What Games are you playing 2015?

[NotMiki]

I find that hard modes that just add +X% to enemy stats sound bad on paper but work reasonably well in practice. There don't seem to be a lot of games that offer interesting alternatives anyway...

Grandia 2 strikes me as one of the best fits for ramping up difficulty just by increasing enemy stats.  Grandia 2 (and it's been a while but I think this is true) your highest-damage moves in combat cost a significant amount of your overall resources.  So higher numbers could quickly push you into now-I-have-to-think-about-things territory.  It's just that the main game is so easy that 20% HP isn't going to get the job done.

[Sierra]

Shadowrun Hong Kong: So I guess we can rely on every Shadowrun campaign starting off with an old friend getting in too deep and dying and leaving you to figure out why (Dragonfall sort of did this twice in the same story!) Anyway, I'm in Kowloon, there's a monofilament whip cyber upgrade, and I kinda regret not running Wugui. The NPC gang is not as immediately engaging as it was in Dragonfall, although I'm intrigued by the Russian dude with the murderbot. Duncan seriously needs to loosen up. Trusting in law and order in the crapsack world that is Shadowrun, how else was that going to turn out?

[Veryslightlymad]

I've played Shadowrun on a few different occasions, and I have played several times in a shadowrun setting with rules that aren't ass. And every time, I run a character with a monofilament whip, the name of one of the Castlevania protagonists (with the last name inverted to "Montbel") who is deeply paranoid and pathologically hunts down ghouls, vamps, and man-made biological horrors.

I can make my own characters in RP settings, but in this case, why would I want to? It's shadowrun. Characters aren't deep. And what's more fun than a weapon that used to cut you in half on a crit fail?

[Fenrir]

Okay then Gref. I meant storytellingwise, since mechanics just looked fairly perfunctory at first glance.
It did look like an entirely different beast than Stanley Parable though? Stanley Parable is a game toying with the player and mocking Bioware for 5 hours. Magic Circle looks like a way to get you more conscious of what happens during the creation of a game (which I feel I know well enough already)


Notmiki: Don't you also amass a ton of healing items you never end up using in Grandia 2?


LISA the Joyful: Oh boy

This follows Buddy going full Kill Bill Bride mode to get some respect around Olathe. It is very much the continuation of the first game, for better and for worse. Would gross out Zenny /10.
I think it overexplained the story a little bit, I liked the overall vagueness of the first one better? This isn't a full on Hotline Miami 2-esque debacle or anything though, of course.


The gameplay mostly just served the story, even more than in the first one. There aren't a lot of interesting choices in battle, but you get basically no randoms and no chance to truly recover ever so there is tense resource management going on. Sort of. Can't comment on more without going into spoiler text. There were a few clever and very heart breaking ideas. Noteworthy things:
You have two party members at the beginning, then one leaves for the rest of the game and you're left alone. He also protected you at camps, with him gone you get attacked every night.
You amass Joy, which is the drug that gives you huge stat boosts but Is Very Bad for you and leads to Bad Endings in the main game. Here you are pretty much forced to use it at one point, as the game is too difficult without it. I fucking tried going without it in the first two hours, but had to give up. The game had won. By that point everything became super easy.
Your very limited skillset is centered around making things bleed if it wasn't clear that you are full badass now.

Replay value is fairly limited because of that, unfortunately, compared to the former game.

There is a sprint button! And I don't think I died even once to gravity!

The music is extremely cool, it was as experimental as the first one (which already clearly copied Earthbound's / Mother 3's style and overabundance of battle tracks) but much more pro. It is so Fenrir it hurts though.

[NotMiki]

Notmiki: Don't you also amass a ton of healing items you never end up using in Grandia 2?

Could be.  I don't remember since, y'know, even if they're there you never use them.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy I Autobattle Myself - Eiko boss rush and new dungeon update are out! I already cleared the boss rush with a grand total of one medal lost. Worth noting that Black Waltz 3 and Thorn and Zorn have MT magic, so Carbuncle doesn't lulz at the rush -quite- as hard as you expect, though it still does pretty bad things to its challenge. My only healing for the rush was Kirin and it proved more than enough. Just brought Magic Breakdown and SG as safeguards for keeping Kirin competitive and it worked out pretty great. I'll tackle the Beatrix fights tomorrow - I figure a Power Breakdown + Draw Fire approach will be enough here for the first fight, at least.

[Grefter]

Notmiki: Don't you also amass a ton of healing items you never end up using in Grandia 2?

Could be.  I don't remember since, y'know, even if they're there you never use them.

You know why you don't know how many you had?  Because no one has ever opened up the Item menu in Grandia 2. Ever.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I totally opened it up between fights to spam those dirt cheap MP/SP restoration items which can only be bought at specific points in the game.

[Cotigo]

Also, if there was any oldschool FF that deserved to called "anime", it'd probably be FF5...

Racist

LISA the Joyful: Oh boy

This follows Buddy going full Kill Bill Bride mode to get some respect around Olathe. It is very much the continuation of the first game, for better and for worse. Would gross out Zenny /10.

Welp. *Downloads.*

I still need to replay on Painful mode though and access the areas I missed the first time through.

[Fenrir]

I should note that I played the Joyful with no mask on, which does sound radically different from playing with a mask. for example everybody attacks you on sight including the only two shopkeepers

I'll replay it later.

RK: eiko event mastered, Beatrix was relatively easy since she's all physical. I had no FF9 equipment beyond a sword for Steiner, but I did have lvl 65 Vivi/Garnet throwing Op Waterja/Diaga under synergy. I also nearly have enough orbs to upgrade both to R4, yessss

Zorn and Thorn were much more difficult because I had completely underestimated them? They did some unreflectable doublecast 2hko skills and stuff. Upgrade to godlike. Scary as fuck, cool fight. I'll stop looking at the strats sections in the FFRK reddit from now on to have more experiences like this and have to work on my own strats. The true FFRK starts here. EZ mode over.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy Gimme Autobattle - Also mastered Eiko event. To my surprise, Draw Fire Steiner didn't manhandle just the first fight, but all of them, since the DEF boost given by Draw Fire is very good -and- seems to stack with Protect (obviously does stack with Breaks). Suddenly, we have a valuable, elegant Knight skillset niche there. At this point, I'm mostly rummaging through the new dungeons for that sweet Mythril. FF3 randoms are a pain in the ass and I'm just summonspamming them at leisure.

[Dhyerwolf]

Per the developer, Grandia 2's Hard Mode is not just an HP boost. Normal enemies end up also getting some speed boosts. Bosses can get boosts of all types (damage, speed, durability). They are currently working out a host of bugs that are going to be corrected, so probably better to wait regardless. But since Hard mode has more improvements, I will try it at some point.

[Veryslightlymad]

OK. I want to bring up the shit topic again, even though I regret accidentally causing it in the first place.

FF5 IS the most anime FF, and it has nothing to do with character situations, story, personality, humor, or whatnot.

FF5 has an oddly higher rate of anime iconography than any other Final Fantasy. Something distinctly Japanese. Like, the sweat drops, the slow ellipsis or the garbled squiggles that sometimes appear above characters' heads. That's, like, a Japanese style for portraying difficult to convey emotions/reactions. It pretty much only appears in western culture as a deliberate parody or tribute to Japanese comic art.

[Captain K]

FFRK:  According to FF Portal, we're getting the FF14 collab sometime in September.  So the expected timeline of future events will probably be thrown out of kilter.

Working on the new regular dungeons before I tackle the end of Eiko's event.  Did a 50-mythril pull on Eiko's banner, got two 4-stars and no 5-stars.  Boohoo.

[Grefter]

FF Type 0 HD - I haven't actually started playing, just watched the opening cutscenes.  Apparently this game is about pretty fashion teenagers fighting Steve Blum voiced Hitlercutus of the Borg.

Edit - The first like 5 minutes of the game after you say New Game is watching a teenager slowly bleed out with his chocobo mount.  Chocobos apparently make horse noises.  I am pretty into the bleeding part, especially when the main Fashion Teen watches it happen, refuses to actually touch the blood covered chocobo (sort of hover hands pats it) and holds the hands of Less Fashionable Teen.

Then you kill some stuff and find out one of the two armies (I missed if it was the enemies, I think it was) are called the Militesi.  I am pretty into that as well.

Fenrir, you didn't sell me on this hard enough.  I was already in from what had been discussed, but if I knew more of what it was about and just how fashionable the Fashion Teens are I would have played it sooner.

Edit - OH MY GODS WHY DIDN'T I PAY ATTENTION TO ACE'S ATTACK ANIMATIONS SOONER.

He literally vogues enemies to death while throwing cards at them.

Edit 2 - All the plot sequences oh my gods.  They are just words words words l'cie in the same way as FF13 was, but instead of telling me there is a dictionary it instead just constantly smash cuts to another face with a voice actor who has been working for nearly a billion years.  Then suddenly you meet the doctor that created the Fashion Teens (who I am now realising are a Sentai team in this world).

Meet Arecia Al-Rashia (Pronounced like Erasure)



Fashion Teens were made by Fashion MILF who wears a weird assortment of 70s Disco flares, 60 Beatnick headscarf, 80s haircut and early 2000s (?) midriff revealed blouse while she smokes from a cigarette holder, has both a scarf as a shawl and a fucking styling cape.  Oh and of course sexy librarian/teacher glasses.  Holy shit.  Also rocking some fucking MAD bling.

Oh and she said some words and said to send the Fashion Teens to war, but I don't care about that, her outfit is amazing.

There was also a bit during the words words words about the Nazis blowing up an entire fucking country with an ersatz nuke "Ultima Bomb".


Edit 1 billion - It is also pretty amazing that the leader of the Fashion Teens carries around a little hip holster for his Magic Cards so he can dual you in a moment's notice with his presumably Tournament Legal deck (I bet he plays Vintage, cause that shit's OP as fuck).



Okay so after getting through all the words finally we get to where you can control the characters again, today; the day after after the Fashion Teens pretty much single handedly turned the tide of the battle against the Nazis because they can use Magic even in Anti Magic fields; IT IS THEIR FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL. 

Is this some kind of pro home schooling propaganda?  I never met any home schooled kids that dressed this damn well.

Edit 899 - Doc MILF referred to her as Ace's mother, not sure if biologically accurate or just turn of phrase.  Either way it seems the Fashion Teens are either vampires or necromancers.  Edit - Oh and I forgot to say there is two new people to the class (presumably OTHER new people to the class since it's the Fashion Teens first official day at the academy) who we need to keep the Fashion Teens post kill feasting a secret from.  Presumable ZANY HIJINKS will ensue.

Edit 1 billion and 2 - I forgot to mention the two new dudes were already seen during the Nazi Fights.  Rem the girl is the one that's likely to be super important to the plot and Machina (Seriously) is likely just to be an anime rival, BUT he is going to be the perfect anime rival.

Why?

Because he fights by dual wielding Drilldo Swords.



This might be the best game ever made.

[Fenrir]

So who are your favourite fashion teens so far?
I fucking love this anime cast

Edit: I had the same reaction to Machina right here in this thread
Also, sorry

[Captain K]

Yeah they all have Abercrombie & Fitch superskinny figures, then Machina joins and he totally doesn't fit in.  Everyone else has stylish red capes and he just rips some curtains off the wall and wears them.

Oh and one of the girls just got date raped in a sidequest.  I wish I was making this up.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I do not comprehend.

[Scar]

It's all about the panty shots in that game.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy Unmarked Autobattles - Cleared all Classic dungeons from the new update. Expect the Elite versions to be kind of a pain in the ass. Oh well, at least Balthier is L65.

[NotMiki]

Far as I can tell, Type-0 is FF8 with fucking awesome capes.

...

Sold.

[Fenrir]

Pretty much!

Oh and one of the girls just got date raped in a sidequest.

The most realistic part of this campus

[The Duck]

Is this what Grefter/Fenrir game looks like?! I may check it out when it goes on sale.

[Fenrir]

Gourry, Type-0 is the kind of super anime game that completely ignores all basic game design lessons from the 20 last years. It is pretty interesting.



Lisa the Joyful: Replayed and finished, having a mask actually changes basically nothing. The game was 100% easier this time around so it at least went fast.
Not really worth replaying and getting all the achievements, though I liked the little secret with Green Ranger.

He's the only surviving member of the sentai team from the first game, he lives alone and he's basically the only guy around who doesn't want to control Buddy. Buddy still doesn't trust him and she leaves. Later on you see that he has killed himself, and you get the "No friends" steam achievement.
Cheerful stuff.

Best track is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GmZXasCoU0

[Grefter]

Also it is a massively lazy "HD" variant. 1080p 60 FPS with models that have oven mitt skeleton for hands and high res 2D textures in 3D environments.  It is a straight port from the PSP with textures upscaled.

It is pretty far from terrible, but it definitely makes it feel like a much smaller studio's $25 games that runs in a free copy of Unreal 3.  Then the actual plot is Square with the melodrama cranked up to 16.

Oh I also forgot to mention that their teacher is totes that ninja from Naruto.