What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[Taishyr]

Your madness shall be contained some day, Shale. Some day.

FF6a: To Banon's hideout.

[Captain K.]

FF3DS:  Got slaughtered by Doga and Unei, so I went and beat Titan to get the fourth crystal jobs instead.  Switched my whole party into what I will probably keep for the rest of the game.  Refia is a Devout, Ingus a Sage, Arc a Magus, and Luneth a Summoner.

Then I got Bahamut, and proceeded to return the asswhupping to Doga and Unei.  Eureka is next.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Eternal Sonata: The setting for this game is so amazing is ALMOST makes up for how blandly everything plays out. Character design is stunning. Beat, Salsa, and Viola are the best characters so far and that's just sad. (Except for Viola, who is consistently amazing).

The game gets points for its fairly unique view of magic. People in the world of ES who can use magic can only use as a side effect of contracting a horrible incurable terminal illness. Combined with the fact that the game is based on Frederic Chopin's life, who died of tuberculosis at a young age, I was rather taken with the idea. But again, that's just more of ES's awesome setting. The execution of this in the story is fairly lackluster, though it's functional.

Gameplay-wise I really like the evolving combat system. The game progressive 'speeds up' battles by having the system mechanics change when your 'Party Level' increases. Everytime the party level increases, the system adds features which can benefit the player (and speed up battle by increasing the ways in which you can deal damage, as well as real-time speed increases) as well as increasing the dexterity challenges required to capitalize on the improved methods. It's a bit hard to explain, but it's great fun in practice.

Another amazing gameplay aspect is how differently each of the characters play. They all have their own niche, though you can force them all to fill the same one if that's the style you prefer. The basic strategy is run up to enemy, do physical combos until your turn is almost over and then blow all your built up power on a special attack. This is pretty effective, but in-game, there are plenty of other working strategies, taking into account healing, ranged attacks, and positioning characters together to take advantage of AoE buffing/healing. Viola in particular has a nifty trick where you can aim her arrow attacks and do more damage to an enemy proportionally based on how close to the enemy's head you aim your attacks. This 'shoot'em in the head' strategy is one of the most effective methods of dealing damage in the game, as a direct hit can do upwards of 10x normal damage and she can fire up to 6 of these shots in one turn. Great fun, but due to dexterity demands, not easy to abuse, but VERY worthwhile when you do.

Wild Arms 4: Love the platforming, love the GC skill 'purchasing', and all the characters are amazing. I even like Yulie, somehow. Her nanotechnology pseudo-science explanation for summoning powers is both hilarious and tedious, but I like the attempt at trying to 'science-ify' summoning. This is the only reason I like so far, but it's better than most lead females. The other 3 main PCs are all incredibly likeable enough to make up for Yulie otherwise.

-Djinn

[Fudozukushi]

Soul Nomad: Finished up watching all the Male Endings except Levin's.  Screw that one.

[Shale]

(Note: skip the below if you want to avoid all PW4 character spoilers. Nothing major, but it may contain stuff.)

Apollo Justice: Finished the first trial segment of case 2. New characters are mostly win, including Klavier (AIR GUITAR), Plum, and Trucy (talking wooden robot hat). Weak link is Stickler and the frequency of underwear references, although that last did provide the Judge with the rare opportunity to own someone. Writing remains at the high standard from the previous games, and returning characters are pretty uniformly great (especially Phoenix).

Klavier's odd as a prosecutor. Definitely the most personable of them, but he's not exactly a threatening courtroom figure. So far he prosecutes like Payne - just throw out a bunch of evidence and hope the defense can't knock everything down.

Jury's still out (har har har) on the Perceive system. Seems like it'll rely a lot on how obscure the tells are - too obvious and it'll be nothing but busywork, too finicky and subtle and it'll be hair-pulling. Guess I'll see later on.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

VP2 - Just beat Sordberg Ruins' boss. I'm still waiting for Phyress, and Heal is absolutely Godlike.

So far, I'm a bit torn on the game. The visuals are absolutely stunning - and I've just been fed to SO3 aesthetics, so my standards are a bit high right now and this is saying something.

The battle system, fundamentally, is pretty neat, and I like the movement freedom. However, it feels a lot more bogged down - one of the reasons I liked VP was the elegance of its system, having nothing it didn't need, being simple, but effective and unique. The added layers feel a bit excessive at times, especially considering that, even with all the additions, the game mechanics end up boiling to simplicity anyway.

Plotwise, they take a very different approach from VP, which actually makes sense, and they've been actually doing interesting interactions so far. The Alicia/Silmeria split is sublime, and lines the contrast between the two souls very effectively. Rufus is okay, too, and I see promise in Leone. Of course, I really liked the approach to einherjar in the original VP. Losing recruitment scenes makes me a bit sad in that sense. But I can understand that fine, the focus is elsewhere.

The one thing that I don't forgive as much, though, is the dungeon design. The dungeons move more slowly, less smoothly and overall less fun than VP's. Photons are a bit gimmicky, and they end up ultimately less versatile and less elegant than crystals. The overall slower in-dungeon movement doesn't help much, either. But it's okay, maybe the design improves later. I can only hope.

[Dark Holy Elf]

PW2 - 2-4. It's probably bad luck on my part, but I'm been driven up the wall in investigation on this one. Trying to figure out which random piece of evidence (or profile, now!) I haven't presented to which random person, or which random thing I haven't examined = suck. Normally I don't bitch about this toooo much, but I was playing this on the bus today, well away from the cradling effects of FAQs. Which I've had to use an alarming number of times so far this case. The logic train is vaguely baffling at times.

SMG - Beat the game! Well, kinda. Still a hell of a lot of things to do, so no way am I done! I don't have much to say yet (will save that for a later rant). The "final stage" was absolutely perfect, though. Wow. Game remains a large improvement on SM64 to me, and only the crappiness of swimming and some camera issues keep me from gushing over it utterly.

[metroid composite]

FFT Poaching game

Last two battles in Chapter 2 were fairly fun.  Gate of Lionel saw Ramza finally using a bunch of Yin Yang (Sleep, a couple Life Drains, Paralyze).  Next battle Ninja was same speed as Queklain, good compatibility, and Queklain decided to charge Bio.  So now comes the actual poaching part of the poaching game...

Oh god I think I'm going to puke.  Give me level-up-down any day over this.  The inviting is fine.  The breeding takes a while, but not that much real-time, it's mostly just a "watching paint dry" feeling.  The poaching...the plan I laid out at the start of the game says I need something like five rare poaches.  Number of times I've gotten a rare poach: 0.

My strategy so far has been to bring one monster into a battle, poach, then check the fur stores.  If no rare poach then reset.  This whole cycle takes about five minutes; I've made a good 15 attempts so far (several hours of play, but a lot of breaks for breeding and recruiting when I was frustrated).  Not one rare poach yet.  I don't really think there's a more efficient method than this--it takes a while to breed an L3 monster, even when you have other L3s (L3s can still breed L1s, and seem to do so more than breeding more L3s, or maybe the game just hates me).

[Dark Holy Elf]

In fairness, 0/15 is pretty terrible (8.7% chance, if I'm right in recalling that rare poaches are 15%... but IIRC this was a number that isn't fully confirmed?).

Still, something to look forward to as my friends and I try to get a couple Zorlin Shapes for our current playthrough. <_<

[superaielman]

It was faster for me to get three L3's, and poach any extras. Didn't take me long at all to nab a Defender last game, or a Whale Whisker.

But it's not especially quick either.

[Cotigo]

TF2: Why Custom maps sometimes suck:

I spent 4 hours playing one match last night.  It's not even that nobody was advancing or anything; the teams swapped amount of capture points held several times.  It's just that as the last capture point of Lazytown is located really close to the spawn and captures as quickly (re: slowly) as any other point on the map, so nobody could win.  I didn't even realize the game had gone on that long until I looked and saw that I had over 200 kills and around 180 deaths.  Then I saw that it was 12:30 at night.  Then I went to sleep.  The match had not finished up.  Gah.

On the bright side, 20 kills as Demoman is a new record.  I'm getting not bad with him.

[superaielman]

Brig:GE- Leonia file, Mage only game. Going to be harder than hell to expand- Chantail, Georg, and Sophia will be my crack defensive team as soon as I expand to a third border. Which I need to do soon if I want to smash Iscalio.

[AAA]

Didn't mention it, but beat Suikotactics yesterday. It's..not a bad game, by any means. A little annoying what with endless reinforcements during later battles, and it's not like FE where you could wipe them all out in two rounds or so so it does make a difference. Final boss was okay, but not very durable. Just..very bland and not really interesting. Pretty damn mediocre. Story was basically the same way, though there were a few interesting things about the ending.

6/10, maybe? Meh. Nothing else on the horizon, though I do plan on going next-gen soon.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

VP2 - Farming for Feathers so I can buy a second Supreme Crossbow. Pondering the prospect of doing enough of Adoula to get Phyress, then head onwards to smash the Ancient Forest. Mmmmm, Supreme Crossbows are the sexiest.

[Otter]

Curse the Rat.

Nikujin: beaten.  Fun sort of platformer slash puzzle game slash figure out how to use all the controls properly game.  Was initially frustrated with it, you really have to get used to the traction or lack thereof along with things like automatic walljump, some difficulty turning on a dime, etc.  Once you're over the learning curve, though, the natural speed and fluidity just make it feel awesome to play, and I can definitely see myself trying for a single-segment no-deaths speedrun now (and failing, a lot, thanks to that damn suicide ninja you need to get a boost from, but hey; maybe two segments >_>).

http://my.vector.co.jp/servlet/System.FileDownload/download/http/0/345493/pack/win95/game/action/nikujin.lzh -- Game download.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRanJbGfxic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeU5W-Xp5hg -- Parts 1 and 2 of my recorded Nikujin run.  It's sped up so that both parts combined take up less than six minutes.  Warning, there be spoilers!  (I.. guess.)

P.S.  Rat needs to do an LP with skype'd vocal commentary and a bonus video where he scores 200 kills in Survival mode.

[Meeplelard]

SotN: I met the librarian and found use for money and such!  Just need to decide exactly what's worth buying and all that <_<

[InfinityDragon]

SotN: I met the librarian and found use for money and such!  Just need to decide exactly what's worth buying and all that <_<

Money is pretty useless, really. Just pick up the Diamond Mail for awesome defense early on and the Jewel of Open for exploration. Library Cards are handy items if you have any leftover cash, but not necessary.

All the other equipment the Librarian sells becomes obsolete very quickly. Joseph's Cloak is a fun novelty, but expensive.

[Grefter]

I found the Elven Cloak a solid purchase both times through the game.  Lasts a good while.

[InfinityDragon]

Elven Cloak is okay. You can get both the Crystal Cloak and Blood Cloak shortly after meeting with the Librarian though. Crystal Cloak gives a better CON bonus and Blood Cloak has a good ability if you use sub weapons at all.

[superaielman]

GE: My team of Georg, Chantail (Who fucking sucks, by the way. His INT is way below average and his rune is trash. Avoid at all costs), and Sophia beat up the best the White Wolf had to offer. I killed Vaynard, Yvain, and Faticia, at the cost of several monsters.

It was an odd fight. Vaynard got down to 123 HP, five monsters left, and all of his other support gone- and he stayed to Wolf Fang critical kill my Level 12 Djinn, with a 100% chance of death from my mage coming up. That's odd, GE AI is usually better than that, though it will sometimes stupidly stay till the bitter end if you're fighting with a far inferior force.


My main team is currently kn ocking Dryst around (Two castles left, just took Caelsent) . My backup team is fending off an attack from Cai and Dinadain right now. Bitch of a fight- my team is heavily aligned towards holy and ice damage, which cuts me nowhere against Dinadain. Damnit.

[SageAcrin]

Elven Cloak is still one of the better purchases, despite that, ID.

Says much about that store, don't it? Elemental brands from there are fun and solid if nabbed ASAP and IIRC Diamond Armor was indeed the shiny pickup from there, but for the most part...

Oh, and I think Iron Shield was one of the few non-drop offensive Shield Rod combos, not that it compares even remotely to something like the Dark or Medusa Shield combo.

*Hypes Blood Cloak.* Hands down best cloak in the game to me, the secondary bonus more than makes up for any paltry stat boosts. 1-1 damage-to-heart-gain ratio in a game where getting five hearts per candle is doing good? Yeaaaah.

Atlier Iris:

Started this up, haven't played it a lot. Just got...Uru, I think it's name was, the fire spirit.

Nice little RPG, entirely inoffensive. The HD screws with VA, but otherwise, so far, it's highly generic. Not that this is bad, it's just not standing out at all yet. I've even played easier RPGs. <_<

Cave Story:

Replayed this with the Snake.

Kinda just a random replay, nothing special except that I feel a need to punt the Snake again because that file's trash for speed running because if you get the Snake you must get the Nemesis or you go insane. Ahem. Stupid Snake being needed for good speedruns. ._.

God Hand:

Playing this mostly, now. Most of the way through the second chapter.

Slots are highly abusable. I got up to 300k from 10k in two and a half hours. This counts an hour or so of playing non-slots games that gained me little to no real cash. And every FAQ antihypes the slots. @_@

This game's a lot of fun for the comedic value, and the system's highly simple, yet has a lot of versatility. It's pretty cool and absolutely ridiculous. How many other games have combos like "Kick enemy in face, launch them across the room, run after them, dash kick and trip them, stomp on them repeatedly, let them get up, pummel them(breaking guard occasionally) until you get the option to pummel them even harder and knock them into a wall, probably killing them."? Mostly fighting games, not beat'em ups. Despite that it works pretty well.

[Cmdr_King]

WA5- What?  Anyway, did soulspace dungeon.  Boss there is good as grindish fights go (probably made somewhat harder by WA5 healing being a touch underpowered, but largely just grinds you down with 2HKO damage and good speed.)  Not really legal though, vibe I get is that the battle pretty much killed the battery on those powers.  Oh well.

[Meeplelard]

OS: Beat Cornlieus' quest.  Why must they always choose the big boss with lots of sprites to work with as the last fight?  Argh, EVIL LAG IS EVIL!

Anyway, Cornelius plot felt rushed.  Its all about him wanting to undo his curse and then they suddenly out of left field bring out the truth of countries past, and the rest the story is kind of forgotten until right at the end?  Yeah; the core story wasn't bad, but the lack of scenes hurt its general quality.

The last level was annoying though.  Wizards that teleport unless you stun them with some sort of Projectile (like their big knives that you can't really aim properly), who can summon enemies!  Ok, the summon enemies thing I don't mind, as the eyes are pretty standard aerial enemy play. What I DO mind are SLIMES THAT IMMUNE BASIC DAMAGE!  So if I don't have Napalm, an Ooze, a Living Wizard to hit Swords back AT slimes (which is hard as hell), or a Toxic Cloud, I...can't realistically kill them?
Granted, I was lucky in getting an Ooze off one mid fight somehow (the thing was still alive, zuh?), and watching MY slime eat the others made me hold onto a spare one.

Cornelius' quest, Titania idiocy aside, was generally more enjoyable on Gameplay than Gwen's, mostly cause he's much easier to use and knowing the system helps...as I said before, he REALLY needed to be the first PC.  Simple, intuitive, and familiar Sword Fighting style is just screaming "First Quest Material!" to me, frankly.  Now, it'd be one thing if all were unlocked initially, and I started off with Gwen's cause she was the first on the list, yes, that'd be my fault.
However, Cornelius' quest had absolutely no reason being after Gwen's.  Plotwise, there was little to no connection between it and Gwen's (ok, so it showed where Leventan came from, and...that's it?), plot's didn't give away each others, so the whole "Game didn't want to spoil itself!" excuse wasn't there...yeah, no reason Gwen had to be first.  I guess the way Cornelius' chapter started in the underworld and all that led himself to not be a good starter, storyline wise, but...I can't help but feel that isn't enough.

Anyway, onto the next quest tomorrow or something!


SotN: Beat Scylla or whatever the full name of her was.  I did get an Ice Mail from a random encounter...only to die from Water before a save point.  Vaguely annoying.
My friend showed me where the Mirror Cuirass and Emblem Gauntlets were too, so yeah, nice to have those on hand!

[Grefter]

I don't even remember where to get those, Mirror Cuirass I remember using, gauntlets... not so much.  Mirror Cuirass makes for less throwing your television into the pool during Clocktower ventures until you get Medusa shield to finally drop.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Still plugging away at Eternal Sonata - only 4 bossfights before the Tri-Ace bonus dungeon! Party Level system is still great, battles are much more fast-paced now, with Harmony Chains activating everywhere. Advice for people who want to play this: Abuse March's 21-hit combo by equipping her with the 2x#ofHits accessory - she now activates her own Harmony Chains and sets up the next PC to get one as well. Viola's mini-FPS arrow game in the middle of fights is still a great way to deal damage and should be abused by equipping all the ATK-boosting equipment she can get her goat-herding hands on.

Note on the story - apparently if you haven't been playing it from the beginning and miss a few key scenes about how 'evil' Count Waltz is, the cutscenes sound like your party's goal is to beat up the government to force them to stop selling mineral powder, which was putting your floral powder store out of business. My friend came in and was watching a few scenes and commented that the main party's goal was the "Quest against Capitalism". ...>.>;;

-Djinn