What Games are you playing 2015?

[Reiska]

As Meeple says it's easily enough ignored for those of us who don't care about it, yeah.

Haven't been doing much interesting gaming myself the last week, been busy and/or blah.  Got to early disc 3 in LO and took a break to finish my LFT run but haven't really done much on that front because I stopped to grind JP on Reis because fanboyism.

[Cotigo]

Maybe we should have another topic just for that game. This would have only the three of us talking, with the occasional Captain K / hinode post, and Zenny saying we're terrible people once in a while

That actually sounds like a plan if people are getting annoyed by our back-and-forth.

I was here for the DL's original love affair with FE7, you three ain't got shit.

This plus if you move threads I'm just going to have to open yet another thread to inform you of how terrible you're being. Don't make more work for me pls i dont like it

[Grefter]

Hyrule Warriors - been playing this at the house of the elves.

Zenny I aM not saying that you should go out and buy a WiiU and this or anything, but I think you need to see some Tingle gameplay videos and make an informed decision about your life.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Final Fantasy Dimensions - Parties have met up. Using Alba (Ninja, Dark Knight, Warrior), Sol (Dragoon, Bard), Sarah (Dragoon, Monk, Paladin), Glaive (Black Mage, Summoner), and Dusk (White Mage, Black Mage). Currently collecting the summons I missed; the job seems notably better now that I have access to both sets of summons and have picked the ones I missed up.

You could probably stand to put your Mages (especially Dusk) through Red Mage to grab Chain Cast (and Sword Magic is great for Status). Not sure what your love affair with Dragoon is... It's a decent physical class if you've got the Spears but otherwise you're almost always better off with Paladin. Bard/Dragoon is an odd combo in itself. I think it gets a decent Fusion but not a top tier one. If you put anyone through Dancer, you can combine with Monk for one of the top tier Fusions.

Or ignore all that because honestly some leveling will be more than enough to carry you through the endgame with that party. Aftergame is the only place you need any kind of min maxing. Because even at high levels those bosses will kick the ass of a poorly outfitted party.

[Fenrir]

Okay then.

RK: This event makes me regret not levelling Gordon more, good job DeNa for making Gordon more desirable than any other Final Fantasy character for two seconds


EOU: Third stratum is really rough with 5 bards. (no shit) Even boosted buffs don't really cut it anymore. The worst enemies 2HKO any bard they want, and get 4HKOed back. I am getting owned by ants. Big ants, yes, but still, ants.
Ants scare me so I don't even want to talk about bears, who aren't even FOEs and who can KUMA-STRIKU-OVAKILL my entire front row with a single attack.
I just found a hexer's grimoire; its debuffs skills aren't too awesome, but I can just apply all my buffs + all the hexer  debuffs then extend the duration of all of those at once one more turn with Taboo Rondo.
I am beginning awfully rude to the NOTICE ME SENPAI made but she never stops being nice. I come in, she desperately asks me to gather some things for a quest, I tell her no every time, she then gives me some items she tried really hard to gather, I tell her to keep that shit, and I ask her to go back to the kitchen and make me some tea before leaving ASAP.
The game says we haves reached "max friendship" and I think it's in denial.


SMT4: I heard that the game starts really hard then get super easy, so here are my self imposed rules:
- No fusion
- Main character is pure support and can only level up Agility/Luck

[Dark Holy Elf]

Final Fantasy Dimensions - Parties have met up. Using Alba (Ninja, Dark Knight, Warrior), Sol (Dragoon, Bard), Sarah (Dragoon, Monk, Paladin), Glaive (Black Mage, Summoner), and Dusk (White Mage, Black Mage). Currently collecting the summons I missed; the job seems notably better now that I have access to both sets of summons and have picked the ones I missed up.

You could probably stand to put your Mages (especially Dusk) through Red Mage to grab Chain Cast (and Sword Magic is great for Status). Not sure what your love affair with Dragoon is... It's a decent physical class if you've got the Spears but otherwise you're almost always better off with Paladin. Bard/Dragoon is an odd combo in itself. I think it gets a decent Fusion but not a top tier one. If you put anyone through Dancer, you can combine with Monk for one of the top tier Fusions.

Both my PCs with significant Red Mage levels were dropped (this may be related to the fact that RM was underwhelming), so dipping back into the class for a Job Level 20 skill isn't going to happen. Unlike in FF5 you can't just slap Black Magic/Summon/etc. on a Red Mage and have him be awesome while grinding out Dualcast.

Dragoon's very fast for a high-HP physical job in a game where speed matters a lot, and they can use swords as well as spears. Paladin's skillset is certainly better, I'll agree, but Dragoon saw lots of use prior to even getting Paladin and still has better stats. As for the Bard synergy, well, Bard has better magical stats than physical stats so it puts the whole Dragoon skillset to decent use (not amazing because none of Bard's stats are great) and of course anyone with decent speed can carry Bard well (hey, MT status!).

[Grefter]

in a game where speed matters a lot

#allstatsmatter

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy Autobattle On The Big Bridge - Selphie/Quistis event mastered, no big shakes. R4 Thundara Strike and Thundaga were my indisputed MVPs, as predicted, Reta-meta also playing a big role. Stumbling onto R4 Retaliate was great, that + a casting of Quake per battle on the last waves of trash mobs let me full-medal all the randoms no sweat. Protectga + Power Breakdown mostly trivialized the bosses' offense, though you may also want Sentinel's Grimoire and Magic Breakdown for the mechanical spider. The big train is Blindable, so that + Power Breakdown + Protectga completely cripples the fight. The soldiers get handled by Quake spam. All in all, felt pretty simple. And now, to grind for white power, those Diaras don't hone themselves.

EDIT: By the way, the folks at DeNa finally fixed the Vit-0 glitch. The flame wars on reddit over this have already begun. They also raised the attack soft cap, though!

[Fenrir]

Oh yeah I have R4 Diara and R2 Power Breakdown, stuff is good.


EOU:

So on the 11th floor you fight Killer ants, which have a MT attack buff and are damaging and difficult to kill
Then you fight Guardian ants, which have the same stats + a MT defense buff, they take aeons to kill
Then you fight Honey Ants which heal themselves.

Right.

Then you fight FOE ants, which are like the other ants here but with jacked up stats
Then you fight 2x Killer Ants + 1x Honey Ant formations, of course the honey ants heal the killer ants, and you really have to start going crazy with the buffs to counter all that
Then you fight 2x Killer Ants + 2x Guardian Ants and see your bards die left and right and each single battle is life or death
Then you find eggs which continously spawn FOE ants until you destroy them

Then you fight 2x Guardian Ants + 2x Killer Ants + 2x Honey Ants formations. Etrian Odyssey, plz

Then you fight the Ant Queen which is a boss in an area filled with ants that can buff her, and eggs that can spawn ants that can buff her.

Fuck ants, guys. Fuck ants. I'm taking a break from EOU.

[NotMiki]

It's almost like the game is designed around a party with more than one character class.

p.s. debuffs wreck this area if you have access to any, seeing as they overwrite buffs.

[Excal]

I think FFT has spoiled us for beating multiclass games with a single class.

[AndrewRogue]

in a game where speed matters a lot

#allstatsmatter

#notmydef

[jsh357]

Speaking of class restrictions, my fourth Fiesta has finally gotten me a somewhat challenging party.  OK, not challenging, just tedious early on.  White Mage/Time Mage/Bard/Dancer.  I can't wait to unleash instant-turn Sword Dances after a year of singing.  Currently I'm up to the Moogle Cave.  The hardest fight so far was Ifrit (I was level 9).

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm not convinced any party with Time Mage can be challenging if you know a few boss status holes. (Ifrit can be both stopped and slowed, for instance.) By the time bosses stop having status holes you have Hastega/Shell/Protect to mock pretty much everything. Agreed about the W1 damage being tedious, but now that you have Comet that should be in the past.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Final Fantasy Autobattle, Little Children - There's not a whole ton of stuff to do while on this lull of events - Selphie/Quistis boss rush is due tonight, next dungeon batch is due next week and so is the Sabin/Edgar event. So, I just grind for random stuff like orbs and maybe fishing for Greater Orbs. Running North Mountain for Lenna's bonus quest landed me a Greater Lightning Orb, which is nice. But I still want those two Greater Earth Orbs so I can hone Quake to R3. Diara is up to R3, at least, and once the next black power day is up, I'll pick up the rest of the -ra Strikes to R4 as well - well, some of them, at least. Fira and Drain Strike at R4 sound like good places to be. One thing that's also noteworthy is that Ethers scale up with your ability loadout: R1-2 abilities will recover about 1-2 uses, while R3-4 will restore at least 2, sometimes 3 uses. This is really big for boss rushes.

[Cotigo]

FF6 - I throw Cyan and Shadow into my party because Shadow can be useful and Cyan needs to get status spells so he's not completely useless later and then Hidon was knocked down. I kinda forgot that the Ebot's Rock dungeon even existed. Man it is terrible. Honestly with a lot of these late game dungeons I find myself thinking I wouldn't have the patience for this bullshit if not for Frameskip. In other news, Relm and Strago are more entertaining than I remembered, so they've got that going for them.

Sidenote, I used flood in an attempt to bypass the one minion with Reflect. He absorbed water. Most useless spell in the game? Most useless spell in the game.

I fly off to the Coliseum to get Gilgamesh since I bypassed the 500000 gil threshold. Dang this guy's actually kinda threatening! Like, 1.2 KO's front row, and still a solid 2HKO on backrow characters, high MDEF and no weaknesses.  I didn't change my party at all and so I essentially only had 3 members (and fittingly Cyan died at the end so no sweet sweet AP for him), but Quick+Flare, Mighty Guard, Hastega and Curaga end up being all I need. Cyan helped, though! Offiering x Zantetsuken nixed the fight for Excalipoor I also got a Merit Award out of winning it.

Since neither Terra nor Celes are in my party anyway, Strago now sports a Minerva Bustier. This remake should have made armor change your sprite, dammit.  Except wait, the only dungeon I have left before the finale is the Fanatic's Tower, and I'm not about to use Gimps for that. Sexy Strago will have to wait.

OK maybe taking my A team was overkill. Only the final floor had any challenging enemies and even then most died to one, and everything died to two, Ultimas. After getting the item, dang I completely forgot a Dualcast accessory was in this game. Like, how is this + Gold Hairpin + Quick + Ultima+ Osmose not more hyped over Offering + Genji glove? The former is actually really really broken while the latter sucks (unless you have an ID weapon on, or I guess Fixed Dice but I haven't found those yet) but looks cool.

So now all that's left is to get Cactuar (I guess), the final dungeon and then the GBA dungeon. Also because I never bothered before, I guess I'll look up some Coliseum Stuff and get Snow Mufflers and Red Jackets and shit too. But that all sounds really tedious right now so I'm done for the night.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

FF5 - Welp, shit's gotten pretty real. Melusine was a bit of a chore, but frankly, White Wind + 1,000 Needles meant defeat was never a risk. I also snagged Mighty Guard from a Stingray and everything will fail forever from now on. I also fought Wendigo due to wanting Mind Blast and L3 Flare, and he was kind of a pain in the ass because I was really lazy and my good offense is all MT (and the boss kiiiiiiiinda punishes that, but not enough to keep me from using it, just meant I had to save Bartz's turns for White Wind every time I used Syldra). Unsure on whether I do Fork Tower or not, and I probably should also hit Phantom Village and pick up that Chicken Knife.

[Fenrir]

I think FFT has spoiled us for beating multiclass games with a single class.

Honestly, as hard as the bard SCC in EOU is, the bard SCC is still probably harder in FFT.
 
How the hell do you handle Wiegraf with bards?



Bravely Default: Ominas Crowe was really rough! (on hard) I had to fully use Brave & especially Default even though it's just the beginning of the game.
Also, wow @ that music. Is that SSH? That was way too intense for that fight (not that I mind)

SMT4: I think I understood everything that happened in the extremely cryptic opening cutscenes because I've already played too much MegaTen. "K this guy is Chaos Hero. This guy is Law Hero. This girl must represent the neutral ending I guess"
So far the game is super cool.

[Fenrir]

Final Fantasy Autobattle, Little Children - There's not a whole ton of stuff to do while on this lull of events - Selphie/Quistis boss rush is due tonight, next dungeon batch is due next week and so is the Sabin/Edgar event. So, I just grind for random stuff like orbs and maybe fishing for Greater Orbs. Running North Mountain for Lenna's bonus quest landed me a Greater Lightning Orb, which is nice. But I still want those two Greater Earth Orbs so I can hone Quake to R3. Diara is up to R3, at least, and once the next black power day is up, I'll pick up the rest of the -ra Strikes to R4 as well - well, some of them, at least. Fira and Drain Strike at R4 sound like good places to be. One thing that's also noteworthy is that Ethers scale up with your ability loadout: R1-2 abilities will recover about 1-2 uses, while R3-4 will restore at least 2, sometimes 3 uses. This is really big for boss rushes.

Ethers kinda do whatever they want! I just had one restore 0 Curaga and 2 Diaras to Garnet.

I had completely forgotten that, during the boss rush you can enter any battle and flee to restore charges. That seems way more reliable (but this only works with BM/RM skills so far, of course)
Really helps me not spend one ofmy 19443 mithrils.

[jsh357]

I haven't done the bard scc, but I would assume you speed song to 50 (using move +3 to evade) then boost pa and punch a few times.

[Fenrir]

Oh, that was dumb of me. I meant Wiegraf in the library.
Edit: What about Riovanes roof too?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Bravely Default: Ominas Crowe was really rough! (on hard) I had to fully use Brave & especially Default even though it's just the beginning of the game.
Also, wow @ that music. Is that SSH? That was way too intense for that fight (not that I mind)

Bravely Default has some issues. Challenge is -not- one of them.

[hinode]

The answer to Riovanes roof if you don't have a good ninja is pretty much always naked strategy: remove all HP-boosting equips from one party member to hopefully bait the assassins into targetting him/her instead. Sometimes double naked is necessary to bait'em both.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

FF5 - So yeah, ended up doing Fork Tower. I picked up the Chicken Knife and raided the Phantom Village on the way for all the sexy equips. Hermes Sandals are horrendously broken, jesus christ. Anyhow, Fork Tower was pretty simple, though Minotaur was actually kind of a pain due to one of my physical classes being squishier than any of the game's mages (seriously, Dancer, why is your durability so awful). 9999 Sword Dances eventually spoke louder, though. Omniscient was pretty much Carbuncle => Syldra lulz until the Flare OHKO that exists solely as a consolation for the previous full shutdown. I suppose I could hunt for Leviathan and Phoenix now, I have no point for any of the remaining legendaries. Afterwards, it's straight to the Rift. For all that I don't even have four-digit HP on all my party... but yet, it hasn't been much of an issue, holy hell.

[hinode]

If you make sure to get Big Guard before Exdeath it'll probably never be much of an issue.