What are you currently playing?

[Xefi]

Currently playing: Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3
comments: still playing this game. just got this dlc for the pilot and Kshatriya suit.
it's one of the best dlc and i like it very much. this gundam is very overpowered and destructive.
it kind of remind me of Jehuty from Zone of the Ender 2. it's now my favorite mobile
suit after those Qubeleys.

*just closed that subtitle at the beginning*

Spoiler!

[Shinji Kazuya]

This just arrived one hour and some minutes ago.
Gonna jump right into it in a couple of minutes!

Spoiler!

[Outrider]

Definitely let us know how Xenoblades is. Heck, maybe one day it'll even be available in US stores for the rest of us to try! (Ha ha, no, that's never going to happen.)

[darkante]

I feel for you guys. : o

[Shinji Kazuya]

I really know the feeling Outrider, believe me.

I just started a bit ago and the title screen scenery and music is so beautiful that I left the game there for some minutes.

[Sinue_v2]

Well, after watching the full series of Pumpkin Scissors on Netflix, I couldn't take it anymore and decided to go ahead and pick up Valkyria Chronicals 2 for the PSP. As far as strategy games go, I'm the kind of guy who can turn a simple training mission into the goddamned battle of Verdun, and judging from my ranking scores at the end of each mission so far... I ain't bucking that trend with this game. So while I'm not much of a lounge chair general, the occasional strategy game will come along that's worth the effort to endure the snail paced turn cycle and slog through the spreadsheet-like menus while meticulously micromanaging those characters who will ultimately get vaporized in the first wave of attack.

This game seems to be one of those titles. I like how Valkyria breaks the monotony a bit by allowing you to take direct control of a unit in combat, allowing for at least the illusion of an active and chaotic battlefield that puts you right in the middle of an ongoing fight. The options of ability, special abilities, commands, etc, is still dizzying at this point... but I'm coming to grips with the basics more or less. I can see this being a major optimization clusterfuck in the future against some of the harder battles, but as said... I'm no strategy/rts gamer, so this is more a reflection on me than on the game I'm sure. One thing I would have liked, which I may have missed, is some sort of indication on what units I should be bringing into battle with me. As it stands, I'm not sure going in whether to load up on ShockTroopers, Techs, or Lancers... which has lead to some pretty pathetic team plays because I opted to prepare for that inevitable "Surprise! Tank!" rather than landmines or someone who can repair sandbags.

The story seems a bit cliche so far, with the usual cast of generic school-drama anime characters, but at least they are presented in a likable artistic fashion and are fairly unintrusive with the wackiness so far. Haven't heard much of the music yet either, but what I have heard is enjoyable.

One really nice feature is the inclusion of Emilia Percival as an unlockable character for having PSP2 save data. Even at the cost of losing a battle, sending that jug-eared chimp girl in her frumpy sweater out into the middle of enemy crossfire to get mowed down is greatly satisfying.

[Randomness]

Well, after watching the full series of Pumpkin Scissors on Netflix, I couldn't take it anymore and decided to go ahead and pick up Valkyria Chronicals 2 for the PSP. As far as strategy games go, I'm the kind of guy who can turn a simple training mission into the goddamned battle of Verdun, and judging from my ranking scores at the end of each mission so far... I ain't bucking that trend with this game. So while I'm not much of a lounge chair general, the occasional strategy game will come along that's worth the effort to endure the snail paced turn cycle and slog through the spreadsheet-like menus while meticulously micromanaging those characters who will ultimately get vaporized in the first wave of attack.

This game seems to be one of those titles. I like how Valkyria breaks the monotony a bit by allowing you to take direct control of a unit in combat, allowing for at least the illusion of an active and chaotic battlefield that puts you right in the middle of an ongoing fight. The options of ability, special abilities, commands, etc, is still dizzying at this point... but I'm coming to grips with the basics more or less. I can see this being a major optimization clusterfuck in the future against some of the harder battles, but as said... I'm no strategy/rts gamer, so this is more a reflection on me than on the game I'm sure. One thing I would have liked, which I may have missed, is some sort of indication on what units I should be bringing into battle with me. As it stands, I'm not sure going in whether to load up on ShockTroopers, Techs, or Lancers... which has lead to some pretty pathetic team plays because I opted to prepare for that inevitable "Surprise! Tank!" rather than landmines or someone who can repair sandbags.

The story seems a bit cliche so far, with the usual cast of generic school-drama anime characters, but at least they are presented in a likable artistic fashion and are fairly unintrusive with the wackiness so far. Haven't heard much of the music yet either, but what I have heard is enjoyable.

One really nice feature is the inclusion of Emilia Percival as an unlockable character for having PSP2 save data. Even at the cost of losing a battle, sending that jug-eared chimp girl in her frumpy sweater out into the middle of enemy crossfire to get mowed down is greatly satisfying.

I haven't gotten around to picking up 2 yet... but I never had problems not having the right units available in the first - I rarely needed more than half the people I was allowed to send in (Excluding the first few maps, and a couple story missions, anyways), so I usually just deployed everything. Barring that, you could under-deploy and just spend time calling reinforcements... (Also, this helped me a lot in A-ranking on the first - let a scout snag a forward base, deploy relevant troops. Or... just deploy Alicia, use Defense and Awaken Potential, and let her waltz to the enemy flag and cap it. Scouts who can kill heavy tanks in a single volley are awesome) Killing Emilia is somewhat appealing though...

Just re-cleared Mass Effect 2, this time being thorough about it. Managed to have everyone's loyalty at the end. Tali not exiled either... didn't manage those first time through. All set for 3 now.

[Keilyn]

Games Im playing:

Dragon Nest
Dungeons and Dragons Online
Civilization V w/ korea Civilization (Im surprised how great it was implemented)
Dragon Age - I always return to this game. One of my favorites.

In a few days I will be playing the new Deus Ex. ^_^

Please for the love of god......GIVE ME something equivalent to Speed Aug and Nanosword....Failure to do so would force me to hack the game itself and code them in.

[darkante]

Decided to run Oblivion on the xbox since i like to get some more work done before Skyrim.

[Shinji Kazuya]

Definitely let us know how Xenoblades is.

Okay, somehow I made a small review or something like that.
You can say that there's gameplay spoilers ahead.
If you just wanna know what I think about the game you only need to read the next phrase and the few last ones at the end of the wall of text.


I played for about seven hours now and I can say that the game is freaking brilliant! The areas and towns are huge and you can pretty much explore everything around you. There's tons of quests to do too, like gathering items on the field (small blue orbs on the fields and lakes, you just walk through them to get them) or from defeated monsters, defeating normal monsters and defeating named monsters who are pretty much optional bosses. There's a lot of them around too.
I got more than 20 quests just from Colony 6 townsfolk (the starting town) and more keep appearing everytime I complete some and come back. There's also freaking level 70 monsters like piranhas and level 30 named boss monsters around Colony 6. I was swimming in the lake where the Colony 6 town is located, collecting items on the water and rotating the camera looking for them (the blue orbs) so I wasn't seeing where I was going to at some points. All of a sudden this awsome desperate struggle music starts playing; I reset the camera behing the character and there's 3 damn level 70 piranhas right in front! My characters weren't even level 10 yet so yeah, instant rape.
When all of your characters die, you don't lose any progress made and return to the last landmark you passed through. There's quite some around the fields and towns.
You can die if you jump from too high and land on ground. If you land on water all is fine.

There's a day and night cycle and on night rare field items are easy to gather but there's also way more high level aggressive monsters around including named boss monsters who only appear at night. You are free to change the time at anytime. You only need to open the menu, select change time and choose a hour from 0:00 to 23:00. Looking for a specific monsters or a NPC who only shows up at a certain time was never easier.
The people in towns also act according to the day and night cycle. They go to their houses when night comes but others who never appear during day show up at night. The game has an affinity system where it keeps track of all the named townsfolk the main characters have met and main characters own affinity between each other. The regular folks have, for example, Colony 6 Resident over their heads while the rest have a proper name. Some of these named people are family who aren't in the best terms at the moment, some are friends, some are friends of the main character or main characters. As you talk and interact with them, they give you quests and when you complete those they will like you more, raising your affinity with them. Just in Colony 6 town there's around 40 named people. You just need to talk to them once and they will be added to the affinity chart big mural where you can check their status like their active time (example: Time Active - 09:00-18:00), location and any connection (example: rivals, normal family, warring family, hostility, etc) with other named folks. You can trade items with all named people too.

The equiment system is like MMORPGs in which you equip a helmet or cap and it shows on the character. You can even buy a cool black bikini for one of the female characters right at the start of the game and it's not expensive at all. Equipment might have slots and you can equip gems on those. You can get gems from quest rewards or craft them. There's a cool crafting system to make your own gems. Gems can have stats like HP Up 10%, Poison Defence 20%, Quick Step 10% (increases movement speed), etc.

The characters have Arts and different Skill Trees. You can have a maximum of 8 Arts on the Art pallet. You level up Arts with Arts Points (AP) and Arts Manuals. You don't level Skills; the Skill Points (SP) you receive are automatically given to the currently selected Skill Tree. You receive AP and SP from defeating monsters, quests and Trials and Records.
Example of Trials: Defeat your 1st unique monster (the ones with their own name that I call optional bosses); Got to know a named person for the first time; Discover a landmark for the first time.
Example of Records: Defeated 50 enemies; Fight something stronger that your party... and win; Talked to people 100 times.
There's a lot of Trials and Records (especially Records) and everytime you complete one you receive experience, AP and SP.


Phew! That was tiring. I think I have said way more than enough already.

I really like RPGs and I haven't played one for about a month. I was really looking forward to Xenoblade Chronicles and I'm not a little bit disappointed. Everything from graphics, gameplay, music and story is amazing!
Now I'm incredibly eager to know what Monolith Soft is developing for Wii U!