What games are you currently playing?

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

The SOS system on P4G is bugging me. I answer 5-6 requests for help between fights, usually the same few people as well. But then when I enter the next battle I find out that only 1-2 answered mine

It depends on the time between calls. You can only answer calls if you're in SOS mode yourself. Also SOS mode is sort of lame. The real meat and potatoes of online P4G mode is seeing what everyone else did as their activity each day - helps remind you to do certain things, especially things that only show up on specific days like "study for exams with Chie".


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Finished the God or War 3D... er... Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate demo.

Didn't care for it. It would be awesome if they didn't have Kratos cosplaying the Belmonts and Alucard and kept him in his own games.

Pretty much why I hated Lords of Shadow. Well that, and the piss poor plot and atrocious combat.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I'm just ready for Mercury Stream to be done with the series, move on and Konami let IGA back out of the garbage he's been relegated to. His last projects were Castlevania HD, Leedmeeds (a JP-only Lemmings kinda game) and he also worked on Otomedius Excellent.

Since Kojima Productions is almost practically independent of Konami, they should rescue him and give him a small budget to put out Castlevanias on PSN and 3DS eShop at least.

Oh well, it thing Guacamelee for PS3 and Vita is around the corner and that may be the most Metroidvania-ish thing this year.

I guess my big complaint about the LoS series is while it has the movie monsters and the never-ending battle between the Belmonts and Dracula, the music is just doesn't fit. Its not bad music, but it just isn't in the spirit of the series. Castlevania at all. Castlevania is known for its awesome music, gothic organs, techno and buttrock guitar riffs. There's a little room for melancholy stuff, but its never really the whole of it. Every composer before LoS seemed to understand some of it needed to clash against the setting so these movie monsters come off less sinister.

That and story was never really Castlevania's strength. Like Metroid, its not good at having these cinematic narrative. Whatever we want to think about Metroid Other M's story, let's be clear - nothing it is as bad as what you find in Lords of Shadow. Patrick Stewart has been known to ham it up a little, but this is one of the worst scripts I've seen him involved with outside of X-Men III. He's a guy you bring on to serve up small doses of awesome, not narrate the whole damn thing.

Its totally okay for Castlevania to be hammy - SOTN totally was, but it was in small doses and the story was paper thin. That's where it should stay. Just let me have the action, exploration and awesome music.

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

I disagree, I thought the story, while nothing to write home about, was at least decent on the PS2 games, SotN, and some of the DS games. LoS didn't even try, they just blatantly ripped off Dante's Inferno and though having Patrick Stewart would make up for that - it didn't.


Speaking of Konami though, God damn how I miss Team Silent -_-'

Those guys really knew how to fuck with your mind and make a scary ass game.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

You tend to confuse lore with story. Lots of franchises have good lore and bad stories.

Metroid, Castlevania, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Skyrim - all of them have good lore. Hell, Skyrim has mountains of good lore. Most of them, however, do not have involving stories. The lore is a garnish that helps augment your story and make it more palatable. Skyrim certainly can feel epic, but that doesn't mean the story the game tells rises above the generic. Ultimately its just playing to the tropes of Norse mythology like Final Fantasy XIII is but without annoying people in it.

Resident Evil stories are always, always stupid. But picking up those journal entries, learning what happened behind the scenes of the Raccoon City outbreak - that was the compelling stuff that helped make the scenario more interesting and intense. It certainly wasn't the acting of the first three games or Code Veronica.

I mean, really, most of these games just have you wandering around, poking things and learning about them and fighting something every now and then. Metroid's stories were really just that of finding stuff and your own experience, then the Prime games added some lore to give those places more substantial meaning. Hearing Samus drone on about them like she does things in Other M really wouldn't have done much to make the experience more enjoyable.

[Firewind]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

It depends on the time between calls. You can only answer calls if you're in SOS mode yourself. Also SOS mode is sort of lame. The real meat and potatoes of online P4G mode is seeing what everyone else did as their activity each day - helps remind you to do certain things, especially things that only show up on specific days like "study for exams with Chie".


Icemage

It depends on the time of day too. I do get a lot of answers during the early afternoon GMT since there will be a lot of Japanese players playing at around that time.

There is also the challenge of fitting in the new S.Links because it requires a different schedule to those used to Persona 4. Thankfully they aren't classmates otherwise it would make Hard and V Hard a nightmare when juggling levelling S.Links and rescuing people. I see why most P4 Veterans consider the most efficient way of maxing S.Links in one run is playing on V.Easy, or doing a V.Easy run as your first run then doing a Max S.Link run with your NG+ bonuses.

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

You tend to confuse lore with story. Lots of franchises have good lore and bad stories.

Metroid, Castlevania, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Skyrim - all of them have good lore. Hell, Skyrim has mountains of good lore. Most of them, however, do not have involving stories. The lore is a garnish that helps augment your story and make it more palatable. Skyrim certainly can feel epic, but that doesn't mean the story the game tells rises above the generic. Ultimately its just playing to the tropes of Norse mythology like Final Fantasy XIII is but without annoying people in it.

Resident Evil stories are always, always stupid. But picking up those journal entries, learning what happened behind the scenes of the Raccoon City outbreak - that was the compelling stuff that helped make the scenario more interesting and intense. It certainly wasn't the acting of the first three games or Code Veronica.

I mean, really, most of these games just have you wandering around, poking things and learning about them and fighting something every now and then. Metroid's stories were really just that of finding stuff and your own experience, then the Prime games added some lore to give those places more substantial meaning. Hearing Samus drone on about them like she does things in Other M really wouldn't have done much to make the experience more enjoyable.

I know the difference between lore and story jackass, I was specifically referring to the dialogue and overall plot in those games. They were nothing special, but they weren't horrible either.

Except LoS, the plot was just all the way bad in that game, Patrick Stewart or not.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Devil Survivor 2 is getting an enhanced port to 3DS. I still haven't gotten around to the DS version thanks to my backlog and wanting to re-finish the enhanced port of its prequel, which I've been poking away at on and off for the last year. Devil Survivor is among the few SRPGs I've ever actually bothered finishing and it was no slouch.

I plan to get to DS2 sometime this year, but Fire Emblem Awakening remains the priority for now. My Tactician ended up romancing Chrom... I'm not happy about it since I was holding out to pair Chrom with Sumia or Flavia (but she wasn't playable in my party yet), but I guess there's always next time.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Managed to somehow sink seven hours into Fire Emblem Awakening today after going on and off between it and Persona 4 Golden. I have this nasty habit of approaching strategy games with a min/max mentality like I used to have in FFXI, which can be applicable to a strategy title, but wasn't the way I ever approached Disgaea or Devil Survivor so I stopped worrying about it and just played.

Sadly, this time Vaike died for good, just on a later chapter (he has shit defense). The battle was too hard-fought and I separated him from Maribelle since I needed her to camp a fortress to prevent enemy respawns until the boss was defeated. So there's my first real casualty.

I turned my Tactican into a Myrmidon. I may convert more units into that because they tear everything up short of armored units, but then you just equip an Armorslayer sword can keep going.

[Firewind]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Ironically, the most efficient way to play Persona 4 Golden is to make your first playthrough a Very Easy run so you can max out as many S.Links as possible and also grind as much money and fuse as many good personae to pass on as you can.

On Very Hard, it's all but required the previous playthrough be a V. Easy run purely so you can get everything prepared for the hell that is going to come.

[Armando]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

On Very Hard, it's all but required the previous playthrough be a V. Easy run purely so you can get everything prepared for the hell that is going to come.

That doesn't sound like a good system.

I'm playing Chrono Cross again. The battle system is still frustratingly slow, which is incredibly ironic since it allows for nonstop attacking.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

That doesn't sound like a good system.

It really isn't. Basically, Firewind's approach is EV training the best Bidoofs that a Ditto could crank out for the day he could fight and capture a Legendary in Pokemon. As cool as Persona 4 is, the SMT series does have plenty of vendor trash personas/demons to collect in battle and create in Fusion, as much as there are better ones.

Levelling a social link is basically bonding with other characters. Each character you can bond with has an alignment with a particular arcana of the Tarot and each family of Personas in the game is linked to that. Level up your social links and when you go to fuse two personas into a new one, you may get a substantial EXP boost for personas of a particular arcana. This lets them access higher level skills sooner (provided they're good skills)

I mean, you could bother leveling the Virtue or Power personas but if you've Dominion from another fusion there's no need for it. Unlike Pokemon's nursery, the fusion system gives you a lot of different opportunities to fuse a new persona out of existing ones, with predicted outcomes of the skills you can choose for them to inherit (there are limits).

This is far more efficient than the "Ditto's Fuckshack" approach Pokemon takes, which leaves you sorting through the results for hours to see if X skill passed on to Y pokemon with the EV valuss you want.

I don't really think about all that stuff in Persona 4 that much, at least, not until the megabosses, I've already min/maxed various SMT games and Persona 4 is far and away one of the easier ones. Plus it just feels dirty to have an exploitative mentality toward the game's character relationships - I mean, you want to hang out with people because they're cool and you like them, not for the SL grind.

[Malacite]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

So, I finally got a bit of luck today.

Some poor, stupid shmuck actually traded in their copy of Xenoblade to one of the local EBs. I saw it online last night, called and had them put a 1-day hold on it saying I'd pick it up the next today. So, I am now the proud owner of a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles, miraculously also in mint condition!

I'm strongly considering getting Pandora's Tower now just so I can have all 3 and possibly sell them as a bundle on Ebay when I'm done (probably get $500+ for it too)

[Ketaru]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Mass Effect 3: Citadel

If it were 1/2 or even 2/3 the price, I think it would be more worth it. But the main campaign of it isn't nearly as long as the cost would suggest. I thought the clone story was really hammy as well. I almost think the price of it is largely to pay all the voice actors for coming back. There is some worthwhile dialogue involved though:

Spoilers

Liara, Miranda, Jacob, and Kaidan arguing with Vega about whether biotic skill or physical prowess are more impressive .
Hungover Javik thinking, for a moment, that waking up 50,000 years later in a galaxy ruled by "primitives" was all a dream.
And my personal favorite:

Urdnot Wrex also returns as a temporarily selectable party member in the main campaign. (b' ')b If he's dead, Vega takes his place. I doubt there will be too many people choosing to sabotage the Genophage cure after learning that.

In addition to him, most of the crew members not normally available in 3 become selectable for a battle simulation arena after the main campaign is over: Miranda, Jacob, Zaeed, Kasumi, Grunt, Jack, and Samara...provided they survived up until this point of the series.

[Icemage]

Re: What games are you currently playing?

Ironically, the most efficient way to play Persona 4 Golden is to make your first playthrough a Very Easy run so you can max out as many S.Links as possible and also grind as much money and fuse as many good personae to pass on as you can.

On Very Hard, it's all but required the previous playthrough be a V. Easy run purely so you can get everything prepared for the hell that is going to come.

Nah, Very Hard isn't that bad aside from the very first dungeon because you just run of out SP without any restoration skills. That's the time when SOS mode is very handy, as it can keep you afloat during that period.

I did my first P4G playthrough on Very Hard. Didn't have any serious issues once I got to level 17 to fuse Sarasvati for Invigorate 2.


Icemage