What Games are you playing 2015?

[DjinnAndTonic]

Glad to hear you're enjoying Code Name STEAM it's a really fun new game by IntSys and...

OMG you're playing Rondo of Swords.

I have a stat topic for that if you're interested. http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6523.0.html

General thoughts on how to play optimally:
Mages suck in the beginning, but are basically your best source of damage late. Make sure you train a few.
Elmer and Selmer are traps. Make sure you get the bonus mission in Ch8 by saving all the townspeople so you can get Cotton. Cotton is the best mage unit in the game out of the box. Marie has to be babied to make her work but she's the best healer in the game if you can do it. If you go the awesome story route, you won't get to keep Marie, so consider training Igraine, but if you can get by with just Cotton until Ch17, you get Aegil the Laser Pope, who requires a little babying but not too much and makes a great in-your-face mage with decent healing. Arios is fine, but kind of a trap as he doesn't become super awesome until VERY late, though he's serviceable if you just want a basic mage. Yumiluna and Galahad are too late to bother with, honestly.

ZOC is the most important skill in the game, and you only need level 2 of it, anything after that is kinda useless. Only Margus and the main on one path (the awesome path) get it early enough to matter much, but you can certainly get some use out of any of the PCs who get it.

Archers are the best units in the game. They can move and attack at range in a single turn. Their only flaw is being stuck hitting only one target in a turn ever. Ansom is likely the only Archer you'll ever get. The other one is good but extremely late-game. If you can stand it, sending Ansom on his Tarot quest will make him stupid-powerful.

The next best fighter is Alhambra, and also a good candidate for sending on Tarot quests. She gets a lot of good skills and gets them early and her stupid-high movement range directly equates to hitting more targets per turn.

Rukia and Owl are complete traps, don't touch them.

The only other thing to look at is whether a fighter has good range and whether you want their Tarot quest skill as you can only get so many of those. Sasha is decent if you get her Tarot quest. Izuna is good for ST damage. Simon eventually gets ZOC and has great range. Kay is decent early, but you'll probably wanna drop him for Simon or Alhambra.

General priority is Ansom >> Margus > Alhambra > Cotton = Marie = Aegil > Serdic >>>>>> Everyone else (Arios > Simon > Igraine > Yumiluna > Izuna > Sasha > Kay > Shino) >>>> Late-joiners (Naji > Alicia > Al > Galahad) >>>>> absolutely useless (Selmer > Owl > Elmer >>>>>>> Rukia)

Seriously, never use Rukia. Her only use is buying and selling stuff. Note that you should only use Shino if you're gonna use Izuna, which means that Shino is basically useless until Ch19, four chapters after you get her, and requires that you fulfill the secret requirements to get Ch19 to recruit Izuna.

The only items that matter are Move+ items and DEFENSE. Defense from Items doubles as partial magic resistance in this game, with the magic stat being the other half of the magic defense equation, though generally just load on the Item Defense as it performs double-duty. This makes it more important than the Passive skills that boost Def and Mag.Def, so I'd focus on increasing Atk and Mag there first, assuming the PC has those passives. Obviously boost Movement and Regen before that though. If you're not sure what a passive skill does or when a unit gets what skill... consult a FAQ, you'll always be glad you did!

Promoting characters is really tough, you have to find their promotion items through quests and such and then send the character to get promoted AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I highly suggest looking up how these things appear as it's quite complex and you will NOT manage to promote your whole chosen team if you aren't planning it out ASAP.

(Note: Not actually that complex, just the game tells you nothing so you have to keep track of how it works yourself. Much like EVERYTHING in this beautiful yet unpolished gem.)

[Magetastica]

How do Tarot quests work? Like, how do I know which one is for whom/What do they do/etc?

[SnowFire]

Hey now, Shino counts as a bit of an archer.  Well.  "Physical ranged unit with move & attack."

Something the LP pointed out is that it's sorta too bad that your deploy cap is 6.  I mean, 6 is the right number, keeping track of WTF is going on is crazy enough at that amount and balancing around a larger deploy would require even more BS, but definitely makes it hard to experiment.  Serdic is required, a healer is pseudo-required so one of Marie/Aegil/Yumiluna, and another ZOC tank to go with Serdic is highly recommended (Margus)...  that leaves 3 slots to be fought over by a *lot* of characters.

At least RoS is way better than, say, FE12 at having the characters be unique so which ones you pick matters.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Oh. You haven't been doing Tarot quests? Well then you can prolly only get two people their stuff. I recommend Ansom and Alhambra. Tarot quests are missions that show up between maps where you can send a character out on it to learn a skill. They have to do this for three maps for their first skill, and six maps for their (usually amazing) second skill. You'll know the tarot quests by then being named after tarot cards. They aren't necessary but they are awesome. Particularly Ansom and Alhambra, though anyone you use prolly wants those passives. Notably, Serdic, Marie, and Aegil don't have Tarot Skills, they just naturally have passives.

Shino is also a Ranged Fighter AND has magic so yeah, she can be useful if you just can't decide who to use for a sixth slot or if someone is gone on a Tarot quest and you need that ranged damage and mobility.

[Fenrir]

Hm, are you using controllers? I use a PS4 one (or XBox 360) and have never had problems with Niddhogg.

Yeah, the Jackbox has a lot of references to American culture and the trivia parts do require some knowledge of the US so that may not be a great option for you.

Have you played Gang Beasts? It looks really stupid but it could be fun if you're drinking with a group.

Yeah I used 360 controls, it's just that the controls feel weird I guess.
I'll get Gang Beasts when it's released on PS4!


Dark Souls 2: El Cid I have your tiara.
I went through the Sunken City, I really do think this is the best part of Dark Souls 2.
I threw my Murakumo +10 away as soon as I got the whip blade thing, and respecced to get 40 dex.
There are a lot of cool NPCs you can summon against bosses, they're pretty much all traps.



Dragon Age Inquisition: The Dragon Age team at Bioware is still way inferior to Mass Effect team. You really have to admire how the ME team made everyone get attached to their Shepard. Here, I already don't really care about my inquisitor.

The dialogue in this game really makes me feel like I'm watching an average sitcom / cheap Game of Thrones knockoff.
I am going to be a huge jerk to everybody, and basically not get any friendship/romance points ever.
I'll try a Solo nightmare difficulty challenge right away #YOLO, maybe scale back later on.
 
Even more so than in Dragon Age 2, it feels like the game is designed towards controling one character only and having AI do the rest. There is still one option to control the entire battlefield, but it is barely explained and feels really poorly conceived.

[The Duck]

Douchebag inquisitor could at least be pretty funny instead of bland. I think you can end up punching certain characters and party members will leave of their own volition because you are so terrible.

I played on Hard and felt that Nightmare would just be a fucking chore. I think the combat in that game is bad anyway so prolonging it would not be a great thing to do.

[Sierra]

Dark Souls 2: El Cid I have your tiara.
I went through the Sunken City, I really do think this is the best part of Dark Souls 2.
I threw my Murakumo +10 away as soon as I got the whip blade thing, and respecced to get 40 dex.
There are a lot of cool NPCs you can summon against bosses, they're pretty much all traps.

Excellent. I'll definitely be stalking you the next time we're both online.

I like the bosses better in Brume Tower, but Shulva is probably the better designed zone. The cursed side areas you have to backtrack for bug me a little in Brume Tower. As for the NPCs, yeahhhh most are varieties of not good:

vs Elana: Benhart is as useless as ever and Ellie shames pugilists everywhere. Next!
vs Sinh: Dragonbro's actually pretty hardcore, I recommend him. Not!Licia's pretty decent about keeping herself alive (and I think she can MT heal?) but she deals like no damage.
vs gank squad: Both options are amazingly incompetent and unlikely to survive the boss fight. Also, if you choose to run past the mooks straight to the fog gate (which you should), your friends will not.

vs Fume Knight: Carhillion is probably the worst summon in the game. He dies almost immediately and has only magic to use against a buffed DLC boss. Ellie at least has the right damage type for this fight but she's still pretty incompetent. I don't think either option contributes enough to offset the durability boost they give the boss.
vs Sir Alonne: Stop gesturing and hit the boss, already!
vs Smelty mk. 2: Stop gesturing and hit the boss already, armadillo chick! For fuck's sake.

vs Aava: Ellie's relatively non-terrible here for the first and only time. Not great. But not terrible.
vs Ivory King: Twiggy has the bell hat but flipside he's also an archer. Lucatiel is just Lucatiel. She's an okay distraction but doesn't live long enough on higher difficulties. Neither's a huge help beyond the simple fact that you want raw numbers to get through the mob.
vs Aava x2: Vengarl's decent. Not!Licia is no more helpful than she was vs Sinh. Being elementally reliant is super bad vs buffed DLC bosses.

So yeah, mostly a wash. The maingame NPC phantoms unique to Scholar, on the other hand, are almost universally badass.

~

Bloodborne: So I thought this time I'd actually clear out the top floor of Mergo's tower, see what's actually hiding in the stray corners instead of just running straight through because of ohgodohgodohgod. Turns out there's lots of ore up there. Nice. While I'm doing this, attempting to sneak up on a death pig for proper anus reaming goes awry as he turns around when I'm right behind him. Holy shit! This is bad for obvious mechanical reasons because 2,000 pounds of angry death pig right in front of me. But it turns out this is also bad because what's wrong with your face?! I'd never stopped to notice that there was a different character model made specific for that zone. Wow.

I'd also not previously noticed the trail of blood leading from Arianna's chair to the sewer. Yikes.

President Maya is leveled up to 50 VIT/SKL and ready for proper dungeon diving. This is obviously a bad idea for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that axechick would be a more competent choice (but faster weapons are just more fun for me, outside of all practical concerns).

[Fenrir]

Douchebag inquisitor could at least be pretty funny instead of bland. I think you can end up punching certain characters and party members will leave of their own volition because you are so terrible.

I played on Hard and felt that Nightmare would just be a fucking chore. I think the combat in that game is bad anyway so prolonging it would not be a great thing to do.

So far it's not great. Being a jerk is just picking the lower right options all the time, and they're nowhere near Renegade Shepard levels.
Nightmare solo is terrible terrible, I'm scaling it back to Hard or Normal next time I'm playing.
Not sure I'll continue for much longer, this is hard to care about this in a post Dragon's Dogma world. It's weird how well received this game got, I thought that reviewers cared less and less about this kind of game? It is the game that does all the things that EA asked (Open world, "Press a button something awesome happens", standard Dragon Age dialogue, Ubisoft approach of filling your mini map with inane sidequests) but nothing spectacularly and with the same battle system issues that have plagued the series except worst.

Excellent. I'll definitely be stalking you the next time we're both online.

I like the bosses better in Brume Tower, but Shulva is probably the better designed zone. The cursed side areas you have to backtrack for bug me a little in Brume Tower. As for the NPCs, yeahhhh most are varieties of not good:

vs Elana: Benhart is as useless as ever and Ellie shames pugilists everywhere. Next!
vs Sinh: Dragonbro's actually pretty hardcore, I recommend him. Not!Licia's pretty decent about keeping herself alive (and I think she can MT heal?) but she deals like no damage.
vs gank squad: Both options are amazingly incompetent and unlikely to survive the boss fight. Also, if you choose to run past the mooks straight to the fog gate (which you should), your friends will not.

vs Fume Knight: Carhillion is probably the worst summon in the game. He dies almost immediately and has only magic to use against a buffed DLC boss. Ellie at least has the right damage type for this fight but she's still pretty incompetent. I don't think either option contributes enough to offset the durability boost they give the boss.
vs Sir Alonne: Stop gesturing and hit the boss, already!
vs Smelty mk. 2: Stop gesturing and hit the boss already, armadillo chick! For fuck's sake.

vs Aava: Ellie's relatively non-terrible here for the first and only time. Not great. But not terrible.
vs Ivory King: Twiggy has the bell hat but flipside he's also an archer. Lucatiel is just Lucatiel. She's an okay distraction but doesn't live long enough on higher difficulties. Neither's a huge help beyond the simple fact that you want raw numbers to get through the mob.
vs Aava x2: Vengarl's decent. Not!Licia is no more helpful than she was vs Sinh. Being elementally reliant is super bad vs buffed DLC bosses.

So yeah, mostly a wash. The maingame NPC phantoms unique to Scholar, on the other hand, are almost universally badass.

I summoned both people against Sinh and neither contributed to anything but buffing the boss' HP.
In the cave of the dead I at least found that the two losers made a nice diversion. The best way to deal with that is probably to summon them, run and then black crystal them right before the boss (if they've survived up to that point)

Holy shit! This is bad for obvious mechanical reasons because 2,000 pounds of angry death pig right in front of me. But it turns out this is also bad because what's wrong with your face?! I'd never stopped to notice that there was a different character model made specific for that zone. Wow.

Yeah this surprised me way after having finished the game too. Spiders having faces too.
I should have noticed all that considering the crow-dogs and dog-crows.

President Maya is leveled up to 50 VIT/SKL and ready for proper dungeon diving. This is obviously a bad idea for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that axechick would be a more competent choice (but faster weapons are just more fun for me, outside of all practical concerns).

Oh god you're doing it. Okay.
These bosses are the hardest things I've done in Souls next to NG1 Gwyn so I hope you're ready. At least two bosses will take you one million tries (Cursed Fire Dog and Cursed Amygdala) I had an easier time with NG1 Ornstein/Smough and 4 Kings. Do not Fashion Souls anymore and just pick the best stuff for each battle.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. - Welp, finally beat it. The last two missions are quite nasty and the final boss in particular is a -dick-. Somehow, Randolph saved my ass there after four resets, letting me divert its attention from The Fox, who gets one-rounded by it, but also deals the best damage to it. Somehow, it took -three rounds- of Steam Crossbow shots to its weak point to end everything, and just breaking it took a round and a half. I also got all cogs, which means I get to use the swanky uber universal boiler pack! ... for the aftergame. WELP.

Regardless, after all is said and done, I can't help but be entirely impressed here. This is a very unique and interesting take on the turn-based strategy genre with a distinct emphasis on -figuring out- the environments and general positioning. Not allowing you a full overview of the maps may sound like a terrible idea, but it's actually part of the fun. Everything is more or less designed around that - enemies also have to figure out where -you- are, for instance. And the way you can parcel actions steam point per steam point, shuffling freely between characters, gives you remarkable freedom and a lot of strategies to work with - all in all, the steam system is one of the coolest methods for action parcelling I've ever seen in a SRPG.

The game does start out rather rough, of course - mission 1 is quite frankly kinda rude to a first-timer (and you -got- to be a beginner at this at some point). But once the game hands you Lion, the system's potential gets realized to an impressive degree and the map design itself is also very cool, with almost every battle having at least a couple memorable nooks and crannies. The variety of ways in which you can accomplish a given mission is also a marvel, which encourages shuffling PCs and subweapons a lot. Since PCs themselves don't level up (the only growth you get in the game comes in subweapon and boiler unlocking, which are gamechangers as well. Compare 1-3 to 2-1 where the main difference is unlocking subweapons as a system and you'll know what I mean), it also means you won't ever be punished later on by not using someone in any given mission. And all PCs have very distinct niches, perks and failings, all while being entirely viable. Character balance is -definitely- good enough to let you play out as many different approaches as the system allows, and the game letting you replay missions with extra challenge options if you want is also cool as hell. I -do- wish the game let you select specific maps, instead of locking you into an entire mission when doing so, though.

In fact, the game's biggest problems in terms of gameplay lie in a few fine line polish details. I mean, the game gives you an overview of any given map before it starts... but -after- the char select screen. Seriously? The game lets you restart/reload maps pretty easy and fast, but why restarting a map to figure out starting positions (which MATTER) and the basic layout should be necessary? Honestly makes no sense. Also, why lock you into a single save slot for the entirety of Campaign Mode? I guess this is a pretty minute complaint, it'd be only really bad if the game didn't give you multiple save slots, but I'm not really sure what was the point. Then, controlling the camera takes some getting used to. I found that mixing up stylus controls and button controls yielded the most precise results, but that takes a couple maps to kink out. Enemy turns also could have used a measure that allowed you to skip them for the sake of simplicity, even though seeing them unfold is actually fairly important (I certainly did take my time looking at the different PC overviews to have an idea of where the enemy force was shuffling to as best as I could most of the time). The 2x speed skip update was a nice alleviator, though.

Scripting/writing... well. I really like the -aesthetics-. They made a very colorful world with highly memorable character designs and it just brims with personality. Problem is the writing is so very basic. The potential with classic literature characters with a rich history underneath was incredible, but it's taken at its most basic level and the characters themselves feel pretty rote. Some one-liners are decent, at least, and the voice acting is simply a joy to behold (Tom's southern drawl is hilarious, for instance. I also love The Fox's cheesy spanglish accent and Califia's raspy voice. And not to forget WIL WHEATON as Abe Lincoln). So, it's a lot of wasted potential, but you'd be really hard-pressed to be offended by it, especially given how it takes itself about as seriously as the music video for "Hey, Mickey".

This said, I'm not sure how to rate this game. I was very impressed by it, with a very intelligent system underneath it all, and I had a lot of fun from start to finish. On the other hand, there are some weird polish issues that keep me from really being intellectually awed by it. Still, it's a veritably worthwhile idea for a new franchise with a ton of things to like, be it in presentation, be it in gameplay. Still pondering between an 8 and a 9 here, but it's good. Go play it.

[Captain K]

MH4U:  Beaten all the 6 star story missions, and about half the 7 stars.  The free dlc today gave me enough armor stones to upgrade blademaster gear to a usable level (i.e. what it should have been all along).

[Sierra]

President Maya is leveled up to 50 VIT/SKL and ready for proper dungeon diving. This is obviously a bad idea for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that axechick would be a more competent choice (but faster weapons are just more fun for me, outside of all practical concerns).

Oh god you're doing it. Okay.
These bosses are the hardest things I've done in Souls next to NG1 Gwyn so I hope you're ready. At least two bosses will take you one million tries (Cursed Fire Dog and Cursed Amygdala) I had an easier time with NG1 Ornstein/Smough and 4 Kings. Do not Fashion Souls anymore and just pick the best stuff for each battle.

Theoretically I might be tag-teaming the harder bits with my brother, if so it may take a while to get through it all just because scheduling. So far I've gone through floor three of lower Pthumeru. I stopped for the night there because the boss is supposedly powered up Rom and fuuuuuck thaaaaat. The floor two undead giant was surprisingly mean considering that the upper Pthumeru undead giant got toasted in one attack sequence. The game's definitely done fucking around.

Right now I'm rocking the pyromancer bone armor, which is pretty fantastic (sans hat, because practicality or no I'll be damned if I give up my fancy crown).

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - Good to know Judas remains as OP as he was in the original game. Took me only two attempts to get a victorious run against Satan.

Tangentially, there's an insane Saint's Row sale going on Steam and I bought both SR3 and SR4 for a grand total of a bit over 5 USD. am i doing this right

[Grefter]

DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT

Edit - Also check out some of the DLC if the pack doesn't have them because well, sometimes it is worth spending a few cents on amazing video games clothes

[Sierra]

phat swag is 100% why I played SR4. I mean, SR3 was fun enough just on its own rights of being ridiculous, but I probably wouldn't have signed up for a second tour if I hadn't been confident of the ability to be completely fabulous all over again. I wasn't disappointed.

Bloodborne: Lower Pthumeru cleared. Bloodletting Beast was kind of terrible. In the provoking terror sense, though camera fuckery had a lot to do with it. I'm constantly amazed at how Bloodborne somehow manages to be a less polished game than Dark Souls 2 in this regard (in other ways too, this is just presently the glaring one). I never had any significant camera issues with DS2, but BB here strongly recalls shit like when Kalameet would walk on top of you to do the glowy eye thing and because you were so close to the enemy you were locked onto the camera would just pan straight up and give you view of nothing but enemy crotch. Really not helpful at all. Anyway, I was too afraid to immediately go into Ailing Loran so I knocked out some odds and ends I'd skipped over on this file. Dicing the Unseen Village hunter trio with an absolute minimum of effort was incredibly satisfying.

Shovel Knight: Started this up, beat the first two robot masters knights. I feel like this is the kind of game Meeple would make if given free reign to do so. (I mean this in a good way.) The best part is probably just the retro tunage, honestly.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

There's a version with a ton of DLC packs, but none of them really caught my eye as of now. Maybe later.

EDIT: Question. Can I play SR3 and 4 with my USB PS3 controller? Sounds like using the keyboard would be a pain in the ass.

[The Duck]

Douchebag inquisitor could at least be pretty funny instead of bland. I think you can end up punching certain characters and party members will leave of their own volition because you are so terrible.

I played on Hard and felt that Nightmare would just be a fucking chore. I think the combat in that game is bad anyway so prolonging it would not be a great thing to do.

So far it's not great. Being a jerk is just picking the lower right options all the time, and they're nowhere near Renegade Shepard levels.
Nightmare solo is terrible terrible, I'm scaling it back to Hard or Normal next time I'm playing.
Not sure I'll continue for much longer, this is hard to care about this in a post Dragon's Dogma world. It's weird how well received this game got, I thought that reviewers cared less and less about this kind of game? It is the game that does all the things that EA asked (Open world, "Press a button something awesome happens", standard Dragon Age dialogue, Ubisoft approach of filling your mini map with inane sidequests) but nothing spectacularly and with the same battle system issues that have plagued the series except worst.

Yeah the game has so much that draws from recent AAA stuff that it's boring. I'm a little surprised it doesn't involve you climbing up towers to get more objectives, Assassin's Creed style. It vomits objectives all over the place but none of them are really meaningful (it's generally worth closing fade rifts though), and even though these objectives are technically extra content, the world still really feels really empty and somehow really awkward and annoying to explore. I ran into something similar with Far Cry 4 when there were a billion things for me to do but I didn't about doing any of them.

The Inquisitor is just kind of a blank slate since even the dialogue choices you make are delivered blandly. I think a lot depends on whether you like the characters and I wasn't that impressed with most of them although some are good. I liked abstract ideas the game addresses rather than actually going through the experience of playing it and that's not great.

The basic gameplay cycle doesn't really change (go to new area, do some bullshit until you can open up a new area or a story thing) but at least some of the story missions do some interesting things. I didn't find that sidequests were really worth the time until you can fight dragons, who do drop worthwhile equipment, so you can just blast through the story of the game if you want.

Shovel Knight: Started this up, beat the first two robot masters knights.I feel like this is the kind of game Meeple would make if given free reign to do so. (I mean this in a good way.) The best part is probably just the retro tunage, honestly.

The first stage song is my favorite to come out of video games in a long long time. I finished my first playthrough of this recently and I'm just impressed by how strong the stage designs are. Great game.

[Grefter]

Douchebag inquisitor could at least be pretty funny instead of bland. I think you can end up punching certain characters and party members will leave of their own volition because you are so terrible.

I played on Hard and felt that Nightmare would just be a fucking chore. I think the combat in that game is bad anyway so prolonging it would not be a great thing to do.

So far it's not great. Being a jerk is just picking the lower right options all the time, and they're nowhere near Renegade Shepard levels.
Nightmare solo is terrible terrible, I'm scaling it back to Hard or Normal next time I'm playing.
Not sure I'll continue for much longer, this is hard to care about this in a post Dragon's Dogma world. It's weird how well received this game got, I thought that reviewers cared less and less about this kind of game? It is the game that does all the things that EA asked (Open world, "Press a button something awesome happens", standard Dragon Age dialogue, Ubisoft approach of filling your mini map with inane sidequests) but nothing spectacularly and with the same battle system issues that have plagued the series except worst.

Yeah the game has so much that draws from recent AAA stuff that it's boring. I'm a little surprised it doesn't involve you climbing up towers to get more objectives, Assassin's Creed style. It vomits objectives all over the place but none of them are really meaningful (it's generally worth closing fade rifts though), and even though these objectives are technically extra content, the world still really feels really empty and somehow really awkward and annoying to explore. I ran into something similar with Far Cry 4 when there were a billion things for me to do but I didn't about doing any of them.

The Inquisitor is just kind of a blank slate since even the dialogue choices you make are delivered blandly. I think a lot depends on whether you like the characters and I wasn't that impressed with most of them although some are good. I liked abstract ideas the game addresses rather than actually going through the experience of playing it and that's not great.

The basic gameplay cycle doesn't really change (go to new area, do some bullshit until you can open up a new area or a story thing) but at least some of the story missions do some interesting things. I didn't find that sidequests were really worth the time until you can fight dragons, who do drop worthwhile equipment, so you can just blast through the story of the game if you want.

Shovel Knight: Started this up, beat the first two robot masters knights.I feel like this is the kind of game Meeple would make if given free reign to do so. (I mean this in a good way.) The best part is probably just the retro tunage, honestly.

The first stage song is my favorite to come out of video games in a long long time. I finished my first playthrough of this recently and I'm just impressed by how strong the stage designs are. Great game.

Quoth the Duck forevermore

Snow, yes you can play them with controller if you want.




Edit - This was actually a mistake, but I am leaving it.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Well, that was all I needed to know.

[Fenrir]

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - Good to know Judas remains as OP as he was in the original game. Took me only two attempts to get a victorious run against Satan.

You find Judas OP in a game with freaking Azazel???
I find him allright, but worse + less fun than Eve and D6 Isaac.

Oh yeah I also finished everything on normal mode with every character, except like 3 easy runs (Finishing the chest with D6 Isaac, lol) and the Lost (obvs)
I also did every challenge but Purist. I just really don't like that one.
I heard the next DLC will have rewards for completing hard mode, so I think I'll stop for now in order to not just unlock everything from the get go.

Bloodborne: Lower Pthumeru cleared. Bloodletting Beast was kind of terrible. In the provoking terror sense, though camera fuckery had a lot to do with it. I'm constantly amazed at how Bloodborne somehow manages to be a less polished game than Dark Souls 2 in this regard (in other ways too, this is just presently the glaring one). I never had any significant camera issues with DS2, but BB here strongly recalls shit like when Kalameet would walk on top of you to do the glowy eye thing and because you were so close to the enemy you were locked onto the camera would just pan straight up and give you view of nothing but enemy crotch. Really not helpful at all. Anyway, I was too afraid to immediately go into Ailing Loran so I knocked out some odds and ends I'd skipped over on this file. Dicing the Unseen Village hunter trio with an absolute minimum of effort was incredibly satisfying.

I'd talk about Bloodletting Beast, but I always confuse this boss with the Frenzied Beast or whatever (which is the cannibal dude except way buffed)

Pro tip I haven't mentioned for the chalice dungeons: Before going to the forced cursed defiled one, finish everything else and go to the meanest cursed defiled rotten very bad chalice dungeon you can go to by doing a dungeon search, and just go get some gems on the first level there. They will be most likely awesome. If you're lucky you'll have a easy boss like "Boar" on the first level, and be able to go to the second level without much trouble.

Buffed Rom actually isn't that bad considering that he can't run too far away in a small dungeon room.

Yeah the game has so much that draws from recent AAA stuff that it's boring. I'm a little surprised it doesn't involve you climbing up towers to get more objectives, Assassin's Creed style. It vomits objectives all over the place but none of them are really meaningful (it's generally worth closing fade rifts though), and even though these objectives are technically extra content, the world still really feels really empty and somehow really awkward and annoying to explore. I ran into something similar with Far Cry 4 when there were a billion things for me to do but I didn't about doing any of them.

The Inquisitor is just kind of a blank slate since even the dialogue choices you make are delivered blandly. I think a lot depends on whether you like the characters and I wasn't that impressed with most of them although some are good. I liked abstract ideas the game addresses rather than actually going through the experience of playing it and that's not great.

The basic gameplay cycle doesn't really change (go to new area, do some bullshit until you can open up a new area or a story thing) but at least some of the story missions do some interesting things. I didn't find that sidequests were really worth the time until you can fight dragons, who do drop worthwhile equipment, so you can just blast through the story of the game if you want.

Yeah. I stopped Far Cry 3 for the same reasons and haven't played an Assassin's Creed since Brotherhood.
DA:I has ridiculously cliched/boring missions: I got:
- Kill wolves
- "Find medicine for my wife, kind stranger"
- "Find my dead husband's wedding ring, kind stranger"
- "Find my lost buffalo, kind stranger" ARE YOU KIDDING ME
- Kill 3 boars because girls find killing boars attractive
- Horse races
- "Find 21 songs, 22 shard things, 29 areas, 12 other shard things, 17 places, 29 bottles" I am 100% serious, I am reporting the exact numbers needed

I do like the quests that show me a rough sketch and tell me to find where it is. For what it's worth.
The gameplay has also been less terrible since I've bumped the difficulty down to normal. (I'm still soloing because fuck that IA)

Also one farmer called me Inquisition instead of Inquisitor. It made me laugh a lot (and reminded me of a super recent Dinosaur Comics)

The Inquisitor is just kind of a blank slate since even the dialogue choices you make are delivered blandly. I think a lot depends on whether you like the characters and I wasn't that impressed with most of them although some are good.

The most noteworthy part of her personality is that she gives 0 fucks about littering the world with empty potion flasks

The first stage song is my favorite to come out of video games in a long long time. I finished my first playthrough of this recently and I'm just impressed by how strong the stage designs are. Great game.

Yeah definitely.
The whole OST isn't actually that great, but the first stage song is so good and so memorable that it's been widely praised.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - Good to know Judas remains as OP as he was in the original game. Took me only two attempts to get a victorious run against Satan.

You find Judas OP in a game with freaking Azazel???
I find him allright, but worse + less fun than Eve and D6 Isaac.

D6 Isaac is pretty particular. I remeber breaking the game itself pretty badly, but Judas is just pretty -easy-, you know? Granted, I'm interested to see in how they rebuilt Eve, since she was -awful- in the original. And yeah, Azazel is kinda nuts.

[Fenrir]

Not sure how she was in the original but she does require good knowledge of the game.

Hurt yourself right away to get your heart to 1 then never pick up red hearts again. Break marked rocks / find secret passages to get soul hearts, plow through the early parts taking no more red heart damage and make every deal with the devil you can until you have 0 red hearts. 

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Yeah, the game was considerably less lax with devil deals in the original (no Goat's Head, for starters), and, from what I heard, Dead Bird got buffed. The emphasis on soul hearts went up in Rebirth, which alone should improve Eve. But her awful starting damage in the original was just way too much to bear.

[Fenrir]

Here you get super buffed speed + damage with 1 heart Eve, so it's very easy to get no damage in the second, third and/or fourth level, which raises your devil room chances to about 80% each level I'd say?

Azazel is disgusting, try him once. I'm fairly sure he's meant to be the easy mode character.
At least he's way less fun than the other characters because he has less synergies.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

There's a version with a ton of DLC packs, but none of them really caught my eye as of now. Maybe later.

EDIT: Question. Can I play SR3 and 4 with my USB PS3 controller? Sounds like using the keyboard would be a pain in the ass.

Yes.  Are there still cross-platform games being made you can't play with a USB controller?  Fucked up if true.

[SnowFire]

There's a version with a ton of DLC packs, but none of them really caught my eye as of now. Maybe later.

EDIT: Question. Can I play SR3 and 4 with my USB PS3 controller? Sounds like using the keyboard would be a pain in the ass.

Yes.  Are there still cross-platform games being made you can't play with a USB controller?  Fucked up if true.

Quite a number of PC games only work with an XBox controller, yes.  Or at least only work properly (vibration, etc.).

I gave in and bought an XBone controller myself.  (Off the top of my head, Bastion, Transistor, Child of Light, & DMC4 I've all used XBox controller for and it was required.)