What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[Niu]

Iria only confess love in ending with Ronix as far as I know. So I guess the deal is sealed now?

[Crystalgate]

Star Ocean 2: Resumed a save of Rena's story. I reqruited Opera and got the runner up prise in the tournament of arms.

Anyway, I'm planning on getting all characters I didn't get the last playtrough. I don't think I'll actually use everyone though.

GORRAMIT, Iria looks JUST LIKE Claude now. I'm more skeptical about Ronixis and not the Mailman being Claude's father on account of that.

Considering that the only thing Claude seemed to have inherited from Ronixis is his last name, that would make sense.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Iria only confess love in ending with Ronix as far as I know. So I guess the deal is sealed now?

Way I see it, it was always sealed. Some people were just too dense and tri-Ace decided to club people over the head with it. But Claude did inherit one other thing from Ron: they share a Kirk-esque disdain for the authority of anyone with a higher rank than them (in Claude's case, that being most everybody).

[Sierra]

You could avoid Tanzer altogether and just do the Arcane Quest!  You'd get Stasis Rune in the end regardless, and that's all that really matters!

Eh. I could, but I've already done part of the Rune quest. Besides, I almost always do the Arcane quest (admittedly because I hate the Rune quest, but never mind).

[Meeplelard]

Rune Quest does indeed suck ass compared to Arcane Quest.  I mean, one has Tanzer, while the other lets you get Drunk and go to a casino!  Its not a hard decision <_< >_>

(well, ok, the drunk related one can completely destroy you if you hold it off and/or don't bring Mecs, as Krakens there are just scary, and even properly prepared skillwise, they have a good chance of destroying you ;_; )

But anyway, yeah, don't blame you for being turned off by Tanzer.

[CompmanJX3]

ToE - Finished.  Final Boss was a pansy.  Pretty much just spammed Demon Twist (on the last 10 bosses or so, really), used Keele for items, let Farah do whatever the hell she wanted, and let Meredy cast Nurse a lot.  I only had to use a couple of life bottles on the final, despite the fact that the battle took probably 10 minutes due to sheer hit points.

Anyhow, turned out to be a pretty decent game all around.  Worst voice acting I've ever heard, pretty lame story, but somehow short enough and entertaining enough to not suck entirely.  I need to play more of the recent Tales games.

[superaielman]

Hah. Enjoy that bit. Lillet wins at life for the end of that cycle.

And...finally got around to refinishing Suikoden and FFT. The former remains mediocre, though I remain amused at how compressed its storytelling is (recruit 100+ characters and overthrow an empire in eighteen hours. Hah). Not playing anything else right now. I guess I should finish Blue's quest in SF, but...Tanzer.

I did. I'm on day five right now, and it looks like I'm about done. Looks like a.. 8 or a 9 out of ten? Just a complete game. It actually pulls off a time loop correctly!

Hiram has excellent taste, on that note.

And no one's going to top my.. 80~ hour S1 file? Yeah. I liked using scrubs in that game too much.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Phoenix Wright - Good stuff. The writing and characters are simply charming, while also being snappy. A breath of fresh air in video games, definitely. There's no doubt in my mind it's a really good game, despite nagging feelings that the gameplay is completely worthless. Good pacing, too. Anyway, done the first three cases. Didn't play it much (at all) on vacation, or I'd probably have finished it already.

Mega Man - This game is still awesome. I learned that Magnet Beam can be SUPER-EXTENDED, making it godlike. Not sure how I didn't know about this before. It's also probably the best way to deal with hoppers if you don't have Iceman's weapon. Hyper Bomb, on the other hand, fails more than I previously thought. It's not much good for Gutsman (hard to connect with, and apparently you can hit Gutsman twice as often with the buster as I thought), seems to lack any use whatsoever against randoms, consumes 2 WE for some unfathomable reason... the last straw was when I tried it against the clone, trying to force him into using a crappy weapon, too. Turns out the clone immunes Bomb entirely. Fail. One of the worst weapons ever, manages to suck more than Super Arm which says something.

MM2 - Not much to say about this, except that it's still a lot of fun. Atomic Fire fails something fierce, though. Air Shooter's almost as good against Wood Man, for crying out loud.

MM3 - This one's also a lot of fun. Gemini Laser's overall use is something I've been underrating, it's very damaging against a lot of things. Needle/Snake/Spark are way worse than the other five weapons.

MM8 - Voice acting is still godlike, as is stage design. Weapons are a lot of fun, perhaps the strongest overall set in the series, with only Water Balloon and Flame Sword being somewhat trashy.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Flame Sword is kinda fun if you just want to pretend Megaman is Zero, since it's at least fairly powerful (comparable to Flash Bomb) and fast. Nothing really justifies Water Balloon, however. >_>

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fast is... not a word I'd use to describe it, since it actually stops your movement. Power's not really as good as you'd expect either. It's better than the balloons I suppose, but it definitely feels like Thunder Claw minus, as far as a melee weapon goes.

Zero is better because his attack reach goes above and even slightly behind him, and he can attack while moving.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Hmmm, fair enough. One of the issues I had with Flame Sword was that I essentially used it while jumping and only while jumping because of the movement stop, which deflates that problem a bit, but doing that has its own problems. I'm not really going to defend Flame Sword's objective worth regardless, it's way too close-range a weapon to generally work in the context of MM8 - alongside the issues you pointed out - but I ended up using it anyway for kicks.

[Niu]

ToE - Finished.  Final Boss was a pansy.

The optionals should satisfy you.

[VySaika]

So I've played all of the things I picked up over the holidays and have settled on...

Persona 3: Okay, this game just grabs me. I almost stayed up last night to pull an all nighter on a game for the first time in a very long time. Didn't because I had to walk the kidlet to school this morning, but oh was the temptation there. Just kinda using Orpheus and Angel as my primary persona ATM, but I'm still in the early game. Joined the Swim Team instead of the Kendo or Track teams, if that makes any difference at all, and I've gotten the Chariot Link up to 4 already. In Tartarus I just reached the end of the first block, got the old document thingy to give to Elizabeth. The boss at the 14th floor was not fun. MT lightning spell SPAM, always knocking Yukari down, and practically keeping her heal-locked(with me or Junpei having to do the healing...) so we were basically managing only 1 attack/round on him. Bleh. Also had to use my bead chain as with the constant MT spam(I saw him use an ST move...once I think), he eventually managed to get everyone in the red in one turn. (Of course, I could have used Cadenza for healing, but I forgot all about that, as I hadn't needed to use it yet and I was using Angel instead of Orpheus(with Garu doing more then Agi to him and all))

Anyway, game is just really fun overall. Love the music, especially. Catchy, fits well, never seems to get old.

[AAA]

What sports team you choose doesn't matter, you always get the same social links from it. There's a similar choice later on that's the same way.

[Sierra]

Hah. Enjoy that bit. Lillet wins at life for the end of that cycle.

And...finally got around to refinishing Suikoden and FFT. The former remains mediocre, though I remain amused at how compressed its storytelling is (recruit 100+ characters and overthrow an empire in eighteen hours. Hah). Not playing anything else right now. I guess I should finish Blue's quest in SF, but...Tanzer.

I did. I'm on day five right now, and it looks like I'm about done. Looks like a.. 8 or a 9 out of ten? Just a complete game. It actually pulls off a time loop correctly!

Hiram has excellent taste, on that note.

And no one's going to top my.. 80~ hour S1 file? Yeah. I liked using scrubs in that game too much.

A: Opalneria is definitely easy on the eyes, yes, though I question her emotional stability. Glad to see you're enjoying the game. Now we just need to get the stat-topic moved over. ...Eh, guess I'll do that myself right now.

B: ...Eighty hours. On Suikoden 1. Super, that's the most disturbing thing you've said in a damned long time. I found it painful just grinding enough to build up the S2 folks for transfer, and that only brought the hours into the twenties somewhere.

[superaielman]

She just needed a man. That problem got solved, so.. yeah.

Grim Grimoire: Done. Extremely short and self contained, which is a good thing. Story is solid, and the gameplay's a lot of fun- if you really dig a map you can play on normal, or if you really hate a map you can play on sweet and smash. well balanced, though the game needs a hard mode rather badly. Where it shines through is characters. Lillet's good and Advocat's better. Both make for highly entertaining scenes and the character development's very solid all around. Clocks in at 20 hours if you play on normal and do extra maps.

I'm very happy with it. The knocks are that the ending's a bit silly and Margarita is pretty much an annoying whore in every single story arc. It's not an especially deep game, but it's fun and worth playing.

My favorite tactic was rushing with Chimeras/Dragons while the starting units guarded my runes.


Advocat is just brilliant.  It's funny- he's pretty much the only character who is exactly what he appears to be and he plays a critical role in helping out Lillet. Just.. can't ever trust him! Gref would like him. Play Grim Grimoire, minion.

[Sierra]

Sooo, messing around with Accent Core some, trying to add people to the list of characters I am competent with. Baiken is next! One-eyed samurai girl with pink hair? Oh yes. Making those counters intuitive isn't going to be easy, though, especially getting it down to the point where I use the right one for a particular situation.

The dash forward special (hcb+k) looked pointless at first (a more complicated version of the standard dash that everyone has! Score!) but does seem to have some actual uses. It seems like she autoblocks while using it (some moves, at least--I'll have to try it more), which can get you close for a surprise throw or overdrive...though you have to move fast for the latter combo and I can't always pull it off. More practice is clearly called for!

Also, Tatami Mat juggling is awesome.

[Meeplelard]

Pokemon Colosseum: Beat Miror B! I better be able to purify Pokemon soon cause damn having about 16 Shadow Pokemon, half of which are ready to be purified, is just annoying as hell.

Villgust: No, I have no clue why I started this game, I just kind of did cause I had it in my mess of roms.

...its about as generic and bland an RPG you can get, and it has bad polish! Up to the second town.  Finding the game has...some radical changes in cash.  Which is to say, I fought a random, it gave me 258 (a lot for the time!) Fought the exact same random a few battles later...got something like 50.  Yeah...

[OblivionKnight]

80 hours on Suikoden 1 is nowhere near as bad as the 65 I spent on AtL1. 

[Meeplelard]

Well, AtL has all this side optional stuff which can take up a lot of time.  So actually, I beg to differ in that regard <_<

[Cmdr_King]

Ah, but Suikoden 1 has infinite scrubs to level up if you're insane.

Edit: Also forge weapons for, which is more time consuming

(Yes, ToP post coming soon, largely when I'm in a more writing-friendly mood.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Well, AtL has all this side optional stuff which can take up a lot of time.  So actually, I beg to differ in that regard <_<

There's actually the problem of -playing the abhorrent mutilation that is AtL1- to actually pull those through. I did all the side quests and finished the game in 20 hours or so and that was far longer than any human being should be exposed to AtL. So, yeah, OK is still completely insane.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The only thing I'm taking from this conversation is that everybody needs to play less AtL.

[Xeroma]

The man speaks truth.

WA5: Just got Greg permanently, party is around L19. It's no WA4, but it's still pretty fun. More on this later.

[SageAcrin]

Man, I think I did every sidequest in AtL1 and put 30-35 hours of in-game time(About half that in real time) or so into it. This includes a 1000-battle arena sidequest.

Conclusion: OK capped out Choko's levels. Is anyone stunned?

Super Robot Taisen Original Generation Gaiden:

Completed.

Short, fun fluff side-chapter with a remarkably balanced difficulty outside of some mid-late chapters, huge amounts of nice, shiny options, and...no cash. Mutter. It's also way too short, sub-250 turn clears are saddening; I'm by no means fast in games that aren't named Alpha 3(Which gives incentive to clear fast.). 8/10? 7/10? I'm not nearly as awesomely impressed as I was with OGs2(Which is a high 9/10 game to me.).

Having to decide if Radha gets the Weurger L or the second Grungust, though? These are the things that are made of awesome. Even if I didn't use her. (Katina and Russel were in my final team though. ^_^)

Devil May Cry:

Booted this up again recently, beat it.

Fun game. Options could be wider, definitely, you have two main weapons and three guns and one sword and one gun you may use but not really. (Sparda pre-DT and Nightmare Beta. Sparda w/DT doesn't count ever.)

On the other hand, those weapons have a decent chunk of variety within them, at least, and the game in general has a lot of boss fight concept changes, a lot of style, a lot of horrible VA and plot(Yes, this is a plus. "I WANTED TO BE THE ONE TO FILL YOUR DARK SOUL WITH LIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHT!!!!1"), etc. Fun game for what it is, what it is could have been better, but it's quite fine.

Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition:

Up to Chapter 8/9 intermission.

DMC1 if it had been better. Plot is now utterly ridiculous on purpose and does not remotely take it's self seriously. VA reminds me of SotN's if someone tried to get SotN's overdone style on purpose. Weapon options are doubled in effect, yet the movepools on weapons are about as deep, and guns have a far deeper one. Admitably, not at the same time, since Styles are linked to movepool depth, and you could potentially go for one of the defensive Styles anyways, but that just adds even more depth to it, and by no means do weapons feel really shallow even without Swordmaster/Gunslinger Style. Overall style of the game is better.

Game is...easier but I'm on SE Normal which is not most people's Normal, it's probably harder on Hard. Gold mode is godlike, almost feels cheesy(Gold Orbs are outright cheesy, you don't need extra fullheal lives in this game. But infinite continues? God yes. ^_^ You could always just grind for Orbs to get new Continues after death most places, anyways, rendering this mostly a timesaver.). Basically the entire game feels like an improvement. Fun. ^_^

Megamari:

Got through Remilia/Cirno/Reimu's stages.

Cirno sucked, you can directly slugfest her down. Reimu sucked but had 3HKO Yin-Yang Orbs. It's like Iceman! Except less stupidly patterned! Which is fun. Remilia was great, would loathe doing that fight without the Yin-Yang Orbs though.

Entire game feels like someone took MM2 and attempted to make it as hard as MM1 without being as stupid as MM1, and added some interesting ideas like two characters in there. Which is really cool. Game works out very well.