What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[Meeplelard]

FE10: Just beat the Bridge!  This chapter is a lot easier when you use all 6 Flying PCs, instead of just the 2 Forced ones and Haar.  Granted, makes you have to worry about Bows, but...part of that was my fault for not taking off Nullify on Haar (though, flipside, this let Haar go into a few spots with Thunder Mages.)

Also, Sigrun is a Seraph Knight already!  Other promoted PCs are Titania, Soren, and Haar.  Shinon, Mia and Nephenee at level 20 Tier 2, and probably going to just promote with EXP.

Now onto the Dawn Brigade section!  I look at the level of my PCs here and I ;_;.

MMBN3: Just finished Higsby's stupid delivery quest! Anyway, beat up Punk who took too long and...gave no rewards ._.

MMXCM: Just got Zero back permanently and such.  Twinking WE makes Charge Shot not suck on that note.

[Yakumo]

If the 40 turn map is the one I think it is, the main target is invincible and you have to run the timer out anyway.

[Grefter]

Tech is fun. Better to not be such a generalist though and abuse the existence of books from the library in Tarant (Find a handy barell to keep them in).  If you are going Dwarf especially I highly reccomend forgoing armour and packing yourself a few spare Smoking Jackets to always go out in style with your Chapeau of Magnetic Inversion.

I think I will play Arcanum instead of Ar Tonelico and Okami tonight.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Got Arcanum working! I am a sexy tech badass.

 Of course, Magick is probably the more powerful route overall. Fucking teleport spell and fucking rez spell and fucking overpowered Necromantic Black level 1 spell.

...nevermind Disintegrate.  Tier 5 energy, but still.  Disintegrate, or whatever it is, from what I remember.

Kills.  Anything.

It does, but you can get Black 1 before the opening movie, and it's cheap as hell.

[Strago]

Tech is fun. Better to not be such a generalist though and abuse the existence of books from the library in Tarant (Find a handy barell to keep them in).  If you are going Dwarf especially I highly reccomend forgoing armour and packing yourself a few spare Smoking Jackets to always go out in style with your Chapeau of Magnetic Inversion.

I think I will play Arcanum instead of Ar Tonelico and Okami tonight.

I'm not sure I follow you, Gref, not knowing much about the game just yet. I should focus on which tech disciplines, you'd say?

[Otter]

Rob is correct, Dark 1 and Light 1 can kind of carry a mage through most of the game as spells go.  Pump up willpower and constitution and you're golden, especially if you invest some points in grabbing Disintegrate too eventually (for those robots you fight in that dune somewhere).  Is tech less boring than that?  Sure!  Also can be a pain in the neck to deal with, though.

I consider first-tier herbology (that's the one with the salve) a must, if only because it makes the first third of the game so much more easy.

Exactly what I told Strago, yeah.

[Pyro]

You can't win that battle NEB. Even if you put Clarissa in range and attack with the Strahl Gewar (or try anything else). You are supposed to lose it.

I'm just curious as to whats in that chest...

[Cmdr_King]

On the note of the super long path map, just kill everything.  Enemies are spaced such that you can readily kill them on the run and it means any low-move characters you have (in my case, Clarissa) won't be holding you back.  Both conditions trigger victory.

(Grr.  I'm on 4-3, but still, must play more XF.  Mustn't let elf finish first >.>)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Oh, yes, it was certainly my intention to kill everything (in multi-goal maps, the more straightforward goal of killing a boss/all enemies is usually the easier one in my experience, with the significant exception of the map with Rupert in the the capital, so far). I still lost pretty spectacularly, as I hit turn 100 as I only first reached the Sentinels. Probably needed another 20 turns at least.

[Luther Lansfeld]

XF sounds like so much freaking win. ;_; Hate.

Anyway, I beat DDS2 yesterday evening. Will probably make a frue post later tonight, but I'm hoping to start SO3 sometime soon.

[Grefter]

Just pick a couple to get down to the highest rank Strago, they all pretty much have their ups and downs.  Some compliment each other that are pretty obvious ones though (both medicinal ones and whatnot.  Blacksmithing and Mechanical stuff).

2 point Electricity is a must have, you can get an NPC to make them for you, but he comes along mid game and Charged Rings are the best tech equipment in the game.

Oh and I strongly reccomend the level cap remover.  Just do it really.

To be honest though, these days when I play Tech I mostly only pick up Charged Ring and then points get put into Tech disciplines to pad out the Tech/Magic scale really.  You don't need much after you have maxed out Firearms and Lockpicking either.  This is of course all power gaming stuff.

Oooooh and Prowl is muuuuuch better than it seems at first, since you will be dumping points into Perception anyway, it is well worth the 5 points to max it and get Master training in it, then the game will die.  It helps you both destroy enemies AND the economy better.

[DomaDragoon]

FFTA: Five classes done. Update will go up later tonight. Only good thing about babysitting.

FFTA2: In the DS, haven't turned it on yet.

[Tide]

You can't win that battle NEB. Even if you put Clarissa in range and attack with the Strahl Gewar (or try anything else). You are supposed to lose it.

I'm just curious as to whats in that chest...

Confirming with Pyro here. I hit that thing with 5/6 of my units and the thing doesn't break down. I ended up resetting that map twice since I thought you were supposed to win.

[Lady Ashe]

My computer is dead, so I spent quite a bit of time gaming today.

Bought Phantom Brave yesterday. Did some tutorial stuff to see what it's like, and it seems good enough. It will probably come after I finish...

Wild ARMs 3.

Only did a couple of dungeons, and I was really early on in the game anyway. I'm going to some tower place now. If Virginia does not die in the ending (or even better, some time before it) there will be hell to pay.

Mega Man Star Force 2 - Ninja.

This is where most of my time went today. Did the first two dungeons, as well as a bunch of grinding for Battle Cards since I'll need them all for the post-game funtime. Bosses seem easier than MMSF1 so far, but I'm early on in the game and these are just their base forms. I just fought the second form of the Star Force version of Gutsman and he was quite a bit faster, so I'm confident that they'll all be fairly competent in their final forms.

[Meeplelard]

MMBN3: Beat Bubbleman!  The fight wasn't as annoying as I was expecting...the path TO the fight now can go rot in the pits of eternal Rinoa.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I found a copy of Rogue Galaxy for ten dollars. I don't have exceptionally high hopes for it's originality, but hey... it's a Japanese RPG. If I wanted originality, I wouldn't be playing one. Insofar it's a fairly enjoyable bastardization of several games I enjoyed.

I get a sort of Phantasy Star-meets-Skies of Arcadia vibe from the world so far, and it plays like Star Ocean 3. Which is good enough for me. Not that far in. I just left the asstastic desert world after dicking around in town for a while.

[Monkeyfinger]

All this talk about the tech path in Arcanum and no one has mentioned the ironically-named Balanced Sword?

For 2 points in I think smithing you get a weapon that's broken at first and usable even at endgame. Against rock and metal enemies it's horrible, you'll want something else against them, but it just massacres everything else.

[Grefter]

Even against rock/metal stuff it is pretty usable.  You just carry around a few spares or the materials for spares on some pack mule.  I know when I played through backstab path I never bothered with blunt weapons, I just broke my knife, dropped it and drew another one.  Kind of the same thing I did with Magic the one time I did it, just carry aruond a pack full of knives and a couple of staves  that have mana pools.

[Dunefar]

RKS: Still working on a no death/no tank Grolla mode run. There's really only two or three chokepoints, but they're doozies. The wall boss can go drink bleach in particular, though the long grind of the Yellow Devil and the various ways to fuck up in Sichte's stage are aggrivating as well.

Mana Khemia: Chapter 7 or so? I've lost my movitation to play lately. It's not the game's fault that I hear TotA whispering 'Replay  me' over and over.

[Captain K.]

Brawl:  Finished Classic with all characters, including the alternate forms.  Zzzzz...

EO2:  Floor 10.  Lots of quests to finish before I try Hellion.  Rested my War Magus to get rid of the moderately unuseful Fearcut and outdated Regenall.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Even against rock/metal stuff it is pretty usable.  You just carry around a few spares or the materials for spares on some pack mule.  I know when I played through backstab path I never bothered with blunt weapons, I just broke my knife, dropped it and drew another one.  Kind of the same thing I did with Magic the one time I did it, just carry aruond a pack full of knives and a couple of staves  that have mana pools.

Magnus can make them, and his carry weight is pretty damn high if I recall. Load him up and you don't even have to go to the trouble of taking them off him.

[Grefter]

Yeah Magnus is really valuable there like that and it doesn't really matter how much he can carry so long as he can still walk, he is and alright NPC, but not one of the broken ones so worth more as a mule than as a combatant.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I kept him the entire game, because every hero needs a best friend who's a Dwarf. Hell, even my Tankadin has one (a Healadin!) Also, I like his voice.

[DomaDragoon]

Team Fortress 2: Playing more. Finally got the Head of the Class achievement - Spy and Engineer were my last two, the former because I don't like any class where I'm almost expected to not actually attack, and the latter because I hadn't noticed that I'd skipped over that one. I'm not very good, though I play a passable Scout and Soldier.

Civ Revolution: <3.  I downloaded the demo just to see how much it's changed since Civ 2, the last one I played. Three hours later...

FFTA2: Still in the DS, but still not started. I'll do that soon.

*Update* 12 hours and no posts for gameplaying? I'm disappointed in you. Anyway...

FFTA2: Three hours in. The game is pretty simiar to FFTA, Though it could have used a larger starting equipment pool. I'm starting to build it up. but there hasn't been much for the classes I'm interested in and I level up way too quickly.

[Meeplelard]

MMBN3: I wanted to finish this game yesterday...but then work called, and so my entire mid day was shot cause they needed me.

Then I wanted to finish it today! ...parents decided we're cleaning out the garage.

So here I am, still playing the game!  Anyway, just beat Flamman.

Desertman was fail.  Stupid quirk, and easy boss, just takes forever to kill cause of said defensive quirk.

Plantman's dungeon FAILS.  Fails in so many ways.  I...don't even feel like explaining it; it was KHCoM Card Door level retarded.  Just...ugh, hate.  Plantman himself, thankfully, wasn't too bad.  Standard Slugfest boss, who DOESN'T HUG THE BACK.  See, that hugging the back wall thing is just stupid and overdone and annoying.  Its like saying "Anyone who likes swords can't play this game, GO AWAY!"  Plantman was just fast moving (expected of a boss, etc.), and attacked normally.  Some niche attacks, but they were pure offensive tricks to keep you guessing.  Not a hard fight, but at least it wasn't stupid.

Flamman's stuff lasted too long.  The Run around the net thing wasn't too bad, though embarrassingly enough, I realized I had 4 more Water items I was never using in Folder 2, which could have sped the proccess up considerably <.<;
Undernet stuff...meh, game loves filler, kind of annoying, especially since my style is Wood, and the game LOVES fire enemies ;_;  I actually ended up going back to normal so I wouldn't explode at everything in that dungeon, even if it comprimised my offense.
Flamman himself...was surprisingly not bad.  Quirk wasn't too bad once I figured out how it worked, and learning quickly that Charge Shots can bust the flames sped things up.  Also, like Plantman, he DOESN'T HUGE THE BACK WALL, so you can actually use a majority of your moves on him.

Granted, fight could have been 5x more retarded if they changed one minor thing with him.  That being they gave him actual variety of attacks.  His moves were easy to dodge and such, which is why the quirk wasn't too bad.  But if they decided to give him all these moves that go all over the place like every other MMBN3 boss does, that fight would have been frustrating as hell.  As it is now? Not too bad.