What games are you playing?

[KobaBeach]

I'm not a fan of the last world in it. 1 was consistently good, 2 had higher highs and lower lows. Freaking hidden mines and enemies that can blitz you right off the bat. Ha-ha.

Very true, I've taken a break from it to tone down the games I feel like I should finish, but I was on Pretty Bomber's area and her place is really tough. Her springs aren't the most intuitive thing in the universe. I'm having fun regardless, I'm just glad this Bomberman game isn't very samey. I expected them to be worse about that, but this one's gimmicks are pretty fun.

Golem Bomber's area though...

[raekuul]

bounced around several D&D games before settling on Icewind Dale. Currently in the Vale of Shadows, preparing to break into Kresselack's Tomb (the first major dungeon of the game).

Also I picked XCOM: Enemy Within back up. Currently working on building a glorified stun gun.

[KobaBeach]

bounced around several D&D games before settling on Icewind Dale. Currently in the Vale of Shadows, preparing to break into Kresselack's Tomb (the first major dungeon of the game).

Also I picked XCOM: Enemy Within back up. Currently working on building a glorified stun gun.

Good stuff, I heard Icewind Dale is pretty good, though it's more gameplay focused with less emphasis on story, so your enjoyment of it does depend on your enjoyment of RTwP as a gameplay mechanic.

XCOM I heard is just constantly insane due to accuracy rates and I'm honestly interested, as a Strategy RPG fiend.

Final Fantasy V - Restarted a bit, and I'm heading to Galuf's world. Just doing the Adamantite scavenger hunt for now, but I may fly around to stock up on Blue Magic just in case before setting off. Not going for all Blue Magic here, but it's still a useful skill to have.

Aqua Breath (and Blizzara) certainly made Ifrit a cakewalk.

Been mostly cycling through Jobs to make everyone a sort of battle mage. Bartz's been through Knight, Mystic Knight and Ninja, Lenna from White Mage, Time Mage and now Summoner, Galuf from Monk, to White Mage, to Blue Mage, and Faris from Black Mage, to Red Mage.

[KobaBeach]

Final Fantasy V - Halfway through Galuf's World, heading to third battle against Gilgamesh, then Barrier Tower.

Took some time to level up some Jobs too with the Objets D'Art but I'm not gonna master everything, just enough and change for both a comfy ride and to be able to deal with the super bosses.

For one, I'm around mid-20s while the GameFAQs walkthrough I'm peeking into on occasion to make sure I don't miss handy stuff, by Courante, is at the mid-30s and already rocking powered up Freelancers. I'm also checking a few Steam guides about ABP farming and Blue Magic by order of appearance, but I'm not being too completionist with it.

Lv1 Summons, Shiva, Ramuh and Golem obtained (Ifrit and Titan are mandatory).

Jobs come and go but:
Bartz - Samurai, !Two-Handed
Lenna - Knight, !White
Galuf - Monk, !Blue
Faris - Dragoon, !Red

[Noelle]

So, I restarted my self-imposed challenge in Pokémon Red with newly revised rules suggested by raekuul. And already it feels way better, since you now can catch Pokémon, you can't just overlevel a single Pokémon due to the need to balance and train them all proper, there's a slight bit of strategy added because of the more strict resource management and of course, team building feels great and essential. I try to plan things in the long term for the most part, so I catch not only Pokémon of varied types, but also keep in my mind the most immediate obstacles and challenges ahead (which HMs I'll need and which Pokémon can learn them, what are the closest gym leaders, etc). I ended up catching Nidoran♀(with the sole intent of intent of having a powerhouse by late game, so it's objectively not gonna make a difference yet), Spearow, Rattata, Paras and Oddish, I also bought the Magikarp from that one guy, since it lets me get one way before I'm given a fishing rod, so I can have a Gyarados early, which will help a lot in most battles.

Oddish was turned out to be a real life saver due to being a strong grass type for the early game, made the Misty battle really trivial, it also learns a lot of new moves in quick succession (which is important since I'm way more reliant on non-TM moves in this challenge, as they're fairly limited), after obtaining Dig from that one NPC in Cerulean, I taught it to Rattata, it's gonna help a lot in the next gym, I didn't teach it Paras because I'll teach it Cut and I don't want to put moves like this all in one Pokémon since they have to be versatile, meaning there will be no such thing as an HM slave. I then left Nidoran♀ in the daycare, it's not gonna learn many any moves right now and it will level up faster than it would in normal battles. One important thing to note about this game in particular is that Pokémon kinda have a set list of things they learn when they level up all across their evolutions, the only difference tends to be what level they learn a certain move, with evolved Pokémon learning the same moves as their pre-evolutions but at a higher level, meaning it's more beneficial to let them learn all the moves you want them to have when they're in their initial forms and only evolving them afterwards. Which is my strategy for most of my Pokémon here, the only one I've evolved so far was Rattata into Raticate, as it doesn't really learn any worthwhile moves after Lv14.

I stopped at S.S. Anne, and will continue today, I'll make a post for each play section.

[KobaBeach]

Final Fantasy V Advance - The Merged World. Heading to the Pyramid.

Exdeath and the Crystals were hard to fight, I had to look up strategies for them. Still, I enjoy this sort of challenge from a turn based RPG. It doesn't require aggressive grinding (it does require a bit of grinding but you can't avoid that), but it also isn't a cakewalk. This is a very hard balance to achieve, however, so I'm not shocked a lot of non-Square JRPGs don't go for this.

Exdeath's Castle was so hard though. I used a bit of savestates for time saving purposes. Got Catoblepas and Carbuncle either way.

Galuf's death kinda hit hard, sadly could not shed a tear due to testosterone though, the big issue of having it in your body, imo. Wish I could cry outside of really painful stuff and still be kind of guy-adjacent. :\ Do take note this isn't meant to be gender essentialism, me wanting to be able to show emotions more clearly is proof of that enough.

Krile is great though, I will protecc!

Current Loadout:
Bartz - Dragoon, !Time
Lenna - (MIA)

you know she'll come back

Krile - Summoner, !White
Faris - Dragoon, !White

EDIT:

Romancing SaGa 2 - Fiends' Cloister, the Deep One extermination and Canal Fortress done. It's actually kind of less absurd when you remember to fight some monsters as you go along (being careful not to go overboard ofc), and keep some of the Balms in your Imperial Vault handy for the battles.

James did get permakilled (at least for this loop of recruits I think?), but the Vicar and Gelatinous Matter went down easy, the Deep One is always a cakewalk if you're properly leveled.

Doing Ludon Mines next, maybe the East and South Oubliettes (and opening Dantarg's dungeon for now) for levelling up purposes, and to fuck over Dantarg, and then dealing with the Nuono Armed Merchants through infiltration by Cape Chalier. I'll keep a safety save in case dealing with the South Oubliette and getting Nazelle part of the empire (and getting the ability to recruit Saigo Clansmen) makes me jump a generation.

/END EDIT

words

yooooo good shit

The evolving strat you're using reminds me of promotion strats in Shining Force and Fire Emblem (and their clones), it's usually better to get as far as you can (the max is Lv20) with your starter character before promoting them (you can promote starting from Lv10), as it gives better stat ups along with the boosts you get from the promotion by itself. Promoted characters don't get as much boosts from level ups. It's a fascinating little detail that adds some strategy.

This is taking into account that grinding is much harder in Fire Emblem, due to the main sources being the enemy units in each campaign map, as well as the arena battles where you can die in unless you manage to go for the lowest bets possible each time, the latter being why I feel like savescumming my way out of deaths in arenas takes a bit too much from the challenge.

Meanwhile in Shining Force, grinding is much easier, but due to the more lenient difficulty curve and lack of permadeath it's much less necessary and really there if you're struggling, it's more of a lighthearted game in the vein of Dragon Quest with regards to plot (I believe I heard SF3 goes places though), while FE isn't very deep at all either, but it tries to be a bit more grim in spots.

[Bean]

Got through the EX worlds in Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble last night. Very good game, borderline great. Definitely the best it's been since the Gamecube days (and 2021's Banana Mania remake of those games). Kind of still feel like doing co-op stuff while I'm working on MaGMML3, so it's either back to Mario vs. Donkey Kong's Switch remake or playing Frogun Encore.

[Noelle]

Shining Force and Fire Emblem

I should definitely play more of these games, I have played other Shining games (I don't know if they're spinoffs or just side series), just not the Shining Force games, and I did play some of the older Fire Emblem games, but not a lot, most of my knowledge of Fire Emblem weirdly enough comes from watching videos about the games, like guides, videos about the creation of the games, challenges and whatnot. It's definitely fun, I have no idea why I haven't played more games though, it's very clear I like them.

[KobaBeach]

Romancing SaGa 2 - Year 1206, and my current emperor is Herbert (Light Infantry M).

Did the first Gemstone Mine quest, the East Oubliette quest, then I realized the Cumberland debacle was a thing, so I did that too, and wrapped up with the Armed Merchants' subduing. Amethyst (Court Mage F) got LP killed too sadly, but I hope she'll be back in a few gens.

Ludon, Cumberland and North Longit in the bag.

I should definitely play more of these games, (...) I have no idea why I haven't played more games though, it's very clear I like them.

me with strategy rpgs in general

[KobaBeach]

Romancing SaGa 2 - Nazelle is part of the empire babey

I didn't think ahead enough so I didn't realize Rapid Stream was best for dealing with THAT FUCKING TERMITE THAT I HATE so i had to die a billion times in the hopes I'd get Gama as an heir to the throne so I could get Rapid Stream and cheese her to death with stuns



time to spark shit in the highlands god help me

[KobaBeach]

I didn't think ahead enough so I didn't realize Rapid Stream was best for dealing with THAT FUCKING TERMITE THAT I HATE so i had to die a billion times in the hopes I'd get Gama as an heir to the throne so I could get Rapid Stream and cheese her to death with stuns

SHE'S DEAD

Romancing SaGa 2 - Fisher's in charge now and I'm going to try and open the Comroon Strait, do the first quest in Comroon Island, and elope with the Mermaid, thus becoming Aquaman. Also need to check about the Leon Bridge once I get back to 1mil Crowns.

After this I'll try to roll a female fighter to unlock Melu (and thus the Desert Guard class) and the Amazon class. Saving the Maze of Memory to the end.

[raekuul]

Icewind Dale - Starting the actual raid on Kresselack's Tomb. (It's too bad I already know that this is the wrong tree to go barking up, but I need to fight my way to the bottom in order to make the actual culprit of the weather problems arc to show up)

Also melting pot or scarf friends or whatever they're called now is gearing up for another archipelago and I've decided to run gen 1 pokemon so this is gonna be interesting.

[KobaBeach]

The Legend of Heroes V (Win) - Almost done with the Prologue and I'm gonna be real it doesn't feel the best that leaving your hometown (Racos Palma) for real takes like three hours, and I'm not sure if that's bias from White Witch and the remake of A Tear of Vermilion being done with that lickety split or if it's actual bad pacing.

I appreciate the slight increase in difficulty more now though, but this is the one Gagharv game (not counting PC98 AToV) where repeating battles in intertown maps actually has a benefit because buying equipment matters and also costs a pretty penny, so idk. Considering the battles are kind of RTS-esque it does fuck with the pacing though.

Also this game kept lagging on my 86Box for no reason? Like when there's a lot of animation and actual screen scrolling (which is all the time), it dipped to like 85% framerate. I fixed this by setting the graphical quality in the options: その他 (Settings) -> 描画精度 (Graphical Quality) -> 標準 (Standard) -> change from 自動 (Automatic) to 同期 (Synchronized).

But yeah this game seems to be kind of a land of contrasts. I heard the plot takes a nosedive partway through, but I haven't gotten that far ever. From what I heard as is, it takes a bit too many cues from WW's plot structure, up to and including a

Gueld-type character

. That is something you can lobby as a complaint to this, it's trying too hard to be White Witch 2 (I can't use acronyms on that).

I think AToV Windows would do a better job of doing that while not being as close to WW's format as a base. But the plot so far does do a good job of selling that feeling of a grand adventure, especially with such a goofy player party as these goobers. McBain is my fave, being the grandpakisser of the forum, but I'd be lying if I said Forte, Una, even Jan (a dog) aren't great either, ESPECIALLY Una, alongside the characters I've seen up to now.

EDIT 4 hours later:

The Legend of Heroes V (Win) - Prologue complete! Past the S.S. Stomach and the first visit to Trim in Chapter 1, gonna go down the Monsoon Road to gain some money for equipment.

Need to buy The Puppet Knight vol. 3 (already have vol. 1&2 of it and Fraud the Swindler).

[Noelle]

Another play session of Pokémon Red and it's boss time Mr. Guy, more specifically the third gym, GuileLt. Surge. It's an electric gym and I don't have any Pokémon that is immune to it, but my Raticate knows Dig and somehow that makes it extremely strong against the electric types here. I wasn't expecting to have a hard time, but it still surprised me that it was so easy. Anyway, with that done I can know use Fly, not that I have it yet, nor do I remember where I get it, but I can use and that's what matters. So since I only got one place to go, I head back towards Cerulean, leave my Fearow in the daycare and take my Nidoran♀ back, one level up and one Moon Stone later and now I have a Nidoqueen. I have a few TMs on my PC, I teach a few of them to my Pokémon, with full consideration of what they might learn later and how versatile these can be, so that I don't end up with a bunch of Pokémon with extremely similar movesets.

Clearing the route to the right of Cerulean now that I have Cut, I can finally progress, there's only one problem, Rock Tunnel is pitch black, you can't even see your character, so obviously I'm not gonna even attempt to go through it without Flash. I head back to Cerulean, Vermilion and finally Diglett's Cave, which leads me back into the outskirts of Pewter and Viridian, where an NPC gives me Flash. Which none of my Pokémon can learn, so I caught a Drowzee, and now it's all good to go.

Rock Tunnel was surprisingly arduous, definitely harder than Mt. Moon was, I mean, it makes sense since it's further in the game, but I didn't remember it being hard or even outstanding. There are a lot of trainers, with a certain variety of Pokémon, it's quite the challenge, nothing insane obviously, but it's not nothing. I reach Lavender Town, heal at the Pokémon Center and immediately go explore the bridge on the next route, there are a few items to get (which is extra important in this playthrough), but it doesn't take long before I get blocked by a Snorlax which I can't wake up yet, so I head back and go to the next route towards Celadon. There I get an Eevee which I will not be able to evolve due to the self-imposed rules preventing me from buying at shops, I thought at least one elemental stone could be found on the overworld somewhere, but I was wrong, you can only get Moon Stones. But it's fine though.

Exploring the rest of the city for more items, I end up on a path that can only be accessed by cutting a tree, which leads me to a house where a random girl gives me the TM for Fly, which I did not remember at all. That feels weirdly tucked away, I guess it's fine because it's not mandatory like Surf and Cut, but it's still strange that it's just hidden like that. lol

So the rules say I can't buy things in shops, but I can spend money in other occasions and buy a few drinks from the vending machine at the top of the department store, especially since at least one is necessary for progress and the other ones will just be used to trade with a NPC. A little girl there wants one of each drink, for each drink you give her, she gives you a TM, which is nice. Now that I'm done with that, I can get a fresh water to one of the guards that used to block the path to Saffron, meaning now I'm free to travel a lot more of the map. By this point, I kinda got tired and decided to stop, once I resume I'll post here once again.

[KobaBeach]

Another play session of Pokémon Red and it's boss time Mr. Guy, more specifically the third gym, GuileLt. Surge. It's an electric gym and I don't have any Pokémon that is immune to it, but my Raticate knows Dig and somehow that makes it extremely strong against the electric types here. I wasn't expecting to have a hard time, but it still surprised me that it was so easy.

Yeah, you're very much expected to just get a Diglett from the nearby cave and maim Surge's entire gym with it.

Good stuff with getting Drowzee, people meme about Hypno due to creepypasta shit but psychic Pokés are broken as fuck in Gen 1 (and maybe Gen 2?).

[raekuul]

They're much less broken in gen 2 between Special getting split into Defense and Attack (so now you can actually beat them to death with something that's not another psychic type or a snorlax/chansey), Ghost pokemon getting real attack moves, Bug moves getting better pokemon to use them (I love my Beedrills, don't get me wrong, but you cannot fight a psychic with a poison), Dark being immune to Psychic (which really doesn't matter all that much outside of boss fights; I don't think any regular trainers actually have a dark type on their team, plus the earliest dark type the player can get is Umbreon), and Steel being resistant to it (this is the actual balancing change, since steel types are weirdly plentiful despite there not being very many of them)

Icewind Dale - Entered Dragon's Eye, which officially starts Chapter Two. ...oy I forgot just how much toast this chapter butter was scraped across.

[Bean]

Second co-op Switch game taken down this month in Mario vs. Donkey Kong's remake. Have to say that it was a good time. Not sure which half I liked more since guiding that little Mini toy around in the second so it can get to the goal safely was a bit annoying in some levels but mostly fun in others. Either way, it was a fun enough game. Glad to finally speed through this after taking a near five-month break from it.

[raekuul]

Icewind Dale - so my party selection is kind of biting me in the ass right now (four fighters, a ranger, and a bard) since I can't actually disarm the traps and I can't cast healing spells (for some reason rangers can't cast priest spells from scrolls? remind me to make good on a mod idea that removes most class restrictions from scrolls and just leaves an intelligence requirement. not that that would help my ranger since she's only a nine in brains). On the plus side once I reach level nine across the board I get to really play the powergamer (the ranger and two of the fighters are intended to dual-class into some other class) (level nine seems arbitrary but it's the earliest that a fighter can have true grandmastery AND level nine the last time you roll for HP increases so you technically get the maximum possible HP that way)

Scarf Friends Archipelago - Pokemon BrLeUdE - my options for starters were Squirtle, Ekans, and Drowzee. This being gen 1, there's a blatantly correct option here. Currently scouring Mt. Moon.

[KobaBeach]

The Legend of Heroes V - Chapter 1 done, and I'm at Chapter 2 (natch!).

The zombie (clay monster really) fight was weirdly hard but, far from unmanageable, just had to keep casting Recovery from the Purification resonance stone to de-petrify people. Una, who had that stone equipped at the time, got petrified by the end but the zombies were nearly dead so. *deus ex voice* S'cool.

The Swingsters battle (Swing Gang is the official term on PSP but) being a cakewalk after you munch on the mint candy to avoid falling asleep is peak, honestly. The scene after it is so fucking cute though, but the music did a lot of the heavy lifting. Okay, so did the writing.

The gangleader was a shithead but, man, seeing him be brought to tears after the goon he was an ass towards took pity on him and managed to organize a way for Lady Luptia to help them make up for their crimes, which was working on the quarry and still be able to play music for their fellow workers. This is why I love Asian-style RPGs.

Anyway we're heading to Dogarna now, Altos accompanying us until Envorin to make a delivery to a fellow bakery. I may have misread the kanji, but someone's older brother may be involved, may be Altos' uncle or something. Either way, fun game. I'm still looking forward to see where the second half of the game falters writing wise. If Kondo was involved with that part, then it's a good thing he really stepped up his game with the Sky trilogy.

Do take note, the other writers of this, Hayakawa exempted (since he left gamedev), worked on the remake of A Tear of Vermilion released the year after, Kondo may have been busy with other business at the time, and let the record show they also did fucking phenomenal work on that one. I need to look up if they did anything else.

Haven't missed a book yet. Almost lost one, the fourth volume of Fraud the Swindler you get from the maid outside Luptia's manor in Bozerl, but I just loaded an old save and made my way back.

not that that would help my ranger since she's only a nine in brains

if this was early 2010s talkhaus people would be making the most fucking rancid cirno jokes right about now. your party set up sounds so fucking based though, especially where you go power gamer

[raekuul]

i mean having a nine in intelligence does mean she's fairly average in intelligence but she's got seventeen in wisdom (which is the minimum needed to dual into cleric) so it's not like she's full on cirno levels of baka

[KobaBeach]

i mean having a nine in intelligence does mean she's fairly average in intelligence but she's got seventeen in wisdom (which is the minimum needed to dual into cleric) so it's not like she's full on cirno levels of baka

yeah i just think the average tvtropes reader would see "nine in intelligence" and start screaming CIRNO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NINE BALL!!!!!!!!!!!!! BAKA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in the most primal, ape-like manner possible, making even the earth's core tremble in terror

get that cleric dual-class babey

[raekuul]

Icewind Dale - well now I know for next time that fighter level 9 is in the Severed Hand, not Dragon's Eye. On the plus side that means I get to beat Yxunomei and her minions to death (but definitely bringing a dedicated thief next time; the traps on Dragon's Eye B5F remain active once triggered so you can't just facetank your way to the boss room). The Tower of the Seldarine (also known as the Severed Hand) is a cakewalk in comparison just because of the change in traps.

Anyway, starting Dorn's Deep next time. Now the real game begins dot gif

[Bean]

Waited a month to finally get back to playing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. This time, it was WayForward's classic mode. Uh, it wasn't worth it. Basically was a poor man's NES Castlevania 1, and I got bored by the time I reached stage five. The looooong loading times between levels certainly didn't help. And with that, the PS4 goes back into storage for the time being. Have really not been high on wanting to play Sony stuff this year. It happens.

[KobaBeach]

Depression is striking again so im sleeping at dumb hours all day, but I will not let the sad demons in my head win. Only the apeshit ones

Romancing SaGa 2 - Doing some grinding on this one some days ago. Grinding willy-nilly should be avoided in SaGa due to the level scaling, but if you know what you're doing you some grinding is fine, so before opening the Comroon Strait with Fisher, I'm taking the time to level up some magic and get some R&D done on equipment (armor and weapons).

This does involve fighting a few battles to let the imperial treasury gain some money in its coffins, so it'll take a bit. Leon Bridge requires 1mil Crowns to be made, the level 1 equipment upgrades requires 400,000 Crowns, Level 2 800,000 and Level 3 roughly 1,200,000 I believe.

I am not grinding out the Orchard to max. It gives off nice money earnings but like. The amount of battles you have to fight are ridiculous and it gets to a point where its entirely superfluous, compared to just normal lategame grinding when you have most of the regions on your side.

Chocobo Racing - I felt like playing this and for some reason Square thought a kart racer with an actual learning curve was a good idea?

I appreciate the weird tactic aspect of the mechanics, you can stockpile certain Magic Stones to power up your Spell to be broken as fuck or you can have up to three different Magic Stones to cast when you see fit, on top of each character having their own innate ability that you can pick from the selection menu.

I'm mostly specializing in the Dash ability, but I do see the benefits of Flap for naturally fast characters who can just rely on Haste, or Grip-Up for characters whose grip is shit, I assume that's Behemoth since its very clearly the Bowser of the cast. But all of this is so complicated, and the tracks I've seen so far so heavy on extremely tight turns (straight up 90º shit) that I cannot recommend this to normies who boot up Mario Kart on occasion for a quick laugh.

This is for turbo nerds like everyone on here, and you could make that assertion to Sonic R too, but Sonic R's thing is that it's a bizarre mix of an adventure platformer with a racing game, and the learning curve on that is figuring out how the game wants to be played. This is Mario Kart but Harder. Honestly I like all three (MK, SR, CR), just. Y'know.

Just beat the Mythril Mines in Story Mode regardless, so I assume everyone's favorite gobbo Goblin is gonna join our party.

EDIT: Okay I stopped Chocobo Racing at the Fat Chocobo track, this AI and the ability of any spell becoming the equivalent of a blue shell for everyone in the track is terrible. It's not a bad game, but I cannot enjoy this

[raekuul]

Scarf Friends Archipelago - right, next time I put a dex requirement on the elite four I'm also turning on dexsanity so that I don't have to spend the last half hour of my game just catching pokemon. at least i was able to just outright buy master balls so it wasn't actually more difficult than "does this have a ball on it? no? then catch it dumass!" and the rival had level 37 pokemon so apparently I was supposed to be up there ages ago.