BrightBow

Unfortunately despite the announcement the patch wasn't released on the 1st for the Steam version. I suppose it's not exactly surprising that the PC version would take longer to fix but it would be nice if they would communicate more instead of quietly missing the date. Also, despite never having encountered that problem over the weekend now for some reason I am clipping all the time through the floor of the overworld when picking up items. Fortunately that's not much of a problem. If you clip below the surface, all you have to do is to use your vehicle and let yourself drop below the killzone. You will then simply get teleported back to the surface. Besides, I always love to explore games beyond the intended boundaries. And I actually did find something down there: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/188416901572899810/8C534AFCF1A7B4F828BF532ADF9A2B838AF9CD56/ I guess that they are always down there since I've seen them both times I explored that area. Unfortunately I can't talk to them since they are below the kill zone.

I suppose it would be better if they actually made her durable. No idea what the point is of giving her these crazy offensive stats when everything kills her in one hit.

I did. And well, it's pretty damn great. It basically fixed ever issue I had with the original Xenoverse. Most notably the game no longer utilizes fake difficulty in the form of Super Armor and Evasive Move spam. The AI is genuine good now and doesn't need to resort to those cheap tricks. Of course they start out as mere punching bags but once you reach the end of the Frieza Saga, the AI gets serious. There are tons of other improvements too. Like, the game world is now actually fun to maneuver thanks to vehicles, flying and a jump command that actually does something. There is a Training Mode now (thank god). The writing is far more entertaining and overall more competent. I'm especially glad that Mira no longer sounds like a complete imbecile and that Trunks is more active this time. The only thing that really bugs me in this game is that it still has no proper vs CPU mode. The Offline Battle mode is still the same as it was in the first game, so you are stuck with a 3 minute time limit and a shitty AI on the vast majority of characters. You know, the lack of settings is one thing but I would really like to know what genius thought that it was a good idea to give every character their own AI level. That way most characters are nothing but deadweight when bringing them into Parallel missions. What's especially weird about the lack of a difficulty setting is that there IS an actual difficulty setting... but only in Training Mode. I really hope that they include this in the other modes. And "they" in this case refers to either Dimps or the Xenoverse modding community. I would hope that it is at least possible to mod the game so that the highest AI setting becomes the standard. I suppose it is worth mentioning that the game is rather buggy currently. In fact, Dimps has directly stated that the fixes they made for the Open Beta were not yet included when the game was released. They are instead said to be included in a patch that will be release on November 1st. The good news is that they also acknowledged most of the issues I encountered, so there is a good chance that that stuff gets fixed eventually. Although a rather nasty bug I encountered that they didn't acknowledge, was one where at the start of a match enemies would get forced out of bounds. Fortunately so far I've only encountered that bug in Training mode and during the Namek series of side quests. Although in the latter it happens all the freaking time. Also the Namek missions are all dragon ball collection quests, and I think that the Dragonballs can also be forced out of bounds. Either that or they sometimes spawn inside of mountains or other locations where they can't be reached.

It did. Of course Lunatic+ also distributes skills like this entirely at random, so the difficulty of it's maps fluctuates to an absurd degree. But that's a problem with the way Lunatic+ is designed, not with the skills themselves.

Pretty much this. You always have to expect the worst possible outcome (or at the very least you can't make your success depend on a 3-30% chance), so when you use them you have to assume that they don't trigger and therefore they have no impact on your strategical decisions. Not to mention that such skills could actually screw you over on enemy phase by allowing more enemies to attack you, which is a pain in the ass on top of being just plain silly. Skills that could only ever benefit the user like Sol would be fine though, Proc skills have some use in the hands of enemies but since you always have to prepare for the worst, you have to assume that they are always going to trigger, so they might as well have a 100% proc chance.

The game might still be a few days away for most of us but Team Fourstar have already started their playthrough. Edit: So judging by their playthrough, the only skills and clothes that get transferred from Xenoverse 1 are the ones that your character has equipped at the time. That's... kinda dumb. I really don't want to grind for all this stuff again. And the game specifically says that if you want to do anther transfer, you'd have to delete your Xenoverse 2 save data. Considering that the X1 avatar is a separate character in this game, it makes me wonder if they maintain their old moves if they show up in a battle. It would be nice if I could just focus on transferring useful moves without having to worry about leaving the old Avatar with a dumb moveset.

Well, the game is not just lacking in Four Swords related content but also in regards to the Oracle games. And what all those games have in common is that they were developed by Capcom. So maybe there is some kind of rights issue that complicates things. Although with Four Swords Adventures there is one title among the Four Swords/Oracle games that wasn't actually developed by Capcom. Still, I don't think that it's a coincidence that their games are so lacking in representation. Whatever the reason, it's a damn shame that those games are so lacking in representation. Vaati's absence is of course very regrettable. Not a lot of characters in the Zelda series manage to be a major character in 3 different games. But these games feature tons of unique stuff in those games in general. Like for example, these days Nintendo is very obsessed with giving Link a horse and call it Epona but in the Oracle games Link had 3 possible mounts and there was not a single horse among them.

You can also go into Character Customization directly from the Character Select screen. So it's easy to quickly edit your moveset. Particularly useful if you like to use Mii Fighters every now and then. Speaking of Mii Fighters, they are far easier to actually select as the Wii U version only displays very few of them, so you might have to scroll a lot before you find the one you want to use and because of the small display you could easily miss them. There is no way to order them either. Meanwhile the 3DS version gives you the same screen that is used in Character Customization. Also, the default controls in the Wii U version cannot be changed, so you always have to manually select your profile every time you enter a character select screen. What makes this worse is that for whatever reason different modes have different freaking rules about how to actually access the profile selection, so it's easy to get mixed up and start a game with the wrong controls. Which is especially annoying in Classic Mode as it requires you to pay tons of money to even play, so you loose all of that if you abort to fix the controls. So I prefer the 3DS version, as it's just far less frustrating to actually play.

The most valuable weapon for me has by far been the Hexlock Spear. It's just what the doctor ordered to fix that one tiny weakness that Effie has and to make her completely unstoppable.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition: Siege of Dragonspear I've finally gotten around to play the Enhanced Edition and I find myself liking it a lot. It very much feels like the original game, except it runs far better then anything I ever managed to accomplish with mods. And Beamdog had good judgment when it comes to tweaking the original game. Like, you can now carry far more arrows and potions and characters of a Neutral alignment won't complain if you have a good reputation. It's small changes like this that go a long way to improve the experience. The only thing that bugs me is that they moved Durlaq's tower further to the north, east of Bergeost. I would really like to know what the purpose of that random change was. Dang it, I must have spend hours searching the areas east of Nashkel looking for the damn thing. But yeah, there is really not a lot to complain about. They did Baldur's Gate justice, in my humble opinion. As for the addon Siege of Dragonspear... I am very much blown away by it to be honest. It feels very fresh. The scenario is that of a military campaign, so you keep traveling forward with your convoy and old areas become inaccessible as you progress. So the game is quite different from either Baldur's Gate game, But it's different in the right way. Kinda like how Baldur's Gate 2 was very different from the first game, with a more linear world, fewer but far more elaborate quests and stronger writing. SoD still feels very much like an addon that Bioware could have made back in the day And personally I like SoD's linearity a lot. I find it a bit silly that RPGs always feel the need to also be open world games. It kinda takes the urgency out of the main quest when you can just run around all over the place. So I vastly prefer the tightness of RPGs like Fire Emblem. Not that SoD actually is as linear as Fire Emblem. There is still some room to explore. I also like how the Flaming Fist army is so colorful in this game. Like, it always bugs me when there is a setting with an colorful assortment of Elves, Dwarfes, Hobbits and whatnot and somehow the law enforcement consist of a single white human male and his 100+ identical twin brothers like in the original Baldur's Gate. And as a mercenary army, the Flaming Fist should be about as ragtag as your average adventurer party anyway. So I am very glad that they avoided this here. Especially since all those guys travel with you, so it's particularly valuable that this army doesn't make you feel like you are surrounded by a bunch of Clone Troopers. The story is pretty promising so far. SoD is a midquel between the story of BG1 and BG2 and being a midquel usually means bad things for a story. But so far it actually feels like a very organic addition to the story of both games. I'm not through the game yet but I think I get the general idea about how those events lead into the story of BG2. Which is particularly nice as Baldur's Gate 2 had nothing to offer but an embarrassing shrug about why your party left Baldur's Gate in the first place. So I am glad that it looks like this addon does a good job at filling the gap between the two games. It also looks to me like Beamdog managed to get a good chunk of the old actors to reprise their roles. Now I did play the German version of the original game, so I am no expert on the English cast but I do recognize the Narrator and Irenicus at least as their performance in the original games was very memorable. And judging by the fact that a minor character felt the need to actually lampshade his different voice, I would guess that they managed to get the voice actors of just about all the major characters to reprise their roles. Well whatever the case, even for me it's a pleasure to hear David Warner and Kevin Michael Richardson in their roles again and the voice acting does it's part in making the addon feel like an organic part of the original series.

I suppose Mewtwo's theme from Pokemon Stadium doesn't count?

I wonder why the parents have plot armor anyway. If they get defeated, you can't get their children anyway. But even in the case of characters who don't actually die when they are killed, there is quite a contrast between Awakening/Fates and the Telius games. While in the former, the characters are quick to leave the battlefield, in Tellius Ike usually has to pretty much drag his injured comrades from the battlefield kicking and screaming. Like in this example from PoR:

It most certainly looks pretty appealing to me. But with all these moving parts, it makes me wonder how durable the console is going to be. That's pretty important for an handheld. Anyway, I'm not sure how the Switch could possibly kill Nintendo's handheld market. Either the console is going to be actually successful enough to succeed the 3DS or it doesn't and the 3DS will stay relevant.

I suppose I should be exited about finally learning where Nintendo is heading but I just can't help but be creeped out by that image of Mario.

You can only teach skills in the base.

Well, when asking you to confirm wheter or not you want to give a skill to someone, the game gives the name, required capacity and a description of a skill. So I would assume that the same happens for Occult Scrolls as well. But it's been a while, so I can't gurante it. Of course if it turns out that in the case of Occult Scrolls it doesn't actually give that information in advance, there is always the skill page of this site: http://serenesforest.net/path-of-radiance/miscellaneous/skills/

Not to mention that medics in the real world do not have access to magic that can make a gravely injured person ready to get back into the field in like 10 seconds. Of course that's trivial anyway since Elise is not some nurse but a member of the Nohrian royal family. And in Fates that has perks beyond the social status, like giving her special powers that allow her to throw the whole battlefield in disarray.

Almost all skills in this game have some use. Even the ones that activate randomly like Sol/Luna/Astra have at least some use in the arena. Awareness would be useful in theory if enemies would actually use skills regulary. It is worth noting that it also protects the user against critical hits and effective damage but that stuff doesn't come up much either. Edit: I suppose Critical would at least be more useful than Luna since critical hits double attack power, so it will deal more damage in the vast majority of situations. The activation rate is identical as well, except that there are various ways to raise the activation rate for Critical Hits.

In the Abridged series? Yeah, that's him.

FE4 is the game that massively improved the controls, so they very much feel like you'd expect from the later games. It's also the first game that has a ton of options to customize the interface and controls.

Btw, Team Fourstar recently streamed the closed beta and as it turns out Xenoverse 2 will feature no less then two new voice sets from TFS members, KaiserNeko and Lanipator to be exact.

Well, I hope Areone will be a bit smarter then the members of Lachesis' Suicide Squadron.

Between the two, sure Godzilla is the better pick. But I can't say that I am particulary enthusastic about having a radioactive lizard in the White House. I mean, that's one heck of an health hazard during tours.

Yeah, I suppose making jokes about Trump's hair isn't very original. But i think they can still work if you wait until the guests had a few beers. He's not a natural born citizen, though.

The "greatest of all evils"? Yeah, sure. Cthulhu is basically the Pikachu of Lovecraftian horrors. It might be the face of the franchise but at the end of the day a Dragonite is easily going to tear his little yellow head of. I mean, Cthulhu once got run over by a boat for crying out loud. Trump's hair is properly a bigger eldritch horror then he is. And unlike Cthuluh, that hair is 100% American.