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[Aoi]

Well, it's also partly that I'm reluctant to invest too much into an alch when my best one is only green; on the other hand, I've got an orange assassin and paladin already being built up... and putting a orange marksman through their paces.

I'm getting second thoughts about employing a DM in a progression team though; they're fantastic in levelling teams where they can use their AoE on a short CD to wipe lower levelled groups, but they NEED to be in the first position and four stacks of bleed to realize their potential.

Alch I'm still iffy on, but thank goodness for Marksman when doing the Temple boss...

Edit: Oh, and in terms of quicker progression... remember that after 18 (different) stages, you get to enable 2xSpeed.

Update: Oh myyyy. Some of the bounties are really hard/annoying. One of them was basically a mega worm boss with 25kHP... and recovered like 5k with every baby worm it eats. And the babies have a ton of HP too.

My other SS-difficulty bounty... was a version of the summoned megabat with the IMMORTALITY trait. If it does anything while within <15%, it gets a full restore. It also had almost 20kHP. Aurrrrgh. "Killed" the bloody thing five times before attrition did me in. Should've just fled instead...

Update 2: So I've opened Prophet (and autocombat, thank goodness...) and it's weird. Base attack hits from any position and does 20% lifedrain, has a buff that gives taunt+100%deathresist, a heal that does heal+regen (same as the paladin buff)extends it, doesn't add it, and a death nova debuff. I haven't actually tried it yet (holding out for a legendary one) but I'm thinking that it could replace a priest.

Also, be really careful if you're running a gunner in a zone with succubi and you're using autoattack. The AI will cheerfully try and gun down your ally. As well as any other classes, but the rest of them aren't as likely to be able to kill them in a single hit. They try and use all buff skills too, so you'll want to be careful with what skills they learn if you don't want them to spam Holy Shield, either. (And, inversely, they don't seem to be using the paladin cleanse/heal nearly as often as it should...)

A few other general thoughts... a high escape percentage is also super useful when doing high-rank bounties; it allows you to escape the battle, pop a ton of food, and charge right back in without the enemies being allowed to heal or anything. Also refresh the recruitment roster a few times when a new team comes in; 500/1000/2000 is negligible later on and you'll want to get a full legendary team ASAP so you don't keep wasting xp/skill books on second tier members.

...Because, holy, it takes a hellacious amount of time to level. ._.

Freakin' healing bosses... 187 turns. Went on for like 20 minutes before I flipped it into manual.

Okay, yeah... REALLY don't use the gunner if it's your most powerful character in the upper difficulties of Crimson Castle. Gargoyle rearranged my team, Succubus charmed her, then when she advanced to position 2, she got Preparation and dropped Bombard and Blasting Shock on my face. RIP.

Welp. That was a fun run. Lost a team of L26 with skills up to date and red/legendary gear. SSS bounties are no joke. 5 +HP, 2 +Armor, 4 +Attack, 1 +DeathResist and I got creamed. (Nope, that's not the end. Had just enough gems to buy holy water to revive my team. Guess I'm grinding the endless tower for that tasty ~150-200 holy water per run...)

1500 days... STILL can't get an orange Prophet.

[DeKaFu]

Well, I just bought Siralim 2 for my phone a few days ago and so far it's a terrifyingly effective timesink. I'd bump the thread for it but it's pretty old...

I'm only level 28 so far, but I've already stumbled on a combo I really like. Most of my team is physical attack-oriented, but I also have a "Glutinous Slime" that has the ability of giving a random ally a 40% attack/int boost whenever it gets hit with an attack. You can "provoke" with a monster to make it intercept half the enemy's attacks, so if I do that on its every turn my other monsters are getting massive boosts (they stack!) throughout the fight. There's more, though.

I have a spell gem equipped to my slime for a spell called "Verdant Spheres", which picks a random enemy and randomly casts one of its spells 1-3 times against the enemy team (or your team if it's a buff). This particular spell gem has the extra property of having a 65% chance of autocasting for free whenever your monster provokes. Sooo....

Just to make things occasionally much sillier, my slime has another spell that grants double-casting (each spell casts twice) to one monster on your team and has a good chance of auto-casting at the start of each battle. When it does, in the 1-in-6 times it lands on my slime, it gets hilarious because the double-cast triggers on the Verdant Spheres spell AND on each of the casts it makes. So my slime can sit there and cast up to 12 enemy spells for free in addition to provoking to set up a round of huge buffs all in one turn.

Guys this game is great.

[sambojin]

While people have probably known about this for ages, I just found Alite. It's a pretty faithful rendition of Amiga Elite, but with slightly better graphics (think texture mapped Acorn Archimedes Elite), and a fully voiced tutorial to get you used to the differences.

The only quibble some might have with it is the accelerometers controls, but honestly, they'll probably work pretty well. Gamepads on emulators or touch controls have usually bothered me more in space sims than looking like a moron with my tongue stuck out, waving my phone around, probably ever will. The tutorial has the "gruff commander" thing going on, but oh well. You could jump right in without it if you've ever played Elite. I'll probably throw a couple of hours at it today.

Anyway, it's Elite, it's a 1-1 recreation with updated graphics, and it's on your phone. Probably worthwhile having there just in case the urge to be somewhat harmless strikes you. About a 400mb download, but most of that is probably the voiced tutorial.

[sambojin]

The Battle of Polytopia just got a big update. It's now got online multi-player! Yay!

I haven't tried it out yet, but I will tomorrow morning. Probably quite a lot. The tribes are only a couple of dollars (I bought them all ages ago, except the new Quetzali or Merman tribes), so it should be worth it if this works well. Might be a simplified civ-like, but I can see quite a few strategies available in it, and it should be quick enough to knock over a game within 30-60mins or so. The base tribes are probably the more powerful tribes, or at least quicker starting, so I don't think it will be p2w in a multi-player environment. Although starting with shields or water abilities might be very good, so I'll see. I've always wanted a MP civ-like on my phone anyway, so I'll probably grab the last two as a way of supporting the project anyway.


Here's the patch notes:

----------
After months of testing it is finally here:
Challenge your friends and enemies in ONLINE MULTIPLAYER games!
-Works cross platform (Android & iOS)
-Free for anyone who has purchased any of the paid tribes.
-Updated UI that looks a lot more squoochie and wimbiewoo.

This is the first take on online multiplayer and I have lots of cool things I want to add to it in the future. Midjiwan is basically a one man operation so development will take some time. In the meantime, play nice!
---------

[Aoi]

How is Gems of War only mentioned in three posts/two threads in this entire forum? And, somewhat irritatingly, one of the posts is my own, quoting somebody else's mention, from two years ago. I started playing three days ago.

It's Puzzle Quest (the original, not the awful sequels) online, with a cash shop, but it's fairly minor. Go. Now.

[Folly]

How is Gems of War only mentioned in three posts/two threads in this entire forum? And, somewhat irritatingly, one of the posts is my own, quoting somebody else's mention, from two years ago. I started playing three days ago.
It's Puzzle Quest (the original, not the awful sequels) online, with a cash shop, but it's fairly minor. Go. Now.

I have two gripes with Gems of War.
The first being that mana is fed to your monsters from the top down, severely limiting ones ability to choose spells in a tactical manner. I would much rather see mana simply go into a pool which any of the monsters could then draw from to cast their spells.
Second issue is that very few spells grant a free turn. Specifically, this is an issue for spells which dramatically change colors on the board, of which there are many. If I cast a spell to generate 10 purple gems, it's a 50/50 chance that I may get a 4-match and earn a free turn and be able to collect more mana, or I don't get a 4-match and the enemy gets to eat all that free mana. Too often it feels like entirely random luck determining whether spells I cast help me or the enemy.

Still, these are not game-breaking issues, and GoW is still quite fun despite them.

If you're just getting started, I strongly advise joining an active guild asap. They will earn you bunches of free cards every week.
Also, if you ever intend to use your hero, work on investing in kingdoms that boost magic power. They are awesome.
Also also, as soon as you are strong enough, start doing the daily dungeons. The materials you earn can be spent in the soulforge to build extremely powerful cards.

[Aoi]

I have two gripes with Gems of War.
The first being that mana is fed to your monsters from the top down, severely limiting ones ability to choose spells in a tactical manner. I would much rather see mana simply go into a pool which any of the monsters could then draw from to cast their spells.
Second issue is that very few spells grant a free turn. Specifically, this is an issue for spells which dramatically change colors on the board, of which there are many. If I cast a spell to generate 10 purple gems, it's a 50/50 chance that I may get a 4-match and earn a free turn and be able to collect more mana, or I don't get a 4-match and the enemy gets to eat all that free mana. Too often it feels like entirely random luck determining whether spells I cast help me or the enemy.

Still, these are not game-breaking issues, and GoW is still quite fun despite them.

While I agree with both, I don't think the former is really worth the complaint; it's just an element of its original design and (at least for me) distasteful for its difference from PQ... and the first difference actually heightens tactical play-- the order of your units is even more important, as it determines who gets attacked by skulls, who deals skull damage, who gets their mana first, etc. It's a rather logical difference once individual units start getting HP, as opposed to a universal pool. But it does make it an exercise in frustration when you want to run multiple units that share the same type of mana... (That golem... so good at shredding armor. Absolutely useless after. Stop sucking up my brown mana...)

The second part is an enormous pain; I suspect that they were originally implemented as a risk/reward maneuver, because the alternative would be that they just didn't think it through. Which is very possible; I've noticed that some skills that generate two types of gems can overwrite one it just changed, which just seems silly (so your 'generate 7 and 7' just turned into a 'generate 5 and 7'...).

[sambojin]

It turns out Polytopia doesn't have matchmaking yet, only "friend codes". So, I'm at GMT+10, but I work at night. If anyone wants to get a game going in a few days, my friend code is: MY9eLhGTvXNe90Xo

I'll make a forum post if we end up getting a few players, so as not to clutter this thread. There's an FAQ, but what it basically says is "Don't be an idiot. Go somewhere cool like bay12 and share your player codes with other cool players."

So if you want to organize a game against me, or even have some interest to (I might be feeling generous on chucking some Google Play dollars at it for others, just to try out a game in the next day or three), give me a message in this thread. Not a pm. I never check them anyway.

[Zangi]

First second logging into that FF15 themed empire game.  Already going straight downhill.

Game is already asking for your money with a 'phone system' exclusive deal.  Specifically android in my case.

The UI and the base building portion basically screams Game of War with FF15 skin.  Maybe I am extremely biased.

[Folly]

First second logging into that FF15 themed empire game.  Already going straight downhill.
Game is already asking for your money with a 'phone system' exclusive deal.  Specifically android in my case.
The UI and the base building portion basically screams Game of War with FF15 skin.  Maybe I am extremely biased.

It's not just you. Pretty much 100% of critics say it's an unabashed clone of Game of War, except with an even worse pay-to-win cash shop.

[Aoi]

I heard that FF shmup is even worse; allegedly, like halfway through the tutorial, it wants you to pay for a beginner pack. Before even all the basic mechanics are explained, and before you even have a chance to get hooked.

In other news, Look, Your Loot! recently got a pretty big update that significantly changes the flow of the game. Also totally revamps the in-game gold/score system... My record used to be like 200k. Now I can barely break 5k, though I'm still getting used to the new mechanics. Thankfully, my multi-million bankroll is untouched so I can immediately unlock stuff easily...

[Kagus]

Dunno if anyone else has played it, but a while back I installed an Android game going by the name of Wicked Lair. Simple concept, you design a dungeon level-by-level in order to defend against a party of three heroes who seek to slaughter the dungeon lord (you) and claim your hoard.

Remarkably high production values, particularly for a game that's completely free. No ads, no microtransactions, not even nagware or a donation button. Even the game's soundtrack (which is admittedly just the one tune) is surprisingly decent.

Some things are pretty unbalanced (the basic warrior hero is easily the most powerful of the lot, and has an ability that scales exponentially to the point where he will one-shot any and every minion you have, and then he'll get another damage boost for having killed them), and there are a couple glitches here and there (level three treants cannot be selected, and as such cannot be dismissed to make way for a different unit), but it's a very solid game for burning some spare time, and there are a number of different synergies and strategies you can formulate in order to make the most of your defenses. Quite good replay value.

Also found a game of sorts called "Cell Lab", wherein you design multicellular organisms cell-by-cell, and try to get them to fulfill various objectives so you can unlock new kinds of cell. It's remarkably advanced and complex, which makes it very interesting. ...unfortunately, it's incredibly taxing on the processor, the battery, and your brain. Not much of a "casual" game, and I feel it would've done much better as an actual PC title.

[smjjames]

Link to the cell lab game? I can’t find it on the apple store.

[sambojin]

Seems to only be on Android. Full title is "Cell Lab: Evolution Sandbox".

[AzyWng]

There's this gacha-clicker-rpg-ish type game I've been playing called Blustone, made by a Visualshower Corp.

The basic gameplay is that you choose up to four characters and then you send them out against waves of monsters. You rapidly tap the screen to make your characters attack faster, and you hurt your enemy and hopefully defeat them before your health bar reaches empty. Once you do enough hurting and being hurt, you can tap on the speech bubble that appears above a character's head to make that character perform their special move.

As far as the characters specifically, you've got four classes and three elements. The elements follow a rock-paper-scissors type deal, and the element icons even show the hand symbols for rock paper and scissors. I probably don't need to explain how the elements work, and it's all explained in-game anyway.

There are plenty of characters, though there aren't too many healers. The way the character progression system is in place (you have to use characters of the same rarity to boost the character you wish to power up once they hit the level cap of 30) means that even if you get a one-star rarity unit, you can still make use of them, which is nice - even when the gacha hurts you, it helps you.

There's not too much in-your-face microtransactions (when you get a gold/3-star unit you're given a limited-time deal to buy something that'll bring them up to rainbow/4-star, but that's the only big intrusive one I've seen so far), free players don't lag behind premium users too badly, and the pvp element isn't super critical to the game so it's not too big of a deal.

Apparently, Blustone is set after the events of another Visualcorp game, called Beyond The Bounds, a point-and-click adventure game split up into multiple chapters. You have the option of either waiting for the next chapter to be unlocked once you complete the first one, or you can use premium currency (called "Manda") to make the next chapter immediately available.

It should be noted that each chapter takes a few days to unlock, so if you're really, really eager to get to the next chapter, you can do that... though I wouldn't advise it.

All in all, both games are a damn sight finer than the travesties you people had the audacity to even mention in this thread a while earlier. And neither of them cost anything to download and play, well and truly.