Sounds like an overall good magic system, but it's always a shame when a spell is made pointless by a later one. Ideally everything would have a use throughout the game. This is especially true in a D&D style system where you have limited spells memorized from a variety of levels, and low level spells are still your bread and butter.

The way the system works in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is this:
* There are 3 types of magic: White, Black, and Wizard. There are 4 spells of each type.
* You have a certain number of uses of each type of magic. You typically have half as many casts of Black as you do of White, and half as many Wizard as Black. (Note that your partner, who doesn't level up but will sometimes leave and be replaced with someone new, only gets uses of the types of magic they actually have.)
* Black and Wizard spells are the attack spells. White spells include healing and a spell that teleports you out of the dungeon, though the spells have interesting effects if you cast them on enemies.
* Wizard spells are stronger than Black spells. (Exception: Aero, the last Black spell you get, is usually stronger than Thunder, the first Wizard spell you get.)
* You recover all of your magic uses when you rest at the inn, or when you use a seed. (Seeds are scarce earlier on, as the only ones that you get are in a wooden chest near the end of a dungeon, and while the chest restocks when you leave the dungeon, the enemies will all respawn; later you can buy them, and they're probably cheaper than they should be.)

Of note, while Meteor is much stronger than Quake, note that Meteor is Wizard, while Quake is Black, so you don't get as many uses of Meteor as you do of Quake.

This is cool stuff and the kinda thing I like seeing with magic systems. It's a shame the older D&D games often let you rest spam in the field to remove restrictions.

Right now I'm playing The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition, the jump in quality from the first one is inclredible, really enjoying it so far!!!!

Then again, FFMQ has seed spam once you reach the town that sells them.

(Some later boss fights last long enough to exhaust your Wizard spells, however, so using a seed during a boss fight (or falling back to Aero if the boss is weak against it) may occasionally be necessary.)

While older D&D games may allow "rest spam", games like Wizardry 1-5 and Final Fantasy 1/3 do not. (Final Fantasy 3 goes a bit overboard with this at the end of the game, with the final dungeon not having save points while being way too long for a dungeon without save points.)

(Another topic idea: Do you like the "rest anywhere" (which often becomes "rest anywhere except in town") approach common in WRPGs, or the "rest only in town/special locations" system common in JRPGs?)

Moving slowly through Druidstone - Shadow of the Menhir Forest missions. Some of them are on Hard Difficulty really hard, which is kind of surprising in current state of gaming. As before, my biggest gripe with the game is cheesy dialogue, but the gameplay definitely makes up for it. So far 25 hours and 18 missions finished. 2 needed a replay with higher level party to be able to finish it on three stars, and two more will need another replay as well. The developers made a pretty good decision to unlock onece in a while after few missions a puzzle mission, which can be very relaxing change of pace after spending three hours in Dark Knight Fortress while trying to escape alive :) So far the game is very positive surprise to me and is much much better than anticipated :)

Playing Stranger of Sword City Revisited.

I made a post in the sub-forum about my party, but perhaps here I'll mention what classes I'm currently using for my main party.
* Clocker
* Clocker
* Clocker
* Clocker
* Clocker
* Clocker (main character)

Does that sound like a good diverse selection of classes?

Completed Little Nightmares 2 (Stadia) and I really like this series. This is a linear platformer but I feel so exotic and lived in that I found myself replaying levels to get all the little hidden gems in it. Each play-through admiring the art and direction of the game more and more.

Currently still playing Jupiter Hell (GOG), I made such a bone head decision when confronting some new monsters admiring their details and attacks that I forgot to heal and lost some great weapons and armor :(

Started playing Tacoma (HB). We got this game for free awhile back from Humble Bundle and my wife has been wanting to play it together on our living room HTPC. So I've been watching her go at it and her passing the controller while I try it out. So far we are very much invested into unraveling the mystery.

I also started playing Submerged (Stadia) which is a gorgeous game. Adventure puzzle explorer which a great sunken city setting.

I have a few matches of Sengoku 3 (HB) and Ironclad (HB) setting up for this weekend using RetroArch with my kids.

Rune Factory 3, Purgatory 2, and Ratchet & Clank (It was free on Ps4).

Planning on playing Ys 6, Nioh, and The Coma after I'm done with those.

These days I am keen on playing Mount And Blade. Also, i will give Mount And Blade - Warband another try.
This series needs some Real Time Strategy macro and micro management of the kingdom, like recruiting warriors in settlements, taking the role of the captain of the defensive battle if the player is not in vicinity of the besieged castle or city like switching between multiply characters in Grand Theft Auto V... so much wasted potential in this series. This could have been a perfect mix of Action, Role Playing Game and Real Time Strategy.

Troubleshooter, Abandoned Children

x-com-esque story driven anime franchised game port

Slow start, shrouded skill system, x-com, nuff said right ?

I haven’t posted here in a while, for no reason other than I just haven’t been able to muster the energy to write anything long out. I feel in the mood for it today, though, so here I go.

I want to first say that I find myself in a very strange position in regards to gaming right now. Never before in my life have life circumstances so significantly affected my gaming time and how exactly I make use of it when I have it. Obviously this is to be expected when one is married with three children under the age of three and works a full time job, but what I did not quite expect was how this would affect my taste in games. Now, I wouldn’t say my tastes have changed, exactly. My taste preferences have simply shifted a bit. My toleration for certain gameplay types and certain difficulty levels has been reduced significantly, and it’s a weird feeling.

For example, I started Horizon: Zero Dawn shortly after completing Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (which, by the way, is a great game, even if it doesn’t quite reach the same level of excellence of Uncharted 2). I was incredibly excited to play it because I have heard many good things about it, and it seems just like the kind of game I would love. And I did... for the first three or four hours. The setting, plot, and protagonist grabbed my attention. The gameplay struck a lot of the right chords. But the longer I played, the more I found myself wanting to rush through everything. That isn’t that unusual for me. I often get this way with narrative-driven open world games. The difference, though, is that in times past, this desire to rush through everything didn’t come until much nearer the end of the game. With H:ZD, this began happening within the first five hours.

It all came to a head when I climbed my first Tallneck. These are equivalent to synchronization points in the Assassin’s Creed series. Using them basically causes the game to vomit icons all over the in-game map, showing you the billion points of interest (whether they be quests, hunting grounds, significant places) in a good-area around you. The moment I opened the map and saw all that stuff was the moment I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through the game. At least not at this particular point in my life.

Maybe this sounds weird, but I just can’t muster the energy to care about all that stuff. I want to see how the game’s main plot plays out, but the game’s design won’t allow this without at least some investment in side activities to get me to the recommended level for the next main mission, and I just... I can’t do it. With all the busyness in my life, with the myriad choices I have to make on a day to day basis, I can’t bring myself to plod through so many ultimately meaningless tasks to just get to the missions I’m actually interested in. Just a couple years before, this wouldn’t have bothered me. Sure, I might not have enjoyed these aspects as much, and toward the end of the game I might get a little fatigued with it all, but I would have accepted it as a minor investment to get where I really wanted to go and that would be that. I can’t do that now.

I recently played God of War, which also had a decent amount of side stuff to do, but I never felt like any of it was meaningless. It all seemed specifically designed to be entertaining and move me toward an ultimate goal. I could handle that. It was more refined and more purposeful. The side stuff in Horizon just feels like busywork to pad the runtime and justify the open world.

The game’s on hold, at this point. I will return to it someday, but for now, I’ll just keep it in the catalog.

So to fulfill my gaming needs, I diving back in to Bloodborne. I’ve been feeling the itch for a while now, and as my interest in Horizon waned, I decided to just do it. I’m trying for a Strength and Arcane build, mainly because I want to dabble in some of the stuff I ignored in my first run through the game. I considered a challenge run of some kind, but I don’t feel familiar enough and good enough with the game at this point to feel confident in one. I settled on something of a compromise: my goal is to use the Tonitrus as my melee weapon and supplement it with Hunter’s Tools and other Arcane weapons/abilities. I don’t think this at all qualifies as even remotely optimal, but I suppose that will be the challenge: optimize my build within the small limits I’ve self-imposed. We’ll se how it goes.

I’ve explored most of Central Yharnam. All I have left is part of the sewers, and then it’s on to Father Gascoigne, who is one of my favorite bosses in this game. I already tackled Cleric Beast, which is an okay boss but felt particularly tedious this time. I suspect this was because I wasn’t using a serrated weapon (which would have provided bonus damage) and because I had only 10 Strength. I’ve pumped a little more into Strength now, though, and I’ve already seen improvement with standard enemies. My true test will be Gascoigne. My first run I did a Skill build, so I was able to make extensive use of gun parries and visceral attacks. Because visceral attacks scale exclusively with Skill and I have no intention of raising Skill at this point, they won’t be quite as effective this time around. Plus, the Hunter Axe is a bit slower than anything I used on my previous run.

It should be exciting.

The Blackwell Epiphany

Shadows in Stars

My drifting through 4x games has lead me straight back to this wonderful game it seemed i never gave the credit i deserved. I'm playing as one of the stronger factions ( dino's ) and managed to survive the starting years. Only had one war in wich both sides destroyed a starpost belonging to the other. About a billion dollars in property and fuel not to mention about 50 lives lost.

Current Stage, Exploitation

Goin' old school with the new... I'm currently obsessed with Daggerfall Unity right now!