What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[superaielman]

Overall fun, though the main villain is the biggest tool I've ever seen in Japanese media... and that's pretty impressive all things considered.

I was going to call bullshit on this, but wow. No. He rivals Kevin for absolute wankery.

[Clear Tranquil]

Yeul is no Shion though so there's that at least~

Also I think the point is Caius is sick and tired of being a tool which is why he wants to *Late first half Episode 5 SPOILERS* kill the Goddess! Of being a tool and of Etro using others as tools~

Read one of Fang's fragments from Sunleth 400 AF for her thoughts on the being behind it all as well.

I think players might be put in his shoes in the end Foreshadowing going on here!~

[Niu]

RS3.12 - Took down Jackle, yeah shinies! Also did the vampire and Cyfreet quest. Watching Sophia being Rudvich's loyal underling feels so weird. Beat Bokhon after that, fetching that Moonlight. Also tag along with Fuse and beat Campbell. Wonder Fuse has Awakening in this patch or not. If yes, he'll be final party member material.

Then I head to Holy King's Chapel and use the Dragon Ruler there to blink techs. Got a bunch of high level rod, rapier, and gun techs. At last I have those states buster moves I need. And whee Red learned Tiger Rampage on top of blinking Al Phoenix and Final Crusade!! Lovely, only Re-Al Phoenix is left!. Anyway, by damage out put should be enough bu this point. Next thing to do would be torturing Dantarg until Asellus drains Grand Cross from him so Asellus can obtain uber physical states.

[Fenrir]

El Cid:

Miracles : Many miracles offer nice utility (healing, tranquill walk of peace, vow of silence, great magic barrier, homeward, wrath of the gods...) You can't rely on the attack spells to get you through the game, and you still need to spend some stats where it counts (like endurance, vitality...) Wrath of the gods is supreme but you only get 3 charges.

Sorcery : Pure mage, you don't need anything but really high magic stats (a little vitality wouldn't hurt though) The Chameleon spell is hilarious, but otherwise you only get pure damage.

I found sorcery to be considerably easier and a lot more different than other classes.
If that matters, the worth of both classes is reversed in PVP, sorcery is extremely easy to avoid or null, while Wrath of the gods might be too good.

[Clear Tranquil]

FFXIII-2: Final dungeon. Yes that's right >_>

The design is Tetris blocks dungeon! and the first boss fight within is *Giraffes! Which I haven't defeated yet *Giraffes! are OP The fights so far in the final dungeon have been tough in general. Might be time to spend all that CP I've been hoarding! On the other hand I don't want the enemies/bosses to go from tough to pushovers like most of the game so far~

[superaielman]

FFXIII-2: Final dungeon. Yes that's right >_>

The design is Tetris blocks dungeon! and the first boss fight within is *Giraffes! Which I haven't defeated yet *Giraffes! are OP The fights so far in the final dungeon have been tough in general. Might be time to spend all that CP I've been hoarding! On the other hand I don't want the enemies/bosses to go from tough to pushovers like most of the game so far~

Blow the CP. The randoms are obnoxious as is.

[Clear Tranquil]

* Clear Tranquil nods

I might after the boss duo then. I think I've came up with a working deck set for them. Just need to tweak it since I discovered if you manage to take one of them out the other one revives it's fallen comrade! I'm using Serah as lead with SAB/SYN/SEN -W- (start) SAB/RAV/SEN -C-, COM/COM/SEN and SEN/MED/MED for the most part here.  With the odd Tortoise-SEN/SEN/SEN thrown inMy Pulse Knight is a great guardian and Serah/Noel's best friend right now <3

Yeah though if the randoms/bosses are only going to get even tougher as the dungeon goes I might as well go ahead and blow it all. Thanks for letting me know super. I have about 80'000 CP saved up from just clearing the story events from Augusta Tower to here. Seems like the case is it'll just give me an edge under these circumstances rather than enabling me to curb stomp everything~

[Meeplelard]

Ninja Gaiden 2: Part way into Chap 8.  There is nothing about this chapter that is actually fun so far.  Starts off with Bazooka wielding Ninjas that keep respawning.  Game wants you to fight them in a sniper war, but that doesn't work because they fire faster than you (and don't have to aim), its 2 on one at all points, killing one means another spawns pretty much RIGHT ON TOP OF YOU, being hit by one means you get chained smacked, and the sandbags do jack all to block their arching missiles.  IOWs, its stupid...

Then they throw 3 robots (that respawn a few times) at you...WITH SNIPING BAZOOKAS.  This is dumb for a number of reasons, the biggest one being, of all things, the robots self destruct, so if you kill them with a finishing move, they'll explode immediately after your invincibility is over, and if you aren't blocking, you're taking damage...if your back is facing one of the robots? Screwed.  If missiles are being fired?  Screwed.

Its basically this nonsense for the first part of the chapter over and over again.  Sniping Bazooka Ninjas.  Then you finally get into a room with EXPLODING SHURIKEN NINJAS.  Ok, not so bad; NG1 did it...except NG1 did it a lot better.  Having a cap of 3 means its actually manage-able (if still ball bustingly hard), and they didn't throw them EVERYTIME YOU WERE ONE PIXEL OUT OF MELEE RANGE (and there's a cap of at least 5 of them.)  Its really just a huge "so you took one of the most annoying things of the previous game...and made it WORSE by adding in multiple design decisions?"

I'll finish this game, but damn is it frustrating.  Its like they took one step forward in some areas, and 3 steps back in others.  NG1's difficulty, boss fights aside, never felt poorly handled.  Oh, you got your ass kicked a lot, but eventually you got a hang of things.  Here, I feel like its luck half the time.  Shame too, because Chap 7 was really quite fun before the Armadillo bullshit, and showed this game definitely still has life in Mook Combat.

[superaielman]

FF13-2: Done. Not finished, but done. Got to the final boss (After a chain of other bosses and cutscenes) got absolutely wiped by Teraflare. I wasn't even remotely close to surviving it, so I will youtube the ending later.


This game has problems across the board. This game tries to be a sandbox RPG and fails miserably at it.   The lack of the directions in the side missions is frustrating in the extreme, especially in light of how FF13 did missions.  FF13 had the little blurb and ballparked you where to go for a bos fight. Cool! FF13-2 mostly has you do item hunting with no direction or marking on the map, so it's either FAQ time or hope you get lucky.  The platformers that they tacked on sucked too (Hi, final dungeon). This is a problem at the couple of points where the game just dumps you out of the main plot and expects you to muddle through. Okay, whatever, I can deal. The actual plot is time travel nonsense, y ou ignore and just try to enjoy the character work.

FF13-2 fails *miserably* at gameplay. The change to invisble randoms irrirated me at first, but it turned into a black mark against the game later on. You can't avoid randoms in two of the later dungeons, which is bad enough. In Academia, they spawn almost instantly in a mazey area. Augustus tower just has them spawn in puzzle areas where they attack you before you can even really see them.

Combat is watered down.  The game itself is easy. You set a rav/rav/rav and a com/com/com and it handles 85% of the randoms. Sab is still useful, but it got the nerf stick bad- slow and daze aren't available any more, and all of the debilitation spells aren't available for the controllable PC's. So when you get to a fight where you want to try fogging the enemies, nope! Hope you have a monster sab handy with those skills, and better hope the monster feels like using them. Syn also got horribly nerfed- there is only one PC syn worth a fuck (Noel) and he doesn't get any offensive buffs. So when you actually get challenging fights, you can't really put the system to full use the way you could in 13 and buff/debuff/tinker with strategies to deal with the fight.  FF13 cast balance meant that there were good arguments for using and not using every PC; 13-2 sticks you with Serah/Noel/Monster of the day. 13-2 should have been more of C9-13, where the game pushed you and got you to really think about your options. Instead you get a largely fixed team and a shallower version of the game system. Blah.

Re: ClearTranquil's point about the purple wanker


Caius was willing to destroy in opposition to what the Yuels said they wanted. Noel called him out on his bullshit most aptly near the end. Waaaaaaah I keep having to see the seeress die waaaaaah I am going to create A WORLD WITHOUT PAIN FOR HER oh hey let's go kill time so she can have eternal happiness. This is literally the same crock of shit Kevin fed Shion at the end of XS3.


I don't have a high opinion of that character.

There are some postives. Serah and Noel are both reasonably well done, and Snow's appearance was cool. Some of the plot stuff was strikingly well done, and the game does a better job with storytelling than FF13.   Just... *shrug* it's a massive step down from FF13, when it could have been so much more. I blame moronic fans entirely for this. Game clocks in at a 4/10. It's flawed but has enough going for it to justify this.

tl;dr version:

Good: FF13 combat, some character work
Bad: Gameplay changes, FAQ bait sidequests
Ugly: The purple wanker.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I pretty much agree with most of that, outside the "invisible" randoms, and any stuff that requires you be further into the game than I am (Academia, villain stuff). And of course with the snarky comment that every game that tries to be a sandbox RPG the whole game fails miserably at it as far as I'm concerned, and at least 13-2 has some story structure. The game will do significantly better than a 4/10 for me barring an epic collapse but I still agree with way too much there.

Anyway, just fought the Faeryl at the Archylte Steppe. While it's quite possible I'm underlevelled, I found this guy quite tough, he piled on a lot of damage and it kept me on my toes all fight. Had one reset and came back with a paradigm set that was less terrible for bosses. I'm finally using SEN again which is nice, it felt useless for a while. Nice to see some of what made FF13 so good still shines through.

[Clear Tranquil]

Well ... Yeul still isn't Shion! >_>

All I'll say for now until super's watched the ending is that Caius's plan isn't as obvious as it seems, there's more to the situation than Serah and Noel think as they make their way to the final fights. I'm not saying the way Caius is going about things is right but I think upon watching the ending players  who have connected to/been invested in Serah/Noel will get a taste of his frustration and rage. Both Caius and Yeul warned Noel what would happen in the end, if Noel had finished him off to begin with things might have been different~

* Clear Tranquil watched ending already back during Japanese streaming >_>

Unlike super I'm actually enjoying the final dungeon which is surprising because when I saw it on streams it looked quite obnoxious but surprisingly I'm not finding it so. I'm actually quite enjoying theTetris blocks theme and the atmosphere here so far. Well I won the first boss there after a few more retries. My new deck set ups worked out quite well after tweaking them so most of them were under -W- formation tuning. I also discovered something cool, after having Serah spam Wound through out the fight including while the target/s were staggered and for finishing one of them off with, when the remaining target revived it's ally it wasn't revived back to full health this time. I'm not sure if this had anything to do with the Wound status proper but because I'd been heavily inflicting it through out the fight I think so. Either that or it was because I'd been dividing damage between the targets this time and the remaining target can only revive the other back based on the amount of HP the reviver has left. They did manage to revive each other two or three times but it was less and less HP each time. Hmmm. Fun times~

I think SEN is going to be quite useful for the final dungeon on the whole. Ran into Proto Behemoth while exploring after the boss fight and owww. Need to remember and bring Tortoise for the finale too it seems.

@ NEB - Yeah agreed. I've had similar experiences by apparently taking a more difficult but still relatively direct route through the main stuff, though quite a lot of it was easy there are definitely exceptions to this where the battle system proper does shine through. Granted this does seem rarer than first time through FFXIII too though true. Hmmm~

[superaielman]

*Whistles* the purple wanker can still get bent, but that ending was pretty damn good. Edit: That's enough to push the game up two points and me to push my foot out of my mouth.

[Sierra]

El Cid:

Miracles : Many miracles offer nice utility (healing, tranquill walk of peace, vow of silence, great magic barrier, homeward, wrath of the gods...) You can't rely on the attack spells to get you through the game, and you still need to spend some stats where it counts (like endurance, vitality...) Wrath of the gods is supreme but you only get 3 charges.

Sorcery : Pure mage, you don't need anything but really high magic stats (a little vitality wouldn't hurt though) The Chameleon spell is hilarious, but otherwise you only get pure damage.

I found sorcery to be considerably easier and a lot more different than other classes.
If that matters, the worth of both classes is reversed in PVP, sorcery is extremely easy to avoid or null, while Wrath of the gods might be too good.

I actually started a file as a cleric last night. You know what never happened in my first game? Moving at full speed. I was always carrying something close to 50% weight capacity. Oh my god I'm never wearing armor again. Resolved to keep weight at 25% or less at all times for the sake of maneuverability, which pretty much necessitates just sticking to clothes. You know what difference in durability I've noticed as a result of this? None whatsoever. So yeah, defensive stats in Dark Souls, not worth caring about unless you're fighting Four Kings. So now I'm running around in Dusk's outfit just because it looks fabulous.

The attack magic might not be overwhelming, but it's certainly nice to have. Lightning Spear? Killed that first titanite demon in four hits. I can't believe I was killing those things in melee first run (or wasting ~100 arrows/bolts sniping each one). Want Great Lightning Spear so bad. But alas, that requires jolly cooperation, which chronic overleveling apparently makes unlikely. I should just forgo leveling for a while since I seem pretty well set to deal with anything at the moment.

Ran the catacombs as soon as it was feasible (that is, as soon as I could get a divine weapon, which meant running through the Valley of Drakes to get the Astora straight sword). 1x Pinwheel death acquired! "Oh, he lived through a full attack sequence this time. And now there's four of him. I should probably--" *ZAP* "...move." Fully kindled bonfires and heal spells...yeah, I don't think I'll be running out of healing at any point during this run.

I let a guest wipe out Capra Demon for me. I beat him legit the first run through this, totally entitled to employ gameplay skip for the most hated battle in the game. Fuck if I'm burning another couple hours on a fight that's almost wholly dependent on whether dogs get in your way the first couple seconds. Player on the other side must've been shaking his head as I blundered into a corner with the dogs, somehow lived on like 2hp for the duration of the fight because I'd accidentally switched items without noticing and there just happened to be a column in the way preventing the enemies from hitting me for the crucial couple seconds it took the guest to kill the boss.

In sum: last time I ran the Juggernaut. This time I'm a lightning-throwing pretty princess swordgirl. One guess which is more effective.

[AndrewRogue]

YOu're making me want to resume my Dark Souls playthrough =(

[Niu]

*Whistles* the purple wanker can still get bent, but that ending was pretty damn good. Edit: That's enough to push the game up two points and me to push my foot out of my mouth.

Are you serious? The ending had made the entire thing into a nonsensical time loop.
And this created a fal'Cie=Etro is dead before she is dead type of situation... which is totally WTF.


RS3.12 - Done collecting all the Holy King items, killed Gwen after that and rebuild the small village. Kzinssie is pathetic as always. Anyway, got the Day Blade from him, now Gerald can become Final Emperor.

[Sierra]

YOu're making me want to resume my Dark Souls playthrough =(

Join ussssssss. (How far were you?)

[superaielman]

*Whistles* the purple wanker can still get bent, but that ending was pretty damn good. Edit: That's enough to push the game up two points and me to push my foot out of my mouth.

FF13-2 ending stuff

Spoilers go here.

The main plot's nonsensical. I'm just surprised they had the balls to A: kill Serah and Lightning. B: Do so in a fashion that was foreshadowed beforehand. That Alyssa spoiler too, wow.  You spend two games trying to save the sisters, and nope! offed in the end.

Time travel plot is bad plot, but the overarching character work (as with FF13) is more important. Game had some other really good stuff in there too- Noel's dream world and Alyssa's betrayal high on the list.

[Captain K.]

Cid, you can farm Sunlight Medals from the small bugs by the secret passage in Izalith.

Also, damn you people enjoying cleric so much.  It was probably the worst class before the patches.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Forget everything else I've been playing, ADD set in and I randomly tried out Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.

Gameplay is too dungeon-crawler for me (It's why I'm not a big EO fan), but the story and demon-collecting work for me. I don't see myself finishing it without massive cheating.

[Meeplelard]

FF13-2: Decided its about time I started this game because...shut up.

Anyway, basically played past the intro and finally got access to Chrystarium.  First impressions other than "Hey, its an FF13 sequel!"?  Well, Serah's about what I expected, didn't know what to expect with Noel but I am liking what I've seen so far since they're going down a more friendly, optimistic route than "super cryptic mysterious guy!" route.  Its like they remember "you can be mysterious and still act like something resembling a normal person!" here, which is points.

On the otherhand...Chrystarium seems to have taken back steps.  Definitely prefer FF13's version, if only because you can see what stat boosts you're getting ahead of time, allowing you to plan what you want for reasons OTHER than skills.  Knowing "ok, going this way gets me +20 Magic while going this way gets me +20 Strength...oh wait, this is Hope, CHOICE IS OBVIOUS!" is preferable to "activate node, HERE ARE YOUR STAT BOOSTS!"

[Clear Tranquil]

FFXIII-2: OMGG the final boss. Finally won after at least half a dozen attempts where it managed to respawn it's allies multiple times as well during each attempt. Including in the winning fight where over the course of it each ally respawned like five or six times before I was finally able to finish off the main target proper. Thankfully Serah's SAB with Wound damage kept reducing their maximum HP totals for each time they revived, so at least it became quicker and quicker to take them out each time.  Once the main target's HP is low it also gets new moves to spam yaay (one of my wipes was when it used both this and another OP move back to back before I could Tortoise/heal/buff on time to survive)  Epic boss fight? Epic boss fight?~

Serah 3000~ HP/ 600 MAG/ Buff Duration 8%  (with equips), Noel 5000~ HP (with accessories) /500~ STR, Pulse Knight max LV, L52 Cait Sith (Long Gui back pack!~)

Decks used - SYN/SYN/SEN (W) SAB/SAB/SEN (C) MED/MED/SEN (W) SAB/RAV/SEN (C) SEN/SEN/SEN (W) COM/COM/SEN (C)

After my first losses I ended up tinkering with accessories to boost Serah's MAG and Noel's HP more. I think it made all the difference in the end for improved debuffing/healing and survival. If Serah fell Noel would survive and I'd be able to get the whole team back on it's toes =) Tinkering with the Paradigm Formations and setting it up as above also seemed to help for priority on AoE buffing/healing/etc with the Wide decks and on ST for focused debuffs/damage with the Cross decks. Also Phoenix Downs are godly in this game (revives + buffs yes plz) (although I didn't have any for the final fight there's also Phoenix Blood which is revives + Hastes ;o)~

[Sierra]

Dark Souls: Dear Anor Londo snipers: Wrath of the Gods. That is all. (Vengeance!)

Was a day for dying to easy bosses apparently. Got whacked by Iron Golem while pausing to chuck a lightning bolt (did I mention I'm made out of tissue paper this time around? I've barely boosted HP). But it turned out okay because TARKUUUUUUS avenged me by finishing the boss as I discorporated. "YOU DIED/received core of iron golem." I am trying to trigger all the NPC phantom events this time because I didn't really see any of them first run.

I also died to Ceaseless Discharge. Man, last time he didn't even attack me as I ran past him for the gate. And I moved slower then! Weird. Stopped to take a closer look at the monstrosity while he was passive. Had not noticed the thing actually had a face before! Thought it was just a big ball of tentacles. And what a face. Ceaseless Discharge does not look happy about being Ceaseless Discharge.

Also, swordgirl upgraded to scythegirl! This is totally impractical for the wind-up and high stamina costs, but come on, scythegirl. Dark Souls, totally a game you can gimp yourself for style, right? (I actually chose it because it had the highest raw attack stats out of the weapons my meager STR/DEX let me use, but admittedly looking like the grim reaper when I've got Quelana's outfit on is a definite bonus.) I've actually been consistently outdamaging my original PC this run just because stat-scaling. I leaned on the drake sword/lightning spear way too heavily last time.

The forest archer jumped off a cliff trying to attack me. Welp, no Black Bow of Pharis for Cid this time around! I'd be more upset if I weren't planning to go with the Darkmoon Bow anyway.

[Niu]

R.S3.12 - Did the quest with Cash and Neidhart. Also beat Orlouge and Rocboquet. Noel will be next.

*Whistles* the purple wanker can still get bent, but that ending was pretty damn good. Edit: That's enough to push the game up two points and me to push my foot out of my mouth.

FF13-2 ending stuff

Spoilers go here.

The main plot's nonsensical. I'm just surprised they had the balls to A: kill Serah and Lightning. B: Do so in a fashion that was foreshadowed beforehand. That Alyssa spoiler too, wow.  You spend two games trying to save the sisters, and nope! offed in the end.

Time travel plot is bad plot, but the overarching character work (as with FF13) is more important. Game had some other really good stuff in there too- Noel's dream world and Alyssa's betrayal high on the list.

I see, that is understandable then. I am not too sure on Lightning.

[AndrewRogue]

Cid: Uh, if I recall right...

I'd defeated Taurus Demon, Bell Gargoyle, Capra Demon, Gaping Dragon, Spider Boobs, Iron Golem, Moonlight Butterfly, Great Grey Wolf Sif and Pinwheel. I think I'd been wandering around the ruins of New Londo and/or Anor Londo.

Anyhow. Mass Effect replay. Kinda slacked off, so now I don't have a ton of time! Trying to stay somewhat in-character with side mission selection and the like. Currently doing Virmire and then Noveria remains of all that. Should be able to finish that this week, and then blitz through ME2 before ME3.

Bastion: Only one more core left, I guess. Then, clearly, the game ends, what with so much of the map open.

[Sierra]

Dark Souls: So apparently Super Ornstein's only move is an electric buttstomp. Yeah, I'll go back to killing him first.

Messed around with PVP some because I want that Darkmoon Blade miracle, dammit. This was probably less productive than farming the damn things from harpies would've been but augh farming (also augh harpies). I can only win anything through Wrath of the Gods spam. I'd feel worse about this if the alternative weren't usually LAGSTAB. It's painfully obvious I haven't invested enough in HP to actually stand a chance against most other PCs (also LAGSTAB), but at least I can potentially nuke someone if I catch them off guard. And at least there's an amusing death once in a while. Watching the host get stabbed in the back by hollows while taunting dead Cid? Totally worth an ex-Cid. Also. *Host bows. Cid bows back. Host's phantom buddy stabs Cid in the back. OHKO.* Chivalry is dead. Darkmoon invasions seem pretty risk-free though, dunno if that goes for the other covenants as well?

Somewhat related, Undead Parish phantom Solaire has a fuckton of HP. Dude ate a WotG and a whole battery of heavy attacks while in the center of a hollow mob before going down.

EDIT: I found what looked remarkably like a puddle of nuclear waste sitting on the road in Anor Londo. "Would you like to view dragon remains y/n." I wandered off. What the heck was that?