What are you playing 4: HD Remaster Gold Collector's Edition Thread of the Year

[Zevox]

1. Joker's combos utilize an ability your Persona has. This is either their Elemental Spell if they've got one or if they have a healing spell...they use a healing spell. Doing this costs no SP if you just spam the combo. You can do this even out of combat. So get a persona with a heal, spam the combo until you're healed up and you're good to go.

It seems to be hard-locked which move each Persona will do out of those combos - usually but not always corresponding to the element icon you see next to their name. So not just any Persona with a healing spell will do. I'm into the third dungeon and only recently acquired the first Persona that actually does a healing spell out of Joker's 3x light -> heavy combo, Principality.

2. You can change your teammate's abilities out of combat whenever you want when.

I noticed that, and was quite surprised. Haven't had a reason to bring back any forgotten abilities yet though, I'm just getting to the point where characters need to ditch old abilities for new. I do like that this lets you re-order your Personas' abilities though, it's nice to arrange things in an order that makes sense to you personally, for easier selection in combat.

3. Morgana is vital with how lethal everything is. He learns a raise spell before the end of the first Jail. If you're getting stomped on, and chances are you will be until after the third Jail, you should keep him in the team.

You must have done more grinding - or just used Morgana specifically more - than I if you got Recarm before the end of the first Jail, because I was into the second when I got it. Healers in general are quite helpful for sure though: Morgana, Makoto, and Sophie being the big three, with Anne being able to supplement them but only having single-target healing. And of course, keeping some of everything in Joker's array of Personas is always advisable, just like always in Persona games.

5. Get good with at least three characters. You'll thank me later, but seriously....get good at three characters. That shouldn't be hard as the biggest bit of advice I can give is to not use Joker as if they're the only playable character. Baton Passes are fun but more importantly if a character has an element the bigger enemies are weak against they're going to be a better use in combat. As #1, Joker's X X Y Y combo doesn't always use the same move. The rest of the Thieves have a set element and their combos will always proc that element so spamming their stuff is a solid choice.

For reference, Alice gave me a rough time, died a few times on her until I used Ann who can imbue her whip with fire and beat her by the skin of my teeth. The rematch you get with her went flawlessly after I set a Fire using Persona to Joker and controlled Ann we didn't even go below half health. The second boss fight was even cleaner with the same tactic and the applicable character. I can't imagine this system not working for the other bosses either. Works against mini-bosses too. Switching between characters, unlike other games in a related franchise, is just something you should be doing. Keep in mind though Joker won't change Personas if you don't do it yourself.

Honestly, you probably could play the game as just Joker once you get used to how it works, as long you kept a diverse enough array of Personas that he could hit the weaknesses of anything you come across - though with how few Personas there are in this game compared to usual Persona titles most likely you'll have one or two lagging behind the rest in levels at any given point, which could be an issue (I'm currently waiting on a new Wind Persona to replace my High Pixie, who is a good 10+ levels behind most of the Personas I'm now using, for instance). But you'll definitely be making it harder on yourself to try doing that, especially early on. Spreading out SP costs by using everybody is definitely recommended. Plus, with the "Master Arts" system, characters do actively get better the more you personally use them. They'll level up just fine if you don't, but won't ever gain those abilities, some of which can be quite handy.

7. The Bond that gives you SP and HP after winning battles is really expensive and probably not helpful by the time you've got the chance to raise it's rank. Conversely all the buffs to specific stats and the Bond for physical/magical attack up by Persona are worth a ton.

Eh, the first level of that auto-recovery bond is fairly minor I'd agree, but I saved up for the second and think it's fairly noticeable (for SP, anyway, which is obviously the one you take it for). So far I've taken to saving BP for it every time the amount I gain rises to the point where three levels will cover the cost, and it seems to be working out.

Conversely, I actually haven't touched the stat buff ones, and only have the first level on the physical/magical attack up ones. The "get more rewards" and "be able to do more stuff" bonds have seemed more useful than straight stats to me.

OK, defeated first Jail boss and got to the road trip section in P5S. Annoyingly, it's actually possible to miss things--Ryuji texted me before we left saying he wanted to show me something and to speak to him outside. First person I saw outside was Sojiro, and when I spoke to him he said something along the lines of "You off now?" and I foolishly answered yes, no realising that was the trigger to start the actual road trip. So, I missed whatever Ryuji was going to show me, hope that wasn't important.

It wasn't important, but it's one of those little character scenes that help make the series fun. He was going to take you to a ramen place to hang out and eat, and of course minor shenanigans ensue. Only gameplay effect is that you missed out on some bond XP.

One other thing: they really shouldn't bother have the boss give you their life story while you're trying to defeat them, because what with it being a real-time combat system and everything being very noisy at the height of battle, it's neither possible to spare time to read the subtitles or hear what the boss is saying. Hope there wasn't any important information there either!

Agreed - between the pace of battle, the music playing, and the sound effects of the fight, it's impossible to focus on what anyone is saying. Unfortunately they do keep inserting dialogue into fights, though I don't think any of it is critical.

[Razade]

One other thing: they really shouldn't bother have the boss give you their life story while you're trying to defeat them, because what with it being a real-time combat system and everything being very noisy at the height of battle, it's neither possible to spare time to read the subtitles or hear what the boss is saying. Hope there wasn't any important information there either!

None of it is actually important. I'm playing with Japanese VAs so I checked to make sure. It's just banter back and forth about stuff you know from cutscenes.

It seems to be hard-locked which move each Persona will do out of those combos - usually but not always corresponding to the element icon you see next to their name. So not just any Persona with a healing spell will do. I'm into the third dungeon and only recently acquired the first Persona that actually does a healing spell out of Joker's 3x light -> heavy combo, Principality.

Pixie is another and you get them in the first Jail.

You must have done more grinding - or just used Morgana specifically more - than I if you got Recarm before the end of the first Jail, because I was into the second when I got it. Healers in general are quite helpful for sure though: Morgana, Makoto, and Sophie being the big three, with Anne being able to supplement them but only having single-target healing. And of course, keeping some of everything in Joker's array of Personas is always advisable, just like always in Persona games.

I actually didn't have it at the end of the first Jail, but from all the guides and other tips I've read indicate that you should. I was only level 12 when I finished Alice's Jail and he learns it at 18 and 18 seems to be the "you should be here" level for Shibuya.

Honestly, you probably could play the game as just Joker once you get used to how it works, as long you kept a diverse enough array of Personas that he could hit the weaknesses of anything you come across

No. You honestly cannot. That's all I can say without spoilers.

Eh, the first level of that auto-recovery bond is fairly minor I'd agree, but I saved up for the second and think it's fairly noticeable (for SP, anyway, which is obviously the one you take it for). So far I've taken to saving BP for it every time the amount I gain rises to the point where three levels will cover the cost, and it seems to be working out.

Between being able to leave Jails, plentiful money and recovery items and a lot of other Bonds that are good it's not worth prioritizing. They're 15 a pop. That's a lot of other Bonds right there.

Conversely, I actually haven't touched the stat buff ones, and only have the first level on the physical/magical attack up ones. The "get more rewards" and "be able to do more stuff" bonds have seemed more useful than straight stats to me.

Those are good, the only ones I'd say are worth taking over raising Stats are the ones that give you more Mask chances and more Bond points.

[Zevox]

Pixie is another and you get them in the first Jail.

Pixie does Zio out of that combo, not a healing spell. It's actually the one I was thinking of when noting that the spell you get there doesn't always corresponding to the icon next to its name, since it does have the healing spell icon there. (Edit: just found another example: Arahabaki, has the Curse icon, but does a physical attack out of that combo.)

Trust me, I kept Pixie in my inventory for an inordinately long time because of that, since it turns out that the first actual lightning Persona you get is Mothman, around level 30. Which is weird as hell, by the way, strange that one of the four classic elements took that long to get a Persona that focused on it.

Between being able to leave Jails, plentiful money and recovery items and a lot of other Bonds that are good it's not worth prioritizing. They're 15 a pop. That's a lot of other Bonds right there.

They're not 15 a pop, their cost starts lower and increases at each rank, like every other bond. 10 for level 1, 15 for 2, IIRC, and 25 for 3. Don't have 3 yet to know what comes after it, or if that's the maximum (I've had a couple of bonds that maxed out at 3 already).

[Razade]

Pixie does Zio out of that combo, not a healing spell. It's actually the one I was thinking of when noting that the spell you get there doesn't always corresponding to the icon next to its name, since it does have the healing spell icon there.

Trust me, I kept Pixie in my inventory for an inordinately long time because of that, since it turns out that the first actual lightning Persona you get is Mothman, around level 30. Which is weird as hell, by the way, strange that one of the four classic elements took that long to get a Persona that focused on it.

I won't trust you. I have used Pixie to cast Dia on myself with that combo. I have video evidence as well.

They're not 15 a pop, their cost starts lower and increases at each rank, like every other bond. 10 for level 1, 15 for 2, IIRC, and 25 for 3. Don't have 3 yet to know what comes after it, or if that's the maximum (I've had a couple of bonds that maxed out at 3 already).

Oracle Recovery is 15 Bond Points for Rank 1. 20 for Rank 2, so on and so forth.

[Zevox]

I won't trust you. I have used Pixie to cast Dia on myself with that combo. I have video evidence as well.

Okay, this confused me so much that I went and pulled Pixie out of the Velvet Room just to figure it out. Looks like Joker actually has two combos that he gets spells out of: the 3x light -> heavy one that I was referring to, and a 2x light -> 2x heavy one that I did not know existed. I just assumed that ended after one use of heavy, like every other Warriors combo ever. Pixie gets Zio out of the former, but Dia out of the latter.

[Razade]

Okay, this confused me so much that I went and pulled Pixie out of the Velvet Room just to figure it out. Looks like Joker actually has two combos that he gets spells out of: the 3x light -> heavy one that I was referring to, and a 2x light -> 2x heavy one that I did not know existed. I just assumed that ended after one use of heavy, like every other Warriors combo ever. Pixie gets Zio out of the former, but Dia out of the latter.

I told you the combo! Light 2, Heavy 2.

I know my stuff. I bring receipts.

[Zevox]

I told you the combo! Light 2, Heavy 2.

I know my stuff. I bring receipts.

If you want to talk about receipts...

1. Joker's combos utilize an ability your Persona has. This is either their Elemental Spell if they've got one or if they have a healing spell...they use a healing spell. Doing this costs no SP if you just spam the combo. You can do this even out of combat. So get a persona with a heal, spam the combo until you're healed up and you're good to go.

Pixie is another and you get them in the first Jail.

I won't trust you. I have used Pixie to cast Dia on myself with that combo. I have video evidence as well.

At no point in the conversation did you specify the combo.

[Razade]

If you want to talk about receipts...

At no point in the conversation did you specify the combo.

Except

5. Get good with at least three characters. You'll thank me later, but seriously....get good at three characters. That shouldn't be hard as the biggest bit of advice I can give is to not use Joker as if they're the only playable character. Baton Passes are fun but more importantly if a character has an element the bigger enemies are weak against they're going to be a better use in combat. As #1, Joker's X X Y Y combo doesn't always use the same move. The rest of the Thieves have a set element and their combos will always proc that element so spamming their stuff is a solid choice.

I got the buttons flipped because I don't know the Switch Buttons, to be fair, but under any form of charitable reading and knowledge of Warrior I think you could suss out I was talking about 2 Light Attacks, 2 Strong attacks. I absolutely gave the combo.

[factotum]

I actually didn't have it at the end of the first Jail, but from all the guides and other tips I've read indicate that you should. I was only level 12 when I finished Alice's Jail and he learns it at 18 and 18 seems to be the "you should be here" level for Shibuya.

I'm about level 15, IIRC, so the only way I can see you could get to 18 before leaving Shibuya is by grinding out the wazoo, as far as I can see.

[Razade]

I'm about level 15, IIRC, so the only way I can see you could get to 18 before leaving Shibuya is by grinding out the wazoo, as far as I can see.

A lot of the guides and tips/tricks things I've head have presumed some level of grinding. I don't think I'd want to grind in Shibuya. Sendai's a lot easier to grind at, a better placement and assortment of Shadows to fight and each area is larger. I still haven't ground a whole lot and things are remaining easier than they were in Shibuya.

[DaedalusMkV]

With oil production, I have an entire powerplant setup that creates plastic and rubber to be fed into AWESOME sinks so that I have a non-stop source of Petroleum Coke. Probably not the most efficient setup, but it works. I've also gotten a liquid fuel power plant up and running, but I'm sure it still needs some tweaking, got distracted trying to find aluminum and getting that up and running.

Just a heads-up, there's a huge update coming in like two weeks that will completely redo the way Aluminum production works. The devs have strongly recommended you don't do too much with it right now, since you're going to find all your production lines broken and in need of a redo when the update hits. Fiddling around a bit with aluminum? Probably fine. Building a large-scale manufacturing centre? A great way to find yourself spending ten hours fixing it all later.

[factotum]

Got into the second Jail in Strikers. I have to say, I'm not particularly impressed with the pacing of the game. The mainline Persona 5 has much slower combat than Strikers, it being turn-based, but the non-combat stuff you're doing is more interesting and takes less faffing around. Strikers is a ball of fun once you get into a Jail, but the hour and a half of clicking through dialogue and (especially!) walking all around town trying to find the completely unmarked people you have to interact with in order to finish your investigation are mostly dull. If the dialogue wasn't as well written or as frequently amusing as it is I'd just be skipping right through those sections, story be damned!

[LibraryOgre]

Well, it happened to me, finally.

A thief tried to hold up my werewolf in Skyrim.

[Zevox]

I got the buttons flipped because I don't know the Switch Buttons, to be fair, but under any form of charitable reading and knowledge of Warrior I think you could suss out I was talking about 2 Light Attacks, 2 Strong attacks. I absolutely gave the combo.

If you count an aside in separate part of your post about a different subject, then sure, I suppose you did .

Couldn't have called you out on the Switch buttons thing anyway, since I'm playing on Playstation, so those are square and triangle to me. That's why I called them light and heavy instead (even though I'm not sure if the game technically calls them that), gets the point across in a system-neutral way.

[Taevyr]

Well, it happened to me, finally.

A thief tried to hold up my werewolf in Skyrim.

I mean, its understandable. One can occasionally find gold or even gemstones on the odd wolf corpse in skyrim: anyone with half a brain would conclude that "giant, seemingly sentient wolf = high chance of loot".

[LibraryOgre]

I mean, its understandable. One can occasionally find gold or even gemstones on the odd wolf corpse in skyrim: anyone with half a brain would conclude that "giant, seemingly sentient wolf = high chance of loot".

"I am a giant wolf."
"And I am a khajjit. I do not make assumptions."
"I'm not wearing pants."
"You might have swallowed something."

[Anteros]

To be fair, you most likely do have a lot of good loot on you despite being seemingly naked.

[Wookieetank]

Just a heads-up, there's a huge update coming in like two weeks that will completely redo the way Aluminum production works. The devs have strongly recommended you don't do too much with it right now, since you're going to find all your production lines broken and in need of a redo when the update hits. Fiddling around a bit with aluminum? Probably fine. Building a large-scale manufacturing centre? A great way to find yourself spending ten hours fixing it all later.

I think I threw together my aluminum plant in about 30mins or so. Took me far longer to find the deposits and figure out how to get it somewhere useful. Ended up having to creatively spiral a train track to get up the rock face that was between my bases and the deposits. Been meaning to check out multiplayer at some point soon, I figure my 90+ hours playing blind is due for some outside influence on build ideas.

[Gnoman]

I'm seriously considering starting over after the patch, because my current setup is so bad that I'm slowly tearing it down and rebuilding anyway.

[Zevox]

So, Persona 5 Strikers progress: I've just completed the fifth Jail. The fourth and fifth felt notably shorter than the first three, and in general I'd say the game's been consistently getting easier since the first - probably partially due to me getting the hang of how it needs to be played compared to other games, partially due to getting more potent abilities and personas. My party's average level is now about 40 (with Joker at 45), and I have almost all of the mastery arts unlocked on everyone.

Spoiler: Fifth Jail spoiler.

Show

The one missing mastery art being Zenkichi/Wolf's final one. Going to be focusing on using him until he gets that.

Have to say, I was quite pleased with his Awakening, and his storyline and development overall. Like Labrys from Persona 4 Arena, he's a spin-off character who feels just as well-written as the originals, and is a great addition to the team. And it is pretty cool to have an actual adult Persona-user for once. Who's an actual ally and party member, anyway, since I guess you could technically point to Persona 4's killer as an adult Persona-user.

Gameplay-wise though, eh, not one of my favorites (in the below list I'd put him in the "eh" category - leaving him off for spoiler reasons). His attacks are so slow when he's not in Fury mode, and the health drain when in it is pretty rough. Up until getting his third mastery art it feels almost crippling, and even with that I hesitate to use it too much (though admittedly the effect of that is substantial). And the healing he gets from his specials and gun when not in Fury mode feels paltry by comparison, even with the boost from his second mastery art. Also, the fact that his "element" is Almighty just means that he can never hit weak points (except for the few things that are weak to guns), which makes him less useful than any other party member against anything that has a weak point to hit. I don't know, I feel like they had a cool idea for how to make his gameplay work with Fury mode and the free healing when outside it, but didn't balance it right.

Overall, I'd say I'm very pleased with the story - not a surprise from a Persona game, but always great to see a game end up with a story and characters that I enjoy this much, even if it's become something I can expect given the franchise. Still have to finish it to see if they can stick the landing, but I'm hopeful. Hell, if they can, there's a chance I might end up liking the story here over the original P5 itself, if they avoid any serious missteps such as I felt that game made at certain points.

Gameplay-wise, also enjoying it. I'd say it's less good at what these Warriors spin-offs usually do than the others (letting you do big, flashy things and feel powerful mowing down hordes of enemies with relative ease), but this style works out for how they seem to want this particular game to be. As far as the characters go, I'd say I'd break down how much I like playing them like so:
- Favorites: Yusuke, Anne.
- Like: Haru, Makoto, Joker, Ryuji.
- Eh: Morgana, Sophie.

Ryuji rose up in my esteem after unlocking some of his mastery arts - he feels like he actually works once you've got the one that shortens the charge times on his charge-up heavy attacks, and the final one that increases the duration and effectiveness of his super armor special ability helps a lot too. Sophie's my least favorite because she just feels weird with those yo-yos for her weapons, and her timing-based gimmick is too difficult and gives way too little payoff to be interesting. I keep both her and Morgana in my party rotation to keep them leveled up on par with the rest, but mostly because they're two of the three healers in the group, and I don't want to have to rely on Makoto entirely for that. I haven't used them since finishing their mastery skills aside from taking brief control to cast a healing spell, and that's probably all I'll do with them from here.

Also, on the subject of mastery arts, the characters I'd most recommend focusing on getting those for are Ryuji and Haru. Ryuji for he reasons mentioned above, Haru because her third gives her unlimited ammo on her basic heavy attack (the one that shoots her grenade launcher while her Persona simultaneously fires a blast), making her the best gunner and general crowd-control character in the game. Her fourth mastery art is also quite very good, letting her held heavy attacks speed up and giving them super armor. With a lot of the other characters the mastery arts often feel like minor bonuses or tricks you can easily forget about, but those two benefit from those specific ones quite substantially.

[Silverraptor]

Well, it happened to me, finally.

A thief tried to hold up my werewolf in Skyrim.

Was he delicious?

[Zevox]

So, the new Smash Brothers character(s), Pyra & Mythra, came out today.

First impressions: they are a lot more extreme than I thought they'd be. Mythra is the high-speed, low power character, while Pyra is the reverse. It's kind of like having Sheik and Ike mashed together in the same character. Mythra is a speed demon who is almost certainly the better of the two in most respects, but can't kill to save her life; Pyra has power to spare, but is far slower than you'd expect, and noticeably more punishable on a lot of moves. Feels like the only way you could play them effectively is to use Mythra most of the time, and only switch to Pyra once your opponent is at 100%+ damage and it's time to finish them off. Sort of like if Pokémon Trainer only had Squirtle and Charizard, without Ivysaur to provide a more balanced option in between.

Second impressions: Oh my gods, I'm already frustrated with Smash's online. Normally it takes a week or two after coming back to the game before I start to feel like it's unbearable, but with Mythra's speed, I'm immediately seeing how delayed everything is. Maybe it's also partially a side-effect of having recently played the Guilty Gear Strive beta and having that far better experience with its netcode, I don't know, but yeesh, I do not know how long I'll even try to keep playing them. I feel like they're characters I should enjoy, but if I'm already feeling this bad about the online... ugh.

[warty goblin]

After a four month or so pause, I cycled back to the Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, and wrapped that up this week.

I liked this game quite a bit. I found the humor pretty enjoyable in a sophomoric sort of way, and it did a good job of breaking up the combat and exploration bits of the game. It definitely goes for a saturation approach, with a large party of walking one-dimensional fantasy stereotypes whose various personality defects keep bashing into each other. I can't say I was rolling on the floor laughing, but I was smiling and chuckling quite a bit. And the story was suitably silly, but managed to be at least reasonably clever in places. It definitely stayed on the main theme that your party and everybody in it kinda sucks. Since most games treat you like Superman for completing the tutorial, I found this constant low grade animosity towards the protagonists really quite refreshing.

The other major chunk of the game was combat, which I found an overall pleasant piece of work. You start out sucking immensely - again on theme - and so your assent into competence and effectiveness feels pretty satisfying. And although you certainly do get bigger numbers, because of the way the combat arithmetic works, high level play isn't just low level play against dudes with commensurately bigger numbers. Early game it's a struggle just to hit anybody, and since special abilities are less likely to hit than standard attacks, you need to use them very sparingly. Late game your accurate characters are often operating at like a 120% chance to hit, so you can throw down special attacks all you like. And because the game has entirely scripted encounters, it does a good job of mixing up enemy types, environmental hazards and overall difficulty. Most fights, at least on standard difficulty, require attention to beat but aren't all that difficult. There's a couple seriously challenging encounters though, and the occasional ROFLOLstomp palette cleanser.

I'd say a solid effort, 8/10 kinda territory.

[MCerberus]

Doing some monster hunter world in order to get ready for the new one this month.
Heavy bowgunning is not something you jump right back into. The piercing set pulls extra aggro and my setup had the speed penalty set to "just enough to make you think you won't be squished"

But hey, it was better than the time I got my regular bowgun out and tried to do the classic "pull the monster to the sticky bombs" maneuver with the... expected results.

[Cespenar]

After a four month or so pause, I cycled back to the Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, and wrapped that up this week.

I liked this game quite a bit. I found the humor pretty enjoyable in a sophomoric sort of way, and it did a good job of breaking up the combat and exploration bits of the game. It definitely goes for a saturation approach, with a large party of walking one-dimensional fantasy stereotypes whose various personality defects keep bashing into each other. I can't say I was rolling on the floor laughing, but I was smiling and chuckling quite a bit. And the story was suitably silly, but managed to be at least reasonably clever in places. It definitely stayed on the main theme that your party and everybody in it kinda sucks. Since most games treat you like Superman for completing the tutorial, I found this constant low grade animosity towards the protagonists really quite refreshing.

The other major chunk of the game was combat, which I found an overall pleasant piece of work. You start out sucking immensely - again on theme - and so your assent into competence and effectiveness feels pretty satisfying. And although you certainly do get bigger numbers, because of the way the combat arithmetic works, high level play isn't just low level play against dudes with commensurately bigger numbers. Early game it's a struggle just to hit anybody, and since special abilities are less likely to hit than standard attacks, you need to use them very sparingly. Late game your accurate characters are often operating at like a 120% chance to hit, so you can throw down special attacks all you like. And because the game has entirely scripted encounters, it does a good job of mixing up enemy types, environmental hazards and overall difficulty. Most fights, at least on standard difficulty, require attention to beat but aren't all that difficult. There's a couple seriously challenging encounters though, and the occasional ROFLOLstomp palette cleanser.

I'd say a solid effort, 8/10 kinda territory.

Yeah, I gave it a try after reading it here, and actually ended up playing a fair bit. The humor was a little old school -- reminded me of some 90s French comedy films. I'm personally not a huge fan of that style, but it's not a turn off either.

Combat was good enough to keep my interest, like fantasy XCOM, though you didn't get as many explosive builds and combos as in XCOM or Gears or similar games. So you had to strategize more, which was nice in its own way as well.

I'd argue more in the 7/10 territory, but my 10 scale is usually a bit more evened out and harsh in general.

[Resileaf]

Yeah, I gave it a try after reading it here, and actually ended up playing a fair bit. The humor was a little old school -- reminded me of some 90s French comedy films. I'm personally not a huge fan of that style, but it's not a turn off either.

Wouldn't you know, it's a french comedy show from the 90s :D
Or 2000s, it's been a long time.

[Cespenar]

Wouldn't you know, it's a french comedy show from the 90s :D
Or 2000s, it's been a long time.

I'm not surprised honestly, it's very recognizable.

Also, obligatory "wasn't 2000s just 10 years ago?" reply.

[Starbuck_II]

Replaying Langrisser Re: Incarnation Tensei:
Battle animation was not great so stopped way back then, but tactics are great.
Pretty good game. You find a magic sword while empire attacks you town, using its power, you kick butt and make a stand.
Your sister was stolen so you look for her.
Pretty easy for the most part (remember triangle: Infantry beat spearmens which beat Calvary which beat Infantry), had to load a few times I got greedy.
Level up your old fighting club members (a maid, who can throw fire magic; you was fancy; a calvary; your old trainer a flyer; and a clergy, the healer). Magic gives exp, so you can level the healer without fighting slowly.
Archers kill flyers so be careful later.

A few curve balls, in mapa level 13 enemies (lv 3 with an upgraded class) with 20 Defense? That was out of no where.
There are like three paths: Light, empire, darkness.

[GloatingSwine]

Doing some monster hunter world in order to get ready for the new one this month.
Heavy bowgunning is not something you jump right back into. The piercing set pulls extra aggro and my setup had the speed penalty set to "just enough to make you think you won't be squished"

But hey, it was better than the time I got my regular bowgun out and tried to do the classic "pull the monster to the sticky bombs" maneuver with the... expected results.

I also have been playing Monster Hunter World.

I've tried to play it before and not gotten properly into it, but I think I've cracked it this time. I'm up to the elder dragon hunts now, using the Charge Blade. I've gotten nice and used to it and learning when to use different modes and charge modes (I don't use the savage axe mode much, prefer to charge the shield, feels more versatile because it has value in both modes).

My next step is to figure out what armour sets are going to be good against them and maybe redo the Nergigante/Kirin fights for some parts that can upgrade a lot of my different weapons. (I'm not using the cheaty "here's a free pass to Iceborne" set, I want to experience this honestly.)


Also Total War: Warhammer 2 and Troy. Just finished a full map clear Mortal Empires game with Clan Skryre (Hilariously I nearly managed to get full map without actually completing the campaign victory condition), and am now doing a Penthesilea campaign rampaging around northern greece blowing things up. Have my stack built and just need to find somewhere to raze for loads of gold to finish off the tier 3 upgrades, then I might split off a new horde.

Think I'm going to go big and green next with a Grom the Paunch campaign.

[Eldan]

Playing Fights in Tight Spaces, so thanks to who recommended it earlier in this thread.

Summary of the game for those who haven't seen the last post:

Spoiler

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Deckbuilding turn-based fight game. You have a hand of cards that represent moves like moving, blocking, punching and grappling. Your task is to navigate a map (often very small, hence the name, there's maps of 4x4 or 2x6 spaces) and take out a set number of bad guys before they kill you.

It's made more interesting by a few details:
First, bad guys telegraph their moves. You have perfect information about what they will do each turn and with clever positioning, you can get them to hit each other and avoid most hits by sidestepping.
Second, a combo system. The more bad guys you can hit/counter without having to move, the more your combo meter goes up, which unlocks stronger cards.
Third, bonus objectives. Mostly, just Finish in X turns, but also "have X enemies kill each other", "get to X combo", "protect civilians" etc. These tempt you into risking taking a hit for more cash or free Upgrades. And health doesn't regenerate automatically between levels.

Anyway, full game is out, so there's now more enemy diversity, vastly more card variety and four starter decks instead of one. That said, I don't think the decks are balanced. Offensive and Defensive seem quite a bit better than Balanced and I have no idea how to make the Trickster deck work. It's full of super situational cards like "move two spaces along a wall, then attack an enemy". And you don't know ahead of time what cards you'll have next turn, so you can't even set them up. Quite often, I found myself in situations where none of the cards in my hand did anything and I was being beaten to a Pulp, even on the earliest easy levels.

Game is hard though. Only once managed to beat the second boss of five so far, usually I die halfway into the prison level. Played it every evening the week it came out, so already a bit burned out on it, but still firing it up occasionally. Wasn't expensive either, so worth having a look at it.