What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[Tide]

FF7 Theme game:

I started this a long time ago. But I didn't really pick it up again until Tonfa's recent exploits. Anyways, the point of this game was to divide up materia into varying classes and give one set to each character. Characters can't use materia/equipment/accessories in classes not associated with them. The set up for each was:

Cloud - Paladin/Knight build. Has Cover/HP Plus. Can use Long Range. Has base level Restore. Must ALWAYS use the lowest level Restore on hand. Does not get revival until Disc 2 after Mideel. Has access to Lightning and Holy as elements. Accessories, things that protect sanity was assigned to the class. As well as +Vit accessories.

Barret - Mime/Chemist. Filler role. Is the only one allowed to use more powerful items (such as X Potions/Elixirs) and is the only one allowed to use attack items. Can use any materia, but only after an ally has Mastered corresponding materia. W-item exclusive. Can equip any armor/accessory

Tifa - Monk/Oracle. Counter Attack + status options such as Mystify, Seal, Transform and Added Effect. Will be allowed to block Fire late Disc 2. Equipment Gigas/Warrior/anything that bolsters attack. Accessories are similar. Can also use Curse Ring if so desired. Gains Deathblow later on.

Red XIII - Elementalist. Can use any type of elemental attack, but MUST be elemental (so Ultima is a big no-no). Fire/Ice/Lightning/Quake/Bio as well as Kjata summon and Contain are on him right now. Can also use Elemental materia in weapons + armor at will. Is forced to use Wizard Bangle when it becomes available. Accessories, any accessories that block elements or increase magic are dominant first.

Cait Sith - Blue Mage. Can use Manipulate/Sense. Also has access to E.Skills. Can equip Ribbon from the get go. Armor must always be at least weaker than what is the most current storebought. Can equip HypnoCrown if desired.

Yuffie - Ninja/Thief. Was originally Time/Ninja. But I swapped it around. Has access to Added Cut/Steal/Throw. Can use Speed Plus when available, as well as Double Cut and Morph. Accessories are similar to Tifa, with the added addition of using Running Shoes + speed boosting accesories.

Vincent - White Mage. Restore/Revive/Barrier/Heal. With Phoenix summon materia later on. Has access to Spirit boosting accesories, Magic boosting accessories as well equipment that blocks silence.

Cid - Dragoon/Time Mage. Time/Comet/Gravity/Exit. As well all three Bahamutts, HP Plus, Deathblow. Has access to Dragon Armlet. Accessories are tilted towards those that make him harder to kill. Can equip the Reflect Ring.

For the most part, its an interesitng way to play the game. Healing was a lot more scarce during Disc 2 when Cloud goes AWOL since I refused to use Vincent. Those were fun battles on that train. A couple of hard fights...Schizo ALMOST killed me. I always forget how damaging he actually is if you don't ward his elements. Jenova Death was also surprising thanks to an opening Silence on Cloud, giving me no healing aside from Hi Potions. Luckily, Cid to the rescue. If I had Red though, that fight would've been cake. As was, it became a lot tougher than it should be.

Most of the other bosses so far haven't been too bad. Ultima Weapon dealt lots of damage, but Yuffie's L1 along with Cait and Big Guard saved the day there.

About to head to the underwater reactor with an opening party of Cloud/Tifa/Yuffie. Will most likely swap to Red/Cait after the save point.

[Lady Ashe]

MMSF2

At the final boss, who follows the fine tradition of having way too much crap going on at once for me to keep track of. Fought it about ten times before giving up and deciding to get a better folder first. I head off to fight some SP forms of bosses to get high power cards, but end up failing horribly and never actually winning any battle cards from them. Argh.

Fun game, still have to get into the post-game but I can already tell it's going to be difficulty. Only real complaint is the stupidity of traveling to and from certain areas later on in the game. But yeah, didn't actually play it at all today thanks to...

WA3

A boss who fights with the power of cosplay. I love it.

About to hit up Nidhogg/Yggdrasil, so I figure I'm about to end Chapter 2. It's fun so far, but apparently I'm only halfway through the game? I'm worried the filler is going to get a bit overkill soon. Though I guess if it does I can go do WA4 post-game now that I have it back from my friend. Another thing - Holy recurring boss fights. I've fought Janus something like ten times now? Anyway, when do I get to this Gunner's Heaven place I read about back in Virginia's hometown? (She still needs to die, though not quite as badly)

FFTA2

About four hours in? Haven't really done much due to the previous two games, but I'm enjoying what I have played. Oh, and my copy of FFT finally arrived. Hooray.

[TranceHime]

FFTA2 - Yeah I got back into playing this silly little gem. Still rather enjoyable.

Here, have some pictars.

[AAA]

Mega Man 1-Buster Only Playthrough. Now I am never playing this game ever again.

Difficulty: Iceman>Elecman>Fireman>Gutsman>>>>>Bombman>Cutman

Cutman I could see being placed above Bombman, since they're very much alike, but taking more damage from the buster, plus having a far easier attack to dodge and being knocked back by the P shooter take it for me.

Bombman has an attack that's a bit harder to dodge and takes less damage from the P Shooter. Still a piece of cake.

Gutsman was harder than I thought. The timing to avoid being stunned when attacked is worse than I thought, and he hits decently hard as well. Both of these can be avoided, but it takes some doing. Took me a few tries.

Fireman is pretty tough. Basically the only real way to go is to just go beserk and hope he goes down before you do. He was easier than I thought he was going to be, though, and it only took me one try at full health.

Elecman is a total bitch. Lots of damage and fast. He can be stun-locked by shooting him just as he jumps to get on top of the platform, but it's tricky and inconsistent and if you miss you're almost certaintly taking a Thunder Beam to the face. This one took over 5 tries.

Iceman is Elecman++. Slower projectile, but there are more of them, they do just as much damage, and you have to do some tricky timed jumps to avoid them, unlike Thunder Beam which just requires you to jump up at the right moment. Also can't be stun-locked, no matter how unreliably. This was the hardest fight out of the original six.

Wily Fortress fights: Yellow Devil>Elecman 2>Iceman 2>Fireman 2>Bubble bot thingy>Gutsman 2>>>>>Wily2>Wily1>Clone>Bombman>Cutman

Cutman and Bombman are completely unchanged. Wimps!

Yellow Devil was tough. Gave me the most resets. Even if you know his pattern the jumping window is tiny and having to wear him down made it even worse.

Elecman 2 is basically Elecman except now you don't even have a block to stand on and you can't stun-lock him. Ouch. Basically the thing to do here is to sit in a corner and keep shooting Elecman. This causes him to keep jumping in the air and using Thunder Beam...which goes right over your head. It's not 100%, but it's enough to off him without too much trouble.

Iceman 2 is unchanged from the original, except you're probably already hurting from the previous two Robot Masters. This is not a good thing. Easily the toughest of the 4 boss rush, and I had to perfect him to beat Wily 4.

Fireman 2 is also unchanged, but is surpremely annoying since it's more or less impossible to get past him unscatched, and you have 2 more boss fights to go. I got past him with 4 bars of health and had to perfect Iceman and Gutsman. I hate his rotting guts.

The Bubble Bot thingy wouldn't be nearly as hard if I wasn't such a fucking spaz, but as is it took me a few tries to get the timing down enough to where the ultra-fast bots didn't kill me.

Gutsman 2 is harder purely because he's the last of the boss rush and as such I had to perfect him. The stage is really tiny which makes this really fucking hard. You just have to hope he stays back toward the other side of the area and time your jumps really fucking well.

Wily and Wily 2 are pretty easy to take down. Wily 1 I did without getting hit at all, and Wily 2 would be tricky if you couldn't just hang out underneath the robot, then rush out real quick to avoid the ball and then shoot him. Just takes time is all.

The Clone was essentially Elecman, except with a far less damaging weapon and less of a tendancy to shoot standing. I just sat in the corner and methodically kicked his ass.

Stage Music:

Elecman>Bombman>Cutman>Fireman>Gutsman>Iceman

Might do MM2 tomorrow, might not.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The trick to Gutsman is you can just let yourself get him by the quake. You'll recover from the stun in time to jump over his Super Arm attack. Once you realise that he's on the same tier as Bomb and Cut, and you perfect him unless he jumps all the way over towards you (in which case you still probably win, but it can get dicey).

[Pyro]

P3: Finished. Fun, but looooooong. I had a nice long rant, but it got eaten by teh internetz, so I'll make it short. I thought a number of issues would turn me off to the game: Persona fusion, party AI, main dying=game over, and the audacity stunt of pistol->head. None of it did, I ended up liking the game quite a bit. Even the plot kept me interested, which is impressive for its style. Blame the copious character interaction.

DL thoughts!? Well, Minato is Invincible Bluelike, everyone else is kinda bad. I was leaning towards allowing elemental resists, but those are dang-near impossible to get, so no. This leaves a big portion of the cast weak to common elements. I guess Koro-chan and Ken get the best part of it with weaknesses that are rarely hit.

[Tide]

Persona 3 speedrun:
Yes, I wanted to quit this. But the persistent side of me made me try try again so to speak.

Current P3 reset counter - 10. This is only April 22nd guys. We have 10 more months of pain to go.

Strategies? I named Minato P 3. As to reduce the text, but he hardly gets mentioned so meh. Everything else meets text skip. My travelling up Tartarus strategy...well I wish it was as easy to have the floors right beside each other constantly. But since I want to remain at least SOMEWHAT sane, I opted to just use the Split up tactic constantly. If I get trapped by something, initiate battle, request for help. Escaping works too. But yeah, since P3 damage is directly related to levels, we have to do the dirty deed so to speak one point or another. So far though, I've gone through the first 10 floors with minimal trouble.

Early on, Itkutski gives you 5k. Buy a bow. Equip it for the first boss. Now just hope it hits enough times to matter. Junpei's deadweight, so I kept him on heal. Tap triangle everytime its Yukari's turn so she will use her Physical. Take them down, AoA. Repeat. Just have to survive one round of doom.

Dancing hands, I needed a reset due to activating an AoA too early. Then they hit me too hard for me to recover. Winning try, just kept them pressed down with Bash. If Junpei was behind any of them, this would've sped things up a lot. lol Yukari physicals. Speaking of Junpei, he also ended up dying due to Bash missing once. Yeah...

Currently, I'm resetting until I can pick up a Rash Guard with Resist Elec (low) for Killer Drive. Unless someone has a better idea, this will take ages >_>

[Luther Lansfeld]

SO3- Started this the day before yesterday. It is ridiculously addictive.


MM2- Played a little of this, EPIC WRITEUP coming soon if I am not lazy (which I am)

[Meeplelard]

MMBN3: Completed!

Bowlman was awesome.  I need not say anymore.

Drillman was a stupid fight.  I was lucky that I like Wide Sword like attacks (Flame Sword, Elec Sword, etc.) which happen to hit him hard if timed right.  Otherwise that fight could have taken forever.

Refights...Flasman fails, as expected (500 HP ON THE UPGRADE! ...wait...), Bubbleman is a whore, Desertman is just stupid, Plantman and Flamman aren't too bad, and despite me fighting them with a Grass form and two in a row, I still beat them in one go, and Drillman is completely unchanged.

Bass is annoying.  Took me some time to figure out how the Aura recharges (thought it was a time thing, but...nope, recharges after specific attacks!) and he hits hard.

Final Boss...was stupid.  Its a fight you need to keep moving...yet he keeps blowing up the front panels.  I've actually seen him blow up the entire front panels, THEN fire the Missile.  The Missile is a move that hits hard as hell, and blasts the 2 back collumns...meaning you have to run to the front collumn first.  Fair...except impossible when its blown up.

But that's not what's annoying.  What's annoying is how I had a relatively Close Range heavy Folder against a boss who CANNOT BE HIT WITH CLOSE RANGE ATTACKS.  Normally, you'd say "ok, use Panel Grab skills!" which yes, I had several of! ...except his panels are immune to stealing, so he's flat out immune, ARGH!
Basically, a resource fight.  I eventually won it when I was able to pull off Random Meteor (which actually isn't that random! Definitely targets panels where there are actually things on the enemies side.) in the right spot at the right time and watched it totally rape the shit out of him.

The dungeons...last few were basically just "Run around the entire world!" Not...as annoying as MMBN2's "HEY THE NET IS FROZEN LOLOLOLOLOL" where they made you go on this massive fetchquest across the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD, though, at the same time, its still very faq bait.  Thank god for shortcuts.

Plot...uhh...
I know a lot of you are saying "MEGAMAN PLOT!" but no, that doesn't apply here.
See, Megaman plot actually MAKES SENSE.  THe problem is, its not very good.  Its bland, boring, crappy writing, and overall silly, but its not illogical (...MMX5/6 do not count.)
MMBN3...went below that level of sensibility.  The game tossed nonsense after nonsense at you.  The Crises were some of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen.  Ok, MMBN1 and MMBN2 had some silly ones, but they weren't that ridiculous.  MMBN1 had, after all, Oven is on fire! Ok, reasonable crisis; something catches on fire, its bound to spread if not dealt with, fair.  And they said this was going on in several places, so by finding the source in your house, you can stop it in others.  Silly, but fair.  Similarly, "TRAFFIC LIGHTS ARE ALL GREEN NOW!" Yes, its silly, but causes accidents and thus, actually sensible, its fluff and works, just not very good <_<
MMBN2 had something like Snakes on a Plane!  Well, not that stupid, but basically, plane is in trouble.  An actual threat, especially for the main character.   Forget some of the others, but outside of the "INTERNET IS FROZEN!" stunt, they were all at least somewhat sensible crises.
MMBN3...THE DISHWASHER IS OVERFLOWING!  No, I'm not kidding; this was an actual crisis.  Alternatively, there was "THE ANIMALS ARE ATTACKING!"  Now, it'd be one thing if the animals were robotic duplicates and you had to jack in and fix their AI or something, but...the actual crisis? THE CHIPS USED FOR MONITORING THEIR HEALTH IS NOW BEING USED TO CONTROL THEIR BRAINS!  No, I'm not kidding; that's literally what happens.

I refuse to discuss the ALpha nonsense.  That was just ridiculous on so many levels.  To put things in the simplest of manners...
YOU ARE FIGHTING THE INTERNET!
No, this isn't an exaggeration.  It is in fact what happens.

Ending was...pulling a "Main character is dead...oh wait, just kidding Teehee " Thing.  Except its not as simple as "You survived based on Deus Ex Machina's 0.1% chance kicking in! ITS A MIRACLE!" cliche; that would be annoying, but whatever, suspend belief, its Science Fiction, etc.

Instead, it had to do with a whole Xanatos Roullette for why he lived.  Basically, a dead guy programs his brain into a computer, KNOWING that eventually someone was going to find him there, and those would be his grand children, one of whom was about to die, so he programmed a code that he knew his son would eventually get and be able to decode miraculously, which just HAPPENS to have the exact data to bring back that one exact person who died.

No, this isn't an exaggeration; it is exactly what happens.  The game treats it like its nothing too...

Anyway, overall game wasn't...much different than MMBN1 or MMBN2.  Some neat new ideas with bad implementations.  The plot is just really damned awful and nonsensical though.  Guess its a 4/10 maybe? Dunno at this point.

[AAA]

MM2-Buster only challenge. Much, much easier than MM1, even on Difficult. Oddly enough, the stages became harder than the bosses; Metal Blade and Air Shooter have spoiled me quite rotten, and being deprived of them made things much more difficult.

Robot Master difficulty: Crashman>Woodman>>>>>>>Bubbleman>Quickman>Metalman>Flashman>Airman>Heatman

Heatman can be easily beaten without taking a single hit. The only real trouble spot is that his time spent waiting before charing you varies.

Airman takes plenty of damage and can be beaten without much effort. His projectiles are a little trickier to dodge and he can't be locked into a pattern like Heatman.

Flashman charges you constantly. That's the only reason he's higher than the previous two.

Metalman is a cinch as long as you can dodge his blades and stay on the other side of the room. Just keep firing and he'll go down.

Quickman could be more difficult, but he gets stuck on walls alot and that's a perfect opening. Still pathetically easy to buster

Bubbleman is actually harder than I thought. Takes less damage from the P-buster, also does more damage and counters you. Took me a couple tries.

Woodman is tough, but I've already bustered him before so his pattern was well known to me.

Crashman is tough. He hops around like nuts and his Crash Bombs hurt. He still only took me a couple tries, though.

Wily bosses(that I could actually buster): Wily 2>Pico Pico Master>>>>>>>Wily 1>Dragon>Guts Dozer

The refights were all more or less the same, except for Crash Man who is even harder since you have less room to manuever. The same goes for Wood Man and Bubble Man.

Gutz Dozer is way easy. Stand on top of the platform, shoot shoot shoot.

Dragon is only higher on the list because he could potentially knock you down.

Wily 1 is not a problem at all once you get his timing down.

Pico Pico Master was a bitch. Does more damage than I expected and I kept standing on the wrong blocks. Took me awhile, anyway.

Wily 2 would have been horrible if I didn't have some E-tanks with me. As it was, it was still a close call. Those bouncing balls just do tons of damage and he takes awhile to go down. Pain in the ass, pain in the ass.

Final battle is boring, Bubeam Trap is the worst boss in MM history, etc.

Stage Music: Crashman>Heatman>Woodman>Flashman>Quickman>Metalman>Bubbleman

[Rozalia]

FF7CC- Got a psp a couple of days ago and got this with it. Due to how many ways they could have messed things up its been solid.
If I'm ever going to vote on this game though I'll need to replay it because I'm too overleveled from the looks of things. I checked a guide when looking for the comination of the safe in the shinra mansion and saw the recommended levels for some bosses. The bosses recommended level was 20, I was 35.

FFTLW- Also got this. Black mages need to die.

[DomaDragoon]

FFTA: About to head to some mountains to kill a monster. I may have a new favourite Cid. Average level is 12.

[Captain K.]

EO2:  Finished all the second stratum quests, cleaned out every area I could find.  Ready to start Stratum 3.

[metroid composite]

WAXF: final boss (or what looks like it).  The durability of this battle is absurd.  6,000 HP and good defences--that's acceptable.  12 or so enemies with about 300 HP apiece which you kinda need to kill?  Sure, I'll accept that.  A defence mode which is invulnerable to attacks but can be deactivated with enough hits?  Okay, sure.  Teleportation counterattack making it difficult to get more than one hit in at a time?  Acceptable.  A wave of 12 more reinforcements towards the end of the battle all of whom can and will heal the boss for 200-300 HP?  NOOOoooooooo!

Dunno, maybe I'll swap characters around and try VP-killing it--I think that deals percentage-based damage, and my generics, good though their stats may be, are kinda crippled in this fight due to elemental weaknesses.

[Cmdr_King]

Depleting VP makes you take damage equal to weight, if I'm not mistaken.  So it really depends on whether or not the boss has any equipment weighing it down.

[Idun]

This is my first playthrough of Xenogears. Right now, I've reached the Tower of Babel and have already been to the command room. I'm dissuaded during the game's battling though, because learning different deathblows seems like a blind coin toss in the air without knowing where the coin lands because of having to repeat unknown commands for the character to learn them. But these deathblows are obviously necessary, or rather, benefits to beating bosses more quickly. . .  But when you're trying to rush through the game, powerleveling = boring. I'm still interested in the storyline, but moreso impressed by the character interaction than anything. I'm abouuut 30 hours in, and I don't know if that's average or not before the Tower of Babel, but I let the game idle anyways, so who cares?

Within the month of May, I beat Shadow Hearts, and Shadow Hearts Covenant. Then in June I beat Xenosaga Episode II (<3), and within an exact week I beat Xenosaga Episode III (<3), which I liked for the better mech battles. Mech battles in Xenogears absolutely sucks. Battling in Xenogears sucks - the random camera angles that obscures my view of the battling plane needs to die.

After I finish Xenogears, I'm hopping onto Suikoden Tactics which I should have put at a higher priority than this . . .  Then I'm going to beat SO3 since I'm in the final dungeon and finish my file on Grandia III.

[Bardiche]

Suikoden Tactics was horrid in my experience. Far, far too slow... Fell asleep during the slow battles.

[Talaysen]

Bah, Suikoden Tactics is fine.

Etrian Odyssey 2 - At the beginning of stratum 4 and I did most of the stratum 3 quests.  I'll probably get back to this next week or something.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - At 3-8 (obligatory lava level) now.  Last fight was stylish but implemented poorly (hey don't fight the enemy PCs because they'll break their weapons).  Whatever.

[Excal]

I'm going to also agree with Suiko Tactics being fine.  It's not a shining exemplar of anything, but neither is it a poor game.

Also, Tal. The battle where you fight against PCs are not the ones you hate.  It's the ones where you get PC allies that you hate.  At least when they're against you, you can kill them and they can't burn your weapon charges after that anymore (and several of them are fairly easy to kill without their being able to fight back all that well, and they're against PCs so they go down fast)  When they're allies, you can't kill them, and they're facing grunts so that they get to do it for the entire length of the battle.

Moving on to what I'm playing.  Rondo of Swords continues to be a wonderfully polished masterpiece.  I'm realising that some skills not only gain a fair chunk of AoE as they get levelled up, but they also have the added side effect of in built IFF, not that you get told any of that for free.  You just have to sink the points (which seem to be finite, if plentiful) and then fire them off, and hope you don't butcher yourself too much in the learning process or burn a good chunk of your potential in locking useless skills.  Then again, as the only people who can really have that issue are mages, this means I can always fall back on Cotton if I botch things too badly, and not be any worse off for it.

Onto better game, I've finished Dragon Quest 8.

The final dungeon was fun, and I can see how it could kill you if you weren't lucky.  Fortunatly, I was never that badly off.  And, the final fetch quest, while mildly irritating that it existed, was short, sweet, and gave you a good excuse to wander around and talk to people about the giant fat naked guy hanging over the world.  Oddly few people seem to notice things like this though, especially in Argonia which he's practically hovering right over.  Ah well, who ever said generic NPCs were smart or observant.

The final battle itself was...  anti-climactic.  The first part was annoying, but easy enough to get through once you realised that you weren't allowed to heal and progress in the fight on the same round.  And if I hadn't of been healed in between the two rounds, I'd have still considered the second part of the fight bloody simple.  As it was, it was a slaughter, the high point of which was Yangus getting of a 50 Tension Oomphed 100 Ax tech off right before Wave of Ice was invoked for a whopping 1500 damage.  Which summed up fairly nicely how the battle went.

Looking back at the game as a whole, I have to say it was a good game, and more to the point, it was the kind of thing I was in a mood to play.  The first half of the game worked really well as just a vehicle for random exploration, encouraging you to wander around the world map and find what there is to find, assisted by the best world map that's been made yet.  The feeling of being able to stand on the top of a hill and see for miles around, or enter a gully and feel like the terrain is encroaching on me, like something could just pop out and surprise me when I leave, it was a blast.  And when you could stand on one side of a river and see something worth grabbing on the other side, and then wandering around, trying to find your way over?  It was all a blast.  Then, when you start to get fed up with the exploring, you reach the half way point, and the plot starts to pick up, and you have direction and focus guiding you.  And while it's a basic story, it's done well, with a few bits that are left at simply being implied.

The ending is long, but it did give me a chance to do some wandering around and talking in a place I've wanted to do so for quite a while.  My one big complaint there is getting a big important choice about an hour in with no opportunity to save beforehand.  As for what I chose?  Let's just say it was cathartic to see a certain character get what was finally coming to him.

Undecided as to whether I'm going to focus more on finishing FM4 or doing postgame content for the moment, but Dragon Quest 8 was a great game, and I think one worthy of a high 8/10.

[Grefter]

XG deathblow system is even worse than that, it isn't even the combination for the deathblow that gets you point towards it.  It is a weird combination of using the attacks that make up the combo, if you keep using the combo over and over the move likes to stop gaining any points.  The fastest way I have heard to learn stuff (and I know it works) is to systematically cycle through every button combo that isn't a deathblow (carry over the cycle between fights).  So for 5 attack bar you do TTTTT, TTTS, TTST, TSTT, TSS, TCT, TTC, STTT, STS, SST, SC, CTT, CS.  Repeat.  It builds up stuff on all skills fairly fast, I know I was always well ahead of the curve for learning new skills.  It is fairly systematic and doesn't require you to memorise the combo you are practicing and it really doesn't matter if you lose track of where you were in the cycle.

That said, deathblow learning system is the nail in the coffin for the gameplay in XG.  With SUPER shit fucking Mech combat that takes over compared to the foot combat and Foot combat having that crap it brings the gameplay down pretty low.

[Talaysen]

Also, Tal. The battle where you fight against PCs are not the ones you hate.  It's the ones where you get PC allies that you hate.  At least when they're against you, you can kill them and they can't burn your weapon charges after that anymore (and several of them are fairly easy to kill without their being able to fight back all that well, and they're against PCs so they go down fast)  When they're allies, you can't kill them, and they're facing grunts so that they get to do it for the entire length of the battle.

...can I just hate both?

[Ultradude]

P3: Er... somewhere early December. Plot is still surprisingly interesting, and the characters are turning out really well between a decent bit of development and lots of character interaction. The battle system is far less annoying than I thought it would be, given how easy it is to mess with an opponent's offense. Currently, Surt, Loki, and Thor are carrying most of the combat with my main character, with all four damage elements and Almighty between them, plus some nice physical skills and healing. Nulling various things here and there, and once Loki gets Null Fire he'll be pretty scary. Might try to get some other max S. Link Personas, and I'll probably... never ever get Alice since I haven't even seen half of the Personas needed to fuse into her, nevermind actually fusing them out.

Other characters vary in usefulness, though Junpei, Aigis, Yukari, and Mitsuru are the only ones still at usable levels any more. Yukari is pretty much default for the healing, Junpei, Mitsuru, and Aigis depend on the enemy though Mitsuru tends to get the shaft more often. Junpei getting Trismegistus has really helped, and having Laeventein (Did I butcher that spelling much?) has really helped.

Odin Sphere: Booted this up for a few hours. Very pretty both in music and visuals, and the gameplay is entertaining. Plot screams fairytale, with a few minor twists, which I mostly approve of.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Playing Sid Meier's Pirates! again. I just got done sacking Santiago, which was tricky on account because I was outnumbered 4:1. Now if only I could have BURNED THE PLACE TO THE GROUND I'd be Henry Morgan, Junior.

[Taishyr]

WA1: Beaten. Not as good as WA2, definitely not bad. Although WA1 has the bonus of far more coherent plot, WA2's more interesting to play. Also WA2 had challenge at some level which was cool; WA1 really looked like a case of "grind, Goat Doll or Fish/Frog Badge" for the optionals which was ahaha no. Except for Boomerang Flash who was a cool fight.

Also, Zenthor, what the hell how were you level 19 for Belselk Final? 2? I forget which he is but I was level 29 there, without leveling on purpose, so um.

[Cotigo]

I'll guess that since I've played the game to death I didn't spend nearly as much time as you did wandering around trying to find stuff, and thus was a way lower level?