What Games are you playing 2015?

[DjinnAndTonic]

@Elfboy: I didn't think the plot would have any kind of sway over your opinion of FFD, especially since it's probably better than FFs 1-5 overall (not that that's a hard bar to clear).

[Cmdr_King]

Honestly Alba unto herself propels the game ahead of the first five FF games I think on plot, although I did play the PS1 version of FFV I suppose.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Reasonable. The game has a poor translation and FF5a an actively good one which does make a difference there, but regardless the gaps aren't large.

That said crappy plot is always going to be a factor, especially in games like these which feel the need to devote screentime to said bad plot (and then not have sceneskip). I don't have FF5 at a 9/10 pretty much because of this, after all.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy Please Stop Autobattling - Just did the Elite Balamb boss rush, but failed to master it. Not bothering to try again, Leviathan is good enough. It's fairly reasonable to finish it without spending any Mythril, though: Granaldo is very fragile and so are the cronies who support him and Archaeosaur gets badly trivialized by either Blind or Paralyze. Oilboyles are, as before, the nasty fuckers, but the lower durability makes them more reasonable, and I found out Safety Bit helps considerably against Oil Blast counters (gravity and ID fall into the same resistance!). Do, however, bring Squall if you want to make anything higher than Novice against NORG, since the battle still takes a long time. He has lower defenses and 60k less HP, at least. And, if you manage to have a Celes Runic RW, the first half of the fight becomes utterly hilarious: it completely walls all of his offense, since he has literally no physicals. Carbuncle yields similar results in a vaccuum, BUT NORG has MT dispel (which doesn't work against Runic!), so it can backfire.

EDIT: welp, finished all new classic dungeons, time to slave away at their elite iterations. The only old Elite dungeon left at this point is Library of the Ancients, and hoo boy, FF5's bosses have about as many status holes here as they do in their home game (faithful translations!). -Both- Ifrit and Byblos are vulnerable to paralysis? Are you fucking kidding me?

[Grefter]

Snow Rambo vs FFV in an epic gape off.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Snow Rambo vs FFV in an epic gape off.

Yes.

[Meeplelard]

Captain Toad: This game actually had the gall to have it's male protagonist be rescued by his female sidekick.  What the hell?  Not only is it offensively cheerful and happy, it also ruins any image of MALE POWER FANTASY I could squint at having!  This does not bode well for episode 3.

[Meeplelard]

Tales of Xillia: Time to play some FF14-*PSN won't load* ...well shit, I already started the PS3 up, like hell I'm going to make that go to waste! 

...so I finally started this up after downloading it like a year and a half ago or something.  While the battle system is more traditional Tales, and the existence of the summon spirits are back, everything else about the game does not really feel Tales like (well, ok, Art Style I guess, but come on, it's Tales!)  The setting is actually interesting because the "What if the average person can use Artes and it's used for everyday purposes like lighting lamps?" and "the idea of the summon spirits is common knowledge to everyone."  Also the setting does feel more cyberpunk than the usual Pseudo-Medieval setting every Tales game has...at least until I got to the 2nd town, but we'll see how long that lasts.



Final Fantasy 3: Started a replay of this.  Land Turtle died to 3 actions consisting of 2 Anarctic Winds and a physical.  Jinn sucked and really no point in saying what happened there!

Final Fantasy 3: Started a replay of this.  Land Turtle died to 3 actions consisting of 2 Anarctic Winds and a physical.  Jinn sucked and really no point in saying what happened there!


...no, that's not me being forgetful and somehow typing everything exactly as I did.  I'm actually replaying BOTH versions of FF3 side by side in an experiment of sorts.  I'm going to gauge the games next to one another, playing the NES version first, then playing the same sequence in the DS version, and reflect on the two.  So far, here's things I noticed:

-NES version wins massively on dungeon set up.  While the dungeons are identical in terms of how their actual layout, and the DS version has the advantage of non-grid based movement, the NES version has a much larger edge in visibility.  The DS version is far more zoomed up and you can only see a fraction of what you can see in the NES version.  This means it's a lot easier to keep track of where you've been or what you want to go in the NES version since you can see distant pathes way better than the DS version.

-DS version has an actual overworld map on the overworld.  NES version gets one eventually but it requires the Sight spell.  To be fair, this doesn't matter until you get off the Floating Continent, as that's when the size of the world increases significantly.

-On one hand, it's nice that Freelancer can do stuff while Onion Knights are a complete blech class.  On the otherhand, getting jobs right after the first boss makes that not matter.  Through Jinn, in the DS version you basically have 4 identical characters, with the only differences being Luneth's Job Level edge, and Ignus' slight level lead.  Otherwise, you just juggle equipment, spells, etc. around and move on.  NES version, after Land Turtle, you have jobs, so actual decisions need to be made. 

Tangentially, they really want you to use a Red Mage this early, and I will note that after this replay, I'm convinced it's the WHITE MAGE you should drop in the early parts, not the Black Mage.   Why do I say this? Red Mage can cover healing almost as well as white Mage; while he has less MP, this will be made up for by the fact that you'll be killing enemies faster, thereby taking less damage.  Black Mage, by contrast, can equip Bows and Arrows, and the game hands you 40 Holy Arrows for a dungeon filled with lots Undead/Holy Weak enemies.  This makes Black Mage actually competent as a back row damage dealer, who can sling Blizzard on the boss.  You could use a 2nd Red Mage or a Fighter, sure, but I think getting a JLevel push on a Black Mage early will make those Mini-Dungeons easier.  White Mage feels kind of dead weight unless you use MP to hurt Undead with Cure, but you don't have enough to really support it.  between Potions and Red Mage healing, you should be able to get through the dungeon fine without a White Mage.

BUT BACK TO THE COMPARISONS!!!

-Both games suck at characterization.  NES' version is just a 4 headed hydra who talks to himself when no one else is around, otherwise suddenly becomes one person if there's someone else to talk to.  Flipside, Luneth and co. are given basically one personality trait and that's their character, with Luneth being "Adventurous Hero Guy", Arc being "Wimpy Kid", Refia being "Tomboy" and Ignus being "Noble Honorable Guy."   I suppose DS version wins because they show a glimmer of characterization, but that's really a 'wins by default" than actual praise.

-NES game respects your time more, simply because the plot in both games are the same but the NES game just has some dialog boxes you scroll through and done.  DS version has to show unskippable text through the Crystal Monologue nonsense that is boring as crap.  Oh yeah, worth reminding you that after Jinn, game shoves you back to the Crystal Room to get your jobs, THEN does the opening credits, so you sit through *2* Crystal Monologues of boredom.  Then you have to walk all the way back to Sasune from the cave.  NES version, after beating Jinn, you warp right back to Sasune, and just continue from there. 

-The difficulty between the two is pretty similar.  On one hand, the enemies are individually better in the DS version since they hit harder (durability is similar.)  On the other hand, NES version you can fight way more per fight at a time, so while you take the same amount of damage, it starts getting uglier when you fight things that have status effects, as it's that much less damage mitigation on the enemies end to status you.  Plus enemies tend to status you more often, though that may be just a result of there being more of them.

-DS' damage curve is already higher than the NES version.  Case in point, Anarctic Wind vs. Jinn in the NES version does about 100 damage, the same item does over 200 to him.  I knew the damage curve in the DS version is way higher, but didn't think it'd show itself so early.

-CP System sucks ass early game because changing two characters can be tricky!  Job Sickness doesn't exist early game by contrast.

As far as what I'm going to be doing in both? Nothing fancy, just what I feel confident with in terms of parties.  I want the games to be on an even playing field.  Granted, there's more options in the DS version to play around with due to how the two games were balanced but well, that's part of the experiment!  Thinking I might do a repeat of my first play-through of the DS version, now applying more knowledge of the game and seeing how that goes.

[DjinnAndTonic]

FFRK: Jeez, Snow, you're so far ahead of everyone now...
At this point, my only goal is to get 100 Stamina before Snow... only two points to go~
Squall and Irvine are getting levelled up to take on NORG because... eh, when ELSE am I gonna use FF8 characters? Cleared all the classic and elite FF8 dungeons, so I guess I'll try taking him on at sub-L50 with those two to see how it goes. That Synergy Bonus is still nuts. And hey, at least my Rinoa is max level. That should help.

Fire Emblem if: Shun bought this so I'm gonna watch him play it for a while and report dutifully to the DL on how awesome the game is.

[Fenrir]

RK: Yeah I didn't play through all of yesterday for example so I can lag behind. I only have like 78 max stamina. It's cool though.
Spell charges are starting to get pretty good. I got a lvl 4 Fira strike, lvl 4 Curaga, etc. Also, 117 quests finished / 128. That's something I guess

I just got through the FF8 elite event up to Norg. I had a long battle then he one shotted Garnet out of nowhere. cool
I decided to just cram like 100 eggs at once in Bard's mouth so he could immediately level from 1 to 50, and now I'm trying to get his second materia just to completely trivialize that one fight against Norg

Her Story: Grefter, do you allocate your playtime by playing 90% dumb games and 10% smart games or something? So playing Her Story would impede on your Dreamfall playtime but not on your Warhammer 40k playtime?
Because I do something similar
Anyway I'm not sure Dreamfall fits as a smart game

[Grefter]

At the moms to my playntimemismbrkken up into 80% Fallout Shelter and 10% You Must Build a Boat and 10% oh my gods Fallout Shelter hurry up and boot.

I should get back to FF3.

[Fenrir]

I've already bing played through You Must Build a Boat, it's allright. I don't think you can unlock the robber on a phone.


I finished Her Story and it's pretty amazing. My favourite non Souls game in a while. Great value for this kind of game too. (I played it for 4.5 hours and have cleared about 2/3 of the database, the hard part comes next. The game costs 5 bucks) Do note that it is also available on phones.

I can't say much about it.
I'm just looking forward to someone VaatiVidyaing this game


FFRK: Got Zealot, Norg and boss rush are next

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

FFRK: Jeez, Snow, you're so far ahead of everyone now...
At this point, my only goal is to get 100 Stamina before Snow... only two points to go~
Squall and Irvine are getting levelled up to take on NORG because... eh, when ELSE am I gonna use FF8 characters? Cleared all the classic and elite FF8 dungeons, so I guess I'll try taking him on at sub-L50 with those two to see how it goes. That Synergy Bonus is still nuts. And hey, at least my Rinoa is max level. That should help.

I'm at 107 Stamina. Sorry, guys.

EDIT:

Final Fantasy Like Someone In Autobattle - Mostly futzing around. I'm pretty close to the 50-Mythril mark and one Stamina Shard away from 108 while being currently next to Elite Guzco. Once I mangle him, I'll just grind some more Ice Orbs, since I frankly could use a bigger stash of them. It'll be cool when the global version finally releases the post-Heroic daily dungeons, since those should have common Greater Orbs.

[hinode]

The boss rush version of Granaldo has 4 chances to drop 4* orbs (Power, Non-Elemental, Wind, Dark) for 18 stamina. Probably more worthwhile than grinding today's daily dungeon, for those who've unlocked boss rush (which I'm too lazy to do, myself).

[The Duck]

I finished Her Story and it's pretty amazing. My favourite non Souls game in a while. Great value for this kind of game too. (I played it for 4.5 hours and have cleared about 2/3 of the database, the hard part comes next. The game costs 5 bucks) Do note that it is also available on phones.

I can't say much about it.
I'm just looking forward to someone VaatiVidyaing this game

I am really interested in this, but is it a better FMV game than Roundabout.

EDIT: also is it even a game lol

[Fenrir]

Less of a videogame than walking simulators, 0/10


Roundabout's FMVs lost a bit of steam in the third area, while this is obviously more consistent. So sure this is better.

I like this FMV renaissance in any case

[Fenrir]

The World Ends With You (IOs)

Holy shit, the writing
The Nomurast game

[Meeplelard]

Final Fantasy 3 Dual Play: Just got to Castle Argus.

So a common theme this session has been I finish the NES version, then find out I missed stuff via playing the DS version thanks to it's "zoom up and you can see secrets!" mechanics, so have to go back and get them.  This includes having to run back through Tokkal Village's Cave, to get some notable stuff (The Freezing Rod being the big one.)

Things worth noting:

-This is the part of the game where CP vs. Job Sickness stands out a lot.  CP concerns mean that you cannot change from Black Mage back to your basic jobs when you go to the Viking Cave, and need to stay in Black Mage the entire way.  Luckily, the route is short and little combat involved, so not a big deal, but still a pain if you didn't know better.  Job Sickness?  Stats at this point are too low for it to have too meaningful an impact. 

-Equipment doesn't matter at all in mini-dungeons in FF3NES, outside of the Freezing Rod item casts, which should definitely go to your White Mage (you want one of these for obvious reasons.  Red Mage won't suffice on MP here) so it can do offense.  Flipside, it's meaningful in FF3DS because it still impacts Magic Defense, something I learned the hardway when Big Rat nuked me a bit.

-Enemies in FF3DS Hate Ingus.  He's died more than anyone else, and it's not a durability thing; they seriously like to target him.  Maybe the game is yelling at me to use 2 Shields on him already since he's a Red Mage.

-The Mountain Climb was trivial in FF3NES.  Even though I had missed the early Great Bow and Iron Arrows, it was pretty uneventful.  The one blech thing was my Monk got petrified and had to blow a Soft to recover him.  Flipside, the mountain Climb in FF3DS was a pain; I had a reset on there due to shear RNG hax.  Back Attack -> healer gets Petrified, another character gets critical hit and KO'd.  On the 2nd climb, I got petrified at least twice more.  Honestly, this is kind of bullshit level since you're not going to be prepared for petrification spam this early.  Yeah, NES had it too but the rate was definitely lower.  You fight more Rukhs per battle in the NES version and thus get hit more often, yet petrify kicked in once compared to multiple times.

-Money at first seemed tighter in the DS version compared to the NES version since so much more stuff you wanna buy (Thief and Red Mage can use Mithril equips for example, as opposed to just Fighter/Warrior), but there's a lot more chests that give you significant amounts of gil.  I'm not going to really be comparing the chest differences on that note since both games balance their chests around their systems, so it's only expected a lot of differences here.

-Mini-dungeons are better designed in NES than DS.  The key thing in the NES version is back row legitimately does null out a lot of the damage since Mini increases your evade and back row halves enemy accuracy (which later in the game is functionally damage halving), so enemies regularly miss; it's just the back attacks and the rare few who have magic that threaten you.  FF3DS, back row is damage halving, which halving damage when you have 1 defense is still hitting pretty hard.  Enemies are frailer and you only fight 2 at a time granted, but it's the difference between fight taking 2 turns vs. 1 and part of the problem in my NES playthrough granted was my White Mage didn't have the Burning Staff so could only lend offense only a handful of times with Aero.

-Speaking of Aero, that spell kicks ass in FF3o.  It's level 2 so doesn't compete with any Healing spells, and is stronger than Black Mage's spells, though early on you have only so many Level 2's to spare (current point, spell charges are 13/4/2).  FF3DS, Aero got nerfed hard and is on par with Fire...which is weaker than Blizzard for some bizarre reason.  It really makes the spell kind of not worth it since Item Casts accomplish the same thing without worrying about ammo. Aero being > Item casts but limited charges makes the spell feel meaningful.

-Also, FF3DS has worse spell charges than FF3NES.  Notably, in Nepto's Shrine, I had 2 charges of level 3 spells, which is nice since the game hands you enough level 3's to go around (Cure 2 from Tokkal for your White Mage, and one of each elemental to hand to your 3 Black Mages), and they're good trump cards and/or big damage spells to use on Giant Rat.  FF3DS, I didn't have any level 3 spell charges for Nepto's Shrine, so the spells just kind of were there.  It seems to regularly be 1-2 less spell charges each level, dunno how much that gap will change.

-FF3DS has random plot triggers to continue the game.  FF3o less so.  Obvious point?  FF3o, you can go straight from Viking Base to Nepto's Shrine, without talking to anyone really (though you should stop by the inn at least!)  FF3DS, I tried to do that and wasn't sure what was going on, until I went back to Viking Base and talked to the Viking Leader.  Only then did the game let me pass.

-...speaking of Nepto.  In FF3o, he 3x overkills you.  FF3DS, he 50x overkills you.  This is completely meaningful and different of course!

[DjinnAndTonic]

Fire Emblem if: Apparently it's going to be called "Fates" in America. For a while I thought THIS was the FExSMT crossover, for a couple of reasons, not the least of which being that there's a game called Shin Megami Tensei if.

Anyway, for those that don't know, the premise is that your Avatar is a special snowflake Dragonborn-something-or-other who was born a prince of not!Japan but then was kidnapped as a baby and raised by the King of not!England as a prince and not told his own identity, and indeed even the actual Princes and Princesses think he's family. He's given a bullshit reason why he's not allowed to leave the kingdom, so he's raised among a close-knit family for his whole life until King of not!England decides to use him as some kind of trump card and sends him out to battle, whereupon he's captured by the army of not!Japan. The royal family of not!Japan quickly realizes his identity and are overjoyed at finding their long-lost brother and son, and quickly invite him to rejoin their family. After King of not!England activates his trap card involving special-snowflake Kamui (Avatar), the not!Japan army brings him to the frontlines of the battle, where both of Kamui's families are now staring eachother down and demanding that Kamui come back to them.

This is where the path splits. You can choose to return to your family you've known your whole life and try to figure out how to stop the war from inside the aggressor's camp... or you can side with these strangers claiming to be your birth family but who are clearly (at least at this point in the game) on the morally righteous side of the conflict, but also somewhat underequipped for the war (especially now that the trap broke their main defense).

Depending on which version of the game you bought, the choice is made for you (though you can buy one game and get the other one half-off through digital download so you can actually make the choice here.) Shun picked up the not!England version because he likes that style of medieval fantasy over oriental fantasy. I personally think that's the more interesting side of the choice myself, though both sides are pretty interesting.

I have to say that it's definitely the most ambitious storyline I've seen in a Fire Emblem and I'm actually pretty excited for it to come out in English now. Especially if it gets as good of a localization as FE13 did.

Anyway, the whole "Prologue" bit is actually the first 6 chapters of the game, plus a proper tutorial map for chapter 7. And then you get a Suikoden-style homebase called "My Castle". Sweet! You get to make weapon shops and the like and have different characters run the shops and chat with everyone and such. There's also a super-duper-ultra-creepster Pokemon-amie style game where you literally pet your PCs to make them like you more... I don't even.

Ignoring that, the game has Amiibo support! All four FE amiibo will have their respective character show up in your base, have a chat with you about how they've come to be there, and then give you an item from a selection. Do this three times (can only be done once per map) and they'll battle you, whereupon they join your army as a unique-classed unit if you beat them. The absolute earliest you can get one is Ch10, but they have higher levels, so I suspect they're designed for about Ch15. They look freakin' badass!

Also, apparently some of the kids from FEA show up in this game. Shun's already picked up Owain, and it. is. glorious.

New classes and such are also pretty cool. The Shinobi and Maid classes are neat parallels of eachother from opposite cultures. Because of course they are. They use shuriken, which are like bows, but inflict statuses apparently? The game gives you a Freeze Staff right at the beginning of the game and man, it is fun playing around with status in FE. Why did they never use this stuff before? There's also this creepy-as-fuck puppetmaster class that's apparently some kind of not!Japan variant of a cavalier and it makes me weep in fear whenever I see it so creepy....

There's Normal, Hard, and Lunatic modes available right from the beginning, along with Classic, Casual, and Phoenix permadeath options (Phoenix apparently means that units can revive -during- battle.) I am of course playing on the fuck-it-steamroll-it-easy-mode because then if I don't understand a kanji, it's not such a big deal that I might lose because of it.

Game is basically Fire Emblem 13... but bigger. I couldn't ask for anything more.

[Captain K]

Archaeosaur gets badly trivialized by either Blind or Paralyze.

Yes, IF IT HITS.  He wrecks your shit otherwise.  Thank you Gate for the Wakka with Blind attack, because Dark Buster wasn't cutting it for me.

Got Squall's memory crystal and Cloud's.  Aster Protoflorian is annoying because his resistance change happens at the top of the screen and you're usually looking at the bottom at your actions.  Also, it can get covered up by other actions going off.  Brilliant programming.  So you have to guess at whether he's switched resistances or not.  Other than that, he's not hard, and my Garnet has 12 shots of massive healing.

[Meeplelard]

So FE14 is living up to expectations, that's good to hear!  Intelligent Systems tends to be good at that generally speaking.  Sure, FE11 was a bit of a misfire, and FE12 could have been better, but then again, they were trying for the extremely hard balance of "Faithful to original games" and "modernize them!"  Though honestly they really could have put more effort in the latter (why is Rescuing completely absent for example?  Sure, wasn't in FEA, but FEA had Pair Ups which felt like a replacement of sorts, so at least that makes sense), but otherwise, since FE6 they've been good at the whole "take what worked and expand upon it!"   It's the Dragon Quest formula, only IS is actually consistently good at it! I believe it was Excal who first pointed out the parallels a while back, but yeah, he's pretty much spot on in that regard.

It's contrast to the Final Fantasy "change everything each entry!" style, which has the advantage of every entry being fresh, but also makes games far more divisive.


But back to the important stuff, yeah, looking forward to FE14.  It's worth noting that the Digital Version actually lets you choose which side you want on the spot, though you're locked into that route on subsequent playthroughs until you download the DLC for the other path.  As in, there's only one Digital Version, and at Chapter 6, the game goes "WHICH PATH DO YOU WANT!?"  If you don't care about physical copies and aren't sure which path you want, this may be the best route to go.  Personally, I already know I want the Black version because yeah, the "build an uprising from within and overthrow your corrupt Government!" sounds more interesting; someone compared it to basically choosing Suikoden plot vs. Fire Emblem plot.  Be interesting to see what the 3rd, neutral (likely canon!) route takes.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Thanks for the update, Djinn! FE14 sounds pretty great. The rumbling out of people who are actually playing the game on Serenes Forest suggests that the plot is really good by series standards, the plot premise is certainly something I like (Avatar as special snowflake aside), they brought back Shove and Rescue (as class skills, but still), the map objectives and design on the Nohr/Conquest/Western route is supposed to be more varied again, they greatly rebalanced the Pair Up mechanics so they aren't overpowered, and replacing weapon durability with each weapon being distinct instead of linear improvements sounds like a significant trade up at best, and certainly a welcome experiment at worst.

Trying not to let myself get too hyped about the game because that road leads to disappointment but it's pretty much the most excited I've been about an upcoming game in a while.


Final Fantasy Dimensions - Holy shit Hecantoncheir was rude. That he is not the rudest incarnation of the boss in the series says something.

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire - Victory Road! This was one of my favourite parts of the game in Emerald and it's... definitely still a significant step up here. The randoms are pretty roflstomp-worthy (they forgot to level them to keep up with higher PC levels in this version... which is weird after how good X was at keeping randoms at near your level) but the trainers are actually pretty fun. Camerupt is still awful, Sceptile and Latias are still broken.

[Sierra]

Arkham Knight: We can't stop here, this is sidequest country.

Actually the optional missions are fairly rote this time. (I'm doing them all anyway, of course.) The series has always been fairly iffy for boss fights, right? AK gets around this issue by not having any of them. This isn't actually an improvement. Even if they weren't always peak gameplay in the earlier games, since the engine admittedly is better optimized to excel with huge melees, at the very least it's nice to shake things up once in a while. (And no, game, I don't mean by switching to another driving segment.) Most of the sidequests here are just beat up mobs of random dudes, which inevitably lacks the drama of a satisfactory showdown with an established face ("Take your best shot, Tommy," was the closest they've got so far, and even that suffered a bit from 100% of the build-up being in the previous game). And the higher tier car chase ones I've concluded are legitimately impossible for someone as bad at videogame driving as I am. You need like Clinger Winger timing here, fuck up once and you'll never catch up to the target again. But the main problem is that there's a void of really memorable moments here, and even the cameo villain cast is pretty sparse. It's like Rocksteady used up all their good ideas in Asylum/City.

Prime suspect confirmed to be existing in this continuity and (supposedly) extremely deaded. Since this information was related through drug-induced flashbacks, I question the latter point. It occurs to me I should lodge a back-up guess just in case that's an awful lot of red herring, though: Talia, because it's been outright stated that AK's voice is synthesized, so practically speaking it could be anyone in that suit regardless of gender so long as they have a familiarity with Batman's tactics and a personal reason to blame him for something. AK's petulant, childish posturing doesn't fit at all personality-wise, but I could still see the devs forgoing basic sense for a chance to go Fooled You!

[Fenrir]

Witcher 3: Talked to some villagers who got a quest about getting rid of bandits for them. Mid conversation they entirely disappeared, and the quest was nowhere to be found. Spooooooky
Geralt feels too powerful plot wise, you know that he can basically just kill whoever he wants and hundreds of guards like nothing. Gameplaywise  I'm playing on the hardest difficulty so he's a total loser statwise (but the nice skills compensate)


FFT (IOs): This version is nice, you get the War of the Lions PSP version translation / additional quests / Balthier without the extreme blur.

Touchscreen controls are terrible. (they still hurt my fingers less than TWEWY since I only need to tap and not drag the finger across the screen. Incidentally I'm stopping playing this for a while)
I wish I could just plug a PS4 controller into my iphone or something. It would look properly ridiculous.

I have a big problem with this game and JP. I usually refuse to have anybody not equipped with Gain JP Up.
So this time I'm raising two generics as JP gods (Getting Gain JP Up, then going straight to Dancer / Bard, then basically only ever using Dance / Sing skills while switching classes to rack up immense amounts of JP).
Hopefully this will feed my JP raising needs, so the three other characters will be left to do whatever/whoever the hell I want. Like Mustadio or Agrias or a Treant. I've never really used them!

Edit: I named Ramza "You fool!"
And Knights are pretty fantastic right now (Dorter), I'm surprised

[Luther Lansfeld]

I decided to replay Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones in honor of its release on the WiiU VC. The game, unlike 7, lets you play on Hard Mode from the first playthrough which is a step up. I spent most of the game crushing maps with Seth+ Eirika + Vanessa + Tana, although Vanessa didn't reach her max potential due to Lute turning out awful. Alas. I had four resets on Last Hope and other scattered resets here and there, but overall it wasn't too bad. So I decided to try the HM Ruins.

So... first of all, since Seth and Eirika had an A support, I wanted to use him in the Ruins. The problem was, though, that he only had 15 Speed, so he was often doubled by various things and wasn't that great anymore. So I feed him a couple Speedwings, getting him up to 19, which was at least serviceable. And then he proceeded to gain Speed for the next 5 of 6 levels and capped it. Good work, Seth. Eirika is the MVP of the Ruins with her stupid evasion (102 Evade with Seth and Ephraim around). The second stage of the ruins is really really rough on Hard, and you really need to liberally abuse Axereavers (note to self, if I do this again bring lots of them!) and swords to get through it, but I survived. Sadly, Colm passed away to a stray Killer Bow hit, but otherwise the team is intact.

One character who turned out pretty solid that I wasn't expecting was Innes. He gained a lot of speed, ended up with 25 at Level 20, and he whored all the bows that no one else was using. Ruins team is Eirika/Seth/Ephraim/Tana/Vanessa/Artur/Innes/Tethys, with Selah, L'Arachel, and Cormag coming in when extras are needed.

One thing I noticed by getting Seth S in Lance and by not using Joshua or Gerik is that nobody can really use Audulma properly because Colm barely hits A in swords by the end of the game, at least how I played him. Eirika may start pulling it out since Sigilande is low on charges (after having already been Hammerned once).