The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Ergoemos]

Just played "Dysfunctional Systems: How to Manage Chaos". Its a very short visual novel about a girl who comes from Earth from the far future, having been chosen for the job of managing the development of other worlds with sentient life. The intent of the job is to guide the planet's development and edge them towards sustainable long term growth. Its a pretty well developed premise, despite the shortness of the "game" (depending on your opinion of such VNs).

I think the art is simply beautiful. The characters are interesting and dynamic and the music is varied and well placed.

Anyway, its only a dollar on Steam for the next day or so, if you have about a couple hours to spend. Its also available on Desura (something I have never heard of but looks like a Steam clone) for five bucks and on Apple devices, also for just a dollar.

The developers, Dischan, have a another product that they give away for free call Juniper's Knot, a story about a boy and a demon. This one is free and you can download it from the website directly, but it is strictly a visual novel, no choices or "game-like" aspects. A good story (I thought, at least) and definitely worth the price of free.

[Dracos]

So solidly in postgame Etrian Odyssey 4.

I've got a set of 5 level 99 (retire 70) team members that are pretty much mauling everything, though did actually lose against the Fallen One last I tried it at level 75.

Post game weapons are a real fight to get. 

Huh, I never hit submit.

Oh well, way past that...

So kinda being worn by my mental goal of putting together 10 super characters, primarily by the 14 day stall time between runs of the bosses.  I can totally see why Guest bullshit is a big thing because it has numerous advantages (Reducing number of ingredients from well over 100 down to 18, duplicating valuable/rare/one time goods, reducing XP drain by providing high tier characters in the party without them getting a share of XP).  Even replacing one of your maxed characters with a guest similar to it, is a 20ish percent xp speed up to the rest.  Full

I've beaten every boss on casual, excepting the full strength warped saviour.  I should probably wander onto normal, but basically even there, there are 6(or 7 if you count warped saviour twice) bosses of any relevance for any characters past level 55, which sort of turns any legitimate push toward max into an enormous grindfest regardless of difficulty setting.

I played/watched a Beat Dance playthrough of the full power Warped Savior.  It was kind of silly, but a little faster for farming I guess.  I can easily see that the real one is usually partially chance, since it'd rely on getting certain blocking effects to avoid it's ability to basically dish out 1000ish a round.  Of course, having a lot of rune mages work, but other than that not so much.

Tried out Sniper and Imperial.  I'm not actually sure I/R is actually better than my R/I.  Runemasters are just super badass.  Sniper is kind of neat, but just basically ineffectual on the high end bosses.  More levels may help, and it's nice that it's back row, but it's basically inferior to both Nightseekers and Arcanists, partially due to how stat recovery works, but partially because Crit multiplication is just weak compared to damage multiplication (Current peak of 3000 wiping out all prep, versus a similarly leveled 70 nightseeker able to do 8000 repeatedly in rounds while keeping ailments around).

Imperial just doesn't leave many points for anything else, whereas Runemaster can basically have a background Drive it can pull off.  Heck, it might even be more obnoxious with twin ELM daggers, but it's still fun to just move the runemaster to the front to start swinging a drive blade around, then back to blast with spells.

[Jason_Miao]

I bought Windforge last week, and beat it yesterday.  It's a game which involves the mechanics of Bionic Commando and Crafting, combined into an RPG that features steampunk airships.  You must raid the temples of a world-wide technology-suppressing cult and steal tablets containing ancient knowledge.

Pro: So basically, I was never into mindcraft - designing and building gradiose houses or castles for no purpose other than intricate architecture was never my kind of game.  Figuring out how to circumvent the game's levels using its own mechanics, or designing a flying wall of turrets and artillery cannons to more efficiently blow up enemy ships, and having a set ending goal is more my speed.  Windforge delivers that.

Cons: Firstly, new indie game, so bugs are to be expected (as opposed to commercial games from large corporations like EA where bugs are unheard of...oh, wait.)  Many of the game-crashing and game-breaking ones have been patched, but it's still an ongoing process.  Secondly, you're a whaler.  The society is based on whaling.  It is expected that you will, at some point, take one of your flying ships and harvest at least one flying whale using heavy weaponry.  It doesn't feel as awkward as being cast as a heroic Nazi concentration camp guard, but the fact that I'm making the comparison in the first place...



Anyway, feels like it's severely lacking polish (I feel as if I've played a beta, not a finished product), but I felt that it was worth the $15 I paid for it.

[Dracos]

*eyes Assassin's Creed  IV where he just murdered a Humpback and a White Whale earlier today/last night*

Some games just like their whaling elements?  It seems no more reprehensible than other kinds of digital hunting or murder.

[Rezantis]

I played Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea (both parts) over the weekend.

Pros:  Beautifully crafted.  We get to see Rapture when it was shiny!  Some really excellent set pieces and individual scenes.  The first part is particularly well done.
Cons: If you thought Bioshock Infinite turned rather wanky as of about halfway through - as I did - the second part is double wanky with cheese.  It was horribly lacking in internal consistency and I couldn't dredge up any real sympathy for anyone involved, including the protagonist. 

[Dracos]

I was gonna give a more balanced read on ACIV, but frankly, now my read is: Stay the fuck away from Ubisoft products.

God damn uPlay garbage.

[Dracos]

Bravely Default is Adorable.  I'm still super early in it, but just finding it cute as could be.

[Ebiris]

It's pretty awesome, yeah.

[Dracos]

Hey Eb, care to trade 3ds friend codes? :)  *should go remember how that works, been just doing it locally so far*

So far I only know a couple of other Bravely Default players.

[Ebiris]

Yeah, streetpass hasn't really worked out for me. But my friend code is 4613-7288-4945 if you want to add it.

[Sierra]

Dunno how much time any of you spend over at the DL, but the games topic there is almost uninterrupted Bravely Default talk lately.

[thepanda]

Friend code 1134 8001 6947

What's dl?

[Dracos]

RPGDL.

Gate, Cid, Ko, Rat, and I think a few others came from there to here, and hang out there a lot :)

[thepanda]

Oh man, I forgot that even existed. >_>;

Are Kefka and Ghaleon still curb-stomping the upper tier?

[Dracos]

I don't think they've done that for a while?  But I'm ignorant :D