This week we record yet another AggroChat Game Club game featuring the game Astebreed, which is an interesting mix of strange Anime Storytelling and Bullet Hell shooter.  What makes the game very unique is that you are a mech... with a sword as well as your laser weapons.  As far as the story goes, I think several of us were equally confused so we rely on Tam to decode it all for us...  because he apparently was able to follow it the entire way.  We have a lot of conversation about the tone of the game, the boss fights, the controls that may or may not have worked...  and the total package.

Since adding Grace and Thalen to the podcast they were not in the initial rotation of AggroChat picks, so we did the most gamer thing ever... and rolled some dice before the show to graft them into the rotation.  That means for the month of August Grace got to pick a title and we will be playing the bird dating sim...  Hatoful Boyfriend... and Kodra was happier than I have ever heard him be.  He loves this game, and drove us slightly mad with it when he was playing it.  Now we are going to get to experience this madness for ourselves, and I am willing to bet that Game Club Seven is going to be one of the more interesting episodes of AggroChat in our history.

Direct download: aggrochat_episode67.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 9:42am EDT

Tonight was a bit of an odd evening, because I absolutely went into this podcast not really thinking we had all that much to talk about.  The truth is anytime I think this... it ends up being a record breaking show.  We recorded for roughly two hours and fifteen minutes, and after editing it still weighs in at a whopping hour and fourty five minutes.  We apparently had lots to talk about.  It would not be an AggroChat without discussing Final Fantasy XIV, and tonight we focused heavily upon our recent experiences in Bismarck Ex and with the Alexander raid.  We talk about the influx of new players into the community, and how sometimes this has had a negative effect on the cohesion of the community as a whole.  Since the Four Job Fiesta is still going on, some of our folks talk about their experiences there especially as Kodra, Ash and Tam have all completed the game at least once, and Ash and Kodra are now on their second play through.

We get the title of the show from a discussion Grace brought to the table about the mobile game Alphabear that has recently invaded twitter.  It is a hyper cute game by the makers of Triple Town where you help adorable bears spell words.... and then you get rewarded by crazy selfies that they take that end up being a random assortment of the words you spelled.  From there we dug deep into the new Magic the Gathering core set outlining the Origins of all of the Planeswalkers.  We also get sidetracked on a length discussion about minature gaming that talks about Warhammer, Infinity and a little WarMachine and the hobby in general.  Finally I talk about my recent experiences in SkyForge and some of the problems I had with the game.  It was an evening packed with conversation, that we ultimately had to reign in and cut short a few times for the sake of time.  Hopefully you all enjoy it as much as we did having the discussion.

Direct download: aggrochat_episode66.mp3
Category:gaming -- posted at: 1:25am EDT

This show we were without Tam who is travelling but still have Belghast, Ashgar, Kodra, Grace and Thalen.  For the most part we have all been caught in the gravity well of Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward, and are now pushing through the games gearing process.  This is working for some of us, but others are beginning to get highly frustrated.  We talk about the positives and negatives of the way the gearing system works.  While wandering around aimlessly through the show we also managed to get caught into a nostalgic timewarp as we talk about our early experiences playing Magic the Gathering.  Everyone remembers that new pack smell, and in many ways Grace and Bel both wish they could return to that nostalgic era surrounding the game and playing it with their friends.  Kodra talks about the new expansion coming out and the changes they have made to the game in a site that could be termed as "Worst Version" of existing mechanics.  It was a fun show if a very rambly one.

Direct download: aggrochat_episode65.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:24am EDT

Due to the Independence Day holiday we opted to record this show a little early this week, and instead of spending Saturday night talking about games, we spent Friday night.  As a result there are several of us who were not quite to level 60 in Final Fantasy XIV but have since caught up and pushed through to the level cap.  However we spent a good deal of time not talking about FFXIV. Grace managed to finish the crazy attunement system in Wildstar and attended her very first raid.  She gives her opinion of the system and how it compares to WoW and FFXIV raiding.  Additionally we go down the rabbit hole that is the Four Job Fiesta and talk Final Fantasy V and the various group compositions fate has given us this year.  I apparently was one job off from the legendary group composition that the person who started the event go their first year:  Monk, Berserker, Beastmaster and Dancer.  Instead the gods saw fit to give me a Samurai so I could quite literally "pay to win".

We purposefully saved our discussion of Heavensward to the end of the show because I knew that was the one thing we were all playing.  It is extremely difficult to discuss this game without going into spoilers, so there are some details that might be spoiled if you have not played up through the Aery dungeon yet.  The awkwardness of this show was the fact that Ashgar is quite a ways behind the rest of us, making it extremely difficult to add to discussions... because at least one point during the show he made a conjecture that we knew the truth about, but could not really go into it for fear of spoiling key plot points.  My theory is that once we have all finished the 3.0 story arc we will do yet another big "spoil everything" show, like we did for 2.55.  The best snippet for me was when Grace decided to talk about her new loathing for Moogles after completing the Churning Mists zone.  Moogles are in fact lazy bums.

Direct download: aggrochat_episode64.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:29am EDT

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