What are you playing?

[abe]

To those of you who have successfully played though Ni no Kuni, I could use some advice. How do you deal with your AI controlled party members? Ever since Esther joined my party, I've been having trouble with boss fights since the AI doesn't seem to ever bother blocking the powerful attacks bosses have. This far too often results in the demise of whoever I'm not controlling at the moment, which in turn causes me to lose a battle otherwise going quite well. Maybe I'm missing something really obvious here, but I could really use a hand. I really don't want to quit the game out of frustration, since it's pretty amazing in most other areas. (I'm loving the beautiful art and orchestral soundtrack)

The AI is definitely the weak point of that game.  However, there is a way to command all of your people at once to take up a defensive or offensive stance.  It's been almost a year & a half since I played, so I don't remember what it is, but I do remember being able to do that.

Also, there's no shame in kicking the difficulty down to easy to help compensate for the weak AI.  There's also no penalty for it, if you're going for the plat. 

I'll have to look into that defend command, thanks. There may be no shame in playing on lower difficulties, but I don't find it nearly as satisfying to progress in a game on the easiest setting. Metal Slug XX on the PSP is a good example. I probably wouldn't have been able to finish it without the beginner mode, but it kinda takes all of the fun and satisfaction out of it.

[argyle]

To those of you who have successfully played though Ni no Kuni, I could use some advice. How do you deal with your AI controlled party members? Ever since Esther joined my party, I've been having trouble with boss fights since the AI doesn't seem to ever bother blocking the powerful attacks bosses have. This far too often results in the demise of whoever I'm not controlling at the moment, which in turn causes me to lose a battle otherwise going quite well. Maybe I'm missing something really obvious here, but I could really use a hand. I really don't want to quit the game out of frustration, since it's pretty amazing in most other areas. (I'm loving the beautiful art and orchestral soundtrack)

The AI is definitely the weak point of that game.  However, there is a way to command all of your people at once to take up a defensive or offensive stance.  It's been almost a year & a half since I played, so I don't remember what it is, but I do remember being able to do that.

Also, there's no shame in kicking the difficulty down to easy to help compensate for the weak AI.  There's also no penalty for it, if you're going for the plat. 

I'll have to look into that defend command, thanks. There may be no shame in playing on lower difficulties, but I don't find it nearly as satisfying to progress in a game on the easiest setting. Metal Slug XX on the PSP is a good example. I probably wouldn't have been able to finish it without the beginner mode, but it kinda takes all of the fun and satisfaction out of it.

Eh, I don't want a game to just let me walk through it, but at the same time often devs don't know how to balance their games - or I guess I should say, they don't know how to balance them *for me* - and I find what they call "easy" to be more in line with what I would consider "normal".  And also, as in the case of NNK, when I start getting frustrated with what amounts to a poor job on the devs part in one specific area of the game I'd rather drop the difficulty than continue to be frustrated and/or quit playing. 

Tl;DR - I think difficulty in gaming is a very interesting topic that I could talk about at length, but basically I think it's silly to think one or even 3 "levels" will fit every player, and it's equally silly to name those levels "easy" "normal" and "hard". 

[soera]

To those of you who have successfully played though Ni no Kuni, I could use some advice. How do you deal with your AI controlled party members? Ever since Esther joined my party, I've been having trouble with boss fights since the AI doesn't seem to ever bother blocking the powerful attacks bosses have. This far too often results in the demise of whoever I'm not controlling at the moment, which in turn causes me to lose a battle otherwise going quite well. Maybe I'm missing something really obvious here, but I could really use a hand. I really don't want to quit the game out of frustration, since it's pretty amazing in most other areas. (I'm loving the beautiful art and orchestral soundtrack)

Simply the best game ever made! And Argyle is right. There are commands that allow you to set up the default form your AI characters are in. Plus you can switch from character to character mid fight. What I would normally do is control Oliver almost exclusively and put my big melee familiars on him. Ester and Swaine I gave my main healer characters so that when I wasnt swapping off of Oliver, they had a chance to survive stuff. Those winged cat characters are pretty damned good healing familiars (I can not remember their name off hand other than I believe it was something like Auralynx).

[bobster]

To mimic what everyone else has said so far, at a certain point in the story, you'll unlock the "all out defense" and "all out attack" commands. That makes things a lot easier to defend. I suspect you might not be at that point yet.

[abe]

To mimic what everyone else has said so far, at a certain point in the story, you'll unlock the "all out defense" and "all out attack" commands. That makes things a lot easier to defend. I suspect you might not be at that point yet.

Well, I guess I'm lowering the difficulty until I get to that part. Thanks to all who replied.

[kamikazekeeg]

Payday 2 is a lot of fun.  It has problems like kinda terrible AI, poor hit detection, and the costs of buying the gear seems outrageous for a game that isn't Free 2 Play, but the missions can be very hectic and challenging.

[dashv]

Dragon Warrior for nes on the Retron 5 with a cheat that let me start a new game at level 30 with max gold and every attack is an "excellent move".

Got Erdrick's armor 5 minutes in.

[turf]

Dragon Warrior for nes on the Retron 5 with a cheat that let me start a new game at level 30 with max gold and every attack is an "excellent move".

Got Erdrick's armor 5 minutes in.

That game has to be really short without the grinding.

[dashv]

Dragon Warrior for nes on the Retron 5 with a cheat that let me start a new game at level 30 with max gold and every attack is an "excellent move".

Got Erdrick's armor 5 minutes in.

That game has to be really short without the grinding.

10 minutes in saved the princess.

[argyle]

I finally booted up Drakengard 3 tonight, and it's a lot of fun so far.  It's certainly more reminiscent of the other 2 Drakengard games than Nier, but at the same time there are definite Nier influences.  Levels seem more linear and less "wide open battlefields".  So far (only play 2 levels in) you can only use your dragon at predefined spots.  The story is really what makes it, and I'm very interested to see where that goes.

I guess the main negative is that technically, it's kind of a mess.  The artistic direction is great, but the constant screen tearing and framerate stuttering hurt your appreciation of it.  Not a deal breaker by any means, but it strikes me as odd that S-E keeps greenlighting games in this series while at the same time apparently giving them extremely small budgets. 

[kamikazekeeg]

Got the Arkham Origins DLC "Cold, Cold Heart" last night which wasn't too bad.  I got about a good 3 hours out of it and while it isn't anything amazing, it was entertaining enough for the most part.  The XE suit for Batman was pretty sweet.  Kinda wish they planned some more content, like something specifically with Joker in mind since I wanted to see more of that Joker, but I can always play through Origins again to get that fun lol

[doctorlaudanum]

I finally booted up Drakengard 3 tonight, and it's a lot of fun so far.  It's certainly more reminiscent of the other 2 Drakengard games than Nier, but at the same time there are definite Nier influences.  Levels seem more linear and less "wide open battlefields".  So far (only play 2 levels in) you can only use your dragon at predefined spots.  The story is really what makes it, and I'm very interested to see where that goes.

I guess the main negative is that technically, it's kind of a mess.  The artistic direction is great, but the constant screen tearing and framerate stuttering hurt your appreciation of it.  Not a deal breaker by any means, but it strikes me as odd that S-E keeps greenlighting games in this series while at the same time apparently giving them extremely small budgets.

Well, it wouldn't be a Drakengard game if it wasn't kind of a mess.

[disgaeniac]

I finally booted up Drakengard 3 tonight, and it's a lot of fun so far.  It's certainly more reminiscent of the other 2 Drakengard games than Nier, but at the same time there are definite Nier influences.  Levels seem more linear and less "wide open battlefields".  So far (only play 2 levels in) you can only use your dragon at predefined spots.  The story is really what makes it, and I'm very interested to see where that goes.

I guess the main negative is that technically, it's kind of a mess.  The artistic direction is great, but the constant screen tearing and framerate stuttering hurt your appreciation of it.  Not a deal breaker by any means, but it strikes me as odd that S-E keeps greenlighting games in this series while at the same time apparently giving them extremely small budgets.

Well, it wouldn't be a Drakengard game if it wasn't kind of a mess.

did either/both of you read the book that came with the LE before starting?

*Anyone else notice that - no matter how long it's been since doc L's posted - putting up any kind of thread, comment, topic, discussion, or thoughts about anything related to NieR and/or Drakengard acts like an...

...instant 'Summon' kind of spell for her? 

[bobster]

I finally booted up Drakengard 3 tonight, and it's a lot of fun so far.  It's certainly more reminiscent of the other 2 Drakengard games than Nier, but at the same time there are definite Nier influences.  Levels seem more linear and less "wide open battlefields".  So far (only play 2 levels in) you can only use your dragon at predefined spots.  The story is really what makes it, and I'm very interested to see where that goes.

I guess the main negative is that technically, it's kind of a mess.  The artistic direction is great, but the constant screen tearing and framerate stuttering hurt your appreciation of it.  Not a deal breaker by any means, but it strikes me as odd that S-E keeps greenlighting games in this series while at the same time apparently giving them extremely small budgets.

Well, it wouldn't be a Drakengard game if it wasn't kind of a mess.

did either/both of you read the book that came with the LE before starting?

*Anyone else notice that - no matter how long it's been since doc L's posted - putting up any kind of thread, comment, topic, discussion, or thoughts about anything related to NieR and/or Drakengard acts like an...

...instant 'Summon' kind of spell for her? 

She's always watching until she's needed.

[doctorlaudanum]

I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED. HOM GALLECH NE'ALLAY FRAY NATILA.

Guilty of all charges. I'm not gonna lie, I know I have a problem. The Drakengard series will be the death of me. I swear I'm not normally this creepy.

To answer your first question, disgaeniac, I was going to read it until I saw the big fat spoiler warning in the table of contents. This is the first game in the series where I went in completely blind, and I wanted to keep things as spoiler-free as possible and failed miserably by going to fan blogs like the idiot I am.