willwithskills

@bombedyermom: I'm playing a melee focused character for the first time in an RPG (I finally decided to mix things up after ONLY ever being the stealthy archer/ranged guy) and I'm enjoying it a lot! I'm around level 30 so I've done a good amount of stuff but don't have an hour count. As long as you get the Big Leagues perk and upgrade it as soon as you can, and also find a good weapon, the melee build can be really powerful. I one shot most lesser enemies and can pretty quickly take down bigger ones. However, I've found I've had to rely on drugs and alcohol a lot more, but that only makes it way more fun. Any time a particularly rough fight is coming up, I down some whiskey and inject some buffjet/psychojet and go to fuckin town. From both a roleplaying and gameplay perspective, I love being this character.

Unfortunately, there was one point where I faced a boss that I simply couldn't use melee against without power armor on, so I was slightly screwed. Had to switch to guns that I just wasn't good with and took forever to do any damage. Still, I've taken down deathclaws one-on-one at this relatively low level with just a bat and power armor, so there shouldn't ever be a situation that's totally unwinnable.

TL;DR: Go for it. Hope that helps!

That is a damn good setlist right there. Warriors of Rock just can't compare in my opinion. Finally having a Flaming Lips song on there seals the deal.
Also, John Drake is my favorite person. Period.

It does seem pretty difficult to actually let anyone go down. (Possibly speaking too soon, I'm on chapter 12) 
The only way in which I see losing someone is an enemy running over to their body while they're unconscious. And yes, it is very hard to see your beloved characters kick the bucket, whether they are actually useful or not.

I can understand why they would want the Michael Jackson zombie removed from the game now that he's dead. Although it obviously wasn't intentional, the zombie now seems like a bad, tasteless joke. Disco Stu zombie is perfectly fine for me.

So I've been playing Valkyria Chronicles lately, and old release I've always been intrigued by. Now that I have a PS3, I finally bought it and have been thoroughly enjoying it. I'm at around chapter 7 or 8 I believe, and I was cruising through with no casualties (plenty of injuries, though. I can't count how many times poor Wavy has hit the floor.) But then, during the mission early on when you have to stop Maximillian's huge tank, it happened.
 
The battle was already frantic enough, and many of my characters had already fallen under fire from the many turrets along the tank. Luckily, I had been able to save them all before death could take them. Eventually I was down to around four or five troops with only one lancer left, not bothering to call in reinforcements because only lancers mattered anymore and they were all incapacitated except the aforementioned one. I was desperately trying to destroy the last radiator when Selvaria, one of the enemy commanders, burst on to the scene with a weapon like no other, capable of killing with a single glancing hit. At this point, I already knew it was too late.
 
I had left Coby the shock-trooper and Oscar the sniper sitting there near where Selvaria entered, and almost to quickly to fathom they had both dropped unconscious. I clinged to the hope that one of my troopers could make it over them before death embraced them, but Selvaria was too quick, running over to their bodies and putting them out for good. I balked at the screen. I thought I would never have to lose any troops, especially not like this. But the cold, impersonal message box that said they had died in action told me otherwise. I flashed back to all the other games in which every little soldier became something important to me, the clear standout being XCOM.
 
Giving each soldier you command a name and a personality unlocks some sort of deep caring that can't be shaken. It could be because that, unlike story characters, their lives are completely in your hands. If they die, they're gone forever. And for that reason, I felt a great sense of loss and Coby and Oscar breathed their last breath. I vowed to never let it happen again as I solemnly wrapped up the mission without another casualty. For now, all I can do is inscribe their names onto this blog post so they shall never be forgotten.
 
R.I.P. Coby and Oscar. They shall be missed, even though Oscar was kind of a crappy sniper anyways.

Thanks a bunch, that's a good source.

I'm not intending to play through this game twice, too many games on my plate, so to those of you who have played it twice:
At the beginning, when you choose to either go fight the Frightener with Vesemir or go with Triss to the lab, what are the immediate ramifications of choosing to fight the Frightener?

Yep, another game I got cheap in that massive Steam sale that happened a while ago. I never really gave The Witcher a second look when it came out, mostly because I wasn't a huge PC gamer but also because I was trying to move away from that type of fantasy world with my RPGs. How wrong I was. 

I had heard that The Witcher had moral choices, like so many games of the day had. They were also supposedly, in a term I find tiresome, "in shades of gray instead of black and white." I didn't believe that for one second, because this had been promised of so many games before, from Fable to Mass Effect to Fallout 3. As we all know, the choices from those games ended up being hilariously obvious, with the shining example being Fallout's "should I nuke this entire city, killing everyone in it, or not? Brain scratcher!" I'm not saying any of those games are bad, and they in fact number among my favorites, but definitely not because of any moral complexity.
 
Along came The Witcher, and I did my usual shtick of choosing if I want to be a good guy or bad guy before the game begins. As always, I decided to be a good guy on my first run through, always protecting the innocent wherever I go like a true hero. I very quickly realized that this archetype would not fit at all. For the first time, I discovered moral choices that were truly difficult to make, ones that boiled down to more than the obvious good choice or bad choice. They made me ask myself what I thought was right, made me think.  I'll give you an example. Beware, for minor early game spoilers lurk below, enter at your own risk.
 
In one of the first small villages you come to, the main quest line is to gain the trust of the prominent villagers and defeat an almighty "Beast" which has awakened in the town. The villagers seem to believe the local witch was the one who summoned the Beast, and this eventually leads to them taking up arms against her. You also find that the Beast was summoned because of the sins of the local townsfolk. At this point you get the choice between saving the witch from the angry mob by slaughtering practically the entire village, or join the attack on the witch. The townsfolk have raped and murdered, but most of these actions were enabled by the witch. So who do you help? I chose the witch, because she seemed to have committed less sin, but the choice uniquely comes down to your personal view, instead of deciding to be nice or evil. That is what sets The Witcher apart from other RPGs, and why I'll continue playing it.

I'm only about half-way through it, but I'm enjoying myself immensely for a two dollar admission fee. To give you a better idea of what the gameplay is like, it's a squad based shooter with 7 members. I won't spoil anything, because something pretty dramatic happens early on, but you are able to individually control each member of the squad, taking control of one member at a time. The best part is how each character is very different, all of them with different classes of weapon with a primary and secondary form of fire, whether this is an assault rifle with a shotgun attached to dual pistols with three different forms of fire to dual wielding a katana and a submachine gun. Where it really gets creative is in each character's occult-based power. Each one specializes in a different form of the occult with two powers. For example, the heavy weapons guy has a fire demon crawling around his arm, which he can either send after enemies to immolate them or use as a flame shield. Also, the sniper of the squad is telekinetic, which she can use to either clear rubble and stun enemies, or to fire the hilariously-named "ghost bullet," which is a shot or her sniper rifle that she manually controls to direct it through the heads of her enemies.
 
The storyline is pretty good in my opinion, suitably twisted in Clive Barker's style, but the voice-acting can be hit-or-miss. I find it effective and fairly good at fleshing out the nuances of each squad member, but many dislike it.
 
Of course, the game has some faults that account for the bad reviews it got. While there is huge variety in the tactics each squad member uses, the enemies themselves are not very varied at all. The game throws tons of each enemy at you over and over, which can get tedious, but I combat this by switching to a character I don't use often to mix it up a bit. Also, as I mentioned, the level design is pretty drab, often being too cramped or just being brown, brown, brown.
 
Overall, though, I like the game, and two dollars is nothing compared to the fun you'll get out of this. I guess I could've answered your question in one sentence: Yes, it is good.