What games are you playing 2019?

[Captain K]

DQXI:

"Kevin can't stop thinking about how much of a burden he is to everyone! Kevin is overcome with crippling embarrassment!"

Fuck this game is getting too real.

[superaielman]

FF6- Replay, I blame Dhyer. Just got to Magitek.  Cyan remains one of the worst designed RPG characters I've ever seen. It's embarrassing the extent that he's eclipsed by every other PC to this point. I did the river loop to get Gau Angiform rage early. It's less good than I expected; the 50% chance of firing off a scrub physical is eh. Not worth the time investment.  Probably will roll a Terra/Edgar/Mog/Setzer team, for all that I'm tempted to use Locke for steal farming. Eh nah, Dragon's Den I don't remember being worth the time or energy.

Meeple said this offhand on Gamefaqs a decade ago, and he's right: the degree  to which his game overcorrected for FF5's broken setups is something. You get an autohaste accessory at the start of the game and it's not especially good, Blue Magic skillset's a bust, etc. I really dislike how overcentralizing magic is and how little you care about weapons outside of magic stat/evasion boosts as well.

[Dark Holy Elf]

In fairness, caring about weapons for magic stat and evasion (in addition to their properties on direct offence) is two more ways you care about weapons than many RPGs.

Generally agree with the rest of your comments.

[superaielman]

There are only a handful of weapons you use for physicals, which are mostly Locke's weapons and Fixed Dice. It's also a direct property of how the physical skillsets like tools don't care about either defense or your attack stat. It's pretty striking in comparison to FF4, where weapons for everyone was important for stats and different roles as well.  IE: Using different elemental claws, Rydia with a bow and arrow vs a rod, that kind of thing.

But it's probably not something that could have been fixed without a drastic redesign of the game's system.  Even if you increase the influence of physical attack/vigor in the attack formula, you'd still favor things like throw and tool over attacking. So it goes.

[Cmdr_King]

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse- Fin!

Shantae is a game with three things on its mind.  First!  Fanservice!  Second... the complicated interpersonal relationships of its majority-female cast.  I guess being a solid metroidvania would be a distant third.

Shantae's crouching animation involves shaking her hindquarters, which is either her winding up to pounce like a cat or her innate need to shake it manifesting.  Frankly it's probably both considering.  Her splash for "IT'S THE SNOW LEVEL AND IT'S FREEZING" involves turning her back to the camera to shiver and ensuring full view of the booty.  The primary cast all get "brass princess bikini" alternates for one level.  Risky is chained up in the finale, complete with bondage splash.

But also the game's plot can adequately be described as "Basically Scott Pilgrim"- despite her troubled past and propensity to hurt everyone around her, Risky Boots has been cursed by seven evil exes, and if she wants to win the girl Shantae's gotta beat them all!  And then the main cast is...
- The token Straight, Sky, is entering full derangement levels of trying to find a boyfriend/husband.  Overcompensating much?
- Rottytops shamelessly asks to eat Shantae's brains at every opportunity, while secretly also considering her a best friend, hero, and probable soul mate.  I mean she lies her ass off specifically to get Shantae to lovers carry her through the forest in her introduction.  Although when she arranges a sleepover at Shantae's in the ending, she does immediately proposition Bolo, so I guess she's bi (and has managed to roll a 20 on Insight and knew Shantae was too hung up on Risky in the moment to give her attention)
- Shantae among other things: wears all of Risky's signature equipment, keeps trying to dress up like her even beyond that, has to fight a dragon in hell, and of course offers the villain ultimate power in exchange for Risky's safety.
- Risky in the ending claims Shantae "is just like [Shantae's] mother, except more annoying".  How old is Risky and did she bang Shantae's mom?

Oh, right, and the game opens with Risky bursting in on Shantae in the bath.  As you do.

Like I have to think the game's target audience is lesbians.  I'm not really stretching here with these interpretations, the main cast all wanting to fuck seems like the natural reading of the actual plot, but everyone being too afraid to actually say that out loud is not how you'd write that if it was just titillation for straight dudes I feel like, despite the obvious fanservice of the art.

Oh, yes.  Distant third.  A few areas delve a bit deeper into precision platforming than the way it handles checkpoints and rooms supports I think (with the caveat that my primary point of comparison is Celese, which is *absurdly good* at exactly that), but they're a minority of rooms, and an equal number absolutely land in the sweet spot where dying is motivating rather than frustrating, at least as a personal thing.  The Metroidvania aspects are... extremely playing to my biases actually, the way it's divided into islands which each having its own smaller internal zones keeps each map easily accessible and makes backtracking sorta enjoyable, since it's not time consuming and you get a good sense of how much better you are.
I do think the latter areas got a bit excessive on enemy damage?  I think Shantae wants areas to be trickier than bosses as a rule (honestly Saliva's boss is probably the only tricky one, and that's just you lacking the resources to do it well).  Granted, items are HELLA good, and if nothing else the final boss would be a nightmare if you made it a point of honor not to use them.

Easy, easy 8/10, and I coouuullldd be underrating it, I'm looking at my ratings and it's definitely feeling like I like it more than the 8s but less than all the 9s, but that could be new game smell so gonna lowball it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yay Pirate's Curse. You should definitely check out Half-Genie Hero when you get the chance; I don't think it's quite as good overall and I suspect you'll agree, but if you liked the first one that much it's absolutely worth a look.

I didn't use items in boss fights until the final boss (since I figured they'd make every other boss too easy, as is often the case in these types of games) and yeah the final boss is completely crazy that way. Enemy damage... I agree with regards to Mud Bog Island, at least, that was very rude. I didn't find the rest of the lategame tooo bad on that front.

[Cmdr_King]

Yeah, it's mostly Mudbog Island.  The ice wolfs having 6 damage is kinda absurd, buuuut if you slam into them you kinda screwed up so that's not too bad.  Mudbog is jammed full of Venoms and it's legitimately hard to navigate it without hitting some portion of them.

I actually had 1/2 Genie Hero before I even picked up Pirate's Curse funny enough, but I had a "blah I wanna buy something" whim and got this.

[DjinnAndTonic]

You know, I also got a pretty 'for lesbians' feeling from Shantae. But I can't really single out *why* it feels that way. It has a ton of stuff in it that I ostensibly associate with fanservice for straight otaku (see the aforementioned chainmail princess bikini episode) but despite all of that, the game doesn't come off in the same exploitative manner. Perhaps it's Shantae herself, or Risky's relationship to Shantae, that makes the characters feel like more than props for titilation despite all the overt titilation?

[NotMiki]

If I had to guess it would be that the female characters project confidence in their sexuality.  There's often a lack of agency in the presentation of women's' sexuality in male-oriented stuff.  So it's perhaps less that it is 'for lesbians' and more that it is a presentation that isn't offensive to women in general.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I think my feelings line up with Jim there. I definitely don't get a specific "for lesbians" vibe from the game but it respects its female characters and gives them plenty of agency so :thumbsup:.

Anyway, stuff I'm playing.

Deltarune - Hmm well. I had fun certainly, though it's tough to know how to feel about incomplete works. I will say that nothing during the game's 2-3 hour runtime really wowed me like Undertale managed (e.g. with the Papyrus fight, so I'm not just picking things from past the 2-3 hour mark of Undertale!). And the change in the storytelling conceit to something closer to the average RPG definitely made the silent main start to feel like a drag on the game in a way Undertale's never did.  I kinda had a "whatever" reaction to the final scene. On the other hand the other characters were good; Susie was quite effective (and got some good character development) and the main non-playable character is Bowser Jr. with Toby Fox writing him and I never knew how much I needed this.

Mega Man 11 - It's Mega Man, it's tough but fun, solid execution of the formula while feeling different. I've beaten a majority of the stages at this point.

Octopath Traveler - Beat all the Chapter 4's and have cleared two of the advanced job shrines. Definitely feel the game has trended upwards from Chapter 2 to where I am now, which is nice! Game clock is at somewhere over 60 hours now, everyone is roughly balanced at around Level 50. Not sure how much I'll do but taking a shot at the superboss is definitely going to happen.

[dunie]

Reached one of the final rooms in Gris but ran into a bug, I'm sure. It has to be a bug. I've dropped into a space where I can only move left and nowhere else without having acquired some skill in a previous room I never visited. Gris is incredibly linear and it's quite difficult to get lost, but gamers have complained about some pesky bugs where you fall through the first stage's plummet to the second-to-last stage without any of the skills you're supposed to pick up in the game. So, I am a bit frustrated I cannot finish. It seems things are fixed more quickly for Steam users than Switch. Regardless, I still stand behind the beauty of this game. Thinking on it though, it's probably two hours max if you try for it in one sitting, which probably means it's a 30 minute or less speedrun game: you can't skip some important skill-acquiring scenes, for example. I do see a lot of replay value in this, especially on the nights where I just want a buffet of sensorial beauty. I hope they send in an update for similarly situated gamers on the Switch like me, because I do not want to restart. Who enjoys a fugue restarting at the final moments of its sounding?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Mega Man 11 - Beat (not to be confused with the bird helper, whom I never used). Didn't use any E/W/M tanks. Bustered all the bosses once (either in their own stage or in the boss rush).

Solid game overall! Speed gear is a really fun tool if a bit too strong. Power gear isn't as fun (or powerful) but definitely has its uses, especially on certain weapons. Never really used the desperation speed+power double gear (except by accident) but it has obvious uses.

Weapons are a solid set, and well-balanced too. This game almost certainly has the best "worst weapon" of any Mega Man (MM9 came so close but Concrete Shot was bad). I'm not even sure what the worst weapon is, actually! They were a lot of fun to use, though they did tend to drain weapon energy pretty fast. The upgrade which makes WE-restorers hit all your weapons at once was a huge boon; loved it more than I expected because it encourages you to use your full arsenal instead of focusing just on a singular most effective weapon.

The shop economy is weird, everything felt really undercosted. I never came close to running out, though I can see how you would in the final dungeon since there's not nearly as many screws there. But yeesh, you get 300 screws in Tundra's level every life you pass through a certain screen there, which is itself enough to buy 3 E-Tanks, if not other things. Can you imagine any other MM game just randomly putting 3 E-Tanks in one screen and not even making them a challenge to reach? ..... maybe Mega Man 3's final dungeon.

Bosses were fun. Stage design was... good but not exceptional. Stages are definitely a bit long compared to the series norm but they did add an extra checkpoint to help mitigate this.

Rough attempt to rank the weapons:
1. Tundra Storm. The powered-up version is instant death to the entire screen pretty much, which alone is pretty solid even considering its high cost. The fact that I used the uncharged version (high damage, hits enemies above/below/around you, pierces shields, comes out near instantly and resets your fall speed for platforming) notably more says something.
2. Acid Barrier. Oh man there's some terrifying platforming in Wily Stage 1 which I dread doing without this. You can run a decent enough offence while it's up too.
3. Blazing Torch. Its trajectory ended up more useful than I expected, once you know how it works. And the damage/shield-piercing is of course excellent.
4. Bounce Ball. Nothing too special on damage but few weapons are as good as hitting anything, anywhere, and you can spam them to get the offence up to reasonable levels (so I think it compares favourably to Block Dropper).
5. Scramble Thunder. Plug Ball on steroids pretty much? For a groundcrawler it's pretty much second only to MM8's Frost Wave, having pretty high damage and shield-piercing.
6. Block Dropper. Nice, low-cost coverage of a bunch of the screen in front of you. Not very powerful but it gets the job done sometimes.
7. Pile Driver. Bizarro Top Spin variant? Better Charge Kick? The fact that it's this low says how solid weapons are in this game. It has some platforming uses since it dashes you forward, and it's got good power, though it can be risky in a variety of ways. I killed myself accidentally using it a couple times!
8. Chain Blast. THe uncharged version is technical since you launch bombs and can detonate them... but it's not very good because the projectiles are slow and the damage isn't that great unless you chain them which makes them even slower, and there's a lack of trajectory options. The powered-up version is a reasonably solid "power" weapon though.

Anyway, solid game. I think I prefer MM8 and MM9 a bit (along with a couple of the older ones but those are harder to compare) but this was a good game and one I look forward to replaying.

[Dhyerwolf]

Persona 5- Beat Castle 2. After the first dungeon was a massive resource struggle, the second dungeon wasn't an issue at all? At the first plot stop point I still had 80% of my SP left. Really weird ramp down (especially given that they give you a way to fuse all MT elemental spells onto one Persona). And now I just bought an accessory with SP regen, so they just wanted the first dungeon to be painful?

Also, switching off between FF 6 and FF 7 when traveling (was doing WA 1 before that, which I've almost beaten). Done a little XG too, but I forgot how abysmally bad the gameplay is (Every battle is just basically using regular attacks, but you have to hit a button 2-4 times instead of once? I honestly think gear battles are more fun...).

[SnowFire]

Made a Dragon Quest XI stat topic, for those curious who didn't notice already.  Fun times.

Speaking of which, for Sierra / Saika, a mild gameplay spoiler/tip/time-saver once you get Jade, if you're curious and didn't already find it: Most Pep Powers aren't THAT amazing.  However, Hero/Sylvando/Jade have a joint Pep Power called Electro Light with a mysterious description like "Something good will happen if you use this!"  It's worth finding out what it does.  SAVE first though, then go use it and see what happens, and reload the save if you didn't like the results.  It's one of the two best Pep Powers in the game.

Dhyerwolf: Persona 5's first palace is flat out the toughest dungeon in the game, and it's not close.  That palace on Normal is harder than the other palaces on Hard IMO.  That said, I was somewhat stressed on resources in the second half of Palace 2, if I recall correctly?  First half isn't so bad, as you said.

As for designer intent, I think Atlus wanted you to appreciate the various quality-of-life features you get from Confidants and the like as the game proceeds, which means doing one Palace with no guardrails.  No Alert reduction, very limited SP restoration, no allies covering for Joker, etc.  I'm not sure if they considered how that would combine with the player just learning how to evade or ambush guards, as well as Joker having a far tinier Persona draw. 

I guess I kinda respect the intent for not wanting the various upgrades to feel like a treadmill akin to yay I got +2 Attack, but pst we quietly added +2 Defense to all the enemies, so you're not really any stronger.

[Hunter Sopko]

His experience makes sense. I didn't get the SP Restoration equips until Dungeon 3, so depending on your Confidant progression Dungeon 2 can be relatively tough or breezy. It's still not going to be on the same level as Dungeon 1 though yeah.

[Dhyerwolf]

Making the first dungeon brutal and then lowering the pressure near immediately feels like a crazy design choice to me, but doesn't mean it wasn't what they were going for. I only picked up the SP regen after the 2nd dungeon (although I could have picked up something), but I had accumulated enough coffee to deal with any resource issues at the end of the 2nd dungeon.

[NotMiki]

It could be that the designers assume less optimal play throughout. the things that ease up pressure require b-lining some s-links and ignoring others.  That's certainly true of SP-regen, which requires not only that you advance a certain link pretty far but also that you haven't spent all your limited money on earlier and more obvious equipment upgrades.

[SnowFire]

To be clear, Palace 2 isn't a cakewalk or anything - I died several times on the minibosses, and actually had to Mementos grind a tad to take out Madarame.  Just it's hard because some of the enemies are hard, not because oh my god SP is running on fumes but not spending SP is suicide.

And yeah, I think the designers just baked in assuming you were gonna spend several days visiting Palace 1, which isn't really THAT big of a deal.  I think Magetastic did Palace 1 all the way on Hard (both Laggy & me set it to Normal for at least parts of Palace 1), and if you make 4-5 visits, you'll get enough levels to almost sorta survive.  In the grand scheme of things, losing 2-3 days on Palace 1 trips doesn't matter and isn't going to stop you from 100%ing all the Confidants if you want to.

--

Fire Emblem Echoes
When I originally played through the game, I thought it was cool how the game would generally let you deploy everybody, so you got a sense of your full team, but worried it would somewhat diminish replayability.  After all, in most other Fire Emblems, you can pick an entirely different core team to go through with for a different flavored experience.  Anyway, due to being on a plane a lot, I finished my 3rd playthrough of the game, so it does have more secrets left to offer!  2nd playthrough was a mild low turncount deal where I tried to get the "Fire Emblem" achievement for winning in < 500 turns.  This playthrough, the third, would be a no optional recruits playthrough.  Alm & Ceclia know this trip is gonna be dangerous, so we're gonna turn down everybody who offers to join.

Exceptions:
* For Alm, the Cipher DLC crew will be joining of Emma, Randal, Shade, and Yuzu.  Well...  after he can beat their maps, at least.  (No other DLC allowed, including the free DLC!  Villager's forks are stupidly busted, that'd kill the challenge.)
* For Celica, she's gonna go recruit Kliff & Faye, because I've never done that before.  And also doing Celica route without a Cleric / Saint sounds painful.

I'll add that you can skip through conversations / cutscenes / enemy turns at lightning speed, which also makes a 3rd playthrough nice & fast.  Keep Mae & Boey snarking at each other about why their trips keep mysteriously going through haunted graveyards, skip anything involving Rudolf or Jedah, good times.  Note that the overall teams ended up interestingly different too; Alm normally has only 1 Pegasus Knight (maybe 2 if Faye went that way), while Celica normally has 3; Alm didn't have any archers rather than 1-2, etc.

Anyway, it was cool and different!  Got to see various wacky bits of dialogue they wrote for dopey situations.  Also, the DLC characters are all fully voice acted: they have well-written dialogue, a support tree, lines when people get kills near them, lines for the final battle with Duma, special sprites, etc.  Shade (who is a dark mage in Cipher) ends up the gothiest Saint ever, wearing a black dress, while Emma has a huge ribbon visible on her sprite, and so on. 

Act 1
Kliff & Faye are left curbside for our quest.  As is Silque, so it's time for ALM'S SNACK CART healing strats, as if you want to heal up you need to stop by the provisions stands Alm wheels around behind him and eat an Orange.  Emma & Randal's DLC map is too badass to be taken on now, though, so we're sticking with the core required crew, which is Alm / Grey / Tobin / Lukas / Clair / Clive.  Grey & Tobin both go Mercenary 'cuz, I dunno, don't want to steal the show too much from the Cipher characters, so stick with safe & boring & also their FEH forms, villagers with swords.  I delay promotion more than I normally would do due to fears about lowmanning it up; while you usually don't get much from delaying promotion in Echoes, with a small crew, it seems more worthwhile.  Final map ends up a curbstomp even without Silque, the "wander up the right side and have Clair let you in" gives you a nice chokepoint and a very easy infiltration.

Act 2
NO GENNY NOOOO.  Celica takes awhile to learn Recover, too, so Celica's snack cart strats time?  Okay, and some graveyard grinding, I admit it.  This is way harder than usual sans Genny.  I do save Valbar & co. via hauling ass north on their map, then proceed to abandon them at the pirate fort.  The only required Celica recruits are Mae/Boey/Saber / (much later Act 4 Conrad), so this would be a tiny team without the Ram Village extras.  I skip the Necrodragons for now and collect Kliff & Faye, who are amused at the situation wherein Alm just ran off without them.

Over at the Thieves' Shrine, Celica & Silque have some "huh weird that we ran into each other" dialogue (Silque is also from the priory at Nonis), and Python & Forscythe have some "huh hello tourists to this haunted dungeon" dialogue at the Deliverance Hideout.  Then it's time for some GRINDING 'cuz hey Villagers actually gain levels super fast when fighting at the Deliverance Hideout compared to the Thieves Shrine.  Faye goes Saint for sanity reasons, Kliff goes Archer.  Archer is supposed to be balanced around subpar stats, but when you got Villager Kliff to Level 15 or something, a lot of that downside goes away, and you just have a terrifying force of nature.  Necrodragons get bodied on return, and I grab the Blessed Sword for Celica from the Sea Shrine.

Act 3
Alm's snack cart runs out of steam here vs. Fernand; while Alm can sorta survive all the enemies beelining your position early, nobody else can, and with no archers and no mages, there's no free chip damage getting in.  I attempt it twice but Alm eventually runs out of HP thanks to the annoyingly luckily accurate dark mages Rigel brings.  Even if I'd hypothetically beaten it, the next map is a swarm of dark mages with no real way to get long-range free damage onto them and a crew of low-resistance characters.  If it is beatable, it's via not promoting both Tobin & Grey to Mercs and getting an archer or a mage of your own, and maybe having Clair lead half their army on a merry chase.  LUCKILY!  I am now strong enough to take on the DLC missions, which seem balanced for Act 3 for whatever odd reason.  It's tricky but doable, and all the characters are in promoted classes, so these early Act 3 maps quickly become curbstomps instead with the Cipher crew hard carrying.  To chat about them some...  they all have good Resistance (which doesn't grow very often / at all in Echoes), and they all have weapons with somewhat inefficient forging costs but that can be forged a LOT if you want to take them to endgame, and new specials. 

* Emma is a Falcon Knight with 13 Resistance, which is amazing - means all the midgame spells from Witches and the like practically bounce off her.  On the downside, her Speed is kinda disappointing for a promoted unit - only 13 or so at L1, when Clair had already outpaced that easily pre-promotion as an L10 Peg Knight or whatever.  (Speaking of 13, that is also apparently her age, so child soldiers, yay!  At least Delthea didn't get in the thick of physical combat...)  Her weapon, Trainee's Lance, has bad Mt (4) but great Hit, and more importantly, has the Solo Triangle Attack special.  Which yes, Randal razzes her about making no sense.  It's a straight-up triple attack for 5 HP, so her merely-okay speed doesn't actually matter that much once she learns it.  Really amazing at shredding low-def units and Terrors, worthless against high-Def units as you might imagine.

* Randal is a Paladin who also sports pretty good Resistance, and also great Speed.  Unfortunately, his Luck/Skill suffer, and his Strength is nothing special either.  So he's a balanced unit, more of an anti-mage while Clive focuses on high Str and killing blows.  His unique, Wayward Lance, is a low-hit high-crit weapon, and offers a special that doubles down even further on this - Heaven or Hell, a guaranteed double, but at -40 Hit, and with guaranteed crits if it hits.  I practically never used that special considering he generally doubled anyway, already had a decent chance of crit, and the skill would tank his Hit to tragic levels.  (The skill might be worthwhile on a low-speed, high skill lance user like Lukas I guess?)  It gets REALLY bad at endgame with the evasion jump there, but whatever, I gave him Gradivus then.  (Also, for Elf/Ciato, your team & Emma get to rescue him in his recruit map for a change of pace from the usual Echoes MO on the gender of recruitable characters in peril.)

* Yuzu is all offense all the time - think Hana from FE Fates, tons of speed and attack, no defense or HP, although acceptable Resistance.  However, "female myrmidon" translates to "Priestess with a sword" in Echoes, so she also packs some magic options, which is actually great, especially since my healing is limited on this team.  Maybe too great, since it seems to distract from intended sword beatdown she wants to do character-wise?  Oh well.  Even with her as a promoted L1 Priestess, enemies would beeline her as she looked the most killable compared to the entire rest of the team, so she spent more time than she probably preferred healing in the backlines.  Her weapon, the Warrior's Sword, is pretty good; just solid stats & a +20 crit rate.  The ability is pretty worthless for Yuzu though - it's Armor Disruptor, which has effectiveness against armored units.  A nice thought, but if Yuzu is fighting armors, she's just pelting them with Fire or Sagittae instead and hitting their weaker Resistance stat rather than walking up tot hem, usually.

* Shade is an L1 "Saint."  Like the rest of the Cipher crew, she packs great Resistance, making her a great enemy mage bait unit.  She's similar to Tatiana; no Recover, but has Physic and Rescue.  She also packs Freeze and Silence, although no Invoke (but that's fine by me, I've won enough using Invoke cheese).  As a battle mage, her speed is averageish, which is better than most Saints who are slugs, but for a dark mage turned Echoes Saint due to where Nosferatu hangs out, her Attack stat is a bit disappointing.  Still, having a ranged healer was just what the doctor ordered, so still amazing.  I eventually gave her the Speed Ring to get her around more quickly as well as ensure doubles in combat.

Anyway, as you might expect, the addition of some high-res mobile units and a healer turns the situation around, fast, and most of Alm Act 3 goes down in flames afterward.  Desaix's Fortress is a little tricky as usual with no archers and the only mages also being healers, and Desaix himself having Javelins that HURT, but I manage.  Lutiher, Mathilda, and Delthea are all ignored and left alone.

Over on Celica's side, things surprisingly aren't that bad.  Hard-focusing XP has resulted in characters that shrug off summoned units and Kliff makes for a very busted Archer with all the extra Villager levels (Alm ships an Iron Bow over to him via Merchant).  Saber holds the frontline while Celica/Mae/Boey/Kliff plink from afar and Faye keeps everybody healed up.  Despite ignoring Palla, Catria, and Atlas's pleas for help, Celica finds herself heading over to take out bandit lord Grieth... because...  because she has a good feeling about doing this?  This is actually required to meet Irma and get proof of princesshood at the Temple or something anyway, but hey, more XP.  There's quite the slaughter at Grieth's Citadel as I take it nice & slow & safe with this small team; nothing like having multiple characters "Fatigued" after a single battle from all the fighting that takes place as I slowly edge up one side with Kliff & the mage crew sniping people.  No trouble over at the Temple of Mila either.  Rare footage of Celica having hit L20 before promotion, though, from all the lowmanning.

Act 4
Doing Nuibaba's Citadel without an archer was interesting.  0 Mila's Turnwheel uses, though!  Guess I know the fight well enough now.  The secret is going around up top and having a Dread Fighter bait out the defenders, since only a DF can get into Medusa range safely.  (Okay, if you don't have any Dread Fighters, there's a Hexlock Shield in Fear Mountain for the same effect, although you won't be chipping back like you might with a Lightning Sword.)  Once some of the defenders are baited out, I use Clair & Emma to start sniping the remaining defenders and using a Shade Rescue as needed.  By the time it's time to kill Nuibaba and her Cantor friend, all her other allies are dead.  Another massive slaughter count fight that takes 25 turns or so to win, but good times.

Meanwhile, over with Jerome & Zeke, there's the rare lines for when you HAVE completed the quest but did not bring Tatiana to the battle where Zeke gets to say something like "Welllll I don't know you but sure you seem trustworthy when you say you've saved Tatiana, so I'll help!"  It occurs to me that if you wanted to be really horrible, you could recruit Tatiana, then run to the Sylvan Shrine and get her killed, then go to the Zeke battle where Alm would get to lie his ass off about how she's fine now.  Anyways, Zeke & Tatiana remain sadly separated, as they refuse to meet up.  i guess Tatiana liked Nuibaba's decorations for why she decided to stay there.  Since Yuzu is sporting the Warrior's sword and Shade the Speed Ring, I actually ship Celica the Mage Ring found in Nuibaba's place.

For Celica, meanwhile, the rout continues.  Despite having a smaller team than Alm - 6-7 vs. 10 - Celica's team still feels more powerful in some ways, especially now that both Mae AND Boey are packing Mage Rings and are artillery 1-5 units of doom capable of sniping enemy mages without counter easily.  Hiking through the swamp is easier when everyone is high enough level to shake off most summoned Terrors and you don't have to worry about protecting Atlas/Nomah/etc. from Gargoyles swooping in on him.  (I gave Mae a bit of Defense boosting too.)  Conrad joins up, and the Storming of Duma Gate mission proves easier than usual, as super-Kliff just wrecks everything and super-Celica / super-Saber are hard to kill off all the extra levels they've gotten.  Conrad is basically a useful meatshield for baiting enemies off his good resistance, and then everybody in the backline kills stuff horribly.  Duma Tower doesn't put up much more of a fight.

Act 5
No archers and no mage ring and lots of Bow Knights dissuading a Falcon Knight dive means that the Last Bastion is slow going.  Still, a combination of Lightning Sword and Yuzu's Sagittae help clear a path along one edge, and then it's easy after I penetrate the back of the Last Bastion and can approach from the "wrong" way.  Wasn't really ever under much threat, even if it took awhile to win.  Rudolf I just plain charge the center courtyard with no archer trickiness, have people who can survive Rudolf critz in his range when he aggros, then have Alm take World's Worst Dad out.  (Side comment: I didn't plan on talking MUCH about the plot, but one of Rudolf's lines made me wonder - he tells Berkut that the weak have no place in his army, and to git.  Was...  was this supposed to also be sympathetic-for-no-good-reason?  that is, he was trying to save Berkut's life in an assholeish way?  Well, if that was the writer's intent, it worked too well, as he still comes across as the bad guy everybody thought he was.   Okay, backing to skipping this nonsense.)  Mycen joins as our final recruit although he doesn't fit in the party yet (but will fit in Celica's party later for Duma!).  Berkut & Rinea aren't too bad, although approaching Rinea is tricky since I don't have a Gold Knight I'd trust to kill her like Mathilda (Randal's offense is too weak, Clive will die horribly if he misses), so I play it slow and use Dread Fighters to approach safely.  Duma himself, well, the lowmanning doesn't matter now and I have some super-Alm and super-Celicas from the focused XP, so the fight is probably easier than usual if anything.  Bow Knight Kliff snipes key targets, Saber/Grey/Tobin are DF magic tanks to lead the way, Faye & Shade can heal from afar.  Unusually, I decide to lead Lord Duma on a walk to the center of the map, then have DFs sneak in after he's wandered off to take out the Medusa user and the Witch summoner.  You also get to marvel at the Ram Village massive support stacking meaning that DF Grey is enjoying Alm/Celica/Mycen/Tobin/Clair supports all at once and Duma only has a 22 Hit on Grey as he futiley chases him downward, and is led away from his worshippers.  Victory!

(Also, Clive gets an ending that assumes Mathilda died, since she wasn't in the party.  No, Clive, she's still waiting for you, don't worry, Alm is just weird.)

Act 6
I might actually do an Invoke-less aftergame to see how it goes, depending on how crazy I feel.  We'll see!  I do have 3 Dread Fighters I can Villager loop at least.

Album with various amusing dialogue / odd scenes of Duma placement:
https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipMpAUqehIagnwCSyX4EOLdphPENhT6nTfAgku6T

[Dark Holy Elf]

Octopath Traveler - Finished the postgame. The final superboss was an enjoyable challenge for sure, although losing to the second stage would have been soul-crushing. I had around three hours between my save before and after that sequence, and it's not like I spent much time on the mini-boss squad. Granted, much of the time I took was spent painstakingly strategising out turns, precisely so I wouldn't have to redo things.

Long game certainly, final clock was over 78 hours. The story fits together nicely from a plotting point of view, though it's unfortunate that it doesn't really involve the characters. Octopath even did a good job with its characters, so it's a shame that it couldn't at least pull a Chrono Trigger and give them some more dialog in these shared sequences. Also disappointing how they play no role in the epilogue sidequests about various important NPCs.

Still, a very solid game. Not much has changed about my assessment; it doesn't really excel anywhere but it certainly does a good job everywhere, and is one of the most overall solid RPGs in recent years. Recommended to any Switch-owner who likes RPGs and has the time to play 'em.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Domination of FF4 continues.

Dark Elf: Took off the Rubyrings too early.  Boss did the worst thing possible, piggyfying Tellah and I had no items to cure it.  Still won with Cecil, Yang, and Cid bashing away but no domination with Tornado or Stop like I wanted.

Asura: Easier in the Japanese version than the US release.  Rydia and Rosa take up slots 4 and 5.  My first actions are fighters defend except for the one with the Defender who itemcasts, Rydia Bio, and Rosa Reflect.  Everyone but Edge has mage species resist gear so Asura can't really do much with her physicals.  Would have been OK if Edge dropped but all those Protects add up.

Leviathan: Cecil's scrubby healing is enough to free up a Rosa turn to berserk Edge, first priority is Slow of course.  Slow in place, she gets another free turn later on and I berserk Cecil for the hell of it.  Rydia pumps out Bolt2 and Kain keeps Jumps coming.  Before being berserked, Edge drops some Raijin to prey on lightning weakness.

Sylph Cave: Went a lot smoother than I remember.  Having Edge drop an hourglass when there are multiple Morbols around makes all the difference; it was worth the 4 hourglasses I used getting the treasures here.  I blow up 6 Dreamevil formations with Leviathan; they take too long to chop down with melee alone.

[Tide]

I started replaying FF9 despite knowing it is a poorlifedecision.jpeg. I've been watching some speedruns of this game so I deploy some speed stratz on some of the battles. Managed to finish Disc 1 in a little under 4 hours. I also didn't run into like any encounters until after Hunter's Festival (which I made Zidane retire from because Coral Ring > better than all other things you can get) so by the time I was walking to Gizu's Grotto, enemies were 2HKOing and Zidane still had the Mage Masher equipped. Ended up having to grind a little to get out of that hole. I'd say, Gizu and Zidane start of D2 is kinda where the difficulty is most likely at their highest. If I didn't grind it out, I imagine Clerya's Trunk to be a complete mess.

Fights in this game are pretty simple. I actually had the most difficulty on the Black Waltzes due to the before mentioned no encounters until that point. The spells were OHKOing or 2HKOing and when you don't have Garnet in one of those fights, turn economy can go to hell if they start spamming MT. But after that, you get more critical skills, get MP Attack on fighters and damage skyrockets. Vivi/Steiner are pretty good as a result since they can OHKO randoms/2-3 round bosses. Others are less good. Garnet is pretty bad, Zidane is underwhelming and Freya's okay but not great. Will see what happens as we continue.

Also, the character work in this game is pretty bad. Like the plot itself works actually but the people it revolves around really need work. Vivi/Freya are cool, but then Freya becomes invisible after halfway through D2. Zidane/Steiner/Garnet/Beatrix all have issues. I guess Brahne works for a figure that you don't like but eeeeeeeeeeh

[Captain K]

Langrisser: It's a mobile gacha game based on the old Langrisser/Warsong strategy series. Basically Fire Emblem Heroes but based on better games (oh yeah I went there).

Has that old-school anime art which is nostalgic, and there's some interesting options for gameplay. You have support troops that you can change, so your main hero might be a swordsman, but he's leading a group of lancers which mitigates his weakness a bit.

Got myself an ugly old man (Bernhardt from Langrisser II) so I'm happy. Oh and did I mention you fight Cho Aniki? I'm not actually making that up.

EDIT: It's also supposed to have a Trails in the Sky collab coming up.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem Fates - Doing a playthrough of Revelation Lunatic, the only route I haven’t completed on the highest difficulty yet. Also using male Corrin (and therefore earlygame Felicia) for the first time.

Chapter 6 (the routesplit map) is actually tricky on this route and difficulty, unlike the other 8 variants on it. How the map works is you have to defeat one Hoshido mini-boss and one Nohr mini-boss, and you have five turns to do it in. In Hard, the Nohrian troops are fliers who start on the other side of the river, but move towards you. Simple enough, you defeat the wyvern miniboss and the Hoshidan infantry miniboss within 5 turns. On Lunatic, though, the Nohr troops are instead infantry and cavalry, who do NOT cross the river (obviously). You can pair up-separate to get Corrin across the river on the second turn, then activate the dragon vein to dry the river up, but this loses you two valuable turns. Worse yet, your options to just waltz in there and kill the miniboss (which admittedly is the easy part) on the Nohr side are limited because he starts inside the threat range of Xander and Camilla, either of whom will erase anyone in one action. So you have to respect that, bait out the Nohr miniboss, and avoid being overwhelmed by the converging soldiers from both armies. Not the trickiest but took me a few tries for sure.

After that there is Chapter 7 (darkness map) which is terrible. Chapter 8 (Hoshidan fort vs Yukimura) is… fine though I lose Gunter towards the end of it and it’s long so I ain’t resetting. The ninjas have on this map have much higher def than res which is really unusual for ninjas. Makes Corrin’s dragonstone good though!

After this map I reclass Felicia to Strategist. Holy hell I should have done this a map sooner, Felicia is actually really good with access to magic, being able to one-round most foes due to high spd/mag at range 1-2 and 8 move. She’s 2HKOed by almost anything physical, but notably not OHKOed, and on Lunatic we will take this! She also picks up Inspiration around Chapter 11 which is, as usual, dumb this early. She’s an underwhelming Maid because the low str/def results in an unimpressive combat, but rather great this way.

Chapter 9 is the wind map. It’s difficult! Not much to say. Not as tough as the Conquest version obviously but still good fun and has me constantly racking my brains in that good way.

Chapter 10 is ice digging and is terrible. I decide to be fairly completionist and expose more or less the whole map to get all the shiny treasure, and the map takes like 25 turns. With Hayato dying right near the end sadly, which is a shame because he’s quite a solid mage on Revelation and I can use those.

Chapter 11, in which your ninja has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough genderfluid dude/dudette to rescue the ninja? Well probably, but the Master Ninjas on this map have some sick stats on Lunatic, including 15/20 defences and super-high speed along with “good enough” attack (and bonus debuffing of your tanks). Fortunately Takumi can take out most of their HP in one go, and Reina who you get early on actually outright one-rounds them thanks to glorious Darting Blow. The last push with two of them near Kotaro is a bit of a pain.

I did not like the frozen ocean on Hard but it’s fine on Lunatic, since there’s actually meaningful enemies raiding your ships until turn ~6 or so when the dragon veins get exposed and you can start to leave them. Corrin’s ship is beset by multiple 18-str outlaws and a brutal berserker (atk in the 30’s, good enough speed, and some ugly crit) which converge on turn 3, that took some careful positioning to deal with. Fortunately Reina and Subaki can cheat a bit at least. The approach of Flora’s ship is a bit of a pain as some powerful sorcerers defend it, but nothing you can’t deal with carefully. Rev enemies are generally pretty conservative so you can take your time, and they don’t usually have quite the same “everyone in a group wakes up at once” AI that certain Conquest maps favour.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Final Fantasy Tactics retrospective: C3 Orbonne

  This is a series that intimidates me when I go in.  However, much of the perceived difficulty comes from my own self-imposed limitations.  The first fight was scary due to an awkward team setup.  Geo Ramza with White Magic secondary, Archer Agrias with Equip Sword PA boosting gear, Priest with Black Magic (no MA up), Knight with Power Break and no Concentrate, and Ninja with Steal.  I really wanted those Platina Helmets and was perfectly willing to reset if the first shot of Steal Helmet failed.  Luck was really on my side on my attempt.  48% and 72% steals both succeeded on first try.  Protect was actually relevant.  Ninja did eat horrific overkill from a best compatibility Jump once.  Ramza Raised her up soon and I abused the AI by having the Priest target a Raise on the Ninja that would go off after the Lancer that killed her the first time got its turn.  So it went off to bother someone else.  Between Agrias wrecking things and some lucky Kamaitichi procs from Ramza, the Priest got about one EXP gaining action.

  Izjude is easy if just trying to win.  Give some spellcasters Germinas Boots/Spike Shoes and bombard Izjude with high powered spells on round one.  I'm aiming to kill every enemy and harvest crystals without allowing the enemies to get any so it's far more dangerous.  Add picking up the Move-Find items to those objectives, pointless as it is.   Team lineup is Mediator Ramza with Guts, Equip Armor, and Move-HP up, Lancer with hori jump 3 and Item, Ninja with Battle Skill, Time Mage with White Magic, and Archer with Battle Skill.  Main opening moves are to take out the summoner before it can move and have the Archer try to land a Speed Break on Izjude before his 3rd turn.  Felt a bit scared because of very limited healing.  Didn't quite play out as nice as I hoped but still made it.  Summoner had Judo Outfit and lived through opening assault but used its turn for Moogle, which was good enough.  Time Mage contributed Slows on Izlude and Protect/Cures on allies.  Lancer and Ninja smash generics; had a funny moment where my Lancer moved within range of a Knight to jump on an enemy Archer.  Knight got its turn while Lancer was still airborne and could do no damage.  Protect became relevant again since it allowed the Ninja to attempt to Power Break Izlude, fail, eat a counter and a sword whack, and survive through it all.  Got about 2 Speed Breaks on him overall which was enough for control of the field.

  Normal strats for Wiegraf 2 are to eliminate him quickly before the rest of his army joins in.  I am not normal.  Still going for crystals as well as Wiegraf's Crystal helmet.  Team is Thief Ramza as the designated stealer with heavy armor + Move-HP up, two gunners with Weapon Break, Oracle with White Magic, and a Wave Fist Monk.  There is a point to Ramza's HP centric setup: AI manipulation.  It will almost never go after him if someone else is available.  Got a really unlucky opening where Wiegraf's Stasis Sword KO's the monk with a critical and Stops the Oracle.  First shot of 45% Weapon Break hits so I play things out just in case.   Actually recovered from the mess.  Ramza gets some Steal Heat working on a Knight which lands a 42% Armor Break on an Archer.  Geomancer Knight is a bit tricky due to Counter Flood.  After taking out the other generics, needed to lure her to spots where the Monk could safely Wave Fist her as no one else had a way to inflict meaningful damage without risking a Counter Flood.  Disarmed and Threatened Wiegraf is easy enough to handle, especially once he's alone.

[Tide]

I made it to about 75% of D3 in FF9. I have pretty different feelings on the characters' in-battle worth for sure now, which I think jive more with speed stratz styles than anything but hey. They do some character stuff on the late joiners (Amarant/Eiko), but it doesn't do much. Ultimately the focus is still on the first 4 so how you feel about Zidane, Garnet, Vivi and Steiner are pretty important to how much you end up enjoying the story. As I mentioned, the actual story beats are pretty good, but Zidane/Garnet/Steiner all have issues, which kind of take away from the rest of the game.

EDIT: Okay, I'm done Disc 3. Disc 4 is really a formality to finish the game so I can probably state some thoughts regarding this replay. Play time is about 24 hours at the moment. Disc 4 is only about an hour so for all intents and purposes, the game is done. Overall, my opinion of FF9 hasn't changed much; it's not great but I'd probably still rank it above FF8 objectively. The plot works for what it is, but combat and character work aren't terribly exciting and those things really hurt it from being better. The discs are also really imbalanced in length (D3 is significantly longer than 1) and there are obvious pacing issues.

More on this later when I have time.