What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

[Shale]

2nd Super Robot Wars OG (The sequel to Super Robot Wars OG2, and the ninth game in the OG saga): Clearly Banpresto is taking naming advice from the Police Squad! team now.

Anyway, finished C5 on Masaki's route. Game is a cakewalk thus far, in keeping with pretty much every other SRW ever. Shiiiiiiiiiiiny, though. And holy crap, Grungust Kai and Cybuster are beasts. After playing so much of the Z series I'd forgotten how great it was to have free attacks.

[Twilkitri]

DQ9 drops are kind of weird, you go from needing a billion Reckless Necklaces to having way more than you'll ever need. The downloaded stuff is all available in one shot now so you should be able to hook up to wifi a single time and get everything.

I can certainly agree to experiencing that with some of the early-game drops (magic beast hides/horns being the most obvious), but given that as I understand it the necklaces aren't dropped by anything, only found in chests, I'm finding it hard to see it apply.

Personally I don't care much for grottos - I was only doing them to pass the time while waiting for brighten rock harvests to respawn. The idea of having to do them for anything is an unhappy idea.

The fact that there were only two story quests actually included in the game (one of which may well be mis-marked as far as I'm aware) annoys me enough that I don't want to have to deal with finding out whether DQ9 works properly with 3DS wireless or not (regular DS doesn't understand the wireless encryption in use) (by all rights it's a late enough game that it should work, but I have had problems with some games (cannot remember which)). DQ9 quests tend to annoy me anyway, so I see no issue with using this as an excuse to disregard them.

Example:

Quest #034 - A Simple Task
Request: Get the 'Simple Simon' or 'Simple Simone' Accolade.
Solution: If your Hero Is Female, as a Ranger equip: Headsman's Axe, Minotaur Helm, Jaguarment, Gloomy Gloves, Steppe Steppers, and Agiliboots.
If your Hero is a male, then as a Priest equip: Sadistick, Dragon Shield, Hermetic Hat, Dark Robe, Heavy Handwear, Blue Jeans, Classy Clogs, and Utility Belt.

What.




VC Wario Land 3 - played through

Got all the treasures. Only got one picture piece, for novelty's sake - the golf minigame is horrible and I saw no reason to bother getting them all just to unlock another course.

I remembered that Wario started off depowered in this game, but I had forgotten the extent to which that was. Can't swim underwater at all, can't break blocks from beneath...

I'm not really a fan of the enemy graphical design. Especially when you make comparisons like the WL3 zombie versus the WL2 Zombie. Most of the enemies look overly simplistic in comparison with WL2 enemies. What the heck happened.

I feel that the game was a bit too railroady - some of the problems which only affected one or two levels should have been removed and existing problems used in their place. Sure, it's coming from a series which is essentially completely railroaded, but they've gone to the effort of setting up a system where each level is going to need to be played multiple times - just there's no point in actually replaying any level until the game tells you that something's changed enough that you can do something new there, rendering the system fairly pointless.

All up, it's fairly entertaining, but WL2 is far and away superior.

[Cmdr_King]

Tales of Hearts: Beat this.  Man, it's good that so few bosses have MAs, with 3 PCs and their OHKO tier damage it's pretty amazingly lethal already.  Mixing more of them in would have been inviting disaster.

So yeah finishing the game got a lot more possible when I realized that golden circle cross thing was telling me where to go, not marking the seaport.  I spent the whole game using like two moves, and yet it worked weirdly well.  Imagine if I could read what moves did and play around with them freely.

8/10 I think?  Probably the only tales game where I was actively murdering the shit out of randoms for most of the game, rather than largely avoiding them once I had my Arte grinding done.  I'm not sure what it was doing right with them, but it worked.

[Captain K.]

Example:

Quest #034 - A Simple Task
Request: Get the 'Simple Simon' or 'Simple Simone' Accolade.
Solution: If your Hero Is Female, as a Ranger equip: Headsman's Axe, Minotaur Helm, Jaguarment, Gloomy Gloves, Steppe Steppers, and Agiliboots.
If your Hero is a male, then as a Priest equip: Sadistick, Dragon Shield, Hermetic Hat, Dark Robe, Heavy Handwear, Blue Jeans, Classy Clogs, and Utility Belt.

Bad FAQ.  To get the accolade you have to wear non-fashionable stuff like blue jeans, clogs, etc.  Doesn't have to be those specific items.  Although yes many of the quests are obnoxious.

[dude789]

Pokemon terrible playthrough: Beaten! Levels were around 47-48 for everyone. It would have been harder if the AI  was less dense. Aside from Bruno who's all around terrible, all of the Elite 4 did something stupid that trivialized the fight. Lorelai spammed Amnesia with Slowbro which allowed Beedrill to get up a bunch of Swords Dances and sweep her team. Agatha thought it would be a good idea to use Dream Eater on my fully awake Onix multiple times. Lance was of course baited into using Agility/Barrier indefinitely with my Beedrill and Gary spammed Recover and Withdraw with Alakazam and Blastoise respectively who otherwise could have given me some trouble.

So overall team thoughts:

Bedrill: Twineedle/Mega Drain/Swords Dance/Toxic
Probably MVP. Twineedle is just so good against so many different pokemon and it hits decently hard even if it's only hitting for neutral damage. Swords Dance sweeping is also an option and he made good use of Toxic and Mega Drain. He was also the fastest pokemon on the team.

Wigglytuff: Fire Blast/Blizzard/Thunderbolt/Body Slam
Very solid. I thought it was essentially a worse Clefable but after using him this play through the gap between them is much smaller than I thought. The HP is of course fantastic, but Body Slam was one of my best catch all options on offense and is probably stronger than Clefable's best offense. Of course Clefable makes much better use of the giant movepool options, but both are solid.

Farfetch'd: Fly/Slash/Swords Dance/Some filler move that I forgot.
LVP: Miserable stats and an awful movepool. His offense was dreadful until Fly and even then it wasn't much better. Slash helped a lot, but couldn't save him from being the worst.

Onix: Earthquake/Explosion/Strength/Rock Slide
Probably the second best after Beedrill and could have been the best if he was around as long as Beedrill. The defense is fantastic and he's practically immune to physical moves. There's something really awesome about seeing a Raticate's Hyper Fang only do 2 damage. The attack stat is bad, but his overall offense is still pretty good because Rock/Ground give such good coverage and have such powerful attacks that you get early.

Hypno: Psychic/Flash/Seismic Toss/Tri Attack
He was solid but didn't feel really gamebreaking compared to the other options. Psychic hits hard, but the intersection of pokemon that get OHKO'd by Psychic and only 2HKO'd by Wigglytuff's Body Slam or Onix's Earthquake is pretty small. His biggest niche was taking out fighting types and tanking against other psychics. He was just decent without standing out.

Seaking: Surf/Horn Attack/Ice Beam/ Waterfall
Had a really good attack stat, but nothing to use it with. Aside from that he was a very average water type who handles pokemon weak to Water or Ice and doesn't do much else.

I still have that Gen 1 Pokemon itch though so I'm thinking of doing another terrible playthrough this time on Pokemon Yellow since I think they touched up the AI a bit in that one. I'm planning on doing using a team of Pickachu/Paras/Zubat/Hitmonchan/Krabby/Ponyta. Any ideas or suggestions on how to make the team worse? I'm only using pokemon I can catch in game so sadly no Lickitung or Ekans this time. I'd also like to have at least on Surfer and one Flier and no more than 2 of the same type in the team.
 

[Cmdr_King]

Mmm.  Isn't Growlithe a bit worse than Ponyta?  Fire's a bit gimpy in Gen 1 in general but I recall Ponyta having better speed and special, which is pretty big.  Gramted Ponyta's available a bit earlier.

[dude789]

It's hard to say. Rapidash ends up a bit faster, but Arcanine has better overall stats and both end up in the "Will outspeed most pokemon" group.

[Cmdr_King]

Mm. In that case the better durability is probably more relevant yeah.  Well, although if you have a bit of a level disadvantage you'll be more likely to run into its flaws, but I've never run RBY with full parties so hard to say.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Pikachu has a decent argument to be the best electric in-game... oh wait, Yellow, never mind.

Both Growlithe and Ponyta are pretty bad, but Ponyta is probably worse. They have the same special, so it's Rapidash's 10 speed against Arcanine's better durability there. Both fail to learn any fire attack stronger than Ember except for the 5-use Fire Blast TM from Blaine*. Both have pretty good attack stats but nothing to use this with except Normal moves... and neither even learns Strength, so we're talking Bite/Stomp/etc. here unless you burn the Body Slam TM on one of them. The big difference, though, is evolution. Growlithe can evolve as soon as it gets a Fire Stone (around the 4th gym), and should because even though this prevents it from learning anything else, this gives it pretty boss stats for midgame. Ponyta doesn't evolve until Level 40. The main consideration Ponyta has is Fire Spin, so if you feel like trying your luck at a 70% lockdown move you may find Ponyta better.

*Actually, Growlithe does learn Flamethrower, if you don't evolve it... at Level 50. Yeaaah that is not worth it.

but Body Slam was one of my best catch all options on offense and is probably stronger than Clefable's best offense

It's marginally better, yeah, assuming we're not burning any TMs on either. They have the same attack, but Jigglypuff gets innate Body Slam while Clefable would instead use the slightly weaker Strength, although can learn Body Slam via the TM.

[hinode]

Growlithe can use the Dig TM, which is infinitely more useful in-game than in multiplayer. Lots of competition for it, though.

[Niu]

2nd OG- Is torn in between starting another cycle to complete all stages, or put it away for the moment to start on Ourai.

[Grefter]

FM3 - Finished so Merry Christmas Mister Sopko.  I haven't got a clue what was going on in the last sequence of the game.  Lukav was going to blow up Midas and then build his own country or something?  So MACHO MAN RANDY SAVAGE literally tears the city apart and destroys a half a decade or so worth of infrastructure development.  Then you kill Lukav but he isn't dead and some stupid cutscenes that looks like it comes from a Sci Fi movie about sharks where Lukav jump on to the boat and Emma wakes up out of a coma and saves them throu some completely unexplained way.  She totes did it though you guys.

Gameplay in the last chunk is sloppy dribble poops.  The most boring fights are ones against Imaginary Numbers because they always have the same configuration of mechs and always are a touch stronger than you are.   Zzzzzzzz.  The last level really hit home how much I dislike the spikes RNG of things like fist weapons and chance to hit each body part.  First attempt at the final level walk forwards and then someone dies on enemy turn because they got body shot twice and 2 shot.  I could have known in advance to equip the relevant defence skill, but fuck foreknowledge being necessary to not get gang banged in a fight.

Overall a game that has some fun ideas but has aged really poorly.

FF Dimensions - Just got to a camp where a Gypsy has captured a faerie in a bottle and wants to sell it to me for 1 million dollars but gives it away for free after I save their kid.

Keep it classy Japan.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Year's almost over, wanted to see if I could remember everything I beat this year:

In reverse order because that's how backloggery lists it.
1. Beyond the Beyond  (PS)
Played along with the LP, promptly gave up on playing fairly after about 2 hours, so this one is a completely gamesharked run. Game is significantly improved with no random encounters. Still the worst game ever. -1/10

2. Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance  (3DS)
Yay! My first completed 3DS game! It's probably one of the best KH games, and KH Pokemon is p. cool. TWEWY cameos already give it like +2 out of 10 on their own. 6/10

3. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days  (NDS)
After over three years of trying to beat it, this boring mess of mixed feelings was completed. Oddly enough, it wasn't Orgy XIII that made this game bad. This was just an exercise in terrible pacing. All the pieces for a good game are here, but it's sorely lacking in anything to motivate me to actually play it. 3/10

4. Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded  (NDS)
This one is just forgettable. It has the same cool additions to the Command Deck that BbS and 3D have, but it's so... unimportant. Just feels like a quick cash-in. 2/10

5. Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep  (PSP)
Feels like a shining gem in the wasteland of KH side games. The three different mains with their own playstyle combined with the command deck customization and the KH Monopoly minigame are just too much fun. Story is whatever, but Aqua is basically the only character in KH who has ever been competent so that's worth watching, particularly in the Disney Worlds. 8/10

6. Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls  (GBA)
Specifically, I finally beat FF2 for the first time. Weird little game, SaGa-esque. Not really -fun-, but interesting from a research perspective, I suppose? 1/10 to 4/10 depending on how much I'm enjoying SaGa bullshit that day.

7. Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced  (GBA)
Thieves break everything! This was my second run, and my first completed one. Breaking everything made it really enjoyable, but ugh the story is a mess. Marche is the bad guy, right? I can't tell. All I know is that he clearly hates the fact that his brother can walk. 4/10

8. Disgaea Infinite  (PSP)
Not an RPG, but it's Disgaea, so I'll list it here anyway. Basically hilarious Disgaea fourth-wall-breaking humor without all those pesky SRPG maps getting in the way? Not really a -bad- thing, but I actually like Disgaea gameplay. Still, short and funny. 8/100

9. Lufia and the Fortress of Doom  (SNES)
So I started a big attempt to finish all my SNES-era JRPGs that I'd never gotten around to finishing (or had never been translated) before SNES became any more obsolete. Lufia1 was the last one. I think I've played them all now. It's still got some charm to it despite being terrible, so 3/10.

10. Live a Live  (SNES)
A beautiful pile of weird. Probably the objective best of the "untranslated Square JRPGs" just for how experimental it was and how much it succeeded despite clearly having no budget. 8/10

11. Riviera  (GBA)
This one was just kinda sitting around unfinished for like 5 years. I think I beat the rest of it in like 4 hours. I really like the dialog/localization/setting aesthetics. The gameplay has that quirky Sting design going on and that's pretty cool in my book. Probably what inspired me to take on LaL. 9/10

12. Mugen Souls  (PS3)
Compile Heart remakes Disgaea! It has all the trappings of Disgaea - angels and demons, disposable mascots, Tenpei music, Daisuke art, huge levels, bonus aftergame dungeons/PCs, generic recruitables and fourth-wall-breaking main PCs. Oh, and anime fanservice from hell. (That's the Compile Heart addition to the formula... -2 points). 8/10

13. Breath of Fire  (GBA)
Another SNES game I hadn't played (yes, I played it on GBA, deal with it). It holds up as poorly as you'd think, but it had some cool mechanics and character designs? 3/10

14. Romancing SaGa 3  (SNES)
There's just something I unabashedly love about SaGa games. RS3 is basically proto-SaGa Frontier, and it has all the madness of SaGa Frontier that would fit on an SNES cart. Sorely needs a new translation or a remake. Seriously, why are all SaGa games so unfinished? 9/10 for favoritism, objectively more like a 5/10 for creativity and potential, but not really living up to it.

15. Seiken Densetsu 3  (SNES)
I feel like this is one of the more 'complete' Square SNES JRPGs. It does a lot of things that hadn't been done before (and still aren't done very often), and it even does a few of them well. Ring menu and ARPG battles are a cool mix, the various storypaths are also pretty interesting, though none feel fleshed out enough. Could probably be great with a remake! 7/10

16. Rudra no Hihou  (SNES)
Ugh. I -really- wanted to like this game. I'd heard so much about it, but it's just a mess. There's some creative stuff going on with the multiple main characters and their parties coming together at the end, the make-your-own-spells system, and even the apocalyptic setting and strange dungeons were a great aesthetic. But it's all such a mess. Nothing is coherent, even with a good translation. And the balance issues and lack of differentiation among the parties is just kinda disappointing. The ending is also really bad. 4/10

17. Zettai Hero Project: Unlosing Ranger VS Darkdeath Evilman  (PSP)
I'm not a huge fan of Roguelikes, but I am a huge fan of Nippon-Ichi. I feel like the "Reset to Lvl 1" feature was a bit of a mess, but the game is overall pretty fun. Grinding for the aftergame dungeons is not, however, and that's terrible. Engaging grinding mechanics is pretty much the one thing N1 games are required to have, dammit. Still, the best writing in a NISA game since Disgaea 1. 9/10

18. Radiant Historia  (NDS)
I'm so glad I played this. 10/10

19. Radical Dreamers  (SNES)
Huh, I hadn't realized I actually played -two- VNs based on an RPG series this year. Disgaea Infinite is by far the superior one. RD is kinda quirky and weird (+1) but related to CC (-3). 2/10

20. Final Fantasy IV The Complete Collection  (PSP)
Oh god, FF4-2. I alternately love it for being so bad it's hilarious (We need oil to power our sails!) and hate it for being well... FF4 RPGmaker fanfiction. Also, there's a lot of terrible battle design decisions up until the last section where the game just stops talking and lets you dungeon crawl. Not a huge dungeon-crawler fan, but objectively it's pretty well done there. -2 for Everyone Being Kain. 3/10

21. Bahamut Lagoon  (SNES)
I actually really love this concept and wish it would make a return: SRPG-style Maps with Turn-based Party Battles when engaging enemies. I can see the arguments that this slows the whole SRPG thing down, but it still intrigues me. Also, when burning forests is a major gameplay mechanic, I'm amused. Objectively, I'm also impressed that they managed to give so much personality to their enormous cast considering how little most of them have to do with the story (FE and CC could learn something). This is the game that started my kick of "Play ALL the SNES JRPGs!" 8/10

22. Trinity Universe  (PS3)
Compile Heart at its least pervy. Unsurprisingly, it has the best writing in a Compile Heart game. It also has pretty good character chemistry and the jokes are generally hilarious. The crossover characters and the original characters all seem to feel like they really belong in the same world together (more than I can say for just about any other crossover game out there, despite being a huge fan of crossover games). Man, what a great visual novel this would be. Too bad about all that terrible gameplay mucking it up. It's Legend of Legaia with thousands of buttons to memorize in a randomly-spawned dungeon creator. Fun. 8/10 for story, but it ultimately earns a 5/10 for not being a visual novel.

23. Revelations: The Dragon Slayer  (GBC)
This happened entirely on a whim when I was cleaning out an old hard drive that had a GBC emulator. It's Swords-and-Sorcery-themed SMT! It's actually pretty fun but GBC games have aged more poorly than just about anything else. 4/10

24. Yggdra Union  (PSP)
I love the GBA version for all its weirdness, the PSP version is like that but better-balanced, better graphics, more characters, and more voice-acting. It's the definitive version, but I'm still not a big fan of bringing a PSP around with me so I probably would prefer the GBA version. Weird. 8/10

25. Advance Wars 2  (GBA)
Hey look, it's FE's sister series. Unsurprisingly, I love it, but it bothers me how unrankable the characters are! Whatever, at least it doesn't pretend to have a story. 7/10

26. Cthulhu Saves the World  (Steam)
Hilarious, until there stops being a story half-way through. Well-balanced, interesting mechanics... until you realize there's no documentation for level-ups and skill trees. It sits in an odd place for me, but overall it's a great game. Would like to have seen it revamped with more story and better art. 7/10

27. Final Fantasy 13-2  (PS3)
This game. I'm still not a huge fan of 13, but I feel like 13-2 fixes all of the issues I had with the first one, and I genuinely like Serah. She's funny. Probably my favorite FF main since Terra. FF Pokemon is pretty cool. I had a whole team of colored chocobos. Also crazy time-travel plot is fun. I kinda hope FF continues to be -fun-. 7/10

28. Secret of Mana  (SNES)
I had played the game many times, but this year marks my first completed run. All the treasures and max levels in everything! It's not a great game, but it's endearing. I wish I had played SD3 first because then I wouldn't have wasted time on this one, though. It does everything better. Everything. 4/10

29. Phantom Brave  (PS2)
Powerlevelling to the max! Also beat all the new content on PB PSP, D2 PSP, and D1 PSP when I did this. It was a N1 kind of week. 10/10

30. Odin Sphere  (PS2)
Gorgeous aesthetics, cool story, unique but repetitive gameplay. I love this game and wish there was some kind of co-op multiplayer for it. 9/10

31. Final Fantasy Tactics A2  (NDS)
Fun gameplay. Job options are exciting. Story is unabashedly non-existent but it instead goes for a bit of world-building flavor to keep things interesting. The FF12 cameos are pretty funny in this, too. Probably my personal favorite FFT game. 9/10

32. Saiyuki: Journey West  (PS)
Speaking of FFT, this is basically a Goku-themed version of FFT. Overall amazing, though not on FFT's level. Still something that I wish more people here had played because I'd like to get an FFT fan's opinion. 6/10

...so 32 games overall eh? Not bad. I could possibly finish a few more (Pokemon Conquest, Lost Odyssey, FE11, and Tales of Graces are all sitting around near-finished) before the year ends, but I felt like writing a list -now-. Overall a good year, lots of 7+ games, but I also have a bunch of experimental and old games on the list dragging the average down. Average score: 5.97 (2 Tens, 5 Nines, 6 Eights, buncha middling stuff, 3 Twos, and Beyond the Beyond at -1)

[Fenrir]

Devil Survivor 2: Killed the third day boss with Ronaldo.
I like difficult bosses in Devil Survivor 1/2. It always seems like you end these fights on your knees with no resources left whatsoever.
Frans dropped some Ziodyne on the physical part of the boss, Jungo berserked the magical one, Ricardo ???ed the invincible one.  (Wait. What the hell, Roberto?)

Here are my thoughts about the new characters:
Fumi: No.
Jungo: Your hat is funny? Get in my team.
That red haired girl: Your hat is funny? Get in my team.
Romualdo: I'd care about your cause in another game. Go away.
The team is thus Frans/Joe/Jungo/Red haired girl.

This game might have the script with the largest amount of non-choices I've seen.



La Mulana (remake): Lost.

[Cmdr_King]

And yet, utterly arbitrarily, a bunch of them matter for getting more Social Link power.  Granted even if you fail at it you're perfectly able to hit Fate 4 with people you like.

[Fenrir]

Yeah, I actually just figured that out and stopped being a jerk to everybody... (except Milhouse)
I'd have liked events raising fate levels by a fixed amount, and nothing else mattering. I'm tired of the dating sim parts of SMT.


Turns out the red haired girl is terrible. So now my team is Frans/Jungo (5 fate)/Joe (4 fate)/Makoto (3 fate). The nurse is allright too, but I don't like the way she's portrayed as SO OLD even though she's like 25? JRPGs. Having two non-mages in the team is far less of a problem than I thought.

Still a cool game. I'm forgetting about work and playing it non stop.
Frans reached 40 magic, and I'm now raising agility... Vitality really doesn't seem to matter that much since he can get Anti-Phys with 5 vit. He is completely overpowered. Jungo's almost as good but not quite, with Mow Down / Pierce / Marksmen.

[Captain K.]

Theatrhythym:  Enjoying it so far.  Using WoL, Bartz, Zidane, Onion Knight.  Seems like a game that's more fun to spectate than play because you can't watch all the little things happening when you're watching the notes.

[Cmdr_King]

Yeah, I actually just figured that out and stopped being a jerk to everybody... (except Milhouse)
I'd have liked events raising fate levels by a fixed amount, and nothing else mattering. I'm tired of the dating sim parts of SMT.


Turns out the red haired girl is terrible. So now my team is Frans/Jungo (5 fate)/Joe (4 fate)/Makoto (3 fate). The nurse is allright too, but I don't like the way she's portrayed as SO OLD even though she's like 25? JRPGs. Having two non-mages in the team is far less of a problem than I thought.

Still a cool game. I'm forgetting about work and playing it non stop.
Frans reached 40 magic, and I'm now raising agility... Vitality really doesn't seem to matter that much since he can get Anti-Phys with 5 vit. He is completely overpowered. Jungo's almost as good but not quite, with Mow Down / Pierce / Marksmen.

You honestly want Repel Phys, just as a warning.

Airi suffers from terminal tsundere and is one of my least favorite characters in the game honestly.  Keita is worse and that's about it.

[dude789]

Pokemon Yellow Terrible Play through mark 2: This was a bit harder! Unfortunately now it's converged to the easy norm for now. It's amazing how much the RNG can make a pokmeon appear amazing or terrible. I reached the Nugget bridge and Paras was completely terrible; like really really bad. I needed to run back to the pokemon center after almost ever battle to heal him up so that he wouldn't die in the next battle. Eventually I fought one of the hikers on the route to Bill's house. Hikers up to this point were miserable because I had nothing that could really hurt them well. This hiker in particular had 3 Geodudes and a Machop. The Geodudes loved spamming Defense Curl so the battle took like 5 minutes with Pokemon Stadium's speed up feature. Right after I beat the Hiker the game froze up. The second time through, despite no real strategy or moveset changes, Paras did much better and I was able to make it through the Nugget Bridge and the following route much more quickly. Paras ended up handling Misty all by himself which was shocking.

A number of factors made the game much easier after Misty's gym. I got the Dig TM which Paras can learn which gives me an actually decent form of offense against Rock types which is nice. Additionally, Zubat evolved and Pikachu learned Thunderbolt which also helped the team. I decided to swap out Hitmonchan for Machoke because I needed a 4th pokemon to prevent the team from becoming too overleveled. I don't expect it to make too much of a difference. They have the exact same Base Stat Total. Machoke has a bit more durability whereas Hitmochan is faster and has a tiny bit more HP.     

[Fenrir]

Yeah, I actually just figured that out and stopped being a jerk to everybody... (except Milhouse)
I'd have liked events raising fate levels by a fixed amount, and nothing else mattering. I'm tired of the dating sim parts of SMT.


Turns out the red haired girl is terrible. So now my team is Frans/Jungo (5 fate)/Joe (4 fate)/Makoto (3 fate). The nurse is allright too, but I don't like the way she's portrayed as SO OLD even though she's like 25? JRPGs. Having two non-mages in the team is far less of a problem than I thought.

Still a cool game. I'm forgetting about work and playing it non stop.
Frans reached 40 magic, and I'm now raising agility... Vitality really doesn't seem to matter that much since he can get Anti-Phys with 5 vit. He is completely overpowered. Jungo's almost as good but not quite, with Mow Down / Pierce / Marksmen.

You honestly want Repel Phys, just as a warning.

Airi suffers from terminal tsundere and is one of my least favorite characters in the game honestly.  Keita is worse and that's about it.

Haha, I love that comment.
With the passive skill that always gives one extra turn at agi 13, Frans doesn't really have much use for stat points other than vitality anyway.
I just saw someone's death on day 6, it was gruesome and completely threw me off guard.

This game twists the alignment system so that Law vs Chaos becomes Libertarianism vs Communist?  There's a way bigger focus on the worst parts about liberalism though. (To be fair, that's easier to convey in an apocalyptic setting) It's kinda interesting, I liked what Strange Journey did with that a lot more though.

[Cmdr_King]

I found both Roland and Yamato's camps completely unappealing and ended up going for the otherworldly being option.  Which honestly I felt like was the best path in this game in terms of how it presented the overall alignment and consequences.

[Monkeyfinger]

Yeah, I actually just figured that out and stopped being a jerk to everybody... (except Milhouse)
I'd have liked events raising fate levels by a fixed amount, and nothing else mattering. I'm tired of the dating sim parts of SMT.


Turns out the red haired girl is terrible. So now my team is Frans/Jungo (5 fate)/Joe (4 fate)/Makoto (3 fate). The nurse is allright too, but I don't like the way she's portrayed as SO OLD even though she's like 25? JRPGs. Having two non-mages in the team is far less of a problem than I thought.

Still a cool game. I'm forgetting about work and playing it non stop.
Frans reached 40 magic, and I'm now raising agility... Vitality really doesn't seem to matter that much since he can get Anti-Phys with 5 vit. He is completely overpowered. Jungo's almost as good but not quite, with Mow Down / Pierce / Marksmen.

You honestly want Repel Phys, just as a warning.

Airi suffers from terminal tsundere and is one of my least favorite characters in the game honestly.  Keita is worse and that's about it.

Haha, I love that comment.
With the passive skill that always gives one extra turn at agi 13, Frans doesn't really have much use for stat points other than vitality anyway.
I just saw someone's death on day 6, it was gruesome and completely threw me off guard.

This game twists the alignment system so that Law vs Chaos becomes Libertarianism vs Communist?  There's a way bigger focus on the worst parts about liberalism though. (To be fair, that's easier to convey in an apocalyptic setting) It's kinda interesting, I liked what Strange Journey did with that a lot more though.

The endings make both paths look pretty awful.

[Twilkitri]

Crimson Shroud - played through

Cannot recommend this game.

I like the aesthetic in theory, but everything's too static. A scene will just have the character figurines in a single position for the whole scene, possibly with some different camera angles. I expected the figurines to be tapped about and so forth. This is only a minor complaint though, really.

At one point, you need to get a randomly-dropped item to proceed, which doesn't sound too bad if you don't know how encounter grinding works. Every room - outside of the first visit and any special events - always has a particular encounter (or doesn't have an encounter at all). The encounter always has the same enemy set and same special rules, if it has any (including the Ambush rule, which is particularly absurd considering that the party knows about all the repeat encounters and is given the option to try to avoid them). They also always have the same opening and closing flavour text, which makes retriggering encounters considerably mood-breaking when the party keeps making the same mistakes over and over, and so forth.

There's only one room which can have the enemy you need for the drop at this point (it is a Skeleton Mage), so if you don't get it you need to move to a different room (and sit through the flavour text for that room, again, and possibly deal with another encounter if you don't choose the obvious room) and then move back again.

Each encounter starts off with the same set of enemies, and the given encounter doesn't start off with any of the enemy you need to kill - it has a Skeleton and two Skeleton Archers. But it's fine because new enemies show up as old enemies are killed. But the possible replacement enemies are chosen from a separate set for each enemy position, and as far as I'm aware the set for the plain Skeleton only allows for more plain Skeletons and also Skeleton Knights, so if you just keep killing the enemy in the first position the number of replacements will run out and a Skeleton Mage will have never shown up.

(Similarly, later on there's an encounter with a Lich Lord and two skeletons of some type - if you keep killing the skeletons before killing the Lich Lord, skeleton reinfocements will keep showing up, while if you kill the Lich Lord while there's still replacement enemies remaining then a Lich will show up instead. This doesn't happen with huge enemies though (at least with archdemons, didn't try with minotaurs/etc) - there the position will just be left empty.)

So it's all very tedious. (Keep in mind that you don't actually get told in-game that you need to get a random drop from an enemy, let alone what enemy.)

(Also - I don't remember how long the battles in question were taking, but later battles against repeat encounters (and this is not a very long game) are 10-15 minutes per encounter.)

All descriptive text - including flavour text for items/locations, but more importantly including details of the effects of skills/magic - scrolls across the top of the screen an no yi ng ly sl ow ly. I was not able to find any way of speeding it up or displaying it in a more user-friendly manner. I ended up giving up on reading flavour text, because it was more annoying to read it than to go without.

I didn't care much for the ending. Supposedly there's a different ending if you new game plus it but I don't want to.

After the point at which you get teleported back to an old area, I went back to the room before the one you were teleported from to save and found myself slaughtered by the encounter there, after which I conducted several hours of grinding under the assumption that I was under-equipped. Then later the final boss is horribly underwhelming and I could probably have dealt with it with the equipment I had had previously. So I guess the encounter in question (which I was able to barely defeat with my upgraded equipment) was just random pseudo-superboss out of nowhere? Anyway don't go to that room after being teleported despite it being the obvious place to save, unless you want to.

The bonus dice system probably didn't have enough of an effect on battles to be worth it. They should have handed out more dice (at lower side counts, presumably) and let you carry more at once. Sure you could spend your time grinding up to 10 d20s, but then you've just got one shot at 200 bonus damage (or possibly 10 bonus damage) (assuming you can actually dump all of your bonus dice into damage at once - I never tried it). Nowhere near worth the effort.

Rolling dice does get a bit old, sadly. The 'tilt' system isn't useful at all either - either you get a small bonus die which is worthless which you could have easily gotten by comboing anyway, or you get a big bonus die which obliterates any chance you had of making your roll (assuming you can actually get big bonus dice out of the tilt system, anyway - I only ever got small dice).

Another note for anyone that decides to play for whatever reason - the Repose spells, which say they give off +10%/+20% MP regen, actually give off +25%/+50% like Frea's skills (at least Repose II gives off +50%, I never bothered with Repose because +10% would have been worthless).



McPixel - played through

Fairly entertaining, often dumb.

The elevator and Titanic stages were the most amusing ones I can remember offhand.

Haven't played any of the DLC yet.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Ys Origin - Yunica Hard Mode playthrough, currently on the Bloody Blight. Phoenix Flame is so hilariously busted. Also, the fight against the fourth demon with Yunica is pretty much up there for me for most memorable fight in the game so far just because of how entertainingly out of control it can spiral, since there's a lot going on, a lot of targets to pin down (targets who HEAL) and the bastard learned his projectile attack patterns from ZUN. With Hugo, you just pewpewpew, abuse his egregious defensive cheese and lollerblade your way through, but Yunica has to -work- her ass off to keep the targets under control, and that's half the fun. Properly managing your MP gauge to keep Phoenix Flame always at the ready to KO the beast's parts is pretty much the difference between life and death, and no other fight in either Felghana or Origin made me feel -that- way in terms of resources for sure.

Plotwise, I'm pretty sure I officially like Ciato Yunica now, since she's written very balancedly. None of her character traits are overbearing, she doesn't indulge in excess overwriting, she just feels fairly organic. On the other hand, whenever Roy opens his goddamn mouth within sighting distance of Yunica, I bang my head on a wall until the bleeding stops. It's amazing how he manages to be about as useless as Miuscha, but in a completely different way. Ys writing.

Romancing SaGa 3 - Blew through the East Continent quests and currently testing Buné, who is a fucking mess. Four different forms with HP buffers and a continuously growing skillset and distinct stat sets (which fortunately don't make a lot of difference)! Messy initiative moves that bring her doubleacting at the top priority tally! An attack/defense buff that messes with my testing! It's like they saved all the insanity for her, considering how straight-forward Avnas, Alloces and Forneus are.

[Shale]

2nd OGs: Stage 7. Irm is the destroyer of worlds. The only reason he's not soloing stages is because I have to feed kills to the Masokishin and *sadface* Ibis for secrets.

Dust: An Elysian Tale: Picked this up in the Xbox end-of-year sale. Fun Metroidvania-thing. Character designs look like they come from a furry comic, but the actual animation is really nice, the gameplay is fun and the writing is pretty sharp. By which I mean it drops Ghostbusters references into sidequests.