Author Topic: What Games Are You Playing 2013? (Read 189503 times)

Fenrir · « **Reply #100 on:** January 11, 2013, 04:50:59 AM »

Strange Journey No Fusion: Kay, Ourobouros (the second fight) is impossible without a lot of grinding so the challenge's over. This was cool while it lasted.

Romancing SaGa 3: Yes. It's great. But.

Romancing SaGa 3 Yattaf solo.

Deep down I knew this would happen. Yattaf is Fighter Ellen w/ spears. (but she's never going to use spears) 20 strength, 15 dex, 20 speed, 15 Con, 16 Vit, 16 Int, 16 Charisma. Everything you'd ever want. Weapons of choices are axes and kung fu, probably with a touch of water (Fire? Earth?) and sun magic later on.

Anyway:

Yattaf is ice burning dudes left and right before even the first battle.
Eventually this happens:

Let's see how far they go without any equipment. HAH.

First boss? Yattaf has Focus. Try breaking 60-100 healing with 0-5 damage hits.

Second boss? He's optional. RUN

Nora?

Zzzzzzz

Go back to the forge, woman

Grefter · « **Reply #101 on:** January 11, 2013, 01:04:28 PM »

P4:G - Brosuke on cooking after Void Quest.

"Help us Master Pimp, you're our only hope."

Fenrir · « **Reply #102 on:** January 12, 2013, 05:03:23 AM »

RS3 Yattaf solo: Frameskip allowed edition

Stats:
HP: 485
TP: 97 (no crowns)
MP: 7
Axes: 18
Spears: 19
Fists: 18
Water Magic: 5
Sw4g: 65535

I doubt the character build choice at the beginning only affects stats and silly weapon levels, since Yattaf seriously doesn't care about that axe at all. She hasn't learned any of the amazing skills she learned last time.

Hard bosses beaten:

There's a pattern here... Great Wheel. Full MT damage, that also manages to be my the best singletarget damage. Costs 6 TPs. I use it against everything. In fact it's the only reason I've managed to go that far.
Water ball is decent. Not sure it deserved losing that weapon crown. I wonder if I'll ever get that back.

RUN.

One thing everyone always forget to mention about RS3 is how great the enemy sprites are. Just look at these things. Pixel art is all the rage these days but I don't think I've seen anything better than the last Snes Square RPGs (I'm thinking about RS3, Rudra's treasure. + FF6 and Bahamut Lagoon to a way lesser extent)

Jo'ou Ranbu · « **Reply #103 on:** January 12, 2013, 05:12:59 AM »

The weapon choice at the beginning affects your skill learning type - so, yeah. You stumbled Ellen away from axe proficiency. <_< ANYHOW, some specific class and weapon combos for certain characters also lead to special learning builds that are usually very good - Ellen and Sara actually can get a unique learn list that includes damn near every tech in the game.

EDIT: And yes, Big Wheel is fucking -nuts- for when you get it and it stays as good MT until the end - and very cost-efficient at that. For full MT, I think only Million Dollars is superior, and that's endgame class rank if you want to learn it. Also, Water Pole? You realize the effect only works if a water field is active, right? I mean, it's not a big deal considering you inevitably have ways to activate it. But keep that in mind, you may need it for that crazy Yattaf challenge. Also, no Moon Magic? Moonshine is pretty much the best healing you can get until the Xuan Castle quests, and in a solo, Moonglow's speed buffing may actually come in handy (also boosts MDef! And I can't begin to tell you how big straight defense/magic defense are in the formula. The fucking game factors the stats twice in its damage calculations).

EDIT2: And -YES-. Romancing SaGa 3 and Treasure of the Rudras both have incredible pixel art direction. The level of detail and artistry amazes me to this day.

Fenrir · « **Reply #104 on:** January 12, 2013, 05:24:18 AM »

NO...

Oh well. I need a lategame weapon more than an earlygame weapon, and Megahawk <<<<< Great Wheel.
(Seriously, axe, please give me Dimension Cut anyway)

Hmm. Looks like being able to learn every tech involves picking the epee for Ellen, and I'm not sure the worse stats overall are worth it.
I'll probably regret this once I try using the Ice Sword.

Edit: About Water Pole, I had noticed the regen only worked with a water field, but not the "block attacks" effect. This explains a lot. >_> Thanks.
I haven't picked moon magic yet because I'm still trying to get that weapon crown back (and can rely on Focus + Salve 2 so far. At least as long as I don't touch bosses) I'm probably going to change that, I even said crowns didn't matter like 3 posts ago.

Jo'ou Ranbu · « **Reply #105 on:** January 12, 2013, 05:32:05 AM »

In all fairness, spears are very good and the only thing keeping them from being the best weapon type no questions asked is high pierce resistance being as goddamn widespread as it is. You're roughly set for life with spears - until you run into the nasty-ass skeleton honey badgers. <_<

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #106 on:** January 12, 2013, 06:03:15 AM »

SO4 - The cult of Crowesexualism continues to dominate the game. I am in a final dungeonish seeming thing.

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #107 on:** January 12, 2013, 06:06:05 AM »

List of people in SO4 who don't want to jump Crowe:

-children
-people with mental capacity inferior to that of children
-people whose genitals are replaced by metal joints

Anthony Edward Stark · « **Reply #108 on:** January 12, 2013, 06:13:35 AM »

SO4 sez "We think Crowe is so cool. He's just unbelievably awesome. That's why you'll never get to play as him. We made sure to take the time to make all our characters really shitty for this game and he'd throw everything off."

DjinnAndTonic · « **Reply #109 on:** January 12, 2013, 06:41:29 AM »

I thought Crowe was playable in the aftergame or new game + or something?

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #110 on:** January 12, 2013, 06:44:06 AM »

I think it might be the aftergame of the PS3 version?

Jo'ou Ranbu · « **Reply #111 on:** January 12, 2013, 10:06:52 PM »

Mario Kart 7 - YEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS. Unlocked all racing courses, methinks. I love this game so much. And blue shells are the worst thing ever forever.

Fenrir · « **Reply #112 on:** January 13, 2013, 01:48:13 AM »

Snow: Def and Mdef do matter a lot, but Moonglow's pretty worthless. I guess this scales with magic level...
Lack of common SaGa knowledge is being a problem yet again. If stat buffs scale with magic level and last for an entire battle (even extra long battles), I should choose moon (Moon Shine, Moon Glow) and earth (Berserk, Stone Skin) magic as my final choice. If they don't, I should choose fire (Self Burning + Fire Wall + Reviver) and sun. (Illusion Sun + Rebirth Wind + Day Break (?))
Water Block is completely amazing, but the restriction bothers me too much in too many battles. I'll have to remove it for the crazy waterfall dragon anyway. (Unless I choose to let lobsters die anyway)

111 TP, 7 MP, still no crown back. I'm probably screwed there. I really should forget about it...
Edit: I got the crown back, but I don't think I can even get one MP for every 10 TPs if I want to keep it. Goodbye, crown.

Bosses today:

The necromancer can summon awful enemies, but the 4 starting ones are really weak. Solution: Hit him with the Tomahawk. Axes being useful for once.

Undine and Volcano are FF5 bosses in a challenge, high stats but vulnerable to all kinds of status.

And I just learned POIZN

That's the damage lost per round.

Even late, this guy is a real pain. Since I gave Sharl the dream gem to get it back in the real world (Cheap as hell, but I don't care) I had no sleep protection. I decided to instead grind on the nurses for a while to get the sleep dodge. Fortunately, the boss doesn't use his other status that often, and I don't think his damage even broke 20HKO.
For the record, Wing Charm's status protection? Terrible.

Easy-ish with the dream gem and Billy/Jimmy.

This guy gets owned by Water Ball. Unfortunately, I get owned by his regen. This battle is a stalemate. At least I don't lose... Right? Right???

SaGa NSFW (Pretend there's Barry White music):

AUGH

dude789 · « **Reply #113 on:** January 13, 2013, 02:47:55 AM »

Dust an Elysian Tale:

-Gorgeous 2D backgrounds
-Fast, slick combat reminiscent of Muramasa: The Demon Blade with some Metroidvania style exploration
-Excellent music
-Character designs that looked like they picked random artists after searching for "furries" on deviant art.

I don't understand.

DjinnAndTonic · « **Reply #114 on:** January 13, 2013, 06:21:23 AM »

Romancing SaGa 3 buffs are laughably bad on duration.
All Buffs (except Stoneskin) decrease every turn after the first by "Current additional stat boost"/4, rounded up
Example : Accel Turn increases Spd by 9, on turn 2, the bonus is now 9-(9/4)=6. Turn 3, the bonus is 4. But Buffs can stack! If you cast Accel Turn again on Turn 3, the Spd bonus is 4+9=13. However, by turn 2, the decrease is more noticeable 13-(13/4)=9 (lost 4 points of bonus Spd).

Conversely, Debuffs last til the end of battle.

Fire Magic is my personal favorite because spammable Reraise is awesome. Sun magic -also- has a Magic Shield effect in Illusion Sun. It's half as effective as Water Pole and Dancing Leaf, though.

Twilkitri · « **Reply #115 on:** January 13, 2013, 06:56:44 AM »

The Journey Down: Chapter One - played through

I like the character design style, but the gameplay isn't anything to write home about. Also a bit short - to be fair, it does seem like they want to be running episodically, but even keeping that in mind it feels short, or at least doesn't feel as dense as other episodic adventures I can think of.

Comparatively little dialogue, no way to jump-cut to the next area that I could find, no way to highlight objects that I could find, some things are more contrived than I prefer (such as the item in the nest)... Also some amount of Bwana refusing to pick items up which he doesn't need yet, which I thought that everyone had discarded as a bad idea a long time ago. I was thinking that there could be an exception made in the case of the Chervil, but on second thoughts he should just be able to pick up the whole book. He certainly doesn't have any problem picking up an entire pitcher of coffee later after asking if he could have a cup of it (and there is a mug elsewhere in the game which he refuses to pick up that could have been used for this purpose :S).

Super Robot Academy - played halfish of?

At least, I'm close to having half of the possible simulations (old plot battles) available, so I'm assuming I'm similarly distant into the game. Always possible that there is a bunch of long stretches without any plot battles or so forth, but do sections like that really count as content anyway?

It isn't very good. But it compels me to play it anyway, which is kind of annoying.

I think that the posture system could have been done without - you can slightly increase your chances of picking a winning posture if you can remember what the opponent's last posture was (so there isn't much point in picking a posture which is advantageous against it as they can't pick it again straight away), but it's still generally luck-based, and it's particularly galling when they take the advantage several turns in a row and you aren't left with much chance to set up any defence as their units all get to act before the timers for your units have even started. Just the timer changes based on your leftover time should have been enough.

It's annoying that the plotless generic enemies still have garbage units at this point, so when you end up accidentally running into one you get an intensely uninteresting battle. Of course the flipside of that would be accidentally running into them and having to deal with a complete battle every time. Solution: Give them better teams as the game progresses and also remove their ability to initiate battles with you. (Presumably they can't be removed wholesale to allow for people who are so inclined to grind coins.)

I am not a fan of the character designs.

My current main team is: Mark Nicht, Akito's Aestevalis Custom, Dearka's Blaze ZAKU Phantom, Melissa's M9 Gernsback, and a Cerberus BuCUE Hound. I've been using that for the majority of the game by now. I also have a separate team for water battles made up of: Tru Getta 3, Nelly Brain, and the Archangel. The water team has actually fared significantly better as I've never even needed to field the Archangel, whereas I've managed to lose several times in plot battles with the main team, but to be fair there have been comparatively few water battles.

The main team probably needs an overhaul as most of the units outside of Mark Nicht are severely underwhelming, but who can be bothered doing that. Especially since the game makes dealing with it so tedious.

Sierra · « **Reply #116 on:** January 13, 2013, 12:57:53 PM »

Quote from: Jo'ou Ranbu on January 12, 2013, 05:12:59 AM

EDIT2: And -YES-. Romancing SaGa 3 and Treasure of the Rudras both have incredible pixel art direction. The level of detail and artistry amazes me to this day.

No kidding. That alone is making me want to play this (that and Fenrir tends to make all sorts of crazy things sound fun).

God Hand: A poison chihuahua?!

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #117 on:** January 13, 2013, 04:31:17 PM »

Yes, a poison chihuahua.

DMC Dante Must Die! - I'm up to Nightmare 3. I've generally fought Nelo Angelo with Alastor before but I ended up switching to Ifrit primarily so I could Meteor-interrupt his phantom sword attacks which are arrrgh. Ifrit has a bunch of advantages in the fight anyway, and is probably better overall. Nightmare meanwhile just continues to live up to its name, what a jerk. Also died underwater for the first time ever! Enemies being able to devil trigger there even though I can't makes me a sad half-demon. So yeah, I'm on track to beat this soon after a hundred or so resets to Mundus probably.

Nitori · « **Reply #118 on:** January 13, 2013, 09:16:55 PM »

Dawn of Sorrow - this is the worst new art, Julius looks hilariously angry and Soma far less fabulous. I guess Mina is fine but no one cares about Mina.

Sierra · « **Reply #119 on:** January 14, 2013, 12:50:30 AM »

God Hand: This game is war on my thumbs. This kind of enforces short play sessions (which is probably a good thing). Anyway, beat up a fat Mexican Elvis.

Fenrir · « **Reply #120 on:** January 14, 2013, 01:20:57 AM »

Heh, thanks Cid. Expect nothing but SaGa from this game though. It's the SaGaest game of all.

Djinn: Hahahah who balanced this?
To be fair, I got Self Burning and it is even worse.

I didn't really want to go to the desert yet and all the bosses left (Forneus, Water Dragon, Dragon Ruler, Algernon) looked completely impossible.
So I grabbed some fire and sun magic and leveled that up. Day Break is completely amazing. In my game every skeleton has upgraded to DEATH EXCEPT WITH EIGHT ARMS and every serpent has upgraded to MEGA HYDRA and every goblin has upgraded to GOBLIN LORD GOD. Every random battle is difficult and every random enemy has too many HPs. So, accurate MT death is a godsend. It even looks cool. Two giant red lasers literally eating enemies.

Then I looted every dungeon available to me because there might be better equipment there? And there was. The Sea Tortoise armor at the end of Forneu's dungeon is amazing.
As much defense as the protect suit, but Yattaf can equip a glove and helmet with it.

The dragon ruler attacks three times per round, but he always uses two physical skills at the beginning of the round, then either another physical skill or *rarely* an ice spell that does around 200-400 damage.
Stacking up enough defense with the Sea Tortoise armor, E. Martial shirt, Close helmet + Vambrace glove = The dragon barely does any damage most of the turns.

Behind the dragon ruler, the ice sword!

It is the absolute worst possible weapon in this solo!! Hurray!!!

I also beat the Water Dragon. A Fire Wall at the beginning of this battle shifts the tendency to fire and removes his healing. He'll try to get back to water tendency with Squall, but the sea tortoise armor grants squall immunity and Yattaf could cast Fire Wall a few times, so he's only wasting time with that. With a mainly mdef build (Sea Tortoise, E. Martial, Plastic boots and Dream Gem), strategic use of Focus, Fire Wall and double dragons, he dies.

For a very early boss, the rats were as deadly as before (!), but died in two hits.

I took 20 damage there.

This guy's only action is summoning crappy enemies. lol Double Dragon. The first battle in the desert agains the three plants was harder. In fact, the only reason I beat that one was Day Break.

With Illusion Sun, Revival Light and Titan Armor (And Triple Thrust), I actually could challenge and beat Gwayne. (This is a terrible, terrible idea in this solo, so I reloaded an earlier save)

I was almost sure I could never beat this challenge earlier, but things are looking good now. I might actually kill everything!!

Except this guy.

Strange Journey no Fusion challenge: Stopping at Ourobouros was frustrating, so I looked for an alternate strategy.
Ourobouros deals a hell of a lot of MT damage (Demon healing can't possibly keep up), has MT expel and a buff/debuff cancel on everything move.
Fortunately he only uses that last skill if 4 buffs of the same kind (the max) have been stacked on him.
Strategy:
1st phase: Try stacking three buffs of kinds with demons, use healing items with the main character, until every demon is dead. Use the crow from the second dungeon because he's the only one with -kajas.
2nd phase: Spam Fire Shot, heal with Beads.

Yay!

Jo'ou Ranbu · « **Reply #121 on:** January 14, 2013, 01:27:42 AM »

Honey Yami don't care, he don't give a shit.

Grefter · « **Reply #122 on:** January 14, 2013, 03:20:18 AM »

Quote from: Jo'ou Ranbu on January 14, 2013, 01:27:42 AM

Honey

I need to send you a link to Needs More Gay when you get home (or send to Djinn now I guess?)

You know I have played this game and had swore to never play it again no matter how good Fenrir makes everything look by standing next to it (Devil Survivor coming up after I finish P4:G). I had forgot this was a thing that happens. SaGaEsT SaGa GaMe EvEr.

Still not gonna play, but I am happier that this is a thing that is happening than I expected to be. You need to spend more time hanging around David Bowie albums. They are strange weird creatures and I think you might cause the Rapture.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #123 on:** January 14, 2013, 04:09:27 AM »

I like the SaGa posts!

SO4 - Finished! Final dungeon seemed to distribute its savepoints in a strange way; frontloadedly. I had fun, the gameplay kept me engaged most of the game. Boss design is pretty bad, the worst being the ant lady and the angel in the middle of the game, and the dungeons are weird about save points/weird in general, but otherwise pretty cool stuff. I controlled Myuria for the most part, with a bit of Edge/Bacchus and a tiny amount of Reimi on the final boss. Myuria likes to zap the shit out of things Palpatine style, I had to control her~ Going to move focus to Tierkreis playing now.

DjinnAndTonic · « **Reply #124 on:** January 14, 2013, 02:41:56 PM »

Oh man, keep up those SaGa posts, it is seriously inspiring. I have almost finished the Battle Mechanics Guide I've been working on with Snow for about 6 months thanks to these posts and Snow's visit.

Actually, if you or anyone else wants to look over what I've got for readability or if there's something you've noticed that I missed, it'd be helpful. Particularly before I submit it to gameFAQs or anything.

News:

Author Topic: What Games Are You Playing 2013? (Read 189503 times)