[Event] The PokeCommunity Game-Along

I'm just an hour or so of play shy of the second half of the game now. Since my last update Sabin, Celes, Edgar and Locke have made their way to the Southern Continent and found Terra in Zozo under the guardianship of Ramuh, who converted himself to Magicite to power the party up. They then infiltrated the Empire's capital, Vector, where they were able to free several more Espers who also became Magicite for the party. I lost Celes at this point, but I suspect she'll be rejoining me soon enough.

After that, I headed back to Zozo, where we discovered a recovered Terra who was able to fill in her backstory with her memory now returned. It wasn't much of a surprise, but cool to see it play out nonetheless. After that, we returned to Narshe to reconvene and hatched our plan to access the Esper World and have them join Narshe and the Returners to fight the Empire. I recruited Mog there too, and with my party now consisting of Terra, Sabin, Mog and Setzer I spent the next while learning all Mog's dances before heading to the gate to the Esper World. There I immediately died and had to go back around learning all Mog's shit again. I then entered the dungeon to the gate, gave the characters deja vu and proceeded to make my way through a cave full of lava, switches and undead.

I collected the Ultima Weapon along the way and eventually found my way to the gate itself. Terra began opening the gate as Kefka arrived, suggesting he actually wanted the gate open. Terra couldn't exactly stop, so Sabin, Mog and Setzer beat him back until the gate was open. A bunch of Espers flew out in a crazy rage, buried the gate in rubble and chased Kefka off while the rest of us were knocked out. We recovered and returned to the Blackjack, our airship, which said crazy Esper's crashed before heading to Vector.

I'm getting more into this game now and getting more engrossed in the story. It still mostly suffers from the some of the shortcomings I mentioned before, but the plot is interesting, Kefka is a fantastic villain and I'm finding the strategic side of this game interesting. The other FF games I've played haven't felt quite as strategic as this one.
 
PROGRESS 3
Game: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Console: Nintendo Switch​

Time for Bay's third progress report on my Black Eagles playthrough! I've been thinking a bit how I want to do this progress report since I feel going chapter by chapter, at least before timeskip, isn't exciting for me or the readers. What I'll do is talk a couple stuff that happened in Chapter 8, explain a bit how I've been rotating my units, and then go straight to Chapters 11 and 12.

During Chapter 8 one of the prologues I did was Manuela and Hanneman's. This prologue gets a bit tricky because of how Manuela is up on a hill and several units going after her. For this parologue I brought Edgelgard, Petra, Lindhart, and Lysithea with me. Lysithea and I went to the hill where Manuela is while everyone else go towards the enemy commander. Eventually Lysithea and I reached Manuela and dealt with several units there. At one point Lysithea's health was a bit low and I had Manuela healed her. Wrong move as a Pegasus Knight went and killed Manuela, causing a "You've been defeated" message LOL. Luckily I was allowed to use Divine Pluse and fixed that mistake by having Edelgard go kill that Pegasus Knight.

Chapter 8's mission is saving some villagers from the rampaged ones. After a certain character gets his true identity revealed, the Death Knight appeared again. I brought Lysithea for this missison and had her used Dark T Spikes on him, booyeah.

Chapters 9 and 10 I've been grinding Felix, Constance, Yuri, and Lysithea. Originally I was about to use Hapi, but changed my mind last minute due to me wanting to unlock several of Constance's supports (Edgelgard, Mercedes, and one other character later on). Besides that I plan to use her more when I get to Silver Snow's route. I also got some students in their Master Classes already.

After Chapter 10's mission Byleth's class got changed to the Enlightened One, which is Byleth using swords and white magic. Considering this month's theme, sure I'll keep him in that class for now.

Okay, now for Chapter 11. So this is where the Black Eagles route can be split into either Silver Snow or Crimson Flower later on.

Spoiler:


Once I'm done exploring, it's time for the Holy Tomb ceremony.

Spoiler:


And there you have it, part one of the Black Eagles run done. Next time, post-timeskip! Depending if anything interesting happens that might be one or two more progress reports there!

>PROGRESS 4
 
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I changed up my team to Terra, Edgar, Cyan and Setzer and made my way in to Vector. I found the city ablaze and in ruins with soldiers from Narshe and Vector as well as the Returners and Banon all reeling from the attack of the Espers. I made my way into the castle where I was greeted by a guard who took me to meet the emperor. He claimed that he wanted peace and asked me talk to his troops while dinner for negotiations was prepared. This initiated a four minute time trial to talk to as many of the 24 palace guards as I could. Naturally, several of the guards attacked me, and the timer didn't stop for those battles. Terra and Edgar were easily able to wipe them out though. Still, I had some bad luck getting stuck behind guards and stuff and only managed to talk to 22/24. During the dinner, the challenge continued. I had to answer a bunch of prompts, earning points dependent on my answers. In the end I scored 89, just short of unlocking all of the rewards. We arranged to pursue the espers to the Crescent Island with General Leo.

Something seemed off about all that, and apparently Edgar agreed. Because of this, only Terra and Locke went with the general while the rest remained in the capital to keep an eye on things. We were soon joined by Shadow and Celes, brought into the mission by Leo. We soon arrived to the island and separated into two teams. Terra, Shadow and Locke went to visit Thamasa while Celes and Leo explored elsewhere. There, I encountered a town full of secret spellcasters, including two major characters, Strago and Relm.

There was an incident with a fire, in which Terra, Strago, Locke and Shadow saved Relm from a burning building. After that, Shadow left but Strago joined us and took us to the nearby mountains where the Esper's were likely to be. Relm snuck along and joined us part way through, during a boss fight with recurring octoboy, Ultros. He's mildly annoying, but I admire his persistence. Anyway, the party then encountered the espers and headed back to Thamasa to talk things out, Leo and Celes also arriving there.

Things didn't go well though, Kefka showed up and killed Leo before doing some serious damage to the town and turning the Espers present to Magicite. The gate to the Esper world burst open, and several more flooded in, dragging their continent with them. Kefka claimed several more as Magicite and then disappeared. Shortly after, the rest of the party arrived on the newly repaired airship, revealing that they had narrowly avoided capture. This concluded the first part of the game's story. Next up I'm going to collect/buy some missed equipment to optimise my characters before spending some time levelling up all my characters before the final segment of the game.

I like that it's left a little vague whether the emperor betrayed us or if it was all Kefka's doing. Personally, I'm leaning toward the latter, but I'm excited to see what the story brings from here on out regardless. At this stage, I'm narrowing down the characters I might want in my final party. I've ruled out Locke, Gau, Shadow, Strago, Mog and probably Cyan. Terra and Edgar are definitely in. The remaining two spots are still undecided with Celes, Relm, Sabin and Setzer all as options. There's still one or two characters I haven't gotten access to yet, but I doubt this will change much. That's on the mechanical side of things. So far my favourite characters outside of their combat utility are Terra, Relm, Locke, Cyan and Kefka (he's just such a good villain). At this stage though, I can safely say there aren't really any characters I have a strong dislike for although some are certainly less interesting than others.
 
This is a really cool idea. Could I do this challenge for Kingdom hearts Birth by Sleep on the PS4?
 

THE POKECOMMUNITY GAME-ALONG - Hand of Fate 2

[PokeCommunity.com] The PokeCommunity Game-Along

FINAL PART

​
There are skill-based games that rewards player for honing their skills, then there are games that will only decide based on RNG, say it's skill and put player into unfair situation because of that. Hand of Fate 2 is game that cross the line between these two states all the time.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it. It had really great aesthetics and I loved the D&D feel. The Dealer was annoying sometimes, but I enjoyed his comments on the lore and story. The game is divided into several short campaigns and they have nice variety of stories. They all centered around conflict between Empire, North folk and Corruption and put you into the foot of hero that tries to stop Kallas, the main character from previous game that turned into a tyrant. You do so by fighting the Corruption, help achieve the piece between Empire and North, which results in killing the Emperor and destroying the Empire, or simple stories like being hired by head of a Thief Guild to find a person who wants to kill them, being hired by a villager to protect him from skeletons on his way to his lover or treasure hunting for powerful relics.

The combat was fun. It was pretty standard version of attack, block and riposte, so not that hard. It took me few adventures to get used to the maps layout and enemies' behaviour. Now the main problem I had with the game. Aside from combat, there was a map made out of cards, which was neat, but there was also a lot of RNG included. I get there are dices. They are standard way to decide if you succeed at some action in D&D. But there were no modifiers, aside from items you could sometimes get, so it got sometimes pretty awful. Then, sometimes you had to pick a card from a set, which determinated if and how well you succeed at some action. The problem was that you had no influence on a result. And the punishment for failing were harsh. There were runs where I got no damage in combat, but still lose all my health because of this RNG. Or lost majority of it and then died in battle after one hit. A lot of time, even when I succeed, there was no reward aside from taking no damage.

I think my biggest mistake was playing this game at the same time as Witcher 3, because that game is far beyond this one. But I still had a great time, even though it was sometimes frustrating. I don't think I'll be finishing it on 100 %, because there are some adventures that requires to roll a certain value literally at the end to finish them on 100 % and I don't have nerves for that.
 
PROGRESS 4
Game: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Console: Nintendo Switch​

All right, so I decided Progress 4 will be for Chapters 13-15 and Progress 5 will be for the final three chapters for Black Eagles's Crimson Flower route. I'll likely continue my Black Eagles playthrough for the Silver Snow route, but I won't document it. All right, let's do this!

Chapter 13 I used the only free day of the month to do some exploring and talked with everyone that sided with the Empire and some of the general/soldiers there. Two people of interest are the general Randolf and his sister Flech. Spoilers for the Blue Lions path:

Spoiler:


Chapter 13's mission is the Empire taking control of one of the Alliance's main stronghold, a bridge. Well, it's more of a fortress but eh lol. Anyways, at one point me and a few students were charging at Judith, but then Ignatz came and did huge damage on me. That's also when Leonie came. I had Yuri kill Itgnaz while Petra killed Leonie, which made me so sad after finishing my Golden Deer run over a month ago lol.

Chapter 14 I was grinding my new unit Jeritza for a bit. There was one mission quest where he and I are the only ones who have to defeat a few enemies. I took the bottom half of the map while Jertiza took the top half so that I let him draw one of the bridges for me. We then face off like three last enemies. One of them did a good chunk of damage to me but otherwise it wasn't as bad as I thought.

Chapter 14's mission is to go to Deridu and get to Claude. Hilda was one of the former students helping Claude defend the city (the other would've been Lysithea but I have her in my army lol). I had Petra and Bernadetta kill her, which upsets Claude. Not long after that I reached Claude and defeated him.

Spoiler:


One other highlight from that battle was how I keep Bernadetta and Felix together to keep their support up even after I had them at A+ Support lol.

Before doing Chapter 15's mission I did three paralogues back to back: Petra and Bernadetta's, Edelgard's, and Hubert.

Spoiler:


Chapter 15's mission is to protect Garreg Mach from a surprise invasion from the church.

Spoiler:


As I'm playing this route, it's so interesting hearing the thoughts of the characters who were recruited to the Empire.

Spoiler:


And that's it for this progress report. As mentioned before I'll doing a final progress report once I'm done with the Crimson Flower route. See you then!

>FINALE
 
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I actually changed games, instead of Age of Empires I began a Terraria playthrough cause of the new update as a Mage class only... despite early game Mage weapons being kinda meh

Also it's on Master Mode so I don't expect to beat the game before the end of the month, but if I do then I'm the best mage this world has ever seen B)
 
PROGRESS 5- FINALE
Game: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Console: Nintendo Switch​

Here we are, the final stretch of my FE3H Black Eagles Crimson Flower route playthrough. Quite a bit to get through, so let's get started.

During Chapter 16 I decided to grind Hapi a bit until she was the level suggested for the upcoming mission. Reason for that was while exploring the monastery I talked with her and she brought up Cornelia, the mage from the Kingdom. I was interested if the two would have dialogue together, so I trained her up by having her equipped with an Experience Gem and be with either Yuri and me. Only took about about an hour so, so not that long.

Chapter 16's mission is the Black Eagles Strike Force making a surprise attack at one of the Kingdom's stronghold cities. My team was split into two, and one of the gimmicks was to turn off two levers to decactive the traps being used.

Spoiler:


On the final resting month I talked with my team one last time and prepared a bit on repairing weapons. I also went to the Abyss and went to the matchmaker lady, where she'll let you choose which pair you want to be guarantee together. It was tough, but I decided on Felix and Bernadetta in the end. After getting everything done, time for the final two battles.

Spoiler:


And there you have it, the end of my Crimson Flower run for this month's Game Along! Overall the plot for CF ended a bit too soon but I still had fun nonetheless. While I won't do a progress report for Silver Snow, I plan to play that route eventually. Before I go, I'll end this with the solo and pairing endings I got!

Spoiler:
 
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I made it through the Floating Continent, defeating the other Ultima Weapon to get to Gestahl and Kefka - turns out both were still 100% evil but Kefka is a special kind of evil because he triggered the apocalypse in a tantrum and took over the world. We tried to escape but were scattered to the winds with out airship destroyed. Then, a year past.

Celes woke up after being in a coma, having been cared for by Cid. He died soon after, leaving Celes with a raft so she could seek out her companions. From there I quickly found Sabin, helping him rescue a kid from a house Kefka basically dropped a nuke on for no reason. We tracked down Terra next, discovering her watching over a bunch of orphans in another town Kefka nuked. We saved their asses from a monster, but Terra decided to remain behind.

After that, we tracked down Edgar and helped him resurface his old castle, saving those living inside and then moved it through the desert to nearby another town where Setzer rejoined the party. It sounds like our next move will be claiming a new airship which will undoubtedly make putting the team back together easier.
 
I should've updated this as soon as I finished the checkpoint (read: Totema battle) but irl things got me, so... 🙃

Anyway, Marche got to meet one of Montblanc's little brothers, Nono. He looked so desperate because his airship was the victim of a hit-and-run recently. Marche and Clan Eternatus proceeded to take it back from the criminals who happened to be at a Jagd; in this case, Jagd Dorsa.
After reclaiming Nono's airship, Marche found out about the bounty on his head from a random clan hunting him, so that means he was on the run. This kept going until he reached Muscadet where the judges resorted to arresting random moogles in their desperate attempts to capture him. Much to Montblanc's surprise (and maybe dismay?), Marche demanded to meet Judgemaster Cid to, well, turn himself in. And there he got it, getting taken to the prison at Sprohm for questioning.
While Judgemaster Cid and Babus were interrogating Marche about whatever driving him to destroying the crystals (a.k.a. the "world-thread" as they dubbed it), the three got their WTH moment when another portal opened near them. At Sprohm, of all places. They were thrown to yet another shrine, leading to another totema, Exodus. Cid notes that the Totema's power was weak, and Marche immediately set the blue fruits scattered across the room as his target. It wasn't that easy with Marche having to go on his own (that's right, not even Montblanc could help him at this point) and Babus chasing after him like crazy, though.
And then Marche managed to destroy the fruits and break the crystal. The resulting seam this time brought not an appearance of Prince Mewt, but rather images of the schoolkid Mewt and his father, the real Cid, moping and groveling in front of his employer. When the Judgemaster saw this, he finally accepted the fact that his judge persona was not the real him, and that the Ivalice they're in was a dream world. Returning the the prison room, Cid made the decision to cut ties with the royalty. He let Marche go and thanked him for helping him see the light.

So Exodus was basically like Ultima but with Babus instead of the targets themselves as the attacker(s). And unlike Ultima where Marche could bring in some allies, he was on his own here. At first I contemplated on either having him stick as a thief (because he hadn't mastered Steal: Access. yet) or turning him into a paladin and getting him to learn Nurse, but then I decided to scrap both plans and turn Marche into a fighter instead. I got him to learn both Far Fist (basically Air Render but with area damage) and Strikeback (a.k.a. a stronger version of Counter) as a fighter to deal with Babus while avoiding his Counter. And dreading the nu mou's Explode spell the most, I armed Marche with a Flame Shield thanks to the Shieldbearer he already had back in his soldier days.

[PokeCommunity.com] The PokeCommunity Game-Along


Spoiler: Clan Eternatus as of now
Human (5/5)
  • Marche (Fighter/Thief)
  • Peet (Illusionist/White Mage)
  • Woolwort (Ninja)
  • Kent (Hunter/Archer)
  • Visconti (Paladin)

Bangaa (5/5)
  • Watoo (Bishop/White Monk)
  • Foobar (Dragoon)
  • Lex (Defender/Warrior)
  • Evor (White Monk)
  • Zwingley (Warrior)

Nu Mou (4/4)
  • Beltran (Alchemist/White Mage)
  • Skimble (White Mage)
  • Monid (Time/Black Mage)
  • Gilbert (Black/White Mage)

Viera (5/5)
  • Sonia (Sniper/Archer)
  • Eldena (Fencer/Red Mage)
  • Martha (Fencer)
  • Della (Assassin)
  • Mikella (Red Mage/Fencer)

Moogle (5/5)
  • Montblanc (Black Mage/Mog Knight)
  • Thomson (Time/Black Mage)
  • Brean (Juggler/Thief)
  • Carlos (Gunner/Animist)
  • Nevil (Thief/Black Mage)

Disclaimer: The list above is for the whole clan. Jobs are subject to change, well, all the time. Also, I only can deploy maximum 6 per battle (or less, depending on said battle) due to the game's mechanics.
 
I have now got all the old gang back together and completed Locke's, Cyan's and Sabin's sidequests. I also recruited a yeti who I'm never going to use, woo.
Currently working on killing off all the dragons and learning the big spells in preparation for taking on Kefka. Four dragons remaining. Also, still one last character to recruit whoever that is. I'm nearly at the end now.
 
All characters recruited and optimised. All important areas explored. All available dragons killed. Almost all the Magicite collected (just need the damn Cactuar if I want to be a completionist but idk if I can be bothered). All that's really left is Kefka's base which I shall take on tonight or tomorrow.
 
Okay, mission accomplished!

I left Umaro and Gogo to guard the airship and stormed the tower with these three teams.

Team A: Terra, Locke, Celes, Mog
Team B: Relm, Strago, Shadow, Cyan
Team C: Setzer, Edgar, Sabin, Gau

I made my way through the structure, leaving a bunch of Behemoth and Malboro corpses in my wake. Although, I did have to make a restart after discovering that it's easier to just run from the satellites than deal with their mass confusion and freezing bullshit. With that aside, Team B slayed the re-animated Ultima Weapon and the Gold Dragon while Team C took out the Skull Dragon and Inferno. Weirdly, Team A didn't have any boss battles to deal with until the group arrived at the three gods.

The three gods were intimidating, but ultimately couldn't hold a candle to my assembled groups. Team A defeated Goddess, Team B defeated Demon and Team C took out Fiend. After that, the group reconvened to face Kefka. They confronted him, but Kefka cut the ideological argument short by having a tantrum and proceeding to nuke various places on the map. Things quickly turned to combat, and I had to choose the order my combatants would appear in - so if any of the first four were KOed at the end of a phase of the fight, the next on the list could step in. My order was as follows: Terra, Relm, Setzer, Edgar, Celes, Sabin, Shadow, Strago, Locke, Mog, Cyan, Gau.

I went into the first phase and quickly discovered my original battle plan was not a good one when I lost Terra, and Setzer before Relm could set up Rearise on them. So I restarted the encounter and things went much more smoothly after that with me abusing Terra's Doublecast to help Relm in quickly casting Rearise on all four of my first fighters. I then had Terra start dropping Utima's on the first enemy with Setzer unloading a dice barrage and Edgar stabbing things with his Holy Lance while Relm finished up the support side of things giving Edgar rearise and setting up Hastega.

The next fight went by very quickly, as with Relm now also involved in the combat, I immediately did nearly all of the monstrosity's HP in damage in one go between Three Ultima's, Setzer's 8 attacks and a jab from Edgar's Holy Lance. It got one regular swipe in before Setzer finished it off. The third enemy was a bit more annoying. It didn't last much longer than the first either, but it did Dispel Edgar's rearise and force me to revive him manually when he went down. Other than that the only real trouble was when it Muted my entire party just before dying, sending me in to fight Kefka himself with no spellcasting.

Against Kefka, I was forced to spend my first round using remedies to remove the various status ailments I'd accrued, like the damn Muting. Good thing I did though, because Kefka's opening round was immediately dropping the whole group to 1 HP. Terra Doublecast and a Mass Curaga and an Ultima while the rest of the group started laying into Kefka with their best attacks. It was quite the slugfest, both sides just dropping power moves on each other over and over but in the end, Kefka fell and I was treated to some of the best end credit I have seen while the group fled the castle. Game over.

As far as difficulty goes, FFVI proved a lot easier than IX but somewhat harder than X. Part of why VI was easier than IX came in that the it was a lot less tedious/difficult to get your hands on some of the best spells/weapons/combos - although honestly it beats out X here too in many cases. By the fight with Kefka, Terra could do 19998 damage per round with her Doublecast Ultima and Setzer, depending on how the dice rolled, could do approaching 30k damage in a single round at times thanks to the combination of Dice, Fixed Dice, Genji Glove and Master's Scroll. Relm was my next best damage dealer being able to deal up to 9999 in a single round but was also extremely valuable as support with Curaga/Reraise/Arise/Hastega which often freed up Terra to deal the max damage possible before she joined the onslaught herself. Edgar was honestly a lot less impressive than those three and I think his spot could just has easily have been filled by Sabin, Shadow, Celes or Strago - but that's not a bad thing at all. I actually really appreciated that almost all the characters were highly usable. VI also had much better customisation options than IX although so far, of the four FF games I have experienced as of now, nothing has been able to match X's Sphere Grid system in terms of that.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed FFVI. Kefka's psychopathic nihilism made him an iconic villain and I'd say my favourite villain character in FF so far. For such a ridiculously expansive cast, most of the protagonist characters were really strong too. Terra, Relm, Celes, Locke, Cyan, Sabin and Edgar were all really well-defined and enjoyable characters while Shadow and Strago weren't as immediately enjoyable but grew on you as the game played out. Gau was fun at first but he, Mog, Umaru and Gogo were kind of just... there. That does make sense though since they were technically optional characters anyway. For a SNES port, the graphics were also really solid (and I am informed pushed their original system to its absolute limits). The music was everything I have come to expect from the franchise with tracks like Terra's Theme, Forever Rachel, Cyan's Theme and Epitaph joining the likes of To Zanarkand, Suteki da ne, Fleeting Dream, Dark Messenger and You're Not Alone in my ever expanding list of Final Fantasy songs that I could listen to for hours and never get bored of.

So yes, great fucking game, especially considering how it still holds up despite the limitations it has coming from the SNES. There is now officially three Final Fantasy titles in my top 5 favourite games list and it's really hard to choose how to order them. Everyone should go play FFVI.
 
okay, so i didn't quite beat ff7r before midnight but i WAS on the final boss when the clock rolled over and it's still may somewhere in canada, so hopefully it counts. why do i keep leaving my games to the last minute...
 
If you posted before me, it counts!

Anyways, I had a fun theme planned for this month, but it would require some explanation and the blurb I've written out is on my laptop...which is now dead.

So, rather than wait until next week (or later) I'm swapping June and August around. Your theme this month is...free choice!

Have a break, play something you love, or have been meaning to get around to! I'll edit this and the first post as soon as my capabilities extend beyond a tiny touch screen again =x
 
THE WIND IS PUSHING MEEEEEE INTO THE CURRENT AGAIN I FEEL THE BLOOD IN MY VEINS, DRA-

I'm playing Dragons Dogma this month btw that's my entry. Specifically the PC version, so that includes Dark Arisen. Finally pushing myself to finish it for once, or at least get as far as I can.
 
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