What games are you playing 2: The revenge

[seitora]

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

After a couple of months away, I started playing again. I called it quits at about 16 hours for the day, currently partways through the Ether Mine (in the large prison segment).

The Bionis' Leg is definitely an order of magnitude bigger than Colony 9 is, and it even expands up a couple of elevations. I spent...probably 5 hours in total just wandering around for the most part, accepting and performing a lot of quests, and exploring the map. I actually should have done some of the story segments first, hah. It's a lot easier to fight some of the monster nests, like the first Tirkin camp, when I have three party members instead of just two.

The Ether Mines was a little bit confusing in the first segment, with all the tunnels going above and below each other, but I was able to power through. Strangely enough, the music sounds like a knockoff of the music in the Shinra Mansion from FFVII.

Somehow, it didn't occur to me that if the protagonists in Xenoblade have British accents, so would the antagonists. The first time the Faced Mechon spoke, I just about died laughing. I was expecting him to call me mate.

It commented before it seems really difficult for me to get familiar with all the systems. I haven't even really touched crafting gems, so I have all these small and large element crystals that I've been mining everywhere. I've barely done more than occasionally upgrade some of my Arts, let alone buying skill books to expand into the higher tiers. Or for that matter, setting up the arts each character uses so I can chain together some epic combos with heavy status effects, or min-maxing the gems that I have been equipping to my characters. Some of that will come with time, and some of it I probably won't touch unless the difficulty kicks my ass later that I have to learn.

 

[seitora]

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

25 hours in, at level 36, and in the Frontier Village. I finished up the Ether Mine reasonably easy, then got through the Satorl Marsh and cleared it out. The one field boss in the large palace, the Reckless Godwin, was actually the very first time in the entire game I've struggled with any of the monsters. I went in a level behind it, expecting to win, only to get my end kicked multiple attempts in a row. I came back several levels later and won quite convincingly against it. The only other monster I even struggled with was one of the big fiery birds in the area, at the same level as I was at, but that was more because it was airborne most of the time so more difficult to attack.

I didn't get anywhere close to exploring the forest, but since I've got to go back into the forest now to hunt the next boss, I'll take the opportunity to explore and map out the entire forest. I've got one more item to track down in the Ether Mine too, so I'll grind out a few runs until I get it. Meanwhile, still picking away at some of the few remaining quests in Colony 9 and Colony 6. The one requiring two girls to have a high affinity with each other...may take some time, hah.

Originally, I was expecting the High Entia to be elf expy-coded. But then the Nopon constantly calling her Bird Lady revised that. So I guess she has some hidden wings that will come off later.

Anyways, I've traded out some party members, so I'm now running a Shulk-Dunban-Melia, gearing Dunban as an evade tank. I've worked a bit at setting up Dunban's skills to mesh well with Shulk's. I finally started using the Gem machine thing in Colony 9, and set it up so I would get some Level 3 gems out of the level 2 material. Sharla seems to have been mostly useless, with the exception of her healing, so I ditched her but got some increased HP recovery gems and/or HP attack gems. Along with swapping out some of my lower levelled gems for higher level ones. I've only really directly played as Shulk so far, with very tiny bits of Fiora and Reyn. I may have to main Dunban for a while, if only because so many of his attacks scale off of Gale Slash, so it might be fun to try him out for some time.

 

[seitora]

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

35 hours in, and level 43. The levelling pace has slowed down, mostly because I've had like three hours of cutscenes now with some gameplay intermissions in-between. I've just finished up chapter 8, and started chapter 9 (right after the Tomb crawl).

I got the entire party back together now, so I'm ignoring continuing on with the story in favour of getting through a lot of the quests. I avoided doing most of the ones available in Alcamoth and Eryth Sea until I could get the party back together, because the quests will usually give party affinity for the active party members towards the party lead, either upon accepting the quest or completing the quest (sometimes both). So I wanted to get everyone back together to start rotating the party leader around. Of course, by waiting until chapter 9 to do that stuff, I've probably got enough EXP from discovering now locations and landmarks that I'll be overlevelled for a lot of the quests!

As it is, I have a high enough relationship between Shulk and Reyn and Shulk and Sharla that I'm able to get some Level 4 gems from level 2 crystals. Physical Protect IV seems to be the most useful thing I've been able to make so far (30% reduction of all physical damage). I finally ran out of room for crystals, so I at least sold off all the level 1 stuff hah.

Also, I'm working on rebuilding Colony 6. It's slow going, but I've been able to get the first level of upgrades all around currently.

 

[seitora]

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

48 hours in, level 52. After getting the party back together, I spent the better party of just about 10 hours running around and completing quests. I had a few holdovers still from Colony 9 and Colony 6 and Frontier Village, and of course, a whole whack of them from Alcamoth. In the process, I also got to explore 'most' of the Eryth Sea. 'Most' meaning the actual landmasses, considering there's a lot of empty space with all the sea on the map. I'm honestly getting a little tired of having to run around back and forth across large swathes of the maps, with only a few landmarks to quick travel to. Even in Alcamoth, where it felt like (because it was) some of the quests dragged on so much because I would have to go talk to one character, landmark skip and then run a long ways to talk to another character, then quick skip and run still longer to yet another character. At several points I just started reading the news and put the controls on auto run!

I got to the point a little earlier that most of my characters are maxing out their first skill tree, so I've been shifting each of them to another tree. Also, I've been making certain since I first discovered them to use the affinity coins to slot in affinity skills for each character. I'm not really sure if there's any particular min-maxing strategy for these, though some look more useful than others. I have to look at the actual specs on the Heavy equipment I have to see if it's worthwhile, but I could start slotting in the abilities to equip Heavy equipment and then reduce 10 points of Weight.

So far, I have Colony 6 all rebuilt up to level 2, and...I think 2 things that are at level 3. Maybe just 1. I'm surprised that for the amount of quests I've done for the area, I'm still only at 2 reputation points for the area, and I made sure to do every quest I could before they left the refugee camp. I guess more quests will open up extensively once I get to inviting more people and upgrading some more?

I got no desire to try playing the game to such a level of completion that my party has 5-level affinity between each set of characters. Regardless, I have been rotating everyone around to some extent, though obviously the affinity levels in the party are overall tilted towards Shulk.

Anyways, after having done all of that, I then proceeded to quickly zip through both Chapters 9 and 10. I'll have to do a second run through of Valak Mountain to pick up some more collectables and more thoroughly map out the area, since I really went through it quickly.

 

[seitora]

@LORD_ARM I take it you've played the game, then? You should comment. I'm getting a little lonely posting the last twenty odd updates in here

Persona 5 Strikers

I like to start and play bits of other games to intersperse my playthroughs of other large games. So a little bit of Persona 5 Strikers it is until I move back to finish Xenoblade Chronicles.

Currently at 10 hours of playthrough on the dot. I just finished the very first Jail, and then watched a few of the scenes right after, so on 7/31 currently. Surprisingly, at least going off the Trophy completion percentages, 95% of people played through the first 5 minutes of the game, but only about 35% made it through roughly three hours.

It's not a pure Musou game, but it definitely follows the gameplay fairly close. In some sense, this gameplay style 'fits' the Phantom Thief theme a lot better than the purer turn-based RPG Persona 5/Royal does. Well, outside of the Thieves brawling and massacring Shadows by the hundreds I'm also very happy that I actually get all the characters right from the start, instead of trying to piecemeal give me one Phantom Thief at a time over a course of several dozen hours.

I really enjoyed the whole Jail appearance for the first Monarch. It just oozes style with how everything was themed along Alice in Wonderland, but with the nightlife aesthetic. But, I'm finding Alice's background just a tad funny. After all, even a year after he died, Shujin Academy Principal Kobayakawa is still fucking everything up for everyone else.

I've only had Sophia for a day and a half. But if anything happened to her, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.

Persona 5/Royal implies that the police are still aware of Joker's true identity, but Strikers comes out and flat-out says it.

The second-last and last boss for the Jail were surprisingly difficult. The second-last (the Lock Keeper), I just had to rotate in all the party members that could hit it with skills that it was weak to, and then it went down reasonably quick. But the boss herself just tanked damage to the point I had to head off and grind a couple of levels before coming back, and she still tanked damage. I was able to read the tells and dodge easily enough, but she soaked up a lot of element hits and skills and All-Outs and party crackers and pole spins and Showtimes before she would go down. I was stockpiling up the SP recovery items from the vending machine outside the baths by Cafe Leblanc, and I ended up needing to use a few of them to make a final push to finish her off.

Ryuji's 'For Real' count: 7

 

[chronodekar]

I'm slowly playing "Slay the Spire". It's an easy-to-pause card game. That means between real-life distractions, the game is very quick to pick up and put down.

You start the game off with a single character - he reminds me of a brute. After playing a few games/rounds, the other characters become unlocked. I got 2 of them unlocked so far. To unlock the last one, I need to actually defeat/finish the spire.

The battles are fun and turn-based. You can usually see the very next move your opponent is about to do and this gives the game an element of planning/strategizing.

No story - as far as I can tell. Just fight one battle to the next, climb the tower, defeat boss, move to next area, repeat. There are 3 areas/zones, I think. Have only made it to the 3rd zone once.

-chronodekar

 

[Jimbobob5536]

Been playing Cyberpunk 2077. It was part of Playstation's Black Friday sale, so I got it for $25.

Playing a hackerman build, and it's quite fun.

Recently got the legendary cyberdeck that let's me use the "ultimate" hacks for cheaper, and lets them spread.

The results are hilarious.

 

[seitora]

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

60 hours in, and the party is at level 58. I've just finished Chapter 11, which is the end of Sword Valley/Galahad Fortress. Progressing the story again. I've moved around and caught up on a lot more quests, so I'm not seeing anything new whatsoever.

I'm at the point where I literally have none of the items required for Colony 6 rebuilding now.



...another update a few days later.

I am now 70 hours into the game, with the party at level 65. My levelling pace is definitely slowing down hah. Possibly because I spent so much time on getting the quests done that by the time I move on to the next area of the game, the monsters are several levels behind me, so I simply don't get anywhere near as much EXP. If I did the quests after going through areas, I'd be getting a fixed amount of EXP (I assume), and I wouldn't lose as much potential EXP from the level disparity vs monsters.

Anyways, I've cleared the entirety of Mechonis Field, including getting my Collectopaedia completely filled out for the area. Speaking of collectibles, several people have made me aware to get everything I need for Sword Valley and Galahad Fortress ahead of time. I knew I needed to get two Red Frontiers for a future Colony 6 upgrade, and it was like pulling teeth to get even one. There are maps that point out spots where they have a 13% chance, and it was more like 1% after going through multiple times and getting probably a couple of hundred items. Then it turns out by the time I cleared Chapter 13, I was already at 5 stars for Junk, so I could have just traded for them and saved myself a headache. Oof.

Now that I've got the seventh character, it's back to the drawing board with getting my party affinities up. I already wasn't bothering with some characters earlier on, but I've been trying to rotate around a little bit just for fun. But now that I'm fighting Mechon, some of the characters are getting sidelined if I'm not maining Shulk. This is because their anti-Mechon weapons really suck with a massive drop in power compared to what I'm used to. So if I'm not using Enchant, they're not getting rotated around, at least until I get through more and more and more and more Mechon areas.

At least once, I wish there was a little bit of an A.I. toggle for the party members. Getting a little sick of using Break techniques on monsters, then Reyn just dawdling around and not using his Topple technique.

Oh yeah. Some random thought I had. Speedrun optimisation must be hell for this game. Not just trying to do the bare minimum of running around and skipping optional quests and configuring arts trees and praying for specific equipment and item drops, but also fall damage. I've done a loooooot of falling off the sides of walls and cliffs to save time in this game, and I have to wonder if speedrunners have calculations on exactly where they can drop off a wall so long as they have X amount of HP to shave 5 or 10 seconds off here and there hah.

 

[chronodekar]

I am having a *lot* of fun with Slay the Spire. This is a wonderful game to just pick up, play for a bit and put back down when an interruption (usually baby-related) comes up. And then, when I get time again, just pick it up and continue.

Just finished 3 acts/zones with the first character. That unlocked another 4th character as well as ascension mode for that first character.

At the very end of the 3rd zone, I had to fight a boss with 2 forms. I think that was the first time the game threw such a back-to-back encounter. Thankfully, the luck of the card-draw was with me and I was able to finish the first. Once the boss was done, I got taken to a mysterious room with a HUGE beating heart. My character said something along the lines of "is this the source of evil?" and attacked the heart. It was not enough and my character went to sleep. Some text came up showing how much damage the attack made and the total damage done to the heart from ALL players, ... I think.

Then I was shown a screen with 3 symbols - and one of them glowing. This was very obviously referring to the character I just beat the spire with. So, I'm guessing if I beat it with the first 3 characters, it will unlock something?

Am looking forward to see what it could be!

-chronodekar

 

[seitora]

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

At 81 hours in and just finished chapter 14. The party is at level 75, and Riki at level 76. The levels to hours disparity fell behind in the early bit of that stretch, but I actually managed to catch up a little bit with levelling up, finally. Once I got to about level 69-70, I was able to kill some of the higher level monsters in the Windy Caves area, mostly the Tempest Vangs, Royal Caterpiles, and Admiral/General Arachnos. When I got caught up a few more levels, I was able to start attacking the Greed and Gluttony Gogols north of the Raguel Bridge as well, along with the Envy Sardi in the water. After getting up to 74, I was also able to tackle the Last Rhogul and Leg Tokilos enemies as well. The level disparity also was giving me lots of EXP.

I've finally started to main Riki. Once I started to get used to him, he started to get really broken. Piling up multiple status effects on enemies like burn, poison, and bleed really starts to whittle away their health ridiculously quick. Then he also helps me to get my Chain Link gauge filled out a lot more quickly. Yoink! also is becoming really useful, between grabbing items, EXP, and AP, making the levelling a little quicker again. Against the Mechon, I was using mainly Reyn and Dunban for tanking. Getting to the Bionis' leg, however. While I rotated a number of party members around to match up with Riki, I ended up having to bring Sharla in while taking on some of the enemies 5 levels above me to keep up my HP. But again, god the A.I. is useless sometimes. Party members falling behind on HP, and she just won't bloody heal until I'm able to force her through either a vision warning or a Chain Link. Riki's Yoink! only gives EXP and AP to the active party members, so of course rotating them around means he is quickly jumping ahead of everyone else in overall EXP.

A lot of it is because the newer areas aren't anywhere near as large as the Bionis' Leg, Eryth Sea, or Valak Mountain, but I'm having a lot easier time of it with filling out my Collectopaedia as I go along. Barely having to retread to find any new items to fill up my pages or to have enough for upgrading Colony 6 in the future. Colony 6 continues to grow. I maxed out housing, Level 4 for Commerce/Nature, and Level 3 for Special. I think I need to get to future areas now to continue with any upgrades. I'm also a little surprised that I'm still only at level 3 Affinity for Colony 6. I assume I need to invite more people to get some quests rolling, but some people still aren't taking the bait. So again, I guess I need to get everything up to level 5 rebuild before I can finally max out Colony 6's Affinity.

Storyline continues to progress. I was actually expecting a Tales of Symphonia plot for a while (with the villain deliberately resurrecting a dead girl's soul into a new body), and then it turns out it wasn't aiming for that at all, hah.

 

[seitora]

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

93 hours in, and at the point of no return. Level 85. Of course, I had probably a good 4 hours of story cutscenes, so if anything, my pace is actually increasing. I'll probably do several more quests first, grind out a few levels, then stomp over the final bosses.

Let's see. I have all Collectopaedia pages filled out, with the sole exception of the one that you have to trade for the items. I'm missing a couple of them, with the obvious one being the love potion item. Colony 6 is now completely restored with the last couple of items I needed on Prison Island, but then I saw I had to fight a level 99 dragon to finish the completion, so I noped out of there right away. Still a lot more sidequests to fill out, so I'm sure I'll get close enough to level 99 not to have any stat penalties.

While most games do it, I'm still mildly amused at how when something urgent is going down in the storyline, you can go and waste 5 hours elsewhere. But this has to really top it.

Spoiler

When the Central Factory and Mechonis Capital is being blown up, one of the Junks' Machina on the ship gives you a quest to go allllll the way to the bottom of the Central Factory to make a new weapon for Fiora, then return alllll the way back up. And you can totally just ignore the place falling apart and go get the weapon manufactured. And it wasn't even any better than a drop I already had, but at least it gave me 30k exp. But quick wrap was already disabled at that time, so what a waste of time.

To my complete disappointment, I found out that I missed a significant quest chain, specifically the one that leads up to fighting a Nopon kingpin and getting several useful gems, like EXP VI. Oh well. I still have lots of EXP IIIs-Vs, and some of the Reward/Bonus weapons to start pushing up the levelling. I've got Riki's skill tree for EXP filled out (at least for leveling in the day time), too. I made another big push again right before storming Prison Island, fighting the higher-levelled Gogols in Satorl Marsh, and then the kobold-esque monsters on the south shore of Eryth Sea.

 

[seitora]

Spoiler: just a big wall of text

Finished basically all the content in the game, at 109 hours. All sidequests that I can see available have been completed. Maybe there's one or two more somewhere that I've missed, but I'm not going to exhaust every possible hour in every single map now just to pick out one or two more pieces of flavour text. All heart-to-hearts achieved. 131/150 achievements, and 48/50 trials. I defeated 3 out of 5 superbosses. The party is level 97 through 99. I did use Expert mode for a little while to keep my party's levels down so I could get more EXP whild doing some grinding. Every Collectopaedia page is filled out, including the miscellaneous. I would have done all the superbosses, but I got annoyed at having to try grinding for specific gem set-ups to take them on, and the grind to fight them, so was satisfied with three.

Getting a fully maxed-out affinity chart between the party was an exhausting endeavor. I accidentally discovered an easy way to cheese it using the not-Kobold boss on the south end of Eryth Sea (I can't be bothered to remember what the actual species name is, but since they're basically a Kobold expy, that's what I keep referring to them as), which can put party members to sleep easily even when they're many levels above him. I didn't stick with that for too long, but it looked like it helped. I rotated party members a lot while accepting and completing requests to get the affinity points given between characters when doing so, as well as taking on some of the easier quests I was overlevelled for with sub-optimal party set-ups.

It turns out Sharla is only 90% useless instead of 100% useless. There were a few monsters that I was easily able to tank with her. The level 99 dragon outside of Colony 6 has an instant-death technique, but her one technique grants damage immunity for a few seconds, enough to stop the instant-death technique. And using her healing to keep everyone at full health while continuing to kill other bosses. And so on. Then, of course, I went through a lot of my collectables gifting them to each other at the end to finally get a perfect affinity chart.

Oh yeah. Unique monsters. I'm a little disappointed to find out there's no in-game checklist at all to see which ones you've killed. I'm not a big enough completionist to try killing each one of them. But it'll be something useful in mind for me for future Xenoblade games to keep a list as I go through, assuming they have Unique monsters too. On a side note, something that's been disappointing the entire game every time it happens. Monsters...just turning around and running off halfway through a fight. I'm guessing sometimes it's because they hit the boundary of their range, but it's still annoying af when it happens, especially when it's a Unique monster that I've already whittled down most of its health, and have to start over from scratch again. The one level 97 spider boss in Tephra Cave did this to me.

As for the game's ending, I was expecting a Tales of Symphonia twist leading up to it, and instead I got a Digital Devil Saga 2 twist. The overall story felt like it lost a lot of cohesion in the last quarter of the game. The plot comes together in that time, sure, but it felt like plot points were also just hammered together to tie everything up. Even the character dialogue suddenly felt a whole lot weaker probably right around after the Sword Valley section? Melia reminds me vaguely of Meru from Legend of Dragoon. Both are blue-haired female player characters from a race of long-lived bird-humanoids who join the party undercover for a while before being outed as a part of said bird-humanoid race, and have an unrequited crush on the main male protagonist. Both are also a lot older than their late teenager to early twenties appearance as a result of said bird-humanoids race being long-lived. And Riki best Heropon.

Something amusing: I mentioned before that I played the original Wii game basically when it released a decade ago, but only got a few hours in. I was looking up some gameplay footage of the original Wii release, and wow. I hadn't even realised they had redone the style of the character models for the DE version. I guess I just thought that was how everyone had always looked, because that's how they already looked in Smash Bros., other crossovers, official art, fan art, porn, and so on. Definitely a lot 'dirtier' style. More realistic, but also uglier.

I didn't even touch the Time Attack mode, lulz. I did one challenge right at the start when I encountered the first warp portal on the Bionis' Leg, then never bothered again afterwards.

Finally, I'll do the Future Connected campaign.

 

[seitora]

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

I finished the DE-exclusive epilogue, Future Connected. I was at about 13.5 hours going into the final boss, so counting the boss fight, and the few cutscenes, I would call it 14 hours.

I had to legitimately look up and see if Melia had a new voice actress in the British dub, because she just sounds so different. But nope, the same. So either the VA had a significant change in her vocals in 8 years that she couldn't reach the same pitch and tone, or it was a deliberate choice to sound that different. Strange.

FC almost feels like it uses a different game engine compared to the base game. I don't know if it maybe lifted something from Xenoblade 2, which I believe came out before the DE did. It's more gut instinct than anything with proof. But combat feels very...slippery? Like, all the monsters and party members keep seeming to be pushed around more, so I have to maneuver whoever my main is back into the fray more often, because s/he keeps falling out of auto-attack range otherwise. That may be because of the Ponspectors being there, which is a nifty mechanic as long as it's short-lived, which it is.

The final boss was ridiculously easy. Maybe it would've been a little more difficult if I was a few levels lower, but I was at level 81 to defeat the boss of the last Ponspector quest. Some of the quest bosses were a little ridiculous with needing some more specific Gem set-ups, and it doesn't help that good weapon drops were rather lacking. Collectopaedia rewards were mediocre on that front, too. I left Kino out of my party for most of FC, but near the end I brought him in to sub out Melia because of some of the ridiculous Uniques and Quest bosses that would hit me with wide-area hard-hitting attacks that also cause Topple or Daze.

Early game was frustrating, because when trying to fight a lot of the field monsters, I would try to kill one, only for it to summon three minions behind it, so suddenly I was surrounded with four enemies instead of one. Plus too many bird monsters flying around and swooping in on me everywhere I tried to go. Once I levelled up some, the later monsters didn't have the same issues. I didn't kill quite every Unique, but I was pretty close. What else? Oh yeah, obvious evil bird guy was obvious. Spacing with the landmarks was actually fairly player-friendly.

 

[seitora]

Persona 5 Strikers

I have now finished the 2nd jail and then did some of the story scenes right after, just getting ready to depart for Sapporo. Sitting right at 18 hours currently, and Joker is at level 31.

The boss fight of the second area was significantly easier than the first boss. Maybe I was just a little bit overlevelled, or maybe all the Bonds effects and being able to make SP-restoring items instead of buying a couple at a time from vending machines helped make the difference. I think the first boss, I had to really be careful with my SP items. This time around, I was able to make a bunch of Leblanc Curry every hour or so by stocking up on food from the supermarket in Sendai, which restores 20SP to every party member...and then it's actually 32SP with a couple of upgrades to the Bond for increased effect of healing items.

I kind of appreciate the premise that the party is going to visit some of the other areas of Japan. Even if each area ends up limited to only a few screens, it's nice to a see a little bit of the 'culture' of the lesser-known areas of Japan.

In Sendai, there is a fortune ticket booth that you can draw that gives 'Curse', 'Blessing', and 'Great Blessing' fortunes. The latter two provide small and large boosts to Bond EXP, and the former gives nothing. The tickets are 100 yen each, and it's possible to draw as many of them as I want. The only caveat is I have to change map screens to force a refresh between each ticket, so some loading times. But I was able to boost myself up another three Bond levels before the EXP boost started to dovetail. That was still enough to give me a big step up with some of the Bond abilities, including the aforementioned boost to healing items.

I did a small amount of grinding, so level 31 might be higher than expected for finishing the 2nd Jail. I picked the Aoba 1st Street ward checkpoint, going through the south half of the screen to fight the tough Lamia and tough High Pixie bosses, which gave me about 600EXP each. With Bufula and Freila/Gun respectively, it was reasonably easy to knock those two off.

As far as the Persona compendium goes, I must admit that I vastly like the improvement in accessibility for fusing Persona together. It shows all the options available with all the Persona in your party and the ones you can summon from your Compendium, as well as automatically summoning a Persona from the compendium and then using it for a fusion where required. It saves quite a lot of time for if I want to fill up my registry later.

I'm not really peeking at a guide at all, with the sole exception of seeing what the boss of each area has for elemental weaknesses. Since the active party is the only one that gets experience points, I try to rotate whoever I need for the boss fight into the party for the fight. I did my research just to make sure there was no missable content in this game. The only thing it looked like was just the special party member requests in each city.

Oh yeah, what else...I found I struggled a little bit going around the map with Morgana. I think his jump distance is actually lower than the rest of the party, because for some reason I was struggling to scale ledges and walls with him, but nobody else. What a shot to the bow!

Ryuji's 'For Real' count: 10

 

[seitora]

Persona 5 Strikers

The Jack Frost Hee-Ho horde scene is the greatest thing Persona has ever done. Anyways, I have completed the 3rd Jail. 24 hours, and Joker is at level 39. This area felt a lot quicker than even the Sendai Jail did, that's for sure.

Definitely dig the ice wonderland vibe for this Jail. I've had my own local winter festivals, but one day, I want to go to at least one dedicated ice festival in one of the big cities. In Canada, there's the Quebec Winter Carnival, and of course, Sapporo has its own winter fest that's mentioned multiple times in-game. The snowstorm bits were annoying, but again, it fits in with the area. The two quick snowboard sessions were fun, especially since they were short and it didn't seem like there was any penalty to not nailing them. To my surprise, the boss of the area wasn't weak to Fire. But it was an ice-user, so of course I rotated Yusuke in to help tank against Bufula and the like.

Oh yeah. I'm catching on that each Jail so far is linking together with one of the Phantom Thieves, whether thematically or just plotwise. My only personal pet theory is going to be me riffing off a pet theory I had for the AI: The Somnium Files games. At least some of this is being set-up for Sophia to develop a 'heart', by trawling the Jails and seeing humanity at its best and at its most twisted.

It took me until after clearing the boss that I realised looking for clovers is the equivalent of the fortune tickets for Sapporo, so I missed out on grinding for some easy Bond EXP. Oh well. I've already hit the point that I essentially never have to worry about SP management now that I have a fully boosted restoration Bond ability, and can order groceries online to cook for more SP restoration.

Ryuji's 'For Real' count: 11

 

[seitora]

Persona 5 Strikers

I've finished up both the fourth and fifth Jail, and am just getting ready to storm the sixth Jail. At 33 hours, and Joker is at level 47. The game seems surprisingly shorter than I was expecting, especially after the expedited fourth and fifth areas. Well, it's still a lot beefier and meatier than most games, but I was honestly imagining something more on par with Persona 5/Royal, ha. At this point, I've settled into the battle system for the most part. I haven't really bothered with learning tells much, and instead brute-force my way through the tougher fights with lots and lots of spells. I do attempt dodges and so on, but it's not high-priority for me.

I've been keeping up on fusing Persona together. I'm not exploring the system too deeply, but it looks like I can essentially push through with the power of money. Oh yeah. I find it amusing that when you're on a remote Japanese island with a thousand people, Sophia's shop still works to expedite ship you items. Doubly so at nighttime. A case of gameplay and story segregation I won't complain about, though. On another note, I have been rotating my party around to use the various characters fairly frequently. So far, I've got Joker (obviously), Morgana, Haru, Ann, and Sophia all maxed out with their abilities. Queen and Fox shouldn't be long, which just leaves me with Ryuji and Wolf that have a little bit to catch up.

Spoiler: some spoilery plot stuff

For Zenkichi becoming a Phantom Thief, I vaguely think this is a 'take-that' at some of the fandom complaints about the Persona protagonists being almost exclusively high-school aged students, with the occasional middle-schooler and the once-per-game inhuman character. And now here comes this middle-aged man, who has a daughter who I think is only one year younger than Futaba, and he gets his Persona. The game does a decent job building his character up and leading into it to show the whole force of personality change required for somebody much more set in his ways to defy society, and defy the world, and bring out his Persona. Not sure if he's the oldest Persona-user in the franchise, since I've never played 1 or 2.

Guessing the mysterious voice in the 4th Jail is EMMA, and that EMMA will turn out to be the final boss. Well, boss-ish. It'll probably be another evil deity seeking to control mankind again, this time a goddess attempting to worm her way into the physical world by using EMMA as a proxy.

So far in this game, I've found two new girls that I can ship with Joker, lulz. The first one obviously Sophia. The second being Alice Hiiragi. Ichinose might qualify depending on how she turns out.

Ryuji's 'For Real' count: 15

 

[seitora]

Persona 5 Strikers

I just completed the 6th Jail. At 43 hours, and Joker at level 63. This jail was easily a lot longer and more exhaustive to go through than any of the previous jails, covering more screens and foot traffic overall. Enemies were getting a little annoying too, with enough of them with only one weakness that I pretty much only rotated through four party members through my entire run (Ann, Haru, Makoto, and Ryuji), with almost nothing for Yusuke or Sophie to touch.

I've currently got every request that was given to me completed, including all the Party Members' special requests (I would know, since I got the Trophy for it). I have defeated the first 3 Dire Shadows available, too. All characters now have their Arts maxed out. My Bond Level is also currently at Level 53 - I did some grinding with moving back and forth between screens in Osaka to rub the statue's feet. Needless to say, looking at my phone and doing phone stuff a lot while waiting on loading screens.

I know this isn't the last level yet, because what's a Persona game without an eldritch abomination to end it? Given Lavenza's couple of pronoun-drops of a 'she', I'm expecting a female deity/elder god.

Something else. There's...very little new music in this game, compared to the base Persona 5/Royal. I mean, obviously a lot of it is going to get reused, but I can't even remember anything new off-hand. Maybe the one 'festive' track and some of the area/boss music?

Ryuji's 'For Real' count: 15. My man's been slacking off. Or maybe he got a Change of Heart to not say it anymore

 

[seitora]

Persona 5 Strikers

I finished the game. 49 hours, and sitting at level 73 for Joker. This doesn't count the extra stuff that can be done post-game, and I'll have to get my Bond level up for what looks like the most difficult Trophy left. I've defeated 6 Dire Shadows, so I think there is two left, assuming there is one each in the last two Jails.

Spoiler

I wasn't surprised about Ichinose having created Sophia. I was expecting that EMMA would have been merely a virtual avatar for a goddess descending from upon nigh (it's been done in other SMT games), and possibly that Ichinose even was manipulated into creating EMMA. But no, instead it was a result of coincidence of Ichinose's genius know-how and Konoe having access to cognitive psience that kicked off EMMA outgrowing its original potential.

I admit, I was expecting a lot more direct Musou/Warriors-type gameplay coming in, because I don't actually watch trailers that obsessively. I was (pleasantly) surprised to find while it uses that base, it leans heavily on the JRPG tropes Persona embodies. In a sense, this almost feels like the gameplay style that really fits the Phantom Thiefs motif, more than the base Persona 5 JRPG combat does, with combat becoming real-time instead of turn-based.

Though I haven't played Merciless difficulty, and I was playing the game on Normal instead of Hard, it seems to me most of the fights can really be cheesed to some extent with essentially enough money. There's no limitation whatsoever to opening up the menu in combat to use restorative items. After probably about the second Palace, grocery items are relatively plentiful enough that I'll never worry about running out of SP-healing items, either. I guess there's the possibility of Hamaon/Mudoon spells, but I think literally only one Shadow in the entire game used it? The Dire Shadow in Okinawa.

Anyways, since I am playing the PS4 version, I will go through Merciless, if only to get my Bond level up to 99 since I have a bad obsession with being a completionist and grabbing a Trophy. If I was playing the Switch, I wouldn't bother. Of course, if I was playing the Switch version, I'd have to deal with bad loading times. So it's a tradeoff, hah. Maybe some more thoughts later.

Ryuji's 'For Real' count: 18

 

[seitora]

Persona 5 Strikers

I finished all post-game requests, right up to defeating the Reaper. I cleared the remaining two Dire Shadows as well. Defeating the final boss two more times was a chore, if only because it was tanking damage like nothing else. I revised my set-up for the boss to leave only Joker and Sophia on the final phase for Bless damage, as I had Yusuke with them in my vanilla regular play, and it turned out he wasn't needed and could be more useful on the second phase.

Aww, Lavenza with the love confession, even if she trailed off and aborted it halfway through <3

After that, I went into Merciless. Wow. Shadows everywhere just TANKING damage like nothing else, and I started bleeding through my SP-restoration items for a while. Joker wasn't quite at level 90 to fuse Lucifer and get the trophy for having a complete Persona registry, but by the end of the Shibuya jail it was completed.

Alice (the Persona, not the character) was actually indirectly my most useful Persona in Merciless. She is the only Persona to get Spell Master, which cuts SP usage in spells for half. Passing this on to a couple of other Persona, including Lucifer, I was able to get Curse, Psychic, Fire, Ice, Electricity, and Almighty spells with half SP usage. Wind and Nuke were the odd ones out, but that was alright. Reduced SP meant I could mow through mobs as Joker without having to worry about SP management as much, given that enemies were now significantly tanking attacks. Given Incenses are a lot easier to acquire in Merciless, I also started putting every SP Incense I got towards Joker for the same above reason.

As for the Eternal Bond trophy, which requires Level 99 Bonds...I went through the game for a little while until I cleared the second Jail, then stayed in Sendai. The quickest method I found was to grind the Naga Dire Shadow in the Sendai Palace. There's two checkpoints fairly close by, with the West Garden only having a single Shadow in between that's normally easy to scoot by. Naga is weak to Fire, Ice, and Bless, so I brought Yusuke and Sophia in with me to help drop its HP for the first little while. I had Wolf instead of Ann for my last fighter, because he had Debilitate and Heat Riser, and I didn't feel like switching Persona around on Joker to use those in his stead.

I ended up re-fusing a Lucifer with Ice Amp - Ice Boost - Freeze Boost - Ice Age (Diamond Dust also works) from Black Frost, and Spell Master from Alice, to maximise ice magic damage. Freezing the Naga basically every other attack essentially locked it down so it could never once get an attack on me. I initially had Futaba's Band equipped for an Accessory to increase Showtime gauge, but switched over to Blue Band for increased Ice damage after I found I would still get one Showtime attack per fight regardless. After this, my fights would clock in under 3 minutes. Between exiting and re-entering the Jail to restore my SP and respawn the Dire Shadow, it was roughly about 5 minutes, so I could do 12 fights an hour. In the level 70s range, I would get about 8 levels an hour, but into the 80s and 90s it dropped down to ~6.5 an hour.

I finished at 69 hours (nice).

 

[Zetas]

I knew this fight was coming, but the musical shit-posting by Soken has me laughing.

 

[seitora]

Tales of Arise

My next big-ish game. I've played three previous Tales of games before, with Symphonia, Phantasia (via the PSX version), and Abyss. I completed the end game for all three of those. Abyss, I'm fairly sure I exhausted most of the extra content, including defeating the superboss. The other two games, I'm fairly certain I didn't. The...Moria Mines I think it is in Phantasia, I know I never touched. Similarly for the ultimate weapons and superboss in Symphonia. But that's my experience with the series so far.

I did just enough research before playing the game to go, "Is this even a real Tales of game? What do you mean there's basically no missable content except for maybe a few skits?!" Because of course the other Tales games I played were notorious for having whole side quests and sections that could be missed by simply playing the game and not backtracking to every little podunk town in between to check in on things. In that same vein, it honestly doesn't feel quite like the above three Tales games, either. It shares the same overall battle system archetype (albeit obviously with a lot of the finer details revised and changed between iterations), and has skits, and cooking, and some of the other tropes like a two-worlds set-up going on. But it still has the feel of a different game with a Tales of skin thrown on, like how individual TP has been eliminated and using a shared CP for the group for healing. Apparently, there's a Denfaminicogamer saying that this is exactly what happened?

As for actual progress, I'm just shy of 13 hours in now, having defeated the 2nd Renan Lord. I'm finding myself surprisingly a little challenged on Normal difficulty with the battles. It may just be a case of git gud, but I've wiped twice so far on boss battles (admittedly, re-tooling with battle-specific accessories in each case made things go much more smoothly). I can read enemy tells for an attack, but still seem to have difficulty evading with exact timing. Either that, or I'm overextended in an attack and can't evade. It's something with me that I've never quite clicked with some of the Tales of battle systems, either, so attempting to link the various mechanics together to rack up a high combo count has always been a little difficult for me. So far, I've been able to get a few 200+ combos, mostly through Sword Rain Alpha abuse.

For anybody who knows me, they wouldn't be surprised that I made Shionne a catgirl the first chance I got after picking up the ears and tail accessory from the owls, hah. It's nice that it carries into the cutscenes and skits, and even seem to emote well. Shionne is also a big eater and high-functioning tsundere (then again, maybe she's a tsundere because I made her a catgirl).

 

[seitora]

Tales of Arise

23 hours in. Finished up the third realm.

Now that I've started to acquire more Titles, and get more abilities and artes put together, the combat is slowly coming together more for me. Mostly because now I can use Boost attacks in a more timely basis when necessary. A realm ago, I was being peppered with battles with Zeugles and other monsters that could use Artes, and could only use Rinwell's Boost like every second or third battle. Similarly for Law and breaking down shielded characters. Now, I'm at the point I can probably use several of each character's Boosts every fight, so it's not as difficult trying to keep pace with the puzzle combat. The one that I'm really struggling with now is Kisara's, since it seems like very tight timing. If I use her Boost right when an enemy gives a tell that it's going to start Charging, I don't get a Break status. I have to wait until it actually does charge.

Speaking of more abilities and Artes, I guess I can actually try to play some of the characters other than Alphen. I know at least with Rinwell and Shionne, it was a pain trying to use them, because their playstyle definitely needs multiple Artes available to really play seamlessly. I'm led to understand I get to double the amount of Artes available very shortly, so that should make their playstyle easier to handle.

I am making sure to keep on top of Cooking, so I'm basically never without a status effect. Sooner or later, I'll get Shionne's one ability for restoring CP after every battle whenever there's any active food effect, so I'll be able to romp through dungeon crawls without having to locate a Camp or use Orange Gel. I haven't been particularly strategising which abilities and Artes to specifically pick up, outside of trying to complete individual titles to get the stat bonuses.

Other gameplay stuff...it's kind of annoying how quickly levelling up is starting to, well, level off. The EXP requirements for the next level are increasing, but enemy EXP isn't going up accordingly. The wild monster encounters on the highway/plains in Elde Menacia can still give lower double digits, at a time when my level-up requirements are approaching close to five digits. So hopefully there's a large spike in enemy EXP soon.

Basically all the quests that I've been able to do so far have been cleared, outside of the one Zeugle way outside my level range and the couple that look like will run on for later into the game. I haven't touched the arena yet. Probably once I get a few more levels, I will at least clear the Novice runs for another title for each character. I guess that'll also give me the chance to get used to each of their playstyles some more.

It's kind of surprising that Law quickly became the comic relief character, given how he was introduced into the storyline. The game's kind of blatantly come out and shown Rinwell has something she's hiding, given the number of moments that it gives a lingering shot on her after somebody says something. I'm guessing sooner or later we're going to run into an enclave of Dahnan mages that she's related to (but presumably has never met since she never left Cysladia before the events of the game proper). Similarly, while Alphen at least can have some secrets given his amnesia, I would assume Shionne doesn't have anything big, given we've had three Renan lords in a row who would have blabbed something about her if they knew. If it ends up being something big that one of the lords should've known about, why, that'd just be bad writing!

 

[MastaofBitches]

that'd just be bad writing!

I mean, if you were looking for good writing, this is the wrong Tales game for that.

 

[chronodekar]

There *is* a big reveal near the end. Arguably, it could also be called a plot-twist. Am NOT spoiling, since I found Tales of Arise enjoyable. You are correct in the limited side-quest department. The best way to answer that is ... well, at the end of the game (near the final boss end) a lot of dungeons suddenly pop-up around the world. You can then go side-tracking to your hearts content!

Having said that, the ... structure of those optional quests dissappoint me. It's similar to how Triangle Strategy does it too. i.e. you basically _need_ to complete the main storyline first. Once that's done, a **TON** of optional quests open up - either as part of a New Game+ mode or just before the final boss. The reason it dissapppoints me, is that by the time I've reached the final boss (or even after defeating him/her), my mood is more celebratory - "Yay! I *finished* game XYZ!!". Am not really in a mood at that point to go back and do side-quests.

Perhaps years later, if I'm feeling bored, I might go back to it ... but I would much, MUCH prefer to have the side-quests alongside the main story. It gives me an excuse to over-level and curb-stomp the bosses. That's fun! Sadly, not the kind of enjoyment available these days.

-chronodekar

 

[Jimbobob5536]

Tales of Arise was a lot of fun. Enjoyed every bit of it. Alphen was always the one I defaulted to for the really tough fights, but I enjoyed playing as Rinwell the most.

Currently playing Tactics Ogre: Reborn. Currently in chapter 2. No idea how far into chapter 2 I am, as I know really nothing about the game. Just rescued Cistina from pirates.
What I do know is that Canopus is my mvp and is always hitting the level caps at the same time Denam does, as I basically never don't use him.