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Author Topic: What games are you playing 2014?  (Read 216210 times)

Fenrir

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1175 on: April 29, 2014, 12:16:31 PM »
FFD just not balanced for solo runs. I mean, they literally hand you a free fixed-class Jeigan every chapter to keep your party count at 5. Also, a lot of the broken stuff in FFD is attached to MT, making it better, including healing and such. I dunno, just doesn't lend itself to solo play.

Challenge-wise? FFD is very tightly balanced. If you follow the prescribed directions the game carefully lays out for you, you will be the perfect level for awesome challenge and quite a number of wipes without any grinding or random-skipping. But do one extra run through a dungeon and you're overpowered for the next five hours.

Why is that, since levels don't matter that much?

Chariot isn't that hard once you get to know him. My tips are:
- Bring a mace. Forget about the lightning spears until the fight with the horse
- Kill the first two skeletons, then wait until they're resurrected and kill them again before moving on
- Don't go in the safe areas until two seconds or so before the Chariot passes.
- After killing the first necro, check to see if the skeletons were resurrected (and kill them for good if so)
- After killing the first necro, don't move farther than the next safe area, every skeleton will come towards you there. Kill them all then YOLO towards the necromancer
- Horse is EZ

Fudozukushi

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1176 on: April 29, 2014, 12:26:03 PM »
Or peg him with a lightning spear each pass and get the alternate kill scenario.  Be like Prettygirl!

Fenrir

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1177 on: April 29, 2014, 12:30:09 PM »
Woaaah you can actually do this?
Dark Souls is awesome.

Fudozukushi

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1178 on: April 29, 2014, 12:41:42 PM »
Yep.  You can gate him, just plaster his ass on passes straight out, or do enough damage on his passes to trigger an alternate kill scene.

Captain K.

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1179 on: April 29, 2014, 01:46:16 PM »
Yearn sorcery/Alluring Skulls help immensely with Chariot fight.

Meeplelard

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1180 on: April 29, 2014, 02:45:19 PM »
Kirby Adventure: So I have the Kirby 20th Anniversary collection and have used it to play all of...Kirby's Dreamland.

Well, time to fix that, and go on the nostalgic binge with a game I played a lot on the NES when I was younger!  How does it hold up?

...fairly well actually.  I was worried that after KSS added in expansive movesets to powers, and KRtDL did the same, the "every power has one action" thing might feel off, but Kirby's Adventure is well designed around that.  One thing that did stand out to me is how short each individual stage is.  Some are huge "blink and you miss it" moments.  This isn't a bad thing per se, just kind of stands out a lot.

Also, I forgot just how good the game looks for an NES game.  There's a lot of vibrant colors and well defined details, it's a fine case of how 8 Bit Graphics CAN age rather well, and the primitive look of them actually adds a sense of charm to them, as opposed to being a distraction.  Granted, kind of already knew this given 8 Bit Mega Man games still look quite good in the same vain, but it's nice to see a game that isn't Mega Man that is similarly good looking from that era, showing that Mega Man wasn't an anomaly.

Anyway, played, beaten, got 100%, and reminded how while the game isn't "hard", it's certainly not laughably easy either.  A key thing that stands out is how powers that aren't Throw do kind of low damage to bosses.  Using Kirby's basic suck and spit power does notably more, but then puts you at the mercy of the enemies attacks, waiting for them to use something you can fire back.  It's oddly well balanced, as either you get the option to attack the boss whenever, but watch the HP drop at a glacial pace, or do significant damage but only during fixed intervals.

Anyway, probably jump onto Kirby Dream Land 2 next, a game I never actually played.
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DjinnAndTonic

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1181 on: April 29, 2014, 02:49:34 PM »
Pokemon Y: All Doge Version
So... as a challenge, this one wasn't particularly hard. The canines that Y version gives you access to as early as Route 8 have such a wide coverage of niches (and the game not being that tough to begin with) means that it doesn't really change the difficulty curve at all.

Can probably be summed up as: Furfrou is way more awesome than expected, Smeargle is as terrible as advertised (and HM Fly isn't so vital to XY as I thought, I've used it all of twice, so even that niche sucks). Granbull is a bit of a surprise in terms of coverage. Fennekin and Riolu are REALLY STRONG and Early as hell, and Vaporeon is MVP because goddamn do you need a Water-type in this game. (and Surf/Strength are the only HMs that you're using constantly). Manectric, Absol, Kadabra, and the collection of Eeveelutions I raised for the hell of it are all varying shades of replaceable. Would have liked to have used Mightyena, Houndoom, Stoutland, and Arcanine to get the rest of the pokedogs (and probably added a lot more challenge being forced to use Poochyena earlygame if I'd bought X). But sadly two of those are version-exclusive (why?!) and the other two aren't even in the Kalos dex. (seriously, 300+ pokemon, you have GARBODOR but you can't give me Arcanine? All of my hate.)

On Victory Road now, so we'll see if the E4 can muster up some challenge (with all the team switching I've been doing, it's not impossible I could wipe, I'm not severely overlevelled yet).

@Meeple: You've never played Kirby Dreamland 2? What kind of monster are you?

superaielman

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1182 on: April 29, 2014, 04:11:43 PM »
Bravely Default- Just beat Chapter 2. Still enjoying the game, though the challenge has taken an appreciable drop since C1. Some of that is Norende (Angel's bow is so good), some of that is ditching the awful for randoms BM class for a third fighter, and some of that's just due to enemy durability not being as high as it was a few chapters ago. IT's easy to see how even a fairly minor increase in HP would make the randoms tougher- that means standard brave blitzing wouldn't one round randoms, and even on normal most randoms have decent offense.


The summoner boss was a jerk and everything else hasn't been too tough. De Rosa's pissing me off though. I went into the fight once accidently totally unprepared at the start of C3 and lost, and now he won't reappear.  Am I missing something there? The blue exclamation  point is still there.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2014, 04:16:06 PM by superaielman »
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SnowFire

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1183 on: April 29, 2014, 04:47:23 PM »
super do you seriously go cruising for dates at noon?  Come on now.

Captain K.

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1184 on: April 29, 2014, 08:25:37 PM »
@Meeple: You've never played Kirby Dreamland 2? What kind of monster are you?

I have never played any Kirby game.  I am the monsters.

And super, check the bottom-right corner of the first screen in the city.  Remember that location because it'll crop up later on as well.

Sierra

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1185 on: April 29, 2014, 08:33:24 PM »
Yep.  You can gate him, just plaster his ass on passes straight out, or do enough damage on his passes to trigger an alternate kill scene.

Yeah, I guess I could just load up on Firestorms/tempests/Chaos Storms. I've definitely seen those rip off chunks of health in passing when I used them to nuke the necromancers.

But really the worst part is just getting to him. That fucker with the greatsword can one-shot you and he respawns on NG+ and above.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2014, 08:36:09 PM by El Cideon »

superaielman

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1186 on: April 29, 2014, 09:46:42 PM »
well, quitting the game and restarting fixed it. Whatever. Just beat the third crystal boss. Still spamming stomp everywhere because it rules, etc. Enemies with counter attackers are *finally* making stomp not a total no brainer to use on every random ever though.

I'm at the point where I really, really need some new classes.I don't have any interest in salve maker and performer's not really an offensive class. Come on game, cough em up!

Tiz is running as a Knight/Spellfencer of physical smashy doom. Ringabel is a Ranger and my best damage dealer by a mile. Rangers have seriously awesome stats and get  level bows, which... yeah. He also is spamming stomp all over the place. I gave him a few levels in the teenidol ripoff class, but I haven't felt the need to use it for randoms yet. Edea is a mix of Thief and Valkyrie. Godspeed strike is awesome and steal is great against bosses, but the lack of durability makes me want to keep her in Valkyrie. Agnes is is the required red/white mage because you need healing to deal with BD bosses.

Re a certain scene right before the fire temple:

<2014:04:29:>[18:05:46] > In the least shocking news ever, the Bravely Default Fairie is goddamn worthless and literally demands you sacrifice children rather than screw up any part of your mission.
<2014:04:29:>[20:05:50] <AAA> the tradition continues
« Last Edit: April 30, 2014, 02:17:57 AM by superaielman »
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<Ciato> he would be so kawaii as a chibi...

Sierra

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1187 on: April 30, 2014, 03:48:16 AM »
DS2: Dammit, Roenna dropped her skirt instead of her hat. (This sounded less dirty in my head.) I mean, that looks nice too (the whole set does), but tougher to mix and match with that. Also skelemob halberd is way too heavy and has the usual halbed problems (first strike does ass for damage so hope your follow-up connects). Jabba scythe slightly-less-too-heavy and also too much STR requirement. Bah. Had to persevere with MACE until I could collect all the pieces for proper goth mode. I remember there's a darkstone drop from the lizard in the pit so I head down there (I need the token of spite for BoB covenant anyway). Leap at it, miss, he's getting away, dive off the bridge after him, it'll be a worthy sacrifice! All the zombies charge at once and somehow I escape without a scratch. Sweet jeebus what just happened.

One dead chariot later and I trade in nudist armor for the bone king set. Aw yeah, this is the right style. I might just stick with this. Also great scythe get, and after some bellbroing goes dark +10. 394 attack power on fairly minimal offensive stats? This looks nice. Weapon is very strange to use, though. You land a hit right on the point and do a sizable chunk of damage, slash with the top edge of the blade and do a little less, club them with the haft and do maybe a third as much. So you have reach but you really have to exploit it precisely to get the most out of the weapon or resign yourself to just doing a barrage of okayish damage. It definitely handles differently than anything else I've used, which is cool, and you get kind of a hilarious enemy juggling effect when you land multiple hits in succession.

Died today from: Harvest Valley ambush room (fuuuuuck); walking right off the stairway leading to Jabba; oh hey I can't remember what that item on the column next to the Iron Keep bridge is, let's find out.

Playing around with Chameleon a little before shutting down for the night. If you talk to NPCs while camouflaged, they react exactly as normal without disrupting your disguise in any way. Long story short, Creighton thinks Pate looks like a curse pot.

Crow roulette got me a faintstone. Which is nice, I can use that for something, at some point. Also the WHITE RING and Old Whip again (latter from a small stone, no less). Fudo if you're gonna run Belmont mode at some point I hope you have a backup plan for when this thing breaks. Because it will, in short order. The damage is outstanding, but I don't think any weapon in the game degrades more quickly. Like maybe multiple points of durability loss per strike depending on what you're hitting. Bracing Knuckle Ring is mandatory with this thing or it's unlikely to last you through a boss fight.

I'm still waiting to see someone run with dual hookhands. Make it happen, you guys.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2014, 03:53:57 AM by El Cideon »

Captain K.

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1188 on: April 30, 2014, 03:59:59 AM »
DS2:  If you haven't equipped Gower's Ring of Protection yet, do so now.  It is somehow sweet and creepy at the same time.

Sierra

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1189 on: April 30, 2014, 04:04:32 AM »
I don't think I've ever even found that thing.

Fudozukushi

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1190 on: April 30, 2014, 05:22:08 AM »
NOT-AN-EDIT: The item in Iron Keep column always taunts me.  I know its a junky soul but I can't let treasure go!

Belmont plan is thus: Get Old whip(after I'd say 23 tries including a slap, two great hammers,  three tridents and four twinking).  Burn straight for Dragonrider and kill him to open up Huntsmands Corpse and grab the Notched Whip there.  Go to Forest and beat Last Giant to move Merchant Hag to Majula to get Throwing Knife Spam.  Beat Old Dragonslayer to get access to Targray's stock, then over to Skeleton Lords and Covetus Demon.  Move Gilligan over to Majula and buy many, many whips.  Maybe grind a Bloody Whip next?

I don't think I've ever even found that thing.

It shows up in the misty woods in NG+ and onwards. 

Bigger reply to stuffs later.

NOT-AN-EDIT: Only Scorpioness, Rotten and Magus jokers down.  Spent too long trolling in Ratbros to get stones to Crow Gamble.  Didn't actually reach my target but had hilarity all the same.  HIDE IN CORNER then either ambush if they go after rats, or tank it out and let rats ambush them.  Die doing rat stuff; die against Rotten because clearly holding Shield down does nothing; die going after lizard in Tseldora because LOLROLL into pit.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2014, 05:24:42 AM by Fudozukushi »

Meeplelard

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1191 on: April 30, 2014, 06:41:40 AM »
Kirby Dream Land 2: Played and beaten and gotten FRUE ENDING or whatever.

Not impressed honestly.  Feels like a step back from Kirby's Adventure in every way.  An immediately noticeable thing is how they removed Kirby's Dash and Slide, meaning just convenient fast travels and a close range "get off me" attack in a pinch aren't there.  Animal helpers do help offset the less powers some but often the game is built around giving the finger to two of the animals and so either you use basic Kirby or the right animal, so botched mechanic, and the animal power ups are often just slightly modified variants of the base one.

The thing that jarred me most was stage design though.  The game loved it's self scrolling stages, something that is generally rare in Kirby games.  If not a self scrolling stage, it loved abusing the hell out of wind or current mechanics.  Oh right, it also loved to shove water in half the stages thereby making the stages more tedious (thankfully they're short!)  Lastly, the game LOVES GORDOS LIKE NOTHING ELSE.  Is there a slight bit of basic paltforming coming ahead?  Expect to see at least 3 Gordos because screw you, that's why!  I'm fine with Gordos, but this is way overdoing it.

Basically, what I'm getting at is I can see why no one ever talks about this game.  It's like KDL1 gets recognition because it's the original, Kirby Adventure came and set the status quo, introducing a bunch of staple mechanics, ideas, etc. that just made the games a lot more engaging.  KDL2...doesn't really do much to the franchise; I guess it established the "100% the game to fight real final boss" standard, but not sure that's a good thing.  It looks all the worse when you consider the following game is Kirby Super Star, which is probably the single most critically acclaimed Kirby game of all time (and for good reason!)

I'll give KDL2 props in one area: They actually found unique things to do with Wispy, Kracko and DeDeDe while still keeping them true to their original forms.  I guess Mr. Bright and Mr. Shine were similar but those two sort of got forgotten in later games because they're lame <_<
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Niu

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1192 on: April 30, 2014, 10:25:46 AM »
Some techno babble on Zohar and WE if anyone is interested.

At the bottom of it, Zohar is just a piece of metal. It gave birth to the material world yes, but still a piece of metal. It pretty much cannot do anything on its own without outside force maneuvering it. And in the case of Deus system, Kadmony is what giving command to Zohar.

Zohar functions by bending the time/space axis to select outcomes from possible futures. But in the case when it select something that is impossible, aka bending the time/space axis to the point they completely parallel to one another, it creates a zone which material world can't exist. That zone is the Path of Sephiroth which connects to the higher dimension.

A slight fragment of high dimensional wave fell into material world through it and got stuck in Zohar. That fragment of wave is the WE.
Escaping from Zohar on its own is impossible unless Zohar's manipulation of time and space is fully shut down. To shut Zohar down requires blowing up Kadmony, and to do that you need to blow up the entire Deus System. WE cannot do this on its own as it is a purely spiritual entity, and the material world is a confinement to its potential power, especially what it got stuck into is the very piece of metal that gave birth to the material world.
This whole thing is XG's Gnostic zealotry drawing a parallel to the degradation of the spirit upon entering a physical flesh in Sophia's fall.

WE, having absolutely zero physical capacity, can only influence the world in spirit. Thus it share a portion of its wave with the Contact; creating a direct link between Contact and WE. Since the WE inside Zohar, it is like a direct cable to Zohar. You can say WE opened up a back door there. On the other hand, Elly is a portion of the Kadmony (central calculation unit Persona) that WE hi-jacked by injecting Abel's vision of ideal women into it.
And this whole thing is really XG's further zealotry over Gnostic Sophia's relationship with humanity after her fall and try to combine it with Freud's concept o flust over maternity and masturbation.
Oh god why. It is moment like this I want strangle Takahashi.

Anyway, WE's plan to bail itself out is to create a situation similar to the one that caused its fall. Aka, Deus at its prime of power, Zohar in full throttle, and all the scattered calculation unit of Kadmony reunited at one place, which should recreate the condition to open up the Path of Sephiroth. Then busted them all together at once, so WE can break out and climb his way back home.

Sierra

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1193 on: April 30, 2014, 08:58:34 PM »
I don't think I've ever even found that thing.

It shows up in the misty woods in NG+ and onwards.

So basically the only place you'll ever need it. Of course.

Dhyerwolf

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1194 on: April 30, 2014, 09:37:52 PM »
<2014:04:29:>[18:05:46] > In the least shocking news ever, the Bravely Default Fairie is goddamn worthless and literally demands you sacrifice children rather than screw up any part of your mission.
<2014:04:29:>[20:05:50] <AAA> the tradition continues

Sorry, but this kind of character is completely a positive in RPGs were bland is the default (not having seen the scene yet, there could obviously be stupider context).
...into the nightfall.

jsh357

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1195 on: April 30, 2014, 10:17:16 PM »
Kirby Dream Land 2: Played and beaten and gotten FRUE ENDING or whatever.

Not impressed honestly.  Feels like a step back from Kirby's Adventure in every way.  An immediately noticeable thing is how they removed Kirby's Dash and Slide, meaning just convenient fast travels and a close range "get off me" attack in a pinch aren't there.  Animal helpers do help offset the less powers some but often the game is built around giving the finger to two of the animals and so either you use basic Kirby or the right animal, so botched mechanic, and the animal power ups are often just slightly modified variants of the base one.

The thing that jarred me most was stage design though.  The game loved it's self scrolling stages, something that is generally rare in Kirby games.  If not a self scrolling stage, it loved abusing the hell out of wind or current mechanics.  Oh right, it also loved to shove water in half the stages thereby making the stages more tedious (thankfully they're short!)  Lastly, the game LOVES GORDOS LIKE NOTHING ELSE.  Is there a slight bit of basic paltforming coming ahead?  Expect to see at least 3 Gordos because screw you, that's why!  I'm fine with Gordos, but this is way overdoing it.

Basically, what I'm getting at is I can see why no one ever talks about this game.  It's like KDL1 gets recognition because it's the original, Kirby Adventure came and set the status quo, introducing a bunch of staple mechanics, ideas, etc. that just made the games a lot more engaging.  KDL2...doesn't really do much to the franchise; I guess it established the "100% the game to fight real final boss" standard, but not sure that's a good thing.  It looks all the worse when you consider the following game is Kirby Super Star, which is probably the single most critically acclaimed Kirby game of all time (and for good reason!)

I'll give KDL2 props in one area: They actually found unique things to do with Wispy, Kracko and DeDeDe while still keeping them true to their original forms.  I guess Mr. Bright and Mr. Shine were similar but those two sort of got forgotten in later games because they're lame <_<

I recently replayed and reviewed this game as well.  Here's what I wrote, my feelings are similar:

This is a bad game.  I used to like it when I was a kid; I remember begging my grandmother to buy it for me. I remember thinking the new animal buddies were cool, and it was the first Kirby game I played that had the copy ability so that was neat at the time.  Ultimately, I wish I had not revisited this game, as it doesn't hold up at all.  Out of curiosity, I looked it up and found out Masahiro Sakurai, the man behind Kirby and Super Smash Bros, had no involvement with this game or Dream Land 3.  That doesn't surprise me.  I always suspected the Kirby games involving Dark Matter and animal buddies were designed by a different team than the rest, and it's true after all.

Dream Land 2 has a few major problems that really stick out to an aged gamer.  The first is enemy spawning: scroll an enemy off the screen, and it respawns immediately after that part of the screen becomes visible again.  This is unbelievably frustrating in the various water maze puzzles in this game, and punishes you for backtracking to get things you missed.  Another issue I have with the game is that the buddies and copy abilities Kirby uses are so much worse than his generic swallow and spit attacks.  The attacks barely do any damage to bosses, making them take forever to beat.  Even worse, a lot of the abilities will put you in precarious positions when used on bosses anyway.  For instance, if you want to whack one with the parasol, it will take no hit-stun and just walk right in to you, rendering whatever advantage having the skill would give moot.

The animal buddies are a bigger problem.  First, there's Rick the hamster.  Using him is inferior to just using Kirby, as you lose the ability to fly and have a bigger hitbox.  None of the attacks he can use make up for this.  Coo the owl is actually pretty awesome (and has an amazing theme song; actually, all the music in this game is great) but the game doesn't want you to use him!  No!  In almost every stage, you'll be forced to use Kine the fish, who is absolutely terrible out of water but is required in order to collect the rainbow drops you need to finish the game in about half of the game's levels.  It's almost like a cruel joke by the developers. They give you all these potentially neat abilities, then make you use only the worst ones to get anywhere.

The final boss is terrible too, and he's the icing on the crap cake.  To fight Dark Matter, you have to use the new Rainbow sword ability.  Kirby also gets to move freely in all directions... very slowly.  This makes it nearly impossible to avoid Dark Matter's screen-splitting attacks, and since the sword doesn't actually hurt the boss, you have to reflect his attacks with it.  The physics of this are poorly conceived to say the least, so I would not be surprised if many players didn't bother to beat the boss.  I know I save-scummed through it on this playthrough.

I wanted to say some nice things about this game, but apart from the soundtrack (Ando is a genius composer, seriously) there's not much to recommend.  This game is worse than Kirby Super Star in every way, and there's nothing that would encourage a replay.  The level design is poor, the bosses are done better in other Kirby games, and the physics feel stiff and antiquated.   Look elsewhere for your Kirby fix.

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1196 on: April 30, 2014, 10:30:04 PM »
This game is worse than Kirby Super Star in every way

That's true for most games that have ever been made, though?

jsh357

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1197 on: April 30, 2014, 10:58:21 PM »
This game is worse than Kirby Super Star in every way

That's true for most games that have ever been made, though?

Well, this is true, can't argue with that.  But I assume the point of the comparison is noted.

superaielman

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1198 on: April 30, 2014, 11:05:52 PM »
<2014:04:29:>[18:05:46] > In the least shocking news ever, the Bravely Default Fairie is goddamn worthless and literally demands you sacrifice children rather than screw up any part of your mission.
<2014:04:29:>[20:05:50] <AAA> the tradition continues

Sorry, but this kind of character is completely a positive in RPGs were bland is the default (not having seen the scene yet, there could obviously be stupider context).

It's more just the usual 'Fairie is terrible'. Though this Fairie is terrible in a much different way than the norm, so there's that!

Just beat the Templar boss. I bet he's a godlike in the DL and that's a shame. Talk about bad in game. The boss duo before him was much nastier.
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself"- Count Aral Vorkosigan, A Civil Campaign
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<Meeple> knownig Square-enix, they'll just give us a 2nd Kain
<Ciato> he would be so kawaii as a chibi...

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Re: What games are you playing 2014?
« Reply #1199 on: April 30, 2014, 11:20:08 PM »
Bravely Default - Fighting Dragons in chapter 4 to unlock Vampire.  That is pretty metal.  I beat Water one pretty easy with a well developed Ninja skill set on one character.  Wind dragon proceeded to completely stomp me when I went to it next.  Weakness overriding any resistance is a little frustrating since I decided that one job level in Thief for everyone wasn't overly grindy.  Abate Wind does nothing.  At least Abate skills reapply after overwritten, Null Fire and Ice from the shield that gives those isn't (I might test with accessories also).

I wasn't going to be able to really keep up with Compounding just by how resource intensive it gets (and to be frank the button pushes was going to get pretty annoying).  I thought of many of the obvious ways to work around the fight, you could easily grind up the job levels to have everyone get Transience and Utsusemi from Ninja and Turn the Tables from Red Mage and auto battle counter them to death forever.  That was lame.  There is also Spirit Master stuff but I didn't want to level that up either.  I thought about it long and hard and groaned to myself.  Threw Tiz into Spirit Master, did one fight and realised the skill I wanted was the level 1 skill.

So 2 people with Spiritualism set and one person trying to keep Utsusemi up gives a setup that can easily handle them with some slow chipping.  No deeper investment than Phoenix Downs, some X-Potions in a pinch and a Turbo Ether or two on dragons without Black Magic weakness to beat them.  Could handle better with more liberal applications of Kairai instead of mindlessly going on the offensive.  Also could probably get away with Compounding and have spend about the same amount of money than replacing Turbo Ethers, but eh.  I have about 20 of them and with Quarter Elixir normally in my arsenal I don't really see a need for them much.

Anyway it looks like Water dragon hits way less hard than the others, presumably because it can inflict Stop which can be rough.  Fire Dragon was even rougher with either worse luck on speed variance on him or he was faster than the other ones I have fought.  I don't have Examine in my setup so I haven't been able to check stats.

Earth and Light ones left to kill.

Have toyed with changing Agnes into Ranger or leaving her in Thief and dropping the damage secondary and rolling three people with Spiritualism but I think that is overkill.

Pretty grindy to be honest and rough on normal, but most strategies that work to kill them in this chapter on Normal will work on Hard too, so I guess the fights scale about the same.  You are also like 2 or 3 job levels away from skills that would trivialise them so I assume the fights are cake walks in Chapter 5.

I see Super has caught up to me.  The double fight is much more interesting than Templar.  What is up with them giving 999 JP and him only giving 200?  I was looking forward to a fat payout and got the equivalent of 2 randoms for him.  Sad times.
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