What Games are you playing 2016?

[VySaika]

Prolly gonna try for the "no free battles" reward this time and do...hmm...either Amane or Gin's path. Most likely Gin's.

Just a heads up. Gin doesn't have 8th day.

That likely means that his path will be easier to do no free battles on, then. Also possibly deathless!? We'll see. Gin is awesome anyway, so getting his path sounds good.

[Fenrir]

The Witness: I finished this. Pretty cool. Highly recommended if you're a rich bastard.

The ending is just you noclipping through the island. Spoilers. There is a secret ending available right at the very beginning of the game with much higher production values + a real life movie of Jonathan Blow that involves a jug of urine.



Bravely Default: I am completely contradicting myself re: Anime here, but there's that job system. So yeah.
Playing on hard and skipping every cutscene. Hard mode is not joking. I am trying to beat the thief and the spellsword to unlock their sweet jobs. They have about 8000 HPs each, my monk is doing 20 damage and my knight 1 damage x2. lol
Black mage does more damage but I only have one cool black mage rod and the spells are expensive. (Well, they only cost 5 MPs, but I'd need them to cost 1 to blow through those 16 000 HPs) I'm also basically not using the friend system village at all, fuck that

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fuck that indeed.

Jackal/Khint have high def so yeah magic is good as you noted. Two Hands is great as well, should certainly get your damage higher. Minor spoiler with the fight that will help:
Khint runs away once you remove half the HP of either, so just focus on Jackal.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Prolly gonna try for the "no free battles" reward this time and do...hmm...either Amane or Gin's path. Most likely Gin's.

Just a heads up. Gin doesn't have 8th day.

That likely means that his path will be easier to do no free battles on, then. Also possibly deathless!? We'll see. Gin is awesome anyway, so getting his path sounds good.

Of the endings I got, Gin's easily my favorite. Go for it.

[Fenrir]

I couldn't resist checking the spoiler and this helped a lot. Especially because Jackal becomes a complete scrub in his second fight (using the bravex4 then 3 turns cooldown strat everytime) Fun fight.

[Fenrir]

Bravely Default: I couldn't resist checking and also beating the merchant right after. He was generally easier than the thief, because he wasn't healing all the damn time with MY potions. 300 ITD damage is hard but he almost never attacks the same person twice, so MT healing handles the whole fight nicely.

I went to the woods and saw that mithril bows existed and were awesome.
As my Monk / Knight / White Mage / Black Mage team was Team Boring of Boring Justice, I went with Thief / Knight / Freelancer / Merchant instead. All with bows except the Knight. The one with black mage secondary switched to rods right before the boss.


The major, major, MAJOR issue with Bravely Default (aside from all the friend system BS and microtransactions) is that selecting attacks in every battle is super aggravating. I wish there were macros. For example, something that would allow being one button press away from just doing 4xbrave physical attack on the first enemy.

Because right now, this very basic command you often want to use, uses 11 button presses PER CHARACTER (3x Brave, 4x select an attack, 4x select an enemy)

Because of this I naturally gravitate towards having a team that works well under Full auto mode even if sub-optimal, just because I do not want to deal with extremely long battles.


Anyway Dragon has super mean offense so I had my freelancer heal ST damage with TREAT alongside the traditional healer only doing MT healing. Defense was not bad but I've been used to more now.

I see Bravely Default follows the FF tradition of status effects usually sucking, I cannot have it land on anything non trivial.

[SnowFire]

Fenrir-senpai I have lost all respect for you.  Enjoy your quest for the holy bikini later.

Since you've been skipping everything I guess you skipped the tutorials, too.  There is a macro for "use the exact same commands as last time."  Not perfect because sometimes the commands are slightly different (I summoned 4x Ice summons, but this battle I want 4x Earth summons) but decent for doing a tad bit of grinding outside the inn before turning battles back off again.

[Fenrir]

Oh god there's a bikini -_-

I am sorry. Those jobs... are too enticing


I know about auto battle but that's for the whole team right? And if you want to make even the slight change (say, instead of Bravex4physical for four character, you want Bravex4physical for three characters and Bravex4 physical for your hunter attacking specifically a butterfly) you have to reselect everything again right? Go through the dreaded 44+ button presses again?

[Fenrir]

My reaction to that is to handle dungeons by just having 4 physical fighters, and 4xbravephysical auto everything in dungeons until I reach the boss.
Then I use a teleport stone, go back to town to heal, go back to the dungeon, auto-4xrun from battles up until the boss, then fight the boss.

It is 1000x less of a pain, and less time consuming, than fighting normally, but also less strategically interesting

[Dark Holy Elf]

I believe if the person whose commands you want to change is the front one you can change those, then hit auto. You're probably out of luck if it's someone down the line (unless someone else knows a way).

But honestly once you are used to it rapidfire command selection is something you'll adjust to, it really doesn't take very long once you know what you are doing (11 button presses can be done in like 2-3 seconds) and you can speed up animations to make up for any lost time there anyway if you wish. The only annoying thing I find is mid-battle equipment switching if you make it part of your strategy.

[SnowFire]

What Elf said; I was able to key in my button presses pretty darn quickly eventually even when I changed up my plan.  Baka.

My reaction to that is to handle dungeons by just having 4 physical fighters, and 4xbravephysical auto everything in dungeons until I reach the boss.
Then I use a teleport stone, go back to town to heal, go back to the dungeon, auto-4xrun from battles up until the boss, then fight the boss.

It is 1000x less of a pain, and less time consuming, than fighting normally, but also less strategically interesting

If you're just going to run from everything anyway, go to config and turn random battles off, it's the same effect but much faster.  What I did for any kind of "imma gonna fight me a boss now" run.  Honestly not a bad idea in general, actually.  This feature is solely responsible for me being able to finish Bravely Default.

[Magetastica]

Fenrir: You can also just hold down the A button and it'll be like a semi-autobattle experience. It'll just keep selecting whatever the default is (usually Attack -> First enemy down the line) So you can do that and speed up battle animations and then make the changes as necessary. You can also hold down whatever button you're using to Brave and it'll go much quicker doing that as well. Hope that helps?

I've been playing nothing terribly new, but I may as well mention them I guess.

Diablo 3: Been running through the season trying to actually git gud. Demon Hunter and Wizard are the bestest except that they die to 1-2 hits to practically everything above T1, but Monk/Crusader/Barbarian hold strong. I think Monk may actually be OP right now? Don't know. I'm still liking Barb better because I can spin-2-win. Trying to actually collect sets and do set dungeons now.

X-COM 2: Picked this up and have been playing it in fits and starts. I am clearly playing this game wrong, though, because I decided to branch out slightly from what they were telling me to do and now I'm stuck in this endless cycle of not enough resources nor time do anything, as I am always just slightly behind being able to achieve what I need to. In terms of gameplay it's more of the same but they made it different enough to be refreshing. For a non-hardcore X-COM player *cough* the difficulty is just right. I really need to think out my moves and play extremely carefully, while making sure that I am always moving forward. The time-based objectives give just enough time to add some real pressure, while still being totally fair. On the flip-side, if I do make a mistake or get unlucky, the aliens no longer OHKO basically everyone forever, so people don't die unless I am just super unlucky or make a REALLY dumb mistake, which I feel is fair.

In the Black Site mission, for example, I made a number of errors in how quickly I was moving along, or otherwise ended up getting unlucky, and I still managed to have my whole team come out alive. They were all very gravely wounded but alive. Which, in all honesty, I find adds more pressure to the game. When people are dying all the time, it feels like I may as well just write them off if anything goes wrong. Now I can actually invest resources into gambling for their life.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The Black Site mission almost bottomed out my team for a bit.  I was headed to get some new recruits when I was intercepted by a UFO and had to defend the Avenger.  Turns out you can send out the wounded in that scenario.

[Grefter]

Yep they specifically tell you that one too.  Avenger invasion is actually super easy in my scrubby opinion.  You can turtle and have a small squad/single Concealment Ranger dash out and gank the objective.  I might have got lucky on that I was on a very defensible position though with a long plateau that squad spawned on with enemies all down hill.

[Lord Ephraim]

Lost my Commander/Ironman due to face checking a Archon/Muton/Snake Tits spawn and lost 3 of my 4 veterans to RNG.  Rookies couldn't salvage anything during the 20 day period before the Avatar Project is completed.  Next run I have to get the Advance Warfare center asap for faster recovery times.

Stella Glow - First hour of the game would already KO Fenrir from the all the anime: amnesiac protagonist's hometown is attacked by a underdressed small titty witch, only to be saved by his childhood friend/love interest turning into a big titty witch. The rest of the game is a pretty basic isometric strategy game that has some nice animations and music.  A hybrid of Ar Tonelico and Luminious Arc.  Outside of the slow start, it's not really that bad.

[Grefter]

I finished it last night.  I don't know if it was a joke Alex, but it definitely was fucking hilarious.

[Niu]

Granblue Fantasy -
The new Chevalier Sword that got updated yesterday is the craziest thing to be added in to the game since the Tiamat Bolt that was added a couple of month ago.
Gatcha weapon and Foughten Feild Weapon can fully retire before this thing now.
Since this Magna weapon alone can optimize the damage by itself. It means all 10 weapon slot can be filled with it.
In other words it means it can be boost by Chevalier Magna stone by ten times... which is the equivalent of the boost from Luci stone and a 120% hp boost at the same time...

This... is even worse than Tiamat Bolt...

I might have to change my priorities here....

[Cotigo]

Cities, Skylines: I apparently really, really, really wanted to play Sim City because I have done nothing since I bought the game except sleep, go to work, and play, so much so to the point that I've been neglecting other things I'm hopelessly addicted to. I'm starting to see what is an "optimal" way to play but am foregoing that to build what I think would be a cool city. The exception being shamelessly to industry and building them their own private road and rail networks that plebians can't get to use.  I'll get to that in a bit. 

The game's overall great and kinda exactly what you'd expect from a Sim City game that isn't 5. Some minor complaints, namely with controls (Connecting roadways seems to be a concept the game has trouble with if you're trying to do it in a way it didn't predict, and the public transit system management screens are TERRIBLE. God help you have more than one bus line on the same street, or put bus stops in the wrong order and have to troubleshoot where the problem happened), and the heavy emphasis on traffic management. Not that honestly there's much else to the game except minimal macroing, but goddamn does the game place a heavy emphasis on traffic management while not giving you a lot of simple micromanagement tools to just fix a simple fucking problem. But then, why worry about creating intersections with stop signs instead of traffic lights, guarded traffic turns, one way turns from low traffic road to high, etc. etc. etc. Nah why do that when you can spend a half hour making a ridiculous private highway system. Oh, and the specifics about income gain, particularly early on in your city, are kinda too obtuse but it stops mattering once you have a decent town going.

Still, complaints about the traffic management aside, it is a good game. I suspect a lot of my complaints are also fixed with mods, so I'll probably look into those after I get bored of my first town.

Will probably chew this up like a rabid dog until I get sick of it and then never think about it again. As it should be.

[Fenrir]

Oh that's nice to know about auto-battle. Good design. Usually in RPGs, when you start selecting commands for your team, then just press auto in the middle, the game will ignore the commands you just selected.

The problem with just holding buttons twice instead of pressing 11 times is that you risk confirming too much and selecting an attack for your next character instead of bravex4.
So you need to cancel a few times by pressing B. But then you've pressed B too many times so you need to reselect A once
This sounds minor but this happens way too often for something that should be entirely painless.

I don't really want to use 0% encounter to go fight bosses, it feels like cheating! Running away at least consumes resources.


Orthros: Double acts, fire and ice ST and MT damage, such a Dragon Quest boss.
This thing opens with monster AoE damage and does not let up. White Mage healing was not enough. I came back with twinked mdef and HP on everybody (mithril shield x4, mithril bangle x4, mdef up on two guys, fire defense on another) + two guys on healing duty and this went smoothly.

MASH X MASH X MASH X pseudo-QTE because Square-Enix has watched too many western videogames. What next, a turret sequence?

Khamer: Lightyears behind Orthros offense-wise. The status would scare me more if I didn't have items to heal.


Here is my Chapter 1 hard mode character evaluation:

Freelancer: Divining Rod = real cool. Treat is surprisingly solid secondary healing if you're cheap and don't want to spend money on potions.
Monk: PUNCH. Not one worthwhile ability
White Mage: Feels annoyingly invaluable. MT healing is too good in this game. Aero 's allright offense.
Black Mage: Everybody loves black mages. The best, but still annoying to use in dungeon.
Knight: Cover saved me in the thief/merchant battles. Outside of this specific situation, high defense isnt really a huge benefit.
Thief: Best offense with the godlike mithril bow. Goes first and ruins your shit. Life Steal is super OP. Steals your breakfast money. My best class
Merchant: Unsurprisingly worthless.
Time mage: Look like Kingdom Hearts cosplayers. Tiz, you get to be one.
Spell Fencer: Oh man I love these guys. They're still level 1 though.

I'm really not a fan of how job level plays a large part in damage dealt. That was a big flaw in FF3DS, this is a big flaw here. New jobs are useless until you use them a bit. This is bad! The game should promote flexibility, not the opposite. The only thing that should differentiate high level jobs from low level jobs should be skills. I have a two hand spell fencer that should deal unreal damage when hitting a weakness, instead a lvl 6 thief outdamages it. Okay I'm done.

[Dark Holy Elf]

While the design decision to make JL affect damage does suck, it's a problem which definitely gets less bad as time goes on, at least, since:
-your number of hits is basically 1 + Agl/10 + (a constant dependent on your current job and its job level), so the further you are into the game the more hits come from your stats rather than job level
-Also, later in the game you gain the first few job levels (which grant most of the hit increase) super-fast

So don't let it dissuade you from experimentation, even though it does kinda suck at your point.

Also, it doesn't matter much any more but Orthros' damage is entirely physical.

[Niu]

Prolly gonna try for the "no free battles" reward this time and do...hmm...either Amane or Gin's path. Most likely Gin's.

Just a heads up. Gin doesn't have 8th day.

That likely means that his path will be easier to do no free battles on, then. Also possibly deathless!? We'll see. Gin is awesome anyway, so getting his path sounds good.

Of the endings I got, Gin's easily my favorite. Go for it.

This is also one of the two routes you can recruit Evil Frost, remember to pick him up.

[Captain K]

Blade and Soul:  New update today.  My class (Force Master) got hugely buffed.  This makes up for it sucking throughout the Beta and the last month.  I'm holding agro from people with better weapons.

Also, the new boss is a pirate admiral with pro wrestling moves and you fight him inside a wrestling ring that's built on his ship.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Genei Ibunroku Sharp FE - aka Persona X Fire Emblem
So I have the Japanese version of this since I own a Japanese WiiU and a Japanese boyfriend who likes both of those series. I'm basically taking turns playing it with him.

The game is VERY Persona, somewhat Fire Emblem, and -all GLORIOUS NIPPON-. It exists in this weird realm of being a game that -feels- aimed at women. There's lots of touches I associate with games that are more popular with a female fanbase than a male one - lots of pretty characters, a focus on a musical career-seeking modern-day plot, magical girls (and boys), a J-horror Persona A plot, lots of cell phone texting, and daily life simulation touches. It's hard to pin down every decision the game chose that made me feel like "This is a game aimed at women gamers", but there's so many of them that add up subconciously that I feel I had to point that out.

However, the game is also about idols, with lots of closeups on boobs. Gotta toss the guys some fanservice I guess?

Despite all that, the actual story is doing its Persona thing well enough - Modern day setting, magical horror stuff happens, protagonists must tame their inner magical abilities to fight the evil in secret while balancing their daily lives, or in this case, their jobs as popstars. But, y'know, popstars in Japan, which is more like being a particularly well known wedding singer than the multimedia tabloid sensations that American pop stars are. So they still have some semblance of recognizable everyman life.

The magical power is apparently related to one's ability to express their inner creativity (novel enough idea!) which is our excuse for why these popstars are the ones who are saving the world whereas everyone else just gets overwhelmed. This also makes all the over-the-top in-battle theatricality actually in-character for a change, which makes the whole spectacle more believable than I was expecting.

So how does it play?

Well, each popstar has their own Fire Emblem character as their Persona Mirage. The Pegasus Knight character's Mirage is Sheeda/Caeda from FE1, and she uses a Lance and has healing and wind magic (Dia and Zan, like in persona). This means she also hits weakness against any enemies that use Swords, a la Fire Emblem. Characters gain new skills by equipping a weapon and gaining weapon EXP to master them, then equipping a new one. Level ups happen Fire Emblem-style, with random stats gaining +1 or +2 upon getting enough EXP. Both levels and weapons come at a pretty brisk pace. Party size is only 3 max, but characters not in the active party can still contribute with support skills. Also, whenever you hit an enemy's weakness, you trigger Session attacks, sort of like FE pair-ups, a nice combination of both games' mechanics in one new one. Also, each character has unique Limit Breaks, which is something neither home game had, so that's something new?

Overall, it's basically Persona with some FE stuff thrown in, but I'm liking the experience on its merits, despite feeling like the game is not really aimed at me. I know the game is going to get slammed hard in the US if it gets a translation because it looks oh-so-anime. But honestly it's less 'anime' and more just... girly. Girly anime.

I still don't recommend it to Fenrir. Zenny should play the hell out of it though. :3

[Luther Lansfeld]

as if something girly wouldn't be panned by the bro-dominated gaming culture of 'merica as well

Mass Effect 3 - Doing all of the setup for the geth vs. quarian standoff. I kind of understand where the quarians are coming from by trying to take back their homeworld, but it's hard to sympathize with their timing.

[VySaika]

Devil Survivor Overclocked: welp, missed getting Gin's route this time because I did ONE thing out of order and didn't play with an FAQ open in front of me at all times.

Gonna do Jesus 2: Jesus Harder route instead, still trying to stick to no free battles, though sadly I lost no deaths already due to one of the optional fights. Neiboros was the name, iirc. One of his abbadon crews managed to kill Atsuro once. Ah well. Should still be plenty doable, I have 6 endgame level demons and one more is only pulling a 4000 macca element out of the compendium away from becoming endgame.

I am really loving a lot of the new demons in Overclocked. Likely my favorite so far is Beast Cabracan. See Beast Orthrus is the earliest way I've seen to get Pierce, which is vital for any physical build. You can element that up into Beast Cerberus, also a phys demon, and have a perfectly viable demon for awhile. Then you can element that Cerberus up into Cabracan, carrying up Pierce from Orthrus to compliment Cabracan's innate Multi-Strike attack, which is the best physical move in the game hands down. Cabracan also reflects Curse, thus telling status attacks to fuck right the hell off, which is nice. Also it's a gigantic turtle with a mountain for a shell. I've got one Cabracan already, stuck in a team with Atsuro and Bishamon. Atsuro brings the Marksman so that phys attacks don't miss, Bishamon brings the Double Up to give me two attack phases, and Cabracan brings Animal Leg so I can move after attacking. Basically lets me Move->Attack->Move->Attack->Move all in one turn. It's pretty great. I'll probably give my second one to Amane after fusing it up.

Niu: Yes, I did everything to get Black Frost. Now forced into a route where I won't get to use it. -_-; It he available on any other route, or just Gin's?