What Games are you playing 2016?

[Sierra]

I've personally never been invaded in the High Wall, but I figured it was only a matter of time before people figured out how to do low-level runs just to come back there with maxed weapons and grief newbs a la Undead Parish.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I have two A ranks, one of them is the Avatar's rank in dragonstones, the other is Xander's rank in swordkatanas (and I think he starts with it?). And they expected me to have gotten S-ranks in anything?

Xander starts with a B.

S ranks are indeed pretty tough to get. With my playstyle, they're only really feasible by using an Arms Scroll. But... those do exist.

So yeah, it feels to me like the game expected me to have way, way more doing-things-time than it was actually prepared to give me - or - it expected me to never rotate my party, and consequently forego the children of anyone I wasn't using and so on. I can't believe the latter is true for contemporary Fire Emblem, though.

Conquest is generally billed as taking after earlier FEs, so I'd disagree with your assessment. You aren't expected to rotate party members on it, just get the kids of the PCs you actually use regularly (much like you aren't expected to get all the supports in a single playthrough of FE6-7). If you do this, you should have no trouble hitting B ranks minimum with everyone, A in many cases.

I mean, you can rotate, as you discovered, and the Exp formula does make it more feasible than some of the earlier games, but if you actually wanted to max people out while doing it you'd definitely have to grind on DLC or something. (I'm not the one to ask about such things; i played even Birthright like I would classic FE.)

[Grefter]

Never?  My barrage of invasions (everywhere really) even in Highwall has been relentless since release.

There is definitely people coming back with Grass Crest Shiels, mid to late game items, rings and 1000000000000 Estus flasks, but you can't upgrade  or you will be locked out.

[hinode]

Recently, I got sufficiently fed up with my Android 2.1 phone playing up and replaced it with an Android 6 phone, which theoretically makes the world of mobile gaming available to me. So - is there anything worth playing on mobile outside of Dragon Quest 1-3 and possibly Adventures of Mana and all the bravest? (Keeping in mind that I can essentially only connect to the internet with it at home, although it doesn't seem particularly likely that I would be playing anything on it anywhere else anyway.)

You've played the Layton games before, I think? Mystery Room is worth a shot, you can download the prologue+case 1 for free and the rest of the cases are cheap. The Layton connection is pretty much meaningless, but I liked the writing and gameplay (which is closer to Phoenix Wright than Prof. Layton) well enough. Also it doesn't require an internet connection to play the way mobile skinner box games like Record Keeper do.

[Sierra]

Never?  My barrage of invasions (everywhere really) even in Highwall has been relentless since release.

There is definitely people coming back with Grass Crest Shiels, mid to late game items, rings and 1000000000000 Estus flasks, but you can't upgrade  or you will be locked out.

Mad phantom invasions supposedly prioritize worlds that have other phantoms in them. So if you're co-oping all the time and seeing tons of purple phantoms, there might be a connection there.

Also I assume you guys know better than to use the finger but just in case: never never ever use the finger unless you want to be up to your ass in invaders within ten seconds. I've been summoned to worlds where the host had obviously used that to raise the max number of ally phantoms, and it just does not look worth it. Invasions happen literally non-stop.

[Twilkitri]

@Twil:  Final Fantasy Record Keeper is the best thing on mobile.  I'd avoid traditional RPGs because touchscreen controls are horrible for navigating dungeons.

As far as I'm aware, with regards to DQ 1 - 3 at least, mobile is the only (legitimate?) way I can get access to modern versions currently. Of course it's possible that SE might start doing PC ports of DQ once they're finished with FF...

For Mobile, Devil's Attorney is a fun little puzzle/RPG boss rush/thingo game.  Otherwise You Have To Build A Boat/1 Million are both great.

With regards to the latter two, unfortunately I'm terrible at match-3 games (although these don't appear to be strictly the same style). Added Devil's Attorney to the list, thanks.

You've played the Layton games before, I think? Mystery Room is worth a shot, you can download the prologue+case 1 for free and the rest of the cases are cheap.

Sadly, I read through an LP of Mystery Room a couple months back as it didn't seem like I'd be getting the chance to play it any time soon. It was an entertaining read, but the game doesn't seem like the sort that'd be worth playing through personally on top of having read it.

[Fenrir]

Confession of a horrible person: I have a friend in real life who always asks to hang out with me, and I don't really want to, and I take hours/days to answer to her, telling awkward lies about me being unavailable because reasons.

Anyway Zenny is now the Fallen London equivalent of this person

[Captain K]

I hang out with Zenny but society thinks ill of me for doing so.  This game has successfully managed to emulate real life.

[Grefter]

It's fine, just do what I did, before hanging out with Zenny cash out of society by buying hundreds of bottles of alcohol.

[Cotigo]

Confession of a horrible person: I have a friend in real life who always asks to hang out with me, and I don't really want to, and I take hours/days to answer to her, telling awkward lies about me being unavailable because reasons.

Anyway Zenny is now the Fallen London equivalent of this person

I hang out with Zenny but society thinks ill of me for doing so.  This game has successfully managed to emulate real life.

It's fine, just do what I did, before hanging out with Zenny cash out of society by buying hundreds of bottles of alcohol.

yeah this all sounds about right

[DjinnAndTonic]

I tried hanging out with Zenny in Fallen London but every time I tried the app kept crashing.

[Hunter Sopko]

I tried hanging out with Zenny in Fallen London but every time I tried the app kept crashing.

Not crashing. That's just Zenny slamming the door in your face.

[SnowFire]

I'll hang out with you, Zenny?  What's your name?

Grefter & Captain K are currently my only buds.  That said loitering on Street Corners has some nasty consequences, why does it tank your reputation so badly?  I'm just loitering here.  On a corner.  It's cool.

Twik, re FE Conquest: Yeah, if you want to actually work on lots of supports in Conquest, you need to farm DLC / castle battles.  Turn on Street Pass wandering and a steady stream of other people whose castles you can take forging materials & food from as well as attack will show up.  You won't actually gain any weapon ranks or XP (which is actually kinda nice in some ways...  in Birthright, I haven't *wanted* to powerlevel), but you will gain support & kills, and kills allow you to upgrade your statues.

[Cotigo]

Oh yeah I forgot Snowfire. Zenthor is the name, what was yours again?

[SnowFire]

Uh...  uh...  I forget.  Just remembered I had some...  important...  things to do with rubbery men.  At the tomb colonies.  In the palace.  Yes.
Snowflame

[Magic Fanatic]

Crypt of the Necrodancer - Yaaaay I finally beat Zone 3 with Cadence.


EDIT: For those not in the know, the game starts you with two characters - Cadence and the Bard.  Cadence is basically Normal Difficult, while Bard is Easy because he gets to ignore beats for moving, but is otherwise the same as Cadence.

[Meeplelard]

Child of Light: I just got a Mouse Archer and walked into a giant stoneman's mouth.  Sure, why not.

[The Duck]

fen keeps sending me cats that are actually spiders

[Sierra]

In this game, that might be preferable to the real cat.

[Fenrir]

 


I've gotten pretty close to the cute devil lady now!
Hmmmmmmmmmm.
I encourage you all to try out this questline, go all the way, and tell me about it before I go any further.
It is 100% safe don't worry


I've also gotten to the source of red honey in Sunless Sea. Gross. Gross and weird. I have never seen any of it in Fallen London, but now Prisoner's Honey looks highly suspicious to me.

[Excal]

BS has forced me to choose between ninja and knight.  This gets all the sadness since I wanted both of them.  I wound up going Ninja, because dual wielding is awesome, and I'm sure Templar will show up sooner or later.  Though plot is suggesting that will be late game.  I also made the worst decision as to who should get the fancy dessert.  Ah well, at least I have patisserier now.  It looks kinda like Chemist, though different enough that maybe it's more like Hawkeye/Ranger.  It's odd, but, since DeRosa managed to return, I'm kinda hoping that Qada also returns, since they're both pretty vile.

Also, the game hasn't said it out loud, but it's pretty obvious who the Kaiser is now.  Also, that twist with the Yunohana plot.  It was 99% expected, but the 1% that wasn't is leaving me interested in where it's going to go.  Finally, I kinda like the revelation of what the Kaiser is up to.  Naturally, we're going to fail at stopping his actual plan, but I see no problems with dealing with the aftermath of his success.

Finished most recent run by getting my ass kicked by random mech from nowhere.  It's eminently beatable, but will require some refinement.  Naturally, this means it's a good stopping point.  Next time, expect some PXZ2 updates.

[Sierra]

I've gotten pretty close to the cute devil lady now!
Hmmmmmmmmmm.
I encourage you all to try out this questline, go all the way, and tell me about it before I go any further.
It is 100% safe don't worry


I've also gotten to the source of red honey in Sunless Sea. Gross. Gross and weird. I have never seen any of it in Fallen London, but now Prisoner's Honey looks highly suspicious to me.

Vengeance quest is largely about tracing the origin of red honey. I could tell you more except I got stalled out on that due to never being able to get into the university.

Devil romance I want to say is one of those quests I managed to just start and then it never turned up in the cards again.

[SnowFire]

I see that visiting the Hall of Mirrors at Madame Plenty's is a fast way to hit Nightmares 8.  Exciting!  (Didn't have the cojones to attempt to succeed at the Nightmares challenges, though.  Odds of ~10% success with a stat hit on failure?  Now I'm interested into what happens if you succeed.)

[Captain K]

That's how I died, fell through a mirror, took me straight to wounds 8.  Not a nice place.

[Grefter]

Fenrir.