What are you playing?

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

It's lile Sailor Uranus, but better

[Gendo's Ocular Dickhole]

SpoilerShow

>t. spontaneous Achondroplasia

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

3D SaGa is an even more acquired taste than SaGa in general.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Okay, let's talk about games.

Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Show Song Remastered

It's funny you have to copy and rename the audio files to get English text with Japanese voices, but I guess the developers were rightfully biased towards PC gamers.

Decided to go with Barbara for my first run, since Ellen from RS3 turned out to be my MVP and she looks to be the closest thing to a nother kung fu waifu.
Also she was like the last main character choice, so I though the game would do something goofy with her - and it kinda did. You just get a brief overview of The Middle Of Nowhere (tm) and then left to your own devices. I think it took my like half a dozen towns before I found some mention of an overarching bad guy looming in the distance.
I then decided to (mostly) stick to the same party and only swap out the 1-2 least permanent slots as the situation demands. Gold and jewels are short, and there's plenty of ways for every single character to burn through it like nothing.

My two 100% permanent party members are literally the first two other main characters I ran into because why not, let's do a Nuzlocke run.
The first one was Jamil, currently on damage-dealing duty, though he might end up getting switched to a defender if I can't find another one for that role.
The next one was Aisha, who started pretty meh but now she's my main healer and only real spellcaster in general. Spells are expensive af so she might stay the only one.
The other main characters I ran into were Sif and Hawke. Sif is currently testing my patience by having yet to glimmer anything, and Hawke and alright but overall a bit too similar to Jamil. He will probably become my defender if I decide to keep him, but I'll probably give him a different weapon since two fencers in a party might be a bit too much overlap.

I also discovered that you can grind jewels with zero repercussions by just spamming stealth proficiencies. It's pretty good to train up new characters, but anything after level 3 is a bit too expensive for casual grinding.

At first I was a bit concerned about difficulty, but that was mostly because the default Martial Arts punch sucks balls (the very first tech on the other hand deals like an order of magnitude more damage). I then did the usual SaGa thing (try to avoid combat & invest your hard-earned cash into cost-effective armor) and so far the battles have been pretty easy. Maybe I'll get my ass handed to me once the bosses become bigger bastards, but who knows at this point.

Overall I'd say the game is pretty darn cool, but there are a few gripes:

• I could probably do without the Indiana Jones travel montages on quick travel
• The bard's role as a semi-NPC sucks. You can recruit him sometimes, but he'll fuck off automatically whenever you enter a Pub (or straight away if the Pub is open air)
• A camera you can rotate manually would be a godsend. It's not too bad in towns, but there's already been a number of dungeons where I had to walk towards the camera, aka I had no fucking clue what I was even running to
• It sucks a bit that shields aren't visible in battle. Would make it easier for weapon types where you're not sure if they work with shields or not
• It's a shame you can't master techs (aka make them available to everyone) like you can in RS3. It wouldn't be too unbalanced here IMO since techs are pretty expensive if your skill level is too low
• 60 FPS was apparently asking too much for a remaster

Also apparently there's a way to play combat with fixed turn orders, instead of letting the character stats determine their initiative. Okay...?

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak

Okay this might be a bit early since I haven't actually gotten far at all, but here are my first impressions:

At first I was a bit confused that they're going with Feudal Japan aesthetics again since they already did that in MH3. Then it dawned upon me that your hometown is basically the one from Naruto, so after I stopped laughing I was good to go.

The quest waifus did a good first impression. You can't get wrong with sexy twins who like to sneak into your house.
Not a fan of the heels, though. Makes them look like they suffered from footbinding or something.
They're also not quite as Best Quest Girl material as the sexy teacher/professor Sophia, or Best Girl material like Catalina.

Is Capcom trying to win over PETA or something? The amount of pet buddies you get reminds me of a more diverse Paw Patrol. The only thing missing is a pet fish (or a "Fysh" in MonHun speak).

It's like nice I guess that you can switch to English or Japanese voices, but they could've saved that money IMO. It's just not the same without the gibberish.

Also the free update stuff you can cash in includes armor that's better than your starting gear, including a High-Rank set

[rabidtictac]

Okay, let's talk about games.

Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Show Song Remastered

It's funny you have to copy and rename the audio files to get English text with Japanese voices, but I guess the developers were rightfully biased towards PC gamers.

Decided to go with Barbara for my first run, since Ellen from RS3 turned out to be my MVP and she looks to be the closest thing to a nother kung fu waifu.
Also she was like the last main character choice, so I though the game would do something goofy with her - and it kinda did. You just get a brief overview of The Middle Of Nowhere (tm) and then left to your own devices. I think it took my like half a dozen towns before I found some mention of an overarching bad guy looming in the distance.
I then decided to (mostly) stick to the same party and only swap out the 1-2 least permanent slots as the situation demands. Gold and jewels are short, and there's plenty of ways for every single character to burn through it like nothing.

My two 100% permanent party members are literally the first two other main characters I ran into because why not, let's do a Nuzlocke run.
The first one was Jamil, currently on damage-dealing duty, though he might end up getting switched to a defender if I can't find another one for that role.
The next one was Aisha, who started pretty meh but now she's my main healer and only real spellcaster in general. Spells are expensive af so she might stay the only one.
The other main characters I ran into were Sif and Hawke. Sif is currently testing my patience by having yet to glimmer anything, and Hawke and alright but overall a bit too similar to Jamil. He will probably become my defender if I decide to keep him, but I'll probably give him a different weapon since two fencers in a party might be a bit too much overlap.

I also discovered that you can grind jewels with zero repercussions by just spamming stealth proficiencies. It's pretty good to train up new characters, but anything after level 3 is a bit too expensive for casual grinding.

At first I was a bit concerned about difficulty, but that was mostly because the default Martial Arts punch sucks balls (the very first tech on the other hand deals like an order of magnitude more damage). I then did the usual SaGa thing (try to avoid combat & invest your hard-earned cash into cost-effective armor) and so far the battles have been pretty easy. Maybe I'll get my ass handed to me once the bosses become bigger bastards, but who knows at this point.

Overall I'd say the game is pretty darn cool, but there are a few gripes:

• I could probably do without the Indiana Jones travel montages on quick travel
• The bard's role as a semi-NPC sucks. You can recruit him sometimes, but he'll fuck off automatically whenever you enter a Pub (or straight away if the Pub is open air)
• A camera you can rotate manually would be a godsend. It's not too bad in towns, but there's already been a number of dungeons where I had to walk towards the camera, aka I had no fucking clue what I was even running to
• It sucks a bit that shields aren't visible in battle. Would make it easier for weapon types where you're not sure if they work with shields or not
• It's a shame you can't master techs (aka make them available to everyone) like you can in RS3. It wouldn't be too unbalanced here IMO since techs are pretty expensive if your skill level is too low
• 60 FPS was apparently asking too much for a remaster

Also apparently there's a way to play combat with fixed turn orders, instead of letting the character stats determine their initiative. Okay...?

Barbara is the "open world" character. She and Gray dump you into the world with very little story. Albert and Claudia are the story handhold characters. Barbara is my favorite start because I like total control over my Event Rank and she lets you do that. She opens up the Frontier super early, which is important to catch a certain quest that disappears at ER2. Oh and Herman is OP. Since most characters are rather interchangeable, the primary determiner of a good character is their LP stat and how early you can perma-recruit them. Herman joins at the start and has 16 LP, which is a ton. Remember, the more LP your party has, the more overpowered spells you can cast and the more times you can run from battles to manipulate ER.

It's best to pretend the Bard is not recruitable. I always pick him up once so he's in my list of recruited characters and then I like him stay gone. He's more useful in origins that force you to do a lot of fighting before you can recruit a full party. Sif's start relies heavily on being able to pick him up, otherwise it's just you and maybe one generic axe guy clearing out 6 minibosses.

Gold is not scarce in Minstrel Song, but gems are. I recommend pouring most of your gems into the main character and your designated caster. Your main tank really only needs Shield, their primary weapon and a healing magic (Bewitchery, Hydrology, Cosmology etc.) As you've realized, buying amazing endgame armor early is the path to success. Conqueror Gloves and Leg Mail are quite cheap considering their best-in-slot status. It's best to save those large purchases until after you've finished the Ice Sword quest, however, since that quest requires you to save 20k in gold. You don't actually have to *spend* that 20k on the quest, but you have to accumulate it.

I won't defend the fixed camera, but there are some tricks you can learn to work with it. The camera will auto-rotate so that running towards it almost always takes you back the way you came. If you want to leave an area, run toward the camera, ignoring the map, and you will get out. If you can tolerate fixed cameras in survival horror games, I think this is also tolerable.

Default martial arts punch is 10x weaker than the skills you learn. Martial arts sucks as a discipline until you can spam the abilities every single turn.

Area of effect damage is very important later in the game. Make sure at least one of the spell branches you give your party has big AoE damage. I also like to have a bow user or some other weapon that learns AoE skills.

My favorite magic schools are Pyrology, Demonology, Bewitchery, Aerology and Hydrology. Bewitchery is good for physical fighters you don't want to invest many gems into. Teach Wave of Life and the self-heal spell. Wave of Life deals very high damage to undead and there are some painful undead fights. Undead also tend to resist physical damage so again, this gives your physical fighters something to do. Aerology, Pyrology and Demonology are good for an offensive mage. You get a lot of single target damage as well as AoE damage and Self-Immolation. Self-Immolation makes you immune to fire and water magic and nullifies the first physical attack you receive at the cost of removing the shield. It's VERY good. Your main caster is going to be fragile so keep this up. You can use Cosmology or Bewitchery for heals on characters you've specced into Pyrology (Pyrology invalidates Hydrology.) I do recommend that every character in your party be able to throw down at least a self-heal. When you get to Silver and the Sky Dragon, you will understand.

Every character is viable, since the way you build them is more important than their starting proficiency. Jamil works well as either a dex-based damage dealer (using weapons that scale from dexterity) or a magic caster. But really, you can build them however you want. There is a guide online that shows the proficiencies of every character and you might want to check that IF you care about min-maxing. It doesn't matter though.

I have played something like 200 hours of this game lmao. Sorry for wall of fuckoff text.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

>Silver quest

That was actually the one I was gonna tackle next. Now I'm curious how hard I'll get screwed.

I've actually banked Herman about 2 quests ago since his growth rate isn't supposed to be very good, but at least he has actually glimmered shit unlike some zweihander-wielding barbarian chick.
I may end up making him supporter/defender, unless I settle for Hawke or Galahad (who already starts as a defender).

Giving everyone a bit of magic isn't something I've done so far. I'm still in the RS3 mindset where I didn't teach anyone magic unless they already started with it, since TP Crowns are nice.

And would you know when I can start worrying about tempering stuff? Should I keep the materials I find for when the grand tempering starts, or can I just sell that shit for cash?

[rabidtictac]

>Silver quest

That was actually the one I was gonna tackle next. Now I'm curious how hard I'l gett screwed.

I've actually banked Herman abotu 2 quests ago since his growth rate isn't supposed to be very good, but at least he has actually glimmered shit unlike some zweihander-wielding barbarian chick.
I may end up making him supporter/defender, unless I settle for Hawke or Galahad (who already starts as a defender).

Giving everyone a bit of magic isn't something I've done so far. I'm still in the RS3 mindset where I didn't teach anyone magic unless they already started with it, since TP Crowns are nice.

And would you know when I can start worrying about tempering stuff? Should I keep the materials I find for when the grand tempering starts, or can I just sell that shit for cash?

When to temper depends upon when you find a very powerful weapon that can be upgraded. Keep in mind that there are many excellent weapons which cannot be upgraded. I never bother upgrading bows because Wisteria is a quest reward and it's a bow with around 40 power that can't be upgraded. I just use it to spam skills and then repair at the smith.

If you start as Gray, his main quest involves forging a weapon called the Falcata. But that quest takes so long you may actually finish the game before completing the quest.

Tempering armor should be done as soon as you get a good piece of armor. Weight is a meaningless stat so you want max defense stat, no matter what the weight is. For that reason, I like to take my armor pieces and temper them with Garal or something equally strong that the smiths have in stock. You can add 4-10 defense to each armor piece, which adds up when stacked onto a single character.

Since you don't need collected materials to forge armor (the stuff the smiths carry is fine,) you can sell your materials unless you have a particular weapon in mind to forge. Again, you'll get a lot of weapons that can't be forged and which have high strength.

The Minstrel Song Remaster changes out crowns work. You can have both a TP and SP crown in Minstrel Song now. So there's no reason not to give at least a little magic to every character.

The Silver quest boss fight is, in my opinion, the hardest boss in the game available before ER14 or so. It's one of the stiffest challenges you will face on a brand new game. Unless you do a ton of grinding, it's likely the boss' opening turn attack will OHKO at least 3 of your characters. So have fun. If you want to test the readiness of your party, maybe you should journey to the Crystal Lake and kill Ghost Ship. If you can't kill Ghost Ship then you won't stand a chance against the Silver quest boss.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Now that sounds reassuring. Though I guess I'll first visit any leftover towns. Maybe I'll find other characters worthy of my attention.

And I've checked out more of MonHun Rise. It's awesome there's now a full-on practice mode instead of those boring tutorial missions.
I think I'll try to main Dual Blades this time around. Would be my first time focusing on status and elemental weapons (when I tended to focus on raw damage with maybe a bit of elemental as a bonus in previous games).
If that fails, I'll always have older mains (Long Sword, Lance*, Switch Axe) as a backup.

And man, I forgot how much of clusterfuck of sub-mechanics the Charge Blade was. No wonder I never picked that one.

*) I know the Gun Lance is cooler, but there's just something about the feel of the Vanilla Lance.

[Kugelfisch]

I guess it's finally time to sperg about Rise tomorrow in the relevant thread.

[RAPEMAN]

I guess it's finally time to sperg about Rise tomorrow in the relevant thread.

>knows it will be shit
>buys it any way
???
>damn you jews!!!