What games are you playing 2014?

[Fenrir]

Banner Saga: Chapter 3, I think I'm going to stop.

The game is cool and all, but I think this is one of the most intolerable battle systems in the long run. I'm playing on Hard and still doing pretty well, but I can't stand these battles anymore. They're a clusterfuck and I feel I have to completely exploit the battle system's flaws. Nothing makes sense.
I believe they had one enemy turn always follow one ally turn (and vice versa) to solve the pacing issue of pretty much the entire SRPG genre, but this made the battle system worthless at the same time. Not a good tradeoff.

I guess I could lower difficulty to easy then just play through normally, but 1) I don't even know what "normally" would be with this battle system 2) The game wouldn't have much of a point anymore 3) That's just not how I roll really.


LISA:

Third time through because I need to. I'm also trying to get the 1ARM chievos thing and play with a Rage/Queen/Sonny team, going for efficiency, not doing any kind of sidequesty thing.

Selling cigs and finding secret stashes surprisingly gives enough money to buy the two dudes in the bar right away (not items though)
Joy also works really well to give you an advantage during boss battles in "speedruns". I actually do believe it is wasted on Brad; you should just give it instead to people with strong inaccurate attacks, like Queen or Fardy, because it gives the usual damage boost while also making these attacks hit 100% of the time. Of course, you're an asshole if you give Joy to a non-addict like Fardy, but w/e, 3000 damage truck at the beginning of the game.

If you give Terry away during the first choice of the game, you get to fight him later on. He can do some damage (OHKO to my weak ass team actually) or cry deeply. Also his PC form stays super weak the whole game but gets an uber attack at level 25. And he has one very sad speech at the end of the game if you've used him. The Hint Lord is surprisingly fleshed out, for being the first PC you usually ditch.

I don't really understand what's going on then, but I really like all the guys who spend one turn being astounded by my stupidity in battle.

[SnowFire]

Fenrir: I played through on Normal, but Banner Saga combat strategy is all about abusing the seemingly "equal" turnsplit.  I'm not sure I'd like to see it more, but there IS strategy to them, and I'm not sure I'd call it the systems 'flaws'.  Basically you want as many enemy units to waste turns on movement with no attack as possible, so concentrate your force on a small sliver of the enemy and try not to let them form up.  When enemy units DO get turns, you want them to be worthless, so shanking enemies down to low health but leaving them alive does wonders for screwing up enemy turn efficiency.  Abilities that force enemies to waste a turn while also doing damage are also gold, especially if done on enemies who are dangerous - Oddleif & the like.

I thought it was interestingly different, at least.  Try it on Normal?  Maybe the upped stats are just too hardc0re for a first-time runthrough.  I'm not sure the extent of the Hard changes, but it's definitely one of the systems where just a small increase in enemy stats / numbers can be totally punishing, and a small decrease lets you just #YOLO smash through everything.

[Meeplelard]

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire - OH MY GOD I'M SPENDING ALL MY TIME RAISING EVS

That aside, the usual gen 6 Pokémon goodness applies. Getting Giga Drain at L21 for Treecko rules all.

Oh please! Don't act like you're not upset you can't play Dress Up with May and not have her wearing a sunbonnet like you could with Serena! 


Lords of Shadow: Completed on Knight, which seems to be 2nd highest difficulty, and highest on default.   No, I will not do Paladin, as I think I had enough of this game.  My general stance has remain unchanged; all the core ideas and fundamentals are there, but the game is extremely rough around the edges and that really hurts it.  You'd think the 2nd game would be fantastic as a result since they'd take the first game and just fine-tune the edges, but no, sounds like they managed to screw it up way more than before.

So other things to comment on?

Well, for starters, QTEs weren't as bad as I expecting.  Forgiving and you can press any button to activate them (well, at least any of the main 4), so it's just a case of paying attention to the screen.  Still usual complaints about QTEs being bad to implement in general because you're busy watching a cool looking cinematic cutscene with the enemy then suddenly a circle appears on the screen and you don't press it fast enough and SPLAT, instant death, fight boss over!  To be fair, most bosses have mid-fight checkpoints, so failing the QTEs just means redo half the fight, not the entire thing, but still poor design.

The plot is pretty straight forward...until the very last chapter.  For the first 11 chapters, it's very simple.  Gabriel's wife is dead, so he went on a quest to find a way to get her back.  He learns killing the 3 Lords of Shadow and restoring balance of Light and Darkness is the way to do so.  So Save the World, he gets his wife back, simple enough!  He goes to do exactly that, and the rest of the game is mostly him going from point to point until he reaches one of them, kills the boss, rinse and repeat.

Then the final chapter kicks in and well...see, when you turn on the game, you get a big "Kojima Productions" symbol that appears, and you really don't see how it enters into this.   The final chapter answers that as the main villain who is actually Zobek, the guy who has been your ally and the game's narrator this entire time goes on a big 10 minute rant about his MASTER PLAN and how everything is going, well, like this.  Oh yeah, we also learn that Gabriel killed his wife when being controlled, and just when everything seems like it can't get worse, Satan pops up and goes "yo, I was behind everything, thank you for doing all the hard work for me.  You literally were my pawn this entire time and thought you doing things for your own good.  NOW I CAN KILL GOD!!!!"  That of course takes another rant.  So...yeah, Kojima sort of forgot he wasn't writing Metal Gear and started writing...Metal Gear.

Characters...well as I said, Gabriel is at least a guy you can root for because he's a good guy who wants what's good in the world and just wants to resurrect his wife, and the things he kills are either demons, undead, lycanthropes (who I should note the game makes very clear exist to just kill everything around them, so they're clearly bad guys), witches who have sold their soul to hell, etc.  Basically, the usual stuff you fight in Castlevania Games.  Oh, they won't resemble the traditional Castlevania enemies, but you know what I mean; things you have no moral objection to killing because they are clearly inherently bad! 
...funny how the game's Narrative tries to tell you otherwise.   No, I don't mean it tries to claim these evil bad guys are possibly good, I mean it claims Gabriel is "Losing his humanity, getting bloodthirsty, driven by madness and rage!"  yet every single cutscene he's clearly calm, collected, and not acting that way at all.  He doesn't just rush into the boss and go all "DIE MONSTER! YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD!" and the Boss is all " I'm not the monster, YOU ARE!  I'M JUST DEFENDING MYSELF!"  and Gabriel is all "YOU RUINED THE CLASSIC SCENE AND THUS MY MOMENT! DIE!"  More like after fighting off every enemy that has stood in his way...should note that every one of these enemies has killed unfathomable amounts of innocent lives, and usually throws the first punch, he reaches the Lord of Shadow, and the Lord is all "Darkness is great, JOIN ME GABRIEL AND WE CAN HAVE SUPREME POWER TOGETHER! YOU AND I ARE THE SAME!" and he just kind of goes "you're a bad guy, no."

Look game, you can't play the "morally ambiguous hero!" card when the good guys and bad guys are very clearly spelled out as black and white in this game.  Gabriel is a good guy through and through.  He kills demons who kill innocents, he's on a quest to save the world and his wife, and gaining the super powers he has is just kind of a side effect of his journey that helps him out.  He kills two innocent people but neither were under his own free will, so it doesn't count.  In fact, despite that, Gabriel is still all "I wish to repent for my actions" so he's nobly taking the blame for something that he has a legitimate excuse out for.

On the other hand, the game spells out that the Lords of Shadow are CLEARLY BAD GUYS.  They are the evil dark halves of the 3 sacred heroes who ascended to the heavens and thus their bodies were left behind, corrupted by the darkness that left because there's two sides to every coin, yada yada yada.  Point is, their good sides all went to heaven, their evil sides stayed behind and basically built up army of evil things, split into Lycanthropes, Vampires, and Spirits (They call them "Dead" but Vampires are undead so that distinction doesn't really work here.)  IOWs, anything that falls into one of those three categories is clearly explicitly evil.  The game never once tries to show that there are noble werewolves, or that there are good vampires.  The closest is Laura, and she's less "good guy" and more "showed a sign of a conscience that let Gabriel go due to appealing to her emotionally."  They make it very clear though that Laura had more than her fair share of innocent blood on her hands...that she took by her own free will...and enjoyed.

So really, the whole angle of "Gabriel is slowly transforming into that which he wishes to kill" or whatever point they're making DOES NOT WORK.  The narrative and cutscenes do not match up at all.   Basically, the best way to describe it would be if something like this happened:

Narrative: "And So Gabriel continues onward, slaughtering all those who stand before him innocent or guilty.  His hands are stained in the blood but he cannot feel for those he killed.  Even civilians are a sacrifice for his greater cause!"
Cutscene: Shows Gabriel defending orphans from a firebreathing demon that just torched their orphanage.

No, really, that's the kind of disconnect we get!

Also, again, Gabriel is not really "well written"; he's a generic good guy paladin dude...that the game tries to pretend is losing himself...yeah, I'm not going to rant about that last part again.  Just know he's basically the same guy from start to finish...this does not include the completely out of nowhere epilogue that exists purely for sequel baiting and really has no basis in the main game.  I guess that's why Mirror of Fate exists, to make sense of the interim, but doubt I'll play that...and I really doubt I'll play LoS2 because by all accounts it's awful.

The real question is...how does this game tie-in with Castlevania?  Yes, it's a reboot so not continuity wise, but what makes it "Castlevania"?  Well...the same things that made DmC a Devil May Cry...kind of.  It has a lot of allusions to original franchise, but tries to do it's own thing.  Clear elements it took from the original series:

-Bemont whose primary weapon is a whip (Duh?)
-said whip is nicknamed "Vampire Killer"
-Leader of the Lycans is Cornell (IIRC, there was a werewolf of this name in the other games)
-Leader of the Vampires is Carmilla (yes, I know the origin of the name, but it's still a character who appeared in several Castlevanias)
-Death being one of the last bosses
-Holy Water and Daggers being sub weapons
-Enemies are Castlevania Themed for the most part, in that you fight Vampires, Zombies, Lycans, Trolls, Bats, etc. 
-There is a stage involving jumping on gears and machinery to progress.  THis is totally the stand-in for the Clock-tower stage...except there are no Medusa Heads...I WILL NOT COMPLAIN AT THAT IN THE SLIGHTEST!
-The Song "Vampire Killer" plays in the Music Box.  I admit I did not see this coming, but hey, nice to hear! Sadly also reminds me of how all the music in older Castlevania Games is better than his Epic Orchestrated crap.  I WANT MY BLOODY TEARS DAMN IT

So...yeah, I guess they tried making it sort of Castlevania like rather than just slapping the name on it.

As far as how good the game is...it definitely will appeal to God of War fans a lot more than DMC fans.  I do think the core combat is way better than God of War because the game doesn't feel like a mindless button masher but actually makes you care about dodging attacks and learning timing and techniques, but the similarities to God of War are more prominent than Devil May Cry.  No wonder there a bunch of people who call this game "amazing" <_<

Overall?  5/10.  Shame because it has so much potential but it's a prime example of how poor polish can completely ruin an experience.

[Dhyerwolf]

Persona Q

So, out of curiosity based on this, I started looking up some random information on Persona Q, and I found this.

"Hashino stated that 2014 being the 25th anniversary of the Persona series was the inspiration for branching into new territory, namely similar elements of the Etrian Odyssey series."

WTF. Persona was released in 1996. Either they really can't count, or there are games that pre-date Persona? I wonder if they just mean SMT (just even that just goes back to...92? it looks like).

[Fenrir]

The first Megami Tensei was released in 87 so who knows what's happening.


Snowfire: I did realize that was the way to win; I tried to: pick few allies per battle (3), wait until the front enemies move, attack them until they reach 1-2 health and move on to the next one. It's not elegant to me. (And it doesn't make any sense whatsoever either, but I'm willing to sacrify verisimilitude)

Success or failure depends largely on whether enemies can get their shit together and not block themselves on their way to attack you, and on which skills they'll use. This randomness would be acceptable in another game, but in this every attack counts because you can't heal anything and finish nearly every battle on the brink of death.

This is all pretty bad compared to say, a good old Fire Emblem.
Hoshigami is another SRPG that does require strategy but isn't interesting to me.

[SnowFire]

Well deploying only 3 allies sounds wrong.  You don't get THAT much from levels so it's not like you get hugely better turn efficiency from only deploying your good troops, and you want more meatshields to take a hit for when you can't stop a relevant enemy unit from doing something.  I *guess* a small deploy allows theoretically better hit & run archer tactics, but the maps are usually claustrophobic enough I'd question this strat, and even if you do want to do it, well, just get 3 dudes killed first and have 'em be a distraction on their way down.  The only way I see this being worth it is if you have a very archer-centric strategy and don't want powerful enemies double-turning your archers to get in on 'em.  (And hell, I ran an extremely archer centric strat myself, but did fine with basically 4 archers + mage + giant as my final party.)

Anyway, give it a shot on Normal is my suggestion, but the battle system isn't for everyone, I suppose.

[DjinnAndTonic]

LISA:

Third time through because I need to. I'm also trying to get the 1ARM chievos thing and play with a Rage/Queen/Sonny team, going for efficiency, not doing any kind of sidequesty thing.

Selling cigs and finding secret stashes surprisingly gives enough money to buy the two dudes in the bar right away (not items though)
Joy also works really well to give you an advantage during boss battles in "speedruns". I actually do believe it is wasted on Brad; you should just give it instead to people with strong inaccurate attacks, like Queen or Fardy, because it gives the usual damage boost while also making these attacks hit 100% of the time. Of course, you're an asshole if you give Joy to a non-addict like Fardy, but w/e, 3000 damage truck at the beginning of the game.

If you give Terry away during the first choice of the game, you get to fight him later on. He can do some damage (OHKO to my weak ass team actually) or cry deeply. Also his PC form stays super weak the whole game but gets an uber attack at level 25. And he has one very sad speech at the end of the game if you've used him. The Hint Lord is surprisingly fleshed out, for being the first PC you usually ditch.

I don't really understand what's going on then, but I really like all the guys who spend one turn being astounded by my stupidity in battle.

Huh, never tried giving Joy to any non-Brad PCs. Just seemed like a waste of a limited resource and since we were already forced to use one addict who would potentially be useless in key battles due to the withdrawal status...

Also, there's almost no documentation for this game... who are Queen and Sonny?

[Cmdr_King]

Dragon Quest III- fin.  Wish the game listed playtime, I feel like I was "half way" about 10 hours in then the game lasted another 25 but maybe something is off in my perception there.  I think I like DQIV more but I can see where III would have its fans definitely.  Did a basic Warrior/Mage/Cleric party, made both spell casters Sages by the end.

Um .  5/10 I think.

[Fenrir]

Well deploying only 3 allies sounds wrong.  You don't get THAT much from levels so it's not like you get hugely better turn efficiency from only deploying your good troops, and you want more meatshields to take a hit for when you can't stop a relevant enemy unit from doing something.  I *guess* a small deploy allows theoretically better hit & run archer tactics, but the maps are usually claustrophobic enough I'd question this strat, and even if you do want to do it, well, just get 3 dudes killed first and have 'em be a distraction on their way down.  The only way I see this being worth it is if you have a very archer-centric strategy and don't want powerful enemies double-turning your archers to get in on 'em.  (And hell, I ran an extremely archer centric strat myself, but did fine with basically 4 archers + mage + giant as my final party.)

Anyway, give it a shot on Normal is my suggestion, but the battle system isn't for everyone, I suppose.

Having three PCs is a risky tactic but worked much better for me than a full team (I got destroyed whenever I used a full team) Whenever I used someone like Ludin I was just waiting for him to die so the other PCs could get more urns.
1) Allies get in the way of each other all the time, so you kinda have to divide your troops anyway or be inefficient if you use a full team.
2) You don't have to divide your very limited resources.
3) You never get attacked by full HP enemies unless they play smart (they don't) or there are way too many of them.
So this is almost like having three Orlandus in FFT (w/ Auto Haste) instead of 6 regular PCs, which is a fine tradeoff.

Huh, never tried giving Joy to any non-Brad PCs. Just seemed like a waste of a limited resource and since we were already forced to use one addict who would potentially be useless in key battles due to the withdrawal status...

Also, there's almost no documentation for this game... who are Queen and Sonny?

Queen runs the brothel, and Sonny is the wrestler with a wolf on his head who joins if you beat the whole league.
If you give some Joy to Queen you really don't care that Brad is doing less damage. I beat Satan/Mike in like 4 turns. Queen gets a 2000/3000 damage x6 (under joy) brutal beatdown attack at level 25, everybody else turns into item boys to make Queen's life easier at this point.

Also, some other PCs are also addicts, which is why I first tried giving Joy to other people. This includes Queen, + Dick (pink ranger) + Buckets (Dual pistol guy who joins if you finish the russian roulette thing), Carp (Fish Head), Clint (500 mags pretty boy), Tiger Man. I think that's it.

BTW, did you find the hidden fish village? And the garbage island? These two I completely missed on my first playthrough.

Dragon Quest III- fin.  Wish the game listed playtime, I feel like I was "half way" about 10 hours in then the game lasted another 25 but maybe something is off in my perception there.  I think I like DQIV more but I can see where III would have its fans definitely.  Did a basic Warrior/Mage/Cleric party, made both spell casters Sages by the end.

Um .  5/10 I think.

I like DQ3 but I found a big part of the appear was having one useless goof off wasting his turns in battle

[Grefter]

So, out of curiosity based on this, I started looking up some random information on Persona Q, and I found this.

"Hashino stated that 2014 being the 25th anniversary of the Persona series was the inspiration for branching into new territory, namely similar elements of the Etrian Odyssey series."

WTF. Persona was released in 1996. Either they really can't count, or there are games that pre-date Persona? I wonder if they just mean SMT (just even that just goes back to...92? it looks like).

I guess they are taking it from when development started?  That would be weird but make some sense on a personal level for the company I guess.

Oh please! Don't act like you're not upset you can't play Dress Up with May and not have her wearing a sunbonnet like you could with Serena!

This is legit the most disappointing part of the game.

Dragon Age: Origins - rolled a City Elf thief when I found out you could just make your own story on the Tapestry of Inquisition, but really wanted to replay Origins.  Going for missed achievements, so sexy time with Alistair was achieved.  Done the mages tower, Shale DLC, killed Flemeth for Morrigwn and the Return to Ostagar DLC.  Headed to Soldiers Peak next.

Dark Souls - got up to Anor Londo.  The archers were easier this time than my first run through, I don't really know what I was doing different, but meh whatever.  Cleared out chests and stuff up to Seigmeyer. Not looking forward to O&S since I don't have much humanity to burn (gave a ton to the Fair Lady).

[Fenrir]

Internet search shows that this is actually the 25th anniversary of Atlus.
It's actually the 20th anniversary of Persona if you consider that Shin Megami Tensei If... is Persona 0

[Fenrir]

Shadowrun Dragonfall Director's Cut got a massive price cut on Steam right now, you should get it.

[Fenrir]

Triple poooost

South Park Stick of Truth: Fun so far, reminds me of Costume Quest. Obsidian is cool.

Are these the worst controls in a recent game, with a keyboard?

WASD To move. Hold shift to run. Space to interact. Mouse clicks to do shit in battle and take items. No key remapping. Let's see:
Right hand is on the mouse, left hand on the keyboard.
Thumb on the space bar, pinkie on the shift button, middle fingers on WASD. My left hand is in a horrible claw like position and playing for 10 minutes hurts my carpals. Pinkie and Thumb also really dont feel comfortable at all.
I'm thinking about stopping and waiting until I get a proper controller.

[Sierra]

FFX: So I'm running through the ruins of Zanarkand and there's cool music and some dramatic echoes of days gone past and I know one of the neatest boss fights in the game is coming up so I'm starting to be all oh right maybe this here is the best part of the game, but then SCREEEECH hold up son, we've got to put that story on hold for some TETRIS BLOCK FLOOR PUZZLES. Gawd. Way to murder the tension, Square. Anyway I stopped for the night after getting wasted by Yunalesca. I was feeling all smug after cruising through the first two forms because you better believe I stocked up on holy waters this time, no struggling to keep people alive in zombie form like I had to do when first playing the game! Then Megadeath wiped out the whole party. Wurp, forgot about that move. Pretty much all of my deaths have been that caliber of stupidity:

#1: Magic urns know exactly how to deal with thieves.
#2: Yojimbo's normal attacks are totally feeble so his overdrive can't be too brutal, can it?
#3: I'm sure this super move the game tells me Seymour Flux is about to use totally won't be able to massacre the party at full HP, because that didn't happen just a few minutes ago right?
#4: Must live as a zombie!

Other stuff: Rikku mugging dudes with status weapons is a vastly more effective random-smashing tactic than I would've expected. Also, do Focus/Aim/etcetera stack with multiple uses?

[jsh357]

Triple poooost

South Park Stick of Truth: Fun so far, reminds me of Costume Quest. Obsidian is cool.

Are these the worst controls in a recent game, with a keyboard?

WASD To move. Hold shift to run. Space to interact. Mouse clicks to do shit in battle and take items. No key remapping. Let's see:
Right hand is on the mouse, left hand on the keyboard.
Thumb on the space bar, pinkie on the shift button, middle fingers on WASD. My left hand is in a horrible claw like position and playing for 10 minutes hurts my carpals. Pinkie and Thumb also really dont feel comfortable at all.
I'm thinking about stopping and waiting until I get a proper controller.

It controlled well for me with a PS3 controller, though the on-screen inputs being all for X360 was a pain.  Farts are also a little tricky since they involve two different sticks being used in two directions, but I never used farts anyway.

[Excal]

Focus/Aim and the rest can stack up to five times.

[AAA]

Shadowrun Dragonfall Director's Cut got a massive price cut on Steam right now, you should get it.

[Grefter]

Dark Souls - Invaded Lautrec a few times, was meh on the fight.  Went back and got Black Bow of Pharis, cheesed it.

Walked in to Ornstein and Smough for my first pull on this run after only having poked my head in twice before on my Strength run that halted here because of work/life/Steam migration.  Got Ornstein down.  Very :O Then pillar hump harder than WoW Arena against Smough.  Got him down to less than 2 big chunks of health bar left.  Out of Pyro (Great Chaos Fireball used most casts on Ornstein), Great Combustion got in a lot of work.  Fuck up because I figure, hey lets see how much damage Bow does plinking over pillars.  Turns out it is pretty good!  Not amazing damage, but amazingly safe and nearly free.   Then I get a ton of Shovel Spam in a row and need to move to another pillar.  Instinctively go to claw at that Block button.  First person view. 

Fuck.

Nearly one shot O&S.  You Died.

Edit - Played some Dragon Age: Origins for a bit, had some dinner and then went back.  Got them this time.  All about learning the openings in Smough's hammer swings really and exploiting them more, but probably could have plinked him down with arrows if I really wanted.  Black Bow of Pharis +9 with standard arrows and 30 dex doing 100+ damage did the last bit of work for me after Great Combustion and Great Chaos Fireball charges emptied out.  Could have gone for Balder Side Sword thrusts, but had also got better at managing his movement around pillar and wasn't prepared to risk the slower attack than Combustion.  Sometimes he follows up the over head slam or the 2 swing combo with butt stomp which timing on Combustion to dodge was tight as shit.

Not really sure on a good way to go for Smough dead first though, just ignore Ornstein at first and try to rush down Smough?

Also not sure where I want to head next.  Catacombs maybe for Right of Kindling?  Tomb of Giants doesn't give me much in the way of progression, but then neither does Izalith or Forest.  I could go for a dive down into New Londo Ruins for the Ember I guess.

For now I think I will craft up that Quelag's Fury Sword I have been waiting for a Curved Sword to make and then go back to Dragon Age.

Edit 2 - Fashion Souls for El Cid I guess.  Not my usual kit, but I wanted something different to look at while running through Anor Londo killing stuff for souls for Quelag's Fury Sword (which is +5 now because there is so much fucking Demon Titanite in this game if you kill Titanite Demons when you see them).

[Magic Fanatic]

Honestly, a weapon with Capture + Deathstrike is a godsend if you plan on doing anything with that side quest.

[The Duck]

And jesus christ don't go anywhere near the DLC zones until you've comfortably stomped the maingame. They're so much meaner.

Well, I just beat the maingame! It took just three days of play which probably wasn't the best idea, but there weren't the big annoying roadblocks for me in this game that there were in DS1.

I don't have much to add about this game. It is streamlined, which I guess some DS players really hate? I really liked the changes but I get the feeling that some people found it disappointing. I kind of feel the opposite, like this is a fairly perfect product. As I mentioned before, the game is gorgeous and runs very smoothly, and options like dualwielding are really good additions to me which encourage something other than my standard shield setup. Fisting did work well for me other than some people at the end with some exceptions. I barely touched magic at all this playthrough so I'm not sure whether to go to NG+ or start over as a sorc or pyro.

Shovel Knight - I am late to the party to this as well, but this is also basically a perfect game and I think the highlight is its soundtrack, which is definitely not an insult to the rest of the game. Also since I have played Dark Souls I am becoming that unbearable person that describes mechanics in other games as being like Dark Souls, which applies to the checkpoints here.

I think my next venture may be to replay the Dragon Ages and then move onto Inquisition. It's totally unnecessary with that Keep thing but I don't remember shit from those games.

South Park Stick of Truth: Fun so far, reminds me of Costume Quest. Obsidian is cool.

Are these the worst controls in a recent game, with a keyboard?

I'm thinking about stopping and waiting until I get a proper controller.

Yeah, use a PS3 or XBox controller if it supports it (I think it should). You can use Motionjoy to emulate an XBox controller using a PS3 one, although I don't know I'm not sure what the button prompts for PC South Park's timed events defaults to. I think XBox controllers are basically plug and play but you can use Motionjoy for that too.

South Park is good but aspects of its design are a little annoying sometimes. Level ups matter for skills, which are significant, but your offensive and defensive stats are almost entirely dependent on equipment strength, which can be a deterrent since enemies level up with you. Basically this means you should find the next level of equipment to catch up with enemies. Also, your partner doesn't really level up very well in a way commensurate to your equipment upgrades and they become more useful for their status effects than anything else. This isn't always a big deal since the scaling isn't severe (except for some bosses) and some skills aren't tied to equipment. However, I found myself beating up all the kids I ran into and got to a point where I couldn't find the next level of equipment and was basically tinking people until I did. It kind of felt they were designing an RPG for the first time but I know they know better since it is Obsidian.

My only other problem is that the classes don't seem differentiated enough to justify a replay, although I probably would revisit the game down the line just for the jokes. 

The game has one section that even I'm a tad squeamish about but I guess you'll get there.

[Fenrir]

Yeah, use a PS3 or XBox controller if it supports it (I think it should). You can use Motionjoy to emulate an XBox controller using a PS3 one, although I don't know I'm not sure what the button prompts for PC South Park's timed events defaults to. I think XBox controllers are basically plug and play but you can use Motionjoy for that too.

I checked the PS3 controller and went all "Oh wow this is actually USB? I don't have to buy something else, I just have to download one program? PC gaming can be easy??"

The next 3 hours were dreadful.

But I finally got it working!! Thanks for the tip.
The problem was that Windows 8 was automatically refusing to install drivers without asking me. Thanks Windows 8.

Edit: Crap I hate level scaling
Obsidian removed it from Fallout 3 to New Vegas, why have they done this for South Park

[Meeplelard]

Crisis Core Expert Mode: I have been playing more of this.  Made some progress and finally got to the part after Bahamut Fury.  Also beat the Bahamut Rematch so yay, second summon!  Game also finally decided to actually start giving me Modulating Phases with actual occasional level ups after I went through a ridiculous dry-spell of them.

Game should pick up because I got a 3rd accessory slot,  interesting materia I can use for fusing is starting to show up, got some accessories that increase my damage notably so fights aren't taking as long, etc.

[Sierra]

Also not sure where I want to head next.  Catacombs maybe for Right of Kindling?  Tomb of Giants doesn't give me much in the way of progression, but then neither does Izalith or Forest.  I could go for a dive down into New Londo Ruins for the Ember I guess.

For now I think I will craft up that Quelag's Fury Sword I have been waiting for a Curved Sword to make and then go back to Dragon Age.

Edit 2 - Fashion Souls for El Cid I guess.  Not my usual kit, but I wanted something different to look at while running through Anor Londo killing stuff for souls for Quelag's Fury Sword (which is +5 now because there is so much fucking Demon Titanite in this game if you kill Titanite Demons when you see them).

New Londo or Catacombs. +15 weapons or more heals. Everything else can wait!

Black sorcerer set's pretty swank! I used that + Velka's tights for Utena cosplay (it's a reasonably close match to the movie).

~

Left-click across the throat means deathoh right this game's called Torchlight 2. I guess I was in a dungeon-crawly mood. Started an outlander for guns guns guns, focused on dual-wielding and firing minionising bullets. It's not the sheer awesome that dropping ricochet traps and watching them massacre everything was in Torchlight 1 but it's still pretty neat. Resisted the urge to take a headcrab pet and name it Lamar. Picked a cat instead, used the default name--I might not care much for Heinlein, but I have to admit that Pixel is an excellent cat name.

[Grefter]

You offend my fashion cred.  That is Black Sorcerer Robes with Eastern Gloves because it covers my undead forearms, but doesn't cover the cuffs of the robes and Black Leather boots for a practical shoe that isn't covered in armour.

[Fenrir]

Cool now don't die and stay in human form 24/7.
Because zombies can't fashion souls

To target Smough I try to get a pillar between Ornstein and me. Or lure fast Ornstein away from slow Smough then rush at Smough, poke a few times, and repeat.
Obviously not foolproof or anything though. I have an easier time with Ornstein -> Smough even though Giant Smough is harder than Giant Ornstein