What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Bobbin Cranbud]

TO-PSP seems to have been designed with the idea that skill growth should stretch across complete playthroughs of all three routes, which... sort of makes sense with the World system?

I know on my Complete Law Complete Chaos 1/2 Neutral playthrough, Canopus had maxed at least two weapon skills and everyone was at 8 in their primary weapon.

... and I still don't think I had Parry above 1 on anybody despite running it constantly. >_<

So yeah. Lots of them are just stupid.

[Grefter]

TO PSP- Stuffs.

This game is very very silly.  Randoms are stronger than plot fights.  Randoms have more equipment.  So randoms have more defense.  So randoms hit harder.  You can retreat randoms so that is all well and good.  It is just baffling.  I didn't like go and grind or anything.  Plot fights scale with your level as well (to a pretty extreme point).  I just don't understand what this game is doing.

I must have missed these randoms, since the ones I fought were far less impressive than plot fights at the same point of the game. It should be noted I only fought randoms quite late, if that's a factor at all. I remember exactly zero challenging non-story fights, though, and while TO storyline fight challenge varies, it tops out at quite tough.

Pretty much seconding Grefter about lulz directed at the idea of weapon ranks hitting level 8, personally. I'd have to check my file but I really don't think I had anyone above 4, maaaybe 5, at the end.

Having checked stuff a bit more it might be because I am a bit overlevelled (I assumed plot battles scaled with levels more than they do or something?).  25 on my not archers and 27 on the Archers, so randoms have a tier of gear above store bought gear (Scored a Permafrost Bow on the way to the Hanging Gardens) and that might be the source of that?  I dunno.  Like I said, I didn't grind, but I don't avoid randoms and I did do 3 maps in the Forest place because uh I didn't realise I needed to go to a castle sometime in Chapter 2 for a plot point.  So proceeded to the next Red location that showed up.  "Wait this is a branching dungeon?  That doesn't sound right. "

Definitely weapon level 5ish and I am up to the Hanging Gardens.  Like I note above, got a Permafrost Bow, so Disco Fucker now has Augment Ice. .5 skill points per attack.  lol once again.  Up to the second mission in the gardens.  Not a fan of paring back party size as you go further into the dungeon.  Get what they were going for I think, but like have a cutscene telling people to stay back and guard or something.  Don't just randomly strip out 5 party members.  Final fight at this rate is going to be small party stuff of zzzzz.

[Fenrir]

I'm not going to play God Hand much more because I know I'm not a bad enough dude. Sorry. Hard mode kicked my ass.

How far'd you get?  If you make it past the dancin' stage 1 midbosses, you're a bad dude.

I wish! I didn't beat the first stage.
... I need to try again...


CT Crimson Echoes: Nobody never asked for a Marle solo section, seriously.
At least this makes Provoke very useful, for once. Slap it, princess.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Haha, Provoke's theoretical use finally pays off in a game with better randoms than CT. Not shocked.

Grefter: The party size fluctuates in that dungeon (not just in one direction), and in particular you get a full party for the final boss.


SH2 - About to go back to Europe, just got through most of the really awesome story stuff! Gameplay features bosses getting OHKOed. I probably shouldn't get the optional fusions this time.

FF13 - At chapter 6. Where we learn that the main commando should not also be the main synergist. Or maybe just that the main Commando should not be Sazh, I'm not sure.

I'll play something new eventually.

[Yoshiken]

Persona 4's so good, I'm currently replaying it twice. (Once with a friend who's watched the anime and wants to see the game, but isn't interested in playing RPGs, and once on my own because I don't like being restricted on when I can play awesome games.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

SH2 - About to go back to Europe, just got through most of the really awesome story stuff! Gameplay features bosses getting OHKOed. I probably shouldn't get the optional fusions this time.

I can hear your boss respect picking up a shovel and digging through the bottom of the well.

[Dark Holy Elf]

They are what they are, there is nothing to really change my respect here. I do wish the boss design was less lazy, though.

<Kato> OH NO IT IS ASTAROTH, A TERRIBLE FOE WITH DEADLY POISONOUS CLAWS.
<Astaroth> hi I don't actually have anything of the sort, but uh I will 3HKO you with magic if you don't mind... like most other bosses you've faced so far. Try to forget to heal or something, please?

Though I do think the boss designer just thought demons were lame, because dudes with machine guns and mad scientists pilotting giant robots are certainly less fail, relatively. Even the best bosses are largely a mix of "ST status attack you heal with the appropriate item, GT spell you heal with Arc Cure" (assuming you aren't blitzing the hell out of things with the game's array of broken), which is rather unexciting, though. Amazing what SH3 was able to do to improve on this largely just by adding boss doubles and jacking up boss speed.

Regardless, I do have to stress that this isn't something to egregiously hold against the game. SH2 is a story game and knows it, it is very careful that the gameplay will never wall anyone from seeing the story. And its easy gameplay remains fun because the judgement ring is a very enjoyable timed hit system which the game does an excellent job of playing with (mostly this shows up in the Goreme trials, which I am enjoying this playthrough, but also with ring abnormalities), and is almost certainly the best such system in an RPG I've seen (certainly better than the Mario RPGs). It's also quite fast even despite taking the time to make judgement ring hits, and keeps the encounter rate to an appropriate level, neither of these being things you can take for granted in the genre. So I really can't find much fault with it.

[Meeplelard]

Kid Icarus: Just beat Pandora!  She is totally the Icecream Pope's Evil Henchman.

Sonic Heroes: FINALLY finished the Hero route, and because Mandy asked, I showed her some of team Dark.  That's probably where my playing of this game ends because seriously, fuck it.

[Shale]

Portal 2: Aperture backstory acquired! Cave Johnson is still hilarious, GLaDOS backstory is somewhat less depressing than I expected (although there's still time for it to get worse). Now to figure out the first three-gel test, and then explode with some dignity.

SRWZ2 replay: Stage 22. Got the SR point on 20 easily enough the second time around. Z2-2 in a week!

[AndrewRogue]

Shale, remind me to mention something about GLADoS backstory when you finish?

[hinode]

TO-PSP seems to have been designed with the idea that skill growth should stretch across complete playthroughs of all three routes, which... sort of makes sense with the World system?

I know on my Complete Law Complete Chaos 1/2 Neutral playthrough, Canopus had maxed at least two weapon skills and everyone was at 8 in their primary weapon.

... and I still don't think I had Parry above 1 on anybody despite running it constantly. >_<

So yeah. Lots of them are just stupid.

To give you guys a better idea of just how damned slow some of those skills in TO grow, I just checked my 181 hour file where I did most of the sidequests (including PotD... twice >_<) and finished all the Coda episodes, and my highest elemental augment level is Denam's L6 Light. Meanwhile nobody has an Anatomy level higher than 3 in my entire party, and that's one of the first skills I buy for everyone. By contrast, I managed to max out Yuria's bow levels by the time I finished Worlding through Chaos route and going down PotD, and she's a postgame recruit. And these are skills that you actually get a chance to build up with normal everyday actions, let alone stuff like Steal, Parry, and the status resists.

I can't speak for Grefter, but I found random battles in TO more dangerous on average than plot battles because you ran into Dragons/Golems/Octopi far more frequently in randoms and you have to kill them. I essentially had only 1 competent attack mage and not a lot of crushing weapons for most of the game, so I had serious trouble damaging them until I started racking up broken elemental weapons for everyone. In story battles that had monsters, I could usually just send Archers and/or Ninjas to make a beeline for the comparatively squishy boss while my Rampart Aura users + status mage held the monsters at bay.

[Grefter]

Pretty much.  Said Golem/Dragons/Octopi also seem to be higher level in the randoms and maybe have an accessory equipped.

On another note, I am going to have to test what the fuck is up with weapon levelling.  I just shot Disco Fucker in the back of the head by accident with some angle problems and his bow skill ranked up.  I can only guess at two things.  My first thought was that you get weapon skill for being hit by a weapon type as well as firing it.  Then I dismissed that as stupid and thought you might get weapon levels from Counter Attack without being actually able to counter attack.  Just tried going back a turn and Punching Disco Fucker in the back of the head.  No skill up.

what the fuck.  I am going to have to finish the game and then give one of my mages Dagger skill and then stab them in the face with someone else.

[hinode]

Yes, getting hit will level up weapon skills. Also stuff like anatomy.

[Grefter]

What the fuck were they smoking?  Do you think it was trying to make like Augment stuff and Attenuate stuff make some sense and it splashed over to impact all levelling up skills?

Anyway, glad it is a known thing and I don't need to work out what the shit just to satisfy my curiosity.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The only randoms I faced had quite inferior numbers/positioning to most story battles. I'm not exactly running scared of dragons or golems of any level if they aren't backed up with good support, and I played without an attack mage for the last third of the game (also when I fought most randoms I ever did, as mentioned). It's possible I just lucked into wussy randoms but yeah I'm seriously confused by hype for them; I never wiped to one nor do I even remember any close shaves or serious drains to my all-important revival item supply.

Of course I feel exactly the same way about FFT and I know I've seen people out there who disagree. (Weirdos.)

[NotMiki]

I'm not going to play God Hand much more because I know I'm not a bad enough dude. Sorry. Hard mode kicked my ass.

How far'd you get?  If you make it past the dancin' stage 1 midbosses, you're a bad dude.

I wish! I didn't beat the first stage.
... I need to try again...

First few stages are the hardest, since you don't have the moves yet to really deal with things.  Leg sweep for godlike, etc.  Piece of advice: when there's a checkpoint halfway through a stage, anything you leave on the ground will still be there when you continue, but when you continue you start at full health.  So if you can manage to get to the first checkpoint without using ALL the healing items, it'll help considerably.

[Grefter]

Randoms haven't caused a wipe or anything, they are just significantly stronger than the story battles.  It is like the armour fight in FF7 on the way to the submarine or the Turks fight with all three of them.  It isn't exactly hard so much as you might need to pay attention.

For what its worth the ones I found hardest were definitely ones that were just a big open plain and you are pretty much surrounded.  Throw in 4 or so dragons or Golems and you have a significant attrition war going where you don't have much terrain to work with.  Jumping from doing 50-60 damage an attack to down to 10-15 on a person with Draconology or Golemancy or 1 on some people is a significant difference (I even gave one guy Herpetology just in case I ran into Lizard men and because the name made me giggle).  I mean you might actually want to use Finishing moves on them!

Just did fight with a Necromancer and some undead stuff in the Hanging Gardens and got bored again.  This final dungeon is such a mega snooze slog.

[Niu]

KH 3D- I know I can always trust the Subasekai team in making a game that fully utilize the hardware. Outside the Drop system being completly stupid, everything elese is perfect. The control, the conceptual design of the battle, and the actual graphical prensentation or all superub.

Also, what is with this impossibily thick plot armor that Sora is having? To the piont I am feeling bad for Master Xehanort.

[Fenrir]

CTCE: Provoke's good, but honestly every status is very useful. Enemies are damage sponge, not quite Xs2 level but they're a serious step up from vanilla CT. Sleep > Confusion > Stop, Hypno Wave being broken if enemies aren't immune.

Following MARLE SOLO, we get Lucca and Robo in some alternate reptite vs robot future. This is cool.
Then, Frog/Crono/Magus. Oh god. Perhaps the worst team. I died against the first random battle. Good thing the game is showering the player with Lapis (200 MT healing item) because Frog's 80 ST healing doesn't cut it.
The game is becoming more meaty! And I don't mind how blatantly unfinished it looks at times. Boss battles take too long, but otherwise no complaints. It's even better than CT about some things. I just hope Magus is a jeigan because it's embarassing how good he is right now. Best stats by far, being the earliest character with two elements, stealing, Omnishield to cut both physical and magic damage. Meanwhile, Frog has crappy everything. Come on now, romhackers. You're not 15 years old anymore.


Saints Row 2: Buried alive one man, nearly dispatched the ronins (I like how they're nearly all caucasians)
Sorry, but tragic deaths don't work in this game. Nope.

[Meeplelard]

Kid Icarus Uprising: "Hey, you're going to fight Medusa, so we're handing you a bunch of awesome stuff, including a totally overpowered weapon like nothing else!  No, we weren't going to tell you that we're actually giving you this stuff until you actually start the mission, thereby making all your weapon practices and what not before completely meaningless!"


...ok, to be fair, its hard to complain about a surprise feature like that, because...really, you're handed something more awesome than you're expecting to use in that chapter.  I just felt like being snarky!


So yeah, Chap 9 beaten.  Game is still fun, quirky, and a sequel to a game made 25 years ago.  Yes, that last part deserves repeating because the game totally doesn't go out of its way to remind you its been 25 years since the original game on a constant basis.  Nope! Not at all!

[Fudozukushi]

Tales of Graces f: Where the f stands for how am I still on my first playthrough!

The final dungeon for the future arc is a complete confusing slog through enemies with 20K HP on the low end, a maze of similar looking corridors and one-way warp points, everyone's favorite STATUS FLOORS!  And my resources vanishing every five minutes.  Oh, and me trying to get the materials for the Roleplay dolls.  That'll be fun.

But first, errrr, second really now but you can bet your bacon and eggs I'll be back to bitch about the future final, where I last left off.  ....And where was that....?  *checks last post* Ugh I need to reply to... nah...  Uh, let's see....  It's five days ago now.  Right, I ragequitted because of new enemies.  Hate world.  Had to resort to going through on Hard because screw effort for that place.  Seriously.  Anyway, it ended with another sort of quasi-bossfight who I just kinda sleptwalked through.  Whatever.  After that it's off to Fodra for a new dungeon.

My talk about the final dungeon?  Well one of the other complaints is that it's unreasonably huge.  All three errrrr, well I guess four, well, three of the dungeons unique to the future arc are outrageously huge and this is the first one.  It basically requires using the Book of Swiftness to move.  And of course the enemies are still future-arc stupid-hard.  Thankfully I can go toe-to-toe with them on Evil again.  After the obnoxiously large dungeon we get into a boss fight with what is essentially the base-version of what's gonna be a giant pain-in-the-ass for the next two dungeons.

And then the place explodes and I have to deal with an obnoxious escape mechanic.  Seriously.

Next dungeon ahoy, and we see the precursor to the final as it's an actual teleport forest. So of course when I actually muddle my way through to the end, the unholy end of bosses is among me.  After two failures on Evil(the second of course being on the final wave) I just get pissed I'm taking so long on this game I wimp out down to Hard and sleepwalk through.  And then take a convenient path back to the start.  Giddity.

Then I piss away a couple hours flying around the world and finding out just where the Pow Hammer is.  Then run scared.  VERY SCARED!  and the reward isn't worth it just gald seriously?

I take a quick crack at the final after that before getting booted off.

Then today/...no just today.

Final dungeon ahoy.  I spent maybe four hours alone in the first part because it is so huge and samey and one-way.  And during that time, I got a half-dozen of the drops of each type from each enemy here.  I got the Soul Orbs for all of them.

And despite that, I still did not find the new weapons for Asbel and Pascal.  So they're stuck with the ones they had before, while everyone else is rocking spiffy new Tales weapons.  Now, they will actually drop from another enemy latter.  This is still terrible and you will learn why.

After I spend way, way too much time in the first part I muddle through to the second.  Which has the, joy of joys, status-effect floors!  On something resembling an upside it's a good place to get the STATUSproof titles.  If y'know, who got what wasn't pre-determined.  Nine know how many times Asbel not having Freezeproof killed him.  Now, there is a way to rid floors of the effect.  You need to do this to proceed, but Nine know who'd be insane enough to leave them up anyway.  In order to take down the effects you take down a local semi-boss and all is well.

Except when it turns out those mini-bosses turn into normal enemies in part three and they drop all of the F final dungeon weapons.  Ha...

But before part three, it's a rematch against the swarm.  In the Paralysis Effect which you can't get rid of.  I think, I didn't get much further but eh...  Anyway, just like before I get the swarm down to the final wave on Evil and then get reamed up the backside.  This time I don't sleepwalk through Hard because all the skill I was using is gone so I actually waste more resources on the easier fight than I did on the hard version.  Go figure.

Along the way I started maxing out stamps for the various cities.  I was expecting more unique ores like from Telos... but nope, just one-buy only versions of default items.  With fancy qualities.  I can only guess these are what they want you to use to make the ULTIMATE weapons.  Which.... you can't actually get in future arc... I think?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Shadow Hearts Covenant: Beaten. I decided to do absolutely zero sidequests once the final dungeon opened this time, which means I should probably go back and do the final Goreme trials since I was enjoying those. Hien and Raiden are still utter joke bosses, but the final wasn't so bad. Still not a great final boss by any means (two of his support got OHKOed by a single Entrance'd spell from Anastasia, and he needed dispel so badly) but better than most SH2 opponents done this way certainly.

Ho hum. This playthrough I learned that I'd badly overrated Kurando. I can't say I really missed him for randoms (though I suppose he's better than Joachim/Gepetto there due to speed?) and for bosses he's just not much of a team player (can't buff/can't use Entrance/can't MT heal, only okay at combos) and SH2 bosses are all about team play; they don't really reward his good stats.

[Cmdr_King]

I'd say Kurando's real strength is in his uncommonly strong physical with Jutendouji, which tends out outshine Joachim's skills in that matter if you don't have him transformed as I recall.  But there's not as many physical fighters and the game rarely rewards one over the other, so yeah, I can see that.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Final Fantasy 3 - Played a lot of this yesterday and the few days before.

-I think this game really picks up when you start getting a wider variety of options for job classes, as would be expected from a job class game.
-I think that two Mini dungeons is probably two too many. I can accept the first one for just being quirky but the second one was just unacceptable.
-Probably my least favorite dungeon in the game so far was the Ancient Cave. The enemies that split on their own turn aren't fun, they are just boring and take too long.
-Favorite dungeon is probably the Cave of Tides or the Temple of Time.
-Master Monk is pretty hilarious in that he went from being the MVP of the team from when you get the Water Crystal until the Ancient Cave. Then he became the LVP very quickly. High defense enemies I suppose.
-Big Rat is Satan.
-Garuda is Satan.
-Hyne is a pretty obnoxiously slow boss which has pretty vague hints that he will basically be a mega physical tank and I used up a lot of my MP in the dungeon because the dungeon was kind of f'ing hard. I beat him after like 80 turns though. Hooray for encouragement to hoard magic.
-Cave of Darkness cannot stand up to the might of STEELGUARD!
-This game's speed is not random. It just seems random at first. When speed gaps begin to appear it is pretty apparent that the mages are slower than the fighters.

I picked four random RPG characters and tried to keep their gameplay function as close to their in-game functions as possible. Without including gimmick dungeons (Mini dungeons and Garuda mostly):

Delita's progression has been Fighter -> Knight -> Mystic Knight -> Knight. He will probably end up as the team Ninja. He's been the physical fighter and little else, mostly because the other characters are a little more diverse even if Delita can technically be whatever class he wants.

Ana(stasia Romanov)'s progression has been... Black Mage -> Scholar -> Thief -> White Mage -> Conjurer -> White Mage -> Black Mage -> Summoner.  She was assigned to be the Summoner because she says "I summon you!" for her attacks. Her HP kind of sucks due to the class selection, unfortunately. Thief was a class I wanted on someone and she spies in Rasputin and steals snacks! Or something.

Snow has been a Black Belt -> Black Mage -> Master Monk -> Knight -> Warlock. A decent representation of all of his three major roles, I think. Knight with two shields with all critical allies in the Cave of Darkness kind of rapes it, since the enemies seem to exclusively use physicals, including the boss. Amusing and very Sentinel.

Chris (Lightfellow) has been a Red Mage -> White Mage -> Knight -> Mystic Knight -> Shaman. This one was probably the least representative, since her HP isn't great and her role in S3 isn't really primarily of a White Mage, but she does fit well enough as one, which is why I ran it (and because White Mages are pretty vital and useful). I got some Knight /M. Knight time in there, so I am pretty happy with the results overall.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'd say Kurando's real strength is in his uncommonly strong physical with Jutendouji, which tends out outshine Joachim's skills in that matter if you don't have him transformed as I recall.  But there's not as many physical fighters and the game rarely rewards one over the other, so yeah, I can see that.

Yuri is better still at physicals, but yeah, if you plan to run an offence based primarily around a team assault using Arc Rage, you're obviously going to use Kurando. Still that alone isn't a very good case for him to be the second best character in the game, which was the conventional wisdom I used to subscribe to until thinking things over this playthrough.