What Games are you playing 2016?

[Niu]

Romancing SaGa 2: I am near the end of the game and have The Final Empress.

So there were 2 of the 7 heroes left to beat.
I didn't beat the water hero. I used the underwater breathing potion only to fuck a mermaid, and I can't make another one.
Instead I went to rescue a boy and his sheep. Dantarg was walking around the dungeon, I ignored him, he went "the fuck are you doingg? Do you know I am Dantarg the hero?" And I went something like "I'm only here for the sheep dude" and he went in a rage and attacked me. Cool.

The termite scenario was the most terrifying thing in an JRPG. Holy crap. Your entire Suikoden castle gets invaded by giant termites. Just giant termites everywhere crawling in your beautiful familiar castle. All your NPC allies are dying and getting transformed into giant termites. You need to get to the sewers then your graveyard and find a secret exit there while termites are, I repeat, everywhere. They're also one of the hardest enemy types to avoid and they're buff as fuck, you can't beat them with just regular attacks and have to spend a lot of resources every fight.
You just need to go lower and lower, termites everywhere, not even sure you'd be able to get back up, letting all your people get slaughtered behind

Niu it seems there is one status immunity accessory in the game, where is it?

Watching Fenrir playing the game in the wrong way is so entertaining.

You can get underwater potion. You must be doing something wrong if you can. If the witch won't make more, look inside your imperial storage room.
If you don't do sunken ship, you can't conquer that region. But you poor thing, saving Sunked Ship to the last. It is the game's second worst dungeon. You'll have a painful experience in doing it late game.

Termite? The truth is you can launch a preimptive attack against the terminite queen before she raids your castle. As in, she appears in the sewer grave yard as soon as your Last Empress shows up, and you can go down there ASAP to kill the ant queen before she comes to you.

Status blocker? There is two. Demon Stone Ring. I am surprise you don't have this one, an amazing tool to murder the emperor if you can't get the character you want on to the throne. Just give the demon stone fragment to the mole and he'll make it into a ring.
Second one is the Somon Ring. It is inside the mansion of the necro hero when you are still controlling Leon and Gerald. If you miss it back then, no chance to get it again.

[LordDirtyBrit]

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Finished chapter 12, which means I've finished the main story. Because I couldn't renew my skell if it was destroyed against the Vita due to the chapter being a point of no return; I decided to hold out until I could lower the difficulty of the fight, though that just made the boss neutral instead of annoying. The fight against Lao wasn't so bad, though I had to make sure the Queen Chimera was dead so that he was just on his own as she kept summoning other chimera.

Overall, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a pretty damn great game. There are definitely changes from the original that are welcome such as the addition of Soul Voices which allows you to either heal or focus on your offenses during QTEs and skells make travelling in the overworld so much fun, especially when the flight module is available. However, I definitely prefer the original Xenoblade over this game as each feature was introduced to the player gradually as opposed to throwing several of them in your face fairly early on. I also felt that the original Xenoblade made the player think more carefully as to who was in your party as certain characters worked better with others. For example, Dunban didn't benefit too much from Sharla's healing due to his role as an evasive tank. Despite these criticisms though, Xenoblade Chronicles X is still a must have for the Wii U. Hell, I only bought a Wii U so I could play this damn game...and Smash Bros too.

[Grefter]

Bravely Second 2 - I am up to Chapter 2.  I have found a Japanese Princess who I guess is a Kitsune?  She is looking for her brother or anisama (??).  It turns out that the party live exclusively on Croissants. 

Also saw the Patissiere in a cutscenes and my body is ready.  Edit - I was wrong, I should have been excited for the Ciatos instead.

[jsh357]

FFXV finished...

I could probably write 10,000 words about how disappointed I was with this game by the end, but I don't really want to relive it. The game started out great and I was totally on board for about 11 chapters, but it's very clearly a mishandled project that was butchered multiple times during the creative process. The directors of this game dropped the ball at every possible point, especially in the lategame. FFXV has plenty of brilliant ideas, and individual sections of the game shined, but ideas don't make a game great on their own.

I give it a 6/10, and seriously a whole 1 point is for including the Final Fantasy theme in the ending again. My biggest fanbase pet peeve now is going to be people claiming "at least it's better than XIII" for years to come. For all its faults, at least FFXIII stayed true to its own design sensibilities and had rewarding gameplay. Its story also made more sense, which is impressive considering how many times I was scratching my head during its runtime.

[Captain K]

Pokémon Sun:  Finished Ooh La La island.  Team is Mimikyu (Ghost/Fairy), Sandygast (Ghost/Ground), Marowak (Ghost/Fire), Sableeye (Ghost/Dark), Drifblim (Ghost/Flying), Deciduous Tree (Ghost/Grass).  Persian with Dark Pulse was not fun.

[Grefter]

Bravely Second - the struggle is real.  Do I side with the literal "Merchant of Death" and side with money, destruction of nature and gentrification and get the far superior move set or do I side with Snow and get 1.5 times more cash from fights.

I think I will actually do the one I want to do emotionally and side with Holly Whyte because damn, even BS is super harsh on a character that consistently presents to me as reasonable and someone you can empathize with.  Plus I really want a bunch of cash to fuel weapon purchases and throwing cat food and pastries at people.   That and all jokes aside I really am digging the shift from traditional White Mage/Black Mage skill sets to the variation that Bishop and Astrologian provide and want to play with them as much as I can.  I am looking forward to the next boss dfoght where I try a Summon spell crafted with Hammer and a Good Measure.

[Fenrir]

Romancing SaGa 2:
Beat the game and optional superboss
This is such an instantly memorable and ridiculous final battle, and it looks amazing on ios.
Revive carried me through these battles. I don't know what I could have done without it.

This is the best SaGa game, which is pretty huge ! The only unfortunate thing about it is that I feel like I haven't really missed much about it (besides a lot of skills/spells)
I still want to solo it

[Fenrir]

Niu I hadn't noticed your sick diss just above
I never went to the sunken ship and had Subier as my last hero so the joke's on you!! Unfortunately that means I never conquered this part of the map.

What's the worst dungeon. Wagnas' big castle? Your castle during the termite queen raid? Because both were very painful

Thx for the tips

[Niu]

The game worst dungeon is the Sunken Tower.
You'll have to do that dungeon if you didn't kill Rockboquet the first time you see her and decided to help her.
That tower can drive you mad if you don't have the desert tower map all memorized.

And you beat the bosses using Revive? Lame.
You shouldn't even let them even get a turn at all by spamming Quick Time.

BTW, in the end did you equip the Strongest Hat?
You know, the hat with the highest numerical def value of 15 (or is 12, either way, super high for a hat)

[Fenrir]

I want to pseudo-SCC FF Dimensions, which jobs should I use for most fun?

I'm leaning towards black mage for the light guys
And maybe dancer for the dark guys, using something else before. Summoner?

[Fenrir]

Oh the sunken tower was way easy, just kill all enemies and you're good


No I never got that hat
Dread Queen immunes Quicktime so I started using something else instead! But yes it is ridiculous

I quite liked the mu formation. Your party auto-defends but has to act last every battle.

[Grefter]

BS - So it turned out they didn't twist Provocateur nearly as hard as they did the others so far, he was still looking to profit from the black market.  That surprises me they didn't completely white wash him given the fact that the Nuclear Rapist was well apparently reformed by academia?  Anyway, worth for 1.5 pg skill and more Holly and Barras stuff because legit best side story of the captains in first game.

Old Aqueduct is rendered in three quarters isometric and it is all I want in life right now.

[Fenrir]

FFD Black mage SCC:

Prologue is out of the way. Everybody is turned into black mages. Elgo throws a Fireball 2 to his face because I choose to go temp-less. (for now)

We take their character design for granted now, but they look real good. I just imagine villagers being pretty fucking intimidated by four black mages coming into town dagger in hand.

In town we sell everything, then buy new scepters, mage hates, robes and shoes.  + the dreaded level 2 BM spells: POIZN, Sleep, and Toad.
All three could have some use, maybe, on paper, but not really right now.
Strategy for every battle is to throw MT
fire/ice/thunder at the enemies, then heal after battle with potions.
Everything dies in one round. MP cost is low enough to make dungeons
effortless. Why would I care about fucking POIZN?
Toad can save some MP, though if I turn a nasty random into one then hack it with scepters, but MP seems plentiful.
I mostly use Fire, because it has the shortest attack animation. Burn everything.

I also buy many potions, plus tents. This is a blind run so I sometimes need to get in, watch the topography / monsters in this dungeon, grab the chests, get out, spend a good night in a tent, then go back in.
I love how Final Fantasy characters just refuse to fold a tent because it's too annoying, so they just buy multiples instead and throw the older ones out. Not very in-touch with the environment-friendly message they sometimes show, but hey.

First boss is Hell Minion + chimera. I do a test run against him first. He's immune to every status. Much like every other boss, it seems. Fuck this.
Either the chimera dies first and the minion goes into super badass mode, or the minion dies first, goes "AVENGE ME, CHIMERA" and the chimera just bails. (pretty funny tbh)
Destroying this guy is easy because black mages have no trouble targeting the back row.
They used like 2-3 potions max.

The airship's random battles are as easy.

The boss (Captain) proves to be a mega bitch though.
He comes after two waves of regular enemies, then is fought alongside one mage and one axe dude. He is fast, double-act, does 3HKO damage, and can confuse. Basically he's a bitch and I can't outheal him.

The plan is:
1) Heal up completely right before him by toading the previous randoms and healing with potions.
2) Take out the mage and axe dude with Toad
3) Unleash Fire on him
4) Use some of the precious 4 hi-potions

The plan is good but it doesn't cut it. Dude does too much damage.
I go FFT challenge and allow Elgo The Temp to not have to stay dead all the time. Unfortunately, Elgo has been staying dead all this time, so he has 1/3rd the HPs of the black mages and dies in any attack.  But he has Slow, which works on the boss and is an absolute godsend; even if it's the only thing he can do before biting the dust it's still pretty significant. Slow still runs out after a while so this is kind of a mad race. Fun.

Good news, 1) The next village has equipment upgrades
2) The next village also has level 3 spells, including -ras. It takes either one or two MT Firas to finish any random battle. And these thing only cost 10 MP! I can't even imagine ever running out of MP in this game. Fira still has the shortest attack animation. Burn everything.
3) We also got more JP, and a class upgrade that boosts magic by 20%. This means more damage. Cool

Bad news 1) Elemental rods don't seem to boost damage anymore 2) there are still no hi-potions in stock in stores.

We get to fight a clone of the Captain + better goons, he goes down after the black mages have torched the battlefield. One dies but the three others still win so that's cool.

I think that's the strategy now. Things aren't very complicated. Burn everything and hope we don't all die first. Ramuh also falls to this very complicated strategy in about 14 Firas.

tl;dr Burn everything

[Cmdr_King]

Yeah, about the only status I found worked on bosses was Slow (I attempted Slow on everything since the game reminded me a lot of FFIVTAY, where slow worked on EVERYTHING and was super broken).  And even then they EVENTUALLY figure it out and start being immune to that too, but it's a good ways in.  I feel like there's a store that sells spider webs or whatever the itemcast Slow is, stock up.

Admittedly I am kinda reading that post as

I put on my robes and wizard hat.

Burn everything.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Just posting to note that I am following Fenrir exploits closely.

Grefter exploits too.

[Grefter]

Elves are you prepared for the deepest darkest secret?

Chompcraft is actually amazing.

[Dark Holy Elf]

You are not the first person to say that but I still don't get it; I got extremely bored of chompcraft almost immediately.

[Excal]

...ompchompchompchompchompchompcho...

[Grefter]

I just hit a real threshold, getting three croissants for snack time over 2 let me easy get 10k cp in one big Snacktime, which upgrade scissors one more time to rank 3, which pushed it to 20k, which let me get rank 3 brush and glue.  I should easy get next rank of croissants after that.   We cookie clicker casual mode now boys.

I also got to Yunohana, got to do more job choices.  Do I want Ranger or there is no question here I am getting Ranger. RIP Targetting.  Still getting Ranger.  Anyway so Artemia is all save everyone by equally sharing resources and functioning on trade economics based on value to all of society over artificial supply and demand.  Meanwhile Gamergate was all fuck you I pay you all so you can starve to death so I can feed my pet and water my grass because capitalism is the only morality, the dollar is your God and you will worship me because I have money also feeeeeeeeemales.

[Captain K]

Pokémon Sun:  Beaten.  Wow that ending sequence is like an hour long.

Elite 4 was annoying, mainly because they spam Full Restores like there's no tomorrow combined with Brave Bird/Flare Blitz.

Overall this was a great Pokémon game.  I never even finished X or AS because they were so boring.  This shook up the stock formula enough to make things fresh again.

Didn't like SOS battles, just let me catch the damn pokemon already.  Also didn't like them changing the types of older pokemon.  800 of these things and you want to fuck with my memory of what's supereffective on what?  Other than that I don't really have any complaints.

Lillie was great.  Hau was barely there.  Bad Guy is probably the darkest thing we've seen in a pokemon game.

My all-ghost team was pretty good, although I was hurting for some Rock-type attacks at the end.  MVP was Mimikyu.  Tanky, fast, and gets a free damage soak.  LVP was Sableye, just doesn't have the stats to get much done.

Oh, and I didn't use any Z-moves throughout the game.  There was some text after the Hala fight that mentions you didn't use Z-moves.  So I thought maybe there would be something special for not using them at all.  Sadly there is not.  Oh well, now I can equip them and blow shit up.

[Fenrir]

How about a megapost then guys

FFD:

I get a dragoon temp. She's worthless aside from the MT healing. That 200 HP healing is like 10 turns of potions. Holy shit OP OP OP. (I know that white mages probably heal way more at this point)

Dragoon temp dungeon is where all the enemies use status, fortunately I bought 5 of each of the status healing items just in case. For one of the first times, ever, this paid off!

Vata would be a decent boss but our healing is too good. I am now convinced that one white mage + three black mages would utterly trivialize the game. We even manage to kick the plot form's ass rather easily, before he decides he actually wins, nuh huh.



Next chapter.
With Nacht's team I decide to... also use a black mage party, because I might as well do a full black mage SCC. (Though I'll probably also allow magus later on, come on)

Fresh from all the victories of the light team, I might have gotten overconfident and gotten a gameover against randoms on the way back in the shrine.

I then might have also gotten a gameover against octopuses on the boat. See, these octopuses have low HP and do very low damage but they counter lightning damage (their weakness) with paralysis. And they have Slow. I had all four black mages throw MT lightning at the beginning of the fight because of course, and they all got double paralysed.
The one person who got back up got slowed and couldn't heal more than the octopuses did damage. It was all a really slow and sad and pathetic slaughter.
I like to think that this ending is canon and anything else happening during the events of FFD is just a dream.

I'm a little disappointed with elemental properties in this game TBH. Not very many enemies seem to be weak against one element, or to resist one element in particular.
Also, in the frog village I turn my entire team into frogs and no one reacts to this. Lame.

The two random soldiers in the forest (next weak mini boss) are pretty close to pulling another humiliating win thanks to their speed and knowledge of -ra spells, but instead of healing we just decide to focus fire on one, then heal up and trounce the second one.

Only at that point in the game do I realize you can change the
setting to have the cursor automatically be set on the last action
taken. AND if I do this characters on auto-battle will automatically do
the last action they've done too (if you've been paying attention,
you'll know the last action they've done is always MT Fire) Oh my god I
had wasted so much time until now

Our new temp, the ranger, is fairly awful compared to the mages. Low damage + weak ass status. Anime pervert personality. Okay.
He looks even weaker once the awesome spell / weapon upgrades come in in the next village. Glaive thus bullies him and steals his shoes.

Titan cave is a little scary once the floor crumbles and I don't know where the next save point is + there are POIZN and stone inflicting enemies. But FFD is very generous as usual, and the way back up is not too close. I buy extra antidotes, needles, tents, and come back.
This is a shockingly long dungeon by FFD standards (this means it is pretty short) and Nacht runs out of MP. (He's the fastest membre of the team so he wastes a lot more than the others) The cave is full of mysteries: What is the deal with the frogs? Why is Titan in a yellow robe? I will never know.

Titan: Everybody throws Fira. Except the ranger, who wins a participation badge by handing out weak potions to his more competent allies. Our HP slowly dwindles but victory is certain. Until TItan unleashes his mega - earthquake and kills everybody except Glaive / Nacht / Temp. (Glaive having single digit HP) Panicking, Glaive and Nacht think about strategy a little then decide to just throw more Firas instead because Titan is probably low on HP at this point anyway.
This "strategy" is an immense success and I pat myself on my back.

We meet a green giant, he has a counter game. The battle goes:
Fira -> Counter Osmose
Fira -> Counter Osmose
Fira -> Counter Haste
Fira -> Counter *dies*

Inside the giant tree, my four black mages do not care about setting everything they see on fire (including: squirrels, spiders), and they're supposed to be the good guys. Also why is there a fucking grizzly in there? FFBestiary


Asmodai looks pretty difficult in a normal playthrough. Here he was easy. He has ST confusion + MT Osmose, MT paralysis (low accuracy), ST Curse (halves damage), MT 100 damage, and MT POIZN + Slow + damage at low HP.
Characters have between 600 and 700 HPs so his damage never feels threatening. Confusion and Curse gets cured easily, and MP absorption would be more relevant if black mages weren't as good at blitzing as they are.
The low HP attack is an awesome dick move, though, but by that point all it took to down him were about 5 attacks, so we barely managed.

Next chapter.
FFD really likes to give you a new job, then switch to the team so you can't use it. PSYCH

Bikke's homies do a lot of damage but are  vulnerable to sleep. I kill them one, put one to sleep and heal up with potions. This takes forever. I still only use 100 HP potions when my characters have about 900 HP.
Bikke himself w/ boys just eats MT Fira. WIN, though Sarah died.


From the next city my favourite spell, Bio, becomes available. It's a good option, but it won't replace Fira against randoms. It's a small damage upgrade over Fira for two times the MP cost. This would be a winning trade, but MP is not that plentiful and our damage is high enough. 0 randoms survive one round of Fira. None.
And the ice dungeon of ice is next anyway.

Hi potions are also available. As is Drain. Drain steals about 350 HP. It's an actually decent option! We have allright healing!!!!

Shiva is very fast and has a few nasty MT ice spells she likes to use, plus she can Blizzara herself to boost her own damage. Fortunately, she likes to waste time on ST silence and physicals.
We begin the fight Firaing as usual (for 1000 damage), and draining to restore HP. This works well until I notice that everybody is only ever draining, but still losing H,P fast. At this point I go into the usual Oh Shit Everybody Starts Throwing Them Big Fireballs As Fast As Possible  Now panick and win handily. Yay!!

The next boss (Mutant) dies like a loser to Drain/Bio spam. Things just keep getting better for our guys.

[Fenrir]

Cmdr still no spider webs, though it's probably be gross overkill at this point in the game

[NotMiki]

Ys Origin: beat the game on nightmare with everyone.  A lot easier on average than Oath though there were a few obnoxious stumbling blocks.  Bosses in Origin in general have messier attacks that make avoiding hits a dicey proposition, so there was a fair amount of grinding involved in places.  Final level for everyone was 51.  Nightmare Dalles is really difficult for Hugo - one thing Nightmare does is make it so you can't upgrade your passive abilities as much, meaning your magic recharges more slowly and costs more.  This is very bad for Hugo who literally cannot avoid some of Dalles' attacks without forcefield.  Also, your ability to avoid Dalles' phase 3 vacuum attacks - which you can survive one of max - is based on horizontal movement, which Hugo has the worst of on base and can't use magic to help with.  Yunica was nowhere near as rough.  Toal's final, Darm, is just an obnoxious fight.  Not hard, just obnoxious.  Everything deals miniscule damage and it is tremendously difficult to avoid getting hit, and the boss itself is a hide-and-seek affair where you guess which body part to attack each time.  It's like being nibbled to death by ducks.  Kinda a drag.  One other thought: Dalles' vacuum attack seems to me to have been designed specifically to confuse people who internalized how Galbalan's vacuum attack works - it hits on the outer range of the circle rather than just the middle and it hits quickly, but the pull isn't as strong so you can just run out of it as long as you don't get hit by an attack.  Anyway, the reward for all this is you unlock Yunica's schoolgirl outfit, which whatev but it also subs out her axe with a kitty plush toy, which you proceed to bludgeon the game with.  Good times.

[Captain K]

I forgot to mention the absolute best thing about Pokémon Sun.  When I saw that we would be getting a Strength Ride, I figured that would be Machamp and we'd ride on his back like Master Blaster.  Okay that would be cool.  Then you actually get him and no, he fucking carries you cradled in his arms like a baby, and it's amazing.

[SnowFire]

Momodora 4: Finished.  Fun little Metroidvania.

* For being a game that lets you chat with random villagers, no pre-final boss chat?  Not even any wineglass throwing or the like?  Or at least some voiceover plot exposition?  Lame.
* The good/bad ending distinction gets negative points, too.  They forgot to add a plot hook to ham it up, or a clue as to what to do, or anything!  Come on, Symphony of the Night kill-Richter ending is legit enough.  The very simplest sort of plot hook - someone saying "You're not strong enough to face the REAL evil missy, you need to figure out some way to cleanse the taint, but only super holy water could possibly do that, and you'd definitely never find any, nope" - would at least have been appreciated.  At least Souls games hide their plot, as opposed to not having any.
* Boss Difficulty is wacky, especially in how the last 3 bosses or so are unbelievably terrible, but some of the other bosses were extremely legit.  (Okay, the Final's 3rd form has high damage to ruin my first attempt, but it's easily evadable high damage once you know it's coming.)  Pardoner Fennel > Duchess Lupiar & Ranger Victoria >>> Frida, Lubella I, Final Boss >> Edea, Lubella II >> Arsonist, Nameless Angel Clones >>> a Dragon Quest Slime > Archpriestess Choir.
* And why was there no boss to Frore Ciele?  That was one of the cooler areas (hur hur) I thought, and by law all artifacts must be guarded by bosses. 
* After seeing some of the official art, this is getting filed under the Bayonetta category of "No really, I'm playing it for the gameplay, honest."  Those random tiny dolls in the first area were nearly naked, not wearing some kind of light-colored karate outfit?  Ew.  Main programmer's Twitter feed  has him retweeting panty shots from other games and non-ironic use of the term "waifus", so yeah, not my cup of tea.  Technically, the sprite work is really great though, very smooth & continuous and all.
* There isn't a way to clone save files, NG+ is automatically on the same difficulty level it seems, and there isn't a boss rush mode.  Makes it kinda annoying to refight the fun bosses if you want.  Oh well.

Anyway, it's short & fun, so I do recommend it.