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

[Niu]

Tried the Live A Live demo, and found out I can fight both Shintyu and Omega. This must be the only demo that allows you to fight the super bosses.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Did end up doing a bit of leveling for Monk SCC.  Not a lot but enough.  An extra level or two was enough.  Still might split up the last set of writeups depending on my attention span.

UBS4 (1 reset):

    Earth Clothes and Germinas Boots with Hamedo as reaction.  Enemy priorities are the lower leveled Monk and the Archer.  The other Monk is a Ninja and will almost always favor regular physicals for Hamedo to block.  Earth Slash to get around evasion with a dash of Secret Fist if it ever comes up to only having one punchboy free to attack a full HP enemy.  Secret Fist didn't really come up in practice as the enemies tended to line up when advancing so I was Earth Slashing multiple foes often and thus anyone close enough for Secret Fist was already hurting.
    Had a loss due to something silly.  Could have healed an ally with Chakra or Earth Slash.  Went with Earth Slash because it recovered more HP.  What could go wrong?  How about it criticaling and knocking a monk off a high drop.  He survived the fall damage but was stuck on a panel with no level ground next to it.  Generics KO him and I'm not able to win in time to prevent crystalization.  Reset.
    Actually played this multiple times trying various approaches on Balk 2.  The attempt I kept, I got the Yoichi Bow from the Archer.  Not usable within the confines of the challenge but still an entertaining trophy.

Rofel again (1 reset):

   Rofel's AI is such that if there are no valid targets within his range on his turn, he will retreat.  My strategy is to bait him to retreat, take out the support, and deal with him after they're gone.  One reset because I didn't set up the PBF correctly to have Rofel retreat.  So he came forward to charge Petrify and I was not in position to maximize my damage.  Didn't feel like punch past Defense Up and auto-protect with the mage support battering me and gave up instead of playing it out.
   Next attempt, I set the PBF properly and he retreats as intended.  Time Mage Hastes him, which would be scary were it not for his AI setting and he wastes the status retreating for the back faster.  Meanwhile, I pound down the support, careful to stay 10 panels away from Rofel no matter what and recovery as needed.  Even with Hasted mages and me forgetting to set HP Restore, I still overcome them.
   With the support down, next comes Rofel.  Being a physical class trying to get past Defense Up and auto-protect, it takes a lot of pounding.  When everyone is in position, bait Petrify and nail him with 4 Earth Slashes and Repeating Fist from the one punchboy who can get close enough.  Then it's just hit with everything I can and endure all the broken armor.

   Like the previous map, I played this out multiple times.  The first winning battle, I had an oopsie using Kenshiro as Petrify bait.  Petrify hits and while I can fix that with Stigma Magic easy enough, it does slow down my offense and Rofel Shellbusts 3 people before reducing his HP to zero.  The winning attempt that I kept, I remembered HP Restore for the reaction.  Also did a bit of positioning trickery that when I baited Petrify from him (this time remembering to use a low Faith punchboy), sneaked in two Earth Slashes yet he couldn't get into Mighty Sword range.  Another Petrify from him.  Couldn't stay out of Mighty Sword reach this time so swarmed him.  Got a good roll on Repeating Fist and by the time Rofel got a Shellbust off, he was at 63 HP.  So finished him off with only one broken armor.  Maybe it would have been possible to lure him around to win with no broken gear but I wasn't clever enough to find such a way with 10 PA Monks.

Kletian fails again (0 resets):

    Still with Earth Clothes and Germinas Boots.  Set Hamedo.  Kletian is smart enough to retreat if there's someone with spell range on his turn.  So I didn't get to punch him out on round 1, not getting enough punchboys able to reach him.  Plus I'm spending turns keeping Kenshiro alive and dealing with annoying Samurai sniping people with Kikuichimonji.  Rely on Hamedo to keep me safe from Ninjas.  My poor PBF placement isn't enough to save Kletian and I do eventually reach him with enough units to punch him out.

    Played this fight a few times as well in the process of trying to find a winning strategy for the fight after this.  Moving Ramza 3 panels away from where the game initially places him on the PBF will draw Kletian forward, leaving him bait for midcharge Punch Art beatings.  This makes for the fastest victory and I would have done this more if I already had the Lv 38 Speed point.  For more EXP though, murdering the support also works.  Ninjas are the first target's to prioritize.  Once they're out of the picture (dead or critical and out of their threat range) there's very little risk of losing.  Lancer Time Mages are laughable and tend to offer themselves up to Hamedo.  Samurai can be annoying but don't have the offense to endanger a party of Earth Clothes Earth Slashing Monks who also pack revival.
   Kletian using Flare is very comical.  2 casts and he's out of gas.  His AI is more defensive and isn't inclined to approach with his staff unless someone's within his movement range.  Either snipe from afar with Earth Slash or come closer and bait him into Hamedo, either way he's a joke on his own.

Balk 2 (4 resets):

    This battle I was worried about being able to clear coming in, especially without the Lv 38 Speed point.  With Earth Clothes and Germinas Boots, my punchboys only do 60 damage to Balk with Earth Slash so trying to rush him isn't likely to work.  Will probably need to take out some of the support before I can focus on Balk.  I am relieved it took this few attempts; was mentally prepared for a much higher number of attempts.  HP Restore as reaction since Hamedo is useless here.

Attempt #1:  Balk shoots Kenshiro for 133.  Chemist has good compatibility with him and high enough Faith to kill him off.   Kenshiro never gets to act as he's highest on the unit list so he doesn't get a turn after being revived, just getting shot down again before his turn comes around.  The monsters are closing in and I haven't really made a significant dent in the enemy forces when I give up.
Attempt #2: Balk gets a Bolt 2 for 171 on Kenshiro.  Chemist finishes him off.  Plays out like the previous attempt with Kenshiro never getting to act.
Attempt #3: Axel and Captain Falcon put on Rubber Shoes and go with Kenshiro in the first group.  Bolt 2 from Blast Gun again and Kenshiro is face down again.  Whatever, if the trap strat works, it will be over before the countdown expires.  I have someone in team 2 move to exactly 8 panels away from where to trap Balk to bait him.  On his second turn, Balk does not move to the trap panel instead opting to Arm Aim one of the trappers.  Oops, forgot he could do that.  Reset.  Punchboys can't guard both lightning and Snipe so I don't have a reliable means of setting up a trap strat.
Attempt #4: I have 3 units with the 11 PA point so I give the Bracers.  Maybe can get something going with the extra damage.  With 14 PA and Earth Clothes, Earth Slash damage goes up from 95 to 175.  112 to Balk means that rushing Balk down looks more viable if (and it's a big if) I can line up enough units.  With sluggish 3 Move Monks.  (cough)
    This time, Balk opens with an Arm Aim on Kenshiro.  Miss.  Chemist shoots Kenshiro.  Manageable.  Just got to see that he's in the path of an ally's Earth Slash.  My opening wave of attacks puts the Hyudra into critical as well as inflicting hurt on various other enemies (and Balk though that damage isn't going to stick).  I was careless with my initial positioning though and the Hydra fries two units.  Balk and the Chemist finish them off.  Crap.  Being down 2 punchboys proves to be too much to recover from.  The Dark Behemoth makes it to my team and starts murdering people.  I was down to one punchboy under Arm Aim when I conceded defeat.

  For the winning attempt, everyone but Axel reach their Lv 36 PA point.  Those 4 get Bracers.  Axel sticks with Germinas Boots and I primarily focus him in a medic role with offense as a secondary priority.
   Battle starts with Arm Aim missing again which is welcome and Chemist shooting Kenshiro.  I'm more defensive with my teams positioning now.  Got off one free 175 damage Earth Slash on the Tiamat due to starting PBF.  Enemies go.  Arm Aim misses again.  Hydra attempts a Triple Flame, whiff.  Hyudra attacks the punchboy Hydra tried to fry.  Balk shoots someone and triggers an HP Restore.
   All three flying monsters are lined up for Earth Slash when my team gets their second set of turns.  I might have a chance now.  Thanks to the increased damage from Bracers, I get in enough damage to KO all three fliers.  Too early for victory laps.  Chemist has Phoenix Down, there's still frequent Balk doubleturns which can easily result in a dead punchboy, and also Arm Aim to fight off.  Stigma Magic can deal with Snipe status though it still takes away turns from offense.  And the Dark Behemoth is still in play.
    So the Chemist was fixated on reviving the Hydra.  Because chemist move-acted on round 1 but the Hydra only moved, it always came back at 20 CT.  One of my units would smack it down again before it got a turn.  Chemist would re-rez it and the cycle went on for the remainder of its existence.  Meanwhile, the Dark Behemoth was closing in and it was decision time.  One option was going all-in on trying to blow through Balk's HP.  But if that failed, I would lose all my progress up to that point.  And the three remaining enemies are quite capable of wrecking a member or two of my team.  The other path was to focus on getting the behemoth out of play.  The Bracers provide enough offense for that to be doable.  Decided my chance were better with removing the Dark Behemoth even if it take focus away from the other enemies.  And I came dangerously close to losing it.  I had carelessly left Jin on a panel inaccessible to Revive when ganging up on the behemoth.  Had it opted to kill him, it would have been a sure loss as my chances of breaking through Move HP-up and Defense Up down a unit were grim.  Lucky me, it went after units that I could reach to revive, killing two before it was brought down to critical.
    It was a tense situation: down two units.  Was a scramble to get them back up while still keeping that Hydra neutralized and dealing with Balk.  Also got to watch my positioning so I don't lose anyone to the behemoth when it runs for a corner.  The Chemist does get a doubleturn wiht his 10 Speed to my team's 8.  But he revives the Tiamat on the doubleturn, it's too far away to harm my team, and it retreats for a corner.  Seemingly ages later though maybe just 3-4 rounds, everyone is back up and I start moving them across the gap to where Balk and the Chemist are hanging out.  Behemoth is too far for the Chemist to support so it's a non-factor.  All the while still dealing with smacking down the Hydra every time it's revived and dealing with the constant Balk doubleturns (and his over 60% chance of murdering Kenshiro on those doubleturns)  And not letting the enemies pick up any crystals.  Felt so relieved when I could get my sluggish 3 Move punchboys into position to bring down the Chemist.  Also opted to kill off the Tiamat and the Dark Behemoth.  Did not want to get Balk down to critical only to have the Tiamat decimate a unit or two right at the end.  Even with all the other enemies down, it still took a while to chase down Balk and batter him with enough Earth Slash to bury him.  I got the Chemist's crystal before that happened, the Mime crystal a mostly wasted gesture in an SCC.  Balk did wander towards the gap and I suspected he intend to cross but I landed the killblow right about then, sparing an even longer goose chase.

   One upshot of this drawn out fight was that everyone but Axel reached their Lv 38 Speed point.  Even if I don't think I need it for Hashulam, it's still welcome given the large speed gap.

Graveyard of Airships (0 resets):

   After that last long, drawn-out sandbag-fest this was a very straightforward battle.  Black Costumes and Germinas Boots because Hash has Spell.  HP Restore on Kneshiro and Jin; Hamedo on the others.  Battle begins with my entire team rocked by Quake.  From here on out, it's focus on survival and getting in what attacks I can.  Oftentimes found myself using Chakra more often than attacking.  Try to stay spread out yet close enough for support actions.  Routine Monk stuff by now.  Hash mostly pummeled 3-4 units at a time with magic.  Couldn't really make damage stick to a team of low Faith SCC Monks.  And the highest Faith units have bad compat with him.  Saw some HP Restores go off which reduces the pressure.  He did try for a few physicals on weakened neutral compat units but that's what I set Hamedo for.  Hamedo went 2 for 4; the last one getting the kill and denying me a kill bonus.  It's alright though.  Axel got enough actions to reach the Lv 38 Speed point.  Going into the final battle, the team is in the Lv 38-40 range all with 11 PA.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem Birthright - I decided to rip off Snowfire and do my own run of Lunatic Birthright with a random team. I dislike small teams, though, so we're doing 12 instead. I got Corrin, Kaze, Orochi, Kaden, Scarlet, Kana, Dwyer, Mitama, Kiragi, Selkie, Midori, Shiro. Rolled Corrin up randomly too and got Troubadour (pretty worthless), +Str -Spd. Speed bane sucks but it's probably workable on Birthright because enemy speed isn't great on average.

Some other rules:
-Challenge doesn't start until Chapter 7; I can use anyone before then.
-For getting kid PCs, I obviously had to fill out a bit of a roster to get them, using the minimum number of additions possible. I did Corrin/Kaze (which also keeps Kaze from dying), Orochi/Jakob, Kaden/Mozu, Hinoka/Azama, Takumi/Oboro, and Ryoma/Kagero.
-From the above list, Jakob and Mozu had to be permanently the backup unit in their pairup with their partner and never actively used.
-The three couples for whom neither parent was on my list of rolled PCs, I allowed myself to use both PCs in the couple, but they must be permanently paired up and they can not use any weapons their child could not. Why yes this is a specifically targetted rule to keep Ryoma from being overpowered (he was still very good).

I'm up to Chapter 18. Notable trouble fights were Chapter 9 (both just surviving the initial assault and making sure I recruited Oboro) and Chapter 12 (this one is wild; it's normally trivial, but I had no flier and had no way to outrace Xander reaching me and cutting someone down. Ended up promoting Takumi to Kinshi Knight). Also Kana's paralogue of all things; the Snipers in particular were very scary and I couldn't win fast so the reinforcements piled up. Had some trouble with 10, 13, and Mitama's paralogue as well. Everyone's promoted now and I have a solid, consistent team, so I don't anticipate too much trouble before the endgame maps.


Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

Scarlet Blaze, up to Chapter 10. I'll save more detailed comments for later but I'm really enjoying this game. It's not as thematically impactful as Three Houses was bit it's a lot of fun, and definitely in the conversation for best Warriors game in terms of gameplay (while obviously having better writing than all the others I've played.

[074]

Laggy Fantasy Tactics: Gafgarog Edition

It...had very much been a while for sure.  That while had clouded my judgment as you will see for a very silly outcome.

Fort Zeakden (1 Reset):
...yeah.  I had my first reset.  to Algus.  I had, out of greed for certain advancements by Chapter 2, moved Ramza over to Archer.  This...proved to be a mistake.  The entire thing turned into a clusterfuck with one of the enemy Knights rolling Steal Heart and charming Sara (setting her up to let herself be killed), Item Knight struck back by un-silencing the black mages, Ramza couldn't put out much damage in total, and between Ramza Positioning and locations, I wasted two of Ramza's turns trying to get an item that ultimately turned out to be a javelin, and one of Navarro's on trying to use Zombie on Algus only to discover that my brilliant meme plan to get him to Auto-Potion himself to death would not work.

And then when I was one hit away from clutching it out courtesy of Eltiana pumping out absurd damage, the stuffed-shirt bastard had the nerve to run away halfway across the map, ultimately timerscamming me.

Frankly, I would not be surprised if this was grounds for me to be forced to uninstall LFT.

I probably could have salvaged it, but not without a crystallization or two.  So I went back and made an adjustment, swapping Ramza over to Lancer and giving him a storebought Javelin, letting him do more damage than Quick Attack did with an axe.  He responded to the black mage trying to cast spells on him by stabbing her in the face for 90 damage.  The fact that nobody had Steal Heart helped, though Sara was a general non-factor (as to be expected from placing a melee unit on the secondary team).  Eltiana sniped Algus twice for massive damage each time, Navarro kept him and Super locked down with Confuse, and Ramza committed murder in general.  I did grab a Mythril Armor here, so I got something from this aside from the usual.

From here, Chapter 2 began.

Dorter Trade City: Hat Throwing Edition (0 Resets)
Preparations for this one were...slim, due to the lack of store access here, and no real new options.  Agrias got White Magic sub, Gafgarion got Time Magic sub.  Furthermore, I forgot to swap Eltiana back to a thunder rod.  It doesn't really matter here, she still did about 90-100 damage with her L2s.  I can't think of much else for this fight outside of admiring the custom spritework they had for making a thief throw his hat on the ground and stomp it.  Seriously, that is an enviable amount of spritework.  Silence shut down mages again long enough for them to die largely harmlessly.

Perhaps more notable was what happened after this fight.  Eltiana learned Magic Attack Up, as if she needed to be even more of a walking warcrime.

Araguay Woods (0 resets)
hahahahahahahaha 250-damage ice 1 hahahahahahahahahaha
Also I forgot to change Ramza over to Archer for this map.  I did so for the next one.

Zirekile Falls (0 resets)
So, I chose not to go the degenerate route of turning Gafgarog into a naked mage here and to do this fight legitimately.  He still got all of one turn, which he used to hit Ovelia with Night Sword before, in quick sequence, getting Stopped by Stasis Sword, shot, and then thunderstruck, immediately forced to retreat.  If I had better stealing I'd probably consider grabbing his gear to get dupes but it is what it is.  A knight did roll Geomancy and got an early Confuse on Delita...only for Delita to not give a crap since he was over away from my party and basically attack the enemies.  Good job confuse knight, you did nothing.

Aside from that, the fight was a bit of a slog due to having to chew through six high-durability targets, but I wasn't threatened.  Also got a clean sweep on items this time.  Most notable was a Platina Dagger and a Leather Mantle.

After this fight, Ramza learned Concentrate, and with enough Archer levels, classed straight into Ninja, jumping up to Eltiana's capacity for murder, even with just two daggers.  Sara...kind of sits there and exists for the time being.  Eltiana learns Ice 2 and reclasses to Time Mage, with me feeling confident in her having L2s+MAU from Black Mage to start working on other classes for the time being.  Agrias gets enough JP to learn Crush Punch.  This will sadly not last.  As she's the only heavy armor user in my party currently, Agrias also gets Gafgarion's old Cross Helm.  I believe here is where Navarro learned Move-MP Up.  Perhaps one of *the* most vital caster skills.

Zaland Fort City (0 resets)
I don't choose the Save Mustadio option because I fear for a repeat of Mandalia Plains.  My fears are wholly unjustified, though.  Navarro silences both Black Mages in a single go when they try to go for a Fire 3 salvo, and also confuses one of the Knights, while Eltiana instakills one of them with a L2.  She gets razzed because one of the Oracles has White Magic subbed, but this is ultimately to no consequence.  Sara and Navarro get zombied by the other Oracle.  Again to no real consequence.  Also in utter hilarity, the confused knight, an Item Knight apparently, just *hands* Ramza an X-Potion.  Thanks, dude.

And a dickhead knight breaks Agrias' helmet.  Shows me for trying to give her nice things.

Agrias killed the last knight before I could get a shot at crystal-learning Fire 3, but I did manage to find a Wizard Staff.  Which immediately goes to Eltiana for further war crime commission.  Ramza learns the art of throwing balls, and then will cease forevermore to learn new throwing arts.  Agrias gets an old Barbuta as punishment for losing the Cross Helm.  I prepare for suffering because I have bad memories of the next map from my first time playing, at that.

Bariaus Hill (0 resets)

Thankfully, I didn't actually have resets here.  It felt like it could've come close, though.  Off the bat, one of the geomancers Stopped Eltiana, taking that nuke off the board.  In retrospect, I *think* I could've used Heal to patch that up, but hindsight.  Confuse kept putting in work here, turning one of the Lancers against a summoner and making a geomancer do ineffective things, but the summoners...hoo boy.  This fight is rude with introducing them, and that's with the LFT nerfs.  Wide-area 90+ damage always hurts.  Had to do a bit of round-robin revival here to pick back up from the opening salvo, but once I did and took out the summoners, it was more of a matter of closing out the fight.  Found an early Green Beret, which you bet went straight to Ramza.

I did some mucking around in a random after having used a proposition to give Navarro a little bit of Mediator AP to learn Invite.  Blame for not doing MFI as soon as possible in Fovoham is on me, but I got a Squidrockin out of the deal.  Not sure if I'll keep him long term but it's funny.  Agrias leaves the party, giving me her gear and forgetting how to use Crush Punch.  I am more disappointed in the latter.

Zigolis Swamp (0 resets)
First off, the MFI guide didn't help here one bit.  Second off, I brought Mediator!Navarro here in hopes a pig would show up.  No pig was seen, only a morbol.  A morbol who got invited to join my party.  So I now have several chocobos, a squidman, and a morbol.

Mustadio's AI, as is usual, was questionable here.  He went for killshots when Seal Evil is better against undead.  I did have a bit of feeling proud of myself, setting up a killshot on a ghost, then using Elemental to eat its MP Switch before the spell went off.  All in all, though...not a remarkable fight if you ask me, as monster fights tend to be.  I also brought a Red Chocobo along for this fight and the next, considering I actually needed a five-man and a monster will substitute in a pinch.

Navarro swapped back to Oracle.

Slums of Goug (0 Resets)
And then we have this one, which played out...amusingly.  Mustadio's first and only (as is usual) action of this fight was to punch one of the thieves in the dick, rendering him unable to move for the next few turns.  They responded by cutting him down.  Luckily, only one of the summoners felt like summoning.  Unfortunately, Sara ate 115 damage from a Sylph summon for that, and the archers were particularly dickish today.  I used the one Magic Shuriken in my inventory to give that mid-charge Summoner a real painful time for it.  Charge mods are funny.

Item-hunting took a bit, got me (amusingly) a free Poison Bow, but the real stand-out part was that from one of the summoner crystals, Eltiana learned Ifrit and Shiva.  I would've let her have the other one, but her turn wasn't up and the sole surviving archer was threatening to grab it next turn anyway, so Ramza was up to get it.  He learned...a bunch of Chemist stuff.

Post-battle, Sara learned Attack Up.  I neglected to take her out of Geomancer, though.  Eltiana learns Stop.

Bariaus Valley (0 resets)

Oh look agrias spent her knight JP in a break.  Damnit.

Auto-JP salt aside, this was another largely straightforward battle, as battles with Knights tend to go.  Confuse and stabbing as usual, with Eltiana throwing out several 100+ damage Bolt 2s.  Navarro runs into the frustration inherent in trying to status a Worst Compatibility knight, while Sara sits on the other side with a Confused Mustadio beating up some nerds.

As for Agrias?  A Talk Skill Knight was slinging Insults at her until she decided to say screw it and throw down.  No real threat considering the Oracles kept getting stuffed before they could cast spells, and the White Mages kept healing my guys by needlessly casting Cure 4.

MFI payouts were...not great to my recall, but that is how it goes sometimes.  I tried to get Navarro the white mage's crystal, but no Cure 4.  He *does* learn a wealth of other spells from the one he did grab, though, including Protect 2 and Reraise, so I'm hardly going to call it a wash when that's still a *lot* of JP's worth of free skills.

And with that battle concluded, ends this session, with the unlocking of the mixed awesomeness of Power Sleeves and Short Edges.  Ramza is going to murder, while I debate reclassing Eltiana back to Black Mage to learn Lv3 spells and maybe Death, or moving her onto Summoner.  Navarro, despite the W-EV I have been thoroughly enjoying from sticks, is...okay, I don't know what I'm going to do with him just yet.  I think the next target skill I'd want for him would be Short Charge, which would necessitate a stay in Time Mage.

As for Sara, I am sorely tempted to throw her into some propositions to get JP available for other jobs (while using Alicia and Lavian to get some bleedover JP for Agrias and Mustadio).  She feels like she's really falling behind compared to the rest and Geomancer as a class can only do so much.

Next time: The Rise and Fall of Gafgarog, and oh god zodiac demon fights in LFT I recall this nightmare too well.

[Cmdr_King]

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes- finished Crimson Blaze

There's plenty to like here but... gosh it ends on just the most "okay we're done here" notes.  It honestly makes me suspicious there's some sort of conjoined ending DLC or something, y'know?

I don't feel super qualified to judge it as a musou type game, although it seems functional enough in terms of giving you some tools to give it more of an FE vibe so that's nice.  You can certainly distribute orders and explode things good by correctly routing weapon advantages and stuff.

What's here in terms of supports is alright, and Shez is an alright lead.  There is a certain sense of needing to dig around to find good stuff that's not just rehashes, but there's plenty of them available so it'll work out probably.  The lack of real endings is a major letdown though.

[Cmdr_King]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge- did story mode. Gosh this game is very satisfying. Honestly way more than the classic games, you can switch from ground to air to ground really easy and it’s great. The super moves are nicely balanced too. Also like… I played as April, that’s great.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem: Three Hopes - Scarlet Blaze down.

In some ways a better game than I dared hope for. It is an odd game, in that I don't think it stands alone at all. You really need to have played Part 1 of Three Houses to understand how the Central Church operates, why certain characters oppose it, and how the characters in each house grow close to one another. To say nothing of specific character details. But as an expansion on Three Houses it really does an excellent job. Many subtle points of the original are made more explicit in this game, and in some cases (like the concessions Petra has extracted, or various discussions on class) it's really to the game's benefit to have these. There are more supports (including some that were always needed in the original game, why yes Edelgard/Jeritza I am talking about you), and they're largely very good. Shez works well (providing another extremely valuable commoner perspective), and I really hope this is the direction they go with avatar characters in the future if those continue to exist (as I think they will).

Perhaps my biggest complaint about the story is that it doesn't have as much emotional resonance as the original. Like it's great from a fanservice perspective that Edelgard is doing better emotionally this time around (Hubert's line about her being more liberated as of late and how much that means to him lives rent-free in my head) but it doesn't make for as compelling a tale. And a certain two characters being allies this time around (contingent on a particular recruitment / story path, but it's the one I got) is fun but does make your victory feel very assured. It's also perhaps an issue that watching the same characters unfold in a fifth(!) timeline now was destined not to be emotionally effective.

Elly's complaints about the ending are fair. Like... it's certainly an ending, I definitely wouldn't have wanted another fight after it, but yeah not having the character endcards sucks and it could have benefited from one more scene probably (then again, I feel similarly about Houses endings where you don't get the lord's S support). Although I will say that the decision to have the very last fight in the game be a battle against both Rhea and Thales, where the name of the game is to try to use them against each other by catching them in the same critical rush is an extremely thematically approrpriate end to the route and quite satisfying, and a pretty clever use of Warriors gameplay to boot.

Oh yeah, gameplay. Has the problem FEW does where I don't think individual commanders are that interesting to fight, and actually in general feels like I'm just bullying the enemies; combat arts and especially spells are just things enemies are incapable of dealing with. Still enjoyable enough to play out both the action side and the strategy side, and abusing weapon triangle advantage feels rewarding. The paralogue maps probably offer the most challenge and are generally quite well-designed. The skill/class system is cool. So overall I enjoyed it, though I suspect it wouldn't have made much impact on me if I disliked the characters/writing.

Good game would play again. Already am in fact, just started Golden Wildfire yesterday.


Fire Emblem: Birthright - Lunatic Classic with my pre-rolled team of twelve continues. 8 resets on the Camilla fireball map. God that map is rude. Beat Hans on the first try (albeit slowly), so that was satisfying. Iago's the only map left I'm really worried about.

[Niu]

Live A Live remake finished.
Very good, Square is really doing the game justice.
SD3 and this, Square can be good as long as they try.

Near Future especially so, Tokida is such a man of culture to cone up with everything in there.
SF chapter also became scarier and reminded the fandom that it is the forbear of all the RPG maker horror rpgs.
On the other hand, the rebalancing had made the game significantly easier. Modern and Bakumatsu certainly wasn't this easy. Though, not to the point of triggering a complaint from me.
Oh and that newly added content in the end, it caught me in surprise in a very nice way.

[074]

Laggy Fantasy Tactics: Golgorand ga Taosenai

You should be able to judge from the name that what was planned to be the end of Chapter 2...ended up literally *just* beating my head on Golgorand.  Something like twelve times or so.

Ramza, for the immediate time being, learned Martial Arts and swapped his Green Beret out for a Headgear.  The results were to speak for themselves.  Navarro also spent time as a Mediator, and Sara was an Archer at this point.  Eltiana the Walking War Crime sat this one out.

Prior to this, in order to counteract the bad RNG on Agrias' and Mustadio's ability rolls (Agrias, in her infinite wisdom, decided to invest in Counter Tackle rather than Split Punch), I did take them to a run of Bariaus Valley randoms.  Got the Mindrave/Mindflayer formation, probably the most dangerous one in this point of C2.  Courtesy of Mustadio having extremely good luck on Arm Aim, Agrias' Coral Sword, and Ramza's new kung-fu, it...wasn't that bad.  Comedy was had as Ramza literally pummeled a squid-man for 200 HP a turn.  And one of them was even Invited.  For perfectly legitimate reasons that do not involve treason and illicit hunting, I assure you.

Navarro got switched back to Oracle, Sara got promoted to Lancer.  Then the fun ended.

Golgorand Execution Site.  (11 resets)

Yeah.  This one gave me some hell.  Between formation woes, zodiac woes, and all other kinds of RNG-induced hell, I had a lot of resets.  I'm not going to go over them all because that would take absolutely forever, and my memory is not that good to remember all the bullshit.

However, I will cover a few of the more notable ones.

Run 2: This one almost ended up being viable.  Until one of the archers literally dodged both 60% hits (that would have oneshot her) from Ramza, and then landed a 40% killshot on Navarro.

Run 5: This is where I went on full tilt, and started resetting due to Ramza having bad compat with the center archer.

Run 7: About when I went off of tilt.  I think I switched Navarro to Priest here since the speed lineup was more favorable.

Run 8: Failure here led to way too much shit, and convinced me I needed to level some of my party members.

This...is where I shamefully admit I had to go and grind another fight in Bariaus Valley.  Ramza was left out, party was Agrias/Mustadio/Eltiana/Navarro/Sara, with Sara in Monk, Navarro in Summoner, Mustadio in Knight, Agrias in Holy Knight.  Thankfully it just took one fight, which was...something of an annoyance considering it was a Squidrockin letting loose with Nameless Dance constantly.  Bastards are...not nice.  It wasn't threatening, more...annoying.

This got the levels largely synced out.  Eltiana learned Ice 3 and used bleedover Summoner JP to learn Moogle.  Navarro swapped back to Priest.  Most importantly, Sara learned Revive, which went on her with Punch Art in place of Battle Skill as she swapped back to Lancer.  (honestly in retrospect she did better as an Archer, though in part due to the fact that the +PA gear being optimal here.  She needs time in Dragoon, though).  Agrias relearned Crush Punch finally to make up for the utter travesty that was her swapping it out for Counter Tackle of all skills.  Agrias swapped to Geomancer to take advantage of PA-boosting gear on swordskills, to boot.  I think I swapped Ramza to Flame Whips here just out of a sense of "what could possibly go wrong?"

Run 9: ...and then I had made mistakes.  Most notably, then forgetting to put Holy Sword on Agrias, so she only had basic attacks, and forgetting to sub Yin-Yang Magic on Navarro.  Ironically, this *almost* turned out a victory...until Gafgarian started getting multiple Night Sword crits and using Secret Fist to, in a most inspirationally spiteful move, keep people from reviving one of my characters.  I considered it a loss because I refuse to accept permadeaths of non-monsters.

Run 10: Agrias got Holy Sword back.  I still forgot to put yin-yang on Navarro.  I knew it wasn't going to work out when the Lightning Bow archer decided to crit-into-proc on Eltiana, instakilling her from full.  I swear the AI reads for those things.

Run 11: Finally put Yin-Yang back on Navarro.  I think I also swapped Ramza back to Ninja Swords here.  Tried confusing Gafgarog and a knight.  It didn't work out beyond wasting the geomancy knight's turn.

Run 12: bloody finally.  I still don't feel like I actually won this one, since it felt like I was iterating until I got a RNG setup that didn't screw me to an extent.  Thankfully, Garfunkel had Charge rather than Punch Art for his secondary, which particularly bit him in the ass as he charged...right as Ramza got a turn.  This ended with me getting some revenge by leaving only one of the Time Mages alive, turning her into a chicken, and having Agrias collect all the crystals.  Conveniently, this got her Equip Sword among other things, which will probably help with her intended leveling path.  Got a Twist Headband and Ice Shield for my troubles.

This managed to make me relive my childhood nightmares.  I'll just leave it at that.

Next time: The End of Girafarig.  For real this time.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Altima: the final punchout (0 resets)

  Before going into the writeup of the final fight, a summary of the loot from treasure boxes dropped from defeated enemies in Orbonne.  3 Light Robe, 3 Feather Mantles, another Black Costume, a Gold Staff, and a Wizard Rod.  All meaningless to a team that speaks with their fists but an amusing statistic.
   Back to Earth Clothes on all.  Jin, Axel, and Captain Falcon also trade their Germinas Boots for Bracers.  The intent is that they speed things up and those three have good compat with Virgo so might as well prioritize buffing their damage.  I figure the drop from 4 to 3 Move isn't that important when Altima uses Teleport 2 to get around.  Lastly, the increased damage from my team lets them take down two Ultima Demons before they move instead of one.  Balrog and Kenshiro stick with Germinas Boots.  They're meant to focus more on supportive roles.  Balrog is designated for attending to Alma.  Hamedo on all.
    At the beginning, Alma charges MBarrier on herself and Altima clobbers her midcharge.  I send Balrog to Revive Alma while the others batter the high level Ultima Demons with two Earth Slashes apiece taking them out.  Stay about 3 to 4 panels away from each other to discourage Grand Cross, of course.  Demons go.  Hurricane on Alma and Balrog, smacking Alma down again.  Other Nanoflares two punchboys.  Altima goes for a physical on one of the Nanoflared.  "Oh no you Hamedon't."  From here on it's routine.  My 9 Speed monks get two turns before the living demons get their next turn, more than ample chance to reduce them to not-living.  After a few times of Alma getting smacked down and Revived, her Speed advantage finally lets her resolve MBarrier.  Punch Altima when I get the chance; use Earth Slash if I feel I need to heal someone other than Alma.  Use Chakra to keep Alma's MP up and those MBarriers coming.  Altima 1 stands no chance.  I was lazy and didn't keep my CT synced with Altima so Grand Cross did show once.  Kenshiro gets hit by Berserk, Confusion, and Sleep; the other punchboy I moved out of the effect area.  Stigma Magic removes all three ailments.  I did notice the first two demons getting close to crystalizing but got that last 208 damage Wave Fist in before Altima could snag any crystals and undo the damage I'd done.

    Not that I would have been in danger of losing.  I'd just be annoyed on principle.

    The first several turns from form 2 were a mix of Despair 2 (to dispel MBarrier buffs) and physicals (could oneshot the good compatibility punchboys if they didn't have Protect status).  Hamedo stops most of the physicals, even one where the counterpunch whiffed from height difference and Altima floating.  And Chakra makes Alma's MP a non-issue so she keeps on tossing out MBarriers.  At some point, Altima fixated on Kenshiro trying to take him out with All-Ultima.  It would have done enough to oneshot him but MBarrier (oh no, only 95% success rate) landed first and brought it down to survivable.  Earth Slash from across the deck undoes most of the damage.  Altima goes for All-Ultima again on Kenshiro.  This time, Kenshiro gets a turn while it's charging and redirects.  Redirected All-Ultima finishes off Altima 2.  A bit anticlimatic the final hit wasn't a punch given the theme of the playthrough but a victory is a victory.

  I'll write up some concluding thoughts later.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem Birthright - Lunatic Classic with random team down. After Camilla's map, the rest wasn't too bad. Hans and Iago's maps were tough for sure, but I beat them first try (although I really should have lost on turn 2 of Iago's map... needed a couple lucky dodges and some luck with enemy AI. Somehow I picked up the pieces and won convincingly after that).

Unit notes (battles/kills in brackets)

Dwyer (46/24): Strategist. Primarily a healer, didn't actually level enough to get Inspiration. Had some combat with Horse Spirit, but wasn't fast or strong enough to kill many things.
Mitama (43/35): Onmyoji. Another healer, less mobile than Dwyer but far faster (due to Darting Blow from Hinoka). Still didn't one-round too often.
Selkie (70/41): Honestly on reflection I'm not a big fan of the foxes. They have good res but no 2 range with which to counter mages, and some evasion but can't use weapon triangle control to really make it reliable. They give lots of speed to their pairup partners, at least? Of the two foxes, Selkie had lower power so was the less useful one.
Kiragi (84/65): Sniper. God, he's just terrible? Takumi without the power; doesn't double much besides armours, isn't strong enough to one-shot or double Wyverns without support. And like all Birthright pure archers, no 1 range which sucks. I considered going Kinshi instead but then his offensive stats would have been truly wretched. LVP by far.
Shiro (98/76): Spear Master. Generically solid but unexceptional, with decent stats in most areas but short of being one of my top PCs for use. There's only one Javelin on this route, so he got it.
Kana (123/80): It's kinda remarkable how much worse he was than Corrin, had something like 8 less def and 15 less str. Faster but not really by enough. That said he still had respectable enough mixed bulk and staff use.
Kaden (115/83): The better fox, at least on this run. Using both is kinda silly because they compete over weapons.
Scarlet (143/102): Wyvern Lord. Now we're into the core combat PCs who made the run possible. Scarlet had outstanding def, good power, and shockingly good speed for her, so that's nice. Just had to watch out for both bows and magic; if neither was present, chances are she was putting in amazing work. Rally Defence and flight were nice utility too.
Midori (133/106): Mechanist. Mediocre upon join, but when she promotes she gets shuriken. Shuriken are good! Her offensive stats weren't exceptional but she has great overall bulk so she was often there at the frontlines doing serious damage to anything, if not always enough to kill.
Kaze (265/170): Master Ninja. Lategame MVP. Kaze's drawbacks are iffy str and bad def, but his speed and res are through the roof and shuriken are great. Later, he gets incredible weapon triangle control thanks to his S rank in shuriken, reducing both berserkers and mages to 0 hit/damage respectively. Doesn't like mixed physical groups but that's about it. Shurikenfaire also helps his str, he actually one-rounds lots of enemies late.
Corrin (303/192): Probably the overall MVP. +Str -Spd, the bane is bad but the Practice Katana goes a long way as an option, and the str is ridiculous, as in "kills Sorcerers and Bow Knights in one hit" ridiculous. Speed pairups are plentiful too. Nice defence too, only real flaw is not being able to one-round at 2 range ever.
Orochi (275/197): Strategist. Definitely a character I gained respect for on this run. Her magic is insane, and while her low speed limits her as a troubleshooter for slow enemies, that's still highly valuable, as Birthright has lots of slow enemies for her to feast on (who are often bulky enough that other units struggle with them). Physical bulk usually lets her take one hit, at least, magic tanking is good. So she was able to rack up lots of kills and actually got Inspiration, which is nice.

Saga Frontier

First time playing this in quite a few years, good times. Played Blue's route. Party was Blue (guns/magic), T260G (HyperBlaster mec, got PluralSlash late), Thunder (Shrieker), Liza (DSC with SoulRune/Solar Blade), and Mesarthim (light/rune as well). I didn't do anything overtly cheesy like time magic or 99-defence but otherwise I was not playing nice.

[Cmdr_King]

Live a Live- This game can be hella frustrating in that way SNES games manage so easily but... most of the time it's fucking brilliant and the remake really sells some stuff that might have easily gone unnoticed playing the original.  Like, god, the end of Cube's scenario just sings now.  And the voice acting in Sundown's chapter?  *chef's kiss*

Yeah this is great, probably not the best game I played this year but like... I finished NieR Automata this year, y'know?

[Cmdr_King]

Fuga: Melodies of Steel- fin.

I do think the game loses some steam in the middle, but still strong overall.  Rides primarily on vibe and tone, which really is why the middle chapters where you're beefing up the roster and doing a whole chapter about one character before they fade into the background drag a bit, the tone loses some of the edge that gives the game it's feel.  On the plus side you kick the shit out of Cat Mengele, so that's nice.  Granted, probably would have helped if I played all 15 hours contiguously rather than spread out over an 8 month period but anyways.

[Dhyerwolf]

Bravely Default 2- Played this a while back. Very uneven game and I don't even just mean in the normal class based game of very uneven classes (although that felt worse than normal here). I don't mind the change from TB to ATB speed, but the game was plagued was serious transparency issues. Both speed and damage mults were way too opaque in a way that just feels like it should have been left far in the past. The counter gimmick was annoying when it was on randoms (bosses depended on the individual boss, but other than 1 particular one it was fine).

Challenge kind of dissapates once you have enough MP regen methods going because you can just have a healer revive everyone if needed. There was definitely a long stretch were bosses were just too much of jokes because of this (Adam was finally the one to break this at least a little).

I did enjoy a lot of classes being remixed.

Sad they got rid of the great chained random mechanic from Bravely Second, since otherwise there was too much random slog at times without anything to spice it up (yes, I know this game had a chaining mechanic, but I didn't like it at all).

Very uneven plot. The Chapter 2 story just needed to be totally flushed, but then the Chapter 3 arc was fantastic. Also, how did they have two tree towns in a game where the only time the graphics are ever interesting is in towns and both of them were total letdowns?! Rimedhal and the Russian city at least made up for that. I certainly wish they were able to pull more of that graphical style into dungeons instead of having many rooms of interchangable boredom.

Giant middle finger to the game though for having class passives with negative features that unlock after a certain point. Why would any designer think that hampering a class with a bad second passive would be a good design decision? I was running a Thief with a Monk secondary and the Artist passive to make the Monk BP costing move free, just to get Thief's second passive that also made the move free but also prevented my ability to gain BP through defaulting? Yikes

Final score was a 4/10. The optional multi boss endgame battles brought it back up from a 3. I loved those in BD, so I'm very glad to have seen those brought back. The ending story structure was also cute enough.

Triangle Strategy- On the other hand, this is the first time the team finally fully knocked a game out of the park. Everything was solid. The branching storylines were handled fairly well within the context of often not changing the general contour of the game until the end, there are a ton of fun battles (especially those in the Salt map or the mines), the system is generally fairly well balanced (I do enjoy the hyper focus on just a few skills for every PC) and the BP system was very elegant. 8/10

[Niu]

Mentioning here incase people overlooked.
Kaneko and Machida are back in person to fundraise for their Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts spiritual seqeluel.

The Kaneko game is 100% spiritual sequel. It won't take place in any of the 9 parallel worlds of Fargaia. So don't expect Kaneko to finish any untold story.
But as of Machida's game, it seems there is tiny possibility of relating to Shadow Hearts 1's good end.

[Random Consonant]

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes - beaten all three routes.  game good but I don't really have a frame of reference for these kinds of games.  Game obviously couldn't strike the same kind of emotional resonance that Houses did so I'm kinda glad the game stuck to beating people over the head with the sort of qualities more observant people noticed about Edelgard/Dimitri/Claude even if the writing could have dared more elsewhere, especially with the new faces (whyyyyyyyyyy do you keep falling the siscon hole videogame writers.)  Lack of real endings is a problem but at the same time I'm not really sure what they could've done that wouldn't have resulted in things being really uneven considering how some of them end.  Shez is a pretty good main all things considered, supportive without being a sounding board and the strong commoner perspective is something Houses oddly lacked.

Of course Azure Gleam Part II exists because the writers backed themselves into a corner and decided fuck it darkest timeline in probably the dumbest way possible and I am very unhappy about that and Golden Wildfire just feels kind of weak in general (although there are parts about it I like quite a bit) but so it goes.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore - Got up somewhere to the final dungeon.  The existence of this game continues to feel like an elaborate joke even now and I'm here for it.  Too bad the joke kinda loses steam towards the end but eh that's what you get when you bring back a B-movie villain who somehow continues to not die when killed.

[superaielman]

Been playing Brigandine LOR on the PC. Creative mode is fun- just wish it would be ported to the switch, as it's easier for me to play on that rather than on a PC.

[Cmdr_King]

Planescape Torment- finished this. I mucked about in the final tree for a while, but I *think* I settled on threatening Transcendent One with TNO’s true name to get him to merge.

The degree to which this is a different (and better) game played as a Wizened Sage as opposed to other builds makes me glad I played it now, rather than in 2006 or whatever. Like aside from Trias (who is still a bit too beefy probably but is pretty surmountable if you’re patient and well stocked) all of the combat feels like an exercise in efficient kiting in order to trick you into dying and relying on immortality a bunch. So it’s kinda weird the mechanics treat them as equally valid builds with no particular signposting. But of course that’s a limitation of the Infinity Engine, there’s not really the mechanics present to just tell the player “you *want* to say this but you lack the Common Sense” when that would help the game along a good deal.

That said once the game turns into the game people remember it as (roughly at the Brothel), gosh you sure can tell why people remember it as they game. Just much tighter while simultaneously feeling richer and better realized, where the game is just bullshitting with people until you realize hey wait, they can solve this seemingly unrelated problem of a different person entirely!

And of course the confrontation with the Incarnations is just brilliant stuff. I also appreciate that the memory of what was done to Deionarra elicits the exact same reaction from TNO no matter what his alignment is or what you’ve had him doing. Like nothing he can possibly do in the course of the game is as evil as that moment (I mean except in the like, cosmic way).

Anyway yeah that was a whole thing.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Lufia 2: True Gades

  So the version of Gades that's in the monster data but not actually used in the retail game is...  kind of dangerous actually.  He does enough damage to put up a real fight.  Against my Lv 45-ish party, Destructo Wave does enough damage to threaten a 2HKO to the party before defense buffing.  Well, everyone except Guy who has the Neutral resisting shield from the World's Most Difficult Trick.  Compared to the 150-200 everyone else takes, Destructo Wave does double-digit damage to Guy which is reduced to 0-20 after defense buff.  Fake and Courage in the first round were key to staying in control.  And Devastation just does lots of ST damage, enough to send anyone into the ground.  It's definitely not Neutral element either (maybe dark) as Guy went from near full HP to 1 from it.
  Still, all Gades has is damage and no status and my team has the tools to keep up.  And with 3 people packing light element offense, they can give as good as they're getting.  Guy with Undead Ring and Hydra Rock and one Tweak does 2400 with Triple Attack IP so that's about a quarter of his HP in one attack.

Very little to comment on the rest of the game.  Amon is a chump with confusion resistance.  Likewise, Erim poses little threat to a team that remembers instant death protection.  The only KO on Doom Island came from the Gades rematch where he KOed Maxim on round 2 so I didn't get to use Wave Motion.

As it turns out, the only status vulnerability a Maxim with a full set of Divine armor has is sleep.  Which Daos' Terror Wave landed on its second use.  One more Holy Energy from Selan won the fight in the next round so it's an amusing footnote.

Ending is still emotional even after so long since I last played the story.

[SnowFire]

Return to Monkey Island

Very good!  Highly recommended.  I recommend setting the difficulty on "Hard" and setting the dialogue option to "more dialogue, less pacing" because hearing the voice actors go at it is great, and the script is witty & amusing.  If you're worried about abstruse graphic adventure game moon logic, the puzzles (even on "Hard") generally make a lot of sense.  If anything, too much sense, it keeps the playtime low despite there being a decent amount of content.  The game has a built-in hint book this time which is pretty good in that it'll give slowly escalating hints before just revealing the answer, so it's a good sanity check to see if you're on the right track.  I only needed it a few times, but it certainly reduced the frustration. 

Also, the writers (Ron Gilbert & co., so the people who did Monkey Island 1 & 2) managed to both vaguely make Monkey Island 2's infamous ending sort of make sense, as well as honor the other games in the series.  They didn't just go "ick that's all non-canon we're ignoring it," so that's cool.  (But don't be scared off if you didn't play the earlier games; there's a Scrapbook feature that brings you up to speed pretty well instantly, and it doesn't really matter THAT much.)

I will say that the game makes an interesting philosophical choice which can make for a stronger single game, but might have implications on the series as a whole.  You know how some characters stay young forever and will have adventures forever (comics characters, etc.), while others actually seem to have time pass?  The original Monkey Island was made by devs in their 20s for kids in their teens, everybody is in their 30s/40s/50s now, and this game definitely bites into a somewhat older Guybrush who admits he's not at his prime.  He's re-doing his quest from Monkey Island 1, and everyone thinks he & LeChuck are crazy for still caring.  The friendly and harmless old guard has been shoved out (I think Terry Pratchett did this theme a decent amount, the new efficient bad guys replacing the harmless old bad guys) and we have some young new rivals who take pirating somewhat more seriously than Guybrush.  He can only hold his breath for 8 minutes under water rather than 10!  It mostly works in-game, but I do hope that Guybrush keeps having adventures forever, etc.  But acknowledging the passing of time does open up some interesting possibilities at least (LeChuck ruing not finishing Guybrush off the first 60 times he had the opportunity feels kind of like if Mario games acknowledge that Bowser clearly wasn't really that set on defeating Mario.)

My one complaint (bit of a spoiler, but a vague one?):Ron Gilbert still loves his faffing about nonsense endings.  Don't go in expecting much here.

The more detailed spoilery version: So the Monkey Island 2 ending, while weird, did come AFTER a climactic confrontation with LeChuck while running around a maze.  You still got to achieve something, even if what exactly you achieved was rendered questionable.  Return to Monkey Island jumps to its weirdness ending a little too quickly, without letting Guybrush settle up with the main antagonists.  Come on!  Plus, some of the interesting plot threads - like what the deal was with the dark magic earthquake and any long term implications from Guybrush eating an enchanted tentacle - seem to just be dropped.  It's annoying because the game does a great job with LeChuck & the new antagonists, a 'boss fight' of sorts to settle up with them would have been highly satisfying even if it was only done via insult swordfighting or something.

[Dark Holy Elf]

One of these days when the mood strikes I really need to play one of those games. I did enjoy what I watched of one way back in the day.

I will say that, at least for me, if you're going to have a writing-heavy game, I'm really, really happy that the characters age. Eternally unaging characters can work for pure comedy (The Simpsons) and obviously things basically devoid of non-insane plot (Mario), but I would find it pretty undesirable in something like Ace Attorney (still partly comic, but is telling a serious story as well), and my impression is that Monkey Island is broadly in the same category. They don't have to age as fast as real chronological time in our world is going by, but it's still nice, putting the main cast in at least some flux and helping make it less likely that things will go stale. As a bonus, it's one of the easiest ways to force game devs to have characters (and particularly women!) over the age of ~30 besides being the token old one.


Anyway I am replaying Valkyrie Profile, at the A ending now. The gameplay remains quite fun even to this day as long as I ban the most egregious things (a listed headed by reaction abilities and breakable accessories, but I expand it a little to include a few other things like statusblockers, and weapons over a certain power threshold and/or capable of instant death). It's a more relaxed version of a challenge run I did back in 2004 (and posted about on the DL forums of the day. Wow, we've been doing this a long time). I have resets to Dragon Zombies, Mandragoras, Wrath, and Fenrir.

Also doing line counts, so I'll post that at some point!


Trials of Mana - Replaying this again. Riesz/Hawkeye/Angela this time, doing the Reisz/Hawkeye path which is the only one I've never done before. Like my last playthrough, I treat the item limit as 3 per battle instead of 9 which definitely gives boss fights some teeth. No actual resets yet though, at Beuca Island. Game remains a joy.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Valkyrie Profile - Beat this and the Seraphic Gate. I started relaxing rules a little in order to beat later SG bosses, especially since I missed the Sylphan Robe (dark-90, the only way to survive the angel bosses' great magic outside invincibility cheese). Relaxed all the weapon rules immediately, let myself one Angel Curio once I reached Gabriel, eventually two to deal with Carnage Beasts. Didn't beat the Hamsters; I could have, but it involved timing things better than I was capable of doing. It's okay, seeing them again is always funny.

Anyway it's a neat enough game and I was definitely worried I was overrating the core narrative but then the A ending shows up and yep it still hits incredibly hard. Lenneth realizing she has been a cog in a machine which erased her ability to love, the reframing of "unforgivable", her skewering of the gods' hypcrisy, I am here for it. Meanwhile Lezard and Loki sure do love chewing scenery.

Valkyrie Profile 2 - I'm not sure I ever thought I'd replay this. It's... god. What a roller coaster of a game this was. Anyway I'm midway through Chapter 3. The gameplay is... interesting? Odd balance but it kinda works. The plot... has a mix of interesting scenes in there but I'm definitely kinda frustrated that the game just has way too many people holding onto Big Secrets and it makes a lot of their interactions feel very artifical. We'll see how I feel about later developments now that I know they're coming.

Trials of Mana - Beaten with Angela (Grand Diviner), Riesz (Starlancer), and Hawkeye (Nightblade). Well Nightblade is certainly no Ninja Master, that's for sure. Didn't really find its unique tools very useful, it has a good L3 but eh, that's not that important in this game, not compared to how Ninja Master can generate SP so fast against multiple targets. Starlancer is generically solid the way it always has been, MT buffs good, Angela is Angela and takes over as crazy good as time goes on. No healer makes the 3 item limit sound tough but not really? It's just not that kind of game. I still died twice but it was due to outright death, not being out of resources, once to not evading Dolan's swipe after letting him get off Spiral Moon and once to Xan Bie who is just generally one of the most evil bosses in the game now.

DioField Chronicle - About three hours in. The characters aren't grabbing me and the gameplay is... interesting? Like a more real-timeish SRPG? I don't think it'll be as good as actual SRPGs but it's intriguing enough to keeo playing.

[Fudozukushi]

DioField Chronicle - About three hours in. The characters aren't grabbing me and the gameplay is... interesting? Like a more real-timeish SRPG? I don't think it'll be as good as actual SRPGs but it's intriguing enough to keeo playing.

I'd say the closest qualifier would be Suikoden V's war battles.

[Cmdr_King]

The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero-  oh damn finished this a few days ago.

Daaaamn okay y'all.  Y'all.  I'm not sure the last time I played a game that felt this complete?  Like yup, there's a few things that crop up that aren't answered and there's a second part to this adventure coming, but... there's just a nice complete arc and the level of escalation feels consistent and appropriate and this is very similar to the overall vibe of KH1.  Except damn y'all, fuckin' Gnosis children.  Game can just punch ya.

Anyway mostly wanted to tag this in here for later so I remember it.

[Tide]

Tokyo Mirage Sessions - Progressing very slowly. This game is *weird*. It's basically Persona, but instead of gods, demons and folklore, we have FE chars. Okay? The story is about Idols. Okay? I'm not sure where they are going with this so the plot has just been largely flying under the radar here. The gameplay is okay. I think it would have been *much* better if the game was 4 PCs instead of 3. That might cause some balance issues, but 3s feel very limiting especially since Itsuki can't be removed. Also, the FE chars are all restricted to FE1-3 and Awakening. Way to make good use of a licensed property when there's like...8 other games there.

The main thing I enjoy about this game is the dungeon design so far. Very cool environments so far. Battles are very rocket tag - enemies routinely 3HKO on neutral and some will have sessions (basically like FE doubles or follow up hits) which will hit 2-3x, meaning PCs can drop in a single turn. OTOH, it's also very easy for you to OHKO enemies due to sessions. I find the 3 PCs limit make it such that it is way more punishing for the player versus the opponent. Will see how this game develops.