What games are you playing 2014?

[Luther Lansfeld]

PW1 - Downloaded the iOS version of the game and I'm replaying it. I'm on the last trial day of 1-3. I can definitely see why I almost quit after the first two cases, but the third is a gem. Wendy Oldbag is my hero.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Ace Attorney Investigations 2 - Finished.

Quick, no-spoiler summary: This was pretty fun. I have a hard time rating it compared to other Ace Attorney games. In general, its lows aren't as low, and its highs aren't as high, as many of the other games. I haven't decided which case is my least favourite but there's a good chance that whichever it is is the best such "worst case"; the vice versa of this is also very likely true. (edit: except that its best case is certainly better than that of Apollo Justice. Duh.)

The cases in this game are very... zany. Like, they're a crazy chain of events, even by Phoenix Wright standards. Check your sense of disbelief at the door. I don't think they're generally super-well-put-together, but they have lots of good ideas. Just... the cases seem to reveal stuff in narratively unsatisfying ways and have plot twist after plot twist after plot twist for the sake of plot twists. It sounds like I don't like the cases, but I do; they're a lot of fun and the game constantly tests your understanding of all the evidence, which it dumps mountains of on you and really forces you to think things through. It's probably the best game in the series "gameplaywise" for keeping the player involved and thinking, even if things are a bit crazy.

One other interesting thing the game does is that... even more than any previous game (AAI1 coming closest), the cases really do link together into one overarching plot. The player is expected to keep past cases in mind for a few plot points in later cases... and unilke most previous games, characters from previous cases tend to remain relevant... in particular, every single killer is relevant to future case(s).

One thing I really liked about this game is that, if you missed something, the game would give you a small hint. I recall Snowfire's complain about the hints coming too early in that game, which is probably fair even if I wasn't overly bothered; in this one, you get those hints... AFTER you waste a bad guess. (The hints are just that; they aren't givaways, and there were several things that took me multiple tries.) I really liked this; you were still rewarded for thinking things through yourself first, but it meant if you weren't thinking in the right direction, you'd get a little poke to where the game did want you to go, reducing the number of times that I would just stare blankly at the screen wondering what the fuck the writers were getting at. This is cool!

The game is almost inevitably a slight letdown after Dual Destinies which I loved. There's no holy-crap-they're-awesome level of new characters that we saw in that game like Athena/Simon/Fullbright. Not that the new cast is bad, though; I quite liked the main rival Justine Courtney and the goofy comic relief prosecutor Sebastian Debeste, though with some reservations which keep them out of the upper tier of favourite Ace Attorney characters. In particular, both just feel like they get pushed to the side in the last ~60% of the last case. Not cool, game.

The translation's... decent enough. Love and admiration for the folks who made it happen, since I was never going to play this game in Japanese. They did a pretty good job with the voice acting. The actual translation is fine mechanically (beyond the odd minor bug here or there) but Ace Attorney is a high standard, and the translation doesn't generally feel nearly as funny or clever as many of the other games. This in turn makes the game a bit less humourous overall. Or maybe it is anyway, hard to tell. To be sure, it's still a humourous game, and there are lots of great moments. Franziska von Karma vs. Sebastian Debeste, and Debeste's logic chess, for perhaps my two favourite.

Logic Chess is a pretty fun gameplay addition. Although the "chess" setting is goofy it is fundamentally just a timed dialogue tree where you have to talk to people, read their emotions and prod them into spilling their secrets. Seems a very appropriate thing to have in a investigation game!

Don't know where I rank it. Better than Apollo Justice, worse than Dual Destinies or Justice For All okay I'm not narrowing this down very much. I'll have to think about that. Still, good game, one of the better ones I've played this year.

WHAT FOLLOWS ARE SPOILERS, DO NOT READ THEM UNLESS YOU LIKE BEING SPOILED
(for this and every other non-DD Ace Attorney game, since I figure anyone who has played AAI2 will have played those and/or won't give a shit i.e. is Grefter)
Justine Courtney... I liked her design, first off, and I thought she was a very effective rival, probably one of the most intelligent ones we've had to deal with. Super-logical and difficulty to deal with. Her face turn in case 4 worked very well too. In case 5... while I thought her interaction with John was great, she was a bit disappointing in this case. I was expecting her to be deeply involved with it when it was revealed she met the president early, but that turned out to be barely relevant. When it came time to deal with the main villain, she barely mattered.

Sebastian Debeste... okay. OKAY. I had this CRAZY THEORY that Sebastian Debeste was the mastermind. Part of this is that I had heard that the game's final villain was a plot twist, and indeed narratively you knew the mastermind would have to be someone you had already met. Plus he wielded a Conductor's baton, and after case 4 you knew that was bad news! And he always managed to be offscreen whenever the mastermind communicated with Edgeworth. And he wore a red jacket! And when he talks to Edgeworth on the phone he talks a lot like Blaise (but can't be Blaise, so someone who takes after him...?). And his "serious" pose/theme music after Edgeworth cheers him up looked rather sinister. I was so convinced of my own theory that I actually presented him as my first guess for the mastermind even though the game was in hindsight obviously hinting at someone else by then. Anyway enough about the character that could have been, let's talk about the character that was. Sebastian himself is just good fun. He's mostly a great comic character (be it his silly misuse of vocabulary, the way others treat him, his incrediable animations, etc.), but the character growth wasn't bad... not so much for Sebastian's sake, but for Edgeworth's and Franziska's. Always nice to see the evil dad thing explored. Then he disappears for the endgame entirely, grr!

Franziska's role is mostly a cameo in this game. She's fun as always, especially around Debeste. I'd rather have seen a bit more obviously.

The mastermind... ha. When it was revealed who s/he was, I was disappointed. I had thoguht Sebastian as that had a lot of potential, and didn't really give a fuck about this character prior to the reveal. And then s/he just proceeds to steal the show at the end of the game, holy crap. Great presence, great animations, and a delightful troll of an opponent. I -loved- how s/he just set in motion all the murders of the game, giving all his/her enemies the rope to hang themselves with; it was great. I wish the game hadn't made him/her a murderer and you'd dealt with them some other way; it kind of betrays what the character stands for to kill someone. Plus the method of murder is one of the stupidest yet, c'mon.

Blaise Debeste is the type of scumbag the series usually uses as a final villain. He is the most "evil" character in the game; it was an interesting choice to make him ultimately secondary to the mastermind, but one which worked really well. Blaise himself, I can take or leave. He's okay. The game has done his trope better (Alba, Manfred) but also worse (White, Gant, Gavin).

Body double was a lame character. Lots of neat things they could have explored with him (why did he plot against the real president? What has he done as president? Why? etc.). None of it is. His role in the story, and even his murder, is a goddamn afterthought to the game's plot, EVEN THOUGH YOU MEET HIM c'mon. Also a coward who literally hides under his furniture at one point had the guts to murder someone? Yeah I don't think the writers knew what they were doing with him.

Lang is still a moron. The game made me kind of feel for him at points, that is something. But overall yeah I could have done without him in this game (he is notably worse/less useful to the story than in AAI1), and his sudden promotion to major character again in the final case was needless. I've already alluded to this repeatedly but the final confrontation sorta suffered from too many cooks; keep him off the stage so Courtney/Debeste/Ray can have their day.

To combine the past two paragraphs... Everyone from Zheng Fa is a moron. Quercus Alba was right to ruin that country!

Wait, I got this far without mentioning Kay! Kay's fun. Great interaction with Edgeworth; the writers seemed to realise this as he's around her a LOT in this game, rather than anyone else. Her woobie moment in case 4 was rather sweet, though I did get a bit sick of her refusal to believe in herself at a certain point mostly because the series does this a bit too often (ironically enough, with Edgeworth himself originally!).

I don't have much to say about Ray Shields. A solid character in cases 2-3 who then largely disappears. Pretty funny too. But... yeah, just not much to say about him!

[Fenrir]

VVVVVV: Finished, 502 deaths, 2 hours, most deaths go to that one room where you have to lead Vermillion around and he's an idiot.
Pretty damn nice but not timeless like Super Hexagon. Speaking of which I completed every challenge in that one but the super hardestestest one, which still looks insane but still easier than surviving 60 seconds in the Super Gravitron in VVVVVV. (which is an achievement)
I loved the sad elephant.

[Ranmilia]

Bury - If You Mess With Her Tea Party, She'll Murder You With Butterflies.

Once again, I return to the realms of translated Japanese RPGmaker horror games.  (There will probably be a few more of these coming soon, too.)  Or close enough - technically Bury is made in Wolf RPG Editor, which from an end user standpoint seems.... completely identical to RPGmaker except with fewer features.  Okay.

Like Cloe's Requiem, Bury is a relatively well known and well regarded game in its native language.  Unlike that game, and indeed all the other games I've talked about, Bury was not the subject of an eagerly awaited and ethically sourced English translation.  Its author explicitly declined and forbid any offers to translate the game, on the grounds that they didn't feel comfortable not being able to personally assure the quality of the story in other languages.  Buuuuut, as you can see, some anonymous person came along recently and translated the game anyway, against the creator's wishes. 

It's out there now, so I played it, and it's ok, and the controversy in translation circles has already made the game notorious enough that I don't feel completely spammy posting about it.  But I won't be linking the actual game here... which might be just as well, since actually playing the darn thing for yourself is a massive slog. 

The game cannot be fullscreened, which is a strike against the atmosphere right away.  Character movement is tile based and absurdly, painfully slow, with no run button.  Text cannot be sped up and cutscenes cannot be skipped, at all, ever.  Music doesn't loop smoothly.  Save files don't give you any information other than time and party members, and even that isn't accurate.  There are save prompts whenever the story forces a PC switch, but using them will make a file showing your previous party instead of whoever you're switching to, so when you're trying to see multiple endings it's hard to go back and identify where in the game a particular save was from. 

Now, all those things appear to mainly be Wolf RPG Editor's fault, but then the gameplay delivers some groin shots that the engine can't be blamed for.  Many puzzles damage you when you mess up or have the temerity to examine the wrong thing, and healing is strictly limited.  Everything, everything is strictly linear and trigger based.  See that bundle of herbs over there?  You can examine it, and it just says "A bundle of herbs."  Can't pick it up or do anything, looks like a background object, until 30 minutes later you find a puzzle and then go read a book hinting that herbs might help.  THEN you slowly walk all the way back to the herbs and now you can magically pick them up.  This kind of stupidity pervades Bury's gameplay.  Even if you know the answer to a puzzle, you have to do everything in exactly the order the game wants you to, and every step has 30 seconds of slow walking to go to some room with several obviously important objects and check on which one (if any) of them the game will let you interact with yet.  And if you don't know the answer, or you were wrong, it's time for more walking to check other places.

Even better, there are multiple times where you actually can't do anything, and you need to walk around and enter some hallways and rooms you've already been to in order to trigger some sudden new event.  And you absolutely have to replay the entire game at least twice making different choices to see all the endings and unlock the final bits of content.  And the choices you have to make are all kinds of unintuitive.  I had someone warn me beforehand and tell me what the requirements were, and I STILL got stuck for an hour trying to get the last ending. Wanna know what was stumping me?  There's a place where there are two books and a sheet of paper.  You must read both books, but must NOT read the sheet of paper, in addition to having made all the correct choices - normally, in the other endings, you must read the sheet of paper in order to progress the game.  Yes.

And all that is really a shame because the story's pretty good!  An absolutely gorgeous, incredibly well executed theme of classic nursery rhymes runs through the whole game.  That is clearly the selling point and makes me want to forgive all the other flaws.  Characters... don't really exist like you think they do, not really, but that's ok.  The story is strange, subtle and subdued, although the ending bits piece everything together pretty clearly.  It doesn't particularly overreach or underreach, just is what it is and invites you to figure it out.  I really adore that method of storytelling. 

If only the gameplay wasn't so bad, though!  It's... it's not the worst I've suffered through.  I can give it that much.  The ideas behind the puzzles make sense, you can't get permastuck, and the harder riddles tend to not damage you and instead give you hints if you answer wrong multiple times.  Save points are relatively common.  There's only one chase sequence and it's very easy.  If the walk speed was quadrupled and the puzzle triggers eased up and let you interact with some things out of order, I might be calling the gameplay good and the game as a whole great!  But as it stands, there's a great 1 hour Let's Play to be had wrapped up in 4 hours of tedious bullshit shambling through the same hallways over and over.

Final verdict: Good story, but aaaaauuuuggghhhhdfhkdfkdjfkhdfhdklhjdklfhjkl;'sdgf RUN FASTER COCO WHY/10?!?!?

[hinode]

Grabbed Wario Land 2 for the Club Nintendo reward, since the other gold tier games were ones I've already beaten (SML2) or not interested in. Platformer where you're immortal is kinda odd as an premise, but R&D1 did a decent job at making the gameplay interesting enough. Intentionally getting hit by enemies for a 'powerup' is certainly a novel experience.

Worst idea in the game by far would be the concealed enemy blocks, ugh. I had to faq both instances of that since I would never have guessed in a million years that you could even do that otherwise.

[Grefter]

DQ6 - I finished this last week.  The final bossy is pretty bullshit and I ended up grinding about 6-10 levels on all my dudes unlocking Hero on the main (so I could have some more offense annd Disrupting Wave away Oomph and Kabuff on the boss, which weren't the bullshit parts). 

I did two runs against it before the grind set in.  Pretty much easy until the final form, the both times dying to a barrage of 100~ damage MT fire/ice attacks while constantly Disrupting Waving away my Insulatle.  Kind of hard to deal with when everyone's HP was floating around 160 - 220ish in Sage (because holy shit is Sage amazing compared to all the other advanced classes).  You could probably deal with it after shuffling some equipment around to specifically resist Fire and Ice damage (and not Frizz and Crackle damage) and not Magic damage, but then you would be punished by the rarer Kaboom a bit harder.  That would be fine if resistance was better documented in game and there wasn't 2 different resistances for "Frizz" spells and other kinds of Fire damage.  DQ breaks down its "elements" fucking weird and all over the place.  I could also have juggled party members to try and get in Healie to use Omniheal and protect people using the Wagon.  Unfortunately introducing that kind of freedom for a single boss fight really fucks with a player since you have no training to do that other than the final dungeon itself, in which there is an enemy type that shuts the wagon.  Soooo high fives.

Coming back with Gigaslash and being level 40ish so the pool of things you can get from Summon being much much better with more people in classes with more HP (sacrificing some of that mad mad MP conservation), using Seeds to buffer up weaker HP pools and a few rare drops (MKS helm and a Duplic Hat which is pretty lol but only saw use for Kabuff really) generally made it much easier.  Just more offense cut down the time it took to get through the HP pools so I saw less Disrupting Wave and less chance for just eating 300HP worth of fire/ice in a turn and a half due to RNG fuckery.  Beat Mortamor, no motivation to do after game super secret special dungeon.

I had more fun than I expected too.  The game is really unpolished and clunky with its stuff, but it is kind of functional.  That it came out 3 years after FF5 and has a job system that is probably worse than FF3 isn't super great or anything, but is better than DQ7 copy pasting it again.  I focused characters on their strengths which was probably not the optimal strategy.  I should have probably made Carver a Priest and then headed him down Sage and kept using him (instead of Nevan probably?) since his high base HP would carry him pretty far with those classes, where taking a HP deficit on Nevan was super spikey in where it mattered and didn't.

That said, Amos is the bomb.  A second party member that can use Boomerangs?  Great and should aways be used.

[Fenrir]

Wasn't the job system a bit better in DQ7? I remember being extrmely unimpressed by DQ6's. Maybe because I knew DQ makes cool things boring.
I've never seen such a massive sudden grind at the end of a game like the DQ6 final boss. He is exactly like every DQ boss ever, with the same spells and all, except with way higher numbers so you need to grind for a few hours.


La Mulana: Now that I have it for Steam with Steam achievements I have learnt something. That crazy trap I activated last time I played (and re-activated now) is actually Hard Mode. So that's why all the bosses were insanely tough! And now that I've activated it again there's no escape!

I actually found a few new things compared to last time, before getting completely stuck (Temple of Moonlight for exemple) I could beat bosses but hard mode, knife and whip being too dangerous, shurikens doing one damage, etc.

Checking some maps, I notice that I don't actually miss that many clues, but it sure doesn't feel like it in game. In game I feel lost and weak all the time.

[Luther Lansfeld]

DQ6 - I finished this last week.  The final bossy is pretty bullshit and I ended up grinding about 6-10 levels on all my dudes unlocking Hero on the main (so I could have some more offense annd Disrupting Wave away Oomph and Kabuff on the boss, which weren't the bullshit parts). 

THERE IS SEXWORTH 2 AND YOU SPENT YOUR TIME GRINDING IN DQ6, GREFTER? 

[hinode]

All your wagon characters in DQ6 gain full exp/job levels even in dungeons where you can't access the dungeon, so it is in fact possible to train a full team for endgame, so long as you can equip them acceptably. You can also send someone down the Luminary path without having to endure the awful Gadabout phase and then switch him/her over to Martial Artist for a character with free MT healing and decent durability/speed, which made lategame bosses a whole lot easier.

I don't remember having to do any grinding for the final boss personally beyond going through the final dungeon twice (once to loot the treasure, second time for the boss), but I suspect I had more MT healing then you did.

[Grefter]

I don't mean training like characters.  I mean that is the only boss fight (maybe one earlier?) where you have 8 people and the ability to dump people into the back row so they don't take damage but are able to be healed.  That opens up a ton of strategic choices you haven't had for 30+ hours of game.

[Grefter]

Also Ciatos I don't understand what you are saying.  I can't hear you properly over my Suikoden 1 and Trails in the Sky replay on PC.

Suikoden - The thing that blows me away each time I play and notice little things each time at the start is how weird the sound design is.  Normally you first notice it when the dragon makes straight up elephant noises or some of the weirder instrument choices in the soundtrack (that Marco gambling music, Japanese retelling of a high fantasy medieval epic?  Banjo and bush band instruments).  Since I play without music on a bit I also note the crazy loud fountains right outside Gregminster Palace.  They sound like a sample of a small waterfall or heavy rainfall and it is white noise that just wipes trough the entire audio range.

The thing that got me this time though that I hadn't noticed before is that when you first go home from the palace you get dialogue choices to fuck around with Pahn and Gremio that I hadn't seen before.  These elicit horn honks and boioioiong sounds like they are in a Three Stooges short.

So can anyone think of a time they use a slide whistle in Suikoden 1?  I am certain they do at some point based on that, I can even hear it in my mind, but I can't place where it happens.

Trails in the Sky - I am up to Chapter 2 of this.  It breezes by much quicker the second time when you are skipping dialogue and when I could sit down and play it for long sessions instead of just playing it mostly portable.  Playing it on PC because there is supposed to be some carry over stuff from LoH 1 to 2 that I would like to have and I want to play 2 when it comes out since I can and because I do remember finishing it genuinely being interested in a JRPG series with recurring characters over multiple games again.  Haven't had one of those like that since like Shadow Hearts 1 and 2 really?  Maybe something in the Atelier wheel house that I haven't touched yet, but nothing else springs to mind.  Suikoden is more shared universe than a clear byline through an overarching story.  The only other thing that springs to mind is Arc the Lad of all things.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Xenoblade Chronicles - what % of this game's scenes are men yelling at robots

[Grefter]

Suikodens - So the line from Kanaan right after Ted casts Hell on the Queen Ant is "What the hell?"

10/10

[Meeplelard]

Xenoblade Chronicles - what % of this game's scenes are men yelling at robots

...there are points in the game where there aren't men yelling at robots?  I thought that was the whole thesis of the game!

"Robots eat humans, Men yell at them for eating humans!"


Bravely Default: Rusalka is a lot easier when everyone has Abate Water and you have 2 Iceflame Shields.  Granted, forgetting it had charm is embarassing, having Agnes with the Lamia Tiara by chance sure helped though!  Also, Agnes clearly wants sexy time with Tiz in a cave...er...I mean...BECAUSE THE SAGE ASKED HER TO BRING ONE ALLY!

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: NINJA. BABOONS.  This isn't that weird, except that the Snowmads are all suppose to be arctic animals, and well...NINJA BABOONS!!!  Also, gotta say, I think this game may have some of the best swimming mechanics I've ever seen, particularly because:

A. Not 3D
B. They don't remove your offensive capabilities, just adjust how they work, so lateral shift
C. YOU CAN USE CRANKY!!! 

...ok, C is pretty much a given for anything in this game

[Niu]

Trails in the Sky - I am up to Chapter 2 of this.  It breezes by much quicker the second time when you are skipping dialogue and when I could sit down and play it for long sessions instead of just playing it mostly portable.  Playing it on PC because there is supposed to be some carry over stuff from LoH 1 to 2 that I would like to have and I want to play 2 when it comes out since I can and because I do remember finishing it genuinely being interested in a JRPG series with recurring characters over multiple games again.

I am lost here.
LoH 1 and 2 has carry over to Trails? Something has to be mistaken here.
Also, you sound like only PC version supports carry over. But actually all versions of Trails supports carry over, just that you can only carry it over between same type of console/handheld.

[Grefter]

Trails to the sequel is what I mean and PC version of the sequel is the only one we are getting in English.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Xenoblade Chronicles - What in the ever loving fuck was that scene I just watched? If you are going to going to go full and complete idiot by sacrificing your chance to save the world because you have a boner for some girl, you could at least make sure you get the girl in the exchange. A horrible execution to a genuinely terrible trope. And then we had the reveal to who Metal Face is, which made me chortle. Why did the writers think this plot thread was a good idea? Is this guy going to be like Wheel of Time Slayer, who you yell at in impotent rage as the character mega overstays his welcome? Most of the goodwill the game had generated from the High Entia arc was just obliterated by the utter stupidity of the last 10 minutes.

(And then I fought a boss fight and I was underlevelled and it was borderline impossible and since strategy seems to barely matter I gained a level and then it was just merely kinda annoying!)

[Fenrir]

The Binding of Isaac: NO MORE. It is the Antechrist of games, abhorrent but tempting and addictive. Why am I playing a game that's making fun of a terrified bullied kid over and over and covering him in shit? I'm not going to trust anyone who has played it for more than 5 minutes. Oh wait I played it for 9 hours. Well ok, I'm not going to trust anyone who has played it for more than 10 hours.

Nuclear Throne: Tried this to compensate, as it's another top down shooter roguelike thing. It is a loud fast game which rewards really aggressive tactics. It is excellent, but like Spelunky it's more skill based than luck based, so maybe it's not going to be as addictive as Binding of Isaac (Its addictive nature lies in seeing whatever cool powers you're going to get and how they're going to mesh together, for this run). I'm not going to stop until I get to the Nuclear Throne anyway, and this should take a really long while.

The robot and plant look like the best characters but my favourite is Yung Venuz the Freemason/Illuminati Triangle Thing.

[Sierra]

FFT: Oh right I finished this at some point. The only thing really to add is that I still hate Balk 2. It would be moderately problematic if I just wanted to kill Balk, but no I have to drag it out trying to steal because guns guns guns (even though the only thing past this point is a couple joke fights and I won't be bringing the gunners to either of them). The first try I forget that his dragon pals can basically murder the fuck out of people in one hit, so *reset*. Second time I hang back as far as possible trying to lure the gunners into ambush range. They prioritize shooting Ramza of the 100% Auto-Potion success chance for some reason, so this basically works, chemist jumps the gap and alright let's break that hat of yours so you get less turns while I'm trying to nick the Glacier Gun. ...0% hitrate, what? He spawned with Maintenance. ffffffffffffffff *reset*

Okay! Ramza yells at my chemist until she's like 17 speed so she can comfortably throw phoenix down at anyone who needs revival (which she does constantly since on average 50% of the team is dead at any given time; obviously everyone has Auto-Potion, but this hardly matters when the dragons get multiple chances at OHKO damage per turn). Melly breaks people's hats and mantles. Reis converts the tiamat which almost completely fails to hit anything for the rest of the fight despite having very advantageous terrain opportunities that limit it to usually two panels to strike. DanceNinja morphs into StealNinja, gets a lucky Don't Act to land while beating up the behemoth, and then manifestly fails at the one steal chance she actually gets. Why just one? Well naturally she got shot to death immediately afterward because she was running around at 10 HP (chemist girl is fast enough to keep everyone alive by this point, but not to heal them to non-OHKO range). No big deal, I'll just revive her again--oh wait, chemist girl can't make it across the gap to the far side of the arena because there are too many corpses in the way. And with her 3 move she'll never make it all the way around the room in time.

...

Okay, fuck it, fine! I'll just punch Balk to death for more HP than he actually has and then call it a day!

But at least I got a tiamat out of it. I brought it along for Hashmalum. This didn't matter because that fight proceeded thusly: Hashy moves forward, starts charging Meteor -> Ramza punches him for over a thousand damage -> DanceNinja stabs him for like six hundred damage. Fin~ The lesson here is that all you need is ninjas (wah wah-wah-wah-wahhh).

[Meeplelard]

Star Fox 64: Never Give Up! Trust Your instincts! Do a Barrel Roll!

...it seems I forgot how to do most of that, because I went entirely the blue route this game.  I am out of practice.  Ah well, got it for free thanks to Club Nintendo!

[Niu]

Gunvolt - So, Inafune's new game is out. GV is so distracting of a character despite being the PC, for he is a shota voiced by Ishikawa kun. Just how am I going to concentrate on the gameplay if I am being induced of yaoi fantasies every other second?
The game design is also not what I expected. It is a pretty easy game with bunch of gimmicks that makes sure the player don't die. (auto invincibility shield, auto revive!)
But on the other hand, it is very time/score attack oriented that none of the gimmicks in the game is going to help and depends entirely on player skill if aiming for high scores. (you lose all stacked points upon a hit regardless of shield on or not, no stack points at all if in revived mode)

Haven't dig into the customization yet. But the game seems to flow pretty well even without it.

[Dhyerwolf]

Child of Light- Endgame. Stat topicing this will probably be relatively easy (considering that the annoying way it dealt with saves. I guess for a game like this I wouldn't typically care, but man it makes this a pain).

May need to replay on normal because it changes both enemy defenses (which are so mathematically easy to deal with since it's easily tested straight division I think) and EXP growth (obviously super important. Also more levels=less needing to come up with as many minute alternate builds, so that's also a plus).

[Meeplelard]

Bravely Default:

Things I should probably stop doing: Refights with the Asterisk Bosses
Things I probably should be doing: Continuing the main game
Things I will most likely end up doing: ?

[Dark Holy Elf]

FF6 Eviltype - Doing stuff in the final dungeon.

Team 1: Terra/Strago/Relm/Gogo (fight Goddess)
Team 2: Umaro/Shadow/Sabin/Gau (fight Atma, Gold Dragon, Doom)
Team 3: Celes/Edgar/Setzer/Mog (fight Inferno, Skull Dragon, Guardian, Poltergeist)

Team 3's the one I have the most confidence in (nobody with bad armour + great spell levels) if you're wondering why it got fed into the two-boss route at the end.

Randoms haven't been tooo bad although Great Behemoth Meteo just horribly overkills whatever it hits. Still blah blah various status tricks and such work, the usual (Controlling Evil Oscars and having them use Sneeze is my favourite way to kill some things). Two resets on randoms, both to the dreaded Outsider/Madam formation which aside from an HP boost isn't even too different from vanilla, one reset due to trying to blast them with MT and getting shredded by counters, one more after I learned to Odin the Outsiders but then got MT OHKOed by a Madam's Meteor. (Sleep on her completes the win, though.) Bosses...

Atma (8 resets) - Good lord. To be fair, part of the problem here is that I don't have Cure 3 on anyone in this team yet, but still this guy's nasty. Above half HP he's fine, elemental damage blah blah vulnerable to slow yay! He does have a mean counter where he uses his physcical and it does quite a lot of damage. Safe on everyone to the rescue. Hell, Shell too. Regen too. Haste. Float. Why the hell not he doesn't dispel. Let's talk about below half HP. First of all, he starts doubleacting, following up other actions with Bio, Stop, Demi, and Sleep. Nothing too terrible there but it's an unneeded complication. Oh, and some things can be followed up by HyperDrive which just pureers one PC (if you survive it you're horribly overlevelled, it's like 5k damage).

The real real problem his primary skillset expands to include CleanSweep (accurate, of an element that can't be nulled without sabotaging your defence, so it's great at picking off the recently revived, and means that Flame Shield is out for an elemental option), Quake (MT OHKO, Float or Gaia Gear or die), and Meteor (MT 1500~ or so). Meteor is completely brutal. Only Umaro and a PC with a Muscle Belt can survive, and only barely. Sometimes Sabin with a +25% HP item does too. But... this is ultimately the problem. Meteor is killer, very difficult to recover from, and since revived PCs don't have Float you're asking for problems there ("Gaia Gear on everyone" is not a solution, the physical counters start OHKOing then, through Protect, and it also tends to mean a loss of elemental defences which are crucial as Fire/Ice/Bolt 3/S Cross fly like mad in this fight and they'll do nasty those with no protection at all). Anyway I hone my strategy more and more (learning to re-apply Slow when he goes through an HP loop, and using Rhinox Rage to get Life 3 and hopefully survive) but ultimately after seven failed tries I give up, and gain one more level (within the rules of the challenge of course, non-Umaro people go from 26 to 27). Now everyone -can- survive Meteor with appropriate HP boosting, and things are smoother. I still die one more time.

Inferno - Compared to Atma he's nothing, mostly elemental damage and physicals and petrify, i.e. nothing that can't be reacted to. HP also isn't too bad.

Skull Dragon - Well the game glitches out when he hits a limit and uses a bugged attack. So I have two resets on that if that counts. The third try, Celes gets turned into a zombie and I revive her after her ATB gauge fills up but before her attack executes, so when her attack DOES execute she's at critical. And apparently her desperation attack just instantly kills the target's MP. Skull Dragon dies!

Gold Dragon (1 reset) - I remember this guy being a total badass but I'm a bit more prepared I guess. He's still no slouch. Anyone without lightning defence is obviously in huge trouble, his physical tech is an ITE OHKO to pretty much everyone not named Gau or Mog, and his charge turn for Phantasm/Wavecannon/Shrapnel (the latter being large MT non-elemental damage) is nasty. Shell's a big help, and mostly just staying on top of things since obviously he can kill things and I have to rebuff. Fortunately by now I do have both Cure 3 and Life 2 so those go a long way.

Guardian - He's a long way from a save point which makes me a bit nervous as always. Fortunately, he's more of a marathon fight than he is super-nasty, which is fine. The fight goes through different phases. The first has healing and gravity but isn't too bad, buff up then keep the pressure on. The second is Atma, which is most notable for tossing out decent double physicals (not too bad with Protect, but notably if two hit Setzer he drops, Protect or no) and Flare which OHKOs people but hey Runic can block that! There's Air Force which isn't really too bad, mostly runs into lightning defence although would shred a party less good at it (Minerva/Force Armour/Force Armour/Thunder Shield). Then there's Dadaluma who has tricks to get around Vanish, periodically X-Potions for 10k healing, and can just do ST 9999 with throws (removing all the buffing work) but it's not too bad. This softens me up though for Ultros who you REALLY want to be buffed for. I definitely come close to losing this stage as he can double MT Tentacle and that hurts! And various other doubleact combos. He also has Entwine, 100% MT slow which partly prevents Vanish strats but also is a huge pain, good thing I have Haste 2 to counter it but I pretty much need to have someone ready with that at all times or terrible things may happen. I consider trying to solo this with Mog as he has no magic damage, but I'm glad I didn't. Last phase just goes invincible and isn't too special outside a really nasty Bio Blast which uh OHKOs Edgar and Setzer without Shell (Mog's just tanky enough, Celes halves it). I scramble to get them revived and Shelled but it doesn't really work. Fortunately he finally self-destructs and takes out Celes with his dying Suplex, Mog is the only one who gets magic points but whatever I'll take it.

Save point! Levels are mostly 25-27 right now.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Xenoblade Chronicles - Just beat the boss fight where you have to kill the Face Nemesis minions. As someone who doesn't really like to grind in games, I feel like I've been grinding for almost every boss in this game. After the fight, there was a plot fight (which was great and joyous fun) and then we had a set of cutscenes that would do Michael Bay proud. Seventh PC get, though!