What games are you playing 2019?

[SnowFire]

Fire Emblem Three Houses
Enjoying it so far.  On Golden Deer route, post timeskip.

Since I obviously don't want to chat about the plot too much, two gameplay comments, one a sorta response to something Elf brought up:

1) To be a bit contrary to Elf, I actually liked Awakening's skill system better.  Having 5 slots but not filling 'em up right away makes every little ability you get relevant, even if it's niche; it's better than an empty slot.  Like, Pegasus Knight's Relief is strictly worse than War Monk's Renewal, but it's something, and you will set it until you get into the postgame.  3H has 5 slots, theoretically, but 1-2 of 'em are taken up by fundamental basic stuff like Sword(/Lance/etc.) Prowess.  You also get some very solid, basic stat-boosting skills early, and all the niche stuff is late...  which means the niche stuff will never ever get set, realistically.  Something like Defiant Strength is kinda cool on FE Heroes pre-skill inheritance Ryoma flavorfully, but you aren't setting it given a choice.  In the same way, a perfectly valid skill set for Hilda might be something like Axe Prowess / Strength +2 / Deathblow (=+6 Str on attacking) / Weight -3 (pretty close to Speed +3), a bunch of functional-but-boring straight stat boosts, leaving just 1 slot left for something "interesting" like Lancebreaker, Seal Speed, or Authority.  For characters who wield 2 weapon types, it's even sillier; you might have Cyril with something like Axe Prowess, Bow Prowess, Close Counter, Deathblow as their base setup, so again, it's like you only have room to pick a single skill.  Stuff like Pavise ends up beyond awful as a result.

2) Since mechanically the game feels a lot like Echoes 2.0 (a LOT of inspiration from Echoes it feels like), one of the most notable things is that the game has some hardcore range-cheezing and gives that more to you than your opponents.  You can re-enact "300" as the Persians by having a hail of 3-4 range arrows smashing up enemies without the ability for them to counter.  On the magic side, the Echoes Mage Ring equivalent as well as a slightly lesser variety are attained quite early on the Golden Deer route at least, so mages can smash from 3 or 4 range as well with impunity.  I kinda worry that Maddening Difficulty will compensate with uber-stat'd foes you're expected to cheese out; I would rather they only increased enemy stats slightly, but handed out the "Counterattack" skill (unit can counterattack regardless of range) like candy to enemies, forcing you to "fight fair".  Similar to how Lunatic Fates Conquest bosses all got range 1-2 weapons.  But yeah, bows & magic end up very scary as a result.  (Also.  Flying units with bows & canto.  Yes this is very fair.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

One big exception to the "you get more range-cheezing than your opponents" is that they typically have Bow Range +X abilities before you can, like Bow Range +1 as early as Chapter 2 (while you have to wait for Archer). They never carry Close Counter, though (a few bosses aside) so they have a big weakness to exploit.

Re bows on fliers, I didn't find them that abusive? (Aside from Claude who's good of course, though even he lacks the Bow Range+ which would have made him truly cheesy). Archer pegasus knights are pretty solid for the time, but once you hit tier 3 you're giving up a -faire to use them, which means Hand Axe/Javelin aren't much worse than Silver Bows, and as you noted you really want to free up skill slots so not having double prowess makes up the rest of the gap (especially since effective bow use really wants Close Counter as well).

Caduceus is all routes, Thyrsus requires recruiting Lorenz but that probably isn't THAT much later if you gun for him. And yeah they're great.


Agree to disagree on the skill system, I guess, but yeah I really enjoyed having to make choices. I loved hitting that point where Hilda had like 6-7 useful skills (as you described) and I had to choose which ones I actually wanted. There are different valid builds that are very effective. You can set your wyvern up with things which juice their combat stats (atk/spd/etc.) OR you can set one up with Alert Stance(+)/2 prowesses/2 breakers and be almost unhittable by a huge number of enemies. It's cool. Fair point that the Prowess skills do add a bit of a tax, especially on multi-weapon builds, although this is somewhat offset by making the -faires class skills.

I do agree with the point that it's nice to give niche skills more chance to shine, and thus some of the skill placements in 3H are baffling, like WTF are the Defiant skills doing on tier 4 jobs, or nerfed!Wrath in tier 3, etc. I probably would have done away with at least some of the basic stat-boosts from tier 0-1 in favour of some more interesting flavour skills, yeah.

[Niu]

Blasphemous - What's this piece of a gem I found!? Sorrowful be my heart for almost letting this game sneak past my radar.

What a well designed side scrolling plat former that gave me the same feel that's back in the prime days of Game Boy Advance when the ACT genre populate the handheld.

The art direction really has that old GBA feel, and packed with the aesthetics from the old times of Spain along with many gore and grotesque. Then combined with a mournful world under a twisted approach of Catholicism. It really builds an extremely chilling and suffocating world that just blew me over with its sheer imagery.

The esoteric story telling is also less extreme than the From Software games that Blasphemous shares the same style with. Which is definitely a plus on my book.

I'd say the only weakness of the game is that it posses not enough secrets to be explored.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Some words about Atelier Meruru:

  All the raw materials seem useful for something.  Does make it more difficult to decide what's worth hanging on to but it's an enjoyable difficult for me.

  Unlike in Ayesha where one could go through the entire game without paying much attention to item quality, here item quality starts mattering early on.  It does ask for some understanding of the alchemy system to meet some quest requirements.  Though the quantity option is always available so it's optional albeit with a time savings payoff for understanding the system well enough.

  Found myself going through my attack items quite frequently, especially after hitting Lv 15.  Power Item works well at clearing out randoms for quite a while.  I mostly avoid combat except for "defeat all enemies" objectives, hunt requests, and fighting a new enemy once to add it to the library.

  I find myself unconsciously comparing the soundtrack to Ayesha's but that's a really unfair comparison.  Ayesha's soundtrack is just that high of a bar.

  Meruru has really pretty hair but seeing bloomers so often gets a bit distracting.  Not enough to take away my enjoyment of the game overall but if that's the kind of thing that you'll be offended by, this game is not for you.

[SnowFire]

Fire Emblem Three Houses
Finished Verdant Wind, the Golden Deer route (yo, "Verdant" means Green, not Yellow, localizers.  Jaundiced Wind?).  Other than the 8 Deer, I recruited Annette & Ingrid, and among the staff, seriously used Flayn (as a Dancer) and Cyril.  1+8+2+2=13, but deploy slots top out at 12, so Annette ended up getting the short stick as far as "who doesn't get deployed in the final missions."  Well, that, and her ending up…  pretty bad.  I guess she was useful on Claude's paralogue in the desert thanks to mysterious mages-in-desert movement principles, but that was it.  (I guess her niche is blowing up fliers with Excalibur?  Except that I already had a ton of bow-users, and enemy fliers are not even THAT common.  And why does Excalibur have to be so heavy?  Go ahead and reward people hitting A-rank magic with something strictly better.) 

Byleth, Claude, Lysithea (Gremory), Marianne (Holy Knight), Raphael (War Master), Ingrid (Falcon Knight), & Cyril (Wyvern Lord) went canon-ish classes.  Ignatz stayed a Sniper forever becuz Hunter's Volley was just that good, and Hilda stayed a Warrior because…  idk, didn't feel like going the full Wyvern fleet option, as I already had Claude/Leonie/Ingrid/Cyril in the skies.  Main difference was making Leonie a Pegasus Knight rather than a Bow Knight.   Lorenz ended up staying in Paladin after training in Soldier/Cavalier/Paladin which would have made going Dark Knight have someone who couldn't do either physical OR magical damage, so sure, crappy Sylvain ahoy with Frozen Lance backup.  (Dark Knight should really have kept Lancefaire, then gotten Dark/Black Tomefaire merged as one skill.)

Re bows on fliers, I didn't find them that abusive? (Aside from Claude who's good of course, though even he lacks the Bow Range+ which would have made him truly cheesy). Archer pegasus knights are pretty solid for the time, but once you hit tier 3 you're giving up a -faire to use them, which means Hand Axe/Javelin aren't much worse than Silver Bows, and as you noted you really want to free up skill slots so not having double prowess makes up the rest of the gap (especially since effective bow use really wants Close Counter as well).

Well, the reason is mostly that even if you faced an army comprised of guys with stats like this:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Qn47ASucW4hQHusF9

Movement permitting, Canto flying units with bows like Claude & Cyril can move forward, take 3-range potshots with Curved Shot, then retreat back.  On an open field, that beats all opponents with <7 move, and in reality, there's often obstructions for them to maneuver around to make it even easier to do this safely.  In practice, the full kiting isn't necessary; merely taking a potshot then retreating oft suffices to aggro an entire inactive formation to charge forward, letting your waiting army get the jump during the next player phase and defeat them all where they stand.

Anyway, I started a Maddening NG+ of Black Eagles, and it seems range-cheezing is indeed the name of the game here.  Bows for (nearly) everybody!  Yes, including you, Ferdinand von Aegir!

--
For plot, I'm still not reading most of the spoilery comments others have made, but there is one particular plot element that comes up in the Golden Deer routes (and at least some of the other routes, I presume?) that I just love.  It's frustrating because it's a compelling and fun variation of a common trope that could very easily be stuck into more plots without fundamentally "changing" or messing with their essence, but inexplicably isn't.  Specifically...

...so a lot of Fire Emblems have a "holy blood" type mechanic where certain people are descended from certain special other people which means that they can wield legendary weapons nobody else can, use secret magical tomes, perform divine rituals, use dragon veins, etc.  Frequently, these people are also nobles.  Let's face it, this is an excuse for Our Heroes (and sometimes Our Villains, e.g. Arvis/Julius) to have some special destiny and have an excuse to save the world and be "better" than the hordes of faceless enemies out there, but sure.  Don't think too hard about why Marth's only descendents who can wield Falchion are Chrom & Lucina rather than either his bloodline dying out completely, or else there being 400 potential wielders after 1000 years, but moving on.

Meanwhile, over in the real world.  Nobles have often claimed very similar things here, too.  The Japanese Imperial family is partially descended from Amaterasu.  God picked the Czars to rule Russia, according to the Russian Orthodox Church.  The point is, nobles are special super-awesome people by dint of their bloodline.  But!  90% of the time, if you search back far enough, what you find is that some warlord conquered the place with an army, declared himself King, and then all these nobles are just descending from that claim.  The current nobles probably actually believe the propaganda, and hopefully have some idea of noblesse oblige, but..  it's all a lie, really.

So.  Why don't more games decide to echo the real world and have an easy plot twist where sure, heroes are special and privileged and have magical powers, but the source of the magical powers is less-than-noble?  You see that upfront sometime in darker & edgier works - in this world, vampires rule everything and have awesome fights - but rarely as a plot twist, in my recollection.  And it's common if the powers come from some "external" source, it might be tainted with human sacrifice or the like, e.g. Tales of Symphonia Exspheres, but that turns into a denunciation of the evil technology.  When it is a plot twist, it's a very individual plot twist that you're the kid of the villain or something (e.g. Fates Corrin), not a group plot twist, and it's not like Fates ever questions the idea that descendants of the dragons should rule (Corrin does go on to rule Valla, after all).  It's more frequent that yup, the gods really did decide to bless certain bloodlines with awesome.  Anyway, Three Houses does it, a first for Fire Emblem.  All of these nobles (barring Claude & Marianne) really do seem to believe they're hot shit, but they're actually just descendants of a gang of bandits that happened to luck out to work with some professional supervillains ages ago, and drink up a bunch of dead god power.  All the stuff about the goddess granting certain humans her powers to fight some great evil was just a giant lie put out by Nemesis & the 10 Elites, and I guess Seiros decided to roll with it rather than fight it, adding on "and also they've fallen and gone crazy so we gotta take 'em out" 1000 years ago.  I kinda like how cynical Rhea is about this too; she definitely does not hold with Lunar-style doing this voluntarily, and makes clear she thinks that Sothis would never have done this intentionally.  This seems to match real-world nobility pride pretty well; sure, you're a noble, but it's because a bunch of Norman pirates conquered Malta and declared themselves King of Malta ages ago, that's it.

I find doing this much more interesting and powerful than the "standard" super-awesome family powers to save the world. 

[Niu]

...so a lot of Fire Emblems have a "holy blood" type mechanic where certain people are descended from certain special other people which means that they can wield legendary weapons nobody else can, use secret magical tomes, perform divine rituals, use dragon veins, etc.  Frequently, these people are also nobles.  Let's face it, this is an excuse for Our Heroes (and sometimes Our Villains, e.g. Arvis/Julius) to have some special destiny and have an excuse to save the world and be "better" than the hordes of faceless enemies out there, but sure.  Don't think too hard about why Marth's only descendents who can wield Falchion are Chrom & Lucina rather than either his bloodline dying out completely, or else there being 400 potential wielders after 1000 years, but moving on.

Meanwhile, over in the real world.  Nobles have often claimed very similar things here, too.  The Japanese Imperial family is partially descended from Amaterasu.  God picked the Czars to rule Russia, according to the Russian Orthodox Church.  The point is, nobles are special super-awesome people by dint of their bloodline.  But!  90% of the time, if you search back far enough, what you find is that some warlord conquered the place with an army, declared himself King, and then all these nobles are just descending from that claim.  The current nobles probably actually believe the propaganda, and hopefully have some idea of noblesse oblige, but..  it's all a lie, really.

So.  Why don't more games decide to echo the real world and have an easy plot twist where sure, heroes are special and privileged and have magical powers, but the source of the magical powers is less-than-noble?  You see that upfront sometime in darker & edgier works - in this world, vampires rule everything and have awesome fights - but rarely as a plot twist, in my recollection.  And it's common if the powers come from some "external" source, it might be tainted with human sacrifice or the like, e.g. Tales of Symphonia Exspheres, but that turns into a denunciation of the evil technology.  When it is a plot twist, it's a very individual plot twist that you're the kid of the villain or something (e.g. Fates Corrin), not a group plot twist, and it's not like Fates ever questions the idea that descendants of the dragons should rule (Corrin does go on to rule Valla, after all).  It's more frequent that yup, the gods really did decide to bless certain bloodlines with awesome.  Anyway, Three Houses does it, a first for Fire Emblem.  All of these nobles (barring Claude & Marianne) really do seem to believe they're hot shit, but they're actually just descendants of a gang of bandits that happened to luck out to work with some professional supervillains ages ago, and drink up a bunch of dead god power.  All the stuff about the goddess granting certain humans her powers to fight some great evil was just a giant lie put out by Nemesis & the 10 Elites, and I guess Seiros decided to roll with it rather than fight it, adding on "and also they've fallen and gone crazy so we gotta take 'em out" 1000 years ago.  I kinda like how cynical Rhea is about this too; she definitely does not hold with Lunar-style doing this voluntarily, and makes clear she thinks that Sothis would never have done this intentionally.  This seems to match real-world nobility pride pretty well; sure, you're a noble, but it's because a bunch of Norman pirates conquered Malta and declared themselves King of Malta ages ago, that's it.

I find doing this much more interesting and powerful than the "standard" super-awesome family powers to save the world. 

No, this is just a plot hole for the sake of creating conflict.
The reality of the war back the is Empire lead by Rhea Vs. Nemesis & 10 Elites. With the empire been given Rhea and her 3 allies' blood.
In other word, at least back then, the empire know that they are the real blessed one with the right cause. Which is stupidly obvious if you just look at the Emblems. Only the people of the Empire carries the Emblem of the 4 Saints.
Rhea has no reason to perpetuate the lie, because she already fought it and won.
Especially so when the Empire founder and her are comrades. It is a piece of cake for her to rewrite the history the way she want after the Empire dominate the continent in its early years. On top of that the territories under Nemesis' influence are not very civilized tribal societies, which has little resistance against strong empire with literacy when it comes to history making.

The plot just force Rhea to make a stupid decision for no good reason who can have drama cooked up 1000 years later.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The thing I really liked about how the writing treated crests, and this was very obvious playing this game shortly after watching FE4, was the fact that the game really dove head-first into what having such a thing in society would mean. In FE4 (and yeah, in other FEs too, but it's most obvious in FE4), holy blood was literally just an excuse for your characters and their main antagonists to be super-powerful, basically little more than a power fantasy. Whereas in Three Houses, the game actually goes into the social implications of crests, and it ain't all rosy. We see crests tear apart families, enable social exploitation, and leave some characters emotionally messed up... all things which you'd absolutely expect if such a thing were reality. Very neat.

[Cmdr_King]

I hesitate to call it a plot hole in any way, with two different angles.


1. While there ARE five families in the empire with crests from the Saints, Rhea's effectively out to control human society entirely, and five noble domains just aren't enough administrative oomph to run a huge chunk of continent like Fodlan is.  So from a simple logistics standpoint, another 10 families is still very managable for Rhea while being much more able to administrate the land.  As well, the way Crests influence society seems, if not intentional, then functionally part of how Rhea retains control: the noble families vying to keep Crest bearers in positions of power and the uncontrolled ebbs and flows of the genetic lottery mean the nobles spend a lot of time undermining and rivaling one another, rather than challenging Rhea or the Church.

More interesting (although this is speculation)

2. Consider what Rhea's plan with Sothis' revival involved: using remaining holy blood and crest stones on a blank slate person in order to force-create a new vessel for her soul.  She clearly failed quite a lot doing this, but ultimately it DOES approximately work, albeit Rhea doesn't understand what sort of person Sothis truly is and that she'd never simply erase another person to use their body the way she assumes.
However, mechanically, it does work.  So by canonizing the Elites, she incentivizes the nobility to preserve their bloodlines and elevate those who carry the blood of the fallen Nabateans and maintain the weapons containing the Crest stones of their associated dragon.  Meaning that it's likely, although we can't prove this was her plan, that once Sothis was revived she could use the preserved blood and crest stones to revive the dragons the Elites killed.  And while she pays a lot of lip service to leading/protecting humanity in Sothis' stead, Rhea very clearly only truly cares about preserving and reviving her race.

[Fudozukushi]

Also...

Rhea: Hey Loog, want this army-destroying spear from the goddess that your tragic hero ancestor wielded?  He was totally not a fuckwit bandit genocidal monster btw.  It also won't turn you into a dragon if you overuse it, promise.  How about you break from the Empire in return, hm?  They just got done with a failed invasion of a foreign nation where the goddess's light doesn't shine.  Can't have them questioning her totally legit existence!

[DragonKnight Zero]

More Atelier Meruru progress:  Reached the population goal with about 5 months to spare despite mediocre planning and extra backtracking. Been so long since a scene with Meruru's dad.  Game isn't that hard in that regard.  I go through a lot of attack items, which eats up time replacing them.  It's quite telling that there's a task to use bombs 100 times and I'd already done so by the time it appeared.

  Oh hey, a different Mana Khemia remix.  Wasn't expecting that one.

  Mine boss went down only getting one turn.  Though this is more because I put it off for a while and got equipment upgrades before challenging it.  Also had Lias to push back its turns.  Later half of the game feels very open ended with all sorts of quests available and being able to choose what order I'm going to bother with them.  Always something to do while also taking time to make equipment as it becomes available.

Piled up money with not too much spending going on until the wholesale shop expanded.  Then I found lots of things to register there to sink my cash into.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FE3H - Playing Blue Lions on Maddening Mode, up to Chapter 18.

Thoughts on the route:

-Chapter 1 is probably a bit unreasonable, you have basically no way to prepare for the fight, you only get five people (and your mages have highly limited spells). You can lose units but doing so early is basically fatal. Pretty much a "play perfectly or lose" map and the enemies here have slightly elevated crit compared to normal (due all enemy Commoners/Nobles getting Dex+4 and of course slightly higher stats) so you'll face low crit you can't do much about.

-After that it gets much more fair. I've seen some hype for Chapter 2 but I beat it first try with no Divine Pulse, just lots of baiting enemies into your meat-grinder trap. (The enemies do outstat you a fair bit so you do have to do this.)

-Enemies now have fixed skills by class, so e.g. all Archers have Poison Strike, Snipers have that + Vantage, Myrmidons and Assassins have Pass, etc. The consistency is nice so you don't need to click through all the enemies like in Awakening/Fates' hardest difficulties.

-Ninja reinforcements are sadly back and are still lame. The most egregious case of them in the maingame is probably Chapter 5 where multiple scary Myrmidons spawn right on top of you. (Also all Myrmidons have Pass... yeah.) A lot of paralogues are bad about this too (among others: Dorothea/Ingrid, Annette/Gilbert, Caspar/Mercedes). I feel like this design could just be terrible but Divine Pulse makes it forgivable at least.

-Speaking of Divine Pulse, outside this use (where I do make use of it extensively), I'm.. actually using it less this playthrough than my previous ones, because I'm just that much more engaged with the gameplay. It's really solid now! Nothing new here, FE is good, FE with teeth is good. But now I have to seriously consider that this might be my #2 Fire Emblem for gameplay, which seeing as it's already #1 for writing... well. I've praised the game enough.

-Enemies are faster now, running a curve that goes all the way to "so fast they just double everyone, too bad". They also have stupid-high attack. It's difficult to tank them for long, the game really favours using range advantages and healing. Good mages who are also good healers (Merecedes, Dorothea) are invaluable in this mode; they range-cheese better than archers because they hit harder and don't lose accuracy at range 3-5. Combat arts are also better since doubling is harder, and again you like the accuracy more.

-Enemy fliers are absolutely ludicrous. They go where they want and ORKO almost everyone. That said there are a few people who can safely bait them (usually one) and most act aggressively so you can wait for them with ambushes, but they do tend to warp battles around them. Not complaining, now I know how the enemies felt on my Verdant Winds run.

-I never got the Rafail Gem before (it's from a certain part 2 paralogue). Wow, that's a nutty accessory, which I guess fits the profile of Relic accessories. It both nulls type weaknesses AND grants crit immunity, which is a big deal in this game with how bosses are structured. I think about how the big bosses of Verdant Winds in particular all relied on crit to be competent (C18 boss, C20 boss, final boss) and how much this would have helped instead of making me rely on Burning Quake.

-Named enemies are super-badass now. This wasn't so bad in Part 1 because the big battle against other students, Chapter 7, had Casual Mode active. But in Part 2, yikes. Let's talk about Chapter 17, because it was a pile of crazy fun: First of all, the Alliance summons a reinforcement wave that includes Hilda, Leonie, two Snipers, and two Falcon Knights. Hilda has ONE HUNDRED ATTACK (yes, that's the exact number) and can OHKO anything she touches. I had several rewinds figuring when they spawned and how to not be there, and on several failed attempts I had five PCs die in a single enemy phase, yeesh. Fortunately Hilda is range 1 only so ranged attacks to the rescue. Bernadetta now has 50-something Dex; she mans the ballista and has significant crit with it (and still has 100% silence), so uh have fun with that? Didn't have an RNG-perfect strat, but eventually did rush in with Dimitri to hit Bernie with Atrocity. Petra's atk/avo/crit were all nutty, but she came in to claim the ballista after Bernadetta died. I didn't deal with her myself, but retreated to let the Alliance army kill her, which they eventually did. And then Claude... ORKOs literally everyone, range 2-3, Close Counter, Flying Weakness Null, lol. What's his weakness? ATTACKS AT RANGE 4 OR MORE. My two main attacking mages both have 4+ range, so where able to kill him; his res isn't too great. But of course, he moves with his army, so safely doing that wasn't an easy feet; Dimitri's special gambit to the rescue. And finally, there's Edelgard. Edelgard has 80 attack enemy phase, 94 on her own phase, significant crit, insane charm, good enough durability, Distant Counter. She could ORKO everyone on my team except Dimitri (OHKO everyone except him and Dedue, whom she doubles). Fortunately the combination of an Atrocity from Dimitri carrying the Rafail Gem (which nulls crit) and a single gambit from Byleth (the only PC with enough charm to hit her, and even then it took a full linked attack) brought her low enough for a Dedue CA to finish. Thank god she doesn't have avoid or Vantage.


Unit notes. I decided to use the entire BL house as well as Dorothea, who does triple duty as a character who I like, is easy to recruit, and a very good PC.

Byleth: Myrmidon -> Pegasus Knight -> Falcon Knight. Pegasus Knight is the best tier 2 class, it is known. Was MVP for a while due to that + her base stats. Due to her training woes I wasn't able to shift her over to Wyvern so she fell off some in tier 3, but now that she's in her Master Class she's pulled up again. She's not super-durable but the offence and mobilty are both great. Also carries a bow for Curved Shot.

Dimitri: Soldier -> Cavalier -> Paladin -> High Lord. Dimitri beelined to Move+1 and is his usual mobile "best stats in the game" self. Due to the combation of decent speed, def, cha, and HP he can often tank things nobody else can, and of course the strength + Brave Lance or Atrocity or whatever means his offence rules. I ended up switching to High Lord even though the loss of Canto really hurts because the extra speed seemed really useful, and 7 move is hardly bad. One of the MVP candidates.

Dedue: Soldier -> Brigand -> Warrior (-> War Master planned). Early on, his personal gives him 12 def which lets him actually tank some things others can't, although as time goes on the speed starts costing him some (e.g. enemy Warriors get enough speed to double and no amount of def slows them down much), as does his cha. Fortunately he also has high str and several ways to use it well: fists, Vengeance, axe to the face, it's all good. Mages make him run screaming. An odd character, but quite solid until the timeskip where missing several months is hard to recover from.

Felix: Myrmidon -> Archer -> Sniper -> Bow Knight. Amazing start due to effective 15 str / 9 spd. Falls off a little as his personal eventually becomes junk. Felix kinda mocks most dedicated archers in this game because his str is so much higher, and god do archers need it, due to their lack of Combat Arts which boost damage significantly like Tempest Lance/Helm Splitter. Sadly mine is quite speed-screwed (like -6 points) which cuts into his niche, but he's still okay.

Mercedes: Monk -> Mage -> Bishop-> Gremory. Is amazing. Physic, Fortify, Live to Serve all make for amazing action economy as a healer, especially when she's hurt herself. But y'know she's also a perfectly capable mage on offence. Gave her Thyrsus and made good use of her above average bulk for a mage. Probably the best magic user in the game, her only disadvantage is a lack of innate 3 range.

Ashe: Fighter -> Archer -> Sniper -> Bow Knight. Yeah I mentioned archers with bad strength, here is one. I decided to keep him along that line. BK is silll an excellent class, and he's actually doing well for speed unlike Felix (fastest person on my team in fact). He's very squishy and can't ORKO hardly anything besides the odd mage but he's still valuable, if probably the overall LVP.

Annette: Monk -> Mage -> Dancer. The comparison between her and Mercie is kinda dismal on paper; lower stats AND a trash faith list. She does have Rally early buut even on this mode I don't find that super-great, giving up a turn is a big deal with how player-phase-focused the game is. But nonw of this matters since she's the dancer! And sometimes just chipping in her own magic is just what you need, since really only the other mages can ORKO armours reliably.

Sylvain: Fighter -> Brigand -> Wyvern Rider -> Wyvern Lord. Kind of has an unimpressive start but the overall growths are solid and he snowballs well into a very competent Wyvern. Never the team MVP but ever since he started flying he's been consistently useful. Hits extremely hard with Death Blow and can actually double sometimes, and take a few hits as needed.

Ingrid: Soldier -> Pegasus Knight -> Wyvern Rider -> Wyvern Lord. Also has a bad start but good growths, although mine got a bit speed-screwed, like Felix! Very sad given her niche. She's still one of the fastest especially with Darting Blow. Probably the weakest of the three fliers overall due to said RNG screw but obviously a good team member.

Dorothea: Monk -> Mage -> Warlock. No plans to move her out of Warlock. First off, the nice thing is despite her stated weakness in Faith, she actually starts out able to Heal, so she was useful as soon as she joined, and quickly gets Thoron/Physic which rounds her out into the great red mage she always is. With Caduceus and now Black Range +1 she has 4-5 range and can ORKO many enemy types. And... Meteor. Is sooo good. Not just the two shots of it (though those are nice, can OHKO problem enemies or aggro others, and the splash damage is nifty in a few ways too), but just equipping it enables linked attacks everywhere within 10-12 range and in this mode where accuracy matters more? Yeaaah. Really good.

Dimitri/Mercedes/Dorothea are probably the best (ignoring the dancer), with Byleth/Sylvain next, though both Byleth and Felix had MVPish times earlier in the game.

I switch accessories, especially mage accessories since they have the slots, more than I used to in this mode. Switching between Healing Staff (+10 healing), Magic Staff (+3 atk), and a range-booster just gives mages incredible flexibility and power at whatever role you need them for.


I have a lot I could say on the story but most of it is stuff I've already commented on in the Azure Moon section of my post so I'll refrain for now; this post is long enough as is.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fell Seal - Arbiter’s Mark: I’m about 20 hours into this game so far. I am playing on Veteran without any modifications, since I wanted to experience the game normally. When I replay it I will probably tackle some modified form.

The game is obviously created by someone who loved FFT and wanted to make a variant of FFT. It has the job class system where you need prereqs to unlock different jobs and sometimes combinations of jobs and it has the little rotating circle with the jobs. It also has the one secondary skillset slot as well as the three skill slots, although they are a bit more flexible. There’s a reaction slot and then two other slots. The game gives everyone the same Job Points regardless if they participate in a battle, and they give people who did not participate a small amount of spillover job experience as well.

One of the nice quality of life things is that it learned from FFT’s mistakes! Including:

-you can see the map when you set up your people
-you can see the map and change your classes/equipment
-you can take back moves
-documentation is better - showing how things are calculated
-more physical skills that are varied and interesting

The biggest departure from FFT is the MP system, which is a bit more like Tactics Ogre. Each of your characters regenerate 10 MP per turn, and often skills cost from 8-24 MP, so you can never run out of MP, but MP is always a consistent issue for most of the non-pure physical characters, and even many of the physical classes have some nice techs. Because of this system, a lot of the classes with high MP drain (hello, Sorcerer) really want to dedicate their skill slots to MP regeneration. One of the characters I have the “reduce MP cost by 1/3” ability and the “move-MP up” ability just to keep her going indefinitely.

The game has this Injury system that keeps the characters out for a battle when they die in battle, which encourages you to have a rotating group of people. Here are the people I have set up right now.

Kyrie: Templar/Marked. Strong mixed strengths with both physical and the holy/dark magic of Marked.
Reiner: Dualist with Dual Wield. Glass cannon physical character.
Anadine: Demon Knight / Reaver: I gave her Reaver for some ranged physical options. Her offense is pretty absurd: she just did 500 damage to the most recent boss. She also has Cleave, which gives her another turn if she kills an enemy. She is probably the overall MVP. Either her or…
Yates: Healing machine with dark magic. Supreme Healer is pretty much godlike with the general overall weakness of healing.
Katja: Joined my party quite recently, but she has Dual Wield and Guns. Can’t complain.
Generic Male #1: Wizard with Alchemystic. A buffer / general mage. Alchemystic is a bit underwhelming, though, because buffs aren’t great in this game. He has Double Cast now, though, and I am working on Half MP. Might just turn him back into a Sorceror.
Generic Female #1: Plague Doctor / Warmage. Decent build but is a little squishy because she has to be in close to be effective.
Generic Female #2: Dual Wielding Gunner who heals. A bit better than Katja due to being built more.
Generic Female #3: Dual Wielding Assassin with Gadgets. Not too useful; I only use her when I’m desperate.
Generic Female #4: Fellblade with Warmage. I mostly use her for some damage along with Fellblade’s single target 75% sleep, which is quite good in this game where truly disabling status is hard to come by.
Generic Female #5: Sorcerer/Wizard. Fullscreen spells are broken, but they cost a lot and don’t do THAT much damage. I built her around MP regen so she can use them as often as possible. Great PC, although squishy.

The boss fights are quite good in this game. Often quite difficult, well-designed, and generall quite fun. Randoms are bit hit and miss; they can vary from “this is very easy” to “omg why”.

The story is boring and just fills time. All the characters are generically likeable and have a couple of personality traits, but the writing is really nothing special at all.

So far I’d give it at least a solid 8/10. We’ll see where it takes us.

[SnowFire]

AI: The Somnium Files
Finished!  Excellent game, highly recommended for those who like visual novels.  Also all the eye / eyeball / AI / ai puns you can shake a stick at.

The good: The plot, the characters.  For obvious reasons, I can't really go too deeply into this without ruining the game.  But it's very smartly written, and it's got a good pace of handing out both new hints / revelations as well as new questions to think about.  One thing in particular I love is that the characters are smart: if there's some obvious weird coincidence afoot, the characters will explicitly talk about it.  Anyway, you're a cop in Tokyo who's part of a secret force that investigates crimes via drugging witnesses / suspects into a chemically induced sleep, then poking around in their dreams / subconscious, called their Somnium, looking for clues.  Along with your AI pal who doubles as a replacement eye (ai-ball).  Bit of a civil liberties nightmare, yes.

Also good: While Uchikowski still loves branching paths, 'cuz that's just how he rolls, this isn't just a rehash of the Zero Escape series (i.e. 999).  So nah, it's just branching paths, there isn't a meta aspect this time a la Undertale.  There's one character / path who does rant about secret societies and parallel universes and the like, but that's mostly just a bit of fanservice.

One of the advertised bits is that the character designer from Fire Emblem Awakening & Fates worked on this game (Yusuke Kozaki).  They did good work, to be clear, but for the most part, it's actually not too obvious?  Guess the change in scene from FantasyLand to Tokyo did a lot.  The only one that stands out is that Kaname Date himself, Our Hero, looks an awful lot like a modern Tokyo Male Corrin from FE Fates (the default look, at least).  Also, I can only assume it was expensive to render the more detailed characters, because there is a suspicious lack of background characters - bars & lounges are empty-ish, the cafe has most of the other customers far in the background, and the crime scenes have the same few cops show up.

Also, there's not TOO much gameplay, and the game is quite generous (if you want to brute force all the interrogations, the game will let you, there's no punishment for "failure" aside from not getting an achievement).  I'm fine with this, but YMMV.  (This is one of the nice things about Phoenix Wright at its best, it lets You The Player figure something cool out rather than watching the characters figure something cool out.)

As another random thought, since by law all games set in modern Japan need to have an "idol" subplot in them somewhere, I really like the slant AI takes.  Rather than having some J-Pop superstar who we're told is the biggest hit ever (e.g. Persona 4 Rise), which is the common take in other fiction (but one that is frankly rather restrictive if taken seriously, and raises major questions about why they aren't being tailed by paparazzi and causing scandals), the character in AI is much more of a C-list celebrity, the equivalent of a popular YouTube / Twitch star.  Sure, she has a studio contract and a few superfans, but it's mostly in stuff like recording podcasts or streaming !Minecraft on !Twitch.  So there's a lot more room for weird stuff to happen and for them to not be under surveillance 24/7.  (As another random thing that the story does right, at least for a more serious game - the game does come up for a proper excuse for an Ace Attorney Maya Fey-esque kid helper - her parents are TERRIBLE at being parents.)

Complaints, which are really mostly nitpicks:

* There are some quick-time event "combat" events in the game, and they are... ridiculous.  Actually the part of the game most played for comic relief, oddly enough, and highly variant in tone from the rest of the game.  You know how sometimes in the movie Inglorious Basterds, it's a gritty realistic tone where one wrong move in a bar gets you shot, and sometimes it's superheroes who invincibly fight through a horde of bad guys?  Yeah, it's like that, with extra skeeviness.  (Our Hero literally distracts mercenaries with panties…  during a rainstorm..  at night.  Or makes some Superman-esque jump to a pond lured by the promise of a non-existent porno magazine.  Or a 12-year old girl with a pipe goes on a smashing spree against thugs with guns.  I Am Not Making This Up.  These battles are in their own separate Rule Of Cool reality everybody forgets about afterward.)  I think they added these because video games are supposed to have some sequence that shows off what a badass the main character is and get some mook-smashing frustration out?  With some juvenile hur-hur thrown in?

* The game includes the assassin-with-a-heart-of-gold trope in one of its characters.  While such characters are obviously "interesting" in fiction - dangerous wild cards with elite skills - I dunno if portraying these types too sympathetically works in a "modern" environment.  James Bond might be a great movie character, but he's also a bit of a psychopath, no?  (One character even calls this out, talking about how assassin sounds all proper & professional, but it's just a nice name for serial killer.)

* In general, the game is quite good at ensuring that even the endings where Date gets stuck on a dead end / exploring a side character's story/history, there's some new revelation to think about.  I think that one of these revelations might be a little too helpful for figuring out WTF is going on, though.  (Or, alternatively, given that we know this, there's too much exposition in the final two locked paths that observant players should already have figured out, so cut some of that, maybe.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Beat Azure Moon Maddening Mode. Last two maps were definitely the hardest in the game, very satisfying to overcome. Ninja reinforcements remain questionable design but Divine Pulse makes them okay, just never play Maddening without DP if you hate yourself. I actually ran out of Divine Pulse three times on those last two maps. When you reach the throne room in the final battle, FOUR mobile ninja siege tome flingers appear, which might be one of the craziest such reinforcements in the series. Even knowing they were coming on the second run I had to use DP to fiddle with positioning.

Random thoughts:

-Part 2 really has significantly better map design than part 1. Like almost all my favourite maps in the game are in Part 2? I'm probably a big enough nerd to talk about all the maps but I'll do that later.

-Dodgetanking becomes really good lategame, Ingrid with Alert Stance+ using primarily axes (the worst weapon for dodging!) became one of my most important PCs right at the end, especially because she had enough HP/Res to reduce some enemy mages to 3HKO. Definitely would recommend building this harder on future Maddening runs, especially on ones where Ferdinand is used. Dimitri's probably great for it too, and of course high-AS PCs like Petra/Ingrid/Leonie. It opens up great EP options especially when combined with Retribution. Ingrid swung her Silver Axe 15 times in one enemy phase; I can't think of any time earlier in the game where that number climbed past 4, for any PC's weapon.

-Long-range attacks with crit are terrifying, but the game gives you several good tools to deal with them. Stride/Warp/Rescue to get in range quick, dodge-tanking, the Rafail Gem, and a strategy I only pulled out in the final battle, Retribution (gambit which grants Distant Counter for a few turns).

-Rafail Gem is really good. Thank god Crimson Flower leans less heavilly on crit bosses than the other routes since it can't get it. Did it really need to null type weaknesses too? Probably not!

-Gambits with large AOEs are pretty damn good, the "lord" batallion gambits being able to be used twice is godly. Otherwise I think there's a reasonble balance between two-use small-AOE gambits (giving you more options for monsters), one-use big-AOE gambits (huge at turning the tide against a swarm), and Stride/Retribution/Impregnable Wall/Dance which all give solid utility. The latter are good for PCs with lower Charm obviously.

-That was probably the most enjoyable final boss in the series? You have to hold off endless reinforcements while the boss itself has (gameplay spoilers) (a) a lot of durability, especially if you go for turtly victory methods due to her regen + barrier which halves two attacks per turn, which forces you to assign some PCs to hold off the reinforcements while others play utility roles and still others damage the boss, and (b) enough damage and crit to be scary in her own right and limit who can gang-beat her safely, (c) alternates between striking two people in range (which you can counter!) and using a huge ITD AOE move (which you can't. Also it did enough to OHKO my Byleth who was one of my best damage-dealers, so she had to gtfo on those turns). Also (d) Vantage/Wrath on boss durability WTF I guess that means "Rafail Gem or savescum" good thing I got it. Definitely kept me really engaged down the stretch in a way FE final bosses rarely manage.

-The two most important PCs in the game to recruit on this route are Lorenz and Caspar. Let that sink in. (On VW and SS Mercedes joins the fray but at least she's a great unit herself.)

Game continues to be a joy for all that I definitely need a break from it now.

[VySaika]

Haha, I actually pulled out the Retribution tactic in multiple maps in my BL run. Bolting/Meteor/etc mages can eat it~

[Niu]

Y's9 - This thing is absolutely great. I end up liking it more than Y's8. I totally feel for White Cat at the end. I am all "don't go Adol, don't go" by the end myself. It really has been a while I played an RPG and don't want it to end.
The game play is also the best of the series so far simply because of the Monstrum abilities. Truly 3 dimensional dungeons that goes up and down. Especially the key mobility movements are unlocked super early. KH series better take an lesson from this. Don't lock double jump and gliding late in the game.

Ahh, whoever is doing the localization this time better not messed up.

[NotMiki]

Glad to hear it.  I loved Ys 8 and played the hell out of it (as my twitch videos can attest).  Have high hopes for 9.

[Niu]

Glad to hear it.  I loved Ys 8 and played the hell out of it (as my twitch videos can attest).  Have high hopes for 9.

I should mention Y's9 has a very different feel then Y's8.
Instead of an adventure out in open field, Y's9 traps you in a city and dungeons and thus a much smaller world.
But has more things to do due the Monstrum Abilities allows more freedom on the map. (But it does have a limit on wall climbing so the plat forming doesn't die off completely.)

Y's9 also has something akin to the Adol/Dhana perspective switch, but with a surprising twist to it. (Falcom's certain behavior in advertising the game is a hint to this.)

[dunie]

Hollow Knight anyone?

A young gamer seems mortified that I've mostly played it without Cornifer's maps. I'm assuming this means I'm playing most of the stages out of order, because I only see his mask most times. I GUESS that's what happens when you waist 100+ hrs per expansive RPG. The payoff for developing intuition should feel better than it really is.

[NotMiki]

Cornifer is really tucked away in some zones.  I wouldn't read much into not finding him.  You can buy his maps in town after some time passes.  I would say that there are a few zones that you really, really want a map for, but even with the maps your first foray into a zone is basically blind.

One of the true delights of Hollow Knight is how open the game is once you pick up the mantis claws.  There's no such thing as a "right" order to do the zones in.  You can have a wildly different experience from other players based on where you choose to go from there.  Many of the later zones can be first accessed from different directions depending on where you've gone, what upgrade's you've picked up.

[SnowFire]

Hollow Knight is cool.  I didn't talk about it when I was playing through it since I wanted to experience it unspoiled.  Still need to go back and get the better endings, but I got the default ending, so that's something.

River City Girls
Is also cool.  This is by WayForward, known for Shantae & the Pirate's Curse around here, although the more relevant WayForward game to know is Double Dragon Neon of all things.  (Skullmageddon now runs a pawn shop.)  I think Aleph/074/Nama also played it?  Anyway, it's a very solid beat 'em up, and I like the tone quite a bit - rather than some sort of 80s fever dream hellscape city from Final Fight clones, River City Girls modernizes things a bit by having perfectly normal trendy shops & people checking their phones in the background as they blase ignore the fighting going on in front of 'em.  Closer to The World Ends With You, I guess.

Anyway, as is usual for WayForward, the humor & writing is good but highly goofball.  Also, they seemingly went for the "hire the best of BandCamp" style for composing the soundtrack, which can be erratic, but they got good stuff here (including, apparently, some remixes from old Japan-only SNES games in the series).   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrB_g6m0Qww if you're curious; check out 16:45, The Hunt, for example.

Similar to the Ys games, there's quite a gap between randoms and bosses.  The randoms are tough but doable, even on Hard (although you'll just die a lot more on Hard, but dying is not a big deal).  The bosses are extremely tough even on Normal, though!  Also like (modern) Ys, you can cheeze them with healing item use in battle if you are stuck, but I'm trying to beat 'em all legit, so RIP me.

[DragonKnight Zero]

It has certainly been a while since I got an ending in Atelier Meruru.  Mostly procrastinating on which words to put here.  For a first playthrough, it had that feel that there wasn't enough time to do everything but there is enough time to do enough.  I respect that and it does give me something to aim for on replays since my scheduling was kind of messy.  I had unfinished quests in two regions so maybe there's more plot stuff yet to be discovered.  On this first time, Meruru's dad was plot irrelevant.  Music's at that place where some gets stuck in my head while playing it but not where I'd try to share it with someone with no exposure to the game.  Never did finish that task which requires using the basic revival item 3 times, I was still at 2 at the end.  Though this is more from deliberately avoiding situations where one would face a risk of death than a knock on the game's difficulty.

Smorgesborg of unsorted character thoughts.  Having not played any of the other Arland games, I'm not aware of all the character development of the returning faces and am coming from my impressions in this game only.

Keina: As a character, reminds me of FF4 Rosa a lot in her devotion to Meruru.  I can picture the outrage that would ensue had the main character been male and she maintained her same degree of devotion.  As a battle unit, my impressions kept changing.  I'm used to having the alchemist be the healer while the allies do the bashing so her focus on healing and support didn't match my playstyle.  Her low HP and LP didn't help either, often being half exhausted just traveling to farther locations.  Someone's got to get sent into the dirt to use those revival items though so I guess she's the easiest sacrifice.  Later, I make better attack items and she becomes useful for freeing up Meruru turns to launch attack item assaults.  Plus, her stat growth vastly improves past Lv 40, very Onion Knight-ish.

Lias: Comic relief.  He really wants his brother's approval but he also has luck nearly as awful as Ashton Anchors leading to hilarity at his expense.  Very useful in battle due to his ability to push back enemy turns.

Totori: The patient teacher.  There are a few moments here and there which crack the facade though.  in battle, it takes a while to hit her stride.  Item duplication isn't all that special when she first joins since the only items I had early on were low-end.  It has tremendous game-altering potential once one starts making better items though.  An MP restorative that restores more MP than it costs to cast the ability?  Very potent skill.  She does well at group damage (her regular attack and one of her skills are area effect) but her low attack power limits her output at bosses so she's better as a supporter.

Gino: Comes off as very single-minded in his pursuit for strength.  Seeks the approval of his master, similar to Lias but doesn't come off nearly as strongly.  Battle-wise, he leans very much towards a boss fighter.  His reason for coming to Arls is looking for strong opponents to test his strength against, he has a passive which raises his stats at bosses, and all his skills are single-target.  Didn't seem very impressive on the base stats front.  Between his passive and his buff skill though, he could be stronger than the raw numbers would appear to indicate.

Rorona: I hear there's been a lot of outcry over her appearance in the game, for reasons I won't get into here.  Some of her pie scenes are quite entertaining in their own right.  Very mixed bag battle-wise.  Starts on the more fragile end of the durability spectrum and the passive that boosts item speed at the expense of power I feel makes her worse.  Highest evade in the cast though so I chose to build her as an evade tank.

Mimi; Another of the experienced adventurers from Arland, her arc in this game is that she apparently has feelings of some sort for Totori and is unwilling to spit them out.  Magical intervention aside, that is and those scenes I found comical.  In a fight, she's the game's physical powerhouse.  Cast best base attack, the highest attack power weapon, a passive which decreases the wait between turns, a speed lowering skill, and a skill that ignores enemy defense.  What is this character balance thing again?  Guzzles MP like crazy if being used at full offense so MP cost reduction is a great idea for her accessories.

Esty: OK, I admit it.  I laughed when her full name is said out loud.  Even if it is an easy joke on the localizer's part.  Very sensitive about her age because Japan.  In battle, she's probably better Totori at mowing down trash randoms.  Didn't feels particularly remarkable though.  Also goes through MP fast on full offense.

Sterk: Found him memorable because his character feels like some crazy mashup of Squall and Seifer.  He's got Squall's intimidating appearance and serious demeanor while he also has Seifer's obsession with being a knight.  Personality-wise, he comes off as some alternate world Seifer who picked a more benevolent figure to be a protector to.  In battle, he's doesn't hit as often as most of the other fighters and focuses more on high power per strike.  He's not sluggish, just that his damage output leans more towards higher damage per attack with his +50% crit rate passive and a stat boost if fighting higher leveled enemies.

[Niu]

13 Sentinels - I cannot wait for this game, I want it now.
Since I bought the prologue, I was able to play up 20% of the whole game with the trial version. And UGH, I can't wait for the real thing.
The art is great and the story really hooked me up.
The battle system is not great, but serviceable enough.
It is a real time rock and paper like SLG. But the air unit really breaks that balance.

Ughh, why the release date if this and P5R can't be switched?
I was thinking so much about this game that I can't pay attention to P5R.

[NotMiki]

13 Sentinels - I cannot wait for this game, I want it now.
Since I bought the prologue, I was able to play up 20% of the whole game with the trial version. And UGH, I can't wait for the real thing.
The art is great and the story really hooked me up.
The battle system is not great, but serviceable enough.
It is a real time rock and paper like SLG. But the air unit really breaks that balance.

Glad to hear it.  What I've seen so far in trailers had me very worried about the game.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Devil May Cry 4 - Thoroughly average and unremarkable, but not a bad game to pass the time. I just fought the She-Viper.