What game are you playing?

[MFB]

I forgot how annoying the dude in front of the Ashina Tower is, like, he's got four rifle-guards around him and then the Tengu's on the roof can hit you with their shuriken too. Might try and work my way down to open up that door, but he's not required so I may just say screw it and leave him.

 

[wankerness]

I forgot how annoying the dude in front of the Ashina Tower is, like, he's got four rifle-guards around him and then the Tengu's on the roof can hit you with their shuriken too. Might try and work my way down to open up that door, but he's not required so I may just say screw it and leave him.

The spear guy? Just take the path around the back of the tower, come out the front entrance, and backstab him and then fight him closer to the tower so the patrolling giant guy doesn't see you.

 

[MFB]

The spear guy? Just take the path around the back of the tower, come out the front entrance, and backstab him and then fight him closer to the tower so the patrolling giant guy doesn't see you.

Whoops, didn't remember that guy and that the location could be interpreted as that one; but no, I'm thinking of the dude who's a copy of the first boss, red armor/big sword at the top of the stair case in front of the castle where Genichiro is at the top.

For the actual spearman you're referring to, that is always my strategy.

 

[rokket2005]

Figured I'd make my monthly check in here to tell you all about the niche jrpgs I play that no one else cares about.

I finished 13 Sentinels : Aegis Rim and it is very good. Probably not a ton of replayability since it's like 85% visual novel, but how all the characters were tied together was really good and I enjoyed the battles too. Upgrading mechs is always fun.

Atelier Ryza : Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout. I hadn't played any Gust games before, but I've been listening to their battle themes for like a year. The big hook/gimmick here is alchemy, which is basically a crafting minigame but it's pretty fun and kind of a min/maxers wet dream. Combat is pretty simple ATB turn based with some tactics level boosting mechanics that make most battles play out the same, but crafting dank bombs and shit completely break the battle system. Supporting cast is likeable and not nearly as bland as I feared they were going to be. They're certainly better than any character Square has written in the last 20 years. Ryza herself is adorable while simultaneously being an absolute fucking bombshell. The game starts out light-hearted and whimsical, ends with some pretty heavy consequences being dealt with. Overall an enjoyable game that's only like ~35ish hours to do pretty much everything in.

Atelier Ryza 2 : Lost Legends and the Secret Fairy. I'm about 15 hours in and so far it's better than Ryza 1 in pretty much every way. The music is a total fucking bop again, battles and crafting have been expanded so it's not just a copy/paste from the first game, and all of the characters from the first game return plus some extras and it's been nice seeing how they all grew in the time between games. My biggest complaint so far is that the main battle theme is one of the best battle themes in games( linked below). Period. Is that a problem I hear you say? The problem is that the song takes like 3 and a half minutes to loop, but most regular battles are over in like 30 seconds tops. There is an option to change any song in the game to another, plus literally 1000's of songs from older Atelier games, which is a super nice feature but I don't want to change the music of places I haven't been so that I get a more or less vanilla experience the first time through. All of the songs in the game are good too, so it's not like it's suffering through bad music to get to the battle theme. Really loving it so far, and if Xenoblade Chronicles 3 wasn't releasing in 3 weeks it would definitely be in my game of the year discussion.



That being said, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is going to be the best game of the year. It's going to be the best game of the last 4 and half years, going back to XC2, and I have faith in Takahashi that it will be better than XC2 also making it the best game of all time. Thank you, this has been my TED talk.

 

[wankerness]

Whoops, didn't remember that guy and that the location could be interpreted as that one; but no, I'm thinking of the dude who's a copy of the first boss, red armor/big sword at the top of the stair case in front of the castle where Genichiro is at the top.

For the actual spearman you're referring to, that is always my strategy.

Oh that guy. Yeah I dunno. I always beeline the guy that bangs the pan and then kill all the other guys and run away and hide if I accidentally pull the boss before everyone is dead (I think you have to get out of the minizone before he'll reset, but he will eventually). Never had a problem killing all the trash before fighting him.

 

[StevenC]

Finished the main campaign for Recore. It's pretty good. 7/10. Worth playing for most people, mechanically sound and the combat is fun, if a bit repetitive. Story has potential but to be honest it's badly executed. There's a load more to play but I don't know if I have any motivation to play it.

Some of the platforming sections are a lot of fun, and some are so difficult that it's easier to cheese them.

 

[wankerness]

Played Sekiro for about a half hour this weekend. Got to Owl Father with no issues (killed both mini bosses with no deaths), then proceeded to get hopelessly destroyed by him in first phase a few times. Ran off to fountainhead for a break, killed “real” corrupted monk in three tries. Owl Father is my kryptonite in this damn game. He’s like those kicking ninjas except way worse! I basically understand the strat and all the counters, you just have to perfectly time and more importantly aim all your dodges. I suck!!

 

[MFB]

Ran out of snap seeds during Lady's second phase so I'll just come back to her; I'm not playing this game of "dodge all her apparitions + HER attacks at the same time," miss me with that shit. I tried the Shichimen Warrior that's in the Abandoned Dungeon and somehow the dude rocked me with terror like, immediately. I don't remember them doing that much damage before, but yeah, needless to say it didn't feel good. I'm up to the Screen Monkeys, and then that'll unlock the Divine Child/etc... Managed to kill the first Snake Eyes before the gunfort too, felt good taking him down on my ...3rd try?

 

[wankerness]

Ran out of snap seeds during Lady's second phase so I'll just come back to her; I'm not playing this game of "dodge all her apparitions + HER attacks at the same time," miss me with that shit. I tried the Shichimen Warrior that's in the Abandoned Dungeon and somehow the dude rocked me with terror like, immediately. I don't remember them doing that much damage before, but yeah, needless to say it didn't feel good. I'm up to the Screen Monkeys, and then that'll unlock the Divine Child/etc... Managed to kill the first Snake Eyes before the gunfort too, felt good taking him down on my ...3rd try?

Snap seeds are pretty useless IMO, it seems like they don't really knock her out of that phase when you do them. It never seemed any easier to use them than just dodge the apparitions for 20 seconds or whatever.

The shichimen warriors and headless will 2-shot kill you with terror effects pretty much, unless you have the resistance buff against it that you get from the purple gourd. Definitely buy that thing and pop it just before you engage them, and make sure to reapply it every 15 seconds or something. If you take too long to kill them you'll probably have to start using the sedatives, too. But yeah, those fights are absolutely miserable and stupid. I always just buffed up with ako's and divine confetti and used the lilac umbrella and tried to kill them before everything was worn off, but I'd usually end up having to use 2 confetti per enemy and would still almost die a couple times even with resistance up. I hate them. The only "easy" way to kill them is if you get lucky with midair deathblows on the shichimen warriors when they jump away, I think I managed to do that successfully like 3/10 times.

Make sure you're looking up ending guides, cause there's some very missable stuff that locks out the option to fight owl father. And the game's pretty short so it comes up faster than you'd think. This playthrough I've been using the "Sekiro Cheat Sheet" on github just to make sure I don't miss anything since I'm trying to get the platinum again (might give up on the skill point grind). Haven't had to look up any actual guides except when I couldn't remember how you get to the old grave.

 

[MFB]

Yeah, now that I'm getting towards the half-way point I'm going to take a look at the ending guide so I don't lock myself out of anything. Up until now there's really no choices to be made, but with Kuro making his decision to sever the immortality, it's where you can definitely fuck something up if you're not careful.

I feel like I'm also getting less upgrade materials for items, but now that I'm up to the Gun Fort/Sunken Valley, I think I'll be getting more scraps so hopefully that'll make upgrades quicker.

Regarding the skill point grind, one thing I did read and I don't know if it's BS, is that upgrading your attack points affects the amount of skill pts required. Not sure why those are tied together, but it's BS if they are given how many points are required for some of the later skills (some from Isshin's scroll are 9 points per skill)

 

[wankerness]

Regarding the skill point grind, one thing I did read and I don't know if it's BS, is that upgrading your attack points affects the amount of skill pts required. Not sure why those are tied together, but it's BS if they are given how many points are required for some of the later skills (some from Isshin's scroll are 9 points per skill)

I think what you read is advice telling you not to upgrade attack power with skill points. If you buy the halves of the mask from vendors, it allows you to spend skill points for tiny upgrades of AP. Since it's drawing from the same skill points that you'd otherwise be using on skills, you definitely don't want to do that until you already bought all the abilities you want since it certainly affects the way each skill point takes more exp than the previous, plus it's a miniscule upgrade that really only exists for something for you to dump EXP into on late NG cycles when you already have all the skills.

Upgrading AP with the memories has no effect as far as I know, that wouldn't make any sense.

 

[MFB]

Ahh, that would make a lot more sense. I mean, I've beaten the game once and made it halfway through NG+ immediately after beating it and am now on my 3rd run, and it didn't ring ANY bells that skills cost go up as attack power does, but I forgot about those god damn masks that change that ability.

 

[MFB]

Took down Folding Screen Monkeys/Nightjar Ninja at the Hirata Estate/Long Arm Giraffe/Centipede or whatever the hell their names are, and got the Mist Raven's Feather/Divine Abduction Prosthetics last night. I'm up to Guardian Ape against, so once I take him down on this one I think I'm gonna use this as my Shura ending playfile as I'm pretty sure I got the dried fruits on my NG+ file so I can get the Return ending.

 

[wankerness]

Took down Folding Screen Monkeys/Nightjar Ninja at the Hirata Estate/Long Arm Giraffe/Centipede or whatever the hell their names are, and got the Mist Raven's Feather/Divine Abduction Prosthetics last night. I'm up to Guardian Ape against, so once I take him down on this one I think I'm gonna use this as my Shura ending playfile as I'm pretty sure I got the dried fruits on my NG+ file so I can get the Return ending.

Are you doing a NG or a NG+? You definitely want to do the "good" endings on NG if you can since owl father and sword saint are much harder on NG+ and they have a much higher baseline of difficulty than the Shura ending bosses.

Of course if you're on PS4 or Windows you can just savescum them all in one playthrough, but you'd still need the file where you did shura ending for one playthrough and sword saint for the other.

 

[MFB]

This one is NG, my one from last June is on NG+ not much farther ahead of where I currently am. Isn't Shura ending where you fight Owl Father and Sword Saint/Emma, so wouldn't that one wanted to be done on my current NG file? I was looking at the endings guide yesterday and don't recall them being on the other two "good" endings.

I'll have to look into how to savescum on the PS4, I've never done it with any of the FS games but it'd definitely be easier for this one

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Finally playing Uncharted 4.

 

[wankerness]

This one is NG, my one from last June is on NG+ not much farther ahead of where I currently am. Isn't Shura ending where you fight Owl Father and Sword Saint/Emma, so wouldn't that one wanted to be done on my current NG file? I was looking at the endings guide yesterday and don't recall them being on the other two "good" endings.

I'll have to look into how to savescum on the PS4, I've never done it with any of the FS games but it'd definitely be easier for this one

Shura ending is when you side with great owl instead of fighting him on the roof of the castle, and then fight emma and ashina (sword saint in his wimpy non-sword-saint mode). It's the bad ending cause you're killing your friends and preventing yourself from going to either fountainhead or the hirata estate revisited areas, as well as missing the third version of Hirata Castle. You're basically missing 1/4 of the game or so by doing it. All the hardest bosses are after them, so you certainly CAN do it on NG, but if you're fighting Owl Father for the first time I would highly advise against trying to learn him on NG+ when he hits considerably harder and has a lot more health. Especially since if you'd been collecting all the prayer beads and saving him for the end of the game instead of as soon as possible, you'll barely have more health or damage on NG+ than you would in NG since health caps out after the first 40 prayer beads and damage starts decreasing exponentially slower after you get the first set of memories.

Great Shinobi Owl = guy you fight on the rooftop at the point where you choose between Shura ending and the other "good endings"
Sword Saint = mega-buff version of Ashina that you fight at the very ending of the game in the three good endings, he now has a gun and giant spear instead of just a katana
Owl Father = super pumped up version of Great Shinobi Owl that you fight in the same room you fought Lady Butterfly if you do the right eavesdrops and don't do the Shura ending

 

[MFB]

OK, then yeah I was just mixing up the two but it does make sense that you'd fight OF on the non-Shura endings when writing them all out.

Regarding Sword Saint, I got the Immortal Severance ending on my first playthrough, and he broke out the spear in phase 2, and gun in phase 3, so I'm familiar with those already and want to see what non-SS has in store. Shit was terrifying when I got to each new phase because I thought I had it cracked and then suddenly, nope, guess again scrub. Owl Father/Emma will be the new bosses I get to go against, but only one of them actual seems like it'll give me trouble.

Guess I'll flip the script and my NG+ is for Shura ending, so that's a little relief

 

[MFB]

Down goes Guardian Ape on the first god damn try, what a maneuver!

 

[MFB]

Took down Snake Eyes #2 last night on first try as well, felt pretty good, then I pushed my luck with Headless Ape and he took me down on the first two tries. I could have sworn you could use Finger Whistle on him and have the two fight each other, but apparently not? Seems dumb considering animals/beasts are listed in the description. So I was using fire crackers on Brown Ape, and hitting Headless with the Spear for additional posture damage, but still got caught by the terror roar and said oh well.