What games are you playing 2020: The true last year of the current decade

[Dhyerwolf]

I Am Setsuna- Beat a few weeks ago. After the nasty boss before the airship, the boss then proceeded to after fail badly (the last bosses especially were a bad joke. Low HP, weak to Light, lacking all around). Game was interesting. I have a soft spot in that it tried to do a lot of similar things to the RPG I'm making in terms of some weird mechanics (although the ultimate moves having those random powerups is a little of programming for little reward; I have some similar stuff but it's more core mechanics), but it also goes to show you that a high level of complication only works with high levels of transparency. Obviously the development cycle was cut short on this game, so it's hard to say what would have actually been made clear (I'm going to assume that secret defense/mdef stats at the very least) and what would have still been a mystery.

Plot was a combo of potentially interesting points that weren't fully fleshed out and potentially interesting points that dragged on longer than you would ever expect. Unlike the two games that it's based off in some way, the world definitely wasn't not fully realized (why is it covered in snow? Just to make it easier to make the graphics) and were definite massive plot holes (the existence of your main character being a critical one). It the game was fully polished up, it could have been up to an 8/10, but some severe issues made my final score 5/10. Fun, fun duellers though (some of them are very thankful for the obscure methods to get rare drops).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Brigandine: Legend of Runersia - Completed Stella's route.

Fun game, will definitely be replaying on other routes. People have already gone over the differences / QoL improvements between the original and this game (sounds like Grand Edition is responsible for a good share of those improvements, but I never played that), but they obviously help! I love having damage projections and the largely transparent mechanics. Only real downside to me is that the quest system is still a bit frustrating, I spend a bunch of time inputting commands to basically roll dice? Or there might be some method to the madness besides RNG which I don't understand. Still, it's a minor complaint.

My most used units were Stella (generally high stats + especially rune + Charm on someone tanky is neat for stealing monsters + post-promotion Dragon's Destruction is really good), Pluto (good out of the gate with Geno Flame), Ginny (good power/HP but bad accuracy and shaky rune, a bit jeigan-ish), Adieu (a better Ginny once he promotes), Ratka (archer with good rune), Sophie (enchantress with good rune), Umimaru (has a good breath attack which he has MP to use once but can spend turns to recharge it), and Lucia (sort of randomly ended up in one of my main attack squads, is kinda mediocre until she reached Royal Guard which is a shockingly good class). My final team was Stella, Adieu, and Ratka, because they had the highest rune stats pretty much (Sophie is similar but I was warned against using mage rune knights against the final because they die easily and losing a rune knight is devastating there).

My most used monster lines generally were Unicorns->Nightmares (healing, and debuffs are great due to being 100%) and Sea Serpents (because Mirelva starts with a bunch, and of course their bulk/power/breath is still good). Other monsters I found useful were High Centaur (hitting whatever the fuck you want is really good in this game), Phoenix (regen, Flame, healing, decent physical stats if needed), Siren (is only an okay Frost caster [55 rune for 3 shots] on land maps, but 100% range 4 charm is brutal if she has access to water), Archdemon (Dimension is great, rest of the package isn't too impressive as I got Meteor Doom too late to matter), Dragon (generally a bit worse sea serpents overall but you can customize their element), Elementals (kinda meh in tier 1, but tier 2 has some great targeting flexibility). I had a Lizardfolk which was unremarkable filler most of the game but I got Lizard Lord for the final battle and it kinda rules, two actions (and moves!) every turn? Hellhounds are neat for Double Move though the stats keep them from feeling super-awesome. Wyverns... well I did steal Gustava's Bahamut and that class is really good (what if Double Movement was on something with real stats?), but the tier before it is pretty shaky (my Level 18 Couatl wasn't really that great). Gremlins are mostly mediocre (Protect-bot at tier 1, then at tier 2 compared to even land Siren, they have fewer shots of attack magic and have HP of paper) but they get React and sometimes that's just bonkers, and at least their rune cost is reasonably low. Goblins, Golems, Giants, and Ghouls all kinda fall into various blocks of "filler if the rune cost is right" and nothing more. I didn't use Angels or Mandrakes enough to get a good sense but they both seem potentially interesting. They got rid of scorpions.

It's good, play it!

[superaielman]

Gremlins are a must have, you can do real bad things with react and Thunder gives them a strong attack spell to use if react doesn't work out.  Rune Knights at high levels do really bad things with two turns and that's something you want to encourage. I'm still not sure who I consider the second best unit in Stella's path. There are several knights in the 7.5/10 range for varying reasons; it's the only country where there doesn't feel like a slam dunk best party or set of knights outside of the leader.

If you play Norzaleo, definitely use Elena. She starts with 70 STR instead of the usual 55-60 of Archers and has crazy good rune. Thousand Arrows running off her stats is something truly delightful to see.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Atelier Ayesha: Keithgriff and Juris shredded the final boss.  I had the MP on Keithgriff to go for a second Double Up sequence but the battle was over before it reached the 3rd and strongest blow again.  Boss does have item power down effect on PS3 original but is used at maybe under 10% or even 5% so it didn't last very long after using it.  Both the guys had an accessory with Fire Power (+15% Fire damage to every attack) though Skill Enhance 2 probably made the bigger difference.  Ayesha did contribute some damage but that wasn't her focus.

Story stuff?  "...and a spare cauldron.  And the spare, spare cauldron."  I get a laugh at all of Ayesha's spare cauldrons.

Kyle, on agreeing to sample and review some bread: "OK, I confirm and accept your feelings"  Since the baker is the one who made the bread does that mean your accepting his feelings?  Didn't know you swung that way Kyle.  I am momentarily ignoring canon and how the baker has his eyes on someone else for the purpose of making bad jokes.

Been on a Disgaea kick and plinking away at my postgame file.  So excuse to talk about my postgame party:

  The core group I'm focusing on for the postgame contains a group of 7, each one specializing in a different weapon type.  All of them are different class types for variety with an S in their weapon type.

Fist: Shinobi  Has an Accelerator and movement increase for 11 move for mobility in the item world.  Also plan on loading him up with Speed to turn into an evade tank.
Sword: Shogun  110% Attack aptitude and 30 skill points per tech use.
Spear: female Cosmic Hero  The only other S in spears once the Shogun and Divine Majin have been allocated.  Also spears don't get quite as high on raw damage.
Bow: Freischutz  Obvious non-Majin choice who gains 30 skill points per tech use.
Gun: Space Marine  120% Hit aptitude and equal base Hit to a Divine Majin.
Axe: Divine Majin  Could have gone swords but decided to channel that 120% Attack aptitude into  axe techs for the really big damage numbers.
Staff: Galaxy Mage  5 transmigration cycles has neeted her every spell in the game.  Even if she's not using most of them besides the offense spells.

The other 3 slots I rotate on a whim.  There's Flonne, who I taught Star magic, the healing family, and the buffs.  There's my Space Pirate, for stealing.  There's an Angel Cadet who is being used as a durable caster and since she has only 1 Counter, doesn't counter things when I don't want her to.  Gordon is sometimes in because 6 throw range.  Haven't decided what I want to do with Thursday otherwise I'd use him more.  Rest of the story characters are essentially benched besides Priere and Majorly, for those times I want their overwhelming power.

The other goal is a monster army.  Want to have access to every monster skill in the game which means 1 of each in the highest tier of their class leveled up to at least 50.  Dragons and great wyrms require 3 dragons and 5 great wyrms to access the full spread of their skillsets.  Argus will be set up to be a template for an ultimate RES tank though of course I'm not going all the way on storing 186000 levels for true max stats.  Hoggmesier and Maderas save me from raising two more monsters since they share skills with their equivalent monster classes.

When I have all this, a Hyperdrive, and all the rank 40+ weapons and items, I will consider my save complete and never touch Disgaea again most likely.  Do not want to admit how much time I've sunk into this game.

[superaielman]

Brig- Finished challenge mode with Norzaleo. I didn't quite break 25k to get the last unlock, but I could load my last save and probably try and force it if I really cared. The mode was certainly challenging, but not always for the right reasons.


You really have to be aggressive about questing to gain more knights. The game (seemingly at random) assigns you new knights. Cool! I didn't know how random it was. I gained two that way and then got no new knights for most of the game. I had 12 knights up until I hit 35 castles. I had five-six borders to try and defend that entire time. Needless to say there were a lot of defensive battles where I was holding off enemy forces with just two knights. I don't know how much of this was bad luck and how much of this was intentional, but bleh.

I also dislike every unit being at L1. Starting level and class are hugely important in Brig, even with quicker leveling curve and EXP quests. Taking that out takes a lot of the uniqueness out of knights; it becomes a simple stat check to decide on which knights to use instead. Having to balance out high level and high potential units would make the starting selection much more interesting.

The stats have some issues with scaling as well. The Knight/Lancer units are poorly balanced in this version; they end up with crazy high STR but terrible AGI. In the base game, units like that are balanced by having pretty good base AGI to offset the bad growth. That balance is not in place in challenge mode. I had to use Rose. She had 20 more STR than she normally does, but 25 less AGI. It's a pretty questionable design choice.

Normal mode and challenge mode both need an option to play on hard with the timer off. It's much more enjoyable to see what the AI does with time; also makes the mid and lategame much more challenging when they have high level knights and monsters to throw at you. The solution challenge mode does is scaling up enemy level and monster level. It works... okay enough. It felt very rocket taggy to me. Also enemy powerups frequently benefit you, as you can steal their high level monsters pretty easily.


I also tried a second MS game and it was much easier.  Rudo is so stupidly overpowered that him and Monica is more than enough to steamroll the entire game; there isn't a point to using a third knight. You are better off letting EXP focusing and using third knight for questing. I knew to recruit Veyta and how to expand and where. Gilliam is useful for this as his high level helps with questing and you desperately want at least one quest knight. I haven't finished this playthrough but I'm at the tipping point, Rudo is about to get his Overlord class and I have control over 25 castles.


I'm also trying a two knight playthrough with Norzaleo. Rules are pretty simple, can only use two knights to attack or defend.  I'm trying to avoid having more than two knights in a single castle in the attack phase as it deters enemy attacks and makes it more likely you will go first in the attack phase. In some ways, it's easier than a normal playthrough. Two knights means your EXP focuses and you are using better knights on average. It also means you are questing more and thus have more chances at getting top end loot and quest knights. I made an effort to quest everyone up to L10 so I had a pile of promoted monsters to throw out when I had to expand. That helps a tremendous amount. The challenge is of that you are outnumbered in most every single fight, you have to build your team out smartly and blitz enemy forces before they wear you down.

I used Will, he is annoyingly obscure as recruiting him requires getting Ferrick wounded. Ferrick is the worst knight Norzaleo has and one of the worst knights in the game, so odds are pretty low you are going to be using him.  If you know how to get Will, he can join up at the start of the third season.  He is really damn strong and is the best Rogue in the game. Will doesn't have as a crazy high STR score as Tommy, but 88 STR at L15 is still good and the rest of his stats are outstanding. Pairings so far: Rubino & Will, Pick & Elena, Grados and Jiu(replaced with Elena).

[superaielman]

Quality of knights


Norzaleo>Guimoule>>Gustava>>Mirelva>Shinobi>>>Mana Saleesia


Yeah. I've been bouncing around where I rate the knights and I think this works for where each country falls. Norzaleo and Guimoule are the clear winners for best knights. They don't have a lot of scrubs and each have very powerful second in command types. Norzaleo's top end is better; Grados and Elena both have pretty good arguments for best Knight in the game who isn't a leader.

Gustava surprisingly takes third. They have a couple of appallingly bad knights in Coco and Gaspar, but the majority are competent. Ivona, Noll, Ginger, Sylvie, Scymerius are all good; Alsin is the only Champion unit worth using in the entire game. Mirelva's got a ton of solid knights, but they don't have a single knight besides Stella I'd call really good. They have a lot of above average knights, but no really overpowered second in command that the rest of the countries have. Tommy is probably the second best knight, and as good as he is... no. He's not on par with Kyle or Alsin or Mu'ah.  Having a half dozen really solid knights is however quite useful.

Shinobi's got problems. It's got a bunch of low level knights and a bunch of bad knights. Their second best knight is Della and she joins two thirds of the way through the game. Sid is great and so is Medessa, but after that it gets thin. Surprisingly their project knights are really bad. I don't think a single of their units who starts below L10 is really worth using besides Taila. Taila's also the worst of the leaders; she is just unremarkable on everything until class change and then... eh. It's a Lyonesse remix with more durability at that point, which I'm not really impressed with. Shinobi may be clearly second to last, but they're still miles ahead of Rudo's pack of scrubs.

 
Ah, Mana Saleesia. I hope you like scrubby white aligned units, because they've got a lot of those! Titania and Aisha are both awful; bad stats and mediocre class line. That still puts them ahead of the Grapplers, who have a terrible class line and bad stats. Largo is at least tolerably bad; Cyrus is the worst knight in the game. He has high strength!... that he can't use because he has 40 AGI and terrible durability. Better hope he doesn't kick multiple enemies out of the way so he can be hit several times by enemy monster and explode! Oh, did I forget to mention that Grapplers second ability is completely garbage and they don't get a close range skill that's worth a damn until L20? Cyrus also leaves midway through the quest so you are screwed if for some insane reason you decided to use him. Allen's not as bad as Cyrus but he's not far off; terrible Rune and bad stats along with being low leveled. You have to use him because MS border problems. I actually dualed him over to Thief. He wasn't good at that due to having really low HP, but at least it gave him some use thanks to Draw Trick. Frederico has bad stats and leaves about two thirds of the way through the game. *punt* And I'm not even going to discuss Gilliam, who has gameworst Rune and INT. His MP is terrible too. His one redeeming feature is being able to quest.  They even managed to screw up the Archer type. Katri's got miserable rune stats and bad AGI; she can't evade tank like the other archers until she promotes to Sniper. The slighter higher strength doesn't justify that.

The flipside is that Rudo's the best Knight in the game.  Kyle is really scary thanks to the class and stats. Monica is amazing; starts as a Minstrel and has good stats across the board. Beyond that, Emma and Veyta are solid and Selena's fine for border duties. But you really have to go through some suffering with scrubs to use the powerhouses.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem Fates Conquest - My first return to this since 3H came out. Played Hard Classic, used female PCs only (+ Jakob for chapters 2-3, since Corrin solo felt obnoxiously tricky), which also ends up meaning no child paralogues. Didn't want to let anyone die since I only had 13 PCs with no way to get more.

I was a little worried about the earlygame but ultimately it wasn't too bad. Tonics to ensure Corrin could ORKO faceless + getting Effie and Elise dealt with C7, C8 I beelined across the south lake to snag all the houses. Once C10 hit the playthrough felt fairly normal in terms of unit number, in fact I actually was at max deployment for a few maps midgame. I think I had the most resets in Chapter 25 (Ryoma's map) which is pure "I want to test myself" because my Corrin could in fact win the duel. Silence was super-useful in the final battle though so I'm glad I stuck it out for that.

Corrin (F, +Str, -Luck): Ninja build. I did this to have a unit with Locktouch and a combat unit with daggers but honestly it's just a really good build in general. Daggers are great, Master Ninja is a great class, poison allows a win against Ryoma if necessary. Generally one of my two or three best units at all points in the run.

Elise: Strategist. She was a quite speed-screwed so her offence wasn't as good as it could be, still had one good solid hit though. Lily's Poise (+Inspiration at the very end) is nice, mobile staff user is of course nice. She died on the last map because I forget that the Skadi Beam destroys the barriers, whoops. Only casualty ultimately.

Effie: General for Wary Fighter, then Kinshi Knight (via Mozu) for Quick Draw (the skill that we now call Death Blow), then Great Knight for mobility. Without Xander, Effie becomes that much more useful, as she plays the main physical wall role. She actually capped speed so I didn't need Wary Fighter until the last few maps, but boy is it useful when you're facing ninjas and swordmaster hell towards the end. OHKO on frail enemies was sometimes possible up to the end, which was nice. I probably should have bought a Brave Lance, in hindsight I had the spare money for it.

Mozu: Archer to Sniper. Easy enough change to give me a bow-user. Offensively pretty good (similar to Corrin, actually), though lacked the massive atk of Camilla/Effie/Charlotte. Defensively had solid enough stats aside from HP, so she could take one or two hits, but no 1-2 bow really limits the opportunities for good enemy phase play.

Nyx: Sorcerer. Had some offence at points but overall thoroughly mediocre since her offence was generally short of ORKO and her durability is trash. Periodically put in some good work when the numbers lined up right, though (the right side of chapter 13 being perhaps the most memorable such occasion).

Azura: Danced. I killed Shura for the first time, boots make her even better. Sorry Shura.

Camilla: Dipped in Berserker for Axefaire, back to Malig for Trample, back to Berserker for being a giant pile of stats. OHKOed ninjas and maids, ORKOed most everything else with bronze (needed a brave axe for Wary Fighter generals), was the key tank for Hans's room in C26, killed the final boss with a Brave Axe. I've deleted Savage Blow from her on some playthoughs but I kept it on this one and I really liked it, a lot of characters on my team had a much easier time completing ORKOs after that.

Beruka: Tanky and mobile and later on became fairly focused on Rally Defence. Offence and magic durability... not so much.

Selena: Hero for Sol than to Paladin via A+ with Peri for Elbow Room / Shelter / Defender and mobility. Her stat build was respectable but not dominant, she didn't usually ORKO but could hold her own in a variety of roles, held the only Kodachi.

Peri: Compared to Selena she was a bit less physically durable and accurate but had more offence mostly due to being faster + lances so got a few more ORKOs. Pretty similar overall though.

Charlotte: Berserker. Rally Strength was her utility move but she could also kill things dead with her great strength and speed. Camilla Jr. still pretty useful as it turns out.

Felicia: Strategist. Inspiration from shortly after she joins is pretty great. Obviously a bit unimpressive in combat due to joining late + not really being very good on stats, but 8 move, Inspiration, and a staff rank go a long way.

Flora: Left her in Maid. The worst of my three healers in every way but of course that didn't mean she wasn't useful. Arms Scroll'd her to S staves for Bifrost, which saved Mozu's life in the ending, irrelevant but happy?

Rescue, Freeze, Entrap, Silence, and to a lesser extent Enfeeble are all great options for dealing with things where I saw no other option, or in desperation.

Fun times! Next up is Three Houes: The Route That Shall Not Be Named

[Cmdr_King]

Super Robot Wars T- https://twitter.com/CmdrKing/status/1291525597747908610?s=20

So... hm.  I do like this better than any of the GBA games I played.  Do I like it more than the non-sRPG Endless Frontier?  Fascinating question.  I think I have to say yes, but it's not a runaway race.  T is a little more upfront with its themes and does a pretty good job of having the licensed shows back them up, but the salaryman angle is played in a slightly weird way that feels a bit at odd with everything.  And while the original cast is good, it's definitely a step behind Haken and Kaguya.  EF is a bit shorter which is good, they have a similar pacing issue where after a point stuff is just a little longer than it really needs to be because you've "solved" the fight but are waiting for it to finish playing out... but y'know, EF has some real problems with backtracking after a point that just don't exist in an sRPG and I think that and the particular selection of licensed stuff being things I'm familiar with either natively or from playing J is the extra edge.

(yes this is the only review I'm doing, because other than what I said on the twitter with pictures, it's... SRW and while T has some QoL features, at least one *unique to this game* until the next one comes out, it's still fundamentally SRW.)

[superaielman]

Orcs Must Die 3-  Cleared on warmage; about halfway through Rift Lord (nightmare) now.


I really miss stunning flame wall and thunderstorm, damn it. It's fun as expected. I see why the developers were excited about it; the game engine uses stadia well.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Silver Snow

Eighth playthrough, and now I've finally done all the routes on Maddening! God playing this route made me very mad. My initial impression of the route was that it was relatively incoherent, but on this go through I've increasingly come to see it as an unapologetic struggle for the status quo in which the player-allied characters spout lines which reflect their privelege and cluelessness about the social problems of Fodlan. And the ending... :vomit-emoji:

On the plus side the final battle was pretty enjoyable, outside of one trap. The game encourages you to seize a fort to stop reinforcements, but doing so both aggros every enemy on the map and causes the final boss to immediately use her range-8 FFT-summon-AoE move, lol. Don't listen to Seteth, kids. Once I didn't do that it was pretty enjoyable though, you have to take out a bunch of white beasts (including reinforcements which arrive every two turns) and a bunch of other enemies (many of whom have Miracle, so you have to plan for that...) and then take down the boss herself who is pretty much the best of the 3x3 dragon bosses which I already find pretty fun. Definitely want some archers for beast-hunting in this map!

The rest of the route is way easier by comparison, though it still lacks a lord character and you definitely feel that, they're all such good PCs. No OP lord battalion either.


Let's talk units.

Byleth: Soldier -> Pegasus Knight/Brigand -> Wyvern. With no lord, we ain't fuckin' around here, standard OP build that I've written about before. Probably the best unit overall for all that Petra ended up with slightly more kills.

Caspar: Myrmidon -> Brigand -> Dancer. Brigand was just for Death Blow but I ended up ditching it later anyway. Did the standard sword avoid build, he's obviously not as good at it as Ferdinand but he could still do some dodgetanking especially against axes in a pinch.

Dorothea: Monk -> Mage -> Assassin -> Mortal Savant. Giving up Dorothea's skillset in Advanced (especially Meteor) is definitely quite a sacrifice, but SS Reunion at Dawn is a thing and Dorothea being able to one-shot every enemy on the map with Hexblade is beautiful. The thing about magical combat art builds is they always fall off late (enemy HP+res grows faster than your damage), but Mortal Savant lets her reclaim all her skillset and be her usual versatile self. An interesting variation on the Warlock build.

Bernadetta: Soldier -> Pegasus Knight -> Paladin -> Falcon Knight. Overall this is probably the Bernadetta build I've been happiest with, though it lacks Encloser so maybe not. Basically optimizes Vengeance at every point in the game. Guard adjutants and Blessing help her safely drop to 1 HP, but being at 1 HP is pretty awkward later so she still was one of the weaker PCs down the stretch. Good Intermediate performance as always though.

Petra: Fighter -> Pegasus Knight/Brigand -> Wyvern. Hey everyone it's the best physical build in the game. I decided to make her the Alert Stance+ dodgetank if necessary which is maybe not perfect with only axe prowess but it was still really useful.

Felix: Myrmidon -> Archer/Brigand -> Sniper -> Bow Knight. With some Knowledge Gem shenanigans I decided to double-dip in Intermediate for him as well, one of five(!) PCs I managed it for. Hit+20 is nice for Bow Knight since it makes super-range shots more viable. Felix remains an outstanding archer with Heavy Draw and his Brave Bow+ put in loads of work later, not much could deal with a double/quad from that.

Mercedes: Monk -> Mage -> Bishop -> Gremory. I was lighter on healers this run than I often am, but Mercie says "check out four shots of Fortify". Some anti-synergy with Bernie but oh well. Usually had Thyrsus, she's solid.

Ingrid: Monk -> Mage/Pegasus Knight -> Dark Flier. A bit of meme build, I wouldn't call it optimum. That said if you've ever wanted to see a FE3H mage doubling most enemies on Maddening, here you go. Just don't expect her to 2HKO too many of them. She was mobile and had Physic, which are also nice.

Leonie: Pegasus Knight/Brigand -> Wyvern. It's the best build in the game part 3. While she could swing a mean axe I leaned her more towards bows, with Point-Blank Volley for smashing things at melee if she couldn't double and Inexhaustible for doubling/quadding at range.

Seteth: Brigand -> Paladin. A simple, "let's make his Swift Strikes as optimized as possible" build. Sucks for the first few maps but hey. Didn't have nearly the offensive versatility of the wyverns and exploded to magic (bad spd/res) but could output huge damage with Spear of Assal against hapless cavalry, sorry Jeritza.

Yuri: Fighter -> Brigand -> Sniper. I was going to make him a Bow Knight but his stats didn't really turn out well enough for it, so he got to sit in Sniper with Hunter's Volley hoping it would crit. The authority boon helped make up for all the time I spent wasting his riding training.

Seteth, Bernadetta, Ingrid, and Yuri all took turns on the bench as the low deployment slots of Silver Snow kicked my ass (did you know that until the final it's just VW deployment with Claude's slot removed? Lazy). Underlevelled Linhardt drew in on the exceedingly rare maps where I needed a 12th.

[Pyro]

Fire Emblem Sacred Stones: Eirika Hard.

This is my standard "There is a new FE game and I don't have the system for it so I'm going to play FE8."

I feel cheaty because I used the Arenas a bit in C4/C11(?). I had a bunch of resets (anytime I lost a character). Notable ones outside of just general carelessness were not remembering that gorgon eggs hatch.

I used a team of Eirika/Ephraim/Tana/Vanessa/Neimi/Colm/Gerik/Tethys/Natasha/Ross/Saleh (Lute got too little speed to use, and Saleh's CON made him quite decent. I used Seth where appropriate and Franz too. I leveled up Myrrh in the first map I got her, though I could have probably held off for harder maps. Funniest Myrrh moment was positioning her to see her dialog with Morva and Riev attacking her from range 1 because of other units taking up the range 2 spots. Crit for 0 damage and she pastes him on a counter. I tried to level up Natasha in C20 to get an S in Light but it didn't happen (she did end up 20/19 though between Bishop exp growth and staff xp). I fed Eirika the stat-up items and she was a reliable tank in both def and evasion. In retrospect I could have distributed the items more efficiently to create multiple tanks of different types. Tethys got the Mov+ Item and it worked well.

The most interesting map is Last Hope of course. Eirika/Ephraim support-tanked most of the southwest, since I forgot that's where most of the reinforcements come from. Myrrh (Fili Shield), Tethys, and Tana took some turns holding the line there too. The *variety* of enemies that come swarming there is impressive, and I wonder if I might have had an easier time setting up on the pillars with ranged weaponry and fighting that way. Neimi/Gerik/Ross held the north corridor pretty well, while Rennac/Colm finched the chests. I forgot how the map worked so I had L'Arachel and Innes doing some pointless moving around (and lighting up suspicious stairs and the spawn areas via Torch staff).

Some of the best maps have clear time pressure and the maps that don't have that clearly suffer for lack of motivation to get things done quickly. Last Hope, The gorgon egg map, and others were exciting and gave a sense of triumph when succeeding. The funniest moment of the run was despairing of Carlyle's crit rate before remembering how his weapon work and having Saleh basically just solo him effortlessly.

Definitely enjoyed playing Hard. I find myself only wanting the new FE game more though so maybe it wasn't a great solution to not being able to play that yet.

[Tide]

Started FFX again but with some challenge restrictions to make it a little more interesting. Playing with Expert grid, which FYI, starts everyone near the center. This is most notable for Kimahri because it lets him dip into several starter skills that he normally wouldn't be able to access unless he commits to a certain path. I chose this grid as it allows more options on where to go on the grid. Also because I've played with the standard one many times.

So what restrictions are in this challenge? Basically, I wanted to try and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each character while simultaneously weakening certain commands that normally everyone agrees is a bit too OP. The rules for this challenge as such:

1) No Switching. This is the big one. Normally, across many different FFX challenges, you get party diversity and utility from being able to swap on your turn with another PC. This is done with no turn cost, which is pretty powerful. So now, I'm forcing myself to not allow in-battle switching. Whatever you take in is what you have to work with. This extends into forced formations by the way - so better keep everyone decently on the same pace!

2) OSG. So each char has to take their pre-determined builds (ie: Lulu as the team BM). The sole exception to this is Kimahri, mainly because Kimahri never has a determined role. To make up for the complete lack of a natural skillset, I've given him the use of "Item". Only Kimahri can use this. Kimahri can go anywhere on the grid but he can only use Red Spheres. So no Special spheres to pick up Quick Hit, no White Magic Spheres to pick up Hastega, etc. He CAN grab them, but he has to make his way over.

3) Use restriction - Since Use is pretty busted, I'm making it such that I cannot use items that have similar functions to another skill or spell unless that PC is already in the formation. To give an example: No Smoke Bombs if Wakka isn't in the party. No Chocobo Wing if Tidus is not in the party, etc. This reigns in it's function a bit without a flat out ban. Note that unique items (such as Grenades and ABPs) are still allowed. Yes, this includes stuff like Stamina Tonics, but you have to get them first.

4) Summon restriction - To prevent this being a Summon-fest, Summon is usable but only if Yuna is the last PC alive. If I wipe anywhere more than 3 times, this rule gets relaxed but this shouldn't be necessary. I'm only attaching the last part as insurance to make sure I finish the game

An extra soft rules:
- Escaping without Flee is frowned upon. While I haven't made this No Escape, I want to get as much AP as I can since I'm not repeatedly switching chars In and Out. This means a lack of AP around characters at certain points, since sometimes, a PC is just THAT bad for a certain area. Flee is an exception since it's an actual skill and makes everyone run away (so party spoils are at least shared, even if its nothing).

Customizing weapons is allowed but without being able to swap immediately after stealing, it makes you think twice now about just auto slapping Rikku in the front. She has some tools of course, but like everyone else, has their bad moments too. I suspect I won't be stealing as often as a regular game, which should actually help place a soft rule on customization.

And with that, on with the show!

Prologue - To Kilika
Nothing really interesting happens in the opening segments. The only fight of note here is Sin's Fin. You're forced to use Tidus/Yuna/Kim, which at first made me wonder how I was going to actually hit the stupid thing. Thankfully, Kim has LANCET. Ah yeah. At 70 damage a pop, this takes awhile but Sin's Fin is pretty docile since only his cronies act. And if you kill 2 instead of 3, he won't re-summon, so you're free to just wait and let the other two defend while Kim Lancets away. The second part of this fight is more interest. Tidus/Wakka take on another Sin part, only this one can actually hit you. The side pods can ram you for about 30-50 damage or so. Without healing, this gets tense, since Blender is unevadable and deals about 120. Blind him with Wakka, Cheer x5, then go to town. I managed to kill it without anyone dying although both chars were in yellow.

Kilika - Mi'hen
Also a whole lot of nothing. FFX is quite slow at the start. The main fight of note here are actually the randoms as the Sphere stadium gets attacked. This gets notably scary because the Sagahins can hit for 75 damage and Tidus STILL only has 520 HP. Wakka can't one shot, so I have to keep Tidus alive as long as I can as if I'm down to just Wakka before the home stretch, I'll probably die. Some clever use of Dark Attack and selecting the right targets to minimize hits helps me get through it. Of course, a little luck to prevent focus firing helps too. I get out with Tidus at about 75 HP. Auron's segment starts and neither Wakka or Tidus get healed. So Tidus manages to cast Haste on Auron, then dies immediately. Wakka has no MP left, so this is basically Auron carry. Thankfully, he has plenty of bulk and Power Break reigns the huge bird's offense in. It counters later on, so Power Breaking it early is important.

Mi'hen
The highroad takes a while to get through and this is really where the challenge starts. I bought Stunning Steel from O'aka and it helps tremendously here. At first, I was pretty certain Tidus would be complete deadweight since he doesn't take care of any enemy specialties as the wolf is easy to take down with Wakka if you give him an elemental ball. However, being able to add slow helps a *ton* against enemies you can't one shot. And this happens pretty often with the Elementals in the area, or the Dual Horns or the Armored enemy. I eventually found a team of Wakka/Tidus/Kimahri was the most balanced to take on the enemies in the entire area. I do give Auron, Lulu and Yuna some chances to participate in fights, but most of the travelling was done with the above team. One thing this challenge really points out is how critical Wakka is to the party. You can make up for every else's niche in some way, but there is no way to make up for Wakka's accuracy. He starts with a *base* of 25 so even if you send Kim his way, there's just no way anyone comes even close to being able to take down aerials. Here's how the formations are handled:

Wolf/Elemental/Flyer: Tidus and Wakka can immediately one shot their enemy niche. Kim is being built with a Black/White focus so he has access to nulls. Casting Nulls turn 1, then have Tidus wack it with Slow eventually gives me enough turns that even at 50 damage a poke, I win relatively effortlessly. To add insult to injury, Kim can Lancet to regain his MP.

Wolf/Dual Horn: One of the benefits of starting with the Expert grid is that Kim can grab Dark Attack on his way over to Yuna's side of the grid. This, along with his 78 MP means he's a better choice for the non-evasive bulky tanks that are susceptible to Darkness. Tidus wacks the wolf, then blind the Dual Horn. At this point, it doesn't really matter but if Tidus lands Slow, it's a complete laugh track all the way to the finish line.

Bomb x3: This requires a little more effort. So the bombs explode after 3 hits and have 850 HP. You need to do about 300 damage a hit to ensure they don't blow up on you and Tidus and Wakka fall a little short...unless you a) give them Ice type weapons. Wakka gets one for free and b) Cheer up 5 times for a 20% boost. This allows them to hit that 300 damage mark. But what about Kimhari? Turns out, on Yuna's side of the grid, there's also a Str+3 tucked in the back. Yuna starts in front of it and has no real reason to grab it initially. However, getting this allows Kim's physical to keep up for awhile so he hits this 300 damage figure pretty easily too. Then you know, he also has NulBlaze cause he wasn't helping out to begin with.

Flan/Dragon: Ah yes, the formation that would normally require Auron and Lulu...except you can work around it. The flan can be Silenced (maybe 70% of the time) but even if not, you can cast Nuls to ward it. The Dragon meanwhile, dies to a Kimahri physical because his weapons also have Piercing. Note that Kimahri needs the special Hunter's Sphere that has the +10% Strength bonus or the +3 from Yuna's side of the grid to do this.

Dual Horn x2: 2 Dark attackers means you can keep their damage mitigated for the most part. If Slow lands on one early, you can then focus on the other. For one of the formations I was worried about, this team actually wrecks them pretty bad.

More later. I'm up to around Thunder Plains and oh boy, does this area suck. 2 Near wipes - both due to ambushes. I should've bought the Sentry (Initiative for Auron) instead of the TKO (Stonetouch for Wakka) but shhh.

[Tide]

More adventures in this twisted FFX challenge - at around the halfway point

Mushroom Rock Road - There are mainly two enemies of note here: Funguars and Garudas. Funguars have a sleep counter if you don't OHKO them. It's a 50/50 but given the fact that compositions without Yuna/Kim don't have healing I really don't want to risk it. There's a couple of ways to handle this: a) Wakka uses Sleep attack. It's not perfect but it gives you an extra roll at weakening it without triggering pollen. b) Tidus uses Cheer x3, then Kimahri will have enough power with the Heat Lance to one shot. It's possible Auron can do this as well, but Auron can't heal and without the proper elemental weapon, I didn't want to find out.

Garudas on the other hand are tanks with 4000 HP but always spawn alone. The best way to handle them involves using Dark Attack and then going to town. So Wakka/Kim rule here. As an insult to injury, Tidus can also Slow them, which then just makes them bigger, bulkier Dual horns. In case it wasn't clear, the best party around this area was Tidus/Wakka/Kim. Kim still has just enough power here with his +10% Strength lance to kill the armored enemies, thanks to +3 Strength from Yuna's. His dabble in Yuna's grid means he has nulblaze, allowing the entire team to just wall the elementals. Tidus/Wakka meanwhile have status to take out whatever else and handle their own niche enemies fine.

Sinspawn Gui - I spent a few battles before hand to catch up the other half of the team, because while Tidus/Wakka/Kim were the best random smashers, Lulu/Yuna/Auron are the best for this fight. Right off the bat, I already knew I had to bring one of Yuna or Kim. Yuna having just acquired Pray made her a better choice since this fight is a bit of an endurance fest. I had some concerns about Kim maybe not being able to keep up with the healing from the Demi casts to boot, so this made the choice clear. Between the rest, I chose Lulu for taking out the head (hits harder than Wakka and doesn't care about armor) while Auron's Power Break stops Gui from really doing a lot of damage with his punches. With that, the team was set. Open with Power Break, then Lulu eliminates the Head and Focuses up in between while Yuna keeps the team topped off with either Pray or Cure. I choose which one based on how much damage I've taken to conserve MP.  Once the head is dead, I have Auron and Lulu eliminate the arms so I can do full damage for a couple of turns. Repeat for many rounds until he finally goes down. Once the head is gone, there wasn't much else Gui could do to hurt me - I just needed enough resources in the meantime to kill him.

Djose Highroad - The main enemy of issue here are the Basilisks. They're slow, but bulky with 2000 HP, can sometimes spawn in 2s and can petrify you. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. But on this challenge, the only people who can cure Petrify are Yuna and Kim. Of the two, ONLY Yuna has a Stoneproof armor at this point, so she's clearly the superior choice for this area. Funguars are still in this area too and while Kim can KO them with some cheers and a Fire weapon, so can Auron. So I end up running Tidus/Yuna/Auron for most of this area. This only leaves the bird (which is rare) and the bug as problem enemies. I save overdrives for them since they ignore evade.

Moonflow North Road - Ochus replace the Basilisk for "big bulky annoying enemy". Unfortunately for them, they are vulnerable to petrify so Wakka has an absolute field day here. Also, without the Basilisk, Kim becomes a decent choice here again, so I run Kim/Wakka/Auron for most of it. I kind of wish I had more Wakkas at this point since he owns pretty much all the randoms except for the elementals. Even Flans can be petrified, so he clearly has no real enemy issues. I just build the parties around him to build AP.

Extractor - No healing, but uh doesn't really matter. Lightning Weapon + Haste and a couple of Cheers lets Wakka deal 500 damage a hit on his own, which means the only thing it has to hurt me is the Aqua Shooter. Since it only deals like 150-200 damage and I have 1100 HP Plus, I am in no danger of dying.

Moonflow South Road - This area mainly serves as a intro-area for Rikku. Rikku starts off *really* bad under these challenge rules since she dies to like everything in a hit and there's nothing she's effective against right now. I try to grind her up but get more grief for trying so I eventually give up and just head to the Thunder Plains

Thunder Plains South - Two parts again because the two areas have distinct differences and different enemy spawns. Anyway, the first half of Thunder Plains is absolute hell. I get Ambushed twice and nearly die twice. Once being saved by Tidus' Hasting Wakka and getting TKO to proc Petrify on the dragon enemy. The second being that Tidus manages to just get an Overdrive, allowing a guaranteed hit to kill the eyeball bat because it confused Wakka and made him shatter himself. It gets significantly better once we hit Rin's but yeah, no party is perfect here. I run Tidus/Kim/Wakka again most of the time since it's the most balanced team that I can put. But really everyone has their strengths here. I try swapping Tidus for Auron but I found Auron's lack of opening speed leaves the lizard open to possibly petrifying me, which is all kinds of bad.

Thunder Plains North - On the other hand, once you get to the North part, things get much better. Why? GRENADES. This is the first time they are buyable and they are extremely potent here due to low enemy HP across many of the randoms. In fact, a single grenade is enough to kill the Eyeball bat and I think the Lizard too. Add in the fact that Rikku is faster, means all of a sudden, she's actually a reasonable choice. Wakka still rules though cause Iron Giants have a lot of HP and do a lot of damage. However, they can be petrified, so TKO is a go. I run Tidus/Rikku/Wakka for some time since Rikku eliminates enough enemies most of the time and fast enough that I can usually clean up without issue. It also lets me Haste up Wakka to speed up fishing for Petrify Procs. Tidus also has Provoke which sees its first use here, allowing me to divert damage away from Wakka while he works his magic. After a while, I run Wakka/Yuna/Lulu to grind up some AP. Mainly for Lulu as Kim and Yuna can interchange fairly easy although each have their advantage over the other.

Macalania - Auron/Rikku/Kim takes care of most everything. Rikku's Grenades are still effective here as even though they don't OHKO, they do enough damage to most enemies that a follow up poke from Kim takes it down. This includes the lizard and flyers as they have low enough HP that a follow up Lancet is a guaranteed kill. Speaking of Kim, he has both Nulls and Elemental magic so he handles all the magic enemies, along with stopping the damage from Chimeras pretty. I use Auron mainly for his damage against them. They can be petrified too, so I swap up formations to get AP for everyone once we get to save point to make sure everyone is caught up.

Spherimorph - Lulu/Yuna/Kim makes this a total joke. Kim and Lulu bring the damage. Kim and Yuna have healing and null spells. Full stop. Insert laugh track here.

I do a little grinding after to get Iceproof on Tidus and some spare throwing items. Restock up to 99 Grenades.

Crawler: Kim/Tidus/Auron. There are ways to take out Negator, but I figured recovering from a Mana Beam might be cumbersome. So instead, we just roll with Negator being out all the time. Due to the way the rules are set up, Kim was the obvious choice since Yuna is kinda ineffective without magic. It turns out Reflex really hoses Crawler badly and guess who just happened to pick it up as he was just around that part of sphere grid? So Tidus and Kim buff up Str/Def/Eva with their respective skills while Auron equips a Lightningstrike weapon and we roll a slow but certain victory. Turns out Crawler can be SLOWED as well so Stunning Steel eventually got proc. then it was beating up a punching bag.

Seymour 1: First fight that required some more pre-planning. Forced formation of Tidus/Yuna/Kim. The guards are a non-issue as Kim has Stone Breath and that basically eliminates them on the spot. From there, both Tidus and Yuna get their Talk buff, which results in Tidus doing ridiculous amounts of damage for this point in the game (like 2900 damage or something). However before that, I get Tidus to Haste himself and throw some Cheers so I can rushdown Anima. With 2 Nul casters,Seymour has issues really making damage stick. Plus I have the Ward and Proof armors on Tidus and Kim to buy even more time. Once Anima comes out, its the Tidus show. I watch him hit Anima for about 4000 damage a hit. Anima still gets a turn and I hope that it's not on Tidus. It isn't - so I just res with the other PC while Tidus continues hitting. He manages to score a crit and does like 7800 damage or something - so that worked! When Seymour returns to the field, I have Tidus use up his OD, basically one shotting him - exactly as planned.

Wendigo: Wakka/Lulu/Kim. Guards once again are a non-issue due to Stone breath. Once Wakka lands the first Sleep attack, it's over. Lulu Focuses up and Kim and her basically do the remaining damage, while Wakka proceeds to lock it down with Sleep Buster. There is some risk here if Wakka misses more than one Sleep attack and Wendigo kills Kim on his first turn, but for the most part, the chances of this are low so I didn't think too much on it.

[Random Consonant]

Dragon Quest 11 - Been playing this, beat Act 2 on Stronger Enemies.  I... really don't have a whole lot to say about it, the QoL stuff makes the game pretty inoffensive on the whole (otherwise I don't think I would've bothered with the game ever) but it's not like anything really stands out about it.  Other than Sylvando of course.

[Sierra]

Oh right, I still exist and sometimes I still play games.

Nioh 2: is more Nioh. Is good. Is a lot of game, like 4-5 months for me to play through base game + first DLC? I don't think it's gonna change the mind of anyone who wasn't into the first one, but probably an overall improvement in formula. It has a character generator, it has miko clothes, what more would I want?

~

Wasteland 3: Oh right, this is why I'm actually posting. This is really good. I'm playing on Normal, because that's just what I do (and because Wasteland 2 actually gave me significant trouble, especially early on). Almost regretted that for a while because I was steamrolling for the first few missions, but the game is pushing back now so I will probably want to rethink my party setup and try some different things. Which is actually really easy to do because you can whip up new characters any time you want back at your HQ. I haven't tried this yet to confirm, but I'm assuming they'd start out at something like your party's average level (I base this on the fact that benched PCs clearly accrue equal XP to active party members).

So yes, good SRPG is good, blah blah blah, that's nice and all and is sound reason to play it, but it's not the principal reason I stayed up way too late last night. The game opens with a disclaimer to the extent of "Stories, themes, and ideas that originated early in development have in some cases been mirrored by current reality." Yeah, wow, you don't say, guys? Suffice it to say that the devs clearly had on their minds what has too often been on mine, which is, to quote FO:NV, "What makes nations, and what breaks them." It's been very good at compelling me to roleplay story events in a consistent manner. While it is obvious from the outset of the game that you're going to be working with bad people to survive, that doesn't mean every choice is going to be obvious or intuitive or easy.

Favorite moments so far:

-Recruiting feline party mascot by singing David Bowie at it.

-Author expy flips the desk. He is dual-wielding tommyguns. Dance music starts.

-This ghost of a dead nation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zdCAylTOiw, creeping in to underline the irony of freeing a slaver from a dictator's dungeon.

-Realization that the nicest person I've met so far is a 70-year-old, morbidly obese, Dracula-cosplaying former warlord.

If there's a fault, it's that the humor still veers too far into crassness for my tastes, but that's a minor issue. Very satisfying double-barreled gameplay/story brain sensation delivery device so far.

[Tide]

FFX Challenge - Finished. The entire run was actually really fun since if often required some additional thinking on team composition as well as the strategy to use for each fight. SPOILER: The slower, steadier method often was the winner. Also highlighted for me how much more valuable certain abilities were.

Bikanel - Having Kim learn White Magic made him invaluable here, but Rikku is the real star, thanks to Al Bhed Potions (ABP) becoming available. MT 1000 Healing is quite a lot at this point in the game! For more enemies, the team of Tidus, Kim, and Auron was actually the best mixture. This is due to the fact that the birds in this area don't have high M.Def so Kim/Lu can actually Overkill them easily for bonus AP. Sandragoras, which were probably the scariest monsters due to 100% confse, I just launched with Auron's Shooting Star. Certain enemies however are better taken care of with Lulu - namely Sandworms and Zus. Both get destroyed by POIZN, so Bio was invaluable (Auron can Guard to keep both Lu and Tidus safe while waiting). Wakka, of course, still rules against pretty much every random formation. I just benched him so he wouldn't go way ahead on the Sphere Grid - this had the effect of making him weaker than I wanted for UNDEAD EVRAE. More of that below.

Home - Kim's Stone Breath owns everything, so planning out how you spent your Lancet draws helps a lot. Auron also has Shooting Star here to own the occasional monster. Some small things of note - Auron's grid at this point picks up a couple of Str+4s in rapid succession, so he's starting to deal *lots* more damage than everyone. One of these areas actually overlaps near where Tidus is, so I had him take a quick dip to pick up some additional strength so he's aiding a bit more as well. Most notable, ESG exchanges 4 of Auron's MP+20 for 4 Strength+4s. Kind of a good trade, most of the time.

No encounters on the airship. Not surprising since its a short segment.

Evrae - Due to it's Stone Gaze, I pretty much had to use Kim/Rikku/Tidus unless I want to risk it never hitting my healer. Nobody has a Stone Ward/Proof armor otherwise, so this was definitely the safest way to deal with him. Immediately pull back and let Cid do his 7200 damage, while Tidus buffs the entire team with Haste and Cheer. In the meantime, I have Kim cast up Protect and do some damage with spells. I Lancet after around the halfway point to keep his MP high. Once the Cheers were up and Cid has done his deal, I wait for a bit before moving back in, having Kim chip it down some more. When we move back in, Tidus attacks every turn possible. That extra strength really doing some good work here! Kim also attacks with the occasional black magic, but I usually had him and Rikku stay more defensive to cure off any status that comes by since it's by far and away the scariest thing in this fight (most damage can be shrugged off easily - especially with Protect up). I only had to deal with him Hasted for a few turns as Tidus had a Overdrive ready and I burn through the last 6000 or so of its HP with that and another spell from Kim. Saving the Mix was pretty ideal for Bevelle's aquatic portion.

Bevelle Ceremony - Easy. Just have to make sure that the tall robot isn't getting KO'd without some damage on it so it doesn't accidentally knock out any one I need too early.

Via Purifico - So for the first time I thought I'd need to summon due to Yuna being solo for the opening stretch of this dungeon. Then I found Kim before the first encounter, so so much for that. Kim is a pretty good first partner all things considered since his magic is strong enough for most things here, has some semblance of accuracy for the lizards and Lancet to keep his MP in stock. I do eventually get all 4 party members together even though you could just make a straight dash to the exit so I could loot a little more efficiently. Nothing really of note. Issaru kinda sucks on any regular playthrough where Yuna has some access to the Sphere Grid so yeah. 

Bevelle Aqueducts - I bet most of you completely forgot this was even a thing, cause I sure did until I was going over all the boss fights in my head. Anyway, this is possibly the first time I had to do this fight legit due to the "No Items except Kim" clause. It's a good thing you normally just throw 2 P.Downs at him because his counters hurt...and he has Eraser. Oh boy. The small bit of good news is that his HP kind of sucks (16000 only) so it's just a matter of attacking when possible.  For NEB - I'm not sure what causes him to do Eraser, because as long as the fight took, I never saw him use it a second time. However, his first move was Eraser so I feel like that part is scripted. The good news for me is that he removed Wakka because if it was anyone else, I might be screwed (removing Rikku kills my Healing, Tidus has the most damage). With the remaining 2, Tidus does the rest of the work while Rikku keeps him healthy. I secure the finish with an Overdrive again.


Natus - I get Yuna caught up on Sphere levels as well as Wakka since I avoided using both for awhile. Kim/Yuna/Tidus are forced into this fight so I don't have any choice on the matter. Luckily, this is also one of the stronger formations for the fight. Why? Because having both Kim and Yuna gives me 2 Healers. ESG allows Yuna access to Reflect which lets me cruise in the 2nd part of the fight. I still have to get there. That's the good news. The bad news is that outside of Tidus, no one really has much offense. He does get a Talk boost here, which helps immensely when your sole offense is from one person. I try Hasting up initially but the Mortibody is able to MT dispel, so I eventually drop it and just go straight to whacking Seymour. Double Nulcasting means I can stay ahead of the 1st phase relatively well and having Items means I can throw Reflect with Yuna and can still Heal up. Overall pretty basic - Standard might have made this harder since Yuna is farther away from Reflect. Of course, I could also have done it grindless and it would be a different story.

Calm Lands - I open up Monster Hunting with Tidus/Wakka/Rikku for the most part. It's effective against most formations sans the 2 Chimeras and the 2 Hydras. For that first, I need Kim or Yuna...usually Kim since he has some offense. For the 2nd, Auron/Yuna were usually a better choice. I keep Tidus in the team all the time due to Sonic Steel and access to flee. But Rikku having gained an Initiative weapon makes her a good choice to place upfront some of the time too, just to void Ambushes altogether.

Cavern of the Stolen Faith - Not much changes in formation line up. I use Tidus/Kim/Wakka mostly for balance. Yojimbo as a boss goes down without much of a fight. I then proceed to hire Yojimbo by literally throwing a good chunk of change of him. This will come back to haunt me come Mt. Gagazet. Capitalism, amirite?

Biran/Yenke: Are bad and should feel bad.

Mt. Gagazet: The climb up the mountain features utilizing a team of Tidus/Auron/Rikku for the entire journey. At this point, Auron has gained a massive amount of Strength and is doing enough to pretty much one shot the Grenades. I do one better and forge an E&C weapon on him. With access to Guard (and later Sentinel up the climb), this basically lets me troll the hell out of ST physicals, which is a lot of enemy attacks. Sure, there are a few enemies that don't use it, but they are few and far between and most everything else gets destroyed with this formation, allowing Rikku to stock up on some goods. The only things that possess some issue are the Imps, which only have a measly 800 HP. Hasting Rikku and dropping 3 Grenades usually works. The alternative is to just save an Overdrive and wreck them that way.

Wantz has good weapons for Yuna/Lulu/Rikku. The bad news is the combined cost is about 310,000 gil and Yojimbo took a good chunk. Since I need some levels on some other PCs AND I want the weapons just in case, I force myself to grind here.

Flux - On Standard, this might be a bit of an issue because many of the formations here have some holes. Going over what everyone brings to the table:
- Tidus: Has Haste. Less offense than Auron, less HP than Wakka. Awful MDef means Total Annihilation will probably still kill him after Shell.
- Wakka: Has almost nothing. Less offense than Tidus and less HP than Auron. Bad combo in general for this fight.
- Yuna: Revival! No offense unless other PCs die. This also means no reliable Aeon Shielding. Has extremely bad HP (thanks to ESG) so Cross Cleave will probably one shot. Might even after Protect?
- Lulu: Slow, has to worry about MP, but lots of damage and defenses. Almost has to be paired up with Kim due to the MP
- Rikku: ABP with Survivor is 2k MT healing with fast recharge. This is really really good. The downside is that she has no revival, and since one of Flux's combos is lol u ded, I can't bring her in reliably as the only healer. Offense varies depending on who is with her, but would prefer Lulu for the best due to the abundance of Fire Gems. Lack of focusing is an issue
- Auron: Has the best HP and best resourceless offense. Unfortunately is also extremely Slow. Will definitely survive Total Annihilation under Shell.
- Kimahri: Balanced on offense and defense, but offense isn't super strong (it's worse than Tidus, above Wakka and costs MP). Better HP than Yuna for defensive duties.

After that analysis, I settled for Auron/Kim/ and didn't know about the third. Since I didn't want to be relying on just 1 reviver, I threw Yuna in there. The beginning of the fight was actually scarier because once you figure out how to survive Total Annihilation, he starts going into a predictable pattern and it becomes easier to react to. By Shelling Auron/Kim, both can survive that and both have the HP and defense to eat a Cross Cleave as well. Still want them under Protect though. Yuna fares a little worse on Cross Cleave (must be under Protect) but can survive a Total Annihilation without Shell as long as she maintains high HP. The fight is a very slow slog since Auron is just so slow and Kim's offense is merely "okay". But with enough pokes from Kim and the occasional swing from Auron, the fight eventually ends. This fight is probably tougher in Standard since Auron has a much smaller offense advantage, but I assume it goes very much the same way as long as you can survive his big call-out attacks, just slower.

Gagazet caverns - We're getting into the stretch of the game where everyone is nearing the end of their grids...kinda. Lulu and Kim still have ways to go (Kim is special) as does Rikku. But for the most part, Wakka/Tidus/Auron are all sitting pretty now in their last segments. Most of the encounters here get owned by more E&C. There are a few that don't (eyeball bats) and for those...Wakka makes a good choice. Note that I don't say he's the best because ESG removed enough strength from Wakka such that he sits at the end of his grid at a paltry 43 or something - which sometimes isn't enough to kill late game eyeball bats. I forget if he had even gotten the last bits of strength here so I actually need Tidus with Sonic Steel to Haste him so he can go twice quickly and kill it. Tidus/Auron/Kim was otherwise my go to party with me saving overdrives primarily for the eyeball bats. Dark Flans in International apparently lost Auto-Regen so Armor Break into anything after tends to kill them quick.

Sanctuary Keeper - 1st reset of this challenge and it's because of underestimating Mana Breath. I figure for this team, my best bet was Auron/Yuna/Lulu. Kim doesn't have tier 3s so his offense is not very good. Wakka and Rikku don't bring much (lest you Mix 2 Wings and Trio the boss to death). This really only leaves Tidus as the other option and I figure that going magical was a better route than trying to kill it with physicals. While you can armor break it, it will counter with Protect to mitigate the damage. On the other hand, it won't stop you from mental breaking him. The issue though is that this boss is really tanky so I have to be careful with my MP on Lulu otherwise, I'd be a sitting duck. I could technically use a Black Magic Sphere to pick up Osmose, but decided to go true OSG here.

Anyway, the reset comes due to underestimating Mana Breath. Yuna was sitting around 1800 HP or something (again, note ESG removes a lot of HP from Yuna) and I was thinking after seeing that attack almost kill Lulu the first time, "Should I Shell Up?". I did have 2 Focuses under my belt so I figured I'd be able to survive it, if barely, at full health. lol 2000 damage OHKO her and I lose my reviver pretty early on this attempt that I knew I'd lose the following attrition war. The second time around, I don't take chances. I constantly keep Yuna and Lulu at full health as much as I can. With E&C, Auron can sometimes sneak in a few counter hits with Sentinel since I also didn't want to accidentally trigger a Tail Sweep. This helps reduce the amount of damage Lulu needs to output, as does Focusing up a few times before casting. I eventually beat it all the while juggling healing, counting attacks for tail sweep and curing random status from Photon Wings. Overall, very challenging even though I wasn't expecting it to be a complete pushover to start.

Zanarkand Road - Same enemies here as Gagazet cave pretty much. I run Tidus/Kim/Auron,

D.O.M.E -  Tidus/Yuna/Auron or Tidus/Kim/Auron are both good parties as it deals with Defender Zs pretty easy and the two mechs have issues trying to damage the party between Auron Sentinel guarding and Kim being able to heal. I do eventually catch up party members after reaching the end, before the trials. At this point, Tidus/Wakka/Auron are done their grids. Lulu picks up Double Cast and Kim finally gets to tier 3s. Good thing too as the next couple of bosses kinda want it

Spectral Keeper - I run Yuna/Kim/Auron so I can control Berserk somewhat. I probably should've wiped here but ended up clearing it first try due to utter dumb luck. The strategy is simple: Keep everyone one space apart so Spectral Keeper can never hit the entire party. Auron lands a Mental Break early, and Kim deals with the bulk of the offense from tier 3s, although Auron helps out whenever his turn comes up. I dodge the first 2 glyph mines pretty easy, but then the next time he summons them, they instantly explode and kill Yuna and then Kim. I was pretty sure I'm screwed at this point since both healers are dead. Then he Zerks Auron (lol) and Auron proceeds to whack him upside the head for about 8k damage, finishing the fight. Whoops!

Yunalesca -  All mage party is the team of choice due to Mind Blast. Kim/Yuna/Lulu deal with this fight about as well as can be. At one point I do almost screw myself over because I got too clever and casted Reflect on Kim so I have someone safe from the curative spells under zombie. Unfortunately, Kim got confused at a critical moment and I needed to control him. I was pretty sure I was screwed since I couldn't use items, my only recourse was to try and smack him with a physical. Luckily for me, Lulu does get like 11 Accuracy on ESG and that probably made it more likely than not I ended up knocking Kim back to his senses. The rest of fight is just being very careful about HP levels. I usually ignored healing and focused on just straight up nuking (especially with Lulu) so as to get through the fight quickly and with less randomness.

Sin Fins - Tidus/Auron/Kim takes over. The first time, I almost get owned by DELAY HAX. But Tidus recovers in time and I get Cid to pull away before any more damage is done. Negation makes Hastega a waste, so I just tended to Haste up Kim, and had him nuke from a distance. When Sin's Core appears, it doesn't fare much better and it goes down to a combo of Auron/Kim and the occasional Tidus attack.

Sin Damage Race - 2 Wipes to this fight (lol). I first tried Kim/Lulu/Tidus, thinking Hasting up and throwing spells at it quickly will be enough. Unfortunately, I forget it has status and I get promptly owned by that, when it hits Tidus and then he kills Kim. Oops. I swap teams to Yuna/Kim/Lulu, so I have two people who can recover from random status. Unfortunately, Yuna hasn't picked up Holy yet and most of her turns are tied to healing everyone since the attacks also 3-4HKO'd me (I don't have HP+30% armors...yet). And uh...I actually legit lose the damage race here because Lulu is just so slow and Kim also has to waste turns healing her MP periodically. I change parties back to physicals and roll, Tidus/Auron/Yuna. This time, Tidus manages to resist confusion that I don't have to worry about it and Hastega with the 2 physical attackers manage to kill it with a few turns to spare.

Inside Sin - I forge a E&C weapon for Tidus here as well (along with First Strike) because guess what all the big bad randoms inside Sin are vulnerable to? That's right, PROVOKE. Not only does Provoke work, but it also turns them to using evadable physicals, so Tidus with a E&C weapon and First strike here pretty much eliminates a ton of threats. These include: Gemini twins, Great Malboros, Barbarossa, and King Behemoths. I also learned that if you kill a King Behemoth with a counter attack under Provoke, it won't death counter with Meteor, so Tidus was by far away the best choice. For the other two slots, I kept Yuna and Kim. Yuna got a Stonestrike weapon, which at first seems useless. However, as it turns out, it has a lowish chance to hit Adamantoises so she ends up killing those whenever they pop up. Meanwhile, Kim has Petrify breath for the 3x eyeball formation, which is by far the worst formation since even a Hasted Wakka can't take them out effectively. They instead die to MT overdrives and as Auron was already at the end of his grid, I just picked someone else who can do the same. Along with Tidus having Energy Rain now, I just need to not fight them 3x in a row which doesn't happen during this run.

Seymour Omnis - Auron/Kim/Tidus. Tidus Hastes up the team, while Auron lands Armor Break. Then Tidus swaps to Double Edge and just Quick Hits like crazy. He does get off an Ultima which kills everyone but Auron, but at that point, it doesn't matter as Seymour rolls into Ice Element and Auron conveniently has an armor with Iceproof equipped.

BFA - 3 tries for this one. You're forced to use Tidus/Yuna/Auron. First couple of tries, I forged armors with Wards for Stone and Zombie on everyone. I also grabbed the 99 Stamina Tonics (as NEB advised) and made HP+40% for everyone. This ended up being not good enough as the status still does through and I lose basically once Yuna gets Zombie'd as I have no way of curing it. For the 3rd attempt, I ended up going out and grinding a little for the items to make proofs. This way, the random status doesn't own me anymore. However, I am worried about BFA's 2nd form first phase overdrive as I have no way for Yuna to survive it. Even with HP+40%, Yuna tops out at a measly 3120 HP due to ESG plot and that 1st phase OD deals like 5800 damage. I manipulate Tidus' Talks to get around it but then I rudely found out that Ultimate Jecht Shot does just about 3000 damage to Yuna. Since she got hit a little bit before hand, this means Yuna dies and its still not late enough into the fight that I can make it without healing.

On the winning run, I modify the armors a little but again. I managed to steal enough Blessed gems with Rikku to get Def+20%. Since I need Yuna to survive, I give her HP+50% along with the two proofs. This lets her hit 3400 for HP, which is much more comfortable margin. I give Def+20% for Auron because really, with only HP+30%, he was already hitting about 6k for HP. I also make One MP Cost weapons for all 3 so MP doesn't become an issue. Lastly, I give Tidus/Yuna damage+ modifiers on their weapons (Str/Mag) and a Sensor ability so I can keep track of BFA's HP.

The first form goes about as expected. I do learn from NEB that I can Slow the Padogas, so I cast Slowga until both are hit. Then I have Tidus Haste Up and Cheerx5 on everyone. Meanwhile, Yuna throws Regen and Protect on everyone as most of BFA's offense is physical. Regen allows me to heal even when it's not Yuna's turn and helps immensely for turn economy as I want Yuna to help with Holy here to blitz past the 1st phase of the second form. Auron uses Sentinel initially but as the battle goes underway, he does use Armor Break when Tidus can get turns after him and before the Padogas. This left Tidus unload a few Quick Hits for boosted damage, which helps speed things up. When the 2nd form come out, I do throw out Tidus' OD to quickly blitz past the 1st phase. I also use Talk once here to keep BFA placated so Yuna doesn't randomly die too early again. Once the second phase hits, Regen keeps me safe especially when the Delay sword hax starts coming out and I can't inbetween as Yuna's turn is pushed back. I do have to recast Regen at some point but sticking to the plan and having an additional Talk charge at the ready, I kill BFA on the 4th run with some room to spare thanks to Auron entrusting his OD to Tidus once the kill range is within sight.

Yu Yevon - I thought I was stalemated for a bit when it drained all of my MP. lol, shows how often I fight this guy >_>. Anyway, he eventually kills himself with Gravija so just be patient. Auron having a Poisonstrike weapon helped since it procing would speed things up.

And that's all the main game fights! If I figure out how to modify the challenge for post game and side content I will do so, but don't expect much for now.

[Sierra]

If there's a fault, it's that the humor still veers too far into crassness for my tastes, but that's a minor issue.

I feel obliged to retract this statement because everything in Denver was gold.

I fucked a robot just because I could and this actually served to help progress the plot.

[Sierra]

Wasteland 3: Game finished. Very good, much recommend.

DL types will probably prefer playing on a difficulty above Normal. I think the last boss didn't even successfully deal damage to a human party member on my first attempt (I ran it twice to see different ending choices). While I would say that enemies, in general, do remain dangerous at endgame for their capacity to murder your party members, their ability to live long enough to do that did not keep pace for me. I suspect most people in this group would appreciate a more challenging setting than the one I got.

However, while Wasteland 3 is a mechanically solid and fun SRPG, my recommendation stems at least as much from quality plot as it does from gameplay enjoyment. I do not think I would extend a similar recommendation for Wasteland 2, as it didn't similarly excel on this front. But Wasteland 3's principal thematic concern is one that videogames rarely trouble themselves with: how comfortable are you knowing that the resources which sustain your community come to you at the expense of someone else's liberty and livelihood?

A prologue synopsis: your group's headquarters got nuked at the end of Wasteland 2. While you had time to evacuate beforehand, you did not have time to save the citadel's stores of food, water, and medicine--supplies crucial to survival in a post-nuclear landscape and difficult to replace in a hurry for a displaced population. Enter a radio broadcast from someone calling himself "the Patriarch of Colorado." You've still got plenty of bodies and plenty of firepower. Deal with some minor security problems for him and he'll give you what you need to survive.

It is never in much doubt that the Patriarch is an authoritarian strongman ruler. It's in his goddamn name. But the catch is, this doesn't have to be your problem. You are perfectly free to do his dirty work, take what you need to save your friends and family, and go back home. Yes, someone somewhere might end up suffering, but this way at least it's no one close to you. You can live with that, right? (Unsurprising spoilers, I couldn't, but it took much longer for that to become clear than I thought it would.)

I'm going to spoiler text preeeeeetty much everything beyond that.

I am actually unsure when or how I could've pushed for revolution without Angela forcing the issue.

If I could have, I would've been inclined to push for pragmatism. The Patriarch's old, medical problems are starting to bring him down, we can probably count on him dying or falling from power in a few years anyway. Secure the lifeline now and move in to clean up afterward, right?

But I've concluded it would be against the entire spirit of the narrative conflict if that was offered as an option (and Angela would never fucking do it). If someone is asking you point blank how long you can tolerate tyranny, the correct answer to that question should not be "As long as it remains useful to me to do so." How much of other peoples' suffering is really acceptable? Are we still human if we can give a non-zero answer to that question?

And I genuinely do not know where I would've got off the train if someone hadn't put it to me so starkly. When it comes to Angela Deth saying "overthrow a dictator or shoot me," well the ending choice I made was probably the only one I personally could've made. But I played the party as gradually coming to grips with the cognitive dissonance of the situation, and I consider it greatly to the game's credit that this so consistently felt like the natural approach. Moving the goalposts is pernicious indeed.

I AM quite glad that the answer I increasingly wanted to find--just invite the rest of the Rangers up here after the revolution, dammit!--did turn out to be an option. But even then, it's no perfect "good" ending. You can save your home, you can save your people, you can save their spirit--but you cannot save all three of these things at the same time. What matters to you the most?

Incidentally, I would REALLY be curious to see how the joining Liberty ending plays out, for all that that's something I could never possibly do.

Good stuff, I'm impressed, etc.

But enough crunchy plot for now, crunchy gameplay stuff starts here. This was my final party (all custom PC names came from the randogenerator):

Rose (custom starting PC): Diplomifier and medic. Designated party leader. Took Small Arms for offense but had increasingly less time to actually shoot things as the game went on. Spent most of her lategame turns running all over the battlefield picking up KO'd allies. (While I do maintain that the game got much easier in the last third or so, that is a case of my damage outpacing enemy damage. It definitely was not a case of me nerfing their damage through armor. Lethality scales up more than armor for everyone.)

Ruger (custom starting PC): Melee brute, sidebar in Explosives and Animal Whisperer. You might think Explosives is the key item in this array, but it was a footnote. Mostly it was to defuse traps; I only occasionally found significant use for rockets and grenades. She did more damage cuttin' fools. Geez, let's try to actually list all the passive melee buffs she had: Raider Hater background (+10% damage to humans, which is a lot of this game), Sadomasochist quirk (+33% damage given and received), stag animal companion boosted by perks (+20% melee damage), cybernetic hand (+10% melee damage), exoskeletal armor (two pieces, I think this totaled 25% or 30%?) = let's call it 2.5x base damage on every melee attack she made. Which could be 2-4 a turn + oh hey special attack is charged up, AOE RADIAL BLAST now everything in her neighborhood is overkilled.

Melee is really good in this game, is what I'm getting at here.

Fang (custom recruit): Sniper. We know what snipers do. Obviously invaluable. Fixed machines and busted locks outside combat.

Hollywood (custom recruit): Brawler and stealthy scout. Despite what the game says, I found Brawling more effective early than later. She spent most of the midgame benched and only came back near the end because I could tell Jodie was likely going to leave the party in response to decisions I was making. Good for stunning people, party-worst damage output.

Lucia (plot companion): Dies to a sneeze. This is problematic for a frontliner, which is pretty much what she has to be since she majored in Small Arms. I stuck with her anyway because of important non-combat skills and she could at least pump out good damage before inevitably getting KO'd in turn 2. And thank fuck she didn't leave right before the last battle, I really wasn't entirely convinced I could count on her, but I'm guessing that keeping her as long as I did and completing her quest did the trick.

Pizepi (plot companion): I had to because green chick and because returning Wasteland 2 companion. Covered skills I didn't have satisfactorily filled elsewhere. Fortuitous timing + laser is not difficult, ze.

That's the official party. But Wasteland 3 really likes giving you goofy, AI-controlled followers. As far as I can tell, the animal followers in this list don't benefit from a party member's Animal Whisperer perks, but maybe they just didn't in my case because they got tagged to my party leader (who had no such skill ranks). But generally they don't contribute enough damage to carry you in a fight anyway. They're just there to add personality to your adventure. These were the ones I found:

Major Tomcat: Let us lament the unfortunate loss of our beloved and behatted feline party mascot. He died pointlessly in a battle that shouldn't have been fought against people who should've known better than to do what they were attempting. That's what happens sometimes when diplomacy breaks down. I could've reloaded, but Wasteland 3 generally encouraged me to live with the consequences of my actions, even unforeseen and unfortunate ones. So R.I.P., best friend in the whole world, you were missed.

Polly: On the other hand, I didn't even notice when Polly died. What a jerk.

Cyborg Chickens!!!: I don't think I ever saw one of these survive a battle.

Party PAL: Is a discobot. Should've been more useful as a literal healbot, but a glitch with Jodie's HP meant that it just kept trying to heal the same missing ghost HP whenever she was around. Oy.

Random Soviet Security Robot Salvaged From the Wreckage of a Crashed Space Station: Actually shockingly effective at offense, but this is essentially a final mission pickup.

The Provost: Does this guy actually do stuff other than randomly spout Latin? I don't know, I only remembered to let him out of the freezer before the last mission.

Finally, I've mentioned Animal Whisperer a couple times above. This is a skill which lets you recruit random animals found wandering the world. The animal's bonded party member will get a passive stat buff (varies by animal type) and the animal will assist you in battle. Well, usually--sometimes followers just go whatevs and take a nap instead. I'm not completely sure why this is. My best guess is it's a proximity thing--whenever I could, I tended to trigger encounters with a sniper shot against an unsuspecting enemy*. Pets often napped through those battles. (*You cannot cheese boss fights this way.) Anyway, some of these were enormously helpful, especially once I got the skill perks. Some of the buffs are great and they generally have enough HP that you don't have to babysit them (you can rest assured I tried to heal animal friends when they got in trouble, but this was remarkably less common than human PCs dying). If AW sounds like a silly skill to invest in at the outset of the game, it really isn't, and it added a lot of fun to the game for me. I'd love to see someone do a novelty run where every party member has an animal follower and there's a whole zoo following the group around everywhere.

As for the animal types that I found:

• Cat: Let's set aside that it buffs your crit rate. That is obviously a very good benefit, but the important thing is that you have an attack cat that can fly all the way across the map and claw someone's face off.
• Chicken: Did way more damage than a chicken should be capable of doing for the brief time it survived. Which wasn't very long.
• Doe: Only kept one in the party to have a matching pair with the stag. Stealth isn't a very helpful buff.
• Dog: Combat speed (read: distance of map movement in battle) is a fantastic buff for a melee PC. Otherwise meh.
• Fox: Cute but not very useful. The buff is only valuable if you have Leadership and Animal Whisperer on the same PC. I didn't.
• Goat: Pretty good. Stubbornly durable, good damage. +Crit damage is always a welcome buff.
• Growler Pup: Dunno, I almost immediately ditched it for another stag. Stag OP.
• Honey Badger: I couldn't keep it, because only Jodie had rank 10 Animal Whisperer, so I can't comment on its offensive capabilities. However, I will note that it had 7,000 HP. Endgame party average was around 300.
• Pig: The HP buff is pretty minor. I let it run free in the cafeteria instead.
• Rabbit: Initiative is a fairly irrelevant stat to boost in this game. If you bring one along, it's for Monty Python jokes.
• Razorback: You would think wolverines would make excellent melee combatants, but mine just toodled around in the back row occasionally lobbing poison darts. Meh.
• Stag: MVP of the animal world. Passively gives a +20% melee damage buff to my already busted frontliner and dashes all over the map goring everyone for hundreds of damage multiple times a turn. Just insanely helpful.
• Waste Wolf: Hard to say because I couldn't tell what the Terror debuff does. It didn't contribute much damage for me, just howled at enemies.

Geez, that's a lot. And I didn't get the trophy for taming every animal, so that can't even be all of them! Sadly, I can't find a comprehensive list to tell me what I missed.

WORDS WORDS WORDS. (Remember when I did this on a regular basis?)

I'm done, game is good, play it.

[Random Consonant]

Tales of Vesperia - Played, beaten.  Game's something of a janky mess and not nearly as much of an improvement over Symphonia as I might of liked but I still enjoyed it and hey at least it actually has writing in places so it gets to be above CS3/DQ11/Pokemon SWSH for games I've played this year.  Ristelle is canon.

I guess it's time to move on to figuring out why birds fly.

Tales of Berseria - Ah, I see the main antagonist would like people to subscribe to his Youtube channel to learn about "rationality."  Odd move for a theocrat.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Disgaea postgame status report:

Priere and Majorly recruited
Baal beaen and Nemisis and Super Robo Suit stolen.
Prinny Balal not beaten.
Rank 39 human weapons: 7/7  Finally
Rank 40 human weapons: 0/7
Other trophy items not acquired: Hyperdrive and Priny Baal's gear  Also 13 slot Champion Belt and Galactic muscle but those are of lesser importance.
Monster army: 20/24
19998 specialists: 6/8  Just missing Master (pointless in the postgame, SP is not an issue) and Teacher (argh, it would be more magic damage)  Also have more than 10 300 power Statisticians for the highest possible EXP gain.

Atelier Ayesha postgame stuff -

  Beat Wilbell's ending quest fight on the first attempt.  Seems aiming for high quality on my attack items made a big difference.  It has a particular gimmick that the GameFAQs guide doesn't mention so I was surprised I won on the first try at it.  DragonScale Iron of doom crushes fights through extreme power but I hadn't made it at that point.  Speaking of DragonScale Iron, made it with about 6 months left on the game calendar.  Planned ahead so I could get it to 120 Quality with the desired effects for overpowering offense.  That trembling sound is the game's combat difficulty shrinking to next to nothing (once I've duplicated a few).  About 3 monsters in the game will live long enough to put up much of a fight, the rest get crushed in about 2-3 rounds.

And to think I stumbled upon the effect combination by accident in a previous playthrough.  What's different from before is perfecting the quality for maximum damage bonus.

[Random Consonant]

Tales of Berseria - Ah, of course, god exists and is also a rationality youtuber.  Everything makes sense, thanks, I hate it.

(Game good but I don't think I've seen a villain cast this determined to give me poisoning since... uh... Tales of Symphonia?  Of course nearly the entire cast of that game tried to give me poisoning but still, yikes.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Pandemics made me go back to playing games, what is this shit

I went through two Fiesta playthroughs for FF5 (WHM/SUM/BST/DNC and BLM/SMN/RDM/DNC, latter being Reg50), the game was thoroughly smashed twice because mage classes in FF5 are just bonkers. Afterwards, I played through most of SRWT (stalled on map 50 because I got lazy and the map design in this game is just very uninspired) and went through the new Paper Mario and now am playing Brig. So, let's mull a bit on those last two.

Paper Mario The Origami King - This is everything Sticker Star wanted to be but lacked the heart to. The absence of XP, levels and numbered stats doesn't bother me in this game, honestly. The battle system against randoms is fun and interesting in a vaccuum, but later on I honestly wished it had some more tactical depth to it - its emphasis on getting the puzzles right for maximum efficiency is cool, but the crowd control options and the general modus operandi felt a bit one-dimensional in the lategame. Gimmicks like the Boo's invisibility, rewarding on-the-go memorization, and the papercut soldiers, which entail figuring out how they extend in the grid, were really cool and I wish there were more of those. This said, however, the emphasis on random battles CONSIDERABLY diminishes, and the game puts a nice emphasis on its incredible boss battles.

Without delving into details, the boss battles in Origami King are fucking -art-. Creatively design, full of personality and all of them working different grid gimmicks that require off-the-cusp adaptation and flexibility, they just felt like the crowning gameplay achievement in the game, and I can't say enough good things about them.

But honestly, the main draw for me is just how charming and well-written the game is. The writers really hit the jackpot with the surreal setting and bizarre implications of a paper world and the game has great pacing. Every location is memorable (Toad Town and its hub nature, Whispering Woods and the FUNKADELIC TREE ENSEMBLE, Scorching Sandpaper Desert and its stunning visuals and bizarrely cartesian structure, Snif City and the fascinating concept of glam decadence as enacted by the Mario World, FUCKING SHANGRI-SPA...), every arc finds new ways to be hilarious and fun, they finally stopped wasting Bowser as a character, the cast is very charming in spite of what the interviews regarding the game may tell you... yeah. When I was done, I honestly felt sad the game ended, because it's just such a loving, tightly knit little thing. TTYD orphans may never forgive the game for not being a full-on RPG, but this is an amazing game that deserves to be enjoyed on its own merits. The current Paper Mario series has gone into a pretty unique gameplay and writing place, and Origami King shows it's very much worth playing. Seriously, play it.

Brigandine: Legend of Runersia - Been playing for a week or so, this is fucking great. Running Guimoule right now, I'm almost done with the conquest part, only Shinobi Nation is left to rout (Dellia is a BITCH). Guimoule is a great starting point for a first playthrough, since the Rune Knight selection is really good (Eliza is very high-level and is a pile of good stats, while Accel, her ATK buff and Accel give her some utility on the side. Darian, Mu'ah and Kate are fucking incredible units with really strong stats and high level, Rose is a nice middle-ground character with surprising potential because Temple Knight hauls ass and the Royal Knight promotion is SURPRISINGLY versatile. Sugar is a solid project knight, as is Patricia, and Vayne is rather powerful, high-level Berserkers make for good offensive physical classes. Conrad is kinda middling in comparison, but perfectly functional, and he's a decent choice for a quest knight early on). Will post more coherent thoughts eventually when I'm not busy.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yay Brig! Glad you're enjoying it.

Also if you have a Switch, y'know what I'm going to recommend. It's been too long since I've nerded over FE with you.


I am also enjoying Tales of Rationality Youtubers. Also Tide battle logs. And Sierra SRPG recs.


I haven't been a huge game-playing mood of late (did finish Suikoden V replay), but I am playing FE3H again because the thought of having Silver Snow of my most recent playthrough was mildly traumatic.

[superaielman]

re Della: Gravity is your friend there. Gravity's not quite as amazing as Magic Down or Weakness for assassination, but it does an amazing job wrecking units like Dellia or Toby. Rose is pretty blah. It's mostly a question on if you want to wait it out for Royal Guard (which is excellent as you note). Emma/Carla/Scymarius/Ariana are much better.

Play Mana Saleesia next! No one else here besides me has played it.  Happiness is Clean Military Rule OHKOing Kate or Della.

[Cmdr_King]

Fire Emblem Warriors:  A nice enough distraction.

On the whole I do think that so many game systems being there but not really necessary for regular play (unless maybe playing on Hard requires it I guess) is a little distracting?  And the game definitely erased a few menus I did between maps because I didn't advance to the next map right away, which is a bummer.  still, definitely some fun maps that really use the mix and match between run around and smashing things.  I think I appreciated playing on easy where I could (mostly) accomplish objectives just with controlling one well buffed PC, but I do appreciate how the game lets you micromanage the team and fluidly swap control, so that's cool.

Not sure on a number.  Maybe later.