No more Let's Plays, for now

I was once like you, but...

Metal Man is surprisingly easy to kill and having the metal blade just makes the rest of the game more fun. You'll miss out on one energy tank, since you won't have Item 1 or 2, but you can find enough later that you'll fill up your available spaces anyway. After taking out Metal Man, pretty much anything is fair game - personally, I don't have the courage to attack Heat Man's stage without Item 2 (though I did do it once). Conversely, I make it a point of honor to never use the time stopper in Quick Man's stage; I prefer to save it for use on the man himself!

He may not die, but he sure can dance*.

*login req'd

You know, you're probably really on to something here. The key to avoiding a flood of mediocre Let's Play threads could be a golden rule of everyone with the idea of doing one waiting a minimum of one-week to mull it over and see if the idea still sounds funny or interesting to them. Usually sleeping on an idea is the best way to start off.

I'm still trying to figure this one out. Mind you, I like the Bubble Man STAGE the most (some of the best music in a game known for great music, giant frogs, neat deathtrap with the disappearing platforms and all the spikes, lots of unique enemies)... but, c'mon, he practically throws himself into the Metal Blades. It's the easiest boss in the game that's not the second Metal Man fight.

I tended to stick to the traditional Air -> Metal -> (Who the heck cares, you've got the Metal Blade and Item 2 and can pretty much beat the game at that point) routine.

Hopefully my "how to embezzle money while playing X-Com as ruthlessly as possible" approach counts here.

I didn't mind the other threads (since it was Brick's by-then-wrapped FF1 thread, DW, and me, I figured there'd be others)... I just don't have time to keep track of all the others at once AND write my own. Although now that the mechanics section of X-Com is over, it's actually going to be a reasonably quick run to the finish, with actually playing the game taking longer than writing about it due to the nature of the game. The last couple of missions will get a more detailed writeup, of course.

This. I knew it was going to be time-consuming, but even so I was surprised. My blog has been gathering dust while I write this thing.

You could always just cross-post the updates to your blog!

I was working on a FFIV Cecil solo run, but it was sooooooo boring, and eventually impossible, that I'm glad I didn't start a doomed Let's Play.

Where did you hit the stopping point? Mt. Ordeals?

I was going good until I hit the Water Fiend, and then I had to grind to out pace its healing. Then I got to the Air Fiend, and you have to use Kain to STOP HER SPIN!. Then I got to Dr. Lugae and there is an explosion that will kill you pretty much no matter what. I stopped there, but I would have also been stuck at the sealed cave where the doors do insta-kills.

But the real problem is that Cecil is so boring. All you can do is fight-fight-heal, and there really isn't any strategy. You can't even really use items for spells, because in FFIV you have to be able to equip the item, and Cecil can equip rods.

I've been doing a FFII (GBA) solo run, and that's going better, but I think I don't have the will power to finish any kind of solo run, because it often comes down to power-leveling. I think I'm more interested in doing one of the Zelda runs we've had on here, as that's more about skill than stats.

Man, I forgot about all that nastiness. FFIV seems the most hostile to solo runs of all the FF games I've played. FFVI had broken weapons and the Magicite system and FFVII doesn't even pretend to fight back once you have Mime (IIRC, Ruby Weapon's a solo fight no matter what you do.) Props on getting as far as you did.

Thank you for the propers.

To really be able to solo a game, you need to be able to customize some. Otherwise it's really, really boring. And in the more story-driven games, it's sometime impossible to get past a place without a certain skill, or at least a meatshield.

I was thinking about creating a "weakest link" FFIV run. Basically, I would take votes on who was the shittiest player in each party throughout the game, and solo him/her until the party changed again. Leveling would be a total bitch, but it would be interesting to see if you could beat Mt. Ordeals with Palom (wait, was that the girl? I forget) or the Tower of Babil with Cid. Fabul war with just Edward. Lunar ruins with Rydia (or Edge. That's for the voters to choose). Stuff like that. But then again, I'd still have to allow for meatshields in certain areas. It's probably still be impossible to beat. Someone who's not me should try it.

I would think that III and V would make good solo runs because of the party system, but I don't have the skills to try that. Plus, truth be told, I always preferred the story RPGs over the character-tweak ones.