What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[VySaika]

Also, Gaignun is hot. It always bears repeating.

IIRC, Jenna and I had the exact same reaction there. As a plus, he's also neither dumb nor a jerkass. At least as far as I've played. I really hope that latter parts of XS2 and XS3 don't turn him into an idiot or a wanker.

[Strago]

*didn't have enough armor to give everyone in the party a piece until the end of disc three*

*never found any armor ever*

;_;
 

[Sierra]

I found...a cotton shirt! Yeah, score.

As for weapons...yeah, I've had horrid luck. Edward's broken two rapiers, two clubs (one of them a badass lead pipe) and an axe. I've got him using metal knuckles right now. Koudelka has a gun, but does zero damage with physicals because I never raise her strength. James has a mace which is only there because it jacks up his magic stats (healer/buffer).

[Shale]

....don't waste the gun. Give it to your physicaler. Firearms are by FAR the best weapon type in the game and they don't break.

[Sierra]

I was wondering about that, since I'd had the thing all game.

[Otter]

LotR Third Age: started!  I'm like 3% in.  Actually watching the optional cutscenes makes it take about forever to get a percentage point of completion, it seems.  Fun enough system, though!

Pssst, Strago should tell me which stats are good for which characters.  I've gone for fairly well-rounded building so far with maybe a slight emphasis on speed, but I'm also pretty early in.  Then again, the game currently doesn't promise to put up too much of a fight.  Maybe I should have set it to Hard instead of Medium?

[Meeplelard]

Crisis Core: Finished another full set of missions! Just 6 more to go or something!  Aeris still won't give me her last DMW scene ._.

FF7: Wutai Arc filled, ONTO THE PAGODA!

...then I remembered I didn't get Magic Hammer, and due to OCD, realize I need to give everyone Materia, so...laziness won this war *shakes fist*

[DjinnAndTonic]

@super: for the SaGa topic, what are you doing about Monsters? Will Lute and Riki see forms that are rankable? How exactly did the SaGa ranking take place anyway? The selection of ranked duelists from SaGa seems kind of arbitrary.

Finished Grandia 3. Dear god what a disappointment of a story. They spent so much money on graphics and visual/audio presentation, and even the occasional scene of humor, and Miranda was a pretty good result of all this money. ...but it all ended up so terrible! Plotholes, loose ends, horrible cliches, unrealistic motivations, Alfina in general... so much went wrong somewhere along the way. Not even the music or decent voice-acting could save it.

Luckily, the battle system was righteously fun, so the game was completely playable. But the story was such an insult, especially considering how much I loved G1 and G2:s (cliched, but fun!) plot/characters.

Honestly, if something with horrible/mediocre presentation and a significantly better story (at least without plotholes) managed to get the budget that Square-Enix threw at G3, we'd have a pretty high-quality game. Growlanser 5 actually comes to mind, who's biggest issue was definitely its lackluster presentation (and the existence of Fairies),

Started up a game of Suikoden 4, maybe I'll get all 108 stars this time (prepping for a Suikoden Tactics game). Were there a lot of easy-to-miss stars in this one, I haven't played in ages?

Still working on WA4, just can't seem to get back into it after the break I took. Same with LoD and GS.

On the handheld front: Phoenix Wright 3! (Yeah, I'm behind on these games...)  Case 2, Day 2. Godot is... ugh right now. Playing as Mia was great! I still hate Pearl. Gameplay is more of the same, but it just never gets old with the quality of writing these games seem to get.

-Djinn

[Cmdr_King]

Suikoden IV recruitment liked to have random and unforseen points of no return.  FAQing recommended.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Also, Gaignun is hot. It always bears repeating.

IIRC, Jenna and I had the exact same reaction there. As a plus, he's also neither dumb nor a jerkass. At least as far as I've played. I really hope that latter parts of XS2 and XS3 don't turn him into an idiot or a wanker.

Gaignun never embarasses himself, though he does spend most of XS3 possessed and is thus a non-factor in the game's plot. Which really is a good thing for him.

And yay, more Godot hate!

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

So, Gaignun is hot hype remains forever untarnished. Oh yes.

[Excal]

From what I recall, there's really only two points of no return for Suiko 4, and they're fairly easy to avoid.  Regardless, if you're going to recruit everyone, use the character guide on Suikosource to make it as painless as possible.

[Grefter]

Suikoden, just fucking FAQ it.

SaGa Frontier rankings were generally done on availability of the character across all quests I believe and then we did mains with varying degrees of merit.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

XS - They locked the Elsa from the inside? Actual shred of competence from the Federation? Fuck. Oh well, at least Storm Waltz nearly uniformly OHKOs the grunts that aren't the random mech, and I upgraded its speed already.

[hinode]

Saga Frontier was ranked in 3 chunks, based on a combination of availability, memorability, and DL worth/interpretability.  In general we were pretty cautious on who to rank, given the large potentially headache-inducing cast, so don't expect to see a monster get ranked anytime soon.

[superaielman]

Monsters aren't really worth ranking. I thought we pretty much hit every viable idea when we did our rankings.

@super: for the SaGa topic, what are you doing about Monsters? Will Lute and Riki see forms that are rankable? How exactly did the SaGa ranking take place anyway? The selection of ranked duelists from SaGa seems kind of arbitrary.

Lute's getting swords (Bleh), Riki is getting a black dragon form. I'm not sure I agree with giving monsters an endgame form instead of skills, but it's not worth arguing about.

[Ultradude]

Wild ARMs 4: Picked up for ten bucks. 1x Raquel get. Her introductory scene is <3.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

XS - Trippy Encephalon dungeon of three hours is trippy. And long. Also, before I forget!

DOUBLE BUSTER IS SO WRONG. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

[Dunefar]

FF4DS:

Finished!

Who the fuck decided that the majority of Lunar enemies needed to resist Holy? Thanks for that, retards. Anyway, FF4DS is a decent but deeply flawed remake of FF4. It updates things and adds content, though not always to the better. It also feels free to rebalance certain things, though this doesn't always work so well.  For my money, I think I like the PAL FF4a more for a FF4+ experience. A couple of things do nag at me, though.

- Why'd they cluster all the added Cecil/Golbez/Kain backstory bits together? There was a bit at the beginning, then a deluge after the Giant of Babil. Couldn't they have integrated it better into the game? Anyway, it was okay without being great.  There's some light continuity issues by what's added. Like really, no one mentions Klu-ya, the man who introduced airships to the world? You think that sort of thing would come up in Baron, the nation that benefits hugely from those airships? Man, fame sure doesn't last.

I did like that Golbez has no talent at White Magic. This was a nice touch and makes sense with in game continuity.

- I respect that they tried to clean up post 70 stat gain. I do wish they'd given you better HP growth instead of nerfing it. You can jack up anything but HP. It's overall better to go hunt Silver Apples if you want a high HP score instead of reaching 99. Go figure that one.

- While I don't object to more rare items, did they have to make the Pink Tail hunts recur several times over in the game? Seriously, what the fuck people? Couldn't we get some after game content or dungeons instead, or something? Please? Speaking of, two extra bosses are nice, but was I the only one expecting a lot more new stuff besides a couple of bosses? I know the concept got some play with FF4a, but that just makes your add ons look weaker by comparison.

Oh yeah, and you can only fight those bosses on NG+. BRILLIANT! Let's replay FF4 yet a-fucking-gain for TWO FIGHTS.

- Augments were a good idea, but would it kill you to document their effects better? The system feels very much designed to reward NG+ers, so see the bitching about NG+ above.

[Nitori]

FE9: Finished~.

Black Knight Duel: Woo completely luck based fights. Fortunately Ike landed an AETHER~!! first hit and it was smooth sailing from there as long as I didn't miss (79% hit rate) or a double Luna didn't happen.

Final map: Completely scrubtastic apart from the three starting dragons, and Ike + Reyson drops one in a turn. Nephritenee killed the other one and then the map rolled over and died. Naesala ended up being almost unnecessary, which is surreal~.

Ashnard: Ike gets two turns. Both activate AETHER~!!. Splat~ (Also Goddess Protect is horrible design)

Top Five:

1. Ike - 124
2. Nephenee - 123
3. Marcia - 115
4. Boyd - 77
5. Soren - 73
(6. Jill - 70)
(7. Astrid - 61)

Overall shiny enough game for a 8/10, I guess. There is still some gameplay stupid and the chance of you getting haxed, but the overall packaged gameplay is cool~. Getting my heart ripped out by FE9 VA was an awesome experience too.

[Clear Tranquil]

Why would Aeris do anything for YOU Meeple? ;p Meanie~

... Eh from the looks of things I'm not sure I like what they did to Aerith in Crisis Core anyway. She seems less confident in herself with lower self esteem and so less forward in being assertive in getting what she wants when she wants. Plus from what I've read it seems like they made her horrendously clingy with Zack ala Tifa with Cloud >.>

Opinion might change when I play the game though! I like the CG of her in this FMV anyway~

**

Nice Grandia and FF4DS reviews Djinn and Dune.

Suikoden IV ... I remember Deborah was very useful in helping me recruit. She gives you clues to where each SoD is when you talk to her in the ship. Most of the clues I figured out right off the bat though there was the odd obsure one or two that baffled me for a while (there's a woman causing a ruckus in Middleport! - no there wasn't!) Sometimes you have to enter a place by ship rather than just teleporting there with Viki. Talking about ships don't leave a certain dungeon if you want a certain character asap. He is god ;p

Besides knowing the type of characters you like I think you might like him Djinn =)

Of course you'll also have to recruit Deborah first before she can become useful to you but yeah.

**

Gaignun is one of the few highlights of XS series yeah <3

[NotMiki]

problem with SaGa as it is currently ranked is that Mystics are assumed to have access to obscure monsters for the purposes of absorption, and Riki (and monsters in general by extension) isn't.  It's one of the more arbitrary decisions from the early days of ranking. (don't ask me what I think the other ones are, unless you like arguments).

and...

*looks at latest member*

...we have someone named after SaGa Frontier 2 music?  Huh?

[Cmdr_King]

Well, gotta remember that Aeris is still fairly young in Crisis Core CT.  Generally they imply that Aeris developed into the character we remember in FFVII because Zack's outgoing, fearless nature rubbed off on her.  Which makes sense, for all I does make Zack look ludicrously awesome (but that's kinda the point, it just stands out a lot more in CC >.>)

[Pyro]

Portal: Holy cripes, this game was awesome, if short. Its a nice puzzle romp with a tasty slice of horror. It would be hard if they didn't have loads of auto-save points, for which I'm grateful. I would really like to see a completed game version of this, or at LEAST the portal gun being in an FPS or something. So much potential awesome with that.  And the final theme is easily the most awesome I've ever heard, bar none!

The cake is a lie.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

XS - Wow, they lay it on real thick with Albedo. Also, KOS-MOS now has S-CHAIN alongside X-BUSTER. Life is good.