What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Come back with Armageddon and fuck.dat, you know it's legit.

[Twilkitri]

Final Fantasy 4 Advance - replayed through

Felt like replaying FF4, and I wasn't about to replay FF4DS, so.

Main takeaway was that I didn't remember anything about the interface lagging as badly as it does. Thoroughly infuriating.

I could have sworn that you needed to beat all the lunar trials before getting access to Zeromus EG and was consequently surprised when I ran into it on my first descent. Actually, checking a video on Youtube, you do get told something to that effect the first time you enter. Possible it's referring to something else, or maybe there's a bug in the game (which wouldn't be particularly surprising). Maybe on my original play I always warped out as soon as I finished all the trials my current team had access to under the assumption that the end wouldn't be accessible yet - as far as I know I only ever fought the Brachiowhatsit once that playthrough, which would be consistent with that.

Kain's lunar trial is still appallingly horrible. I eventually ended up throwing the Hero's Shield on him so that he could take a hit and I wouldn't have to leave everything to the whims of wonky timing. I kind of wonder whether Lunar Bahamut can be reflected, but I threw away/sold all my curtains as they were wasting inventory room so I couldn't feasibly set that up.

[Grefter]

StarCraft 2 HotS - So finished this.  I think the campaign on Normal is easier than Wings is, but I am okay with this because I know absolutely nothing about how to play Zerg.  Now I know it is totally just spamming tier 1 tech units and saying kekekekekekeke.

So plot stuff.  I can see where mc is coming from.  I am not really down on there being same kinds of notes hit with Kerrigan that there is with Thrall, that is something that happens when you have the same person doing the writing.  They have themes that they keep returning too.  So it isn't remotely surprising seeing Metzen return to the same themes that surround the character he has written the most about and clearly identifies so clearly with.  Chris Metzen is all about Thrall and the Horde.

I could have done without her really going full Zerg again though, it is actually a plot kind of explored fairly well before with two people in love but not able to do so because one needs to lead a nation/empire and the nature of the ability to love in that kind of scenario (Dune is the one that really rings truest to this for me).  I could have gone for her trying to shape and lead the Swarm as something from in between (that and I dig the zergdreads look Ghost Kerrigan is rocking at the start of the game before she goes back full fetish zerg with spiked heels).

I had more fun than I was expecting to with the Zerg campaign considering I mostly know Protoss and Terran (Not gonna lie, even watching streams with pro Zerg players, Z matches are just mostly "And there is a pile of green, brown and purple doing stuff.  OH SNAP FUNGALS". or zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz more mutas.  ZvZ is just impenetrable for me).  I wouldn't say Kerrigan is my favourite female lead in a video game because April O'Ryan kind of still exists, but I can definitely see why mc would identify with her.  Especially now that there is actually character to her rather than vaguely ominously evil and sadistic when she is a Villain in SC1 and Broodwar (even as a Villain protagonist).

Sooooooo how long to Legacy?  Forever?  Well fuck.

I totally dug the standard Blizzard referential/rip off other franchises.  Suddenly DBZ fight! (okay I didn't dig that) but plot sequence after that we get summoning giant worms and riding on their backs.  Give me a Dune reference and I am happy.  Make reviving Ultralisks "Torrasques" and I give you a high five.  I am a cheap date for Blizzard games still even after D3.

[Meeplelard]

Kain's lunar trial is still appallingly horrible. I eventually ended up throwing the Hero's Shield on him so that he could take a hit and I wouldn't have to leave everything to the whims of wonky timing. I kind of wonder whether Lunar Bahamut can be reflected, but I threw away/sold all my curtains as they were wasting inventory room so I couldn't feasibly set that up.

Lunar Bahamut is reflect-able.  The first time I beat him, I used a Lunar Curtain and reflected all his Mega Flares.

The key to winning is Jump right before the Mega Flare resolves.  You should come down with enough time to throw an X-potion or something and do that again.  It is a dumb fight either way.

Frankly, pretty much all the Lunar summons are pretty bad honestly, for one reason or another.   Either they're too easy, or they are poorly designed and just frustrating (Lunar Odin)  FF5a and FF6a's bosses in the aftergame are way better just because they are legitimately creative and interesting as a result.

[Fenrir]

Fusion spells were turned into one use items bought with gems in P3P Snow. As you can guess Armageddon's price is ridiculous (120 stones)
Doesn't matter, I now have Asura with Unshaken will (near status immunity) so I can keep that sweet HP+30% accessory. I'll try this later. This should go well.

[Twilkitri]

The key to winning is Jump right before the Mega Flare resolves.  You should come down with enough time to throw an X-potion or something and do that again.  It is a dumb fight either way.

The problem is that if you enter Jump while the 2-count is on-screen you land too early, and if you enter Jump while the 1-count is on-screen you jump too late, so you need to jump at some point between the two - and not only can you still have those problems if you jump too early/too late between them, if you jump late enough that you don't land too early you can still have managed to jump too late to have enough time to heal, although this case at least needs to have happened several times before it kills you. So there's really no way to tell when you're supposed to jump, especially since Kain's turn is probably up so you can't try to judge how time is flowing from his bar filling (and if his turn isn't up then you're in trouble anyway).

Despite all that I don't really have that much of a problem with the fight conceptually - just with you needing to replay the damned murder mystery first every freaking time you retry.

[Grefter]

Legend of Grimrock - So this has been on my to do list for a while and I figured after SC2 seemed a good idea .  Installed it and started just to see how it is.  Enjoy it and realise it is kind of short, so I decided I might try to beat it this weekend instead of Ayesha.  Holy fuck suddenly 4 am..

[SnowFire]

Heart of the Swarm: I finished this awhile back, though still doing some achievement grinding (I better not have to replay the entire campaign to get the Kerrigan level 70 achievement after I somehow got cheesed out of a level on "Supreme," sigh.)  I'm mostly of the Ephraim/Laggy "plot so bad" school of thought, BUT.  The plot is still fun anyway.  I mean Diablo games all have an objectively horrible plot, but Blizzard pulls it off stylishly, so whatever.

Anyway, if the plot is viewed with SRS BIZNESS googles, the biggest problem is that the game doesn't want Kerrigan to be a villain this time around.  Now, it's very possible that a plot could have been written that sold Kerrigan-the-reformed-hero, but it'd have to really put a new spin on the Zerg, who have a bunch of, well, evil stuff in their arsenal, infestation being the most obvious, but the general galaxy-domination-via-killing-everyone also pretty bad.  The WC3 Orcs were closer: they went from worshippers of demons from beyond to shamanistic honorable-war-is-cool or something, which is fine for a fantasy universe.  But no, the story simultaneously wants us to be sympathetic for Kerrigan - she's the good girl, Mengsk is allied with the hybrids which are just inherently Evil, Because - yet still let Kerrigan do all sorts of super-evil shit and act casual.  Even if we seriously believe that Kerrigan is avoiding civilian populations on Korhal or some crap, and if we grant that because this is an SRPG Kerrigan's best way to get at Mengsk involves attacking the Dominion (rather than being a freakin' UNSTOPPABLE INVISIBLE PSIONIC ASSASSIN like she kind of is and trying to kill Mengsk Solid Snake style) - you do crap like infest random prisoners or barracks staff into an unstoppable wave of infested!  I'm pretty sure I remember how the whole colonist plotline in Wings of Liberty went, making people go batshit and kill their friends seems pretty unforgiveable.  And Kerrigan is busy sending off the other broodmothers to attack random other Dominion worlds, which I'm sure will be done with the greatest of care after how Niadra reacts to similar orders from Kerrigan!  (read: set up some Zerg to knock down at the start of Legacy of the Void before the big Amon showdown.)  Anyway, yeah, I just don't buy Kerrigan the hero, and I'm surprised Raynor buys it at the end, either.  She already did the "oh I was being mind controlled by the Overmind I'm not really evil" act before turning around and murdering everyone act once in SC:BW, and Raynor even briefly mentions it in "what about Fenix," so even if she really WAS good, everyone should be rolling their eyes and playing with the fact that she can't possibly sell this after fooling everyonce once already.

If they'd decided to spit on Wings of Liberty in a different way, they should have just had Kerrigan been evil, and skipped having her transform at all.  Raynor was a fool to think that a magic wand would untwist her; she's a psychotic nut bent on not just killing Mengsk, but dominating the galaxy with all bowing to her.  You don't need to look all Zergy to be a monster!  THen at least the story wouldn't need the bizarre contortions it goes into to explain why Kerrigan taking control of the Zerg, and all the bad things she does, are really all about her pinpoint revenge against Mengsk & his cronies, with totally no innocents swept up in the mess, nope.  (Okay, the game does kind of hit it in the first Protoss colony mission on the ice planet, but I'm not sure WTF Kerrigan was even doing there or why she cared or why she thinks that the Protoss won't find out soon enough anyway, so while I appreciate sticking some innocents in Kerrigan's line of fire and owning those deaths, it's still incoherent and the game still thinks Kerrigan is a hero anyway.)

Also, I'm hardly a crazed SC1 fanboy, having played its campaign long after the game came out (2002 or so?) and far preferring Myth: The Fallen Lords for my 1997 RTS fix, which also has a way better done plotline.  SC1 plot: Not actually that amazing, but it's competent.  Wings of Liberty is my favorite SC plotline so far, for all that Blizzard picked a lame direction to afterward and the Xel'Naga artifact plot was pretty weak.

[Pyro]

Soleil. Old Genesis game I played when I was a kid. There are a lot of "Now what the hell do I do?" moments thanks to weird puzzles.

The animal enhancement system is a lot of fun. Always something new to play with and they combine in quirky ways. For example the Speedy sword throwing enhancement along with the 'bounce off walls enhancement = deathtrap for enemies. The illusion one is totally broken though. It creates a copy of you that enemies will target... All enemies up to and including the final bosses. It even auto retargets projectiles in mid flight!

[Fenrir]

P3P Yattaf Solo: Burnt all the bread
The Asura strategy worked really well and nothing ever really threatened me. Granted, I went all out. Level: 86.

I like P3P. It is still anime as hell, but Yattaf + Streamlined town interaction that makes the entire game feel like much less of a drag = Miles above FES.
PC control was much needed too (though I didn't exactly notice this)


WAXF: Killed the 1-2 Secutor.
I kind of want to use the dog the whole game (if he doesn't leave the team) Hmm. I dunno.

[Pyro]

Nothing to stop you from using Tony the whole game except that he will kind of suck.

[Meeplelard]

PSABR: Finally beat the game as Emmet because I downloaded him.

He's...another guy with a gun.  The Weapon change gimmick was something I guess, but in the end, he felt like just a Radec variant, whose Triangle moves temporarily change.  Definitely the less interesting of the pair he came in (Kat was a pretty faithful representation of her Gravity Rush self.)

[Grefter]

Legend of Grimrock - And mash through until 1:30 am on the second night and finished.  Fun and short.  A few fights that would have been frustrating and character builds generally are fairly forgiving, knowing some in advance helps though (When in doubt focus on one skill to 50 and you will do okay, but there is plenty of builds that function well diversified). 
I used Human Warrior with Unarmed ending around 40ish points and 20 in Athletics, he got 3 skill up books.  Just didn't get hit.  Hits more often than my other Warrior because of the high dex that lets him dodge.  Works out well. 

Other warrior was a Minotaur with 16 points in Armour and 33ish points in Sword (just learned Slash).  This is where spreading your points thing has an impact.  Sword/Armour is a defensive build, you still kill things okay, but being able to wear Heavy Armour without evasion penalty generally just makes a bulky front liner.

Back row was filled out with a Thief using Missile weapons.  Was pretty good once you get some ammo enough to last an entire fight.  Straight up broken when they get 32 points in a skill so they shoot 2 arrows at the same time (yep you get to double your offense, I see no problem here!).  All the points in there, few overflow went into Dodge but didn't really account for much.

Fourth character was Mage.  I wouldn't want to play without a mage, they are terribly useful.  I also wouldn't want to play with more than one mage, they are an awful lot of effort and micromanaging them really interrupts your flow mid combat.  It is a pretty neat way to balance.  Unfortunately Mages are one of the ones where pick any skill to level to 50 won't work.  Spellcraft has a cool level 50 skill that is entirely useless because you will have like 12 points to put in to other skills.  That is a problem because the level 50 skill is halve all Energy costs...  Staff Defense is just terrible and a waste of time.  You could get buy levelling one of the elemental skills to 50, but it is a terrible waste.  They don't seem to scale with skill ranks, just unlock more stuff.  Last direct boost to a spell you unlock is at 24-27 depending on tree.  Everythign after that is a passive buff either to resist or a tiny stat buff, with only Ice really getting one that is relevant (Willpower), Air gets Dex which is nice defensively and Fire gets Str which is nice for carring shit around, Earth gets Vitality which I guess is okay.  I could see arguing going for the part wide passive +25 Resist to Fire maybe since it is like 5 extra points.  You also really want 18 points into Spell Craft though because that halves the time it takes to cast spells (and you want to use the Orbs you can find as well, so 10 is what I would consider bare minimum).  Back that up with enemies immuning/resisting elements sometimes and Mages are just very cluttered.  If you went for Fire Resist party wide (specifically because there is a common durable foe that uses Fire) you could get Improved Poison Bolt from Earth by end game, so if you wanted to dedicate skill books to your mage you could get them like 25% cast time reduction from Spell Craft alright.  Not really worth it though since you would only get the fire resist late I think.

I went Ice anyway and didn't regret it really.  Not tons resisted it.  It worked on the Fire dudes.  The Party wide spell to resist Frost was pretty useless though, but on the other hand enchant Ice Arrows wasn't resisted much either.  I got the 18 points in Spellcraft and grabbed the +3 Fire skill book to get rank 1 spell to dabble with.  Dumping points into it after tha got me up to basic Fireball at end game, but it didn't see much use.

If I was going to redo it, I would have gone the cheesey Minotaur Thief that just spends the whole game in the back row throwing shit at people.  I think you could make a solid front line evasion tank out of an Unarmed Thief (Lizard man?).  Minotaurs generally pretty great though, but you want to drop that Dex penalty they start with like a bad habit because that will bit you in the arse quickly.  Warrior I would think about just doing pure Axe and not caring about Evade. Hell they could carry around a torch and free up good shield for the Thief tank.  Mage I think I would go Air Magic and maybe splash into baseline spells for all the elements after getting 18 Spellcraft.  I don't think they are worth feeding all your skill books too, but the Fire magic book is worth getting for them.  I don't see a burning need to roll bug dude for your mage, but there also isn't a particularly compelling reason to roll Human over them.  The other 2 races are shitty mages, so that is your only real choice.  Bit more Willpower/Energy for a single extra skill point?  Meh.  I think the more compelling argument is that while the human portraits don't have much breadth, they are miles above that available to the bug dudes.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fenrir, you should definitely use Tony all game. While he is inferior to other options you can certainly still beat the game with him, and I'll be very curious to see what uses you put him to, since his mobility+durability+elemental resistance is hard for other PCs to match.

Thanks for the DS advice everyone. Fenrir, you were probably right about dart guys repoisoning me without me noticing since at that point I hadn't figured out what was doing it. I don't recall seeing "!Toxic!" reappear but eh. Have since used blooming purple moss successfully, so if it was a weird glitch at least it was a one-time thing. For Cid, re the bosses, it's probably a result of our different playstyles. Capra Demon is nearly helpless against shield blocking, while Gaping Dragon mocks the hell out of it with many of his attacks. He'd be completely worthless if I had decent range, but I didn't, and he has lots of ways to punish you in close so I had to learn how not to die to those, and then it's a long fight so I would screw up periodically, even though it's not that hard.

Dark Souls - Blighttown. Speaking of lack of range, mosquitoes are dicks. My weapon got damaged here so I had to retreat out, and when I did I bought 75 throwing daggers which deal with those. Most satisfying kill that doesn't give souls ever.

Star Ocean 4 - Roak. Hooray, Myuria joined, now I can use a mage without having to use Lymle or the temp. I am trying not to complete copy Ciato and just use the Edge/Reimi/Bacchus/Myuria party but it is tempting, Edge teamplays better than Meracle by quite a bit.

Marathon - Chapter 12 of Total Carnage.

[Sierra]

Dark Souls - Blighttown. Speaking of lack of range, mosquitoes are dicks. My weapon got damaged here so I had to retreat out, and when I did I bought 75 throwing daggers which deal with those. Most satisfying kill that doesn't give souls ever.

Re: weapon damage, you know you can buy a weapon repair kit from the Undead Burg merchant (I think, could be Andre)? It costs a couple thousand souls and is infinitely reusable at any bonfire.

[Fudozukushi]

Dark Souls - Blighttown. Speaking of lack of range, mosquitoes are dicks. My weapon got damaged here so I had to retreat out, and when I did I bought 75 throwing daggers which deal with those. Most satisfying kill that doesn't give souls ever.

Re: weapon damage, you know you can buy a weapon repair kit from the Undead Burg merchant (I think, could be Andre)? It costs a couple thousand souls and is infinitely reusable at any bonfire.

Both now, and maybe a couple more too.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm aware, yes. But... it's a waste of money! You could always just walk back! Inefficiency! something something OCD tendencies

[Fenrir]

So far, formation attacks are really easy with Tony and I like his range. I think most of the time I'll use him + the best PC (Clarissa so far) + 4 drifters since I like sprite-changing generics more than boring story PCs.
I've already made three drifters with high attack, 2 with high magic, one with high def/res, and all of them being fast.

I won all the early battles the wrong way.
1-2 by killing everybody. Sacrifice with Clarissa, formation attacks with Dog/Brother, clone spam with Labyrinthia.
1-3 by killing everybody. I just waited until they were out of VT/HP and sniped them with Labyrinthia. Time consuming and worthless! Yay! (The 1-2 battle took so long I learnt about VT there)
1-4 by killing the boss. This might actually be easier than saving all those crappy villagers.

The classes in this game are fantastic.

[Fudozukushi]

I'm aware, yes. But... it's a waste of money! You could always just walk back! Inefficiency! something something OCD tendencies

Inefficiency is any trip through Bligthtown.

True OCD will require getting anything anyway.  Including useless things like Hollow Warrior set and Chain Mail!

[Grefter]

Symptoms can display themselves differently from subject to subject.  I see no shock at the N1 fan expressing a need to collect and gather everything and being confused at the guy with a love for Math having a need to do everything in the cleanest most efficient manner. 

Don't be stunned when the dude that was compelled to LLG Breath of Fire 1 immediately after beating it will only sink a large investment into something that directly grants him more player power.

[PsySlaver]

Fenrir is back, wow.

Played Atelier Rorona for one hour or so and not sure I want to continue.

[SnowFire]

1-4 by killing the boss. This might actually be easier than saving all those crappy villagers.

You actually did it the standard way.  Saving all the villagers is QUITE tough because the enemy AI really favors killing them dead and a single loss is game over, and the enemy debuffs like hosing your team over.  It's much easier to rush down the boss.  (So...  go play it again and kill everything non-boss if you want to prove yourself.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

It'd be easy enough to save all the villagers if it weren't for that useless old man!

[Cmdr_King]

Atelier Ayesha- Beat.  First impression was pretty accurate: game is traditional atelier to its detriment, and a firmer hand on the story flow would have really made it shine.  Still, gameplay has a quick pace and can put out cool fights when it wants.  7/10/

Pokémon Black 2- Beat.  Game has unusually high average levels for Pokemon; running a team of five most of the game I was still 55-60 after I finish the E4.  Not sure if I'm feeling more of a 7 or an 8 for it, it's really an uncommonly well made maingame as the series goes.  Haven't mucked with aftergame though.
Lucario, Haxaurus, Leavanny, Samurott, Zoroark.

[Meeplelard]

FE5: Cyas is a dick.  Putting havan to sleep just before he hits level 20 with 25 EXP *sigh*

Now my next goal apparently is to RECRUIT XAVIER!!!

...I am getting Douglas Flashbacks ._.