What are you playing?

[Guest]

You don't even have to obsess. If you browse hentai anywhere, you'll find tony taka and gunma.

I wouldn't be surprised if either of those two are being forgotten by new generations of autistic teenagers. End of an era.

[Musical Space Cowboy]

Well, it's been a few years, but I've once again reinstalled Deus Ex. I must have played this damn game hundreds of times, but I'm sick of current-year shit.

By the way, all the MonHun talk has got me interested in playing, but I'm not that familiar with it. What game would be a good starting point?

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

If you have a Switch, there's probably little reason to not go straight to GenU.
If you only have a 3DS, there are a lot more options. Haven't had much time to check out 3U, but between 4U and Gen I'd say 4U has the better story mode, if that has any importance to you. Vanilla Gen could certainly be a turn off because especially the early ranks have too many boring gathering quests.

Then again Vanilla Gen introduced the ability to play as one of your Palicos, so it all balances out in the end if you have patience. Or just look up on the interwebs which of those boring gathering quests are actually mandatory to rank up.

[Kugelfisch]

A good option to just check it out for free would be to get yourself the PPSSPP emulator and take Portable 3rd for a spin.
As much as some quality of life changes came along in the subsequent games, it's remained very true to the formula over the years.

[rabidtictac]

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is a game to start with too. It has the target cam but otherwise is extremely faithful to old style monhun. Or if you want the game with the most upgrades in quality of life, GenU is the way to go. But GenU lacks any kind of story or real progression.

[Kugelfisch]

But GenU lacks any kind of story or real progression.

That's not true.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

So I played more SD Gundam Cross Rays.

Incoming SpergShow

So I discovered that pilot stats play a much bigger role in damage formulas than I initially thought. On top of that even low-tier units will eventually catch up to end-tier ones stat-wise (though they'll probably have lower hit points). This is pretty huge since you can make pretty much any unit with a decent weapons and ability loadout viable.
This probably also explains why my master units and squad leaders overkill the shit out of anything they touch, since I've kept those guys in my squads since the beginning.

This might even allow me to salvage the Sandrock from Gundam Wing. The Wing Gundams have it pretty bad in this game, since their end-tier versions are based on Endless Waltz, where everyone except the Wing Zero is in various states of having been dismantled. This usually results in a pretty shit weapons loadout (except for the Heavyarms Custom who wrecks all kinds of shit).

The Sandrock probably has it the worst. He already has it pretty bad in the animu version, since the Sandrock Custom just has higher stats, but loses damage potential everywhere but at range 1 (where he gets a slight damage boost). He also loses his Cross Cutter special attack (wich like all special attacks ignore any kind of defensive ability). The only upside is that he can now ploink at people from range 4 instead of 3. Yay.
And then you get the Endless Waltz version, which only has slightly higher stats, but is unable to hit anything beyond range 2 (and even range 2 is useless since all he can do at that range is scrape off your paint with some Vulcan rounds).

But luckily Cross Rays comes with stuff from the Glory of the Losers manga, which gives us Sandrock's Armadillo loadout. This is literally just the vanilla Sandrock with the Custom's ploinky submachine gun, but this is probably as good as it's gonna get for him.

Also don't even bother with XL or bigger units. They're annoying to move around and can't take advantage of SFS (those Green Goblin flyer thingies), which let you break the game in all sorts of hilarious ways, from doing double moves to being able to do shit you can't normally do after moving (like joining in support attacks, using skills or attacking with MAP weapons).

The clear star in terms of DLC is definitely anything that lets you unlock G Fighter units. These guys are fucking amazing and loads of fun. The only ones that will wreck your shit harder are the Turn A and Turn X, unsurprisingly

The worst are probably the units from Reconquista in Pee. The only one that doesn't look like complete dogshit is the G-Lucifer, and that's mostly because it's pretty hard to fuck up a Gouf clone.

[rabidtictac]

Pilots states were basically all that mattered in SRT OG2. You would spam skills to stack up buffs and then instant kill everything.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Pilot stats, and maxing at least one of those starting machine guns to max ASAP so you can equip any Real Robot with a quality dakka gun that will pretty much never run out of ammo. Made even better in the PS2 remake because you can craft special ammo that can pull shit like ignore force field and shit.

[GitGud]

Four Elements Trainer....