What Games are You Playing 2018?

[NotMiki]

Dark Souls: Remastered: beat. it's Dark Souls, but prettier and smoother. Still looks like a PS3 game when you compare it to BB or DS3 tho. Not sure what can be said about DS that hasn't been said already, but all the good and bad is still true, except the part about Blighttown performance issues, which are gone. I had forgotten just how long the game is. It's long! And the ending areas are a bit undercooked. But the heart of the game, say the first two thirds or so, remains as awe-inspiring as ever. There's so many great details. Here's one I'd forgotten: The Depths is a dank sewer below the undead burg. its upper areas are populated with undead chefs and dogs. below, where they dump their waste, where rushing water fills your ears and you can't hear enemies coming at you, are rats, slimes, and a particularly nasty brand of lizard.  There is a series of particularly claustrophobic tunnels in it, barely wider than your shoulders, and when you take a turn in them you see...a light in the distance. A brilliant sunset, straight down the tunnel. you thought you were far underground, and in a sense you were, but here is the sun. You approach, and at the end of the tunnel the space opens out to a balcony overlooking a great aqueduct. you perhaps say to yourself, "I'd like to go down there, to that wide-open area closer to the sunset!" (It's the boss room.  The boss is a big boy and needs his space.)  That framing is intentional, of course.  Not like it's the most amazing sunset to be portrayed in a videogame or anything.  But Dark Souls has a way of making you pay attention to its details.  It's the sort of thing that justifies the oppressive environments.  The point of wading through the depths was to reach this moment.

Yakuza: Kiwami: beat.  It's melodramatic and goofy.  Clearly inferior to Yakuza 0, but definitely worth playing.  Combat is a little improved from Y0; everything else is worse.  That's fine.  Combat I never really felt like I could tell if I was doing it right tbh.  Except for a few bosses that are only sane to do in rush mode (a stance where you fight like a quick-footed boxer, deal weak damage but can chain ducks and dodges.)

BBCTB: Story Mode: beat the Blazblue part, still have the other 3 games to go.  It's short but entertaining.  Vintage BB, but in a (mostly) good way.

Ys VIII: picked this up after a long layoff.  I am doing a challenge run, inferno difficulty with no healing (with the exception that I will buff myself with cooking items prior to boss fights).  Beat the spoilery boss at the end of Act 2.  It was hard yo.  The new localization is different in places but I haven't noticed any changes I consider *that* meaningful yet.  That's not surprising since most of the questionable loc decisions are in the latter half of the game.  Playing through some of the plot segments, the foreshadowing and attention to detail is really quite impressive, as are some elements of world-building (Falcom playing to its strength in giving a lot of attention to a world populated by a relatively small cast of NPCs).  More noticeable the second time through.

[Cotigo]

Pretty sure that sunset's new. I don't remember anything about the Gaping Dragon boss room from the original except that it was dark dank and big.

[NotMiki]

 The light is more visible from the balcony where that channeler is than the bosd room itself.  If I feel inspired perhaps I will fire up the ol' ps3 abd compare.

Ys 8: got to the boss at the peak of Gendarme, the midway point of the game.  Got dunked on pretty hard.  Being forced to really explore mechanics and suss out what vulnerabilities can be exploited in these fights is a lot of fun.

[Dhyerwolf]

Cold Steel 2- Top of the Infernal Castle. The music for this dungeon was so good (and thankfully they kept the music for the random battles too). I let all the bosses hit me a little before Delaying them to death, but that was not a great idea with McBurn. 2 PC HP magic and MT OHKO S-Crafts were painful. After dying a few times, I had to reset and reorient more PCs toward Delaying, because 2 just wasn't enough with him (and I only needed 1 Delaying PC for all the other bosses).

[DragonKnight Zero]

Final Fantasy Tactics Shemanigans: Onward with Chapter 2

  I had a unit with Samurai unlocked at the Lionel Castle gear upgrade.  Most of the time I usually do not have one this early.  So a longer hike to upgrade gear and hopefully another few randoms for more JP.  baraius Hill from Lionel scares me.  The Chocobo random can get dangerous, especially with mixed colors since it becomes more likely that mages risk getting pounded midcharge.  I've gotten a game over before without killing a single one before though it doesn't happen this time.  Do the one proposition and it's time to move on.

  Zigolas I always reset until the Uribo shows up.  Mustadio is a Chemist with Snipe.  He came with Seal Evil so in short order, the field is filled with statues.  My goal is to invite the Uribo for breeding but Mustadio doesn't care so most of my actions come from healing it until resources or my patience give out.  (or Mustadio one-shots it with a high damage critical) It's simple to position people where it can't hurt them for total lack of vertical tolerance so it comes down to spamming Invite with a mediator.

  Goug can be kind of trolly sometimes but the enemies have low damage output.  My team's is kind of low too so it's not quite a stomp.  5 Speed Summoner dies to gunshot plus Black Magic from Ramza unless he has worst compat with Ramza so he's out of the picture without getting to do anything (unless I misposition Ramza and allow him to get a redirect, oops).  6 Speed Summoner almost never has an attack Summon due to only being job level 2 in Summoner so his annoyance factor comes from undoing my damage with Moogle.  Once the Thieves are down, the battle is basically won.  I did pull a silly with my Chemist or anyone else not having access to Antidote when Poison Bow archers are around but, eh.  Baraius Hill went great.  I planned on breaking the Lighting Bow the Ramza side Archer carries but my unit with the skill had worst compatibility.  Nailed that 20% Weapon Break first try despite that.  Agrias was very cooperative and I didn't lose any crystals to her or any enemies.  She also took her time killing the weaponless Archer which allowed me to harvest crystals and chests from most of the other enemies.

Yay, new characters.  They're really feeling a lack of skills at this point.  Baraius Valley randoms are not nice to undeveloped characters.  Agrias did start with Move +1 which is totally sweet.  Mustadio started with Leg Aim and Seal Evil.  Dammit, of course the most useful Snipe skill is the one he's missing.  At least Agrias and Archer Mustadio can help kill squids.  I do end up getting Agrias to Lv 14 which pushes her from 5 to 6 PA as a Knight.  Very welcome to have at Golgarand.  Golgarand scares me still.  Sure, having lots of lategame skills and top tier reactions can make it easy but I'm still running around with nothing but Counter Tackle and Weapon Guard for the few people lucky enough to inherit it.  Ramza is one of them and it actually blocks a shot in that battle.  More about that fight next writeup.

  Also started up Wind Waker.  It's been a very long time since I've seen a Zelda naming screen.  Given I expect to see the name a lot over the course of the game, going to change it to something I like to see.  I dno't end up choosing my favorite fictitious character's name.  Ayesha felt like a closer match as another character who dresses in green and wears a silly hat.  She's close to my favorite character despite having not player her game yet.  Much silliness will ensue.  When I played Ocarina way, way, back, named Link Hyuga.  My favorite characters were so different back then...

  I do like how the player isn't thrust into the iconic green outfit from the start.  Train with the swordmaster, make story progress.  First real battle I'm just flailing wildly, works OK.  When it comes time to find a shield, I run around the whole island searching for one forgetting the one place where the game showed one earlier.

More later

[NotMiki]

Ys 8: In my inferno no-healing challenge Dana's solo bosses have been giving me a run for my money but the main story ones haven't been too too bad.  I actually perfected the midboss in Baja tower.  I expect Oceanus will be a pretty significant stumbling block when I get there.  Also the initial translation had the boss names as OceanOS and now it's OceanUS and I am peeved they took a greek root and just mashed a latin ending onto it.  Philistines.  The new translation is better overall, but there are some loc choices that seem to me to be a step back.  I'll have more complete thoughts on that once I finish.

[SnowFire]

Elf, re Bloodstained:
Actually, that character death mechanic was made-up by Bloodstained.  Maybe they wanted an excuse for you to at least try all characters?  If you die in CV3, you're always kicked back to the last checkpoint; you don't lose the ability to switch but get kicked back less far.  Also, CV3 doesn't let you tank more via switching between characters; you have a shared life bar in CV3.  Differences in durability are reflected not by more or less raw health, but by different "defense"; Sypha & Grant just lose an additional bar of health when hit.  e.g. 3 damage becomes 4 damage.

Also, I agree with you that the character switching is super-cool, but I think that also gives the Zangetsu challenges merit?  Yeah you COULD just use Gebel and skip this nasty platforming bit and feel like a strategic badass, or you could do it the HARD WAY and smash through legit, which makes you feel like a different kind of badass.

Trails of Cold Steel 2
Finally went back to this and finished off the Epilogue, perhaps inspired by wanting to free up space on the Vita for CSH as well as Dhyer's playthrough.  I still really don't like the "plot" elements of the epilogue; after a good finish at least at the very end of the normal game (not the end in general, just the very very end), and a good side story with Lloyd, all the plot in the final epilogue vary between being boring (go collect stuff for a flea market!  go get bland testimonials about how much people like Trista!), dumb (where most non-Rean characters end up going), and stealing the end of CS1's thunder by doing graduation type beats again.

The actual postgame dungeon is, at least, admirably direct about being optional content.  I almost might have preferred if it was intentionally plotless, but having it be "okay this doesn't matter but we're gonna do it as a final bonding thing and because it'll be AWESOME" is the next best, I guess.  I don't really approve of requiring 4/7 Class VII members for the bosses, though.  I think such a restriction would be perfectly fine in the maingame, but for the postgame, especially since this is the last chance to use a bunch of characters, let players use who they want.  Luckily, Elise/Alfin/Angelica can go sulk in the corner, so that really only leaves Toby / Claire / Sharon / Towa to use.  And Sara, sorry, you're usable elsewhere in the game so no dice at sneaking in.  (Unfortunate since I ended up getting her all the way to L7 for super-Rushes, but so it goes.)

Anyways...  I did beat the (original, Infernal Castle) final without Delay hax, which was very rewarding, especially after he nuked my party but I barely survived and hung on to win anyway thanks to unloading some of the broken this game has.  For the postgame...
* For the Lacrosse Field fights, I just Delay cheeze'd 'em after I saw that Celestine had Seraphic Ring.  Kinda weird in-character, since as usual everyone's talking about what a tough and excellent fight is going on, but if Vandyck had been paying attention, he'd have seen it was just one side standing around in a Delay'd Stupor as giant skulls came down and ate their souls.  Followed by him standing around in a Delay'd stupor and giant skulls coming down and eating his soul.
* Reverie Corridor randoms were a little disappointing.  The CS1 final dungeon's very final areas actually had randoms that were pretty darn scary, and the occasional Infernal Castle random was scary.  Considering that Sharon's back, even with an underleveled Juggalo MQ, enemies deserved to have status resistance decent enough for Sharon's ludicrousness to matter.  Toby & Claire's status is also just fine for trivializing randoms.  The chest minibosses just don't have the HP to tank an Emma or Elliot 2x power magic blast, or a 2x power S-Craft if that's your style, and you can do dopey Claire or Machias tricks as usual on 'em. 
* Bosses die horribly to Delay as usual; after I banned that, they...  still died horribly, but hey, you could see what they did for a bit.  This is also where Towa gets to shine, as Weakener is a dirty, dirty status; one of the best in the game.  Since your actual damage comes from magic nukes, being able to massively amplify said damage is a great debuff.
* Toby, Claire, & Sharon didn't finish off mastering their MQs by the end.   Kinda thought there'd be a floor 17-20 with the real randoms, but no dice.  Towa wouldn't have, but hahaha no at keeping her on Scepter, so I gave her Rebellion instead for the least-likely sounding leadership type MQ based off the name.  (But hey, it is a prize for max Academic Rank, and has good spells, so.)

Anyway, final final boss was cool!  (Gameplay spoilers here, for Dhyer?)  A pretty good shot at attempting to make a boss that could potentially threaten endgame CS parties without being total BS.  Somebody needed to have just flat everything immunity.  In order to make things interesting, I didn't ever use Chrono Burst, and didn't end up using Machias/Claire turn advance nonsense either.  This was a bit unintentional, but I got a random drop of the Revolution Orbment, which seems totally busted; it's +10% damage for every level ahead an opponent is, with a maximum of 10, so against the L150 final, that's just flat up-double damage.  I stuck it on Laura to have her in the backline so that I could swap in a 4x damage Radiant Lion if I wanted, but I never ended up needing or using it.  In fact, my starting party ended up never doing a single switch: Rean, Toby, Towa, & Emma.  So...  yeah, Emma had stacked her mastered MQ, a Silver Bell, and the Time orbment that grants 1/3 casting time, so she had ludicrously insanely fast Claimoh Solarions or Phantom Phobias.  Toby & Towa were backup nukey spellcasters, with Towa able to stack on Weakener and MT-restore MP with Energy Rain, and Toby occasionally casting Saintly Force on Rean for physical damage buffs.  Rean, without his Delay game, was still *just fine* as the guy who cast Chrono Drive to buff everyone's speed, then Impassion on himself to be a Termination Slash - Dawn factory.  That and item boy.  So yeah, the final made me occasionally have to respond to his tricks, like giant damage with All-Cancel attached to blow away my cheaty buffs, but things like ST OHKO damage is easily recovered from, and spells get eaten by Crescent Mirror as usual.  I think the final's best chance was maybe with his MT status attack, reminiscent of Final Fantasy final bosses packing Grand Cross or the like...  but...  I had a null-all status accessory on Rean, and Toby's Wing L4 still granted like 80% status immunity, so no dice.  Once he was low enough on health, I unloaded an unholy stream of magic off Overdrive, and didn't even use any switches or S-Crafts.  Good times; now I want to maybe take another shot at him with banning Crescent Mirror as well and using a different team or something.

[Tide]

It's pretty telling that you have to ban all that and the game still only kind of puts up a fight. You didn't even to get into using Overdrive or Valimar. Good stuff though.

That's why I like CS2 - the game at the end gives you so many broken tools that it kind of snaps under it's own weight. It's like an updated version of how broke FF8 is, except without being FF8. I ran around post game on the floors using only guests (so Alfin/Toval/Claire/Sharon/Towa and Angelica) just for fun and it shows off at how good the guests are at holding their own weight. If you ever get the chance, invest 250,000 mira in a mirror and grab a sekrit character. They have built in Ice Crown effects at the cost of being unable to change orbments. Nothing quite like watching Llyod go into super saiyan mode forever because the game needed more broke ass shit in it.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Mario + Rabbids - Kingdom Battle - Strangely awesome; a stark contrast to Type-0 where it was strangely unawesome. The gameplay is a variant on XCOM except more information, more polish, and less weird triggers for enemies. The game throws the formations out there and it’s your job to figure out what to do with them.

I’m about halfway into the game right now, and currently I have Mario (all-rounder, is forced), Rabbid Peach (healer and miscreant face basher), Rabbid Luigi (drains people’s life force by bashing into them), Luigi (classic archer/sniper type), Rabbid Mario (ball lightning short range character), and Peach (short range all-rounder). Character balance is pretty good; I originally thought Rabbid Luigi was the weakest, but now that I powered up his Dash I’m not as sure. The game has excellent enemy formations and enjoyable battles. Each ‘stage’ is one or two maps; if it is two, you don’t heal in between so that can make it have a bit of a gauntlet feel (although I think there is a way to go back and heal in those cases if you want to go through the trouble.). I think the difficulty is a little uneven; ranges from quite easy to quite hard somewhat randomly. It’s cool, though. I feel like the game is starting to find its gameplay groove now. Seeing Mario characters use guns is weird; seeing Rabbids using guns while dressed as Mario characters is even weirder.

Plot is… what you’d expect from a Mario and Rabbids crossover. There is madness and chaos, most inhabitants of the Mario world seem to be suffering randomly, and Bowser Jr. is a dick with daddy issues. Rabbid Peach took a selfie with a boss after she knocked over the tower he was standing on. Good times. The person you control is Beep-0, who is a misanthropic robot. My favorite line of his was “I am a robot. I do not dream, but if I did, I would dream of intelligent machines taking over the world.” my kind of guy.

The game has nice music and graphics.

[Dhyerwolf]

Yeah, I haven't tried fighting the final boss of the Reverie Corridor yet. I agree that the epilogue seemed completely pointless and that the randoms are super pathetic, especially on status resistance (where enemies are like 15-20 points less than the final enemies in the main game, but you have a 100% decent AoE might-as-well-be-fatal status user). I'm fine with the forcing 4 members of Class 7 if only because I already had 4 PCs who were greatly decked out, and the Reverie Corridor is sad enough that I didn't need to change Sharon or Claire's orbments...even for the boss fights so far (although generally only one is in my active starting party, because I have the 2x initial attack on Laura and the 2x initial magic on Alisa. Also, it's fun to occasionally see Alisa bust out 150,000 magic damage and then have any MP used recover by the next battle).

[Pyro]

Dragon Quest VII:

Beaten. What a long, long game.

The best part about DQ7 is the sense of adventure and world building that goes into it. There are something like 20 standalone scenarios, and you explore the past and present of all of them. Building the world, island by island, is a great system for the game to incorporate. The party reacts to the scenarios in a variety of ways via the party chat and that is interesting to see unfold.

The worst parts of DQ7 are the lack of polish and the game abandoning the two characters driving the earlygame plot (Kiefer and Maribel).

After Kiefer leaves early in the game, there really isn't any more PC conversation to be had outside Maribel's snarking. The game abandons the chance to have PCs grow and develop based upon their experiences because lol silent main. Mervyn the old knight has no explored personality to speak of, Ruff the wolf-turned boy is amusing but boring, and Aira is a late joiner who doesn't get a chance to have much plot development or reaction to events.

The lack of polish shows up in the combat and class system. Combat with randoms is a pointless chore for 95% of the game, and classes tend to overlap with their abilities too much to be distinguished easily. For example the mage PC and the fighter PCs can both get MT damage, MT healing, and so on... One ly the fighter type classes get the big MT damage for free (why?) Itemcasts further mix things up because they aren't tied to who can equip them so anyone can have infinte uses of certain spells...

Also the game's class system only allows one to carry over 'base' class skills, so if you switch from one aecond tier class to another it is as if you had never been in that original second tier class at all... This creates serious balance and power issues that you mostly paper over through liberal use of the free MT damage. Takes all the fun out of the class system though.

Still holds a place in my heart for nostalgia but it really is not a good game

Also has the worst cutscene incompetence ever. "We powerless villagers need you all-powerful adventurers to kill a monstwr for us.... Oh you can't? I am afraid these 3 villagers (an old man, a young girl, and a fat shopkeeper) will effortlessly knock you out and lock you in a barn".
WTF.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Recently finished a playthrough of WAXF. Primary purpose of the playthrough was the line count project, but I still did a four-person run just for some extra spice. Puts the game in a place which is reasonably tough but I won most fights on the first try (definitely some notable exceptions including 2-4 and the final battle, usual suspects); I know the game pretty well at this point.

Towards the end of the playthrough the PSP started dying randomly during it, a problem which I've not been able to fix despite replacing the battery. The PSP died during the ending, YouTube to the rescue. Sadly I think that's the end of the line for the system, which is a shame since we had finally sprung for cables which connect it to the TV. Ah well, such is life.


Also played through Mario Kart: Double Dash some recently, since this is apparently the year to randomly revisit Mario Karts. I liked it! Not much to say. Maybe at some point I'll sit down and do a proper comparison of the series.

[NotMiki]

Ys 8: In my inferno no-healing challenge Dana's solo bosses have been giving me a run for my money but the main story ones haven't been too too bad.  I actually perfected the midboss in Baja tower.  I expect Oceanus will be a pretty significant stumbling block when I get there.

Ys 8 update: Oceanus was indeed a significant stumbling block.  Since I streamed it and clipped the video, I know how long the fight was: 8 fucking minutes.  The boss' moves individually weren't that bad, but keeping any sort of consistency for that long is quite a strain.  It took an age but I really liked the fight overall - I think I tried maybe four different setups before finding something that worked, and really honed my approach for each phase of the fight and found ways to maximize ways to attack in places where it hadn't seemed possible.  The boss can't be damaged much normally - you have to fill its stun meter then attack it, and it takes about triple damage then.  And this means that your stats don't actually matter all that much since each stun you can do about the same amount of damage.  But, if you hit it with an EX attack at the bottom of the stun meter, you get the full benefit of damage well beyond the "normal" amount.  So I equipped Sahad with an accessory that slows his movements but gives him 1.5x damage, basically giving up on using him for the fight except to deliver the final blow, reducing the number of times I'd have to stun the boss from 4 to 3 but consigning myself to basically doing the entire fight other than the final hit with 2 characters instead of 3.

Dana's solo bosses...well, I fought another two, and the first of the two I beat in 2 tries and the second dunked on me hard.  I'd forgotten all about the undead boss at the end of Valley of Kings.  Interesting design: the boss had adds you needed to be constantly managing.  Boss itself had universally slow and predictable attacks, the kind you can flash dodge and retaliate all day long, but waiting for the timing on those big windups was always fraught because maybe one of the adds just shoots you with a projectile from behind in the meantime.

I'm up to the final stretch now, where Dana's plot is finally explained.  The plot of the game is better than I had remembered, particularly the way it fosters the sense of mystery about why, exactly, the things that happened in the past happened and what, exactly, it means for the present. (I expect the final stretch to last quite a while because Ys 8 has just a metric ton of cool, tricky bosses, and they are as backloaded as the plot is.  There's something like 10-12 bosses left and they're all killers.)

[Tide]

My Wild ARMS 4 RTA finished at 5:00:54 yesterday. I am 54 seconds away from a sub 5 time. I can only summarize my feelings as such:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGH!

[DragonKnight Zero]

Final Fantasy Tactics: finishing off Chapter 2

  On to Golgarand.  My thief had Ninja unlocked so I changed her into one.  9 Speed is quite sweet at this point but can become a liability if she's swarmed and dies before her second turn.  Ramza is a Wizard with Magic Attack up so I want him on offense.  He did gather the JP for Move-HP up and Equip Armor but neither get used here in favor of Thunder Rod Bolt 2.  Ninja has Concentrate; no one else has reaction or support abilities that help win fights besides Weapon Guard for Ramza.
  Ninja goes first, tries for a first turn sword snatch, miss.  Gaf lands a critical Night Sword on Ramza for 88.  Crossbow Archer tires to pop one on Ramza, denied by Weapon Guard!  My Priest and Monk go next.  Moogle on Ramza and he's healthy.  Wave Fist on Cross Bow Archer, guarded.   I had positioned my Ninja so only one Knight could reach her but she Counter Tackles the first away allowing the second to take a swing at her.  Lucky 30% character evade kicks in keeping her out of danger range.  Ice Bow Archer goes for a charge leaving her open to a midcharge from Agrias.  After all the enemies do there thing, Ramza is in good enough shape to not need to heal anyone.  My supposed misfortune with Knights works to my advantage here as they're bunched up for Ramza to drop Bolt 2 on both.  One dies and the other is in critical and no one nearby has Item so they're effectively out of the fight.  Ninja spends her next two turns killing off Ice Bow archer and the weakened Knight (out of convenience).  Ramza eats a midcharge Night Sword because I decided it was more important to land a fatal Bolt 2 on a Time Mage.  Cross Bow Archer goes for a fatal Charge +3 but she left herself open for midcharge whacks from Monk and Priest.  Ramza takes one for the team and falls but Monk lands Power Break on Gaf and Priest Raises him up so it's pretty much mop up.  Other Time Mage did troll Agrias and Ninja with Don't Move but doesn't do actual HP hurt before dying and the 3rd Knight didn't get to do much besides landing one attack on Agrias before falling.

  I hike all the way to Igros for more Cross Helms just because.  Magic Contest opens up so I do that prop as well.  Get into some more randoms on the walk so other units can catch up with Ramza's EXP level and also play with the shiny Blood Sword I swiped.  Lv 17 Ramza is the highest I've had at this point in the game and I was a bit concerned about some of the generics getting too high since 6 Speed is easier to work with for the upcoming story fight.  RNG gives me two Wildbows which are both poached during randoms.
  Lionel I was a bit worried about my team composition since I went with a Geomancer and a Ninja (along with Knight Agrias and a Oracle with White Magic as my main healer).  Given the tight confines, this degenerates into a melee war where it really helps to have durable units which can sustain a few hits.  9 Speed Ninja lacks dominating offense with knife stabbing so I need to watch and manipulate CT so she doesn't take more abuse than I can handle.  Geo got the Blood Sword so I'm less worried about him.  Anyways, Hell Ivy and a midcharge sword skill drop the Summoner before he can do anything.  Archers are higher priority than the Knights due to their range.  I do get lucky and no one drops to ill-timed Bolt 2 procs or criticals.  Once one Knight and Archer are down, I feel in control.  At some point, I get Geo over and break Gaf's sword and enjoy the sight of him stubbornly trying to punch out Ramza at 18 a hit while Ramza recovers 15 a turn due to Move HP-up.  Got crystals from the Summoner and two Knights so got some free Summons and Geomancer stuff.

  Next battle went better than expected.  I went with the "pile on Speed Break and Slow" strategy since I wanted all the Move-Find items.  A Knight and Chemist are my Speed Break users and Time Mage Ramza with Summon secondary is the Slow carrier.   First Nightmare lands two Sleeps but I have people tossing wakeup rocks to solve that.  My first four Speed Break attempts all hit so all Quek gets is a second Nightmre before joining the slugs.  Maniacal laughter follows.

  For the first time ever, I have an FS Bag in the Fur Shop as soon as it opens.  If nothing else, it opens up the option of some painful Jumps, especially since Twist Headbands are now buyable.  My main heavy offense tools up to this point are Thunder Rod boosted Bolt 2, Lancer Jumps, and Swordskills.  Several people have Ramuh now and Ninja Swords are finally available so more variety.  I believe I had one Chantage available but voluntarily choose not to use it yet.

[SnowFire]

Super Punch-Out!!
Played this one off a loan from a middle school friend ages and ages ago, played it again off the New 3DS eStore.  Still amusing; cartoon "boxing" that is closer to WWE kayfaybe is way better than the actual thing where people's brains get turned into mush.  Anyway, Hoy Quarlow, the 78-year old kung fu master from China who inexplicably is allowed to club people with his staff in a boxing ring, remains total BS and flattens me.  Oh well, he is the third-to-last enemy at least.

Nier Automata
Finally started this up.  Insert usual positive feedback on the graphics & vibe, but, uh, screw this game for having no checkpoints in the prologue and no way to save.  Difficulty was perfectly reasonable until the boss, then I find out that the auto-items don't kick in if you get hit again while the screen is grey or something?  I don't know.  I'm pretty sure I had backup spare items, I'd been collecting these Medium Restores from chests and the like throughout, then SURPRISE dead and no retry after getting trapped between the two spinning death wheels, 1 hour down the drain.  WTF.  Not really fair to kill someone off this early without explaining the system, I'd have used the items manually if I'd known how.

[Sierra]

I had the same experience with Nier: Automata's prologue, and it put me off the game for a while. It was worth coming back to it, though!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Also had that experience, and yep, screw it. Game is 100% worth coming back to and doesn't have that problem once you finish the prologue, but it's a shit way to start the game and helps keep it out of the upper echelon of hype for me.

[Pyro]

Bravely Second:
Strange sequel. The game doean't follow the firgt's story beats quite right, it is almost as if something is off.... People who should be dead are alive and so on.

It makes me think that maybe this isn't the same cast... Which should be possible.

Fum enough otherwise, although too easy on Normal. I tend to want to play games as they were 'intended'.

[Cmdr_King]

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowsers Minions-  Fin (a few days ago).  Didn't do the Minion campaign, maybe someday.

https://cmdrking.blogspot.com/2018/07/mario-luigi-superstar-saga-so-whats-rpg.html

I didn't talk much there about some of the specific humor points.  Like I love just how hard Luigi swoons for Peasley, especially since Peasley himself is actually kinda pathetic, but really good at showing up at just the right time.  Sorta the advanced form of Luigi himself really.

This remake honestly fixes the biggest issue with the original, or at least mitigates it some, because god damn was just cycling through a list of abilities less tiresome than constantly juggling the brothers' positions and all that.  Having that extra "everyone jump" button also meant you could leave the most relevant command active but still do at least basic platforming.  Also the first M&L I've played that wasn't like 10-20 hours too long, which is bonus.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle - Great game if you like strategy games, I’d describe it as a better XCOM overall, with some of the issues that plagued that game eliminated.

Some random points:

- chance of hitting is shown on each panel for each enemy as you mouse over the square you want to move to. No more trying to guess line of sight! For all that M + R line of sight is quite intuitive and I rarely struggled with figuring out why my % to hit was what it was
- not buggy or slow and doesn’t have the weird fog war and SURPRISE ENEMIES FROM NOWHERE
- The game has reinforcements that (usually) spawn at the start of the enemy phase, but you always know the turn before how many, where, and what kind of enemy is spawning
- The movement-as-a-weapon mechanic is quite clever and can be quite advantageous at times. There are a set of enemies that move close and attack you when you attack them, and the movement dash attack doesn’t provoke that. There’s a bit of the ‘rabbid’ role (dashers with more mobility) vs. the humans (more supporty and less mobile).
- Even though there is a sweeping rabbids vs. humans for role, each character feels different from each other.
- Character balance is interesting and can change from fight to fight. Fortunately, the game gives you full exp regardless of how many battles you participated in, which is groovy.
- This game, between the jumping mechanic (increase move by jumping off someone’s head), the dashing mechanic, and the pipe mechanic (you have new movement score when you enter a pipe), has the craziest movement mechanics of any SRPG I’ve ever seen. And the enemies utilize the options, too!

I generally felt that the dashing moves made the Rabbid characters better; Rabbid Mario has a MT Dash, Rabbid Luigi has a really hard hitting and draining dash, and Rabbid Peach has MT healing and multiple dashes (and yes, half of the PC cast are just Rabbids cosplaying Mario characters). Mario, Luigi, and Peach are fine but a little below the top tier. The Yoshis are both a little underwhelming, or maybe just a little too late. Even in boss fights where you can’t dash the boss, the bosses usually have pretty strong support enemies so the dashing characters still have something to do (and do it well!). Luigi is definitely a better boss killer than random fighter, I found.

One of the game’s biggest flaws is that it forces Mario into your party, limiting the options for the number of parties you can use. There are a few chain fights that require that you protect Mario during the first one or two in order to have him for the last one. I often saved the MT healing for that last fight. The other major complaint is that the game’s difficulty is somewhat inconsistent; even in the final chapter, which is quite hard on average, there are a few just inexplicably easy battles. (Although the last time I thought that, the fight was the first of a chain of three…)

Plot is a standard goofy, humorous, and not overly serious Mario RPG with an extra dose of insanity added due to the presence of Chaotic Neutral Personified, the Rabbids, who mostly spend their time torturing Goombas and wrecking havoc upon the kingdom. My favorite moment is when Rabbid Peach took a selfie as Rabbid Kong was falling to his death (after she toppled him). Beep-0 is a sarcastic dick and Bowser Jr. is a loveable fop.

The game is nice looking, with the very colorful, vibrant backgrounds and the classic Mario character designs (and the Rabbids’ horrible, bastardized versions of said characters). The music is very catchy and I often found myself wanting to listen to it again.

9/10, would play again. I haven’t decided if I want to delve into the DLC or just start something else.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Wind Waker - Tactical Sneaking

  Shield in hand, I do try out the Hyoi Pear.  Seagull can grab Rupees that I couldn't figure out how to reach at least so it pays for itself though I don't know how much use I'd get out of them in the game.  Onto the next segment.  Rope swinging tutorial is masked well and as it turns out, it is an important skill in the upcoming area.  And the first taste of dungeon crawling is a swordless mission.  Well, that's a bit of a twist.  With bright green clothing and sunny blond hair, Ayesha seems like a terrible candidate for a stealth mission but i guess the guards are nearsighted and/or numb to cuteness.
  I believe this is a tutorial dungeon but it doesn't feel like one unless I consciously think that way.  Got into the game and got through in one playing session that took a while.  I'm apparently bad at sneaking and got spotted by the very first searchlight.  Would get thrown back in the cell multiple times due to missed jumps, pressing the wrong button, wandering into rooms where I was trapped or something else silly.  I thought I needed to do something after beating the searchlight guards so i was trying all sorts of stunts around the control panels before moving on.  Ran around in circles quite a bit, made even longer by not knowing how to push boxes.  Didn't figure out how to reach one chest but was ready for it to be done and left without it.  Of course, things can never be simple and rescuing sister is denied by that damn bird.

  Next stop: I find the requisite item quickly enough but I hang around a while because of lots of optional sidequest stuff.  Free Tingle though I don't really care about him; it's a means to an end.  I do find the stolen Picto Box after a wrong turn where I get dunked by a rat.  Start the assistant quest and get the first picture due to remembering seeing someone close to the key location.  Stumped completely by the second task though as I don't know who is the most timid person on Windfall.  I blank on finding a round, white, pale object and leave that quest undone thinking it's something I'll encounter later in the game.  I'm just stubborn enough to find the four kids at hide and seek.  Three I find easily due to some poking around and a NPC who gives me a helpful tip.  Even find the passage to the top level of the bomb shop though it doesn't seem to unlock anything.  Fourth kid is more evasive until I happen to peer through the telescope in the right direction.  Figures it would be the one tree that I didn't try rolling into.  Got that done and the first Joy Pendant as well.  Reward goes to waste since I've managed to reach full Rupees at this point (having won the heart piece at Zelda Battleship earlier)  After what seems like an age, set sail for more story progression.

[Captain K]

Star Ocean Anamnesis came out today. Doesn't work on emulator, and runs like a snail on my old phone. Works passably well on my wife's phone, so I'll see if I can tolerate the sluggishness to play it.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Tales of Berseria:

Warning: Spoilers for the first quarter of the game. I avoided outright revealing much of the endgame stuff.

Beat the final boss. So this is the best Tales game. Unquestionably, in my mind. It's not without flaws, but they are mostly nitpicks. Play this game.This is the only Tales game in existence without a cheesy romance plot between the two main characters (or any of the PCs for that matter), if that convinces anyone to play it. Also, this is the only Tales game that doesn't shit itself in the endgame plot, so that makes it the Tales game most worth FINISHING if nothing else!

So Tales of Berseria paints itself as this dark game about REVENGE! We open with some dark stuff (dead parents and demons), then immediately timeskip to idyllic JRPG opening village that you just -know- is going to get destroyed in the inciting incident because of course it will. This might tempt you to distance yourself from the characters but I urge you to resist that temptation, as we will be seeing more of this place than you'd think and it's worth allowing yourself to get invested.

And then the big betrayal happens, and our main character Velvet is traumatized and then locked in a dungeon for 3 years, eating monster corpses. Her desire for REVENGE is completely understandable, but she's genuinely harsh and disturbingly violent about it, making it harder to see this character as the hero. And that's good. Because she's kinda horrible, even if she has a good reason to be. And the people she wants to kill have a demonstrably positive effect on the world as a whole. Velvet is vengeful and cruel and terrible... but ultimately she's not wrong.

The big trick the plot plays on you is that it sets itself as this typical story about REVENGE and how it's wrong and it's destroying the person seeking it. A story we've seen a million times. But in actuality, the story isn't condemning Velvet's quest, it's trying to show a more realistic version of the typical 'topple the oppressive church/government' narrative that's really common in JRPGs. REVENGE isn't a healthy motivation, but it certainly can be focused into doing something good.

And the theme of the story manifests in how the characters all revolve around taking their flaws and channeling them into worthwhile goals, without losing their selfishness or quirks that make the characters who they are.

So while the story is great. It is, of course, the characters that make this Tales game work. I spoke a bit about it in chat, but I think Tales of Berseria is going to be the kind of game that people are analyzing in ten years from now in much the same way that Chrono Trigger gets analyzed for having impressive scenario structure or FF7 for amazing use of foreshadowing and environmental theming. Berseria is just a master class on character writing. And it cleverly characterizes its cast through many parts of its gameplay in addition to the normal cutscenes. Each of the characters has a strong connection to the central theme in their character arcs, and even the weaker characters (Eizen) play a great role in story cohesion. These characters all feel like a part of this world and the various viewpoints in the oft-conflicting cast really fleshes out the sides in the plot.

On a surface level, they are all clearly tied to the main plot:
Velvet is the central driving force
Phi gives insight into the role Malakhim(Angels/Spirits) play within the church
Eizen leads the pirates that would become the party's army and also gives an opposing viewpoint for what Malakhim are like outside the church
Eleanor is a member of the church itself
Magilou is a trickster character that ends up having a strong connection to one of the villains
Rokurou, similarly, gives insight into what daemons are like and has a strong connection to one of the villains

But each of them use their role within the plot to explore the various 'big ideologies' that are clashing:
Velvet embodies the central 'is REVENGE always a bad thing?' conflict with her quest to tear down the one stabilizing social structure in the world because she hates one person
Phi explores what it means to have an identity outside of one's 'purpose', and subsequently is the driving force behind Velvet's growth
Eizen is a little trickier, since the conclusion to his character arc is already known by anyone who has played Tales of Zestiria, the game that Berseria is a prequel to. He's basically there to fill in the backstory for Zestiria and forms the main bridge between to the two games, so his development here can seem a little lacking. He does play his role in exploring questions about Malakhim enslavement and codependence on humans. Knowing his ultimate fate changes nearly every scene he's featured in... It's fascinating, in hindsight.
Eleanor is the lynchpin of the whole church vs. rebels (Reason vs. Emotion) narrative conflict. Without the squeaky-clean exorcist to provide contrast to the nameless church soldiers the party is fighting, the whole conflict would be toothless. She provides neccessary perspective, and throughout much of the game, I found myself siding with the ostensible antagonists. MVP best character in the game in my opinion. The whole plot just WORKS thanks to her. Her big sidequest near the end of the game had me in tears.
Magilou is Magilou. Great comic relief character. Ends up being one of the most important characters. I don't wanna spoil too much with her. She really rounds out the early game with her 'generally-wicked' demeanor really selling the whole 'the party are the villains' facade that sets up much of the game.
Rokurou primarily exists to round out that whole 'the party are the villains' facade, too, being a daemon. His big contribution outside that, of course, is humanizing the daemon faction, and posing all those troublesome ethical questions about killing daemons/monsters that JRPGs like to ignore. Amusingly, Rokurou's outlook is, of course, 'well, I mean, humans kill eachother for a bunch of reasons, so why not daemons too?'

While I'm breaking down characters, let's talk about ludonarrative harmony. I'm a big fan of JRPGs that use their characters' skillsets to inform little things about who they are as a person. RPGs as early as FF4 get praised for this (Rosa is motherly and therefore gets healing, Kain is cowardly and his skillset has him jumping out of battle as much as possible, etc.)
But Tales of Berseria went a bit beyond the usual in this regard, even for a Tales game. Sure, there are some standard character-informing bits, like how Velvet uses a retractable blade and lots of kicks in her moveset because her mentor taught her to utilize surprise and wide-sweeping effects to make up for her lack of size, etc etc.
But ToB was a little different than most Tales games and gave each character their own GIMMICK ability, assigned to the Gimmick Button. And then designed the whole balance of the game around using these. The Gimmicks are called Break Souls and basically function by spending Max SP to do cool stuff (you can recover Max SP by doing various actions in battle like inflicting status or killing enemies). This causes the basic flow of battle to be 'standard Tales attack strings/combos'->OMGBREAKSOULCOOLSHITISHAPPENING->'rebuild Max SP to do attack strings and Break Souls again'. So it's awesome that each character's Break Soul got to be so fitting to their character. Each of the Break Souls even gets an upgrade as part of the plot that relates to the character's growth as well.

Velvet's Break Soul is Consuming Claw, an ability that lets her damage and take on the strength of any daemons she hits with it. When she hits something, she gets a huge powerup and some healing, but quickly starts leaking HP until the powerup ends in an automatic powerful special attack that hits anything around her. The parallels to her (self-)destructive quest for revenge and selfish nature are pretty obvious when you lay it out like that. I particularly like how the move heals her, but then starts draining her health, so her only method of recovering HP is to use it again and again.

Phi's Break Soul is Divide Pain, a protective aura that halves incoming damage to all party members for a while. I never played as Phi, but I certainly always noticed the increased damage I was taking when he wasn't around. Phi's arc sees him grow from a figurative mindless tool to person who learns to think for himself and finally to a person who wants to protect those he's grown to care about. Standard enough, but when he gets his upgrade, the field actually does some minor damage to enemies and breaks their guard, showing a clear transition from support tool to active participant. As the damage effect starts getting outpaced, he sort of ultimately ends up back in a support role, which mirrors his own character arc where he -chose- to be someone who prioritized protecting people.

Eizen's Break Soul is Dragon Dive, which allows him to teleport anywhere on the map to attack an enemy if they've been stunned or downed. This is broken as hell for crowd control and great for keeping him out of danger and building up resources. It's one of the weaker links for character arc parallels, but it DOES reference his Malakhim traits. He has a curse that causes misfortune to anyone around him, so it makes sense that his ability only triggers when the enemy is down on their luck. This kind of exploitative ability does mirror itself in the party's general pragmatic view of exploiting others to achieve their goals, though Eizen doesn't seem to particularly like this aspect of himself. (Fittingly, the animation gives him a dark dragon-shaped aura while performing this skill, which another part of himself that he fears - that he could transform into a draconic monster... it's explored a bit more in Zestiria.)

Eleanor's Break Soul is Aerial Strike, which has her sweep enemies up into the air away from the rest of the battle for a bit to strike/combo them midair for a bit. It also pierces most guarding stances. While much of the rest of Eleanor's standard attacks are crowd-suppressing lance swings or long distance spells/healing, this particular move stands out for how it takes her and the enemy away from battle for a bit, protecting the rest of the party and separating her from their support. It sort of shows Eleanor's independence and protective nature, as well as her streak as a bit of a loner. Possibly the Break Soul least directly related to a character's arc, but even in a small way, you get a picture of who this character is from it.

Magilou's Break Soul is Spell Absorber, which does what it says. If she pops it while any enemies have their casting circles going, she stuns the enemy and absorbs energy from them. When she absorbs enough, she releases a huge powerful spell with the stolen magic. Basically, this plays really well into Magilou's trickster archetype, she's essentially a magic thief and a master manipulator and it's glorious.

Rokurou's Break Soul is Vengeful Stance, which apart from the obvious naming choice tying in with one of the major themes of the game, puts Rokurou into a counter stance that will unleash a stupid-quick and powerful attack if the player times it such that an enemy's hitbox runs into the counterstance aura. The Break Soul can be upgraded to push the advantage later on. Rokurou's counterstance really sells his whole 'martial arts swordmaster' part of his personality on the surface level aesthetic, but I also like how it makes him one of the more cerebral characters to play. You have to be paying VERY close attention to what the enemy is doing to properly respond with his counterstance. It makes the player take on his role as an analytical fighter, but then gives the player the option to violently rush down the enemy once the trap is sprung. Rokurou's lighthearted happy-go-lucky demeanor really masks his dark murder-driven goals, and you get an appreciation for his patience on and off the battlefield when playing as him.

So yeah. Ludonarrative Harmony. I really felt like the designers put a lot more effort into marrying the battles to the character development than most JRPGs (which is impressive considering that I find that to be one of the biggest strengths of JRPGs in general).

But let's talk about those nitpicks I mentioned hours ago:

The equipment system. There's not a lot to complain about in ToB, but this is it. The equipment system is just terrible. There's a passive-skill system wherein characters can learn passive from equipping a certain weapon or armor long enough (similar to FF9). Unlike in some games in the Tales series, this does NOT work here at all. The characters are constantly getting new weapons (that they likely then won't want to switch to so that they can learn their old weapon's passive).

And then there's the upgrade system. There's a ton of features in the game that open up when a character equipments enough weapons that have been upgraded to +1~+10 like extra Break Souls and Mystic Arte gauge...

And you'll never see any of it because it takes hours to upgrade a single piece of equipment.
And once you've upgraded one to like.. +3.. you almost immediately get a new weapon or armor and need to replace the old one (especially since you've probably long-since learned its passive skill and gotta get to work learning the next ones)!

It's just clunky and awful. It's only really usable for the postgame dungeon where you're no longer getting new equipment and have enough money and crafting resources to fully kit out one or two characters to get those cool Break Souls/Mystic Arte bonuses. Luckily you can ignore it for most of the main game if you play on Normal (I got my ass handed to me multiple times on Moderate if I wasn't grinding the equip-upgrading system...)

Though.. it DOES kinda make me wanna start a New Game+ on Maniac carrying over all my upgraded stuff (if that gets too crazy, luckily the Difficulty setting is freely adjustable~)

Anyway, Tales of Berseria is good stuff. It makes me want to play it again... and I never wanna replay games immediately. (Also kinda makes me wanna play Zestiria but from what I played of that before... hmm... could be a trap.)

EDIT: Jesus, almost 3 pages of words and I completely forgot to mention the huge 'Found Family' v. 'Abusive Family' theme going on with literally all of the characters and how that ties into the Identity subplots...

[Captain K]

Star Ocean Anamnesis.  This game has been out for over a year and a half in Japan.  They have four versions of Claire Lasbard and zero versions of Adray.  Fuck this game.