What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Yoshiken]

Xenoblade: ...Well played, plot. Well played.
Now back to sidequests.

At the discussion: I'm doing the majority of sidequests, but I'm also pushing through with the story and not going too far out of my way for quests. (Which generally just means doing about 6-7 quests at once, rather than individually.) That said, yeah, it seems very possible to get through based on just a few fights and a couple of simple quests, thanks to the experience you'll gain just from reaching new areas, finishing basic quests and obtaining achievements.

[Monkeyfinger]

Xenoblade's sidequests, I found, are probably best done piecemeal.  Don't do any and you'll find yourself underleveled constantly, but if you do them all at once you'll end up increasingly overleveled until you're just effortlessly rolling over everything waiting for the monsters' levels to catch up to yours*.  So you're probably best off doing some, moving on until you find yourself under par level-wise, going back to do some more until you're caught up, etc.

This is always how I end up doing it in sidequest heavy RPGs. It's a natural consequence of exploring towns thoroughly looking for sidequests, then skipping the ones that look really boring. This is the natural way of doing things for me.

I like Xenoblade's sidequests.

[Scar]

Tales of Graces F - Beate.....wait wait, there's more? SCORE!

At least I have finally unlocked Chaos mode. Still trying to get all the titles too. Glad there's more to the game, I thought I missed a crap load of things. Then again, this is a Tales game. I am certain that I have mised a ton of things.

[Fudozukushi]

Tales of Graces F - Beate.....wait wait, there's more? SCORE!

At least I have finally unlocked Chaos mode. Still trying to get all the titles too.

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA

Glad there's more to the game, I thought I missed a crap load of things. Then again, this is a Tales game. I am certain that I have mised a ton of things.

Not really, no.

[Talaysen]

Re: Xenoblade

I'm guessing that you wouldn't have to do much grinding if you just picked up the sidequests you see while walking around town.  NPCs with sidequests have a white ! above them, and for a lot of them you don't need to report back when you find the items/kill the enemies.  If you grab the quests, then go and kill enemies on the way to your next destination and pick up items on the way, you'll probably clear some of them without much effort.  And EXP scales anyway, so if you get behind, the things you kill will give more.

I've been doing all the sidequests myself (but ignoring any enemy that isn't for a quest or a unique monster to keep levels down a bit), so I don't know exactly how this ends up working in practice, but it seems like the game doesn't completely screw you over if you aren't doing all (or even most) of them.  CmdrKing says he needed to grind up some, but I don't know how much he's been fighting on the way / how many quests he's grabbed on the way / etc.

[Cmdr_King]

Largely ignore enemies that don't aggro, kill those who do, take quests very, very rarely.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I'm fairly certain that in any given game I fight more randoms than CK.

[Idun]

Hitting up FFXIII again. I'm CH10, and just finished fighting Mr. Sexy Transformation; am wondering when the CP will come running in, because I really, really want Hope to learn some Saboteur things. So, at the suggestion of AwesomeCT, my team is now Lightning/Vanille/Hope. I would really love to have Fang in, so I may just interchange with that. If Hope can learn some great Sab stuff, then I don't need to put Sazh in.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fang starts really picking up about Chapter 11, I think.

[Clear Tranquil]

Yeah once she picks up Deprotect, Deshell and Imperil she's good to go =)

**

Salvation (MED, MED, MED) is a great deck with Light, Vanille and Hope Idun. Triple RAVs is great too =) So is Imperil + En spells. At least I think Hope gets En spells by this stage~

I would recommend these decks for switching betweens -

RAV/SAB/SYN (more effective with Role Levels)
MED/MED/MED
RAV/SAB/RAV
RAV/RAV/RAV
RAV/RAV/RAV (ATB Refresh)
COM/RAV/RAV

Can't really recommend Chapter 10 for the CPs without it getting kind of grindy (there was a place between a Behemoth and a group of bomb types I looped between for a while during my replay) Chapter 11 and later has better spots.

Does Hope know Faith/Brave yet? Faith/Brave/En spells + Deprotect/Deshell/Imperil work great together~

[Yoshiken]

Xenoblade: Finished off the time-restricted quests - I love that the game tells you which ones have a restriction on when you can do them - then continued with the story. Didn't exactly have trouble on the boss, but it wasn't a complete walkover. (Required healing at the right times and careful move placement, but doing that meant nobody fell, let alone coming close to TPK.)
Left the mines after the next boss fight, walked into another fight. They're loving them plot battles right now, yeesh. Niiiice scene. I was waiting for them to reappear, and I'm glad the scene was done well.
...Back to Quests. Yeah, I'm trying to complete all of them. Turns out, though, I've done basically everything available at this point anyway. I got a quest that gave me two choices: throw an item away, or find someone who sends me on a fetchquest and then presumably more. Went with the fetchquest because I figure it'll be better for Affinity. If this doesn't change anything compared to the other option, I'm gonna be a little annoyed at putting in extra effort for no extra gain.

Also, I seem to be unable to find Beach Krabbles in the opening area. I've found everything else, including various Lv 70+ monsters, but not the basic crappy thing I have to kill for a quest. Blaaah.

[Idun]

RAV/SAB/SYN (more effective with Role Levels)
MED/MED/MED
RAV/SAB/RAV
RAV/RAV/RAV
RAV/RAV/RAV (ATB Refresh)
COM/RAV/RAV
--------

That is crazy. I have exactly this (except not two ravs. . . which is ingenious really)

Can't really recommend Chapter 10 for the CPs without it getting kind of grindy (there was a place between a Behemoth and a group of bomb types I looped between for a while during my replay) Chapter 11 and later has better spots.

Nope! Not yet! Or, he may, and I haven't noticed. I'll check later tonight! Thanks guys. (:

Does Hope know Faith/Brave yet? Faith/Brave/En spells + Deprotect/Deshell/Imperil work great together~
[/quote]

[Dark Holy Elf]

Hope gets Brave/Faith in the crystarium section unlocked after the Chapter 10 story boss, although IIRC they're somewhat far along so you probably won't see them until Chapter 11.

MED/MED/MED surprises me as a paradigm choice; it feels like you could get more milage out of replacing one of those Medics with a Commando (to maintain the chain gauge) or Synergist (to tilt things in your favour for later). Especially Commando if you run Tri-Disaster, since its chain vanishes rapidly if you switch to a full defensive paradigm. However I have not actually tried it.

[Clear Tranquil]

Well the thought process there is for the combination of all the role level bonuses for three MEDs to result in some rapid fire healing to full through the enchaced healing before immediately switching back to a chaining/offensive deck. Granted I usually control Vanille for some thoroughly boosted MT heal spam before switching back to something else~

With Lightning as leader instead COM/MED/MED might indeed work as an alternative =)

[Idun]

I've MED/MED/MED just for instant healing, and I can say it's a nice 3 second break on the eyes. With V/L/H normally L & H get low HP, and Vanille heals weird - half and half, for example . .  and I almost always control Lightning. What I *don't* like is COM/SAB/SAB unless the other SAB is decent in offense.

[Meeplelard]

Pokemon Affirmative Action Version: Finally doing the after game, got 2 of the 3 Legendaries...who aren't really after game apparently BUT I MISSED THEM BEFORE AND GETTING THEM NOW SHUT UP YOU SMELL

[Sierra]

DE3: Stalking evil Canadians.

[Cmdr_King]

Sands of Destruction- Beat.  Turns out not only is the game not scaled for chaining attacks, but it's not scaled for doing all the sidequests.  Final boss did 50 damage with it's Special, and failed to break defense otherwise.  The sidequest gear is good, to be sure, but um.  Yeah.

[Fenrir]

Red Dead Redemption: Hum. The game nails atmosphere (... Mostly in cutscenes), but there's nothing exciting going on. Going to this after Saints Row 3 is painful. And it's what, only 2 years old?
Controls are Rockstar bad. Too complicated, not intuitive enough. Even at the end of the game I'm going to hit the "get out of cover to eat sandwich" button instead of the "kill everything" button.
The first non cutscene event I've seen was a madman starting to stab a woman. He stabbed her about two or three times (I was wrestling with the controls) before I managed to shoot his face. The stabbed lady got up in one second and stared at me like there was nothing wrong going on and everybody got back to what they were doing. Yep.



Wizardry Labyrinth of Lost Souls (PS3): Got addicted to this. Already finished the game as the human female, and restarting as a solo human male. (I'm not racist)

For the first few floors, the difficulty comes from understanding all the weird mechanics in place.

These kinds of weird mechanics:
- First thing you need to do is buy a map, or you're going to get very lost very soon.
- You get a permanent 1 Vit stat loss for being resurrected by conventional means. Vit roughly (very roughly) determines how many HPs you're going to get every level up. I've discarded a few characters because they were too Vit-screwed.
- Identifying an item costs as much as selling it back. You need some bishop ASAP to identify all the items for free because all your money is coming from that. But bishops have to be either good or evil alignment and need 13 Piety + 13 Intelligence
- Good and evil characters can't be in the same team.
- "YATTAF LOST 1 PIE". This is piety, not a real pie.  You can lose stats from levelling up. Annoying at first, then you realize this doesn't matter at all.
- Actually you just kinda stop gaining stats from levels after about 30 levels unless you've been dying a lot, and this is normal.
- The shopkeeper never restocks, and his starting items are kind of crappy. Money can be converted to experience though and this is awesome.
- The inn lets you stay at a stable for free, this restores magic charges but not HP. Just use some healing spell and sleep again, voila, you never need to pay for anything more (I do anyway)

When you start getting to used to this, enemies really start striking back, with  instant death, big MT damage, attacks that drain levels or money, etc. Fun.  And the game has 0 puzzles, puzzles being the worst thing about dungeon crawlers! *glares at the Dark Spire* The final quest is a bit annoying since it involves going back to previous floors (no idea which ones) I just faqed my way to the final boss from that point on, but it wasn't too much of a problem.
The final boss is also named "Tempestus Rex" despite having nothing to do with T-Rexes whatsoever.

I'm going to do the DLC at some point, but right now I'm concentrating on the solo mode. Solo is HARD. You really, really need someone for identifying items (a bishop) and someone for opening rigged treasure chests... (a thief/ninja) I'm probably going to hog money and go ninja all the way. (with some fighter class change for more HP) Right now he's class changing like a madman. Fighter -> Samurai -> Fighter -> Mage -> Fighter -> Bishop.

[superaielman]

I am also playing Wizardry. I nabbed the Wiz1 remake and am playing on epsxe. Just got to the third floor.

[Talaysen]

Sands of Destruction- Beat.  Turns out not only is the game not scaled for chaining attacks, but it's not scaled for doing all the sidequests.  Final boss did 50 damage with it's Special, and failed to break defense otherwise.  The sidequest gear is good, to be sure, but um.  Yeah.

Well that's because the special ignores defense.

- Actually you just kinda stop gaining stats from levels after about 30 levels unless you've been dying a lot, and this is normal.

There's a stat cap at +10 of the race's starting base stats, so yeah.

[Sierra]

DE3: Obligatory, self-indulgent visit to [developer hometown here] concluded. Bosses...yeah, they don't like EMP grenades. Only reason I was in any danger was because of the electrified floor (I died once because I didn't immediately notice that was happening).

Augments are weird. You could probably get through the game without taking any, since...the game was obviously designed around you not taking any. The developers gave you complete freedom to take whatever upgrades you want! Correspondingly, because they couldn't know what you would take, none of them are actually necessary to further the plot. Augments might open up alternate paths, extra goodies, be necessary for sidequests but, in order to avoid the player getting stuck somewhere because they didn't pick the proper upgrades, they're never required to progress through plot-important areas. So we get stuff like all required hacking being level 1 even if it's in a high security compound, while some random storage compartment in an alley is level 5.

Game is fun, it's just silly sometimes.

[superaielman]

Wizardry 1- Finished. Final boss's support was brutal- I wasn't high enough leveled to dispel his support, so it was silence spam and hope.  I got lucky, jumped the final boss and managed to silence him turn one.

Short game.  Class changing and the like isn't really worth it; you just don't get high enough leveled for it the way you do in later games.

[Sierra]

DE3: Finished up with Detroit redux, went home to jet out again only to discover my enemies had laid a diabolical trap--the door to my apartment building was replaced with a vortex to the abyss, and I plummeted to my death immediately upon entry! Wait, that was just a bug. Well, they should look into that anyway. It was very effective.

Back in China, replay opening sequence until I actually manage to save Malik. Man, that was rude. Horde of goons > bosses, always. Also, in what I suspect will prove to be a bad decision, immediately went to the clinic to get biochip replaced. The current air of paranoia is such that I have to presume something I didn't ask for got installed at the same time, but having systems short out on me randomly is kind of bad.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I should really post here more often. I haven't posted about the non-Lost Odyssey games I've played in over a month, wow.

Lost Odyssey - I've kinda stalled on this. It's not bad but the pacing gets to me a bit, as mentioned. Anyway, I'll definitely be playing it more when a certain friend visits, since he really enjoys watching it and making fun of the character designs. I am currently running around the Numaran palace after stripping the Numaran army of their clothes. Honestly, given the costume work in this game, they should thank me for doing them a favour, but instead they got angry and embarrassed and want to kill me. Jerks.


Final Fantasy XIII - Beat this. In Chapter 12-13 I settled on a Sazh/Fang/Vanille team. Worked pretty well I guess, though not as well as my first playthrough team. I had one reset on each of the three final bosses.

Doing the aftergame this time. Swapped Hope in for Sazh because I was getting fed up with lacking Ice and Water spells for my ravaging, plus the second high-end Medic does add some flexibility. Anyway, aftergame was uneventful enough until I ran into Titan's trials, which has some rather nasty bosses. The first encounter was with Neochu who is just a douche; it took over half a dozen resets to manage his upper HP and then I learned he gets new tricks below half and yeah I don't think I'm good enough to deal with him yet. The next two proved more manageable but still quite nasty. Zirnitra I hit a wall against until I realised that he was so ST-based that he could controlled quite nicely with Sentinel Snow loaded up with anti-status accessories. Ratkavija was more straightforward, a fun suped-up version of the Inertial Barrier enemies from Oerba. The aftergame does really get more milage out of PCs' secondary roles (particularly Commando, Sentinel, and Ravager) which is neat.


Laggy Fantasy Tactics - Playing this, just beat Adramelk. I'm doing an FF13-flavoured playthrough. The only really hard restriction is that, after Chapter 1 anyway, I've forged characters to use certain weapons, though the general designs are things I've tried to copy from the home game as well. To summarise:

Snow "Steelguard" Beoule: Fists; Squire/Knight/Monk/Summoner/Black Mage; Martial Arts/Equip Armour/Half of MP. Golem off high HP is cool and the most flavourful thing I could find for him.

Lightning: Swords; Geomancer/White Mage/Thief/Black Mage; Attack Up/Equip Sword. Hits things and casts Raise.

Sazh: Guns; Time Mage/Black Mage/Bard/Chemist; Equip Gun. Applies various buffs; occasionally does item duty. I stole Balk's gun so he now has Flamestrike.

Vanille: Rods/staves; Black Mage/White Mage; Short Charge/Magic Attack Up. MVP for much of the game because female black mage makes things go boom, and she emphasised this quite strongly. Also a pretty effective white mage, no Holy though.

Fang: Spears/sticks; Lancer/Oracle/Samurai/Time Mage; Equip Spear/Two Hands. Hits things very hard with pointy objects, casts YYM or TM as appropriate (only has the Slow spells from Time, hasn't actually spent time there due to Sazh spillover).

Fun times. Battles notable for challenge so far include Wiegraf 1-2, Algus, Queklain, Izlude, Riovanes Roof, and especially Doguola Pass which was the site of four resets (nothing else so far has broken two). Yeah, Doguola Pass. LFT is a strange creature.