What Games are you Playing 2017?

[Fenrir]

NEB you are going to hate FE2r so much

[Dark Holy Elf]

I know there are other things you've said which let you draw that conclusion, but I'm amused that this exchange was essentially

<NEB> This game seems to have a lot of plot and not much gameplay
<Fenrir> Yeah it's not a NEB game; it is a Fenrir game

Truly we live in interesting times.

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze - Near the end! I do think the game found its identity a bit better towards the end so that's cool at least. Will say more when I'm done.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Final Fantasy Dimensions - Reunion

One last seqence controlling Dusk! One last dungeon for the light side, no bosses. This dungeon is a suitably nasty sendoff though.

Massive Cavern: Unlike the previous dungeon, status takes a real hit here and several key enemies are immune. So damage is the order of the day, and Red Mage doesn't really provide much any more, so Black Mage is still go.


-Ahriman: A staple enemy of this dungeon, they have initiative and will cast Doom with it, which gives me about four turns before I die. If somebody is already Doomed they will cast Dark for some modest magic damage. They're vulnerable to Break at least.
-Malboro: Bad Breath inflicts lots of statuses, I block confuse so most of the rest can be healed with a Remedy. They also sometimes use a slow-inflicting Tentacle, or often just use physicals. Either way, Break takes 'em out.
-Black Flan: Low HP, they die to a single Quake. Fights against three of them are the easiest encounters here. They can inflict Slow.
-Ghast: A couple MT Firagas take them out. They can Binding Attack so I block that too.
-Apocrypha: For some reason these guys randomly block most statuses and are reasonably durable despite not looking it in either case (they're gargoyles, not Radiant Historia final bosses). They can cast Confuse (blocked!) or Silence and the latter is annoying, so fortunately they don't do so often.
-Parasite: They're pretty common but also pretty weak aside from a Binding Attack which I block. Break works.
-Fury: One of the real jerks of this dungeon, Fury is a spellcaster that can use Comet for 1500+ or various other spells for somewhat less. They block most statuses; Sleep works although since they often appear with Ahrimans, it may not be a good option! Two Comets kills them.
-Titanius: Immune to all status and have 10000 HP or so, three Comets kills them unless they counter the first one with Curse. Did I mention they counter any damage with Curse sometimes? Yeah it sucks, as it nerfs my damage and makes their own physicals more deadly. A fight against an Ahriman + a Titanius is very RNG.

I definitely have to run a few times when Ahrimans are present. When they're not I can at worst fall back on Sylph, usually. Oh yeah there are two miniboss fights against...

-Behemoth: Immune to status. 3HKOed by Comet. Uses Comet as a Death Counter for around 1500 and on its own turns can Heave for about 2000 to the back row (Protect reduces this, so I use the Protect Bangle) or physical for half that. Sometimes they counter with physicals too. Sylph works if I can't just outslug, just have to be careful.


At the bottom there is a cutscene, a party switch to Alba, and a plot fight, but this one has teeth.

Cocytus (1 reset) - She will cast Blizzaga on the whole party for 2000, wiping out all my low-level folks so only Alba and The Mask survive. Then she casts Benumb twice for 7000 a swing. Game over man! The second time I am able to have Alba Defend and she survives the Benumb with 42 HP remaining. Her fourth attack is a plot move that ends the fight.


Back in control of Alba, we lose The Mask and head up to Lufenia.

Imperial Elite x3 - Not a terribly challenging fight, petrify doesn't work but Drowsy Slash does, so I use that. Then everyone was a zombie.


Back in control of Dusk, the plot takes us to Lufenia and we fight zombies.

Weresoldier Z x4: Kinda dicy but sleep does work so I'm able to put the front row Weresoldiers to sleep, cast Sylph a whole lot, reset Sleep a bunch, and eventually on spare turns get off Tornado then finish with Sylph to thin 'em out. Once that starts the fight falls into place.


And that's it for Dusk! Let's give him a hand. Final stats:

Dusk Level 83
Black Mage L15
Red Mage L13
Dragoon L10
Warrior L5
Summoner L4
Bard L2
Monk L1

[Fenrir]

Actually I felt the beginning plot lasted a quick 15 minutes and you felt it lasted a sluggish one hour, and I expected this might say a lot about our mindsets going in.


I'll probably give Awakening another chance eventually after this one, assuming I keep liking this. Or maybe I'll just do Thracia 776 instead

[Dark Holy Elf]

It's not about how I feel; that's what my game clock says! Actually it's around 50 minutes, but still.

If anything I'm rather excited for this game because Fire Emblem is just so superior to other video games in terms of what I look for in games these days; I can still make fun of the slow start which is something I expect out of many other JRPG series but not really this one. (Compare how FE7 was like 2 minutes of dialog, tutorial fight, 5 minutes of dialog, real fight, and I'd be surprised if anyone didn't finish at least Chapter 2 before their game clock hit one hour.) I extra wasn't expecting it because this is a remake of a game I assume has very little plot.

[Grefter]

If anything I'm rather excited for this game because Fire Emblem is just so superior to other video games in terms of what I look for in games these days;

When elves can't get X-Com 2 but this happens.   Literally me right now.

[hinode]

From developer interviews apparantly Gaiden had the bulk of its plot written out in the manual, but no one's ever translated that to my knowledge. The actual in-game text was barebones even by 8-bit standards.

I've reached the end of chapter 3 in Echoes on Normal/Classic. Anecdotally hit rates in the remake feel a *lot* better than they were back in Gaiden, but it's possible my memories are exaggerating how painful the latter was. Nosferatu in particular doesn't feel like an excercise in masochism this time around (it helps that you don't have to kill stuff with it to get meaningful exp for healers this time around).

Conversely, I've gotten an almost comical amount of 1 stat level ups thus far, even for people with really good on-paper growths (Alm, Celica, Catria). It's not a big deal overall, especially considering the promotion system, but it is a shock to the system after the inflated growths of FE 12/13/14.

[SnowFire]

FE Echoes
Well I was planning on ignoring this until I finished CS2, but eh.  While I'm in Act 3 of CS2, I juuust got there, so that might yet be awhile, so sure, joining the bandwagon.

It seems that the JP fanbase reaaaaaaaally loves characters that are massively head-over-heels in love with the main character so that they can identify with them and thus be loved by proxy.  Still, I'm impressed that so far they've kept it to mostly older-anime style art, so you know what, I'll still take it.  Although...  maybe have at least two pieces of art per enemy type?  The hordes of brigand clones make it feel like I'm invading a Williamsburg coffee shop with all those identical beards.  Or maybe a Canadian lumberjack conference.

Also, we're burying the lede on the most important issue: DL class promotions for the villagers!  From inspecting Ram, Tobin was shooting arrows for arrow practice, Klive scorched a wall in magic practice, and Grey slashed up a fence in sword practice.  Klive seems a decent mage anyway (and the Internet says he gets a good spell list), Grey has comically bad speed which is fixed by going Mercenary, and Tobin, uh, we need an archer and you're the only one left, so sure you win.  We already have a Soldier in Lukas.  Faye, though, is ????.  I figured "eh, female, so take the female-only class" and made her a pegasus knight, but surprise, a new peg knight joins 20 minutes later.  Is she supposed to be a Cavalier, then?  (I'm not complaining too much about the Peg Knight pick because Faye has 3 points of Strength on Claire as it stands, which is *potent* for weak characters who struggle to meaningfully break defense.)

[SnowFire]

Also, belated, but re all the Mona hate in Persona 5:

[Fenrir]

Grefter hurtwords :

I don’t think I’ve mentioned how hard I bounced off Xcom 2 despite me enjoying Xcom 1 quite a bit + 2 improving over the Xcom formula in every way           
I honestly think they just aren’t even good games anymore? Xcom suffers from:
- An agonizing pace
- Too much time spent making non choices like “Should I move forward and go under cover or move forward and slightly to the right under this other cover”
- Too much unpredictability. I’m not talking about RNG, but field of view and how it affects enemies, whether background objects will explode, panic status, etc. The way enemies get a free turn when you notice them is maddening.

The base building is allright, but not, like, good. Again, there are a lot of non-choices: Do you want to prioritize short term or long term? Well, prioritizing short term will give you a bad armor that costs an item slot, so just go with long term.

I honestly believe both FE and Invisible Inc are both vastly superior strategy game in their own way and Xcom is this sloppy middleground between them that just fell into irrelevance as soon as the latter got released
 
FE Gaiden Reloaded: Finished Chapter 2. It went well. Rescuing the three green units was difficult (Bad AI still there), I restarted and summoned some hellspawns with my cleric that could bother the pirates while the rest of the team moved through the enemy ranks quickly.

Optional helldragons from hell were EZ, especially compared to that one guy with a shield in Alm’s 3rd battle.
My villagers are: Mage Gray, Archer Kliff , Mercenary Tobin, Sister Faye. The boys are average, Faye is really useful. No one feels particularly awesome or bad so far, except whoever is wearing the thunder sword.
Honestly with the turnwheel, Classic Hard should be the default difficulty. It’s even disappointing that there isn’t a difficulty level above.

At the end of chapter 2 I finished a Quest by giving a Cheese loving guy cheese. He gave me honey. I then completed another quest by giving the honey to a bartender. She gave me one biscuit. Cool quests game.
Some people are praising this game’s story, and this just doesn’t make sense except in the context of other Fire Emblem games maybe. The only remotely interesting thing happening so far has been the classy dancing couple at the end of chapter 1.

[Grefter]

You deserve this you trash

it is all true

[Laggy]

Invisible Inc

NEB play this already, Fenrirs agree

[Fenrir]

Oh yes Invisible Inc is just the best strategy game honestly. My whole post could have been just "Invisible Inc existing makes Xcom look bad"

[Grefter]

Planescape Torment.  Did Ravel's Mase.   Holds up.

[superaielman]

XCom2 is fantastic, and it's so not like my normal type of game.  Manages to hit it out of the park on both the gameplay and plot side which is pretty rare.

[Fenrir]

FE Echoes: Deleted all my save files by doing a soft reset...?
Well

[Hunter Sopko]

Fire Emblem ... It's just big ass ... fucking ...

[Dark Holy Elf]

wut seriously


Anyway I have played a bit more and yes, suddenly we have gameplay. Gameplay is pretty simple, forests are god, I'm having fun outside not being sold on FE battles as "random encounters" in a dungeon; even small FE fights are a bit too big a deal for "did I successfully encounter-dodge on the field y/n".

[Fenrir]

Yes

It took me about 3 hours to get back to the beginning of Chapter 3.
Replaying made me realize:
- Invoking / grinding is not necessary to save Leon, you just need to be super aggressive
- On the other hand invoking is necessary to beat the dragons if you do not do any optional battle.
- Fuck sidequests I'm ignoring them all
- Supports working two squares apart is a new thing isn't it? It's great. This is the first time I care about support mechanics in a FE game

Character performance is like opposite of last aborted playthrough. Kliff and Leon are now gods. Saber is garbage.

[Grefter]

Yes

It took me about 3 hours to get back to the beginning of Chapter 3.
Replaying made me realize:
 - I am elfboy now.

DQ:Heroes 2 - slowly getting further in this.  Strength of the sequel over the original keeps holding up.

[Fenrir]

The archer fortress is such a spiteful piece of design
I remember this kind of hatred in FE Gaiden and it's still there

You get:
- having to cross the desert with low movement
- like 14 archers all packed together in one fortress, they all have like 4 range
- one super sniper hidden in the middle, a few badass mercenaries
- Game: "enjoy your two new pegasus knights!!" Me: "Oh cool thanks!" Game: *loathful smirk*
- they all stay immobile and then you come near and they all start moving at once and homing to your weakest unit's position. You try to retreat but there's only the desert as far as the eye can see and your healer can only move one square and she's gonna die nooo


Perhaps the worst/best FE map

[SnowFire]

FE Echoes - Also on Chapter 3 now.

* Yeah, the game is definitely nice as far as picking what evil parts of the old game to keep as "interesting", and which parts were just chores / technical limitations.  BUT.  I get why a NES game might only have 2 pieces of battle music, but as far as things to upgrade in a remake, really, you can write some more pieces of music.  They tried by having a pretty solid remix that disguises the shortness of the loop by mixing things up, doing variations, etc., and that's good, but just write a few more pieces?  Please?

* "They're going to execute Mathilde soon!"  Uh.  Game.  Time exists and passes.  Please warn me if by "soon" you mean "when is dramatically convenient, i.e. whenever you show up" or if you mean "by X date, and if you backtracked for conversations to start the chapter or dare grind, looool btw you didn't know you were on a time limit before."

* I stop by a forest village with only one exit to hear some tales of woe, and also shake the rust off a random sword I found somewhere.  When I try to leave, a spawned Paladin army is now sitting on the only way out, with no way to usefully retreat from it as best I can tell.  Seems like a potential hard stop if you foolishly saved in the village and had trouble with the encounter, which I certainly did - the only fight so far I've accepted a death (which doesn't REALLY count because Casual), because it has the super-spread formation from the Berkut battle I just finished, except you are facing 8 Cavaliers, a Paladin, 2 archers guarding the flanks to make Pegasi nervous, a super-Arcanist, ugh.  Also you are sporting squishy new recruits.

* The plot's themes are in a slightly weird place (but, to be clear, way better than FE Fates's nonsense, so I'm not really complaining TOO hard).  Alm is a proper proto-democrat.  But he also has a mysterious lineage?!  Won't that be awkward.  "Haha!  We thought a commoner was actually good for something, but turns out it was because he really had royal blood in disguise.  Guess that explains that weirdness.  Back to the way things were!"

* Also for some reason it seems really Against The Pale for Alm to dare claim the throne himself, with Celica accusing him of lusting for the throne, and Alm himself going "huh, better not sit on the throne" if you inspect it.  Uhhh.  Game you said it yourself, but if you're going to revolt, it really helps to have a replacement leader lined up so that people know what they're fighting for.  "I'm a warlord who led the victorious army to save our people" is a perfectly respectable excuse to make yourself King - or, if you're nervous about bloodlines and such, "Lord Protector", "Regent", "Steward of the Throne", whatever.  Or if you want to go all proto-Democracy, make yourself a First Consul or something.  But..  have SOME leader!

* I'm not surprised they changed it, but I wonder if "Another Hero-King" sounds cooler in Japanese, rather than the extremely lame way it sounds in English.  ("Hey Ma, I checked in the drawer, and we had another hero-king there as a spare.  Should I get it out?")  (Mō Hitori no Eiyū-ō ?)

[The Duck]

Oh yes Invisible Inc is just the best strategy game honestly. My whole post could have been just "Invisible Inc existing makes Xcom look bad"

Agreed, this is one of the best strategy games to come out in years.

[LordDirtyBrit]

All these posts about Echoes reminds me that I need to get into Fire Emblem.

Final Fantasy V: Started the merged world section of the game. While the game's storyline and characters are quite barebones outside of the tongue-in-cheek dialogue, Galuf's death was pretty damn stylish for the time. Even if he is facing off against one of the most boring villains in the franchise. The fact that there are people on GameFAQs claiming that Exdeath is a more effective villain than Kefka baffles me. In terms of gameplay, I remember the Forest of Moore being much more difficult during my first playthrough. I suppose I wasn't familiar with the Titan + Gaia Gear combo when I first played this one.

Pokemon HeartGold: Caught Lugia; because this is HeartGold, it obviously means that I'm at the postgame. Unlike DPP where a vocal minority of hipsters will tell you that they're the best in series, a rather large amount of people claim that this game is Game Freak's magnum opus. In my opinion, HGSS are not the best in the series. In fact, unpopular opinion alert, I'd say that HGSS are probably my least favourites of the Pokemon remakes. This is because I believe that this game is a combination of all the aspects I dislike about generations 2 and 4. It combines generation 2's poor overworld design, inconsistent level curve and limited amount of Johto Pokemon (in a game set within that region) with generation 4's slow battle and movement speed. A lot of the aspects that players hype this game for such as the added Crystal elements (Suicune and Eusine), gym leader rematches and walking Pokemon are small touches which don't add that much to the core gameplay in all honesty. On a brighter note, I found a shiny Goldeen near the Power Plant. That's something I guess?

Final team (Johto):


Temporary members:


I'll probably list my team I'd have used against Red in the next post.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Beaten Chaos. I decided not to collect every soul in the game as the process is too time consuming and my brother tells me that it will end up making you overlevelled. Final thoughts? This game is definitely a worthy follow up to SOTN. Heck; I'd say it is a slightly better game overall, at least for me anyway. The combinations you can use with souls to defeat bosses are fun to toy about with, I particularly enjoyed cheating Death's tackles with the Medusa Head ability so that I could stay in mid-air. Speaking of Death; I found the bosses in this game much more engaging than SOTN's roster, mainly because there's some actual challenge provided by them this time. Julius Belmont in particular did not hold back. At least continuously losing to him meant I could listen to his excellent battle theme for longer.

The game isn't without flaws though. Like SOTN, you can only access the true ending of the game through a cryptic method of defeating the game's climax boss. While you could credit both titles for not holding your hand, I do believe that this practise doesn't add anything to the experience and nothing would be lost if the game just continued after the player defeats the climax boss without using the method. I also believe that the Chaotic Realm is a poor method of extending game time. The main purpose the area serves is to make the endgame feel longer than it actually is. If you removed the Chaotic Realm from the game, I reckon that the endgame would take around 15-20 mins as opposed to 30. Despite these drawbacks though, I still highly enjoyed this game and I'm looking forward to trying out Portrait of Ruin sometime in the future.

[JarmaineMor]

I'm playing PREY right now but it's proving to be quite tricky as the enemies are tough.