What Games are You Playing 2018?

[Luther Lansfeld]

Octopath Traveller- Now that I have finished the chapters and the credits have rolled, time to tackle the ‘aftergame’. I fought the four bosses to get the aftergame jobs, starting with Runelord. Runelord’s pretty tough, I had one reset before coming back and adjusting my strategy and all that. Multi-target(MT) Rehabilitate FTW. Archmage wasn’t too bad, especially with reflect cheese. Warmaster was a hilarious fight, I used the cheesy cheesy physical blocking with Tressa and was all like ::smugface:: and then the boss used MT six hit, 2HKO damage (which you could break her out of, but she had 12 shield). I laughed my ass off as I gawked in horror at my two people with 4 block died, but thankfully had 2 people with 8 shots of blocking, so I didn’t die horribly. Starseer wasn’t too bad.

Okay, so what do we have to do now to utilize these nifty new jobs? Apparently there are four sidequests required to open up some secret final conflict with the true villain, so I do those and open up the sidequest called “A Journey’s End”, which is a quest that explains how the eight stories fit together and you end up fighting the great evil.

I think the point seems to be that the eight Chapter 4s are supposed to be a satisfying conclusion to each story (or an attempt at one, as Tressa’s path shows. That Kotaku review that Snowfire mentioned in his first post is bonkers, man.), but if you really want to fight a big bad boss, this sequence is here. I don’t think anyone should feel like this is required to have really beaten the game. (It even gives you rewards like a regular ol’ sidequest; a 0 encounters accessory and 100k gold.) So there’s a boss rush of bosses from each path (not necessarily the final boss, but some important boss in the person’s quest). It’s a nice way to get to know your new skillsets and is not too challenging, closer to a victory lap than a true challenge. Each of these bosses opens up the a diary entry from someone that shows the role each character’s quest played into the metaplot of the game. Plots below.

Lyblac is a woman who has been, for hundreds of years, orchestrating the revival of the dark god Galdera. She is basically doing harm behind the scenes throughout the whole game and way beyond.

-She convinces Mattias that he should become the Savior, representing Galdera, after he has a crisis of faith. This happened at least 100 years ago according to his diary entries.

-Graham Crossford, who is mentioned in both Tressa and Alfin’s path, is part of the family with the dark god’s blood inside of him. Graham, with some shades of Yuri Hyuga/Lianna, decides to listen to Lyblac and try to revive his wife from the dead. He is turned into Redeye and roams the land, causing destruction in his wake. There are three of the entries about this.

-We learn that Werner and Simeon are allies who plotted the downfall of Hornburg together, at Lyblac’s behest. Werner expresses deep regret for allowing himself to be caught in her schemes and allowing her to perform the great evil that she has done. It sounds like Simeon is also older than he lets on, maybe around the same age as Mattias. It is implied that Werner and the Obsidians were the ones who destroyed Erhardt’s city.

-Primrose’s dad was investigating into what Lyblac was doing and knew too much about the Gate of Finis, which is why he was assassinated by the Obsidians.

-Cordelia’s parents were assassinated by some group involved with Lyblac as well, because they were the protectors of the Dragonstones had something to do with containing the power of Galdera.

Anyway, after finding out all of that plot (which was quite enjoyable), I take on Galdera! I am around level 54-55 with all of my characters. And you have to use all of the characters to win because there is two phases of the fight that fight half of your team! OH MY GOD WHAT JUST HAPPENED? I just get totally plastered by Galdera, even with all of the cheesy bullshit and shenanigans from the new classes. He is clearly much closer to a superboss than he is to a regular boss, so I get decked out to beat him again. Unfortunately, you have to fight the eight bosses again to fight him again, but I set up my team to shred them in under five minutes each, so it wasn’t too bad.

Anyway, I decide to do the following things:

-get the best equipment for each type of weapon
-pick up some swag armor
-pick up Warmaster’s divine skill, MT physical damage of each different physical type, which is amazing vs. the first form
-carefully and meticulously do team setup to be able to deal with all of Galdera’s total bullshit

Gameplay spoilers for the superboss motherfucker follow in slightly small text:

Each of the teams needs a dedicated damage dealer, which in this game tends to be the elemental mages, so Cyrus will obviously play that role. Each team needs a healer with Aelferic’s Auspices, which obviously Ophilia is already set up for. The other two characters fulfill supporting roles.

First team setup ended up as follows:
Primrose: Dancer/Sorcerer, with her support skills dedicated to bringing unholy death to all who stood before her.
Olberic: Warrior/Cleric, mostly a healer/reflect buffer who sometimes throws Aelferic’s Auspice at Primrose and sometimes Brand’s Thunder when there’s nothing else more urgent (which there usually is). He had physical buffing, Patience, and break damage limit.
H’aanit: Hunter/Warmaster, who did a lot of Leghold Traps and Warmaster limits (which does 6 hits of 5000-6000 damage of every single physical element), with some item use thrown in and anything weak to bows gets instantly wrecked of course. Her support abilities emphasized physical damage, as well as Patience which is an amazing skill that gives you an extra turn at the end of the round 25% of the time.
Alfyn: Apothacary/Starseer, who mostly used Concoct to heal status/SP/BP/HP, but sometimes used the Starseer BP gain boost if Primrose gave him the MT version.

Everyone but H’aanit had Saving Grace, which is a very interesting skill. It allows you to go over your max HP, but only with one stroke of healing, so if you healed for damage and went 20 over max, then too bad, you can’t gain more. But since Alfyn has 9999 healing on Concoct… you can get 9999 HP. Which, to be honest, doesn’t last as long as you might think in this fight…

That team fought the first boss, who emphasizes killing several enemies at the same time and blasting the boss before he can revive those enemies (who protect him from damage grumble grumble). As you can tell, I am set up for MT blasting and support. Dispel is a huge bitch and I’m not sure if it is triggered by having too many buffs or it is just rare and random, but I only saw it twice out of 50-60 turns. Dispel is a nightmare because it removes reflect, Aelferic’s Auspice, BP boost, defense/evade/speed/elemental defense buff from Starseer and you pretty much have to start over on your buffing game. His third set of enemies that he summons are all weak to one element, but every time you hit them, it cycles through which one it hits. So line them up and watch them burn. He has 500,000 HP himself but you really have to do about double of that in damage to actually kill him. This fight is monstrous and I was on the edge of my seat even with extra levels and equipment. After the fight, I drank some tea, went for a walk, and relaxed before taking on form 2 (which I had not seen yet but was given one or two hints for to make it a little less painful).

Second team setup ended up as follows:
Cyrus: Scholar/Hunter, with his supporting skills dedicated to bringing unholy death to all who stood before him. The fight ended up suiting Cyrus better than the other one would have, because 3/4 enemies were weak to the elements he has, and the fourth was weak to arrows. Being an enemy weak to arrows against a party Hunter is a bad time in Octopath.
Ophilia: Cleric/Dancer, see Olberic with even more buffing. Some physical damage because of Runelord’s bullshit (Runelord’s abilities revolve around using a physical and having an added magic damage effect on it, so in practice, the mages using physicals are actually the best at it, rather than the physical characters. Ophilia was doing 9999 damage with the added damage quite frequently.).
Tressa: Merchant/Runelord. So Merchant/Runelord has quite an abusive setup. Runelord has an ability that makes anything that is self-targetting MT instead, which is amazing for Sidestep, which allows you to take one physical hit. So I tried to keep up 4-6 physical blocking hits at any given time because one of the parts spams horrific MT physical damage, and the others sometimes use physicals too. Runelord also has the ability to use that move to buff their allies’ physicals to inflict whatever element of magic damage you want. I ended up using Light primarily because one of the parts is weak to light. This ended up generating a ton of extra damage, especially when the party was silenced and the mages didn’t have much else to do besides physicals that do like 10 damage (that also inflict 9999 light damage lololol). I gave her the support skill that makes her buffs last longer, as well as the elemental attack/def buffing one that Runelord itself has.
Therion: Thief/Apothecary.  Mostly set up to do physical damage, but in practice mostly was the item bot and got extra turns due to Patience. Sometimes he threw in a Aeber’s Reckoning or a Shackle Foe when I was dispelled, but overall he played a very supporting itembot role. Interesting, because Thief is quite good for the rest of the game, but didn’t seem as suited for this boss.

Saving Grace once again was on everyone but Tressa, who ended up getting crit and one-hit killed by the boss the turn after it got rid of my buffs.

The second boss was the opposite; instead of rewarding killing all of the parts at once, it instead wanted you to kill one at a time, while of course flinging death in a bottle at you because Galdera is evil. Reflect/Sidestep were amazing tools in my cheaty strat, dispel and MT high 2HKO damage were the tools of his choice. One of the parts was weak to bows, so Cyrus shot him with arrows for like 21 damage but took 3 shield from him. (I love that my mage spent half the fight flinging arrows for 21 damage and that is a legit strat!) One of the support-role parts spent a lot of its time healing the other parts’ shields, which was amazing because that meant she wasn’t buffing the hell out of her allies. The other two parts… one did massive MT magic and  one did massive MT physical damage. Once you gun down one of the parts, the rest isn’t so bad, even if the damage scale keeps rising. I never saw what the physical part did when he was alone, but I’m sure it would have been horrifying. Sidestep is godlike. After the three parts die, you can finally beat on the core of Galdera, which is a victory lap compared to the rest of the fight. At least, if the victory lap was only as hard as the hardest boss in the average RPG. ;_;

The four advanced jobs were, unsurprisingly, fairly helpful here, especially Sorcerer (who just spammed MT magic) and Runelord (who generated mad offense and breaking via the magic added to physicals). Warmaster is pretty much exclusively useful for their Divine Skill and their Physical Att/def passive and nothing else; their skillset sucks. Starseer is the weirdest class, with a couple of interesting buffs that are quite good after the MT buff (BP gain doubling, as well as a physical/elemental defense buff that also buffs speed and evasion). I would say that Starseer was the least useful of the four, as you might have noticed in my writeup. I used all of the other skillsets, but not Starseer’s as much. I will say that Sorcerer’s Divine Skill is hilariously bad. It is actually just straight up worse than their passives. WTF.


</gameplay spoilers>

So overall, I think the game really improves as it goes, often rounding on nice stories about its characters with some attempt at themes and ideas. I liked that the game didn’t have a generic RPG main character as one of its protagonists. Alfyn is the closest but he really feels different than a normal RPG main with a cute girl and a sword and all that. Primrose is my favorite main; she feels a bit like an Asellus variant, but even darker. The rest of them vary from better than expected (Therion) to generically likeable (Olberic, H’aanit), to adorable (Ophilia, Tressa), to hilarious and campy (Cyrus). I actually managed to find something positive in each of the eight main characters, which I can’t say for all games of this type (Hi Lute). More importantly, though, I think the game hits its gameplay stride later in the game, especially if you stay within the recommended levels. Evasive Maneuvers is a must for dungeon and overworld travelling and using that skill improved my experience, I think.

I’m not sure how I feel about the overarching boss being an optional superboss. In some ways I wish that the ties between the plots had been a part of the maingame itself more explicitly, but on the other hand, I think that a brutally hard boss as the final boss would have been quite rude, and it’s nice to have the big bad actually be a badass instead of a pansy (ala BD, FFT, many other things). The job system is interesting. You have characters who are ‘stuck’ in a base job but are allowed to change into one other job. So Ophilia, who is a Cleric, can be one of the other seven jobs. I made her a Dancer because buffing and healing are a good complement to each other. However, you cannot have another Dancer besides the one person who starts with it (Primrose) and the one extra person (Ophilia, in my case). The advanced jobs are the same, meaning you can only have one character in each of them. This means that the final boss setup is a little trickier than it would be otherwise. I definitely would have doubled on on Sorcerer at the very least. I really like how having one base job fixed makes the characters feels unique rather than identical to each other like FF5/BD/etc.

Otherwise, I like the art, the music, and the general feel of the world. The setting work is not perfect but it’s alright. Better than SaGa Frontier on that front, which the game clearly draws from pretty heavily. It’s kind of a SaGa/BD/XS2 (more the former two than the latter, there’s just some gameplay similarities between XS2 and it). At the end of Chapter 2 I was relatively less enamored with the game, but I think it hits its stride late (although yes, becoming overlevelled and grabbing the advanced jobs before Chapter 4 makes the game a lot easier. The Advanced jobs have a higher level requirement than the Chapter 4s, though, which is what I used as my own barometer for what to do in the game.

I remember telling people at the beginning that I thought the game did nothing that was exceptional but was good at everything. I think the game grows into its themes plotwise and its gameplay/boss design both generally improve with time, which makes me re-evaluate that initial kneejerk. I’m not sure exactly on a score for the game, but I think it sits somewhere in that high 8 range. Appropriate, for Octopath. Final clock was 66 hours.

[hinode]

Just played Donkey Kong Land 3 on a whim, beat everything except for the time attacks in 3 days here. I did a blind run of every stage first, then went back with a map to hunt down secrets I missed. Dumping some scattered thoughts on it here:

* On balance, the game's level design is pretty solid, which is its biggest overall strength as a game. I think the Gameboy's low tech actually worked out well here, in that it kept Rare from getting too gimmicky, especially compared to DKC3. For example, Ellie the Elephant no longer runs in a panic when she sees the generic rat enemy, which means there's no entire stage designed around a frightened Ellie charging through at high speed. There's also no direction-changing water, no rocket stage, etc. Aside from the two bodsled stages (which are pretty awfull, for reasons to be discussed later), stage gimmicks are fairly mild and are pretty integrated with the core platforming.

* Conversely, the game really suffers from sprites being too big relative to the Gameboy's tiny screen, which means massive visibility issues all game long. Running is not safe unless you're backtracking or have memorized a stage beforehand, which is a real bummer for a platformer. Getting lost is really easy in some of the really big stages (especially underwater ones), the camera not panning properly is your biggest danger in several boss fights, and any situation where you have to go downwards is a bit scary if you don't have a map open nearby. Oh, and the two aforementioned bobsled stages (this game's minekart equivalent) are by far the worst in the game due to how little visibility you have on what's coming ahead. On balance, these camera/visibility issues keep the game from being truly good, I'd say it's just okay on balance.

* On the upside, at least they fixed the issue from DKL1 where sometimes the camera won't scroll down properly so the game thinks you fell down a bottomless pit even though there's plenty of solid ground beneath the camera. That is the single biggest piece of bullshit that I have ever experienced in any commercially released platformer, which is saying alot considering I've gone through Yoshi's Island DS.

* On average, I found about 1/2 bonus stages and most of the DK coins when going through blind. Most of the bonus stages are located in reasonable locations provided you are patient enough to deal with the game's limited, but there were a couple of invisible barrels that I would never find in a million years without a guide or map.

* The game's controls felt a bit slippery to me, though I got used to them pretty quickly. Rare seemingly compensated for this by being unusually generous with hitboxes for the player. It felt like the game would let me bounce off any enemy as long as I wasn't coming from right below it, and the game was super lenient with registering barrel hits when you're holding one. This was most obvious in the second K. Rool fight, where Kiddy Kong can hold a barrel right in front of him and it will hit K Rool as he flies above you, even though he won't damage you during that phase. At least Dixie holds barrels up over her head, so that makes sense.

* Squaks was consistently the easiest animal buddy to use, in large part because they never put him in any hard stages (like all bramble or something). Squitter was the hardest, I had to remap the Select button on the emulator to create a web platforms faster.

Lastly, I actually played the Japan-only GBC version with a fan translation patch. The coloring is kinda lazy and uglyish looking, but the overall visibility improvements are definately worth it. It also had a certain novelty value that helped convince me to give this game a shot.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Wind Waker: Link Ayesha does whatever it takes to rescue sister

  Back at the forsaken fortress again.  The idea is to use the bomb cannon to bust in though in this case a stray shot from the enemies broke down the barrier first.  Boss fight at the start.  It's been so long since I've touched a commercial Zelda game that I didn't catch on to the gimmick until the game nudges me.  Not totally necessary here as the boss sometimes teleports at ground level but does make things faster.  I knock out the searchlights out of habit.  Rising water sequence feels tense but it forgiving in practice since the water is polite enough to wait for me to look for grapple points.
  It is satisfying to knock off the demon bird that kidnapped all the girls.  Huge plot dump follows.  I was aware of a big spoiler already but the game still has good enough presentation about it.  The game stops hand-holding at this point and it takes more work to seek out clues to further progression.  Filling out the Sea Chart is something I'd do anyways so I'm able to piece together where I need to go from Fishman hints.

  So there are two thingies that will let reach the temples.  To get them requires another set of items.  I have the location but not the means to reach them.  This could become frustrating but not very long after, I pick a fight that gains me the needed mode of transport.  Volcano takes a few tries due to not figuring out how to kill a key enemy.  I had been to ice island earlier and got turned into a popsicle after taking two steps (was a hilarious sight) but now that I'm back with fire arrows, got through with much less trouble.  I do some exploring with new toys in hand.  Got a surprise game over from a giant pig.  Which was named after the lead character which makes it even more silly.  Accidentally hit it when trying to shake off spiky balls sticking to me and didn't pay attention to how much damage it was doing.

  Enter both temples.  Game makes it appear like I could take them in either order (postscript, you can't) but the Earth temple instrument is the one I remember seeing earlier in my travels so go there first.  Filled up another heart container giving a whole 9 hearts for the next dungeon.  I still have only one bottle too.

[Niu]

To Ciato: I noticed what you did wrong the last boss form too. You didn't use blind. If you do, you only need to up keep the magic reflect, which can save you a lot of turns. The second thing you did wrong is you should try to break as many parts as possible before focusing on taking down the parts. Spam your BP drug as much as you like, this is the end anyway. The spam Warbringer's divine skill and have H'aanit toss out her super wolf pet back to back. The parts should all be stunned by turn three. Then just kill them one by one by Runelord's elemental damage. 15000+ per hit is totally doable if you tweaked your elemental offense.

Oh BTW, Simeon and Werner are not allies. Simeon and Mattias are. They both received ageless body from Lyblac and established the Obisidian together. There also couple of side quests that explores Simeon's past.
Also, the Crossford Family is the descendant of the sorcerer who sealed the Gate of Finis in the past. That's how they have Galdera's essense in them.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem Fates Conquest - Doing a Sword Only challenge. Playing on Hard Classic because Lunatic does not need any sort of challenge layered on top of it.

Rules are simple, I can't use any weapons except swords. Staves don't count as weapons for this; I can still use those (although sadly there's no sword-and-staff class except Hoshido Noble which isn't available in Conquest).

Nohr (C1): Corrin is +mag -lck (For Levin Sword), Swordmaster talent. Anyway this is sword!Corrin vs Xander, proceeds as normal.

Gift of Ganglari (C2): Stall point. Corrin solo isn't reasonable here when you're quickly surrounded and outnumbered, so I play it normally.

Journey Begins (C3): On the other hand I do manage to do this one with only Corrin doing combat, with Jakob to provide staves and Gentilhomme while Gunter provides a pairup with his great passive boost. The boss is a pain but not too eventful otherwise. At one point Jakob is attacked and counters (you can't actually unequip weapons this early!) but it wasn't relevant to the progress of the battle (Corrin could have survived the same hit and countered for more).

Hoshido (C4): Another mostly-Corrin solo, though the guests do work naturally, can't really prevent that. Generally I use a Kaze pairup since it allows doubles against the slower faceless, I do switch to RInkah for the faster ones who need to be taken carefully because of Seal Defence.

Mother (C5): Well you literally get no sword-users here. I treat it as a dragonbreath solo. Not too different from normal tbh, Kaze/Rinkah don't add much here.

Embrace the Dark (C6): This actually took a few tries! Hinoka/Takumi have a pairup which can one-round Jakob and Elise and two-round Corrin (even if paired up with Jakob). Bait Takumi turn 1, hope he misses, hit him while keeping everyone else out of range, which leaves the choice of Hinoka eating a counter or Takumi being 2HKOed next turn. I see the former sadly but with both one hit from death I'm able to retreat, get healed, and look for an opportunity to finish one of them later. Meanwhile Xander evades Ryoma and murders both Sakura and Yukimura like the champion of justice he is.

A Dragon's Decree (C7): In this chapter, we recruit Silas, our second sword-user. Yay! Corrin and Jakob pairup takes out the west, Silas with Elise takes out the south, Effie later pairs up with Silas. Not much to say, retreating to deal with the north lest Arthur/Effie be attacked is a little hairy but not too bad.

At this point we can class change someone to get another sword-user. My initial thought is Jakob since Paladin Jakob is great but I realise I don't want to lose a staff-user. So instead the choices are Arthur or Odin. I decide to go with Odin because of his superior speed and not being crit-bait.

Cold Reception (C8): Probably the hardest chapter so far? Only three attackers and I can't counter the mages at all, and both they and the axe-users can hit really hard (WTA be damned in the case of the axes). To make matters worse you have to beeline to the west to save at least three villages and I really want that 10k gold. I mix in some attack stance here so Silas and Corrin can OHKO mages without being countered, though also use some pairups of course too. Silas has the job of running from out of Flora's freeze range to melee her and survive so that she doesn't mess me up.

Another Trial (C9): Still the same three attackers but it's an easy enough map to take out on my own terms. Azura activates the dragon vein, Silas with Effie pairup can endure lots of punishment and Corrin can ORKO spearmen so they don't get to proc Seal Defence. The boss being a spearman on a throne is a pain but whatever, he doesn't move.

Unhappy Reunion (C10): Our lord and saviour Camilla joins, immediately takes the Heart Seal from the previous map and transforms into a dark knight, proceeds to ruin everyone who isn't a boss with a bronze sword. Selena also joins; we're up to five attackers! Otherwise uh yeah this fight is hard! Jakob and Corrin take the west house, with Corrin killing some oni savages as they retreat. Odin (+Arthur) takes the east; with a forged bronze sword and Arthur pairup, Odin has enough oomph to ORKO the archers until the pairup shows up late in the battle. Everyone else takes the south, Selena (+Beruka) and Silas (+Effie) doing the main work with support from Azura's dances and Elise's healing. Niles shoots the ballista a couple times before his position becomes too dangerous and then pairs up with Camilla, while Nyx mans the fire orb for quite a while (I decide these don't count as weapons, fight me). Once the water goes away things get hairy but I'm able to control the key targets (pegasus knights are the worst) and retreat some. Final turn includes some gems like Hinata being one square away from reaching the defend zone and everyone else needing to run from the Oboro death zone which includes an oni pairup and an archer pairup among more (though I do kill Oboro before this). I miss the southeast house with its dracoshield but oh well.

Rainbow Sage (C11): So there's a room with four archers with Counter. I can't counter them and they wreck me. Fortunately we can skip that! Rinkah's room is easy (Selena ORKOs all the oni), Azama's room is fine aside from Azama (bait the mages with Niles/Elise, then sweep in and KO them all, not actually hard). Azama himself deals 1.5x damage back against melee attackers, ouch! Have to be careful, I use Silas who can't double doing 14 damage (21 to his own 24 HP). Fortunately his hex misses. The myrm room actually isn't too bad, I have several people who can tank and hit back hard. Kaze's room I can tank through by taking the back entrance, grabbing the treasure. Hinoka's a pain with her backup healer but the square in front of her is pretty safe, and dual guards buy me some free hits to overwhelm her.


Shadow Hearts 3 - Beat Purgatory and Envious Jealousy. Purgatory's a fun dungeon and I wish you didn't have to jump through infinity+1 hoops to unlock it, by the end the randoms obviously hit super hard but it's SH3 and you should one-round most of 'em before this becomes an issue. Bosses aren't too notable until the final. Envious Jealousy itself is... honestly just a less fun version of Lady, dangerous and requires you to be on top of your game but Lost Progress does limit some strategy possibilities and the fight is mostly just "don't let the boss get a stock gauge". Spirit Ward (banish one PC) for the last stretch of the fight is a fun if dickish trick though.

[Tide]

Shadow Hearts 3 - Beat Purgatory and Envious Jealousy. Purgatory's a fun dungeon and I wish you didn't have to jump through infinity+1 hoops to unlock it, by the end the randoms obviously hit super hard but it's SH3 and you should one-round most of 'em before this becomes an issue. Bosses aren't too notable until the final. Envious Jealousy itself is... honestly just a less fun version of Lady, dangerous and requires you to be on top of your game but Lost Progress does limit some strategy possibilities and the fight is mostly just "don't let the boss get a stock gauge". Spirit Ward (banish one PC) for the last stretch of the fight is a fun if dickish trick though.

He's actually less impressive than Lady because he can be killed before it does anything. This isn't possible against Lady because in that fight, the one counters with Lost Progress (Lady herself) is invulnerable. For Envious Jealously, you can do a 3 person combo by hitting it first, then comboing to an Entrance user, then popping off a Magic Mind's Eye Spell from Slim Mask Hilda to do about 6600 damage. With Stellar Graph boosts + Warlock + Weakness, it might do more, but either way, it's a 2HKO. I was actually disappointed that the super boss of the game is worse than the final boss. But I think that's more of a testament to how cool the Lady fight is.

[SnowFire]

Octopath Traveller
Finished up all the C3s.  The early C3s, when rushed, were actually a bit dangerous, especially if you didn't realize how busted Thief's Atk debuff was (as Elf & Ciato can attest, it takes Alfyn's C3 boss from "nearly MT OHKO" to halve its damage, which makes it way easier to keep up with).  The later C3 bosses tended to get curbstomped, especially Cyrus & Primrose's.  Cyrus's boss, having a single action and wasting it to mildly buff his too-low shield count?  Yeah, you aren't really seeing turns, are you.

Cosmic Star Heroine
Pretty close to the end, I assume.  Finished the main plot on Nuluup.  Boss in the facility was kinda disappointing and bad for how plotty he is, and didn't really line up with how he was hyped as a fighter either.  Time for some more sidequesting I guess.

---

Story time!  Okay this arguably might be better for the bloggier Good Morning thread, but whatever, it's games related, and I get to make fun of myself.  So I was in Japan recently on vacation, and there was a Yoshitaka Amano / Final Fantasy exhibit running in Ikebukuro around the time I was in Tokyo, so why not visit?  ( http://amano-exhibition.jp/ ).  Anyway, it was pretty cool.  I suspect y'all have seen the "official"er parts of Amano's artwork, but the exhibit included some of the more obscure stuff, like his paintings of various monsters & summons, as well as some character work that he basically did for fun for games he wasn't involved with - e.g. FF7, FF8 (blonde Squall dancing with blonde Rinoa is weird). 

Here are some of the Amano exhibit pictures:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/LcMgYnQcEu4cwbzd6

Also, there were also J-pop idol singers at the attached mall where the exhibit happened, and we all know from recent anime & video games they idol singers are weirdly influential in saving the world from monsters & shit.  In America I'd think a band playing the mall circuit was slummin' it up, but since this was clearly a well-attended healthy mall, I guess it was fine?  They certainly had hordes of people lined up watching 'em.  Also a completely insane no-photos policy, which was being obviously ignored by all present; who makes these policies?  Clearly they  should get fired and replaced with the reverse party, you MUST take photos and post them on social media or some such.

Anyway, after leaving the Sunshine City mall, there's a store right across the street with a huge Trails of Cold Steel IV banner / sign.  Cool, I think, more geeky stores, let's have a look.  (I'd already grabbed earlier the Falcom free fan magazines 4 & 5, complete with a free tote bag...  I have no idea how they're gonna make that many characters work, though.)  First store: huh, that's weird, all the people in here are women.  And...  cosplay materials?  A cafe?  Is this a BUTLER cafe or something?  Okay, next store.  This store has...   huh, everybody here is a girl, too.  And that is quite the collection of Yaoi soundtracks and manga and otome games and...  okay I see what's going on here.  Next store!  Okay, the third store in the line also clearly had a certain audience in mind (Tales of Vesperia Yuri body pillow?), but also had lots of other interesting collectibles, so worth grabbing some stuff, even if it's largely cheap buttons & keyrings & the like.  The main oddity was that the prices were really blatantly trying to squeeze fans of character XYZ.  It wasn't like they printed more copies of the more popular characters so all the prices were about the same; no, it was more like 40 bucks if you want Chrom, 20 bucks if you want (Male) Robin, and 4 bucks if you want Miriel.  (Proof: https://photos.app.goo.gl/JZiWPYLufLKuUho68  )  Well, SnowFire smells a market opprotuntity here.  Who needs your stupid 20 dollar Miles Edgeworths when Larry Butz is literally like a 1.20.  I can fuse together like 15 Larrys into some hideous combined monstrosity that's way stronger than 1 lousy Edgeworth and still be ahead on price.  Much more efficient that way.  (Oddly enough, P5 Makoto was cheaper than expected too...  like 4 dollars or so?  Joker was the big ticket item in the P5 section.)

I check up online afterward, and sure enough, I was apparently investigating "Otome Road." ( https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3038.html )  Well then, that was educational.

[Dhyerwolf]

Unfortunately, CSH bosses tend to be underwhelming. Needed more HP to deal with the damage bursts.

[SnowFire]

Said boss -Director Steele - had okay HP I thought, just he also had uninspiring damage and no good tricks.  He summons Shadows, but you can just flat ignore them because they don't really inflict damage until they style up, which takes a nice long time wherein you can pummel him in his face.  Also, shouldn't he be some evil spin on Chahn if he's a Gunmancer?

I'm half-tempted to reload my save and try the fight on Super-Spy now, it seems like an unusually doable fight without having to worry about RNG too much.  Just make sure you nail him with Vulnerable at the right times I guess.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I've written about it before, but I'm of the opinion that CSH's battle system, while cool, results in a paradigm where what the enemy does barely matters. Your strategy is all about a race to do damage needed to win the fight as quickly as possible, and enemies do very little to disrupt you or make you adjust your strategy. Even KOing someone (which doesn't happen that often given the relatively low scale of enemy damage to compensate for the fact that your healing is weak) has very little effect, since unless it happens before you hit 50 style, you even get a one turn warning before you actually die!

I basically can't remember what any bosses in the game could do at this point.

[Dhyerwolf]

I agree with that. The offensive side of the game is very fun, but the defensive side needed a lot of work. I do seem to remember that it did matter a few times around midgame, but got irrelevant once you had enough offensive tools.

Giving bosses more HP would just really allow them to get style up more to make them dangerous at the end. I felt like endgame boss HP wasn't high enough to worry about busting out the most nasty offensive tricks based on having max style+Burst+buffs.

[SnowFire]

Also, for all that this is supposed to be based off of like Phantasy Star, it sure seems that Zeboyd accidentally made Mass Effect 1 instead with where they're taking the villain.  Super badass galactic agent gets infected by mind-control offscreen evil forces, runs around doing Bad Stuff, new up-and-comer agent in the same organization has to take him out?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Super Mario Odyssey - Beat this. On the whole I stand by my initial assessment, which is to say that it doesn't really do the things well that I want to do Mario well. If you want to explore an environment and discover treasure behind every second corner, and periodically actually have to demonstrate some platforming skill to get it, I guess it's your game, but personally, I would really have prefered they just focused on the platforming. The lategame improves a bit; I liked the Luncheon World reasonably well (especially the platforming in its athletics sideroom) and final Bowser is a pretty cool fight, but overall not enough to budge my overall feelings on the game.

So in the ending there's this scene where Peach seems to express some disgust with the way Bowser and Mario fight over her. That's kinda cute, athough it doesn't make up for how she's even more directly damselfied/objectified than normal (you are trying to save her from a forced marraige to Bowser) and the fact that your hat is now motivated by saving his own explicitly female, also captured hat. Great.

5/10


Shadow Hearts 3 - Beat!

So despite being Level 55-60 and coming off my win over the supposed superboss, I actually lost to Lady. I didn't realize that you can't knock the Malice Umbral down, banked on a Gale Crest -> Rock Crest combo connecting, watched it miss and break my combo, then promptly got comboed in my face and died. Wow.

It's obviously a much easier fight with all the sidequests done (like, you can just tank the Entrance Calamity Gaze if you're at full health) but still retains a lot of the teeth and good design it always has. Certainly one of the best final bosses in an RPG anyway.

Replay was fun, just a generally solid gameplay game. Watched all the scenes again. Not a great story game overall but it certainly has moments. Johnny is endearing, Shania is an interesting concept (though nowhere near as good as she should be in execution, sadly), most scenes about the villains and/or Johnny's backstory are pretty attention-grabbing.

[NotMiki]

I've written about it before, but I'm of the opinion that CSH's battle system, while cool, results in a paradigm where what the enemy does barely matters.

I'll be interested to hear tour thoughts on Berseria down the road

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Octopath Traveller- Tons of great stuff

You know, I'll echo the sentiments from your posts. I'm fairly close to wrapping up the C3s on all characters and I feel the pacing and stride of the game really hit a sweet spot on the third chapters in general. I also mostly agree with your character assessments, in particular towards Primrose and Cyrus, who are my favorite Travelers in the cast. Primrose is just a REALLY compelling, coherent main and her tale is a joy to follow through, even though it's very grim. Cyrus just spews gold in his absurd campy dorkiness and the writers seem to enjoy writing his Snagglepuss-like antics so much. I'm also kinda sad about Tressa's tale, since it's just a vehicle to tell essentially a bunch of anti-capitalist shonen vignettes and doesn't spend enough time on Tressa being the most wholesome girl in the continent. This said, she really feels like she steals every scene she's in with her presence. She's just so adorable I actually manage to forgive the bizarre way her tale was written.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Just played Tressa’s C3, which has nothing to do with Tressa and was the bored I’ve been playing a video game in years. The random plotless Tiger boss that appears out of nowhere was the best part because it meant I got to play a battle and that the chapter was almost over.  Tressa herself is adorable though.

[Luther Lansfeld]

It's a shame because I enjoyed the other C3s. But Tressa's is just weird and bad. Leon is such an ineffective character.

[MC50]

Alright, rant post about Xenogears. I've been looking to play some old PS1 RPGs on my free time that I missed since I haven't played many, and started here.

There are going to be some spoilers here, so it's in smaller text. And a bit of this is just rambling whatever thoughts come to my mind, so I'm sure I missed some important things or harped on some things that don't really matter. That being said, I'm sure most people here have played this already. Me and a friend played thorugh most of this game over the past month and a half or so. (We are right outside the final dungeon, I believe)



I knew very little going into this game. Actually, I think all I knew was "Chu Chu died for your sins", which I think  I actually picked up here, like, ten years ago.

COMBAT SYSTEM
 - It's not great. I mean, what PS1 RPG has great combat, I guess. Basic hit 'n heal stuff. Most of the techs don't seem worth using. We decided not to use Billy/Citan as much as possible as they seemed kinda ridiculous, and we felt like spamming Billy AOE heal would trivialize every fight. Not sure if it would, but felt that way, so we ended up running Elly/Rico for quite a while, before swapping to Bart/Emerelda, eventually. Of those, Elly's magic always dissapointed. Always. Rico was... okay. But again, he just seemed kind of mediocre (and did not have anywhere near as much health as he should). Bart is okay. Wild Smile is good. Emerelda is a solid character and felt like Elly with a physical, which is a nice upgrade.


I will say that the character animations and attacks in battle are very pretty. I always liked learning new moves just to see what they would look like. I feel super bad for whoever made adult Emeralda's sprites because they are super cool and almost completely wasted since there is no way to see them without going out of your way. I guess that makes it kind of cool in its own way.

Mech battles, on the other hand, initially seemed more interesting - the fuel mechanic seemed like it could be interesting in deciding what attacks to use when. It wasn't. The only time it was relevant was in the lategame fight where Miang ambushed you after you beat Ramsus' gear, and since we had blown all our fuel on the Ramsus fight it was either A: Reset the game or B: Defend for 30 minutes to get the fuel back.

Actually, I liked that fight. It was kind of an interesting fight with the counter field gimmick. The game did need more interesting battles.

As a side comment, that 3D Platforming in the tower thats name I forget? That was... Something, that's for sure.

CHARACTERS
 - Fei is an odd guy. We were always trying to get a handle on his personality and couldn't really get it down - that might actually be the point? I did like that scene in Disc 1 where him and Elly are on the boat stranded. The atmosphere was nice. Id is kind of interesting, and I like how Fei actually was the one doing things at various points in the game.

 - I didn't really have strong opinions on Elly. I suppose she represents the other point of view for a while, and I kind of like how she had a few cronies. For getting a lot of screentime, I never had a particularly strong opinion on her. I'm not a big fan of the fated lovers thing. It probably hit for some people but, I dunno... fall in love on your own terms, not because a past you did. (Though I guess they did anyway, but...)

 - Citan is hilarious. I mean, what a jerk. Obviously meant to be super suspicious, and it just felt like he puppeted Fei along for the longest time "Oh you'll enter the tournament won't you Fei" "Yes Citan", for a while that was actually our running theory that Fei was like Citan's creation or some crap programmed to listen to him haha. His biggest jerk move was in the factory where he just  lets them eat the people meat, what a master.


 - Bart has a lot of screentime and feels like the most realized of the not main characters. Although I won't say he has a super strong personality he is generally likable. Though I remember us constantly making jokes about why you would need two characters with eyepatches (I know they worked it into the plot a bit, but still thought it was funny)

 - I like Rico for the 3 hours he is relevant. He then falls off a cliff, never to be seen again in the plot. A shame. Also, his face picture and sprite give off completely different impressions.

 - Billy is weird. My friend hated him. I was kind of indifferent? He didn't like how he showed up and basically made the plot about him for a while. I, again, had no strong opinion on him. He is okay.

 - Maria is basically the same thing? It was at this point that I realized the game was doing a sort of vignette thing for a while, when I was honestly more interested in trying to put together the games main plot. Anyway, she was really good in mech combat for quite a while, though I think thats just because her mech comes upgraded with some really strong equipment.

 - Chu chu is a joke character, so not much of an opinion. The whole scene seemed a bit oddly timed but I guess it was fine.

PLOT
 - Man, what an interesting plot. It starts off okay, but picks up before too long. There's a lot of terms going around, and a lot of cutbacks to the mysterious organization that can be a little confusing at times. I'm not sure if its a game that would benefit from a replay? It probably would.

SO anyway, the plot is promising but nothing super amazing. There are good points and there are bad points. The second half of the first disc, again, felt like it fell into more of a "Here is the plot section about the prison" "Here is the plot section about Billy" "here is the plot section about Maria" which isn't too bad but wasn't really advancing the main plot they felt they had set up earlier.

And then disc two happened, and man did they ever advance that main plot. There was enough plot in there to fill three games, it felt like.

And honestly, that was some of the most interesting plot! Like, I actually liked quite a few of the scenes that they just kind of slideshowed over or were like, here play this highlight with 9999 HP (so you might as well be playing a lets play), it was absolutely the time the plot was the most interesting. I don't even think any of it was bad, though my eyes totally glazed over at the end when Fei was revealed to be Grahf who was revealed to be his father who was revealed to be Citan who was just tricking everyone into thinking he was evil who were aliens. (Or something like that.)

But if I had played this game as a teenager, I think I would have fell in love with it. Stuff like Grahf's speeches about Power instead of chuckling at I would have thought were super cool. I would have looked up tons of supplemental material about the game and got incredibly in to it.

As it is, I still think it was an interesting, likable game. But I feel bad because it could have been so much more.

As an aside, I think a game done purely in the style of Xenogears Disc 2 - A visual novel with battles inbetween - could actually be interesting if the battles were more interesting. It's not a bad idea - it just felt like a shame in this game and kind of made me feel like getting equipment and such was a waste of time.


Other things I liked? I liked renaming the mechs. Coming up with silly names was a highlight.

[Dunefar]

Pretty much. Xenogears is decidedly an artifact of the time, especially things like Grahf and the entire unfinishedness of the game screaming late 90s RPG.

I'm not a fan of the game, but I can look back and mark it as part of my cultural teenage years. It really stands out like that. Saga Frontier, Xenogears and so forth really show where Square was at in late 90s.

[Dark Holy Elf]

That was a good read, thanks for posting. Always fun to see what people think about a game like that arriving years later. I like XG quite a lot, but it's far from perfect, and you definitely pointed at some of the reasons why. I think my biggest difference is that I liked both Fei and Elly more (though I'm with you on the fated lovers thing. I even think Fei and Elly have an organic relationship and fall in love naturally! Don't cheapen that).

Gameplaywise, yeah attack magic on foot is bad (it's good for killing a few low-HP physically immune enemies, but not general use). Elly's a much better PC once you realise she's actually just a fighter (she actually has one of the highest attack stats after she gets that rod in Solaris)... still nothing special, but better than Rico certainly. And yes Billy's MT healing and Citan in general are totally gamebreaking, so good on you for trying to go without 'em.

[Sierra]

Dead Cells: Beaten. For a given value of beaten. I smashed up the current last boss a couple times and that feels complete enough for me. Repeating Crossbow (plus the You're Already Dead bow) for the winning run. That thing is sooooo satisfying to use. I generally preferred maining Tactics builds, it's just too much fun stacking all the traps at once and just watching everything onscreen chain explode from contagious status effects.

Dead Cells is highly recommended. Combat is fast, smooth, and fluid, and the game is built well for short runs (a successful run for me is an hour, maybe a little bit more?) You have plenty of pathing and equipment choices and the game is just overall a joy to play. Very worth picking up next time you need a platforming fix.

Also at some point this happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSFGySnko8M

Hadokens >>> Dio Brando.

~

Death's Gambit: Hey guys did you hear about this game called DARK SOULS

It isn't always a bad thing to wear your influences on your sleeve. I liked Salt + Sanctuary in spite of its copycat nature because it had a fantastic Metroidvania map, but if S+S was too blatant a clone for you then wow stay miles away from Death's Gambit. The 2D Souls imitation is even more slavish and the design intricacy is nowhere near as deep. There's a even a giant eldritch horror boss named after a part of the brain! DG is decidedly not great. Some of the spritework is decent, and you do have a nice number of pathing choices early on, but that's about as complimentary as I can be. Combat controls often feel a bit sticky. Maybe it suffered a bit in comparison to me playing Dead Cells right before it, but why did anyone think hold L1 to climb ladder was a good idea? Game is also glitchy. Past a certain point in the game, your attack stats drop every time you die. This is not some hardcore plot synergy gameplay feature, because your stats will revert to the correct values when you quit and reload your save. Somebody just fucked up the coding of a boss gimmick and its gimmick became permanent after the fight. Also, of all the things to crib from The Ringed City, why would you take the unkillable snipers? Last boss is also among the easiest in the game. First try win, and it's a four-stage fight.

The incongruous ancient-future tech zone was genuinely creepy, and one or two boss fights were pretty cool (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-Eehx0gz1c), but otherwise you're safe staying away from this.

I'll probably hit the 2D Bloodstained before Hollow Knight PS4 and another Metroidvania game I Kickstartered come out next week. 'tis the season for platformers.

[Cmdr_King]

I decided to write a lot more about Celeste, this felt like the appropriate place- https://cmdrking.blogspot.com/2018/09/celeste-trans-narrative.html

[hinode]

Portrait of Ruin: Started this up a few weeks back. Mainly been spamming the hell out of the shuriken subweapon after I grinded it out to mastery, the damage output is pretty crazy if they focus on a single target.

[SnowFire]

Octopath Traveller
Finished all the C4s, onto the postgame.  Also check out the stat topic I posted! 
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=6997.0 

Surprisingly enough, the last C4 I did was the only one which had a boss that wiped me.  H'aanit's C4 boss has powerful attack that deals like 2HKO damage and inflicts unconsciousness to everybody.  And he starts triple acting below half health.  Wasn't so bad on the refight where I just kept my offense rolling and never really let him get turns, but if you get on your back foot, playing defensively is suicide (well, without the right status immunity accessories, at least).  Gotta go fast.

Played some of the postgame, and yikes.  Boss of the Forest of No Return wiped me fast, and boss of the Shrine of the Archmagus also beat me, although I nearly killed him.  Guess I need to grind or something?  Maybe, I'm still beneath the recommended level, although not by THAT much.  But no, there's gonna be some sneaky way to win.  Wish I'd brought Alfyn, he could work down the late-fight 10 shields pretty fast with those Ruinous Seed mixes of his.

Cast thoughts:
Tressa: Main, went with Scholar secondary.  Should every non-Cyrus main go Scholar secondary?  Maybe.  Less encounters, obviously, but being able to blow up the world with magic was just great - Scholar's elemental stuff for randos, Bifelgan's Bounty for bosses or really tanky randos, and all the $$$$$, which was sorely needed.  Nice to always have Analyze around, too.  Eph & Grefter are cowards for using Therion, stealing is wrong, just let Tressa buy everything.  (okay, you have permission to steal Soulstones & Purifying Dusts and stuff like that.  that doesn't really count as property.)

Olberic: Cleric secondary. Pretty solid.  Had this debate with Elf & Ciato who found Olby underwhelming, but Olberic is solid enough because the Incite damage buff is really really good, since buffs are powerful-but-short-lived, and it's all about being buffed up while bosses are staggered and spending your 3 BP for massive damage.  Buff'd Cross Strike is really good in C2 and early C3, and Brand's Thunder wrecks stuff onward.  Olberic can be the difference between needing 4 breaks to kill the boss and 5 breaks, so speeding up that clock is definitely appreciated.  Meanwhile, having a tanky backup MT healer was fine, and after I got Forbidden Spear, his holy magic when that was a weakness was surprisingly okay.

Primrose: Merchant secondary.  See above about buffs being good.  She wasn't a huge damage-dealer herself, but being able to drop damage buffs on everybody and hit tons of weaknesses (Dark, Wind, Bow/Spear/Dagger, Sword & a buff if you're willing to use the cheapest Hired Help) was useful.  Lategame, she too got Bifelgan's Bounty for some damage if she had BP piling up to spare.  Her counter-attack was actually pretty decent too, since while it doesn't do damage, it does help break enemies if you set her default weapon up right.  Allure wasn't THAT big on damage for my playstyle, but I guess every bit can help sometimes.

Alfyn: Thief secondary.  Functional but uninspiring.  His base kit is solid enough, use Dusts for some reasonably cheap MT healing.  He didn't particularly use most of the Thief kit well, except for one part, but it was the most important Thief skill - vs. bosses, at least physical bosses, stacking infinite turns of Shackle Foe to debuff their physical damage was generally a powerful strategy.  POIZN is also shockingly great against bosses - 2 turns of poison for an action/BP, well, 2% of a boss's life is actually pretty significant, often. 

Therion: Hunter secondary.  Bit of a rocky start in C1-C2, but at least Shackle Foe is great as per above.  He doesn't really do much damage at start, although double-hitting dagger weakness and also having swords is something, and Hunter gave him the ability to hit bow weakness hard and also chip at axe weakness.  Then he gets Aeber's Reckoning, and...  wow, all those randoms are dead, and the boss took 9999.  Armor Corrosive is also solid if he's in a team with other physical types, especially Olberic since he can Abide/Armor Corrosive/Brand's Thunder and not "waste" the extra damage over 9999. 

H'aanit: Warrior secondary.  Like Therion, an "I hit all the physical weaknesses mwahaha" type, with the ability to really prey on Bow/Spear weakness, Abide buff herself, and then Cross Strike bosses hard.  This was functional but also ended up feeling like a frailer Olberic variant.  Wasn't really a fan of playing Monster Hunter too much, though.

Ophilia: Dancer secondary.  Pure support bot, plus I always like the light+dark builds.  Still, you need support sometimes.  Once she unlocks Saving Grace, her max HP becomes more like a suggestion; the ability to "buffer" a heal was super-handy vs. bosses.

Cyrus: Apothecary secondary.  Well Scholar completely rules and is the best class in the game, so of course Cyrus is gonna be good.  Smashes randoms, also smashes bosses by working down their shields fast, a frequent recipient of Peacock Strut along with Tressa.  Apothecary gave some backup healing when needed, backup status fixing, more HP (you get a 20% boost off setting it as your subjob, throw in a big +Max HP accessory too), and more POIZNing bosses hype.

I guess I'll hold off on plot thoughts until I see what threads the postgame decides to tie up!  Cyrus's end of C4 was pretty funny and foreboding at the same time, at least.

--

Re others:
Portaint of Ruin: Really all of the subweapons are very good in Portrait of Ruin.  Definitely one of the games where using regular weapons felt like more of a challenge; even once you know which weapons are blunt / piercing / slashing / etc. and which enemies are weak to what, subweapons & magic just smashes safely from a distance. 

Xenogears: I didn't use 'em either, but there are various twinky setups that do make attack magic good.  I guess the developers found them and balanced around you getting them or something, because yeah, it's rarely worthwhile if you're not doing Ether Doubler nonsense.  I'm not sure I even got any, I forget where they are but they're hidden basically.

Anyway, the main thing that I personally think stands out about Xenogears is having an interesting NPC & villain cast that seems to actually have their own individual motives and who interact in interesting ways.  It isn't "Lord Bane and his loyal servants" and it isn't "we all fight each other because we're wild cards and the plot says we do."  Nah, they all pursue their own objectives, which means sometimes fighting Our Heroes, sometimes fighting other villains, sometimes working with other villains, and sometimes helping out Our Heroes.  There's a FEW just straight-up baby-eaters (Bishop Stone), but that's okay in moderation.  Meanwhile, Grahf / Ramsus / Miang are all classics, stuff like the Villain Goon Squad in Dominia & the Elements are solid, and even pathetic types like Hammer have their own pathos & solid plot arc.  And sympathetic NPCs like Sigurd or Emperor Cain also do their own thing in a way that "makes sense" and shows that the writers did the ol' acting adage of playing every character like they're the main character in their own story.

(Of course, I am obligated to mention it isn't all roses...  unfortunately, Krelian is...  problematic.  Granted, maybe the writers "needed" a character like him to make the plot of Xenogears run at  all, somebody who's "read the script" and can make crazy far-fetched 500-year plans and predict how clashing volatile personalities will interact, but he's got issues.  Some are explainable with some reading-between-lines or generous assumptions, but not all the quirks.)

[VySaika]

Also Octopathing, but much slower than others. Working my way through the C2s still, just finished Cyrus's. The randoms in the dungeon were more of a pain than the boss was! But so far my boss fighting strat has just been: chip to break, buff Alfyn's attack, unload max BP Amputate, repeat process. Its slow going but safe since I have a lot of healing on hand usually. Alfyn as my main does mean he has a level advantage to bring that pain with, of course.

Jade Empire - Streaming this on Wednesdays(though missing this week due to therapist appt), the game runs choppy as hell on PC, almost unberably so. Random helped me with some fixes that make it run betterish, but we'll see how far that goes in later fights where things get super hectic. I still love the setting and the character interactions, and the Open Palm vs Closed Fist philosophies is the most interesting Good/Evil dynamic I've seen in a bioware game...except for where they completely fuck up the ending of course and turn it into Open Palm = Doing The Actually Reasonable Thing and Closed Fist = Fuck Teh Entire Rest of the World I want Power!!!!!(nevermind that the way you get that power EXPRESSLY DEFIES THE ACTUAL TENNENTS OF CLOSED FIST!)

Evoland 2: A Slight Case of Space-Time Continuum Disorder - Look at that name. Just look at it. It's glorious.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 - Beat Style is gone. I can no longer beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker. Oh wait, yes I can, I can do that off my basic grab and just giantswing dudes into other dudes. Kiryu dot jay pee gee continues.