Nier - Finished the B ending, or second playthrough, or whatever you want to call it.
The second playthrough really helps round out Nier as a game. A lot of the plot makes a lot more sense, and it's rather thought-provoking and definitely leaves an open question as to whether the actions of the characters are justified. Overall I feel like the game managed to create a conflict with no truly bad characters and where so much conflict just comes from miscommunication and assuming the worst of others, and that's pretty interesting.
Kaine backstory was also nice. I ended up really liking all four of the "main party" cast. None are among my favourite characters ever, but they were all super-memorable and brought something interesting to the table. Rest of the cast is mostly just there. I liked the final dungeon duo but I felt if you're going to pull that with those characters, that you should do more with it? Most pointless character award certainly goes to Noir; I'm not even sure if the game was just kinda trolling you with that. Then again he's Weiss' anime rival, and as such I conclude he gets about as much screentime/importance as anime rivals deserve.
It's not the best-written game ever or anything; it's really more about its broad concepts and some of the executions could be better. There are a few things that I wish the second playthrough had helped more than it did (Aerie sequeunce remained unsatisfying). But overall it's a breath of fresh air.
The music is great. I was a bit skeptical since I'm not a fan of most game vocals and I was worried that the music would be of that overdramatic vocal type... but I can really only think of one, maybe two tracks that fell flat in that regard to me. Most of the rest was really outstanding. Special shout-out to Hills of Radiant Wind being so good, since you hear it a fuck-ton and music you hear a fuck-ton being good is very, very important to me. (I'll take reasons why Chrono Cross soundtrack is unimpressive for $100, Alex.) Music direction is also stellar and I loved how various themes reappeared in certain places and how extra instruments would fade in and out depending on location and how a cutscene proceeded.
Gameplay... sigh. "Clearly worse than Devil May Cry 2" sums it up. I play plenty of action games and this is one that just feels obviously lazy, and rather bland. There are some good ideas with the bullet hell sequences but once you realise you can just block it who cares. I will give it this: it isn't aggressively bad. I can think of virtually no times the gameplay actively annoyed me. It was just there, something to get through before seeing more of the story, characters, and world. But it's still disappointing. Also given the emphasis on the party, I feel an opportunity was missed to give it a turn-based party-oriented RPG combat system. I'd love it if this game had FF4's battle system and I shouldn't be saying that about the game. Just imagine if it was anything like Wild Arms 4... *swoons*
I've seen some people say the game has bad graphics? I guess I just don't care that much. It has decent CG sequences where you can clearly make out facial expressions and that adds a lot to cutscenes and that's really the most important thing I can say about graphics.
Overall good game but I still have no idea how good. It's not as good as, say, Suikoden V to me, a game that I even more unequivocally like the writing of and find the character growth system more appealing. Probably somewhere in the vicinity of 6/10, but after the second playthrough it that feels like it's more likely to be a lowball estimate than the highball I would have called it before. And regardless of what rating it earns it is certainly an interesting game and would be high on my list of things to recommend from the (generally unimpressive) PS/360 generation.
New Super Mario Bros. U - Beat Bowser, now working on getting the remaining star coins (I have almost all of them) and doing the ninth world, which will be truly uncharted territory since we didn't do that in our group play of the game.
Wild Arms 4 silly challenge run continues
Enil - Somehow she is even worse than normal because Jude's dinky physical means he barely does any damage to his allies when killing their clones, not much to say past that.
Silver Star Express - The soldier fights here can be pretty rough. Dreadnoughts counter everything but hitting the hex with Misery, which sucks. Chemical Fighters do damage + disease which isn't as bad overall but occasionally can be nasty, and does favour not stalling. Pyro Gunners are the real problem, though, since their fire damage really stings, and poison is always bad. Still, it's the combinations which can be tricky. Resist Fire and Dispel both see some use here, and Genocide Edge, which I learned in Etemenanki, comes in handy a couple times. One reset on a fight with two Chemical Fighters and two Pyros.
Tank Vehicle - He's nasty, wrecking the party fast due to starting adjacent and being fast. Jude moves to hopefully distract him, but no good; Yulie and Raquel die. Arnaud uses Illusion and Jude uses Short Circuit, I win.
Balgaine - Jude and Raquel get in his face in the centre hex, Yulie and Arnaud in corners he never attacks. No real use for Arnaud since I don't have Reinforce. Jude Short Circuit, Raquel Poison Bite then Dragon Edge, Yulie Revive. Straightforward. Sadly I screw up and have people dead when Balgaine dies from poison.
Tony 3 - Like Tank Vehicle he brings the offence, but loses a valuable turn stepping forward, and Illusion is shutdown again. Kresnik is super-tanky compared to what I'm used to so that doesn't help Tony's cause much.
Super Soldier (5 resets) - This fight. THIS FIGHT. Okay, Super Soldier opens with Blast, 2HKOing everyone except Yulie and sometimes Arnaud. He gets a second turn before Arnaud's first, and will happily complete the 2HKO. Fortunately, moving Jude forward gives him a new target (and one he can melee, so usually Jude gets hit). Sometimes Super Soldier will move turn 2 instead, which is great. Jude sometimes dies from now, sometimes not. If he does he's not coming back; that's a Yulie turn I can never afford.
From here, a few difficulties present myself, namely that Arnaud's elemental blasts don't OHKO, Jude's Phantom Lines don't OHKO, and Material... is borderline. With a lack of great offensive options I instead spend my first Arnaud turn jumping to an elemental hex (bringing Yulie and Raquel), and Illusioning the adjacent enemies. If Super Soldier has moved, I jump adjacent to him to hopefully eat up most of his turns with this. Otherwise whatever. I defaulted to jumping to the fight but in hindsight this was a bad idea probably as whichever enemy I go adjacent to often wastes turns moving, and it's good if the the soldier on the right does that since sometimes he'll order everyone else to attack with his own melee attack and that sucks.
Yulie's first turn is tricky. I toy with various strategies, such as Material and Protecting to make her mostly immune to Blasts, but eventually realise the best idea is just to Heal (in WA4! Yes!), which maximises the chance of both Arnaud and critically, Raquel being alive. Because from here on, if both live to get a turn, especially with Illusion evade effects, there's a decent chance I get off Genocide Edge, which kills all the soldiers except the leader. From there on, Illusion is hopefully enough. On my winning run, Yulie does die, but that's okay, the others finish the job with Raquel landing a nasty elemental Dragon Edge.
Tough, and I definitely need some luck in the opening rounds (either Magic Blocker or Super Soldier moving), but a fun fight and eventually I get through.
Prototype Gear (3 resets) - Gets two turns immediately. Can OHKO Yulie or Arnaud (unless Arnaud dodges) or ID them with Radious Breath. This fight is kinda RNG because if they die before I get a turn I'm not winning (Jude's Short Circuit hitting the fourth boss out of the last five does make a game of it, but it's not enough). So I pretty much need to hope that either Prototype Gear misses with ID twice (at least on Yulie), or he decides to move.
Eventually he does move (downwards) without killing Yulie, at which point I'm able to have Jude and Arnaud close in to surround him while Yulie is outside of his range. That's game! All his attacks hit adjacent hexes or a line, and Yulie can revive. If he'd moved to the centre I could try to accomplish the same thing with Isolate.
Actually the end of this fight is a bit dicy as at one point Prototype Gear breaks out of Illusion and goes on a badass run and kills everyone but Yulie. Reviving actually isn't that easy, but Arnaud is the best bet, and if he lives long enough for Illusion I can probably count on getting others up too. I am a bit worried about Yulie's MP though, for a moment.
Augst - I'd kinda like to give the kill to Yulie but he absorbs elements so I'd have to chip him down to like 100 HP or take ages letting Yulie tap away at him, no thanks. Nothing else to say about this fight!
The break point fight in Dragon Fossil Mine is a real bitch. Both the Necromancer and the two Helter Skelters can order focused attacks which wreck me utterly. Usual problem of OHKOs being hard, even with Yulie being able to pull them with Hi-Sanctify. Necromancers randomly evade magic (including Sanctify) and this is awful. I have to reload and come back with a different skill loadout, the key change being the addition of Hi-Blast, which allows Arnaud to one-shot even without the fire hex (and has a chance to one-shot Necromancers with the fire hex). And then just pray to the RNG gods.
At this point everything is getting nastier. Fortunately the next run of bosses isn't that amazing (I hope) at least until Reclaimer Dragon. We'll see, though.
