What games are you currently playing?

[coyotecraft]

Beat Final Fantasy 8 in a day. I'm shaking. Game clock was roughly 15 hours. But in real time played it was closer to 20. It was one of the worst unluckiest play throughs I've ever done. Had to replay the missile base twice. I almost cried when I got to lunatic Pandora and forgot Squall had a lightning attribute that wouldn't dmg Raijin - and my last save was back on the Ragnarok. That segment is just 40mins of button smashing thought cutscenes.
I almost beat the final boss on my first try at 13 hrs. But none of the repeat attempts went as well, so I farmed some extra magic and GFs for another 2 hours.

 

[Fayte]

Beat Final Fantasy 8 in a day. I'm shaking. Game clock was roughly 15 hours. But in real time played it was closer to 20. It was one of the worst unluckiest play throughs I've ever done. Had to replay the missile base twice. I almost cried when I got to lunatic Pandora and forgot Squall had a lightning attribute that wouldn't dmg Raijin - and my last save was back on the Ragnarok. That segment is just 40mins of button smashing thought cutscenes.
I almost beat the final boss on my first try at 13 hrs. But none of the repeat attempts went as well, so I farmed some extra magic and GFs for another 2 hours.

I never beat 8 but I remember getting as far as getting the ragnarok. But you beat the whole game in a day? Holy smokes, Johnny Billygates.

 

[coyotecraft]

The speedrunners figured out that you just have to get the Quistis Card. So you can refine it and junction 100 Triples to Strength. Plus, Ifrit's Str Bonus Abilities, and you can pretty much cheese the game with 1 character without leveling up.

The final boss requires some preparationH since it'll always hit you with it's ultimate attack when you defeat the second form. Otherwise you just spam limit breaks.

 

[Fayte]

The speedrunners figured out that you just have to get the Quistis Card. So you can refine it and junction 100 Triples to Strength. Plus, Ifrit's Str Bonus Abilities, and you can pretty much cheese the game with 1 character without leveling up.

The final boss requires some preparationH since it'll always hit you with it's ultimate attack when you defeat the second form. Otherwise you just spam limit breaks.

And that’s why I didn’t really like FF8. Too easy to break the game.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

The speedrunners figured out that you just have to get the Quistis Card. So you can refine it and junction 100 Triples to Strength. Plus, Ifrit's Str Bonus Abilities, and you can pretty much cheese the game with 1 character without leveling up.

The final boss requires some preparationH since it'll always hit you with it's ultimate attack when you defeat the second form. Otherwise you just spam limit breaks.

I made the mistake of using Rinoa's limit break once, and only once, but it was unfortunate timing. I had wandered unprepared into the final battle. The rest of the party was dead, Rinoa's limit break was ready, and I thought, "Well, I don't know what it does, but hopefully it'll help."

No. Don't use Rinoa's limit break ever, for any reason.

And I'll bet that if I put 100 Triples on Strength and could defeat anything in one hit, I'd run into a Malboro that would confuse and poison my party, and my super character would just kill the partymates and then self that much faster.

...

And that’s why I didn’t really like FF8. Too easy to break the game.

I really didn't like FF8, and it's not because the game was "easy to break."

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I finally picked up Battletech when it was on sale last week. It's still buggy and unstable, but I was able to play through the campaign without any insurmountable problems. I wonder if they're still patching it, or if they've decided that it's good enough.

They did a few very interesting things to make the game more addictive, taking cues from free-to-play games. They randomized the loot and they put all of your strategic decisions on a timeline. So after a battle, if you fought a big, powerful mech, then there's a chance you'll get to salvage it. And you can do things to increase the amount of salvage you get, like aiming for the legs or the head instead of the torso. And every time you go to a new star system, there's a chance of finding rare equipment for sale. And every time a mechwarrior gets wounded or a battlemech takes damage, the healing or repair time goes on a timeline. And if you want to build improvements onto your ship, then that goes on the timeline. Or if you find a nice piece of equipment that you want to attach to a mech, it goes on the timeline. And as time passes, you see that you get closer to getting your best pilot or heaviest mech back into action, or you get closer to using that awesome new autocannon, which makes you want to keep playing.

 

[Ellie]

If you could take the mandatory and slow tutorials out of FFVIII it would be far better.

 

[coyotecraft]

If you could take the mandatory and slow tutorials out of FFVIII it would be far better.

You just press Triangle to skip out of the tutorials.

The mission briefings on the other hand are obnoxious. The train heist isn't as complicated as they make it out to be. But at least Rinoa had a scale model. Unlike her dad who makes you follow him up and down the street explaining the parade route.

 

[coyotecraft]

I spent the last few days beating Two Worlds II. Horrible game. A lesson on how not to make an RPG. I played on Easy but it didn't feel easy. I died A LOT. Lots of weird glitches. Dumb A.I.
I tried playing with a Mage Build but I was hardly doing any damage. I only won because half the time the enemy was just frozen or got caught in a corner or something so I could just wack on it for 5mins straight. Maybe that IS "easy mode"

The summon and magic system was pretty cool but also kinda useless.

I was under leveled most of the game. Once I got to chapter 2 I figured out how to make an Invisibilty spell, and just sprinted through all the levels.
I lost a bunch of gear I had stored in a chest in this keep. You can store stuff anywhere but the story implied that's "your room", so it's easy to keep track off. During chapter 3 you're trapped on swamp island, you don't have access to anything thing. Thankfully there are only 2 mandatory battles and everything else you can just run away from. Which is nice.

But as I said, I was under leveled and if it weren't for my huge supply of potions I got from the beginning of the game, I'd die in 3 hits or less.

The final boss is a dragon you have to shoot down with a ballista, it'll summon 1 lava golem, 2, then finally 3. And while you're fighting them it'll rain fire down on you every other second. (Fire Resistance Potions were worthless) Again, I only beat it by standing on top of the ballista so the golems stood still. Spammed the potion hotkey when ever the dragon showered me with fire.

The keep is inaccessble after you beat the game. You can still wander around and do more side quests, I think. But my chest in the keep had all my gem stones high level gear I was saving up. So it's like, fuck you game, I'm done with you anyways.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

That sucks. Sorry you had to slog through that. You should put your review on Steam and warn others away.

 

[coyotecraft]

FFXI had another free to play week, but I missed most of it. I logged on and just started messing around. Leveling up my Bonecraft to make certain armors even though it's completely useless. I'd kinda like to craft coral armor sets. I remember wearing that for a long time while I was doing all the level-cap quests. I could probably accomplish that this weekend.
Craftskills are much easier to level up these days, it's just a matter of getting all the materials.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

FFXI is still going? I assume it must still be making money or else Squeenix would shut it down. But I would think Squeenix would have tried converting all the players to FFXIV. I wonder if there's anyone locked into FFXI due to hardware limitations. Do you know if anyone is still playing on a PS2?

 

[Xilef]

Preparing to blast through Borderlands 2 with a friend. The current NVIDIA PhysX drivers causes the game to crash my computer, so had to roll-back to a version that didn't crash. Also the game is very CPU bottle-necked, so had to reapply my 4.1GHz CPU overclock that somehow un-applied itself.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Preparing to blast through Borderlands 2 with a friend. The current NVIDIA PhysX drivers causes the game to crash my computer, so had to roll-back to a version that didn't crash. Also the game is very CPU bottle-necked, so had to reapply my 4.1GHz CPU overclock that somehow un-applied itself.

Do you have a special cooling system? My processor hits its max temperature pretty quickly without overclocking, and then the thermal throttling hits.

 

[Xilef]

Do you have a special cooling system? My processor hits its max temperature pretty quickly without overclocking, and then the thermal throttling hits.

I've got an all-in-one liquid cooler, but it's very old by now and isn't anything impressive like the new ones you can get, so I was quite worried about re-applying an overclock that hadn't been applied for about 12 months on my 2014 era processor.

I stress tested the CPU afterwards and it hits 80°C - the CPU usually idles at about 40°C, so I'm happy with that. I could probably push it further until it hits 95°C but I'm not willing to bother.

In comparison I went ahead and applied an automatic overclock to the AMD Ryzen 5 3400G PC (with an amazing modern all-in-one water cooler) I built for my friend's parents and that hit the same frequency at 70°C, so I'm happy with the results that I got out of my 5 year old processor with a not-very-good all in one water cooler.

It definitely helped with frame-rates; before in Borderlands 2 the worst areas dropped below 60 FPS, now it pretty much never drops below 60 - but draw distance has to be set to Medium (draw distance being the only setting in the game that effects CPU utilisation).

 

[Fayte]

I was under leveled most of the game. Once I got to chapter 2 I figured out how to make an Invisibilty spell, and just sprinted through all the levels.
I lost a bunch of gear I had stored in a chest in this keep. You can store stuff anywhere but the story implied that's "your room", so it's easy to keep track off. During chapter 3 you're trapped on swamp island, you don't have access to anything thing. Thankfully there are only 2 mandatory battles and everything else you can just run away from. Which is nice.

But as I said, I was under leveled and if it weren't for my huge supply of potions I got from the beginning of the game, I'd die in 3 hits or less.

I find it odd you say the game is too difficult when you chose a mage build (historically the weakest class in most RPGs), ran away from most fights, and played the game underleveled. It sounds like it was your fault it was too difficult because you did the opposite of what it takes to get stronger. (just an observation)

 

[coyotecraft]

The magic system in Two Worlds 2 uses this card combination effect. Element+Effect. So the strength of the mage really depends on the cards you get and are able to stack via mastery. The cards are really expensive, and the store's inventory is random to boot. So your early game strategy is just standing as far away from the enemy and pelt them with spit wads and hope they drop dead by the time they reach you.
The game teaches you to use an AoE spell when surrounded, but it does less damage than a missile. You have limited MP. So you have to run away to put distance between you.

A warrior can basically stun lock an enemy. And in most cases getting surrounded isn't going to happen in the majority of caves, tunnels, where you fight. SO you just hold the attack button, and their HP steadily declines.

Ideally a mage can summon decoy creatures as interference. Which sounds balanced, but it's problematic in tight spaces, making a better wall than window.

An Archer, doesn't have the range a mage has, But it can hit multiple targets at once, and theoretically can set traps to hold enemies in place if need be. But I've littered a room with traps and they rarely triggered.

It's difficult to kill things as a mage. But the invisibility kinda makes it so you don't have to. I believe all or most of the bosses were fire based, and water is the starter element. So when you inevitably have to fight, you should have a chance. Unless you sold your water element card and specialized in fire.

I'm just now realizing there were a lot things that could have been considered foreshadowing. On tutorial island you kill a lava golem with your new water spell. You don't really question where the golem came from. They're the same lava golems you fight during the final boss with the dragon. In Chapter 1, the final plot token is a dragon fang which they use to animate a bunch of crystal golems. You're sorta mislead into believing dragons are all dead, and the story trajectory is in a completely different direction. I think the significance of all that is lessened by the fact that the player can casually summon Earth Golems like they're nothing special, and they would never question it or see meaning in it.

 

[coyotecraft]

I played Terraria the other night.
The last time I played it the Bosses only went up to Plantera. The game didn't have achievements. I think they had just added the snow biome.
They've added so much since then. Updated sprite icons. Added variations to monsters. Unfortunately I think I have to create a new world and play through all the bosses to get to the new content. They've got hover boards and mounts that make getting around so much easier.
I loaded up one of my old worlds where "the Crimson" had infected the desert. In the new update, there's a big sandstorm and if you stand still the wind will push you. The cactus are all dark and sinister, I love it.

But my computer sucks. I've never noticed until now, but I can't use the keyboard keys and the mouse at the same time. I'm holding the spacebar, the mouse is locked. Which makes playing Terraria very difficult. You got use the WASD keys to move, and the mouse to aim.
Apparently it's an issue with Windows10's "smartsense". God damn it. I've turned it off and it still locks up after a delay.

 

[Fayte]

Spontaneously bought Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithfulness last night. It’s got a lot of stuff wrong with it that I’m not a fan of but so far the overall game is pretty fun.

 

[Jason]

I actually really liked Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, battle system was fun and the story wasn't too bad, also it can look rather pretty at times.

What am I playing? Over the last week I've started Diablo III and finished it (Along with the Reaper of Souls expansion), my first time, and despite not liking it as much as Diablo II, it was still a really fun game and I found the story interesting enough. It was nice how references were made back to the events of the first two Diablo games too, since I've not played them in >10 years, it sort of gave me a refresher on the events that happened (Although I played Diablo II so much back in the day that I remember the story very clearly anyway). So yeah, enjoyed it... I played a Monk, and found a legendary staff that made one of my abilities do 5,000% damage... yeeaaaah, cheese mode!

After finishing that over four days, I've spent the last two days (Over two sessions) playing and finishing Knack 2. Yeah, yeah, it's Knack let's all laugh and blah blah. I defended the first Knack back in the day since I enjoyed the game for what it was, went in with really low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Now that I already had some sort of expectations, I needed this to be better, as sequels should be... and it was! I mean, overall it's the same formula, go to a room of enemies, fight them, do some platforming to the next room, rinse and repeat but this time with extra moves and stuff... but I feel like they definitely improved it and it was just overall a pleasure to playthrough, so much so that originally I was going to play it over 4-5 days (It's got 15 chapters, I planned it out into chunks of 3-4 chapters a play session so I didn't burn myself out or something, and still had time in the day to do other things) but sat down for four hours yesterday and eight hours today to finish it quicker than expected. Fuck the haters, the Knack games are good! :P

Oh, and before these two I played Assassin's Creed Origins, took me over a month to finish since the world is so big and it's very pretty and I got distracted by a lot of things too, but I LOVED it!

Now I'm deciding on what to play next... looking at my backlog and nothing is really jumping out at me. Hoping I can pick something since I've got no work for two weeks (Well, until the 16th) and I'm wanting to at least finish a game or two in that time. I'm lagging behind!