What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Random Consonant]

FE13 - oh god what is happening to these people's feet

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Wait, they don't have feet?  A suspect decision.  Changing your art style to Rob Liefeld is one of the few things that isn't an upgrade from animu shit.

[Captain K.]

FE13:  Found what is quite literally the last copy in town.  Was going to make an UOM main with battle scars but couldn't resist streetpass tagging people with the name Yattaf so female main it is.  Went with older woman with cleavage but was tempted by loli with eyepatch.

Anyway I am playing on Hard mode Casual, because I am a pussy and fuck FE's version of permadeath.

[Nitori]

Dawn of Sorrow: Tell me about your day again, giant laser shooting penis

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Wait, they don't have feet?  A suspect decision.  Changing your art style to Rob Liefeld is one of the few things that isn't an upgrade from animu shit.

That was pretty well documented on FE13's absurdly awful promotional art. The body proportions and absolute disregard for anatomy and physics are also quite Liefeldesque.

[Pyro]

Ni No Kuni has a sceneskip function and I was able to skip amy dialog I wanted except maybe at the very beginning?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

RS3 - Ellen has a speed game? Man, Accel Turn synergizes so well with Martial Arts.

[Meeplelard]

Wait, they don't have feet?  A suspect decision.  Changing your art style to Rob Liefeld is one of the few things that isn't an upgrade from animu shit.

That was pretty well documented on FE13's absurdly awful promotional art. The body proportions and absolute disregard for anatomy and physics are also quite Liefeldesque.

Let's just be glad FE's setting doesn't support Guns, lest we get DLC Marth wielding a 5 barrel, 4 foot long Revolver...

[Scar]

FE:A

Things get sooo much easier when you start promoting units. Also, Donnel is a flat out BEAST if you have the patience to train him.

[Luther Lansfeld]

FE13: Just got Morgan. ;_; My Wyvern Knight got OHKOed by a berserker.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Wait, they don't have feet?  A suspect decision.  Changing your art style to Rob Liefeld is one of the few things that isn't an upgrade from animu shit.

That was pretty well documented on FE13's absurdly awful promotional art. The body proportions and absolute disregard for anatomy and physics are also quite Liefeldesque.

Let's just be glad FE's setting doesn't support Guns, lest we get DLC Marth wielding a 5 barrel, 4 foot long Revolver...

Too realistic for Liefeld.  A Liefeld gun is just a big chunk of metal with random doodads all over it and one or more holes at the end that may or may not glow.  Something like a Borderlands 2 gun, which can be about that over-the-top, is likewise way outside his wheelhouse.  There are a lot of ridiculous, over-the-top parts, like the ammo feed on the Jakobs ARs being a wagon wheel made of five interlocking magazines that is loaded into the bottom of the gun and feeds rounds in while rotating to each spoke in turn, but the team put a lot of work into animating all their weapons so that you can see how, even if the design is way impractical, the weapon works.  Liefeld doesn't do any of that.

Basically, that would be this and Liefeld does this.

[Clear Tranquil]

Mario Kart 7 Wow. Speed really does mean -nothing- Thanks to Tai and Gate for the hints/tips there~ Last 150 cc cups get. Mirror Class unlocked. I ended up using Toad with Egg 1, Roller and Peach Parasol. Before I had him with Mushroom which was good/won races/150cc cups for a while but then I switched to Roller even though it has less speed which didn't matter because wow speed really does mean nothing~

I am going to play as Lakitu now

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

RS3 - Stat topic chugging along. I'm done with over half the cast, currently up to Tatyana now. It's pretty weird that Epees end up better on average than -Axes- do, but this is the foil of the endgame. Final Letter is very good and pretty much keeps the Epee users within 3HKO range in spite of the shoddy Level Factor and weapon power deal the weapon itself gets. Also, hooooooooooly shit mages got it worse than I first imagined. Tiberius struggles to break four-digit damage with the very best Sun Magic has to offer and 23 Intelligence.

EDIT: Annnnnnnnd in spite of the retardo mults on Dragon Inferno, the low hit rate and problematic spreads in one of speed or strength granted to all people who get it but Boston suddenly drop the damage averages -once- again. Oh well.

EDIT 2: For the Fennies: if Ellen got Dragon Inferno, she'd be dealing over 3000 damage a pop with that. Still some accuracy issues, but she'd average a 2HKO with it -anyway-. And, if it's any consolation, by turn two she starts dropping ITD 2HKOs just by virtue of Tiger Break spam. The cast has a goddamn lot of 3HKO machines, that's for sure.

[Fenrir]

"Went with older woman with cleavage but was tempted by loli with eyepatch."
You did well.

Snow what about maces? I don't know why maces exist. I suspect they're only here to make sure people don't normally get magic crowns, for obscure SaGa reasons.


Persona 1 Snow Queen:
Finished this. The game has 67584 skills and I only ever used Mediarama, Megido, Megidola and Megidolaon.The main character had 5x more experience than everyone else because he just had h4x speed and spammed Megidolaon all the time. Since random battles can be skipped by talking to demons / SP regens by walking around / characters are fully healed every level up, no one ever runs out of SP. Ever.
I stopped the optional dungeon one fight before the end because it was incredibly boring.

Persona 2 Innocent Sin PSP:
Thinking about it, Persona 2 (the other one) is the one game that really made me want to live in a big city. The setting is the only one thing the game actually does amazingly well. There are dozens of stores, each has a shopkeeper with unique character art, unique music, and everybody inside says something different after every major event.
No one would probably have the time to talk to everybody after every major event in this game, but this might be a big part of the appeal, too.

I have no complaints about Eternal Punishment but Innocent Sin kinda ruins it with all the anime plot and most annoying Gary Stuest main in existence. He is a strong but silent loner that everybody in the world is madly in love with because he's hot and cool. Bella from Twilight has nothing on this guy.
Except he doesn't look like anything special? That haircut seriously ruins everything.
Anyway. Eternal Punishment doesn't have that shit.

Anyway I'm playing a solo of sort on hard mode (Every character revives after every battle so it's tricky. I just kill them right away during boss battles, don't give them any new equipment and never have them participate in conversations), and it's really easy so far. I got a Poltergeist and a Pixie for respectively Tarukaja and Dia, and both are overkill.

[Meeplelard]

DMC3 Fresh Hard (Dante): Just Beat Vergil 1.  I lost to him once due to getting a little overzealous and all that.

Jester 1 got me as well for similar reasons.  Gigapede got me because he's stupid.  Agni/Rudra killed me more times than I can count because they're jerks.  Cerberus got the DMC2 treatment and was cheesed out because I forgot to go in with Swordmaster, so this was the only really viable method!  I lost to a stray random with those big clubs here and there which is weird because I remember them being completely uninspiring outside of being more durable than they appear, ah well.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma: I beat Rachel's second chapter, got pissed at the targetting puzzle only to remember I forgot a secret room gauntlet thing as Ryu that I could go back to that I reset to 2 chapters earlier, and have to redo Rachel's chapter...

...which is annoying because Rachel is NOT well balanced for this game.  She has the worst weapon in the game (non-upgraded Wooden Sword not-withstanding), a fraction of Ryu's mobility, and a god awful ranged weapon.  I know they wanted to add variety, but adding it in the form of a character whose straight up worse than what you're use to?  Not smart...

[Grefter]

I have no complaints about Eternal Punishment but Innocent Sin kinda ruins it with all the anime plot and most annoying Gary Stuest main in existence. He is a strong but silent loner that everybody in the world is madly in love with because he's hot and cool. Bella from Twilight has nothing on this guy.
Except he doesn't look like anything special? That haircut seriously ruins everything.
Anyway. Eternal Punishment doesn't have that shit.

Duuuuuuuuude, now I want to see you play P3.  P3 is exactly that except you play as Edward instead of Bella.

Fantastic.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Calling P2 IS plot "Anime" tells me you haven't gotten very far in it yet...

P2 IS isn't "anime", it's more like... you know how when you're drunk and every sentence involving the word "Hitler" seems funny? It's that.

[Grefter]

It is if every anime is either Satoshi Kon or Hetalia, which I assume is the case for Fenrir because that is how he rolls.

[Captain K.]

FEA: Promoted my first unit, Lissa to War Cleric.  I figured the extra defense stats certainly wouldn't hurt, plus I needed an extra axe user since Vaike sucks so bad.  I think he's managed to die in every single fight so far.  Even got crit-killed by an enemy with 1% crit rate.  Thank Jeebus for Casual mode.

Got Florina and Prince Marth.  Tried to get Nino but her support had stats in the 50s.  Seriously wtf.

[Luther Lansfeld]

FE13 - About to tackle the warlord guy's castle, he looks tough.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Snow what about maces? I don't know why maces exist. I suspect they're only here to make sure people don't normally get magic crowns, for obscure SaGa reasons.

In theory, they were supposed to cover the niche of blunt damage that doesn't have accuracy issues (Martial Arts accuracy formula is kinda crap along with erratic base hit rates and axe techs have low hit rates themselves) along with unique status and debuffs. In practice, they're horrible failure outside Draw Sword and Swallow Sword, which are both OPB and Training Cane-only. OF COURSE, in the DL, their suck doesn't matter because Golden Bat is cheese incarnate as a weapon with a Hide Rune clone that deals damage and Petrify. Poet has a case for Heavy due to that crap, and he's the worst mace user out of the three people who actually get the weapon type (Nora and particularly Mikhail have a fair deal of options for backup or alternate possibilities. Mikhail is just ridiculous with Sun Magic -and- Maces to cheese a whole lot of stuff).

[Grefter]

Tales of Graces f - I missed a few night's worth of play in updates because it is mostly the same thing over and over again.  Something happens, Asbel changes his mind at the last minute and then :O  Zombie Ghost RICHARD is actually a dracula.  Then some more stuff with Pimp RICHARD and :O Zombie Ghost Richard is actually a dracula.  Then some stuff with Hubert and :O Zombie Ghost Richard is actually a dracula.

So I head off to Desert France (where half the townsfolk wear berets all the time) and run around a bit.  Go off to a side area with level 1 billion enemies that curb stomp you, but you can get da loots.  Not really worth it, but whatever.  I play some Magic Carta which is an amazing activity in masturbation from Tales Studios.  I get to relive the ?!?!??!?! moment of Karyl from ToD saying "Some call me 'Blue Lightning'.  You can call me Karyl".  Then I rage at the minigame when I realise to win the shit you care about you need to not just win, but to completely sweep.  That is stupid.  Then I can't work out how to turn up the difficulty to get someone I actually like a costume so settle with beating it on Easy and unlocking something for Asbel.  Fucking woot.

When he was in the party I used Zombie Ghost RICHARD all the time because he is a dracula and that is fun.  Swapped to Pimp Richard and had The Worst Time Ever A Tales Game Other Than Trying To Control A Mage In The Older Games.  So I had pegged controlling mages as still pretty fucking shit.  Then I realised you could set the game to autocast off of O if you leave it blank.  This is so much better.  I don't know if the game picks a random spell at that CC rank or does a best fit for you.  I don't give any fucks this is awesome.  I can play a mage (kind of) in a Tales game and not be stuck watching the same 4 spells over and over and over.  It still is frustrating trying to use anything more than his neutral A-Artes line, but you get there.  It isn't as clunky as trying to chain different directional arts and then juggle to a different direction B arte (Fun fact, I don't actually enjoy that part of Tales control schemes and this is part of why I don't normally combo much).

This lets me focus way more on the state of the battle field and actually lets me do more than mindlessly mash on A or B and Guard.  Range Malik provides lets you actually realistically think about enemy positioning to dodge and stuff.  So thank you RICHARD your control scheme let me really appreciate a Tales combat system again.

[Cmdr_King]

Be fair, that costume is the I'm Playing A Better Tales Game costume.

[Grefter]

It shows up in cutscenes?  If so it is worth it I guess.

[hinode]

Got Florina and Prince Marth.  Tried to get Nino but her support had stats in the 50s.  Seriously wtf.

Nino's support consist of a high level Hero, Swordmaster, and Assassin, a lineup that might sound familiar to you.

Finished FE13 last night. I had 3 resets due to character deaths and 1 to realize how Tiki's paralogue worked. 21 was my favorite chapter to play on Normal, although the surprise reinforcements would've been an unpleasant surprise on any higher difficulty where reinforcements work FE6-style. More detailed writeup to come later, when I'm less tired from work.