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In the JRPG thread we kill gods with the power of friendship
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of course i also beat twewy like a billion years ago and my crusty old brain forgets everything
But yeah, TWEWY wins the best silly/for fun post game for me. I laughed so damn much.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
mostly there was "Another Day" which was pretty great
and then the challenge boss and boss rush
I'm in a quest where I'm fighting Vainamo the Bellower, who's this gigantic titan gorilla lizard in Cauldros. Each of his limbs is the size of a skell or more, and he's all covered in lava and shit, and he fights like you wouldn't believe, all overwhelming force and shooting out his claws like the T-1000 only he's as big as an apartment complex, so when the song starts up you really feel it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmdnpbmM4pc
I go in on him with Elma and Lin and Celica, myself in a level 50 skell and Elma and Lin in 30s. I open up with the G Buster, which does less than 10% of his health (this fucker has over a million HP easy) but staggers him. Lin gets in there and Binds him just as Elma calls out for a melee attack, so I activate the V-Knuckle and knock his shit off for somewhere in the neighborhood of 35k damage. I get out of his way and set off a barrage of missiles as Celica calls for ranged attack, which staggers him again, which lets Lin grab him again, which leads into me dropping the Phoenix on him and really, really hurting him
I kick into overdrive just as he leaps into the air and comes down on top of us with an attack so forceful it blasts Elma's Skel to smithereens in one shot, and I go into cockpit mode to lay down as much hurt as possible as fast as possible and he's just going berserk, but we're keeping him locked down and doing as much damage as physically possible the whole time
But I'm fighting too close to him, his leaping attack is basically a touch-range and I'm almost inside of his character model and I pay for it because before my overdrive has ended my skell gets fucking wrecked in two more shots and I don't see it coming so I don't have time to react, and Celica and Elma are down from the same blow
My Skell explodes and I hit the soul challenge
"All right, screw the skell!" and I'm like "YEEEEEEEAH" as I hit the ground with all my secondary cooldowns activated, and I smack him with the Assault Rifle melee attack and it knocks him into Topple, and me and Lin have at it even though the fuckign thing has abotu half its health left
What follows from there is a flurry of me running around to prep for directional attacks, using sprinting to make it easier to position myself while sacrificing the TP gain from my auto attacks, using the Soul Challenges to heal Lin and build up the TP for a few Hundred Shells, and the whole time Uncontrollable is blasting
And it's just the two of us fighting this thing on foot, but between Lin's Trash Talk and me using every Soul Voice and Soul Challenge that comes our way, and running like Hell when he starts to leap into the air, we manage to get him down to 10% health before he does a leaping attack while I'm doing a Hundred Shells and obliterates me
Lin is by herself so it's a foregone conclusion at that point but she lasts for nearly twenty seconds just by tanking, and I watch to see how long she lasts. "I don't want it to end," she says as she falls
I lost the Hell out of that fight, but it felt so good, the way a loss ought to feel, where you throw yourself up against something that looks impossible and through careful use of the systems you nearly pull it out. It's exciting. It feels visceral and interactive and tight and right in a way that Xenoblade never did
I do miss the Chain Attacks, but that is it
Maybe because they were overpowered as hell and the entire endgame/postgame fights were basically 100% Chain Attacks?
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Yeah, it was great.
For the Overdrive mechanic. It makes sense, given the much faster pace of combat in this game, because it allows you to use certain arts much more often than you could outside of it, and you can extend overdrive in a way that chain attacks could only dream about, and the longer you keep them going the stronger you get and the weaker the enemy gets
It's a faster-paced, more dynamic, probably better system
But I miss Shulk getting off an attack and then linking and hearing
"REYN!"
"Yeah! It's Reyn time!"
Ain't nothing stupid abotu it. Took me like forty hours to pick up some of this horse pucky, and I was enjoying the game. If you're frustrated with it, asking questions to try to improve your experience is the most natural thing in the world
(also I think there isn't actually a "focus on arts" command but the principle is the same; Lin will still use Trash Talk more or less every time it's done with its cooldown, so you might should make it her art that you upgrade first and fastest)
Steam Switch FC: 2799-7909-4852
Beyond that they sacrificed inter party dialogue for a larger cast of characters, because there game doesn't know if you've got Irina or Gwin or Doug or Phog or Frye or etc etc etc with you so they can't "matter"
That's partially down to how the games handle characterization differently, though; X goes out of its way to tell the stories of many, many, many more people, and actually has a great deal more character-driven content to get through, but you'll only find one or two characters outside of Lin and Elma who are given as much attention as, say, Reyn
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Especially in affinity missions you end up responding via dialogue choices pretty regularly
You basically have two modes of characterization for the PC.
In the main story they're an amnesiac who acts as a viewpoint for the player, so concepts can be revealed organically over the course of the game. Elma, Lin, Lao, Gwin, Irina, Tatsu, and L are closer to being the "main" cast of the game, and your character is important primarily because they're 1. close to Elma and 2. strong as Hell
In the sidequests your player character grows their reputation over the course of interconnected mission chains, so you're known as this hyper competent bad-ass. It's a narrative that runs parallel to the main game where when it comes to the conflict with the main enemies you're in Elma's shadow, but outside of that specific conflict you grow and flourish in a way that's a huge support to BLADE as an organization, and things you do in the sidequests end up supporting the main quest in various ways so you still feel engaged with how the world is shifting
They hang the lampshade on your silence in a couple of sequences, but in general it works as well as possible for this kind of game, both in terms of tone and in terms of integration with the game's many, many narrative threads
Also your character is a right wry bastard
for example when I was first able to use the mission kiosk I checked out the tyrant fights listed there and got my shit pushed in but I didn't see anything really indicating that it was going to be beyond me for now especially considering they were among the first missions available to me
I remember early on, there was a level 13 tyrant that was still wrecking me at like level 18, while some other tyrants I was able to beat at same level
So uh, try and see if you die
You haven't got one
Now, most normal missions are tied to chapter progression, which means that you are probably strong enough to take on a mission if somebody gives it to you face-to-face. That's not a guarantee, but it's as likely as not.
OK you need to keep in mind you get one kind of mission from the kiosk: Basic missions (under Gathering, Bounty, and Social). These aren't really tied to your ability to do any of them at a given time, or even what areas you have access to. But Social ones will lead you to Normal missions, which are the story-based ones that are given to you in person and might have particular bosses. So if you see a Social mission, go ahead and grab it and go talk to the person in question, they'll have something for you to do and it will be much, much closer to being level-appropriate.
If you lose to the boss of a Normal mission three times, it will give you the option to scale back the difficulty just for that one fight. I have done it twice in the game (once on the actual final battle of Chapter 12) and am in no way ashamed
Looking at you, Simius and your fucking roll attack that will one-shot multiple people even if it's lower level than you
super fun video game wooo
Do other things, lots of stuff raises the survey rate, not just probes. Do a couple missions, explore some more, you'll pass it without even noticing.
At least it gives me a reason to put it down and eat/drink.
man i'm tryin'
most of what I got left are collection missions that i've been trying to nab everything I see just in case, and tyrants I can't fight yet
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
if I get stonewalled like that again I'm probably calling it because I thoroughly disliked what they were asking me to do
Next time you're asked to do that you'll have your skell
This might not be the game for you!
Just be aware that they represent a pretty small portion of the content, and the survey requirements basically assume you're doing a healthy amount of side questing in-between
Like, I would say yes because FFXIII-2 is a better game
But FFXIII is a bad game so maybe you have bizzarro tastes, in which case I can't really account for that
Give it a shot, it's dirt cheap like... everywhere I think
i felt like I was though before it became a problem, was the issue I was having
the collection stuff didn't feel super in my control but I was hitting every doodad between points A and B hoping, everything with an actual objective that wasn't "go die to that tyrant, idiot" I completed.