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

[Luther Lansfeld]

Atelier Ayesha - Spoilers within!!!

Finished and got Linca/Marion’s ending. Both Fortress, the first real boss fight when shit gets real, and the final were both quite challenging on Hard Mode, especially with my limited grasp of the synthesis system. I also noticed that I was probably fairly under-levelled, as evidenced by the speed in which i gained levels and the fact that every PC was like 4-5 levels higher than me on join…

For Fortress, I ended up trying to synth better healing items and got to level 30, so my characters had the super limit moves, and synthed some buff items to buff my fighters, and also added some HP and MP to my armor and made a fire resistant accessory. My team was Ayesha, Juris, and Marion for this boss because Juris put out more damage than Linca and debuffed his attack. I probably took 10 tries to finally beat him, and it was a very close call even so. I was a little lazy about synthing for most of the game and didn’t really take the time to understand the systems, but after Fortress I tried to take it a bit more seriously.

For the final boss, I ended up dying twice and just adapting my strategy to massively pile damage late. He had a move below half HP that reduces the effectiveness of items, which is your only healing, so that was a pretty dick move. I just saved my super moves and ACs and all for him to drop below half and just fucking piled damage into him until he died.

I also fought the Old Oath Dragon in the aftergame to get Linca’s ending; he seemed really tough until I looked up how to synth God’s Miracle Drug, which is MT revival and full healing and goes off two turns in a row. So the boss was easy after that lol!

For my PCs, I used combinations of Ayesha, Linca, Juris, and Marion for most of the game.

Ayesha - Made lots of bombs for clearing randoms, which I feel like vary in effectiveness throughout the game from WTF WOW to decent based on point in the game. Her healing is always vital, since she was my only healer / MP healer the whole game, and Concentration is a nice bonus in boss fights for speeding up her turns. Obviously a great PC. She ended up having lots and lots of HP.

Regina - Didn’t use her too much after the early game, but she was pretty good there.

Wilbell - First character I dropped due to being a jerk. She seemed decent though, although ran out of MP quickly when I used her.

Linca - I really like Linca for clearing out randoms thanks to Valkyrie Strike or whatever it was called. Full MT + Slow is pretty sweet, and it was quite powerful. She is reasonably tanky as well. Her other moves aren’t wonderful, but she is effective enough in boss fights, although probably worse than Juris.

Marion - She debuffs physical defense with her attacks which is cool, and one of her ACs involves piling extra MT damage into enemies, which is great for randoms and bosses alike. Her medium ranged attack is pretty effective.

Juris - Juris is quite useful; Attack debuff and Focus Soul for extra HP / self-healing are both pretty lit, and his ST damage is quite good, making him a good choice for the game’s very few bosses. Not as effective as Linca or Marion against randoms.

Keith - I used Keith for some of the time but I didn’t find him too effective; I know DKZ said that he can be pretty good if you know how to use his crazy MP intensive move but I never really had the patience to tinker with it, especially since I am not too fond of the character.

Odelia - Never tried.

Nio - Aftergame PC so take as you will, but she seemed cool enough, with some MT and some revival. Too bad I didn’t have her for any bosses before getting God’s Miracle Drug!

I generally enjoyed the cast, particularly Marion who is sensible and no nonsense, and Linca, who is a ‘robot’ swordgirl and is generally pretty funny. They are just the cutest lesbians. Ayesha is cheerful and friendly and ditzy and you can’t help but root for her. Juris is actually pretty likeable as well; he reminds me a bit of pre-timeskip Dimitri with his social awkwardness and odd mannerisms; he tries to relate to people but is rather poor at it. Ernie is a sweet mom figure. And hot damn is Regina into Ayesha.

Keith is obviously the game’s most jerkish character; he really starts on the wrong foot due to being mean to the sweet pumpkin Ayesha. Ultimately I understand him a bit better (actually he reminds me a bit of Duke from ToV) because he’s decided that humanity is no good and has created weapons for evil, but instead of being a villain he’s a PC. Interesting setup for sure. He’s not as bad as I initially thought but I can see why he’d get under people’s skin hard.

One character that I thought the game did some really interesting stuff with was Nio. I remember being immediately struck by how, unlike most Damsels in Distress, she expresses a personality beyond just being kidnapped, and she has ideas and feelings of her own. She is a free-spirited and happy young girl, trapped in a place she doesn’t understand, and trying her best to puzzle it out. Once she comes back, she feels…. left behind by the world. She has not aged in the four/five years that she’s been gone, so rather than a two year age gap between her and Ayesha, it’s instead six/seven. I think the game deals with this plot point with some deftness. She is happy to be back, but she wants to work extra hard to make up for lost time. She realizes that her sister is an adult now, and no longer needs her help organizing the workshop anymore, so she feels pointless and no longer needed and like a baby because all of her friends are four/five years older and she isn’t. I think it’s easy to understand why she feels the way she feels. Ayesha does smother her with concern, understandably after her four/five year disappearance, and Nio becomes frustrated because she just wants to go back to living a normal life. I also really liked the scene between Ayesha, Nio, and Keith where Nio tells Ayesha that Keith told her that “your sister will come for you soon” and he is embarrassed because he doesn’t like to be seen as nice. I also like that you can actually do things with her and have have normal interactions, reinforcing the fact that she is a normal person outside of her role as damsel.

Otherwise the cast is full of quirky, charming people and most of the characters are generally charming. In general, I really like the aftergame aspect, where you can explore the end of character’s journeys after the final boss.

I also really liked the anime style cut ins of the characters as well as the really good music. I think my favorite track is the one that played as the random music in the salt desert or maybe the one that played against Old Oath Dragon.

Probably gonna rate the game 7/10? Not certain.

[Tide]

Final Fantasy X - Adventures in the aftergame.

Great read. Reminds me why I keep coming back to FFX's post game. The best part is usually the build up and trying to figure out ways to win while your party was still somewhat under powered, requiring the use of the game's plethora of options on deck. Your completion time for Penance was faster than mine back when I did it. I had a 123 hours I think in total, but that's also because I did some really grindy stuff such as farming Dark Yojimbo for 4-slot Ribbon armors and getting Luck to 200+. Also didn't use the minimalist set up with Def+20% and instead had like 23000-25000 HP for the last series of fights.

The one thing that is disappointing to me is how much the post game focused on max speed/strength quick hits. I remember Penance not being terrible because I could take down both arms relatively quickly, although his 12 million HP meant it took like 40 minutes before he finally died. I like how we stumbled upon similar strategies though - Quick Pockets and Three Stars made up the crux of my strategy late because it meant you can recover fast due to 1 CT and nil MP cost meant the MP busting didn't matter.

One thing that really surprised me is grabbing Kim's Ultimate weapon. Of all the FFX stuff I did (including mass grinding), Kim's Ult is the one I NEVER ever got. Despite multiple playthroughs. I usually just end up crafting one for him anyway and he ended up being my utility player late as a result. 

[Luther Lansfeld]

Bloodstained - Ritual of the Night - Fantastic game in every aspect gameplaywise, from the clever platforming tricks that you have to acquire to get through the game to the Invert mechanics being very cool, to some of the platforming tricks actually being useful against bosses (I love that Dimension Shift is useful against Dominque’s beam move, that is fabulous). The bosses are all different from each other, signal their HP thresholds and introduce new moves through them, and generally the bosses are the best bosses I’ve seen in a Metroidvania. The weapon variety is fun, the skillset macro set ups are convenient and nice for the player, and the moment-to-moment random encounter combat is stupendous. I mostly did a Aredhbar + fire spells (Riga Dohim + Riga Strorama) with Spear Expert, but sometimes I used a sword for extra swinging speed and occasionally I used the gun as well. Bloodless + Zangestu 2 + final boss are all great fights in particular.

For the final, I ended up caving on my policy to only use two items per boss fight and just chugged down every random food item I had accumulated throughout the game after losing like 20 times. Despite using all those items, I still lost like three or four more times! That final boss is epic as fuck.

The plot, lol, whatever Castlevania, you're drunk.

<3 this game. 9/10.

[Dark Holy Elf]

@Tide:

Kimahri's ultimate weapon is actually relatively easy once you understand how (I speak as someone who initially bounced off getting it as "omg this seems impossible"), the butterflies don't move so it's just a matter of some rote memorization. I made only minimal use of its properties so maybe I shouldn't have bothered but it didn't actually take that long to get for what it's worth.

Quick Hits are a bit too centralizing because of the somewhat questionable decision to ramp up boss defences more and more (and start making them all immune to Armour/Mental Break, which many of the earlier superbosses aren't!). Quick Hits via celestial weapons ignore this, little else does. And QH is even nerfed in this version of the game compared to the original JP/NTSC versions! The stat system also ends up being unkind to magic (despite it being really good before you start stat-raising) - you don't really want to spend time farming BOTH strength and magic spheres, and magic is less desirable because if something has high mdef there's nothing you can do whereas if something has high defence you can use celestial weapon attacks.

[superaielman]

Games I've played this year (And end of last year)


Octopath Traveller

Dragon Quest 11

Dragon Quest 3 (replay)

Mario & Rabbids

Orcs Must Die 1/2 (Replays; OMD3 is coming out soonish)

Final Fantasy 1 (replay)



Octopath is the least favorite of the new games; it had really neat gameplay but some notable polish issues and the writing/plot was a strong negative. Rabbids is definitely the favorite of the new games. The side missions are so much fun and some are as unforgiving as any XCOM game.  One thing I've grown to appreciate with older titles is that they're quick and cut down on the filler that's so ubiquitous in PSX and later titles. FF1 took me about 12 hours to get to the Temple of Fiends revisited; DQ3 was like 15-18 hours.(DQ3 definitely required a faq at points as I never remember where to go after the ship.)

The idea of say replaying Persona 4 sounds most unpleasant in spite of it being a really great game; whereas I can replay something as straightforward and mediocre as DQ3 at any time. e: I've made this observation re replaying games and games in general before I'm sure, but it is really hitting home considering I am playing more videogames now than I have in years.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Wild Arms 2:

So I played this for the first time a few weeks back. I've owned it for a long time, but I didn't play it when it was new, and by the time I first tried it, I was so off-put by the translation that I literally shelved it for 8 years.

Having played it in 2020, I feel like that was a mistake. The translation is still absolutely atrocious, but I think, once I managed to decipher what was being said, WA2 might have the best narrative of all the Wild Arms games? It certainly has the most interesting villain. And each of the PC cast, though relatively underdeveloped by today's standards, are tied directly to game's central theme of how the ideal of "Heroism" can be destructive in a myriad of different ways. It is solid stuff. And Odessa's Watchmen-like plan is surprisingly underrepresented as far as villainous motivations go in video game tropes, which kinda surprises me.

The game is Djinn-bait all the way down (once we get past the translation). It has unique PC skillsets with unique learning methods for each PC; multiple types of summoning, transformation, and limit-break-type skills; instant in-battle party-swapping; a proper Blue Mage character; goofy anime antics; a disarmingly-poignant political plot; and surprisingly deep world-building (this game in particular is KEY to understanding how the WA franchise as a whole fits together and finally playing it was like getting a Rosetta Stone for the series).

The battles themselves were a slog, but nothing the magic of a speed-up key couldn't fix. Seriously, PSX-era games are basically impossible to play on native hardware due to the ridiculously slow pace (not even counting how slow the loading times are!). Tim and Lilka ended up my MVPs, despite neither being great for damaging things.

The game is pretty heavy-handed with its messages, but one thing that stood out in particular in this narrative was the NPC of Marina. Functionally, she just exists to be Ashley's girlfriend. But narratively, she serves as a huge contrast to the GAME as a whole. In a genre (medium) that is all about interacting with the world primarily through beating things up, Marina is a non-combatant and a 'normal person'. She is constantly worried about Ashley's well-being as he keeps signing up for what would basically be suicide missions for a non-protagonist (and really, Ashley basically dies a couple times but gets better because plot armor). She makes (entirely reasonable) objections to his actions, and they have (unsettlingly realistic) arguments like a military couple might have. It would be easy for a player (who wants to escape reality and just beat up silly monsters for fun) to dislike Marina, who is essentially an antithesis for this kind of escapist fun. But she's given a lot more depth than simply 'being a scold'. She apologizes (sometimes despite being right) for being overbearing or for overstepping her role in her and Ashley's fledgling relationship. She questions herself and her motives for chiding Ashley, and is generally a surprisingly true-to-life depiction of someone in her position. If Ashley himself wasn't so open and willing to listen to her concerns and fears, it would come off as almost abusive. But Ashley, over the course of the game, becomes more aware of how his headstrong desire to be a Hero is super-destructive, not only to himself, but to the people who care about him, and Marina's role in that development is key. And in turn, she manages to develop into a stronger person alongside him. I think if the translation had been better, these two might be the best-written couple in a JRPG ever?

I know that Marina gets a bad rap from a decent number of WA2 fans, and it definitely feels like she's the "Skylar White" (frpm Breaking Bad) of the game - she's 100% right most of the time, but because if anyone listened to her, there would be no conflict, she's essentially 'getting in the way' of the story's very existence, which tends to turn an audience against a lady. I genuinely like how they handle her, and have very little patience for the kind of fans that would write her off.

Other interesting narrative notes about the social politics of WA2 include: Brad Evans, the guy who was supposedly gay in the JP version (he wasn't, if anything, the US translation actually made his relationship to Billy Pilder MORE romantic-leaning). The translation muddies things a bit, but what's going on with Brad and Billy is that when the War Hero Brad Evans 'died', the War Hero's Best Friend took up his name to keep the spirit of the rebellion alive. So the playable "Brad Evans" is actually Billy, and the wheelchair-bound "Billy" is actually Brad (who was, completely-platonically, holding onto Billy's dogtags all this time and that's why the people who found him think his name is "Billy"). Now, this isn't to say that a gay reading of the two isn't possible, but it certainly isn't 'overt' or 'canon' like some have claimed. And honestly, while I'd LOVE for them to be a proper couple, the game doesn't go far enough for me to give it any credit for being progressive there.

In contrast, I am 100% on board for Kanon as a trans allegory. Perhaps it wasn't intentional, since most robot/android/cyborg characters all inherently have a *bit* of overlap with trans narratives, but Kanon's story is so much more focused on her identity that the allegory works much better than trying to read into the (relatively minor and less-focused-on) 'gay' relationship between Brad and Billy. So... yeah. I’m not prepared to see Kanon as anything but a trans metaphor at this point. She discards her old self, adopts a new name, changes her body, and everyone from random townsfolk to gods is like “dude, life would be so much easier if you just were normal like everybody else”. And you know what? Kanon says “fuck you” to all that noise. Kanon knows she has problems. Kanon knows she’s an outcast. Kanon knows there are people/deities that are never going to accept her. But Kanon also knows that she has friends that support her. Kanon knows she might not be like anybody else on this whole stupid planet, but she’s still all-in on being herself, no matter what form that takes. She could easily use some shortcut to go back to being “normal”… but would that make her happy? Would she really want that outcome? No. She wants to be herself, and now she has a support group that wants her to be herself, too. Kanon is Kanon. She is not her ancestor Anastasia. She is not her dead-name Aisha. She is the person she made herself to be, and no one can tell her to be otherwise, including the vaguely-omnipotent deity spirit of Muse that she has to confront in her penultimate character arc episode.

WA2 was a wild ride, and one of those games that I REALLY wish would get a re-translation. Or a Remake, but for some reason that honor was reserved for WA1. Bleh.

Speaking of Remakes!

FF7 Remake: It's real good, you guys. One of the best ARPG systems ever. The way this game handles battle pacing and party-switching is a masterclass in how I've always wanted an ARPG to play. Dear Tales and Star Ocean and Ys - just steal this game's battle flow, please?

I'm AAAAALLMOST done with the game, on the final dungeon. So I'll write up some story thoughts later, but I've noticed there's been no chatter from the DL about this game, which strikes me as odd. Are we all just trying to avoid giving spoilers?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Speaking of Remakes!

FF7 Remake: It's real good, you guys. One of the best ARPG systems ever. The way this game handles battle pacing and party-switching is a masterclass in how I've always wanted an ARPG to play. Dear Tales and Star Ocean and Ys - just steal this game's battle flow, please?

I'm AAAAALLMOST done with the game, on the final dungeon. So I'll write up some story thoughts later, but I've noticed there's been no chatter from the DL about this game, which strikes me as odd. Are we all just trying to avoid giving spoilers?

Off the top of my head: Laggy, Tal, and VSM have played it, or are playing it, but none post in WGAYP regularly.

I'll get to it eventually. I'm still getting over the fact that it apparently doesn't suck; I was assuming it would! And a little bit miffed at the business model to split the game into three for more $$$ but I guess that's not the worst thing.

[Pyro]

I'm a little put off about FF7R after hearing about the apparent addition of some Kingdom-Hearts sounding plot elements, and I don't have a PS4!

Octopath Traveller: Completed C3s for Alfyn, Tressa, and Olberic. Alfyn's C3 feels a little off (although as consistently over-the-top drama as his C1 and C2). He showed some steel in the end of his C2 (drugging the villain with a smile on his face) but in C3 seems to be completely a softie always-trusting wide-eyed idealist. Gameplaywise, that boss was an absoulte terror, wholely unlike the Chapter 2 bosses that were more like HP blocks. There was a constant feeling of pressure and excitement that was missing from earlier parts of the game. I think I might have liked it if his C2 and C3 were flipped from a character devlelopment standpoint? [Wide eyed idealist -> Meets a brutal reality -> Comes to some terms with that -> ?

Tressa's C3 was terribly not exciting, with little chance for development or exploration of character beyond "Here's the backstory to that NPC from Chapter 1". It's unfortunate and capped by another HP block boss.

Olberic's C3 was a decent climax for him dealing with his issues, and felt more like the end of his character arc than the midpoint of it. He gets the answer he's been seeking since C1 and gets the confrontation with the central figure of his plot and backstory. I get the feeling his C4 would feel more like an epilogue since it feels like the character arc is completed. The boss fight and duel in C3 were both not terribly exciting gameplay affairs, which again felt more like enemy HP blocks you just carve through while healing when needed.

Off to do Therion's C3 next. I've liked him story for the most part (kinda stupid *reason* for going on the quest but the character dynamics and plot beats work).

Hopefully I'll get back to Primrose's C3 soon since the somewhat cookie-cutter revenge story is done really quite well so far and I'd be interested in seeing how it proceeds.

[Tide]

@Tide:

Kimahri's ultimate weapon is actually relatively easy once you understand how (I speak as someone who initially bounced off getting it as "omg this seems impossible"), the butterflies don't move so it's just a matter of some rote memorization. I made only minimal use of its properties so maybe I shouldn't have bothered but it didn't actually take that long to get for what it's worth.

Quick Hits are a bit too centralizing because of the somewhat questionable decision to ramp up boss defences more and more (and start making them all immune to Armour/Mental Break, which many of the earlier superbosses aren't!). Quick Hits via celestial weapons ignore this, little else does. And QH is even nerfed in this version of the game compared to the original JP/NTSC versions! The stat system also ends up being unkind to magic (despite it being really good before you start stat-raising) - you don't really want to spend time farming BOTH strength and magic spheres, and magic is less desirable because if something has high mdef there's nothing you can do whereas if something has high defence you can use celestial weapon attacks.

It's funny because I think of all the Ults I think Kim's actually the least time consuming when you know what you're doing? It's either his or Yuna's. Tidus requires a certain modicum of luck, Auron/Lulu are set time sinks and Rikku's is pain if you don't have No Encounter. I remember there's a way to set it such that Wakka's can be gotten with just 40 Blitzball games if you do a reset of the league at a certain point but bleh, 40 BB games is still pretty ridiculous. I just never figured out how to properly navigate the area. Doesn't help that I don't think Kim's celestial isn't really great for him? It has the same properties as Tidus' but having a 3rd E&Cer seems really unnecessary. I prefer having One MP Cost and First Strike on a personalized weapon.

Magic's other problem is that there isn't a quick recovery akin to Quick Hit. Double cast sorta tries by dual acting and having no recovery lag, but doesn't quite match up. So if you compare damage output, physicals outpace them.

Speaking of FFX, I'm doing a quick replay. At Macalania Forest right now. I'm at a weird junction where Tidus and Yuna are lagging. Highlights of this playthrough so far include getting a 4-1 victory against the Goers and planning to create a new build for Kimahri. Realizing why my old Kim builds were bad has been an amusing experience.

[Dark Holy Elf]

It's funny because I think of all the Ults I think Kim's actually the least time consuming when you know what you're doing? It's either his or Yuna's. Tidus requires a certain modicum of luck, Auron/Lulu are set time sinks and Rikku's is pain if you don't have No Encounter. I remember there's a way to set it such that Wakka's can be gotten with just 40 Blitzball games if you do a reset of the league at a certain point but bleh, 40 BB games is still pretty ridiculous. I just never figured out how to properly navigate the area. Doesn't help that I don't think Kim's celestial isn't really great for him? It has the same properties as Tidus' but having a 3rd E&Cer seems really unnecessary. I prefer having One MP Cost and First Strike on a personalized weapon.

Magic's other problem is that there isn't a quick recovery akin to Quick Hit. Double cast sorta tries by dual acting and having no recovery lag, but doesn't quite match up. So if you compare damage output, physicals outpace them.

Speaking of FFX, I'm doing a quick replay. At Macalania Forest right now. I'm at a weird junction where Tidus and Yuna are lagging. Highlights of this playthrough so far include getting a 4-1 victory against the Goers and planning to create a new build for Kimahri. Realizing why my old Kim builds were bad has been an amusing experience.

If magic could ignore defence and do 99999 then Doublecast would actually outpace Quick Hit in the International/PAL/HD version, because 2x99999 every 4 clockticks is better than 1x99999 every 3 clockticks. But you don't actually hit 99999 except against low MDef. Doublecast Ultima does almost identical damage over time as Quick Hits against Nemesis or Dark Yojimbo (around 2x70000 per 4 clockticks compared to 99999 per 3), but has horrible animation time. If you use Flare instead, it comes out a bit behind. And to be clear, these numbers are with Magic Booster, which means either your name is Lulu or you have to craft a Break Damage Limit Magic Booster weapon for anyone else.

I used Nemesis and Dark Yojimbo to be favourable to magic; almost all the other dark aeons and Penance have even more magic defence, so the comparison just gets worse. The one exception, interestingly, are the Dark Magus Sisters; Mindy in particular is an excellent target for magic because of her low magic defence (she takes over 80000 from each Ultima, or over 70000 from each Flare) combined with her skyhigh luck which makes attacks and skills impractical. But that's really a "only if you maxed magic for some reason" strategy. I just used Attack Reels.

[Laggy]

I had a lot of thoughts about FF7R but was gonna hold off until people actually finished playing it, since the current player pool is rather shallow. I may get off my ass and compile them later. It would likely be a megapost of shit because I have a lot of Feelings about vanilla FF7's story and remake's take on it.

[Laggy]

Okay, so FF7R.

I may do more indepth plot/scene analysis later but here is the general spoiler-tree tl;dr.

Gameplay
It's an ARPG, so just accept that going in. Movement and positioning are big here, as well as timing your abilities to not get hit-cancelled. However compared to other ARPGs I've played (which is a pretty shallow pool, SO2 and KH are the most prominent entries) it's a lot less button-mashy and strongly promotes switching control of the main PC as well as pausing the game frequently to use menu commands, so I will say it's the best take on ARPG I've seen so far. If you absolutely loathe it probably stay away (especially if you hate getting interrupted out of animations/casts), but if you've managed to play through other ARPGs before FF7R is worth your time. It also has plenty of teeth, which alone kinda earns it above FF7 in my book by virtue of actually trying to fight back. <.<

PCs feel unique in their identity and playstyle, and you have good reason to use all of them as a result to tailor to the fight at hand. They aren't terribly deep but the fact that it's optimal to swap through them keeps the flow mostly fresh. Magic is OP as long as you don't get hit out of your cast (high damage, weaknesses a big deal) and Bolt is still the bestest materia just so you know it's still FF7. Which hey means it still needs more effort to use than it did in vanilla.

The enemy design got a lot of love and I was pretty floored at the amount of work put in for randoms that some FF7 players probably wouldn't even remember the names of; very few get missed (although WARNING BOARD GOT ROBBED ;_;). Fights are generally well defined, although some encounters are annoyingly gimmicky to the point of being frustrating (dear god, don't play the game without Assess AKA Scan) but notably none of them actually -killed- me, just dragged a lot. The biggest stinker is that a bunch of boss fights have phase changes (almost always HP triggers) with no telegraphing that you're about to hit them in advance, and when these happen the game basically pauses and wipes out all current stagger, AND the effects of any damaging ability going out at the moment, including limits. This is dumb and I would've much rather they made it more obvious by using multiple HP bars or whatever.

UI kinda sucks ass. The weapon upgrade submenu and materia swapping are criminal in how slow and cumbersome they are in addition to how often you should be in them (a LOT), and it gets really bad when you have to do party swap sequences; there's actually cutscenes that lead straight to fights with PC swaps and I hope you notice that there's a prompt to hold down the menu button so that you actually can do pre-fight setup after the scene finishes, cause if you don't, hf going in with PCs that probably haven't had their gear updated for hours. THANKFULLY the game has a sane quick reset (reload back to start of encounter, or last save/autosave if you prefer) but these UI flaws could've frankly easily been addressed.

Oh and the god damn camera, holy fuck can we please zoom out farther than the seam of Cloud's billowy pants. The game is absolutely crammed to the gill with dungeon crawlers to an almost Dark Souls-esque feel (complete with kicking ladder shorcuts down!) which of course was right at home with me but may feel excessively filler for you depending on your mood of padding out every vanilla FF7 Midgar screen into a full sized often hour plus romp. The camera (TRUE TO DS FASHION) sours this a little by letting you see so little by default, but it does pan outwards depending on where you are so it's less egregious than it could be.

Some battle tips for those getting into it, if you want them (don't read if you prefer to learn the system through trial by fire, but these are pretty generic):

* As stated above, Assess everything, elemental weaknesses are big and very often fight gimmicks will be explained or at least partially explained in the bio blurb of enemies, especially on how to stagger them.

* The enemy AI very very heavily prioritizes targeting whoever you're currently controlling. However, once they've begun a cast/attack towards them, they'll always finish it, so swapping out after you've baited that out is effective.

* Getting hit out of casts/animations will consume the resources required for it, which is quite punishing, especially for higher tier spells which have notable cast times, and even limits aren't safe from being cancelled. So time your active abilities carefully.

* By default, party AI will just guard stuff and generally take cover whenever a fight calls for it. You can assume PCs not being controlled will reasonably stay alive, not do much damage, and not build up much ATB. Because of the aggro system and these factors it is very advantageous to swap to PCs that can freely go on the offense when windows of opportunity open for them, as it gets the most ATB built up. It's also good to get stuff rolling whenever possible, e.g. consume Barret's Overcharge when it's built up so he can start building another, as the AI won't use it.

* Somewhat counterintuitive to most ARPGs, dodging (specifically the X button dodge) is honestly not very effective against most attacks. The general rule of thumb is that you are supposed to guard against most things, and what you cannot guard - grabs/grapples/some spells - only THEN are you supposed to dodge those. Of course guarding is really boring (while not incorrect, as it accelerates ATB gain and is still better than getting hit) so switching PCs intelligently ends up being better in general. Just straight up running is often more effective than the actual dodge command too, so yeah, only hit the dodge on attacks that seem to specifically require it.


Story
The Nomura elements have been a bit overstated. The most annoyingly evident aesthetic are the ghosty bros (already revealed in the trailers as the Keepers of Fate, oh man that's subtle) which I could have done a lot less of or frankly without entirely. The ending does go off the rails but in a way that makes me tentatively okay with it because the intended direction is mostly presented upfront, rather than being a cryptic dumbass cliffhanger.

The actual character work and cutscenes are gorgeous, stay very true to the spirit of the original for the most part... I have plenty of quibbles but they don't tarnish the amazing amount of work and love that went into it. This, along with the visuals and music, are the strongest part of remake and is what made it worth playing through. This section is brief but the emphasis here is strong, since this is what most of the story and presentation uses. The polish is out of this world and I really appreciate it.

The sidequest formula can fuck off (it's the same tired 'go around town being the errands boy to BUILD UR REP' BS that triple A games have been choking on for a decade and on now) but the main story is strong and character work is great. They pretty much nail everyone in the main cast well (exceeeeept Barret, who is kinda 70% cringe but 30% really good. Picks up better as the game goes on which helps a lot.) The Avalanche crew gets lots of love and screentime and it absolutely is one of the best things early on to actually have meaningful interaction and background with them. The townsfolk/minor NPCs/slums/etc. are alright, decent fluff, though no particular sidequest or thread line really wowed me - the main thing is how much Midgar is brought to life simply from all of the background chatter - getting snippets of NPC chatter scrolling down as subtitles is a really really good touch and I wish every game did that, frankly, so I don't have strain to hear the flavor text.

Wall Market rules btw

Some points of criticism - they went overboard with painting Shinra as evil, when it really didn't need more emphasis. Shinra was already plenty evil and no one with any moral compass was gonna mistake vanilla FF7 as trying to paint them as sympathetic, so doing away with any grayness entirely is a bit offputting. The few additional plot twists that add to this are unnecessary, although they don't destroy the plot or pacing, just kind of weigh it down some. Unfortunately the biggest annoyance to me was the Sector 7 pillar sequence, which is supposed to be a high octane time-sensitive section where the crew is trying to rush desperately to stop it from happening, and its pacing is utterly ruined by several POV switches and dragged-out farewell scenes with Avalanche members that would make sense in a vacuum with their greater development but feels out of tone as presented. And the few spots where the game tries to point out rather ungracefully that hey, good people exist and work for Shinra too, are rather hamfisted and applied with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

But it must be said that all of these things I'm complaining about, while a little eye-rolley when it happens, comes with the backdrop that I came in with extremely high expectations and a little worry about the care given to vanilla FF7's story, which I have found myself more appreciative as time passes (its themes are arguably more relevant today than ever before!) and how it excelled in so many ways not obvious to me as a kid.

-

All in all I sunk in 36 hours to finish it over the course of four days, so it obviously hooked me real good. Don't regret buying it, may consider waiting on the price to drop if you didn't like vanilla FF7 - the game's perfectly playable with no nostalgia factor, but you'll definitely miss out how much love was given to the details.

[Grefter]

Oh and the god damn camera, holy fuck ...  The game is absolutely crammed to the gill with dungeon crawlers to an almost Dark Souls-esque feel (complete with kicking ladder shorcuts down!) ...

No mention taking to dodge roll and parry.  Not giving the Dark Souls of Final Fantasy 7s its proper due.

[SnowFire]

Fell Seal

Finished up the Deep Dungeon equivalent, the Ancient Path.  First two maps & last map were cool, but the middle maps were kinda boring, at least the cowardly safe way I played 'em.

I definitely think that for physical characters, guns / bows are where you wanna be at endgame / postgame; there's lots of skills with (weapon range) as their range, and more generally, there just doesn't seem to be that big of a drop-off in power as there's "supposed" to be by late.  You trade some damage for a LOT of safety and not needing to equip boots.  The one exception is maybe whoever has Excalibur, since that weapon is very busted - holy elemental and permanent Renew.  Stuck that on Kyrie w/ No Flank & Health Expert, she was ridiculously hard to kill and could safely walk wherever she wanted, meaning she could actually safely engage.  (Note, this definitely isn't true in the early game, where using a crossbow on your scoundrel can easily cost half your damage compared to a dagger.)

Ori & the Will of the Wisps

Talked about it in chat before, but realize I didn't post it here.  Finished, I really liked it!  Also 100% item collect'd it after mildly FAQing the fetch quest line.  Not surprising since I really liked the original Ori & the Blind Forest.  The additions, like combat worth a damn and boss battles, are pretty neat.  My main nitpicks - and they barely count as complaints at all -
* The marketing "cover" picture is a bit of a tease.  You might think that the game is gonna have some Sonic & Tails thing with the new super-cute owl Ku, but spoilers, no, you only get to control her for one segment and that's it.  I guess they weren't confident they could make the gameplay work, and it's not like controlling Ori all the time is a problem who is still a joy to maneuver.  The other returning characters from the original are in an odd spot too - I'd be fine with plain leaving them behind for our New Adventure in a suspiciously similarly named area that has a similar problem to solve, but the game has them chase afterward With Concern, but then they never show up in time to do anything.  If you're gonna include 'em, include 'em!
* This is mostly a side effect of "having more experience at Ori" but there's only one escape sequence in Will of the Wisps that really challenged me.  The others were *cool*, sure, but also generous enough in their timing to not repeatedly murder you.  This is probably for the best for new players of the series, but maybe a little disappointing for veterans?  Oh well.

And oh yes, the soundtrack is great as usual.  https://garethcoker.bandcamp.com/album/ori-and-the-will-of-the-wisps-original-soundtrack-recording / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NhwEQEercE to check it out, depending on if you prefer YouTube or Bandcamp.

Edit: FF7R without having played it: Isn't it great to hear nerds having opinions without enough context?  Well, I watched a decent amount of Laggy's stream at least.  On the Big Remake Plot Point (spoilers, but I suspect everyone knows there's a particular big Remake divergence): Doing a new continuity is totally fine.  Go for it.  Doing a new continuity *in setting* is weird and meta and steals too much of the focus.  There are games that do this well, but it tends to make that the new focus of the game; Shinra's actions pale compared to in-universe enforcers of fate or whatever.  Just...  do a new continuity and skip the goddamn ghosts.  If you absolutely must make it clear in setting what's going on, have some mako poisoned crazy person ranting that this is all wrong, what should really be happening is (plot of FF7o).  Ah well.

[Cmdr_King]

I dunno, everything I've seen suggests they're doing a way, way better job than Star Trek 2009 did.  FFVIIR is still about the "new" cast, they're just being fucked with by a returning character.  Some people are married to having in-continuity reboots, although given how this works this actually makes FFVII Remake a *sequel* which is a lot more interesting to start with.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Some 12 years ago I did a very silly challenge run of Path of Radiance in which I only used the lowest levelled people at any time. It was pretty crazy. Well, the craziness is back! This time the game of choice is Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade. Because what makes a challenge run more fun than dealing with bullshit ninja reinforcements?

The rules!

1. Only the lowest levelled PCs may be brought into any map. Tiebreak is for lowest Experience, naturally.
2. Every unit in the game must be recruited, and must be kept alive until the final chapter, so that there is no cheaping out of the system by conviniently killing Sophia. <_< The point of the game is to use everyone, or at least everyone who joins unpromoted.
3. Effort should be taken to even out levels as much as possible (so e.g. I can't just powerlevel Roy to cheese the earlygame).
4. No resources to boost up a unit's performance artificially, i.e. no stat boosters. I'll need to sell them for money anyway...
5. No unit may be promoted before Level 20. A Level 20 unpromoted and a Level 1 promoted unit are considered equal for level (since one turns into the other with a promotion item).
6. If a unit can not gain experience on a map (aside from 1 by being attacked, that doesn't count), they are exempt from deployment. In particular this applies to Merlinus, to unpromotable units who have reached Level 20, and to Fae when her weapon breaks.


I'm playing on Normal Mode, because I predict that FE6 HM would just be too much for this challenge (it's way harder than FE9 HM). I'm looking up reinforcements because I'm not above that. I allow myself periodic mid-map saves (usually about every 10 turns or so), but never for the purpose of trying low-odds plays, because I value my time more than I did 12 years ago, and this game's maps are significantly longer and more bullshit than FE9's anyway.


On with the show! I'm skipping the first five maps because you can use everyone for 'em, so they play basically as normal, just with effort to focus on lower-levelled people. So we begin with chapter 6. This update covers everything up to and including Chapter 18, which is about two thirds of the game.

The Trap (0 resets)

Roy, Bors, Wolt, Ellen, Dieck, Shanna, Chad, Lugh, Clarine, Rutger. Level 4-5.

Not really feeling the challenge here yet, of course, even if I'm missing a few good units. Perhaps the highlight is shenanigans involving Chad and Cathe. Chad gets the first two chests on the left and opens the door for Roy to recruit Sue. Meanwhile, when Cathe shows up and heads right, I first block her access to the first door (which just has enemies) then allow her to open the second... and the same turn that happens, I do a massive rescue chain along the central-north hallway to get Chad in range of her so I can steal her lockpicks next turn. I then black her escape south so Roy can recruit her while Chad loots the remaining treasure.


The Rebellion of Ostia (2 resets)

Roy, Bors, Wolt, Ellen, Shanna, Chad, Clarine, Dorothy, Saul, Sue, Alan, Lott, Ward. Level 5-6. (Sue's a bit lower.)

This one is pretty rough and messy for the first few turns, but I don't have much specific to say about it. I mercifully don't encounter major issues in recruiting. Zealot does the boss's HP minus 1 with an armourslayer double, so that's handy.


The Reunion (0 resets)

Roy, Wolt, Shanna, Chad, Clarine, Dorothy, Sue, Treck, Lance, Dieck, Lott, Ward. Level 5-7.

Fire Emblem maps with "Reunion" in the title tend to be terrifying. This one isn't so bad... once you know about the dickish reinforcements and come to terms with the fact that yes, bosses are gonna have psycho avoid in this game, even ones wearing 40 pounds of plate mail. Anyway, thanks to looking up the reinforcements I don't encounter too many major difficulties, and am even able to snag some key kills for my new Level 1 characters, Wendy and Lilina, and get all the treasure before Cath can ruin my day. The boss is a bit of a nightmare, a slow plodding affair involving Armourslayer Dieck and rescue-drop healer.


The Blazing Blade (3 resets)

Roy, Chad, Clarine, Noah, Ellen, Saul, Rutger, Wendy, Oujay, Lilina. Level 5-8. Three resets.

Lots of figuring out which enemies randomly don't move. This map is dumb; I'm so glad later games show you this information. I lose to the boss once because I don't realize he's super fast and doubles with the Hand Axe, so we retreat to "have Lilina cast magic on him, rescue/drop" while he has his melee weapon equipped and win very slowly.


The Misty Isles (1 reset)

Roy, Saul, Bors, Wendy, Oujay, Wolt, Dorothy, Sue, Lugh, Alan, Noah, Ward, Shanna. Level 7-8.

Shin and Fir join, both are easy to level immediately which is nice. I only have one healer and need to split my forces to reach the relevant villages; the team of Ostians + Ward and Shanna goes to the south and has a bit of a struggle, but it's the other team that manages to incur a reset when some key misses result in me learning that unmounted archers just plain can't take hits. Boss is a pain (noticing a pattern), but due to low res and the fact that he starts with a melee weapon out (Hand Axe is his backup, he's a berserker with crit so we never want to see it) he can be slowly dealt with by having Lugh attack him, then rescue/drop.


I head to Echidna/Larum's route because it has a lower-level Gonzales, gotta use the lowest-levelled people obviously!

The Resistance Forces (1 reset)

Roy, Ellen, Clarine, Lilina, Wendy, Wolt, Shin, Fir, Ward, Lott, Treck, Lance. Level ~8.

The one reset is from forgetting about the ballista despite the game hyping it right as the battle starts. Oops. Anyway otherwise the map is mostly easy after a decent start. There's a berserker who is a bit scary but can be baited with a dodgy sword-user then pelted from range. The boss is a nightmare, a Druid with Nosferatu who I struggle to overcome the draining of, naturally with way too much evade. Lance proves about the only person with the combination of offence (he doubles) and evade to make headway, and I win eventually.


The Hero of the Western Isles (3 resets)

Roy, Ellen, Saul, Rutger, Dieck, Bors, Barth, Gonzales, Alan, Sue, Dorothy, Chad. Level ~9.

Ugh this map. So for those of you who don't remember, you get Thea and Klein here. The big problem is they come with a bunch of friends and SOMETIMES they (the recruitable PCs, I mean) randomly don't move while their friends do, blocking your path to recruiting them. And if any of their allies die, you miss out on a promo item. You also miss out on a promo item if you fail to save even one village. I miss all three (village with sleep is the one I miss). Anyway, my forces are dividied in three here to save as many villages as possible; Rutger and the archers head east, Dieck and the armours through the middle, and Roy/Alan/Larum/Gonzales go south. Larum helps a lot with letting Roy recruit Klein (who appears along Roy's route), Klein then heads back to help Dieck's crew (which definitely struggles a lot) and recruit Thea who heads that way, pincering them as they try to get through axedudes and archers. A little Alan-enabled rescuing helps get Larum to recruit Echidna, and the boss is like a non-draining version of the previous, which is certainly scary enough but Echidna takes him out no problem. We'll see how much I regret missing the three promotion items.


The True Enemy (2 resets)

Roy, Wolt, Lilina, Larum, Chad, Saul, Lott, Ward, Geese, Gonzales, Shanna, Thea, Clarine. Level ~9.

Geese, Gonzales, Clarine, and the pegasus knights flail away at the east, mostly trying vainly to kill a single sniper through a wall. Meanwhile Roy's crew heads through the murderhole alley, with Lilina putting in the most work of erasing them, though is squishy of course. Eventually I cut my way through a berserker (Chad and Lilina do the most work) and grab Raigh with Chad. And this is where the map gets hairy. See, Cath shows up in the north, definitely closer to the small crew. I block her exit to the south with Clarine and the pegasus knights, expecting Cath will go back north, but instead she just... sits at the south door. Which increases the time Roy needs to reach her. AND MEANWHILE, reinforcements are coming in from the south! Clarine needs to tank two turns of a berserker steel axe which can OHKO everyone in that group, which does have sub-50 hit on her to be fair, but yikes. (One reset due to it hitting.) As soon as Roy recruits Cath, the team can finally escape through the door she was blocking, with one flier grabbing Roy to get him back to the throne. Because OH YES, there's a 20 turn limit on this fight. Fortunately a rescue chain and Larum get Roy over to the boss lightning fast, to where Lilina has destroyed a much-hyped manakete boss who has mediocre res and is 1 range only, bad combo there. I even get all the treasure!


The Axe of Thunder (0 resets)

Roy, Larum, Lugh, Cath, Shanna, Thea, Shin, Noah. Level ~10.

Mages are good in this game, continued. This is my first taste of life without healers. I don't really like it, but at least there are a bunch of elixirs in chests in this fight. Cath does a combination of raiding chests and stealing from thieves who raid them first, and ultimately secures most of the prizes, though a red gem does elude me. Noah, Shin, and Lugh are the combat stars. The boss is similar to Chapter 9's, a berserker with a melee default and Hand Axe backup, except his res is actually decent, so Lugh's win against him is very, very, very slow. Slow enough for Cath to grab a chest across the map I had figured I wouldn't have time for.

Oh yeah and Cath is, of course, a pain to level. She has 8 attack! Fortunately she's still easier to level than Sothe was in PoR, because enemy defence is much lower in this game, and she's super-accurate, so I just need to chip squishy targets for her to finish. I'm able to get her some decent exp here, surprisingly.


Rescue Mission (1 reset)

Roy, Larum, Ellen, Cath, Alan, Lance, Rutger, Fir, Ward, Oujay, Barth, Wendy, Astohl, Treck. Level ~10.

After a series of maps I have less than nice things to say about, I will praise this one, it's cool! There are several nasty groups of cavaliers, headed by a Paladin with silver and backup up by one cavalier with killer, one with an axereaver, and a couple more randoms. The armour trio passes the Horseslayer around but nobody can stand against this group forever. I dig in on two fronts near the start of the fight, with the myrmidons and Alan/Lance/Roy taking the south while the Ostians, Ward, and Treck take the north. Miredy joins and is a godsend. I initially send her south but then I realise the north group will need her help with a reinforcement, especially since the south ended up with the horseslayer at the end of trading shenanigans. She ferries both the Horseslayer and Ellen across to the north, where a combination of Horseslayer trading, Ward's Halberd, and Larum let me deal with the paladin swarm. Meanwhile, the south faces its own trials in the form of another cavalier swarm while being pincered by a couple wyverns. Fortunately Alan/Lance tank and kill while the myrmidons do their own killing. A Horseslayer wyvern hanging out over the water poses some problems, but eventually I safely lure him to where I can beat him to death too. Finally, there's the boss, who fortunately gets no throne bonuses and thus isn't much of a problem, he's a wyvern so Oujay's wyrmslayer takes him out.


Arcadia (3 resets)

Roy, Larum, Cath, Dieck, Dorothy, Shin, Saul, Clarine, Bors, Gonzales, Geese. Level ~11.

Oh god this map. Desert, fog of war, a turn limit, and a duo of camp gay bandits who WILL kick your ass. And me without a flier. Also SOPHIA.

Anyone who says Wendy is as bad as Sophia has clearly never tried to level both. Where Wendy could reasonably survive a hit from most things and had an 80-hit Slim Lance to claim kills, Sophia joins with 2 AS, 1 defence, 15 HP (translation: dies to everything except unpromoted mages, and those have crit on her), along with such low skill/luck that, combined with her most accurate weapon being 70 hit, means she gets displayed hit rates that are around 50 on most things. But of course, I've gotta level her.

A small mercy is that Cecilia joins at the same time which gives me a much-appreciated extra healer (Clarine can only move one square), wyvern slayer, and general chipper of various other scary enemies. Highlights include the wyverns that attack near the start (dealt with by Wyrmslayer Dieck and Dorothy, though it needs a bit of dodge luck), the mercenaries and killing edge hero near the border of the oasis which ends a couple runs (the solution ends up being to get rescue-chain Bors forward who can kinda sorta tank but not well, and hope for some combination of his Killer Lance, Cecilia, and Shin to take the hero out). By this time the gay bandits have closed in and I realize I won't be able to outrun them, so it's a combination of trying to dodge-tank them (getting Dieck to a tree helps, but is imperfect), then blowing them up as hard as possible with Shin/Cecilia/Dorothy tagteam. I need luck to get through them but I do. And at this point I'm running out of time, so I charge Roy and some allies to the east, Shin/Cecilia again offensive stars against a second group of wyverns here. The boss has a Light Brand and way too much avoid, but Cecilia has WTA and decent damage, so she gets the nod. I ultimately make it with one turn to spare.

There are manaketes on this map; I don't fight them. They have crit, huge power, and are scary, but are passive. I'm able to get all the treasure except Silence and Warp, I keep missing high-end staves oh well. Not like I want my staff users to gain heavy exp at this point anyway...


The Infernal Element (0 resets)

Roy, Larum, Sophia, Lott, Thea, Sue, Chad, Astohl, Wendy, Clarine. Level ~11.

After the previous fight this one's a relative breather, no reinforcements or time limit. There's Bolting but that can be carefully kited (and baited when it's safe to do so). Lots of axedudes everywhere. I deliberately keep Astohl's level low so I'll have him for chapter 16, but Chad can go wild. This map takes way too long because it takes some crazy number of turns before the path to the boss actually opens up (and my attempts to have Thea ferry people fails because the druid with the boss is too scary, plus archer backup). But eventually it does open. That just leaves the boss himself who of course is a Binding Blade boss and thus a pain, Sue is my only person who can reasonably hit him and survive his surprisingly fast magical offence for an old dude.


The Dragon Girl (1 reset)

Roy, Larum, Lilina, Sophia, Raigh, Cath, Geese, Ward, Shanna, Treck, Ellen, Wolt. Level ~12.

This fight also isn't too bad, though harder than the previous. The reset is due to a valkyrie at the start who doubles a lot of my army and, due to my forgetting about Aircalibur's special property, ends up OHKOing Shanna and causing my reset. Past that, three prepromos join here (Igrene, Perceval, and Garret), and Igrene/Perceval bail me out of a lot of situations. Later in the fight cavaliers swarm like crazy but a combination of the prepromos and axedudes with Halberd (usually keeping Ward on a fort since he's rather fragile) let me cut through them reasonably, along with Treck who can take hits at least. The boss is kinda sad! Worse stats than generic L1 Paladins. Perceval takes off most of his health, and Geese finishes him (so I don't have to use him as quickly again). Decent opportunities to try for Sophia levels here (thank goodness for Larum), though she's still a pain.


Retaking the Capital (2 resets)

C16. Roy, Sophia, Cath, Astohl, Bors, Barth, Wendy, Oujay, Noah, Fir, Dorothy, Saul, Fae. Level 12-13.

THIS MAP. Somehow the next one is worse.

Okay, so, first off, I'm glad I have two thieves. Astohl and the other Ostians go through the central entrance, with Astohl stealing a red gem from a thief. This group has no healer and burns through their healing kinda quickly, especially when a bishop near Narcian with Purge decides to feast on them. In a pinch, Saul can toss Physic. Meanwhile, the rest of the group heads up the eastern entrance, needing a couple tries to dispatch a surprisingly nasty killing edge merc backed up by a Bolting mage. Roy recruits Hugh but haggles him down to -3 stats because I need money, and I'm willing to deal with a scrub anima mage because at least they have a 95-hit weapon.

Fae makes her debut here, she proves useful because of her high res and ability to, after a few levels, instantly slay the two manaketes on this map (Cath steals a red gem from the second late in the map, after raiding the eastern chests). Sophia, meanwhile, finally starts to feel... not useful, but usable with her ranged damage (still inaccurate though) and ability to survive hits from enemies with non-overwhelming offence, and even ORKO armours reliably! Hooray! I'm able to plow exp into her to finally get her off the team for a while after this fight.

Next up is dealing with Douglas; Noah gets tapped to tank dodge-him, using an Elixir when he's hit once. Eventually he is hit a second time, but by this time he's bought enough time and can just flee toward the rest of the group. Fleeing back away from the group out the entrance isn't an option, because another Bolting mage has shown up there...

The Ostians get stuck at the door because there's a bunch of powerful enemies, including several mages, backed up by a Physic-user. Dorothy and Javelin users switch off damaging enemies through the door, periodically backed up by Physic or burning through their healing items. Reinforcements slow this further. Eventually the rest of the crew shows up and finally I'm able to safely open the door and take out the other enemies. This finally frees Astohl up to raid the west treasure room, after some help from Fae to kill off the snipers guarding it.

Final notes: Cath steals the Blue Gem and Delphi Shield from Narcian, and Miredy ferries all three gems, Hugh's Member Card, and the Silver Card to the secret shop. A few turns of breaking the wall later (during which I discover Zeiss will attack his sister through the wall), she recruits Zeiss and I stop by the shop and buy all the promotion items I can buy. After selling the gems I have over 45000, enough for nine with the silver card. I'll need more, but this should hold me until the next secret shop, I hope.

Narcian is tricky with his draining, but he gets no throne bonuses, and Wyrmslayer Oujay and Fae can both fight him without too much issue.


The Pinnacle of Light (4 resets)

Roy, Astohl, Bors, Barth, Alan, Noah, Shanna, Lott, Zeiss, Fae. Level ~13.

Hardest map so far. This is NOT a map you don't want to have a healer for.

So the map features arrows of light, which attack vertical lines doing 10 damage to anyone on them. Only certain lines can have arrows on them, which ones is a guide-dangit thing. Fortunately I use a guide. The arrows also appear non-random, as they're the same every time, and mercifully they don't strike on the initial stairwells you have to go up the first few turns.

Aside from that, the first problem is a Bolting sage who OHKOs by Shanna and isn't too far from it on anyone else so the early turns are very tricky as I try to take any damage on the player phase so I can rescue the person damaged if they're hit (at least Mr. Bolting doesn't double). Inevitably he scores some hits which burns some elixirs. On the winning run I get Fae to take the first two by charging her up the stairs quickly (after having learned the weird quirk that the mercenaries near the start don't move). Fae taking boltings proves a theme; there are two MORE Bolting mages, and Fae can bait them out from the second floor plaza. Yes this takes ten turns. Yes the rest of this fight is so long that she can.

Meanwhile, there are paladins with backup on each side, I move to take both out. The group with Douglas, Noah, Lott, Shanna, and Zeiss (with Delphi Shield) actually doesn't have too much trouble, the group with Alan, Roy, and the armours does, because nobody can stand against the paladin here long. Afterwards I slowly proceed around, baiting out enemies where I can and avoiding possible arrow paths to minimize the damage I take. Astohl steals a couple vulneraries on his route, which helps. Next up is a couple bishops with Purge, both mobile. I try to bait them forward to hit more vulnerable targets and then have my cavaliers rush in and kill them, but it's a bit tempremental as their AI feels a bit defensive, often sticking with slightly suboptimum targets if they stay further back. Getting damaged here sucks, but I do get both bishops down.

Finally, the worst part: the boss has Berserk. With his massive 20 magic, his hit rate with it is 100% on anyone with less than 8 res, which is almost everyone aside from Fae (whom he won't target with it). With no healer, I can't cure this status. I initially plan to get Douglas berserked and send him on a rampage through the enemies, but sadly the central Sage near the boss starts moving and goes to kill him, which I wasn't counting on. So much for that. Instead, I deliberately get my lower-offence characters berserked (Shanna, Roy, and later Barth) after taking some of their scarier weapons, and just tank their offence for a few turns. In Barth's case, since it's the last shot, I'm able to have Fae distract Barth for a few turns while the other slip through.

Finally, the last push. As soon as the boss uses his last berserk, all the remaining enemies, previously immobile, aggro. Roy's group, with the armours and Alan, actually has no trouble despite struggling with the paladin earlier, because they still have healing, while Douglas's group has run out, and has to run from the sniper, mage, and silver lance armour which is actually quite a nasty combination for everyone. Eventually, I'm able to kill isolate the mage a bit, allowing an injured Douglas to tank and counter the armour while I surround the sniper; Douglas does have to take a chance that an arrow might fall and finish him but fortunately this doens't happen. Meanwhile, the boss is a nightmare with his stupid high evade and high magical damage to my low-res team, but Fae and her 30+ res to the rescue again. She's down to five weapon uses after two maps!

I'm not looking forward to my next healer-less map. Hopefully there won't be any status staves next time it happens. (Narrator: There would be.)


At this point, we hit the routesplit. I end up on Sacae route, predictably, since it's based on total exp gained by the nomads vs the pegasus knights, and Shin starts at a lower level than Thea, so the nomads gain more exp if all are at about the same level.

The Bishop's Teachings (0 resets)

Roy, Astohl, Bors, Barth, Wendy, Larum, Lance, Rutger, Gonzales, Wolt, Dorothy, Ellen, Lugh, Zeiss. Level ~14.

Fog is back, I still hate it. The toughest part of this map is entirely optional, which is going along the north route through the forest, in a (vain) attempt to reach the northeast village with its Eclipse tome. There's a bunch of mages here who hit pretty hard, including a Bolting sage who fortunately misses a lot against my forested party. Rutger is the star here, since he can actually hit things, with Lugh being runner up, though nobody can take many hits if evade fails. Nomads later show up in this area, and Zeiss with the Delphi Shield is a champ against them because they have crit but low power, and love to attack fliers, so he can counter 'em with a javelin while Dorothy eventually gets to the ballista so she can finish them off from safety.

Meanwhile, the southern route is all about the TRIANGLE ATTACK! Yes, I had forgotten about this until now, but all three armours can surround an enemy and access 100 hit + 100 crit attacks, which is just great given the poor accuracy of lances. OHKO almost anything that they can surround, pretty great for Nomad Troopers in particular.

The boss is a paladin on a gate with silver + javelin. Fortunately, Lugh is able to withstand a counter from a javelin, and after he gains a point of speed from the first couple encounters, can even double! Larum and Ellen take care of the rest. I try to give the kill to someone less useful but no dice.


The Laws of Sacae (3 resets)

Roy, Astohl, Cath, Clarine, Lance, Treck, Wolt, Shin, Lilina, Raigh, Dieck, Lott, Shanna, Thea, Zeiss. Level ~15.

Nomads, as far as the eye can see. As mentioned earlier, they run shortbows, with low power but some crit. Troopers are similar, with better stats (doubling many slower PCs). There are a lot of them, and also some sworddudes, and it's very easy for them to overwhelm me. Few PCs can survive a crit and another attacker; Roy and Clarine can't be critted but are 2RKOed. The best bets are Shin (evasive with competent defence, especially on a forest, though can be crit), Treck (a bit tankier than Shin, but way less adept at counteirng) and my new hero Zeiss, who almost nulls them and can retaliate with the javelin.

Also on this map are some five elixirs and I resolve to steal them all because man I need all the healing I can get knowing that there will likely be more healerless maps. First turn, I bait out the sword users (the nearest nomad is immobile, very weird) with Shanna, then steal from one of them and kill both, using rescue to retreat as the nomads arrive. From there on is a hectic few turns of healing when necessary (Shin grabs the elixirs from the thief and camps out on a forest), cursing the Lancereaver and Killing Edge myrms, and trying to hold a line along the river around the starting area, which is constantly shifting because the nomad troopers CAN move over water, at the cost of most of their movement. It takes several tries just to survive the first few turns, as I learn things like "don't attack anyone too far from the starting point or the Druid with Physic will wake up and become an extremely annoying healer". Also there is so, so much rescuing.

Once that's done the rest of the fight isn't so bad, but is very, very slow. Periodically some wyverns fly in from the northeast; they tend to die to Wolt's Brave Bow, Raigh, Shin, etc. Lilina is basically the number one at killing power. Nomad reinforcements come in in various places, but never in the overwhelming numbers from the start. Upon approaching the boss (not sure on the trigger), reinforcements start coming from random huts in a ring around him, but having as many people as possible camp on them helps (and keeping the non-Zeiss fliers away from any unexposed huts). Definitely some places where I need to brave some ~8% fatal crits but not too many.

The boss is evasive of course, and murders everyone with his brave bow and brave sword. He starts with the bow out, so I fight him at melee and rescue the attacker, repeat. Lilina does most of the work.

[Lord Ephraim]

FF7R has two sides to the game: one is a well crafted remake with plenty of nods to the old game (I cannot overstate how great the enemy design is in the game) and the other......NOMURAAAAAAAAAAA.  You'll know the NOMURAAAAAAA parts as soon as you see them.  Some of it is not as bad as it was cringy. As far as an ARPG is concered, it's SquareEnix best one yet.  It's not a button masher and it's not a facestomp easy time on Normal either.  In fact, as I was playing this, I was also play Persona 5 Royal.  On the hardest setting, Persona 5 Royal was still an easier game than Final Fantasy 7 Remake on Normal.  FF7R has a NG+ Hard mode that gives bosses new AI and attacks, and you cannot use items or recover MP at benches.  It's as hard as it sound.  That means, yes, Final Fantasy is now harder than Shin Megami Tensei.

Persona 5 Royal is pretty much the same as the original version, with new content being frontloaded and backloaded in the first/last 5 hours of the game.  Every single gameplay addition was designed to make the game easier while nothing introduced makes the game harder.  Bosses were redesigned to encourage the usage of Baton Passes, which in the end makes fights easier since you can utilize strategy rather than brute force with levels, buffs, and broken personas.  The boat palace boss is the worst because in the end it becomes a 1v1 duel where you can be stuck in a heal lock until you dodge one of his attacks.  The new girl is cute but irrelevant for 90% of a 100 hour game and the guidance councilor I can't get his voice out of my head because HE IS FERDINAND VON AEGIR.

[DragonKnight Zero]

  100%-ed Atelier Meruru.  For the first time ever, completed some of the grindier in-game accomplishments that give development points.  And made it in time to build all the facilities and have it show up in the last in-game newsletter.  Final level was about 61 for Meruru with the rest around there and the highest leveled outlier at 67.  As an added bonus  I believe I have a full Trait listing in my Extras library save for maybe one.

  300 battles is a lot.  I intentionally fought more than I usually do throughout the game and still ended up grinding out about 30 or so.  I'd already defeated the hardest optional bosses so raising the battle count felt like unrewarding busywork.  Never finished the cooking license before.  Even consciously using food items in fights over just using Elixirs for all my healing needs, still didn't make it to 20 uses by the time all the optional fights were done.  Fortunately, i had enough made that I could stand outside town, remove any equip that boosted HP and LP, put it back on, use food.  Repeat until I reach 20 uses and no game time consumed.

  Keina and Mimi worked out OK for the Eternity Goddess.  Between Mimi and strong Meteors and Peacemakers, had enough offense to bring it down in a timely manner.  Elixir that auto-activates if Meruru is below 50% HP was enough to stay in control of the fight.  Boss dealt out a few KOs, one of which giave it back 3000 HP because of a passive that activates when it has a turn below a certain HP threshold.  Keina has MT status curing if for some reason, the boss' Eternal Light aka status hell (on an unlimited time card) or some other attack didn't trigger an Elixir when her turn comes up.  Otherwise she's buffing or curing to free up Meruru turns to launch Lv3 item offense.  My auto-Elixirs also restore MP so generally had enough when turns come up.

  I did fight the Masked G during the last months after starting building the last facilities.  Left the auto-Elixirs in the container.  He dropped the team even faster than the last time I tried to take him on without cheese tactics; I saw one turn between all three characters.

  The scene where Meruru's father strongly objects to her becoming an alchemist happens in the first hour of the game unless the player is really slow.  The scene where he discloses his reasons occurs in the last two months of a NG+ and has an additional prerequisite I won't reveal.  I'd guessed the why beforehand (and the game's hints are quite strong before that point) but it was still a nice bit of closure for what little plot the game has.  Also contributes a bit of worldbuilding that isn't on the Atelier wiki.

And since the PS3 is currently plugged in, dug out...

Atelier Ayesha - Clear Game conquest

    My old save file had been sitting near the end of year 2 for months (real life time) as I was indecisive about what I wanted to do.  Decided on enough activity to get into year 3 when I can finally start triggering some ending quests.  Beat the Tank optional hunt, which I'd never done before.  Shielding Ayesha from the MT nuke was my big strategy change that was enough to push my team to victory.  I almost never used the Defend command before.  It puts people in the same quadrant, which I tend to avoid doing because of area attacks and I usually spend my assist meter on offense.  But since Ayesha going down usually leads to defeat, chose to risk the disadvantages.

  21 game days later, have knocked off a bunch off ending flags and... I'm back to having next to nothing to do for 11 game months.  Sigh.  Am likely to start experimenting with creating different whetstones and dyes just because I've already made everything else at least once.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark - I did a replay, this time with a Three Houses gurlz themed team.

Edelgard - Reaver / Templar.  Attack Expert- Defense Expert- Counterattack. She was the resident party tank and attack buffer, and on turn 3 was able to get off a massive Holy attack via Templar. I gave her high mobility to get around the back of enemies. Generally a pretty good build, although not too creative or inspiring. Axe bitch, of course.

Dorothea - Went for Druid / Sorceror to capture her red mage nature combined with her ranged attacking. Economy / Double Cast / Mind Expert / Mana Font Countermagic. Sorcerer skillset + Doublecast status healing / regular healing / Bleed. She was really good, especially as the MP healing item got better over time. Probably the overall MVP due to utility and general high offense to multiple targets.

Petra - Assassin /  Scoundrel - Evasion Up - Attack Up - Know Weakness - Dual Wield - Counterattack Most of the time she Dual Wielded Main Gauches and used some other equipment to get up to 50% evasion. Evasion is really good in Fell Seal because it actually evades pretty much everything except 100% attacks, which is really not many things in this game. late in the game she got teleport, which was amazing for backstabbing.

Bernadetta - Peddler / Ranger.  Evasion Up. Bloodlust (lol, just fits plotwise). Countershot. She was almost pure utility. Don’t Move + Patented Usage + Sales Pitch = general pain in the ass. Turn 1 she always used Mana Stone on Dorothea. Late in the game she got teleport, which she used to tactically retreat from enemies.

Mercedes - Princess / Alchemystic with some Wizard and Mender mixed in earlier. Passive: Blessed One (her unique ability in 3H!), 15 MP at the start of the fight. Absorb MP. She started using Mass Haste + Mass Insight (MIND up) turn 1 and then just healing and Quicken after that. Great, useful, rarely took an offensive action.

Lysithea - Fellblade / Wizard. Malice. Mana Font. Evade Magic. Killing power + status whore, especially Sleep. Gave her very high Move for general mobility and Mana Font.

The replay went pretty well; I think I only game over’d once or twice. I did the Deep Dungeon equivalent after beating the final boss without too much difficulty, although a couple of the maps are pretty tough.

Great fun. I think I will try a harder difficulty next.

Ys VIII - I decided to start this up on a whim. The game is like… Suikoden (castle functionality and collecting people), Gilligan’s Island (shipwrecked but people seem cheerful anyway), FF7’s Fort Condor, a DMC/Souls combat system, Xenoblade-style world exploring, and massive leaning on extreme anime tropes for its characters. Laxia in particular is pretty damn tropey and it’s kinda annoying honestly. The fact that you can switch between PCs and it feels more RPG like than most of these action games is pretty sweet though.

It’s a pretty strange game and one I am not 100% sure how I feel about. I started on Normal but decided to beef up the difficulty after finding the first couple of hours too easy. I have been enjoying the game on Hard, though.

[VySaika]

MegaMan 11

I have played so much 20XX that the physics being different are fucking me up. So many deaths to reflexively trying to dash jump but oops there is no dash. The Gear system is actually pretty sweet and really provides the kind of oomph that MM was missing, though. Despite not clearing a single stage yet(trying to start with Block Man since...it feels the game was basically telling you to do that with the opening. Is there a better one?) I'm having more fun with this than I did with MM9 or 10. Or really any MM since 2, 3 and 5 back in The Day(or MHX Vile Mode and both ZX games, but that's a bit of a different critter).

Darkest Dungeon

Beat 3 bosses so far, and only had 3 character deaths. Only one of those to a boss, even. Lost one of my Vestals(ouch), my Occultist(also ouch) and one of my Plague Doctors(I have 2 more and they're better anyway). Added some community mods for extra classes but haven't really tried them out yet. Used the Cook once, but I don't really...get what she does? She's really fiddly.

Highwayman, Grave Robber, Vestal and Plague Doc are my fave classes so far, though I can't use them all at once since a tank is KINDA needed. Crusader makes the best tank imo, with Bulwark of Faith being a strong defense move and giving +24 light to help make your torches last longer. I try to run high light as much as possible, fuck the bonus rewards I don't want to get surprised and lose like 2 rounds trying to get everyone back in position.

Honestly Surprise Attacks are the thing I hate most about this game. When I surprise enemies it doesn't mess up their formation, while when enemies surprise me it does mess up mine, putting my frontliners in the back and vice versa. With what moves you can use dependant on where you are, I just really dislike that. It's worse than FE's Ninja Reinforcements imo. Especially because I have gotten surprised even at high light! I did recently find a trinket that gives -20% surprised chance, which I slap on my lowest speed unit in every venture now. But I dislike having to do equip juggling like that in general.

Still, I'm having a lot of fun. It's too bad I let the aesthetics of the game cause me to sleep on it for so long, though I still don't really dig them. The character quips are amusing though, and the feeling of leveling up my good units is Very Good. I am going to be DEVISTATED when my best Vestal/Highwayman/Plague Doc/Crusader die, though. Also fielding that team made "The Usual Suspects" pop up last time I left with them(for the most recent boss, the wacky prophet dude who hides behind benches). That was amusing, I wasn't expecting the game to track that.

I'll do some full on class thoughts later when I've used them all a bit more. Also wondering if the DLC classes are fun enough to justify picking that up. Shieldbreaker certainly looks great, though Musketeer being basically the exact same as Arbalest is lame.
 

[Dark Holy Elf]

Your milage may vary, but I personally thought Block Man was quite a nasty boss (and not an easy stage, either). I feel like the one I personally found easiest was Tundra Man, who gives a good weapon to boot.

[VySaika]

Ah. Well, I finally got him! And yeah, naaaaaasty as a boss. Had to use 2 E Tanks since I could not figure out how to dodge form 2's attacks.

[Niu]

FF7RE - I got my Wall Market and I am satisfied. The gameplay actually being good is a nice surprise. Though, I must say a couple of boss fight is a bit of drag. As in some boss phases are too short while some are too long, and it kinda feels uncomfortable as a whole.
The newly added plot though... I guess this is what happens when Kitase goes all out with his desire to alter the story with Nomura doing it along side him instead of stopping him. I am having this feeling that Kitase is going to unload everything he wanted to change but couldn't during the recompilation project, thanks to this remake is actually a sequel thus he no longer has to fear about the backlashes of retconning.

SD3 Trails of Mana - The game kept all the corny designs back in the old days, including those random explosions. I highly approve of this. The current SD team really loves to tell its audience that their game is old school and they have no intention to modernize it beyond superficial level.
Though, they really could include more Heores of Mana tie ins. Anise being just a super boss is somewhat disappointing. I mean, that's it? For everything she did in HoM, that's it?
Also, the difficulty drop in the end game is a bit jarring. Stupid ally AI is the only thing that's maintaining the difficulty. Bosses' big move being interruptible end up being a really bad design.

Persona 5 Scramble - Resume to do the after game and the highest difficulty. I really like this game, more so then the main game.
Doesn't have to do any co-op actually made the game's pacing a lot better. Able to go in and out of the dungeons with no restriction is even better! Really, Persona main games after 3 has this homework like tedium due to all the time schedules, but Scramble took it all out and everything became twice as fun.

The dungeons are bigger this time and some reasonably challenging platforming missions. Battle is even more fast paced and the grinding is easy. And still feel like a Megaten despite adopting a musou like gameplay. The no buff/debuff no life gets even more serious here. Since the musou like gameplay means higher frequency of enemy offense, but they are still equally damaging megaten style.
Also, due to the musou style, aka huge amount of grunts, it makes status ailment extremely powerful. Especially brainwash, and you we get to see army og enemy grunts killing one another. While sleep and fear can easily remove any difficulty from Futaba Defense missions.

The aesthetic also got a big improvement in both dungeon design at the music. Especially the Okinawa Jail and Osaka Jail that are absolutely superb. More evident Persona needs less of Meguro. All the new composers out performed him. Last Surprise, that bored me completely in P5 also got arranged into something amazing in Scramble.
Really, like Sakuraba needs to be banned of his bad thing, Meguro really needs to be forbid from composing in the Perona style ever again. Serious, when can Meguro do another DDS or Strange Journey style soundtrack?

The antagonists this time got a different theme this time. Instead of plain evil like P5, antagonists in Scramble are victims turned predators, and some of them well intended extremists. With 4 of them being relatable to individual protagonists on our side. And instead of needing help to fix their personal problems, they become the ones who try to help the antagonists to come out of their trauma. Especially so in the case of Haru and Makoto.

As for the new characters... Sophia is not much. Another AI leans human heart 101 that has been done too many times.
Zenkichi on the other hand is a combination of powerless single father scenario with an adult defeated by corrupted institution scenario. With his problem ultimately boils down that he misinterpreted his daughter's expectations of him. Thus leading me to have some bad taste with him getting Persona powers to bail it out of his difficulties. I'd rather see him confront his problems without relying super powers. But other than that, he is a pretty likable character.

Though, I must ask again. Where is Mitsuru and her Shadow Walker?

[superaielman]

Brig demo- completed this. It was quite good; gameplay changes are a lot of small changes. It's comparable as to the jump between regular Brig and GE; though that is pending me playing more of the demo and seeing things in action. The classes are the same, though it looks like the country leaders have all been reworked.


The transparency is nice, the combat's still fun and the free for all mode I am already looking forward to. Will definitely get.


One change I want to single out- you can send knights to train as a quest and get them some EXP. Not only that, the monsters you send with them get the EXP too. That is extremely useful.

[Dark Holy Elf]

More FE6 notes in which I ramble far too much. The playthrough is done!

Battle in Bulgar (7 resets)

Roy, Astohl, Cath, Raigh, Shanna, Ward, Geese, Gonzales, Oujay, Bors, Barth, Miredy, Noah, Fir, Larum. Level ~16.

No healer again, ack. Good thing I stole those elixirs. (I steal one more from the frontmost Nomad Trooper on this map, too.)

The initial part of the map isn't too bad; there are some nomads (including a trooper), but I know how to fight 'em by now; Miredy with the Delphi Shield takes out the ones in the west and a combined force led by Oujay's offence takes out the rest; the armours and Noah can also tank them reasonably. A bunch of wyverns show up during this; Gonzales hops on a forest to handle the ones in the west, and a combination of axemen, Wyrmslayer, and Raigh deals with the ones in the east. On turn 8 a bunch more nomads and wyverns reinforce, and being ready for this is key, but similar tactics apply. Also during this, I bait out the Sleep Staff user (mobile) from inside the city, pulling him southward. I try to get him to target Raigh who he's got unreliable accuracy on, and Geese ends up as an unrestorable victim as well.

The trickiest part of the fight comes on turn 12 onwards where the main door opens and a bunch of sword-users (including swordmasters with their crit), nomads, and mages stream out. I kite and retreat during this, but more nomads and wyverns show up as reinforcements during this process, which complicates matters! Eventually, the winning strategy proves to be to, after taking out the frontmost waves from the city (the former sleep staff sage with Raigh, a few myrms with my lance-users), to annihilate all the mages in the group with Bors and Barth and one other unit (whom I can rescue away using Noah or Shanna). Then, Bors and Barth can tank a nearly endless number of nomads and swordmasters. Miredy does pretty well too, but her defence isn't as good so the swordmasters are still quite scary to her. One of the myrms has a lancereaver and this is a pain, and a later one comes out from the city with an armourslayer, but by the time he can be a problem I've killed enough of the key dangerous units (the nomad trooper and both swordmasters) that other team members can safely swoop in. Bors and Barth hit Level 20!

Whew! Once that's done the inside of the city if routine and easy... until the boss. A 23-speed swordmaster with FE6 boss evade bonuses. *cries* Fortunately, Larum brought in some spare promotion items, and I promote Barth. Who can now null the boss's damage at melee range, and eventually takes him down with a Slim Lance (for maximum hit). Yes.

Reached Level 20: Barth (promoted), Bors, Zeiss


The Silver Wolf (5 resets)

Roy, Cath, Sophia, Hugh, Fae, Alan, Dieck, Dorothy, Saul, Clarine, Ellen, Wendy, Thea. Level 16-17.

Even more than Laws of Sacae, the hardest part of this fight is the very start. Bolting mages. Mobile Bolting mages. Mobile Bolting mages on a fog map. Mobile Bolting mages on a fog map who are hidden in an unreachable courtyard so they're almost impossible to kill even once you figure out where they are. whyyyyy.

Okay so. There's a bunch of axe users who charge in immediately. Sword-users can bait them out of course, but uh Bolting combines with almost anything else to 2HKO my sword-users. The key, I realize, is that the two centremost squares that are just inside your starting room can be used to bait the axedudes while keeping just outside of turn 1 Bolting range (not that you can reasonably know this without trial and error or a detailed enemy map). I place two other bait units beside them who DO draw the Bolting mages forward. After drawing forward the axe-users and killing some with Killing Edges, I then charge forward on the next turn to wipe the remaining axe-users out.

Now, here's the key part. The Bolting mages 2HKO almost anyone. So how do you deal with that? Well, if you have a bait unit exactly 10 squares from their special snowflake hidden courtyard, the first bolting mage will go for your bait unit, and the second Bolting mage won't be able to get within 10 squares to follow up. Some trial and error teaches me that they'll go for Hugh (doing his max HP minus 1) as the bait unit, so he assumes that position. Cath can't advance yet, since she's OHKOed.

Oh yeah and during all this there's a Berserk Staff user from a DIFFERENT hidden courtyard, because of course there is. Fortunately I have Restore this time. Also for some reason he usually goes for Niime anyway, whom he usually misses.

I can, it turns out, kill the Bolting mages, because on turn 3 Dayan shows up to be recruited by Roy. I can trade him a Longbow and Dayan then 2RKOs the Bolting mage, who he can just reach. Of course there are OTHER unreachable mages who will Physic him! Of course. But I eventually learn that Niime can (with some luck) hit the Bolting sage with ECLIPSE (10-hit HP-1, actual hit goes a bit over 50 due to Niime's high skill against the mage's bad evade, plus WTA). Followup with Longbow, profit.

I have little to say about the rest of the map. There are some ballistas to worry about (on an indoor map, WTF) but since Bolting is gone by this point and they don't OHKO Cath or my one flier (who has the Delphi Shield of course) it's not a big deal; I even bait one of them away from his ballista. I grab all the treasure and the boss's Red Gem. Fae breaks her weapon on this map (reaching Level 19), including chipping down the boss for Alan to finish.

Reached Level 20: Alan, Dieck
Became unable to gain exp: Fae (Level 19, no weapon remaining)


The Bow of the Winds (4 resets)

Roy, Cath, Chad, Astohl, Clarine, Rutger, Fir, Noah, Lance, Wolt, Lott, Thea, Sophia, Larum. Level ~17.

Another map where the worst part by far is the start. The game decides that some artificial challenge is in order, and what better way to do that than by separating your forces into three separate groups despite there being no plot justification for it? Don't do this, games.

One group in the northwest gets bumrushed by Nomads. For this job I tap Noah, Fir, and Larum; Noah can somewhat (but not indefinitely) tank Nomads at a bridge chokepoint and respond with a javelin, Fir can double them with her Wo Dao, and Larum adds to my offence when necessary. I'm even able to bait some nomads to cross the river and into Fir's waiting arms. While tricky this is not the problem.

The east contains the problems. There are three wyverns which may fly north or south, I eventually bait them to mostly flying north (where Wyrmslayer Rutger waits), except for one who charges with its javelin towards Wolt in the south. A wyvern lord near the centre and a nomad trooper in the south both head towards Wolt's group as well; Wolt and Lott combine to take the wyvern lord, but I have to be careful (and missing is uh bad). Then I run from the nomad. Into the range of berserk.

Oh yeah, did I mention that? There's a Druid mini-boss in the east with Berserk. So I have to kite that, as my only healer is Clarine, who is in the northeast (I do try to have Sophia, also in the northeast to bait out one use turn 1). But as I try to escape the Nomad, that's not an option, and Lott gets berserked. This proves surprisingly harmless since he ineffectively flails at Astohl. Killing the Nomad Trooper is the tricky part but I'm able to rejoin with the northern group and do it. I'm never able to safely Restore Lott, but it doesn't really matter in the end. Finally, the east group is able to join up with the Noah/Fir group in the west, where Thea is able to bait the sleep staff from a second druid mini-boss from a spot on the river due north of him and other units are able to safely bait over more Nomads.

The bosses? There are six, all with identical portraits (both to each other and to the one previous Sacaen boss in Chapter 18) because they're all Sacaen I guess? Kinda racist there FE6. Anyway three of them are Nomad Troopers who start with a bow out; I fight them at melee and rescue so they don't switch to their sword which has crit. They have hella evade but Rutger has loads of hit and is able to eventually bring him down. I seize with Roy at the start of the turn which brings out some reinforcements, I'm able to kill them all though. The second boss is a Druid; though they hit hard they have no crit and much less speed/avoid so are actually a fair bit easier. The second gate I seize is the one which ends the fight, thank you glorious RNG.

Reached Level 20: Clarine (promoted), Fir (promoted), Noah, Rutger


The Binding Blade

Roy, Astohl, Oujay, Wendy, Gonzales, Geese, Lott, Ward, Ellen, Saul, Dorothy, Sue, Shin, Shanna, Thea, Treck, Lugh, Hugh. Level 18-19.

Murdock's map! This map has a reputation of being pretty tough, and with good reason. But Murdock doesn't want you to know this one trick that will win it for you!

Actually I'm pretty lucky and get a fairly strong team for this map: two mages who can use Aircalibur (well Hugh unlocks it midfight but ehhh), three archers, and four axe-users. These aren't always positives, but with the enemy makeup here, it is. The map overwhelmingly consists of wyverns; I fight over 60 of 'em. As well as a dozen lance-using paladins. And not one of them uses an axereaver.

To the east, I send Shin, Sue, and Lugh, who between them can kill wyverns pretty good. Unshockingly they promote after not too much time. Treck, Lott, Ward, and the pegasus knights go with them, but they're much less effective. Nobody here can tank wyverns for that long (Treck comes closest), but the sheer offensive blitzing is good enough.

To the south, I send various other PCs. The only thing you really need to know is this. Gonzales can climb on peaks, which give +40 avoid. He gets a further +10 from WTA on lances, which basically everyone has. And then... hardly anything can hit him. So his job is to intercept almost any enemies. He doesn't reliably hit but he can distract like a champ. I let a few deliberately sneak past by baiting them with other units, but this is just so Gonzales doesn't get all the exp. He still gets a crapton, promoting and then reaching Level _10_ by the time the map ends. Otherwise, Dorothy snags some kills in this group, being an archer, as does Oujay, being generally good, and Wendy is decent enough at baiting and surviving some enemies who get past.

That's really the meat of the fight, although it takes a while, especially Gonzales's group. And there's a 30 turn limit to worry about for this fight to unlock the side-chapter, and it definitely matters! Approaching the Shrine of Seals itself is relatively tricky; there are two tough manaketes (Oujay's Wyrmslayer does good, his high luck nulls their crit, Lugh helps) and big swarms of wyverns appear (8 a turn 3 turns in a row, plus another 5 led by Gale, who has a Spear) at this point, but again the same basic groups (including a now promoted Geese, who can do similar things to Gonzales) do their things, with Hugh promoting and also snagging some high-offence wyvern-killing of his own.

Meanwhile, Oujay, Lugh, Astohl, and Roy lead a charge around the far side of the Shrine, away from the wyverns, trying to reach the boss before the time limit. The shrine includes a sage with Bolting, so Lugh provides healing. Astohl also needs to steal the Knight Crest from Murdock (after Sue arrives to rescue him safely). Promoted Oujay can fight Murdock very safely with his Armourslayer, Murdock having a Tomahawk means the Armourslayer claims WTA, and Oujay's hit against him is actually... ~70! Pretty sure that's the highest hit I've seen against a boss so far. Roy seizes on turn 29.

Also in this map, I buy all the remaining promotion items I'll need, after having sold a bunch of superfluous stuff (obviously things like stat boosters and gems, but also higher-value items like blades, some reavers, the overkill-healing Recover staves, etc.) There are still two more I have yet to get, which are stolen from Zephiel and Brunnya.

This is the first map where I know there are several PCs I will never use again due to hitting decently high (like uh 3+) promoted levels. As it turns out I never end up using Barth again either, though.

Reached Level 20: Astohl, Dorothy, Geese, Gonzales, Hugh, Lugh, Oujay, Shanna, Shin, Sue. All promote except Astohl.


The Silencing Darkness (4 resets)

Roy, Wendy, Lott, Ward, Thea, Wolt, Ellen, Lilina, Raigh, Larum. Level ~19.

I'm kinda embarrassed at the reset count here because this map is really not that hard. But it has darkness and I make multiple stupid mistakes.

The start is probably the hardest, as you're rushed by a hero, sniper, and two myrmidons from each side, some of whom have special weapons. After some experiments I decide the best thing to do is charge everyone to the left to take out the first group (which includes a brave sword hero who can puree most of my army and has good speed/evade, Lilina + Larum is a great combo against him though), then meet the group from the right as they come to me. After that I stay together as a group and move slowly around the map. Lilina and Raigh both promote quickly which gives me two more healers, which is nice.

A lot of enemies don't move, which makes the map mostly simpler than it probably should be. There are also a bunch of traps which either do 10 damage or, in the case of spikes, 10-YourDefence damage, which is largely laughable, except the one time I forget about them and the tiny bit they do makes the difference in killing me. >_<

There is treasure which randomly contains either elixirs or manaketes. I open four of the six chests total, one on the very final turn after killing the boss so I don't have to kill the manakete that pops out. Manaketes are kinda badass but I do have two mages which goes a long way. Lilina is definitely MVP in this fight.

The boss has Nosferatu, always a pain. Wendy with her Lilina support can dodge, double, and do decent damage, though it takes some luck with him missing of course. I deliberately hold Larum back a bit so she doesn't reach Level 20 and I can use her next map.

Reached Level 20: Everyone except Larum, i.e. Roy, Ellen, Lilina, Lott, Raigh, Thea, Ward, Wendy, Wolt. All except Lott promote, because I don't have the final Hero Crest yet... I'll get that next map.


The Neverending Dream (2 resets)

Roy, Chad, Cath, Dieck, Rutger, Shanna, Miredy, Zeiss, Lance, Noah, Treck, Sophia, Saul, Larum. Level ~20.

Most of the characters picked for this map are either Level 20 or Level 1 promoted with 0 exp (I have a lot of them, I use dicerolls to choose which ones get to join in). Within a few turns everyone is promoted except the thieves, Larum, Lott, and Saul. I decide to use my second-to-last Guiding Ring on Sophia rather than Saul because I really want a healer on each side. Sophia goes with the smaller group in the west, which includes Chad, Noah, Treck, Sue, and Rutger. They kite the Berserk Staff from the central Druid on turns 1-3 (no Restore on this side), then head up towards the treasure and the western switch.

Meanwhile, in the east, Miredy and Zeiss are fearsome, Saul can heal (including Berserk on the first three turns, then Sleep from a bishop reinforcement in the north later), Roy/Lance/Dieck/Shanna are all solid too. Miredy and Zeiss use swords to kill the Brave Axe Hero guarding the east switch. I don't really have any problems here. Cath grabs the treasure and then the whole group starts heading towards Zephiel's throne room.

One of the more frustrating sections of the map comes when Noah, Treck, and Sophia need to kill the Brave Sword Hero. Shouldn't be too bad, except a reinforcement Bishop shows up who can Physic him, and is so far away from any of my units at the time I decide not to hunt him down. So I have to abuse the fact that Physic isn't used until the hero falls below half health then get some luck actually hitting him, since he's pretty dodgy. With that done, I open the throne room on turn 26.

The throne room is by far the hardest part of the map. I'd mostly rolled it until now but things are serious. The second enemy phase after it's opened sees a bunch of ninja reinforcements from inside the room. The solution is to bait the heroes out the turn I open the door, finish them off on player phase and rescue people away to bait out the next closest enemies, which are the Druids. And from there, sweep in and kill the Druids, the Manaketes, the Sniper and Bishop, and the Hero and Berserk who showed up as the near reinforcements, while being wary of the Sniper and Bishop reinforcements heading down. Then kill them next turn and move as quickly as possible to COVER THE STAIRS (this makes so much sense, FE6) to prevent more reinforcements which arrive every 3 turns.

Zephiel. Oh dear. Well first off, Cath steals his Hero Crest and Lott uses it to promote, rescue her away. Then, actually killing Zephiel. He has 15 crit, which is non-zero on a lot of people, as well as high defencees, no weaknesses, lots of evade, etc., you know how this works. My best unit for the job turns out to be a Level 5 Dieck, who, with Shanna and Lott nearby for C supports, nulls the crit and manages decent accuracy (45% chance of doing 7 damage x2 with a Silver Sword). Zephiel meanwhile regens 7 a turn. I have Saul heal Dieck twice per turn since he's 2HKOed (Larum helps), rescue him with Lott/Shanna, repeat for a while. ALSO complicating matters during this is that 8 reinforcements enter the main doors at this point and I can't kill Zephiel before they reach me, so I have to deal with them without letting up on my Zephiel-killing strats or exposing the stairwells (Miredy and Zeiss are the most important for this). On the winning run I'm able to bait one of the groups towards Noah and Treck's group instead, who pick off the Sniper and Druid in turn through the walls before engaging with the Heroes.

Zephiel falls eventually. At 39 turns this is the longest fight in the game for me. I deliberately prevent Cath from reaching Level 20 so I can use her next map, and deliberately use Sue very little, because I know I'll want a good archer for Chapter 24.

Reached Level 20: Everyone except Cath, i.e. Chad, Lance (promoted), Larum, Miredy (promoted), Sophia (promoted), Saul, Treck (promoted).


The Ghost of Bern (11 resets)

Roy, Cath, Marcus, Zealot, Echidna, Garret, Klein, Fir, Alan, Bors, Ward, Lott, Wolt, Saul, Clarine, Hugh. Level 1 promoted, except Roy who is about 3.

One last tough map. It's not an easy map normally, but here the complication is as follows: Marcus, Zealot, Echidna, Garret, and Klein have joined. All of them (but especially Marcus/Zealot) have bad stats for their level. And I really, really want to get them some exp, because otherwise I'll have to use them in the next map as well, which only has 8 free deployment slots!

At the start of the map, I bait out some wyverns from both the north and the west. And then... the fun begins. There are three ballistas on this map, all are on islands I can't reach because I don't have a flier. Two have ridiculous range, one (that can only reach the east) has a minor crit rate. The long-range ones 2HKO Klein, Marcus, most mages... and a couple wyverns do move after them so if say Zealot is almost 2HKOed they can finish him off.

Key strategies include Ward and Lott rocking bows now to do some accurate chip on wyverns (Klein can KO lords with a Silver Bow once they do this, which is great), Bors rescuing Klein in a pinch, and Clarine acting as the best bait by standing on a forest where she has over 80 avoid but low enough defence that lots of wyverns go after her. In the east, Garret does his berserker thing and gets on a mountain to bait a spear-using wyvern lord.

All 11 resets are basically due to something going wrong at this point (the ballistas really make a mess of things), and I'd have had fewer if I wasn't trying so hard to get the prepromos some kills, but that's life.

The later stages of the map are largely easier. Sure, there's a lot of status staves, but both Clarine and Saul bring Restore. Most of the enemies actually near Brunnya don't move (at least until she runs out of Bolting) which makes them relatively easy to pick off, except that Brunnya has Bolting and that OHKOs some people, crits a few, and doubles a few more, any of these are terrible. But being mindful of that it's not too bad.

In other notes, Karel mostly just goes shopping (only thing he buys that ends up mattering is extra Light Brands) Cath steals a Blue Gem and the last Guiding Ring from Brunnya (which also gets her to Level 20), Saul finally promotes (that's everyone!) and Roy duels Brunnya because almost nobody else in my army can in a sane amount of time, Binding Blade to the rescue.

Reached Level 20: Cath


The Truth of the Legend

Roy, Fae (grr), Fir w/ Durandal, Bors w/ Maltet, Lott w/ Armads, Sue w/ Mulagir, Alan, Thea, Igrene, Saul. Level 1-2 promoted, except Roy who is about 5.

Well, here we go. Mission to level the prepromos was, as you see, a successful one. Fir, Bors, Alan, and Lott didn't get much exp on the last map so they carry over, but that's fine. This map is boring but easy, little more than a victory lap at this point.

Manaketes are kinda scary for my underlevelled people, they have 13-15 crit so unsupported PCs have to watch for that (it's a big problem for Lott in particular) and physical PCs who don't hit weakness on them do almost no damage. Roy meanwhile spends most of his time just seizing thrones. Almost all the heavy lifting in this chapter is done by Fir (who gains luck in her first level to null their crit, uses Wyrmslayer and Durandal) and Sue (ORKOs without triggering counters), with Alan a notable third (Wyrmslayer does good work, though doesn't ORKO) and Lott occasionally snagging finishers. Bors also just laughs at manaketes with his high luck and defence, and a legendary weapon of his own, but his job is to hold the back line so the reinforcements don't get to anyone squishy. Fae can't do anything in this map besides carry things, great design there.

Jahn is the worst boss in the game (1 range immobile and weak to the divine weapons).


Beyond the Darkness

And Idunn isn't much better. Fir and Sue take out a manakete each, Roy 2HKOs with the Binding Blade (or would, but 6% crit kicks in and it's a OHKO), that's that.

Final levels obviously varied, Fir/Sue/Roy were all around 7 as the highest. Gonzales is still the highest overall at 10!


Character data, battles/kills/times died. Of course, kills are mostly proportional to how low a level someone started at. Note Gonzales at #1 for kills, entirely due to Chapter 21. Roy had the most battles of course, because he's in every fight, but because I didn't want him gaining much exp per fight a lot of what he did was chipping for others.

Gonzales 135/69/0
Lance 131/45/1
Lugh 106/45/0
Fir 87/45/1
Alan 118/43/2
Sue 104/43/0
Wolt 100/42/1
Roy 180/41/5
Shanna 110/41/2
Wendy 108/41/1
Ward 105/40/1
Sophia 79/40/0
Lott 115/39/0
Dieck 104/38/1
Dorothy 85/37/1
Lilina 79/37/1
Treck 99/35/0
Shin 85/35/1
Oujay 77/34/0
Rutger 93/33/1
Noah 118/31/1
Thea 52/27/1
Zeiss 97/26/1
Chad 86/26/1
Miredy 73/26/1
Barth 85/22/0
Geese 58/21/0
Raigh 54/21/2
Cath 54/20/1
Fae 52/18/1
Hugh 31/15/2
Astohl 70/8/1
Marcus 13/5/0
Klein 11/5/1
Zealot 9/5/4
Clarine 20/4/2
Garret 17/3/0
Igrene 10/3/0
Echidna 10/2/1
Douglas 12/1/0
Cecilia 11/1/0
Percival 6/1/0
Ellen 8/1/0
Dayan 7/1/0
Yodel 2/1/0
Karel 2/1/0
Saul 1/1/0
Larum 20/0/1
Niime 2/0/0


Chapter turn counts:

Chapter 1-8x: 9 9 13 9 11 16 14 25 21
Chapter 9-12x (Echidna route): 18 19 14 19 24
Chapter 13-14x: 24 24 32
Chapter 15-16x: 21 33 34
Chapter 17-20x (Sacae route): 20 32 20 18 26
Chapter 21-21x: 30 31
Chapter 22-25: 39 22 30 2

Ranks: B in Tactics, Funds, Combat. A in Survival, Exp, Power. Survival was a rule for the challenge and Exp/Power are basically "spread your exp more" which I was of course amazing at.

How happy I was to get each PC in my party: A star indicates a character who was at least somewhat RNG-screwed, I didn't track this religiously (and in particular don't actively remember any PCs being RNG-blessed, though I imagine both heroes were a bit, as well as Alan)

MVPs: Alan, Lugh, Sue, Lilina, Shin, Gonzales (chapter 21), Larum
Near-MVPs: Lance*, Clarine, Treck, Oujay, Miredy, Fae, Zeiss
Glad to have: Ellen, Dieck, Rutger, Saul, Noah, Fir
Siutational: Roy, Bors, Shanna*, Chad, Astohl, Wendy (when caught up), Barth, Gonzales (most maps), Geese, Raigh, Hugh
Ugh really: Wolt, Ward, Lott, Dorothy, Wendy (upon join) Thea, Cath*, Sophia (when caught up)
Dear god no: Sophia (first few maps)

General ranking by class (promotable characters only):
1t. Nomads: Bows are accurate and hit weakness on wyverns, and the nomads have speed to double with them, move to reach targets, and rescue. They're great.
1t. Wyverns: They fly, have high str, def, and skill (the latter really matters for lance-users in this game, since lances have lower hit than normal). Speed is respectable too. Luck and Res are the problem stats. Don't get to use them too often though.
3. Anima mages: They're squishy, but Fire is so, so good. 95 hit in this game is amazing, and it's range 2. Generally the best boss-killers and reliable against everything else.
4. Healers: Obviously Clarine is better than the rest. You really feel it when you don't have them because status gets common later in the game and their healing is much more efficient than items.
5. Paladins: They still have two weapons and move, hard to argue with that. What they can do with rescue is particularly useful. Stats vary from unremarkable to quite solid. Rarely made a dramatic difference though, the wy the classes above do.
6. Swordmasters/Heroes: They might as well be the same on this playthrough. Good speed/avoid (Dieck a bit less, but he got a bit RNG blessed), solid enough concrete durability, and swords having high accuracy ain't overkill in this playthrough, believe me. Not much utility beyond armourslaying and wyrmslaying but sometimes that's enough.
7. Pegasus Knights: Their stats were suspect on this playthrough (str for both, HP for Shanna and Luck for Thea) but they still have rescue/flight utility.
8. Dark mages: The most accurate spell being 70 hit makes them dramatically less useful than anima mages, and their stats are generally worse too. Sophia is of course a special class of awful for how underlevelled she is, but I'm not factoring that in here. Oh well, targeting res at range 2 is still good. Nosferatu is neat too.
9. Armour knights: The last three groups are situational. Sometimes armours just die due to being doubled and they're almost always kinda offensively inept and have bad move. And sometimes their defence is just amazing, especially against nomads.
10. Infantry axedudes: The ones with mountainwalk (Gonzales and promoted Geese) are really good in chapter 21!... but aside from that, they suffer from axes being just a horrible weapon type in this game. Not being able to reliably hit is terrible, most accurate weapon is 65 hit are you kidding me. Not like their stat builds inspire either.
11. Infantry archers: Somehow I have more contempt for this duo. To be clear, they're definitely useful when enemy wyverns are around, but otherwise? The comparison with nomads is just so sad, with less move, less speed, even less defence. Their stat build is just so often inadequate, and I end up setting up kills for them to keep them along because they're just so bad, defeating their advantage of chipping.

Pre-promos there's not much to say about. They're amazing when they join overlevelled (particular shout-outs to Zealot, Echidna, Cecilia, Perceval, Igrene, and Niime on their joining maps) and are mediocre to terrible when I was forced to use them again at the end.