What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Pyro]

I am doing some testing for ToX and I realized that I wanted to double-check some of Milla's Spirit Shifted Artes, thinking they could get her more damage than her physical Arcane Arte Cloud Pierce. In passing I happened to try an aerial combo for her, even though I kind of suck at those. Then I realize that Milla's Lightning attacks ignore vertical tolerance completely and can be used from way up high above the enemy where she isn't subject to the annoying auto-counters everyone else rams into. So not bad at all for damage, and much better than was thinking she would be.

Then at 200 uses her Lightning moves doubled in damage. And thus was born Lightning Death Goddess Milla Maxwell.

[Fudozukushi]

I am doing some testing for ToX and I realized that I wanted to double-check some of Milla's Spirit Shifted Artes, thinking they could get her more damage than her physical Arcane Arte Cloud Pierce. In passing I happened to try an aerial combo for her, even though I kind of suck at those. Then I realize that Milla's Lightning attacks ignore vertical tolerance completely and can be used from way up high above the enemy where she isn't subject to the annoying auto-counters everyone else rams into. So not bad at all for damage, and much better than was thinking she would be.

Then at 200 uses her Lightning moves doubled in damage. And thus was born Lightning Death Goddess Milla Maxwell.

ToX: Back up to endgame.  Jude now has max attack as his base.  Yay or something.  Milla's side of Chapter 4 was interesting.  It also taught me the best way to play as her.  Jump in the air and spam Thunder Blade until everything dies.

Now with two endorsements!

[Pyro]

I saw that and thought you meant CASTING thunder blade, which has a tendency to inflict burn and do very solid damage on high HP bosses.

The Spirit shifted version makes a mockery of that. Though some way of mitigating the high TP cost is required.


I still find Elize's defend strat amusing. The damage reflect is largely worthless due to not doing overkill damage back to the enemy, so you can't whore an ultra low def Elize and pull massive damage rflection like you could basically due in ToG. although it is funny to imagine taping down the guard button and winning an otherwise hard boss fight...


alternating artes prevents the long combo damage penalty, so variety is good!

Elemental resists stack additively so they tend to be good. All the elemental resist skills are link skills amd stack so two folks linked are at 60% and it just gets better from there.  Stack some elemental guard armors and helms and you can mock most elemental damage. Also if you absorb an element it can not inflict status on you. So light absorption means no more confuse, which is yay.

[Fudozukushi]

Yeah I remembered wrong and thought I said Thunder Blade Lightning until I went back to get that post and WHOOPS no Lightning there.

[Monkeyfinger]

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.

Polymorph other is a great finisher for that strategy. Let him spend the last moments of his life as a squirrel.

[Sierra]

If there's any more of them in ToB, I'll remember to try that.

Speaking of, ToB. Permanent party assembled at last! And Mazzy gets to spend the rest of her life in the pocket plane apparently. Uh, sorry about that, Mazzy. Wasn't exactly the plan. Is there no going back to the world map once you hit ToB? I've just been shuttled from one place to another so far.

The game flaked out and Edwin's spell sequencers are no longer usable. The abilities button for him just doesn't exist anymore. If I try recasting the sequencers, the game just tells me he already has them set. Very annoying! Hell is not being able to use your most broken skills.

EDIT: random peasants instantly realize that I'm Bhaalspawn now. What. Is it tattooed on my forehead (the bums will always lose)?

[Grefter]

http://www.shsforums.net/topic/51477-spell-sequencer-bug/

Try this

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Lollipop Chainsaw - zombie elviszilla just ate my town am i doing this right

So, yeah. Beat the game. Killabilly was a fun fight! Regardless, nothing I said before about this game has changed at all: it's crazy, silly, ridiculous, uncomfortable and pretty damned fun. Now, what to do next. Trying to choose between DMC4 and Bayonetta.

[AndrewRogue]

Do you want to play the better or the mediocrer game first?

If the former, Bayonetta. If the latter, DMC4.

[Meeplelard]

Lollipop Chainsaw - zombie elviszilla just ate my town am i doing this right

So, yeah. Beat the game. Killabilly was a fun fight! Regardless, nothing I said before about this game has changed at all: it's crazy, silly, ridiculous, uncomfortable and pretty damned fun. Now, what to do next. Trying to choose between DMC4 and Bayonetta.

Flip a coin or Hatbot it; both games are good.

[Meiousei]

Should also suggest Killer is Dead or are you waiting before playing that one?

[TranceHime]

unfortunately because i am unable to pick up pokemon X on release date, i have taken it upon myself to play shitty Moemon romhacks which are vaguely interesting because of the sheer amount of effort needed to code half the shit they actually implemented in these romhacks.

Like SaGa style move sparking. Yeah, I wish I was joking.

[Sierra]

ToB: So basically Highlander if someone had had the brilliant idea of collecting all the immortals in one place and telling them to get along.

[Random Consonant]

People get silly ideas sometimes.

[AndrewRogue]

Bhall is from Zeist?

[Sierra]

Andy, take a day's detention for making me remember the plot of Highlander 2.

For actually knowing the name of the damn planet, you get a week.

[Grefter]

Bhall is Zeist.

[Cmdr_King]

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team- fin.

It was pretty good for about 15 hours.  The dream mechanics are generally pretty interesting and even when it stops being novel, it remains enjoyable enough by and large.  They've kept exploration mechanics pretty simple.  Giant battles are back, and aside from the last are pretty lenient.

The trouble is, they've been making this series for ten years and you can just feel the fatigue in the standard gameplay.  They really don't know what they can do to mix it up except have completely separate gameplay, which is fine except you still have a big chunk of the game that's tired.  That feeling bleeds through and wears you down as a player too.

So by the end I was just grinding it out because I wanted to finish the game up before the weekend, and with a final clock of 39 hours that's a pretty large gap between when I really enjoyed the game and when I just wanted the game to stop.  Still, there's a reasonable amount of good game there too.  And it IS all about Luigi.  Just, yeah, lost all steam for a while there.  7/10.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Disgaea D2: This is Disgaea 4, but more streamlined and with a less good/funny story. Tons of fun, and it has some good one-liners here and there. The story is a lot more serious than previous Disgaeas, more in line with Disgaea 2 and Phantom Brave. I think if I had gone into the game looking for a more standard JRPG plot with the occasional joke instead of LOLDisgaeaWackiness, I would have been more pleasantly surprised than disappointed by how little truly funny parts there were. The Etna Episode Previews are still pretty good though.

I feel like the whole story would have benefitted immensely from a looser localization.

Gameplay is more streamlined and there's a ton of quality of life updates that make things go a lot faster. The maingame maps are more balanced than ever before for non-grinders. They also put a lot more emphasis on uniqueness in characters and generic units, with passive abilities (Evilities) being more notable and numerous than ever. Unlike some of the previous titles with the Evility system, the game WILL mercilessly destroy you if you ignore the unique passives that every unit type in the game has. Story units all have a unique Evility or two, while generic units can pick from one of three different options that all offer a slightly different take on a similar theme (Like, the Water Dragons can either immune all Water damage or get increased stats every time Water damage is used or just a straight increase in Water damage).

Thanks to these new and more relevant Evilities, the game has a lot more variety in playstyle options. Defensive, counter-focused FE-style team builds are distinctly more viable (and sometimes less time-intensive to make/setup than more standard offensive builds). Grind-focused Evilities and Status-effect-boosting Evilities offer other team strategies that I never would have tried in previous Disgaeas.

The grinding options are just as numerous and exciting as previous titles. They of course decided to add some new ones for the crazy grinders, including Land of Carnage mode, which apparently increases the stat/level caps by a factor of ten and tries its damnedest to kill the life out of you. Fun, if that's your thing? I probably won't get to the point where I want to do -that- much grinding, but it's nice to know that I could grind for hours and continue to make significant progress and still have future challenges where team synergy will -matter-.

[Grefter]

Icewind Dale - So this game is better than I remember it being, which means to everyone else it will suck.  It is combat heavy Infinity Engine game that does combat pretty well.  It hits the sweet spot in levels where the spells are not out of control for most of the game.  It only really gets out of hand with the Expansion after you have finished it (I was pushing level 20 on rogue classes, 14/15 on others, capped out with Level 8 spells on Wizard.  The spell selection on the wizard available really restricts them from competing with Bards out scaling them due to level.

I was wrong about Druids, they have pretty shitty spell selection, but they do have a section of being better healers than Clerics because of their unique level progression.  By about 12 they even out in healing capability, Cleric gets Level 7 spells sooner than Druid, but on the other side of the coin all the level 7 spells for Clerics fucking blow, so it really comes down to Clerics having one more level 6 slot for Heal.  Clerics have better buffs, but Druids have some okay filler damage spells in Call Lightning if you are outdoors and Static Charge if you position them right.  Outside of Firestorm and Sunscorch their other damage spells suck.  Sunscorch is a pretty good Level 1 early on for damage and later is good for Troll killing.  On the other hand Clerics get Flame Strike which is as good as it has ever been in IE games (Flame Strike is always good).

Plot of the game is what it is.  You definitely don't play the game for it.  Big dungeon crawl that is fun if you enjoy the combat system.  This is probably the first time going back to an IE game than 2nd Ed AD&D didn't kind of grate on me.  One of the things it really does well for its niche is giving the player a good sense of character progression.  With the expansions it covers the same level range of all of BG1 and 2 up to SoA.  That is crazy high experience curve for D&D really, but in a dungeon crawl like this?  It hits a pretty sweet spot of feeling like the kind of progression you see in something more like Wizardry or Might and Magic while being very solidly in the BG style combat system.

Soooooo given everyone else's discussions about BG2 and Torment, I can't say I recommend it to you guys, but I certainly really enjoyed it.

[Fenrir]

It hits a pretty sweet spot of feeling like the kind of progression you see in something more like Wizardry or Might and Magic while being very solidly in the BG style combat system.

I'm the only guy who will understand this. And I've already played Icewind Dale. (And it rocked)


I'm only playing things in short doses lately.

Touch my Katamari was good. I haven't played a Katamari game in ~10 years so the lack of change wasn't an issue. They managed to remove the tank controls somehow? I always thought they were TOTALLY NECESSARY but nope. Left stick controls character, right stick controls camera, this works here too.

I answered the Bear vs Cow question with Cow. Not on purpose though.

Goro's story was cool as hell, I wish I could link to all of it but it's very low quality on the internet.
The ending was:
"A single thought took hold in my mind.
Katamari Damacy is really awesome.
And that's my story."

Better than Tidus'

[Sierra]

ToB: Sometimes Sarevok randomly smacks the fuck out of someone for 200 damage. Jesus, bro. Anyway, beat up a jerky fire giant, hit Watcher's Keep because why not.

Teleport maze, that's why not.

You know, maybe it's because I already know she's the villain, but Melissan seems remarkably unsubtle with the whole "Oops, all the Bhaalspawn are dying and it's totally my fault (but seriously not on purpose you guys oh by the way here's a few more you should kill)."

[Twilkitri]

Final Fantasy III DS - played through

Generally pleasant, final areas a bit nervewracking. Somehow managed to not gameover during the final areas although CoD brought things close a couple of times.

Final party was all L57, Luneth Ninja41, Arc Devout32, Refia Sage31, Ingus Scholar99. Arc was the only character who managed to avoid dying multiple times (or at all) against CoD, which is probably for the best.

I was surprised to find that so many enemies in the tower/WoD were susceptible to gradual petrification. (After being surprised at how enemies seemed to keep dying more quickly than they should be doing and looking into why that could be happening - I had had two golem staffs on Arc and one on Refia). Not going to complain about it though.

[Fenrir]

Ingus Scholar99

Badass.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Star Ocean 4 - Beat Ethereal Queen.

Wandering dungeon was rough, since you pretty much need to put aside several hours at once to beat it, which I definitely can't be bothered to do too often. I'm quite glad the Seven Star Cave exists as that was really more my style as far as aftergame stuff goes. Still, wandering dungeon was fun enough to test oneself against, long gauntlet of a dungeon where item limits mean a lot. Spell-based revival is crucial; I used both Myuria and Sarah and have a hard time seeing it be remotely doable without at least one. I did it in two main runs: once as far as the Philosopher's Stone (I also bought an ogre cannon from the santa shop) so I could make some ultimate weapons, then the true run.

Ethereal Queen herself was a predictably nasty fight. Not so bad for the first half or so, but once she starts using Supernova things get nasty, since ugh GT OHKO to anything near her. Resurrection Units to the rescue, but the limits on those are kind of a big deal. I ended up mostly using rush boosting (and benefitting a lot from her killing my allies) and rush combos to kill her, with Reimi. Unlike Gabriel there's little reason this strategy couldn't be pulled off with a melee type too because rush combos don't care, but Ethereal Queen's element resistance meant Reimi was my best option. First half of the fight was the more usual, safer, ranged pew pew pew.

Pretty fun, but I'm definitely done with the game for now.


Suikoden 3 - Beat all the chapter 3's. Finally did bring down the Azodess in the Flame Champion Hidaway (which was rather brutal) with Chris' party, in no small part because it included Emily (also Estella). Currently in duck village in chapter 4. Went with FC Chris because I have a hard time caring enough about Geddoe to pick him and I saw FC Hugo again quite recently, so eh. Also hey, this should result in minimum possible pain against the Water Dragon who spoilers will be awful.


Fire Emblem 12 - HM replay. Okay, translation doesn't help, most of the game's writing since the prologue ended has been terrible. Ninja reinforcements suck, but they did make the Roro fight more fun at least, that was pretty neat. Running a pretty traditional team with lots of flyers. Chris has kinda gotten RNG screwed and is actually struggling to stay on the team, it's weird.