What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[null1024]

Etrian Odyssey III [DS].
'S fun. Decided to skip the first two, and I dunno if I'll pick up IV.

Pokemon Black 2 [DS].
I'm so damn hype for X/Y it hurts. The last time I was so excited about a Pokemon game was third gen, ten years ago.

[professor ganson]

It's my favorite NIS game by far, and grinding is far less painful and endless than in their other games. Oh well.

Interesting. This one never quite held my attention long enough for me to get into it. It's nice how it got a PSP release, though. I'm slightly tempted to check it out again.

[CStarFlare]

Like basically all NIS games, it doesn't really come alive until you start abusing the system to get powerful. Fortunately, you can do this extremely early - once you have a dungeon monk and a titleist, you can start making high level dungeons and applying low level titles to them. Enemies with abysmal titles don't give exp, but you can destroy the high level items and get clear bonuses and get tons of exp and gold.

With a bottlemail you can retrieve items high above its own level for use in fusion. Fusion can be used to increase stats, transfer/upgrade abilities, pool mana, and raise confine and equip bonuses - with creative fusion, you become nearly unstoppable pretty quickly.

The thing I like most about Phantom Brave is that it's not a huge time sink. My second run to the original release's strongest boss was under 24 hours; my recent run to beating the upgraded version's new super bosses was about 40. When I'd finished killing the strongest bosses in Disgaea 1 and 2 I'd clocked well over 100 hours on each - mostly spent just grinding the best exp maps and praying I'd find a specific item in the Item World.

[SuperGrafx]

Went back to Skyrim
My goal is to wrap up the main quest before the Xbox One launches.
I love the Elder Scrolls games, but man, it's so easy to get wrapped up and distracted by all the awesome side quests!

[professor ganson]

Like basically all NIS games, it doesn't really come alive until you start abusing the system to get powerful.

Yeah, it's a shame that the main game in NIS games doesn't present much of a challenge, and all the fun is in the grinding. I'm wondering whether Disgaea 4 is different in this regard. I plan to play through the main game without any grinding when I finally get around to playing it.

Good to hear that Phantom Brave is less of a time drain.

[beatsgo]

Chipping away at Puzzle and Dragons for the past 3 weeks. For a free iOS/Android game, this game has an unusual nack of keeping me on the phone. If anyone interested, my friend ID is 396766226.

[Softdrink 117]

My copy of Disgaea D2 arrived already!

Not playing it just yet, but I expect that it will be just about the only non-shmup I play for the immediately foreseeable future. So goddamn excited. Disgaea is quite probably my favorite RPG series of all time, and the first game has a very special place in my heart. I really hope that D2 manages to do it the justice it deserves.

[Obiwanshinobi]

F-Zero GX and Super Monkey Ball all night long. Normally I prefer to play such games in the morning, freshly out of bed on empty stomach (hot water only), but this time I had to try out my new 'Cube controller and couldn't stop for a couple of hours.
It appears to be a GameCube's posthumous child, 2008 model.



That would explain the colour and 3 metres long cord. Otherwise it's the same as old ones (i.e. d-pad and triggers are still not fun to use).

[professor ganson]

My copy of Disgaea D2 arrived already!

What! Amazon says "NOT YET SHIPPED" in my case. (Supposed to ship Tuesday.) That's cool you got it so early.

[Softdrink 117]

What! Amazon says "NOT YET SHIPPED" in my case. (Supposed to ship Tuesday.) That's cool you got it so early.

Ah, that could be it. I ordered it directly from NISA's online store. Maybe they shipped some of their stock early.

[KAI]

MGS Peace Walker [PSP]
Like the game, but that shit about taking care of your army is so stupid. Thank god you can skip it.

KOF2002UM [PS2]
NAMELESS IS SO FUCKING BROKEN. THAT FUCKING SUPER DESPERATION MOVE TAKES 20% OF YOUR LIFE BAR EVEN IF YOU ARE BLOCKING IT. IF YOUR OPPONENT IS CORNERING YOU, YOU ARE FUCKED.

[Jonathan Ingram]

Thank god you can skip it..

Sure you can. But then you can pretty much forfeit any hope of developing new weapons/equipment and getting the true ending.

[null1024]

Etrian Odyssey III [DS]
Money, or lack thereof is bothering me. Also, decided to see if I was nearly prepared enough to face the 1st Stratum B2F FOEs, noep. Not a total shutout, but there's currently no way that I'd be able to stay alive long enough to kill it yet.

KOF2002UM [PS2]
NAMELESS IS SO FUCKING BROKEN. THAT FUCKING SUPER DESPERATION MOVE TAKES 20% OF YOUR LIFE BAR EVEN IF YOU ARE BLOCKING IT. IF YOUR OPPONENT IS CORNERING YOU, YOU ARE FUCKED.

I'm so glad no one I know likes to play as K9999 [in stock]/Nameless [in UM]. 20% on block is nasty.

[Mischief Maker]

Etrian Odyssey III [DS]
Money, or lack thereof is bothering me.

There's a reason they added a class called "Farmers" Make 5, put everything into harvest for 4 of them, unlock "To Market" for the 5th. Make use of shortcuts to get to the harvest spot in the southeast corner. Money problems solved.

[heisenbergman]

I was playing Arkham Asylum around 10 days ago.

Then I bought Jamestown and started playing that.

Then I started to get hooked into shmups and looked for more to play.

Now I'm kind of balls deep into it and haven't played anything else.

But yeah, that, Arkham Asylum. Good game.

[dcharlie]

Monster Hunter 4 - 3DS

O, ye of little faith. This forbidden fruit thou speaketh of exists and henceforth you shalt refer to it as... Monster Hunter Online, a divine manifestation of our Lord CryEngine 3`s many forms.

hahaha - yeah, i will hold my hand up - i had my doubts about a few things i'd seen pre-launch MH4 and i did utter the horrific phrase "well... at least MHO looks like it's AT LEAST trying to change things up with the enemies throwing objects etc"... now i am removing both my feet from my mouth.

I simply can't get over MH4 - it's brilliant. So utterly brilliant - and again i'm only just trundling up on 20 hours and i don't particularly want to play anything else.

I mean - going back to the above MH4 moaning - i saw the swinging boss and my reaction was "that's going to suck" - the flying insect boss? "that's going to suck" - the linear levels (that are separate events) "going to suck" - the return of Babakonga "WHY?! Thats going to suck" etc etc...

So wrong. So so so so wrong. May the Capgods have mercy on my soul. And i've only got to the start of the virus infection stuff - and it lets YOU have the infection first and... yeah... oh god. oh good god.

I think it's in my interests that this doesn't get an upgrade to a Deep Down looking game - i might spontaneously combust.

In the meantime - playing a bit more with the wife (she's a 100% completer style MHer, so i'm getting #fingerwagged on my lack of massive stocks of items) and it's as glorious as ever.

Final Fantasy 14 - PC

wife is starting to get too far away - but we have a plan to do some stuff that my lowly lvl 20 ass can handle.

Eiyuu Densetsu : Sora no Kiseki - PSP/Vita

Whilst MH4 is in Japanese, and because i apparently don't get enough Japanese at work 12hrs/5 days a week, i wanted to add an extra game to delve into (though Ys Vita has been on the back burner too) - everyone seems to love this series so curious to get involved in all the hot fuss!

Zelda : WW HD - WiiU

Because my son needs something else to play so he doesn't just run my wifes FF14 character around the world map.

[Vexorg]

For some reason, I just couldn't ever get into Phantom Brave. To me, the game just seems really slow, which probably comes from hundreds of hours playing the various Disgaea games (which maintain a surprisingly fast pace of gameplay for an SRPG, especially once you turn off the attack animations.) I believe I still have both the Wii and PSP versions around somewhere, but haven't touched them in years. On the other hand, one of these days I'd like to try out Makai Kingdom, but I don't have a PS2, and the PSP port never made it out of Japan.

As for what I'm playing right now, I'm getting back into Terraria after the recent 1.2 update for the PC version that added a ton of new content. I spent quite a bit of time on this previously, but lost interest around the time (in early 2012) they stopped updating it, but eventually after doing console/mobile ports they got around to doing more content for the PC version as well.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Out of curiosity, I'm trying to find an NES RPG I stumbled on ages ago but never really played. Its setting was futuristic, I remember the opening may or may not have shown a close-up of an earth-like planet, and you started off with a few different characters, some capable of PSI if I remember. I also remember a robot maid or such who needed to be repaired with batteries. I found it on an emulation site ages ago when I was younger and can't remember it for the life of me. The graphics were a bit more detailed than Mother, the first town kinda reminded me of Phantasy Star. The graphics were bright, the town I remember being pastel pink or blue. It wasn't Lagrange Point, I think it was in English (probably a fan translation?). Anyone happen to know?

Kay, found it going through all the RPGs in GameFAQs's list. STED: Iseki Wakusei no Yabou. The question now is: is it worth playing?

[Softdrink 117]

So, I've had some time to play Disgaea D2. Just started Chapter Four of the main storyline, and I have to say, I'm really impressed by the game so far. It has so far done no wrong in my opinion. I'm finding myself totally engrossed in the gameplay and story in a way that some of the other games (notably D3) didn't really grab me.

There's so much to talk about, but I'll try to keep it brief:

The main base is the Overlord's Castle, but everything is a little different. All the major locations are in the same places, but there are loads of new areas, and you can jump now. A lot of musical pieces from the first game are back, and many have been remastered or remixed, which gives a very fresh feeling to them even though they're quite familiar. The story of the first 3 chapters is also very reminiscent of the first game, but from Chapter Four on, things look to be headed in a very, very different direction-- which is great. Finally, characters are a logical extension of how they were at the end of D1, which is good. Unlike the cameos from the main trio in the other games, this actually feels like they've legitimately developed.

Character creation has been completely overhauled. You can now choose what weapon a character specializes in-- this gives them a boost of one proficiency rank (eg B -> A, A -> S). You can choose their 'personality'-- which determines what Evilit(ies) they have and what voice tracks they'll play. You can choose colors, and although these are just palette swaps, it's a welcome feature regardless. Dark Assembly has been overhauled and streamlined; you still have factions to worry about, but the overall system is much less of a hassle than in D3 and D4.

You can now choose which main character you want to play as from anyone in your party, including created characters. This seems like just a 'ok w/e' thing, but many characters have unique dialogue depending on who you're maining at the moment. In addition, interacting with characters in the Castle can improve the relationship between your main and that character, which does things like increase team attack chance, increase likelihood of support attacks, enable Monster Mounting, enable Protect defense actions, etc. etc. etc.

The menu in the Castle has been totally overhauled. It takes some getting used to, but is overall faster and more convenient than any of the previous games have been. There is no longer a 'warehouse' vs an 'item bag' -- all items are now accessible at all times, at least from what I can tell so far. Could be wrong about that though. Battle menu is exactly the same.

Master/pupil relationships are no longer based on character creation-- ANYONE can be anyone else's pupil, including having story characters act as master/pupils to each other. To compensate for this new flexibility, Extra Gain now works both ways: Masters gain stat bonuses from Pupils, but Pupils can learn skills and get Weapon Mastery bonuses from Masters.

Oh yeah, that's the other thing: Weapon Mastery is back! Yay!

There's also a facility in the main base that affects character stat growth (eg +5% atk per lvl). This is pretty standard since Disgaea 3, but the difference is that this is open to you from basically the beginning of the game.

Item World has been retooled. Levels now scale in accordance with how far you are in the item-- so lvl 1 is physically smaller than lvl 10, etc. This hasn't been as much an issue since Disgaea 2, but compared to D1 (where floor 1 could be twice the size of a story map), it's a huge improvement.

[null1024]

Garou: Mark of the Wolves [Neo-Geo/MAME].

A few matches against my friends. I need to stop fighting with Hotaru exactly like I would Athena in KOF, it doesn't work. Specifically, Hotaru's reflect is a bit ass in comparision -- quite a bit of startup and not useful for hitting those who run up towards you. On the other hand, I love Hotaru's anti-air super to death. It's an angle of despair, especially at P-power.

Been forever since I've played. I knew how to juggle a bit with Dong before and I kept messing things up today...

[jasoncslaughter]

I've been playing a lot of Bubble Bobble II lately. I'm not especially good at it, but I manage to have fun nonetheless.

[hermit crab]

Castlevania 3

Moved the NES audio cable from a stereo input in the AV amp to the center speaker channel of the multichannel input to enjoy true mono (single speaker) sound.

[Zaarock]

Armored Core: Verdict Day (360)

I hope more people try this out, it's a really good improvement over V and well balanced right off the bat. Was expecting more people to pop up because of the popularity of Dark Souls, but I guess people didn't expect this to be such a big improvement over V. Great difficulty curve just as a single player game too, was just right for me and the super bosses in world mode can be a proper challenge. Only a couple teams have beaten the hardest boss yet, I think my team might have been the first to do so outside of the japanese server.

Player vs player is the main attraction of course but they handled the campaign and bosses a lot better than ACV this time, and the hardcore challenge mode is quite cool (clearing feels like a speedrun or 1cc attempt)

There's also a fairly indepth system for making AI-controlled mechs, which can be a lot of fun to mess around with and there are already some pretty efficient half-AI squads that are able to deal with fully human teams.. it's a very interesting setup. I've seen some of the top dueling players go with squads of AIs and kill people off very fast while regular players are being distracted by the AIs

It's pretty much the For Answer of ACV, I.E. improved in almost every aspect and a bit more fast paced. Feels like it's getting extremely overlooked outside of japan just like V though.. Could be game of the year for me over Metal Gear Rising, depending on how Bandai handles updates and servers.

[Ghegs]

Armored Core: Verdict Day (360)

I hope more people try this out

I was about to post "I'd play it I could play it in English on my JP360, but alas, the western releases are regionlocked as per usual for AC games"...went to doublecheck on Play-Asia and they say the US version is regionfree.

Well damn. I just played through the very first AC a few weeks ago and I've got Project Phantasma and Master of Arena on the way. Guess I might jump a few console generations ahead while waiting.

[Ruldra]

Cookie Clicker? What a stupid thing, it can't even be called a game. Who would want to play that?

1 day later...

[BrianC]

I've been playing a lot of Bubble Bobble II lately. I'm not especially good at it, but I manage to have fun nonetheless.

Which Bubble Bobble II? Rainbow Islands, Bubble Symphony, Bubble Bobble part II NES, or Bubble Bobble part II GB?

[gameoverDude]

Pac-Mania (Japanese version)

Superior to the USA arcade release. So glad Namco based their PS1 Namco Museum (and presumably others) version on the JPN one instead. Atari/Tengen's one cuts out one stage from each world in the first loop.

This is a game that I can't get enough of, having enjoyed it since the Genesis version. I bought Namco Museum 5 mainly for this (and Dragon Spirit). Namco should've given their PS1 Museum series even more volumes TBQH- especially with other gems like Burning Force, Steel Gunner 1 & 2 (good for GunCon), Nebulasray, Galaga '88, and Lucky & Wild.

[ACSeraph]

FF14 and DOA5U are the main ones at the moment.

In between those I've been playing a few NeoGeo CD games that I picked up last week. Sengoku and Ninja Combat. I suck at both of them but they are fun, especially Sengoku. I had heard Ninja Combat was terrible but it actually seems pretty good to me. Brutally difficult though.

[gbaplayer]

Live a Live on SNES.

[null1024]

KOF98 [MAME/Neo Geo].

Did all my friends just suck today, or did something just click with me? I pretty much held on to the controller for a whole hour without getting kicked off.

And man, this is a great game. I love 2002, but 98 seems to be doing a few things better. Also, USA team.