What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Captain K.]

Happy Wars:  Zephyr came out, crowd control class looks pretty cool and was sorely needed.  About to hit rank 40.

Streetpass Mii Plaza roundup!:

Mii Force:  Still good but frustrating.  I mostly have to go through it with the flamethrower which is terrible because my other 3DS uses a red shirt char.  But changing that would mean not using a red shirt in Find Mii 2.  This appears to be conscious design by the programmers!

Flower Town:  Changed my mind about this one.  It's actually really enjoyable just because it has variety.  You don't just get your watering from guests and then you're done for the day, you can still roam around and do other stuff/shop/do jobs/feng shui it up.  Takes a long time to get going but it pays off well.

Warrior's Way:  And this is objectively terrible.  Almost completely linear.  You get your armies for the day, fight and win or lose there's nothing else to really do.  Upgrading your castle isn't stimulating at all.

Monster Manor:  While designing maps with Tetris blocks never gets old, it's getting a bit stale.  The same problem with red shirt comes up again - I never have to fight anything because you only fight enemies when changing colors of hallways.  Supposedly there are some actual puzzles later on but I have yet to reach them.

[Fenrir]

Now go do the Boss Rush with Max Only. It'll be like a Max-only run, only possible.

(seriously, Max is like the coolest person in that cast)

There's a boss rush?
Anyway. Max vs Volt/Rem = lol
Max is definitely the best character but he sounds as unfun to control as one of the mages. And you get him so late.

I "beat" the game (I screwed the Aurora wall thing up but whatever) Nereid was totally ridiculous as expected.
I Rune bottled savories to get to 9999 HPs and beat Cless (With Reverse Dolls). Equipped Cless'stuff/two Warrior Symbols/The Omega Shield (you get that midgame and never ever take it off) and used a Syrup Bottle midbattle for status immunity. Omega demon chaos spam + Lots of jellies.

Megasonic Thrust was my best skill overall. Those lategame skills don't even compare.

[Twilkitri]

Toki Tori - Played through

Fine.

Beat the hard levels for Forest Falls and Creepy Castle, not going to bother with the ones for Slimy Sewer and Bubble Barrage though. I just don't really find that style of gameplay to be particularly entertaining when things get too complicated.

Kind of annoying that the rewind control is locked out when you start dying, considering that a menu option comes up to rewind after you finish dying anyway.



Duke Nukem 2 - Played through

I'd only ever played the first episode in my youth, so I got to see the other three. It was underwhelming.

The first episode has a lot of variety in levels, the other three - not so much. There are story-based reasons (sparse as they are) for this but that doesn't really ease the pain. Also they didn't seem to care about this when they made the bridge of the spaceship some sort of cave.

The other three episodes also reuse the gimmick levels from the first episode (all episodes have an earthquake level, all episodes have a radar dish level) which cheapens their effect.

I cannot say that I am a fan of the way the rocket chairsledthing thing moves.

[DjinnAndTonic]

There was a YouTube video of Max Solo Boss Rush so I know it's possible. Just curious how Fenrir might go about it.

[Meeplelard]

Here's justification for your usage of Tiki:

She plays a notable role in Shadow Dragon AND re-appears in Awakening. Due to that, she's got the most canon appearances of any Fire Emblem game alongside the Peg Knight Trio (who are all in FE2 I believe), and unlike the Peg knights, she actually plays a semi-notable role!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Project X Zone - So the current chapter I'm on has like 80 enemies. Meh. Think I'm done with this game until I'm in a situation where I have nothing to play but portables. Wasn't really expecting this to happen after the game's rather promising early stages, the game kinda went to hell when it let maps balloon uncontrollably AND stopped having any missions that weren't "defeat all enemies".


Suikoden 3 - So I started this again. I remember reading that it's a good idea, at some point, to play through each character's Chapter 1-3 in succession to get a stronger feel for their storyline, so that's what I'll be doing. Toying around with some challenge where I use weaker weapons/armour/... magic skill level maybe? than normal.


Star Ocean 4 - Cave of the Seven Stars. Randoms here are certainly a big step up from the final dungeons. Bacchus is the man, though. Black Hole Sphere to stun them for a bit and fill up the rush gauge, then rush combo Galvanic Shock to one-shot one of them, avoid fire and repeat as necessary. Switched from Edge to Sarah because Edge really wasn't offering much special, AI Faize is quite a bit better at not dying than AI Edge. Yes, I'm unironically sticking with Faize as a superior PC to someone.


Final Fantasy V - Decided to try a solo challenge since I was craving more FF5 but want a break from fiesta and normal playthroughs are just crush smash crush. Using Faris primarily because (a) Galuf and Lenna both miss significant chunks, and (b) Faris versus Bartz, c'mon guys this is obvious. Grefters will happy to know I used Galuf until I got Faris though, so he is level 5 while Bartz is 2 and Lenna is 1 (this should help his solo bit in early world 2). Also, extra challenges because I can: (1) no escape, because I'm not a wuss; (2) fight everything in the game, if possible; (3) no Mix because Mix is dumb and overcentralising on a solo; it can do basically anything ST outside damage and I'd rather actually have tradeoffs in my skillset.

Anyway I learned that earlygame FF5 enemy damage is weird, it is largely terrible but the magic tends to hit like four times harder (to the front row). Fortunately most of it isn't used often, turn 2 at the earliest? Just got the water crystal. Quick recap:

Wingraptor - Ohnoes I actually healed against him. Much easier than Moldwynd x3 randoms which can potentially use Aero (~75 damage) on turn 2. (You'll never see this on a non-solo since they're OHKO-bait.)
Karlabos - Hardest fight by far, thus far. Basically he has a 100% paralysis move (shield blocked, 10% shield rate though...) and a ~100% HP-1 move. Paralysis gets him two turns in a row after it's used. Quick, spot how I can lose horribly without being able to do anything in response! Speed differences aren't enough, back row proved essential. Vampire in response to HP-1 or if HP gets too low is the way to go. Vampire is kinda cheap in a solo, I was considering just never using it but I needed it to make this fight sane. Eh, it should fall off soon enough anyway, even a bit of MEvade can fuck you over.
Siren - Monk with Black Magic Lv1. Punch punch, switch to undead, cast fire.
Magissa - Went as pure black mage for this, which probably isn't as safe as blue since I can't outheal Magissa, but fortunately I can outslug her. Put Forza to sleep as soon as he shows up, Frost Rod-boosted Blizzard for the rest of the fight.
Garula - Blue Mage with Black Magic. Use Flash (obtained with Ether from North Mountain) to blind him, then Blizzard away from the back row for a simple victory. If he gets lucky with hitting I could use Vampire, but he doesn't.

Currently level 15, was 7-8 for Karlabos, levels for other things less important.

Guess I'll take a look at beating Shiva (which will involve more Vampire). Jackanapes... well you can't get Level 5 Death on a solo! Image + axe Aim or something? Control on a thief (ew 40% hit rate)? We'll see, that's certainly a project for late W1... fortunately there are other places to get an Elven Mantle. [EDIT: Oh wait, if I can get 1000 Needles, then Thief + that = win.] A bit worried about Liquid Flame / Karnak escape but after that it should probably be clean sailing for a while? Could easily be proven wrong.

Classes used so far:
Monk - Inflated by the extra levels obviously, hits like a truck and lots of HP and counters! Recently hit JL2 (the highest I intend to get, for a long time) so I can pass Barehanded around.
Blue Mage - Vampire. And hey, can use shields and do some damage otherwise, and has Flash and stuff. It is by and large easier to learn skills on a solo at least! About to hit JL2, unfortunately 3 is what I really need (for Blue Magic itself)
Black Mage - Has hit JL1. Does damage, casts Sleep on Forza. MP is sorta limited on a solo compared to normal play, extra levels doesn't offset having more sources of damage. Still solid.

No real use for the other jobs yet (Knight, Thief, White Mage). I was hoping Thief might be fast enough to prevent Karlabos from getting two turns in after paralyse but sadly not. I'm pretty indecisive in terms of what to build. Blue 3 and Time 2 seem like must-haves for many bosses in the future, beyond that... I'll just grab what I think I need and we'll see. Summon at some point... probably White but not sure. Control obviously, and Ninja has plenty of good stuff, once I get fire.

[Cmdr_King]

Mm.  Reducing your magic skill levels has the practical effect of making magic weaker (and nigh-unusable outside healing if we're talking default/untrained only) in a game where magic is already relatively at its weakest in the entire series.  More interesting, at least to me, would be reversing that; try doing a no-Blacksmith run perhaps.  My instinct is that the upper half or so of physical characters can function just fine this way, but it still brings the physical/magic balance to something more interesting.  Cooullld be wrong though!

e: heck, in keeping with the idea of weaker armors, maybe just do a no-shop run.  Scavenge gear from treasure chests and such, but otherwise abstain from the blacksmith, armorer, and item shop.  (I'd say use the rune shop, but on the other hand adding that in would just mean you use default runes/can't change rune setups until you recruit Jeane.)

[Meeplelard]

Dead Rising 2 Case West: Been sitting on this for a while, finally played through it.

It's more of the same for Dead Rising 2, which isn't a bad thing as DR2 is a good game, and hearing Frank's banter as you screw up with Chuck is funny at times.  The chemistry between the two is amusing as well, between Chuck being the whole Cool Action Hero, and Frank being the Smart Ass Jerk whose "been there before", and the two clearly don't like each other, just working together because it's kind of necessary.  Frank can't do it alone, and Chuck needs someone to help him clear his name.

Cliffhanger sequel-bait ending I'm not fond of though, which yes, we know DR3 has been confirmed, but it's not looking...uhh...promising.  Also X1 exclusive so I probably won't ever play it.


Doubt I'll play Off the Record, unless it becomes a "Games With Gold" thing, because while DR2 is good, I can't see spending more money on it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Mm. I'd kinda like to at least somewhat preserve character balance, so if I nerf fighters I will nerf mages in some way, too... maybe not as much, but some. Two spell ranks is my kneejerk as a decent tradeoff for no blacksmith, as it should keep things usable. Maybe I should nerf them unevenly. Three for water, one fire fire and earth, two for everything else? Maybe.

Not going to do no shop though, that will just encourage me to grind treasure bosses for armour (and also would encourage annoyances like rotating around my few armours which are way better than the rest). Instead I'll probably do something like "use armour 3 tiers worse than current storeboughts".

edit: oh yeah, the lowered def requirement necessitates a ban on monster PCs and Augustine hahaha. Well I'll use Fubar while he's forced of course. (I can also make an exception for the dogs and then never use them anyway.)

[Luther Lansfeld]

Been doing lotsa gaming, but no posting!

Blue Dragon – The final boss sequence was douchey. Nene was a ridiculous boss who basically makes you want to horde elemental resistance items, and the other bosses were pretty irritating too.

Overall the hard mode is a good hard mode, feels a lot like Eviltype except with the final dungeon expecting side quests to be at least partially done. Definitely would recommend the hard mode to someone who wanted the game with a lot of bite, not to someone who wanted a slightly more challenging version of the original.

Cthulhu Saves the World / Cthulhu's Angels – Played this over a course of a week. Fast and fun. Umi is the best – Cthulhu needs fangirls too. ^_^ Dungeon design sucks ass, though. Not sure the point of Ember. I like that you kill Dacre in CA and that the narrator is the final boss and has lots of punny attack names. Both modes ended with Umi beating people's faces in, though.

Fire Emblem: Awakening : Finished the maingame of another playthrough on Hard Classic. Got all of the kids and I'm working on supports in the aftergame as well as levelling kids. Brady, you suck!

Wild Arms 5 – Finally decided to tackle this. The game feels like it is putting WA2, WA3, and WA4 in a blender and seeing what comes out. The results are mixed, but I'm enjoying the game so far. The gameplay is fundamentally a watered down version of WA4, the map system harkens back to 2, an d the medium system is like 3's. I think my favorite character in the game is Greg, unshockingly; he is the pragmatic one in a team filled with idealistic children. Plus his voice acting is super sexy.

Also, they were right when they said we should never meet our heroes. </Metric>

The RIVALRY motivations range from well duh(Greg) to hilariously stupid(Chuck). Seriously, a hot, rich, and successful guy is macking on a lady that you didn't have the balls to ask out, boo hoo. Carol's voice acting is a thing. Can we just ban children from RPGs altogether, just to be safe? Monowheel is awesome. Puzzles are awesome. Graphics are nice, but the gameplay itself is somewhat lacking.

Suikoden – Finished replay! Lawl to the final boss, Sonya was the best boss in the game. Playing rock/paper/scissors and CHEATING is the best. Game is weird. Beginning is super strong writing wise and the game decays into weirdness. Oh, I guess I did a challenge of the game, not using Water or Wind or Flowing or Cyclone. I mostly just used Mega Medicines for my healing and they were adequate.

Few things:

Pahn, immediately upon me accepting him into my army despite being a traitorous cur stands in my bedroom saying “Where's my food.” Get the fuck out, son.

Translation fail Part 1: There is a line after the Dwarf Village 'said' by Kirkis: “After returning from the dwarf village” which I guess was a tag in the code?

Translation fail Part 2: When you are asked if you want to ride a boat with Tai Ho, the options are:
1. Yes
2. Correction, maybe later.
Viktor, upon seeing Shell Venus, screams “There you are!” Why didn't we see a continuation of this epic rivalry in the second game?

Earth Rune is boss in this game. Two attack spells helps.

Mind control is such a compelling villain motive that TWO of the generals have it. Intriguing!

Forcing party members is no bueno.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn – wtfever ya'll

[Dark Holy Elf]

FF5 Solo - Completed a bunch more.

Shiva - Blue Mage with... something. Flash the Commanders, then Vampire as needed.
Fire Ship - I have a choice, here, between Barehanded or black magic, both are great here... except Poltergeists. Those guys are scary because they can inflict confuse turn 1, null all black magic elements, and have some evasion. Best bet is still to punch them and hope, though.
Liquid Flame - Blue Mage with Black Magic 1. Another fight where Vampire is the hero. Long one because he heals himself, I have to watch for paralysis locks, etc., but the risk of dying is relatively low because of 0 MEvade, I need to get quite unlucky with paralysis.
Karnak escape (2 resets) - Once just involved bungling something with Gigas counters, the other time involved getting all the way to the end and getting hit by Death Claw. PARALYSIS! Ruining my day forever. Anyway, I use Blue Mage with Barehanded here. Barehanded one-shots everyone except Gigases (two-shot) and enemies in the back row. Vampire can repair damage if I'm low on HP. Aera is an important pickup from Gigas, which it fortunately uses 1 turn out of 3. Aera lets me one-shot Sorcerers, who are a bit scary (confuse) and waste time (frog) I don't have, even if they're in the back row, which is nice. Also, I have to beat a Sergeant random at some point, who is accompanied by Cur Nakks... MT OHKO with Aera kills the nakks, but makes the sergeant run. Hit Sergeant with Aera, then MT OHKO everything works. Finally there is Iron Claw. Switch up my setup, Black Mage with whatever. MT Fira kills the dogs, he transforms, hit him with sleep! Then 2HKO with whatever element. Giving him a turn is a 1/3 chance of Death Claw which is the end. I grabbed all the chests.
Dhorme Chimera - Yay Aqua Rake.
Library - I'm Level 21 here, thankfully not 20. Anyway these battles aren't too hard, I'm more concerned with gaining job levels than specific strategies. The weakest setup I have that deals with them is Beastmaster + Blue (if I need healing) or Time (if I don't). Time is a bit stronger since the only way to die here is to be hit by slow (page 128) then berserk (page 256), and hasting self offsets that. Main Gauche + Elf Mantle makes enemies unhappy.
Ifrit - Liquid Flame version Easymode. Black Mage with Time 2. Haste self, Slow him, 3HKO with Blizzara.
Byblos - I can 3HKO him too, but the counters could mess me up so I don't. Time Mage + Blue is the safest thing here. Vampire won't always hit, but his damage isn't so great and it hits often enough. Haste/Slow to turn things my way, Vampire when needed, otherwise Gravity until he's in range of death from 130 damage Goblin Punch aw yeah.

Jobs so far:

Blue Mage - Unshockingly the most crucial job. If I did this again I would probably try to go without using Vampire. As mentioned before it should get less overcentralising as time goes on. Anyway using it for the entire Karnak escape sequence helped me hit Job Level 3, so I have Blue.
Time Mage - Haste is awesome in a solo, pays off in any battle you plan to get 3 or more actions in. Slow is great too of course. Hit JL 2 in this so I have both those spells.
Monk - JL2, for Barehanded.
Black Mage - JL1. Good place to switch into to have loads of damage, though... the best at this point.
Beastmaster - JL1. Working on Control now. Uh not much else to say about it, physicals aren't complete garbage with Main Gauche though (whip physical kinda is, sadly).

No other jobs used yet, not even White/Red/Summon/Ninja.

[Meeplelard]

Mother 3: Just beat the Mechanical Gorilla.

This game is behind its time in terms of basic mechanics, polish, etc.  Its barely improved from Earthbound in this regard, just in Earthbound's case, this was the norm.  Mother 3, its a 2006 jRPG, there's really little excuse.

[superaielman]

LFT- Chapter 3! I'm at Goland, getting my ass kicked around the freaking block. Olan keeps getting killed on the second turn before I can reach him.  >_<

[AndrewRogue]

Laggy Fantasy: Tactics are Magic: Up through Dorter2. Been having some trouble as my team has next to no offense, but I'm powering through. Getting Invite on Fluttershy has been quite helpful, as it swings fights pretty dramatically.

War of the Lions translation is awful. While it does clear up some scenes and actually improve on a couple of them, the Ye Olde Englishe being jacked up to 11 turns quite a bit of the game unintentionally comical. Argath is a laugh a minute.

Rayman Legends Demo: Fucking fantastic. Ash and I had a blast with this.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FFT is such a great game. It has two vastly different translations. How they both managed to suck, I'll never understand.

[AndrewRogue]

It seriously is pretty impressive to manage to get a complete retranslation and STILL FUCK IT UP.

Also, the fact that they do ye olde englishe and then throw in a spoony bard reference. Seriously.

[Meeplelard]

Simple really...

FFT's original translation is like a lot of early PS1 Translations: It's lazy, bad and people didn't bother to care toher than "does this resemble English?"  This leads to hilarious mistakes!

FFT War of the Lions translation wanted to be as different from FFT's as possible, so went with the "WE MUST SOUND AS IMPRESSIVE AS POSSIBLE!"  This led to, well, what Andrew said.  Also they love to use "Th" over "S" a lot.  Argath is probably the best (worst?) example of that.


That's a problem with a number of retranslations Square-Enix had around that time.  While they are more accurate, they often come off as being written with that "we must impress you" mindset.

FF4DS comes to mind for this, compared to FF4a (and possibly FF4 PSP...I think that version is just the GBA script with adding in some FF4DS terminology like Eidolon and Feymarch.)  I remember looking at two examples from both translations.  They were the same line of dialog in the corresponding scenes.  FF4a was straight forward, to the point, and sounded like normal English.  FF4DS said the same thing in twice as many words, and it sounded way too wordy.

...it's like they gave the translation to me and didn't have someone hit me anytime I was being anything but concise.


TO BE FAIR:
Having a profound, wordy style dialog for specific characters is fine if you want a specific speech pattern from them.  At least then you're giving them an extra character trait to try and help sell their character.  Just FF4DS and FFTWotL did this with EVERY character, so that clearly wasn't the purpose. 
In FFTWotL's case, at first I thought "Oh, they're all nobles or had noble upbringings" and that's what they were aiming at.  That is until Mustadio, a commoner, spoke in a very similar style, at which point I just realized the guys were, well...again, see Andrew.


(That said, FF5a definitely got the whole "Translate and put actual effort into writing" thing down right.)

[Shale]

WotL translation at least falls under "overdone atmosphere" instead of "Nobody involved spoke fluent English." I was able to suspend disbelief for the new script a lot more easily than the old one, just because it felt intentional.

But yes, FF5a reigns supreme among retranslations.

[Pyro]

Tales of Xillia: Finished (Jude Main).

In short, this is one of (if not the) best Tales game for gameplay, but one with a mediocre story/character cohesion along with an inferior soundtrack.

Gameplay: Tales of Xillia's combat system is good due to depth. You have the basic combo system, which allows you to blow through TP fastfastfast to deal lots of damage or pace yourself to keep your resources at the same level. Since you regen TP through regular attacks there is incentive to mix in regular physicals with Artes unless you just want something dead. The game's Link system works very well, providing you with the means to mix PC's passive skills and healing while tapping into some awesome combo artes. Want more HP? Link with Alvin. Want to halve your TP costs? Link with Elize. Want to steal stuff? Link with Leia. The drawback is that you share inflicted status, but that only matters for a handful of big battles. The game features auto-items that you can turn on and off (as well as setting what situations call for item use), and you can swap the auto-items on/off for the whole party with two button presses. Swapping PC's in/out is fast, easy, and encouraged by the game's design.

The character growth system is a lot of fun. You have a hexagon representing the 6 stats. You expand the hexagon by taking certain points (each representing stat gains) within it. If you take enough points to 'enclose' a space you get a new skill for it. The hexagon starts out small but when you 'enclose' the 3 of the 6 outer layers it expands. You can push out and expand ASAP to unlock the more powerful outer nodes and skills, or you can develop evenly. You start out gaining 3 GP per level, then 4, then 5, then 4, then 3, and finally 2 in the 60s-L99. So basically you can complete MOST of the boards by endgame but some selection will be left undone.

Every PC has Skill Points as a stat. They can equip passive skills to the point where the sum costs of those skills equals their Skill Point stat. This keeps you from grabbing too many skills at once and lets you tailor your playstyle to how you like..

Character balance is good.

Jude is a hyperfast main character who excels at getting out of the way of attacks. His damage output is respectable. He has some healing skills that affect an area but no revival. Mostly he's just CRAZY fast. I think of Guy from TotA but the speed just makes a mockery of that. The guy can practically teleport. Oh he can do that too if he backstep dodges an enemy, as it teleports him behind them for bonus crit rate and immunization against further strikes in their combo.

Milla is a fighter/mage hybrid with some aerial gimmicks. Not much for raw damage but good at tying up lots of enemies. I was actually unimpressed with her, truth be told. Her durability isn't anything special (it's bad without a particular skill to reduce damage by 30%). Her damage is lackluster... Maybe I misued her but there you go.

Alvin hits things like a god damn truck. He also soaks up physical punishment really really well since he gets +25% Pdef (loses some MDef but Mdef doesn't matter too often). And he has some great ranged attacks. Variable Trigger is so good it's almost broken since it hits a line, deals lots of damage, and is fast. The Charge mechanic just makes the damage that much better.

Elize is a ridiculously good healer. Spells are really fast (and the lag time is cooldown, not windup), TP eventually becomes a non-issue, she heals areas for a good deal more than most Tales healers, she has a very spammable Auto-revive move, ressurection, an MT status healing move that adds status invulnerability... just a fountain of heals. Her Healer AI is very good as it keeps tabs on when to spam area healing and when to do the auto-revive/ressurect other party members. Her attack magic is excellent crowd control that concentrates enemies into an area. She has some defensive skills like Auto-Medicine that make her surprisingly tanky since it's a 15% chance to heal 30% HP... doesn't sound like much until you remember just how multi-hit the game can be and suddenly her durability is a lot higher than it looks. As a side note, her ultimate passive skill is an OPB auto-rez. That is not in fact OPB. It refreshes anytime you switch her in/out. Faster than casting Revive on herself even. Especially nice since everyone uses skills that make revival full HP/TP restoration. Oh yeah she has a unique skill that triples her exp in a fight that is long and has her healing a lot. Like boss battles. Where most of your exp comes from.

Leia is a solid healer (mostly revival, some ST healing) and fighter. Stealing is essential in some boss fights on Hard (they heal themselves with items otherwise!). Her aerial hijinks can be a lot of fun. Her Item skills are wonderful. You may as well just set her to be the auto-item user and lelet her make the best use of items to keep your party in tip-top shape. Rather tanky to boot. Not bad at all!

Rowen is like Rita Mordio with less damage. He can put out lots of fast area spells, and gets better at it as the game goes on. Elemental options abound and he ties up enemies very nicely even before he puts together his good magic combo skill repetoire. His Binding Chains move gathers an entire enemy field into one area.

In terms of in-game usefulness, I think Elize/Alvin (heals/damage) and Leia/Jude (for the same reason mostly) work best. But you can swap party members in/out as you see fit and everyone gains full exp.

[Fudozukushi]

I think my favorite pointless thing about Jude is getting the skill that gives his front-steps damage combined with the skill that removes the AC cost of back/front-steps.  ENDLESS COMBO.

I can't get into the swing of Milla either--generally because I'm just plowing through with the Devil's Arms and killing everything in seconds is the exact thing you don't want to do to learn a melee moves.  But from what little I've read--IMMA EXPERT NOW--you need to get Milla into the air so you can have happy fun times doing melee or magic.

Alvin just blooms so late.  Speed Charge is such a goddamn boon but you can't get it until like 50.  At least proper maintenance of his charges means you have the best glory.  Then again Variable Blast all day every day no one gets near you that isn't a boss.

Never knew switching Elize in/out refreshed Angel's Cry.  Mainly because buwhy is she out of the party in the first place.  Auto-Medicine I swear is actually wrong in its % chance.  I literally couldn't die in the Arena because it just kept going off.  Watching Negative Gate go off in less than a second is glorious though.

Rowen is just too screwed by AI.  It will not uses Arte Tuning at all which really cuts into his damn power.  A full barrage of Fireballs will ruthlessly butcher the Advanced Single Boss in the Coliseum but the AI will never make use of it or anything because standing around like an idiot is a better idea somehow.

Leia has a skill that KOs her when her link partner dies, but the partner gets full HP/TP.  It costs 8 SP.  It is known as the worst skill in the game.  Minimum Damage has more freaking uses god damn.

Anyway that was my party as well for fighting the Golden Mage Knight.  Jude/Leia brought on the pain while Alvin kept whatever he could busy to screen Elize while she did her healing/revive.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

But yes, FF5a reigns supreme among retranslations.

FF5a's script is less a retranslation and more a full rewrite, isn't it? I seem to recall the localization team got tons of leeway with the text.

[Meeplelard]

FF5a kept the basic text the same, but added in actual writing quality to make the text not dull, adding in mostly a large amount of comic relief.  Supposedly, the actual FF5 Japanese script is a lot more similar in tone to FF5a's than the other English ones, being more humor toned and light hearted, albeit the style of humor is significantly different (more satirical and less gag-based)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Uh no, Rob's correct. The tone of FF5j is similar to, y'know, the three translations we saw previous to FF5a's which all had a very consistent tone. Which is to say it has some humourous moments, but satire it is not. What on earth would it be satirising? Story-heavy RPGs barely existed then. I have multiple Japanese-speaking friends who have played FF5 in its original Japanese and neither described the script as funny (the terms I recall run more along the lines of "crap" but it has been years since I talked to either about it <.<). If you compare the scripts of FF5a and other FF5 editions side-by-side you can clearly see where FF5a completely rewrote things in a way not at all similar to the original, in order to be more humourous.

FF5a basically had a freedom to completely gut the existing game's tone, probably because the English-speaking world had no attachment to the story it was trying to tell. If Square Enix NA had done that with FF6 or FFT or probably even FF4 there would be an uproar from fans, but FF5 was in a unique position where only a tiny minority of people in North America/Europe/etc. had played the game when they might form an emotional attachment to the story (plus, let's be honest, it's a bad script for encouraging emotional attachments), so they were free to rework it into something people would actually find appealing without pissing many people off.

[SnowFire]

I'm with the Elf-Rob alliance on this one.  I think we've been over this before, but your theory that FF5 was originally supposed to be humorous / satirical / something doesn't seem to fly from what I know of the story, either.  It was just really generic.  Now, luckily for us, it turns out that if you do want to interject random humor, it's easy to do this on a generic quest-to-save-the-world skeleton, but that doesn't mean it was there originally.  To wildly guess, I'd suspect that FF5's script was written by big fans of FF3j's plot, since there are a number of similarities (multiple worlds, 2 sets of 4 destined warriors, evil plan to return everything to void), but decided they should incorporate some of FF4's innovations, so we'll have Exdeath actually show up sooner than the final dungeon to taunt the party a la Golbez, and we'll need some tragic death / sacrifice thing too, but from an old guy so it's okay (Tellah / Galuf).

[Luther Lansfeld]

I will echo the skepticism with respect to FF5 original having a satirical script. Most of its crap feels inevitable to be played straight.