Lurker > _stingers_

How are there no votes for that long then 5 votes at once

Pichu

Ice climbers

Pyra

WINDJAMMERS UNITE caps

Ff14 stans in shambles

Yeah that's mildly annoying but I mean... Whatever. Not the worst thing in the world because p5 is amazing on it's own

great game underrated by spinoff stigma

Tear

Oh I forgot about new Pokemon snap. I wish Nintendo ever did sales so I could buy it

Aerith

Ice Climbers

Pyra

Excuse me that is Petey piranha not piranha plant

Ice Climbers

Tear

Pyra

Aerith

• 10. Super Mario Bros. 3
• 9. Final Fantasy X
• 8. Chrono Trigger
• 7. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
• 6. Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation
• 5. Splatoon 2
• 4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• 3. Final Fantasy VII
• 2. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride
• 1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Action/Adventure
RPG
Whatever animal crossing is
Shooter
Fighter
Platformer

That's 6 genres in 10 games. That doesn't seem that one note. I'm guessing your saying that RPGs are overrepresented, but they are the most story driven and thus generate the most emotional connection so it's no surprise they'll be ranked higher on a most favorite list on average how I see it. Casual gamers would avoid that line of thinking but they probably aren't filling out these surveys

Holy crap man. Fate was on your side tonight.

Also the recency bias seems pretty strong with three houses, sword/shield and acnh. Can't see those standing the test of time that favorably

Wow at Undertale. I didn't realize that was such a global phenomenon

Tear

Ice climbers

Pyra

Aerith

But born just in time to fart in a bottle and sell it to people for money on the internet

https://www.ladbible.com/news/latest-reality-tv-star-made-70000-in-a-week-selling-her-farts-to-strangers-20211214

What the hell

I've been busy with holiday stuff. I'll be back in North Carolina tomorrow night so I'll try to resume playing either Wednesday or Thursday

HanOfTheNekos posted...

So far, what I've gathered from this topic is to not play Persona 5.

Or that how passionate it's fans are speaks to it's quality

masterplum posted...

Super controversial opinion: Royal sucks. It bloats down a streamlined 100 hour game into a 150 hour monstrosity

I think everything royal adds improves the experience. I do wish they managed to streamline things a little better because it's obvious what is extra content, but I still can't imagine going back and playing the base version over Royal

Persona 5 is definitely the best game on here but it sucks you can't play Royal. If you don't like RPGs though I'd switch my vote to God of War

Mac Arrowny posted...

Nobody called it GotY! It got 10th on one list

oh lol. i wouldve put it on my list if I remembered it came out this year, since I didnt even have 10 games on there. it probably wouldve been last though

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I didn't even know there WAS an Atelier Ryza 2!

It was enjoyable but I don't know but any metric that you could call it game of the year

die hard or live trying

Got my gifts from Bolo! You're a beast thanks for giving me so much stuff @@

Cthulhu saves the world & Breath of Death - I haven't heard of these! I just looked into them and they look charming :)
Transistor - This is something I wanted when it came out and then forgot all about! Thank you so much for this
Sanctuary RPG Black Edition - An ASCII rpg sounds interesting. Haven't ever tried this genre before so hopefully I enjoy it :P
Wildermyth - This one looks really cool! I haven't heard of this one either but I'm most excited for this after watching the trailer. I really love the art style

Thanks for giving me so much new stuff to check out! Can't wait to try it all :) After I finally finish CS2 I'm gonna dive in haha.

MZero posted...

i noticed this too (didn't notice?), glad it wasn't just me!

you don't have access to the Courageous right now. You came by boat, remember?

That's true technically but iirc she didn't even have intent to join at that point, she was just saying she was busy in Roer

Ice Climbers

Pyra

Next I go downstairs and into the shop and find Laura who also wants to do some shopping. They go around the store looking at all the appliances while Laura is simultaneously fascinated and incompetent at the sight of technology. She can't figure out how to turn off a vacuum and breaks a washing machine. Rean pokes fun at her by saying she was certainly born for the way of the sword, and Laura says that her lack of domestic skills should not be a winning quality. This was a pretty cute scene lol it made me like Laura a little more so props for that.

Next to the shop is Elliot on a bench. Argh! One off from my last but least joke again! How does this always happen :( who even is the last person I haven't talked to yet? I feel like I've been everywhere. Process of elimination says...Fie. Damn. Wonder where she's hiding. Anyway he wants to play some music, real exciting stuff. Let's move on.

I eventually find Fie, she was hiding at the airport which I probably should've remembered existed. I mean I feel like you're always going to check there last to be fair since everything else is in one large area. Anyway, she just wants to chat with Rean in general. Shes the only one besides Rean who had any kind of connection with Vulcan, since he gave his condolences over her former boss dying. That's kinda sweet. They end up finding a lost kitten and reuiniting it with its mother, and then Fie remarks that she's glad that the kitten wasn't abandoned. Parallel time! She talks about how the night her leader died when fighting the red constellation, a girl about her age from the constellation visited their camp. SHIRLEY MOTHERFUCKER! Can't believe they didn't want to hit us with the name-drop. She says she showed at their camp, the enemy, because she was chasing a stray cat. That certainly is in character for ol' Shirley.

Can't find anything else to do after that, so I go back to the Courageous to advance the plot. Another S rank awww yeah. Rean talks to Valimar and Valimar sounds more human than usual, so Rean asks him about it. Apparently he had almost no memories so he had to use bare built in English (Japanese sorry Mzero) to talk to us, but over the course of our journey he's relearned things and can now communicate more naturally. Cool! I kinda liked him as an edgy stereotype robot but this will work I guess.

Rean gets a call from George, apparently the technology institute has been talking and they want to modify our robot. Please make battles more interesting please make battles more interesting. The professor there (who's a huge douche BTW) says that if we can get him a lot of zemurian ore then he'll make us a giant robot sword. That's pretty cool but probably won't make battles any more interesting so that's lame. One big problem though is uh, zemurian ore is pretty rare. Generally you can only get enough of it to make 2-3 weapons for your party, how the hell are we going to find enough of it to make a giant robot sword? A question for another day, as we move forward in time...

Next time on Cold Steel, trying to locate mass amounts of Zemurian Ore? That'll be an interesting topic. See you guys then!

12/22
Looks like I was right, but they call it a "Stopover day" instead of a bonding day like normal which is cuddly. I walk around almost every area outdoors on the topside as well as the bar and the church without running into any events. I do see my boy Andre again which is nice. Finally on the other side of the top floor I finally find someone, my main man Machias. He wants to go check out the Technology Institute so away we go, and he gets startled by an RC car driving by. To be fair seeing a tiny car in their world would be kinda crazy lol. They get roped into racing them and invite Jusis out to join them, but then Jusis and Machias get too into it and crash into each other while Rean coasts to victory. Another day, another instance of Rean being the best at something.

I head over to the Reinford building that I neglected earlier and just have hordes of people inside thanking me for saving the day. Just an average Wednesday for ol' Rean Schwarzer. On the top floor I find Alisa in her penthouse suite, she wants to examine everything to make sure that the interloper didn't steal anything. While searching her mom's room she finds an unframed photo of their family together hidden away in a book and remarks how important it must be to her, but also that she kept it hidden. Lol Alisa slowly recognizing her mother as a human being is one of the more interesting/relatable subplots of this game so I have been enjoying that one.

I find Sharon in the house, no event with her but I like what she says to Rean: "Some may see your ability to mourn your enemies as weakness, and understandably so, but I see it as you and your classmates strength." I just like when the game talks about how not everyone sees the world as moralistically as they portray these kids because it keeps it from getting too preachy. Though I wish it happened more often, it's still nice when it does.

Alfin is in the library with an event for us, while perusing the library she is dismayed at the lack of romance novels. Wasn't this the grandpa's library? I guess there's a thin line between romance and smut, though we all know where the grandpa falls there. They then play blade and talk about Crow, and Alfin wishes she could be Crow so that her and Rean would be bound by fate together. That would be pretty romantic if it weren't coming from a child, but what can you do...

Walking around looking for more events I find Anton in the hotel who's listening to the radio, which says "Breaking news, an airship has just been hijacked..." Before trailing off. Is this a reference to something in Crossbell? I don't remember anything off the top of my head.

Next I find Gaius by the highway, he wants to go fishing. Finally something not related to the wind! They go and get attacked by monsters, and then fend them off and go home. I wish something else happened that I could talk about, but no. I like how they finally gave Machias a more interesting event but still couldn't come up with shit for Gaius lol.

Towa and Angie are in the diner, but only Towa has a scene. Honestly thinking about Rean and Angie alone seems like kind of a weird vibe so hopefully they don't get any scenes together lol. Everyone has that friend in a friend group they don't really know that well and it gets awkward if you're alone together. That's them.

Once you get into towas event Angie is there too, so I guess it's a package deal. Angelica leaves for a bit to get some ribbons to decorate towas hair with though, and then the two get their heart to heart over their place in society after the war ends. It has her link XP go up at the end and shows some battle traits there, but there's still no Towa portrait for Rean on the links section. I guess they want to wait until they officially unveil her or whatever. Angelica is there however, so I'm assuming she'll be a permanent option from now on, which makes sense.

Milliums chilling on a bench, she needs to go back on the Eisengraf to get something we left behind. We get permission from the railway police and get back onboard, and she's looking for a teddy bear. I randomly had a teddy bear attachment on her arm beforehand so now she is just carrying two bears around and it looks kinda funny lol. Perfect timing! Millium talks a bit about the Chancellor and Rean let's her know she doesn't have to hold it all in and she can cry about his "death" if she wants to, but she seems confused. She reveals that she's never cried before and doesn't understand why someone would! She's either a robot or a fucked up sociopath so I guess we'll have to see what direction the game wants to go. We already have Renne in the latter category though so I'm still gearing towards former. Altina and Millium robot sisters will add some spice to the game after all.

Emma is next, it's her first time in Roer so she asks Rean to show her around. She gets to ride the escalator and see the orbal generator. They sit down and talk about how crazy of a town it is, and Emma legit says, reminds me of something I read in a book, "Technology beyond the comprehension of the observer is indistinguishable from magic." So I guess Arthur C. Clarke is canon in Zemuria? That's the biggest plot twist of the game so far, lol. But they gave another scene where Rean tells Emma she should follow her dreams and not let her duties get her down, you've heard it all before.

Vivi and Linde are reunited in the grocery store, and they both join us onboard the ship this time. Vivi says she will be our chief sexiness officer, which was a vacancy we desperately needed filled.

Jusis is chilling against the wall acting nonchalant, he asks Rean to join him on a shopping trip. He has Rean carry all his shit he buys around and Rean complains that he shouldn't be doing this, but then Jusis claps back with the, just imagine I was Towa, you wouldn't complain then would you? Which is actually a pretty damn good point lmao. Sorry Rean you have to hold the L this time.

Next is Sara who's in Jackass' shop, she wants to take Rean out to the highway for another training session. She gives him a nice speech about how the world isn't fair and people aren't gonna slow down for You, so if you want a place in this world you're gonna have to take it. And then says she's not holding back and will kick his ass, which seems to come true though they agree to call it a draw. Sara always the real one, shoutouts to her. The writing in CS has always felt weird to me but they just moved all the real shit solely to the adults, and the adults just don't get enough screen time. It is what it is, I guess...but I miss Crossbell. All real shit all the time. They were the best.

At the end of the path before the mine I find another trial chest, this time for Elliot and Gaius........ Okay I was kidding before but now I know they really are trying to make sure you can't open any of these. "How can you tell that Gaius grew up in a pretty extreme environment? His whole family is IN TENTS!" Okay that one was actually pretty good lol. I am now 0/3 on trial chests in Roer though so I'm not looking forward to backtracking for these later.

In the mine we kill some jaegers until we end up finding the train they're hiding Mom on, but the train starts to leave the mine to get away from us. Summoning his inner Lloyd, Rean instructs everyone to jump on top of the train and they all manage to flawlessly land on top of a moving train and get inside. Something which seemed so silly in Zero(Azure?) seems so quaint here now. The series really likes to mess with your emotions. I think it's just because Lloyd felt like so much more grounded of a character whereas you kind of just expect Rean to do whatever the hell the writers think he needs to be able to do at the time. What's the male version of a Mary Sue?

They have you do a pretty fun mini boss rush through some jaegers in the cars that ends with a pincer battle where you get attacked by 8 of them in a row, which is basically just the game saying if you weren't saving your CP, reload and try again. I appreciate that bit of game design though because it at least forces you to meter your resources properly.

No boss at the end of that, just Sharon showing up and then we go to bust into the Reinford building. Just gotta go up a few flights of stairs, nothing too interesting happens. One of the enemies here is a Zephyanthes though, wasn't that a boss once? So that's kinda cool.

When you get to the top Angelica talks shit at her uncle for being a little bitch and taking over the Reinford company so underhandedly lol. Basically what you'd expect from her. And he summons some robots to fight us, which is what you'd expect from him too, knowing nothing about him at all. These Noble villains are all the same right? The boss fight is pretty easy, he has a move that heals him for 30k occasionally but you're able to out-dps that without much effort, and he summons some robots across the map but any full map s craft like Alisa's new upgraded one or Sara's takes them out instantly. Not really in any danger this whole fight.

After the fight he says that Arios' combat data was installed on the machine so it shouldn't have been able to lose. I don't remember Arios summoning a bunch of little robots so you might wanna check your notes there buddy. Eventually Sharon and the Chairman walk in and Alisa's mom just whoops uncle's ass lol. Legit 2 slaps and a punch and knocks him on the ground. Let's go chairman! Then we go outside and the Courageous is here to pick us up, presumably to start part 3 of our 3 phase plan. This has been a long day @@

The game warns you that the next part will be a gear battle and let's you switch out your orbs if you want lol. I can't imagine that will start being necessary now so I'll pass. We resume onboard the Courageous, Angelica is planning on going into battle with her dad to settle shit once and for all. She gives a roaring speech where she says she'll crawl out of hell to return if she has to, which would be pretty badass if she didn't follow up with "so I can see these beautiful ladies again." Way to ruin it! She gets in a purple gear and goes off with some soldiers, and then it switches to dad's POV. He is informed that Angelica is on the way with some gears and he says that he will handle it. One of the main terrorist dudes who's name I forget, the big burly guy, offers to go help but Marquis says that this isn't a noble alliance matter, just a father disciplining his daughter. That's cute lol, I have a feeling it won't quite work out like that...

They get to fighting and Fie sums it up perfectly..."This is more like watching a family feud than an all out war. But with robots." At least the game has some self awareness about how stupid this is lol, it makes me appreciate it more.

Angelica wins the fight obviously, but then Vulcan (that's his name!) comes out and knocks her gear out of commission then challenges Rean to a duel. They had to find a way to include him in Angelica's special moment I guess, I mean we are playing as him after all so I guess we need something to do. Once Rean shows up we get an obligatory, "It's the ash-colored knight" from the crowd. Man I really never thought when I said how awkward that line was that it would end up getting repeated 50 more times throughout the game. How in the hell did the translators approve that lol

The mech fight with Vulcan is the same as every other, spam counter while healing and charging. If mech fights are in 3 and the whole system is revamped I pray to God they remove this counter move because there's never a reason to use anything else, it just makes you invincible.

Class VII in the cutscene congratulates Rean on his impressive achievement, clearly not realizing how braindead of a fight it was. After that Vulcans gear starts to blow up, but he just decides that this is his crowning life achievement and going out like this is a-okay, and refuses to abort ship as it explodes. Okay then. Kind of a random death but he was kind of a whatever character so I guess that's one less thing to worry about.

After that...event, they talk about the aftermath - Marquis Rogner surrenders and swears fealty to Alfin, and we dock in Roer to have the Reinford company do repairs for us. Think they could get us some professionals to man the ship instead of a bunch of random students? Somehow I doubt it. This, however, ends our day, so we'll have to see how things pan out tomorrow.

12/21
The day only moved forward by 1, so apparently at some point yesterday it turned from 12/19 to 12/20 though I never noticed it. Whatever! The new day starts off with the gang talking to Gwyn, Alisa's granddad. He lets us know a secret way into Roer, by sailing in through a stream that starts in Ymir. Sounds risky to me but I'm sure things will be fine. It has me pick a party, Alisa is the required one this time so I get to pick my full team of people I actually want to use for once. The game starts you off on the byroad right by Roer, so I guess we don't get a cutscene of them sailing the boat down the rapids. Lame!

Trial chest for Alisa and Emma is the first thing I find. It makes sense that Emma was the top scorer on the Thors entrance exam. After all, she really knows how to spell! Nice. Unfortunately though, I don't have Emma with me, and there's no quick travel menu to get back to the ship to change teammates, so I guess this one will have to wait until later.

Upon arriving to Roer, the guards at the gate outside think they recognize us, but then say that all kids look the same and that they're just faces you'd see at the bar. First, these kids have pretty wild and wacky appearances, so cut that shit right out I'm pretty sure you'd recognize Alisa anywhere. Second off, why are you seeing kids at the bar? Mysterious shit man! The gang then ponders why it was so easy for them to get in, so I'm guessing they're setting up for a man on the inside who was helping them gain access. Since it's Roer, maybe Sharon's pulling some strings for us? We'll see!

I speak with Jackass, the crafting shop owner and he lets us know that Schmidt is working with the nobles to develop weapons. I forget who Schmidt is to be perfectly honest but I'm sure he'll show up soon! Hugo is in the shop downstairs and tells us he'll let us know anything he finds out but doesn't join the Courageous yet. In the general store we find Linde, Vivi's sister. Glad to see she's okay! I can't believe that they made us wait this long to reunite the two. She then says if we need anything to come and find her because she won't be going anywhere. Not what I expected? I guess they're gonna make us wait until the end of this section to formally recruit her or something. I could see them holding off on Hugo but Linde doesn't have much else to do but join us now lol. She's working part time at a grocery store for God sake, that's like, the lowest of the low...

Anyway after that I try to go to the Reinford hq but we aren't able to go inside yet. Apparently Angelica's uncle is evil (who wouldve guessed) And is taking over the Reinford company while Alisa's mom is imprisoned. And he's even using the top floor where their home was as his own personal office. How uncouth! We must stop this man immediately.

Instructor mary is chilling in a random house, she asks how Mint is doing and tells us to be careful but doesn't have much info for us. I head over to the bar but there's no Claire in a sexy dress so not much to see here. Over at the church there's some new sister that nobody recognizes, 0% chance that becomes a plot point later.

Last but not least I head over to the Roer technology school, but to my surprise there's nothing there. Except a receptionist who refers to Schmidt as a dick, which was funny for it's unexpectedness. But I thought there'd be some plot advancement. Not sure where else to look now! Eventually while aimlessly walking around the gang has a cutscene where they talk about being out of leads and Alisa gets a call from her buddy at the diner. I feel like the diner being in the last game and Alisa going to talk to that chick was literally only put in the game so they could have this scene here. But it's okay, I respect that.

Over at the diner the ~mysterious~ sister from before is revealed to be none other than Angelica! I don't really care for her much, she's okay but kind of one note? But I do like her rebellious plot against her family so I'm glad to see her out of prison. She goes into detail about how her father isn't as on board with the Noble alliances actions and occupation of Heimdallr as the rest of the leaders. She also says that she plans on using her few allies she has in the alliance to lead an insurgency against her father's army. I have to admit that's pretty damn badass, so she's growing on me a bit here.

She reveals she's uncovered the location of Alisa's mom, which is on some cold steel tracks in the iron mine outside of town. See what I did there? These really have been the Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country, haven't they? ...Anyway, we decide to set off on a 3 part adventure, first to the mine to rescue Mom, then with her in tow we come back to Roer to reclaim Reinford HQ, then finally with his hostages gone, we head off to the Schwarz Drache Barrier to finish things off with Angelica's dad. Seems like a pretty sensible plan to me! They mention that we're gonna need to bang out all 3 operations back to back in order to give our enemies as little time to react as possible, also smart. I'm liking the way their planning is going.

Angelica joins my party and it tells me that setting her as my party leader is highly recommended since her quartz will give us triple advantages randomly. Unfortunately for this game I've mastered the art of getting triple advantages every fight and I'm burned out on temp characters after they took my Claire from me. Sorry Angelica, you're staying in the back. You, Sara and Machias will be there for me when I need you. Angelica's stats are pretty nutty though, she almost had as much attack as Laura and that's with only one moderately good accessory equipped.

The game let's you explore out on the highway going to the Barrier instead of going immediately to the mine so I do that for fun. I find a trial chest for Elliot, Emma, Millium, and Sara out here. Keep in mind you can't switch your party for this section, and Alisa and Rean are required. Is there any chance on earth that a single human being would ever have picked those four people to join them to get that chest the first time around? I absolutely refuse to believe anybody would pick those four characters. That is such a joke. I think they really just wanted to make sure they were able to show off at least one chest quote this game, to make sure everyone knew they existed. That's the only rational explanation. "Have you heard Elliot's father published a best selling book on the Imperial forces? They don't call him 'Craig the Read' for nothing!" That doesn't even make sense bro that'd be like if he was a writer not a publisher but whatever I'm not even mad.

Lmao I walked up to a chest and Angelica chimed in, "Always happy to lay my hands on another chest." Okay she's growing on me still that was pretty funny. There's another shrine here, but Angelica says we don't have time to worry about it because we have important things to do today. Nice avoidance of ludonarrative dissonance, game designers! Eventually I get up to to the Barrier and Angelica puts her veil on and says that we should do some investigating since we're here and I get +2 AP. That's pretty neat! Margarita is here, the fat chick from the first one, but besides that there's nothing here. At least I got some AP out of it, the best reward you can truly get. After that Alisa suggests we head back to Roer to restock, but nothing actually happens when you get there so off to the mine!

After a battle my Alisa hits level 90 and gets an upgraded S craft which has a Class SSS+ ranking. Alisa's S craft sucked before so hopefully this one's actually useful. It does say it has a 200% chance to mute so that seems promising if it can actually mute bosses. Also Angelica got her s craft upgraded, which is pretty funny since I just got her. Why not just start her off level 90 bro c'mon.

Oh man I'll finish in 2024 lol

How much further do I have to go? I just finished 12/22 last night

that was the greatest thing ive ever seen

It seems like Saturday is more popular. I'm generally busier on Saturdays but I'm sure I'll still be able to participate

Fyi that elo is around where your gsp gains slow to a crawl. You'll get under 1k for a win so that 100k is like 150 wins in a row lol

Consistency is the hardest thing to learn. When you're hot you're hot but learning how to minimize when you're not is what takes serious practice

All the metafy coaching in the world won't help you here :)

Unless I random a shoto I stg