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

[Random Consonant]

Three Houses - Crimson Flower Maddening, started Ch5.

I already see why this gets complaints even without the ninja reinforcement issues, enemy stat bloat is real and not a friend.  It's far from the worst I've seen, of course, but the first three chapters in particular have some particularly harsh inverted difficulty curve energy.  (Granted Ch3 is mostly because of FOG.  Did you know vision range with a fresh torch is 7 squares?  Because I sure do now, thanks archers.)

Ch1 just sucks, four characters who you can't field and miss out on exp and can't possibly make up for it on the forced auxillary battle in Ch2 because of Maddening's exp curve is gross on principle even before what Maddening does to the map itself, existant crit rates across the board is just gross.

Ch2 is somewhat better, but even without making things (probably) harder on myself than I needed to by forgetting I could unequip people baiting archers into range you still have four people with base stats so that's annoying all things considered.  I don't think I actually reset on it though.

Ch3 is just terrible before the fog is removed and I'm sure my saying this is utterly shocking.  Green units get buffed by Maddening too and it still somehow doesn't save them from being some of the worst green units ever no I'm not mad because one of them got crit twice on a 3% chance.  I wind up unable to get Petra, Caspar, and Sylvain to Lv5 before the end which ends up being an annoyance in Ch4.

Ch4 is... honestly fine?  Would've been better if I didn't split the team in a weird way and wasn't trying to baby people to get them into real classes and if SOME PEOPLE would actually bother to gain RES.  Resets there pretty much due to bad plays.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Three Houses Edelgard and Hubert only -

So Chapter 12 was relatively easy, but had some tricky parts. I give Edelgard Cichol Wyverns and Hubert Supreme Armored Company to up his durability and give him a good Gambit. Edie is a Wyvern Lord and Hubert is a Dancer. I ended up timing out the first part of the map, which causes peg knight reinforcements to appear. Because Edelgard is overleveled, she can one shot with Smash, and otherwise I used thicket + Dismount + Killer Axe to try to take them out with a crit.  Otherwise there was some tricky stuff to maneuver around like reinforcements that I ended up avoiding at the beginning, but overall not too bad.

Chapter 13 was fast but pretty hard. I ended up using two shots of Aymr to get to and kill Judith on Turn 3 before the reinforcements appeared; I felt under a lot of pressure to beat the map quickly because there is just a lot of stuff going on and it’s hard to protect Hubert (and Byleth) from harm for very long because I don’t have the usual arsenal of people to take out the enemies. I decided to keep a save file after this map just in case using the two shots was too much to handle later.

Chapter 14 was tricky and I had several resets on it. My first approach was to try to take out the Bow Knights on the right coming from the ship, which was very challenging but I ended up fighting off the swarms of Wyverns + the Bow Knights with a few shots of DP. But then… the reinforcements from from the city pincered me; some came from the bottom and others came from the top, and I could not protect Byleth (or Hubert) long enough to pull out the victory and ended up having to reset. Then I tinkered around with killing Claude early (Turn 2 was my goal, since Turn 1 not too much happens). I realized that Stride is very helpful in this and only had to use two shots of Aymr to get to Claude and Killer Axe+ crit him. I had to tinker around a little with the setup but I ended up getting the victory.

Hubert turns into Dark Knight at this point. So that leaves me with one Aymr use for Seteth/Flayn’s map. Despite multiple DPs just to triggering reinforcements at the wrong time, I ended up not having any resets n this map. Hubert is very good at dealing with Armor Knights and using Frozen Lance to one-shot heroes, but otherwise is killed by almost everything. Edie is the workhorse of course, taking many many hits and dodging with Alert Stance+. Discovered that you can not trigger reinforcements in the map but going to the extreme left and was able to trigger them on my own terms rather than at a bad time. Alois firebombed most of his own allies at a certain point which was hilarious. I think we should participate in Internet Disc Horse and call Alois an evil person for this or something.

Anyway, Flayn ended up appearing much lower down that I am used to, in the centre rather than on the side. This is good because as her group sprinted to the defend point, I had time to catch them. I ended up piling my Gambits into the enemies there and using Hubert to bait the mages. I used my last shot of Aymr on an archer who was about to make it to the gate and then moved Edie on the other side of the battle to smite other enemies who are very annoying. The assassins were a big pain in the ass because I didn’t have Edie with Lances; if I hadn’t have won, I would have done a more anti-Assassin build since a lot of the enemies on the map are them.

The defend condition actually mattered with only two people!

I had zero DPs left for this map, but I won!

So next is Arianrhod. Honestly, this is the breather of Part 2; Rodrigue was easy to Brave Axe to death, and Felix died to a couple of Banshees + run away from Hubert. Lots of Armor Knights for Hubert to eat alive as well. I ended up grabbing eight Agarthium after saving up my Gambits to get them from the Golems. Easy peasy map TBH. I had a couple of DPs just tinkering with setup, but otherwise no issue. I didn’t send anyone to the right at all.




Here’s the skill loadout. Yes, Edie has 50 strength. 29 more than Hubert. Amazing.

Last two maps coming up next. My Raging Storm supply is full again!

[Luther Lansfeld]

Three Houses Edelgard and Hubert only -  Finished. I must outwit even death.

Talitean Plains was a bit different than normal. Demonc Beasts are a bit troublesome on this playthrough because it’s much harder to gang up on them, and because these are immune to magic, Hubert can’t damage them. But! Hubert can Banshee them, preventing them from moving, which helped me control them for a couple of turns at least.

I ended up pulling back to the left near the beginning of the map and killing Mercedes and her peg knights first. Killing Mercie stops the tide of peg knights, which I didn’t actually know and is great. I had to do some maneuvering to make sure that Hubert was never hit by a single one or else he would die. Thankfully I was able to do that with the power of Evasion Ring and Alert Stance+. So I killed Mercedes and then went back to the right to kill Sylvain. All of the demonic beasts transformed in the time when I was dicking around, but Rhea didn’t appear. Dedue transformed as well. At this point, I did have to kill one of them. After offing Sylvain, Rhea appeared, and I was able to one-round her with the Brave Axe. I had to dance around the Golem and bait them a few times with Edelgard so they wouldn’t kill Byleth, who was now hiding in the extreme left corner.

I ended up using four Raging Storms to kill Demonic Beast Dedue, and then a couple of turns later killed Dimitri. I fished for the crit on him but didn’t get it, but thankfully he didn’t crit back, nor did he kill me. Hubert finished him off with Frozen Lance.

None of the Demonic Beasts in the upper half of the map were killed except Dedue, and I ended up also abandoning the two Golems. They are just all too big a pain in the neck to bother with.

Final map was a thing. On Turn 1 Edelgard baited the front four enemies with Alert Stance+, and then I killed them and moved onto the Golem. Unlike the Golems on the previous map which I was able to fuck around with and not kill, I had to take out a couple on this map. Thankfully they cannot go down stairs, so I was easily able to mess around with this Golem and kill him. And then there were peg knights. I had some trouble and tinkering with them but ended up beating them after a couple of DP. Probably the biggest difficulty was the area with the Golem at the top of the stairs after Gilbert (who I avoided killing to prevent peg knight spawn from the east/west parts). When you cross the wall, the reinforcements from the south appear. I ended up using one of my shots of Raging Storm here to kill two of them, and then Gambited the rest. Also, lol Holy Knights trying to move through the final map’s terrain.

After this, I killed the Golem, who was a pain in the ass with his like 40 crit after Rhea buffed him a bunch. Once he was felled, all that’s left id Rhea. Now, I need to kill her quickly or else Catherine/Gilbert/Ashe/Annette will be breathing down my throat, so I broke her one turn, Raging Storm x 4 the next, and prayed for crits and not being crit on the third turn. It worked and I won.

Woo hoo!



699 Battles 

[Dark Holy Elf]

Brigandine LoR - Mana Saleesia run done. I should definitely upgrade the difficulty because aside from the start things definitely weren't too tough. The start was definitely significantly trickier than my first playthrough, due to having 5 borders at first. Once I wiped out the pirates things got much smoother.

Plotwise you're playing as the villainous theocracy, complete with the cult of personality and re-education camps. That's certainly a thing.

Unit notes:

Rudo: Is busted. I guess it would be nice if his unpromoted form weren't 4 move + melee only but that's pretty standard for his type of knight. Otherwise, hits like a truck and has more mana pool at the start of the game than anyone else got, ever. Also 6 command area, wtf.

Emma: Super rated her well below #2 knight in the country and I don't even especially disagree, but tbh she felt like the only knight besides Rudo who isn't significantly flawed in some way - availability, being stuck with 3 command area, bad mana pool, etc. Nothing about her is bad, and she was rather clearly my second best knight at the end in both mana pool and general use.

Selena: Solid enough mage, then leaves.

Kyle: Good stats and pool out of the gate, drops off as his level advantage erodes. 3 command area is annoying. Still has a good case to be #2 knight in the country, earlygame performance matters a lot, especially on this route.

Monica: Buff and debuff after moving give her some nice flexibility, though 3 command range and average mana pool + slow in-practice levelling speed hurts.

Veyta: I didn't get him until I cleared out the pirates and could start questing without weakening my borders. Still worth using because he only needs to be better than the likes of Gilliam, and his mana pool gets good fast enough for this to be the case. He rarely actually did anything in fights, but he didn't need to.

Gilliam: Starting level is so important in this game, how bad can someone who joins at Level 20 be? About as bad as Gilliam, it turns out.

Other knights I used in respectable filler roles (i.e. they're well above the trashy level of the lower MS knights): Avril, Titania, Jaden, Katri, Frederico, Largo, Lorenzo. Lorenzo and Largo are still pretty bad, but it's all hands on deck. Katri was probably the best of this group (she'd actually be a good unit if her starting mana pool didn't suck), and is the only one who actually reached tier 3. God this country has way too many people with 3 command area.

I mostly used the same sorts of monsters as last time, but fittingly I used angels/seraphs much more (and demons hardly ever). They're solid, not much to say; Holy Word, Divine Ray, and Area Heal are all good in varying ways, even they come with a hefty pool cost.

[Cmdr_King]

Tales of Berseria- Voring back and forth, forever.

So, this does some things that guarantee a certain score.  9/10.

But... hm.  I do wonder now, how would I feel about other Tales games, and especially Vesperia?  Like... in some ways ToB being a Tales game kinda clashes with what the story is doing.  Skits feel like a crutch so the game can be more budget conscious, rather than something that makes sense in the overall structure of the game, ToB needs to lock you into where you're at for a huge chunk of the game which clashes with some of the sidequest structure, just small things like that which don't quite fit what it's doing.  But on the other hand, that sense of focus is generally to it's advantage. 

I think the main place it fumbles on its own terms, apart from some late game happenings with how the themes are done which I don't want to get into here, is how the battle system shakes out.  It's just 100% momentum based and it creates a frustrating amount of dead time I feel like.  Like, enemy ambused you?  Welp you're not gonna die but also you're gonna eat up 2-3 minutes just fishing for a stun or status landing so you can actually start a proper combo and deal actual damage.  And under neutral conditions it's fine but the game being so swingy is frustrating.

[superaielman]

Re Emma: You are correct that she doesn't have any noticeable flaws. She also doesn't have any noticeable strengths. 330 Rune is slightly above average but not great. Her stats are above average but not remarkable; she's a clear second to Carla in overall stats and loses out to Arianna in rune and Scymerius in STR. She's like Cain in that her value is capped by being stuck in mediocre second tier class. I say this as someone who used her all the way through the endgame and did all the optional fights with her. She's solid, but in any other country she would be treated as a secondary knight rather than one of the absolute best available.

MS knights: They are bad. They are really bad.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Finished up playthrough #2 of Tales of Symphona and #3 is underway.  Felt like jotting down some thoughts about the endgame stuff.  Most of which I haven't done before.

  Got my Last Fencer.  This is one of those fights where I can't rely on the usual crutch of items so it's rough.  Used a method I found in a FAQ to semi-cheese it, not sure if I could earn a win in a straight bout.  The scene afterwards had me going "awww..."  As contrived as the plot beats can get sometimes, this one avoided the trap of drama to be dramatic or characters acting artificially stupid so it worked.

  Finished Devli's Arms quest and got my Empty Soul title.  That last fight was won with an All-Divide, brute force, and enough items.  A really long endurance match and my Grade suffered for it.

  Beat Sword Dancer 3.  Didn't take as long as I thought it would, which is welcome.  Messed up my strategy the first time and wiped, won on next attempt.  Colette got off Holy Judgment very early on both attempts which leads me to question if the game saves RNG states somehow in save files.  Didn't need an All-Divide; lots of the right kinds of elemental defense kept damage manageable.  So did Guard Plus on Lloyd since his job is to keep the boss away from the rest of the team which entails lots of blocking physicals.

  Made a real attempt at the optional dungeon, after stocking up on cooking ingredients.  I got to the bottom floor but didn't have enough Soulfire to be granted access to the last boss of the place.  Opted to bail when the game provided the option.  Not sure if I'll go back to beat it in playthrough #3.  I like the game overall but not so much to deal with 80 fights in a sitting.  Worst floor was one where I lost TP while in motion and it was a kill all enemies floor.  Cooking right before entering a fight kept my team from fighting battles dry though it sure was annoying.

  Got the coliseum titles for all 8 characters.  Doing it with Genis was the very last thing I did before going to whomp the final boss.  The first three fights (when I finally did succeed in winning, after many failures) were mostly won by bonking them with the kendema.  Last two cooperated with leaving themselves open for spells.  Colette was a tricky win but her melee damage is better so I could get her to the last fight mostly reliably though I don't have a reliable strategy for the last one.

As much as I enjoy saying I suck at the game, winning Advanced Singles with Genis isn't the sort of thing one can really fluke their way into.  So I guess I have some skill after all.

Used Colette in the final boss to attempt stealing from form 2.  Also because I'd grinded her up to 399 stealing attempts.  Got Little Pickpocket title in the very last battle of the game.  Nothing else to add; it's the final boss, therefore less deadly than the bonus bosses I beat.

  I still feel the voice acting is well done overall, complementing the personalities the characters show in their actions and dialogue.  Even the side cast and NPCs in voiced segments.  The music, while it won't live up to the high quality of Xenogears or Atelier,  manages to get stuck in my head anyways.  I guess Namco has competent composers working for them.  The only other Namco soundtrack I'm familiar with is Dragon Spirit and I happen to take a liking to that one as well.  (had considered nomming a Dragon Spirit track for music tourney)

  Playthrough #3 is underway.  I was less than 10 Grade short of picking all the options I wanted in the Grade Shop.  Cue groaning.  I could retain cooking ability or figurine data but not both.  Decided that completing Figurines was the more grindy task so went with that.

  When I do complete playtrhough #3, I think I'm complete with the game and will set it down forever like Metroid Prime 2.  There are some titles that I'm going to skip obtaining.  They are;

All the cooking mastery titles - Assuming one cooks something after every fight, I estimate 1500 to 2000 battles minimum to master cooking with all 9 characters.  Way too grindy, forget it.  Especially since I didn't carry cooking skill over.
All the Lv 100 titles - Yeah no, I finished the last playthrough at 72-73 for everyone and that's having done pretty much everything.
Monster Book, Collector Book, and Figurine Book completion - Figurine book is too much pellet grinding.  Collector Book takes a ton of money, an annoying minigame,  and Lv 80 so I doubt I'll bother.  I think i will finish the Monster Book but I'm not sure where to find Nova for the title at the very end of the game.
I hate Gels - I'm not so skilled at the game that I can get through without Gels whatsoever.
Combo Maniac - 100 hit combo?  Um, I'll pass.  I'm scrubby when it comes to putting together combos.  Got to 77 hits and I feel I've hit my limit.
Midlife Crisis - I'm not very good at this minigame.
Strategist - Or this one.  Was ready to give up but everything lined up and I got a win.
Gung-ho - Low leveling this doesn't seem fun to me
Berserker - Just don't feel like bothering playing most of the game on Hard or trying to grind it out later.
Chicken - 50 escapes isn't something I want to grind out either.  Though in that alternate universe where I do grind pellets, could make progress on this at the same time.

[Random Consonant]

Three Houses - Beat Crimson Flower Maddening.  Turns out it smooths out somewhat once people start getting into real classes and most of what went wrong was just self-inflicted overreach (well.  there was also opening the Death Knight's door in Ch6 before I meant to.  Well this is why I play on casual.  That and Legend of the Lake god fuck that map on maddening also REMOVE FOG.)  That said I'm not really a fan of it, I mostly just want enemies to be more interesting/scale better, not have the stretch when you're stuck with Commoner/Noble be more of a hellzone than it already is (and my stance on ninja reinforcements shouldn't surprise anyone).

Byleth - Falcon Knight.  Kind of shafted a bit on strength and I'm not sure they gained more than two points of defense ever.  Should've leaned into bow harder because Alert Stance+ wasn't happening but oh well.  Didn't do much at the end other than take pot shots and slap Retribution on people because I am a dumbass of the highest order and only had two people with A in Authority.

Edelgard - Wyvern Lord.  Meanwhile I'm not sure if she gained more than two points of luck ever.  Yes I know luck but things have CRIT RATES and sometimes they don't actually die.  Pretty much fantastic outside of that though.

Hubert - Mage -> Paladin -> Dark Knight.  Wound up pretty bad at things that weren't magic and dex (in particular his speed was closer to what you'd expect from Hanneman than someone with a real growth).  Fortunately(?) he was good enough in those areas to justify bringing him for Frozen Lance.

Ferdinand - Wyvern Lord.  Not super wonderful on offense (though it was adequate) but having someone who can actually reliably dodge stuff on enemy phase is great of course.

Bernadetta - Pegasus Knight/Brigand combo -> Sniper.  Frontloaded on strength early so I decided to play with Vengence for a bit.  Also got to murder the Death Knight twice so that was fun.  Had the predictable falloff in Advanced and picked up HV later than I would've liked but oh well.

Dorothea - A story in two parts:

Me, Ch4: well it's not like i can trust dorothea's magic growth that much so sure let's use the spirit dust now
Me, Ch14: oh it's mag blessed dorothea again welp NO MERCY FOR THE DAMNED let's make unreasonably huge meteors

Nothing too amazing in other stats (actually got shafted on charm for a while, which was uh interesting) but being able to get there on just the non-gardening boosters (not that I... really had gardening boosters for much of the game, unlike last time when I had more than I knew what to do with) was nice.

Petra - Wyvern Lord.  Other dodgetanker.  Not really a whole lot to say.

Mercedes - Bishop -> Gremory.  Break glass in case of needing to use Fortify.  Didn't feel like routing through Mage with her so her offense was Linhardt-level but sometimes you just want that extra +10 healing.

Ingrid - Falcon Knight.  Filler, -also- only gained like two points of defense ever and didn't turn out great elsewhere and wasn't helped by not getting her Death Blow so I mostly just brought her along for an extra warm body to poke away at golem armor without having to blow more gambits than I needed to.

Leonie - Paladin -> Bow Knight *why did i route through paladin again augh* .  Also wasn't helped by my unwillingness to pick up extra stuff for her.  Oh well, at least she could kill fliers and not die to certain enemies that double everything.

Hanneman - Warlock.  Hey with so many people not being able to survive contact with the enemy anyways his terrible speed doesn't *proceeds to outstat Hubert in everything except str/mag/dex* well okay then.  Not sure what I would've done with that slot if Hell Man didn't volunteer to join.

Jeritza - Mainly baited axe/lance people as the need arose and sometimes used Stride on people.

[Tide]

Yes, I play games. Just finished a couple more before the end of the year and will likely be the last ones to be completed for 2020.

Cold Steel 4 - I've already mentioned some thoughts in Discord. Overall, I think my sister put it the best: 'It answers most of the questions it makes the players ask, but the answers are pretty unsatisfactory'. Just a lot of build up but the resolution just feels empty. It's also like 20 hours too long (really the game should've started at like Act 1.3 instead of where it did) and the ending is such a cop out. Gameplay wise, it's probably the most broken CS has ever been, which is saying a *lot*. It's one saving grace is that I finally can get Rean and Towa to end up together. Yes, inject that shit into my veins.

Troubleshooter - This on the other hand. It took about 2.5 years before the development team completed the game and officially released it and that's about how long I played it for. 180 hours or so spread across 2.5 years, which isn't really that bad if you think about it! Gameplay is very good and I think most DL peeps will get a kick out of the skill system. The story is a bit all over the place, but you can place a coherent thread that links all the story missions together despite the translation being messy and it being very much told in bits and pieces. I recommended this before the beta was up and I'd still recommend it now. For $20, it's a huge steal and you don't have to sink like 400+ hours on it just to get a couple of highs like some cocaine addict. Probably would be GOTY for me (even if not released in 2020) but 3H exists, and 3H as it turns out, is also pretty good.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Dragon Quest 11 - Beat this. Well, Act 2 anyway. As the game took over 68 hours, I'm definitely done. Hero was Level 59.

I'll mostly save the review for year-end stuff. For now, let's talk about some gameplay notes. I played on Stronger Enemies, which was definitely a good place for me.

Hero: Built him mostly with greatswords and luminary stuff. Anyway, probably the strongest Dragon Quest hero of the games I've played, gameplaywise. Just great AoE options throughout the game (Zap, Helochopter, QUADRASLASH what the fuck is that move), especially considering there's a class of enemies which pretty much only he does good damage to. In boss fights, he brought the best damage early (Cutting Edge was 2x off high atk) and Omniheal late.

Erik: Pretty good. Boomerangs were quite effective AoE for a while, and he has good speed, so yeah, good in randoms generally. In Act 2 this falls off, but after a certain point he ends up with the best ST damage (Divide + Fatal Flash off of dual-wielding), so he ends up more of a boss-fighter but that's fine.

Veronica: Twink her agility and watch her ruin all randoms' faces. In boss fights she had Sap but the poor durability did hurt.

Serena: Probably the LVP from the time party switching is a thing until the end of Act 1, although Kabuff does relentlessly troll some bosses. She's slow and doesn't offer much in randoms. Then she rejoins in Act 2 and is overpowered because now she has all of the offensive magic bullshit nonsense, so yeah let's twink her agility and have fun. Also Dualcast as a 20% chance to just COMPLETELY ruin randoms' days (hello there double Kacrack for ~500 damage). In boss fights she has at least adequate durability with shields and can only do literally fucking everything (heal, revive, most relevant buffs/debuffs).

Sylvando: Most of his weapon skillsets felt a bit underwhelming, so he's not great in randoms. In boss fights he offers Hustle Dance and Oomphle, with better durability than Serena or Rab (Hustle Dance is cheaper than Multiheal, but Sylv's own MP is so much lower to mostly make up the difference until you pull out MP-healing items). That's... basically all he does unlike those two, but it's enough.

Jade: She's okay at what she does but a bit one-dimensional, and not actually the best at what she does outside of one thing. She is pretty fast and usually has pretty good ST damage, with Vacuum Smash for group targeting meaning she was usually in randoms and could occasionally draw into boss fights. Still, there was better than her at both roles. The "one thing" is of course killing metal slimes dead, hello there 67% critical rate.

Rab: In Act 1, a better overall Serena due to higher HP, Sap, 100% revival, and a nice MT regen buff (no Kabuff though). In Act 2, he's now generally inferior to Serena in boss fights buuut honestly I just used both most of the time, Sap/Blunt/healing/Insulatle is still a nice set. He also gets better in randoms as Pearly Gates is nice MT. Has MP forever and is happy to share if others run out.

Spoiler Man: I dunno, he exists. At first I thought he'd outclass Serena because Kabuff off better stats and Magic Barrier, but then Serena comes back super-charged so nah, guess not. He's durable and can slot in for heals/buffs in a pinch while being able to absorb an extra hit or two in boss fights, offers basically nothing in randoms though.


In terms of bosses, I had the most trouble with Tentacular in Act 1, and then Alizarin and Gylddyga in Act 2. The final was pretty competent, the first form moreso than the second since it brought back every horrifying trick seen in the other Act 2 boss fights. The boss right before the final wins the award for most disappointing, total joke unless I missed something.


The game does have a weird penchant for giving you uncontrollable guests with infinite HP, and they have a weird effect on battles since every time an enemy targets them they essentially just wasted their turn. I will grant that a few of the fights involving one ended up pretty fun/interesting anyway (especially arena matches and then the Spectral Sentinel you face this way; actually all of that gang were pretty neat fights).


As you can probably tell I enjoyed the gameplay quite well, but there are limitations to how good the clunky randomised Dragon Quest turn-based combat can be. But the gameplay probably reminds me a fair bit of Phantasy Star 4 or Saga Frontier, rocket tag randoms which really reward you staying on top of them. If only DQ11 had the pacing of those games.

The writing... was mostly dull, occasionally incoherent, and occasionally weirdly conservative, none of these being a good look. I probably have more nice things to say about Grandia 3 on this front. I expect better in 2020, especially from a game of this scope and length.

5/10


Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Magilou's magical adventures: Oops, all mages! We've hit the timeskip, having made up for my previous failure when I accidentally locked myself into the cultist route. This time, Sylvain turned out better so stayed on the team, while Linhardt turned out worse so didn't, and Dorothea is overpowered again and I am loving every second of it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FE3H mage playthrough has reached Chapter 17. 14 was pretty tough but still fairly manageable. Dorothea, Lysithea, and Constance all have Black/Dark Range+1, silly skill is silly.

Also did some small little playthroughs of random NES games: Mario 2, Mario 3, and Mega Man 4. Nothing really to say about the first two, they were fun. For MM4, I did a weapon-focused playthrough similar to the one I did for Mega Man 3 earlier this year. The order this time was Dust > Skull > Bright > Ring > Pharoah > Drill > Toad > Dive (for the two or three people reading this who actually remember all the MM4 weapons). One added mini-rule for this playthrough concerns Bright's weapon, Flash Stopper. This weapon freezes all enemies on the screen for a few seconds and lets you fire the buster during this time (so way better than Flash Man's weapon). Its main weakness is that all but one boss are completely unaffected by it. However, I could still technically use it and fire the buster against such bosses. I decided that this didn't count as "vulnerable to Bright" so I didn't end up eating all my Bright ammo for no reason against a boss while functionally being the same as bustering them.

Trouble spots:
-Bright Man stage and boss. It's a pretty tough stage (made worse by the fact that the totem enemies, who you encounter while traveling on a moving platform over spikes, are harder to kill with Dust than the buster), and a pretty tough boss (arguably the hardest one to buster), and Dust/Skull are both worse than the buster against him (because you can charge the buster).
-Ring Man stage and boss. Dust is kinda uniquely bad against the wall cannons in this stage, and horrible against the hippo mini-boss. That said the mercy is I run out and then Bright totally clowns all four mini-bosses of the stage. Ring Man himself is pretty competent with (effectively) the buster, though not as tough as Bright.
-Wily Stage 1 (the fifth stage overall) is pretty rough mostly because it takes me a while to get good enough at fighting the Mega Mettaur. Dust isn't even a bad weapon against him! (It deals 2, only the charged buster or Pharoah do 3) He's just kinda rough because his "jump on top of you" attack is very hard to avoid and does loads of damage. I win once I mostly either try to flee from him when he jumps or accept the hit rather than get struck by both the hit and the seismic.
-The boss rush, of course. Due to the way the weapon order works I pretty much have to buster (or worse) Drill Man and Wily himself, as well as use suboptimal weapons for at least a time against others, which definitely requires me to get good. The winning strategy:
1. Use Dust to kill Skull
2. Use Dust to kill Dive. Apparently, this is a secondary weakness for Dive (3 damage), as if Skull didn't have enough problems.
3. Use up remaining Dust/Skull ammo on Toad (who's a joke boss and free win), finishing with Ring.
4. Use Ring to kill Dust
5. Use Ring then Pharoah to kill Ring
6. The tricky part. The remaining tough bosses are Drill and Bright, neither is easy, and at this point I'm using weapons which are worse against them than the buster. Drill in particular is hopeless against them (which is a shame because it rules against Wily Machine, but inevitably I have to use it up). I make sure to fight Bright when I think I might run out of Drill ammo because the next weapon is Toad and that hits weakness on him. Otherwise I try to fight Drill, and on the winning run do in fact beat him with Pharoah + his own weapon. Oh yeah and at any point during this I can fight Pharoah since his weakness (Bright) is totally independent, and completely destroys him for a free heal.
7. Wily Machine. He's immune to both Toad and Dive (the only weapons I have at this point), so it's just a matter of bustering him without an E-Tank, which takes 3 tries.

Weapon thoughts:
-Dust Crusher is, overall, better than I gave it credit for. When it hits a target it splits into four smaller targets, but those often just damage the primary target too if it's still alive, making it a decent power weapon. The specifics depend on the enemy's hitbox; large enemies take all the hits and die quickly, thin ones don't. Quite good against a lot of things, its notable weaknesses were already noted in Bright and Ring's entries. Its big weakness is that only one can be on screen at once (the shrapnel counts towards this limit), so if you do need more than one hit, it's gonna take a while to wait to fire again. Still good at killing some enemies like hoppers (3 hits, but you always have time). Some need some good timing; the weapon works less well if an enemy is flying away from it, for instance (really just applies to those flying shield guys). Against bosses it's a trash weapon if it doesn't hit weakness; fortunately a fair number of bosses do take at least 2 from it.
-Skull Barrier is bad. Yeah, there's the odd place where it one-shots a weak enemy which tries to fly into you while you're platforming, that's definitely cool and valid in normal playthroughs. As an offensive weapon it is weak and requires you get close to things. Also the fact that any projectile coming close to you cancels it (and the projectile, to be fair) means you can lose it at inopportune times.
-Flash Stopper is completely overpowered, any time I got to use it in a stage it completely wrecks almost everything, most notably including the mini-bosses of Ring and Toad Man's stages. Useless against bosses (except poor Pharoah) but that's better than forcing me to use a weapon which is mostly ineffective.
-Ring Boomerang I didn't use too much but it's... bland and fine, short range but respectable power. Other weapons are used too rarely on this playthrough to comment on.

Because no weapon has as much ammo as Needle Cannon I did use the later weapons more than in my MM3 run, but still not that much.