What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[superaielman]

Civ5- Playing and doing well on Prince now. Current run is playing as the Mongols. Holy *shit* is their UU broked. It's vunerable if Knights to at short range, but otherwise it slaughters everything. It absolutely maims enemy cities, especially city states.

[AAA]

Since it's Prince you can probably conquer the world with Keshiks no problem, just keep in mind they will eventually obsolete if things drag on too long, so have a backup plan and don't neglect science too much. What speed are you playing on, anyway?

Also do you have all the DLC or is this vanilla civ5?

[superaielman]

Vanilla, though just got G&K and am downloading it now (thanks snowfire). My normal route to victory in Civ 5 on prince is play for a cultural victory and collect all of the wonders like (My precious).  If I'm playing for domination, I use the same turtling strategy early on. It's easy enough to deal with AI DoWing you early on, you sit a single unit in your castle and outlast them. Once you hit the industrial era, you have basically every single building in your capital  and a pile of money/techs.  I don't really build settlers ever, the game on Prince really rewards building towards a tall empire. Playing on standard speed. UU's get replaced awfully quickly on standard, but I was on the great plains map and was able to take out most of the world before they were obsoleted. It became standard artillery spam after that.


I've now cleared the game with the Americans, Egyptians (My favorite, shiny production bonus on wonders), the Japanese, the Indians, and the Mongols. The Ghandi one super boring, I only built one gigantic city and never DoWed. Still won the game with a cultural victory right before the American and Songhai got nukes.

[AndrewRogue]

World of Warcraft: Went and screwed around Pandaria a bit. Leveled to 87. Decided to take a break and go minipet hunting in dungeons. Had been doing a little bit of it before I picked up Pandaria (so level 85, Cata blues/greens). Pandaria blues and greens though... sheesh.

Molten Core: Tank and Spank pretty much everything, minus Baron Geddon (need a roof over your head) and Ragnaros (still need to position right). Got Raggy down before the first sons of fire phase. Hilarity ensued.

Black Wing Lair: Fuck this entire goddamn dungeon. 3 wipes on Razorgore before I got it right. 1 wipe on Vael because I didn't have a tight enough rotation (that fight is goddamn serious about DPS!). Was cruising easy until Ebonroc at that point. Fun fact: I can't kill Ebonroc! So uh... gave up on killing him and took down Flamegor and Chromaggus with him hitting me. Nefarian was a fun little stomp.


Karazhan: Only done this at 85. It was pretty easy, Netherspite aside (who I was forced to cheese out to beat). Should be breezy now.

Serpentshrine Cavern: This one wasn't possible for me. I couldn't deal with Leotheras the Blind or Fathom-Lord Karathress. My severely increased damage output should make both of them possible. Not sure about Vashj though. That might require I get to 90 and gear a bit further.

~~~~

Rayman Legends: How the hell do people get Diamond trophies in this game? Jesus.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

My raid-geared 90 tankadin kills bosses in seconds. Literally seconds. Netherspite in Kara? Dies in less than ten seconds.

[AndrewRogue]

Yeah. I'd fully buy it based on quest geared 87. Honestly, I could almost do it with non-heroic geared 85 (got him down to 200K, I think?). It just amuses me how exponential stat growth in expansions is sometimes.

Honestly, I really should just finish questing and levelling, but slamming old content amuses me.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It's how I make money instead of doing dailies.  I solo clear everything in Vanilla, most of BC, plus Naxx and ToC and that's a good 2500 gold or so.  Doesn't take more than a few hours and you can get really, really drunk while you do it.

[Sierra]

BG2: I told Keldorn to go home and be a family man. Then demilich butt was kicked in liberal measure. Had never fought Kangaxx before and it boiled down almost entirely to improved haste/berserk Minsc solo. I'm...not sure his second form even got a chance to do anything. He was getting hit so frequently it was just a constant litany of ::spell failure::. Almost done in the city now, but there's still:

-Planar Sphere
-Umar Hills
-Windspear Hills
-Trademeet

None of which I've touched at all. So much fucking game. Also character quests for people I don't like and Stronghold stuff. I'm not sure how much of that I'm going to mess with. (The legit one for my MC would be Planar Sphere, but modded game so I can do whatever.) Some of them I haven't actually seen before.

Horrid Wiltings may now be tossed with wild abandon. Somehow it's still more fun stunlocking everybody with hasted meteor spam.

EDIT: Viconia successfully scared off a lich with Turn Undead during the Unseeing Eye quest. I...might be a little overlevelled for these quests. Oh yeah, Keldorn being in close proximity when she activated that also made him go into panic mode. Keldorn, buddy, there something you're not telling us?

[Dark Holy Elf]

FE12 Hard Mode - Now with text I can understand! Actually the writing in the prologue wasn't... that bad. I'm kinda surprised. Of course now we go from "new material" to "plot that was in FE3" so the suck probably kicks in now. Still, the translation team has done a good job here, I'm quite impressed.

HM prologue is way harder than NM, I had a fair bit of trouble on both Athena's map and Katarina's. A bit uneven because BANDITS map is a joke for instance (kinda funny since it's one of two which isn't just a training mission). I can already tell ninja reinforcements will make me angry, but otherwise seems fun enough. Chris is a Cavalier for anyone keeping track.


Suikoden 3 - Chris chapters. Whoof, they feel the loss of armour much more than the others, fights they used to stomp they uh don't any more. The five Zexen Knights vs. North Cavern was brutal, went through dozens of items, Bone Soldiers are huge jerks. (By contrast Mt. Hei-Tou with just Chris and Percival wasn't too bad.) About to do the Iksay stuff.

[Grefter]

Few more levels and you can star dumping truly degenerate shit on the game.

For giggles try Chain Contingency, -> Horrid Wilting x3, Trigger:On enemy seen.

As soon as it triggers you can instantly cast Chain Contingency again instantly and the game pauses letting you pick the same thing.  You can then cast a normal spell that round because Chain Contingency doesn't count as a casting option.

It technically isn't as broken as Improved Alacrity - Timestop with Robe of Vecna and Amulet of Power, but it is significantly less space bar mashing.

EDIT - I had wrong spell name for Improved Alacrity, misnamed as Spell Sequencer.  Spell Sequencer lets you cast three Fourth level spells at once.

[Tide]

Front Mission 3:
Emma route initial routing done. Final time after last level: 8 hours and 5 minutes. Things that routing has confirmed: ROFUP I is godlike, Burst weapons are godlike and Ryogo starts with both. Next up: Alisa route routing + fine tuning. That or more Grandia 2 running I guess.

[Sierra]

BG2: I love how even NPCs who haven't met him before instantly know Cernd is a twit and cut him off midsentence.

So, Planar Sphere. Apparently if you go in there at a high enough level, the game spawns adamantite golems in a couple rooms. This is hilarious because the necromancer's notes are all like, "Dudes, I'm gonna make an iron golem, it'll be sweet." Adamantite > iron. It's even more hilarious because they spawn in the engine room later and they're too big to navigate the catwalks. So they just stand there blocking up their entire support contingent of lesser golems from even reaching you. Someone didn't really think through the enemy scaling there.

Also adamantite golems are unable to damage Mordenkainen's Sword. Either that or being unable to move locks out their attack animation (I don't think this is it because they could still spam Cloudkill and Slow). Totally the best summon in the game either way (barring ToB content).

[Grefter]

That really goes for nearly any room with Iron/Adamantite Golems.  They are all built in some room that they have no way of getting out of.

The only area I can think of that has a Golem like that which it can move far from where it spawns is Suldanesselar and there it can move around like the walkways, but can't get close to the stairs you can walk up to the second floor of houses and stuff.

Makes for fun times if you collect all the pantaloons and try to actually use the armour on anyone as well.

[Meeplelard]

Endless Frontier: 3 Robot Clones got blown up by other Robots that weren't clones.

As in, yes, Haken blew up the Einst versions with Rampage Spectre as a final attack...but EXPLOSIONs that's why.

[Cmdr_King]

Blue Dragon: Done.  Holy crap finishing 360 games.  Red letter day I assure you.

Once they decided bosses should either have HP or do damage (and occasionally both), and things like buffing actually meant anything, that was neat.  And it wasn't really bad before then, the breeziness was kinda enjoyable for what it was.

This is a weird goddamned class system.  As far as I can tell, character levels mean basically nothing, and all your meaningful stats come from job levels.  Until very late in the game, the value of cross classing is... fairly limited.  Barrier magic is mostly useful for grinding, Support magic's haste doesn't come into its own until the final dungeon (and enemies just flat out die to fast too bother statusing), so really?  Just stick everyone in their initial classes and rank up.  I mean, 8 ranks in Generalist for extra support slots and an accessory are nice, and for the final bosses I found I had to get Assassin Speed, but... aside from that, raw ranks in your base class for sheer stats is just the best move.  Until you need to power level because the endgame is so nasty, this is a job system where you're encourage to camp in one place from start to finish, sorta like if it was FFIII for 90% of the game then expected you to break it a la FFV at the end.  And no mistake, I skipped all the optional dungeons, and this is roughly as suicidal as if you were playing Chrono Trigger!  But eh, power levelling was more straightforward and I completely lost steam at the point I realized oh shit, game wants me to try now.

Rest of the game isn't worth talking about.  It's pretending to be a reconstructed SNES RPG, but it's really more half parody half example.  There's just too much stupid for it to really work.  Nene's fun at least.  6/10 I think?  I might be a little harsh with that and might bump it up to a 7 when I add it in, will have to see.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I think you're underestimating crossclassing a bit simply because stat differences aren't that potent, so having more people just able to use white/black magic in particular is nice. (You're right about barrier/support mostly.) And to make physicals not suck pretty much requires at least two of Attack Amp, Double Attack, and up-to-date Magic Sword, I found, so some crossclassing helps there too.

[Pyro]

Crossclassing for higher agility is very nice, too.

[DjinnAndTonic]

MMX: Command Missi Mana Khe Trails in th Tales of Xi Final Fantasy Dimen Disgaea D2: Oh man, my entire backlog is suddenly clear! I am playing Disgaea D2. I am the happiest Djinn. Fuka and Desco are actual -usable- DLC PCs for a change. Unlike most of the DLC PCs for the previous PS3 titles, Fuka and Desco weren't designed to just be fun aftergame bonuses once you hit level 100 and get to the final chapter, but instead, are easily available in chapter one or two and come in at Level 1 (like most of your Generic options would be anyway), making them fully usable in the Main Game. They even come with a high support level and Fuka fills a niche as a story PC with an Axe proficiency while Desco fills the niche of PC Monster! Awesome!

While I miss Magichange and Fusion, the other new additions and streamlining are all pretty nicely implemented. They toned down the Geo puzzles, brought back simpler skill-learning and levelling systems, making less things reliant on the same currency (Mana). In general, it has the streamlining of Disgaea 4 but Dis1's aesthetic trappings to make it look more like the original (I guess for nostalgia's sake?).

[Fudozukushi]

Play more Xillia.  I need someone to Xillia things at.  Or something.

[VySaika]

Rune Factory 4: Hard mode is not screwing around. Still, everything is beatable by BIGGER NUMBERS so forging up gear for the next dungeon is go. Loving the new glove weapon type(what's this? Gate favors punching things? The hell you say.), though it is less effective vs bosses sadly. The big damage comes from slams/throws after you stun an enemy, which just never seem to work on the two bosses I've fought thus far. Which is a shame, because when I say "big damage" I mean my normal attack is doing 80 and the slam is doing 650.

Getting to bring allies with you into dungeons is kinda cool, I guess. Forte and Bado both are okay. The problem is they really just serve as an extra hp bar to soak up damage, since they will only occasionally remember to actually attack. And while they have way more life the me, they also do way less damage. So it goes.

EO Untold: So this kinda got played for one day and then left my DS faster then any EO game has ever done so. Not due to any fault of the game, but because I picked up RF4 the next day. <_<;

Still, managed to kill a ragelope before I paused. I'm satisfied with that for now.

[Meiousei]

White 2- I'm a little late to the party, but I'm setting a time limit. Christmas Day, I have to have beaten the game before I even open Pokemon X.  I wonder what kind of challenge I should try...I had an idea of playing the starters plus the first 3 pokemon I catch for the whole game (4 manning the game basically). Funny thing is, the first 3 I caught was literally: Purrlion, Seaweedle and Riolu. By the lords, help me. This could either be awesome or a trainwreck.

FFT:WotL- I'm trying to figure out if my FFT is bugged. I did all the requirements to get Dark Knight, but it's not showing up anywhere. >_< Oh well, I'm going to get Agrias up to Dark Knight as fast as possible. And get my other classes up before I start Chapter 3 proper.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Valkyrie Profile - Finished! Just used Arny and Lawfer and Jelanda because I am boring.

Chrono Trigger - It's the season to replay things~ Lucca just bailed my ass outta jail, yo. I picked up Marle's necklace first so I am a criminal yo.

[Lord Ephraim]

Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl:

Not a fan of first person dungeon crawlers but I have a huge stockpile of Nintendo credit I got from my brother's Wii U so I figure I start on the one with PLOT.  This game is not as hard as I thought though. I might play more when I get through the more appealing 4 3DS games I just bought.

Rune Factory 4:

So I'm playing as a princess who has the option to date a shirtless horseman or shirtless wolfman.

<Ciato> Where do I sign up?

--

I also picked up New Super Mario Bros 2 and Mario&Luigi Dream Team.  I'm might get around those sometime next year. Upcoming pokemon and Phoenix Wright come first.

The Wii U I got is a shiny paperweight right now.

[Sierra]

BG2: Humiliating dragons for fun and profit. Thax'awhatsit got hit with Finger of Death but I thought, you know, we can probably be more insulting than that? So for Firkraag we do the following:

-Bhaalspawn/Edwin go in stocked with Lower Resistance and spell sequencers full of Greater Malaison.
-They clone themselves. Clones copy the lesser sequencers too.
-Chuck all the debuffs at him in the opening round (Viconia tosses in a Doom for good measure).
-Activate secret weapon: Chromatic Orb!

And the ancient red dragon eats it to a level 1 spell. Admittedly it still took like half a dozen shots for him to fail the save, but one good troll deserves another. My team is now capable of dropping like eight Fireballs on an enemy party before they can blink, but you know, it's the little touches that matter.

Stronghold stuff is all done, except for Thief because they hate me. Might have something to do with me massacring their leadership, I dunno. Amused that the neatest and most involved stronghold quest is the one probably nobody ever sees. Seriously, does anyone play a bard?

Mazzy gets to come along for punching Jon in the face. I think I used her as a melee fighter last time? Jesus why. She gets like five shots a round with a bow. That's crazy.

The priest I hired for De'Arnise hold cloned himself. What. I thought you guys frowned on that sort of thing.

[Meeplelard]

White 2- I'm a little late to the party, but I'm setting a time limit. Christmas Day, I have to have beaten the game before I even open Pokemon X.  I wonder what kind of challenge I should try...I had an idea of playing the starters plus the first 3 pokemon I catch for the whole game (4 manning the game basically). Funny thing is, the first 3 I caught was literally: Purrlion, Seaweedle and Riolu. By the lords, help me. This could either be awesome or a trainwreck.

If it means anything, Leavanny isn't bad, Lucario is of course great, and Liepard is...er...yeah <_<;

Endless Frontier: Finished!  So you guys want a Meeple rant? No, you probably don't, which is why I'm going to spare you one and give a quick run down!

Game is fun but repetitive; don't think I could take much more of it, so length is fine.  Boss fights were a bit too excessive, and sometimes massively forced (why did we have to fight Dorothy a second time exactly?  Mind you, she's the boss I hate the most not because of what she does, but her animations seem to take forever while being completely uninteresting.  Yes, you drop bombs out of your dress, we get it, IT'S NOT AMUSING THE 73rd TIME YOU DO IT, LET ALONE THE 284th!), and Boss Fights to me just came off as "Random Encounters with Higher HP, and occasionally whip out ST OHKO damage."  Game wasn't hard and didn't have a single reset unless yo include the time I accidentally pressed the power button on the 3DS and had to replay part of the dungeon <.<;

Final Team was Haken, Reiji, Xiamou and KOS-MOS.  Haken because main character and he was good at the whole damage thing, durable, and such.  Also Rampage Spectre.  Reiji was even better at the damage thing, and Faith made him a back up healer if need be.  Xiamou because...actually, outside of Barrier, dunno why I kept using her over Kaguya.  There was a brief moment mid-game where she had attack 2nd only to Reiji, and she did have Valor before anyone else (not including Reiji's Soul), and maybe I was too lazy to swap out but that doesn't explain why I kept swapping her back in after forced PC fights...then again, due to how EXP worked, she was like +3 Levels on anyone else I wasn't using.
KOS-MOS because all games she's in, she's a strong PC, I figured this is no exception and well, she's solid, but more importantly, she was my healer.  I shoved a Luna Stone on her and now she had 700+ SP and could spam Bond, sometimes twice, which made the lack of Kaguya feel...completely irrelevant!  Also, she's pretty tanky too, and even has Guard to compliment, that's always a plus!

As far those I didn't use?  Already covered Kaguya kind of by saying "probably should have used her over Xiamou."  Aschen's cancel timing annoyed me, her voice in DTD mode REALLY annoyed me, and she didn't seem to really have much special about her. 
Suzuka...where do I start.  I guess the fact that she was often getting KO'd by things that weren't KOing anyone else (there wre times I'd do a team of like Xiamou + the 3 I wasn't using just for shits), the timing on her attacks is annoying, she's awkward in animations, damage is lower than others, and her animations aren't really that stylish.  Yes, they took a dancer and a robot, and somehow made it uninteresting.  Feels like they put all the flashiness into Kaguya, who they went "Swordgirl...that uses a sword that shoots boomerangs..." and then added some extra visual flair in some of her animations (mostly the sword flashes anytime she did a 360 slice)

Music is good,  Humor is hit or miss, Boob Joke comments were not exaggerated, T-elos needs to be punted into the sun, Haken putting his hat back on anytime he uses Last Showdown is badass, and the game gets a 6-7/10 out from me!