What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Meeplelard]

FEA Replay: Finally completed!

Not comment on characters since boring,a nd I think I commented on the DLC characters already.

Well, no, I don't think I mentioned Eirika and Lyn so...uhh...here they are!

Eirika is nothing like her FE8 self...at all.  She's a Bride, knowing all of Bride's skills, so that's a perk, she has a B in Bows, D in Lances/Staves.  Yeah, like I said, not Eirika like at all.  I turned her into an Assassin since it kept her good Bow levels, and never really used one before so yeah.

Lyn is mostly a stock Swordmaster though she has Zeal, something females can't get.  She misses out on Myrmidon skills sadly so she's not as evasive as you think though you could reclass her and what not. 


Generally speaking of the DLC characters I've used, looks something like this for worth:

1. Micaiah.  Shadow Gift is just that stupid good, and she has the stats to make it work.  She was probably the MVP of the entire file, truth be told. Promoted her into a Dark Knight, then she hit level 20 in that rather early and turned her into a Dark Flier.  I didn't even notice she lacked Hex and Anathema, truth be told.
2. Leif.  Surprised me, but basically being a trickster with quite good stats, and only real failing relative to Anna is no Move+1 made him quite good.  Staff levels at E are a bit meh, but you can raise those pretty fast.
3. Marth.  Pseudo-Prepromo Lucina w/ Aptitude and 30 levels to work with; he's quite good as result.
4. Seliph.  Male Swordmaster w/ Galeforce at a lowish level.  It's funny because I keep thinking "oh, he's just a swordmaster" then remember "Wait, he has Galeforce..." and suddenly his utility sky rockets.  Why not higher?  Because I feel his damage was a tad lacking at times which held back.
5.  Elincia.  Mobile staff bot w/ Rally Speed.  I was at first disappointed that she was offensively inept, but having Falcon Knight whose actually really good at using staves ended up being quite handy.
6. Eirika.  Ended up basically being an Archer with a Bow and staves for a while, then just a good Bow using PC as an Assassin.  Rally Heart was a cool option too, being a lesser Rally Spectrum that also boosts Move.
7. Alm.  If he had better speed, he'd be notably higher because Dread Knight offense is insane.  Sadly, he doesn't have that speed, and sometimes needs to be paired with a high speed Pair Up just to avoid being doubled.  After a point, he's not in jeopardy of being doubled anymore, and when he does double, things just DIE.
8. Lyn.  Feels a little too generic as a Swordmaster, and her strength is a bit on the iffy side.  She's not BAD, but she doesn't really have anything that stands out.  Especially compared to Seliph, who does a lot of the same things and then it's +5% Crit and Acrobat vs. Galeforce, Charm and Avoid+10%.  That's really her issue; Seliph is just better than her at doing the same things.
9. Roy.  Is any shocked that Roy is the worst of a bunch of Fire Emblem Lords?  He's a Mercenary with Aegis and Dualstrike+, which aren't really bad, but honestly aren't enough.  His stats aren't particularly stand out like some of the other characters,  which begs the question of "Why not just use Gregor or Inigo?" if you want a good Mercenary.   His stats are comparable to Marth's, true, but Marth is 3 levels lower and has Aptitude, so it's really no question how the two are going to end up on the long term.


I already really want Ephraim, Celica and Ike, as those three look kind of ridiculous.  Good choices I suppose for Suped Up Lords as DLC characters.

[Crystalgate]

Titan Quest: Started an Earth/Spirit character. My strategy was to pump Earth Enchantment, then pump Flame Surge and once I got to Delphi, spec out of Flame Surge and instead put the points into Ternion Attack. Earth Enchantment Doubles my fire damage and Ternion let's me shoot three projectiles for 80% damage each with my staff. This makes the damage 480% which so far has been just about as balanced as it sounds like. There's also an improvement down the road that gives Ternion Attack area of effect.

I'm not sure what I'll get other than that. Maybe summons.

[hinode]

Project X Zone: Beaten a few days ago. For a while in midgame I appreciated the teamsplit chapters because they meant fewer bosses per stage, which meant less of a slog to complete.  Then chapter 36 threw 5 bosses and some 90K HP midbosses at me. Than chapters 38 and 39 had even higher boss density than previous full team maps. Then the last two stages happened, which were... yikes.

At least 40 is just slow if you move all your units to the bottom area of the map and work cautiously upwards. 41 was both brutally long (well over a full 3DS charge from start to finish) and descended into a complete clusterfuck at times. The worst was when reinforcements got triggered mid-turn, resulting in all the faster enemies getting their turns in consecutively immediately afterwards - taking 8 boss attacks plus some grunt moves consecutively without the usual PCs spread throughout was quite painful. Luckily I had a ton of high end healing items hoarded for this moment, which I spammed recklessly since I don't intend on bothering with a Clear Save ever.

XP was definately the best-designed game system, lending a real sense of strategy to skill/Multi-Attack/finisher usage that I gather from heresay was completely absent from NamcoxCapcom. The core battle system is pretty solid, but I was left with a sense that it works better when the PC cast is much smaller. I had a hell of a time trying to remember which attack was strongest for 20 separate PCs for the sake of counters and didn't even try to memorize any other attributes like XP growth. I suspect this is why they put in the +1 system, so players would have something to aim for in battle without having to memorize the attributes for every single attack, but it definately restricts both in-battle decision making and PC variety.

The pre- and post- battle dialogue was definately my favorite part of the game, with good lines and amusing crossover interactions. The game would be a lot worse if they weren't subbed ala Endless Frontier.

Super Mario 3D Land: Three worlds in, and the level design is already significantly more creative than NSMB2 (or any NSMB game, admittedly). 3D makes the platforming controls a lot trickier than 2D Mario games, though; I find myself screwing up basic jumps that I never would in any of the 2D games.

Auto-saving after every single level is great, but it makes me wonder why they went back to the lame checkpoint system in NSMB2.

[Fenrir]

Tales of Eternia Reid Solo:
Disc 2.
Hell of a challenge, one of the best I've done. The difficulty is constantly ramping up but the game showers Reid with game changers like new weapons, recipes or skills, multiple times per dungeons. The save system is very nice too, something I had never even noticed before.

I have welcomed Carbonara as Our One True God. 60%HP / 40%TP healing after battle.



Eat this over and over, Reid.
Unfortunately they don't have the ingredients down there on Celestia
He is stuck with non nutritous meals like Fruit Cocktails. 10% TP healing. Fucking great.



Dark Souls Bow Only:
Looks actually possible and not crazy?
You can snipe enemies and everything! And you can actually headshot them!!

Anyway it's the second to last challenge I can think of I haven't done for this game.

I've done:
- Pyro build
- Mage build
- Cleric build
- Melee only
- Kill everything on sight
- SL1
- Fist weapons only
- NG+
The only cool ones left are Bow Only and Fat Bastard With Huge Poise and A Zweihander.

Anyway I ignored the undead guys, went straight for the bow + 30 arrows and killed Stray Demon with them. (Total joke)
Undead burg: Ignored undead dudes again and bought 200 normal and 200 weak arrows.
Went back to the start, rushed through New Londo and got a Composite Bow. (dying 10 times in the process)

I'll try getting to Pharis right after the gargoyles to steal the Black Bow.

[Sierra]

Short Bow fires the fastest. This might actually matter at some point? Plenty of situations you can get two shots off with that instead of everything else getting you one (between titanite demon bolts, for example).

Fenrir make a pure dragon mode run. It's totally balanced! The fact that you drink estus through your neck is not at all indicative of the fact that From Software didn't apply much thought to this covenant.

I am almost ashamed at the number of characters I've run through the game by now. It's honestly kind of disturbing.

~

Shadowrun Returns: I wore a Sander Cohen bunny mask to a funeral and no one said anything.

Smashed through this over the weekend. Fairly short, but not so much that it feels like a bad deal for the price. Worth bashing through if you're in the mood for an old-fashioned point-and-click PCRPG. (Which you should be.) Plays kinda like Fallout 2 combat except, you know, polished (I loved Fallout 2 but so not because of the combat). You have skills instead of called shots, can actually control your damn team, permadeath is FFT-style, dudes automatically crouch when they end a movement next to cover, you can set people up for interception fire, etc. Pretty simplistic system but it gets the job done. It's never what I'd call difficult, but the game will punish you for making dumb tactical choices. (There are higher difficulty settings, though--I played on Normal, which is what I always do the first time I play a game unless the word Gust is somewhere on the packaging.) I died once, AI got lucky with a grenade crit + double tap (MC death is game over).

My only real gameplay complaint is for when you have to split a mission between a raid and a matrix run. The decker basically runs with a party of friendly programs in parallel to the physical combat going on in the real world, which is neat in theory, but in practice missions like this tend to end with 3/4 of the party standing around waiting for the decker to run out of cyberspace. You can totally afford to have the MC skip decking altogether and just rely on hirelings for it, which is what I did. It's not required very often and it's better to have a specialist when it is. Lets you focus your MC on shooting dudes in the face, which is something the game wants you to do a lot. (Hiring dudes is kind of expensive though, makes me pine for the Genesis days when you could feed someone chump change for one job and then exploit them for thousands of nuyen worth of unpaid matrix work.)

In a more macro sense, it's an extremely linear game, basically a static series of conversations and setpiece battles. This is totally fine for a once-over but you won't get much different an experience from running it a second time. Charisma can get you some extra conversation options, but you'll never talk your way out of a major fight. It's mostly just different ways of convincing people/upping your payment for jobs/some minor extra options for non-combat obstacles. And while you don't get anywhere near so much karma that you can be a god at everything (which I approve of, forces you to make tactical choices about your build instead of grinding until you become god of all skills a la Skyrim), if you want to see what the other classes are about, you can just hire people to experiment with them.

The basic campaign turns out to be pretty much late Fallout 1 with space bugs instead of super mutants. Which is fine. Also, totally trolled by the ending. Called it, but still good for a laugh.

Is Shadowrun or World of Darkness more deliberately hopeless? I really can't decide.

Lack of manual save is baffling. I'm not sure what the thought process was there, combat savescumming or something? Some of the last missions are as much as an hour of chained battles and if for some reason you have to power down your computer in the middle of one, whup, best resign yourself to redoing that stage from the start when you pick it up again. Biggest strike against the game. Not crippling or anything but definitely a bwuh design choice just for the inconvenience of it.

[Fenrir]

Composite Bow actually seems a bit faster, those two bows being the fastest in the game. Higher damage too. (But lower range)

Thanks Cid. You can even get the head without fighting any boss. One more Dark Souls playthrough confirmed. (30 stones for the torso though??)

[DjinnAndTonic]

Tales of Xillia: Finally got to play this! It's off to an awesome start and I can't gush enough about it, but I'm sure everyone expects that because Djinn and Tales games. So I'll just list the problems with it:
1. TP is back. Why? You fixed that problem in ToG, why would you saddle yourself with this lame resource mechanic when you're already using ToG's AC system? Just feels like a step back.
2. Link System is awesome, but it has problems. First of all, I'm playing with other people, and Linking automatically takes control away from a human player, so it effectively turns the game from a 4-player affair to a 2-player affair since you have Link to get the most out of the system. I guess this is good for people that play solo, but it's a flaw for me.
3. You have to Link to do any of the upper-level artes, so if you only have 3 PCs, then one of them is getting shafted.
4. I guess I could complain about Jude being a far less interesting main than the best the series offers, but you get a choice between him and Milla, and Milla fucking rocks.
5. Music is still bland, like every Tales game since ToD.
6. On the hardest available starting difficulty, the game is still too easy at the moment, though if I know Tales games, this will change once I get a bit further in.
7. I miss ToG's style-switching system between A- and B- Artes. ToX has some similar aspects to it, but it's less integral to the gameplay.

Overall, though, balance is pretty good. The three PCs I have so far all play very uniquely from eachother and from previous Tales builds. Milla in particular is a great variation on a Tales mage, which quick-spell versions of all her spells to allow her to fight at different ranges. The story is straightforward, the villains aren't completely inane, and the main PCs so far are all competent and have good chemistry, as long as you don't make Jude your main. Seriously, he fills in the 'young kid' role very well and manages to be likable in it, don't ruin it by trying to make him carry the whole story. Especially when Milla does it so well without trying. Alvin is hilarious and my new personal hero. Reminds me a bit of Lowell from The Last Story. I just hope the other characters can keep up the trend... (I have little hope for this, considering at least two of them are little girls and that almost never ends well... I guess ToV's Rita was okay if you consider her 'little').

Lots of fun, I wonder when I'll have time to play it again?

[Sierra]

Composite Bow actually seems a bit faster, those two bows being the fastest in the game. Higher damage too. (But lower range)

Thanks Cid. You can even get the head without fighting any boss. One more Dark Souls playthrough confirmed. (30 stones for the torso though??)

Yeah, it really sucks getting powered up before doing anything else. Dragon scales have a shit drop rate from one of the meanest standard enemies, so I got them by killing other players. Drop a sign in Undead Burg, hope low-level players don't know what they're getting into, spam fire breath. (I got lucky though, some random player figured what I was trying to do and was nice enough to straight up drop half of what I needed.) So basically run down to the ancient dragon right when you get to Lordran, run back up to Undead Burg with the head stone to murder people, run back down to the dragon with loot to get the torso stone...It's an exercise in masochism, climbing out of the Great Hollow twice at like level 10.

I have no idea at what point in the game From Software thought dragon mode was going to be balanced. Fire breath stunlocks everything in the first couple zones to death but the damage becomes obsolete almost immediately. It's absolutely shit by the time you could legitimately get it without the master key. Buff is pretty useful but eats a ton of stamina. Fortunately, your unarmed damage is not stat-based; it remains at least decent for most of the game and is horribly overpowered for the first half or so (buffed plunging attack vs Taurus Demon = fucking hilarious). I think it's something like 400 ATK at covenant rank 2?

Your melee range kind of sucks though. (I had to call in help for the Four Kings just because I had trouble hitting them.)

[Pyro]

Tales of Xillia:

I'm a big dirty Tales fan so I was going to like this. Let me hit some of the finer points:

1. TP system works well enough. Artes are very powerful but consume TP. You have an AC counter that limits your combos, 1 AC per attack/Arte. You can chain a full combo of Artes if you so choose, it's just rather expensive. TP is regenerated by attacking so by sticking to regular attack combo strings you can restore TP. The end result is that you have control over your damage output. You can pace your damage output to suit your own needs whether it is maintaining a balance with your TP restoration, or going all-out and draining TP to take something down.

2. Link System. This works very well because it 'pairs up' two PCs so they fight in tandem. Every few combos you get to do a shiny combo attack that is very powerful too.

3. Skill tree system: The skill tree system lets you choose how to level your PCs. It is a spider's web with skills and new Artes caught between the 'nodes' of the web. If you take all the nodes that surround a skill/arte, you get it without expending the expansion points (CG) which you get 3-4 of per level. You can only set the skills you have the Skill-Points for, but having them increases versatility, and they are very powerful for combat purposes. This reminds me of a better version of ToV's skill system, where the skills are easier to obtain and you have more control over it.

More later.

[Fudozukushi]

TP becomes such a complete non-issue later on to the point that it doesn't limit anything.  I guess they just don't want you spamming demon fang endlessly.  Suckers, I do that anyway gel supremacy.

Oh wait, that means I've been playing too huh?

Tales of Xillia: Actually I'm right at the endgame, clearing up sub-events before heading into the final dungeon.  Why haven't I posted about it?  Ummm, laziness?  Yeah that sounds like my kind of excuse.  Guess that just gives me an excuse to dump everything plot-related in one giant spoiler post.  Except swooning over Gaius, that'll be in bold.

But uh, addressing some more of the above posts.  Difficultly will step up in chapter 3, though randoms will never stop being pathetic.  Well, really that's the only one, so yeah.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Project X Zone - ... there's a chapter 41? aw nuts. I'm a little tempted to put this game down. It's not bad but it's slow and repetitive and I'm disappointed to hear there are still 14+ chapters left. I have a much lower opinion of the battle conversations than hinode does; some are funny, yes, but most are bland non sequiturs and a few are cringe-inducing. Otherwise, opinion on the game's strengths and weaknesses remains pretty much unchanged.

XCOM - Far superior strategy game. Replaying this, felt rusty enough to go for normal, having a blast. The game's flaws remain but they are still quite forgivable, and the more one plays the game the more its flaw of "will you or won't you be able to see that enemy after moving?" becomes easier to mitigate via experience, which is nice. Currently ironmanning it up, although the playthrough isn't formally on Ironman mode because the game froze a few times last playthrough (none so far this one at least) and I don't trust it not to do the same again and eat the ironman save file.

Star Ocean 4 Universe Mode - Picked this up again, at En II.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Project X Zone - ... there's a chapter 41? aw nuts.

Fuck, I'm at like C31. >_<

[Random Consonant]

I sympathize, since I've stalled at about that point.  The game could stand to be a bit more consice (still beats NxC on that end though...)

[Idun]

Made it to Frontier Village; currently controlling Dunban, with Shulk in tow. Princess stepped out of the party for a second. Hey store, thanks for spoiling the game! (Who the flup is Riki?) Moving on, L37. That's that. All quests until Frontier Village complete. Or at least, that I know of.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Tales of XXX: the combo system is awesome still. The opening sections beat ToG out of the water! Still a little too easy, but playing on Hard makes the bosses challenges. Enough that we had had to drop the difficulty down on one or two.

The villain cast is looking kinda lame now, but the fanservice chick is hot in that whorish way.

PC interaction is still the highlight of the story, Rowen is pretty hilarious and an awesome UOM. The little girl is inoffensive overall, at least she acts like a little girl. Teepo is her comic relief mascot thing and tries to be funny. He often fails but I inexplicably like him anyway, especially when he is trying to eat Jude's face. Jude is actually a pretty good character, but I'm glad he isn't who I chose for a main. Milla and Alvin carry every scene they talk in.

My only concern about the link system at the moment is when the inevitable solo colosseum area shows up, I will be completely cut off from using my powerful artes.

The art direction and overall tone of the story is a lot more mature than previous Tales offerings.

[Fudozukushi]

Since it doesn't seem you have your fully party yet I can somewhat safely say that the villain cast will get better when they actually y'know talk to the party instead of wondering where the hell they all came from.

I was literally going through the arena when you made your post, so points for bacon.  Though when the coliseum inevitably comes up there'll be other more pressing problems to deal with.  As usual there's the team match as well which you damn well will want to do hot damn is the reward for that good.

Hilariously I had an easier time in the Arena as Rowen and Elize over anyone else. 

Anyway, I'm on track to just eke out the Sub-Event title in postgame, so right now I'm trying to max out my shops.  Completed Weapon, everything else is in the 90s.  Trying to finish off the Link Heart titles too, but having Jude and Leia glued to the hip for the entire game means I'm doing annoying grinding.  On the other hand playing boulder master as Rowen is balling.

[Nitori]

inFamous: Playing electric Spiderman is fun, doing Good side because good is cool

[Hunter Sopko]

inFamous: Playing electric Spiderman is fun, doing Good side because good is cool

Excellent. Good side is also the best path to do the stunts, if you're interested.

[Otter]

Save the Date: beat this last week, 's good

TH14: yadda yadda it's good, capped all the Lunatic cards in spell practice, awaiting patch

LFT: Team Republican Nominees has saved Olan, gotten through its first Zalmo encounter and is on its way to Orbonne.  I really like mime but my party is practically designed around making it less effective than it should be.  Right now Rick Perry is a thief with martial arts and that is kinda the worst for Mimestadio, who imitates the double-attack martial arts punches by doing a single non-martial arts punch.  Romney and Palin have been pure damage-twinking wizards so far, just fire spells and fire rods and MAU, and obviously my mime is casting those without benefit of MAG+x equips or the fire boost or MAU etc. so that's bad too.  Paul Ryan is the only one with decent mime-synergy; he just now switched from monk over to geo where he's still just spamming monk skills but off higher PA, and that monk skillset works pretty nice with a mime.  So that's something.

So I'm learning a lot about what stuff doesn't go together (to reiterate: my team and mime) and thinking about how to salvage the situation and get through Chapter 3.  I think one move that would help might be sending Rick Perry back to knight, equipped with Charge, since both the weapon and the Charge help Mimestadio dish out way more damage (and in the meantime Rick would be picking up nice breaks to use with Concentrate).  I might also send Mitt and Sarah to oracle and time mage respectively, get some status stuff working so it's not all about MA and I can get some better mimes out of those two.  Unfortunately doing that and keeping their black magic secondaries gets rid of a lot of my revival.  Maybe I'll just pick one, give it to Mitt, and let Sarah hang out in priest for a while?  These are the questions.

Yadda yadda LFT's good, I'm bad at it, this is not a challenge game and yet I feel like I'm about to hit the part where I have to farm randoms or props for jp or something

[Captain K.]

Happy Wars:  went ahead and dropped $20 on the game since it's good enough to deserve some of my money.  Ended up with 5(!) super-rare items as a result.  Now I'm spoiled for choice for cleric helmets - I just have to decide which one to use.

Streetpass Mii Plaza:  Bought all the new games for it since this is something I play every day anyway.

Mii Force:  Nice shooting game, the levels have nice variety so you're not always doing the same thing.  Difficulty isn't bad but it's balanced by you having really crappy weapons unless you do lots of tagging during the day.

the Garden one, forget the name:  This is boring.  Not bad mind you, just super slow/tedious.

Warriors Way:  simplified Nobunaga's Ambition.  Doing pretty well so far.

the haunted mansion one:  This is really good actually.  Could see this standing on its own as a full-fledged game with some modifications.

[Shale]

FF5: Got all the tablets, mainly through Zenigage spam. I've tried a few times to steal the fourth Protect Ring from Odin, not sure if I'll keep doing that until I get it or just smash him with money and go into the Void.

[Meeplelard]

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance: I just killed Metal Gear Ray with a sword...yeah, that makes total sense in a Platinum Games kind of way.  Also playing Hard Mode since from my understanding, it's geared towards people use to DMC-style action games.

Ducktales Remastered: Woo-hoo!  Beat Amazon Jungle after trying it about 4 times.  Playing on Medium, and game is kicking my ass.  By trying, I mean "full cycle of lives."  Hard game is hard.  Even the tutorial stage cost me a few lives.  Fun stuff like the original game in any event.

[Fenrir]

Otter you're the man.

ToE Reid Solo: Finished Gnome's cave.
Since resources (ingredients) have been scarce I've actually used the Heal ring (8% max HP healing after killing any enemy) unironically in this dungeon. Woaah.
The game has a nasty tendency to throw ice swords in ice dungeons and earth halberds in earth dungeons, making sense teasing you with a powerful but for now totally useless weapon. (that's probably going to be outclassed right as you leave the dungeon)

[Lord Ephraim]

Tales of Triple X:  Completed in about 45 hours.  The last chapter felt extremely rushed, but otherwise a pretty solid game.  I think it's a bit better than Graces F, but no where near the level of Vesperia. 

The best feature of the game is instant travel that you get from the beginning.  No sidequests are missable either, and a skit telling you when a new one opens up.  Does this count as hand holding? Maybe, however, it's better than having to switch to text documents after every major event to make sure I don't miss anything.

The worst part is the lack of artes.  Tales games usually gives you new abilities to play around with every hour.  Here you get only a handful every 3 hours.  I heard this is improved upon in the sequel.

Cast was pretty solid but no godtiers like Yuri, Jade or F arc Richard.  Gaius was pretty cool until his new partner in crime came in, urgh they can go die in a ditch.  Best PC was Elize, I have over 2000 uses of Teepo Roar and it keeps getting better.  Worst PC is Leia.  She literally brings nothing to the plot.  Not that she's bad or anything, but you can remove her from the game and get the same results.  Honestly Ivar should have been the 6th PC.  Sure, he's annoying at times but he brings a couple of laughs here and there.

Dragon's Crown:

Level 24 Sorceress.  The fanservice here is creepier than mort NISA games, but the game is pretty fun to play.  Online has some Brawl-tier amounts of lag, sadly.

[Clear Tranquil]

Eph, did you do Jude or Milla's side? I'm on Chapter 4 on Jude's side and after the events at the end of Chapter 3 when Jude and Leia ended up in Hamil, Jude might not have snapped out of it if it hadn't been for Leia and she did (spoiler if you didn't do Jude's side) did dual Alvin, true she didn't win but it was still kind of badass, with her making a stance against Jude and Alvin about not giving up too and well against Alvin in general. I'd been waiting for someone to try and kick his ass the whole game pretty much aside from very early on where he was cool Nothing much going on with her apart from that true but I also like her interactions with Elize and Agria, and at least she's been pretty inoffensive on the whole and has pretty much just did her duty, made a stance and pulled her weight in major plot battles/in helping to try and save the world.

I agree about Ivar being funny and him being a party member/playable but not at the expense of Leia since she's my main I'm playing on Hard mode and honestly her being back up healer/reviver/support to Elize has been invaluable at times since my AI Elize has gotten herself wiped quite a few times over the course of the game even with defensive AI tactics options. Well I'm playing on Hard mode and I'm only L50 and have just been using storebought equipments for the most part, sometimes enemy drops/steals as well but I haven't done any arena stuff or Devil Beasts. I've just fought the boss at the shrine. It managed to wipe out my entire team once and then in the reattempt most of my team at once including Elize due to status shenanigans, then it was boss Mystic Arte spam happy later in the fight so Leia's ability to get the team quickly back on it's feet with items was appreciated. I've just picked up the skill that boosts item effectiveness with her as well =) Well it was a fun fight, appreciated when I had the openings to lay the pain on the boss with Leia/Jude Tempest Pirouette spam too.

I agree about the rush later if Chapter 4 is indeed the last one, totally wasn't expecting boss fights in a row and was a bit unprepared.