The Pile of Shame Warpact

[Victrix]

Weekend update, post your progress!

I knocked off God of War and Phantom Dust single, now I'm playing a lot of PD online, and finishing off DMC3 single player.

I'm also doing a major pile cleanup, and selling or giving away a lot of games that I'm not going to play through.

[Victrix]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeees. Finally knocked off a game that was actually on the pile. GBA Ogre Battle bites the dust!

Excellent game with a few significant annoyances - thoughts follow

It has a rough and slow start, but once you get into it, and stuff starts to make sense, its a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed playing through it, and it was significantly harder than FFTA/FFT, maybe on par with FM3, but a lot more fun :P It's also the first srpg I've beaten in a looooooooong time (Arc the Lad 1 doesn't count :P). I have nearly complete games of FM3, FFT, FFTA, and barely started Disgaea and La Pucelle. And I won't even get started on the fact that I own OB/OB64/TO

Ah well. This victory has given me the drive to dig back in. I think I'll tackle FFTA next, since its so easy. After that, I'll probably finish my FFT save, then decide what to play after that. I actually restarted FFT from the scratch when I hit the end of chap 3, because I wanted to play it straight and try to soak up the story (which worked, but now it's been so long since I've played I've forgotten most of it ). I do have a very strong party saved near the end of chap 3 though, from my replay, so I'll probably use that save. I'm guessing FFTA won't take me very long to finish.

Once those are out of the way, then I'll think about returning to the Ogre Battle Saga

Scored a B ending, and looked to have about 2/3 of the items/emblems/classes. I tried to avoid most serious spoiler stuff in the faqs, so as a result, I totally didn't realize the A path was just a random choice that I thought nothing of :/ That was a bit annoying, but oh well. I found a lot of what seemed to be extra/secret characters accidentally. Some were nice, some not so much.

I really enjoyed the mechanics behind the combat, but some aspects of the game annoyed me. Foremost, the *speed* of the game was _sooooooooooooooo_ slow. Painfully slow. Even turning all options to fast/off didn't help much. I had to really force myself to sit through it.

The other annoying aspect was the two split party fights, they hit you with that completely unexpectedly, and you have to finish multiple fights in a row both times. I managed to get through the castle on my second try (first time I sent out 4 people because I thought I had to literally split my party :P), and the last area on my first try, because I had a better idea of what was coming.

I spent so much time nurturing one group, and then hit the castle and discover I need to pull out the handful of random persuaded goobers and underleveled monsters to finish the area successfully was a bit of an unpleasant surprise.

Didn't use/abuse training much at all. I dimly recall playing TO once a long time ago and hating training, but I think I grasped how it should be used *much* better this time. I don't know if the same mechanic holds true in the other games that have training, but here, I was able to use it very sparingly to quickly catch up a lagging character, use up stat items, and earn a few simple emblems. I was surprised to see that Miracle could be learned in training, but that seemed so cheesy I didn't do so - never acquired it naturally.

Made two Snapdragons. Was very, very pleased to see what a Snapdragon did when I actually used it Made one Angel Knight and one Swordmaster for my own Angel Knight and Swordmaster

Fluid Magic and Energy Transfer were grossly powerful. It almost seemed like they should have transferred current Energy instead of a flat amount.

The fairy embrace +1 turn ability was also very nasty, though I wound up going with Fluid/Energy and two summoners as a basis for mass damage instead.

Eleanor's 'secret' ability was a um, rather nice surprise. Didn't get it till near the end of the game, but it helped speed up a few choice fights. I wound up just blitzing through the last missions on the way to the end, by killing the leader each time. Acquiring new equipment and dragging out the fights seemed sort of pointless. Plus my parties were again each operating at less-than-optimal strength, due to the random -7 leveled goobers they had along on each part of the split.

My ending party was Swordmaster (Main char - tried him as a Warlock for awhile, but this game seems to encourage brute force over finesse, so I ditched him), Dragoon (Dragoon Magic is poor, but they certainly are nice tanks and damage dealers - did a bunch of fun Counter-Spear bouncing with my Valk in the midgame), Valkyrie->Angel Knight (was disappointed to find that AK's didn't give +1 morale, but then found that the Snapdragon AK Sword DID give it ), Knight (Ivanna - unspectacular, but quite solid), Shaman (Euphaire, yay Energy Transfer), Siren for a long time, replaced by Elrik briefly, then finally settled on Eleanor as a Siren, Rictor (VERY strong), and a generic Priest.

I never did figure out what the element numbers on the terrain meant. I just watched the defense/offense numbers, and that seemed to work well.

Similarly, I never figured out what effect an 'optimal' or 'preferred' weapon did for a given character. I generally just gave my fighters the strongest weapons around and they seemed to do ok with them. Anyone know what preferred weapons do, if anything?

Some of the Emblems were amazingly obscure, and I missed a ton.

Likewise, I never found a lot of the classes. Never made a Lich, dunno what else I didn't get.

Didn't use demihumans/beasts much. Think I saw I could attempt to recruit a ghost/undead, but didn't bother. It seems like some of the classes and emblems were set up to encourage a mutually supporting party with demihumans, beasts or dragons, but I was too busy experimenting with various normal human combinations to try out any whackier party compositions. If the game wasn't so frustratingly slow, I'd happily play through it again on the A path and try out some weirder party combinations, but I think I'll move on to the other OB's first, I don't recall any of the main three being this glacial.

Quests seemed sort of tacked on and easily abusable, so much like training, I did a bare minimum to check them out. Did get several useful items from them, but didn't go too far into the quest line (unlocked but didn't attempt Batraal Chronology).

Multiplayer looks like it'd be really cool (again, minus the speed of combat), but sadly, none of my friends have this for their GBs (just FFTA).

We'll see if my SRPG momentum carries me on through at least ffta. Good break from the multiplayer mayhem for sure. Pretty lengthy game too, I was nearing 40 hours, and according to the ending data, I had only seen about 2/3rds of the classes/emblems/items in the game, not to mention an entire separate story path that I didn't do. I'd say easily 100+ hours of good fun in this title. If it wasn't for the damn slow speed of battle

edit: it occurs to me that emulating this and making use of the speedup function during enemy turns/slow ass effects would pretty much remove my only major technical gripe about the game. Hmm. Something to consider.

[OmegaFlareX]

Damn, a lot has happened since my last post. I've pretty much abandoned my pile for now, because I have other things to worry about. But I will come back to what's left someday.

I just looked over my list, and there's a lot of stuff that I'm dropping. 6 games that are currently up for sale and Final Fantasy Legend III, since it isn't mine. Whatever, the game was crap anyway. I also dropped Lunar 2 and Breath of Fire III, again, since they don't belong to me.

But my total now is a mere 14 games which is less than half what I started with. That's a relief, especially since I'm putting together a decent PC soon and plan to dive into PC gaming.

[Victrix]

A lot of the games left on my pile that I haven't ditched are ones that I have a good solid save for, half way or two thirds of the way through. It's only a handful of games that I haven't really put a lot of time into for one reason or another (but that I'm still not willing to get rid of). Tactics Ogre GBA is what, three years old now? Four from it's Japanese release. And I enjoyed it throroughly, so I know that keeping it was the right choice I almost always wind up having a lot more fun that I expect when I finally sit down and give the pile some needed attention.

But you know, WoW and DotA and stupid Korean game and Shooter Of the Month multiplayer with friends over voicecom/lan tends to eat up all available gaming time, not that I'm complaining

And you haven't dropped it by half, you've dropped by more like 9/10ths :P Rather impressive...

[OmegaFlareX]

And you haven't dropped it by half, you've dropped by more like 9/10ths :P Rather impressive...

Heh, thanks. I remember on the first pile thread, my total was something ridiculous like 130. But that number included a lot of action-y-type games that I since decided don't belong in my pile. When I said "half", I meant half of this new pile thread.

[Rocca]

I've been playing DOA a lot for the past 2 weeks and I unlocked all 137 costumes, the DOA3 Booster Disc, CG Gallery and G4 Itagaki "Icons" video.

It took forever, it was...sort of worth it and I'm never doing that again.

Fame: 31
Shame: 12

[Opaque]

I redid my pile of shame, took out some things that shouldn't really count, and added some things that I've had for so long they really should be in it.

Shame: 13.

My fame should stay the same though.

[Rocca]

I redid my pile of shame, took out some things that shouldn't really count, and added some things that I've had for so long they really should be in it.

Shame: 13.

My fame should stay the same though.

Nice. I bought a couple of things recently, but 90% of my hauls have been things I've finished years ago, so no point in counting that in. I do have stuff to add to my pile of shame, I'll do that later.

[Opaque]

I added things that I figured rightfully should be in there like games that I sold after partly completing t plan to buy back in the future, and things that I should have put in there in the first place like OoT and MM from the Zelda GC bonus disk.

Really, only like 3 things on that list or games that I've bought since I made my first list.

[Victrix]

Updated. I'm discovering, to my considerable surprise, that FFTA is a much _worse_ game than Ogre Battle GBA O_o Ogre Battle is very true to episode VII, difficult, and has a rather mature story. FFTA has a childish story (what little of it there is), and seems to be wayyyyyyyyyyy easier. I'll play it some more before passing judgment, but I'm rather surprised by that. Perhaps that explains why I stopped playing it in the first place. On the bright side, it at least plays quickly :P