What Games are you playing 2016?

[Shale]

Yeah, I've never gotten more than 20 minutes into Metroid 2 before the controls and interface turn me off, and I've had no problems with the remake. There's zero nostalgia re: the GB original in it for me -- if anything it feels more like a total conversion of Super Metroid into a game where Samus is actually a bounty hunter -- but that hasn't hurt the experience.

[Magic Fanatic]

FFBE: Up to 106 Demon Hearts!  Just 54 left to go.  Probably going to have to forego the Magicite event to get all the Hearts, though.

[Pyro]

Skyrim: this game is hitting my exploration and completionist buttons pretty hard.

1. Dragons are supposed to be scary bosses but they tend to die like pansies. Sad!

2. The thief guild is scummy (get innocent people thrown in jail and shake down struggling shopkeepers) and I can do nothing but join them or ignore them. Quite unsatisfying. Don't think I want to do the whole thing.

3. I can't stop doing minor and sidequests when I ought be doing the main.

4. Playing a stealthy wizard gives way more options for how to handle things. Although apparently it is fighters that break the damage curve.

[Sierra]

2. The thief guild is scummy (get innocent people thrown in jail and shake down struggling shopkeepers) and I can do nothing but join them or ignore them. Quite unsatisfying. Don't think I want to do the whole thing.

This really stood out to me as one of the peak Bethesda writing fail moments in the game. I rarely kill NPCs in games, but I decided to wipe out the thieves' guild just because the only quest options you got with them involved making innocent bystanders suffer. So I attacked them and spent several minutes chucking fireballs only to discover that every NPC in the gang is flagged immortal. Can't break this quest chain! Why u no wanna be a sociopath, player. (I ditched daedra quests for the exact same reason.)

The landscape was pretty and I had fun climbing mountains and looking around, but lord does interacting with people ever make it feel like a soulless world.

Also dragons eventually just become a dull nuisance to deal with once they're everywhere. Fuck, I don't want to spend another five minutes shooting you guys down, I'm getting my 'sploration on here.

[NotMiki]

FF Theatrhythm Gotta SS Every Ultimate Score Because Reasons update: guess I am a lion.

[Shale]

Eh. Maybe.

[SnowFire]

Pyro: I linked this before, but:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=14422

It's a 5-part series.  Oh yeah, the THieves' Guild plot is dumb.  Really dumb.

[Fenrir]

Not much time for vidcons. I've been playing Reigns for ios. It is pretty cool and the usual Grefters should check it out. I don't recommend it on Steam because it's way too light a game to play it by sitting in front of your computers.

The entire game is: you are a king sitting on a throne making binary choices (should I build a church y/n) trying to rule as best as possible, until your inevitable early death because you let the military get too powerful and they've staged a coup. Or something.
Then you control the next king. Each playthrough lasts like 2 minutes and there are cool incentives to keep you playing.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

2. The thief guild is scummy (get innocent people thrown in jail and shake down struggling shopkeepers) and I can do nothing but join them or ignore them. Quite unsatisfying. Don't think I want to do the whole thing.

This really stood out to me as one of the peak Bethesda writing fail moments in the game. I rarely kill NPCs in games, but I decided to wipe out the thieves' guild just because the only quest options you got with them involved making innocent bystanders suffer. So I attacked them and spent several minutes chucking fireballs only to discover that every NPC in the gang is flagged immortal. Can't break this quest chain! Why u no wanna be a sociopath, player. (I ditched daedra quests for the exact same reason.)

The landscape was pretty and I had fun climbing mountains and looking around, but lord does interacting with people ever make it feel like a soulless world.

Also dragons eventually just become a dull nuisance to deal with once they're everywhere. Fuck, I don't want to spend another five minutes shooting you guys down, I'm getting my 'sploration on here.

Bethesda's philosophy around Oblivion became that the player should be free to do any content at any time, which also meant that nothing you do should ever have lasting consequences. Fallout 4 actually manages to have a decision have consequences, but they decided to do that in a situation where there's an obvious solution that could have left both choices open so it's paradoxically a bigger writing fail.

[Sierra]

It's kind of ironic, really. The choice I wound up making was to turn down whatever powers and loot the quest might've given me because the methods of acquiring them were too scummy. This is fundamentally a moral decision, but in context it only looks like one if you squint at it really hard from far away, since it only wound up being one because the writers were too incompetent to give us a more creatively compelling alternative.

I thought you people kept telling me Fallout 4 was better than usual Bethesda writing. (Low bar, I know.)

[AAA]

The general consensus is that the writing is more or less standard Beththesda: The main plot is worthless but there are some good side-bits and areas that work well. People tend to say the gameplay is what they really improved upon.

It's Fallout 3+, not Fallout 4: New Vegas

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It's kind of ironic, really. The choice I wound up making was to turn down whatever powers and loot the quest might've given me because the methods of acquiring them were too scummy. This is fundamentally a moral decision, but in context it only looks like one if you squint at it really hard from far away, since it only wound up being one because the writers were too incompetent to give us a more creatively compelling alternative.

I thought you people kept telling me Fallout 4 was better than usual Bethesda writing. (Low bar, I know.)

It's probably not any worse.

[Grefter]

It is better.  You actually have stilted dialogue now instead of mountains of monologue.

[Shale]

AM2R: Yay, I'm fighting Omega Metroids!

.....fuck, I'm fighting Omega Metroids.

[Magic Fanatic]

FFBE - I did it.  I finally got 160 Demon Hearts.  Now I just need to get myself another 58 Void Vessels.  That's gonna take a while, but having two, especially if I wind up drawing a Zidane sometime...

Final tally of non-Void Vessel materials for the Rods of Gravity:
Massive Stone: 2
Litrock: 293
Earth's Core: 137
Demon Heart: 160


That said, there are a few offensive things Lenna can use, but they all run into the same problems that Banish does - low multipliers.  Specifically, she can use Bio Blaster and Magic Infuse.  She can also use Steal, if you need another Thief.

[Captain K]

Magic Infuse is actually a sword magic, and those average your attack and magic together, i.e. terrible damage.

[Magic Fanatic]

...So THAT's why everyone keeps saying that Hybrid damage sucks.  Good to know.

Still, there's also the Beams from the Biggs and Wedge trusts, right?

[Shale]

AM2R: Done! Metroid Queen is a pain in the ass if you're not patient, but if you are it's nigh impossible to lose. Finished at 5:31, with 81% item collection. Really good game, and I'm impressed with most of the new stuff they added (an escape area, Speed Booster and Gravity Suit with fun uses for both, and a really neat Alien riff). Going back and looking at YouTube runs of the GB original they definitely made Metroid fights a bigger challenge than they used to be, which is a good thing, and exploration as a whole seems to be less trial-and-error and more rewarding the player for closely examining the environment (and powerbombing everything).

[Captain K]

SO5:  Beat the Storm Dragon, which took over an hour since it's mostly immune to physical attacks.  So I took control of Fiore and did Sacred Pain to lower its defenses and then chained ice spells against it.  Learned how to combo Fiore's skills in the meantime, not as simple as comboing with Fidel.

Speaking of the combo system, it's a lot more freeform than in previous games.  You can cancel anything into anything, including cancelling moves into themselves.  However there is a timing element involved, depending on the move used.  Cancelling a move into itself has a much smaller window than cancelling to a different move for example.  It's pretty deep, although it does involve paying more attention to what's going on.

[Captain K]

FFBE:  Got Lenna up to 80.  Used one of the discount magic keys to get the Spirit+10% recipe, which I was excited about.  Until I looked at the crafting requirements:

Farplane Soul x 10

Looks like I'll be living in Dalnakya Caverns for the rest of my life.

The new use limit breaks automatically while auto-battling setting is lovely.

[Magic Fanatic]

FFBE - Between Vaan and Kuja, the Arena is a joke.

Hm...  Boosted drop rates for Zidane/Kuja/Vivi, and introducing Amarant and Lani.  That sounds...  Like a wash all-around, outside of Zidane's Trust bonus.

Still working on getting the Crystals needed to Awaken Bartz and Lenna, so switching out Rain and Fina is going to take a while.

EDIT - Question for the Captain K:

Considering how trashy the next Boosted set is (outside of what I already mentioned), is shooting for Warrior of Light a good idea?

[Dhyerwolf]

Speaking of the combo system, it's a lot more freeform than in previous games.  You can cancel anything into anything, including cancelling moves into themselves.  However there is a timing element involved, depending on the move used.  Cancelling a move into itself has a much smaller window than cancelling to a different move for example.  It's pretty deep, although it does involve paying more attention to what's going on.

This part sounds pretty damn cool.

[Captain K]

Considering how trashy the next Boosted set is (outside of what I already mentioned), is shooting for Warrior of Light a good idea?

He's a rare drop even with the boost, so I wouldn't get my hopes up.  I think he's a tank?  Which isn't important in the current game but is important in future content (see also Cecil).  If you need more characters for your roster it wouldn't hurt to pull.  I'm considering doing some more random pulls myself, since my only non-story 5 star is Lenna.  My 4-star team gets the job done, but some more power never hurts.

Speaking of Lenna, got her to over 400 spirit (after auto-shell accessory).  Her Curajas heal for 1500.

[Magic Fanatic]

After 27 more pulls, I got my own WoL.  Figure I may as well make a list of what I have now, at least...  Skipping over junk, unless I think a number is funny.

Rain
Lasswell
Fina
2x Lenna
6x Tellah
1x WoL
1x Galuf
1x Miyuki
3x Bartz
4x Bedile
1x Luna
3x Cyan
2x Rydia
3x Shantotto
2x Fran
3x Kain
2x Krile
1x Shadow
1x Sabin
4x Maria
1x Penelo
1x Vivi
1x Mel

[Captain K]

You got three Bartz?  Holy shit.