What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Fenrir]

Figured out how to get screenshots from the PS3.



Carrying a boar. (Note: I never harm boars)


BYE LOL.


x2


I need to throw something there

A+ game

[Dark Holy Elf]

Trails in the Sky - Onwards through chapter 4. Gosh, would this game ever be difficult to replay, there is so much stuff you have to do which I weirdly don't begrudge the game because it is doing the small things right which are needed to support such a storytelling style (e.g. the whole tournament sequence). But I probably would begrudge it if I had to do it a second time. Oh well, that's not relevant fortunately. Game remains pretty solid.

Batman: Arkham Asylum - This game. This game is frustrating. I think they've done a really great job with atmosphere, and, well, just making the game feel like a Batman simulator (from my relatively limited knowledge of what it means to be Batman, mostly coming from the movies and to a lesser extent the Adam West TV show). The writing and voice acting for Joker is top-notch, in particular. Unfortunately, for 80% of the game, they apparently forgot how to make the actual gameplay fun. Kinda like GTA except the setting actually somewhat appeals to me instead of inspiring revulsion.

FF5 - Four Job Fiesta, beat Barrier Tower with Knight/Berserker/Ninja/Dragoon. Maybe I'll post more detailed notes at some point.

[AndrewRogue]

Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC: It's... better? Definitively, but that isn't saying a lot, honestly.

[Nitori]

SaGa 2 DS: I never should have used love threads because they talk about love all the goddamned time make it stop, I should have bought all hate threads. Also Arena of the Dead is amusingly abusable for cash.

Hatoful Boyfriend: omgomgomgomgomgomg

SO HAWT also the plot is better than FF4

[Meeplelard]

Metal Gear Solid 2:  Picked up the HD Collection because...shut up.

Anyway, finished the Tanker sequence...I think.  Given what just happened in plot with the "Save now plz?" prompt, I can only assume that's the end of that part!

While I can't speak for the plot (which from all accounts, is a massive trainwreck of the most fucked up kinds?), the gameplay is a considerable improvement over the original thus far.  I'd have to look at exactly WHAT I bitched about in MGS1, but this game seems to have addressed most of the original game's issues, and then added a few other things that, while not necessary, do compliment the game's style.  Frankly, the ability to just aim your gun and shift to 1st Person View and back at will, and not be forced into it with specific guns (that also means you lose movement) alone is a huge deal.

Was going to complain about the lack of Crosshairs...until I held the Attack button down and saw there is a laser sight while you're aiming, so yeah <_<

[SnowFire]

Last Window: The Secret of Cape West
Did you play Hotel Dusk?  This is more Hotel Dusk.  Same strengths (plot, characterization, sweet animated-pencil-drawings), same weaknesses (puzzles of fail - usually easy yet aggravating, or hard for a stupid reason rather than interestingly hard; cruddy 3D navigation of environment when not talking to people).  Like Hotel Dusk, the criminal organization Nile is in the background, but Kyle is not on some bloody quest against them, and the main goal of the game is to discover the truth.  Jewel thefts, insurance fraud, and extortion are all plenty interesting enough; it makes the murders that did occur stand-out more and have the proper resonance.  (Even the Phoenix Wright games have the problem of the bodies piling up, and thus feeling a bit more jaded about death than you should.  When someone dies in the Hotel Dusk-verse, it's a big deal.)

I'd argue that the plot is possibly a tad better than in Hotel Dusk, except Hotel Dusk paces itself better.  You start illegally ransacking offices and finding out about things like the hack novelist's sordid secrets fairly early in Hotel Dusk, and then incongrously mix bowling mini-games in and the like even later, which is fine.  For whatever reason, Last Window decides that you should spend the first 2/3 of the game being the ultimate apartment busybody, and then the last 1/3 digesting straight important plot where you finally do get to raid people's belongings and get guns shoved up against your back.  Somewhat understandable in that ideally  half the people you meet are red herring sideplots, and half are Involved In The Conspiracy somehow, so you have to meet people in normal contexts first so it'll be shocking when their secrets are revealed...  but the game spends too dang long on the low-stakes interaction part.  Oh, well.

Anyway.  Kyle "Lazychu" Hyde gets himself fired for not bothering to do his Red Crown job and thus has nothing better to do than wander around his apartment investigating stuff.  Cing's fetish for hotels continues (possibly because they have an easy template for each room?) as Kyle's apartment is in fact a converted hotel.  And said hotel might have had a murder in it just before it was converted.  HMMMM.  Attempting to leave Cape West will result in Kyle shaking his head in disappointment, since going outside might expose him to that dangerous California winter sunlight.  Better have non-awkward conversations like "Merry Christmas, I was wondering if we could chat about your deceased husband whom some thing you murdererd" instead.  (Seriously, Cing, ditch your stupid 3D engine and just use single rendered scenes, which would make it easy for Kyle to have scenes outside the apartment.  Or even cut out from the 3D engine and use simple drawings occasionally.  Example: Kyle, Mila, Rachel, & Ed plan on having dinner at a nice restaurant while Mila is in town.  But OH NO MELODRAMA Ed needs to go to the hospital!  So let's cancel the dinner and just walk around the apartment with Mila some instead.  And Ed promptly gets better afterward.  Just let me go to my darn dinner of a single pre-rendered frame and pick people to chat with, 'k?)

I recommend ruthlessly FAQing anything that gets you mildly stuck since the puzzles (save 2 or 3 of 'em) are totally not what you should be playing the game for anyway.  The plot could have used more Phoenix Wright interactive "pick the right answer" and "present some inventory item that isn't totally obvious" moments, but sadly most are pretty obvious, what with there usually only being 2 dialogue options and the inventory presents being rare + obvious + no penalty for failure.  (At least in Hotel Dusk, you could get yourself a Game Over with stupid presents, like "check out this thing I stole from you."  People are more blase about this in Cape West.)

It's a good thing the DS Lite is region-free.  Ah, Nintendo, why did you fall from that path with the DSi...  and why did Cing go bankrupt and only localize the game in Europe which presumably is more expensive than the States.  Some things must ever remain mysteries, perhaps.  Still, all told, Last Window is an excellent experience, I'd recommend it.  (Although if you haven't played Hotel Dusk, probably best to start there, of course.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

FF5 Four Job Fiesta - Knight/Berserker/Ninja/Dragoon: Finished world 2.

I figured I could post this in Laggy's thread, but there's no point competing with Laggy/Richard antics, so I will post it here instead.

World 1

I get Knight first. Knight is kinda overpowered at first. Hold down A, everything does. I kill Siren before she transforms, I kill Magissa before she summons Forza, and with the help of the Mithril Helm from Tycoon Castle, Garula's damage tinks.

So second is Berserker! Nooo! At first this seems fine since hey I get to look forward to Two Hands, probably the best support skill for a Berserker. Then I run into...

Liquid Flame (1 reset): I had no resets on bosses on Fiesta last year, so this is my first ever Fiesta reset. Anyway, Liquid Flame is a pain since he counters -everything-. The tornado form uses Magnet (lol whatever) but the other two forms use decent MT and ST damage respectively, and Liquid Flame's own turns are competent enough. With my only healing near-useless potions this is kinda tricky. Fortunately I realise after losing once that I am only 5 AP away from Two Hands. I figure Liquid Flame will be insanely tricky without it so I "grind" (fight 3 extra fights) to get it. Liquid Flame still proves tough for all the same reasons but with double the damage it's more manageable.

Karnak escape is easy-peasy, hold A for victory with Two Hands. Then I get Ninja. Yay, competence! Ninja isn't really better than Knight yet but I anticipate scrolls being really useful in the future.

Ancient Library goes off without a hitch, I am lucky and never get ambush-killed by Level 5 Death during the point where I am Level 15. (Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?) Ifrit is Liquid Flame who doesn't counter, i.e. a joke. He drops a Fire Scroll which I toss at Byblos making him much easier. Afterwards I get a snazzy ship and the ability to get more scrolls. I also hunt a rare drop for my Berserker, the Doom Scythe. Rare drops suck incidentally (1/16) but at least this one is from a common enemy.

Sandworm I toss scrolls at, it triggers counters but whatever, Sandworm sucks. Clay Claw gets facemelted by Thunder Scrolls. Adamantoise just isn't very scary in general. Sol Cannon gets destroyed by 2H Coral Swords and Thunder Scrolls. Ronka Ruins are probably the toughest dungeon in World 1 but still aren't very tough, Thunder Scrolls take care of Stone Mask swarms and hold A works well enough otherwise, making sure to target Lamias before they get a second turn. Archaeoavis has good Def at first which makes him resistant to hold A, but scrolls work. etc. Second hardest W1 boss isn't too hard.

Last class is Dragoon! Fuck, Dragoon is terrible, especially with Knight around, since it can't use Two Hands. Bad offence is bad. In W2 I actually spend most of Dragoon's time with Berserk set.

Purobulos I screw up and have a Berserker for. The optimal strategy here is to mute each bomb then kill it, probably. As is I tough it out by running a few of them out of MP, using two scrolls to soften them so their Self Destructs aren't scary. Titan I 3HKO thanks to high variance from my Berserker, while Chimera Brain isn't too scary against my high HP.

World 2

I beat Abductor and Gilgamesh without much trouble. Gilgamesh 2 is better certainly thanks to Jump but hardly anything unmanageable; I cheerfully waste the Hi-Potions I got from Sol Cannon knowing I'm about to be able to buy them, finally!

Gloceana randoms aren't impressive against hold-A, while the Moogle River eats it to Thunder Scrolls for the most part (except the wussier randoms who again bite it to physicals). I refuse to Phoenix Down Tyrannosaur, and he proves kinda badass since apparently Fire Scrolls trigger his (nasty) physical counters which I wasn't expecting. Still not bad, just means I waste some money. Moogle village is notable for the Dancing Dagger, which I give to my berserk Dragoon for a while.

Second Abductor is so bad.

Drakenvale! Drakenvale is when I realise the main downside of the Doom Axe - you can't unequip it mid-battle and it can sometimes fully heal the zombie dragons here (who have 4500 HP and are kinda badass). Fire Scrolls work well here, both for the high-evade eagles and the fire-weak everything else. I have my first reset here against the Golem fight as literally everything goes wrong (Doom Axe healing the Zombie Dragon twice as a highlight). Dragon Grass himself is a joke, scroll MT OHKOs everything and the boss does nothing but summon.

On Xezat's fleet, Gabbledegooks are big sacks of money and both Gilgamesh and Enkidu fear instant death and various other status tricks. Barrier Tower's tougher certainly, but most of the randoms aren't terribly impressive. I run into Red Dragons and they're quite another matter, but for the most part I have the offence needed to slug them down. Atomos I plan to put to sleep but of course Berserkers ruin everything, but the second PC Atomos kills is the Berserker so I'm largely able to carry through with my plan from there.

I make a stop at Moore and buy lots of Air Knives since there's some notable wind weaks coming up AND they are the best non-2H weapon in W2. On to Ghido's Cave, an utterly forgettable dungeon with no treasure, having two randoms who die to Air Knives and Fire Scrolls before doing anything respectively.

Moore Forest has jelly enemies who spoil everything I have somewhat, but the only have 50% evade so whatever they die well enough. Fire Scrolls help with killing the trees. Wyrms are the scary enemies here with their MT 25% attack and I have no clear counter for them, I just have to eat some damage sometimes and they make me keep my HP respectable.

Seal Guardians (1 reset): Perhaps unsurprisingly, the hardest boss in World 2. I'm a little worried about dealing with them so I decide to use a 1H Doom Scythe Berserker to try to ID them (roughly 10% odds per swing). Unfortunately I lose track of their HP once, eat MT Firaga and die. Try again, actually watch their HP and blitz them (Shuriken + 2H knight physical) if one ever takes 4800+ damage. Two of them do in fact die to instant death which makes me happy.

Exdeath's Castle is by far the toughest dungeon in the game so far. I miss having Hastega for any tough fight. First few floors aren't so bad with some Air Knife-weak enemies and frail mages (although notably the Reflect Mages can bounce the Doom Scythe's ID effect, how lame is that?). Around the sixth floor things get serious with Adamant Golems hitting surprisingly hard (when they hit), 2HKOing with their special moves, and Coeurls having Blaster (though only when alone). Then we get dragons! Yellows aren't so bad since diamond gear resists their arsenal, Reds are still pretty badass though. I get a Coral Ring from a Yellow! Yay! Then I forget to save and reset when I make a wrong turn thinking I will only be set back by one screen. Whoops, redo the dungeon, lose shiny Coral Ring.

I have one reset here, when I get attacked by Adamant Golems straight out of the lava. Eesh, lava tiles hurt. They make me waste lots of resources, fortunately I don't go in them often. I get Two Swords, finally, near the top of the dungeon. I also get the Twin Lance which is badass.

For the bosses... I beat up Carbuncle for fun. Not much to say, Hi-Potion in response to every spell he does, destroy him after his fourth turn. Gilgamesh similarly poses little threat, I just blast him with offence, including a Berserked Ninja doing nearly 3k damage per attack. Exdeath is trickier, of course... I have no Hastega or Shell or any of the other things which normally make me not respect him. I take a different approach here, with a berserked ninja and berserker along with an item-throwing shield knight in the back row and a ninja who throws things (Excalipoor, Kodachis, Shuriken). Both by non-berserkers have a Main Gauche. He uses Reverse Polarity so my entire team ends up in the back row but honestly that's fine, it makes his offence all the easier to control... physicals aren't a threat with back row and all the evasion, -agas are somewhat resisted thanks to Diamond gear and an Ice Shield. Earth Shaker is the one scary thing he nails me with and it's not really enough.

Onto World 3!

[Sierra]

Dragon's Dogma: Started this over the weekend. Running a fighter because bashing things to death has previously been more fun in games like this than maginuke, grabbed a mage pawn for heals while I eviscerate things.

Game is fun. Silly mix of good/bad/lolworthy on design front, but fun. Bad = menus, menus, so many menus! You have to hit two different buttons to get to different parts of your inventory and it always throws me off. Also major thumbs down for easily missable content. This is a glaringly bad design decision in any context outside of it hinging on clearly important player decisions. Last night I go to the inn in Gran Soren to do the Mercedes escort quest, figuring my level's high enough by this point to not die horribly, find it's mysteriously vanished. "Oh I'm sorry, player, you didn't know that quest was on a timer? Too bad. Also fuck you." Bad form, game.

There are so many little details that just make me laugh and go, "What?" The wildly inappropriate menu music, pawns talking over each other, pawns being amazed by rocks and stray twigs, how incredibly silly your silent protagonist looks for being silent any time anything happens in a cutscene, the incoherent jumble of an introductory sequence, the "Wait, what do you mean I can only switch my skills around by talking to this one NPC?" I'm assuming the story will always be a bad joke. But whatever, it's fun enough just tromping around the world killing stuff. I miss Dark Souls ninja flips, though.

[Fenrir]

Oh man, you've seen nothing yet!

Escort quests are sometimes randomly generated, and most of the time give worthless stuff. Skip skip skip all of them. They're horrible. Yes, NPC with no weapons, stay right next to me while I'm fighting a chimera!
The best way to finish an escort quest is to run to the destination and to never stop fighting monsters ever. The NPC can't catch up, but he'll reappear right next to you at random intervals, then you'll outrun him again, etc. This means he often won't be hurt at all. Brilliant design there

The game also includes you escaping the duke's prison in a sidequest then going back to the duke like nothing happened. In fact you can't do anything else.

Terrible clipping, by the way. The black cat guy is always at his shop, you just need to wait like 5 seconds for him to appear sometimes.

Etc etc


Glad you're having fun anyway. Fighter and Mystic Knight are definitely the Dark Souls melee class. Daggers (the Strider's melee weapon) have longer attack animations but more hits (bigger chance to stun), they require much less finesse.  The bow's great though, much better than Dark Souls'.
The strider class gives you a roll and a double jump for more mobility, but the roll isn't really amazing. It's the equivalent of the Dark Souls middle roll.

[Sierra]

I'm only bummed about the quest disappearing because it was Mercedes' and anything that involves more of that accent can't be all bad. And I guess that skeleton key with the curiously specific description is going to stay in my inventory for a while.

Somehow while listing game's quirks I neglected to mention aught aught aught aught aught. I button-mash through dialogue in this game (unless it's Mercedes talking), and I never do this. Also the fact that people are totally cool with you looting all their stuff right before their eyes, although I guess that's better than you doing it all unobserved and everyone psychically knowing you're a worse person for it anyway (hi Bethesda). Also the random spawn rates. What, game. Why do you do this to me. Far western region late at night, kill a swarm of goblins, walk five feet, encounter new swarm of goblins. Seriously not exaggerating here, it's absurd. "Victory!" *two seconds later* "'Tis a formidable foe! 'Tis more dangerous than a regular goblin blagh blagh blagh." And somehow the game is fun despite all this. I don't get it. It's a comedy of errors.

Anyway, went for a stroll in the country, found a giant rock dude napping peaceably and murdered the fuck out of him just because he was there and that's about how this game rolls. Met a dragon and died horribly (eight health bars?!) Ran around some more, said fuck it, grabbed my brother's NG++ sorcerer pawn and went back. Still almost died horribly, and to add insult to injury a horde of goblins spawned as the dragon was swooping around with a tiny sliver of health left (Capcom!) Oh well. At least I can move on now.

2x giants tricked into falling off cliffs so far. I hope to improve this number.

How do you even access the third tier classes? I've not switched out of fighter at all, but last I checked the only new options were the second tier ones. Probably a certain amount of levels in those and then the third set opens up? I was originally going to aim for Warrior, buuuut I think I like normal swords too much. The attack skills are amazingly useful. Do they transfer over to anything else?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Trails in the Sky - Beat this. Level 38, 37 hours.

This game was pretty fun. It has its clear flaws which hold it back from greatness, but it's still an experience I found generally enjoyable throughout... it's not a short game and I didn't really have any trouble completing it. Its flaws are fairly forgivable; it doesn't screw anything up too badly, while being solid on several fronts (if never exceptional). If you're the kind of person who thinks Radiant Historia is the best JRPG in the past few years then Trails will probably be not too far behind; same basic situation. For me, it's still decent.


Writing-wise, it's an odd bird. The overarching plot is decent enough and is developped along fairly well. It does draw upon its anime roots frequently enough but rarely in a way that offends me, and I'm pretty easily offended by anime storytelling tropes. There are still some fuckups (Agate and Lorence both feel like different shades of anime "badass" which I detest) but generally things go along well enough. The game's story tends to revolve around mysteries... every chapter involves Estelle and Joshua solving at least one significant one, while steadily the overarching mysteries of the game builds up. It's not so far down this line to really merit comparisons to games which sell themselves on it, but it's a clear inspiritation and they do a good job with it.


Character-wise, the game lacks any real exceptional characters depth-wise, but thankfully both Estelle and Joshua are very solid and believable and have great interaction. Schera and Kloe are pretty good too. Olivier is just awesome, of course... while the somewhat creepy noble narcissist has been done, it's rarely been written this well (complete with the reactions of the other PCs to him). Agate is a bit of a misfire and Zane is generically forgettable. Tita is objectively memorable just failed to get an opinion out of me... which I suppose is good by child character standards! The villains are weaker because, sadly, the main villain is ultimately just mind controlled by a sequel-bait villain. Bo-ring! Too bad, I liked his charisma anyway. Amalthea I felt like the writers couldn't decide if they wanted her to be a menace or a joke (and I'd certainly have preferred the former which she was actually somewhat effective at). Lorence is sequel-bait cryptic-talking anime nonsense, though funnily enough I liked his relationship with his fellow soldiers, on a minor note.

NPC-wise, most of them are fine for their roles. Cassius is such a godmode Stu it's embarrassing, but at least it serves as a somewhat interesting motivation for Richard so maybe I'll forgive the writers for that. Also, Joshua has a bit of this problem as well... but (a) there's a good reason for this revealed at the end, and (b) his relationship with Estelle completely humanises him anyway.

Setting-wise, the game really does a great job. I'm usually "whatever" to setting hype for RPGs but Trails nails it pretty well. Travelling around Liberl, we get a good sense of each of its major regions and what makes them tick. The writing quality helps a lot here... sequences such as the academy sequence could easily have fallen flat but I thought the game brought it to life effectively and made it something I actually enjoyed a fair deal.


Gameplay-wise, it's an interesting mix. The game plays a bit like Grandia or Lunar with moving around the map, charging for some abilities (spells), and even cancelling (though cancelling is a bad joke unfortunately). This is at base a fairly enjoyable system, and the Xenosaga-like turn event slots and the ability for the player to interrupt the turn order to use S-crafts (limit breaks) puts a nice ripple on thing. It's marred by the inability to see the turn order past the next action for each combatant (so no doubles), and sometimes not even that far if there's a lot of enemies in the battle.

The game's orbment system reminds me a lot of materia... it doesn't quite afford the same level of customisation, but the customisation is more interesting since the combination of orbments you set also determines your spells. I think they could have cleaned up the orbment menu (so you don't have to scroll down to cast healing spells, and can see the spellbook more readily) but that's a fairly minor complaint. A more major complaint is that while the system design is good, the battle design is... not so much. The game is generally too easy (I never had a reset) and while the game comes up with some good designs for a few of its enemies, it rarely assembles them into interesting (let alone challenging) boss fights. The fact that the game's idea of a challenging, semi-plot fight is to have a boss who 3HKOs you with a limit break and 7HKOs you otherwise kinda indicates what the problem is there. Monsters in boxes present the closest thing to real challenge generally because they often have swarms of semi-competent enemies. That and the boss fight on Zeiss Tower which is the one time I felt threatened. The final boss might be decent on paper but oh so cheesable.

The game has a bunch of sidequests, but I don't see the point of caring about them when presumably they would just make an already easy game easier, and they would get in the way of my seeing how the story would unfold which I was actually enjoying. Such sidequests feel more suited for a replay, but as I've mentioned before I'm not sure how easily replayable the game is. The plot doesn't feel quite good enough to replay just for that and there are a lot of things that would get in the way of a gameplay replay. Maybe sometime in the distant future.


Visually the game looks nice enough. Maybe it is just the PSP screen compared to the DS or something but I did think everything looked nice and crisp. Music-wise, I generally failed to care about most of the tracks. They were nice but kind of in the background. A couple exceptions: I did really like Rescue Mission (the battle theme for the black-clad soldier boss fights and final dungeon randoms) and the final dungeon theme itself, so I really enjoyed the last two hours from an audio standpoint!


DL-wise I'd want to get a handle on exactly how long it takes spells to charge (The stat topic doesn't seem to say?). PCs probably range from solid Heavies (Estelle) to Lights (Tita) with the game's two rankable bosses being kinda bad and boring because Trails boss design.


Yesssss Simpsons reference in the ending, I knew there was a reason I liked XSeed.


6 or 7 out of 10 depending on collecting some thoughts and my mood. It's like a better version of Grandia 1-2, because unlike Grandia the Trails folks knew how to design a world and write. This helps a lot!

[Fenrir]

El Cid: Some skills transfer to other classes, some don't. Look at the little icon below the skill, indicating which classes can use it.
Warriors don't have 1H sword at all though, they only have 2H weapons.
Both kinds of passive skills are universal I believe. But some are tied to weapons (Double jump only works with daggers for example)

I think you need to level some other vocations to unlock the third tier classes. After all, they're all a mix. (mystic knight is knight+mage, assassin is knight+strider, magick archer is mage+strider)

Warrior isn't really an improvement over the basic class, I'd actually say that it's the worst class in the game.


Dragon's Dogma: Beat the penultimate boss. There's a cool online element with him, but he's a pretty boring fight, so whatever. Game finished as far as I'm concerned.
I also did the sidequest where you bang the queen. This sidequest doesn't change at all if your main character is female! I wonder if I'd have still automatically rescued and slept with that shopkeeper, at endgame, with a male main character. I hope so!


Penny Arcade Episode 2: More of the same, some of the bad ironed out. Not a bad thing at all. I have actually laughed out loud, and this never happens. They're really nice little games, but I'm really glad we're out of this episodic gaming phase right now.

[Grefter]

Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness 3 - Finished this.  It is really good.  Zeboyd just keeps improving.  This is kind of amazing.  This is a game the DL in general should really check out, don't need to play the other PA games (but like Fen says above they are a bit of fun).  Looks like there is going to be another one hopefully?  I look forward to it.

It is probably the most Elfboy game I have seen.  Just uses a lot of the modern twists on RPGs in an old style combat system, taking a best of both worlds approach.  It is slick and intelligently put together with no frills and tons of options.

[Fenrir]

It is probably the most Elfboy game I have seen.

You're scaring the Zenny core audience!

I'm probably getting it tomorrow. I actually want to know how this ends. Hopefully sales have picked up from Episode 2.


Anyway I just finished that one. While Ep 1 had no difficulty options, while Ep 2 had three, and the hardest one was still easier than Ep 1. There's that unlockable Insane mode, but you know, you need to finish the game and all.

Near the end I realized that, between both episodes, the battle system changed from ATB (Active Turn Based) to VNATB (Very Nice Active Turn Based). While it seems like nothing changed, now everything the player chooses has priority!

Let's say turns go that way:
Character A
Enemy X
Character B
A gets a turn and does whatever. Both X's and B's turns come up during A's attack animation. B acts before X anyway because he has priority.

What does it mean? It means that if you give those speed potions to your team and mash square, you get infinite turns. No drawbacks.
This solves the problem I talked earlier, but also adds some other ones. Like in FF9, character speed sometimes seems to matter less than attack animation length.  (thankfully, it isn't agonisingly slow like FF9)

[SnowFire]

Dark Holy Elf: Sounds mostly fair.  For what it's worth, Trails does have difficulty levels....  AFTER YOU BEAT THE GAME.    Yeah I'd have willingly cranked it up to Hard on a first runthrough myself since the game has Save Anywhere anyway.  (I might yet replay it myself some day if I'm bored enough, but will wait a few years due to the issues you already noted.)

I think that if you're going to have a godmode Stu in your plot, Trails did it the right way, at least.  Good guy godmode Stus inevitably sit around doing nothing for some inexplicable reason in your average JRPG plot, because they're sworn not to interfere, or because this should be the next generation of heros fight, or whatever.  Bad guy Stus are just aggravating usually, and more common.  Cassius was properly busy doing something (?) in the game, but not what you were doing, so he didn't clobber your plot while simultaneously avoiding the inexplicable inaction problem.  Plus it was interesting with the game's POV from Estelle as she slowly found everybody else praising her father to the high heavens.  I kind of buy that; many people take their parents for granted or don't have a good impression of what's normal and what isn't, so.  And as you already pointed out, it made for an interesting motivation for Richard.

Also, one rankable boss certainly isn't boring!  Mockable and terrible != boring, Light needs some scrubby bosses.  Do agree it's a little odd that gameplay wise, they decided to undercut said boss.  I'd have been perfectly fine with playing up competent menace, but I guess they went for "competent at planning and investigation, not particularly competent at fighting."

Not really a contradiction to anything you said, but I'll just add as my own 2 cents that the sheer amount of dialogue updating in Trails is incredible.  Whenever you do anything, everybody updates their dialogue.  You can run around and watch as people comment on how it's morning, then afternoon, the night; you can follow all the tiny subplots of the NPCs.  It's pretty amazing.

Various plot comments I could make, but two in particular.
* The game trolls you with its name.  I really liked the airports everywhere - lots of Final Fantasies have airships in them, yet inconsistently and only used as the doom fleet of the bad guys or something.  Hey, airships are pretty damn handy for civilian use.  Really helped the setting.  That said, if you taunt the player with a name like "Trails in the Sky" and have airports everywhere, I"m assuming I'm going to get to fly around at some point in the game.  Maybe even just as an aftergame thing.  But nope.  The two bits of flying you get to do are both as secret stowaways, not glorious sky captains.

* Joshua's plot twist at the end doesn't really fit the tone of the game?  First off, I was assuming that Joshua had been *trained* by the assassins, but actually being one at such a young age is weird, JAPAN aside.  But moving on, basically nobody dies in Trails.  People get mind-screwed, and the party seems weirdly forgiving of some of the Sky Bandit antics (the Rolent raid was before they got mind controlled, and they damaged a mine and released monsters into it!  What if Joshua & Estelle hadn't been around?!  That's murder to steal a fancy gem, pretty low...), but nobody really dies - it seems you're just knocking out the special ops soldiers, and Richard runs a coup where he just locks up and blackmails anyone who gets in his way.  This is all fine.  But then in Joshua's backstory, he was killing "every day?"  Sometimes more than one?!  So like 700 bodies on him by age 12?!  Even if this is an exaggeration, if Joshua had killed merely 50 people, that's pretty hardcore.  This wasn't a grimdark world; there were plenty of resources to allocate to things like arson investigation, so mass murder in Erbonia should have raised some eyebrows.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Also, one rankable boss certainly isn't boring!  Mockable and terrible != boring, Light needs some scrubby bosses.  Do agree it's a little odd that gameplay wise, they decided to undercut said boss.  I'd have been perfectly fine with playing up competent menace, but I guess they went for "competent at planning and investigation, not particularly competent at fighting."

Eh, spoilers to be safe even if not technically needed:

Plotwise, I know they made mention to that Amalthea was good at planning and bad at fighting. That's cool; it's very realistic and honestly I think we need more villains like that in RPGs. The problem is we don't actually see any evidence of this competent planning, at least in part 4?

Gameplay/DLwise, I don't think the other rankable boss is much better anyway. Hooray for interp splits on boss S-Craft use?


Honestly, I can't ever see myself having enough time to talk to all the NPCs 3+ times. Once is enough effort for me. As such it's something I have a hard time caring about. If you found some value in it, cool.


Definitely agree with your two extra points, though I hadn't actually considered either. Second in particular is a bit of a drag and makes me wonder what the tone of the sequel would be.

[Dhyerwolf]

Note to self: somehow get a Trails game clear save (I was midway through C1, so if I needed to restart that would not even be that big a deal) whenever I restart playing it.

[Grefter]

Find one somehow, somewhere

[superaielman]

Tales of Graces: Just beat Cedric.


Tales is a series (US market) that felt like it was spinning it's wheels to me. Yes, Abyss did a lot of good on the story front, and Vespiria was amazingly pretty and had great character work. But.  The combat was pretty similiar in all the games, as was a lot of the presentation.  Tales is as guilty as Dragon Quest in sitting on it's laurels and not changing up the formula. Graces did a couple of things that were long past due.

1.  Combat tweaking. It replaces the TP system with a CC system. CC is pretty similiar to...  well, CC stamina or SO3 fury. You can still do insane combos (CC rises throughout the game), but you can't sit there and just spam Azure Edge or Void Sword to lock down the final boss.  Game rewards you with increased drops/EXP/gald for beating fights in a certain way. ToG also gives you a very good scan system that lets you see the HP/weakness of every enemy. 

2. Synthing/sidequests.  They are there, and you can get a lot of neat rewards from doing sidequests.  I've enjoyed doing the sidequests.  For the most part so far, it's been finding an easy to get item or synthing something.  The game also doesn't punish you if you don't do these sidequests (Fuck off Xenosaga 2). The system has good documentation and is pushed  on you. I dig.

3. Challenge level. You get several challenge options from the very beginning, and you can change these at any time in the game. When combined with the synthing system and sidequests, you can make the game exactly as hard or easy as you wish. This is something more RPGs need to do.

I like the title system too. Plotwise, I'm too early to say. The main theme seems to be "Take what you want and then pay for it."   Asbel, like Luke and Yuri, is quite good.

Wallbridge and the wallbridge ruins were pretty bad on the dungeon design side, but that is a very tales failing. Oh. One thing that is awful beyond all reason is Pascal and the loli groping gimmick. Hey Japan, if you're going to have fanservice, make sure everyone involved looks to be 18. Not only is it offensive beyond belief, it adds nothing to the game. It is also bonus awful anime trope shit, which the game had avoided to some extent so far.

[Sierra]

Dragon's Dogma: Quest added--the Duchess Requests Your Presence for Clandestine Lesbian Activities.

Fenrir you didn't mention the most ridiculous part about this sequence. Not only does no one care if you come back after escaping, but no one cares while you're escaping. I was sneaking by the guard, thinking man there's no room here, he must see me, but he doesn't react...so I turn around, talk to him, he gives me the usual canned babble. I'd come right out of the corridor with the cells, there was no way I could be anything but an escaping prisoner. Hire better help, Dukie. Also please catapult Feste over the parapets, I don't think there's much question why you're going insane.

More from the What file: jumping around on rooftops in the capital, want to get to street level again but lazy so I just hop off and go splat. All pawns follow me down, everyone's at like 1/3 health now. This triggers someone's battle scripting and VA: "No! They have they advantage!" The cobblestones are winning. Also I was stuck playing offline for a bit this morning and the autogenerated pawns kept turning up with either creepy deep tranny voice (for women) or helium voice (for men). Had the regular voices when talking to them for recruitment, switched into horror mode for the background VAs. I have no idea what/why/how/just god make it stop.

And yeah, I'm pretty much not going to use a class that doesn't at least let me stick with my current weapons options/attack skills. Dragon's Maw is broken as fuck, you just turn into a human blender and everything that's not a scalable enemy just flat out dies.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Tales of Graces:

Pascal is awesome and super is wrong. (Except about Wallbridge, fuck Wallbridge!)

I'm sitting somewhere at 70 hours for this game, and I'm only just now getting through Fendel to the Amarcian enclave. Decided to stop and max out a bunch of titles, go globe-hopping for sidequests, cook -everything-, and increase the shop levels of all the cities along the way to buy their Rare weapons so I could start Customizing them with Rise Shards.

Playing exclusively on Chaos mode, except for a few optional bosses that I'm way too underleveled for. Using Malik as my Main, with Sophie as my Secondary, and Cheria for some of the more interesting fights that require a smarter healer.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Time to take up all of this page!

FF5 Four Job Fiesta - Knight/Berserker/Ninja/Dragoon: Complete!

World 3

Antlion is a putz. I put him to sleep with the Slumber Sword then throw stuff at him so I get his valuable Cottage.

Pyramid is annoying, but less so now that, for the first time, I realised that you can get the Brave Blade before coming here. A mix of scrolls and physicals takes care of things here well enough. Melusine gets put to sleep then Fire Scrolls tossed at her before she can barrier-change; with only three PCs, I have no Berserker who would screw this strategy up!

Lenna rejoins. I get the Holy Lance, Sasuke Katana, and Rune Axe as my first three weapons since I don't need Excalibur too badly due to having the Brave Blade. I then go to Mirage and get the Thief Knife (ends up not being useful), Mirage Vest, and four Hermes Sandals. Of course I also want my Assassin Dagger and Excalibur so I head to the Wind Shrine next.

Auto-Haste smash everything. Not much to say here. Wendigo is a stupid boss, I don't bother trying to slowly sleep-hax him and instead bludgeon him with ST each attack having roughly a 25% chance to connect. So he effectively he has 80k HP. I still never need to heal because dude, get some offence. In addition to the aforementioned two weapons, I pick up the Masamune since I can throw that. (None of the other weapons can be thrown.)

At this point I am faced with a decision. I can go beat the game now (possibly with a little cash grinding so I have more Fuma Shuriken, which are quite pricy). This is probably the objective right idea. There's little else of value to me in the various other quests available. But y'know what? Grinding (which is a possibility due to my current levels/fuma stock) is boring, so I decide I'd rather go seek out the Titan Axe to make my Berserker have MAXIMUM POWER, as well as a second Aegis Shield which helps a little in certain fights. The problem is, I need to do Fork Tower.

I send my Berserker and Ninja to the physical side, and the Knight and Dragoon to the magical. Obviously the physical half is a joke (it's possible I should have done it with one PC, even). Magic half has enemies who counter with horrifying things if I use physicals. Unfortunately they all get OHKOed by the 2H Brave Blade so no issue there. The problem is Omniscient.


Omniscient (1 reset): Setup is 2H Brave Blade Knight and Dual-wield Dragoon with two Mage Mashers. Okay so he counters everything I can do with Return. He has a whole lot of status weaknesses, but the only one I can exploit is Silence. Silence helps! Unfortunately my only way of inflicting it is the Mage Masher, which has about an 18% chance to land silence against his MEvade. Two of them means I have about a one third chance. Silence lasts long enough for one additional attack from the person who inflicted it, and of course two attacks from the other PC. So basically, I have to hope I inflict Silence first turn, and then at least every other turn thereafter. Omniscient has innate Protect/Shell so his durability is actually pretty solid (effective ~34k) so it takes six turns of Knight attacks (since Dragoon does almost nothing) followed by a finisher. So I need to silence him at least three times (turns 1, 3, and 5), probably more. In theory this should happen something like 5% of the time but it takes me way more than 20 tries (granted, most of those attempts are just silence failing turn 1 which takes just a few seconds). Kinda boring!

My one actual reset is because the first time, when I was going for the kill, he became unsilenced right before he died and used a L3 spell which was actually barely a OHKO, then his death counter Flare won him the fight. Kinda WTF and fluky given the tiny window he was unsilenced. (He only uses L3 spells at low HP.) Second time there was no such issue, though I equipped an elemental shield to go with my Diamond Helm just to be safe.


Getting the sub unlocks Istory Falls which was my actual goal. As mentioned, the prize here is the Titan Axe, along with a second Aegis Shield. Nothing else really matters and the dungeon is again easy. I bash Levithan's face in taking care not to hit him with Two Swords much because of the danger of doublecounters.

This takes us to the final dungeon! The first three areas are largely owned by my high-offence setup (Berserk Ninja, 2S Dragoon, 2H Berserker, 2H Knight) and holding down A, although tossing Fire Scrolls does prove a more efficient way to deal with the forest (not a big deal either way). Calofisteri is unimpressive although stalls things out a bit with her defence and draining. The caves are a bit scarier because Great Dragons have a MT 3HKO Earthquake counter to non-magic, so I take them out with high-powered Brave Sword hits. Achelons are also annoying due to defence, evade, and countering with Evil Eye sometimes (stone). Water Scrolls take them out, and Jump is also somewhat effective, though nothing is perfect really. Patiently waiting for the Knight or Berserker to hit them is also an option for counter avoidance. Finally, there is Apanda, who counters with both Protect and Drain to annoy me, but ultimately has no real chance.

Sky area is notable for evasive ninjas, who I deal with by hoping for luck and/or 2HKOing with Jump. At least they occasionally drop Fumas. The other enemy here is easy. In the castle, again, most enemies are easy, with the exception of the hard-hitting Iron Giant. They counter basic physicals in a nasty fashion, but not Jump or Water Scrolls, so using those is helpful, as is setting Image and other anti-physical tricks. For the bosses here, Catastrophe I blitz before he can finish his MT 2HKO of the party, Halicarnassus is a joke, and...


Twintania (1 reset): Okay so Twintania has two problems he presents. One is that he counters physicals with Tidal Wave (low MT 2HKO) one third of the time. The other is that, on his eighth turn (after a two-turn charge time), he uses Giga Flare which is 3000 MT and kills my party. Neither of these are an issue in normal gameplay due to Shell, and alone, neither of them would be a problem for my team. His other turns are pretty scrubby, but the counters prevent me from blitzing and stalling for too long is bad news. While I could possibly still pull this off with Fumas and Elixirs for speed I decide to try and hold onto those and try my other strategy: Death from the Assassin Dagger and Death Scythe, which has about a 30% chance of landing per swing.

I lose once because it just isn't my playthrough to get lucky with randomcasts in boss fights. Also, I didn't know this before, but Twintania goes up to psycho speed during his two turn charge time, so even by ninja only gets two shots with the Assassin Dagger though I was expecting more. The Berserker only gets one shot with the axe (I had unhasted him so that he didn't trigger to many counters). On the second attempt, I make some tweaks: ninja with equip axe and the Death Scythe, Dragoon with Assassin Dagger, kill the Berserker right away, and this enables me to see no counters and get at least four shots of Death in. This time, the fourth and final one connects.


Into the final area! King Behemoth rips me apart with counters and then I have a bad experience with a Crystal Dragon. Neither threatens to kill me but they do start burning my Phoenix Downs, which I really didn't stock up on enough before the final dungeon. So I grudgingly leave to stock up and come back (my levels are pretty low anyway). This proves a mistake because (a) I never fight another King Behemoth or Crystal Dragon, (b) all the other final dungeon enemies are wusses by comparison, (c) I hardly need any Phoenix Downs against the last two bosses as it turns out (one each). But eh, couldn't have known that.

I steal the Genji Shield from Gilgamesh which I don't care about (Aegis is better). Other randoms get taken out by various things, but I adopt a pretty defensive setup (Ninja with Image, Dragoon in back row using Jump, Berserker in back row using the long-range Thor's Hammer) which helps well enough. Against Necrophobe, I use the Magic Lamp twice so that Odin will be first out in the final battle (the attack summons it creates are weak as hell, but they're kinda competent against Necrophobe's four targets). He's easy enough to blast from there though I do need to watch out for his decent damage. Gilgamesh shows up, I try to get the Genji Armour which I would actually maybe care about, but fail.


So, the final battle! Team looks like this:

Krile: Ninja w/ Equip Shield, Sasuke Knife/Aegis Shield
Lenna: Knight w/ Two Hands, Brave Blade
Bartz: Berserker w/ Two Hands, Thor Hammer
Faris: Dragoon w/ Throw, Main Gauche/Aegis Shield

Only Lenna in front row, Hermes Sandals for everyone obviously.


Anyway, Exdeath is a little imposing since White Hole, if it hits, is annoying, and the first form has some really good damage when beaten up. Fortunately I get lucky and White Hole misses (two Aegis Shields means the odds of this are quite good, since stone immunity shuts the attack down). Other than that it is just a matter of stepping on the gas pedal once I think he's low on HP, so Fumas come out to play then. Don't really want to see Meteor, even though I'd survive it.

Neo Exdeath shows up. I immediately spam the Magic Lamp; Odin destroys the mage part, Golem sets up his physical wall. Shoat misses unfortunately, and the other two effects aren't too useful or notable. Then, I start attacking with the knight and tossing everything I am not using (Excalibur, Holy Lance, Rune Axe, etc.) at Neo Exdeath. I make a casual effort to blitz the Almagest part but I am not successful; fortunately it misses the only person it could OHKO so it's just a matter of using three Elixirs. I switch targets at this point to the Grand Cross part, and discover something hilarious. He has a three-turn charge time for Grand Cross above half health, and a two-turn charge time below half. I drop him below half health right before Grand Cross would go off and on his next turn he... starts charging again using the "better" charge time. *facepalm* He doesn't live to resolve that one. From there on I just try to balance out damage against the last two parts. I face another Almagest but again it's not a big deal, and thanks to far superior speed I'm able to easily take out the final target when the second to last falls (I generally go after whichever part I think is closest to getting the next turn towards the end).

And that, as they say, is that. Final levels ranged from 37 to 39.


Overview of jobs!

Knight: Second year in a row running Knight. Still very effective at what they do. Swords are powerful weapons (elements, status, and the raw power of Brave Blade), they have good durability, and Two Hands makes both them and many other fighter jobs better. You can even switch on a shield mid-battle with Two Hands, it is great. Guard/Cover is occasionally quite handy. On this playthrough I never used their other abilities, except for Equip Shield on my Ninja in the final battle.

Berserker: The legend. You can't direct their attacks, you can't stop them from triggering counters, and they're slow (though admittedly durable). Hooray! I was very lucky that I drew them alongside Knight, which doubles their damage at least. They have three things going for them: the Death Scythe is a nifty way to ID various things (including bosses), they cut through defence pretty nicely, and their Berserk ability is one of the few ways to significantly buff the offensive output of a Ninja (Great after you get Twin Lance in particular). Still terrible overall of course.

Ninja: Though they're fragile and Dual-Wield isn't as good as Two Hands on fiesta (no Freelancer to benefit from it, double counters suck sometimes), still MVP overall. Their melee damage was solid and didn't need a support ability (though Berserk could push it up if need be), but more to the point they have Throw, which greatly increased my team's ability to deal with multiple enemies, evasion, and exploit elemental weaknesses. Also while Dual-Wield isn't a great ability, it does save...

Dragoon: Well kinda. So Dragoon sucks, we know this. I mean I -guess- it's better than Berserker but ugh. Can't set Two Hands, spears are terrible outside the Holy Lance, and even Dual-Wield drives this problem home as there are no other good spears to dual-wield with, so Dragoon gets stuck with the Assassin Dagger and its lack of bonus to jump. (Yes, I'm aware Dragon Lances are a rare steal I can access with the Thief Knife. I don't care.) Basically, Dragoon is almost always setting either Throw or Dual-Wield and trying to be a crappy Ninja with better durability, much like how on my last Fiesta run Dragoon was always pretending to be a Time Mage. Whoopee. Only real plus is that Jump ignores evade (and row), so it's useful for that sometimes.


Fun fun. Obviously much harder than my last run since even though Ranger -> Ninja is a significant upgrade, going from the broken of Time Mage to the suck of Berserker is too big a hit. If I do it again I hope I don't get both Knight and Dragoon a third time. No mages is a bit of a drag but at least Throw offers some skillset options. Will do "hard mode" next time, I think.

[Tide]

Wild ARMS 4: Speedrun -

Time for Krakken

[Sierra]

Dargon's Dogma: Last night I climbed up Lesbian Mountain and found a gang of lesbian thieves who only wear combat lingerie.

This game!

(Naturally I joined them.)

[Meeplelard]

Eevee vs. Nobunaga: Just got a Gallade and a Rhyperior despite only beating one map and...uh...not complaining!

Yeah, been laxing on this game, what about it?