What are you playing today?

DarkRPGMaster

JuMeSyn wrote: »

Yeah, I'm definitely finding that the money yield in particular was increased. I did a little extra fighting for spell leveling, but nothing major, and I haven't had a problem affording new gear. Gold Isle did take everything I had on me, but it was enough.
Now here's a difference in the Mana Fortress itself. Instead of really big floors, they're broken up into multiple smaller rooms. Maybe that was to give more auto-saving moments so that progress isn't lost. I can appreciate that I guess, but breaking up the action with more little loading screens and tiny areas just doesn't feel as impressive.

Something to note, make sure Dryad's spell level is maxed out. You'll thank me later.

Michael Baker

A different oddity I found is that, unlike most buffs that disappear within ten seconds, the razzafrackin' reflect spell seems darn near permanent. I used it on my guys to defend against the Lamian Naga's magic attacks (pointlessly as it turned out), and the effect lasted through the boss battle that came immediately after that one. This put a major crimp in things, because I accidentally reflected three healing spells onto Mech Rider 3 before I realized that the effect was still active. Randi held onto the effect through to the Mana Holy Land, where he was finally KO'ed. The spell lasted two bosses, two zones, and a rest at the inn.

To add insult to injury, the Mech Rider uses this spell, and when I cast Dispel on him to remove it, I got a message about how it wouldn't be removed.

LordGolbez

I can't remember. Does reflect and cast magic on yourself work in SOM or can the Sprite not even cast attack spells on party members?

Mike Moehnke

I'm very ready for Lufia: The Legend Returns to be over. Too many identical dungeons with identical progression and irritating mechanics. Oh, and now it actually ignores the one part of the very first Lufia that I actually remember. Great.

Michael Baker

I started up Tales of Innocence because hey, why not.

Mike Moehnke

Defenders of Oasis is interesting in certain respects, and I have to give it credit for that. When a character goes to sleep after talking thrice to a sheep (thus counting it), that's kind of amusing. On the other hand its combat order is so incredibly wonky that I have no idea what the developers were thinking. Instead of everything moving once per round, each action appears to be calculated individually without an overall round or turn structure. That means the same character or enemy can attack twice and sometimes other participants don't get to do anything for a long time. When enemies have instant death attacks, it's kind of a bummer.

Michael Baker

Tales of Innocence is continuing quite well in mostly automatic play mode. I'm mainly interested in how the story turns out at this point, because I am sick and tired of the combat system. I can usually rate Tales games by how long it takes for me to hit the full-auto limit, and this one held out longer than Tempest, but it's not as fun to mess with as Hearts or Sgt. Frog were.

7thCircle

I took off work Monday through Wednesday this week to max out my time in Final Fantasy XIV during a free login campaign. That gave me 2 days to cap weekly stuff before the reset, then 2 days after. Even completed 2 Wondrous Tales, which I usually don't do that fast.

I get hyped every time I log back in after a break. I enjoy tearing through new content, playing it while it's still relevant, and maxing gear upgrades in the process. For fun, I finished getting two more crafting jobs to 70, and I spent longer crawling Red Mage and Black Mage to 70 than I expected to. I still love the Stormblood dungeons, and those two jobs play so differently from each other, replaying content with them was a blast. The Black Mage job questline in Stormblood is amazing. Some of the best writing in the game is in the job quests, and Black Mage is my favorite Stormblood one because a certain NPC in it is hilarious. That said, I find Black Mage to be the most frustrating job to use at times. Even when I get all my casters to 70, I expect to stick with good old Summoner when I'm not healing. Healing is still the best.

DarkRPGMaster

Obtained and been playing Yakuza Kiwami recently. Dear god this game is dramatic in story, goofy in everything else. Absolutely love Majima and his wackiness, doing everything to fight Kazuma. He goes so far as to do a "dating sim" thing and dress in drag for it, and even challenging Kazuma at bowling! Mostly just doing all the side stuff I can before continuing. If this is how every Yakuza game is, I've been missing out on greatness.

Alex Fuller

Figuring out something to review next so picked up Tales of Aravorn: Cursed Lands. Got in about four hours last night and certainly enjoyed it. Combat is interesting enough, but writing so far has been strong (which is good as its kind of a VN primarily).

The arena battles are somewhat boring though so may just trade off switching the difficulty down instead of feeling obliged to deal with them.

Also been slowly working through Yakuza 6. I understand that by getting distracted by all the various substories and other things I am playing it correctly.

7thCircle

One of the first PC games I played was MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries. It became one of those not-RPGs that my mind categorized as an RPG, and a memorable experience that I've been wishing for a long time would return in a modern game. I was skeptical about BattleTech just because I thought the system might be too slow in a tactical video game, but ended up getting it day one because I've been wanting to play a new MechWarrior-ish game for so long.

I'm so glad I played three MechWarrior games in the past and still had a working knowledge of the rules, because this thing teaches you nothing, and combat is not easy. I've gotten hooked on it for all the same reasons I loved MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries. It also has many of the same frustrations. It's an unforgiving battle system, and the game is happy to spawn enemies with long range weapons where they can bombard you while staying out of your visibility. Or your starting position will be on the wrong end of a pincer attack, forcing you to fight two lances at the same time from different directions. There's no way to heal, and you're outmatched in every fight, so there's hardly an easy victory unless you intentionally take a low difficulty mission.

The main quest I'm at has a difficulty of 3/5, so maybe I'm 3/5 of the way through the game? I have 7 mechs that are 60T or higher now, and have started scrapping the medium tonnage ones that carried me through the game so far. Makes me sad to see them go.

Mike Moehnke

It's been long enough that I'm ready to try another SMT title. Here we go, Strange Journey Redux!
Odds that it will be completed in anything like a timely fashion are slim because I know this thing is a beast in terms of size.

Phillip Willis

Mike Moehnke wrote: »

It's been long enough that I'm ready to try another SMT title. Here we go, Strange Journey Redux!
Odds that it will be completed in anything like a timely fashion are slim because I know this thing is a beast in terms of size.

Now you too can feel the BURN that is STRANGE JOURNEY. Feel it completely RUDUX'd!

Michael Baker

Oooh, Sector Eridanus is going to be ... well, fun if you like dungeons that are secretly five dungeons' worth of map with half a dungeon's worth of plot, all at the end.

TheDoomhammer

Still playing Pillars of Eternity II, testing out alternative paths and quest outcomes for curiosity. Also carrying forth this gimmick from one of my POE1 playthroughs.



Those watercolour portraits took me way longer to do than they should have, considering how terrible they are.

DarkRPGMaster

Been playing Warriors All-Stars, and while the game isn't bad, something feels missing from this game. I don't know what it is, but I'm not enjoying myself as much as I normally do with Warrior games.

Cassandra Ramos

I really, really, really need to move onto another game, but I've been sucked into Pokemon Ultra Moon for the longest time. I completed the Alola Pokedex (sans Zeraora) and I started training a Tapu Fini to help out in the Battle Tree.

I also have an idea to put together a living Pokedex in the Pokemon Bank...

Clix

StrawberryEggs wrote: »

I really, really, really need to move onto another game, but I've been sucked into Pokemon Ultra Moon for the longest time. I completed the Alola Pokedex (sans Zeraora) and I started training a Tapu Fini to help out in the Battle Tree.

I also have an idea to put together a living Pokedex in the Pokemon Bank...

I developed my living Dex back in Gen VI, since the EXP drops and regional spread we're so generous. I am just missing a spare Poipole.

DarkRPGMaster

Got my first ending in Warriors: All-Stars, and I realized why I'm not enjoying myself as much...the story is faction based. I came from a long line of Warriors games where they were focused on characters instead of a faction, so it doesn't feel as gripping, and I don't feel as invested in who I choose because I can switch on the fly with no problems (instead of committing myself to the character as I used to have to).

7thCircle

Been bouncing between games this weekend because the new ones I started haven't grabbed my attention.

Life Is Strange has been in my digital backlog for a couple of years. I finished the 2nd episode tonight. Stories where 4 years' worth of high school drama happens in a week and meathead adults don't believe teenagers when they report crimes are mildly grating to me. It's not something that resonates with me, and a story with this as the foundation won't hook me. The rewind gimmick is a good idea, though it hasn't been implemented in very creative ways. You spilled soda on a book, now you can rewind time and not be a klutz. The game's also slow and I get bored. I played 2 episodes in 4 sittings whereas I usually play all 5 episodes of Telltale games in a day or two.

I got Assassin's Creed: Syndicate as a gift a couple of months after finishing Rogue and deciding I was about done with the series. And now a third of the way through Syndicate... I still feel like I'm done with the series. Nothing's wrong with the game; it's just the 8th one in the series I've played and I'm tired of it.

And I've been playing too much Overwatch, getting annoyed at my plummeting SR and that almost no match is balanced. My stats are the best they've ever been, and I had a few matches today where at some point I had gold damage as a healer, but I keep losing from lousy teammates, mainly DPS players who are awful. That was my issue today anyway.

Cassandra Ramos

I've actually been playing a lot of games lately, though not really finishing any (yet?).

More progress has been made in Tokyo Mirage Session. Still in the penultimate chapter, but I think I'll be finishing that game soon.

I'm up to chapter 2 in both timelines in Radiant Historia. I do like the addition of follow up attacks by characters who are not in the active party. The voice acting is quite good as well.

I started up the Octopath Traveler prologue demo as H'aanit. Three hours will not feel like enough in that game. Very much excited for the full version.

And for Pokemon Ultra Moon, I got it in my head to breed up two very good Treeco and name them after Fire Emblem Awakening characters (Lucina and Morgan, as they are siblings. I hardly understand why. I should get back to training that Tapu Fini.

Michael Baker

I am MAYBE three bosses away from the end of Tales of Innocence.... but unfortunately, that third-to-last boss is even nastier than the fourth-to-last boss before him, not to mention I'm on my last two Life Bottles and there's no good way to get more at this point.

So the boss, thankfully not accompanied by mooks, has flight capabilities, long-range weaponry, cyclonic force attacks, and some weird flashy-thing that doesn't actually seem to do much until you realize it just halved your HP. It also has 120,000 hit points.

I'm just about ready to give up on this game, again.

Michael Baker

At the moment, playing Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption. I'm on Day 32, and I know I've missed stuff and haven't properly optimized for the road ahead. Gonna need a second playthrough to get things right, I think.

Also playing Magical Vacation on my various commutes. Currently I just beat the Enigma dwelling in Lemitsu Palace, so now it's time to track down those dwarves who carted Cafe-au-Lait away.

TheLegendaryZoltan

I just recently acquired my first-ever N64 and have begun playing Paper Mario. In Japan it's just called Mario Story. What a boring title. Hahaha.

7thCircle

I finally got around to starting World of Final Fantasy yesterday. I was expecting a bunch of great ideas wasted on a budget, TOSE-developed game that would frequently use an old-school aesthetic as an excuse to be subpar. So far I'm pleasantly surprised. The game not only has more ingenuity than I was expecting, but it moves quickly and doesn't have the sluggish pace JRPGs love so dearly. I especially like how the diminished impact of experience points on overlevelled mirages encourages you to swap around party members. In the dungeon I just beat, I needed more fire resistance, so I strolled in using a level 1 mirage, and it caught up so quickly that everything worked out okay. It's a nice difference from other monster-catching games.

I'm in chapter 7 or 8 or 9, heading to Nibelheim. They go by fast.

7thCircle

Took off work Monday through Wednesday for the FF14 free login period. Like last time, that let me cap two week's worth of tomes and whatnot. The story in 4.3 was excellent with a surprise trial I enjoyed. Square has found a good place for the difficulty of story trials lately.

Other than that, I leveled my 3rd desynth from ARR endgame junk to HW endgame junk, took my last crafting job from 30 to 53, finally got Red Mage and Black Mage to 70 (good riddance Black Mage, I might use Red Mage in the future as a change of pace from Summoner), and ran Heaven-on-High but not enough for a weapon. I got lucky with drops in the new raid and only needed to run it three times for two significant gear upgrades. I suppose my biggest accomplishment was ending with more gil than I had at the start, even with all I spent on desynthing and leves, some collectibles I'll never use, and a crafting gear upgrade I shouldn't have bought.

I still find the SB dungeons to be a blast. There's so much content in the game now, and so many roulettes, that doing them each day is a fresh experience, particularly if I change jobs and roles between them. I've grown to prefer Summoner over Astrologian. Summoning Bahamut and having him barf damage on things is unceasingly satisfying.

I've now capped everything I want to cap in the game other than my last desynth and crafter. The only ARR content left is the beast tribes I've been slowly, slowly picking at because I don't care about them. I don't know what I'd do for a month if I resubbed now, and even in 4.5x (when I plan to resub) I don't know what I'd spend my spare time on. I'll probably end up doing something boring, like Eureka or leveling Miner.

DarkRPGMaster

Well the 2nd stage of Eureka starts on the 7th, as does the Monster Hunter collaboration (permanent content), so there's always that. Though you could also save that for 4.4, so you're good either way.

7thCircle

I spent around 4 hours in Eureka during the last free login period and it was not for me. I'd have to be extremely bored whenever I resub to go there again. After doing a pre-nerf relic in HW I decided never again, and at least for that I was running dungeons, which I enjoy. Sitting in a FATE train in Eureka for 2 hours, with most of that time spent doing nothing, I did not enjoy.

Michael Baker

Nozomi and Reina were off to Grandma's house this weekend, so I plugged in the PS3 on Sunday and spent about 12 hours playing Tomb Raider. I started from just after the prologue ended all the way to just after the rescue helicopter completely failed to rescue anybody. A look at the FAQs suggests I'm in the final act of the game, but it'll have to come later. Much, much later, most likely; I don't get the PS3 out much these days.

For portables, I managed to grind Magical Vacation in short bursts and get my party up enough to beat the mid-boss I was stuck on. We shall see how much further I can get on this one.

7thCircle

I spent a while trying Behemoth in Monster Hunter: World tonight. Never killed it, and only got close once. I know the fight is going for a Final Fantasy XIV feel, but it succeeded in ways I'm not sure they expected. The ilvl (HR) is too low, so undergeared people go in and cause wipes immediately. There are a few easy mechanics and all it takes is one party member not knowing them and we'll wipe. There's one harder mechanic that requires coordination you're unlikely to get with randoms. One person alone can't wipe the party because of it, but it makes the fight more frustrating and difficult when it's not handled correctly.

Combine that with the chaos of an endgame MH battle and you get the hardest fight in the game, at least that I've seen. At least I've gotten great at it. Just need luck to give me 3 more that are, and no awful luck like Behemoth dashing to the side of the arena with no comets just before casting ecliptic meteor, or repeatedly shoulder tackling the same person to death.