What Games are you playing 2015?

[NotMiki]

http://kotaku.com/the-witcher-3-takes-shots-at-drm-1707277761

Have been considering getting a video card/Witcher 3 bundle.  Said bundle gives you the GOG version of the game.  Had more or less decided to just wait til video cards and Witcher 3 are both cheaper, probably be a wash money-wise.  But now I dunno man.

[Sierra]

DS2SOTFS Company of Champions - Ditched my pyro run because pyro ended up not as stupidly op as it was in 1, and yeah.  Restarted with a sorc build, amd hacked in a Blue Flame because I wanted to use it. Holy shit this weapon's cool. It may not necessarily be all that powerful, but there is something intrinsically satisfying about having Great Magic Weapon boost both your damage and your spell damage. Interestingly, also getting a decent bit of milage out of Strong Magic Shield in the Watchdragon Parma. Otherwise, offensive spells outside of the Soul Arrow/Spear family have been lackluster but everything else synergizes so well I don't really care. Besides, I still haven't beaten any lord soul boss except the sinner so I still have lategame spells to get.

The only real downside is that this weapon is normally locked away stupidly late or requires farming after using a bonfire aesthetic in Tseldora and meeeeeeh.

Its almost at +5 and my Int is already at 40, so if I need more damage later I may have to figure out some weapon to power stance with it, but for now I should be fine up to Shrine of Amana at least.

I recommend at least trying for a second Blue Flame (Undead Crypt ghost drop rate is not good, but at least you get infinite tries). Powerstanced BF with buffs active on each = probably the best melee damage I've got out of the game. Double Great Magic Weapon also looks pretty stupid anime for what that's worth (it's a shame you're never getting more than one Crystal Magic Weapon charge without actual NG+). Invest bare minimum into STR/DEX for the powerstance requirements, raw infuse it since the scaling's not great anyway, pump INT to 40 or so and slap on Lingering Dragoncrest Ring so your buffs last forever. That formula worked amazingly well for me.

I don't use offensive sorceries other than Soul Arrow variants pretty much ever. Soul Spear is alright for a boss cannon I guess (Crystal Soul Spear absolutely does not justify two spell slots and I'm not sure why they nerfed it in that particular manner). Soul Greatsword is kind of nice for sweeping whole mobs, but that's about it.

[Cotigo]

Yeah, I was thinking of farming for a new Blue Flame anyway just for legitimacy points. I may do that.

Are you sure that raw is better than going magic Blue Flame? At +5 the scaling jumps to B, and boosts the magic damage (and therefore casting damage on Great Soul Arrow/Homing Soul Mass) pretty high.

[DjinnAndTonic]

FF Record of Kain: So despite hating him, Kain has been stupidly useful in a game where physicals and durability are King. Cloud outclasses him of course, and I'm guessing so does Josef but I never tried him out. Since I needed a second meatshield besides Cloud (and Tyro/Wakka/Cyan certainly aren't cutting it), I've been stuck with Kain. 

But that all ends today! I picked up Warrior of Light, who is basically just stronger/tougher/slower Kain. And he's about twenty levels lower than Kain and already outclassing him. It helps that he can use high end Swords, of which I have plenty, whereas my strongest Spear is a 2 star affair. Conveniently enough, WoL is sporting a new sprite based on his Dissidia look rather than just looking like a FF1 Knight, so he fits my criteria nicely. His FF1 sprite DOES pop up during his Soul Break "Class Change", amusingly enough. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to continue using both him AND Snow, since they fill similar roles and have similar Soul Break effects. For now, I like the dynamic of three physical bruisers plus two squishy Mage/Healers.

Current party: Cloud/WoL/Snow/Rinoa/Vanille
Also leveled up: Kain, Tyro, Rydia, Lenna, Wakka, Cyan, White Mage

At this point the only named PC I haven't used in my roster is Josef. I also kinda want to try out Red Mage.

[Sierra]

Raw infusion lets you maintain optimal bonuses out of RoB/Flynn's Ring, so as an actual weapon I think it'll always be better that way. Maybe not as an offensive catalyst in that case, though. I guess it depends on what you want to get out of the thing. I almost exclusively used it as an implement of melee destruction, so actual casting strength was not a factor in my build. Unlike in DS1, magic power does not influence the numerical ATK bonus of buffs in any way in DS2 (only their duration), save giving them a slightly higher base damage to enhance with their fixed percentage. I'm pretty sure from memory that the raw infusion ATK boost was more significant than anything I could get out of the INT scaling as far as melee output goes, but I suppose I can't comment on what that does to its casting potency.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It didn't let me use MANDINGO so I deleted it.

[hinode]

And I think I'd need a proper Healer with a Healing soul break to drop Lenna at this point, so it'll have to be Aeris when she becomes available. Flip side, I can totally replace Rinoa or Tyro with Vanille! Still means I'm stuck with a recycled sprite PC, but the FTP limits are strict enough that I don't want to handicap myself too much by dropping Lenna and losing battles I should be winning easily if my party was just constantly Regening HP for free.

I don't have Aerith myself, but checking online her default Soul Break is actually Seal Evil in this game, while Healing Wind requires one of those character-specific equips.

Decided to replace Rydia with Vanille myself as well, looking at stat charts Vanille has noticably more HP/defense and a much better Soul Break in exchange for lower magic and some unimportant stuff. Luckily the Vanille event itself throws tons of Growth Eggs at you at the lower levels that are a few Normal clears away, since I don't think I'm close to handling the Hard version yet.

[Fenrir]

Josef is Snow with more offense and less defense pretty much. They can equip the same things including the princess dress. Snow has a rather useless limit (he casts regen and protect on himself iirc? Good job) while Josef punches things more. Snow also has a few extra skills from what i've seen (he can haste himself. Not sure if useful here.

Character evaluation:
Kain/Josef/Snow/Cyan: These guys can stab/punch things, and use an ability to stab/punch things twice. The rest of their skillset is pretty meh. Cyan is special in that his stats are just the worst
Cloud: Whoever made this game is a FF7 fan because you get Cloud ASAP and he outclasses everybody. He can use spellblades to hit weaknesses like a mage and deal more damage than them.
Rydia/Lenna/Vanille: all the girls are mages, surprise. Their damage is outclassed pretty fast (though my Lenna is decent with her chibi-holy) they have more of a support role: healing, status, hitting weaknesses, buffs. But they're a pain to use well since they only have two ability slots and few charges. You need one for healing, another one makes your team worse but helps meet hidden goals when replaying a stage for mastery. If she survives that long.
Wakka: he's some sort of mage/fighter hybrid, with worse stats than the fighters but a lot more utility with buffs and status. He's fun to use but I didn't find any good weapon for him. He needs a long range boomerang-chakra thing because he's way too squishy for the front row.
Generics: They blow.


I played Witcher 3 for a bit and liked it a lot so far. Playing this after Dragon Age Inquisition feels like playing Mario 64 after Bubsy 3D. (Not in the sense that Dragon Age is bad; it just didn't get it) The battle system is still messy, but I think I'll just focus on levelling alchemy and signs to avoid using swords too much. Right now I'm just helping villagers because I need more bread/water. Life is pretty shitty.

[Cotigo]

Raw infusion lets you maintain optimal bonuses out of RoB/Flynn's Ring, so as an actual weapon I think it'll always be better that way. Maybe not as an offensive catalyst in that case, though. I guess it depends on what you want to get out of the thing. I almost exclusively used it as an implement of melee destruction, so actual casting strength was not a factor in my build. Unlike in DS1, magic power does not influence the numerical ATK bonus of buffs in any way in DS2 (only their duration), save giving them a slightly higher base damage to enhance with their fixed percentage. I'm pretty sure from memory that the raw infusion ATK boost was more significant than anything I could get out of the INT scaling as far as melee output goes, but I suppose I can't comment on what that does to its casting potency.

I'll keep this in mind for late-game. Trudging through spiderhell now and with GMW buffed Magic Blue Flame +4 I'm OHKOing just about everything with my melee, so I'll stick with what works for now. I've also been using Great Soul Arrow for 360 noscoping n00bs (re: slowly binocular lining up shots and cheesing out enemies I don't want to actually fight) so the spell damage is paying off. Worse to worst, I use a couple palestones, switch to raw, and blow a soul vessel to respec.

This game, man. Such Casual Souls.

Out of curiousity, is this from memory on vanilla DS2 or is this DS2:Scholar? I thought I heard something about Flynn's ring getting changed slightly with respect to spell/faith/fire/hex damage between versions. Either way, I can test out the scholar changes because it's not like I'm not gonna be swimming in stones I won't use otherwise by endgame

[The Duck]

There definitely is some good depth there but for whatever reason it didn't connect while playing

Yeah I still wonder about tha?. Let me recap the possibilities:
1) The main character is really boring and uncharismatic this time around, so any conversation that involves him/her becomes a bit more boring
2) We got tired of the Bioware formula / direction / voice acting
3) The open world nature of the game removes urgency from te storyline; ME/DA1 and 2 had more of a mission structure
4) All of the above

I did feel the emptiness of the open world was salvaged by by the design and personality of the areas. In essence, these are all meticulously crafted very large places, instead of just something copy/pasted ad infinitum like you'd see in Scrolls or Just Cause 2. There's always something interesting around the corner despite the game being the open world, and that's the game's saving grace to me.

BTW I meant that the game has a fun world to explore, not fun plot to explore. Also, let me add another Con: My left thumb hurts from pressing L3 too many times

I think it's mostly 1 and 3. Hawke could actually be played in a way that is sarcastic/interesting and even your DA1 character had a developed backstory and had some interesting dialogue options. Shepherd actually did shit like headbutt asshole Krogans. I don't know what it is about the Inquisitor but mostly your options are wishy washy and about possibly having impostor syndrome, even the jerk options aren't that fun, and the female VA I had just sounded incredibly bored. S/he also has no real backstory worth talking about which I guess was purposeful but doesn't do many favors in terms of establishing yourself as an agent in the huge world they have created. I even made a pretty concerted effort to talk to everyone after big events and while there are some good scenes, I generally got the sense that the character I was talking to was interesting but trying to interact with a plastic bag.

The lack of urgency is also big since you can be far removed from what's going on by all the time you spend collecting crack rocks and killing squirrels. There technically is a mission structure but time between story missions can be fairly large. I don't necessarily think that the Bioware formula has necessarily run its course since that worked for me as recently as three years ago, I just think it was really clumsily delivered here.

[Grefter]

FF:RK - the pacing for the level unlocks in this is nuts.  FF7 to open with because they know it is the most popular one.  Then bam force fed FF4 straight away, but you unlock a few other game worlds.  Now I am 4 stages deep in FF7, X and nothing more unlocks.  So you have to keep doing FF4.  5 stages deep.  Hopefully something new opens up.  At least I finally get an actual character from FF4 after this stage.

[Fenrir]

Yes. Kain.
i hope you're not looking forward to Post FF7 because you'll have ten million FF4/6 fights before

I don't know Duck, things have changed a lot in 3 years.

Witcher 3: I take back what I said about having an item oriented build because farming herbs is way worse than in Inquisition. There was this one mission in which Geralt said "hmmm i should put some oil on my sword, drink a potion before fighting this thing" and I was all "YES time to put all these herbs I've gathered to use" except I couldn't create a single item. Not a single one. On top of that item detection is the worst.

Anyway Quen looks broken as fuck so whatever. Balance is over already. I still recommend playing on the hardest level. And in polish.

I really like small details like having to actually read books that serve as quest items, the bestiary giving useful tips, triple triad redux, etc

[Fenrir]

This is definitely the best game if you want realistic peasants, and by that I mean gross as hell peasants.

[Grefter]

Yes. Kain.

Are you saying I am the brother that will betray you?  Are you my Abel? 

Its okay, I got Rydia finally 5 stages in.  It is crazy that there is no other FF4 characters that are things that actually exist and will be used before that happens.

At least my inventory isn't full of spears that no one can use (I mostly get daggers and axes it seems).

[DjinnAndTonic]

FFRK: Snow casting Regen on himself saves me from wasting valuable Cure charges on him, its actually more useful than most of the Soul Breaks since it seems most of the damage ones don't scale up w/ stats? I've certainly noticed that Kain's, Tyro's, and Wakka's are outclassed by their regular physical moves most of the time.

Admittedly, if I'm using Lenna, then Snow's Soul Break is pretty redundant.

Currently rocking a Level 40 Cloud with Drain Strike and Blizzara Strike (w/ Thunder Strike for the Vanille event). My next highest current unit is Rinoa at 36, rocking Cura L3 and Thundara L3 (can't wait for the free Thundaga from this Vanille event). Both have a 4* weapon and 5* armor. Everyone else I keep shuffling because it's more fun that way. Snow is L30 w/ a boring 3* dagger and Armor Break. Vanille and WoL are L26 with 4* weapons (Diamond Sword and Light Staff) that they harvested from Tyro and Lenna.
Rydia, Cyan and Wakka are still in the 20s since I haven't used them much since the FF4/6/X dungeons ended. Also, Summon Magic is way too limited to be worth the ability slot. Even assuming their damage is awesome, you get one shot of it per dungeon. And upgrading the Summons are near-impossible due to their upgrade material being limited to Event dungeons and even there, they exist in limited quantities. It's frustrating since I like Summons.
I might give Josef a try anyway despite his level deficiency from Fenrir's recommendation. I wanna see if maybe his Soul Break's damage keeps up with his regular damage output. I wish there were more Monk skills to make use of his semi-unique ability category. But I've been using Monk's Deathblow with Snow and it's basically useless.
Kain is still my second-highest level unit at 38 unfortunately. I can't shake the usefulness of his bulk and level advantage.
I still don't have any 5* weapons, but I'm only three Mythril away from my second 50-pull, so wish me luck, whatever I get will basically dictate how I have to build my party.


@Grefter: Hey, that's pretty lucky actually! Nearly everyone can use Daggers, so if you power them up, you can swap good equipment around to whoever you decide to use. Downside is that they are almost certainly the worst non-mage weapon. Though they sometimes have added status. Out of curiosity, which ones have you picked up?

[Meeplelard]

From what I understand, the GOOD Black Mages which you may have just missed are Terra and Rinoa, whom are apparently very effective at what they do, albeit may require their relic weapon.  Big thing about both is unlike most Mages, they have a competent physical, Rinoa having range ignoring so she can use Back Row with no penalty, and Terra can use all good defensive gear making her defense pretty high for a mage (on top of both having actual HP Scores; they're averagish instead of bad.)

Looking at other factors, it seems Vanille could work as a decent Black Mage since she has 4* Black Magic and good Magic stat, even if her primary purpose is healer. 

Down the line, other Black Mages who have events are Vivi and Golbez, Vivi being what appears to be a pure damage Mage, having game best Magic and that's about it for his gimmick.  Golbez is a tanky mage, in that he has solid physical stats, can use heavy armor (and Axes!), but lower Magic than other mages (still solid), iffy speed, and no White Magic options.


Regarding Kain...apparently he use to be so bad they had to give him a +20 Strength boost at level 50 after an update.  I think Celes and Cyan got upgrades of sorts as well, like Cyan got access to Heavy Armor when he originally didn't.  ONe thing I wish there was is more documentation online.  Apparently there's some more stuff released in Japan (like Terra gets a unique armor) and I can't find any stats on it, grrrr!!!

[Grefter]

Dancing Dagger (Which doesn't do anything special, but you never turn down a knife fight because if you win, hey free knife?)

[DjinnAndTonic]

FFRK: got to the magic 50 mythril and pulled eleven relics. Only one 5*. And it's a Bangle. Damn talk about screwed. There's not enough mythril sources in the game to get anywhere near another fifty except by waiting for the daily allotment. So at least a month and a half before I can draw again. I got some 4* defensive gear and a 4* Axe that might see use but otherwise it was all junk.

Oh. And I got a Katana. So yay I can use Cyan?

[Grefter]

pay2win scrub

[DjinnAndTonic]

Honestly I wouldn't mind throwing a few dollars at it. It certainly has held my attention at least as long as most of my handheld games of late. I wonder how much it would cost to do another 11-for-the-price-of-10 relic draw?

*checks* *coughs*

It's like $30... For just -one- draw that will only guarantee a single 5* item. C'mon Squeenix, not cool. At least offer first-timer discounts or monthly sales or something.

[Fenrir]

Two months later

I can quit smoking and paying this game whenever I want

Are you even sure you're guaranteed to have a five stars item if you do a 11 items pull? Nothing points to it. I'm pretty sure you can get nothing but threes.

The game's pretty evil since four stars stuff is really way inferior to five stars stuff. But that's ftp. You knew what you were getting yourself into.
Btw, commoner three stars items upgraded to bourgeois five stars items are still shit compared to native noble five stars items. They think they can hang out with pure five stars items because they also have five stars, but everybody can see their roots and upbringing. Get these fucking five stars dancing daggers out of my sight, you son of a submariner.

Anyway you shouldn't really bother with Josef if you like Snow, I really had to make up for Josef's squishiness by giving him the princess dress (yes i'm going to keep telling I gave Josef a princess dress because it's too cool)

Summons do look pretty worthless overall, but they can be upgraded to get more charges. Kirin also sounds good, he's mt regen.

Today is finally armor upgrade day, so all my equipment is maxed now. Time to get them greater earth orbs from Lenna's event's hardest level while I still can. Protectga looks ace.


Grefter, how about only one Ff6 character in 21 stages? And it's Cyan.

Warrior of Light's sprite is a mess, he looks like an anime cosplayer. Not using this jerk

[DjinnAndTonic]

FFRK: I haven't actually put any money into the game. I was considering showing my support for it by dropping a few dollars (maybe 5-10?) for some nice loot, but well, you can't even get nice loot unless you're willing to drop the amount that could buy you a proper video game instead. Sorry Squeenix, it's just not happening. Make a more reasonable pricing model please.

Picked up my free Thundaga from Vanille's event and upgraded it once so now it is my best source of damage period. But it also hits weakness on like 80% of the enemies in Vanille's event, so I can't wait to trounce the Hard level there. (Or more likely, squeak by with only Cloud left alive.) Unfortunately I gotta focus on Lenna's event since it's almost over.

[Cotigo]

FFRK: I have not even downloaded this game, but from everything I've heard here I'm going to hate it until some specific instances come up.

Can someone tell me when the Terra, Locke, Celes, Edgar, and Ramza instances come in? I may start playing it during those. Alternately, I may just play FF6 again and reminisce about my last playthrough of LFT.

Actually it sounds like I may as well just do that.

DS2: FFFFFFFFFF I have lost SO MUCH soul memory to stupid shit.

Dysentery or something: click click click things die and I'm not in any real danger so I can be as much of a stupid faffabout for others' amusement as I want. terrible story and why are there wookies without fur mating with humans then being a race in this game also all the men look like han solo but it's an MMO with people I like playing it so I guess it is time to click left mouse button and forget that I can jump.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Locke, Edgar and Ramza haven't been released in Japan yet, so even longer if you wanna play it in English. Terra and Celes already had their events in both versions, though these events reappear from time to time in the Japanese version. No word yet on when they'll show up again in the English release.

Honestly it's not a game to go out of your way to play. It's like Cookie Clicker or Candy Crush. It's only worth playing when you have lots of waiting time you need to fill. (Like if you have a daily 10-30 minute commute to work on a crowded train where the only thing you can do is play on your phone.) The only thing that recommends it over something like Cookie Clicker is because FF6-style sprites with a stripped-down FF6-style battle system is more attractive and engaging than mindlessly clicking baked goods. The effect is still the same - it's a Skinner Box Collectathon, though at least it occasionally throws a challenging boss fight at you?

[Sierra]

Out of curiousity, is this from memory on vanilla DS2 or is this DS2:Scholar? I thought I heard something about Flynn's ring getting changed slightly with respect to spell/faith/fire/hex damage between versions. Either way, I can test out the scholar changes because it's not like I'm not gonna be swimming in stones I won't use otherwise by endgame

I could've sworn DS2 vanilla Flynn's got a damage hit in conjunction with infused weapons, but after Laggy stated otherwise I tossed it onto a lightning-infused sword in Scholar and it did indeed get full damage bonus. Flynn's does not give a damn. Flynn's is just that good.