What games are you playing 2014?

[Fudozukushi]

Ha, those are the exact Cameo Weapons I ended up getting.  Leia has her Devil though so she doesn't have her Graces yet.  Gaius got Eternia based solely on me having all the materials on hand instantly by sheer chance.  Jude got Hearts and I think Milla got Destiny.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Zelda 2 - Successfully took down the final boss in a glorious, epic duel. Fun little game, feels like a strange place to find a spiritual predecessor to Order of Ecclesia, but there it is. I had the most trouble with the boss of the third castle, where I had to master the art of the jump-eye-stab to beat him. Obviously there's some stuff to be majorly polished in this game but what's there is quite cool. Suffers from old game problems of being periodically obtuse about certain things (Hidden Village is quite annoying for example) and it is rather annoying that you have to go back to the beginning of the game castle when you die.

Probably will tackle a non-platformer next, since I have played too many of those already this year.

[hinode]

Started messing around with Donkey Kong Land, and egads the attempt at replicating DKC's prerendered graphics style on a monochrome 8-bit system are a disaster. Not only does it look awful, but it has a serious negative impact on visibility compared to graphically simpler games like Super Mario Land 1/2.

Still the mechanics are decent and the length is short, so it works as gaming filler in-between Layton vs Ace Attorney and Smash 3DS. It's also something that I won't feel bad about dropping for whatever reason midgame.

Edit: Just reached the first water level and must explicitly exclude those from the "decent mechanics" part. Just what we need in a platforming game, swimming levels where you have no ways of damaging the enemies whatsoever. Ugh. Luckily savestates are a thing.

[Clear Tranquil]

Ha, those are the exact Cameo Weapons I ended up getting.  Leia has her Devil though so she doesn't have her Graces yet.  Gaius got Eternia based solely on me having all the materials on hand instantly by sheer chance.  Jude got Hearts and I think Milla got Destiny.

Heh, Hearts is what I was going aiming towards for Jude as well, he has it now, Gaius winded up with both Eternia and Abyss, Eternia was what I was going for since him and Alvin burn TP like I don't know what but ended up with Abyss unsealed first, then finished with Eternia later. My Milla has Crusader of Rebirth and with that everyone has at least one ultimate, and both Alvin and Gaius two~ My Leia has her Devil but only about 4550~ P-ATK and less A-ATK on it so still a while before that will be max power, the speed, defence, and casting time reduction from Graces is nice though~

[Luther Lansfeld]

Chrono Trigger - It's been a long time since I played this. Just got the Epoch~

[Shale]

Bravely Default: Ganked Super's 3DS and started this up. It's a slow, grindy, bizarrely clunky (you have speed adjustments, encounter rate toggle, etc, etc, but no way to quick-heal outside of walking back to the last inn and then retracing your steps through the current dungeon?) version of FF5 that was co-developed by Zynga. I'll keep at it until the job system opens up more -- I stopped at the boss in the Rainbow Thread cave -- but so far the only redeeming aspect is the bad guys' voice acting.

[Fudozukushi]

Ha, those are the exact Cameo Weapons I ended up getting.  Leia has her Devil though so she doesn't have her Graces yet.  Gaius got Eternia based solely on me having all the materials on hand instantly by sheer chance.  Jude got Hearts and I think Milla got Destiny.

Heh, Hearts is what I was going aiming towards for Jude as well, he has it now, Gaius winded up with both Eternia and Abyss, Eternia was what I was going for since him and Alvin burn TP like I don't know what but ended up with Abyss unsealed first, then finished with Eternia later. My Milla has Crusader of Rebirth and with that everyone has at least one ultimate, and both Alvin and Gaius two~ My Leia has her Devil but only about 4550~ P-ATK and less A-ATK on it so still a while before that will be max power, the speed, defence, and casting time reduction from Graces is nice though~

I'm gonna grab both of Milla's since the one I don't have has a full set of elemental resists.  Which is kinda nice.

I think Leia only has 2800ish on her arm.  I stuffed her hard after hitting 8 affection.  Ugh...

[Grefter]

So ToX2 is an Ar Tonelico game?  Interesting.

[Fudozukushi]

I wish.

At least then I could enjoy it in a bad way.

[Reiska]

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (Android/iOS version)

Playing this primarily to document the (significant) differences for DL consumption.  Finished Ceodore's tale last night.

The astute may remember that Android/iOS devices also previously got a port of the original FF4, specifically one based on the DS version.  This port of TAY is probably better classified as a remake, as the game is running in the FF4DS engine and rendered in 3D.  Unlike FF4DS, though, the mechanical differences in this version up front are more subtle - I've noticed already that buffs like Protect, Shell, Haste, etc. work like their (good) FF4DS incarnations rather than their (poor) FF4 SNES incarnations.

The moon phase system is still around and unchanged.

Bands now work completely differently.  You no longer have to hunt and peck for them by experimenting with combos of different commands from the involved PCs (with no hints on how to unlock them); instead, the bands not unlocked by events now simply unlock when you fight X battles with the correct characters in the same party together.  If you continue to leave the characters in a party together, the bands will gain levels as well, making them more powerful.  Hooded Man and Ceodore's Cross Slash, for example, got a 5% attack power boost for each level it gained, and it was level 3 by the end of Ceodore's tale (maximum is 5).  They seem generally stronger as well; I fought Tunneler in the +Attack moon phase, so damage was higher than normal, but I don't remember Cross Slash hitting for 2000 damage under those conditions before.  (Hooded Man and Ceodore were both level 25 at the end of Ceodore's tale.)

I'm told some of the dungeon designs are different in other parts of the game (generally shortened), but I didn't particularly notice any cuts to the length of Ceodore's tale's dungeons.  The Mythril Grotto was the same as ever.  Devil's Road is still an annoying teleporter "maze" (it's actually a hallway, really) and no longer has damage floors (yay!).  Underground waterway looked identical to its FF4DS incarnation I believe.  Mist Cave also looked more or less the same as I remembered the Wii/PSP versions being, except that the room with the Mythril Gloves chest has a second chest added which contains an Adamantite.

The biggest change, then, is noticed when you complete the tale and save your clear data: there is no challenge dungeon.

Speaking of save data, this version of the game gives you 3 save slots *per character tale* - they are restricted, in the sense that you don't have 21 or however many total save slots.  You have 3 save slots for Ceodore, 3 save slots for Rydia, etc. etc.  You cannot save Ceodore data in a Rydia save slot, and so on.  You get 5 save slots for the final chapter.  Nice user-friendliness move on S-E's part to prevent dumb save-overs.

Beating Ceodore's tale unlocks all the other tales but Kain's, like in the PSP version.  I'll be starting Rydia's tale shortly after this post!

[Grefter]

I did not know that.

So FF4:TAY got a remake before FF7 did.  This is the reality we live in.  This is the reality we deserve.

[Dark Holy Elf]

You aren't being nearly negative enough here, Grefter; it's two remakes, really. (PSP had a number of graphical polish upgrades on Wii, plus not being episodic.)

At this point I have to wonder if some high-up SE exec has a bet about how many ports/remakes they can churn out without doing one for their most popular game ever. Expect an announcement for 3D FF1 any day now.

[Grefter]

You know, I wouldn't even complain about that (even though that is what I thought Heroes of Light was [an exceptionally shitty] supposed to be).  FF1 in say the Unreal 3 engine you could probably do for relatively cheap and launch on everyfuckingplatformever since that stuff will run on tablets now.

As much as I don't like FF1, a full blown graphical update isn't something they have done in the last decade (everything still uses DoS versions of sprites doesn't it?).  It could move units and you could release it super broadly. 

They also might actually fix some of the problems with the game.  Probably not, but hey, it is more salvageable than FF4 is.

[Reiska]

You aren't being nearly negative enough here, Grefter; it's two remakes, really. (PSP had a number of graphical polish upgrades on Wii, plus not being episodic.)

At this point I have to wonder if some high-up SE exec has a bet about how many ports/remakes they can churn out without doing one for their most popular game ever. Expect an announcement for 3D FF1 any day now.

FF1 for 3DS was actually announced yesterday.  No US dates yet, releases January 2015 in Japan, but people who buy the first print run of Final Fantasy Explorers get it for free a month early.

http://www.siliconera.com/2014/09/17/final-fantasy-1-coming-nintendo-3ds-eshop-3d-support/

[Grefter]

Well that is pretty much the most underwhelming 3D remake I could imagine.  Which is par for the course, but still that won't stop me from being disappointed at the lack of aggression and overwhelming application of their market dominance that Square are not using enough of.

[Tide]

LFT - Jesus it's been a while since I played a PSX game. Circle for confirm? WTF is this bullshit.

Also christ I am bad at this. Multiple resets on both Sand Ra-a-ats Cellar and Algus. I think part of that is being really rusty and the other part being that I'm playing around midnight and get tired.

Oh, FUCK! is the best name for Ramza btw.

This is the best idea. Learning FFT route so naming him this towards practice makes everything more amusing when I screw up. My favourite so far:

"Oh Fuck! She was Wiegraf's sister?"

[Meeplelard]

From what I understand, FF4TAY iOS was made pretty much the same way FF4TAY was:

Reuse a bunch of assets from the other games, add a few new original ones in, call it a new game.  In this case, they were running of FF4 iOS instead of FF4 proper.


Still silly that they feel the need to constantly churn out FF4 all the time when there's demand for like all the other FF games.  Considering the way Square-enix operates, there's definitely some level of obsession with FF4 over there.  Heck, even Chibirhythm displays that; Kain being a 3rd FF4er when most games only got 2 (FF7 was the only other 3 character one, and well, it's FF7, I'm willing to let any favoritism that game gets slide simply because it's freaking FF7.)


As far as FF1 3D goes...they took pretty much the path of insured success.  Copy and Paste game to another format, sell like 10k copies, break even.  FF1 is so cheap, even in it's later renditions, it makes sense.  Betting FF2 is soon to follow, because wherever FF1 goes, FF2 is petty much immediately after.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

there is no challenge dungeon.

That's incredibly disappointing.  Some of the Challenge Dungeons were actually kind of fun, unlike pretty much everything else.

[Fenrir]

I did not know that.

So FF4:TAY got a remake before Great Greed did.  This is the reality we live in.  This is the reality we deserve.

[Tonfa]

I did not know that.

So FF4:TAY got a remake before Great Greed did.  This is the reality we live in.  This is the reality we deserve.

[Fudozukushi]

I did not know that.

So FF4:TAY got a remake before Great Greed did.  This is the reality we live in.  This is the reality we deserve.

[Captain K.]

So FF4:TAY got made in the first place.  Not to mention FF4.  This is the reality nobody deserves.

[Cotigo]

I did not know that.

So FF4:TAY got a remake before Great Greed did.  This is the reality we live in.  This is the reality we deserve.

[NotMiki]

what am i fighting foooooooor.

[SnowFire]

League of Legends: After a long, 10 month grind, I have finally hit level 30.  WTF, Riot.

Duck Souls Remastered: Pretty fun.  And no nostalgia-tinted lenses here, I didn't play the old NES game nor watch the TV show.  Seems appropriate enough to mention what with the Scottish independence vote and everyone remembering how Scotland really only became enthusiastically British when it sent poor, talented Scotsducks all over the Empire to rule the world in the 1800s and collect gems by jumping around on the native's heads...  unless of course the native was a carnivorous plant.  Something like that, anyway.

Random thoughts:
* I went through the stages basically in order.  Amazon / Himalayas / Vesuvius were the only stages to wipe me; Africa, Transylvania, & Moon were EZ.  Of course, Amazon has the "only 3 hearts" issue + "learning what exactly I can and can't do" so.
* For bosses, Dracula / Incan statue / Yeti were all legit.  Magica, Evil Beagle, & Terra Firmie king were bad.   Moon rat was pathetic, perfected 1st try.
* The difficulty curve isn't quite to my preference.  Once you start racking up the heart containers, you basically won't die to damage to anything except "I don't know this boss's pattern yet", but there's still lots of insta-death lurking in the shadows, and you only have 3 lives per try at a stage.  Potentially makes things a bit random.  And...  checking Jo'ou's old post, Hard mode replaces life-restoration items with extra lives?!?!  FFFFF, there's already too many full-life restorers that don't matter, they'd only be better than 1-ups if continue checkpoints were very rare AND you're taking a ton of damage.  Extreme is basically the same game apparently except you don't get any continues, so yeah, rather than make the game harder, you simply have to be more perfect at beating its existing difficulty level.  Meh.
* Okay I haven't technically beaten the game yet, fine, whatever.  Why did they decide to stick the toughest, least forgiving platforming section at the end during a Super Metroid-esque escape sequence?  I'm sure once learned, it's doable, but it costs a life each time to learn the jumps you can and can't make, and then you get to do the whole damn stage & boss over again after you run out, because 3 lives max and I probably blew a random jump earlier so more like 1-2 lives to spend on the escape.
* Is it just me, or is this game's 'plot' the same as Castlevania Bloodlines?  Evil sorceress trying to resurrect Dracula, needing 5 parts (okay this is more C2/SOTN), only a McBelmont can stop her, etc.?  Although it's kinda weird that the NES version had you fight Dracula in Transylvania, and the remake has it be in Vesuvius?!  (Please do add a new stage, but can't it be called the Volcanic Transylvanian Underground or something?)
* How many games do you get to play a genuinely old person (duck) running around beating people on the head with a cane?!  Sure, there's the "she's a thousand years old but looks 16" trope Japan loves, but that's a little different.  Checking the Internet, it seems the voice actor for Scrooge McDuck was in his 90s when he recorded the well-done work for the game, so yay for some age diversity in protagonists.
* http://what-if.xkcd.com/111/ , for those that haven't read it yet.