What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Sierra]

Dark Souls: In the catacombs, just about to hit the hidden bonfire. Get invaded, can't use it. Climb up to bridge switch, cast Chameleon. I don't think the invader will cross the bridge since I haven't cleared the fog wall, but it's my only option since I'm deadmeat in a duel. Invader checks bonfire room, no Cid there. Invader checks switch platform, sees a vase, moves on to the bridge. Cid presses switch, bridge flips over and invader falls to his death. This was a triumph.

Chameleon: best spell or best spell? Totally worth having one less spell slot for offensive magic.

[superaielman]

Marxism is about power inequalities. I don't think you can split organized religion (Which FE10's clearly was) from this in FE10's case, considering what a large roll it played. I mean, Oliver's a duke, there's a heavy religious element due to Ashera's influence and so on.

[Dark Holy Elf]

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

Except, of course, for the minor detail that it did happen under his watch.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

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.

You know, you could be making money on this if you'd tape it and sell it to the Japanese.

[Grefter]

Marxism is about power inequalities.

Marxism may be about that.  Marxist rhetoric doesn't have to be about that.  It is about power structures and the way economics effects them.  You could theoretically apply Marxist rhetoric in support of the Capitalist system if you were brain dead enough to think it is one that works but followed the general idea behind the way the power structures are built and function.

It is taking the basic construct of Marx ideas and applying them outside the scope of his initial arguments.  Marx was all about power inequality and betterment of the human condition.  You can still apply his analysis of power constructs and apply them completely differently.  You are still analysing the ways that economic difference is utilised to leverage power in that scenario.

[Cmdr_King]

Did not.  He was totally out of teh country with Begnion invaded, and dead when they occupied.  remember, these are idiots, not rational people.

[Dark Holy Elf]

If a king voluntarily leaves the country along with most of its army, after provoking the strongest nation in the world, and that nation invades as a result, I'd say that gets classed as an invasion "under the king's watch".

It's like if Hitler, in 1941, decided he wanted to move all his military forces to Algeria and make that his new country, and the allies promptly and invaded and occupied Germany. Somehow I don't think the German people would be too happy about this. Countries very rarely look back fondly at leaders who lead their country to ruin through military error (to stick with the German example, note how they turned on the kaiser after WW1), and Ashnard is an especially egregious case of unjustifiable stupidity.

Basically Ashnard plot in FE9 is, pardon the language, fucking retarded. It requires a severe suspension of disbelief that his own officers didn't assassinate him or that his own army didn't suffer from mass desertion, since I doubt many of them would be especially happy to be dicking around in Crimea while their families back home were ravaged by an invading force. Neither FE9 nor FE10 ever seems to notice this, I guess we're supposed to believe that Ashnard is so badass he cowed his entire army.

[SnowFire]

Grefter: I didn't want to blow everyone's minds, so the Marxist part kind of fell by the wayside in favor of some post-colonialist material I had lying around.  (also i didn't want to mix bullshit in with an actual complaint.)  However, while it's true that all the main laguz nations are clearly dominated by the Patriarchy as seen by men being their leaders, there is one exception.  Nailah is the queen of the wolves, and she has 30% Strength growth while Volug has a mere 25%, obvious facts that I'm sure you knew.  So why did you neglect to mention that, mm?  I bet you were following foul Elfiato hopes of a Volug coup by forcing poor Volug to abuse Energy Drops so his STR will be higher since of course Laguz leadership is decided by the strongest.  Much like the East German Olympics program heartlessly sticking their athletes full of steroids.  You criminal.  No wonder Elf gave Volug an A+ and Nailah a mere A.

Rob: Preeeetty much.

Zenny: I'd say it's pretty obvious that the urine represents the patriarchy, myself, not the string.  Drinking it symbolizes simultaneously the guilt of liberal knowledge of male crimes yet the acceptance of the power it provides, common among those who deny the need for revolutionary action.

Meeple: Yeah, I had originally written but later removed a nod for Cainagheis as being presented in FE9 as a ruler with both wisdom *and* strength.  It's just weird and annoying how FE10 seems to have decided that such wisdom was vanishingly rare among the rest of Gallia.  The plot also doesn't seem to grapple at all with the implications such an allegedly savage warband averse to tactics would likely have.

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.

That's exactly what I'd think, normally.  And as I noted, I wish they'd let laguz make mistakes like this that's clearly just an error, or a personality flaw, like Skirmir.  The problem is that *the laguz grunts themselves* claim it's a racial issue rather than a military issue.  "The laguz way is to stupidly charge forward!"  Don't get me wrong, I'd rewrite the plot to go along the lines of your explanation, I'm just not sure the game's script entirely agrees.

[superaielman]

Marxism is about power inequalities.

Marxism may be about that.  Marxist rhetoric doesn't have to be about that.  It is about power structures and the way economics effects them.  You could theoretically apply Marxist rhetoric in support of the Capitalist system if you were brain dead enough to think it is one that works but followed the general idea behind the way the power structures are built and function.

It is taking the basic construct of Marx ideas and applying them outside the scope of his initial arguments.  Marx was all about power inequality and betterment of the human condition.  You can still apply his analysis of power constructs and apply them completely differently.  You are still analysing the ways that economic difference is utilised to leverage power in that scenario.

Your analysis is not going to hold up if you are ignoring large parts of what sets up the conditions in the first place.  You can't separate economics and religion in a theocracy, especially one with as much corruption as Begnion. A straight analysis of Oliver's habit of buying birds for unspeakable acts would not be complete without noting how his religious post (Senator) gave him the economic and military might to pull off such corrupt acts.

(To Snowfire) *Shrug* The leaders were smart enough for the Laguz and showed a head for strategic planning. I am willing to write it off as grunts being dumb and Laguz tactics not being good because of the lack of a compelling need there.

[Meeplelard]

Meeple: Yeah, I had originally written but later removed a nod for Cainagheis as being presented in FE9 as a ruler with both wisdom *and* strength.  It's just weird and annoying how FE10 seems to have decided that such wisdom was vanishingly rare among the rest of Gallia.  The plot also doesn't seem to grapple at all with the implications such an allegedly savage warband averse to tactics would likely have.

In fairness, you have to recall that Caineghis is older than most Beast Laguz hence the wisdom thing, and actually has interacted with Beorc on a fairly regular basis (including Crimea's Royal Family.)  He's clearly exceptional in that regard, and all the better for it, as he's got the best of both worlds.  Ranulf is also established as being someone who uses his brain.  You'll note he's not afraid to say "Skrimir, SHUT UP AND THINK" at times.  At the same time, he knows what Laguz are like and he's not going to be irrational into pretending something isn't the case when it is. 

Ranulf, again, unlike most Laguz, has actual interaction with Beorc, so he's going to stand out.  Yes, it makes Laguz seem like savages, but its stated that this is a race of beings who've been living on basic extensions of "laws of the wild" who are slowly adapting more civilized styles (Caineghis is one such example of that.)  Its not them saying "There is no hope for Laguz!", but rather, "Laguz as they are now aren't ready, but we're making progress!"

[Dark Holy Elf]

Final Fantasy XIII-2: Beaten. Final dungeon was good. I wasn't able to beat the 2x Schroedinger + Proto-Behemoth fight (did beat another Proto-Behemoth but I was probably a bit lucky there) though in retrospect I could have messed with paradigm formations and possibly done something good there. It's okay, it was a good warmup for the final.

Final boss was a fun fight! (gameplay spoilers follow from here) I had adopted a rather defensive set of paradigms to deal with some of the enemies in the final dungeon. This is a terrible idea against the final. Everything about that battle stresses having decent offence (although obviously you'll need some defensive strategies too since there are debuffs and it had too much HP to blitz). I dunno if you can actually see Doom like in FF13 but I still had to give up the battle once and rejig my paradigms because there was just no way I was beating the boss in a reasonable time without at least one full-offence paradigm for certain spots in the battle. Ended up going with the following (Serah/Noel/monster listing):

SAB/RAV/COM, SAB/RAV/MED, RAV/RAV/COM, RAV/COM/MED, SEN/SYN/MED, SEN/COM/MED

I didn't use the last one that much ultimately (although it did payoff as a "stabilise enemy chain while staying on one's feet/removing buffs) but everything else got serious use.

I didn't do much optional stuff (obviously), had 41 fragments I think? I finished with Serah having 3200 HP and Noel 3400, with the two monsters I used in the final battle, Flanitor (MED) and Orion (early peeker COM) having around 3500-3700. Game time was about 25 hours.


Overall, well. The game's low point is undoubtedly the ore fetch quest to advance the plot past Academia 4XX. What the hell, game. Other than that the game is a bit disappointing in a few areas. Due to non-linearity the experience of individual fights was no longer tightly balanced like it was in FF13 (right down to the star rankings), and the game suffered very inconsistent challenge as a result, which made it harder to enjoy at points. They also nerfed SYN/SAB (though this was arguably needed, it did make randoms less fun because the optimum strategy was far more often just to use a permutation of Commando and Ravager), and stripped you of a bunch of skills while adding little in return (Wound doesn't make up for no Pain/Fog/Haste/Slow/Enelement/Barelement). Pretty eh on the monster stuff... for instance, at a certain point while levelling up my Flanitor in the final dungeon its HP, which had stalled at around 1000-1100, suddenly started increasing by 150 per level, which was kinda WTF (how was I supposed to predict that would happen? Makes me wonder what other monsters I missed). And just aesthetically and narratively I guess I'd rather have people! But yeah, basically the gameplay experience isn't as good. Still pretty good because it's still FF13, it has great polish decisions and isn't afraid to kill you at points if you approach things wrong.

*minor spoilers, big stuff is spoilertagged*

Plot's weird and is both like and unlike the first game. Unlike in that it gets notably better as the game goes on! Some of the stuff in the last two chapters was quite good, particularly the dream worlds. Also, the endings. Wow, great stuff. The main one is... haha. Just a delicious subversion of RPG norms. (The game tricked me into thinking everything would be sunshine and rainbows and then everything turned horrible with the deaths of Serah, Lightning, and the realisation of Caius' goals even in his defeat. The best part is THE GAME SAID ALL OF THIS WOULD HAPPEN and I sorta brushed it off with the "oh it's an RPG through sheer force of will we'll make everything turn out fine anyway!") Also Youtubed all the paradox endings and many of them are surprisingly great, some of the best I've seen in the genre, a fun series of what-ifs mixed in with the occasional one that is completely silly ("Mischievous Mog's Marvelous Plan With Flan!" is somehow more ridiculous than it sounds).

Of course, like the first game (in fact even moreso), some of the raw plot stuff shouldn't be taken too seriously (time travel's inherently a mess and I refuse to think about it, I'm sure it has plot holes everywhere but I will await Snowfire to analyse them or something). And it's, on the whole, more about the characters. Serah is quite good, as is Hope (though neither is amazingly deep). Noel's a bit of a miss... inoffensive, certainly, but a bit bland, and I thought the weakest part of the endgame plot was his showdowns with Caius (during which Serah does a lot of politely sitting there waiting for them to have their manly showdown or something). Noel does at least say things to Caius that badly need saying, so he can get some points for that. Caius, of course, is a complete tool and has an -incredibly- unsympathetic motivation by the standards of villains who aren't just out to devour the nearest baby. But the game doesn't really try to paint him as anything else, and does do a couple things that perhaps make you understand a bit more where he's coming from in the endings which is a nice touch at least.


Not sure where the game scores. I had it pencilled in as a 6 but it's one of those games helped out by the end. Final dungeon was a high point gameplaywise, but unlike, say, Blue Dragon, it can't drag up the game's gameplay that much because it's quite short. Plot doing some good things was more unexpected though. Could be a 7 after all, I'll think about it. Fun enough game, disappointing in a fairly expected way but I'm quite glad I played it, and far better than a certain previous Final Fantasy direct sequel.

Not doing the optional stuff any time soon if ever, I haven't even gotten around to that in FF13 and that sounds much more up my alley than this game's fetchquests!

[Captain K.]

I've only played the demo, but it tells you that some monsters will be "late-bloomers" and some will be Jeigans.

[Dark Holy Elf]

It does. (This one was neither an early peeker nor a late-bloomer, for the record.) I don't think that especially excuses sudden spikes in performance at unexpected places. I'm fine with small changes (e.g. how some pokemon gain exp faster early and slower late, etc., is handled in an inoffensive way) but this is literally a monster whose HP tripled during one item-feeding session after several sessions where the HP climbed only slightly (maybe 10-20% each time), with no reason to believe this would happen.

[Monkeyfinger]

It does. (This one was neither an early peeker nor a late-bloomer, for the record.) I don't think that especially excuses sudden spikes in performance at unexpected places. I'm fine with small changes (e.g. how some pokemon gain exp faster early and slower late, etc., is handled in an inoffensive way) but this is literally a monster whose HP tripled during one item-feeding session after several sessions where the HP climbed only slightly (maybe 10-20% each time), with no reason to believe this would happen.

from reading the gamefaqs ff13-2 forum a bit, i gather that flanitor is the only monster who is like that.

[Meeplelard]

Ninja Gaiden 2:  2 MORE CHAPTERS DONE!

Chapter 11: Not much to complain about here.  Ok, fighting those Spider-demon things now 3 at a time instead of two with no free hits from sniping AND exploding shuriken assholes was not nice, though didn't end up as bad as it could have been.  Also, FUMA SHURIKEN FUCK YES!!! Pity its been nerfed since the previous game, but yay having an unlimited ranged weapon that DOES STUFF.

Chapter 12: Demons not too bad, Dragons are dumb because you haven't fought them yet and they hurl about 10 at you in one area when you have no clue what to do, and Ninja Dogs can bite me.  DUAL FLAME ARMADILLOS!!!! ...weren't that bad actually when I discovered that Incendiary Shurikens not only actually work if you hit their head, but do a fuck ton of damage and is way safer than going head on.  Wish I knew that before in the solo fight.  Zedonius 2 can bite me though.  No, I'm sorry, a boss who stays out of your range via flying, can summon support while there at a whim, hurls projectiles everywhere, practically camouflages itself due to being lava, AND THE LAVA IS A MASSIVE HAZARD WITH NO PRECEDENT THAT YOU ARE NOT TRAINED TO DEAL WITH.  To make matters worse, this is a clear example of poor game design where Mid-chapter bosses are NOT Check Points, and when you have a near invisible mine field that you don't expect at all right BEFORE a save point, it means you have to refight this stupid boss.  Oh yeah, the frame rate reached its worst by far in this fight to boot.

The Werewolf guy whose name eludes me now?  He wasn't too bad on the refight.  At first I thought it was dumb, but then discovered that a UA from the Lunar Scythe can kill 4 of his support immediately, his support does NOT respawn, and that right there starts things off way easier.  There is still some stupid shit, most notably his support has 2 factors that make them bullshit:
-the usual complaints about enemy throws...all of them.  His support has both long animation throws AND they're near instant -_-
-Their shockwave attack.  Its not the attack itself that's annoying so much as the animation.  Its a big yellow flash that can be spammed...in an arena filled with nothing but light brown sand...with a boss who is tan colored...in a game that already has camera angle issues. I don't thinK I have to explain what's wrong with this scenario...

[Sierra]

Dark Souls: Join up with chaos covenant because dammit I am going to save Solaire this time. Build up thirty spare humanity, throw it all at Quelaan. Run to Izalith shortcut secure in knowledge that dammit this time we did something right. Kill bugs, open door to kill other bugs, see crazy Solaire. Kill crazy Solaire. Goddammit, From Software.

Siegmeier died again too. I remain skeptical that it's possible to save either of them.

[superaielman]

FF1 BMNAM- Black Mage No Attack Magic. This came out of wondering if I could beat any real challenge out of Dawn of souls. I

can use: Buffing magic, support magic like warp, and status magic. Anything that inflicts direct damage is banned. I'm also not doing any

of the side areas.


Resets up to Garland: About a dozen. I have to avoid Gigas Worms (Creeps) as they will wipe the floor with my party. Any fight with

grey imps is also really bad news, as black mages have zero durability. I have to spam sleep on anything more threatening than imps and

hope it connects. I run and grab the Leather hat in the chaos shrine. One of my black mages dies horribly, so I need to go back to the

first town to get him revived and buy more potions. Reaching level 4 is critical- it doubles black mage HP (26 to 52!) and removes the

risk of getting OHKOed by Garland.

Garland at L4 is tough but beatable. I get lucky and get some dodges, plus a crit hit for a whopping 11 damage. Before you mock, my

black mages were not breaking defense half the time so this was better than my average round of offense. I did this fight with three PC's,

as one of the black mages was L3 due to dying in the first run and thus OHKOed by a Garland physical. I blew through all seven potions but won with three PC's alive, so yay.

Focus sucks, my PC's learn sleep. Nothing else matters in the L1 level, so I save my cash for L2 magic (Temper. Glorious temper) and potions.

I cross the bridge! And promptly draw mad horses, who wipe me out without breaking a sweat. Okay. I have to avoid randoms on the way to Pravoka, as the following formations kill me:

Two creeps
Ogre
Any of the crazy horse formations
Those fucking Iguanas

The result of this is about 10 resets or so! I reach Pravoka at L5, with just enough cash to revive/heal/buy leather gloves.  The pirates are as easy as ever and give a level up, so yay. I grab Temper from the shop and go to elfland. Of note is how rapidly the cost of revival is going up. It's not going to take long before it's more economically viable to buy phoenix downs at 500 a pop.

I fight four spiders, which is normally pretty easy. They can't really damage even my black mages, but my own offense is bad. About ten rounds of attacking got a single spider down, and my entire team poisoned.  Thankfully, I remember that I blew some cash on temper. This takes my BW's offense from like 10 at best to 30 against the spiders, which is obviously a massive improvement.  (
THINGS I HAVE ALSO LEARNED: poison damage in FF1 *is* fatal in battle. Damn it. )0

I'm mostly dead at this point, so I have to go back to town. Four pures+inn is 300 gil, which means I'm once again flat fucking broke. I did hit level 6 though! There is grabbable loot in the dwarf cavern at this point, so my next mission is to go ther-

*Runs into three spiders*

*Kills them, but gets poisoned and has to put all the gil from thte fight into healing/unpoisoning the team* Woo boy.

I have to be careful when travelling the seas, as a shark can nearly kill a black mage in a single hit at this point (L7-8). Thankfully L8 is a benchmark level for HP.

[Fudozukushi]

Dark Souls: Join up with chaos covenant because dammit I am going to save Solaire this time. Build up thirty spare humanity, throw it all at Quelaan. Run to Izalith shortcut secure in knowledge that dammit this time we did something right. Kill bugs, open door to kill other bugs, see crazy Solaire. Kill crazy Solaire. Goddammit, From Software.

Siegmeier died again too. I remain skeptical that it's possible to save either of them.

Solaire I've seen video evidence for.  But I've never seen any shots of Siegmeyer alive at the end.

[superaielman]

Beat Astos. Buying those knives helped *massively*, as I could now break enemy defense. Wizards I beat on the third try. Was just a matter of drawing two of them and getting lucky. A double tempered BM could OHKO a Wizard, it was just a matter of living long enough to do that. Thankfully I got very lucky and my main attacking BW evaded a wizard physical in the second to last round. I had about a half dozen resets in the marsh cave, which isn't bad at all. I just didn't get in many fights there period, which is a blessing. Astos was one reset, that was entirely due to poor luck and not taking him remotely seriously.

[DjinnAndTonic]

super's Black Mage antics are amusing me more than they should. I wish there were screen caps to go along with it. Go go status slinging.

[superaielman]

....On the other hand? The randoms guarding Astos's treasures were HELL. I walk into the treasure room, ample up and

*Draws six of the ghost type enemies. In an AMBUSH*

Needless to say, this was a reset.


I had about ten resets in Astos's treasure room. I could sort of beat three ghosts/mummies if I got lucky and I didn't get jumped. Any more than that and it required my black mages (4 defense, 100 HP) to tank for several rounds and welp. Undead in general are going to be a massive pain in the ass. Status+decent damage+status immune+come in large packs=OH GOD THE PAIN. On the bright side, Confuse is awesome! MT and doesn't wear off like sleep does, so when I run into formations with more than a couple of enemies.

Also, silver armlets were a massive, massive jump in defense and worth every penny I spent. I'm in the Earth cave right now. vampire should be as pathetic as ever at least, though I am not looking forward to Lich.

[OblivionKnight]

You're not using spells from the Black Mages, but will you use item-casting, or is that out of bounds?

[superaielman]

OK: I'm unsure. Leaning yes towards itemcasting attack spells being okay, unless someone has a strong argument against it.

[NotMiki]

what's the point of masochistically torturing yourself if you don't make it as miserable as possible?

[Meeplelard]

Attack Items do cap off at Level 2's unless he gets stuff from the Soul of Chaos Dungeons.  It'll be ok for MT, but only really stand out of he can nail weakness (and even then, level 2's hitting weaknesses that late are a bit iffy overall, but its still free MT damage that's probably better than Black Mage/Wizard physical bets)