What games are you playing?

[Zha Hong Lang]

ugh my game controller tires me, I can't do the prison of insanity anymore

going back to whatever else I was doing

[Chaoxys]

Currently on my 6th or 7th run of Okami. I seriously find new things every time I play through it, like new locations or secret bosses.

[Bean]

Found my role for Sazh in the party. He's the secondary magic user, whether it's healing, for defense, or offense. Went with the weapon that gives him a boost to that stagger gauge when he attacks and upgraded it to its level three form for more power and one more attack per round. He's doing a great job, and I'm taking turtles down with power in 4-7 minutes depending on which kind I'm fighting. Plus, I can throw in a summon every now and then to speed up the process. It's going well! Worst grinding of the game, but I'm glad the game doesn't have a lot of it.

[YelseyKing]

What's your trick for taking down the Adamantoise-types? They usually kill me so fast, even with maxed Crystariums, that taking them down without summons + Death seemed all but impossible. (Ironically enough, I've heard that while immune to Death, Long Gui and Shaolong Gui are *easier* to take down, since Poison works on them, and the way it works means it just eats their HP at a lightning rate.)

[Bean]

What's your trick for taking down the Adamantoise-types? They usually kill me so fast, even with maxed Crystariums, that taking them down without summons + Death seemed all but impossible. (Ironically enough, I've heard that while immune to Death, Long Gui and Shaolong Gui are *easier* to take down, since Poison works on them, and the way it works means it just eats their HP at a lightning rate.)

I'll put the strategy in spoilers to keep from clogging up the thread. Here's the guide I'm using first.

Setting Things Up
First things first, you have to have a decent defense going in so I made three Gaian Rings to resist earth damage by 40% for when the turtles use Quake. Hopefully you didn't sell any equipment off since that's kind of a no-no in this game and have two Clay Rings and one Siltstone Ring. These will be turned into Gaian Rings by upgrading them. You can buy the items in one of the shops near the bottom of the screen if memory serves me correctly. Put the items into the rings in the order I have them listed.

Clay Ring to Gaian Ring - 2 Superconductors, 1 Cobaltite, 5 Superconductors, 1 Uraninite, and finally 8 more Superconductors to max it out.
Siltstone Ring to Gaian Ring - 9 Superconductors, 1 Uraninite, and again 8 Superconductors to max its level.

My team is currently Fang/Hope/Sazh. Fang has the Taming Pole upgraded all the way to its final level, the Kain's Lance. The upgrade info is in the guide. I also did the same thing with Sazh for the Antares Deluxes to Total Eclipses (which might not have been the best choice stat-wise, but I like the Chain Boost ability to raise the gauge faster). Hope has a Hawkeye upgraded to an Eagletalon. I'll be upping it shortly to its third level. This was a no-brainer since he's always a magic user. The only way to get these items to level three though is to get a very rare drop from one of the bigger turtles, so you're probably stuck at L2 weapons right now if you've done any upgrading at all. If you haven't, there's your issue most likely!

You could also use whatever one gives you a huge magic boost. The Spica Defenders or Denub Duellers will also work, but I was worried about that not having a boost (Defenders) or losing 40% of Sazh's max HP (Duellers). Keep in mind his stats are going to be in the mid-1000s with the weapon I'm using instead of close to 2100 with either of the above, so it's your call. Then again, you could also have Lightning in there for magic, too, but I like Sazh's 20k+ HP more since it gives you more margin for error.

Equipment wise, it's Gaian Rings for all three. Since I beat Mission 51 (all of Titan's Trials), Fang has the Genji Glove to break the 99,999 damage cap. Also gave her the Growth Egg for double experience that I won't need much longer and the rare item drop Connoisseur's Catalog to try and get that dang Trapezohedron. That's the thing you need to upgrade weapons to level three, but you don't want to do that until maxing them out at level 1 and then 2 anyway.

Sazh has two magic-boosting marks and an Auto-Faith giving talisman. This is kind of unnecessary since I don't really attack right off the bat. Hope is basically carrying the other two catalog types and I can't remember item #4. It might be a magic boosting item which makes sense. No reason to have Auto-Haste on since it only lasts a minute and the magic users will put these spells on first thing.

Fight & Formations
These roles are for Fang/Hope/Sazh in that exact order.

1) Saboteur/Synergist/Synergist
-Start with this to get some healthy boosts on while trying to land Deprotect, Deshell, then Imperil on the legs. Doesn't matter if it hits. You're just stalling until you have at least Haste, Protect, and Shell put on by the Synergists.

2) Commando/Medic/Medic
-After two stomps, it's time to heal up. Throw Ruin at the leg you're working on while you wait to slow the Stagger gauge down. Do not Attack. Those stomps hurt up close. Switch back to #1 once everyone's back in the green unless you're ready for the next step.

3) All Ravagers
-Go to town on the leg. It should get staggered even with Fang being unable to Stagger them herself thanks to my weapon of choice. Did Deprotect land earlier? If so, switch to #2 at 400% on the gauge. If not, wait until 500% and immediately switch back to #2. This is when you use Fang's Highwind skill under Abilities as a Commando. With the Genji Glove on, she can take it out in one shot at that point with her Highwind ability.

It's back to steps #1 and #2 to buff your characters up or heal. If at any point you see the word Quake on screen, stop what you're doing immediately and go to #2 to heal up. With Shell on, this still does 7-8k damage on everyone. In the latter portions of the battle, these turtles use Roar. This does 10-15k If you're close to winning, heal up fully. It also causes Daze if you're unlucky, so have an item in case you need Hope to heal you. Just warning you now about that. It cost me once.

Anyway, take out the other leg. Then it's time to finally cause some damage... almost.

4) Saboteur/Saboteur/Synergist

-Now you have two people trying to land status effects. What's annoying about this is Hope is always going for Slow until it hits, but the three you absolutely need are Deprotect, Deshell, and Imperil. All three are required to deal major damage. If it takes forever for them to land, resign yourself to the fact that you won't have the time to finish the job in one go.

Once you have landed all three, it's time to switch to #3 again and magic that big boy up until he's Staggered. Once he is, immediately switch to...

5) Commando/Ravager/Ravager

-Whether it's the Adamantortoise or Adamantoise, it's time to let Fang slice and dice. One thing to note about Fang's weapon is that her last hit has some stupid combo that takes a couple of seconds to finish. Queue up your attacks and either hit Triangle to stop the gauge after the second to last bar or hit circle while attacking and stop the string while on that same second to last hit to get in exactly one more round of damage. As soon as you see it recovering from its fall, you might as well stop what you're doing and throw a final gauge-resetting Highwind to end your attacking spree. Once the turtle stands back up, and it will if you don't have at least two L3 weapons, it's time to repeat the process from the beginning. UGH!

Once you do get some power behind your attacks or magic, you can finish these fights in about 3-6 minutes depending on your luck with status effects! Sure beats the 7-10 minutes I was spending on one a few hours earlier!

Summon Strategy
If your TP is at 3, you can and should use a Summon on the two Adamantoises walking around. Still, let Hope and Sazh get some status buffs on you first. You can actually target the Adamantoise itself with Curse in the meantime to try and inflict a little more damage later on down the road. Once a few status buffs are on, either heal up or switch to the Sab/Sab/Syn combo before immediately going to summon Bahumut. Skip the animation with Select, hit Square to immediately go into Gestalt Mode, Select again to skip, then Triangle right away to have an Adamantoise down for the count. It's just a shortcut, and if your magic doesn't land, it won't matter much anyway.

If it's still too tough for you, then yeah, Vanille's one spell is the only way you're winning this. I am so glad to be past that point. Ha-ha.

And there you have it. There's a lot to it, but it gets easier with practice.

[TheFinalSentinel]

And that's Bayo 2 down.

What a fantastic game, and what a step up from Bayo 1.
I really love the way it ties the two stories together though. That was a really nice touch.

No clue what's next, but it's quite possibly Megaman Zero, or Castlevania: Circle of the Moon.

E: THERE'S A POSTGAME
I'm going to do that, and if I find someone to play it with, do the co-op missions, and THEN move on to maybe a GBA something.

E2: The post game is just arena battles. 5 chapters, 6-8 verses each apparently.
I did one, I'll do the rest some other time. For now... something else.

[Kshaard]

So now that I've been a "gamer" for about a year I may as well do a fairly existent list on this thread for absolutely no reason.

Trying to get all the coins in Mario 64 as a last ditch effort to eke the absolute most enjoyment possible out of this game. Starting to doubt that Hazy Maze Cave is actually possible though (that one eye in the red coin room…).
Around halfway through the Forest Temple in Ocarina. Don't know why I haven't bothered to just finish that dungeon; it's probably something to do with
A Link between Worlds. Absolutely terrific as everyone in the universe knows. In a slight quandary about the power glove 2.0 as it seems I need to have it in order to get it. I must be missing something cringingly obvious. (pls no spiolres)
Final Fantasy 3 DS exists. 8 hours in and I stilll don't get the appeal of turn-based combat and random encounters over real-time doing stuff. My recent discovery that you can move in diagonals has changed my life, although it feels like you have to press really hard on the d-pad in order to actually achieve such advanced states of being.
I've been enjoying Lylat Wars a lot in spite of the quarter-second input lag and my utter inability to aim at anything. Just haven't had a long enough continuous length of time to make any real progress.
Although I've made some headway into Banjo-Kazooie it's sort of taken its place at the back of the queue at this point.

[Bean]

A Link between Worlds. Absolutely terrific as everyone in the universe knows. In a slight quandary about the power glove 2.0 as it seems I need to have it in order to get it. I must be missing something cringingly obvious. (pls no spiolres)

Final Fantasy 3 DS exists. 8 hours in and I stilll don't get the appeal of turn-based combat and random encounters over real-time doing stuff. My recent discovery that you can move in diagonals has changed my life, although it feels like you have to press really hard on the d-pad in order to actually achieve such advanced states of being.

ALBW is my favorite game of all-time. I won't spoil it for you. Enjoy. Some of those dungeons are great. As for turn-based combat, I think it gets better when they add the active time battle system to the mix once Final Fantasy IV came around. I-III are a little too old school for me.

Speaking of Final Fantasy, I'm still plowing away at the grind that XIII is in its post-game. I'm closing in on the 100% to make up for the one I never got for XII. Upgrading equipment to try and have a full inventory since that's one of the goals. Don't know why I'm so platinum crazy lately. Guess I've just got the gaming bug lately.

[metasomnia?]

Fortune Summoners is a thing. It's not often I try a 2D action RPG type game and then immediately get my butt handed to me by slimes right off the bat :/

Eternal masochist that I am, I've decided I apparently wanna try to do a Bug monotype run of Pokémon Emerald (plus a Feebas for water HM purposes of course) without buying any healing items.

RIP. Good luck with that.

[Jesuiscontent]

Fortune Summoners is a thing. It's not often I try a 2D action RPG type game and then immediately get my butt handed to me by slimes right off the bat :/

Haha yup. The game is very good at tricking you with cutesy graphics and music to make you lower your guard before murdering you.

[HatKid]

Fortune Summoners is a thing. It's not often I try a 2D action RPG type game and then immediately get my butt handed to me by slimes right off the bat :/

Oh hey, a game I stopped playing because I felt like it was far to difficult to play with a keyboard. I've been meaning to go back to it though.

I finished Saints Row 2 and 3 within the last few days. I prefer 2 over 3 for sure. Why remove putting logos on clothing? Why is 3 so goddamn ridiculous? (Not that thats necessarily a bad thing) Why does every male in 3 have to be super ripped macho man?? Why take out septic avenger?? That was my fav activity in 2. Why are different levels of activities spread throughout the city in 3? It is nice that you can customise your cars in your garage in 3 though. I feel like 3 doesnt have the "soul" that 2 does, but I feel like I cant properly articulate this thought. Oh well. Looking forward to gettign 4 in the mail, the president in basically the matrix sounds pretty fun.

[Zygl]

Eternal masochist that I am, I've decided I apparently wanna try to do a Bug monotype run of Pokémon Emerald (plus a Feebas for water HM purposes of course) without buying any healing items.

RIP. Good luck with that.

I've actually made it to Wattson since that post. Route 110 rival battle was a nightmare solely because of the Combusken but I did eventually get through it through sheer luck and an X Special I picked up at some point.
Wattson's Magneton is the new problem, all the accuracy drops in the world can't guard against a Shock Wave and while Nincada is immune to that it can only take like two Sonicbooms. Pretty sure it resists literally every offensive move I have too. And I believe after that Combusken the only healing item I have left is one Oran Berry? I'll get through it though, if nothing else there should be enough experience between all the trainers I've skipped so far to evolve Nincada and just kinda sweep him with a Shedinja.

[raekuul]

I got Freedom Planet from Maiku Wotaharu on Sunday, and now that my birthday's passed I can crack open that PSX copy of FF8 that I ordered a month ago.

[Bean]

Final Fantasy 13 status: 100%.

I'll probably move on to World of Final Fantasy next after recording the first part of my Super Mario Land 2 run.

[YelseyKing]

Final Fantasy 13 status: 100%.

Congrats! I didn't 100% it, because my perfectionism wouldn't let me. I'd missed a few bestiary entries earlier in the game, and as such saw little reason to go after the more time-consuming post-game challenges. I'll definitely do it on a replay, though... and I *did* 100% FF13-2. Which was actually admittedly much easier, but there were still some things that were... things. Like farming a super-boss for Trapezohedrons. That was... fun. (Though at least the battle played my favorite song in the FF13 trilogy. So that helped.)

[Alice]

I started playing Dust: An Elysian Tail again on casual difficulty since raocow started his lp. I actually one fairly big complaint about casual mode, though I can sort of understand the decision behind it. Certain options such as auto-leveling are locked into the enabled position and you cannot disable them. I could understand enabling them by default on the save but locking them on is actually kinda annoying.

[BurntTenda]

I started playing Final Fantasy XV, which is pretty fun.
Very plot hole-y, which hopefully will be fixed with patches.

But the combat is quite fun.

And sudden puzzle platforming in the Pitioss dungeon is both fun and a true nightmare.

[Zygl]

Got to Lavaridge in my last Emerald play session. Maxie went down in one attempt somehow by way of Copenhagen the Volbeat being the ultimate scumlord, basically soloed the entire battle barring like one HP on his Zubat - at level 17 (his entire team is 24-25) - almost entirely through confusion damage.
Lavaridge Gym is still a touch frightening - I don't have a single super-effective attack to speak of since Surskit's not in Emerald - but the first three trainers in there went down with little issue anyway so I'm pretty sure I can find a way through it.

[metasomnia?]

Got to Lavaridge in my last Emerald play session. Maxie went down in one attempt somehow by way of Copenhagen the Volbeat being the ultimate scumlord, basically soloed the entire battle barring like one HP on his Zubat - at level 17 (his entire team is 24-25) - almost entirely through confusion damage.

Badass.

Haha yup. The game is very good at tricking you with cutesy graphics and music to make you lower your guard before murdering you.

Oh hey, a game I stopped playing because I felt like it was far to difficult to play with a keyboard. I've been meaning to go back to it though.

Update: I kept getting my butt kicked for like two hours before I started developing something resembling basic combat skills and managed to finish the prologue. I'm also playing with the keyboard by the way. Also, I'm enjoying the fact that while it's difficult to level up, there aren't many levels and each one grants a fair bump up in stats, giving you much more survivability.

[BurntTenda]

FINALLY I DID IT I BEAT THE PITIOSS DUNGEON!

And now on to the other dungeons and maybe do the Menace dungeons.

[Bean]

Chose to start up World of Final Fantasy on the PS4 a couple days ago. Was not expecting it to also be my first ever experience with Pokémon, but here we are. Seems fun enough to go through. The dialogue is making it more enjoyable since it's filled with puns and other dumb good moments. Kind of glad I went with this one for now instead of diving right into FFXV.

[Sorel]

After playing up to the final chapter of FFXV, I can only recommend it to anyone who likes a good

and sad

story, Kingdom Hearts-ish gameplay, or both.

FFXIV on the other hand is something completely different, a MMO. And a really good one at that. Picked the Black Mage as my starting job, and it's really fun to spam fire until everything is dead use spells.

As a side note, if you don't have enough FF in your life already, you should give Brave Exvius a shot. It's a gacha-type mobile game, but compared to others, it's actually really forgiving and accessible for F2P-players because even the "crappy" gacha pulls are worthwhile to keep and raise. There's also lots of fanservice (not the perverted type, the nostalgia one.).

[BurntTenda]

I beat my first

Menace dungeon

.

After every encounter Prompto just continuously said,
"Woohoo, we're alive! Let's celebrate by eating something dead!"

After every encounter.

It got a little annoying.

[Bean]

Maybe I chose the right Final Fantasy to go with for now then by choosing World of. This game's comedy is really hitting the right notes with me, and the battle system's pretty fun, too. You get two stacks of three to work with at the start of battles, but you can unstack and have six playable characters going against enemies. Rarely recommend doing this since your stats are way lower individually, but sometimes it's needed when you want to catch your opponents and get them on your team.

It's literally Final Fantasy meets Pokémon, and I'm surprisingly enjoying it so far.

[YelseyKing]

I got the Jak trilogy for Christmas, so I figured I'd take a short break from my Shadow Hearts marathon and play the first game. It's pretty fun. I've always liked the old-school 3D collectathon platformer, so this one's right up my alley. I appreciate that pick-ups are automatically saved, and don't have to be re-collected if/when you die... and also that there's no lives. You just restart from a checkpoint. Having to collect every randomly scattered doodad around large stages in one go can be a huge hassle, so I'm thankful *that* isn't a thing I have to worry about.

Daxter is an annoying little puke, though.