Author Topic: What games are you playing 2019?  (Read 42906 times)

VySaika

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #150 on: June 02, 2019, 03:42:16 PM »
After playing a few more maps as him, Arjuna is worse than I thought he was and gets dropped to C. God dammit Arjuna. How are you this bad.
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Luther Lansfeld

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #151 on: June 02, 2019, 04:37:39 PM »
Wild Arms 4 - Decided to pick up a short, breezy game after the slog of FE4. So far I’ve done up to Wunderwelten and defeated Belial. Most recent event is running into Gawn. What a douchebag. He needs to be punched in the face for stealing food from children.  We’ve transitioned from rolling my eyes at Arnaud to rolling my eyes at Gawn. The game is still great. I’m really enjoying the bosses and the speedy pace of gameplay and plot. It is of course very cheesy, because Wild Arms.

FEF Conquest - Nothin’ too fancy, just a new Hard mode run. The degree to which this game’s gameplay is better than Genealogy is truly amazing. I think I’ve completed the first ten maps in the time it would take me to complete 1.5 maps in FE4, and there are way fewer turns that you spend not engaging the enemy. This is why I am anti-nostalgia, once and forever.

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Dhyerwolf

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #152 on: June 04, 2019, 03:06:41 AM »
FF 7- Beat this a few weeks ago. Good reminder on why it's such an iconic game. The setup of disk 1 works incredibly well, and the game is bursting with iconic scenes, mini games (iconic doesn't mean good though!), music and locations. If the battle system wasn't a complete steamroll it would be a great improvement. They have just made HP Plus a materia you found in a dungeon that way you'd really have to grind it to make it very effective.

Xenogears- Up to Zeboim. The plot is really well structured in these sections!

FF 5- Starting this, up to Karnak
...into the nightfall.

Luther Lansfeld

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #153 on: June 07, 2019, 06:12:46 AM »
4 Dudes. 1 Car. -

Uh, so it took like two hours of updates to actually START the game?

Uh, so this game has like no plot and bad gameplay? What is even the fucking poi-

*discovers the ability to aim the camera directly at Gladiolus's ass as he pushes the car*

Ooooh I get it.

The only bit of plot/character development we get is the tension between Noctis and his dad, and poof he's gone. These three other dudes... who are they ? What do they stand for (besides yaoi)?
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MysticLord

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #154 on: June 10, 2019, 11:36:03 PM »
I'm currently playing SaGa Frontier, a game for which I made an editor. I came here to make a thread (I heard there are some SaGa fans here) for it but it appears I can't make threads yet so if someone could rectify that, I would appreciate it.

Editor is here, download the version with the largest number:
https://bitbucket.org/MysticLord/snakeoil/downloads/

Source code:
https://bitbucket.org/MysticLord/snakeoil/src

Readme.txt:
https://bitbucket.org/MysticLord/snakeoil/src/default/readme.txt

Waza, the SF data project is here (necessary to understand some of the editors, like the skill editor):
https://bitbucket.org/MysticLord/waza/src/default/
« Last Edit: June 11, 2019, 07:30:20 PM by MysticLord »

Lord Ephraim

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #155 on: June 11, 2019, 08:38:16 AM »
Super Robot Wars V:  Why didn't anybody tell me these got English language support.  Anyways starting with V first over T.

Complete forgot how absurdly dumb these games are.  The game first starts off in a ravaged Earth where all the wars from the various series completely wiped out the sea and humanity's last hope is a battleship designed to look like a World War II navy vessal.  Then stuff happens and Crossbone Gundam and Gundam 00 is like "can we be in this game but have no plot relevance" and it's k.  Then they remember to throw in Getter and Mazinger so here have them too with no explanation on how they got here.  Then wormholes open up and now we're allies with a corporate president that has a mecha combine with a train.  So far we're lacking in half naked female mecha fanservice so they put Cross Ange in the game.  Yuck.  At least 7 female characters already want to bang Arthrun, who happens to show up at the perfect time when Cross Ange is introduced.

Apparently T has Cowboy Bebop.  It is a mecha show now.  Can't wait for Ein to pilot a mobile suit.

SnowFire

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #156 on: June 12, 2019, 06:20:54 PM »
So you know that new Persona game?  The one with the new female character?  No not P5 Royal, that's not out yet and doesn't look like that interesting an addition anyway.  No not Q2 New Cinema Labyrinth either.  No, I'm using my replacement PS Vita to finally catch up to the DL circa 2009…  for some blistering new 2011 action...

Persona 4 Golden

First, the important thing: When doing a remake, why on earth would you downplay one of the *best* things about the original in the battle theme?  I mean, sure, it's time to make history yeah is okay and reasonably catchy, but it's up against tough competition.  This isn't P5 where getting player advantage ambushes is common, either (which does still play Reach out to the Truth).

Anyway, I figure my tolerance for creepy social links where people talk to themselves about their problems then credit a silent main for fixing everything about their lives was deep enough these days to trudge through.  (No, I never played the PS2 version.)  And hey, the localization is legit very good.  For the most part -Marie's fsteak reference is a wee bit forced.

Currently on Kanji's dungeon.  I beat Shadow Yukiko at L12 on Our Hero, L11 on Yosuke/Chie.  Hard difficulty.  Quite the slugfest, that - Terror Voice -> Shivering Rondo is a OHKO and she has insane HP in Golden to compensate for her new ice weakness, so if you take too long, she will run you out of fear healing / revival or will get lucky on Double Fang crits.  Scary fight, I had no revival / fear healing left and Yosuke was dead as I won.

Thoughts compared to P5:
* Shuffle Time is a way smoother method for getting new Personas than shadow negotiation from P2/P5, which is slow and dumb.  It rewards winning efficiently and doesn't have a swingy "roll a die and find out if the battle is over for free or if you just gave up a key AOA."  idk why they went back to the old dumb method in P5.

* Related to the above, since you're not directly fighting / recruiting the same entities you get as Personas a la Pokemon, the game *should* be more sane to balance, since having a really busted enemy doesn't mean you can just recruit it and then have a really busted main character Persona.   (Okay, sure, P2/P5 has the occasional unrecruitable random enemy, but it's not common.)  Whether it'll actually take advantage of that, who knows, but I prefer the flavor anyway - having a whole ton of Shadows lying around that all claim to be clones of Queen Titania or whatever is a little strange, while having just a bunch of evil wizards wandering around is fine.

* Skipping Gun elemental is good by me.  If you must have a 2nd flavor of physical, don't give the entire party access to it for free, it's not really an interesting distinction then.  (Like, if ONLY Haru/Naoto had it, then it'd be interesting.)  Loss of Nuclear/Psi elemental is an either/or thing, but probably fine; too many elements tends to overcentralize the Wild Card ability's flexibility more than it already is.

* Bland rando-dungeons is quite a step back after being spoiled by P5's amazing dungeon design, but eh, originally on a PS2, I get it.

* The Hierophant SL is very absent in both early P5 & early P4 - but this is because the relationship is rather hostile at first in P5 to explain it.  You're supposed to like & sympathize with P4 Dojima, though.  Now, police officers legit do work crazy hours in real life sometimes, which leads to sky-high divorce rates for cops and such, but seriously, he's around crazy rarely at the start, to the point that it transitions from "harried overworked dad doing what he can" to "child neglect" a little.  Is there some kind of a crime wave going on in this sleepy small town?

Other thoughts:
* Marie, the new Golden character, seems like crystallized Japanese shut-in fanservice - extreme tsundere for no reason, into the main character, and somehow so clueless that even telling her even basic stuff counts as some amazing sensei lesson about life.  I just might have to date her to annoy Sopko and see how deep this nonsense goes.

* Speaking of mocking Sopko, I know he said that he thought the game should have played up  the possibility that Yosuke was the killer a bit more.  I'm not seeing it; Shadows are all extreme oversharers bent on embarrassing their normal selves as best I can tell, so if Yosuke used normal mortal means to kill Saki, you'd think his Shadow would be eager to guilt-trip him.

* As another silly bit of trivia: if you start Marie's social link when it's raining outside, it's mysteriously not raining anymore.  Some might say this is clearly a budget issue where there is only one version of the scene, but cultured people realize it means that Marie can control the weather, and is just cruelly not using that power to make it never rain.

* I really like that there's only ambient sounds and no music for when it rains.  Really makes you notice it and be properly scared.

* After Sopko said that P4 Golden eliminated most of the remaining vestiges of Challenge, I actually started on Very Hard (blind).  I sadly had to give that playthrough up and restart because the first dungeon is just that stupid.  Knowing SMT difficulty curves, it's probably fine later, but while the bosses are quite beatable, the randoms post-Yukiko's Knight (Floor 6 & beyond) are just insane; when you're level 5-6, L13+ randoms have some level difference crazy damage modifier such that Magical Magus's hysterical slap will flat OHKO anybody barring Yu with a phys-resist Persona, and yes, that's with getting lucky and having the HP +50 Gentleman's Tux on both Yu & Yosuke.  Very Hard removes the "retry from start of floor" option and you have punishingly little money so you can't exactly spam Goho-Ms.  It makes roll-the-dice failures like "whoops both Chie & Yosuke missed the final shot on this charged up Magus, now Maragi deals 200 damage to the team" very throw-the-controller.  At the time I assumed that there were 10 floors to Yukiko's castle (midboss on Floor 5, right?) so getting to the top seemed imposing and frustrating, but probably best for sanity's sake to give it up anyway.  Plus no money seems like a less *fun* way to play the game anyway, it means you can't experiment or spend up to equip reserve party members or fuse fun Personas from the Compendium.

* For a fitting name, I went with "Ultra Narakumi" over rivals like "Pope Narakumi" or "Master Narakumi".  Seeing the Good Omens miniseries makes me consider going with "Warlock Narakumi" though.  Ah well. 

* I started the Jester SL with comic relief sidekick Adachi, which I understand to be new to P4G.  Uh..  I dunno how this one is gonna work.  Dangerous territory here game.  We'll see!
« Last Edit: June 12, 2019, 06:29:05 PM by SnowFire »

Tide

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #157 on: June 12, 2019, 11:22:39 PM »
IIRC Dojima doesn't even appear as a SLink until you solved the mystery for the month. So the worse you are at doing your job, the harder he's working to crack a case of missing persons that would basically be impossible. It's a nice little touch, but he's around a lot more often if you are clearing dungeons in 1 day.

Also - is this your first time playing P4? I thought you had already played it on PS2 so some of this stuff shouldn't be that surprising?
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SnowFire

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #158 on: June 12, 2019, 11:50:38 PM »
(No, I never played the PS2 version.) 

I mean.  I did spoil myself on P4 back in the day via watching some YouTube videos of the plot (nicely skipping the S Links which I'm generally leery of), and I know the soundtrack of course.  But you'll note I never voted on Persona 4 outside Nyarlie's Dungeon (wherein everybody votes everything).

Anyway that sounds right, for the first dungeon Dojima is basically never ever around and Nanako is being raised by a television.  Which is accidentally extremely on-theme, granted.

(One other side comment as someone for whom a lot of the game is pre-spoiled: I respect P4 not spoiling itself by not giving names to certain shady people, like that gas station attendant telling people about the Midnight Channel when it rains, or the random other student who propositions Yukiko out of the blue.  In Suikoden games, if you talk to the random store attendant and they have a portrait while everybody else doesn't, there's some inherent meta-spoiling going on here, which sure whatever in Suikoden, but bad in a mystery-themed game.)

One bit of plot weirdness: why the hell do silhouettes of future victims show up on the Midnight Channel?  I get that once people are forcibly tossed in to the Metaverse their Shadow gets to star on the Midnight Channel, but silhouettes showing up early makes no damn sense.  (Answer: It gives Our Heroes an excuse to interact with Kanji before he disappears I guess?!  That's a narrative reason, though, not an in-universe one.)

Tide

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #159 on: June 13, 2019, 02:39:23 PM »
Ah, okay. I skipped over that line apparently. P4G balances out a few things, adds a few things and steps back on a couple of others. One of the key things that strips the challenges are the Golden Hand encounters. I'm sure you've seen one already but if you kill these dudes, they drop an insane amount of EXP. So much so that the routes in Speedruns basically avoid fighting anything else and just hunt Gold Hands of that dungeon.

The New SL don't really add much. Marie is pretty bad yes. Adachi is amusing but ultimately doesn't do much. You do get an option of going for a bad bad end though if you max out that S.Link. Kind of cool since they wrote an entire scenario for it, but it doesn't reveal much else about him (and kinda makes the end deduction easier really; that is, if it was difficult in the first place).

I think the reason for why the silhouettes are shown is later explained. I don't remember if it was a plot point or if you had to find some NPC to explain it. If you're interested, I can spoiler tag it since this is one of the few things you don't know about.
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Hunter Sopko

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #160 on: June 15, 2019, 03:38:39 PM »
* Speaking of mocking Sopko, I know he said that he thought the game should have played up  the possibility that Yosuke was the killer a bit more.  I'm not seeing it; Shadows are all extreme oversharers bent on embarrassing their normal selves as best I can tell, so if Yosuke used normal mortal means to kill Saki, you'd think his Shadow would be eager to guilt-trip him.

Yukiko. Yukiko was the killer early in production.Don't think I ever pitched the theory it was Yosuke.

DragonKnight Zero

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #161 on: June 18, 2019, 07:30:34 AM »
Atelier Ayesha:

  I've finished the first playthrough long ago; just haven't gotten around to putting my thoughts down here.  Got around half of the optional fights and didn't worry overmuch about the others.  Went for an ending to unlock the Extras; can try for the fights I skipped on the next go-around with more knowledge of the alchemy system.  Triggered all but one of the character specific endings.
  With two game months to go, finally experimented some more with alchemy and created a higher capacity handbasket.  That would have been nice for all those optional fights earlier.  Money got tight at the end given my spending habits and the delivery jobs drying up.  Rolled over the calendar at the workshop just because.
  Really liked this game.  Liked playing around with alchemy.  The time limit gives weight to my choices and it feels generous enough for some flexibility.  Combat sometimes felt like a chore; the small number of character skills don't do a lot for variety.  Would have enjoyed the core gameplay even if Keithgriff had been the main character; he's got more of that main character persona.  Of course, with a more conventional main character, the game wouldn't have attracted my attention as much.  Ayesha is one of the least badass leads I've encountered and I wouldn't have it any other way.  Already had enough badasses and wannabe badasses so I was ready for a change of pace. 

Sierra

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #162 on: June 23, 2019, 07:59:20 PM »
Playing Bloodstained. Is ver. gut. Will ramble more in detail at some point but posting right now mostly because I have no idea where to go. Have run out of new places double jump can get me and now just have a wide array of "need additional movement upgrade to bypass this" spots all over the map. Last boss I beat was in the library-ish tower.

Cmdr_King

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #163 on: June 25, 2019, 02:44:09 AM »
Octopath Traveler- God is dead, so the RPG is complete.

There is just... a lot to talk about in this game and I should really really have made an earlier post to wrap up each individual story honestly but I think I can remember those with some light reference to LPs or something.  I need to get down some thoughts I"m having on the overall way it fits together.  Which is... much better than I thought it would before playing the game, when I became profoundly disappointed it wasn't a SaGa Frontier-esque collection of smaller games with a nice bonus boss.

So to my surprise they tie up the lore and the gameplay in a way.  13 gods is pretty mythological, but the repeated idea is that the other twelve had to team up to seal Galdera right?  Well... the eight travelers each fall under the domain of a separate god, which is a hard thing to make happen by accident.  But of course, it wasn't accident in its way.
Ophelia, Cyrus, Olberic, and Primrose are all pulled into the plot as casualties of Lyblac's agents.  Tressa, Alfyn, and H'aanit are all in at one level or another chasing after Graham Crossford, her biggest victim.  Therion falls inbetween, trying to clean up another Lyblac-created mess.  So aside from the usual "villain created their heroes" thing, there's still a divine spark there: these are Champions, brought together to replicate the tales of old, embodying the 12 gods as benign counterpart to Galdera's possession of Kit.

But considering how reliably the game is topical, it's got another layer.  Everyone has things only they can do, and the underlying ills of society only become clear and something you can tackle together by fighting the battles in front of you first.
You're not just the hero of your own story, your story is key to weaving together the fabric of a better society.
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DragonKnight Zero

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #164 on: June 29, 2019, 08:41:09 AM »
Going retro for this segment.

  Made progress in my FF4 file beating Bahamut and the Giant.  Bahamut is more nerve wracking than difficult.  I did clean out the fixed Behemoths and warp out to rest before coming back in to challenge him.  It's still quite a trek with time consuming fights though and messing up at the boss can cost 20-30 minutes of progress.  Got it on the first try, thankfully.

  Had a Thunder claw on Edge for Giant randoms.  As unintuitive as it is to do so, it boosts his damage a lot there.  The machine weakness makes up for the significant drop in listed attack power.  Giant takes a while to actually complete since I steal 99 Alerts while I have that chance (spread out over multiple fights for sanity).  No D. Machines which suits me fine.  They are neither dragon or machine as far as hitting racial weakness goes.
  I have fought the Elements boss honestly in the past.  This time around, I don't try to play fair and destroy Milon with Reflected spells.  Rydia tosses out a Bio early before Elements HP drops below 40000.  Don't use Slow at all (intentional)  Totally dominated.  Milon either hit Imaged people or Cecil or Fusoya who have Priest hats and thus take only about 150 thanks to Undead resistance.  CPU is a joke as I remember to Slow the Attack orb.

Seiken Densetsu 3

  Inspired enough by recent releases, I go track this down after having not played it in a very long time.  Mostly stick to a direct path with the occasional tactical retreat if I feel I'm getting too beat up early or have rotten luck with traps.  I run with a Kevin, Riesz, Charlotte team to have an easy trip.  Volcano nearly drained me of resources.  Since I'm not battling every formation in a region, my levels are a lot lower than they were in the past.  Used to be right at 18 after the volcano.  This time, the party was only at 15 on completion.  Did the snowfield and was still 1000 EXP short of the first class change after returning to Elrand.
  in hindsight, really should have grinded to 21 for Lugar so that Riesz could have Power Down.  Still won but that was an unnecessary risk.  Another side effect of not fighting as much is that I ran short of cash for equipment upgrades after the first God Beast.  And it would have been earlier except I forgot about the new equipment shops after the Holy Land visit.  Flammie Drum in hand, the path is open to Flammie glitch Kevin's attack into broken territory.

SnowFire

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #165 on: July 01, 2019, 02:55:39 PM »
Persona 4 Golden

Movin' along, thanks to long plane flights.

* Shadow Kanji: Actually wiped me on my first try.  One of the support (Tough Guy I think) got Tarukaja'd then Rampage'd for massive physical multitarget damage which was extremely horrible.  Second try was a win though, both with knowin the weaknesses to clear the support faster plus better luck on the support not using Red Wall / Blue Wall to stall with.  Once the support is dead it's mostly clear sailing, but good fight otherwise.

* Shadow Rise: Is awful.

* Shadow Teddie: Well that's some HP bar alright, but ultimately a single-acting opponent who announces all their ice attacks to let Yukiko defend and Nihil Hand being completely nulled by guard is not really gonna threaten.  Bosses need to learn and accept that they are going to spending most of their turns under Tarunda, and need some way to threaten regardless.
(Side comment: Yukiko didn't get an early Divine Grace & Mudo in P4 vanilla?  Well that might make things trickier, although maybe just more expensive if you're stuck using Value Medicine healing rather than Divine Grace boosted Media.)

* Shadow Mitsuo: Actually kinda dangerous.  While if Shadow Teddie gets a Heat Wave crit he mostly just wastes the One More with Spirit Drain, Mitsuo follows up weakness-hitting MT magic with a fuck-off Megido, and he double-acts and seems to like hitting the weakness of someone downed again, so you better hope you were full-healed before and he was Tarunda'd if you want so survive that combo.  He's got lots of MT element damage so tricky to play around all of it unless you're willing to grow & huff a ton of Paprika for Walls, which will also slow down your kill and leave you open to status hax losses, so choose your poison.  I lose again the first time, although definitely due to SMT bullshit: during the first rebuilding phase, he Stagnant Airs -> Evil Smile -> MY ENTIRE TEAM GETS FEARED.  Normally, similar to chain revival, you can use chain status-healing with free status heals + item status heals + Yukiko's Amrita, but nope, all 4 of my team passed their turn shivering in fear, followed by Ghastly Wail for a total party kill.  If I'd known this was coming, I actually did have a Yatagarsu Persona with Null Fear for Yu, but lesson learned.  Realizing I'd want to kick my offense into gear some, went downstairs, found another lucky hand, and got Yukiko Mediarama which made my defensive game notably more efficient.  2nd try went much better; I did have to hack through 3-4x Mitsuo the Heros, but this time the Stagnant Air -> Evil Smile combo never came out, so there we go.


Minor whining: I ended up not liking Futaba's extreme cheatiness in P5, and I dunno if I'm a fan of Rise's upgrades in P4G either, suspect I would have liked P4 vanilla's version more.  Definitely not gonna push her S. Link too fast so she doesn't start dropping random buffs on everyone, but you can't stop her from occasionally boosting All-Out Attacks, which..  they're already cool and iconic, you don't need to make them take longer, or suggest a fun cool chaotic rumble is being directed by your distant cheerleader or whatever.  Boo hiss.


Social Links: Just as I tried not to rant again about FE Fates Conquest's plot, I'll try not to rant too much here.  To be sure, plenty of these are inoffensive and well-written.  However, I'll make one representative rant, and Yumi Ozawa of the drama club wins the award for SF rant inspiring S. Link so far. A few disclaimers first:

* There is a grand tradition of convenient coincidences to get the player to where the plot is.  What are the odds that Zack's buddy fell into the exact church that his girlfriend was chillin' at, etc.
* The "style" of Persona 4 is to almost always be watching through Hero/Yu's eyes, with villain-cam scenes extremely rare, so Yu needs to directly be at any event (or watch it on TV). 

Okay, sure.  But Yumi's plot is basically that her separated dad is dying (whom she hates) and her mom is trying to arrange a family reconciliation with him, while Yumi would be happy to let him die in solitude .  Heavy stuff.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  However the way they integrate Our Hero into this is *awful* lazy writing so far.  He just straight-up follows Yumi over to the hospital uninvited and eavesdrops on super-personal shit involving Yumi's family.  Wince.  And then gets caught without Yumi having much of a reaction to the random guy from drama club doing this (this happens early in the Social Link, so it's not like her long-time boyfriend did this).  No.  If you must, have Yumi explicitly invite Our Hero along to the hospital because (insert BS justification here, needs emotional support, needs a scooter driver, idk).  Or have Hero show up at the neighboring hospital room for a legit but coincidental reason, there to pick up his cold medicine or something.  Or massively delay this event in the S. Link (probably not feasible).  But yikes, this is super-awkward yet the narrative refuses to recognize it.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2019, 05:42:33 PM by SnowFire »

Dhyerwolf

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #166 on: July 01, 2019, 11:12:23 PM »
Xenogears- Babel Tower beaten (as well as the next segment). Had to look at a youtube video to get the timing for the first room down (which means that it was a pain in the ass since I normally use my Vita on the metro). Will be lowering my score for the game 1 point just for that dungeon. Also, one of the enemies in Shevat Corridor (some sort of Wels?) was really nasty. Citan level speed, have a buff that gives them damage than can KO any PC if the damage focuses (And doesn't need much focus to kill Maria). HP isn't great, but they have enough evade to evade deathblows so you'll see some nastiness occasionally.

FF 8- Upon replay, it's very clear that there's no way a halfway respectable organization would have allowed Zell (or Selphie) to become SeeDs. If Zell qualified as passing solely by virtue of being attached to Squall, I'd hate to see whoever failed.

FF 6- Solely grinding towards the end. Only 3 dungeons (Ebot, Fanatic, Cyan's Dream) left besides the final dungeon. Seem to be a lot higher than the stat topic level wise. My main party (AKA: the only one I really run) is around 42-43. Minimal switching and no Moogle Charm use.
...into the nightfall.

Cmdr_King

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #167 on: July 02, 2019, 12:29:26 AM »
Every enemy in that dungeon is an extreme gimmick to account for being locked to Maria and one of two PCs you originally picked for a gear dungeon.  That one’s deal is it only powers up if alone, so Maria’s MT damage makes them way safer.
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SnowFire

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #168 on: July 02, 2019, 04:25:31 PM »
Dhyer: FF6's XP curve doesn't really change much post-level 30.  Checking, it's like ~8k XP to go from level 30->31 and 13k XP to go from level 40->41.  Not really THAT different, so if you focus the same characters, it's pretty easy to hit L42 pre-Kefka's Tower.  Of course, the way Kefka's Tower works strongly encourages at least some party rotation & XP spreading, which will move things a lot closer to "around L40 for everyone."  (Definitely a good justification to let Terra/Celes grab Fire3 / Ice3 even if forced to only the reasonable-level automatic spells learnt, though.)

Lady Door

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #169 on: July 02, 2019, 10:36:10 PM »
Super Mario Odyssey, because I can. Also known as the game that makes it painfully obvious I haven't played a game with 360 camera control in literal decades.

My need to 100% games with achievements is warring with my desire to avoid tedium. Well, yeah, I could spend the next hour scouring this level for the last 3 purple coins, orrrrr I could go play something else. I could look it up online but what's the point of that? I like Talkatoo giving you the name of the quest without any further detail because it makes me think the devs spent a little bit of time naming the 500+ achievements since they do turn out to be related to the location or activity required to get them.

Otherwise I'm playing the non-raiding lines of Pokemon Go and Harry Potter: Wizards Unlimited Unite, because I am a scrub that has gone full casual. Hunting shinies is way more fun than min-maxing even though every time I catch Pokemon I have to decide if they're worth keeping even though 90% of them have no use in battle and I have yet to use my TM scrolls because I'm waiting for the right one and
« Last Edit: July 03, 2019, 12:04:10 AM by Lady Door »
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Dhyerwolf

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #170 on: July 03, 2019, 02:49:05 AM »
Xenogears- Lol Shakhan. I mean, Vierge is nasty as hell, but Shakhan could have spent at least one turn trying to attack. I also feel like I need a timeline for Aveh. When exactly was Sigurd training at Solaris and how did he even get there?

Also, grah Margie AI. Use Elly to put someone to sleep, Margie wakes them up with a worthless 1 MT Damage attack!
...into the nightfall.

Lord Ephraim

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #171 on: July 05, 2019, 08:58:45 AM »
Bloodstained Ritual of the Night:

I felt like the developers looked back on the kickstarter disaster of Mighty No. 9 and realized that their goal is just to make a Metroidvania and make it good.  Nothing fancy.  That they did.  Almost too safe.  A lot of abilities, movesets, castle aethetics, powerups, and even boss design is straight up ripped out of Symphony of the Night and Aria/Dawn of Sorrow.  If you love those games then this game is great as the physics engine and controls are the best of the bunch.   Shards or "souls", your special abilities, are pretty well rounded and not a lot of garbage with one or two good ones.  Weapon attributes are important now since you can look at enemy resistantes and weaknesses for proper exploitation.
Some bad things though.  The game is incredibly buggy.  Items get stuck in the walls,  lots of menu lag,  one boss turns the game into a powerpoint presentation, and too much loading inbetween screen transtions.  The last one I heard is much better in the PC version, but I went with the PS4 one since there was a physical release.  I like the cryptic progression path but the game will spoil you where to go next just by talking to the shop lady.  Enough, I want to screw around and find my own way thank you.
However the worst part of the game is a kickstarter backer got to design an enemy in the game and made it a large disembodied dog head.  Not like a evil looking dog, nope just a large doberman head.  Not cool.

Captain K

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #172 on: July 07, 2019, 03:33:46 AM »
So I found this Valkyrie Profile mobile game called Valkyrie Anatomia. It's a gacha game with all that entails. But damned if they didn't outright nail the aesthetics of VP1. The hand-colored art, the dour music, and the stories. Oh wow, the stories. VP2 had a lot of ball drops, but the biggest one was how the focus was no longer on the Einherjar. This game brings back the heart-wrenching, tear-jerking, punchyouinthenuts death stories, and it's wonderful. 
 
In addition to story characters, I got Frei and Mystina. They made Frei badass. She floats in the air like Freya and does aerial martial arts. 
 
Don't like what they did to PWS, but it does cut down on animation time I guess.

Dark Holy Elf

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #173 on: July 07, 2019, 04:17:54 PM »
Haven't had regular internet in a bit, and have been very busy with life things before then, so plenty of time to play games and think about them, not much time to post... until now!


Suikoden 2 - Finished a run of this where I counted up all the lines. Science!

Suikoden 2 is one of those games I tend to think of as one of the great video game stories. It’s not my singular favourite even in its own series (that’d be 5), but it’s still pretty darn good. Playing through the game again (for the fourth time in the last two decades) and reflecting on it, here are some of the things I think it does very well:

1. Very effective use of dialog to develop its characters.

It’s funny, because Suikoden 2 has, on one level, terrible dialog, thanks to the translation. Gratuitous punctuation marks everywhere, poor word choice, misattributed lines, etc. But where it matters, the game shines through. With Jowy, for instance, the game shows rapidly and subtly that he has intelligent and resourceful, that he’s willing to do some morally questionable things to attain his ends (e.g. lighting the fire in the mercenary fort), that he feels he doesn’t belong (to his family, his country, etc.), that he feels a strong desire to (over)protect those he loves regardless of their wishes, from Riou at the start of the game to the entire nations of Highland and Jowston later. Sometimes it’s even through lack of dialog; his ellipsis-filled pause at the Jowston Council scene certainly communicates his feelings on what he witnesses there. None of this is rubbed in your face, and a lot of the characterization is relatively subtle if you aren’t watching for it, but it’s remarkable how on a replay pretty much every action the character takes is amply foreshadowed by his earlygame characterization.

I don’t think any other single character in the game is this effective overall, but certainly the same broad strokes apply to other characters, mainly Shu and Nanami, who again receive plenty of consistent characterization which informs their choices later. Viktor, Flik, and Apple aren’t as major players, but again you get a strong sense of them. Luca Blight, though he does occasionally veer a bit into cartoonish (in spite of the praise of the game’s subtly effective character work above), is certainly overall effective and memorable; he makes sense in his own twisted way, as do the ways other characters react to him. And so on. All of this combines to make the plot flow more smoothly, and make the characters fan and interesting to watch even on replays.

2. A good, coherent setting which connects to the plot, characters, and themes of the game

This is of course a strength of the series generally (although it must be noted that 1 is not nearly as good at it… 2 really got the balled rolling). Jowston is a patchwork of city-states which don’t really see eye to eye, often suspicious of each other. Highland is fanatical and deeply patriarchal (they “sacrifice” their queen for fortune in battle!). And despite the temptation to paint any one nation as just good or bad (and there’s a lot of bad in Highland), the game goes to great lengths to show that things are complicated. South Window is kind but weak. Matilda prizes honour but is very self-serving about the way it does so. Tinto is industrious and pragmatic; quick to abandon its allies as Highland invades but equally quick to admit that doing so was a mistake and sending help once the Dunan Army does a favour for them. Through Annabelle’s competence and good nature we form a naturally high opinion of Muse, but the game acknowledges that its strength is partly built on the slimy actions of her predecessor. And Highland… as mentioned, it’s an unpleasant, patriarchal mess of a nation, doubly so as we realize that one of the most unpleasant, bloodthirsty true runes is at its core. But damned if the game doesn’t also sell you on how its ideology can be seductive; Jowy seeks to harness it to do good while also minimizing the bad. And you understand how the likes of Seed and Culgan can come to love the place as their home that they have always served, and how good people can be caught in its machinery.


My main knocks on the game are the same as always. One, silent mains suck. The plot really wants to draw a contrast between Riou and Jowy, but when Riou is an poorly-characterised player stand-in, it doesn’t work as effectively as it could. The Peace Conference scene is a hell of an effective scene just because of the gutpunch it represents and how it reframes the rest of the game. But it could have been even better if Riou had been able to articulate his own beliefs there, or the next time they met, and make the stakes of the conflict clear. The game tries to work around this issue by giving Nanami a lot of the dialog that Riou might otherwise have, but Nanami is her own person with her own ideas (in particular, she hates any conflict with Jowy while Riou appears sees it as sadly necessary, and a talking Riou would have done great service to this difference).

Two, far too much of the story is driven by men. Nanami has the most lines, but to a large extent she’s an observer, only rarely shaping events. Apple is largely in the story to be replaced by the thoroughly more competent Shu and then carry out the more menial parts of the strategist’s role. Jillia and Pilika are largely characters that things happen to, and at best we get their opinions on them afterward. Otherwise, this is the story of Riou and Jowy, of Shu and Luca and Leon, of Viktor and Flik. It’s a place where the game shows its age; I would like to think that the game would have a few more major female players and voices if it were made today, or at least that there’d be more of an outcry about this issue (it feels like it went virtually unnoticed when the game was new).

But it’s a great yarn overall, no question.


I have less to say about the rest of the game, obviously. The gameplay is quietly competent, which is better than I would say for Suikoden 4 onwards and certainly “good enough” considering the game’s other strengths, though not something I’d ever play the game for in and of itself. Enemies have enough teeth to be worth paying attention to and the rune system is pretty fun. The soundtrack is solid. I’m not a huge fan of the game’s sprite style but it does some great work with their animation details at times. Really, though, the rest of the package just rounds the game out in a nice way, leaving you with a very overall satisfying product. I was never the game’s number one fan back in the day (I’ve always preferred Suikoden 3), but it’s a game I respect a lot, and a game that has aged very well despite its obvious flaws.

8/10


Paper Mario 2 - Played through and beat this.

Gameplaywise it’s really rather shockingly similar to the first game. HP/FP/BP and the way you choose your levelups, the badge system, the partners (the first two partners are even the same first two from PM1 with a new coat of paint), jump/hammer and the way each upgrades, the enemy design... I’ve seen all this before!). There are just enough differences to keep me interested (the fact that partners take damage, and the action order of Mario and the partner determining who gets targeted more makes for some interesting decisions at least), but overall it’s more of the same. And that’s not bad considering PM’s gameplay was always a strong point in its favour.

There are a lot of badges which raise your damage, and naturally I used as many as I could. I feel like the game would be a lot harder if you didn’t; there were so many random formations (not to mention bosses who summon support) which I could take out in one round because of my power-twinking and I often feel like if I couldn’t I would have a bad time. As is none of the bosses killed me, though a few (Chapter 1 boss, Chapter 7 boss, and the final) came reasonably close. (Chapter 2 and 6 bosses stand out as bad on the other hand.) Certainly a game with lots of potential for challenge runs, like the first.

The writing is more engaging than the first game… and certainly more surreal. PM1 is honestly probably the most generic of the Mario RPGs writing-wise. This one isn’t anything amazing, but it’s probably in the upper half, and has more of those crazy moments I associate with Mario RPGs. Highlights (spoilers abound):

-The Peach sequences from PM1 are back but they don’t involve Bowser so to make things interesting her main interactions are with this computer (self-described as the perfect computer) which develops a creepy crush on her.
-After you beat a certain chapter boss (unusually early, too!), you get the big celebratory end-of-chapter music… and then Mario leaves the screen and you realise you’re in control of the boss’s old body now. Yes this game does Chrono Cross’s big scene better than CC does it.
-There is one scene where one character demands another says “I love you” 100 times. He actually does it, and the game counts.
-There is one sequence where you are told repeatedly not to look at a certain book. If you do it anyway, the game warns you three times to see if you are sure. Then it plotkills you. There’s also a non-standard game over in the endgame which amused me too.
-The main villain is unceremouniously crushed by Bowser who falls on him randomly, after the latter spent the entire game bumbling around ineffectively. (Bowser remains a joy in these games.)


The game does have some negatives compared to the first… mostly it feels a bit slower in a few ways (walking speed is too slow and the spinjump which allowed faster movement is gone, not enough fast travel / dungeon escape options) and some parts are definitely a bit gameplay-light for my tastes (such as the train chapter). But overall I think I enjoyed it more anyway, though both end up as 7/10 to me.


Partner notes:

Goombella: Benefits more than average from all the power-boosting you can do, tends to end up with incredibly high damage if the enemy has low defence. Later she can also transfer turns to Mario who has more damage still, so hey, that’s nice. Whereas Goombario didn’t really stand out, Goombella is in the running for MVP.

Koops: The other character in the running for MVP, just because he has a 3 FP MT attack. He also has 1 def, which is cool, and a crippling weakness to jump attacks, which isn’t, but doesn’t come up too often at least. Early on the defence is nice, later on his MT gets better and better relatively. The other character in the running for MVP.

Flurrie: Flurrie plays a role that only PM2 could allow, the party tank. Good HP and Lip Lock is an incredible draining move: high damage, works on spiky/flying/etc. enemies, ignores defence, so it has a pure offensive niche on top of basically keeping Flurrie alive indefinitely and allowing you to relentlessly troll enemies who can’t target your back character.

Baby Yoshi: Probably the weak link of the party, he appears to specialize in damage to zero defence but isn’t as good at it as Goombella. His real niche is probably Gulp which does def-ignoring damage to two targets, so when you’re up against exactly two high-def enemies, he’s your guy.

Vivian: They nerfed Outta Sight! And y’know it still manages to be quite useful in certain situations. Otherwise she has a 6 FP attack which can hit everything except fire immunes, so that’s good. The best partner against the final boss as both those moves were really valuable, which makes sense narratively I suppose.

Bobbery: Can blow himself up for the strongest MT attack available to any partner. It costs 9 FP but sometimes it’s just what you need. Also has high HP. There’s not much else to say about him, but he’s solid.

I missed the mouse PC. :(


Super Mario Bros. 2 - Also replayed this again.

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Luther Lansfeld

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Re: What games are you playing 2019?
« Reply #174 on: July 11, 2019, 07:19:45 AM »
this.cannot.continue.

fuck. why haven't i played this sooner?

A GAME ALL ABOUT KILLER ROBOTS?

currently playing as 9S. hacking minigame is fun. i know what's coming and i am ready.
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