What Games are You Playing 2018?

[DragonKnight Zero]

Happen to be around so returning to writing about old school Megaman via the Anniversary collection

Megaman 5

Played all the stages, though not in one sitting.  Was mostly smooth sailing once past Gyro Man, which I took second.  Got a game over at Charge Man to my surprise; really out of practice with his pattern.  I skipped to Stone Man third after Gyro Man because I wanted to make more use of special weapons, especially for Crystal Man's stage.  No more than one death to any of the other robot masters.

  Last stages went by much easier than I remember due to tactical deployment of special weapons.  I remember where the M Tanks spawn so no issues with weapon energy.  Only section that really gave me trouble was the conveyor belt segment in Protoman 2.  Died about seven times there, though the net loss of lives came out to about 3 or 4 due the high drop rate of 1-ups.

  I feel this entry is the closest example of "Megaman comfort food."  Even though I don't think that highly of its quality, it's still easy to pick up and romp through.  Charge shot is really powerful.  Not quite the destructiveness of X4's Plasma shot (then again, very little is as crazily bonkers/broken), but the wide vertical range and ability to pierce past anything it kills gives little incentive to use special weapons.

[Sierra]

Nier Automata: "ARE YOU SURE THAT YOU WISH TO HELP?"

-YES

It seemed only fair, since I wouldn't have made it through that section on my own. Anyway, I didn't feel any motivation to go back and grind through all other optional bosses and endings and what have you (even though the five or six fake endings I did find were hilarious). Though it occurs to me after the fact that cloud saves probably trivialize the cost of Yoko Taro moments like this, which is a little sad.

Nier Automata is an amazing experience. It isn't always an amazing game, since the gameplay isn't really a main draw (although it's markedly more fun than in this game's predecessor) and was mostly dead easy outside of the final challenge, but I have rarely ever seen such wholehearted commitment to exploring narrative themes. I can easily see myself replaying this someday just for story, which isn't something that I can say often enough. It's also batshit crazy in that special way you just don't find outside of the Taroverse.

I don't get the sense that crafting an anti-war story was expressly his intent, since a more personal brand of existentialism is consistently at the heart of quests, character arcs, references, and dialogue, but damned if this doesn't wind up being one anyway. You have two gangs of automatons engaged in an endless war for no better reason than that this is what they've always done on behalf of ancient orders from superiors that they've never met. And of course the creators on both sides are long dead and it ultimately turns out that both factions of robots are based on the same technology, which are kind of inevitable developments but no less effective because of it. No one ever comes right out and says HUH! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, but we're as close as you can get.

I like the soundtrack a helluva lot more now than I did during the music tourney, but that's pretty normal. Context! Really, my favorite thing here might just be the melancholy piano that plays in the background whenever you're out exploring the city. It's like a few seconds of that is somehow instantly evocative of the entire experience. EDIT: this track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmS3EJKBCFc Also 9S what are you even doing.

[NotMiki]

Emil’s optional fights are worth youtubing.  If you’ve watched the trailer, there’s something he says in it that requires a little context.

[SnowFire]

Mm.  Crono's pretty good in CT.  That said I agree with Elf that CT buffs are really good ST, so if they're MT, I dunno how you balance around that, in the same way that maybe giving poison damage to the PC party isn't wise either.  I guess you can just make the enemies uber enough to demand using the buffs, but that's kinda lame too.

Anyway if I was doing a remix of CT's PCs, Ayla is the one that I hope got the most modification.  She's very good but extremely one-dimensional in an uninteresting way.  I guess they balanced her around "well she doesn't have magic, so her physicals better be really good", but there just aren't enough enemies that demand magic (uh Spekkio), and for enemies that do, just use her in a Dual Tech anyway.  So her "weakness" is irrelevant and she just unloads tons of damage quickly.

--
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
Two milkmen do comedy!

This one's been sitting in my backlog for a long time.  Did 999 have cursing?  It feels like the characters in this one have slightly pottier mouths, but I could be imagining things.  As usual, the first room's puzzle is weirdly the toughest albeit largely due to BSy reasons.  Oh well.

[Dark Holy Elf]

There's actually quite a lot of enemies which reward magic damage! Just... mostly before Ayla joins (Yakra Cathedral, Shadows, Heckran Cave, Zombor, Magus Castle). Ayla's main problem is lack of crowd control for a while (and enough bosses immune Rock Throw to avoid her completely running away with the ST damage curve; Cat Attack and associated unites are solid but not amazing) but later on she picks it up with unites (mainly Fire Whirl which is great). There's a good chance she's the best PC but it's not by some large amount, and in particular if you brought Triple Kick down by even ~20% damage, she would stop standing out (beyond being one of the very few RPG characters with a steal command which is legit useful).

Chrono Trigger remains one of the very best RPGs out there for character balance, impressively so for a game so old.

[Niu]

I don't get the sense that crafting an anti-war story was expressly his intent, since a more personal brand of existentialism is consistently at the heart of quests, character arcs, references, and dialogue, but damned if this doesn't wind up being one anyway.

Yes, the theme of the story is based on Taro's pessimism of life, and his view of futility of it.

Some info that might give you more perspective on the story.
You know how Machines goes berserk with their glowing red eyes? That actually is not going berserk, but become "normal".
All Machines were built as death machines for the sole purpose to kill. For them having intelligence and other purposes are actually abnormal.
Them going violent with red eyes is merely a reversal back to the normal state. Though what exactly is the switch that cause this reversal is not properly documented.
But anyway, the point is, there is nothing wrong about the machines going death and destruction with red eyes.
And when you follow this line of thinking, you can arrive into a perspective like the Pascal village is merely a bug. It's destruction in flame is the right thing to happen instead.

Also, remember the picture books scenes from the 9S route? Recall the one telling the story of a god that rise from the mountain and gave Machines intelligence and tell them to seek out the meaning of life?
That's the source of bugs that made Machines stop being red eyes glowing death weapons.
The said god in that story is P-33 from the first NieR name. Androids and Machines that heard his call and stopped fighting were taken by him when he travels into outer space.
And yes, Terminal A & B's plan is a parallel of that, and also a disastrous failurem compared to P-33.

Finally, I recommend taking a look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiNKk3fPed8

[Grefter]

FFD2 - just finished Chapter 4.  I am digging some of the plot ideas they are playing around with here.  Like in ways that making his into Dimensions 2 works really well thematically.  It isn’t plot tied in or anything, but in the same way Dimensions was dumb and kind of cute throwbacks to FF1 plot all through it, this is a weird mosh mash of Chrono Trigger style plot run through a Final Fantasy filter.  It is super budget though so I don’t think it would hold like say Elfboy’s attention, but if you like mobile games and want to check out something a bit different then this is pretty good at it.  Like instead of leaning into trying to make a super pretty mobile thing like Chaos Rings did back in the day, it agilely embraces mobile game play patterns and tells a budget JRPG plot through it.

Did you finish it yet Djinn?

Breath of the Wild - So I picked it up with my Switch and shelved it during the tutorial to playing Fire Emblem Warriors.  Over Christmas I played a bit more and started to get into it, but shelved it to play something much worse.   There was a long weekend this weekend and I think I sunk like 30 hours into it.  Holy damn this is good when you are in the mood for it.  I picked up the DLCs and there is a bridle that maxes out a horses stars and a saddle that will teleport it to you.  When I worked out how to use them I found out that I could also give my horse French Braids or let it wear its mane super long and put flowers in its hair.   The DLC fancy bridle hides the mane and looks ugly as shit.   So fuck that noise I will just have a horse that looks fabulous and teleports to me.

[Sierra]

Yes, the theme of the story is based on Taro's pessimism of life, and his view of futility of it.

That's been evident in every game he's ever made, but I feel like certain points in Nier: Automata suggest that he's maybe, maybe mellowed out a little bit. Specifically, ending E + occasional dialogue points to the extent of "Yeah, everything sucks, but if we work together and try really hard, there's maybe a chance that we could make things a little better." Events in the game are still hella bleak, but that final note seems almost reluctantly, grudgingly positive, at least in comparison to previous final endings in his games.

Also, cool song.

Emil’s optional fights are worth youtubing.  If you’ve watched the trailer, there’s something he says in it that requires a little context.

That was definitely a thing. Emil head danmaku, I approve.

~

Nioh: I forgot to mention that the best part of DLC is that there are masked ninja dogs with kunai in their mouths so when they bark they shoot kunai at you. No part of this sentence is an exaggeration.

Done with every mission that is not Twilight/Abyss stuff, which I don't care about. Don't quite know why the All Quest trophies never pinged for maingame or DLC2, but whatevs, feeling pretty done here. Nioh is a good game; it's 50% of Bloodborne transported to circa 1600 Japan. If the 50% of Bloodborne that you care about is the crazy lore, then you can give this a pass, but all the good points of combat are here, and the Nioh devs are mayyyyybe a little better at recognizing the value of potential quality of life improvements than Fromsoft tends to be. I'm not really a fan of the randoloot, but it's not like this ruins the game or anything. Just means I have to spend 5-10 minutes unloading garbage on the tea house after every 2-3 missions because my inventory's capped again.

I kind of feel sorry for the final final DLC boss, because it looked super cool and ultimately just got cheesed out the way almost everything else in the second half of this game did (ninetails at least hit me a couple times, that's something to be proud of?) I didn't take a video of that boss fight specifically, but this is pretty representative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zAbpQuxjRk I'm also pretty sure that Sanada's ninja bud was supposed to spawn in midway during the DLC3 rematch with him, but I nuked Sanada so fast that Sasuke only ported in after his boss was KO'd.

Exploration was generally a lot scarier than boss fights by the end, but even then there was relatively little the game could do to blunt the cheese potential of my build. Throw all the things until I'm out of things -> living weapon because my armor set refreshes ninjitsu items after living weapon expires -> repeat ad nauseum because I'm using a guardian spirit with the fastest recharge time (and which also boosts ninja power).

Probably hit Horizon: Zero Dawn DLC next.

[Niu]

Yes, the theme of the story is based on Taro's pessimism of life, and his view of futility of it.

That's been evident in every game he's ever made, but I feel like certain points in Nier: Automata suggest that he's maybe, maybe mellowed out a little bit. Specifically, ending E + occasional dialogue points to the extent of "Yeah, everything sucks, but if we work together and try really hard, there's maybe a chance that we could make things a little better." Events in the game are still hella bleak, but that final note seems almost reluctantly, grudgingly positive, at least in comparison to previous final endings in his games.

There are more story to tell about this.
Taro's first sign of mellowing out is in the Fire of Prometheus when DoD3 was released.. Aka that story of P-33, where he found his meaning of life and took all the peace loving androids and machines with him to outer space.
But DoD3 was too fucked up, so little people actually paid attention to Fire of Prometheus.
Then comes the NieR: Automata Concert, where 5 different voice drama were played, including what happens after Ending E.
The script of the drama were given out to the attendant of the first concert. The post ending E drama, which is scheduled for the fifth concert was then spoiled ahead.
The content of post Ending E was that 9S committed suicide by completely deleting his memory sector so there is no chance for him to get rebooted. Then 2B, who discovered this was plundered into despair and lost all her will to live.
S0, when attending the actual fifth concert, most people were all prepared for the worst. But the actual drama played out differently, and it ends in 2B and 9S's happy re-union. This effectively created Taro's the biggest mind fuck to his fandom ever since DoD1's Ending E.
The chaos and mixed feeling Taro had created in that concert is quite a thing to see.
But I am still not certain what message he is trying to send by doing this.

[Cmdr_King]

Oh damn, speaking of the concert plays:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0y083mMHA

Kyle McCarley and Kira Buckland get some friends together and read the scripts for those!  They're all full spoilers, so I've been holding off on them, but now Sierra's done and it needs linked again.

[DjinnAndTonic]

FFD2 - just finished Chapter 4.  I am digging some of the plot ideas they are playing around with here.  Like in ways that making his into Dimensions 2 works really well thematically.  It isn’t plot tied in or anything, but in the same way Dimensions was dumb and kind of cute throwbacks to FF1 plot all through it, this is a weird mosh mash of Chrono Trigger style plot run through a Final Fantasy filter.  It is super budget though so I don’t think it would hold like say Elfboy’s attention, but if you like mobile games and want to check out something a bit different then this is pretty good at it.  Like instead of leaning into trying to make a super pretty mobile thing like Chaos Rings did back in the day, it agilely embraces mobile game play patterns and tells a budget JRPG plot through it.

Did you finish it yet Djinn?

Breath of the Wild - So I picked it up with my Switch and shelved it during the tutorial to playing Fire Emblem Warriors.  Over Christmas I played a bit more and started to get into it, but shelved it to play something much worse.   There was a long weekend this weekend and I think I sunk like 30 hours into it.  Holy damn this is good when you are in the mood for it.  I picked up the DLCs and there is a bridle that maxes out a horses stars and a saddle that will teleport it to you.  When I worked out how to use them I found out that I could also give my horse French Braids or let it wear its mane super long and put flowers in its hair.   The DLC fancy bridle hides the mane and looks ugly as shit.   So fuck that noise I will just have a horse that looks fabulous and teleports to me.

Haven't finished it yet, I'm currently fighting Chaoses throughout time in some crazy parody of Bill and Morrow's Excellent Adventure.

Have you found Alba's sidequest line yet?

BotW: How are the DLC story chapters? I heard they focus on the guardians, which is extremely relevent to my interests.

[Sierra]

HZD: I am unsure why the Banuk opted for the Thing That Goes Doink model of building bridges as opposed to, you know, just building bridges.

I forgot how apt the blue and purple lighting they flood all technological environments with in this game is to giving me motion sickness. Which is a shame, because that's where all the neat plot business occurs. Tech companies, please, do not feel it necessary to make every computer monitor and phone and PDA include glowy blue and purple screens over the next couple decades. I realize it will make them easier for videogame protagonists to spot someday, but in the meantime, please consider your customers' well-being, before the robocalypse arrives and they all get eaten.

[Grefter]

Yeah found Alba.  The Side Quests thing tells you all the currently open quests that you haven't started >_>

I haven't done the DLC stuff in BotW yet, just that couple of chests that are added to the main game world.  I could go do the Trial of the Sword, but meh.  I haven't even done any dungeons yet, so I am not super up on the Champions yet and Guardian stuff is idk, they are just Beamos aren't they?  Zelda memory sequences though?  Those are my jam.  Zelda is fucking rad.   

[NotMiki]

La-Mulana: been playing this a lot recently, trying to make it through without an FAQ.  The puzzles are for the most part great, and you feel really good solving them.  But.  Some of them are legitimately unfair in the sense that the clues are just bad, or in the sense that there are things that you trigger that are not hinted at at all.  On top of that, quality of life is very low, and the game is not particularly respectful of your time, requiring manual healing, requiring use of subweapons that you may need to grind money to replenish, and occasionally including platforming segments that prominently feature you helplessly falling three or four screens down if you make the slightest mistake - this in a game where movement is so clunky that intentionally getting hit is often the most efficient way to deal with enemies.  So it's a really interesting game with some great ideas and I'm not sure I would recommend it to anyone.  Except that I'm still playing the hell out of it and excited to have made some real progress.  Go fig.

[DjinnAndTonic]

FF Dimensions 2:

So I've spent the majority of Chapter 6 on a whirlwind tour of refighting nearly every boss in the game and you'd think that would be awful. But FFD2, in another surprise move, manages to weave a bunch of character arc payoffs into this retread format. Once again demonstrating that it's a game that respects your time.

The main fights are still a little too weak for someone who has been completing all side content as it becomes available, but the side content in the form of submissions and Babil Tower fights continue to offer some challenge.

Honestly, while it's not groundbreaking storytelling or anything, it is a lot more competent than its cookie-cutter opening made me expect. And I think if Square had actually used this plot for a Chrono Trigger sequel, it would have been hailed as the Chrono sequel people had been waiting for. (presuming the gameplay was more CT-style with CT-level balance)

Almost done with the main campaign, but it seems there's a Seraphic Gate-style postgame chapter to play following the ending that I'm looking forward to for some higher challenge.

[Captain K]

Dissidia Opera Omnia day one.  Pulled for Chocoblades for Bartz.  Got two of those, two Cloud swords, Vaan knife, and Yuna staff.  Plus Vivi staff from tutorial.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Surprise Choron Trigger discovery; poison ticks do not remove Chaos status.  So it's a very safe, though slow, way of handling some enemies such as Ruminators, which have been buffed from their original incarnation.  I've been too lazy to test whether sleep persists with poison ticks.

Poisoned targets deal around 15-17% less damage and take about 10-12% more.  So it's more of a added bonus than a gamebreaker and most of the hardest opponents are immune anyways.

Actually saw Lucca miss with Napalm on a Byte.  What the hell?  It his Spekkio just fine so it was quite the surprise to see.

To answer an earlier question, protect status hasn't changed.  The Eidolon boss counters any damage 90% of the time with a fairly strong MT physical so full party Portect is nice to have there.  (It also has high enough magic defense that Lucca feels like deadweight for damage dealing)

  I'd intended to keep quiet about going through Grandia 2 for a while longer but had a surprise discovery at the Valmar Core.  As I was trying to get through without spamming SP or MP recovery items (which I had very few of), I used a lot of physicals on the main body.  Turns out it has trouble doing much when 3 or 4 people are gangbeating it.  Even when the core was close to death and I had enough SP to finish it with techs, I still consciously chose to stick to combos to keep the core reeling more.  Also seems somewhat fitting that Elena's staff whack dealt the finishing blow.  Level 46 average, feels a bit low?

  As for the final, final boss being weaker than previous fights, the group already kicked its tail once already so it makes sense from a story perspective that's it would be in a weakened state.  Things played out conveniently such that Millenia dealt the killing blow with a big attack spell.  Refights were funny for me in that I kind of thought about taking out one or more parts first but the way things played out, the main body ran out of HP first.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Dissidia Opera Omnia day one.  Pulled for Chocoblades for Bartz.  Got two of those, two Cloud swords, Vaan knife, and Yuna staff.  Plus Vivi staff from tutorial.

Gacha bullshit aside, the BRV system in this is pretty fun. I like how it handles making each character unique by giving them a unique gimmick and then focusing literally all of their support skills around it. Rem's turn-shift abilities look super-broken, though. Can't wait.

If you want a Ogrenix Cloud buddy:
Friend ID: 432 578 462

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Dissidia Opera Omnia day one.  Pulled for Chocoblades for Bartz.  Got two of those, two Cloud swords, Vaan knife, and Yuna staff.  Plus Vivi staff from tutorial.

Also started this! On my first few pulls (the game frankly showers you on the free currency at the very start and they also give you 15k of the free currency... and the first pull is half-off... AND you get guaranteed 5*s off the bat. This would've made the first year and a half of FFRK SO MUCH SIMPLER), I got unique weapons for Rem, Vaan, Hope, Zidane, TWO PENELO DAGGERS (wtf i haven't even unlocked her) and Lock (who I haven't unlocked EITHER). I'm rotating between the former four, who are undeniably my best units as of now. Red Spiral is really good for action economy (BRV => HP damage is really nice) and Stellar Circle 5 deals a lot of BRV damage! Shell's also nice for buffs and avoiding Brave Breaks. I haven't really -used- Rem's Cure, since at this point you really shouldn't be taking HP damage, but good lord the turnshifting skill looks tasty.

[NotMiki]

Ys 8: translation patch hit, so I started a new game on inferno difficulty. no major changes I've noticed so far - some terminology and proper nouns are different but most of the things that stuck out in terms of localization don't show up for a while.  Inferno difficulty is not messing around in terms of damage, but enemy HP seems somewhat in line with hard.  Three bosses in, I haven't struggled too badly with anything.  But boss difficulty definitely ramps up as the game goes, so I can't read much into that.  The next area is the coral forest, the game's first "dungeon."  Sahad is even more the MVP this time around than on hard, and I expect this trend to continue.  Best damage and an early special with big range and damage, in a mode where you need to be frontrunning at all times.  Adol is really struggling right now - his normal attacks are the shortest and he doesn't have any specials that do a good job of keeping him out of harm's way.  This won't continue, but for now he's LVP by a lot.

[Shale]

Hollow Knight: After screwing around for a while I realized that despite having beaten the Waterways boss I didn't actually get the traversal item hidden there (or the map) so I went back and cleared it out, and was then able to get into the proper Fog Canyon entrance. Followed that up with a visit to the Abyss and now I've taken out all three Dreamers and got half of the True Ending token. Only problem is that the other half requires a boatload of Essence that I don't have (Currently at 1200, need half again that much for the Awakened Dream Nail). If I get the base/bad ending, I can go back for the rest later, right?

Bayonetta: Beat the third Cardinal Virtue. Which means Gracious & Glorious are a thing now. Ouch. Also I have to do The Broken Sky again because I missed an Alfheim and god dammit that level is a pain. On a happier note, I forgot about the highway stage, and specifically about the positively delightful scene where Bayonetta starts a motorcycle by flipping it off.

[NotMiki]

If I get the base/bad ending, I can go back for the rest later, right?

Yes.  There's at least one dream boss that will net you a lot but is pretty hard to find on your own.  Shouldn't be that hard to get what you need without it though.  Not sure how much of a purist you want to be, just throwing that out there.

[Shale]

I've taken out three dream warriors and the dream version of the Ancient Basin boss. Found the Failed Champion (armored slug) but that thing is stupid.

[SnowFire]

Celeste

This is pretty fun.  Play it.

Final Fantasy XV: Assassin's Festival
Why am I even reviewing this?  I played it on literally the last day it's available, today.  Grumble grumble stupid limited-time content that happens in this age rather than physical media.  You better be downloading this right now if you want to play it.

https://kotaku.com/final-fantasy-xv-s-fascinating-assassin-s-creed-expansi-1822428475

Explains it better than me.  I think I had more fun with this DLC than I have had so far with vanilla FFXV.  It's really well done DLC!  And makes its own bizarre but internally consistent sense!  Good times.  (I don't think I'm gonna do all the optional puzzle hunt stuff at the end, though, beating up a giant robot after a cinematic chase sequence after a failed assassination attempt will have to do.)

[NotMiki]

I've taken out three dream warriors and the dream version of the Ancient Basin boss. Found the Failed Champion (armored slug) but that thing is stupid.

How about the dream version of Soul Master??  Ok there is also a dream version of Dung Defender, in a hidden room beneath his boss room that you need to dive into, under the big ol' acid machine, and if you do a bunch of prerequisites, a dream version of Zote, for which you need to have saved him in both locations, fought him in the colleseum (after you've rescued him in both locations he will appear as the final boss of the first trial) AND rescued Bretta.  Dream versions of Soul Master and Failed Champion def. feel like they're balanced for you to have nearly completely upgraded health and damage.