Nelson Mandingo posted:

At the top right is the "rock paper scissors" graph that explains what unit counters what.

Arist posted:

This theme song for Gus fucks

Crystal Lake Witch posted:

I knew that, what I didn’t understand is that id put an enforcer down to block one lane while I focused on something else, and sometimes it would last long enough that I could focus on the other lane long enough to make progress, and then on the next attempt, against the same enemies it would just instantly die.

Fedule posted:

Honestly it bothers me a lot that more people aren't more critical of the mini games. It's cool that they tried to go for the variety and the spirit of the original but nobody making them seems to understand that the minigames they made suck rear end. Not necessarily in concept (sometimes in concept, like the new crunch gym) but just like, the specific quantified goals that they ask you to meet, and that there are various levers all trying to get you to want to do them, are engineered to produce misery. One of the reasons people actually liked the minigames from VII was that very little really extrinsically compelled you to complete any of them beyond muddling through once as part of the plot so they kinda automatically self select players who don't hate them, and therefore the fact that they were jank to the extreme didn't matter.

Take Glide de Chocobo as an example. Concept: fine! Gliding is cool. Going through a little course, cool. Going through rings and racking up points; fine. But the controls suck, as far as I can tell you can't invert up and down for gliding (unless it is tied to the main game camera, which would suck even more), diving and pulling up doesn't seem to work reliably and probably has some kind of logic to it but you're left to guess exactly how long it takes and how close to the ground you can get before you can pull up, it asks you to get perfect scores, and the courses are just long enough that you fail at the end when the actual difficult thing that is the point of the course and that you are supposed to learn throws you and on the way back you are bored out of your skull basically waiting for the start of the course to pass by so you can retry the thing you actually failed at but you lose focus when arriving and thus enter into a recursive feedback loop of boredom
and frustration. All of this together produces misery, and the telltale bang to rights sign of a loving awfully designed segment: invariably, the feeling of a player who attains the max rank is "thank gently caress I never have to do that again". This is how it is for most games I've found. A special shout out to the many many times the game makes you think this and then surprises you with another, even harder version.

Fortunately, the critical path permits you to pass only some games with only the minimum passing score where applicable and if you don't have completionist brain damage like I do you can ignore them. However; the game really really really wants you to do them all. It keeps trying to pull you back. Every time you say, I love this game, I want to engage with it more, it directs you back to them. And the things it asks you to do will make you miserable. The only minigames I haven't hated were the ones that I happened to find easy enough to demolish in a few tries, like the pirate shooting thing, although that's mostly just luck that it happened to be a thing I could get to grips with easily.

It's only the minigames I think this about. The combat is loving incredible and I want to do more of it in more variations (not that there isn't the occasional clunker, like the abominable VR mission with the mindflayer I was complaining about earlier). Even the card game which I came in expecting to hate won me over and I want to play more of it. Every side quest leads to some kind of treat, the mission with the dog was conceptually extremely dull but give me a pop banger variably mixed into some fights and some lovely character dialogue and suddenly it's a highlight. This is how games should make you feel, like you want to go again, like you'll go again even when you've finished everything just for the fun of it. Not happy that you can dispense with it forever.

Thundarr posted:

The enemy units should be fixed for each stage (maybe changing a bit depending on difficulty setting?). Exact placement and timing of when you deploy a unit can affect the outcome though, like whether or not it gets hit by an AoE from a trebuchet. The really obnoxious part was even watching a video of a clear I had to repeat the stage multiple times due to units not doing the same thing because I was off by half a second or five feet.

ImpAtom posted:

I like most of the minigames, but I also didn't seem to have the trouble you're having. The Chocobo Gliding has like one set path you need to do and puts markers exactly where you need to do things. Even the ones I disliked were over very quickly. More to the point I think the disposable minigames are genuinely better than the similar ones in FF7. Honestly I'd say by and large they have some of the best executed minigames in the series.

I said come in! posted:

Do you know if there is a way to do the mine cart one again without replaying the whole chapter its in?

Harrow posted:

I can't test it right now but I read that game difficulty apparently affects Fort Condor? Supposedly if you turn the game down to Easy your ATB in Fort Condor charges ridiculously quickly and you can steamroll. Anyone still struggling with Fort Condor want to try that out?

nine-gear crow posted:

I just want to say on a character level, I love what a little poo poo gremlin they've turned Elena into compared to how she was in the original game. Pairing her off with Rude for most of the game is the perfect choice because he's now like this exasperated single dad who has to keep this tiny destructive goblin on something resembling a leash. She is a very worthy replacement for Reno in the Turks dynamic.

Augus posted:

the soccer minigame is really easy, you just need to know that pressing R2 twice lets dash faster

ImpAtom posted:

The Chocobo Gliding has like one set path you need to do and puts markers exactly where you need to do things.

ImpAtom posted:

Elena being this horrible little goblin of a person is delightful and gives her a much better dynamic with the Turks. I also enjoy the fact that she is both terrifyingly dangerous and also a complete fuckup who you can make run off cliffs.

Honestly like a part of me would gladly play a DLC where you had a team of just the Turks.

Fedule posted:

Fedule posted:

I think what's telling is that everyone basically either says "yeah I beat this one easily" or "oh my god this one sucks so much". Like I said, I beat the pirate shooting one easily. It sucked, however. Same for Red Football.

Jimbot posted:

(Upper Junon spoilers) Andrea would be disappointed in me. I missed a few notes in two of the difficult formations. I'm a disgrace.

Fedule posted:

What I'm looking to hear is exactly what you're supposed to do on the last dive of the third course. I have the entire rest of that course muscle memorised but it does not seem according to my understanding of anything to be possible to hit that last low ring and then get enough air to make it to the last pair of rings.

Rageaholic posted:

Holy poo poo, the trial of Red XIII is upsetting