What games are you playing 2014?

[Clear Tranquil]

Thanks for the input Snow~  Interesting. Will keep that in mind. I have the game now. Definitely enjoying Finn so far though I currently only have the base level Rage of the Capilli. Will keep taking him along that line then~ 

[Grefter]

That seemed the immediate and obvious best path to me.  I headed down the Fire path after getting deep into Lightning, but water and fire seem fairly interchangeable.

[Clear Tranquil]

Thanks Grefter

Yeah, I am enjoying the game so far. Playing on Extreme and seeing how far I can get with mandatory fights only but I might relax that to allowing fights and rewards from whatever I accidentally stumble into later, that and optional boss types, or maybe only optional boss fights depending. Currently just got the mouse and only have the EXP from the three boss fights so far. Except for the first boss Aurora was only L1 so I eventually winded up having to do it on Casual though put it up to max battle speed for that. This was with DLC perks though (was able to clobber together a Tumbled Emerald, Tumbled Amethyst and Tumbled Ruby from DLC and stuff along the way)~

I still had to be on the ball for the Guardians at L1 and with limited healing items/plant use. Finishing off the second one was a bit of a race helped by the use of plants which eventually recharged. I don't feel entirely great about not doing it on Extreme though wonder if it is indeed possible on Extreme at L1. Game and characters are fun, Aurora is still kind of ehh but she is only L9, Rubella is fun, fast, interrupts stuffs, heals and revives saving some of my items, can take some damage, and Counter Heal well that's just right up my street (problem is all of her lines, Tumble, Heal, Revive, all seem good so where I take her will depend on SP limitations and what comes up), Finn brings the pain with magic, Golem is apparently the early game tank, haven't used the sister yet but Haste/Haste All and Unstoppable look good, actually Slow looks like it could be useful too, like Rubella all of her lines seem solid, just got Robert, not sure about him yet~

Update - Just beat spider dungeon. Sister and mouse were quite good, starting with level advantages definitely helped there, especially on Robert. Rain Arrows for MT physical off speed, I like this. Sister is fastest, and made good use of hasting allies and slowing enemies. Robert mocked the minion spiders then Finn mocked the giant spider with magic since physicals didn't do as much there. Sister, Robert, Rubella and Finn were all useful in this dungeon~

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Robert is a character whose worth goes up and down depending on the game's flow and how you build him. I find it very important to beeline into the Slow-inflicting physicals tree as soon as possible, and he benefits quite well from the crit boosting too. I didn't really update his basic MT, though, since Óengus eventually surpasses him in that free MT damage niche. The base speed and damage attached to Hinder are still quite nice, and getting it MT is great shakes (speed manipulation is really huge in the game, especially against enemies, which makes him valuable no matter what).

Rubella... sigh. Her MT healing really needed to be a bit more accessible in her trees, since that's the one niche of hers where she's unmatched. I found the status immunity spell to be almost useless, since there are so -few- statuses in Child of Light and they get mostly countered by Haste and Slow. She just loses steam as your item stack builds - the game's items are just crazy potent. Regardless, Rubella -does- play a rather Jeigany role in the game dynamics, being downright invaluable early (she -really- eases up on your item usage and fast interrupts are useful as hell) but mostly dismissable late.

[Meeplelard]

Minish Cap: That moment where you spend an hour trying to find how to get to the next area, when all you had to do was go slightly northwest of a spot you went to multiple times, and somehow kept missing the obvious path.

...I'm really great at doing that in Zelda games, I feel.  That happened at least once in both Oracle games!  Just got Pegasus Boots, in any event.

[Clear Tranquil]

Thanks Snow

Yeah, I just got Robert to Hinder All on the Hinder line after beating the Griffon boss and yeah I have the feeling the Slow is going to be critical for upcoming fights now that Norah has left, speaking of which now feel like it was a mistake not to take Tristis down the Quicken line immediately, Norah's Quicken** was especially nice, went the Ultimate Armour/Unstoppable route with Tristis though and just picked up Ultimate Armour All and have Unstoppable** with him. Griffon was an epic boss fight, eventually came up with the set up of starting with Sister and Aurora, having Sister slow down everything with Lull All, then get Quicken** up on Aurora when she got the chance, while Aurora was mainly there to spam Starlight All as much as possible like life depended on it in between using emergency items as needed, if she went down I used a revive potion to bring her back then set her up again, brought in Tristis once Lull All and Quicken**  were up and got Ultimate Armour and Unstoppable up on peeps.  When things got close and Aurora was down and the fight looked lost I would bring Rubella in for heals or Finn for squeezing in a quick Lightning All, was eventually able to get Finn in for a decent spell and he was able to finish off the Starlight softened minions. I had to toss around a lot of HP and MP recovery items as well, and sometimes Quicken potions if I thought that would be more viable than casting at the time. Robert came in later for speedy item heal/revives.

Later in the fight I relied on Rubella more as I was running out of stuffs. Didn't help that the boss kept on using Revive to bring back a minion but at least that was a lot easier than dealing with three targets, Aurora had field day unleashing Starlight/Starlight all there. Throughout the fight I kept up hastes and slows, ultimate armours and unstoppables as much as possible with Sister and Tristis. Eventually I ran out of healing items so Rubella saw more use at the end. Sister's Petrify move (apparently actually Paralysis?) was also useful on the boss. Switched to physicals whenever I got the Griffon alone. It finally went down and fight was over after finishing off the sole remaining revived minion. Fight took forty odd minutes. Every single character pulled there weight here except for the Golem really >_>

Aurora has definitely gotten better, which is good =) Think I should probably try and take her down the Slash line for Slash All at some stage but not sure~

Edit - Golem, I take back all the bad things. Ended up relying on Golem Smash* to finish off the Crepusculum fight while Tristis the only other character left alive at the end tossed slow downs, damage ups, and defence ups. Good grief that fight was hell, took quite a few retries, thought I was never going to manage it. Yaay plants~

Edit 2 - Child of Light: Beaten  Final levels were Aurora L33, Rubella L35, Finn L35, Robert L37, Tristis L38, Oengus L38, Gen L43, Golem  L34 and Sister was L26 when she left. I missed an optional boss and some forced mob fights from sidequests though apparently. More comments later~

[Fenrir]

FFX-2: At the end of Chapter 2.

I unlocked Space Marine Alchemist which is pretty fun. Not very good (she has a big ass gun and does like half the damage of the class with a fan) but I REALLY like throwing grenades at randoms.

Typical FFX-2 scene:
- Youth League NPC: How could you give the megasupersphere to Neo Yevon? They are bad guys!
- Yuna: :/ Sorry!
- Paine: *throws a grenade*


Psychic is so sick now, it's even better than Festivalist. It's two tiers above Festivalist which is already two tiers above the best other dresspheres. The dressphere balance is completely wrecked because of these two. I'll try using them less after unlocking their entire skillset, but it will be difficult.

[Meeplelard]

 The Minish Cap: Finished, not 100%, not going to bother 100%ing it, too much stuff to do, not interested enough!

The first 2/3rds of the game has the same problem a lot of OoT and after Zelda games have, and that's the fact that the game is built around a super formulaic approach.  You go to dungeon, walk around dungeon collecting keys until you get Dungeon Item, then you complete 2nd half of the dungeon using said items.  It's old and monotonous and when the dungeon item sucks (Lantern and Claws anyone?), it makes it all the more insulting because it gives a "THIS ITEM WAS MADE FOR THIS DUNGEON AND THIS DUNGEON ONLY! Also we forced out a lot of item collecting with it to pretend it's useful."  This method of progression is annoying and dumb, and that's why ALBW was great for just cutting out the middleman, letting you get all your usable items OUTSIDE of dungeons, and then the dungeons could focus on real puzzles focused around an item or two.

Also the bosses did follow that cliched "use item on boss to stun -> beat up guy with sword."  Oh, but the Wind temple didn't...except you get the Bow right before the temple, so they sort of just add it in there anyway.  I guess the Giant Octorock was kind of a reverse situation since it was stun with shield -> set fire to tail, but that was annoyingly set up.


The last 1/3rd, though, is more what should be done: Actual creativity.

Cloud Top Temple or whatever it's called hands you the dungeon item very early on; like before the map or compass.  The item itself is interesting (Roc's Cape, so jumping over platforms and useful in combat for evasion), and thus the entire dungeon can focus on actual legitimate puzzles.  Not teases like "Oh, you see an obstacle in the way but you don't know how to deal with it because you haven't found the dungeon item!"  Zelda games tend to think that's a puzzle, when it's not; a puzzle is something you have all the elements of, and it's a case of figuring "How do these all fit together?"  Looking for the one puzzle miss your brother stole from you is not part of the puzzle, it's just annoying!

This dungeon just hands you the dungeon item, and then goes "oh yeah, all those other items you have may seem some use too!"  You have everything that can be useful for this dungeon handed to you, outside of a few keys, which aren't hard to find, then you fight the boss who, while using the Roc's Cape, the fight itself wasn't centered around it; it used the cape in the manner it was intended, Platforming.  Not "oh, it happens to be this bosses weakness!"

The final dungeon was similar; you enter it getting your last "Tool" which is the 3rd clone, allowing for 4 Links, then sets it up around using every Tool.  Final Boss sequence did require 4 Links, but only for specific moments; wasn't a fan of the last minute "NOPE NOT DEAD LOL" tease, with a fight that has misleading features.

Either way, by not focusing on the Dungeon Item, or handing it to you early, the dungeons actually get way more creative, and I'd like The Minish Cap more if the first 4 dungeons were like the last two; not centered around "Find item -> Use item on rest of dungeon -> Beat Boss with item" strategy.  It didn't occur to me until recently that ALttP didn't follow this method at all, and the original Zelda didn't either; it really was OoT that started it (well, I guess Link's Awakening did this too thinking on it, but memory is a bit fuzzier.)   A lot of times, the dungeon item there had little to do with actually solving the dungeon itself outside of one or two areas that you likely wouldn't get to until after you got the item (which made those moments come off more as tutorials for how to use said item.)

The other thing is because The Minish Cap had less items being forced on you, they actually did create some interesting uses of them; there are unintuitive combat uses for a lot of items, like the Magical Vacuum (I forget it's name, but it's functionally a magical vacuum.)  Better yet, game does actually give you hints on using it.  The Lantern having combat use caught me by surprise, because a fair number of enemies actually get reamed by it if you use it properly (...I'd still prefer they just put in the Fire Rod though...), Digging Claws are still moronic though; they never try to find any creative use for those.  They're pretty much an ideal case of "we made this for a dungeon...and some item hunting...in areas where it's obvious to use...because...you know..."


Basically, first 2/3rds of The Minish Cap are kind of bland and boring, the last 2 dungeons are a considerable step up from everything else and feel a lot closer to what Zelda should be aiming at to stop the formulaic approach!  I know this game is 10 years old but I can still say stuff like this damn it!  And the fact that A Link Between Worlds took an approach that lines up with the last 1/3rd of  The Minish Cap suggests Aonuma agrees too!

[SnowFire]

Bravely Default: I think I'm actually to the point where I'm willing to ask for help.  C8 Central Command, and I'm blocked.  Ominas / Qada / Mephilia / Yulyana.  Qada uses Fire Bane and my defensive strategy is *fucked*.  Even through Default Guard, Promethean Fire & Firaga smash me up hardcore.  And this is all happening on the same turn so Spiritmaster is no guaranteed of defense, I'd have to rig Spiritmaster to reliably go after Qada but before the others, and it'd require 4 actions to Spirit Ward everyone up anyway, which isn't a winning long term strategy.  I'm Level 72.

The way I see it, there are two paths forward:
A) Every time I see Fire Bane, Bravely Second, use the 3 BP nullify-all-elements Spiritmaster ability, and go to -1 SP.  Then put the game away for a day & 8 hours before resuming the fight.  This might be the most boring strategy possible.
B) Unload Summon Friends with the random people from the subway's 50,000 damage special attacks or whatever.  Aside from being cheating, this is a one-fight ticket, I'm not getting these back basically ever.  Only really worth it if this is the only fight it's needed on.

Are there any other good options out there?  Aside from "grind more" of course.  Although I'm not even sure how much grinding will help here, that damage is totally nuts with the Fire Weakness up such that the only possible way to survive it is Default Guard, and Defaulting every turn, while cool, won't actually win the fight.

I'm rather proud of how I handled the previous fight which had blocked me, though - I realized that I was using the wrong Time Magic spell.  Rather than Meteor, I had to cast Regen.  On the enemy boss.  And use Gaia Gear / Quaga for the rest.  Yes.  how do you like that Alternis, I'll kill you with kindness

Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade - Finished, at last. I started this up more than a year ago post-FE Awakening, but got stalled out just at the Ilia / Sacae route split, because goddamn is Ilia route boring and easy.  Anyway....  it's interesting, but I definitely far prefer the map design of later FEs.  There's too much empty moving around and not enough strategic clashes, and a lot of the events the game hypes don't actually matter.  So... a new sandbar path opened up to the castle?  Uh huh, whatever.  The river froze over?  That...  doesn't actually matter.  Now, if something like Awakening Paralogue 3 - the one with the fleeing villagers - had a suddenly freezing river, allowing a previously blocked force to move in on the civilians, it might have mattered!  But really, it's mostly the empty movement.  Smaller, denser maps, please, I don't need to feel like an adventurer traipsing around the dungeon - looking at my clear time (which still A-ranked Tactics) lots of those "raid the tomb for the legendary weapon" maps took like 24 turns.  Awakening maps usually take ~10 turns, and some finish in ~5, and only a few really stretch to 20+.

Anyway, the difficulty is definitely flaky in this game.  There's a lot that can go wrong but it doesn't feel particularly strategic.  Main threats are things like misjudging ballista range and getting a healer sniped, status staves (Sleep / Berserk), and screwing up various recruitments (Zeiss suicidally attacking with a javelin... through the still-existing wall...  my range 1-2 mage trying to break him out, then dying on the counterattack.  Nice job following Gale's instructions just to observe...  however it was you were observing from within a locked room.).  Okay, the bosses were legitimately difficult early sometimes, but other bosses were range 1, which uh yeah.  Then in the second half of the game boss speed stops growing (except for Sacae route apparently) and that's trouble for the bosses.  I was playing via emulation and will admit to ruthlessly cheating my way past some of the bullshit, which probably also contributed to the second half being easier than it 'should' be since I only allowed 1 meaningless death (Ellen) to stay on the books.  ON THE OTHER HAND getting the 'good' ending requires keeping people alive which would mean a lot of frustrated resets anyway, so who knows.

Also this is not news, but Idoun is probably the weakest FE final boss in the series (that I've played).  FE isn't really about boss fights anyway, so it's not a huge deal, but still.  FE7 Dragon >>>> alleged "divine dragon" Idoun if you want to have just one scary opponent to encourage you to break out the cool weapons for.

As another random thought, mages are pretty awesome in practice since high-Resistance enemies aren't particularly common, but the stupid old specific promotion items idea starves 'em for Guiding Rings a bit.  I suppose they are storebought at the secret store, but still.  If Guiding Rings weren't a concern, running all the mages you can get your hands on would potentially be quite reasonable.  Except perhaps a certain desert shaman who shall remain unnamed.  Kind of a refreshing change from FE9/FE10, which were a lot harsher on its mages.  (Of course, FE6 also has the most insane swordmasters in the series, too.  Rutger/Fir/Karel > FE10 Mia, who's the only one vaguely in this competition.  Dodge everything and get consistent criticals, only problem is Move to keep up killing things, and hey storebought boots in C21?)

I wasn't particularly taken with Zephiel, despite the hype from others going in.  He's probably an upper tier villain for the Fire Emblem series but not particularly outside of it.  Sure, the backstory is properly sad, but he's ultimately humans-are-bad villain #97, just with an interesting alternate idea for how to fix the problem.  This is miles ahead of Sephiran who ultimately boils down to something similar yet less convincing, and way better than crap like Ashnard / Nergal, but only a 6/10 among general RPG villains. 

Don't think I'll bother with Hard ever, especially since part of the fun is trying out different characters, and it appears Hard mostly just buffs the characters I used already.  It's clearly based on "is an enemy who gets buffed stats because you're supposed to fight them, but you can hack the system and recruit them" but seriously, some of those late joins who badly need help don't get any?  Sigh.

Muramasa Rebirth: Took this up out of frustration with Bravely Default.  It's fun and pretty, and an interesting combat system.  But time to whine as usual:
* The difficulty levels are "repeatedly tap Square button, win" and "owowowow."  Legend is beyond easy and thus not fun, but Chaos is a bit TOO difficult for me.  I guess I'll suffer through Chaos and just accept a lot of resets on the bosses, but something in the middle would have been nice.
* The kitsune companion near the front has the usual Vanillaware impossibly giant boob fetish.  Yes blah blah magical creature, I get it, I'm not nitpicking the plot here, merely noting that this isn't sexy, this is grotesque.  If it's fanservice it's not working.  And I've played Growlanser games.
* I picked the default route, Momohime's, the swordgirl.  Now, this might change later, but this is slightly misleading, as you are in no sense playing Momohime (for the first 3 chapters at least?).  Rather you are playing some jerkass murderous assassin named Jinkuro who stole her body and has utter contempt for her (complains about being in a weak girl's body and his need to soul-steal some new host; he had wanted to steal his rival's body, but screwed up somehow and got her as a bystander).  He's also crazy and talks about how he plans on murdering everybody who gets near him to provide souls to make awesome demon weapons.  This extends to would-be allies - there's some prostitute he finds dead in Chapter 2 that he knew before, and he's all "hurry up and get to the afterlife before I steal you too".  Momohime herself doesn't really seem to be in the game (yet), she's just baggage as a soul, not even able to ask WTF is going on.  Now, if Hideo Kojima were making this game, this is potentially pretty fun - see, you're a young male who wants to go on a crazy video game rampage by "controlling" a cute swordgirl!  Shades of Metal Gear Solid 2 & Raiden, sure.  However this is Vanillaware so they probably aren't being as meta, and just think this is straight-up awesome, doesn't everyone want to travel Japan making a swordgirl slaughter everything.  Sigh.

We'll see how it goes, being pretty + having good if brutally hard boss battles (so far) isn't a bad start.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Bravely Default: I think I'm actually to the point where I'm willing to ask for help.  C8 Central Command, and I'm blocked.  Ominas / Qada / Mephilia / Yulyana.  Qada uses Fire Bane and my defensive strategy is *fucked*.  Even through Default Guard, Promethean Fire & Firaga smash me up hardcore.  And this is all happening on the same turn so Spiritmaster is no guaranteed of defense, I'd have to rig Spiritmaster to reliably go after Qada but before the others, and it'd require 4 actions to Spirit Ward everyone up anyway, which isn't a winning long term strategy.  I'm Level 72.

How to deal with it (gameplay spoilers):
Slow Qada down by your method of choice, and make sure your Spiritmaster is very fast, either by natural means or buffs. Qada's bane will reliably happen after his comrades do their damage, and then you get a chance to fix it up before they attack again next round. Whatever you do, don't slow down any other enemies.

I wasn't particularly taken with Zephiel, despite the hype from others going in.  He's probably an upper tier villain for the Fire Emblem series but not particularly outside of it.  Sure, the backstory is properly sad, but he's ultimately humans-are-bad villain #97, just with an interesting alternate idea for how to fix the problem.  This is miles ahead of Sephiran who ultimately boils down to something similar yet less convincing, and way better than crap like Ashnard / Nergal, but only a 6/10 among general RPG villains. 

Honestly I think most people who "hype" Zephiel would agree with that assessment. He's pretty cool for a FE villain. He has a pretty interesting setup. FE6 writing is not good enough that it's really pulled off in a way which is super-compelling, but FE6 being a sequel to FE7 in particular means your standards will be pretty low. I tend to mentally throw FE6 in with the 16-bit era (despite when it was actually made) and he's head and shoulders above any other villain from that era save Kefka in my opinion (which again doesn't say much). This is being too nice to FE6 of course - it did come out this century - but it's part of where the kneejerk comes from.

[Meeplelard]

Zephiel's more what puts FE6 above FE7 in terms of plot than anything else.  He's an ok villain, and it adds at least that much to the plot.  By contrast, FE7 is just a wild goose chase with a villain who is basically "Rar, I'm evil, TIME TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD WITH MAGICAL SCIENCE!!! ...oh yeah, and there'd a Darth Vader-like plot-twist shoe-horned in because that's totally the same as depth, right?"  Zephiel at least has motives, and doesn't completely fall flat on his face the way most "Humans suck, burn them all!" hypocrits are.

So yeah, totally a relative thing; "Good for an FE Villain" is about the extent of it, and that doesn't say a whole lot since most FE villains suck.  Really the only other decent one is Lyon offhand and some of FE10's (Jarod comes to mind.)  I guess FE4's Alvis because it's rare to see a guy who actually isn't evil, just so practical that the way he views things happens to line up completely against the main (Sigurd in this case), though not sure he counts because he's not really antagonistic until literally the end of Gen 1, and he's not the main antagonist in Gen 2.


That said...

Bravely Default: Started this up, not much to say yet; just got Ringabel.

[Lord Ephraim]

Bravely Default: I think I'm actually to the point where I'm willing to ask for help.  C8 Central Command, and I'm blocked.  Ominas / Qada / Mephilia / Yulyana.  Qada uses Fire Bane and my defensive strategy is *fucked*.  Even through Default Guard, Promethean Fire & Firaga smash me up hardcore.  And this is all happening on the same turn so Spiritmaster is no guaranteed of defense, I'd have to rig Spiritmaster to reliably go after Qada but before the others, and it'd require 4 actions to Spirit Ward everyone up anyway, which isn't a winning long term strategy.  I'm Level 72.

The way I see it, there are two paths forward:
A) Every time I see Fire Bane, Bravely Second, use the 3 BP nullify-all-elements Spiritmaster ability, and go to -1 SP.  Then put the game away for a day & 8 hours before resuming the fight.  This might be the most boring strategy possible.
B) Unload Summon Friends with the random people from the subway's 50,000 damage special attacks or whatever.  Aside from being cheating, this is a one-fight ticket, I'm not getting these back basically ever.  Only really worth it if this is the only fight it's needed on.

Are there any other good options out there?  Aside from "grind more" of course.  Although I'm not even sure how much grinding will help here, that damage is totally nuts with the Fire Weakness up such that the only possible way to survive it is Default Guard, and Defaulting every turn, while cool, won't actually win the fight.

This was my only literal road block because Ragex4 spam actually doesn't work.
Have a fast spiritmaster, 2 ninjas, and a performer.  Take Commerce secondary on one of ninjas.  Ninjas should have equip Katana, Hawkeye and STR+20%. Someone should have hasten world.  Use Stillness first turn.  Performer should buff stats and BP.  Commerce Ninja should use pay-to-play to boost crit and high leverage.  When Stillness wears off, launch 4 Brave normal attacks on Qada.  With 2 ninjas, it should take an average of 5800 damage per attack to kill him in one round.  With high crits from katanas and 150% Patk with high leverage you should easily hit that number.  When Qada dies, Enigma makes the fight a free win.

[Cmdr_King]

999- So, still playing this, but for the sake of posterity and possibly having to reverse myself, let's put down some thoughts after hitting my first (Bad) End.

This game isn't very good.  It's a complete flop as an adventure game; very pixel hunt oriented, it takes for-fucking-ever to get anything done, and an overreliance on math puzzles which tend to be time consuming without being satisfying at all.  Grefter take note, I'm not sure if I've said this that you remember: this game would beway better on PC.  Mouse Highlights are essential for something built like this.  Maybe I just took all the lame doors!  Knife ending does seem like it sucks that way.
Plot flow is also terrible.  This is at heart a character driven piece, or at least is presented as one.  Except most of the character beats are in the fluff text... which interrupts you while trying to fucking pixel hunt and thus becomes annoying mash-through text.  "Shut up I'm working" basically.

So the presentation of the plot is poor and the surrounding gameplay is annoying.  The plot, by itself, has to sell this game. 

And right now it's just... not.  No mistake here: I've basically read all the major spoilers for this game.  I was looking forward to playing it.  And it's not delivering.  The way the plot is unfolding is just not interesting at all.  The door order I took was relatively stable until the end; hang out with Snake as much as possible, he seems cool, then Clover because she needs a hug.  (though yes I broke this pattern for the last door).  Okay.  In that time I got... nothing interesting about either character.  Aside from the fact that Snake's relatively witty (and see earlier comment about mash-through text problems) there's not plot benefit to spending time with the most likable character available.
And that's where the plot is falling apart.  I know the spoilers, the endgame.  I'm looking for the game to give me a reason to want to get there and it's not providing one.  These people are dicks.  I don't like spending time with them.  That can work if the characters are INTERESTING.  See Evangelion.  But the way information about them is doled out, it's not happening.  I don't like them and I don't care to know anything about them.
And even that could be fine if Junpei was interesting.  Hell, I was pretty okay with the pixel hunting in the first escape, because Junpei seemed alright.  And then June shows up.  Which is a nice meta joke and all, June is Zero, the main fucking villain and yeah she's trying to keep Junpei alive to save her because causality!  But basically June is designed as the Worst Heroine Ever and hey, she's living up to that.  Cute joke.  Also makes the game suck because lots and lots of screentime is devoted to her and she sets Junpei to Idiot Teenage Boy Mode.

So yeah I am at this time basically sticking with the game because I have it, it's short, I'm gonna collect that "beat a game" coupon.  Full on FAQ mode is probably activated and I've definitely decided to skip VLR.  Bleh.

[Dark Holy Elf]

This was my only literal road block because Ragex4 spam actually doesn't work.

Well it's a team fight, so Rage is doin' it wrong anyway. Dark Nebula's the way to go. (And in fact if you're willing to be super-boring and run four Dark Knights, you can one-round the fight and every other one in the tower.)

[SnowFire]

Sorry 999 didn't work out for you, CK.  Since you've spoiled yourself I'd honestly just abandon it now.  Although Knife ending probably is the weakest one to get first?  Axe & Sub are better.  (Although, as someone has hopefully already warned you, don't pick door 2 if you have a choice.  You're forced to take door 2 & collect the sub ending if you're trying to see all doors, so you can see it when it's forced.)

The one thing I will add is that I for one *love* playing adventure games with a stylus, and far prefer it to a mouse.  Super-easy to tap around where I want.  I never really got stalled by the pixel hunting, though, and it is something that I know is frustrating from other games where I was a worse pixel hunter.  (But the 'puzzles' of 999 were basically just a speedbump as far as I was concerned.)

[Fenrir]

The main appeal of 999 for me was the crazy plot twists. I can't imagine replaying it ever with the elements of surprise gone, and the mystery keeping me going during puzzle rooms.



FFX-2: Chapter 3. Got the trainer dressphere and a ribbon! (Way to make a puzzle be a lot more obscure than it should, FFX-2)

Omni (the fat Leblanc henchman) was actually way stronger than Baralai. True Fear = His big hug attack and its insane damage.

Trainer is way cool. I ask my little hawk to grab giant wolves and take them Offscreen, where I assume they're thrown into a bottomless pit.
Psychic is mastered. Turns out that the "Immune to physical and magical attacks lol" spell is actually free! And it lasts for like 5-8 turns? Oh man Psychic.

Why does Mt Gagazet has giant rocks that go away when you go run towards them? Somehow I tried walking slowly towards them to make these giant rocks less scared. It worked. FFX-2.

The battle system can get really dumb. This other time I was a poisoned alchemist fighting two wolves. I had selected "Attack", but Alchemist Paine takes forever to steady her gun so she kept getting interrupted.
It went like this:
- READY...... *gets hit by a wolf*
- READY..... *gets hit by another wolf*
- READY..... *gets hit by poison*
This shit went on for at least 4 full turns until she could actually act.

[Fenrir]

Oh, I don't think I've mentioned that Psychic Paine gets MASER EYE, which is basically Cyclops' (the x-man) red laser eye beam of death, except she doesn't actually need to remove her special cyberpunk glasses.

Yeah she actually is worthy of the legendary name "Yattaf" at this point.
I wonder if I can change her name during the game.

[Sierra]

Fenrir stop making me want to play FFX-2. I know it couldn't possibly be as fun as reading about it.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

It's Fenrir's gift to the world.

[Grefter]

It really is a bit better than it seemed to be 10 years ago.  Like it isn't great or anything, but most of the dumb things in it are pretty obviously stupid, but none of it is really that outlandish in the grand scheme of things.  It is definitely the start of Square going in a different direction with stuff, but it is still close enough to that era of FF7 - FFX where Square were experimenting with stuff and putting out a wide range of interesting experiments. 

It takes the normally stale ATB system and really makes it more rapid (like its a bit slower than FF8 feels when I play it and I play on Slowest setting for FFX-2).  It also adds in variable charge times to that and elements of combo and interrupting slightly due to animation time for a weird melding of concepts you normally see in a Grandia game in a more classic ATB style (I would like it to pause when someone's turn comes up but then it would be pretty much straight Grandia combat I guess).

It of course then dresses it up in net that is casting as broad as it possibly can for Otaku beat off material with the most pointlessly convoluted random shit to do to string together the game (like I described it earlier, it is like they are trying to do a linear story in an open world JRPG).

[Luther Lansfeld]

Kid Icarus Uprising - Viridi is definitely my kind of gal. Up to Chapter 15.

Trails in the Sky - This playthrough is no more, it has ceased to be. IT IS AN EX-PLAYTHROUGH!

[DjinnAndTonic]

Oh no! Why'd you give up on Trails?

[Shale]

I still haven't forgiven FFX-2 for the cactuar island quest.

[Meeplelard]

Bravely Default: I have killed a Merchant and have thus absorbed his soul.  Now I contain the true power of capitalism!

[Fenrir]

I think FFX-2 is really the game that made me realize what I want in those games and made me stop having completionist tendencies.

It's hard to not aim for 100% in FFX-2 since you get an extra ending and everything. But doing this made my first playthrough fairly pointless and miserable. I was on rails and had to semi-watch terrible cutscenes and play bad minigames I didn't want to play at the moment. AND I probably had to do the cactuar island quest. I don't know what that is but I don't doubt it's very bad.

The game was also very easy. I had learnt nothing from the beginning of the game on, because I didn't have to, so I was just completely helpless against the first roadblock (The Magus 3) and had to stop right when it started getting interesting.


So I actually find FFX-2 REALLY fun right now, but it wouldn't be without my usual rules to free myself from all the BS (Cutscene skip, not much faq use and certainly not aiming for 100%, plus a challenge to make the game way harder and keep me on my toes)