What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Fenrir]

373 damage is actually just about what I had with my Black Knight Halberd +0 and 40 strength. It's decent.
...Oh man. I don't know how you're going to handle the final boss with whips.

It's not like I ever relied on parries to win that fight anyway (because even after all this time playing the game, I cannot parry worth a damn). In short, the solution is CHUG CHUG CHUG.

With the 10k souls from the gargoyles, I've bought a seal from Andre, joined Alvina and eventually bought a claw from Shiva in Blight town, before getting to the depths. Unfortunately, I'll have to waste 5 points into dexterity before being able to use it...

The claw gets you...bleed damage!!! at least. Which is actually really nice for some big lugs like Anor Londo giant guards, but yeah, mostly irrelevant. I ran with a fire claw once as backup offense for a pyromancer and it was...okay as a backup weapon for a caster, but not what I'd call good. Probably still your best option, sadly. The dragon bone fist is outright horrible, probably the worst boss weapon not called Smough's Hammer (is it just me, or aren't there a lot of crummy boss weapons?)

The final still doesn't look easy with CHUG CHUG CHUG, unless you always use Iron Flesh and go to town. You're never really sure you can actually heal in that fight.

Bleed's actually pretty awesome (and satisfying) against the very few enemies vulnerable to it, so far! Damage is low enough that it matters, unlike in a normal game. (Something else that got better with my total lack of damage: the "This Is Sparta" kick)
The claw+X does much more damage than the caestus +X, so I've pretty much forgotten about the caestus entirely. It is a better left hand weapon than the claw (useful L1 versus terrible L1), but double claws are too stupid and ridiculous to not use (omg female Wolverine)
I'll still use the Dragon God Fist, because I've already put 20 points into strength. I do not think claws+15 would really be good enough against the DLC bosses anyway, compared to the Dragon God Fist with 50 strength.
I'll try the Dark Hand too!

By the way:
Taurus demon deaths: 0
Moonlight Butterfly deaths: 1
Bell Gargoyle deaths: 2
Capra demon deaths: 0
Gaping dragon deaths: 5
Quelaag deaths: 3
Capra Demon really isn't a problem anymore at this point, while Moonlight Butterfly and Gaping Dragon can still beat me in battles of attrition.

[Luther Lansfeld]

X-COM: Enemy Unknown - Completed on Normal mode. May try Classic mode at some point, but gonna play some portable shit in the meantime. Like Suikoden Tierkreis~

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Ys Origin - Maybe this was -exactly- what I needed to play. Hack 'n slash action with shiny music and looks and fun boss fights and skills. Blowing shit up with remote mines is far more fun than it has any right to be. Also, jesus -fuck- Hugo is such a dick. I thought this wasn't even contractually allowed for protagonists in Ys games. Past that, the game's writing is really good at wasting a perfectly good idea and dumping ten billion adventure cliches on you (holy crap Miuscha why must you exist). But who cares when you're blowing shit up with a wand, two eyes, infinite bombs and a smarmy robe?

Oh yeah. Currently at the Guilty Flame, got my ass kicked by Toal. Hopefully I get another shiny toy to play with this time.

MIMIC GREFTER: Oh, so you're going to make me FAQ Mask locations pre-emptively, aren't you? I swear, I try to play nice to games, but they just beg otherwise.

[Dark Holy Elf]

So, I beat XCOM a couple nights ago.

Fun game. I'm not madly in love with it like some people I know, but it's certainly good. It comes off to me as a mix of Fire Emblem (permadeath, low stat scales, high-stakes SRPG) and 4th-edition D&D (movement, actions, and cover mechanics), with some Civ/Syndicate/etc.-style macro-management thrown in for spice. Pretty interesting definitely.

One of my favourite things about the game was its class/ability system. I'm a pretty big fan of branching choices like this since they're often interesting to make, and because you get multiple people of each class you can easily explore all the choices and customise the type of character you want. Meanwhile, the game does a good job with its four classes; another game that proves you don't need two dozen of them, and that a small, tight number often works better. Really fun. If there was one thing I wish FE would pull straight from XCOM, no questions asked, it is something like this.

Combat's also generally quite fun. Your individual actions definitely matter because errors can very easily lead to troop death, and by and large you own your errors despite RNG being a factor. Troop death is probably about where it should be in terms of punishment; not so bad that one should instantly reset over every one, but still a big deal. I generally played the game like I would Fire Emblem, where I could reset a map but would not load an in-battle save. I ended up only resetting twice, both of which went badly against me and would have cost myself most of my well-built up troops later in the game... which I could recover from but it would have been an annoyingly time-consuming setback. In some ways I like the earlygame dynamic a little more where you don't lose all that unit progress, but it ends up not being a big deal. The best fix for this situation is to give the player periodic high-level joiners lategame like Fire Emb- oh, what's that, XCOM does this too? Excellent.

The management side of things works reasonably well too. I'm a bigger SRPG fan than I am large-scale strategy so this is definitely the side of things I'm less attached to, but they managed to make most of it transparent enough and not all that time-consuming, so it worked. The one complaint I have has to do with interceptors... the minigame where you shoot down UFOs is both kinda strange and also so rare it gets difficult to plan for and decide how much money you need to invest in it. I largely ignored it for the first half of the game, got burned a bit by this midgame, then invested a lot of money in it and... ended up feeling this was a total waste because despite hints you don't end up needing an awesome setup to shoot down the final mothership or anything like that. Not ultimately a big deal, though.

The game doesn't have much plot. Some of what is there is pretty good; I liked the personalities/philosophies of Dr. Vahlen and Dr. Shen. Some of what is there is not; the alien motivation fed to you in the final battle felt like a misfire of blathering. But overall there's just not very much of it, it is not why you play the game, that is fine. As far as stock settings favoured by the west go I will take "alien invasion" over "war simulator aginst terrorists" any day.

The game's biggest flaw has been talked about before, and I will do so again: you can't take back movements. I grill my favourite game of all time for this, and I will grill XCOM for it even more, because unlike in FFT it's often not obvious at all what you'll be able to do after moving. Strange things block line of sight sometimes, especially when elevation changes are involved. I didn't enjoy the game's start that much, and this has nothing to do with earlygame combat or mechanics - actually, I think I'd love those on a replay. It has everything to do with the game just plain being less fun until you figure out some of the rules for what blocks line of sight, and what counts as cover, and what counts as flanking, and there's no real good way to do this except trial and error (or reading a guide online I guess). It's not really a game where I enjoyed the learning curve as such, but fortunately one mostly gets past that. Just never 100% past.

The game's other major flaw has to do with the way enemies spawn, at least on Normal (I've heard Classic changes things a bit here?). Since they literally don't exist until you see them, a few oddities get introduced, such as (a) you don't want to move too far on your own phase once you've burned several of your own turns, as "seeing" a new enemy late in the round gives them chance to attack you before you can do anything about them. And (b) you can totally, utterly annihilate the game by inching forward slowly turn after turn... possibly with a bunch of the rest of your army on overwatch as you do it. This is pretty horrible and I don't do it because ew, gross. It's far from alone about this for SRPGs (many others get broken by a very slow progression in this style) so obviously this isn't a fatal flaw, just eh. Terror missions were some of my favourites just because this approach obviously wouldn't work.

And in general, I'm always favour of games giving you more information. XCOM gives you a fair bit (especially once I discovered the unit analysis window in battle), but there's a few places where it's lacking. Several armours have special properties like movement boosts which the game doesn't tell you (I only learned this after beating the game), and it would be great if you saw enemy hit rates against you so you could adjust your strategy. I'm also not an especially big fan of the "fog of war everywhere" approach but this entire paragraph is mostly just me talking about my personal biases.

Also game, please don't use a single button with no confirmation for "end turn". Thank goodness I only did this when it never actually burned me.

Random highlights of the playthrough:

-The first time I faced Sectopods, I faced three at once. This was so brutal. One of two non-reset battles where I lost a colonel because damn.

-Realising that I could one-round berserkers by shooting them with an assault, having them run towards the assault, and kill them with a reaction counter. This never got old. I doubt it ever shall.

-Discovering how broken Mind Control was. Not sure why it makes the enemies so stupid but I'll take it! Sadly I didn't get many chances to use this, but still!

-The final battle was pretty fun, once it decided to get serious (the first few rooms were admittedly very boring/easy). Someone (Ryan?) said that he thought it was worse than the battleship; I thought it was much better because (a) two sectopods at once, and (b) that final room is pretty glorious. I lost three people (one vs. the sectopods, two in the mind control room... both gunned down by my assault as it turned out) and had to tough the battle out with a 5-HP sniper as the volunteer, one support who was all out of tricks, and said aforementioned Assault, who ended up killing the last two Ethereals herself with some timely help from the others. Good times.


It's a fun game, certainly, but part of me really wants to see where a few iterative sequels of gameplay refinement might take it. What was it Fenrir said about FF13? Change a bunch of things about XCOM and you have a 10/10 game. That pretty much sums XCOM up perfectly to me; it's a good game, but one that has potential to be considerably better. I just hope those sequels happen instead of getting XCOM: the FPS or XCOM: the RTS.


No idea how to rate this at the moment, but it's in the 7-8 area. I could see replays (which I definitely intend) taking it up very solidly into 8 area, perhaps even higher, but it's hard to say for sure. Better than I was expecting honestly; this is the most I've enjoyed a western game since... gosh. At least since Civilisation II, which is like 13 years ago. And if we don't count Cthulhu Saves the World as western it's not even especially close.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I guess even you can sometimes recognize a good game when you see it. Hub.

[Grefter]

FM3 - So I head back to the Glorious Land of Nippon and romg there is martial law declared and Macho Man Randy Savage's Dad has been declared leader of a coup!  But secretly he isn't!  Upon hearing that his homeland is being taken over by the military, his family and friends are under threat and his country is turning into a corrupt fascist dictatorship Macho Man Randy Savage has this to say "FUCK YOU DAD".

So I figured while I was playing some Torchlight 2 I would watch a no deaths run of Dark Souls to try and understand it and to see what it seems Fenrir has determined as what is required to be "good" at Dark Souls.  This I could not find (thought there was supposed to be one floating around?), but what I did find was a wiki to wikiwalk through to still try and understand you guys.

I still don't get it.  It is like Vagrant Story with more obtuse systems and a whole ton more dick punching and no direction through the city.  Does not compute.  I love Vagrant Story.  I hate dick punching.  I don't understand the joy you get from receiving dick punching, but please never change.

[AndrewRogue]

XCOM: Crits happen. And cost me pretty much every ranked soldier I had left. I continue to manage to climb back, but a failed mission and increasing panic will likely spell the end of this run for me.

Should I be doing no resets on my first play? Nah.

Is it fun to do so? Yeah.

Rayman Origins: So I cam to this game in weird, roundabout way. Played Rayman Legends on a Wii U demo console. Thought it seemed cool. So downloaded Rayman Jungle Run on my iPod, and it was fun. So I bought this, and, shock, it is fun! Playing through with Ashley, because platformers with multiplayer and the ability to hit each other are best. Game is fun. Art design is amazing. Sound design is amazing. Sad I missed this for so long.

Rayman Jungle Run: Collected all the Lums in every level and beat all of the Land of the Livid Dead. Only the single run achievements remain, and I'm not sure I'm going to do those.

Scribblenauts Remix: Fun when it isn't crashing my iPod. A little too sandboxy for me, though. It sort of hits that Minecraft point for me. I see why people like it, but I can't see myself playing it for long.

[Tide]

FM3 - So I head back to the Glorious Land of Nippon and romg there is martial law declared and Macho Man Randy Savage's Dad has been declared leader of a coup!  But secretly he isn't!  Upon hearing that his homeland is being taken over by the military, his family and friends are under threat and his country is turning into a corrupt fascist dictatorship Macho Man Randy Savage has this to say "FUCK YOU DAD".

Macho Man Randy Savage is putting his priorities in life man. Flipping off your old man > saving your countrymen from super soldiers.

[superaielman]

Plants vs Zombies: Third time through normal mode. Way more zombies now, it's a notable uptick. It's my second run through the game.

[Just Another Day]

The game's other major flaw has to do with the way enemies spawn, at least on Normal (I've heard Classic changes things a bit here?). Since they literally don't exist until you see them, a few oddities get introduced, such as (a) you don't want to move too far on your own phase once you've burned several of your own turns, as "seeing" a new enemy late in the round gives them chance to attack you before you can do anything about them. And (b) you can totally, utterly annihilate the game by inching forward slowly turn after turn... possibly with a bunch of the rest of your army on overwatch as you do it. This is pretty horrible and I don't do it because ew, gross. It's far from alone about this for SRPGs (many others get broken by a very slow progression in this style) so obviously this isn't a fatal flaw, just eh. Terror missions were some of my favourites just because this approach obviously wouldn't work.

The inch-forward technique is pretty much the only way to go on the harder difficulty modes. The major difference in Classic+, AI-wise, is that enemy units move around the map themselves, either wandering randomly or homing in on noise you might make (bursting through doors, breaking windows, and presumably also gun-fire? Weirdly, not actually sure about that.). So once you've engaged the first group of enemies on the map (hopefully getting the drop on them via overwatch), you often stay engaged as the rest of the map's forces come running. You've still got a bunch of advantages, if you're conservative about exposing yourself you'll always almost get the first round of fire against incoming aliens, but it's at least a little better than on Normal, I think.

-The final battle was pretty fun, once it decided to get serious (the first few rooms were admittedly very boring/easy). Someone (Ryan?) said that he thought it was worse than the battleship; I thought it was much better because (a) two sectopods at once, and (b) that final room is pretty glorious. I lost three people (one vs. the sectopods, two in the mind control room... both gunned down by my assault as it turned out) and had to tough the battle out with a 5-HP sniper as the volunteer, one support who was all out of tricks, and said aforementioned Assault, who ended up killing the last two Ethereals herself with some timely help from the others. Good times.

Two sectopods is definitely a good fight, especially since they've got good terrain for them. But the rest of the dungeon is pretty easy even on normal, and as far as I can tell change at all on harder difficulties, so the first two rooms become even more dull and trivial, and the end loses some of its shine. Particularly when you realize (as I did on my second playthrough) that the uber ethereal is load-bearing, and you can ignore its support entirely.

I think the battleship is somewhat random, so I'm sure experiences vary, and I didn't get it in my first playthrough at all, but in games 2 and 3 waves of Mutons supported by Sectopods made it a long, tough, fun map, probably the highlight of any of my playthroughs.

It's a fun game, certainly, but part of me really wants to see where a few iterative sequels of gameplay refinement might take it. What was it Fenrir said about FF13? Change a bunch of things about XCOM and you have a 10/10 game. That pretty much sums XCOM up perfectly to me; it's a good game, but one that has potential to be considerably better. I just hope those sequels happen instead of getting XCOM: the FPS or XCOM: the RTS.

Strongly agreed. I think that's a lot of why I'm so enamoured with the game, that there really seems like there really might be the strong foundation for a whole new SRPG franchise to obsess over. Fingers crossed.

My SHIV-only game is finally getting moving, though it took a couple months of game-time to get there. It'll be the dramatic story of how Major "Strings" saves the world with her posse of robot sidekicks. Who are very cute and eager to please, but painfully incompetent and surprisingly delicate. We'll see how it goes once she starts upgrading them.

I just realized that I'm really looking forward to the scene in the ending where a team-mate beckons frantically at the Volunteer as they flee. Shivs don't show up in some cut-scenes, but I hope they do in that one.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, realising the uber ethereal was load-bearing would help of course. When I fought him he had the brains(/luck) to run for cover and let me deal with everyone else after his opening mind control.

Never saw more than one Sectopod at once in the battleship and Ciato drew the same enemy layout as me so I figured it was non-random, but who knows.


Oh yeah, also:

Mario Kart 7 - Getting into this a bunch again. Got 3 stars on all the courses, so now everyone I play online will know that I obsess over dumb accomplishments in games I get into I am awesome. Also beat all the Normal staff ghosts, but the expert records are hardcore badass, I can't even get within 5 seconds of most of them. Obviously I still have a long way to go to actually master this game, though who knows how long my current run of play will last.

Lost Odyssey: Decided on a whim to give this a try again, because even though it's mediocre it's an interesting enough kind of mediocre for me to want to see it through (or at least closer to through than I got). Currently mid disc 2. The last three hours (i.e. the only ones I've played this past half-year) kinda highlight the ups and downs of the game pretty well: dream sequences are excellently-written (rest of the writing is awkward but not bad, and the villains make me smile), battle design is pretty good (bosses very much have their unique quirks, and even randoms have theirs), between-battle setup is a bit dull and time-consuming, and the game is glacial. PSX-level start-of-battle load times, hour-long sequences with no battle and surprisingly little plot given there is no battle... it's the lost PSX Final Fantasy all right.

[Cmdr_King]

Devil Survivor 2- Niu is the Brightest Star in the Sky.

So this game.  By simple virtue of Joint Crack, this game is less irritating than the first Devil Survivor.  But beyond that... y'know how in Evangelion the plot was this giant distraction to string together all the character bits and cause psychological breakdowns?  Imagine a version where they took apart the main plot, made a reason for everything to exist, then put it back together without the character bits.  Not to say the game doesn't have a likable cast, but it's not remotely the focus.  And as such I'm not sure what to do with it.  I mean, it's not bad for what it is, and the SMT logic works well in the context of Angels The Big Dipper attacking, but it lacks the heart that made Eva work.

Gameplay is alright.  The game basically has to cheat to keep from getting horribly stomped at the end, although there are some enemy gimmicks that are just more effective for enemies than your team.  It just can't compete with the raw power you have once things well and truly get rolling.

7/10 material.  Not something that's going to stick with me, but good at what it is.

[Meeplelard]

RE6: Beat Leon's Route!

While it is the best route of the three, it highlights just what RE6 did wrong best at the same time, and is it was a game too ambitious for it's own good.  Too many things put into the game, and they clearly didn't give enough time for the developers to really hammer out the kinks, as well as look at certain aspects and go "should this be in the game?  Does this actually add anything to gameplay?" etc.  Also some enemy designs feel poorly play-tested because...well...

Zombies grabbing you is an instant loss to 1 Health (out of 6), and sometimes there's no real way to prevent this.  THEN on top of that, Zombies do gradual damage that you have to QTE out of.  AND THEN there's an enemy that if they grab you, they do instant 1 Health damage ON TOP of the grabbing damage...so you can take 2 hits immediately, and if you have one health left, that's instant death, no chance for partner to save you.  Also enemies with Instant Death moves are still stupid, as there are a few too many.

On the otherhand, I can safely say people whining about the game being too QTE heavy need to stuff it.  Yes, they exist, but they are NOT all over the place and every five seconds like people claim.  There are less in this game then there were in RE5 (relative to the lengths of each game anyway), and they're pretty forgiving.  The only really bad one is the climbing related one found in the end of Leon and Jake's routes, because the controls are not the most responsive and feels like a waste of time (especially since Leon has to do it twice and the second time is REALLY lenient on the whole "fail and you die" thing, you will more likely spend a good 5 minutes on a section I think the devs wanted to take 30 seconds -_-)

I'll play Ada's story soon enough, but overall, "disappointing" is indeed the word that best sums up RE6.  You can see the game has a lot of potential and could have been amazing, but well, if pushing the release date UP a month from it's original date should have been an indicator that the game was rushed.  Remember, it was announced earlier this year, and sort of suddenly too.

Contrast that too...ohh...

DmC:  Demo came out today, and just played this!  This is...a pretty in-depth demo truth be told.  It actually feels like a legitimate snippet from the game instead of an incomplete but playable part to give you an idea of what's in the game.  Little changes make it better than the NYCC demo (which wasn't bad actually!), to boot.

So far?  It seems like the game has genuine potential to be good, and unless enemy design REALLY drops the ball, it should prove itself a worthy addition to the series, once you get over the whole "Emo Goth Dante" design (mind you, his personality is similar to original Dante's...though, kind of more like a hybrid of Dante and Nero), it definitely has a Devil May Cry feel.

That said, the game also feels different.  It's kind of like Bayonetta in the sense that it definitely gets what makes this kind of action game work, BUT also adds its own unique touch at the same time.  "True but different to the rest of the series" is an accurate way to put it.

[Fenrir]

I did say that about FF13. (too bad they went in the opposite direction to where they should have gone, in FF13-2)

FM3 - So I head back to the Glorious Land of Nippon and romg there is martial law declared and Macho Man Randy Savage's Dad has been declared leader of a coup!  But secretly he isn't!  Upon hearing that his homeland is being taken over by the military, his family and friends are under threat and his country is turning into a corrupt fascist dictatorship Macho Man Randy Savage has this to say "FUCK YOU DAD".

So I figured while I was playing some Torchlight 2 I would watch a no deaths run of Dark Souls to try and understand it and to see what it seems Fenrir has determined as what is required to be "good" at Dark Souls.  This I could not find (thought there was supposed to be one floating around?), but what I did find was a wiki to wikiwalk through to still try and understand you guys.

I still don't get it.  It is like Vagrant Story with more obtuse systems and a whole ton more dick punching and no direction through the city.  Does not compute.  I love Vagrant Story.  I hate dick punching.  I don't understand the joy you get from receiving dick punching, but please never change.

(Try to ignore my blatant LUST for Dark souls)

You can't really get Dark Souls by seeing a a no death run done by a pro, like you can't really get Super Mario Brothers by seing a tool assisted speedrun. Death is not necessarily a major point of the game, but danger and risk are, and it's something you can't really appreciate here. (It's about learning from your mistakes the first time too)
You don't need that much to be good at the game, mostly: learning how bosses attack and when/how to block/dodge and when to attack, taking things slowly, learning the environment. I'm only good at the third one.

There is a ton of stuff in this game, but it's all mostly easy to understand. There is no terribly obtuse system like blacksmithing in Vagrant Story/Legend of Mana/Unlimited Saga. You can forge your Axe+1 so it becomes an Axe+2. Then you can forge it so it becomes an Axe+3. On +5 and +10 you can add an element.
So basically: There are tons of weapons, try each to get a feel of how they handle. Put your stones and money into your favourite so it becomes better. Maybe make it fire elemental at +5.
Covenants all work under the same way: Do what they want you to do, and you'll get 2 or 3 items unique to that covenant.

The lack of direction and maps actually work here, because the level design delivers. Explore and you'll naturally make a mental image of the in game world in your head without effort. I can actually imagine the entire game world inside my head easily, and it's not something I can do (or even come close to) with any other 3d game. You get a large non linear world, with no need to check a map constantly. It is the exact opposite philosophy of GTA, Assassin's Creed or Metroid 1, where the areas are larger but not distinct and you absolutely need a map.(except Metroid 1 doesn't have a map) The game doesn't really have that many true dick moves. I count 2 kinds. (when the floor crumbles under your feet in Lost Izalith, + the first mimic/slime you encounter) Maybe Anor Londo archers.
(Dick moves are still great fun. Drakkhen rocks)

There aren't surprises or dick punches left for me in Dark Souls, but I still play it because there are tons of builds and different weapons that handle differently. For example your approach against any enemy can be very different with a regular sword (regular), or a 2h sword (high damage and range, slow as fuck), or a halberd (not hitting leaves you more vulnerable than other weapons), or fists (very low range), or a whip (slow with nearly no stunlocking power, but allright against multiple enemies IIRC)
Gameplay is better in Dark Souls because Vagrant Story is pretty much straight up RPG with QTEs, like Shadow Hearts or Legend of Dragoon. There aren't really any mechanical differences between fighting with a spear or your fists with Vagrant Story, because range largely doesn't matter. Dark Souls is a more active game where most encounters need to be treated in different ways and death is around every corner (death not being a source of frustration, since it's better integrated than in any other game), while in Vagrant Story you just run up, punch people and try not to get your RISK too high and never really die. There is no masochistic desire in me for wanting to play a difficult game like Dark Souls, just the same desire for something that requires constant attention you get from DMC or God Hand.


Oh god.


Anyway I beat Ornstein and Smough. My damage was terrible against Ornstein, but he's a human, he can bleed. The claw has terrible range and a slowish animation, so the only way I actually beat them was tanking with full Havel + Wolf Ring. I wish I could actually use huge armor for the entire game, but the walking animation is just too slow for me.

Bleed damage has actually been surprisingly invaluable. There's that fight, the asylum demon, drakes, capra demons, minotaurs, harpies...  I don't really except bleed to carry on for much longer, so I've been pumping all my stat points into strength for the Dragon Fist Bone. At +4 and with 35 strength, it is still shit.

I also got the Dark Hand, which is useless as a weapon and awful as a shield. Yay! It's the only shield I have, but I haven't really used it seriously at any point yet. The biggest advantage it provides are:
1) Cool distorsion effects
2) My character looks like she's constantly mashing berries in her left hand.

I also just betrayed Shiva for the DWGR. Currently doing ninja flips in Velka's armor set and holding two claws.

[Cotigo]

DE:HR

So after reading Snow's post I decided I was going to restart and do a pacifist run. On my first run though, so, you know, probably gonna give up midway through. Knowing more about the mechanics and being less paranoid about losing ghost means I caught up to where I was within a couple hours.  Knowing the map layout ahead of time really helped me speed through areas taking down everyone.  Also knowing that putting small boxes in the way will screw up guard pathing.  Throwing a box down some stairs, putting a small box in the way so the soldiers climb up a separate set of stairs and then each of them getting taken down as they obliviously walk past me is more satisfying than it should be.

[Sierra]

I've been pumping all my stat points into strength for the Dragon Fist Bone. At +4 and with 35 strength, it is still shit.

I warned you! You may barely crack 300 attack power before you stop getting any damage bonuses from stats.

[Hunter Sopko]

Dark Souls: Capra Demon down, Death Count: 2. Almost beat it my first try. Like, one more tink-hit level almost. Then I got caught in a corner and rolled when I should have shielded. Uchi +5 OHKOed dogs if I hit them cleanly, so that helped. Into the depths, rescued Laurentis. Gathering souls for Pyromancy before moving on.

Persona 4: The Golden- Got this, started. So pretty~ Smoothed out the character models. Added detail to rest of graphics is noticable but not exactly next gen. Images and text are HD. New OP is colorful and trippy and is gorgeous on the Vita screen. Got the Solid Gold edition, though the travel case is disappointing since it's useless if you don't also use the faceplate. Just scratched the surface of the beginning. Chie's new voice is AWFUL. Like, not even P4A quality. They also throw the new NPC at you immediately, but nothing really important.

[Fenrir]

316 damage at 40 strength, Cid. Fear.
317 at 41 strength!!

It does look like it deals more damage than a claw +15 with 40 dex. That's just how great a S is compared to an A. But its range is lower, its weight is way higher and there's no bleed. So yeah, probably not worth it. It is at least way better than a lightning claw (180 physical + 180 lightning damage)

The R2 might have the longest charge time of any weapon? It is awesome when you actually manage to pull it off, and can be used to instant kill just about anything right after a backstab.

Sif was plenty difficult without a decent shield. It was all invincibility frames abuse during ninja backflips.

[Grefter]

It is like VS in the same was X-Com is like Fire Emblem. (Two of us can play that game dear Fenrir <3).

[SnowFire]

Growlanser: The Wayfarer of Time
Ocelot, you did it again!  It's a thin line between "bold plot twist" and "lazy writing," and you are not really reassuring me you're on the right side of the divide, Mr. Script Writer.

Okay.  So yet again, someone who was dead, d-e-a-d dead, in a setting that as best I can tell has zero casual magical resurrection and people who die stay dead, has shown up to briefly chat then run off without being particularly challenged on this fact.  In my last post, the breast-groping, while pathetic, wasn't entirely horrible in that sure, part of the appeal of this type of character is the ability to have them do/say crazy shit just to see what happens, and more stupid options aren't a huge problem.  The other complaint was that there wasn't really an option to have Our Hero respond with something approaching a proper response to our first zombie - insane happiness at a miracle, madness, or paranoia.

This time around, Miss Zombie shows up to chat, the party member who buried her seems to be blase about this and doesn't notice anything particularly wrong with this, she immediately runs off, and then the Growlanser stand-in-for-the-main fairy deadpan notes something along the lines of "Weird, according to master's memory, she's dead."  This isn't some kind of interesting clue, like "huh Mary's wearing a ring with the same insignia as Florian, I wonder if there's some connection."  This is severe reality-shattering impossibility, appropriate for sanity checks & Cloud style head-grabbing.  Something is deeply WRONG for this to happen, there's clashing realities or memory modification or madness or (judging from the title) time travel or something.  Even if Our Hero is happy to be wrong, his sanity should be ticking away!  I can maybe explain his own silence via "Okay I can't let everyone else think I'm crazy, time to shut up and figure out what the hell later" but that isn't really sold as what's going on.  Failing that, even if the plot is kept exactly the same, let me friggin' demand an explanation for WTF, or be astonished and happy at her survival, or something!  What!  The!  Hell!

Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone
Sure I'll give anime Zelda II a shot.  But wow, these characters are young.  Similar to DQV Act I, this is going to feel like child abuse.  Do not let your kids go to school have to fight deadly snakes & slimes & stuff!  Yeesh.

[Fenrir]

I raised awareness for X-Com and all I got from Gref was trolling?? I'm leaving the DL again.

Vagrant Story does actually have that dungeon dwelling adventure quality (with an emphasis to atmosphere) that you can also see in Dark Souls, that does make them very close in feel to me.
This might be why I've really been disappointed by VS recently. VS can't really hold in this regard to similar atmopsheric games; the enemies are never threatening, and the serious stone is in stark constrast with the buttpants, crazy hair, antagonist bishonen and block puzzles everywhere. Rosencrantz is talking. All I can notice is his gross pixel on his lip.
(Meanwhile the mechanics haven't gotten any better, especially since by now everybody rightfully hates QTEs and confusing crafting systems)

[Grefter]

Yeah that is really what I was thinking, except all the stuff you really seem to like do very little for me (Don't like DMC or the like in the first place, that + more punishing is not a thing that brings me joy).

[Shale]

I also played the DmC demo. Combat feels like a solid step down from the heights of DMC/3/4 (obviously 2 is not a "height") but it's not bad by any stretch. doesn't have the same feel, not as technical, but still plays well and has the potential for fun positioning shenanigans if they choose to go down that path - you have a variant on the Devil Bringer in Dante's chain weapon, but you can use it to pull yourself to enemies or enemies to you by choice, which flows into being able to isolate enemies or escape from combat as a core mechanic. Potential downfall: there doesn't seem to be a way to lock on to a particular enemy. This isn't a problem in standard combat thus far, because the camera is reasonably friendly, but I want to be sure which enemy I'm pulling in.

What's really surprising is that the style is actually an asset. Dante's design is still not good, but the setting is a city that is trying to murder you down to the last cobblestone, and it works. The jerky motion, the way the floor pulls out from under you, the walls writing "CRUSH HIM" on themselves - it's effective in a totally different way from Dante eating pizza while murdering demons with billiard balls. I may actually buy this.

[Niu]

Devil Survivor 2- Niu is the Brightest Star in the Sky.

Why are you comparing me with Polaris? I certainly don't look like "-.-"
Further more, why are you comparing this with Eva?

[Cmdr_King]

It was my way of saying I got the Kingmaker Ending.  Al Saiduq is such a you character.

And I'm comparing it to eva because the Septiontrones art and gimmicks remind me of Eva's Angels (for obvious reasons in the case of art).