What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Your complaints about SP will be more or less over as soon as you reach... C4, methinks? Anyway, as soon as the battle system begins spreading its wings, although your complaints regarding it until then are perfectly valid. Pretty much agree with your early game character gameplay assessments as well.

[Sierra]

P4:  Shadow Erdrick was a rather competent boss, so had to do some massive grinding to beat him.

Got hot and sweaty with Chie.  Level 2 Personas are nifty - no weaknesses!

Not all of them are like that, unfortunately. I know at least two PCs keep their weakness even with a new persona.

~

P4: Finished, good ending got, etc. Good ending is stupidly obscure. Say "No" twice in this particular spot when the game asks you if you want to leave yet? (Note: the game asks you this everywhere whenever you do anything in this fake ending sequence.) Fail, Atlus. Ending is various shades of cheese on a par with P3's ending. Won't bother to elaborate because of spoilers and laziness.

End time was eighty-six hours. On a par with P3, for me. Compendium completion rate: 87%. Levels for the last fight were eighty-three for the MC, seventy-seven for everyone else. Last boss is...vaguely competent? Decently threatening without having a dozen forms just for padding, so that puts it above P3's final (for all that the Nyx fight was way neater aesthetically).

Game is a whole is fundamentally just P3+. Since I basically liked P3, this is a good thing. The only thing that really bugs me about it is the various ending shenanigans and oh god Atlus it's 2008 why is there no sceneskip, but it's pretty consistently entertaining on the whole. Boss fights were a lot of fun; considerably moreso than P3's because most of P4's bosses have plot relevance. Shadow bosses were always a highlight: most of them have great design (especially the Maru-kyu and Void Quest bosses), the boss track kicks ass, and the fights always represented the peaking of some character's internal conflict. Related to that, witing definitely feels like it's a cut above P3's; "Yeah, we're screwed up, neurotic teenagers, but we're doing our best anyway" is fundamentally a more interesting (yet still positive) theme than "The power of teamwork shall conquer all!" (though P4 does hit that pretty hard in the good ending). The cast and their various problems felt pretty realistic given their age; the core PCs are highly endearing as a result. Well, I can't say I really cared about Yosuke, but that's more my apathy for that kind of character.

So yeah, 8/10, I think? Maybe 9/10. I really did enjoy it, and they did a lot of fun things with the Tv theme.

Rankings! I'm putting all of this in spoiler-text because a couple people in chat were leery about posting the full PC list. I don't think there's anything too surprising about it given that P4's opening video shows everyone, but eh, whatever.

...Actually, I'll do ranking stuff tomorrow. I need to get to bed.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Dissidia:

Started with Cecil's storyline since he's the first beginner-difficulty character I stumbled across. He's pretty fun to play as and the Dark Knight/Paladin switchfest is pretty cool aesthetically. Also, I'm spoiled on his ability to get close to his foes at a decent pace. From my limited understanding of Japanese, his story seems to touch on his relationship with his estranged brother, which I find kind of cool since they never did anything with that in FFIV. Since I don't fully understand everything, I've taken to the enjoyable practice of tricking myself into thinking the story is the greatest thing ever and pretty much matching my emotions to whatever music is playing during the cutscenes. Highly enjoyable, I wonder how long I can keep it up? If I'm lucky, I'll be able to enjoy watching the cutscenes until the inevitable English translation, where I'll have to fully understand how corny their dialogue is. I'm already getting lots of 'corny dialogue' vibes just from the basic Japanese I understand, but let's not think about that.

Anyway, Cecil was fun, but once I finished his story, I couldn't hold back anymore and I jumped right into Tina/Terra's story. For those that don't know, my love for Terra is roughly 1/6th of Meeple's love, which is to say, quite a large amount anyway.

Terra: She's a mage. I didn't understand what that meant until I played this game, but there's no better way to describe it. Vaguely reminds me of Zelda (not Shiek) from Smash Bros. The difference in difficulty was, I'm happy to say, quite noticeable. I spent about 4 times as long on Terra's story as I did on Cecil's. This is good because Cecil is a one-star difficulty character while Terra is a 5-star (top) difficulty character. Not necessarily because Terra is harder to use (she is, but that's besides the point), but because Terra's maps include quite a few more enemies and more difficult passing requirements. Her story seems kind of lame compared to Cecil's (crazy, I know). She seems to be stuck with amnesia again (why?) and doesn't know what her 'dream' is. Don't worry, Cloud will help her figure it out and then she can get her Crystal, too. Yay. Despite all that, the voice actress was really good and I enjoyed it because it's Terra and I don't think anything they would have done could have ruined it for me. The cutscenes seemed to try their hardest to show Tina as incredibly frail and weak and 'damsel-in-distress'-like, but her ability to kick-ass in battle kind of ruined that image (thankfully). Overall, I am a happy Djinn here.

The game really -does- play like an ARPG, with the levelling system, the 'random encounters', the equipment system, the progressive skillset acquisition, etc. If the battles weren't all one-on-one, it would be hard to call this a Fighting Game at all. Apparently there's even a mode where you can control your character with a command menu (just like FFXII, I suppose?).

There are some aspects of Dissidia that definitely have a rankable quality to them - unique skillsets, stat growths, and equips namely. But as previously pointed out, it's still a bit too much of a Fighting game to really rank. It would be possible (in a Tales/SO3 way), but Dissidia in the DL wouldn't look anything like Dissidia in-game.

Despite this, I still want to see a stat topic of it someday... I wonder how you take 'endgame' level?

-Djinn

[Grefter]

Correction.

since they never did anything in FFIV

I am seriously tempted to give MK a spin now that NEB is playing it as well just to compare it to other Gust games and see whether or not others might be worth him picking up and trying out in comparison to his respones to it.  Might start it up tonight.

Other Gust games really really deserve the reputation though NEB.  AI1 was the hardest of the 4 I played and it was pretty stupid easy.  AI2 and AT enemies just were walking corpses.

[Pyro]

Yeah, AI1 had BOSS NORN (who turned into a double-acting borderline OHKO machine if you weren't careful. Before you had revival)

[Grefter]

Oh yeah Boss Norn and the Air Djinn are both fairly noteworthy in that you have to kind of plan for them.

AI2 has errr nothing.

[Dhyerwolf]

Got hot and sweaty with Chie.  Level 2 Personas are nifty - no weaknesses!

Not all of them are like that, unfortunately. I know at least two PCs keep their weakness even with a new persona.[/quote]

Balance for them learning Mediarahan.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I bought GalCiv 2. It is much harder than I recall, to put it lightly. Maybe I'm just getting bad map draws, but I always seem to get boxed in by other races while I'm still exploring, and then ultimately get an ass-beating. Did they change the way people were seeded in the expansion or something?

[Monkeyfinger]

CalCiv2's AI, in recent months, has started mass-buying colony ships on credit (you know, those options with small down payments and long/hefty per-turn debts). It lets them expand at breakneck speed, but keep playing and you'll notice most of their economies hitting a wall a year or so down the line.

[Meeplelard]

Phantom Brave: Episode 3 beaten.  Not much else to say.

Dissidia: Just beat Terra's story, working my way backwards, so half way done. These stories would be more enjoyable if I understood japanese <_< >_>

Also unlocked all the villains, leaving just the two Guests who I can't get yet.  Thoughts and such!

Garland: About what I expected.  Slow, but hits hard.  Oddly better at comboing than I expected.  Good Ground HP attack, Aerial one has issues with actually targetting.

Emperor: A lot more fun than I expected.  Yeah, fights take forever, especially if tis a level like Dream Zanarkand where its so much open space on both axis and a lot of pit area making the Gylph Mines useless and...yeah, he's very much reliant on terrain.  Still fun just turning the whole stage into a death field, and watching the enemy destroy themselves as Flare slowly creeps up on them.

Golbez: Despite being...really weird, when I started using strategies similar to what I did with Terra, he started working out.  Fun character, will consider making him one of my mains.

Ex-death: ...meanwhile, I refuse to touch this guy outside of random select.  Pure Countering, slow as fuck to the point where he requires Air Dashing to get anywhere (which he doesn't have yet), and really bad at direct combat.  Whenever I use him, I just resort to Almagust Spam to slowly wittle away at their HP since his Brave Attacks are a pain in the ass to use.  I'm sure he's good if you take time to mater him, but fuck if I want to use someone who relies entirely on counters and is boring as shit before you learn how to use him.  The one character I honestly can say I am not fond using.

Kefka: Of course, this is a character I'll never understand.  Attacks that should hit...don't, and attacks that shouldn't hit...somehow do.  That's probably the point of him though; you have no clue what's going to happen.  So you just stop trying to come up with ANY strategy, and go all out spamming stuff left and right, hoping something works.  When you win, you basically go "wait, what the fuck just happened?"  (or alternatively, if he beats you.)  I guess they wanted Kefka to make NO SENSE WHATSOEVER, and they succeeded.  Also proof that anyone who says Kefka was meant to be a serious villain, just crazy...uh, yeah, no <_<

Sephiroth: Holy shit, an easy to use villain!  Sephy's quirk is nothing new to fighting games; simply a case of fast attacks, but bad recovery.  Good at combos, speed is a bit disappointing (he's not slow, but was expecting him to be faster), generally good attacks, though the Aeris Death Stab is...so risky on some stages (Dream Zanarkand and Dimension Castle come to mind), since you can't cancel out of it and he doesn't stop until he hits something, even if its a pit.  So yeah, he basically needs to be on the ground to do HP damage unless you're CERTAIN you're over actual terrain.

Ultimecia: Shooter.  Sit back, keep firing, hope something doesn't get close unless you're using one of her HP attacks.  She's also as slow as Garland, which means she's triple the speed of Ex-death!

Kuja: PROJECT CHARACTER.  Kuja's someone who I can tell would be devestating, but its not a case of "learn how to use him" its "are you going to bother leveling him up?"  Kuja's a neat concept of a character based entirely around moving and attacking and keeping pressure on that way.  The problem? his starting moves are kind of bad.  You can make due with the brave attacks by slowly sniping, but his main issue? His only HP Attack, Aerial or Ground, is Holy Star.  This is a really awful move cause it has a very specific range, and it takes a while to actually go off; it does suck the enemy in, but they've often jumped out of the way.  This is Kuja's biggest flaw; he has problems KILLING things.  Often I just got EX Mode so I can make things faster with Last Requiem doing most of the work.  I know he gets good HP Attacks eventually, but egads is suffering through the Holy Star stage annoying.

As it stands now?  Characters I'll probably be maining at Terra, Golbez, Emperor and maybe Sephiroth.  Terra for obvious reasons, Golbez cause he seems kind of cool, Emperor cause he's a great way to piss things off, and Sephiroth mostly cause he's fun to use.  Of course, Shantotto or Gabranth might sneak their wayon the list, but I need to, you know, get them first <_< >_>

[Dark Holy Elf]

MK - Okay yeah Chapter 2 was much easier. Between the rumour kid's +30 HP to the party, being able to synth a few new sexy accessories, AND getting stat boosts just for synthing them... well let's just say enemies needed to get much better than they did.

Not much new on the plot front, other than the fact that THE TICK rules. I did two character quests... but both seemed like a pretty big waste of time as I got no rewards for them and uh MANA KHEMIA PLOT. Tony is a douche to rival his WA4 namesake, though.

[Xeroma]

You get character quests for THE TICK, elfboy. <_<;

[Excal]

Garland: About what I expected.  Slow, but hits hard.  Oddly better at comboing than I expected.  Good Ground HP attack, Aerial one has issues with actually targetting.

The real question is, how good is he at knocking folks down.

[Xeroma]

Nearly all of his attacks have huge knockback, so yes.

[Sierra]

Got hot and sweaty with Chie.  Level 2 Personas are nifty - no weaknesses!

Not all of them are like that, unfortunately. I know at least two PCs keep their weakness even with a new persona.

Balance for them learning Mediarahan.
[/quote]

Pretty much. I still used both of 'em in my final party. Best magic damage.

[AAA]

Elfboy: The only character quests where you get something is the second one for Nikki (and even then it's not that great, just something to synth for a Grow Book), and the second and third one for MANA KHEMIA PLOT SPOILERS, where you get him a Mana, so he can use certain abilities, and the ability to use his Support Card, which ain't that great. If you don't find the character amusing then don't bother with their quests, because that's all you're gonna get.

[Veryslightlymad]

Team Fortress 2:
Once again, the game thought it'd be fun to delete a bunch of my high scores and achievements.

Here's something I don't understand:
How do people get high scores in the 50-80, I've seen 1000 range. It's ridiculous. It's completely inaccurate.

A match is OVER in maybe a half-hour. You shouldn't have the TIME to get that many points. Your TEAMMATES should be biting into your score once it gets that high. You would have to be dominating the entire enemy team for A LONG TIME to get a score that high.
EDIT
If a match runs into a half-hour, you should probably have over a hundred or two points TOTAL, but there's no way I'm buying that you never ever once died in the entire match.

But practically everyone has one. I don't see how it's possible. My high score is 13, and I did EVERYTHING to help my team on that run. I was clearly the match MVP.

I don't pretend to be a very good player, but there's no way I believe scores that high are legit without some kind of gimmick game. Again, simply because everyone seems to have one. How can player X have 50-80 as his high score when player Y ALSO has 50-80 as his high score? Player Y should never lose 50 times in a row to player X. And let's say the 50-80 guy runs across ME. I'm not good, but I'm not "I'll lose to you 50 times in a row, and my ENTIRE TEAM WILL ALSO DIE TO YOU NEVER ENDING YOUR SCORING SPREE" terrible.

I officially call shenanigans. I know several people on this site play way more than I and are way better than I, so tell me: How do these scores happen? (Incidentally, when I played with you guys, you were clearly much better than I was, but there was no way in HELL I'd buy any of you ever having 50 points in a life. No offense. You just weren't that good.)

[Taishyr]

Regarding MK Character Quests, you also get rumors from the CQs, but those may not be worth it to people.

I do it because it's more amusing than just ending the day and jobs look mindnumbing.

EDIT: Check that comment, jobs are actually useful and they have set expiration times. Hopefully nothing other than book entries are permamissable from those.

[AAA]

Left 4 Dead-Oh yeah, I should mention I got this and a Year of Gold yesterday. Sadly, my Gamestop did not have Persona 4. I've played it for awhile and it's easily the best multiplayer game I've ever played. It's intense, non-stop fun, and when you get a good group of people it's hilarious. Valve's humor is evident all over the place (graffiti on the walls), and they put a ton of polish everywhere. My only real complaint is the lack of variety with weapons and no Mall level. Seriously, you made a zombie apocalypse game and didn't give it a Mall level? Bah! Bah I say!

I know a couple of you guys have the game, so we should try and get a game together sometime. My gamertag is jdprice5 if you didn't know that already.

[Scar]

PC or 360?

I have L4D on the PC and it is indeed awesome.

~

P4: Finsished the stripclub. Bosses were unimpressive. (I ran in just to se how I would do with no mana and won. Thanks full healing.) Main is level 35, the exp in here is nice. Think I'ma grind till about 40. Kanji's shadow is still the best one so far.

Me and Chie are a couple! I have no idea what that means, but I have her social link at level 9. I'm also trying to get the fox social link up, because cheap healing is awesome. Did I mention the lack of fatigue in this game is awesome? I can explore a dungeon in one day! Weeeeeee

Also, Matador with Mahama....anyone?

[superaielman]

MK - Okay yeah Chapter 2 was much easier. Between the rumour kid's +30 HP to the party, being able to synth a few new sexy accessories, AND getting stat boosts just for synthing them... well let's just say enemies needed to get much better than they did.

Not much new on the plot front, other than the fact that THE TICK rules. I did two character quests... but both seemed like a pretty big waste of time as I got no rewards for them and uh MANA KHEMIA PLOT. Tony is a douche to rival his WA4 namesake, though.

The setting's at least different, I'll give it that much. The actual serious plot needs to go away though.

[Cmdr_King]

Mana Khemia has plot beyond the series of character arcs?  Fancy that.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Regarding MK Character Quests, you also get rumors from the CQs, but those may not be worth it to people.

I do it because it's more amusing than just ending the day and jobs look mindnumbing.

EDIT: Check that comment, jobs are actually useful and they have set expiration times. Hopefully nothing other than book entries are permamissable from those.

Not even book entries are permamissable from jobs. If you miss the book entries from a chapter's jobs, they become storebought in the next.

[Taishyr]

P3FES: Finished! Never did a rant.

First, the S. Links, as performed by SteveOda Nobunaga, Demon King and AvatMessiah. WARNING SPOILARS I guess kinda somewhat, assuming you know any of this is actually -true-. We have only questionable accounts, after all.



FOOL: Or, In Which Oda Nobunaga Joins And Cultivates A Suicide Cult Dedicated To Green Moons
MAGICIAN: Or, In Which Oda Nobunaga Encourages Hebephilia And Extreme Idiocy
PRIESTESS: Or, In Which Oda Nobunaga Assists In The Poisoning Of The Suicide Cult
EMPRESS: Or, In Which Oda Nobunaga Causes The Bankruptcy Of A Renowned Corporation
EMPEROR: In Which Oda Nobunaga Smokes Pot Under The Student Council President's Protection
HIEROPHANT: In Which Oda Nobunaga Has Issues With Wood, Especially Around Old People
LOVERS: In Which Oda Nobunaga Deals With Annoying People
CHARIOT: In Which Oda Nobunaga Helps A Young Track Star Permanently Cripple Himself
JUSTICE: In Which Oda Nobunaga Steals School Funds And Blames It On Others
HERMIT: In Which Oda Nobunaga Drives A Woman Mad After Intense Periods Of Internet Surveillance
FORTUNE: In Which Oda Nobunaga Convinces A Young Man To Do All He Can To Not Help People
STRENGTH: In Which Oda Nobunaga Teaches A Group Of Fourth-Graders How To Beat Up Sixth-Graders
HANGED MAN: In Which Oda Nobunaga Causes A Rise In Japan's Child Delinquency Rate
DEATH: In Which Oda Nobunaga Is, For Once, Creeped Out By A Stalker Child
TEMPERANCE: In Which Oda Nobunaga Indulges In "French Sweets", And Convinces Young Men To Run Away With Him
DEVIL: In Which Oda Nobunaga Sets Up A Charity To Scam A Businessman Out Of Money
TOWER: In Which Oda Nobunaga Gets Men Drunk
STAR: In Which Oda Forces A Youth To Abandon His Family For His Own Pride
MOON: In Which Oda Indulges In The Sin Of Gluttony And Assists Another Suicide Cult In Recruiting
SUN: In Which Oda Torments A Sick Man
JUDGMENT: In Which Oda Renews His Pledge To The First Suicide Cult, And Helps Them Reach The Top Of The Tallest Building In Town
AEON: In Which Oda Learns Of The Mental Anguish Caused By Metal Traps
WORLD: In Which Oda Gains A World-Destroying Power For No Real Reason

Oda Nobunaga. Hero or villian? We may never know.

Quick blowdown otherwise: Plot was nonexistent half the time, characters unimpressive. Both faults stem from schooltime being way too long and plot events too spread out/uninteresting. Battle system was good, Tartarus needed more creativity in design but for a random dungeon it wasn't too bad. Shuji was interesting but plot rolls over his screentime. Requests kept things interesting, SMT fusion setups need a fix badly but it's still tolerable, Junpei was the only person with a personality beyond "dedicated" or "bitch" or "dedicated bitch".


And now, for cast comments!

Main: DNR Bluelike. I don't know if I allow the init turn, though I lean toward it. I don't allow skill inheritance. He still rapes Godlike six ways to Sunday. Doesn't like status, but outside of that...

Junpei: High Middle. Spring of Life close to negates his HP cost for physicals, spoils fire and fucks around with other physical users, lacks consistent damage output.

Yukari: Light. Healing! Healing! Healing!

Akihiko: Middle/High Middle. Pretty effective, but doesn't excel. The buffs... don't seem good enough to help.

Mitsuru: High Middle: Mind Charge Bufudyne, effective status.

Ken: High Middle/Low Heavy. Um... Hamaonn+Hama Boost is pretty solid ID, and he's got full healing to let him try and manage slugfests.

Koromaru: High Middle. Solid ID, fire immunity.

Aigis: ...Low Heavy. Yeah, Lightning weakness. Oh no! Yeah, she's fucked if she runs into it, but... um... Orgia Mode rapes. Oh noes she loses Middle matches. She also wins a fair number of Heavy matches. I'm willing to accept she's borderline anyway, but the weakness is only crippling if she runs into it. Come back when 1/2 of Middle has Lightning and I'll listen.

Shinjiro: Middle.

Yeah so. Probably 7-8 range?

[Talaysen]

Not even book entries are permamissable from jobs. If you miss the book entries from a chapter's jobs, they become storebought in the next.

I assume he meant encyclopedia/bestiary entries, which are perma-missable.  Since uh I assume Tai knows that if he misses recipes his entire Grow Book is fucked.  >.>