The Last To Post Wins!

[Interdimensional Observer]

8 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

EDIT: For me, the hardest fight in EO2U is the one right before Scylla.

That one I can see being a massive nightmare without a Protector/Beast, but as long as you do have one or the other, the difficulty becomes manageable. Pick a target, whittle away their HP to just above ~50%. Then unleash everything NAO on that target. The other one then recolors itself, keep your Protector/Beast alive for the next two turns, and then have them Force Break on the third to survive the enemy's suicide attack.

Although, I still needed two tries here on Story Mode. Why? Because I thought the enemies were immune to Binds and Ailments. Turns out one of them is, but the other is only resistant. I had Flavio used Sagittarius Shot for some reason (was I trying to unnecessarily attempt to burst down the second?) on the enemy I let go suicidal. They got Stunned on their third turn when the Sagittarius Shot landed, which meant it delayed its suicide attack, thereby wasting Bertram's Force Break and leaving me dead the turn thereafter. 

 

8 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Yeah, the damage sponginess of EO2U's bosses is pretty bad. I still love EO2U because the story is great. I admit, I never played that game on Classic Mode, but I want to do so someday soon.

U2 has arguably my favorite 3rd Stratum as well. It's that or V. I like V's because it is different, it breaks the "Stratum rules", which go:

Spoiler

1. Lush Green Forest
2. Alternative on a Forest (broken by V)
3. Something Ice or Water (broken by V)
4. Anything Goes
5. Spoilers You Know That Define the 5th
6. Horror

But within the "Stratum rules", U2 has the best 3rd Stratum, and I genuinely like it.

Stratum-wise:

1st: 4>U2>5>U1

2nd: U2>5>4>U1

3rd: 5>U2>U1>4

4th: U2>4>5>U1

5th: U1>5>U2(never actually finished this one, only made it to Juggernaut)>4

6th: 4>>>>>U1>5

My criteria being a combination of how I remember the Stratums play out, and their aesthetics and music.

I like Gladsheim and Ginnugagap, but I never saw the final floor of Ginnu, and Gladsheim has one major problem with it.

 

 

And uh, this is one of the most unnecessary licensing payouts I could ever imagine. Nintendo entrusted the Wii Punch Out!! game to a developer called Next Level. Someone at Next Level made a character reading a manga, completely offscreen barring hacking. The specific, small and blurry images in the manga, were taken from Sailor Moon. Which caused Nintendo to admonish Next Level, remove the hidden reference from the North American copies, and then paid Namco (who own the original/poster-child magical girl) for the license in Japan.

 

 

 

59 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

I win, because i have pudding

Pudding:

 

Edited September 21, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Armagon]

Lmao

 

 

[Armagon]

 

[Acacia Sgt]

This is interesting. I found a site with reviews of Star Trek Voyager, written almost as soon as the episodes originally aired. It's fascinating to see such a perspective.

[Armagon]

[WeAreNewcastle1053]

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

Lmao

 

 

https://bikiniarmorbattledamage.tumblr.com/

They'll fix BOTH of these girls!

[Shrimpica]

Pudding Pudding

[Strullemia]

I remember someone mentioning how difficult ch 17 BE and Petra paralogue would be on maddening here.

Petra’s paralogue was really difficult and I only managed to complete thanks to Lysithea. 

Ch. 17 was only tricky at the start. After you kill the left part of the map it’s smooth sailing.

Now it’s time for ch. 18.

On 9/21/2019 at 2:54 PM, Ingrid Brandl Galatea said:

Chapter 5 was ok, only took lots of time. Since I knew about ambush spawn and the locations of the reinforcements I was well prepared. It was tricky to ignore the archer rangers, but not too hard with some focus. The true boss had tons of HP, but Byleth could take two hits. Used Ingrid and Dmitri to stun him not to come too close to my weaklings.

The chapters seem to become easier since the cut of ally and enemy level becomes closer and closer. Byleth and Lys are pretty much at the same level as the enemy right now. 

Yeah, maddening gets easier the longer it goes on because your units tend to snowball pretty good.

[DragonFlames]

Atelier Rorona has an optional boss that has insta-kill attacks and can attack twice. Fun.

I also ran into a dragon that kicked my butt into next week and I wasted most of my battle and healing items on the thing (its health bar wouldn't budge, no matter what I did), so now I sit here with basically nothing on me. Even more fun.

The constantly-low-on-materials-situation hasn't improved at all, even with Hom there (seriously, 1/3rd of the entire recipe list is basically useless to me because I can't find the materials I need for those items), the game asks me to fully explore two areas I haven't even unlocked yet, and I have no clue how to do so, and it asks me to synthesize items with quality and traits I can't make because of what I mentioned earlier. Great.

On the plus side, I am now on my 10th assignment and the popularity thingy has been at 100% for a while now, so the only reason to do side quests now is for sweet cash money.

[Armagon]

50 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Atelier Rorona has an optional boss that has insta-kill attacks and can attack twice. Fun.

Which one is this? 

 

39 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

I also ran into a dragon that kicked my butt into next week and I wasted most of my battle and healing items on the thing (its health bar wouldn't budge, no matter what I did), so now I sit here with basically nothing on me. Even more fun.

Ah, that dragon. Even in the post-game with the two new characters i was given, i still haven't even gotten close to killing that thing. Pretty sure that's meant to be a post-game boss that you can fight earlier if you're really well prepared.

 

50 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

the game asks me to fully explore two areas I haven't even unlocked yet,

I think if the names start popping up, you're close to unlocking them. But sometimes it also means stuff you can get there can be found in other places.....i think. Atelier Totori and Meruru also do that but since exploration is a bigger focus there, you'll probably unlock the area by doing enough exploring instead of waiting for the event.

It's weird, if you get really lost looking for an item, you can always check with the Wiki. Helped me out throughout the trilogy, not so much with Atelier Lulua because that section of the Wiki is pretty incomplete.

56 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

On the plus side, I am now on my 10th assignment and the popularity thingy has been at 100% for a while now, so the only reason to do side quests now is for sweet cash money.

You're actually on track for getting the true ending (80 popularity or higher). The other requirement is to get a combined total of 94 completion stars. Not to be confused with the stars you get on the due date, i'm talking about that row of stars at the bottom of each assignment. These stars will never go down (unless it's the final assignment but you'll see why) and to get the true ending, you need at least 94 total. Ideally, that means getting 8 stars or higher on each assignment.

I didn't get the true ending btw. I got the normal ending (same number of stars but less than 80 popularity). But i did have enough friendship with Lionela that i got her ending (you can get both a basic ending (bad, normal, good and true) and a character ending).

 

 

[Tryhard]

On 9/20/2019 at 2:01 PM, Nobody said:

i beat the entirety of pokemon y with 100% crit farfetch'd so i'm happy he's finally getting an evolution

[Acacia Sgt]

It wouldn't look out of place in Ducktales, heh.

[Armagon]

You see this thing?

This is the Erde Kaiser Sigma from Xenosaga Episode III and it is honestly the most broken thing i've ever had access to in a JRPG. The final boss dies in 1-3 hits from this thing, depending on who summons it. And the 99 EP cost doesn't matter either because the same sidequest chain that gets you Erde Kaiser Sigma also gets you the Moon Bade (iirc, that's what it's called) which reduces all EP consumption to 1. Slap that on to MOMO, have her summon Erde Kaiser Sigma and watch as the game is deleted because of how broken this thing is. There's a reason why you can't use this thing until the final chapter.

[Acacia Sgt]

But is it more broken than Proto Garland?

[Interdimensional Observer]

Xenosaga has beaches? I haven't really looked at all at the games, but I thought they were a lot of spaceships location-wise.

And, why does KOS-MOS in XC2 name her Merc Mission squad that, minus the Sigma? 

Also, how difficult/hard to figure out blind, is the sidequest line for that thing? I always make a point to regard brokenness with regards to how accessible something is. Accessibility being a combination of when and how hard it'd be to figure things out for oneself without help.

 

 

 

And it's been confirmed, the Friends of Mineral Town remake will let you marry Kappa again. But uh, who in their right mind would want to marry a kappa, one that you barely get to socialize with? Not to mention it looks a lot grouchier than it used to:

Spoiler

 has been turned into

...I'm never going to get over the art changeover.😒 Though they said they're not sure its possible to get the old art or artist back, and even if they could get the artist, their artstyle has changed significantly since over a decade ago. Understandable.

At this point, if I really wanted to try getting back into Bokujo Monogatari (which I question), I might be better waiting for a whole new game, something where the artstyle by default fits, and isn't replacing something I once knew. And Stardew isn't something I'd consider, even if it is a superior product to whatever Marvelous puts out now.

[Acacia Sgt]

Wouldn't say grouchier, just more serious.

Also, I found hilarious someone commenting the Gourmet looks like he could be part of RF's De Saint-Coquil family, hahahaha. (fan comment, of course)

Now I wonder though, will the "secret" spouses have more to them than in the original? For suposedly having to work more on being able to marry them, having them come with less involvement was a let-down. At least live together! It's hilarious when you have a case like HM DS, which had a mermaid you could court; and she at least had a little pond near your house to stay at.

That reminds me, I saw they stated the child would grow further than the early-toddler stage. Though since they also said it would be to the standard, that likely means elementary school age. I suppose having a kid grow beyond that is still not something they'd do again. AWL did it; but it was due to how the game was structure, though at least it's remake/sequel, HM DS, still allowed the kid to reach teenagehood.

Edited September 23, 2019 by Acacia Sgt

[Armagon]

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Xenosaga has beaches? I haven't really looked at all at the games, but I thought they were a lot of spaceships location-wise.

Yeah, there are two beaches. The first one is an artificial beach on the Kukai Foundation space station. The second one is a natural one on Second Miltia where the Uzukis live. The beach in the screenshot is where the Dark Professor's lab is located. At the end of the sidequest chain, you fight the Sigma before you can use it yourself and you are required to use the other three versions of the Erde Kaiser to win due to a unique barrier system Sigma has.

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Also, how difficult/hard to figure out blind, is the sidequest line for that thing? I always make a point to regard brokenness with regards to how accessible something is. Accessibility being a combination of when and how hard it'd be to figure things out for oneself without help.

I'd say you'd need a guide for the sidequest. Sidequest itself isn't particularly hard for the most part but the Xenosaga trilogy has a severe lack of minimaps so navigation can be kinda a pain. You also have to fight two boss fights during the sidequest: Omega ID (the hardest boss in the game) and Erde Kaiser Sigma, the latter of which isn't too hard but is impossible if you don't have the other three Erde Kaisers (and you'll probably need guides to find them too).

Yeah, you have to do quite a bit to get access to Sigma.

Edit: I should mention that that's also the only sidequest in Episode III and the way it's structured doesn't even make it look like one. It's more of just individual objectives strung together.

Edited September 23, 2019 by Armagon

[DragonFlames]

13 hours ago, Armagon said:

Which one is this?

It's a large gryphon that's standing around in the area with all the vultures (luckily, you can walk past it by taking another path). One of the side objectives for the 9th assignment asks you to kill it. I tried. It... did not go well.

13 hours ago, Armagon said:

Ah, that dragon. Even in the post-game with the two new characters i was given, i still haven't even gotten close to killing that thing. Pretty sure that's meant to be a post-game boss that you can fight earlier if you're really well prepared.

That explains things. Oof. Sterk didn't exaggerate when he said "do NOT go there". The thing was tough as nails. And it also could attack twice. Because of course it could.
But on the other hand, after killing dragons left and right in Lulua, it's kind of nice to see them being an actual threat again.

It's funny, though: in this game and Lulua, enemies attacking twice usually spells out death and feels sort of cheap. In 7th Dragon III, I wasn't bothered by the fact that dragons could attack twice each turn. Maybe because the latter game teaches you this very early on, so you are better prepared, or it's that 7th Dragon III was balanced around that mechanic and Atelier wasn't?
It is something to think about.

Do you have any game like that? Where a mechanic you absolutely loathe in other games you like in that one?

13 hours ago, Armagon said:

I think if the names start popping up, you're close to unlocking them. But sometimes it also means stuff you can get there can be found in other places.....i think. Atelier Totori and Meruru also do that but since exploration is a bigger focus there, you'll probably unlock the area by doing enough exploring instead of waiting for the event.

It's weird, if you get really lost looking for an item, you can always check with the Wiki. Helped me out throughout the trilogy, not so much with Atelier Lulua because that section of the Wiki is pretty incomplete.

The thing is, I'm trying to play through the game as guide-free as I possibly can. That's why I'm reluctant to check any wikis and such. I'll probably have to, though.
I'm guessing I can find the materials I'm missing in the areas I'll unlock going forward, but it's still pretty strange to get recipes for items which need materials you absolutely can't get at that point in the game.

The 10th assignment will be pretty exploration-heavy regardless, so I hope I unlock those areas soon. We'll see.

13 hours ago, Armagon said:

You're actually on track for getting the true ending (80 popularity or higher). The other requirement is to get a combined total of 94 completion stars. Not to be confused with the stars you get on the due date, i'm talking about that row of stars at the bottom of each assignment. These stars will never go down (unless it's the final assignment but you'll see why) and to get the true ending, you need at least 94 total. Ideally, that means getting 8 stars or higher on each assignment.

I didn't get the true ending btw. I got the normal ending (same number of stars but less than 80 popularity). But i did have enough friendship with Lionela that i got her ending (you can get both a basic ending (bad, normal, good and true) and a character ending).

Really? That's awesome!
So far, I have completed every assignment with full gold star ratings and I plan on keeping that up (now even more).
As for the character stuff... my friendship is only really high with Cory and Sterk, because I've been using them almost exclusively, so if I get a character ending, it'll probably be one of those two.

5 hours ago, Armagon said:

You see this thing?

This is the Erde Kaiser Sigma from Xenosaga Episode III and it is honestly the most broken thing i've ever had access to in a JRPG. The final boss dies in 1-3 hits from this thing, depending on who summons it. And the 99 EP cost doesn't matter either because the same sidequest chain that gets you Erde Kaiser Sigma also gets you the Moon Bade (iirc, that's what it's called) which reduces all EP consumption to 1. Slap that on to MOMO, have her summon Erde Kaiser Sigma and watch as the game is deleted because of how broken this thing is. There's a reason why you can't use this thing until the final chapter.

Not gonna lie, that looks awesome.

[Shrimpica]

[DragonFlames]

1 hour ago, Shrimperor said:

I wouldn't mind if that was real... STOP TEMPTING ME!

That lowercase "i" though... *shudder*

---

In other news: I made this while I was bored.

Edited September 23, 2019 by DragonFlames

[Armagon]

4 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

It's a large gryphon that's standing around in the area with all the vultures (luckily, you can walk past it by taking another path). One of the side objectives for the 9th assignment asks you to kill it. I tried. It... did not go well.

I don't remember that one having insta-kill attacks. Either i killed it quickly or it never used them on me.

4 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

That explains things. Oof. Sterk didn't exaggerate when he said "do NOT go there". The thing was tough as nails. And it also could attack twice. Because of course it could.

......ohhhhh, you're talking about the dragon in the Ster Highlands. I'm talking about the dragon in the Night's Domain. Yeah, the one in Ster Highlands is one of Sterk's events. You need to kill it with Sterk in the party. This event is actually referenced in Lulua.

Spoiler

Remember that event where Sterk mentions he recieved a scar protecting Rorona? This is it.

 

4 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Do you have any game like that? Where a mechanic you absolutely loathe in other games you like in that one?

Hmmmm. Not that i can think of tbh. 

Although well, i guess depending on the game, a status effect can either be a minor inconvinence or an infuriating thing to get hit by.

5 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Not gonna lie, that looks awesome.

It really is. I think it also has the longest attack animation in the game (i didn't time it, i could be wrong). You know, just to give enemies time to pick a god and pray.

Erde Kaiser and it's three other forms is also a direct reference to the G-Elements from Xenogears

which is actually four mechs fused together, referencing mecha shows where things like that happen, such as Power Rangers. Though unlike the Erde Kaiser (specifically Sigma), G-Elements is just a boss. You never get to use it yourself.

1 hour ago, Shrimperor said:

*Inception bwong plays*

[Shrimpica]

 

[Armagon]

Things to note: Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time both refer to the 3DS remakes but the original Majora's Mask is also the best game in the series. Also, Link's Awakening here refers to the DX version on the GameBoy Color.

 

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

In other news: I made this while I was bored.

>Faye in "Awesome" tier

 

Also lmao, no one ever recruits Deen. He's just killed for his Brave Sword. 

 

[Armagon]

Very glad that Tal Tal Heights remains one of the best songs in the series.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

Erde Kaiser and it's three other forms is also a direct reference to the G-Elements from Xenogears

Another XG reference? Except this time, it looks like what was silly became badass. Leaves one wondering then why there isn't a Face Merge then.

 

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

It really is. I think it also has the longest attack animation in the game (i didn't time it, i could be wrong). You know, just to give enemies time to pick a god and pray.

Something negative Monolith picked up before it abandoned Square? Because the broken summon from FFVII takes a full minute & twenty seconds to finish.:

Spoiler

 

 

43 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Also lmao, no one ever recruits Deen. He's just killed for his Brave Sword. 

If you're playing no/minimal-grind, his bases and joining level are quite good, even if a trained Sonya is more valuable otherwise. SoV nerfed Sonia's spell selection and decreased the difference in growths between the two rival recruits. (Although being forced to promote at 20 is a serious blow to those NES Sonya growths with the same EXP dropoff as SoV.)

And, the Accordion artbook did give him a nice backstory, albeit one that would be better in the game itself:

Spoiler

 

52 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Things to note: Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time both refer to the 3DS remakes but the original Majora's Mask is also the best game in the series. Also, Link's Awakening here refers to the DX version on the GameBoy Color.

Another good fan of A Link Between Worlds, I like that.

I found ALBW refreshing after Wind Waker and Twilight Princess had essentially killed off any sense of freedom you get for the first half of the game, Twilight Princess being really bad in that regard. Skyward Sword's dungeonification of the overworld was interesting, but not freedom. By returning to ALttP's format, the strong sense of freedom from almost the get-go (not full freedom- no going to Lorule right away) was restored, and it did so without radically overhauling the franchise as BotW did.

I'd rank the Oracles a little higher myself, although I'm honestly not sure where I'd put anything else besides LttP, ALBW, and LA and MC.

Also, you left Tri-Force Heroes off that list. But I will say I kinda regret buying it, it just isn't the funnest thing if you aren't playing it with real friends. Not so much the puzzles (though a few issues exist), as it is the bosses and special challenges that are the problem. A noble effort to make a multiplayer Zelda though.

 

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

 

You played 3D World, but not XCX. Wii U at friend's house I guess?

Can't quite say where I'd put things for 3D Mario, but I do like the Galaxies. Why doesn't Nintendo give them HD remasters for a quick handful of Yen?