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

[Shale]

Dammit, I don't have money for a new video card. Must become employed.

Dissidia Duodecim: Picked this up again on vacation with the DS still missing, beat the Labyrinth finally. Good lord, Demise takes forever. Oh well, got all four L100 labyrinth sets, now to smash Confessions of the Creator.

[hinode]

*Makes it to floor 98 of PotD*

Wait, no plot scenes? ... oh crap.

*withdraws to make sure*

*goes to Heim*

*Cutscene: Coda Episode II begins*

...

*slits wrist*

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

?

[hinode]

I have the restart Palace of the Dead/Hell's Gate from scratch to get Warren and continue this godforsaken postgame quest.

[Talaysen]

Disgaea 4 - There are damage projections.

Mind status: blown

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I have the restart Palace of the Dead/Hell's Gate from scratch to get Warren and continue this godforsaken postgame quest.

TO aftergame sounds like the spawn of suffering and disgust.

[hinode]

The World tarot system is pretty cool, letting you go back to various points in the game and make a different choice. There are some annoying quirks with the implementation, mostly when you get to chapter 4, but on the whole it's much more convenient than NG+ would be for a branching path game. You don't have to redo all of C1 and C2 to go from Chaos route to Netural for instance, just the last two fights in C2 Chaos.

It's just Coda episode 2 that is soulsuckingly tedious, since it forces you down a dungeon that's clearly designed exclusively for those Japanese gamers who want infinite grind sinks.

[Scar]

and yer reward? Two brand new level 1 characters!

WooooT!

[Yoshiken]

Been replaying DDS2 so that I can review it for TTA. It's.. surprisingly easier than I remembered, actually. It's amazing what prior knowledge does to this game. Earth spells are the most broken fucking thing ever - I'm currently in the Power Plant, and pretty much everything is just falling apart against it, even the few enemies here that aren't weak to it. It's a shame the boss I'm on immunes it, because I'm kinda struggling on that laser gate. >.> It doesn't help that I haven't been using Roland this time round, so I'm conveniently using everyone that the right gun can hit weakness on, and the left gun's Barrage is the most disgusting thing ever. Potentially 130 damage to an average 120 PCHP? Oh okay then.
But yeah, really enjoying this on a re-run. The gameplay is interesting - randoms have that right level of challenge and variety that makes them tolerable (at least, up until the Power Plant - fuck Alilats) while not being a dull grind - and I'm loving the plot. I'd totally forgotten about the Tribvhana stuff, for example, and that third fight against them is an absolutely amazing scene.
I never really noticed just how bad some of the graphics and animation could be until now, though. Some of the facial expressions are really odd, and attack animations look really awkward in some places - Argilla's is the best example, in that she attacks, then just stands facing the floor for a short moment until the enemy actually seems to get hit by it.

But yeah, on the whole, I'd forgotten how good this game was. <3

[Fenrir]

The horror of Argilla's breasts takes some time to creep in.

Bera is not a god. The real god who created the IU world is Yuno.
But Yuno got fed up wuth humanity and want to leave this behind, and he let the strongest human back then to take his post, who is Bera.
But Bera found himself got cheated. Instead of having sovereignty over human, he got locked up in the moon and force to be human's man servant for eternity.
The result is what we see in game, he tries to destroy the moon and replace human that were created by Yuno with his own creation.

I.Queen supposedly has a role in this too. But they cut her off as they couldn't find a place to fit her in.

Huh, interesting! I knew they cut a lot from this game.
Yuno isn't in the final version, the final boss just cryptically and casually mentions "i got uber power from her". Since his huge castle gave Seraphic Gate vibes I just assumed he was talking about I. Queen.
They still technically do call him a god though (and you get the deicide achievement from beating him) I guess it got to him.


Radiant Historia: beat the hell spider. I liked using Aht's traps against bosses
Lvl 32 Stocke, 28 Marco and 26 Spoiler. That seemed like an awful party for that boss. That MT attack kills Spoiler and badly injures everyone else.
Strategy: Spoiler lowers the boss' attack and raises Stocke's, trans turns to marco who Area Heals twice when the boss uses MT (which is all the time), then everybody trans turns to Stocke who spams Power Wave when given the chance.


Dungeon Siege 3: Really small game for Obsidian. It's short, graphics suck, story is mundane...
Great gameplay makes for one of the best couch co-op games on the 360 but I doubt it's a great singleplayer game. Fine by me really.
It controls like a standard hack and slash ARPG, but: There are no items of any kind and no healing spells (only health regen spells) Upon their death, enemies sometimes give either health or mana restoring orbs, but that's it. Using normal attacks raise MP by a huge amount. Characters have two stances, like shield+sword and 2Hsword, each with their unique spells. You can upgrade skills in different ways, etc...
It sounds great and the execution is not bad at all. There are a lot of canon fodder enemies to ensure that you don't feel challenged too much. (on normal at least) I went with the pyro girl.

[Fudozukushi]

This time on Record of Agarest War Zero.  Lose, deceit, and learning!

Last time I got rocked by a boss rush.  Yay.  This time I'll be rocked by a single boss!  Because there's only five battles between the last one and the next.  And the boss is... the REVENGE BROTHER who now has POWER!  Power enough to kick my ass pretty badly.  GAME OVER 2 goooo!  Alright, that wasn't even close, so I go and beef myself up a bit.  New sword for Eugene, giving Alice a group heal spell and using a bit of Part Points to increase stats a bit.  Attempt 2 goes, well almost good!  To the point where I actually had everyone alive at the end.  Yay!  After battle rewards show me that getting level 25 gets me the next Tier of Limit Break things.  Which for nearly double the cost in AP and straight double the cost in SP are there!  I've only seen two at this point, and they're probably not worth it.

After this we get some plot discussing how attempting to bargain with dark forces to save your own hide is a fantasy staple.  Or it's played straight whatever.

To the next ADVENTURE!  Where we learn that Sayane's bad sense of direction comes from her being ambidextrous.  Because it's not sprite mirroring at all.  And on that tangent, the graphics for this game are so schizophrenic.  The field graphics are PS2-quality, sprites the same, but the character portraits during talking segments have that simulated breathing effect which gives me a headache.

And to adventure!  Where I learn that the first boss in that rush has already become a normal enemy.  Giggity.  Wait, gigity is reserved for the Devil Tentacle enemy.  So, giggity there!  It's a kraken anyway.  At this point the game is finally breaking even with Enhance Points, instead of taking a dozen battles to upgrade the smallest thing, it now takes only two to upgrade something middling!  So, I clear up this dungeon, but by that time it was tv time, so I checked to see if the final event was a boss fight or just a normal event.  It's a boss fight.  Again the boss has more HP then everyone on my team combined and frankly almost more then my damage record.  Plus there's high-HP minions.  This'll be fun.

Oh right, there's also two of them at once.  FUN!  IT"LL BE FILLED WITH FAMILY FUN!

[Niu]

Disgaea 4 - There are damage projections.

Mind status: blown

What?? You played D4 and the first thing you talkee about is NOT sardines? Blasphemy! Have you no respect to his higness!?

Huh, interesting! I knew they cut a lot from this game.
Yuno isn't in the final version, the final boss just cryptically and casually mentions "i got uber power from her". Since his huge castle gave Seraphic Gate vibes I just assumed he was talking about I. Queen.
They still technically do call him a god though (and you get the deicide achievement from beating him) I guess it got to him.

Well, you are not wrong to guess on I.Queen. She supposedly participated in the mass. Just her related plot got cut even mroe than Yuno did.

[Dark Holy Elf]

So I decided to start a Four Job Fiesta playthrough of Wild Arms XF, inspired obviously by the FF5 thing. This is possibly a bad idea because

(a) XF more often expects you to use certain jobs to overcome obstacles, and
(b) XF is much harder.

But I've never turned down a crazy challenge before! So yeah, I can only use one job from each of the four unlock points. I'm also only using plot PCs this playthrough because I leaned so heavilly on generics last time. I decided TONY counts as legal to fill a slot. Because Tony is awesome.

Anyway, as my first job, I got Fantastica. No damage for me!

1-1 (road): Trivial.
1-2 (gatehouse): Formation Arts let me kill the boss. Fantasticas are actually really good at these (1.1x power before defence due to their L5 ability, 1.5x damage after defence due to their armour).
1-3 (Poliasha) [1 reset]: I try to fight this fairly and get annihilated, no shock. So I actually make use of Object Attack and run away exactly like you're supposed to.
1-4-A (prison stealth): Not much to say here.
1-4-B (prison rescue) [5 resets]: After trying and trying to win this with just Fantastica I eventually give up. Not reasonably doable with no way to blitz and no way to heal the villagers. I allow myself to use Dandelion Shot and things get easy, Rob Turn Slow Down Rob Turn Rob Turn on the boss.

1-5 (jelly blobs): I let myself use Elementalist so that this doesn't take years.
1-6 (Samille and El Jackson) [1 reset]: As above, since I want some sort of ranged attack for the cliff. I still lose once due to making an error and no revival and El Jackson being a big jerk. TONY is awesome here.
1-7-A (collapsing shrine): Pretty easy, go up the side with the Elementalists because they die quickly to bell physicals/formation arts.
1-7-B (Levin rescue) [5 resets]: Again, I don't think this is doable with just Fantastica. It's almost impossible for Levin to win with just four berries and mediocre damage. Maybe if I'd bought a lot of gems, but I'd saved between the last fight and this and couldn't shop. Eventually I give up and let myself use Elementalist.
1-8 (Magnus) [1 reset]: Careful, careful. Using nectars lets me not get destroyed by the boss but I still have to be careful since he hits pretty hard even to near-full VP.

At this point, I get my second tier of jobs! Obviously at this point I badly need more damage, so maybe I'll get Sentinel which provides it! Or Sacred Slayer and its amazing healing/utility! Or maybe Geomancer and its decent attack/durability! Nope. Excavator. I am getting trolled. I can haz mobility!

1-9-A (detector): Well at least I can do this map without cheating! Yay Excavator!
1-9-B (Mathis) [1 reset]: So. While I rag on excavator some, it does have one neat trick, Switch. Mathis is borderline indestructable due to 550 res and Hard status. However, Fantastica's Feeble Mind can drop his MP to, then Switch can kill him by switching his HP and MP. Yay! One reset as I get blitzed during setup by his speed.
1-10 (Rupert): Okay, last playthrough I mocked the hell out of this battle. It got back at me this time and I almost lost. I can kinda see why it's easy; if you don't hire generics you only have 3 PCs! Anyway, some strategy errors reduces me to soloing the last two enemies with Clarissa. Slow Down + Feeble Mind + Switch kills Rupert, who has no skillset for this fight.
1-11 (puzzles) [2 resets]: Excavator's a good choice for the puzzles anyway, though I do screw up and lose once. Against the fairylights at the end, I die once because they're so fast and my offence/durability is poor, especially split up. Play it more carefully not letting myself be swarmed and it's fine.
1-12 (paigeols): Rush, Slow Down, Feeble Mind to take out each paigeol one at a time, then Switch to kill them through their godly defences.

1-13 (rhinos): Combination Arts! Yay! Suddenly slingshots (excavator weapons) become useful due to being able to activate CAs at 5 range. Game-changer! Not too much to say about this battle, other than I surround and protect anyone who gets petrified, since I have no way to heal it, all my ranged options mean the gremalkins aren't too scary.

1-14 (town defence) [4 resets]: Well. Not only does this battle repeatedly kill me, but it takes a long time to do so as I'm able to slow the enemies somewhat but never totally stop them. Eventually I give up and use Elementalist, my usual bailout class! This gives me the offence I need to win. Though I still get one last reset. Slow Down really helps with buying time to kill the hateful Geomancers, good position helps blocks berserkers, Rush helps me get in position while doing useful things.

1-15 (zombie invasion) [1 reset]: Brutally long fight, I pack nectars for the first time since 1-8. The first few enemies get killed by Slow Down then combination arts, and are easy enough to take out one or two at a time, healing as necessary. Then comes the swarm of nine. On the winning run I camp on the cliff and systematically nuke the MP of the elementalists (the sentinels can't climb up), then kill them with Switch and take out the sentinels with slingshot combination arts. Highlight of the fight was using Switch on my own PCs to regain MP after I'd neutralised all HP damage threats.

1-16 (Black ARMs) [1 reset]: Tricky fight to control. Stronach can be baited into attacking PCs pretty easily but most of his men prefer to go after townsfolk who die in 3-4 hits. Like the more infamous prison fight there's a particularly frail old man and a sentinel who likes to go after him, so slowing her down is key. Still, lots of fronts to control, and I do almost lose until I realise I can heal each townperson once with Switch! Pretty awesome. It's not perfect due to 3 range but Rush does help. Anyway, close fight but it means chapter 1 is done!


***

I also started Blue Dragon. Not much to say so far, still early. Except that Shu is poised to break records for stupid RPG mains and that's not something I say lightly.

[VySaika]

When Tai was playing Blue Dragon and chatting with me about it, he felt the need to say "Shu shut up" so often he just started abbreviating it to SSU. Also MSU for Maromaru shut up, but not quite as often. So...you're probably not far off there. Have fun!

[Pyro]

Grief Syndrome: Because I am a fangirl.

A fun little game (very short) that mostly caters to fans of Madoka by having good sprites and attack animations. Spoilers of bosses/character combat styles abound obviously. The initial runthrough is rather trivial to be honest. You have lots of lives to lose to enemies, and a little experimentation yields some nasty character stategies.

Homura: Range is always good. Ranged explosive damage is even better. Being able to make a virtual walking wall of booming death is even better still! Yeah once you get the jump-cancelling thing it's just a matter of mashing buttons and watching the advancing wall of fire eat up anything and everything in the way. And for added benefit the arcing attack starts off behind her and so offers her some protection from backstabs. Time stop is a great special attack for either offense or defense. Freeze time, move out of a tight spot while laying down a barrage, laugh at enemy attempts to do harm. As the Lap # gets higher and the specials can be used more often, a whole wave of durable enemies can be nixed without ever risking harm. Nasty. She has the lowest number of lives, but who cares? On the higher laps she is probably the best PC. Owning Elly (one of the hardest bosses) for free is just icing.

Kyouko: Fun fun fun. The variety of chainable melee attacks combined with amazing damage means she can dance around the screen slaughtering enemies in rapid succession. Her special skill sucks quite horribly, although it can be moderately useful in a swarm situation on account of laying down a temporary shield so she can focus on one half of the wave. Downs aerial enemies with stupid ease via the downer slice special, and can control enemies that she doesn't just kill by her forward special slam. Surprisingly poor on high level runs due to needing to get up close and personal with increasingly OHKO-happy and durable enemies.

Madoka: Is kind of boring to play but stupid powerful. Her damage with charged shots clears normal enemy swarms with trivial ease, even on higher level runs. Her special is amazing at dealing damage to a small area around her for a short period of time, and deals TREMENDOUS damage to big bosses (which is 4/6). Good number of lives so she can take hits, but she really shouldn't be since she is a ranged fighter and doesn't have to risk getting close. Even if she does, her special can lock up enemies nearby her while giving her plenty of time to charge one of her arrows, which has the added bonus of flinging every single enemy it pierces all the way across the screen. Just... fairly uber. Only real weakness compared to Homura is dealing with Elly, I think. It's a small boss and the massive number of attacks from every direction that can't be dealt with via arrow spam makes it difficult.

Mami: TIRO FINALE. I guess she has other moves, but they suck and do crap damage, serving only to either get you through randoms or reposition enemies for TIRO FINALE. I think her best normal attack is one that blasts enemies away from her. Her best non-special damage is the charge attack that basically acts as Homura's regular instant-activation attack. The special itself is a little cumbersome and only to be used once enemies are in position. This can be a problem on the higher levels as it typically involves a lot of moving around close to enemies so she can blast them into corners for finale'ing.

Sayaka: Lots and lots of lives. Girl almost never dies, which I suppose fits canon pretty well. She is uber-short range and fairly fast in attacking. Not as good as Kyouko in that regard however, and the range is MUCH worse. She works quite well early on when her massive durability and rapid attacks can let her tear through enemies, but once they start getting durability and damage on higher level runs she is fairly screwed. She has to charge enemies to do damage, and they tend to have longer range than her with pretty much everything. If you're talking runs where enemies just kill you outright in a hit, then that massive number of lives gets eaten up pretty fast by swarms of enemies.

[Dhyerwolf]

I've wanted Marumaru to shut up more times than Shu and I only got about 5 minutes past where Marumaru shows up! So...just wait until you see him.

[NotMiki]

So today I beat Mountain of Faith Extra, and then beat UFO Normal.  Only took 3 and a half years of playin' Touhou to do it.

[Fudozukushi]

Hahahahaha, christ the bosses are going to be even harder then at first glance.  How the ell did they manage that?  You'll see.  or actually you won't since no one probably cares whoop whoop whoop.

[VySaika]

I've wanted Marumaru to shut up more times than Shu and I only got about 5 minutes past where Marumaru shows up! So...just wait until you see him.

According to Tai, Marumaru does in fact shut up somewhat later, while Shu just gets worse and worse. I'll be interested to see what Elf thinks of the cast come endgame. <_<;

[Clear Tranquil]

Hahahahaha 

Yeah I probably should have warned Tai about Shu before he started playing Blue Dragon. I remember being bothered by Shu too but I must have blocked out quite how bad it was. I only made it as far as Marumaru's village myself before my 360 exploded in self disgust (well no my hard drive/saves from my old 360 were corrupted in the process of trying to transfer everything to another 360 and as a result I lost all my Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata and SO4 saves ...  >_>)

Epic Battle Fantasy 3-

Saved after the Pyrohydra. For some reason this boss was waaay easier than the Kitten Ruins one. Superior equipment/skill levels and choices perhaps? I had three or four resets because of typical Epic mode enemy hax (like 12'000~ critical damages on a team with no character having that much HPs to start with =() and also because I wasn't prepared/ready when the boss starting summoning random enemies to the fight when two of it's heads went down (though I should have been, game has done this often enough already <_<) Other than that though I went to town with Fright/Cleaver and Kyun/Pulse abuse from Matt and Natalie with L4 Swordbreaker/L5 Darktooth (yaay Pulse counters) equipped vs the light/holy elemental head, then Cleaver and Kyun/Judgement abuse w/th L5 Heaven's Gate/L5 Seraphim equipped vs the dark elemental head. Lance contributed in general and for the fight overall with Ion abuse, Flare/Bind as needed and Unleash abuse on individual heads as required. He was equipped with Deep Blue L5 (yaay counters w/th random Flood abuse~) On the winning fight though between the MT Ion and random Pulse/Flood counters from Natalie the fire elemental head also lost a significant amount of HP while I was in the process of beating up the light and dark ones. Enter Lance's Shockwave for doing solid damage vs two heads at once. Shockwave is a skill that I don't remember using much though I wanted to but kept forgetting to do so. However it was put to good use here. At the end of the fight after the light head was down and the dark one had lost a lot of health I used Shockwave to keep the two remaining heads (dark and fire) within similar HP thresholds. Then once I judged each target's HP was low enough I used Matt's Cleaver to finish them both off at once in style. Yaay!~

Kitten Ruins boss on the other hand had me into double digit resets and I still haven't been able to figure out exactly why. Perhaps it had something to do with the kittens/invisible cat hax    I didn't find Natalie's Thunder based staff in the Ruins until after I'd already finally managed to defeat the boss though. Maybe that would have helped in making it easier if I'd found that staff earlier and not later while backtracking for stuffs

I've heard evil things about the final boss so I better be really prepared there too (tempted to use up all the stat boosting items I've been stockpiling/hoarding and also to blow all my cash on a lot of Hamburgers/Pizzas >_>)

(oh and while in the process of getting through/exploring the Volcano dungeon fun times were also had when Natalie did 40'000~ while hitting weakness with a Judgement critical and then shortly afterwards surpassed herself further by doing 80'000~ with the same while fully buffed off her light/holy boosting staff vs a debuffed light/holy weak enemy *dances* This game is fuun times when stuff like this happens >=)~)

[Fudozukushi]

One choice.  ONE GODDAMN CHOICE!

Goodbye liver.

[Grefter]

Coconuts and eggs?  Why didn't I think of that before.

Fucking hippo dicks are HUGE.

[Tide]

So I decided to start a Four Job Fiesta playthrough of Wild Arms XF, inspired obviously by the FF5 thing.

Have I mentioned that you are awesome and have given me a new idea to play with in XF? Who cares if its a bad idea?

[hinode]

FINALLY.

Second run through Palace of the Dead took less time than I thought it would - I went from floor 41 all the way down to 115 on Saturday alone (note that this is ~45 stages, not ~60). All those elemental weapons I'd crafted/accumulated were pretty overpowered, especially the light-elemental ones, so most of the fights were fast and easy. It's just the sheer number of them made things hopelessly dull and monotonous. I also took the time to make sure I got Winged Boots and Sidhe Shoes this time around, since I was aware of how many stages had steep vertical terrain/narrow platforms hanging in the middle of nothing/large fields of mold that bogged movement down to a halt. Incidentally, the exp from this dungeon is amazingly terrible. I started out with a full team of L35 classes. After essentially two runs to the bottom, I ended up with... level 37 classes, and about half of that exp came from the 3-4 plot battles. That's pathetic.

The lone geniunely difficult fight was the final one, floor 115, where I had two resets thanks to the game's infamous guest AI. GODDAMN IT WARREN, YOU ARE A SQUISHY WIZARD! STAY AWAY FROM THE BIG OGRE-LIKE BOSS GUY AND THE DOUBLE-DAGGER WIELDING DOPPLEGANGER AND CAST YOUR SPELLS FROM A DISTANCE!

Only six battles left in Coda, from what I've heard, so I'm pretty close to being done with this game. I might fiddle around some with of the classes I haven't used thus far in random battles, maybe get a few easy-to-get classes/monsters to finish out my class roster (Wicce and Divine Knight are out, though). I got Ji'ygla's Bow from floor 114, so maybe I'll level up to 41 to check out how overpowered the full set is.

[Fenrir]

Infinite Undiscovery Hard Mode Solo: Going to the castle in the earlygame.
This is not going to be a strict solo run since I'm trying to get the "Get everything" achievement (this allows me to know the game well so I can handle soloing on the much harder infinite mode later) But it's pretty damn close, I just remove all of my allies' equipment, spells and skills whenever I have to use them.
In the first village I buy ingredients to raise Aya's Cooking Level. (the game uses Item Creation)
Straight away I find a way to get infinite money (get two red berries, one blue berry, make 100% juice, sell and repeat) extremely fast. Just raising IC to a satisfactory level gives me enough money to buy 99 30% healing potions. The game is already broken and I don't even feel like I have done anything. I think I'm going to limit myself to 15 healing items of a kind at a time like I was playing some Tales game because right now the game isn't even trying. Bad Infinite Undiscovery.
I believe that my self imposed challenge will eventually need more letters than high end FFX challenges to be balanced.


Radiata Stories Radiant Historia: Chapter 6 already. Uber plot boss from the beginning of the game (and his blue clone) was a wimp.
I LOVED the "Marco goes crazy and kills everyone" bad ending. Marco? Really? Marco


Dungeon Siege 3: Lvl 22, in the industrial city. Still a blast to play, but the storyline is really boring for Obsidian. (save for the passive aggressive robots in the industrial city)
My character is now a FF dragoon, and surprisingly this means she actually does a ton of damage!