What games are you playing 2014?

[Fenrir]

I don't have a job right now and I haven't played a lot of videogames this year so you know. I'm doing yet another solo Yattaf challenge. SaGa Frontier.



10/10


I'm not going to use a trick to get infinite money but I'm still checking faqs somewhat to grasp the mechanics. Did you know that Emelia, despite being the token gun character, has the lowest chance to learn gun skills in the game?


Despair prison is a pretty difficult first dungeon, especially since Yattaf has way worse stats than the two other Roufas' angels.
In a solo playthrough you can really appreciate how a single stat gain can change your life. In a few minutes, the bazooka found in the beginning of the dungeon went from total lifesaver to worse than 0WP slash attacks.
I still had to restart a lot of times, especially because of this kind of OP monster:



It's an ape on an unicycle and it's >>>> bazookas.

 I tried using crappy punch attacks against weaker monsters to unlock enough skills to get the gift crown, which reduces the cost of every skill by 1. This got me a 0 WP Doubleslash for the boss. He wasn't too difficult with this, Deflect, a shield, and two cure items; just a standard attrition war.


After the first dungeon Roufas takes Yattaf to an italiant restaurant and she asks why they're in a warehouse. Life in prison was so harsh she can't tell the difference anymore, I guess. Roufas asks her to join his vigilante group, and she GTFO to raid the sewers and travel the world.
However whenever she goes to the airport she has an existential crisis and leave, so there's really not much choice but to go to join Roufas' angels. Or, you know. Raid the sewers. Which is what I'm doing right now. She doesn't have existential crisises there.

Learning abilities is very easy so far, somehow. I have 3/4ths of DSC and have just barely made it out of the first dungeon! Yattaf fanservice costumes are going to make this even easier, as they affect skill growth in a major way.

[Fenrir]

For anyone who knows SaGa Frontier mechanics well (WHY):
Does a piece of equipment that raise quickness lower your chance to get a boost to quickness after battle? Knowing this would help a ton.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yes, it does. Stat growth is based on the exact value of the stat at the time the battle ends: the lower it is, the better a chance to gain stats. In addition to stat-boosting items, this also means any buffs which directly raise core stats themselves (e.g. PsychoArmour, but not Shield) also make it less likely to gain stats after each battle.

Fortunately bosses are no more likely to make your stats go up than any other battle, in general, so feel free to throw on stat-boosters/buffs for them, but yeah if you can get by without you're better off not using them otherwise.

[Fenrir]

Thanks!

I weep for my newly acquired AngelArmor

[DjinnAndTonic]

Bosses DO offer a higher-than-normal chance to Spark new skills though, so it might be worth your while to savescum them earlier on for DSC hax.

Emelia also has that nifty trick where she can change her talent list for what skills she's good at Sparking, so you can get DSC or any other money skill much easier with some FAQing.

[Fenrir]

No need for save scumming, I just got it from that unwinnable solo Pink Panther vs Berva fight in the arena.
Which I've won.

[SnowFire]

- I'm not sure you can actually ever get Lucifer in the team again in one of the MegaTens?
He's the best demon, and still waaaay inferior to the two protagonists.

Apparently you can kinda sorta get Lucifer on your team in Chaos route of SMT4, for what it's worth.  (As an uncontrollable guest.)

As a side comment I don't really like the design they went with of him in SMT4 - nor in SMT2 from that screenshot.  He's the *morning star*.  He should be beautiful.  Evil beautiful, perhaps, or maybe marred beauty with some kind of giant scar or the like, but this is someone associated with arrogance / pride / vanity / etc.  SMT4 goes more for the "hospital patient with giant tumors" look.

[Grefter]

That is like a Frankenstein of David Bowie.

Also, I see Fenrir is reaching for the deepest depths of insanity.  Your people that understand SaGa mechanics don't exist, there is just people that can read the stars and auguries written in blood (and Elf).

SMT SJ - can go fight the final boss now but know it is bullshit in Neutral path, so grinding.

[Laggy]

I never post here but the sound of SaGa coerced me out of hiding

Fenrir I look forward to your Riki solo

[Niu]

Grefter, you sounds like you are complimenting us SaGa fans or praising Kawazu san to be some mystrical being.

- I'm not sure you can actually ever get Lucifer in the team again in one of the MegaTens?
He's the best demon, and still waaaay inferior to the two protagonists.

Apparently you can kinda sorta get Lucifer on your team in Chaos route of SMT4, for what it's worth.  (As an uncontrollable guest.)

As a side comment I don't really like the design they went with of him in SMT4 - nor in SMT2 from that screenshot.  He's the *morning star*.  He should be beautiful.  Evil beautiful, perhaps, or maybe marred beauty with some kind of giant scar or the like, but this is someone associated with arrogance / pride / vanity / etc.  SMT4 goes more for the "hospital patient with giant tumors" look.

Lucifer have two forms. A  angel form and a menacing demon form.
You can see both in SMT2, depending on the routes you take.

SMT4 is an outlier, as Kaneko didn't do the art there. And geeish, SMT4 just felt so out of place without Kaneko.
Not to mention SMT4 completly destroyed the character they have cosntructed for him since SMT3.
He is just a text book cliche tool in SMT4.
Where is that manipulative bystander who have been slapping YHWH's face with minimum effort?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Bosses DO offer a higher-than-normal chance to Spark new skills though, so it might be worth your while to savescum them earlier on for DSC hax.

Not innately. Some bosses do have high spark values, but some may well have lower than the randoms you are fighting at the same time. Obviously this varies depending on the randoms (which in turn is tied to your battle count) and bosses in question.

[Grefter]

SMT:SJ - Okay those password demons were fucking crazy broken.  Game is over.  You get some pretty sweet RP options through the whole game topping out with the final one in the end of the Neutral path.

Wil you give the "power" to Arthur?
 - Yes

I had fun with this, it scratched the itch that Etrian Odyssey does in a different way.  It stands out as a good SMT game for an even more niche audience than your normal SMT games.  If it wasn't chock full of annoying shit I would recommend it to elves because it is a JRPG that stays pretty consistently difficult the whole time, but holy damn is it full of SMT bullshit the whole way.  So, do you like SMT bullshit to get through to SMT craziness?  Do you have a tolerance for old old old school dungeon crawling akin to a significantly more polished Persona 1?  If so, play this.  It is pretty great at it!  If you can't, you probably don't even know this game exists.

Edit - That said, cutscene audio being tied into the music track in a game that came out on a handheld in 2009 can fuck right off.  Seriously, get your shit together.

[VySaika]

Just to point this out to folks, *I* did not have the patience to slog through Strange Journey. And I like EO and SMT games. And I got a steady stream of Toro-hype for the game as well, which is one of the few hypes I listen to. And I just dropped it around the third zone because I was so tired of the evolved form of SMT bullshit. Grefter is not even slightly exaggerating when he says that the game is full of if the whole way though.

[Magic Fanatic]

I never post here but the sound of SaGa coerced me out of hiding

Fenrir I look forward to your Riki solo

Isn't that straight-up impossible thanks to the last Ring?

[Fenrir]

I don't know about that last ring, but it's impossible because of Virgil, and don't get me started on the magmaslimes anyway. I highly doubt freaking Riki can get his hands on a super overpowered mega MT attack to defeat them all at once.
Also it's a solo with a monster in a SaGa game. I already hate FF6 Gau and SaGa monsters are even worse

Solo Asellus/T260G/Blue could also be potentially interesting, not sure I'll bother but hey. Red is probably too good, Lute too boring.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Riki might be able to MT OHKO the slimes, but they have initiative and do 1 LP to anyone who doesn't block them. So you'd pretty much have to be in a monster form with a shield and high LP and pray for ludicrous luck. Virgil's a dumb stall point and I'd probably just use pathetic base-level PCs to get the combos needed.

[Grefter]

I went to start DQ5 and my copy doesn't seem to work oh noes

Wouldn't you be able to solo Riki with someone else after the opening sequence just by the way SaGa handles party members?

Lute solo for all quests!

[Dark Holy Elf]

The game forces Team 1 for story bosses, generally, and the main character can't be removed from Team 1 (with the exception of Lute). So it's really more like Lute's quest is the most practical for soloing with any character who isn't a main.

[SnowFire]

Amusingly enough, I'd probably have been happier if the SMT4 final bosses had some of the apparent BS the Strange Journey finals have (well, judging from Taishyr's stat topic - didn't play SJ here, ack, no, hate EO-style first-person dungeon crawlers).  SMT4 has SMT bullshit early, but it doesn't really ramp up, while the amount of counter-bullshit your PCs can throw keeps growing.  So the SMT4 finals are sorta scary on paper but not too bad in practice.  (At least it isn't the cataclysmic dive Nocturne bosses take by the midgame, I suppose.)

I like that Taishyr stole Elf's FFX Anima comment with "no, this is not a typo" for one of the SJ bosses damage.

[Fenrir]

The game forces Team 1 for story bosses, generally, and the main character can't be removed from Team 1 (with the exception of Lute). So it's really more like Lute's quest is the most practical for soloing with any character who isn't a main.

I guess you could solo with a monster in Lute's quest and pretend it's Riki (whatever), but not fighting Mei-Ling solo ever is sad.
It's kind of weird that SaGa Frontier has no mystic main character, thinking about it. Asellus doesn't really count.


I love almost everything about Strange Journey. SMT BS 4 life.

[Twilkitri]

Donkey Kong Land VC - played through

Not as good as I was remembering? In particular the controls were a lot dodgier than I thought I remembered them being.

Exclamation marked all levels.

I never had DKL2, but I did have DKL3 and in contrast to DKL I don't remember it positively, mainly problems like terrible minecart-style levels and distressingly restricted saving opportunities. On the assumption that the series goes flatly downhill, I'm not going to bother getting either 2 or 3.



Super Smash Bros. 43DS - 105/105 challenges complete

Hammered the 50-hour challenge because plain smash mode is the most boring thing. Also hammered the get-all-custom-moves-hats-and-suits challenge because I just couldn't be bothered finishing the collection - got around 40 custom moves left to get and most of the time I even get any they seem to tend to be doubles more often than not, despite the weighting the game puts on giving you new things. Still, got most of them.

I've never been able to beat Classic/etc in the older games on harder difficulties, so I guess that says something about this one (referring to having beaten Classic on 9.0 for the challenge). I suppose the older games didn't let you stack +100 attack on your characters though.

Smash Run is good fun and I will probably continue to play it, and might end up finishing off custom move/hat/trophy collection eventually. For all that there only being the one map is likely going to get old at some point. But with the challenges being completed, and SMT4 having come out recently, seems like a good time to stop for now.

[Meeplelard]

Bayonetta 2: Congrats Masked Lumen who is totally NOT Bayonetta's father from the first game, nope, no chance of that, you've proven yourself a way more interesting Lumen Sage than Pope Vader, at least in combat.  Plotwise, he's mostly just there because "we need a shonen rival."

No seriously, Mask Lumen fights are fun and really do sell you on the "they are the opposites of Umbran Witches."  Pope Vader mostly just threw generic holy blasts and angel feathers at you...it really didn't feel stylized just "He's a Light Aligned Bad Guy, watch as we give him generic attacks and oh right, something angelic looking!"

Mask Lumen?  He fights like Bayonetta, except no guns, instead throwing fireballs at you.  Instead of Wicked Weaves, you see random Bayo 1 bosses come out of nowhere and attack.  His feather attacks now feel like Bayo's bird moves, he uses a few melee moves reminiscent of things like Stilleto, etc.  I think he even has an "Sage Time" because there are moments where you suddenly stop moving briefly and he readies and attack (you can still dodge as the time wears off just before he connects, but mostly there to throw off your momentum and make you learn the timing.)

Basically, what I'm saying is "Mask Lumen, you are a decent substitute for the Jeanne fights in Bayo 1, well done!"

I hope this guy is unlockable in subsequent playthroughs or you can play as him in Tag Climax; he seems like he'd be a fun Vergil equivalent from DMC3.

[dude789]

Riki might be able to MT OHKO the slimes, but they have initiative and do 1 LP to anyone who doesn't block them. So you'd pretty much have to be in a monster form with a shield and high LP and pray for ludicrous luck. Virgil's a dumb stall point and I'd probably just use pathetic base-level PCs to get the combos needed.

In my LP, Riki was a Black Dragon with Magnetic Storm and it couldn't OHKO them, but perhaps something with slightly more min maxed stats might be able to do it?

[Sierra]

DOS: More flames and burning. Finally brave enough to clear out the firey area looming in the center of the map all game. There's convenient water barrels scattered around that you're supposed to break to neutralize the fire field and weaken the enemies, but there aren't enough to be of use around the boss's hill. This is kind of a problem since he can do a three-turn chargeup to a 10X PCHP bomb! So I went back to town and raided all the water barrels I could find there. They won't need to put out any fires any time soon, right? (Did I mention there was a ship on fire in the harbor since the start of the game? There was a ship on fire in the harbor since the start of the game. I never troubled myself with fixing it, the barrage of panicked NPC chatter repeated ad infinitum around it flagged the entire area Avoid.) And even then survival hinged solely on getting him frozen so the countdown would actually pause long enough for me to kill him. Also the goonsquad respawns automatically and I don't get extra XPs for rekilling them and there are not entirely obvious instakill panels and ffff. So that was pretty brutal. I actually had a weapon break!

Apparently I could've solved the murder mystery like four levels ago. I just needed to engage in more breaking and entering! (I'm not really in the habit of robbing people unless it's a blatant plot necessity.) So hey let's see how confronting prime suspect goes massively overleveled. *A one-rounded boss fight later* Yeah, level is really the god stat in this game. Go up against a team of enemies two levels above you and you'll get utterly demolished; even one up is pushing it. Anyway after all that there's an ice area and it's kinda yawnsies. The boss trundles around aimlessly triggering AoOs and summoning mooks that get toasted in one round.

I have proper nukes now, but they're not all that great. Nice way to start a fight when there are enemies clumped up that don't know you're there, but you'll get way more out of buffs and summons over the course of a lengthy battle. Haste + berserk on the party melee specialist still best way to wreck faces. Summons actually level up with the caster, so the starting spider spell is still immensely useful (and not one I've found a book or scroll for anywhere, so definitely a good call at chargen). Damage is just alright, and the poison infliction almost never lands, but there's great meatshield value there. Can reliably toss one out in front at the start of the fight and watch the enemy archers waste all their specialty arrows on it.

I'm supposed to go into a mine next, so I'm going to take a little break from this.

I do have one notable complaint to lodge against the game: targeting. This shouldn't be any issue in a game where you just click on an enemy and your dudes attack it, right? And if the game just had a reticle or something circling an enemy's feet that you could select, there wouldn't be any issue. But there isn't, you have to click on the exact enemy model, and that's occasionally a nuisance because enemies will casually shift their stance while waiting for their turn. So the enemy you were about to click on is really just empty space because the dude shrugged or something, and now instead of shooting from across the map your archer is wasting the turn charging all the way over there (and probably triggering attacks of opportunity en route). So that's annoying. (I've actually restarted battles because of this.)

~

Wasteland 2: Restarted, now with 10% more sound party planning. Managed to get almost all the skill bases covered after a level or two; and really, for the most part it's enough to have just a level or two in a lot of the exploratory ones (at least so far). Conversation skills you can't fudge, but most everything else can be savescummed so long as your level's not so low as to give you 0% chance (and you better believe I'm savescumming). Fought through Ag Center with a lot less fuss; honestly, just understanding in advance the kind of resource scarcities you'll have to deal with in this game is a big help. I mean, it's not New Vegas, game is pretty harsh on you right from the beginning, first dungeon I hit the party's operating under a death timer. You really have to build as complementary a squad as possible. You can't be good at everything solo in this game. You can't even be competent at everything solo in this game.

Captain Mercaptain, huh? I better find a Major Mermajor out there somewhere too.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Riki might be able to MT OHKO the slimes, but they have initiative and do 1 LP to anyone who doesn't block them. So you'd pretty much have to be in a monster form with a shield and high LP and pray for ludicrous luck. Virgil's a dumb stall point and I'd probably just use pathetic base-level PCs to get the combos needed.

In my LP, Riki was a Black Dragon with Magnetic Storm and it couldn't OHKO them, but perhaps something with slightly more min maxed stats might be able to do it?

Black Dragon's a great tank with terrific strength, but isn't really that impressive a mage (Magnetic Storm is a spell) so you could probably get more milage out of various other monster forms (Crystal Tree has the highest Will and is probably your best bet). I also don't think Magnetic Storm is the strongest MT monster attack offhand (except against mecs) but I'm too lazy to go leafing through skill data to try to figure out what is.

Thaaat said, something else I did notice since making that post: while MagmaTouch is evadable (with Deflect etc.) and shield-blockable in theory, no shield actually blocks the element it is. So while there are various non-monster abilities which can stand in its way (such as Deflect and Kasumi), there is nothing a monster can have which would prevent it, which means a guaranteed 5 LP damage every battle. Unless... maybe the RING/Thief is the solution? It has initiative, like MagmaTouch, although how the game breaks high-initiative ties is something I've yet to figure out. I also forget the exact mechanics of invisibility: the only way you have a chance is to use it turn 1 and hope it goes before most of the MagmaSlimes, then use a big MT attack which kills/statuses (is the latter even possible?) all of them turn 2, and invisibility needs to wear off when the action takes place, not at the start of the round (which I don't recall).

EDIT: Never mind that won't work. I forgot the Magma Slimes are technically one big fight, not a chain of them, and since the RING/Thief is once-per-battle, and no non-healing, non-ring monster ability has initiative... think you're just screwed.