What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Luther Lansfeld]

FFD- In Chapter 2, just continuing to piddle around.

Sonic Colors - When does this game stop sucking? I've gone through about 9 areas and all of them have been piss easy.

[Sierra]

DD/DA: Poking around on Bitterblack Island, no new gear new enemies in the first couple minutes ho hum--

OHSHIT MIMIC

Am I...am I going to have to go back to attacking treasure chests before opening them? I think I am. (SADLY MY PAWNS WILL NOT.)

The environment is pretty cool. Instead of a bunch of random cave dungeons attached to a world map, it's all one sprawling area, what looks like (so far at least) just different wings of one huge castle. This is an approach I'm very fond of! It's a universally dark, dank and dismal place to visit so far but still I appreciate the style of the layout way more than any of the base game's dungeons. It's a little like poking around the Koudelka mansion except not broken up by interminable battles.

That first boss though, I, uh, probably wasn't supposed to kill him yet. Ten health bars, does 75% of my HP with one stomp, like fifty feet tall stuffed in a barrel so good luck dodging. So instead of actually fighting him I climbed up on the rickety bridges over the boss arena and plinked away at him with Great Cannon for half an hour while my pawns jumped around like morons, taunted him, and fell to their deaths (in basically that order). Now my pawn and I no longer level simultaneously. Staggered leveling, as irritating to me now as it was when I first encountered it in FF1 decades past. Wait why did the cyclops drop multiple eyes. I don't get you, Capcom.

Fenrir make sure to bring plenty of lamp oil. Also towels. You should never forget your towel. (Seriously.)

Death is a jerk.

[Grefter]

The environment is pretty cool. Instead of a bunch of random cave dungeons attached to a world map, it's all one sprawling area, what looks like (so far at least) just different wings of one huge castle. This is an approach I'm very fond of! It's a universally dark, dank and dismal place to visit so far but still I appreciate the style of the layout way more than any of the base game's dungeons.

Well I for one and shocked to hear that you like a quirky open world game with free roaming, no load screens and a bleak setting.

But seriously, Dragon's Dogma sold enough to justify a sequel?  And you bought it?  You are crazy mang.  Crazy.

That said I look forward to Fenrir's posts about it (yours are good, but don't quite have that Fenrir panache).

[Sierra]

What I lack in style I attempt to make for in ::words::. This can take you down a bad road. You start hanging out with a couple adjectives just to leech off some local color and before you know it you're penned in down some backalley by a gang of adverbs with unsavory expressions and more syllables than you know what to do with, but it's okay they'll show you.

And yeah apparently it did. Million or so copies within a month of launch? Though this here is more "Original game repackaged with new content." And because I am a single dude with only a cat to worry about I can afford to buy new versions of games I already have.

I can wear an eyepatch now. So worth it.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

OFF - Finished World 2, and sheesh this game is depressing. That arc is pretty short, but the story with Japhet, as simple as it is, is kinda disheartening if you stop to think about it. Also finished testing him, and holy crap he has even more HP than Dedan. Right now, I'm about to finish World 3 by beating the crap out of Enoch, and I can predict testing him will be a fucking pain in the ass because his whole fight involves an escape segment - and you can't save between the escape and the actual fight. Bleh.

[Grefter]

You mean it is the same release style Capcom use for every second game series they have.

[Fenrir]

I'm going to love Dragon's Dogma expansion and my commentary is going to be boring!
It's a reasonable price for newcomers, you get the entire game + the expansion for 30 dollars at launch on PSN. It's a shitty price for those who already bought the game (= Probably most of those who are going to get the expansion)

Anyway did they change healing in Dark Arisen?
Healing in Dragon's Dogma was particular, for an action game. Cyclops hits you with a club. Press start, time stops, you go into a menu, use a herb and instantly heal.
Involved risk and reward mechanics.


So, getting that no incapacitate title in a normal Tactics Ogre playthrough is pretty difficult, when there are bosses with near OHKO limits, and random dudes with Dark Weight.
My team adapted reasonably well, but Sylvie the Generic Vartan is no Canopus. Some days he seems to have half damage, half accuracy, one third less HP, less defense and magic defense. And none of these godly limit breaks of course.
My tactic for most battles is:
1) Form a massive wall with the 2 Terror Knights and 2 White Knights, with the 2 archers and priests behind.
2) Have the 2 Vartans and 2 Gryphons catch the enemy from behind.
3) Canopus hits someone with the Finishing Move Dullbind. Crap I forgot I had to aim this again.
3) Everything goes well then Sylvie dies. Again.
4) Restart and have Sylvie barely do anything.
Seriously, fuck Sylvie.
(Oh this was pretty hard to find, so I want to share the PSP TO artwork: http://saloonrpg.blog67.fc2.com/blog-entry-27.html
Warning: Legs)


I also finished Sine Mora.
The characters look like they're ripped straight from Blacksad. Amazing work.
It might even be more attractive as a shoot them up as Ikaruga, with an even more convoluted storyline. (I don't even know who's talking most of the time)

The actual game is pretty bad.

There are weapon upgrades. 0 upgrades = Pathetic firepower. All upgrades = God of destruction. Each time you get hit you lose a few upgrades and need to get them back immediately. (They disappear pretty quickly) Usually as you try to get them back you take another hit and lose a few others, and again and again. Misery.

Instead of a lifebar, each attack you eat hits some of your time instead of your lifebar. If the timer hits 0 you're dead. So you can make up from getting hit by killing enemies quickly.
On one left side of the screen there's you. You need to avoid the bullet hell.
On the right side there's the enemy. He's often very small so you need to aim.
How could you do both things at once? I guess the alien replicants who made the game thought "One eye concentrates on the left side of the screen and the other on the right side. Problem solved. Stupid humans."

There's a pretty rad slow mo gauge though.

[Clear Tranquil]

Star Oceans 4- Finally reached the save point in the Audience Chamber in the Palace of Creation, saved before the final bosses. First though allllll the way back to Calnus so I can do more Item Creation, back to ENII for the Last Letter sidequest, and to fulfill some shop orders in general. Going to use the two Red Dragon Scales I found in a treasure chest to make the Bigfoot Claws for Meracle and also ensure everybody finishes with their best main game equipment overall~

Cleared out all the loot in the final dungeons except the ones I don't have the proper elemental rings for yet. Also had to discard stuffs in my inventory to make room for repeats but mainly I did this so I could get all the EXP and SPs from opening the treasure chests/etc >_>

Also might just be me but the game seems to progress really rapidly after the return to Aeos and finally making it to ENII. I mean hanging around Roak and getting all the best stuffs for the best equips for the time whether through the arena or IC, then you're at ENII and there's more new stuffs, some of which can replace some of the best stuff you made, then the final dungeons and same again. Wouldn't be surprised if the final upgrading back at the Calnus outdates some of the stuff I've found on this final stretch of dungeon crawling here too <_<

Currently Meracle is equipped with the Laser Weapon because tossing symbology cards is fun sometimes (and actually turned out to be quite useful when I was engaged by enemies in the anti/sealed skills sections of the Halls of Termination, was glad I'd made healing/revive/buff cards too though they aren't based off INT I don't think) ~

[Sierra]

Anyway did they change healing in Dark Arisen?
Healing in Dragon's Dogma was particular, for an action game. Cyclops hits you with a club. Press start, time stops, you go into a menu, use a herb and instantly heal.
Involved risk and reward mechanics.

Not insofar as I can tell. There's a new augment to make magical healing faster though!!1

(I mostly rely on mage pawns to heal me, actually. Reduces the amount of crap I need to carry around, and going into the menu breaks up combat so I like to avoid that necessity.)

Other stuff, uh. Looks like most of the originally DLC gear is bundled into Dark Arisen as Black Cat merchandise. I think there are some mechanical tweaks but this may be wonky memory. Dragon's Maw isn't in the Mystic Knight skillset anymore and I miss my instant win button. I guess they needed something to make Fighter actually attractive in comparison though. Dark Anguish (I could've sworn this used to be called Abyssal Anguish, the really nutty Mystic Knight weapon buff?) doesn't seem to last as long either. Again though, may just be faulty memory.

EDIT: and of course important change is you can now easily acquire more portcrystals than you will actually need.

While I'm blabbing about the game, it occurs to me I was never clear on this: for weapons with both attack and magic ratings, does the magic bonus actually contribute to melee damage, or is it just there to passively boost your spell power? I never used them much before, so mechanically optimal or not unsure.

[Grefter]

I'm going to love Dragon's Dogma expansion and my commentary is going to be boring!

You say that like I don't read everything you have to say about Dark Souls and enjoy every word.

WA:XF - So Ragnar is Djinn.  Levin encounters the moral quandry of following the woman who has been championing his ideals under someone else's name that he has already decided to follow after finding out she was not who she was pretending to be and following the woman who she was pretending to be and does indeed stand for the ideals he believes in as well. 

Ragnar then proceeds to suggest

Three way.

Unironically.  So yeah.  Djinn.

[Meeplelard]

Sonic Colors - When does this game stop sucking? I've gone through about 9 areas and all of them have been piss easy.

Game gets harder during, Starlight Carnival, Astro Coaster, Planet Wisp, and Aquarium Park.  Tropical Resort and Sweet Mountain are kind of piss easy, yes.

Edit: Though, keep in mind I wouldn't say the game ever gets really "Hard" per se, just stops being a total joke.  This game is scarcely hyped for it's difficulty, for whatever that's worth, and often people snipe at it for the difficulty spike in the 2nd half (though, that's more PROFESSIONAL REVIEWERS!!! or something, and the spike while notice-able isn't like "lolololol" to "frustratingly hard" like they'd imply.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

DJINN RAGNAR AND BLITZ TONIC LEBRETT

There's nothing Ragnar does that doesn't make a scene worse.

[Fenrir]

Thanks Gref! I like your posts too.Seriously I don't know how to react!


I just spent one hour adding +1 to all my equipment in Tactics Ogre in preparation for the Hanging Gardens.
Crafting is interesting.
There is nothing obscure about it. Materials are easy to find and very inexpensive. You buy crappy ores from the store then make them into bigger ores then into ingots and then into better equipment. It takes a lot of time but is all easy and cheap.
Crafting can fail, in which case you reload and try again. Nobody ever said "I just wasted five minutes making ores and bought that Baldur Shield for 5000 gold. Crafting failed. Oh well" Everybody reloads.
So all it takes is a lot of time, spent in menus and saving/reloading.

This crafting system is obviously pretty terrible to anyone playing this game!
But! It is 1) Time consuming and 2) Simple, while most others are 1)Time consuming and 2) Needlessly complicated
So it makes one of the most terrible first impressions, but this might actually be one of the very best crafting systems.
While it looked worse than XF's (for example) at first, but I don't think the added steps of sending generics to the world map to find random shit really adds much.



Anyway you guys should really use Crossbow Canopus or Gryphons one of these days. I can't recommend them enough.
Canopus really should not use any other weapon. All these years, giving him bows or spears? I was a fool. Canopus is all about crossbows. Even more in the PSP remake where he benefits from an incredible AoE finisher.

The best thing about using 2 gryphons is that they have the same RT and always act in tandem. So, "Priest from the back row eats a 2HKO rock to the face" will always irremediably lead to "Priest from the back row immediately eats another, fatal rock to the face"
They're as mobile as vartans (!), and their rocks are reasonably powerful with the same range as bows (!). Their physical attack deals are as strong, and they benefit from an accuracy boost.
Their finishers are very cheap (Only 50 points) with perfect accuracy.
They're by far the fastest units in my team, and pretty durable too. They also only cost 1 slot.
The only things they really lack are item use and Trueflight.
Gryphons. Not Crossbow Canopus great, but great.


Denam's cool as a Terror Knight. Obviously, having the main character be a "Terror Knight" is already its own reward, but he gets a pretty accurate sleep spell (Very useful against titans/dragons) while still being on a competent tanking class.



El Cid: oh yeah I always forget about magic healing. I soloed Dragon's Dogma so this was a non factor.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Bear in mind that I dislike almost all crafting systems (it's just a question of how much), so take my thoughts here with a grain of salt.

The reason TO's crafting system is one of the worst is the nature of the time consumed. If you do XF crafting, you can estimate roughly how much time it will take to gather the needed ingredients. Is it pointlessly time consuming, yes of course, but at least it's predictable. Want to craft in TO? You might succeed in making the item first try, then it's not too time-consuming. Or you might try to make it ten times and still not have it at the end. That feeling is pretty terrible. I think it's extra bad that you have to reset over it. Resets are what you try to avoid in games!

It's like farming rare drops (which is also lame), except at least that involves fighting battles (in the game's presumably rather fun base gameplay) and trying to be as efficient as possible about it. And doesn't involve resetting (unless you want to do it without e.g. gaining unwanted levels/etc.).

[DjinnAndTonic]

I'm going to love Dragon's Dogma expansion and my commentary is going to be boring!

You say that like I don't read everything you have to say about Dark Souls and enjoy every word.

WA:XF - So Ragnar is Djinn.  Levin encounters the moral quandry of following the woman who has been championing his ideals under someone else's name that he has already decided to follow after finding out she was not who she was pretending to be and following the woman who she was pretending to be and does indeed stand for the ideals he believes in as well. 

Ragnar then proceeds to suggest

Three way.

Unironically.  So yeah.  Djinn.

Oh yeah! I knew Ragnar had one redeeming quality besides his abs. Go go polygamy~

[SnowFire]

I find it interesting that Terror Knight Denam worked out.  Style points, sure, but despite having Rampart Aura, I never had any trouble shredding enemy Terror Knights - they seemed to be tanks without tankiness in exchange for their status.  Considering that TO does throw some authentic tanks in your direction, it stood out.

[hinode]

Out of curiosity, what level is your Canopus' Crossbow level, Fenrir?

Mine hit L6 whilst sidequesting in C4, and the third Xbow finisher (Deathblow) is a three hit attack that OHKOs almost every boss in the game. With Canopus' amazing move it is just absurdly good in assassination missions, quite possibly even better than Brimstone Hail overall.

As for TO crafting, its only redeeming feature is that it's mindless enough for me to do it while listening to podcasts and not get distracted on either, much like playing slots in a DQ game. This almost made up for the atrocity of game design that is Wootz Steel. Almost.

[Grefter]

Nah it isn't even that.  It is how it takes more than the item cap in basic materials to make stuff the further you get in.  Everything uses the same core materials and just escalates in price.  From memory some end game stuff tool more than 2 stacks of shitty ore to make a single item.

Soooooo grindy.

[Sierra]

DDDA: So the expansion likes ninja bosses. You can generally run away from them but this can still be pretty alarming. OHSHIT eaten by zombie dog. OHSHIT zombie dragon (fortunately there was a balcony, Great Cannon 2, bosses 0. Except for the times I died repeatedly trying to fight them in melee). OHSHIT SUPER OGRE JUMPED OFF THE BRIDGE RIGHT AFTER SPAWNING wait that one worked out pretty well.

Giant cyclops/zombie dragon pretty clearly not meant to be killable through conventional methods without some extreme grinding. The one unavoidable boss I've fought so far was properly scaled for an endgame character though.

Running Abyssal Anguish hammer mode again. It continues to be a most satisfying and efficient way to demolish boss health bars. There's something viscerally rewarding in that *thunk*/*scrape* SFX combo.

OHSHIT CAPRA--

[Grefter]

WA: XF - Not even much further in an encounter with the head of the Zoroastrians or whatever.  A scene that is all about dealing with the past of Elesius and what it will do with the future after the coup has like 2 or 3 lines from the Princess and then is all about Ragnar again.   What in the actual fuck dialogue writers?

Also Ragnar's advice on hitting on the ladies is to act nonchalant.  He does this by loudly describing how totes hot a woman is to himself within hearing distance but no actually talking to her the entire time.  So you know, be a creeper.

[Fenrir]

I find it interesting that Terror Knight Denam worked out.  Style points, sure, but despite having Rampart Aura, I never had any trouble shredding enemy Terror Knights - they seemed to be tanks without tankiness in exchange for their status.  Considering that TO does throw some authentic tanks in your direction, it stood out.

Terror Knights have the same equipment options as knights (excluding weapons) They have a bit less base durability but nothing major. (I'm comparing TK to WK since I don't have a high level Knight, but I assume WK are roughly the same as Knights) I saw no difference in durability when I changed Denam from Knight to Terror Knight.
Healing + Phalanx might make enemy knights look tankier than they really are. This or they have less defense oriented skills/equipment.

Out of curiosity, what level is your Canopus' Crossbow level, Fenrir?

Mine hit L6 whilst sidequesting in C4, and the third Xbow finisher (Deathblow) is a three hit attack that OHKOs almost every boss in the game. With Canopus' amazing move it is just absurdly good in assassination missions, quite possibly even better than Brimstone Hail overall.

As for TO crafting, its only redeeming feature is that it's mindless enough for me to do it while listening to podcasts and not get distracted on either, much like playing slots in a DQ game. This almost made up for the atrocity of game design that is Wootz Steel. Almost.

I think he and Arycelle have level 5 weapons while everybody else is at level 1-3. Looking forward to this! Crossbows are probably the best weapon types in the main game, for all that bows are more fun to use.
I haven't done many sidequests since keeping the pirate battle for later, and ending up missing it.

Bear in mind that I dislike almost all crafting systems (it's just a question of how much), so take my thoughts here with a grain of salt.

The reason TO's crafting system is one of the worst is the nature of the time consumed. If you do XF crafting, you can estimate roughly how much time it will take to gather the needed ingredients. Is it pointlessly time consuming, yes of course, but at least it's predictable. Want to craft in TO? You might succeed in making the item first try, then it's not too time-consuming. Or you might try to make it ten times and still not have it at the end. That feeling is pretty terrible. I think it's extra bad that you have to reset over it. Resets are what you try to avoid in games!

It's like farming rare drops (which is also lame), except at least that involves fighting battles (in the game's presumably rather fun base gameplay) and trying to be as efficient as possible about it. And doesn't involve resetting (unless you want to do it without e.g. gaining unwanted levels/etc.).

I think you have it backwards. Figuring out how much time crafting takes is very simple in TO. "I need to forge 32 storebought Inferior Ores into 16 Iron Ores into 8 Iron Ingots into 4 Steel Ingots into 2 Baldur Ingots into 1 w00tz ingot. Then I forge that into my weapon"
It's not worth saving / reloading until the very last steps, since the materials are cheap and the % chances for low materials are sky high. Even when crafting the piece of equipment itself, the success rates are 60-80%. The time spent saving/reloading is really trivial comparted to the rest. (This might change far into the aftergame but I doubt it) It's just particularly noticeable as bad design.
In XF I do not immediately know on which maps I need to go, and I don't know the number of crafting items my drifters are going to bring back. Things are less obvious and streamlined.



Anyway, looking back, it's pretty great how Lans Tartaros is out of the picture earlier than Brantyn. (not for long, but hey) I don't think anybody expected that.

This would be like the council of elder conservatives actually ousting the charismatic new evil leader in all those RPGs. This never happens.
(I guess every RPG is trying to re-enact the Julius Caesar story)

Hell, another council just got owned by the charismatic new evil leader in that Balxephon/Hobyrim flashback cutscene I just saw. Balxephon was all "Council = dead. Hobyrim? More like Hobo-rym."

[Dark Holy Elf]

If the success rates are that high then TO crafting is less terrible than I had always heard. My remaining comments stand however.

[Grefter]

Success is based on your stats.  So later in the game you are doing stuff the easier it is.  There is technically some on the fly risk:reward benefits you can do on how frequently you should save when making a piece of gear.  It is mostly just a pain in the arse and so blatantly and obviously terribly designed that is offensive.

[Dhyerwolf]

Could you actually forge multiples at once. Because if so making that one item to add to your weapon is going through the crafting screen 30+ times (let alone the chance of failure). Definitely much worse than XF, where trial and error worked well enough for me at end game.

[Sierra]

DDDA: Wait a minute, that was the final boss from Ghosts 'n' Goblins. Capcom! I am pleased to see that at least one person in the world of Dragon's Dogma actually acknowledges how dysfunctional their cosmology is, though.

Expanded content beaten. Sort of! Once you've killed the boss, the whole area resets with remarkably meaner enemy formations. Want to fight multiple dragons at once? (You're crazy but) you can do that! Feel like fighting through a whole city of capra demons? Too bad, that'll happen too! (Minotaurs actually, but the circumstances in which you first meet one are so similar that I can't help but associate.) So basically it's what NG+ should've been. (NG+, for the uninitiated, being "Exactly the same as before except piss-easy because you have endgame levels and gear.")

Area turned out to be more linear that it looked at first. (Early on you find a clearing with a host of locked doors. Turns out they're all just treasure rooms!) Not really a problem, still pretty cool to explore and way more fun that any of the base game's dungeons. They reused a few rooms over the course of the dungeon, which is lame, but eh. Minor complaint.

Death is still a cockmongler.