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I just got my copy of Devil Survivor 2. I'm currently having a blast despite being unable to decipher the weird glyphs. I'm not terribly far into it, but it seems to be a reboot of DS1 with very little unchanged stuff. Physical characters still suck. The magic based female character (i think her name is Io? pardon my lunarese) you start with kicks rear end, and unlike Yuzu she has a move range of 4 Despite the apparent lack of changes, I'm really liking it. Devil Survivor 1 is one of the few games I enjoyed enough to pay the silly price of importing games from Japan, so I'm okay with it. Can anyone who has played it and who knows Japanese tell me whether or not there's a part like saving Haru in DS1 that will screw you out of all the good endings if you miss it? It's not like I'll be able to read any of them, but Yuzu's ending in DS1 was really bad.
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# ¿ Aug 8, 2011 01:45 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:58 |
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King of Solomon posted:The early dungeons in Strange Journey aren't really all that bad. I only pulled out a guide (well, loaded up a map on the SJ wiki) in very specific places, and even that's because I thought the door search is retarded. I haven't played much of Strange Journey, but from what I've heard, whereas Sector E is the video game manifestation of Atlus' hatred for the player, Sector H is directly based off of the floor plan of Atlus japan's HQ building. I have no clue what that means.
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# ¿ Aug 10, 2011 05:26 |
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I hope the Persona fighting game will be more accessible than BlazBlue. In the latter, in order to play a new character with any sort of efficiency you had to record into muscle memory a bunch of long hair trigger combos, which effectively meant you had to spend a couple hours in training mode or resign yourself to play terribly. It was so bad, they had to implement an auto-combo feature that you could use to simply see the god damned story mode content of each character. I have a weird fascination with fighting games despite being terrible at them generally so I'll probably buy it, but I hope ASW will nudge The Ultimate towards Street Fighter's accessibility rather than BlazBlue's model.
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# ¿ Sep 3, 2011 10:45 |
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DeathBySpoon posted:-What's the best way to level up low-level demons? Any time I try to bring them into combat they just get oneshotted by something and never get any EXP. Is there an easy way to get them to learn "Watchful?" Or maybe a way to fight lower level enemies to ease them into my party? It's not a good idea to keep demons with a low base level around. The reason for that is that the difference between the base level of an attacking demon and that of the defending demon is a factor in damage calculation. So despite how much you like her, your level 15 pixie is going to get her rear end kicked by a demon with a base level of 15. It's not very apparent unless you hang on to a demon for very long, but you'll certainly notice it when you start a new game+ and Loki is doing several thousand points of damage with Megiddo.
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# ¿ Sep 4, 2011 09:44 |
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UselessLurker posted:Devil Survivor lategame goof: I'm fighting Belberith in Yuzu's Day 8 and after absorbing Honda he suddenly spoke perfect Japanese. It was quite uncanny. I remember a couple instances of "Character X left..." being untranslated, too. I don't know how that can happen; don't they dump the entirety of the text before translating it?
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# ¿ Sep 6, 2011 05:02 |
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Technique posted:What is the deal with special editions and t-shirts? I mean, what kind of person just struts around with an Anime Dude T-Shirt. I usually work out in that sort of junk t-shirt. I'm pretty sure only the pathologically maladjusted wear them in public, but if you're a CS major like me you probably see a couple every day.
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# ¿ Sep 9, 2011 12:26 |
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Is there a more precise estimate of when Devil Survivor 2 NA is coming out than "2012"? I imported a Japanese copy and would like to actually know what happened.
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# ¿ Jan 5, 2012 05:16 |
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Alteisen posted:"I am Ronaldo Kukiri and I will show your sins" Yeah, Ronaldo is a pretty taxing boss. The game's difficulty is pretty weird, to be honest. The day 4 boss is a real rear end in a top hat, but the day 5 and 6 bosses are chumps and it's not until day 7 that the game resumes throwing hard fights at you. Fortunately, by day 7 you've unlocked Evil Flow which makes pretty much everything a joke.
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# ¿ Mar 10, 2012 04:09 |
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I had a really hard time on the second fight of day 7 in Saiduq's path because I hadn't leveled Hinako's Fate so I was stuck with two characters against a group of 10 that includes a boss and a sub-boss. Most of the fights in that chapter can be tough because it's full of human enemies who sometimes come with good setups (Rage Soul + phys amp + attack all + devil flash, holy poo poo) which you have to be prepared for.
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# ¿ Mar 10, 2012 04:25 |
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I didn't have a whole lot of trouble with Phecda, because Ronaldo kicked my rear end the first time, forcing me to update and optimize my team to a level strong enough to crush him.
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# ¿ Mar 10, 2012 16:46 |
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TurnipFritter posted:I don't like how on Day 5 the character with sex appeal is the fifteen year old girl who constantly puts her hands on her boobs. Stop that Index, stop that this very instant. That made me feel pretty uncomfortable too. Is it less gauche in Japan?
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# ¿ Mar 10, 2012 22:31 |
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Dogbutt posted:OK. On day 4 and stuck on Megrez or whatever his name is. Does Megrez change elements depending on what team you go on? If there's one with electrical weakness, then I need to know. I made a physical MC, so most of the bosses were a pain for me, too. If you go with Fumi's team, she should be able to kill it very quickly with Ice Dance and Ice Boost thanks to her ridiculously high magic stat. Try to fuse a demon with Ice Dance and high magic, then copy it via the Compendium several times so you can summon him back if those on the field die. Movement skills like True Phantasm, Devil Speed, and Switch are extremely useful, too. Also, I don't know if it depends on whether or not Jungo died, but when I chose Fumi's team, I got a surprise ally whose team was somewhat well optimized for killing Megrez.
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# ¿ Mar 11, 2012 19:22 |
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Ronaldo randomly showed up to help me.
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# ¿ Mar 11, 2012 19:39 |
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Pureauthor posted:Whoops. Yeah, I let Jungo die because I'm hella dumb and the way to save him isn't immediately obvious and Hinako's fate was low, so I had a bit of a hard time with the second fight.
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# ¿ Mar 12, 2012 20:05 |
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The most terrifying thing about those games is that there's a market for them.
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# ¿ Mar 13, 2012 08:31 |
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Pureauthor posted:I consider Devil Survivor series the best of the SMT spinoffs, for what it's worth. So do I. I'm a big SRPG enthusiast so it might not be worth much, however.
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# ¿ Mar 14, 2012 02:57 |
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Jon Irenicus posted:If I was going to being playing Devil Survivor one soon, without any knowledge of the game or series, what would be some critical lessons to know that might not be spelled out? At some point in the game a pop star character is going to get in trouble. You absolutely cannot forget to save her if you want an ending worth a good goddamn.
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# ¿ Mar 19, 2012 14:30 |
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King of Solomon posted:So, I've been playing DS2, and I just hit the (Friday) Mizar fight on the tower. Should I just buy/fuse some dragons or something? I'm getting completely hammered by the fact that this guy and his clones have what amounts to Chaos Wave but without the downsides. I didn't have a very hard time with that fight. You're at the point where offensive strength vastly overshadows survivability, so it's a matter of putting a dragon with Evil Flow on teams that don't have a gap closer like Devil Speed and getting the first hit in. You should have pierce and Multi-Strike by that point (I think?), which will pretty much decimate anything that doesn't reflect physical hits, it's so stupid strong. Evil Flow is probably the best way to make a joke of the game. The AI never uses it (my guess is the devs realized how overpowered it is), and a group with a Dragon and a Kishin is going to massacre fools left and right. Go ahead and make one really strong Dragon with some of your leveled demons, then copy it via the compendium, and use elements to keep its tier up to date.
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# ¿ Mar 20, 2012 10:54 |
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Speedball posted:So what affects your team's speed in DS2? How many actions you took (attack, move and out of battle skills). Dragons and Viles make it more expensive to attack, and Genmas make it less expensive to move. You're also delayed a bit when you're attacked, and having a Tyrant in the attacking team increases that delay.
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 07:23 |
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Rascyc posted:The worst is that counter attacking actually consumes whatever resource is driving your turn count. So you can have a unit get flooded with constant counter attacks which delays their turn even more. It's a small problem mid game but it was really annoying when it happened. I don't mind this so much; it helps curb Fire Emblem syndrome where you can send a single character to massacre a whole army. I wish they'd modulated it a bit so that getting hit from a range at which you can't counter didn't push you back a bit: increased attack range is overpowered enough as is.
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 17:29 |
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KataraniSword posted:The final boss is really just bullshit in several ways. No kidding. I got a real laugh when the annoying physical damage arm regenerated before the character who killed it got his next turn. Fortunately my physical MC killed the main body in two rounds of combat (it helps that he loves to use that deliciously reflectable physical move). Also, I don't know if this is unique to Saiduq's path (it probably is), but I got another laugh when I noticed he was essentially dead weight for that fight. Challenge!
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 21:39 |
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Ryoshi posted:I must be the only goddamn person on Earth that didn't like DS1 much (and haven't even picked up 2 as a result). I love MegaTen games, I love SRPGs, it's just that DS1 had so much utter bullshit between the entire skill cracking system, the demon auctions, and utterly ludicrous roadblocks that I felt the game actively didn't want me to play it. So I obliged. I'm not terribly sure how you can complain about bullshit roadblocks in DS1 and then turn around and praise Strange Journey.
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# ¿ Mar 23, 2012 07:43 |
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^^^ Yeah, my beef with SJ is the dungeon gimmicks. Holy poo poo, the dungeon gimmicks.KataraniSword posted:To be honest, I was more annoyed about the second half of the fight, where he was busy wedged in the ground and unable to do poo poo. That wasn't so bad; the second part of the fight is pathetically easy and can be ended on turn 1 with Evil Flow. I was just kind of pissed that the game didn't strongly imply it before the fight: Saiduq was my Magic Yin mage and -- with 999 hp and a crapload of MP -- was one of the more dependable and sturdy units on my team. Fumi, Joe and MC were total glass cannons, and it didn't go so well for them. I mean, all of this is par for the course for a MegaTen game, but wasn't it a bit excessive?
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# ¿ Mar 23, 2012 08:00 |
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KataraniSword posted:Meanwhile, I have suddenly ended face first in the steaming wave of bullshit that is DS2's bonus bosses. God drat, the Lilith fight might be the first time in the game I've sincerely wanted to break my DS. It's not DIFFICULT with high-enough level demons, just unfathomably frustrating. I've only peeked at the bonus fights yet -- still playing through the game trying to earn the titles I've missed -- but they look somewhat crazy. The necromancer fight has an army of level 60 demons attacking level 30 civilians whom you must rescue. Fun times!
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# ¿ Mar 23, 2012 08:17 |
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drat, I definitely missed out when I failed to save Jungo in my first playthrough; his side story is amazing. "Jungo is the only name I can remember well, so I'll name him Jungo."
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# ¿ Mar 23, 2012 09:31 |
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This might come off as a lame rant but I have to say I preferred the explanation behind summoning from DS1. "Your phone can quickly perform complex magical rituals" was a lot easier to believe than "Your phone has the physical ability to re-order dark matter somehow," and the explanation from DS1 accounted for the fact that your ordinary humans turned into spell-flinging killing machines who can take machine-gun fire like champs. Sure, that account was little more than "magic!" but at least there's something, right? Also, some spoiler-y talk, but did anyone think that Anguished One's ending felt really vague and undefined? Okay, so we're creating a new world. Wait, did civilization disappear? Did everyone else disappear? Are we back to the stone ages, creating a 10-man hunter-gatherer society? Why did we ever think this was a good idea? I'm replaying through the game to see the other endings (I'm particularly interested in the communist utopia), and I hope the whole "changing the entire goddamned world" plan is a bit better fleshed out in those. I think I'm getting too old to suspend my disbelief.
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# ¿ Mar 23, 2012 22:06 |
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Krad posted:I already did that against Yamato after dying 5 times in a row and it completely felt like I was cheating. The "difficulty" on this last part of the game makes no freakin' sense. Yeah, it just felt to me like the ability to deal damage spirals wholly out of control and it becomes a game of who wipes the other team with a single attack first. Evil Flow is just a particularly good way to ensure that it's you who does.
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# ¿ Mar 24, 2012 10:58 |
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Dehry posted:I finally got through the Kill Polaris ending, and I must say, it's a lot more depressing than the Nayoa ending from DS:Overclocked. I still prefer it over the True "Reset Button" Ending. Ronaldo and Yamato's endings were horrible both in their own way with Polaris changing mankind to be super helpful or super competitive. Ronaldo's ending was horrible? Did I miss something? I finished it last night and the gist of it was "Everyone loves and helps each other and puppies are happy and there's rainbows too." Even Polaris says at the start of the last fight "yeah that was my plan too, good going guys."
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# ¿ Mar 24, 2012 20:05 |
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^^^ Oh, I didn't know that. Yamato's ending is next on my schedule, so I'll see how awful it is, I guess. How different is the "True" Daichi ending compared the the normal one? Is it worth a fifth playthrough?ImpAtom posted:It is the end to free will. Everyone is happy and helpful and so-on, but at the cost of being controlled and altered to never be anything but. It is a Law ending, which tends to be "things are good" with an unspoken air of "as long as you understand that you've given up all right to self-determination." I didn't catch any text relating to that. Instead of being self-centered jerks people finally break free of the prisoner's dilemma and realize that the better outcome for everyone is co-operation and altruism. There's some weird text at the end about "the end of competition" but no insinuation at all that people are no longer free; people are just as free as ever, just more inclined to help people instead of focusing on themselves..
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# ¿ Mar 24, 2012 20:11 |
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ImpAtom posted:
I think this part is true (although the word "complete" should be left out), but your explanation of how this is a loss of freedom, and of how this is terrible, is quite stretched. I for one never chose to be born into humanity's current set of behaviors and motives, and yet I don't feel unfree, or under any sort of tyranny. Is nature exerting total tyranny over our mind and soul for elevating the set of behaviors and motives that we are under through evolution, regardless of how we feel about them? I don't think so. In any case, if the end result is great for everyone (Ronaldo), can it really be called terrible?
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# ¿ Mar 24, 2012 20:44 |
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ImpAtom posted:
The problem is that you're misinterpreting what actually happens in the ending. Nobody gets brainwashed, and nobody is "ordered" to do anything. Remember how the theme of the 7th day is that the loser factions will back up the ideology of the winner faction -- thus unifying the will of species? Again, you're not making a convincing argument for why it's taking away people's freedom. There is no dictatorship, and there is no power exerted on anyone against their will. You're simply taking the word "freedom" and defining it as the current state of affairs, as if this piss poor money-based society can somehow be considered free. I'd argue that in an equal society, people would be more free as opportunity would not be limited by wealth. quote:And it's not really possible to mesh egalitarianism and freedom, because beyond a certain point you have to quash someone's freedom to maintain it. Now you can make the argument about a world where nobody feels ambition or the need to advance or anything like that but... well, the only way that can be maintained is by limiting things so that people can never think or act that way. That is what makes it different from a 'regular' society. It is peace achieved by limitations. No, that's ridiculous! You don't need to quash anyone's freedom to trample over others for their own gain because this drive no longer exists!
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# ¿ Mar 25, 2012 10:34 |
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You also need 12 Vit for Drain Hit, which essentially makes every physical skill in the game cost nothing. Very good for a Multi-striker -- Pierce, Drain Hit and Phys Repel are great passives for it. Be wary of Null Phys and Drain Phys though, if your character has Pierce and their attack is reflected, they'll one shot themselves. Another viable physical build is Rage Soul + Attack All, which will essentially destroy anything that doesn't reflect physical damage with Pierce. It's a worthwhile build for Makoto if you want to use her, because she builds enough Magic that you'll be able to place the big healing spells like Samarecarm on her to use while out of battle. It seems to me like physical characters are the best at taking down the post-game bosses thanks to the crazy damage they pull off against anything that doesn't reflect physical damage but I've only beaten up to Lilith yet so I may be wrong.
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# ¿ Mar 26, 2012 18:57 |
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Just beat Belial in DS2. He was pretty easy compared to Lilith, and I got him on my first try despite my physical characters getting one-shotted by Gomorrah Fire (woooops, probably should have guessed that "the inferno" would involve fire damage and prepared properly), mostly because I lucked the hell out with my 40 mag Lucifer who just happens to have Ice Dance and Ice Amp. I wonder how hard Beelzebub is. Is he hard countered by placing Amrita on all your teams like he was in DS1?quote:Ugh... Apparently I may have waited too long to get Joe past Fate level 3. I'm on Day 6, and I'm finding no events for him. Is there an opportunity to level him up again before I choose a path, or am I hosed? I think the Stake battle is on day 6, so be sure to choose Joe's team. If no events pop up during the day, that might be enough to push him over Fate 4.
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2012 04:19 |
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KataraniSword posted:Thus, pro-strat is to leave one minion alive (as far away from Beelzebub as possible, to prevent healing through Fairy Dust or Diarahan or the like) and just park your main Pierce-nuker right next to him and kill him through counter-attacks - he doesn't phase-switch if you don't initiate the attack, so as long as you have Pierce and some way of mitigating fire damage (and hopefully, some source of healing since he DOES pack Ultimate Hit and Holy Strike) you should be fine. I had a much easier time building a full team with Ice Dance and Ice Amp, then one-rounding him after making him vulnerable to Ice. Pretty fun fight all things considered, and I'm happy to finally have Ultimate Hit (it does work with Attack All and Rage Soul, right?) and Holy Strike to play with. quote:Wow, day 7 in DS2 really takes the kid gloves off. I appreciate it but the difficuly curve seems jarring- I cruised through days 3-6. Are you on Saiduq's path? It's really, really rough if you didn't build Fate with the Daichi faction members. Actually the first fight of that path is rough regardless because those sadistic developers leave you with only two party members to fight it with without lowering its difficulty to compensate. Heavy neutrino fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Mar 28, 2012 |
# ¿ Mar 28, 2012 21:38 |
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Dragongem posted:No, Ronaldo's path. I walked into the second battle of that path and Daichi just ran over and pounded my team with Multi-strike D: Imagine being on Saiduq's path and having to do that same fight with only two party members because you didn't boost Hinako and Jungo's Fates. That's me. That's how it was on my first playthrough. Seriously though, make at least two Dragon demons and stomp through the rest of the game with their hilariously overpowered Evil Flow racial.
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# ¿ Mar 29, 2012 00:38 |
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Yeah, I had a stupid strong Dragon with Force Dance, Force Amp and Force Boost who pretty much one shotted the poor fool. I still can't believe Evil Flow made it past QA; it's so broken and the game would be impossibly hard if the AI actually used it.
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# ¿ Mar 29, 2012 01:04 |
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Oldstench posted:So, do most of you actually enjoy DS2, or do you just play it because a) MegaTen, and b) the lack of good SRPGs on DS? Oh don't get me wrong, I love DS2 about as much as I hate it. Difficulty is a good element, not a bad one and the game is very rarely unfair. You're kind of right, though. I'd play pretty much anything MegaTen, and I'd also play anything that's a good SRPG (god knows SRPG enthusiasts have been starved for good games over the last decade).
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# ¿ Mar 29, 2012 18:51 |
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Dragongem posted:My favorite part was in Day 3 IIRC where Yamato's like "ok here's the plan" and you can space out like Yeah I was about to mention that. The options are something like "Listen" and "Space out."
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# ¿ Mar 29, 2012 21:34 |
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Krad posted:Uh, I'm sorry, but I don't recall DS2 having any songs that rocked as hard as this. Therefore, you're wrong. Although DS2 had no track that I liked more than Demon of Darkness, I have to say that on the whole its soundtrack was a lot better than DS1's.
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# ¿ Mar 30, 2012 17:42 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:58 |
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King of Solomon posted:Yeah, if there's one thing I'll bitch about in this game, it's how the turn order system works. Enemy units are just loving faster than you, and will generally get several turns to your one. For some reason, whenever you get attacked, your turn order is slowed down, which is complete nonsense.x As I've said a couple times, I think this is completely fair. If it costs time to attack, then there's no reason it shouldn't cost time to counter-attack -- when you can, that is; getting delayed by a ranged attack that you can't counter is definitely bullshit (play your cards wrong and some bosses can attack you 3-4 times in a row before you get a turn). I like the mechanic because apart from kind of making sense conceptually, it cuts down on Fire Emblem syndrome where a single unit can be sent forward to massacre an army and encourages some finesse in your squad movement because a unit that initiates a skirmish gets a massive advantage. It just needs some tweaking because the way it currently works gives such a disproportionate advantage to ranged attacks, which are already pretty overpowered on their own.
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# ¿ Mar 30, 2012 21:17 |