What Games are you playing 2016?

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Star Ocean 5:  So the most impressive thing about this game is how seamless transitions are.  "Cutscenes" happen automatically as you walk from place to place.  Characters will talk as you're moving, and other characters will look at the person talking, regardless of where you are in relation to them.  Battles happen instantly with no load times, you just move up to an enemy and a few UI elements will pop up on screen but you're still moving the same way you were before.

All of this being noteworthy is kind of sad when you think about it.

[Grefter]

Speaking of FF5 I forgot to start my Fiesta run earlier so that is taking up a bit of my mobile game time (poor FE Fates still sitting there nearly done.  Bravely Default 2 waiting to start.)

FF5 - I am just doing a normal run because I am bad.  Knight - Summoner - Geomancer - Chemist.

Up to Karnak now betraying all the elves and their idealsgrinding cash because the ROI is too high to ignore and I am all about capitalizing on prime markets.  Also I think I am going to be huffing Ether like its 1899.  After that I will buy some Fire Rods to beak over Shiva's face and buy other summons.  For now Galuf just uses Guard repeatedly because I am not spending money that is going to become more money on trash spells.

It would have been kind of fun to get something to mesh with Two Hands for some shenanigans, but I am not spending money to not play as Chemist.  Knight with Mix is a goer too.

[jsh357]

My Fiestas this year have been ridiculous. I keep getting Mystic Knight, Ranger, and Chemist. I got Ranger-> Samurai two Upgrade runs in a row!  I guess Gilgabot has a thing for me.
http://fourjobfiesta.com/players.php?player=jsh357

[Magic Fanatic]

Yeah Europa is terrible.  Do you have Full Break on Vaan yet?  That and Barthundara should make his damage manageable.  You basically need reliable healing and deep MP reserves.  He can be silenced, but then he uses nothing but his physical attack and that's worse than Barthundara-mitigated lightning damage.

Do you have the katana from beating the White Dragon yet?  That on Lasswell+Tranquility is good damage.

I myself have not really been playing FFBE at all.  Just logging in and collecting friend points.  Waiting for an FF5 drop rate increase to spend my tickets and lapis.  I'm stuck on D-5 in the intermediate collosseum.  This boss is just rng fest.  It can be paralyzed+poiznd, but getting those to land is a crapshoot and it has ridiculous damage and spams a move that petrifies party members.

Sadly, Vaan doesn't get Full Break until 5*L80, so that's still a ways off.

White Dragon?  Uh...  I suppose this is a bad time to mention that I've only just unlocked the Wolfsfang Peak?

I've been running Vaan/Rydia/Fina/Maria/Kuja when it comes to the Arena.  Vaan and Kuja are my only 5*s, while Rydia/Fina/Maria/Rain/Lasswell/Kain/Russell (Core Gladiator) are all sitting at 4*.

[Dark Holy Elf]

My Fiestas this year have been ridiculous. I keep getting Mystic Knight, Ranger, and Chemist. I got Ranger-> Samurai two Upgrade runs in a row!  I guess Gilgabot has a thing for me.
http://fourjobfiesta.com/players.php?player=jsh357

I dunno, Mystic Knight and Ranger are at best middle-of-the-line jobs from their respective crystals for fiesta (and in general)? (Summoner and Time Mage are better for water, Ninja and Bard are better for Fire, and even Beastmaster has an argument though it's a weird one.) Chemist/Samurai are better than Dragoon/Dancer I'll grant, but otherwise this doesn't seem special at all. This reminds me I need to get back to writing FF5 stuff.

EDIT: Bard might not be better for upgrade depending on what other jobs you get first.


Bravely Second - I has all jobs. And hey, 11th job level, cool. I've settled into that point of a job system game where I'm just putting together OP setups that wreck things, even on Hard Mode, but things can still kill me if I screw up. Plot continues to flirt with neat ideas and either execute them well or intersperse them with utter stupidity. The yokai sidequest elegantly tied together a lot of the backstory which the game had set up and then derailed it with INTERDIMENSIONAL SPACE COP RINGABEL what the fuck if you're gonna tip-toe around what the hell happened to Ringabel for 50 hours then finally address it you could maybe avoid doing something quite so stupid.

Ori and the Blind Forest - Second elemental dungeon done. I'll say more when I finish the game. I feel like the game has expected me to have more health than I have so I should probably go fix that.

Blue Dragon - About to do the big disc 1 final dungeon which is supposed to be terrifying on hard mode, so getting ready for that.

[jsh357]

My Fiestas this year have been ridiculous. I keep getting Mystic Knight, Ranger, and Chemist. I got Ranger-> Samurai two Upgrade runs in a row!  I guess Gilgabot has a thing for me.
http://fourjobfiesta.com/players.php?player=jsh357

I dunno, Mystic Knight and Ranger are at best middle-of-the-line jobs from their respective crystals for fiesta (and in general)? (Summoner and Time Mage are better for water, Ninja and Bard are better for Fire, and even Beastmaster has an argument though it's a weird one.) Chemist/Samurai are better than Dragoon/Dancer I'll grant, but otherwise this doesn't seem special at all. This reminds me I need to get back to writing FF5 stuff.

EDIT: Bard might not be better for upgrade depending on what other jobs you get first.

I only play on Chaos, so "respective crystals" is a little meaningless, but in general I think Ranger is one of the most mindless classes in the game. This is compounded by Upgrade runs, as you probably want to stick with the Ranger to make optimal use of RapidFire. In two different Upgrade runs, I got it as my first class. You just spam Nightingale early on, cheese stuff with Killer Bows, then Rapidfire later (Early World 3 the way I play) and don't really struggle until Neo Ex-Death (Usually you have something else that can take him with minimal grinding; in my case, Samurai this year) I will probably just stop after completing 9 runs already, though FF5 is admittedly an awesome brain drain game to play on the side while procrastinating from writing lesson plans.

I find Mystic Knight a very easy class with Drain sword, but also frustrating because it's a pretty slow run since you have to spend extra turns using Sword Magic.

Beastmaster is probably my least favorite class to get, even though it's better than Thief or something. Pokemon is dumb in this game. I actually enjoy getting Berserkers as long as I don't get more than one.

[Hunter Sopko]

Just hit the halfway point to Gyrados myself. Woo.

1109 Vaporeon ^^

Also something odd. Got two Eevees, one is 377, one is 357. The 357 is further along its CP track. Weird.

[Captain K]

The level you are when you catch Pokémon determines their max CP.  Plus random variable I think.  As you level up you will get higher starting and max CP pokes on average.

White Dragon?  Uh...  I suppose this is a bad time to mention that I've only just unlocked the Wolfsfang Peak?

It's in the outer space place that you get to from the crystals in towns.  Forget what it's called.  You should be able to beat it easily if you're already to Europa.  Gives you best katana you'll have for a long time.

[Dark Holy Elf]

jsh:

I don't like the pokemon aspect of Beastmaster much myself (although like Mix, it's often a bailout option if you would otherwise wall against a particular boss), but Control is groovy. There are some enemies you can only reasonably kill that way (Prototypes, Shield Dragons), some Blue Magic you can get early that way (White Wind, 1000 Needles), and at worst it's a total lockdown of one random, since hardly any of them immune it and its accuracy can't be reduced by level/MEvade.

Rapidfire I generally don't find that great on fiestas; it roughly doubles your physical offence (which is less good than it sounds because physical offence is so weak at base in FF5) but so does Two-Handed or Dual-Wield, and they don't cause you to lose all targettability (though you do gain ITE and don't lose a shield if you had one) . It's better in normal playthroughs where you have Freelancer so you can stack 'em. The job's still fine (I like the back row compatibility, not suffering against evade, and yeah Nightingale is neat for getting you past a few potential trouble spots) but certainly not any sort of game-breaker.

Drain Spellblade is nice, MK honestly is a pretty solid job overall (although it walls hard against Archeoaevis and is rather ho-hum in randoms unless you also draw Knight), just more that Summoner and to a lesser extent Time Mage are crazy good (TM's kinda indirect in its power but instantly bails out even the weakest of teams anyway in my experience). That was pretty much the source of my comments; it's not that the jobs you mentioned are bad, just strange choices to gush about.

[Grefter]

Fallen London - So much choice paralysis.  I also think I just pissed away a pile of cash vendoring stuff I could have levelled up.  Oh well, it got me the money I needed to something I wanted.  I am breeding up a Raven advisor so I can have a pet for Shadow stuff.  I fed it a Book of the Dead, then it asked for another one, 2 Bazaar Permits and a Considerable Bribe.  I don't know what it is off to do, but when it comes back it will give me a good 7 or so boost to Shadow.

I am also thinking I need to get back to Sunless Sea both for random unlocks in this and because I am super in to this setting.

[jsh357]

jsh:

I don't like the pokemon aspect of Beastmaster much myself (although like Mix, it's often a bailout option if you would otherwise wall against a particular boss), but Control is groovy. There are some enemies you can only reasonably kill that way (Prototypes, Shield Dragons), some Blue Magic you can get early that way (White Wind, 1000 Needles), and at worst it's a total lockdown of one random, since hardly any of them immune it and its accuracy can't be reduced by level/MEvade.

Rapidfire I generally don't find that great on fiestas; it roughly doubles your physical offence (which is less good than it sounds because physical offence is so weak at base in FF5) but so does Two-Handed or Dual-Wield, and they don't cause you to lose all targettability (though you do gain ITE and don't lose a shield if you had one) . It's better in normal playthroughs where you have Freelancer so you can stack 'em. The job's still fine (I like the back row compatibility, not suffering against evade, and yeah Nightingale is neat for getting you past a few potential trouble spots) but certainly not any sort of game-breaker.

Drain Spellblade is nice, MK honestly is a pretty solid job overall (although it walls hard against Archeoaevis and is rather ho-hum in randoms unless you also draw Knight), just more that Summoner and to a lesser extent Time Mage are crazy good (TM's kinda indirect in its power but instantly bails out even the weakest of teams anyway in my experience). That was pretty much the source of my comments; it's not that the jobs you mentioned are bad, just strange choices to gush about.

I dunno,  think Nightingale is fairly broken at the times you have consistent access to it. I have found it removes a large amount of difficulty from World 1 and even the first half of World 2 as long as you don't overlevel. (I would consider World 1 the hardest section of the game until Neo Ex-Death) It's probably the best healing option you have no matter what classes you get, and if you have multiple !Animals users it's almost guaranteed to trigger.

There are a few key points about Rapidfire that make it better than "doubling offense." First, Bows are back-row weapons, and FF5 puts a lot of enemies in the back row, so Ranger can do more than normal damage to those formations. Second, passive extra effects like the Killer Bow's instant death get rolled for each hit (it's not a proc effect like Death Sickle), so even though it has a lowish probability of working initially, it's got a very reasonable %chance (please don't make me do maths) when you get 4 attempts, and this is made even better with 4 people using Rapidfire. This is super relevant against bosses with multiple ID-weak targets (Necrophobe) and several tough enemy formations (Hello Iron Giants), though you do need to spend some time in Bal Castle to make the best possible use. Third, the Elven Bow, Yoichi Bow, and Artemis Bow (may be others) get critical hits a lot for one reason or another, so points 1 and 2 kind of add together and make Ranger offense pretty sick for most of World 3; the only thing you are trading off to use it is an ability slot. There's also the Chicken Knife, but it's the Chicken Knife so I didn't think it worth mentioning.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Nightingale is neat and a hell of a lot better than Potions for W1 healing (I agree that W1 can be pretty tough, because items are never again so awful as they are from the stretch of game from Karnak to Regole). But let's keep its hype in perspective: at no level does it ever have more than a 50% chance of kicking in, and unless your magic is very high (e.g. Animals on a Black Mage/Summoner) it will heal less than two shots of MT Cura, so White/Red are still always equal or better healing options.

There are a few key points about Rapidfire that make it better than "doubling offense."

I will give you the Killer Bow being able to proc 4 times, but the other things you've cited are advantages of bows in general, not Rapidfire, and go away if you port Rapidfire to another job. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that Rapidfire increases your offence by less than 2x if you don't have a back-row-OK weapon, since you'll waste time randomly hitting back row targets for half damage. Certainly I noticed on a fiesta where I had both Ranger and Knight that Two-Handed was better in most situations than Rapidfire was, for the person who had a Two-Handsable weapon.

And Ranger's overall level of offence throughout the game isn't that special. Pretty good in W3, but below average until then, since their str isn't that great and untwinked physicals are just rather low-damage at base.

[Fenrir]

The 3DS is a real underwhelming system with very few truly remarkable games on it but I found its best game: Picross. Just plain fucking Picross. I've been playing a lot of Picross these last 3 days. There is something highly stimulating and zen about Picross. It is also fucking ruthless, lategame you can lose like 30 minutes of progress if you make one tiny mistake. Prepare to die. At Picross.

Yesterday I was kissing this cute girl I just met and all my brain wanted to think about was Picross strategies, like which squares to colour if I got 2 3 3 3 or whatever. This was pretty disconcerting.

[superaielman]

Fenrir: That's a sign you should either play way less or way more. I actually dreamed about two games when I first started playing them: FFT and Puzzle Quest.  Sometimes games just do that.

[Grefter]

I still dream about party efficiencies in Infonity Engine games when ever I think about playing one.  It at least has been years since I actively lost sleep over it.

Fallen London - So I got my Raven back.  Now I think I will get one for Watchful as well.  I will get my two Raven Advisors and then hang myself from the tree of knowledge to learn how to make fire.

Also on the to do list, but a boat.  I could go cheap and upgrade later, but I think I might just go straight for a fancy yacht even if it is super expensive.

[DjinnAndTonic]

It reminds me of when I had dreams of falling arrows back when DDR was still an everyday thing.

Artifact Adventure: So I heard about this on Extra Credits, and they described it as "FF1 meets Skyrim, with more meaningful choices than any RPG seen before". I want to know more about this, and I'm curious if anyone else has played this game?

[NotMiki]

It reminds me of when I had dreams of falling arrows back when DDR was still an everyday thing.

Yeah, this kind of thing happens to me all the time, mostly from games I play before I go to bed.  Plug my brain into a system and my subconscious treats it like a playground.

[Niu]

Caligula - 40 hours into this game and I am not even half way done.

This game certainly has too many things to do despite being a pretty small game.
Second to the last dungeon and the easiest after game dungeon can be accessed right off the bat is terribly distracting too.

The Shadow Hearts 3 like battle system also made the game longer than it has to be. But I won't complain as I like how SH3 plays.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It reminds me of when I had dreams of falling arrows back when DDR was still an everyday thing.

Artifact Adventure: So I heard about this on Extra Credits, and they described it as "FF1 meets Skyrim, with more meaningful choices than any RPG seen before". I want to know more about this, and I'm curious if anyone else has played this game?

It's only seven bucks so I took a flyer on it. Combat is rote NES fare and your classes are fixed so the only real way to beat fights you can't beat is to have your numbers get more bigger.  The basic gimmick is that you start out picking one of three things that basically determines how your game is gonna play out, and then there's some other things spattered around.

It's worth seven bucks I suppose, but Extra Credits is overselling it.  An NES-style game where you can adventure pretty much anywhere is a neat idea but it's weighed down by the primitive gameplay of the titles it apes.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Artifact Adventure: Okay I gave it a try, Rob pretty accurately described it but EC has some valid points too. Particularly in just how everything effects your endings. Basically it kind of feels like the entire game is a series of minor choices in side quests that get remembered a la the court room scene in CT. Also has kind of modular story build similar to SaGa Frontier.

Apart from that, the game is FF1, and lives or dies depending on how much you like replaying that game. Recommended for Supers everywhere?

[Twilkitri]

Pokémon Picross - done almost everything

All I have left to do is pick up the final energy expansion... which is going to take a bit under a month of picrite collection. I don't even have anything left to use energy for fdaskln23;nr;va



Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma - played through

Better than 999, but not as good as VLR.

So on the one hand, you've got less escape rooms than VLR. On the other hand, there's also no analogue to VLR's gold files. On the mutant hand, there are a heap of non-real-world puzzles, which I don't recall showing up in VLR (but could easily be wrong on this point). (Example: Some -thing- that's locked has a screen which displays a polyhedron covered in dragons, and you rotate the sides of the polyhedron until the outside is consistent. And this type of puzzle is definitely reused at least once, pretty confident it's reused at least twice.) So ultimately, there's less escaping and in some cases it's less fulfilling.

I don't really follow the fragment unlock system. There's one major multibranch early one, and after making my initial choice there, most of the fragments which became available were located on branches other than the one I chose. Ultimately you do need to make the other choices at some point anyway, but I'm pretty certain that this process unlocked less fragments than there were remaining choices (i.e. making at least one of the choices didn't unlock anything new). I can definitely get behind unrelated fragments being unlocked in general (because things wouldn't have gone anywhere fast if only the relevant fragments had been unlocked), I just don't follow how it was done - it would probably have been better if they unlocked in a more spread-out fashion, rather than ultimately getting the majority of them from the first of those choices.

Either I have the worst luck ever or the game was trying to compensate for something and failing miserably, because I managed to fail a widened Monty Hall puzzle on the correct response at least three times.

What the heck is up with Akane's eventual behaviour in the Reactor Room? 'We could finish this puzzle easily enough, but let's blow the reactor up instead and let some other version of us deal with it' shortly after going over why that course of action is morally dubious - the other versions in question end up being ones who were about to die via another method anyway, but it was Junpei who came up with that, Akane just broke the reactor without any ideas as to what she was going to do next. Also, presuming I'm not working off faulty information, D-Team was still extant at that point (and this was the same timeline where Akane & friends had recently saved them from poisoning, not that they would remember).

After first seeing the D-Team FQB fragment, I was totally thinking that it was going to turn out that Phi and Diana were actually sisters. That line of though lead to some strange places when events started unfolding at least until the naming.

[Meeplelard]

XBCX: I now have a giant Robot.  Peelxem decided it's default name of generic title followed by random letters and numbers was stupid and thus named it Boyort. 

also, somehow, I feel like platforming is EASIER in a giant robot.  Like, you can stand on more things than you can as a human, despite how much bigger you are and you shouldn't have the same flexible footing.  Not that I'm complaining...

[Grefter]

Fallen London - MORE LIKE GREFTER LONDON

This month's Exceptional story

"A Junior Reader"
"D__m! It's another one of this b____y cats!"  A cart crewed by Special Constables rattles to an abrupt halt to avoid a battered-looking cat sleeping on the canal path.  The motion jolts a slim red book to the floor.  An unattended child darts to snatch it up. 
"Mother!" He shouts. "Look what I've found."  He cracks the spine and begins to read.

"Yes, dear." His parent is occupied by the window of a nearby haberdashers.

The child abruptly stiffens, eyes locked on the book.  A tiny column of smoke drifts from his left nostril.

Snatch the book away
The book is clearly dangerous.  And almost certainly valuable

Duck the child in the Canal
The waters are cold.  A brief submersion of the head should be sufficient.

Use him as a distraction
People love to look at angelic children, particularly those on fire.

A shadow check to get something

[Captain K]

I used him as a distraction.  Though I was sorely tempted by the water.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

People who play Overwatch don't seem to understand trying to RP with them. And when you tell them that you were role-playing non-violent resisters so opening fire means that they're the REAL losers just makes them mad.