Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

[Captain K.]

Halo series:  Achievements achievements achievements.  Up to rank 45 in Waypoint, which is a damned lot.

Blazblue CS:  Got the frue ending.

MvC3:  I should not play this after playing Blazblue.  I keep trying to Barrier Burst.

Radiant Historia:  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to set fire to my own city.

[Fenrir]

Brütal Legend: Finished.

So yeah. This game is famous for being an RTS disguised as an action game. (because nobody likes RTS. Me neither honestly)
RTS battles could be a pain, but there aren't really a ton of them (like, 7-8?), there's always a new toy to play with in every one of them, they're never too difficult even on the hardest setting, and there are a lot of action missions between them. In general, the game manages to be extremely varied all the way through, so it's a blast.
Side missions were kinda repetitive and mostly easy, but honestly they're the best part of the game because you could drive around in a great environment, listening to some good metal music. I knew nearly no metal music and the game got me interested in a few bands.
The inevitable big sandbox collect-a-thon serves the same thing. There are like, 120 dragon statues to find, 10 garages, 12 hidden mytho, 30 hidden jumps, etc etc. You get no indication of where it is, but as an excuse to roam around it's good enough. I'm glad I wasn't OCD about it though, else I'd hate the game right now.

Anyway, the game didn't take itself seriously enough. It feels too much like a standard generic cartoon, and this clashes way too much with the metal atmosphere.
I never cared much about any character but Jack Black and the side mission dudes. BTW, there is a big plot twist about the main badguy at the end and I didn't understand -anything- about it. It's like, some ancient hero dude was sent in time, in the past, maybe in the future, and he sealed some main bad guy. He's also my father, and like him I was sent in the past. Or alternate dimension? And now, the main badguy is completely different, but perhaps the same? My girlfriend, my mother and my arch-enemy's girlfriend might be three, two or one person, I'm not sure.
Whatever, the enemy gets decapitated -> Feel-good ending


The talk about Okami makes me remember about it - It's the game I've actually bought (on PS2) that I've played the least of. Meeple isn't kidding about the bad intro. I realized I didn't really want to play through something very similar to a 3D Zelda with so much cutscene boredom. I probably played some RPG instead and I've never picked it up again.

[Rozalia]

In response to Scar DW7 goes back to the charge system so it now plays like how DW5 did but it still has things like skills from DW6 and a few other things such as seals.
The multiplayer is conquest mode only and be done both offline and online. Conquest is just loads of missions so if you're starting it from scratch with a buddy its quite good however if you've already done it all then you're essentially doing just skirmish levels.

Did the Wu story and while I dislike all those Wusers I have to say I now really like Sun Quan. He knows he is a coward so strives to become the most badass coward alive which he achieves as he owns the mighty Zhang Liao by having his allies block both Liao's weapons and then stabs Liao in the chest killing him which was as Liao himself said "Excellent".

Then in the ending:

*Sun Quan Picks up his extreamely well endowed wife*
*Walks towards a dozen of his male commanders all the while giving a good hearty laugh*
Sun Quan: Men, let us enjoy this.
*Men cheer*
*Roll credits*

......Well they do say Wu is all about Family, love and shar....Wait a minute. Liu Bei and Cao Cao both die in their ending while failing in uniting the land but Sun Quan lives and then has a sex orgy to celebrate?
Best version of Sun Quan ever.

[Meeplelard]

Namco x Capcom: HOLY SHIT ARE GUY/GINZU GOOD AT BUILDING UP SUPER GAUGE.

Baby Head/Awesome Mummy got stunned which is the first PC I ever saw stunned and took him forever to recover.  Other than that, he seems pretty good as a tank and uh...well...

He has a Falcon Drill Punch.  I think its safe to say he's the BEST BABY EVER.

Captain Commando's allies are so much cooler than he himself.  Honestly, Captain Commando is a generic stock lamer super hero, his allies consist of a generic Ninja whose awesome cause he's a generic Ninja, a BABY IN A MECH, and an Alien Mummy Dual Wielding Knives that wears a baseball cap backwards.

[Grefter]

Brütal Legend: Finished.

I need to get around to playing that, I sort of just watched my brother play it. Even though you don't do Metal much Fen do you at least know some of the awesome voice work people involved?  A good chunk of the characters are voiced by hard rock legends.

For reference, This guy is voiced by this guy from Judas Priest.  Also note that Rob Halford is gay and this shocked the metal world at one time.

Also the doctor guy was voiced by Lemmy from Motorhead which is pretty much the most awesome thing ever.  Lemmy is amazing and I recommend you check out some Motorhead if you enjoyed some of the music in the game.

[Fenrir]

Yep! The main problem is that those characters feel like cameos (despite Ozzy Osbourne's amount of lines) while the main characters are voiced by regular characters.
The Killmaster (Lemmy) kind of disappears out of nowhere while the Baron (Rob Habford playing as himself here) appears out of nowhere at the same time.
I thought he was just the same guy who had just shaved, for a while.

I'll go check Motorhead out. Man, there were too many bands I didn't know about at once for me to discover them all.
I mostly noticed Racer X, Ozzy and Motley Crue (And whoever did "Kill the orcs", obviously)

[Yoshiken]

Pokemon Black: Oh dear god battle subway is even worse than the previous incarnations. -,-

Running a VGC test team of Archeops/Tornadus/Chandelure/Reuniclus that were legal-hacked in, ended up running into a team of something/Haxorus/Salamence/Garchomp and got murdered. Now I've switched Reuniclus for my own Haxorus, but only because I don't have access to Pokesav and can't edit in the awesome that is Mienshao.
Was reading on Smogon about someone missing 4 times in a row with a 99% accuracy move. Apparently they are more likely to find two shiny Pokemon in a row than have that happen. Hax Subway. ;(

[Grefter]

If you liked Motley Crue and Ozzie then definitely check out Motorhead, old school rockers all round.

[Shale]

SRWZ2: It has begun. Finished stage 1. Shiiiiiiiiny. Worlds ahead of Advance Portable, and that was already impressive. Judging by the number of reinforcements that crop up in a three-turn mission, the designers are intent on keeping players on their toes.

Now, melee mode or range mode for Blaster.

......yeah, like that's a tough choice for me.

For the muffin-inclined, HEN 6.35 runs the game fine, and requires no reflashing - it's one of the semi-signed homebrews, and runs without hardware mod on the official 6.35 firmware.

[Niu]

Dissidia 012- Dress up Laguna in his knight costume, controls Kefka, turns on Shuffle and Boogie.... This is just too amusing.

[Yoshiken]

Ocarina of Time: Been replaying this lately because I don't have a 100% complete file on my N64 version. Forgot just how short the Shadow Temple was (and infurating - went up the ladder near the Ghost Ship and had to go back through the whole damn dungeon to get back there.) Bottom of the Well is still the creepiest thing ever, and I always forget about the tunnel under the central room in the Water Temple. Sheik is as subtle as a sledgehammer on a replay, yet I remember being fooled completely when I first played the game. Hunh. Can't be bothered with the Biggoron's Sword just yet - but nearly at endgame, so guess I might have to soon. >.>

Pokemon Black: More Battle Haxway~! Actually managed to survive a fight against utter insanity earlier - Garchomp/Hydreigon/Salamence/Kingdra. And somehow, my non-Haxorus'd team beat it, despite Haxorus being my anti-Dragon Poke. Not complaining. Record is still something like 20 fights on Super Doubles, current run is at around 10. >.>

[DjinnAndTonic]

Sheik is as subtle as a sledgehammer on a replay, yet I remember being fooled completely when I first played the game. Hunh.

That's because Zelda had never had anything resembling a TWIST up until that point. If you weren't taking things at face value, you were doing it wrong. But yeah, ZELDA PLOT.

[Grefter]

Radiant Historia - Up To Chapter 5 Alternate History.  Fun stuff.

Mass Effect 2 - Playing this on Insanity.  I was having fun with this.  I have done a few missions fighting YMIR mechs without much cover in a row.  Now it is less fun.

[Shale]

Z2: Took the Japan path at the first split, and am now on Celestial Being/Dancougar Neo. Every single SR point has had a three-turn limit so far, but none has been especially tricky. You just can't waste time, but beyond that it's just a matter of taking care of business. SP isn't as rare as it was in the first Z, so you can actually keep spirits flowing, especially with the low turn limits.

Dai-Guard is awesome. All three pilots start with HP restoration spirits, and you need them all because, true to the show, the Dai-Guard is held together with scotch tape, spit, prayer and MANLY SPIRIT. Its armor rating in the first stage is 200.

[Magic Fanatic]

RS:MS

Tried to finish the Oh, Mummy! quest.  Cannot, as it doing its Song of Souls twice in a row is enough to kill my entire party.

Reload to an earlier save.  After looking through the guide to figure out what I should try doing (I can't do Valhalland Monsters again, as I turned it in at ER2 and for some reason won't let me pick it up again).  Dropped Hawke, recruited Gray for all of ten seconds before dropping him, and then picked up Claudia.  My party is currently Jamil/Barbara/Myriam/Sif/Claudia.  Also managed to swipe a Dinosaur Egg, but I get the feeling I'm missing something important in the Jelton Plains.

Also, what can I actually DO with this egg?

[Shale]

You can sell it for cash money.

Jelton Plains have some caves you can spelunk into for random treasures, but they're mainly there as the route to Pyrix's home. If you feel like learning some new techniques, he's the best enemy in the game to practice against, since you don't die when he drops everybody's HP to 0.  Just keep an eye on your LP.

[Fenrir]

Mass Effect 2 - Playing this on Insanity.  I was having fun with this.  I have done a few missions fighting YMIR mechs without much cover in a row.  Now it is less fun.

Have fun with zombies.
Which class for Shepard? I'm tempted to replay ME1/2 on insanity as a vanguard soon.


Risen: Replaying to get achievements and try new things. It's great, I basically got to a whole new place with a ton of sidequests I couldn't do as a bandit last time. Including a really cool murder mystery quest.
The way classes work is that every character starts the same and has access to (almost) everything, but factions have small advantages:

- Only bandits can get level 10 axe/sword, other characters can only go up to 7. Bandits get the gamebest armor too.
- Members of the order can master staves instead.
- Only mages can learn magic. (and it's awesome)

Needless to say, members of the order are vastly inferior. OMG staves! They're supposed to be the dedicated scroll users (Scrolls are one-use magic), but they don't have a particular advantage related to that.


Older game:

Breath of Death 7



This was supposed to be some oldschool (Mostly Dragon Quest) RPG parody, on XBLA (/PSN?)
I didn't really want to buy this, but it only costed one buck.
Humour was really, really weak. The game is as funny as a T-Shirt with "Epic fail" written on it. I think I remember smiling once during the whole game, but that's it. Honestly, the less said about it, the better.

What was surprising was the gameplay, as there were a ton of neat additions to the regular turn based DQ formula. In fact, it felt about as far from DQ as it could be.

- HP is fully restored after every battle. Only a few MPs are restored, depending on how fast you killed the enemies. Normal attacks aren't enough to kill enemies, obviously
- Every levelup, you get to choose between two things. Do you want for example, +30 strength and +30 magic or +30 HP and MP? Big damage against one person or low damage spell against a group? 10 MP and 50% success rate, or 30 MP and 100% success rate for your espace spell? +1 hit to your regular physical attack, or a big stat boost? etc etc. A lot of those choices are very interesting and there's no way to change them.
- There's a combo meter that looks similar to FF13? Everytime you attack, the combo meter raises, you deal more damage, your status has a higher chance of working etc. Some skills reset the damage gauge (Finishers, or, unfortunately for the player, the better healing spells) Some multi hit attacks raise the gauge faster, but often do lower damage overall.
- Every enemy gets more powerful every turn.  This really forces you to be on your toes all the time, but unfortunately it kind of ruins defensive skills.
- There's a set number of random encounters in every dungeon. No random encounters afterwards (but you can still fight some to level up if you wish)
- Everything is insanely fast paced, there are difficulty setting and a score attack mode. (the lower your level, the better your score)

The gameplay is tight and demanding, like uh... Shadow Hearts 3's.
I think it's clear: Great game if you like RPG gameplay. Horrible if you don't.

[NotMiki]

You can sell it for cash money.

Jelton Plains have some caves you can spelunk into for random treasures, but they're mainly there as the route to Pyrix's home. If you feel like learning some new techniques, he's the best enemy in the game to practice against, since you don't die when he drops everybody's HP to 0.  Just keep an eye on your LP.

In order to unlock Pyrix early you have to do Mt. Scurve.  To unlock it go to the bar in Rosalia and talk to people.  You need Climb lvl. 3 to get to the top.  This is a good idea if you haven't done it already because you can get a decent helm you can sell later (or immediately) for lots of cash.

[Yakumo]

Sheik is as subtle as a sledgehammer on a replay, yet I remember being fooled completely when I first played the game. Hunh.

That's because Zelda had never had anything resembling a TWIST up until that point. If you weren't taking things at face value, you were doing it wrong. But yeah, ZELDA PLOT.

Someone hasn't played Link's Awakening.  But yeah, in general they aren't exactly trying to be subtle.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Vanguard has a pretty steep learning curve, as a lot of it is based on ping-ponging with charge to get in shotgun range and using it's shield heal to stay up. Doable but I wouldn't make my first playthrough as one an insanity game.

[Magetastic]

I'm playing through Insanity on ME2 as an Infiltrator. As long as the enemies don't get too close (which is near impossible thanks to the Cloak) I'm fine. Then again, I have a knack for a Sniping game, so it might be a bit different for me. Also, enemies on more than one or two sides just obliterates you, I find. (Thank you Ms. Thief's loyalty mission. *sigh*)

Also been playing Duodecim. Currently through both the 12th and 13th cycles, and doing the storebought story alternating with the labyrinth. I like what they did to the colloseum, feels more enjoyable when there's an actual endgoal, something to explore, scaling challenge, and different requirements for the fights than "beat up person x"

[Pyro]

Older game:
Breath of Death 7
I think it's clear: Great game if you like RPG gameplay. Horrible if you don't.

Cool. Now go play Cthulu Saves The World. $3 and more awesome RPG gameplay.

Trails in the Sky: Generally a fun game although it could benefit from faster combat. Enemies are starting to get a bit too easy, but I DID have one wipeout to a plant-monster that spams area damage/sleep right around itself... really my own fault for ganging everyone up on it and the game is VERY lenient about deaths... it allows you to restart from the beginning of the fight and the game's escape command is 100%.

[Cmdr_King]

Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days- So, Axel mode (from a fresh save, naturally) is a clear step up from Etna mode.  The level curve has fewer sudden jumps, there's considerably less serious business (and what's there is expanding on Axel's background, which is fine since it wasn't the focus of Disgaea 2 unlike Etna's serious business plot), and while there is some grind to it (lack of good special characters again), Axel himself is a good unit and there's more maps with good cash drops.  That said, the map design isn't quite as good as the main game's, with the occasional "uh let's just toss enemy boost x3 on here", though small maps mitigates this at least.  The penultimate map is also just... why.  Game Over and Encroach I get, and Invincible prevents you gaming the map, though there had to be a better way of doing that, but why No Lifting?  You can't even access that part of the map, and it gives you no recourse if the enemy does walk right past you (since it will, every enemy but the boss will head straight for the door Game Over area rather than attack you).  Beyond that, the writing felt tired as often as not; they really stuck with one note for most of the story, and don't really do a lot to amp things up as you go.

Improved, not really good, 6/10 range.  Not that it has any affect on Disgaea 2's overall score.

[MC50]

I finished Mana Khemia a couple years ago ago, and I liked it enough to pick up the first two Ar Tonelico games. I started the first one, but stopped playing it about halfway through, but I started them again recently and finished them both.

Just a warning that there might be some spoilers in here.

The first game is... alright. It's really easy to break, which is bad when the combat is as boring as it is. Also, the last phase of the game has way too much backtracking. There were also some systems I barely touched (enhancing your songs, outside of, like, putting reduced MP cost on everything), I'm sure there are some effective things you can do with it, but getting Lyner ridiculous ATK pretty much wrecked the game. Some parts were enjoyable, though! Aurica Route.

The second game is quite a bit better! It's still pretty easy, but the battle system is way more enjoyable. The hardest boss fight for me was Jacqli Robo, which is around the third boss fight! The final had a lot of status and I didn't have many status curing items, but still wasn't too bad. Characters were more likable then the first game, mostly because Croix is not Lyner. I ended up at level 56, final team was Croix--Luca, Shun--Third Reyvateil. The plot was understandable, and most of the characters were likable. Luca Route.

They weren't bad games! They don't exactly leave me jumping out to play the third one, but the second left a way better impression then the first.

[Rozalia]

Dynasty warriors - Finished all the storys and the Jin ending is pretty nice though I feel sorry for the three kingdom guys as it seems like after death the likes of Guan Yu, Zhang Liao spend their time in hell fighting each other. Yeah I'm sure its a visual thing but it sure looks like they're in hell fighting each other.

Jin Kingdom is one of the worst ideas ever however. Nobody on the Jin roster is actually part of Jin, they're all late era Wei officers mostly. I mean why would Xiahou Ba a Wei loyalist who fearing Sima Yi's power joined Shu to have them get rid of Sima be part of the Jin kingdom? Also the new characters for the most part are good choices such as Deng Ai though I don't agree with his design and the fact he kills people with armbars but some of the choices are terrible. To begin with they added in Guan Yu's fictional son which is bad in itself but then they feel the need to include said Fictional son's fictional wife too? What?

Also where is He Man the devil who shoots across the stars and who by the power of the way of peace has the POWER! For that matter where is Lu Kang, Sima Wang, Dong Tuna, Dong Chao and all the other great officers of the time.