FFT - Replayed this. Shock! Awe! Did a two-person file with Ciato while she was here. No restrictions, though the highest-end cheese (Math Skill mostly) was avoided. MP Switch and Auto-Potion were okay, though we didn't brave-twink.
My character was Elfboy (Ramza), Aquarius, went Samurai then over to the mage side, mainly Oracle. Didn't ultimately use any Oracle skills until Altima (Don't Act and Life Drain) but they were awesome then at least! Also had Move-MP Up from Oracle, and MP Switch. Yes. It is immensely cheap as advertised, though only 74 brave and giving up Teleport hold it in check a little. Speaking of which, also had Magic Attack Up and Teleport at times. Weapon Guard for most of the game pre-MP Switch, it remains a quietly solid filler reaction. Item for much of the game while in Samurai, since Item rules.
Samurai remains a pretty neat project class. It is not fun to be in, but it really takes over lategame. Instantaneous, magical, no-MP damage that gets around basically every form of defence is nice, and it kicks increasing amount of ass as magic starts tailing off (not that magic ever really gets bad). The Kiku/Muramasa options are terrific. Murasame is also great healing, and Kiyomiri is an outstanding defensive move. The skillset combines well with Teleport to boot, well with Auto-Haste, and is just generally solid. While the massive accession woes keep it from being in the top five classes, it's definitely in the second five.
Two Hands Oracle, which I contemplated doing, is... well, not useless, but feels inferior to a Draw Out Oracle (who will have a Wizard Rod) and takes... well, less JP, but not -that- much less. So not very good I guess, though still super cool!
Ciato was pretty much a stock beatdown machine, which is good because with my dicking around in Samurai we couldn't have survived Chapter 2-3 with anything less. Summon Magic, Holy, Teleport, Magic Attack Up, Auto-Potion... pretty much the cheapest set of things to own the game with outside Math Skill. Early Black Magic, too naturally. Ramuh wins battles singlehandedly for a good long while, and is probably the best single action skill in the game if Phoenix Down isn't. Strengthen MAU MA-boosting 4-ct large-area IFF death. Besides that, got Titan/Shiva for element coverage, Moggle, Odin, Golem, and Lich later. Odin didn't see too much play (given the 108 Gems use, Leviathan would have been a bit better, but realistically no Short Charge hurts the big summons a lot unless you beeline for them) but Golem and Lich were naturally terrific at least once or twice. Although Holy 2HKOed Velius anyway.
Also a fun fact about her character. We wanted a Taurus to go with her zodiac sign, and the very first generic we hired... was a Taurus with 67 brave and 69 faith. And 199 chemist JP (the random range is 100-199). And 180+ in most other things (Squire and Wizard in particular). Hax.
Hard battles... well. Chpater 1 was generally a cakewalk, we had one reset in Zeklaus Desert/Lenalia Plateau/Fort Zeakden though. Chapter 2... a little trouble with Bariaus Hill and Goug Machine City, a little more with Bariaus Valley oddly (though it involved things like the Lightning Bow hitting Bolt 2 something like 6 times in 8 attempts). Execution Site was a slow but manageable slog that we actually won on the first attempt, Lionel Gate was one reset, and Queklain was 2-3 and a sign that zodiac demons were going to be a problem. God damn he's fast.
One reset on Olan (USE GALAXY STOP YOU MORON. Also he hates Armour Break, -85 HP), then we got into an easier spell. Only Izlude (two resets) with his horrific Jump damage and decent support gave us any trouble (two resets?) until Yardow. Yardow then proceeded to be the hardest battle in the game, giving us six resets. The Summoners hasting the Ninjas would be a very, very bad thing. Ninjas and Summoners were both extremely dangerous and annyoing to pin down. After that, one reset against the undead of Yuguo Woods, and Riovanes... wasn't too bad. Only Velius killed us, and only four times! We'd have won earlier, except apparently Ramza breaks ties with Velius for turn, which is bad, as we wanted Velius to cast Titan on Ciato, then me Kiyomori her so she survives. Eventually I was able to monkey with Wiegraf to go just after Velius, and we pulled this off. Two Holies killed him, Elfboy had to act as bait round two but this was easy enough. Roof we beat first try thanks to Elfboy stripping.
Chapter 4... well we died once to Meliadoul, her support is nasty if you don't kill her fast, and we screwed up the formation so that happened. Besides that early C4 is easy. Then Balk and Bethla produced three straight multi-reset battles. Balk is a dirty whore who is too fast, the Bethla battles both had too many icky archers and otherwise put us on the defensive fast. One reset on Poeskas Lake, one on Zalera (the easiest Zodiac, but still not trivial as Elfboy was OHKOed with Flare 2 on the first attempt). Adramelk, at five resets, was the second hardest fight on the playthrough, as we both had bad Zodiac with him. Killing him fast was totally impossible, but all his status nonsense meant the reverse wasn't true. Baited him into just enough damage to win eventually, although we won through massive luck anyway. Elfboy survived a Flare with about 5 HP when he was the last PC left. The only reason it was Flare and not Holy was because Protect/Shell wore off on the EXACT CLOCKTICK that Holy would go off but Flare wouldn't, and Holy would have killed. Crazy. I didn't even figure this out until now, figured him casting Flare instead of Holy was a weird AI glitch (I'd never seen it before).
After that... Murond Holy Place we got mega-haxed, as the Geomancers hit us both with Petrify and Stop before we moved. Uh. Um. ;_; Rest of Murond was easy, as was the final dungeon until Balk, and even Balk was surprisingly not too bad. We played defensively, killed the Hydra/Tiamat/Chemist with Draw Out and Ice spells, and eventually struck at Balk with Kikus when the time was right, avoiding the big bad Dark Behemoth. Then came Hashmalum, who tied Velius for third most resets. Surprising, but oddly he was a fair bit harder than most everything else in the game. We both had bad zodiac with him, but again that didn't stop his own offence from being sick (why does he have 13 speed? ;_;). Granted Auto-Potion failed four times in a row for those four resets. <_< Basically did something similar to Velius with using Kiyomori to survive his opening assault, then laying into him. Eventually started using Black Costumes to avoid Spell nonsense, and Angel Rings so that him kiling us once wasn't too bad. Two Liches and he was done, though the hit rate was none too good thanks to zodiac. Altima, finally, took... two tries? Three? Not as bad anyway. Altima 1 was the source of all the challenge, a good gravity assault took care of 2 along with Angel Rings/ AI abuse with our reaction abilities. Mostly had to make sure the demons didn't become too relevant.
Overall yeah, lots of fun, it is FFT, and two person is remarkably balanced for experienced players.
Mario Kart Wii - Played a lot of this the past two weeks too, but not much to report about it.
F-Zero GX - Got this in San Francisco, yay! Also played a bit of Xer's copy. Seems mostly like X with a few more features added. Which sounds awesome to me, and I can't argue with an $8 pricetag.
MMX - Played this with Ciato at Gate's. Hate the spider. I was pretty woefully out of practice and failed it up so much at Sigma-1's platforming Gate had to step in for me. In my defence I was extremely tired and a bit sick.
Wild Arms XF - Finished Part 4. I'll probably save most thoughts until I'm done the game at this point (very close), but it looks like it's headed for high 9/10 with the promise of improving if it has any replay value at all. Awesome. Final boss of Part 4 was intense, as were most boss fights in the chapter. Charlton is quietly better than 90% of RPG villains, and the rest of the cast is varying shades of okay to above average outside Ragnar who is awful (and Chelle/mummyboy, as his foils, are also bad). Gameplay is of course pure win.
