What games are you playing 2024? Battle strength determined by frilly outfits

[Twilkitri]

Have you played Konami Pixel Puzzle Collection on mobile, Twil? It's not deep mechanically, but it's very long and completely free. After you beat it 100% you get to do it again without the ability to mark squares.

I have! At the time I thought Expert Mode was terrible but that didn't stop me from replaying puzzles in it aways after hitting 200% completion. Unhappily my save didn't transfer when I got a new phone but your having brought it up has gotten to start going back through it.


Glass Masquerade 3: Honeylines - Folks & Spirits (Steam)

It's more Glass Masquerade 3.

Since the previous expansion they've added the option for piece cuts more in line with the first two games, so it was good to see those again.


Retro City Rampage DX (Steam)

I was afraid that this would be structured like the classic GTA games (e.g. beat score X in location 1 to unlock location 2 etc.) but happily it has a more linear, story-based one.

Has a lot of amusing scenes/callbacks if you're into the gameplay at all. The final mission was terrible, though, a format switch to a racing game style view where you have to get through extended sections of obstacles to get a brief chance at damaging the final boss, with no checkpoints. Might be less of an issue if you have a controller with a turbo option but I don't.

In keeping with GTA and the like, the game has a bunch of checklisty side tasks. I beat all the spree-style ones (albeit not with gold medals for a significant amount) but didn't bother trying to collect all the loot items I'd missed etc.


Superhero League Of Hoboken (GOG)

Somewhat amusing point&click adventure/RPG hybrid which doesn't really work on a gameplay level.

Much too heavy on the RPG side, and a bit too light on the adventure side.

The superheroes in question each have unusual powers, but most of the powers are either used once to solve a puzzle or are essentially just offensive magic for RPG battles. A couple have utility/traversal uses. One of the later heroes has a power used to solve multiple puzzles!

One of your initial superheroes has the power 'put animals to sleep' (actual sleep, for clarity). One of the initial missions you get is to deal with a bunch of rabid sheep. You may connect these two concepts. No! Putting animals to sleep only works in combat. The mission actually needs to be handled by an item you get in a different location. Not good! There should have been much more emphasis on solving problems via powers. (Or at least in getting the equipment you need to solve problems via powers, which does happen at least once at least.) The combat-only powers should not have been, or most characters with them should have also had non-combat powers.

Battles are also often just a chore and there should have been less of them.

Gaining access to additional areas of the overworld is decently set up for the most part except for the locations which aren't actually on it, which are all accessed via train. The problem is that the train system was set up by someone who hates public transport and wants everyone else to hate it. Every train only runs between two specific locations, and each train is only usable if you have a keycard specific to it. Stations are somewhat evenly split between having one line or having two lines. It shouldn't be required to have to go looking for the relevant station after you get a new keycard! Any train should just be able to go to any station that you currently have a keycard for. This isn't really a puzzle.

Also it might just be me but I think it's weird that there are so many locations which are essentially in pocket dimensions that you can only access via train. I don't know offhand if the locations in question are supposed to actually be distant from the overworld but our group of superheroes isn't supposed to be dealing with problems outside the area around Hoboken anyway?

[Dark Holy Elf]

More Bravely Default 2 fiesta (Vanguard/Bard/staytuned):

Abandoned Mansion: At this point I do a quest which leads here. Halfway through I open a chest with 3 Hi-Potions, and kick myself because those would have been really useful against Berserker, and honestly the randoms in this dungeon are a step down from Bernard's anyway. There's a boss here, it's easy.

Onto Chapter 2! Since there's a choice of which boss you fight first in this chapter, I roll for my job immediately and get Pictomancer. So after getting the first job in Chapter 1, I get the last in Chapter 2, which means I'll have a truly large section of the game with just Vanguard + Bard. Also at this point my first characters master Vanguard. Vanguard's second job special provides a free attack boost based on the ChanceOfBeingTargeted stat, which is welcome. They also get Neo Cross Slash now, which has a big MP cost (54) but does over twice as much damage as the already powerful Cross Cut, so it's neat for big brave-blitzes.

Academy/sewers: No real problems here. Probably the most noteworthy enemy is the Mantrap which very, very rarely counters physicals with confusion, which is dangerous. Gigantos also counter physcials much more frequently, dealing a significant but predictable amount of physical damage. They're weak to earth so Sword of Stone puts in work against them.

BOSS Roddy: Roddy's not much of a problem. I largely resist his damage with my Wind Talismans (best accessory) and Academy Robes, and at only 17000 HP he's an easy braveblitz. Plus I have Hi-Potions now, so I can keep up with boss offence. Yet this fight still manages to give me a good scare. Why? The Picto-Beleth who accompanies him is immune to all physical damage types. This leaves me with remarkably little in the way of good options for killing it! Fortunately the Vanguard special attack is earth, not weapon-typed, so it does around half its health, and I can take out the rest with a bunch of attack items, but I could have been in real trouble if I'd had less of those.

Wiswald Woods: Largely easy. The most notable enemy is the Petunia which does big light-elemental damage on their own turns, making light resistance tempting.

BOSS Lily: Lily has two things which make her scary. One is huge physical damage with Human Slayer and Quickfire Flurry. Bardstrats lock that down. The other is paralysis, including as a counter to physicals. The Laurel Crown (on everyone) blocks that. With those protections in place this fight is pretty routine. She comes with a Picto-Amrita which can inflict dread and that's certainly annoying, but it's easy for me to kill unlike Beleth (its resists are magical).

Treetop Tower: In this dungeon I get multiple Earthbreaker axes, which are an upgrade over storebought, but are earth-elemental, which is a mixed bag. Some enemies resist earth, but others are weak to it. Hellhounds have a physical counter but it's not too scary.

BOSS Galahad: Galahad comes with THREE annoying picto-demons, including a Beleth and an Amrita from the previous fights, and a new one, Picto-Mona. Who MT heals the team for 10k. Screw that, she dies first. I make some misplays in this fight, dumping a braveblitz into the Amrita only to discover that Amrita is immune to earth, and dumping a brave-blitz into Mona only to discover she immunes axes. WHY ARE IMMUNITIES NOT LISTED BY SCAN IN THIS GAME GRRR. Anyway the fight still isn't too hard because it can't really break through Bardstrats. Once I get my act together, I unleash three Direct Sunlights on the enemy (obtained from a quest) which hit weakness on all four enemies present and does 1950 x3 to them all, nice. I then blitz Mona with a sword to get rid of the healing, then blitz Amrita with a non-earth axe, removing the threat of dread. Beleth goes next; I use a Vanguard special and then a few storebought lightning attack items to finish it off. Galahad has a physical refelction buff is annoying, but he can't kill me and Lily sometimes paralyzes him which is funny. Eventually the reflection wears off and I smash him with Neo Cross Slash.

Secret Studio: A short little dungeon. Most of the enemies are weak to axes or earth and I have zero difficulty here.

BOSS Folie: Folie fights with a Rock Tortoise and Golem; the latter absorbs earth so ruins one of my early plans. They aren't too scary overall (tortoise will set up reflect, I don't care). She also fights with an untargetable wall (the game's data says it's called Study in Crimson) which throws out Darkra for big magical damage (first turn it does 2000 to one, ouch), usually ST at first and usually MT for reduced damage later. The wall sometimes uses a MT status move which adds poison and dread (not very accurate, maybe each at 25% chance), and everyone is blocking one or the other with their hat. Folie herself uses some pretty weak debuffs, unimpressive physicals, and Daub (+30% damage received?). As her HP drops she starts using Scuro and Chiaro which are significant ST magic damage. She will rarely counter Default by gaining BP, but since most of her actions aren't too scary I'm not overly bothered.

All of this adds up to "use Don't Let 'em Trick You x4 on turn 1" to control the magic damage, since that's very dangerous and nothing else about the fight is. I take out the two supports first, then set up for a Bard special + Hurts So Bad + Neo Cross Slash blitz. Honestly after I see my final damage I realize I could have done this at the very start of the fight possibly, or at least as soon as the support were dead.

Pictomancer get!

I'm not sure what to do with this job right now. Honestly it seems kinda bad, outside Sub-Job BP Saver letting someone with Vanguard sub-job being able to donate BP for free (which is obviously gonna be cool). It's got more Atk than Bard but still way behind mastered Vanguard, and terrible HP. We'll see. For now, still running two Vanguards of course. Anyway Chapter 2 is done, except for one last little dungeon and-

Wayward Woods (2 resets): Wow this is the hardest dungeon in the game so far? Devil's Snares absorb earth, and counter physicals with Don't Touch which can inflict a plethora of nasty statuses, like the Mantrap only way more frequent; they can also do randotarget physical damage which really adds up. Buffs and Cross Cut can mostly deal with them safely, with higher HP ones I just use Neo Cross Slash, which marks the first time that sees work in randoms. Toxic Worms can throw out both MT poison and MT blind both attached to significant MT damage and have pretty good HP, and half earth. Adamantite Golems null earth, have big HP, and usually counter physicals for big (defence-ignoring?) physical damage. Yikes! Not friendly for my team. I get through it, though, and Chapter 2 is complete!

[074]

Visions of Mana Demo: Played it.  Honestly it feels...comfortable?  Like, I'm not expecting anything grand from it but it is a comfy ARPG, and the class options are definitely there.  I probably will get it when it comes out, since I don't have much else to wait for.

Characters get nine classes overall, one base and one for each element, and as they're tied to elemental relics, you can't (for now) run duplicate elements in the party.  From what I can gather, classes determine your CS (limit break, which is this time shared by the whole party in exchange for basically being a smart bomb) and base weapon type.  Probably stats as well.  Which, interestingly, each character has at least three base weapon categories shared among their jobs, but unique to them so far.  Demo let us play with Wind and Moon classes (tying to two of the three characters, at that)

Worth noting is that all learned spells and passives are shared between jobs.  Weaponskills are shared between jobs that share the weapon in question.  Point system unlocks later class abilities, so while I imagine you will get to unlock everything eventually, you have to decide what to get now.  I'll be interested in seeing how it plays out in the full game.  I say, as I have way too much of a backlog already.


Crystal Project: Speaking of backlog, taking my second dive into this game.  About the same impression I had before: gameplay is good, even if classes feel a bit more restrictive, music is good, but the writing feels a bit painful to me.  Too many blatant references, and the framing makes me keep on wondering if this is supposed to be its own world or just a MMORPG world and it's never honest about either.

But this isn't a game that I play for the writing.  It's a game I play because I want to have my Reaper/Monk do a chargeup before chunkifying some dude with a wind punch for 1600+ damage, and then follow up the next turn with what would be a life-sacrificing attack but his setup turns his hands into life-draining orochi claws that give a return on investment.  And the fact that I can get excited about builds is a pretty good indicator that something has definitely gone right here.  ...I will avoid going into the classes here but more because I'd end up turning this into an In-Game Use post and that thread is elsewhere.

[Dark Holy Elf]

BD2 Chapter 3: I roll for a new job and I get... Spiritmaster. Well, it's an oddball, we'll see how it fits in.

Also on the Rimedhal world map I pick up Alastor, a new axe which is not earth elemental, so I can stop worrying about running into random earth resistance all the time. I get another storebought in Rimedhal itself. It's the only thing I pick up; armour upgrades basically aren't worth much with the weight system.

Some notes about random strategies in this chapter: enemies are getting increasingly evasive so Won't Be Missing You is getting better and better, Close Those Tired Eyes is another I use a fair bit. While its sleep isn't too accurate, it has a low MP cost, and it has a large variety of uses: it cancels an enemy's defaulting state, it prevents the counter they would use upon waking up, and of course it deprives them of turns until they are hit physically. Pictomancer moves are mostly worthless in randoms; the one I use the most is Freehand, which does ~900 average damage split among random targets. This is a pale shadow of what Cross Cut can do (which has a lower MP cost), but for non-Vanguard offence it's fine. Freehand does trigger magic instead of physical counters. Pictomancer physicals, incidentally, are very disappointing; Bard if anything is still better just because the current best bow inflicts paralysis. Obviously Vanguard is still the heavy lifter in randoms; Crosscut is huge, and Neo Cross Slash, though rarely needed, is obviously even better in a pinch. Speaking of good Vanguard skills: eventually I pick up Sub-Job BP Saver which allows free use of Gift of Courage, i.e. BP Transfer. This lets non-Vanguards transfer BP to Vanguards. It gets especially useful once I drop to one Vanguard.

Anyway, the chapter itself:

Serpent's Grotto: Randoms here are okay but not as tough as Wayward Woods. Lux Elements continue the element enemy tradition of having strong magic damage and gravity, so they're always good targets to kill. Turans have White Wind so they die first. Cask Paraponeras have a draining counter to physicals so they merit Cross Cut.

BOSS Martha: All physical boss means bardstrats are go. I wonder how this challenge would go in a version of the game which nerfed Bardstrats? I don't have to think about it. She uses Jump as a counter to defaulting sometimes; she'll head off the screen and descend a few clockticks later (fraction of a turn) to deal damage; this is fine but means I shouldn't default right before I'm planning to attack her with someone else. Martha has huge HP (nearly 60k, best before this was just over 30k) but buffed Neo Cross Slash tears into it remarkably fast anyway. This does not bode well for the durability of the rest of the bosses in this chapter.

Jaws of Judgement: White Fangs counter physicals for big damage, put them to sleep or Neo Cross Slash, or let my dragon helper Gwilym chip them down for Cross Cut which definitely happens sometimes. Merciless Souls counter physicals with Battle Thirst, stealing BP, but they can't steal from someone at -3 BP so braveblitzing is just more effective than usual. Azazels are the scary enemy of the dungeon, dealing significant magic damage with Meteorite and also countering magic with that, I nearly wipe when I do Freehand x4 and learn this. But I don't!

BOSS Gladys and Helio: Gladys is the main damage-dealer so antiphysical bard strats come out to play. Helio then uses some big magic damage, so sure, he gets to die first. Gladys makes things a bit interesting by adopting her counterstance which counters me for every attack I make on Helio but that's still physical and thus reduced by bard nonsense. Neither of them have great HP. Routine win.

Spiritmaster get! Let's talk about it.

Healthbringer, first of all, is a neat healing move. Sure it only does ~450 MT (though it focuses if allies are dead) but even that is often better than a Hi-Potion, for a low MP cost, and here's the thing: it resolves three times. So it's great healing action economy. AND while it's active, the user is immune to control-denying status and can't be killed if their HP is above 20%. This is great, I even use it in randoms if I anticipate my victory is at least a round away. Besides that, another neat move is Devotion, which costs 1 BP to restore MP equal to 20% of the user's to any target (self included), which is a bit weaker than an ether but hey it's free, literally so at the end of a random. This frees me up to use Neo Cross Slash more. They also have respectable enough magic damage of one element (light).

At this point I go to the Hall of High Holies but I wipe to a random there so I figure the game is telling me I should do other things first. I head over to Enderno and figure I could get the Salve-Maker asterisk now but hey there's another quest sure I'll do that first and it sends me to this other dungeon and-

Frosty Forest (1 reset): Okay clearly I did something wrong with sequencing because this dungeon enemies are extremely strong for this point. My solution is to mostly not fight them, and use Neo Cross Slash when I do. Special mention to Arachnes whose brave combos include hugely damaging MT physicals (the cause of my reset), and a fight against six skeleton assassins hiding in a treasure box who have something like 40000 HP between them, ick. Phoenix Downs have a reasonable chance of instant death (40%? idk) so I resort to using those and praying, fortunately the last one dies as I send my final PC into negative BP. Anyway I finish the quest here. Should I have done this at all now? No. But I make bad choices sometimes.

Crystalcap Mountain: A bit of a breather, but still not trivial. Plagues are annoying because they attack MP (they also sometimes use Doom) and also counter magic with that, but that's more annoying than dangerous. Triffids are plants so y'know sometimes counter with some annoying status but not too often, they're also weak to axes. Algaions hit so hard as to one-shot my frailer PCs but they die quickly themselves.

BOSS Glenn (1 reset): I delayed doing this fight a bit because he uses a 1500 MT attack item which isn't reduced by bardstrats. Or at least I assumed it wouldn't be reduced, I realize I didn't test. That said he has bad HP by this point, so I use a bard special to buff and then one-round him with Neo Cross Slash x4.
... oh yeah, and he counters physical attacks sometimes with Philtre, which inflicts Charm. So my one reset involves my Vanguard getting countered after her first attack then brutally overkilling her three party-members and dropping to negative BP. Oops. Yeah we refight him with her blocking charm.

Hall of High Holies (1 reset): As mentioned, I have one reset when I come here the first time, but now that I have a levelled-up Spiritmaster and am using Neo Cross Slash ever more, it's not too bad. Most of the enemies are humans; the swordswomen counter for a big drain + MP drain which does lots of damage, so that merits big damage of my own to avoid the counter. Lancemen are bulky and make themselves bulkier, while mace- and wand-users have big magic damage, the time I lose involves a MT Banishra/ga spell (I forget which) laying waste to my party. There are also Gaganas, who have wind-animation attacks which are not, in fact, wind, and are evasive, but not very damaging, and Abadons, who fairly reliably use MT dark damage. Nothing too bad.

BOSS Domenic: Only thing about Domenic has that puts a wrench in my plans is Stop as a counter to physicals. Nothing I have seems to get rid of Stop (Purify and Basunabringer both miss it). If my Vanguard had blocked that this fight would be a joke. He also counters magic with Slow (annoying, but not as bad) and Artistry (WHY) with Triplera which is his main damage option. Still, he has no wait to overpower anti-magic bardstrats that I saw, so the usual buffing followed by smashing works. Of note, Banishga actually kinda does okay damage, certainly less than Neo Cross Slash but not laughably less like everything else I have.

To end the chapter there's a chain of three fights, each against 2-4 Holograd soldiers who have ~15k HP each (this is far more than most randoms), and being a chain fight, I can't just go into major negatives BP-wise since I'll keep that for the next fight. There are two enemy types, swordswomen who aren't too notable and mages who deal big earth damage (over 2000 with Stonega ST, though often use weaker stuff too) and have magic counters. Neo Cross Slash blitz, with other PCs using attack/accuracy buffs, Healthbringer, and Gift of Courage. Straightforward enough, I'm never really worried about losing.

Chapter 3 is done! At this point I roll for my next job and get Bastion, but more on that in the next update.

[Random Consonant]

Trails Through Daybreak: well ok falcom i accept your apology for the cold steel games

Seriously though I enjoyed it a great deal, not quite to the same extent as Zero or Azure, but still pretty high up there.  A few assorted misses with the overall cast and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about field combat being a thing compared to the previous games but overall it felt smoother to play than the Cold Steel games and it's nice that it's not just a repeat of the Rean Show feat. Rean.

[Cmdr_King]

Xenoblade 2- So, because I bought Torna as part of the expansion pass, I got a ton of goodies in XB2 that made it super duper easy.  So I kiiiiinda beat the main game in a bit less than 40 hours.

On the one hand this does mean I beat the danged game and don't *really* understand half the systems in it, but on the other hand the game only mildly improved on the deadliness of enemy mobs so I think I was certainly less frustrated.  I will say though that the handful of quests and such I did end up doing were definitely a move in the right direction relative to my complaints about XB1.

So honestly, on the whole, I think Xenoblade 2 is a better game than 1, even if I understand that it tends to undercut itself a times.  But honestly setting aside anything else, Xenoblade 2 just has a much better villain cast. Like yeah Egil is fine as a foil to Shulk but as a character? Eh. And sure “Deus with dialog” is interesting to me as a Xenogears veteran but again, not an amazing villain. Meanwhile there’s real pathos to Jin and Malos and I get why Rex wants to redeem them much more. Like, Shulk developing an aversion to killing makes sense as a reaction to events through the game , it’s a good part of his character, but Rex clearly understands his enemies as people and relates to them as such.

More substantively… both of these games are honestly smaller in story scope than Xenogears, but where XB1 is trying to execute some of its ideas without really embellishing them (or I guess, not doing ENOUGH to embellish them), XB2 is more an outwardly Very 2010s RPG that then eases the player into the more philosphical side of Takahashi's writing, and where it borrows directly from Xenogears it takes those ideas in a different direction.  Like, the fact that Pyra and Mythra are basically a variation on Fei (with a plot role slightly closer to Elly) is well documented, but the fact the two games were released nearly 20 years apart is very present, one feels like someone taking the clinical understanding of DID in the late 90s and building a story around them, while the other feels like a depiction of a plural person derived from knowing some plural people, so this very similar idea feels a lot fresher and influences the story in interesting and new ways.

But yeah the game's flaws are really really well documented and honestly playing the Definitive Edition of XB1 spoiled me somewhat becuase between those two games they got better at quest markers and properly pathing out your minimaps, but still I overall enjoyed this one more.  It just had more under the hood whereas XB1 just felt like a thinner game than other Xeno stuff.

[Cmdr_King]

XB2 Torna The Golden Country- Wahoo.

For the most part this is the best parts of XB2 concentrated into a smaller space.  Along the way they also did a good deal to smooth over some of the most frustrating parts of XB2 proper, although that might also have been in part a function of being a DLC campaign.  In particular the areas here are smaller and use vertical space a LOT less, but that could also just be so they could design it faster?  I dunno.

I do think the ending feels a little at odds with itself.  The trouble they have is they couldn't really TOP the showdown with Malos, and that was the only logical place to put the culling of the party that happens.  And within the context of XB2's battle system I'm not sure how you do a good Price of Freedom sequence.  But simultaneously the ending sequence is doing a lot to show in montage a finalization of the state of play that leads into XB2 proper and not having a real 'chapter' about Amalthus' campaign and Lora's last stand does kinda diminish what this game was doing with its unique plot.  It hits the most important bits and does a good job of showing Torna as a real place (albeit I think they might have forgotten some stuff) but I'm surprised how much of Jin's transition between who he was in Torna and who he became in XB2 is left to inference.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Chapter 4 opens with a split-path, and I've already rolled Bastion, so I head to get that in Halcyonia.

There are only three fights before the boss here, and they're similar to the ones at the end of Chapter 3: squads of Holograd soldiers with ~15k HP. The sword and magic users return, joined by lance- and club-users. They play similarly enough to the fights in Chapter 3, mages die first but otherwise straightforward enough.

BOSS Lonsdale: Lonsdale is a rude welcome to chapter 4, where bosses get serious about their counters. Lonsdale can counter anything except items, pretty much. Specifically:
-He counters physical and buffs with Corporal Punishment, a physical attack powerful enough to one-shot my lower-HP characters, sadly including my Bard who I forget to put an HP booster on.
-He counters magic attacks with Vallation which nullifies the next magic attack.
-He counters debuffs with Wall which raises his defences. It's tempting to dispel this but dispels get rid of debuffs as well, clever boy.
-He counters Default with BP+1.

Healthbringer and Items both don't earn counters, and he's all ST (though fast) so I can't really lose but the fight does take a long time. I can't buffcheese to stop his damage without dying myself, and I can't just blitz him since his physical counter 2HKOs. So mostly this ends up a slow fight of single Neo Cross Slashes, healing actions, etc.

Bastion is my reward, a new job, yay! I throw one PC into it. At this point I decide to go play some boring card games and then beat up Shirley, since I'll need to do it at some point and it gives a decent amount of JP for my new job, immediately getting me to JL 4 for Bastion so I have Rampart.

I do this in part because while Lonsdale had three fights before him, that's three more than the next boss.

BOSS Marla: Like Lonsdale, Marla counters almost everything that isn't Item (or Healthbringer, in my case). However, she's even faster and can chain together Recurring Nightmare (physical attack which gives the user a free turn on a KO, she'll use it often if she sees someone near death) so the threat of party wipe is certainly higher. She also has super high evasion so it's a good thing her buff counter isn't quite as scary (also this time I make sure my buffer can take hits). Anyway, her counters:
-Physical attacks, buffs, and debuffs with Shadowstepper, which is a decently strong physical.
-Magic attacks with BP+1
-Default with Become the Lightning, which raises her Atk (and MAtk, not that she uses that for anything afaik) by 25%.

Her speed is crazy and she's almost always in the "about to get a turn" state.

Rampart, fortunately, comes to my rescue in this fight in a big way. I'm able to chain it into other buffs and hopefully my buffer doesn't die. The "other buffs" I use are typically to accuracy just so I can hit. I also use Holy from my ex-Spiritmaster and that hits a weakness but it still doesn't do that much. In addition to Rampart, two of my characters now have Spiritmaster's Spirited Defence (one Spiritmaster and one former Spiritmaster using Sub-Job Specialty 1), which lets them survive otherwise fatal attacks at 1 HP, preventing Recurring Nightmare and just generally keeping them alive. I keep Healthbringer up at all times, often recasting it once it's ticked twice.

This is another pretty slow fight (thanks to the evasion) and a bit of a dangerous one but I do prevail first try.

Wrecked Institute: Not too much to say here. At this point my strategy in randoms largely involves the Vanguard doing most of the killing and the other PCs running interference with MP/BP/turn donation. I still use sleep but I use it less and less. Buffs sometimes if I need an accuracy push. Nothing too challenging here.

BOSS Vigintio: He's kind of a joke. I have a bunch of elemental resistance via shields, armour, and Wind Talismans, but nothing I've set particularly. Like the other two Holograd generals he counters physicals, magic, buffs, and debuffs, but most of them get countered by him gaining BP so he can't stop he from setting up anti-magic nonsense. His own turns involve a weirdly high amount of Electon (full-screen lightning/light) which he's weak to so he ends up damage himself more than me. He counters physicals with Comet which only tickles after Bardstrats are set up. Easy.

Holograd Army HQ / Flying Fortress: See previous dungeon, not too much to say. Fights are fun but not particularly challenging any more.

BOSS Adam: Adam counters buffs with Ruby Blades, which damages himself a bunch. So I set up Rampart and anti-physical bard nonsense, forgetting that I dispel myself now that I have a mastered Spiritmaster. Oops. Let the Spiritmaster reach 2 BP then do it again. On his own turns he uses various different elemental blades which strike multiple times in recurring fashion. Between Rampart, elemental defence (Icefire Shield, etc.) and buffs he's not great at killing me and does thousands of damage to himself. Later in the fight his own turns favour Minus Strike more, which certainly kills, but again runs into Rampart, so I keep using that. I don't even start attacking him until he's lowered himself to ~40k out of his starting ~120k, haha. Then I do and it turns out he's weak to axes, well then.

Chapter 4 done!

Current team:
Seth: Bastion with Vanguard secondary (with Sub-Job BP Saver for free BP donation)
Gloria: Vanguard with Bard secondary (my might knows no bounds)
Elvis: Pictomancer with Bard secondary (Sub-Job Specialty 1 means he extends buff duration by 2 turns due to Bard's specialty 1 stacking with Pictomancer specialty 2)
Adelle: Spiritmaster with Vanguard secondary (SJBPS for free BP donation, again)

Working well!

[Cmdr_King]

Rhapsody 3: after poking the 6th story for a bit, I decided to take the game at its word and treat said scenario as a proper after game. By which I mean I have declined to play more if it.

I was liking the game well enough through the first three stories but the fourth is such a pure dungeon crawl with nothing much going for it, a prequel to a silly but not THAT interesting chapter plot in the second game. Worth plowing through to get to Cherie’s chapter, but I also completely stalled on it twice and played a whole fucking Xenoblade both times.

This gets at the larger problem though: Rhapsody was never ANY good at dungeon design, but the first game was piss easy and the second, while mean at times, has a decent means of buffing up your party to eventually win just about anything, so with a little grit you can just force your way through. This game you spend so much time in dungeons, and enemies are actually fairly lethal, and the inane party system gives you tons of party slots but doesn’t let you control most of them so it’s just a constant slog. Shit, in most of the chapters you don’t even level up fast, then by the time you DO the game says “lol enemies just level scale to you”. Thanks game. Thanks.


In conclusion your honor, it’s good that after this N1 gave up on dungeon design forevermore and just made srpgs. Best decision they ever made. Real shame they gave up on musicals in exchange.

[Dark Holy Elf]

hitting you with walls of text. they're almost done I promise until my next challenge run


BD2 Chapter 5: Starts with a whole bunch of sidequests. I think by this point in my first playthrough I was done with the game and skipped a lot of them, but this time I try to do most. Few are actually worth the time, though getting more money is always good since I can buy elixirs now!

One sidequest of note: the one about Roddy working too hard, in Wiswald. For some reason this quest has you spend 37k gold to complete it. It's not even clear why! You see some people helping out in town and Seth is just that inspired to give them money. There is no reward for giving up such a massive amount of gold beyond a single (storebought, inexpensive) accessory, not even a cutscene about how Wiswald is doing so much better now thanks to your investment or something. I am confused.

Dungeons at this point aren't too notable, buff accuracy is needed, smite with Vanguard, transfer turns/BP as needed if enemies remain, or sometimes finish with holy magic. Some enemies do pretty big damage if given a chance, particularly with dark magic (so reducing this is good). Let's talk about bosses. There are five of them in the Crystals' Resting Place, the big dungeon of this chapter.

BOSS Asura: He has huge evade, and deals lots of multihit physicals (the multhit property means Rampart isn't too useful). Spiritmaster hovers at 2-3 BP in this fight to turn off autobuffs. Set up anti-physical Bard nonsense and Healthbringer. My Bard gets transferred lots of BP to keep both the defence and accuracy buffs up. Asura counters physical attacks but not buffs, so isn't too big a problem since I came prepared.

BOSS Catoblepas (1 reset): My first reset since Chapter 3, and first reset on a story boss since Chapter 1! This guy is a jerk. He doesn't counter buffs either, mercifully (though he does rarely counter any damage with a physical), nor does he have multihits. He just has huge speed and huge damage. I shouldn't have lost, but I got a little greedy letting my defensive buffs lapse when he's at ~3% HP left and guess what he decides to do a brave chain which involves multiple uses of an attack which does 2500 MT damage, I'm so dead. Aside from that, though, bard nonsense + Rampart + accuracy buffs let me do my thing again, same as against Asura.

BOSS Genbu: Counters buffs by hitting hard, but Rampart gives me time to set them up, which is great. That said, this guy is, while not super hard, a big pain, because he reflects a third of all physical damage he takes back at your face. A single reflected Neo Cross Slash comes close to killing my Vanguard, especially if a crit is involved (eventually I hit on the brainwave of giving her a Giant's Shield to get her more max HP, making it less likely). So I learn the hard way that I can't really use that in brave chains, and this fight takes forever. ("Just use magic!" you say? Yeah Holy does about 1500 to him, compared to Neo Cross Slash's ~10k, no thanks. Also he uses Reflect a lot.) That said he's not as fast or offensively adept as the previous two bosses, especially once he gets below half HP and starts wasting turns using Reflect on me (which stops nothing I do), so I'm not too worried. The fight takes over half an hour. x_x

BOSS Immortal: And finally an easy one. No evade, no super speed, no physical reflection. He's another boss who is all physical so I shut down with usual anti-bard nonsense, but honestly he seems kinda weak anyway, and wastes turns on spittle attacks which can inflict contagion (mildly annoying MP poison, Spiritbringer more than makes up for it) and poison (which my party immunes because everyone is still using the lightest statusblocking hat in the game). Also he's weak to axes. The first boss I manage to see 20k Neo Cross Slash against.

BOSS Edna (1 reset): Edna is quite tricky so probably deserves a greater breakdown of what she does. At full HP she mostly does three things.
Physical attacks: ~2500 to one
Vortices: Some large number (8?) hits of wind magic to random targets. If not facing any resistance they probably do like 800 or so, but wind is an easy element to resist.
Soaring Flourish: Dispels and inflicts slow on one foe, inflicts haste on self. Slow is a very frustrating status in this game, it can neither be status-healed nor dispelled (at least with anything I have). Outside brave-chains I only see this against buffed targets.
Default: obvious
If she reaches 3 BP, she will use a combo of Soaring Flourish (may target anyone) -> Attack -> Vortices -> Silent Storm
Silent Storm: ~2500 physical to everyone, inflicts silence. It looks like wind but it's not. Hate this.

Once she falls below a certain HP threshold (it's higher than 50%, maybe when below 100k of her 180k HP) she gains some new stuff:
Apoplexy: Inflicts Wind Resistance Down on everyone. And other Element Resistances Down but for my team, this doesn't matter. Not 100%, sometimes someone gets lucky and isn't hit by some of the statuses. I *think* this dispels but now that I think about it I'm not 100% sure, I might be just remembering that Airy and Anne's similar moves did, and there were a lot of other sources of dispel flying around by this point. One way it is definitely weaker than the moves it's obviously inspired by is it doesn't make you WEAK to elements, just reduces resistance. If someone nulled wind before, they still half it after being hit by this.
Ultraflare: MT damage. A bit weaker than Silent Storm I think? I think it's non-elemental magic but I'm not sure.
At this point her big brave chain changes to Soaring Flourish -> Vortices -> Silent Storm -> Ultraflare. If she uses this when I have no damage mitigation in place it's gonna wipe most of my team, probably only anyone defaulting will live.

-Counters physical attacks by gaining BP (50% or so).
-I know she countered magic too but I forget with what, Holy was doing less than 2000 so I didn't bother.
-Once below ~60% HP, counters buffs with Soaring Flourish. Fortunately the dispel is ST, so I can still buff allies.
-Once below ~60% HP, will rarely counter healing actions (Items, but not Healthbringer) with Apoplexy.

Anyway Edna is a pain. She's super fast (~50 more speed than the previous fastest bosses who I already noted as speedsters) even before she uses Haste. I lose once because I come in not blocking wind and she just does too much damage of mixed damage types and I have no way to shut her down enough to keep up. So I come back with wind nulling on literally everyone: Typhoon Shield on my Vanguard, two Wind Talismans (or similar) on everyone else.

I have a choice: I can stay at 2-3 BP and stack anti-physical buffs (at 1 BP or below, I'll dispel my own) and accuracy buffs. However, she still dispels me a lot, is able to do magic damage, etc., so my protections aren't perfect and need to be reapplied way too much. I also need to waste lots of turns healing my bard and spiritmaster of silence. I decide this is not worth it.

I instead decide to keep my Spiritmaster at 1 BP or less, so the four spirit moves (Health, MP, Dispel to clear Apoplexy, and status healing to clean silence). This limits my buffing potential, but these spriits just save me so many actions otherwise. This does mean I need to stay very on top of what she can do, especially those brave chains. I use over 20 X-Potions to keep up with healing (in addition to the constant Healthbringer, and many Phoenix Downs), far more than any previous fight. For offence, I need to use accuracy buffing three times to reach 100% hit against her (she's very evasive), though two gets close. Of course, either she or my own spirits will dispel me shortly after, so I only do this right before my Vaugard is about to get a turn, either naturally or by having my sing-user use Shut Up and Dance. After unleashing a brave chain on her, Edna will almost surely have enough BP to brave-chain me right back, so it's only something I should do if my party is in good shape. Rampart can help with Silent Storm, but I have to watch the timing so my own dispel doesn't mess me up (and even then, it's not nearly as effective as against some previous bosses because of Soaring Flourish being used as a buff counter and in the brave-chain.

I spent a lot of nervous actions with Edna at around ~45k HP, just outside my kill range and facing the full wrath of her limit mode, but eventually I safely squeak in a couple attacks to lower her to 25k and then I just need to find an opportunity to set up one more brave-chain and I win.

Chapter 5 complete~

[SnowFire]

Unicorn Overlord
Finished.  Then finished again after I did the bonus mission.  I think the strengths  & weaknesses of UO are pretty well known...  it was good, but could have been a little better.  That said, it is genuinely way more playable than original Ogre Battle, and I do hope they take the bones of the engine they made and do some sort of fast-follow DLC or the like.

One of the reasons I slowed down some was that the game had gotten a bit curb-stompy.  Bizarrely enough, despite this, the Bastorias arc ended up maybe being the most challenging one in the game?  I remember seeing in Discord some "lol beasts" commentary, but...  well the first mission was challenging but for dumb reasons, albeit still fairly easily cheesed with Hastened Call / boss rush strats (which I avoided almost every other map).  But the last two missions were no jokes, either.  At night, werewolf units traveled at infinity speed and could instantly shred lonely wounded units that weren't up to snuff, leading to one of the very rare "um I'm gonna reload a save rather than accept a squad !death + Valor loss" moments.  Normally huffing an Empowering and/or Defensive Draught is enough to get past any surprisingly badass enemies, but  Over on the PC side, my mostly-Beast unit put in work, and other beasts were solid role-players elsewhere - I was pretty happy with 'em.  (Well not Ramona of course, she never got used, but the other beasts.) 

Gameplay-wise, everything after kinda crumbled, as you start getting the busted power-artifacts like  the ones that give more than +1 AP or PP (which I tried to nicely split between squads to not power-focus TOO much).  Well, the final-ish boss was actually pretty tricky - I guess some emergency party-shuffling to include more multi-hit attacks would suffice worst comes to worst. 

Plot-wise, hmm.  First off let me say that I genuinely liked the addition of the fairly extensive epilogue scenes for all the character groups.  A problem the game has is characters generally stopping getting any plot scenes outside their own arcs, and letting all the recruits get another detailed scene + post-coronation dialogue is cool.  As for the arcs themselves...  I think it's interesting to separate them by quality of villains and quality of supporting cast.
* Cornia: Okay PCs, meh villains.
* Drakenhold: Good PCs, meh villains.
* Elheim: Okay PCs, bad villains.
* Bastorias: Bad PCs, good villains.
* Albion: Bad PCs, bad villains.

Not a strong way to end as can be seen!  To go into some more detail..  usual warning that spoilers ahoy below.

* Cornia's cast is generic but likeable with all the FE1 callbacks.  Villains are all mind-controlled but get hit with anti-mind control juice.  The early showdown with Galerius is cool but makes 0 sense in light of the plot twist toward the end of Unicorn Overlord (shouldn't the big plot twist there have been outed early..?  Actually just go ahead and out that one early and don't give it a happy ending, we already knew that the game had starkly refused to show Ilenia's fate, just have Alain go ice mom unknowingly early to drive the dagger in.).  After the main Act 1 set, the plotline with Tatiana was fairly good, an example of as solid vignette style mini-story.  Melisandre is JP fanservice but actually has some surprisingly good supports after I ground them up much later.

* Drakenhold has by far the best cast.  I felt like I got to know Aramis, Gilbert, Virginia, Leah, and co. pretty well, they all made sense, they combined being interesting with not being dumb.  Even the side characters were good - Primm, Hilda, Amalia, etc. were all memorable and cool.  The desert gang was fine I guess.  (Berengaria is hard to judge as ridiculous fanservice, but I guess she succeeds in being that, so there's something there.)  Villains are all mind-controlled again though.

* Elheim: I can't say that Rosalinde & Eltolinde were the deepest characters ever, but they were fun enough, and their various servants & allies had their moments too.  The fact that the regular elves & dark elves apparently get along perfectly well in this universe was interesting.  Ridiel was a simple and well-trod plotline but the game made it work and it's a plot line that SHOULD be done (for all the forgiveness for criminals, this kind of "beaten down by society and lost their idealism and sells people out" is certainly resonant and a more interesting target for recruitment).  Galadramir was awful but that's just one ignorable character, maybe my least favorite character in the game.  Meanwhile the villain-side was mega-terrible this time.  Some of the characters are mind-controlled, but others..  I have no idea WTF they were trying to do with Gailey.  He apparently wasn't mind-controlled, but we barely are given a motive for his heel turn, and to the extent we are it makes zero sense.  Letting Baltro suddenly become a mass necromancer, a power he never really displays again, was definitely a kludge for "we have no idea how to justify fighting more elven units."  Not a big deal, but gonna assume this was a one-time thing since it never comes up anywhere else and seems like a real handy power for Baltro to have.  Alcina makes zero sense and sucks.

* Bastorias: The villainy in this arc is unironically the best ones?  There are two big bads are not mind-controlled and both have valid evil schemes.  Mind control is still used, but for the mooks rather than the showcase villains, and it seems to have limitations.  There's even a plot point about how bestrals aren't great targets for the Rite of Control.  And while the game loves to show bad guys backstabbing each other for Reasons, this arc was by-far the best-explained one I bought the most.  Reimann is a huge psychopath who the game doesn't try to nonsensically explain away his villainy (a la Alcina) and is both threatening and also very betrayable. Eigor is a valid chip-on-his-shoulder threat.  Okay, the scene where the Bastorias Blue gets stolen isn't sold well, but oh well, cutscenes not making clear the geometry of a scene isn't a new complaint for me for villains from nowhere stealing the MacGuffin.  Okay, despite all that praise, Yunifi is pretty boring as a character.  She's a generic do-gooder whom everyone loves and trusts on sight (I guess MILDLY explained by her pendant, but honestly the narrative seems to be leaning into divine right of blood arguments).  Morad doesn't really get to do anything cool, and Ramona is just a backstory dump.  I also don't really like the way they handled the final PC plot twist - it should have been "Yunifi and Morad were 100% lying about their amnesia the whole time" a la FFX Tidus.  (Also, shouldn't Yunifi have been an elf, given later revelations...?  Maybe she is, I suppose, we don't really see her ears.)

* Albion: The plot here really doesn't add up, neither logically nor thematically.  It's very odd because Scarlett was clearly one of the core characters designed and the most designated, canon-y pair with Alain..  but..  she really doesn't get to do much here. 

Let me switch to the villain side.  Much as mind control is a bit of a safe-for-kids excuse for people to be fighting you, it does make a certain degree of sense in-setting.  Why is Zenoira strong?  Because they possessed a bunch of people, especially people in charge of military units. Sure, fair enough.  And yet, there are 0 mind controlled enemies in Albion.  Fine, that means we need some local villains, but almost all of the opposition is portrayed as pressured into it by Zenoira.  But..  where are the Zenoirans, then?!  The only one who shows up is Baltro.  This is a game that marks the affiliation of the units you're fighting, and Alain even confirms it: it's very clearly the Church you're fighting against.  (Okay, and a random Paladin from Cornia in Bradley, who isn't mind-controlled either but has decided to become evil because reasons.)  That's fine!  Zenoira won and installed their own cronies, perhaps.  But, alas, no.  Based on the reactions Alain and Scarlett have later, it seems that it's still the Church people in power who are loyal to the old Pope etc., and this was all some huge misunderstanding/ mix-up where everyone else trusted Sanatio, and the word of the Pontifex was just unquestionable law.  And Sanatio's plot doesn't make tons of sense, but the general mood is that he's been tricked by Baltro, although I don't really understand how.  He does make clear later that if he'd known Scarlett lived, things could have been different.  None of this makes tons of sense - if Albion was intimidated, there needed to be a Zenoiran army here.  If Sanatio was tricked, then he needed to perceive corpse-Pope as alive and talking, not know he's dead but consider this such a terrible secret that would ruin everything that he needs to () work with Baltro.  Like seriously, did you read Lord of the Rings?  Just means Gondor needs a Steward!

Okay back to Albion PCs.  I can forgive a logically messy plot that works thematically.  But it kinda doesn't here.  The leaders you meet elsewhere are deeply committed to the liberation of their homelands and the defeat of Zenoira.  Scarlett does not get any scenes on that topic.  What she does get are scenes of her family's servants when she was a kid being extremely obsequious and deferential to her, despite the fact that she must have been, what, like 7 or 8 years old at most when she left?  Perhaps 9 or 10 at the margin?  You might recall such a child with affection, sure, but you are unlikely to be "best friends" unless you were a fellow kid, which I don't get the impression was the case.  Okay whatever, minor plot hole, let's move on.  The game cooks up a plot element where the Pontifex is hereditary in this world.  I'd like to point out that this is fairly rare with real-life religions, but it does happen sometimes, so sure.  And the narrative remembers this for Sanatio, making finding the new Pontifex one of his goals (since I guess if he had Scarlett, then he wouldn't need to keep a cover-up with Arrant, which is somehow linked to also complying with Zenoira?).  But it bizarrely doesn't for Scarlett.  If she's supposed to be the ruler of Albion by blood right, nobody on our team freaking talks about it!  You can't just introduce a plot point like this and then forget about it.  Josef or Travis or someone else pragmatic should have been saying "hey we need you to go lead our force to show we're the rightful rulers and they're the heretics", and Scarlett needed to reply and give her own thoughts on the matter.  If she wants to rise to the challenge of being a leader like Gilbert, great!  If she wants to refuse, great!  Maybe she thinks the Orthodoxy can get by just fine without a weird bloodline descent thing (although, factually in setting, I guess her bloodline DOES have special shrine unsealing powers for reasons), maybe she wants a quiet life for herself, who knows.  The point is, this is a huge weapon that the Liberation has been given - the rightful heir is part of their team! - and it needed to be discussed!  Just what are Scarlett's feelings here?  Given that what we ARE given involves Raenys / Umerus being incredibly loyal and nice to Scarlett, it sure seems like she would have an easy time if she stepped up and said the Pope's daughter was here!

And yet we're still not done.  Okay, fine, Scarlett didn't want to do that.  But making it so Sanatio was mislead means that it's in some sense Scarlett's "fault" for not just un-misleading him.  But the game doesn't own that plot point, either, which would have involved a trade-off for Scarlett's non-existent non-decision.  Ugh.  It's annoying to me because I find that "justifying" why the mooks in the army are fighting is just good world-building.  I admire how Claude dresses up his clause in Byleth's banner as a matter of restoration in FE3H Verdant Wind, say.  They didn't have to make this plot point - they could have said that kids of the holy line are no big deal and Scarlett wouldn't necessarily have an easy time convincing others to join.  They could have made Sanatio just a power-grasping jerk who didn't actually want to find his "replacement".  But you combine both, and you end up with them trying to make both sympathetic, yet by all rights one of them really shouldn't be.

Okay that was way too much on Albion plot.

* Final cleanup: Despite not having, um, names, the Great Sages are actually some of the best plot & characters the game has?  I actually really respect them explaining the backstory behind what really happened in the plot, as well as the game caring enough about its setting to at least include this.  I also appreciate that there's a solid excuse for what they are and why they exist, and aren't just mysterious benevolent helpers for no reason.  Dunno why they locked these behind the Ring of the Maiden quest though - the game sorta wants you to wait a bit on that, which means these revelations all come extremely late (and don't reward the player for finding the sanctuaries "early").  I was amused that Amalia's backstory involves the super-hidden town in Drakenhold, amusing they worked that in.

This one I'll absolutely forgive as no big deal and "hey look, it's a final showdown, it needs to be epic and involve all the mechanics you learned", but the game does indicate that Baltro can't just mass possess EVERYBODY, hence restricting the Rite of Control to movers & shakers & badasses.  Yet, if so, where are these armies coming from?  (Especially the Bestral armies!)  These clearly aren't just normal paid mooks anymore, once they get insane orders like "kill everyone."  (Which I'm not sure actually happens despite the cutscene?  If it had, the postgame coronation should have been way more dour.)

In nitpicks, the game is occasionally good at letting Alain do something clever.  I'd rather if he'd have denounced Baltro's hypocrisy unprompted and realized he obviously wasn't acting in the best interests of the stranded Zenoiran souls.  Instead Baltro just kinda busts out with that himself.  It shouldn't have been that hard to figure out after he just betrayed Galerius!

There's also a bit of protagonist-centered morality in the ending.  I was kinda hoping to learn more about Valmore, but he's not even an afterthought, just an excuse for a happy ending for a character personally closer to Alain.  The fact that Valmore's family won't get a cleaned, sane Valmore back is just not discussed.  Oh well.

[Captain K]

Unicorn OverlordBizarrely enough, despite this, the Bastorias arc ended up maybe being the most challenging one in the game?  I remember seeing in Discord some "lol beasts" commentary, but...  well the first mission was challenging but for dumb reasons, albeit still fairly easily cheesed with Hastened Call / boss rush strats (which I avoided almost every other map).  But the last two missions were no jokes, either.  At night, werewolf units traveled at infinity speed and could instantly shred lonely wounded units that weren't up to snuff, leading to one of the very rare "um I'm gonna reload a save rather than accept a squad !death + Valor loss" moments.

The AI is top-notch in Bastorias. They'll actually do feints like "hey attack my exposed unit" and then when you move after them there's suddenly a fox in your base.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Final Bravely Default 2 update, after which you may now return to your regularly scheduled posts which are not walls of text, I promise.


Chapter 6-7: Once again, new quests. The most notable ones take me to a new optional dungeon, and one actually worth talking about:

Magma Mountain: The most notable enemy here is the Sizzlemoth, which has a MT physical which inflicts charm. Worse, it can use this as a counter to buffs and debuffs! Thanks, I hate it. There's also lots of big fire damage here, unshockingly. Equipping for fire defence and charm protection is a must, but I have very little of the latter, so I settle for just putting it on my Vanguard (Spiritmaster immunes it innately, fortunately). It suffices.

BOSS D-Vergr (3 resets): He starts with four minions out. The minions have around 9000 HP, which can be killed by one Neo Cross Slash (once I switch from an axe to a sword, at least) but loads of evade, needing at least three accuracy buffs to hit reliably. The main boss has the following skillset:

Terminus Est: summons a minion
Attack: The usual, 2k damage or so
Shadow Nova: MT dark magic, does over 2k if not resisted.
The End: Also MT dark. I see it only rarely, I dunno how it differs from Shadow Nova.
Bafflepuff: Confuse. Also used as a counter to buffs and rarely to physical damage.
Cackle: Only used as a counter to magic, MT debuff to Magic and MDef.
Seek and Destroy: Sacrifices a minion to hit one person for 5-digit damage. Yes, the devs gave the boss the Surpassing Power skill just for this.

His brave-chains are mixes of physicals and Shadow Nova.

The minions, on their own turns, can use Entice (inflicts charm) or a physical attack called Irritant. More on that later.

As mentioned, on my first attempt I only have two PCs immune to charm, and that's obviously bad. I need to buff to control the minions, who otherwise will charm me to death sooner or later, and buffing gets me countered by confuse. This is not tenable. One reset.

I come back with confuse immunity on Elvis, and shuffling out fire resistance for dark in a couple other places. Things go better this time, since I can now safely buff accuracy, but the minions keep returning and sooner or later they charm a key person at a bad time. They seem to get loads of turns sometimes for some reason. Regardless, that's two resets.

I head out and buy Mortarboards (confuse + charm immunity, 4 weight hat from Wiswald, it kinda rules tbh) for everyone except my Spiritmaster, so I'm finally free from status nonsense. I come back, look all those G-oetias in the eye and say "I don't care about you". I ignore them, setting up a damage blitz on the boss himself, whose HP isn't too high, and...

... and I lose more decisively than my previous attempts. And I realize why, too late: Irritant, the physical used by the minions, has a significant turn delay attached. With a full field of them, I get fewer turns than I should. Once I drop to two PCs, though, I'm just plain dead, they slowly lock me to death until the boss puts my Bastion out of my misery with Seek and Destroy. Wow, okay.

So the strategy is as follows: buff accuracy, use Vallation to protect from Shadow Nova on vulnerable PCs, and mercilessly kill the minions. Healthbringer can assist with keeping me alive (and repairing Vallation damage), as usual. It works.


Anyway. I also beat another optional boss (Hephaestos) who is notable for having 200k HP, which is quite a bit, but he's pure physical with no real tricks so gets owned by Rampart + my other usual nonsense.


The quests done, I advance the plot.

Fount of Knowledge: The randoms here are pretty badass, actually. I didn't notice on my first playthrough because my randomsmashing was cracked out by then, but yeah, they good. They hover in an HP range where even axe-weaks typically need Neo Cross Slash to kill, so I go through MP fast, and they hit hard. Some details:

Magiponera: They have very hard-hitting ice magic (over 3k) and can do significant damage to MP (2HKO typically), or inflict sleep. Can't stand these guys.
Angra Mainyu: Also do significant MP damage, with Mind Crush. Sometimes waste turns on Doom (5-turn countdown). Very evasive (I equip for accuracy but they still need three accuracy buffs).
Siamese Cait: Dodgy little bastards (also need three accuracy buffs). They also hard with light magic, or can inflict freeze (stop + poison status, can't be cured by any items). May use Curaga to fully heal themselves if low on HP. They absorb holy which is my backup damage. There's a fairy in Mag Mell who hates them enough to give me a quest to kill them; don't worry, I hate 'em too.
Rafflesia: If not killed in one hit they may counter with paralyse. Not too bad otherwise.
Fallen Frond: They hit hard with wind magic, and are moderately evasive. May use Curaga to fully heal themselves if low on HP.

I go through potions and even ethers reasonably fast. One thing that helps a bit is doing in-battle HP/MP healing: Spiritmaster's Devotion works well for the latter, while my Bastion equipping a Blessed Shield and using its Cura itemcast to heal is actually shockingly decent healing, like 1200 MT or 3000 ST? Better than X-Potions; I'd assumed it would be worse.


BOSS Night's Nexus (1 reset): She has three forms, good speed (not as fast as Edna, but comparable to other "fast" bosses, i.e. a bit shy of 2x), and a hint of evasion (one accuracy buff is usually enough, two is safer). Here's the skillset:

Attack: ~1600 or so
Calamity Calls: MT dark damage, ~50% contagion
Inflame: MT damage, ~50% berserk
Ruin: MT damage, always does fixed 200 MP damage
Salvation: MT damage, heals user for around half the total damage dealt
World-Ender: MT damage
Default: throws this in periodically as per usual

If it looks like there are a lot of similar skills there, it's because there are. I'm fairly sure they're all physical (it's possible World-Ender isn't, that one's rare), it's possible some others have elements (Inflame might be fire? I'm not blocking that). Her attacks are remarkably undamaging, they might push to around 1000 against no buffs at, but almost always I see 3 digits. They are all multitarget, though, aside from the basic physical.

Contagion and Berserk are both annoying; Contagion does significant MP damage at the start of my turn, and berserk's turn denial is an obvious problem. Other than the ailments, Ruin is easily my most despised attack: 200 MP damage is a lot (ethers only restore 180) and can leave me dipping into my BP supply in order to use turns restoring it. It's worth noting that Rampart is not as good a solution to these moves as you might expect: it blocks the HP damage, but the other effects go through. Not cool!

She has three forms. When you beat the first, everyone celebrates: you won! Yeah yeah I totally buy the main villain had less HP than all the Chapter 5 bosses, guys, good one. The second form is the same as the first with slightly higher stats. The third form, though, is the problem.

The first thing to note is that while the first and second form are completely different fights, the second and third are technically a chain (even though there's a cutscene in the middle): status and BP carries over between them. So one key is to go into form 3 in good shape; I don't on my first attempt, and that's part of why I lose.

The bigger problem, though, is that form 3 now has three parts: the main body, and two hands. And they ALL have the full skillset as listed above, or most of it (in particular, I confirm that they all have Ruin, two have Calamity Call, two have Salvation, and two have physical attacks... only the body seems to have World-Ender but who cares about that). The Night's Nexus herself is just as fast as ever, and the hands, while a bit slower, are still pretty fast (and actually have slightly higher damage). So that means the boss's offence just went up by a factor of nearly three; if one of them does a brave-chain I can be barraged by an absolutely crazy number of MT attacks. (The main body will store up to 3 BP and do four-part chains, while the hands will store up to 1 and do two-parters.)

Oh yeah, and she counters physicals with a physical of her own (a lot), and counters either buffs by gaining BP (~50%), and counters healing by gaining BP (sometimes. Either she stops doing it in form 3 or I got very lucky).

After losing once I go out and buy some more statusblockers. My vanguard gets a Carbon Cap to prevent contagion; my Spiritmaster and Pictobard get accessories (my Bastion doesn't really use MP). I also equip Peace Rings on my Pictobard and Bastion (my Spiritmaster is already immune, and my Vanguard getting berserked isn't a big enough deal to sacrifice significant amounts of attack/damage over).

From there the strategy is clear enough: Spiritmaster stays at 2-3 BP, do lots of Don't Let Em Get You to reduce the physical pain, Spiritbringer to restore MP (really important to save turns with Ruin flying around), Bastion uses the Blessing Shield to provide healing if needed, occasional Rampart, lots of turn shifting around via Gift of Courage, buff accuracy to Neo Cross Slash reliable (it does around 12k, with a decent crit rate).

Form 3 is more demanding. I use Spiritmaster's special (MT full healing + regen) to help turn the tide but otherwise play carefully. Each hand can be killed in about three uses of Neo Cross Slash. Once I kill the second, I know from past experience that they'll both come back after a few turns, and that's annoying, but fortunately the main body doesn't have too much HP in this form so I'm able to do one more brave-blitz and win.

Night's Nexus uses physicals, Calamity Call, Ruin, World-Ender
Grasping Hand uses Calamity Call, Ruin, Salvation
Cradling Hand uses physicals, Ruin, Salvation


At this point I decide I'm high-levelled enough (48) to try some of the Hall of Tribulation fights. Spiritmaster has by far the biggest upgrade from JL 13+, so my first target is to get that.

BOSS Helio, Domenic, and Martha (2 resets): The opening to this fight is great. The camera pans over the enemy line showing you Helio and Domenic. Huh, wasn't there supposed to be a third boss?

And then Martha drops on someone dealing 9999.

Anyway this fight is nasty, let's talk about it.

All three bosses have a a "Counter Any Ability" which gives them 1 BP. I'd guess it's around 50%. This will counter anything a PC does EXCEPT the default command and item command. Maybe the basic attack command, I never used one. The fact that items are safe is a key detail of all the tribulation fights, and this includes itemcasts.

Helio the Spiritmaster can cast Holy for huge singletarget damage, or set a version of Healthbringer which restores around 3k MT (he basically always does this when it expires), or rarely cast Reraise on someone. When he reaches 3 BP he will do a brave-chain of Holy castings.

Domenic the Oracle uses both Triplera and Triplega which each do 1-3 hits (randomly) of a random mix of fire/ice/lightning. Each hit is significant, probably high 2HKO for the -ga version and low 2HKO for the -ra version. Fortunately he doesn't do this often, outside brave-chains. He uses the majority of his turns casting Reflect, both on his own team and mine. Extremely rarely he will cast Stop, and both times he does it bounces off a reflected PC. Unfortunately he's immune. His brave-chains involve Triplera and Triplega and thus have lots of damage potential.

Martha is The Problem. She counters the Default command by using Super Jump; on her next turn, she lands for around 5000-6000 MT physical damage. Oh and it delays everyone's turn. She will sometimes use Super Jump on her own turns, or Sonic Thrust (weaker MT physical, good for shredding Rampart). She can also use various ST physicals (Bolt Blast is lightning, Mind Crush does lots of MP damage, Angon pierces default). Her brave-chain, mercifully, is all ST physicals.

That's a lot of damage! On my first attempt I die horribly. I come back with Iceflame Shields (fire/ice immunity), Valkyrie Coats (light/lightning resistance), and Light Talismans (stacks with the former to light immunity) on everyone. This leaves Helio unable to damage me, and Domenic *mostly* unable to damage me, though sometimes he rolls a lot of lightning damage and that can cause problems. Martha can still just carve through the team, though. So... bardstrats it is!

General strategy:
-keep Don't Let Em Get To You x4 active at *all* times. Anyone without this is going to explode sooner or later.
-Since buffs are needed, keep Spiritmaster at 2-3 BP. I use Healthbringer to keep up with healing. I would love to use the Blessing Shield but unfortunately the Iceflame Shield is too important.
-Rampart is pretty cool, even though Sonic Thrust sometimes just shreds it.
-Only default if my current HP situation is good. Preferably if Rampart is up.
-Regen is a good buff to get up to help with healing, since there's no dispel to worry about. Either the Spiritmaster special or casting it manually. It's reflectable so I have to watch that (the one time I forget is annoying, thank goodness Pictomancer has dispel because Regen is fixed 10% MHP and you don't want a boss with that).
-Mind Crush is so freaking annoying. I need to use lots and lots of ethers to keep up.
-Mild accuracy buffing is needed the two mages. (Martha needs a lot, she's very evasive.)

I end up Domenic first, just because he's so much easier to kill than Martha (I just don't have the turns for more significant accuracy buffing) and I figure that once he falls, the battle will be mostly won. I'm kinda right but I still almost lose at one point after which is embarrasing. Funnily enough, Helio runs out of MP around the time I finally kill Domenic, but he's a non-entity anyway at that point. Martha dies second once I'm able to scrounge up time to buff accuracy (I can also use the Blessing Shield at this point, which helps).

Anyway both my resets come pretty quickly, so fight #3 involves me figuring out a lot of details of the fight and generally takes forever. I get so few turns for anything besides staying alive, and it's so difficult to make headway for a long time especially since only attacking very rarely gives Helio's healing more time to be effective. I use all my Ethers and X-Potions and Elixirs, and the fight takes about an hour and a half, but I do win. The one last scary point shortly after killing Domenic is terrifying because I would lose about an hour's work there.


Woo! Spiritmaster Level 15 reached. Spiritmaster gains two more spirit effects: Lifebringer (revives) and Bravebringer (+1 BP). Both are automatically summoned at 1 BP or less. This is silly. Let's go try it out.

BOSS Orpheus, Anihal, Bernard, and Shirley: Looking at enemy levels this is probably intended to be the first Hall of Tribulations fight.

Orpheus uses MT magic damage. Nothing too scary, a bit under 2k, but it's non-elemental and hits everyone and that's definitely really bad when added to other things in this fight. If he has buffs I didn't give him time to use them.

Anihal's pets haven't scaled up very well, they mostly do 3-digit MT damage. She can still use Muzzle for MT silence.

Shirley, being the gambler, is random as hell. She can pull out lots of hits (up to 10?) of ST magic damage (high 3HKO or so), but usually whiffs around doing not much.

Bernard is the star of the show in the same way Martha was: he does by far the most damage, has the highest HP/evasion, has a brave-chain of four powerful singletarget physicals, and has counters besides the generic "gain 1 BP". In his case, he can counter Default with Steal Breath (steals a BP) and buffs with Buff Burglar, which does exactly what it says on the tin. One mercy is that if he's not brave-chaining, he won't do much damage, just relatively weak physicals which may steal a little HP/MP/BP. When he brave-chains, though, it's time for four attacks which do around 4000 damage each, potentially OHKOing some team members (though Spiritmaster can never be OHKOed, which is super valuable as it means he'll never wipe my full team). Since he steals BP and gains it on counters he gets these chains pretty often.

UNFORTUNATELY for this fight, cap-broken Spiritmaster is overpowered. Every round I regain HP, MP, get revived, get status-healed (sorry Muzzle), and most importantly gain 1 BP. And Bravebringer can be cast manually on top of this, so make that 2 BP. This breaks the game's action economy and I'm free to essentially get triple my normal compliment of actions. (A little less because manually casting Bravebringer itself costs 2 BP, but this is easily worth it and also helps keep Spiritmaster's BP below 2, which I now like).

With all these extra actions there's plenty of time to use Blessing Shields to heal (my Bastion and Spiritmaster both do this) or transfer BP around. Or use Phoenix Downs, because as Bernard's brave chains above illustrate, people definitely die! (It's not worth waiting for the spirit to revive them, but that's still a nice bonus if it happens.) My pictobard uses accuracy buffs -> Shut Up and Dance so that my Vanguard can reliably hit.

Kill order is Orpheus (he's fragile, but his MT damage scares me) -> Shirley (she's randomly scary) -> Anihal (mostly because she takes some incidentally retargeted Neo Cross Slashes and is thus easy to kill next) -> Bernard.


Level 14 Bard provides Epic Group-Cast, so I can now use the Blessing Shield for 3000 MT Healing, and Spiritmaster's Healthbringer now restores around 1600 MT. Awesome.

BOSS Sir Sloan (1 reset): I decide to go advance the plot now, figuring my new powers make me unstoppable. Well, not quite. Sloan does multiple Microgravities in a brave chain and I die.

So the cool thing about this fight is that Super Spiritmaster isn't the answer. The spirits don't prevent me from all dying at once, and debuffing Sloan is useless - his damage isn't based on his attack stat, but his HP. So one last time, back to Bard strats, since their percent damage reduction does work. This also leaves me free to buff accuracy as much as I want, which is good because Sloan's evasion is crazy. Anyway, with bardstrats and my now shockingly good healing, this is a routine win.


I decide to try out another hall fights. One more in particular, since Vanguard is my next most valuable job to cap-break.

BOSS Selene, Dag, Roddy, Lily (3 resets): This one is quite a bit tougher.

Selena will sometimes cast Protect or Shell which aren't too notable, or will use Full Cure for around 5000 MT healing. Her only brave-chain, which she uses quite often, is Benediction (+30% healing power for 3 turns) -> Full Cure. Depending on how much she has used this recently she can heal for up to 9000. If an ally drops she will use Raise All for 99999 revival on them. This is brutal and one reset is partially due to finding this out. So she's obviously target #1.

Dag can use Enrage (provoke) to make sure he is the one targeted; he is smart and always prioritizes my top damage-dealer (I assume he looks for Atk/MAtk, since if he targets a second person he'll hit my Spiritmaster). He'll also use Shield Bash for around 2000 and turn delay. Initially his brave-chain is a bunch of Shield Bash, which seems to mainly target my spiritmaster and bard but I'm not sure why he focuses on them. Once his HP drops he'll mix in Neo Cross Slash into his brave chains which does over 8000, i.e. just kills most people. Or Quake Blade, which is kinda similar but earth. More on that later.

Roddy has Chainspell, so everything he does is cast twice. He can use Stonera (ST or MT earth damage with a chain of slow/stop) or Aerora (ST or MT wind damage with a chain of sleep/silence) or Healaga (3000 ST healing x2, targets the lowest-HP ally). His brave-chain is to use Healaga twice, Stonera, and Quake, which is a stronger than Stonera but always ST. Once an ally drops he starts using Tornado (stronger ST wind magic) and his brave-chains will involve Disaster (stronger ST wind/earth magic, but is nulled by anyone who nulls either element).

And finally, for the third of these fights in a row, there is an incredibly dangerous physical attacker with way too much evasion. Lily can use Shadowbind (paralysis, no damage), Quickfire Flurry (bunch of hits), Human Slayer (about 3000 ST), and Grand Barrage (5-8 hits of ~300 each). Her brave chain is to use Human Slayer twice, then Quickfire Flurry, then Grand Barrage. Once an ally drops she may use two Grand Barrages. Once she's below half HP she uses Grand Barrage x4. Do the math on that one, it's horrifying. She's the only one of the four who has a counter to something besides "gain 1 BP from anything"; in her case, she can counter physical attacks with Shadowbind.

It takes three resets to figure out everything about the winning strategy here, but here's what I end up doing:
-Earth immunity and at least wind resistance on everyone except my Vanguard. This can be accomplished by Gaia Shield, Academy Outfits, Earth Talismans, and Wind Talismans.
-Reflect Ring on my Vanguard; the Relect Ring has a huge boost to Targeting Chance so also ups her attack a lot. Reflect stops everything Roddy does. As a bonus, he'll sometimes inflict sleep, slow, or stop on himself! I imagine his healing can also be shut down with reflect but I can't actually cast it.
-My bard and spiritmaster use hats which provide cost reduction / MT, while the other two get hats which block paralysis. In the case of my Vanguard this is absolutely crucial, or Shadowbind counters will wreck me.
-Keep Super Spiritmaster up. This provides the BP, healing, extra MP, and status healing (for silence/sleep). Unfortunately the dispel means I can't buff defence which leaves Lily a huge threat.
-Use Pictomancer's Disarming Scarlet to keep Lily at Atk-35%, especially later in the fight this becomes crucial, so that I can actually survive Grand Barrage x4.
-In a change, I put Sing secondary on my Spiritmaster, so I have another source of Shut Up and Dance.
-Spiritmaster and Vanguard can still use the Blessing Shield for MT healing, though it bounces off my reflected Vanguard, so X-Potions can be used to heal her.
-Otherwise it's the usual buff accuracy -> Shut Up and Dance to pull chains of Neo Cross Slash as offence.
-Pictomancer's Purify can remove Provoke, I discover. Hooray!
-Kill order is Selene -> Dag -> Lily -> Roddy. Selene must die first, Dag I end up killing before Lily because he's just much easier to kill (less evasive), and I learn the hard way that Lily being below half health when she has any offensive help is a bad time.


Breaking the cap on Vanguard mostly gives me Ultimatum, which is finally, finally, a MT physical! It costs 1 BP but has a higher base power than even Neo Cross Slash (though doesn't break the damage cap). To give you an idea, Berserker also has a MT physical which costs 1 BP, and this one is 3x stronger. It's fun! Sadly I don't have too much left to use it on.


Neither of my remaining jobs gets much from breaking their job cap, but I make a try at Pictomancer anyway. Unfortunately the Pictomancer / Berserker / Arcanist tribulation fight features Castor hitting me for MT 12000 damage (not a typo) without even needing a full brave-chain, and Folie can use Purify to heal attempts to debuff him (and also has horrible multiturning status hell). I can probably find a way to win this (which will also involve some elemental shutdown of Vigintio whose damage is actually legit now) I figure but it seems like a large step up from even the previous fights and y'know what, nah I'm good.

I tangle with two other kinda superbossy fights, Cyclops and Jormungandr. They're both pretty similar, featuring a swarm of incredibly evasive helpers (as in I need around 5 accuracy buffs to reliably hit) and a very hard-hitting physical primary boss. Strategy: Disarming Scarlet on the boss, Rampart, accuracy-buffed Ultimatum to kill the minions with all my usual Spiritmaster, +BP, BP- and turn-transferring nonsense.


Isle of Nothingness: The final dungeon is still capable of putting up a bit of a fight. Most notable are Amons, who appear in huge groups and have a ST physical which hits for around 4500. That's a lot! It's fire so I do have to adapt my equipment. Accuracy-buffed Ultimatum is the way to go, but does need BP sadly.


BOSS Night's Nexus: The first form is the same as the third form from the Fount of Knowledge, except she has one new move (Exclusion, one turn ST banish). Unfortunately for her I'm way stronger now. I do equip berserk and contagion-blockers again but with those in place, this form poses zero threat, its damage is too poor for what I can do now.

Some plotty nonsense follows, and then the real final boss! Here's what we're dealing with:
A World Forsaken: ~2500 MT
A Life Cut Short: Death, also used as a counter to buffs
Courage Squandered: -1 BP MT. Works even if the target(s) have negative BP. Also used as a counter to items
A Wellspring Depleted: ~500 MT MP damage
Tragic Denouement: Inflicts all debuffs, MT
Counters any damage by gaining BP


The counters all seem to be under 50% except maybe the item one. The item counter definitely throws a wrench in my plans since the tribulation fights had trained me that items are safe! Also after that huge MP damage I do need to use ethers a lot.

That said she just doesn't use enough turns on damage, and Spiritmaster nonsense undoes a lot of what she does. The instant death is annoying for my singing pictomancer, but my singing spiritmaster is immune because Spirited Defence is silly. So while it takes more time than you might expect for me to kill a boss with only 150k HP and modest evasion (two accuracy buffs suffice), I never feel in any remote danger. This kinda cements on my mind that the halls of tribulations are kinda superbossy!


Final quick thoughts on the classes:

Vanguard: 8/10. Debuffs have some use but not much. Really, though, this class is about three things: high attack via the second specialty, shocking MP-efficient damage moves (both Cross Cut and Neo Cross Slash are best in class for their MP costs), and BP donation. Being durable is just gravy. Definitely one of the best classes in the game.

Bard: 7/10. Great skillset. Stacking damage reduction is one of the easiest ways to mitigate any boss who doesn't rely heavily on dispel (read: everyone except Edna, this is not a Dragon Quest game). Having a rare way to boost accuracy is also welcome. The sleep and damage-boosting songs have uses too, and then lategame Shut Up and Dance is wonderful.

Pictomancer: 4/10? It has a few niches, but overall debuffs just aren't that great in this game. -10% Atk might result in as much as -15% damage if you're lucky (usually less), but the Bard version is better at that for a number of reasons (Bard buffs are MT, bosses get turns faster so status wears off on them faster). And it's not a great carrier because no S ranks and low weight tolerance. It does have Sub-Job BP Saver though, and that's surely in the conversation for best support ability in the game. And it did have good synergy with the rest of my team, particularly Spiritmaster.

Spiritmaster: 7/10. Good but weird. The various spirits themselves are only okay, but getting all four of them going at once for free? That's neat. Except the part where it dispels you, that's not neat. Its L1 passive which prevents OHKOs rules and makes me forgive the class for its ugly weight tolerance, Sub-Job Speciality 1 is also cool. It has a great special if its own damn L2 passive isn't interfering with it, MT fullheal that also casts reraise and regen on everyone? Nice. Breaks the postgame as well, so there's that.

Bastion: 4/10. Self-only defensive buffs are truly terrible, so this class doesn't have too much except Rampart (and Vallation, but waaay more bosses use physicals in this game). Nulling one physical hit on everyone is great, and while the HP cost isn't fun to pay it's probably nicer than paying with extra BP like in BD1. As a carrier it's decent enough, you can do worse than tanky and high weight tolerance, and the free BP while absorbing damage while defaulting is cool.

[074]

Laggy Fantasy Tactics: A Run

That basically sums it up.  I'm doing a LFT run because why not, and also i never was able to complete one all the way through (most of them kind of peter out in early to mid C4)

The party so far:
Ramza: is Ramza.  Has generally been running Ninja and its prereqs, with a bit of Knight.  Will be stopping in Knight to learn Speed Break at some point for later purposes.

Daison: Oracle/White Mage, sometimes dips into Mediator for monster recruitment.  Pretty much the go-to for support effects, and has been carried by Move-MP Up himself.  Also frequently hits people with sticks.  Also grabbed a shitton of geomancer skills from a crystal lately, I may want to invest in Counter Flood.

Charene: Samurai/Monk with Equip Spear.  I'm probably not committing enough in either direction but it's fun to have both PA and MA to run off of.  Not being restricted to Katanas means that she hits harder than her stats say.

Susan: Wizard/Time Mage/War Criminal.  MAU boosted elemental spells are bullshit.  Also Frog is a good control option if you need someone just plain removed from battle.


With that out of the way, battle highlights:

Gariland: it's Gariland.  You're up against squires and one chemist.  A chemist who, in this case, rarely even used potions until he was cornered and being beaten down.  lol.

Mandalia Plains: Had one reset because I tried to save Algus' ass and it led to him walking back into the horde of enemies, just to get mulched, on his second turn.  Even died to a crit, IIRC.  jfc.  Second go went cleanly at least, though Ramza ended up doing much of nothing the whole time.  Really should have gone for Accumulate rather than Equip Axe, even knowing what I was planning for down the line.  Oh and Susan got her triple-kill canceled by the red panther being a cute kitty.

Sweegy Woods: Another rather uneventful fight.  Charene'd upgraded to Monk at this point.  It showed.  She pretty much broke everything's face after a single Accumulate.  Algus basically tanked the left two monsters while I had to keep the black mage from nuking everything again.  Ramza managed to do something as archer though.  He'd rolled low enough on starting JP he'd have to go for another fight as it though.

Dorter 1: you know, I don't think I ever used archer as much as this playthrough.  Ignore Height is hilarious here.  Also Monk still an unholy force of face-breaking.  Daison's gone Oracle which means i now start abusing its Move/MP-Up for more healing.  Even if it's pathetically bad right now.

I think it was about this point that I'd set my mind on Ramza going Ninja, while Charene would go Samurai.

Sand Rat Cellar: Three resets.  It was really my fault, too, since rather than refactoring my team i instead, uh...kept approaching different approach tactics.  There were some easy ones too.  This was a fight I largely lost on the prep screen though.  Biggest one was assuming with Delita that, since Rat Cellar was in the desert, it would have Sand tiles rather than the mix of Hell Ivy/Pitfall/Carve Model it did have.  Also trying to get fancy with the monks instead of just fucking killing them was a mistake, and assuming Guts on Delita would be enough supplemental revival to my Oracle was a mistake.  Managed to work it out by leaving Algus (as Knight at that point) to die to the other three knights and archer while I relocated the team from his side to Ramza's and took out the monks.  Thief!Ramza with Power Break did generally neuter the knights though.  Half the time this fight is a fucker for me.  The other half it's...

Thieves' Fort: Thankfully, this one wasn't, and almost as if compensation for the difficulty I had with Cellar of Sand Mouse, this one was almost too easy.  Thief!Ramza now had Quick Attack, leading to payoff with my acquisition of Equip Axe all the way back in Mandalia.  One of the priests ran out to try and Bolt2 the team, only to get instaganked for 120 with an Axe Quick Attack.  Two of the three thieves had also gotten the clever idea to line up right where Susan could just cast her own lightning magic, with Algus actually being useful and shooting the one that wasn't going to die instantly from good zodiac.  The map was basically over at that point and the other priest I think had the humiliation of even missing a coinflip Raise.

Lenalia Plateau: ...Poor Miluda could not catch a break here honestly.  I swapped Charene to Archer for this, and she took advantage of the ridge on the left.  Killed the mages in short order, crippled the knights, it wasn't much of a fight from there.

Archer Is Useful count: 2


Windmill Shed: This fight...holy crap I had no right winning this one on the first try.  I'd gone in with a half-cocked strategy that, were I actually thinking, I would have at least gone to fix some JP issues for execution.  No, I had to test out my shiny new Ninja Ramza.  Against Wiegraf.

I attempted to cripple him with Power Break, only to lose both coinflips and get countered, and Ramza went down to critical.  I tried to do a clever bit and time a revive before the attack which I'd *figured* would kill him (a Life Drain from the oracle)...only to then be met with Ramza dodging the spell off of narrow margins and my thoughtfully-timed Raise hitting a living Ramza.  I am a tactical genius.

(Ramza got killed right after that, even)

To add more panic to the pile, Delita set up Wish on Ramza.  Wish then also proceeded to miss.  Thankfully, I'd learned my lesson from Sand Rodents and Charene had Revive.  I managed to land Raise on Ramza this time now that he was actually dead, pop Revive on Delita...and then I decided to have Ramza, his turn accelerated by Quick, go for another Power Break on Wiegraf.  He landed one of the two hits before dying to another counter, but at least Wiegraf was sitting at something like 4 PA rather than 7.

Mercifully, Susan had obliterated most of the opfor, with both monks and the chocobo down.  Unmercifully, Crush Punch procced on Daison.  Out of sheer spite, the monks dropped chests when I really needed crystals, and for a good while the fight turned into a horrible loop where Wiegraf was killing Daison immediately after he'd been revived, so there was a whole thing of just...me going back and forth reviving him and hoping to hell I didn't miss the 75% hit rate on that.  It broke once Daison managed to get a turn, I got them away, the oracle crystallized which Susan immediately picked up, and I was able to close the fight out from there.

Most of my damage on Wiegraf had, hilariously, been from unleveled jumps from Charene.  Also I had MFI'd the Wizard Robe, which means that Susan is set to become even more of an unholy terror.

I could have solved a lot of the early problems from the start, honestly.  Had I, last map, decided to instead level Ramza enough to get Concentrate rather than dive right for unlocking Ninja, I could have gone in on Thief and just obliterated Wiegraf's PA from the get-go.

Still, Wiegraf 1 just seems to give me the best fights and this is no exception.


Interlude: I got a dragon.  Two resets to remember that the dragon spawns on coming in from the south of Lenalia.
End interlude.


Fort Zeakden: Understanding my mistakes from Fovoham, I'd swapped Ramza in to Archer for this.  One of the Black Mages had tried to instagib Ramza with a spell.  Ramza had an Ice Bow that was MFI'd from a previous map, and could charge faster than the black mage.  Another triple-digit counter-kill for Ramza.

He'd then made his way up to the rooftops.  Susan nuked the other mage from her spot, while Ramza took potshots at Algus.  This fight was honestly rather uneventful, all things considered, and none of the other knights were killed, just Algus and the two mages.

You know what?  I'll take a clean Zeakden run even if I didn't get the chance to MFI anything.


Chapter 1 ended there.  Four resets, one due to horrible RNG and the other three due to poor planning.  Chapter 2 update will come when I clear that.

[superaielman]

Replayed Triangle strategy and did the new hard mode maps. Love that they added the story missions as mock battles.


Triangle is the best pure SRPG I have played since the PS2. (I  adore Brig but it’s writing is not strong)Brilliant gameplay and story; endless replay value and holds up very well coming back to it a few years after release.  It even does a good job on cast balance which is a feat in a 30 person cast. Definitely a 10/10 title.

[074]

Laggy Fantasy Tactics: Act 2

Act 2 went...surprisingly smoothly all in all.  I managed to not have to do any propositions, even though the temptation continues to run strong every single time I look at my JP scores.  Some highlights.

Dorter 2: This is about where I started going crazy with MFI bullshit.  Charene petrified Andy with a lucky Carve Model, and Susan did the usual murders.  Archer Ramza was there to grab the higher-up MFI locations, though I still had to stall Agrias and Gafgarion out to keep them from closing things out too quickly.  Last archer was an asshole who had Item, and specifically Soft, to break Andy out of petrification, so he had to die the normal way after all.  Sorry Andy.

Araguay Woods: You know what's fun?  Having a free mount for your spear-wielding samurai who's normally got Move 3.  Pokes of doom abound.  Not much else to say, didn't MFI much even though I probably could have.

Zirekile Falls: I played this one dirty, stripped Gafgarion of his gear beforehand.  Still had some hilarious troubles as I didn't check, assumed one of the knights wouldn't have Equip Bow and a corresponding crossbow to kill Daison, and it took several turns for Charene to get in position for Revive to get off due to the chokepoint at the start.  Also Gafgarion hasted someone before he escaped.  MFI gave me another prize though: an Ancient Sword, something that you normally don't get until Chapter 3.  (also a Platina Dagger but that's purchasable right after this fight)  Watch as I neglect to leverage this properly for the next few fights.

Zaland Fort City: Knowing the huge wall is there, I grab Spike Shoes for everyone who isn't able to jump 4.  And then waste my advantage by deploying Daison and Susan too far to reach the black mages.  This, however, was the point where I'd say I needed to quit for the night: I'd forgotten to put White Magic as Daison's sub and didn't give Agrias the Ancient Sword.  X-Potion Knight was left to sandbag so I could do MFI shenanigans.

Bariaus Hill: I Need To Stop, Part 2.  Swapped Agrias to Knight but didn't sub Holy Sword on her.  Think I forgot to put Time Magic on Susan as well.  Honestly still didn't matter.  Sleep and Frog shut down the Lancers in hilarious fashion.  More importantly, though, MFI'd a Twist Headband.  Of all the things I could have found...god damn.

Zigolis Swamp: I Need To Stop, Part 3.  Forgot to swap Mustadio back to Engineer for gun use and Snipe, neglected to put Daison in Mediator to try and recruit the one non-undead monster there.  Didn't matter, Susan just nuked them anyway.  Also guest starring a red dragon!  Red dragons are tanky and do decent damage, who would have thought?  Not that he got to show that off much, due to being Stopped for half the fight.  No MFI here.

Goug Slums: Literally the one fight in which I had a reset this chapter, would have been multiple if I didn't get lucky.  First one was lost in deployment; forgot to give Punch Art to Charene and Time Magic to Susan, and spread the deployment too thin.  I still forgot to give Time Magic to Susan the second time around.  I was about to lose due to neglecting to check AoEs until I got incredibly lucky with an Asura Knife Draw Out.  Two kills, and I think two Death procs?  The enemies had grouped up together for me to kill all four in one move, and it turned everything around.  Oh and then I turned the surviving archer into a frog.  lol.

Bariaus Valley: This one's generally been on the easier side, nothing really of note here in this fight if you ask me.  Well, outside of the one knight rolling MFI and swiping the node in the corner.  When does Monk get a dickpunch ability, because that knight needs one.

Golgorand Execution Site: Normally I do a single random run of Bariaus Valley to get Split Punch for Agrias.  I decided to forego it this time since she rolled with enough free JP to in fact do so.  This fight usually is one of the big stumbling points for me, and will fuck me the hell up.  Which is by design; Golgorand does not fuck around.

It was absolutely ridiculous.  Agrias and Charene basically cut across the arena with Agrias even oneshotting an archer who was lining up a big charge on Ramza.  Ramza himself hit Gafgarion hard enough to force a retreat, and the whole fight was over within a remarkably short time.  MFI gave me a bag to sell for ludicrous amounts of money, even.

It got the last laugh on me though, since I was hoping for crystals to get Agrias built up, especially off of the Geomancy Knight.  I did not get that.  Every single enemy dropped a treasure chest.  Assholes.  Oh, and concerning was how, early on, one of the archers landed Zombie on Ramza.

Foreshadowing is a literary device in which-

Lionel Gate: This fight was over in a very short amount of time.  Which is good because god fucking damnit Secret Fist fucked my entire party up.  Serves me right for not investing in Death Sentence protection for everyone.  Oh and Gafgarion wasn't an issue.  No secondaries, matched speed which means I just move-waited to make sure he couldn't hit Ramza at full strength more than once.  No MFI due to the time pressure of course.

Queklain: So, I'd planned to invite a Flotiball from Zigolis for this fight.  Turns out I didn't really need it.  Agrias and Ramza were doing about 150 each a turn to him, Split Punch landed Don't Move, Mustadio petrified the knights, and the only casualty was Charene getting petrified off the bat.  Ended on a Melt proc even, which was funny.  I was half afraid he'd have Counter Magic'ed it but it doesn't really apply when the attack kills you.

...and now I face the temptation of the Fur Shop and the sweet dragon-based loot I can get from it.  Defenders and Dragon Whiskers both available for my perusal if I only pay the one-time fee of 20,000 or 24,000 gil respectively.

[SnowFire]

super: I guess I realize I didn't do a post on it, but I did return to Triangle Strategy a few months ago, beat it, and then played ~5 maps in to a NG+.  Should do a detailed writeup sometime.  I do agree it's good that they added the story missions as grindable in a patch - it's particularly important in that the story missions drop healing items.  You could potentially hard lock yourself out of healing items in the OG patch, which was dumb, so there is at least a very slow way to get more in the event of disaster now.

In other news...

Touhou Luna Nights
Beaten.  I played Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth which was made by the same Team Ladybug indie group and enjoyed it, and saw the 9/9 silly Cirno sprites, so sure, what the hell.

Anyway, it's a pretty good Metroidvania.  The platforming & combat are really fun, most importantly.  I'm not a fan of top-down shooters, but the Graze mechanic makes for high-stakes and rewarding gameplay in a platformer where you want to just barely dodge enemy shots.  Since our heroine can stop time, there are some pretty tricksy patterns that come at you fast, but if you dodge them in real time, you get rewarded.  (And you get minorly rewarded for "dodging" them while time is stopped.)  It makes things nice and exciting.  The boss fights are all great.  I basically did a daggers-only using the subweapons very little, which I found out later was not optimal from checking speedruns, but hell, it's optimal on fun because it makes you learn the enemy patterns, which are all very rude but just barely fair when time isn't stopped.  Unusually, it's also a game that gets the difficulty curve exactly right - the game is very gentle and training wheels early, and it gets tougher and tougher linearly.  Lots of games have inverted difficulty curves because they're feeding you so many goodies & power-ups that they're not sure if you have late game, but no, beating up the final bosses feels much more challenging and rewarding than the earlier ones.

Similar to Deedlit, it's not very much on the exploration aspects - the gradual unlocking mechanic is incredibly basic-ass, along the lines of "beat boss to get the green key, there is a green door in exactly one spot that opens the way to the next area."  So don't go expecting much special there.  Similarly, the level design is on the cramped side - there aren't really any big rooms, it's all narrow corridor maneuvering.  Oh well.

Also, the music is great?  ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL62MUJgPtF56ufLQ26qVIrRNumtoDpJc1 )  I listened to some Touhou stuff way back when and acknowledged it as pretty good (if famously, er, synthy in instrumentation).  The remixes are all great, better than the originals IMO.  Like, take "The Maid and the Pocket Watch of Blood" - honestly not that impressive in its original form, but dang if the Luna Nights version isn't fantastic.  Pretty much wasn't a single track I disliked.

Okay, that leaves TOUHOU PLOT, or more specifically fangame plot.  This one wasn't so strong, although I suppose it works better than Deedlit.  Deedlit's nothingburger of a setup didn't work well, but Touhou at least adapts better to "cozy" plots of not much happening.  Something odd is that the writer seems to think Sakuya is both A) Extremely powerful (there's a number of lines about "oh no my power has been sealed here" and others having lines from bosses like "haha I'll stand a chance because your powers are sealed" - Translator's note, they're sealed for like literally a minute of gameplay time, the very first thing that happens is unlocking the ability to stop time again, WTF), yet also B) Kinda naive / dumb.  (I'm sure it's in character, but the main antagonist mocks Sakuya as being naive for not noticing her, which given that the player has already been given ample clues as to who the antagonist is...  she has a point.)  Weird combo; I'm used to slightly "underpowered" but clever main characters.  Anyway, getting back to the plot, the Received Wisdom in writing is that you're supposed to have some sort of "inciting incident" in a story where something interesting happens that drives events forward.  It doesn't have to be at the VERY start, but it should be early-ish - Gandalf coming to the Shire and recruiting hobbits, say.  Or for other Touhou games, EoSD involves the sun being blotted out by mist, and PCB involves "someone stole spring."  But the initial plot of Luna Nights is just the Touhou girls horsing around for fun, with put-upon Sakuya dealing with her boss's silly whims.  Very cozy, but sure I guess, given that most of these people seem to get along well.  The plot actually starts at the end of Stage 4...  of a 5 stage game.  I dunno, I'd liked there to have been some sort of stakes earlier?  Also, in ANTAGONIST SPOILERS (??), is this just going to be a fan sendup of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil with all the bosses from that game back exactly, or go anywhere new?  Well asking the question answers it, of course it's going to just mimic EoSD exactly rather than be creative.  Boo hiss, I'd have actually been more down for Nitori having some sort of evil plan than for it to be Flandre, Again as the final boss.

While I said "beaten", what I mean is the main game was beaten.  I did the extra stage, cleared the first extra boss, and hahaha nope'd out of final extra boss.  Well I did just praise the game above for having a rewardingly constantly increasing difficulty level, but yeah that boss is for people better at the game than me.  I got to her second phase and will call it a draw.

[Captain K]

I've been playing a mobile tactics game called Sword of Convallaria for the last month. It's a gacha game, with all that that entails. But what makes it stand out is the "Spiral of Destinies" mode. It's a branching path story where your actions change how the story unfolds. There's also some sim management as you control the kinds of skills your characters get. Pretty cool, and I recommend checking it out.

[Laggy]

LFT fast (not speedrun) playthrough writeup. No nonsense and few limitations, I want to see how hard the game feels trying to be as straightforward as possible with my knowledge of it. I do impose some rules.

* No superfluous grinding (notably no randoms, though I fatfinger a couple, once in Ch1 and Ch2 and just end them ASAP. They're uneventful.) I don't ever crystal farm, though once a fight is under control I'm not above having PCs that are out of range of finishing the last enemy unit(s) bonk themselves for JP while the ones who actually can reasonably end the fight do so. At some points I delay ending a few encounters to get a specific JP count for my sanity but it's always only a handful of turns.
* No propositions or poaching that isn't in a story fight, no going out of my way to MFI overpowered picks, etc.
* Technically I can use special chars, and objectively it's correct to use Orlandu once you get him, but that's boring. I settle for just using Agrias instead of having to worry about a 4th generic; also to see how she feels since I haven't used her in a while.
* No Calculator (it's dubious if the time spent unlocking and leveling it is even worth it for maingame LFT, though it's a lot more tolerable with props) but also the "best" way to use Calc is still degenerate full battlefield strats so eh, I'm not into that.
* I use my starter generics and spend no time in the soldier office and get 3 female Capricorns with Ramza Capricorn. Which means they all have worst compatibility with Agrias. OH WELL

Unfortunately with the emulator I'm using there seems to be some sort of bug that's affecting some damage formulas to be way lower than they should be, notably Spark from Bombs, some Elementals, and (most relevantly) spellguns all doing single digit damage. So far this hasn't really mattered in a meaningful way (Balk 1 ended within a single round of actions for me and he wouldn't have OHKOed regardless) but may as well disclaimer it.


The long-term team composition goal I had in mind was:

- 2 female generics beelining for Bolt/MAU into Ramuh/Moogle, then using Summon to carry Ch1-2 (and part of Ch3) while they branch into Yin-Yang and Time respectively
- 1 male generic going for Ninja with Item secondary
- Ramza going for Draw Out because female MA while going through the physical tree is less painful
- Agrias (Geomancer or Knight, grinding Holy Sword in easy fights)

It's a fairly straightforward composition that balances between strong aoe damage/healing, one dedicated speedy Item user and a "let them approach me" gameplan for the most part. DO and Holy Sword fill in the gaps where appropriate as instant, unevadable damage with splash. It is notably very revival light: just one Item user. I never end up using Raise for pretty much the whole game on either caster, valuing their offensive/utility magic more; Guts for Wish does come up as a backup plan for Ch1-3, as Ramza just spends a lot of time unlocking Samurai and never can stop to pick up a decent secondary skillset. He also started with Yell which is a decent JP filler move.

Is this ideal? Probably I should've just caved and had another dedicated Item secondary (Ramza or one of the casters.) But honestly, I find FFT a lot more brain-engaging when you run low revival sources, so I just rolled with it.


I recorded the whole thing (including fight downtime, shopping, etc.) as a reference so if you are interested you can check it out. Still got the endgame stretch to finish but I doubt it will put up much of a fight.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2255127851 - start to Ch2 Zirekile
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2255436567 - Ch2 Zaland to Ch3 Yuguo
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2256671378 - Ch3 Riovanes to Ch4 Bervenia (uncleared)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2256671649 - Bervenia to Bethla
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2258755690 - Germinas to UBS5

Writeups for Ch1 and 2 for now, I'll do the rest at a later point.

Chapter 1

In Ch1 this means Wizard/Summoner, Thief/Archer, and Monk for these units respectively.

Everything up to Dorter doesn't really deserve comment, although Mandalia Plains did open with a Wizard killing Algus immediately with 41 collateral Bolt damage.

Sand Rat: Complete slaughter, the two Wizards sweep with Bolt and Poison and my Archer finishes off the enemy Archer by claiming the high ground first. None of the units ever get out of their deathtrap save the Monk who starts outside.

Miluda 1: Also one-sided, only one Thief gets an attack off and all the other enemy units are dead before they can do anything.

Miluda 2: Requires a bit more careful zoning to deny the enemy Knights any meaningful hits. Miluda's tanky enough that my slow hang back and pick off approach means everything else dies before her, but I'm never in any danger.

Wiegraf 1: Harder than it needed to be mainly because I'm being stingy with JP and not picking up Bolt 2 or getting Ramuh early, opting to save for MAU. This means my offense is quite limited for a blitz approach, so I end up killing all the support instead. Lucked out a bit with some evades and Ramza never eating a Crush Punch ID proc. Probably still would've done ok even if it'd gone south but likely I should've just picked up better damage beforehand.

Ziekden: MAU is done, so the girls go Time Mage to unlock Summoner for Ch2. Archer is great for obvious reasons in this fight. Kill opening Wizard (who almost always charges an OHKO on Ramza so you don't really have a choice), then go after Algus, usual deal. He gets some good Auto Potion RNG but it's not enough. Poison gets extra value here.

Overall, chapter 1 is predictable, Black Magic just rips it in half handily - nothing can really compete with the raw damage output+splash and Poison's range is great for Knights and bosses. Archer feels very good in some fights too and since Ramza needs a lot of time in Monk to unlock Samurai, Repeating Fist's early OPness gets to shine. Battle Boots for basically the whole chapter as well, the +1 PA/MA accessories are honestly kinda traps for the most part.


Chapter 2

My male generic wants to head to Ninja eventually but since it's ultimately just a carrier destination there's no real rush. I dedicate this chapter to getting more of Item finished and spending a lot of time in Thief, for Move+2.

Ramza similarly needs to unlock Samurai, although unlike the male generic he would rather start accruing JP there ASAP. However since actually playing and leveling on Samurai is pretty painful I also decide that he goes Thief where he can to pick up Move+2 as well. Both of them grab HP Restore as a generic reaction (I have a very high opinion of it for 300 JP.) Otherwise he just bounces between jobs for unlocks and runs Guts secondary and spends an awful lot of time Yelling. The idea is that...

...the two female generics will carry this chapter by blowing shit up with Ramuh. Moogle gets picked up too, those two summons alone make for an incredible skillset for a long stretch of the game IMO. I decide against bothering with more in Summon for now. They'll go Oracle and TM once that's done.

Agrias will round out the roster at the end. For Zigolis/Goug I'll just throw in a chocobo as filler.


Dorter 2: Possibly the most one-sided fight I've ever had here; the enemies decide to bunch up in a nice cross formation and uh that's that. Basically no meaningful enemy actions occur, and as the last surviving Thief and Archer retreat back to their inevitable slow deaths I bonk the guests some taking my time to go up and finish them off. Summoner gets unlocked after this.

Araguay (1 wipe): I opt to be greedy and not mount Boco, he gets his eyes gouged out and panic runs into the welcoming arms of a Goblin Punch. FIRST WIPE I'VE EVER HAD ON THIS MAP IN ANY FFT VERSION, oops.

Zirekile: A slow ass fight where I maximize my JP-gaining actions while playing it safe with my limited revival. We finally do have Ramuh here although it's genuinely less efficient than Poison against all the enemy Knights.

Zaland: Oh hey a very nice box formation with the two Wizards and two Knights, oh look they're all dead to double Ramuh. Again the fastest clear I've ever had in this encounter. Moogle is picked up so we're done with playing Summoner for now.

Bariaus Hill: Musty solos one Summoner, I spread out to avoid Elemental splash and carefully bait the Lancers forward to pick them off without letting them land fatal hits. I do eat a death or two but not my Item user, and clutch a Haste out to dodge the enemy Summoner's Shiva. Another zoning-heavy fight. Also my planned Oracle doesn't have Priest JLV2 yet so she has to make a detour here for that.

Zigolis: A pig spawns and promptly gets poached (running dual Thieves right now!) Actually this fight drags out longer than I'd like - Skeleton Souls 2HKO, the opening Ghost gets a Shadow Stitch off and the pig annoyingly evades easy death early on and keeps Musty sleep locked. So I spend a lot of MP using Moogle to avoid getting killed and two of the early undead units actually reach 0 on their timer near the end of the fight. Fortunately neither revive, though it wouldn't have been that big a deal, just annoying.

Goland: I mess up a lot of my plays here so it's worse than it has to be. However ultimately it's a fight that largely centers around baiting the Summoners to their death and not getting too messed up by the Archers in your turn order killing your casters. I'm careful not to lose my Chemist so it never spirals out of control. (RIP Boco though)

Bariaus Valley: Musty gets a one time cameo here, and with a Chemist on the other side this fight just sort of crumples over (guns are really good here against the casters and the Knights just aren't in a great position to threaten you.)


Now is probably a good time to take stock of my exact setup/how much I've grinded thus far...

* Ramza - LV11, unlocking Samurai still. In Knight to get it to JLV4 and also because Golgorand is pain. Normally Guts secondary (Yell & Wish), has Item here with Phoenix Down from spillover JP. RSM HP Restore / Move+2. I had Equip Spear from a Lancer dip and was planning to use it, but stupidly sold my Javelin and did not buy a Mythril Spear before I was locked out of castles. I may deeply regret this soon.
* Draper (male generic) - LV11, finishing Ninja unlocks still. In Geomancer to pick up Attack UP. Item secondary (Hi-Potion, Phoenix Down.) RSM HP Restore / Move+2 like Ramza.
* Stephanie (female generic) - LV10, Time Mage (Haste, Slow, Don't Move), saving for Teleport. Summon (Ramuh/Moogle), MAU.
* Annette (female generic) - LV11, Oracle (Silence Song, Paralyze). Summon (Ramuh/Moogle), MAU.
* Agrias - LV13. Freshly joined (with only Stasis Sword.) Immediately in Geo to actually do damage and work on Attack UP.

And so we get to...


Golgorand (1 wipe): Conventional FFT wisdom says you want your casters to match enemy Speeds (or be 1 below) so you can immediately cast on them freely. For Chapter 1 this is generally 5 Speed, for Chapter 2 this is 6, and for Chapter 3 this is 7. LFT Knights throw a ripple in this since they are slower than vanilla (90 mult instead of 100) but this works mostly still.

The two enemy Knights on the ground in Golgorand in vanilla are usually not a big deal - they're 3 move and don't have secondaries. So you can just kite them, forever. In LFT they have 5 move (Move+1 preset) and one of them has Elemental as a secondary. This is kind of a big deal. So big that both of my casters, who are 6 Speed and on Ramza's PBF side, end up eating shit and dying before they get a single action.

I try my best to recover (still killing Gafgarion before his second turn) and do get some good luck so it looks like it's not totally hopeless for a bit but ultimately 9 units vs 3 is just way too much action economy disadvantage to fight uphill on.

On the second attempt the casters are now 7 speed and actually get to move, although things are still grim early on as they usually are - a struggle to simply stay alive and not get buried into being forced to revive while still taking out Gafgarion ASAP. At some point the Yin-Yang Archer also confuses Ramza and my male generic, and they're just left floundering on the wrong side of the map for a good portion. And then finally the last insult to injury: in forgetting to get a spear for Ramza he and Agrias are both on Coral Swords... and I forget one of the enemy Knights has fixed Rubber Shoes. AND both my casters only have Ramuh as their damage spell (and the Oracle is on a rod.) Which means only the Time Mage with the Rainbow Staff, and the Geomancer with the Mythril Sword, are capable of damaging him. And said Geo was Zombie'd while he was confused midway through, so if he goes down, I can't revive him either. (Spoilers: he does go down eventually from lack of healing)

Long story short, the fight does end up boiling down to just the two floor enemy Knights, and eventually they both get a turn to 2HKO my Time Mage (who I have tried desperately to keep alive the whole time). FORTUNATELY I win the 50/50 on undead revival on the Geo, and he lands the last fatal blow to Mr. Rubber Shoes.

I felt very tested at all points throughout this fight that I'll plug a direct timeline link to it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2255436567?t=2h7m53s By far the hardest fight in Ch2 and up to this point in general, nothing else comes close, but that's Golgorand for you.

Lionel Gate: I don't even bother with Rubber Shoes here, Ramza COULD win the duel handily (he's finally in Samurai! And 2handing a spear for 120 damage pokes to Gaffy, plus Gaffy knocks him into HP Restore range) but I just go for the lever to be safe. The Summoner charges Shiva which is the one scary move that happens in this fight and is instantly shut down by Silence Song, so that's that.

Queklain: Quek lands double DS and no sleep. Pdown one of the Knights because they're bodyblocking me. Oops, I forget to set Holy Sword on Geo Agrias. Doesn't matter, I slap him with a Slow 2 on my Time Mage's first turn and have too much damage; he kills one more person but that's not enough.

As predicted, Ramuh dominated Chapter 2, although at 7 CT and with far more dangerous enemy setups it's not quite as overpowering the way Black Magic is in Chapter 1. Silence Song was the other clear winner; even if you don't pull out blitz wins at Zaland or Goug, it shuts the most dangerous units down there real fast, and the only one at Lionel to boot. My male units kinda sucked at damage but they did their job at keeping enemies distracted or pulled into position for my casters to blast away, and they spent most of the chapter investing in unlocks/RSM to be relevant in the future as Ramuh becomes less of a powerful button.

[Twilkitri]

Dangeresque: The Roomisode Triungulate (Steam)

Set of short point&click adventures. Generally fairly entertaining/amusing.

I think that progress at finding the bonus objectives should be retained across replays of each roomisode rather than you having to achieve them all in a single play to get the best score. This isn't a Quest game where you're finding better or worse solutions, these are primarily just finding specific additional jokes - and having to repeat that every time isn't particularly entertaining. The second & third roomisodes particularly have points where the world state changes and access to some of these is lost.

The bonus roomisode has you lose access to verbs and I don't care much for that either.

(Also RigRug is bad.)


Dragon Age II (Steam+EA)

Entertaining but not as good as Dragon Age Origins.

Made the MC a rogue again. As the Origins MC is still extant (for all that they don't appear in II) I left the II MC with the preset name & look rather than customising them (although I elected to use the preset which removed the nose scar (?) rather than going with the strict default).

As with Origins I let the game decide how attribute/ability points should be distributed for the non-MC characters as they levelled up. The MC I primarily put ability points into the two-weapon, assassin, and duelist lines (although I never had them use the duel-centric duelist abilities).

Ultimately sided with the mages, lost Isabela, Fenris, and Sebastian across the course of the game. Did not put the MC into a relationship with anyone.

I like the idea of the game structure. But, it feels like anything in the city which isn't plot-relevant barely actually exists, and as a result I don't think the game does a good job at conveying any sort of progression of time. I don't remember any incidental characters who change across the years or so on.

Inventory is annoying. They give all items a star rating which reduces as you get further into the game and better equipment becomes available, which sounds like a good idea in isolation. But, I have seen the game give separate instances of accessories which it lists as having the same effects different star ratings - so what am I supposed to take away from this? Do items have hidden stats which it doesn't list?

Also, you can't see what rating currently-equipped equipment has. Thanks, game, practically defeat the entire point why don't you.

Also! General storage is in a location where you can't take a party, and you can only adjust equipment for people who are in the party. So if you pick up a fancy sword for instance, once you're free to check if anyone wants it you first need to reform your party to include all applicable characters, then if no-one does want it you can separately go to storage to drop it off. On the off-chance that you pick up a weapon that someone does want but they don't have the stats for yet, if want to check this in future you need to get it out of storage, then leave and reform the party to include them to check. That said outside the fairly early game I don't think I ever saw any character not have the stats for anything I picked up.

Switching topic to reuse of dungeon layouts, in my view essentially the only problem here is that all of the unused doors in each dungeon are still visible. (I guess also parts of the map.) All they had to do cover (or replace) the unused doors with walls. Or even just pile stuff in front of them like they do with some of the caves in the outdoor areas.

I hate the city gangs system. Not to suggest that the city shouldn't have gangs. But it really put me in mind of Superhero League Of Hoboken in how you get attacked a bunch and then you've (essentially) killed everyone (after an eventual hideout quest for each). There must have been a better option.

I intend to go on to Inquisition at some point but not immediately.



(Got a 403 page several times while trying to preview this message, posting without previewing seems to have worked fine? Is previewing broken for anyone else?)

[saqib]

Might as well get things started with finishing up writeups from FFT Fiesta.

  Was being indecisive about what I needed for the final series.  For accessories, picked up 2 Rubber Shoes (just in case though I don't plan to use them) and a 2nd Defense Armlet.  Grabbed a 2nd Red Shoes. (should have picked up a 3rd as well) Most of my remaining funds went to extra katanas for Draw Out.  Kikus and Murasames mostly with a few more Kotetsus and Heaven's Clouds.

UBS4

  Priest with Draw Out, Dancer with Punch Art and Martial Arts, Samurai also goes Punch Art + Martial Arts.  Blade Grasp on all.  The only really meaningful threat on the field is the lower leveled monk.  He dies to a Bolt3 from the mediator's Blast Gun and an Earth Slash from the dancer.  After that, it's just taking out everyone else.  Other monk, then archer, knights last.  I checked the knights' secondaries for anything that would threaten a full team of 80 Brave Blade Grasp, danger level nil.  Elemental boosted Blast Gun, Earth Slash, and Draw Out > enemy evasion.
  Did stall for a bit at the end.  Could have dropped the last knight with Holy but the first monk would crystalize first so I opted to wait a round to go for all the marbles.  Crystal which Felicia picks up.  Learn Counter and Move-HP up off it.  She now can master the class.  Only damage I take all fight is one arrow and random Throw Stone.

UBS5

  Everyone but the dancer is set up with a spell gun and a Black Robe if they can.  Arrange PBF to draw Rofel forward with a Petrify.  Firing squad executes him in three shots.

Morund Death City

  Priest and mediator go in squad 2, everyone else in squad 1.  Mediator, monk, and samurai have Hamedo and keep Blade Grasp on the rest.  I give the dancer a Bracer and a Power Sleeve to go with her Thief Hat.  Punch Art and Martial Arts on her and the samurai.  Move Ramza exactly 3 panels from his default location.  Kletian comes forward to charge Holy on the dancer.  Ninja on squad 2 side goes for Throw on the Mediator, Hamedo.  Other enemies advance doing nothing.  Dancer advances with a Spin Fist on Kletian, a ninja, and a time mage hitting all three. (this is the only time I've used Spin Fist all game)  Mediator shoots ninja dead.  Priest does nothing of importance: using Kiku on a samurai just for the action.  Monk Ramza punches Kletian for 210.  Wave Fist from the samurai does enough to drop him.

Death City Presincts

  My female Gemini's turn to be the priest.  I give her Blast Gun, Thief Hat, Black Robe, and Red Shoes and set Hamedo.  Samurai Artemis gets a Blaze Gun, Black Robe, and Hamedo.  Everyone else sticks with Blade Grasp.  Defense Armlets on the members unable to wear Thief Hats.
  I messed up PBF placement putting the female Gemini in squad 2.  So Balk ends up shooting at Artemis on his first turn instead.  Gun Hamedo.  Priest moves up and Kiku on Balk for 160. (and the hyudra)  Enemy Chemist tosses a Hi-Potion on the hyudra, not that it matters.  Monk Earth Slash on two, 40 to Balk.  Samurai and mediator shoot the hydra dead.  Dancer starts Nameless.  Balk gets his second turn and shoots at the female Gemini.  Just as planned.  Gun Hamedo procs a Bolt2 leaving him at 124 HP.  She does 153 with the Blast Gun allowing me to end it [https://menuland.ph/mang-inasal-menu-prices-in-philippines/]right there[/https://menuland.ph/mang-inasal-menu-prices-in-philippines/].  Easiest Balk 2 fight I've ever had.  And hey, that 40 damage Earth Slash mattered.  Dancer doesn't get any actions this battle.

Hashulam

  Black Costumes for all but priest and samurai to ward of Spell.  Hamedo on monk and samurai with the rest sticking with Blade Grasp.  MagicDefend Up on all.
   Turned out to be very straightforward bashing.  Hash mostly stuck to hitting 3-5 units at a time with magic but MagicDefend Up (and Move-HP up on the two who had it learned) along with Chakra, Murasame, and the occasional Cure were sufficient to keep up.  If someone got low enough to die to a physical, well that's why I have Hamedo on the two units with decent physicals.  Priest supports and uses Draw Out.  Monk and samurai go between offense and support as needed.  Mediator shoots,  Dancer uses Kiku or Slow Dance if not able to get a good fining line/offense would require too much bunching up.  Hash couldn't really get damage to stick and went down like a chump.  No Slow procs from Heaven's Cloud but didn't really need it anyways.

Sounds like you're making solid progress in your FFT Fiesta! Good call on the accessories and setting up your team with Blade Grasp and Punch Art. The battles seem to be going smoothly, especially with smart use of Hamedo and spell guns. Nice job managing Balk and Hashulam with minimal damage taken! Keep up the great work!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - Replayed this for the line count project, but it's also the first time I've played it in nine years which is crazy for a game I like so much? I did a "lowest level only" run similar to what I've previously done for FE9/FE6/3H where I had to use the lowest level person all the time, along with recruiting everyone and keeping them alive. Interestingly this doesn't make some of the already hardest maps (e.g. Dawn Brigade part 3) any harder, since you can use everyone on those. The hardest maps were 1-Endgame (everyone still in tier 1), 4-1 (night map with Ike's team), and 4-Endgame-1 (everyone still tier 2), followed by maps like 3-11, 4-3, 4-4, 4-E-2, 4-E-4, and 4-E-5, so mostly maps where I'm a tier lower than normal plus the very end where being a few key stat points short really does add up.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia - eyyy they released this for the Switch. New file so I have to play normal mode. Well surely this will be really easy for me - *dies a bunch to Blackmore, Eligor, and Dracula anyway* never mind. Not much to say past that; there was nothing notable about this run, but I had a good time. I approve of OoE having the prominent placement on the art of the Switch DSvania collection, good taste.

Chrono Trigger - Another random replay (Steam version in this case). I beat the game, then did a NG+ run to get all the endings. It's interesting that I used to think fighting Lavos with two people in NG+ was evil but now, even with levels still in the 40's, I was able to do it. Don't neglect your MDef, kids. (It's funny reading guides which say things like "this is super hard even at Level 55, what you need to do is use a Haste Helm + Nova Armour on Crono". WRONG.) Otherwise, this was my first time playing the game with the "new" (DS) translation, which while a bit less punchy at points does clarify some lines well. Also makes the slide show ending hornier than I recall it being. Otherwise, it's CT, still great. I want to force every game dev to play this and understand how a game can be this good even without exceptional writing or battle system; everything about the game's pacing and polish is so good.

Hyrule Warriors - Also got a Switch version, so sure, I'll play this again. Kinda fell down a rabbit-hole and spent over 100 hours on it, I'd forgotten how much I enjoy this game. Gameplaywise it's pretty clearly the best of the four Warriors games I've sunk notable time into, I think - both the action and the map aspects are engaging in a way that I'm not sure any other game in the series has matched simultaneously, and I love the huge variety of fighting styles available. I beat the maingame, essentially completed the first three adventure maps, and stuck me toes into a few more to get some of the multi-elemental weapons.

Baldur's Gate 3 - Started this, still in act 1. Really fun game when it's not tripping over itself with how clunky it is. I hate harzardous terrain on the ground which is both hard to see AND your NPC allies will randomly walk over it in a limited-healing system like this. I also hate how party switching, which the game encourages through both its writing and gameplay, is such a pain compared to how Chrono Trigger did it. On a positive note, though, the writing is very enjoyable, good characters and feels like a well-done D&D campaign (except the part where the game seems to expect me to constantly want to extort NPCs, which I guess is some people's idea of a fun anti-social character. I'm not even blaming the writers for the option, really, but it's weird because it wouldn't be socially acceptable in any D&D campaign I've actually played).

Fire Emblem Fates - Also started a replay of this. Lunatic Conquest, we'll see if I stick with it or something pushes me back to Hard.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Other people can post here too, really, it's fine.

Fire Emblem Fates - Beat Mr. Fuga's Wild Ride. Still on Lunatic. Still a wonderfully-designed game mode. It's not that much harder than Hard but the little changes do add up a lot.

Ace Attorney Investigations - In honour of the second game being localized for the Switch, I played this for the first time in a decade. It's been a while since I've really felt a compelling urge to replay an Ace Attorney game and in some ways I feel like I've fallen out of love with the series but then I ended up enjoying this a lot anyway! Honestly I was kinda pleasantly surprised. This is still one of my favourite AA games, case 1/2/4 are all solid then case 5 is real good, simultaneously a good mystery to unravel and one of the funniest cases in the series. Edgeworth best protagonist.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Replaying this as well (third Normal Miriam playthrough because I'm too rusty to try Hard, fifth playthrough overall), just got the ability to turn into a laser beam.

[074]

Astro Bot Went and cleared the maingame.  I'll just have to say that overall, amazing platformer and an unironic love letter to all of Sony's gaming history.  It's 4:45 AM so I'll not go into detail here but...yeah.

I'll say, pity this didn't come out *before* the instant Sony started showing its ass.  And, you know, all the Concord shenanigans.