Unofficially Official What are you Playing

[John Mora]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Phantasy **** III: Generations of Dong

[Stormy]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Alternating between replaying Crysis, Oblivion, and Star Ocean: Second Evolution on my PSP at work.

I played the demo of Demigod a couple times, its fun but not worth $30. I'd pay $20, but no more.

[Riotsword]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Phantasy **** III: Generations of Dong

It's good, it really is! At least certain aspects of it, right?

Anyway, I'm still playing FFXII. I think it's come to a point where I'll just play it to pass the time instead of to beat it. Kind of like how one plays a Guitar Hero game or a sports game. Oh, I'm also playing Mother 3.

[John Mora]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

It's good, it really is! At least certain aspects of it, right?

Let's hear your defense. It might be more convincing than the others!

[Dallas Alvis II]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

I stopped Phantasy Star when it went online. Was I wrong?

[Riotsword]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Let's hear your defense. It might be more convincing than the others!

Uh, the overworld theme evolves depending on the number of people in your party?

I don't really have anything, I'd just rather hear your explanation.

[orius]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Here's a recent critique I did on PSIII. It's maybe a bit spoilerish, but in a general way:

The branching storyline would have been cool if it had been developed better. It adds some variation to the second generation, but really, the third generation is almost the same for every character: get the parts for Wren, get the weapons, kill Dark Force. Ayn's sons have it a bit different because they have to play through most of Nial's storyline as well. Besides that, only the beginning of the third generation and the ending as different.

The music is pretty repetative IMO. After a while, you'll get tired of the dungeon theme. The best part about the music is how the overworld theme changes as more members join the party.

The dungeons mostly have the same dimensions, and they're somewhat uninspired. They're basically the typical RPG dungeon that forces you to go through an overly long maze as a way of ramping up the random encounters. They're nowhere near as confusing as the PSII dungeons though.

Combat's annoying. It's pretty much just attack, attack, attack, because magic is consistantly less useful. After a while, it gets boring.

Then you have to walk everywhere at least until you get the Aero Parts. There's no Ryuka spell to teleport, and there's not even any Telepipes to speed things up. So you spend the first 2 generations hoofing it everywhere which leads to more annoying encounters. Even after you can fly, there's only certain spots where you can land and take off, so you'll still be bumping into enemies.

The magic system could have been good with the ability to adjust the power of the spells. But the Healing spells are expensive early on given Mieu's limited MP pool, and they have that annoying chance of failure. The attack spells are weaker than weapons after the first generation. The other spells aren't that reliable, so you're better just attacking.

Overall, the game is playable, but all the interesting features tend to be overshadowed by the more grindy aspects of the game. If Sega had put more effort into developing the game and fleshing it out, it might have been good. It does have potential, juts none of it is ever reached.

[FlamingMage]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Besides Battlefield: Bad Company, the only time I've played games recently is "challenge gaming"

I guess my most recent challenges are:
--Jak and Daxter: The Precurser's Legacy no precurser orbs game (Totally impossible. I'm confident that it can't be beaten without picking up orbs.),
--Final Fantasy X Tidus only (grindin at the highroad...not looking forward to Gui.)
--Uncharted Crushing difficulty (almost a challenge game in and of itself, but I'm considering trying to beat it with no rifles...)
--DQVIII fisticuffs only, (easy-peasy, training myself for a single-character challenge later.)
--FFX-2 thieves only (I swear this has nothing to do with Rikku's default outfit. Well, okay. Maybe a little. I'm going to spend a lot of time looking at them, may as well make it more fun...)
--Golden Sun, Isaac-only game and Psyenergy-only game (haven't worked on these in a while, but I need too...)
--Kingdom Hearts, Hard difficulty no magic game (**** you you ****ing Pot Scorpion! You ****ing kill that ***** Donald in the first ten ****ing seconds no matter how ****ing time I waste leveling. For ****'s sack, I trained to level 20 on the ****ing Destiny Islands )

And I'm always playing Oblivion.

[Toaster]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Topic necromancy.

I played The Void earlier today.

I'm on my way to encountering the first Brother. What a weird, and surreal experience. The game's systems seem really obtuse and abstract at first, but become a lot easier to understand after the initial moments of confusion. I wish there was an option to switch the voices back from English to Russian with English subtitles. The game seemed so much like a compelling experience when I watched the trailer and I heard the crazy whispers of a foreign language. Reminded me of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus.

Also, requesting sticky.

[Goufunaki]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Went after trophies for Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (damn robotnik mean bean machine is the only one I'm missing), but lately I've been hooked on Playstation Home's Salt Shooter mini game.

[Cutter De Blanc]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

I'm currently playing Black and White.

[Riotsword]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Just beat Phantasy Star IV again, working on Phantasy Star II now. I might give up because there's like 50,000 meseta worth of equipment I need to buy and I keep getting less than 300 per battle.

Also playing Streets of Rage and a bunch of other Genesis games in between.

[marcus]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Topic necromancy.

I played The Void earlier today.

I'm on my way to encountering the first Brother. What a weird, and surreal experience. The game's systems seem really obtuse and abstract at first, but become a lot easier to understand after the initial moments of confusion. I wish there was an option to switch the voices back from English to Russian with English subtitles. The game seemed so much like a compelling experience when I watched the trailer and I heard the crazy whispers of a foreign language. Reminded me of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus.

Also, requesting sticky.

Ice-Pick Lodge needs more money to make good games. They're consistently weird and I like that. You should also check out Pathologic which is the only survival horror adventure game that alters the flow of events based on exactly what you do and it gets really, really creepy.

[Perversion]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

Played Flower for the first time in forever, and it still had the same effect on me this time (at the beginning, I found myself really calm and relaxed, and later, when I skipped ahead to the last level, yes, I did shed two tears).

Playing the hell out of my import Demon's Souls, and picked up and started FFIII on the DS last night, for some strange reason. Other than that, the only other game I'm playing on a regular basis is Lumines Supernova. Spent a good day plowing through Mushroom Wars (PSN game) last week, got over the difficult hurdles I needed to, and am now stuck on the final boss level (this game is HARD, and I'm playing on EASY. ).

[Stormy]

Re: Unofficially Official What are you Playing

I just finished STALKER, and am using the opportunities provided by the free play mode added in Complete 2009 to explore some areas I missed during the game. I don't expect my interest to last long, even though the game was amazing.

I kinda feel like playing some GalCiv II again, but I'm resisting so I can focus on my school stuff.