What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[superaielman]

Civ5: Bought this. I am weak. Very weak.

[Talaysen]

Clearly, we must have Meeple purchase the Emil face bullet hell DLC to make Meeple suffer.

Wait, is this something that really exists?  I must try it...

[Niu]

Yes, that DLC turns ever round shape projectile from the enemies into Emil's face. Totally hilarious.

[Meeplelard]

Nice to know the devs have a sense of humor!

Though I'm not sure what Niu is expecting it to do to me other than garner a little chuckle <_<

[SnowFire]

Finished up various games lately.  And by "lately" I mean "over the past 6 months."  Had a long Radiant Dawn rant that got eaten by the computer gods, and my Mass Effect 2 comments I never finished, but eh whatever.  Anyway:

Mass Effect 2
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
The World Ends With You
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Catherine
Diablo 3

They're all quite good!  In different ways.  Well, Catherine is the weakest of the set, but it's still interesting enough and certainly worth a playthrough.

Since it's officially D3 chat time or something, yeah, the game is great.  I'm honestly surprised since I thought I was pretty well Diablo-d out and am not in general a huge fan of hack & slash, but I really like how D3 moves toward more action, less RPG.  You don't slugfest it out with better items, you control space and use the right tools for the job, and dodge enemy missiles and ground attacks.  Cleaning out all the tedious nonsense From D1/D2 which made sense for Nethack in the 80s, a 2-3 hour game, but doesn't make sense in a long-term game played for enjoyment is great.  I love not having to fear an XP penalty from death, which generates weird anti-fun behaviors in D2 like "let me go safely farm rather than actually play the game."  (Side note: I never know how seriously OK is with his comments, but color me glad that the game does max out at 4 players.  Balancing around an 8 player lynch mob would be godawful, and with seeing and dodging enemy projectiles so important, you don't want the screen to get too chaotic with PC effects which might cloud enemy movements & telegraphs.  Plus each player plain matters more with only 4 players.  Doing solo mode while letting 3 NPCs do all the work also sounds chancy, so maxing that at 1 helper is also the right call.)

Plot is silly but well voice-acted and appropriately melodramatic, which is the right call.  I do think the plot & setting in Act 3 & Act 4 could have used some work.  I'm not talking about "making sense," since I don't expect that to really happen in Diablo games, but just to have the main plot thread be cooler.  E.g. Leah is supposed to be Deckard's successor, right?  How about having her knowledge of those crazy old stories come in handy at least *once*?  I respect they can't show that off in FMVs, so you end up with Azmodan just showing Leah where he's invading, but eh, all she's used for in Acts 2 & 3 is her power - Leah, go explore the sewers, Leah, go resurrect a crazy Dark Horadrim, Leah, go knock down the palace gates, Leah, go stop the soulstone from leaking because it can hold 3 demon souls just fine but goes batshit with 4 demon souls in it.  I don't think D3 is tricky enough to be doing some kind of subversion about how knowledge is actually useless, so.)

Party mechanics are a ton of fun.  Mostly have played with NotMiki / Talaysen / Zenny and some random other friends of mine, and it actually changes the way you play.  For example, Wizard has a secondary, Arcane Orb, which I intially thought was kind of crappy - overpriced area damage you can't set up reliable and can miss.  But with Zenny's female monk (no wonder she couldn't be named Jesus) drawing in enemies nearby with Cyclone Strike, followed up by a Frost Nova from me to lock 'em down, and suddenly everyone can unload AoE damage (including my Arcane Orbs) guaranteed and get a very dead mob very quickly.  It's great seeing synergies like that form.

As far as boss design, chalk me up in the uncreative that says Act II boss was the best designed.  It's just a damn cool fight, complete with Castlevania-esque "Now see my true form, and despair!" ham.  Tal / NotMiki / myself even wiped to him on my first time.  As for Diablo himself, I think I like the design, but it's hard to judge since he ended up being too easy.  (I suspect the difficulty falloff in Act III / IV was partially because our team started aggressively trading good rares to the characters who needed it, meaning our gear was better than the solo experience it was proabably balanced around.)  I will say that I'm glad that two ideas I wanted to see sort of made it in - you should have at least one part of the Diablo fight in deep shadows with poor visibility, because he's supposed to be the lord of terror not shooting fire, and you should have to fight the equivalent of Zelda II Dark Link, because Diablo games are all about corruption from within or something, and this could be a symbolic battle against the evil within you and also a classic dark mirror scenario.  Well they combined 'em, so hey, I'll take it.

Anyway, on to Nightmare.  The only complaint - and this is super minor - is that since you get all the flexibility of a character in one playthrough, there's less reason than D2 to replay the same character type and try out new builds, because you already could have tried out all the builds.  And for me at least, I'm not overly interested in Barbarian / Monk since I like positioning games & dodging over tanking, for all that I admit it's a totally necessary role in a team.  That means I "only" get to really play 3 characters before I start repeating myself or playing off-characters.  Oh, the horror of being able to experiment in one playthrough rather than many.  I'd say I've already gotten my money's worth, so yeah, I don't care.

[Dhyerwolf]

FE 10- Into part 2. Part 1 was brutal, especially that BK fight. I needed to level up Micaiah twice with extra BExp so that she got 2 more Spd points because anything less than 11 was not really cutting it there. Lost Edward, Leonardo, Fiona and Laura (Meg I just did not bother to recruit). Balance is really weird. Since I know most of these characters do not become that great later, they become really confusing.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Nice to know the devs have a sense of humor!

Oh, they do.  They're just inclined to black humor.

[Cotigo]

Diablo 3 - Playing my monk more than my witch doctor, because PUNCH ALL THE THINGS.

Had to change up my playstyle for Nightmare.  Draw everything in and punch them without thinking works pretty well throughout normal and maybe nightmare if you have a teammate, but rare enemies deal so much more damage (re: any) in this mode that the strategy is a lot less viable.  You actually have to dodge their special moves, wtf?  After changing up my build the game became a breeze again.  Found Zultan Khull's head.  Will probably try to grind a bit in the oasis for the item for the sekret stage.

If nobody else has done the sekret stage yet, it's awesome and you should do it.

[Fenrir]

Convenience is highly overrated.  Reading the text is so much more rewarding when you have to work for it.

Incidentally this is why every game should have an Al Bhed language option. Anyway I agree, but the work has to be difficult gameplay sessions.

DQ9 Yattaf Solo: Ragin' Contagion and the next boss was tough as hell, I had to grind a bit.
Nice touch: The Ragin' Contagion dungeon had one of those RPG puzzles where you need to direct a light to some specific place by moving mirrors around. Seen in DDS, ToP, IU, and probably at least 20 other RPGs around. Except in this one, you don't need to do anything to the mirrors, the puzzle just solves itself. So um... What are you trying to say, DQ9? Was this part of the game rushed? Will something be unlocked later on? Is this Dragon Quest parodying RPGs?

The next boss was really hard as well. This part was the most painful in the game by far: I had to give Yattaf the slime armor, something not even Lady Gaga would ever wear.

Then classes unlocked.

The class system is nice and all, but it's broken by having the ability to keep skill points between class changes. You can just use each class a bit, then pool all your skill points, learned in any class, into any skill tree.
In that case: Spears, because they own metal slimes, which means more xp, more skill points and more skill trees mastered. I then got anything that could give me some power boost for a low skill point cost, then nearly maxed shields. Got a ton of money, bought everything available, unlocked gladiator and mageknight, did a ton of alchemy, re-bought everything, and steamrolled the Lleviathan dungeon. (I nearly ran out of MPs against the boss, at least)

Now that every class can use spears and that spears are always the superior option in every case, there aren't even that many differences between classes anymore. I'll still try maxing fisticuffs at some point.. But not now.

[Idun]

Reached the Apex of Taejin's Tower and opted to do the C'ieth stone mission. I can't access the enemy, so I guess I have to make my way back up the column. That's lame.

[superaielman]

That mission is a pain in the ass to trigger correctly, and the boss is exceptionally hard. That was the only fight I had to use -sols in to win.

[Bobbin Cranbud]

Shining Force 1

Replayed because I need something turn-based to play in the background while I chat.

This is the second time I've played it on the Wii and the first time I had my game designer hat on while I did so, and, uh... ouch.

Early on, I was annoyed by interface decisions. Heal doesn't auto-target injured characters and to this day, after four playthroughs of this, five of SF2 and one of SFCD, I still don't see rhyme or reason to how changing targets works in Shining Force games. Pressing the action button brings up the menu instead of talking (when you're facing a person) or searching (when you're facing something searchable), despite there never being a case where you'd benefit from searching a person or talking to an object. Item shops don't show you the effects of purchases. Battle messages don't progress automatically. All in all, there are just gobs of extraneous clicks.

Later, I was annoyed by the worst goddamn AI ever. For more than half the game I routinely ran into melee enemies who wouldn't move when targeted by ranged attackers. Enemy spellcasters seem to choose their spells at random, or possibly to minimize damage (Dark Dragon chose to cast a non-lethal spell on Bleu, who was on his own, instead of every other character except Max, for instance). Enemies in general seem to understand who is vulnerable and then actively avoid those characters. Domingo, my tankiest character in DEF and second in HP, was always their first choice to attack. Plus the passivity I've come to expect of tactics game AI - the enemy stand around and wait in most battles, and they're scattered all over the map. Made worse by larger maps.

The story is really, really bad, and it didn't have to be. It's like an '80s Saturday morning cartoon except tons of people die, including at the protagonists' hands. One villain after another pulls the "taunt and then teleport out" trick, the "secret" the characters spend over half the game trying to find out is spoiled for the player in the opening cut scene, and there's a completely pointless bit of "nice job breaking it, hero." Honestly, the terrible AI is almost forgivable because it's in character. The sad part is, I or probably anyone here could rewrite this script in a day or two, keep the same progression of battles, and have something that's actually really cool.

There's still a lot to love. The character designs are creative (Domingo! Guntz! Centaurs as the main demihuman race!) if not all that well-done from a technical perspective, the setting is actually one of the better medievalesque fantasy worlds out there (unlike a lot of "ancient technological civilization" stories, SF actually makes that matter, with the bad guys and eventually the party digging up combat robots and using them), you have a lot of choice in what to emphasize in your Force from an early point (end of Chapter 3, basically), and I found myself rather liking the simplicity of the class and equipment systems. Tactics games in the Tactics Ogre tradition usually feel like they're won or lost on the menu screen long before you deploy, Shining Force, if it wasn't so damn easy, would actually require you to win with good tactics. Not losing your XP on death is a nice touch as well; if they'd only taken that as a cue to make it hard, it would be much nicer.

As it stands, it really is the comfort food of tactics games. Now that I'm done I'll probably play SF2 again as my "background game" and see if they fixed any of my criticisms.

Mega Man X

Played because I saw it cited in a webcast on game design (Extra Credits? I dunno, it's been a while.), a friend talked about the time she played it with no powerups, I had Wii points that have just been sitting there, and I've never played it before. Initially seemed impossible. Then I changed the button mapping so it wasn't fucking idiotic (fire was Y on the GC controller, seriously?) and -

Wait, what?

An SNES game where I can change how the buttons are mapped? <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Anyway, I'm done with everything except Sigma. Of the SNES classics I've played for the first time on the Wii, this is probably my second favorite (trailing Super Metroid). This is actually the first Mega Man game I've cleared all the robot masters/mavericks on (I've only had them as rentals before), but the ability to pick the order you do levels in, the way beating some of the mavericks changes other levels, and the option to go back and stock up on lives/energy are all really cool. It's easy to see why this is regarded as a classic game and why the series is so popular.

Also, holy shit this game is gorgeous. The weapon effects, X's sprite, the maverick designs, the detail in the backgrounds - all of the polish. All of it!

I assume it's really easy for people who don't suck at real-time games? Not being able to shoot vertically feels so weird when the main action platformer I'm used to is Metroid, but I eventually adjusted to it... sort of. Aside from that it's not really all that hard for me and I'm awful at this sort of game.

Dragon's Dogma

Haven't had a chance to play this yet, but my father picked it up so it's inevitably going to come to me as a hand-me-down. I watched him play it a bit yesterday, it looks so very good. Dat hydra. Wow. Also, best character creator, or best character creator?

[Hunter Sopko]

If you like the concepts of SF1, I'd recommend playing the GBA remake Resurrection of the Dark Dragon. I think it solves most of those.

[superaielman]

The GBA remake added a whole host of problems. It Dawn of Souled the challenge pretty badly, and had the extra bonus of making the leveling system awful. Why yes, I want class promotions to lower my stats and hurt my growth overall!

[Grefter]

Except for the difficulty and AI of course, good gods did they not even touch those.

Valkyria Chronicles 2 - I am getting progressively more frustrated with Evasion.  The game really pushes and rewards high risk maneuvers by way of rankings being tied to turn number and the small force size you can deploy at a given time.  It is all too easy to be in a situation where you will over extend yourself trying to get dat A and it balances entirely on whether or not the enemy randomly drops to the ground and becomes nigh immune to damage.  Most of the time I have been fine, but goddamn it is frustrating whenever the enemy does dodge.  If ou didn't have to worry about Turn count you could take your time and bait and shoot people in the back and the like (all these cool mechanics the game has!), but as is you pretty commonly need to run in guns blazing with too few people to manage that.

Especially frustrating on boss fights.  Juliana in particular was pretty annoying.  I lost the map because she didn't die to 4 CP sunk into spraying her from 3 sides with shock troopers.  Then she drops 3 CP to wander into my base camp that was undefended because I had spent half my unit deployment on surrounding her with dudes to unload all over her.  Restarting and blitzing to her base camp, running interference with a Tech and then sniping her in the back of the head twice cleared the level in 1 turn.  Which was satifsfying by frustrating because it is the complete opposite of normal tactics you utilise in the game.

Best part was the game having lines about how we will remember what we learnt from that fight.  Hit and fade quick attacks to assassinate the enemy commander?  These are good things to learn, but things the game never actually gets you to do.  It is always kill everything that moves, you can use 6 guys.  So the game that plays like Rambo suddenly threw Enemy at the Gates at me and patted me on the head for doing so.

Also fuck rando awards.  Fucking none of my Armour Techs have a Certificate yet, but Alexis got a Diploma for that running interference.  So now she can skip from base Armour Tech to Fencer Elite straight away.

[DjinnAndTonic]

For those of us not familiar with it, what does "Dawn of Soul"ing do to challenge?

[Grefter]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ
This pretty much.

[SnowFire]

Djinn, super beat Dawn of Souls with Black Mages casting Temper on each other to double their attack power and stabbing Chaos in the eye with daggers, and apparently it wasn't even hard after the first third of the game.  Good luck trying attack magicless BMs in FF1!

--

Gosh darn it.  Diablo 3 really did give me my first pinky injury I can ever recall having when I realized I couldn't really play the game on Sunday.  Right hand holds the mouse, left fingers cover 1-2-3-4-Q skill slots / potions, leaving left pinky to be the "Shift: stand still" and "Alt: show lootz" buttons at an awkward angle.  And you will be holding shift a *lot* as DH / Wizard.  Definitely taking a break for awhile to let my pinky recover?  What?

[Meeplelard]

For those of us not familiar with it, what does "Dawn of Soul"ing do to challenge?

Butcher the challenge to an insulting level of the original.  If you take FF1 in either its NES or Origins form (difficulty difference between the two mostly comes from Origins being more polished, so less FAKE difficulty involved) and then compare it to the Dawn of Souls/PSP version, you'll notice one version makes you actually try for your victory, the other you sort of steam roll without breaking a sweat.

I assume it's really easy for people who don't suck at real-time games? Not being able to shoot vertically feels so weird when the main action platformer I'm used to is Metroid, but I eventually adjusted to it... sort of. Aside from that it's not really all that hard for me and I'm awful at this sort of game.

The game isn't easy, more that MMX1 is forgiving, and has many "fail safes" for beginners to fall back on.  Part of the thing with Mega Man games is your first playthrough is done often by trying to figure out what works well on what, using full inventories, and replays you try to adjust something about it, either something simple like "Fight bosses in different order", or try challenge runs like the classic "Buster Only" challenge.

That said, I'd say the 8 Bit games are tougher than the higher graphical games.  And when I say 8 bit games, I do in fact include MM9 and MM10.  Honestly, I'd recommend looking into playing some of those.   MM2 is often a good place to start, though MM9 may be better just due to probably being a little more polished (lacks the GUN TURRET ROOM OF HATE)

[Idun]

That mission is a pain in the ass to trigger correctly, and the boss is exceptionally hard. That was the only fight I had to use -sols in to win.

You know, eff you people and yours -sols. I currently have ONE Ethersol from a treasure chest. Turning on the game now to see this boss.

[OblivionKnight]

Since it's officially D3 chat time or something, yeah, the game is great.  I'm honestly surprised since I thought I was pretty well Diablo-d out and am not in general a huge fan of hack & slash, but I really like how D3 moves toward more action, less RPG.  You don't slugfest it out with better items, you control space and use the right tools for the job, and dodge enemy missiles and ground attacks.  Cleaning out all the tedious nonsense From D1/D2 which made sense for Nethack in the 80s, a 2-3 hour game, but doesn't make sense in a long-term game played for enjoyment is great.  I love not having to fear an XP penalty from death, which generates weird anti-fun behaviors in D2 like "let me go safely farm rather than actually play the game."  (Side note: I never know how seriously OK is with his comments, but color me glad that the game does max out at 4 players.  Balancing around an 8 player lynch mob would be godawful, and with seeing and dodging enemy projectiles so important, you don't want the screen to get too chaotic with PC effects which might cloud enemy movements & telegraphs.  Plus each player plain matters more with only 4 players.  Doing solo mode while letting 3 NPCs do all the work also sounds chancy, so maxing that at 1 helper is also the right call.)

I am always 100% serious, girlfriend! 

I mean moreso that there should be an option, honestly.  With only 5 classes, it's not a huge issue, but if (lol, when) they make an expansion, with 7 or 8 classes, it would be nice to have the option.  I do agree with you that it is nice to balance around smaller groups, and with the lag the game gets, it's a blessing.  But D2 you could limit the number of people in a game, so...it's not a breaker to me, honestly, but a thought.  What can I say, I like a mass of people.  I do like it with the fewer people, honestly (probably better than with more), but it still is a thing to keep in mind.

Finished up Act II.  I'm...probably too high a level - my blacksmith is at the max level he can get until I find those blacksmithing pages.  Game is very good.  I agree with a lot of Snowy's comments - particularly, that I don't have a burning desire to make more than one of the same class.  I think it wouldn't be terrible to add something that differentiates skills a bit more per individual character, but eh.  I can't imagine not using a rune for a skill - is there any reason not to use a rune on a skill once it comes?  I'd like to see more of a +/- relationship here, but eh. 

Love the Witch Doctor - very fun class.  Also, with the way damage works now...I am going to be running a two-handed axe or something, as the ceremonial knife I had with the fetish wasn't doing much.  Damage exploded with the two-handed weapon, so yeah.  Act II boss was excellent, as Snowy said.  The positioning focus is so much better than D2's mass of damage racing.  Love the mix of skills that just work so well together.

Also...if Adria doesn't end up becoming a major villain either in the game or during an expansion, I am going to be surprised.  Seriously, her conversations after you first rescue her are just...yeah.

Might call for people sometime this week or weekend, although I need to rush to Nightmare mode to catch up.

[superaielman]

Djinn, super beat Dawn of Souls with Black Mages casting Temper on each other to double their attack power and stabbing Chaos in the eye with daggers, and apparently it wasn't even hard after the first third of the game.  Good luck trying attack magicless BMs in FF1!

This can't be said enough, but dawn of souls makes Grandia 1 look like Wizardry 4.

1. Massively increased levels compared to the NES version. This makes your evasion and accuracy much better. Your offense skyrockets due to this. Getting four hits (Eight with GM) in the NES/PSX version is not easy, in DoS you can do it before you beat Astos fairly easily. Defenses can be overwhelmed by Temper in the PSX version, but in the DoS version? I did 3000 fucking damage with a Black Wizard physical to Chaos.  Enemy stats are unchanged.

2. Items. Ethers are 100 gil and are storebought in Pravoka. Goodbye resource problems. Hi potions exist and give you a ton of extra healing on the off chance you need it (You won't unless you refuse to use a white/red wizard). You can also buy haste/temper/defense potions after you buy the Fairie from the Oasis. Of course, that doesn't matter since you'll be using a couple of mages. There are also Phoenix downs, etc.

3. Magic changes. INT affects spell damage; spell charges are replaced by a traditional FF MP system. Both result in spells being *gruesomely* broken. Itemcast Bolt/Fire 2 slaughter everything once you get them in the NES version. You can start spamming those spells of doom by Elfland in DoS. The changes to the spell system means that you are going to be doing far more damage than before with those spells. Healing is similarly improved. 

[Fenrir]

Honestly the Shining Force issues are not that bad for a 20 year old game. I find the wonky turn order (with no way of knowing in advance who's going to act) much worse. This made it the least strategic TRPG I've played, as planning ahead is almost impossible.

DQ9: Got my fourth fruit. How do these things regenerate after being eaten?
I like how important characters are 3D and random NPCs are 2D, by the way. Seems so strange in a Dragon Quest.
Grinding wise: Unlocked ranger, got Meditate from the martial arts tree (Figured this tree would have good self healing). Now I'm raising boomerangs. I should probably train something else, but they're my favourite DQ weapon.

[Cotigo]

  I can't imagine not using a rune for a skill - is there any reason not to use a rune on a skill once it comes?  I'd like to see more of a +/- relationship here, but eh. 

....

Also...if Adria doesn't end up becoming a major villain either in the game or during an expansion, I am going to be surprised.  Seriously, her conversations after you first rescue her are just...yeah.

There's never a reason to not use a rune, but aside from the first rune on a lot of skills, runes don't get linearly better.  I'm level 39 or so and have most of my runes unlocked, but on many skills I am still using the second runes I unlocked because their effects work better for what I want. 

Also

loldiabloplot

[Shale]

There are a few skills where the first rune you unlock changes the move fundamentally enough that you're losing something good it had in the basic version, so if you don't want to make the tradeoff, you keep it unruned until you unlock something less dramatically different. Other than that, yeah, there's always a rune worth using.

Anyway, killed Diablo. OMG final boss spoilers. More importantly, unlocked the secret level. And found a 110 STR spear there.