What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[Dark Holy Elf]

FE10 - Endgame1. Holy crap that's a lot of plot that wasn't here first playthrough! Evil Senator's Evil Rant of Evil (before being told to BURN TRAITOR) has a lot more meat to it this time, and there was an added backstory scene which was rather neat and explained some stuff (which I'd more or less pieced together, but it was nice anyway). Good stuff.

WHY WASN'T THIS IN THE FIRST PLAYTHROUGH AGAIN? Oh well. It's less egregious than BoF5 at least.

Anyway, after doing that I managed to get summarily owned first round much like I did last playthrough, HETZEL + General swarm = GG. I rule! Y'know, it really wouldn't hurt me to remember details like this.

(Rank Hetzel, has caused me more resets than about 98% of FE bosses!)

[Grefter]

ES: Mandolin Church Filler Catacombs. I want Falsetto back, dammit! Oh well, closest thing to a full party I've had yet, at least.

Urge to smack Crescendo: rising. Dude, Count Forte is a megalomaniac who wants to take over the world. He is turning the populace of his country into an army of mindless zombies specifically for this purpose. You cannot reason with this person. Quit your emo bitching and have him assassinated already.

You're still in the part of the plot that resembles logical progression and you're already losing your patience with the game? This does not bode well.

Wait what?  People weren't supposed to be shitty with the game and making fun of it in the first 15 minutes?  Well fuck.  I went from 0 to making fun of it in about 2 minutes.

[Niu]

FE10 - Endgame1. Holy crap that's a lot of plot that wasn't here first playthrough! Evil Senator's Evil Rant of Evil (before being told to BURN TRAITOR) has a lot more meat to it this time, and there was an added backstory scene which was rather neat and explained some stuff (which I'd more or less pieced together, but it was nice anyway). Good stuff.

On the same note, did you meet the requirement to recruit Sephiran? Or meet the requirement of finding out who Seneleo's mother is?

[Excal]

You should ask him about that second one on his fourth playthrough.  Go go stupidly built importation methods!

[Grefter]

Mass Effect - This was pretty good on X-Box.  As expected Keyboard and mouse has improved it by about 20 times.  Even the kind of retarded vehicle combat is way better with a mouse, controlling it in general is way easier.  Menu sucks though, but it was shit in the X-Box version as well.  So fun game and still worth playing.  Currently playing as the Vanguard (Fighter/mage for lazy mode example).  It is pretty decent, shotgunning stuff is fun, but meh biotic still got nothing on a tech character with a weapon unlocked (last game I played the tech/soldier hybrid and had assault rifle unlocked).

[Sierra]

ES: Mandolin Church Filler Catacombs. I want Falsetto back, dammit! Oh well, closest thing to a full party I've had yet, at least.

Urge to smack Crescendo: rising. Dude, Count Forte is a megalomaniac who wants to take over the world. He is turning the populace of his country into an army of mindless zombies specifically for this purpose. You cannot reason with this person. Quit your emo bitching and have him assassinated already.

You're still in the part of the plot that resembles logical progression and you're already losing your patience with the game? This does not bode well.

It really doesn't. I lost patience with the game a long time ago and it's been a chore to play for a while now.

[Rozalia]

ROTKVIII- Finished. I beat all the powers on the map but waited a bit before finishing because I wanted to unlock all the wife events. The last one I believe comes when you're married for 16 years and I was at 14 at the time so I thought it wouldn't hurt.
My ruler gets the event at the age of 65..... and dies the month after.
The Son takes over but not before some prefects think they should have gotten the top job. In total there were 4 prefects and one Viceroy. I put down the rebelion in a period of 6 months and excuted every single officer who betrayed me.

I got the, "we shall go to the west. TO ROME!" ending.

I enjoyed the game so I'm proberly going to go through it again. Choices I'm liking so far is Chen Gong as I liked him in the book and he's generally awesome in everything he gets given a role in, or Yuan Shu because facing Liu Bei, Lu Bu, Cao Cao and Sun Ce at the same time is fun.

[Hunter Sopko]

Suikoden Tactics- Finished. I liked it, on the whole. The storytelling was pretty good for an SRPG and it really does a lot with a little. The end was satisfactory, if a bit of typical Suikoden, except for the whole beasti-... interspecies erotica part of Kyril's backstory... had to say that caught me offguard. Again, I like how the game explains a different game's plot better than the actual game did.

Final party was Kyril, Seneca, Andarc, Flare, Lazlo, Kika, Hervey, Sigurd, Mizuki, Akaghi. When I could have the 12 member party, I also used Corselia and Keneth. Mizuki and Lazlo were the only people to hit for over 1k. Mizuki hit for 1k on a Water Elemental and Lazlo hit for 1.1k on a fishman.

Gameplay was sweet. Easily breakable, but confusing on what they actually wanted for an S-Rank. Managed about 5-6 of them, maybe?

EDIT: Oh yeah. Andarc's uncanny resemblence to Ovan from .hack//GU was kinda creepy. I halfway expected him to be behind everything.

Onto Lunar:SSSC!

[Dark Holy Elf]

FE10 - First two chapters of Endgame beaten. E2 boss was substantially easier this time, due to me having the right weapon. Boss still had a crit rate (6%, kinda scary), but even a crit wouldn't quite OHKO, so defensive fighting, three counters + a finisher with a weapon with actual hit did the job.

Otherwise, the rest of the map remains a fun exercise in steamrolling the enemy before the Swordmaster/Sniper brigade chippersheds you. Distance-bombed the boss there to avoid any nonsense with his skillz. I did notice Pelleas was listed as able to one-round the boss; it's amusing to think that if I attacked there I'd be the one-rounded instead.

HETZEL proved the true obstacle of E-1. Naesala couldn't one-round him, so he lived a turn longer than I expected! ANNOYING HE WITH HIS STAFF ANTICS. Beat the map in seven turns, would have been six except I wanted Matrona.

So now I just need to make a few decisions about weapons to bless. Meteor vs. Cymbeline and +6 Silver Axe vs. Brave Axe probably being the biggest. I could also bless a Wyrmslayer, but doubt I will.

[Meeplelard]

FF9: On Terra and such.  Will probably say "fuck it" to doing side quests in Disc 4 beyond some odds and ends with CH&C like getting Ultima Weapon and Ragnarok.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

FF9: On Terra and such.  Will probably say "fuck it" to doing side quests in Disc 4 beyond some odds and ends with CH&C like getting Ultima Weapon and Ragnarok.

There are other side quests in that game?

[Captain K.]

AW Days of Ruin:  Been working on S-ranking all of the Trial Maps the past few weeks.  Finally succeeded last night.  The only one I had to FAQ was Metro Map, because it relies on exploiting nonintuitive gaps in the AI rather than intelligent strategy.  Now I have a tiny gold star for my effort.  Woo.

[Ryogo]

Just got a copy of Skies of Arcadia, will be playing that sometime in the future, I hope.

[Idun]

I beat WA4. Long and grueling task, yes, but I am officially happy to say I finally beat a Wild Arms game!! Now, I'm playing Star Ocean Til the Time. I tried using a FAQ, but I completely and utterly forgot what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing, where places are, battle configs. . . 

Edit: to not double post for the sake of DPing, I just beat Star Ocean til the End of Time. I think I'm going to organize my backloggery account, and then head onto Grandia III. Thhhheeeen, Dragon Quest or FFXII. I haven't decided yet.

[Captain K.]

P4:  Got this today.  Didn't get the artbook, because Gamestop sucks.  Not sure what to make of it so far - seems like a step down from P3, but it's still early.  Anyone know what the official name for the main is?

[Sierra]

ES: Trying to burn through the rest of this before P4 happens. Aria Church through Too-Long-For-a-Coda Ruins. Prince Crescendo thinks surrending himself to Forte will make Waltz spare his country (AHAHAHA) and some old lady I really wish I could beat up babbles on about destiny. End already, ES.

On the bright side, at least I got Falsetto back. Falsetto/Viola/Someone Else (probably Chopin) party for the win.

[hinode]

That bastion of reliability we call Wikipedia claims he's called Soji Seta in the manga.

(Okay, this seems to be corraborated by other people, but I couldn't resist the sarcasm <_<)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

SRW@2 - Crossbone Gundam X2 get! Crossbone Gundam X2 break!

Welp, that was easy. This looks like a nice, versatile mech to slap Kincaid into.

EDIT: In other shocking news, Ibis still sucks.

[AAA]

MK-Chapter 9. Baaaah, gonna need to AP grind methinks. Welp, at least got some new areas that need full exploration, that at least offers an excuse. That Chimera boss wasn't too bad until he was almost dead and decided to get three turns in a row, which was nearly enough kill the 3 out. Nearly. Approaching 30 hour mark.

GH3-Is it coincidence that the last 3 bonus songs alphabetically are also the 3 hardest? Irregardless, haven't passed them yet. Through the Fire and Flames I got through like 1 percent of it. Fucked around and improved a few scores on other songs, nothing major. Also finally managed to pass the Slash Guitar Battle DLC song, though the Devil Went Down To Georgia still eludes me.

[Sierra]

Irregardless

I officially hate you for the next twenty-four hours.

[Twilkitri]

DQ4-
I'm some way into Meena/Maya's chapter. Currently meandering off to some mine if I remember correctly.
Alena's chapter was decent but involved a bit too much wandering back and forth between opposite ends of the continent. Taloon's chapter was okay I suppose, but it's no Taipan.

Unfortunately for my plans to be able to vote on DQ4 any time soon I against my better judgement swapped it out for Endless Frontier which I had recently gotten to see what it was like.

EF-
As things currently stand, this might be my second favourite game this year (after TWEWY). Style, style, style.
Except Suzuka who was beaten with the ugly stick a great deal then had the end of it glued to her forehead when it came off from overuse. She has no style whatsoever.

Currently just died horribly against Galdia&Phantom, so I will be meandering off to town to pick up some revival items as having barely any is the main reason for such.

I seem to recall people calling KOSMOS overpowered but I am not seeing this whatsoever. Then again they said the same thing about Joshua (and I didn't see that whatsoever).

[TranceHime]

KnY: Grindan has suddenly become glorious and reasonable. Hit L60 with my hard-hitters, considering going SMASH on the B20F boss so I can check out the loot in the 3rd loop. As a necessity, I had to give the Hero Memory to Tio to twink her HP a little bit, since she's going to need as much HP as she can get for the fight against Big Slime, who has overkill 2HKO to insane 3HKO MT damage depending on average HP >_>;; I had to gimp Dranko a little bit to do that, but eh. He can cope with that. He needs a break from killing things. I need to stop getting Battle Circlets and such and get some actual useful items like the Ultimate Magical Herbs. Consumables I actually WANT. Like Elixirs.

[Idun]

Beat Star Ocean Til the End of Time. Going toooo finish Grandia III. After doing the backloggery thing on the site, I noticed that I have even more backlog. But some of it I'm not interested in alleviating.

[Ryogo]

Picked up my copy of P4 today, since us New Brunswickers just got their copies today. Stupid America and their not getting the games to us on time
I do have the artbook though, which is a nice treat. I won't be playing it yet though, I'd like to beat P3 first.

P3: Currently on the Hell Knights. Each time I come really close to beating them, and then get destroyed a few turns before I'd win. Stupid Break Elec attack. It makes this battle so much harder

Skies of Arcadia: I just rescued the Blue Rogues from a public execution in Valua and am of to save Fina from being imprisoned in the Grand Fortress. I like it so far, seems like it'll be a good game. I <3 my Dreamcast

[Xeroma]

? KOS is overpowered in Namco x Capcom, not EF. She's just an excellent heal battery w/ revival and good damage in EF, no innate damage buffs kinda hurt.