What I've been playing lately #2 two posts a month #3

 I have been sort of half-playing games lately, here are some of them.

Final Fantasy XII

I hadn’t played this since 2019 or so on my old laptop so it was finally time to play it on the PC in 2024. I had played it at least twice on the PS2 back in the day, and once on PC when they released the Zodiac Age on Steam.

I really liked it on the PS2, and I liked the changes they made to it for the Zodiac Age, what with the Job system and all. I got all 100% completion a few years ago on the PC and that particular run I got Espers I had never unlocked before and pretty much saw stuff I never encountered on the PS2 version. But this time, I bombed through it at 4x speed and didn’t really take much in.

I had set goals like get every Esper, complete every Hunt and so on but after a while I knew all I would do is one goal: complete the main game. Which I did. I didn’t even bother doing the auto-level thing all that much, I did it for an hour or two and then got bored and kept playing. So I died a lot more than usual, but the game stayed somewhat challenging. However by the end my equipment and setup was so strong I was able to crush the main plot easily. I did most of the hunts, maybe 40/45 of them, but didn’t really bother with Trial mode and only got maybe 7/13 Espers.

Final Fantasy VII

I always wanted to play 7 again but was held back by the lack of speed boosters for the PC version. Then one day a weeks ago after my kind of bleh replay of 12 on x4 speed I said fuck it, time to re-install. 

I played FF7 maybe 2-3 times on the PSX. I would always play it using the PSX controller with no sticks even when on PS2 because it didn’t support their use anyway. I played it just once on the PC and as usual got it 100% completed. Much like my experience with FF12, my journey to 100% completion saw me explore things I had never seen before when I had it on Playstation: Chocobo racing/breeding to get the Gold Chocobo, acquiring/maxing every single materia in the game, every Limit Break and so on.

This time was a little bit different - I did get a lot of the materia but didn’t bother making sure to get all of it. I definitely didn’t bother levelling all the Limit Breaks, I just tried to stick to a party made of Cloud-Tifa-Nanaki as much as possible. Tank, Thief/DPS, Mage.

It still probably has the best story arc of all and the best use of the full cast. No one is really forgotten, except maybe Vincent this time I didn’t really do any of his sidequests. And he’s a bonus character anyway. I did the Wutai sidequest even though I didn’t have to.

Much like 12 I found myself getting wiped out a lot. I didn’t spend much time grinding and often didn’t use the right moves or equipment. Guess it’s just been that long. I used to find FF7 just right, not too hard but this time it was very difficult. Part of that was the ATB gauge - I had it on Active and thus enemies would get free moves while I’d be trying to figure out mine.

What’s next?

I kind of want to play Resident Evil 4 again. The original one. It’s been 5 years, does it still hold up?

Love/Hate #47 - FORTNITE

I've known about Fortnite a long time but never played it. Theo asked me to get him the 'Fishstick' toy from Smyths maybe 5 years ago? Further back? That was about the extent of it.

So Theo usually stays with me for much of the summer and holidays like Christmas and Easter and whatnot. He was here for Christmas 2023 and we were looking for things to do and finally I caved and spent several hours installing Fortnite. It's free, but takes up like 30gb.

We played a game of Duos, him on the Playstation 4 downstairs and me up here on the desktop, using Whatsapp to talk and wouldn't you know - we won our first match, above! Getting a Victory Royale in your first game set some unrealistic expecations. But it was addictive. We won a few more times after that.

I was a bit slow at first but I got all the basics straight away. I like prioritising shields in Borderlands and such so I usually make sure to grab a shield potion ASAP. Early on I relied on Slap/Slurp Barrels a lot for this.

I like to have an AR. A legendary or named AR is just perfect for every situation.

Shotguns are so good. Give me an automatic shotgun and I can hang with the best of them. The various pump shotguns and whatnot kind of suck/are harder to use but in a pinch they can murder players.

As ever, I like SMGs but they are poor at longer ranges.

I suck with Sniper Rifles. I've had a couple of lucky shots that can turn a figth around and have at least one headshot kill with them but they are relaly just good for recon and the inevitable sniper duel.

Pistols are fine at the start but I usually switch to larger ordinance as fast as possible. That said, the lock on pistols are great for crap players like me.

Make sure to have grappling hooks by the end game, good lord. Useful for escaping the storm.

I like the Shieldbreaker EMP grenades. Nobody uses them so I like to fling a few/all at the start of an encounter, it disorientates people I think. Like something has been discarded by the meta as not being worth it, people don't use them as much if at all so when I use them people aren't really ready to suddenly lose 70 shield or whatever. They can be flung right over cover and change the dynamic of a fight. Probably just better to ignore them for another gun but fuck it they're fun.

Turrets are so fucking good. Like having another player on the team sometime. Sometimes they are completely useless but are nice in a pinch.

We generally do zero build and I pick Fill if I am on my own for anything but solos. 

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I tried my hand at a few random lobbies, solo, duos, triples and squads.

Solo was horrifying. Felt like playing DayZ again. I could get pretty damn far by myself, usually with a robot buddy that I hired and my trusty deployable turret. I came very close to winning a couple of times but in the final analysis was just not able to beat the other finalists.

Duos was a mixed bag. Some people see my default skin and drop out instantly. Thankfully that did not happen often. Came very close to winning a bunch of times and even won once, shoutout to Gemma who added me as a friend afterward. The trick to winning the trust of these randomers is let them have the first pick of all the loot, let them set the direction, give them shield potions and whatnot and just be generally helpful. The amount of times I have been the clutch in keeping our team alive when my foolhardy ally or allies wander off is insane.

This guy spent 90% of the game hiding so I hid with him. We placed #2 so not a bad strategy...

Triples were weird too, played a few games and just know now that if one ally goes in one direction and the other wanders off as well and I am forced to follow one around, we are doomed. The third person goes down its very hard to keep things together and people tend to quit if they require respawning. This was mainly the experience with randomers before I gave up on Fortnite recently. I had much more success with my nephew and my kid. After many attempts, we finally won a Victory Royale in a very satisfying conclusion wherein we held on the final storm circle by a lighthouse while the trio of sweats with medallions were forced to come to us and were battling the storm and our solid formation.

Can't speak much about squads I may have played it a couple of times but I can't recall. I imagine with randomers its the exact same as duos or trios, depends who you get.

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It's not all murder, you can play other game types. Theo was getting me to play Lego Fortnite with him we messed around with that a bit.

 But like Roblox, while it's nice they have free versions of other games, I can just as easily play the actual other game rather than playing a Fortnite copy of it.

The map is nice if a little forgettable. 

Fecking updates!

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Idk, I got sick of playing it. Maybe because I don't mind the journey as much as the result; yeah it's nice to win but I have the most fun battling other players and looting. I'm not the best player but I think I'm a pretty good teammate, which doesn't mean anything if the other player(s) don't respect that. Maybe I just miss DayZ, which was all about the journey. I moved onto FF12 and FF7. I'll play Fortnite again, I only briefly looked at the new season that launched, but am less excited about it. Not quite love definitely not quite hate.