What games are you playing 2019?

[VySaika]

So I am finally getting around to playing Breath of the Wild. Played it a bit when we first got it, but Kier was binge playing it(and other things) and thus hogging the switch and I drifted off. With Tax Return Dollars the sprog now has their own switch, because we both use it as a handheld more than a console anyway, and I can now play things at my leisure.

Muddled around until I found the zora domain and started up the Vah Ruta segment. Because I did not have the shieka outfit for stealth, getting all the arrows from the lionel was harder then clearing the divine beast! Four deaths to Waterblight Gannon, though only 2 of them really count imo. The first two were on the first form where I just had it stuck in my head that I was supposed to hit the eye with shock arrows and I got butchered. Then I just...went in and his first form melted pretty fast under the attacks. Herp derp. Second form killed me twice due to my horrible depth perception and missing the iceblocks, but eventually I got him down.

Now back to muddling around. Found a birdbard and solved a wind "puzzle" (blow up all teh blow-up-able things, sail away to victory~), found a bunch of korok seeds. Guess I'll head off towards Death Mountain next, since there was a goron in the zora domain talking about it??? Saika and Open World games don't mix well, tbh. I'm trying to avoid looking up a guide, but for me "you can go anywhere!" tends to wind up with me going nowhere.

[Cmdr_King]

Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright-

Mm.  This is... very much a Fire Emblem?  It's very strange after playing Conquest first how much this... just... feels like Fire Emblem doing Fire Emblem things.  And to a degree this definitely has me thinking that, contrary to marketing, you are very much NOT meant to play whichever game style sounds more like your speed.  A lot of stuff in Conquest happens only as a direct riff/payoff to stuff you learn in Birthright, and in Garon's case what you DON'T learn.
There's.. more to say, but gets in depth so that'll be a separate thing.

The Squad:

Corrin- she spent a good chunk of the game just playing support really.  Jumping out to early level leads made her better at that generally, and as a rule she just wants to smack things with Yato so weapon levels aren't a thing.  She's... alright?  Yeah.

Sakura- I think on paper she'd have been my best mage if she had weapon levels.  Clearly shoulda fed her that pile of Arms Scrolls.  Oh well.

Azura- Sure is Azura

Hana- I actually asked about her in chat, and it turns out no, she IS typically your squishiest.  This is kinda bad given Fates' design quirks because the retainers and other PCs are already at a huge disadvantage, FE14 has the best late-join characters and prepromotes in the series because they really wanted your siblings to be awesome and used.  BUT.  Swordmasters really are that point-and-click-and-kill as units, so if you BOTHER she will start murdering things.  Y'know, in 20 levels.

Orochi- Really good for someone that damned slow?  Part of the "FE doing FE things" feel of the game is how archetypal a lot of the units are, Orochi being the prime example.

Oboro- I kinda hate that her support with Orochi is literally "smile more" *cough*  anyway she's pretty much in the Neph mold, except sans Wrath, so... fine.  Not great, but fine.

Hinoka- Starts pretty amazing.  I went Falcon Knight, so she ended up doing more flying healer things towards the end, she often couldn't quiiiite one-round things where other units could.  Oh well.

Setsuna- Definitely my worst unit.  14 strength at 20/8, AND tended to have accuracy problems.  Yikes.  Granted a little bit of this is how Fates handles bows vs tomes, there's probably a special bow for that that would have helped.

Rinkah- Ups and downs throughout but overall solid.  Surprisingly so for a club girl.

Takumi- One of the better archers in the series frankly?  Fujin Yumi being a ridiculous weapon helps, but he was very point-and-delete in a way most archers outside FE4 never are.  Probably not quite as good as FE10's archer duo?  But purely because he lacks that endgame 1-3 bow option.

Jakob- He decided to get screw in speed AND strength, but good support bait throughout.

Ryoma- Xander's probably better.

Kaden- never really got good.  Sad.

Scarlet- Filler more or less?  But killer axe is a nice tool in that role at least.

Shura- better filler than the other ninja I didn't level up.  Pity there was only one map with treasures on it after he joined.

[SnowFire]

CK: For what it's worth, weapon ranks do matter a little for Corrin because higher weapon rank = more bonuses in combat, at least when you aren't at weapon triangle disadvantage.  Not a huge deal but it's something.

I agree that I actually like BR's plot better despite CQ's vibe theoretically being more SF-friendly.  Ah well, that's been ranted about plenty already.  I forget, what bit of Garon plot did BR have that CQ didn't?  I seem to recall Garon's plot being stupidly far more hidden than it needed to be, e.g. the bit about Young Garon imbibing way too much dragon's blood as part of a ritual which drove him crazy and rendered him susceptible to demonic dragonic possession or something.  You'd think the story could be more open about that.

Rinkah & Scarlet are both more useful than they "should" be because Birthright has a weird paucity of axe/club users.  Basically just those two, and a few people who get it on promotion but have a low cap on their max weapon rank (e.g. Master-of-Arms Mozu, Great Knight Silas).  They're also some of the rare tanks that the BR team has, along with Azama of all people, and Ryoma for an evade-tank.  Scarlet's also pretty cool on Leo's swamp curse map, since the curse doesn't affect Nohrians or something, and she's a flier in a swamp anyway.

--
SF's Fire Emblem corner!  I've played a little bit of a bunch of FE games for, I dunno, reasons.  The one true series.

FE8: Was playing a scrub team vs. Eph mode a few months ago, but after clearing the Eph side, eh, I guess I funneled XP too efficiently or something, but the game was getting too boring & easy after the desert at Renais castle.  Clearly I should challenge myself!  I should try...

FE12: I tried Lunatic with a Female Archer naming Chris/Kris "Clarisse" and deciding that both Katarina & Clarisse were sent on the infiltration mission, but Clarisse had some multiple personality breakdown that resulted in her working for both sides, with "Klein" her evil half.  (Yeah, I don't blame the FE Heroes localization team for changing this one up, the German players would have laughed way too much at the evil assassins Eine & Klein.)  Sadly FE12 Lunatic Paralogues are really not balanced around you picking whatever crazy stylish set up you want, you just flat lose the stats war, and get told on Discord that neener neener people have done it with 0% growths on Lunatic Reverse (sure, with super-optimized setups and the occasional bit of save/reload abuse).  Note that evasion is not really much of a thing in earlygame FE12, so hoping for lucky dodges is not a great strat.  Started again one difficulty level lower on Maniac, and...  holy shit this is still hard, but at least vaguely doable as a Female Archer (rather than a Cavalier, which is apparently the usual "best" Avatar unit for the Prologue).  Like, we're talking eat casualties with massive cheating via the emulator load state button in Prologue 8 vs. Katarina.  Okay, maybe later.

FE6: Well there was just a FEH banner for this recently, and I never played it on Hard.  Played a little, and the enemy layout is not particularly inspired still with them making it a bit too easy to bait just a few units out at a time too frequently, but the enemy stats are definitely notably better, especially in bulk.  Enemies now sport big tanky HP & Def values so they can sustain a pretty decent amount of beatdown before dying, which is okay when dealing with just 1-2 units at once (which the game usually lets you do), but might be dicey later.  Also, Marcus is actually useful!  Dang if giving him an Iron Sword lets him both hit, and also chip enemies down to single-digit health to feed the kill to real party members, and also help out for boss kills in C1-3.  We'll see how C4 goes, with the hordes of cavalry in the open, and attempting to not get owned by Rutger...

FE Fates: Seeing Elf & CK's recent playthroughs, finally started up Lunatic Conquest (I played through Hard Conquest before), Branch of Fate start, and...  promptly got my ass kicked on the first map, Faceless in the swamp.  It was a pretty legit difficulty map even on Hard, and now the Faceless are sporting Grisly Wound and a few have the extremely horrible Seal Speed.  Restarted, broke out the Path Bonuses, gave Corrin 2x Dragon Herbs (+2 to all stats) and a Boots (+1 Move), broke out Tonics for nearly everything for Corrin and a few for Jakob (F-Corrin this time, I did M-Corrin on CQ before, so Jakob time), and attempt #2 went much better via having Corrin just murder the Seal Speed units with a 2x Yato strike, which stops it from ever proccing.  Still.  Grabbed Mozu, Ice Tribe next.  Will probably go Archer Mozu this run, that build seems helpful for boss-killing on Lunatic.

Wargroove - Okay, this isn't Fire Emblem, it's Advance Wars.  Still.  Nearly done the main campaign I think, on the fake final battle which is obviously not the final battle in C6 because you haven't settled up with the assassin who killed dad from stage 1 yet.

[Captain K]

KH3: Got all achievements and the platinum trophy.

Hardest trophy: 70,000 points on Rapunzel's dancing minigame. There's very little margin for error.
Easiest trophy: 12 million points on Verum Rex: Beat of Lead.

Kind of miss the uber endgame fights of the first two games. Battlefield 14 guy is just not the same.

Supposedly they have the models for all the Final Fantasy characters done, just didn't have any good spot to put them in the game. Maybe they'll release a Dissidia DLC where you can fight all of them.

[DjinnAndTonic]

KH doesn't really do DLC. They'll just re-release KH3 as Kingdom Hearts III.25 First Fractional Increment (Final Fantasy Included), with like 2 bonus fights where Cloud and Leon and Noctis are your teammates and bundle it with a slight graphical upgrade of Re:Coded or something. Sell it for $50.

This is the Kingdom Hearts method. None of that fancy DLC price-gouging. This is old school traditional homegrown gouging. Keeping Kingdom Hearts Great Again.

Can't wait for the inevitable announcement of Verum Rex: The Game at the next big press release.

[Niu]

Nomura said he has no plan to realease a separate KH3 Final Mix.
New story content is most likely be free DLC.
New playable content will be paid DLC.
Not ruling out that the paid DLC pack will be KH3's Final Mix.

[Cmdr_King]

Yeah my working assumption is that twoards the summer or so we get KHIII Final Mix as a ~$20 DLC thing.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I remember feeling that Birthright and Conquest completed various parts of each other's stories but I never really got the vibe that you were supposed to play a certain one first.

(I preferred Conquest's story to Birthright's myself; Birthright is indeed Fire Emblem doing Fire Emblem things and I find that so dreadfully dull. The Nohrian siblings are each and every one great in BR though, so there's that; Xander is easily the best "loyal general working for the bad guys" in the series. Basically I enjoyed that route's writing whenever one of them was on screen, and was put to sleep otherwise.)


Shantae and the Pirate's Curse - Decided to replay this after CK played it earlier, finally got around to doing so now. This time I got 100% of the heart squids (had to FAQ one in the desert ruins) and I actually beat all four forms of the Pirate Master without using an item (and in general did an itemless playthrough aside from Pirate Flares which are just time-savers). That was pretty rough! Did eventually figure out how to reliably avoid the cannonball attack of the second and third form, crounching right beside Risky is the key to letting you dodge the first half of it, how cute. Game's still an enjoyable romp.

Also playing around with Smash Ultimate and unlocking characters. Some of the spirit board/world of light matches seem pretty rough.

[Niu]

Hardest trophy: 70,000 points on Rapunzel's dancing minigame. There's very little margin for error.

When I saw this, I don't know what happened.

https://youtu.be/ULCgq43s-iE?t=758

[Luther Lansfeld]

New Super Mario Bros U DELUXE edition - I decided to play as Toadette because woo hoo, they put in a playable female character. The game adds both Toadette(tagged as ‘Easier’) and Nabbit (tagged as ‘Easiest’). So what’s easier about it? Toadette gets access to a special crown powerup called Peachette, which I guess is their way of putting Peach as a playable character without changing the regressive, retrograde plot of the game where Peach exists primarily as a plot device. It replaces the Squirrel suit in most circumstances but there are a couple of differences that make it a little better.
1. floating is a little smoother and more controlled
2. boxes with crowns always spawn crowns, even if you are small (normally it is just a mushroom)
3. when you fall into a pit, you shoved out of the pit by the little boost that squirrel/peachette has normally, even if you’ve already used it

You might think 3 would be the most powerful but it’s not as useful as it sounds because pits that you fall into are often quite far from any place to land. I found that 95% of the time I fell into the pit after the boost anyway. Maybe if I remembered that it existed more often I could have utilized it better, but I wasn’t really playing with the intention of using that to cheat. I also feel like the game has a lot more death by damage than falling into pits overall, so I think 2 ends up as a more powerful bonus than 3 does.

The other thing that Toadette gets is more lives. All 1-ups in the game are turned into 3-ups in her mode. If you know anything about the NSMB series you know that this is a joke of a bonus because it a) gives you excessive lives anyway and b) the only punishment for game overing is that you lose your halfway point within a stage. That’s it. I guess this is useful if you are really bad but not really useful otherwise.

Overall I don’t think that the mode is that much easier than the regular game. I had a lot of fun replaying the game. This time I decided to collect all of the star coins, which was a good romp. I did SUPERSTAR ROAD which is kind of the set of super stages. The second one is a hellish nightmare, kind of in the tradition of Super Mario World where the second Special stage, Tubular, is the most horrifying stage of all time. I think I probably lost 50-60 lives on that stage, but thankfully the stage supplied infinite lives to cover my shame! The rest of them weren’t as bad, but trying to get this coin was v. fun.



I think I'm gonna try out Super Luigi U after a small break.

Bayonetta 2- I wanted to buy this for the Switch, but it was still 60 bucks on the Nintendo store for just the second game, so I said "fuck it" and I'm playing the WiiU version. I started it up a few months ago but never finished it. So I started again on Chapter 8 and immediately got dunked on by Golem, who is a huge fucking jerk. I can't wait to fight this guy with other enemies. "Look at it this way... coulda been worse!" indeed. The plot is insane and I have no idea what's happening. Bayonetta is still a queen, though.

[Captain K]

Been hooked on Gems of War lately, which is a few-years-old multiplatform match 3 game. It manages to evoke that collectible card game feel well. I just got this card... OH! I can combine it with this card and... oh I need to obtain this item to make it better... grind grind.

It also got released on Switch this week (I'm playing on mobile because I'm too poor to afford French Riviera apartments and a Switch).

[Cmdr_King]

I Am Setsuna- fin

You can really tell this was a first project for most everyone involved. Funny enough it ends up with this very PS1-jank kinda feel in some ways.

In that light I hate to dwell on the shortcomings because they're all consistent with this.  There's a clear tension between their clearly being tasked with creating a Crono Trigger-like game, while their core concept and mood were a bit of a twist on FFX.  In principle there's no reason those two things can't go together, but the way they arrange the details and which aspects they highlight clash.  The way CT's maps, movement speed, and animations work were all designed in a way that makes sense in Chrono Trigger, a game with five extremely distinct settings built with sprites.  So when you transpose that onto Setsuna's snowfields, it feels slow and same-y.  Making you choose which abilities to equip, and making it possible to miss them if you don't get some of the drops for whatever reason has some of the same problem, especially since that means on paper all the abilities should have clear niches throughout the game, so you never see a big improvement to your overall performance in combat.

Well except Luminair.  It's nice.

They did a credible job with the characters relative to the amount of dialog in the game.  Endir as a silent main cuts the legs out of the early game, and I think Setsuna's blend of naivete and... acceptance about how the world works doesn't land very well because they try to couple all of her character moments with Endir and... y'know, silent main.  But once there's other characters for everyone to talk to it does more or less work.  Although I wonder if they didn't take on more NPCs than they knew what to do with.

Also Reaper never works.  But eh, that's fine.

Honestly though that's more analytical brain just kinda going over ways the game could probably have been better.  The actual flaws are more like...
Why don't spells show area of effect when they have them
Where's the world map.

Like those two things are PRETTY IMPORTANT to an RPG designed like Chrono Trigger!  Especially when it's all snow!

But nah, it's alright.  Manages some real moments here and there.  7/10

[Lord Ephraim]

Sekiro - You know parry mechanics from Dark Souls and how it was a cool idea but never really necessary to beat the game?  Well, now it's time to git gud and learn to parry because the game is impossible otherwise.  The first boss in the game is more difficult than Lady Maria in Bloodborne (a lategame DLC boss fyi), same idea and fighting style but in Bloodborne you're not made of tissue paper.  Getting hit once means 90% of your health bar is gone and it takes two healing items to refill it.  You come into the fight with three healing drinks.  You also get to revive once when you die, with 50% HP.  This means you get 3 mistakes, against a boss harder than 70% of Dark Souls/Bloodborne.  THIS IS THE FIRST BOSS IN THE GAME.

Maybe I'm getting too old for this shit but I don't have the twitch reflexes to parry 5 attacks in a row.  In Sekiro you kill bosses by depleting their posture gauge.  How do you deal posture damage? By parrying.  Oh you have to keep on the pressure because the posture gauge recovers when not taking damage or blocking.  There is a health gauge but all it does it make the posture gauge refill slower the less health you have.  You also have posture that bosses deplete in 4 attacks unless you perfect parry everything.

The game is the literal definition of get good or die.  There's no way to increase your attack power or health without defeating bosses so there's no grinding.  Also it's an entire single player game, so no summoning either.   Probably the first time I regret buying a game because of it's shitty difficulty.  It's a shame too because the rest of the game is great.  You can actually use stealth to pick off enemies one by one and even weaken minibosses by using stealth blows.  When it comes to actual dueling, the game is shit unless you have great reflexes.  I suck at fighting games and bullet hells.  Sekiro is the Touhou of Dark Souls.

[NotMiki]

You can make it through through most of the game while being a mediocre-at-best parryer - take it from me, a mediocre-at-best parryer.  Some advice: HP-killing bosses is viable like 95% of the time so don't feel like you need to play the parry game on everything.  Dodging out of attacks using circle seems like a natural thing to do, especially if you just played bloodborne, but bosses in this game are really good at punishing it.  If you mistime your parry, keep mashing L1, or just hold L1 to block.  Unlike enemies, getting your posture broken isn't instant death (although it might be in the fight you're in) so you can look at your own posture meter as a renewing resource to spend.  If you are standing still in front of a boss and it does a sweep attack and you successfully jump over it, hit jump again to kick the boss in the head.  Although dodging gets you hit a lot, circling around the boss at a full run tends to be a pretty good idea that lets you see its attacks better, and most bosses are a lot easier to do HP damage to when you come at them like this.  As a related note, circling around the boss at a run and then transitioning into a thrust by holding down R1 is a good hit-and-run strategy that works on a lot of enemies if you have the space for it.  Finally something to look forward to: the game starts you off with dismal resources but they get considerably better with your first couple upgrades - in particular once you get 4/4 prayer beads you can increase your HP by about 50%.  And you can pick up a couple extra charges of healing relatively soon as well.  It helps a whole lot (and healing scales to HP).

(I will have Thoughts on the game when I beat it.  For now, my opinion is: this is an incredibly fun combat system that is well-balanced and makes you feel extremely cool when you do well.  It is fundamentally sound.  It is also just too damn hard, and 100% of the solution for that is to just tone down boss damage. that's all it needs, but it needs it pretty bad.)

(As a second note re: difficulty, after the first boss and for basically the rest of the game there are multiple paths to pursue. so while there is basically nothing you can do but beat bosses to get statistically stronger, you DO have the option to pick and choose the order you do bosses in.)

[Lord Ephraim]

After 50 tries I barely beat Lady Butterfly, who I find out is NOT the first boss but rather the first one you can encounter.  The real first boss is some dude on a horse.  He actually wasn't too bad because you can learn a skill that directly counters him.

Then I fought a flaming bull.  Kills you in one hit but directly countered by throwing firecrackers at his ass, so slow and steady wins the fight.  Shit fight because how how little fucking damage you do.  Then a split path opens up.  One path takes you vs. a ninja that oneshots you and has insane health, one path has a spearman who oneshots you and has insane health.  You can counter the later's thrust attacks but it does fucking nothing but leaves you open to another attack.  What the fuck are these mechanics.

I hate this game so much.  You are allowed no mistakes vs. minibosses tougher than anything From Software threw out.   Limited moveset, shitty dodge rolls with no invinciblity frames (on a engine where enemies track your movement with precision), no health with limited healing items that don't heal for shit. 

I think I understand how the game works now at least.  It wants you to be aggressive as much as possible.  You attack an enemy twice, they block them, your third strike is parried which means you must stop attacking and react to their attack.  The issue is they can put out 4 or 5 different possible attacks with different start up times and properties.  Guess wrong and you lose 90%-100% of your life.  Is it a thrust or sweep?  It's a guessing game where you you need twitch reflexes.  Everything can be solved if you had more health and enemies did less damage because certainly every single non grunt enemies have large life pools and without 10 straight perfect parries you cannot deplete their posture bar.  The only two bosses I had no trouble with seem to ignore this and instead have gimmicks that are easy to figure out. 

[NotMiki]

Not that it'll necessarily change your mind about the game but: there are other directions you can go from the castle entrance and basically all of them are (in my opinion) easier than the direction with the ninja and the spear dude. I really appreciate this point in the game for that - once you beat the bull, you can pick your fights for a good long while.


Sekiro update: got to the final (?) boss and got my ass kicked a whole bunch.  I think I have a workable strategy for its first 2 phases but making good decisions and being patient enough to get to phase 3 without serious injury takes some real effort and concentration.  For me, anyway.

[NotMiki]

Sekiro: beat. I will have a lot to say about it later but for now: I liked the game a whole lot, and it felt great to play 95% of the time (basically any time you aren't fighting those dickhead ninjas that use a lot of kick attacks, or the final spear miniboss that comes with an extremely dangerous and annoying add). As a videogame it's fantastic. I am playing it again for the dual purpose of seeing how much I have improved and seeing some rather obscure content I missed, that I need to see in order to fully appreciate the story.

Sekiro's final boss sequence was remarkably difficult but also, in the end, extremely satisfying.  In particular, its second phase handed me my ass over and over, and I devised a slow, safe way to chip away at it from a distance. Then I picked it up again the next day and discovered that the time I'd spent circling around it and learning its tells allowed me to take a much more aggressive approach to the boss than I had thought I'd ever be able to. This is the kind of feeling you hope for from a hard game, though in general the game is still too hard on base (especially the very beginning, that starts you off with too little health and healing compared to enemy damage).

[SnowFire]

Ephraim, did you play Stella Glow?  Seemed like an Ephraim kind of game.  Aside from usual Nonsense Vaguely Haremy Anime embarrassing, that game's combat is too damn slow, despite being somewhat interesting?  Maybe I'm impatient now that modern Fire Emblems have things like "skip enemy phase" and failing to protect the dumb AI guest means time to start from scratch.

--

Speaking of Fire Emblem, Percy's recruit map is the hardest to do legit with no casualties, don't @ me.  (okay sure maybe Iago/Ryoma/final maps in CQ are harder but you could hypothetically accept casualties there since there's so little game left.)  You have to be moving really aggressively, splitting up, and player-phase ganking the formations before they can all clump up, but the final set features cavalry with weakness-hitting weapons and Percy's Flying Squad of wyverns which are very easy to accidentally let clump up into a roving deathball that you can't safely bait on enemy phase and will run you down.  Yikes.

Anyway, doing the cave ninja map now, although I wasn't able to save poor Saizo so far.  I also opted for the pair of boots rather than Shura (sheesh the game doesn't communicate this well) since I'm trying to use Anna this playthrough.  Got a bit of an issue, though...  Archer Mozu + Charlotte + Camilla + Percy +  Anna = I'm way overstuffed on greens.  Ah well.

--

I finished Wargroove.  The last map was pretty cool ignoring the dumb cliffhanger ending, but I dunno if I'm persistent enough to unlock the epilogue.  The second-to-the-last map was a little odd...  it's extremely fair.  Problem is, "fair" means the enemy will get totally wrecked; there was a side mission earlier where the enemy starts with a whole continent and some badass defenders for free while you've got a single dinky island, and that was still doable.  Equal-ish towns & army and an enemy hero AI who boldly charges forward is very 1v1 me sis epic but also a bit of a curbstomp.  Oh well!

--

There's another game I finished recently which I'll have more thoughts on to share, but maybe later, since I need to "really" beat it as well and get yon better endings.

[Lord Ephraim]

Sekiero or how I embrace the cheese:

I've cheese about 3 minibosses by abusing slopes and just chip vitality damage until you can safely land a deathblow.  I also found the poizn knife to be really good at dealing with a lot of the stronger samurai and spearmen.  Funny enough the Armored Warrior, a typical dark souls boss, wasn't too bad.  Making through Mibu Village was easy but man the two bosses there are ridicious but learning patterns and hit and run tactics seem to work.  Fuck Corrupted Monk.  That guy had waaaay too much health and near instant posture recovery means it's a 40 minute fight where you're allowed four mistakes by how much damage it does.

I'm up to 5 prayer necklaces and the health boost is something that should have been the default.  I went though so long without dying until the goddamn guardian ape and it's bullshit instant lock grab brought another rage quit for the day.

Ephraim, did you play Stella Glow?  Seemed like an Ephraim kind of game.  Aside from usual Nonsense Vaguely Haremy Anime embarrassing, that game's combat is too damn slow, despite being somewhat interesting?  Maybe I'm impatient now that modern Fire Emblems have things like "skip enemy phase" and failing to protect the dumb AI guest means time to start from scratch.

Is that the 3DS game with the singing witches?  It's non-offensive aside from the issue you said that the enemy phase takes too long.  You want to use characters that don't have movement restrictions or the sand levels are unbearable.

[NotMiki]

Re: Corrupted Monk, snap seeds damage and stun her, so that helps (only works twice, though, so you've got to choose your spots).  I found the boss a lot easier on my second playthrough - her HP is bonkers and playing the posture game doesn't get you that far, but you can play keepaway well enough to learn her patterns and capitalize on the meager punishes the game gives you.  It's a weird fight because unlike a lot of troublesome bosses, she doesn't pressure you that hard, it's just very difficult to find an entry where you can actually deal damage.

[Cmdr_King]

Pokemon Let's Go Eevee- This game is surreal sometimes.  It's faithful to the original Yellow to the degree of retaining trainer dialog word for word 90% of the time, but then it reminds you this is actually bizarro sequel land where Red and Blue did their journey a year or so previously.

Mostly though it's adorable.  I can't imagine Sword and Shield will be able to replicate what Partner Eevee does on that front, but everything else?  Gimme.

Team-

Marowak- Poor poor Marowak just never came together.  Didn't manage to get anything done in the E4, which is a pity.

Raichu (Alolan)- ended up way underlevelled due to the way I ended up playing it, but still got some KOs here and there in the E4.  I almost wish I'd used it more heavily just to get a sense of it, but given the way you get it (you can trade an evolved Raichu for an L30 Alolan) means that wasn't really an option.

Kabutops- So in Let's Go the fossils are revived at level 44 and immediately evolve on level up, which is nice!  Actually solid despite this not being Gen 1 anymore, albeit in part because hey, Rock Slide is pretty good.

Partner Eevee-  Apparently Partner Pikachu is pretty good, but this thing.
The gimmick is that partner Eevee can't evolve, but has stats in line with a fully-evolved pokemon and rigged IVs (pikachu is the same way) and has a bunch of dedicated move tutors.  Eevee's gimmicked around moves of its evolution types (so Fire, Electric, Water, Dark, Psychic, Grass, Ice, and Fairy).  They're all 90 power, 100 accuracy, and have a 100% chance of a bonus effect.  Those being Burn, Paralyze, drain-effect, Reflect, Light Screen, Leech Seed, Haze, and Status Cure.
100% burn on a 90 power fire move.  The fuck y'know?  So aside from amazing coverage, an endgame Eevee will toss up some screens, burn the opponent, then drain to top off HP so even against neutral foes it's pretty ridiculous.
I kinda love how unapologetically unbalanced it is.

[Lord Ephraim]

Beat SPOLIARS at the top of Ashina Castle after the ninja invasion.  Only took me two tries.  It's absolutely amazing what a large life bar and tons of drinks do to make difficult bosses manageable.  Come to the conclusion that Lady Butterfly is just a very very poor introduction to the game and everything else seems within reach.  I came back after multiple attack upgrades and dunked on the spearman boss at the Outskirts.  Even the 2Apes1Shinobi looked insane but the brown ape can be stunlocked with firecrackers turning the fight into another Guardian Ape 2.0 but without the bullshit grab attack.  I have no idea how you're suppose to figure out to use the spear after deflecting a certain attack but once you learn about it, the ape takes insane vit and posture damage.  Probably the hardest boss since Butterfly has been oddly Headless, simply because you need to use a buff that is in very limited quantities and the fight is not possible without it.  If you die you don't get those consumables back.  THEN I learned you can upgrade the umbrella to cheese them.  If spirit emblems' cap wasn't so low, the umbrella might as well be cheese mode it makes parrying so much easier with a larger window to do it.

Overall my opinion of the game has skyrocketed once you escape the early game.  You don't die in one or two hits,  deathblows restoring 1/5th of your life makes saving drinks during fights with normal enemies, and prostethics open up a rather limited skillset once you start upgrading them.  I'm also surprised on how many idols are right next to boss fights, not that the higher mobility of Sekiro makes dodging enemies easier to challenge bosses again faster.  My favorite upgrade is the whistle that makes dogs go berserk and attack their ninja masters.  Some dogs later in the game wear cute little Naruto headbands and I just can't kill them recklessly.

[NotMiki]

Sekiro: beat the optional boss for one of the endings that I missed in my first playthrough because the sidequest is so obscure.  It was maybe the hardest boss in the game?  Maybe the final boss is harder.  Of the maingame bosses it was certainly the most oppressive, and its best punish opportunities were also very high-risk if you mistime them.  Cool fight, for sure.

Eph there is a narrow window to do the steps to unlock this boss, and you're in it.  So if you want to be as much of a completionist as the game will let you be in 1 playthrough, go ahead and FAQ it.

[Hunter Sopko]

Pokemon Let's Go Eevee

Indeed. Everything CK just said about the game is valid, but I just finished it too so I might as well give my rundown.

I will very much miss the roaming pokemon. It's adorable to watching them wander about the map even if it isn't super complicated. I won't miss the catching. It is harmless for 90% of the game, ditching random encounters for just straight catch mechanics makes some sense tying into Pokémon Go. For the first half, it's great honestly. Reduces the tedium quite a bit since it still gives you XP. But it catches up with the game. Most status movesets become pointless on most pokemon because you don't need them for wild catches. And endgame/aftergame you're just tossing a dozen Ultra Balls for each catch and it doesn't feel like berries do much to help, so it becomes actively annoying and flips to an exercise in tedium. The sole exception to this is the rare encounters like Snorlax and the legendaries, you have to fight and KO them first before going into the catch mechanic- all with a 5 minute time limit. This worked honestly! But I don't want to get frustrated throwing Ultra Balls at an Electrodude for 5 min.

While as CK noted, the game is super duper easy, the mechanics updates really bring the charm back to the RBY formula. It's a great nostalgia trip.

Team:

Partner Eevee: What CK said. I found myself running Psychic and Dark, with the third slot for whatever gym or dungeon I needed. Ice for E4 Dragonslaying. The only move I kept after the move tutor became available was Swift for neutral damage. They also make sure Eevee is goddamn adorable.

Victreebel: Almost all Grass and Bugs are Poison, one of those Gen1 quirks, so the Poison side not much use, but for a Grass attacker worked very well. Power Whip is pretty great.

Nidoqueen: Works quite well as a Ground attacker once she evolves, even if she relies on non-STAB attacks mostly until she evolves. Have wanted to eventually use one of Queen or King, so it was good to finally have the chance. MVP of mid-late game since I gave it the Mt. Moon Moon Stone, but didn't get to do much in E4.

Clefable: It does take a bit to really notice the tankiness (after it evolves, an issue since the second Moon Stone is a bit into the game), but it does its job. Very few Steel types to threaten it and non-STAB damage generally isn't a worry, so you're only looking out for Poison damage, which only really gets threatening in late game. Moonblast is pretty strong and works as a Dragon slayer.

Raichu: Very useful, even if there aren't quite as many Water types in play still plenty of Flying as well. Considering I didn't use a Psychic type and ran it on Eevee, maybe I should have gotten the Alolan Raichu, but it would've been a huge level hit so I just skipped it. I committed all my Rare Candies to...

Omastar: Of course I'm running Lord Helix. As CK mentioned its great that it joins at a much better level and evolves immediately, but I still had to invest a decent amount of Rare Candies into it to catch it up to the rest of my team. Mostly used it as a Water attacker honestly, I didn't need to use the Rock side much.

[Lord Ephraim]

If it's the boss I think you're talking about it only took me about 12 tries which is pretty good considering how fast you can actually die.  You can sort of manipulate the first phase by maintaining distance, baiting one of three attacks that are easy to dodge then counterattack for three hits.  Found out the hard way you do not want to do thrust attacks, they don't get deflected, they get countered, for all your health bar.  Second phase was much harder simply because of how hard it is to get posture build up to stick.

If you're talking about the boss you fight at the same spot you fight horse dude, then I think he's hardest boss in the game.  So much life and so many attacks that deal 80-90% of your HP, but a lot of them are dodgeable.  It's just a dumb attrition fight.  Reminds me of chalice dungeon bloodborne bosses.