What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Clear Tranquil]

Star Oceans 4 - Doing the battle arenas. Reached rank 26 in the solo mode with Faize. He is L51 has a Elastic Rapier I made him with Item Creation which gives him over 1000~ ATK and chance of stun on his base physical attacks, and is also rocking a maxxed out Ice Needles, Mindflare, Enlighten and a L8 HP Boost. I also use Vampiric Blade for getting back the MPs. Sometimes Convert but that's a bit risky without healings/after you've used up the meager supply of items the battle arena gives you. Fights are starting to get a bit tougher, I keep losing to the rank L23 Adept Necromancer because I can't work out how to avoid Shadow Needles, Black Rock and some crab thing were also quite resilient and took a while to go down because of element resistance . Chained Ice Needles with all the buffs up are still ok though but sometimes my shoulder buttons are stiff and I've been finding it difficult to chain/combo sometimes. Having to fight Edge at the start was fun and then I was all like oh yeah I can do that, and had a go with Lymle so I could have her fight Faize and then Faize fight her just because, Edge was tough with Lymle at first since I thought Fire Bolt chains with Hound Grenade finisher would be a good set up but I kept getting interrupted before I could get the Fire Bolts off, had to retry and gave her Hatchet Reels with Hound Grenade finisher instead which worked much better, also when I did get hit Energy Shield helped a lot. Then I was able to fight Faize and after I fought Lymle with Faize, Faize vs Lymle was funny because I had a demon doggy chasing me around the arena, and Faize was unable to outrun it and ouch Lymle dog hit hard. Still won quite easy though since Lymle didn't have much HPs~

I did a lot on Roak and made some serious progress for the grand scheme of things. I've completed all the side quests available so far except for the Ogre Battling, Otherwordly Diet  and Astral Caves, also completed a good chunk of Roak's store orders as well, also still have to go back to Lemuris to hand the Fang Flutes in. As far as monster collection goes on Roak I managed to get 100% for Honeybee, Unicorn Wolf, Kobold Bandit, Axe Beak, Thieving Scumbag (nice monster jewel) Albero di Anima, Corpse Bat, Syndonaist Alpha, Syndonaist Beta, as well the Black Eagle, Guardian Beast, Tamiel and Sand Bird pseudo bosses and bosses using the save/reload method. For the Syndonaists I wanted to make sure I definitely collected 100% monster data for them incase they disappeared like the Cardonian stuff.  Some of the others I thought might make nice monster jewels and also fought a lot of stuff while collecting materials for sidequests and clearing the way to harvest/mining points, etcs.

I had some fun times, Meracle has her 30'000 and 50'000 damage trophies now. I've been able to buy/use lots of different skill manuals for everybody and since I've completed the relevant sidequests Lymle, Myuria and Sarah all join Reimi in having Energy Shield and No Guard is now available for all the fighters. I also have Meracle's Ocarina ability for clearing the Sand Bird quests which should make things easier for hunting monsters, collecting data, and getting rare items in the future.

I can has a bunny now. I called my bunny Pinkfluffs because it wouldn't let me use Fluffypinkster or Pinkfluffster >.>

Currently I've been using Faize, Reimi and Meracle the most in my teams, mostly maining Faize/Meracle, Lymle and Myuria have also had a fair bit of usage as well, with Edge/Bacchus still getting some too. Haven't used Sarah at all yet. Faize is L51, Meracle L49, Reimi L47, Lymle/Myuria L46, Edge L40, Bacchus L39, Sarah L36 (she's still received EXP from doing side quests and things)

Going to be hanging around the battle arena for a while =) Want to get Meracle's Dragon Claws and Faize's Mithril Rapier at least (only have enough Fight Coins to get one so far), don't know what else yet~

[Shale]

ShF3: Cleared the optional dungeon with Synbios' force. Man, I remember this thing being way harder in my first run. The boss of the whole thing has nightmarish stats - 5000 HP, Spark magic with a really wide area of effect, near-OHKO physicals if he doesn't crit and overkill if he does - but is really easy to neutralize with positioning shenanigans since he starts in a 3x3 box with walls so high that the only way out is flying. So I sniped at him for an hour and claimed my Shining Sword. Gonna be a bit more fun to tackle with the Scenario 2 team, though; the only PC there who can use MT healing is male, but the MP regeneration accessory is female-only. And you need a *lot* of MT healing for that battle.

[Ryogo]

ME2: Found out where Jack went after Pitch Black (because Pitch Black did not, of course, have a sequel). Loyalty grinding was supposed to commence but hijacked by plot for GHOST SHIP. Very rude. I'm told this game has kind of a stealth point of no return and I should focus on loyalty/sidequesting as soon as possible. Is this accurate? (I'd do that anyway, but still.)

I should really stop buying fish.

Point of No Return is very obvious. Point of Consequences if you dick about is not. As Gref says, do not do the Derelict Reaper mission until you are ready.

Andrew is right. The best way to do things is not touch the mission to obtain the IFF until you're ready to end the game. You can get away with doing one, maybe two missions after that until the point of consequences hits (there's a reason you can do at least one mission, without getting into spoilers), and it'll be pretty obvious when you hit that point and will suffer for dicking around more. It's NOT obvious that the consequence point is coming though unless you've played the game at least once.

Railroading collector ship mission == Okay to do (You're kinda forced to anyways), IFF quest == save until you're ready to finish the fight

[Dark Holy Elf]

Last bonfire I found in Lost Izalith was right at the end of the lava, which still leaves a decently long walk? (Unless there's one in the ruins somewhere.) Taurus Demon is also a fairly large trek, though isn't too hard a boss (same with Moonlight Butterfly). It's worse if you get killed by the dragon after him. For Bell Gargoyles the raw distance isn't too bad, but I found I always needed to kill the enemies on the way (and there are 14 of them) and of course I fought them so many times, it adds up.

My rough guess is that about 6-8 hours was spent on just walking back to boss fights, which is quite a lot!

There are a bunch of small things that can help of course, I didn't think about unequipping things for faster running speed (I was usually equipped for the second fastest, fastest is worth the time saving of unequip -> equip in some cases). And of course getting better at using dashing and rolling to dodge past enemies. It's a shame I don't really want to replay the game because it's clearly better on replays! Maybe some day.

Oh yeah, randomly, is there any good reason not to just use the Ring of Favour and Protection forever once you get it? +20% to three crucial stats seemed way better than anything any other accessory does, and it still leaves space for a situational tool like the anti-lava or traverse-abyss accessories. (Havel's Ring was probably the most common occupant of the second slot.) I probably missed some good ones, but most other accessories felt way weaker by comparison.


FE7 HHM - Cog of Destiny's a jerk. Actually one of the best FE fights (which is funny because on any other mode it's one of the worst), I like the dynamic making almost all enemies mages does, since they PCs who are durable aren't very damaging and vice versa. Wish I had bought more hand axes though. FE7's shops are seriously the worst thing about the game, this is very obvious after playing later FEs (10 in particular).

[Sierra]

Oh yeah, randomly, is there any good reason not to just use the Ring of Favour and Protection forever once you get it? +20% to three crucial stats seemed way better than anything any other accessory does, and it still leaves space for a situational tool like the anti-lava or traverse-abyss accessories. (Havel's Ring was probably the most common occupant of the second slot.) I probably missed some good ones, but most other accessories felt way weaker by comparison.

Depends on your build. If you're an offensive caster, you want that slot free for whatever ring boosts your magic type instead. Personally, I have never used that ring, even for pure melee characters, just because I can't stand the idea of locked equipment. It is objectively good but I just hate the drawback too much. Typically my ring setup for melee is Cloranthy Ring (boosts stamina regen, found in an optional area you skipped) and probably the Wolf Ring (boosts poise, found in a side path just before Moonlight Butterfly). I won't tolerate moving at anything but top speed, so I'm generally wearing light armor (or no armor for heavy weapons chick), which makes poise an attractive bonus. Otherwise most rings I can think of are just about situational use or specific builds. Lingering Dragoncrest Ring is good for a weapon enchanter build I guess (which can be absolutely devastating when paired with a good light weapon).

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'll be honest, I spent a lot of the game with 0 poise (lookin' like a cultist). It felt like there were only a relatively small number of fights which exploited this...

(Though yes, when they did, heavy armour was go, and Havel + RoFaP lets you stay at the second speed tier in that, so good enough for me. Never bothered with Wolf as such.)

[AndrewRogue]

There were one or two points I regretted the F&F ring (Lost Izalith, Four Kings, since I had to ditch Havel's to maintain my preferred speed). Outside of that though? Just comes down to flexibility.

[Fenrir]

6-8 hours sounds crazy (Aren't you seeing time "wasted" as longer?) but there's a good chance I just don't remember the first playthrough.

Most of the time I have the ring of favor and protection + Havel on. Pre patch, the DWGR (aka ninja ring, which allows backflips. Backflips are slightly better than rolls) was better than the RoFP, and using both together allowed ninja flipping full havel builds. I still use it from time to time.
'
The Lost Izalith trek is: Walk through the lava, blimb the slope, run past the fire breathing statues, climb some stairs, and voila, Bed of Chaos.
Getting past the zombies to fight Bell Gargoyle isn't too hard, getting past the warriors is harder. The only boss where you realistically have to kill people is Capra Demon I think. (Because of dogz)
Poise is the main reason to get a heavier build than "fastest", its way better than the higher defense. It's excellent in PVP and against Gwyn and Nito. (no divine weapon) Presumably other bosses too but I don't want to try a low walking speed high poise playthrough.


Megaman X Maverick Hunter Vice mode:
Good thing Vice mode exists so we can all finally understand his motives.
...
Anyway I managed to go pretty far with the distance needler, stubborn crawler and Marooned Tomahawk, but X and Zero are destroying me. They're like Death and Dracula from Castlevania PoR except their faces are dumb.
Looking at a faq I saw that Vice mode actually has powerups (!), I'm going to painstakingly collect them all and destroy the two fancy lamers with their crazy bullet shmup patterns.
Edit: Dead! It'd have been so great if touching X actually hurt him.



Zenonia: The first game that was supposed to be as good as a console game, but available on the iphone, was released on the PSPas a mini.
Good first impressions (nice pixel art), appaling second impressions.
The framerate is unforgivable (Probably in the 10-15 FPS range, for an action game. How could this exist past 1993?), the main character is slow as hell (Unless you pick the assassin class), the music is ear bleeding.
I put every single stat point into agility, which raises critical hit and evade rate. I had a ~70% evade rate, which could be boosted to 110% by using one of my skills. Then I found some boosts that could boost evade by 269%. The game clearly stopped caring. (And I still got hit a lot)
It also crashed a lot, including during the last cutscene. I didn't bother getting back there.

One interesting is that the game has moral choice!!
But the evil path, like Valkyrie Profile DS' is more of a "Main character is more idiot than evil" path.
There's a conflict between the holy paladins of white and blue and the dark dragon forces of red and black. In the evil path the main dragon bad guy, who looks obviously evil, just tells you "Uuuuh your father... was killed by the paladins?" and you believe everything. The good guys are then all "WTF?" and you're all "Liars!!"

Later the main evil dragon chick, right before dying, tells you that everything was a lie.
And you're all "Whatevs I have already broken 4 holy seals, I'm not going to stop there"
Fantastic.

[Fudozukushi]

Poise is boss against Four Kings because you can just stand there wailing into them without a care until they grab you.  On Four Kings note having your ring slot's restricted to Covenant Ring and Favor Ring is a real pain for casters since Dusk's Crown also increases Magic damage against you, so you aren't getting any damage boost from any magic against them unless you feel like being borderline suicidal.

[Sierra]

I never, ever take off Dusk's Crown when I'm running a caster. Like I care about Dark Souls defensive stats when I could be dealing more damage! More importantly it looks fabulous.

~

ME2: I have never encountered such gratuitous use of the word "cloaca."

Also Miranda internet dating logs. Today was fun. Swear to god though I'm tooling around the galaxy in a ship full of asari porn junkies. More than I needed to know.

[Pyro]

Legend of Grimrock: Beaten

A fun enough old-school dungeon crawler. Harder than I like usually and I needed to FAQ a variety of the puzzles. The game needed to have you reach a higher level or give more skill points so you could allocate skills more effectively. You can get 50% MP reduction! But it will do squat. You can get double-speed melee weapons with rogues! But you won't hit anything because you didn't put points into the weapon (and hence get an accuracy boost).  Re-specing might have worked out better.

Whole party was pretty useful except for the rogue, and that was because I focused on Evade rather than offense skills like I should have. Swords seemed like the best thing on account of being faster than hammers and so on.

DLwise, the default party...

- Human Fighter: Swords so he can do damage decently fast. Damage spikes helps with some healers or something.
- Mork: I think he wants to go swords too for damage? The second best sword for both of em then I suppose.
- Whitefeather: She wants to go for Evade probably. She'll never have damage, so having perfect evade is probably the best she can hope for.
- Da Wizard: I imagine wants fire magic. Maybe Ice magic focus for the chance of freeze. Even with 50% cooldowns he's not that fast due to needing to input the runes for spells manually.

[Hunter Sopko]

Taurus Demon is also a fairly large trek, though isn't too hard a boss (same with Moonlight Butterfly).

Eh? Moonlight Butterfly isn't that far, unless you didn't find the hidden bonfire near the closed gateway in Darkroot Garden. From there, it's only 3 root monsters and a heavy armor dude, maybe about a thirty second walk if you're running without fighting?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

ME2: I have never encountered such gratuitous use of the word "cloaca."

Cloaca Mahoney disputes your claim.

[Sierra]

ME2: Huh. So quarians keep those suits on even on their own ships? I figured their ships were sterile environments and they only needed the suits for outside excursions. Bitching out the admirals was pretty great, moreso for them graciously admitting I was right afterwards.

Anyway, loyalty missions done (still plenty of sidequesting to get in before returning to the plot, though). Yeah that pretty squarely solidifies Mordin as the best of the new recruits. As far as his quest goes, I suggested he use the data to help the krogan. Hey, the last time I took pity on an infamously violent alien species it turned out well enough. It was difficult in good conscience to say no when the opportunity arose again, in spite of Shepard getting so many firsthand examples of krogan unpleasantness. If Wrex wasn't in charge, I really wouldn't have any hope of this ending well. It seems like the game really wants you to make this choice, though--even questions I casually asked Mordin just to get more information about his work with the genophage were voice-acted with a persistently accusatory tone. Then I talked to the shaman about krogan history and heard about how it was good and educational that they'd nuked themselves back to the stone age repeatedly and jesus I just saved the Thraddash didn't I. Does Wrex have a different VA now? He didn't sound the same.

Apparently there is no lesbian orgy button in this game so instead I propositioned Garrus. This was hilariously awkward, although I kind of dread seeing the outcome of his "research."

[Clear Tranquil]

SO4-

Have the Mithril Rapier, Dragon Claws, Wild Arc and Crested Spear from the battle arenas. Wheee~

The Mithril Spear gives a +666 boost to INT and the Crested Spear +444 INT, apparently the 360 versions only give +333 and +338 respectively so looks like Faize in particular was buffed here. The uber Faize is now rocking with over 1000 INT with max Beat S (900+~ in Beat Burst) and 20'000+~ HP, is L55 and has Terra Hammer =)

I reached rank 5 in solo mode arena with him. Some fights took multiple retries though especially the Great Solar Phoenix which went into double digit resets. Plasma Cannon you are not my friend. Eventually picked up Faize's 10'000 damage trophy though - Enlighten X 3 + Mindflare + max cancel combo + weakness hitting.

Other tough fights with Faize this time were Lord of the Mountains, which kept summoning allies, another spellmaster type with healing, a Guardian Beast type - Smashing Feet which kept on ignoring Hide, eventually decided to try blindsiding it and spam Hide from behind and was able to set up for defeating it that way. Hide has definitely been a lot of help for Faize in the arena =)

I tried the Ultrabeast Gedon at Rank 2 once so far and it seems a lot easier than the Great Solar Phoenix was for Faize. It's just a tank. It also liked to spam Void and Healing once it was low on HP, war of attrition/resources and then I screwed up thinking I was in Hide mode when I wasn't and it sneaked up to Faize and delivered melee pain~

Meracle is L53. I have her up to rank 28 or so in the arena so far. Managed to pick up her 70'000 and 99'999 damage trophies =) I am still mostly using the Focus + Berserk + Blindside + physical attack combo > Comet Impact spam strat with her though I have starting using Somersault Smash for randoms elsewhere. Meracle doesn't like Void, Blind or Silence~

[Sierra]

ME2: Hahahaha Mordin Solus, interspecies dating adviser.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Suikoden 2 - Decided to replay this on a whim. Good fun, the game has aged pretty well I think (translation is awful but the writing comes across fine, and the speed of the game makes me much more favourably inclined towards it than many other PSX titles). Up to South Window. (That's south of here!)


edit: CT, yeah, it sounds like the PS3 version upped the powers of some of Faize's weapons notably. Which he probably needed although the lower power encourages the player to ditch him which is probably a good thing, so I see why they did it that way in the original.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

FE13 - *Tiki/Anna A support.*

...

GODDAMMIT, I should NOT be laughing this loud at 2AM in the morning!

[Grefter]

WA XF - It has been a while since I updated.  not much ground made.  I did 1-16 or whatever it is and OH HEY +2 UNLOCKS with Search Scopes and other things to play outside of bus trips, so random punching was actually a decent use of time.  I know it is not Approved Legit Playstyle, but eh portable game gonna be portable.

Only thing really to note is "Oh hey you wanted maps full of undead to make me appreciate Sacred Slayer OC?  Way ahead of you bro."  Actually wiped once to the zerg rush map against Ragnar, but that was just me fucking up and going "I know there is obvious trap here, but I will do it anyway" and ran him back at the start.

Highlight to it was having my Elementalist with Sacred Slayer OC getting blitzed down and giving no fucks because he was one shotting motherfuckers left and right on his way out.  My only regret wasn't finding a way to twink him enough to do it in Sacred Slayer with Widespread.  As it was Labyrinthia was doing a respectable enough job with a strong 2HKO.  If only that second 4 spawn hadn't split up before she could wipe them out.  Clearly the answer there was more Sacred Slayers to Turn Shift her.

[superaielman]

Refer to Ragnar only by his full name RAGNAR BLITZ LEBRETT, as it is the only way to fully express his wankery.

EO4- Got the item that lets me fly to the second tier of the sky. Levels are L21ish.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

FE13 - Playing the game only with children PCs completely robs you of your sense of perspective. For instance, I keep thinking Severa with 42 Speed could stand to be faster because Brady capped his own Speed stat as a Trickster, and he also makes Noire's 34 Speed look downright sluggish. Seriously, this is just kinda degenerate. >_>

[Meeplelard]

Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor's Edge: The Mecha Dinosaur is seriously a really poorly designed fight.  STOP MAKING ENEMIES SO ANIMATED THAT YOU CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ATTACK AND AN IDLE ANIMATION.  This is not difficulty, it's straight up poor misleading design.

Also, don't make unblockable Shock Wave Attacks when the attack causes debris clouds to fly up, making it impossible to actually see the sometimes.  I can see why this fight kept getting brought up as a low point of the game, especially considering, well, to quote multiple reviewers "HOW DO YOU MAKE A FIGHT WITH A CYBORG T-REX UNFUN!?"


On the upside, Ayane's legitimately fun to play as.  She's got combos and moves fast, and a good ranged attack and Ninpo.  Way better than Rachel in Ninja Gaiden Sigma who was pretty much the combination of all the worst things in the game, equipment wise.  Oh, Ayane also doesn't have gimped movement like Rachel did either, so she can do legitimate off the wall acrobatics.

[Shale]

Well, it sounds like they captured the Ninja Gaiden Black experience exactly!

[Meeplelard]

Well yes, I'll give it that much!  The series has always been really bad at boss designs, I won't deny that!

To be fair to NG3RE, they fixed Bow Combat A LOT.  Auto Lock On exists, no more limited arrows, Arrows are basically all explosive kind (though enemies still have armor that deflects them, so jump -> Shoot-> repeat  isn't an auto-win in enough instances), and generally speaking, enemies you are required to take out with a bow get one shotted.

Downside is you're often forced to deal with Snipers in enemy swarms.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing yet, granted, more of a "Ninja Gaiden hates you and everything you stand for" scenario...which is up to par.

[Captain K.]

Code of Princess:  This is basically an homage to (or ripoff of) Guardian Heroes.  So if you liked GH, you'll like this.  Only real departure from GH is that you can change equipment to help with difficult battles.  Oh, and the main character dresses like this:





Making strides in women's rights every day, Japan.  Although the game does call her out on it; the townspeople think she's a prostitute and her brother tells her to put some clothes on next time she saves the world.