What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[Pyro]

Tales of Vesperia:

The fun continues. Now that I got Yuri's FS Bonus 2 (restores TP upon use of a Fatal Strike), there is a big incentive to use minimum damage so you can't kill anything with damage, spam artes like nothing else, and hit a lot of FSs. Makes treks through long dungeons less item-intensive and gives you all kinds of shiny rewards. This combat is a step up from any other Tales I've played now, and I am curious to see if they will do more with it. I'm certainly surprised at finding myself actually enjoying a Tales battle system as much as I do here.

I just fought Telios and his partner, which was decent. The game's plot is very much TALES PLOT, but the character work is neat. Pity really, I think focusing on the simpler aspects of the plot would have worked better, but meh. Yuri certainly feels unique for an RPG main. Also BADASS HAT, but that certainly doesn't contribute to my opinion of his character. Of course not.

The game is drop-dead gorgeous at times, but ARGH I WISH I COULD CONTROL THE CAMERA IN TOWNS.

Generally pleased with it thus far, so better than the other 360 RPGs I've played by a large margin.

[Niu]

ToV- Finally getting a touch on Judy's landing cancel, now time to find out which exact move is good at sweeping up grounded enemies.

Tried to detsroy the 200 kill arena fight with Estelle's counter from hell, but bah, stupid time limit made it impossible.

[Meeplelard]

FFX: Sinspawn Gui beaten!  Every thing that can be overkilled by him has been, the second form being served a nice dose of Requiem courtesy of Maester Seymour!

Also solved that issue I was having of "CRAP! So many level 1 locks, so few key spheres" since I just gained 6 of them.

Game is still lots of fun.  Auron gained the Strength Sphere from Blitzball so he can capitalize on power, to allow him to stand out more, and Lulu gained the Magic Sphere from Luca cause, well, frankly, who ELSE makes good use of it?
(Well, suppose Yuna does since it boosts her aeons, but shh!)

Crisis Core: Finished all Missions sets except for Great Cave of Wonder...which is the hardest, naturally, and ends in Minerva.  94% Completion, Zack is level 90, and I just gained a Genji Shield.  I was expecting awesome but...not THAT obscene O_o.  Also got lucky as DESPITE the low DMW, managed to get Octaslash off on like the 4th spin after he asked for Octaslash.

Once I hit 9-6-6, I'm going to do lots of Materia twinking.  I'm trying to reduce the amount needed by getting boosts through Materia level ups and such at the moment.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

DQ8 - Man, I need better monsters. Is Curer -always- that useless or only when nobody needs healing? Granted, Cybot is pretty serviceable with Dumbking-level HP, good speed and double-acting. Feels like I'm not up to par with the monsters, though.

[Clear Tranquil]

Personally I found the healers fail even when healing was needed because the healing wasn't potent enough. The way to go as far as I know is to set up the special monster teams to open super moves. So basically you put say three mech types on a team and you get a funky new team name, their HP boosted and the team super move. Cybot, Robot and the other one is what I've used. Other good monsters are Metally, Archdemon and the strongest undead monster, forgot what it was called. I still have to clear the final round of the arena but they helped get me there and I found those teams useful on the final boss.

LoD-

NEB yeah I think you're right. Rethinking I reckon I went into the fight the first time w/o using Power Down just to see how much Faust's elemental counters would do without the dragoon armours being equipped. The characters took so much damage that it surprised me into forgetting what stat items I'd used >.> I really didn't think the dragoon armours were that useful for dealing with counters which I'd severely underestimated the damage of. Also another reason I was confused as to whether the stat items always worked or not is because sometimes when I use the Speed Down, Speed Up, Power Down, Power Up combo Meru or Albert and Meru get an extra turn before Faust uses his massive fire attack but sometimes not.

Vitoly! -

For the first stage I managed to get in around 16'000 damage with Albert with Meru healing like crazy on her turns with Rainbow Breath. Albert then died to Faust's massive ice spell but amazingly Dart at full HP and guarding survived it. I used an Angel's Prayer on Albert and then used Rainbow Breath. For the next stage of the fight I waited until Meru was back in human form then used material shield on her and magical shield on Albert. Cool Boogie with Meru for 400 SP. Faust then decided to kill her with a counter and powerful magic combo instead of counter + physical or even counter and Dancing Ray. Angel's Prayer, healing breeze. Then I manage to take off another 9000~ with Albert (3000~ each turn), Meru Rainbow Breathing in between each turn. Dart died to the "There's a mushroom" attack though. Albert was still protected by the magic shield. Angel's Prayer from him on Dart.  Albert did get killed from a wind counter + magic combo from Faust after his third 3000~ Used Rainbow Breath on Meru's final dragoon turn and had her return to human form. I thought the fight lost because I was out of reviving items and Meru was dead if Faust didn't use an ice counter + dancing ray combo but ... Cool Boogie with Meru for 400 SP ... he uses ice counter + a powerful wind spell ... which misses! Bwhahaha. I dragoon with Meru to heal her and Dart up with Rainbow Breath. I throw caution to the wind and use Soul Eater powered Moonstrike, 2000~ Faust retaliates by throwing a powerful ice spell Dart's way ... kills Dart. I use Rainbow Breath to restore Meru's HP to full then somehow manage to score a Perfect! on her D Addition. Faust dies! Leaving Meru as the sole survivor and all the EXP >_>

I managed to survive with both Meru and Albert this morning with Albert in dragoon form and rose stormed. I thought Rose Storm might be enough to allow Dart to survive after using Moonstrike with Soul Eater but it wasn't since Faust did fire counter, spell and decided to sneak a physical in there as well >.> Dart wasn't at full HP to begin with so bleh <.<

Oh yeah in the inbetween times each fight when he isn't guarding Dart uses Sun Rhapsody's to restore Meru's MP.

[Sierra]

Snow: If you haven't done so already, hit the island in the center of the world map (I forget the name of the place, but it's the island with the big honkin' statue on it). The colossus you can get there is one of the best monsters through pretty much the whole game.

Granted, you've probably been there already since it's the best place to make money.

[Grefter]

Robot team is available to late for good power gaming, same goes for most of the special monster teams.  Monster Battle is fairly comfortabley beatable after the introduction to Doglike and Season 6 Willow fight if I recall properly where as most of the special teams require flight.

[DjinnAndTonic]

To Cid: Futon Dog stat tests... DO IT!

To Niu: Yeah, screaper hate, good thing GL6 didn't make it to the US... what? Huh, why? What is GL6's plot? Revenge of the Screapers?

Also, all the LoD talk made me put down SuikoTactics (which at least has better character development/interaction than S4 - not that that says much) and pick up my disc 1 LoD game. I'm now to Disc 3 and 'enjoying' my latest party member Miranda... The Winglies are an interesting variation on Elves, and the Divine Dragon was a pain to fight with Dart/Albert/Miranda. Inventory space in this game is ARGH!

I like Rose. I find her to be a pretty decently portrayed character, despite the tsundere-ishness.

I would have liked Shana except for *spoilers*secretprincess*spoilers*, which is almost never cool unless it's purposefully melodramatic for parody's sake. Apart from the *spoilers*, she's a generally believable character.

Everyone else is one-dimensional and falls somewhere in the range of 'funny' to 'just kinda there', with no real horribly offensive characters. Even Miranda.

Dart/Shana love story is crap, though not the worst RPG romance plot I've seen.

-Djinn

[Grefter]

Why would you do that to yourself Djinn when you were playing a perfectly acceptable vaguely average game?

BG1 - Up to Cloakwood mines.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Grefter: Mostly to complete my voting rights. Also, Dragoon Armor is pretty and I want to try to draw it.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Snow: If you haven't done so already, hit the island in the center of the world map (I forget the name of the place, but it's the island with the big honkin' statue on it). The colossus you can get there is one of the best monsters through pretty much the whole game.

Granted, you've probably been there already since it's the best place to make money.

Yeah, and I do have Talos. I just feel that my team isn't broken enough to turn Rank B into a fine paste, hasn't been so for a while, and makes me resort to -fucking hax-. I'm not spending 700 coins a pop for hax.

[Shale]

So I finally played some extended Brawl over the weekend, while visiting a friend. Fun game. Can't see how it's that different from Melee, but I'm very much a casual SSB player so that doesn't surprise me. I surprised myself by actually being reasonably decent with Sonic; I was only picking him out of fanboyism, but he's quick and responsive, with good coverage on his attacks. Ike and ROB are also fun to use. Gameplay-wise, I cleared out the event battles (on normal) and home run competition for her, and played the first level of SSE, after which the game froze. What I saw was fun, though!

Also, per the news released from the weekend's demo, three words for any SRW players thinking of not picking the super main when Z comes out: Wrench-chucks, yo.

Edit: Oh, and I started the RSMS endgame quests. Auldburg was simple, and got me a bunch of Greaves of Titius, which could come in handy (that makes four characters immune to Terrology). Next stop was the Netherworld, where Death roundly kicked my ass. Fighting him with this file seems like it may be a really bad idea, since one of my characters is Captain Silver, the un-re-recruitable 7-LP wonder. I only managed to spark one technique in what was a reasonably long fight, too (granted, it was Multi Shots, which kicks ass, but I had to quit without saving because Silver got LP-killed).

[Talaysen]

Have I mentioned that Krious is a fucking beast? Because he is. Almost nothing breaks the combination of regen/draining (Spriggan was notable for forcing me to actually cast healing spells on Krious for the first time in god knows how long), on top of having the most HP and a few maxed out PDEF Up plates. Huge stock of Knacks plus maxed out Free Knacks plates = he dishes out three killer attacks while everyone else is waiting for their ATW to go down. The fight with ZombiE, where Wolgainer employs the Screaper Remote? Krious tore through half the Neylern army while Randall and Haschen were chipping away at one damn soldier. Dude hogs so many of the kills that his ability board is almost full.

Welcome to GL5 twinking.  It's insanity of the highest degree.  And it only gets better.

Did Sherris's quest after that. Unlocking it is such FAQ bait, and the Cid hates FAQ bait, but Sherris is pretty and hits people with a fan, so I had to do it. Chapter doesn't top an hour or so, which is probably for the best. Run around for a bit padding out her ability board with a fangirl named Sapphia who gushes that "We female soldiers would do anything for you, Captain Sherris!" (WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT YURI?!) Yeah, I'm cool with that. I presume the Rufus/Ziekwalt chapters are equally obscure and worth FAQing?

I think just Rufus's was FAQ-bait.  Ziekwalt's chapter doesn't actually get you anything besides MOAR PLOT (which you should probably see regardless of how you feel about the plot anyways).  But yeah, you should probably just FAQ 'em to be sure.

EDIT 2: Forgot to mention this. So Pernagi, you say you've got a device that can detect the presence of these Screapers that have been terrorizing the continent and killing people for centuries? That sounds like a pretty useful invention. Why didn't you tell the world, eh? Seriously, would it have been hard to just build a few of these things without the whole sacrifice-human-lives-to-control-screapers feature for use in coastal areas? I have to imagine it would've been useful for preventing people from being eaten at some point. But nooo, you only hand out gruesome weapons to expansionist kingdoms. Jesus fucking Christ, man.

Pernagi's a jerk and an idiot.  It's been said.

[Grefter]

That is what your reset button is for Snow.

Edit - If I remember correctly I think B was the hardest for me outside of S or whatever the highest rank is.  Monster availability is kind of on the shit side until A anyway.  The final fight takes a certain degree of bullshit luck no matter what team you use so whatever there.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Eh, I know my limits. My former team (Talos/Dumbking/Hackzilla) just didn't ever manage to get past the second fight, often getting pasted on the first fight. This means that the amount of hax going my way necessary to win is far too high for me to resort to save/reload abuse and get it in a reasonable amount of time.

[Sierra]

Eh. I'm pretty sure I finished up the arena with Talos/Cybot/Archdemon, so it really should be doable now. I...may have used the better one of the cyclopi instead of Archdemon, but yeah, not a lot of difference.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

So... S4. I mentioned that I was playing through it as I had never finished it to a friend of mine at a bar last night, for no real reason but that I had paid money for it at one point in my life, and he asked me why it was worse than any other Suikoden game. So I summarized the plot. And I realized how telling that was.

"So you get kicked out of your hometown and drift around for ever until you get to this island, and then the King has you run errands until the island gets captured, then you become the Captain of this boat the King built. You team up with some pirates, and then you politely ask for help from some islands, which you usually get with almost no work, and then you retake the first island, and then you attack their base and there's a tree at the end."

Anyway... yeah, this game craps on its predecessors even harder than I remember.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Eh. I'm pretty sure I finished up the arena with Talos/Cybot/Archdemon, so it really should be doable now. I...may have used the better one of the cyclopi instead of Archdemon, but yeah, not a lot of difference.

Well, I conquered Rank B. Don't have Archdemon, but Curer+Cybot+Talos worked. The issue with Rank B is that you -need- to be in fairly good shape past the first match, and that's annoying since they like their MT. But once that was past, it didn't really matter. Talos+Curer made the last fight unlosable unless Curer decided to not heal at a crucial time. This wasn't the case, fortunately.

[Shale]

Well, now you should be able to recruit My Three Golems, so worst case scenario, Golemator smash.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Where? I haven't got Empyrea yet, and directions would be nice.

EDIT: I know where the Bricklayer (first golem) and Goldman (gold golem) are, but didn't know there was a third.

[Dark Holy Elf]

You need flight for the stone one. And for the final robot too, IIRC.

[Captain K.]

Curer is actually supposed to be pretty good.  I used Octurion instead, who is also very hit-or-miss.  Think my final rank S team was Octurion, Skeledoid, and Talos.

Pokeymans Battle Revolution:  Up to Rank 6 of the Masters battles.  Boss has Rest-buffing Registeel, LG Deoxys, Giratina, and some other obscene defensive thing.  Killed everything but Registeel, then ran out of PP and struggled myself to death.

Godzilla Unleashed:  After initially finding this game unplayable, I started getting into it.  It's still not as good as God:DAMM, but better than I initially thought.  Much love for MOGUERA.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Rob: Great description of S4, I LOLed. To be fair, though, you left out The Rune of Punishment plot and Ted, which were the only remotely interesting parts of the story. You also left out the part where Elenor drugs everyone and then pokes them with a stick, which was the highlight of the game.

You also didn't tell your friend about sailing though, so it probably evens out, or even makes the game sound better.

-Djinn

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Actually, I mentioned that Eleanor was my favorite part of the game because she's pretty much what I would be if I were a woman in her early 50s in Suikoden: drunk and EXTREMELY condescending. I'd probably be a more adept strategist, though, because her best tactic was to hide a second boat around a corner and then have it jump out like ten seconds in to the fight.

[metroid composite]

Subterranean Animisim

Was playing a lot of extra.  Got tired of playing with just Reimu A.  Decided to try and clear with another character, so went back and played someone random.  Shockingly enough I cleared with 5 lives (Reimu C).  It quickly became apparent that Reimu C is a terrible Extra choice, at least the way I've been playing Extra (lots of moving while unfocused...yeah).  Also, much to my disappointment, the Extra boss, despite being Satori's sister, does not have different spell cards for different characters (at least, not within the first 10 or so spell cards--didn't get as far into her with Reimu C as I did with Reimu A).  So anyhow, thinking "unfocused movement, eh?" I figured I might as well try to clear with Marissa A...and did first try (this time with only one spare life).

I'm kinda weirded out by this--on rare occasions I've cleared or come close to clearing other Touhou Normals in the past, but it tends to be a rare lucky occurance.  Yet here I am with 2/2 clear attempts in one day.  Maybe I need to upgrade SA to "Easiest game in the series".  Then again, maybe SA Extra has trained me up or something?  Just a sec; I'm going to go play IN Normal...EDIT: NOPE!  IN Normal still eludes me, though that was a better than average run (didn't continue until stage 6).