What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

[factotum]

Eh, it can be difficult for sure, but honestly other than my first time through Persona 3 (which was my first time playing any Persona game) I don't think I've ever missed more than one or two on my first time through. In P4 I'm pretty sure the only one I didn't max the first time through was the woman from the day care center job (Temperance, I think)

I just fired up my P4 Golden save from the day before I finished the game to check, and I have 8 uncompleted social links:

Empress (Margaret) 5
Emperor (Kanji) 6
Hierophant (Ryotaro) 8
Justice (Nanako) 7
Hermit (Fox) 8
Death (Old Woman) 2
Moon (Ai Ebihara) 1
Jester (Tohru Adachi) 2

I'm pretty sure I also have at least one I never even started, because I never started the other night-time job you can do (tutoring--just did the hospital). Plus, in P4, some social links have two entirely separate storylines that you can't possibly follow in a single playthrough, e.g. the Strength social link can be followed via either the soccer team or the basketball team, with different results in each case, and the same applies to the Sun social link, where you can do either Drama or Music. So, I'd have to replay the whole game in NG+ to see all that content.

[Zevox]

I just fired up my P4 Golden save from the day before I finished the game to check, and I have 8 uncompleted social links:

Empress (Margaret) 5
Emperor (Kanji) 6
Hierophant (Ryotaro) 8
Justice (Nanako) 7
Hermit (Fox) 8
Death (Old Woman) 2
Moon (Ai Ebihara) 1
Jester (Tohru Adachi) 2

I'm pretty sure I also have at least one I never even started, because I never started the other night-time job you can do (tutoring--just did the hospital). Plus, in P4, some social links have two entirely separate storylines that you can't possibly follow in a single playthrough, e.g. the Strength social link can be followed via either the soccer team or the basketball team, with different results in each case, and the same applies to the Sun social link, where you can do either Drama or Music. So, I'd have to replay the whole game in NG+ to see all that content.

Fair enough - though you definitely could have done Margaret's link, since it is just advanced by fusing the Personas she requests and doesn't use time to rank up, so hers you can't ever run out of time for.

To be fair though, I can definitely see how someone might miss out on maxing Nanako and Dojima the first time through, since there's an abrupt cutoff point for theirs that you're not going to be expecting. Also, since I've not yet played Golden yet, I never had the Jester and Aeon links in the mix, which I'm sure would make it harder to finish everything, unless they did something to free up your time in another way relative to the original version of the game.

And very true about the two school clubs having two variants - although the sports club is really just a matter of which character the link focuses on more, since you meet and befriend both either way. If you're counting those though, yeah, two playthroughs is required to see every social link by virtue of that.

[tonberrian]

Fair enough - though you definitely could have done Margaret's link, since it is just advanced by fusing the Personas she requests and doesn't use time to rank up, so hers you can't ever run out of time for.

To be fair though, I can definitely see how someone might miss out on maxing Nanako and Dojima the first time through, since there's an abrupt cutoff point for theirs that you're not going to be expecting. Also, since I've not yet played Golden yet, I never had the Jester and Aeon links in the mix, which I'm sure would make it harder to finish everything, unless they did something to free up your time in another way relative to the original version of the game.

And very true about the two school clubs having two variants - although the sports club is really just a matter of which character the link focuses on more, since you meet and befriend both either way. If you're counting those though, yeah, two playthroughs is required to see every social link by virtue of that.

You get January and the first third of February or so to do stuff in Golden, more time than taken up by jester (which is, I think, 6 days due to spoilers for for people who haven't yet played 4), and 10 days for Aeon, but there's also a day necessary for each battle companion for another spoilery thing.

[factotum]

To be fair though, I can definitely see how someone might miss out on maxing Nanako and Dojima the first time through, since there's an abrupt cutoff point for theirs that you're not going to be expecting. Also, since I've not yet played Golden yet, I never had the Jester and Aeon links in the mix, which I'm sure would make it harder to finish everything, unless they did something to free up your time in another way relative to the original version of the game.

I did max out Aeon because I wanted to see the extra content you get for doing that. Didn't bother with Jester because Adachi never seemed to be around (plus spoilery reasons I won't go into). Similar with Ai's link, I just took a dislike to her more or less as soon as I met her and didn't want to bother with it. As for Kanji, I didn't realise he hung out in the Practice Building for ages after I recruited him and so missed a lot of link-raising opportunities there, which is why he was the only companion I didn't max out.

[Man_Over_Game]

You must have misinterpreted the clues significantly. There's no fairy on Lanaryu, and I don't think there's any clues pointing to the corrupted dragon, but the game practically guides you directly to the first Great Fairy.

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The easiest Great Fairy to get to is directly outside Kakariko village, just a little behind the shrine.

I got the first fairy already, I guess I just assumed that "Magical, mystical spring up in the mountains" (mentioned in a memory cutscene from Zelda, and some random person in Hateno Village who gives you a sidequest) referred to a Great Fairy (who generally are associated with springs).

I guess the weirdest thing about it is the lack of reward. Your reward for doing all that work is basically a new Goddess Idol location (in case teleporting up a mountain with damaging cold weather is better than teleporting to Impa's village, I guess), a Shrine (Spirit orbs are cool, I guess), and an Ice Spear in that Shrine (it's not bad, 20 damage but starting to become obsolete once I got into the Zora domain, which is literally the next step in the game).

I put in a lot of hard work to get up this mountain, had a sort of miniboss with the corrupted dragon, and got...basically a spirit orb, of which I have probably collected close to 30 by now for a lot less work.


It feels really odd. BOTW has been really good so far at rewarding you for your hard work, even when you don't know if you're going to be rewarded. Instead, this was kinda the opposite: Put in a lot of work for a really obvious reward, and got almost nothing for it. I can expect that from a lot of other games (Witcher 3 comes to mind, sometimes), but it's the first time I've experienced it with BotW.

[tonberrian]

I got the first fairy already, I guess I just assumed that "Magical, mystical spring up in the mountains" (mentioned in a memory cutscene from Zelda, and some random person in Hateno Village who gives you a sidequest) referred to a Great Fairy (who generally are associated with springs).

I guess the weirdest thing about it is the lack of reward. Your reward for doing all that work is basically a new Goddess Idol location (in case teleporting up a mountain with damaging cold weather is better than teleporting to Impa's village, I guess), a Shrine (Spirit orbs are cool, I guess), and an Ice Spear in that Shrine (it's not bad, 20 damage but starting to become obsolete once I got into the Zora domain, which is literally the next step in the game).

I put in a lot of hard work to get up this mountain, had a sort of miniboss with the corrupted dragon, and got...basically a spirit orb, of which I have probably collected close to 30 by now for a lot less work.


It feels really odd. BOTW has been really good so far at rewarding you for your hard work, even when you don't know if you're going to be rewarded. Instead, this was kinda the opposite: Put in a lot of work for a really obvious reward, and got almost nothing for it. I can expect that from a lot of other games (Witcher 3 comes to mind, sometimes), but it's the first time I've experienced it with BotW.

The dragons (there's three of them, but only one is a miniboss) have rare drops you can get by hitting them with arrows in the right locations (very hard). Specifically, you can turn them in for lots of rupees or mon, but you need 2 of each drop to upgrade the final armor in the game to max level - the drops are horn fragments, fang fragments, scales (which are also used to unlock the shrines at the springs), and claws, which you get by shooting the relevant location with an arrow while gliding around the dragon.

[Man_Over_Game]

The dragons (there's three of them, but only one is a miniboss) have rare drops you can get by hitting them with arrows in the right locations (very hard). Specifically, you can turn them in for lots of rupees or mon, but you need 2 of each drop to upgrade the final armor in the game to max level - the drops are horn fragments, fang fragments, scales (which are also used to unlock the shrines at the springs), and claws, which you get by shooting the relevant location with an arrow while gliding around the dragon.

As far as I could tell, though, the dragon I freed kinda...disappeared? It doesn't seem to be flying around anymore, and the shrine/idol required me to shoot it "through it's body", which dropped a scale that you're supposed to...toss in the Spring. It's a very weird "Play this cutscene" sort of scenario.

Once I got the scale, it seemed to just fly off into the sky, and there wasn't going much higher than the top of the mountain I already was on.

So can I find that dragon again and shoot it for more stuff?

[LibraryOgre]

I think I've reached a point where I've played too much Kingmaker.

[Narkis]

I think I've reached a point where I've played too much Kingmaker.

There is no such thing. How many times have you finished it?

[tonberrian]

As far as I could tell, though, the dragon I freed kinda...disappeared? It doesn't seem to be flying around anymore, and the shrine/idol required me to shoot it "through it's body", which dropped a scale that you're supposed to...toss in the Spring. It's a very weird "Play this cutscene" sort of scenario.

Once I got the scale, it seemed to just fly off into the sky, and there wasn't going much higher than the top of the mountain I already was on.

So can I find that dragon again and shoot it for more stuff?

They spawn at certain times of day in particular locations. So yes. Come back tomorrow, shoot the dragon for more stuff.

[Zevox]

I did max out Aeon because I wanted to see the extra content you get for doing that. Didn't bother with Jester because Adachi never seemed to be around (plus spoilery reasons I won't go into). Similar with Ai's link, I just took a dislike to her more or less as soon as I met her and didn't want to bother with it. As for Kanji, I didn't realise he hung out in the Practice Building for ages after I recruited him and so missed a lot of link-raising opportunities there, which is why he was the only companion I didn't max out.

Yeah, I understand that with Ai, she definitely makes a bad first impression - I think she was one of my lowest priorities to rank up on my first time through, and probably only wound up maxed out because scheduling worked out such that other links weren't conflicting with her later on. She does end up being a good link, though there is one potentially annoying hitch to it.

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Her link works the opposite of all of the others for how you end up in a romantic relationship with her. When the time comes where she asks you out (which occurs earlier than in other links), if you accept, the relationship will eventually end and you'll end up as just friends, but if you refuse, you'll eventually grow closer and it'll become possible to end it in an actual romance. Makes sense in context, but if you were trying to romance her without knowing it, it's possible it'd trip you up.

Edit: Also, bit of Persona news that we were discussing not too long ago: Persona 5 Scramble is getting a western release. Kind of sad that we had to find out about it through a translation of Koei Tecmo's financial reports, rather than them or Atlus just, you know, announcing it, but hey, at least we finally know!

Hopefully the long wait here means they're at least getting the English voice cast together to properly dub it. Still kind of annoyed they skipped that on Persona Q2.

[Cespenar]

I did max out Aeon because I wanted to see the extra content you get for doing that. Didn't bother with Jester because Adachi never seemed to be around (plus spoilery reasons I won't go into). Similar with Ai's link, I just took a dislike to her more or less as soon as I met her and didn't want to bother with it. As for Kanji, I didn't realise he hung out in the Practice Building for ages after I recruited him and so missed a lot of link-raising opportunities there, which is why he was the only companion I didn't max out.

I'm playing through it right now, and even though I want to max Adachi (because it's obvious that something's up with him), he always seems to avoid me somehow.

I'm also going for Aeon, because Marie's situation looks like an actual mystery, rather than straight up friendship/intimacy/whatever like the others.

[tyckspoon]

I'm playing through it right now, and even though I want to max Adachi (because it's obvious that something's up with him), he always seems to avoid me somehow.

I'm also going for Aeon, because Marie's situation looks like an actual mystery, rather than straight up friendship/intimacy/whatever like the others.

Adachi hangs out mostly in Junes (during the daytime) and the Shopping District near the gas station (at night.) Unlike most Links his dates of availability are not constant, and I think which time/location you have to talk to him to actually advance the link might change depending on story progression and S-Link level.. basically if you're not using a guide, then you want to go check for him every day and see if he's available.

Spoiler: Adachi related spoiler

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You only have to get him up to S-Link 6 as a 'normal' link. The rest is handled by plot events, like how the Fool and Star links advance.

[LibraryOgre]

There is no such thing. How many times have you finished it?

Never. But I'm stalled out at the Soul Eater fight in Vordokai's lair, again, and really mad at it. I don't really feel like doing Varnhold or Beneath the Stolen Lands.

[Narkis]

Never. But I'm stalled out at the Soul Eater fight in Vordokai's lair, again, and really mad at it. I don't really feel like doing Varnhold or Beneath the Stolen Lands.

Looks like your problem is that you haven't played enough, then.

Soul Eater fight can be annoying, yes, especially if people who go up against them aren't really suited for the job. At least the rest of the party can still participate with buffs and heals.

I never bothered with the roguelike portion of Beneath the Stolen Lands, and I don't feel I'm missing anything. The dungeon it adds in the main campaign was pretty good though. Varnhold's Lot was a fun little diversion, though if you're at Vordakai's you missed your chance to import the save and have it affect the main campaign.

[Man_Over_Game]

Defeated my first Divine Beast in Breath of the Wild. My wife was exploring the Zora area first, so I did some googling and decided to go Rito instead (after people said Goron and Gerudo were the hardest).

I gotta say, I friggin' love the new Zelda dungeon design. The idea of controlling the tilt angle of a massive mechanical bird you're occupying to move boxes and adjust the physics of the airlifts was genius. The dungeon was a bit easier/shorter than I'd hoped it'd be, but maybe the original Water Temple wasn't really that hard and we were all just really stupid back then, you know?

So I fight the boss (easy with bomb arrows and a Forest Dweller bow that gives you 2 more shots for free every shot, luckily I had both. A disappointing boss fight, if I'm being honest, didn't have to use the environmental wind mechanics at all..), and my reward is another bow, basically a Forest Dweller Bow but x2 the damage. Cool, but not all that...outstanding? I compared it to most of my other bows, and the damage is acceptable, but I realized that it's not that the bow was bad, but that I already had really high-end bows. I never broke my bows, because the game never gives you enough arrows.

And then I realized something: BotW was supposed to have a crafting system.

You get tons of ore, most of which is flint (which is useless). Wood is extremely bountiful (and also useless). Most ore you get mentions that it's good for crafting, yet the only real form of crafting I've found is upgrading my clothes through the Great Fairies. Hell, most of the time, they want grass, not ore, to upgrade my stuff! I have tons and tons of ore and I'm afraid to sell any of it because it feels bad to.

I'm willing to bet that you were supposed to craft most of your arrows, Horizon: Zero Dawn style, and for some reason they decided to gut it from the game and keep most of the base materials. But since crafting never happened for some reason, and because the game gives you as many bows as you get melee weapons, you never actually end up running out of decent bows.

If I had to wager a guess, it may have to do with the fact that most enemies are programmed with a "tether" that prevents them from targeting you beyond a certain point, making them highly abused against ranged attacks. You can still abuse this with your unlimited bombs - if you're patient - but I do feel that there was a big opportunity missed with making arrows more accessible. Googling how to get arrows usually involves farming a bunch of specific enemies, or just sleeping for a day to refresh the stocks in shops.


Oh well. I'm digging the wind power you get out of the dungeon. Basically charging up your jump button allows you to create a wind vortex that sticks around for a while and launches you way high into the air, which is great if you don't like climbing (and who does?).

Probably going to the Goron mountain region next. Now that I can basically FLY, all those damned falling rocks, lava rivers and annoying cliffs won't be nearly as big of a deal! Although, I'll be honest, I'm getting serious Megaman vibes from using the power from one boss to obliterate the next.

[Cespenar]

Adachi hangs out mostly in Junes (during the daytime) and the Shopping District near the gas station (at night.) Unlike most Links his dates of availability are not constant, and I think which time/location you have to talk to him to actually advance the link might change depending on story progression and S-Link level.. basically if you're not using a guide, then you want to go check for him every day and see if he's available.

Yeah, I know his "locations", but his availability seems to be like a tenth of the other characters by comparison. Anyway, got spoiled by your minor spoiler upon quoting this post, and that part seems a bit relieving, at least.

[LibraryOgre]

Looks like your problem is that you haven't played enough, then.

Soul Eater fight can be annoying, yes, especially if people who go up against them aren't really suited for the job. At least the rest of the party can still participate with buffs and heals.

I never bothered with the roguelike portion of Beneath the Stolen Lands, and I don't feel I'm missing anything. The dungeon it adds in the main campaign was pretty good though. Varnhold's Lot was a fun little diversion, though if you're at Vordakai's you missed your chance to import the save and have it affect the main campaign.

Started over, again. For all three, to play as the whim carries me.

Main story: Aasimar Sacred Huntmaster of Erastil, with a level of Mad Dog Barbarian to give me +10 to speed and Martial Weapons proficiency. An Elk is not the ideal animal companion (Ekundayo's wolf's trip attack has been so useful so many times), but they're pretty stout, and work thematically. I am going to miss the stat boosts that came with Archaeologist -> Dragon Disciple, though.

Varnhold's Lot: Human Divine Guardian Paladin. That party is in sore need of someone with a beatstick and a willingness to use it.

Beneath the Stolen Lands: Archaeologist -> Dragon Disciple. Haven't decided on a race, yet, but Aasimar is always a strong contender.

[Hagashager]

Been playing Hand of Fate 2 as a "wind down" game before going to bed. I can't decide if I absolutely hate this game or not.

It works best in short bursts, hence why I do it before going to bed. That said, half this game is straight gambling. You're completely at the mercy of RNG and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

[Narkis]

Started over, again. For all three, to play as the whim carries me.

Main story: Aasimar Sacred Huntmaster of Erastil, with a level of Mad Dog Barbarian to give me +10 to speed and Martial Weapons proficiency. An Elk is not the ideal animal companion (Ekundayo's wolf's trip attack has been so useful so many times), but they're pretty stout, and work thematically. I am going to miss the stat boosts that came with Archaeologist -> Dragon Disciple, though.

Varnhold's Lot: Human Divine Guardian Paladin. That party is in sore need of someone with a beatstick and a willingness to use it.

Beneath the Stolen Lands: Archaeologist -> Dragon Disciple. Haven't decided on a race, yet, but Aasimar is always a strong contender.

I consider Elk one of the stronger companions, actually. Perhaps second behind the Smilodon. That charge of theirs is no joke

Paladin was my preferred MC class for Varnhold's Lot as well. Though I used cuστom companions instead of the three premade ones they try to give you. They have no interactions anyway. Small warning: Cephal and Varn will be unavailable for some parts, so you should make sure your 4-man party is self-sufficient.

[Cespenar]

Been playing Hand of Fate 2 as a "wind down" game before going to bed. I can't decide if I absolutely hate this game or not.

It works best in short bursts, hence why I do it before going to bed. That said, half this game is straight gambling. You're completely at the mercy of RNG and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

As far as I remember some types of "checks" had a bit more control to them, and of course you can always try to put less risky cards in your deck; but for the most part, you're right.

[Silverraptor]

Been playing Final Fantasy Advanced Tactics 2 again. I forgot how fun this game was!

[Rynjin]

Just finished up Yakuza 5. Boy that game is a mess.

For anyone who hasn't played it, it's sort of like 4 games in one. Each chapter follows a different character (chapter 3 is split between two characters with interwoven plots), and their stories are semi-self-contained. It's entertaining, each character plays differently (for one segment, it becomes a rhythm game/idol simulator rather than a beat 'em up/RPG), and it has all that juicy Yakuza goodness.

Then it gets to the finale...boy is that one of the most disappointing finales I've ever played in a game. It's an absolute narrative mess, to the point that when the final boss is revealed my first reaction is to scream "WHO?" at the screen; it was a character who had appeared once on Kiryu's story at the start of the game, and then one other time about 40 hours later, whereupon he gets his ass THRASHED by one of the other main characters. He is also, for some reason, aping the mannerisms and posing (as well as basic backstory elements and motivation, to an extent) of the main villain of Yakuza 2, who was a much more engaging character.

Despite the fact that he's gotten his ass whooped by everyone who looks at him funny over the course of the game...they programmed him instead to be a challenging foe to Kiryu at the end. The boss fight is immensely frustrating. Not in the mechanics. It is one of the coolest and most satisfying boss fights I have ever played; certainly either the best or second best of the entire Yakuza series, and the difficulty is fair. No bull**** super armor for this boss like the RGG team likes to crutch on sometimes, or waves of mooks. Just satisfying, visceral combat.

No, the frustrating part is that aside from the mechanics and the verbal bitchslapping Kiryu gives the character in the cutscene's lead up, there's no emotional attachment here. The entire game ends on some non-entity character, as well as the plots of every other character but Shinada (whose story was resolved before the finale in any case) coming to abrupt, nonsensical, or frustrating endings (in two egregious cases, rendering entire PLOTLINES irrelevant in hindsight and making you feel like you completely wasted your time). Nothing about the finale made sense logically or narratively, and while the series isn't largely known for its amazing story writing this story was beyond the pale.

It genuinely feels like they poured their hearts and souls into the wide, expansive segments for the individual character segments and then...forgot about the game's deadline for shipping and had to giga-rush the ending to hit the deadline. I've seen a theory that no-name character was not supposed to be the final boss, but was instead supposed to be his sworn brother who is hyped up as a big deal, but just...dies offscreen unceremoniously because they couldn't get the VA back to record that part or something. I'm not sure how true this is, but it makes a ton of sense.

Despite all this, I do recommend the game to anyone who hasn't played it. It's a blast, and every part has something unique and fun to do. Just...don't expect too much out of the ending.

[IthilanorStPete]

Guess who just beat the final boss in Slay the Spire!

(hint: it's me)

Spoiler

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Yes, I mean the Heart.

Went Ironclad on Ascension 1, forcing a defensive deck. Had a bunch of relics, a lot of good powers, and enough defensive cards + body slam to carry me through.

EDIT: Decklist:

Spoiler

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[Anteros]

Guess who just beat the final boss in Slay the Spire!

(hint: it's me)

Spoiler

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Yes, I mean the Heart.

Went Ironclad on Ascension 1, forcing a defensive deck. Had a bunch of relics, a lot of good powers, and enough defensive cards + body slam to carry me through.

EDIT: Decklist:

Spoiler

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Yeah, barricade+bodyslam is basically invincible if you get it off the ground. It's really weak early on, but if you make it to the heart it's almost a guaranteed win. One of my favorite builds for sure, although it's hard to get it to work on higher ascensions because it's so weak early that you can't make it past the buffed mobs on the early floors. It's a shame you didn't get an entrench card. It really pushes that build over the top.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Guess who just beat the final boss in Slay the Spire!

(hint: it's me)

Nice! That's an impressively thin deck, too. I'm not sure I'd bother with Juggernaut, though; it's an expensive card for a relatively small amount of random damage (although thinking about it, it could be fantastic if you managed to get it into a Defect Frost Turtle deck). I might be biased on that card, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

---

Speakin' of the Defect, I can't seem to win with the guy except with a pretty specific archetype: start with Frost Turtle, then on the late second or third floor transition into a power spam deck with as many Storm+s as I can get my grubby little claws on. My last win was at least a little different, with a much stronger emphasis on using Echo Forms to boost my Focus through the roof... before transitioning into Storm+s combined with Creative AI to spam powers and lightning like always. I like the 0-cost card archetype, but it seems unusually vulnerable to bad luck; no matter how well I'm doing, I'll eventually have a bad couple of hands and lose a bunch of health.

Other characters. The Watcher remains my best, and I'm way further in Ascension with her. I have similar problems with defaulting to the same archetype, but I really like playing a Stance Dancer deck so that doesn't bug me as much. Tried and failed to replicate that crazy victory I had with an Alpha/Beta/Omega deck, but couldn't handle the Slavers elite fight on the 2nd floor. Similarly, been trying to break out of the hyperdefensive archetype for the Ironclad and pull off a Status deck, but I can never seem to get Evolve, Firebreathing, and cards that actually give me statuses in the same run.

Last but not least, I just had an awesome run as The Silent. Got Grand Finale from Neow, and was able to completely build around it. Tons of card draw; enough that for the whole first floor I was able to force my way through the whole deck to play a Grand Finale+ on the first turn consistently. Ended up letting the deck get too thick to do that anymore, but with an extra Grand Finale+, tons of card draw, and Nightmares+ I was still pretty much unstoppable, especially once I got Afterimages+ and Well-Laid Plans+. The White Beast Statue gave me enough potions to fill in the cracks. Basically everything went right strategically; I didn't take damage at all on most floors, perfected The Collector and The Awakened One and came this close to perfecting The Guardian (lost two health because I wasn't paying enough attention to my energy), and got really lucky with having a bunch of elites spawn in a single path I could take, and there aren't really any elites in the game that can survive 3-5 Grand Finale+s every two turns so I steamrolled them too. Luckiest run I've had in a long time, and my new best run. And... I just realized I have no idea how to post a picture that I can't right-click-"copy link address" on, which is making posting a screenshot of my deck rather tricky.

[factotum]

Well, defeated the original end-game boss in Persona 5 Royal and am now working my way through the additional Palace for the third semester. It's kind of weird how random extra-tough enemies you run into in this game are tougher than major bosses--actually died to one earlier, losing around 40 minutes of progress. OK, sure, it was a level 86 mob when my characters are around level 78, but it was still harder to beat than Yaldabaoth!

[IthilanorStPete]

Nice! That's an impressively thin deck, too. I'm not sure I'd bother with Juggernaut, though; it's an expensive card for a relatively small amount of random damage (although thinking about it, it could be fantastic if you managed to get it into a Defect Frost Turtle deck). I might be biased on that card, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Thanks! I definitely got better at the game when I internalized the idea of just not adding a card to your deck when it doesn't synergize well. You're probably right about Juggernaut, honestly; 2 Body Slams plus incidental Fire Breathing damage was generally enough.

[warty goblin]

Still messing around in World of Warships. I'm not very good, insofar as I don't exactly top the scoreboards and also my ships tend to sink a lot, but it's good semi-brain-requiring fun. I don't like aircraft carriers. Being a game focused on surface warships, aerial attacks are simply not very interesting to deal with. They're plenty effective, but lack interesting counterplay. Or really almost any counterplay for that matter. You have AA guns which deal some DPS to air squadrons; this is never ever enough to shoot down a squadron before it attacks you. Every ten seconds you can tell your guns to concentrate fire to port or starboard, which will still not destroy a squadron before it attacks you. You can try to maneuver, but you are steering a 28,000 ton steel behemoth which takes 20 for the rudder to go hard over, so good luck with that. This concludes aircraft counterplay. Compared to the weird armor trigonometry of battleship duels, or playing 'guess where the destroyer is hiding', this is boring and frustrating when an aircraft carrier decides you're it's new favorite target.

But every now and again you can break through to the corner of the map where the enemy CV is doing something super-tactical like hiding in a corner, and get them in range of your main battery. I'm currently maining the Bayern, the last German-built battleship of the first World War, which sports 8 15 inch guns. These are a little tricky to hit with, but do make a stunning first impression when they connect. It is intensely satisfying to watch one of those smug flattops try to wiggle out from under the rain of iron I'm dropping right on top of them, through the flight deck, and into the explodiest parts of the ship.

[Gnoman]

Defeated my first Divine Beast in Breath of the Wild. My wife was exploring the Zora area first, so I did some googling and decided to go Rito instead (after people said Goron and Gerudo were the hardest).

I gotta say, I friggin' love the new Zelda dungeon design. The idea of controlling the tilt angle of a massive mechanical bird you're occupying to move boxes and adjust the physics of the airlifts was genius. The dungeon was a bit easier/shorter than I'd hoped it'd be, but maybe the original Water Temple wasn't really that hard and we were all just really stupid back then, you know?

So I fight the boss (easy with bomb arrows and a Forest Dweller bow that gives you 2 more shots for free every shot, luckily I had both. A disappointing boss fight, if I'm being honest, didn't have to use the environmental wind mechanics at all..), and my reward is another bow, basically a Forest Dweller Bow but x2 the damage. Cool, but not all that...outstanding? I compared it to most of my other bows, and the damage is acceptable, but I realized that it's not that the bow was bad, but that I already had really high-end bows. I never broke my bows, because the game never gives you enough arrows.

And then I realized something: BotW was supposed to have a crafting system.

You get tons of ore, most of which is flint (which is useless). Wood is extremely bountiful (and also useless). Most ore you get mentions that it's good for crafting, yet the only real form of crafting I've found is upgrading my clothes through the Great Fairies. Hell, most of the time, they want grass, not ore, to upgrade my stuff! I have tons and tons of ore and I'm afraid to sell any of it because it feels bad to.

I'm willing to bet that you were supposed to craft most of your arrows, Horizon: Zero Dawn style, and for some reason they decided to gut it from the game and keep most of the base materials. But since crafting never happened for some reason, and because the game gives you as many bows as you get melee weapons, you never actually end up running out of decent bows.

If I had to wager a guess, it may have to do with the fact that most enemies are programmed with a "tether" that prevents them from targeting you beyond a certain point, making them highly abused against ranged attacks. You can still abuse this with your unlimited bombs - if you're patient - but I do feel that there was a big opportunity missed with making arrows more accessible. Googling how to get arrows usually involves farming a bunch of specific enemies, or just sleeping for a day to refresh the stocks in shops.


Oh well. I'm digging the wind power you get out of the dungeon. Basically charging up your jump button allows you to create a wind vortex that sticks around for a while and launches you way high into the air, which is great if you don't like climbing (and who does?).

Probably going to the Goron mountain region next. Now that I can basically FLY, all those damned falling rocks, lava rivers and annoying cliffs won't be nearly as big of a deal! Although, I'll be honest, I'm getting serious Megaman vibes from using the power from one boss to obliterate the next.

Arrows are incredibly common. If you fimd the treasure chest scattered about, and hit the arrow shop or Beedle every time you pass a town or stable, you should very quickly have more basic arrows than you know what to do with. Meanwhile, all that ore you're finding is great for selling, and is used for upgrading the better armors after you unolck more fairies.