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

[hinode]

Tactics Ogre: Okay, I need to find a way to get my troops past Ravness without her blockading the way with Rampart Aura and raping all my mage units because they don't have the jump to travel via the righthand-side of the map. I could use some tips here.

Edit: Nevermind. Ended up beating that stage by having two Knightsblockade the staircase, keeping all my mages back, and slooowly wait on the melee enemies to approach the bottom of the map while I sent the archers up the rightside. Not sure if Rampart Aura was actually doing what I wanted it to, but having extra tanky healers never hurts in an ugly slugfest.

[Cmdr_King]

If you have an Xbox, there's no reason not to scrounge up $15 for this game.  Also coming to Steam August 16th.  LOL if you bought a PS3.

Unless you're me and have an XBox but can't use XBLA.  Which is why I plan to get the game on Steam.  I hear very good things.

[Grefter]

Etrian Odyssey - Okay I don't think this game can make up its mind.  The first few levels are amazingly brutal and the game does some neat kind of unique things with getting you to run away from FOEs and having a boss that it is best to kite away from his adds so that you divide and conquer. 

The next segment of the game gives you a quest that is pretty much "Okay grind up to level 30 now" on a level with a healing point.  The maps have amazing shortcuts so you can kind of rush through the whole stratum with impunity.  The randoms are far less threatening due to expanded skillset, FOEs are pretty much just speed bumps compared to previous stratum's (like there is randoms that were more threatening on B4 than the FOEs are here) and the final boss is off in a room by himself.

Not that I mind, it is just a strange shift.

Also Thor is just fucking mean when fighting Cernunos.  Oh a boss that summons enemies.  Okay MT Lightning spell OHKOs them and hits his weakness.  Slow clap deserved there.  I shouldn't have bothered Immunising or Defendering and just gone for attack buffs.

Edit - This means nothing of course.  It just means that the optimal builds you see floating around Gamefaqs are pretty fucking amazing for what the game has to throw at you.

[Twilkitri]

Tales Of Phantasia (Advance) - Finished

So I had been looking forward to kangaroo-related hilarity but that only actually shows up once in the game. Tsk. There is a fair amount of off translationing going on (sometimes it seems like lines were translated completely absent from the context they were going to be used in), but on the whole it reads reasonably well enough.

Battle system is not as bad as I seemed to remember it being from the SNES one, but still pretty annoying. Most annoying things offhand include: Up+attack at further than extreme close range to the enemy doing a jumping straight up attack, which I don't remember ever being useful at this range, rather than closing distance and doing an upswing as I had undoubtedly been intending; automatic dash back to starting position kicking in at the least opportune times and almost never being useful anyway (aside from that it results in your party still considering you to be standing back over there and they don't meander over, but you could put them on Stay mode anyway. Will grant that that would be horribly annoying to have to do all the time though); that you can move through other enemies during auto-move if you shift the target to an enemy behind them, but you can't move through them youself if moving manually.

Some of these may be fixable with particular items equipped - I didn't bother trying with the Technical Ring or so on, and even then the Technical Ring is gotten ludicrously late - but that means the situation is worse.

Also, unless I missed something, not being able to turn the whole party around without shifting everyone around in the formation (and then you need to put them all back afterwards).

Game crashed a couple of times and I was afraid that it was going to kill my save like BoF1GBA but it didn't, thankfully.

Suzu is garbage (although to be fair I only ever had her in the active party before she got any passable weaponary or most of her other skills).


Did a couple missions in Let's Go Arche but the whole gameplay concept there doesn't seem that interesting to me so I decided not to bother with it.

[Talaysen]

Yeah Etrian Odyssey games aren't really all that hard once you figure out how to break them.

---

Catherine - Blitzed through this pretty much.  The gameplay bugged me and it took me awhile to figure out why.  The game puts too much emphasis on speed and reflexes and not enough on solving puzzles.  There are a few places where the focus is on puzzles but they are pretty rare.  The plot's interesting at least.

Anyway, probably a low 5/10 overall.

Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - Finally got around to finishing this too.  Don't think I'm going to bother playing the entire game again for other endings because the gameplay really isn't that good.  Oh well.

Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls - Grim Circlet quest is stupid.  Game's pretty fun but I've spent so much time trying to get the stupid Grim Circlets to drop and it's getting really frustrating.

[Luther Lansfeld]

FFT - "Man, I've played LFT, that game is not bad challenge-wise if you don't powerlevel like a bitch, I'm sure Balk 2 will be no prob- OW OH MY GOD DID THAT TIAMAT JUST HIT ME FOR 300 TWICE?!"

And naturally, buying equipment to block these elements would take having foresight or something, which would just be dumb.

[Sierra]

Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden: Putting off playing some longer games, figured I'd hit something short that'd been waiting a while. I'm kind of surprised I don't remember this being more of a thing here, because mechanically it's very much a DL sort of game. Evadable random encounters, CTB with a speed stat that actually matters, everyone has their own unique inputs so it's never just mash attack to win, and heck, they lifted the combat menu right from Wild ARMs. The only real problem is that it's just so easy (which I guess you could alleviate somewhat by dodging randoms; I fight everything).

Of course, that's not really why anyone plays it anyway. They play it because it's Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden: Part 1 of the Hoopz Barkley Saga, and has all the insanity those three subtitles would suggest. This game treats Space Jam as a pivotal event in human history. Normally anything so obviously ridiculous isn't my style, but the fact that no one told the cast how ludicrous their world was and the characters treat everything with deadly seriousness makes it funny enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome (it's only in the 4-6 hour range anyway). It also made me realize I like Eternity a lot more when it's in an actual game.

I could never decide how much of the savepoint messages was trolling and how much was genuine. Some of it has to be for real because they have to be some degree of JRPG fanboy to even know what Growlanser is and yeah, again, combat menu lifted straight from Wild ARMs.

[hinode]

Tactics Ogre: Up the middle of chapter 3. It took me a while to get going despite having the game for quite a while now, because I wanted to research the system beforehand and found the sheer quantity of skills/spells/equipment overwhelming at first. It took several days of research before I got fully comfortable with my long term planning.

Thoughts on classes so far:

Knight: Tanky healer who can heal almost as good as a Cleric since healing magic is stat-indepedent. Great anytime the game gets rough, which happens pretty often. I made Denam a Knight to help ensure that he stays alive at all times. Also ended up converting my initial Cleric into a second Knight since it buffed up her durability massively while still letting her heal HP just fine.

Warrior: Solid filler units. Lack of anything long range if you don't use a crossbow kinda sucks, but Mighty Impact keeps them relevant.

Archer: The range on bows in this game is completely absurd, and the damage's not bad either. Even with low base movement they're dominant on assassination missions, making the hard ones bearable and the easy ones a total joke. Using two right now, quite possibly the only two generics I'll be using consistently by endgame.

Vartan (Canopus): See above, plus flight and 5 base move. Well, I ended up trying out Crossbows with him, since I heard they had really good finishers. The AOE on the first one is indeed pretty nice, but I don't think it was worth giving up his starting L2 Bow with its immediate, if less useful, finisher. MVP by far until I got Ninja levelled up, and has a good chance of retaining that title for the full game.

Wizard: Magic can hit a lot of physical enemies really hard, even ones who barely get scratched by weapons. That's more than enough to justify a deploy slot, though the frailty can be troublesome at times.

Cleric: Healing magic being stat-independent hurts their value quite a bit, as Knight and Rune Fencer can handle HP healing just fine. That leaves their niche as... status healing, Exorcism, and the occasional Major Heal. That's enough to merit a single roster slot from me, but no more.

Rune Fencer: Not impressed so far. It's a Red Mage-type class who's kinda lousy at everything except healing, which is passable. I've got Ravness now, so we'll see if her pumped up stats can make it more impressive. If not, I'll switch her over to Ninja.

Ninja: Getting it mostly caught up in levels was a pain, given that most random battles have very limited deploy slots (making it harder to compensate for a useless low levelled PC) and/or monsters who take way too little damage for me to bother grinding against. The payoff, though, was well worth it: amazing damage output, good speed and movement. The fact that they don't need finishers at all means I can switch unique PCs over to Ninja and benefit from their high stats/RT/starting skills and not have to worry about low weapon levels.

[NotMiki]

Mana Khemia - I am playing this.  I must say I am impressed and surprised by the depth of combat and overall level of difficulty.  Bosses, in particular.  Nice to see a game that gives you tons of superpowerful options, then sets the game's difficulty to a level where you actually need to use them.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The save pump rants are harvested from some of the finest forum posters they could find: I don't believe they wrote them.

Also that battle menu is clearly from Estopolis (Lufia, if you are a BAKA GAIJIN). If you would spend less time playing your Call of Duty and eating burritos maybe you could manage to learn that.

[Cmdr_King]

Wow, wait.  Nerds hate on burritos now?  Goddammit internet nerds, you're making the rest of us look bad.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Wow, wait.  Nerds hate on burritos now?  Goddammit internet nerds, you're making the rest of us look bad.

One of the fuel pumps hates on them because INFERIOR WESTERN AUDIENCES do not realize that Pocky is the ultimate gaming snack.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Well, Pocky is a far superior as a gaming snack to burritos. Far less messy.

Certainly not down with burrito hate in general, though.

[DomaDragoon]

Fajitas > Burritos. Of course, both > tacos.

Been playing a bunch of emulation stuff for the heck of it. The fast forward on VBA goes at about 10000%. Cool.

[Cmdr_King]

Fajitas have their advantages but most places serve them on hotplates which  completely overcook the tasty meats within.  A burrito is basically an infinitely flexible delivery system for any combination of meats, beans, peppers, and sauces, and comes in any size necessary for the occasion.

Though yes, not suitable for consumption near electronics.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Well, Pocky is a far superior as a gaming snack to burritos. Far less messy.

Certainly not down with burrito hate in general, though.

Man, fuck that. You know how many Pockys you'd have to eat to equal one good sized burrito? Like thirty.

This is ridiculous anyway; the best gaming food is whiskey- one handed, self-contained, gets you drunk:

[Dark Holy Elf]

Well yeah, that's why you don't try to make a meal out of Pocky. I'm just also not interested in eating meals, especially gooey ones, near electronics.

FFT - Finished the replay of this, it's awesome, you know this.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Seems fun enough. Combat is a bit improved from SotN but still could certainly be better. Otherwise the game is... a lot like SotN. Worse music I guess. We'll see.

FF13 - Chapter 6 now. Game continues to be pretty solid on most fronts.

[Cotigo]

NEB is not a man who takes risks, I see.

[Xeroma]

games

Play VVVVVV.

I've been playing a lot of things lately. Been focusing on Touhou a lot, making big progress and improvements at general Danmaku-ery.

[Cotigo]

Oh yeah that reminds me, I've played videogames recently haven't I.

Edgeworth Investigations - Won't say too much about it.  It was a good game.  Felt like many things were an improvement over previous games (the logic system was neat, and I felt that most of the puzzles were easily solved without an FAQ.  There was... one bit in Chapter 3 that I had to tardguess and reset my way through but I don't recall what it was, and Chapter 5 had a couple moments that weren't head-desk worthy because the puzzle was hard to figure out, but because depending on how you looked at it there was technically more than one answer.  Still, it's a definite improvement over PW3, which as I recall I got fed up with enough of the puzzles that eventually I just started FAQing my way through the game.

VVVVVV - Neat little platformer.  Beat it, got all the shinies.  Certainly worth the dollar or whatever I paid for it during the Steam sale.  Also, $%@# getting those two shiny trinkets in the Space Station part 2.  If you've played the game you know exactly what I mean.

[Meeplelard]

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Seems fun enough. Combat is a bit improved from SotN but still could certainly be better. Otherwise the game is... a lot like SotN. Worse music I guess. We'll see.

Wait, you mean you actually started this game without me pestering you constantly about it?  Let alone within only 2 months as opposed to 10?

...who are you and what have you done with Elfboy!?


On a different note...

Lost Odyssey: So Disc 4 kicks in and basically, its side quest mode time!  Well, basic ones like "run around town doing odd jobs to get random items" but hey, I got me a better sword and a nice Gaia Ring, so that's something.  Also learned that no matter how generic the item in the Auction House is, they are all one shot items gotten from areas that you can't revisit.  This has to be like the most awesome thing ever in a video game.  Permanently always suck in jRPGs, so having a fail safe for them to allow you to get the items is just awesome.  Yes, I know there's still a few exceptions, but they're easy to find such that simple exploration beyond doing the VERY BARE MINIMUM to get through the game will get you them.

Also, nice to learn that Double SP relates to the entire battle, not just the character that has it equipped; makes skill slot manipulation that much easier!  And skill+3 and skill+5 stacking = ^_^

[NotMiki]

I've been playing a lot of things lately. Been focusing on Touhou a lot, making big progress and improvements at general Danmaku-ery.

I've been focusing on all the Touhou games Xer's not playing <_<

[DjinnAndTonic]

Catherine: Great Movie, would watch again. I especially liked the parts where it pretended to be a game.
In all seriousness, I found the twitch-reflex puzzle parts to be pretty exciting on the harder difficulty levels, but it gets old/frustrating after a while. Notably, the Rapunzel mini-game was the same idea, but without a time limit and I found it much less enjoyable.
I -really- enjoyed the plot and it should be applauded for taking the subject of a sexual relationship seriously without devolving into porn. The Order Path was pretty intriguing and I can't wait to play the Freedom Path. The only real issue is that the game LOVES symbolism and has no idea how to be subtle about it. Catherine strikes me as Persona 4 if the creators were like "You know, I just don't think the symbolism in P4 was OBVIOUS enough. Let's fix that." I really dug the voicework, too. Particularly Orlando.

Plants vs Zombies: Now that I have played this, I have been reminded how much I love Tower Defense games.. and I want to play ALL of them now. Every Tower Defense game. Ever.

Lost in Shadow: Very stylish game. And that's it. It left no lasting impression other than "ooh, how novel and pretty."

Elebits: I hated this game.

Team Fortress 2: Well, I gave it a shot since it's all free now... it turns out that FPSes still aren't my thing. Though I can definitely see how it's enjoyable. Game seems well-balanced.

Okami: I tried multiple times to play this game, but something always got in the way and other games were played instead. In fact, every game besides Catherine on this list is the result of my attempting to play Okami at Meeple's suggestion.

[AndrewRogue]

Mana Khemia - I am playing this.  I must say I am impressed and surprised by the depth of combat and overall level of difficulty.  Bosses, in particular.  Nice to see a game that gives you tons of superpowerful options, then sets the game's difficulty to a level where you actually need to use them.

This is way belated, but what part of Mana Khemia is proving hard?

[Meeplelard]

Lost Odyssey: ...right, I'm suppose to be doing the Eastern Ruins now, aren't I?  Well, looks like I should start doing that!

*gets about half way, calls it quits*


This was after more arbitrary side questing mind!