stymie

The best trolls are broken.

"Hey everybody, it's Tuuueeesssday."

That line, in that hilarious, lovable tone, was stuck in my head all day. I've never met Ryan Davis, and I had to excuse myself today and step outside because I was getting choked up -- that speaks volumes for the kind of man he seemed to be. All day long, the love was pouring in; every game website I look at has had some kind of tribute up or another. Hell, Ryan even made the front page of Reuters. He was so loved, and seemed to have left such a positive, lasting impression on everyone who met him. I'm only sad that I'll never have that chance.

A couple months back, I had to travel to Delaware for work, just on the other side of the river from New Jersey. Being from Central IL, it was a hefty trip -- but I had asked my bosses if I could drive instead of fly. For one thing, I have lost my tolerance for airports -- especially being a bigger guy -- but I had another secret motive. I was almost a month behind on Bombcasts due to real life interventions, and I figured there was no better way to catch up. My entire 12-13 hour drive home was a massive Bombcast marathon, and the whole silly notion of it entertained me to no end.

Ryan could get me from stoic to damned-near-pissing-my-pants laughing in the first 30 minutes of almost every Bombcast. The best were the segues into food conversations. He would take some seemingly innocuous statement on something as trivial as a preferred brand of ketchup and manage to turn it into a serious 20 minute debate. And it would never fail -- only at the end of the debate, after I was grinning ear to ear with sore cheeks from laughing so hard, would I realize how dumb it was that [whatever the topic was] had just become a massive debate.

What a fun, fun guy. My most sincere condolences for his newly wed wife, his family, and all of his friends. For the rest of the Giant Bomb crew, and especially Jeff -- I don't know what to say. I lost my two best childhood friends at a very young age (22), and we often forget how much closer we are with our true best friends than we even are with, sometimes, our own family. I hope everyone is able to find a bit of peace and a bit of laughter remembering how much fun and happiness Ryan brought to everyone around him.

-JS

"Hey everybody, it's Tuuueeesssday."

That line, in that hilarious, lovable tone, was stuck in my head all day. I've never met Ryan Davis, and I had to excuse myself today and step outside because I was getting choked up -- that speaks volumes for the kind of man he seemed to be. All day long, the love was pouring in; every game website I look at has had some kind of tribute up or another. Hell, Ryan even made the front page of Reuters. He was so loved, and seemed to have left such a positive, lasting impression on everyone who met him. I'm only sad that I'll never have that chance.

A couple months back, I had to travel to Delaware for work, just on the other side of the river from New Jersey. Being from Central IL, it was a hefty trip -- but I had asked my bosses if I could drive instead of fly. For one thing, I have lost my tolerance for airports -- especially being a bigger guy -- but I had another secret motive. I was almost a month behind on Bombcasts due to real life interventions, and I figured there was no better way to catch up. My entire 12-13 hour drive home was a massive Bombcast marathon, and the whole silly notion of it entertained me to no end.

Ryan could get me from stoic to damned-near-pissing-my-pants laughing in the first 30 minutes of almost every Bombcast. The best were the segues into food conversations. He would take some seemingly innocuous statement on something as trivial as a preferred brand of ketchup and manage to turn it into a serious 20 minute debate. And it would never fail -- only at the end of the debate, after I was grinning ear to ear with sore cheeks from laughing so hard, would I realize how dumb it was that [whatever the topic was] had just become a massive debate.

What a fun, fun guy. My most sincere condolences for his newly wed wife, his family, and all of his friends. For the rest of the Giant Bomb crew, and especially Jeff -- I don't know what to say. I lost my two best childhood friends at a very young age (22), and we often forget how much closer we are with our true best friends than we even are with, sometimes, our own family. I hope everyone is able to find a bit of peace and a bit of laughter remembering how much fun and happiness Ryan brought to everyone around him.

-JS

Microsoft is going to have to decide who their core audience is, and I think at this point it's fair to say they're not targeting the hardcore gamer niche.

And that's their choice, of course. But likewise, this is a gaming website; and one that, I would say, tends to somewhat favor the more dedicated gaming crowd. The OP cannot expect everyone to see and like a product in the same context as him, and it should not be any surprise that the Giant Bomb staff critiqued the Xbox One on the basis of it as a gaming device. If the GB staff gives opinions on the quality of a new iPhone or Android handset, I expect them to primarily talk about its gaming ecosystem. Do both devices do a dozen other things? Sure -- but this is Giant Bomb, not The Verge. I'm not here to see what problems Vinny had with dropped calls, I'm here to see Vinny dropkick innocent civilians as he bursts out the door of his Chinese apartment.

I don't have Cable TV, and I'll never pay for it again as long as I can get by on a combo of services like Hulu Plus & Amazon Prime / Instant Video. Therefor, I found this unveil a bit lacking; Microsoft seems intent on focusing on things I don't want and don't care about in a gaming console (or are, at the least, secondary concerns). I'm underwhelmed by the XBox One at this point, and the PS4 reveal definitely left me more excited.

However, that doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to E3 with an open mind!

Living in the U.S. I don't have the same forced restrictions, but as a cable-cutter who gets by on Hulu Plus + Amazon Prime / Instant Video, I feel the same way. The Xbox One's (does that make it the President's Xbox?) big feature list simply doesn't apply to me.

Rocco from Boondock Saints, is that you? I LOVE YOU, MAN!

Thank you; I figured once I stopped failing on the blade mode sequence, it would be mostly rinse & repeat. That makes me feel a lot closer than seeing the 140% does, that's all I needed to know.

So the last boss has been absolutely wrecking me. I went through a couple dozen attempts, none of which went well. Granted, I got to the last boss with only one nano paste available and repeatedly failed the Blade Mode event (timing is a little tight for my blade mode aiming skill, apparently). I repeatedly got the boss down to around 140%, but not past that point. So, a few questions for anyone who has finished the game:

1) Are there any opportunities to get nanopaste in the fight that I am not taking advantage of? (Guessing maybe the blade mode event may lead to one)

2) Should it really be necessary to get into the fight with more than 1 nano paste already available?

3) If you get past the blade mode event that happens around the 150% mark, is the fight mostly repetitive from there?

Thanks!

It seems a bit interesting that combat is what's keeping you in the game -- I'm about 45 hours in, and combat is the one thing pushing me away from the game. The weighted effect of the remarkably bad AI just gets worse as the game goes on (at least for me). I went into some of my gripes about the compounding effect of the bad AI in another thread: http://www.giantbomb.com/ni-no-kuni-wrath-of-the-white-witch/61-33382/i-hate-that-i-dont-want-to-play-this-game-anymore/35-576433/?page=2

The boss design in some of the later fights also worsen the problem with the constant short-CD, cinematic spell casts. However, I've found the rest of the game endearing enough to finish it out at this point. I have a few other points I'm tempted to make, but hard to do sans-spoilers and I think they're just a little bit further ahead of where you are now.

I think there is somewhat of a curve to the experience of Ni no Kuni, and a lot of the disagreement you'll find about the game has to do with different players being at different phases of the game. I'm about 50 hours in, and I'm knocking on the door of the game's end. The majority of the "RPG" elements of the game have held up; I love (almost) all the characters, I have been thoroughly satisfied with plot and its twists / revelations, I love the music, I love the exploration, I love the horrible puns and the goofy familiars.

But as the game winds down, I have to say I truly, sincerely hate the combat. It's been a sort of parabolic experience for me. In Ni no Kuni's very early sections, I was pretty nonplussed by the fighting; of course, the game opens its mechanics at a very slow and deliberate pace, so that is to be expected. As I got further into the game, I started really enjoying the combat -- there would be frustrating moments, but they were always things I felt that were within the boundaries of my control and which I could do better. However, somewhere around the 35 hour mark, a sense of loathing started settling in for me as the fights became less forgiving, and the flaws in the combat system stood out more and more. Now, as I'm going up against end-game bosses, I find myself struggling to keep playing at times.

First and foremost, the AI is remarkably terrible. I've glanced at various forums, and most people seem to notice this later in the game (not sure if the larger # of available spells affects the games AI) and it continuously worsens the longer you play the game. Now, heading towards the game's final dungeon, the party members I'm not controlling can often be seen running against the wall with a familiar out but not taking any action. And healing -- forget about it. I've tried setting up two characters as healers, specifically with healing pets and setting their AI mode to "Keep us healthy." Somewhere around the 40 hour mark, they decided they didn't like doing that anymore. Even though I've given them familiars which have vastly superior healing capabilities compared to their own, they tend to dismiss the healing pet -- sometimes to auto attack / melee, sometimes to do nothing at all.

I've also hit a boiling point with casting animations. Many bosses early in the game have "cinematic" abilities that stop all other action. Bosses later in the game have tons of them, and sometimes cast them every 7-8 seconds (some more frequently than that). This leads to a situation where you cannot use some of your good abilities on numerous boss fights, because if the cast time is 2 seconds + the ability needs an additional 2 seconds to finish its animation, your abilities will get "canceled" in order for the boss' spell to go into cinematic mode. You don't lose the MP, but it *does* set your ability to use spells on cooldown.

And the bosses that leave damage or ailment effects on the ground, and constantly watching your AI teammates run right through them...

Watching the AI teammates bring out their familiars at the start of a fight and waiting 10 seconds before they'll do anything...

Switching from Oliver to a teammate in order to make them bring a familiar out or cast a spell, only to in-turn watch Oliver immediately dismiss his familiar and decide to go whack something with his wand...

Not being able to equip any of the badass, high MP abilities on your familiars because if you do, your teammates will spam them and go OOM 15 seconds into a fight...

The list goes on (and on, and on). Every layer of complexity and difficulty that gets added to the combat, I feel the flaws just stand out more and more. I can't see myself ever playing the game again because of this, and that is such a damned shame, because Ni no Kuni has shown me some of the most heartfelt, sincere moments I've ever seen in a JRPG, and the characterization seen in the game (I'm trying really hard to avoid any remote spoilers, here) is just simply excellent.