What Games are you playing 2015?

[jsh357]

Ni No Kuni: So at first I was happy to get a 2nd PC...only to see it's a Mage PC with a Mage Familiar, both of whom are healers, and has half Oliver's MP and lower HP.  To top it off, the AI seems to love blowing all their MP ASAP (though maybe that's because mages can't do physical damage worth crap OH LOOK), so she becomes useless pretty quick.
Should probably toss a non-MP reliant familiar on her just to alleviate the issue.

Get used to it.  No matter what commands you give, the AI is going to waste MP and never learn when to actually heal.  If I were to ever play the game again, I'd probably just use pure physical Familiars on the side characters and do all the healing on my own.

[SnowFire]

Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow: Hard mode, no class change, no forge, no Silver Card: Final Destination:
I'm a merchant's child, am incredibly beautiful, and will soon be vastly wealthy…    except that I can't both be a merchant's child and wealthy at the same time, so I suppose it would also be accurate to call myself an orphan.  My family simply didn't understand me and my preferred mode of money-making, so cast me out on my own.  I guess piracy and afros and hitting people with axes wasn't the usual family style?  Never fear, it isn't really mine, although neither is shop-keeping.  The axes are just a means to an end; I want cushy government contracts and access to the treasury.  Everybody knows the good guys win, so that means cozying up to Altea, then parlaying my axe skills into a trusted advisor position.  Money in the bank!  But how?

This is where I must admit that I cheated a tad.  Through a story too complicated to explain, I came across the legendary Eyepatch of Command.  Witness its might:



Yeah, mostly maxed stats at 20/12, that's fair.

Anyway, with the might of the Eyepatch at hand…  (eye?)...  it was a simple matter to command my way into Marth's knights.  Soon the other members of my division were kneeling before my leadership, with only Luke requiring a tad bit of convincing.  Well, there was one…  this Katarina figure seemed immune to the Eyepatch's magic.  Perhaps.  She too was someone of obscure provenance who claimed a sudden desire to serve the Prince…  what is going on here?  She acted deferential to me regardless.  Something deeper is going on here than meets the eye - is she trying to use magic to infiltrate the Prince's circle as well?

My rise to power was swift, aided by the Prince's inner aides inexplicably hanging around us.  I of course promptly commanded them to join my cause, ludicrous as this was for experienced knights to serve under a "recruit" like me.  My biggest coup was no doubt collecting the Prince's fiancee, Caeda.  She proved no match for the power of the eyepatch, which promptly convinced her I was a Gary Stu equal to that of Marth.  It was clear, I would be the most powerful trainee in history, ordering around princesses and generals alike…  as long as I survived these maps, at least.  Sheesh!  Rarely have early FE maps been this brutal, with often the best move being to huddle in the corner on turn 1 rather than move out to face my foes.  No matter, I have no reserve about using 'cowardly' tactics to win.

Nor did Katarina, although in an odd way.  She apparently had the ability to poison all of the castle's staff and random soldiers, but not Marth himself?  Strange.  I'd have expected her forces to rush me considering the situation regardless…   she'll lose if she waits, but no, she lets her assassins slowly get ganked by my own advance.  (Memo to self: Add a back exit to the throne room if I ever become Royal Architect.)  Curious.  I don't even need to use the Eyepatch to mind-control Marth, as Katarina herself provided the perfect opportunity for me to prove my loyalty and worth with her attack…  hmm.  She did appear to fawn over me some - could she have been plotting to earn my love with her own ploy to make me look good?  Wheels within wheels...

And thus did an epic adventure to beatdown a lot of dudes start, an adventure I was 100% sure of completing successfully since that's just how these things go, and this appeared to be mostly a repeat of the war a year ago anyway.  Gharnef had his own mind-control powers and was back for some reason and had mind-controlled both the Arachnean emperor and a random orphange head to create super-Japanese stressed-out child assassins or something.  Considering how obsequiously everyone spoke of Arachnean 'Princess' (Queen?) Nyna, I advised Marth to wave around the Fire Emblem more often and point out how Nyna had chosen him, but he felt that this risked damaging his prized lockpick if he dropped it.  A shame.

As I suspect is well-known, the maps were interesting, and seemed to really favor my flying allies - lots of escaping thieves, lots of hard-to-cross terrain, and busted stats of doom.  Caeda capped her speed at Level 10 for example…  part of the reason I dislike the idea that characters could change classes, as it makes everyone a big pile of stats and encourages weird things like General Caeda so that her speed growth isn't 'wasted'.  Luckily, I knew that allowing class changes would merely lead to chaos, and thus ignored it.  Hordes of other recruits begged to join up, and who was I to deny allies?  I recruited them all, and then put them in a very large treasure chest specially constructed to keep them safe from all combat.  Some of the later recruits are just…  what.  You join with 15 speed when enemies have 20+ speed?  You will stay back over there…  far over there.  At least one recruit did allow me to bear the Tiara of Power, if but briefly:



I took it off later, as I found that wearing two pieces of the Regalia was too much for mortals to bear.

For the regular maps, the Eyepatch allowed me to interfere with enemy decision-making to a degree.  Awakening, for example, has an enemy commander who will notice if there's a potential KO to a target if every character attacks it and hits.  Using the Eyepatch, I was able to fuzz the enemy commanders into only noticing OHKOs, not team-up 2HKO/3HKOs, and force them to fall back to damage maximization when lacking a OHKO.  This was slightly awkward as often times unit safety depended on the order that the enemies made their moves in, and it was never clear how they'd respond to ties (notable for Glower mages!).  Still, it definitely allowed some more #YOLOy strategies than usual, so I can't complain too much.  What I can complain about was the Eyepatch restricting my sight.  Characters routinely have huge range in this game of 8-10, especially if you are running 2x mounted units, 2-3 flying units, and boots Marth.  Yet my vision was restricted to a comparatively small patch of ground!  No "press R to zoom out" function like in Awakening, either.  Too much scrolling back and forth trying to guess at the exact edge of the range of units from off-screen, the threat range indicators were unusually super-relevant here.

The side mission maps were more interesting.  They were all close-range knife-fights that seemed to usually be "win on turn 2 or lose for sure."  An interesting change of pace, for sure, and appreciated.  The Radd & Caesar map & Roros proved especially vexing until an adequete turn 2 strategy was deployed.  Hard mode Rorox7 (w/ ninja fast-attack respawns) for Godlike, bring it on Ashera.  Strangely enough, Katarina's army was by far the easiest - but of course she was merely offing her now useless subordinates so she could resume her attempts to seduce me.  I'll consider it, K, but let's wait until after the war for when my financial position is more secure.

The enemy's largest aces in the hole were their stealthy ninja reinforcements, of course.  Not even honorably announced in advance - perhaps they expected me to play through Normal first?  Luckily, my Eyepatch has a power equal to it: the SaveState Reload, whatever that means.  I'm not really sure how it works since as best I can tell I've never used it once, but sometimes I get this weird feeling that there was a bad future where ninjas slaughtered a unit, and I find myself making orders that just barely avert this.  Some form of precognition, perhaps?  If I have used it without knowing from the bad futures, though, I feel fairly little guilt over it.

The final maps were not too bad compared to the difficulty in some of the midgame.  I have to say, though, that if you're going to use mind control so often, you might as well have fun with it, Gharnef.  Why not have your Noble Bishops running around, hamming it up?  Might better explain why those Nyna-followers are attacking me & all, and you could have given Elice, you know, lines.

In the end, I assured Marth that there was no need to publicize his new chief Minister of the Treasury, as it was an extremely boring job that required no public oversight.  Just let me handle everything.  Yes, yes…  this makes more sense than Marth needing to be some kind of god-king worshipped as the sole savior when Marth constantly harps on how he's strong only because he has friends and allies and it would make no sense to bury the achievements of his uber-friend.  Good thing this explanation is false, as it's really stupid.  This way to the treasure vault, Katarina, our family will live well...

Kill count list / members used:

114 Anna - Well nobody else who uses axes is at all memorable or plotty or decent, so.  Even with 2x Arms Scroll use, never got beyond B in Bows, but whatever.
106 Cecille - Luke with worse everything except Speed & Skill, but Speed is the godstat, so that's okay.  Identical after both mostly capped out in the endgame.  High move still generally solid in FE12.
105 Luke - See above.  Generally good stats except speed but that eventually caps anyway.
85 Caeda - My first Falcoknight.  A tad shaky on the Strength side and Wing Spear doesn't murder everything, but.
79 Marth - Could have been even higher if he didn't cap level fairly easily.
78 Catria - Actually rode the bench toward the end due to horrible Dracoknight speed cap and capping a bunch of stats early.  But totally broke'd earlygame.
72 Palla - Falcoknight #2, so waited for awhile at 20/0. 
52 Merric - Not amazing, but I guess magic damage keeps enemies honest for the slower infantry troop.  Staves.
51 Linde - Nosferatu would be better if she wasn't so easily OHKO'd.  Really, really needs an Angelic Robe…  or two…  but you do have a reasonable budget for stat-boosters, so that's doable.
3 Yumina - Staves are really good in FE12.
2 Malicia - I'll certainly run 2 dedicated staff users (4 including the Sages).  Especially when totally randomly only the random Marth fangirl can use Hammerne.  Why??
0 Feena - Didn't run her earlygame, but she fills slots well and was often useful on the X chapters, and you fill out to 12 slots by endgame anyway.

17 Julian - I tried to build him up a little early, but not really worth it.  Just deploy him for mad lootz and be done with it.
10 Nagi - Well she OHKOs everything at base, and you can toss a speedwing or two her way and she won't even die to enemy turn action.  Kinda obsoletes Tiki, since it's bunch of dragon enemies (C10-C14) - Tiki joins - long Dragon drought - Nagi joins & a ton of dragons to kill.
4 Sirius - Killed some stuff on his join map, I guess.
3 Est - Oh hey, Est joins early in FE12, how novel, I must use her.  wait where did she go

Anyway, it was okay!  Very much in-between the meh that was Shadow Dragon and the awesome that is Awakening.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

So Suikoden III and V don't run particularly well on an emulator compared to most other games I've played. Which is odd.

Also I think S3's decision to have you play the boring beginning of every Suikoden where you are a messenger or errand boy and grocery delivery bitch both as Hugo and Chris, for double the boring, was not the best. Really hurts the game's ability to build momentum, which is something it really struggles with in general anyway.

[SnowFire]

So Suikoden III and V don't run particularly well on an emulator compared to most other games I've played. Which is odd.

Also I think S3's decision to have you play the boring beginning of every Suikoden where you are a messenger or errand boy and grocery delivery bitch both as Hugo and Chris, for double the boring, was not the best. Really hurts the game's ability to build momentum, which is something it really struggles with in general anyway.

I dunno.  Chapter 1 still isn't terribly long, and it certainly *ends* with a bang.  And you need some "normal time" with Lulu not during a crisis if the game wants you to appreciate his demise at all, so at least some time will get eaten by that.  Not sure that plot-wise either chapter could be sped up easily without losing something.  (You can always skip the St. Loa Knights I guess?!)

[Anthony Edward Stark]

So Suikoden III and V don't run particularly well on an emulator compared to most other games I've played. Which is odd.

Also I think S3's decision to have you play the boring beginning of every Suikoden where you are a messenger or errand boy and grocery delivery bitch both as Hugo and Chris, for double the boring, was not the best. Really hurts the game's ability to build momentum, which is something it really struggles with in general anyway.

I dunno.  Chapter 1 still isn't terribly long, and it certainly *ends* with a bang.  And you need some "normal time" with Lulu not during a crisis if the game wants you to appreciate his demise at all, so at least some time will get eaten by that.  Not sure that plot-wise either chapter could be sped up easily without losing something.  (You can always skip the St. Loa Knights I guess?!)

Correction: Hugo's chapter 1 ends with something big.  Chris' chapter 1 ends with her going back to the Zexen council to re-learn shit the player already knows.  It's an absolute wet fart.

They're certainly capable of setting up a first chapter as more than "run back and forth between two areas that have plot scenes until the end of the chapter" if they want.  Geddoe's Chapter 1 introduction does a great job of establishing basic personalities for each member of Geddoe's unit, showing us that tensions are rising and that you stand somewhat outside the conflict while still being nebulously involved.  Chris' chapter 1 is especially egregious.  You can cut everything before you show up to the actual treaty meeting and not lose anything important.  Everything before that exists to establish one of two things: plot-relevant details that the audience can infer pretty easily from Salome's dialogue (the Zexen council are shits, Chris is in charge because her bosses just died) or that Chris is the best at everything and a woman being good at things is supposed to be a novel enough concept that the audience should find her interesting because how can a girl be the best at everything that's so crazy?

There is maybe 15 minutes of stuff that actually NEEDED to be in her chapter 1.  Start as you leave for the meeting, fight battle, go back to Zexen, end.  That one segment in the battle even reiterates the character traits we've already learned.  Salome is smart, Borus is violent, Roland is kind of a shit.  There's even another scene with the Zexen Council at the end of Chris 1 so that the player gets that, yeah, what Salome said about the Council being up their asses isn't just him being judgmental, it's him being right.  It would also establish to the audience that Salome is someone who knows what he's talking about rather than someone who repeats things you already know.  As you said, the stuff with Hugo is supposed to make us feel bad when Lulu gets killed when he fucks up jumping someone from behind with a knife.  Most of Chris' chapter serves no purpose except to tell us stuff that is later repeated from other sources.

[SnowFire]

On Suiko3: Eh.  I'm going to cop-out and say I'd have to replay it to respond better.  Suffice to say I don't recall being excessively annoyed at an over-long exposition, but it's possible that's misty nostalgia.  Regardless, even if there is some fat, in absolute amount there isn't tons of it.  I'll rag on S3's inter-town travelling before its plot if I'm going to complain about pacing issues.

[SnowFire]

Pretty quiet here.  Time for more Wall o' Texts.  Was travelling recently, so time @airports and the like to burn.  So many portable games to play, so much new blood…   what should be next…  hmm, I know.

Fire Emblem: Awakening, playthrough #4.
Once, there was a strategist named Karl M.  He desired a classless Fire Emblem, where all were equal and none were jealous of the other.  This proved inadvisable, as everyone had their own unique talents.  So he settled for the next best thing: a leveless society, where all had equallish talents, and none were left behind to fester in the Barracks.  You have nothing to lose but your chains, Ylliseans.

Yup, inspired by Elf's epic Path of Radiance equal level exploits.  Goal is to keep everybody equal in level and see what happens.  I have some complaints about how Lunatic enemies were stat'd up; this might be an interesting alternate 'challenge' playthrough.

* Fun first, rules second.  This isn't GameFAQs, I'm doing this for my own amusement.

* Casual mode, but only for allowing in-battle saves (e.g. like Radiant Dawn), no deaths allowed until the final mission, recruit everyone.  If things go pear-shaped toward the end, I might relax this, but it'd be basically conceding defeat.  I'm not cheesing level-ups.  Having in-battle saves makes things like misremembering the timing on ninja reinforcements a lot less stressful and thus more fun, see rule #1.

* In general, deploy the lowest level units available.  Exceptions:
** It's always legit to deploy Chrom (req'd anyway!) & the Avatar.  I'm not going to force them to hang back if their level is "too high."  (e.g. Chrom is level 11 right now, I'm deploying mostly level 10 characters with some level 10 characters left benched, but whatever, I'll still use him, just sparingly.  Avatar is level 13 but also has Veteran so that feels the sameish, I don't like "punishing" him for Veteran.)
** It's acceptable to deploy someone slightly too high level as a pair-up - e.g. a level 9 character's future wife is level 11, there are still level 10 units undeployed, fine, whatever, it's a level off.  (It's the kind of thing that having a super pre-planned XP schedule might fix anyway but that'd be no fun.)  If the difference is huge then the other character is only acceptable if never switched to the front.  (Only time that really has mattered so far is deploying Fred as strict pair-up bait for Sumia.)
** It's always legit to deploy the lowest-level healer.  I'll probably upgrade this to "two lowest-level staff users" for the larger deploy maps.  (Otherwise, you're talking about chugging even more potions due to having to be sparing on the healing lest not being able to deploy a healer at all.)

* No Risen grinding or DLC in general, although...
** Olivia, if she is a dancer, can legitimately use DLC (EXPonential Growth) to catch up to the current lowest level if desired.  (Also known as "dance grinding for XP after the map is 95% cleared but way faster".)
** A low XP DLC map is legit for grinding up Lissa & Maribelle supports later.  (This is a completionist runthrough, and I'm not getting Owain or Brady if their moms are played as healers.)
** I *might* concede a Risen map or two later depending on how dire the kids end up being.  We'll see.

* Buying stuff from SpotPass teams is legit.  Renown awards & DLC bonuses are not.
** … except that I did get the L Bullion off Renown more for early annoyance reduction than power.  Less rotating of items between everyone.  (There's still a lot, but it's pretty convenient with the UI - nice faint overlay for who has the item currently, and a green sword icon for "this unit is deployed.")

Finished C10, C11 is up next, aka Gangrel's map.  Everybody is level 10-11 at the moment (okay, 1 straggler at L9/94 XP, and Stahl & Gregor at level 12.  Avatar is L13, Lissa & Maribelle are L14, Fred/Anna/Libra are starting levels.)  Random enemies on this map are L14 usually, with some promoted units as a special surprise.  This is where this run will start to get interesting, I imagine.

Also, normally I'd be inclined to alternate M/F/M/F on Avatar genders by playthrough, but…   Chrom has already married Sumia/FemAvatar/Maribelle, so I'm doing Chrom/Olivia this runthrough.  This means keeping Chrom a safe distance from all marriageable females, and trying to keep FRobin's grubby paws off Chrom is tricky, so it's still bro time, hence Karl Marx but not Emma Goldman.  (I somehow managed to get Chrom/Sully to C support accidentally, but Sully also got the first marriage in Sully/Donnel just at the end of C10, so that is dealt with anyway.)  Speaking of Donnel, I'm going to keep him a Villager until L15.  Risky since his Axe rank will be shenanigans later, but I figure if Underdog is ever worth anything, it'll be at its best in this playthrough.

[Meeplelard]

Ni No Kuni: Beat a giant lava minotaur thing.  You know, this fight would have been somewhat easier if the AI had any inclinct of a survival instinct.  Enemy announces a big attack, and they sit there and take it, instead of either trying to run out of way (do-able given it's got some Tales Battle System elements in there) OR put up Defend/Evasion like the game made a point of "If you see enemy charging something big, USE THESE!!!"

As a result, big MT attack goes off, you see your PC either dodge or take like 11 damage when the other PC takes like 50.  This is a game with expensive resurrection too, so a character dying can be a pretty big deal, at least this early anyway.

[Dark Holy Elf]

On Suiko3: Eh.  I'm going to cop-out and say I'd have to replay it to respond better.  Suffice to say I don't recall being excessively annoyed at an over-long exposition, but it's possible that's misty nostalgia.  Regardless, even if there is some fat, in absolute amount there isn't tons of it.  I'll rag on S3's inter-town travelling before its plot if I'm going to complain about pacing issues.

As someone who has played the game within the past few years, just posting to second this. While it's true that you could cut some stuff for Chris 1, the extra material there gives you a chance to see the characters bounce off some different situations and I generally enjoyed it.

[Captain K.]

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate:  Decided to buy this on a whim.  Never played a MH game before except 3's demo, which I disliked.  But I heard this one was more accessible so went for it.

Started off with sword and shield, but found myself whiffing attacks past enemies too much.  Changed to Switch Axe which I like a lot, good range and speed.  Just finished the 2-star quests in the first town and did an expedition.

[Luther Lansfeld]

DDR II - I have mostly been sticking to Difficult 6 songs, but I will probably try to move up soon. I was thinking when I walked home from the grocery store about how awesome it would be if Janelle Monae's Q.U.E.E.N was a song for DDR. I think I''d be really motivated to play it then.

Bayonetta - I ended up finishing the game on Normal. After a bit of a slow start, I think the game becomes quite enjoyable aside from the odd quirk (the shooter stage, while not as bad as the 360 version, could have done without the spinning, and the little shooter part in the third to last stage was kind of weird and annoying). The gameplay is relatively simple but challenging, and the game is always throwing new quirks at you. Grace and Glory were probably created by Satan. Luka and Bayonetta's interactions are amusing, the main villain manages to make an impact with a small number of scenes, and you get to punch God into the sun at the end. Game probably ends up my favorite 3D action game just based on strong gameplay (without horrible camera issues like DMC1).

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker - I've almost finished this, I think. It's a cute little game, but I'm glad it's not very long because it is definitely a bit repetitive after a while. It reminds me somewhat of Kirby, in that it mostly floats by on its cuteness.

Long Live the Queen - I got this game as part of a Humble Bundle sale, and played through it a few times, trying to get different outcomes and endings. It's a fun enough game to play around with and I was addicted to it for about a day, but I'm done with it now.

Paper Mario - This game's beginning is hella unexciting. Hopefully it gets better!

[Sierra]

Chrono Trigger: My sister was complaining about how she went looking for a fun FF game and wound up with FFXIII instead, so I got nostalgic about way back when Square still knew how to make fun games. There's actually some pretty heinous lag on the version I'm playing though (PSN version, so I think it's an artifact of this being ported from the PSX release; a number of the PSX FF reissues had that problem). Just got to the future, still hungry.

[NotMiki]

DDR II - I have mostly been sticking to Difficult 6 songs, but I will probably try to move up soon. I was thinking when I walked home from the grocery store about how awesome it would be if Janelle Monae's Q.U.E.E.N was a song for DDR. I think I''d be really motivated to play it then.

One of the 360 DDR games has Walk Like an Egyptian.  It's p. great.

[Meeplelard]

Ni No Kuni:  You know, game, throwing a big intimidating plot boss that you have to wear down to half health out of nowhere, that you can legitimately die too thanks to powerful attacks, some of which are MT and hard to counter, and THEN go "oh, yeah, there's the two commands that are integral to make this battle system work since it gives you limited control over AI Partners to let them defend and conserve MP!" is not good game design.  Honestly, "All Out Defend" and "All Out Attack" literally address two of my major complaints about the game's battle system thus far:

-AI Partners being too stupid to use Defend/Evade against major telegraphed attacks.  The game makes a point of telling you exactly how to use this, shows you why it's such a big deal, and you actually make full use of this...then the game makes boss fights designed basically to screw over your allies, essentially turning every fight into Solo Fights (There is resurrection but it's rather pricey at 500 per Phoenix Feather when having 2000 is considered "A lot" in this game, at least the point of the game I'm in.)

-Resource limitations.  The game so far has been really bad about this.  Your MP totals are in the 2 digits, and some attacks cost that much, and your AI loves to use them unless you tell them not to do it ever, in which case, they're not doing things like healing and leads to situations like "Oh crap, I forgot to turn them back on!"   Add in how pricey MP Healing is, as well as how weak it is (basic MP Healing heals 10 MP, and costs 200; my MP scores are like 89/65/39, and some spells cost as much as 18) and you have yourself a game that is a massive resource crunch.  There are Blue orbs you can collect but they heal like 5 each and aren't reliable enough.
See, what makes Tales games use the same system but work is a few design choices around them.  Tales games generally recover a small portion of TP after fights, and eventually they instituted it where you get MP Back from using basic physicals.  Additionally, Orange Gels (let alone improvements like Pine) are cost effective, so if you need more TP in a pinch, you're good.

Yeah, I know I keep having nothing negative to say about this game, but I don't hate it as much as it may sound; it's just the game has so many bad design decisions that hurt any other qualities it can have.  Really feels like the game either needed another play-test to hammer out the kinks or people were designing different parts of the game without consulting one another,leading to design philosophies that clash.  Like the resources, MP limitations would make sense if the game restored some MP after every fight.

[Grefter]

Dark Souls 2 - Got up to Fume Knight in the Iron King DLC.  I have used all my wedges prior to getting here, so one short.  Just got punished for exploring.  That is some serious fucking bullshit right there.

Edit - Another boss fight in DLC where it quickly approaches anti-fun.  It isn't quite Kalameet shitty, but it is no fucking Artorius that is for sure.

[Fenrir]

P4 Golden Very Hard Solo:

Momentary Child

Mementary Child has purely physical damage, an ice weakness, and he has to waste a turn, to use his best skill Deathbound. He's bad.
OK he has ONE trick: He can raise his damage and crit rate with Rebellion and Tarukaja. If he got a critical attack under Tarukaja, that COULD have been bad news. Fortunately as long as I defended before he used Deathbound, I was in no danger at any point

Level 33


Killing Hand

Killing Hand, if alone, uses Deathbound, then summons some healing Hand (Which Casts Diarama on Killing Hand nonstop, and has an ice weakness)
Otherwise it only uses physical attacks. It has no weaknesses.

The healing hand cannot be killed with 2 Mabufulas, and it's immune to Dizzy so it always gets one turn to cast Diarama, maybe two.

Plan A was trying to kill the healing hand everytime it was summoned, but it was a huge resource drain and I just didn't have enough SP healing.
Plan B went as follow: Smack the Killing Hand with physical attacks, let the healing hand heal him with Diarama everytime, until the healing hand runs out of SPs. (this takes 39 Diaramas) Afterwards, let it be useless and destroy the killing hand with whatever.
It worked pretty well.
Level 37


Shadow Mitsuo

All his attacks are allmighty so I can't defend myself against them. And they do huge damage.
Time for some ultra grinding.



Phoenix Wright DD: Got this on the iphone. The formula is getting old. I think the mechanics of the series really need to innovate at this point beyond introducing one convoluted new gadget every game.
It's still a pretty decent timewaster so I'll probably finish it!

[jsh357]

Ni No Kuni:  You know, game, throwing a big intimidating plot boss that you have to wear down to half health out of nowhere, that you can legitimately die too thanks to powerful attacks, some of which are MT and hard to counter, and THEN go "oh, yeah, there's the two commands that are integral to make this battle system work since it gives you limited control over AI Partners to let them defend and conserve MP!" is not good game design.  Honestly, "All Out Defend" and "All Out Attack" literally address two of my major complaints about the game's battle system thus far:

-AI Partners being too stupid to use Defend/Evade against major telegraphed attacks.  The game makes a point of telling you exactly how to use this, shows you why it's such a big deal, and you actually make full use of this...then the game makes boss fights designed basically to screw over your allies, essentially turning every fight into Solo Fights (There is resurrection but it's rather pricey at 500 per Phoenix Feather when having 2000 is considered "A lot" in this game, at least the point of the game I'm in.)

-Resource limitations.  The game so far has been really bad about this.  Your MP totals are in the 2 digits, and some attacks cost that much, and your AI loves to use them unless you tell them not to do it ever, in which case, they're not doing things like healing and leads to situations like "Oh crap, I forgot to turn them back on!"   Add in how pricey MP Healing is, as well as how weak it is (basic MP Healing heals 10 MP, and costs 200; my MP scores are like 89/65/39, and some spells cost as much as 18) and you have yourself a game that is a massive resource crunch.  There are Blue orbs you can collect but they heal like 5 each and aren't reliable enough.
See, what makes Tales games use the same system but work is a few design choices around them.  Tales games generally recover a small portion of TP after fights, and eventually they instituted it where you get MP Back from using basic physicals.  Additionally, Orange Gels (let alone improvements like Pine) are cost effective, so if you need more TP in a pinch, you're good.

Yeah, I know I keep having nothing negative to say about this game, but I don't hate it as much as it may sound; it's just the game has so many bad design decisions that hurt any other qualities it can have.  Really feels like the game either needed another play-test to hammer out the kinks or people were designing different parts of the game without consulting one another,leading to design philosophies that clash.  Like the resources, MP limitations would make sense if the game restored some MP after every fight.

The scary thing is that this version of NNK is an expanded version of the original DS release, so they had an entire game release worth of feedback to go on and still didn't fix many of the problems.

[Sierra]

Dark Souls 2 - Got up to Fume Knight in the Iron King DLC.  I have used all my wedges prior to getting here, so one short.  Just got punished for exploring.  That is some serious fucking bullshit right there.

Edit - Another boss fight in DLC where it quickly approaches anti-fun.  It isn't quite Kalameet shitty, but it is no fucking Artorius that is for sure.

I actually like Fume Knight more than most of the original bosses because he's genuinely difficult and satisfying to dodgehax against, but he's definitely super frustrating at first (I fought him first with pugilism souls on NG+, where he can easily kill you in one hit. It was pain). Nothing in his arsenal is undodgeable BS, but he just does so much fucking damage. I'm aware this is not a welcome suggestion, but blocking = probably not ideal here. I see people try it all the time and even with heavy shields he seems capable of wearing you down very quickly. He'll just rip right through your stamina and deal a ton of fire damage anyway (if he's in FRUE POWER mode). Gyrm greatshield sounds preferable if you have to, though? Think it has top fire resist.

Don't bother with the NPC summons at all. Neither of them contribute enough damage to offset the durability boost they give the boss (despite Ellie having the right damage type for that fight), and Carhillion in particular is probably the most worthless summon in the game. Contributes almost no damage because DS2 sorcery, and dies almost immediately. Should probably be easy to get PC summons there at least since goddamn everyone wants help with that fight.

The last wedge is found after beating Sir Alonne. Who can only be fought after Fume Knight. (Sir Alonne is the Artorias caliber fight, pity it's such a bitch getting to him.) I was lucky first time and overlooked one of the statues so I actually had a spare wedge by the time I got to the bottom of the tower. On replays I purposefully leave the top statue intact for last because it does nothing to help any enemies. Obviously not helpful advice for you at this point, though.

[Grefter]

With a little bit of distance I think I know why it irks me compared to Artorius.

The no shield thing I had worked out and that is part of it.  Having to fully Jedi the fight feels shitty with the damage he does.  Being able to block even part of it would feel like I am using more of me verb set and have more choices (Artorius I could block the first 2 swings of the three hit combo).

The damage punishes significantly harder than Artorius.  Artorius would 2 shot me, but it was enough that I could heal and take another hit, I pretty much need to double Estus to survive another hit.  Artorius also left a consistent opening on a timer in which you can heal.

The HP pool on this fucker is stupid stupid big.  The fight drags on and on and on.  It just amplifies the chance of failure.  I have +10 Mace and 40 Strength.  The only way I am getting more damage out is getting a new Ring of Blades (which would involve beating Smelter lol) and going and getting stuff from other DLC (flynn's Ring?).

I guess I go do The Gutter and kill the Rotten and keep going there.  Maybe I get Velstadt helmet and see if only learning one phase helps (because phase one is kind of shitty as well).

Also I had no luck getting summons or summoning either.  Not sure if it is a regional problem or if it is just a timing thing

Having to learn two phases is super shitty. 

[Sierra]

He definitely does have way too much HP. All of the DLC bosses are notably more durable than the maingame ones, but he's worse about it than most (POIZN dragon might have more, not sure).

Flynn's Ring is great, but only if you travel light. +50 attack power, you've basically got another Ring of Blades +2 on, but the bonus scales down according to your carrying capacity. As long as your max load is less than 60 (I think? It's 14 or less VIT, or 9 VIT + Third Dragon Ring) you get the full bonus; anything more than that and the ring gradually decreases in effectiveness. This is fine for me since I always ignore VIT and wear light armor, but I dunno what you're using.

If you're doing this sorta early in the game (even as early as like mid-game levels), which it sounds like you are if all the Old Ones aren't even dead yet, then there's a decent chance low soul memory kept you from matching anyone. Personally I don't mess with any of the DLC bosses until maingame stuff is cleared. They're just so much meaner.

[Meeplelard]

Ni No Kuni: Got to Hamelin.  This game's interpretation of Fairies is...well, points for DIFFERENT I guess.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: I threw Bullet Bills at a giant mec piloted by Bowser Jr., then proceeded to do 5 more Stars in the next world because shut up.

[AndrewRogue]

Phoenix Wright DD: Got this on the iphone. The formula is getting old. I think the mechanics of the series really need to innovate at this point beyond introducing one convoluted new gadget every game.
It's still a pretty decent timewaster so I'll probably finish it!

Oh wow. Did not expect this to get the iPhone port. Neat. One less reason to want a 3DS.

[Fenrir]

Yeah, the port is good and the platform is a perfect fit. You only lose the 3d effects, and no one cares in 2015.
You can save anywhere so the life bar doesn't have mich of a point, I don't know if that was in the original game.
The first trilogy and Ghost Trick also got ported.

[Grefter]

Darn Souls 2 - Beat Rotten.  Had to look up where to go and shit to get to Drangleic.  Then had to look it up again to work out how to get to Aldia's Keep.  The fact that they are both from the same area is both depressing and shows a greater need for direction.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, the port is good and the platform is a perfect fit. You only lose the 3d effects, and no one cares in 2015.
You can save anywhere so the life bar doesn't have mich of a point, I don't know if that was in the original game.
The first trilogy and Ghost Trick also got ported.

You could actually save anywhere in every Ace Attorney game. The only difference is that in the older ones, if you forgot to save, and you died, that you would have to redo everything since you last saved (a colossal waste of time in a text adventure; unlike in Mega Man, Dark Souls, etc., you aren't proving anything by re-reading text and remaking decisions you now know the answers for). Dual Destinies finally figured out that was stupid and now the game picks up from just before where you died even if you haven't saved recently. This makes the life bar entirely for personal pride but I'm fine with that.

I actually thought all the polish improvements in DD (along with the usual high quality of writing) made the game one of the most enjoyable in the series; I didn't really see the need for much innovation beyond that.


For my own gaming, I have started Bayonetta 2 (seems a lot like the first, but that's not a bad thing) and am still playing KIU... one chapter away from beating them all on intensity 7, and have now beaten several on 9. Hooray~