What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[DjinnAndTonic]

Lost Odyssey: Been itching to play this one, so I just shoved everything else aside and played that last night.

I got decently far I think? I'm playing it without a walkthrough for once, so I'm constantly getting paranoid about missing cool things. There's lots of little treasures hidden all over the place in this game, and my HDTV isn't large enough to prevent the eyestrain it induces from looking for all the little things.

The game is pretty challenging so far. It's pretty easy to wipe to bosses and even difficult randoms. Perhaps I'm not levelled enough, but I find myself spamming items just for survival in a lot of battles. There's not a lot of customization options as of yet, so I'm not sure how I could be doing this more efficiently without grinding. The battle system itself is -really- basic turn-based stuff. If it wasn't as challenging as it is, it would be worthless, but it does its job well enough.

The character growth system is pretty fun. I can already tell that I'm going to like the Mortal characters more than the Immortals, because the Immortals are getting broken and interchangeable quite fast. I've only got 3 PCs so far, and the randoms are consistently numbering in the 4s, 5s, and 6s, so hopefully I get a larger battle party soon. Around level 16.

Story is engaging enough so far, though I wish they would have held off on making the villain so readily apparent after they spent about an hour making him more ambiguous and interesting. And then they show him rubbing his hands and cackling evilly. Argh. His only hope now is to go the Blue Dragon Nene route and just be a total troll.

Main three PCs are a mixed bag. Kaim is just there most of the time. Seth is kinda grating, though it could still go either terribly awful or terribly awesome depending on where they go with her development. And Jansem is comic relief that actually makes me laugh (I can't be the only one who has played this and immediately thought "Sokka" from Last Airbender here, right?).


FF13-2:
Played more of this since my friend and I managed to meet up again on our days off! It's still pretty awesome. Battles are fast, monster-catching/raising/eating is engaging, and the time-travel mechanics are still loose and fun!

My favorite example is how Snow is apparently doing his time-travel thing separately from Serah and Noel, but then Serah and Noel solve the problem that Snow set out to fix (through more time-travel, of course!). So Snow starts disappearing from the time he was in due to it not being a problem anymore... but not until Serah and Noel show back up in that time period to watch it happen. *Tsk tsk* Snow, don't you know you have to go visit the Old Man at the End of Time first so things like "being effected by time changes" won't hurt you?

Just started Episode 4 (of 6?). Will play this more if my friend can make it over, but otherwise, I'm focusing on Lost Odyssey for console games.



Half Minute Hero: Picked this up again, it is good times. I'm totally gonna stat topic this.


Seiken Densetsu 3: Running out of steam on this one, but I'll still play it from time to time. We'll see if I finish it this time.

Song Summoner: I've almost reached the second boss fight! Seriously, this game is slow for an iPhone game. I thought I'd be done with it by now.


Advance Wars series: One of my favorite LPers started this, so I tried it out for a little while. Hey, it's Fire Emblem with nothing but generics! Yay? More fun to read than play, honestly. Not likely to pick it up again, but I'll keep reading it.

[Meeplelard]

Djinn: Lost Odyssey is a decently tough game until somewhere mid-Disc 2.  Then it takes a bit of a plummet in difficulty.  By Disc 4, you are basically too broken for it to fight back, for a number of reasons.  I'm tempted to play a more restricted playthrough next game where its like "Immortals can only use skills from Mortals they have plot connections too", and maybe allow skills that are from the currently equipped accessory too (but only if said accessory is equipped, doesn't matter if they've learned it), and see how well that holds up.  My only issue is that Seth won't get any real skills until Disc 3.

That said, Seth and Kaim are pretty similar, but Ming is not, though there is another Immortal whose pretty much identical to Ming with a very slight magic advantage (...I'm not kidding.  The only difference stat wise is that the 4th Immortal has an A in Magic while Ming has a B.  Its weird they didn't give Ming SOME stat advantage on the other.  Not that the difference in magic is large enough to care)

[Sierra]

Dark Souls: *Cid gets invaded in the Depths. Casts Chameleon, turns into giant pile of excrement. Watches invader run past twice, disappear. Cid gets a book.*

This shit is on now, motherfucker.

[Grefter]

That sounds like really compelling PVP.  You should try out the deatmatch mode in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood or Revelations sometime Cid. 

You can dress up as a hooker and spend the whole match sitting on a bench.

Edit - This isn't to disparage the gameplay there, it is pretty awesome that it exists.

[Sierra]

The best part is that I later found out he unlocked the level shortcut before quitting in frustration. He looked everywhere.

[AndrewRogue]

Mass Effect 1: And beaten again. Despite largely being a repetition of my first playthrough (wanted to clean up some odds and ends in my playthrough for ME3), it was still pretty enjoyable. Was playing on Veteran because whatevs.

Difficulty in ME1 really gets laughable after a certain point. By about Virmire, most enemies just weren't threats anymore, and the ones that were one-shot me (snipers!). Marksmen is still completely insane, turning your average pistol into a killing machine of unfathomable power. Sabatoge wrecks most enemies, as do Throw and Lift. By the finale, I was pretty much just running and gunning.

Inventory is still tremendous ass. Terrible and pointless system, especially given that weapons were pretty much "choose next one with biggest number." I also don't appreciate how much better certain company weapons were, such that, say, FoeBlaster VII (Bad Designers Design) is strictly inferior to the CuddleGun VI (Rainbow Co.), since it made gearing up even more tedious.

I also encountered a bizarre number of bugs along the way. I really don't remember the game being quite so buggy, but I had at least three crashes, and several just plain weird things.

Story wise, it is Bioware. Some things are good, some things are bad and, regardless of anything else, it is written better than 90% of other games on the market. The plot carries itself well enough and the individual missions are well done (with Virmire standing out as particularly awesome). Side missions are pretty weak on the whole, although there are a couple decent ones.

Characters...

Kaidan: Not bad, but bland. Has a couple of decent things to say.

Ashley: Space racist. Pretty decent. Generally like her portrayal.

Garrus: Solid character all around with a good arc. Clearly a bro.

Wrex: Probably best character? Manages to be a representative of the Krogan race, but also defy expectations and be a witty and likable SOB.

Liara: Didn't do much with her this time around.

Tali: Falls too heavily on being a representative of the Quarian race, but is fun.

On the whole, the game stood up surprisingly well, even having played ME2. Speaking of...

ME2: Now to do this game again. Grabbed the Thief, the Convict, the Mercenary, Archangel, the Scientist and the Warlord already, and am now onto Horizon. Gonna stop and do some sidequests after.

The difference in ME1 and ME2 remains pretty much as glaring as night and day. ME2 gameplay is far better (although the silliness of Biotics and ME1 cooldowns is missed) and cutscene/dialogue direction is far and away better.

[Pyro]

Fortune Summoners: Beaten

Fortune Summoners is an independently developed PC game with anime-like designs that follows the adventures of one cute little swordgirl and her two cute little magic using friends. It also features lines such as "My magics are the punishing fires of hell, here to burn you all to ash!" and "Oh yay we're going to be devoured! Wait. What's that mean?" The game isn't very serious.

It is more or less a 2-d sidescroller action RPG with three characters: Arche the idiot swordgirl, Sana the healer mage (to a T) and Stella the fire mage who makes things die glorious blazing deaths (with fire, you see). The game alternates between some solo sections and combinations of two, but past the beginning parts you're going to be kicking ass with all three of them together, holding off enemies with Arche while Sana heals/buffs/throws in damage and Stella calls down the aforementioned punishing fires of hell. You can opt to take the role of any of the three, as the AI is very good and can handle most situations... often better than you the player can. You can also adjust the AI in terms of formation and magic-intensiveness with the literal push of a single button to cycle through a few modes. Very nice and easy to use feature, that.

Enemies and allies alike have pretty good AI, with healing and damage and buffing balanced, and the right abilities used in the right situations ( a diagonal-up fire spell to deal with aerial enemies or used in stairwells where it can get a lot of hits). Monsters generally do the same (buff strong fighter allies, GTFO and try to heal or used ranged attacks at low health, and input-read (okay that is more "cheating AI" than "good AI", but there you have it). Most enemies generally command some respect, and the game will wipe you out over the course of it. Fortunately death is a slap on the wrist, with the ability to restart from the entrance to the screen you are on, and you can 'escape to safety' in the middle of a dungeon for 10% of your money, which isn't usually very painful at all since you frequently invest it in equipment anyway.

I generally enjoyed the game with a few notable gripes. The dungeon design is cruddy, as it is easy to get lost (everything *looks* the same) and the 2D nature of it with multiple layers means that there are more forks than you would like. Still, I was never so lost that I didn't know where I was or what the hell I was supposed to do. A map sure as hell would have been nice though, for all that it may not be a bad idea to keep one yourself. The input-reading could be a little annoying at times, but it encouraged using all three girls and there are ways around it (rolling on the ground has never been such an awesome sword technique).

Anywho. Fortune Summoners was a fun game and I enjoyed it a fair amount. The demo is pretty lengthy and free if you want to give it a shot on Steam.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FF13-2: Up to the final episode.

On the one hand, the plot has gotten better recently, and the final dungeon seems like it has stepped up the game's often inconsistent challenge. Pretty cool. On the other hand, the fetchquest involving searching for the five pieces of ore hidden in different eras was pretty inexcusable. Not only did it send me scurrying to a FAQ, but it meant I went a very long time without meaningful gameplay. Bah.

Main villain motivation is pretty awful as advertised, although at least so far I don't think comparisons to the Red Wanker are justified, just because the game seemed to want me to sympathise with the latter so much. Of course I'm not done yet, so this may be re-evaluated!

I think the game's headed for a 6 but we'll see.

*minor spoilers*

Oh yes and I was amused by the fact that there was a point in the game where "Scream at Hope" was not just a dialogue option, but it the correct dialogue option. I'm sure some people will appreciate that at least!

[Clear Tranquil]

Watch out for evil Giraffes! ~

[superaielman]

Tell me how you do against the Behemoth+two sab fight if you run into it, Elfboy. That one slaughtered me repeatedly (And which I had to die about a dozen times to avoid since FF13-2's encounter system is fucking terrible and the random had me pinned in a corner).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Evil giraffes were pretty badass, yes!

[SnowFire]

Fire Emblem Plot, the Marxist-Feminist-Poststructualist perspective: On mission 3-7, Rivals Collide.  I'd just like to point out that this is the first time I've seen an enemy commander that is female, and if you're familiar with the mission, this fact barely counts!  (Okay it is possible 3-6 also has an enemy female commander, but I sure didn't see them if they were with the fog and endless waves of suicidal troops seeking to embrace sweet death.  I guess a foolhardy Jill could have flown bravely into the darkness to take a peek, but eh.)  Having come off Mass Effect 2 recently (argh, still need to write a retrospective on that) which was pretty good about having random female soldiers trying to kill you and random female mercenary commanders and the like who range from brutal & incompetent to pretty scary, this is more noticeable than usual.  Especially since Begnigon, from what we know about it, you'd think would be pretty darn egalitarian on gender grounds at least - they're freaking ruled by a girl, and the commander of the Holy Guard is a woman (Sigrun), and Tanith & Marcia exist, etc.  But aside from rando-Pegasus Knights, everyone you kill is male.  Less of an issue with generic grunts, more odd with the named bosses.

Also the depiction of the Laguz in FE10 is actively annoying.  Radiant Dawn seems to think that the racists are basically correct in that Laguz really are quasi-intelligent violent killing beasts out for blood, but hey, Ike likes 'em anyway, so whatever.  Weirdly enough Skirmir is fine, since clearly he's the arrogant noble and he both pays a price for his pride and eventually comes to like cowardly beorc "thinking" and tactics, or something, so hey, character development.  No, it's how everybody talks about the grunts, and Lethe / Kyza that are the issue.  (Chapter 2 Lethe: "I don't get why you want to talk this all out.  Violence is the fastest way to decide who's right!"  Chapter 3: "Our army would never accept stopping fighting.  Once you get them pumped up they just keep going at killing beorc!  Rargh!"  Chapter 3 Lethe: "Well it's suicide to cross in darkness when the opposite bank is held by an unknown enemy, but the laguz way is to keep advancing anyway into a slaughter, so gogogogogo.")  Really, in general I shouldn't think too hard about things like "occupations" and trailing forces and supply lines in Fire Emblem games, but all the constant references to laguz savagery and bloodlust make me wonder WTF is going on in cities they conquer.    If their troops really are constantly spoiling for a fight, Ike merely ordering them to stop fighting because they surrendered is only going so far.  Also, Ashera help Begingon's native laguz - now they really are likely collaborators with an invading force, and resistance forces have an absolutely clean conscience killing them all off.

So, yeah.  I pretty much hate Chapter 3's plot arc because it is so close to something I'd potentially write or generally like - yet getting the narrator's stance entirely 100% upside down and backward.  I'd love to see a fictional treatment of, say, Napoleon's invasion of Russia in disguise.  But that isn't the story they're telling in FE10 Chapter 3, though, although by rights it should be.  Sigh.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Okay it is possible 3-6 also has an enemy female commander

It does, though you're entirely forgiven for not noticing and, like 3-7, it doesn't really count. There's exactly one female enemy commander in the game who "counts" (and you can probably guess her class), and yes this is something that all Fire Emblems are bad about.

[Cmdr_King]

Hey, be fair: there's another female commander who counts AND isn't riding a flying horse!

Anyway, Laguz aren't portrayed as animalistic so much as proud warrior race guys.  They're like furry klingons.  It makes a weird sort of sense though, remember that a great many of these guys are about one generation removed from literal slavery.  Of course they're going to embrace the more tribal, historic culture of their people, it's the furthest thing from beorc 'civilization' and emphasizes their own identities as races.

The bigger lingering question for me was how the hell the Begnion Senators were still in power.  Given things we see from them during the invasion, Zelgius or not they should have had a full blown military coup on their hands.

[Meeplelard]

Seeing as they stated back in FE9 something as simple as "our leaders are chosen based on strength!" and Ike goes "hey, I'm all for that! Makes more sense than just being lucky to be born into a family", it does display there are some advantages to that (eg a Laguz Leader, due to their leadership philosophy, will never have someone "weak" leading them.)  Now this isn't always good as a strong person can be corrupt, but a weak ruler is not something you want either.  I guess the logic is "Strong but corrupt > Weak but good hearted." as the former can at least defend their country if need be.   I wanna say that somewhere in FE10, they state that as much of a heartless tyrant as Ashnard was, he still was a strong leader who had people supporting him, and the country felt safe from invaders.


...really, Part 2 displays this well in a different way.  Elincia is held against the ropes because the nobles think she's not strong and shouldn't be on the throne.  By the end of it, she's managed to thwart a rebellion and prove she can stand on her own two feet, even being able to make costly decisions that she knows she'll regret, but ultimately need to be done.  Hell, even in Part 1, we see Pelleas is basically the prime example of "Weak Ruler only in that position because of his birthright", displaying that the REAL leader of the Daien Army is Micaiah, and Pelleas is basically a "Ruler in Name Only" that Micaiah happens to be loyal too.


...yeah, I know its not FE10's theme that "rulers need to be strong" but it is something that is consistently displayed throughout, that being a benevolent leader isn't enough.  I mean, Skrimir, for all his failings at actually thinking things through, still maintains loyalty from his troops, because he's not afraid to take action (just his actions aren't necessarily ideal.)


BACK TO THE LAGUZ THING WITHOUT BEING SIDE TRACKED!!
Remember the definition of Laguz and Beorc.  Laguz are "Children of Strength" and Beorc are "Children of Knowledge" IIRC.  Laguz are more likely to fight head on, and do things based on brute strength and what not while Beorc are going to be more about strategy and using terrain, weapons, etc.

You'll note Ranulf actually is self aware of the oddity of Laguz actually making plans, as he goes "Believe it or not, we have a plan of our own!" when he notes they have a plan (one that would have actually worked if not for an unexpected factor.)  You have to bare in mind that only a few Laguz actually have dealt with Beorc personally, and they too are running off prejudices (albeit, FE10 has displayed that, in Crimea at least, the situation has improved), so they are clearly not going to THINK like Beorc.
I mean, Lethe has more interaction with Beorc than most, being an Ambassador of Gallia to Crimea, and even she's still not exactly fond of Beorc politics.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I wanna say that somewhere in FE10, they state that as much of a heartless tyrant as Ashnard was, he still was a strong leader who had people supporting him, and the country felt safe from invaders.

Well they shouldn't have, considering that he abandoned his country and let it be invaded while he hung out in some other country's castle for some fucking reason. The Ashnard leadership plot hype is a swing and a miss.

[Cmdr_King]

It was more along the lines of "Ashnard might have been a raging douche,b ut when he was around we had a strong military, this Begnion occupation would never have happened under his watch".  Basically the general 'war mongering means we're STRONG and DON'T AFRAID OF ANYTHING' mentality.  It's stupid, but so are civilians in FE10.

[SnowFire]

Meeple, re FE10 laguz: As the semi-sarcastic intro noted, this was me putting on my leftist intellectual cap.  To be more explicitly sociological for *why* FE10's portrayal annoys me...  bah, let's do the full rundown.  Man fears the Other.  There's Us, and Them.  There are lots of Thems; other religions, business competitors, sports rivals, and so on.  Since Radiant Dawn tackles racism head-on, Thems based on nationalism & racism have been pretty common in history.  The English hated the French, the French feared the Germans, Chinese & Japanese looked down on Koreans, etc.  In the particular American context, I'd argue that Cowboys & Indians was one of our solid examples from the 1900s-1960s or so.  It's *good* to have a savage opponent out there who just wants to burn down the settlement that you can feel good about killing and protecting the womanfolk.  And sure, grant them a certain intelligence, a low cunning if you will, that enables them to use sneaky ambushes and other tactics to gain a temporary edge, until a man with courage stands up and fights back.

Anyway at some point the realization dawned a bit more that American Indians were *people* and not just opponents, and it became uncomfortable to use Indians as straight-up mook screaming bad guys.  Most of popular culture has just stuck with multicultural guards inexplicably loyal to the Dr. Evil of the day (rather than claiming Dr. Evil convinced a savage tribe in darkest Africa that he was a god or something, as seen in the 1930s).  Fantasy figured out how to get back classic Indians - just call them orcs instead.  We've created a whole race who's intelligent enough for surprise raids but won't learn or join civilization.  They're evil, see, and just not cut out for it.  (And yes, Tolkien himself was better than this, but there's no question that Tolkien rip-offs from D&D onward have used Orcs / Goblins / Kobolds precisely for the classic Indian role of "can be killed on sight, barring occasional cute sidekick who is probably hated by his home culture.")  And...  I'm okay with this, a bit.  It's a hack, but so long as attention isn't drawn to it, it's not so bad as a source of stuff to kill.

However all bets are off once politics & racism are a theme.  Now, this is fantasy, so I don't expect all the rules of normal Earth to apply - notably, on actual Earth, people are people are people with perhaps slightly varying diseases you're likely to get by race, while in a fantasy world there might be genuine differences.  Fine.  However, it gets very uncomfortable as far as I'm concerned when you get into a situation which echoes actual history, yet one where racism is actually correct.  All the "laguz are wild and savage" stuff seems to directly confirm what European colonizers thought about Indians / Africans etc., and the laguz really are invading!  To be sure, the game thinks the races should coexist, it's just bizarre that the moral seems to be "well, yes, they are savage and bloodthirsty, but we should STILL get along!"  This is...  patronizing.  And the thing is, there isn't even any need to emphasize it as much as the game does.  Skirmir can't control his army?  Okay, that has precedence in history, we've got something more akin to a giant raiding band than a proper army, and you saw that in some tribal democracies who'd team up to take on the big city's "proper" army.  This is an interesting situation.  Yet Skirmir & Ranulf are quick to attribute this problem simply to "that's how Laguz roll bro."  Which would imply that no, even in some happy future, you still couldn't have a proper laguz army that would accept sensible orders.  Same with the river crossing.  It's dark!  We're under attack!  This is a panic situation.  I'd be totally okay with any number of excuses to have 3-6 happen - Lethe realizes what's going on but can't get a clear sense of the situation, conflicting reports are coming in, etc.  Or just plain "Benignon couldn't possibly have formed up much of an army in our rear without noticing, this must be a scratch force trying to psyche us out, push on anyway."  Or just plain make a mistake, "They can't stop us, there's too many of us, we'll crush them."  Instead, the game once more *directly attributes* the continuing disorganized advance to the laguz nature -> "we don't back down!  Rarrgh!"  Yup, the Laguz walked right into our CLEVER TRAP because laguz just don't think and want a fight, even on terms badly disfavoring them.  Again...  uncomfortable echoes of an earlier age and seemingly confirming that the racists are 'right' in this world, a conclusion I'm not really happy with.  There are all sorts of interesting mistakes that the Laguz can make that are made for the same reason everyone makes mistakes; stick with that rather than "oh now the Laguz will do something stupid because they're Laguz!"  Do FE10 beorc justify their bandits & marauders by saying "Well I guess that's how we beorc roll?"  No.

Of course, the risk with listening too closely to the sociologists is becoming gunshy about handing out flaws, and always having Noble Nature Warriors a la Radiant Historia's Guttrals.  It's bland with no twists.  I'll offer a brief example of a "primitive" culture I think was done reasonably well for video game fiction: the Ixataca in Skies of Arcadia.  Okay, sure, Valua came in and beat the snot out of their fleet.  But whatever, because we're going to unseal our local giant doom monster!  What do you think about that?!  A bad decision, for sure, but an *awesome* bad decision, and shows that they have both heroes & villains & in-between, just like everywhere else.

[Grefter]

Man that is the biggest load of bullshit I have seen you post ever Snowfire.

At not one point do you note down how the Leadership structures of the Laguz countries innately favours the male Laguz as men are statistically higher on Strength on average and the fact that the Bourgeoisie merchant classes wield all the true power in Begnion.  The Merchant royalty that can straight up buy and sell Laguz as pets as seen in FE.  Just like the slaves they keep under their boots in wage slavery.

You do alright at Post-Structuralist though because well, Post-Structuralist angles are far more flexible than Functionalism and Structuralist arguments though.

Not Feminist, Marxist or most especially not Marxist-Feminist interpretation though.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I want to know how anyone fears an army whose MO is "charge forward and always fight." Just dig a long enough Punji pit and you win the war.

[Cotigo]

I tie a string to my dick and swing around a weight at the end of the string then my cat chases it.

See the dickstring represents the strangling grip of the patriarchy and the cat represents a cat.

Then I pee in a bottle and drink it myself.

[Meeplelard]

Snowfire, part of the problem is that Laguz have been this way for...what? 800 years?  You can't expect them to make a sudden turn around into a more civilized approach.  Its not that there is no hope for them, just Laguz as they stand now aren't use to this idea of "quitting while you're ahead."  Again, the Laguz have stated they are structured based on the laws of the wild. 

Battles are basically an "evolution" of the hunt.  In the hunt, you strike to kill.  So an extension is that battles, you must finish off your opponent.  Correct me if I'm wrong, Skrimir does acknowledge that he understands Soren's stance, at least once Soren explains himself, but at the same time, he states that the rest of the army wouldn't understand it.  They're too built on adrenaline and surge for combat.  Laguz outside of the higher ups like, say, Caineghis, aren't use to diplomacy factors.

They're not saying the Laguz are complete savages, but rather, the way thing are now, they simply aren't ready to think in terms of "Quite while you're ahead" and are still thinking in terms of "strike to kill."  Again, they note that Laguz have advantages in their social structure, such that since its built entirely on "Leaders come based on strength", it means they'll always have a firm leader who can garner support.  Afterall, as corrupt and untrustworthy as Naesala is...he's damned strong and can defend his people.   

Again, Galia and Goldoa being monarchies is more the implications of the Royal Family, in that Lions and Black Dragons > others of their race respective Laguz race (Birds don't have anything like this.  Based on gameplay, and how its mutually agreed that Tibarn > Naesala in plot, I guess we can assume Hawks are the top end of the Birds, though I suppose that Birds had Herons was suppose to be their "Special" Laguz race.)  Its worth noting that these two countries also come off as more "civilized", at least with the Royal Family and higher ups, than Kilvas and Phoenicis which are basically just countries living off pirate actions.  Caineghis certainly came off as a ruler who uses his head and not his muscles to get things done.  I also seem to recall that one of the reasons they sent Skrimir off to war was so he could get an actual view of the world outside of Gallia, and learn a thing or two from the Beorc, so he could be a king similar to Caineghis rather than just a brutish one.

It was more along the lines of "Ashnard might have been a raging douche,b ut when he was around we had a strong military, this Begnion occupation would never have happened under his watch".  Basically the general 'war mongering means we're STRONG and DON'T AFRAID OF ANYTHING' mentality.  It's stupid, but so are civilians in FE10.

Yeah, that's pretty much the idea.  I don't think they say its a GOOD thing, just more that having a douchey ruler who CAN defend your country is better than being occupied by a bunch of foreign douches who don't give a shit about you.  Its a case of "one is bad, the other is worse."  FE9 of course just displayed the issues with the extreme of "Really strong leader, but immense douche!" which...just about every RPG ever shows.

FE10 shows the problems with the other extreme:
A kind hearted, benevolent ruler who wants the best for his country but can barely stand on his own two feet.  That's what Pelleas is for.

It doesn't say one is better than the other, just both Corrupt Strong Leader and Weak Benevolent Leader have major issues and you don't want either.  Its clear Daien would have fallen apart if Pelleas didn't have Micaiah has a crutch to lean on.  In Ashnard's case...well, we saw what happened there!  The entire world unites against him and he loses!

[superaielman]

At not one point do you note down how the Leadership structures of the Laguz countries innately favours the male Laguz as men are statistically higher on Strength on average and the fact that the Bourgeoisie merchant classes wield all the true power in Begnion.  The Merchant royalty that can straight up buy and sell Laguz as pets as seen in FE.  Just like the slaves they keep under their boots in wage slavery.

Your marxism fu is weak. All that ranting and you don't touch on how the power structures provided by religion and espeically the oligarchy of the nobility provide the power.  Snowfire using feminism is pretty ineffective though, I agree. The power abuse in game is gender neutral- look no further than Reyson's stuff in FE9.  There's a female empress, female goddesses, female soldiers, etc. It's clear the opportunity for power is there for women, and some do take it. (Ena)

Snowfire on Laguz

The problems with Laguz struck me as military issues more than racial ones. Laguz tactics and command structure is shit because they are so much stronger than the average human.  They walk into the trap in 3-6 because they're goddamn arrogant and don't think anyone can stand up to them. It doesn't imply a lack of critical thinking that racism would.

[Meeplelard]

...right, I play games too, completely forgot!

Duodecim: So yeah, finally got back to this.  Everyone is level 100 and much to my dismay of actually giving Kain more time in my party than he deserves, level 100 for everyone doesn't get you anything, its only level 50.  *sigh*  Also beat Dragon Isle.  Now to find the last area of 000 because there is an Accomplishment for it!  Also need more KP to get useless stuff.

Ninja Gaiden 2: Quick Rundown of the last 3 chapters!

Chapter 8: Nothing fun about this chapter at all.  It keeps pulling bullshit after bullshit after bullshit.  See, after beating up a lot of stupid EXPLOSIVE SHURIKEN SPAMMING BASTARDS, what's the game do?  Hurl a mini-boss...with really damned competent support at you.  Said boss has misleading attacks and no real pattern, so its a luck shot if you beat him.  Also, you fought him earlier, he didn't count as a Checkpoint in that chapter, HE DOESN'T COUNT AS A CHECKPOINT AGAIN WHAT THE FUCK?  The boss of this stage, Zedonius...not too bad, but again, highlights how bosses in this game are clearly random, have no AI, etc.  Also, Fuck his throw animation...a lot.  I don't need to sit through 5 seconds of him just wailing because I didn't see his non-telegraphed big move, which interrupts the flow of battle.  Couldn't, you know, they just have him chuck Ryu against the ground once and make it to the same damage as the collective number of hits before?

Chapter 9: Overall not bad, but some stupid parts, like the miniboss from nowhere, the swamp of Centipedes abusing bad camera angles, and the boss.  Ok, 2 Dragons that hurl big shit at you that you need to fight with Arrows?  that's fine, and not easy, since they have lasers that can be fired before you have a chance to react.  But THEN they summon infinite spawning support which not only attacks you without warning, sometimes, distracts the auto aim so you can't just do rapid fire to get the last bit of health on one of the two.  Again, this is a case of the game saynig "Well, we could do this...but fuck you ^_^"

Chapter 10: ...an actually fun, well done chapter.  It kicked my ass, but it was constant "ok, lets try that again!" moments, and nothing like "Fuck this game."  The boss was actually not too bad but highlights a lot of problems that I'll cover in a bit.  To branch from that, fighting off 87 Ninjas like that was ridiculous...but fun.  It just shows "yes, Mook combat can be fun when this game isn't being too cute."  The demon spam after it worked as well.  Also, the boss had a 1 second Throw Animation that was straight forward, to the point, and actually unique looking (she stabs you with her tail)...WHY CAN'T EVERY OTHER BOSS IN THE GAME HAVE THIS?

I have maxed out all my weapons and have 100k yellow souls.  I think I might be able to Item Spam a lot from this point...yet I still fought the boss of Chap 10 without items...


Boss problems in NG2 that are consistent:
-Inconsistent stun times.  See, when you hit them, sometimes they flinch, sometimes they just walk through it.  Its never consistent, you can't ever decide "do I want to attack again?"
-Misleading start up times.  Sometimes their attacks look IDENTICAL to their flinch animation, so playing around with point 1, you get slammed by a big move because you think they're flinching but they're winding up for an attack.
-...not to mention some moves look identical but have different properties.  IN Chap 10's bosses case, she has two "tail stab moves"; one is a blockable attack she'll combo you with (sometimes breaking your guard spontaneously...yeah, lots of random factors), sometimes its an unblockable throw.  YOU CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE AT ALL AND DODGING IT IS NOT REALISTIC.
-Throw animations.  See how I hyped Chap 10 bosses throw and not Chap 8's...
-They have no real AI or patterns of which to look out for.  Basically, you jump in there, dodge/block a lot in hopes you don't get hit, and hope enemy runs out of health before you do.  Compare this to, oh, a Devil May Cry game where you start to actually read enemy moves, get an idea of what's a safe range, and how fast enemies act, and even what they'll do when (if based purely on HP triggers.)  The bosses still put up a fight because they don't make it easy to dodge consistently, but there is a sense of consistent improvement.  Each time you fight, you slowly get this "Ooh, so that's how you dodge that!" feeling and then you start focusing on the timing, not the actual skill.  NG2 bosses?  No, you don't get that...at all...



...yeah, the only thing that makes NG2 bosses less stupid than NGB's is the durability.  If you get lucky, you can plow through them very fast, but not unlike NGB, their core designs just suck.

[Grefter]

At not one point do you note down how the Leadership structures of the Laguz countries innately favours the male Laguz as men are statistically higher on Strength on average and the fact that the Bourgeoisie merchant classes wield all the true power in Begnion.  The Merchant royalty that can straight up buy and sell Laguz as pets as seen in FE.  Just like the slaves they keep under their boots in wage slavery.

Your marxism fu is weak. All that ranting and you don't touch on how the power structures provided by religion and espeically the oligarchy of the nobility provide the power.  Snowfire using feminism is pretty ineffective though, I agree. The power abuse in game is gender neutral- look no further than Reyson's stuff in FE9.  There's a female empress, female goddesses, female soldiers, etc. It's clear the opportunity for power is there for women, and some do take it. (Ena)

Snowfire on Laguz

The problems with Laguz struck me as military issues more than racial ones. Laguz tactics and command structure is shit because they are so much stronger than the average human.  They walk into the trap in 3-6 because they're goddamn arrogant and don't think anyone can stand up to them. It doesn't imply a lack of critical thinking that racism would.

Your views on Marxist rhetoric is terribly small minded if you think it has to pull from the entire body of Marx' work.  There is entirely Marxist dialogues that ignore large swaths of the removal of his approach to Theology.  Shit you can even use Marxist rhetoric without wanting to completely destroy the cash system.  The central point is that Economics is the fulcrum on which the current society functions and most likely the source of a great deal of problems.