The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Dracos]

You know who really suffers in S5?

Cluster based attackers.  Seriously, almost no enemies are ever close enough for a cluster to catch two of them.  Columns are more rare than usual so also suffer, but row and all attacks just have a much bigger impact in this game relatively.  That normal attacks can sometimes multi-hit even further disadvantages column and cluster, since just going attack might result in 2-3 hits going on at x1 (or like 6 if you're using Richard).

[Rezantis]

Yeah, that's just it.  Don't get me wrong, the S-range mages aren't useless, but I can't see why I'd want to use them instead of Viki or Zerase (who are both ludicrously powerful), or even Sialeeds and Jeane.

And yeah, row attacks are by far the most useful multi-attack, and the only one I tend to use.

In other news, apparently I had a 'no rumours' trade event, so I went back to the castle and asked Sairoh, who directed me to Haud.  They were buying gold for 900,000 potch.  So long story short, now I have like six and a half million potch.  And that's after buying Richard one of the one-million-potch armours that Mohsen has for sale . . .

[Dracos]

Oh, lucky find.  Yeah, that's a rare one, but it shows up.  Especially if you horde gold in your store-room.

Save some cash for the Eyeball rings in Nivra.  A set of those on your meleers basically renders them near invulnerable.  Especially if teamed with Murad and What's her name.

[Sierra]

Well yeah I'm not about to argue that Zerase isn't broken as fuck. Seriously Konami what.

[Rezantis]

Viki would be more broken due to having a Rage Rune and A-rank chain magic . . . except that Zerase can use the Magic Absorb rune.

I kinda shelved Zerase.  The ability to spam away with level 4 spells out of the star rune is a -little- ridiculous.

[Dracos]

I took the S-type mages out to recruit Levi and walk back.  Doing nothing but spamming spells.

They went from level 20 to level 44 during the walk.

Then went back to the storage room where they belonged.

Zerase is crazy and definitely top mage.  But yeah, any S-type mage needs to deal with that they're like 4-5 amazing long/medium mages.

Still, Richard is Richard and tops out the 'What Were You Thinking, This Guy Just Totally Is Ridiculous'.  Level 47 starter?

[Dracos]

Slowly grinding most the group up to 52ish before I go wander into storm fist.  It's pretty much an absolute slaughter anyway, since so much of the cast are superpowered at this point.

[Rezantis]

I just cleared Stormfist!

. . . yeah, it's an utter slaughter.  The final boss you fight in Stormfist lasted two rounds. 

And I defended on the second round with everyone except Zegai (who had a Crazed orb), because I was curious to see what sort of attacks they had.  Oh well.

Does the game get any harder?  Or is there a bonus dungeon?  There seriously hasn't been a difficult battle in the entire thing.

[Sierra]

Suikoden V's villains die the way they lived: a major load.

The final boss approaches competence (by SV standards) but that's really it. It's sad, you have so much broken and practically nothing to exploit it against (a multi-party dungeon kinda tries to make you spread your top talent out, but that's too little too late).

[Dracos]

Yeah, the end game enemies do a better job of being durable than the bosses, and S5 in particularly lines you up with full everything against bosses, so you can just abuse the heck out of level 4 runes if you want.

What really strikes on end game is how silly the War numbers start to get.  These guys have lost battle after battle, losing tons of men and their best generals.  The entire country is well aware at this point what way the setup is going...

And yet they're still able to field 3x your number in forced recruitments that don't even run away :P   It's not like S3 where you're facing off against enemy nations or S2 where you're up against several well organized countries in their own right...

Nope, you're facing off against a remaining 2 cities that haven't totally fallen to your dominance, and despite that they have a ton of resources compared to the entire country being behind you.

Childerich is definitely meant as an attempt to evoke the kind of 'man that guy's a beast' that blight does, but he just is totally ineffectual and seems horribly stupid to be out there used in that manner.  At least with blight, he was a tremendous power house with a true rune and royal blood, so it was reasonable that nobody could tell him no.  With Childerich?  What's he even supposed to do?

It should've been Gizel, being an effective schemer really that was the tactical boss rival for a lot.  None of the other villains really had the vibe and none of the generals came off as some super rival for Lucretia to work against.  Sure there was a bit of that, with Dolph's antics, but basically the front of their general squad was a group of super-loyalist morons for the most part.

[Dracos]

Finished up last night. 

I forgot how completely shitty the ending is down most routes.   Just total nonsense as a 5 minute thing before it actually gets to anything decent as a closeout.  Olg had warned me but I had really blocked it out for being terrible.  The politics stuff was kind of silly too, if you get/take the return to the kingdom ending.

Started up NG+, but couldn't bring myself to walk through the hours of pre-treachery where they slowly build up the situation.

Dunno if I'll go do an S3 run (prolly not), or more likely head back to Shadow Warrior which totally lost me in its secret design.

[Dracos]

Shadow Warrior it is, barely moved in it though.  I don't feel particularly awesome playing it, which is slowing me down.  For a crazy bitchin' mafiaso wielding a katana and magic, I should feel more awesome dealing with the enemies.

I also get to follow up every fight with a 'you did shitty' ranking, even if I barely get hit and use a variety of weapons and spells.  Not sure what doing good by the system is since that's how they explained it to me.

[Dracos]

I'm doing better at it, but my opinion of the game isn't really improving.  Apparently I'm often 3 or 4 stars now that I can dash in and use twirl around and kill everything.

I don't like that most attacks (Both for enemies and player) don't feel like their range is linked with the visual.  I was fighting a Warlord boss (and dying) and the vast majority of it's attack (a swing two axes down thing) was in fact an invisible area sphere around and behind it when it did that which counted as being hit.   I definitely wasn't getting an earthquake vibe, and it didn't knock me much around.  It had some grapple effect to keep me from getting far that I think it wanted me to do something with, but didn't really seem to come across.  Eventually I just used hit and run with a machine gun from across the map and behind cover, which felt weird with out little cover was an option the entire game to date, and how they'd swamp me with enemies from every direction anyway previously.  With that he went down easily.

Most enemy attacks lack much physical presence or orientation.  Or at least, enough that I'm really picking up on it in the thick of it.  Enemy appearance is...often sudden.  I tend to know by the blaring loud music long before I've spotted the enemies.  Including when enemies are just sitting there unaware, fiddling around on the floor for no reason.

The environment art seems really weird.  A lot of it is old traditional japanese homes or bamboo forests, despite that we've left residential land for urban.  A lot of the terrain is explosive on hit.  Whether it's a car, a motorbike, or just a video game arcade cabinent, almost anything that can be interacted with by weapon will explode.

You run through a lot of water in the game.  A lot of moats, small strangely walkable lakefronts, rivers, etc.  Last night I ended a battle, looked and saw that the pool around me was a bit deeper than usual.  Dove in to check for the obscure secret hiding.  Died instantly on touching the water.  Way to go game design~ :P  Stopped for the night with that.

[Dracos]

Playing Etrian Odyssey 4 at the moment.  Having fun and in the fourth 'land' where it starts revealing that not everything is roses as it was in the repeated ignorant of history people.  Been playing on casual, which is fun, excepting when the game goes "You lose".

Some of the boss fights are still impressively hard, and I think things hit harder on normal.  Generally I find enemy attacks are in one of 3 variations:
1)Mostly irrelevant small damage.
2)Status/Bind/Instadeath effect, dealt with moderate damage to row or team.
3)90 percent of party health in one shot.

So while within handleable ranges, but with bosses occassionally doing number 3, I don't know what room there is for more damage to show up.  Maybe it's just reduction in damage dealt by players to monsters in normal.

[Dracos]

Tried to steam-roll the last level last night at gate's poking.

Got tired before finishing sadly. ;_;  So many long floors and foes.