What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Obiwanshinobi]

My mind immediately pictured some elderly nun with a death-grip on a controller trash-talking the screen as she punches out half of the Third Reich.

This kind of thing ought to take place somewhere out there, come to think of it.
Alas, no The Club or Halo: Combat Evolved installed off my legit physical discs on my lady's laptop for me, not while it's off-line, anyways. And Mashed: Fully Loaded (NOT in menus, where it's 60 fps properly but in the very controllable game) caps framerate at 50 fps and seems to frameskip there, which is practically just as bad for me as if it didn't run at all. I gues - that's PC gaming for ya, sometimes. Time to reinstall WinXP Pro on my old girl of a rig. At least OutRun 2006: Coast to Coast works like a charm on this laptop thing (I also played some games on Steam using it).
It sucks about The Club, though; now that's a game I'd rather not HAVE to play with a gamepad. Is local split-screen multiplayer present in PC version too, anyone?

[reckon luck]

i'm trying to remember a game, i'm pretty sure i learned about it through the farm so i'm asking here

2000's PC doujin, might've been freeware. A series of single screen boss fights with a technical Treasure-ish vibe. Everything was based on Japanese mythology, I think? Closest game I can think of is Shinrei Jusatsushi Tarōmaru. but it's not that.

[Ebbo]

Iwanaga seems to fit the bill.

[Steven]

Tales of Destiny Director's Cut: got Lilith, at Mikheil now. Turns out that spamming Rainbow Arch is the best strategy there is for a certain boss and Kick Rock is invaluable for the super dangerous zako in Shusaia, so I am glad I didn't wait to get Lilith. Like almost everybody else that has ever played this game, I don't have Resshin Tenshou since it requires beating certain bosses on the highest difficulty level, which I don't even have unlocked, so Stan was so useless against the Shusaia zako that he was detrimental. I kicked him out, which I almost never do, and used Lilith instead.

I regret not getting Narikiri Lilith on my last playthrough so I could have a fake Lilith earlier in the game; she is a lot of fun because of her stupid and hilarious moveset. On that subject, I know that one of the changes in Director's Cut was that Rainbow Arch got toned down. It's still very good and definitely the best anti-air attack in the game, partially because it's so massive, but I think it was considered borderline broken in the original version of the remake.

Almost done now. I may change my mind later, but right now I am enjoying this game a lot and want do Lion's side immediately once I get the three Narikiri Dolls that I want. I am having very little difficulty with the bosses now, so either I got better or the game isn't as hard as I remember it being. Some zako are terrifying, however...

I do also want to try playing as other characters eventually because I only ever really play as Stan and occasionally Lion and Lilith; the game really pushes the Swordian users (not as much as the PS1 version, though...) and I think that most of them are better than most of the other characters, so I want to check out them in particular. Mary and Lilith are awesome and Johnny has the super broken Maware Rondo and the very rare sound element, but Woodrow seems lackluster in comparison to these three and the other Swordian users. Kongman and especially Chelsea are just bench warmers. At least Kongman can act as a decent wall, but Chelsea seems pretty useless, especially with Woodrow around to do archer stuff too. Who knows, maybe Woodrow, Kongman, and Chelsea are actually extremely good and I'm missing out.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I regret not getting Narikiri Lilith on my last playthrough so I could have a fake Lilith earlier in the game; she is a lot of fun because of her stupid and hilarious moveset.

Lilith also benefits a lot from a Narikiri Doll because she's an unusual case of a character with a very strong moveset, but whose actual stats are kinda sucky / low unless you pump them up with the permanent stat boosters. She covers a lot of elements that are handy including Sound which is really rather useful, and yeah, Rainbow Arch is super awesome for anti-air on small zako.

Air Pressure I believe was changed in later releases to Add Pressure (アドプレッシャー) to make it clear it wasn't a wind elemental spell. It's explicitly a gravity field attack.


On that subject, I know that one of the changes in Director's Cut was that Rainbow Arch got toned down. It's still very good and definitely the best anti-air attack in the game, partially because it's so massive, but I think it was considered borderline broken in the original version of the remake.

Almost done now. I may change my mind later, but right now I am enjoying this game a lot and want do Lion's side immediately once I get the three Narikiri Dolls that I want. I am having very little difficulty with the bosses now, so either I got better or the game isn't as hard as I remember it being. Some zako are terrifying, however...

Who knows, maybe Woodrow, Kongman, and Chelsea are actually extremely good and I'm missing out.

Woodrow's got limited element selection, but he's arguably better than Stan is in terms of pure moveset due to having two dodge moves with i-frames, whereas Stan has to use Rekkuzan to try and evade stuff. Plus Woodrow has some very hard hitting moves, moves that can build combo meter aggressively, and so on. He does have a few quirks though; his top tier wind spell, God's Breath, hits a miniscule area of effect. It's usually better to use Cyclone because it'll hit more reliably, though God's Breath is ridiculously powerful when you can connect with it. Also, his level 3 BC will kill him, which is a problem if he's fighting solo, but one of the strongest BCs in the game in terms of raw multiplier (in between Majinken Setsuga and Kongman's L2 BC iirc), and also revives all dead party members on the field, making it an insanely good emergency measure to bust out. If you'd rather use Woodrow's BC to actually attack, put a Narikiri Woodrow on someone like Mary or Kongman which will let you use Woodrow but limited to L2 BC.

Woodrow also sucks a bit on Lion's side for the bonus dungeon due to the story ending before he can get his swordian fully powered up.

Chelsea's healing move is silly and useless, but she's a solid archer character who has some mobility moves that let her evade and attack at the same time from the air. She might seem like a bit of a joke character, and her squeaky voice isn't everyone's cup of tea, but she's pretty effective.

Kongman is actually similar to Woodrow in that he's an offense oriented character but with an emergency resurrection move you have access to if you suddenly run out of life bottles. He can also inflict a few status ailments, and has some respectable juggle moves and mobility, covers several key elements, and generally works quite well, even if he seems silly. His lack of ranged attacks is an issue, but if you can time stuff like Crush Earth or Heavy Bomber you can open up enemies to combos with him, and he's pretty solidly durable. Plus he has a self buff that lets him get physical attack anti-stagger whenever he pleases.

I was playing as Kongman in multiplayer when playing with some friends not too long ago. It was the first time I'd invested serious time with him, and he's a lot better than I'd given him credit for. If you need to rapidly approach enemies, you can get into the air with Great Upper/Falcon Fledge, and drop in at an angle with Ikasu Hip.

[reckon luck]

Iwanaga seems to fit the bill.

that is exactly it, thanks

[Steven]

I regret not getting Narikiri Lilith on my last playthrough so I could have a fake Lilith earlier in the game; she is a lot of fun because of her stupid and hilarious moveset.

Lilith also benefits a lot from a Narikiri Doll because she's an unusual case of a character with a very strong moveset, but whose actual stats are kinda sucky / low unless you pump them up with the permanent stat boosters.

I was thinking about that too. Half of her moveset scales with physical attack and the other half scales with magic attack, so I was thinking about using Woodrow. Assuming you want a balanced stat spread, he's probably one of the best characters for Narikiri Dolls of Swordian users and also Lilith. Turning him into Mary or Kongman would probably be worse than using the real Mary or Kongman, but if I wanted any of the fragile characters like Lion or Lilith or even Rutee to have not-microscopic HP and def stats and also to retain a decent magic attack, I'd probably use Woodrow.

But yes, Lilith needs better stats. I think the worst thing about her is that she dies to everything in just a few hits. To be fair, half of the cast does, and I think she might be at least a little more durable than Lion, but Lion has Majinken Setsuga and massive iframes thanks to Gen'eijin and Demon's Lance Zero, the latter of which also gives him Penetrate status because why not, and the others are magic people and Chelsea, and I have no problem with magic people and archers being fragile. Lilith... yeah, she needs some help with durability at minimum. More damage output and CC would be nice too, but for now I'd be satisfied with her not dying to everything in two or three hits.

Air Pressure I believe was changed in later releases to Add Pressure (アドプレッシャー) to make it clear it wasn't a wind elemental spell. It's explicitly a gravity field attack.

Did it? I just played Zestiria recently and it was Air Pressure there, at least in the Japanese version, and the only things more recent than that are Berseria, which doesn't have it, and Arise, which I have barely played. This is the moment when I realize OMG there have been only 3 Tales games in the past 11 years and they used to release at least one non-port/non-phone game every year from 2002-2013, and I don't want to think about what came after that. At least the Graces f PC port was pretty excellent, but aside from that...

Who knows, maybe Woodrow, Kongman, and Chelsea are actually extremely good and I'm missing out.

Woodrow's got limited element selection, but he's arguably better than Stan is in terms of pure moveset due to having two dodge moves with i-frames, whereas Stan has to use Rekkuzan to try and evade stuff. Plus Woodrow has some very hard hitting moves, moves that can build combo meter aggressively, and so on. He does have a few quirks though; his top tier wind spell, God's Breath, hits a miniscule area of effect. It's usually better to use Cyclone because it'll hit more reliably, though God's Breath is ridiculously powerful when you can connect with it. Also, his level 3 BC will kill him, which is a problem if he's fighting solo, but one of the strongest BCs in the game in terms of raw multiplier (in between Majinken Setsuga and Kongman's L2 BC iirc), and also revives all dead party members on the field, making it an insanely good emergency measure to bust out. If you'd rather use Woodrow's BC to actually attack, put a Narikiri Woodrow on someone like Mary or Kongman which will let you use Woodrow but limited to L2 BC.

Woodrow also sucks a bit on Lion's side for the bonus dungeon due to the story ending before he can get his swordian fully powered up.

I just made it to this point. Spending 90% of the game in a weakened state was not good for Woodrow. At least it's better than how he fares in the PS1 version, where I believe Igtenos starts at level 5 when you're at the very end of the game and you're like lol no go sit on the bench.

Iframes are always welcome and his first hi-ougi is pretty big, which is nice, and most of the other non-Chelsea characters have very little in the way of poking-element attacks, so he's definitely got some good uses. I really should use him more, but for now I think Stan + Rutee + Mary + Philia covers most things very well.

her squeaky voice isn't everyone's cup of tea

For the past 20 years her post-battle ウッドローさま！私は私は～♥ has been permanently burned into my brain and it is the very first thing I associate with Chelsea. That and retroactively stealing Wild Geese from Nanaly. This is still way better than the extreme stupidity of Yuri having Marian and, arguably even worse, Eleanor having fucking Lost Fone Drive of all things, made even worse by the fact that Eleanor gets it just by level up, but it still feels very wrong to give moves like these to other characters.

Kongman is actually similar to Woodrow in that he's an offense oriented character but with an emergency resurrection move you have access to if you suddenly run out of life bottles. He can also inflict a few status ailments, and has some respectable juggle moves and mobility, covers several key elements, and generally works quite well, even if he seems silly. His lack of ranged attacks is an issue, but if you can time stuff like Crush Earth or Heavy Bomber you can open up enemies to combos with him, and he's pretty solidly durable. Plus he has a self buff that lets him get physical attack anti-stagger whenever he pleases.

I was playing as Kongman in multiplayer when playing with some friends not too long ago. It was the first time I'd invested serious time with him, and he's a lot better than I'd given him credit for. If you need to rapidly approach enemies, you can get into the air with Great Upper/Falcon Fledge, and drop in at an angle with Ikasu Hip.

There is that one boss where you are restricted to using only Stan, Mary, Chelsea, Kongman, and Lilith if you got her, and I didn't have Lilith. Kongman's revive thing was very handy for that. Chelsea died a few times and before I was in a good position to bring her back, Kongman had already done it himself. Granted, she only came back with 1 HP, but it's still enough when you have the boss distracted and she's way far away because archer, so she can heal herself safely anyway.

Kongman looks fun to play as once you know how to use him, but I haven't really tried him. I'm guessing he's probably fun as hell in multiplayer since you can use him for strategies that you can't really do alone. On that note, multiplayer genuinely enhances these games to a level far beyond what you get when playing them alone, unless you get stuck playing a boring character like Mint or Klarth before he gets any summons (and after, if I'm being honest) or something lol. Well, Phantasia just sucks for multiplayer in general, so maybe not great examples, but yeah.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Lilith... yeah, she needs some help with durability at minimum.

I think I used to use her doll with Stan or Kongman. Mary'd work well too. They've got the stats to make her work well, Stan can give her up to 3 shots in a row with Thunder Sword.

More damage output and CC would be nice too, but for now I'd be satisfied with her not dying to everything in two or three hits.

That and retroactively stealing Wild Geese from Nanaly. This is still way better than the extreme stupidity of Yuri having Marian and, arguably even worse, Eleanor having fucking Lost Fone Drive of all things.

Wild Geese being her best BC was rather silly; make it her L1 and give her a properly unique L2 or something as her signature move, or just don't rip off Nanaly directly. Eleanor's is also ridiculous given the name directly references TotA's plot, like what does it have to do with her? Eleanor shoulda had Shouha Rekkousen as her second one, at least there's precedent for spear users to have it thanks to Eugene.

I'm okay with the silly costume tech artes, though some of them are absurdly good (Estelle's is one of her best physical attacks, really showcases how poor of a physical attacker she was designed to be). I'm not sure why Yuri gets Marian given he's using a Judas costume, not a Lion costume though...

unless you get stuck playing a boring character like Mint or Klarth before he gets any summons (and after, if I'm being honest)

The AI is really bad about blocking with spellcasters, but a player controlled Mint or Klarth can actually frontline and play distraction pretty effectively in a pinch. Mint gets some decent rods to hit with, too, so multiplayer Phantasia opens up some options that you wouldn't think of otherwise, particularly early on when TP is fairly limited. It's also helpful to have someone just guard during a pincer attack so your mages don't get overrun. While Cless or Chester murder stuff on one side, player 2 can block and distract on the other. Not as interesting as later games where spellcasters like Philia, Reala, Harold get physical skills to use when they want to get in close, but still workable.

[Steven]

Lilith... yeah, she needs some help with durability at minimum.

I think I used to use her doll with Stan or Kongman. Mary'd work well too. They've got the stats to make her work well, Stan can give her up to 3 shots in a row with Thunder Sword.

Kongman would give Lilith massive HP for sure. I haven't compared all of the stats to see who has the highest of each stat, but I think Kongman should have one of the highest physical attack and defense stats too. Lilith needs both of those, but turning Kongman into Johnny would probably be pretty great too, assuming Johnny's moveset is mostly physical. He's not in my party now, so I'll check once I get him back. There are a bunch of things that are weak to sound element when he's not around and it's kind of annoying because I think the only other sources of sound damage are Philia, Woodrow, and Lilith, and each of them has only like one attack that is sound element, and of course Lilith is optional and not available in the first half of the game and Philia and Woodrow have to level up enough to get those attacks.

Wild Geese being her best BC was rather silly; make it her L1 and give her a properly unique L2 or something as her signature move, or just don't rip off Nanaly directly. Eleanor's is also ridiculous given the name directly references TotA's plot, like what does it have to do with her? Eleanor shoulda had Shouha Rekkousen as her second one, at least there's precedent for spear users to have it thanks to Eugene.

Giving that move to Eleanor was ridiculous in all of the wrong ways. Like really? Really? That, of all things? There is a spear user in Zestiria who has Shouha Rekkousen as a hi-ougi (hardest non-optional boss in the game, too!), so they could have copy/pasted the animation onto Eleanor with some tweaks to fit her model or whatever if needed and called it good. Berseria's already got some copy/pasted assets from Zestiria anyway, with most of it being justified by Berseria being the prequel to Zestiria. I'd prefer that over giving her something that just doesn't and shouldn't work outside of the context of the Abyss.

Then again there is a boss in Berseria that uses Yuri's first hi-ougi and Velvet has one of Kyle's too, so maybe they just felt like recycling a bunch of hi-ougi from older games for some reason. I don't know, this just seems lazy and uncreative to me. I don't think those are anywhere near as bad as Eleanor's Lost Fone Drive, though. The devs must have all collectively decided to simultaneously deactivate their brains for that one.

I'm okay with the silly costume tech artes, though some of them are absurdly good (Estelle's is one of her best physical attacks, really showcases how poor of a physical attacker she was designed to be). I'm not sure why Yuri gets Marian given he's using a Judas costume, not a Lion costume though...

Yeah, Marian being attached to the Judas costume was really weird. Why not give Yuri something else that's not a super important attack, preferably something actually used by Judas? Lol. How about Majin Messatsuen instead? Or anything, really, just not Marian!

I also think Marian should have been upgraded to level 1 hi-ougi status in the Destiny remake anyway instead of having Jouha Messhouen, but too late now.

The AI is really bad about blocking with spellcasters, but a player controlled Mint or Klarth can actually frontline and play distraction pretty effectively in a pinch. Mint gets some decent rods to hit with, too, so multiplayer Phantasia opens up some options that you wouldn't think of otherwise, particularly early on when TP is fairly limited. It's also helpful to have someone just guard during a pincer attack so your mages don't get overrun. While Cless or Chester murder stuff on one side, player 2 can block and distract on the other. Not as interesting as later games where spellcasters like Philia, Reala, Harold get physical skills to use when they want to get in close, but still workable.

Now that I think about it, doesn't Klarth have a book that gives him pretty big physical attack? Big for Klarth, anyway. I think he does. Obviously Chester, Suzu, and Rody if you're playing Cross Edition are still going to be better at physical stuff than Klarth, but it's better than nothing, and those other guys aren't around for 70% of the game. Phantasia could probably use some Narikiri Dolls too, but they'd probably have to rework them partially because I don't think giving Chester the stats of Mint/Klarth/Arche isn't going to work very well. Suzu is super fragile, so that won't change too much either way lol.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Sonic is for sure the hardest element to get access to. I'd argue Philia's doesn't count as it's very difficult to hit with Extension (slow animation, limited hit area) unless you manage to juggle Holy Lance into Extension, which leaves Johnny, Lilith, and Woodrow. I actually forgot Woodrow has sound / sonic attacks, though all of his are dual element with piercing it looks like, so if the enemy resists that but is weak to sound I'm not sure if it hits weakness or neutral?

I'd agree making Marian or referencing it in his BCs would be better, perhaps as part of his L3's animation instead of the black and white feathery stuff Majinken Setsuga does. After all, Marian is really his raison d'être for a lot of his decisions, would only make sense he'd reference it in his strongest Blast.

Klarth gets several rather hard-hitting books (quite a bit higher damage usually than Rods or Brooms), it's just wildly impractical to ever use them! The only other game I can think of that has a strict attacker or caster divide, Symphonia, sensibly gives Raine extremely fast attacks with a good, wide hitbox, meaning if you ever want to attack with her physically she's actually quite good at it despite having no physical techs. Genis's weapon is slow and sucky though.

I guess there's Legendia too, I haven't played that one yet though. None of the casters get any physical techs as far as I know.

[Obiwanshinobi]

WHOA! Secret Weapons Over Normandy runs like a charm all maxed out on this laptop I installed it on. So, having this and OutRun 2006 on it I can get pretty busy gaming even without internet whatsoever. Gives me quite an incentive to dust off my flight stick soon, too!
As a matter of fact, the framerate during first tutorial mission I've played so far seemed to NEVER drop below 40, and it controlled delightfully all the time.
I don't know about either console version, but PC one used to impress me graphically great deal. So, playing it now in this here monitor's native resolution at framerates higher than ever before comes as an act of, um, historical justice. After Mashed: Fully Loaded frameskipping on me the other night and such.
And I verily, VERILY recommend SWON to anyone who's into not necessarily most realistic of aircraft games out there. If you don't expect writing to be the strongest feature of it, that is.
I still have yet to decide which buttons layout suits me best... and I'm SO looking forward to experementing with it next evening!
I wonder if it doesn't do some pre-DirectX 9 "HDR" thing in real-time. Something about saturation reminds me of Spartan: Total Warrior, which reportedly did so on PS2-gen consoles.

[To Far Away Times]

Currently playing Forza Horizon 6. I love these damn games. You get so many cars and it’s so free form and there's tons to do. Just good vibes all around, cruising in a Pontiac GTO with a Touhou livery.

[Sima Tuna]

Currently playing Forza Horizon 6. I love these damn games. You get so many cars and it’s so free form and there's tons to do. Just good vibes all around, cruising in a Pontiac GTO with a Touhou livery.

I love and hate the games.

I love the gameplay, the cars, the overall party vibe.

I hate that they are, and have always been, essentially live service games. They come out, they're available to purchase for a short period of time, then they go off the storefront forever.

Yes, you can replay the old games if you own a copy that was purchased prior to it being taken off the storefront. But if you didn't think to buy that copy of Forza Horizon 1 for xbox 360 or whatever, then M$ thinks you can go fuck yourself.

It's genuinely a shame, because the games are fun simcade racers. But if there's ever a time period when new Forza Horizon games stop being made, eventually the entire franchise will be unavailable for purchase.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Semi-good news then, as the first 4 Forza Horizon games are playable offline if you have the physical disc

Everything after that has a hobbled unplayable disc build as per Microsoft's first party standards since about 2021

[Steven]

Sonic is for sure the hardest element to get access to. I'd argue Philia's doesn't count as it's very difficult to hit with Extension (slow animation, limited hit area) unless you manage to juggle Holy Lance into Extension, which leaves Johnny, Lilith, and Woodrow.

Extension is soooooooooo sloooooooooooooooow. I'm tempted to disable the move because the chance of it hitting is small unless the enemy is in a corner or trapped between two characters and can't move. I also play Stan with a lot of moves that push the enemy around so I can control the enemy positioning as I see fit, so I'd have to redo my style or spam normals to get Extension to hit during one of my combos and I don't think it's worth it.

actually forgot Woodrow has sound / sonic attacks, though all of his are dual element with piercing it looks like, so if the enemy resists that but is weak to sound I'm not sure if it hits weakness or neutral?

It's going to be a neutral hit.

Actually, after almost two whole playthroughs, I'm still not 100% sure how weakness combos work. I noticed that if I hit something with a fire weakness as Stan and AI Mary attacks with a hi-ougi, sometimes she gets weakness hits during the hi-ougi despite not having any fire attacks or fire equipment and I'm not sure why. If it was Hearts I'd know exactly how it works because it's really simple in Hearts and Mary would be getting a weakness hit 100% of the time after following up a weakness hit, but this game is weird. Maybe the timing is really tight or something? I don't get it.

I'd agree making Marian or referencing it in his BCs would be better, perhaps as part of his L3's animation instead of the black and white feathery stuff Majinken Setsuga does. After all, Marian is really his raison d'être for a lot of his decisions, would only make sense he'd reference it in his strongest Blast.

Marian, secretly possibly the most important character in the whole game even though she has about 25 seconds of screen time on Stan's side. Marian (the attack) definitely should have been upgraded to be a hi-ougi, especially since they did it for Satsugeki Bukouken and Kouou Tenshouyoku. It still baffles me that the PS1 version's localization team somehow seemed oblivious to the attack Marian's intended kanji reading and and turned it into Demon Attack and that apparently Namco has stuck with calling it that in English. Oh well. I played the US version for a little bit, but only for about an hour, and about 20 years ago. I doubt the overall quality of the localization is very good given the time period and what I've heard about it.

Klarth gets several rather hard-hitting books (quite a bit higher damage usually than Rods or Brooms), it's just wildly impractical to ever use them! The only other game I can think of that has a strict attacker or caster divide, Symphonia, sensibly gives Raine extremely fast attacks with a good, wide hitbox, meaning if you ever want to attack with her physically she's actually quite good at it despite having no physical techs. Genis's weapon is slow and sucky though.

I definitely prefer it when magic people aren't completely useless at physical stuff. I don't necessarily demand that they be able to do 100+ hit combos all by themselves even without spell cancelling like Philia can in this game, but it's nice to not be completely useless at self-defense. Obviously Jade is the classic example at this point. He shouldn't be in there poking stuff with his spear because he has better things to do, but he can and he's pretty decent at it.

I guess there's Legendia too, I haven't played that one yet though. None of the casters get any physical techs as far as I know.

They don't. Unfortunately, magic is not very good in Legendia anyway, so the best thing you can do is go all physical and have Will or Norma or whoever there just for healing in case you need it, so I guess it's not too dissimilar from Symphonia's magic queue system rendering physical overall better than magic. It's partially because in Legendia magic sucks and is weak and partially because physical is way better than it should be, with Senel and Chloe being able to lock stuff down using nothing but normals, which are possibly one of their best moves because of how stupidly fast they are. That's good in a way because in Legendia TP automatically regenerates very slowly over time instead of upon hitting with normals. Yeah, it's weird.

Anyway, I am at the final boss now and... I'm not really sure what to say. I love/hate this boss. I gave everyone both resist dark and resist light, which helps a lot, but I still haven't been able to win, although I did get very close once. The real problem is Penetrate. Did the last boss really need 30 fucking hits of Penetrate on top of crazy fast movement and teleporting and spamming giant lasers that fill the screen and pass through characters to hit everyone behind them? I did beat this boss before, so I know I can do it again, but it's been so long that I don't remember what I did, other than that I barely survived, with only Stan left alive after Meltias (Melty Earth? Melty Ass?). Two problems: compared to last time, my levels are lower and my difficulty is higher. Not a great combination. Equipment is probably a little better this time, though, and there was one time where I just barely lost, so I know it's possible exactly as I am now. I think that this boss would largely just be a punching bag without Penetrate, so I'm glad they did something, but occasionally having to land 30 hits on an extremely fast target that can teleport in order to get it to stagger is very annoying.

The game crashed on me once during the fight, fortunately near the beginning. I've been having occasional read errors with this disc, but never a crash until now. I do have a second disc, so I can use my other one if I need to.

So... I think Philia is a detriment in this fight. She's too fragile to take many laser hits, too slow to run away when the boss teleports next to her, and she only has a little bit of fire stuff: Fireball, which barely does anything and won't do anything if the boss is outside of its short range, Fearful Flare, which misses way too often for it to be useful, and Explode, which is super slow and has a high CC cost. That leaves only Flare Tornado... eh. At least she inherently resists dark so I don't have to use an accessory slot on her to not get annihilated by that.

Probably going to go Stan/Rutee/Woodrow/Mary for now and see how that goes. Mary has a strategy setting where she does follow-up attacks for the player, which is both useful and super cool that the devs thought to give her that. Woodrow is mostly there to shoot the boss with his bow when Penetrate is active because having to chase the boss down sucks. I have a hat for Johnny that gives all of his attacks fire element, so I may try that, but he's a bit more fragile than Mary, so I'm hesitant. Lilith has Steak Flare (焼きま～す♪), but I won't dare bring her into this fight because she has the durability of wet single-ply toilet paper.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Extension is soooooooooo sloooooooooooooooow. I'm tempted to disable the move

I had her spamming Indignation non stop when set to AI as it hits a wide area and is pretty foolproof. Extension is good, but it's more situational (for sound element or going for the instakill chance of Smash), and it requires some setup. Best to save Extension for when you're playing as Philia and can pick when to Holy Lance -> Extension.

I noticed that if I hit something with a fire weakness as Stan and AI Mary attacks with a hi-ougi, sometimes she gets weakness hits during the hi-ougi despite not having any fire attacks or fire equipment and I'm not sure why.

It's possible hitting for something the enemy resists nullifies the weakness or something like that, not sure. Generally, hitting for weakness will make any followup hits count as weakness. Mary does have one fire attack in her moveset, Bakujinkyosatsu, and it happens to be arguably one of her best moves. It auto juggles to itself, making it amazing against the final boss along with her ability to Kagerou any time she's about to be hit by something for relative safety. Very, very powerful stuff.

Obviously Jade is the classic example at this point. He shouldn't be in there poking stuff with his spear because he has better things to do, but he can and he's pretty decent at it.

It's funny, he only really has Thunder Lance > Lightning Tempest / Impaling Heavy as a useful combo (as Sonic Spear is somewhat slow for some reason, and his other move is an AOE keepaway move you don't really need in a game where you can run like hell), but he's still rather good on melee because of how fast and effective it is. I think he's better at melee than Tear or even possibly Anise (Tear's Pikohan is damn good though, just stay far away and run around the map dropping hammers on the enemy), Thunder Lance is that useful. Especially given Abyss doesn't have element absorption in the game, enemies can only resist Wind damage at best. Thunder Lance also can be set to steal items, and it might be one of the best moves for that given how spammable it is.

Did the last boss really need 30 fucking hits of Penetrate on top of crazy fast movement and teleporting and spamming giant lasers that fill the screen and pass through characters to hit everyone behind them?

Miktran Excessive is very silly, and very fun in a chaotic way. Though him busting out Melty Earth unexpectedly is always rude!

Philia definitely struggles to get spells out in this fight when set to AI, though it is very handy whenever she manages to cast. You could consider setting Force Field to one of your shoulder buttons so you can order her to spam it whenever Miktran gets in her face, which both protects her and is useful for ripping through his Penetrate. I would recommend disabling her fire spells; she doesn't have any that are useful here and it's better to hit his weakness with other spells. Instead, focus on her wide area spells for the best chance to hit Miktran. Your top priority for everyone is to tear off his Penetrate, so stuff like Indignation, Tidal Wave, Black Hole, Meteor Swarm and such should be what you aim for as far as spells go. Let your physical attackers handle hitting for fire damage, they're far better at it than the relatively short ranged Flare Tornado or slow startup Explode will be. I'd argue Philia's Fire spells are probably her least impressive element (which might be a deliberate move as she shares them with Stahn, if they were as good as her Light and Water spells Stahn would become a god-tier spellcaster or something).

Stahn can either stay in his face, or try to air combo into Flame Shoot at long range, or Raging Flare / Volcanic Rage at close range. Mary can pretty much spam Bakujinkyosatsu and Kagerou non-stop, Johnny can abuse the hell out of Maware Rondo or do backup healing, Rutee can spam healing. Woodrow's got several good multihit attacks that can rip off penetrate even if he has no Fire attacks, Kongman can swap between being in the air and dropping to Crush Earth or distracting him by tanking hits as needed. Chelsea can spam Rasen on the ground to rip through Penetrate, or stay in the air and shoot down for safety with Gekka. I actually forgot that one of Chelsea's big gimmicks is she has Shot + nearly every element in the game (Fire/Water/Wind/Earth/Light/Dark).

Whoever you're playing as should have that healing material where holding guard and pressing down causes you to heal yourself, it's ultra fast for healing but I'm sure you're already using that.

[Steven]

Well, I did it. Holy fuck devs what were you thinking? Amazing boss fight. I game overed once after Meltias because everybody died but Woodrow and me and I wasn't close enough to hit with Souhajin, then I got lasered and died and stupid Woodrow ran right up to Miktran despite having 10 HP left. I took control of him, but it was too late and I had to restart.

Everybody barely survived Meltias with about 10~100 HP left on the next attempt even with resist + All-Divide, and then right after we healed a little bit Miktran decided to do Penetrate Charge -> immediately teleport to Rutee -> Burst Dash -> Rutee dies -> immediately teleport to Philia -> Burst Dash -> Philia dies -> immediately teleport to Woodrow -> Burst Dash -> I get hit too, but we both survive -> lasers -> Woodrow dies and now it's just me at 50% HP and Miktran with 15 hits of Penetrate left. Ignored the dead people, didn't bother to heal, and held L1 and spammed Souhajin until he staggered. It seems that Penetrate wears off after a while if you don't break it, which is how I survived. Everyone was level 63 except Woodrow, who was 65 for some reason. I saved over my previous clear file with my new clear save, but last time I was a bit higher, in the level 68~70 range, and on a lower difficulty, Normal instead of Evil. I have no idea how my levels were so much lower this time, as I never ran from any fights and never used Holy Bottles until the party split in Dycroft. My play time was about 3 hours shorter this time, so maybe that's why.

At this point I have two options: get a few Narikiri Dolls (Lion and Lilith for sure, and maybe Johnny) before playing Lion's side or play Lion's side without Narikiri Dolls. It's going to be easier to get them now than on Lion's side, and the zako in the Arcana Ruin already beat my ass so hard that I can barely make any progress. I have never been here before, but after only a few minutes I already hate this place a lot. I could lower the difficulty since I just want to get it over with, but...

[vol.2]

Semi-good news then, as the first 4 Forza Horizon games are playable offline if you have the physical disc

5 and 6 are both still available on Steam.

I'm looking for a new racing game to play and wondering if one of these might be it (I only have a PC to play games on). My most recent game is Dirt Rally 2.0, which I had a lot of fun playing with my steering wheel and pedal setup. I'm into watching rally stuff in general, so games that have rally courses rather than tracks are more interesting to me. Forza looks like it at least has some dirt tracks, and the successor to Dirt Rally 2.0 is EA WRC, which gets terrible reviews. Maybe there's something else I don't know about.

[AGermanArtist]

Semi-good news then, as the first 4 Forza Horizon games are playable offline if you have the physical disc

5 and 6 are both still available on Steam.

I'm looking for a new racing game to play and wondering if one of these might be it (I only have a PC to play games on). My most recent game is Dirt Rally 2.0, which I had a lot of fun playing with my steering wheel and pedal setup. I'm into watching rally stuff in general, so games that have rally courses rather than tracks are more interesting to me. Forza looks like it at least has some dirt tracks, and the successor to Dirt Rally 2.0 is EA WRC, which gets terrible reviews. Maybe there's something else I don't know about.

If you liked Project Gotham try Grid Legends.
If you liked Sega Rally Revo - Dirt 5.

Codemasters absorbed quite a few of those games' devs.

[vol.2]

If you liked Project Gotham try Grid Legends.
If you liked Sega Rally Revo - Dirt 5.

Codemasters absorbed quite a few of those games' devs.

Cool. Thanks for the rec. Grid Legends looks to be the better reviewed of the two.

[Daytime Waitress]

I'm looking for a new racing game to play and wondering if one of these might be it (I only have a PC to play games on). My most recent game is Dirt Rally 2.0, which I had a lot of fun playing with my steering wheel and pedal setup. I'm into watching rally stuff in general, so games that have rally courses rather than tracks are more interesting to me. Forza looks like it at least has some dirt tracks, and the successor to Dirt Rally 2.0 is EA WRC, which gets terrible reviews. Maybe there's something else I don't know about.

Whilst I've never given it a try personally, despite falling down the sim-racing rabbit hole a while back, I've only ever heard good things about Richard Burns Rally and the ridiculous amount of community-generated materials it's benefited from over its 20+ year lifespan.

Similarly, the original Assetto Corsa has mods for every car and track imaginable. The physics engine doesn't really do dirt and therefore rally all that well, and there are far better options available if you're into oval racing. But outside of those two subgenres, AC will cover you from historic racing all the way up to the modern era; spanning sports cars, road cars, open-wheelers and anything in-between. I legitimately don't think I've ever enjoyed racing games as much as I have with the vintage sportscar (60's/70's) and historic track mods that I've found for this game.

Slightly left-field (or at least left turning) - NASCAR Racing 2003 has a similarly-enormous community that still puts out replicas of any livery or engine type or circuit you care to name. It's a type of racing that I couldn't have cared less for before I started with sim-racing, but having tried it out recently, I've been marveling at the variety of tracks and technical precision - to say nothing of endurance - it takes to hurl those fuckers around. N2k3 in particular has a really impressive way to create what the kids would call "emergent narratives", too: the way the AI responds to each other and the variables they're subject to mid-race manufacture a lot of unique scenarios that modern sims (with their ridiculous system requirements) can't seem to replicate. From a front-runner blowing a piston before the opening turn and basically consigning half of the grid to wave those on the inside past; to the trio of chucklefucks who suddenly insisted on running three-wide around a short track whilst I was trying to lap them: despite "only turning left for a 100 laps", very few of my races have felt the same.

[TransatlanticFoe]

I'd recommend Project Cars but it's been delisted digitally But as you're PC, pretty sure you can find it somewhere. Proper career mode where you can start in karting and work up - or just spend your life in the Renault Clio Cup if you want to.

[AGermanArtist]

Despite all the negativity, Marathon gets better with every update.
This really is a marvel of a game, and with the roadmap it's just going to get better.
I rarely touch ARC Raiders now. Once you get to where I am in that game, it feels pointless playing it.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I recall from way back in 2004, when Richard Burns Rally was new - Xpand Rally getting pretty favourable reviews.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Forza looks like it at least has some dirt tracks

Yeah, they have different circuits with various races (street, rally, etc). Although, the racing is very arcade-y

Horizon 6 got me to re-new gamepass. Cloud gaming is laggy as hell, currently (probably due to everyone on the planet playing this weekend), so it should finish downloading 12 hours from now.

I wouldn't say I have a love/hate relationship with these games. More 'like/dislike'

Likes:

• The aforementioned 'free form' nature (also what I loved about Tokyo Xtreme)

• The variety of cars, tracks, terrains, etc

• The details of the cars' interiors/exteriors, and that they get actual licensing

Dislikes:

• The presentation ("Yo, that was NEXT LEVEL! That's going up on ALL my socials! Annnnd... SENT" I feel bad for the voice actors asked to sell this shit)

• The fact that they dump hundreds and hundreds of new cars on you constantly ("I got another Audi? Cool. Put it over there with the other eight")

• I wish the actual driving was a little more like actual driving than GTA driving (i.e. One wouldn't be able to slide a Cadillac XTS Limousine around a corner doing 70mph without rolling it at least 3 complete turns)

• I wish the races weren't essentially demo derbies

• Pretty much all the online stuff ("Hey! Join my clan! C'mon! Join my clan! Join my clan or you're gay! C'mon! Join my clan or I'll ride your back bumper across the entire map! Why don't you answer me? Are you gay? Joining my clan will turn you str8....")

[Sima Tuna]

Gran Turismo is still the king when it comes to single player racing game progression for me.

Not talking about whatever the newest live service game is called, but the old classics like GT2, GT3 and GT4.

[BIL]

Pretty much all the online stuff ("Hey! Join my clan! C'mon! Join my clan! Join my clan or you're gay! C'mon! Join my clan or I'll ride your back bumper across the entire map! Why don't you answer me? Are you gay? Joining my clan will turn you str8....")

Look I said I was sorry ok (｀w´メ)

[Daytime Waitress]

Gran Turismo is still the king when it comes to single player racing game progression for me.

Not talking about whatever the newest live service game is called, but the old classics like GT2, GT3 and GT4.

I'm just playing through GT1 and GT2 now for the first time, and I'm feeling this.

You start getting your arse beat, and then through gradual upgrades and tuning and just plain knowledge of the car itself, you can start to dominate.
But no matter how much you trick out your vehicle, a starter car is never going to carry you through to the end of the game*.

Spoiler

Yeah, I know it's a 30-year old game and there are probably optimised routes for "minimal spending, minimal vehicle swaps", but I'm coming in cold and with a "that car looks cool I wanna drive it" perspective so...

Whether it's straight cup progression, or special events that have drivetrain or weight specifications (and all of that policed by HP restrictions - in GT2, at least), you're constantly being asked to shift around and become a master of all trades (which is probably why licenses have mandated vehicles and it's not just run what you brung).

And to do that you have various ways of sifting through all of the above - you can incrementally fine tune something you actually enjoy; you can bust your butt winning prize cars and then beast on everything; and/or you can just plain chuck a tonne of cash at the problem. But there's never just one way out of a situation.

So there's a definite ladder where you're going to hit brickwalls, but there's also a lot of lateral movement.

Christ it feels daffy finding this all out after tens of millions of sales and thirty years, but it really is a great way of doing things.

[m.sniffles.esq]

So there's a definite ladder where you're going to hit brickwalls

I think GT2 was my first. I hit a wall early, learned from my failures, and surmounted it by tweaking gear ratios.

That's when I knew I was probably going to like the game.

edit: I've played Horizon 6 for about 30 minutes and had the audio cut in and out several times, controls lock-up twice, and just now it crashed the entire console. Remember when they would release games that actually worked?

[To Far Away Times]

Oh yeah, the old Gran Turismo caRPG progression was tops. I do feel like Gran Turismo really started to loose a lot of it's luster around GT4 and GT5. At one point it was a huge system seller (It's the reason I bought a PS1 and a PS2), but now Gran Turismo is just kinda... there. A few bad sequels will do that, I suppose.

I like Forza's Horizon 6's progression too. The wrist band system limits you to certain types of cars in certain types of classes until you accumulate enough points to advance to the next class. So it kind of has the limitations of the Gran Turismo caRPG progression, but then you can drop into a supercar and run around at 200 mph and do all the fun wanderlust exploration in between if you want. I think they could go further with it and make it more limiting and have you spend more time in the lower ranks, but the idea is solid, I think.