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

[Niu]

Lufia DS:  Finished.  Final party was level 46.  Amon was a joke, Erim was Erim, and Daos died in two Dual Blade combos.  Guess he would be hard to fight the legit way, but Artea seemed like he could beat him if you were careful.

Overall, game is about what I said before.  Gameplay is poor, but the story and characters were good.  Especially enjoyed the way they handled Iris.

It's about a 6/10 game, but I'll bump it up to 7 since they didn't completely shit on the original like they could have.

Any plans for the second cycle? Or Egg Dragon?

[Captain K.]

Yeah, I'm checking out the second playthrough.  Unfortunately I can't just skip the story scenes since Iris says different things now.

[Pyro]

She just has some 'thoughts' shown in a few places that don't amount to much. You can pretty much skip everything until the three towers and nothing actually changes.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm overdue to actually post things about games.


FE10 third place medal playthrough (also with Pikachus and kitchen utensils) -

So, I'm up to part 4, just beat 4-P. Part 3 was easier because the Greil Mercenaries still have too many good PCs, even with the weapon restrictions and bereft of Ranulf/Janaff/Ulki. Haar is still silly awesome. Unsurprisingly, Titania, Ike, and Gatrie remained excellent. Otherwise, the challenge's emphasis on Str made for some weird situations like Rolf and Boyd being better than Shinon, Nephenee, and Mia - in fact the latter two were dropped entirely. Archers suffer less than melee people, but nobody suffers less than the mages. Even Ilyana was decent! Soren and Calill are just obvious. I used Rhys over Mist, which was probably a mistake since Mist's speed and move are probably still more important than Rhys' damage... though I dunno. In some chapters this definitely wasn't the case. And obviously Heather was really good, which is kinda the fun part of the playthrough. Third promoted character? I've never even seen her promote before! Knives actually having RANGE OPTIONS is just wonderful, and her peak damage is pretty much party-best even before considering the high speed (the other high-speed options aren't really viable) and Adept.

The Dawn Brigade and Crimean chapters were reasonably tough, although none was a show-stopper. Nolan got RNG raped beyond all belief, though Aran got super RNG blessed to make up for this. Jill was kinda not doing well RNG-wise but canto ensured she was still worth using, and after a little luck with Paragon she became the third best PC of the path. Zihark was okay, though the lack of power was becoming increasinly evident by the end. And Sothe... is Sothe. See all the Heather comments, except Sothe's stats are much better relative to his team. And then there's those Beast Killers. Yup. Godlike, reached Level 18 by the end of Part 3. As for the CRKs, Calill and Kieran got the Paragons, nobody else was really worth using, although Marcia/Danved did see use as 4-P filler for rescue/shove/doing like 4 damage in a pinch! 3-5 was probably the hardest map for the GMs proper, or maybe 3-11.

Part 4 may be pretty tough, since I have fewer competent PCs than normal. Particularly dreading Ike's maps, since I think I balanced the teams pretty well and arguably I shouldn't have. Micaiah's team includes Sothe, Sigrun, Tanith, Sanaki, Haar, Ilyana, Heather, and Rhys. Ike's includes Soren, Titania, Boyd, Mist, Aran, Gatrie, Shinon, and Oscar. Elincia's includes Tauroneo, Rolf, Calill, Jill, Zihark, Nealuchi, and Kieran. All are/will be promoted before engaging in part 4 battles, except Mist and those with fixed promotions. Elincia gets the highly notable reinforcements of Volke (zomg broken on this playthrough) and Bastian for her second map, of course. And everyone has a laguz royal who is uh an awesome shover! Also a heron.

Bronze weapons actually disappear from stores for a while! Though they come back at least. WTF, I thought nothing disappeared from stores in FE10! I never had reason to care! I don't think I'll run out (I knew this was coming so I stocked up), but if I do I can always forge some iron weapons with -3 might or something.


Saga Frontier - Beat Red's quest. Party was Red (swords, some Alkaiser moves), Doll (Shadow Servant, Tower, katanas), Fuse (fists, Awakening, Starlight Heal), BJ&K, and TimeLord (Light magic gift). Team Super fanbait clearly. Worked quite well, more sword-users is always good (aw yeah double Deflect).

Red's a pretty decent sword and fist user (not the best at either, though close at fists, not that I built him that way) with the Alkaiser option, which is generally impractical but can be useful in emergencies, and is quite a boon in the final dungeon, giving him a stat boost and, for the VERY FINAL BATTLE, a damage boost on top of that. Didn't realise Re-Al was such a VP1 Lenneth-style powerup, but he'll take it!

Not much to say about Doll and Fuse specifically, although Awakening is more worthwhile with fists than other options. I'm still not absolutely enamoured with it but it's pretty cool. Still dislike Mindheal. Doll was mostly a foray into shadow magic, and I also got her arcane. I discovered that I like Tower much more on a fighter mage. Boss fights were ShadowServant -> Tower -> use sword moves, instead of saving it for the end and trying to guess boss HP like I'd have to do with anyone else, which would be lame. Gun moves might work even better for stat synergy, but I like swords. Doll sparked Tres Flores on her first sword attack of the very last battle, which made me happy.

TimeLord, well, hmm. TimeLeap is uber. Of course, it's not really unique to TL. Still, using him over someone else does let you get Mesarthim if you wish, and also lets you break game with OD/StasisRune Blue-style if you wish (though that's probably more effort than it's worth). Since I didn't, I couldn't really even justify setting Overdrive (grr mystic spell slots), which is quite funny. But yeah, TimeLeap. He gets the speed for it easily enough, and it's awesome. How much I spammed it depended on how nice I was to bosses, although some did sometimes outpace it certainly. TimeEclipse is also a solid move, of course. I was able to get him light magic but that was a bit of a favour for him, and without that his random battle performance is less impressive.

BJ&K is mostly about free healing, which is good on a mec (no slot wasted on backpack = hells yeah), and LaserCannon + Magnify, which is one shot of like 8000 damage. Boom. Also any number of shots of 1500-3000 damage before this, which is great midgame. I gather Rabbit also has this option, but I liked Medic and didn't want to use both - the cumbersomeness of healing mecs makes me leery of this.

This was the first playthrough I actually noticed how cheap some of the midgame defensive gear is. Screw saving for Powered Suits, just getting decent armour + HyperWear + decent gloves/boots/hat works very well, and WarlordArmour is a cheap upgrade to achieve endgame-like defences. I probably didn't look after my midgame defences enough in previous playthroughs. Main advantage of suits seems to be that you can then slap accessories there that block garbage like sonic and water attacks, but yeah.


BossX failed utterly, by far the worst final boss I've faced. Sure, I robbed him of a bunch of turns with TimeLeap, but by no means all (combination of speedhax and my showing mercy), and what he did get he used for utterly pathetic actions. Looking at the stat topic I really didn't miss much, woohoo ST OHKO in a Saga game as your very best? Bit of a waste of the uber boss-killing party I had, I didn't even use FinalCrusade!

Characters I still need to use for an extended period of time (I don't intend to use all of them), mostly for my own reference:

Annie, Hamilton, Fei-on, Lute, PzkwV, Rabbit, every mystic except White Rose/Zozma/TL, Kylin, every other monster except Cotton (whatever, like non-Kylin monsters are really different from each other).

[Meeplelard]

BossX failed utterly, by far the worst final boss I've faced. Sure, I robbed him of a bunch of turns with TimeLeap, but by no means all (combination of speedhax and my showing mercy), and what he did get he used for utterly pathetic actions. Looking at the stat topic I really didn't miss much, woohoo ST OHKO in a Saga game as your very best? Bit of a waste of the uber boss-killing party I had, I didn't even use FinalCrusade!

Back when I was playing SaGa, I can't tell you how many times I loaded up my Red File JUSt to kick the shit out of BossX.  Dunno why, but its delightfully fun beating the crap out of a sad SaGa Boss, especially one of his design.  Maybe I just liked the image of DSC on someone THAT BIG.

That said:

FF8: In the middle of the Prison!  Man, this game is dull, why am I replaying it?

Viewtiful Joe Red Hot Impact:  Found this for $5; being a rare game that is that cheap, couldn't really justify passing it up, and V. Joe was a decent enough game as is, and the nature of it translates to a Brawl-style game brilliantly.  That, and it has DMC characters in it <_< >_>

Finished all story missions!  Story is...maybe one of the best features of the game oddly.  Its well written cause its V. Joe's cast, meaning there's no sense of the game taking itself seriously AT ALL, and a lot of funny moments (Though, fuck Captain Blue Jr.  What game did he originate from anyway?)   Its nice to have a game where the "Crisis" is "Whose going to be the star of my next big movie...which is primarily about ME!?" and he just has people duke it out IN ACTUAL SCENES OF THE MOVIE until he gets an answer.  Then one of the hands on stage gets upset her role isn't big, takes a giant robot, and thus we get a final boss with a moral lesson of "EVERYONE IS SPECIAL AND IMPORTANT!" but handled in a way that's obviously meant to make you "OH COME HOW CLICHE CAN YOU GET!?"
But yeah, its nice that the game is a completely unconventional plot that makes no sense nonetheless!

Gameplay wise, its...Viewtiful Joe spliced with Brawl.  unlike Brawl though, the game is creative about its requirements.  Its not "beat the crap out of the opponent" usually, but "Do something better than him!"  Be it collecting objects, be the last one holding onto the flag, etc.  I will say that Captain Blue Jr. again, needs to die.  Dunno what it is, but he kept seeming on getting all the items, COMBINED with his annoying "Arrogant 7 year old voice" and the stupid Yoyo style...yeah.

Characters I played as thus far:

V. Joe: He's basically Captain Falcon in this game.  I guess since they gave the Time Manipulation and V-up gimmicks as generic power ups in this game, they just took moves like Red Hot Kick and Flanderized a skill set off it. 

Dante: HIS GENERIC ATTACK IS RAPID FIRING HIS GUNS IN WHATEVER DIRECTION HE WANTS.  That's just wrong on so many levels.  I like the attention to detail kept on him since V. Joe 1 like having the Red Circle appear during his Double Jumps to acknowledge Air Hike and all that.

Alastor: Only got to use him against the final boss (just happened to be the level I chose him) and the...ending credits...he seems like he could be fun, I should try him again.

Sexy Silvia: Her charge special attack is a BEAM OF DOOM!!!  She also has Dante's projectile nonsense.  That is all.


Totally need to try the V. Joe 1 Bosses out at some point.

[DomaDragoon]

So, since Black Ops came out yesterday, and my brother is a CoD-fish, I'm going to be away from the 360 for the foreseeable future. Sad panda.

Punch-Out Wii: Cleared the Minor Circuit Title Defense matches.

DQ9: Have been doing some more DLC missions.

[Sierra]

New Vegas: Beaten. No Gods, No Masters. Mixed reactions to that but I think it's really to the game's credit that there's no easy, perfect answer in the end, and it seemed to fit how I'd been playing the whole game--I helped the NCR pretty consistently, but for the people on the ground rather than nationalism, and the NCR's interest in Vegas was too obviously acquisitive. And there seemed something rather sad about the inevitability of the area becoming just another faceless backwater once the NCR tide washes over it and moves on. Other stuff in spoiler text:

Kind of regretted killing House by the time I went through with it because he seemed to have a plan for everything (except getting shot in the face) and I have to wonder what is grand vision was. Letting him live after being deposed would've been even more cruel given the circumstances, though.

Would've preferred to avoid nuking the Brotherhood, too. Only did it because Yes Man insisted they'd be a major problem later, and setting up an independent country isn't something you do half-assed. Really wanted to come to some kind of arrangement with them since I can understand their fundamental motivation in a post-nuke environment, but that seemed to not be an option on this path so they had to go. Sorry, Veronica (not that killing them made her leave me anyway, but I felt bad about it in the epilogue).

Helping Cass get revenge causes widespread problems for NCR, eh? Guess I shouldn't seen that coming, really. They were pretty slimy people so I didn't think too much of eliminating them at the time.

The rest I guess isn't that spoilerish. Dunno why the game gave me the option of saying I'd talked the Khans into leaving the Mojave, because I'd done no such thing. I actually never found whatever was needed to talk Regis/Papa Khan into turning on Caeser and the quest remained unfinished, so I dunno what flagged that situation in the endgame.

Dealt with Caesar by massacring everyone in the Fort almost immediately. He didn't have too much of interest to say initially (kind of curious that he wanted to destroy the mystery weapon instead of make use of it, but eh), so given all the "Women are physically and mentally inferior to men, good for bearing children and otherwise beneath notice" talk (this is a 100% effective way to make me hate someone), and seeing the women slaves there struggling bentbacked under heavy loads...Fuck it, genocide mode, leave/come  back with weapons and every soldier in this camp burns (this was easy to accomplish until I got to Caesar's tent. Oh god ten dudes in a cramped area, equipped with ballistic fists, against a frail ranged fighter). I am going to talk to him more in another run (I am kind of curious about his reasons for founding the Legion, given his origins), but it was pretty satisfying to just eradicate the misogynistic slaving fuckers. Lanius I could've talked into leaving, but fuck that, I'm not leaving the Legion with anyone capable of command.

Mm. More complete thoughts on the game in general when I've run the other factions' endings (I kept a save with damn near everything done before the encounter with Benny, should only be a few hours' for each), and there's some other stuff I neglected to do that I want to get to (Vault 19, character quests for Boone/Arcade/Raul--the epilogue made me feel particularly guilty for neglecting Raul). For now I figure it's enough to say it's the best game I've played in the past couple years.

[Cotigo]

Hoo, games.  I should be doing something else right now so that's a good time to start writing about games right.

LFT - Started Chapter 4.  Priest/Oracle Ramza FTW.  Made short work of Velius, that's for damn sure. (Holy>Weigraf, Silence Song>Velius). Party is Ramza, Agrias (who cycles through Samurai, Holy Knight, and Monk), Vector (TM/BM), Quinn (Summoner/WM), and Patricia (Ninja/Lancer/Geomancer with Steal secondary).  Just about at the point where everyone's mastered their two primary classes and I can start branching out into other skillsets.  Unfortunately this kind of puts me at a paralysis as I cannot think of what skillsets I'd like to add to my repertoire. 

Realm of the Mad God:  This is the game that makes me think I COULD love a really well designed Roguelike.  Levelling is fast paced and Equipment is sometimes easy to come by, and there's actually benefits to not being level 20.  For a free game, not bad.

Minecraft:  Played Classic.  This game is methamphetamine in building sim form.  I built a pretty sick house and a large cavern before accidentally hitting the back button on my mouse and losing ~10 hours of work.  I intend to purchase the Alpha before playing again so I can at least save what ate up so much of my time. 

[Random Consonant]

Dawn of Heroes: I actually started this a while back.  Got up to the third barony.

I'm not really quite sure how I feel about the game as a whole, so here's a rant.  There will be some *SPOILERS*, though not too many.  A lot of the ideas are sound enough, but it comes with some baffling design decisions and not-too-great map/battle design.

You have a bunch of people who have things that they're good at, whether it's baiting enemies, locking them down, killing them, or supporting allies, who fall in the respective categories of Guardian/Controller/Damager/Supporter.  The game itself isn't as offensively biased as other SRPGs so the non-Damager characters have time to shine.  The individual balance seems kinda wonky (the Sabretooth, for instance, honestly seems more of a Damager-type than a Guardian-type, what with the offense and the not really Guardian-like HP/defense/armor options, but whatever).  This is cool.

Combat is phase-based, with a maximum deployment of 5, but you can only target individual enemies up to twice in one turn for the most part.  There are exceptions, namely bosses/minibosses and the last enemy on the map, but for the most part, the game doesn't really let you gang up on things.  Granted this also applies to enemies, they can't gang up one of your guys too much.  *shrug* Okay, I don't really feel much either way about this.

As an aside, I really wish there were some way to speed up or skip the battle animations.  They're longer than they honestly need to be and I don't particularly care to see Omniscient's side effect animate for the ten-billionth time.  It's annoying enough in games that are nice to look at and Dawn of Heroes is by no means nice to look at.  This is really minor, however.  At least there's sceneskip.

The characters have a global party level, so no one is really undereleved.  This is a really cool thing to do in a SRPG and should be done more.  Seriously, it encourages using different people and level grinding in SRPGs is one of the worst things ever (also the game apparently caps level at 25, which may or may not mean anything there).  Of course, gear factors a fair deal into a character's worth and the gear you get after battles is random, so this can leave some people in a hole, which is less of a cool thing.  Normal gear can be bought, but it's pretty expensive relative to the money you get from fighting battles, and selling gear gets you little more than jack squat, and the gear you can buy is unenchanted and thus likely inferior to what you can find after fighting normal battles.  There are optional battles which give no EXP or gear but lots of gold, but those are better used for hiring heroes (which are not cheap) than buying gear, and these battles tend to highlight some of what I believe to be problems in the game.

Map design is really uninspired.  Granted not all of them have to be spectacular obstacle courses but the maps are more or less devoid of things that are interesting from a gameplay perspective and make up for this deficiency with their sheer size.  Wait, did I say make up for?  I meant exacerbate.  Granted interesting map design isn't a strong point in SRPGs, and taste is subjective, but I'm willing to say that, relatively speaking, some of these maps are about as large as FE4's.  Seriously, some of them do not need to be nearly as large as they are.  Others are mostly fine, size-wise.  Also some of these maps have ~*hidden secondary conditions*~.  Granted some brief looking on GFAQs shows that the hidden requirements are basically use event item on the stage in question but still, not cool.  Some of the non-hidden secondary requirements aren't much better, as they require blitzing in a game where that's not really manageable, but those are cheeseable with something I'll mention later.

Enemies for the most part haven't really succeeded at being all that threatening.  Of course there are exceptions here, but even those exceptions seem to be at least somewhat plagued by questionable AI decisions or thwartable by using Control abilities or taunting or having their damage reflected with Backfire.  They mostly succeed at being annoying due to having better defenses/evasion abilities than you do (and I suspect ever will have) but for the most part, it's just that.  Annoying.  The one real exception I've found to this so far is Sadao, who is an *utter dick* in practice due to most of your offense being physical (which he has a 50% chance to evade no matter what) on top of a OPB Auto-Life effect, complete with double-acting (in fairness most bosses do that) and being immune to Control abilities but from a theorhetical standpoint I don't have much of a problem with his general design.  He has support that makes the fight nasty but my problem with the fight stems from another issue which I will address in the next paragraph.

Guests take up a deployment slot when the inevitable escort mission comes along but they're controlable, so the game is automatically better than CotP that's a point in the game's favor.  The escort missions themselves haven't been too troubling, for all that I've only seen two of them thus far.  Less justifiable is what happens when a hero gets lost/kidnapped/whatever as a result of the plot.  This *also* costs you a deployment slot, which is pretty nonsensical considering that by the first time this comes up, you can easily replace the missing hero.  It's an especially rude surprise when it happens in a battle's opening cutscene, after you've chosen your team for a battle (in fairness, this doesn't happen with the Sadao fight, so you at least know about that fact, for what little that's worth).  Heroes going missing as a result of the plot, I can deal with.  This should not be a flimsy justification for a lost deployment slot until you get him/her back, though.  Going to another barony gets the hero back!  But then you have to redo some battles, which is pretty annoying.

Backtracking a bit to chosing people for a team, there's no ability to view or modify your battle formation prior to starting a battle ever.  I find this to be utterly unjustifiable in a modern SRPG.  Seriously, even FFT's lying-half-the-time excuse for PBF is preferable to this and I am not a fan of FFT PBF.  The game also seems to lack in-battle saving, though since retreating is always an option this isn't *quite* as glaring a flaw as it could be.  Still not a great design decision, though, considering there are multi-stage battles.  Neither is being restricted to one save slot, for that matter.

Finally, the aforementioned cheese; Banish Scrolls.  These are a purchaseable one-use item that instakills an enemy within range.  They're not what could be called cheap but they're also not hideously expensive, costing what I believe is around what you could purchase a single piece of gear for.  It's certainly not a gameplay skip as each character can only hold a single consumeable but nevertheless they look pretty nutty from what I saw when I used of them to fufill some "win within 2 turns" secondary requirements.  Range isn't in fairness but it's serviceable enough for what it does.  Not quite sure what they were thinking there, really.

Well, we'll see where the game ends up.  For the most part it's alright despite the flaws though, just some of those flaws really annoy me.

[Veryslightlymad]

Mass Effect 2:


Started up a game despite not finishing a bitch playthrough of the first one. Recruited Garrus and Mordin. Some thoughts so far:

General Gameplay: A few things annoy me that ME1 didn't----I can't bind "del" to anything, which really pisses me off as an arrow key user. Thankfully, for some strange reason, a lot of the actions are all grouped into one button, which means I don't miss it nearly as much as I could. As far as infinite health vs infinite ammo goes, ARRRRRRRRRRRGH. I wish I had the Ammo SO BAD. Infinite health is nice, but I'd have way more fun if I could just snipe everything like I'm used to. I miss it so.

Oddness: I seem to be listed as "In a relationship" with Ashley... at least, I have a portrait of her in my room----this.... kind of bothers me because I never actually completed the romance with Ashley in ME1. Now when I invariably romance someone else (or not) it'll be seen as "cheating" even though I totally didn't start a relationship. BLARGH.

Miranda: Kind of a bitch at first---less of a bitch now. Don't have much of a grasp on how she plays. So far I like Ashley better.

Jacob: Actually a very likable dude. I'd take him over Kaidan any day of the week.

Garrus: For some reason, Garrus became Batman. I don't really buy it----Garrus just.... wasn't that good in ME1. But I guess he gained a level or something.

Mordin: I love this guy already. Talks like a psychopath. Seems to have a heart of gold despite gleefully executing bad-guys. Called someone a "Cloaca". What's not to love?!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Miranda: Kind of a bitch at first---less of a bitch now. Don't have much of a grasp on how she plays. So far I like Ashley better.

Jacob: Actually a very likable dude. I'd take him over Kaidan any day of the week.

Garrus: For some reason, Garrus became Batman. I don't really buy it----Garrus just.... wasn't that good in ME1. But I guess he gained a level or something.

Miranda is pretty much the clear choice for best character in the game. She gets Warp (effective against armor, barriers, health, organic targets), Overload (effective against shields, mechanical enemies), Slam (fucks up undefended targets of both types), and most importantly, her 4-point class skill does something that no other character can claim: one version increases all squad damage by 15%, one version increases all squad health by 15%. Makes her... pretty much mandatory for Hardcore.  Makes her pretty much mandatory, since nobody else can do that.

Garrus is... almost as good. He would be better if not for Miranda's class skill. Concussion Shot isn't as good as Warp, but he gets Armor-Piercing Ammo to help with that following his loyalty quest. Armor-Piercing ammo rules.

One thing that's kind of a bummer about ME2 is how much better some characters are than others now. I mean, yeah, Wrex was awesome in ME1, but there's really no comparing Miranda, Garrus, Grunt or Legion to Jacob, Jack, Kasumi (on higher difficulties... Kasumi destroys on Veteran and below) or Thane.  It's better in pretty much every other way, but still, a bummer.

[Grefter]

Uh dude what?  Garrus was always that good plotwise.  Pretty much the only reason he wasn't a Spectre was because he turned down the training.  The only thing standing between Garrus and shooting some dudes was his obsession with the law and you know, fear of becoming like a certain other Turian douche Spectre.

Rob is spot on with the characters really.  It is better to pick one or two not so good characters and use them early, then use good characters after you have done the character quests and unlocked all their skills.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Indeed. The second scene with Garrus is him resolving a hostage situation by taking the guy's head off over the shoulder of the hostage. Garrus will end you.

Dealt with Caesar by massacring everyone in the Fort almost immediately. He didn't have too much of interest to say initially (kind of curious that he wanted to destroy the mystery weapon instead of make use of it, but eh), so given all the "Women are physically and mentally inferior to men, good for bearing children and otherwise beneath notice" talk (this is a 100% effective way to make me hate someone), and seeing the women slaves there struggling bentbacked under heavy loads...Fuck it, genocide mode, leave/come  back with weapons and every soldier in this camp burns (this was easy to accomplish until I got to Caesar's tent. Oh god ten dudes in a cramped area, equipped with ballistic fists, against a frail ranged fighter). I am going to talk to him more in another run (I am kind of curious about his reasons for founding the Legion, given his origins), but it was pretty satisfying to just eradicate the misogynistic slaving fuckers. Lanius I could've talked into leaving, but fuck that, I'm not leaving the Legion with anyone capable of command.

Caesar built his empire the way he did because he concluded modelling an empire after the Romans was appropriate for the level of infrastructure that was left intact in his neck of the woods, and it kept them from leaning on salvaged pre-War gear like the NCR does. If you poke around his camp, you find out that he HAS actually managed to provide security to his territories. Like, if you talk to the merchants, they complain about how they have to carry guns if they cross the Colorado, and how in Legion territory any merchant who trades with the Legion is under the protection of Caesar and nobody fucks with them. Bandits and raiders and such? Almost completely unheard of in Arizona. And that's what he ends up bringing to the Mojave, is security (as opposed to the NCR, who don't do any of that unless you personally do it for them). Of course if you leave Lanius in charge, things go to shit. The dude's name is Latin for "butcher" after all.

Also, the Legion ending leaves you, the player, with the possibility of making changes in the future (well, as long as Caesar isn't dead). The NCR ending? Not so much. And in the independent ending, you're a regional warlord.\

EDIT: Also, siding with Caesar's Legion gets you the coolest ending for Boone. It's seriously awesome.

[Sierra]

I picked up as much about Legion-controlled territory from talking to NPCs, yeah. If it weren't for the "subjugate all women for breeding stock" bullshit, I might be able to contemplate that the security the Legion provides is worth its various other brutalities, but with that in the equation I can only respond with unquenchable rage (fucking slavers can just go die, I don't care what their reasons are because there's simply no way to justify that). Oh well, I'll talk to Caesar himself at some point. Will probably do House route next though.

[Captain K.]

Dawn of Heroes: <snip>

You touch pretty well on some of the game's good and bad points.  Banish scrolls are cheap but completely unnecessary.  I beat the whole game without using one.  It's basically a crutch for people who suck at strategy games.  Same with money grinding.  It's there if you want to but not needed.

I didn't have any trouble with the Sadao fight, but I know some others have had problems.  I think after dying once while trying to kill the ninjas I just said "fuck it" and had everyone attack Sadao and ignore ninjas.  It worked quite well.

The disappearing party slots was rather annoying, but I took the game's blatant warning about it seriously and just kept going through the area to finish.  You can take your time and sightsee after the barony is complete.

The "Win in 2 turns" things are for the most part completely optional.  They're meant to be done by overleveled parties (or by using Banish scrolls).  On the occasions where they are required to advance, they are much easier to complete (as in the 3rd Barony).

But yeah, wait until you start playing multiplayer.  It's great.  We've got some games organizing on the Gamefaqs board now.  It's best if you wait until level 25 to start since you'll have the final abilities on all characters, but you can try it earlier just to see how it works.   You should hit level 25 during the sixth barony if you just play straight through, but of course you can grind to go up faster.

......

Lufia DS:  Got the first Dragon Egg.  Smashy smashy.

[Random Consonant]

Yeah, the blitz approach against Sadao is what I decided on.  Just botched up positioning in a few places.  Of course, discovering that Auto-Life abilities triggered by Backfire giving the guy an extra turn... also did not help.

Edit: And as it turns out, eschewing Backfire entirely in favor of Reynard (who just gained Smite) proved key there.  Go figure.  Oh well, 'swat I get for trying to be cute with that fight.

[SageAcrin]

Romancing SaGa: Minstrel's Song:

Aisha haz a shiny ring~

*Skips out over Jewel Beast's corpse, leaves his Lair.*

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I picked up as much about Legion-controlled territory from talking to NPCs, yeah. If it weren't for the "subjugate all women for breeding stock" bullshit, I might be able to contemplate that the security the Legion provides is worth its various other brutalities, but with that in the equation I can only respond with unquenchable rage (fucking slavers can just go die, I don't care what their reasons are because there's simply no way to justify that). Oh well, I'll talk to Caesar himself at some point. Will probably do House route next though.

Seems to me that if you can keep Caesar alive and Lanius out of power you have a good chance of changing things, which I can't say about any other ending. But that's not expressed, just implied.

[Shale]

Ninja Gaiden Black: Very Hard lives up to its name. Level 2 is pain - loooooots of samurai and warlocks between save points, and a fairly brutal new phase for the boss where he gets off the horse and turns into a generic samurai with a high block rate and doubled damage - and damage is pretty high already in this mode. Level 3's not bad; level 4, though....Grenade. Launchers. EVERYWHERE. The worst is in an area where you're usually being shot at by soldiers with sidearms who are perched on a couple of rooftops - the damage is annoying, but you have time to rapid-fire the bow at them until they die. Here, one of them is shooting third-of-your-health grenades at you constantly and the bow's auto-aim is less accurate, so you have to take the time to line up shots in first person, rolling away (and losing your aim) if he even looks at you funny. That took forever to clear out.

Stage 5 isn't too different from the usual, except instead of Black Spider Ninja it has Red Spider, who can set you on fire and cut you in half at the same time. Woo friggin' hoo. Made it up to the dragons at the end of the level once, and got massacred.

Edit: Ninpo spam wins the day! Hydracubus ate some health potions but wasn't bad on the whole. Now, stage 6. Passage of Pointlessness, here I come!

[Dark Holy Elf]

FE10 - Up to endgame. The Ike chapters were very tricky, they're generally the two hardest and my team was too balanced for my own good. Everything else was kinda competent. Shoved Paragon on the Ravens to help them catch up. Endgame team looks like it'll be...

Reyson - Heron with canto is needed for some boss strategies, and he's got a start on a Volke power support which I'll need.
Volke - freaking duh. This challenge is literally unbeatable without him.
Heather - freaking duh mark 2, though not quite as strictly necessary.
Rhys - I can do worse than a filler healer, and he's Heather's support.
Elincia - Units with canto are good, healers are good. Mist isn't promoted yet so yeah.
Calill - Elincia's support, is a Sage, has 32 speed.
Soren - Ike's support, is a Sage, has good magic and a power affinity even if he never doubles.
Boyd - RNG blessing of the gods, which will give him pretty much my highest offence besides the obvious and serviceable durability.
Titania - Boyd's support, has capped Str/Spd so she won't totally embarrass herself, and having more units with Canto is good.
Nealuchi - Flies with high attack (by my standards), good durability, canto, power support (not sure who'll get it yet)... no excuse not to take him!

The last spot is up for grabs, though my main considerations for it are Vika (Nealuchi but a bit worse in luck/HP/atk) and Bastian (fourth competent staff user, high magic for Thunder, though bad speed). Other characters who I've thought of but probably won't make the cut are Ilyana (second fastest sage, but lowest magic and no power support), Haar (good power/def/canto/flight, but low speed and res), and Rolf (capped str, good speed, 2-3 range).

[SageAcrin]

Starcraft: Broodwars single player:

AHAHAHA YES I FINALLY BEAT BW ZERG 8.

*twitch* YAAAAAAAAAAAY. *twitch*

[Veryslightlymad]

Been playing more ME2.... almost nonstop when I have nothing else to do.

Random junk: Warmed up to the combat system. I love that giant goddamn laser I stole from the Collectors. SO MUCH. And the Sniping slow-down effect that Infiltrators get is wonderful. I also like the new hacking systems so much better than ME1s 360-degree Frogger.

Miranda: Is less of a bitch now. Starting to dig her. Don't see how she's super useful in combat as Rob said, since she seems to die like, a billion times more often than anyone else. It probably has to do with issuing orders, since she does have a flexible utility set. Que ser A.

Jacob: Enjoyed his creepy-ass loyalty mission. Him and Shep are bros.

Mordin: Still fun. Handier in a fire fight than he looks. Nothing particularly great to say.

Garrus: Is Garrus. Seems a bit better than in ME1, which is good. Annoyed that he doesn't even repair his armor. Hope his alt-costume fixes that.

Grunt: Such an idiot. Loves to charge right into enemies and die. Perfect Krogan my ass. Wrex would rip this pup in half.

Zaeed: Well, he's DLC, so I guess I couldn't expect much. Still. Wish he had at least a recruitment mission.

Jack: Psychotic bitch. Still, she's one of my favorite squaddies to have in a fire fight, so there's that. Annoyed that she doesn't wear armor.

Samara: Hate her so much. Annoying personality. Haven't used her in a mission yet, but ye gods, do I just want to punch this broad in the face.

Thane: Love his voice. Annoyed by his schtick. I like him in battle, because he actually aims for the head with his sniper rifle. So I can run with Thane and take a large number of enemies out at a distance. It's very refreshing.

Tali: Hooray! Tali is back! Granted, I just got her, so I haven't seen what they've done to her for ME2, but I'm just happy to have one of my team from ME1 to play with.

All in all: Still digging the hell out of this game. The humor in this one is great in parts---I actually teared up because I laughed so hard at the all-Elcor rendition of Hamlet. "Dirty Hanar" was great, too.

ALSO: totally annoyed that it seems to think I'm in a relationship with Ashley----or had sex with her before Ilios, because.... I didn't. She spewed poetry at me and I made her leave. So screw her. Dunno if I'll pursue a relationship with Jack/Miranda/Tali, but if I don't, I hope they don't go insane like Ashley did, come ME3.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I am baffled that you are having more success with Jack than Miranda. I consider Jack to be the absolute worst character in the game.

[Shale]

Ninja Gaiden: Haaaaaaaaaaaaate cat-demons. Killed me three times in the underground Hydracubus rematch, and you have to deal with two rooms full of claw-demons and zombies, plus a couple of jumping puzzles, to get from the save point to the boss room. And now for my reward: A hundred-demon challenge, followed by Alma!

Kill me.

Super Street Fighter 4: Aaaaaargh Xbox controllers on a 2D fighter. I may put the $20 I saved on the game into a fightpad.

[Grefter]

The difference is largley in issuing commands.  The big thing Miranda really brings to the table (Other than being able to handle armour and shields, which is great in higher difficulties) is that she buffs Shepard and your other team member with her passive as well which no one else does.  So you can park her in the back somewhere while she supports from cover where she won't die as easilly.  Jack on the other hand has no real defense mechanisms and straight up doesn't bring as much to the table.  Way to many Biotic powers rely on the enemy having no armour or shields, in which case they are practically dead already.

Miranda's strengths are good but not noticed much on normal difficulty because the game is pretty easy and forgiving.  Turn the difficulty up a notch and you run into Armour and Shields everywhere, absolutely everywhere.  Then your basic biotic control skills usefullness plummets and Jack turns out worse and worse.  She is very good at handling things when they are out of shields and armour.  If you want to handle things without armour though that is what Thane brings to the table with his crazy huge boosts to Health damage.  You will just straight up ruin people's day if you run Thane or his ammo skill (neither being my personal choice.  Even without that things down to health are just plain not that threatening anymore).

On the normal game you really can just use whoever takes your fancy and as long as you have something to handle Armour you will be fine.