What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[dude789]

FE Awakening: Chapter 12 was certainly a big spike in difficultly. It's nice that weapon selection actually matters a bit in this game on the PC side, the big spread of weapon powers can be frustrating on the enemy side. Chapter 12 is probably the best example of this. You've got all these knights and cavaliers equipped with iron lances, steel lances and javelins who have around 17-20 or so attack when average defense is around 10-12 maybe. The problem is that there's also a few paladins among the knights and cavaliers who have silver weapons whose attack is much higher (27-28 or so) and they'll just swoop in from way across the map and lop off 60% of a characters health or just straight up OHKO the dancer character. It'd be okay if it was just the boss who did this or if I were playing on a harder difficulty, but these guys didn't really have any special markings and this was on normal mode. 

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Started up KotOR2 again.  I don't know if they changed it since the last time I played the game + restored content patch, but holy fuck is that gauntlet you have to run through Nar Shaddaa with Atton, Mira and T3 hard.  If I hadn't made sure to have Atton get his Jedi on the second we hit ground I don't know how I would get through it.  Still cool that they gave Atton his own solo section, though.  I've always liked him, although his blackmail arc with Kreia sort of drops off (because you can resolve it by making him a Jedi once you get your ship back). 

[hinode]

I went and FAQ'd the reinforcements for FE13 chapters 24 and 25 because I remembered from Normal that they had stuff that would be a pain in the ass if they could attack on the turn they spawned. Sure enough, C24 had six forts spread throughout the map that would spawn Paladins, Great Knights, and Wyvern Lords on a rout stage, ugh. The former are at least hindered by all the forest tiles, but the Wyverns would've been a total pain in the ass if I weren't expecting them.

Meanwhile, chapter 25 shocking turned out to have actually REMOVED some reinforcements, instead of the usual tactic of making them spawn a turn earlier and sometimes adding a few extra rounds near the end. On Normal, a set of Dark Fliers and Griffon Knights arrive on turn 2 on both lower corners, but these are gone on Hard and above. Holy crap, I think IntSys actually playtested their reinforcements for once. Oh sure, the Generals spawn on turns 4 and 6 instead of 5 and 7, but those aren't ambush killing anyone.

Edit: C25 complete. I'm sandbagging the last stage so I can look up some details on how the Avatar logbook works, so I'll just compile some quick thoughts on my team this time before I forget. Doubt the finale's going to change my thoughts on a PC, anyhow.

Chrom, 20/18 Great Lord: S-ranked with Sumia. Great start and solid endgame. Definately appreciates a speed boosting Pair Up to reliably double fast enemies on Hard Mode, but someone less overkill than Sumia but who can do more than chip damage on Dual Strikes would probably be better overall. I briefly considered reclassing him to Great Knight for Luna until I noticed it would cost him 4 speed, which is painful even with +9 from Pair Up.

Sumia, 20/16 Falcon Knight: Much less useful without Frederick's strength boosts, she struggled to reliably one-round anything not weak to Beastkiller save the squishiest of mages (not even lategame Sorcerors, which kinda mattered). The high skill helps with activating Dual Strikes though, so Chrom got a lot of kills for her, especially with a Javelin equipped.

Julius, 20 Tactician/15 Grandmaster/12 Dark Knight: S-ranked with Miriel. He was defense screwed early on which held him in check, especially with a partner who wasn't boosting either his defense or his speed. Eventually the sheer quantities of levels fixed that flaw, though on Hard he never felt invincible or completely dominant without any form of draining. 8 move as a Dark Knight was pretty cool for getting him to the frontlines; Valkyrie would've been even better, but male Avatars are kinda boned on class selection compared to females in exchange for more flexible Rallybot children options.

Miriel, 18/15 Sage: Her offense was fantastic early on, especially right after she got Concentrate and Julius got Solidarity for ~33% crit rates with Thunder tomes in the first third of the game. Bad level-ups later on ultimately relegated her to Dual Strikes, mopping up stragglers for exp, and the occasional uber-ranged Rescue, sadly. Lack of durability was an issue the entire game - she could barely take a single physical attack for pretty much the entire game, and her Res wasn't that great either.

Panne, 10 Taguel/~13 Wyvern Rider/15 Griffon Knight/1 Wyvern Lord: S-ranked with Gaius. Panne's growths as a Wyvern Rider: 105 HP/75 Str/65 Skl/70 Spd/40 Luck/50 Def/20 Res. That's just nuts on paper, even by FE13 standards. Only problem is the initial speed loss from dropping a Beaststone, which Pair Up can alleviate. I think going for Griffon Rider before Wyvern Lord might've been a mistake in hindsight, though Deliverer is always nice at least.

Gaius, 10 Thief/~14 Myrmidon/15 Swordmaster/1 Assassin: He was supposed to just be Panne's speed-boosting backup, but somehow he ended up with 38 strength/44 skill/36 speed and was a total killing machine, especially with +Strength from Panne. 8 move while she was a GK, too. What the hell? I need to check if those stats are normal for him. Maybe I fed him a bunch of Energy Drops early on that I'm forgetting, I know all the mid/lategame ones went to Chrom instead.

Tharja, L20/20/6 Sorceror: Blah blah blah Nosferatu blah blah blah high defense blah blah blah Tomebreaker blah blah blah free damage boosts from Vengeance. I had her tank 30-40% of the map at times, hence the highest non-Avatar level of anyone. Clearcut lategame MVP.

Gregor, L17/6 Hero: I basically scanned the Pair Up list for a class that would raise both Tharja's skill and speed and settled on Hero. Poor Gregor basically never saw any action after chapter 9 since his speed and defense were both so middling, but he provided the essential stat boosts to make Tharja broken.

"Marth", 20/19 Great Lord: Actually trumps Gaius with 39 Strength/40 Skill/42(+2) speed. Turned out a lot closer to the one from my first file than I expected, albeit with higher average team levels and thus stats. No S-ranks so I mostly used her with Tiki, though she could fight separately pretty well if need be.

Tiki, L30/8 Manakete: Pretty great with those Hard Mode stat boosts, range 1-2 on a Manakete is fantastic and Pair Up/Rally Spectrum existed to fix any speed issues. I tried to mostly stick with regular Dragonstones when supporting and only switch to Dragonstone+ if she took lead.

Libra, L12 and Anna, L13: I am lazy on training staffbots in this game and just stick to the prepromotes for higher defensive bases. Mostly relied on Physic and Rescue lategame since both are storebought.

Olivia, level irrelevant: I'm resigned to the fact that she's probably the worst Dancer in the series for a variety of reasons, unless you grind her stats via reclassing. Still, she can usually give my staffbots and rallybots free turns safely and sometimes got rescued out after dancing for someone important. Dropped from chapters 21, 24, and 25 for safety purposes, though in hindsight 25 was workable.

Morgan, L19/6 Dark Knight and Laurent, L15/6 Dark Knight: Waited to recruit both until I could pass on Rally Spectrum, plus they got Rally Magic for good measure. Then I fed them what experience I could on their easy Paralogues (with more success on Morgan, obviously) and promoted them to Dark Knight for 8 move Rallybots who could take a hit without dying, finish off weakened enemies, and snipe the odd flier with Arcwind. This worked out about as well as I could've hoped, the Rally Spectrum spam was great lategame and both their durability and offense mattered on occasion compared to a 10/1 Rallybot. They pretty well justified my decision to pair my Avatar with Miriel this run, whom I largely picked for flavor reasons initially ("At the very least Julius should have a Sage wife, even if there's no silverish haired ones available!").

[Pyro]

Ni No Kuni: Finished.

I maintain that this was an "okay" game that suffered from a lackluster plot and gameplay that didn't really excite. It excelled at being a beautiful game, but that doesn't sell it by itself.

THe characters were underdeveloped through and through. Oliver after the very first arc pretty much acts like Oliver from the last arc, and is way too much of a straight man to be interesting besides. Drippy is a bit of a joy in his comments and mannerisms, but not compelling or endearing enough to carry the game himself. Esther is pretty much just eye candy once she joins the party, having little role to play at all. Swaine's joining arc is pretty bad and you don't care at all about him for a while, but his major character arc is decent enough in that you get to see some of his motivations and a genuine disconnect with his former self... then he kind of drops off the face of the planet as far as being a character goes. Character interaction is somewhat acceptable with Drippy picking on Oliver a fair amount and Esther/Swaine being a squabbling comedy duo (which just feels... odd given the age difference, Swaine acts far too much like a teenager). None of these interactions sell the cast as eminently likable. The overarching plot of the game is just bad. Plot points are not elaborated on NEARLY ENOUGH in the arc up to fighting Big Bad 1, and Big Bad 2 is just completely disconnected from the plot beforehand (with handwaves made to tie them in). Big Bad 2 was added to the game after the original plot/story was completed, and it shows. Badly. The narrative disconnect is painful and honestly doesn't even make good sequel material, let alone trying to be part of one large story arc. As an idea, this woman has been the villain 'all along' but has... done almost nothing to hinder the PCs, leaving everything to Big Bad 1. The lack of action until Big Bad 1 is defeated just makes it cheesy "BUT THERE IS A BIGGER VILLAIN BEHIND THE VILLAIN!" nonsense. I'm not even sure on a few major plot points with Big Bad 1, who feels far more strongly connected to the overall story (being the driving force for most of the action of the game, and a far more obvious and omnipresent villain throughout). The game would have been much better served by not adding the last arc and strengthening the story it had up to the end of Big Bad 1, which is where the major climax of the game is and the resolution of the impetus of the journey.

Combat had an interesting system in mind but kind of blew it on implementation. You can switch familiars around and such, but honestly there isn't THAT much reason to once you find one or two to work with. And recruiting new familiars being entirely random is a pain in the behind. Randoms tend not to be a threat for most of the game, and when they finally are you have MT spammable damage to wipe them up easily (which is a good idea, as they have access to the same moves in some cases!). Bosses tend to be decent enough affairs, at least once you can give the "All Defend" and "All Attack" commands to have the AI prep for enemy supermoves that will hurt bunches and bunches, or counterattack when a boss is disabled for some reason due to cooldown or being smacked with a severe weakness. All told though the game failed to excite with the system. The "feed your familiars treats to boost stats!" system got exceedingly boring very quickly, and the familiar system in general felt lackluster. The movesets are heavily reminiscent of Pokemon, with the option to even hold off on evolving waiting for better moves to show up on unevolved mons (this tended to hurt long-run potential somewhat as evolved mons are reset to L1 and need to build up levels again ala Disgaea reincarnation). But for a large part I just didn't care about the movesets outside a rare few. The need to hit weaknesses was not really there that badly (and you generally have weapons to do that for you). The offense stat buff moves were nice enough, but other than that it was just "ST damage" of varying MP/damage ratios and MT damage to select from. Meh. PCs felt underpowered outside of Oliver's lategame (yeah, he's good) and the late-joining PC who comes with a spammable MT hyper-fast move that launches enemies like rag-dolls. I generally didn't care when Esther, Swaine, or a Familiar learned a new move. And that's not what a game should aim for with it's PC development system.

The game is gorgeous. It's been said. It's been said again (because it bears repeating). If you like playing games that are pretty you kind of owe it to yourself to play this game.

I can't justify spending full price on it though. It's a fun romp but not nearly good enough to be hypable, and I don't feel it's a good game for this group in particular that emphasizes gameplay.

[Niu]

I think the solution to Grefter's problem is to play as Pascal, the melee mage. Up to lv.3 physical->Magnetic Field->whatever usually works wonder.
Or go for Cheria, who is much easier to manipulate her charge time than Malik. Up to lv.2 physical->Religiousx2->whatever works wonder as well.

RS 3 Hack- The game is a series of disappointment after God. Chaos Ruler still sucks in this patch, it seems none of the patch maker is working on improving Chaos Ruler. Typical elemental MT spam is getting old among end game bosses.
Hell Lord isn't much better either. It is a surprise how he is easily walled using Imperial Arrow as the formation.
Diva sucks, no explanation needed.
Saiva has nothing but inflated HP. Not to mention the uber reward from beating other last bosses end up making her even weaker compare to past patches......

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Went on a FONV mod safari. At first I was taken aback by the elaborateness of some of these people's video game wives. But then I realized that feeling the urge to make a video game wife is a guarantee you will have time to do it. At first I was going to say that's why the boobs always look like real boobs don't but... Gamebryo.

Tried out the Boulder Dome mod that attempts to recreate Van Buren's area of the same name. Interesting and ambitious, but it has a couple problems. One, I get that they wanted the place to feel desolate and trips to take a long time, but fuck there's a lot of walking you have to do. Way too much.

Also, amateur voice acting. If you make a mod probably don't add that. It just makes your mod awkward.

[Hunter Sopko]

Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection- Started this. It's... strange. But it works, kinda. Ogre Battle map system with comboing, summons and danmaku, Sting elements in the battle system and the good type of IF artwork. Thankfully the alchemy stuff is very simple, unlike Spectral's in-depth but obtuse system. Writing is also simplistic but it's a GoC game. At least servicable so far even if it does not pull off in medias res at all.

[Lord Ephraim]

Kid Icarius Uprising:  Okay, the controls suck but everything else about the game is awesome.  I'm more of a fan of the flight sections than the ground missions.  If I could I would tape a troll face to Palutena, poor Pit.  Anyways, I've been replaying the first two levels to get a feel of the difficulty levels.  A higher intensity means better loot, right?  I'm spending too much effort into weapon fusion.  I'm leaning towards staff or palms for my weapon choice, I dunno.  There's no axes for Pit? wtf i change my mind this game suxs.

I think this game is better played on a normal 3DS than a XL.  The stand that comes with the game doesn't fit the XL, and the heavier XL makes it more unconfortable to hold.  A small touchscreen is actually better for moving around on the ground missions.  Fucking Sakurai doesn't makes things any easy for us large people.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Higher intensity does indeed mean higher rewards, both in terms of item quality and raw number of hearts.

Dunno about the XL specifically, but the best way I found to hold the game was to hold it normally with my left hand while my stylus-holding right hand added some support via the pinky.

[superaielman]

FF6 Eviltype- Started this back up. I haven't played in a few days. Right now I am saved right after finishing the Magitek research factory.

Orcs Must Die 2- Beat Yeti Den and Chilled Caverns without mana. Yeti Den was just a matter of using grinders in the right way to handle the sappers and spamming the Jar of Ghosts to keep the enemies at bay. I beat Chilled Caverns on the first try (with one skull granted). I *think* I can five skull CC without mana, but that requires a lot of effort and getting lucky with my traps killing the goblin shamans.

The hive, fuck. I haven't even gotten halfway through the level. I'm thinking I need decoys at the bridge at the center of the level to save my archers from Lightning bats, but wave 3 keeps on slaughtering me no matter what I do.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Metroid Prime - Most of what good will I had for this game got pissed away by a "you must collect twelve random macguffins scattered throughout the world!" episode. Like seriously, wtf. Anyway I'm at what I have to imagine is the final boss right now. This game is a surpirisingly big failure. Will post more detailed thoughts when done.

Soul Calibur 4 - Mostly just screwing around in one-player, something I don't normally do in fighters but I guess I was in the mood for? To the game's credit, the tower of lost souls is actually quite fun. The rest not so much. I don't even want to talk about "story" mode except to say thank goodness the story is skippable. But you don't have to spend much time on the rest.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

NAMCO WRITING PLOT

[Fudozukushi]

Bot how could someone not love Tiki randomly murdering Siegfried!  Or Soul Calibur ice-cubing the world because it's suddenly evil!  Or Yoda venturing through a rift of space time instead of defeating Palpatine!

[superaielman]

Soul Caliber plot peaked during Soul Blade. By SC5 it literally is a yo dawg waiting to happen.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I wouldn't know about most of it since SC4 decided to put much of its plot in incredibly slow FFT-chapter-intro style text. Sceneskip is a glorious thing.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

* Jo'ou Ranbu tries to imagine that entirely bereft of context.

... l...i...t...t...l...e s...o...p...h...i...t...i...a c...l...e...a...v...a...g...e

Okay, I give up.

[Fudozukushi]

You can fast scroll it, though with like, with the exception of Zams you pretty much know exactly what's going on anyway. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

No I don't.

And I like it that way.

[Fudozukushi]

Good vs Evil.

EVERYTHING RUINED!

[Meeplelard]

Yeah, really not much more to plot than "SOUL EDGE BAD! SOUL CALIBUR GOOD! ALGOL IS MEAN!" and then the endings sort of do their own thing that you just scratch your head about...

SC5 at least has a story, though, like super said, it just ends with a "yo dawg" moment, so I'm not sure that's an improvement...

[Fudozukushi]

SOUL CALIBUR also bad!  Angol Fear is a stupid name.

[Meeplelard]

Fire Emblem Awakening: So I like this game and all but for some reason I'm playing it at a Snails pace.  I'm thinking I'm feeling a little burned out of FE from playing FE12 Hard Mode as much as I did and quickly or something, so yeah, gonna take a bit of a break.

Darksiders 2: Been playing this as well.  Game is...about what has been said.  Notably improved core gameplay in terms of battle system, platforming, etc.  Inferior for exploration (mostly due to poor rewards due to how the game handles it), plot and setting.  It's hard to compare directly to the first game as a result, as while the first game was God of War meets Legend of Zelda, this game is more like Devil May Cry meets Diablo with a hint of Metroidvanias.

I was thinking about doing an Abridged version of this, but there's not enough story to really work it.  Also, lack of a fill-in for The Watcher means half of it would be Death monologuing <_<

[DjinnAndTonic]

A little late, but ...

for the Grefters: You really won't be missing out on any damage by turning off the AI characters' Mystic Artes. You can just use Malik's/whoever you're playing as Mystic Arte multiple times instead. Then you won't miss any damage AND you can control the pacing of the gameplay.


Games Djinn plays:

Penny Arcade Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 2: Sorta plodding through this when I have time. I love the quirky setting and writing, even though I'm still not a fan of PA art. Eventually I will get to PA3 (aka: the one I really want to play). Though the mini-game-based ATB system in this is pretty fun for how short the game is.

Fire Emblem 13: Started playing this, but got busy right around chapter 4... I like the cast so far, and I haven't seen enough plot for it to be -bad- yet. Chrom is a crazy idiot for trusting me, but at least he's getting called out on that. Frederick for best character so far! Gameplay-wise, he's good, but my natural aversion to Jeigans has me throwing him out in front as a literal wall, bereft of any weapons. With the enemy sufficiently lured, my weaker squishies can run up and drink in the EXP.

Also, I like The Vaike. He will become a murder-weapon if I have to walk over the corpses of every other expendable in my army to do it. (I hope it won't be that hard.)

[Luther Lansfeld]

What mode are you doing Djinny?

[DjinnAndTonic]

Normal Classic, male Robin +HP -Luck (I think, I don't recall which minus I picked. I just selected whatever it defaulted to, same with his appearance). I figured whatever was default would be how I'll take him in CKDL.