What games are you playing 2014?

[Luther Lansfeld]

This was actually the most feminist game I've ever played.

??

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Uh in Lollipop Chainsaw an enemy uses gendered slurs as physical weapons.

[Fenrir]

This was actually the most feminist game I've ever played.

??

Two reasons:

- With no women around, a lot of men are shown as fucking worthless.
Like, the first day I downloaded the game, I went to the steam forum, and there already was a topic about "But but but what about men? Men are GREAT, they have invented EVERYTHING throughout history while women have invented nothing" from a guy obviously offended by the game.

- There is actually one girl in the game. (Called Buddy) Brad the main character takes care of her, protects her by keeping her sheltered against her will, and eventually tries to rescue her. (which is the whole game) But the damsel in distress trope is deconstructed, as the main character is shown doing way more harm than good, for a ton of reasons.
It goes pretty far; she says to him how she's the one who's hurt her the most out of everyone in the world, the entire PC team turns against him, there are parallels showing that he has become similar to his own abusive father, etc.

Like Mother 2/3 there are a lot of tonal shifts, so the game can get super serious super fast, even right after a super dumb tasteless joke.



Edit: Oh yeah "feminist" might not have been the right word, but you guess what I meant.

[Dark Holy Elf]

- With no women around, a lot of men are shown as fucking worthless.

I know you corrected yourself on this, but that's really not very feminist at all, yeah. It sends the message that men are only decent either due to trying to impress women, or perhaps due to being pacified/humanised by women? That's quite problematic.

In general a game trying to be "edgy" by not having female characters is pretty ridiculous, as this is hardly a thing which is rare. (And I don't praise games for doing the reverse, like Touhou or whatever, but at least that is kind of novel.)

[NotMiki]

In general a game trying to be "edgy" by not having female characters is pretty ridiculous, as this is hardly a thing which is rare.

A game that disregards women and a game where the absence of women is keenly felt are worlds apart.

[Fenrir]

Yeah, you're being really reductive there! LISA is not DmC.

First there's one good female character, so this is already a lot better than a lot of games.

Second this is a post-women world, not a world that has never had women. So whatever is attacked here is not necessarily the very nature of men (which would be, as you said, problematic) but the social constructs.



I'm not finding the story of the game perfect by any means (Tonal shifts still bother me, this is a problem in a lot of RPGs), I still find these elements I talked about pretty nice.
Anyway I'm replaying now and am trying to use the terrible first character you get for the whole game. He keeps getting skills every other level but he's still godawful.
I really don't know why this 8-10 hours game has 30 PCs but I'm liking the variety.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Feminism generally rejects the idea that the moral fabric of society would be unwoven without women (this idea leads to shame for women who don't uphold a moral standard of what a women "should" be). That plot point in spoilers definitely speaks to me more as a part of the general downer tone that the game is going for than anything specifically feminist.

Hyrule Warriors - Mostly getting tread upon by villains in the Adventure Mode maps I have left. Using Zant and Agitha is oh-so-painful. Just lazily piddling around until I leave for vacation in a couple of days, collecting Gold Skulltulas and trying to finish Adventure Mode. Did you really need three Imprisoned on one map, game? Fuck you.

Super Smash Bros. Wii U - Not too much to say, just collecting Trophies and looking at all of the cute and sweet things that I collect~ Also training more Amiibos to do my bidding. Yes, yes. *rubs hands together* This computer is already better at playing Zelda than me...

[Dark Holy Elf]

DmC has two women and isn't even the worst game in its series (let alone gaming/media at large) for either quantity or quality of female characters so I have no idea what you're trying to pull with that statement. If you want to go after NEB-friendly series on this front feel free to trot out Mega Man.

Anyway the world could be somewhat interesting (I have my doubts) but whatever it is isn't feminist, since ultimately it's just another work on the bandwagon philosophy rampant in too much of media that the only stories worth telling are about men. You say it's not played as problematically as I assumed it would be, and I'll take your word for it since I'm not going to play it to find out differently.

It still gets no credit for this design decision though.

[DjinnAndTonic]

It is kind of novel for being the only RPG I can think of that has only male PCs. I can't even think of a single one outside of solo RPGs.

Like seriously, for all that JRPG females aren't always great for feminism(Rosa!!), JRPGs do tend to portray the female cast as competent, even if they fall victim to a lot of other troublesome tropes. Especially compared to a lot of other game genres.

[Dhyerwolf]

It is kind of novel for being the only RPG I can think of that has only male PCs. I can't even think of a single one outside of solo RPGs.

Until FF 15 it seems like. Hey, at least whatever game you guys are talking about apparentally has a plot reason!

[Fenrir]

DmC has two women and isn't even the worst game in its series (let alone gaming/media at large) for either quantity or quality of female characters so I have no idea what you're trying to pull with that statement. If you want to go after NEB-friendly series on this front feel free to trot out Mega Man.

Anyway the world could be somewhat interesting (I have my doubts) but whatever it is isn't feminist, since ultimately it's just another work on the bandwagon philosophy rampant in too much of media that the only stories worth telling are about men. You say it's not played as problematically as I assumed it would be, and I'll take your word for it since I'm not going to play it to find out differently.

It still gets no credit for this design decision though.

I went for the game trying the hardest to be edgy, because this seemed like a particularly wrong choice of word for LISA.

It seems like you're just letting your kneejerk distaste reaction affect your judgement because this is all wrong.

This is similar to how using the Bechdel Test to judge a single film is a terrible idea, and can only be used to look at the industry as a whole.
You cannot judge the game purely because it has low women presence just because it's in an industry in which it has low women presence, just like you can't judge a single movie as being morally bankrupt for failing the Bechdel Test.

Feminism generally rejects the idea that the moral fabric of society would be unwoven without women (this idea leads to shame for women who don't uphold a moral standard of what a women "should" be).

I don't think that's true at all!

Feminism doesn't actually talk about doomsday no-women scenarios right?
It does talk about the masculine personality as a social construct (-> Ruthless competition, violence, dudes not being able to cry, etc) creating unbalanced individuals. Considering this, a game portraying society as totally reasonable / sensible / normal with women suddendly wiped out, would actually negate the feminist argument of gender as a social construct alltogether.

Think about a reverse apocalypse scenario where every man is wiped out and only women are left: a lot of women would be shown as helpless without men, because pre apocalypse society has made them less independant. Would that portrayal be misogynist? Precisely nope.

So I believe this is might actually be in tune you more than you think.

That plot point in spoilers definitely speaks to me more as a part of the general downer tone that the game is going for than anything specifically feminist.

I disagree because the terrible stuff happening is a direct consequence of the partiarchal behavior of the MC, instead of just "Gods Hate You" like in grimdark stuff like Drakengard. He saw the girl as a chance for redemption and not a person with a desire for independance and things go wrong because of this. The game even shows he could have done a right choice (by going to Rando) but refused earlier because he got selfish without realizing it.
Thinking about it, this is very similar to Braid's plot if you have played it, where the main character is a deluded guy thinking he has to Save The Girl, who as it turns out actually doesn't want this creep into her life at all but no one asked her. (Let's not talk about the dumb nuclear bomb here)


Anyway this is all too much serious talk for a silly game in which I have two fish-people in my team right now.

Point is, you went against me saying it might be the MOST FEMINIST OMG game i've played, but I haven't played any other game that explores feminist themes anyway. The most other games I've played do is try to have strong female characters (which is good, just not really going to impress me more)
Note: I haven't played Analogue and Hate +.

[Fenrir]

It is kind of novel for being the only RPG I can think of that has only male PCs. I can't even think of a single one outside of solo RPGs.

Like seriously, for all that JRPG females aren't always great for feminism(Rosa!!), JRPGs do tend to portray the female cast as competent, even if they fall victim to a lot of other troublesome tropes. Especially compared to a lot of other game genres.

FF1 and 3j!
Lord of the Rings games! (Duh)
Barkley Gaiden!
Drakkhen!!!

I think that's it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

It does talk about the masculine personality as a social construct (-> Ruthless competition, violence, dudes not being able to cry, etc) creating unbalanced individuals. Considering this, a game portraying society as totally reasonable / sensible / normal with women suddendly wiped out, would actually negate the feminist argument of gender as a social construct alltogether.

Think about a reverse apocalypse scenario where every man is wiped out and only women are left: a lot of women would be shown as helpless without men, because pre apocalypse society has made them less independant. Would that portrayal be misogynist? Precisely nope.

I completely disagree, I would find the latter story extremely misogynist! In a no-men society, women would obviously figure out how to deal with life without men. Maybe the more dependent personalities would find other women to depend on, but society as a whole would absoultely make do (setting aside any problems related to reproduction for a moment, which would obviously have far greater impact, dunno how LISA handles this). If a work of fiction decided to portray women as a whole (or even just a large portion of them) as somehow incompetent or unable to cope without men, that sends the rather horrifiying message that women being dependent on men is a natural, unchangeable state and that the "men and women are fundamentally different and therefore treating them differently is justified" camp is right.

So yeah I don't think the no-women version is much better.

[superaielman]

Space Run- Just started this. Buck is my spirit animal.

[Magetastica]

Haven't really had time for games due to working, but I have been playing some on my breaks and trips to/from work.

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire - Playing this on my trips to and from work. It's great! It's Gen 3 with more touches, and Gen 3 was my favourite to begin with, so it's probably the perfect pokemon game for me (so far). Just got my Kyogre and am about to challenge the 8th gym leader. Getting Kyogre went poorly, however, as I didn't know it now knows Ice Beam from the start! I had my Mega Sceptile ready to slowly wittle it down to 1hp so I could catch it normally, but it used Aqua Ring then Ice Beam for 4x damage and the ability to heal itself. Not worth it after that so I just used my Masterball.

Smash 4 - Playing this at work during breaks or when people challenge me. We have a little competition at work that if you can beat me or another guy who's equally skilled, you get a prize. Virtually nobody has managed this. But it did drum up enough people to get LOTS of repeat consumers! And some really good matches have come out of it! So lots of fun. I'm down to Marth and Mac as my mains, for sure, while I'm learning Ganon/Jiggly. Other characters I enjoy using are Lucina (see previous Vancouverite comments on her, though I'm trying to avoid her if possible for that very reason) and Robin, mainly, though I'll play most characters.

Also we have amiibo, and we've been training some of them. A coworker of mine has a Link named Lonk, and it trained alongside me, my coworker, and our amiibo. It has become a monster that took me 5 tries to beat once, and even then it was just barely. The worst part is that I taught it its air game, and the air game keeps me from being able to do anything to it in the air. I can only fight on the ground, because it destroys me with the very things I taught it.

Mario Kart 8 - Time trials for Twisted Mansion, Royal Raceway, and N64 Rainbow Road. One coworker decided to set down a time, and it ended up being really good (within 10s of world record) and this prompted me and another coworker to get back into the Time Trial Fever from when we did Mario Kart over the summer. I managed to get 2:01.x on Twisted Mansion (vs 1:55.x world record), 2:00.4 on Royal Raceway (vs 1:52.x world record) and less time was spent on Rainbow Road, but got 1:23.x (vs 1:17.x world record). I have spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to get under 2 minutes on TM and R. Raceway.

[Meeplelard]

It is kind of novel for being the only RPG I can think of that has only male PCs. I can't even think of a single one outside of solo RPGs.

Like seriously, for all that JRPG females aren't always great for feminism(Rosa!!), JRPGs do tend to portray the female cast as competent, even if they fall victim to a lot of other troublesome tropes. Especially compared to a lot of other game genres.

FF1 and 3j!
Lord of the Rings games! (Duh)
Barkley Gaiden!
Drakkhen!!!

I think that's it.

White Mage in FF1 is regarded as female.  Heck, I think Dawn of Souls even has the default names being pretty much all females.  You can choose to have a party of all males, but there's still a female playable.

Drakkhen, all characters can be either gendered.  I think they even changed some of the job names (instead of "Warrior" it's "Amazon")


That said, Dragon Ball Z RPGs if you want to count Lord of the Rings >_>

[Captain K.]

White Mage starts as female and evolves into male.  First transgendered RPG character!

[Grefter]

Also we have amiibo, and we've been training some of them. A coworker of mine has a Link named Lonk, and it trained alongside me, my coworker, and our amiibo. It has become a monster that took me 5 tries to beat once, and even then it was just barely. The worst part is that I taught it its air game, and the air game keeps me from being able to do anything to it in the air. I can only fight on the ground, because it destroys me with the very things I taught it.

What if you were good enough at a game you couldn't beat yourself??!??!

Dark Souls - Computer is built so this is restarted (just as an excuse essentially).  It is easier knowing stuff, but I still get my shit destroyed stupidly.  Died twice to Taurus Demon and wasted all my Resin (One on a bad run, one accidentally not changing back to Estus on the run up and a third by using it too early and it wearing out before even fighting him because I ran up the ladder and killed archers before he spawned.  That was dumb).  Killed him with 3 leaping attacks and a poke.

I nearly made the run to the gate in the Parish but got swarmed by an extra Hollow that made it under the gate before it closed.  Next run should be good!

I am actively trying to force myself to go down a Dex build instead of Strength, but I needed Str to equip stuff, so I am pretty much in a Quality build for now.  Hard to break old habits with how to do things.  Club was so appealing and good times. 

That said I got a Balder Side Sword while fucking around a bit in Parish, so definitely want to stick with the Dex build.

[Fenrir]

It does talk about the masculine personality as a social construct (-> Ruthless competition, violence, dudes not being able to cry, etc) creating unbalanced individuals. Considering this, a game portraying society as totally reasonable / sensible / normal with women suddendly wiped out, would actually negate the feminist argument of gender as a social construct alltogether.

Think about a reverse apocalypse scenario where every man is wiped out and only women are left: a lot of women would be shown as helpless without men, because pre apocalypse society has made them less independant. Would that portrayal be misogynist? Precisely nope.

I completely disagree, I would find the latter story extremely misogynist! In a no-men society, women would obviously figure out how to deal with life without men. Maybe the more dependent personalities would find other women to depend on, but society as a whole would absoultely make do (setting aside any problems related to reproduction for a moment, which would obviously have far greater impact, dunno how LISA handles this). If a work of fiction decided to portray women as a whole (or even just a large portion of them) as somehow incompetent or unable to cope without men, that sends the rather horrifiying message that women being dependent on men is a natural, unchangeable state and that the "men and women are fundamentally different and therefore treating them differently is justified" camp is right.

So yeah I don't think the no-women version is much better.

This is a strawman argument; as I haven't talked about "society as a whole" but about "a lot of women". You dumbed down my message and are talking about something else entirely.
I think I've already answered to your argument; I see your viewpoint as shallow minded and negating gender difference as a social construct, which is one of the bases of feminisms.

In the end we're both feminists arguing about whether a game I've played and you haven't is kosher, and I believe this is getting pretty silly.

In LISA basically men are hopeless because humanity has no future.

It is kind of novel for being the only RPG I can think of that has only male PCs. I can't even think of a single one outside of solo RPGs.

Like seriously, for all that JRPG females aren't always great for feminism(Rosa!!), JRPGs do tend to portray the female cast as competent, even if they fall victim to a lot of other troublesome tropes. Especially compared to a lot of other game genres.

FF1 and 3j!
Lord of the Rings games! (Duh)
Barkley Gaiden!
Drakkhen!!!

I think that's it.

White Mage in FF1 is regarded as female.  Heck, I think Dawn of Souls even has the default names being pretty much all females.  You can choose to have a party of all males, but there's still a female playable.

Drakkhen, all characters can be either gendered.  I think they even changed some of the job names (instead of "Warrior" it's "Amazon")


That said, Dragon Ball Z RPGs if you want to count Lord of the Rings >_>

I was thinking about the original NES FF1 there, which has an androginous White Mage which turns into a male looking White Wizard. (so it was male all along)

I guess it's arguable.

You're definitely right about Drakkhen though!

[Dark Holy Elf]

This is a strawman argument; as I haven't talked about "society as a whole" but about "a lot of women". You dumbed down my message and are talking about something else entirely.

You're really grasping at straws if you're complaining that I'm interpreting the highly ambiguous "a lot of women" differently from the way you intended. Maybe try clarifying what you mean instead of insinuating that I'm arguing in bad faith, which I can assure you I'm not. While I'm asking you to show some respect for your fellow posters, I'll also ask that you kindly don't dismiss my views as "shallow-minded". If this is really just a "silly" argument then that's all the more reason you shouldn't be resorting to insults.

[Sierra]

I am actively trying to force myself to go down a Dex build instead of Strength, but I needed Str to equip stuff, so I am pretty much in a Quality build for now.  Hard to break old habits with how to do things.  Club was so appealing and good times.

I usually cap STR at 16 if I'm not going for an actual strength build. At least, you can safely leave it pegged at that while you work up other stats because it's the requirement for the best middle shields (silver/black knight, former reliable in almost all circumstances and latter almost negates fire).

Abyss Odyssey: picked this up in Steam Halloween sale or something a while back, giving it a whirl now because I actually have a gamepad for the computer this time (it was basically unplayable when attempting on keyboard). Odd little thing, Chilean dungeon crawl/platformer localized by Atlus. Looks like a relatively short game--I played a couple hours (dying several times in the process) and got to what is purportedly the final boss (plotwise, but questionable in practice, trophy list suggests the existence of other bosses I haven't met)--but dying can set you back potentially to the beginning of the game. You retain EXP/levels/skills/money on death, but lose gear and dungeon progress. You can set respawn points further into the dungeon, but doing so is expensive. Decent weapons are also really expensive and random drops are unreliable, so it's kind of a gamble whether you want to twink out with items you might lose on death or buy insurance to try and scout things out first instead (the dungeon's semi-randomized, but you get a basic map that at least shows projected difficulty level of rooms so you can kinda plan a route). Kind of an odd collection of gameplay ideas that I sometimes dislike on paper and I'm not sure work exceptionally well together, but it's pretty and you get to play an art nouveau swordgirl who sounds like Major Kusanagi, so that makes it good enough a time killer for me. Hundred rapier poke!

[Meeplelard]

Well, speaking of games that are explicitly NOT Feminist!

Castlevania Lords of Shadows:  In the middle of Chapter 5.  Game definitely got better once you got to the end of Chapter 2, where it has the first REAL boss fight (aka one that isn't a Shadow of the Colossus Bullshit), and has handed you most of the new mechanics.  Game decided that giving you health refills are regular intervals mid-level is not a bad thing and using Light Magic to restore health is a lot easier now that they aren't throwing 3 Werewolves at you at once.  Still has some major issues, namely that camera has killed me on multiple occasions due to placing my character in a spot I literally cannot see him and I get blind-sided by an enemy who is also off camera.  For those who played DMC1, take that style of camera and compound the issues that much more.

As far as the feminist angle of this game goes...

Here's the cast of characters so far!

Gabriel Belmont: Middle Aged Browned Haired White Guy with a 5 o'clock shadow.  The only thing keeping him from being a generic Western Protagonist is he has long hair instead of a typical ball cut or whatever, and he does have an original design due to unique looking armor, which hey, that's something!

Gabriel's Wife Marie: Is Dead, randomly appears to remind Gabriel he's trying to bring her back.  Is still dead, is kind of the thrust of the story...did I mention she's dead?

Pan: Spirit of the Lake, is a goat man.

Zovek: Ugly Old Man Knight who is the badass partner of Gabriel.  Exists for narrative exposition and to show "yes, there are other badasses in this world, not just Gabriel!"

Cornell: LORD OF THE WEREWOLVES, wields a giant hammer.

Some Mute Girl Whose Name Eludes me: Appears at first and seems cool and hey, she's taunting a titan just so it's distracted from Gabriel whose stabbing the shiny weak points!  This might be a female character I can get behi- ...wait, no, she just got killed by Gabriel sleep walking.  Nevermind.

Abbot: Is a cowardly man living in a tower.


...that's about where I am so far.  Needless to say, this game hasn't exactly been pro-female.

On the non-feminist discussion side of things, I am for some reason slightly surprised Gabriel remains clearly a good guy.  One such example is that Abbot is in the tower, I expected Gabriel to go "Damn him for being a cowardly weakling!"  His actual statement is "damn him for not protecting his people!"  I know it's not a major difference but putting the focus on "protecting his people" just makes him sound less obsessed with strength and vengeance and more what you'd expect out of a guy who is a holy knight.  I guess I'm mostly surprised because the game still has very God of War vibes, and I keep thinking of Gabriel, especially with his battle grunts and such, that he's this "DEATH TO ALL MONSTERS AND ANYTHING THAT STANDS IN MY WAY!" but plot very much paints him as a Heroic Dude on a mission.

No, he's not a deep or well written character; this game's plot is very much just there to give an excuse for why you're doing stuff, but at least I can say I WANT Gabriel to succeed in his mission, because he's a good guy.  Can't stress how much that makes a story, even a generic one like this, more bearable when the game doesn't play the "character is deep because morally ambiguous!" card as an excuse to prove he's deep.  No, he's not morally ambiguous; he's clearly a good guy, and I'm fine with that.  Now if only he had something resembling a personality beyond "I'm the good paladin dude guy"

[Grefter]

Dark Souls - I went 16 Str because I got Black Knight Shield off the Burg guy.  One of the ones in Prison dropped the sword which was tempting to build towards, but no, Balder Side Sword is still a go.

Threw poop at Capra again.  Poked into the Depths and died to giant Rat (approached it from the other side this time.  Didn't know how to deal with him.)  Lost all my souls because I don't 1 shot Rats with a weak R1 and swung twice then got stuck in a corner between rats gang banging me.  There goes my 6k Capra souls.  Oh well, not earned anyway.  With Laurentius freed I wanted to go upgrade my flame and get Combustion to clear out that annoying Ooze hallway that is easy Titanite Shards.  BSS at +7 now.  Seriously thinking of heading back to Prison and getting the Rusted Iron Ring because moving in water is more annoying than I expected (had got it last time).  Also considering going and clearing out Moonlight Butterfly since I am at Andre of Astora's place now.  It is just there and I just killed the Titanite Demon, so it is easy runs.  Reinforced Club was +5, so I do have something to handle Stone Giant's with, but I don't think I will be 2 shotting them this time.

Also I am still bad at Gargoyles, took a few tries.  Swapped to Drake Sword.  Wasn't doing HEAPS more than the club, but it was enough to make a difference.  Had one good run where I got them both down in range of a heavy hit to kill them both (had to target swap mid way due to opportunity etc), but they got a good synchronisation of covering attacks so I couldn't capitalise before I screwed up and died.  Run after that got them and it was like clockwork though.  Zoned fire perfectly and cut off the tail (first time I have done it!) which made them more manageable just by sheer factor of reducing their move pool making them easier to predict.   Had a moment of thinking of levelling the Axe because it is funny and is technically a Dex weapon, but will wait and see.  Might make it Lightning.  It seems pretty neat.

[Excal]

So, a few games I've been playing.

First up, Crusader Kings.  Been tooling around with a few different tries, been finding I enjoy playing a Duke, haven't played a King position yet, but am debating between just cheating my way there, or working my way there legit.  However, my current goal is to start as a Count, work my way up to a Dukedom, and then see what happens. 

So, I started a game as the Duke of Krain, which is just east of Venice.  Seems nice enough, I have two counties, and I get to usurp the title of my Ducal lord whenever I want to.  Of course, getting a claim on his title, and actually making good on it are two completely different things.  I was considering trying to use nearby Croatia as a way to force grab a few more Counties to bulk up for my eventual backing up of my claim.  And as part of this, I was planning to keep one of my daughters from marrying until I could offer her to a Croatian Duke I was on good terms with.  Instead, she eloped with a freaking second son.  Who already had nephews. 

Welp...  so much for that.  As for what happened to that Duke I was friendly with?  He picked a fight with the King of Croatia.  And won.  So now he's king.  And since then he's been sweeping up everything so the whole country is in his pocket and there aren't any loose bits to nab.  Dang.  And, trying to claim vassalage under him for some extra muscle will be super risky since he somehow got a claim to the same Dukedom I want.  So...  yeah.  He coulda been family.

In other assorted bad news, turns out my starting duke was the second son of the Duke of Weimar.  So there was a whole branch of the family holding some pretty nice turf up in Germany.  Except, some time around 1100, they decided to rebel against the Emperor.  So, I picked up the whole extended family since I'm the only one who hasn't lost the family lands.  The one bright side is that that branch managed to get a wonderful military commander for the eventual war I'm going to fight.  And, I lucked into finding a nearby county where they had a daughter, and that's it, shortly after his wife died in childbirth.  So, his kid is now the heir to the County of Verona.  Sweet.

But, for now, it's still just a waiting game until a chance to grab a Ducal title comes up.


Pokemon OR - Feels a bit strange since my first go through was with Sapphire.  But it is nice to face mooks that don't like Rough Skin as a talent.  Just hit Mossdeep, and am steadily rolling along.  Gen 3 still my favourite Gen, and I am happy with my Skarmory and Slaking.

Persona Q - Given that the SMT games started with first person dungeons, it should be no surprise that Persona and Etrian mix very well.  The gameplay also deals with a lot of the issues I have with Etrian gameplay.  Namely, that there's a lot of abilities you have to work towards, without any real idea of how useful any of them are going to be.  And a general impression that everything is expensive but that you don't really get a lot for that expense.  Whereas here, you do still pay for using abilities, but you have the SMT weakness system going on.  Sadly, it's more like Devil Survivor in terms of benefits than P3/4, in that it's random if you knock them over or get a followup/all out attack.  But, hitting weaknesses does give you a boost, which means all moves are free and you go first next round.  Boost can be lost if you're hit though, so going first isn't always an advantage.  As well, everyone has the wildcard now.  What this really means is, everyone has a fixed primary persona, and everyone can also equip a subpersona which is effectively a watered down wildcard from before.  You can also only switch them outside of battle.  They give access to skills as well as an HP/MP buffer at the start of each fight.  Of course, I'm hoping that the main personas evolve over the course of the game, because Orpheus is crap.  It also means that Junpei suffers, because before he had a lot of overlap with Minato (fire/slash) but that was okay because Minato quickly moved away from that to being a wildcard.  Now?  He's stuck as Fire/Slash as well, and he's still forced into the party.   They do have Junpei as physical and Minato as magical, but it doesn't seem like enough.  Especially since Koromaru also jumps on that fire train.

Aside from all that, this game is very clearly written by the Persona team, which is good because it resolves the other major issue I've had with the Etrian games, and 7th Dragon as well.  Namely, all generics, all the time.  You can run into other characters in those games, but none of your characters have any sort of personality.  Here?  The writers seem to love Junpei being an idiot as much as I do, I've gotten a dungeon break where Akihito does missionary work for protein powder, and at one point I had to shrink part of my party to super chibi size, and Koromaru's predatory instincts kick in and he hunts those party members.  And It. Is. Adorable.  Seriously, whoever was in charge of animating Koromaru had way too much fun.


Xenoblade - Been having some fun tooling around in this.  Gameplay doesn't seem super great, but it's serviceable enough for me at the moment.  Just hit the end of the prologue.  Somethings weren't surprises (wait, Shulk get the Monado?), somethings totally were (though, the gameplay end of things dropped more than enough hints I didn't pick up on), and all in all it did a good job of setting up why Shulk is travelling and why I should care about his quest.  And while he reasons are super selfish and personal, I can also dig that they also align with a pretty reasonable and laudable goal as well.  Just, because he just went through some rough shit, and he's at the start of his journey it makes sense that he's picking the selfish reasons.  So, yeah.  Guess it's fair to say I'm enjoying this a lot more than I was expecting to.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I finished DA3 today.  I guess I would just say that much of the game is like if Skyrim had characters with discernible personalities and they had enjoyable conversations which revealed details about them as you explored shit to murder a shitload of things and steal everything that you're allowed to click on.  The areas are usually quite large and well-designed.  They manage to, for the most part, avoid the problem of "how the fuck do I get there? These cliffs are one degree too steep for me to walk up, apparently" by laying out paths to follow.  Sometimes they're roads, sometimes they're more like goat paths, but most of the time if you can't figure out how to get to a destination, searching for a path and then following it will take you SOMEWHERE of note.

Other things that set it apart from an open world "run around and do shit" RPG like Skyrim is the combat is party-based and ability-based.  Thanks to the big changes to healing (namely that you can only do it with a finite amount of potions) most of your healing relies on mitigation.  Warriors have abilities that build armor, with the sword and shield tanks being able to gain a lot and 2h warriors only having a little.  Mages can cast a barrier spell that gradually runs down as time goes on.  Rogues rely almost entirely on not being wherever the enemy is attacking, either because they are invisible or they are shooting around on a grappling hook like Batman (as opposed to Warriors, who pull enemies to THEM like Scorpion).  What this means is that your dream team of four rogues is probably not a very good idea.  So your options for a party are basically:

1.  Play as the tank.  I used Blackwall as mine because he has a rockin beard.  If you are playing as whoever your tank is, you can manage mitigation and positioning to make sure that, for the most part, you stay alive and your other party members don't get hit.  This means you can fill out the rest of your party however you want.

2.  Use the standard party composition: a warrior, a mage, a rogue and a wildcard spot.  This has the added bonus of letting you deal with all of the class-specific interactables.

3.  Just use ranged classes and have all of you run in a circle constantly around an enemy trying not to get hit.  Requires way more micromanagement than I'm willing to do but I know a dude who had two four archer rogues kiting an enemy and whenever he got too close to one they would vanish.  If you fuck this up you usually die.

My go-to party was Blackwall the Grey Warden, Dorian the Telvanni Mage with a fucking awesome mustache and Varric because he was the only good thing in DA2.  Used Vivienne because I like her character, but her specialization class is basically Magic Knight, which is fucking OP as hell but involves the AI running to point blank to swing a lightsaber at shit.  She died a lot and I got tired of it.

Character work is generally very good.  I was very disappointed I couldn't get the racist elf mage to leave after he did a "YOU PEOPLE" speech about Qunari and I punched him in his dumb face with my enormous fist, but the ending explained why he was willing to put up with me actively shitting all over him at every opportunity, I guess.  Still, he can fuck himself.  Also Sera's pretty annoying, but I guess she's supposed to be like 16 and, unlike Solas, if you tell her "you fucking bother me, get out of my castle" she will leave and you won't have to put up with her, so I'm giving that the Fallout Exemption here.  Really enjoyed how Cassandra and Leiliana react to your conduct with them and how that can change their endings; also was an interesting counterpoint to Vivienne getting that particular ending instead and how she's basically immutable.  While she likes you, she's far less receptive to your suggestions than either of them.  Dorian and Iron Bull were both an interesting opportunity to learn more about societies we haven't gotten to know much about except from outsiders, so that was fun.  And of course we got to hear about Varric's new books and he's fucking awesome.

The major chunks of the story are wrapped up with large set pieces that are generally more like Dragon Age 1, with some fairly involved dungeoneering.  One exception to this that I really enjoyed was the Imperial Ball in Orlais you get to go to, where you have to manipulate public opinion (and in my case, make people realize that they are wrong for underestimating a Qunari) and win people over to have more time to ransack a fairly small but incredibly treasure-dense dungeon at the end.  It was an interesting change of pace.  Also your party interactions there were fun.

Overall, the major callbacks from the first two games work, but I think BioWare has established they mostly know how to handle those based on ME2 and 3.  One place where it kind of falls flat is, if you got the ending I did in DA1 where Alistair is King and Loghain is dead, you can really see the seam where a decision was supposed to be more important but for the character in it.  I realized eventually that he WAS in a previous game, but his part was so minor that I had forgotten about it.  Would have made a lot more sense to rope in one of the many Grey Wardens from Awakening instead.

Overall, great game.  I hear it looks kind of shitty on 360, and considering the minimum requirements for the PC version I would believe it, but that's not my problem.