What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[Sierra]

So, P4 post-game character rambling goes here. Ranking thoughts on PCs happens first:

Using spoiler names for PCs #6 and 7 at the request of people in chat. Also, all shadow forms are illegal. If you've played the game, you know why. A note, first: you need to get a PC's S. Link maxed in order for them to upgrade their persona. It's not automatic, like it was in P3. I'm inclined to allow this for everyone, though. The main benefit is that most of them lose their elemental weaknesses (and in some cases gain an immunity or resistance to something else), but it also grants a variety of new in-battle abilities. Most of these only kick in when you knock an enemy down, but the last one everyone gets is a OPB autolife (they survive the attack that would've killed them at 1 HP). I haven't really factored this into my ranking thoughts below but, again, I'd be inclined to allow it.

MC: Might actually be rankable! Skillset is Bluelike, sure, but there's no 9999 tech in P4 (that I know of) and he isn't guaranteed initiative since AGI actually seems to do something for turn order in P4. Probably still a Godlike just due to the insane breadth of the skillset, but not the kind of broken that Minato was. Fun, in other words. Has a few unique accessories, also.

Yosuke: Diarama is pretty shitty healing by endgame, but he...might get some use out of it on top of Sukukaja and decent speed? Meh. Mostly just a straightforward wind mage and the first Middle in what's sure to be a long line of them.

Chie: Power Charge + God's Hand = splat. Probably translates better to a duel than she should. Granted, she's one-dimensional and totally sunk if she can't rely on physicals (she has magic damage, but it's BAD). Probably a competent Middle? DL Heavy is too brutal for someone who consumes her HP to attack.

Yukiko: Is Mitsuru with the elements flipped. And no Mind Charge. Yeah, have fun in the depths of Middle.

Kanji: Straightforward slugger with a truckload of HP. Middle? STR-boosted Primal Force should hurt like a bitch, but it might not be enough to deal with limit fighters.

"Alice": Buffers, full-healing, Ice Boost/Amp make for a pretty good package, but...weak to one of the most common elements (lightning) and totally reliant on one to do any damage. Pretty much confines him to Middle.

"Conan or Conina": ID whore. Mahamaon/Mamudoon plus the relevant -Boost skill makes for an excellent random clearer in-game. Also non-elemental magic plus Mind Charge...granted, that chews through SP like nobody's business, but it's an option if needed. Damage actually isn't that hot, but generally solid stats should pull through some slugfests. Rather strange but fun PC, overall. Also, killer writeup bait.

Ranking? Well, reliable ID off of good speed is enough for someone to make Middle or even Heavy, as we've seen in the past. Also has ID immunity (or dark/light, depending on how you see P3&4's crazy elemental breakdown) and fire resistance, which are nice bonuses. Probably would be a pretty successful dueller despite being crap against bosses.

Bosses now! I've kept this as spoiler-free as possible, but I have to discuss the plot a little when talking about ranking. So yeah, consider yourself warned.

Using spoiler names for all of these, just to be on the safe side. If you've got far enough to see them, you know who they are (though consider yourself warned that you can infer the identities of some if you've glanced through the artbook--but hey, it did warn you about spoilers).

New Age Retro Flasher: Control gets punted, first off...though I guess it would make him fun in team matches. Mostly cruises on HP (more than anything but the final, if the FAQ I checked is right) and element spoiling. Anyone who relies on elemental attacks without covering all four of P4's elements basically gets their offense shut down when he hits half HP and faces horrible overkill in return. I think non-elemental magic still gets through, but it's still kind of a neat trick.

Probably not rankable. Plot relevant, but a massive spoiler, and...not really a character I'd expect to have fans, which only compounds the problem. Could also be argued that the power comes from the shadows, not him. NR Heavy or Godlike at best, I'd say. Probably the latter. Quad Convergence is mean.

Tony Mk. III: Best name I could come up with for him. Pretty much just had the same "You meddling kids!" vibe going on. He's also total Light-bait. Not as bad as Chidori, but 3,000 HP is pretty sad for a boss by endgame. I guess initiative Heat Riser is something? Still doesn't get him out of the scrub division.

Anyway, ranking him's a no-brainer--the party's trying to catch this mook the whole game and there's no lack of screentime on his part. Also an extremely straightforward boss with no interp issues when it comes to plot. Identity is massive spoilerness, though. P4 really seems like a prime case of ranking the PC cast first once the game gets a good player base, and coming back for the bosses later if the game turns out well in the DL.

Psychedelic Eyeball: Prolly Godlike. Good damage (thanks mostly to the doubleacting) in any flavor he needs, HP->1, Matarakunda, invincible while he puts up his own buffers and Mind Charge...serviceable enough.

Necronlike for plot, so probably not a good rank (as awesome as it would be to have a giant eyeball ranked). NR fodder maybe?

Final Boss: I'd consider the form-chain legal, first off (though the "Hahaha, I'm not dying" turns and the Thousand Curses BS are thrown out as plot moves, as far as I'm concerned). Sure, there's a brief cutscene in between forms, but you start the second part with the same amount of HP/SP as you had when you finished off the first form. Hell, any buffers you had up remain active. It's comparable to TotA's final, really, and I think most people let Van chain. Not that the first form is great here, but it does buy her a little time in a duel. Anyway, second form covers most of the bases: status, HP->1, stat-downers, Mind Charge to blow past limits, doubleacting for generally solid damage otherwise...hardly a Myria caliber slugger, but competent enough for Godlike.

Rankable? Well, aside from being spoilertastic, the individual in question is mentioned all of once prior to appearing when the final dungeon opens up. And given how the last ranking of a final boss from a Persona game turned out...naaaaah. It would be totally awesome to have a genuine Japanese deity ranked, though. Again, see if the game does well, maybe come back to the bosses later.

[DomaDragoon]

CTDS: Beaten, most endgame stuff is done.
In order of improvement based on new stuff, Lucca > Magus = Ayla > Marle > Frog > Robo > Crono.

Lucca should be obvious. She gets elemental immunity, a darn good physical for Middle, and speed that doesn't suck too much even if she doesn't twink for it.
Magus bumps up his already good magical defense, has a non-fail physical, and gets Stop as a status choice.
Ayla gets more crits (and if you allow the Iron Fist, she's now a legit threat for Godlike) and can now play a kiss and counter style.
Marle gets some mediocre ITD or Confuse, and a decent speed boost.
Frog gets half MP costs. Woo, though it does make Cure actually not suck in a duel now.
Robo can try his luck for a Quad 9, and gets a slight upgrade from the Terra Arm if he doesn't use the Crisis or Apocaypse arm.
Crono gets a touch more physical damage and a bit more speed, both of which are useless if he Swallow Twinks.

FFTA: Four races complete, but my computer went kablooie so it'll be a while before I get the final three human classes (Blue Mage, Archer, Hunter). Updates to the stat topic will probably be tomorrow.

[superaielman]

MK- Emo over a tree? You have to be shitting me.

[Monkeyfinger]

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.)

Achievement grinding maps can inflate a score ridiculously high. A lot of them aren't merely gimmicks, they outright cheat by using custom server variables that inflate damage/healing really high, or make stacks of 50 dispensers to destroy, stuff like that. You should notice that a lot of the really outrageous scores are for heavy, pyro, and medic, the 3 classes that these maps are needed for.

Past that, insane high scores can be ratcheted up legit on payload maps, because you get 2 points per capture, and a "capture" on a payload map is defined as pushing the cart for something like 10 seconds. In a badwater match, I once got like 3 kills, 3 destructions, and 15 captures in a single life as demoman by simply standing by the cart as the team brushed aside the reds. Bam, 36 high score. (Though the game didn't save it for some reason.) Now imagine someone getting say 10 kills instead of 3.

Spawn camping as a demo, heavy, or the medic sucking the dick of one of those classes on any map where the enemy has only one spawn exit can also yield some eye-popping single-life scores, especially if you killed a ton of enemies on the way to spawn.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

MK- Emo over a tree? You have to be shitting me.

MANA KHEMIA PLOT

DDS - Man, the Jailer segment was a waste of time.

[Tide]

WA4 Speedrun: First, I tip my hat off to Snow for learning about the Tiny Flower being earlier. Next, Belial now actually has a fixed battle plan. That's right. I uploaded the video so you can all take a look.

In other news? Pinnacle is stupid. WHY Can't you just let me rename the god damn file BEFORE recording?! Argh, thanks to that, I mysteriously lost a segment. Most likely recorded over. And after THREE perfect segments in a row, I am NOT going back through that hell just to capture the missing one. Piece of shit ._.

[Niu]

FF fighter that is Nomura ARPG in disguise-

Collecting Chaos Report takes FOREVER!!!

[DjinnAndTonic]

FF fighter that is Nomura ARPG in disguise - (such a fitting title)

Tidus uses the "This is my story" line throughout his Story Mode, to serious effect.

However, when he says this line in other characters' Story Modes, his fellow FF heroes call him out on it. Awesome. ^_^

Finished Cecil, Terra, Cloud, and Tidus - I think next is Frionel/Firion?

Levelling up in a Fighting game is somewhat weird, but it strikes me as fairly unique. Are there any other Fighting games that feature this?

-Djinn

[Twilkitri]

SRWJ replay done.

Only Jonathon, Quincy, Waltfeld, and Al-Van were left unaced by the end (of the characters available, in any case). So close, for all Al really gets no chance whatsoever for kills barring some sort of abuse.

Things that I got this time that I didn't earlier:
Li'l Bonta - Didn't really care much for this, but I barely ever got to see it because my Sousuke had too many kills to show up beyond when he was forced or most characters had gone elsewhere. I don't recall using him particularly much in the original play... Seems on paper that the Arbalest pretty much trashes it, in any case, you'd only want to use it for surely mass hilarity regarding Sousuke being unable to speak (this also means you have to be able to read it).

Great Zeorymer - Seems like this has worse accuracy than regular Zeorymer, what with it giving off 60-70 odd hit rates when regular Zeo had been functioning completely against my memory in this regard with generally 90+ when it wasn't 100. And this is while Masato had +20 accuracy equipped. Potentially the enemies just randomly jumped in evasion a bunch between when I was using Zeo and when I was using Great.
In any case, I completely prefer regular Zeo's weapon layout, which is more amenable to close-range fighting than Great's, which is what I generally prefer to be doing. Can't really see the hype regarding it being overpowered that I have seen at various places.

Bloody Kaiser - Unimpressive on the whole really. Julia has some nice support spirits though, and having an extra repair unit is never really a problem. I dumped all of her points into ranged instead of melee by accident and then spent an inordinate number of maps wondering why she wasn't doing particularly good damage ._.

One more play for Vorlent. How much I am looking forward to that.


SRWW - Played the opening map of this.

They let you call up relevant spirits belonging to other people from the person you want to use them on. This is awesome and should have been brought in ages ago. That is all.


DQ4 DS - Near Azimuth.

I had been climbing the tower nearby but then I found that the designers thought it would be funny to give monsters in this area multitarget ID when you have no way as far as I'm aware of defending against it. Playing has subsequently stalled until I can be bothered getting back up to where I was up to. I might check along through the tower next time for places where quicksave is available.

I don't understand this game's quicksave at all. The general idea of (horrifically misnamed) quicksave is that you can save the game in the case you need to turn the system off? Then why does it not let you quicksave inside dungeons. That would of course be abusable because the quicksave here is permanent (until you make another anyway). Oh cascading failures. Then of course there's the fact that they make you turn the system off directly after quicksaving for no freaking reason whatsoever. If you're going to allow effectively regular saving at areas outside churches, then just let me make regular saves at these areas. Stupid.

[hinode]

I had been climbing the tower nearby but then I found that the designers thought it would be funny to give monsters in this area multitarget ID when you have no way as far as I'm aware of defending against it. Playing has subsequently stalled until I can be bothered getting back up to where I was up to. I might check along through the tower next time for places where quicksave is available.

I've never seen that multitarget ID there, ever. Or... pretty much anywhere else, for that matter. Really rare multitarget ID that can't be immuned isn't really any better a design concept, but I don't think I've heard anyone else complain about it before.

Zenithian Armor resists (but doesn't block) ID, believe that's the only ID resist you can get at that point in time.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Levelling up in a Fighting game is somewhat weird, but it strikes me as fairly unique. Are there any other Fighting games that feature this?

-Djinn

There's a Virtual On clone based on DBZ that does it, I understand.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Digging this out of P4 spoilers. Why do I read spoilers for games I never intend to play? Who knows! Well, because it has DL stuff in it, that's why.

Sure, there's a brief cutscene in between forms, but you start the second part with the same amount of HP/SP as you had when you finished off the first form. Hell, any buffers you had up remain active. It's comparable to TotA's final, really, and I think most people let Van chain.

No comments on P4 here for me (well, if the cutscene was particularly lengthy I wouldn't allow it, probably), but I feel like pointing out that in the Van fight, status does NOT carry over (including Death; dead people are revived) so it's very much a separate fight. *punts whoever started the hype otherwise*

PS4 - Is apparently on the Virtual Console. Time to consider another replay...

Need to play more MK.

[Bardiche]

SRW Alpha Gaiden: Just beat Shu! (prolly only the first time, I bet he'll be back!)

I like this game~ Some people are really overpowered (HEERO COMES TO MIND), and others downright suck. (hi Emma)

But oh well. Game rocks.

[Shale]

Shu will only be back if you finish the game on Hard. Then you can see his second-most-broken form ever!

I'm one stage farther, just met the Xabungle crew. Jiron attempting to steal Borot was all kinds of awesome.

[074]

P4: Just started the second term.  Seven words describe the situation I face right now:

I'm going to kill that fucking bear.


Those who've played to that point know why.  XP


In all seriousness, however.  It seems that the difficulty has been cranked up from P3.  Plot bosses are a general threat from the Castle onwards, and death feels like more of a threat than in Answer (though not compared to P3:Hard.  They DO have hard mode here, though...)

Physical persona are scary.  Much moreso than in P3, it seems--though this is largely due to being able to control other party members, it seems.  Main Dies = Game Over is still sadly in effect.  It's...really like P3 with better writing and far more streamlined overall.  Hopefully, it'll stay good throughout the entirety.

[SageAcrin]

SRW Alpha Gaiden: Just beat Shu! (prolly only the first time, I bet he'll be back!)

I like this game~ Some people are really overpowered (HEERO COMES TO MIND), and others downright suck. (hi Emma)

But oh well. Game rocks.

Character balance in SRWs is basically non-existant. OG1/2 are actually relatively *good* at it. >_>

Let's see...

The World Ends With You:

Up to...2-3? Haven't been playing this too much. I've been playing a lot of things in the last couple of weeks, as you'll see.

This game still rocks, yet I'm still not really that into stylus-only controls, and it still feels like it's too much to ask to control both screens at points. I mean, it works, but it probably should have been a little slower paced. Oh well.

Wild Arms: XF:

Up to 1-11, I believe.

The good: Class system has really excellent versatility and a focus on picking up as many skills as possible from across all the skillsets(Especially action skills oddly, since they're so easy to get), the handling of characters who don't enter battle(Full CP/EXP!), actual use of height movement as an important stat.

The bad: Class system has some utterly retarded jobs out of the set I just got. Class system is used as a fulcrum for puzzle maps that, ironically, completely limit said excellent class system by shoving you into certain abilities-which you can't really buy yet, making this option academic- or jobs. (This is lessening. If it keeps up this game may be good. If it keeps making puzzles like that...less so.) OC/Passive balance needed to be better done(Re: OC didn't always need to be the first skill guys. In fact those puzzle skills you so love probably should have been.). Tony is not Godlike.

The neutral: The plot. I could swear FE7 did this plot. It wasn't as interesting, but.

Overall...well, I have hopes, but as it is it's just so-so, so far. At least it let me brute force some of the puzzles into interesting and challenging maps, but I'm not sure if that was on purpose or an accident. And everything related to that prison failed at life.

Subterranean Animism:

http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=1733

^_^

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology:

Played this up until hitting the second town. (Yes, I've REALLY jumped around on games, this list is this long for the last couple of weeks.)

Pretty generic Tales crossover stuff. I think RM2 sounds a lot better, but there's nothing really bad about this, seeing as how it basically did what I wanted and crossed TotA's system with ToS comboing, and made the challenge not fail at life. Which is about as reasonably good as Tales combat gets. Repetitive mission system though. Which isn't shocking, but hey. Also this has no plot. Also not shocking.

Basically a lot like ND3 except with less depth of options. (Ten main classes, couple dozen PCs.)

La Mulana:

Got up to Confusion Gate.

LucasArts Adventure.
Platformer.
?
Profit?

Well, that seems to be the idea. It's really an adventure game mixed with a platformer. The good news is that it's really quite good at both elements relative to their genres. The bad news is that it's still a damned adventure game and you will be shoving a pole up something's-well you get the idea. Not literally, but it has the same problem in this direction of occasionally unintuitive answers, and Confusion Gate, sadly, is the height of this.

Which wouldn't be so bad except the game also punishes you for bruteforcing puzzles on occasion. Usually on the "Waste of time." level but...sometimes it can waste quite a lot of time. This is stupid. Adventure games shouldn't do this. That they do is irrelevant. >_>

I dunno, I like the game, but I like both genres. And even then, the fact that I got stuck for four hours because someone wouldn't repeat their puzzle is just plain retarded.

Final Fantasy: Dissidia:

Cleared all routes but monkey boy and batman(Zidane and Frionel) out of the initial ten.

This basically feels like someone squashed KH into a fighting game. Which still ends up mostly KH, but the fighting game elements do show.

It's something you can see playing against another person and, if their characters are remotely the same level, actually having a good time with. On the flipside it's kinda counter-y(Some characters just can't handle some characters), and the plot mode, while good in general, has the absolutely flabbergasting quirk of sometimes being *too hard*(!!!), to annoying degrees.

Of course, grinding in this is as easy as falling out of bed, it would take ten minutes to shatter any challenge the game has in general, but hey.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

DDS2 - DDS2 bosses continue DDS1's fine tradition of being colossal wimps. Other than that, the game is clearly a step up from the original: the revamped mantra system works a lot more elegantly in-game and is more interesting and versatile, enemies are less obnoxious about hax, hunts are less of a massive waste of time, and the dungeon crawling feels generally improved. The plot is Code Geass.

[Captain K.]

BvS:  Did an Out On Top run yesterday.  Over 2800 stamina spent on missions.  Ended up with over 12 million XP, which on most days would be good for 1st-2nd place.  Where did I end up?  6th place.  W.T.F.  Well, there goes a lot of time and effort down the drain.

Was planning on looping today, but since I didn't even get Top 3 for free shiny, I guess I'll stick around for a while and wait until I can use Eye of the Storm to fulfill that requirement.  Or just play the lottery until I win something crappy and pretend I got Top 3.

GH4:  100% on Eye of the Tiger (Medium, Bass).  That's my first FC ever, so I am quite happy.  Lots of 99 percents on other songs, so I seem to be getting better at this.

[SageAcrin]

Oh, missed this.

Great Zeorymer - Seems like this has worse accuracy than regular Zeorymer, what with it giving off 60-70 odd hit rates when regular Zeo had been functioning completely against my memory in this regard with generally 90+ when it wasn't 100. And this is while Masato had +20 accuracy equipped. Potentially the enemies just randomly jumped in evasion a bunch between when I was using Zeo and when I was using Great.
In any case, I completely prefer regular Zeo's weapon layout, which is more amenable to close-range fighting than Great's, which is what I generally prefer to be doing. Can't really see the hype regarding it being overpowered that I have seen at various places.

...Twil, Dead Lonfun, Great Zeorymer's weakest attack, outclasses Dimensional Coupler Cannon, standard Zeorymer's second best attack, by 200 power, 1 range, 10 less EN cost and 10 less Will cost.

Every other attack it has is stronger.

There is no area in which Zeorymer's actually better besides accuracy, and Twin Lord, Great's 30 EN attack-which is, mind you, 800 power stronger than Dimensional Coupler Cannon-has +30% accuracy. Only Zeorymer's standard melee attack-which is 600 less than Dimensional Coupler Cannon and 800 less than Dead Lonfun and is essentially, due to the former's stupidly cheap cost and nice range, pointless once you get the cheap Will cost up-has +40%.

I mean, Zeorymer had a combo attack. A kinda shoddy one running off a truly fearsome 5 move mech. And I guess it's higher range lost 10% accuracy, Twin Lord's only 1-3 P... Never mind that Atomic Kick 500 more than Dimensional Coupler Cannon is. And 1000 power over Energy Wave, the aforementioned more accurate ranged weapon. And with that, I've exhausted the only real advantages it had.

Believe me, I tried to figure out some way Great Zeorymer didn't kick the ass of the combined bonuses on the other splits. I gave up.

Oh, and yeah, IIRC the enemy evasion goes up between the mechs. To boot, if you're going for Great, you mostly fight Super enemies with Zeo. Or FMP grunts, who no one can hit. The shift was pretty startling IIRC.

[Shale]

Oh, and yeah, IIRC the enemy evasion goes up between the mechs. To boot, if you're going for Great, you mostly fight Super enemies with Zeo. Or FMP grunts, who no one can hit. The shift was pretty startling IIRC.

That is the big thing. Masato is just not a very accurate pilot, but the "never fight non-Zeorymer enemies" part of the Great Zeorymer condition hides it.

[Bardiche]

Shu will only be back if you finish the game on Hard. Then you can see his second-most-broken form ever!

I'm one stage farther, just met the Xabungle crew. Jiron attempting to steal Borot was all kinds of awesome.

I'm now at the point where they WASHDRIER MECHAS. I lol'd. Lol'd harder when it was TRAP TIEM.

My top-tier pilots are now Zechs (Tallgeese 3), Noin (Tauros), Usso (Victory2 Gundam), Burning (Dendrobium), Loran (Turn A Gundam), Quatre (Sandrock Gundam Custom), turdwhosenameIkeepforgetting (Gundam X Double), with occasional guest appearances by the rest of the crew, most notably the ones you have to use during story modes.

I love the Argamma, hate the rustheap and cargo tank. The last one has the best defenses, but defense sucks if you can't attack. Rustheap has best movement, but sucky attack. Argamma has AoE attacks, which rock at taking out great deals of weakened enemies.

Favourite Gundam has to be the Tauros. Noin + Tauros + Bio Sensors = 0% chance to get hit even without Focus. Only bosses might be able to hit her, and even that is tricky at best. Tallgeese levels entire armies, though, so definitely can't deny his worth either~ EN problems of course bite me in the arse after consecutive uses of the Megablaster, but Heat Chain generally gets the job done.

The one thing I love about Sandrock is that it has a pretty good range, a weapon with 3000 Attack (upgraded, I must admit) that doesn't take EN, can fire whenever he bloody well wants to and generally scores a lot of crits! If only Quatre and Evasion became good friends...

[Twilkitri]

...Twil, Dead Lonfun, Great Zeorymer's weakest attack, outclasses Dimensional Coupler Cannon, standard Zeorymer's second best attack, by 200 power, 1 range, 10 less EN cost and 10 less Will cost.

Oh, really? I thought I remembered regular as being better than that, but I didn't really got a chance to compare them. Hm.

There is no area in which Zeorymer's actually better besides accuracy

and style *shot*

Believe me, I tried to figure out some way Great Zeorymer didn't kick the ass of the combined bonuses on the other splits. I gave up.

The 'combined bonuses' of the other side are X-Aesty (pointless and pilotless), Layzner Mk. II (presumably not anywhere near as much a jump from Lazy 1 as GZ was from Zeo), the Strike Intercontinental Weapon System Package (why would you ever want to use it over Sword given all the melee points you've put into Kira, also Strike gets obsoleted soon if it's not already at that point).
And Gai and his aesty, who... clash with keeping Balzack which is doable with getting GZ, so he means nothing. Yah, this sort of comparison was doomed from the start.

Where the real money is is in: Is using Great Zeorymer for the final third of the game better than using regular Zeorymer in every possible level. Personally I'm not sure in that regard, but considering my playstyle any thoughts on that I have are probably horrifically off-kilter from the majority.

Now if they had put a pilot in the X-Aesty (say Seelie, who never ever gets to show up in any SRWs as far as I can remember) this would be more interesting... for my money an extra pilot is worth more than doing what is effectively negligible extra damage against the sort of HP major enemies have at endgame, but I'm sure some people disagree on that regard.

[AAA]

L4D-Moving right along. Got the Achivements for surviving all campaigns, plus all the Hunter, Smoker, Boomer, and killing the Tank and Witch without taking any damage ones. Also got Back 2 Help, Pharma-Assist, My Bodyguard, Dead Givaway and the revive 50 people ones, plus some others I don't remember right now. What I have left:

1. Kill 1000 zombies with the turret. Last I checked I was at a hundred or so, this is going to take some time.

2. Melee a zombie to death from behind. Shouldn't be a problem.

3. Kill a Tank all by myself. The first problem is not having the other survivors attack, the second one is actually surviving to do it.

4. Headshot a Witch. This is extremely tricky and I doubt I'll be getting it anytime soon.

5. Kill 53,465 zombies. Yeah

6. Go through an entire campaign without needing to heal. This isn't as bad as it sounds because becoming incapacitated and/or dying doesn't stop you from getting this; All you have to do is be alive at the end. 

7. Go through an entire campaign using only the pistol(s). This is probably what I'm going to go after next time I do a full campaign. As long as I have a competent group and don't get overly adventurous I should be alright.

8. Go through a campaign without ever disturbing a Witch. The main problem here is your teammates.

9. Heal 25 people. I think I have 8 or 9 left to go? In any case, this is just a matter of time.

10. After summoning a rescue vehicle, no survivors can take damage. On Easy, maybe, but this looks to be hard as fuck.

All that and I still haven't even touched Versus mode!

edit: Best Graffiti so far: "NO ZOMBIE IS SAFE FROM CHICAGO TED!"

[Ryogo]

P4: Just started the second term.  Seven words describe the situation I face right now:

I'm going to kill that fucking bear.


Those who've played to that point know why.  XP


In all seriousness, however.  It seems that the difficulty has been cranked up from P3.  Plot bosses are a general threat from the Castle onwards, and death feels like more of a threat than in Answer (though not compared to P3:Hard.  They DO have hard mode here, though...)

Physical persona are scary.  Much moreso than in P3, it seems--though this is largely due to being able to control other party members, it seems.  Main Dies = Game Over is still sadly in effect.  It's...really like P3 with better writing and far more streamlined overall.  Hopefully, it'll stay good throughout the entirety.

Have to agree here, especially about difficulty. The first thing I did was buy time to find a weakness for my enemies in P3. and then rape the hell out of them by spamming it. I'm only at floor 150 or so in P3 still though, so I'm not sure if that changes, or if hard mode makes it different.

But in P4, half the enemies I'm running into have NO weaknesses, which make it a helluva lot harder to play the "Lets All-Out Attack" strategy every turn by spamming magic with the main. Bosses have been kicking the crap out of me this whole time (Especially the bonus bosses). I think the reason you can control your characters in P4 is because, well, you need to. I don't even want to think how the AI would control the party actions... And yes, Main dying = game over sucks hardcore. At least they have it set up so that your party members can step in to take that insta-kill blow. I REALLY like that feature to give you a chance to at least change your persona to something that isn't weak against the enemy. Still in the same spot though, Rise just disappeared. Really itching to play P4 again... Or any of my PS2 games for that matter...


GOD DAMN YOU BACKPACK-O-GAMES BEING LEFT BACK AT MY DORM!!!


Also, I got Dracula: Origin today. Also, is already beaten. -sigh- I need a good point and click adventure game that I won't beat in less then 24 hours of getting it.

I will admit, I used UHS a number of times. But most of it was for stupid shit. Like I missed a random item that's not obvious you can pick up, which I found out later in the game that pressing spacebar shows all interactive items on screen, unless you're in a puzzle view. That would've eliminated half my gameplay time too, probably. Also, I had to look at the tops of two coffins that had a name and number on each of them in huge letters, and even got their own zoomed view. The names were in bright white, but the numbers were in blood and hard to read, so I clicked the numbers so he'd say it out load, kinda thing, and went back to solve a puzzle with them, but for some dumb reason it wouldn't let be use the lock, saying "I was missing information." I spent an hour scouring around for something I might've missed, even though I was pretty sure I had figured out the puzzle. I couldn't go anywhere else until I had solved it, and there was nothing I had missed. I went on walkthroughs, UHS, but found nothing, other then that I was right.

I went back around again afterwards clicked on the coffin lids again, and spammed clicking on the numbers, hoping something would happen, until my hand slipped and I accidentally clicked on the name instead. He mentions the name on the coffin, then he scribbles something in the notepad about the name and number.

Because I didn't click the painfully obvious name on the coffin lid that had been posted in about 5 other places, the game wouldn't let me do a damned simple puzzle. -sigh-

Anyways... enough rant. The game was alright. Graphics were pretty decent, ending was unsatisfying, but too many little nit-picky things wrong to really make it a fun game. Also, too short.

Starting up Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge tomorrow, along with Sam and Max: Hit the Road. Weeeee!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

edit: Best Graffiti so far: "NO ZOMBIE IS SAFE FROM CHICAGO TED!"

Oh motherfucking YEAH.