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

[Shale]

So I bought Serious Sam 3 from the Steam sale, and shockingly, it works on my ancient Geforce 7900. It looks like Quake 2, but it runs! Smoothly enough for me to get up to the first Kleer Skeletons, even! (On which note, I think I missed the shotgun, because (a) I found some shells but not the gun itself and (b) they wouldn't make me fight a bunch of Kleer with a pistol, would they? Right?)

Now hopefully my new card will get here today and I can play the game properly, but still, props to Croteam for optimizing their shiny new engine to run playably on the minimum specs.

[Xeroma]

Shotty is on stage 2. The game wants you to rip their heads off on stage 1. This becomes less practical when you start fighting more of them.

[Shale]

I guess it's a way to get the christmas achievement, at least.

[Fudozukushi]

Warning, murdering things with magic gets really fucking boring while melee scales pretty well with levelling and trends towards more dynamic and fun fighting.  Dual Wield looks pretty fucking stupid though.

It is, god is it ever stupid.

I like how one of the two weapons just disappears when you put it away in third person mode. You just kind of shove the thing inside your abdominal cavity or something?

It fuses into the first one on your hip.  Of course you'll only realize it when you turn into a werewolf, because your left-hand will still be equipped for some reason.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Recettear: Kinda late to the party here. Awesome little Item Shop simulation game. It's a lot like Atelier Non-Iris, except replace "Item Crafting" with "Item Pricing and Customer Levelling". Also, the dungeon-crawling aspect is all Ys-style ARPG instead of the various turn-based systems from the Atelier series.

And... yeah. That's it. That describes the game completely. I guess it has a funnier translation than most Atelier games?  (Affirmations! Yayness~)

Turns out I'm really addicted to this style of play. I should drop this and pick up Mana Khemia 2 instead.


Darkdeath Evilman VS The Unlosing Ranger!:
Most terrible quote from this sitting: "I'm not responsible for anything, man! Except maybe bruising her uterus! OH!"
Chapter 7's boss fight involved picking up random green shards and tossing them into the giant boss's hard-to-see nostrils to get him to open his mouth so I could walk inside it, do a shot of 4HKO damage and then get crunched, and spit out at the beginning of the level to start all over again.
How the HELL was I supposed to figure that out, game?!

Anyway, Mana and Kyoya win for most amusing/terrible characters in the game so far.

Saiyuki: Journey West:
So far it's an awesome little SRPG, very much a Chinese-flavored FFT-meets-BoF2 affair, only with a pretty damn awesome translation. I ended up stalling my own playthrough when I got bored at a doctor's office and read -really- far ahead in the LP I was playing along with. ( http://lparchive.org/Saiyuki-Journey-West ) So now I'll probably never finish it.

Too bad, it's a really interesting game DL-wise, too. Someone should stat topic it if they're feeling the need to stat topic something cool.

Also... has anyone else played/heard of it? I'm curious about DL-ers' opinions on this one because it seems like something the DL would have latched onto as tightly as Brig/OB/FFT.

[Shale]

I bought it, played it...I think until Cho Hakkai joined? It was five or so battles. Anyway, hated it for reasons I can't remember at this point, returned it and got Grandia instead.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Darkdeath Evilman VS The Unlosing Ranger:

Okay, NIS America. This has been a long time coming. There's just these FEELINGS I have to get off my chest.

Quite simply, you're the best. The only one for me. If NISA was a beautiful woman, and I didn't have an easily-jealous abusive girlfriend, I would marry you. You're smart, you're witty, your gams look amazing - the whole package! You really know how to please your customers and make me want to throw money at you. You're like the World's Best Prostitute, only you really "get me, y'know?" So you'd be like one of those prostitutes in the movies who marries some rich guy to 'take her away from it all', only it's really presumptuous to think that she needs HIS help and... uh...

Look, all I'm saying is: Keep doing what you're doing. Don't stop. Faster. Harder.

Your Ever-Loyal Customer, d00d,
Djinn

[Grefter]

I remember back in the day the IRC channels I frequented touted it as FFT+++ and I sort of rolled my eyes and went "That is nice, if I had access to either of these games I might care".

[Monkeyfinger]

i remember some kid with like 2 posts making a thread here about how saiyuki is awesome and should be ranked

[Random Consonant]

I played some of it, thought it was kinda bland, boredquit, went to do something else.

[Nephrite]

FF13:

So, the plot railroads you for 30 hours, then explodes off the tracks and becomes the most non-linear thing in the universe? Make up your fucking mind, game.

[SnowFire]

Non-linear to me means make-your-own-plot, or a whole bunch of plot hooks of which you can solve problems in a number of ways, stuff like that.  FF13 Chapter 11 is a whole ton of sidequests, sure, but it's still not really non-linear, more like "have some optional battles."  Pretty much all the sidequests are variants of "kill a tough monster over there somewhere" anyway and the plot excuse for doing them is horrible.  (Why do we want to fulfill long dead l'Cie's quests?  Aren't we trying to escape our own quest?  Do we have any reason to think these quests are important or still relevant now?).

[Cmdr_King]

I think in this case 'non-linear' is meant int he sense of "given no clear indication of what the fuck you should be doing".

[Dark Holy Elf]

If you want to advance the plot, you can always follow the orange indicator arrow like you do in the rest of the game, so I can't really agree with that complaint.

(Why do we want to fulfill long dead l'Cie's quests?  Aren't we trying to escape our own quest?  Do we have any reason to think these quests are important or still relevant now?)

Well... no, they aren't. I would strongly suggest the quests are not canon. Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with an excuse for more gameplay should people want it. It's far from the first game to have blatantly non-canon optional content (Xenosaga, Disgaea, etc.). I think putting it in C11 is arguably a shame because players can lose out on the tightly-balanced lategame combat which is brilliant, but in theory there's nothing wrong with choice, and I know some players probably would have liked the option much earlier.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Oddly enough, I hear that official word on Disgaea Optional Side Content is that it all happens in canon (not counting the Alternate Ending-paths, of course).

[Captain K.]

KoF13:  Got my 100th online win, with something resembling a 50% win rate (100 wins, 106 losses).  I may just grind out the rest of the 300 matches by surfing the internet while I let people beat up my characters.  No way I'm going to get the 10 ranked wins in a row.  I've had 8 wins in a row TWICE, but there's too many good players online now.

OoE:  Tired of Albus mode, so I started a new game with Shanoa.  Apparently Albus is running around naked, because even with crappy gear Shanoa takes a fraction of the damage that he does.  Currently killing things with fire (glyphs).

[AndrewRogue]

Tsukihime: Akiha True/Normal ends get. I learned her body is nothing like a man's.

Decent path all around although it is hard not to get irritated at some of the idiot plot. Seriously, if people would just TELL Shiki things, we probably could averted everything bad that happened.

Confused as to why Roa was like he was on this path as well. A 'Teach Me, Ciel-sensei!" segment sort of addressed it, but not in a really useful way. Did explain away a few other questions, though.

Ciel next, I guess.

[superaielman]

Feel the opposite of  Elfboy; FF13 was much overdue to stop railroading you so hard. You can condese the first eight chapters of gameplay into a couple of hours and lose nothing on the gameplay front (And I could care less about the story).

There is absolutely no reason for it to be as on rail with literally everything as it is (Hello CP cap and forcing your party apart for a huge section of the game). The sidequests can be ignored if they aren't your thing.

[Sierra]

Skyrim: I ran into the plot more or less by accident and now there are dragons tooling around the world map. They're not much trouble to deal with but it is kind of a nuisance when I'm out sidequesting or exploring and the game's all ninja dragon up in my face. I should probably visit more towns and actually unlock more sidequests, actually, since...I've got a collection of undroppable quest items blocking up my inventory from dungeons I found and explored at random. I would love to get rid of this crap. Side note, I wish there was a more elegant way to switch spells/equipment. Slows combat down to have to dive into a submenu every time I want to swap in something else.

Is there a level cap? I kind of assume it's 50 since there's an achievement for hitting level 50.

[Shale]

My new video card works like a charm. Not only does it mean I can play games that require hardware from the last four years, it's also gotten rid of the random crashes I've experienced since upgrading to a 64-bit OS when playing anything more graphically intensive than The Binding Of Isaac. So it's been PC game central at my house since yesterday, mainly in the pursuit of Steam holiday achievements.

Serious Sam 3: Beat the first level. Gorgeous game now that it actually has textures.

Jamestown: In this game you play as a British convict in the colonial age who sets out for the New World to earn glory and redemption in the battle against the savage natives in the name of the crown. Except the New World is Mars, you're fighting with laser-bristling spaceships, and the savage natives are War-of-the-Worlds Martians - Martians allied with the hated Spaniards no less. Oh, and it's a danmaku game.
So. Awesome.

Atom Zombie Smasher: Neat little strategic puzzler. Feels pretty stacked against you before you get the mercs, but once you have them on your side, it's a lot of fun.

Magicka: A Diablo-like with an actually distinctive gameplay system? And shotgun humor? And characters who sound like the Swedish Chef? Hell yes I'm in.

And Yet It Moves: Cool idea, finicky gameplay. Couldn't quite beat the fourth stage. Will try again in hopes of reaching the gift-pile achievement at least.

Orcs Must Die!: Mouse control makes this game even better, and it was already awesome.

[Nephrite]

If you want to advance the plot, you can always follow the orange indicator arrow like you do in the rest of the game, so I can't really agree with that complaint.

You're right, but the difficulty spike in Chapter 11 from previous chapters is absolutely inexcusable. They practically require you to do grinding to kill anything which is just mind-boggling to me.

Now, I had already done some grinding for money earlier on so I was able to catch up rather easily, but the fact that you can run out into the Steppe area and get mobbed by monsters almost immediately who can pretty much overwhelm you is... I don't know.

Maybe it's the game screaming USE YOUR SENTINEL or something, but it seems like a rather ham-fisted way of doing so. Maybe my experience isn't typical either, I dunno.

EDIT: I will also say that it isn't so much "given no explanation of what to do" but more "Here's an enormous new place without any real conversation... AAAAAAAAAAAAAND GO!" It just seemed like I was playing a completely different game all of a sudden with the way it drops you onto Pulse with very little ceremony (yes yes intro CGs but still) after all the more-or-less hand-holding it had done up to that point.

[SnowFire]

Neph: Just ignore the sidequests.  The difficulty spikes if you keep doing them, yes, and will render the rest of the game too easy for challenge.  But you can advance the C11 'plot' just fine skipping them.  (C11 & C12 are reasonably difficult anyway, but not undoable.)

[Fudozukushi]

Skyrim: I ran into the plot more or less by accident and now there are dragons tooling around the world map. They're not much trouble to deal with but it is kind of a nuisance when I'm out sidequesting or exploring and the game's all ninja dragon up in my face. I should probably visit more towns and actually unlock more sidequests, actually, since...I've got a collection of undroppable quest items blocking up my inventory from dungeons I found and explored at random. I would love to get rid of this crap. Side note, I wish there was a more elegant way to switch spells/equipment. Slows combat down to have to dive into a submenu every time I want to swap in something else.

Is there a level cap? I kind of assume it's 50 since there's an achievement for hitting level 50.

The best undroppable quest items are the ones that bug out and never turn in.  Goodbye 50 pounds of inventory space, I didn't need you at all!

It's not 50, more like 80-something.  And it's less an hard cap and more like that's when you get every Skill to 100 and can't level them anymore.  Or something.

[Captain K.]

Level cap is 81 I believe, due to skills being maxed out.

Quest items do *not* weigh anything.  So if you can't drop it, it's not hurting you.  Other than being in the way when you're scrolling through things.

Also, Cid, are you using the Favorites menu?  It's much faster than the regular inventory menu.  Unless you just want a quick "swap from setup A to setup B button".  Which would be nice indeed.

Skyrim:  Killed the big boss while wearing the skins of his relatives.  Life is good.

Only have to do the Civil War questline, get married, and then burn every Hold to the ground and I'll be done with this game.

[Meeplelard]

You're right, but the difficulty spike in Chapter 11 from previous chapters is absolutely inexcusable. They practically require you to do grinding to kill anything which is just mind-boggling to me.

And I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you on this.  The only enemies that fall under your distinction in the Archelytte Steppe are King Behemoths, and Adamantchelids and co.  The latter are ridiculously easy to avoid the game makes it pretty clear "YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSE TO FIGHT THESE THINGS.  RUN AROUND THEM.  THEY DON'T CHASE YOU AND YOU CAN'T PRE-EMPT THEM!  THESE ARE AFTERGAME ENEMIES!!!" (as if the size wasn't a dead give away.  Worst case scenario?  You fight one, get slaughtered, and then never fight it until much later.)

So really its just King Behemoths who yes, are bad asses, BUT you can avoid most of them pretty easily, or get them in Triple Fights/Pre-emptives.  Either method works for killing them early, albeit doesn't make them trivial, but then, its about using the Battle System, Paradigms, etc.  Not being "herp derp win."


Everything else, between the wolves, goblins, those spiny guys who are damn near impossible to hurt before breaking them, etc. are all pretty reasonable to take on in your first attempt.  And the bonuses in Chapter 9 to stats from the Crystarium, as well as the CP you gain, are pretty large step up relative to previous levels, IIRC, so you get your stats up to speed pretty fast.