What Games are you playing 2015?

[NotMiki]

Yeah Witcher 1 looks like a total joke.

It's a hot mess of a game, and occasionally brilliant.  The ending is pretty great.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Oh hey, suddenly a Locke event.

Zenny you said to tell you when Locke became available. Well he's available now for about a week and a half. Literally just opened up like an hour ago.

Also also, I finally pulled a five star weapon. And it's Locke's special Rising Sun. So now I have both an awesome back row weapon AND a compelling reason to use Locke apart from "is FF6 and not-Cyan".

[Cotigo]

Siiiiigh.

English version or Japanese version?

[DjinnAndTonic]

English. Also the chances of getting his super weapon are increased by a lot right if my luck is any indication.

[Grefter]

Also by the text on all of the ongoing character events.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Yes the game also says that its odds are increased but this is the first time I've gotten anything that was supposedly at "increased odds". So I was guessing that the odds are in fact decently high. Out of roughly 35 draws total, I finally got something that was supposed to be easy to get.

Edit: aaaaand.... 1x Locke GET. The regular level event stuff is clearly balanced for someone at lower levels than 40 across the board. I probably could have Mastered the whole set on Auto. Now for the Elite versions, which look promising for a challenge. And if not... Well hey at least I get the Phoenix summon out of the deal.

Locke himself is cool. A Support fighter that I've been needing since Tyro and Wakka stopped being useful. His regular Soul Break Sneak Attack already sets him up as a Backliner Support type, but with his Rising Sun weapon he's already got my strongest weapon, back row defenses, and a cool new Soul Break that does multi target physical damage and Slow! Time to wreck me an Anima.

[Cotigo]

DJ, how did you install the English version? Mine automatically downloaded the Japanese version, which is fine I guess but if it's not running events for characters I can nostalgia over I really don't give a shit. I guess playing it in Japanese is at least "studying"

[Fenrir]

I like the frequency of events; I could do Locke's right now but I'd miss Thundaja from Vanille's. So I prefer to focus on that...

Except today is also weapon upgrade day and I might finally be able to upgrade absolutely all my weapons to max, which would make Anima a bit easier? I had to withdraw from the event yesterday because my numbers were not quite large enough.

And obviously once I'll be able to concentrate on Locke's event, a brand new event will be opened up and I'll still have to hurry the hell up.

Also I'll soon be able to do another 50 mithril pull and I'll have to decide when exactly I want to do it. I don't care about Locke but a five stars chakram for someone else sounds nice.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I probably wouldn't even live through Hard Anima without some tapdancing, so I'm just plugging away at Locke's event. And raking in that sweet, sweet free Mythril.

EDIT: Getting the Rising Sun and Locke would be nice, though, back row would at least make him essentially less squishy than Josef.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Shovel Knight - Beaten on hard mode. Pretty fun; they removed a lot of the checkpoints (there's typically just one before the boss and one halfway through, like NES Mega Man) and upped enemy damage (while removing much of the healing) so dying from damage is a thing which happened a lot more outside boss fights. Nothing really redesigned, though, which was a bit disappointing but understandable enough. The boss rush at the end was absolutely brutal, with their better damage + only getting healing every two fights (and sometimes not even then? Twice the game didn't give me healing after the fourth, which felt like a bug) = ow, I probably had at least a couple dozen resets here (the game normally tracks them, but didn't in this case because I took a break after failing a bunch). Nothing else in the game was nearly that bad, though honourable mention for the first half of Plague Knight's stage.

I also have about half the achivements. Might be nice to get some more at some point. But probably not just yet. Excellent game, not the best ever but yeah very solid. 8/10 territory or so.

[Laggy]

Witcher 1 is bad. Cid, do yourself a favor and just skip to 2. Or at the least, definitely don't spend time doing all of the sidequesty stuff if you really want 1's plot so you have an idea of what you're getting into in 2, although it's not really strictly necessary.

[Grefter]

Locke event got me to not rage more.  Killed whirlwind thingo before she even whirl winded this time (but would have just Retaliated through it now...).

FF games just don't work any more.  ATB feels like you are moving through molasses.  Adding in the FFX-2 charge components to ATBs without having varied recharge rates is bad and makes it worse.

For example

Get into a fight with Ifrit and Shiva.  Tell first person to attack, Second person you input Blizzara because Ifrit is out.  After first person attacks and before second person moves Ifrit uses Fira and swaps to Shiva.  You heal Shiva.  Okay I will wait and use Fire.  Repeat previous fucking issue.

Old FF fights aren't built to have that charge there and it fucks with the fight dynamics sometimes.

[Fenrir]

Oh yeah Ifrit/Shiva is terrible for this. I think it's the only time this problem really happens. It could have made healing a huge pain but healing auto targets whoever has the lowest hp% if you don't specifically target someone.

My Cloud - Snow - Vanille - Lenna - Kain team is pretty badass, aside from Kain. Vanille has cura and boost, Lenna has curaga and chibi-holy.

i tried to use Gordon since he's the only non Kain character who can use spears. Problem is , he has even lower attack than Kain. He is a red mage in a game specifically not made for red mages at all and gotten late. So he's about as useful as he was in FF2.
They could have given us Freja or Fang but nope and they're not even planned.

[Scar]

Had over 100 mithril. 

Tried to get lockes weapon...

Got a mystery veil...

And shit.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuq

[Grefter]

Fucking whrilwind bullshit "Use Jump So We Pretend Kain Is Useful" FF4 boss was pretty shit for it and was why I was rage face at that as well.

Input commands.  enemy goes into counter stance.  Eat 3 Thundagas because lol.

[Fenrir]

Oh yeah there's also Whelk. And Wingraptor. And Whelk 2.0.
And they're all way way worse than Valvalis.
Neeeeevermind.

On the plus side, I have 52k shiny things. Thundaja requires 125k.

[Dark Holy Elf]

You can certainly design an ATB counter-oriented boss where you'd have to watch your charge times so as not to hit them during their counterstance (honestly Whelk was kind of like this in FF6 proper since the game had some charge time on all attacks, but it was pretty minor and mostly just punished you if you tried to have one PC attack twice in a row before he hid in his shell again IIRC). I don't think it's inherently bad design to encourage players to learn to time their attacks to get past these.

Not that I have much faith in FFRK to have said good design.

[Sierra]

I know basically nothing about FFRK except that almost everything you guys say about it makes it sound worse. Why is everyone playing it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Mobile platform is cool I suppose? That said I agree; it sounds like if I really want a portable game with FF nostalgia that my time would be better spent playing more Theatrhythm, which is actually competent at the genre of gameplay it provides.

[DjinnAndTonic]

It is a Final Fantasy music playing platform that occasionally delivers a fun boss fight, a collectible character,  and doesn't require me to play a rhythm game.

[Meeplelard]

It's also free at base.

[hinode]

Incidentally the charge times for abilities in RK are in fact variable; this is most easily noticed when you sometimes have one PC use a Soul Break, then another immediately use a basic attack command right afterwards. Unfortunately it's not very well documented, at least in English; this is the best I could find.

It's also worth noting that the speed stat and Haste/Slow has no impact on the charge rates for moves, which really limits how much they matter in practice.

[Grefter]

Bars filling up and numbers, that sound when numbers are counting up that games make.

Also I need something to do on the train and while I shit.

[Fenrir]

In FFRK you cannot really get what you want unless you throw a disgusting amount of money at the game. But is it ultimately worth it? Why do you want what you want?
The obvious answer is that Locke's sprite doesn't matter and you're a fool for thinking about giving your money to somebody who's trying to scam you by using your nostalgia. Nostalgia is a joke. The past is holding you back. Live in the present.
I applaud the game for giving these strong courageous messages.
(Unintentionally)


Also also we can finally -really- answer the RPGDL Ur-question you had when you were 10: who's better?
And the answer is Cloud. Cloud is better.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Actually, the answer is "whoever can equip your only five-star weapon". Level 25 Locke with Rising Sun is doing double my Level 47 Cloud's damage with just their physicals.  >.>;;