What Games are you playing 2015?

[Grefter]

Progression raiding also got put off as even more distant unattainable goal for most players with the new raid tiering system.  Mythic is for the fucking crazy crazies, but there is still plenty of raid for scrub guilds now that they don't have to plateau as early.

Dark Souls 2 - After a couple of weeks of PS2 graphics (for good or ill), coming back PC and running a game at 60 FPS was beautiful.  Unfortunately that makes me want to scratch my itch on some other games all the more prevalent.

Spent some time invading as a Bell Bro while I refamiliarised myself with movement, controls and enemies.  Ganged up on some people and won.  Then won some 1v1 which is crazy unexpected.  Had one guy that I looked like I was fucking awesome, come up against a dude with a spear doing the shield poke strats.  Went in hard and chipped him down, kept pressure on with Throwing Knives.  He managed to get distance and estus and nearly killed me.  I rolled down onto the stairs, he followed me down with a plunging attack with his back to me so I fucked his shit up with a backstab that ripped off 75% of his health for the kill.  It all looked nearly intentional, so other than the fact that I only actually had 3 Throwing Knives, rolling down the hole was in panic and while the punish on his plunge down after me was intentional I went in expecting normal swings, not a backstab.

After that spent some time just being summoned to learn Sinners Rise a bit.  Ultimately helped 2 people kill her.  Summoned help to kill her myself.  Lucatiel nearly died because I stupidly summoned her before clearing out the trash in the run up, so it goes.  As the host I went super defensive and just turtled behind a shield to let summon do most of the work just to minimise risk.

So like now I have cleared Forest of Fallen Giants, Lost Bastille, done Belfry and Sinner's Rise.  I am now level 80 and have 40 Str, 20 Vigor/Vit/Endurance.  Put a point into Dex as well for stuff.  That puts me at level 80.  I was only like 7 levels higher when I finished DS1.  I feel pretty over leveled.  I feel like I don't really give a fuck though, it all stems from cooping a bunch which is something I wanted to be able to do in DS1 but never could.  I just wish you could join Sun Bros as early as you could in DS1.  On the other hand, I also wish I ever worked out how the fuck to join them in DS1 since neither play I actually ran into the option sooooo whatever.

Torn whether to branch out into some spells or convert to a quality build.  Maybe dump some more Str so I can Power Stance some bigger weapons?

[jsh357]

Level 80 isn't unreasonable to be there.  You'll generally get to SL 120 by end game.

[The Duck]

Gref be cool like me and Fen and do Fistisouls.

[Sierra]

Sunbros in DS1 was Faith 25 for entry. Subtract 5 from requirement for each successful summon run you've had outside it. If you played the game without mucking around in multiplayer at all, it's not surprising you were never given the option, because without helping people only a dedicated cleric is actually likely to hit the reqs.

DS2 Sunbros opens up relatively early if you want to make a break right for it. Beat up Dragonrider (piss easy), talk to Licia, warp back to Majula, talk to Licia again (she's moved to down the stairs in the room with the nonfunctional gadget), pay her to open the door, run Huntsman's Copse and beat up Skeleton Lords (imposing first time but MACE solves all problems), Sunbros are in the next zone. That's a lot of not intuitive at all stuff when you don't know what's where, but the obstacles are relatively minor ones if you want to run straight for it.

And you can easily hit SL150 by the normal end of DS2 without even trying to grind for souls (at least, this is where I generally stop). This is even excluding extra from the DLC. You just level a lot faster and a lot more in the game than you could in DS1 (it has more stats to maintain so this is probably fair). You're pretty much expected to.

[Cmdr_King]

Dragon Quest- so.  Um.  I have no idea how to feel about this game.  Like.  There's a lot of stuff I normally mark games diwn for, but they just don't matter.  Wipe?  Go the other direction, there's only one item in the game that losing money will set you back meaningfully from getting.  Only one dungeon has actual length, and said dungeon is the only one with a boss in it, so managing resources is very rarely burdensome.  And even then the way the game is scaled meanes stocking up on herbs will actually last that dungeon even with the item limit of 6.  And of course realistically the game is short enough, and the map small enough, that you physically can't get THAT bogged down.  Hell, only one location, the tomb, is badly telegraphed despite the game thriving on random npc hints.

Um.  Pr...obably 5/10.  Yeah sure.

[Grefter]

And that was the really interesting thing I came out of it with.  The iOS port only has a tiny bit of polish on it compared to the NES release.  That tiny bit of polish lets a game that really kick started a genre on consoles holds up surprisingly well.  It isn't good, but it is also a bit better than a bad release is even today.

I was seriously considering investing into Dex and going Quality build which would pretty much either mean Fisting stuff to death or going Straight Sword/Greatswords.

I probably will dump a bunch in Adaptability though, but might not need heaps since I think my starting class had a bit.

[Cmdr_King]

Basically all they did aside from graphics is remove all the stairs/door/etc stuff.  Based on playing an hour or two of playing the NES game anyway.  And yeah, the game fundamentally is very playable with those removed, I was really not expecting that.

[Tide]

Came home without my computer adaptor by accident. So I revisited my Priest SCC on WotL...

Goland Coal City - Resets: 0
Those Male Chemists are always Libras to my understanding. Unfortunately, my Ramza is Capricorn. I ended up in a loop when one of the chemists did nothing but revive his friends I killed with Holy. The good news is, they have very low evasion so I can easily go up and bop them again. I send 2 Priests around the building to reach Olan as he proceeds to read words because Galaxy Stop is apparently too hard.

Lesalia - Resets: 0
Zalmo runs away from me, which is an issue since I do not want to get into an attrition war when my resources are so limited. I Protect Up, then have one Priest Holy a Knight. This Priest then sacrifices herself while I send Ramza and another to meet Zalmo as he comes up to try and revive the dead Knight. Alma being a human shield helps a bit but not really necessary.

UBS 2 - Resets: 0
The Chemist didn't have P.down apparently so this was pretty easy. Knock off the Lancers, then its cakewalk.

UBS 3 - Resets: 0
Similar to Zalmo but trickier. I'm forced to kill the two knights starting beside Izlude as they block off the passageway to reach him. One of the Knights has shit Faith so he ended up taking 2 Holys. This meant I needed to send my remaining 2 Priests to kill Izlude, while the other three who took out blockade delay the approaching enemies. I Shell Up with the three on the ground and Protect up with Ramza and the Priest who will be going after Izlude. This helps cut the incoming damage greatly. The summoner was dealing like 40 points of damage at most despite also have 74 Faith.  Once Izlude makes the fatal mistake of being in my targetting range, I lock the 2 Holys on him and he falls.

UBS 1 - Resets: 0
Equip Ramza with the Chameleon Robe. Line up 3 Priests on one side and the other two spaced part on the other side. Ramza's Cham robe dissuades Wiegraf from targetting him, so he goes for my bigger group instead and effectively takes out 2 Priests. I still have 3 Holys though so guess what happens.

Luso - Resets: 0
6 Behemoths, 5 Priests. 1 Holy a piece for each Behemoth. Luso eats the last one all the while being supported by my Priests as needed. I almost get Ramza killed by 2x Gore, but thankfully he was under Protect so he was fine.

Grog Hill - Resets: 0
The key here is to knock off the 2 Chemists quickly. Easier said than done since they both start far away and have guns to boot. Turtle up initially for a Protect casting, than start luring enemies to my spawn position. Holy the Squire/Thief/Archer all on turn 1, then one of the chemists came down so I locked Holy on him. This left just one Squire and the last Chemist. Unfortunately that Squire had Item and Revived the Archer. Well fuck. I lock my last Holy on the Chemist as he proceeds to X-Potion the Archer. Then I proceed to beat the Squire with my wonderstaves. Thanks to Protect, he can't really damage me and eventually retreats once he hits crit and starts accumulating. I run back with 2 Priests for Crystals, then Holy the rest.

Yardow - Resets: 0
The Ninjas get destroyed ASAP because their offense is really scary (OHKOs a Priest under Protect? Holy shit). This isn't too hard thankfully because the Ninjas just love to suicide by charging far ahead of the summoners. Speaking of the Summoners, Magic Defense Up and Shell = lol at the Summon damage. I've eaten several over this SCC and they're still dealing double digits despite these units casting them with high faith. And I haven't even considered equipping a White Robe yet (Holy's damage is far more important than some defensive measures). After that, I lure the Summoners over with a Shell'd Priest and take each one out with a Holy. This leaves the almighty Malak who I proceed to play whack a mole with until he retreats.

Yuguo Woods - Resets: 0
I completely forgot that I had curative magic and those dealt damage to the undead >_>. Easy battle nonetheless. Cast Holy on the humans /monsters for fast kills and use curative to chip. Could've turned Rafa into a Chemist too, but eh.

Riovannes Gate - Resets: 0
I was afraid I might had to reset due to Ramza's squad getting critically injured very early into the fight. Luckily the AI decided to be dunces and the archers spread their arrows apart, allowing Ramza and the Priest with him to survive long enough for the group of 3 to come near. The Knights all go down to either 1 Holy or 2 Holys. Looks like most enemies need 2 Holys now, which is unfortunate. Malak also proved to be a bit of a pain as he had best comp with one of my girls and his low faith made Holying him usually not a good move unless it was from her. I couldn't displace his CT either so I eventually just swarmed him and beat him with staffs again. Never change Malak. Once I got the Priests to the roof with the Archers, fight was pretty much over since they had no room to run to and Minimum range made them dead in the water.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Mass Effect 2 - Just recruited Samara and Thane. Since I did five things (Jacob loyalty, Miranda loyalty, Tali, Samara, Thane), I am being forced to do a mission~

I also picked up the Lair of the Shadow Broker and Kasumi DLC thanks to the Mass Effect fairy sending me a MS points gift card~ I will have to try those out. When do ya'll think is the best time to do that?

[Grefter]

Kasumi asap, Shadow Broker technically works best if you do it after recruiting everyone, buuuut the last recruit also triggers a timer for Bad Things to in the plot.  So really just do it whenever.  The up side to having all the recruits you can technically come back for (you unlock something and can revisit it whenever you want I think?) but you would mostly just miss out on a joke or two. 

It is worth noting that the thing you unlock gives a bit of an info dump on characters.

[SnowFire]

Allegedly you can do Lair of the Shadow Broker aftergame without much incident.  (It's what I'd have done had I not lost my ME2 save.)

[Fenrir]

Kasumi had a pretty hard boss. It depends on how badly you want her.
Best to leave lair for the aftergame or very end of the game i think.

Soulsphony of the night: inverted castle is cruel. I got a fist of tulkas to drop from a lion after an half hour farm, i could farm some more for +5 def but nope nope nope
Frankestein monster managed to be worse than any other boss in the game (even the bat) it is an amazing feat. I cheesed the hell out of doppleganger v2 (and maria) with a super cool infinite divekick combo. Meanwhile beelz looks impossible.

Joseph cape is super cool in purple/dark purple.

[Meeplelard]

Crisis Core: Nibelheim finished.  Sephiroth was a huge dick on Expert mode.

Metroid: Got this because Club Nintendo.  The game is meaner than I remember, particularly because you revive with 40 Health regardless.  It's like how Zelda started you with 3 Hearts regardless, only it's much harder to grind for health.

[Sierra]

Kasumi had a pretty hard boss. It depends on how badly you want her.
Best to leave lair for the aftergame or very end of the game i think.

Kasumi's mission was one of the first things I did in the game. That boss...took a few tries.
I tackled Lair smack in the middle somewhere and that worked out fine.

~

Touhou Labyrinth 2: Oh right, this is a thing which exists. It's basically more of the same (not that this is a bad thing) + more options for customizing characters. Do I want to spend skill points on making Team 9 an actual thing with gameplay bonuses? Goddamn right I do. (Wriggle is still unreasonably good because POIZN.) Downside, the game's doing the Yo Dawg I Heard You Like Grinding etcetera thing much earlier than last time. I'm just at the end of floor six and already there's an unbeatable boss ten levels above me blocking the only way forward.

[The Duck]

When I replayed ME2, I did both Kasumi and Zaeed pretty much right after getting Mordin and Garrus and that was (mostly) fine. Kasumi has an annoying boss but it should be doable where Ciato is at since she's recruited some of the midgame people and is doing loyalty missions. Ciato you could probably do the Shadowbroker where you're at as well.

[Tide]

Priests roll into Bed Desert...

Wiegraf/Velius - Resets: 0
Ramza equips Cham Robe/Holy miter. Eat a Wave Fist, then nuke Wiegraf with Holy. In the second phase of this fight, Ramza retreats to where the other Priests are. Velius being a dumdum charges down and locks Clops onto Ramza, giving all my Priests a go at him and Ramza too. I lock 4 Holys on him and smack him with Ramza midcharge dealing 80+250 per Holy. Needless to say, the demons really didn't matter.

Roof of Riovannes - Resets: 0
I stagger my speed spread, giving Ramza and a second Priest 9 Speed, one with 8 (the main damage dealer) and one with 7 who is nekkid. I lure the two assassins with Ramza and the 9 Speed Priest by giving them an opportunity to midcharge me. They take the bait, and ignore Rafa. I proceed to lock Holy with my 8 Speed Priest and that is pretty much that.

Doguola Pass - Resets: 0
I drop the Magic Gauntlet for 108 as strengthen is more powerful than +2 MA at this point. I also change everyone's headgear to Gold Hairpins so they can all cast 2 Holys a piece. The higher leveled Priests and Ramza can even cast a few additional spells after. Anyways, with strengthen, this is a non-issue as Holy OHKOs some enemies, 2HKOs others. I take the OHKOs as a I can. The AI doesn't seem to recognize Regenerator being in effect and often targets me with a lethal L3 spell, only for me to get a turn inbetween and restore some HP, making it no longer lethal. To add insult to injury, I actually kill an enemy Wizard by redirects only as his friend was stupid enough to do this twice.

Bernervia Free City - Resets: 0
Position a priest in the second formation near the bottom right. This lures Melia into a specific spot such that she will use her Mighty Sword skill, but be in range to get targeted by 2 Holys. 2 shots to take her down to crit, I only need 1.

Finath River - Resets: 0
The Chocobos have your levels and I was only 23 with Ramza at most, so this was pretty much a joke. Lock Holys on Chocobos as they come and OHKOs for free.

Zeltannia Church - Resets: 0
Zalmo starts in a position that Ramza can immediately lock Holy onto and OHKO. I'm actually not sure if he could even do anything about this because he sure as hell didn't try to Shell himself or anything of that sort. After watching everyone take their turns, Ramza nukes him to the next millenium.

[Captain K.]

Curtain Call:  My Lenna has Dualcast, Ultima, Meteor, Doomsday.  Shit evaporates.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Mass Effect 2 - Finished Garrus and Kasumi's loyalty missions, decided to be nice to Sidonis because reasons. My newly acquired Sniper Rifle made pretty easy work of the Kasumi boss.

[Fenrir]

LISA: Finished Pain mode. I think I saw about 5 unique fights, there's a small special area unlocked, and a new ending sequence. A ton of PCs got slaughtered by bosses (RIP Dick, Fly, Bo, Nern, Ollie) but I didn't reload because 2 arms Brad with Joy is good enough.
Mike had a lot of HP in Pain mode (I think 80 000?), so Poison was nearly necessary to beat him.


Castlevania Symphony of the Night, the symphony including a lot of punches: I beat Galamoth and Dracula. Galamoth was easy I didn't get hit. He has basically three attacks:
- Throw homing balls: Just stay at a distance
- High sword beam: Just never jump
- Super long lightning attack: Mist to get between his legs, then MASH SQUARE
Since he has ten million HPs this took a long time but one I understood how he worked I wasn't in any danger.

Drac was pretty difficult. His attacks are fast but there's a decently long time between them.
So Mist is once again super great. Surprise, turning into invincible mist at will is OP.

Only Beelz is left but meeeeh.
Overall, this was a fun challenge. Alucard punching stuff didn't get old in the 8 or so hours it took me to beat the challenge.
It wasn't balanced but I don't think there's any way to make SotN balanced.

I'll try Maria mode next.

[Cotigo]

and a new ending sequence．

Is it any less terrible than the joyful ending?

[Sierra]

Touhou Odyssey 2: Turns out Grind Moar boss was just a Deal X Damage and It'll Run Away boss. Still took some grinding to survive that long, mind (10/12 PCs dead when I "won.") Of course, three floors later, I'm now running into that problem for real. I just can't deal any freakin' damage. It isn't that the boss init boosts DEF/MDEF 100%, that'll wear off. But even with that replaced by debuffs I can barely scratch her, and poison hitrate is pitifully unreliable against her. I'd spam ITD but the only ITD spells I have are in elements she resists (Rumia MVP sadly not happening this time). She's dangerous offensively, but barely manageable with the right lineup and buffs. I can just stick Meiling at the front of the line and she'll take negligible damage, but there's no guarantee the boss will exclusively target the first in line, and if she hits anyone else it's almost a guaranteed OHKO. Eventually the party'll get worn down and I just can't hurt her remotely fast enough for victory to happen first. Like, geez, I came into this well above the level the game says is appropriate for this fight. Not sure what they want out of me here.

Huge shock, fan-made game is still referential as fuck. I smiled when I picked up power armor and then frowned when the item description referenced the Capitol Wasteland.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire - Maingame done. Catching Kyogre was actually pretty simple (Mega Sceptile did a huge dent on its health before it got lol ohkoed by an Ice Beam. Dear god, 4x weakness is ugly), but then I pretty much never even took it out of the box because why not just play with my party? Elite Four was mostly the Camerupt/Milotic parade: Sidney aside, who mostly got manhandled by Mega Gardevoir, Camerupt and Milotic were pretty much exactly what I needed to properly handle most of them, though Phoebe also needed some help from Manectric. Glacia just ate very painful Flamethrowers and Overheats from Camerupt night and day once her Walrein managed to connect two Sheer Colds on Gardevoir (it survived one through affection hax! What the heck), and its HP actually -was- good enough to weather a fair amount of damage. Drake got borderline soloed by Milotic (Ice Beam so gooooood). In the end, Camerupt was also MVP against Steven, since it could survive a Giga Impact from Megagross and Overheat just tore it up to pieces. I'll bother with Delta Episode later. So, final evaluations!

Sceptile/Mega Sceptile (L48, Giga Drain/Leaf Blade/Swords Dance/Earthquake) - Going Mega or not on Sceptile's case is actually a legit interesting choice at times due to its typing change. Huge stats, but holy crap do I want to eat OHKOs from non-STAB Ice attacks all day and have defensive problems against Fairy and Dragon-types? Past that, it was a mixed offensive sweeper. Giga Drain sorta loses its offensive luster by endgame, but it's always serviceable, especially running off Mega S. Attack, and Leaf Blade certainly picks up the slack well enough, especially backed up by Swords Dance. Earthquake hands it some coverage, particularly against Steels and Electrics, which Scepty otherwise sorta struggles offensively against. Amazing in the early and midgame, sorta dawdled a bit in the end due to Grass not being particularly useful offensively on those endgame fights.

Mega/Gardevoire (L49, Reflect/Calm Mind/Psychic/Draining Kiss) - Draining Kiss on a high S. Attack Fairy-type with Calm Mind is soooooooooo stupid, guys. Gardevoire was already a prime RSE MVP contender for the lategame (held back by its underwhelming earlygame performance, but not by nearly enough to not make it a high-profile choice), but gaining Fairy typing and Draining Kiss just do -wonders- to cover its holes along the way. Psychic/Fairy is great (completely trivializes Fighting, neuters the fear it had of Dark-types, reams Dragons and Poison-types fear Psychic defensively. Sucks against Steel, but Garde -never- was amazing against Steel-types anyway), Draining Kiss is very useful to mitigate the durability woes and synergizes obscenely with Calm Mind. Once it reached L30, it took the MVP mantle and never really let go, Elite Four aside. The durability in the Ralts period's still all sorts of appalling, but it has enough options to not entirely suck ass now, including Draining Kiss - so yeah. Mega evo was pretty much overkill - 165 S. Atk and a 20 boost to its base Speed? Holy crap.

Camerupt (L50, Overheat/Flamethrower/Earth Power/Yawn) - The ensemble dark horse in the party. Numel's egregious durability/speed combo led me to think I'd never really take much mileage out of Camerupt aside from scoring a few essential OHKOs, but it ended up being a cornerstone Pokémon once it evolved, due to -actually being able to take hits- and having a very solid in-game typing. You'd be surprised at how many problems can be solved just by tossing Camerupt at them and OHKOing their asses. Ground trivialized Electrics further and not fearing Grass also let me exploit those types more effectively. Yawn was also -oddly- useful whenever it came up. Only really feared Waters, but I had plenty of Water coverage in my party.

Mega/Manectric (L48, Thunderbolt/Rain Dance/Thunder Wave/Strength) - Pretty unexciting, mostly a fast Thunderbolt spammer with the occasional Rain Dance use to boost Milotic's offense. Fairly useful anyway, since Electric is a very useful typing for offense (especially considering I had no real Rock coverage) and Mega Manectric both sports good stats and a great ability in Intimidate, and you can't really go wrong with speedy Thunder Wave.

Milotic (L52, Surf/Recover/Waterfall/Ice Beam) - Holy shit, does this thing tank. There was nothing as capable of covering my bases defensively as Milotic's simple yet devastating stalling game, really. I did swapping on the Waterfall slot all day - Safeguard, Light Screen, Toxic - just for the sake of covering different utility needs. Ice Beam was responsible for nearly soloing Drake and also hands it huge coverage. Really good wall with solid offense and non-utter fail speed really work. By the end, it didn't even eat 2HKOs off most weakness-hitting coverage attacks, so it pretty much bordered on immortal.

Crobat (L48, Acrobatics/Poison Fang/Confuse Ray/Fly) - Weirdly good overall, suck phase with Zubat aside. Confuse Ray is badass utility and plugs holes pretty much everywhere when you want to annoy, and Poison Fang liked to pick the funniest times to proc its deadly poison. Acrobatics is also badass spammable Flying damage and even Fly had uses when I was trolling charged moves and fishing for safe Surfs or Flame Plumes in doubles. Not terribly special at offense when not hitting weakness, though (albeit Crobat was my main means of dealing with Grass-types before Numel/Camerupt got rolling and also my fastest Fighting-types check), setting aside the hilarious period of statistical dominance due to an early final evo. Pretty fun Poké, all in all, though the Poison typing pretty much never mattered due to AS's sheer scarcity in Fairy types.

About the game itself, it's been said. It's gen 3 with gen 6 mechanics, but still covering a large amount of gen 3 sensibilities. Considering gen 3 and gen 6 are my favorites in the series by a healthy margin, this is in no way anywhere near bad. One thing I particularly liked was the game handing you access to a lot of Pokés from later gens, unlike what happened in FRLG. Though, given the fact the game uses RSE's level curve, the game would've broken even worse than XY if I turned the Exp. Share on.

[Shale]

AAI2: finished. Final villain was as good as advertised. Especially when using an armrest. Overall the fifth case was not one of the series' best, but it gets credit for being broad rather than just long, tying up a whole bunch of loose ends from the other cases in a satisfying way. Most of my complaints about the game would be solved if those threads had been more evident early on - let the case 4 villain show up earlier, draw some of the connections between crimes bit by bit instead of all at the end, and you've got the strongest overall story arc in an AA game by far.

[AndrewRogue]

Allegedly you can do Lair of the Shadow Broker aftergame without much incident.  (It's what I'd have done had I not lost my ME2 save.)

I did it postgame no issue.

[Fenrir]

Zenny: It's another sequence added on top of it that reveals some more backstory. Essentially Buzzo was the one who ruined Rando's face and destroyed Brad's dojo, as a revenge against Brad for being directly responsible for Lisa's death.

It's all foreshadowing for the Buddy DLC I assume.