What Video Games Are You Playing Right Now?

[Eclipsed]

Yeah, OoT is something i probably wouldn't enjoy if i played it now..but the nostalgia is real.

...wait, some of you guys consider it hard? whatta buncha plebs 

~~
I randomly managed to plow through Nights of Azure. It's a 6 or 7/10 Gust JRPG, basically consists of 40% supernatural demon stuff and 60% yuri between the protagonist Arnice, a half-demon Holy Knight of the organization Curia, and Lilysse, a Saint from the same organization and her best friend.

Basic world lore is that XXXX years ago or so the First Saint defeated the evil Nightlord who threatened to shrowd the entire world in Eternal Night, but a consequence was that the sealing blow caused the Nightlord's Blue Blood to shower the earth corrupting everyone and everything it touched. The organization Curia was established to maintain the Nightlord's seal, and every 10 years a Saint is sacrificed in order to do so. Holy Knights are formed to protect these Saints and also combat Fiends, people who have turned into monsters from being exposed to Blue Blood.

Arnice is the first ever purple blooded half-demon, a result of her original red human blood being exposed to the blue demon blood. Yada yada yada, Lilysse is chosen by Curia to become the next Saint to be sacrificed with Arnice as her Holy Knight, and the duo spend the entire game quipping back and forth how Lily shouldn't sacrifice herself, how Arnice will protect her no matter what, and overall affirming their love for each other 

The gameworld is pretty lifeless, there's literally only three other male NPCs to interact with at the one hotel you stay in the entire game (and the familiars you unlock i guess); the rest of the world map is reserved for monsters and hack n' slashing. 

Gameplay is OK, this was one of Gust's early attempts at Action Rpgs or so and it shows. Arnice is limited to running around hack n' slashing with a sword and fixed combos, no spells, and can't even jump around, but you eventually unlock daggers, crossbow, and a 2h hammer so you can mix n' match the slice and dicing. You can also collect and summon up to 4 familiars to assist you in combat, there's a variety of them ranging from melee dps to tanks to healers but I find that the first 4 they give you at the start of the game are the best >.>. Quests and overall main plot progression are limited to "Go to X, talk to Y, defeat Z, proceed"...

 

~~
Nights of Azure 2 on the other hand is looking like an 8/10 just from first impressions. Overall story is same premise, 'cept we have Holy Knight Aluche and Saint Liliana this time around set some time after the events of the 1st game, so an indirect sequel. I'm only at the beginning, but wow jumping from PS3 to PS4 graphics is very nice, the character models' eyes more lively, movement and expression animations more fluid, etc, #graphicsmatter. They also made better effort in establishing the main yuri duo Aluche's and Liliana's relationship this time; Arnice x Lilysse was kind of shoved down your throat at the start and didn't feel as natural. Gameplaywise the hack n' slashing is overall same if not more polished, but the cooler thing is you can have an actual partner with you instead of just familiars and can perform some pretty flashy combos with them now.

[Funyarinpa]

2 hours ago, Eclipsed said:

Basic world lore is that XXXX years ago or so the First Saint defeated the evil Nightlord who threatened to shrowd the entire world in Eternal Night, but a consequence was that the sealing blow caused the Nightlord's Blue Blood to shower the earth corrupting everyone and everything it touched. The organization Curia was established to maintain the Nightlord's seal, and every 10 years a Saint is sacrificed in order to do so. Holy Knights are formed to protect these Saints and also combat Fiends, people who have turned into monsters from being exposed to Blue Blood.

 

This sounds like it just aped FFX lol

Edit: By the way, I finished Metal Gear Solid 3 yesterday. I don't feel that it's one of the all-time greats, but the whole game was certainly unique and the ending was a-ma-zing, goddamn.

Edited November 16, 2017 by Funyarinpa

[Kurisu-Chan]

On 16/11/2017 at 7:30 AM, Funyarinpa said:

This sounds like it just aped FFX lol

Edit: By the way, I finished Metal Gear Solid 3 yesterday. I don't feel that it's one of the all-time greats, but the whole game was certainly unique and the ending was a-ma-zing, goddamn.

And it's as bad as he sounded it like.

 

Frankly, Nights of Azure was...meh..meh at most, i mean...meh.

[Riku]

Finished Trails in the Sky the 3rd, then decided it was finally time to see the result of my (2) years of learning Japanese and started Zero no Kiseki Evolution.

TiTS 3rd was really nice, and the rythm is far better than FC and SC as you don't go talking to everyone (there's nobody after all >.>) and there isn't any side quest, just the doors, which are part of the story, so interesting. (ok, a few are boring, but still better than 10~20+ hours walking on the map trying to talk to all NPCs and do the side quests)

As for Zero, only midway through chapter 1, and damn, if it wasn't voiced I wouldn't be playing it. Knowing that only the main story is voiced, it's a pain when talking to NPCs and doing side quests. Thankfully I'm using the French guide which summarises the conversations of the "important" NPCs and the side quests, so no problem so far. Can't really say much about the story for the moment. Also, the 3rd spoiled me with Turbo mode, Zero felt sooooo slooooow at first, but got used to it.

[Jun Inoue]

13 hours ago, Riku said:

Finished Trails in the Sky the 3rd, then decided it was finally time to see the result of my (2) years of learning Japanese and started Zero no Kiseki Evolution.

TiTS 3rd was really nice, and the rythm is far better than FC and SC as you don't go talking to everyone (there's nobody after all >.>) and there isn't any side quest, just the doors, which are part of the story, so interesting. (ok, a few are boring, but still better than 10~20+ hours walking on the map trying to talk to all NPCs and do the side quests)

I mean... that's far less them game or its rhythm and more you being a completionist

[Riku]

23 minutes ago, Jun Inoue said:

I mean... that's far less them game or its rhythm and more you being a completionist

To be fair didn't talk much with NPCs, but the side quests are OBLIGATORY. I mean, it's the ONLY way to get lots of money. (selling your old gears and weapons doesn't get you much, and you use your sepiths for something else)

So doing all the side quests does make the game longer. It's actually the same in Zero right now. Just spent one hour saving and loading to fish the right fish for a quest, and the guide was wrong and fished too much.....

Edited November 18, 2017 by Riku

[Jun Inoue]

34 minutes ago, Riku said:

To be fair didn't talk much with NPCs, but the side quests are OBLIGATORY. I mean, it's the ONLY way to get lots of money. (selling your old gears and weapons doesn't get you much, and you use your sepiths for something else)

So doing all the side quests does make the game longer. It's actually the same in Zero right now. Just spent one hour saving and loading to fish the right fish for a quest, and the guide was wrong and fished too much.....

I mean, it's kind of "very JRPG-like", I'd say. And the Legend of Heroes games certainly do not shy away from this heritage. Considering the care put into the NPCs and quests, though, I never found it much of a terrible obligation.

[Eclipsed]

Almost towards the end of Nights of Azure 2

It's still a pretty mediocre action jrpg at the end of the day, but the one thing it has over the first game is having an actual band of female characters instead of being limited to just the Arnice + Lilysse duo

So you can have some decent (yuri) interaction moments like this rofl

That's gotta be the best comedic usage of the whole music-cutting-out shenanigans ive seen in a while xD 

[Eclipsed]

D'awww, Gust finally mustered enough courage to settle for a non golden happy ending in Nights of Azure 2. 

The first game had like 4 bad ends that were neutralized by the 1 true golden happy end, but this time around you either get the normal tragic end or the true romantic bittersweetness end and they both gave me some pretty feels.

Ultimate spoilers

Spoiler

You either beat the big baddie and as a result become the big baddie yourself and subsequently slain by your best friend,
 -> It's a lovely ending because throughout the game as Aluche is slowly becoming a full demon she always begs Ruenheid to be the one who will cut her down so it's nice to see it actually play out in full. I say this because the first game also brings into question the whole human, half-demon, full demon morality compass with Arnice but never really committed to showing the consequences of going full demon.

Or you and your lover who can stop time make the ultimate sacrifice and trap yourselves along with the big baddie in eternal stasis, thus saving the world
-> Wonderful, wonderful wonderful romantic tragedy because of several revelations that are made at the same time: when Aluche dies against the Moon Queen in the prologue, the Eternal Night was actually supposed to engulf the world at this point but it was Liliana who slowed down time which then gave Aluche the entire game with its lovely time limits to eventually make her way back to the Moon Queen for round 2

In addition, the 'Liliana' Aluche spends the majority of the game with was just a manifestation of the real Liliana's subconscious, who desired to spend her last moments with Aluche before her powers gave in and the slowed down Eternal Night is fully unleashed

And by the time Aluche finally does reach the Moon Queen and its revealed that Liliana was just standing there slowing down time the whole time, Aluche decides to join her, saying,"It's my turn to slow down time" and a lot of mushy 'we'll be together forever' stuff and with the power of love the two are strong enough to instead lock the Moon Queen and themselves in eternal stasis, forever prolonging the rise of the Eternal Night.

Oh, and they don't even say anything to third wheel best friend Ruenheid before disappearing forever, just a quick glance of 'this is the only way / this has to be done' acknowledgement and then poof.  

Fking romantic, man. 

 

Aight, i gotta get back to the damned Atelier games, i think once i finish Meruru i'ma skip the Dusk trilogy for now and jump into the Mysterious series cuz Sophie's cute and I've only been hearing good things about Firis

[Riku]

And finished Zero no Kiseki (Evolution)!

Was nice, but I have to say all the side quests burnt me out out a little. Add to that I did the 3rd and Zero one after the other, and I'm the type to focus on one thing when I do it (so for the past two weeks and half almost all of my free time was for those two games), so now I want to rest a little. Will do Ao during the winter holidays.

As for the game, I would say it was more interesting than FC, but a little under SC and the 3rd. Hyped for Ao who's the most liked game of the fanbase.

Edited November 26, 2017 by Riku

[Funyarinpa]

Pretty much done with Dark Souls II except the last DLC (+the final boss).

The game is really underwhelming overall, especially with regards to atmosphere and level design, but checking out some lore videos, there still is a worthwhile story in there just told in a really flawed way.

[Jun Inoue]

1 hour ago, Funyarinpa said:

Pretty much done with Dark Souls II except the last DLC (+the final boss).

The game is really underwhelming overall, especially with regards to atmosphere and level design, but checking out some lore videos, there still is a worthwhile story in there just told in a really flawed way.

It felt unfinished and really unpolished. I wonder if it was all on Miyazaki's absence due to being working on BB, or more stuff happened to the team.

Personally, I also think that the story suffers for it. The final conclusion seems to be kind of "DS 1 all over again, but with different names"; the only interesting "twist" being that

Spoiler

the game pretty much lets you know that you were just one of untold many and that your choice in DS1 didn't matter at all.

 

[Kurisu-Chan]

10 hours into Tales of Xillia 2 and....mh, i prefer Tales of Xillia 1.
I have 3 main problems with Xillia 2.
First problem : there's a lack of skits, like, really, i remember in the first one, you had at least 3-4 skits per 10 minutes of gameplay...here, you can spend 2 hours without encountering a single skit, and that's a huge problem in my book, also the characters reacts way less to new locations, i remember in the first one the whole cast would react to a lot of shit in every town, not here.

Problem 2 : there is a flaw in quest designs, where are the cool and interesting quests that helped build the lore of the first game? here you litterally have a menu fetch quest to gain money and shit, and not, doing the few side quests for your characters is not good quest design.

Problem 3 : What the fuck Bandai Namco, what the fuck it took you to fuck up (from here, spoilers about the plot)

Spoiler

Milla Maxwell soo much? You had to use the excuse of the plot being about parallel lines to turn Milla, the best character of Tales of Xillia 1, into the shittiest tsundere ever? You had to ruin miss edgy and turn her into miss trashy? why? why?!

Overall, the plot is less memorable than the first one so far, but the dynamic of the story is good, so there's that, overall i still like it, but less than Xillia 1.

[Ranzo]

8 hours ago, Kurisu-Chan said:

10 hours into Tales of Xillia 2 and....mh, i prefer Tales of Xillia 1.
I have 3 main problems with Xillia 2.
First problem : there's a lack of skits, like, really, i remember in the first one, you had at least 3-4 skits per 10 minutes of gameplay...here, you can spend 2 hours without encountering a single skit, and that's a huge problem in my book, also the characters reacts way less to new locations, i remember in the first one the whole cast would react to a lot of shit in every town, not here.

Problem 2 : there is a flaw in quest designs, where are the cool and interesting quests that helped build the lore of the first game? here you litterally have a menu fetch quest to gain money and shit, and not, doing the few side quests for your characters is not good quest design.

Problem 3 : What the fuck Bandai Namco, what the fuck it took you to fuck up (from here, spoilers about the plot)

  Reveal hidden contents

Milla Maxwell soo much? You had to use the excuse of the plot being about parallel lines to turn Milla, the best character of Tales of Xillia 1, into the shittiest tsundere ever? You had to ruin miss edgy and turn her into miss trashy? why? why?!

Overall, the plot is less memorable than the first one so far, but the dynamic of the story is good, so there's that, overall i still like it, but less than Xillia 1.

I couldn't get into Tales of Xillia II I really enjoyed the first one but this sequel I just kind of put it down and never got back to it

I think my main problem with it is that the dude your playing as doesn't have a voice that was really jarring for me because all the Tales games that I played had fully voiced main characters. Like I'm usually okay with a main character being silent but that time it was kind of a deal breaker. Plus he just seems super boring...

 

Anyway I'm playing Nier Automata right now and I'm enjoying it but I'm still only like 3 to 4 hours in

[Kurisu-Chan]

16 hours ago, Ranzo said:

I couldn't get into Tales of Xillia II I really enjoyed the first one but this sequel I just kind of put it down and never got back to it

I think my main problem with it is that the dude your playing as doesn't have a voice that was really jarring for me because all the Tales games that I played had fully voiced main characters. Like I'm usually okay with a main character being silent but that time it was kind of a deal breaker. Plus he just seems super boring...

 

Anyway I'm playing Nier Automata right now and I'm enjoying it but I'm still only like 3 to 4 hours in

Frankly, i think it does serve the game quite well, having the opportunity to chose what Ludger Kresnik says does work quite well, i have a lot of fun with it, as it reminds me of western RPGs rather than japanese RPGs.

And, especially, Ludger Kresnik is a fun character to follow, way more charismatic than that forgettable doctor dude (even tho he is way better in the sequel).

They just had to ruin my favourite char. 

[Kenshin_sama]

What a wonderful boss fight. Actually took me a few tries to figure out a strategy for him, lol.

Overall, I was impressed with FFIX. I'm still not a big huge fan of the ATB system in general, but the gameplay in this particular title was acceptable, imo. Unfortunately for me, the Steam port was a little buggy and I ended up crashing all the time even with the mods removed, which is partially why I temporarily stalled this game and re-played FFIII for a short while (I was in a Final Fantasy mood, lol).

The story was excellent though. It didn't take off early on, which I consider a good thing, and was able to pull off a good setup for a grand ending. There were some good plot twists towards the end that I was very much surprised with too, which made it that much more engaging. The ending was awfully sweet too, though not as great as I would've wanted it to be.

 

If it were up to me, I'd get Zidane and Dagger to kiss instead of just hug. That's one of my major pet peeves with Japanese romances.

Definitely one of the most enjoyable RPGs I've played. I'd likely put it up in my top 10 at least.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Kenshin_sama

[MaggieROBOT]

26 minutes ago, Kenshin_sama said:

What a wonderful boss fight. Actually took me a few tries to figure out a strategy for him, lol.

Aaaah, the memories! I played this in the PS1 and it was my first main series entry FF ever (first was Tactics) so I'm a bit biased, but yeah this game is really good!!!

I think this boss here was a bit "asspulled" into the story but then I discovered that's pretty much FF tradition. I got him in my first try using a bunch of elixirs and a trance state Steiner  (funny thing is that I used exactly the opposite team: Eiko, Amarant and Steiner)! But it was such a poor and luck based strategy that when I tried this boss again years later in an emulator, I failed so hard...

[Kenshin_sama]

26 minutes ago, MaggieROBOT said:

Aaaah, the memories! I played this in the PS1 and it was my first main series entry FF ever (first was Tactics) so I'm a bit biased, but yeah this game is really good!!!

I think this boss here was a bit "asspulled" into the story but then I discovered that's pretty much FF tradition. I got him in my first try using a bunch of elixirs and a trance state Steiner  (funny thing is that I used exactly the opposite team: Eiko, Amarant and Steiner)! But it was such a poor and luck based strategy that when I tried this boss again years later in an emulator, I failed so hard...

My strategy involved going in with a semi-burst setup, which involved having Zidane and Vivi attacking all the time unless they needed to use phoenix downs, and I would heal with an aoe cura spell and Freya's aoe regen. Freya has MP restore too, which I tried to take full advantage of. When the party had regen and decent mana, I'd go ahead and start attacking with her.

What threw me off the most was the zombie effect. I'm accustomed to debuffs like that wearing off on death, but apparently zombie stayed there, and I didn't realize until my 2nd try that it blocked revive. So I basically had to make a point to check for zombie every time the boss used his big attack that causes status ailments.

I would've gone with Eiko for her aoe revive, but I wanted to finish the game with Dagger.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with you about the asspull, but I don't really consider it a bad thing either. He was a highly symbolic figure that represented the game's central theme involving the will to live. He is, in a way, a physical manifestation of death, and defeating him serves to reinforce that theme. But at the same time, I'm also the type of guy who's willing to forgive writing flaws as long as something good comes out of it, so that's just me.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Kenshin_sama

[MaggieROBOT]

22 minutes ago, Kenshin_sama said:

My strategy involved going in with a semi-burst setup, which involved having Zidane and Vivi attacking all the time unless they needed to use phoenix downs, and I would heal with an aoe cura spell and Freya's aoe regen. Freya has MP restore too, which I tried to take full advantage of. When the party had regen and decent mana, I'd go ahead and start attacking with her.

What threw me off the most was the zombie effect. I'm accustomed to debuffs like that wearing off on death, but apparently zombie stayed there, and I didn't realize until my 2nd try that it blocked revive. So I basically had to make a point to check for zombie every time the boss used his big attack that causes status ailments.

I would've gone with Eiko for her aoe revive, but I wanted to finish the game with Dagger.

  Reveal hidden contents

I don't necessarily disagree with you about the asspull, but I don't really consider it a bad thing either. He was a highly symbolic figure that represented the game's central theme involving the will to live. He is, in a way, a physical manifestation of death, and defeating him serves to reinforce that theme. But at the same time, I'm also the type of guy who's willing to forgive writing flaws as long as something good comes out of it, so that's just me.

DAMN THAT ZOMBIE STATUS!!!! That was what killed (unkilled? whatever) me in my second attempt XD

I put Zidane and Steiner to attack all the time too, while Eiko cured everyone and used Holy when everything was okay while Amarant supported using Revive when Eiko was unavailable and using Chakra to restore people's MP. But I guess he ended up dying with zombie, Eiko turned to stone and I said "screw everyone!" and made Steiner solo the thing. I can't believed it worked... But I always used so weird team combinations lol I used Quina, Eiko and Amarant to beat Ozma and Hades!

And about what's in the spoiler tag, I agree with you. I didn't disliked the end because of it. And we always overlook such small flaws when everything else is so perfect  But I still say to myself in any game where an enemy comes out of nowhere that he "pulled a Necron" to this day hahahahaha

Edited November 30, 2017 by MaggieROBOT

[Kenshin_sama]

2 minutes ago, MaggieROBOT said:

DAMN THAT ZOMBIE STATUS!!!! That was what killed (unkilled? whatever) me in my second attempt XD

Lol, ikr? xD That seriously threw a wrench in the whole thing for me, especially when it would come up before shortly after I selected cura.

4 minutes ago, MaggieROBOT said:

Eiko turned to stone

I decided to enable passive abilities that would block stuff like stop, stone, sleep, etc. It made the fight a lot more manageable.

7 minutes ago, MaggieROBOT said:

I used Quina

Now that I think about it, Quina's multi-remedy would've made him/her an interesting choice here, actually.

9 minutes ago, MaggieROBOT said:

Chakra to restore people's MP

Oh yeah, I forgot he had that, lol.

[Dreamysyu]

[Kenshin_sama]

There's a good reason I don't play horror games. To me, they're far more terrifying than movies since I have to dedicate my concentration on gameplay, which hurts my ability to put up a mental barrier and brace myself for the jump scares.

I'm making an exception for Ib, though. It's still scary as all hell, but the world is interesting to me. Even though I've put the game down a number of times in an attempt to give up, I keep getting sucked back in just out of sheer fascination. That being said, I'm gonna have to play this in short bursts to avoid getting a heart attack, lol.

For anyone that might be interested, this game is freeware, and I'd recommend downloading the English release here. The version I downloaded from Gameshed was kinda buggy, but the one from the translator's site works just fine as long as you run it in compatibility mode for Vista and install the necessary fonts (I'd run it as administrator too, just to avoid any kind of hassle). Yeah, it is a bit dated, but definitely worth picking up.

[MaggieROBOT]

MOGEGES!!!!! @Dreamysyu play Mogeko's Castle too, if you like Gray Garden! Those are one of the best RPG Maker games I played!

And Ib! I did a reference of it here on Fuwa some hours ago! @Kenshin_sama be sure to get all endings, the bad ones are terrifying! (I got some doll trauma)

Edited December 3, 2017 by MaggieROBOT

[Dreamysyu]

1 minute ago, MaggieROBOT said:

MOGEGES!!!!! @Dreamysyu play Mogeko's Castle too, if you like Gray Garden! Those are one of the best RPG Maker games I played!

Well, technically I haven't played Mogeko Castle myself and only watched two Let's Plays on Youtube, but I agree, it was definitely the most interesting and probably the deepest RPG Maker game I experienced, in one way or another. As for Gray Garden, I really like it so far!

[MaggieROBOT]

12 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

Well, technically I haven't played Mogeko Castle myself and only watched two Let's Plays on Youtube, but I agree, it was definitely the most interesting and probably the deepest RPG Maker game I experienced, in one way or another. As for Gray Garden, I really like it so far!

Interesting and deep indeed XD  The blog Kenshin-sama linked above is where I found these, and other, awesome games! So worth it!

And Rawberry best girl!