What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[AndrewRogue]

Flareon vs the World: Main game beat. Doing... not main game now? I don't honestly know anymore.

Either way, my general assessment is that it is pretty much like most Pokemon spin-offs. Neat concept that, done right, would be really awesome. Instead, subpar implementation really mars an enjoyable experience. (Could I have a Pokemon spin-off that lets my Pokemon have more than one attack just once?)

[DjinnAndTonic]

Pokemon Conquest:

So this is absolutely awesome stuff. Pokemon + Feudal Japan is just so odd, but really entertaining. I like the basic premise of Monster-collecting and an SRPG, and it's even more fun when you Collect Warlords on top of the usual Pokemon.

The SRPG elements are really stripped down, though. Each Pokemon only gets one active ability, plus the OPB active ability of their Warrior (Trainer, but uses Telepathy instead of Pokeballs to control them). On the other hand, they all get 3 pretty interesting passive abilities, so positioning and party composition become where the majority of the strategizing comes into play, which I'm all about.

Evolution requirements are dumb, but fairly standard for Pokemon. The recruiting mechanism for Warriors is kinda annoying, but I dig the "Synchronizing" Rhythm game for how Warriors recruit new Pokemon.

One of the big draws for me, however, is the fact that you essentially get to recruit Gym Leaders in this game. It really makes team-building more fun when there are non-generics in Pokemon. At least for me, since I'm all about using the Story characters. The fact that they are all historical figures just makes it that much more fun.

The only thing that -really- annoys me about the Warlords (Gym Leaders/Historical Japanese Figures) is that over half of them aren't recruitable in the maingame. And two of them that -are- require a password or wi-fi connecting to recruit (not that this is -hard-, but I'd have preferred just getting them through a recruiting battle like the others).

As of roughly 55% of the way through the maingame, about to take on the first of Nobunaga's actual army, I have recruited all but 2 of the recruitable Warlords for the entire main story and evolved all of the ones (my main) who can evolve in the main story. This whole being-locked-out-of-catching-em-all is frustrating me to no end. Oh sure, I can catch a bunch of the Pokemon with my generics, but I want my kickass story characters.

Current Warlords: 16 - Jo (Female Main Rank II/Eevee-trainer), Oichi (Required, Normal/Dragon, Jigglypuff), Motonari (Password-unlocked, Grass), Motochika (Password-unlocked, Water), Ginchiyo (Thunder), Muneshige (Normal/Flying, Ginchiyo's husband), Yoshimoto (Bug/Steel), Yoshihiro (Fighting), Shingen (Required, Rock/Ground), Yukimura (Fire/Flying), Kunoichi (Dark/Ice), Kenshin (Required, Psychic/Fighting), Kanetsugu (Psychic), Aya (Ice/Ghost)

Warlords left I can get: 2 (Gracia and Magoichi)

Warlords left that I can only get in aftergame: 20

Literally more Postgame story characters than Maingame. ~aggravation~

The only available Water-using Warlord in the maingame is Password-only. Even in postgame, there's only one other. gg, Pokemon Conquest.

However, the game -does- give me easily-recruitable Aggrons, so...

[Niji]

Chrono Trigger DS

HOLY BALLZ so decided to go ahead and beat lavos to unlock the dimensional vortex, firstly i must say they changed a lot of the script's contents... Everything is a lot more clear now.. Shocking the revelations really....really really shocking, all the new dialog on events with magus in your party is nice too.

Now I must play through multiple times to get all the endings so I can see how different the story is with this actually good translation.
(the translation/revised script is far superior to the PSX version btw).

Difficulty of bosses and enemies with a party in the late 60s to early 70s, If I didn't have access to infinite megalixers they would be ballz hard, but I do so....stupidly easy. I don't even have to try if I use Robo and his newest weapon.

Also 90% crit rate is dumb.

Farming infinite magic capsules before I challenge the final, final (super) boss. This boss is hella cheap so extremely difficult regardless of level. (it uses trick moves, and not to mention Curse, Etc so all your defensive gear except plates is fairly worthless. I won't spoil the plot though you will have to get the game yourself. It is worth every minute, though word of advice take a break from playing before you take on Lost Sanctum, Dimensional Vortex, and Arena. They are tedius if you've been playing story mode, but coming back in after a long break they are excruciatingly fun! (and a level up nearly every map change XD, an impressive feat in the 60s and 70s level range i hear 90-99 though takes many hours).

Far more fantastic than the previous incarnations, the new animated cut scenes added in addition to the ones from PSX version are pretty cool, the story is actually clearly connected to chrono cross once you finally understand who the entity is lol. (and no its not schala)

[Cmdr_King]

Honestly, by the time I did everything to unlock it, I found the Dream Devourer no harder than most CT bosses.  It's got tricks, and the raw stats are OP Lavos level, but you're just that damned powerful with all that aftergame gear.

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy- Finally unlocked the last song and completed it, so I think I'm willing to call the game finished now.  The core game has a couple niggling flaws (I'm convinced it sometimes just does not read slides correctly), but once you get up to the higher difficulties it's really easy to time with the music rather than the visuals and it gets very intense and fun.  Mind, on Ultimate I question the physical ability to complete the BMS tracks, but anyway.

The game however shares the key flaw of Dissidia, which I just naturally compare it to in many ways; it's grindier than fuck.  It's not as offensive, since you do at least start unlocking stuff just through normal play, but after a point there's a moment where you say "okay, I've been playing the game 15 hours, why have I only unlocked 2 new songs?"  That said, I spent 27 or so hours getting the unlockable songs which is a bit just, but not soul-shattering.  The characters are completely ridiculous, but seeing as this is a rhythm game and not a fighting game, they're just a cute extra (and honestly a way to challenge yourself as much as anything; they're weaker than the mains by quite a ways from what I can tell).

Anyway, not setting the world on fire, but worth picking up if you've got the 3DS anyway.

[Captain K.]

Conquest: So apparently Guardian Charm breaks the game pretty hard.  Send a single pokemon into battle with it and they get a massive stat boost.  And they get a large amount of link% also for soloing the battle.  You still need a team of pokemon for some of the capture the flag ones.  Terrera is completely impossible to win with one pokemon.

[Tide]

Wild ARMS 4 -

Kraken is dead. I ended settling. But since being any faster requires a back to back double crit along with holding a 4 man Joint Struggle, I just decided to skip it. Rest of the segment was good. Time for Hugo.

Devil Survivor 2 -
Up to the 3rd day. About to save some other dude. Killed more demons. Yep.

[Meeplelard]

FF13-2: Got back to this, CAPTAIN CRYPTIC IS FINISHED HELL YEAH!

And got the Lucky Coin in Serendipity.

...so I just have the Beastiary one left for "completely fucking stupid Fragments" and then I can actually get to doing more interesting things.  Also got 3 more paradox endings...

[Anthony Edward Stark]

FF13-2: Got back to this, CAPTAIN CRYPTIC IS FINISHED HELL YEAH!

And got the Lucky Coin in Serendipity.

...so I just have the Beastiary one left for "completely fucking stupid Fragments" and then I can actually get to doing more interesting things.  Also got 3 more paradox endings...

>wants to do interesting things
>playing something FF13-related

Motherfucker are you serious?

[DjinnAndTonic]

Conquest: So apparently Guardian Charm breaks the game pretty hard.  Send a single pokemon into battle with it and they get a massive stat boost.  And they get a large amount of link% also for soloing the battle.  You still need a team of pokemon for some of the capture the flag ones.  Terrera is completely impossible to win with one pokemon.

Tell me more about where one gets this 'Guardian Charm'...

[Yoshiken]

FE9: Started doing the low-level run on this because I was too impatient on FE8, where bonus exp. resetting wasn't an option. About to start The Great Bridge, and I've just had to use bonus Exp. to change my party members for the first time. (Wanted Brom on the team, so pushed Ilyana up to the same level as him, letting me switch her out.) I'll do a proper breakdown once I complete this, but so far, MVPs throughout the game have been Lethe, Reyson, Jill and Tormod. Sothe has actually started getting kills again, thanks to the Stiletto. Only really annoying stages so far have been Day Breaks Pt. 4 and the stage with Shiharam, who nobody but Ike could really touch at all. Also recently started getting promotions - in order, I've had Ike, Volke, Rhys, Oscar and Tormod promote so far.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Oh nice, I did a run extremely similar to this (major difference was no BExp) so I am certainly interested to read about this. I'm surprised Lethe is good, since for me, by the time I first used her (which was around your map) she was really quite weak; same with all the other prepromos. Also, interesting choice of hardest maps; I actually thought Day Breaks was one of the easiest sections of the game. Shiharam I also had no significant issue with (Sothe steals elixir, then apply unpromoted mage to the face) but of course, RNG is RNG so a slightly different party could make a big difference there. I think up to your point I found the hardest challenge to be Shiharam's map, though not the boss especially. I found wyverns a real pain with how squishy most of your army is.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Are you doing much RNG manipulation or just winging it?

[Yoshiken]

I've done some very slight RNG stuff - basically, only on Bonus Exp levels, and only to the point that I want to get at least 4 stats up.
Also, for reference, this is on Hard Mode and I'm counting Laguz as double their level, since I think that accurately reflects their worth.

[Grefter]

Etrian Odyssey 3 - Up to second stratum boss.  Got wiped when he did his big MT 2 turns in a row.  Will account for that next time as a possibility.  Should be fairly doable.

[Captain K.]

Conquest: So apparently Guardian Charm breaks the game pretty hard.  Send a single pokemon into battle with it and they get a massive stat boost.  And they get a large amount of link% also for soloing the battle.  You still need a team of pokemon for some of the capture the flag ones.  Terrera is completely impossible to win with one pokemon.

Tell me more about where one gets this 'Guardian Charm'...

You buy it from the Cute Merchant that randomly appears inbetween months.  It costs 10000 gold.  Anything bought from the merchant carries over to all your scenarios (or until used, like a Fire Stone).

[Dark Holy Elf]

I've done some very slight RNG stuff - basically, only on Bonus Exp levels, and only to the point that I want to get at least 4 stats up.
Also, for reference, this is on Hard Mode and I'm counting Laguz as double their level, since I think that accurately reflects their worth.

Ah, that makes sense. I treated them as Level+20, which is how the exp formula treats them (and probably closer to accurate for a while, since a Level 4 laguz is obviously stronger than a Level 8 beorc), but your method makes sense too, and yeah, would make Lethe really good.

[Fudozukushi]

Dark Souls: Had the urging need to play again ever since I heard of the Prepare to Die edition.  Which was actually about a month ago, but I'm lazy.  Felt like playing as Bobstein, savior of the Soul Level 1s.  Who prompty proceded to die a half-dozen times in the forest while I relearned things.  Then despite being months out of practice I manage to finally beat Pharis.  Granted last time I played was before the Patch so fighting Pharis then was without lock-on so eh.  Got my swanky new hat though!

[Niji]

Xenogears: Started playing this again, forgot like...everyone dies at the beginning, also having actually read various "bibles" now and playing the game....a lot of shit is making a lot more sense, also this game is much much much darker than I remember.
Chrono Cross: Lol only at the opening animation but soon the addictive play throughs!

RPGmakerVXace: Tooling around with this...might just start working on my game sooner than later ahahaha, in which case I probably won't play video games for some time.

League of Legends: Excitedly waiting for Zyra to juice. The Eve rework is horrendously powerful, the twitch rework is garbage(both still broken as hell regardless; in skilled hands of course). Almost out of Elo hell again squeee

Hyper Dimension Neptunia MK-2: Uhhh it states online that the game was made such that you don't need to play the first to get it. This is a complete and utter lie. Also this is the only game that has brazenly violated the "15 minute rule" and actually become incredibly fun to play after 2+ hours in(and only just then). Pretty much when you actually get new characters(NISA!!!! <3). The Meta jokes are hilarious but one seriously needs to play the first game first unfortunately as nearly all of them reference the first game /sigh. This game makes me want to pirate EVEN MOAR because the bad guys are SO COOL <3 idols. But it is somewhat playable for me without playing the first as I DO enjoy being thrust into the middle of a story with no explanations or details hahah, however this leads to a lot of the story and references leaving me bemused

Some game I can't remember the name of with stamps and seals and stamp magic: Super ultra fun to play, hella boring to watch apparently. And heavily memory/math pattern figure out play based. Which is boss awesome! So enjoying it quite a bit....also body switch gender bender!


Pokemon Conquest: I need to get this game, but sold out everywhere(why they only sending 1-2 copies per store per refill wave ARGGHH), including online unless you are willing to pay $20 more for it hahah. Online backorders are so back ordered since such small shipments that....you won't even get your copy most likely in the next few shipment waves -_-
Hopefully nintendo is catching wind this game might be more popular/well selling than the main game...lol

[Dark Holy Elf]

Grandia 3 - Challenge run beaten.

Melc Crystals was truly monstrous, I had something like 6 resets. Just a real tough fight to stay on top of, it needs much better healing than what I had (a single PC with Alheal). The rest of Melc Ruins was also a pain, with several resets against Red Beasts (speedy bastards who do high 2HKO cancelling physical damage or MT fire 2HKO with Ba-Boom among a few other options) and Hyudras (who are insane without Lizard Slayer which makes them not too bad).

After that the game got way easier, disappointingly so. I had actively good luck against Violetta (also learned that she hates defence down a lot) and Emelious in terms of how all the turns went and neither gave me terribly large difficulty, and randoms, eh. Final dungeon was a bit better and certainly I was a bit nervous at points with Calibus and of course the dreaded hallway of Excise Omega + Last Keeper, but nothing too bad. I leaned increasingly heavily on physical setups of Slayer skills and Berserker to get things done, and it worked well enough. No resets for this entire stretch.

Fortunately Xorn put up a good fight to make up for this. One reset (plus another where uh I forgot to re-equip Alfina's magic, beating Xorn without healing is lolno) and the second fight was certainly tough with a skin-of-my-teeth ending featuring a dead Dahna and everyone else in the red. Dimension Gate phase was obviously extremely nasty because that hits way too hard, Death Knell could be bad if I couldn't get out of it. Darkness also fairly brutal. Despair wins the award for extra annoying attack on this playthrough, though. My strategy to make Xorn sane revolved around tying him up with berserker IP-damaging physicals (not that I really noticed any IP damage, gauge moves too fast) stunning him at the COM line. This works... reasonably well (not even close to a total lockdown but it prevented constant triple-turns... usually. If things went against me they still happened). However it falls apart ENTIRELY with Despair, as that dispels Flash/Shadow Warrior/Wow, AND seals off the effects of Berserker so yeah, you now fail forever at that strategy. Also of course kills off Life Up which lets Dahna get OHKOed. I basically had Dahna defending except when absolutely necessary during the second half of the battle because even if she wasn't getting OHKOed, it didn't take much else to push her over the edge and uh Xorn gets a lot more turns than my healer. Fun fight.

Compared to my previous playthrough (females only), this was certainly an easier challenge. Having four PCs just helps too much, and the restrictions weren't -that- harsh. However, it's interesting to note that both Melc Crystals and Xorn were harder for this playthrough. A lot of that is because both those fights benefit a lot from having more PCs who can toss out good MT healing at any point (Alheal isn't as good as Alhealer or Healing Gems, and only one PC had it). Some of it is also that the two-PC team suffers more against more enemies since they're harder to plan for (and can combo you in annoying ways), and most randoms (as well as Emelious, possibly the hardest boss for the two PCs) feature those.

If I did one thing different about this challenge I would probably allow egg fusion at a certain point; I didn't realise there was no non-fused egg in the game that could turn into Meteor Strike for instance. Same with Alhealer and Crackle Fang. I can accept no Absolute Zero or Crystal Wall (the ultimate water and earth spells), though kinda unfairly the two guys (who needed the help less and couldn't use magic nearly as well anyway) both got their ultimate spells, Heaven's Gate from plot and Astraea Zap from a random egg outside Raflid Town. Astraea Zap isn't that good anyway, Heaven's Gate was solid enough in its extremely limited fashion.



Wild Arms XF basic equipment - I'm up to 3-7, shit is getting real. Overall the differences between this and vanilla weren't too noticeable for a while, although the stretch of battles from the end of chapter 1 until 2-4 (oh god 2-4) were already pretty good and making them harder has predictable results; I had something like 4 resets on 2-4. Afterwards nothing too bad for a while (one reset on the Elesius escape) until Lefas Corner and its storebought +2 equips where I really fall behind. However, after one or two kinda decent battles, the game goes into easy mode until Alexia joins. Both those maps were a bit tougher than normal because she couldn't use her personal equipment making her quite bad. Then in 3-2 I hit Crestabelde which sells +3 equips and now I'm really behind, plenty of fights are quite nasty since, but particularly 3-5-A (Martial Guard defence of the Guardian Shrine) and now 3-7 (final Samille/El Jackson battle featuring power of TEAMWORK). I suspect things only get harder from here but maybe some Emulator bullshit will prove me wrong.

[Talaysen]

Hyper Dimension Neptunia MK-2: Uhhh it states online that the game was made such that you don't need to play the first to get it. This is a complete and utter lie. Also this is the only game that has brazenly violated the "15 minute rule" and actually become incredibly fun to play after 2+ hours in(and only just then). Pretty much when you actually get new characters(NISA!!!! <3). The Meta jokes are hilarious but one seriously needs to play the first game first unfortunately as nearly all of them reference the first game /sigh. This game makes me want to pirate EVEN MOAR because the bad guys are SO COOL <3 idols. But it is somewhat playable for me without playing the first as I DO enjoy being thrust into the middle of a story with no explanations or details hahah, however this leads to a lot of the story and references leaving me bemused

Actually, Mk 2 sorta retcons most of what happens in the first game.

[Niji]

Hyper Dimension Neptunia MK-2: Uhhh it states online that the game was made such that you don't need to play the first to get it. This is a complete and utter lie. Also this is the only game that has brazenly violated the "15 minute rule" and actually become incredibly fun to play after 2+ hours in(and only just then). Pretty much when you actually get new characters(NISA!!!! <3). The Meta jokes are hilarious but one seriously needs to play the first game first unfortunately as nearly all of them reference the first game /sigh. This game makes me want to pirate EVEN MOAR because the bad guys are SO COOL <3 idols. But it is somewhat playable for me without playing the first as I DO enjoy being thrust into the middle of a story with no explanations or details hahah, however this leads to a lot of the story and references leaving me bemused

Actually, Mk 2 sorta retcons most of what happens in the first game.

I have no idea whats going on, Who are Neptunia, Lastation, Lowee, and the xbox one? i have no character on them other than they have been being tentacle raped for 3+ years, i take it the last game had "bad end" ending regardless XD? I really want to know who they are I don't give two shits about the CPU canditates(this game feels like pilot canditate/for goddess imo). Nisa compa if is fun, let Nepgear die in eternal fire! This game too moe moe 10 year old girls.

[Meeplelard]

FF13-2: Got all 160 Fragments, watched extended ending.  Did the Lightning DLC Episode, saw that ending.  Beat Snow, then the guy after him.  So really all that's left is beating Ultros/Typhon because I haven't done that yet, and I'll pretty much be finished with this game entirely.  Huzzah or something.

[Tide]

Grandia 2 LLG -

RICHARD pokes me and we continue our set trail into the great beyond. Oh yes, the pain has only just started.

Mareg:
Boss-Mareg is p.cool with his 2HKO Beast Fang Cut and 1.5x my speed. Still doesn't matter because he's all ST and there's only one of him. So whatever. He goes down, but not before KOing Ryudo once.

Valmar's Tongue:
This is the first real test (so to speak). There are four parts, with each part packing 2HKO damage to everyone but Mareg. None of the parts are particular fast (sans the tongue itself) and none of them are terribly durable. However, if you let them get an offensive turn going, they will rack up damage pretty quick. The right claw has a physical and a fan-shaped fire physical. The left claw has a fan shaped poison physical. The head can heal and has a tech called Eat'em Alive that does about 67% of a PC's HP (more to Roan, less to Mareg). Tongue can cast some debuffers, and has a couple of MT attacks (including Starving Tongue and Huge Leap).

RICHARD and I weren't sure of what it could do in the beginning, so I proposed we go straight for the jugular and aim for the tongue. Once it dies, everything else dies too. This turns out to be a good decision because both times I've had to fight it, it usually spends a good chunk of it's turns busy casting the almighty FREEZE. Given that nobody on the team is actively moving towards him, this is basically a free pass. The other factor working in my favour is that the other parts stop gaining CT when one part is acting. This helps to prevent any double turns and makes the damage much more manageable.

Mareg dumps all his SP asap and then proceeds to spend the rest of his turn item monkeying. Ryudo is the key member in this fight because of the Flamberge. It's an unlimited item cast BURN and it deals 350 damage each time. Neat stuff. Meanwhile, Millenia helps with Burn for about 320 damage a cast. The two of them go all offensive every turn, leaving Mareg and Roan to do the healing. Speaking of Roan, he is terrible. 2HKO'd by physicals and basically has no damage outside of Golden Hammer. But oh well, still sufficient. Eventually Tongue dies.

I had to redo the fight twice because Roan died last minute on the first fight and fighting the eyes at an even lower level than normal = arghle no.

Eyeball bats x4:
A foreshadowing of things to come. There are 4 of them. Each of them double turn and do 4HKO damage except on Roan who dies in 3 and Mareg who takes 5. Then they can also use Delta Burst when three of them are active for about 450 damage. In case you are wondering, this is OHKO territory on Roan and near OHKO on Ryudo and Elena. Nasty stuff. However, they do have one fatal exploitable weakness. Sleep.

RICHARD laughs at me when I go and buy the almighty SLEEP HARP. I get only two as a result, and the first fight results in almost absolute disaster as people start dying left and right and I am forced to revive people and have people consistently in yellow or red. Mareg still dumps all his SP, but this time, Ryudo and Roan are the damage dealers and Elena helps out with whatever support is possible. I burn all my revival at this point and upon finishing the fight, find out that this town does not sell the revival item (Yomi's Elixir). Welp.

I redo the fight again, this time getting Snooze (and maxing it) because the Eye of Valmar fight features these things again, and let's face it, I am not making out of that fight without this to control these things. By themselves they already cause a huge havoc. Can you imagine what happens once we add the eye there?

So anyway, this is the first skill upgrade we have (we've done the entire run so far without no coins invested anywhere). With Snooze maxed, this is a lot easier. Both Elena and Roan cast Snooze until 3 of the bats are asleep. Ryudo and Mareg do there thing with Mareg using physicals once he's out of SP. Doing this, I make it through the fight without anyone dying once.

EYE of Valmar is next. And you know he's going to cause endless resetting.

[Sierra]

Dark Souls: Had the urging need to play again ever since I heard of the Prepare to Die edition.  Which was actually about a month ago, but I'm lazy.  Felt like playing as Bobstein, savior of the Soul Level 1s.  Who prompty proceded to die a half-dozen times in the forest while I relearned things.  Then despite being months out of practice I manage to finally beat Pharis.  Granted last time I played was before the Patch so fighting Pharis then was without lock-on so eh.  Got my swanky new hat though!

Fudo are you actually doling a SL1 run? If so, I request deathcount.

[Captain K.]

FF13-2:  This got down to $20 so I finally picked it up.  In the second time period now, where I can start becoming a Pokemon Master.

Also O_o at the amount of DLC.  If I wanted to spend money on virtual crap, I'd play Perfect World.

-----------------------------------

Perfect World:  Spending money on virtual crap.