What games are you playing 2022: No to stat bloat since the turn of Millenia

[DragonKnight Zero]

New year already?  Didn't really register for me.  Oh well.

Lufia 2 stomp continues.  From the time of having a full party, gameplay gets more interesting with enemies with more varied weaknesses and resistances to pay attention to if one doesn't want to be stuck dealing scratch damage.  Given how I was somewhat underleveled, the next couple of boss fights outsped Tia which complicated my survival.  The clown bosses went down in 3-4 rounds since I paid attention to setting up my characters to hit their weaknesses.  The one after that inflicted a casualty due to their speed advantage.  And I was still without revival.  Gades 1 reduced the team to a smear; no surprise since I got there at Lv 18-19.
    Gades 2 gave less trouble.  I gave Maxim the Mind Ring and Guy the Undead Ring to go with his Thunder Ax.  Got buffs up on round one after which Maxim goes on heal duty.  With Guy and Dekar slugging away for about 350-400 a round, didn't take long and nothing terrible happened.

There's more but I'm cutting it off here to get the topic up.

[Cmdr_King]

Deltarune Chapter 2- I must admit that, for now, I find the overarching plot far less interesting than the moment to moment plot.  Chapter 2 does use it more to purpose where it seemed a bit 'shock value' in the first, but it treads a little bit into "Lore for Lore's sake" territory.  I doubt it'll pan out that way, but because the game's coming out piecemeal it is a bit just... kinda there for now.

Everything else is great.  Susie is great, Ralsei feels like a more distinct character now, Noelle is great, everyone else... is serving the role they're meant to.  Is good, nobody surprised.

[Random Consonant]

Bravely Default 2 - I can't believe the final boss was just Lucia from Octopath Traveller again.

Low 7 or so?  I wanted to like it better but less QoL and more balance by annoyance outweigh the better pacing and more likeable cast.  Granted the better pacing does make me more inclined to give it a replay later but eh.

Oh well, at least we'll always have Elvis.

[Cmdr_King]

Cthulhu Saves Christmas- Fin!

I feel like this game hits its brand of humor more consistently than CStW did, which is nice to see since CSH felt a bit off.  I think it's because this game feels a bit more specific and targeted in its jokes?  Like, this goes a lot more into your Persona type games where the first seemed like it was trying to hit like.. the entire jRPG genre from 1986-2009.  The music in particular is extremely on-point, I keep forgetting it's NOT the SLink and similar around-town music from P5.
But yeah I get the sense that some of this is kinda things they wanted in the original, but I'm glad to see them here in their own thing giving the game a more distinct and refined vibe from the original. 

I uh may have unthinkingly set the game to easy so I almost don't feel qualified to assess the gameplay?  It's identifiably the basic system from CSH, but it feels overall a bit streamlined just from being a fixed party.  I admit I don't feel like I got the full swing of Baba or Belsnickel's personal mechanics.  Some of the charm of the first game is lost by downplaying insanity as a mechanic, but with so much else going on the simplified form here work with the overall game more.

But yeah this is pretty good.

[Cmdr_King]

Get in the Car, Loser- finished, including the first round of DLC (granted I played it in like Act 2).

Occasionally brilliant, extremely on the nose, always fairly relatable.  I almost want to just shout out memes rather than digging in more just because with the game's length and on-the-nose-ness, getting into anything seems like it might just discourage rather than encourage people to play it.

For myself I am really glad I did the DLC though.  It takes a lot of the micromanagement out of the equipment/ability system which is interesting on paper but feels like it kills the flow a bit to me, honestly.  I didn't realize the entire last boss chain was in fact a chain so I kinda went in equipped wrong (the DLC sword is very useful overall but the default sword of fate is probably better for bosses) but on the other hand I was 'overlevelled' so it didn't mean much in the end.

On the whole probably the best of this "clear out my entire PC backlog" trip, but probably a game I'll be more interested in having played as other people play it.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Lufia 2 battle report continues:

    So it turns out I forgot about whole towns and dungeons since I last played.  The game does have some nice scenes though the overall progression still has that strong fetch quest feel I remember from before.

   Idura 2 puts up a fight due to his weakness being ice.  The only characters that can really exploit this are the ones most likely to be using their turns for healing.  (Ice Balls exist but are fixed power and I don't have lots of extra cash)  He's also faster than everyone.  Went down without anything bad happening but took some time.

  Idura 3 almost wins.  He confused Dekar, who in turn walloped Guy which left him weak enough for the opposition to pick him off.  (Idura is still faster than everyone)  A sleeping Maxim fell next as Guy was set to wake him up with an item but got killed before acting.  Maxim is my only character with revival.  With only Dekar and a low HP Selan, defeat looked immanent.  Only because the enemies did the only set of actions that let Selan live (physicals on Dekar) did I get to carry on.  I won that battle from that position and chose to keep the result rather than resetting but it was sure a close one.

  I will mention that I'm not using any Ancient Cave equipment to more closely experience the intended gear curve.  It won't help the enemies that much for the most part.

  Devil Flower (Rogue Flower in retail) put up a fight to my surprise.  It does quite heavy damage to my Lv 25-26 party when they're not saturated in blue chest armor.  Also likes its status which I forgot to account for.  No one had sleep protection and the boss is quite capable of sending people to dreamland.  Had Selan been put to sleep early, might have lost.  Had Maxim been put to sleep early, the fight would have dragged even longer than it did.  (He has the Burn Sword and does the bulk of the damage)  So I got lucky in spite of my careless casual approach.

  Couple of Ancient Cave firsts (from the Gift file): Flash used the ST status cure on someone with a status, which has never happened before in all my past time with the game.  And during the same run, I found a Safety Hat (Safety First in the patch).  This is significant only because it's impossible to find in the retail game.  Not "impossible unless fulfilling an obscure set of conditions".  Not "rare on the level of the Pink Tail" low odds.  It's truly impossible because of how the cave has no chance of headgear appearing in red chests after B9 normally.  So it felt good seeing it.

[Cmdr_King]

Pokemon Brilliant Diamond- fin.  I remember DIamond being longer.  Actually it probably was.

There's just actually nothing to say about it honestly.  It feels a lot less... like there's new stuff in it than any earlier remakes?  They definitely updated some of the actual pokemon lineups for trainers but like... what's available to the player and how you play the game feels so similar I can't really peg anything that's different about it at all.  What was funny was some of the weird bullshit bonuses you get with mystery gift and save files from other games, turning Jirachi into my lead was fun.  Otherwise just kinda... exists.

[SnowFire]

Fire Emblem: Souen no Kiseki (aka Path of the Blue Flames, aka the one with Ike before he started pumping iron)

Despite having a giant backlog, I somehow got ensnared by this.  Decided to give Maniac Mode a go.  Patching a JP ROM wasn't that bad (definitely don't get it pre-patched, that's asking for trouble), too.

Now, if you search up Maniac Mode, you'll find it has a..  let's say..  mixed reputation from the first Google hits.  It's more about overwhelming you with extra numbers, which can actually work for say FE7 Eliwood Hard Mode if you care about your XP rank and are training lowbies constantly, but won't really challenge immortal juggernauts that much.  Also, Zapp Brannigan style "overwhelm your kill limit with waves of attacks" is actually not totally crazy in a game with expensive forging - those extra enemies will dull Titania's axes in all the blood.  Really.  As usual, the earlygame is the worst on this - by the time Muston / Jorge / Daniel / Aimee showed up with their shop, I'd broken Titania's Iron Axe and Steel Axe, Ike's Iron Sword & Steel Sword, Soren's Wind tome, Oscar's Iron Lance, Rhys's Heal staff (only 30 charges under JP rules!), and Boyd's Iron Axe.  At least Boyd still had a decent number of uses left on his Steel Axe, Poleax, & Hammer, but…  yeah, the extra enemies are notable.

The other notable change is to the XP rules.  You get slightly less XP for kills.  But!  The enemies are a bit higher level which gives a bit more XP to offset this, chipping XP isn't affected, and there's the aforementioned waves of enemies, so you get plenty of battle XP.  Bonus XP really is noticeably cut, though - you get enough to rig level-ups at the base if you want, but not enough for easy major catch-up.  This has the unfortunate effect of making objectives and efficient play matter less, and going on massive killing sprees matter more - trying to rush through the river escape map (C6, "A Brief Diversion"), aside from being suicide, just doesn't pay off.  You're going to have to take it slow and steady and murder everyone and eat a bonus XP penalty for not speeding through, but who cares, because the bonus XP wasn't that much.  The even starker example is Feral Frontier, where slaughtering all of Muarim & Tormod's rebels for battle XP is 100% the play now rather than attempting to spare any.  (This was always true, I guess, but it's MORE true on Maniac.)

This isn't all bad (and arguably bonus XP needed a nerf anyway).  The extra toughness on some enemies does reward things like Soren's Adept as more relevant.  Plus, at least based on Elf's old writeup, I think enemy AI changes a bit, with fewer stationary enemies - it's been far too long since I played FE9 North America, but the feral Tigers in C14 definitely move, the mages on Norris's ship in C13 (Astrid map) definitely move and can be quite annoying, and so on, which Elf's writeup seems to indicate that they don't.  That said, Maniac Mode's boosts certainly aren't enough to deal with the most famous FE9 exploit, that of Earth / Earth supports, so you can still make a nigh-unkillable Ike & Oscar cooking duo if you want.

Other thoughts..  Shinon is worse in JP rules which, unironically, makes him better.  I'm serious.  JP Sniper doesn't have the +15% crit bonus so he's actually very good for chipping to set up kills for others, and during the very dangerous early turns of C4 ("Roadside Battle", Soren's map) he can still facetank and build walls to protect Soren & Rhys, which really helps with the extra enemies swarming you.  Titania is just as amazing as usual, act shocked.  The main pleasant surprise has been Mordecai - having a pre-promo tank who can hold chokepoints with no training necessary is shockingly relevant on a decent number of high-deploy count maps (C11, C13, C15), especially if you're benching some early joinees and planning to use later recruits.  Do you want to keep using him in the second half of the game?  Hell no, but he's an authentically good unit on some tough missions.

I'm up to C16 currently, "The Atonement."  Enjoyable enough, although I am reminded that FE9 can take awhile to play itself in the backline by modern impatient standards, even when combat animations are turned off. 

And oh yes, I still really like the plot & writing so far.  The only nitpick I'll offer, and it's not a big one, is that Ike does a "voice of the player" moment around C8-C9 where he basically acts like he doesn't know anything at all about Gallia or the beast tribes, either in favor of tolerance or in terms of imbibed prejudices.  Now, yes, you-the-human-player doesn't know anything about this fantasy world and needs to have it explained, and it's also an explicit plot point that Ike is considered lucky in Benignon to have the privilege of growing up in a tolerant community that didn't ingrain certain strong class beliefs in him.  So being a little naive and shocked at prejudice is fine.  Not knowing *anything*, though?  That's a little too far.  Wish the writers could have cooked up a conversation where the parties cover all the relevant points for the player to learn but in a way that indicates Ike is sheltered but not ignorant.

[Cmdr_King]

Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky- fin, Threia ending.

So it seems clear to me this game had a major rewrite shortly into production.  The overall structure and framing of the game with the office comedy elements feels grafted on after a lot of the basic setting details and areas were designed.  Now, a lot of that stuff is fine, and the end of the game does eventually bring back the elements that flow naturally from the setting and Ayesha, but it's intensely backloaded in a way that makes it pretty clear a lot of this was a reaction to the reception of Ayesha and the two parts just kinda exist side by side rather than building on one another in any meaningful way.

Once the original plot arrives it's decent enough, apart from just feeling like Clone and Nio had been kinda wasted to that point.  Does make me curious to get to Shallie and see if they manage to bring any of that stuff forward, but honestly I get the impression... no.

[Cmdr_King]

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance- fin.

I am catastrophically bad at these games, but that's what easy mode is for.  Anyways, in some ways this game does feel a bit... half, like just kinda doesn't give you much time with it's mechanics and seems like at some point in concept it meant to have a bit more stuff in various parts to kinda build out the state of things.  But I don't know that I mean that as a complaint because I think being compact is a net positive for the sort of game it is.  Ultimately aside from the memes it is certainly intended as a way for the series timeline to move forward if people who weren't Kojima wanted to do so, but it also functions as a sort of coda for just... acknowledging the level of effort required to really fix what's been done to the world.  As well as just giving Raiden a personal story that fits his *real* history, not just the things he claimed to have believed.  So that's neat.

Also, y'know, memes. 

[Cmdr_King]

Pokemon Legends Arceus- So the game has three clear checkpoints for the 'end'.  when the credits roll, when you've unlocked all the legendaries, and the final challenge for completing the pokedex.  I've reached the second, having cleared out all the 'story' content except the one you need completion for, so I'm calling the game here.  I might tool around and fill out the dex for a while yet, but I think I'm ready to move on to another game overall.

Overall this is a game I'm very glad exists, although I'm not sure I'd want a second one.  Although there's also places it could be improved so I'd probably play one if they went for it.  In much the same way that Pokemon Go is kinda 1/3rd of the ideal pokemon game, this feels like it's counterpart, the one that's somewhere between half and 2/3rds of the ideal pokemon game.  Go captures the primal desire for the ability to just go out into the world, meet other people, and catch pokemon in your own back yard.  Arceus captures the primal desire to inhabit pokemon, to see them as animals and how their world might work, and also sells the idea of how pokemon would help you navigate the world and influence the development of human technology far harder than any of the traditional gym journey games.
The main fumble point... okay so it's not a bad thing in most gameplay, But they completely revamped the damage and HP formulas such the the game is far more rocket tag-y.  Now, out in the wild and doing captures and battles with wild pokemon, that's all fine.  It's a way of making the stealth and capture mechanics more relevant.  Similarly, the shift to cool-down based turns adds more tools to your kit in 1v1 (or team vs 1) fights.  But between those two things, the (rare) fight against other trainers devolves into repeatedly revenge killing one another and hoping that you didn't turn-screw yourself in the process.

But as noted, this is only a small portion of the game's actual content, and there's stuff you can do to mitigate it.  Simultaneously it does stand out as a weak point in the game's overall feel and presentation just because everything else makes sense together while this one element feels undercooked. 

[Cmdr_King]

Atelier Shallie- we have taken the path of the eternal understudy. Fortunately Wilbell is great.

So I will freely admit I cranked down the difficulty for the penultimate and final bosses. Most of the game had a very nice balance after a very easy early game, but honestly if I have the best attack item and properly upgraded equipment I probably shouldn’t end up getting locked down by the boss’ last 20% of HP like that, y’know? At least not in a game where powering up is actually relatively arcane at times.

Everything else is mostly good, the core cast feels more like a unit and has a more distinct drive and vibe than the previous game. That said as a finale for the Dusk games it’s a mixed bag. Some characters and plot lines more or less come together (retconing Dusk as a desertification phenomenon and the overall plot of this game that rises from it is a smart move, and some series staples like Harry and Wilbell are handled nicely) but gosh it feels weird to wrap Linca’s plot but not have ‘our’ Linca take part, to say nothing of the conspicuously last minute reference to Ayesha.

Ultimately it’s solid but I was very ready to wrap it up at the end. Albeit the fact I’ve been stuck without internet for two days and played like 60% of the game in a rush contributed I imagine.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I haven't written a post here in nearly 3 months, oh dear. Lots of stuff, most of it short, but here goes:

Cthulhu Saves Christmas - I beat it. Best Zeboyd game probably. I already said my piece in the 2021 year-end thread. Still the most recent new game I've played, it's all replays from here on...

Pathways Into Darkness - Amy was away for a week, and said I should play something she didn't give a shit about watching, like a FPS or something. So here we go. Ancient little game, Wolfenstein-era FPS meets eldritch horror-inspired text adventure. Bit of a nostalgia trip.

Kid Icarus: Uprising - Played a bunch more of this randomly. Too out of practice to particularly improve on any old benchmarks, so I just played through the game once, mostly around intensity 7 or so.

Zelda 2 - Zelda 2's actually pretty cool y'know. I did a run with 1 Life. Most things endgame kill you in 2-3 hits, certainly novel for this sort of game. Dark Link took... a lot of tries. Then I beat it with 1 Magic. Definitely easier than 1 Life, the only really notable thing is you have to wait until you've gotten every MP booster in the game in order to beat the fourth palace, since the boss there needs Reflect (costs 120 of 128 MP at Level 1 Magic) to kill. Otherwise you can still cast Best Spell (Shield) easily enough, and Life once, so hey. Hardest fight is actually Thunderbird since casting Thunder again takes all your MP, so no Shield/Jump/Reflect, makes him quite nasty. Finally, I beat the game with 4 Atk (capped at 1, initially, and I could raise it +1 every time I cleared two palaces). I'd tried 1 Atk back in the day but never beaten it, 4 is more reasonable. It's still much harder... 1 Life means you take about 4.5x damage (it varies) compared to max, but 1 Atk means you deal 1/12 as much damage... yikes! Even 4 atk is still 1/4 as much damage, so it's pretty comparable to 1 Life... harder honestly, aside from the final boss. It's a huge mercy that your Atk stat actually has no effect on Dark Link, he dies in 8 hits regardless. Thunderbird is 32 though, so that was nasty.

The lesson from this is almost surely "never pass up an Atk level to get something else, never pass up a Life level to get a Magic level" since the stats are pretty clearly ranked in that order for usefulness. Magic could have been worth more but again Shield is definitely the best spell and it only varies from 32 MP to 16, Life is the next most important and only varies from 80 to 50.

Mega Man 9 - Did one of my "must use up all weapons in a certain order". Tornado was the focus this time, so you use that up fast, it's cool though! Otherwise it's Jewel -> Magma -> Plug -> Laser Trident I think? I forget, should have written the last four down. Magma's a bit better than I realized, I didn't realize the "extra damage if you successfully shotgun an enemy with all three flames" applies to all bosses, not just Hornet Man. Endgame was brutal and I had to resort to E-tanks, the boss rush followed by arguably the hardest Wily in the series in a single run of weapons leaves no margin for error.

Mega Man 1 / 2 / 10 - More random Mega Man replays. I tried to replay 10 on Hard but got completely destroyed, I forgot how nasty that is. Normal was enough, considering I'm rusty at the game... haven't played it since it was new (when I apparently played it at least 8 times?! And I don't even think of it as one of my favourites...).

Mega Man X8 / X4 - And still more. For MMX8 I did a run of Hard Mode, no X. This... yeah gets really horrifying towards the end. Normally I lean on how powerful all of X's upgrades make him... in particular the invincible dash and damage halving. Having none of that made Sigma and Lumine in particular rather hellish, but it was very satisfying to get good enough to prevail! MMX4 was a standard run using X. I apparently hadn't played the game since 2009 which is crazy considering I like it quite a lot! Mostly clean sailing until the final boss. Good lord both of these games have crazy hard final bosses. It's funny how classic Mega Man doesn't really go in for that too much, the toughest MMX finals are really on another level especially if you haven't got all the game-breaking powerups.

Fire Emblem 7 - Did a Hector Hard Mode file. Fliers good, Raven good, cavaliers good (well Kent at least, Sain decided to gain neither str nor spd and Lowen didn't do much better). Used Marcus until around Chapter 26 or so, he's great. Nerd shit:

Raven 158. Florina 157. Fiora 148. Kent 133, died at Cog of Destiny. Heath 127. Hector 91. Marcus 78. Priscilla 64. Harken 53. Hawkeye 50, died at Sands of Time. Pent 44. Lucius 38. Matthew 38. Vaida 32. Lowen 30. Eliwood 29. Erk 29, died at Dragon's Gate. Guy 29. Lyn 26. Jaffar 24. Louise 24. Bartre 17. Isadora 13. Rebecca 13. Oswin 12. Nino 8. Rath 5. Dart 4. Athos 3. Canas 3. Dorcas 3, died at Peddler Merlinus. Legault 3. Sain 2. Renault 1. Wil 0.

Currently working on another Three Houses file (of course).

[Pyro]

Fire Emblem 3H:

Beat Claude's route, playing Edelgard's.

Hard mode isn't very hard thanks to Divine Pulse but I'm unwilling to try Maddening due to seeing things that gave me nightmares. The plot and characters are great and the class system is very good. Not sure it can keep my interest for 3 playthroughs but definitely glad I played it.

The endgame seemed to drag in Verdant Wind. Kind of ran out of actions to take with all the time that we were given. By contrast, I find the time pressure to recruit people in White Clouds very stressful.

I want to like everyone but the idea of having to kill the characters is so dang sad. I can see why people might want someone to blame the sadness of it on, but it's not that simple and I guess that's the entire point.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Stomping Lufia 2 - the writeup continues

  I've already finished, it's getting everything I want to express out in text that's dragging along slowly.

4 person party again.  And the first big dungeon with Lexis can troll in a way that is probably unintended.  About half the enemies there are resistant to Neutral.  The strongest buyable weapons at the time are all Neutral element.  Given how the last dungeon has a Burn Sword and a Fly Ax to find for free, this is a mean trick to pull on a player who goes to the trouble to grind money to upgrade weapons only to have them do less damage than a lower attack elemental weapon.

  The dungeon also has the nasty Assassins.  They outspeed the party, are one of those that resist Neutral, are a hassle to avoid due to their movement, and can instakill if the RNG feels like it.  I do have three sources of ID protection by this point which does mitigate the danger somewhat (even if the Undead Ring is the only one I had in play when I went through). 

  The seas of the world are open after the events of that dungeon.  Very little else reaches their level of danger in my time with Lexis.  Other than trying to raid the Tower of Truth early.  Haha, turns out those monsters are a threat to a Lv 30 party with sub-optimal gear.  I actually leveled up my party to 35 before the Mountain of No Return.  Not because I felt I needed the levels, but so that Artea doesn't start 5-6 levels ahead of everyone.

  The monster data for the retail game seems to indicate the Gargoyle bosses are Hard as well as Flying but I think the patch removes the Hard attribute.  Maxim's Pumpkin Jewel did less damage that I expected.  Guy's Fly Ax did perform up to expectations.  He started with enough IP to open with a Flying Smash that took one from full HP to nearly nothing.

  My favorite part of the sub upgrade is no random battles while underwater.  Of course I go everywhere other than the next plot point for treasure as well as visiting a town early.  Got the key from Dragon Mountain but didn't go farther in.

More to come in a later post, including some actual boss fights.

[SnowFire]

Hard mode isn't very hard thanks to Divine Pulse but I'm unwilling to try Maddening due to seeing things that gave me nightmares. The plot and characters are great and the class system is very good. Not sure it can keep my interest for 3 playthroughs but definitely glad I played it.

The endgame seemed to drag in Verdant Wind. Kind of ran out of actions to take with all the time that we were given. By contrast, I find the time pressure to recruit people in White Clouds very stressful.

Yeah, the game's time-management activity system kinda collapses late in the second phase of the game.  There's a bit of a tense rush to get professor XP during White Clouds so you can have more actions which lets you do all the Paralogues and get needed skill training, but then you have a big empty desert of what to do with your time in the second half.  I guess it's okay in that it lets you "catch up" if you've changed your mind on a skill training path or realize you've invested in the wrong spot, but meh.  If I had to guess, it's that the devs realized that cross-house Paralogues are less likely to fire in part 2 (Ferdinand / Lysithea, Leonie / Linhardt, and Mercie / Caspar are all super missable) and were hesitant about making too many of them...  and too many single-character paralogues (e.g. Marianne, Hubert) would make it so that there's Too Many Paralogues and dilute focus...  but yeah, the result is that there's too much stuff in White Clouds and not enough after it.  (The DLC, of course, makes this problem worse by adding two more White Clouds paralogues to The List.)

For Maddening: If you're unsure about Maddening, I'd recommend doing a New Game+ Maddening.  You can essentially adjust your own difficulty by how much you abuse or don't abuse the NG+ features (i.e. do you equip the imported super-battalions from your previous playthrough or not, do you use it to unlock super good skills on Byleth early or boost their professor rank, etc.).  It's also worth mentioning that the hardest parts of Maddening tend to be the early-game and the final maps, and if you only have Blue Lions left to do, the Blue Lions pretty cleanly have the best team for smashing the early game.  Dedue, Dimitri, and Felix are all very solid even with practically no skill training.  That definitely helps some IMO.

[Cmdr_King]

Tales of Xillia 2- sweet jebus even in the annals of Tales final dungeons that's bad.

Everything else is good!  Game is good.  I have never seen a Tales game really pull off the depiction of grief quite so well as Chapter 12 of ToX2 does it.  The cast benefits so much from already existing and getting to do "well shit what should my life be now" instead of having to be established and have a Defined Character Arc to go through it's not funny.  Leia and Alvin are great in this and they are... not, originally.  Elize's personal character chapters are kinda eh, but as a contributor to the entire party she works so much better with just a year of maturity to her.  Milla and Jude are still very, very good.  Rowan is mostly the same, except actually gets to have character moments and spotlight in this game!

Also like, all the actual plot native to this game is good.  Much better expression of underlying political/racial relations in the wake of sudden change than some other games I could name.

Now, the game actually does have problems.  It is fucking MEAN, like "I just turned it down to easy because I wanted to finish the game in a reasonable time frame and not have to grind" mean.  The entire thing is broken up into a fairly rigid chapter structure, and one thing it's doing with that is trying to enforce the player going through every single sidequest in order to keep up with the overall power curve.  It's an attempt at padding in a game that's honestly plenty strong enough and lengthy enough without it, and I know exactly why they did it and also wish they hadn't.  Like, this game is built from the bones of Tales of Xillia with some unused/probably completed but unimplemented content from that original game, and because of that it doesn't have that 'explore' edge that one might expect from a certain kind of jRPG.  So, they fleshed it out so to speak to make up for the player knowing all the dungeons in theory.  But... why though, it's fine to just let the game stand alone based on what you developed unique to it, y'know?

Might have to shuffle around some rankings for the series, we'll see.

[Tide]

Tales of Xillia 2- Stuff

Glad I'm not the only person who liked ToX2. Like yeah, the game's not perfect but I really enjoy the premise of all the different scenarios. It's a neat way of looking at a set of established characters and exploring more about their characters as well as getting into interesting scenarios that ToX1 couldn't get into. I think the DL as a whole isn't very receptive to it (something about Ludger being an awful main) but the entire set up of it is something I really liked. The fact that the more flawed characters have some of the more interesting "what ifs" (hi Alvin) is cool too.

Anyway, right, games. People still play these right?

SD Gundam Generation Cross Rays:
I've touched upon this in Discord briefly. Long story short, it plays very similarly to the PSX generation title (G-Gen F) but it's updated in terms of some of the polish, graphically better and includes the newer Gundam series titles. On the whole, the main weakness of the gameplay lies in the change in the mech design philosophy. G-Gen F did this right by making each every suit have some sort of built in weakness, which gives you an incentive to keep building up your armory and creating more suits an ACE data. Here though, a lot of the suits are similar and don't really have this design philosophy. You don't have things such as eating weaker counters, forcing low accuracy shots with terrain, avoiding counters altogether, kiting, etc. because a lot of the mechs have similar weapon ranges, accuracy and such. Pilot stats matter more and there's a completely revamped skill system. However, it would've done the game a whole lot of favors if the skill system was also more utilized by enemies. Hard mode in this game just inflates character stats but not skill set ups. So at the end of the game, playing on the bonus difficulty is still kinda of joke. Even if you're at -150 stat disadvantage, not much an enemy can do if you're shooting it repeatedly from 11 tiles away. I sunk a lot of hours into it - it's a good grind game too since building levels, upgrading mechs and such takes a while and the entire game is about 150 hours. Think I'm done for now. Overall, still a solid 7/10 but a disappoint 7 since I was expecting more.

X-Com Enemy Within:
I had previously played X-Com back in like early 2020 or something but never finished it. I finally sat down and finished a standard campaign but on PC. It's about what I remembered. PC has better loading, better map visibility etc. But the gameplay is basically the same. My biggest issue with X-Com is that there is very little character related work so its hard to relate to it on a writing/plot level. The premise is good, but there's no driving force here since Bradford is barely a character, you play as a mute CO and Valhalen/Shen are basically NPCs. Your soldiers obviously can't do much since they can die but it wouldn't been nice to get something that you can be attached or related to. Game time was about 36 hours and I did pretty much everything including the DLC missions. I think I had it at a 7 at the time. It's probably the same still. I can see myself going back to it, but considering I like Chimera Squad better and X-Com 2 is supposedly a big upgrade, its kind of hard to see how it will hold up over time.

X-Com Chimera Squad:
Yeah, I like this game. It's still X-Com but battles are now in smaller spaces, characters have personalities and there's no perma-death. What?! Blasphemy. Chimera Squad does a whole bunch of interesting things for the series, and this change from soldiers permanently dying to a 3 turn countdown is one of those things I think hardcore fans severely dislike (see also: Fire Emblem) but myself and I presume the DL as a whole probably sees as a net benefit. There's some interesting dynamics but what it ultimately reminds me of is FFT. You can definitely get into some tense situations where someone is bleeding out and you need to prioritize between stabilizing that person, repositioning or doing something else. I think I appreciate that a lot more than just "Oh that guy is dead and there isn't anything I can do about it". Of course, FFT did have actual permadeath so after 3 turns, the person does crystallizes, but you could theoretically keep playing. However, the time spent training a new unit is almost never worth the cost of just restarting so I think the comparison is very fair. Also, if someone is stabilized, they can't rejoin the mission if it has multiple phases and you have to deploy a back up android instead, which are significantly weaker - so getting KO'd is still always bad.

What else? The character balance is pretty much spot-on. There are 11 PCs and you can only choose 8. However, I've found that all the agents have pretty much their own selling points. I was never really severely disappointed with any of them, although I didn't recruit the supposed weak-link of the cast. There were moments where someone feels a little underwhelming but I found that was also often based on the scenario. There are different mission types and some PCs are just way better than others depending on the mission. For example, Claymore is frequently cited as one of the strongest chars due to his ability to pump out a lot of AoE damage. However, the fact that he only has 9 Move and can hit friendlies with his grenades means that he's more of liability than the others on escort levels. Flip side, someone like Cherub doesn't pull out a lot of damage, but can become cover as well as shield allies from any damage for a single hit is great on those since the shield works on the VIPs. The difficulty is pretty random. I've seen it described as a wave and I think that's correct. Some levels are notably harder such as the boss missions, but then immediately after, the next story mission is focused on getting intel on the new enemy faction so then all the enemies there are grunts. Game keeps an edge even late, which is very nice.

Ultimately, I just like all the systems here. Between the time management (choosing between research, training or getting supplementary resources) and combat, it's a good title. Shorter than regular X-Com, but I think WA4 proves to us that you don't need to be a long game to be a great game. It's probably a solid 8-9 right now. We'll see how it ends up, but yeah. Like Grefter said, just punchy and solid. I'd recommend this to other DLers if you like X-Com and are looking for a shorter title.

[Cmdr_King]

NieR Automata- my first platinum! Thanks Yoko Taro!

But no so. One interesting thing is comparing my reaction to this to how I experienced NieR, which I had a similar arc with (well, I finished the A route in Automata near release but), because knowing NieR’s story before playing it the game felt a bit rushed, like it was so eager to get to the tragic beats it didn’t always lay proper groundwork so some of them landed but many did not. Automata was not that at all, they were so thoroughly invested in the mental states of the cast that knowing exactly how this all ends made many of the big tragic beats hit harder.
Although it’s also possible this is more that Automata also has big uplifting beats too. Like, few things land as well as those first chiptune notes of Weight of the World in ending E.

[Cmdr_King]

Mega Man Zero- So I will freely admit, this collection does the thing where I can turn on 'story mode' and just have all the various upgrades and y'know what, the game's... okay, that way.

I played the first stage legit and then got up to the boss in one of the first mission sets and y'know what, decided to just start over.  Good thing honestly, the game just kinda does dumb bullshit a lot?  But also it kinda recycles stages in a way that sucks and also wow, just fucking wow that bomb mission.
Bosses... I despite Anubis actually, otherwise I do feel like if I wasn't able to just faceroll them because all upgrades most of them would have been pretty reasonable, in a real "hey yeah just roll this four of five times and you'll probably manage".  Granted, this woulda also made the boss rush hell.

Not sure what else to say about it because I feel a bit unqualified.  Like, I have not actually played any MMX games!  Well.  Command Mission but.  I do appreciate that the game is actually understated in what it's doing, they're really trying to sell the overall scenario with just a mission briefing from Ciel each stage and it kinda works?  That's cool.  You can sorta tell I think that Copy X was meant to be the real deal in concept and they changed it because, oops, they kept the MMX series going alongside this one, but I think that works overall actually.  X himself falling to that point would feel more contrived than "people wanted their heroes back so much they tried to clone them and it went sideways".  Not that this is some wildly story driven thing but, y'know.
I do think the game kinda assumes you've played yourself some MMX, just in terms of understanding how core controls work, but maybe MMX is designed that way too I dunno. 

But yeah so MMZ1 isn't very good.  I think everyone knew that?  But it's true.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Triangle Strategy - Is good! Definitely a worthy successor to the TO/FFT style of game. Except for not having a class system.

So let's talk about non-gameplay first. The game spins a pretty interesting story about three once-warring powers now at peace (spoilers, the peace doesn't last). There's pretty good setting work into how the three nations vary and why they clash. Competent enough political plot stuff. One thing I will definitely hype about the game is the conflict is intensely human and political; nobody's trying to summon Satan, and there isn't a creepy cult of ugly old men sacrificing babies. Game delivers on that promise better than almost any other Japanese RPG I can think of.

Front and centre in the game's storytelling is its choices. The game features a bunch of story branches based on the choices you make... or rather, convince your friends to vote for. A lot of the choices are really quite interesting. The big endgame choice in particular works really well.

For gameplay, the combat is certainly quite enjoyable. It's definitely more TO than FFT in that it can get kinda slow and bogged down at times, but if you enjoy studying the turn order and thinking about who will act when and how to keep your folks safe, it's certainly a good time. Highly adjustable difficulty is nice; I played on Hard until one very difficult fight around 2/3 through, then switched to Normal. Hard was certainly tough, Normal I never lost after switching to but I'd also had to get pretty good at the game by that point.

You get to deploy 10 characters, they're all pretty neat and varied with reasonably interesting skillsets and playstyles. My only complaints are that (a) there's not much customization, this is closer to a WA4 situation, and (b) what customization there is is... quite bad. There's a crafting system (which is really a skill system) but it's clunky and the choices you make are poorly documented. Rabbids this ain't.

But honestly that's my only major complaint? Very solid game all around. Rather clearly the best game the Square Enix Bad Title JRPG Studio has made, because it has the best writing and at least arguably the best gameplay (you could make a case for a lot of their games, but y'know this one's a strategy RPG). 9/10 area.


Other stuff I've played recently:

FE3H Cavalry Only

Rules are simple, once hitting Level 10, everyone must be a (non-flying) cavalry class. That's Cavalier in Intermediate, either Paladin or Valkyrie in Advanced, then finally expanding to include Bow Knight, Great Knight, Dark Knight, and Holy Knight.

Perhaps the most challenging thing about the run is that you don't get the good intermediate masteries so damage is lower than I was used to. The other challenging thing is having no magic in Intermediate tier.

Everyone with a riding boon got Move+1, which was most of my team. Not everyone, as you'll see.

Byleth (130): Paladin. Hit things with a Brave Lance, had good stats. Not a standout unit but not bad.
Edelgard (129): Great Knight. Mostly because I wanted Axefaire. Great Knight isn't a great class (har har), but she had her usual good points of stupid high Atk, high bulk (useful with no great dodgetanks), and Raging Storm.
Hubert (101): Frozen Lance Paladin -> Dark Knight. A pretty classic build. Cavalier Hubert is a bit limited and Paladin isn't as effective as normal due to no Fiendish Blow, but still generally competent.
Ferdinand (90): Paladin. Used Swift Strikes once he got that. He was kinda generic, not as good as Sylvain.
Bernadetta (124): Bow Knight. Did Vengeance things, not having Death Blow makes it more useful relatively, but she was still kinda struggling late in Paladin. Bow Knight was a huge improvement to gain the utility of Encloser and huge range in general.
Dorothea (63): So uh fun fact, I benched Dorothea after Level 10. Started wondering if that was a mistake, so kept her along on adjutant duty. When she did hit 20 I pulled her out again, reclassed to Valkyrie, and never looked back. Obviously good from that point on, Hexblade/Thoron/Meteor/Physic you've seen this before. LMAO me thinking Riding bane would actually matter.
Petra (98): Bow Knight. Definitely nerfed by this challenge, the lower speed of cavalry classes + no Darting Blow seriously cut into her doubling, albeit she was still way faster than anyone else, with one exception (~30 speed, next best was around ~20). Was fairly cool as a Bow Knight, but definitely suffered as a Paladin.
Sylvain (96): Paladin -> Dark Knight. Swift Strikes bot like Ferdinand, though his higher power did help a little... what helped more is getting to Dark Knight, and suddenly he had Physic and armour-killing as well, nicely versatile at the end.
Ingrid (33): Paladin. Got her midgame when her stats were good, but the build is unkind to her the same way it was to Petra and she had no promise of Bow Knight in the future, so eventually got benched.
Marianne (83): Like Hubert she could use a magic CA in Intermediate tier. Unlike him she got to go Valk in Advanced and could use spells and Physic. Very solid.
Leonie (133): Bow Knight. So uh somehow she got the most kills? And it's understandable because she's very good on this run. Better speed than the Swift Strike boys, promoted soon after the timeskip into Bow Knight and just rocks then, very versatile in her offence with Point Blank Volley. Earlier she just has generically good stats.
Hapi (54): Used her because riding boon but honestly this might have been a mistake, due to no magic CA she was so bad in Intermediate. Once she did hit Valkyrie, see Marianne pretty much (i.e. she was good), but was a bit behind on levels. Oh well. Impregnable Wall + her personal put in good work when appropriate as usual.
Jeritza (36): MVP while he was around. With Darting Blow he was even faster than Petra. Great strength, good bulk. Smashed things. Windsweep. His usual downside of missing Death Blow isn't a downside any more.

Super Mario Kart - Beat 150cc all cups auto-mini again. Then did it as Bowser, at Amy's request. Fun fun~

Metroid Dread - Replayed, got 100% this time. No guides, no videos, very satisfying. Still extremely happy with this game, there was the perfect mix of challenge for the puzzles/execution needed to get 100%. A couple of the shinespark ones were definitely very tricky!

[Cmdr_King]

Radical Dreamers- did the primary path, not sure if I'll go hunting for anything else since sounds like they actually expect you do flail.

Gets a shocking amount of mileage out of implication.  There's several scenes that just have characters reacting to something without entirely knowing why, and trusting that the player will know, or figure, that they should know two of these characters from Chrono Trigger and infer why particular things effect them the way they do.  It's surprising how well it works.  And several things, especially the intro, make a lot of Chrono Cross make way more sense because when CC remade this, they carried those elements over while changing their context in a somewhat nonsensical way.  But yeah, this is neat.

[Random Consonant]

and there isn't a creepy cult of ugly old men sacrificing babies.

Me, the person who took Frederica's route: well, that is technically correct.  of course, the truth is worse  hyzante delenda est

Anyways, Triangle Strategy good apart from the things that are less good, at Ch18, haven't really gotten back to it due to a mixture of deciding if this is the part where I give up on trying to go through all the story maps on Hard and also juggling like three other things poorly.

Super Robot Wars T: help im being attacked by an even bigger military-industrial complex and late-stage capitalism

Dark Deity: help im being attacked by a probably bad switch port of a probably buggy mess of a fire emblem clone

Crystal Project: help im being attacked by open exploration ff5

[Cmdr_King]

Mega Man Zero 2- huh.  mega man plot.

Ended up playing this on cheat mode too, I feel like I just don't quite brain correctly for some of the bosses.  That said, what's here is a lot better and it felt less like just slamming my face into a wall and more "y'know what, I'm kinda just playing these for funsies, not for mastery, so fuck it cheat mode".  Nothing is anywhere near the tier of the bomb mission, and the bosses are generally pretty sensible.  Without having played the MMX games, I feel like this game *actually* made it's boss cast the sort of noble types that MMX sometimes tried to paint mavericks as?  Like, the conflict between reploids and humans feels real here in a way I don't think it ever would in that series.  But y'know, just guessing on that.

[Cmdr_King]

Mega Man Zero 3-

D’ya know Suikoden? And if you play them in order Suikoden II feels like “oh this was the game they were making the whole time and the first game was like an alpha build they shoved out the door while they kept working on the real game”?

That’s what playing Mega Man Zero 3 is like. This is the actual completed version of Mega Man Zero and the first two games were alpha builds with partially-complete mechanics they released to fund the finished game.

So I ended up playing this way all the way through legit, and it's just very good at being this kinda game.  Well, legit, I still used the checkpoints because life systems are for suckers, and my ranking started high then dipped well into the C range by the end because I am bad at video games and still used enough elves to just start facerolling bosses in the last stretch, but y'know.  Anyway it has far fewer "why are you LIKE this" bosses than the previous games (especially zero 1 obviously but Zero 1 isn't... good, this is known), and the final stretch is really something.  It's not a flaw exactly, but I do feel like it's a bit of a shame the third form of the final boss isn't its own stage with its own checkpoint, because dang, that is a complex fight I just spammed elf healing to get through because I just did two other bosses.  Felt like I didn't get a chance to actually feel out this fight that was clearly the most complex boss design in the series!

But yeah I'm probably gonna cheat-mode through Z4 just because I've reached the point I'm ready to move on but this series begs to be played in sequence, but nice that I actually, factually played at least one for realsies.