What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Niu]

RS3.12 - Noel and Rocboquet down. Got the game best rapier from Noel as well. Got the Obsidian Sword after that, Hate is still a pitiful punch bag.
And I found out Ixtel is in this game, and he drops Brionac too! Yay, I now have the strongest gun! Then move on did a whole a lot of SF2 event, blinked Final Letter and Fire Dragon Fist when figting Megalith Beast!! Yay!! But bah, I couldn't find Death Sage for some reason.

Since I want to recruit Sherah now, I'll quickly go close other Abyss Gates first so I can initiate the quest on Death.

[Fenrir]

That patch sounds crazy.

El Cid, you should have checked this out, because you might not ever see this again. (same thing with vagrants/ gravelord invasions)
Armor gives you poise on top of defense, which can get pretty useful. (see why everybody PVPs in heavy armor)

Archer is the worst class by far unless you just give him an axe or something and forget about bows. They're only good at doing a little chip damage, with a few lategame exceptions.



SO2 Precis Solo: Went to the cave of trials, got 50 levels and 2 Tri-Emblems from Santa. I'm too lazy to go back to Indy but I feel like I've already won.

ToI Mania mode Luca Solo: Finished the first dungeon, on my knees, after playing for about 10 hours.
Yeeeeah this is way too hard. Battles against the three mini bosses were really fun and intense, but I can't go on like this forever, any real boss could utterly crush me.
I could break the game by grinding the guild dungeon and getting uber weapons, but where's the fun in that? I'm bumping the difficulty down to normal or hard mode.
I really like this Tales battle system, it has free run with enemies being able to handle it (unlike in Abyss), being able to Guard -> Sidestep right through the enemy is great, skills don't cost too much TP, style and weapon customization are alright. The DS controller isn't really comfortable enough for this kind of game, though.
And the game is bombarding me with skits I choose not to see!

[Fudozukushi]

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?

Was it gray?  Then it might have been a Dragon Covenant duel sign.

[Grefter]

That patch sounds crazy.

...

ToI Mania mode Luca Solo: Finished the first dungeon, on my knees, after playing for about 10 hours.

That patch sounds crazy.

That patch sounds crazy.

That patch sounds crazy.

I missed you dude.  Never leave again.

[Sierra]

El Cid, you should have checked this out, because you might not ever see this again. (same thing with vagrants/ gravelord invasions)
Armor gives you poise on top of defense, which can get pretty useful. (see why everybody PVPs in heavy armor)

I've seen all of one vagrant, at the end of my first run. And the "Defeat of the Gravelord servant" message has popped up many times, but I've never actually seen any effect of that invasion.

I seriously miss actually having poise, yeah. Everything staggers me and even plenty of blocked heavy attacks will knock me back a couple feet. I've barely noticed any worthwhile difference in durability from not wearing armor; poise seems to be the real advantage of it.

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?

Was it gray?  Then it might have been a Dragon Covenant duel sign.

It was indeed, yes.

[Fenrir]

This means I'm a good judge of what's crazy or not!

El Cid, in 200 hours I've never been gravelorded and have seen only one vagrant.

[Luther Lansfeld]

FF9 - Disc 3, now I have access to the lagoon. Time to try to find the chocobo upgrade so I can explore more!!!

[Niu]

That patch sounds crazy.

And that is not the most comprehensive patch either.
This patch I am using is an inbetween patch of 3.12 and AA patch.
The latest patch is AA Beta patch. Which has the monster transformation system and Mec customization fully integrated. The variety of events covers up to with Judy's quest in Unlimitede SaGa.
But god, do they have to nerf Goddess and Blue/Rogue in that patch or not.

[Meeplelard]

FF13-2: Just beat up a giant robot in our first time traveling adventures!

[Niu]

RS3.12 - All Abyss Gate closed, and I get Re-Al Phoenix too!! Now it is time to beat the crap out of Death, but before that I need the Black Diamond first.
And gee, not only I can't find the Death Sage, I can't find the Chaos Ruler either!

[Sierra]

Dark Souls: Killed Lautrec in the firekeeper's outfit. Vengeance!

So, Tomb of the Giants, best place to invade or best place to invade? The ohshitwhereishe factor is pretty high on both sides. The smart hosts seem to just sit still and wait for the invader to walk by. One of them I only noticed by his glowing shoes. What the heck makes boots glow in this game? One time the guy died offscreen while I was still materializing. Tomb of the Giants! It is possibly only made more eerie by the fact of enemies patiently waiting for the host's arrival while you're in phantom mode. Sound is dulled and there's this muted, vaguely breathlike background noise while you walk around motile but passive corpses. Suddenly you're a POV monster from a horror movie.

I still suck at invasions though and am just not built to deal with other PCs (not enough HP). It can be an amusing disaster sometimes, but the only reason I'm really doing it in the first place is for souveneirs of reprisal (I want the Darkmoon Blade miracle) but this obviously is not to be. So I went in for Jolly Cooperation instead. This was much more fun/successful, and I got Great Lightning Spear out of it too. Most horrific moment possibly in the game: host pulls a Leeroy Jenkins into the Ariamis basement. Oh my god how are you still alive. Somehow the only casualty was the other phantom ally.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

I realized that one of my hand-me-down PCs had Steam on it. Since I couldn't fairly complain about having to use it if it had been autoloading for years for no reason, I broke down and bought Terraria.

It's as great as I imagined it would be while grumbling at Let's Plays of it. Just killed the Wall of Flesh and started Hard Mode.

[Captain K.]

Started playing Perfect World again since I have a lot of time on my hands.  Surprisingly little has changed in two years.  Gold prices are up, but many other commodities are rather cheap.

The new expansion launched today, and it's pretty groovy.  The free armor set is a bit worse than what I've been using, but the weapon is an improvement.  I also got a new skill that turns me into a whirling dervish.

[VySaika]

SRWJ, finally beaten. Took me awhile, but I slowly got there. Kill leader was Toya in the Granteed(obviously), followed by the Nadesico and Mazinkaiser. Neither one of which are remotely surprising. Final fight was funish, was tempted just to slaughter endless waves of reinforcements for kicks for awhile, but decided to end it. Final map PC oddly dissapointing despite having monster durability.

[Hunter Sopko]

Started playing Perfect World again since I have a lot of time on my hands.  Surprisingly little has changed in two years.  Gold prices are up, but many other commodities are rather cheap.

The new expansion launched today, and it's pretty groovy.  The free armor set is a bit worse than what I've been using, but the weapon is an improvement.  I also got a new skill that turns me into a whirling dervish.

Was playing a couple weeks ago. Should jump on to check out the new patch.

[Cmdr_King]

Sonic Colors (DS)- Finished, sans emeralds.  If this were indicative of Dimps in general, they seem alright.  Not good necessarily, but okay for being the B Team.

That said, they've made some truly baffling design decisions here.  Primarily a) arghle Void and b) You're... reusing Sonic 2 special stage design?  Really?  Fortunately that second thing isn't a big deal, both because it's optional and because they're less stupid than Sonic 2's despite touch screen controls.  The first, well, it only REALLY applies to one stage, so one stage out of twelve being terrible isn't a complete knock on the game.

The rest of the game is alright, little on the easy side, but I'm not gonna complain about that.  Bosses were even easier, on average, but the final is pretty decent and very Sonic-y, so I can't fault it entirely.

So, y'know, 'salright.  6/10 territory.

[Niu]

RS3.12 - Did the quest with Marin and got the Black Diamond. The Minion are still worthless punching bags. Also beat up Amt's stupid cat. Having Lightless Sword, aka big ITD+ITE damage in this patch made the stupid animal pathetic. Half way in Wagnus's event. I must say all his henchman are all more competent then him.
Death will be next after Wagnus is finished.

[Fenrir]

Deus Ex Human Revolution (PS3): Fuck.
The game is big enough to be dubbed (unlike Alpha Protocol), but not big enough to include language options (unlike Assassin's Creed)
Stuck with a bad dub that completely pulls me out of the game.
Who's to blame? Square Enix?

Tales of Innocence Luca solo Mania: In some sewers. With 5 PCs out of 6. Pulling along nicely. I cheesed the last two bosses by only using the long range Fierce Demon Fang.

Dark Souls Valentine Card:

[Captain K.]

Was playing a couple weeks ago. Should jump on to check out the new patch.

You won't be able to access the new area unless you're level 95+.  But there are minor changes to quest tracking and the like.

[Magic Fanatic]

Disgaea 4 - So I've been blasting through this lately, and have been having a blast.

Contrary to how I normally play Disgaea games, I'm restricting myself quite fiercely - each stage can only be visited once, and no item/character worlds.  This restriction will be lifted once I know I'm in the aftergame, but until then...  I'm being provided with quite a bit of challenge.

Highlight reel:

Chapter 7 Boss: Death King Hugo - Oh good lord.  2HKO damage, SP Damage on hit, and freakishly durable...  And that's just the boss.  Nevermind that the support is competent, and the boss only waits three turns before rushing you to help kill you.  This is the first REAL hard battle in the game.  I won this by the skin of my teeth, and abusing the fact that the Base Panel lets me move twice.  Two resets, or somewhere thereabouts.

8-3 (or is it 8-4?) - Deathblow block meant free levels for my healer.  Got her up from 43 to 58 in one map.

Chapter 8 Boss: Des X - Damage race, because I still hadn't learned how awesome Heart Cannon was.  Emizel really proved his worth here, even with only Mega Wind...  And Desco's Magichanged form has a B-Ranked power skill to help kill things faster, too.  3 resets.  One for me not expecting the phase transition and going in the second phase with only six characters, the other two being washes for too many characters eating death too early.

Chapter 9 - Is a real breather after all that, though I did feel gimped on money for a good while.  I wasn't really threatened by the CH9 boss, either.

Chapter 10 - Oh god even the stages are hard.  Stage 1 isn't too bad - some enemies stupidly leave themselves on Bye-bye Panels.  Stage 2...  Eh, another easy one.  Just gotta be careful where the blocks are.
10-3 is the first real killer stage.  I wind up soloing half the stage with Valvatorez, the last enemy having to be killed by Bow Val due to all his other skills being out of range.
10-4...  I don't recall it giving me too many problems, but I did have a case of "enemy lives with 1 HP".  Damage race stage that I won.
10-5...  I looked at it.  My brain melted.
[08:07] <MagicFanatic> ...Okay...  What?
[08:08] <MagicFanatic> ...This stage...  How...?
[08:08] <Namagomi> MF: !
[08:08] <MagicFanatic> 10-5.
[08:08] <Namagomi> Have fun!
[08:09] <MagicFanatic> Oh god.
I somehow won it by running the Shamen on the upper level out of SP, and killing everything with Valvatorez's Tower moves while sitting on a square two blocks higher than everything surrounding it.  Outranged the archers with my gunners (I kinda found out that they don't move ever), and then built a staircase to take out the last Shaman.
10-6...  Brain melted again.  Gave myself a few resets after I didn't like how a few attacks resolved in the first round...  And then I had a brilliant idea: Kill the no Color Change block, and then throw everything out of the way to prevent Magichanging.  There was one I absolutely could NOT prevent, but...  He died before he got to take advantage of his Magichange goodies.  The rest of the battle was easy, if long due to me having only two gunners to not die and kill everything with Heart Cannon combos.

[Fudozukushi]

Suikoden V: With the new one out in Japan I got the feeling to go and relive my glory days.  IN HD! Sorta.  Having a giant-ass flatscreen TV allows me to see a lot of weird things.  Like, the character portrait boxes actually stretch a good deal to the left and don't have a lefthand border, I can see vague outlines of Shigure's eyes and there's a bunch of random lizards just chilling about the Dwarf Camp.

[Sierra]

That's great, Fenrir.

Chapter 7 Boss: Death King Hugo - Oh good lord.  2HKO damage, SP Damage on hit, and freakishly durable...  And that's just the boss.  Nevermind that the support is competent, and the boss only waits three turns before rushing you to help kill you.  This is the first REAL hard battle in the game.  I won this by the skin of my teeth, and abusing the fact that the Base Panel lets me move twice.  Two resets, or somewhere thereabouts.

That fight was horrifying. I beat it first try, but Desco was the only survivor. Because the boss thought it was a good idea to wipe out the barely alive gunner instead of the PC who could actually do real damage. And because he didn't care much about zapping his support earlier when he fried half my team. (I am pretty sure he reacts to proximity rather than being on a timer. I inched forward over several turns to try and have my team just at range to move and attack next turn. He lunged forward and brought the pain the moment anyone was in range.) Desco for MVP as always.

Also new Suikoden what Fudo.

~

Dark Souls: Four Kings remain the embodiment of pants-shitting terror. Fought them first because I wanted to talk to Kaathe this time, had some trouble because I couldn't tank it out and my damage is too slow with this PC (higher per-hit, but not as spammable), said to hell with it and brought some summons. They both turned out to be sorcerers. Oh my god what is wrong with sorcerer damage output. Ran the fight in phantom mode a couple times later. Did you know even as a phantom you need to have the Artorias ring to survive in the Abyss? Would've been good to know before jumping into the pit! Think I redeemed myself on the host's second try though (which might've been unnecessary had I been there the first time, but details). Also how did I never know there was a shortcut through drained New Londo. Decently quick way to make 90,000 souls. Wait, what? 90,000? That's, uh...what just happened?

[Grefter]

Deus Ex Human Revolution (PS3): Fuck.
The game is big enough to be dubbed (unlike Alpha Protocol), but not big enough to include language options (unlike Assassin's Creed)
Stuck with a bad dub that completely pulls me out of the game.
Who's to blame? Square Enix?

At least the French will be better than it was in the original I hope given that it was made by Eidos Montreal from memory  (Pretty sure it was Eidos' choice for what it is worth).

[Fudozukushi]

Also new Suikoden what Fudo.

Suikoden tsumugareshi hyakunen no toki / Suikoden Not VI the second.

Suikoden V: Bloody salt event still won't trigger.  Stupid random chance.  Every other time I always get it as soon as Raftfleet opens but not the time it'd actually be worth it.  On the other hand I've already broken 100,000 potch so eh.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

Still playing Terraria on and off. Is there an dl server for this? Does it ever see use? Will I search through the vast "What games are you playing" archives to find out?

(The answer to at least one of these questions is no.)

In other news, the latest build of Caveman2Cosmos is much more stable on my PC, which means more glorious Civ action. The AI civs seem a little better at surviving the neanderthal hordes in this version, too, which is nice.