Videogames

[Alcibiades]

What's Crisis Core like? I have Vakyria Chronicles 2, Dissidia, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, Persona 3, and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep.

It's an action RPG that is very focused, almost to the point of feeling like its on-rails. The environments are very small and linear, with save points in almost every room. I enjoy this focused experience, but if you're hoping to spend time wandering around and exploring Midgar a bit, that's not going to happen. I actually think that Midgar was better represented on the PS1, thanks to those pre-rendered backgrounds, but there are some notable exceptions (like the Church and maybe the Shin-ra building. There are some areas that look very very nice. The artwork is very advent-children like. The character models are nicely expressive as well.

Gameplay is mashy in the random battles (yes, random, so oldschool in that regard), and much more interesting in boss fights. It's pretty frantic as you switch back and forth between cures, attack magic, and physical attacks, while you run around trying to avoid getting hit.

I think the game stands up well on its own without nostalgia; it's not just fan service. But, if you're nostalgic for FF7, thats what really makes it a must-buy. Square really knows how to mash those nostalgia buttons (the opening video, for instance, has a train running through Midgar in almost the exact same shot as the start of FF7).

How is Persona?

[Kosciuszko]

It's an action RPG that is very focused, almost to the point of feeling like its on-rails. The environments are very small and linear, with save points in almost every room. I enjoy this focused experience, but if you're hoping to spend time wandering around and exploring Midgar a bit, that's not going to happen. I actually think that Midgar was better represented on the PS1, thanks to those pre-rendered backgrounds, but there are some notable exceptions (like the Church and maybe the Shin-ra building. There are some areas that look very very nice. The artwork is very advent-children like. The character models are nicely expressive as well.

Gameplay is mashy in the random battles (yes, random, so oldschool in that regard), and much more interesting in boss fights. It's pretty frantic as you switch back and forth between cures, attack magic, and physical attacks, while you run around trying to avoid getting hit.

I think the game stands up well on its own without nostalgia; it's not just fan service. But, if you're nostalgic for FF7, thats what really makes it a must-buy. Square really knows how to mash those nostalgia buttons (the opening video, for instance, has a train running through Midgar in almost the exact same shot as the start of FF7).

How is Persona?

Persona is pretty awesome for those that miss the old school JRPG games. Its pretty much an urban fantasy in a Japanese city (Tokyo I think). Basically you're <insert name here> and the battle leader of the Special Extracurricular Execution Squad, or SEES.

You fight through a bunch of randomly generated levels of a tower and its really tough. You will die, a lot, and it shows little mercy on the harder difficulties. Each floor tends to have certain types of enemies you need to deal with, so you need to plan your party around the strengths and weaknesses of everything (you'll still die a lot).

It also has a phase to the game where its more like a Japanese Sim type game. You have three social stats: Academics, Charm, and Courage. This does help you out in the more battle oriented part of the game because how popular you are (kinda) can make your Persona stronger.

Overall its really enjoyable as a challenging JRPG. Story wise its pretty good too, with the idea being that a massive tower appears every day at midnight and an extra hidden hour is added while its there, called the Dark Hour. Combat is during the Dark Hour, fighting Shadows from the tower (Tartarus).

Battle itself is turn-based, not too different from a Final Fantasy. The big thing are weaknesses; exploit an enemy's weakness and you get an extra attack and the enemy is knocked down. Knock them all down you get an all-out attack for massive damage. But they can do it to you too (thus why you plan your party accordingly). Your main character can cycle his/her Persona every turn, thereby changing the strengths/weakness when necessary. If your character dies, its game over.

[Jon AS]

Using your example of Mass Effect 2. My first playthrough on 'normal' was 42 hours long (with dlc). I'm sure I died a few times, but usually I prevailed. I fail to see how dying more often and adding countless 'hidden' hours to my playthrough would somehow make the game more satisfying to me. The end result is the same --I won-- and ultimately it was the story and characters that drove me forward, not the gameplay.

Like Poobah I don't think Insanity adds "hidden hours" to the gameplay in ME2 (speaking of hours though, did you stand around for 10 or so? Because none of my runs through the game have taken significantly more than 30, some quite a bit less), it presents you with challenges of either tactical nature (when playing a power focused class) or skill (particularly when playing Vanguard the way it's meant to be played).

Compare that to ME1's difficulty scaling and you see a clearly inferior system: the amount of HP enemies have is beyond ridiculous and on top of that a lot of them will have the Immunity ability, which is basically a poor man's god-mode. It could take ages to take a single enemy, but it wasn't challenging, just frustrating.

As far as Nightmare on the console goes... I don't know, but I didn't micromanage that much. I just set myself up in the best gear I could get my grubby little hands on and poured into two stats and only glanced at Willpower for extra Stamina and my Templar AoE (I think it also added to the Reaver AoE aura?).

Yeah, a Warrior with high dexterity becomes almost unkillable, doesn't really matter what happens to the rest of the party in that case.

[Poobah]

Like Poobah I don't think Insanity adds "hidden hours" to the gameplay in ME2 (speaking of hours though, did you stand around for 10 or so? Because none of my runs through the game have taken significantly more than 30, some quite a bit less), it presents you with challenges of either tactical nature (when playing a power focused class) or skill (particularly when playing Vanguard the way it's meant to be played).

:cheers: Vanguards in the house :cheers:

Though that said I found it really fun to play my adept on Insanity. The game definitely took longer... well, I think I died a lot more on my vanguard, but I spent a lot more time cowering behind cover working out how the fuck to solve a given situation on my adept. Of the four insanity playthroughs I've started each was uniquely different (should note I only finished with my original Soldier-Shep and with Vanguard-Shep, Adept-Shep got a bit frustrating because I'm really bad at using powers, maybe if I had a gamepad so I could bind all my power keys to various easy to press buttons and triggers, and Infiltrator-Shep played a bit too much like Soldier-Shep, though partly my bad for taking the rifle training instead of the big fucking sniper rifle, but I'm in love with the Geth Pulse Rifle).

-Poobs

[Jon AS]

Though that said I found it really fun to play my adept on Insanity. The game definitely took longer... well, I think I died a lot more on my vanguard, but I spent a lot more time cowering behind cover working out how the fuck to solve a given situation on my adept. Of the four insanity playthroughs I've started each was uniquely different (should note I only finished with my original Soldier-Shep and with Vanguard-Shep, Adept-Shep got a bit frustrating because I'm really bad at using powers, maybe if I had a gamepad so I could bind all my power keys to various easy to press buttons and triggers, and Infiltrator-Shep played a bit too much like Soldier-Shep, though partly my bad for taking the rifle training instead of the big fucking sniper rifle, but I'm in love with the Geth Pulse Rifle).

But you can already bind the quickslots (and all other controls) to whatever key you want, including mouse buttons. That said, the standard setup works for me because most powers need to aimed anyway, so taking a fraction of a second more to trigger them doesn't make a huge difference.

[haLobEnder]

Persona is pretty awesome for those that miss the old school JRPG games. Its pretty much an urban fantasy in a Japanese city (Tokyo I think). Basically you're <insert name here> and the battle leader of the Special Extracurricular Execution Squad, or SEES.

It's been awhile since I played but I'm pretty sure the city is just some fictitious one they made up. 'Coastal City' or something like that. Persona 4 is a bit unique in that it's set in a rural Japanese village.

So have you picked up the original Persona for the PSP as well?

Actually if you're enjoying the Persona series I'd also recommend checking out the other Shin Megami Tensei gamesl. The two most recent ones are Devil Survivor and Strange Journey for the DS, but there's also Nocturne, the Digital Devil Saga series and the Devil Summoner series for the PS2.

If you're looking for a challenge, Nocturne in particular would probably appeal to you. The only problem is that as with a lot of Atlus games, they only make enough of them to turn profit -- they quickly become hard to find at a halfway decent price.

Like Poobah I don't think Insanity adds "hidden hours" to the gameplay in ME2 (speaking of hours though, did you stand around for 10 or so? Because none of my runs through the game have taken significantly more than 30, some quite a bit less), it presents you with challenges of either tactical nature (when playing a power focused class) or skill (particularly when playing Vanguard the way it's meant to be played).

I'm just going by what the clock tells me. I beat the game at 32 hours and since then have been completing all the sidequests I missed as well as the DLC. (Actually I haven't even started Overlord yet).

I did spend a fair amount of time resource mining.

Oh, and I do have a 'renegade' playthrough going on the second highest difficulty ('hardcore'?). I found it to be fairly manageable up until the boss battle on Haven.

[Jon AS]

Oh, and I do have a 'renegade' playthrough going on the second highest difficulty ('hardcore'?). I found it to be fairly manageable up until the boss battle on Haven.

That's one of the two most difficult fights of the game. Lots of fun to be had there.

[Poobah]

Yeah that's a real bitch of a battle.

[Sad King Billy]

Dragon age (spoiler) question:

How the bloody hell does one kill Captain Janeway Flemeth?

I just sent my party there and it wiped the floor with me. Total party wipeout in less than a minute, and I hardly made a dent in her hp. Any help? (side-note: not complaining, considering her background, I like that she's a vicious horror that beats the living shit, puss and liver out of me without breaking a sweat. But I play to win, and no eldritch abomination will stop me, no matter what it tries to pull me).

edit: thx poobah.

[Poobah]

Dragon age (spoiler) question:

*don't read unless spoilers don't matter to you*

How the bloody hell does one kill Captain Janeway Flemeth?

I just sent my party there and it wiped the floor with me. Total party wipeout in less than a minute, and I hardly made a dent in her hp. Any help? (side-note: not complaining, considering her background, I like that she's a vicious horror that beats the living shit, puss and liver out of me without breaking a sweat. But I play to win, and no eldritch abomination will stop me, no matter what it tries to pull me).

Do spoiler tags like this [*spoiler]SPOILERS[/spoiler*] except without the *'s so it looks like this:

SPOILERS

[Sad King Billy]

[haLobEnder]

Dragon age (spoiler) question:

How the bloody hell does one kill Captain Janeway Flemeth?

I just sent my party there and it wiped the floor with me. Total party wipeout in less than a minute, and I hardly made a dent in her hp. Any help? (side-note: not complaining, considering her background, I like that she's a vicious horror that beats the living shit, puss and liver out of me without breaking a sweat. But I play to win, and no eldritch abomination will stop me, no matter what it tries to pull me).

edit: thx poobah.

Perhaps you're too low level to go up against her at the moment. Make sure you have Wynn in your party --hopefully that's not a spoiler-- to heal you and chuck bombs at her if you can.

It also helps if you can get your tank to distract her so that a rogue can get behind her and do backstab damage. I don't think there's any 'tricks' per say to killing her.

[Tyrellius]

SKB,

What level is your party at?

I kept both Flemeth and the the Dragon in the mountains as the last two encounters before heading to Redcliff and starting the final storyline. I think everyone was level 20. Alistair tanking in Tier7 Calians armour, PC dual wielding in Wardens set, Sten 2handing with the Dragonslayer2h in the Juggernaut armour and Wynn throwing down warding glyphs and dpsing from afar. Went through about 15 potent healing potions of Hard difficulty.

I found Flemeth far easier than the High Dragon as Flemth didnt randomly fly off and land on my casters. Oh and I had the dog mod so I had Cerebus nibbling on her ankles too

[Sad King Billy]

Eh, just checked: main character is level 11. Probably not quite the time to take on one of the living horror stories of this world. [/understatement]

I'll go do some more random quests then.

It's kind of funny, I'm so used to bioware (and other devs) games where the enemy is scaled to your level, getting into a situation that's lightyears out of my character's league is so strange I completely forgot the possibility that I need to turn back and train. I just automatically assumed there was some trick to the fight that I couldn't figure out (tried poison, all kinds of spells ...)

I love this game more every day.

By the way, are the main quest parts scaled? Meaning, would it have been possible to do the whole 'broken circle' quest (for example) with a character fresh out of Ostagar?

[Galactus]

It's "soft-scaled", each area has a level range of enemies and scales within that level range. (It's, IIRC, Circle, Redcliffe Village, Brecilian Forest, then Denerim, Orzammar/Deep Roads and Haven/Temple but I don't know the exact order for those) Generally speaking once you've done those first three I'd say you can finish any of the other with some patience and skill.

[The Anti-Targ]

I play video games on normal because I am bad at video games :) I'm not trolling, I really do and that's really why. I used to think I was good at them and then I met the Internet.

The fact that Shepard can be anything is what makes Mass Effect awesome.

I bet I'm worser than you. When I get God of War III I'm gonna be playing it on normal, and I'll still die A LOT. I watched my brother try to kill Hades on hard and it was a bastard of a boss battle for him, so it will be bloody impossible for me.

I just got a PSP! I found a great deal on one on Craigslist, and decided to jump on it. So far, I have FF7 Crisis Core, Wipeout Pure, Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops (some major control issues here...), Loco Roco 2, and God of War Chains of Olympus. FFT is in the mail and should arrive in a few days.

What's Crisis Core like? I have Vakyria Chronicles 2, Dissidia, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, Persona 3, and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep.

Dissidia, in my experience (not played it much) is pretty good. If you like fighters you'll like it, and if you like Final Fantasy you'll like it. Particularly if you're a big fan of the older Final Fantasy characters.

I'm not a fan of handheld gaming devices, at least not for games that involve extensive and intense play. However I've heard tell that MGS: Peacewalker is the best PSP game ever, at least that's what comes from people who like MGS type games. It's got a wee Monster Hunter / MGS mash up minigame too.

There are a lot of PSP games I'd love to play, not least of which are Valkyria 2 and 3. But My aversion to handheld devices is greater than my desire to play those games. So I am holding on to hope that when NGP comes out (or some time not too long after) Sony will make a PSP emulator available for PS3, and then I can get into those PSP games for which I've always had a hankering.

Although,there are more games specificaly for PS3 that I'd like to play than I can ever hope to play, so adding a bunch of PSP titles to what can be played on PS3 will just make that forlorn hope list that much longer.

It's partly why I can't understand people owning multiple consoles. There just aren't enough hours in a day/week/year to get through all the good games on a single platform.

[Tyrellius]

It's "soft-scaled", each area has a level range of enemies and scales within that level range. (It's, IIRC, Circle, Redcliffe Village, Brecilian Forest, then Denerim, Orzammar/Deep Roads and Haven/Temple but I don't know the exact order for those) Generally speaking once you've done those first three I'd say you can finish any of the other with some patience and skill.

I usually end up going Brecilian Forest, Denerim, Circle, Redcliffe, Haven, Orzammar. I've never had a Wolf army though :( Its kinda sad seeing that empty button in the army summon icon.

[Kosciuszko]

Dragon age (spoiler) question:

How the bloody hell does one kill Captain Janeway Flemeth?

I just sent my party there and it wiped the floor with me. Total party wipeout in less than a minute, and I hardly made a dent in her hp. Any help? (side-note: not complaining, considering her background, I like that she's a vicious horror that beats the living shit, puss and liver out of me without breaking a sweat. But I play to win, and no eldritch abomination will stop me, no matter what it tries to pull me).

edit: thx poobah.

Level up. Make sure you're on your tank for most of it for better fluidity. Make sure your party is out of Flemeth's breath. I think lots of fire resistance is also useful, IIRC. Don't lose aggro on your tank. Maybe I'm thinking of another game here but doesn't backstab damage not work on dragons?

[haLobEnder]

Level up. Make sure you're on your tank for most of it for better fluidity. Make sure your party is out of Flemeth's breath. I think lots of fire resistance is also useful, IIRC. Don't lose aggro on your tank. Maybe I'm thinking of another game here but doesn't backstab damage not work on dragons?

Oh? You're probably right. I wasn't really checking the damage bonuses from backstab, just assumed if I wasn't facing it I'd be doing more damage.

Dragon Age 2 demo releases tomorrow.

Also some early reviews of the game are coming in; Apparently PC Gamer gave it a 94%.

[Kosciuszko]

94%? I don't keep up with the review sites but that sounds quite good. I'm struggling with whether I wanna pre-order it or not now.