Games you are playing

[Rain]

[Sampson]

It's like watching women's tennis with your eyes closed, I'd imagine.

[Suzuricho]

I am currently playing Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness, Etrian Odyssey, and Dragon Quest IV Chapters of the Chosen.

...I like the DS! When you have kids, it's easy to close to keep it paused, and then pick it up when you have the time to again!

[Maxine MagicFox]

o_o You didn't mention you were into Harvest Moon games!

.....

:3 So, tell me, what are your favorites? Please tell me you've tried Rune Factory. If you haven't, I'll be happy to introduce you. XD

[Twat]

[Kimiko]

I just finished Final Fantasy VIII. Finally.

As usual, I spent ages and ages grinding, collecting magic and items, and generally exploring every corner of the game. I get my money's worth out of games this way, but by the time I get to the end of a Final Fantasy, I'm about completely fed up with it, and just want to get it over with. Doesn't help either that the final dungeons in FF games are usually the ugliest/least interesting.

FF8's final dungeon was much better though. It actually had quite interesting puzzles, environment and bosses. Well, except for the last boss, which was one of those with umpteen reincarnations, more than I can remember from other FFs. The ending was.. okayish. Despite being an enjoyable part of the game, that final dungeon totally didn't fit in the story ("we took away all your commands/abilities, and now you have to go through all these hoops to get them back before the final battle"). After that there was little in the way of a conclusion / 'what happened afterwards', just a looong movie that didn't give many details.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. Because of the junctioning/GF mechanics, battles were usually very easy (although with my tendency to over-level, I usually don't have too much trouble), so it felt like this game was more focused on its story than other FFs. There were plenty of side-quests and rare items to collect though, so I didn't get bored quickly.

The characters were about par for FF. Squall was the usual bland protagonist (although his emotional stupidity was even worse than FF7's Cloud's) who can't be removed from the party. Rinoa kicked ass, but was unavailable half the time because she had to fill the distressed damsel role. It's so annoying when my favorite character (and one of the strongest too) is forced into helplessness. The other characters didn't have a lot of depth. Selphie seemed annoying at first, but ended up one of my favorites because she actually had some story and personality to her. It's embarrassing though that the camera nearly always took an angle that looked up her ultra-short dress.

Visually, this installment was better than its predecessor. I suppose that's to be expected of course, but I liked that the characters were realistically proportioned, as opposed to FF7's (and the 3D remakes of 3 and 4's) chibi ones. Monster models were also more detailed, but strangely lacked 7's sleeping/weakened stances.

Musically however, there wasn't anything to write home about. Some themes were recycled from FF7 (and not the good ones), but some FF classics, such as the intro, battle and victory themes, were absent/replaced with lesser stuff. The best piece was easily the song that played for Rinoa&Squall's romance, and even that sounded like it was mostly copied from something popular.

All in all, this was a solid entry in the Final Fantasy series. Definitely one of the easiest I've played so far, but that didn't detract from the experience. It felt like some corners were cut (monsters lacking weakened stances; the ending being only a movie), but not so much as to be too disappointing. Let's hope Squeenix will learn to create more interesting characters in the next installments.

[Black_kero]

Currently playing Etrian Odyssey and will start playing Pokemon Heart Gold when I go and buy it tomorrow.

[Rain]

[scy]

I'm somewhere around Chapter 7 on FFXIII if I had to guess. Will probably have most the game done in a few days now that I have absolutely nothing to worry about besides some gaming.

[spoiler]Just got Hope home and have the game paused on the lolcakewalk Airship fight. So ... yeah.[/spoiler]

I've found Sentinel about 110% useless. Maybe I'm doing it wrong or something but Vendetta damage is terrible and I'd rather Protect/Shell (if that) than waste time in Sentinel form; after all, time = rating = more TP/better loot. COM/RAV/RAV all-the-fucking-way (with occasional detours into SAB/SYN/MED on Bosses or COM/RAV/MED). 5-starring is pretty easy even without Ambushing enemies (with few exceptions; fucking Gatling Gun enemies not long ago T.T) in a DPS setup.

For the most part, have found SAB/SYN relatively lacking. That said, I need to make a COM/RAV/SAB or COM/RAV/SYN Paradigm so the switch isn't a "oh fuck losing bar while we buff/debuff/heal this was a dumb idea fuck get your turns faster Hope" I guess. But, as evidenced by how I played EO/EO2, all-DPS works quite well for me. But, I will concede that my final group (most likely) is based around the idea of Haste + Bravery/Faith + Deprotect/Shell; might see how I like Haste + Slow instead but we'll see.

I will say I wish the AI was a little smarter; my Lightning sits at ~250 STR/150 MAG and when she's CPU controlled (or Auto-chained), she'll waste time fucking casting Spells. You have STR-based Elementals. Use them. Sheesh. Pretty much conceded that any RAV in a CPU spot needs a Magic weapon and accessories for optimal DPS.

[spoiler]Or situations like Hope spamming Thunder on a Thunder-weak boss ... but with an Aero thrown in there for good measure. Why? 3k, 3k, 3k, 800. Uh, wtfyoudoing?[/spoiler]

Fortisol/Aegisol before Boss triggers probably shouldn't work as it makes some fights ridiculously easier than they probably should be. Nothing has been "oh fucking hell" hard yet but I've had a few Game Overs that I shouldn't have.

As for Upgrades, haven't done much (most my cast is sporting Level 1 Accessories with a Level 3 weapon); items are a bit scarce and I haven't been using my cashmoneyz for more. Upgrade system isn't too bad due to how easy getting to 2-3x Multiplier is and letting the big EXP items do some real work.

No real major complaints outside of tired of the two-party groups and the switching view every hour-ish of game. It's nothing major really (since it's storyplotplotplot moments) but I just want my group and able to pick who I want and just go with it. Not much issue with changing groups wrecking havoc with my Paradigms if only for the fact 90% of the shifts you'll even need to use are covered anyway (COM-RAV, COM-MED, COM/RAV-SYN-SAB, RAV-RAV, etc.). I think I've only needed to Custom a few over the ~10 hours of play and that was just for combinations that aren't useful but I wanted (RAV-MED after I've done some time as COM-RAV to stabilize bar and needed healing and filling bar up, for example, and even that is sometimes covered).

Crystarium Grid is a little huge at this point but nothing major. Hold X, watch lines fill, whee. It's pretty simple, straight forward, and painless to work with.

Edit: Oh yeah, Story. I quite like it so far and it's not really confusing if you, I dunno, pay attention. The Datalog entries help clarify things if you missed something / forgot as well.

[noodles]

[Kimiko]

Hey, Zeta, have you played A Witch's Tale yet? How is it?

[Twat]

Zhe dispenser goes here! Also FFIV DS when on the go. Again. Maybe I should try for the bonus stuff. I should make an effort in finishing at least one of the four Wii games I have downloaded this year.

[Kimiko]

And speaking of games by Gust / NIS, do the Atelier and Marl Kingdom/Puppet Princess series share artists? Because this (screencap of at about 4:33)



immediately reminded me of this



Or is that just coincidence?

[Twat]

I start the game and see this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sME5_tyRbkg&fmt=18[/youtube]
WHOA

[noodles]

RICHTERRRRRRR

I figured I would have seen this at some point