and having two strong monster teams also helped a lot. Marcello in particular dropped in two rounds after my monster teams were done. Bloaty didn't fare much better. Time for post game stuff.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Scar: Yeah, that XF battle is the hardest in the game almost certainly, and can definitely be frustrating. My advice is to cluster everyone riight near the gate before you drop the third enemy into critical HP, so that you can easily rush out. Having PCs with Turn Shift (Sacred Slayer command) to quickly race everyone out before the reinforcements can hit you with Shut Out is particularly helpful.

[SageAcrin]

http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=9956

Now, to go back to playing RPGs for a while since phew.

[dude789]

Scar: Yeah, that XF battle is the hardest in the game almost certainly, and can definitely be frustrating. My advice is to cluster everyone riight near the gate before you drop the third enemy into critical HP, so that you can easily rush out. Having PCs with Turn Shift (Sacred Slayer command) to quickly race everyone out before the reinforcements can hit you with Shut Out is particularly helpful.

There's also lay points on both sides of the field so you can use that to transfer slower characters like Labrynthia over. Grapplers are also very useful for clearing the sentinels out of the way if you chose to charge up the middle.

[Dhyerwolf]

Lost Odyssey- Something about this game inspires me to update a lot. Anyways, third wipe out in the Hot Springs/Poison Gas cave (To be differentiated from my many wipeouts in the Black Out/Poison Swamp Cave). First time...group of 6 enemies got me, and I was barely not at the level where I could OHKO them. Second wipe-out also to them! I was waiting for Ming's All-Aquara to resolve (and I believe I was at the level where I could OHKO them now!)...but yeah, two turn charge time=I got unlucky and got smacked up too much. Third time...mother fucker, new enemies that have 450 MT damage! And such shitty HP, but not knowing what they could do, I didn't realize that leaving two of them alive for a turn meant I was eating 900 MT damage (On the bloody 4 mage party!). Ming lived...but then ate a crit while still charging damn All-Aquara (note that if it resolved, I likely would have lost anyways since rows would have saved the two back row enemies barely!). But yeah...I was just thinking last dungeon with three fighters that the game was ready to roll over and die (minus bosses), but so I was proven wrong. I'd say it goes to show that fighters are just that much better, but I think that a lot of enemies in this dungeon have substantially more HP (...maybe. Fighters still are that much better anyways). This dungeon is about as evil overall as the Black Cave was. People in this world should just never, ever go in caves (or battlefields...or cities. God, the people of this world are so screwed. I can't fully believe they lived 1000 years for the immortals to hang around!).

[Dhyerwolf]

And I said it inspired me! Probably also my last post since workweek starts again! Beat that dungeon. Boss was nasty. Knew going into it that he had auto-reflect (Against the 4 mage party. Thanks game!). However, Powerus+Combo=Mack at least does 1200 damage (Still...the other three mages would have been doing 1500 unbuffed, so still a pretty major thing). Grounda bombs did 750, but I only had 3 of those, so much smaller effect. Evil part was when he started using All-Aquara and used it twice in a row. MT healing is not fast in this game, but luckily the Magic Counter skill (which I randomly had on Mack) is actually Magic Null and Counter! So basically, Mack lived, and I killed the boss with only him alive. Scene after was kind of awkward, but yay full party again. Now all the immortals can learn the stupidity that is double-item!

[Pyro]

Dhyer you care way too much about Lost Odyssey. Well, at least you're enjoying it!

Ys 7: Played it, got hooked, marathon'd it to the final dungeon. There are so very many shiny things that I want, and all of them require the same rare ingredients from the final dungeon. Bah Humbug.

The game has been a blast, with loads of cool music, environments, and boss fights. The plot is pretty dang generic for an RPG but has at least one cool take on the traditional tale and is competent enough to keep you reading if not much else. But who cares about the plot? This game is all about taking pretty characters (and Dogi) and smashing the crap out of amazingly fun bosses with awesome music to enjoy said smashing to. This is it's premise and it delivers it in spades.

(speaking of pretty characters, Tia and Mishera are about as pretty as you can make a blue-haired girl.)

Random spoiler comment: MWAHAHAHAHA NO ONE EVER SUSPECTS THE FLOWER GIRL MWAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Scar]

Sweet. I'm looking forward to Ys 7.