What games are you playing 2019?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Cleared Adventure Mode, Hard Mode all the way of course. Surprisingly rough; I needed over an hour to git gud enough to overcome the final battle (both the boss rush and the final bosses themselves) and there were a few other trouble spots throughout too (Akuma for a particularly memorable one). Anyway I had a good time. Smash isn't really optimized for platformy bosses due to the controls, so it's never gonna be among the best at this, but I still enjoyed it more than I was expecting to. I also like how Smash has increasingly become a love letter to gaming in general. It's a game which is filled with joy and positivity at a hobby whose own fanbase is often the opposite.

Game is otherwise Smash 4 Redux, technically there are a few new characters but the only one I care about as a character is Chrom and he's just Yet Another Variant On Marth. It simultaneously obsoletes Smash 4 and isn't that notable in its own right. I've long since accepted that they'll never fix what I consider to be Smash's flaws (a bunch of control-related things) and flipside it can hardly get better at what it does well, but what it does well is enough to make it a consistently solid game. Probably around 7.5/10 or so.


Wargroove - I am generally enjoying this. Except fog of war, fog of war sucks. Not too much to say, I was definitely having a good time (and overall still am, to be clear) but three fog maps in a row has dampened my enthusiasm, and I've been playing more of...


Virtue's Last Reward - So it turns out the Prisoner's Dilemma is really cool and sure you can make a game about it. You just can't talk about these games without spoilers, y'know?

I teamed with Alice first and explored that route as much as possible, now going through the route where you team with Tenmyouji, only done the Dio team subroute there so far.

Zero Jr is great. More please, I like my evil tormentor using rabbit puns non-stop. Best voice acting.

Phi obviously seems to know a lot about what's going on. I suppose she's my prime candidate for Zero just because it kinda fits? Especially if this game is, as is my going theory, some sort of test of morality to see if we deserve to be let out of our quarantine zone. Is the series willing to play the "female lead is Zero" twice in a row? We'll stay tuned, I guess.

Dio is a dick. Ace Attorney taught me to never trust a circus performer and taught me well. His plan is a bit of a frustrating one because I feel like Sigma and Clover could have done a lot of things better about it than they did.

K is interesting so far, I enjoy the fact that he's good but also rational to the point of being villainous in a prisoner's dilemma simulator, how appropriate. Him being masked is also of course interesting; assuming the writing isn't dumb (and this series generally isn't) then he's masked either because someone doesn't want the others recognizing him, or at least the player not recognising him. Which makes me think he's someone connected to the 999 Nonary Game. He does remind me of Seven, because both are big guys with (claimed?) amnesia, but I'll be even more amused if he's Ace, because he pulls the "I am very moral and wants what is best for everyone" act really well. Plus I'm always up for more Ace. Or it could be someone else entirely, of course. We'll see~

Not sure what's up with Tenmyouji/Quark, there are implications it might be something really weird (Quark is a bodyjump of some sort?) but maybe I'm reading too much into a couple lines.

The totally redone artstyle makes Clover hard to recognize, to the point where I wasn't 100% sure it was the same Clover but yep guess she is. Alice is in a weird space in that obviously she's riffing on the hints dropped throughout 999 but I'm not sure if the game is going Full Sci-Fi/Fantasy or if they're just playing with us. Both are fine character-wise in this game, obviously they have some connection with some deeper goings on but it's not clear what. Clover's insistence that she doesn't know what's going on seems honest at least.

Luna seems generically nice and quietly competent.

Sigma not being voice acted is kinda odd in a game where everyone else is. If the point was for immersion then it's at odds with making Sigma... not very self-insertable? He has a very clear personality (the extreme perviness stands out as something that self-inserts don't do  in particular). I was wondering if there's going to be some big twist with him; I notice the game hasn't actually shown him yet (even in the ensemble shots such as when everyone gathers in front of the screen) outside of the one flashback before he was captured, which made me wonder if it's all misdirection and the Sigma we're playing with is actually someone else (or body-jumped, etc.). But then I watched the opening video again and noticed he does show up in a couple still shots there, so... maybe not.

[NotMiki]

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.

I was talking about first boss, and yeah wow 12 is real good.  I eventually settled on an aggressive strategy for phase 1, getting up in the boss' face and trading hits - and that worked well but also made it tough to manage my own posture.  I think it's probably the hardest boss in the game (outside possibly the final boss) because the punishment window is so narrow, and if you fail to punish you get hit for like 90% of your health.

The second boss I liked the design of a lot but it's a real mental shift because it feels so much more like a Souls boss than a Sekiro boss - getting close and wailing on it is pretty safe, but it likes to make distance and blast you with tricky long-range stuff.

[Lord Ephraim]

Sekiro beaten.  The intended final boss is deservingly the toughest yet but my good friend Mr. Umbrella and projected force is extremely useful in stage 2.  The whole lightning counter gimmick is annoying to get used to but there are random enemies to practice the mechanic and once you get it down stage 3 is actually the easiest part of the whole fight.  I like how they throw another boss before just to try and drain resources before the main fight.  I had to learn to perfect him so I can go into the final fight with full resources.

Once the game clicks with you, you end up dying a lot less and having a lot of fun.  In the end I think the game is actually a bit easier than Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1 (no friendly summon condition only), but it's probably the worst From Software game because of how limited repeatability due to a shorter main quest and lack of customization.  DLC to expand Seikro's moveset or offer another playable character would be something I buy.  I don't think there should be any changes to the game except make Lady Butterfly a bit weaker to encourage less rage quitters because the game is great once you escape the early game.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Virtue's Last Reward - Part 2 of Speculathon 2019

Progress update: done all of the Alice route, and all of the Tenmyouji route, then the Luna route -> team with K sub-route. Still have to do the other two sub-routes of the Luna path. Have progressed past locks to get the Tenmyouji ending and K ending, and also have gotten the Clover ending.

Still putting things together, lots of fun.

Junpei = Tenmyouji? Heck is that just his full name? I mean they’ve done everything short of spell it out, he knows Clover + Clover trusts him deeply once she figures out who he is (and he’s not Snake) + he’s been searching for Akane which Clover said Junpei had left to do. The artstyle shift makes it even harder to be sure than normal but yeah it’s possible they’re the same person separated by four or five decades based on appearance too.

Akane = K’s “mother” / the murdered woman? I kinda want to go back and watch the scene in the director’s room to see if he talked as if he knew/suspected the woman they’d found was her; certainly he was upset enough for this to be possible. Buut her mentioning to K about being aware of different timelines + the age checking out if Junpei is Tenmyouji strongly indicates this.

Much more of a reach, but K’s father = the “Zero” who talked to us in the Tenmyouji ending = Santa would complete this trifecta of references to 999 characters. Evidence of this one is certainly sketchier at the moment though. 99% sure about the non-Santa part of that equation though.

Dio is still a dick. I’m susprised you can prove he’s the murderer without going through a lock in the flow, would be pretty funny if anyone did that as their first route.

The K ending is great because it both answers a lot of questions and asks some really good ones too. Who destroyed Dio’s bracelet and/or took Quark’s? Just where are Tenmyouji and Clover? Both Tenmyouji and Clover don’t seem that sinister, which leaves Luna as my primary suspect (yeah, yeah, the game wants you to think she’s dead, but we know there are ways to get your bracelet off without dying; it’s quite possible she used medicine to enter a coldsleep-like state?). Quark’s 9 bracelet would het her escape, or anyone else who could remove his or her own bracelet. Not sure if Alice’s death on this route was a suicide or not, be interesting to see if the last remaining routes shed light on this.

It’s strange how we don’t find the murdered woman on the Alice route. At the moment I can’t see any reason for anything to be different? I’m not really clear on when Dio would have killed her and why her body is found where it was, though. Kinda surprised we didn’t pull that out of him buuut we did have bigger problems at the time.

K is a clone (?) of Sigma who was created as part of research which the Nonary Game seems to be part of which is presumably part of a plan by Zero(?)/Akane(?)/??? to avert some shitty situation for humanity via multiple timelines. Don’t feel I yet have enough information on the parts of the mystery to really speculate. Since K isn’t Zero, though (unless I got misdirected hard by the K ending), it’s hard to reconcile the statement that Zero is one of the players with other evidence such as Tenmyouji's desire to get out and get revenge on Zero whose identity he knows. Of course, it would explain a fair bit if Zero isn’t one of the players, or if it’s somehow only a half-truth (and in a game with information jumping across timelines, there are a few ways for that to happen).

[SnowFire]

Elf: Neat stuff. Mostly not going to comment, but a few comments on sufficiently safe / in-the-past issues:


* Yeah, I was a bit frustrated with Sigma's actions in the Laboratory route too, where Dio is trying to use the Axelavir as a bargaining tool.  Simply telling everyone else and threatening to beat his ass down if he's a jerk seems like it'd be a fine alternative, or lying a different way and telling everybody about the Axelavir that Dio has and how he'd nicely agreed to share it with Quark, and letting Dio pick if he wanted to make an enemy of everybody or to just give up his leverage.  That said, I sorta see where that scene came from: backwards reasoning, we want a path where Sigma goes to a negative score.  Okay, that means he needs to be betrayed round 1, then both A) bravely press cooperate for some reason, yet B) have an opponent sufficiently heartless to betray someone at 1 point.  So they concocted a contrived situation where Sigma would feel pressured to do this.  I'm sort of okay with some sort of "Sigma makes bad choices" option, but I wish the betray option went a little better even if it was still a game over.  Have some cathartic beatdown of Dio, say.

* I loved "Zero"'s speech about termites in Tenmyouji / Quark's ending.  Just sayin'.  (I'm not so sure Tenmyouji wanted vengeance against Zero in that ending though, just claimed that he knew who they were, and also see y'all.)

* FYI, if you didn't know already, getting all the 2nd safe code bonuses unlocks an extra scene after the ending in addition to the help/journal files.  That said, you can YouTube that scene if it's a bother.  (Some of the 2nd answers are definitely FAQ-bait, although IIRC the Archives is the reverse, with the 2nd code being obvious and the 1st code being quite difficult.)


Fire Emblem Fates
Still doing my Lunatic CQ playthrough, although it's a bit stalled.  Alas that so many slots are basically guaranteed eaten on Hard/Lunatic CQ; not running Azura & Camilla is suicidal madness.  You probably want 2x healers / damage prevention auras so that means Elise & your servant are guaranteed in.  That's 5 slots right there.  While I guess Xander & Leo are replaceable, it hurts to do so, so call that 7 slots.  That leaves just ~5 empty positions on your team.  I'm running Archer Mozu, Sky Knight Selena, Charlotte, Peri, & Anna to mix things up (never used the last 3 seriously before, and not used the first 2 in those classes).

Currently on C18, Black & White, the chapter where you have to fight the smartest and most sympathetic character in the game, Zola.  Alas that he gets punked unceremoniously in Revelation, I was really rooting for him.  He's got a plan to end the war for free, and yet rather than order him around as the Crown Prince, you have to fight him (and actually kill him for realz).  This chapter is weird because it feels like it comes from an alternate universe where it's a cartoon TV episode where the two feuding sides have to work together against a sneering unnoble guy and then shake hands afterward, which would be fine if the game's tone was pretty light (maybe in Birthright route?) but is jarring compared with some of the chapters around it (soldiers slaughtering innocent civilians?  eh whatever, do nothing.  soldiers kidnapping enemy generals who most definitely were trying to kill you & your friends very recently?  Sacrilege, let's kill 'em!).  Oh well, we all know it was an excuse to fight up some Nohrian enemies too, but still, the alternate history Conquest that actually takes this plot point seriously, imprisons the Hoshidan royalty, releases Sakura or something so she can order the Hoshidans to surrender, finds instead that she fights on with Yukimura and deploys some sort of ninja rescue mission, etc. would have been pretty cool.

Blaster Master Zero
This is why the above is stalled. Playing the 3DS version, although the sequel, helpfully titled "Blaster Master Zero Two" just recently came out for Switch (Blaster Master One was apparently misleading).  It's a fun Metroidvania.  Surprisingly enough, it's actually a close remake of the original NES Blaster Master in many ways, just with more content for the jumping tank to conquer, dialogue, etc.  Oddly enough, this is apparently a rare time where the old Worlds of Power Nintendo Game novelizations was used to make a plot for a game that was originally really darn plotless...  most notably by giving Jason someone to talk to, even if she has the usual Video Game Amnesia so that she doesn't spill the plot points too early. 

Main issue is that the difficulty level is at Symphony of the Night level or so - sure, some early stuff can maybe kill you, but once you get rolling it's mostly a curbstomp.  There's nothing stopping you from maxing your gun level very early, so imagine if you could get the Crissaegrem in Area 1.  Similar to Cave Story, taking damage reduces your gun rating, but you quickly get a regenerating shield that allows the first hit to not reduce your gun level, and more generally the ultimate gun is just so ridiculous you aren't really threatened any more - penetrates walls, amazing range & breadth, stunlocks enemies, etc.  Oddly enough, the original game was considered brutally tough - but that's because it had no save points, no passwords,  highly limited continues, and a number of areas that offered some nice instadeath.  Add in friendly save points that don't even reduce your gauges when you die, and, well.

Two main areas of difficulty:
* In the very first area, there's an underwater sector that starts beeping at you when you go in.  Having played Sonic the Hedgehog, I promptly got out.  Turns out the beeping was the radar saying I was getting close to the objective.  Trollin'.

* In the fourth area, there's a section where you have to make a suicide jump and grab onto a ladder as you fall, and the controls for grabbing the ladder are very finicky.  This was in the NES JP version, but the US staff hated it so much they took it out of the US release.  Well, it stayed in the 3DS/Switch version, but right next to a save point with unlimited continues.  Except I still haven't managed it after like 15 tries.  Ugh.

Other than that, it's a nice palette cleanser.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Leo's decent but far from required, same with Elise honestly (more healers are nice and she's a good one but there's nothing she does that is irreplaceable). I tend to agree that Azura/Camilla/Xander are no-brainer picks, and the first servant is close just because early Inspiration is amazing. Still, that gives you quite a few slots to work with. Also, every map from the time Xander joins onward has at least 13 deploy slots, except some child paralogues.

Re the Dio/Axelavir route... yep, was definitely hoping Sigma and Clover would do something more like that. They seemed to underestimate the leverage they had, since as long as they don't let Dio hit 9 BP his threat would utterly ruin his credibility, and kinda key to an iterated prisoner's dilemma is that you have to have credibility! Like on many of the routes we see that nobody trusts Dio, he gets to 6 points and then stays there as it's double-betray the rest of the way.

That said I kinda get that if you think Sigma cares deeply about not letting a child die that he might be pressured into this. Just... grah, you'd want more assurance. What's to stop Dio from walking out of there with the medicine? Someone as selfish as that might want to keep it for himself in case he comes down with a case of root6 after all. But yeah I think you're right, there had to be a plausible way for Sigma to hit -1 BP without him looking like a complete idiot, and they didn't want to waste someone's villain reveal on it.


Hm now I want to watch Tenmyouji's ending again, I really thought he said something about "wanting revenge on that bastard".

On a gameplay note... I've got all the gold archives except one (the garden which mystified me). Either I'll go grab it later or watch on YouTube. Have had to FAQ the game once, which was the board game puzzle in the treatment centre. I figured the starting square surely didn't count because that would be stupid. After getting a number of variations on possible guesses at the rules (since they're only vaguely implied), I figured maybe it did count and tried again but still got it wrong. FAQed it and apparently it not only counts the first square but assumes you do the minutes before the hours which is not how clocks are usually read, not even in Japanese...... okay.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Shantae and the Half-Genie Hero (4) - I decided to play this on the Switch during Spring Break. The game is decent and fun, but it definitely isn’t as good as Pirate’s Curse (3) which I consider quite a good game.

Things I liked:
-the transformations are cute and fun and add variety to the game and unlock secrets
-the platforming is much more intense much more quickly than 3. It feels more like a Megaman and less like a Metroidvania.
-boss fights were generally fairly enjoyable, especially squid baron
-very nice looking game compared to the previous ones!

A few things I liked less than 3:
-The game leans very heavily on backtracking and fetchquests to progress the plot in any way! I felt like the game was trying to cut down on the number of areas that it wanted to design or something and it just felt so tedious to have to backtrack constantly.
-Some of the triggers for plot events weren’t obvious, even with the in-game help. Felt like an older game than it was as a result.
-Platforming tricks aren’t as interesting with the transformations as they were with the items in 3. I felt like 3’s platforming was very fluid, whereas the things you do in this game feel less so.
-The game goes with an episodic plot structure, which is overall less effective than a regular storyline.

Still, the game has the decent humor and platformy goodness that drew me to the series. And there are so many women in this game!

Next is I Am Setsuna. Not really feeling it so far, but we’ll see.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Virtue's Last Reward -

Getting towards the end now. Most of the plot pieces are falling into place nicely.

Things I’ve not yet done:
-gotten Phi’s and Quark’s endings (assuming those are things)
-done whatever escape is behind a white door that ISN’T the director’s room or the security room
-defused the bombs, stopped Phi, survived at -1 BP… probably some other lock I’m forgetting offhand

Dio. Is. A. Dick.

How good was the Sigma ending -> Luna ending sequence? Hell, just the headfake of “Sigma - End” totally threw me, since we’d just had an extended scene with Luna and I’d assumed we’d gotten her ending, but nope. Used the info there to dive into the Luna reveal right after - in and of itself, not too crazy, I’d already been expecting Luna was somehow not dead as a way to explain things in the murder route - but the sequence where you get a choice to ally with her not for any gameplay reason, but as a symbolic gesture of trust… that was deftly done.

(Except that I’m still not sure who destroyed Dio’s bracelet on the K ending subroute… Luna had been my main candidate but that no longer seems possible... Quark? But why?)

With that I’m pretty much now willing to say that barring some major collapse this is definitely a better game than its predecessor. The outstanding voice work is also a pretty big help (seriously, it’s really good), as is how the different plotlines feel more like an organic exploration of possibilities based on the player’s actions. Not sure where this game is headed for rating-wise since gameplay meh whatever but… it’s definitely good.

I remain sad that Zero Jr. doesn’t get more, although going back and watching some of his earlier scenes again is a gift that keeps on giving. The best:

<Dio> How do we get the bracelets off?”
<Zero> Ohhh, B.O., I think you already know the answer to that~

Updated “big theory” speculation is that Akane was the masked abductor of Sigma in the opening, but that the player Sigma is some sort of clone of him (“I was you will be me”), and that the original Sigma became the scientist / architect of the AB game / Akane’s conspirator / “Zero Sr.” (not sure if the face he showed us in Tenmyouji ending was just too old for Sigma to recognize or if it was faked). Presumably OG Sigma also had the power to maintain memories across timestreams (which is why he was abducted + what his life’s work since has been on) but player Sigma’s are either enhanced in some way or it was necessary for him to be a blank slate for the game. Not sure why player Sigma has a human body and robot arms. Maybe the end goal is somehow to jump back to 2028 and use some improved knowledge to avoid the Radical-6 calamity then.

Of course if Sigma is indeed a fresh body that frees up a stasis pod for there to be a third person besides Alice and Clover who is legitimately from 2028. But since Luna / K / Dio / Tenmyouji / Quark are all explicitly from the current time, the only person left is Phi… and I have no idea what’s going on with Phi. That’s obviously the biggest missing piece of the puzzle, since I don’t have her ending. (Quark’s either, but I don’t feel like Quark’s reveal will be as big… could be wrong!)

[Cmdr_King]

Detective Pikachu- Well this happened.

This is such a strangely designed game.  There's 9 chapters and in gameplay terms it's reasonable to call chapter 7 the climax, with it being the most involved and dense.  But then the core story beat... actually the core story beat simply isn't resolved, but the meat of what happens peaks in C8, while C9 is this weird scenario where the stakes are technically high but it's also probably more straightforward mechanically than the first chapter.  It's weird.

The actual design chapter to chapter is fascinating because each chapter contains episodic content (and in about half of them there's an element of "this has no bearing on the larger quest to find your father but you're here so what the heck") while not actually being especially episodic.  In fact I'd almost say the game is best played in a single session, except it's just a bit too long for that.  At a minimum I think Chapters 6-9 should be played together.  ANYWAY, a lot of this is because each chapter has a similar structure of the main characters encountering a problem, that problem being the result of a specific Pokemon, and having to use the particular quirks and abilities of that pokemon to explain whatever the Mystery of the Day is.

Like basically the game is more of a showcase of how Pokedex Entries manifest in the day to day lives of Pokemon world people.  I've read the game spent some 5 years in development, which explains this nicely: it was originally in production before Gen 6 came out, and a lot of the game highlights Gen 5 and 6 pokemon, although later chapters highlight some Gen 7 stuff and one or two heavy hitters from earlier gens get some screen time.  Point being it almost feels like more of a primer or exploration of Pokemon as a setting to hook in newer players than a story the writers were really invested in.

In fact I dare say this game might actually exist with the specific intent of being *extremely adaptable*.  Like based on the trailers the Detective Pikachu movie uses the same main cast and core plot  of this game while changing every single other detail, but always in a way that makes it more marketable: way more Gen 1 Pokemon, action scenes that play up Pokemon battling, so on.
(of course I spent a lot of time thinking about this.  I mean I fired up the game specifically because I wanted to play it ahead of the movie.)

It's not great if I'm terribly honest but I also find it utterly fascinating in a weird way.  Oh, also it's a Pokemon game with high levels of voice acting that's mostly good.  Also I may want to know where to meet reporters that know how to class up for secret black market auctions.  6/10.

[SnowFire]

Blaster Master Zero
Finished.  It's okay, and nice & short.

* There kinda isn't a satisfying final enemy for SOPHIA (your tank), the Area 7 miniboss fought in the tank is way too much of a wimp.  I never even ever fired my big ultimate shot.  Would have liked a little more variety in enemies, it is very consistently "tons of wimps trying to overwhelm you" with almost no "one big dangerous threat."

* The final boss has a way less cool name!  Apparently he was the Plutonium Lord in the NES novelization, which is a totally metal name, but they went for "Mutant Lord" / "Underworld Lord" / "Multidimensional Overseer" in this version (yeah, they couldn't just pick one).  Sorry Professor X, but I gotta kill you.

--
Elf: Yeah, the Luna ending was pretty great.  As a random comment... did you notice she always spams ally and never ever betrays?  Which is totally the ethical thing to do when lives are on the line! 
 Also, it helped that "Bluebird Lamentation" was one of the better pieces on the soundtrack, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFJ1r6_4mW4 for those that haven't heard it.  (One of the minor complaints about Zero Time Dilemma is that it includes a remix of Bluebird Lamentation in it, but it's worse than the original and it doesn't use it all that well - it'll play in just kind of random situations, rather than saving it for only once or twice.) 

--
Fire Emblem Fates CQ Lunatic
Forgot, but I somehow left Kaze & Percy off the above list of used characters.  As a side comment, the default Heart Seal classes for a lot of Fates units are pretty darn underwhelming...  units with 0 Magic having Troubadour, units with awful Strength having Str-based classes, etc.  Makes it a little trickier to mix things up with non-meme builds.

Anyway, here's my whining for the day: https://photos.app.goo.gl/bruHrkwGNKu9daoG6 
Yes, that's 14 Str Selena, when she starts at 10 Strength at L10 upon join.  She gets +2 Str on promotion to Falcon Knight and has +1 Strength from a meal, so that's +1 strength from level-ups after 12 level-ups.

Just about to do C20, the infamous wind chapter.  I went ahead & got Kaze hitched beforehand not so much to use Midori as to have another map for a bit o' grinding as well as the Dragon Herbs you get as a reward.  C19 was as usual a bit of a frustrating map; I didn't have a Benny for the free win, so you get to build cowardly formations you'd never ever use anywhere else against the dang un-attackable camoflaughed Kitsune, with people crammed into dual-defense all in a big corner hugging a mountain and the like.  Since I benched my cavalry for obvious reasons, late-joining Felicia proved solid filler though, being able to support just fine despite being a bit behind on level.  (Also the dodgy C19 Kitsune was another reminder at Fates's off weapon balance...  you want Bronze & Iron anyway so you can hit shit reliably, the fact that they upgrade cheaply and better is just a bonus.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Virtue’s Last Reward - fin. All the fin.

Non-spoiler version: that was quite a lot of fun. Virtue’s Last Reward spins a mystery yarn which is compelling to unravel, with some very good character work and outstanding voice acting to help it along. It’s a very ambitious story and more than a bit crazy at points, but it all holds together remarkably well? Like despite having even more moving parts and big twists than 999 it has fewer plot holes. It tells a bit of a different style of story as well, which is neat, it’s a huge sprawling “what if” based on your decisions and that alone is pretty cool, as you use information from different possible timelines to inform yourself of what’s really going on.

The negatives are that the gameplay is kinda variable (you’re basically just solving various puzzles. Some are good fun… mostly just various games and logic puzzles some of which I’m familiar with and some of which are new. And some are kinda finnicky and annoying (sadly one of the very last puzzles I did was one of these). It’s not really a game to play for gameplay really at all. Fortunately, unlike 999 you don’t have to redo gameplay you’ve done before in order to get extra endings.

Spoiler thoughts:
Well, let’s break down the lategame plot twists.

-You’re in the future after Radical-6 has wrecked shit: duh. Junpei tries to hit you with a wham line about it in the Phi end but duh.

-The identities of Tenmyouji and the old woman: straightforward, had been telegraphed plenty already. Have I mentioned that bringing back Junpei in a supporting role that takes the player by surprise but have still be recognizably Junpei instead of cryptically mysterious is great? Because it’s pretty great. I wonder if he figured out that Sigma really didn’t have the memories of Dr. Klim on his ending. It does explain his generally suspicious behaviour around Sigma nicely.

-Akane is a magnificent bastard master manipulator of everything: I mean this isn’t really a plot twist per se, it is consistent with what 999 suggested but it’s nice to see VLR totally own this plot point. I wasn’t sure what to make of her after 999 but she’s really great in this game.

-Sigma is bodyjumped into himself as a 67-year old: I kinda called this one way near the start (Sigma’s face never being shown in cutscenes + no voice acting) then started to jettison it over time, shoulda stuck to my guns! This one is more just plain FUNNY than anything else. I love how there are actually like a dozen plus lines of characters calling him old in one way or another and they almost all flew over my head. Also his penchant for making perverted jokes is now super-funny in hindsight. Not to say the utterly disgusted looks Phi and company give him weren’t already justified, but maaan those looks make even more sense now. For an actual plot twist it’s actually pretty clever although I’d have ditched the obvious fake eye, since it seems unlikely that nobody would ever comment on that and also unlikely that he wouldn’t notice.

-You’re all on the moon + you all have a magical disease which slows your reaction time so gravity “looks” normal: well this one is slightly harder to believe honestly but you can kiiinda handwave it, I appreciate that it’s vaguely plausible if you squint. The game did basically tell you you all had Radical-6 as well as what Radical-6 does so it’s not an asspull, and does nicely cover Sigma’s otherwise presumably considerably weaker muscles. Though some of the other characters (besides Phi, who obviously did and concealed it) might have noticed they’re now incredibly good at lifting things etc. Now I wonder if there are any lines of characters noticing that which I missed…

-Akane is K in one of the three routes: Man I want to compare her lines with Kyle’s now. Though obviously she’s trying to play Kyle so there’s probably not much there. I did think it was rather surprising when K became very chatty during the Phi ending so that at least makes sense. I guess that suit has a voice modulator, which makes sense since Kyle presumably sounds like Young Sigma, though Akane would have to tune it carefully so that the modulation is the same with her higher-pitched voice. Also I guess she’s quite tall? She does kinda look it in some of the art shots in this game I suppose, and I… actually don’t recall any shots of her in 999 with other characters on screen when she’s not lying down.

-Phi is… actually we don’t know! I mean if there’s a disappointment with the lategame it’s that we don’t learn more about Phi. I assume ZTD goes into this more. VLR did reveal so many of its mysteries that I can accept it holding one or two back. I enjoyed Phi anyway, her snark + Getting Shit Done quotient are both welcome.

-I liked pretty much all the characters which is great, definitely something I think is an improvement over 999. Luna, Dio, Phi, and Akane are the favourites in some order, I think, but really everyone is good. Quark is relatively forgettable I guess, such is the fate of the character who spends most of the time incapacitated by Radical-6. And Dr. Klim ends up relatively undercharacterised due to not being able to appear on screen but so it goes.

-One thing I never figured out: what was up with Sigma’s fast-forward-like freakout in the security room? I assumed it was a symptom of Radical-6 at the time buuut if he’s constantly suffering from those symptoms at all times that can’t be the reason.

-Just for reference, I had to consult a FAQ twice: once about the board game puzzle in the treatment centre and once for the clue to the gold file in the infirmary. Don’t really feel bad about either, neither was well-communicated in-game. Also, I did not enjoy the “get the dice to be face up on the right squares” puzzle, especially the supercharged version in the Q room. Maybe someone with better spatial reasoning than me can do those with something besides trial and error, but as is, not fun. Especially since the 3DS screen interface for the puzzle gave me some troubles on its own.

-I don’t really like ending on a negative note so yeah, game was good. Not sure where it’ll fall in overall ratings to me since it’s hard to compare even to other writing games; there’s not much else I’ve played quite like these. (And I’m not really dying to find more of ‘em, since any significant falloff in writing quality would result in quite a bad game… but yeah, I’m on board the hype train for this one.)

Zero Time Dilemma? At some point, certainly, but I’ll play some other stuff for now.


EDIT: More random thoughts.

The prisoner’s dilemma is, of course, really cool. I enjoyed the way the game explores it. The Nonary Game feels well-planned to prevent the situation of full cooperation, which is the obvious strategy to an objective outsider. If Zero Jr. had outlined the rules while everyone was still together, they’d be able to form several group strategies to ensure everyone always chooses Ally… a simple pact of “I will choose Ally except against someone who has previously chosen Betray, then I will choose Betray” would leave it so that it was in no player’s interest to betray. But of course, the rules are introduced when the players are isolated from each other and forced to choose immediately, so no such strategy could develop in the first round, and there is good, strong reason to choose betray in the PD absent such a pact. And then of course, from the next round on, the threat of death from some players being at -1 makes cooperation harder and the asymmetry makes pacts all but impossible to make. Clever!

The only strategy I’m a bit surprised didn’t come up was the idea of purposefully having only one person vote from each trio, which would allow that player to make the Ally vote more safely (since the payoff for choosing betray against someone you know is going to ally is lower). Also much easier for the others to just punch that person in the face if they do betray.

Snowfire:
Yeah, I caught that Luna always allies. First law of robotics and all that! Similarly that Dio (almost) always betrays. It’s interesting to note that Luna’s strategy never results in her escaping (outside of the Phi end of course) but Dio’s, while it generally involves him failing as nobody trusts him again, does work out once… when he faces Luna in round 2. (And also in the blackmail plot of course, but that doesn’t count.)

[Luther Lansfeld]

I Am Setsuna - Finished!

Some random thoughts about the game:
-gameplaywise, the game feels like a watered down chrono trigger? the randoms are decent early and the bosses are sometimes good, but mid-lategame I feel like the randoms just become pathetic (too much ability to just spam Supernova/Blowbeat, the combos in this game are hella broken). I could forgive this more if the bosses were a bit better than they were and more consistent. The final boss in particular just really sucks if you kill his support first. I guess I could try him without killing the parts, but I don’t care about the game that much.

-Characters:
Endir: Has MT healing and the random-slaying Blowbeat combo with Nidr. To be honest, I don’t think I would have used this character much if not for Blowbeat. Blowbeat is just broken as fuck though, especially if you ambush randoms.
Setsuna: Solid healer/mage character, a variant on Marle. Lategame, she has Luminaire, which on Momentum inflicts Auto-Revive and heals for like 300 damage. As if that wasn’t stupid enough, she has a combo with Kir called Supernova which destroys most randoms and does a pretty big chunk of damage to bosses as well. Earlygame she’s not as good because of Blowbeat + Aeterna being overpowered, but lategame she’s probably the second-best character.
Aeterna: The once and future queen. Slow, Protect, and later Haste are all great tricks to have vs. bosses, and Demi is really good against randoms, especially when you aren’t using Blowbeat for whatever reason. Haste in particular is just dumb thanks to her already very fast speed. She has some decent combos midgame but that’s not really what her game is about.
Nidr: See Endir basically, without the MT healing but with more single target damage.
Kir - slow and fragile with high damage. good vs. randoms that the party ambushes, pretty bad early vs. bosses, but lategame Supernova is just too good.
Julienne - Underwhelming PC without much going for her besides Antipode, which is like a poor man’s Blowbeat, and is later replaced with Supernova.

-Plot: a watered down ffx? There are interesting things there, but the game never hits it perfectly with… any of its characters? The best is Setsuna, who is a Yuna with a martyr complex but, due to the game’s less involved plot and less well-written script, she never hits the same highs as Yuna does. Aeterna is also decent but she holds on to her secrets for waaaay too long. FFX and Xenogears teach us that we can have big secrets earlier in the game and it works better than info dump at endgame! Both Endir, a silent main who is slobbered over, and Julienne, who is boring and ineffective, are both less good characters. NPC cast is abysmal.

Music’s pretty lackluster. Graphics are okay.

Overall, the gameplay has some highs and there's a couple of endearing characters but nothing amazing. 5/10.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Time for another FFT war story.

Before moving on after Yardow, go shopping for new equipment.  Also make my way down to Goug for the proposition there.  It's a welcome detour since I get some training in weaker jobs along the way as well as gathering the last JP I want for my Riovanes setups.

Yuguo Woods: When is this genuinely hard.  I have a self-imposed challenge to not allow the enemy wizards to resolve any lv3 black magic.  Between Mustadio using Seal Evil and PA focused Agrias, didn't experience much difficulty.  The only tricky part was getting enough actions in for everyone.  Rafa was close enough to unlocking Thief with shared JP that I want my Archer to land enough shots.

Riovanes Gate; The enemy Archers have a massive position advantage and to make things worse, they have the ability to spawn with the Windslash Bow + 108 Gems combo for more hurt.  The knights are well positioned to make advancing on them a hazardous venture.  There are ways to shut them down but I didn't have the inclination to grind for them.  Still, the enemies can only attack one unit at a time (barring Malak getting lucky or Knights being able to use geomancy or Earth Slash), so while appearing intimidating, still very manageable even with what I had access to.
   This is the first battle all game where I use a reaction ability other than Counter Tackle, Weapon Guard, or Ramza's Damage Split.  I fielded a male Ninja who had enough spare Time Mage JP for MP Switch.  Along with someone with Chakra, this provides an extra layer of protection from the rain of arrows.  Of course early on, Malak connects an Asura Back on him that exactly wipes out his 30 MP so the battle is off to a bad start.
  I generally turn Rafa into a Knight for this fight.  If she can use Steal Heart, that's her secondary of choice.  She did have the 150 JP to learn it this game so I have her learn it.  Charming Knights is fun and helps shift momentum.  Also keeps them from body blocking anyone trying to storm the ramparts.  Other than that, Rafa has evasion to help draw attacks from my team.  Yes, this does mean Malak sticks around longer but that's how I enjoy approaching this battle.
  With my crazy luck, all three of the Archers are Aries which gives them best compatability with my Libra Ninja.  He does get dropped once but I am able to recover.  Even one dodged arrow is enough to have him reach the top where he takes out archers from full to zero HP in one attack.  While this is going on, I'm stealing Crystal Helmets off the knights and without their archer support, lone Knights aren't able to endanger my team.

[Ranmilia]

https://startingoverinraccooncity.blogspot.com/2019/05/peering-in-on-spyparty.html

I've been playing SpyParty a lot lately.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/423687973

Sometimes, it is very fun.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War - I’ve played every game since 6, so I feel like I should complete my FE experience at some point. Because I already played the remakes of 1-3, I’m not gonna bother with them, but I’ve decided to try 4!

A few impressions:

PC balance:
-Sigurd is really really good. He’s like the best parts of Quan and Finn put in a blender to make a fantastic PC. Having Sigurd required to seize all the gates make the game a little harder, but not as bad as it could be with an infantry unit.
-Pursuit / Follow-up is an overpowered skill. It pretty much makes every unit with it good and every unit without it feel underwhelming. Lex and Quan manage to be decent anyway despite it because of high STR/DEF
-Azel seems like he should be really good, but with the dominance of horses, he often fell behind.
-Lewyn seemed a little underwhelming and then he got Foresti and HOLY SHIT THIS CHARACTER. So much dodge tanking.
-Lachesis also peaks late due to her overpowered promoted class.
-Noish is terrible. Alec is better but still not great. Definitely a bad showing for the green/red cav.
-I let Arden die when he was Astra’d by enemy Ayra. And nothing of value was lost.

Gameplay:
-The maps in this game are holy shit big, and there is way too much walking between places and other things that do not involve meaningful combat. I think this is the #1 problem with the game.
-Some of the formations are very tricky and interesting to deal with. I think that’s when the game is at its best.
-Chapter 3 and 5 are both fairly enjoyable on this front, although not perfect (those Meteor users vs. my flierless team is a bad time). I really enjoyed the assault of Eldie (died once to him) and Travant’s army of Horseslayers. (Sadly, Lewyn’s evade was TOO POWERFUL for them to attack him. )
-Chapter 2 and 4 are miserable and require so much moving from place to place. Chapter 4 also has the ridiculous bridge thing and the cinematic battle which went on for so long. I know it’s partially an excuse for you to get your characters back, but they could have just made that part of the map adjacent to the previous one to start with. Stop wasting my time.
-Legendary weapons are so so dumb.

Plot:
-The game comes off much more as a war documentary / story than most of the other Fire Emblems, which go more for the anime-style rivalries and conflicts.
-I feel like I need a flowchart to figure out WTH is going on and who is related to who
-You can tell very accurately who will join the party and who is evil by their portrait. People who look attractive are PCs, people who scowl and are generally ugly don’t.
-there is a lot of reference to rape in this game.
-Eldigan is unceremoniously killed by Chagall in what later ends up being a harbinger of things to come.
-THE LAST CHAPTER IS SO DARK. Arvis, while not a great or compelling character, is such a magnificent bastard that you can’t help but admire him. This game definitely delves into GoT-tier of killing nice people. Also, Quan and Ethlyn is sooooo horrible.
-Honestly, the game’s writing is a little flat. Lots of interesting setting ideas and plot threads, but the writing is just not very deft. I don’t feel like the characters really jump out at me. Arvis / Eldigan / Sigurd are fine but none reach anywhere close to exceptional.

Other stuff:
-Art and music are both fine but not great.
The Thracia phase music in Chapter 5 is weirdly whimsical for the extremely dour tone they are going for with the arrival of the Thracian forces. I found it very jarring.

I finished Gen 1 and the first two chapters of Gen 2. Shanan has turned into a bishounen, Oifey is now a porn star. I have an amazing amount of sword users in my party. I ended up letting Dermott and Arthur die because Chapter 7 is brutally long (65 turns!) and therefore I missed Tinny. Oh well. None of them have Pursuit so who cares! I didn’t delve into eugenics so my characters are suboptimal. Oh well!

Also, does Chapter 8 have a CHAGALL PALETTE SWAP? That's really weird.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I forgot to report the death of JOHNOLIVER, i'm sorry

[Random Consonant]

PC balance:
-Sigurd is really really good. He’s like the best parts of Quan and Finn put in a blender to make a fantastic PC. Having Sigurd required to seize all the gates make the game a little harder, but not as bad as it could be with an infantry unit.
-Pursuit / Follow-up is an overpowered skill. It pretty much makes every unit with it good and every unit without it feel underwhelming. Lex and Quan manage to be decent anyway despite it because of high STR/DEF
-Azel seems like he should be really good, but with the dominance of horses, he often fell behind.
-Lewyn seemed a little underwhelming and then he got Foresti and HOLY SHIT THIS CHARACTER. So much dodge tanking.
-Lachesis also peaks late due to her overpowered promoted class.
-Noish is terrible. Alec is better but still not great. Definitely a bad showing for the green/red cav.
-I let Arden die when he was Astra’d by enemy Ayra. And nothing of value was lost.

Yep.

Gameplay:
-The maps in this game are holy shit big, and there is way too much walking between places and other things that do not involve meaningful combat. I think this is the #1 problem with the game.
-Some of the formations are very tricky and interesting to deal with. I think that’s when the game is at its best.
-Chapter 3 and 5 are both fairly enjoyable on this front, although not perfect (those Meteor users vs. my flierless team is a bad time). I really enjoyed the assault of Eldie (died once to him) and Travant’s army of Horseslayers. (Sadly, Lewyn’s evade was TOO POWERFUL for them to attack him. )
-Chapter 2 and 4 are miserable and require so much moving from place to place. Chapter 4 also has the ridiculous bridge thing and the cinematic battle which went on for so long. I know it’s partially an excuse for you to get your characters back, but they could have just made that part of the map adjacent to the previous one to start with. Stop wasting my time.
-Legendary weapons are so so dumb.

Yep.

-You can tell very accurately who will join the party and who is evil by their portrait. People who look attractive are PCs, people who scowl and are generally ugly don’t.
-there is a lot of reference to rape in this game.

Yeeeeeeeep.  Although the the first is pretty much fireemblem.txt it's still pretty yep.  also burn down the kagatopia

I didn’t delve into eugenics so my characters are suboptimal. Oh well!

Good news!  The most optimal parings are more or less the fastest ones anyways!

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fire Emblem 4 - Aside from Lene who refreshes four people, Ares, Shanan, Oifey, and Finn are generally my best units. Nanna is Lex’s daughter and has Paragon, so she will promote very soon. She is extremely tanky and has high HP, which is funny on a healer. I never recruited Gen 1 peg knight (which made the Meteor mages on Sig’s last map so painful) so I have Femina, who kind of sucks. It’s interesting how you have these sub characters. Leif is such hot garbage. Apparently he promotes to a godlike class like Lachesis, but he has no staff and thus is more painful to level. Seliph is fine but I was surprised to see him rated so high on tier lists. Larcei and Ulster are both quite competent as well.

After the hell that was Chapter 7, 8 seems relatively breezy. I just got done fending off a swarm of wyvern knights who were trying to kill Hawke and civilians. Leif is an excellent civilian rescuer, good work pal. I generally have to do four sessions to get through a map, and I just finished the third.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War - Just finished, hooray!

Gen 1 Pairings: LewynxSylvia, LachesisxLex, BridgetxJamke, AideenxMidir, AyraxAlec, TailtuxClaude.

Dead/unrecruited people in Gen 1: Arden, Erinys, Holdyn, Beowulf, Dew(got better)

Gen 2 pairings: SeliphxLana, LarceixShanan(gross), LesterxFemina, AresxLene, LeifxNanna.

Dead/unrecruited people in Gen 2: Arthur, Tinni, Dermott, Oifey (RIP)

Map notes:

Chapter 8 is pretty damn trivial for a non-prologue chapter. It feels very paint-by-numbers and doesn’t really offer any major challenge, especially since Altena won’t attack you. I mostly used Oifey to bait a whole bunch of the Wyverns with the Flame Sword and then their collective lives were sad. The only really interesting thing that happened was Ishtar running toward me and me running from her, and then Julius shows up and says “Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?” and she’s like cool I’ll come with you cute evil boi, sry daddy.

Chapter 9 was hilarious because Travant is such boring and unexciting enemy, and then you liberate the castles and the 11 THREAT RANGE MAGE BOSS WITH 18 SPEED Musar appears as a NINJA REINFORCEMENT and TRIES TO MURDER ME while I am liberating villages. Due to sheer luck pure skill Finn managed to dodge the following:

4 lethal shots at 45% hit
and
2 rounds of being doubled and kill with 2 hits at 45%

Life is pain, Highness. Until it isn’t.

Anyway, Altena kills that douchenozzle and we survive other very rude things like eight ballistas and one siege tome and then we have to fight Arion, the dumb anime son of Travant. Gungnir is very dickish and hurts really bad, and he has a bunch of friends to boot. It took me a few tries and I had to tinker with my setup but I managed to survive without anyone dying. It was a team effort.

Meanwhile I grinded up Caipre, who is the small child who inherited Forseti and a Paragon Band, but is Level 1. I just did Arena with my shit character Femina and healed her once a turn until I got to 20 on that map. I tried to marry Femina off to him because she had lots of money due to villages but it didn’t work. Oh well.

Chapter 10 is pretty typical FE map until the Julius / Ishtar appearance. I baited Julius with Shanan because he didn’t get doubled, was evasive, and had high speed to avoid Charge. I ended up killing Ishtar rather than Julius because he’s really really hard to kill. Apparently you can get one of your units killed and then he leaves as well, but that’s not any fun. Julius tells his daddy to bite his shiny metal ass and leaves. Last past is a bit of a rush because you are trying to make sure that Seliph can get Tyrfing. It ended up being fine because Ares baited all of them (and has mad RES to not die). Arvis seems very unenjoyable to kill without Tyrfing, although Altena ended up doing most of the damage to him.

Final Chapter is again kind of typical until the Ishtar / pegasus of doom brigade. Did they really need Leg Rings? ;_; Ishtar herself is a doozy, although the unholy wall of 75-HP/27 RES called Ares manages to tank her Adapt Mjollnir. Oifey is tragically slain by the peggies but the show must go on. Scorpius was hilarious inept in the face of Faval, who killed their whole army singlehandedly. No range 1 weapon? NOOB.

The last part is interesting. I baited Julia into a place that she could not move out of and then worked on killing Manfroy and recruiting her. The plan almost failed when Altena’s new buddies tried to kill her; I had to reset and then surround Julia to prevent her from being attacked by them. As it turns out, this was a really good idea because the final boss would have been so so so painful without her. The Deadlords were pretty inept and didn’t threaten the army of darkness at all. Caipre killed like half of them with Forseti. Final part was very dull and took far too long, but Julius ended up activating multiple Accosts in one turn and thus killing himself. What a moron.

And thus, we win.

Plot notes:
-Manfroy is a pretty big idiot. He decides to possess Julia because… it’s funny? Julius tells him “no way” but he does it anyway
-They try a little bit with Ishtar and Alvis but the rest of the characters are LOLNO
-Gen 2 plot really suffers from not knowing exactly which kids will be present and which will not. It is a very paint-by-numbers adventure of smiting rich people who are dicks and demon worshippers.
-Sigurd has a bit of the tragic hero figure going on with him, but Seliph really is the most generic lead ever.
-The endings are very bad. All of your friends became kings because they have holy blood and everyone loves them forever, holy shit wow. They even love Ares Dark, who is clearly too edgy for this world. Of course, a woman might inherit a duekdom if there’s not a DUDE to do it.
-Is Lewyn a dick or what? The ending features him trying to foist his responsibility off onto a small child, and he spends the whole game doing literally anything besides ruling. Asshole.

General character worth:
Lene (refreshes four people, wow) > Ares Dark > Oifey > Shanan > Finn > Seliph > probably some healers IDK. Honorable mention to the fact that Seliph is really good late, especially after Tyrfing, Leif is terrible and no good until he promotes and then he is great, and Altena/Caipre (Lewyn) are both quite good but join late / take some babying to move along. Larcei was pretty good early, especially with Brave Sword and Leg Ring from Ayra, but her durability hurts. Finn and Oifey were definitely not so good late, but I leaned on both early so they count. Finn has the whole section in Chapter 7 where he kills every enemy on the Leonstar side. Faval and Hawke are also quite good but suffer from low move.

Comments about the game: The maps are extremely long and sprawly and you spend so much time moving from place to place. It gives it a very warlike feel I guess but man is it grueling. Gameplay is recognizably Fire Emblem but is less polished and refined, I feel. Some of the bosses are just ridiculous and can really just bullshit you. The good thing about the game is that you can save every turn (and should).

Favorite map: Probably Chapter 10? I enjoyed the stuff with Ishtar and Julius, and there are other interesting strategy things to do. Last map is cool too, for all that the final part is dull.. Least favorite: Chapter 4. That map is so fucking stupid; it makes you backtrack a bunch and has the Dew thing, as well as the extremely long phase of watching the enemies fight each other which is beyond boring.

[JensDuck]

Mortal Kombat 11

[SnowFire]

Cosmic Star Heroine
After finally replacing my Vita on the cheap (my old one's controls had gone all wonky), I could finally finish this (I'd stopped in C11, just before the Asteroid Ruins).  I did, and the final bosses were even reasonably interesting, although the Mecha Dragon rando was actually a little more dangerous as far as forcing a reset.  (Not SUPER dangerous, I would have reloaded & re'spec'd if I was seriously under threat by it.)  The gameplay is still great, and I definitely respect Zeboyd releasing a belated Vita version despite there probably being not much of a market for it out of obligation to the original Kickstarter back in 2013 when they thought the game would take 2 years to make rather than 4 years and the Vita was less dead.  (If you didn't read why it took so long, part of it was that Microsoft discontinued support for MS XNA, what the older games were built off of, so it was time to rip the band-aid off and rebuild everything in Unity.  Which has much less efficient memory-use for the Vita's tiny RAM.)

However, who cares about praise?  We're here for wacky story fails and Jo'ou laughing at me expecting anything from a Zeboyd plot!  Sure enough, there are some bizarre dropped balls.  To set this up properly, let's talk about an understandable dropped ball for comparison:
* Otter was instantly repelled by the first chapter where there's some computer going haywire, Alyssa needs to hack it but says she's just a novice, then...  she just succeeds off-screen, wrapped up, yay!  So a bizarre "hey check out how awesome our protagonist is" that doesn't work.  But it seems obvious to me what happened: there was obviously supposed to be a hacking minigame here, Alyssa was being self-deprecating because it would have been new to you-the-player and thus expected for you to be fumbling around, but it got cut before launch, so it's just this.  I get that.

Less understandable that could easily, easily be fixed:
* The big villain is built up as a "master class gunmancer."  You never fight him with him using gunmancy skills or having a skillset remotely similar to the gunmancer in your party, and she never even attempts to build a rivalry or anything.  The final showdown is just him becoming a Big Dumb Monster.  The characters never even jibe him for this and talk about how pathetic he's fallen or anything (i.e. own this, like killing a swordmaster by stealing his sword or poisoning him or something).

* There's one of those obligatory scenes where the new villain gets the McGuffin, except also involving a fade to black, and done in a way that makes zero sense both in-setting and from a drama writing perspective?  It's really unfulfilling, "Hahaha I am an evil" -> fade to black -> Huh the MacGuffin got stolen and she disappeared.  You have three options here: A, just have her not say she's evil yet.  She's a member of the team, she has a perfectly good excuse for inspecting the McGuffin.  B, this whole plot point was a mind control device, but basically nobody ever gets mind controlled aside from the users of said device themselves.   "Hey, can I have X" => "Okay sure WAIT NO SHIT".  Remind people what the dang plot point is.  C, if you insist on the reveal first then stealing it, this is usually done as a show of power for why you are so helpless thing, so if you must do it this way, you have an unwinnable boss fight followed by the boss forcefully taking the goods then letting you off for some excuse.  Anyway, A & B are both fixable by just changing the text, it'd have taken 30 seconds.

* I'm gonna call this a "nitpick" rather than a real complaint, but there's some wackiness going on here plot-wise anyway.  There's the usual "this traitor could have done far worse things earlier that would have ended our quest" as well as "this traitor is actually a big deal and seems like she could have taken some people with her".  More to the point, I guess this is supposed to be a dueling servants of the dark god thing where they hate each other but solely because they want Cthulhu to do different things?  You'd think they could have owned that plot point a little more, but the game acts like they're both pure puppets at times, in which case it seems like they should have been working together more.

* The final boss is alleged to be weakened by some sort of virus.  If there's any gameplay impact to this whatsoever, I missed it (= Tidus using Talk on Jecht?).

And oh yes.  I went through the $%%^ Rhomu lab THREE TIMES searching for that damn sidequest door and never found it.  Oh well, YouTube to the rescue.

[VySaika]

Picked up Fate//Extella Link on the Switch. It's basically better than the first game in every way except maaaaaaybe plot? The plot in Link is more clear and less Nasu Dot Tee Ex Tee so whether that's better or worse is up to you~

The biggest improvement is that you can now use NPs more than once per battle and you don't have to collect items to do it, the gauge fills up by getting kills while using Moon Drive. Also Active Skills now exist, kinda like teh R1 moves from Warriors Orochi except you get 4 of them, which are neat additions. Also also, the AI allies are actually useful and can kill enemy officers on their own, however the enemy AI is also very good and will take over your sectors if you don't defend them! So it actually hits a balance that musou games rarely do, your allies can be useful but you can't count on them to always win. It's nice.

Medusa is probably my favorite character to play as so far, but I haven't unlocked everyone yet. Drake is also a lot of fun. Sadly the other rider, Astolfo, is basically the Dan Hibiki of the game. Still adorable tho~

[hinode]

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Got a digital copy of this for essentially free due to Black Friday deals last November, then promptly ignored it in favor of other games more immediately interesting to me, like Smash Utimate. Finally got around to playing this about a month ago. I haven't played a Mario Kart game for more than a few minutes since the SNES original, so I started with 50cc.

The game is quite good technically and in terms of track design, both in terms of quantity and quality for the latter. Watching a few GDQ VODs has convinced me that MK8D blows away the previous games for track quality, and a grand prix run even convinced me that Nintendo actually toned down the item nonsense that some of the past entries had spiraled into.

With all that said, it's clear now that Mario Kart is a franchise that just doesn't excite me, at least as a singleplayer game. After finishing all the grand prixs a few weeks back, I've had no interest in going back to the game, even though I did enjoy my time with it. It's just that other games interest me more, even ones that 99% of the planet would consider worse. For instance...

Nights of Azure 2

I'll be honest up front, the main reason I had any interest in this is that I heard that NoA was a series that had actual canon yuri relationships, and not of the "let's write the player character as male, then add a female option with bare minimum edits to the dialogue" kind. That puts it on an extremely short list with... um, I'm not actually totally sure what games actually count here. Most people on Gamefaqs seem to prefer the first one, but I don't have a PS4 and I've heard the PC port has some issues, plus my current computer only has integrated graphics. Meanwhile I got a new copy of the NoA2 Switch for only $23.

Gameplay was pretty much what all the reviews said, an arpg that is generally so easy there's no reason to do anything but mash the light attack button and use special abilities when the activate. I actually had one loss to the very first boss because I didn't bother to block or evade its attacks at all, because I had no reason to do either up until then. Second time around I put in some actual effort and won with no serious issues. After that, the bosses were pretty much trivial except for the DLC ones (whose difficulties are variable depending on when you fight them) and the final boss, whose third form is a huuuuge spike in damage output.

The combat system was still fluid enough to be decently enjoyable and never offensive, which is a good thing since I had to play through the game twice to get the true ending with all the epilogues, which involved a lot of repeating the same areas over and over and over again to fulfill quests. That got kinda tiresome, even though I liked the game's atmosphere and music in general.

The game has a time limit system similar to some of the Atelier games (same developer as Nights of Azure - Gust). I don't think it's as well implemented as the Atelier games that I'm familiar with, though. Those tend to have lots of endings, but this game only has two + epilogues for the true ending, and it is literally impossible to get all of those epilogues on a first run. Then on NG+ the time limits are removed, which combined with some clear bonuses for having both endings result in a obvious route to go through the game: get normal ending on first run, then grind out all the sidequests for true on NG+. The only reason I didn't completely rush the first playthrough is because I was forewarned ahead of time about the difficulty spike for the final boss.

The absolutely worst thing about the game is the way it periodically crashes to the home screen. That's just inexcusable for a commercial game from a major developer, and I would be far more pissed if I had paid full price for the game, or even worse, the collector's edition. The one mitigating factor is that the game only ever crashed on me during the hotel, so as long as I went to save ASAP anytime I came back from combat I would never lose meaningful progress, but it's still an obnoxious problem to deal with.

Now for thoughts on the story and characters, since that's what I really cared about to begin with. Spoiler tagging everything just to be safe, even though not all of it is spoilertastic.

The much-publicized lily system felt like it was kinda bait-and-switch in the end. There's some kinda flirty lines in the game when you build up affection with your AI partners (and I am kinda impressed at the developer's lack of subtlety in labelling the party members as 'Lilies'), but I didn't really get the sense that anyone except for Lilia and Rue had outright romantic affection for Aluche, aka the childhood friends whose relations had already developed before the story started. I still liked having an extra party member to fight alongside, including non-romantic options, so I'm glad Gust put them in this game. I wonder if the pre-release marketing caused some backlash when the game shipped with only one predefined pairing, though. Speaking of which...

In the end, Aluche and Liliana's relationship was pretty straightforward: they were childhood friends who were already in love when the game started. You see them interact in various story scenes plus the blue lily quests, but there's no major conflicts or development in their relationship throughout the game. That's fine in a vacuum - I enjoyed what was shown of them, and the lack of melodrama was, in some ways, a relief. The issue is that I don't think Gust built them up sufficiently for what happens during the true ending.

On paper, I quite like what happens there- Aluche uses Rue's power of transforming thoughts into power to fuel Lilia's time slowing. So long as she holds onto Lilia and their love remains true, Aluche can maintain the localized time stoppage forever. That's a rather beautiful image to end a story on, and considering why Malvasia turned to villainy it is quite fitting that she is stopped by an act of love, rather than one of violence. It is doubly fitting that two people who are effectively Alstromeria's reincarnation and successor combine to stop the plans of her tragic ex-lover. The most insightful review that I've read of NoA2 (http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2017/10/review-nights-of-azure-2-bride-of-new.html) compared both this game and its predecessor stylistically to opera. That's a fitting comparison for how the true ending unfolds, but I think the buildup to it wasn't convincing enough. Personally, I think an ending like this (two lovers frozen in time eternally, to save the world) as a conclusion to a story that tries to convince the audience that this is the grandest romance ever, with two lovers who would move heaven and earth to be together. Something like Beren and Luthien, or hell, Arnice and Lilysse from Nights of Azure 1, based on the descriptions I've read of that game. Instead, what we got with this game was a kinda understated relationship that didn't get super built up or emphasized in-game (since a lot of screentime went to the other lilies). Looking at places like Gamefaqs, I've seen a lot of people who didn't care much for either the AlxLilia romance or the true ending, and in hindsight I think that's understandable.

That said, as someone who's kinda jaded by the heavy presence of the "love is beautiful because of its fleeting nature" trope in Japanese yuri works, I appreciate the fact that this game essentially went in the opposite direction, with two lovers united for eternity. Maybe I'm being optimistic here, but I get the impression that Aluche and Liliana aren't cryogenically frozen in a near-death state, but that their time together is warm and loving, even if it feels like they are trapped in a prison to their friends back in the world.

On the whole, I found the backstory of Malvasia with Alstromeria to be the game's better executed love story. That is operatic to the bone, a doomed romance with beautiful highs that ends in pure tragedy. It's a pity that DLC2 doesn't have any voice acting, since the flashback scene in that was the most emotional moment in the game for me.

As for the rest of the cast, I wound up liking pretty much everyone except for Eleanor well enough to enjoy their screentime. Everyone else has a backstory that helps flesh their characters out beyond the surface-level anime tropes while expanding on NoA's dark, gothic setting. It's a pity that it came in part at the expense of developing the main romance, but the time certainly wasn't spent in vain.

One other notable thing is that *all* the authority positions in this game are filled by women, even the assholish and villainous ones. Every known knight is female as well, although that's admittedly based on a sample size of 5. That's a lot of traditionally-male roles occupied by women in the setting. The game never draws any attention to this, but it does subtly influence the game's gender and power dynamics that feelly pretty signficant to me as a laymen, although I'm not really qualified enough at either lit crit or feminism to say definitively. But he whole knight protects damsel from villain trope just feels different to me when all three roles are filled by women, and that's before we get into the ways the story winds up subverts the initial dynamic. The fact that the villain is essentially a lesbian who turned heel due to her lover's death is something that might have felt really problematic in a different story, but the fact that her grief is portrayed sympathetically (well, at least once we got the full story from DLC) and she is far from the only lesbian in the story ameliorated that concern to me. This kind of all-female cast is fairly common in bishoujo anime and manga, but less so in a video game, and especially one with such a dark tone and aesthetic.

On a related note there is absolutely zero homophobia in-universe, although human bigotry towards demons serves as a suspiciously similar substitute during the backstory. But AlxLilia for instance face absolutely zero social stigma, which I understand is the same as the first NoA.

On balance, I can't say that Nights of Azure 2 is a great game, or maybe even a good one. Both gameplay and storytelling have serious flaws. Nothing deal-breaking to me, but a lot of fans of the original online seem to have been disappointed with it, and the sales numbers dropped pretty badly in Japan. But with all that, there were elements of the game that I found really interesting, and which I really enjoyed, so I don't regret my time spent on it for a second. Canon yuri relationships are so rare that even a deeply flawed game with one feels noteworthy to me, and this game handled its romance with enough sincerity to keep my attention. I'm probably on-board for any sequels/follow-ups that Gust makes, although I'm really not expecting one considering the sales numbers.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Suikoden - I replayed this. It's the game we thought it was. The start is strong and it kinda loses its way a bit as it meanders in the midgame (Milich arc in particular is not great). It's very unpolished. Still, nice to retread, I hadn't played the game in 16 years.

Suikoden 2 - Obviously better, still holds up very well as long as we don't talk about the translation which is somehow more of a mess each time I see it. I am up to Tinto. Shu remains a lot of fun to watch! Just a solidly-written game with gameplay which manages to hit some solidly fun notes for something which isn't the point of the game.


Wargroove - Beat this, and as the actual new game, it's the one I will talk about.

I'm disappointed I didn't take to this game more. SRPGs are good and this one has some neat mechanics which make it play differently from many others (yes, I somehow never played Advance Wars). Damage being based on HP makes the whole countering paradigm feel completely different from Fire Emblem and games like it, as do the complex matchup mechanics. Forget the weapon triangle, you WILL have your dragon unit own the hell out of puny land and water units while avoiding harpoons/ballistas/witches/mages like the plague, and if you screw this up you may well lose the entire battle, since one hit puts you in the hole 1000 gold (their repair cost/new unit cost) plus the lost combat opportunities of using this unit further while you go reinforce them or get a replacement back to the front lines. And so on for all sorts of other complicated matchup possibilities.

By default I feel the game with its interesting SRPG gameplay that keeps you awake should have grabbed me more, but a few reasons it didn't:

-Fog of war is really terrible, fortunately it goes away after a brief showing midgame. It's already a bad mechanic in FE, I didn't need a version where your vision is even more restricted and a unit taking a hit from a bad matchup cripples them completely.

-The game really badly needed threat ranges to be toggled on like Fire Emblem does it. Earlygame it's not a problem, lategame avoiding hits from key units with huge threat ranges (flyers, warships/harpoon ships) is just far too crucial and I did way too much going back and forth between lots of different enemies and trying to remember exactly how far they move.

-The AI in this game was occasionally a bit frustrating. It's kinda clever in that it knows how to kite your threat ranges too, but it turns out this just isn't much fun? The worst is when you get flyers kiting you over the ocean before you get your own flyers. This doesn't even help the enemy win!

-There's a shortage of really clever map design, and challenge feels very inconsistent, and unintentionally so (some maps which feel intended to be hard really aren't, and vice versa).

Plot barely exists. That's fine, it is what it is, but it means the game coasts entirely on gameplay and it just didn't do quite enough.

Still I had a pretty good time, it was fun to toy around with. It just consistently held my attention less well than everything else I have been playing recently. VLR smacked it down pretty bad and that's definitely going against my genre biases! Might come back to it at some point and try Arcade Mode or the Epilogue, I dunno.

Probably 5-6 range.

[VySaika]

Beat all the maingame content in Fate//Extella Link, and unlocked all the cast(except maybe DLC chars? There's empty spots in the barracks but my character list says 100% sooooooo...). Definately a step up from Extella across the board, and I've played with all of the cast now so I have some room to talk about how they are.

EX Tier: Darius III, Artoria, Alexander the Great/Iskandr, Medusa
So Darius III is just flat out busted as hell. Great damage, great range on his normals including a C3 that hits a HUGE line in front of him, and a buff Active Skill that increases his attack range and damage further. What really puts him to EX Tier though is his complete lack of janky movement in a game that's full of it. The power and ease of control combo is just unmatched.
Artoria and Iskandar share wide reaching normals with strong Active Skills and no real downsides. They aren't slow, they also are very stable in movement, and very strong. The big difference is that their big money move attacks come out later than Darius's C3 and thus are easier to interrupt.
Medusa does have some janky movement issues, but her claim to fame here is being the single easiest servant to trigger Rush attacks with that I've seen. Rush attacks are vital for killing boss servants fast(and clearing many bonus missions). Couple this with her great crowd clearing Active Skills and she rounds out the highest tier.

A Tier: Charlemagne, Gawain, Altera, Lu Bu, Nero, Nameless/Emiya/Archer, Karl the Great/Rex Magnus, Karna, Scathach, Francis Drake
Definitely the most packed tier, A Tier is where all the servants who are Really Good(most of them, it's a well balanced game) but just don't have that edge that drives them over the top go.
I'm sure you'll notice that every Saber that isn't Artoria is in A rank. Sabers are just generally strong in this. Nero is easily the worst of them and she's still Very Good. Charlie is a bit better than the others, but not enough better to go up to EX.
Nameless is alllllmost good enough to be EX Tier, frankly. But he just lacks that one big holy shit standout thing to put him up there.
Karl the Great is naturally super strong, but is just a bit slow without having the advantages Darius does to make up for it. He does however have the Single Most Extra As Hell NP Attack In The Game.
Lu Bu and Karna have similar strengths, lots of area covered and lots of damage output. Karna has worse ASes but Lu Bu is slower so it's pretty even.
Scathach and Drake are masters of jank, with attacks that just keep them moving all the time everywhere, but manage to make it work by having a good enough area on their attacks that they don't let up on the damage even while whirling about everywhere. Very fun to play as~

B Tier:  Tamamo no Mae, Robin Hood, Arjuna, Gilgamesh, Cu Chulain, Li Shuwen, Lancelot
This is where the servants who aren't bad but take some understanding of their gimmicks to make them work go. All the B servants definately have some weakspots but can still be very good if you play to their strengths.
Tamamo and Robin are here for the same reason. Bad normals but amazing ASes. Tamamo can wreck entire fields and lock down aggressors with her skills while Robin also has good area damage and a very easy time starting Rush attacks. But their lackluster normal attacks make them just too meh for A Tier.
Arjuna is the Absolute King of Jank. His attacks take him all over the place and he's not all that great at connecting with them. Also his Rush animation is slower than other servants so he seems to do notably less damage with a Rush attack when you can trigger one.
Yeah, Gilgamesh is down in B. The reason? The startup on all his attacks is Slow As Balls. He is so easy to interrupt. Really he wants to fight at a medium range, starting his attacks on lone enemies on the edge of a crowd and then firing his charge attacks into the crowd itself for maximum results...but the enemy has no desire to let him play at that range sooooo...rip his gameplan.
Cu is basically just Scathach minus. He's still good but just a bit worse all around then everybody in the A Tier.
Lancelot has a similar issue, just being not as impressive as the other Berserkers. However he has the single most fun Active Skill in the game: Mimicry. He just transforms into a random other servant on the map, getting their entire moveset(including their Active Skills) for a short period. He may be B Tier for power, but he's EX for fun~
Li Shuwen, the sole Assassin in the game(...really guys? You couldn't add a single Hassan or Carmilla or Kojiro or anyone like that?), is mostly here for the very short range on his attacks and his Active Skills being....eh. In particular his one Close Range AS(which is teh Assassin class specialty...which he only has one of...) has a "fun" feature where it likes to act like you're aiming litterally anywhere other than where you are aiming. Awesome!

C Tier: Archimedes, Gilles de Rais, Elizabeth Bathory, Astolfo
So the casters that aren't Tamomo are basically just bad. Gilles is easily the best of this Tier with his Active Skills being fairly strong, but his normals are super meh and he's not quick at all. Archimedes is basically just worse across the board. I'm all kinds of Not Impressd with the supposed Great Scholar.
Elizabeth is basically Cu-. She's ~okay~ at everything with only one real standout and that's her one HP draining Active Skill. Too bad healing is super plentiful in this game so it doesn't really mean that much.
Astolfo is...the Dan Hibiki of the game. Comedy Option supreme. Normals are sketchy, ASes are equally sketchy, but he's adorable so we forgive everything and give him the honorary EX in our hearts that he deserves.

Jeanne Tier: Jeanne d'Arc.
Let's talk about Jeanne. She's got a great normal moveset, including probably the best C4 attack in the game with its immense range and spread and being multihit. Her Active Skills are all fairly strong, if a bit bad at starting Rush attacks, and even her close range ones cover a nice amount of ground. So why is she in her own special tier of failure as the worst character in the game? Because using her Noble Phantasm, La Pucelle, kills herself. Yeah. Now, there is an Install Skill you can use to give her a shot of Auto-Life so she revives afterwards! But even that means 1/map at most. Also the Drive Skill she can use in her Moon Drive(a sort of mini-NP?) damages herself. Not too badly but still there.
So why is this still so bad if both the NP and the Drive Skill are mitigatable? Because your map ranking includes a Damage Taken category. And her self damage counts against that. So use her Drive Skill a couple times, or her NP even ONCE and you can kiss that EX rank(needed for unlocking new Mystic Codes) gooooood fucking bye. "Oh Lord I offer this EX rank up to you" *BOOM*

So this has been Saika's Rant About A Musou Game. Haven't done one in a very long while. Hope it wasn't too boring or made no sense to anyone who hasn't played the game~