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

[SnowFire]

Finished up Ghost Trick.  Great game.  Play it.

The game is on the easy side in general, just because there are only so many things you can do.  I'd have liked it if there was a "Hard" mode where you get a ton of unhelpful red herring actions you could perform with various objects to make it feel more rewarding to figure out a solution, rather than "I tricked every object I could and moved through all of them and won."  However the puzzles were *cool* even if easy, so I don't care that much.

Plot, characters, and dialogue remain the selling points, of course.  Unlike DHE I liked pretty much the whole game.  Think they struck the right balance between seriousness and the necessary ludicrousness required to set up some of the puzzles and freak deaths.  (Energy restrictions, bro.  Can only keep 2/3 of the spotlights on at once, them's the rules.)  I also liked how they kept doing...  hmm, don't think there's a term for this, but "additive" plot twists.  It's not the same question of "Who shot me" with updated guesses; the plot keeps moving with revelations that build on previous ones yet change the interpretation of events we've already seen.

I didn't quite guess the main plot twist, though I was in the general vicinity at least. Lynne believing she was Cabanela at first was a nice warning that you can't trust your initial impressions of who you are.  So I was definitely prepped for that possibility.  I also seriously considered the non-human angle considering just how utterly clueless Sissel is about the world and Missile's existence as a useful ghost, but couldn't figure out who it'd apply to, so discarded that.  Oops, although one minor plot oddity is that Yomiel is able to move Sissel's dead body - plausible, sure, he builds his own body out of spare parts later and can certainly manipulate his own dead body along with random other stuff, but definitely put me off the scent since that spoiler was 'alive'.  Although I really should have recognized that the spoiler popped out of the same bag that Yomiel had been carrying.  Anyway, I was not really expecting the redemption of Yomiel, but I did think that the big time travel reset everything would be to 5 years ago to save Alma after how much the murder machine device got hyped.  My guess was also that Sissel was Alma, since she always appeared silhouetted - super suspicious whenever this happens.  Nice red herring, at least, since she appeared to be the main dead character "unaccounted for" and might have died close enough to Yomiel's presence...  for all that there'd then have to be some explanation for what happened in the intervening 5 years.

In the minor nits department, how old is Kamila anyway?!  She's a roommate with a rookie police detective so I assumed that she was of a similar age - 21 or so - and just short.  Plus, she's asked to come over to the Chicken Kitchen at 10:00 PM, which presumes a driver's license in most settings.  But the game seems to act like she's way younger than that.  On the same note, I find it hard to believe that Lynne didn't know about the murder machine.  She was investigating Jowd's case, right?  She should be intimately familiar with the scene of the crime, since Jowd claims he only swapped out the gun.  I guess you can argue her memory was still screwed up from being dead for a brief time, but it turns out that everyone actually seems to have their entire memory restored on being alive again - it was just Yomiel that explains why her memory was fuzzy of earlier.  Also, not really a nit, but amusing that the blue-skinned country wanted to kill Lynne for knowing too much.  She didn't even know that Yomiel was killed by Temski!  They'd have been fine, no need to have assassins taking potshots right next to police vans.

No surprises as to my favorite part of the game.  The Yomiel vs. Cabanela reveal, of course.  Badass.  I loved that the puzzles were to save their lives without Yomiel noticing, as well, since he'd just kill them in a different fashion anyway if he knew.  If anything I was hoping to have to go up against him again as the game went on, not that I'm complaining about the betrayal->redemption plot path he ended up on, just because it was a delicious twist on the game's system.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Blue Dragon - Thank heavens, the game is actually trying. I'm at the final dungeon (?). Beat some badass T-rex boss who has EYE LASERS because why not. Also is about 4x average speed. I decided to give all sidequests the finger because the game needed to get some challenge somewhere, and yeah, as a result the final dungeon is a big step up! Level ~36 right now.

[Fudozukushi]

Dark Souls: Plot so good you have to work your ass off not to find it.

I finally got O+S summons woop woop!  Sure they're at 3:00 AM!  And the first was getting summoned into a NG+, but summons!  Except there were invaders!  And the first one was a big jerk spewing toxin!  And the second one literally lucked out and killed the host while he was on his last shred of HP and the boss door was right there!  And some weird crystal/ice sorcery neither I nor the other have seen!

[Yoshiken]

how old is Kamila anyway?!  She's a roommate with a rookie police detective so I assumed that she was of a similar age - 21 or so - and just short.  Plus, she's asked to come over to the Chicken Kitchen at 10:00 PM, which presumes a driver's license in most settings.  But the game seems to act like she's way younger than that.

She's pretty young, yeah. The only reason she's living with Lynne is because of Jowd's arrest - given Lynne's trust of Jowd, she obviously refused to let Kamila just get taken away and offered to look after her instead or something. Plus, she quite clearly couldn't have been driving to the Chicken Kitchen, since she was walking through the park to get there. It just seems that Lynne needed Kamila to go there more than she could worry herself over potential danger at that stage.

On the same note, I find it hard to believe that Lynne didn't know about the murder machine.  She was investigating Jowd's case, right?  She should be intimately familiar with the scene of the crime, since Jowd claims he only swapped out the gun.

She was looking into the case, although it's not clear quite how much she knew. Given that almost everyone involved apparently thought Jowd was responsible for the shooting, it's possible that Lynne didn't know the information that only Cabanela and the pigeon-guy knew.

The Yomiel vs. Cabanela reveal, of course.  Badass.  I loved that the puzzles were to save their lives without Yomiel noticing, as well, since he'd just kill them in a different fashion anyway if he knew.  If anything I was hoping to have to go up against him again as the game went on, not that I'm complaining about the betrayal->redemption plot path he ended up on, just because it was a delicious twist on the game's system.

I absolutely loved how they played that as though Cabanela were a villain, which was something I thought they'd pull for ages, and then quickly turned that around again. Also, hunh, how does Yomiel react if he sees things moving? I never got that loss, although I did take Cabanela out with a bowler hat~

Oh, yeah, I play games too. Practically finished FFX. (Reached BFA, can't be bothered to grind so his sword slice isn't OHKOing Tidus/Yuna/Rikku.) The less I say about this game, the better for everyone here.

[Luther Lansfeld]

FF7 - Complete! Will blather more about it later when I don't have an exam to study for.

[Random Consonant]

SRWZ - cool upgrade you got there Setsuko

[Cmdr_King]

"who did nothing when my mother and I were callously dishonored!!!"

"Why do you cry, Jilia?  That person wasn't your father"

So I guess Luca does (rather obliquely) refer to what happened with his mother.  Unexpected.

[Clear Tranquil]

Yaay Ciatos~

Thanks NEB, Meeple. After talking it over with Tai some and NEB's latest post sounding promising with regards to challenge I've decided to do a solo character run if I do play (which might be after I'm finished with Radiant Historia and DMC3 but Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and Tactics Ogre are also options so) Tai suggested Jiro (since Kluke isn't always available or something) =)

Devil May Cry 3-

Mission 5. Played around with Trickster L2 and Air Hike vs the flying blood demon bat things at the start. Dashing up surfaces, around in different directions and hiking up high to blast the demons with mah guns from a far was fun ^_^ Having great fun with the game in general so far really though Mission 3/Cerberus was a bit frustrating. Game picked up after that though as I started to get a grasp on the mechanics of stuffs =) Gigapide in particular was some nice stress relief after the previous boss. Ironic as the Cerberus weapon itself hurts Gigapede badly (and is also great fun for doing spinning ice wheel things with!)~

Seriously I really like the Cerberus weapon though. Probably because of my affinity with the ice element/ice elemental stuffs/characters but yeah. Going to play around more with the game later. Didn't save after getting Air Hike/defeating those blood demons because there's other stuff I want to try and I didn't have much time to play this morning~

[Fenrir]

Hmm, Blue Dragon Hard Mode Solo first time through... Tempting...


Dark Souls: My extreme sorceror has 7 or 8 spell slots, 50 int and base other stats. I'm starting to raise his vitality because he can't take hits from anything.
I've finished Anor Londo and am trying to beat the four kings to get spoiler covenant. This is not working well, so I'm doing everything else I can right now, like the painting, Ash lake, Ceaseless Discharge, etc etc.

Playing as a sorceror is about as difficult as playing as a melee character, except he overkills most bosses. Smough and Orstein were so easy! A lot of regular enemies are pretty difficult to take down, but the invisibility spell really helps getting past them.




I've tried protecting the forest from other people with the cat ring, and haven't won even once. So far, sorcery is awful in PVP. Every spell is easy as hell to dodge. I can have a pretty badass enchanted weapon but that's about it.

I've also invaded another player and used the chameleon spell to turn into a giant moving urn. Such a cunning plan, but the urn is seriously slow. That other player disconnected before I could get to him :/ We'll see how this goes once I get unlimited invasions, world! Muhuhahahah!

[Captain K.]

Try turning into a tree while protecting the forest.

[Fudozukushi]

Dark Souls: The waiting game has never been so oily.

So, as I wait for the patch to hit and make scaling(and thus the Dragon Slayer Spear) useful, I have instead decided to do another new character!  Instead of doing something productive like cut through all the bullshit stalling last week's ~magic~.

Meet Bobstein, Ornstein's third cousin twice removed.  A pyromancer by trade, the poor boy just does not have any talent at all for leveling up.  Poor Bobstein will be stuck at Soul Level 1 the entire game/until I get tired of him.  Poor Bobby was actually out to quite the odd start, as he saw the big white door in the watchtower and got scared.  So he went through another door, which led to someplace even scarier!  But his lucky club and running like a madman got him safetly to a little bonfire in the Undead Parish.  Seeing a blacksmith, Bobby thought it would be neat if he had something to reinforce.  But poor Bobby never had a Hollow Soldier's shield drop.  So instead he went and met Mister Rickit and bought himself some shiny spells!  And after killing some nasty ghosts and getting a super-special soul, he suddenly decided to go take a swim in some putrid water.  Oh Bobby.  But don't worry, some homeward bones will save him!

So after his delightful trip down super-drown-lane, bobby was feeling bold!  But bobby being bold was a bad idea, as the big old boar felt like ignoring Bobby's shiny new Hollow Soldier's Shield!  Well, Bobstein gritted his awkward teeth and CHARGED in and burned that sucker down.  Then went and killed three Black Knights.  And Havel too for good measure!  It sure was tough beating on that rocky armor with just a simple spiked club, but boy was it worth it!

[Captain K.]

One of the top ten pvpers (on Xbox version anyway) is a level 1 pyromancer.

As for myself, I finally got to O+S.  The part with the archers was pretty cheap of the game.  Whereas the rest of the game felt like you could outthink it, that just was a slogfest.  Luckily once you do get past it, the rest of the level is cake.

Tried four times to beat O+S and failed.  Primarily due to the people I'm summoning sucking ass and dying 30 seconds into the fight.  It actually doesn't feel like too hard of a fight though.  I might actually beat it if I remember to use my crystal ring shield.
EDIT:  5th time's a charm, with two allies that actually knew what they were doing.

More damage notes for Lightning Spear at Faith 30 (soul level 46):

Smough - 256 damage (had one hit of 359, not sure why it was more)
Orenstein - 35 damage LOL
Smough 2 - 127, with one hit of 159.  Apparently he has some kind of weak point, but I don't know what exactly I was hitting to get that.

Ceaseless Discharge (SL 49) - 181 damage

[NotMiki]

1cc'd Ten Desires.  Only moderately behind the times!

[Fenrir]

"One of the top ten pvpers (on Xbox version anyway) is a level 1 pyromancer."

Isn't he only good because he invades new players then crushes them with overpowered equipment?

[Shale]

RH: Nearing endgame on both sides. The Executioner fight was fun – he crushed me a few times when I tried to go for attrition, including one total BS loss where he was at 10% health before tripleturning me and just killing my entire party one by one. Then I decided “screw attrition,” burned three straight Turn Breaks on setting up a 10-hit combo composed of one Grapple and then an endless loop of Air Assault → G. Fire that destroyed both knights. A similar strategy made mincemeat out of the souped-up thaumatech soldier in the standard history. Went back and got “At Journey's End,” which was hilariously out of nowhere for both Raynie and Stocke.
I've still got a few sidequests hanging around that I may head back and do before I march out to war. Which reminds me, is it ever going to be reasonable to fight that gladiator-bear in Cygnus? Even with my current equipment Stocke and Aht don't live very long against that monstrosity.
Edit: Okay, I killed the bear with poison and long sequences of "Stocke heal, Aht set trap, bear attack, Aht heal, Stocke knock bear into trap, repeat." What's nex....OH GOD THE PAIN

Character assessments, since I haven't really talked about them at all:

Stocke: Does damn near everything. Prototypical RPG main.
Marco: Damn, that's some good utility. Trans-turn, HP and status healing, good tools for moving enemies around without burning TT. His damage is even reasonably okay with a good sword!
Raynie: G. Fire. SMASH. She does nothing else useful except the odd Push Assault, but has awesome ST damage. But not as awesome as...
Gafka: Holy crap. Now THAT's damage output. And combo numbers too! Sadly not both at once, because Musou's damage is awful, but hey, it got me a 44-hit combo once and that's pretty cool. And his best damage hits a full column, which is pretty neat.
Rauch: Permanently underleveled, but not terrible now that his equipment is up to snuff. Aside from the durability (which isn't even that great), he seems cursed to be unexceptional.
Aht: Casts Area G. Heal out of battle. Traps are useful when I need 100% poison, other times I'll just hit things with G. Fire and skip the positioning shenanigans.
Euruca: I haven't used her in like seven hours. She's got G. Frost now, so I guess that could be useful if I don't have Raynie!

[Captain K.]

"One of the top ten pvpers (on Xbox version anyway) is a level 1 pyromancer."

Isn't he only good because he invades new players then crushes them with overpowered equipment?

Well the thing is, there's a lower limit on invasions but not an upper one.  So at level one he can invade literally anyone in human form.  So he gets new players, new game++ players, everything.  Since he doesn't level up, he's fairly limited by armor weight.  It's a combination of Fog Ring cheese and skill.

[Cmdr_King]

It turns out Suikoden II is still awesome.  Also turns out that among things, L2 Canopy Defense and double-beat runes are broken.  hurray!

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

RH: Nearing endgame on both sides. The Executioner fight was fun – he crushed me a few times when I tried to go for attrition, including one total BS loss where he was at 10% health before tripleturning me and just killing my entire party one by one. Then I decided “screw attrition,” burned three straight Turn Breaks on setting up a 10-hit combo composed of one Grapple and then an endless loop of Air Assault → G. Fire that destroyed both knights. A similar strategy made mincemeat out of the souped-up thaumatech soldier in the standard history. Went back and got “At Journey's End,” which was hilariously out of nowhere for both Raynie and Stocke.
I've still got a few sidequests hanging around that I may head back and do before I march out to war. Which reminds me, is it ever going to be reasonable to fight that gladiator-bear in Cygnus? Even with my current equipment Stocke and Aht don't live very long against that monstrosity.
Edit: Okay, I killed the bear with poison and long sequences of "Stocke heal, Aht set trap, bear attack, Aht heal, Stocke knock bear into trap, repeat." What's nex....OH GOD THE PAIN

The second optional arena battle is just "spam poizn wing until it hits, then round-robin revival until it dies" if you -care-. I did and got the game's strongest robe for Stocke early, but you may not care. If you have at least 40 Holy Waters you should manage, though! But yeah, those things always will OHKO you until like near-endgame levels, but it's 100% ST and it's vulnerable to poison. So yeah, there's that.

[Shale]

Yeah, I just beat it with POIZN/Curse cheese. Yaaaaaay?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Well, I just used Gospel Armor instead of the Moirae Manteau, but sure why not. Those bosses are basically beatable nearly regardless of your level due to cheese.

[Clear Tranquil]

Bear is weak to Ice so Ice Traps should do a serious number on it and Frost Star trapz should absolutely destroy it, possibly even one shot in a two trap trigger (Star trapz can cover two panels - so big ass enemies like bears and thaumatech types or enemies which take up more than one space on the gride like heavy Granorgites, etc can be double shotted in one with one move skill for fun biiig numbers ;)) if Aht is set up w/th Promised Knife/Glaux Dagger (stolen from the Alistel Officers in Granorg), Crystal/Thaumacharm x 3 and endgame levels (it works vs Special Thaumachine only with a different element instead - Aht: Volt Star Trap > Push Assault (I used Change so she could do this herself for the lolz) > ded - so why not~) Perhaps by endgame levels Aht is also fast enough that bear doesn't get to go first anymore either (turning the turn order in your favour and thus breaking it's multi turn/combo shenanigans - which while on the subject is where speed/twinking and/or Change abuse comes in handy for the game's ultimate super boss if you care~) 

Bear is also vulnerable to sleep Shale so you could have used Sleep Traps in addition to Poison Traps if you'd preferred/didn't want to go for the damage =) I didn't have the sleep ones when I first defeated it (and Aht had only just gotten the poison ones from Bodyguard) so I just banked on Aht speed + status wing items instead but if traps have more accurate status might be worth playng around with on my replay (solo/duo game) Then again I didn't know the fight was weak to ice first time either so >.> You probably already know this but multiple trapz in a row for/from combos work so long as the first trap is triggered before more are laid so for example Aht trap > move skill > Aht trap > Aht trap > Aht trap > etc (Change abuse wheee~) does the trick~

**

The way I usually dealt with spiders in the end was getting the buff/debuff items going then exploiting Aht speeed + Stocke/Eruca speed + Change abuse + Aht/Eruca Turn Breaks to combo build then Attack/Cross Star w/th Aht, G Fire w/th Stocke, G Frost w/th Eruca and Dead Fencer as a finisher w/th heavy combo damage. I didn't have Aht's Dancing Death for ST combo building though and I kind of wish I'd done sidequests during the story to get it now since apparently a Dancing Death > G Frost combo double's G Frost's damage w/th triple damage if Eruca is buffed~

[superaielman]

Borderlands: Just beat the arena boss. I'm level 14 berserker right now, playing with Yakko/Xer/Nitori at the moment. borderlands is a lot of fun, so yay.

[Fudozukushi]

Dark Souls, Steinfest 2011:

Ornstein: Actually decided to do something other then wait around for summons.  Go and make myself a nice new Fire spear!  Because O is too resistant to lightning.  So, just check which spears I have and... where's the Winged Spear?  Oh, right, I used, to-my-knowledge, a unique weapon to make the Dragon Slayer Spear.  Giddy.  So, that means I have to use the Pike.  So, head down tot he Demon Ruins to kill Ceaseless Discharge--die once then succeed.  Slay the Taurous army.  Don't feel like dealing with Kirk yet so I just head down and die by Capa mobbing.  Half the stamina/health/armor and 7 stability down means I can not play like my first character.  Whatever, recover, lure the capras out with my bow, kill them, lit the bonfire, go and grab the Ember.

Off to the catacombs!  Which go strangely pleasant, so naturally I assume I'll mess the jumps to Vamos up... nope!  All's fine here!  So then skeleton wheels... nope, the Fire Pike +7 reems them!  Though Black Knight out of nowhere had me worrying.  So then that just leaves Pinwheel to cheat my ass.  No!  Despite reducing me to like 50 HP I kill him/her/it!  That Rite of Kindling would be so useful if I had a need for Estus ever.  Which is actually now.  Huh.  Well, no desire to brave Tomb of the Giants, head back home!

Summons, summons, summons, loads of summons and loads of invaders.  Only one invader actually manages to pull their victory off successfully(and then only because we were fighting the two Royal Sentinels before O+S) and even then he was one hit away from death.  Other invader highlights include dying at the same time as the summoner, killing me with a lightning shotel but then getting backstabbed to death, NOT USING A SHIELD, and the final one getting the business end of the pike because I could actually stand behind the summoner and hit them because it is long.  And bonus points for that last one being another shotel jerk.

Also I broke 1,000,000 souls saved up!  That's enough to straight double my Soul Level!

Bobstein: Unlocked the farmer's forest.  Can't kill Pharis.  I WANT THAT HAT.  So I'll upgrade my stuff and use magic weapon.  Next time.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

In terms of actual electronic games, Battle for Wesnoth, and a little bit of Civ 4 and Europa Universalis 3.

In terms of games played on an honor system over an electronic medium, Magic the Gathering.

In terms of magnificent edifices to human achievement played, nay, experienced in person, which might be called games in the same sense the Platonic ideal of a tree is, itself, a tree, Dominion.

[Fenrir]

Captain: Huh. So you could be a new player, try your hand invading with a cracked red eye orb from the beginning and draw a lvl 700 uber character? Are you sure? I heard those guys are lonely.

Dark Souls: Finished as the sorceror. I got a ton of cheap spells lategame, the boss of the tomb of giants was still tough.


I think I got the plot: (Massive spoilers ahead. You guys should save this somewhere because you'll just be confused by the ending, really, and this could help you... If I'm right!)

There is a massive war going on between the "Dark side" (dragons, serpents) and the "Fire Side" (Gods like Gwyn, Nito, etc)
As seen in the intro, dragons ruled the world at first. Then heroes of the fire side appeared:
- Gwyn
- The witch of Azelith (who became the bed of chaos boss)
- Nito
- The furtive pygmy.
The first three owned the dragons. Then the age of fire started ,as Gwyn became the official guardian of The Big Fire Thing.
Pygmy didn't do jack shit, though. In fact, a prophecy appeared, telling that the pygmy's descendants would pwn Gwyn and start a new dark age of humans. (Looking back, the dragons might have invented the prophecy)
Gwyn got paranoid as hell and locked all of pygmy's descendants (including the main character) in a prison.
One knight, probably working for the dragons/serpents, then released the main character to send him on a killing spree against the people who locked him up with seemingly no good reason. And also because he might think he could end this tyranny and start a new age of humans.

Meanwhile, Gwyn and all his friends naturally try to murder the hell out of the main character.  If all goes according to the plan, MC kills everyone and leaves, he becomes some dark lord. The fire disappears. MC was probably manipulated into thinking humans would rule but really dragons+serpents own everybody. Bad ending.

Gwyndolin and Fraampt are clever bastards though, and threw a wrench into that plan. They thought they could manipulate the MC, too. So Gwyndolin created Gwynevere, pretty much the only really friendly figure in the whole game (with large breasts), to convince MC to try igniting The Big Fire Thing. Well, if he does that, he burns alive, the gods have won, and a stronger age of fire starts. Bad ending.

What I still don't understand is why normal people can become hollow. Among other things.

TL;DR version: Life sucks.

So this was fun... And I'm still not tired of it. Will restart as a priest soon. Or as a pyromancer?