What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Dark Holy Elf]

L2 itemcasts rip apart some areas, such as the Sea Shrine, on normal playthroughs, let alone ones where your offence is BM physicals where you will probably always use them if there are 2+ enemies and they don't resist the element in question. I don't really have an opinion on whether they're used or not but they are very centralising and will certainly "stand out".

[superaielman]

I think I'll stay away from item cast attack spells, with the cavet that I'll use them if I start getting absolutely pasted by dungeons later. Elfboy is underrating the effect if anything. Dawn of souls changed the formula- INT now matters for spell damage- which means even L2 in the hands of a Black Wizard is on par with an L3 in FF1o.


Just beat the Vampire. 2HKO physical! Has status! OHKOed by a Black Mage physical. On that note, my ST damage if I get a turn or two to buff is scary. Three tempers+Haste in the opening round means a Mythril Dagger Black Mage physical jumps from like 30 damage to 400 damage.  The game's gotten much easier at this point. Sure, the dungeons are brutal resource grinds and I nearly ran out of potions on the way out of the earth cave! But. I only had about a half dozen resets, which is way less. Being able to control large scale randoms with confuse+sleep helps tremendously, and my ST damage output against single target is quite good.

I'm around L22 right now. I need to go buy confuse/haste for more PC's, and then restock on items before tangling with Lich.

Edit: Beat Kary at L27.

Lich was a joke. Oh hey, he lets loose a brutal high 2HKO to the team! Then dicks around with his awful physical and haste/slow. Zzz. He gets mowed down by temper spam.

I get to Crescent Lake.

Item shop:

High Potion (150 HP per potion) 150 gil
Ether: 150 gil

.......

Welp.

 I steamroll Kary's dungeon.  The randoms are owned hardcore by status/temper fueled beatdowns. The lone exception to this is the Red Dragon, which has 2HKO MT damage and crazy high MDef.  I run from these assholes as a rule, since it's not worth the effort of killing them.  Kary herself was pathetic- yes, she OHKOed a Black Mage with her physical, but that's all she did. Hold stopped her completely.

This challenge has gone from ball breakingly hard to *lol* in an exceptionally short period of time. We'll see if the ice cave can reverse this.

Edit: Just got the Oxyale. Game's challenge has plunged hardcore, as noted above. Ice Cave gave me a few resets (Swarm of wizards) but nothing too bad. Castle of ordeals was cake.  I really need some money to be able to afford Catclaws/Ruby Armlets.  I have two armlets and one claw. Level 33 or so right now.  The items are part of it, but it's mostly that randoms have not kept up in raw offense with the improved gear. Every single boss is going to be a pushover till Chaos (He... could be trouble, we'll see.)  Randoms just have been total status bait to this point, and the ones that aren't don't have enough offense to be remotely scary.

I've gotten some use out of Sleepara. It's really useful for things like Clay Golems or Raskahas, who have status immunity but iffy Mdef.  It's funny, but this challenge is probably easier than running four thieves.

[Meeplelard]

NG2: Completed!  Chap 13 was nothing special, Chap 14 is exactly why a Boss Rush should be kept out of this game, because...god, bosses just aren't fun!  Even if Genin and Elizebet are two of the lesser annoying ones (Genin does have a Throw that does 75% DAMAGE WHAT THE FUCK EVEN DANTE MUST DIE DOESN'T PULL THAT SHIT!)

Game's done though, and won't be replaying it.  Its not bad but...there's just a huge level of frustration and while it does get better in the 2nd half, there's still a large amount of bullshit that holds the game back.

[Captain K.]

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.

I believe you have to talk to Solaire at the Sunlight Altar after killing O&S but before killing Centipede Demon with him.  Not sure if having him help you with Centipede is required.  Think you have to use him at all available bosses prior to that also.

[superaielman]

http://tinypic.com/r/11qs8d1/5

As you can see, Tiamat was not challenging. Outside of a a five undead ghost fight in Kraken's shrine (Which I died every time I ran into it, so ten resets or so) the game has had zero real challenge. Randoms in particular are *pathetic*, they get owned hardcore by spammed black mage physicals at this point. I've stopped using status and buffing most of the time.  I knew FF1 challenge dovetailed bad late, but this is silly.

Edit: Beat. Chaos was tough but crackable. I had three-four resets until settling on a plan. Invis/heal/heal/toss a potion until evasion got up, then heal/heal/attack buff/attack buff, then heal/heal/attack buff/attack. 

Outside of Chaos? *flush* Randoms don't have enough HP and their offense tails off horrendously late as well. Bosses run screaming from Temper spam, and you can even buy the potions once you get the bottled fairie.

[Luther Lansfeld]

FF6 Eviltype, Mild Version - Just finished Zozo. It's a moderately more difficult version of FF6, not a whole lot to say really. It will never be my bag, baby, but it's a fun enough experiment. Still has FF6's non-existent HP curve~ Daldulma the freaky dude was pretty hard, I ran out of Phoenix Downs during the fight.

Edgrr just got his Chain Saw. Bitches will be cut.

[Fenrir]

Well done, Super. Now, thief solo??

Deus Ex Human Revolution: In China redux.
It's really weird how it goes back and forth between being an elegant game and being really dumb. (Taggart's press conference was so stupid)
Either Deus Ex 1 or the final dungeon got foreshadowed, because out of nowhere comes this guy talking about his giant plant in Arcantica where he does supersecret things.
I've removed every navigation help and outer glow around objects, and the world suddendly is a living thing instead of a videogame environment. It's not like I needed to find every item anyway! I don't really use any against grunts, and bosses are rare. Actually, the second boss died to a stun gun bullet + 2 typhoons to the face. I'm still sitting on 17 typhoon bullets.

Tales of Innocence Luca Solo Hard Mode:
There's this boss called Chien (=Dog in French), he attacks with two dogs.
The guy is called Dog because he has dogs.
Anyway he was crazy hard. I farmed 15 Lemon Gels (60% HP healing) to beat him, and got a few levels by doing so. Strategy was TEMPEST STRIKE TEMPEST STRIKE TEMPEST STRIKE against the dogs, then heal with Center instead. (Oh yeah, I got some self healing)
Feudal Japan island comes next and there's a sudden spike in difficulty...... Yeah....
Thankfully I got some overpowered Mithril Sword from a level 4 guild dungeon, and a passive skill that allows me to take one hit before flinching. Both of these things, plus self healing, somehow make Luca the Tales God.
This is a cool game, I think I'll pick up Vesperia soon. Cutscene "skipping" is not optimal but works well enough in practice, and this game in multiplayer + HD sometimes sounds lovely.

Dissidia: Tried the final battle without ever having played the game before. This usually leads to confusion, but Dissidia takes this to a whole another level. I had no idea whether the buttons did anything at all. This game looked like a gigantic mess.
Nevertheless, I got Chaos' second form to 60 HPs, on difficult, on the first and only try, which was apparently really good. Plus I made Chaos have an epileptic crisis or something.


And I've seen a bit of Starcraft 2. Somehow, it is bigger and dumber than Gears Of Wars.

[Sierra]

Dark Souls: Finally got around to finishing my cleric run, played enough NG+ to get that last miracle. Sunlight Spear is pretty fearsome (I've seen upwards of a thousand damage per shot) but ugh two attunement slots + only five charges. Anyway, with that taken care of every trophy's unlocked but two. Knight's Honor (collect every unique weapon) is way too much of a pain in the ass to deal with. You need Sif's soul three times to complete that! That means you can't get this without going a decent way into NG++. NG+ goes by pretty quick from what I've seen, but to hell with that. From Software, trolling completionists like a boss. 94% completion is still a damn sight better than I've bothered with on any other game, anyway (I usually don't go out of my way to get trophies that aren't easily acquired over the normal course of the game; Nier's 77% was the previous highest, as you get plenty by accident just cycling through for all endings).

Collecting all unique weapons would also require the completion of the other trophy I'm not getting, which is Defeat Crossbreed Priscilla. Feh. Should say "Murder Crossbreed Priscilla." I will let those two stand as a testament to not killing people who don't need to be killed, thanks.

Onwards to Demon's Souls now, I guess.

[Sierra]

Demon's Souls: Enter first area past the intro as human, immediately get invaded and backstabbed to death. This is familiar. (Surprising though, given this game's a few years old and, y'know, Dark Souls just came out a few months ago.)

Now that I'm capable of not completely failing at combat...game isn't bad, but a multitude of improvements made by Dark Souls are immediately apparent:

-Oh my god healing is so gimped in this game. Running out of healing supplies is a constant concern. I actually went back to the black phantom horde in Boletaria and farmed up to 99 crescent moon grasses--sure, they barely heal anything at all, but they're readily available in bulk and don't come with an assraping price tag.
-Making you run through a lengthy opening area and boss fight before letting you level or buy anything? Bad form. (Sure, Dark Souls did this, but it was a vastly shorter sequence.)
-So is it just me or is there no way to revert to human outside of a limited and fairly uncommon item? Because having to run around at 50% HP is uh kind of fucking annoying (okay, 75% if you don't mind having a ring slot forever spoken for).
-Max inventory limit? Feh.
-I bought a grindstone thinking it would let me repair items any time I wanted. I used it once and it disappeared. It cost two thousand souls. Okay repairs will just always have to wait for the next Nexus visit.
-It seems impossible to wear any decent armor without slowing to fat roll speed from a single item. And yes, I am prioritizing endurance.
-I've fought three bosses. None of them killed me. (Tutorial boss doesn't count.)
-Visual design took such a step up between games. Dark Souls wasn't spectacularly colorful most of the time, but at least it knew to shake things up once in a while. Demon's Souls seems bent on constructing the grimmest, grimiest, darkest and dingiest fantasy world it possibly can.
-The music in Demon's Souls is so inferior that it's depressing.

[Fudozukushi]

Demon's Souls: Enter first area past the intro as human, immediately get invaded and backstabbed to death. This is familiar. (Surprising though, given this game's a few years old and, y'know, Dark Souls just came out a few months ago.)

Now that I'm capable of not completely failing at combat...game isn't bad, but a multitude of improvements made by Dark Souls are immediately apparent:

-Oh my god healing is so gimped in this game. Running out of healing supplies is a constant concern. I actually went back to the black phantom horde in Boletaria and farmed up to 99 crescent moon grasses--sure, they barely heal anything at all, but they're readily available in bulk and don't come with an assraping price tag.
-Making you run through a lengthy opening area and boss fight before letting you level or buy anything? Bad form. (Sure, Dark Souls did this, but it was a vastly shorter sequence.)
-So is it just me or is there no way to revert to human outside of a limited and fairly uncommon item? Because having to run around at 50% HP is uh kind of fucking annoying (okay, 75% if you don't mind having a ring slot forever spoken for).
-Max inventory limit? Feh.
-I bought a grindstone thinking it would let me repair items any time I wanted. I used it once and it disappeared. It cost two thousand souls. Okay repairs will just always have to wait for the next Nexus visit.
-It seems impossible to wear any decent armor without slowing to fat roll speed from a single item. And yes, I am prioritizing endurance.
-I've fought three bosses. None of them killed me. (Tutorial boss doesn't count.)
-Visual design took such a step up between games. Dark Souls wasn't spectacularly colorful most of the time, but at least it knew to shake things up once in a while. Demon's Souls seems bent on constructing the grimmest, grimiest, darkest and dingiest fantasy world it possibly can.
-The music in Demon's Souls is so inferior that it's depressing.

-Hilariously, because my guy had so little health I never ran out.  By endgame I was actually maxed out on the high-end grasses.  Dark is way better either way.
-You should be able to buy things at least.
-There is one, maybe two enemies that drop it.  Stupidly difficult to farm for them though.
-And items in your quick bar count towards character weight too.
-I don't even think it restores all the way either.
-Armor in Demon's is beyond useless.  Not only does it barely reduce damage but it noticeably affects stamina regeneration.
-All *-1 bosses are pathetic.  Early during Dark Souls I read about people saying Dark bosses were easier then Demon and I psyducked at them.
-It gets a bit better in the later parts.  Though I enjoy 1-* because it's relatively fall-free and it's the most unseigable castle ever.
-5-3 is the best track in the game and it's only middling compared to Dark Souls.

[Sierra]

-You should be able to buy things at least.
-Armor in Demon's is beyond useless.  Not only does it barely reduce damage but it noticeably affects stamina regeneration.
-All *-1 bosses are pathetic.  Early during Dark Souls I read about people saying Dark bosses were easier then Demon and I psyducked at them.

-Right, largely forgot this because everything was beyond my price range anyway. >.>
-Yeah, I'm running around in Miralda's outfit because, well, if armor's not good for anything else at least it lets me look like a psychotic bondage queen (sans hood, which is just too creepy).
-Fool's Idol was nice enough to just sit there and let me have a conversation when my brother called mid-fight. I felt like I was fighting the librarian ghost from Ghostbusters.

I walked into the Tower Knight fight and just had to sit there a moment, thinking, "Really? That's the music you're going with?"

[AndrewRogue]

Mass Effect 2: Recruited everyone. Completed Horizon and the ship. Now just wrapping up loyalty missions before I dive forward to the quasi-point of no return.

[superaielman]

FF1 PSX- Just beat Kary.

Crescent lake area is offically when the PSX/NES version got harder than my BMNDM challenge. MT status magic means that you end fights fast as a black mage, and Phoenix downs/ethers/high potions means resources aren't an issue. Meanwhile in the PSX version, I got jumped and my White Mage got IDed! Had to run back to Crescent lake. The randoms weren't especially threatening to the team, but it did wear me down- I did the dungeon in two parts due to that death and still ran out of potions by the time I got to Kary.

I have a slightly suboptimal team for this run- Two fighters, a red mage and a white mage. A second red mage would be better. That said, it's still one of the best possible teams in the game and is designed to beat the crap out of things.  With the exception of Chaos and a few random formations (Hello, ghost fight in the underwater shrine), I am expecting this playthrough to be harder than a bunch of goddamn attack magicless black mages flailing away at things with their physical.

I should say I haven't had any game overs with this team and had some late with the black mages, but every single game over was getting jumped or running into a few nasty formations. Every other fight, except for Chaos, was total domination.

[DjinnAndTonic]

FF13-2: I play games slow. (Well, since I'm co-playing it, I have to wait for my friend to have time to play too)

Midway into Chapter 4, I keep taking detours from the plot to hunt for exciting new monsters. The project I'm chomping at the bit for is to start recruiting my Choco-Rangers. I just got to the point where I can go and collect a Silver Chocobo.

Current collection of funtime Monsters are the Pulsework Knight (SEN, of course, everyone should be using this instead of wasting CP on Noel/Serah's SEN path); Feral Behemoth (COM, going to get eaten by the superior Dragoon soon); and a Silver Lobo (SAB, starts with Imperil stuff and just looks cool with a Carbuncle on his back).

Collected a Red Chocobo (COM) that I want to start power-levelling for awesome Monster funtimes. Trying to catch a Blue Chocobo too (RAV, apparently the best monster one in the game).

Monster Medics have been pretty disappointing thus far. Especially since the best earlygame option is the Flanitor... and it's just too ugly for me to consider letting it on my team. (Hey, it's Pokemon 13-2, looks MATTER!) Cait Sith is just too slow and frail to be viable anymore, despite being the cutest 'mon in the game. I want the Green Chocobo, but I don't know where to get it.


Plot: Actually kind of cool! I loved the repeating time loop with the boss of Augusta Tower. Just a really fun idea. (I also liked the solution that Serah comes up with.) Absolutely full of headaches if you think about it too hard, but it was a really fun scene/grandfather paradox that out-paradox'd itself.

I've been choosing all the "silly" options at the dialogue branches, and Serah is a delightfully flighty treasure-loving, murder-mystery-novel fangirl who likes tossing Mog around and humoring Noel. Basically an improvement over every character in FF13 not named Sazh.

Non-Time-Travel Plot is :psyduck: - Oh look, Clairvoyance causes Paradoxes and/or Death... Serah's eyes glow... and the main villain is 'cursed' by a goddess or something. I don't even care, go back to wacky time-travel hijinks.


@super: What is with this sudden Black Mage hype? I get that you like status-whores, but come on...

[superaielman]

It's more having to do with Dawn of Souls scoring like Grandia/10 on the challenge scale after a certain point. I was killing enemies in the mirage tower and onward with BM physical spam, which is sad beyond belief.

[Luther Lansfeld]

FF6 Eviltype, Mild Version - Just finished the Lava Caves with Terra, Setzer, Sabin, and Gau. A very bad team for this dungeon, what with the Ings who absorb Fire and Setzer who is basically useless. Phoenix Down spam is a go.

The challenge level is above FF6 but not dramatically.

[Fenrir]

Fudo: 2-1 was the hardest boss in the game for me. Nothing else really gave me too much trouble.

I beat Deus Ex, comments later. It's probably something like 8/10. Way similar but inferior to Vampire Bloodlines, but I love that game.

[Fudozukushi]

Fudo: 2-1 was the hardest boss in the game for me. Nothing else really gave me too much trouble.

I had way too much trouble with him too.

[Excal]

Mass Effect.

Just finished ME1, still find it interesting that it's generally Garrus who's all "You're going to sacrifice humans?", especially since this time it was Shepard and Kaidan he was hanging out with.

Aside from that, moving straight on to ME2 has reminded me of just how much better ME2 is over the first one. The combat just feels more refined, and while biotics have been hit with a nerfstick, they also feel more balanced.  Whereas in ME1 it was simply toss a Singularity and everyone in that area is effectively dead, now it's never quite a one hit kill, and cover works against it.  Also, there's defenses.  That said, I'm enjoying the Warp/Carnifex Hand Cannon combo.  Also enjoying the shorter mission scenarios, feels like you're accomplishing more than the massive setpieces ME1 had.

Currently got the DLC recruits, as well as all of the early recruits but Subject Zero.  Looking forward to seeing the differences between Kaiden and Ashley at Horizon.

[Sierra]

Demon's Souls: Bell Gargoyle's little bros killed me a couple times. I said to hell with this, I'm going somewhere else because Tower of Latria is the most depressing place in the history of places. So I went to the Valley of the Defiled. Oh my god I was wrong. This is the most depressing place in the history of places. Hope you like shit brown walls, shit brown rain, shit brown swamp, shit brown diseased mutant rat men, shit brown slugs and poison poison poison. This place makes Blighttown seem nice and homey. First boss there was laughably sad, second just ate a bunch of healing supplies due to the quasi-poison gimmick. Music continues to inspire naught but eyerolls. The tubas of vague menace will haunt me forever.

Found a vender that sells the humanity restoration item. It costs ten thousand souls (and I am guessing the stock is limited). Keep on trollin', From Software.

[AndrewRogue]

Honestly, I worked on the assumption that Soul Form was default health and being human was a lucky bonus.

[Grefter]

You people pay money to do this.

Puzzle Quest 2 - Played through this again as a Male Assassin.  Finished it.  Disappoint as Achievement popped up at the end, Completionist 2/4 and that is it.  No having finished with same class of different gender.  That means that Steam didn't register my first character finishing the game and that makes me very sad.  I LIKED that character.

[Captain K.]

Perfect World:  Up to level 97.  The new Morai area is neat, and offers quite a bit to people who aren't heavy cashshoppers.  Unfortunately that's a small percentage of the players now.

NBA Jam On Fire Edition:  This is... surprisingly not bad!  Captures the spirit of the original game rather well, and the mechanics seem fairly balanced.  Playing through Road Trip with the Dallas Mavericks, because shut up, I always played them in the original NBA Jam.  Dirk Nowitski can score from just about anywhere.  Jason Kidd sucks as a defender, but he's got a 10 in passing so he can get the ball to Nowitski no matter how many defenders are in the way.

Haven't been able to get online though.  Game says I already have an EA account attached to my email (pretty sure I don't).  But when I ask for the password to be sent to that email, nothing shows up.  faceEApalm

[AndrewRogue]

Really need to stay away from ME3 related boards. Spoilers and spoileresque discussion is getting common thanks to the spaaaaace editions. But on that note.

ME2: Grinding out loyalty missions. Completed Mordin's (yay!) last night. Started Zaeed's.

[superaielman]

FF1: Tiamat beaten . With the profanity inducing exception of the ice cave (Six resets, every time due to getting jumped by status slinging randoms), it's been pretty easy. Game's challenge goes *pffffft* after the ice cave, even in the decently challenging version of the game.

IDing Tiamat is always cool.