What Games are you playing 2015?

[Grefter]

The gunplay in it is pretty stock standard yeah, so if you don't enjoy that definitely steer clear of the past 10 years of the genre outside of specific exceptions (Deus Ex).  The stand out for Far Cry/Crysis as a thing is in how they often let you setup your approach to engagements, which means that as soon as they put you in stock corridor shooter mode it feels pretty shitty to play.

[Fenrir]

Dragon Age Suikisition: I have a big castle. I didn't get it from a climatic battle, I got it from my allies while I was doing something else. Uuuh thnx guys.
 I can choose my advanced class and stuff. Rift Mage looks unexciting aside from that ultimate spell, Knight enchanter sounds completely ridiculous, Necromancer doesn't summon anything (the ultimate Necromancer spell is Haste? Uh?)
I'm going with KE.


I'm French yet I've never seen something as cheesy as Corypheus. Also this is a terrible name for a villain, dude you sound like a plant.
The desert area and the spoooooky bog are pretty nice, much better than that starting area. I liked jumping around finding stuff in the desert area, it's not Mario Sunshine or anything but it was nice.


Yattaf is a terrible Yattaf. Blackwall openly said to her that he dislikes her. Then on a journey when she finds notes left by Blackwall's friends, she goes all "Blackwall would have liked seeing this, unfortunately he's not here "
Seriously Yattaf? Grow a spine.

Edit: Actually I forgot that speech she had right after becoming Inquisitor in which she basically said "I RULE SO MUCH" and absolutely everyone disapproved. That was great.

Edit 2: BTW, so many bugs

[Grefter]

I keep forgetting I have that on my to play list and then end up playing Hearthstone, Ass Creed or cheap steam games.

I am broken.

[Fenrir]

It's okay man. It's just Dragon Age Inquisition.


In other news Knight Templar is OP as hell in this solo. Before picking the class, I was looking at the abiity list, thinking "This ability looks good, this other ability also looks good"  but I wasn't quite realizizing just how well everything synergized beautifully.

My main moves are:
- A barrier that fully negates HP damage, and goes down over time and damage taken. Tons of passive ensure that this can stay for a while.
- A magic melee sword swipe, that costs basically nothing, does lots of damage, and restores barrier. The barrier regen is ludicrous, moreso if multiple enemies are hit.
- A low mana, fast recharge, move that turns Yattaf invincible / invisible for 2 seconds. Yattaf can go inside an enemy in the 2 seconds, then make him explode from the inside or something when she reappears, doing a ton of damage.
- A move that freezes one enemy for a few seconds. Works on some bosses.

[Fenrir]

There's a Kickstarter for a new Not-Castlevania with Not-Shanoa as the main.

The bad news is that this is an actual real thing that exists:





Stretch goals have to be unlocked by things like retweets and cosplays.
It's like a twisted parody of Kickstarter made by me, coming to life

[NotMiki]

The bad news is that this is an actual real thing that exists:

Turns out he was a vampire after all.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Mario Kart 8 - 200 cc doing its thang and wrecking me at every turn. So far I've gotten three stars on Shell and Banana, and Gold on Mushroom(1 star)/Flower/Star(1 star)/Leaf. I'm going to work on the even scarier ones later.

Rayman Origins - I'm not sure if I need to use more drugs while playing this game or if the drug-like simulation of random music and strange enemies is enough. I am currently on the fourth world, and the game is a nice solid platformer, but nothing eyepopping.

Last Story - Just learned some backstory about Mirania and Yurick and then snuck into Zangurak's hizzle.

Those Kickstarter awards are hilarious.

[Grefter]

I'm not sure if I need to use more drugs while playing this game or if the drug-like simulation of random music and strange enemies is enough.....but nothing eyepopping.

If you ain't bugging out you ain't had enough.

[Nephrite]

Dragon Age Suikisition: I have a big castle. I didn't get it from a climatic battle, I got it from my allies while I was doing something else. Uuuh thnx guys.
 I can choose my advanced class and stuff. Rift Mage looks unexciting aside from that ultimate spell, Knight enchanter sounds completely ridiculous, Necromancer doesn't summon anything (the ultimate Necromancer spell is Haste? Uh?)
I'm going with KE.


I'm French yet I've never seen something as cheesy as Corypheus. Also this is a terrible name for a villain, dude you sound like a plant.
The desert area and the spoooooky bog are pretty nice, much better than that starting area. I liked jumping around finding stuff in the desert area, it's not Mario Sunshine or anything but it was nice.


Yattaf is a terrible Yattaf. Blackwall openly said to her that he dislikes her. Then on a journey when she finds notes left by Blackwall's friends, she goes all "Blackwall would have liked seeing this, unfortunately he's not here "
Seriously Yattaf? Grow a spine.

Edit: Actually I forgot that speech she had right after becoming Inquisitor in which she basically said "I RULE SO MUCH" and absolutely everyone disapproved. That was great.

Edit 2: BTW, so many bugs

Knight-Enchanter is so overpowered it's amazing.

[Scar]

I'm waiting for the Witcher to come out. Never played a Witcher game, so we see how that goes.

Been playing a lot of Final Fantasy Record Keeper. The damn game won't give me Kain's relic weapon. Bastards. It did give me Rydia's which might help a tad more.

[Reiska]

From one twin to the other, so my next stop is...

Palom's tale! 

Waning Moon (-Black Magic) goes off on me early in the Tower of Trials.  Fuck.  Still not a big deal, just a long and tedious dungeon.

Troia Waterway is next.  A Little Black Magic maxed out early on in here (it's +30% damage when maxed).  It's not that long of a dungeon nor is it particularly notable.  These two gain quite a bit of EXP though.

This version of the game drastically reduces the prices of the passes to get to the various levels of the pub in Troia; the Member's Writ dropped from 10000 gil to 2500, the Member's Card from 50000 gil to 5000, and the VIP card from 99999 gil to 10000.  Buying all three still earns you a Black Tail, and of course there's a Lustful Lali-ho stashed in there too, but you'll lose it if you let Leonora see what it is, so don't.

I don't have enough money for the Queen's Whip, so I'll have to come back for it and/or any of the other Queen's gear, which is still fairly pricey.  As it turns out, I have enough money on chapter completion to just load and buy the whip, which is the only one I need for the secret band.  Yay!

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
Yang's Tale: Clear time 2:17, levels - Yang 21, Ursula 20
Porom's Tale: Clear time 2:44, levels - Porom 22
Palom's Tale: Clear time 3:38, levels - Palom 26, Leonora 24

Palom's Tale in-game use:

Palom: 7/10.  Everything I said about him in Porom's chapter still applies; he isn't any different.
Leonora: 5/10.  She has Cura and Slow, which is good enough for character tales, and healing is valuable when you have a party this squishy.  Palom is enough offense, so her lack of it doesn't matter much here.  Her deficiencies don't really come into play until the final chapter.

[Reiska]

Edge's Tale is next  The prologues with the Eblan Four can no longer be failed - you'll get a gameover if you do.

Gekkou's mission comes first, on the Waxing Moon.  This moon phase doesn't matter to him.  Gekkou's 3D model is really strange looking, it reminds me of the fat ninjas in Samurai Warriors that do huge amounts of damage.  Fitting, since he does that too.  He no longer has the option to intervent in the monks suiciding on the Mysterious Girl (and thus suicide himself).

The next ninja is getting full moon (-attack), so I pick Tsukinowa since he's the least durable.  Pretty uneventful, though I gameovered once because I went into a fight at low HP.  Didn't matter much because lol PC autosave after every fight.  (This is actually really nice.)

I do Izayoi third, giving her +attack.  Since she's going to be sitting in the back row with a bow anyway, plus she faces the weakest enemies.  Most of them don't even get to act this way.

This means Zangetsu gets the moon that boosts Human Kite.  Yay.  Zangetsu is badass looking in 3D, oddly.  His part is similarly uneventful.

The Tower of Babil itself is uneventful as well, until Izayoi joins and immediately gets OHKOed by the flame dogs.  Because of this, she ends up notably behind in levels and her bands don't get learned and leveled properly.  Siiiiiigh   I missed the Adamantite here, so I had to reload after clear to go find it. 

I actually need to do this for Palom also.  So he gets a bit more EXP and time added, reflected below.

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
Yang's Tale: Clear time 2:17, levels - Yang 21, Ursula 20
Porom's Tale: Clear time 2:44, levels - Porom 22
Palom's Tale: Clear time 3:49, levels - Palom 27, Leonora 25
Edge's Tale: Clear time 3:10, levels - Edge 27, Gekkou 20, Zangetsu 21, Izayoi 19, Tsukinowa 24

Edge's Tale in-game use:

Edge: 8/10.  He OHKOs pretty much everything he faces (especially with Waning Moon), he can heal, he can hit weaknesses, he can do basically everything.  He's pretty much one of the best characters in the game outright, and this chapter does a fine job of showing you why.
Gekkou: 5/10.  Probably the best of the Eblan Four overall, but his strengths don't really manifest in this tale other than being generally tanky and decently hard-hitting.  Nothing special.
Zangetsu: 5/10.  Conversely, his weaknesses don't really manifest in this tale (he's basically a worse Kain - TAY Kain, that is, not vanilla Kain).
Izayoi: 4/10.  Probably the worst of the Eblan Four overall, and her durability is a notable problem even here.  While she can heal, so can Edge, so she's not too great.
Tsukinowa: 5/10.  His durability would be more of a problem, but he gets more EXP than the other members of the Eblan Four relatively.  He can also heal and he does decent backrow damage, so he's okay.

[Fenrir]

Knight-Enchanter is so overpowered it's amazing.

Yeah it is frankly ridiculous, even more so in a solo challenge.

I respecced AGAIN and got all the barrier related skills, now I can pretty much no longer die. Here is a list of all the gross barrier passives I get:
- If I do damage I get some barrier back
- If enemies damage my barrier they get damaged back
- My barrier goes down more slowly than it should
- My barrier is stronger than it should be
- I get a boost to mana regen whenever I have a barrier active. Which is always.
- When the barrier goes down, which is never, all enemies around get frozen for a few seconds, and my next spell doesn't cost any mana. So I can cast another barrier and make enemies go "Oh god NOT AGAIN"
- If I die, which is absolutely never, I survive the hit and instantly get a full barrier; there's a 60 seconds cooldown so I "really" need to be "careful"

lol? I don't even need to use the barrier skill anymore, since my barrier regens very fast by damaging enemies, and just refuses to go down even whenever I get swarmed by 8 demons at once. I can kill giant bosses just by pressing and holding square and not even moving at any point.
And as always, as a mage, I can inflict a ton of statuses and do a ton of damage too. Mana is not an issue, cooldowns are not an issue either.

I don't even heal anymore, seriously. I only drink potions for the satisfaction of littering the beautiful landscape.
I just killed one dragon that was 4 levels above me. (This is Bioware so dragons are kind of a big deal, remember Firkraag?)


Anyway I'm delving into FFXIV. Wish me luck. It will probably be a miserable experience but I'm curious.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M - Delving into range and steam expenditure theoretics, I think I devised a system I'll personally use for my own averages. I also think I decided how I'll handle the weaponry for Tin Man and Randolph, but this is less important.

Anyhow: the average squares between S range and D range equals 5.8something. Which, rounded down (consistent to in-game internal calculations -and- how the game calculates steam expenditure on an intuitive level), I'll take as the average distance between characters. Amount of steam expended to get into the range necessary for being able to attack = Maximum range - average distance. If Maximum range >= average distance, steam expenditure is zero. If an attack requires being at a certain range for landing more bullets, use the range's value in the maximum range variant (so, in order to hit at all, Henry's Eagle Rifle only needs to be at 7 range [A's maximum range], needing no steam expenditure. However, in order to hit all three shots, D range minimum is required. D's maximum range outside of AoE is 4. So, he needs to move at least 1 square in order to land all three shots).

I'm still trying to elaborate a personal formula for steam expenditure needed for critical hits, which I -think- should be factored in, since all fighting units, including PCs, have a weak spot, and critical multipliers -also- vary from weapon to weapon and even character to character to a lesser degree. Typical multiplier is 1.2x, but specific weapons have 2.4x and Tom's Punch Gun has a hilarious 0.96x. The Ninja Boiler also has a 2x stacking mult to all crits and Randolph sports his Arcane Lore to stack a 1.2x multiplier on top of whatever he uses. The positioning for landing critical hits and how to optimally balance steam usage for maximum damage are also very big in-game. So yeah.

Any thoughts from the other players? NEB, Djinn, Meeple?

[Meeplelard]

I'm honestly unsure what angle to take; I guess figure out what would be ideal for turn 1 for reach character, and either assume enemy moves by an amount equal to an average (possibly variable if they come from a game with an actual movement mechanic, so like an Fire Emblem Paladin would have greater distance while a General would have less, but we're talking averages here), or assume enemy doesn't move at all, and get a multiple turn average.  Or am I not getting what you're asking right?

Curtain Call: So Force Your Way ultimate killed me in a medley, luckily Aetheryte before a path split and got around it!  I could have also probably, you know, twinked more defensively, used a team that was higher leveled, or Teleport Stoned, but shhh!

...I'm going to have to stat topic this game too, since I did the first one, aren't I?  If I did, should I include DLC characters, and if yes, would that include Krile, the character never released in the west because WHAT THE HELL!?

I do need to also work on making a super twink team or something...you know, a team where we have a x13.2 Ultima fired off by 3 characters on the first boss and the next like 15 enemies all die (or a summon appears and damage overflow stops )...oh that, would also involve a few x3 Ancient Magics from Shantotto and maybe a x2 Doomsday by Vivi.  Or I could make an Added Cut team, but that involves using a bunch of characters I'm not fond of IIRC...or I could make a combination of it.

...no clue what I'd do for a TWINKED FMS TEAM because seriously, who cares about FMSs!?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I'm honestly unsure what angle to take; I guess figure out what would be ideal for turn 1 for reach character, and either assume enemy moves by an amount equal to an average (possibly variable if they come from a game with an actual movement mechanic, so like an Fire Emblem Paladin would have greater distance while a General would have less, but we're talking averages here), or assume enemy doesn't move at all, and get a multiple turn average.  Or am I not getting what you're asking right?

I'm thinking more on how to handle crits. I think that a happy medium where more range means less need for steam expenditure already works out (since that... uhhhh, pretty much what it happens in-game), but crit positioning is dicier since it's not -only- range that matters. On the other hand, range definitely factors in (see Fox landing crits more easily than -anyone else in the game does-).

[DjinnAndTonic]

Just as a kneejerk reaction to your question, I'd assume that range is the main factor for landing crits, since for the most part you just have to get to correct side of the enemy to hit their critical point. So just take whatever steam expenditure each PC needs to get into firing range for their desired number of shots, and multiply it by a flat rate like 1.5x, rounded down like in-game, I guess? For characters whose movement Steam expenditure is 0 or 1, just assume a base 2 steam is used for correct positioning. This will reflect things like Fox's domination when using crits, and also punish the crazy range needed for things like Dorothy hitting all her bazillion shots on a single weakpoint (though I guess she can use her OPB Silver Shoes thing to mitigate that cost for turn 2?). I think the various kinds of weakpoints kind of average themselves out overall. A lot of the aliens have really obvious easy-to-hit weakpoints, and all human-types have their weakspot as their very-uncovered head, with only a few of the enemy types really hiding their weakpoints, so I don't think there needs to be a huge steam expenditure for PCs to be hitting crits. 2 minimum is already pretty high in addition to weapon and movement cost.

[Dark Holy Elf]

If you're assuming the default distance is 5, then the absolute minimum number of steam needed to get behind/beside the enemy is 6 (bit some enemies do have weak points on the front, so maybe it should be less?), so at the very least that should buy you a weak point shot. Arguably it should depend on the enemy and what they do, of course. A melee enemy would need to get closer (and thus be easier to critical, or just get in more shots if your name is Dorothy), while ranged enemies would not (and in fact, might try to get slightly farther away to annoy STEAM PCs further... which would create a difference between in ranges greater than 5, at least, so that's nice).

Overwatch is interesting. In theory a STEAM PC should be able to get one overwatch shot off against anyone who doesn't stun them with their first attack (or status you, or kill you, etc.), the interesting question is when they get more. Obviously against people who attack twice, but probably also against melee people if the STEAM character doesn't end their turn at melee anyway? Judging how many more may be difficult, unless you feel like testing vs. a berserker or something.


Anyway, on that note!

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. - Beaten. I had a fair bit of trouble with 16-1 since it was such a marathon map and I used the save points up not realising how much of one, but still, beat on the second try. I had a bit of trouble motivating myself to finish this game towards the end for some reason, but I suspect that had more to do with my mood than anything to do with the game? Hard to say. Final team was Lion, Fox, Queequeg, and Cafila; I debated between Cafila and Tin Man for use so went with the one whose design I obviously preferred. I also liked using Tom certainly. Tiger Lily's fine (and would have been a huge help in 16-1 definitely) but isn't as fun so nyah.

I enjoyed the game quite well. As mentioned, I do wish the polish was better. I also wish the writing was worth giving a damn about, like, at all. Like if you're going to put so little effort into the characters/setting why do you even bother going through the motions of JRPG tropes (predictably there is a scene where everyone agrees the main character should be their leader with like 0 justification for this) instead of either doing something fun with the source material characters, and/or dialling up the cheese to 11. On that note, the Code Name STEAM theme song, and Lincoln's voice acting, were some of my favourite parts of the game on this front.

But the gameplay's solid. Nice experimenting mixing the limited third-person perspective with a strategy game. Great array of PCs who play differently. Replaying maps to get better scores/times/those challenge runs are really neat on paper, this game has a lot of replay value which I'll have to dig into at some point.

Game's a 7/10 to me maybe? I'm not sure. Good, but I'm not wowed, and I definitely hope to see more games like this in the future. As long as they don't distract IS from new Fire Emblems too much, obviously.

[Fenrir]

FFXIV:

If you choose a human female it's nearly impossible to not make a perfect adorable waifu, this is the exact opposite of Dark Souls 1
Also that starting outfit has to be something out of a porn movie.

I went with the conjurer class, the first scene was on a boat, people talking then panicking about pirates attacking! In media res stuff! Except the MC hides and then ten seconds later she learns that the crew outmaneuvered the pirates and escaped.
Then the trip to the port was uneventful. Then there were a billion unexciting fetchquests in the port town.

Unfortunately jumping in this game is not very exciting, you can't jump in the water or anything and there are invisible walls everywhere.

The interface is pretty O_O. Ye gods.
There are 8 different crafting classes, oh boy

[Reiska]

It's basically impossible to make a female character of *any* race not look at least somewhat attractive in FFXIV, yeah.  Even Roegadyn, to an extent.

FF4TAY PC

Only one tale left to go before things start to come together.  Edward's is up!

What's even more fun than going through the underground waterway over and over?  Doing it while you have to kill everything by chipping 40 damage at a time.

Edward's Adamantite is hidden in a corner of the Antlion's nest.  Also, the Baron guards in the last bit of the chapter have some weird glitchy text.  Yay for lazy ports!  I didn't bother hunting down all the Bronze/Silver Tails or any of that.  Can always go back and do it later if I'm feeling particularly completionist/achievement-chasey.  So that's it!  Easy chapter, just kind of boring.

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
Yang's Tale: Clear time 2:17, levels - Yang 21, Ursula 20
Porom's Tale: Clear time 2:44, levels - Porom 22
Palom's Tale: Clear time 3:49, levels - Palom 27, Leonora 25
Edge's Tale: Clear time 3:10, levels - Edge 27, Gekkou 20, Zangetsu 21, Izayoi 19, Tsukinowa 24
Edward's Tale: Clear time 2:40, levels - Edward 23, Harley 14

Edward's Tale in-game use:

Edward: 6/10?  If you switch the Economical Ring from Harley to him, you're at no risk of dying ever at least.  Awful offense though.
Harley: 1/10.  Worst serious character in the game, and she only barely contributes to this chapter.  She really should have just been a plot character, not a party member, if they were going to leave her in this state.  (Pity she never got the function she was actually intended to have, a look into dummied data suggests she was intended to have Blue Magic.)
Generic Guards: 4/10.  Embarrassingly, they don't actually hit much harder than Edward, but at least they take hits well.

With the completion of all those, we now unlock Kain's tale for this version.  In the next post!

[Grefter]

You might want to (or might not want to) jump back into DL IRC to hook up with regulars there Fen.  Meeple has recently started playing and I know Laggy et al still play.

Dragon Age: Inquisition Symphony - I dunno what you are talking about with this game Fenrir.  This is practically Demons's Souls's 2.  The controls suck and climbing up ladders is the slowest thing in the history of ever.  I could catch an elevator on the Citadel faster than those.

[Dhyerwolf]

Pokemon X/Y- Just stopped in front of the second gym

Fire Starter- Strong magic and all around stats with a solid skillset
Snorlax- Surprisingly damaging and insane HP
Absol- That strength is nuts
Roselia- Gave her the TM with the Poison move whose damage doubles when the target is poisoned. Fun to play with for sure.
Wartortle- Solid all arounder
Axew- Not particularly great, may sub out.

Have also been running Espurr, Pikachu, the goat, and the ghost sword a little, but dropped them all.

Breath of Death- Just got Lita. I think Sara is currently the best on speed, HP AND Damage. Oh, she can also heal too.

[Reiska]

FF4TAY PC: Kain's Tale time!

First, we have two dungeons with a temp.  Yawn.  It looks like they scattered some of the treasures from Ceodore's challenge dungeon around the early parts of the chapter, though.  The first Adamantite is in the second part of the Devil's Road.  Baron More glitchy soldier text to be here (lol) once we get back to Ceodore and HM.  Who get to go through....

GUESS WHAT IT'S THE UNDERGROUND WATERWAY AGAIN god dammit S-E.  The second adamantite for this tale is found in the waterway's first map.  Temp!Kain can kill Edward with autobattle even when he's wearing Ceodore's starting equipment instead of anything actually good, haha.  Octokraken barely gets turns and dies to three Cross Slashes.  Evil Kain has some serious problems even HITTING Real Kain.  Granted it's the first time I've done this fight with Hooded Man not at level 15.  Heh.  So Kain gets his Persona, and that's that.

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
Yang's Tale: Clear time 2:17, levels - Yang 21, Ursula 20
Porom's Tale: Clear time 2:44, levels - Porom 22
Palom's Tale: Clear time 3:49, levels - Palom 27, Leonora 25
Edge's Tale: Clear time 3:10, levels - Edge 27, Gekkou 20, Zangetsu 21, Izayoi 19, Tsukinowa 24
Edward's Tale: Clear time 2:40, levels - Edward 23, Harley 14
Kain's Tale: Clear time 2:34, levels - Kain 30, Ceodore 30, Rosa 30, Cid 30

Kain's Tale in-game use:

Temp Kain: DNR really, *shrug*.  Doesn't face much in the way of notable opposition.  Is identical to original game's Kain around midgame and faces largely the same enemies; he was pretty good there, and it's much the same here.  Largest contribution is probably when you steal his gear to give to Ceodore and HM.
Hooded Man: 7/10.  For all that his lack of utility starts to show itself, he still has a marked statistical advantage over Ceodore here. 
Ceodore: 6/10.  His durability starts to be a bit of an issue here, but he can take a damage hit to sit in the back row if he needs to (and his backrow damage is still at least decent, thanks to bows).  His healing starts to not hold up as well here, too.
Rosa/Cid/Real Kain: DNR here, no action in this chapter with no challenge dungeon to face.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

If you're assuming the default distance is 5, then the absolute minimum number of steam needed to get behind/beside the enemy is 6 (bit some enemies do have weak points on the front, so maybe it should be less?), so at the very least that should buy you a weak point shot. Arguably it should depend on the enemy and what they do, of course. A melee enemy would need to get closer (and thus be easier to critical, or just get in more shots if your name is Dorothy), while ranged enemies would not (and in fact, might try to get slightly farther away to annoy STEAM PCs further... which would create a difference between in ranges greater than 5, at least, so that's nice).

About half the enemies in the game (and actually most relevant ranged enemies, in fact!) have their weak points either on their front (sniper Prowlers, grenadier Prowlers, stealth Prowlers, Dreadnoughts, Queens, Abominations, Generators) or have their back weak spots be so huge (Shrikes, Gunners, even Starface itself) that range becomes more important as long as you can at least see their back. The only ranged enemies that truly have their weak spots on the back are Hounds and Scourges (and Scourges may well feature in the "large weak spot category" depending). Melee enemies - such as Rippers, Berserkers, Lurkers and Slashers - are the ones who usually have their weak points on their backs, and even then better range makes reaching those spots easier (side flanking from a distance, for instance). The exception lies in Crashers, whose weak point is an upward tail that can be aimed from any direction (and is almost entirely irrelevant due to their durability. Nettlers are on a similar boat, being OHKOed by literally everything). Feels like that would encourage a "somewhere in the middle" approach. I'd argue myself that, due to this, ranged characters are actually -easier- to critical than melee characters in-game.

Overwatch is interesting. In theory a STEAM PC should be able to get one overwatch shot off against anyone who doesn't stun them with their first attack (or status you, or kill you, etc.), the interesting question is when they get more. Obviously against people who attack twice, but probably also against melee people if the STEAM character doesn't end their turn at melee anyway? Judging how many more may be difficult, unless you feel like testing vs. a berserker or something.

Having tested overwatch against melee, I've managed to get up to three overwatch shots against the likes of Berserkers when they were at a large distance. Overwatching them from range nets at least two shots. Ranged enemies, who -can- overwatch, usually save their steam in order to always do so, so they typically won't trigger overwatch more than once (for all that I've managed to slam Starface thrice with Fox's Sharp Eyes overwatch , which was kinda glorious). Another balancing factor is that overwatch requires the PCs to save on steam, so they have to sacrifice attacks on their own turn to trigger overwatch counters. You also could argue the opposition doesn't -have- to trigger the counters, but depending on range, that can be notoriously difficult.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Well, if you make an attack and, at the end of that attack, your target is still alive/not stunned, they will always get an overwatch shot off (provided they're in range to make one), so no reason that wouldn't carry over into the DL.

The melee enemy thing probably depends how much they have to move. I feel like you get an overwatch shot every ~2 squares or so, but I haven't tested this so am far from certain.

Of course, as you note, there is a steam cost for Overwatch, and since one of the main reasons for Overwatch shots (stunning enemies who act multiple times) is much less potent in the DL, I'm not sure how broadly useful they will be. Fox gets a bit more steam efficiency out of them, of course (and gets a few free ones with her limit), so they're mostly of interest to her. For everyone else, it depends on overwatch stun rate.