What Games are you playing 2015?

[Fudozukushi]

Handsome Joe is insulted by your pettiness.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Codename STEAM - Chapter 14. After my last post I realised that Randolph was due for a try again, and of course I then send him out in a map where he's completely useless. Unlike Snow I don't really have the patience to reload and choose a different team unless I lose.... and actually I just realised it's been quite a while since I lost despite the fact that I did quite a bit in some of the early-mid maps? It doesn't really feel like the game has been getting easier (especially not that Stealth Prowler map. Man, fuck those guys) so I guess I have been getting better or something.

I think it's both getting better at the game and just having -better- character options. The game mostly backloads its top-tier PCs (Lion and Queequeg show up in the first half, sure, but Califia, Tin Man and particularly The Fox all show up later, and both Califia and The Fox are more aggressively dominating than the early two), and the map design also changes considerably to accomodate the enlarging array of options (for instance, I felt the early maps had a lot more platforms and whatnot to use Lion Launcher with). There's also the fact Missions 13 and 14 both feel like breather pit-stops compared to most others, but then it's kinda welcome given how nasty missions 15 and 16 are (I -really- like Mission 15's maps, by the way).

How much cog collecting have you done, by the way? Not that it's terribly relevant past 60 cogs throughout.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm at 58 I think? I get them if I both find them and and can get them without significantly impacting my chances to win (or wasting 2+ extra rounds, though that's rare thankfully).

It's true that getting the Fox is a big help; I do use her the vast majority of the time and sometimes I get out of potentially sticky situations pretty much entirely because of her.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I'm glad the game rarely gets cute with the cog placement, at least. I got all of them without even remotely considering a FAQ.

The Fox is frankly the closest the game gets to a broken character. Though I wonder if she would even be in the high echelon were she a Middle Boiler PC, since so much of her worth comes from scoring insane damage on a critical hit from miles away. This is also why I sorta believe that a Light-class can only be so bad, both Ninja and Scout Boiler are really good.

[Twilkitri]

Suikoden 3 - completed

My PS2's modchip randomly started working again aways back, and I finally got around to taking advantage of that and getting back to my S3 playthrough, and I thought to myself "this time, why don't we play more than a single chapter before getting distracted by other things" and somehow I managed to finish it.

It was generally enjoyable when it wasn't being aggravating. Ultimately I want to say that 1 & 2 are better, but it's difficult to compare them at this point.

I like a lot of the music, main tracks coming to mind are The Wind And The Earth and Mysterious People. Now complaints.

I never ended up divining what benefits I was supposed to get from the pair battle system. Possibly there weren't supposed to be any.

Really really needed sceneskip, for all that I'm given to understand this is common to a lot of games of the era.

Needed for the Mountain Path boss to be avoidable outside of Geddoe 1. Including the one they replace it with later on.

Feels like you get relatively little time to use many of the minor stars? For a lot of time in Chapter 1s through 3s your party is full of mandatory characters or you don't actually have access to adding them, and there are even some segments in later chapters where the former is still the case. I went around with teams of mainly minor stars while collecting the chapter 4/5 stars, and I don't think I ended up even using half of them.



Broken Age - completed

I went in to Act 2 having heard it had little to recommend, but it was generally enjoyable? Can't really speak to things set up in Act 1 having been ruined as I can only remember the general gist of things that happened in it. It is kind of dumb that there are puzzles in Act 2 which require usage of information from the other path when there was nothing like that in Act 1, but as I'd seen people complain about it I was ready for it at least. Anyone hoping to spend as long as possible without switching paths should start with Shay's path.

There is the one strikingly obvious change from Act 1 which people have complained about, which I also feel is kind of a problem - but I can't tell whether I feel that way just because I've seen other people feeling that way or not, as I can't remember enough about Act 1 to think of any particular sequences which the change contradicts.

There were lots of amusing moments in the game, and that's all I was really hoping for, personally. I don't recall there being any out-there inventory combination puzzles, although I was using everything on everything in the search for funny rejections so I could be forgetting some. Can agree with anyone who finds the rewiring to be saddeningly tedious.

Not really a big fan of the ending. Also feels like that one character who reappears near the end from Act 1 is contradicting statements made earlier in Act 2 just by existing, but again I can hardly remember anything they did in Act 1 so I can't be certain.

[SnowFire]

I never ended up divining what benefits I was supposed to get from the pair battle system. Possibly there weren't supposed to be any.

Makes the battles faster, it's only 3 commands rather than 6.  Also makes unrealistic "everyone piles onto the same enemy" strats slightly harder which makes enemy balance a little easier.  I dunno, I liked it, although enough people hated it that they reverted it in later Suikodens.  If you really want your frontliner to dive that one specific enemy rather than fight whoever's in range, you have to give up a spell, sorry.  Also helps reduce the general micromanagement of where spell-less fighters are attacking by simply not letting you do it if you're having the backliner cast.  Basically I thought it was a good balance between perfect control (and thus extra tedium with 6 characters and also easy use of overpowered focusing strats) and autopilot (DW4NES, FF13 allies, etc.).

Too bad that Broken Age isn't supposed to be amazing, though, I helped Kickstart it and have been meaning to give it a try.

[Twilkitri]

I have to say that I used the autobattle for the vast majority of the fighting in the game, so speeding up battles isn't really something it achieved and it mainly only came into play in battles too risky to use that where I could have preferred complete control. I mean, I considered the possibility that it wasn't supposed to have any beneficial effect, but assumed I could be missing something - I'm not saying I hated it or anything.

[Grefter]

I think it is a neat experiment that wasn't perfect.  It has a few moving pieces that are pointlessly obscured from the player that curbs its potential.  Overall I like it and think it is unfairly maligned, but I don't mourn it not being actively pursued much further.  I don't think it was a style that would support an entire spin off genre or something.  It is neat to have existed and while it could have carried a couple more games of refinement probably, it is far from the biggest loss of that kind.  Suiko 3 is enough.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I will pretty much echo Snowfire and Grefter's comments. I derived a bit more use out of the system than you, because I found it encoraged me to not use auto-battle compared to the games where you have to enter six commands. I still did use auto-battle plenty, mind, but less than I did in any other Suikoden (besides Tactics). Still, not like your experience is at all unreasonable either.

[Grefter]

I think my first play through was somewhat similar all truth told.  Maybe slightly less because I actively sought out enjoyment of it because S3 was really blazing hot in the DL near when I started and I had only played 1 and 2 a bit before joining.  That couple of year delay before I got a PS2 also pushed the mystique a bit.  So it (along with FFX) were put on pretty high pedestals and were give a lot of leeway.  Some of the appreciation for the underlying systems came on replays of post path split section.

Also I probably should thank Super for hooking me up with it when I finally got a PS2 it was a big deal.

[Sierra]

R1R1Borne: I got the platinum!
Which makes me a better person than Cid.

Not anymore. Nyah!

EDIT: I guess the best thing I can say about S3's pairs system is that while I find it unnecessary and in theory objectionable, in practice at least it never had any significant impact on my enjoyment of the game (which from memory I place above the rest of the series, but I am really due a replay. Why is it the only Suikodens I've replayed are the ones I don't actually like?)

[The Duck]

I actually replayed S3 recently with an emulator and frameskip, and it does hold up in many ways, although even with frameskip, walking from area to area is a chore, to the point where it feels best to just do all the large scale recruiting once you get the Vikis. My take on the partner system was that it was an attempt to balance things to prevent you from using six runes in one turn, which would have completely trivialized this game in particular. They also wanted to make you have choices between doing something on the offense and healing. I don't think it really work all that well but it's relatively unobstructive. A tweaked variant of it could have been interesting, like if you had greater control over things like positioning.

Of course they did away with this balance later on and very little in SV can take even 1/3 of a round of full party rune usage.

[Fenrir]

Hahah thanks guys. And yeah I basically added everything in that screenshot but the HP bar and one of the damage numbers.

Are you serious Djinn. You didn't talk about any SaGa in particular so I'm assuming you mean Unlimited SaGa.


I've been playing Cordial Minuet because I really really want one of these amulets and wear it. I am prepared to spend too much money on this.
I'm pretty terrible right now though. I need to spend a day or two thinking about strategies but time is running out in the next few days.

[Meeplelard]

Resonance of Fate: Just beat Yeti.  That dungeon was awful if only because Freeze status in this setting is a load of crap.  Yes, things like paralysis and such exist in other RPGs, but most of them don't have you relying on a single item person, or the structure of the game isn't such that it begs on being Paralyze locked.

[Sierra]

Been playing Guilty Gear Xrd Sign a bunch this weekend. It's a fighting game, not a ton to say in-depth, so just random observations:

-I don't know why Millia felt it necessary to staple a license plate to her hat, but I suppose it's not the most questionable fashion decision a Guilty Gear character has ever made.

-Speaking of, Bedman's design approaches Faust levels of ridiculousness. Don't find him terribly fun to play, though.

-Direction given to Slayer's voice actor apparently consisted solely of Sound Like Sean Connery. "The most important thing in life is...dandyism." I like Slayer.

-Eddie is Zato-1 again. Zato-1 is emo.

Game looks fantastic. It's a little odd how many characters don't make a return appearance, though. Want to say Venom is the only returning newcomer from GGX? Anji/Baiken/Dizzy/Johnny/Testament all MIA. I guess I'm not hugely bothered since my preferred fighters are all here (Millia/May/Chipp). More variety is always good, though.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. - So, I decided to do some damage tests to figure out how crits and multipliers work in order to attempt a stat topic. First discovery: the crit mult varies depending on the weapon used and also on the enemy. The Fox Rifle's base mult, for instance, clocks in at roughly 2.4x. This stacks with the Ninja Boiler -multiplicatively-, which also explains why her damage in-game is so fucking nuts.

Meanwhile, Tom's Punch Gun has a -negative- multiplier on its crit (0.96x). What the hell, IntSys?

EDIT: That also explains explosive weapons triggering red damage that's no different from the base, though: they must have a 1x multiplier that overrides all enemy defenses and crit mults.

EDIT2: FURTHER TESTING also testifies me that all boosting passives (Courageous, Warrior's Spirit and Arcane Lore) add a 1.2x mult to whichever statistic it boosts and they also stack multiplicatively. The damage crit boost given by the Ninja Boiler seems to be roughly 2x as well, stacking with whatever other mults. This explains a goddamn lot.

EDIT3: Scarab Boiler's offensive boost doesn't stack with Warrior's Spirit? Well, that's a goddamned shame. EDITEDIT: Nope, was wrong: the PENGUIN LOBBER specifically doesn't stack its offensive boosts. So, its maximum potential damage is 72 no matter what. Califia, John and Lion all get the stacking mults.

EDIT4: Yeah, the non-stacking is entirely specific to the Penguin Lobber. Even Queequeg's Harpoon gets the damage boost.

And with that said, I'm going to start working on that danged topic tomorrow. Should be up in a couple days tops.

[Niu]

Been playing Guilty Gear Xrd Sign a bunch this weekend. It's a fighting game, not a ton to say in-depth, so just random observations:

-I don't know why Millia felt it necessary to staple a license plate to her hat, but I suppose it's not the most questionable fashion decision a Guilty Gear character has ever made.

-Speaking of, Bedman's design approaches Faust levels of ridiculousness. Don't find him terribly fun to play, though.

-Direction given to Slayer's voice actor apparently consisted solely of Sound Like Sean Connery. "The most important thing in life is...dandyism." I like Slayer.

-Eddie is Zato-1 again. Zato-1 is emo.

Game looks fantastic. It's a little odd how many characters don't make a return appearance, though. Want to say Venom is the only returning newcomer from GGX? Anji/Baiken/Dizzy/Johnny/Testament all MIA. I guess I'm not hugely bothered since my preferred fighters are all here (Millia/May/Chipp). More variety is always good, though.

They are using a new engine and has to redraw all the HD sprite.
It is natural that they can't bring back everyone at once. Plus, they need to make more sequels, it'll be unwise to bring back everyone at once too.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. - Chugging along with the stat topic. Figuring out the calculations take all decimals into account until the final result, only then rounding down, made my life a lot easier!

[DjinnAndTonic]

I am excited to see the results.

What are you doing about subweapons?

[Sierra]

GGXS: Have you ever wondered what expressions the Guilty Gear cast would make while receiving a sudden and unexpected rectal examination? Faust is prepared to satisfy your curiosity. (I-No is perhaps unsurprisingly pretty okay with the experience.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I am excited to see the results.

What are you doing about subweapons?

For subweapons, I'm allowing starting/given subweapons. So, Henry gets the Medi-Rifle (for all the zero good it does him in the DL), John gets the Steam Rifle, Lion gets the Steam Crossbow. Tiger Lily, Scarecrow and Tin Man all get a Steam Musket, since they're handed those weapons in their joining map even if someone else's wearing them (Tiger Lily's claim is the strongest, since her joining unlocks the Steam Musket to begin with). Due to that, I also handed Randolph a Steam Musket, since it feels quite artificial for him to be the only one to not be able to attack in the DL when that's entirely untrue to in-game experience. The interesting thing is how, due to the varying crit mults, passives and boiler options, even the Steam Musket folks differ on damage fairly noticeably. Also, I'm likely building something in the vicinity of -four- distinct damage averages, because Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. is that kind of game.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Definitely agree with giving an attack sub-weapon to those who don't have one yet... and a decent one at that. Everyone should have a claim to all attack sub-weapons besides their three best unquestionably, since the worst sub-weapon they can be forced into using in-game is whatever is fourth best for them. (Fourth might be overly harsh, even.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I'll bother listing subweapons for those purposes, in that case. Not like the game couldn't use some public documentation.

EDIT: Anything past 30000 medals feels clearly post-game for me, though, but YMMV.

Also, the way the game works out, it's quite possible that none of the subweapons end up as the PCs optimum damage for those who have offensive primaries.

[Fenrir]

El Cid, did you only get the Bloodborne platinum trophy because I taunted you?


I've won some money at that gambling game, but I don't even care, I only want one of the cursed amulets.
This might be difficult. I might take a day off at work just for this. Playing non stop for four days. Sounds good.

[Reiska]

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (Android/iOS version)

Playing this primarily to document the (significant) differences for DL consumption.  Finished Ceodore's tale last night.

The astute may remember that Android/iOS devices also previously got a port of the original FF4, specifically one based on the DS version.  This port of TAY is probably better classified as a remake, as the game is running in the FF4DS engine and rendered in 3D.  Unlike FF4DS, though, the mechanical differences in this version up front are more subtle - I've noticed already that buffs like Protect, Shell, Haste, etc. work like their (good) FF4DS incarnations rather than their (poor) FF4 SNES incarnations.

The moon phase system is still around and unchanged.

Bands now work completely differently.  You no longer have to hunt and peck for them by experimenting with combos of different commands from the involved PCs (with no hints on how to unlock them); instead, the bands not unlocked by events now simply unlock when you fight X battles with the correct characters in the same party together.  If you continue to leave the characters in a party together, the bands will gain levels as well, making them more powerful.  Hooded Man and Ceodore's Cross Slash, for example, got a 5% attack power boost for each level it gained, and it was level 3 by the end of Ceodore's tale (maximum is 5).  They seem generally stronger as well; I fought Tunneler in the +Attack moon phase, so damage was higher than normal, but I don't remember Cross Slash hitting for 2000 damage under those conditions before.  (Hooded Man and Ceodore were both level 25 at the end of Ceodore's tale.)

I'm told some of the dungeon designs are different in other parts of the game (generally shortened), but I didn't particularly notice any cuts to the length of Ceodore's tale's dungeons.  The Mythril Grotto was the same as ever.  Devil's Road is still an annoying teleporter "maze" (it's actually a hallway, really) and no longer has damage floors (yay!).  Underground waterway looked identical to its FF4DS incarnation I believe.  Mist Cave also looked more or less the same as I remembered the Wii/PSP versions being, except that the room with the Mythril Gloves chest has a second chest added which contains an Adamantite.

The biggest change, then, is noticed when you complete the tale and save your clear data: there is no challenge dungeon.

Speaking of save data, this version of the game gives you 3 save slots *per character tale* - they are restricted, in the sense that you don't have 21 or however many total save slots.  You have 3 save slots for Ceodore, 3 save slots for Rydia, etc. etc.  You cannot save Ceodore data in a Rydia save slot, and so on.  You get 5 save slots for the final chapter.  Nice user-friendliness move on S-E's part to prevent dumb save-overs.

Beating Ceodore's tale unlocks all the other tales but Kain's, like in the PSP version.  I'll be starting Rydia's tale shortly after this post!

Finally got around to continuing now that this version's been ported to PC.

Nothing super notable to report in Rydia's chapter for most of it.  Both of the bands the Rydia/Luca/Calca/Brina team gets access to maxed out in level by the end of the chapter without even trying.  As for what the levels do for them:

Calca and Brina: Max level reduces the MP cost from 10 to 7 MP.
Go! Calcabrina!: Max level boosts the damage by 30%.  It OHKOs almost anything it faces, trap doors included, but it's pretty slow to execute.
Lightning Brain Buster: Max level boosts the damage by 30%.

I dunno if the system is better now, but I will say that bands are almost always your optimal offense in boss fights now, so they're at least clearly relevant.

As before, there's basically two things you can do with the Kokkol Ore: either make the Mythril Hammer and two Dancing Daggers, or make one Dancing Dagger, the Battle Axe, and the Tomahawk.  (The Battle Axe is a prerequisite for the Tomahawk, so.)  I took the former approach, didn't particularly regret it, it makes the dolls a lot more useful when they're not banding, and it also tends to be better than spamming -aras on Rydia.

I'm pretty sure Agart Mines (Rydia's last dungeon) lost a floor.  Not positive, though.  Fine by me, the randoms in there are fucking obnoxious and Rydia is an awful PC until she learns Bio, which she's likely not to do before the end of this chapter.  Adamantite's picked up in the old Quarto Puppet room.  Agartoise died in two Lightning Brain Busters, literally.

Speaking of the Quarto Puppets, they now block the path back out near the recovery jar on B2F, so Calca and Brina aren't missable anymore.  Yay.

So, a few stats so far -

Ceodore's Tale: Clear time 3:33, levels - Hooded Man 24, Ceodore 25
Rydia's Tale: Clear time 4:09, levels - Luca 25, Rydia 26

Not sure which tale I'll do next.  I'm also not sure if I'm going to attempt to farm colored tails.