It got cold again and my apartment complex shut off heating for the season, so my apartment is really cold. Addressed this by running my shower at max heat for about twenty minutes, which raised the ambient temperature considerably.

Downside is that now I want coffee and all of my pants are wet.

http://www.ign.com/faqs/2003/chrono-trigger-walkthrough-437178 Based on section 5-C in this, it looks like a lot of the dual techs really AREN'T doing anything but just adding the damage from the component skills :T

That sort of confirms my long-standing suspicion that combos were generally pointless in CT, especially when you start getting combos that would hit the damage cap, but where doing the component techs separably wouldn't hit the cap and thus do more damage.

I do wonder if Level Zero rebalanced that any.

Anyway, still working on the second boss in Dawn of Ys. I have the attack pattern down but you don't have a lot of room to maneuver so actually pulling it off is hard.

Also played Solatorobo a bit. Cleared the early sidequests in Airedale and the arena ship (almost lost to the last battle there wtfffff?), on Spinon now.

For the record, from my understanding a lot of players just put Critical Trigger on auto. I had to because I get just enough input lag in battles to screw it up.

I thought it was funny that the manual never explains what the unique stat each character has does. In reality, it's really simple -- stat name indicates, roughly, what their AI package is, and the higher the stat is, the better the odds that they'll make a good choice when reassessing mid-battle. Incredibly simple thing. Manual doesn't mention this. And it's not a big deal, but it's useful. Like for Heal, instead of a character going on standby, they might be all HM I SHOULD KILL DUDES if their special stat is high enough/appropriate for that.

Apartment complex turned off the heat for the season, and it got cold again. FUCK.

You can influence which orders come up in combat by selectively disabling skills, from what I remember. Party composition also affects that, as does the amount of MP? or whatever on hand an battle length (or morale, maybe). It's not really THAT random from what I saw but there are a lot of factors affecting it so it's not necessarily predictable unless you intentionally limit what a party can do.

Meanwhile I have no idea how stat gains are supposed to work because Square's been hiring meth addicts to write their manuals for the last decade and a half. IIRC though, Rush is supposed to be innately geared towards favoring axes, so I'm really wondering why he was getting INT for you. Wonder if certain equipment or formations effect stat growth?

I'd check but I'm not in the mood to play something fiddly right now. I think Solatorobo is about the speed of my mind is am work right now.

I get short with my coworkers sometimes. I feel really bad about it :( I'm trying to do that less/just come off as weird and abrupt but inoffensively so.

My job's just maddeningly Sisyphean !!!

Annubis, which version did you play?

More HP is generally tedious. My favorite kind of balancing is more the 'glass cannon' approach, where enemies don't LAST that long, but they can kill you really fast. This is kind of what SMT does. Most battles in nocturne are over in like three turns, tops, but they all have the potential to wreck your day.

Meanwhile, the Level 0 mod for CT took EXACTLY the approach and it plays really well. OH WELP.

Wrt VP, I remember the first time I played it it was on easy, and I hated it, because I didn't realize this at the time, but you don't actually have to play the game even remotely right to win on easy mode. So I wasn't even bothering with combos, which are like the CENTRAL THANG of the battle system.

Ys IV - Up to the second boss. Got the best armor currently available and my level should be right. Just a matter of getting his pattern down.

Also played some Chrono Trigger hard mode mod briefly, before discovering that every single fight is essentially a boss fight now, which is immensely tedious and not really balanced or interesting. Blerf. Hoping the chrono cross mod I found isn't as insane.

Aquaria - Beat two of the eyeball jellyfish in the meat temple. Also found some recipes that can use all the spoiled meat I keep finding in jars.

I was very much planning on playing Day of the Tentacle and Cupla Innata recently, but this weather is confusing which games I want to play.

Speaking of which, y'all know that 90% of the things printed on 3D printers are going to be plastic dongs.

Okay so this thread's giving me a minor existential crisis about what i would even consider a favorite game. In terms of criteria.

So then I took the approach I take to music: My favorite albums are the ones I can listen to a hell of a lot without getting sick of, which garner a strong emotional response from me, and which ALWAYS get the same emotional response.

So, in that sense, which games could I play /the most/ repeatedly, without getting sick of them or without them losing their effect?

And that's going to be a different list than the one I first posted. Because, for instance, as much as I find Unreal and Riven exemplary, they do kind of lose their effect over multiple playthroughs because, and especially with Riven, a lot of the magic is based on not knowing what you're doing. Or even something like Super Metroid (or most metroidvanias, really).

This is the same reason why I'm omitting certain popular RPGs like Chrono Trigger. Because the things I find in CT that make it stand out so much are also the things that, to me, weaken it on future playthroughs -- a lot of the game relies on its surprisal factor. Doing the unexpected. Stepping away from RPG norms. Once you're used to them -- once you're expecting what once was unexpected -- it's not the same.

Also feel like the same might apply to FFIX, to an extent. So while that's my favorite FF game, I don't think it'd be as robust to endless playing as, say, FFV would, since FFV allows for a lot more experimentation (although it loses out on the gestalt factor).

And I should note that it's not, for me, just an issue of replayability -- I barely even finish games the first time anyway. Rather, it's more a case of, can I experiment with new gameplay mechanics or new approaches as I go along? Once I am good at the game -- once I know HOW to win -- is it still going to be fun to pull off that execution?

List will have to be forthcoming as I think this out, but I can definitely say that SMT:N and SimCity 4 would still be on it.

--- edit ---

I think any game I boot up to just to wander around unproductively in is probably going to make this list.

Actual list, in no real order.

1. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne - This game changed how I thought about traditional JRPGs. Genuinely hard to the point where mastery of the system becomes this joyous, enlightening moment. Tons of room to experiment. A sense of creativity in coming up with your demon/main character/party builds. A branching story. A battle system that, in retrospect, is so stupidly simple that it hits a rare level of elegance and becomes brilliant and makes you wonder why nobody ever thought of it before. Creative dungeons, and a general world sense that makes the environment a joy to walk through, even when it's trying to murder you.

2. Earthbound - This is one of those games that, for me, it's worth it just to walk through. I think the developers knew this, too, given how the ending works.

3. Ultima 7 -

4. SimCity 4 - The only limit to this game is your own creativity. Yeah, the game requires a bit more micromanagement, but the tradeoff is the level of customization -- control -- you have in building your city. You can grow some really unique character. You can always experiment with new street layouts. And the atmosphere is probably the best out of the entire series. Stupid terrain glitches aside, it's... easy to imagine living in your creations.

Runner's Up:
Chrono Cross
Terranigma
Tales of Symphonia

There's always that one guy in college that just bleeds all over the place.

Sort of like how there's always that one friend you had in highschool and nobody could tell if he was black or white.

This is why I wasn't really sleeping much during 2009. Night time's the right time for lying in bed as your mental censors shut down and there's no sieve between you and the wall of things you don't want to/really shouldn't address.

And it's not always something you can talk about with people close to you because it's not necessarily the kind of 'depression' you can treat with drugs. Not necessarily something chemical in your mind, but just the realization of whatever it is you're staring into...

Meanwhile I'm acting like a psychotic asshole in some chatroom and debating about topics that I don't really care about at all, just because... I don't know why. I see what I'm going to say before I say it and I'm very aware it's not furthering??????

Meanwhile I haven't had caffeine in a few hours so I'm actually sober from my baseline caffeinism and it sucks

Meanwhile I think I'm actually bald and it's just completely covered up by how long my hair is. I don't know. Maybe I've had a persistent scalp infection since 2006.

Meanwhile I'm wondering if there's some FAQ on being an adult because 25 doesn't feel appreciably different from 15 except now I have enough money to be a massive consumer whore, although I guess that's pretty much the American dream.

Meanwhile I feel like I'm really losing faith in gaming as an artform.

Meanwhile I think my headphones are tight enough to have deformed my glasses.

She's dead, bro.

Surprisingly enough, not for the reasons you might be expecting, either!

I think the assumption is that nobody gives enough of a fuck about Harper to try assassinating him.

Aww shit what if some guy with a concealed carry firearm is at an event and he sees some guy carrying a plastic block and THINKS it's a 3D printed gun, caps him, but then it turns out it's just a camera/Dreamcast/etc.

Also I am assuming that women would not be murdering people with guns because it is a well known fact that they don't have fingers.