Whatcha play'n?

[Adol The Red]

Been playing the PSP Final Fantasy Tactics downloaded onto my Vita. Finally managed to learn Ultima. When I first played I didn't know anything about it, and mostly just wondered why i couldn't master Ramza's Squire class. In my last game I knew about it, and did let myself get hit by it during the Limberry Castle gate battle, but then I just finished the battle without learning it.

Well, I finally got it. Only took two hits, but man that battle was something else. Kept having to immobilize my own characters to make sure that all the enemies stayed immobilized. By the end I had one character down with the death count at 1, and my White Mage/Time Mage was charmed and bringing all the enemy monsters back to life. But I finally managed to learn the freaking thing.

Also stole the Glacial Gun, and I've never been much for trying to steal during story battles. Thought I might try to steal from Elmdore, but man that just wasn't going to happen.

Also played the ME3 Leviathan DLC. Pretty cool. Nothing special so far as combat, but I still got my action fix. Where this DLC is at is story, specifically a backstory we've all be curious about. Basicially it was what I always imagined, but of course there were details I never thought of. I'm just curious as to why they put it all the way at the end of the extras list. I knew it was coming out on Tuesday, and got right on the Xbox when I got home from work. And I see about 3 multiplayer packs and a weapon back, but no Leviathan. I was getting flustered but decided to go through the whole list to make sure, and there it was at the very end. I mean, why? I should think you'd want that front and center.

[Pie]

It's really awesome to hear you getting into the FFTactics mood lately. XD I love that game. :_: The only thing that I think is a total shame is that some skills are completely useless and under-powered after a point and that it's not beneficial enough to stick to a job once you've learned their "useful" skills since there are always so many abilities to learn if they keep changing jobs. An example of a few of these skills I'd say would be "Jump+X" since Dragoon can get "ignore height" pretty easily. Also within the Dragoon class, if you get "distance+5" for their jump skill, it makes getting "distance+1" for example, pointless. I liked how FFTactics Advanced compelled players to return to using old classes by the fact that more open up the further you play into the game, but I don't think I like the idea of learning skills off of equipped gear.

I don't have a solution, but I just always thought it was a shame. '_'

[Adol The Red]

[Kerreth]

[Adol The Red]

Yeah I remember them In Tactics Advance. Animists, I think they were called. I can't remember much of what I did in FFTA. I do remember that level scaling worked differently. Instead of scaling to your highest level party member, like in FFT, FFTA scaled to an average of your entire party's levels. Which of course means you could work the difficulty in your favor by keeping a level 1 party member around. I also remember I liked the Gladiator class in that game, mostly for Bolt Sword, and fully because I think swords made of lightning are cool. Also the illusionist class was pretty cool. Kind of like a summoner, if I recall.

[TheNesta]

Depending on which day you ask me, I'll alternate between Chrono Trigger, or Final Fantasy Tactics being my favorite game of all time. Today, I'll go with Tactics.

I've played the game countless times, and while I have experimented with a few different setups, I find that I fall into my favorites more often than not. Ramza is an amazing character that I feel you could pretty much do anything with if you wanted. Back in the day I made him a Ninja a lot of the time. In War of The Lions though, it's kind of a no-brainer. The Dark Knight class is ridiculously overpowered, almost rivaling Orlandu. Speaking of Orlandu, maybe some people feel bad about using him because he's so broken. I feel bad for those people. Two other "story" characters I like to use are Beowulf and Reis. Beowulf's Templar abilities are incredible, and maybe even overlooked in some cases. Using Chicken in Deep Dungeon is the easiest way to max out everything in the game. Reis is just awesome too, but in recent years I've been making her a Calculator as well, because hey - why not just totally steamroll everything in Ivalice? After that I usually have one "default" character. I favor a Dancer most of the time, but hey, while we're being absolutely fucking stupid, why not make her a Dark Knight too? Though, another choice I've taken a liking to in recent years is using Mustadio. His Aim ability is pretty damn good too. Finally, special mention for Agrias because I love her so. Holy Knight is amazing earlier on in the game, and I try to use her as long as possible.

All the times I've played the game, I can tell you the hardest part of the game is the roof battle with Elmdore, Celia, and Lettie. "Escort" missions are always a pain in this game, but add on top of that the smallest map in the game, protecting the weakest character in the game, against three of the strongest (and fastest) characters in the game. Not punishing enough? Try stealing the Cachusha, and Barette from Celia and Lettie. I've done it - once. After about 30 reloads. Not fun.

As for Blue Mages, I was never that big on them originally. I found Blue Magic too annoying to get in many other games, with little payoff. Well, recently I realized that it's actually pretty good in at least three games in the series. Final Fantasy V which was discussed a little bit. It's one of the best classes in that game by far. Final Fantasy IX, Quina is actually a really amazing character. When I replayed the game recently I pretty much wiped the floor with Ozma because Quina did a Magic Hammer for about 8k mp, followed by another one that finished depleting all it's MP. Harmless at that point really. And finally Final Fantasy XI, which I've been playing quite a bit of lately. Blue Mage is actually a really awesome class in that game with a list of about 100 different skills you can use. And a lot of them being really incredible.

Well, that's about it for random Final Fantasy discussion. Figure I might as well quickly go over games I've been playing:

Darksiders II: Sadly, I've been having some trouble getting into Darksiders 2. My two biggest complaints are some infuriating bugs I've encountered, and also side quests. That's not to say the side quests are bad (though I think some of them ARE), but the way I've been handling them has really bummed me out. I obsess over trying to do them as soon as I get them, which is in a lot of cases impossible, or at least very hard to do at my current level. This also throws me way off track and ends up taking way too much time. I just need to stop them cold turkey or something, cause I'm a big fan of the universe Vigil has constructed with the series, and the combat is really fun too.

Dust: An Elysian Tail: This is a gorgeous looking indie game that was released as part of the Summer of Arcade promotion on X-Box Live Arcade recently. It's sort of a Metroidvania action RPG similar to some of Vanilliaware's titles. I really want to love this game too, but I've had some problems with it as well. For one I find that the difficulty on Normal is too hard, mainly because healing is so scarce. It's just not something I'm interested in ramming my head against a wall over right now. And then the next difficulty level down is Casual which is... well Casual. I don't even know if it's possible to die in this mode without trying really hard, and they take out the character building aspect of the game. On top of that, I've encountered some save bugs where the game doesn't save my progress properly, bumping me back to an older version of the save file. Frustrating.

Final Fantasy XI: As I've said, been playing a lot of this. I played the game for about two years when it first came out, and ultimately ended up hating it by the end. Recently though, for whatever reason, I decided to try it again, and thanks to a lot of improvements and new content I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I've got all the jobs unlocked, rank 5, level 37 Warrior, 30 Dancer, and 20 Monk. Good times.

Ys Origin: Yeah, I'm still playing this, and it continues to be awesome. Just finished Hugo's story, and now working on the final character's story. Awesome stuff!

[Kerreth]

Which is pretty cool, because Quina was probably the hardest character to learn spells on. >.>

MATH AND GUIDES AND NO HP METERS, STAWPPIT.

[Soeroah]

Currently, Assassins Creed 1, Kingdom Hearts 3D and WoW.

[Adol The Red]

After all this time I finally started a more or less avatar character in Skyrim, a Nord named Tallak Storm-Claw. Also my first major usage of two-handed weaponry. Having a lot of fun just running around and rooting out random bandit dens and such. Focusing more on that and minor quests before I do anything major. Also, I've been playing the Uncharted on the Vita. Finally bothered to beat it on normal, and I have most of the trophies for so many kills with such and such weapon.

Aside from that I'm looking very forward to Dishonored. I cannot wait, so I much play other things to take my mind off of it.

[ThePaul]

Still playing The Secret World, but not as much as before. Been distracted by Borderlands 2, Resident Evil 6 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Borderlands 2 was freakin' awesome, and I really enjoyed my trip to Pandora. Played as Maya my first play through, and ended up with that skill tree that helps with your elemental damage. I enjoyed the story and the hidden easter eggs a whole lot, as well. However, I'm finding myself not really feeling like booting up my Newgame+ or starting as another character. Not solo anyway.

I'm having lots of fun with RE6 (especially when I played with my buddy, even though I was yelling at him to stop being such a noob half the time), despite the flaws and just under developed mechanics (new and old). completed Jake's storyline and bit of Leon's, and I'm beginning to realize I'm kinda' a sucker for somewhat cheesy storylines that take themselves too seriously. Also, I still love the Zombie Thwacking Stick (played as Cherri during Jake's story).


XCOM is freakin' awesome. You should all download the demo right now. GO! DO EET!