What games are you currently playing?

[Jason]

So about three weeks ago I started playing Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, my aim was to finish it before next Friday since I'm going on holiday to Florida and don't like leaving games unfinished for a long period of time, I NEEDED to finish it before then. I just finished it about an hour ago with a grand total of 53hr20m on my final save file (You still have half an hour or so to play after the final save point), and I can now FINALLY say I've played every mainline Final Fantasy game.

It was... alright. Story sort of felt flat as fuck all the way up until the final hours, then it felt more interesting and "epic". Characters were great though, especially Balthier, although I have no idea what Vaan or Penelo's roles were in story, it would quite literally have been the exact same outcome without them there. Also the music is utterly forgettable and for the most part pretty trash, I just finished the game and I can't even remember any of the music or hum it or anything, except the main theme which is just the prelude music from EVERY Final Fantasy game anyway...

 

[bacon]

Best part about ff12 is the gameplay imo. End game content imo is some of my favorite and i enjoyed the hunts and exploring

 

[Jason]

Best part about ff12 is the gameplay imo. End game content imo is some of my favorite and i enjoyed the hunts and exploring

See, the gameplay, or more specifically the gambit system, would be a lot more fun if it didn't feel like the game played itself throughout the entire story... I'm guessing for the endgame hunts and stuff you require more fine tuning with them and stuff, but for the whole story I only needed like three or four gambits max on a person, lol. I do think the best thing about the game was the story, it just didn't play out the way I expected it to, it was more subtle than anything and to do with the politics in the background than what was actually happening, interesting approach, it just made it feel boring for too long until everything fell into place and we saw actions take place.

I'll probably go back to it at a later date and check out the endgame stuff, I also want to have a run around that crystal area to find all the chests since I heard there's some good gear and Hastega in there too. I also want to see what the big deal with Yiazmat is too, lol

 

[LaDestitute]

I'm currently playing RuneScape 3 and Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Also a little bit of No Man's Sky but that's become a bit boring to me.

I've been playing RuneScape for a long time, like for 10 years back when RS2 first dropped and left/stopped playing between before random events got removed and before EOC's introduction. Came back last year and have been steadily working on rounding out my skills and buffing my combat-level up from it's mid-80s when I left. Now I'm level 91, woohoo!

Right now I'm trying to train Agility...getting 61 to level 73 is gonna be super tedious. Thankfully, the Empty Throne Room helps majorly once you hit level 65. I also spent hours and hours previously power-leveling my defense to 70 and my magic to 70 from what was like...mid-60s? Then I can finally go back to my next slayer task, fungal magi.

Kingdom Battle is one hell of a surprise and is incredibly enjoyable for it's concept. I still think it's a crackpot-idea, like something you'd hear as an outlandish joke-rumor but it turned out to be...true? It's like food. There's probably one recipe or mashup you thought was a little disgusting, only to try it and go like "OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING". It's so fun and is a nice slimmed-down experience of what you would find with Final Fantasy Tactics or even more properly XCOM. It's also really neat this got Miyamoto's blessing and even has the amazing Mr. Kirkhope working the OST.

 

[coyotecraft]

I'm playing...the waiting game.

So I bought a replacement PS3 this summer but I haven't done much with it. I finally got my old PS3 working temporarily again so I can transfer data over to the new system.
It's going to take 1hr 30mins. But I have no idea if my old system can stay on that long or not. I've got an extra fan blowing on it so keep it cool. Fingers crossed. Hoping I can salvage my save data.

Edit: 45mins. I can't hold my breath that long!

Edit2: Phew. Looks like it worked. I think now I can finish Agarst War without having to redownload it from the store and start over.
Although because I've transferred my save data, I don't think I can unlock new trophies with it. Not sure how the works.

 

[Jason]

Earlier this week I finished Spider-Man, and now I'm torn between doing all the side content for the platinum, or moving onto FINALLY playing Horizon Zero Dawn. I played the first hour or so of HZD to see if I could get into it right there and then (Literally minutes after finishing Spider-Man, lol) but it just wasn't doing anything for me. Now, I know that's not a reasonable amount of time to decide whether I like a game or not, which is why I'm torn between the two choices, lol. I'm sure I'll enjoy it once I dedicate some proper time to it, so we'll see...

Oh I'm also still playing Overwatch, and I logged into Runescape the other day to see how things are going.

 

[coyotecraft]

Made it to the last boss on Record of Agarest War. But it's like a 3 battles in a row. And they raise the difficulty like 20 levels above you. But I mean, how many RPGs have a final boss that's Actually lv100? Technically lv105. There's nothing else I can do at this point but grind.

 

[coyotecraft]

Ahh, I've finally done it. I beat Record of Agarest War. It took 6 years. Mainly because my PS3 was broken for most of it. But also because it was a boring ass long game. Hell spawn of the notorious Compile Heart and Idea Factory. The same people behind Cross Edge. I think those two games have bruised my soul. I don't even feel any satisfaction in completing it.
I'm not even sure why they weighed on my mind as much as it did. I've got a bunch of games that I have no love for and never completed, and I never think twice about them.

 

[LaDestitute]

Got RPCS3 to run near perfectly on my rig and thankfully my rig is good enough to handle stable gameplay at all times, at least for games known as compatibility "playable" or 'ingame (to some extent)"

I'm currently replaying Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix to catch up on it and II before KH III comes out. It runs really smoothly, 30 FPS at all gameplay times. I've been trying to get the 60 FPS hack to work with Cheat Engine but CE is a bit fucky lately it seems, specifically with RPCS3.

 

[Xilef]

Playing Deus Ex. I am finding it quite boring and I am having to force myself to play through it, but I want to actually finish it.

My problem is that I'm spending about 3 hours in each chapter trying to do the perfect run.

Just really not enjoying it. I'm going to play Human Revolution then Mankind Divided once I finish Deus Ex - I'm looking forward to HR again because I enjoyed playing through that. Also; HR seems to be reeeeeally similar to the original game, albeit streamlined, modern and generally a friendlier experience.

Reason I'm doing Deus Ex is because I found out I own a copy of Mankind Divided and I have no idea where I got it or when I got it so I'm going to play through it after HR.

Edit: holy shit the accents are bad in Deus Ex. "We're Austraaaaaleuhn" she says with a shitty British accent. And her "Australian" friend is like "U wot mate I fuck you up" with again a very shitty British accent.

The Hong Kong citizens sound like Americans doing quite frankly racist impressions of Chinese people.

 

[coyotecraft]

Trying to play through Xenogears. It's just. so. boring.

 

[Xilef]

Trying to play through Xenogears. It's just. so. boring.

Yeah I spent way more time studying that game's file format than actually playing it. I was interested in its visual style many years ago after I saw this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nds_QKLWs9o
I was researching games with that style and focused on Xenogears a lot. Unfortunately I just couldn't play past 20 minutes of Xenogears; it was just too boring for me.

For a while now Legend of Mana has been my primary source of inspiration for RPG Maker graphical style, but also with 3D models and animation effects thrown in - I think there's good value in having 3D doodads in an MV game.

 

[coyotecraft]

I just got to a point where the game freezes during a cutscene. This is a PSN version on my Ps3. I've read online that these kinds of glitches are temperamental, and to just reset and keep trying.
But that means sitting through a 10 minute cutscene of a guy playing a church organ. AHHHHHHH.

Edit: So after about the 4th go around I tried turning off the PS Smoothing option. At the point were if freezes it shuddered, the text went all MISSNO. on me, and then it managed to continue. So I got to the next save point. Yay.
But seriously, the game has been on-the-rails forever at this point.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I never played the original Deus Ex. I liked Human Revolution, but I bought it before the director's cut or whatever, so the only viable build is the Terminator, and you ignore noncombat skills until the late game.

I've only ever heard good things about Xenogears. Why is it such a beloved classic? Has it just not aged well?

 

[Xilef]

Spent some time fixing some of the issues with my VRChat avatar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95gSXGXFp8Q
I do think VRChat is one of the best games to have been created. It is a good throw back to how FPS games were in the early 2000s with custom models and custom maps everywhere, that's something modern games pretty much entirely lost.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I remember Quake II in my college dorm. (You already know that when an American says college, that means university, right?) It seemed half of the custom models were naked women.

Did you ever try Second Life, Xilef? I never got into it. Ten years ago the graphics were OK I guess, but it's probably nowhere near as detailed as VRChat.

 

[Xilef]

Did you ever try Second Life, Xilef? I never got into it. Ten years ago the graphics were OK I guess, but it's probably nowhere near as detailed as VRChat.

I never tried Second Life, however it would be a mistake to say VRChat is in the same vein as Second Life - VRChat does not attempt to create a virtual economy with virtual possessions. It's pretty much exactly a chat room, but the talking point is either people's unique community produced character models or the contents of the community produced worlds. I am very concerned about VRChat's apparent total lack of a business model - they got HTC money injection I heard but I cannot imagine what it is they'll do for monetisation. If they put the custom characters or custom worlds at risk then the entire game will lose everything that draws people to it.

If they try a Second Life economy with accessories and props to be purchased then that could work, but it would be a secondary function. I wonder if something like Reddit Gold would work, where players give map creators or other players real-money gold as a "thank you" and their gold wallet can influence some map script behaviour. Maybe have it so map creators can charge money to access certain doors in a map and 90% of that money goes to VRChat and the map creator keeps 10%.

 

[coyotecraft]

I just learned that the summons in Final Fantasy 9 have an atk power that goes up with number of corresponding gemstone in the inventory.
And if you equip Eiko with a Diamond, Moonstone, Or Emerald, then Carbuncle's attack will change to Diamond Light, Pearl Light, and Emerald Light, casting Vanish, Shell, and Haste respectively.

I honestly never used Summons in FF9 because I thought they weren't very useful. But now I know why. It's because I sold everything off once I learned all the abilities.

 

[Xilef]

I just learned that the summons in Final Fantasy 9 have an atk power that goes up with number of corresponding gemstone in the inventory.
And if you equip Eiko with a Diamond, Moonstone, Or Emerald, then Carbuncle's attack will change to Diamond Light, Pearl Light, and Emerald Light, casting Vanish, Shell, and Haste respectively.

I honestly never used Summons in FF9 because I thought they weren't very useful. But now I know why. It's because I sold everything off once I learned all the abilities.

The only reason I know about the gemstones was because of FAQs. I think it is actually explained in the game UI somewhere, though. My first play-throughs my summons were very weak because I just never found gem stones, now when I play the game my summons are always massively powerful (overall my entire party becomes extreme damage dealers).

The game does try its best to encourage you to hang onto items, which I think is quite welcome.

Actually I remember my second play-through and I was saying to my brother how Vivi is just really weak with magic - and at that moment I cast Fire and took out and entire group of enemies in one move. I must have done something in my first play-through that never powered up Vivi.

-

Finally beat the Yakuza Metroid Fusion boss (10+ attempts). Trick is to stay as still as possible (which goes against all instinct). The next boss was then a pain in the ass, took about 4 attempts, now I'm trying to beat Nightmare. SA-X is ridiculous too, you must freeze it.
The game does a lot of teaching via dying which I'm not 100% a fan of - there are clever Metroid moments where you accidentally reveal a pathway when trying to shoot a specifically placed enemy, but the bosses are very much die and try again until you learn. The standard enemies do a heck of a lot of damage too and you really can't farm health in this game, you must find recharge stations which get locked off at points in the story.

Game structure is good for a portable game, just wish there were save points right outside the boss rooms.

 

[Jason]

Over the last couple of weeks I was playing Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix, from the PS4 collection, it's the first time I'd played it since I originally had it on the PS2, and I was surprised with just how well the game holds up, although it's very vanilla in terms of gameplay, but it's fine since I'm playing the games in order anyway so it'll only improve from hereon.

Earlier tonight I started Re:Chain of Memories, it's my first time playing it aside from playing Traverse Town on the original GBA release, would have finished it but someone stole the game from me back then and I never really bothered to play it via emulator after finding out there was a PS2 remake... that never made it over here anyway. Yeah, I see a lot of people on the internet saying it's the worst game, especially so in the gameplay department since your battle actions are card based, but honestly; I like it. It sort of adds an extra layer of strategy rather than just smashing X until enemies are dead. The ability to chain three cards together is really cool, since it pretty much guarantees an unblockable attack with high damage output, but at the same time, doing so means you lose the first card in your chain for the remainder of the fight, so relying heavily on them will eventually reduce you to no cards and you'll be fucked lol. I've only done two worlds so far (Traverse Town and Agrabah), but yeah... I'm not seeing the problem with it, especially as someone just doing a single playthrough on normal and not a Proud 100% run or something, although I WILL be playing it twice, the second time as Riku, to get the whole story before moving on to Kingdom Hearts 2.

One thing that REALLY threw me off is that, since the game came out five years after the first game, despite it taking place literally right after the first (Picking up exactly where it leaves off, right?) Sora's voice has changed rather drastically, I knew his voice was different in Kingdom Hearts 2 since it's set a few years after, and of course the voice actor went through puberty too lol, but yeah, a young Sora character model with an old(er) Sora voice is rather... jarring, at times. Also they seem to have done fuck all with the cutscenes in this game, quality of them is pretty dire in comparison to the gameplay, and everything from the first game. Thankfully this is the only game of the collection to suffer from it though, so meh.

TL;DR I played a Kingdom Hearts game, and now I'm playing another.