What game are you playing?

[Ralyks]

Past the second full moon in Persona 3 Portable. Kinda waiting for some of the dark stuff I heard about the story. Maybe whoever said it above it right, could be 50 hours until the story kicks in. I'm at 16 hours. Gone too far.

Or I could take a break and I'm currently booting up the Dead Space remake.

 

[TedEH]

I’m curious how the main quest progresses cause your companion leaves if you get branded

There's an NPC in the beginning of the snowy area that tries to convince you to burn yourself instead to save her instead, I assume that's what this does. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[MFB]

Boy, for defeating Radahn, the rest of Caelid sure doesn't have a problem kicking my ass.

Bloody Finger Millicent? Biffed. (Didn't know she was a thing, first time I've encountered her. Shit placement, real rude)
Commander O'Neill or whatever his name is? Biffed. I get him to like a 1/3 of his health and he gets multiple summons.
Godskin Apostle? LOL, dude kills me as quick as Radahn, two hits and I'm done.

Maybe it's just that these bosses now require distance spells vs playing a bit too close with Carian Slicer, but they're also agile and will dodge GP/LGB. Might throw Rock Sling on after finding it last night with a quicker cast time and see what happens; nowhere to go but up.

 

[wankerness]

Boy, for defeating Radahn, the rest of Caelid sure doesn't have a problem kicking my ass.

Bloody Finger Millicent? Biffed. (Didn't know she was a thing, first time I've encountered her. Shit placement, real rude)
Commander O'Neill or whatever his name is? Biffed. I get him to like a 1/3 of his health and he gets multiple summons.
Godskin Apostle? LOL, dude kills me as quick as Radahn, two hits and I'm done.

Maybe it's just that these bosses now require distance spells vs playing a bit too close with Carian Slicer, but they're also agile and will dodge GP/LGB. Might throw Rock Sling on after finding it last night with a quicker cast time and see what happens; nowhere to go but up.

Caelid has two halves that are intended to be tackled at VERY different levels. Hence why there are +8 and +9 stones laying around in the open in the northeast and why the erdtree avatar up there has like 4x the health/damage.

Commander O’Neill is necessary to progress a lot of stuff and in the low level portion, definitely kill him and do all the stuff in the magic city and Millicent’s quest. I always fight him on horseback, just do hit and runs on the adds. If you’re on foot you will get wrecked when he spawns all the axe guys that you mention unless you are majorly over leveled. Hopefully you have a magic-scaling weapon by now. If not, moonveil comes from a dungeon in the low level section (Gael Tunnel in the southwest I think?).

It’s easiest to chop them up with a good melee weapon and then hang back and nuke O’Neill with rock sling.

If you progress Millicent’s quest she won’t invade you. I had to deal with that on a couple playthroughs till I figured out there’s no reason you need to go in that area before killing O’Neill and giving the item he drops to Gowry, who then sends you up to where Millicent’s body is and you can cleanse her.

 

[MFB]

Caelid has two halves that are intended to be tackled at VERY different levels. Hence why there are +8 and +9 stones laying around in the open in the northeast and why the erdtree avatar up there has like 4x the health/damage.

Commander O’Neill is necessary to progress a lot of stuff and in the low level portion, definitely kill him and do all the stuff in the magic city and Millicent’s quest. I always fight him on horseback, just do hit and runs on the adds. If you’re on foot you will get wrecked when he spawns all the axe guys that you mention unless you are majorly over leveled. Hopefully you have a magic-scaling weapon by now. If not, moonveil comes from a dungeon in the low level section (Gael Tunnel in the southwest I think?).

It’s easiest to chop them up with a good melee weapon and then hang back and nuke O’Neill with rock sling.

If you progress Millicent’s quest she won’t invade you. I had to deal with that on a couple playthroughs till I figured out there’s no reason you need to go in that area before killing O’Neill and giving the item he drops to Gowry, who then sends you up to where Millicent’s body is and you can cleanse her.

My staff has B scaling for INT, and I think Sorcery Scaling on it is in the high 100s - like 150; INT is now at 33 I think, maybe even 35, so I'm good on what should be both fronts. I have Moonveil but it needs 18 dex which I don't have and would take a good chunk of grinding to get.

I didn't think he had enough room for Torrent but I'll give it a shot. Maybe I just equip RS with Meteorite Stuff and cheese him if I can that way. Might just sling and roll while my summons attack him, although they tend to go down quick too.

 

[profwoot]

Killed Mogh and Rykard yesterday. The haligtree is stressful so I went and burned the tree and now working through Farum Azula.

This has probably been discussed already, but it's quite striking how easy the bosses are compared to various normal mobs. I'd much rather fight Mogh again than the Crucible Knight hanging around in Farum. A lot of that is the ashes summon, I suppose.

Got my lordsworn straight sword to +25. Might start leveling that ridiculous giant hammer just to finally try something different.

 

[Mathemagician]

I would definitely go back now.

The Capital version of roundtable hold is one of the coolest things in the game IMO. It's down on the ground level, there's HUGE double doors going into it, as well as a side entrance to the upper level. There's also some enemy NPCs in there with good drops if you're doing the volcano manor quest, but I know you didn't do that since it gets cancelled if you beat Rykard before doing all the bounty quests.

Corhyn is the monk NPC that starts out in Roundtable hold at the beginning of the game. You probably didn't do any of it but I think it might still be doable before you burn the tree. When you unlock Altus he goes out there and hangs out on a path until you talk to him and tell him where Goldmask is (a freaky NPC with a sunflower on his head who is on a northern ruined bridge in Altus). Then they meet up. They move to the capital if you progressed that, and then you get a quest to find out the truth about Marika/Radagon (if you're paying any attention to the lore/plot) and have to cast some spell in some certain location (it's less cryptic than other quests but not by much). If you do all this then they temporarily survive the coming apocalypse and you can get a different ending to the game and more importantly Goldmask's gross bikini armor and sunflower mask. After that they move to Mountaintop of the Giants, as long as they've done that you're good. Otherwise I think they just get fried and quest fails.

Spoilers for Goldmask quest-

Last warning-

Man that quest in particular was interesting because of the ending. Corbyn basically decides he’s too committed to his own worldview even then the leader/founder of his religion (Goldmask) starts to express beliefs that differ from the current core teachings. IIRC Goldmask’s views become like softer/more accepting over time? Something to that effect it’s been a while. So as the player you start to see that Goldmask isn’t such a weirdo, but the Corbyn well, you know how religious zealots are about murdering anyone they disagree with…

 

[rokket2005]

Got to Disc 2 of Xenosaga 3.

Jesus Fuck.


Unfortunately, for whatever reason emudeck doesn't recognize that the disc 2 iso is in the same folder as all the other games, and it doesn't show up in my nonsteam games library. I wish navigation in desktop mode on Steamdeck wasn't so god damn exhausting.

 

[wankerness]

My staff has B scaling for INT, and I think Sorcery Scaling on it is in the high 100s - like 150; INT is now at 33 I think, maybe even 35, so I'm good on what should be both fronts. I have Moonveil but it needs 18 dex which I don't have and would take a good chunk of grinding to get.

I didn't think he had enough room for Torrent but I'll give it a shot. Maybe I just equip RS with Meteorite Stuff and cheese him if I can that way. Might just sling and roll while my summons attack him, although they tend to go down quick too.

Meteorite staff has S scaling for int iirc so it’s best as soon as your int is any good (30+) before you have the requirement for the renalla one, unless you use a certain school enough that one that gives a specific school bonus would be better.

Summons are worthless on O’Neill, he does that huge aoe rot cloud repeatedly that kills any summon almost instantly. You just have to fight him on horseback. You can cast from horseback no problem, just need to make sure your character is at least somewhat pointing towards him when you cast.

 

[Werecow]

I forgot about Owl Father before when i said about my no damage fight list. Got him this evening. I used to fight him entirely defensively, but changed to be really offensive. It's a thrilling fight like that, and keeps him slightly more predictable in the first phase.
Second phase has so much bullshit with the camera and needing to either be re-locking on or staying unlocked for a while, but it's still great fun being more offensive. I died twice when nearly there from his bloody owl hovering right in the camera so i couldn't see a thing haha.
I'm up to Isshin now and giving the game a rest. Still don't know if i'll try it with him.

 

[MFB]

Meteorite staff has S scaling for int iirc so it’s best as soon as your int is any good (30+) before you have the requirement for the renalla one, unless you use a certain school enough that one that gives a specific school bonus would be better.

Summons are worthless on O’Neill, he does that huge aoe rot cloud repeatedly that kills any summon almost instantly. You just have to fight him on horseback. You can cast from horseback no problem, just need to make sure your character is at least somewhat pointing towards him when you cast.

After playing more this afternoon, DHQ Staff has 195 sorcery scaling with 36 INT, and it hits for more than Meteorite Staff even with S scaling; shame that one can't be upgraded for damage. Took a look through my swords that I collected, ended up upgrading my Trina Sword which has Sleep status effect, and it might be just what I need. I was able to get it up to stronger than my Lordsworn Straight Sword with half the upgrades, dealing ~215/hit.

I ALSO set Rock Smasher as my final spell, and that thing is fucking POWERFUL. I didn't know you could hold R1 to keep it on a target and against Giants, it took about 3 "hits" to kill them; so just shy of 60FP for 2000 damage?

 

[wankerness]

I'm not really aware of sleep being useful on anything other than the Godskin Duo, where it can be devastating. Especially if you make sleep pots, I think they usually knock them out in 1-2 hits.

I just finished chapter 4 on Lost Judgment, but have been doing a bunch of sidequests. It still could go bad (the first one I never really got into, but I didn't really hate it till the gang invasion crap ramped up close to the end of the story), but so far I kind of love it. The main character is still no Kiryu, but just putting him in more typical Yakuza sidestories (the usual dichotomy between sappy and hilarious) and making the main plot involve him posing as the advisor to a student mystery club in a high school to investigate a murder (as opposed to doing detective shit around town to investigate a serial killer) has really gone a long way towards endearing him to me.

The VERY BEGINNING of the game was still godawful and I still hate the detective mechanics and the new ones they included, but they don't feel as overwhelming as in the previous game, maybe just cause I like everything else that's going on. The one thing that has bugged me so far has just been the sheer number of chase sequences, but that particular crappy minigame has been a series staple since #3 so I'm resigned to it.

Also this is the first game in the series to really solve the problem of the EXP grind. Previous games would always make random battles give garbage XP so you'd be stuck doing stuff like grinding some godawful dice rolling game or eating tons of food over and over or repeatedly doing specific floors of some dungeon/arena to level up. This one, it gives you bonuses in random fights based on doing a variety of things, so you can easily grind tons and tons of EXP just through random battles as long as you switch everything up as much as possible in every fight. Which also gives it the benefit of the combat feeling less boring and repetitive. It's great.

 

[TedEH]

So I thought maybe I'd seen most of the map by now - I got all the maps for the overworld, got to the big forge that takes you to the spinny vortex place, got to the Haligtree - then all of the sudden I find a teleporter to a new area (Mohgwyn Palace). This game just keeps going.

 

[narad]

I don't really mind at all, but guys,

Elden ring!

Rejoice, ashen one I'm ready for the next dark souls.

www.sevenstring.org

 

[gabito]

Hey, at least they're not talking about the big four in a "Pantera" reunion thread.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Extra 20 or so hours spent on more assing about in not Elden Ring, but Xenoblade Xicles 2 Electric Boogaloo. And while I'm loving the play time, the entire gatcha mechanics are starting to piss on my radiators.

I don't mind the salvaging mini game so much. Sure, a bit of random risk/reward when you do it, especially with certain sidequests making me salvage more than I'm inclined to do, but I get a ton of cash at least. But the entire random gatcha premise of generating new common or rare blades is what really testing my patience. It's bad enough that certain sidequests requires a certain kind of bred blade, but making go through all the random elements... I've said in the Squenix thread that I'm hating random generation driven minigames in everything lately (a stick I will keep beating FFVII with), but this is a few sticks too far. I'm also starting to get overwhelmed by all the rare blades I'm amassing, since each of them has their own mini sidequest, so even if some strories are cute and or compelling, it's just more assing about to polish every shaft and tickle every ball. I know KOSMOS is in this game, but frankly I don't care... well at least until IF I get her from the gatcha process anyway. At least being rewarded with more gameplay is always nice.

I probably should just finish the game, since I'm only 2 and a half chapters left.

 

[wankerness]

I don't really mind at all, but guys,

Elden ring!

Rejoice, ashen one I'm ready for the next dark souls.

www.sevenstring.org

Let the record show that I brought that thread up right when Ted and MFB started talking about their playthroughs, and I’d tried to keep my own discussion confined to it too!

I started Axiom Verge 2 and I was not impressed. Apparently the first one’s better?

 

[Ralyks]

I started Axiom Verge 2 and I was not impressed. Apparently the first one’s better?

From what I've played of the two, yes.

Crossed 20 hours in P3P. This story really needs to get somewhere. Part of me thinks it's also the lack of an actual over world and cutscenes that's making this feel slightly tedious.

And Dead Space continues to be really fun. Actually enjoying it more than when I played original version, and I really liked the original.

 

[TedEH]

Let the record show

Meh. That thread doesn't have the momentum that this one does.

 

[profwoot]

Remember how I just said that most of the ER bosses have been disappointingly easy?

I'm currently stuck on Alecto, Maliketh, and Malenia. Could be my build but gotdamn they're all hard as fuck. The Farum dragon was fine and the fire giant went down first try (barely) but I might have to actually study these 3.