Great LPs outside of Talking Time

MCBanjoMike · #**211** 11-15-2011, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MCBanjoMike

I've been reading this and it really is super great. As someone who had almost no prior knowledge of Xenogears, watching someone go through the game, it almost looks like it would be...fun?? I'm half tempted to try playing it for myself, but everything I've heard about it leads me to believe that I would eventually come to regret that decision if I did.

I finally broke down and bought this last night - pray for me. I played about 2 hours, and I actually enjoyed it! Except for the encounter rate in dungeons, ouch. Anyway, the SA forums are once again open to the public, so everyone should return to reading this fantastic LP.

Glass Knuckle · #**212** 11-15-2011, 01:55 PM

That Xenogears LP is pretty much the only thing keeping me interested in finishing the game. I've gone from reading just behind my own progress in the game to avoid spoilers, to just ahead of my progress so I'll have something more entertaining to think about when I see the vanilla version of events.

Meditative_Zebra · #**213** 11-17-2011, 03:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turnip

THIS IS NOT THE PROPER ORDER IN WHICH TO DO THE EVENTS OF LINK's AWAKENING

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. J

Oh man that's so great. Can't wait for the rest of them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meditative_Zebra

I've never even played Link's Awakening and this blows my mind.

I was just trying to show this series of videos to a friend. Sadly, the link Turnip posted goes to the Something Awful forums and is blocked for anyone who hasn't ponied up cash monies to have an account with their site.

Thankfully the videos of this dude's LP are out on Youtube and can be found here. It's a pretty great LP!

Refa · #**214** 11-19-2011, 06:56 PM

BTW, in regards to the FFT romhacks, in that LP there was mention of LFT (another FFT romhack). The mission statement is a lot more inspiring than FFT 1.3, to say the least.

http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=2452.0

Anyone else hear anything about it?

Mogri · #**215** 11-19-2011, 09:52 PM

I've seen someone LP it informally. It's FFT, but bigger and flashier. It's not so much a challenge patch as it is a rebalance patch, and I think most things got adjusted up. The LPer really enjoyed it, as someone who's beaten vanilla probably a dozen times.

poetfox · #**216** 11-29-2011, 06:53 PM

Pigeon Dating Sim.

KCar · #**217** 12-05-2011, 12:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by poetfox

Pigeon Dating Sim.

I got a friend of mine with more of a tolerance for Weird Asian Things to play this and liveblog it on facebook. She didn't reveal as much of the underlying weirdness in the back story as Ms. Gallant has been able to.

I remember her playthrough of a DS dating sim - was it a tokimeki? In any case, seconding the recommendation.

Pajaro Pete · #**218** 12-10-2011, 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mogri

The best part of 1.3 is listening to people defend it.

Archael finally appeared in that thread, presumably after some goober showed up and started whining about how you don't have to grind in FFT 1.3.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Archael

Hi

I am the editor of Final Fantasy Tactics 1.3.

If you need verification that this is the real Archael, feel free to go to http://www.insanedifficulty.com (the site 1.3 is hosted on and where I work on it and other hard type mods) and make a post asking if the guy posting as Archael on SA is for real.

I found this thread because someone linked me to it on romhacking.net, trying to express the sentiment that 1.3 is a bad mod because it gets shot down here by people saying that it's unfair, difficult in the wrong ways, lame, boring, tedious, or whatever else.

I'm going to try to explain why some people are either off base, wrong, not getting it, need to learn to play, or why the mod isn't for them and they need to go play Bejeweled instead.

I feel that this will best be done in a Q/A format and it'll save space too. Here you go:

Q1: Wow the editor of 1.3 must be insane / masochistic / has asperger's / didn't know what he was doing!
A1: Actually, I'm just a guy that has played FFT since release and felt that the original game had great gameplay, but was way too easy.

Q2: This is bad design. This is the wrong way of doing "difficulty" in FFT. What he should have done is balance everything perfectly, then tweak the AI so that it is smarter, harder to beat, and/or is on even footing with the player but can challenge players more than Vanilla:
A2: You have no idea how many limitations hacking / modding FFT has currently. It is IMPOSSIBLE to tweak the game's AI enough right now where you can release a hard type mod where enemies are on a perfectly balanced ruleset with the player and the player can still be challenged. Gaming has not evolved to that point yet. Gaming AI isn't at that point yet, and Hacking / Modding is not at that point yet.

If you want to be on perfect even footing with an enemy and want to be challenged. by skill alone, play Chess. A modded game, or any video game at all, is not for you.

Q3: FFT1.3 only makes me need to grind more!!! This isnt difficulty, its just more tedium!!
A3: You can grind levels, XP, and JP if you wish. But the game WILL adjust its difficulty to take this into account. Enemies will match their level with yours, and their gear will scale accordingly. Whether or not you "grind" in 1.3 is up to the player, but the game certainly does not encourage it, nor demand it.

One thing is certain: Grinding is a much less viable strategy in 1.3 than it was in Vanilla. You can do it, but don't expect a jail out of free card. Grinding too high is NOT recommended for newbies of 1.3 because enemies will scale far too sharply for them to be able to manage. Usually, this forces them to start over and keep their levels in check.

There is no way out of difficulty in 1.3. Sooner or later, no matter what you do, you will have to learn to play by the game's mechanics. And yes, it is a hard type mod, and yes, it does rebalance things more than it did in Vanilla.

Q4: I was pro at FFT! I am a FFT VET! HOW DARE YOU MAKE THIS THING WHICH CHALLENGES ME AND DOESNT LET ME /FACEROLL THROUGH IT?
A4: The simple fact is, if you find 1.3 hard, you were never that good at FFT to begin with. Or, you abused overpowered mechanics which let you create immortal units or wipe out the entire map's worth of enemies in a single turn.

Q5: You're lying. No one plays 1.3 and has an easy time with it. 1.3 is impossible.
A5: You are wrong. There's many 1.3 LP's / Walkthroughs on Youtube that can help you out, done by people better than you, more knowledgeable at the game than you, and generally more patient than you.

Q6: ARRGGH. YOU MAKE ME ANGRY!! WHY CANT I JUST BLAME THE GAME / MOD / THE CREATOR?

A6: Calm down. 1.3 is a difficulty mod. What were you expecting? Pink Candy Pony Land? You will never get better at it without patience. If you want an easy game, why are you playing a Difficulty Mod? It doesn't make sense.

Q7: Archael, you used falsed advertising. 1.3 isn't just a rebalance mod, it is a hard type mod.

A7: I never tried to hide the fact that 1.3 GREATLY increases difficulty. It is usually the first line in any 1.3-related description I put out. 1.3 is a DIFFICULTY, rebalance, and content modification of Final Fantasy Tactics.

Q8: You are a bad modder / hacker / game designer. Your mod sucks.

A8: Then don't play it. I am not perfect, and neither are any of my projects. But by that same logic, you are not perfect either, and if you tried 1.3 thinking you could manage it and failed, stop blaming the game or its design for your own inability to adapt or figure out the obstacles it presents. Tons of people beat 1.3 already. Why can't you? If you spent 5% of the time and energy you did formulating arguments against its design in figuring out how to beat the enemy in 1.3, you'd have finished it by now.

Summary: A lot of you aren't very good at FFT, and by extension, 1.3. There's people out there who feel 1.3 is TOO EASY. Mind Boggling, huh? They are just like you, except they are much better at FFT's mechanics.

Learn to play, and if you don't like hard mods, why did you go through the trouble of downloading / patching / playing one?

I'll hang around this thread for awhile, because these 9 answers are probably going to generate even more questions.

- Archael

Mogri · #**219** 12-10-2011, 05:07 PM

Archael is a regular of the GameFAQs FFT board. He is way more of a jerk there than in this document.

Alpha Werewolf · #**220** 12-10-2011, 05:55 PM

Yeah, he's a jerk. But as a long-time fan of his channel, I can tell you that he's also right about a lot of things, including how 1.3 was always supposed to make the game much harder, and the fact that some people feel like it's too easy.

SpoonyGundam · #**221** 12-11-2011, 11:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turnip

Archael finally appeared in that thread, presumably after some goober showed up and started whining about how you don't have to grind in FFT 1.3.

I can't decide whether the best part is when Archael decided to take some of the criticism to heart and try to make a more balanced alternate version of the hack, or when he tried to backpedal out of making said alternate version within a few hours of announcing it.

MrChris · #**222** 12-11-2011, 12:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpoonyGundam

I can't decide whether the best part is when Archael decided to take some of the criticism to heart and try to make a more balanced alternate version of the hack, or when he tried to backpedal out of making said alternate version within a few hours of announcing it.

I think the absolute best is that Archael has since started a thread for his own Let's Play of vanilla FFT. It's a solo archer challenge. In video format. The original post inititally included a link to over 20 videos on Youtube, most of which appear to be between one and two hours long.

Have you ever wanted to spend 40 hours watching Ramza slowly plinking enemies to death as an archer? Oh boy, does Archael ever have an LP for you!

Pajaro Pete · #**223** 12-11-2011, 12:36 PM

God that whole clusterfuck was brilliant.

MrChris · #**224** 12-11-2011, 03:01 PM

There's a chapter in Al Franken's Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot where he describes listening to the Rush Limbaugh show for the first time. He tunes in to hear Limbaugh talking about a line of ties that he's marketing; he expounds at length on how great the ties are, how other people are lying about the ties, how the ties aren't as conservative as people are saying, how none of the ties have stripes. Franken is baffled and switches to a different station for fifteen minutes; when he switches back to Limbaugh's show, he's still talking about the ties.

Watching this video is the Let's Play equivalent of that experience. SPOILER WARNING: the first five minutes of video consists of a video feed of a forum thread, and a dude reading the messages in the thread while periodically trying to make Final Fantasy Tactics sound effects into his microphrone.

The other thing that's odd about the video is how quickly it becomes apparent that, for a guy who loves to talk about how his ROMhack is only for the most elite pro FFT players, Archael is actually a pretty lousy player. I actually watched the first battle in that video just to see how one plays a solo archer challenge, but all I learned is that if you a) concentrate your attacks on the slowest enemies who will never catch up to your character anyway and b) somehow contrive to move your single archer in such a way that the enemies are outside his bow's attack range while he's still within their melee range, you'll probably lose the battle.

All of which is to say that Turnip is correct, and that Final Fantasy 1.3 has been a brilliant godsend to the world of Let's Plays.

Giampi · #**225** 12-11-2011, 04:32 PM

The best part is where he boasts about how he's going to destroy a particular set of enemies, and then immediately starts screaming that enemies are going to rape him, like, two seconds later.

Kjara · #**226** 12-11-2011, 11:24 PM

Looks like he actually ended up releasing an easier version (he ended up actually releasing it when someone called him on the backpedaling). If anyone actually wanted to try out the class reworks and such but didn't enjoy suffering through the difficulty, you have the chance now (not to say that the random battles won't still be a pain at times but at least they usually contain less bs than the storyline battles).

The drama is hilarious though.

On a related note, LFT, one of the other romhacks mentioned in that thread is actually quite good so far (just hit chapter 4 in it).

SpoonyGundam · #**227** 12-12-2011, 12:04 AM

I'm seriously a bit impressed with him for actually putting that hack together. Dude is still kind of an ass, but it's definitely a step in the right direction to stop being such an ass.

MrChris · #**228** 12-12-2011, 12:30 PM

I'm also impressed, and somewhat surprised; the dude works fast. That is now the only Let's Play I've seen which has directly resulted in an update to the game being LP'd. I'd say that qualifies as pretty great.

dosboot · #**229** 12-14-2011, 10:36 PM

OK - gamercal here is an LP'er I'd like to share.

He has a great knack for explaining mechanics and he's a good player to watch play on top of that. Seriously, check out his Super Mario Kart LP videos (4 videos at the moment, but oddly only 3 in the playlist) - half of everything I presently know about Mario Kart on the SNES comes from these videos. Along the same lines, I also liked the mechanics commentary woven into his co-op Mario 3 LP and his (live!) Touhou videos.

And one more thing! An interesting stand alone video from a co-op super mario world hack. Admittedly it is just a 30 minute long puzzle level (starts around 1:45) which may or may not be anything new to you. The co-op commentary makes it more compelling than most though, and they encounter more than one unexpected surprise.

jpm84 · #**230** 12-29-2011, 02:09 PM

I don't know if any of you already saw this "Let's Break FF6" before, it's been running for a little while. It concluded yesterday, and it blew my damn mind. I can't spoil it, even if you could probably predict the ending yourself.

I don't post on Talking Time much, and it's been a long time since I've posted here, but I immediately thought of you guys.

Kishi · #**231** 12-29-2011, 05:22 PM

This is pretty great.

Googleshng · #**232** 12-29-2011, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpm84

I don't know if any of you already saw this "Let's Break FF6" before, it's been running for a little while. It concluded yesterday, and it blew my damn mind. I can't spoil it, even if you could probably predict the ending yourself.

I don't post on Talking Time much, and it's been a long time since I've posted here, but I immediately thought of you guys.

Well wow. That was just wonderful that was. Wasted entirely too much time with it, but still.

Violet · #**233** 12-30-2011, 02:24 AM

Oh cool, I've been waiting for an update on that glitch, which was found ages ago but dropped out of sight for some reason. Thanks, jpm84.

Yay, a new reason to replay FF6! Last time it was to beat it with just Edgar, Setzer, and Kutan.

Kahran042 · #**234** 12-30-2011, 03:24 PM

Just about anything by these two, at least in my not-so-humble opinion. Also, I'm not sure if they've been mentioned yet, but Nakar's Ultima LPs and Thuryl's Might & Magic and Phantasy Star LPs on the LP Archive.

McClain · #**235** 12-30-2011, 07:09 PM

What the heck did he just do to FF6? I just read the first update and my mind is already blown.

I need to check this thread more often.

Brickroad · #**236** 01-02-2012, 07:30 AM

4-player Battletoads race starring ProtonJon and three guys who are not ProtonJon.

Aaron M · #**237** 01-04-2012, 08:56 AM

Speaking of Battletoads races, here's Psychedelic Eyeball's race from 2008. Without infinite lives.

narcodis · #**238** 01-12-2012, 09:00 PM

Rock band soundtracks a live playthrough of megaman 2 on stage in front of hundreds of people. Which is just about the coolest idea I've ever heard.

Mogri · #**239** 01-12-2012, 10:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by narcodis

Rock band soundtracks a live playthrough of megaman 2 on stage in front of hundreds of people. Which is just about the coolest idea I've ever heard.

He played it on Normal. Respect: lost

ais523 · #**240** 01-15-2012, 01:52 PM

Hey, I think I can combine those!

Speeddemosarchive's charity speedrun marathon last year featured a live Battletoads race, where instead of using the game soundtrack, someone played it on piano in the background. Sadly, the recording of what happened doesn't seem to be working right now, but hopefully it'll have cleared up by the time you read this.