Author Topic: What Games Are You Playing 2013? (Read 186825 times)

Anthony Edward Stark · « **Reply #1625 on:** June 22, 2013, 09:26:37 PM »

Quote from: Fenrir on June 22, 2013, 05:02:10 PM

I found pacifist is pretty fun in NV. Pro Caesar though??

Yeah, I don't think you can finish the game on Caesar's route without killing the President. You don't have to do it directly but he does have to die by your hand.

Meeplelard · « **Reply #1626 on:** June 22, 2013, 11:30:20 PM »

Honestly, FF3o did Job Levels better. You get bonuses from JLevels, but they aren't huge, especially for fighters. FF3DS gave too much emphasis to Job Levels, it really hurts later jobs, most notably the Earth crystal ones. Fire/Water Crystals are gotten promptly enough that you can catch up with some investment Though I don't think JLevels really are the problem with the game.

It's that FF3DS tried to rebalance a system to make all jobs viable when the original intent was that Jobs were specifically intended to become obsolete in favor of others. Even with a bunch of JLevels in FF3o, a Monk would not be better than a Black Belt (keeping it to the FF3DS names because easier), or a Warrior beating out a Knight. This isn't the case in FF3DS, especially since Black Belt is gotten way later in FF3DS compared to FF3o, and Black Belt is one of the most JLevel intensive classes in the game for worth.

So I don't thin JLevels themselves are the problem, I think it's that FF3DS wasn't balanced properly around their existence. FF3o showed JLevels are not intrinsically flawed, just FF3DS' way of handling was too much.

THAT SAID...

Donkey Kong Country Returns: Beaten the main game. Not much to say other than it's hard but fun. Someone argued it was the best 2D platformer of this generation. I cannot agree with this but mostly because Mega Man 9 exists which is one of the best Mega Man games ever, less so for DKCR's worth.

Though, DKCR really contrasts NSMBU in general. NSMBU gave you a bunch of lives, you're never at a risk of dying. DKCR, you can easily have 70+ Lives, but it's also easy to just blow through about 30 of them in a given stage, so the game is hard enough to make you actually care about those lives.

Fudozukushi · « **Reply #1627 on:** June 23, 2013, 12:46:06 AM »

Shit, I've only done the Legion path once so I completely forgot about the President. I do remember I have to blow up the Brotherhood though. Well, when I get there we'll see how creative I can get I guess.

Sierra · « **Reply #1628 on:** June 23, 2013, 12:57:32 AM »

Are we talking pacifist run like the game legitimately never registers any deaths as caused by you? Is that even possible in New Vegas? (Does it count as your kill when you reprogram turrets to do it for you?)

Fudozukushi · « **Reply #1629 on:** June 23, 2013, 01:14:47 AM »

NCR/Yes Man is doable since you can peace-talk all factions and can disable House but not kill him. House and Caeser require you to wipe out the BoS though.

Sierra · « **Reply #1630 on:** June 24, 2013, 01:16:07 AM »

Castlevania weekend. Rondo of Blood, beat up Dracula with a twelve-year-old girl. He didn't take it very well. Two runs through the game, though--first was just straight-up Richter the whole time because I didn't find any of the alternate stages or any of the captured girls. Then FAQed the hell out of it (because holy crap how did anyone stumble onto the good ending on their own? What's wrong with you, Konami?) and ran Maria the whole time because she's so much easier to use that it's absurd. Gave up trying to beat good ending Drac with Richter after probably a few dozen failed tries. There's just too much shit going on when that third form hits low HP.

And today was Symphony of the Night. Tore through an Alucard run to unlock the other characters (PSP version includes Maria mode. Birds shall be thrown with abandon! Yes). Spent most of the game maining the combat knife. What the heck? Hadn't taken any notice of this thing before but it turned out pretty excellent. A few points less attack than most one-handed swords but attacks twice as fast. Pretty good deal! Anyway now I'm poking around the CV wiki just to check out all these gamebreaking random weapons I've never got throughout three runs through the game and jesus there is some ridiculous shit in this game. I didn't know 90% of this stuff existed. You and your drop rates, Konami.

Will probably make a Richter run before tackling Maria. Save the novel run for last and all. Never actually completed Richter mode before anyway. And why play new games when I can play old ones over and over again right?

Pyro · « **Reply #1631 on:** June 24, 2013, 01:26:55 AM »

Etrian Odyssey IV:

I was curious if Etrian Odyssey 2 was indicative of the series as a whole in terms of challenge/setup/so forth. EO4 has answered that for me since they feel like identical games. Pure dungeon crawler with some party customization thrown in and cute chibi anime PCs.

I like the exploration aspect of finding caves/labyrinths, since it involves some thinking and avoiding/baiting the giant monsters that will make mincemeat out of your party while searching for interesting tidbits in the landscape. The customization works fairly well and I like the comfort of knowing that if I 'mess up' I can just spend two levels and respec. The other thing I like about the game is End of Raging Winds. Too bad it has only played once, and only for a midboss at that (deserves to be a major boss theme).

Party is a Fortress/Dancer/Twinblader (status whore)/Medic/Sniper.

The Dancer isn't contributing as much as I had hoped unfortunately. The Sniper's damage is starting to leave something to be desired (although Arm Bind is nice, the accuracy is just too poor against FOEs). The Fortress does her job well, the Twinblader kicks ass (accurate status, good damage, speed), and the Medic does what a Medic does. I'm as uninspired by the EO4 Medic as I am with the EO2 Medic though. Slow and the healing isn't as good as I'd like. Row-target status healing is sweet at least.

Fenrir · « **Reply #1632 on:** June 24, 2013, 08:29:58 AM »

FF3 Yattaf:

Last really interesting fight was Titan. Easy though. I had a job level ~90 Knight who took 1 damage with 2 shields after using Shield from its weapon.
I grabbed Black Belt and did the Odin/BahamuR sidequests to raise job levels. Then Doga and Unne were each OHKOed by Focus -> Focus -> PUNCH. I then punched my way through Eureka. (and got an amazing ribbon in the process)

Do you know just how much damage a level 80 jlevel 50 black belt does?? Yeah me neither. All the game ever shows anymore is 9999.

500 HP potions don't exactly cut it anymore (Yattaf has 7000 HPs) but I don't... really need healing in battle anymore? At worst I can switch back to jlvl 99 Knight, who can heal a decent amount with Blood Sword + whatever best shield is available.

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #1633 on:** June 24, 2013, 08:34:13 AM »

Exp focusing kinda dumb sometimes.

Also you can estimate your Black Belt's damage by seeing how many hits it takes to kill endgame bosses! I can't guarantee how effective boss defensive stats will be though.

Fenrir · « **Reply #1634 on:** June 24, 2013, 09:21:07 PM »

Quote from: Dark Holy Elf on June 24, 2013, 08:34:13 AM

Exp focusing kinda dumb sometimes.

Strangely this worked really well with FF5 solo.
I maybe should do a post where I rank all these challenges I did, one of these days.

FF3 Yattaf solo is pretty much over, I can't imagine losing to the final boss. I also have 15 elixirs.
Instead I've done all the stuff added to the remake. And it is all awful.
1) Mognet. Wifi only sidequest in an RPG. Great idea. Thankfully removed from the PSP version
2) A legendary blacksmith that moves between towns.
3) No meaningful enemies until the end, only a pure waste of time
4) Optional dungeon that's as long as this: <-> Only one dumb superboss.

The FF3DS/FF4DS team is decent enough at remaking old games but only has terrible ideas on its own. They made their own game after those remakes and it was a slog filled with terrible ideas. (FF 4 heroes of light)

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #1635 on:** June 24, 2013, 10:33:27 PM »

That sounds like a pretty good assessment of that team yeah.

FF3DS focuses three different resources when you only use one PC: regular "level up" exp, job level exp (based on number of actions, now one PC gets all the actions), and "hand/weapon" exp you gain each time you attack. FF5 only has one resource being focussed in this way (AP isn't focused and there is no equivalent of hand exp).

Speaking of FF5 challenges, new fiesta: blue mage, time mage, monk, white mage. Compared to all my previous fiestas this team is stupid OP. No boss is capable of posing a challenge up against the combined might of time/blue/white (not that white has mattered yet); I don't have any lightning damage or stop-song but I'm still going to beat Omega and all else shall be mocked. Fighting all the randoms because they're somewhat more interesting with this team at least.

Meeplelard · « **Reply #1636 on:** June 24, 2013, 11:45:56 PM »

Quote

The FF3DS/FF4DS team is decent enough at remaking old games but only has terrible ideas on its own. They made their own game after those remakes and it was a slog filled with terrible ideas. (FF 4 heroes of light)

The team also made Tales of Versus. You'd think a Tales Cross Over Fighting game would be easy and natural progression, but nope! They managed to screw that up too!

Clear Tranquil · « **Reply #1637 on:** June 25, 2013, 04:35:58 PM »

Okami HD- GG, Fireburst is OP~

Just about to do Catcall Tower (^_^), as well as Fireburst, I have also managed to power up the time Brush tech (Mist Warp), the Cherry Bomb one (Cherry Bomb 2) and just received Whirlwind though I haven't used the latter two in battle yet. Also to rival the group of jumping heart dogs in the area I have been playing through now there are lots of kitties ^_^ Now I am going to a tower which promises to be full of them. Massive CT bait game is massive CT bait game =) I'll reserve full judgement until I'm all done but this is a serious contender for one of my all time favourite games~

Fudozukushi · « **Reply #1638 on:** June 25, 2013, 05:06:57 PM »

Fallout New Vegas: Honest Hearts and Dead money finished in that order. Comedy value of the two of them shoots up with all the Divide and Big MT foreshadowing turning the Courier into some sort of completely oblivious asshole. Good thing I was 1 INT so it was totally in my non-existent character. The Courier vs Courier Foreshadow Dialogue Challenge also completed during the Ending Slides for Dead Money, and if I'd killed just one more thing I probably would have leveled during the slide. Woulda loved to see how that played out. My vigorous habit of deleting my saves to try and fix all the loading screen crashes means all my Madre saves are already gone.

Honest Hearts: Still the weakest of the DLCs I feel. Graham's great and all, but the White Legs are just bland and dull. Even with the Ulysses stuff for the White Legs they can't compete with the other DLCs. The brutality and diversity of the Marked Men, the delicious Ham of the Robo-Scorpions and the unnerving nature of the Ghost People. Fleeing the valley is still weak since you kill Salt-Upon-Wounds anyway leaving so Graham and the Dead Horses could probably clear the White Legs up and save Zion anyway which Daniel's ending slide bitches about eh.

Bizarrely choosing to attack will be what I do during my Pacifist playthrough.

Dead Money: By this point even with DUM DUM INT I've enough skill points to just pass most of my challenges. Had points in Perception for once as well so I got Christine's chip thingy. Pointlessly got all the Vending Machine tapes. Having Auto-Inject Stimpacks was kinda hilarious for cloud running. The final tunnels leading to the vault are still obnoxious though.

Totally gonna skip this on Pacifist since shipping the comps around the Ghost People doesn't seem possible. Even in 100 Sneak Mode Dean would just start shooting as soon as he saw anyway. Granted I didn't have him on passive but all it takes is one DANGER anyway and everything's ruined. I don't think it's even possible to get past some of the speaker parts without shooting them too. I suppose if I get Stealth Boys in every single one of Dean's Stashes the first might be possible but eh....

Clear Tranquil · « **Reply #1639 on:** June 25, 2013, 06:19:30 PM »

Okami HD- Ok, so now we have a dance troupe~ Get out of my head game =P

Edit - Obtained Fountain and Power Slash 2 heheheh~

Meeplelard · « **Reply #1640 on:** June 25, 2013, 10:51:25 PM »

CT is finding stuff I didn't even know existed in the game! Granted, Mandy was doing the same so maybe I just suck at finding this stuff <_< >_>

Project X Zone: Up to Chapter 5! It's basically Namco x Capcom 2, even to the point where characters from that game are all like "Hey, remember when we fought together?" or recognizing things similar, like Tron going "Hey! That girl is like KOS MOS!" when she sees T-elos.

The major thing this game has NxC so far? Enemy turns don't take forever and a day. One example was that a turn had like 10 enemies going in a row...took less time than would 2 enemies acting in NxC.

Fenrir · « **Reply #1641 on:** June 26, 2013, 12:17:58 AM »

Quote from: Dark Holy Elf on June 24, 2013, 08:34:13 AM

FF3DS focuses three different resources when you only use one PC: regular "level up" exp, job level exp (based on number of actions, now one PC gets all the actions), and "hand/weapon" exp you gain each time you attack. FF5 only has one resource being focussed in this way (AP isn't focused and there is no equivalent of hand exp).

I didn't even know about hand exp.
job level exp didn't matter that much because you can reach high levels fairly easily by playing normally. The curve for regular exp is less exponential than usual though. I didn't end up with that much of a level advantage in FF5 (where I didn't grind either)

Quote from: Dark Holy Elf on June 24, 2013, 08:34:13 AM

Also you can estimate your Black Belt's damage by seeing how many hits it takes to kill endgame bosses! I can't guarantee how effective boss defensive stats will be though.

Red dragons were constantly 4HKOed. I'd estimate that Black belt level 99 everything does around 30k damage overall. Probably less than a warrior with Advance.

Superboss Iron Giant died against a solo jlevel 7 character. I had grinded Yattaf to level 99 and switched to onion knight. Back row, double onion shield, onion armor, genji stuff otherwise. Then, alternating between Flare and Elixirs.
Level 99 onion knight makes even jlevel 7 work.

Unlocking Yattaf's non chibi art was pretty awesome. I can't even find it anywhere on the internet. It's the uber secret only available on the PSP/phone versions!

Captain K. · « **Reply #1642 on:** June 26, 2013, 05:20:42 AM »

So apparently Xbox is giving free games away every two weeks to Gold members for an indefinite period of time. Right now the free game is Fable III. So what the hell.

Fable III: I can identify a person's sexual orientation by shaking their hand. I also learned that gay meant homosexual during the Industrial Revolution.

superaielman · « **Reply #1643 on:** June 26, 2013, 05:25:46 AM »

FF6- Playing this on and off. Up to the Magitek factory. After Eviltype, playing vanilla is a slight step down in challenge. *cough*

DjinnAndTonic · « **Reply #1644 on:** June 26, 2013, 08:57:47 AM »

Project X Zone: Played a few levels of this. It certainly is... flashy! It's enjoyable so far, but I haven't seen a lot of depth in terms of actually differentiating the PCs from eachother so far in anything but the most superficial (read: aesthetic) ways. This does not make the gameplay -bad-, it just makes it repetitive. At least thus far. I haven't gotten far past the tutorials, there's plenty of time for them to get fleshed out. I'm just not holding my breath.

Story is balls-to-the-wall over-the-top already, but playing it with the straightest face. I approve wholeheartedly.

I am amused that the entire game is voiced in 'glorious nihongo'. It's been so long since I watched subtitled anime, I forgot what it sounded like (which is to say, not much like regular spoken Japanese). I get why they made this decision, PXZ is a damned niche game if I ever saw one and any corner-cutting that wouldn't offend the target audience is a corner well-cut. I'm still just shocked the game got an official translation at all. It's a big gamble, and I hope it pays off because I would love to see more of these.

Dear Capcom: Please stop denying that Breath of Fire existed. Yes, I love Darkstalkers too, but they are not a suitable replacement for -everything else in your library of games-...

I hope when NamcoXCapcom 3 or whatever comes out in Japan, they bring Konami in on the action (Squeenix, Atlus, or Nintendo would be even cooler, but they don't seem as willing to do crossovers, plus FireEmblemXSMT is coming out soon so they're probably considered a rival series at this point...)

Meeplelard · « **Reply #1645 on:** June 26, 2013, 01:29:00 PM »

Quote

I hope when NamcoXCapcom 3 or whatever comes out in Japan, they bring Konami in on the action (Squeenix, Atlus, or Nintendo would be even cooler, but they don't seem as willing to do crossovers, plus FireEmblemXSMT is coming out soon so they're probably considered a rival series at this point...)

If anything, Nintendo's been more receptive to Crossovers than any of the companies you mentioned above. Sakurai stated he'd be cool with the idea of Nintendo vs. Capcom after Ono said that's the project he wants to see. Not to mention one of Nintendo's bigger new IPs in recent years was Mario and Sonic At the Olympic Games, which is a crossover with Sega. There's Pokemon Conquest which is Nintendo x Tecmo I believe (or whatever company makes Samurai Warriors), and SMTxFE coming out in the future, which is AtlusxNintendo. I think it's safe to say Nintendo doesn't ind crossing their characters over with someone else.

Heck, one of the Itadaki games replaced Final Fantasy characters with Mario Characters, while retaining the Dragon Quest characters.

Meanwhile, I haven't seen anything with Konami that suggests they wanted to do anything like that, outside of Snake in Brawl, and that was completely Kojima begging Sakurai.

Really, the only crossover that'll never happen is something like Metroid vs. Halo, or ZeldaxUncharted. Or Gods vs. Gears: War Of the REAL MEN!

Fudozukushi · « **Reply #1646 on:** June 26, 2013, 04:56:33 PM »

Fallout New Vegas: Completed with Mr. House's ending path. I had the House Duster and none of my other playthroughs would go for him so I went for it. It has doubled as an experiment into my options for the Pacifist Run. Also bizarrely I didn't get an ending slide for Hanlon despite doing his Quest. Weird. My ending speech with Lanius was also a completely different beast than I've used in the past, maybe because of Lonesome Road? Anyway during the Second battle I only ever popped two guys as further practice so something.

I also started the Pacifist Run-through, my first order of business seeing if I could make it to the Implants. So after encounters with two raider groups--one sporting a grenade rifle--and a quick fling with cazadors while running from one of the raiders I make it to Implant Town. So, with 42 SPECIAL points and 182 EXP the world is my scary, scary oyster.

Pacifist Rules more than Tunnel Snakes
Rule 1: Don't kill things. Obviously. I'm counting Companion kills into this as well.
Rule 2: Complete the Caeser's Legion questline. Since this Questline unavoidably involves killing people, my actions to complete those Quests will be solved by not directly murdering people.
Rule 3: Complete as many Caeser's Legion Quests as possible. (This includes taking out Forlon Hope through what I'll describe as a hair-brained scheme.)
Rule 4: Complete as many Companion Quests as I can. (With some trickery it should be possible to get everyone but Lily)
Rule 5: Complete the DLCs I can; figure out if Dead Money is actually possible.
Rule 6: Get the maximum amount of Idolized factions I can.
Rule 7: Get every Ending Slide group.
Rule 8: Come up with more Rules.

Sierra · « **Reply #1647 on:** June 27, 2013, 02:00:23 AM »

Noticed Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines was on Steam and recalled people making it sound cool, so what the hell. Messed around a bit with the tutorial as a Malkavian because come on, but I dunno if I'll actually stick with that because, while amusing, I would like to be capable of holding conversations with people. To what extent is this a game where you can talk your way through problems and avoid combat if desired?

Grefter · « **Reply #1648 on:** June 27, 2013, 04:18:52 AM »

Obvious main quest missions are pretty forced combat/stealth scenarios (favoring combat that gives no reward because White Wolf XP system). Side stuff in the hubs though is really free form. I would recommend first run through play something not Malkavian, something that is okay at combat and enjoy some social skills. Brujah is super easy combat but less easy social. Ventrue is a pretty happy medium. Tremere have a pretty consistently good aesthetic (I would use Guns).

Second play if you want sometime enjoy Malkavian as they give veiled spoilers everywhere and either look like All The Fetishes as a female or Pimp Coat with Dr Seuss Hat as a male.

AAA · « **Reply #1649 on:** June 27, 2013, 04:46:59 AM »

Also there's a fan patch that fixes a lot of the bugginess and crash issues, I don't have a link but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

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Author Topic: What Games Are You Playing 2013? (Read 186825 times)