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Quote (chevleclair @ 16th July 2017 21:31)

I've now beaten Fallouts 1,2,4, and New Vegas.

I've noticed something about those games and their evolution. After earlier installments with missable and widely variable story arcs that had impacts on the endings (sadly, those are spoiled by sequels), and a virtual black and white morality, things begin to slowly shift to ambiguous morality and linear storytelling. The gameplay started out as a stunted version of Neverwinter Nights as an RPG, to more of a Deux ex fps rpg-fps style.

I'll probably derp through Chrono Trigger for a spell, before diving into something a little heavier.

Part of why FO3 gets so much criticism in hindsight is because its the equivalent of a greatest hits album. Its just a mish-mash of all the Fallout concepts thrown into one game and a lot of the charm was missing.

But you're right about the games evolving from black/white moral choices and open-ended story telling to ambiguous moral choices and linear story-telling... except Fallout New Vegas. Especially with the DLC, FNV plays more like Fallout 1 and specifically more like Fallout 2 in its story-telling. I actually thought it was all over the place, and you get different endings depending on your different choices, as well as additional endings for companions, gangs and factions.

The moral ambiguity in FNV is one of the strong points for me. I was never really sure for the longest time if I was making the right choice, because I questioned siding with NCR a lot and felt sympathy for the Powder Gangers, for example.

The 'Come Fly With Me' quest is another great example of this. You can help them out and complete the quest and then at the last minute, with a high enough Science skill, you can optimize the trajectory or change it to make the rockets crash into each other and blow up. So the game STILL gives you choices even after your choices.

The entire Veronica/Father Elija sub-plot is full of moral ambiguity.

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Dynamic Threads (Youtube)

Just finished replaying the campaign in 100% Orange Juice on extreme difficulty. The reward is a purple crown accessory for all characters.

Curiously, you're allowed to use the OP version of Tomomo (the one that shows up as a final boss opponent) when playing single-player, so this means that using her is fair game even on Extreme.

The extra scenario Tomomo Hell really is hell this time though. Especially since they made a couple changes that help out the enemy Tomomos - only 14 victories are needed to win the match (instead of the original 15), and Magical Massacre (Tomomo's hyper card) decreases the required Recovery Value for the next time a character is KO'd, by an amount equal to the number of opponents KO'd by it. They still need to be at full health, and the card is still obnoxiously expensive (40 stars) to play, but it actually does a little more to help Tomomo now. (I'd previously beaten Tomomo Hell using Fernet, in the pre-Steam version of the game.)

A few days ago I basically thoroughly finished Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls. This is an action platformer, and takes some (though not all) inspiration from Mega Man. The story is that there's an island of monsters living peacefully until pirates (who are also monsters) invaded and looted the place, so the local mad scientist converted a chimera originally designed to help with household stuff, to have a giant golem fist that can punch basically everything.

The game has a Mario 3 like map layout, but the levels are largely linear, and are replayable to find secrets. Beating bosses grants you abilities but they don't follow a pattern of weakness. There are a total of four bosses and four optional extra stages, followed by three final stages. The game records whether you got back all the treasure (and then some), and whether you died in the middle of the level, and also whether you were using this thing called "berserk mode" where you deal triple damage but take double damage. I've done all three for all the stages. There's also a postgame bonus level which is more exploration based, and has you collecting what's basically Halloween candy, and I've found all of it. Heck, there's even no achievement for beating the final boss stage all in one go (as opposed to dying to one of them and restarting the level, which leaves the previously-beaten bosses beaten but for some reason counts s no-death), but I've done that too.

The game's quite fun. The controls are very responsive and generally intuitive (you get basically unlimited mid-air jumps and dashes, though you can't gain height from them), and the writing is abundantly humorous, and last but not least, the dev hangs out on the game's Steam forum.

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current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal

finished so far this year:
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 4th August 2017 02:13)

A few days ago I basically thoroughly finished Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls. This is an action platformer, and takes some (though not all) inspiration from Mega Man. The story is that there's an island of monsters living peacefully until pirates (who are also monsters) invaded and looted the place, so the local mad scientist converted a chimera originally designed to help with household stuff, to have a giant golem fist that can punch basically everything.

The game has a Mario 3 like map layout, but the levels are largely linear, and are replayable to find secrets. Beating bosses grants you abilities but they don't follow a pattern of weakness. There are a total of four bosses and four optional extra stages, followed by three final stages. The game records whether you got back all the treasure (and then some), and whether you died in the middle of the level, and also whether you were using this thing called "berserk mode" where you deal triple damage but take double damage. I've done all three for all the stages. There's also a postgame bonus level which is more exploration based, and has you collecting what's basically Halloween candy, and I've found all of it. Heck, there's even no achievement for beating the final boss stage all in one go (as opposed to dying to one of them and restarting the level, which leaves the previously-beaten bosses beaten but for some reason counts s no-death), but I've done that too.

The game's quite fun. The controls are very responsive and generally intuitive (you get basically unlimited mid-air jumps and dashes, though you can't gain height from them), and the writing is abundantly humorous, and last but not least, the dev hangs out on the game's Steam forum.

Sounds and looks a lot more like Shovel Knight than Mega Man. I might check it out, since it's on PC. Word. I love platformers.

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Dynamic Threads (Youtube)

Reinstalled GTA V.


image unrelated

Finally figured it was time to clean out the closet and get cracking on those Lester Missions to get that last scrap o dough needed to buy up er'thang. So I finished the Lester Missions in GTAV last week and all three characters got in the high side of the hundred millionaire's club and just as I was about to start buying up er'thang...turns out there was one more mission I'd forgotten about.

GTA V has a bunch of 'random encounter' missions that aren't much more than picking up a random stranger and driving them to some destination while you have a conversation with 'em. That's it. One of these missions ends with said stranger giving you stock advice...and it turns out that even though I thought I'd already done it...I hadn't. Which means I still had one more shot to invest er'bodies now multi millions of dollars in one last slip of insider trading. This finally got me to break the 1 bil ceiling for one character:



I would have figured Michael for a shoe-in to hit the top end, but unfortunately I already had him spending his dough on property before I realized I still had more cash to rake in. Not that it wasn't moot anyway. Once the money game was over, I instantly started a spending spree buying up all da properties, all da clothes, guns, cars, etc. And now...I'm finally playing the game the way it was intended.



Doin dumb stunts and causing chaos. Getting bored though. I wish I knew a crew to try the online game with, otherwise this'll prolly be going back into the ether soon to make way for Mordor.

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Twarts

For my birthday on Friday I finished Final Fantasy XII (the original, not Zodiac). I really enjoyed it, but since it took me over a year to play, I lost some sense of the story. So I intend to play it again doing a story-only run, probably in a few months.

Still poking away at Final Fantasy II. I'm up to the cyclone, but want to grind Esuna some more before I enter it.

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius is having a FFXI raid right now, which makes this former XI player very happy. The raid boss is a bit annoying, though - he alternates being weak to physical and magic. I need a bunch of supportive units to survive his attacked on ELT so I'm just bringing two melee units for damage. Which means I've got to sit and turtle for several rounds before I can unleash my damage dealers. It makes the fights linger than I'd like, so I've been playing them slowly.

I also started a replay of Final Fantasy X on Friday. Barely into the game - I've just reached Besaid today. My reason for playing FFX is two-fold: I'm overdue for a replay, plus I've never played X-2 and I'd like to correct that.

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Watch me play games on Twitch!
Schedule:
Mondays & Thursdays: Final Fantasy VII -Rebirth-
Saturdays: Final Fantasy XIV Side Quests (or maybe more Rebirth, we'll see!)
7:30pm - 10:30pm Central or thereabouts

I was just streaming FF6 on Twitch, but nobody showed up

(Debbie Downer, womp womp womp)

I will probably keep playing it, though I do take breaks to play Mario World, the odd Megaman game, or some Street Fighter 2.

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X is blue.

Quote (Spooniest @ 17th September 2017 15:37)

I was just streaming FF6 on Twitch, but nobody showed up

(Debbie Downer, womp womp womp)

I will probably keep playing it, though I do take breaks to play Mario World, the odd Megaman game, or some Street Fighter 2.

What is your twitch name? I will give you a follow!

Currently playing FFVII and League of Legends - just reach the promised land on disc 2!

This post has been edited by ShaneT12 on 18th September 2017 14:49

Quote (ShaneT12 @ 18th September 2017 09:48)

What is your twitch name? I will give you a follow!

Spooniestbaado is my twitch name.

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X is blue.

I'm playing the FFXII remake.

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I had an old signature. Now I've changed it.

I finally picked up Persona 5 but I've been sprinkling the play with bouts of Tales of Zestiria with my husband. We're big on the Tales games because of the multiplayer capability ( especially since I can't play fps' due to migraine issues). I'm also going to start IX here soon after picking it up for the PS4. I'm just going to be all over the place for a while.

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Check out the Magicite Menagerie!

Retro gaming cosplayer with a focus on Terra Branford.

Quote (St Khael @ 25th September 2017 12:42)

I finally picked up Persona 5 but I've been sprinkling the play with bouts of Tales of Zestiria with my husband. We're big on the Tales games because of the multiplayer capability ( especially since I can't play fps' due to migraine issues). I'm also going to start IX here soon after picking it up for the PS4. I'm just going to be all over the place for a while.

How is Tales of Zestiria? I used to love the Tales games, but haven't picked up any recently since I was disappointed by Graces and Xillia. I found Graces too childish, and Xillia too fan-servicy. The last one that I really liked was Abyss.

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I had an old signature. Now I've changed it.

We just started so it's hard to have an opinion of it. The character design is excellent, I must say but it really lacks in the in-play animation if graphics are more your thing. So far it's fun, though. It's not as engaging as Abyss was in the beginning, however.

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Check out the Magicite Menagerie!

Retro gaming cosplayer with a focus on Terra Branford.

Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition. I've played the classic edition previously, and am playing the EE version before I switch to my new computer, and jump to Divinity: OS 2.

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Console RPG Cliches

Quote (Elena99 @ 23rd September 2017 16:50)

I'm playing the FFXII remake.

How is it? They didn't add any story content to it, right? I'm not big on the remakes, but it's good they changed the board and job system a bit.

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I say what I wanna say, I play how I wanna play.

I made a roguelike about goblins. It's called Goblin-Like.
...I'm addicted to it.

http://jacobabrennan.github.io/Goblinlike

You can check out a let's play / how to video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1C8TAebz4

I'm playing a horror rpg game from the 80's called sweet home.It is made by capcom in around 1988-89 and you control 5 people, each with 1 specific tool to deal with puzzles of the house:A woman with a medikit for healing curses and poisons, a girl with a key, a guy with a camera, a guy with a lighter and a person whom i can't tell if its a guy or girl named asuka.

Oh yeah the characters names:

Kazuo the lighter guy and wears full black
Taro has a camera and is in red
Akiko i presume is a girls name has a white medic hat and white nurse outfit.

Asuka is wearing blue and has a vacuum so i presume its a girl since only boys can use axes

Emi has a red outfit and a blue hairband and has a skeleton key which doesn't work on all doors.

The goal is to find the painting of i think it was miyami frescoes and take a picture with taro.Taking a picture reveals texts on the painting giving a clue as to where things are and bits of story.Your goal is to escape the house with all members and the house is full of traps and monsters, and it works a lot like a rpg, but aslo has a lot of puzzles like resident evil.

You can actually lose a party member if you put a wood log over a gap and it breaks and you fall through and nobody saves that party member, or in a turn based combat or from poison or curses.




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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Quote (Magitek_slayer @ 10th October 2017 15:56)

I'm playing a horror rpg game from the 80's called sweet home.It is made by capcom in around 1988-89 and you control 5 people, each with 1 specific tool to deal with puzzles of the house:A woman with a medikit for healing curses and poisons, a girl with a key, a guy with a camera, a guy with a lighter and a person whom i can't tell if its a guy or girl named asuka.

The Resident Evil series was one of my favorites growing up as a kid - I remember hearing about this game but never actually looked into it.. I have quite the back log of games piling up that I need to get to eventually.. but I think I'm going to go ahead and add this one to the list!

Actually looks pretty fun!

Played and finished System Shock...the first one. This sucka is old school son! Like, it came out a year after the original Doom, and unlike Doom, it was full 3d...and a lot more complex! Inventory, Audio Logs, the works! All started with this game.

My basic experience with it pretty much matches the this review from Super Bunnyhop. His review was based on a hacked version back before the game got re-released a couple years back as the 'enhanced edition', which is what I played, however both are functionally the same.

Mouselook really does make all the difference when playing this thing. It has a really wonky sense of weight to all your movement that makes it seem like you're character is just plastered 24/7. And its weird that for how complex the keyboard setup is, it can by entirely bypassed with the mouse interface. Makes things feel oddly tactile in a way I haven't experienced before. The closest comparison I can think of is how interactions worked in Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Tried my hand at the sequel and it is just godawful to play. Ugh...what a shame.

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Arts

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Twarts

I thought System Shock 2 was the much-lauded one?

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current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal

finished so far this year:
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 17th October 2017 02:04)

I thought System Shock 2 was the much-lauded one?

They both are, but System Shock 2 is typically rated a little higher.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

System Shock isn't a shooter so much as it is a 1st person Metroid. Exploration gets you items you need to access different parts of the station you're on and that's largely how you progress. There are enemies, but they're randomly generated after a point, slow and there's not a lotta strategy involved in taking them down. There's an melee weapon you can find about 1/3 of the way into the game that's a one shot kill for most everything you deal until the late game and even then, it's 2-3 swipes max for even the toughest foes. Point being, fighting is almost a non-element.

System Shock 2 however is very much a 1st person shooter and instead of being about exploration, its about augmenting combat through various forms of number-based stats, buffs, and RNG elements. It's meant to make the game feel more complex than it actually is, but instead makes everything cumbersome and awkward to control until presumably you've upped the necessary stats. The focus on combat over everything else leaves the level design to look confusing and non-functional compared to the original and upgrades are bought rather than found.

Between the two, the original was far more satisfying to play.

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Arts

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Twarts

That sounds like SS1 might be more my thing than SS2, actually. Though I should probably sort out my usual problem with 3D games, that being often getting headaches from them.

Anyway...

I've been playing Mini Metro lately. Really interesting puzzle/sim game (surprising for me to like a puzzle game).

Basically, city transit stations appear on a map. Passengers appear at each station and want to go to another station. You have to manage a transit system to accommodate them. Build different-colored lines and add upgrades to them (e.g. adding carriages to locomotives, giving them more passenger capacity, or turning stations into interchanges, accommodating more waiting passengers). Cities also have rivers which you can only cross if you have an adequate supply of bridges or tunnels. (Maps are vaguely based on real-world locations, e.g. London, Paris, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Washington DC, New York City, Montreal, Osaka, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Cairo, Istanbul, San Francisco, Shanghai, St. Petersburg).

In Normal mode, your score is the number of passengers you can get to their desired destinations before you have a station that gets overcrowded with waiting passengers, and every week you get some upgrades, always an extra locomotive and a choice of another upgrade. In Endless mode, your don't lose from overcrowding but get a limited (albeit high) number of locomotives and upgrades, while your score depends on (I think) how many passengers your system can accommodate at one time. In Extreme mode, it's like Normal mode except you cannot ever redraw tracks (though you're warned before the stations appear, I think).

The different transit stations are indicated by the following symbols. Passengers appear at these stations, with their own shape symbol indicating where they want to go. You can play the game simply by connecting the different shapes with transit lines, by mouse. Some destinations are unique, and may not appear on all maps. Sometimes generic stations may transform into unique stations.

* Circle: These generate many types of passengers, most commonly triangles, squares, and some pluses. Every map has many of these. I think these are residential areas.
* Triangle: Generates mostly circles, and some stars and pentagons. Every map has many of these, though maybe not as many as circles. I think these are business districts.
* Square: Generates a variety of passenger types, most commonly circles and triangles. Every map has a few of these, leading people to speculate these may represent transport hubs of some other sort (e.g. airports, seaports, long-distance rail and bus stations).
* Plus: A unique station. Generates circles. Based on its shape, speculated to represent a hospital.
* Star: a unique station. Generates triangles and circles. It may represent a government building or conference facility.
* Rhombus (actually more like a square turned on its side, or a “diamondshape”, but there’s also a diamond symbol): A unique station. Generates squares. Based on its shape (resembling a baseball diamond), believed by some to represent a recreational destination like a sports stadium or park.
* Oval (actually more like two quarter circles, resembling an oblong gridiron football): A unique station. I forgot what it generates. Based on its shape, believed by some to represent a recreational destination like a sports stadium.
* Wedge (quarter-wedge with round side facing down, like a teardrop): A unique station. Generates circles. Speculated by some to represent an educational institution or a tourism/travel destination.
* Pentagon (a regular pentagon with a vertex facing up): A unique station. Seems to generate squares and triangles. Good for jokes on the Washington DC map (though the actual Department of Defense "Pentagon" building is located in Arlington County, Virginia). Some imagine this may represent a hotel or an airport, though I think it's probably a government building, e.g. a courthouse.
* Diamond (an irregular symmetric pentagon with vertex facing down): A unique station. Based on its shape, thought to represent a shopping destination or a bank.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 20th October 2017 05:01

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current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal

finished so far this year:
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins

I've been playing Horizon Zero Dawn. It's got some really nice attention to detail going on which I appreciate and the combat is good fun, got to love taking on the really tough enemies. I still prefer The Witcher 3 overall for its characters & story telling but that will be a very hard game to top. Next up I'll probably be playing the new Wolfenstein game.

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'Let that be a lesson to all oppressive vegetable sellers.'

Just finally completed my recent playthrough of FF7... the plan was to move on to FF9 and then FF10... but I broke down and bought the Switch... Think I'm going to have to interrupt the FF gameplay for some Zelda for awhile

Had a losing streak in 100% Orange Juice a few nights back, then the last couple nights I've been on a mainly winning streak.

Meanwhile I'm now much further into The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. I'm near the end of the first game, in its final chapter. This is a game that basically begins as an adventurer with a slice-of-life feel, but gradually transitions to a different tone, with stuff like political intrigue being a big part of the story.

And the game lives up to its reputation of having an extremely finely-detailed script.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 2nd November 2017 08:45

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current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal

finished so far this year:
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins

So yeah, new computer now. That means I've made the promised jump to Divinity: Original Sin 2. Seems Larian may have simplified a few things from OS1, but overall, 2 is everything I've expected and more, at least so far.

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Console RPG Cliches

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 2nd November 2017 03:43)

Had a losing streak in 100% Orange Juice a few nights back, then the last couple nights I've been on a mainly winning streak.

Meanwhile I'm now much further into The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky.  I'm near the end of the first game, in its final chapter.  This is a game that basically begins as an adventurer with a slice-of-life feel, but gradually transitions to a different tone, with stuff like political intrigue being a big part of the story.

And the game lives up to its reputation of having an extremely finely-detailed script.

I have both of those, and both of them were gifted to me. :/ Weird.

I've wanted to delve in LOH:Trails for a long time. It just seems so complicated. Battle system reminds me of Grandia a lot. I wonder if there's a reason behind it...?

Someone who just randomly friended me gifted me 100% Orange Juice. Up until now I was kind of embarrassed about it, but I didn't want to offend them. It looks like a loli game :/ But you play it, and i respect your opinion. What is it? I mean a simple google search would have remedied my lack of knowledge, but I was afraid of what I might find out. Is it fun?

Edit: Uhm, did someone tell the makers of Legend of Heroes what Trails In The Sky ackronyms into? ...That's kind of unfortunate, what with its female lead...

This post has been edited by Spooniest on 10th November 2017 05:31

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X is blue.

I've shelved Final Fantasy XV for a bit because I'm starting to run up against a wall of how good I am at the game for my level versus the struggle of leveling up past the already very-high level my party is at. I'll probably come back to it in a couple weeks.

In the meantime I'm back into Rise of the Tomb Raider and am remembering how fun I find these new-Lara games. It took me an hour or so to get back into the flow of how to play and what exactly I'm doing beyond point A to point B, but I'm finding it as fun as the first.

I also popped the Final Fantasy X remaster into my PS4 for the first time last night because my daughter was bored and I thought she'd be interested to see it, and she was, even asking to pitch in on a battle or two early on. She'd always been a fan of Lightning in Yuna's costume in Lightning Returns, so she appreciated seeing the source briefly in the prologue.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Spooniest @ 9th November 2017 11:41)

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 2nd November 2017 03:43)

Had a losing streak in 100% Orange Juice a few nights back, then the last couple nights I've been on a mainly winning streak.

Meanwhile I'm now much further into The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky.  I'm near the end of the first game, in its final chapter.  This is a game that basically begins as an adventurer with a slice-of-life feel, but gradually transitions to a different tone, with stuff like political intrigue being a big part of the story.

And the game lives up to its reputation of having an extremely finely-detailed script.

I have both of those, and both of them were gifted to me. :/ Weird.

I've wanted to delve in LOH:Trails for a long time. It just seems so complicated. Battle system reminds me of Grandia a lot. I wonder if there's a reason behind it...?

Someone who just randomly friended me gifted me 100% Orange Juice. Up until now I was kind of embarrassed about it, but I didn't want to offend them. It looks like a loli game :/ But you play it, and i respect your opinion. What is it? I mean a simple google search would have remedied my lack of knowledge, but I was afraid of what I might find out. Is it fun?

Edit: Uhm, did someone tell the makers of Legend of Heroes what Trails In The Sky ackronyms into? ...That's kind of unfortunate, what with its female lead...

Oh, Estelle will do just fine threatening you with her bo staff. And she wields a darn mean bo staff. After all, she was trained by and is the daughter of the legendary Cassius Bright.

Trails isn't so much complicated as it is just long (people aren't kidding when they say it's a "slow burn") and intricately detailed. You can actually choose how much detail you want, because there's a variety of sidequests you can simply ignore if you want to, but if you're like me and you start talking to all the NPCs and getting to know the townsfolk you wanna help them all out and get that warm and fuzzy feeling. Plus the random chapters of Carnelia and other stuff. So in summary it's the kind of thing that's best if you just let the game tell its story rather than trying to be genre-savvy and rush through the game (and if you do try that you'll probably end up mispredicting things, as I've done, several times).

And you can even run around enemies if you don't want to fight them, and if you do want to fight them, you can ambush them to get more turns at the beginning of battle. The battle system is actually pretty easy-to-understand and has a pretty nice interface, and on top of that you can now turbo the game when you wanna tell it to get on with it. (It's very much not the challenging game that Ys is; the only things it shares are the developer and the high level of polish.) And in a refreshing design point for a JRPG, this game is really story-focused, and it will not do things like, say, inserting a boss just because you expect a boss at the end of a dungeon/quest.

As for 100% Orange Juice...

Well, it's not a "loli game", nor anything with sexual content (unless a shirtless guy holding a rose is considered "sexual"). The art is just cutesy in a chibi way, that's all. Everything in the game is "safe for work" and generally family-friendly at least for anyone who's a teenager or older...with the exception of multiplayer chat and lobby names, where people get to say whatever they want, and so you get your fair share of bad memes and edgy crap.

That said the multiplayer scene tends to be more chill than for the usual PVP games, probably because the game does have a strong component of randomness which can easily screw over even the most experienced of players and produce really unexpected results. It's good advice to consider that a game isn't over until it's truly over -- it's entirely possible for what seems like an inevitable victory to come up short and then get redirected through some series of unexpected events into a 4th-place defeat, and any veteran will know this. So there's probably a bit of a "humbling influence" there.

But the gameplay is rather unique in that it's not about erasing randomness. It's about embracing randomness and rolling with it, literally and figuratively. There is actually a great and surprising depth of strategy to it, and it revolves around taking advantage of situations, planning on likely outcomes, and taking calculated risks while fully knowing that they might backfire. Also, simple headmathing is very useful in this game.

As for myself, I like the game a lot. I even wrote a guide for new players, explaining all the mechanics of the game, because the game's manual is a bit dated and it doesn't have an in-game tutorial.

Also a plus for 100% OJ, as well as Trails -- the dev, or technically the localizer, is very active in maintaining the game. 100% OJ in particular has had lots of DLC releases of extra characters and free updates with new content and features. It's been greatly improved since the original pre-Steam release. In fact one of the most recent updates added a way to get the original 12 characters of the game without having to play the single-player campaigns...though I still personally suggest playing them to learn the mechanics. (And single-player has turbo, too!)

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current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal

finished so far this year:
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins

Legend of Dragoon
Grandia II
Xenosaga Episode I
Resident Evil Code: Veronica X
Tales of Phantasia are my favorite games.