What Games are You Playing 2018?

[NotMiki]

Character balance is pretty interesting, but so far I’d say that Adol dominates with Force Edge and Hummel is second best thanks to range.. Ricotta’s the worst by far.

I’m already struggling on Nightmare with items (no farming) I can’t imagine Inferno with items. You pretty mich have to learn every boss perfectly and just chain guard/evade over and over with no mistakes?

There is a lot of flash evade/guard involved, for sure.  It hasn’t been as unforgiving as I expected, though.  Usually each character can survive 1-2 hits.  I’ve been grinding a little bit, but grinding in 8 is not the ezmode switch it was in past ys games, so it’s only a marginal difference.  I actually haven’t gotten that much use out of Hummel - I usually go for rushdown strats, and once I get it, for range use Sahad’s Magna Wave.  Totally agree re: force edge.  It is silly good.  Ricotta gets a couple moves late that put her on much better footing, but til then she’s a little underpowered considering how her best damage early moves leave her open to hits.

[Niu]

Character balance is pretty interesting, but so far I’d say that Adol dominates with Force Edge and Hummel is second best thanks to range.. Ricotta’s the worst by far.

Riccota stays the worst until after game.

She has this one amazing AOE move that can make after game content a piece if cake.
But she needs a lot of ATK topping to make that useful, which isn't happening until after game either.

In the main game it kinda goes like this.

Adol: Only if you need slash type damage.
Laxia: Lethal Raid is good againt almost everything.
Sahad: Best AOE
Hummel: If you need range or play safe in boss fight. Too bad they nerfed his counter. It was bonkers back in PSV.
Riccota: Useless in main game outside stealing.
Danna: Ultimately a better Adol due to her self buff.

[NotMiki]

I pretty much agree with that assessment.  I would say that Sahad is boss MVP for most of the game, and remains so in the aftergame.  Laxia is better in some specific fights, but Sahad's damage and range tend to win out.  I mostly favored Adol over Dana, but that's just personal preference based on their movesets (I never got tired of bump attacking dudes, even though it's tricky to do so without taking hits).

[074]

Funny thing, I actually almost gameovered yesterday. First thing Jenova did was cast Stop on Aeris. I only have one Restore materia. Guess who had it? Everyone was at 20% or so by the time the status finally wore off and I could heal the party. I guess not all of the plot bosses are completely toothless. Also, that Jenova boss theme, you guys. So good.

Jenova-BIRTH felt like probably the most competent plot boss in the game, to be honest?  Accurate Stop basically being the big killer here.  Also immunes Poison.

At least I can laugh when I fail at the parade sequence.

Honestly, the parade sequence is what I feel is better design for B-list minigames (with A-list being stuff like the bike chase, snowboarding, and Xenogears' gear battling minigame).  It's there, quick and easy, and the failure result is kind of amusing on its own with the infrastructure at Shinra being so incompetent that when someone says "send that soldier a bomb", they just send you a bomb to use, not a bomb to blow you up with.

Says a lot of how late President Shinra ran the company.

[Magic Fanatic]

I'm inclined to say things get a little fuzzier from Red XIII on, but we'll see).

I'm going to assume that pun was intentional.  But yeah, FF7's been a game I've been meaning to go back to as well, but there's just...  So many games to play as it is.  Breath of the Wild, FF14, 2.5 different Gacha games, and then trying to get back into DDR, plus Dissidia and getting better at fighters in general...  Yeah.

[DjinnAndTonic]

the infrastructure at Shinra being so incompetent that when someone says "send that soldier a bomb", they just send you a bomb to use, not a bomb to blow you up with.

Says a lot of how late President Shinra ran the company.

I only vaguely recall how this sequence played out, but just from how you describe it here, it makes me think:

President Shinra is a cool dude who knows what Soldiers like: bombs!

[Niu]

I pretty much agree with that assessment.  I would say that Sahad is boss MVP for most of the game, and remains so in the aftergame.

Riccota begins to dominate in after game once you start topping her ATK. You should have enough resource to do that 1/3 into the after game content.
Her bone tossing move actually has a infinite range. The hit box only disappear when it reaches the other side of the screen.
This actually becomes extremely valuable when you start tackling the after game siege fights.
She in literal sense, can cover the entire battlefield without moving a single step and can pretty much kill before getting killed. It stands out even more in higher difficulty where you don't want the enemies to get close int he first place.

BTW, who do you prefer when doing DPS rush down on bosses?

[NotMiki]

BTW, who do you prefer when doing DPS rush down on bosses?

Depends on the boss, but mostly Sahad.  If Raging Deluge can get all its hits in and is safe, it's no contest.  Laxia is good on fights you need to move around more with, especially since Lethal Raid gives you an opportunity to get out of trouble.  I imagine Dana is very good for this but I never got the hang of using her (outside her solo dungeons.)

Good to know about Ricotta's ultimate move - I never did that many of the aftergame raids but it's not hard to see how good that would be.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

DFFOO - There's not much content to do now that I completed Squall's event and mastered all of the current story chapters, but I guess that's okay. Lots of levels to get for my ever growing party (the weekly banner had Terra's Falchion at a boosted rate along with Rem and Penelo weapons... felt like I could squander the risk. Two pulls garnered me two more copies of Penelo's Orichalcum Dirk, which is now at three limit breaks, and two copies of Terra's weapon, which is a great result - I seriously needed a non-Hope magical damage dealer, and now that I got into the groove of her Meltdown/Meteor chants, she's a quite solid, if setup-heavy, magical tactical nuke). Also got two of Bartz's hat, which I won't complain about). So now I'm catching Terra up in crystal augmenting and levels - she's almost there, L36 and 25 crystal levels! Once every other main party PC reaches L39, I'll have Terra ferry up some low-level losers for extra ranks and gems. Feels like I can actually hoard for a long time after Vanille's banner, which should be up late in the month and comes with Yuna's AoE Esuna rod. If I land that, I can bench Hope as my Brave battery and use him only when I -really- need the damage resistances. Otherwise, my party's pretty well set for a good three-four months.

[Sierra]

I'm inclined to say things get a little fuzzier from Red XIII on, but we'll see).

I'm going to assume that pun was intentional.  But yeah, FF7's been a game I've been meaning to go back to as well, but there's just...  So many games to play as it is.  Breath of the Wild, FF14, 2.5 different Gacha games, and then trying to get back into DDR, plus Dissidia and getting better at fighters in general...  Yeah.

Never assume I made a pun on purpose! Also, part of the reason I personally stopped FFXIV was that it meant I wasn't playing much of anything else. Witness the backlog of notable 2017 games I'm just now getting to (and I still haven't touched Persona 5 or The Last Guardian).

FFVII: Chocobo racing makes my brain bleed and the blood comes out of my eyes.

But at least that's over with. Walked into Gongaga with Tifa and Aeris in the party without remembering this would be at all significant for either of them. Tifa lying to avoid admitting she knows Cloud is delusional and/or lying, pretty great. Aaaand almost gameover on the way out because some random plant thing sleeps the party, casts Bio 2 on 2/3 of them, and then uses like 99% gravity on all of them. Tifa woke up just in time to run away at 1 HP with the other two dead.

I didn't even remember what Seal Evil did but used it on the Turks just for the hell of it. "Wait, why aren't they attacking or moving? ...Ohhhh, right." Rude has the laziest walk-off animation, it's great.

I'm actually trying to keep everyone up-to-date on weapons and armor and it turns out this is hell on your pocketbook in FFVII (I'd always just picked Cloud + two people I liked and stuck with that the whole game).

EDIT: I'd forgotten about the triceratops-on-tank-treads-with-afterburners enemy and I have no idea how.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

EDIT: I'd forgotten about the triceratops-on-tank-treads-with-afterburners enemy and I have no idea how.

FF7 enemy designs are pretty glorious. Animistic Rube Goldberg-esque giant houses that drop mortars on your face. Skeleton ghost motorcycles. The aforementioned triceratops on tank treads. You have to wonder what kind of mutation Mako poisoning causes on random wildlife in that game.

[Grefter]

I don’t think FF7 wants you to only use 2 other characters the whole game, but it definitely feels like they want you to do sprints between shops with them by the economy.  Sometimes a weapon will disrupt that, but not heaps while money is still relevant.

Slay the Spire - I am bad at this and it makes me sad.  Roguelike deck builder.  Super early access but yeah keep an eye on it if those 2 words sounded interesting.

Nine Parchments - I am bad at this and it makes me happy.   Arcade style Twin stick shooter from the studio they put out Trine.  Have played 1, and 3 players.  3 is hectic, 4 would be bonkers.  You have some Magicka elements there but it is less zany spell combos and more focused on replaying and unlocking stuff and different spells.  I recommend it if that sounds cool at all.  Art style is the same as Trine, which is to say it is vibrant and really contrasting.  It makes some of the visuals to read sometimes, but it looks nice.

[Niu]

El Cid, you play GBF???

[Sierra]

Nope, I don't. Why?

[Niu]

Nope, I don't. Why?

Some one with an ID of El Cid using the English UI popped up into my raid yesterday. So I have to ask.

[Sierra]

Well, El Cid was a real (Spanish) dude and a Bard's Tale PC, so there's plenty of chance for someone else to have derived the same screenname from non-PSIV means.

[Cmdr_King]

Dragon Ball FighterZ- Finished all three story modes.

So the third mode is a bit miserable in a few ways, mostly because you spend SO MUCH of it without having three characters to field while enemies do the usual.  Compounded by 16 being kinda gimped in story mode's format.  Also the AI starts to try and I suck at these games but that's not nearly as at issue as having that extended wait to having character options.

Still, god damn this feels like Super's filler.  Which is the best part of Super.  It is goofy and self aware and just wants to let all the minor characters exist and breathe and BE, and I love it.  It has substantial amounts of Bulma and sometimes Whis shows up to sass at everyone (usually assisted by Bulma).  The "Waifu 21" meme was earned but I kinda love it because it's so easy to laugh at and I think we're supposed to kinda.

The ArcSys style is really good at making you feel like you can do STUFF even if you suck, and everything looks way fancier than it really is which really adds to that.

Real good, not that I need to tell anyone to play it exactly.  8/10 feels right in the moment, although I could see dinging it 1 for a few frustrations towards the end.

[Grefter]

Still, god damn this feels like Super's filler.  Which is the best part of Super.

🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

[DragonKnight Zero]

  For me, the hardest battles in Grandia 2 were Eye of Valmar, Valmer's Claw, and Melfice (tacking him at Lv 30 is scary.)  From that point on, resources shift in my favor as my team has enough MP to last a drawn out battle and enough SP so that members can use their techs more than twice on a full tank.  Actually cruised through the game without needing to retry battles and slacking on keeping my equipment up to date until Valmar's Eye walled me hard.  Everyone ran out of MP and I used most of my recovery items.  Still ended with one character dead and I probably only got past because the main body got stuck somehow.  Then Valmar's Claw comes by and nearly empties what HP recovery items I had left and managed to build back up.  One Healing Herb and one Holy Wound Salve were all I could lay claim to after that struggle.  Nothing quite as troublesome as that trio for the rest of the game other than Valmar Core (Devils at Raul Hills nonwithstanding)

  Got a really strong LUNAR vibe from the story and progression as I went through (not really shocking given the developer) that I ended up making lots of comparisons in my head.  Sometimes I refer to the real main antagonist as not-Zophar, the ugly forms even ooze blackness in nearly the same way.

  Just for amusement, I even made my own list of which LUNAR character the cast is most like.

Ryudo:    OK, I'm stumped here since I don't recall anyone in LUNAR being so jaded and cynical.  Has most in common with Jean I guess with the whole "running away from past and eventually confronting it over the course of the game" act going on.  Their exterior personas are radically different though.

Skye: Nall  The non-human sidekick  Mostly there to make wisecracks and stick with the male lead through anything.

Elena: Luna  Really talented singer, has feelings for male lead but mostly conceals them, jealous at the idea of him being with another.  Also good at being a healer and low on the offense stats in battle.  I feel they share the same sense of righteousness too.

Millenia: Ruby  Hot tempered, likes the male lead and is rather clingy about it, enjoys burning things.  She's got most of Ruby's personality traits included being soft-hearted towards children.  Though I doubt Ruby would dress that daringly in a human form.

Also, I find her battle quotes the most enjoyable by far.  "Deep fried goodness!"

Roan:   Mabye Mia, they both have that polite demeanor in nearly every circumstance.  Also pushed into leader roles at a young age and generally admired by the citizens of the communities they lead.

Mareg: Mel  In battle, this is the closest one would get to a playable Hell Mel.  Clobber stuff with an axe and leave the spell slinging to their teammates.  Both are parental figures as well and act respectably off the battlefield.

Tio: Lucia  Another easy comparison; both learn about human emotions through the course of their journey and their manner is very mechanical when they first appear.  It's off the beaten path (stay the night in St. Heim after Tio joins)  but Tio also gets a scene where another character experiences embarrassment because of her unfamiliarity with human conduct.  Nowhere on the level of the hot springs scene but feels in a similar spirit.

Valmar: Zophar  On a surface level, reminds me strongly of Zophar.  Looking back, all that talk about preventing the Day of Darkness ought to have been a big tipoff that he would appear just like in LUNAR 2.  The motivations seem more like a certain Magic Emperor.

Mostly playables right now, may or may not get around to others if I feel inspired to.

[SnowFire]

Celeste
Beaten.  Well, the Summit.  Haven't done the Epilogue or the B-Side alternate versions of the stages yet (and...  seems like the Epilogue is blocked to me at the moment anyway).  It was really good!  My only complaint *might* be that the stages can drag a bit if you're trying to be completionist - maybe a little too long - but whatever, that's your own fault, skip the Strawberry and move on.

Sir Alex had a good point in IRC that the aesthetics of the game being more acceptable than certain other hardcore platformers.  There was a post on Kotaku that expressed a vague but reasonable feeling - which I agree with - that while the game has some tough challenges, it wants you to succeed.  You can just move on if you're stuck, the game doesn't make fun of you with a bad rating for being slow or dying a lot, and in fact encourages you by noting the death count is a point of pride.  (Also, the characters being relatable and pretty cool, rather than lingerie models or whatever the heck Super Meat Boy is.)

130/175 Strawberries, although I checked the occasional online guide.

--
DK0, I dunno about Luna "concealing" any feelings of the male lead, since that couple is famously written like, well, an already-married couple from the very start.  She's a lot more assertive than early-game Elena, too, basically skipping any "get more resolve!" character arc.  (The others mostly look good, although I agree Ryudo doesn't really have any close comparisons.  Wouldn't even attempt to use Jean.  Maybe KYLE but there's a lot of differences there too.)

[Sierra]

FFVII: Forgot to wonder aloud how no one in the party doesn't immediately suspect Cait Sith when they start talking about a Shinra spy in the group. Dude who forced his way into the party for no reason whatsoever and is the only person we haven't known for a while with an obvious reason to hate Shinra? Who else is it gonna be, guys? (Ignoring Yuffie because she's optional, dialogue would be the same even if she wasn't there.)

Cosmo Canyon -> Nibelheim -> Rocket Town. Cid + Shera is the most openly abusive relationship I've seen in a game. Not sure what you were going for there, Square. That Cid themesong, though. I was so spaced out when I played this part last night that I might've convinced myself I dreamed Palmer getting hit by a truck out of nowhere if I hadn't played this game before. Who puts lard in their tea, anyway? I'm also unsure what the logic was in no one telling Red XIII what happened to his dad for like years (or even decades, given how old he is). How is that not gonna come up? Why deliberately hide it instead of like dedicating a statue to the town's savior? (Oh wait.) I dunno, maybe all that stuff happened right before Shinra grabbed Nanaki so no one had time, but it doesn't read that way. That whole backstory just feels so perfunctory.

Wutai is the armpit of the game. Taking away materia reduces FFVII to Hold X: the Game. Also I forget Yuffie's last couple hiding spots and spend way too much time running back and forth all over town. Then the boss's Aero 3 OHKOs people and it's 2AM so I just ragequit for the night.

[Grefter]

Aura is totes doable after you unlock the Tiny Bronco, but I am pretty sure they meant for you to do it after the Temple of Ancients.  A couple of levels go a long way and you have some of the 0 slot weapons.  It is also easy to hit trying to find the shallow water while circumnavigating the world.

Also you didn’t notice Cid was that bad?  There is a reason I never liked him and never really use him.

[Ranmilia]

Celeste
while the game has some tough challenges, it wants you to succeed.

"You can do this" is the theme of the game, from start to finish.  Great stuff.

[NotMiki]

Celeste: completed the main game. great platformer, basically agree w/ SF and Alex. 154/175 strawberries, and beat the stage 1-3 b-sides. will definitely be going back to do the epilogue and other b-sides.  Some of the specifics of how it goes about communicating its life affirming message seemed a bit off to me, but that's looking at some pretty small trees in a great big forest. I liked it a lot. it's very pretty. the music is good, occasionally great (stage 2 in particular). It has an extremely cool boss fight.

[Tide]

Cid: My last playthrough of FF7 was helping Tonfa test TF7. When I got to the marsh, RICHARD and Laggy peer pressured me to ford the it. I think there was a good 15 minutes spent trying to figure out how to cross it without getting caught. Alternatively, I think they were having too much fun watching me wipe repeatedly. You don't need the Chocolure materia at all - the entire thing feels honestly a little clunky.

For me, the hardest battles in Grandia 2 were Eye of Valmar, Valmer's Claw, and Melfice (tacking him at Lv 30 is scary.)

The only way I can really have fun with Grandia 2 anymore is when I purposely hamstring myself. Fighting him at level 25 with very limited coins makes the most difficult fights obvious (and the easiest fights also very obvious). Eye = Core >>> Melfice by far.