Glad to see more people are playing Order of Ecclesia. I'd be totally down for a sequel to that, too. Best combat and play control of the series, and great weapon balance. (Only Hasta / Culter / Arceus really felt truly terrible.) I like mixing up the usual castle environments of Castlevania with lots of outdoor ones, too. Pretty much agree with Elf's take on the elements and the glyphs; I think I used the Falcis line more, to the end of the game, pretty much. Secare / Confodore absolutely had their place if you can get in close, but Falcis does enough damage from a safe distance that you're still 1-2HKOing a lot of enemies and doing it safely. Also agree that Magnes was great fun, and wish that I didn't feel bad setting that as a "movement" option rather than a stat boost / summon. Luckily it seems that the designers of Harmony of Dissonance agreed, as Shanoa has perma-Magnes there. It's great fun dodging Beelzebub's flies and moving in to rapier spam him with Magnes.
Speaking of which, games. Probably behind on this.... though not by THAT much, been doing a lot of reading in the subway.
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow Julius mode replay: Fun and fast. Stuck on Death at the moment, forgot that he's pretty badass in DoS.
* Bat Company: Still pretty tough, especially if done early. Gave up trying to mess with Yoko / Al against him after a few deaths and just used Julius, who can double jump kick / slide to safety as well as toss axes.
* Gergoth: Great fun, fight even if not THAT difficult. Totally a Julius boss, so used Yoko this playthrough and still won due to dodging his pattern well.
* Speedy time-stopping knife dude: Another fun fight that I know his pattern too well now. Could use pretty much whoever, even Alucard.
* Mirror dude: Totally slew me easily the first time I tried, left because memorizing patterns / careful Bat placement is screw you, came back after Dario2 and killed him before he ever hopped back in the mirror again with Ice spam from Yoko. Uhh that's one way to do it.
* Dario2: Tried solo-Julius on him this time. Was easier to dodge than I recall, Julius worked fine. (Easy way is to hit his weak point for massive damage with Yoko Ice of course.) Fun, but no I'm not going to try and Alucard him out if I ever do this a third time.
* Death: Ow ow ow. Very much a "don't get hit" boss. Not that amazingly hard to dodge but you lose life fast when you screw up.
New Super Mario Bros. DS: So I chased around a tiny Bowser, then fought him and a big Bowser, and I beat up the small Bowser, but then Bowser hit me and I got small, then I ate a mega mushroom and got big and jumped on Bowser, true story.
Vaguely amused that it really is the Princess in each castle, but she's just moved to the next fallback castle every single time rather than having her buddies everywhere with "But our Princess is in another castle!" Or transformed Kings, etc.
Castlevania: Harmony of Despair PS3: Running this with super / Ephraim / Xeroma mostly, and occasionally AndrewRogue / Namagomi. Maining Shanoa, backup is Alucard. Great fun, though I definitely recommend getting a big group and doing it together if possible - all your drops are shared across one account, so even picking an off-character means you can potentially uber yourself for earlier stages. Definitely more fun to suffer through the early stages together with others doing it for the first time as well, which isn't likely online where you have crazy people who grind drops. We're getting close to being done, though - we've beaten Chapters 1-6 Hard as well as Chapter 8 Hard. Astarte on Chapter 7 Hard has uncanny luck like forcing disconnects of Eph / Me whenever we fight her, and she's pretty badass anyway.
Shanoa is just a ton of fun to control, especially when Magnes points are available for fighting. Fulgur (Lightning) is her safest option and still does good damage despite being homing. Ignis, if all three bolts connect, is her best damage. Don't use Nitesco / Grando that often, although they have their place. Nitesco can block vision so it's not entirely safe, and Grando is the best damage option at long range, but is much less likely to hit than Fulgur.
Alucard... eh. Apparently Internetz hype is that he sucks, which I can see for those who grind a lot - Alucard is entirely equipment drops based. It does mean he's really fast to get up to speed at least. Unfortunately the damage is just not that great in general. He does have one trick, though... Jewel Knuckles style weapons, like in SOTN, have an *insanely* fast attack rate. Actually even better than SOTN's. So Alucard is all about sneaking next to an enemy then rapidly punching them out. This is downright good vs. bosses that stay on the ground, too (So Chap 1/4/6/7*). In fact he's downright better than Shanoa vs. Dracula - Drac has a "charm females" attack, and Alucard punches out Form 2 frighteningly fast. (The giant demon from the SOTN prologue Richter fight.) Pretty much solo'd Form 2 on our Hard Mode Chap 6 playthrough, actually. Chap 7, Astarte, Alucard theoretically has the same punch spam... except then he falls prey to Astarte's "charm males" attack.
Still arguably better than Shanoa, who is stuck with Nitesco as the only thing that causes any damage to the elemental-resistant Astarte, and Nitesco blocks the view of her next move.
King Arthur Collection: Tried like 15 minutes of this when I was in the mood for a strat game, had picked it up for 5 bucks on Steam awhile back. Utterly non-impressed, though, the combat system feels like Total War if nothing happened. Dudes stand next to each other and fight, slowly, to the death. No dramatic morale breaking cavalry charges or the like. I guess there's supposed to be spells & stuff flying around the battlefield later to make it interesting, but meh.
Cthulhu Saves The World: Just started. Challenge level is pretty good on hard. Sense of humor is... very... yeah, feels like a fan-made game still. Oh well! Wish it was more "let's take Silly Cthulhu and make a classic JRPG" rather than "let's take a classic JRPG and apply a dab of Cthulhu names." Seek out the (monster infested) Shrine of Heroes 'cause that's what heroes do? Yeah, that's a Dragon Quest IIIesque plot pretty much. We'll see, I suppose.
Ghost Trick: Just started this recently. Okay, the game explicitly introduces the note then is like "whoa no time to read it," fine. An excuse blatantly created to stretch out plot revelations, but fine. However... what does my body look like?! I want to investigate my death, right? Let's do some elementary forensics here, starting with "is there a giant bloody mess in my chest like a shotgun shell exploded there." There sure doesn't look like there's any such wound, but maybe this is artistic license to not amp the game's rating up? I'd at least like some comment from Our Hero, who even possessed his own body briefly. This will make me want to throw a penalty flag later if they try to pull some "twist" with my method of death.
Otherwise, hurray, totally arbitrary rules about what can and can't be possessed - or which handle allows me to possess things - means that gameplay exists that involves tormenting random dudes so that the can-be-possessed objects get moved close together while I ignore the similar looking nonliving objects that can't be possessed, um, 'cause. Cool! I'll take it.
