What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[TranceHime]

Moemon Gold/Silver Edition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4-dWpcRpIM
I get owned by Giovanni... The EARTHBADGE will have to wait.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

SRW@2 - GoFlasher Special got, GoShogun glitch exploited. GoShogun hype incarnate is a go.

FM4 - Just started it, did Elsa's first two missions. At first, it feels like a far more fluid and pretty FM3 if you don't count the immense potential the skill system has. I do, however. I'm looking forward to see how this pans out.

[Talaysen]

Mana Khemia - More night time boss battles~

Silver Horn - So I went into this battle kind of unprepared.  Guess what happened.  I ate MT OHKO.  Luckily Anna survived with Guts, and while I was able to win the battle, I didn't get an A, so I reset.  Second time, I twinked out RES for my front party, and they survived.  I proceeded to then beat his face in.

Rondo of Swords - Up to mission... 15 now?  Got some more people!

Alhambra (catgirl person) - Used her for one mission, and she doesn't seem too bad.  Solid HP and Attack, but poor defense.  She makes up for this by having good evasion, it looks like.  She also has a move stat of 8, which is really good.  Overall seems decent, and might be worth replacing Kay with?  Hmm, maybe.

Rukia - Thief, apparently.  Starts at level 4, but has a skill that increases EXP gained.  Haven't really used her since she has low HP, attack, defense, and averagish move.  I assume she gets evade hax or something?  Whatever.  Tanking defensively is better in this game.

Elmer - Looks like an underlevelled Selmer+.  Who cares.

Arios - Another mage!  Better offense stat, but worse defensively, it looks like.  Again, whatever.

Igraine - They like throwing mages at you here...  Stats look worse than Arios, but better Move.  Dunno about their spells though.

The reason I'm so meh about these mages is because I'm actually impressed with Cotton.  See, she has a move stat of 8, which is INSANE for a mage, apparently.  She also starts with the Fire Dragon skill, which I quickly realized OHKOd like everything early on.  What I didn't realize is that it has a high 2HKO AGAINST FREAKING BOSSES.  Fighters tend to hit like a 3-4HKO on those guys.  She also got a lot more MP and HP compared to the other mages, and another spell (Thunder) which works as backup, I guess.  I just spam Fire Dragon anyways.

Also, other person I realized were better than I originally thought.

Ansom - MAGE KILLER OF DOOM.  Seriously, move and attack from range slaughters mages and is about the only way it can be done without taking damage.  It's even solid damage against other people as well.  He also got a lot of HP and decent defense so he can take hits in a pinch, but that's usually not needed.  I class changed him ASAP, but haven't got to use him much after that yet.

So yeah, main team right now is Serdic/Margus/Ansom/Cotton/Marie/Kay, though I might switch out Kay for Alhambra after this mission.

Anyways, other stuff I didn't mention before because I wasn't sure on it.

Errands system - Between battles, you can send people on errands, and those people cannot fight during the next mission.  Hurt people can't be sent on errands, either.  The errands include Quest, Train, Shop, and Trials.  Going on Quests can get you free items (including stuff for class changing!).  Training I think increases stats?  Haven't used it yet.  Shop is shopping.  You send people to either sell items or buy items.  If you send someone good at selling, you can sometimes get more money than what the items were worth.  Likewise if you send someone who sucks at it, you'll end up getting less money.  When buying, you can only select a type of item to buy, and the items you get are dependent on the amount of money you allot for the character and how good they are at buying.  So you can send someone to buy Rings and give them 1,000G, and they'll come back with about 1,000G worth of Rings, or more or less if they're good or bad at buying.  Or something like that.  I'm not sure of the specifics myself.

Polish in general - Is kind of lacking.  Enemy movement ranges are shown, but the interface for viewing them is kind of annoying at times.  The problem is that archer/mage attack ranges are completely unknown unless you memorize them.  This is extremely annoying since archer attack ranges change from archer to archer (though I think different ranges have different sprites or something?).  There's also no damage projections, but I guess it kind of makes sense because of the moving through enemies to attack thing, but whatever.  Polish is just lacking in general and it all adds up.

Plot - lol

Still, I'm kind of liking the game even now, since it provides a challenge without being a dick.  Gameplay is unique enough to be refreshing, but the polish kind of hurts it there.  The game really does have a lot of potential, so I'd kinda like to see a sequel with these problems fixed.  Of course, I haven't finished, so this could change but yeah, that's what it feels like right now.

P.S.  I forgot to mention Margus practically soloed mission 14.  Margus for fucking Godlike.

[Mad Fnorder]

BvS: Finally hung out with Bruce Jr. Working on The Running Man, The Trade, then Jonin, then Tote, then Monochrome. Should be a cool run.

Noitu Love 2: This game is stupid awesome. Side-scroller with a really cool interface- WASD for movement and jumping, but you have a mouse cursor as well. with it, you can click to dash and attack enemies and valid targets. RMB throws up projectile blocking shields where you click. Special dash moves can be done either with double taps or RMB mouse gestures. Great Metal Slug-esque boss fights, multiple characters that are unlockable... You, Mega-man fanatic people, go, now. www.Konjak.org . There's a demo.

[Niu]

Tala, Arios and Igraine are extremely brutal if you can find their higher class change item. Arios turns to a bloody insane murderer once he got Ars Magna. Igraine would have crazy range dark magic abuse, can spam on top of it due to mp reduction. And even without higher class change Ingraine can still afford a good shot of spells.
And becraeful of Cotton later one, as her spells well, don't hit very far, the best is 5 range? She is soo going to get OHKO or 2HKOed later on if she steps that furtehr forward tot he front line. And once you start leveling her spells, you'll find she actually can't afford too many shots of her spells.

bah, wait. why am I giving advice on Itsuwari no Rondo anyway?
Go play Subasekai already.

[TranceHime]

Moemon Gold/Silver Edition: I beat Giovanni and got the Earth Badge. I also beat my rival before completing Victory Road. However, I now face a new challenge - the Elite 4. They all have Pokemon higher level than 60, and my highest level is only 61, everyone else is below L55... On the other hand, I did manage to catch Suicune and Raikou, albeit their levels being lower than I'd like them to be (40, just like in GSC). I plan to use Suicune, because, well, she's a damn tanker. Raikou maybe in place of Typhlosion, but Typhlosion's Fire/Ground typing is neat to have.

[Meeplelard]

FF7: About to enter Kalm! Then realized I didn't feel like doing the Flashback sequence at the moment.

...yeah, I expect this playthrough to not be finished anytime soon <_<;

[Sierra]

DQ8: NPCs named Bangerz and Mash? Munchie mode?! Yeah, this game rocks. Anyway, just got Jessica and went to Peregrin Quay.

[Twilkitri]

Professor Layton: Finished. Although I looked up the answer to #135 because I hate those things (also the answer to the chocolate bar code one, but that puzzle was annoyingly stupid and I wasn't intending for a direct answer anyway).

I'm not sure I see the point of them putting that god-forsaken 8 queens puzzle in the bonus ultra hard puzzle section when they've had you do a partially done one earlier in the game that you can (and I did) just go back and look how you answered, then copy that across?

Pretty awesome in general anyway, although it starts to lag near the end. One problem is that a reasonable amount of the puzzles are old ones; that's not really too bad though.


The World Ends: This game is also awesome. Just starting day 4. I don't know if I'm just too conditioned to MMBN or what, but I was expecting enemies to be dropping 'pins' that aren't money? Possible that I just don't have access to a high enough drop rate yet. I want to retroactively replace one of my music tourny choices with Long Dream/whateverit'scalledinenglish.

I somewhat wish that the characters didn't look like extreme anorexics though.

[Talaysen]

Tala, Arios and Igraine are extremely brutal if you can find their higher class change item. Arios turns to a bloody insane murderer once he got Ars Magna. Igraine would have crazy range dark magic abuse, can spam on top of it due to mp reduction. And even without higher class change Ingraine can still afford a good shot of spells.
And becraeful of Cotton later one, as her spells well, don't hit very far, the best is 5 range? She is soo going to get OHKO or 2HKOed later on if she steps that furtehr forward tot he front line. And once you start leveling her spells, you'll find she actually can't afford too many shots of her spells.

bah, wait. why am I giving advice on Itsuwari no Rondo anyway?
Go play Subasekai already.

At least Cotton has a good Move stat so even if she gets 1/2HKOd, she can just get out of the way.  That's not something the other mages can do, unless they get higher Move later on?

Also, what the hell is Subasekai?  Use words I can understand please.  >.>

Mana Khemia - More night time bsos battles~

Snow Maiden - Thought this was going to be harder.  She uses ice-based timed cards that are MT 2HKO (and a high one, at that).  Healing Echo omega and Purifying pretty much completely shut that out, so the fight ends up being relatively easy.  Still has potential to be nasty, I guess.

Rondo of Swords - Finished mission 15!  That mission was a lot easier than it looked, due to there being a place you can bottleneck with Margus and cheese out ZOC + ranged attacks.  Got Shino during the mission, too!  She seems like an archer/mage or something?  Seems like a decent combination if so, but she doesn't seem that great otherwise.  Need to use her to be sure though.

[Xeroma]

He means TWEWY, Tal. Speaking of which...

The World Ends with You - Week 3, day 5. Still a lot of fun, but that's all I can really say right now without spoilers.

[Nitori]

The World Ends With You - Finally beat up Minamimoto after a bit of pin grinding. I went to all that trouble of leveling up the healing, and then I don't use it. Go figure. (It was probably the Dragon equips for Josh that did it. He took off over half of his last life bar without me even noticing.)

Long Dream hype, Twil? I approve.

Game which is worse than the above (Final Fantasy XII): Did all of Pharos. Second Ascent can go die but it overall wasn't that bad. Easy boss fights are easy although Reddas needs to stop attacking invincible targets (Hi Dr. Cid~)

[Talaysen]

He means TWEWY, Tal.

Oh.  Whatever.

Rondo of Swords - ...

So during mission 16, I was too slow to kill off one of the bosses before the other pincer attacked from behind and things went downhill from there.  So I quit the mission to keep the EXP, and noticed Cotton had a new spell to learn: Faerie Fire.  So I put some skill points in it and went back to the mission.

...

FAERIE FIRE IS NUTS

It's an AoE spell that hits a 5x5 area around her, and overkills the grunts there, which aren't exactly weak in durability.  So I put Margus on the bridge to stop the enemies from getting to other people due to ZOC, and stuck Cotton behind him, and as the enemies went to get attacked and were stopped, Cotton wiped out a bunch of them with Faerie Fire every turn, one time I got five people in the same cast.  This made it possible for me to get rid of the grunts and take out the boss before getting pincer'd.  Unfortunately somehow that boss took out Marie, but whatever, she doesn't depend on her stats much at all due to being a healer.

So yeah, Cotton is awesome.  I feel bad for slamming on mages earlier, but Selmer deserved it.  I guess it wasn't a good idea to assume they'd all suck.

Anyways, on mission 17 now.  I ended up resetting because Alhambra or whatever got killed fairly early on, and I didn't want to try and finish the battle shorthanded and have an Hurt character for the next.  I'll have to be more careful next time.

[Niu]

At least Cotton has a good Move stat so even if she gets 1/2HKOd, she can just get out of the way.  That's not something the other mages can do, unless they get higher Move later on?

But those crazy dark magic spells hits like what, 11 blocks distance later on? They wouldn't have a chance to be in danger at all with that range. While in later stages you'll face archers with 6 or 7 range, Cotton is doomed to death in comparison. Not trying to slam Cotton down or anything. But she'll fell off eventually, and it is better to raise some other mages before hand. And Selmer, Arios, and Igraine are all top choices here, Galahad isn't too bad either.
The pope girl should join soon too, you'll want to replace her Marie, better states, healing, and a very powerful defensive skill that you'll want for later fights.

...wait, why am I giving advice at this crap again?

[Talaysen]

But those crazy dark magic spells hits like what, 11 blocks distance later on? They wouldn't have a chance to be in danger at all with that range. While in later stages you'll face archers with 6 or 7 range, Cotton is doomed to death in comparison. Not trying to slam Cotton down or anything. But she'll fell off eventually, and it is better to raise some other mages before hand. And Selmer, Arios, and Igraine are all top choices here, Galahad isn't too bad either.
The pope girl should join soon too, you'll want to replace her Marie, better states, healing, and a very powerful defensive skill that you'll want for later fights.

...wait, why am I giving advice at this crap again?

Well, I could probably train Igraine a bit too, she seems the best of the other three mages right now.  Is it possible to use two mages?  Thinking maybe a Serdic/Margus/Cotton/Igraine/Ansom/Marie team could work.  Replace Marie with Aegil or whoever like you said if she does turn out better.  Alhambra/Kay aren't doing much outside of having lots of Move, really.  Neither is Serdic, but he's forced.  Most of my damage comes from the ranged attacks and Margus just protects them.

Also, you don't have to like a game to be able to give advice on it.  >.>

[Captain K.]

DQ8:  On my way to Ascantha, massive alchemy has ensued.

BvS:  Got Jonin rank.  Also, belated congrats to Magic for getting Sannin rank.

Picked up P3:FES and TWEWY today.  Haven't played either yet.  TWEWY is frickin expensive ($40 DS game?), but the instruction book smells groovy.

[Xeroma]

TWEWY is worth every penny, rest assured. Also I need to get FES. Mrgh.

[Hunter Sopko]

'bout time, Captain.

[074]

P3:FES Get!

...yeah.  Aside from it being a total STEAL (and now replacing P3 in the P3 case alongside the P3 artbook...)

Already noticing a few changes on Journey (original game)--Social Link characters pop up more often on the side in the beginning, and you get scenes (okay, it's not that big, but it's still a little detail) on the 'returning to the dorm' parts so far.


Also: HARD MODE.  I'm playing it.

[Rozalia]

Jade cocoon 2 - I've played the first one and thought I'd have a look at this as it was cheap.
So far its kinder lackluster. What I've gathered so far.

Plot - Completely generic. The hero is called Kahm or something like that and let me tell you. This is justin mark II. Completly brainless in most aspects and is a child doing something he shouldn't be. I mean why is his father letting him do this, does he not care? I know he wants his boy to get strong but getting his son to go fight in the wild isn't a safe thing to do.
Anyway he applies for being a Cocoon master but then learns no one is a cocoon master since hundreds of years ago. So he he goes to become a beast hunter (Who he thinks are "Super hyper Cocoon masters". Yes he actually says this.
Anyway he gets given a test and after it is promperly possessed by a "Ugly Ogre" (Its more like a lizard then an ogre to be honest). Anyway he gets told that if he doesn't collect the four orbs to save his body and soul then it will take him over and turn him into a demon. Yeah its been done before.

Characters - Some give me some laughs or smiles at least. They border either on epic fail or awesome.
Its interesting that the head priest is the hero of the first game and apparantly is now immortal and the most powerful humen fighter in all the world.
He now has a voice and a good personality, however I'm kinda wondering why he has that dark lute with him. I mean I know it was his fathers weapon (Father is also main villain of the first game. Yeah at the end there is a "I am your father" moment) but doesn't the lute summon darkness and evil demons on the world. Isn't that a kinda evil weapon for a hero? However according to him it can dispel darkness if the right tune is played with the orbs.

(I just noticed. Everyone wants those orbs, I mean the demon outright tells you the orbs are the only way to kill him and then so does levant followed by your fairy friend. I'm guessing its a trap of some kind. Why would a demon tell you how to destroy him?)

Combat- Its getting better now I'm getting different element type monsters. Once I start merging monsters it should spice the game up quite a bit.
The gameplay is essentially like pokemon but better as it has more stradegy involved. Main Character will proberly turn into a beast. I mean you have to hack through four monsters to get to him while meanwhile you're being hit by 3 monsters and when you do get to him you'll find he has 5 hp at most. However all damage is reduced to 1 against him so he rapes slow enemies and pcs.

Not only that but it seems like he can cover his bases well from what the in game tutorials tell me.

Earth monsters- take little from normal physicals (Wind ones are still strong though) and then laughs at physicals all together after some minor buffing.

Wind monsters - Kills Pcs who don't immune sleep badly. If they don't then its over because wind monsters are fast and they are dishing out a sleep spell at around 70% success rate x3.

Water monsters - Look at earth monsters but replace physical with magical.

Fire monsters - kills healers. Fire monsters cause good damage and are fast to boot. Will heal-lock a lot of healers (unless they resist fire of course). Due to Fire being the most commanly blocked element proberly makes these monsters useless against most people.

You can have a max of eight monsters in battle (A max of three for each element) and you use 3 at a time being able to switch to another party of monsters at will without any down sides.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

FM4 - Wow, Latona is pretty badass. Actual evade? Yes, please.

[VySaika]

Plot - Completely generic. The hero is called Kahm or something like that and let me tell you. This is justin mark II. Completly brainless in most aspects and is a child doing something he shouldn't be. I mean why is his father letting him do this, does he not care? I know he wants his boy to get strong but getting his son to go fight in the wild isn't a safe thing to do.

Can you think of a better way of getting rid of an unwanted retarded teenager?

[Talaysen]

Rondo of Swords - Finished up that mission 17.  Not too bad if you know what you're doing, but the LOL REINFORCEMENTS part near the end can be a scare.  At least you don't have to kill them and can just rush the gate.

I'll check out what Aegil has next time I play.

Persona 3: FES - Why did I get this again?  Whatever.  Fought the first boss of The Answer.  Definitely a puny!  Yay for punies!  Haven't done anything other than watch the scenes and save though.   Plot seems kind of forced though, which is bad.  But we'll see.

[Niu]

But those crazy dark magic spells hits like what, 11 blocks distance later on? They wouldn't have a chance to be in danger at all with that range. While in later stages you'll face archers with 6 or 7 range, Cotton is doomed to death in comparison. Not trying to slam Cotton down or anything. But she'll fell off eventually, and it is better to raise some other mages before hand. And Selmer, Arios, and Igraine are all top choices here, Galahad isn't too bad either.
The pope girl should join soon too, you'll want to replace her Marie, better states, healing, and a very powerful defensive skill that you'll want for later fights.

...wait, why am I giving advice at this crap again?

Well, I could probably train Igraine a bit too, she seems the best of the other three mages right now.  Is it possible to use two mages?  Thinking maybe a Serdic/Margus/Cotton/Igraine/Ansom/Marie team could work.  Replace Marie with Aegil or whoever like you said if she does turn out better.  Alhambra/Kay aren't doing much outside of having lots of Move, really.  Neither is Serdic, but he's forced.  Most of my damage comes from the ranged attacks and Margus just protects them.

Aegil has defense a mage wouldn't have. And her general state is far higher than Marie as well as better healing. Though, the best thing about her is the Protect Me! skill, that boost defense on all units next to her, which you'll really want for the end game. After some leveling, she makes Marie looks like shit, the only reason you want to keep Marie is to use her MP sharing spell. Though, in one of the routes, you might want to drop healers entirely and use a full offensive team.
As for Kay, a certain black knight would join later on if you meet the requirement. Hell be replacing for Kay for the end game, but end game only though, as he has inferior sates all around, but a very insane ultimate. Has like... 13 range with ridiculous damage. You'll be using that OHKO later bosses.

[DjinnAndTonic]

*takes in all the Niu advice about Rondo of Swords*

I went to go buy a new DS game since Rondo and The World Ends looked so cool, but none of the Game stores had The World Ends and one of them DID have Rondo of Swords on sale (good timing!), so I picked it up.

I see the polish issues - Plot is horribly bland, characters aren't even really likeable (Well, Margus is actually kind of amusing), and the interface is clunky when it comes to ranges. I was pulling my hair out when I first started trying to learn the movement ranges.

However, once you no longer need to double-check every movement range, the game starts to become addicting. The gameplay is pretty original and refreshing, though there are balance issues with the mages. The game is challenging, but the challenge never seems like a bad thing due to the way the restart options work. Like in Fire Emblem,  there are severe penalties for a character dying, but they are permanent, so it's something you can fix. More importantly, if you DO screw-up on a map, you can retry the mission with all of the EXP you gained from that attempt. Now, even if you messed up and have to play the mission again, at least you haven't just spent the past 30 minutes (or longer) wasting your time (*cough*FE*cough*). You can still lose all that experience, though, so there's still that level of challenge - you have to pay attention to your situation, if you're losing, it's best to plan on restarting and keeping the experience rather than charging into certain death. The fact that restarting a mission also restores any items you used is just icing.

So anyway, I've had the game 2 days and I haven't been able to put it down. (Which is good, because I was about 2 years into a Norgard Brig playthrough that I told myself I wasn't going to play).
My first time through, I powered through a lot of things trying to learn the gameplay, got all the way to Mission 13 and was pretty much just missing out on the most efficient way to play the game. I finally broke down and read up on the game, realized I missed 3 characters (including the all-important Archer Ansom), and decided to restart. The characters I missed weren't easy to miss by a long shot, but I wasn't quite sure how recruiting worked, and I just kind of assumed that some of them (see: Ansom) would join later due to plot (he seemed important enough).

Second try, now I'm fully-staffed and fully-stocked and have learned to abuse the restart option. On chapter 9, trying to get Cotton the secret Mage, and really enjoying myself.
Still abusing Margus' Zone of Control ability. Not really enjoying trying to level up Marie the Healer, and I despise my mage. Ansom might be the most surprisingly useful character ever and I don't think I'd ever be able to finish the game without such a good earlygame Archer. Serdic is decent though the whole "game ends if he dies" thing sucks, it makes him hard to level through restart abuse. Kay the Cavalier is beastly simply because his MOV allows him to rack up EXP like nobody's business. Unlike most SRPGs, this game doesn't throw Cavaliers at you like they're going out of style, so Kay actually feels pretty useful and unique.

I try to round out my team with fast-moving dodgy sword-users, but those seem to be pretty plentiful in the earlygame, I've already got three (Serdic, Sasha, and Owl). Sasha's easy to level, but not very good, I traded her out for Owl (who's pretty amusing, if unimportant, storywise) and sent Sasha shopping (since she has the best affinity for it plus a skill which increases her chances at shopping well) and sent the Mage or Marie on Errands depending on who I wasn't using.

In terms of how I think RoS characters are in the DL setting - the skills seem pretty hit-or-miss. Some skills would transfer over tremendously well (the ones that tend to be useless in-game), while the ones which are useful in-game (like Zone of Control or "Heals a Party Member who walks by you automatically") would be pretty useless in a DL-setting. The mix of the two makes me want to see a stat topic for this eventually.

Anyway, it's late and I need to stop typing and start playing more of this game. It's not perfect by any means, but it is pretty damn fun and I've been looking for a fun DS RPG for a while.

If The Worlds Ends With You is better than this then I'll definitely be picking that game up next.

Poor Wild Arms 4... keeps getting shoved further and further back...

-Djinn