Author Topic: What Games are you playing 2016? (Read 125517 times)

DjinnAndTonic · « **Reply #425 on:** February 17, 2016, 01:59:20 AM »

SMT x FE - Got further in the game, it is decidely more anime and more Persona now. In between main events, there are optional S.Link-type events for all your party members (3 for each) that unlock special skills and weapons. They are kinda bland, but usually end in some kind of performance, musical or acting, which is kind of a neat touch for a game about minor celebrities saving the world in secret with the power of creativity and magic.

Boss fights are crazy-stupid challenging on Normal, I dread a Hard-mode run of this game (though notably you can change difficulty on the fly, which I was previously unaware of, makes grinding faster!)

The game also features a prominent side character who is American. You can tell he's American because he's blonde, fat, tall, bearded, and in love with otaku culture. Also, he speaks funny. I can't tell if I love him or am extremely offended by him.

Captain K · « **Reply #426 on:** February 17, 2016, 03:38:03 AM »

Why not both?

DjinnAndTonic · « **Reply #427 on:** February 17, 2016, 04:14:36 AM »

Yeah, I think it's the otaku part that I hate. The American stereotype stuff bothers me less because okay, whatever, visual shorthand, but goddamn I hate otaku bullshit more and more with each passing day.

Fenrir · « **Reply #428 on:** February 17, 2016, 10:48:05 AM »

Thanks for that post Gourry

Djinn, so what do you not like about it actually? The fat otaku loser stereotype?
Man, the most anime video game is taking the piss out of western anime fans like only Rob would. Harsh. Tu quoque, mi fili

Bravely Default: Oh god, Conjurer.... What the fuck.... Maybe he'd be useful in a solo though.

Update on Arcanist:
POIZN rod does work well with the Arcanist skillset. In fact it works way better than black magic. Equip two POIZN rods and you have a ~85-90% chance to inflict POIZN against bosses per attack. Also, Pierce Mdef is awesome with Exterminate.

My best moment was when fighting Summoner + Valkyrie + Ranger at once. I had saved 3 BP on Ringabel, and had him use a regular attack on each of them + Exterminate. Each attack managed to inflict POIZN and Exterminate did 9999 damage to all of them (maybe slightly less on one?) Then the next turn I just had him use 4 Exterminate again for the hell of it for 40k damagex3 for 12 MPs.

I am so fucked whenever I run into a POIZN/ dark immune boss like Orthros and have to deal with shitty 2000 damage physicals again. I literally am too lazy to attack with anything but Exterminate against bosses now, I just have all the other characters use defensive moves or steal.
I am very afraid the final boss will be POIZN / dark immune and have 99999999 HPs.

So far the immune bosses have been: one of the 6 dragons, token vampire bishie, Orthros, and the big earth lich gigas. Big Earth Lich Gigas is not immune to sleep so I was happy to find that he's still owned by Arcanist/BM. Orthros is immune, I don't know about the others.
Non token-vampire-bishie asterisk bosses are confirmed all vulnerable.

Edit: Poizn rod hype was all mentioned in the stat topic. My bad. Exterminate damage seems very low there, but I guess it's against high def endgame enemies and the arcanist has no pierce mdef/ soul of thamasa etc

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #429 on:** February 17, 2016, 03:19:24 PM »

DeRosso has to be one of the ugliest characters I've ever seen described as a bishie.

Pierce M. Def makes a ridiculous difference to spell damage. Look at the stat topic and compare Firaga (~4100) with Quaga (~2500). They have the same power I'm pretty sure, and Time Mage even has like 30 more M. Atk.

Fenrir · « **Reply #430 on:** February 17, 2016, 04:27:38 PM »

Really? He looks allright to me

He's way hotter than Brahms that's for sure

SnowFire · « **Reply #431 on:** February 17, 2016, 04:51:48 PM »

The fact that you have Pierce M. Def now also shows why Exterminate isn't really THAT big of a deal: you can get 9999 damage off spellcasters reasonably easy anyway with TM Meteor, MP-permitting. Granted, that splits its damage while Exterminate is MT, but eh, couldn't be bothered to equip Status Amp & go YOLO 2x Poison Rod usually. The rare times I went for statusing bosses I used the Rod ultimates instead which can inflict a resistance-down debuff on the bosses to let you get the status you want in.

Fenrir · « **Reply #432 on:** February 17, 2016, 05:38:51 PM »

If Meteor had costed 4 Mps too I'd be all over it and I think there'd be more time mage hype despite the lackluster early/midgame. As it costs 100 mps it's a pain to manage, and in any case it wastes additional turns.

I keep status amp at all time and sleep + twilight randoms, so having it equipped is not much of a bother

Magic Fanatic · « **Reply #433 on:** February 18, 2016, 02:46:52 AM »

Favorite thing: Swordmaster L14 skill as a secondary to a spellcasting class. Very very powerful. Too much grinding, though.

The Duck · « **Reply #434 on:** February 18, 2016, 02:24:13 PM »

Darkest Dungeon - I finished the level 1 dungeon bosses and hadn't lost very much. Then I got to the mid tier and had two people wiped out in a single run (a Vestal and a Highwayman). It becomes increasingly prohibitive to lose people since you are putting so much money into dudes and I'm running low on funds. I've had to control the flow of low level dudes so they can just keep on with low level runs so I can gather resources but the process is actually kind of slow since you do have to rotate out dudes to lower stress in town. The game is striking a weird balance, and it's mostly that the enemies get stronger a lot than you do and it becomes harder to deal with things as dungeons get longer. Status effects and relics that increase status percentage to get past things like stun resistance are starting to really help. I have a handful of level 4s and 5s and may be gearing up for the Darkest Dungeon but I can see that getting really frustrating if I lose several characters there.

I'm a little disappointed by the quirks system since it doesn't seem to me that they're really that interesting in the long run. One variant is kleptomania, where they cannot help but look through different kinds of treasures, which can range from just random shit on the floor or them having to look through books or something of religious value. These have generally not been that prohibitive. Other quirks seem to be straight up stats changes, which again aren't that interesting. The other ones are things that dictate how they destress, like where they will or won't go. I can't think of the kinds of stuff I would actually want, but I wish there were quirks that were more interesting or prohibitive. The afflictions you get after a lot of stress are more interesting, and they can be positive or negative, and sometimes they are really annoying to the point where your dudes won't listen to you or accept healing.

The combat is as good as ever and they do show you a lot under the hood as far as resistances and percentages go. One thing is that the bosses are always a new thing and there do seem to be formations and characters that are better suited towards fighting them and you don't really have any idea of what those could be until you actually start fighting them. This can lead to you just running away or getting wiped, and that's becoming harder to stomach with higher level characters. It seems like a system where you could hire higher level characters for money instead of doing the time would be helpful but that may not be the game they're trying to design.

Still really like the art style. The afflictions are so dramatic:

https://www.google.com/search?q=darkest+dungeon+affliction&biw=1585&bih=777&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjJ76TawYHLAhWERCYKHRdNAp0Q_AUIBigB#imgrc=_

Fenrir · « **Reply #435 on:** February 20, 2016, 11:03:10 AM »

Bravely Default Hard: Chapter 7, level 70. I tried a few asterisk bosses and they were impossible. My problem is that I have two magic oriented teammates and two physical oriented teammattes and right now the physical ones are contributing next to nothing. I think I'll train my physical guys as spiritmaster and salve maker by fighting the usual 4 bosses and going in dungeons getting the last chests left.

Legend of Legacy: I am also stuck here. The only place left for me to go is some ruins way up north (north of the boiling sea), and randoms have stepped up significantly there. Hum. I don't think there ever was a point in other SaGa games when I just had to stay and grind so I'm probably missing something. I tried going back to other dungeons and found some dark thing that destroyed us all, some other NPCs, but no new maps.

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #436 on:** February 20, 2016, 04:37:20 PM »

I got stuck a bit there too, if you're where I think you are: there are other places you can go at that point. IIRC the trigger is visiting the Great Crag (assuming that has appeared?), then you can buy some other maps to places with less brutal randoms.

Fenrir · « **Reply #437 on:** February 20, 2016, 06:23:36 PM »

Um. No idea what the Great Crag is.

The dungeon I was stuck in was the fire one. I got further in by generally trying to avoid randoms and I eventually found my first boss, some vaguely female golem thing. Pretty hard (powerful MT attacks) but I just kept piling on attacks + Water Contract til we barely won.

I like the magic system in this.

Meeplelard · « **Reply #438 on:** February 20, 2016, 06:24:52 PM »

Breath of Death 7: I had this game for a while, finally started it Thursday, beat it like 10 minutes ago. I knew it was short but not "3 sittings, one of which was an hour tops and the other two were about 2-3 hours each' level short. It's probably for the best because this is a game that definitely would have overstayed it's welcome if it was too long.

Was this Zeboyd's first game? Because if so, it shows. The humor was funny at first, being referential and metahumor, but after a point it became clear that was basically all his material. Yes, you are aware of jRPG cliches, yes you can make fun of yourself, and yes, you toss in memorable things from other games/media, it's funny in short, spread out doses, but it's everywhere, and reaches an "alright already!" The one part I did find kind of creative was with the Ursurper because that felt like legitimate parody with the whole "Wait, all I had to do was ASK to be king and you would have abdicated the throne?" "Yep, that's right!" "...I'm so sorry! If only I had known, I'd have been a far more supportive uncle!" since I don't think I've quite seen that done before, at least so explicitly.

Not sure what i think of the minimalistic plot. I get that it's a throw back to NES jRPGs where there was basically nothing but "pre-title screen intro -> go through a bunch of dungeons with little to no context as to WHY -> FINAL BOSS THAT EXPLAINS ENTIRE PLOT!" NES Dragon Quests basically did this, FF1 did this, etc. The game is short enough that it can get away with it, and it avoids the "plot getting in the way of gameplay" but I still wish there was a little more substance. Yeah, chat exists, but I wish the game just had some more PC banter in between.

Played on hard mode. Had a bunch of resets because a fair amount of RNG involved depending on circumstances until late in the game where you can go into Steam Roller Mode. Overall, pretty average game I'd say. 5/10.

No clue when I'll get around to Cthulu. Played BoD7 mostly because I wanted something to play between now and when FEF arrives, and it needed to be short. I thought BoD7 would at least last me until like...tomorrow <_<

SnowFire · « **Reply #439 on:** February 20, 2016, 08:59:32 PM »

Fenrir: Yeah, C7 teamfights are pretty intense, that's when the game expects you to be doing something broken on Hard. You CAN blitz some of 'em out with the right setups, though. If you're curious for how I made my 2 physical characters useful... Edea ran Knight w/ 2x Shields & Heavy armor, practically physical immune to anything short of Barbarossa or Kamiizumi. Secondary is whatever, Compounding for revival / MP restoration? Tiz usually ran either Pirate or Vampire, both of which have stat debuffs. If you keep enemies afflicted with Atk / MAtk debuffs and have Default Guard on everyone (Templar 1/4 damage while defaulting skill) then you can turtle pretty darn effectively. For some bosses, Tiz ran Ninja secondary so that he could spam the Ninja ability that makes enemies target whoever you want to funnel attacks onto my phys-immune Knight. But I know others ran totally different strats and won, so this is just one.

Also I think it was one of the C7 bossfights where I manged to get rare footage of CONJURER BEING USEFUL. It was a fight where I just had, had to have my healer go first consistently against speedsters, so the speed buff summon for her wasn't a waste of time and requried less maintenance than Performer Speed buffs which wear off faster.

Grefter · « **Reply #440 on:** February 20, 2016, 10:31:47 PM »

Tomb Raider - Okay this was finished this week and I think I have parsed enough to post. The short is, good engaging game with a weird setting.

The long of it, the narrative isn't particular deep with it essentially going through the same arc over and over again. Lara is hurt (probably from falling). Lara does something pragmatic to survive. Lara climbs something. At some point Lara will fall off that thing and hurt herself more.

The iconography is not subtle. It is still fun. I dig how that it is outlining that even in bleak pragmatism and frankly justified "not so different than I" villain speeches the game doesn't get preachy about how totes different it is when Lara does it. Lara does some serious shit to survive and save her friends. It isn't that far off what the villains do, but the game shows rather than telling that like yeah she does it without rape and blood sacrifice that fails.

On the other hand, she and the crew are all pretty ready to roll up on an island full of murder rapists and cleanse it with fire and steel. Which is the part of the setting that is terrifying. The game implies that they have had to do some dark shit in the past. This is also the first time any of them has seen zombie ghosts that have an army of undead?

Ninja samurais to fucking people's shit up and driving people to murder rape. That is some straight up colonial wet dream shit right there set in modern day.

So what in the actual fuck is going on in that version of earth? It is legit kind of fascinating.

At its core the game is well served by that play loop. It is a straight up empowerment fantasy ripping the best parts of that from various sources. The story structure is veeeerrrrry revenge film. You are always given a damsel to rescue. You run around and are given new power ups that help in combat and traversal so it scratches that Metroidvania itch (while upon examination half your traversal tools are keys. Pry bar, rope arrows on doors, shotgun in barriers which is the fucking best, grenade launcher). All of it just to are the player feel like Lara is strong, and I mean to emphasise this hard. This is the thing that everyone latches on to. The game does an amazing job of projecting all o F it on Lara rather than it feeling like just player empowerment. I can't tell if this works because of good writing or if they just hired a British actress and gave her more than 8 lines like your usual protagonist and didn't gatekeep all the cool shit behind 12 string complex button combinations.

I wish I had played this instead of Arkham Asylum when I wanted that feeling. It would have come off a lot less stale.

Twilkitri · « **Reply #441 on:** February 21, 2016, 12:54:13 AM »

Hocus Pocus - played through

Nostalgia has let me down yet again.

Game is a fair bit jankier than I thought I remembered. But mainly it ends up being very samey and overstays its welcome.

Adventure In The Tower Of Flight - played through

Was fine enough, sadly I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped to.

Was expecting it to be more metroidy, but instead your progress is ratcheted by every door you go through being locked behind you. Even when it doesn't make sense, like in the town. And for rooms which you end up going through multiple times (via the same doors).

There's space in your inventory for four items which I don't know what they are, which I ended up getting two of. Presumably they do something if you get all of them, but I'm not about to replay the game to try and get them all. Especially since there's at least one branching path in the game which one of them could be on one side of.

Pony Island - played through

Was pretty entertaining. However, I'm very uninterested in replaying any large sections of it.

I missed the third 'question'. Looked up where it was after the fact, and it'll require replaying a bunch of act 3 to get to, and I just can't bring myself to bother. Similarly looked up where the tickets I missed were after the fact, collected all the ones I could get to easily, but there are 5 left that would require replaying a bunch that I don't care to do currently. Maybe someday I'll replay the game in general and pick them up as I go through it.

That aside, the game was enjoyable when it wasn't being intentionally otherwise.

Niu · « **Reply #442 on:** February 21, 2016, 02:28:20 AM »

Quote from: Fenrir on February 20, 2016, 06:23:36 PM

Um. No idea what the Great Crag is.

The dungeon I was stuck in was the fire one. I got further in by generally trying to avoid randoms and I eventually found my first boss, some vaguely female golem thing. Pretty hard (powerful MT attacks) but I just kept piling on attacks + Water Contract til we barely won.

I like the magic system in this.

If you are constantly up keeping the water field+Splash Wall, you should not have any problem.
After you get the fire contract stone, go learn Sun Light Curtain immediately, it is the fire version of Splash Wall and is even stronger.
This is kinda the game's problem, the damage is scaled with the assumption you'll always use Splash Wall/Sun Light Curtain.
If you have problem with randoms, go learn spear and bow techs.
Bow has more damaging MT, spear also has a some good MT that adds stun.

Grefter · « **Reply #443 on:** February 21, 2016, 04:38:40 AM »

Quote from: Niu on February 21, 2016, 02:28:20 AM

Splash Wall

That is a trippy name for a urinal.

Trails in the Sky SC - I have been playing this, finished chapter 1. All the villains are DJ. All the non-Estelle female cast is CK. Estelle is pretty great and this is like... not quite Shadow Hearts 2 good use of being a sequel, but pretty close. Hard reset on the magic progression system while maintaining end game stat scaling is weird. EP pools seem a bit flatter this time?

Ultimately it is more of the same and I am glad it finally came out.

NotMiki · « **Reply #444 on:** February 21, 2016, 05:35:32 AM »

Rabi Ribi

"holy shit the pandering."
"hey this is a pretty great metroidvania"
"holy shit the pandering"
"wow these boss fights are totally awesome"
"are we still pandering? seriously?"

More or less. Gameplay and design-wise it is a very solid metroidvania with a remarkably open world and a boatload of excellent bosses. Combat and gameplay systems are more elaborate than they needed to be, to the extent I feel they sometimes get in the way in the cool boss fights. But boy, those are some cool boss fights. Danmaku-inspired, challenging, complex. (The very final boss is clearly an homage to EoSD. It's neat.)

Anyway, recommended as long as you can tolerate an entire cast of moe anime girls that wear skimpy clothing and refer to themselves in the third person.

Cmdr_King · « **Reply #445 on:** February 21, 2016, 09:12:40 AM »

I get Kloe and Tita (and cutenessisjustice) but where does Schera fit in?

Fenrir · « **Reply #446 on:** February 21, 2016, 01:38:49 PM »

Niu!!! A big part of the fun in SaGa is learning the mechanics by yourself. I'll not read your post sorry.
Anyway I got much further. I had missed hidden staircases leading to the water and wind dungeon. I de-Atlantised the land, beat a few archwings (nice death animation bro) and felt pretty good about it.

I've had Garnet use shields half the time in battle and she's become pretty godly with them. Like... Her main skill has guard lvl 36/100. I know this doesn't sound particularly impressive but I bet I'll have no skill at level 50 at the end of the game. I've had her stop using spears, at all, they weren't particularly good.
Owen has used axes for a bit instead of stabby swords, then went back to regular stabby swords. Axes do good damage but seem to have way less skills and accuracy. Swords are still not really impressive so I just have him learn wind magic.
Filmia is using bows and does all the damage. Bows own.

I'm finding magic pretty useless beyond contracts and shields. Plus they're a big pain to learn. Contracts are rock solid though.

The game makes a particularly bad first impression by starting very conventional and unimaginative, but it hides its strengths. As far as marketing goes this should mean death, but SaGa quite clearly doesn't give a fuck. It is still content looking like the current Final Fantasy game (Bravely Default, in this case) luring in innocent RPG players who don't know what's waiting for them and are going to be very confused/sad/angry.

SnowFire · « **Reply #447 on:** February 22, 2016, 02:00:15 AM »

Ori and the Blind Forest: Finished. This game was fantastic. Play it, at least if you're willing to invest in an XBox One controller for the Steam version. About the only bad thing I can say about it is that it's short, so similar to Portal in that even if the ~4-7 hours you spend on it are perfect, that's it. But... they basically are perfect, so. Early contender for GOTY 2016? Ranked against my 2015 games, it'd about tie with Trails SC which was a pretty easy #1.

The Good:
* The art is beautiful. Every single area is hand-crafted, no mass copy-paste replication here. The few times that something looks identical are visual clues that you might want to try the technique you used when you saw something like this before to manipulate this barrier.
* The music is beautiful. It's one of those games where half the pieces are remixes of the same theme, but that's pretty okay in a short game.
* The platforming is great. Not much to say but it's hard with plenty of opportunities to kill yourself, BUT you can drop your own save point wherever you want pretty generously, so it's not frustrating to die.
* The game does not fall into the modern Zelda trap of being too eager to explain its own systems / puzzles. There's helpful pop-ups that tell you what button will allow you to pull a switch / do something totally new, but the game lets you figure out a fair amount on your own, which makes it much more rewarding.

The Also Good But Can Be Portrayed As Vaguely Close To A Flaw:
* This is a "nice" Metroidvania - the rough area of your next objective is always highlighted, so you can rest fairly assured there must be a way to get there. You get clues at a macro level if not a micro level, in other words. If you're the type of person who really likes having to figure out where to go next with no clues, this may not be to taste. (stupid clock tower in SOTN grumble grumble how was I supposed to know that opened every minute.)
* In the same way, I got all the energy cells first playthrough, and only missed getting all the life cells via a surprise point-of-no-return in the 2nd dungeon. Nice, but slightly less replayability by making completionism a little too easy perhaps. (Steam achievement tracker says I still have 1/3 of the secret areas left to find though, so.)
* There's one section of the game that's the Lost Woods / Mists of Illusion type place. It's really cool but is once again 'too' nice! The proper 'feel' for such a place should be frustration from getting constantly lost, but the game is nice so you're stuck with just awesome platforming instead. Cheated.
* Did I mention this game was short? I want more of the epic escape/chase scenes the game has, and to make 'em even longer.

So yeah, there's less weird hidden stuff than something like Symphony of the Night where you can play through again with weird weapons and finding random easter eggs. Makes for a more focused game with perhaps slightly less replayability, although I guess there's replaying for speed as well as doing a no-skills-on-level-up playthrough.

Grefter · « **Reply #448 on:** February 22, 2016, 02:39:11 AM »

noob it isn't the clocktower that opens once a minute its olrox's chambers

get gud scrub

but seriously that just it fucking worse. I love SotN but it is fucking weird sometimes

SnowFire · « **Reply #449 on:** February 22, 2016, 02:45:03 AM »

I'll have you know that I combed over every space of THAT clock tower, *twice*, with the darn accessories equipped that tells you to wear them "in the clock tower." Aka the OTHER tiny 2-screen clock tower that leads to Olrox's chambers.

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Author Topic: What Games are you playing 2016? (Read 125517 times)