What games are you playing 2014?

[SnowFire]

Grefter I should have been the one to fill your Dark Souls with liiighttttttttt

[DjinnAndTonic]

Legasista: N1 dungeon crawler. Better than Guided Fate Paradox, which costs three times as much, amusingly. (Paradoxically? </pun>)

It has a neat graphic style with the heavy use of black instead of more standard anime shading. The actual sprites are Rayman style armless legless abominations but the actual gameplay is a more numbers oriented LoZ with multiple PCs (so... Ys Seven) with an interesting Equipment-as-health mechanic and a Job system.

I'm pretty impressed w it and it gets hard as shit later on (like dungeon 4?). I'm only on dungeon 4.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Suikoden Tactics - Beat this. Around 21 hours, levels around 35 or so.

Pretty fun game but not amazing or anything. I liked the elemental panel system and beyond that it's an enjoyable enough SRPG with damage projections and CTB and charging and all that good stuff. Downsides are that it's not a very deep system (worked well for a 20ish hour game, would have been tedious at 50), it's a bit slow sometimes, and the character balance... some characters permanently die like Fire Emblem, so there's really no reason to not use as many of the "immortals" as possible. Helps that this includes the three OP archers.

The game's writing is kinda middling: it has some moments, like Iskas' charisma, and I appreciate its efforts to patch up all the holes in S4's story by explaining rune cannon, that tree, Graham Cray, the Kooluk setting you somehow never visit in S4, etc. But as a standalone game it's... not bad, but kind of awkwardly written (some scenes feel missing or incomplete). The voice acting, outside of Seneca and Iskas, is also pretty hilariously bad which hurts a lot of cutscenes to boot.

6/10 maybe? 5 if I'm feeling less generous in a few days. Enjoyed it but not high on the replay list, the usual.


EDIT: Also posting my thoughts on my fiesta classes here since they'll purge from GameFAQs.

Thoughts on the classes:

White Mage: I think everyone knows this is great.

Red Mage: Great in world 1, mediocre thereafter. Obviously Dualcast is a nice bonus if you can use it, but even if you can't it's not useless later; I like the utility its skillset provides, and it has a great variety of equipment options for carrying other skillsets. Too bad about the HP.

Geomancer: Let's go over what I like about Gaia:
-Can kill Skull Eaters.
-Destroys the Ronka Ruins with Wind Slash. Makes the dungeon a joke until the last stage of the boss.
-Swampy areas of World 2 overworld have a decent chance of Bottomless Bog, which is multitarget instant death.
-Chance of Earthquake is enough to destroy the Dragon Pod if several people have it.
-High chance of Wind Slash inside Barrier Tower allows randoms to be crushed there.
-Chance (not high) of Wind Slash in Castle Exdeath. Since you have Air Knives now and Magic Dragons are additionally weak to wind this really helps with blitzing the earlier floors, though isn't reliable enough for later ones. SADLY was one of my better sources of offence against the boss too.
-If you want to fight Bahamut, Cave-In (Meteor variant) is great against him, and this is pretty much the only useful place you can ever use it. (I didn't.)

Everywhere else, though, the skillset is pretty bad (and absolutely wretched in forests). The class has very little else: Rune Chime is a nice weapon (though a rare drop, and requires other elemental skillsets to shine), and ignoring terrain damage is handy in a couple places.

Dancer: Sigh. Dancer seems on the point of being good but isn't, really. The dance-boosting equipment comes too late unless you get a thief (tip: if you have a thief, steal a Lamia's Tiara in Ronka unless you know you aren't getting Dancer!). The HP really hurts on a class that wants to be in the front row. It's difficult to port Dance to other classes since most good physical classes can't use any dance-boosting equipment (Red Mage is actually the best that can besides Dancer). It's more interesting than Dragoon was, certainly, and it had a chance to shine against Necrophobe's barriers thanks to ignoring reflect and being targettable, and hey MP regeneration is cool I suppose... but it isn't very good either.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Xenoblade Chronicles - Just beat down a tentacle robot and lost a plot fight to a face-having robot. I am unsure if the giant man-eating robots are supposed to be campy or not...

I am currently controlling the gunner lady.

[superaielman]

FF5- Beat. http://imgur.com/3MoQLKr SFT was the hardest fight in the game (I had to change gears from offensive to defensive.) I ended up leaving the void and walking all the way out to get more Fumas.  The second to last boss was brutally hard but I got lucky and beat him pretty quickly due to sworddance proccing a bunch. The two yellow dragons in the barrier tower were also nasty. Everything else wasn't too terrible.


Opinion of the game's up a little, but I still have a bunch of issues with it. Dungeon design is awful, FF5 plot is FF5 plot and the job system doesn't feel flexible enough for me till the very end.

Knight>Ninja>RM>Dancer for use offhand. Knight was constantly good on offense and could take a hit. Ninja had absolutely fantastic randomsweeping and Fumas were great. Two swords kind of blows RM paid off early and late, but lagged very badly midgame. Throw had great synergy with the class. Dancer was just embarrassingly bad till world 3. Sword Dance was great after that, but the class can never take a hit and has to be in the front row for sword dance.

Edit: I want to expand on dungeon design. FF5 has more than one dungeon where MT ID is a risk. Other games in the series have L5 Death, but every single other FF game after 3 tends to give you characters with naturally different levels. The forest of moore and the pyramid are both in the running for worst FF dungeon due to unspeakably obnoxious gimmicks (And that's impressive in a series with Academia 400 and ice cave bullshit). Just generally found a lot of this playthrough frustrating, because the same design choices I didn't like when I played the game a decade ago where still there.

[Meeplelard]

Lightning Returns Abridged:

Jihl: Lightning Returns, the story so far...isn't that right my legion of fanboys?
Fanboys: ALL GLORY TO THE GODDESS JIHL!
Lightning: ...
Hope: ...
Caius: ...
Lumina: ... ^_^
Lightning: So...about that recap...
Hope: Right, starting now!
Noel: YEUL!!!!!!
Yeul: CAIUS!!!!!
Snow: SERAH!!!!!
Sazh: DAJH!!!!
Vanille: FANG!!!!!
Fang: VANILLE!!!!! ...stop being so manipulatable...
Lumina: Awww, you're no fun! That ruins the entire scheme ^_^
Fang: Yeah, well, deal with it!
]

*After your token Sacred Phase*
Lightning: So...Hope...about helping Sazh...I think we should do that now.
Hope: Uh, yeah, got any leads.
Lightning: Yes, actually, the Chocobo I got the first fragment from actually gave me a list telling me where all of them are!  First stop, CHOCOLINA!
Hope: Why her?
Lightning: Because the list says so!
*At Chocolina*
Chocolina: Hello Miss Mighty Savior!
Lightning: So...Sazh...think you can help?
Chocolina: Yes! Here's Dajh's soul Fragment I have!
Lightning: ...wait, why do you have Dajh's Soul Fragment?
Chocolina: Because I really want to help Sazh out!
Lightning: So why didn't you give it to him directly?
Chocolina: BECAUSE I CAN'T OK!?
Lightning: ...he's close to you, isn't he?
Chocolina: SHHH!
Lightning: I think it's time you go see him.
Chocolina: Only when Dajh wakes up OK!?
Lightning: Uh, ok, sure...
Hope: You do realize Chocolina is the name of Sazh's Frocobo, right?
Lightning: What'd you say?
Hope: Nothing!
Lightning: Next up, ONE OF THE SEED HUNTERS!

*Random Seed Hunter in Yusnaan because shut up*
Lightning: So I hear you have this Soul Fragment...
Seed Hunter: Yes, and it's yours if you find ALL THE SOUL SEEDS!
Lightning: ...aren't there like a lot of those and only appear in Chaos Fields with large enemies?  You're seriously asking me to GET ALL OF THEM when they randomly spawn?
Seed Hunter: Well, you could also find this random Moogle Object and give me that, and I'll give you Soul Fragment for that.
Lightning: ...yeah, I'll do the Moogle Item thing, because I happen to have it thank you very much...by the way, why do you have the Soul Fragment of a little kid?
Seed Hunter: BECAUSE SOULS!!!!
Lightning: uh-huh...yeah, I'm just going to move onto the next one...

*At the Champion's Square of Yusnaan*
Scientist Guy: HEY LADY! WANNA HELP ME WITH A PROBLEM?
Lightning: Um, what is this problem?
Scientist: I made a Robot too strong in the Colosseum, but you look capable, CAN YOU DESTROY IT FOR ME PLEASE THANKS!
Lightning: but I didn't...
Hope: Oh just do it; you gotta save his soul anyway, this will get that out of the way.
Lightning: *Sigh* Fine.
*beats up a generic Robot she's destroyed many of in the colosseum, FF Victory Fanfare is sung by the crowd*
Lightning: Ok, so why did that Robot feel slightly alive?
Scientist: Because I shoved my brother's soul into it for SCIENCE!!!
Lightning: ...that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard...well, no, but it's up there.
Scientist: Here, take this Soul Fragment I found! I've no use for it!
Lightning: ...though hey, how convenient...don't tell me you were going to use this for...
Scientist: SCIENCE!!!!!!!!
Lightning: ...so...yeah...time to get the last one in the Dead Dunes...
Hope: Do you know where it is?
Lightning: Yes, yes I do.

*Dead Dunes*
Lightning: Hey, Fang, thanks for helping me do this.
Fang: Well you are helping Sazh and he's a friend of mine, so let's do this...what are we looking for?
Lightning: A special kind of Cactuar, apparently, know of it?
Fang: we could just comb the desert randomly...DO NOT TAKE THIS STATEMENT LITERALLY!
Lightning: Ok.
*They searchn for it until find...well...this*
Lightning: Fang...
Fang: Yeah?
Lightning: Do you think that's the Cactuar we're looking for?
Fang: If that's not it, I quit at life, and coming from me, that's saynig a lot!
*One "Cactuar" fight later*
Fang: Is this what you're looking for?
Lightning: Yes, yes it is! Thank you!
Lumina: Awwww, you got another part of Dajh's Soul ^_^
Lightning: ...what do you want?
Lumina: Well, seeing as I gave Sazh the Coffer, I figured I should see how you're doing ^_^
Lightning: Why are you doing this?
Lumina: I just want to help ^_^
Lightning: ...I find that hard to believe...
Lumina: Isn't it sad? He does anything for his son, ANYTHING! You should be able to relate to that with someone you love ^_^
Lightning: ...
Lumina: I just want to see them reunited ^_^
Fang: So...parting ways again?
Lightning: Yeah, thanks!
Hope: Good, let's go see Sazh!

*Sazh's house*
Lightning: Sazh, I got all of Dajh's Soul Fragments...though thinking on it, not sure how that physically works.  Seriously, how do you carry a soul fragment?  Why am I thinking about this NOW!? And why do they look like maps?
Sazh: What!? THANK YOU LIGHTNING! COME ON DAJH! WAKE UP! WAKE UP DAMN IT! STOP SLEEPING!
Lightning: Umm...Sazh...
Sazh: WHY ISN'T IT WORKING!?
Lumina: It won't work because of your scary face ^_^ *actual line of dialog*
Sazh: My face!? What am I suppose to do about that? I can't change it! *also actual rough line of dialog*
Lightning: ...she means you're getting too angry, Sazh, and Dajh is scared of you as a result.  God I can't believe I'm agreeing with Lumina, I think I need to sit down.
Sazh: Huh? That...I...guess you're right.  *grabs toy airplaine* Ok, time to change that, FATHER'S COMING HOME DAJH! TIME TO PLAY SPACE PILOT WITH THE CHOCOBO CHICK!
Lightning: Wait, where did that Chocobo Chick even come from? It totally wasn't here.
*Sazh does exactly what he says*
Dajh: Dad, that's not fair! That's our game!
Sazh: Dajh, you're back ;_;
Lightning: Well, this is a happy ending...
*leaves house*
Lightning: Ok, Lumina, why did you help him?
Lumina: I felt sorry for him ^_^
Lightning: ...yeah, I don't buy that.  What's your game?
Lumina: I'm not telling ^_^
Lightning: ...Hope, God never said I couldn't slaughter her, right?
Hope: He doesn't want you to kill Humans so, and there's still a chance she is one so...
Lightning: ...I hate being the savior sometimes...

*One sacred phase later...we've done this a lot, I am not doing this joke again*
Lightning: ...great, I'm my soul again, aren't I?
Lumina: Yep ^_^
Lightning: ok, just tell me, what the hell is going on already?
Lumina: YOu know that hole in your heart? ^_^
Lightning: What about it?
Lumina: Well, watch this convenient FF13-2 DLC Flashback to remind you ^_^
*Scene shows*
Lightning: ...Serah's soul was inside me when I went into the crystal, then God took it out of me when reviving me, using her as a hostage...I see...
Lumina: There's more to it than that...how do you know Serah is real ^_^
Lightning: Are you saying GOd is playing me for a fool?
Lumina: Yep ^_^
Lightning: ...Not sure I buy it, but if I find out that God doesn't make good on his bargain, as soon as the world is reborn, I WILL go kill him!
Lumina: Now that's the Lightning I know ^_^
Lightning: ...there's something else you're not telling me...
Lumina: Hope is fake too, by the way...OR IS HE!? ^_^
Lightning: ...
Lumina: And there's other fakes too, YOU MIGHT BE ONE OF THEM ^_^
Lightning: ...now you're not making any sense...
Lumina: But really, the only fake you ever knew...was Serah ^_^
Lightning: ...once all this is over, I am totally murdering you
Lumina: ^_^!!!

*Lightning does a bunch of sidequests for a day, might show off some of these sidequests later, this is filler for the next sequence that happened a day later*
Serah: Lightning, keep pushing forward!
Lightning: Serah...
Serah: remember, Lightning, how much we've been through? The pain and suffering? The hard work we put into it?
Lightning: Yeah?
Serah: I want to forget it all! It hurts! Please!
*she disappears*
Lightning: ...ok, yeah, that's not Serah.  Serah would never be like that; she was always one to confront her problems and be stronger from it! God's toying with me...but then again, does Serah really exist? Lumina said she's fake, and maybe it's my belief in this fake that I remember her being something that's she not...god damn it God, that was a completely dumb idea removing my emotions and part of my memories.
Hope: So Lightning...you sound like you're going to betray God.
Lightning: I never said that! I'm just indicating God's methods aren't exactly the most efficient.  He's a pretty weird deity all things considered...
Hope: If you say so...

[Excal]

Bravely Default: So, I've beaten what feels like the primary ending, and am now trucking through such that I am now halfway through Chapter 8.  Have still done all the optional fights, which is good in Chapter 7's case since they did some really interesting and thematic teams there.

Currently getting my ass handed to me by the Chapter 3 crew.  My current set up does not deal well with a proactive Ninja along with all the rest of that damage.  Then again, I might also get out of JP gaining mode at this point and just move to optimal setups.  I am done with randoms at this point, and therefore the amount of JP left to gain is mediocre.  Might do a bit of grinding just to finish the last two classes I haven't mastered (Freelance and Arcanist), but that's it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention about Suikoden Tactics: what was up with those sidequests? Some of the worst I've seen in an RPG. It's like FFT propositions where there are arbitrary requirements for passing them except passing one or not actually has kind of meaningful rewards in terms of getting new PCs and the likes? I dunno. I pretty much ignored them, which solved the problem nicely at least (the best thing about stupid optional content is that it is optional).


FF6 Eviltype - Started this up again because I'm on a classic FF kick I guess. Eviltype is so good. What I've decided to do is do a "lower" level game where I can only defeat any given enemy formation once (barring unrunnable encounters obviously), I expect this will result in me dying forever. Up to Ultros 1.

Mario Kart 8 - Is fun.

[Reiska]

XCOM: Enemy Within - Replay, attempting to actually beat Classic.  Not Ironman.

Classic difficulty in the early game really exposes what is both the biggest difference between the modern XCOM and the classic XCOM, and at the same time, possibly the biggest flaw in the modern XCOM's overall game balance on difficulties above Normal.   Specifically, the classic XCOM is a lot more about macromanagement - your waves of soldiers are expendable and cheaply replaced; you go into every mission expecting to lose some, or even most, of your squad every time, and it doesn't matter because your tech matters a lot more than your soldier's stats and levels and whatnot.  The game is balanced around this.

This isn't really true of Enemy Within.  Soldier skills matter a lot in Enemy Within, almost as much as your equipment does.  You get much smaller squads in each mission than in UFO Defense, so you have to make each individual soldier count much more.  The end result of all this is that Enemy Within really is balanced around eliminating or at least minimizing your losses as much as possible, which becomes a bit problematic when three missions into the game you're facing opposition that has a 45% hit rate on you in full cover and have a 2-in-3 chance of one-shotting rookies and 1-in-3 chance of one-shotting squaddies/corporals, and that's assuming they *don't* catch you in half cover and kill you with 20% chance crits.  (To be fair, the crits still kill you on Normal, but they have half the chance of happening - 10% instead of 20% base.)  On Normal, also, they only have 1-in-3 chance to oneshot a rookie and they can't oneshot squaddies (except snipers). 

It's all very frustrating, and probably the biggest source of the game's inverted difficulty curve.  ANYWAY.

Run is going less than well.  Into month 4, have lost UK and France from the project.  FINALLY got laser weapons but I still don't even have alien containment, fml.

[superaielman]

FFT: Rako returns. In honor of Rako's amazing run as thief in FF1, I'm doing a modified thief SCC. Settings: Equip sword, weapon guard, move+2 for my thieves and item without phoenix down. It hasn't been too hard... till Wiegraf 1. He was a bastard. Thieves fear counters like little else, and evasion's a problem as well. I ended up winning without buying mithril swords but it took a half dozen resets.

Bright side, I get to turn my thieves into ninjas in C4!

[Fenrir]

Roguesouls 1: Screwed up in New Londo Ruins but managed to beat everything else before Sen's Fortress including Sif.
PoiseSorc is my best build yet, would be unbeatable if I never screwed up. Alas.

PoiseSorc is:
- Get through Undead Burg, raise nothing but Int
- Get Wolf Ring and Elite Knight Set
- Then raise Vit to 30 and kill Havel


Phantom Brave: OH NO I got caught up in NI1 aftergame again. Hours lost.
I'm even skipping the precious aftergame cutscene, I'm just there for the mindless grind.
I have 2 godlike uber weapons (one vase for Marona, and one tree) and whoever is wielding them basically doesn't matter. I don't get how stealing works. How can enemies steal my items even with all my stats? It's the number 1 risk I fear, as otherwise Marona is just too overpowered with her vase to die. (and she regens nearly all her HPs every round)
 
I'm trying to not check too much information, but I don't know how you could get anywhere in the aftergame without knowing about the Failure Title trick, which is fairly obscure.

[Captain K.]

Marvel Heroes:  Doing pretty well in the anniversary event, got quite a few good artifacts including Gem of the Kursed.  Mostly playing Thing right now because Invisible Woman got nerfed into oblivion and my Human Torch hasn't hit 60 yet.  Eagerly awaiting Mr. Fantastic.  I want to give him many size boosting adds so I can walk around with a Giant Reed Richards.

[Pyro]

Tales of Symphonia.

I dod not remember the. Sky Island Dragon fight. It was a doozy.

[Cmdr_King]

EarthBound- Fin.  So, let's put the technical stuff up here.  There's some obvious quality of life issues because this game was released in 1995.  Setting those aside, though, the game has basically the worst difficulty curve.  You'll almost invariably have to stop and grind for each new location until roughly Fourside.  That's like a third of the game here.  Except after that you go from grind everything to blow everything the fuck up in maybe two turns at most and nothing is threatening in the game ever again unless you let it be.  It's like it starts as a Dragon Quest game then changes gears midway and becomes an FF game.  For all the annoyance and the overall lack of satisfying crunch to actually finishing, I can't realistically give it better than about 6/10.

Summary: EarthBound is a really easy Dragon Quest game.

The absurdist/quirky/whatever qualities of the game have largely been overstated.  It's there, but nothing really ever comes of it.  You fight drunks and animate objects for the first half of the game instead of dire rats.  The art style is distinct certainly, but the enemies themselves are straightforward so it doesn't stand out that much.  Oddly it's the lategame enemies (robots that blow up in your face and Starmen standing a fair chance of OHKOing 3/4 characters on turn 1) that are more memorable, and I think the intent there is that they ARE normal RPG enemies and that's why they're the endgame stuff.  The game's stopped being a little adventure for Ness and become epic stuff.  Setting aside the artwork, the basic quest structure is really pretty standard with the major exception of Moonside.  I can see why people think of it more as parody than anything else, since it is most definitely in the basic form of a standard game even if some of the content tries to be otherwise.  That said, there's definitely moments where the game amanges to pull of the 'weird for the sake of weird' it wants to do rather than being a bog standard game with a funky paintjob.  Like, the coffee/tea breaks are really just strange and work really well.

Summary: EarthBound is a Dragon Quest game with a new artist who may or may not have been stoned.

At heart EarthBound is not trying to be high concept.  Kid with psychic powers is destined to save the world, makes friends.  And there's a total lack of conversation between the party, and indeed for the MOST part dialog in the game is NPCs talking at you.  There's not a lot of story potential here and the cast is horribly non-talky.  But this is where EarthBound really stands out.  Uniquely among games of its era, EarthBound puts a lot of effort into the text of the game.  The actual words and how they are arranged carry more meaning than the summation of those words.  The clearest example is during Jeff's solo segment, when you get to Dr. Andonut's lab.  Jeff is still in Protagonist Mode and doesn't talk... so his father just sorta babbles at him.  Dude hasn't seen his (early teenaged) son in 10 years, is awkward around people, is absentminded to start with... and what he says captures that emotion beautifully.  Would you like a donut?  yes/no  Yeah, I'd like one too.  Um.  How have you been?  Like science?  Wow it's been great catching up.  Oh!  You need a helicopter!  Right this way!  Complex concepts are actually conveyed with few words in a very sparse graphical style.  It's stunning really.

Summary: EarthBound is the bizarro Dragon Quest Plot.

Anything else I can really think of would just be ways I think the game might be improved, or opportunities I think it missed.  And since it's not FFXIII, I don't think anyone wants to read that.

Summary: end document.

[Reiska]

I don't remember having to grind all that much in EB outside of like the very very earlygame, honestly.  That said, the rest of your critique is really fair. 

[DjinnAndTonic]

Anything else I can really think of would just be ways I think the game might be improved, or opportunities I think it missed.  And since it's not FFXIII, I don't think anyone wants to read that.

Summary: end document.

God, I would much rather read this than another FF13 rant... (for all that FF13 rants certainly -do- seem to pour out easily, it is a polarizing game.)


Legasista:
Finished this! It's short sweet and to the point. It is apparently a ClaDun sequel in everything but name. Breezy and fun, plot was serviceable enough, though nothing special. Equipment and job system was pretty entertaining, though I could have enjoyed it just as well with a lot less randomization in the weapons department.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight:
Continuing on with my non-Disgaea Nippon Ichi spree! Another Dungeon Crawler! Unlike Guided Fate Paradox, it is not turn-based, so it's basically like a solo version of Legasista, complete with a Job system and random equipment setups! Nippon Ichi seems to like these! This one is even more clunky than Legasista/ClaDun's systems and Guided Fate Paradox/ZHP's systems. I'm not liking this trend, Nippon Ichi. It -does- integrate story and gameplay pretty well, at least.

Now storywise, I'm personally rather fascinated by playing as a downright sadistic evil and malicious character. But I can totally see how that wouldn't be everyone's idea of fun and I don't recommend this title to anyone here. Metallia is not pleasant. She's cruel and dark and takes glee in it all. It's not the light-hearted selfishness of Disgaea, it's not the subtle choices of Soul Nomad... but it -is- unique. You're playing as a terrible person, doing terrible things, and in some ways, that's interesting watch and get drawn into. Metallia is a scary terrible person, and the world of Witch100Knight is full of terrible people, and she's still probably the worst one. It's not something I've seen really done before, and the game doesn't necessarily want you to sympathize with her, but you can certainly side with her and enjoy the ride of being vile and malicious. I feel like there's a lot of games that purport "Play as the villain!" as a selling point, but this is one of the only ones I've seen where said villain really does make you hate them even as you're going along with her machinations. It's got a gloss of humor here and there, but never in regards to the cruel things the characters are doing. It's a weird story to watch. I will have to play further to sort out whether the game is being brilliant at making something uniquely dark in game storytelling, or just failing at making likable characters...

[Cmdr_King]

I don't remember having to grind all that much in EB outside of like the very very earlygame, honestly.  That said, the rest of your critique is really fair. 

The game also expects you to grind when you first get Paula, and again when you get Jeff.  Which ends up meaning you're stopping to grind for a suprrisingly lengthy bit of the game, content is fairly frontloaded.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Marvel Heroes:  Doing pretty well in the anniversary event, got quite a few good artifacts including Gem of the Kursed.  Mostly playing Thing right now because Invisible Woman got nerfed into oblivion and my Human Torch hasn't hit 60 yet.  Eagerly awaiting Mr. Fantastic.  I want to give him many size boosting adds so I can walk around with a Giant Reed Richards.

Looking at the bars Doomsaw was using, Reed's travel ability is to blow himself up like a balloon like in Willy Wonka. Some huge round blue motherfucker floating all over the place. Fuck yeah. Best Reed Richards power outside of Lego Marvel.

[Meeplelard]

I don't remember having to grind all that much in EB outside of like the very very earlygame, honestly.  That said, the rest of your critique is really fair. 

The game also expects you to grind when you first get Paula, and again when you get Jeff.  Which ends up meaning you're stopping to grind for a suprrisingly lengthy bit of the game, content is fairly frontloaded.

Eh, not really.  With Paula, Ness is strong at this point to solo things such that the Sanctuary dungeon (if you didn't do it before Carpainter), she'll catch up to some degree, and after beating the boss, everything runs away from you leading to easy EXP without fighting so good to grab some on the way out.   In Jeff's case, it's more a few tricks.  First off, get all those cookies, sell all those cookies, and buy Cups of Coffee with them, which are just good enough for the time.  Casual fighting in Jeff's section, and avoiding the enemies around Stonehenge, you should be fine.  The hardest part is inventory conservation, all things considered.

I don't deny the difficulty of the game is frontloaded though, outside of maybe Magicant, but that doesn't necessarily mean these parts need grinding.

[jsh357]

In truth, the only 'mandatory' grinding in the game is either a) to have enough HP to beat Frank or b) to learn PSI Rockin for Titanic Ant.  In all of the other rough patches of the game, you should have plenty of experience from fights along the way and your under-leveled characters should catch up adequately.  See Meeple's reply re: Paula/Jeff.  Some people have trouble with Frank because they don't know about the Mr. Baseball Cap you can get early on, and some people have trouble hitting things in Peaceful Rest Valley because the game doesn't tell you Slingshots are worthless.  I won't defend that particular problem, though it's present in many RPGs of the time sadly.

[Meeplelard]

I wouldn't say the Mr. Baseball Cap is a deal breaker to be honest; missed it my first game and didn't have any problems with Frank.  It's only a +1 Defense on the Baseball cap, and even that early, that's not a big deal.  Won't deny it's got the advantages of being free, and thus a potential extra Hamburger and such.

I do agree that Onett in general is the only real grinding you have to do, and maybe Peaceful Valley Rest, though that has little to do with Slingshots, and more to do with knowing exactly what you're going up against.  Knowing to have at least 3 Teddy Bears and avoid Territorial Oaks like the plague goes a long way in that dungeon (on the trip back, Territorial Oaks aren't so bad because now you're not relying on Teddy Bears to soak up damage.)

Still, I think the real issue with PVR is it feels balanced to be taken on by a party of at least 2 PCs, but they expect Ness to solo it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FF6 Eviltype - Up to the scenario split. The early going was fine, improved steal (which I don't think was the case last time I played Eviltype?) was a boon certainly. As was nabbing the Guardian (allows capture, good power) from Marshal.

Vargas - 2 resets. Mostly just needed to manage healing very carefully. Also stop pretending Locke has offence (which to be fair, he did much of the time) and put him in the back row.
Ultros 1 - 6 resets. Ultros is just all-around badass. Would OHKO Banon with "You frighten me!" so I had to defend through that, and actually ended up defending a lot in general so an untimely doubleact wasn't fatal. Did a bunch of damage with Sabin, healed a lot with Edgar and had Terra either heal or use Fire (triggering a counter) depending on what I could get away with. The large MT damage with Flash Rain was a rude surprise and dealing with that was also pretty key...
Ghost Train - 1 reset. Not too bad. Mostly a lot of hoping he doesn't use Scar Beam or Acid Rain, my resources were pretty limited by this point.
Rizopas - 1 reset. Got taken out by his initiative blitz first time. Second time I just healed a bit more, had to use two X-Potions and an Elixir but whatever, it's what they're there for.

[Grefter]

So the sequence of events go, start the game then have to grind.  Later you can do a specific set of things to help pull through an area with a lot of foreknowledge so that you can grind easier later when enemies will auto die because you out level the area.  Then it does this again.

And this is the player's fault?  Fuck that noise.

Dark Souls - Started up a Pyromancer.  Played for a few minutes and the game kicked me out because my frame rate was too low to play online.  I need to upgrade.

[jsh357]

So the sequence of events go, start the game then have to grind.  Later you can do a specific set of things to help pull through an area with a lot of foreknowledge so that you can grind easier later when enemies will auto die because you out level the area.  Then it does this again.

And this is the player's fault?  Fuck that noise.

Dark Souls - Started up a Pyromancer.  Played for a few minutes and the game kicked me out because my frame rate was too low to play online.  I need to upgrade.

Are you using DSfix?  It helped me keep a steady 30 FPS.

[hinode]

It's been years since I tried Earthbound, but I distinctly remember getting demoralized by the suicide oaks in some valley area and not caring enough to go grind up or FAQ for a solution.

Considering that neither the gameplay nor the art style nor the humor gripped me at that point, I shelved the game and never went back. Eventually I lost the save file due to a PC transfer and never felt bad about it.