What games are you playing 2023: WGAYP, Engage!

[Cmdr_King]

Devil May Cry 5-
So... I guess this is probably the best DMC game?  I dunno, maybe it's just having an affection for it being so straightfoward and streamlined.  Makes it stand out, y'know?

But like any time I was going "huh this feels a bit awkward" I popped into the customization shop and went "ohhh there it is", it's a nice feeling.  I suppose V doesn't work like that but I think for the amount you have to use him he's fine.

Anyway it's funny the series manages to keep going back to such similar wells and getting stuff out of it.  It's neat.  Just a very confident series, y'know?

[SnowFire]

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles: Resolve

Finally sat down and finished this off.  I played through part 1 (Adventures) in 2021, but then stalled out in Part 2 Case 2 just at the end of 2021 / beginning of 2022.  Went through Case 3 in bits & pieces, and then sat down and finished the rest of the game off in the past week or so.  Short version: it's great!  Definitely highly recommended.  Just..  yeah, case 2 and early case 3 can drag a bit.  Case 1 wasn't actually that amazing either, but it was short.  That said, case 3 eventually gets rolling, and the final case was very good and compelling, so a strong finish!  (The final case is also looooooong, but the good long.)

Random thoughts:
* The character work is REALLY good.  I liked basically all of the main cast in part 2.  In particular, Gina, who'd been a rather weak link in part 1, finally manages to find her stride. Herlock Sholmes remains a pretty great and unique take on Holmes.  (Side note: good-hearted steampunk goofball is probably closer to accurate to Doyle than some of the modern versions that portray him as a huge jerk.  Cough, cough, BBC Sherlock.)  There's one "new" character whose presence is a bit jarring for..  reasons.. but I suppose it's basically obligatory.

* The game is of the Ace Attorney series, so certain tropes are still enforced.  Seriously rolling my eyes at anyone telling me that this trial is obviously over, so there's clearly no need to do the cross-examination, right?  I think that threat is a little stale by now, we all know I'm gonna do it anyway.  Also, this is yet another AA where there's a cold case from X years ago tied to the Prosecutor Du Jour that becomes surprisingly relevant again in the present, just like Phoenix's first game, Apollo Justice, Dual Destinies, and Spirit of Justice.  But hey, if it works, it works.

* I was a little worried that Case 3 would end up like Spirit of Justice's DLC case, as that DLC case didn't really make tons of sense.  Both involve Implausible Science Fair Experiments Maybe Gone Right.  Luckily, Case 3 does end up making a reasonable amount of sense, even if it has to invoke a particular trope to explain things that you can only fire so often.  (Specifically, that the coroner & investigation team is just writing flat lies into the autopsy report.)

* One of CK's old posts from 2021 - on just the first half of the game, granted - took a rather "fuck the British Empire" take from the game. That was definitely a potential direction the game could have gone given how case 1 of "Adventures" works out with directly addressing extraterritoriality & racism, but..  not where the game ended up, IMO!  Rather, this is definitely a game about how cool Victorian England is, and how cool it would be to chill out there.  Sympathetic British characters all talk about how noble and wonderful the Japanese people they've met / meet are, and the nature of the game essentially has Japanese people being more true to Advanced Western Ideals than the British themselves at times, making the moral more "once the British understood we are just as awesome as them, we'll be gucci."  Not gonna hold the side JP nationalism against the game too much, it's no different from classic 20th century Hollywood making Americans the star of everything even in stories set elsewhere, but the game definitely doesn't end up a critique of imperialism or anything.  (There's a Polygon article from 2021 on the same point, although focusing more on one particular zany plot twist in the endgame, but I'd argue the point would stand even if that particular plot twist is thrown out as humor / bluff / etc.)  Ah well.  Chalk it up as a side effect of being a bit kid-friendly / all-ages appropriate, I guess.

* As usual, the game would have been helped a bit by a slightly larger cast so that the villainy options weren't so constrained.  On the other hand, I get that you don't want to make people's brains explode, and the game is plenty long as is.  Idk, hand Ryunosuke a dossier of like 3 Nebulously Bad Background Aristocrats who can just exist, and then surprise it's actually one of the people we met already and spent a bunch of time on, what a shock.

Spoilery comments / Nitpicks / things that don't quite work:

* I really do like that the big villain is a genuine vigilante who thinks they're the hero.  It's a character trope that is very often played sympathetically, but hell, even the vigilante who is played somewhat sympathetically - the original Reaper - quickly gets corrupted.  Yes, he really is killing "untouchable" baddies, but he's also on a general killing spree of people who annoy him or get in his way, so.. don't do this.

* The big twist with Mikotoba is hilarious.  Suuuuure Iris really should have been able to puzzle things out, but it's still cool.

* The Iris's parentage plotline introduced in Case 4 doesn't make tons of sense.  Dr. Wilson only went to Japan ~4 years ago or so, right?  This doesn't really fit, and should have been easily verified by someone of precocious talents.  Or did Sholmes seriously only tell Iris her first name, not her last name?  The impression I got from Adventures was that she didn't really greatly know her father since he moved overseas and only knew him from reading his notes, not that she was totally in the dark.   

* And while we're on that note.  While Victorian England certainly was an era with random orphans of unknown birth, the game explicitly says that the Van Zieks family was from the creme-de-la-creme social calls.  And apparently the Baskervilles had their own seal!  I get that fiction likes people of unknown parentage because it's dramatic, but this side doesn't add up either, there should have been somebody somewhere to take Iris.  It would have been so easily fixed, too - make it so she's a bastard daughter Klint had with some poor girl Les Miserables style.  Then it would make perfect sense why she wouldn't have an inheritance, would need a special favor to have a good doctor see the mother, and why the respectable family wouldn't necessarily raise her.

* While I understand the "need" to resurrect Kazuma because by law, best friends must find themselves randomly rivals kinda sorta, it's still a decision somewhat at odds with having Adventures work.  I don't necessarily mean on "how did Sholmes pull this off" grounds, just on, like, emotional / plot grounds.  Luckily the game actually puts some thought into how such a revelation would change the game and Ryunosuke's motivation, so well done there, just still a tad jarring.

* While we're on that note, the world of GAA seems to be one where Japanese people are basically indistinguishable from Brits, in appearance or in accent.  Van Zieks' new apprentice isn't obviously Asian, nor is the mysterious King of Bohemia sprawled on Sholmes's couch.  This is…  wishful thinking, and not what you'd do if you'd want to make racism a theme, but sure why not.  (Also, it makes Case 4 make the British come off as very gallantly open-minded for the era.  Can you imagine, like, two non-Europeans being entrusted with investigating high matters of state in 1890 America?)

* Speaking of things from Adventures slightly undercut by later revelations…  wait, Yujin Mikotoba called Susato back to Japan not because of suspicious international conspiracies, but solely over the petty point of "protecting" Iris's heritage?  Really?  Eh.  I guess they had to come up with something to explain it, but I don't buy it.  (Of course, I think the characters were being monsters by not telling Iris immediately about Dr. Wilson's death, but chalk it up to characters in fiction, especially mystery fiction, being inexplicably cagy about such things.)

* I'd kind of presumed earlier on that some sort of diplomatic shenanigans would be involved, but it turns out to be a rather more personalized plan.  Given that, Seshiro's villain motive makes a bit less sense.  Maybe the plotline should have made him just friends with The Real Villain instead?  The writers try to let him "off the hook" somewhat by saying he was ordered / pressured into it, but he lives freaking on the other side of the world.  Additionally, to the extent there's blackmail, it's blackmail that cuts two ways and could rebound on Mr. Real Villain too.  He's an important person (Minister of Foreign Affairs!), so it's hard to see why he doesn't laugh it off as "Hahaha couldn't interpret this telegram bye."

* The very lategame zany twist the Polygon article complained about referenced above, involving aid from an unexpected source - https://www.polygon.com/22612944/the-great-ace-attorney-chronicles-british-empire-critique-ending-analysis-spoilers - I was really expecting this to be a giant bluff.  Mostly because Sholmes is portrayed as flat broke and considered a bit of an overhyped fraud, so him just preying on a stressed out person with some lies would make sense, it's not like we see this mysterious patron.  That said, even if the twist is taken straight, it's fair enough.  The idea that it'd take someone up top to really get rid of trouble is fair enough to me - that was one of the problems with Spirit of Justice, you can't use logic to convince someone who outranks you to stop outranking you.  You're gonna need to use someone who outranks THEM.


This should unblock me for my large backlog of visual novel-y stuff...  House in Fata Morgana?  428 Shibuya Scramble?  Paradise Killer?  The new AI The Somnium Files that got mixed reviews? Lots of options.  Along with some of the new RPGs, of course...  8PT2?  Hmm.

[Cmdr_King]

Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation- breezed through all of this.  So...

I think it was a bit unfair to play this in close proximity to Engage, because yeesh it makes the gimmick maps and the ways they don't work stand out way more strongly.  I gather this was certainly the broad opinion when it came out too, but yeah no they reuse several of these ideas in Engage and put way more thought and execution into them.  And of course, Fates HP plot means I sure was glad to be playing on Casual because I rather constantly underestimated how lethal enemies were, although even then it does kinda highlight how badly the royals leave the retainers in the dust.  Just, absolutely destroyed, a few keep up or join at good levels so they can get contribute but it is just not even close (except Elise she's bad). 

Anyway so I have said this the entire game but the writeup should commit, this game is kinda like if every plot point was treated about the way the orphanage scene in FFVIII was.  I understand what, emotionally and thematically, the point of most of their plot decisions are, I get where they want to go with this, but they at so many turns just take a weird detour that only raises further questions.  It feels like they just didn't have a chance to polish this script but like... in every regard this is presented as the 'real' story.  Birthright is Corrin being groomed to be a 'proper' royal by Ryoma and falling apart when they just can't manage it in the end, Conquest is Corrin flailing at an impossible situation arising from Xander's stubborn pride, but Revelation is Corrin's choices and demeanor shining through and moving the plot forward.  It's weird!  It's like... poorly written as described but not even bad?  Honestly I think I might like it the most of the three.  but I am not sure why this game turned out this way.

[Tide]

Doing a Challenge run for FF6, playing the Advance version since there are 2 bonus dungeons and I don't like playing hacks in general. Anyway, so the twist to this replay is that we're going to assign points to each character and use a ratio system for determining parties. I've waffled on some numbers during the initial hours of the game, but finally decided on what to roll with. Crucially, the challenge doesn't even take off until the party regroups back in Narshe since that is the first time you actually have control on who you place in the party. Also, because Magic is broke in FF6, I'm going to assign an Esper limit to each PC so that you can't just dump Espers on everyone. This I'm still playing around with but will probably have my final decision once I reach the top of Zozo. So the basic rules can be summarized like this:

1) Each PC is assigned a set number of "Ratio points". Parties cannot exceed a total of 8 points. The tiers for each PC are basically broken down as such:
5s: Terra, Celes (Obvious)
4s: Edgar, Mog, Shadow (Waffled on Edgar being a 5, but settled on 4 because his WoR is definitely weaker plus he will have one less esper choice than the girls)
3s: Sabin, Gau, Relm, Gogo (swapped Relm with Strago as Strago is more projecty)
2s: Sezter, Strago (Waffled on Sezter being a 3, but his main strength comes from Early Fixed Dice. And raiding Kefka's tower early is risky, so going to go with a lower value)
1s: Locke, Cyan (Waffled on Locke being a 2, but decided to go for a bell curve shape, so this works. Also, Locke is generally preeetty bad until late)
0s: Umaro (Is Umaro)

For the most part, I followed the DL Char ranking chart and modified it some based on my own playstyle and knowledge. Not perfect by any means, but a good place to start!

2) Each PC has a set number of espers they can learn from. Once they choose that esper, that Esper becomes off the table for everyone else and is theres. There are a total of 31 espers in FF6A, so the breakdown went something like this:

4 Espers - Relm only (Relm's a project and I think if you are willing to sink 3 points and time into her, she should at least pay off)
3 Espers - Terra, Celes, Strago (Makes sense plotwise and justifies the 5s for the girls. Strago is generally weaker than Relm as a pure caster so I want something else to help him out)
2 Espers - Basically everyone else
1 Esper - Locke, Sabin (Sort of a balancing decision. Sabin is basically used very often. Locke...I was going to give him a higher cost to start, but since he's dropped to 1, giving him only 1 esper to offset).

End Esper count = 4 + 9 + 16 + 2 = 31. Of course one of those comes from beating a Super boss and another is basically at the end of the game dungeon so hey. In practice, this is probably going to feel more restrictive.

Everything else is on the table. No use of obvious cheese stuff like Vanish Doom. The advance version doesn't allow it anyway. So far, I'm at the outskirts of Zozo. To the surprise of no one, Edgar kinda wrecks the WoB pretty hard. Using a team of Edgar/Sabin/Locke (4+3+1) and hardly taking any damage because Edgar just confuse locks everything so far. I've never done the tower climb in Zozo without Celes' healing though, so this will be fun.

KAN was probably the first time I've actually decided to use Gau because I couldn't just power through to the bottom with a team of 4. The split ended up being Terra/Sabin (5+3), Edgar/Gau (4+4) then Celes gets Locke and Cyan (5+1+1). Edgar and Gau basically demolished their battles since Brawler's Stone can hit most if not all the enemies and they can all be confused locked. Edgar also has BioBlaster as a fallback. Kefka then dies to Celes' team. Runic lock stops Kefka from doing anything dangerous, while Locke and Cyan go on the offense.

Zozo Climb: So nothing eventful happens until here. This is where the real fun starts since you usually bring with you a team of 4. In this challenge, that's not  possible due to the ratio limitation. I run Edgar/Sabin/Locke. Edgar at this point, is still god. Noiseblaster wrecks randoms something fierce and lets Locke stock up on stuff. Sabin then does all the work. The main scare aside from the Dancer enemies are the Hill Gigas as they can do Magnitude 8 as a death counter. Without Celes, healing the entire party requires 3 Hi-Potions so they go down pretty quick if you get an unlikely string of counter rolls. Boss at the top died super quick. Sabin with 2 Earrings and AuraBolt dealt about 650 damage and Locke can pump out a little less than that but still very solid (550-600 without double Moonring Blades).

Opera: I forget where the switch to the ceiling was and end up with only about 3 minutes to stop Ultros from turning Celes into Wile E Coyote. Also, because the game forces me to use Celes and Locke, I have no choice but to run Cyan as the last person since every other available PC breaks the ratio cap. Doing the rat randoms with JUST Locke and Cyan is painful since they have no MT and Dispatch is complete random as to who it hits. Thankfully, Locke's double Moonring Blade set up is still strong enough to get kills quickly on the gold rats. I ended up getting to the target with just 13 seconds left on the clock. Ultros himself was also no slouch this tine. I had a limited supply of Green Cherries so Imp Song was actually of some concern. I also stupidly gave my Ribbon to Cyan instead of Locke so I couldn't just ignore it. At this point, I had assigned Kirin to Locke and Ramuh to Cyan in preparation for the long-game but Cyan's Dispatch was still the best damage I got. This meant I had to juggle between hitting Ultros with it, eating Acid Rain counters and healing myself. Probably the first time in a long while I had a tense Ultros 2 fight! He does eventually go down but boy did it take awhile. At one point, Cyan even goes down and I had to rush Locke to revive him despite being Imp'd.

Magitek Factory: Ugh. This place really sucks when you don't have Gau or the Figaro brothers. So Dispatch at least ignore defense. Thankfully. But the random targeting really leaves something to be desired. I have no choice but to hope Cyan targets the right enemy since the start of the dungeon, no one is really strong enough to pull even 2HKOs. Locke is even a more sad bastard here because all the enemies have high defense. So he went from dealing about 600 damage in Zozo to barely breaking 100. The randoms don't have a ton of damage other than the ProtoArmor but this makes them all horrible slogs. Once I get a level or two under my belt though, things get a lot smoother since now Cyan + Celes can 2HKO.

Shiva/Ifrit was an interesting battle. A lot of the danger can be mitigated with Runic. However, Celes is also my best damage dealer, so I sometimes forgo the defense and go offense with Ice on Ifrit to deal a whopping 800 damage. The rest of the fight is really about having Locke spam items for healing when needed, while Cyan does the heavy lifting. Enjoy this while it lasts, Cyan.

Number 24 and 128 are pretty sad. 24 basically goes down like a chump. I basically see nothing from him other than a basic L1 spell. Okay. 128 does better because I only have Locke/Cyan and he has three parts and Dispatch still has random targeting. However, 128 doesn't have high defense so double Moonring Blades to the rescue. Cyan chips in with the occasional Bolt 2, but I conserve his magic because of the following fight.

Cranes are tough. I forget which one absorbed Lightning and accidentally hit the wrong one with my first spell. Whoops. The also do a lot of damage since you are pincered. Locke has Cure 2 now though, so that keeps most of the team afloat. I have Sezter assist with Items while Cyan spams Bolt 2 until the right Crane dies to it. Cyan pulling out 1000 damage so early was not something I expected. Once one of the cranes go down, the rest is easy. I have Locke chip in with physicals while Sezter does the healing with Hi-Potions. Cyan then switches back to Dispatch spamming and the left cranes dies shortly after.

Picked up Mog, then did some Veldt training for Gau. Made way to the Seal Cave with Terra/Locke/Sezter

Sezter is pretty bad since Chocobo Stampede hits nothing, Flash doesn't even 3HKO and he lacks any spells. Still fine, because this area is mostly undead, so a lot of encounters was just "Drop Revivify or Phoenix Down". In the rare occasion where I wanted to save some supplies, Locke can deal about 300 x2 with 2 Hawkeyes and Terra can use Fire to light up the Zombie Dragons. Eventually Sezter gets strong enough to aid with killing Ings. Which is good because they were the enemies that were the most frequent but also cumbersome to deal with without the undead cheese.

Banquet sequence resulted in a max score, so I got all the goodies. Huzzah! Now on the way to Thamasa with Terra and Locke.

Thamasa: Strago joins up with Terra and Locke making for a perfect ratio score of 8. Flame House is basically the Strago and Terra show. By this point, Terra has Ice 2 and a Morph'd Ice 2 on Flame Eater basically 2HKOs him. Strago uses Aqua Rake on the adds and randos. Locke circle jerks the entire dungeon more or less.

Warring Triad Mountain: For the most part, more of the above. Aqua Rake is 2, Terra Fire 2 is good. Just have to watch MP. Locke's ST damage is passable, so I often have him hit something, the just use Fire to conserve MP. Also, I gave Strago the Heal Rod so he can heal my dudes without needing to have access to Cure. Ultros 3 is much worse than Ultros 2 and is basically a wuss. Morph'd Terra T2s really hurt and basically KOs him real quick. Afterwards, I have to carry Relm to complete the dungeon so we do as quickly as possible to get it over with.

The Air Force: In case it wasn't obvious, Terra is pretty much Godlike for the rest of the WoB, so she was the obvious choice here. I could run Sezter, Strago, Locke or Cyan as her teammates, or just take a ratio 3 Sabin/Mog. I settled for Locke and Cyan because both had Cure 2 and really, Morph'd Terra can handle most other stuff. The Air Force enemies can do quite a bit of damage, especially the Spit Fire. Luckily, having had Cyan learn Bolt 2 means he's not absolute deadweight and a Bolt 2 from Cyan + Locke physical is enough to kill one. As a bonus, these all carry Tinctures, so I spent my MP pretty freely. Ultros 4 is still a wuss because Terra. As for the Soul Cannon/Plane boss thingy, it also died really quick because Terra T2s and some occasional help from Cyan. Any actual damage they could put out, my two Cure 2 bots can handle it allowing Terra to go nuts.

Floating Continent: Really dangerous area. I'm forced to carry Shadow for a bit. Eventually realized that the escape point is near the end so I just killed Shadow off to run my 8 point party. Certain formations are real scary or tanky. The Platinum dragons are the only scrub enemies because they die to a MT Bolt 2 from Terra. As for the rest...Brainpans, Apocrypha are also weak to Lightning. So Cyan and  Terra can MT and deal good damage here. They are still dangerous thanks to Smirk and the Level spells which can occasionally hit. Misfits are real dangerous and you should cheese them out because only Terra has Fira and when unfocused, the damage isn't enough and then Lifeshaver really hurts, so better to toss a Revivfy. Dragons are tanks. Lots of HP, can counter with Snort which can ruin all sorts of attempts at killing them. I usually just leave these to Terra and have Cyan and Locke be Cure 2 bots.

Atma Weapon - Terra carry basically. Morph'd Fire 2 does 5000 damage on neutral and thanks to the high AP value of enemies here, Terra has a really long Morph timer. Atma's pretty dangerous if you let it get going so I do cast Kirin to help with the heals and just have the Cure 2 bots do their thing. On free turns, Locke steals and was able to get a Ribbon from it, so very nice.

Escape Sequence - I murder Celes because who needs her when Terra can basically carry the team? Terra with T2s carry more or less.

WoR Time! I grab Sabin from Tzen to immediately give me an 8 point party.

Moblitz: Phunbaba's 1000 needles is the main concern, but the dude is no pushover. I don't have Cure 2, so unlike what I usually do, I have to recruit Sabin and get him to assist here. Celes basically keeps them both healthy while Sabin does all the damage. Takes awhile because one Aurabolt a piece deals only about 1200 damage and Phunbaba has 15000 HP or something. He does eventually die and I never even saw 1000 Needles this time. What a chump.

Figaro Caves - Sabin uses Fire Dance. With the Mag boosts from Stray, he can pretty effectively MT KO most enemies. Any stragglers get killed by Ice 1 from Celes.

Tentacles - So Edgar is auto forced here but he basically does one action and then nothing else because the Tentacles keep Seizing him. I imagine this fight to be a headache in an Edgar solo. So for the most part, this was a Sabin/Celes carry while Edgar used Bioblaster than basically sat there and circle jerked. Fire Dance + Ice 2 quickly kills 2 off, and once that happens, the rest of the fight is cake. Having both Sabin and Celes with RunningShoes equipped basically makes this a cakewalk.

Darill's Tomb - I go through most of the dungeon with just Sabin and Edgar. The enemies are basicallly freebies because all of the die instantly to Revivify except for the Malboro, who can get Fire Dance'd + Drill. DULLAHAN on the other hand is a real asshole. Lots of damage from Holy and Ice 3. And at this point I don't really have gear to try and ward this damage. With no Cure 2, I can't really keep both brothers alive because he deals damage way faster than I can heal. Charka helps but its basically White Wind so as soon as Sabin gets hit, it loses potency. I don't make it far before he blasts me with a MT Ice 3 and wipes me. On the 2nd attempt, I kill Edgar and use Celes instead. Celes equips RunningShoes again while Sabin goes double Earrings. The entire strategy is for Celes to be fast enough to Runic lock while Sabin does all the legwork with Aura Bolt. Like with Phunbaba, this takes awhile, but it does get the job done. Any damage Celes takes can be healed with Charka, while I let Sabin go below 50% before I blow a X-Potion or two.

With the airship, we can do basically anything else now. So first things first, I grab Bum Rush. Sabin is now the best damage dealer in the entire roster for awhile. I run back to Moblitz and have Phunbaba a second time with just Celes and Sabin.  Different battle but same story. Celes keeps them both healthy and Sabin basically wrecks house. Then, I head towards Narshe to grab Mog and the Moogle Charm. I tried fighting the Ice Dragon but he basically murders me with Absolute Zero. Whoops.

After getting Mog, I get the Moogle Charm and cheat some annoying backtracking. I do Mt. Zozo next though to grab Cyan since Ratio 1 fillers acting as Cure 2 bots worked pretty well for the 1st half of the game. Getting Cyan is no issue. I fight Stormy here and using Terra and Sabin, I do manage to kill him in a close damage race. Terra was at 400 HP and Sabin was at 100. Bum Rush + Morph'd Tier 2s did its magic. After Cyan, I run to the Veldt and grab Gau, then trigger Shadow's recruitment. The Senior Behemoth dies to the same song and dance and it's undead form goes down to a P.Down. Then I make the trip to the Arena and finish off recruiting Shadow. So far so good.

I grab the Minerva at this point cause it's easy and a major piece of equipment for the ladies. Now that I have some better gear, I raid Kefka's tower just for the Fixed Dice because Sezter kind of sucks. He is still nothing special, but at least Fixed Dice make him "okay" instead of "Locke with no benefits". Afterwards, time to tackle to Phoenix Cave to grab my last Ratio 1 character.

The Phoenix Cave is real annoying. Settling on the two teams wasn't easy either. I wanted both teams to have healing and good damage, but due to the way I've split the Espers, this mean bringing Cyan along and Cyan's glory has long been gone. So I run teams: Celes/Sabin and Edgar/Shadow. I then give Seraph to Shadow to teach him some recovery spells. At this point, we're ready to go. The 1st floor enemies are real dangerous. Namely Nercomancers and Face. Face have Smirk and Stop goes through Ribbon. Yuck. They also have 1000 needles and my HP pools haven't reach 2K yet, so this is a clear 2HKO. Necromancers can Zombie, have powerful magic and even X-Zone. Luckily they are undead so you can cheese them out and should. A lot of the underground is more about MT and Sabin at this point is pretty much a beast since he is spending so much time with Stray. Air Blades or Fire Dance both can hit close to 2-3K damage, allowing for MT OHKOs. So Celes just does backup healing most of the time. On the other side, Shadow has his scrolls and Edgar has a couple of MT Tools. I do get T2s finally on the other party members and Bolt 2 to Celes thanks to the elemental shields. I haven't banned these, so might as well go ahead and use them! Although just because they can, doesn't mean everyone is good with them. Edgar's T2 is notably pretty bad in the Quartet, but its stronger than Flash, so it has merit. Also, this makes Maduin an interesting Esper since its short term power vs. long term benefit. I obviously chose the former since Terra with T2s rekt the WoB.

There are no boss battles (I skipped over the Flame Dragon), but the randoms area deadly enough that at one point, I run into Necrox2, Face and this umbrella enemy and ALMOST wipe from full health. Sabin got Zombie'd so I had to quickly off the Necros, then spent a large portion of time being Stopped and eating damage from the 2 enemies. At one point, I go down to critical with Celes and I am constantly praying that I don't get sprayed by 1000 Needles because my health was almost always below that while trying to recover. Everytime I res'd Sabin, Umbrella dude would use Flash Rain and kill him. Rude. I eventually decide to get Celes to a safe enough HP level and blast him to kingdom come with Ice 2. Turns out, having Zoneseek equipped for over 7 levels or something results in like 69 Magic Power so he kind of explodes. Finally, I reach the end and recruit Locke. Going to have to redo this area with Mog to kill the Flame Dragon, but hey, Progress!

I gamble one of the Behemoth Suits to get the Snow Muffler for Mog. With this and his magic set, he's now a tanky durable healer. No Magic boosting but we can make do without. Still vulnerable to magic though, so gotta be careful. With Locke, I go back to Narshe to grab Ragnarok. The choice between the Sword and the Esper is pretty obvious in this playthrough. Since Ultima can only be taught to one person through the Esper, it's use is otherwise pretty limiting unless you want to gamble on Metamorphisis for items. That sounds like a special kind of hell. Maybe if I'm like super bored or doing a regular playthrough and just want to power grind but it's pretty obvious that the sword is going to be the better option since it's available for 4 party members, 3 of which who are the game best characters anyway. I also run back and kill the Snow Dragon with Mog/Sabin/Locke. With my significantly better equipment, this was pretty easy. One problem though is that I still do not have a way to thaw Freeze quickly. I might end up assigning Ifrit to someone just for that since Esuna doesn't heal it and Ribbons don't block it, making it nasty when it hits. Tritoch dies similarly easily with my new gear. Sabin does all the heavy lifting while Mog just heals him as needed. Locke does like 14 damage from his physicals and is basically deadweight but we needed him to open doors earlier so whatever. Yeti cave opens up and it's time for Umaro. Tonberry is pretty scary with Step Mine counters but thankfully, I only run into one. Most of the other randoms get killed by Sabin using MT Razor Gale. Umaro goes down to the tried and tested strategy of Sabin carrying, but what else is new?

Earth Dragon - So at this point I'm feeling pretty confident. I go into this fight with Locke/Sabin/Mog/Umaro, thinking "Alright bro, what's the worst you can do". Get hit by double Quake and instantly lose everyone but Locke. Uh oh. I then play a war of attrition using Cure 2 to repeatedly bring Locke to a safe HP level and then attempting to Res Sabin so he can get off a Bum Rush before dying. I manage to get 3 hits in but eventually get overwhelmed. Second try, I cast Float on everyone before hand (should've done that initially) and laugh track all the way to the end. In most normal plays, I'll be running something like Terra/Celes/Edgar+1 and the Quakes can be handled with MT Cure 2s, but challenge runs always remind you that hey, enemies can actually do things sometimes.

Owzer's Mansion - I run Terra/Locke/Sezter. For the most part, this was largely the Terra show again. Tier 2s still kinda wreck randoms something fierce. For everything that survived, Locke/Sezter can usually combine their attacks together to get the kill. As for Chardy, when you realize what his gimmick is, the fight is pretty elementary. Morph'd Fire 2s bring the painting down real quick and Sezter added one or two high value dice rolls here for the finish. I grab Mog + whoever after raid the Cultist Tower of it's goodies.

Doma Castle - I run Edgar/Sabin/Locke. Sabin basically murders the entire dungeon on his own because his magic boosted Razor Gales basically do like 3500 damage so things basically die instantly. Edgar hits the Dream Stooge with the Air Anchor and Sabin slowly kills the other two with ST damage. Locke's physicals chip in a hit or two here but he's largely useless and just around as a warm body. As for Wrexy boy, I don't have X-Zone, so I can't cheese this fight. Luckily, he stupidly decides to possess Locke. Thanks dude. I prompt murder Locke, then Edgar uses Drill while Sabin attacks with Bum Rush. I forget why I didn't use Razor Gale. Probably because the numbers were pretty paltry and it's not like you can actually kill the adds. He doesn't possess another target so he eventually dies a somewhat slow death compared to all the other bosses thus far.

Zone Eater's Belly - I get crushed by the ceiling once because playing this on a phone doesn't have the best control scheme. Falling ceilings OP. Laggy, pls nerf.

Ancient Castle - The road down to the Castle is littered with enemies that have really high Magic Defense or something because T2s were barely breaking 100 damage even with 70 Magic Power Celes. The team I sent down was Celes/Locke/Strago/Umaro, so the lack of magic casting was offset somewhat because Celes/Locke/Umaro all have usable physicals. Just not anywhere near as good as the Magic I can sling. Strago learns some Lores effortlessly as I make my way, which is nice. The Master Tonberry isn't anywhere near as scary as the regular ones since he doesn't seem to counter with Step Mine (or if he does, it's a low% chance as I never saw it). The Gladius is kinda eeeh as a weapon, but sure, I'll take it.

Once we get to the castle, I immediately swap out Odin for Raiden because Meteor is just such a meh spell. Also, I'd probably end up with Crusader and he learns it 10x as fast, so whatever. I fight the Blue Dragon but he's kind of a chump and dies pretty quickly to the team's offense. I have Strago cast Haste and bounce spells off him due to him wearing a Reflect Ring as all the enemies have Auto-Reflect. Now, the Samurai Soul enemy, ooh boy. He was an asshole. Unfortunately, one has to fight him to get the Offering.

Samurai Soul has 3 really nasty abilities. The first is Assassin Blade. It is single target ID. This can be easily dealt with from a Phoenix Down, but being able to drop anyone in one hit is obviously some cause of concern here. The second is Throw X Weapon. Like Assassin Blade, it is single target. However, it is scarier because it cannot be blocked by ID immunity and deals like 7800-9999 damage. Celes does have Life 3 by now, so one could juggle Reviving with Life 3 Casts to hold ground and win by sandbagging. However, his 3rd threat ruins any thought of that. Gil Toss does about 1200 damage to everyone and I believe this damage focuses. So the less party members you have, the more damage it does. This makes him extremely deadly since you need all 4 characters alive at this point or the damage probably just wipes you. You also need them relatively healthy or you will be spending multiple turns juggling all the reviving again. I do beat him in one try by keeping Offense down strictly to Locke/Umaro. Celes occasionally helps, but she's usually busy between Reviving, casting Life 3 and the occasional Cure 3 as needed. Strago can't do much here, but ? and the Heal Rod mean he can at least assist in some way. Plus Haste was good to give Celes more turns. At one point, I come extremely close to wiping when Samurai Soul does Throw Ashura on Celes -> Gil Toss -> CleanSweep. This sequence insta-kills Celes. Then as I lock in Locke to P.Down Celes, Gil Toss kills everyone but Locke who goes down to 107 HP. Locke revives Celes, then CleanSweep hits and kills Locke and drops Celes to 2 HP. So yeah, I win this one by the skin of my teeth. Good times.

Just a few quests left including the optional espers, namely revisiting some areas to wipe out some of the still existing bosses. Not sure what to do about Magimaster yet. I might bring Celes along since she's spec'd really well for that fight. Buuuut that means climbing up the tower legit and THAT sounds terrible.

Party thoughts and assigned Espers so far:

Terra (Maduin, -, -) - Even at 5 points, still the best character in the game. Very limited parties doesn't matter much when you can mostly one woman carry. I gave her Maduin due to the +1 Mag on level bonus PLUS Terra with Tier 2s and Morph can easily hit the damage cap anyway. So Tier 3s were kinda superfluous. Basically the best at damage. Even her healing isn't bad because of good magic power despite only have Cure 1/2. Tier 2s basically carry all the way through most of the game. I still have 2 empty slots yet and haven't decided on what else to give her.

Locke (Kirin) - Okay, for a Ratio 1, Locke is surprisingly good...as long as you give him the Genji glove. With it, he's able to do equal damage to the other chars most of the time. And with the Bandit's Glove, he can steal twice in one go which fattens up your inventory nicely. Downsides are many, but aside from being kind of glassy, Locke has no MT, so instantly he falls behind like everyone but Cyan. He's also extremely one dimensional since with only 1 Esper slot, he has no offensive magic. The logic for doing this was basically, "Well Cure 2 pretty much carries on healing, and you don't need super high magic for great healing with Cure 2", ensuring he can always do something as a Ratio 1 slot in. At ratio 2, he'll be pretty bad so maybe in the future he'll be Ratio 2 with +1 Esper slot or ratio 1.5.

Edgar (Bismark, Starlet) - Edgar wrecks the WoB something fierce. Noiseblaster is too good. Yeah he has other tools, but I haven't used them much. Maybe Drill or Chainsaw for a boss. I gave him Bismark pretty much strictly for the Vigor+2 at level up, in preparation of his late game. As a Ratio 4 though, he's pretty middling. WoB isn't hard enough that I feel not having him was a cmplete loss and in WoR, he a stretch in the middle (right after getting the airship) where he is pretty mediocre without any Esper boosts. I got more use out of him later once I got some better gear, but yeah, biggest surprise in the run so far. Probably should go down 1/2 a point to 3.5 and see what happens.

Sabin (Stray) - Does what he does basically. Even on a normal playthrough, you'll probably be largely using his Blitz's anyway, so the Magic Boost on level is probably more important. Snags OHKOs pretty easy and even MT OHKOs with Fire Dance earlier. Given his early join in WoR and the fact that you end up running smaller parties most of the time, one of the few things I didn't anticipate was how quickly you might level. And with Stray's +1 Mag, this translates to a lot of additional magic power, making Sabin something of a major powerhouse. He even has some decent healing for smaller parties thanks to Charkra. Probably should go up 1/2 a point to Ratio 3.5 instead. 

Celes (Zoneseek, Phoenix,-) - So while I had Terra with more Short-Term, offense oriented build, Celes is basically the opposite. More defensive + status magic build. No Espers assigned until the start of WoR made her pretty weak to start. HOWEVER, the +2 Mag from Zoneseek let her quickly catch up. Once I got access to Elemental Shields, she can start producing actual damage since I have more than Ice 1 now that I can sling. A different build style might make her more worthwhile at Ratio 5, but yeah she's still really good.

Cyan (Ramuh, Unicorn) - Along the same lines as Locke, but not as worthwhile because Cyan falls off pretty quick. Dispatch at least is ITD so he's more useful than Locke in this challenge for the Magitek factory. I did give him Ramuh to supplement him with some attack magic for the long game. Otherwise, Unicorn for Cure 2 back up as with Kirin on Locke. He's about what you expect. For a Ratio 1, nice and easy to at least be a warm body who can toss healing around.

Gau (Siren, -) - Gau doesn't care too much about Espers if you plan on using some Rages. I plan so, so I'm not too concerned regarding his magic list. The tough part I think for using Gau is 2 parts. For starters, his training requires going to the Veldt specifically, where you don't get EXP and Gau gets very limited AP. So, if you want to get some extra levels or learn magic FOR Gau, you actually have to do 2 training trips. That's pretty yucky. But also adding to that, you then have to know what Rage does what. And with over 200 choices, that's tough if you don't have like Meeple FF6 knowledge. I've been referencing some guides but even still it's a hassle. In the future, he's probably better as a ratio 2. This will give you the incentive to use him more. I hardly bring him along because the need to grind Veldt for new Rages and the knowledge needed for the new Rages you get is a real mind tax. Wish there was someway you can tell in-game what each Rage would give you. 

Shadow (Shoat, Seraph) - Shadow's reeeaal unique. He doesn't need L2s because Throw + Elemental Sabres are basically better AND he has Scrolls for MT. He can also get some hard to hit elements from Throw, so him and Edgar are basically best friends. As a result, his magic set ended up being heals + some status magic via Shoat. On the whole, Shadow is actually real good. Like I want to use him actively most of the time because he can put out real damage with relatively little investment into Magic/stats. The only problem is that he's super expensive. Sabres aren't cheap at 7000 Gil a pop. And yeah, late game there isn't MUCH to buy because storebought equipment gets outclassed by a plethora of actual good stuff. But 7000 a throw? On randoms? That drains money real quick. I'll still leave him as a Ratio 4 though.

Sezter (Phantom, Terrato) - Kind of bad. At least his weapon is long range. Flash and Chocobop are good but one doesn't do a lot of damage and the other is too easily avoided right now. Doesn't matter though since WoB Sezter is pretty forgettable regardless. His real value comes in WoR and he needs both the Offering AND the Fixed Dice. Granted once you get both, the game basically explodes, but until then, he's a slightly better Locke on account of having actual MT before elemental shields but not much else. I'd change his cost to like 1.5 or something.

Mog (Shiva, Golem) - Pretty unremarkable in the WoB since there is no real reason to ever even recruit him. In WoR, there are some fights in the Arena that benefit off his equip list. And "Physical tank healer" is actually valuable in Advance where M-Eva no longer functions as actual evade either. Dance is pretty obsolete at this point since Mog's entire job is to absorb physical hits and cast Cures when necessary. Moogle Charm is godlike but Mog's actual combat worth probably isn't worth a 4. Like Edgar, probably should be 3.5 instead.

Strago (Carbuncle, -, -) - Uh yeah, Strago should join the 1s. When you aren't actually grinding he joins way too late to get any WoB Esper time and since his recruitment first requires Relm, he's basically going to be delayed before rejoining. Overall, he's way more projecty than Relm because at this point, I still only have his starting 3 Lores. For contrast, at this point, I can basically turn Relm into a nuke relatively painlessly. Basically massively hurt being overpriced on points + late join doomed him from never being in the active party.

Relm (Tritoch, -, - ,-) - We all know the story here. Relm has no esper time in WoB, but assuming you get her faster than I did in WoR, she can start adding real value quickly since you start picking up some good espers. I have enough now that I can actually round out her spell list with stuff so that's probably the next step. Probably not worth a ratio 3 but a ratio 2 or even 2.5, probably.

Umaro - Well he's a meme more or less. I add him in because he's a warm body and warm bodies are valuable. But even at 1 point or 0.5 point, I'm not sure I'd ever actively bring him along. So yeah, 0 sounds right!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Octopath Traveler 2

Finished all the chapter 2's now, I think? Plus Osvald's Chapter 3 which is actually just a Chapter 2, I'm not sure why they decided to pretend his first chapter is actually two different ones but maybe that'll become clear later.

Decent game but I do wish it didn't feel so samey compared to the first. The improvements are mostly superficial things that don't matter much (there are limit breaks of a sort, everyone has two path actions instead of one) and it feels like it carries over all my core complaints about the first game, such as it being so darn slow. And the gameplay might as well be a copy for the most part. That said, I was reflecting on this yesterday; I wasn't really that enamoured with the first game at this point either, just because the second quarter of the stories are mostly kinda underwhelming filler as you get to know your characters more. To some extent this is what you'd expect at this point in a story, but being hit with eight of them in a row tends to drag. The gameplay is also mostly too easy at this point, again in both games. Other thoughts on the stories so far:

-Ochette: hasn't really hooked me yet
-Cassti: Was already one of my favourite so far because of the combination of the core mystery being intriguing and Cassti herself being my type of character, but then the Winterbloom C2 got me in the feels on top of that, so yeah, clear favourite at the moment.
-Throne: There's definitely some potential here and Father is certainly detestable in the best way.
-Osvald: Mmm, revenge. Loved the portrayal of the prison. But the most recent chapter was... kinda fillerish? It depends on what the point of the revenge tale ends up being, I suppose.
-Partitio: In proud Octopath merchant tradition, he himself is quite endaring, but the story feels a bit muddled. Not nearly as muddled as Tressa's, at least, but.
-Agnea: The lower-stakes story is kinda refreshing, but it hasn't strongly hooked me either.
-Temenos: Temenos himself is delightful, I feel like I'm playing as a major villain but I'm not actually evil? Probably? Certainly isn't what I expected from this story regardless.
-Hikari: Pretty solid, Hikari himself is endearing and his Chapter 1 had a great hook. C2 is filler.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

Played Azure Gleam at last. It makes me angry.

Played Scarlet Blaze as a palate-cleanser. Decided to do Maddening this time. Maddening starts out crazy overtuned, just winning the first mini-battle in Chapter 4 (the first where difficulty mode matters) was a major slog, and the first two story battles (C4 Garreg Mach, C5 Lonato rescue featuring a freaking terrifying Byleth) were both extremely difficult. But the further things went on the more it turned into a normal playthrough. The game was throwing A-rank weapons at me left and right so as soon as I got the ability to use those (Chapter 10, when you get Master Seals), it turned into a very recognizable game indeed, albeit still harder than any other difficulty of course (and I did lose several times to the lategame rescue map, C15).

Goldeneye

It's been 22 years since I've played this, but I really liked it back in the day and I'm enjoying it now. It's definitely not the type of game I would ever seek out as a new game now (first-person games are just too viscerally violent for me), but the game's strong design does shine through. Beat the stages on Agent, then went through them all again on Secret Agent. I think this game has one of best second difficulties for replays, because not only do the enemy numbers get better, but the missions themselves get more involved in ways which would just feel like a slog or frustrating on a first run, but add a lot of spice when you already have a sense of the stage.

Current progress is that I've defeated all maingame stages on Secret Agent, Aztec on Agent (seriously this stage is brutal even on the lowest difficulty), and have obtained all the maingame Agent and Secret Agent time trial secrets (including Statue which I'm very certain I never got back in the day, because I didn't know about using diagonal movement to increase your speed... video games you so silly).

[Tide]

Nearing the end of what I presume is my FF6 ratio challenge. Still have MagiMaster, Kefka's Tower and prepping for the bonnus dungeons to go.

I go back and fight the Fire Dragon. He is...uh...bad at this point and basically goes down real easy. I then do some grinding for Lores/Magic for the last stretches of the game. Namely, I split up my espers pretty much so there's very few free slots. Terra takes Bahamut for Flare and then Raiden for Quick. Relm takes Palidor, Alexander and Leviathan for a mix of 5 elemental spells and Haste/Slow. Celes ended up taking Gilgamesh unintentionally.

Which speaking of, the bonus espers. So these include Leviathan, Gilgy and Cactuar. All 3 are boss fights so I get ready for them. Leviathan is pretty trash. Minerva + someone with Force Armor and Force Shield basically eat his Water MT damage for free. From there I roll Celes/Sabin/Umaro. Umaro dies on like Turn 2 but whatever, he's a meme anyway. Celes casts Life 3 on herself and Sabin for safety but really, I don't need it.

Next up is Gilgy. Unfortunately for me, Gilgamesh is a heck of a lot more competent than Leviathan. He's pretty similar to his FF5 form, with his Haste/Protect/Shell limit and Jump attacks...except his physicals hurt. A lot. How badly? How about 2400 damage in the back row? Yeah, so he instantly one shots peeps not under Protect pretty much. I initially try fighting him with just a 2 person party of Celes/Sabin/Umaro again, but this proves impossible because not only does Gilgamesh have a lot of damage, he also has unevadeable damage in Throw. My first attempt ended when he shanked me by throwing an Illumina at Celes' face. Whoops. Round 2, I decide to run a 4 man team of Edgar/Sezter/Locke/Cyan. Locke and Cyan are basically warm bodies. Sezter is the main damage dealer and Edgar heals and does the occasional assist. Battle starts, and I get a good rhythm going until Gilgy confuses Sezter. Uh oh. Sezter then murders his own team by cheating their pants off with Fixed Dice before Gilgamesh comes and boots his ass out of the fight. Lesson learned. ROUND 3 THEN - I load up Ribbons/Peace Rings on everyone, and try again. Cyan does have Protect from Unicorn so I start spamming that to help ward off some of the physical blows. Battle ends before Gilgy gets too obnoxious as Sezter does get lucky with a couple of high rolls on his first attack. On reflect, I might have been able to cruise here with Sezter casting Vanish or summoning Phantom since Gilgamesh is mostly physical. Ah wells.

Then there is Cactuar (or GIGANTUAR), who is a complete asshole. His whole deal is he spams 1000 Needles being a fast MF, he can do it very quickly. I believe he can double act with it, which is all kinds of fun. He counters physicals with Knockdown, a massive Havok-Wing like damage physical which basically kills whoever it hits (deals about 2800 damage from the backrow). And of course, he has the Cactuar evade and magic defenses so he's really tough to take down. The main issue here is that FF6 HP Pools just don't quite explode like they do in FF7 or FF8 (or even FFX to a degree). Most of your HP is within the low 2000s if you are around level 35-40 (which I think most of the DL agrees is pretty much endgame levels). So 1000 Needles twice in a row is pretty nasty!  Initially, I run Celes/Sezter/Cyan/Umaro for a 4 man team and try to absorb some hits. It really doesn't do much good though because Umaro basically commits suicide as soon as the fight starts. I then proceed to die like 3 or 4 times when he triggers a counter attack and Cactuar mauls me with a string of 1000 needles. By the 5th attempt, I've benched Umaro because he's basically doing fuck all anyway. I keep Celes/Sezter/Cyan and strap everyone with Running Shoes to keep up with him. I fight a mostly uphill battle because Celes can never get Reraise to really stick for more than a turn. Sezter basically dies after an attack thanks to Knockdown and Cyan is uh...Cyan. His magic is bad so his Cure 2 doesn't really help me out here after Revival. Another 3 or 4 tries, I get a winning run where Sezter gets lucky and rolls some high numbers within the first two turns. So I'm thinking, "Oh he's probably dead". He then proceeds to counter attack with 10 casts of 1000 Needles. I had Reraise on only one person and obviously no one was at full health here since I was juggling my defenses between Cyan and Celes. I die to the last casting of 1000 Needles before he also dies. Double KO. So yeah, it's probably possible to win, just improbable since I have to be at full health will all 3 PCs and have at least one Reraise cast. Well, fuck him. I make Celes learn Quick from Gilgamesh Esper, grind a bit for more HP (Sezter notably has Terrator so he gets a sizable HP Boost on level), then strap Green Berets and Red Caps on my PCs. With this, I finally hit 3000+ HP. I fight him for like 8th time or something this time, string together a pretty smooth fight after the initial turn scare. Quick giving me superior turn economy means Cactuar's speed is no longer as impactful and I can keep my healing and Reraises on hand.

Probably the best fight of the 3 new Espers! Also probably would be way easier with a full team I imagine since you'll have more tools and options and better PCs for the job, but hey. A challenge is a challenge.

[Twilkitri]

Half-Life 2 Episode 1 (Steam)

Played through. I guess it was fine, I think the civilian evacuation sequence was the least enjoyable part.

On checking, I played through Half-Life 2 proper in 2017 and Lost Coast in 2020, so I guess check back some time in 2026 for my (minimal) thoughts on Episode 2.


Dragon Age: Origins (Steam)

Played through the main game. On normal, which may have been a mistake. But I guess I did beat it somehow.

I had previously been under the impression that Dragon Age was akin to a fantasy version of Mass Effect. Very much not the case.

Made the main character a Rogue which focused on bows as an analogue to playing sniper rifle classes in ME. Half the game later I finally came to terms with the fact that I barely ever had the character using a bow and stopped putting points into bow-related skills. I let all the other characters control their own levelups, which appears to have worked out well enough.

The first location I went to after the opening was Redcliffe, which was probably a bad idea. During the night sequence I could get through the upper battle easily enough, but consistently got worn down and destroyed by the lower battle. Eventually I determined that we were still able to travel back to the upper area during the lower battle and ended up surviving by getting some of the enemies to chase the party up there where we could get the stronger NPCs still guarding the upper area to help out, then heading back down to attract more etc. Of course this meant that all the weaker NPCs guarding the lower area died. Later read that I should not have gone here first.

Didn't really have this sort of trouble again for the majority of the rest of the game, at least. Mainly had issues when the party was up against particularly strong bosses or types of enemy (revenants), or when they were largely outnumbered (which is essentially what the lower battle here was, especially after the NPCs got picked off. One of the reasons for doing this sequence later was so that you could have a healer along to help prevent that). As far as being outnumbered is concerned, a significant amount of the time it was possible to alert part of the enemy forces and lead those away so as to not deal with them all at once.

The blood effects are very unnecessary.

I think the next thing I expect to play is Leliana's Song?


Glass Masquerade 3: Honeylines (Steam)

Cleared all puzzles.

The imagery is better than the maingame imagery from Glass Masquerade 2, but they annoyingly have all the puzzles using a fixed frame again. Further, in what's presumably an attempt to change things up, they've added a few separate rulesets to the puzzles - but it feels to me like the structure that had to be added in order to facilitate this has led to the puzzles actually feeling even more samey - and this is despite me setting it to select random rules for each puzzle. I think they have made some changes to the systems in patches since I finished so maybe things have improved in those regards?

Glass Masquerade 2 had some good expansions so hoping that 3 will have some as well.


リトルハーツ (Little Hearts) (Steam)

Played through. (On normal.)

Haven't played any other SRPG Studio games so not sure how much this game was using built-in features versus custom features.

Has some interesting features. Lots of weapons have skills attached: basic throwing weapons all have a skill which prevents them from criticalling, there are a few separate ranges of weapons which allow the user to make follow-up attacks (which can't be done normally), a lategame enemy-only range of weapons all have a skill which makes the weapons act as effective weapons if the user initiated the combat. There is a 'focused' status which can be applied in a number of ways, wears off after one battle (or staff use) and that has various effects - for example Killer weapons all have a skill which guarantees a critical if the user is focused (so long as they aren't going against the weapon triangles). Most of the top-level staffs can only be used if the user is focused.

Each of your combat units has a unique preferred weapon, which you can later upgrade. (Other weapons cannot be upgraded.) This isn't a large-cast game - there's around 17 units, and the units which are going to be usable on each map are always fixed. (Don't know whether the game has permadeath or not, but it seems like it shouldn't given these factors.) Have some weapon lists etc up at http://twilkitri.fewiki.net/stuff/Little%20Hearts.xlsx - bearing in mind the likelihood of my having mistranslated/mistranscribed/misunderstood things and/or condensed things in questionable ways.

Game very much takes the gloves off in Map 25, then again in Map 30, after being fairly placid beforehand, at least on Normal.

[Scar]

Someone send me a link to the discord!

Anyways, I am trying to completed Octopath Traveler 2 before FF16.

I just beat all the characters chapters, so just need to find the path for the big bad.

Hikari, Osvlad, and Throne are in the 60s, but I would swap the 4th person in randomly, so the other characters are considerably lower leveled. Might need to do some grinding.

[Cmdr_King]

Sonic CD (Anniversary Edition)- played this.  It's... weird how even with the unified Genesis Mechanics the anniversary edition adds it still feels very unique, albeit not usually in a way that's better than its peers.  I didn't dig too much into completion (I... do not grok the UFO stages at all), very much just a quick and dirty run, but the level design is a lot more back and forth than any of its peers, and a lot more focus is on unique boss mechanics (chases, races, the treadmill) than on either the stages or learning attack patterns.  It's honestly not amazing, but it's interesting to see this peek into how the series might have gone if Sonic 2 hadn't been a bone-breakingly popular megahit by the standards of the day.

[DragonKnight Zero]

  Talk about 4 Job Fiesta drove me enough to try a variant for FFT.  The format is meant to be similar to the FF5 one with various details below.

Ramza and 4 generics (with one oddball exception)  Gender split can be whatever.
5 Jobs will become available over the course of the game.  Once a Job is unlocked, at least one member of the party must have that Job as a primary class during story fights.  Abilities and RSM can only come from those 5 Jobs or universal skills (detailed later).  Guests are not restricted by this and can be whatever the hell they want.
Like all other challenges, the restrictions don't officially begin until Dortor.
Anything goes while grinding to unlock jobs with a few exceptions.  Move-Find Item, equipment theft, and Invite and Brave and Faith altering are not allowed unless their corresponding Job is unlocked.

One job will be selected from the following groupings by RNG and become available on the following schedule:

Group 1: Knight, Archer, Priest or Wizard  Available at start
Group 2: Monk, Thief, Oracle, or Time Mage.  Available after Windmill Shed
Group 3: Geomancer, Lancer, Mediator, or Summoner.  Available after arriving at Liionel Castle in Chater 2.
Group 4: Samurai, Ninja, Bard, Dancer, or Calculator  Available at start of Chapter 3 (I'm playing on console so Mime is a "hell no")
Group 5: Any of the above plus Chemist.  Available at start of Chapter 4

I also threw in Agrias, Mustadio, Rafa, or Malak into group 5 for spice.  Haven't made any rulings on how to handle special characters; I'll mull over it if I roll one.

Universal skills

  I chose to designate various skills from Squire and Chemist as universal and usable by anyone much like how all characters in FF5 can use Item.  For Squire, it's everything but Accumulate.  For Chemist, it's Potion, Antidote, Eye Drop, Echo Grass, Phoenix Down, and Equip Change.  At a bare minimum, Gained JP up is allowed for quality of life.
   Ramza's unique Squire stuff is banned.  Unless Mediator is rolled in which case he's permitted Cheer Up once he learns Praise (purely for the convenience for Brave raising and only in randoms)

  Probably forgot to mention something but feel free to ask.  I rolled (with outside help) Priest, Monk, Mediator, Samurai, and Dancer for my 5 Jobs.  And with that wall of text, onto the game.

  For the first time ever, Ramza got plastered in the intro battle.  Head Break landed on him which was followed up by the archers picking on him and the knight smacking him again.  He was at critical but I had him run in to kill someone despite that and the last archer dropped him into the stone.

  Gariland went to plan without disaster.  Despite not intentionally farming for crystals/chests, Ramza got a crystal anyways for Potion and Equip Change.  Maybe I should have though and at Mandalia because of how tight money is early on and every box is another item to sell off for added cash.  Get enough actions for Delita to teach him Throw Stone, important for my plans this chapter.

  Stopped by at the soldier office for my first three hires.  Got two females and a male.  I'm not aiming for specific Zodiac, just good Brave and Faith values, but can afford to skimp a bit since I can make it up later with the classes I rolled.  Both females are Virgos and the male is a Taurus which is alright for my Virgo Ramza.  Change all four units into Chemists and teach them Throw Stone and Phoenix Down.  Also teach Delita Throw Stone and set Item on him.

  Mandalia: Choose the usual option for the Brave increase.  I am willing to reset until Algus doesn't die early as I'm relying on him and Delita for offense during the chapter and would rather he remain to get training in.  Things played out in my favor on the first attempt though.  Use Potion with Ramza as necessary but tried to be thrifty with them as money is super tight this early.  Got two boxes despite not stalling so yay, another 100-150 Gil.  All three generics have Priest unlocked by the time the battle is over.

  After Igros scenes, back to Gariland.  I scrape up the funds to get staffs for my priests and two Feather Hats.  Do 2-3 randoms with a starting generic filling in the 5th slot until I have enough saved up to hire the 5th unit.  As Dancer is one of the Jobs in this run, I opt for a 3rd female.  She's a Gemini which could spell trouble.  Bad compat with 3/4 of her allies and very vulnerable to Balk.  Eh, I'll manage somehow.

  Randoms are such a slog with just priests.  Priests with rocks so they're better off than SCC priests but their offense is terrible.  And this early in the game, running out of steam is a real risk with only 3-4 casts of Cure per unit.  Gotta be careful to not have someone get ganged up on.  Multiple Chocobos are a death sentence due to danger of attrition and 3 chocobos is might as well reset and spare oneself the agony.  Getting those 2-3 randoms done felt like it took forever and then there were 2-3 more to unlock Priest on the 5th generic.  At least I got two Holy Water drops, which were sold to fund equipment upgrades.  And I was still not fully geared when I went to Sweegy before the monster levels could inflate further.  Delita and Algus had their best stuff since they're the bulk of the offense but my priests were stuck with starting Clothes and one was left without Battle Boots because I didn't have the money for another set.  I've been playing with a self-imposed restriction of no more than 3 Phoenix Down in one fight but so far it hasn't come up.  For one, money is so tight at the start that I don't have extra funds for consumables.  So I pretty much avoid using them.  Also, I haven't actually set Item on anyone, relying on careful positioning and hoping someone doesn't get ganked by an ill-timed critical in randoms.  Not that hard to manage when the inhabitants of Mandalia all rely one range 1 physicals for offense.

  Sweegy was slow but pretty safe.  Have my team use rocks to soften up targets for Delita and Algus to kill and avoid extending too far that we end up in attack range of every enemy.  Toss Cures as needed to prevent deaths.  My priests do 3-6 or 4-8 with rocks so I'm depending on Delita and Algus to do the heavy lifting.  Will go for a staff bonk if something's low enough and will get a turn before the guests but my units' focus is defense.

  After the fight, head back to Igros for a set of Knight gear for Delita later and do another random (sigh) to finish up gear upgrades.  By the time I'm back to Sweegy ready to challenge Dortor, two of the females have their Lv 6 MA point.

  I'm likely to refer to my units by the custom names I gave them from this point.  The common theme is characters that look like cats but aren't.  Ramza is Nall, first female hired is Ruby.  After that comes Artemis and Luna.  And Felicia brings up the 5th slot. (more often seen as a catgirl but she does have a cat form so she counts, nya)  I teach Raise to a couple of my units before entering Dortor but I hope to not need it as 30 MP isn't going to last very long.

Dortor 1: (0 resets)

  It's intimidating with a gang of priests with the main risk being having enemies gang up on someone and dropping them.  Artemis sits out being the highest leveled generic.  I actually have two units with stronger staff bonks and I end up sending them up with Delita and Algus to help with the Long Bow archer, heh.  Nall and Felicia advance on the ground with the eventual intention of baiting the close wizard into getting midcharged.  The Wizard does oblige them on its third turn and foolishly leaves itself open to two staff bonks.  It's a Pisces against a male Virgo and a female Gemini so it's left at 1 HP.  But a rock from the roof drops it before it gets its spell off.  On the roof, one priest knocked the archer off with a rock and Delita and Algus go to finish it off.  This results in Algus being targeted by both remaining archers and the other Wizard.  Clutch C. evade moment dodges one archer attack which enables him to live through the storm which would have killed him had all the attacks landed.  Next round of actions involve the knight hitting someone, but it's not enough to kill, and the living Wizard being nice enough to go for a spell in range of two more midcharge staff whacks.  And this time, they're enough for a clean kill leaving me free to Cure up injured units.  Fight is pretty much under control at this point and it's just a matter of mop-up.  Longbow archer drops a box and I do get the Long Bow out of it, neat.  Delita and Algus finish up the Knight before anyone else's countdown expires.  It's fine, I'm not planning on stalling out fights for crystals/chests unless I'm hoping for a specific drop.

  After the fight, Delita learns Gained JP up and I change him into a Knight with Guts secondary for Sand Rat Cellar.  He also gets the Iron Sword.  I'll be leaning on him to help kill things in the next map as my own offense still sucks.  Teach any remaining allies Priest, give the Linen Robe to Ruby, and that does it for preparations.  Nall has enough Squire JP from spillover to pick up Gained JP up so I do so and set it.

Sand Rat Cellar (0 resets):

   Not counting the reset from forgetting to set JP up on Delita.  The plan on paper is to have Nall and Felicia support Delita and Ruby and Artemis supporting Algus, try to get the enemies to separate, and beat them down one at a time hopefully avoiding dying.  At least before half the enemies are down.  At Lv 6 with upgraded gear, my priests have over 60 HP so enemies generally need to land 3 hits to kill someone unless the monks roll high with Brave.  Things go awry early when the Delita side monk decides to wander over to toss rocks at Algus.  Things get really dicey when Artemis dies with most of the enemies clustered nearby.  I do get a Raise and a Cure off on him but expect to see a restart in my future.  Got really fortunate with enemies splitting up their attacks so there are no further deaths.  At which point, my plan gets back on track and I slowly wear them down while healing as needed.  Did need to play defensively though, sometimes tossing rocks and retreating instead of going for an immediate kill to avoid overexposing people.  I tried for the Silk Robe drop but the Knight who had it was the fifth enemy killed so time to stall.  Intentionally offer up units to the remaining Knight so he'd smack them and bait Delita/Algus into healing instead of attacking.  It works and he stays alive long enough for a chest to appear.  Only got the Buckler though.
   I did win but it was a close one with 3 of my 4 units out of MP.  Forgot to set Counter Tackle on Algus, which would have helped with wearing them down.  Crystals for Artemis and Felicia.  Dash and Heal for Artemis which slightly speeds up randoms.  Felicia gets Weapon Guard, which is cool but I'm unable to use it in the constraints of the Fiesta format.  And of course, Potion because I was too cheap to spend the 30 Chemist JP.

  Afterwards, shop upgrades.  I grab 3 more Linen Robes and 5 Red Hoods.  Also a Leather Vest for Algus.  Got into a random at Sweegy Woods, which is slightly less of a slog than randoms have been.  Cures and Raise to get Skeletons into critical and hide in a corner.  Black Goblins and Bombs have less HP than Mandalia monsters so there's less HP to grind down.  And Artemis' Dash improves the damage output ever so slightly.  I needed the money anyways so better here than Mandalia.  Pick up armor upgrades for Delita at Igros.  Got into a random at Mandalia, which I slogged through but maybe I shouldn't have taken it.  Everybody has their Lv 8 Speed point afterwards.  Which means the Priests at Thieves' Fort will go after my team and be able to rain down Bolt spells with impunity and I'm unlikely to be able to midcharge them.

  Thieves Fort (0 resets): Delita is still in the same Knight setup from Sand Rats, just upgrades gear.  Algus is an Archer with Item and the Long Bow.   I remember to set Counter Tackle this time and also give him Move +1.  All my units have Magic Defend Up as they're all at Job Level 8 from the last couple grindy fights and have more than enough to spare.  Ruby sits out so there's one less target for Thieves to charm.
   General strategy is still the same.  Support Delita and Algus, stay mostly defensive, and soften up targets for Delita and Algus to kill.  Black Magic Priest having best compat with Artemis made things dicey.  She mostly has free reign to unload Bolts on my team.  And I wasn't watching the AT list close enough and just when I'm wearing her down, other Priest gives her a Hi-Potion undoing all my work.  Dammit.  Had a couple of deaths which stretched my MP reserves but made it.  I wanted to try for a Priest's Silk Robe but that one was one of the last to go down and all the support was wiped out before the end.  Luna snags the Priest crystal that appeared, giving her Black Magic that I'll probably never use even in randoms, Hi-Potion (again going unused), and Dash so she can do slightly more in randoms.  The Silk Robe Priest dropped a box but I only got her hat, meh.  I had manipulated AI so that Delita/Algus would spend turns healing rather than attacking while stalling.  Another side benefit: Delita got just enough Knight JP for Equip Armor.

  No random fight on the path back to Igros. (thankfully, I was not looking forward to another Priest SCC pre-Holy slog)  Rather than buy a 5th robe, I give Artemis the Leather Vest for Miluda 2.  Delita has class changed into a Monk with Equip Armor and Guts secondary.

Lenalia Plateau: (0 resets)

   The Priest slog: 4th rodeo.  This one looks scary.  Three mages that can cause all sorts of trouble.  Everyone on my side goes before them so they'll have free reign to pick on whoever they want.  Knights are less of a concern as they only hit for 25 but I can't ignore them as they're quite capable of bringing down someone weakened by attack magic.  Then there's Miluda who I'll try to keep 5 panels away from until most of the enemies are down.  On my side, I have Magic Defend Up, Cure and Raise, and Delita punching for 50.  Needed to play defensively and try to avoid having the same unit get ganged up on.    Positioning is important as well as paying enough attention to the AT list to realize that I have a double turn to safely get in range of Knights to staff bonk things and retreat before they can act.  When I can afford to attack, the focus is to soften up targets for Delita to finish off rather than try to kill them myself.
  Had a fortunate opening.  Time Mage Hastes but a single Wizard.  This could have been bad but the Haste had him come forward to go after my team.  One rock weakened him enough for Delita to drop him on my second turn.  This relieves a lot of pressure on my team.  Still had a death or two thanks to the other wizard raining Bolt 2 on my units and a knight dropping a weakened target.  He only started with 28 MP though so was out of gas after 3 casts.  Some Raise followed by Cure got KOed units back into the fight though.  Meanwhile Delita's third action was to punch the Time Mage for 50 out of her 54 HP so she retreats without her doing much to complicate the fight (her 2nd Haste spell missed and her 3rd on self wouldn't have mattered when she's running for a corner).  After softening up a Knight for Delita to punch out, the fight was pretty much stablized.  Still took a while to wrap up with my low damage.  Got Delita to punch out the MP-less Wizard and the other Knight because my units do so little.  Then it was a slow wearing down of Miluda.  Easy stuff when she's alone, just heal up people that she hits.  I helped Delita along with a bunch of rocks and the occasional Dash.  Got some black magic from crystals as well as Dash for another generic but nothing of note really.  Delita hits Lv 8 in this fight so he's going into the next one at 7 Speed.

  Shops have upgraded so shopping time.  My units are around Lv 9 at this point and with Silk Robes, some have the 56 MP for Holy.  Huzzah.  Pick up some gear at Igros as well, including a second set of armor for future use.  Also bought a Small Mantle for Zekaden.  Got one random on the way back to Windmill Shed but nuking two enemies with Holy really speeds things along.

Windmill Shed (0 resets):

   I suppose I could have stretched this out long enough for Delita to take the 7 actions needed to reach the 300 Monk JP for Move HP-up.  But that felt too risky with the threat of death from Crush Punch.  And when I'm packing two people who have the MP for Holy, went for the assassination.  I'm not counting the reset where I forgot to teach Nall Holy.  Or the one whiere I misplaced a Cure because I forgot Delita would move before it would go off.  Or the one where Delita got Stopped by the first Stasis Sword.
  For the battle itself, first set of actions see me moving into position and Delita lobbing a rock at Boco.  Enemies go.  Wiegraf Stasis Sword on Delita, Boco pecks Nall, Monks punch Delita.  My turn.  Luna heals Nall.  Felicia places a Cure where Delita will walk into it, other priests lob rocks at monks because they can and retreat, and Delita punches out Boco.  Wiegraf stops Delita with next Stasis Sword and the monks punch Delita some more.  At this point, I'm able to safely lock two Holies onto Wiegraf; the first is enough to send him running.  Had Delita been unStopped, he would have gotten another action before the Holies go off but oh well.
  Whew, this was a relief.  I'd been dreading having to do this fight without Holy but my levels were just high enough to prevent it from turning into a slog.

  At this point in the Fiesta, the 2nd class is available.  Due to spillover JP, 2 of my units already have Knight unlocked and a third is in the 190s.  Those two class change into Monks with Basic Skill to start getting that monk JP and two others change into Knights.  Thanks to spillover, I have Monk unlocked on all five units in one fight.

Fort Zekaden (0 resets):

  I went 3 priests and one monk for this one.  Delita is a Squire with Item and Equip Armor.  I meant to pick up a Mytrhil Sword for him but forget so he's stuck with an Iron Sword.  I want him to have exactly 4 Move so might as well throw a Small Mantle on him.  The intention is that Algus will move into a position to shoot him where Delita cannot reach him for a sword hit.  This serves to draw Algus forward while the two chase each other around.  Magic Defend Up on all my units just as a precaution though it's intended to be over before they're at risk for magic damage.
  Well, that didn't quite happen.  My units go first.  Monk is in formation 2 and goes around the side of the fort while the priest back there comes towards squad 1.  I move my squad 1 units just out of spell range of the closer Wizard.  Algus moves to a lower elevation to take a shot at Delita.  Delita then goes for a physical on Algus, whiffs his 72% swing.  Enemies do their thing with a Knight whacking Delita and a Wizard frying him for 47 with Fire 2.  At this point, I'm able to lock 3 Holies on Algus and there's nothing the enemies can do to stop it.  Monk beans knight with a rock (yay, JP), Knights just move, and other Wizard locks a 70 damage spell on Delita but my Holies go off first and end things in two casts.

Chapter 1 end - Skills learned
Priest: Cure, Raise, Holy, MagicDefend Up
Monk: nothing yet
Universal: Throw Stone (all), Dash on Artemis and Felicia, Heal on Artemis, Gained JP up on Nall

[DragonKnight Zero]

FFT Fiesta Chapter 2: (priest, monk, mediator, samurai, dancer)

Dortor 2 (0 resets):

  Give Battle Boots and Item to both Gaf and Agrias.  Bring both males to have one less Steal Heart target for the thieves.  Males are monks with Gained JP up and Basic Skills.  Females are priests with Magic Defend up.  Agrias also started with Move-Find Item so might as well set that until she has Move +1.
   Gained JP up may have been too greedy.  Artemis gets focused down by the enemy forces early and I'm caught in a rez loop and not getting much offense in.  Gaf and Agrias are very slow about targeting Wizards.  Ended up with thieves downed first, then archers, which gave the wizards plenty of turns to rain spells on the monks.  Did stabalize the situation eventually but it was messy and more deaths than I'd like for this map.

  Buy two Mythril Vests and with nothing else on my shopping list, off to the next destination.

Araguay Woods (0 resets):

  Choose to save Boco.  2 monks, 2 pirests.  I choose not to use Holy here so that monks and Agrias can get more actions in.  Boco doesn't get cornered by black goblin so routine beatdown.  Agrias picking up a Phoenix Down is probably the most noteworthy event in this battle.

Nall learns Chakra after this fight.

Zirekile Falls (0 resets):

  Strip Gaf off all gear except helmet and armor.  Agrias is a Knight with Holy Sword secondary.  2 monk, 2 priest again with Nall as one of them.  Another straightforward map of beating on enemies and staying alive.  Delita shows up with Lightning Stab which speeds things along.  Try to get Nall over to Ovelia for Chakra to fuel MBarrier goodness.  No need for Holy.  Agrias gets just enough actions to hit job Lv 2 in Knight and also has enough for Move +1.  The rest of my team now has the JP for Gained JP up too.

  Afterwards, time for a shopping trip.  Dortor has Triangle Hats and Rainbow Staff for sale.  Finally, some MA gear and a better staff for bonking things.  Staff whacks are comparable to what 6 and 7 PA monks hit for.  Also hike to Igros to grab a Coral Sword for Agrias; might as well take every advantage within reach.  Got two randoms on the return trip to Zeland, which are welcome to obtain extra monk JP.  I went with a 2-2 Priest/Monk split again and teach the monks Wave Fist and Chakra.  Agrias is back to Holy Knight with Item and sets Weapon Guard.

  Zeland Fort City (1 reset):

   Choose to save Mustadio for bigger Brave boost.  MagicDefend Up on my units.  Mustadio goes right and shoots a wizard.  Miss a killshot Wave Fist at 85% on that Wizard.  Both Wizards target Mustadio and he dies.  Game Over.
   Next attempt, I switch to Gained JP up on the monks.  Mustadio goes left and shoots a Wizard.  The monks drop that Wizard but one had to hop over the wall to do it.  Knight, archer, and other wizard gang up on that monk and drop her.  I have Raise but need to watch CT so that she doesn't immediately go down again before using it.  Meanwhile nuke the other Wizard with Holy.  As Chapter 2 Monk offense is still low, takes a while wearing down the other enemies.  Raise the fallen monk back up at a time where she can retreat.  Make use of Chakra as an MP battery for the priests.  Knights come up over the side of the wall to duel Agrias while most of my team is making their way through the doorway.  I am lucky enough to obtain a Wizard Robe drop off the Lv 11 Wizard (will always have one) so that's useful.  Got more crystals; Felicia picks up Heal, heh.

Make sure Mustadio is geared up.  Change Agrias into a Knight with Holy Sword for the extra PA.  I went with another 2-2 class split for the next fight.  Magic Defend Up on all to soften up the incoming Summons.

Baraius Hill (1 reset):

   My 7 Speed team moves before the enemies so I try to position the team to bait archers into coming closer.  Mustadio lands an Arm Aim on the left side summoner.  I nuke the close Knight with a Holy, send a monk towards the disabled summoner, and take a few swings at an archer while staying out of the other Knight's movement range.  Sending someone after the summoner was a tactical mistake as she loses her Don't Act status right before getting a turn.  Drops a summon on the monk after her and while it's not fatal, an archer puts the monk down right afterwards.  She's dead in a bad position since I'm also trying to keep my allies alive and fending off summoner #2.  By the time I get someone in Raise range, it misses and my dead unit crystalizes before I get another chance.  Reset.
   Next try has a similar start.  Mustadio lands Arm Aim again on the same summoner.  I try to bait archers into coming closer.  Next round, Mustadio shoots the summoner, nuke the close knight with Holy again, heal up from arrows, and try to soften up an archer for Agrias to finish off.  I don't make the same mistake with sending a monk after that summoner.  Got some good luck on the next round as left side summoner goes for Protect on herself and the other summoner drops a summon but so-so Faith and Magic Defend Up means no deaths on my side.  Mustadio lands a fatal midcharge gunshot on the left side summoner.  Agrias and my team put the other summoner on the defensive and she spends her remaining turns on Moogle for herself or near death archers rather than offense.  Got a crystal off the close knight which taught Armor Break, heh.

  Arrive at Lionel and now the 3rd class has opened up.  Teach Nall Move-HP up as he can spare the JP and I want it for Lionel so might as well.  Return to Zeland for armor upgrades and two Battle Bamboos for the Mediator unlock grind.  With Gained JP up, got it done in two fights with two Oracles at a time and the 5th unlocking Mediator through spillover.  First fight was Mindflares at Zirekile, ick.  Nuked most of them with Holy and thankfully, the only status they land is a Berserk on a monk.  Random at Baraius was bombs and a chocobo, very mundane.  With Mediator unlocked on all 5 units, Fiesta can continue.  Bought a Platina Dagger at Lionel but nothing else there is of use to this party.

Zigolas Swamp (0 resets):

  Mustado has Seal Evil so he made statues.  Went with 2 priests, 2 monks, and 1 knife wielding Mediator.  Priests MVP, monks help out with 36 or 40 damage Wave Fists, mediator is carried by the others and throws rocks for JP.

At Grog, snag a second gun and go with 2 mediator, 2 monk, 1 priest.  Toss on Magic Defend Up on most of the team to soften incoming summons.

Goug Machine City (0 resets):

 Got a good start with Mustadio landing an Arm Aim on a thief.  The non-statused Thief goes down to my team ganging up on him.  5 Speed summoner gets three people for about 60 each, no casualties.  6 Speed summoner has no attack summons (as is usual).  From here on, stay healed up and beat down enemies one at a time.  Starting with attack summon caster, other thief, other summoner, and lastly the archers.  It took long enough for a couple of enemies to crystalize but they don't yield anything interesting.  Actually, nothing of note really occurs in this fight.  It's dull writing about it and is likely nearly as dull reading about it.

Baraius Valley (0 resets):

  2 Mediators, 2 Monks, 1 Priest.  Both Mediators go on the Ramza side while priest and other monk go in squad 2.  My whole team goes first so I soften up the Ramza side Wizard with a few gunshots while the other team positions themselves to lure their wizard forward.  Agrias next, she obliges my planning with a Stasis Sword on Knight and Wizard with wizard dying.  Enemies go.  Knight tries Shield Break on Agrias, blocked.  Lightning Bow archer shoots someone.  Other Knight has Elemental and goes for a 20 damage Carve Model on Agrias.  My turns again.  Nuke the other Wizard with Holy.  Mediators shoot at Lightning Bow archer (mistake, should have softened up the Knight that Agrias tagged earlier).  Monks play medic with Chakra, a task sometimes compounded by uneven terrain.  Agrias procs a Death Sentence on previously injured knight with Split Punch.  Squad 2 tries to move in to help out,, leaving that archer for last.  Another Shield Break attempt, miss.  Enemies poke at me but nothing I can't handle.  Finish up putting bullets into Lightning Bow archer.  Next Split Punch lands another Death Sentence.  Another Shield Break attempt, miss again and that was his last action.  Last Knight can hit for 64 but he's unsupported now and Chakra can keep up long enough.  It did take a while to be able to converge on the last archer, enough for some crystals to appear from the wizards.  One yields Protect and the other gives up Shell, among the typical expected stuff.  So now I have white magic other than Cure/Raise/Holy.

Return to Warjias for Brigandines and Wizard Staffs.  Get prepped for Golgarand with Artemis and Luna as Priests, Felicia as a Mediator and the other two as monks.  Teach Ruby Revive.  Levels are around 14-15 and Nall has reached 8 PA in Monk.

Golgarand Execution Site (1 reset):

  Virgos in squad 1 and the others in squad 2.  I expected Gaf to go after Artemis because of mage HP and good compatability but he comes over to Night Sword Luna instead.  Um, OK.  Makes it easier for me as Luna can oneshot him with Holy.  With Gaf taken out on round one, what could go wrong?  How about Ice Bow archer having best compat with Artemis and dealing inflated damage to him?  And a Hasted Time Mage being able to reach him and bash him into the ground before my team gets their second turns so I'm down a member early?  And the other Time Mage raining down black magic from up high?  And getting pinned by all three Knights before I've even downed a second enemy?  Felicia does have Item and can Phoenix Down Artemis but I only have 5, having never bothered to stock up.  I believe I made a tactical blunder with the mediator's target priority (crossbow archer instead of time mage) but still, fell behind early and just kept falling further behind in momentum until I gave up and reset when down to just the two monks standing and all three Knights still pressuring the team.
  Next try starts out the same as before with Gaf Night Swording Luna and the crossbow archer plinking Artemis for 20.  Nuke Gaf off the battlefield and no more best compatibility archer at least.  Instead, I get a 74 Faith Time Mage who Slows him and the other Time Mage, who despite low Faith, keeps landing Stop at 40% on Luna.  Cue scrambling like ants trying to stay alive and dreading Luna getting chopped up by knights while stopped.  I made a positioning error when Artemis was trying to Cure Luna and any allies I could get into the effect range and Ruby got her armor broken.  Crap.  Keep playing on.  Somehow, Luna avoids death and is able to contribute to the fight again.  Though not before getting Stopped a second time before I'm tired of the Time Mage and have Artemis nuke her with Holy.  From this position, I am able to successfully turn the tides of the battle.  Starting with the other Time Mage who has been landing Hastes and Slows all over the place.  This actually ends up helping me when Ruby drops several times.  Because the CTs have been split, I get situations where I can Raise Ruby and she gets to act before any knights put her back into the ground.  Ruby learned Spin Fist off geo Knight's crystal as well as some geomancy which may be relevant for the dancer grind later.  Got Shell for a second character as well off a time mage crystal.  Wasn't trying to stall; it was simply slow taking out all the enemies as the team's offense without Holy is low and it takes 2-4 Chakras to recharge the MP for 1 cast of Holy.

Back to Warjias to replace the broken armor.  Got a random on the way out.  5 chocobos, ugh.  First fight I make use of Threaten in as it generally takes 3 attacks to off one without using Holy and they're very capable of swarming.  Random as Baraius Hill on the way too but it thankfully wasn't chocobos and my team is well rounded enough to pound through it.

Gates of Lionel (0 resets)

  Nall is a priest and I run two monks and two mediators down below.  MagicDefend Up on all because my team doesn't have the tools to take out the summoner on round 1. One Mediator has the Lv 18 Speed point which works in my favor.  After opening gunshot on summoner, she retreats out of summoner range.  7 Speed archer goes to charge something on her which lets me have some midcharge hits on it (or just breaking the charge with Throw Stone knockback).  Nall oneshots Gaf with Holy.  Pretty much just play defensively this fight, kiting the knights as much as I can and not letting summoner and archers gang up on anyone.  Summoner goes down on my team's second set of actions.  Getting an archer out of play is the next priority.  6 Speed archer kept trying to steal Artemis' Green Beret.  Got three attempts, all missed.  Knight does break his gun after two attempts though, which is annoying.  Pisces Knight is especially durable facing two female Virgos, a Gemini, and Taurus mediator punches.  In the process of taking out everyone else, priority becomes feeding Nall enough Chakras to have the MP to Holy her for the win.  Gafgarion's crystal teaches Antidote to someone, hilarious.

Office of Lionel Castle (0 resets)

  Nall is a Mediator, Artemis a Monk, the three ladies are Priests.  Use the PBF which has Queklain dropping a Nightmare on the dudes.  One Sleep, one Death Sentence, not that the result matters.  Lock 2 Holies on Quek, the third priest bonks the sleeping unit awake with a rock.  Artemis was never doing much on offense with worst compat but I have him try a 30 damage Wave Fist anyways, miss.  Nall shoots Quek for the JP.  Holies go off, battle over.

New stuff learned this chapter -

Priest: Regenerator (Artemis and Luna), Shell (2 units, already forgot which), Protect (1 unit)
Monk: Wave Fist, Chakra (all),  Revive (females), Move HP-up
Mediator: Threaten (Luna)
universal: Gained JP Up (all), Antidote (all)

Various class thoughts -

Priest: Chapter 2 is their time to shine.  With all the MA gear that becomes available in C2, even their physical becomes decent.  Holy will generally oneshot anything at this stage.  Only enough MP for one cast but that's OK because they got paired up with...
Monk: C2 I feel is a low point for monk.  Their statlines are such their HP isn't that much better than a priest at these levels.  Their most important use is providing MP for priests with Chakra.  Wave Fist still helps in dealing with randoms.  Still hoarding monk JP for Hamedo so not a lot of their skillset online yet.
Mediator: Haven't had much playtime yet but right now they shoot things with guns and provide emergency item usage as needed.  They have other uses that will come into play later on once they've earned more JP to use.  Threaten weakens monsters when I see that they'll get a turn despite my efforts.

[074]

Fell Seal:

On the last couple of fights, so I figure now's a time for a retrospective.  Long story short, this game tries its best to be a modernized FFT, an entry that has some massive shoes to fill.  Does it manage it?

Kind of.

Honestly, I'd say the game is overall somewhere in the "good" category.  Part of this may be my nostalgia for FFT talking but I think part of it is that there's a certain 'spark' FFT has to it that FS can't quite capture.  Not to say that it doesn't put up a good effort.  Some of it is on the animation and sound design end, which...it's a smaller studio, I can't quite fully fault them.  Other aspects I'd have to say would be certain aspects of the balancing.  One is just that it takes a *lot* of doing to break out of certain damage thresholds.  Some characters can set up for it pretty well, others you may have to spend a majority of the game trying.

There's some other aspects that *do* get to me though.  Probably the biggest one is...mm.  I know you can turn it off and for future runs I will, but I remember default having it so to that extent: items.  More notably, enemies having access to an invisible selection of items for use.  In FFT, at least, you could definitely identify Item Guy, and stop him from using Item.  Here, anyone, even monsters can just pull out an item, and it's a frustrating bit of additional sandbagging.  So yeah, if I do replay this (I may, with a class unlock reference handy), going to turn it off for enemies.

Another is just that enemies are going to generally have better AP access than you, which is particularly frustrating when you're trying to level new classes; you're going to generally be at a disadvantage compared to enemies for a notable part of the game.  Doubly so with equipment scaling up for them ahead of when it does for you, to a degree that I suspect FFT doesn't do it.

All in all, though, I consider these more of gripes or annoyances, not necessarily dealbreakers.  I'll give it probably a 7.5/10 overall.

[EDIT] Now that I've cleared, figure I can go over bosses and notable fights that stuck out to me.  Will microtext this to avoid spoilers, though for a four year old game I'm probably overdoing it.

Demon Alphonse: Budget Queklain, or maybe just a HP-bloated Archafflictor.  Either way, he's pretty much your starter boss.  You get Bzaro as a free guest for this portion, and he's intimidating for newcomers, buuuuut...if you know what you're doing, he's not that scary.  But he is meant to be the intro boss, for better or worse.

Katja 1: Frankly, Katja's fights aren't normally worth noting, I'm just noting this one because of the fact that this is one of the ones where the game actively cheats and pre-sets traps.  At least the game warns you this time.  The later two times it does this, in late C4, are so infuriating that I actively hate them.

Earthwyrms and Earthwyrm Queen: So, not gonna lie.  I thought this was a pretty neat setpiece fight and I still kind of do in retrospect.  The game was trying something different with this and frankly, I enjoyed the fight.  Big, involved, had some surprises but they weren't rude in the way some other things were, felt like a proper bossfight.  I liked it.

Septimue 1: What, the evil-looking guy was actually evil?  I'm shocked and discredited!  Anyway, frankly, the swarm of assassins he ambushes you with were far more rude than he was.  Septimus was largely a punk, but also this is after Kyrie and Anadine had come into their own, so they were ready to carve giant chunks of HP off of him.  I swear I remember one of the two taking off half his 700 health in one attack.  Anyway, Septimus is a punk.

Godstear Wastes: Aeoths are frankly assholes, but more annoying in the long run rather than actually a threat.  I almost always save them for last, with one noted exception.  However, this is one of those maps with pre-set traps, and it doesn't have the decency to warn you.  Seriously, fuck pre-set traps.

Mountain Temple 1: FUCK PRE-SET TRAPS FUCK PRE-SET TRAPS FUCK PRE-SET TRAPS FUCK PRE-SET TRAPS.  IT IS NOT FUNNY OR CLEVER, JUST A FUCKING DICK MOVE.

Raife 1+Grim Eye: I...actually don't remember much of this.  Raife hits like a truck, but Grim Eye was the one who had all the weird new spells.  It was neat, but otherwise nondescript.

Septimus 2+Secunda: They're fought together, so I'll take them together.  And Septimus is still hilariously the biggest punk of the lot.  Seriously, the biggest threat he provides is adding more hits to the OFA dual-gun vampire being an asshole.  More notable is Secunda, who is hilariously running a (albeit HP-inflated) largely legal dual-wield+Infused Edge+Wizard Magic setup.  One that would probably take getting to NG+ to qualify for, but legal.  Absolute nightmare to face, I think the only reason half my party members weren't Wounded after this had anti-wound items/skills on.

Raife 2: First count of Pounce on Bzaro absolutely screwing him over.  Well, maybe second, the first one was the previous fight.  This honestly wasn't that big of a fight overall, just mildly annoying with the demons.  Archafflictors with the full-field status move are assholes.  Especially when they use your own reaction to yank you up a cliff away from everyone else.

Primus: Primus is an asshole.  He's an asshole who's likely designed and played by that smug prick who did 3.5e Batman Wizard shenanigans.  The same one who runs Blue or Blue/Black decks in M:tG.  The same one who thinks weaponized telefragging is creative.  That asshole.  Seriously why is half your arsenal literally instakills that ignore things like reraise.  With the elite guards who turn into demons, this feels curiously like an inverted version of Elmdor's fight in FFT.  I'm just mad about instakills here.  I beat him, but the fight still felt cheap.  Though I suppose part of my issue is just the fact that I have to deal with the Wounds afterwards.

Raife 3: This was...rough but I somehow got through without too much in the way of wounds.  Think this was the last time in the game I brought Yates out, though.  Amusingly here, he was running a copy of my Kyrie build, which...yeah.  It's a good build.  Bonus points for Katja somehow getting a miracle dodge against what was going to otherwise be a sure-kill attack.  Oh and now that I think about it the werewolf was basically running the same build as one of my generics.  Kind of hilarious that I somehow built two of the same ones I'm running here.

Maw 1: Oof.  SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT SLEEP BLOCKERS.  Holy shit this asshole loves to spam Sleep+Poison+ATK Down and it sucks.  Sometimes blind comes out as well but...yeah, this fight is literally some convoluted bullshit with status and delayed AoEs flying everywhere, but I say that in a good way, honestly.  Maw loves to throw out its AoE that inflicts Sleep+Poison+ATK Down+Blind, you've got an Archafflictor and Malcubus also throwing around bullshit.  Everyone is imploding under statuses...until I ended up offing all the adds.  Amusingly, while applicable here, Ecdysis was going to come up more in the finale...

Weirdly enough, Maw hits like a wet noodle most of the time, especially with its status attack that struggled to break 30 damage on most.  Which I suppose is a welcome change from the instakills and absolute nukes.  Fight still felt rough because you try getting bogged down in poison and sleep and sleep and poison and sleep.

Maw 2: Not gonna lie.  First, I had panicked slightly when I realized this fight didn't let you have a save between this and the last one.  This one is...to say the least, brutal for quite a few reasons.  Most notably, Ecdysis.  And this is where it felt like, in a way, the game was fighting back and telling me "hey, stop just tacking on the status reactions".  Because it would do something that would proc a status reaction, move next to one or more PCs, and then just throw it on them.  I honestly applaud the hell out of it.

Funnily enough, my galaxybrain moment here was somehow, after it threw out the HP->1 that it has (full-field HP->1 is also rude by the by), using everything to just get five out of six of my deployed troops healed up.  After that it stopped doing anything threatening and...somehow by that point Katja somehow got a triple-turn on the final boss where she just kept stabbing it over and over and over.  Those stabs somehow got her to be MVP, so...yeah.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Octopath Traveler 2

I'm currently in the final chapters. I'll save story thoughts for when they're done.

On a gameplay note, it was way too easy for a while, but in the last few non-final chapters and now the final chapters, bosses have gotten way tougher. Some major caveats for this: I'm underlevelled, at least in the game's eyes. I'm not sure how this happened exactly. In Octopath 1 I reached the final chapters at Level 35 (main character at 45), while in Octopath 2 I reached the final chapters about 5 levels lower, despite the fact that the recommended level for the final chapters is 5 levels higher than in Octopath 1. I feel like I played the games the same way (that is, I tried to explore environments fully but also used Evasive Manuevers basically always) so I'm surprised at the difference. Either way, though, it means the game has suddenly found teeth, which is neat.

Goldeneye

Finally accomplished what I never did in my youth and beat all the maingame stages on 00 Agent. I no longer recall what prevented me from doing this in the original game, I'm pretty sure it was Control. That defence section definitely took a lot of tries to get right.

I didn't get the majority of the 00 Agent secrets; Bunker 1 and Surface 2 are simple enough, but most of the rest are either crazy tight times (Facility/Archives) or are already extremely difficult stages (Train/Caverns) so I don't figure those are happening.

Unsure if I'll bother with Aztec and finally unlock Egpytian.

Brigandine 2

Cleared Norzaleo, which means I've finally cleared all the routes. Was fun as always. Knight notes:

Rubino: He might be the weakest ruler save Talia (starts with just past 200 pool), but that says little, he's still solid at base and one of the best later, just very versatile and tanky.
Elena: Similar general outlook as Rubino. Her pool is slightly lower, her command range is lower, and doesn't have the tankishness, though archer is so good the comparison isn't a terrible one anyway.
Will: I think he's the MVP honestly. He starts way ahead of the kids in pool and only finishes barely behind, Ranger is a great class. Only downside is being obscure but if you know about him... watch out.
Grados: He has two downsides: one is that Norzaleo is easy early when he's at his strongest (you can conquer Gustava without ever having more than 3 borders), the other is the 3 command range. That said he's got monster personal bases due to being Level 23, and that includes pool which is comparable to Will and way ahead of everyone else at base.
Jiu: The nation's other tier 3 starting badass, she has 4 command area at least but far less pool than Grados, which is a losing trade, but she's still good for the same reasons.
Schizler: Competent personal stats, average pool. Not much to say about him, he got used but wasn't a star.
Maximillian: Pretty close to a Shizler clone except he joins half a year in, which obviously makes him worse but again, definitely used him as filler.
Jack: Shizler who joins at Level 8 instead of Level 17, which is obviously worse, but similar enough later. I made him a swordsman instead of a knight to be different (Norzaleo already has loads of knights) but I really missed Heal and he never really got reliable evasion so maybe this was a mistake.
Pick: Probably the only knight in the nation I found underwhelming. His gimmick is MP regen... but honestly, he has so much less MP than a bard that he'd need to regen quite a bit to just catch up to their base (probably around four or five turns). He has more int than them but that's a losing trade considering the loss of songs and the way lower HP.
Leonora and Theodora: Respectable enough projects on paper but I didn't really get them going. In Theodora's case she faces extra competition from the fact that I got Sylvie and Yuiri quickly and they're both just better, never mind Elena.
Brendan and Araina: Both filler, not great, 3 command range isn't a drawback they needed, but they're both usable enough with okay pool and starting in tier 2.
Klaus, Ferrick: Just bad.

Final Fantasy 5

I did another fiesta. Summoner! To be more precise, it was a meteor (full random) run which rolled Dancer, Summoner, Mystic Knight, and Knight in that order. Summoner is so OP the rest mostly doesn't matter much. Quick notes:

-Arguably the hardest part of the run was fighting Shiva; I decided to fight her before heading to Karnak (coming back with a fire rod trivializes the fight). One reset, then Remora's paralyze and Sylph healing pulled through.
-After that, the carnage begins. The run was pretty close to just a Summoner SCC for a long time. Shiva destroys the Fire-Powered Ship, Ifrit destroys Byblos, Sandworm doesn't counter MT, Ramuh destroys Ronka, Arcehoaevis is made surprisingly easier by CHOCOBO for the final form.
-And then you get Titan which is 110 power MT, already utterly stupid... which becomes 165 power at the first shop in World 2, for the robe-users at least. Silly. That said, World 2 is probably least dominant part of the game for Summoner. Sure, everything which doesn't float just dies, but there's a few notable things which do, including Enkidu and Blue/Yellow Dragons.
-Atomos might also have caused trouble but he's Mystic Knight's first time to shine, Sleep Spellblade and collect victory.
-Dragon fights in Exdeath's castle were the other trouble point in the game, especially in the lava areas which sap my HP. Blue and Yellow Dragons are not quickly killed or easily statused (petrify works on blues, but they have some resistance/evasion), and while Reds do die fast they can get off an Atomic Ray first which hurts! I didn't ever die to them but I came close.
-Exdeath and Melusine both reaaaally hate Golem + Carbuncle.
-And after this Syldra is just so, so dumb. Everyone can use Air Knives and toss out 3k MT whenever they want, it's not even expensive or anything.
-Once I clear the Pyramid and get my shiny shoes I decide to get Odin and Phoenix; Phoenix Tower has the added benefit of providing lots of easy exp for my team.
-I decide not to bother with any other dungeons, not even the Island Shrine. I'm good. Leviathan is too much trouble to get and Bahamut basically doesn't do anything Syldra doesn't.
-I largely just blow apart the final dungeon.
-Despite skipping lots of World 3 I'm still Level 35-36 by the end which is high enough, thanks to the fact that I never run since why bother when Summoners end everything fast anyway. Arguably an underrated part of the job, you just get money and exp so easily with them.
-Final showoff note: I beat Tree Exdeath and Neo Exdeath without taking a single point of damage or being hit with a single negative status effect. The first form misses a White Hole against a Ribbon or Aegis Shield (the only part of this strategy which is luck, not that Phoenix+Soft would have been a big ask) and then the second attack runs into Golem + Carbuncle. Almagest Part dies to Break Spellblade, the second shining moment for a non-Summoner job on this run. Syldra spam kills too quickly for Grand Cross to get off, while the other two parts are, again, walled by Golem+Carbuncle. I save lamp!Odin for the back part at the end but honestly it's not necessary, just guarantees I finish it in one turn instead of two.

Job notes:
-Knight is a slow but tanky Summon-caster. For part of World 3 I set Two Hands and Brave Blade instead, which actually outdamages Syldra against a single target if its evade isn't too high; I switch back to Summon for the end though. Knight also learns Equip Shield which is the best secondary to set for Summoner.
-Mystic Knight is not as tanky as Knight but still tanky, and is fast, outspeeding a number of enemies Knight/Summoner don't, so that's cool! It also has Break/Sleep Spellblade for a couple key moments.
-Dancer is a fast Summon-caster which can use Robes (for Titan), Ribbon (for stats / immunity), and Golden Hairpin (for MP halving) which helps excuse its bad HP. Dance is basically never useful on this run.
-Summoner is the best job in Final Fantasy 5.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Last played in 2002... not quite as long as Goldeneye but close! Not much to say; this is game I played a bunch as a kid and I still remembered the broad strokes well enough that I was able to beat it using only one continue, despite Labyrinth and Scrap Brain being rude. The final chase of Labyrinth is very stressful!

[Luther Lansfeld]

We’re halfway through the year, so I decided to do some small write-ups about my favorite games I’ve played this year.

My game of the year this year has gotta be Metroid Dread, which is a fabulous return to the 2D Metroid staples while offering a fresh and fun experience. While the plot is only so-so, the gameplay is stellar. The boss fights are fun and engaging, the upgrade system and exploration is super great, and the atmosphere and setting work are top notch.

My second favourite of the year is probably Bravely Default 2. I haven’t beaten this game quite yet, but I’ve been having a blast with its fresh take on job systems, its change from turn-based in Bravely Default 1 to CTB in Bravely Default 2, and the quality of life features like adjusting in battle speed, retuning the Default system, and making cool boss designs that all feel unique and not just copied from BD1’s. I’m having a great time with the game so far! I will confirm my feelings when it’s completed, but it’s a great game.

My third favourite is probably Theatrhythm: Final Bar. I’ll be honest, this answer feels like a bit of a copout, considering that it’s basically the same game as games I already loved (the first two games) with some slight variation in the formula so they can sell it as a different game. Still, I am forever in love with the endearing chibi designs of the Final Fantasy characters, and what’s not to love about a game where you get to listen to FF music?

An honorable mention to Pokémon Scarlet, which I just finished and throughly enjoyed! It added a fresh coat of paint to a franchise that I've had a lot of trouble getting back into after XY; I love that there are encounters on the map, I love that you have more openness in what you do and when, there is a ton of selection of Pokémon catchable in the mainline (including ALL the Eevees!), and the game despite my skepticism had a plot that was at least heartwarming, if maybe not Oscar-worthy. Really loved this take on the Pokémon experience.

[DragonKnight Zero]

FFT Fiesta Chapter 3 (priest, monk, mediator, samurai, dancer)

  Before going anywhere, got to unlock Samurai.  In addition to the usual gear upgrades, I also pick up a Mytrhil Bow, a Mythril Spear, and an Ancient Sword as people will be spending time in Knight, Archer, and Lancer during the grind.  (already have a Platina Dagger for Thief)  I also do a few propositions to get JP for the prerequisite classes while leaving any randoms to the second stringer squad of Rad, Alicia, Lavian, Agrias, Mustado, and the Chocobos.  Also make my way down to Goug to replace the broken gun.  Did about 4-6 grind fights to unlock Samurai on all 5 units.  Did a bit of Brave boosting during those grind fights; team is around 73-75 Brave at the time I choose to mov on.  Pick up 5 Asuras for Draw Out and head off to Goland, not bothering to do any skill grinding for my newly unlocked job.

Goland Coal City (1 reset)

  "This is an easy battle, what could go wrong?"  Thinking this was going to be easy peasy, went with two Samurai in this fight.  Yeah, turns out mediator and thief both stabbing Olan midcharge drops his HP frightfully quick and he died before I could get the priest in position to toss a cure up at him.  Olan waiting until his second turn to Galaxy Stop didn't help matters and it missed both enemies up on the roof leading to his death.
   Next attempt, I'm more careful with my priest's positioning.  Still start things off by focusing down the thief that comes to stab/steal from Ramza and then a chemist.  Help Olan kill off the mediator as well as the other two thieves.  The last Chemist, I intend to invite for his gear.  Olan is generally helpful with Galaxy Stop.  I gain the Main Gauche from the high level thief and the other Chemist's Mythril Gun from boxes.  Mediator drops a crystal; monk Ruby snags it gaining Persuade and Negotiate.  Um, sure, I don't really see either ever being relevant but still, free skills.  Land the Invite before the other two thieves death countdown expires.

Lesalia (0 resets)

  I'm running the two males as monks but only have one Judo Outfit for them, oh well.  Teach Artemis Earth Slash.  Only Nall can Chakra for 30 or more MP on Alma which complicates my intention of keeping the MBarriers coming but I'll make do.  General strategy is keep Alma able to cast while beating up generics until Zalmo is opened up.  Coral sword knight shows up with Elemental, making him a priority target.  This could have gone badly if he landed status procs as I've been stingy with status healing so far relying on Alma's Deathspell 2 isn't ideal. (forgot she had it didn't you; it's OK, I forget all the time)  But I'm able to get him down before any geomancy statuses land.  My non-Holy offense is still slow so getting swarmed is a bit of a concern when enemies are approaching both sides of the balcony.  Mediator Felicia lands a midcharge gunshot on Zalmo for 144 around this time though and (thanks to MBarrier Haste) quickly shoots Zalmo for a regular 96 best compat gunshot and he bails.

  Getting that second Mythril Gun saves me a trip to Goug so all I'm doing is picking up the relevant equipment upgrades before heading to Orbonne.  Judo Outfits are very welcome for monks and Holy Miters for preists and mediators, Chameleon Robes for manipulating Wiegraf AI (and instant death protection which will come into play in C4).  Got to make sure I have enough spares in case things get broken/stolen.  Have enough cash to afford an extra of key stuff so no problems there.  Also grab two Germinas Boots.
  Other prep: Teach the females Earth Slash.  Nall buys Hamedo.  Went ahead and taught Regenerator to the other two generics.  Luna picks up Mimic Daravon and Invitation for UBS2.

UBS2 (0 resets)
  Alma's Red Shoes go on the priest.  Nall is a monk with Hamedo.  Ruby is a Samurai with Punch Art.  Artemis ended up as the Priest this rotation.  Luna is the mediator and Felicia is a second monk with Alma's Barette.  Enemies advance, one Lancer poking Nall because I was too lazy to change his starting spot in the PBF.  Time Mages are leading off with Hastes, which could be worrisome but the first Hastes whiff.  Nuke one Lancer with Holy, Nall Chakras himself,  attack the Lancer who poked Nall with gun and Earth Slash the low offense mean they fail to drop him.  I do take care to position Nall to bait a Lancer into trying attack him from the side.  AI obliges and while Hamedo is blocked by shield, that one less hit of spear damage, which matters because one of the Partisan Lancers is a Taurus and has good compat with 3/5 of the team.   Time Mage goes for a Haste on the Taurus Lancer.  This round, I am able to get through the evasion and drop him while putting Nall and Ruby into the effect area.  Miss on Nall because he has worst compat with the time mage, lands on Ruby.  Artemis does some curing.  Another spear poke baited into a Hamedo, shield guarded again.  Next round of actions from my team, Luna puts the last Lancer to sleep with Mimic Daravon and I do some recovery while going after the Chemist and the Time Mages.  They're kind of a nuisance with one having Stop and the other one with Summon magic.  Turn order and positioning worked out favorably for me though with a Wave Fist from Nall and an Asura from Ruby dropping the summoner time mage without him being able to launch any Summons.  Other Time Mage did land a Stop or two but it was too little, too late with him unsupported.  Chased him down and ended him.
  And all the while, third lancer has been snoozing away.  Before I got around to dealing with him, Ruby got a Lancer crystal and a bunch of Vertical Jump skills. (possibly relevant during the Dancer unlock grind)  Other Lancer dropped a box with his Ice shield, which I didn't even notice until later.  Finally getting around to the last Lancer, had Ruby wake him up with Wave Fist and Luna lands Invite first try.  Hey, I wanted that helmet and I'm not complaining about a free Diamond Armor and N-Kai Armlet.

UBS3 (0 resets)

  After the dragged out previous battle, this was ultimately a straightforward assassination.  Take out the Summoner with gunshots and Earth Slash.  I still have one unit left to lob an Earth Slash at Izlude.  Next round, I'm able to tag Izlude with Holy, another gunshot, and some more Earth Slash bringing him down to critical.  The Germinas Boots were a huge help here for mediator and samurai, enabling them to line of attack they wouldn't be able to otherwise.

UBS1 (0 resets)

  I had a unit with the Lv 23 Speed point so she was one of the monks.  Chameleon Robe on the priest.  Wiegraf goes and Stasis Sword on two, no Stops.  Fantastic.  8 Speed monk Chakra on the two hit.  Enemies go.  Archer shoots the priest; others just advance.  My turn: samurai moves two panels behind Wiegraf and Asura on him and archer.  2nd Monk Earth Slash on Wiegraf.  Mediator shoots him.  Priest uses Holy.  The combined damage brings him down in a single round.

Power Sleeves are now buyable.  Oh yes, this is a large improvement for monk damage.  White Robes can be useful if expecting to face a lot of elemental damage.  Bought one Gold Staff for completion though don't expect to be using it.

Grog Hill (0 resets)

  Just a bunch of deserters in basic classes, oh shit they killed the mediator on their first set of turns.  Priest uses Raise; other three units beat on thief and a squire.  Enemies kill the mediator again.

Priest casts another Raise on mediator; other units finish off the thief.  Chemists are still hanging out of reach to effectively gang up on them.  Chemists and Archer snipe down the mediator another time.

Oh no, not again.  Priest casts Raise on mediator.  I'd like to supplement this with some Chakra but I need my other units' turns to finish off a squire.  Enemies kill the mediator again and also down a weakened monk.

God damn it.  This pattern keeps continuing while I try to concentrate enough offense on a Chemist to get it out of play.  It takes another round or two and I do bring down a Chemist but at the cost of another unit getting sent into the dirt.  Somehow, I manage to recover from having only a samurai, a priest, and three units on the ground but hoo boy is it a frustrating fight.  Landing a Mimic Daravon on the other Squire is the start of the turnaround and I'm eventually able to get everyone back up and chasing down that pesky archer on the high ground.  Whew, this was a rough one.

Yardow (0 resets):

  After the mess at Grog, this actually went smoother.  Nall and one other as a monk, 1 of each class for the others.  Nall sets Hamedo while the rest are still making do with Regenerator.  Magic Defend Up on most of my team in anticipation of summons.  One Ninja comes up on wall to throw something at my team and the others do the usual.  Malak charges up a Sky Demon Back with Rafa in its range; Sky Demon being exceptionally rare to appear given his Job level of 4.  Samurai Chakras whoever got hit, Priest nukes the ninja on the wall with Holy, monks Earth Slash at lined up ninjas, and mediator tries to line up to take a shot at them.  Rafa does some damage with Heaven Thunder, no kills though.  Summoners toss Moogle at the injured ninjas.  Next round has the ninjas filing out.  I'm only able to kill one of them on my team's next round of actions and there's a Summon or two coming as well.  It's alright though; ninja's next turn was swinging at Nall and Hamedo denied it.  Take it down while doing some healing from the summons and Malak stick pokes.  Battle is pretty much wrapped up with my full team up.  All that's left is chasing down the summoners while staying ahead of their damage and Malak poking with stick for 40-50.  Ninjas crystalize before I finish the mopup; leaving two boxes and one crystal which provides Stigma Magic for the lucky recipient.

  Doing all the equipment upgrades entails traveling back to Dorter.  Got some randoms along the way and did a bit of Brave raising while clearing them.  Everyone is now between 75-78 Brave.  After a bit of thought decide to grab a Bracer, which depletes most of my remaining funds.

Yuguo Woods (0 resets):

  Was undecided on what to do with Rafa but did settle upon turning her into a Chemist for this fight.  I won first try but still ended up redoing it to see if I could engineer something where Rafa gets more than one action.  White Magic > undead and I have Punch Art support too so the victory was never in doubt.  Still, I tried to have things play out where I got more midcharge physicals in and less getting multiple people caught in a single spell.  I had Solution learned on the mediator but didn't end up using it on the winning attempt.

  Change Rafa back to Heaven Knight with Item for the next battle.  Nall has the JP for Blade Grasp so he learns and sets it.  Pick up Invitation and Mimic Daravon for him as he's going to be inviting someone in the next battle.

Gates of Riovanes (0 resets)

  Nall is a Mediator.  Artemis and Felicia are monks.  Ruby is the requisite priest with Draw Out secondary leaving Luna as a Samurai with Punch Art. (for lack of anything more impactful since it's not doing much with 7 PA)   Luna is starting with Nall in squad 1.  Generics are making do with Regenerator as none of them have the JP for Blade Grasp and Hamedo isn't going to be much help against the rain of arrows.  Malak goes first, not in range to do anything as usual.  Rafa also moves and does nothing on turn 1.  My monks go and poke at the far left knight with Earth Slash while staying out of range.  Priest does nothing.  Knights amble towards my party while archers go and pick on Rafa.  Their combined gangup sends her running and Malak follows.
  I want a Crystal Helmet so I intend to invite one of the Knights.  I pick the high level one with the Platina shield as my target.  Nall's main role is to kite him and try to put him to sleep with Mimic Daravon.  This leaves the other units free to beat on the other knights.  It takes a while due to my low offense.  Actually make use of Protect here as insurance against archers all picking on the same unit and dropping someone.  Feather Boots knight provided the most trouble since I can't peck at him from outside his threat range with Earth Slash and his shield blocks most of my team's attack options.  Things worked out for me though; got off a Holy without being pincusioned by archers and enough followup attacks got through the evasion so that he only got one swing at a Protected unit, keeping the overall damage manageable.
  With two knights down and the third finally put to sleep after 4 tries (at 56% even because of good compat), time to chase down the archers.  Just as feared, at one point all three archers charge up on Artemis.  First arrow knocks him back with a critical sparing him the damage from the other two.  Probably could have recovered even if they all hit but a welcome bit of random chance.  While the rest of the team is trying to line up some offense, the archers are bunching up so I fish for some Mimic Daravon but am not landing any even when I can target 2-3 of them.  And when I finally do land a sleep or two, the rest of the team has caught up and it's unneeded at that point.
  I do stall out the fight to let the Earth Clothes archer crystalize.  The knights have also crystalized so I send some units to pick them up.  Felicia gets Secret Fist off one while Artemis adds Spin Fist to his Punch Art collection.  No Earth Clothes by the way.  All this stalling has given the snoozing knight time to wake up.  Well, I needed him awake anyways to have Nall invite him onto the team.  Those 144 swings on 4/5 of my team could hurt but 78 Brave Blade Grasp does its job, denying those painful physicals.  Invite lands on the second attempt and battle is won.

Inside Riovanes (1 reset)

  Priest Ramza with Draw Out setup here.  Wizard Staff, Gold Hairpin, Chameleon Robe, Red Shoes gives 10 MA and the important silence immunity for Velius.  Artemis is a monk, Ruby a mediator, Luna a second priest, leaving Felicia as the samurai.  Magic Defend Up on all for protection.  Artemis learns and sets Hamedo.
  One Holy and one Asura take care of Wiegraf.  Tried to bait a physical but he's not inclined to go for a 20% chance at 100 damage, instead sticking with Wave Fist for 60.  Move-HP up is recovering 20 HP a move to undo some of that Wave Fist damage leaving Nall at about120/200 going into Velius.
  Nall gets first turn so I have him toss another Holy at Velius.  He gets the turn after that too so I have him retreat.  Velius charges forth a locks a Cyclops on Artemis.  Being good compat with him, it gonna oneshot him even with Magic Defend Up.  Artemis lands a punch on Velus for 210.  Luna casts Shell on herself and Nall.  Two demons go, do nothing of significance.  Ruby shrugs and shoots Velius for 96.  Felicia Chakras Nall for a bit of MP.  I have Nall not act on his next turn to realign CT as he's not getting off spells otherwise.  Velius drops Loss on the priests, uh oh.  Not good as it prevents me from Raising Artemis.  Get a bit of luck as confused Luna charges an Esuna on Nall.  Demons are closing in to do a bit of chip damage to non-confused units.  Felicia Wave Fists Luna for 24 to break confusion.  Ruby goes for a three demon Mimic Daravon... dammit forgot to teach it to her.  Lands a Persuade at 35% but it still isn't enough in the end.  Nall is finally free to Raise Artemis but Velius opts to smack Ruby into the stone as the demons have softened her up enough for a melee kill.  I'm scrambling to try to bait Velus into Artemis' Hamedo.  Demons are upon my remaining team members though and Shells are wearing off.  When Velius Seals Felicia, I abandon hope and concede defeat.

  Next try, I toss the Bracer on Artemis and remember to teach Mimic Daravon to Ruby but no other adjustments.  Wiegraf is the same as before.  Instead of having Nall use Holy right off, have him Move/Wait twice to get his CT aligned to be able to get Cure/Raise off without Velus interrupting him.  Velius goes to nuke Artemis with Cyclops as before.  Artemis midcharge punch with Bracer does 390.  Holy from Luna takes off another 210 or so.  Gunshot for 96 and Chakra for a bit of MP like the last attempt.  Demons get a bit of hurt in with Giga Flare.  Nall Raises Artemis.  Velius doesn't take the bait instead punching out Luna.  Well damn, Had carelessly left her where she'd take a Giga Flare and it was enough for a kill.  I opt not to revive her.  Artemis gets a 260 punch in.  Felicia Chakras Nall for another 15 MP back.  Ruby goes to Mimic Daravon on demons landing one sleep.  Nall doesn't go for revival on his turn opting for support.  This time, Velius obliges my manipulation and goes for a physical on Artemis.  Hamedo for 260 wins the fight right there.

Riovanes Roof (4 resets)

 Have Artemis sit out to reduce potential Allure targets.  I stick on Chameleon Robes and Judo Outfits and Alma's Barrette for instant death protection in preparation for this fight.

First go: Elmdor Muramasas Rafa.  Rafa pokes Lede with stick.  Celia Shadow Stitch on Rafa.  Lede kills Rafa with physical.  If you've ever played FFT this far, you've probably seen this exact sequence dozens of times.
Next attempt: Muramasa on Rafa.  Rafa pokes Lede.  Assassins kill Rafa before anyone on my team gets a turn.  Gave Over.
3rd try: Muramasa on Rafa.  Rafa pokes Lede.  Assassins kill Rafa before anyone on my team gets a turn.  Gave Over.
4th try: This time Rafa tries a Diamond Sword at Elmdor and retreats.  Celia goes for a Charge +1 physical.  Lede targets Rafa with Ultima.  To my dismay, my priest is a Virgo and a Cure will not do enough to save Rafa from the incoming damage (and Cure 3 is too slow).  Wave Fist, gunshot, and 64 damage Wizard Staff whack are not enough and Rafa still dies, just 5 clockticks later than the previous failures.

  So I'm pretty much not winning this way.  Strategy change time.  Swap out Felicia for Artemis to be the mediator.  Have samurai Nall and the priest swap jobs as Nall is better suited for supporting Rafa having best instead or worst compat with Rafa.  Also, as an added bit of insurance, I remove Artemis' armor leaving just his hat.

  On this go, Rafa retreats with a Heaven Thunder on Elmdor.  Celia goes for an Ultima on Artemis, just as I planned.  Because the damage only brings him to critical, Lede is also drawn to Ultima him.  Holy from Nall and Wave Fist from the monk are enough to bring Celia down.

New Skills

Priest: Cure 3, Esuna (most)
Monk: Earth Slash (all), Hamedo (Nall, Artemis, Luna)
Mediator: Invitation (Nall, Ruby, Felicia), Threaten, Mimic Daravon (all), Praise (Nall), Solution (Artemis)
Samurai: Asura (all), Blade Grasp (Nall)

That really is it for Samurai due to not getting lots of Samurai JP with all the assassination missions.

Class thoughts:

Priest: Enemy HP has been rising faster than Holy damage so not as dominating on that front.  While not as much MA as I like in a caster class, Draw Out has strengthened the class' overall usefulness.  Pulls decent numbers even with dinky Asura.  The Speed multiplier does tend to come in handy only possibly being awkward on turn 1 against opposition exactly 1 Speed slower.  Been getting by with the basic set of Cure, Raise, and Holy, only occasionally dipping into Protect/Shell/Esuna.  (most fights status not being relevant, guarded by equipment, or something not covered by Esuna/Stigma Magic)
Monk: With PA armor showing up, this class is a lot better being one of the heavy hitters of the party.  Higher levels means better relative HP too.  Earth Slash is the main workhorse skill here with Wave Fist for floaty or earth absorbing targets.  Chakra for HP/MP support with Revive as backup revival.  Hamedo is very nice when one can bait the enemies into physicals.
Mediator: They get a gun upgrade this Chapter so they're a bit better.  64 damage at 8 range isn't a whole lot but usually enough to contribute.  More of their skillset got use too.  Invitation for nabbing early gear upgrades.  Mimic Daravon to attempt to put groups to sleep.  Praise for Brave raising.  Solution to weaken undead wizards in Yuguo if I can't interrupt an incoming spell with brute force.  Still mostly meh by itself as a class and debatably the weakest of the tier 3 options but the Brave raising pairs well with the powerful Reactions that Monk and Samurai have.
Samurai: To no surprise to a FFT veteran, Samurai is meh and very so-so with its own skillset.  This is exacorbated by a drought of JP when rushing through the chapter.  Blade Grasp is amazing of course but only Ramza acquired enough spare JP for it.  Samurais ended up being inferior Monks due to me giving them Punch Art.  Martial Arts would have helped, were I not so stingy with monk JP and also wanting Gained JP up on any Samurai to get them to Blade Grasp faster.  Pretty much stuck to heavy armor for them; the Wizard Robe not feeling worth the loss of HP when they only have Asura learned.

[Twilkitri]

Dragon Age: Origins - Additional Modules (Steam)

Leliana's Song

Fairly short and quite enjoyable. Decent range of things to do, although the first segment is the only really open one.

The city guard situation in the first segment doesn't really make sense and I'm not sure if it's supposed to suggest that I wasn't playing it properly or if there just wan't much thought put into it.

This module also has fancy introductory animations for each of the major characters which neither the maingame nor any of the other modules have, which is weird.

The Darkspawn Chronicles

Short and fairly novel, decently enjoyable. Only note specific to the module is that it just stops once you prevent the maingame characters from winning, no information is provided as to what sort of impact this actually has on the world. Which was disappointing.

Awakening

The major one.

It vaguely wants to have a management sim aspect but it's not very good at it. You get one choice early on with regards to whether your soldiers should be protecting the major city, the keep (which is not in said city to be clear), or the farmlands - or if they should be spread across everything - but after this you never really get any information on what sort of effect this is having. A couple of later quests require you to divert some soldiers and it's very unclear what impact doing this actually has on your previous selection (if it even has any).

There's a large, gated-off section in the keep yard which is practically unused - if you make a particular choice during a quest then one person will start standing around in that section. Possibly suggests that there was more intended to be done with it that ended up being left out.

You can have the keep walls repaired & upgraded but the game doesn't let you see them from the OUTSIDE so what is even the POINT

All that aside, the main gameplay is largely entertaining.

I did experience noticeably more crashes while playing this module than I did while playing the maingame, which was annoying. Including one right after beating the final, so I had to redo that.

The Golems Of Amgarrak

Not a fan. Too many battles that put you up against a bunch of golems which each spend a lot of their time preventing your characters from being able to act. And one battle which put you up against four strong mages at once which liked freezing your characters and preventing them from being able to act. Additionally, unless your main character is a healer themself, you get very little in the way of magical healing for the module - and while as far as I can recall it does hand out a few high-level healing potions, it is only a few, so you'd better hope that you imported a whole bunch of others as well.

The battles outside of the problem ones were spread across the more usual range of difficulty at least. Meanwhile, the story was kind of mediocre and the mist section it opens with doesn't really make sense. Also the ending arbitrarily kills off the rune golem for no reason.

Witch Hunt

The plot problem with this module is that I don't think that the main character, as they had been run so far, would have any pressing interest in looking for Morrigan given she had specifically requested them not to. They give you a barely passable stand-in reason at the start of the module (getting back the stolen book) but ultimately don't let you actually run with that reason.

The library section is decently entertaining, but then you essentially just go through four small dungeons, at least some of which you've been through before, and you're at the end. Two of the dungeons have light gimmicks, one of them has a boss fight, one of them essentially has nothing notable. On the plus side, no battles on the level of the terrible ones from Golems.


I picked up Dragon Age II during the steam sale earlier in the month but I'm probably not going to play it for a while.


The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past (Wii U VC)

I had played the majority of this via emulation back in the day so I remembered a bunch of things, but still mostly enjoyable. Have the impression that I found it much more difficult when I was playing it emulated but if so it was probably just due to overreliance on savestates.


Word Rescue (Steam)

Played through this due to a lingering desire from childhood to see episodes 2 and 3. (I was never a big fan of Math Rescue so have no such desire for its registered episodes.)

It probably wasn't worth it.

The game should probably give you a free refill of slime when you die, some of the later levels (on Hard, anyway - which doesn't appear to actually impact the educational facet of the game, only the enemy count and so on) make it very difficult to actually get anywhere if you don't have enough on hand. (You keep whatever you had on hand when you die, so ultimately this leads to a situation where you try to reach a slime pickup then die so that you can get it again.)


Blaster Master Zero (Switch)

Very entertaining.

Got what appeared to be a bad ending, and on checking into it it was. (I had missed the Jump Booster.) So I had to backtrack aways then retrack to the final area again.

Which ties into an issue I had with the game: I would have liked for there to be some sort of fast travel.

Also, the controls for catching ladders are terrible, and that one jump based around that is bad. (The point where you have to catch a ladder while in a current underwater meanwhile is merely aggravating.)

One of these will be attended to in the next game.


Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch)

Also very entertaining, mostly.

So while there's fast travel between zones after a fashion now, they've gone too far and now fast travel is the only way between zones. (And since it involves traversing area maps the fast part is variable/debatable.)

No improvement to the controls for catching ladders but there are at least no situations as bad as that one jump in the previous game this time.

The game is noticeably more difficult than the previous game, which from my perspective is a downside.

Has a pretty great section towards the end, albeit one which has a bunch of infuriating smaller sections throughout it.


I should probably wait until Zero 3 is on sale before picking it up - feels like it isn't very obvious when items on the Nintendo store go on sale though.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Octopath Traveler 2 - Completed. Game clock was around 75 hours. Unlike OT1 there is a final boss that doesn't feel like a superboss and a clear ending point.

In terms of gameplay this is basically more Octopath 1. The biggest changes are positive ones which increase character differentiation. In Octopath 1, "Olberic with Hunter sub-job" and "Ha'anit with Warrior subjob" were virtually indistinguishable. OT2 adds a couple new layers. First of all, everyone gets some sort of battle ability innately which in general are more meaningful or relevant than a lot of OT1's (like the hunter's releases are spammable and thus much more useful). Then, everyone gets two skills, one midgame and one near the end, unique to them, and a few of these are very good. Finally, everyone gets a "latent power" gauge (similar to a limit break) which lets them do something extra when it's filled.

My biggest complaint about the game's gameplay is that otherwise it's very similar to OT1, and in the midgame I was a bit bored because bosses were things I felt I'd "solved" already in OT1, and thus very easy. The game does some more interesting boss design things later, which is nice.

In terms of story... mm. It's definitely a game where "vibe" carries the story more than the actual writing, which is definitely a bit shaky. I still appreciate the "eight short stories that all secretly connect" story structure, it's definitely unique and doing its own thing. I don't have a strong feeling about whether OT1 or OT2 is better in this regard. I feel like the average story quality is almost the same, but OT1 had larger variance - I liked Primrose's story better than anything in OT2, but disliked Tressa's more than anything in OT2 as well. Your milage may vary.

Actually let's do a quick comparison! Which story I liked more in each game, by class:

Cleric: This one's close. I like the Temenos better than Ophilia, but Ophilia's story about what draws people toward exploitative cults hit home better than OT2's not-all-that-engaging mystery.
Scholar: I like both characters although they're very different! Cyrus's story is better than Osvald's though; Osvald's gets off to a good start (the prison is great) but Harvey is just too evil and kinda unconvincing to be an interesting antagonist and that's basically all that's going on with the post-prison parts of the story. The ending where Osvald just abandons his daughter and leaves a woman to do the emotional labour part also really rubbed me the wrong way. I assume/hope there's an optional quest I missed which resolves this but that's not good enough IMO.
Merchant: Easy win for OT2. Partitio's story is a bit wobbly at points (both his C1 and a certain deus ex machina NPC) but ultimately it builds to an excellent ideological confrontation with a memorable antagonist. Partitio himself just has sky-high charisma, his infectious optimism actually convinces the Main Plot Villain associated with his quest to re-think her choices and indirectly saves the world, and you know what? I buy it.
Warrior: I don't think Hikari's story has anything quite as juicy as Olberic vs. Earhardt but otherwise it's much more solid, every major player is memorable and Hikari himself is very endearing.
Dancer: I will say that Agnea's low-stakes story about the power of self-belief which ends in a metaphorical dance-off battle is neat and unique but yeah obviously have to go with OT1 here.
Apothecary: Cassti ultimately probably had my favourite of the OT2 stories, I particularly enjoyed the side chapter dealing with an NPC's end-of-life... and of course the whole twist surrounding Malaya and Cassti's backstory. Her antagonist has the manic charisma reminiscent of Simeon or Matthias from the first game and is good fun, and also works well as a dark reflection of Cassti while tying into the main themes. Is good.
Thief: Throne's a bit frustrating. I really liked the story with Father; Chapter 1 and 2 build him up in delicious fashion and then 3's a... decent enough conclusion. By contrast Mother is not great, too cartoonish. And then Throne's final chapter is a mess in an attempt to tie to the overarching story that ends up feeling very weird and not in a good way. So I guess this is probably a win for OT1.
Hunter: Definitely preferred OT1. Both Ochette herself and her story are quite bland; the decision to make the antagonist entirely offscreen (until a single flashback in the unified ending) does the story no favours. Ochette herself is reasonably likable at least but it doesn't really carry a story.

Gameplay notes on the PCs:

Ochette: Loses Ha'anit's broken Arrowstorm but otherwise, yikes, they majorly buffed capturable monsters, mainly by making them infinitely spammable, so you basically get an expanded skillset which includes a whole bunch of very powerful effects, of the player's choice. There are two midgame-damage-curve breaking story ones, and aside from that there are lots of breaking options, MT buffs, you name it. Her latent power is flexible and provides early access to MDef Down which is otherwise difficult to access, though not one of the OP ones. What is OP is her second unique skill, which lets her spend 48 MP to tripleact her monster summon which is just stupid. My own choice of secondary job for her was Warrior just go give her even more damage/breaking options, but honestly she'd do well with anything.

Cassti: So my embarrassing admission is I didn't figure out I had access to an enemy-targeting version of Concoct until the end of the game (I knew there would be one, just figured I'd learn it at some point... no it's just hidden in the menu, oops). Anyway Concoct is great, and her latent power makes all the ingredients free which is wonderful for hoarders. Also wonderful for when you get the "grants BP" mix ingredient (I only ever got one, I used it dozens of times). Concoct is busted. Her own skillset provides some appreciated axe damage shenanigans which are an improvement on Alfyn's. Final class for her was Armsmaster which is just favouritism more than anything, but the ability to do huge damage on non-Concoct turns is certainly nice since Concoct means she kinda rules regardless of what you do.

Throne: Thief does a little bit of everything offensive as in OT1: debuffs and damage of different varieties, with Aeber's Reckoning being a nice MT smash move (even better in this game because it's easier to buff speed). But what really pulls her into "really damn good" territory? One is arguably the best latent power in the game, allowing just straight doubleacting. (You still boost the two turns individually, so it's not OP for damage, but it's ridiculous for utility.) The other is her first unique skill, which does MT dark magic damage. This would be useful if that's all it did, for breaking reasons, but what makes it OP? It causes every enemy to miss with their next physical attack. Even bosses. This turned at least one final chapter boss into a joke. For a secondary I gave her hunter because Leghold Trap and Precise Shot are both great to use with the extra actions she gets.

Osvald: Clearly the devs agreed with me that Scholar was too strong in OT1. In OT2, it loses its tier 2 spells at base... but you can get access to them by casting a buff! Obviously this is a significant nerf. Anyway, Osvald is still a good source of magic damage and particularly late in the game once you get a bunch of +mag gear this can be quite potent. Osvald's latent power allows him to focus his MT spells for extra damage and that's neat enough but obviously not one of the better ones. His unique skills aren't too great either. So... worst PC but not bad, definitely has a niche. I gave him Merchant secondary because another PC who can use Donate BP is always good; if his good magic damage isn't useful in a fight he'd always have that.

Partitio: Is the merchant, which means he has Hired Help which I assume is good but I basically ignored again, and Donate BP which is just one of those really game-defining skills. His latent power, though, competes with Throne and Agnea's to be the best. It fills his BP gauge. Oh yeah and Merchant gets a passive which fills his latent power gauge at the start of each fight. So for most of the game I had him using Inventor (MT physical damage of any weapon type) to do big damage to randoms. At the end of the game I used Arcanist which gives access to a certain cheese combo from OT1, though it's not as broken in this game for a few reasons.

Agnea: There are more ways to buff in this game so that's a bit of a nerf to Dancer; it's now one of the less appealing subjobs IMO. Agnea herself, though, is still real good. One reason is her latent power, another one of the really good ones, which can make any skill MT. Obviously this includes her Dancer buffs. Early on I did subjob Hunter with her because of MT Leghold Trap, later I did Apothecary for MT healing+revival. Why did I move off Leghold, you might ask? Because Agnea's first unique skill is completely busted and basically has that effect itself: it's MT wind magic (like Throne's, I would use it even if had no effect past this) which causes all player turns to go before all enemy turns next turn. Yes this is stupid in this system.

Temenos: Cleric still providing useful MT healing we know and love; items compete well enough at certain points but the ability to boost the healing (or MT revival) means in a real pinch, this skillset is gonna shine. Temenos himself otherwise is notable for a good magic stat, which leads him towards the Scholar subjob... but the real reason to use Scholar subjob on him is something else. Scholar in this game gets a "3-5 (boost to 6-8)" hits vs random targets which on Osvald is fine but on Temenos? Temenos's latent power causes any hit to break shields. So yes, 6-8 hits of shield-breaking on a boss is ridiculous. I don't want to imagine fighting his own final boss without him.

Hikari: The extra skills and latent powers cause most PCs to feel "buffed" compared to OT1, but Hikari might be the biggest buff of all. It's not because of his extra skills, even though the second one is literally just "Brand's Blade, but more damage, and divided into two hits where one is MT". It's not his latent power, even though "do Brand's Blade-like damage then act again at the end of the round" is obviously very good. No, the real game-breaker is that he gets five skills of your choice from duels. And two of them, gained from story events, are 2-hit MT sword and spear attacks which do huge damage and carry him through the game. Fill out the rest with utility of your choice; I was particularly fond of the "analyze, but show two weaknesses instead of one" as well as various good breaking options. Really good PC. I did subjob Cleric because he was my main and thus always in my party, and that's a skillset it's nice to never be without.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. As mentioned in an earlier post I think it's a bit too long and definitely kinda lags in the second quarter of the game (kinda like OT1). I don't feel strongly about whether it or OT1 is the better game, but in general I think they're in the same area and if you liked one, you'll probably like the other (and vice versa).


Fell Seal - Beat a Alchemystic SCC. Was pretty fun, and not super-hard, though it easily could have been super-hard if not for a couple things!

One of those things is crossbows. It's funny, when I've used this class before I've always used them as a mage and given them staves (which range spell range by 1). For the SCC though, staves are nearly useless, crossbows are god and let me actually kill things I want. Offence is pretty low so it often takes a good 5 or so attacks to bring down one enemy, letting my entire team easily do this is huge.

The other thing is Mystic Shield, their frankly kind of overpowered reaction skill which absorbs one hit as long they have MP. This hugely pushes their durability and means that I almost can't lose to a single enemy.

Other skillset notes:
-Side Effects is a neat passive, granting a little bonus healing to buffs and bonus damage to debuffs. The effect on buffs is obvious, but the added damage to Corrosive and Noxious Bombs is actually really useful. As an extra bonus, the bombs still don't trigger "Critical" reactions (Rebirth/Quicken) even if they deal damage which is super useful for avoiding those.
-Resistance Expert means they have loads of res. Magic damage generally isn't too scary.
-Mass Barrier is the star of their active skills, letting them block one status, AOE. Since damage is mitigated by Mystic Shield this is huge for surviving. Enemies which deal lots of status at once can still go through this and are a huge pain. It's only 8 MP so I can always use it and it always leaves me with 2 MP Mystic Shield, perfect.
-Mass Shield and Mass Aegis also cost 8 MP, the defensive buffs are modest but can be fine filler actions. Aegis in particular makes my res really high and will sometimes even let my MP survive a hit from magic.
-Mass Renew is a neat extra source of healing, though at 12 MP I need to get two consecutive turns without taking damage in the middle to use it. Mass Haste, similarly, costs 16 but is a nice offensive boost. Regular Haste I don't use much, but it's situtation to transfer turns to a more useful character.
-Refresh is neat; I didn't use it much early but later I used it quite a bit to refresh statuses on lots of people, particularly noteworthy if one of those statuses is haste since Refresh at 8 MP is cheaper than re-casting Mass Haste. It also triggers Side Effects, though only once no matter how many statuses it adds.
-Soul Tendrils plays an essential role but is not very good. It's basically a non-elemental Level 2 spell, but it costs 22 MP (the equivalent wizard spells only cost) 14, which is obviously a lot (need 3 turns in a row without being hit in the middle). Still, that's how I deal damage to enemies with Evade Attack, or Pektites, or enemies who immune the element of my current crossbow, so sometimes you have to make do. Mass Insight is nice to buff its damage, I try to use it if I anticipate needing Soul Tendrils. Its only other effect is to buff Side Effects slightly, but that's not the worst bonus.

Battle notes:
Iirzk'tara Gorge: 1 injury
Baaz Island: 1 injury
Strangled Cove: 2 injuries
Gelligh 2 (Septimus): 1 reset, then 1 injury
Bardvig Aqueduct: 1 reset, then 1 injury
Kapawka Jungle: 2 injuries
Godstear Wastes: 1 injury
Mountain Temple 1: 2 injuries
Mountain Temple 2: 2 resets, then 4 injuries
Crossroads 2: 1 reset, then 3 injuries
Illuster: 1 injury
Cataracta Citadel: 1 reset, then 3 injuries
Immortal Council Chambers 2: 2 injuries
Gelligh 3: 1 injury
Mount Nevanzer: 2 resets, then 2 injuries
Nervanzer Wellspring: 1 reset, then 0 injuries

Grandia 3 - Currently doing a challenge run, will detail notes when it's done.

Final Fantasy 3 - Playing the PR version. Game's a good time.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Final Fantasy 3 - Beat the pixel remaster. Levels were 46-47, game clock was a bit over 14 hours. It's wonderful how brisk this game feels. It's not as if the game lacks gameplay content (dungeons, bosses, jobs, etc.). Even if it had a meaty story it would be less than 20 hours long. (Unfortunately the story is pretty laughably bad, but oh well.)

It's almost certainly the definitive version of FF3. Auto-saves, battle speedup/auto-battle, and encounter control are very nice. Job sickness and capacity are both gone and while I'm not sure if that's positive or negative it does mean the game more than ever just leans into "no, really, just use whatever is best RIGHT NOW", and honestly I think that probably makes a lot of sense.

Class system is closer to NES than DS but does maintain at least a few of the DS job features to give certain jobs relevance (Viking, Scholar), so that's nice. Enemy design is definitely closer to NES overall which means randoms have definite teeth. Bosses keep any skillset additions from DS but are back to single-acting, that said some have been improved (particularly Xande who lost his "wastes every other turn on Libra" AI, and also Titan who is just legit pretty strong if fought ASAP like I always do).

I played the game without using White Mage or Devout, for I think the first time ever? It's not optimal necessarily but it works pretty well. Aside from that I also had an "only one Ninja, only one Sage" restriction but in this version that's honestly not much of a restriction.

Job notes!

One interesting thing is that this version kinda pulled back on non-mage jobs using magic. In NES, Ranger and Dark Knight could use some low-level magic. In DS, those jobs lost that, but Knight and Scholar got some instead. None of these jobs have magic in this version. It's a slight nerf to some of the jobs but honestly they all manage. Ranger is the one I'm least sold on needing this nerf.

Fighter/Knight: They're basically the same job in this version. A bit of a slow start (probably the worst job for Djinn's cave actually?) but then you just keep getting better swords for elemental weaknesses, draining, big damage, you name it. Auto-cover is very cool, proactive tanking in a game this old! Got used as late as Two-Headed Dragon. I used Knight all the way to the end this time and actually it did slightly more damage than Ninja with Ragnarok/Excalibur because of job levels, though obviously couldn't use Shurikens.

Monk: Solid early job, the nunchuks make it peak at physical damage for the first few dungeons. Black Belt I didn't actually use this time, it feels mostly in the shadow of Thief?

Red Mage: Gets its DS spell charges instead of NES, thank goodness. Used all the way until Eureka. Interesting little job. Obviously good out of the gate between Wightslayer and having most of the advantages of both Black and White Mage, remains good through the end of the FC with things like Ice Helm, and then Ice Rod + Ice Staff to itemcast boosted Blizzard for free (something the other mages can't do). Starts falling off around Goldor... but then you get Rune Staff (itemcast Blizzaga) in Salonia and honestly that gives them good spammable damage the entire rest of the game. Late the "only has 1-3 shots of Curaga" finally starts catching up with them but really only, like, Eureka late. The really high JL does help their healing a fair bit; hit JL 99 so that was cool.

Black Mage: The game advises using three for the earlygame mini dungeons and honestly that's probably correct, their int means their spell damage gets pretty good. Falls off around Goldor in the usual fashion, and status isn't great in this version so they weren't wonderful through e.g. Cave of Darkness but they were usable.

Magus: Deals nice big spell damage. Shuriken aside, their Flare outdamaged any physicals in this version fairly easily, thanks to Haste being nerfed to its DS version. Very solid in their availability.

Scholar: Items blow up bosses. I only used them as far as Kraken (after which point they become too squishy for their "hit randoms with books" strat) but honestly you could probably switch someone into one right before each boss the entire rest of the game and do very well.

Ranger: Exist in their usual niche of okay backrow physical damage for the tree and Cave of Tides. Doesn't feel like they'd age well in this version but I didn't try.

Thief: Great back-row damage for the Goldor arc as usual. Afterwards you could get some decent damage out of knives but only decent and they'd be squishy so I don't see much point.

Geomancer: Free magic damage if you don't have spells (e.g. Magic Circle Cave mini-dungeon) or are out of MP. Can do frontrow melee but you probably shouldn't.

Dragoon: Hi I heard you want to beat Garuda. Also Blood Lance is very good. One of the best physical jobs after getting them, at least until Eureka weapons they can't use, but Blood Lance Jump saved me as late as Bahamut who is really rude in this version.

Viking: Great honestly. Initiative provoke that works on all physicals (no immunity, though it does have a natural miss rate of around 1/3). Strap on two shields to null damage and breeze through many randoms. For bosses or against magic enemies you can switch to hammers/axes which... since this game moved away from DS's "agility as godstat for physical damage" they are actually competent at, though not the best.

Dark Knight: As usual, godly in the Cave of Darkness. Fine later although their lack of armour options compared to Knight/Dragoon/Viking means I'm not massively enamoured. Darkside is gone and replaced by Bladeblitz which seems to be just "weaker MT physical" and there are worse things to have.

Sage: Lower JLs mean that dedicated mages can still do some things better them but they're still the endgame Red Mage, being able to do everything, and they're back to having the better summons and don't have the glacial speed of DS so that's obviously good.

Ninja: Physical job with lower JLs which can use literally everything, and shuriken doing twice as much damage as anything else means it'd be obviously sub-optimum to not use at least one.

Didn't use White Mage, Devout, Evoker, Summoner, Bard, or Black Belt this run.

[DragonKnight Zero]

FFT Fiesta Chapter 4 - Part 1
(Priest, Monk, Mediator, Samurai, Dancer)

Story progress is getting put on hold to grind up Dancer for the three females.  I also purchase an Ice Brand, a Partisan, and another Platina shield so facilitate this.  One geo and one lancer per battle while the other three train in various other fiesta jobs as my whims dictate.  Nall spends some time in Squire too to finish up Move +1.  As a side benefit, the generics get enough spillover Squire JP to learn Move +1 themselves.
  Some of this training is done on the way to Goug as I need to go there anyway to unlock the Colliery series of fights.  Running into a flock of 7 chocobos at Baraius Hill was particularly miserable but I managed to power through.  Also did some propositions while having the second stringers handle any randoms that pop up in the duration.  Of course it's during this themed playthrough that Alicia nabs Fire 4 from a crystal when I'm not able to take advantage of it in the constraints of the playthrough.  The grind takes place over three days of real time due to not having the attention span to do a lot of it at once.  And when I finally pick up Beowulf, I choose to run back to Goug to do the contest proposition there.

  One consolation prize is that 4 out of 5 units accrue the needed Samurai JP for Blade Grasp with the 5th close.  Did a bit more Brave raising with the team at 78 save a straggler at 76.  Team is about Lv 29-31 going into the next story mission.  I've finished the Fiesta and there were barely any resets in all of Chapter 4 so I'm not posting a number unless it's something other than zero.

Colliery 1

  Luna doesn't have the JP for Blade Grasp.  She does have the needed JP for Hamedo and Equip Gun though so I set both and give her a Mythril Gun.  Mediator also set Hamedo for added fun.  Luna is the dancer and has the lowest HP so the AI loves going after her only to be shot instead.  Between Blade Grasp and gun Hamedo, the enemy chemists don't land a single shot while my side dismantles them.

Colliery 2

  The main reason I'm doing this sidequest is to nab the spell gun on this map.  General plan is chasing down the Blaze Gun chemist, Solution once or twice, then spam Invitation until it lands.  Leaning on Blade Grasp to keep my team safe from the magic gun.  First shot lands 153 through  Blade Grasp, which does slow my team down a little in taking out the close thief and behemoth to heal from it.  Dancer is using Nameless.  Second Nameless frogs the far behemoth so stop dancing after that and move on to other actions.  Leave behemoth be while I have the team converge on the chemist and take out other thief when I have an opening to gang up on it.  Beowulf helps disable the chemist with some Don't Act.  Takes 4-5 tries before landing that invite.  Grabbed crystal from first thief before beating up the frog, got some steal skills that won't see use.
  In hindsight, I should have given the Dancer Talk Skill to double up on Invitation attempts.  She's not doing a whole lot with other secondaries as it is.

Colliery 3

  Ruby gets slotted as the dancer again so sets Equip Gun and Hamedo again as she's still a bit short for Blade Grasp.  I need to keep her out of dragon range; the others have Magic Defend Up and White Robes so I'm not as worried for them.  Monk, Mediator, and Dancer in squad 1 with Priest and Monk in squad 2.
  The dragons are the biggest danger but I need the Chemists down first before I can really effectively remove them.  On squad 1 side, gun Hamedo plus a followup shot from spell gun toting Mediator should be enough to off that Chemist though if needed, dancer will chip in another shot.  Rather have her doing Nameless Dance though.  On squad 2's side, Holy is the plan with maybe a bit of softening up with 24 damage Earth Slash from the samurai.  Blasted dragon kept hovering too close to the Chemist for a safe Holy nuke.  All up to RNG as for how helpful Beowulf is with landing Don't Acts.
  Had some epic bad luck with the dancer getting two Nameless Dances off between ATs with the first frogging a dragon and the second unfrogging it.  Still won but geez.

Colliery 4

  Only 4 deployment slots but 5 jobs, hadn't thought about how to handle this situation.  Leaving out the 5th rolled job makes enough sense though.  So no one in dancer for this fight (though still allowed to set it as a secondary and use any learned RSM)  Germinas Boots on at least samurai, mediator, and Beowulf so that they get in faster.  Straightforward slaughter of enemies.  They did land a Death Sentence on someone but it's simple enough for the priest to Raise the victim after it kills them.  I guess Reraise could have helped too, had I remembered it (had the surplus JP in pirest).

Welcome Reis and Beowulf, who will spend the rest of the  game unused on the formation screen.
Luna finally has the Samurai JP for Blade Grasp so all 5 units set it for the next fight.

Dougula Pass

  With Blade Grasp, the Wizards are the most significant threat.  The closer one is taken care of with a monk Earth Slash and a midcharge from the Samurai, Mediator chipping in if needed.  Nameless Dance frogs the other wizard on the first attempt.  Pretty much a straightforward beatdown of the remaining units after that.  Priest supports or nukes with Holy, mediator shoots people with Black Robe boosted spell gun, monk bashes, samurai attacks or Chakras priest.  Lancers first, then whichever of knight/archer is within kill range, frog last.  No crystals, murdered them too fast.

Bervania

  Going for the assassination on this one.  Artemis turn as the priest; teach him Kotetsu.  Luna is a samurai with Black Robe and Equip Gun to tote the Blaze Gun.  They go in squad 2.  They're specifically arranged to manipulate the AI in a particular manner.
  Battle start.  Ninja goes to throw something at Artemis, Blade Grasp.  Meliadoul moves onto the box and does nothing.  My monk goes, does nothing of importance.  Artemis walks to Meliadoul's side and Kotetsu for 132.  Enemies go.  Arrows whiff.  One summoner charges something to hurt the monk on roof.  Other summoner has Germinas Boots and charges a summon on squad 1.  My turn.  Mediator shoots Meliadoul for 80.  Dancer whaps summoner with carpet.  Samurai shoots Melly, get an Ice 2 for 206.  More than enough to send her running.  No broken gear, just as planned.

Finath River

  3 reds, 3 yellows.  The high level on my formation screen was 33 so I was somewhat worried about 9 speed reds overwhelming my team.  Samurai, mediator with spell gun and Black Robe, and dancer did have enough offense to take out a red chocobo per round.  Combined with Magic Defend Up on most of the party (and enough help from Nameless Dance), this proved to be enough to keep up.  On the other side, nuke the closest yellow with Holy (with monk chipping in damage if need be), then move them over towards squad one to help support.  Minor oops is that priest Artemis actually had Kiyomori learned but I forgot to use it, which would really help out with survival.  Monk helps hurt stuff, is an MP battery with Chakra, or dances Nameless Dance.  Dancer has White Magic and tossed a few cures as needed, though the priest was the main medic.

Zeltenia

  Fly would be relevant here, except I don't have anyone with the JP for it.  Delita didn't have Lightning Stab so no quick kill to be had here.  Ended up going the long way.  Took out the two closest knights before I had the opening to gang up on Zalmo.

Bed Desert

  One of the few times where I was looking forward to this fight.  Normally, I dread dealing with Balk.  This time, I have the tools to humiliate him.  Set up my female Gemini as a priest with the Blaze Gun, a Black Robe, and Hamedo.  (also Equip Gun)  Because of best compatability, Balk will be drawn to shoot at her and Hamedo punishes him for trying, mwahaha.  I also teach the monk for this fight Stigma Magic.
  At the start of the fight, Balk's first shot gets through Hamedo for 175.  Manageable, she's still alive.  Monk Stigma Magic on everyone but Nall.  Priest heals herself.  Enemies go, with archers taking shoots but evaded by Blade Grasp.  Mediator Nall Antidote on self.  Samurai Wave Fists Wizard.  Dancer starts up a Nameless Dance.  Balk shoots priest again; Hamedo for 140.   Nameless goes off frogging a Knight.  Monk Chakra on priest.  Priest shoots other knight rather than risk putting Balk in critical and him retreating behind the support.    I was planning to bury the wizard with midcharge hits from mediator and samurai but the little punk Poisons the samurai instead.  Balk goes again to shoot at priest, Ice 3 Hamedo takes him down to 30.  Archer shoots at dancer, Blade Grasp.  Archer shoots at priest.  Hamedo but the gunshot hits my samurai, annoying.  Nall gets his turn now and caps Balk with no further fanfare.

North Wall of Bethla

  Or whichever one has the summoner and lnacers.  Blade Grasp is a massive help against the rain of arrows and, later on, lnacers.  Monk shows up with Earth Slash so I gravitate towards taking him out though I want the Summoner gone too.  Summoner gets off a Shiva on two people but between Magic Defend Up and Kiyomori (actually remembered I had it), it gets reduced to 22 and 33 on the targets.  First Nameless Dance Stops him and he doesn't live long enough for a second cast as I opt to Holy him out of existence.  Straightforward matter of wearing everything down and healing up from the few arrows that get past 78 Brave Blade Grasp.  At one point, I want to Secret Fist a lancer (first time I'd considered using it) but he had a Defense Ring to shut that idea down.  Really, game.  Used some Slow Dance when it was just down to one archer and the user wasn't in range for anything else.  Finish opposition and move on.

Bethla Sluice (1 reset):

  I had a reset here.  Not because I was in danger of losing, but because one of the switch knights snagged a crystal when I wasn't paying enough attention to his movement range. (and not realizing they would actively seek them out even if it takes more than one turn)
  Monk, priest, dancer in squad 1 with samurai and mediator in squad 2.  Opening round sees the predictable enemies shuffling around, archers shooting at people (Blade Grasp), left side wizard starts charging something big on team 2, and close knight walking up to Ramza and swinging (Blade Grasp again).  Team 1 opens with Earth Slash and Holy on knight and dancer using Nameless Dance and team 2 offing the wizard midcharge.  First use of Nameless puts an archer to sleep and silences the other wizard.  Hahaha, living wizard is now a non-factor.  Team 1 kills one knight and puts the other in critical before making their way up while the samurai's goal on squad 2 is to ascend and start lobbing Earth Slash at the switch knights.  Monk does the same.  I aim to put them into critical HP to get them to move off the switches rather than go for kills.  Sleeping archer does eventually wake up (whether from wizard bopping it or just enough time passing) but doesn't land a hit until I'm one Ramza turn from ending the fight.  Only one crystal from the left side wizard; Luna learns a Fire 4 she'll never be using. (a second one, geez game dangle this in front of me during a themed game why don't ya)  I do end up killing the Ultimus Bow archer.  All told, enemy survivors are three knights in critical, one archer, and a silenced wizard.  (maybe not the wizard, he could have been caught in Earth Slash and Draw Out AoE, forgot)

[DragonKnight Zero]

FFT Fiesta Chapter 4, part 2
(priest, monk, mediator, samurai, dancer)

  Some very welcome upgrades after Bethla.  Flash Hats are fantastic.  Black Costumes will be very useful in some upcoming fights.  Kikuichimonji is nice not so much for swinging (though still an improvement) and more for its long rangel Draw Out.  Only Nall has the spare samurai JP for the skill at the moment but it's something. Finally get to restock on various katanas; haven't been in a trade city since before the Colliery series.  Also opt to bring my stack of 108 Gems up to 3 along with buying two more Angel Rings.  Had around half a million Gil before, spent around half or so before proceeding on.

Germinas Peak

  The ninja is the primary target to eliminate; everyone else is mostly shut down by Blade Grasp.  I actually messed up and didn't do quite enough damage to take him out, was fortunate he only did 80 to the dancer before retreating.  The enemies tended to spread out in ways that I'm not multihitting them with Draw Out or Earth Slash, necessitating taking them down one at a time.  Did get one instance where I was able to tag multiple with a Kiku, very satisfying damage from priest Nall with Wizard Staff, Flash Hat, and Red Shoes.  Mediator did most of the damage; spell gun, Black Robe and 81 Faith enemies lead to disgusting amounts of pain.   Holy was not relevant, CTs just not lining up.  The few Nameless Dances used didn't land anything more significant than Sleep but even one snoozing enemy is a decent help.
  But when it comes down to it, this is a very routine "beat down the enemies without getting killed myself" exercise.  Got a box from the ninja, finished fight before any other death countdowns expired.

Poeskas Lake

  Maybe I shouldn't have tried to off the lower level Revenant so early as it led to an undead Archer taking the high ground to take shots at the units busting that ghost.  Thus making it more tiresome to chase down that runaway spirit.  Basic battle plan of beat down the ghosts then chase down the undead humans.  Blade Grasp turns away the many incoming arrows.  Did get a cool moment where I reflected a Cure 3 off the samurai's Reflect Mail all the way across the map onto the undead summoner, which sent it into critical and it ran away without getting to do anything.  Undead oracle is sent to critical with a single Ice3 from the mediator's spell gun (boosted with Black Robe again) and joins the undead summoner in huddling in the corner.   While I was able to entice one archer to come to lower ground, the other stayed up high in the enemies' starting area and was an annoying git to close in to beat down.  One ghost revived but was quickly beaten down again.  Dancer did some Slow Dances as slowing the undead also delays how quickly they rise back up.  Summoner got nailed twice, oracle once.  None landed on any archers though which were the ones I most wanted to slow down.  Ironically, oracle was the last enemy to go down.  It did attempt a Blind Rage, which makes a comical "too little, too late" moment and got killed before it went off.  On the plus side, everyone has reached Lv 35 for the Speed point.

Gates of Limberry

  Everyone gets some form of status protection, be it Black Costume, Chameleon Robe, or Reflect Mail (turns away Apanda Bio spells).  Monk is female so has the Barrate. Celia opens with Shadow Stitch on Nall. (whatever, don't need him)  Lede can't reach anyone for Shadow Stitch so comes down and charges Ultima on the dancer.  Gunshot and a Kotetsu from the priest take her to critical and ends the fight right there.

Halls of Limberry

  The three 108 Gems go on the mediator, priest, and samurai.  Monk gets the Barette.  Only Dancer is vulnerable to Blood Suck but with her low HP, don't expect that status to become an issue.  Mediator gets Hamedo while the rest I go with Regenerator as I anticipate being hit by lots of things that bypass Blade Grasp/Hamedo.  Magic Defend Up on the team.  Mediator Nall sets Item.  Samurai Artemis has Punch Art secondary.  Dancer sets Draw Out and has a Flash Hat and Red Shoes for the added MA.  Priest goes with the standard Draw Out.
  Magic Defend Up on all may have been a mistake; leaving it off the dancer may have been a better option.  I completely messed up on baiting Ultimas.  Elmdor Muramasas the girls, confusion on the Dancer. (not good as I'm losing her Kotetsu damage)  Lede Shadow Stitch on Artemis.  Celia goes for Throw on Nall; gun Hamedo intercepts.  My turn.  Nall shoots Celia, sending her to critical.  Priest Felicia launches a Holy at Elmdor for 304.  Monk Earth Slashes Elmdor for 60.  Confused Dancer attempts a 40% physical on Celia, whiff.  Enemies turn.  Elmdor offs Felicia with a physical.  Lede instakills the stopped Artemis.  Celia finishes off the dancer and runs away.
  At this point, I screwed up.  Should have had Nall Phoenix Down Felicia instead of shooting Lede.  Another 60 Earth Slash on Elmdor.  Elmdor and Lede gangbeat the monk.  (another misstep, Hamedo would have saved her).  It's a full HP Nall and a field of corpses.  Have him Phoenix Down Felicia who gets an immediate turn due to CTs synching up and launches a desperation Kotetsu on Elmdor and Lede.  132 to Elmdor drops him low enough to run.
  So I won but it was a messy one with so many errors on my part.  Also, the rare instance of Phoenix Down making the difference between victory and defeat: the first time that's occurred during this playthrough.

Limberry underground

Preparations: Chameleon Robe on Priest and Samurai.  Black Costumes on the others.  Black Costume users all get Angel Rings too.  Hamedo on monk and samurai; Blade Grasp on others.  MagicDefend Up all around.  Red Shoes on Priest.  Germinas for Samurai.  Nall (the Priest) also learned Heaven's Cloud.

Mistake #1: Throwing people with 3 Jump into the water is a terrible idea; they're forced to take the long way out.  Should have just taken the lumps from skeleton physicals.
Mistake #2: Having the dancer open up with Nameless Dance.  She gets put to sleep by Nightmare before one activates.  A Slow Dance would have gone off before Zalera's second turn.
Mistake #3: Poor target prioritzation.  Would probably be smarter to get undead into dead or critical rather than go for a round 1 Holy on Zalera just because it would hit in time.

  Zalera has too much HP for a blitz strategy to be successful.  So I went with a defensive one based around drawing lots of Nightmare and hoping for Death Sentence while wearing down the opposition.  Mostly worked out, given that I still won first try, but execution could have been improved.  Maybe then I wouldn't have ended up in a situation with 4 sleeping team members and only the mediator awake.  At one point, Zalera drops a Confuse 2 on two of the sleeping units along with Meliadoul.  Game really had it out for me because Melly,

A. Had Battle Skill set.
B.  Had Head Break learned.
C. Saw fit to attempt Head Break on sleeping Dancer, connecting on the 2nd attempt.  Goddammit, my Flash Hat.

That was the only broken gear too; the undead knights took a few swings but thankfully missed.

Bone Snatch came back twice during the fight.  Other skeletons stay dead.  Undead knights were put into critical at some point and they retreat into a corner until Meliadoul wanders close enough to smack them.  All the while, I'm scrambling to keep people awake and unconfused with Stigma Magic and Esuna (first time I actually use Esuna all game) and taking what shots I can at Zalera.  There was a Spell on the Samurai at one point.  She has Stigma Magic for extra insult.  Still, Zalera doesn't really have the needed offense to kill anyone in one shot as long as I keep HP above Flare 2 range so just keeps spamming status while I have Chakra and white magic so I have the resources to outlast a war of attrition.  Dancer eventually gets turns and connects a Slow Dance or two, tilting things ever so slightly more in my favor.
  After a long time, Zalera does flit over to the gravestone side of the arena.   This makes me nervous as the Living Bone had dropped a crystal over there.  To my horror, it looks like he'll snag it before I can get any of my units to grab it.  If I hadn't landed a kill with one last Heaven's Cloud and Zalera had picked it up, I would have reset in indignation.  This fight took nearly an hour and this is without any of the stalling I often do in normal play, just to give a sense of how drawn out this fight turned out.

  Meliadoul is added to the roster only to sit there unused.  I do have one other stop to make before plowing on.  Hike back to Zhargidas for Thief Hats and replacing the broken Flash Hat just because.  The random on the way there had a funny moment where enemies were bunched up for a 3 target Mimic Daravon that hits two in spite of its poor accuracy.  This is also the only time I've bothered with Mimic Daravon all chapter, crazily enough.  Anyhow, the other reason I'm at Zhargidas is that I want a Blast Gun and the rare battle at Germinas Peak is available now.  So I'm going to invite some chemists.  Set up the Dancer with Talk Skill secondary to double up on invites (the only time I set Talk Skill as a secondary all game), save, and prepare for a lot of resets.

  Amazingly, I get the desired battle on the very first try.  The Blast Gun chemist is present and there's a Glacier Gun and a Blaze Gun to be had as well.  With Blade Grasp on everyone, I'm not too worried about getting shot up but I put up a Shell before reaching them anyways.  Start up some Nameless Dance as well hoping for something useful.  Both monk and dancer are using it.  Only relevant status was a confusion, which was still useful as it cost them a turn to clear it.  I needn't have worried about damage.  With Blade Grasp and my high Brave, the gunners weren't inclined to shoot my team at all, favoring 5 damage Dashes instead.  Mediators did Death Sentence my priest at 35% but that's all they got done before taking them out.  Start spamming Invitation and support as needed, for both my team and the chemists I'm trying to invite.  I would have been content with just the Blast Gun but I was able to successfully invite all three without the invited ending the fight by killing off the last enemy side unit.  Did spend a few Phoenix Downs on the chemists and the invited also guzzled some of my Hi-Potions but the payoff was very worth it.

  My formation screen was already full before the fight and I do need a slot to add the new recruits so.... bye Malak.  Add them one at a time replacing each other and I have three more shiny spell guns to play with.

  Didn't get a single fight on the way to Igros; too bad, I would have like some more Samurai and Dancer JP.  Before entering, I set up the monk and dancer with Equip Gun and a spell gun for each.

Igros

  Fly would be relevant here, if I had anyone with enough Dancer JP to grab it.  Priest Nall can't really do anything at 10 Speed without eating a midcharge swordskill so he just advances.  Mediator gets a shot on Dycedarg with the Blast Gun and advances under the ledge.  Dycedarg uses Stasis Sword on Nall, no Stop.  Monk and Dancer cannot get line of sight on Dycedarg so start up Polka Polka, intending to weaken Dyce's swordskill damage.  Of all the things Zalbag can do, he decides that stealing Dyce's Aegis shield is a fantastic idea (groan).  It lands but I would have preferred a physical.  Knights shuffle around doing nothing of great importance.  Samurai Artemis uses Kiyomori on himself, Nall, and mediator.  Polka Polkas go off, hitting various knights but missing the one target I care about.  Nall has enough time to get a Cure off on himself.  Mediator runs under ledge and shoots Dyce again.  As I've carefully positioned my team to prevent multi-hit swordskills, Dycedarg Stasis Swords Zalbag, no stop.  Still no line of sight for monk and dancer and they continue with Polka Polka.  Zalbag is still above 20% HP so he chases down his brother and lands his 140 physical.  Knights are going after Zalbag if they can but shield evade works enough to keep him upright.  He does have a fatal Charge +2 targeted on him.  But mediator gets a turn before it resolves and shoot Dyce down to zero HP first.  Meanwhile, Nall had locked a Holy on the same space in preparation for phase 2.

  Monk and dancer switch to Slow Dance; one of them connects which is welcome.  Adramelk's first turn is to nuke the monk with Holy.  Nall brings her back with Raise.  I just leave her at half HP and sure enough, Adramelk tries to off her with a 21% physical, Blade Grasp.  As for offense, monk does more damage with spell gun than Punch Art.  Samurai has bad compat so his role is to be an MP battery with Chakra for priest.  Priest favors Holy if MP is in a good place and CT lines up and Heaven's Cloud/Kiku if it isn't depending on positioning.  I avoid bunching up for Loss and Adramelk obliges me by going for another 21% physical on the monk.  Three turns is all he gets before the barrage of spell guns and magic take him down.

Outside Morund

  Another map where Fly would have mattered but still had no one with the JP for it.  The non-Virgos in team 2 had a blast.  Set them up with spell guns and Hamedo and bait the mediators into gunshots.  Team 1, had less fun.  Samurai with Punch Art, priest with Draw Out, and Dancer with Draw Out: they have issues with vertical tolerance while the summoner and geomancers have no such issues with height differences.  I'd given them Regenerator since there's very little they face that's subject to Blade Grasp/Hamedo and of course, the ninja geo just has to show up with Throw, something that Blade Grasp/Hamedo would help against.  Priest Luna doesn't have the JP for Kiku so when enemies do line up, I'm not in prime position to exploit it.  MagicDefend Up keeps the damage from getting too heavy but there's still the matter of the priest undoing damage and status effects from geomancy slowing things down.  Samurai keeps CT in sync with summoner so it was the first to go down with a midcharge physical plus some added damage.  The rest kept harassing team 1 and diverting turns for recovery until team 2 could make their way over for fire support.  One mediator boxilized before fight was won.

Hall of Morund (1 reset):

  Yes, there was a reset here.  Not because I was losing but because I'm not accepting a broken katana on a fight won in three actions.  Nall is naked except for Feather Boots.  Rofel walks up to swing at him, Blade Grasp.  Dancer Luna goes to Rofel's flanks and Kotetsu for 132.  Monk Artemis Earth Slashes Nall, Rofel, and Vormav:  96 to Rofel.  Priest Ruby Kikuichimonji and the same targets: 240 to Rofel sends him into the carpet.  Bye-bye Shrine Knights, no broken gear.

Underground Chapel:

  Zombag will focus on Ramza above all else.  It's his turn to be the samurai so I give him 108 Gems and Hamedo.  Monk gets Equip Gun and a spell gun, the others already have some form of magic based offense to bypass Defense Up.  Kikus and Earth Slashes take the Ultima Demon out of play before it can go.  Archaic Demons aren't able to inflict casualties thanks to MagicDefend Up.  They only live for one turn before going down and then I turn my focus to Zombag.  All the while, he's been failing to break through Hamedo, though his evasion has also been on and none of the counter swings get through.  While keeping Ramza around as bait, Threaten Zombag once and pummel him with spell guns and Draw Outs.  One Zombag swing does break through leading me to divert the monk to Chakra Ramza.  (Reflect Mail may have not been a good idea here) but I still wear him down decently quick, finishing the kill with a Holy when he's low enough for it to kill.  May have used a Slow Dance somewhere during this but it wasn't important to the outcome.

On the way back to Dorter, I deliberately trigger a random with the goal of getting everyone to exactly 80 Brave.  As a secondary objective, see what white magic I can pass on to the designated priest blue mage style.  I actually get Cure 4 on the first try.  Protect 2 and Shell 2 I only tried once or twice each before finishing off the enemies and moving on.  That 72% hit rate doesn't help things; shameful that the "advanced" versions have lower accuracy than the lower tier Protect/Shell.

[Cmdr_King]

Super Robot Wars V- fin!

So overall you can feel, playing this, both that it's the first game to hire native english-language editors (rather than just hoping that SEA english speakers were close enough) and that they'd just come off a big saga and weren't quite sure what the next game really wanted to be.  It's overall pretty rough around the edges in a way that's only marginally distracting, but does stand out a lot at first if you've played any of the three later games that borrow heavily from its mold.  The series selection also has just a lot of casts that are here as hangers-on without much in the way of native plot, so you get a little bit of UC gundam but not really because 00 really fills most of the gundam slots, but really only Cross Ange and Might Gaine have serious plot focus which... not always the best.  And then there's the Yamato, the entire endgame is crafted around it, the OG plot is crafted specifically as an homage to the original version of Yamato so that Yamato is still the real main character.  And in absolute fairness Yamato is pretty hype and they do a great job of letting it be the star.

it does however confirm for me I am super not going any further into the past for this "spending money on SRW" project, I can wait for a new one or maybe relearn the dark arts and play some GBA/DS era games.

Game does end very strong though, both of the last two maps were super hype, especially on the IF route.  But it's rough enough before that that even coming straight off finishing it up I'm putting is cleanly below the rest I've played recently.

[Twilkitri]

Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille Zur Macht (PS2)

Played through. Was mostly enjoyable.

The AGWS system doesn't seem especially well thought out, although to be fair I didn't really interact with it outside the sequence where Jr's team is using them by default. I was initially keeping the frames and generators up to date but I ended up stopping doing this because there was no reason to ever actually use them, so this was effectively wasting a significant amount of money. AGWS equipment, on the other hand, I hardly touched because the interface was terrible. ...and ultimately when I tried to use one later on, when Jr. was doing no damage to Simeon, his AGWS also did no damage to Simeon. I had also tried to use them against Ace Pilot's AGWS earlier, when they were much less outdated, and they were promptly flattened, although I guess that turned out to be a superboss.

And, you can buy new AGWS units for ludicrous prices. Given this and the costs to keep the regular units up to date the game seems to have thought that I should be getting much more money than I actually was or something.

The enemies in the second major area in Song Of Nephilim were incredibly rude and I ended up using Seraphim Bird on them every battle. (Maybe this is the sort of place where AGWS were supposed to be useful, although given you need to spend turns getting into them, that would be very tedious.)

Not sure when I'll get to Episode II, although certainly not before the first batch of Pokémon DLC. Since I have a PAL copy it presumably isn't going to recognise my clear save from I~


Blaster Master Zero 3 (Switch)

Played through, was good.

They have fixed the problems with catching ladders, and re-connected major areas while retaining fast travel, so that's those problems down. It's still more difficult than I'd prefer.

Another pretty great ending sequence.


Quake II - new campaigns (Steam)

Quake II 64

I had no interest in replaying the regular Quake II campaign, but I'd heard that Quake II 64's campaign was noticeably different. It turned out to be even more different than I was expecting, though. (Which was welcome.) Just a breezy linear set of individual levels rather than sets of interconnected levels.

It does end abruptly with no message/fanfare/anything, which is weird.


Call Of The Machine

While I found it enjoyable for the most part, overall I would have preferred it to be shorter.

Favourite unit of levels was probably Corpse Run which had some good opportunities to really leverage Q2's AOE weaponry, least favourite is Ruined Earth because of there being too many jumpscares.

While this campaign does at least have an ending message, the ending itself is still pretty weird.

[superaielman]

SO2 demo is glorious and I can’t wait for the full game to drop in November.

[Luther Lansfeld]

This Way Madness Lies — Completed the game on ‘Challenging’, the second highest difficulty mode.

This game really feels like the culmination of what makes Zeboyd good — tightly balanced gameplay, light-hearted storytelling, and well-balanced characters — and adds magical girls and Shakespeare. Honestly, the game feels like it caters to my interests in such a complete way. Definitely the best gameplay effort from Zeboyd, as well as graphics and character design, and the writing is definitely good at being funny filler.

Beatrice was one of my MVP characters, who has multi-target offensive status (poison/defense down/attack down/charm) and a crazy-high ailment inflicting stat. In addition, this game features the ability to see an enemy’s ‘ailment HP’ which lets you know how close you are to being able to inflict the status. Charm is quite powerful even though it only lasts one turn, since the enemies tend to do massive damage to themselves. Poison is also quite good, especially MT Poison for randoms who can be pretty durable.

The other was Paulina, who is a great healer with several good moves, has multi-target Unstoppable (a buff that lets you go into negative HP for one turn) on her Hyper turns, and has one move that lets you inflict status for an extra turn on an enemy that is currently statuses. Combined with Beatrice’s Charm on bosses, the enemy will often do massive damage to themselves or their support. (And yes, you can charm bosses).

Imogen is forced but she’s a good all-around unit, similar to other Zeboyd main characters. She has healing, light magic, charm, and turn shift. Would be a compelling choice even if she wasn’t forced.

My fourth choice (besides Imogen, who is forced) for the final dungeon was Kate, who is a good defensive tank character with some fun general tricks up her sleeve, such as attracting attacks, buffing defense, and being able to heal herself out of Unstoppable with attacks. She also has a weird White Wind-like healing move which can be useful if your characters are pretty far into the negatives. I also like that her design reminds me of a FE pegasus knight.

The other charcters are Rosiland (who is a mixed fighter/healer, and is pretty good but doesn’t fill the healing niche as well as Paulina because of the lack of MT Unstoppable), Viola (who is the damage character, but doesn’t have a whole lot of other tricks), and Miranda, who feels like a discount version of Paulina, at least the way I play because I like buffing and healing and statusing. She has a skillset that changes laterally whether she is Hyper or not, which is an interesting idea but in practice I didn’t find her toolkit as useful as the other PCs. You could probably run them on the same team and Miranda could fill other roles, but not as well as other characters. None of the characters are bad though.

Interesting to note that they brought the full choice in abilities back to the game, as opposed to Cthulhu Saves Christmas which had three randomized skills in each battle. Cosmic Star Heroine felt very patterned/monotonous because the same combination of abilities were largely used to beat everything, but this game I feel like the enemy compositions matter a lot more and you pay attention to them. It helps that the status HP is visible! Great change.

Music is also a step up from the previous games.

I’m currently replaying the game on NG+ and I turned up the difficulty to the highest setting. I’m about 1/3 through since I’ve been button-mashing through cutscenes and I know where to go.

Great game, recommend to anyone who likes traditional turn based RPGs!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Let's talk about playthrough #18 (also working on 19, will save that for a later post).

Did an all women run. That wouldn't be particularly difficult since there are no shortage of good female PCs (if you play CF and choose female Byleth, I think most people would agree the best four or five PCs available are women? Possibly more?) So I put a spin on it, reviving my the randomization process I used for one of my recent runs. The modified ruleset is as follows:

-Only female PCs may be deployed or set as adjutants. If a male PC is forced (e.g. for a paralogue), he should take no actions.
-Each female unit is randomly assigned two skills (excluding authority) to train in. Once they are seen, a third may be chosen.
-Characters may not use any weapon or magic in battle that is not one of these three skills.
-Any advanced or master class can ONLY be qualified for if the two highest (or only) skill rank requirement(s) of that class are from the list of skills a character can train in. e.g. to qualify as an assassin, the character must be training sword+bow. To qualify as Bow Knight, the character must be training bow+riding (but not necessarily lance). etc.
-A character can not qualify for a one-prerequisite class (e.g. swordmaster, warlock) using their chosen third skill.
-A character can train other skills for the purpose of recruitment and class certifications. Note that all beginner and intermediate classes are still on the table, so characters can still get useful skills like Death/Fiendish Blow.
-Authority is not affected by this run; anyone can train that however they want.
-Maddening NG no grinding etc.

Anyway, Crimson Flower of course. Here's the full list of PCs. The first two skills in brackets are the two I randomly rolled, the third is one I chose to round out their build.

Byleth (Sword/Flying/Axe): Pretty standard Wyvern Byleth, swords are a neat option for Creator Sword and then Windsweep for certain bosses. She got terribly speed-screwed but she hit hard, at least, and it's very VERY difficult to have a bad female wyvern in this game.

Petra (Lance/Axe/Flying): Standard wyvern #2. She got loads of defence in addition to her usual great speed so was just amazing all-around. Probably my strongest unit? Her or Dorothea.

Edelgard (Bow/Faith/Axe): Edelgard is good, Sniper is good. The combination is... still one of my better units but the limited move definitely hurts on her, like yes she kills things very dead but has a bit more trouble reaching them especially on terrain-heavy maps. Probably the least I've ever used Raging Storm. I completely ignored Faith on her, as seems in character.

Dorothea (Fists/Reason/Faith): Fairly standard Dorothea with her ridiculous Reason list and Physic as usual, only noteworthy thing is she had the highest magic in my party, thanks RNG, Dorothea with cast-best magic makes every other mage in the game look bad and I'm here for it.

Lysithea (Sword/Riding/Reason): Lysithea with no faith spells is unfortunate but still very effective at murdering cavalry, armour, and low-HP enemies. Valkyrie is a wonderful fit for her giving her some much-needed range flexibility.

Constance (Armour/Flying/Reason): Underwhelming until she reached Dark Flier because her speed was just wretched and she had no faith and no really cool reason spell like Thoron or Dark Spikes. Dark Flier and Bolting both went a long way toward helping her, though she was always a bit shaky on accuracy, because there's basically no such things as a bad Dark Flier, and certainly not one with as much magic as Constance.

Mercedes (Faith/Armour/Reason): Again a very standard Mercedes. She was one of my lesser-used characters not because she's bad, but because she's a bit boring and I had so many other units with Physic; still there were maps I really appreciated (or missed) Fortify.

Marianne (Sword/Faith/Reason): Probably the easiest build for a recruited Marianne. She was a lot like Mercedes, another unit whose defining feature was Physic, trading Fortify for Thoron, Soulblade, and Silence. Probably a winning trade overall.

Bernadetta (Fists/Faith/Lance): Usual tale of Vengeance being very cool in Intermediate tier and almost useless thereafter, her fists could kill things just as well 90% of the time. She also had Physic, which is cool! Rescue at A faith and ~15 magic is too late and too low-range to be that useful, but hey.

Leonie (Fists/Faith/Bow): War Cleric #2. Had an expensive build since I couldn't start on Fists/Faith until she was recruited (and she's hard to recruit super early because of her B support being locked, I got her in Chapter 6) but I still wanted Point-Blank Volley. Still, like Bernie, she punched things well, had Physic, and PBV could kill things fists couldn't quad (especially those lategame fliers). Worse than Bernie until they were both War Clerics but better thereafter.

Hapi (Bow/Fists/Faith): War Cleric #3. Honestly her build was just too crazy expensive, needs A fists for Aura Knuckles, B authority for Edumund Troops to hit reliably with them (her dex/luck are pretty bad and she had almost no supports) and had banes in both, and of course I also wanted A faith for Warp. Useful at various points for cheesing monster maps and always had Physic, and certainly blossomed at the end, but clearly not her best build.

Ingrid (Reason/Armour/Sword): Mage Ingrid is interesting and I might have done Dark Flier if Constance hadn't drawn it (only one Nuvelle Fliers), so instead I just used her sword boon + Thoron access to be a good dancer, not much to say.

Annette (Axe/Riding/Armour): Definitely made a mistake with her, I should have chosen Reason as her third just so she could be a bit more useful in Chapter 4-6 (I got her early with Lysithea due to both sharing a recruitment method) and she was obviously destined to hit the bench regardless.

Shamir (Faith/Flying/Bow): I could have chosen Axe or Lance for her third and made her another flier; perhaps I should have. I figured she might end up on the bench though so I decided to let her use bows and be good short-term filler in Chapter 6.

Manuela (Lance/Bow/Faith): erm yeah, I didn't think there was any salvaging lance/bow Manuela. Was never deployed except her paralogue.

Anna (Axe/Reason/Faith): Mostly healed people as filler in Chapter 3-6. This might be the most I've ever used Anna!