What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Clear Tranquil]

@ Grefter Me or Niu? ;o

Lavitz gets Gust of Wind Dance at L11, and since he's forced for Shirley's Shrine yeah L11 at the end of that seems pretty reasonable.

Thanks NEB

Oh I remembered I did the marsh fort and Sandora battles with Commander/Knights pseudo boss, that probably helped as well~

Rose is easily my strongest character right now. Whip Smack mastered, does between 140-190~ depending on enemy, DLV2, Astral Drain Special does 200~ I have her with the Demon Stiletto/Cape/Attack Badge combo Dart has mastered Double Slash and Volcano, is working on his third one and Lavitz has mastered his first one, and is on L3 on his second. Dart also has DLV2 and Lavitz just got Blossom Storm aww yeeah~

[Meeplelard]

Isn't Early Game Rose's whole thing being "I'm better than all of you at everything...except HP...and Shana's speed...DEAL WITH IT!" <_<?

[Grefter]

I mean you CT.  Niu is always a good time, but he is a fairly predictable.

I am aware that the final dungeon is crazy big, DDS does that itself.  There is a difference between that and the one right after they start peeling your party like a banana.

[Fenrir]

Yeah TAY's was pretty long in retrospect. But it didn't really feel long at all. Maybe because it's basically the whole final chapter and I expected a lot of game left by that point since the dudes are finally reunited.



Soul Sacrifice: Has the Lost Odyssey syndrome of pretty bad main story (repeating the same things over and over) + great lore hidden in menus.
I've just been sitting there for one hour reading a lot of tales about horrible-to-decent people making pacts with the devil and being changed into bosses. Love it.


I should mention gameplay at one point. It's an action/RPG specifically about boss fights. Some missions aren't boss fights but those honestly only exist to help pace the game a little. Random enemies exist, but mostly as resources (and minor annoyances) during boss fights.
When you kill an enemy it reverts back to its pre-monster state (for example, a spider) and you can choose to either save it (A little health restored + More Good Exp) or sacrifice it (Spell resources renewed + More Bad Exp)
When an ally falls in battle you can heal him so he gets back in the fight or sacrifice him to unleash a big bad >:-( smiley face spell. Usually everybody saves each other online, because sacrificing really is being a total jerk so nobody does it. (except me obvs.)

Spells are your only way of attacking. You get a bunch of them every mission and can fuse them together.
You only get 6 spell slots though. And you can't spam spells; you only have a limited amount and have to search around the battlefield for items or random monsters to replenish them. It's not too bothersome, it's just a way to balance the game. 6 slots does feel too limited though. There are like 40 spell types or something but I can't afford to waste one slot. In fact nowadays I only use regular projectiles, roots (elemental damage roots), eggs (explosive eggs), healing, golems.


That's the basics but there's a ton of other shit, as expected from a game like this.
I just equipped a +65% damage -35% defense rune on my chaos arm IV, then a bunch of elemental tri-roots and fought an earlygame harpy. Immediately bombarded it with fire tri-roots. It caught fire (stunned) so I used ice on it (combo) + attacked it over and over with ice until both its wings were broken (SW33T L00T) and it was trapped in ice. At this point I used electricity for another combo and it died.

"Chez Yattaf' multiplayer room working well. About 50 MP games so far.

[Meeplelard]

Super Mario Galaxy: Finally finished...well, ok, I mean beat the final boss.  Took me long enough and it's entirely my sister's fault.  No, I won't get into why!

Well, no, part of it is my brother's fault for hogging the TV but let's not get into that!

Anyway, I can see why the game got such critical reception.  It really does elevate the genre to new heights and doesn't skimp on like anything.  Ok, some people whine about the LACK OF EXPLORATION but since when has that been a big part of Mario?  Mario 64 is like the only game and maybe Sunshine?  Either way, I'm not sure what you're suppose to look for in exploring other than Stars so...<_<

Two things that I don't like about this game though are Swimming and Spring Mario.  Spring Mario is just an awkward mechanic that feels forced last minute, and honestly is the only power up that didn't really add to the game, but legitimately detracted.
Swimming...oh boy.  For as good as the game controls normally in most places, Swimming it seemed to have lost all competence and became legitimately painful.  This wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't keep forcing you to do swimming sections once every like 3 Galaxies or so.  One of the last stars I got was all "Oh, new one Star Galaxy, lets grab that!" *Swimming* "Fffffffff."  Thankfully it was a boss fight so it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but blech.

[Grefter]

It wouldn't be a Mario game if underwater controls weren't dogshit.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The underwater controls in the 2D games are only moderately bad. The underwater controls in the 3D games are an abomination.

[Meeplelard]

Swimming in Galaxy isn't so bad when you have a shell and just need to go straight with some basic turning (see the Penguin Race for example), it's just that only comes up sometimes.  Plenty of "Swim free style!" and LOTS of "DIVE DOWN TO DEEP!", the latter emphasizing the problems the most.

I don't remember Mario 64's swimming being that bad (though certainly not good by any stretch of imagination), though possibly because it is used way less (I can only think of two swimming stages off the top of my head in Mario 64 but very possible it's faulty memory).  Galaxy seemed like it was proud of swimming mechanics and kept bringing it back meanwhile.

[Shale]

FF Dimensions: Picked this up on an end-of-year sale. I'm not thrilled about the JP twist on the job/ability system, but other than that (and the amateur-hour line-break glitches) Alternate Reality FFV is good times.

[Grefter]

JP really exists to throttle you going broad with jobs and guide you into focusing on two or three jobs.  You will always have plenty of JP if you don't go super broad.  I am not even convinced it is actually to stop you being overpowered and not just to keep the player focused (and counter exceptionally dumb grinding).

FO:NV - Starting this up again was painful as fuck.  I hate this engine so much.  It is terrible.  Once I was down past Primm I was mostly comfortable with it again though, but goddamn does it fucking suck.  I probably should have replayed Alpha Protocol.

[Sierra]

FONV: There are more important things to talk about than FACTS and DATA!

I should really hate Borous because cazadores, but it's just impossible for me to dislike anyone who talks like that. Anyway, weapon loadout for Biiiiiiig Mountain (and probably the rest of the game):

-12.7mm submachine gun (GRA edition because I don't have that achievement yet).
-Holorifle+++ (probably my favorite weapon in the game).
-Riot Shotgun
-Survivalist's Rifle (awesome, but not sure why I brought this, as I probably won't use it. Sorry, Randall!)
-Annabelle (I've been stockpiling missiles the whole game. Time to go nuts with explosive sneak attacks from a mile away).

May cycle in the Cyberdog Gun later if I feel like it. I remember it being pretty fearsome when modded.

In between expansions I stopped off in the Mojave to finish off We Will All Go Together. I hate this quest more than any other in the game. There's always this one ghoul who gets killed outside the city limits or something and I spend like an hour circling round the damn town trying to find its corpse, then I go off to do a DLC mission and I guess the corpses reset at starting points when I come back or something? Fuck that quest anyway. Then I stop in Goodsprings to get geared up for OWB and wait what Cid why do you have twenty-two varmint rifles in storage. What were you doing, early 2013 Cid. I don't understand.

I guess I chucked them all in there earlygame and the weight made it inefficient to haul them out and sell them. I just don't know.

[Meeplelard]

Wonderful 101: I was fighting a giant spiked robot.  Then a Transylvanian Girl appeared, started talking like a valley girl, transformed into the Pink Ranger, posed like Bayonetta, then whipped the robot to death.

Then I fought a Giant Mech on a giant tower, using said Giant Whip, then I Falcon Punched him in the face with a truck sized fist.  Oh yeah, there was also a German Alien Villain with 3 eyes who told me his life story because Wonder Red requested it.

...I am under the impression Kamiya made this game to prove that people really shouldn't try to test his levels of over the top insanity.  Mind you, the above was all the abbreviated version.

[Fudozukushi]

Something about the holorifle never felt right with me.  But the cyberdog gun is real good.  It has a scope!  It weighs 27 pounds!  It needs pistol powder!

I ran through Searchlight's crap earlier too.  Thankfully fast traveling to the place instead of wandering in seemed to put all the target ghouls in their initial spawns so I didn't have to deal with any wandering at all.

Having Bloody Mess with the Avenger is hilarious.  I fire so many bullets everything explodes and I always leave the crimson trail in my wake.