What Game/s are You Playing? Daily / Whenever Check :) (GAMEPLAY)

[Aussie2B]

I'm currently ready to tackle the four-wing version of Ethereal Queen in the second iteration of the post-game dungeon of Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4. I was a little nervous doing the Anima fight again, but I did clear it on my first attempt. Also managed to have all my party members alive by the end of the battle, unlike my first victory against them. Again, I only got one Moonstone, which sucks, but I'm still not sweating it. Gathering all the needed Orichalcum to make every Item Creation recipe is the bigger pain, and if I actually accomplished that prior to having all the Moonstones I need, I could just use Synthesis to turn any extra Orichalcum into Moonstones. The Orichalcum is also more annoying because, by the time you have enough to make all these different recipes, you'll probably already have the weapons they make, so there's not much reward in it. With the Moonstones, you can at least use Synthesis to make each character's strongest weapon, and since only one Item Creation recipe requires one Moonstone, I've used the additional ones I've received so far to make a couple of those.

All that said, I've put another pause on Star Ocean because I'm sick for the third time since late September, ugh. Such is life as a parent. So, out of my desire to play something more basic, I started up Game & Watch Gallery 2 on my Game Boy Advance SP. I've ended with the second, third, and fourth games in the series (not counting the Game Boy Gallery game released only in PAL regions), despite never intentially aiming to collect them, and, until now, never gave any of them much time, partially because I figured there was nothing to do in them but try to improve your scores. Now that I know there's stuff to unlock and that you can earn a credits roll and "beat" the game, it's more interesting to me. Though, it's still just a matter of scoring high enough in each variation of each game. I like that the game also goes into the history of the Game & Watch series, which I know little about. I mean, I know some bits of historicial info, like the D-pad originating with the series, but I've never owned any of them and, to the best of my recollection, have never once played one, though I did own some Tiger handhelds and what have you. I've played a little of every game on Game & Watch Gallery 2 now, and I can see why there are people nostalgic about these games. As simple as they are, some of them are pretty addicting, both the Modern versions and Classic versions. I think I like Helmet and Vermin best so far. Parachute is decent too. I'm still trying to get the hang of Modern Chef. Managing both Peach and Yoshi simultaneously throws me off. I haven't figured out Donkey Kong at all yet. I'm not sure what exactly I have to do to progress after flipping the switch. It also throws me off that Mario snaps from spot to spot, instead of the smooth movement in arcade Donkey Kong. Which you'd think I'd be fine with, considering I played a ton of the Coleco Donkey Kong tabletop back in the day, but I guess I gotta reacclimate.

[Aussie2B]

I'm pretty much over my latest cold, but I'm still playing Game & Watch Gallery 2 on my Game Boy Advance SP and have yet to return to Star Ocean. I've racked up 40-some stars, which is nothing compared to the 120 there are in total. But I believe there's a credits roll at 50 stars, so I'm not too far off from counting it as beaten. I think there's another credits roll at 120, but I don't know how that differs. I'm finding the "Easy" and "Hard" designations are kinda wacky. The Easy versions definitely start off slower (painfully so, in some cases), but they eventually speed up and don't seem much harder at that point. In fact, the first game I got over 1000 points on (and thus earning all five of its stars) was Classic Ball on Hard. The very first time I played it, I scored well over 2000, yet I'm still struggling to get more than a few hundred in Classic Ball on Easy. The other game I've got all five stars in is Modern Helmet on Hard. The only game where Easy is significantly easier for me is with Modern Chef. I'm getting better at it and enjoying it more, but I have a tough time when there's more than two adjacent columns of food. The food definitely flies around more on Hard. I still stink at Donkey Kong and have barely been touching it, though I have been improving a little and can at least clear the stage.

[Atomicfear]

my everquest proj1999 is crapping out on me. has an error ;(

[kupomogli]

Ys10 is worse than both Ys8 and 9 in nearly every way, and while I was disappointed in Ys9, there were still some things I liked better than Ys8(there were less bosses, but they were generally better on average.) The one thing I will say that I like better on Ys10 is that weapon skills appear far more balanced in usefulness. The stab into the ground on Ys8 for example is completely useless the entire game, you're never going ot use it, but the one on Ys10 is actually good whether you're doing it from the air or on the ground and interacts differently than other attacks This is based on the first three skills I've used and their usefulness.

However I've played five hours, and according to PSN, I've completed 25% of the main game. Now, that wouldn't be a problem in most cases, but most of that five hours has been text dumps. tThe dialogue is great and the characters are likeable, however this is modern day Falcom padding. This is some of the worst padding I've played in any Falcom game to date, and I've stopped playing their Trails games midway through Cold Steel 3, so I'm not sure how utterly absurd the padding gets in the later games. I'm going to throw a few comparisons out there, but one comparison I'm going to throw out there is a game that does it well, a game that doesn't feel like it's too padded despite the very reason the game existed is to flesh out the storyline of the original game, and that's Final Fantasy 7 Remake. On Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the first two chapters of the game include the Sector 1 Mako Reactor and Sector 1. These two chapters take a combined total of less than two hours. When it comes to the amount of exploration I've done in Ys10 in the first five hours, those two hours on Final Fantasy 7 Remake have more exploration, a much larger amount of video game real estate to actually explore. So despite all of the depth to the characters that were added and additional dialogue to make the charaters more likeable than they were on the original, the game is still better paced than the text dump extravaganza that's Ys10 and you actually see and do more. So the second game, and I use this one alot when comparing classic RPGs to modern RPGs, is Suikoden. Now, I won't go into too much detail and instead just name the areas that you go to, but there are a lot of things that happen in each of these areas, you explore all of thehse areas, and this is only the very first hour of the game. So you start in Gregminster Castle, Gregminster, dungeon island to meet Leknaat, Gregminster, Rockland, Bandit Hideout, Rockland, Gregminster, Lenankamp, Rockland, Lenankamp. There are at least 12 main events that happen within that first hour(there are more because more than some main events happen in each of those areas like Ted's meeting with Windy, Ted giving the Soul Eater rune to the hero and the death of Ted, and then Viktor helping the party escape from Gregminster in the last time you are in Gregminster. But the game gets straight to the point in each of these events and still finds time to make these characters important. Suikoden 2 in total is a 9-12 hour game. I know the game like the back of my hand so I can get all 108 stars in under nine hours, but for someone who doesn't getting 100% in 12 hours aside from some stars being RNG if they're there or not wasting more time. Consider that I've done nothing on Ys10 at all in comparison and you can complete the entire game of Suikoden 1 in less than twice the time.

So the last game I'm going to point out, is Ys8. Now granted, I could easily point out, Ys 1 and 2, Origin, Oath in Felghana, different classic Ys games that have a smaller storyline and are shorter games, but all of these get to the point, you get a good understanding of all the characters motives and personalities, and you really like these characters. Before Ys8, my favorite Ys was Ys Origin. It has a great storyline but yes, you do have to play through the game three times to see it all, but atleast it does have such a great replay value. However with Ys8, there's a more expanded storyline, but like Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the text dumps weren't out of control. Now, when I first played the game on the boat it was a bit rough, but once you're given control at the end of that chapter, even when the game does want to provide you a lot of story, it's it's still not too much. The Dana stuff is usually a few lines of dialogue here and there and then Dana needing to go from one area to plant a sapling to allow Adol passage through, but you're atleast given the freedom to explore during this time. The few points during Ys8 that have the most storyline and the most dialogue still haven't came close to what Ys10 has already had and that's during a few sections of the game where you repeatedly keep going back and forth between the area of the town and certain locations both in the middle of the first half of the game and at the very end of the late game. In between all of the fairly concise dialogue from modern gaming though, Ys8 just has these incredibly well designed monstrous areas to explore. The game has a total of 36 different bosses and that's not including all of Dana's bosses.

Long story short, Ys10 has an obnoxious amount of padding like modern Falcom games are known for, but that's not its only issue.

Ys10 issue is also with its gameplay which is not very good. Now again, it does have the more balanced weapon skills as I stated earlier, true, but the core gameplay is ruined just by how you play it. So they reduced the amount of playable characters from six on Ys7, Celceta, 8, and 9 to two. That's fine, it's not a big deal there. However, it's not like Adol and Karja even feel that different to play aside from Karja's main combo string being slower than Adols. So there's that going against it. In all the other games, playing nearly all the characters feels very different. But that's not even the issue here, how the characters play for the most part is fine, even if there feels like much less of a reason to change characters, but more on that later because that's included in part of its own section.

The first biggest issue to the games combat system is the new duo and defensive mechanic. Now, the one plus side to this system is that after doing a perfect guard you have a slight amount of invincibility and the enemy themselves gets staggered back to stop them from damaging you during the counterattack. That's great because, at times you can do perfect guards on Ys8 and Ys9 and just be invincible from follow up attacks. I do think Ys Celceta and 7 did it the best where your perfect guard had no invincibility. It has the exact same perfect guard that works the best, but you're not using it on easier to guard attacks then avoiding the rest of the damage or perfect guarding other hits in the middle of invincibility. So atleast with that, I give it to Ys10 combat system, because I haven't yet got to the issue with the new duo and defensive system.

So the issue with this new duo and defensive system, is that the defensive system and duo system is on R2. So think of it as its own moveset, because that's exactly what it is. You hold R2 to attack and use duo meter for your attacks and skills for your duo gauge, you don't hold anything to normally attack, and then you hold R1 for your regular moveset. Adol's regular moveset, Karja's regular moveset, and duo actions all have their own meter. There is no shared meter like there was in the other Ys games, oh no, that'd be way too simple and fun. I might actually enjoy the combat a bit more than(wlell, probably not because I haven't even got to its biggest issue.)

But seriously think about it, if you want to guard attacks you're pressing R2, which has a bit of delay going from attack to guard back to attack again unlike there being no animations in the past games, you having to hold either R2 or R1 depending on duo or single character special attacks or hold R2 or hold nothing when doing duo or single character regular attacks. The amount of mental and controller voodoo you have to perform to play this game is uncomfortable. I didn't even mention jumping, evading, and switching between the two characters. I will mention one thing with evasion though, blue attacks are unlbockable and are called "quick attacks" you have to evade them. So the game has a lot of rock, paper, scissors defensive mechanics as well always a joy to find in action games /s.

So I mentioned none of that's even the worst part of the games combat. It's all pretty bad, but bosses now have defense bars on top of their HP bars. I started the game on hard, and on the third boss, this became such a chore, among also being killed in two to three hits, that I just turned it back to normal. So Karja's normal and special attacks deal more armor damage than Adol, while Adol deals more HP damage, again, more of that rock, paper, scissors bullshit round 2. Their duo attacks also deal either more guard break damage or more HP damage. The guard break bar however is as slow to remove as damage towards the HP bar. So when you remove the guard break bar four times in the course of the boss battle, it's like the boss have five bars of HP and on hard mode it's like the guard break bar and HP amount both reduce as if the enemy difficulty was on nightmare on any other game. It's absolutely ridiculous just how much of a damage sponge these bosses are. Below is a video of me defeating three bosses in nightmare on Ys8, but that's the thing, if I wanted to play nightmare difficulty on Ys10 and have damage sponge bosses, I'd play nightmare difficulty, not having super damage sponge bosses because of this garbage guard break mechanic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtH6OOY5nJw

You want to see a guard break mechanic that works well, that isn't a chore to play through and just allows you to deal more damage while staggering enemies? A guard break mechanic that actually gives you the benefit of dealing more damage after breaking their guard. You have the opportunity to break their guard faster by using break skills during certain points and then going all out during the window of opportunity that their guard is broken. Even if you're not very good, the guard break still builds up, so you can still go all out when their guard is broken getting the benefit of the extra damage, but on Ys8 it's like, hey, here's four extra HP bars.

https://youtu.be/G0y3YWnQTCs?t=1608

[Aussie2B]

I'm sitting at exactly 50 stars in Game & Watch Gallery 2, which I'm still playing on my Game Boy Advance SP despite the battery really seeming to be on its last legs now, and I'm wondering how much more I want to keep playing it. I don't know if I have it in me to aim for all 120 stars. I'm lucky to get a few stars each play session, and I've probably already picked most of the low-hanging fruit. It felt like it took a decent effort just to hit 50, and the rewards taper off after this point too. They came every five stars before, but now it's every ten, and then later every 20. The only particularly interesting award left is the King Koopa version of Modern Ball, at 100 stars, but each version of Modern Ball is harder than the last, and I've yet to get particularly good at even the initial Yoshi version, as I haven't found it as fun as many of the other games and thus haven't touched any version of Modern Ball much. The other rewards add some more games to the Museum, but that's a lost cause anyway, with a whopping 16 entries requiring linking up with the first Game & Watch Gallery, which I don't even own.

I have gotten all five stars from a couple more games, and I'm really liking Modern Chef now. There are a bunch of games where I can get roughly in the 700-900 range, but it's kinda frustrating putting in the time to get the score that high but still fall short of hitting 1000 and earning all five stars. It just takes practice of course, but with limited gaming time, I don't know how much practice I want to put in.

[kupomogli]

Dropped Ys10 at 50% of the way in. After hitting around 8-10 hours, I started to skim dialogue and even then it was constant cutscenes throughout the game. It doesn't end at opening, it is constant, even 50% of the way through the game. After 10 hours, I started reading the first five lines and if they didn't quickly get to some sort of point that they're trying to make, I'd skip the dialogue completely, and as you can probably, I've skipped everything since. I'm not going to skim through 10 minutes of dialogue to find out there's nothing relevant or interesting, I'm certainly not going to sit through the regular and constant 20-30 minute cutscenes.

I then thought, why the hell am I just playing through this game just to show I've played it to completion. Because the gameplay is trash, the level design is trash, and then the game is padded out AF and it's well written, but there's nothing there, it's just fluff. Constant amounts of fluff.

So I quit playing Ys10 and I actually started another game that's quite similar, but this one is actually good.

Granblue Fantasy Relink. So dialogue is what you'd expect in classic RPGs. They get to the points while still making characters who are likeable. The game is short though, it's maybe 15+ hours, so it's not unnecessarily long and padded out, but apparently that's where the end game content starts, because there's a decent single player storyline with some great gameplay.

Whenever you play through quests however, you're either playing through waves or boss battles. This is similar to Monster Hunter, but more closer to a game like Soul Sacrifice as bosses are in one large area as the game itself is a linear game. There's no running back and forth whenever the boss escapes, it's just straight up defeat the boss.

Now, I haven't played Granblue Fantasy, but I have played Dissidia Opera Omnia and the weapon and skill progression is pretty much like that game. You'll get materials to upgrade your weapons, and then you max your weapons levels out. You keep all the weapons(although you can sell them) because you can level them all up. Each of them has a unique quality to them, additionally, as you level them up you can gain permanent stat buffs to your characters, so end game it'll be vital to your end game MMO like progression.

The game does start you out with having six characters to use, but as you progress through the game you'll get member cards. There are 14 different non DLC characters that have their own combat, so it's like using 20 different weapon styles in a Monster Hunter. I've only unlocked one of the 14 characters because I've noticed that the other characters masteries will automatically build alongside your own character progression, so mastering everything first allows you to get characters that you will have sort of prebuilt without having to spend all that time leveling them up. So save your character cards and play through the ones that you start with and then use the others end game, atleast if you want to use all of them and don't want to spend more time grinding them up because you got them early.

The progression and combat are the best part of the game so I'm interested in continuing once I get to end game. I have a friend that has already finished the game so thankfully I'll have someone to play with at that point.

So combat is like a DMC lite. For those who have played Castlevania Curse of the Moon, the combat is similar to that, that's pretty much the games very core part of the combat. Most characters have a single combo and triangle will determine a finisher attack at the end of whatever attack you're at, including double and triple finishers. Pressing X then Square will lead into a launcher, you have aerial combos, you can defend or evade, but perfect defending and perfect evasion will add limited time bonuses. Your triangle button is a unique skill for each character. The main character can use an attack with it, or charge it into three powered up versions and you can charge and move(as well as run) around as it's charging. Then much like Draogn Quest Heroes and modern Ys, holding R1 will allow you to press any of the face buttons to use a special attack. The special attacks don't use MP or energy though, each skill is set on a cool down so there's no spamming your best attacks repeatedly, it is more strategic in your use. Sometimes your characters will trigger a link attack requiring all linked characters to press o during a call out for additional damage.

This is a pretty good game. It's really enjoyable and thep rogression is actually really enjoyable tbh. I loved Dissidia Opera Omnia and if they can do it here, I'd really like to see a offline version much like Mega Man X Dive.

[Aussie2B]

I'm now up to 70 stars in Game & Watch Gallery 2 on my Game Boy Advance SP, so I'm still maintaining a decent rate of progress, adding a few stars every night. For that, I earned two more Museum entries. If I can hit 80, I'll get the last of the Museum entries I can unlock without linking up with the first G&W Gallery. After that, only the King Koopa version of Modern Ball and the cast credits remain as rewards, but having to earn 20 additional stars for each sounds tiresome. I've gotten the max stars in both versions of Modern Chef. That one became quite fun once I got the hang of it. And believe it or not, I got max stars in both versions of Modern Donkey Kong, but not because I mastered the normal method of playing them, haha. I had read that stomping koopa troopas is the best way to rack up points in Modern Donkey Kong, and the in-game hint recommends stomping them too. (It would help if these in-game hints weren't so Engrishy, though.) So I tried hanging out at the bottom of the screen, and sure enough, you can easily rack up hundreds with barely having to do anything but jump. As long as your timing is decent and you keep an eye on how close the barrels are and adjust accordingly, there isn't too much threat, and you can rack up over 1000 points without so much as seeing Donkey Kong, let alone clearing the stage even once. Classic Donkey Kong doesn't have koopa troopas, though, so I guess I'll have to get good at repeatedly clearing the stage for those.

[celerystalker]

I spent most of what little time I've had the last 6 weeks playing Romancing Saga 3 remaster on the PS4. I included it in a Play-Asia order of Christmas presents to get over the free shipping threshold, and it really got its hooks into me. I've had the Super Fmicom original for a couple of decades, but being able to play it in english has been tremendous.

It has some very cryptic systems for not including any kind pf manual in this version, but once I got into it, it has become a top 5 JRPG for me. The sheer variety in ways it can be played it wild, especially for a game around 30 years old. It's Square at its very peak era to me, and is such a wonderful blend of simple and convoluted that it made me want to get under the surface of things. The way it can be played in nearly any order and can as a result have different available scenarios is neat amd ahead of its time. The 8 different main characters with differing prologues amd access to certain areas, quests, and systems is refreshing, and the fact that the games has two completely fleshed out battle systems and massive mini games (the business buyout to financially cripple the bad guys and war game when you play as Duke of Loanne) can make separate playthroughs feel almost like a new game. The fact that it can take a concept like party formations and integrate it into both a standard JRPG battle system of the time and in the unique commander mode in ways that have commonalities and completely unique functions in both shows some truly thoughtful design.

I did two full playthroughs (Thomas and Katarina), and enjoyed both immensely. The final bosses are genuinely pretty tough, though they can feel a bit infair sometimes. The New Game+ is executed better than in amy other JRPG I've ever played. You can start one even from an incomplete save file, carrying over all stats (save for HP), spells, and non-quest related equipment. You also carry over any skills you mastered, and can assign them to your new party immediately. There are nearly 30 playable party members and 8 possible main characters, so you can experiment each time, and can assigned mastered skills to anyone, instantly catching up new characters you haven't used extensively as viable in new runs.

I loved it, if you can't tell, and think it's head and shoulders above the rest of the SaGa series given its aesthetic and becoming slightly more user friendly. I'm taking a break from it for awhile, but I'll be back for the remaining characters. It also gave me an excuse to use my Vita for a bit for remote play while my wife was watching horrible teen dramas as she likes to do this time of year (I like to watch shows with her, but I can't take Riverdale
Yuck.)

[kupomogli]

Romancing SaGa 3

I thought I loved the SaGa games, but it appears to me the only SaGa games I can really get into are the ones that are more linear in their approach, and I do include SaGa Frontier when stating this as there are a few major side quests but the game itself is very linear otherwise.

For many different reasons I didn't like Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song, Romancing SaGa 3, Scarlet Grace, and Emerald Beyond. Emerald Beyond it was too linear, but at the same time it was heavily trial and error because let's say you fight a specific enemy and bam, that enemy was far more powerful than you and you just couldn't even hope to win.

And that's the problem I had with Romancing SaGa 3. The prologue of the game when I played it was great, but then you get past the prologue and you start doing these side quests. So I'd get to the side quest with this horde of rats, you can go back to the one person to get an item that will damage them every turn, but even then, I couldn't kill them, I even came back later and still couldn't kill them. I do this other side quest where I get brought into this dream world, can't defeat the boss. Another side quest where I go to this glacier area and fight this giant fish boss with the Minstrel, can't beat him, I actually defeated the other element but when I went back to Undine I was required to fight her too for some reason and couldn't beat her, I couldn't beat this dragon.

Like, the game did not tell me where to go and I had no clue what to do so I kept going to every location and spoke to everyone and started doing all these side quests and bam, brick wall.

I honestly think that Romancing SaGa 3 is a terrible game because you either know exactly what to do or you don't and the game is massively, MASSIVELY trial and error. And I absolutely can't stand when games make a game trial and error because that means that every time I can't progress I have to leave that area, get all the way out of the dungoen, a dungeon where the enemies were all stupidly easy but I could not progress because an overpowered boss. When I get more powerful I go attempt it again, fail, and again have to make my way all the way back out again. So each time I'm wasting huge chunks of time going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth because. It just isn't fun going through this massive amount of time wasting trial and error.

If it was possible to actually win, then sure, I wouldn't mind the game. Think of a Bloodborne or a Souls or whatever, where it's a hard battle but you actually overcome it, but in Romancing SaGa 3, often times it's not even remotely possible to defeat the boss because of sheer numbers. You can't exact win if enemies deal AoE damage that defeats your party in one or two hits. The only reason I did so for the fire element is because I did a formation in the front row and the AoE didn't hit everyone, just that front row, and I focused on healing that character and eventually won, but every other boss just had an insurmountable amount of HP and damage that it just wasn't happening.

I will even state that let's say that I did suffer through all the trial and error. Let's say that I eventually memorized everything, memorized exactly how to play through the game without any trouble whatsoever. My opinion would be the same and if I was to give sort of an explanation on my feelings of the game, even if I can finish the game without any issues afterwards, I actually rarely ever forget anything, and my thoughts on how good a game is remain based on all of my experiences. I would definitely refernce how the game is better during replays and at that point it "may" be a great game, but I'd say that overall it is a bad game and that's my opinion on Romancing SaGa 3. The opinion won't change but maybe one day I'll replay it, skip all of these side quests until I move beyond and find where I should actually go(which btw I couldn't find out where to go either despite feeling like I've been on every map I possibly could. Again, more trial and error. But that would be my opinion of the game an absurd amount of trial and error of a game that may or may not become good.

I have the exact same opinion I did of Dark Souls way back when. It's the only Dark Souls that I don't like, replayed it, thoughts are the exact same. This is despite liking Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, and aside from the open world, Elden Ring.

Anyways, thought I'd just give a reply to that.

[kupomogli]

So on Granblue Fantasy Relink I finished the main game, chapter 0, and I finished off all of the games quests after chapter 0 including this extremely difficult one called The Final Report. This is definitely a great game that I'd rate a 7/10. It's a bit lacking in terms of content for a Monster Hunter type game as you have around 15 bossses, not counting a few elemental variations of two different bosses and each new difficulty the bosses will do some new attacks but it almost feels like only until the hardest difficulty do they actually feel differnt(outside of raw stats and damage output.)

The combat is great, the party system is great, and building up your characters both the character you'll be using and your allies is a lot of fun. There are 18 different usable characters and each character has a unique mechanic attached to them, whether it's one character that can build up an attack charge meter based on how many perfect attacks you get in a row, another character that can do a full combo finisher provided all of the attacks are perfect, a character who's last hit of the combo will send her into the air and then you can do aerial dives towards the enemy and as long as you press the square button just as you hit the enemy during the dive you'll do a backflip to repeat the process over and over while three hits will reach full power allowing for her triangle attack to deal a large amount of damage or continue to just keep the aerial dives going.

Unfortunately the AI is a bit stupid and you'll really want to cherry pick characters that will work best for the AI. The AI will barely attack, they'll never use their unique properties, they will spam their special attacks the moment they become of use, so the best AI characters to use are those with ranged and support as those characters will deal the most damage.
.
Now what's really cool about the game's party system is actually the gacha mechanic. So the games gacha and customization are actually great because it's not using it as a paywall to force an absurd grind. So each of your weapons you can craft to increase their levels and if don't want to battle the bosses that give you the items for these upgrades, you've likely earned enough items to purchase these through the knick knack trading shop. You just trade the items, purchase the weapons, and then trade the items to uncap the weapons. That's when you get soul stones to place on weapons or sigils to add on your characters and these allow you to fine tune the customization of your characters.

For instance, one character I used during The Final Report in a way I never used him normally(infact I dropped him off my team at the end game and used other characters,) was Gran. So Gran has a ton of attacks that allow him to be used offensively or as a support. Now offensively I think he kind of sucks, but as a support I think he's the best character in the game, because I built him as a tank, gave him defensive and recovery skills, and then gave him a skill that he increases his defense by 50% and takes damage in place of my other allies. I then gave him sigils to decrease the amount of damage received, decreased the cooldown time of his skills, increased his HP, and also HP regen so that he just naturally regained any of his lost health.

Now of course many sigils are more valuable than others, so ones that rely on situational type things are ones that immediately don't use, but there's depth in the character customization through these sigils. To me though it's more so, how much defense do you want over attack, but there are characters that benefit from charge attacks, characters that benefit from finisher attacks, damage cap increases because as a gacha game once you hit the damage cap it doesn't matter how much you deal you're going to be stuck at that damage, etc.

I defeated the games hardest boss on The Final Report quest in a bit over 50 hours and every other quest after seems easier. I haven't did everything, I've only done a few, including one where you fought three bosses with level 125, but it seems like that one boss was where it's safe to drop the game as you've pretty much did it all. Just to let you know, you had to fight the games final boss again, but two points during the battle you had to break the boss or you had to deal the last 10% of HP against the boss. If in these two points you didn't deal the damage threshold, then it was game over because the boss would do an ultimate attack that didn't deal any damage, just gave you an instant faiil, and that 10% HP you had to deal at the end that did take a good deal of grinding and sigils to get extra damage out of my character's ultimates. Now, you have to change to hold SBA for your characters not to use their ultimates, but I do think maybe if you were to remove hold SBA when the boss is going into his final attack that it might actually be easier to hit that 10% because there's a circle that gives the player a chance to use theirs as each of your party members can combo the SBA to then do a super ultimate, and if you wait for that circle to go down you have a lot more time to deal attacks in between, because your AI allies will not use theirs until the circle goes all the way down, giving you a chance to do yours, and essentially allowing you to get a little bit of extra time without these being done just back to back. I did not try that, but I think that would have been enough to not require the sigil grinding to get that extra 2% I couldn't deal.

[celerystalker]

I thought I loved the SaGa games, but it appears to me the only SaGa games I can really get into are the ones that are more linear in their approach, and I do include SaGa Frontier when stating this as there are a few major side quests but the game itself is very linear otherwise.

For many different reasons I didn't like Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song, Romancing SaGa 3, Scarlet Grace, and Emerald Beyond. Emerald Beyond it was too linear, but at the same time it was heavily trial and error because let's say you fight a specific enemy and bam, that enemy was far more powerful than you and you just couldn't even hope to win.

And that's the problem I had with Romancing SaGa 3. The prologue of the game when I played it was great, but then you get past the prologue and you start doing these side quests. So I'd get to the side quest with this horde of rats, you can go back to the one person to get an item that will damage them every turn, but even then, I couldn't kill them, I even came back later and still couldn't kill them. I do this other side quest where I get brought into this dream world, can't defeat the boss. Another side quest where I go to this glacier area and fight this giant fish boss with the Minstrel, can't beat him, I actually defeated the other element but when I went back to Undine I was required to fight her too for some reason and couldn't beat her, I couldn't beat this dragon.

Like, the game did not tell me where to go and I had no clue what to do so I kept going to every location and spoke to everyone and started doing all these side quests and bam, brick wall.

I honestly think that Romancing SaGa 3 is a terrible game because you either know exactly what to do or you don't and the game is massively, MASSIVELY trial and error. And I absolutely can't stand when games make a game trial and error because that means that every time I can't progress I have to leave that area, get all the way out of the dungoen, a dungeon where the enemies were all stupidly easy but I could not progress because an overpowered boss. When I get more powerful I go attempt it again, fail, and again have to make my way all the way back out again. So each time I'm wasting huge chunks of time going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth because. It just isn't fun going through this massive amount of time wasting trial and error.

If it was possible to actually win, then sure, I wouldn't mind the game. Think of a Bloodborne or a Souls or whatever, where it's a hard battle but you actually overcome it, but in Romancing SaGa 3, often times it's not even remotely possible to defeat the boss because of sheer numbers. You can't exact win if enemies deal AoE damage that defeats your party in one or two hits. The only reason I did so for the fire element is because I did a formation in the front row and the AoE didn't hit everyone, just that front row, and I focused on healing that character and eventually won, but every other boss just had an insurmountable amount of HP and damage that it just wasn't happening.

I will even state that let's say that I did suffer through all the trial and error. Let's say that I eventually memorized everything, memorized exactly how to play through the game without any trouble whatsoever. My opinion would be the same and if I was to give sort of an explanation on my feelings of the game, even if I can finish the game without any issues afterwards, I actually rarely ever forget anything, and my thoughts on how good a game is remain based on all of my experiences. I would definitely refernce how the game is better during replays and at that point it "may" be a great game, but I'd say that overall it is a bad game and that's my opinion on Romancing SaGa 3. The opinion won't change but maybe one day I'll replay it, skip all of these side quests until I move beyond and find where I should actually go(which btw I couldn't find out where to go either despite feeling like I've been on every map I possibly could. Again, more trial and error. But that would be my opinion of the game an absurd amount of trial and error of a game that may or may not become good.

I have the exact same opinion I did of Dark Souls way back when. It's the only Dark Souls that I don't like, replayed it, thoughts are the exact same. This is despite liking Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, and aside from the open world, Elden Ring.

Anyways, thought I'd just give a reply to that.

I can understand that. I didn't really run into those problems myself, though a manual, even digital, would be hepful. For the rats, I used attacks like Twist and Turn and Giant Swing that hurt all enemies, and killed it without knowing there was an item to get to make it easier. Using the right formation for the situation makes a huge difference, though the game doesn't really explain it. Also, sparking and mastering the right wards makes a huge difference, completely netralizing a lot of attacks, as well astons of equipment that netralize elemental attacks.

Basically, learning the right loadout and formation is integral to success, but the game definitely doesn't give players a lot of tips. I went into it completely blind, and it took awhile to wrap my hands around it. I can totally see where some might find it off-putting. For me, it kinda worked.

[Aussie2B]

It drives me nuts when games don't even include digital manuals, even more so for games that weren't designed from the beginning to explain everything in-game (considering Super Famicom games came with paper manuals). I guess I may want to check some FAQs whenever I get around to Romancing SaGa 2 and 3, both of which I bought when their recent-ish localizations launched (not the new remake of RS2, though). And I've been sitting on the Super Famicom originals a long time too, having not played those either. It's kinda funny at this point how many Super Famicom games I bought because they were Japan-exclusive that have gotten localized since. Not a complaint at all, though. I love seeing Japan-only games finally officially released in English. But before I explore the SaGa series further, I still have to play through Final Fantasy Legend 3.

Anyway, as for what I have been playing, my rate of progress in Game & Watch Gallery 2 on my Game Boy Advance SP definitely slowed down after I hit around 75 stars, to the point where was lucky to add even one additional star each night, so my rate of playing the game at all also dropped, as I'm not keen on using up my limited gaming time each night on a session that could well result in zero progress. So I got back to Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PlayStation 4 briefly, and I'm now sitting before the final, six-winged form of Gabriel Celeste. However, I got sick for the fourth time in the last three months, blegh, so I went back to Game & Watch Gallery 2 and have worked my way up to 80 stars. Now there's nothing more I can get for the Museum, even though it's only one third full. I'm skeptical that I won't drop the game before hitting 100 stars, but we'll see. There are still quite a few games/modes where I'm not good enough to get more than one or two stars out of them, but they're just not clicking with me.

[Aussie2B]

I got one more star in Game & Watch Gallery 2 on my Game Boy Advance SP some days ago, but I've mostly dropped the game at this point.

I've been trying to finish off the last few things I want to do in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness so I can finally retire that for the time being too. I'm still having fun with it overall, but I've been sticking with this game for so long now, albeit with many breaks. I wanted to start fresh in 2025, but it doesn't really make a difference if I continue to tie up loose ends for a bit. The sticking point for me right now is the boss Bloodbane. I can beat it no problem, but its drops are the only way in the entire game to obtain the Dragon God Scale item. I need one to make the last Item Creation recipe I've yet to do, and the RNG hasn't been kind to me. I didn't get one my first two runs through the post-game dungeon, and on this third run, I've been reloading and have tried four times already. What's weird is that the strategy guide claims there's a 1% chance of getting the Levantine sword as a drop (otherwise you can obtain it via Synthesis, which I've already done), and out of those six battles against Bloodbane, I've had Levantine drop three times. I know sometimes people get lucky, but it seems to me that there's no way it could be 1%. Maybe the guide left off a second digit. There are a lot of drops in the post-game dungeon that have a roughly 10-20% chance. The Dragon God Scale is 18%, if I recall correctly, and yet still nada. Beyond that, I'm sitting at 99% completion of the enemy and item encyclopedias, and I've hit the max level of 255 with Relia, with the others not far behind. At this point, I mostly just need to defeat six-winged Ethereal Queen and farm a few more pieces of Orichalcum and Moonstone and I'm done. I should be able to accomplish that without having to even beat Gabriel Celeste again, I hope.

[calthaer]

Reading through these and feel bad that Aussie2B is the only person posting.

Daunting for me to post thought because I have to actually face my compulsive switching. It's rare that a game just grabs me and I play it all the way through to completion - I often get bored ~50% of the way there on an hours-long game and I'm ready to switch. I really wish they made more games that lasted 10 hours and no more. The maps are too big, too many unlockables, etc.

Over the past few months I've played:

The Last Spell - really like this...but it's a rogue-like, so you have to beat something and then go beat it again
Heroes of Might & Magic III - going through a campaign...slowly
Ion Fury - like an old Duke Nukem but man is it long
Red Alert 2 - There was an error with one of the cut scenes and the game stopped working
Baldur's Gate - playing off-and-on for the past two years with a friend
DarkQuest
Gloomhaven - Can get pretty frustrating
Path of Exile 2
Hand of Fate 2
Diablo IV Expansion

and there are other games waiting in the wings...some of these I haven't picked up in months or sometimes years:
Salt & Sanctuary
Advance Wars 2
Odin Sphere
Final Fantasy 9
Thief 3: Deadly Shadows
Artifact Adventure
Fallout
Gauntlet: Slayer Edition
Cobalt Core - have "beaten" the main game but not unlocked everything
Metroid Prime (the Wii disc with all three of them on it)

One of these days I'll get all these done, but I get 10-15 hours in and then I'm ready for the game to end and it doesn't.

[Aussie2B]

Haha, it's no problem. It's great when others participate, but I don't mind when the topic temporarily turns into my own personal gaming blog, haha. In fact, I periodically copy and paste the posts I make in this topic into Word files I have, creating a gaming journal going all the way back to 2004. It's fun to look back on my experiences with games over the years, and I can search the files to quickly look up what I thought of a particular game. It's also tremendously helpful if I want to return to a game eventually to do more and need a refresher on what I did and didn't already do.

I wouldn't worry about how much you play a game either. I mean, I've often listed off games I newly bought and briefly tested out for probably 30 minutes tops. It's definitely not a topic just for talking about games we're playing to completion. And I know what you mean about games being too long. A short length is a selling point to me. Unfortunately, sometimes I start a game and think it can be banged out quick, only to end up with a bigger commitment than I expected. Like with Game & Watch Gallery 2, it's listed as just a couple hours long on How Long to Beat, and, sure, if you're already familiar with the games and good at them, it wouldn't take long to rack up enough stars to earn the credits, but for someone new to the games, it'd probably take way more time than that to practice and improve enough.

Anyway, as far as gameplay goes, I'm effectively done with Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4. I got enough Orichalcum to have every Item Creation recipe made and to complete my Item Encyclopedia. I thought six-winged Ethereal Queen would complete my Enemy Encyclopedia, but then I discovered that I missed a dumb little imp in Chapters 4-5. The final version of Ethereal Queen was definitely harder than the previous ones, but I still beat her on my first attempt. Even with my whole party at the max level, the Anima fight is still harder. No matter how strong a single enemy is, a six (or seven, if you want to count Relia)-versus-one battle is gonna be in your favor to some degree. Six (or seven) versus six is a lot harder to manage. I also maxed out everything that takes skill points, though I didn't learn every role because some are tied to the in-game Battle Trophies. Since a number of Battle Trophies are cumulative and they carry over from one file to the next (same as the encyclopedias), I don't see a point in concerning myself much with them now. If I ever play through the harder difficulties (which is a must if I ever wanted to pursue the platinum PSN trophy), then I'd get closer to earning the remaining Battle Trophies while doing that. I did earn 66% of them, though. The only other thing I could do is try to level up my moves and spells more, but that would be incredibly tedious and there's no real reward in doing so. I think Air Slash is the only one I maxed, as I just spam that with Fidel from a safe distance during most boss battles. What I do want to still load up the game for is to read the messages from Augury (now that I finally maxed that) and check out the lore stuff in the Glossary.

[YoshiM]

Been on a hiatus. I missed the red-and-black of the site.

@kupomogli-I DID play Nightmare Creatures but this aging brain can't remember if I liked it or not. I'll have to revisit.

I've been playing a lot of Atari 2600 lately as I decided to try out Atari Age's latest High Score competition. Played a bunch of stuff I never touched before from commercial to indie/homebrew stuff. I discovered I have a weird issue with spamming something for points, like punching monkeys and running around on the first board for the fruit/whatzits for extra points (which was allowed) in "Kangaroo". I never really did that before, as I prefer to just progress normally and try and rack up points that way.

I picked up an Atari 7800+ as part of my "future proofing" my ability to play my cartridges. Yeah, it's an emulation box but it merges the two universes of ease of use with modern TVs. I played it more at work, trying out "Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest" followed by games I picked up using store credit or local Chamber of Commerce cash-"Xenophobe" and "Choplifter". "BBCC" is pretty cool with it aping the control concept from Super Mario Bros. but the included pad style controller was NOT designed for that style of play (hold down one button and then cross over to jump with the next button). I have to hold the controller with my right hand pinching the right side with my thumb on the bottom and my index and middle fingers over the buttons on top. After doing that, I could actually progress in the game! I always loved "Xenophobe" in the arcade and the 7800 version is pretty dang close to that. The NES version plain sucked IMO. And "Choplifter" is just balls-hard with this port, more like "drive nails through said extremities into a 2X4". I'm used to the SMS version, but the 7800 is out to frickin' KILL YOU DEAD. I have not had a chance to play it at home as my HDMI-to-Composite adapter does not work with the system.

On the more modern side, I DID beat the main quest in Skyrim for PC. I married Lydia, bought that house in Whiterun and adopted the orphan girl that hangs around that town. I set it down for now. I also plowed through "Alan Wake". To paraphrase Dale Cooper from "Twin Peaks" (which I have watched the first two seasons in the past few months for the first time), "This is a damn fine game". I found it's rare for me to go back and replay a "modern" game I beat, but this one just called to me. Steam Deck made playing that easy. I'm not sure if I'll play "Alan Wake: American Nightmare". What I did play of it years back just felt like I was playing just levels rather than an ongoing adventure like the first.

Switch side I got into the game "Horace" based on a review on Nintendo Life. It was on that big year-end sale Nintendo had. I love it-great retro feel, tough and frustrating, but pleasantly so (if that makes sense). If I get stuck, I keep going at it knowing its me that's the problem. You don't have lives (thanks to Horace the robot's "Lazarus Chip") but it does keep track of deaths. Give it a check-it's for sure on the eShop and also on Steam.

[Aussie2B]

I did read all the messages given via Augury in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on PlayStation 4, or at least I kept mashing through them until I went a long time without seeing anything new. If there was anything I missed, oh well. Some of them were decently amusing. I still haven't read the stuff in the Glossary, but I began my next game anyway. I decided to start up PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe for PSP. I figure it's a sufficiently big enough change of pace for me, especially considering I have little experience with the tower defense genre in general. In fact, I think most of my experience with that kind of gameplay comes from mini-games in other types of games, rather than full games designed as tower defense. Stuff like the final challenge in htoL#NiQ and the fort battle in Final Fantasy VII. It's funny that, despite decades of gaming and exploring so many different genres, there are still genres I have minimal experience with. It was a year ago when I played through Rock Boshers DX, which had to be the first twin-stick shooter I ever beat, so I think it's a fair time to dig into something else that's fresh to me.

[kupomogli]

I don't post as much because generally it's going to be the same games or I just forget about the site and jump on every once in awhile. Everything I post is modern though because while I have a classic collection of games, I don't really have anything set up. I'm a bit too unorganized to make the space around my television clean and orderly and I really don't have enough room to have SDTVs at all, well, I do, but that'd mean I'd have to clean my back rooms and just thinking of how long that'd be to get them cleaned up rather than just be rooms for storing boxes and I immediately lose interest. So really I just post modern games and that's it. Eventually I'll get to cleaning those rooms out one day and I'll get back to all these games I've collected or still collect.

A few recent games I've bought is I actually purchased a lot of all of the Japanese Gundam games on PS3. I already owned Gundam Breaker and Gundam vs Gundam Extreme Vs. i used to own a few others including the western version of Gundam Target in Sight but I ended up selling some. Well, now I own them all, this includes all of the Musou games which is a series of games I just don't like(I didn't like the Gundam ones either back in the day) but maybe my tastes have changed or maybe my distaste for some of the modern day mechanics will give me a little more interest in these other games that just didn't appeal to me back then. I do happen to enjoy Dragon Quest Heroes 1 and 2, the second one not as much buut the first one because it was so much more like a tower defense game with zooming back and forth to each of the areas, so maybe Dynasty Warriors Gundam?

It was during this time that I also decided to finally purchase Gihren's Greed Menace of Axis on the PSP. Menace of Axis is apparently the best one, slightly worse with still images instead of animations when compared to PS2 but this was the last iteration of the series that they released before releasing the title New Gihren's Greed, so it had more content than every other game. So I know how the formula works with their games because I bought every single Gundam Battle game starting with Gundam Battle Royale, which each new game was like an expansion on the previous game, however with Gihren's Greed Menace of Axis, there was actually a second release titled Giren No Yabou: Axis No Kyoui V. So the original's main draw was nearly every single group that participated in any of the wars and every single person who ever piloted a mobile suit in these groups were included within the game. The V version of the game included a few more scenarios with other groups in Zeta Gundam that weren't included in the original. This version is pretty expensive though, so I decided to just purchasae the base version of Menace of Axis on the PSP, mint condition for around $20. I'm fine not having this additional group and the extra scenarios.

As someone who really likes Gundam games, as somewhat of a fan of some of the shows but more so being my favorite AA video game franchise, this was always a game that I always wanted to own but I never purchased until recently.

----------

As for what I'm playing, I've came back to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth after a long hiatus when quitting the game at Costa Del Sol, shortly into chapter six. Right now I'm on chapter 13 out of 14 and after completing the game, I'll have done 99% of all content. I've missed a missable match of Queen's Blood in Upper Junon, and I'm not going to play through another 16 races in the garbage fire that is called Chocobo Racing. And I'll never be able to platinum the game what with the requirement of getting an A and S rank in every song on the piano or Loveless play. This is despite getting the highest rank in the parade or platinuming a game like Theatrhythm Final Bar Line.

I absolutely love Final Fantasy 7 Remake and I think it's "as good' as Final Fantasy 7 for the PS1. I don't have the same feeling that some people do that "you're only playing through part of the storyline, therefore you're not playing an entire game." You're playing through the entire game of Final Fantasy 7 Remake which just happens to be a portion of the story of Final Fantasy 7. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth took throw away characters like Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie and made them characters that are just as important and memorable as any of the main cast, a group of characters who's death in the Sector 7 radio tower was more impactful than the original Final Fantasy 7 and deaths that were more impactful than even the death of Aerith on the original Final Fantasy 7. The dialogue and mannerisms of the characters were much more pronounced so Aerith's personality stood out far more in the first game, a character that is now an actual rival for your interest over Tifa which was one of the intents in the first game.

Then there is the combat of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, a game that took something as simple as the ATB system and pushed it into a real time combat skill based combat system with a paused based system with a special attack meter. This added so much more depth than the original game as the skill based gameplay allowed you to still deal damage and perhaps build this special attack meter up faster based on your actions and then depending on the spells or attacks used, you'd you'd deal damage, pressure the enemy, increase their break damage, etc.

But again, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a worse game in every way, including the combat which actually has more depth but really is much worse. I'll start off with by far, the worst part of the game however, and that's the game's padding. Now, the open world is one thing, but I didn't even mean just the open world. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is padded to an absurd degree. As early as chapter one, the game will put you at a grinding halt and tell you to explore Nibleheim giving you a large blue circle until you trip over what the game wants you to do to progress. This is only the first time the game has you do what's going to become a long running staple of just how the game pads the experience out and disrespects your time. The open world itself is mostly empty but has you taking long portions of time not just explore just that open world, but get to general story areas themselves, and I mean "long" portions of time. A lot of quests, nearly all of them, will require you to run through long sections of the open world in what's often following or finding a designated spot from the game. The unique open world areas called intel are 20 different locations in each open world area that will take you on average 30 minutes each to find them all in each area.

The biggest problem with the open world itself is just how much that's important within the game that's locked behind this open world. There are many materia that you won't get if you don't put in a lot of time finding these unique locations, there's a lot of enemies you'll never fight or experience, you won't get any of the enemy skills as you're required to fight and unlock VR battles where enemy skills are your reward, and there's unique events by completing certain open world intel. In Cosmo Canyon, what took me around 14 hours to fully complete, had cutscenes where Barret and Tifa remember Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie and going through each of these side quests had some of the most memorable cutscenes in the game imo as it felt so much like all of the dialogue and events in Final Fantasy 7 Remake over the events in Rebirth. Made me think about just how much of a better game Final Fantasy 7 Remake was but also had me think about just how much I loved the interactions with those characters throughout the game.

Was any of the time worth it? Was the 60 hours minimum that I put the time into finishing all these open worl side content worth it? Well, yes and no. The silvering lining is that Final Fantasy 7 Remake despite not being the best looking game, is probably by design one of the most beautiful open world games I've ever seen, because despite all of this wasted time, the world was explorable, all of these pieces of "intel" really required searching thoroughly through each of these open world areas, but it was also extremely padded, 30 minutes on average if not more for very little actual pay off.

The tone to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth throughout the game was kind of bad. It wasn't at all like Final Fantasy 7 or even Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. It was more like a celebration of Final Fantasy 7 as everywhere you went in the game was like a party. Even the areas like lower Junon and Corel did nothing to change this mood. Yuffie was a side character thrown into the game, but she became nothing more than a character for the recurring theme of let's hurry up and get me my materia, either that or getting sick during each new form of transportation. Aerith really felt like she had no representation outside of Costa Del Sol, like she was more as a background characters rather than anything, despite at this time not being a background character. Cloud, Barret, and Red 13 seemed to be more highlighted than any character in the game and Tifa and Cait Sith seemed to have equally high apparence in the game. It just felt more like, there wasn't really all that much happening with the characters throughout the game, probably because there was just so much of the game that they had to get through compared to Midgar. The game is at it's core longer than Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but it doesn't feel like any of it was equally well designed.

Now for the combat which is better, yet somehow much worse, than Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Now I'm going to go into detail about Cloud since he's received the most significant upgrade and is the best character in the game. Not the most damaging though, that definitely goes to Tifa, but the best character. So in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Cloud had a normal attack combo string, a punisher attack combo string, each of these could be held to do an either aoe spin attack or a single target heavy slash, the regular stance could defend while punisher could take less damage and counter against melee attacks. If you swapped into punisher just before a melee attack hit, you'd still trigger the counter. Rebirth has a significant increase on Cloud's depth in combat, which if you switch into punisher not only will you do the counter, but you'll counter with an attack and then three more quick slashes, so a punisher swap counter was added. The deadly dodge materia is included as a basic mechanic for Cloud so if he dodges you can hold the attack and Cloud will preform a sweeping aoe attack much like his regular combo aoe, however, this attack will bring Cloud up into the air to allow him to start performing aerial attacks and stay up in the air while dealing these attacks. Additionally if Cloud is further away and he rolls then attacks he will start shooting out weak blade beams that makes him like a long range character, but if you're also further away from the enemy and you once again hold the attack, Cloud will almost teleport to the enemies to deal an extremely quick five hit combo. You can evade out of it immediately after and the series of attacks will still trigger. Additionally this is Cloud's biggest ATB gain. However, that's not all. If you swap to punisher mode while in air, Cloud will drop onto the ground with an aoe slash, if you immediately swap back into his regular stance, he'll dash through the enemy swinging his sword as a dash strike attack while turning around, this can also trigger after dealing atleast three punisher attacks. Additionally the punisher attacks build the most ATB otherwise and the first attack on the ground after any point of going into punisher will have Cloud do forward to overhead slash that will knock a large portion of enemies into the air. I often times will use the blade beam, then go into the five hit aerial slash which is seconds and you're instantly on the enemy, press triangle to drop down with the heavy slash, press triangle again going through the enemy and usually right there I will be close to two full bars of ATB so I'll often times use one ATB bar, but I can just go right into another roll again afterwards and again press triangle, press triangle attack. It's a good damage dealer, good ATB builder, and you're likely to evade damage if enemies attack during that point or have to take the time to turn back around.

Tifa can now also attack in the air and as long as Aerith or Barret are on the team they can throw Tifa to start her into an Aerial combo at no ATB cost, this also means you can use Tifa's more triangle attack to attack down to the ground. Tifa is actually worse though than on the original because her focused strike gains ATB after an evasion, and odds are you're almost never going to trigger that so you're never going to get ATB back. Like, why would you even use the attack when the enemy isn't pressured? It builds almost no break gauge, it does almost no damage, and the odds that you actually evade the attack and the game realizes that you did with this skill. You may as well consider having given away an ATB instead of actually had a use.

However, that's one of the games biggest problems. You're likely going to use Cloud, Tifa, and Barret or replace one of those, likely Tifa, with Red XIII. All of these characters gain a pretty good amount of ATB quickly and in the case of Tifa has the highest damage potential. Red XIII will often perfect defend or at the very least defend when not being controlled, and when in vengeance which you will be when you're playing as him thanks to the AI, you can add haste to all characters without the need for a fully mastered magnify and time materia. He's one of the best damage dealers in the game with his first ATB skill, and a good support. Barret however is the ATB master. He's gaining ATB like it's nobody's business and quick, the fact that he now has an ability called bonus round that doubles the speed he fires bullets basically doubles the ATB he gains. He's not the greatest damage dealer, but building ATB the fastest makes him an irreplaceable character.

Meanwhile, Cait Sith is easily the worst character in the game, even when you get kind of good with him, he's still the worst character in the game because he has to have the moogle the moogle costs ATB. Yuffie builds ATB decently well but her damage numbers are so stupidly low even with doppleganger that she's not worth using as a character. Then Aerith, how they ruined Aerith. She starts off slow and pretty much requires a first strike Materia if you want her to be able to start off as reliable. The skills she had as abilities on Fnal Fantasy 7 Remake are all worse, dealing absolutely nothing in comparison. She's required to use radiant ward and ATB ward to gain the amount of ATB she was getting in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and because her triangle skill now returns her to her ward and holding square was once her triangle skill, she's a big slower in doing her triangle charges to get more ATB with her.

Magic also seems much worse than remake, and I mean damage wise. Consdering that you have barely any MP and the game really expects you to use the synergy attacks to temporarily have infinite MP meaning that you need to use atleast three synergy points, magic is just not worth it. You'll still be in double digits MP when you hit level 50 and this is even with an MP Up materia equipped. Magic that performs worse now has such an absord cost in comparison because you have such litle to go around. Early game you might cast a couple spells and you're out of MP, late game you cast a couple mastered spells and you're out of MP.

The final reason why combat is better in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, is because Cloud can't do everything. Barret and Aerith build for dealing more damage to aerial enemies easier thann Cloud and Tifa which had to jump up to reach them before being able to attack. You had to choose characters based on their strengths to be optimal in combat, when Cloud can just do everything and generally is one of the higher damaging characters in the game, it hurts the identity of the other characters combat styles, it's like what's the point, why use anyone but Cloud now outside of building synergy points, magic damage, or recovery/buffs?

Then finally, the materia system is even worse. It's a flaw from the original Final Fantasy 7 where you either level up new materia or you use mastered materia, at which point you're gaining no experience. There's so much materia in this game though... so much. I can tell you often times it's just randomly thrown on all my characters and I'm just doing skills every battle so it's never being used since I often times just don't have the MP to use it or I don't want to use it because I know I won't have any MP after using a couple spells.


But yeah. I'm on the second to last chapter at 115 hours, playing on dynamic difficulty which s the games hardest difficulty the first time you play the game, it makes all enemies at or higher than your level. I would rate it a 6/10.

[Nz17]

Solitaire in Space, an indie freeware video game for SEGA Genesis.

[Aussie2B]

Still playing PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe on my PSP and getting more into it, but I think I'm not particularly good at it, haha. There are three difficulties, though I don't yet have access to Hard-core, and I can switch back and forth while it retains everything I did in both Casual and Regular. I started with Regular, as I virtually always play games on their default difficulties, especially for my first time, but I only earned a rainbow on the tutorial in that mode. A rainbow is a perfect clear where no monsters made it to your base. You need to earn rainbows to unlock paths to more stages. Besides the overarching difficulty setting, stages are also labeled as Easy, Medium, etc. I cleared a number of Easy stages on Regular, just without any rainbows, but I got creamed on my first Medium stage on Regular. So then I decided to try playing on Casual. I don't know how exactly it affects the stages, whether it's more time between enemy waves, slower enemies, weaker enemies, faster tower attacks, etc., or some combination of all that, but it does feel like I have more time to actually strategize rather than haphazardly placing towers in a panicked rush. On Casual, I was able to earn rainbows easily on most Easy stages and was able to clear Medium stages easily too, albeit without rainbows. I've opened up the three main islands (though I think I heard there's a bonus island with randomly generated stages or something, I dunno). I've been unlocking medal challenges in the Tiki Hut too, but I've only cleared one of those. There's no difficulty selection for those, so I assume they're comparable to Regular or even Hard-core. But you don't need to worry about earning a rainbow in those, only meeting the goal and beating the stage without losing all the Tiki kids at the base. I can switch back to Regular in the main game at any time, and clearing the stages on the higher difficulties will change the icons on the map (both the regular icon for a cleared stage and the rainbow), so there's incentive there to earn rainbows on the higher difficulties. But for now, I'm good with giving myself a chance to ease into the game and build my skills before I ratchet up the difficulty.