Author Topic: What Games are you playing 2016?  (Read 125414 times)

Grefter

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #525 on: March 02, 2016, 08:54:35 PM »
Quote
After reading that rant which was generally negative about a game I like reasonably well, I'm surprised that you actually give it a higher score than I do! Different scales probably, but I was still amused.


It was actually enjoyable for about 3/5s (up until Dhouly really). I have some major issues with some of the execution of ideas so I thought I should explain myself. The game seems to be this beloved masterpiece that could do no wrong so I thought I would be more detailed regarding why I didn't enjoy it as much. 


I think your assessment of the game isn't off, more your reading of opinions of the game.  I think generally the high points of the last 10+ hours is fighting Ruin and Laughs.  I think the game peaks either at Dhoulmagus or at evil Jess arc and everything is down hill from there with Empyrea or whatever the birds name being the last actual consistently even okay part of the game, the dungeon immediately after that is trash and the only good things from there are camp.

Regarding Jessica, I found her mvp.  Generally speaking full staves imo, here is some algebra for whips.  Whips = whip/rated.

From memory they do need alchemy to work and by the time Casino is unlocked it feels like you are expected to Gringham whip or gtfo.

I do think Dragon Quest in general pushes back against Tide styles of game and they actively want you to be slow and level grindy.  DQ8 really hammers that home with things like Alchemy.  It is the most pacing mechanicy pacing mechanic I can think of.
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Dark Holy Elf

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #526 on: March 03, 2016, 12:55:21 AM »
Yeah, Tide, while I agreed with your first post, it's interesting to see we differ a great deal on what part of the game we disliked! Personally I thought the game dragged a lot between Maella Abbey and Argonia (although there are some highlights in there, like Morrie, Pickham/Red, and Don Mole, there's also a lot of blah), and I would love to cut a bunch of stuff out from there (like the sad king stuff Snowfire described). But once you fight Dhoulmagus, figure out the true source of evil, and go on the trail of Evil Jess / Sir Leopold / Marcello I was hooked.

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Luther Lansfeld

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #527 on: March 03, 2016, 01:21:36 AM »
Fire Emblem: Birthright – Finished! A generally thoroughly enjoyable gaming experience, with gameplay that is better than every other game in the series? I loved the revamped Pair Up/Support Attack system and I like the skill system, it adds a lot of spice to the battle system, and the enemies seemed to have much better AI than in previous games, with the ability to think as a team a bit better. The music and graphics and art all very nice as well. I’d say the weakness of the game is in its plot and characters, but this is nothing new. They replaced the silliness of Awakening’s cast with a paint-by-numbers serious cast, and it largely doesn’t work out very well. It over-utilizes certain plot devices, and I found some of its emotional moments to be contrived and uncompelling (although one of the emotional scenes actually got to me on the train).

I’m trying to decide if I want to give this an 8 or 9. I’ll have to think about it. I really wish it had capitalized on its potential plot-wise, but that's not really what I played the game for anyway.
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Cotigo

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #528 on: March 04, 2016, 02:26:11 PM »
MGS3 -  Just beat the Sorrow.

The End was pretty easy, though I had to look up a Tutorial Vid for how to get his Camo. A very good Camo, for the entire game before the boss but useless afterwards. M'kay.

The Fury had me raging a bit until I figured out how to quick reload the Tranq. Sniper Rifle and remembered I had Stun Grenades. Turns out a boss with line-of-sight AoE damage gets wrecked by things thrown around corners. A couple deaths due to controls (let's make Roll and Crouch the same button! This is stupider than Dark Souls' mapping Jump and Roll onto the same button. Somehow).

Still going strong with no-Kill, at least if I'm reading The Sorrow fight right. There weren't any enemies in the area except the bosses I've fought. I bet that fight's a pain in the ass when you're playing all murdery. Granted, the lead up to the boss was a pain in the ass with no CQC takedowns allowed.

I stabbed a deer with a fork to see if I could eat it in one bite and I could. Good game.

Anthony Edward Stark

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #529 on: March 05, 2016, 02:51:28 AM »
It's Square-Enix weekend on Steam, so if you haven't played Sleeping Dogs, definitely do that.  It's real goddamn cheap.  It's a tribute to Hong Kong action movies in the way that a lot of sandbox games tend to gravitate to a particular genre or filmmaker, but they do it a little better than Rockstar has been doing, tonally.  The story avoids using a lot of direct references to other works and instead relies more on formula and feel.  The characters don't have a TON of depth but we do get to see most of the central figures bounce off each other pretty frequently, so you get a sense of who these people are pretty well.

Play it, because the sequel just got axed.

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #530 on: March 05, 2016, 06:36:43 AM »
Wasn't the sequel going to be an MMO or something stupid like that?

Seconding recommendation for Sleeping Dogs. Other dirt cheap games of note on Steam:

Just Cause 2
Hitman: Blood Money
Thief 1-3 (skip Thief 4, it's garbage. The first three are kind of janky and old but I played them a few months ago and they still hold up pretty well if you like stealth)
The director's cut of Deus Ex 3 is also pretty cheap.
Don't think of it as a novel. Think of it as a chance to retroactively win every argument you have ever walked away from.

Cotigo

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #531 on: March 05, 2016, 07:00:23 AM »
Sleeping Dogs

Hmm.

Seconding recommendation for Sleeping Dogs.

Yeah OK.

Unrelated note, the Talos Principle is $10 and if you want a Games-are-Art wankfuck it's apparently pretty good. Picked it up along with Tired Canines.

Fenrir

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #532 on: March 05, 2016, 03:03:43 PM »
I think the Sleeping Dogs MMO was actually released and nobody ever cared?


SMT 4 No fusion and Other Things Challenge: Advancing at a glacial pace.
I got a demonica suit!
Graphics remain gorgeous, they are probably better than like any other game I've played on the Vita. (except that Assassin's Creed I played for 5 minutes maybe)

The world map is a mess. You can't tell things apart. You can't even tell easily what's an obstacle and what isn't. Is that a road or a wall? I am running from a monster and am hoping this is a road. It is somewhat like classic SMT world map, with icons instead of actual characters running around, except it's also in FULL 3D for some reason. You can rotate the map, but there is no compass, so this is a very bad idea if you do not want to be left even more utterly confused. The devs had two instructions: "Make it like the older games" and "Make it 3D" and this did not end well.
Much like the Nocturne world map, it's also clearly meant for people who know Tokyo. I do not know Tokyo.
I miss the linearity of the earlygame: One city, one big dungeon. No stupid world map.

Demon conversations are a massive step down from Soul Hackers but there still are some fun bits. I like how some demons will just ask you a ton of stuff , then go "Meh... You're giving your items away too easily... You're kind of a loser... kthxbye" I am trying to recruit Jack Frosts and they are the biggest pricks.


Edit: Holy shit, Nozomi has the worst AI ever
Nozomi: "Here I go!!" *shoots*
*Asura blocks gun attacks, gets massive bonuses from it for one turn, one shots two demons*
Me: FFFFF *summons one demon, heals*
Nozomi: "Here I go!!" *shoots*
*Asura smirks again*
« Last Edit: March 05, 2016, 06:32:46 PM by Fenrir »

Anthony Edward Stark

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #533 on: March 05, 2016, 09:19:00 PM »
I think the Sleeping Dogs MMO was actually released and nobody ever cared?

It made it into beta.  I don't think it was an MMO as much as a drop-in drop-out world with roam like Metal Gear Online.

hinode

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #534 on: March 06, 2016, 03:38:13 AM »
FE Fates Conquest: Getting my ass kicked by chapter 10 on hard mode; they sure aren't messing around with the level designs on this route. Not sure whether I should go look up strategies on the internet more seriously or just drop down a difficulty level and taking things mostly blind.

Dark Holy Elf

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #535 on: March 06, 2016, 04:20:08 AM »
If you do decide you want advice, there's a lot I could give. The map is pretty tough!
-Use Camilla a lot, can not stress enough. Her + Azura can clear out enemies fast, she can one-round enemies with Seal Defence so nobody eats that hit, and so on.
-On a related note, if you have any gear you want to hand to the recruits, plan that out. Camilla may want a more accurate axe (either bronze or iron) as an option, and Beruka may want a Hand Axe, at minimum.
-You can probably hold off the archers who come from the east with one to two PCs, try to keep them from reaching the ballista.
-The two houses on the left (money and Dual Club) are extremely valuable, and the one on the top right is easy enough to get. The lower right is a Dracoshield, and this is less essential, get it if you can but don't strain yourself.
-Niles can be really useful against the pegasus knights, so keep him in the vaguely central area in case any slip through your defences (some will ignore your units and just charge for the green squares). If you see a paired up pegasus duo, make sure you take care of 'em.
-Other specifics would depend on your PCs. I will note that if your Effie is turning out reasonably, she may be able to OHKO archers and/or pegasus knights with a decent Str pairup and/or tonic, and this is good.
-Don't press forward too far on the left side, or you can get trapped by the reinforcements that appear there. There's no real reason to go past the barricade.
-Once the chokepoints vanish and things go to shit, you can largely pull back towards the centre and work on trying to deal with the threats as they come.
-If you don't provoke Hinata, IIRC he won't approach you. Oboro will eventually charge forward regardless with a bunch of enemies. Set up to one-round her so you don't get your defence sealed then pounded.

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DjinnAndTonic

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #536 on: March 06, 2016, 07:18:04 AM »
FE Fates Conquest: Shotgunned all the way to Ch 18. I don't get all the complaints about the story, it's pretty enjoyable overall. The only major issue I have with it is that there's a lot of missed potential because the initial setup is so very very strong. Especially on the Nohrian path, IMO, due to Corrin making the harder choice and having to fight against basically both families because the one she chose is so obviously in the wrong and there's lots of emotions and backstabbing drama going on. It's not shown off as well as it could be, but overall, the game has done a decent job selling me on the relationship between the Nohrian siblings and if you buy into that, any of the odd decisions the party makes seems to make sense. As in, "Why on earth would you put up with this guy who is obviously evil?" "Well, he's literally the father of the only people in the world who matter to me... and he's king, which is making things difficult, but I'm dedicated enough to these people to try to figure out ways around this." It sorta makes Corrin read as a little codependent to me, but that doesn't make her a bad character, just one who has a glaring flaw.

Gameplay continues to be amazing, though I'm completely ignoring most of the character-building depth - I haven't minmaxed any of my promotion options, I'm using ODIN, I have no idea what to do with the Heart/Friendship/Partner Seals to get the best abilities, and I think the only reason I'm keeping up with the difficulty curve is through forged weapons. Notably, I'm playing without perma-death, so that ALSO makes things a lot easier. Still, I feel like this would have been more interesting if I hadn't been playing blind (gameplay-wise, story-wise I'm enjoying seeing how things play out).

I still haven't gotten any S-supports this late into the game, so I guess I'm just doing a no-kids run?

Lord Ephraim

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #537 on: March 06, 2016, 11:08:52 AM »
Everything after chapter 15 in Conquest is straight up stupid.  Spoilers up to the final chapter.

Oh no! Your Father is actually a blob monster! We must kill it! Oh wait, we can't talk about it because of plot device that will make you blow up if you dare!  Then Master Tactican Azura comes up with the brilliant plan of conquering Hoshido so you can use a magic throne to show everyone that Garon is REALLY evil.  And everyone follows along. Corrin becomes whiny and indecisive the whole time joining Nohr because everyone he saves just gets killed by Garon and Iago.  It's not until Iago actually attacks Corrin for the rest of the royal family to realize that they should have killed him off long ago.  Leo had no problem killing that person imitating Izana no problem.  This is just like the blood pact nonsense from Radiant Dawn, easily my least favorite thing about that game.

I played a bit of Revelation.  It takes the dumb plot device of Conquest and turns it into Suikoden plot, which makes it a bit better.

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #538 on: March 06, 2016, 09:19:58 PM »
SMT4 no fusion and shit:

Bosses have really fallen in difficulty after Medusa, but randoms and hordes remain threatening enough.

MC is supposed to be support only (all points in luck and agi, no attack skills) so demons get to shine compared to him, but in practice he is a monster. 2x more HPs than anyone else, crits all the time, sleep bullets + mt gun for sick status.
The terrifying de/buff barrage he inflicts completely destroys bosses assuming we can survive four turns or so (no boss has used dekunda/kaja so far). He also has resurrection and healing + good MP regen when walking. Yes.

Asmodeus' monster design is the worst thing.

Grefter

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #540 on: March 06, 2016, 11:33:39 PM »
Djinn: See Eph.  Nooooooooot really buying Conquest plot hype.  Video games have a long history of both underplaying the consequences of catastrophes in the background (e.g. war) AND featuring long, over-complicated plots that work anyway, but Conquest is a nasty combination of both.

I just finished C15, and...

* We're supposed to prosecute a war of conquest against Hoshido all so that we can maybe trick someone into sitting on a magic throne.  Maybe.  How to put this...  NO.
** I don't care if Corrin is a saint who somehow makes his/her armies inflict no casualties in battle.  (Which, while not unique vs. other games, is kind of a shame they added to Fates...  the earlier Fire Emblems were unusually 'realistic' about admitting that normal people will get killed by Our Heroes because they're fighting for the wrong cause.)  There are other follow-on effects to this.  If nothing else, you already have proof at this point in the game that Garon is a psycho who orders massacres of innocents and we're not going to explicitly disobey him.  Why wouldn't massacres like this happen again?
** Even if Garon entirely trusts Corrin, someone whom he's tried to *kill* already, isn't it possible he'd also know to avoid the throne?  If my most trusted family member told me to jump into a volcano, I still wouldn't do it.
** What exactly is the problem with trying to kill Garon again?  Or heck, if you don't want to get your hands dirty, letting the Hoshidans do it in C14.  If Corrin is so dedicated to pacifism he won't even kill Garon's life, then he needed to stand up and fight for the innocent villagers in Cheve equally, hypocrite.
** Which, let me say this again, GARON TRIED TO KILL CORRIN.  Even a darker, more pragmatic version of Corrin would have entirely solid reason not to work with him!
** The whole throne thing is sold more as a way to reveal the truth to the siblings rather than something necessary to defeat him.  Even if Corrin can't talk about the invisible world, surely he can explain to his moral, nice siblings that daddy has gone cray-cray and needs to be ushered into permanent retirement?  This plot would work better if somehow the throne was needed to break his shield and he'd be invincible otherwise or some such.


Basically Conquest wants to have Corrin be super-sympathetic *and* to be the hero of darkness who directly helps along the bad guy.  This is a tough line to walk; it'd have been much easier to either have him work with Nohr rebels or the like and be sympathetic, -or- be more pragmatic and concoct some reason to be the bad guy's enforcer.  Anyway, that combination can be done just fine (see, uh, Final Fantasy 4, this isn't new) , but the game fails at selling it, so meh.

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Grefter

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #543 on: March 07, 2016, 05:38:22 AM »
Djinn: See Eph.  Nooooooooot really buying Conquest plot hype.

Not so much hype as I wasn't really seeing all the anti-hype. I thought it did a solid enough job selling me on the drama and emotion of the scenes while the odd plothole didn't frustrate me as much as it seems to frustrate everyone else since I've been enjoying the character interaction overall. The supports and the siblings in particular. I do admit that Azura's endless parade of plot devices that keep trying to force unnecessary complications into the story are the worst part though. I guess enjoyment of it depends on how you weight the importance of plotholes vs character interaction. And even that's subjective. I'm just surprised at the uniformly negative reaction its story gets when there's clearly some good stuff in there. Perhaps something more egregious happens further on in the plot? Gotta finish it first I suppose.

Dark Holy Elf

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #544 on: March 07, 2016, 05:48:05 AM »
The worst of it is definitely in Chapter 15-16. It improves again later I think.

I'm largely with you, the plot is kinda bad and has stupid contrivances for sure, but not *that* bad or anything. It's leagues better than Shadow Dragon or New Mystery of the Emblem at worst, and the character work made me enjoy it more than 6 or 7 as well.
« Last Edit: March 07, 2016, 05:53:03 AM by Dark Holy Elf »

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #545 on: March 07, 2016, 05:51:19 AM »
Been a while since I posted here. Let's see, what have I played since...

Undertale: Finished. Neutral, and then Pacifist. May do the other route at some point, we'll see.

Enjoyed it quite a bit! The characters are fun. The gameplay is fun. The serious story is decent.

Some ending discussion below...

jThe Neutral Ending last boss was probably the weakest boss in the game. It seemed impressive at the start, but once you realize it's a plot fight, it kind of just dragged on. And the meta stuff didn't really do it for me, there. I know this is nitpicky, but when the boss "Loaded State" I looked to see if my life went back to when he saved state, but it doesn't. I know that's a silly thing to notice, but it still took me out of it a little - it would have been better if Flowey was using powers that you had access to - the force closing the game was cooler, for sure.

True Ending last boss was more fun, and had a catchier song. It wasn't the *best* boss fight either in the game (my personal favorite was Mettaton, and my favorite joke was when the colored tile puzzle came back - because I had actually been keeping notes in Notepad when Papyrus explained the puzzle earlier in the game, so I was ready for it!!! Though it ended up being a joke again anyway : P.

Actually, I enjoyed the puzzles, with the exception of the vents one in Hotland which was just time consuming, quite a bit. They were simple but made things less monotonous. Games could do with more stuff like that, though I don't want stuff like Tales of Symphonia's old cryptic puzzles with the one sign giving you some riddle in overly flowery language.

But yeah - fun game, fun gameplay. Very solid.


Omega Quintet:

I randomly played and beat this since I had bought it in a sale at... some point. Depending on your tolerance for this kind of stuff... It's playable. The serious story is actually not that bad. I could have done with more of it, actually. The music is decent, too. It... Kind of sounds like it should be in a different game, but the background area music and such is kinda nice.

The gameplay annoyed me. Because it "looks" like it has a lot of strategic depth and there are a lot of options.

But it doesn't.

You spam AOE's against regular enemies, and spam L1 specials against bosses. That's enough to beat anything. Items are also overpowered, though you usually don't need them.

It's kind of frustrating, because you can tell someone spent some time into making this big sphere grid like thing that you can go in any direction in - but 95% of the skills on it are useless. It's like someone's RPG Maker game, where they have all these cool ideas for moves but no point in the game where they are useful, and a bunch of redundant ones inbetween.

Also - I kind of did it to myself because I wanted the true ending, but the quests in this game are incredibly dull. I didn't do all of them - just the mandatory ones. And, of course, as is tradition, easily missable.

Still, I didn't hate it. It was fine as a filler game.

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest

Just finished Chapter 21. Hard, Classic.

The plot is not the best in the world, but it's not really that bad. It's at least keeping me interested, which is more than, say, Roy's game can say. And the supports are usually fine.

Toughest missions so far were 10 (the defense map) and... 12? (The one with pots.) Other maps have taken 2-4 tries each, generally.

Hard seems like a good balance (WARNING - I did beat FE12 on Lunatic (though it was with a friend, and it probably took like 6 hours a map - so I'm not a Fire Emblem master, but I am persistent). It's tough but not unbeatable, though with the trial and errorness of the early parts of the maps it did lead to me turning off animations rather quickly. I feel like Endgame might get rough, but we'll see. Might go more into depth on the later missions as I do them.

Lot of fun so far. With two other paths to play, I'll probably be playing fire emblem for another month and a half.

That sums up most of the things I've been doing.




Looking forward to Bravely Second.

Dark Holy Elf

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #546 on: March 07, 2016, 06:22:04 AM »
Nice comments on Undertale, I generally agree!

I'm generally with you on the Flowey boss fight and Asriel one, and agree while the latter is considerably better I do think there are better fights still, Mettaton's is great and a good choice for best. My personal favourite my be Papyrus', though. I'm not sure I had a chance to hype this when I first played the game, but the execution of that boss fight is just so beautiful, one of the great moments in video games for me.

-The game sets him up as bumbling comic relief.
-He spends several turns warning you about his blue attack. In the meantime he uses attacks along the bottom of the screen which won't hit you and are pathetic.
-He uses the blue attack. It's pathetic, since by now you know how to deal with blue attacks thanks to the previous dungeon. Then at the last moment, your character falls down for no discernable reason and probably takes some damage from a stray ground attack which had up-to-now been a joke.
-The rules have changed. The music has changed. Shit gets real. Great boss fight ensues.
-And oh yeah the special attack at the end with the big long jump is glorious.

Mettaton actually has some similarities; I wasn't even sure if we'd get a "real" fight out of him. Then we do, and it's great. And the music is just unbelievably fitting, remixing both of Mettaton's themes in something that sounds just like some sort of variety channel special... but awesome.


For myself, I'm at the final battle of Conquest. Chapter 20's the one I had the most trouble with, though I can see 10, especially if you're one of those poor bastards who tries to use prepromos as little as possible (and even if you aren't, yeah, still tough).

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Reiska

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #547 on: March 07, 2016, 04:26:29 PM »
Re: DQ8 - Holy Protection simply requires you to be one level above the enemies to not run into them, no more, in previous DQs; I assume 8 is the same.

Super Robot Wars Z2 Saisei-hen

Finally finished this.  I enjoyed pretty much the whole way through, but if I ever do NG+ on this entry it will most definitely be with animations turned off, because animations in this game are all pretty long even by SRW standards.  Random mentioned that his final game clock was something like 220 hours faster than mine and I'm reasonably confident the majority of that was watching animations (I was streaming the whole thing, so most of the time I didn't skip).

One thing Saisei-hen did that Hakai-hen didn't which I liked was having a handy statistics screen showing exactly how much stuff you earned/accomplished/whatever.  So I know that I earned 23,145,144 credits total, got 53 of the 59 SR points (like battle masteries in OG1/2), got 36 of 109 pilots to ace status (70 kills), and that Simon in the Gurren Lagann earned the most pilot points of anyone (2,288). 

Saisei-hen was a notably longer game than Hakai-hen, and most of that was in the back end.  Looking back at my Hakai-hen save, I had a clear time of 169:28:11 on that one, over 271 turns, my units averaged around level 50 at endgame, and I had 12 aces (with the highest kill count on any PC being Crowe, the OG character, at 128 kills).  In Saisei-hen, my clear time ended up being 288:43:23, over 319 turns, my units averaged around level 72 at endgame, and as mentioned, I had 36 aces, which is actually more characters than you can even use in the final map.  I had some people with ace status whom I hadn't used since midgame, even.  There is a LOT more trash to kill in Saisei-hen compared to Hakai-hen; it was almost reminiscent of SRW J in that regard.  Where in Hakai-hen my highest kill count was 128, and my next highest was only in the 90s... in Saisei-hen I had 13 characters with 100+ kills, and nine of them had over 130.  And one of the 100 kill characters hadn't been used at all in the last 15 chapters of the game.  The highest KO count on a single PC ended up being 206. o_o

I don't have a whole lot of coherent thoughts to say about the actual game; it was typical SRW, although you got a pretty impressive playable unit count in this game - the final stage had me deploying 30 units and 4 battleships.  As in the last game, I taunted the final boss to fight him at his strongest... but I actually found him to be a lot easier this time around, as I managed to take him out in one well-coordinated turn of throwing literally everything I had at him.  Ended up only losing three units in the final map - one to ninja reinforcement, one to unlucky dodge failure -> OHKO, and the last because intentional suicide attack by a character who was out of SP but could still put out another 10k damage before dying.

Suppose I'll be tackling Z3 soon.

Meeplelard

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #548 on: March 07, 2016, 11:59:42 PM »
FEF: Still hard Classic, just beat Chapter 10.  Should have beaten it earlier but kept doing stupid silly mistakes that were avoidable leading to resets.  Winning run had me use a Rescue Staff but eh, gotta do what you gotta do.
[21:39] <+Mega_Mettaur> so Snow...
[21:39] <+Mega_Mettaur> Sonic Chaos
[21:39] <+Hello-NewAgeHipsterDojimaDee> That's -brilliant-.

[17:02] <+Tengu_Man> Raven is a better comic relief PC than A

NotMiki

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Re: What Games are you playing 2016?
« Reply #549 on: March 08, 2016, 12:40:19 AM »
Momodora: Reverie in the Moonlight, a.k.a. Momodora 4.

This game is awesome.  Better than I dared hope.  The gameplay is superb.  The art direction is superb.  The sound design - unexpectedly - also superb.

Baaaaaaaasically this is a 2D amalgam of Dark Souls and Castlevania, with a slightly anime aesthetic, and some of the prettiest pixel art I've encountered.  Does that sound good?  It is good.

To elaborate a little on gameplay, you get a double jump, a dodge roll, a 3-hit ground combo, an aerial attack, and a bow and arrows.  Enemies hit *hard* but can be hitstunned with melee attacks.  There's a slight delay between your second and third hit, though, so say you hitstunned one enemy and another is right behind it, you have to make a snap judgment whether your third attack will land or if you need to dodge roll or jump out of the way.  Precise timing and good judgment are key.  It's beautiful.  Enemies are designed with this in mind, too, and so you end up with enemies that have quick lunging attacks or blocking moves that can punish you for overextending or hanging back.  All that said, normal difficulty is not too too hard.

Another neat aspect of the game is it incentivizes you to try to no-hit bosses by giving you special item rewards when you do.  You can pick up, for example, powerful offensive magic, but it takes time to cast, so again you have to carefully judge when to use it.  Speaking of items, there are no consumables - all active items refill at each save point.  More games need to do this.

Anyway, I love it, and it comes with my highest recommendation.
Rocky: you do know what an A-bomb is, right?
Bullwinkle: A-bomb is what some people call our show!
Rocky: I don't think that's very funny...
Bullwinkle: Neither do they, apparently!