What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age [Archive]

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Rynjin

2024-03-28, 07:08 PM

Dragon's Dogma is a classic case of "first impressions matter". And those first impressions were enough to make me stop playing after (checks time played) 2.1 hours.

Finally getting my party and finding out they were mindless pawns was the first big hit, I'd say. Running around the overworld with my pawns shouting generic lines over and over killed any interest I might have had. I also remember the overworld being very underwhelming, just empty space with nothing interesting going on in it. Maybe that's just the opening zone, but I found it boring.

There's a lot of stuff hidden even in the early game, but I completely understand bouncing off the first couple of hours. The flow of the game goes Taste of Power > Generic Chosen One Opening > Tutorial boss fight(s) > Boring escort mission before you can actually get to the good stuff. It really doesn't put its best foot forward.

warty goblin

2024-03-28, 09:19 PM

Reached Act 4 in Knight's Tale. As per previous act transitions, the dominant enemy has shifted from the Sidhe to the Formorians, because the game is basically dumping all of Brittish Isles folklore into a big bowl and stirring. As Arthuriana is already a total gamish of different traditions and a millenia plus of rando ideas grafted onto the same trunk, I like this.

Also the Formorians are a decent challenge, and thankfully quite different from the Sidhe. They don't do annoying things like pull dudes out of position or freeze people when they die, instead they have HP bars about a mile long, more armor than a tank, and hit like a ton of bricks. They also have seriously annoying sorcerers.

Fortunately I now have Lancelot. If your problem had an HP bar, Lancelot can fix it. And by fix it I mean run up to it and remove most of that HP bar. I like to use Guinevere in a buddy system with Lancelot, both because I'm a traditionalist and because the team up is alarmingly powerful. Lancelot is basically a knightly missile, and Guinevere extends both his operational range and his destructive power. And then she teleports in and shanks fools from behind.

SerTabris

2024-03-29, 03:31 PM

Dragon's Dogma is a classic case of "first impressions matter". And those first impressions were enough to make me stop playing after (checks time played) 2.1 hours.

I know one of the main things that made Skyrim never really click for me was having usually either no companions, or a single person with only a few lines; it sounds like for me this might feel worse, but I'm not sure.

Well, if you've got a premise of 'evil King Arthur', I feel like pairing Guinevere and Lancelot is just very natural; nothing stopping them then, is there? (And now I'm thinking about the other fun variations of this I've seen in both story-based games and books and other media...)

Rynjin

2024-03-29, 03:39 PM

Pawns have a lot more personality than your average Skyrim companion, though that's not a high bar to clear. There's a few different personality/voice presets, and they'll all pick up little quirks based on how you ask them to play. SOme will (over)eagerly focus on collecting items and crafting new ones, others will be glad to play a support role, while others will be more aggressive and fighty, and they do have different lines for these.

But in the first game most of your callouts will be related to enemy behavior and quest completion so those are a lot more generic.

Zevox

2024-03-29, 07:26 PM

FF7 Rebirth: So, when I said I thought I was done with Rebirth? I was wrong. Because two things occurred to me: one, I could go back and see all of the "date" events that I hadn't with ease; two, I'd previously tried fighting some of the summons at their full strength with Cloud solo, and found it a fun challenge. So I went and did the former. Short version: Aerith and Tifa's are what you'd expect; Yuffie's is good and fortunately much less date-like than Aerith and Tifa's; Barret and Red XIII don't actually do anything in Chapter 8 (Barret for obvious story reasons, no clue why that's the case for Red); Red's in Chapter 12 surprisingly contains the one moment in the game where someone openly refers to having been able to see the future back in Remake; and the Cait Sith/Vincent/Cid one that I didn't existed until I saw it in the menu options (I'm not sure what its normal trigger condition is; having a bad score with everyone, maybe?) is mildly amusing.

For soloing the summons, I decided to go and challenge myself to do it with every character (except Cait Sith since I don't like him), with the summon at full strength, with no or minimal changes to my default materia setup for the character (because obviously you can make them a lot easier if you specifically choose a materia setup to counter them). And I was mostly successful. Cloud and Tifa were pretty easy to do this with, especially Tifa, who just destroys bosses with her damage output by spamming Unbridled Strength -> Omnistrike once she gets a stagger, and is very good at getting those. Red XIII was also pretty easy, with some difficulty with Odin, though less than many others. With Yuffie I struggled on Odin for a bit but ultimately took him down, and for Bahamut had to swap in a Barrier materia to survive Gigaflare, since the only to prevent him from using it when you're solo is to kill him before it goes off, and her damage output just wasn't up to the task. Aerith was the hardest, since her everything is slow, and even Radiant Ward's improvements to her moveset and dodge only go so far, but I was ultimately able to do it, mostly because Arcane Ward -> Firaga does insane damage even to non-staggered enemies. Finally, Barret, while mostly easy to do since I had him built like a tank, I wound up having to do something I didn't want to in order to beat Odin: give him Reraise materia (lets him set up an auto-revive if he dies). He just couldn't dish out enough damage to keep Odin from getting bored and doing Zantetsuken, especially since his dodge is terrible so he was unable to avoid Odin's glowing attacks, and even perfect parrying them sets you up to get countered if you do any ATB attacks afterward (and unlike Aerith he can't abuse something that makes him invincible while he does a move). Wish I'd figured another way around that, since Reraise is kind of a hard counter to Odin's gimmick, but I couldn't come up with one.

Now I'm pretty sure I'm actually done with the game. I think. We'll see if I get some other bright idea for some combat challenge I want to pursue in it.

Stellar Blade: A demo for this just came out today, and I went through it. It is unfortunately not what I'd initially expected/hoped, but it seems pretty good nonetheless. Based on the initial reveal trailer I'd taken it for Bayonetta but with Eldritch Horrors for enemies instead of Angels and Demons; in reality, it's a game that really wants to be Nier: Automata, with a bit of mechanical inspiration taken from various action games. It has combo routes based on varied light/heavy attack sequences; perfect dodges whose animation looks like it was taken from Bayonetta (the backflip) but does not a Witch Time style effect; blocking that reduces damage taken but doesn't negate it, parrying which does negate damage and reduces the enemy's "balance" (which, when zeroed out, leaves them open to a big damage cinematic attack); special moves that are powered by a meter you build by doing normals, perfect dodges, and parries; and attacks are usually pretty freely cancelable into dodge and block/parry but oddly enough the active frames for some (mostly heavy attacks) seem to be uncancelable, only the startup and recovery. You get to unlock follow-up attacks you can only do after a perfect dodge or parry, which are pretty satisfying, and some grant you buffs. It doesn't have the fast pace or silly tone of a Bayonetta game, but nor is it the slow, methodical pace of a Dark Souls style game (though it does steal the basic Bonfire concept for how its Camps work, as most enemies respawn when you use them). All in all, I was enjoying the combat, and that's what'll sell me the game for sure.

The rest of it, eh, less so. Like I said, it really wants to be Nier: Automata, and while I liked that game, it was mostly for the combat - Platinum Games and all - while the story I was more "eh" about. And while there's others who like Automata's story a lot more than I do, I doubt anyone's likely to feel this game's story lives up to that. From the demo it really doesn't feel like the characters have any particular personality to them, and details about the setting and their goals are pretty unclear - it's set on a post-apocalyptic Earth that's full of Eldritch Horror style monsters, and there's not a lot more I could tell you. To be fair, maybe the demo's just doing a bad job showing these things, as it does seem more focused on getting you into the gameplay than giving you a taste of the story, but if it is representative of the final product in that regard, well, I think more effort went into the jiggle physics for the lead character than into the story, sadly.

Hi-Fi Rush: Now this is the kind of Bayonetta-level silliness I like to see in my action games. Chai literally has the music in him, because his MP3 player got fused into his body about where his heart should be and is now granting him musical rhythm-based power-ups as he bashes robots with his electric guitar-style weapon made from junk parts. I'm not far in, just beat the first boss and reached the hideout for the first time, but I can easily tell this'll be a good time.

I might not be as good at this as I usually am with action games though, because of the rhythm element. I'm kind of bad at that. So far I'm struggling to get above 50% just timings in a fight, and am often more around 30%. I think part of the problem for me is that I'm timing it to something that's not based on when I push the first button: even my initial attack is judged by whether it's in time to the beat, and the actual attack swings always happen on the beat, so if I'm pushing the first button earlier or later relative to the beat that changes the timing for my next button push to get it right. While I can easily learn how long to wait between pushes if the timing is defined by when I push the button for the first attack in a sequence, timing everything to something external like that, without significant visual aids (I have an easier time with the "beat" attacks due to the rings that pop up for them), is not something I'm good at. Guess it's a good thing I'm playing on normal difficulty then, I suppose.

Anonymouswizard

2024-03-30, 07:59 AM

Mass Effect Andromeda: retry #ImNotSure. Pretty much still a case of 'I like the gameplay and more Star Trekky vibes, not sure about everything else's.

But both this and DD1 are serving as breaks from BG3, and they're doing that very admirably.

NeoVid

2024-03-31, 08:40 PM

Yesterday, I remembered something. Hadn't I heard about a game that was made as the spiritual successor to Road Rash? I went looking for whatever game that was, and immediately learned that Road Redemption is currently $3 on Steam. Got it on the spot, and ended up playing for two solid hours even though it was already 2 AM. And for a totally unexpected addition to the simple and addictive formula of Road Rash, it's also a freaking roguelite. The routes and objectives are heavily randomized and you have to start over from the beginning whenever you die, but at least you can get unlocks and XP before you go flying off that bridge...

The warped sense of humor is stronger here than it was in the original games, complete with a character who has higher stats the better your graphics settings are, but takes auto damage if your framerate drops below 60. It's been a long time since I've found a game I can just pick up and play for 15 minutes at a time... even though it tempts me to keep playing for far, far longer than that.

Zevox

2024-03-31, 11:44 PM

Beat Hi-Fi Rush. It's excellent, best new addition to the DMC/Bayonetta style of over-the-top action game series since Metal Gear Rising. The rhythm element definitely makes it harder for me than other games of its ilk - even as I got towards the end of the game I don't think I was ever getting more than 60% just timings in a given fight, and certain parry sequences were rough - but it's a lot of fun nonetheless. Great cast of characters, great music, great combat, mostly good pacing (Korsica's stages and boss fight went on too long, but other than that all was good), and really good humor too; I wasn't expecting so much office work humor, since I wasn't aware of the nature of the villains going in, but there's some good stuff there.

Seems it unlocked quite a bit of post-game stuff after I beat the final stage too, so I'm probably not done with it. Won't likely be cranking the difficulty up, as I imagine I'd struggle quite a bit with that going more than maybe one rank higher, but I'm having too much fun not to check out whatever else the game has to offer.

Form

2024-04-01, 07:58 AM

Hi-Fi Rush is one of the games of which I saw a playthrough, but which I regretted watching instead of just playing the game myself. I held off on it because it's a rhythm game and I don't like rhythm mechanics in games, but for Hi-Fi Rush I think I should have made an exception. Chances are I'll give it a shot myself after all one of these days.

Eldan

2024-04-01, 08:04 AM

Errorname

2024-04-01, 09:40 AM

I ran through on a lower difficulty that was pretty forgiving of messing up the rhythm and still enjoyed it a lot, but was painfully aware of how much I sucked at the core gimmick of the combat.

Anonymouswizard

2024-04-01, 10:28 AM

I actually got surprisingly far, only failing because the game threw a chase section at me that needs multiple perfectly timed Assists, and I suck at getting the timing based ones off quickly.

It's a shame, because it was quite fun.

Zevox

2024-04-01, 12:06 PM

I saw part of a playthrough, thought it looked fun, got it, ended up brutally stuck almost immediately since I couldn't get the rhythm combat to work and then watched the playthrough instead, which was more fun.
Playing on normal I definitely got the impression that I could've beaten the game without engaging much with the rhythm element if I'd needed to - it mostly increases your damage output and score, few things are impossible without it. The only parts that really force you to are the parry sequences, which are mostly either easy (the drones) or not needed to win (other enemies).

There are some mandatory ones during bosses though, including one boss entirely based around that mechanic, so that could prove a problem. Those were wholly or partially responsible for several deaths in my case. But there is also an easy difficulty I didn't use, which would probably help there.

Sermil

2024-04-01, 05:08 PM

My favorite rhythm game was Cadence of Hyrule -- because you could switch it to turn-based mode and not have to actually match the rhythm at all. :smalltongue:

DaedalusMkV

2024-04-01, 09:18 PM

I found Hi-Fi Rush weirdly stressful to play. I kept at it until I finished the story because I liked the characters and wanted to see what would happen, but even though I suspect I had less trouble with the rhythm game elements than some (I think I could pretty consistently manage about 80% Just Timing, and occasionally over 90%, by the end) I just couldn't relax with it. It felt like the game was constantly judging me - and finding me wanting. Even though I rarely died (only six or so times in my playthrough on normal difficulty), it felt like every time I finished a fight it would go "Your timing was okay, and you didn't take a lot of damage, but you weren't very stylish, you could have used more variety in your attacks and you definitely could have finished that up faster. B-" Combined with the sheer number of combos and super moves and mechanics the game just kept piling up on top of each other and I felt kind of smothered by the gameplay by the end. Super stylish, but probably a game I would have been happier just watching somebody play rather than doing myself.

Cespenar

2024-04-02, 10:27 AM

Personally, Crypt of the Necrodancer has apparently spoiled me to a degree that all other rhythm games feel and play poorly in comparison. Hi-fi Rush included.

Also finished something called Between Horizons. Indie oldschool adventure with pretty polished "2.5D" graphics and a Ace Attorney/lite Obra Dinn-ish deduction system. Pretty enjoyable realistic scifi story too. Two thumbs up from me.

Zevox

2024-04-02, 01:53 PM

I feel like if it hadn't had the letter grades after every segment like some sort of evil Guitar Hero with a plot I probably could have relaxed a bit more and had more fun with it. Maybe I'm just weird like that, because I don't think I've seen anyone else with the same complaint.
That's something it inherited straight from Devil May Cry - and, ultimately, arcade games, since their influence on Capcom is likely why DMC has that to begin with. This sort of game doesn't just want you to beat it, but to do so with style and skill, and see that reflected in a high score and letter grade.

Edit: And I think my Hi-Fi Rush time is done. Did 7 of the 8 Spectra doors, and then ran smack into the goal of the last one: beat the enemy within a time limit with an 85% or higher just timing rate. Which I have literally never done. And the enemy in question is not a pushover either, it's a fire bird. Yeah, there's just no way that's happening. Guess I'll check Youtube to see what you get after finishing the eight doors just out of curiosity, then move on.

Cespenar

2024-04-07, 10:56 AM

Also as a newbie to the Yakuza series: this (Like a Dragon) is written better than I expected. The mafia/political plot has some deep cuts for just being a tongue in cheek jrpg, and the japanese VAs bring it home as always.

Anonymouswizard

2024-04-07, 07:54 PM

Going back for another attempt at Wrath of the Righteous with an Aasimar Magus (Sword Saint). Mostly as a critfisher build, although I'm having to delay Improved Critical (Estoc) until at least level seven, and Greater Spell Penetration until level Nine, but I'm very much doing well in Act 1.

Honestly while it takes a while for your AC to catch up Sword Saint seems ridiculous. One of it's drawbacks basically doesn't matter ('can only use their abilities with one weapon type', like I'd spend feats on a second weapon) and the fewer spells isn't that terrible. At worst it means I'll maybe take Abundant Casting before Last Stand.

The only thing now is to decide on my Mythic Path: do I try Azata again, Trickster, or go Demon->Gold Dragon? Probably won't do Trickster until I've actually beaten the game once, but both of the others are tempting.

Rynjin

2024-04-07, 08:05 PM

The plots have long been one of the major strongpoints of the series. Play Yakuza 0 when you get the chance.

Errorname

2024-04-07, 09:18 PM

Been running through Hades again, and I want to shout out how amusing I find their inversion of the typical fantasy game enemy progression. You start the game fighting the damned souls of the Underworld's deepest depths and end it fighting giant rats.

Bohandas

2024-04-08, 12:22 AM

Just bought a game called Maniac (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1482380/Maniac/) on Steam. It's like an updated version of GTA 1. Spent the last three and a half hours playing it. It's very good.

Beelzebub1111

2024-04-08, 07:59 AM

I spent this weekend eradicating The Automaton Menace in the name of Democracy! I...don't enjoy fighting the bugs (especially the new invisible ones) so that means I'm off to play City of Heroes Homecoming until the menace returns.

Eldan

2024-04-08, 09:17 AM

It seems we are getting Illuminates and possibly Cyborgs as new enemy factions, so you might be good, there.

There are now two new news broadcasts in the game: one says that a previously unknown Automaton fleet has arrived in Cyberstan and one that a "stellar object" was seen that looks like an Illuminate ship.

Cespenar

2024-04-08, 09:58 AM

The plots have long been one of the major strongpoints of the series. Play Yakuza 0 when you get the chance.

That's on my list too, yeah.

warty goblin

2024-04-08, 10:05 AM

Getting very close to finishing up Knight's Tale. The missions in the last chapter get really hard, with huge enemy counts, so a mistake in movement can have seriously painful consequences. The game does a good job of letting you mitigate long term damage in general, but if you over extend it's perfectly possible to have a pretty tanky guy go from just fine to nearly dead in one turn. As in-mission recovery is pretty limited, that renders them useless for the rest of the mission, leading to more damage on the remaining front liners and an inevitable death spiral.

But I do really like the combat. It develops quite well over the game, always keeping that heavy armored feel, but amping up to be a bit faster and more deadly and more flexible. The enemies get harder and more capable too, and, at least with the difficulty a notch above normal and my lack of hardcore optimization, actually keep pace. This is the rare tactics RPG that hasn't got an inverted difficulty curve, and, aside from actual mistakes, hasn't turned into rocket tag. You get that fun feeling of dumping some cracked OP kinds of abilities, but the game can still push back, hard. Not just boss fights either, but fairly normal encounters.

NeoVid

2024-04-09, 04:21 AM

Can't play it yet, but I'm looking forward to Fallout: London. Just one issue... I know zilch about modding, so I'd like a 'For Dummies' list of must-have mods for Fallout 4. That way I can get used to working with mods well before London's release, instead of getting frustrated by the game not working when I try to play FO:L on release day.

Triaxx

2024-04-09, 06:08 AM

Check out Gopher on Youtube. He's still a solid source for Fallout 4 modding. (Don't use Vortex though. Mod Organizer 2 for the win.)

LibraryOgre

2024-04-09, 11:20 AM

Still avoiding BG3 for some reason. Got bored of Fallout 4, started playing Skyrim, just because.

tonberrian

2024-04-09, 09:20 PM

Was playing Cyberpunk 2077, but dropped off cause i didn't want to progress to act 2. Then my laptop died and it's no longer a choice. Luckily it's still under warranty, but I have such terrible luck with laptops I'm likely going to have to purchase a new one.

Kardwill

2024-04-10, 01:59 AM

The plots have long been one of the major strongpoints of the series. Play Yakuza 0 when you get the chance.

Yeah, it's cheesy, over the top, and I just loved it. Especially Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami 2. Didn't enjoy Kiwami 1 as much, but it may be because I played it too soon after Y0. Or because I wanted to slap Nishikiyama (and maybe Majima too) the entire game ^^

Right now, I'm playing Horizon : Forbidden West. I'm not quite as engrossed in it as I was in Zero Dawn, but it's quite fun to take apart Dynobots again, and the story has its nice emotional beats. :)

Rynjin

2024-04-10, 02:09 AM

Yeah, it's cheesy, over the top, and I just loved Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami 2. Didn't enjoy Kiwami 1 as much, but it may be because I played it too soon after Y0. Or because I wanted to slap Nishikiyama (and maybe Majima too) the entire game ^^

Kiwami suffers from being the first game in a long running franchise. Narratively it is extremely simple, and the characters are pretty cookie cutter. It also doesn't yet have Yakuza's flair for the absolutely bat**** yet which shows up by the second game. The best stuff in Kiwami is the stuff ADDED in Kiwami (the flashbacks with Nishiki, Majima Everywhere), not the stuff native to Yakuza 1.

Narratively speaking 0, 2, 4, and 5 all have very good plots (except 5's ending, ugh). 1 is kinda bland and 3 tries to tell two stories at once, one of which is waaaay more compelling. Everything involving Kiryu being in Okinawa embroiled in local politics and trying to raise a gaggle of kids in his orphanage is solid gold, and everything involving the main plot in Kamurocho is garbagio.

6 has the distinction of being the only Yakuza game I started and didn't finish. It was largely uninteresting and kept interrupting me with guest stars trying to sell me on the Clan Builder minigame and I just did NOT care. I like the New Japan Pro Wrestling guys (Tiger Mask W is a fun anime and the cast is largely comprised of those guys in their wrestling personas) but damn they did not need to have so much of an obtrusive presence in 6.

Kardwill

2024-04-10, 02:29 AM

Yeah, the characters also suffer from it : Playing YK1 (remake of the first game of the series) just after Y0 (6th? 7th? 10th game of the series if you include for the spinoffs?) was quite the whiplash, since several characters feel like a "first draft" of the cooler characters they were in the prequel.
And the game felt "smaller" too (the city feel, the story, the minigames...)

But YK2 was just as glorious as Y0, so I know I'll be back to the series in a few month. :smallsmile:
I just have to decide if I skip the older Y3 and maybe Y4? I heard jumping back to those older games after the Kiwami remakes could be pretty jarring.
Or maybe try one of the spinoffs (like Judgement), for a change of face before returning to the adventures of The Coolest Yakuza Ever.

Rynjin

2024-04-10, 03:23 AM

I need to get back to Judgment; Yagami is a real neato protag.

As far as games go, I hesitate to suggest you skip any necessarily...though maybe WATCH a playthrough of 3? 3 suffers from having extremely clunky gameplay. It's called "Blockuza 3" for a reason; enemies block so much and so sturdily that you basically have to spam grabs to win, and it's not very fun. But the interactions with the orphan kids are great. Urgh.

Yakuza 4 is perfectly fine to play. I recommend playing it even if you end up bouncing off of 3. 4 and 5 play closer to 0 than anything else, and IMO 0 has the best gameplay of the bunch.

I do not really like the Dragon Engine combat introduced in 6 and also on display in Kiwami 2.

Kardwill

2024-04-10, 04:19 AM

Yeah, some bossfights in Kiwami 1 against "block everything" big guys like Shimano were already pretty tedious. I will maybe skip 3 (although the idea of playing Okinawa-Kiryu is intriguing ^^. Maybe kinda-speedrunning the game on a lower difficulty just for the good bits could be a thing?)

Thanks. :smallsmile:

Anonymouswizard

2024-04-10, 05:57 AM

Still avoiding BG3 for some reason. Got bored of Fallout 4, started playing Skyrim, just because.

Same, although I've fled to more linear than more open. Honestly I found BG3 makes it very hard to make the character I want, mostly due to how 5e handles skills.

Liberated Drezen, now onto Act 2 of WotR. With a lot more spell slots, although I'm soon going to have to start shuffling level/rank up picks into more Arcane Pool

Beelzebub1111

2024-04-10, 06:21 AM

City of Heroea Homecoming keeps calling me back. Playing the expansion packs I never got to try out. Specifically "Going Rogue". I made mirror universe versions of my original hero and villain as loyalist and resistance respectively. Treating it as a "what if they never leaned magic" scenario. Going for "full circle" on all accounts.

InvisibleBison

2024-04-10, 07:57 AM

Forbidden West kind of reminds me of Mass Effect 2, in that compared to the original it's got better gameplay, a weaker story, and annoying changes to how ammunition is handled.

Corlindale

2024-04-11, 02:09 AM

I'm in a busy time in my life right now, so I find myself gravitating towards the gaming equivalent of comfort food. Which in my case means it's time to replay all-time favourite Might & Magic VII for the nth time!

Last time I played I did a low-magic run. This time I'm trying a themed run, with 'the Devout' being the keyword. So I figured a party of Paladin, Monk, Cleric, Druid would make sense. Which is... actually a pretty decent party composition for a Light Side run. I'm going to miss having a Sorceror for late game and a Light Side Monk is not the best at Disarm Trap, but otherwise I feel my bases are covered pretty well. Although with both Cleric and Druid my Paladin's access to Self Magic is probably going to fall into the 'too little, too late' category. But I think about teaching him Mind just for fun. I figure my Druid will get Air and Water up to Master just for those juicy utility spells, and then go deep into Fire to be my AoE-specialist.

I haven't really touched the main quest apart from clearing my castle, but I got the Cleric and Druid promotions quests down so I can get the Fly spell and then I'll be off to clear out the Barrows and get the Monk promotion done. As a side note, I love how the game really makes you earn the power of flight by making you complete a quest where you'd really love to have had the power of flight to do it (both the Sorcerer and Druid promotion quests involve going to remote locations surrounded by dangerous monsters). I did kind of cheat a bit by using the Fly scroll from the Bracada Desert to get the druid circle in Avlee, which is clearly the most dangerous one. And I guess you could always hire a Wind Master NPC if you really wanted to make things easy.

Having a lot of fun so far. I don't know if it's nostalgia goggles, but the game holds up incredibly well in my opinion. After this run I plan to do another themed run with 'Shadow infiltrators' as the keyword. So Thief (->Assassin), Monk (->Ninja), Ranger (->Bounty Hunter), Archer (->Sniper). Dark side, obviously. It's going to be a bit more difficult with much delayed access to Master elemental magic and very little Self/Dark magic. But at least I won't have any issues with disarming traps, and I'll have much better bow users.

LibraryOgre

2024-04-11, 11:00 AM

Same, although I've fled to more linear than more open. Honestly I found BG3 makes it very hard to make the character I want, mostly due to how 5e handles skills.

Liberated Drezen, now onto Act 2 of WotR. With a lot more spell slots, although I'm soon going to have to start shuffling level/rank up picks into more Arcane Pool

Then I got bored of FO4 and played Skyrim for like a day, before I got annoyed by it (I can't tell a follower that I'll think about making them Steward, then do it a day later?) and stopped that, too. So, I picked up Surviving Mars again to play way too late in the night. I am also annoyed by it. I may be getting depressed.

Wookieetank

2024-04-11, 01:04 PM

Started playing Wild Arms 1 with my daughter, and between her bedtime and busy schedule, got impatient with our progress, so I picked up playing Wild Arms: Alter Code F on the side for my Wild Arms fix. Plays a lot like Wild Arms 3.5, just without horseback combat (boo). Story wise Alter Code matches rather closely with WA1, with the big changes being the combat setup, tools used for solving puzzles (pulled some of the options in from WA3) and flipping the world map along the y-axis (which keeps exploring surprisingly fresh). Now I just want to replay the whole series once I'm done with Alter Code, but am sorely tempted to skip to WA3 (personal favorite), but WA2 is a strong entry too.

warty goblin

2024-04-11, 08:42 PM

Finally wrapped up Chapter 4 of Knight's Tale today, that being the end of the main story, with chapter being the endgame stuff. I started this in early/mid February, and it took about 66 hours all told.

Of the various XCOMish things I've played, I'd rank this very near the top. The combat feels right for the setting, with the heavily armored characters in particular feeling tough in a way I don't think I've really encountered elsewhere in tactics games or RPGs. Plenty of games have tanky characters, but the armor system makes it feel like actual protection. I went Old Faith, which gave a very magic inflected playthrough by late game, and the combination of spells and knights in armor was extremely satisfying.

The other mechanical thing I thought worked extremely well was having unique characters in a loose class system. Because the skill tree for each character was unique, my roster got less hom*ogeneous as the game went. This reduced tedium considerably, as I could switch out one Champion or Sage for another and it wasn't necessarily a downgrade so much as an alternative playtime.

I liked the story pretty well too. The cosmology of Avalon was generally vague, which might really irritate some, but I thought it was a solid high fantasy interpretation of an Otherworld, not really here or there. I could have done with more character interaction (if you can put Lancelot and Guinevere in a parry together they should really say something to each other!) but the core was a pretty clever inversion of the mythology. Probably annoying to purists (how exactly you can be a purist about what's basically a thousand year long unmanaged collaborative fan fiction project I don't know, but fans will get upset about such things) but a lot of fun for me to see various pieces of Brittish Isles folklore knitted together willy nilly.

Overall I'd highly recommend it if you like turn based games about hitting dudes with axes. I think I'll mess around a bit with the endgame stuff, but now it's time to Cyberpunk.

Kardwill

2024-04-12, 04:02 AM

Maybe you need to shake things with other types of games? I know I burnt out of RPGs, 4X and Turn-based Strategy (my favorite genres) a few years ago. Playing them became something between a chore and a bad habit. I broke out of this funk by playing different kind of games that weren't my jam before, like action platformers, roguelites or beat them alls. Playing shorter games (around 10-30 hours start to finish) also helped break the tedium of those 100+hours monsters.

Cespenar

2024-04-12, 09:32 AM

Honestly, there should be a law against 100+h RPGs. :p

No, but seriously.

Another thing I 'm liking about Yakuza Like a Dragon is that it looks like it wraps a pretty well rounded story (with combat paddings and all) under 40h. Would prefer even less but that's me.

Anonymouswizard

2024-04-12, 12:47 PM

Ended up wanting to restart WotR to switch to a Dhampir Rogue, so I hoped over to Rogue Trader for a bit. Finally got my Psyker to the point I could select another power, and decied to go for Santic Powers over Telepathy or more minor Pyromancy stuff. So now I can buff Resolve and set things on fire, and honestly once I get an actual Psy Rating this combined with both Psyker and Officer loving that Willpower Bonus will become ridiculous.

Although I can see why people like Idira, that +1 Psy Rating is ridiculous in the first act. I might actually find a use for her if I can work out a late game build that exploits Psychic Phenomena, but that's for another playthrough. I'm still planning on throwing her into the first Black Ship I see.

Erloas

2024-04-12, 04:09 PM

I've been playing a more diverse set of games than I have in a long time. Played Don't Starve Together with my wife for a while and recently moved on to Stardew Valley, neither of which are games I normally would have played.
Recently finished XCOM 2 for the first time, a genre totally in my wheelhouse, just hadn't gotten around to. Mixed in some Cities Skyline 2 too. And just started on Diablo 4 since it came to GamePass

Anonymouswizard

2024-04-13, 09:53 AM

Taking a break from big RPGs with a trip to Stardew Valley. Started a new game and everything is going a lot faster than it used to. Currently the big bottleneck is saving up 4000 coins for a coop.

But it was when I was fishing in the river in my dungarees with my masculine haircut that I realised 'hang on, I've made a lesbian'. I guess it's time to shove flowers in Emily's face...

NRSASD

2024-04-13, 12:00 PM

Playing some Rimworld these days, in light of the new expansion. Havent played since Ideology, so I was a bit surprised to discover that by the end of the first day, 2 of my 3 colonists were pregnant. Were going for a boreal forest base that will hopefully blossom into a monster research facility, but currently the only monsters we contain are of the kindergarten variety.

SerTabris

2024-04-13, 07:49 PM

Taking a break from big RPGs with a trip to Stardew Valley. Started a new game and everything is going a lot faster than it used to. Currently the big bottleneck is saving up 4000 coins for a coop.

But it was when I was fishing in the river in my dungarees with my masculine haircut that I realised 'hang on, I've made a lesbian'. I guess it's time to shove flowers in Emily's face...

Well, I'm sure she'll appreciate you not blatantly ignoring that you've clearly made a lesbian, unlike some video game developers I could mention...

NeoVid

2024-04-14, 05:01 AM

A game I didn't even know about when it was originally released just rereleased: Gigantic: Rampage Edition. I got it because a good friend was a huge fan of it, and I support the trend of games being brought back from the dead. The servers were melting down on release day, but I kept playing anyway, and now I'm totally addicted. Gigantic is a super stylized capture-point hero shooter with one MOBA element: You can heavily customize your character's abilities over the course of a match. It's also got a totally unique win condition, or at least one I've never seen in my lifetime of gaming: The energy from the capture points is used to release your main base's Guardian to attack the enemy team's, and temporarily make it vulnerable to being attacked by your team. You also summon creatures on the capture points to hold them for you, which have their own array of special abilities, and can be upgraded if you're willing to sacrifice ultimate charge to do it... There's several layers of strategy in this game that I've never seen before!

Before you get to those layers of strategy, there's also a more straightforward mode, Rush, that new players have to start with. But, you get access to the real mode, Clash, at just player level 9, and doing all the tutorials gets you at least 4 account levels, so it's not any sort of punishing grind. Speaking of a lack of punishing grind, the game isn't F2P, so it doesn't need to drag the experience out to tempt you to buy (nonexistent) microtransactions! It released two days ago, I've played a fraction as much as the real fanatics, and I've already got all the heroes unlocked.

And despite how unique Gigantic feels, it's also helping me recapture the feeling I had playing my all-time favorite hero shooter, Super Monday Night Combat! I don't think I'll be able to put this one down for a while...

warty goblin

2024-04-17, 09:21 AM

So my goal of playing through Cyberpunk has hit the slight snag that my guaranteed game time is 6 - 7 AM, and my just out of bed brain and reflexes are ill suited to a twitchy and narratively complex shooter RPG.

Therefore I've reverted to an odd combination of World of Warships, Pillars of Eternity and Age of Wonders 4. This madness works by playing WoW until I get bored (1 match), then I doodle in PoE until such time as the overwriting and general cRPGishness of it overcomes my genuine affection for the beautiful 3d/2d art design (10 minutes or so) and then my brain has rebooted enough for AoW 4.

My current run requires careful consideration. I'm doing a T5 world with a mega powerful demon prince, if you beat him you win. Most of the world is blasted lava plains. You cannot regenerate HP on the volcanic plains.

Fortunately I knew this, and planned appropriately. Because in the game's fiction you are a godlike extraplaner wizard king, I figured any godlike wizard king trying to conquer a demon prince's realm would come prepared, I metagamed like a munchkin and showed up with a tribe of primal orcs who worship a giant wolf spirit. Orcs are a pretty simple chouce, they're tough and hard hitting. The primal background is a bit odd seeming, but it lets you build a temple that converts surrounding terrain to whatever is favored by their patron spirit. The big wolf likes forest, so I'm planting more trees than an airline trying to greenwash their reputation. Including on the blasted volcanic plains. Now I can heal on my home turf.

Better yet, if I load up on nature tomes, my dudes get progressively more and more buffed in forests. I'm going to fill all my forests with fae mists, then fuse my orcs with trees, so they're stealthy and fast moving in forests. Basically I'm going to create hippy forest strongholds, then slowly expand outwards and crush old demon-boy.

IthilanorStPete

2024-04-17, 11:00 AM

So my goal of playing through Cyberpunk has hit the slight snag that my guaranteed game time is 6 - 7 AM

I do not understand morning people. :smalltongue:

Most of the world is blasted lava plains. You cannot regenerate HP on the volcanic plains. [...]

The big wolf likes forest, so I'm planting more trees than an airline trying to greenwash their reputation. Including on the blasted volcanic plains. Now I can heal on my home turf.

What I'm hearing is that you managed to embed a game of Terra Nil (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1593030/Terra_Nil/) in AoW 4. That's delightful.

Anonymouswizard

2024-04-17, 02:43 PM

And that's Act 1 of Rogue Trader finished again, but this time I'm far happier with my character. The boss fight was ridiculously easy this time round despite going in with two sanctioned Psykers, one specced into Pyromancy, because I'd built Abelard as an absolute tank who kept them locked into melee range. The trick really does seem to be 'don't let them use their heavy bolter'.

Now it's time to explore Footfall, and hopefully get Heinrix back at some point. His build might be a little all over the place but at least he doesn't randomly summon demons.

LibraryOgre

2024-04-18, 09:35 AM

I had a wild hair to play Mass Effect: Andromeda, and I'm mostly enjoying it (and am still avoiding BG3, I know). There's a LOT of rough places, though... SAM interrupting things to tell you the temperature has changed. Triggers that trigger way late. Lots of story cross-linking that didn't happen. Your Dad's memories for some reason tied to random in-game objects that seem to exist? Maybe? instead of actual achievements beyond "chase the glowing ball." But, I still like it overall. I like the "create your Ryder" character system, and I even find the Nomad to be not-hugely-annoying to drive. The ability to change gears and boost really help it over the Mako.

Ionathus

2024-04-19, 10:53 AM

I've gone back to Subnautica for a second playthrough while I drag my feet on getting a gaming PC put together.

The central experience (explore, gather, craft, explore further, gather more...) is just one of the best I've ever had. They do such a good job of laying out the breadcrumb trail for you.

I'm also making significantly greater use of the propulsion cannon tool this time around. Makes grabbing food fish a breeze, and it makes fending off Stalkers way, way more fun. It even works on Crashfish -- and let me tell you, picking up those little bomb bastards and chucking them across the map (instead of rolling my eyes and swimming away for the fortieth time) is the most satisfying upgrade in the world.

Beelzebub1111

2024-04-19, 12:07 PM

I am playing a stalker for the first time in city of hearoes and once you get your assassination power it almost feels like cheating. You can just stealth past all the enemies straight to the boss, take three damage inspirations and one shot him with no retaliation. the only time it doesnt work is if there is a cutscene that makes him know where you are.

LibraryOgre

2024-04-19, 12:42 PM

In ME: Andromeda, I have the Pull power, as my "primer". But, every time I do, I think of this comic.

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2011-05-28

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/strip/4003/0/schlock20110528.jpg?v=1530096509993

LEGS: You've got the basics. Head back to the ground. We're walking.

TINO: But... I can fly!

LEGS: We all can. These are very expensive uniforms.

TINO: But... You can fly! Why would you walk anywhere?

LEGS: Do you know what we call flying soldiers on the battlefield?

TINO: Air support?

LEGS: Skeet.

Anonymouswizard

2024-04-19, 12:51 PM

Still on Stardew Valley, and catching that bloody walleye is driving me insane. The rest of the night fishing bundle is already pretty difficult, but
1) the Walleye is only available for two hours a day, of which you lose one if you don't want to collapse from exhaustion
2) it's only available when it's rainy, and
3) it seems to be one of the annoying fish to catch which constantly shoots to the other end of the bar

While other fishing bundles are annoying with fish only being available in certain seasons this one drives me up the wall.

On the other hand already got Emily up to five hearts, sheep are a long way off but I've stumbled across a lot of jade.now I just need a silo for hay storage and a shed to stick a ton of preserves jars in. Then once sprinklers worth actually using unlock next Farming level I'll be able to start cranking out artisan goods, which is where the money is.

Ionathus

2024-04-19, 01:58 PM

While other fishing bundles are annoying with fish only being available in certain seasons this one drives me up the wall.

You have my sympathies. Fishing in Stardew pushes all of my buttons in the worst way -- there's no frustration like having the bar almost full and then getting juked by the fish.

Are you doing cork bobber and a fishing buff? I didn't catch on to foods that buff fishing until late in my playthrough, but they were a game changer for expanding that margin of error.

Batcathat

2024-04-19, 02:13 PM

I kinda like the fishing mechanic itself, it's just frustrating enough that it feels good when you get the hang of it and/or catch some particularly tricky fish. That said, keeping track of which fish can be caught where and when is kind of a headache, even using the wiki (I would love to see some stats on how many people complete the fishing bundles using only in-game information).

Cespenar

2024-04-20, 10:56 AM

I have reached nearly the end of the Ace Attorney-like-but-Chinese Murders on the Yangtze River, and I'm a bit impressed. There are as always, bit of logic leaps when it comes to some of the evidence orders, but all in all, it has quite meticulous and interesting cases. Definite suggestion from me for the Ace likers.

Cygnia

2024-04-20, 11:05 AM

This week, Epic had The Big Con for free, a quirky point & click game set in the 90's about a teenager trying to steal enough money to save her mom's video store.

Form

2024-04-20, 12:53 PM

That wiki is a lifesaver. It's what I used when I went and caught all the fish.

At first I hated the fishing minigame, but I quickly got used to it when I actually started doing it to the point where it actually got fun. As long as you don't do it too much.

warty goblin

2024-04-21, 08:59 AM

What I'm hearing is that you managed to embed a game of Terra Nil (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1593030/Terra_Nil/) in AoW 4. That's delightful.

Something like that, although with a lot more orcs who are also trees.

Actually pulled off a win in that game this morning. It took a certain amount of cheese and touch of save scumming, but it worked out by the skin of my teeth. This, more than any AoW 4 match to date absolutely nailed the feel of a long and horrible war against overwhelming demonic odds. Seriously, this thing got epic. My provinces were repeatedly burned to the ground, my capital was besieged, and I actually lost my second city briefly to a combined assault of demonic orcs and I think demonic goatmen (there was a lot of very evil free cities all of whom completely hated me, I really could not keep track). I had to crash my entire economy and force march a hero stack straight across the map to save my capital, while my leader and the actual army battered down the demon prince's capital's walls. This took eight turns. Five turns in, he launched a sally that, although it banished him to the void, destroyed most of my attacking army. So I had to force march my auxiliary hero back across the map to get exhausted reinforcements in place in time for the walls to fall, by which time the damn demon prince had respawned. But he didn't have much of an army left after his breakout attempt, so I was able to beat him down in the end.

At this point AoW 4 has absolutely cemented itself as my favorite game to come out last year. It's just a perfect fantasy epic simulator. I just play with a strict restriction that I autoresolve most fights, and only don't autoresolve if my leader is involved. This keeps the game from taking 10,000 years.

AlanBruce

2024-04-21, 03:41 PM

Just finished The Rising Tide DLC for FF16.

Its been awhile since I played the main game, so I went in to my saved file in Final Fantasy Mode (Hard mode). I managed to get through the DLC fine. Not really stressing it

And then I got to the DLCs final boss.

Grim Portent

2024-04-21, 04:24 PM

Been playing Rimworld, unmodded other than some UI stuff and a few cosmetic styles to try out the new Anomaly DLC, and recently wrapped up my first successful run through it.

Probably the most cinematic ending I've had to any colony in the game. Tooth and nail struggle to get to the finish, and the last colonist standing was the daughter of the last surviving member of the founding colonists, who was herself locked in a cryopod a literal second away from death. Bleeding, broken, on the brink of death. Lacey 'Madam' Lowe aged, 15, stared down the Void and we were triumphant. Many lives lost, many atrocities performed, but we did it.

Now to run at it with overpowered modded supersoldier vampires and armies of genetically engineered slave soldiers. My horrors shall be uncounted, my crimes beyond reckoning! Let the world weep tears of blood as I twist flesh and steel to make my armies.

If only colony manager was working though, I do feel a bit lost without it.

Zevox

2024-04-21, 06:22 PM

After wrapping up Unicorn Overlord earlier this week (it's good, would recommend), I've been kind of bouncing between things, looking for something to play while waiting for Stellar Blade's release this coming Friday. Started a second run of Unicorn Overlord on a harder difficulty, but my interest sort of trailed off - there's only so much I can do to vary my teams up in the early period of that game, and the harder difficulty was mostly just making every fight last longer, not making them more fun. Tried starting a re-run of Mega Man 11, and a game of Age of Wonders 4, but wasn't really feeling those.

Then I looked through the current sale PSN is running and saw a Yu-gi-oh game on sale for $10: "Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution." And I've been on a bit of a Yu-gi-oh nostalgia kick of late, so after a little googling to see what people had to say about the game, I grabbed it.

Will say, I'm glad I got it that cheap, it's clearly a game with low production values; on the quite rare occasions it shows something other than static artwork of the characters or the fairly simply animations of the game board, it looks like something you could run on an N64. And it came out in 2019, apparently, so yeah. But it does have its merits - its main single-player mode sees you playing through most of the duels of the show... or each of the shows, apparently, as there's six different "series" to play through. I'd heard about GX being a thing after the original show finished, but I didn't know they'd kept making more after that, much less that many, so that was a surprise to me. I'm only familiar with the original show, and even that not the later seasons, so most of those will be new to me, but of course I've been playing the original show's duels first, and they're pretty accurate - as much so as is possible given the show never really followed the rules of the TCG, anyway. It does make some of them rather awkward at times given the crappy decks some of the characters play with, but that's part of the fun of using the story decks instead of your own (which you can do). It also lets you play each duel from both sides, playing the antagonist/loser of the duel once you've beaten it the regular way, which is a nice touch. (Often that's the harder way to play - beating Yugi with Kaiba in their first duel especially was rough, since aside from Yugi's traditional crummy monsters he always used, the designers gave him an actually pretty decent "stall and draw Exodia" deck.)

The game seems to have a ton of cards to collect, too. Playing through the original series' campaign unlocked me six different "booster" types to buy (with in-game currency they're being quite generous with, even when I re-play duels), each of which says it has 314 different cards to collect, and each other series has its own set of such booster packs to unlock. So, yeah, I'm sure I'll have way more options for making custom decks than I could ever know what to do with when this is all done. Aside from maybe trying to re-create the old deck I used while I was briefly into the TCG I don't know how much I'll try to do that though, I think playing through the story duels with the story decks is most of what I'm in this for.

Just finished The Rising Tide DLC for FF16.

Its been awhile since I played the main game, so I went in to my saved file in Final Fantasy Mode (Hard mode). I managed to get through the DLC fine. Not really stressing it

And then I got to the DLCs final boss.

Maybe it was the mode I was playing in. Or maybe I was rusty with Ifrits combos and mechanics, but I dare say that boss may be the hardest one in the entire game. Nonetheless, it was, like all boss fights in this game are: a brilliant spectacle. I still think the Bahamut fight is top tier, but this one gets really close.
Sounds nice. I knew that had come out recently, but I've been hesitating on getting it due to the price point. I liked FF16, but I'm not so sure I want to spend nearly half the game's cost on a couple of extra DLC areas, even with Leviathan's moveset being added. Maybe when I see it on sale, or when I want to replay the game.

Personally my favorite boss from the game was Titan, but Bahamut was a close second. Helped that Titan's second phase reminded me a lot of a Bayonetta fight.

AlanBruce

2024-04-21, 08:50 PM

Sounds nice. I knew that had come out recently, but I've been hesitating on getting it due to the price point. I liked FF16, but I'm not so sure I want to spend nearly half the game's cost on a couple of extra DLC areas, even with Leviathan's moveset being added. Maybe when I see it on sale, or when I want to replay the game.

Personally my favorite boss from the game was Titan, but Bahamut was a close second. Helped that Titan's second phase reminded me a lot of a Bayonetta fight.

WritersBlock

2024-04-21, 09:09 PM

Since it was on sale I picked up Fable Anniversary and now I wish they would bring Fable 3 back to the steam store, as well as Fable 2 (or add fable 2 if it was never on pc, not sure if that is the case or not.) And I wish every other area with enemies in this game did not have half a dozen npc's that stand around right next to you all the time and get in the way when you are trying to fight a gang of bandits or whatever else you may be facing, getting in the way and messing me up when I try to target an enemy.

Having to reload because I injured or killed an npc instead of an enemy because they wont run away and practically cling to you while you are trying to fight is not a good thing. Although they CAN be handy for drawing a trolls attacks away from you, so there is that at least.

Game does have quite a bit of charm and can really bring the funny when it wants to as well despite some issues the game does have. (Have no why idea why they delisted the third game however I would really like to play a pc version of it.)

Rynjin

2024-04-21, 09:15 PM

Ionathus

2024-04-22, 11:33 AM

It helps that full friendship with Pam (I think...?) gives access to the fishing channel that tells you every detail for each (non-unique) fish. I know most players finish the community center before that stage but it's a nice failsafe!

Batcathat

2024-04-22, 03:34 PM

Yeah, I know there are ways to do it, but considering finishing the fishing bundles is pretty laborious even looking them up on the wiki, having to figure all of them out too feels like a lot (though to be honest, I haven't even tried doing that).

In other news, I wasn't sure what to play next until watching the Fallout series put me in the mood for some old school Fallout, so now I'm replaying Fallout 2 (I considered starting with the first game and I might replay that later, but I've always felt like Fallout 2 is better in almost every way, except maybe the main plot). Maybe it's just my nostalgia speaking, but I feel like it holds up.

Zevox

2024-04-22, 05:06 PM

You get roughly around 5 extra hours of gameplay. A new area to explore. New enemies and ten extra sidequests. Im certain the price will drop in time, so it may be ideal to purchase it later if you want to see the conclusion to the story and the missing Eikon.
Oof, yeah, 5 hours of extra gameplay for $30 does not sound like a good deal. Though the story already has its conclusion? The ending's pretty conclusive as-is, Leviathan's just a side-thing, right? :smallconfused:

If you're still having fun by the time you get through the Link era, might wanna hop into Master Duel (the modern card game simulator on Steam). I feel like you'd like playing Vanquish Souls; it's a deck inspired by Marvel vs Capcom-esque fighting games where you tag out fighters on the field for ones in your hand to combo their effects together and kill your opponent with "assists".
While that Vanquish Souls thing does sound intriguing, I probably won't end up doing that. Looking at it, it's a free-to-play, multiplayer version of the game, and it's safe to say I'm not interested in that anymore. Getting me to even try another free-to-play game at this point is going to be a tall order. I mean, I know I'll try 2XKO (yes, that's the actual name...) when it comes out, because MvC style fighting game, but even for that I'm not expecting my love of that kind of game to overcome my dislike for free-to-play elements.

Rynjin

2024-04-22, 05:44 PM

While that Vanquish Souls thing does sound intriguing, I probably won't end up doing that. Looking at it, it's a free-to-play, multiplayer version of the game, and it's safe to say I'm not interested in that anymore. Getting me to even try another free-to-play game at this point is going to be a tall order. I mean, I know I'll try 2XKO (yes, that's the actual name...) when it comes out, because MvC style fighting game, but even for that I'm not expecting my love of that kind of game to overcome my dislike for free-to-play elements.

It is like...ACTUALLY free-to-play. The game is so generous with materials that buying anything is actively a bad deal. As long as you play about one game every 3 days to complete your dailies (they stack up to 9, and you'll complete like 5 of them in one match a lot of the time) you'll get enough stuff to build whatever the newest deck that comes out is. And that's after you've exhausted the huge number of things a free player gets.

I'm genuinely unsure how the game makes money.

tyckspoon

2024-04-22, 06:32 PM

I'm genuinely unsure how the game makes money.

Selling cards to Yugioh content creators when their viewers force them to go buy random terrible deck archetypes for the content >.>

Zevox

2024-04-22, 07:16 PM

I'm genuinely unsure how the game makes money.
The simple fact that you mentioned "dailies" is already all I need to know. That sort of thing is part of the free-to-play elements I no longer want anything to do with. I don't want games trying to incentivize me to play them every day to not "fall behind" anymore, I've been very done with that since I dropped Hearthstone. And I honestly don't think I'd much want to play Yu-gi-oh with actual people anymore regardless. Which is why the one I'm playing now works, plenty of single-player AIs for me to beat up on with premade decks and without caring how optimal my one custom deck is.

ArmyOfOptimists

2024-04-22, 07:32 PM

The simple fact that you mentioned "dailies" is already all I need to know. That sort of thing is part of the free-to-play elements I no longer want anything to do with. I don't want games trying to incentivize me to play them every day to not "fall behind" anymore, I've been very done with that since I dropped Hearthstone. And I honestly don't think I'd much want to play Yu-gi-oh with actual people anymore regardless. Which is why the one I'm playing now works, plenty of single-player AIs for me to beat up on with premade decks and without caring how optimal my one custom deck is.

This is what soured me on the new game from the makers of Ori. No Rest for the Wicked has some good gameplay in there, but after the prologue area, you're introduced to the TOWN! Featuring daily and weekly quests, plus building orders that complete in real-time. Instant bad taste in my mouth. A single-player or co-op game doesn't need these types of "engagement boosters" in it.

Rynjin

2024-04-22, 08:05 PM

Trust me, I get it. But these aren't dailies like "I gotta grind this **** like it's my job" or even Hearthstone's ones like "Summon 50 Murlocs" or whatever that take 10 matches and a specially built deck to get done.

My list consisted of when I got on:

Ritual/Synchro/XYZ summon a monster 3 times (this is a "do one of these 3 things", not 3 of each)
Special Summon a Monster 5 times
Destroy a card 5 times
Activate a Trap card 2 times
Fusion/Pendulum/Link summon a monster 3 times
Activate a Spell card 3 times
Duel in Solo Mode 3 times.

That's 3 days worth of dailies because I didn't feel like playing yesterday or the day before.

I played one match.

The only ones left in the list are the Trap card one and the Solo mode one.

Now if you want to play the game even less frequently than that, eh, you probably don't like the game much. Although even then it's actually a viable strat to just start a brand new account any time you want to play a deck and build it just from the starter gems. Of course none of that fixes the "I don't wanna play against players" aspect I guess.

AlanBruce

2024-04-22, 11:00 PM

Oof, yeah, 5 hours of extra gameplay for $30 does not sound like a good deal. Though the story already has its conclusion? The ending's pretty conclusive as-is, Leviathan's just a side-thing, right? :smallconfused:

The Leviathan DLC is not required to finish the game, true. However, for those wondering what happened to Leviathan and why he isnt in the base game, it serves as a conclusion of sorts.

Zevox

2024-04-23, 12:36 AM

Now if you want to play the game even less frequently than that, eh, you probably don't like the game much.
There is no game that I want to play daily, or even every few days. There's too many different games I enjoy for that. That's, again, part of what makes me no longer want to touch free-to-play games: they're all trying to get you to do that. Some more aggressively than others, sure, but keeping you playing as often as they can is ultimately part of the goal of the design for all of them. And I'm no longer okay with that. Even games I enjoy coming back to regularly, like my favorite fighting games, I'll go months at a time (minimum, since when I do come back to them it's not always the same one) without playing when my interest is drawn more by various other games instead. And free-to-play games do not tend to get designed in such a way that that's totally okay.

Also, yeah, the not wanting to play with other players part is kind of a big deal in this specific case as well.

Rynjin

2024-04-23, 01:07 AM

There is no game that I want to play daily, or even every few days.

Probably just a difference in taste then. I like always having a "default game" to play for a while. For a long time it was Rainbow Six: Siege, even longer before that it was Team Fortress 2, now it's mostly Master Duel since the shooter market kinda sucks ATM.

NeoVid

2024-04-23, 05:51 AM

Don't worry, that feeling that Stalker is busted will go away as soon as you have to rescue someone, and escort them out of the mission past all those enemies that you were able to skip fighting on the way in...

Mastermind is still my favorite archetype. Army of minions, face my army of much better minions while I stand back here debuffing the life out of you and laughing maniacally!

warty goblin

2024-04-23, 09:49 AM

So the last Age of Wonders 4 DLC added the option to play as wolf people. And as mentioned in my previous game, you can worship a giant wolf spirit. You can see where this is going.

But there's one more layer to Wolfception. See, you can customize your race's mount of choice*. So I now have wolf riding wolf worshipping wolves. Who summon wolves. And who get buffs for being near wolves. Technically any animal, but it's probably a wolf. And I enchanted them to be wolfier wolves.

There remains the matter of what major race transformation to go for. Dragon wolves have some potential, as do really big wolves. I could also go for being part snake, but that seems silly. How can a snake-wolf ride a wolf-wolf? And messing with the perfection that is the wolf form might anger the wolf god, or Wolf-wolf-wolf. Maybe angelic wolves?

*slightly confusingly there's two ways to do this. You can just change the aesthetic of your mount, or you can edit your race's traits to get a specific mount with particular special abilities. Needless to say I did he second, because project Turbo-Wolf demands nothing but maximal wolf.

In conclusion, wolf. Wolf wolf wolf wolf-wolf Wolf!

LibraryOgre

2024-04-23, 11:28 AM

Playing Mass Effect: Andromeda, and what's really striking me is how some of the flags trip... but don't stay tripped.

Just this morning, I come to a Remnant place on Eos that the kett were tracking. I get there, SAM informs me that it's the place the kett were tracking, and I tell him to watch out for kett. I come out of the place, and that conversation repeats. I leave the area, and that conversation repeats. Exact same conversation, three times, relevant only once.

Grim Portent

2024-04-23, 11:56 AM

So the last Age of Wonders 4 DLC added the option to play as wolf people. And as mentioned in my previous game, you can worship a giant wolf spirit. You can see where this is going.

In conclusion, wolf. Wolf wolf wolf wolf-wolf Wolf!

Snake-wolf would remove the ability to rides wolf-wolves.

I advise Supergrowth and the hero perk from the last Materium book, if you've got the affinities to pick it up. Makes your heroes about the same size as giants, and nothing is more Turbo than being a three story behemoth version of a thing.

Zombimode

2024-04-23, 02:54 PM

I've just finished Atomic Heart and what can I say: it was an amazing experience.

The game deserves more then being constantly either ignored or badmouthed.

Now, to be fair there are elements of the game that are rather mediocre, others are just good but not great. The first section of the game in particular is where it is the most unimpressive. It reminded me of other games, mostly Half-Life and Prey, that did the "destroyed science complex" simply better than Atomic Heart does.
Driving sucks.
Most of the props in the game-world are static - no cheese-wheels rolling down the mountains here.
The design of the optional underground areas is very "game-y" and formulaic.
And, because this is something most reviews are very keen on pointing out: technical issues. I encountered... *drum-roll* ... a whole 2 (in words: two!) of them:
* one very minor graphic glitch on the game's save-the-game stations
* the game has some difficulties with actors clipping through doors and walls - including their hitboxes.

The game is something of a slow burner. It takes a while for it to stand on its own legs - both thematically and gameplaywise - but it is important to note that it does.
My appreciation of the main characters also grew over time. The relationships between the characters are constantly and sometimes subtlety evolving. Seeing and experiencing that growth was great on its own.
The game's story is one trust and control, of the clash between grand ideas and the people having those ideas, and above all a story about humanity. If the game makes any point at all, it is that humanity, that is all our pesky emotions, fears and desires, is just to stubborn to vanish and that it takes no coordinated effort to preserve - people being people is enough. And I like the tone here: the game avoids sliding into cynicism, but is also neither preachy nor optimistic.

But Atomic Heart's strongest aspect is its design. The visual design is impeccable, but I also want to highlight the audio design. Especially the game's use of music is impressive. One thing that Atomic Heart relies heavily on is what I call the "crafted scene": where gameplay, scenery and (music) score creates one cohesive whole.

So, the TL;DR is: if you like "Warren Spector" games, especially in the style of Arkane Studios (Dishonored, Prey), if you value artistry in game, if you enjoy the amalgamation of gameplay and music in games, give Atomic Heart a try.
The game has AAA pricing but to me that is definitely worth it.

Cespenar

2024-04-24, 11:49 AM

So the last Age of Wonders 4 DLC added the option to play as wolf people.

The game is just the customizer's heaven at this point. Not really my cup of tea, but still.

Cygnia

2024-04-24, 12:09 PM

Dropped coin on Sentinels of Earth-Prime to help scratch my superhero itch (and the fact that it can play with Sentinels of the Multiverse cards is a bonus).

warty goblin

2024-04-24, 12:25 PM

The game is just the customizer's heaven at this point. Not really my cup of tea, but still.

It's either an optimizer's dream, or a particular sort of fantasy RP nerd's dream. I'm not much into the former - I find build crafting to be like homework on a deliberately irrelevant skill - but I very much dig the later.

Specifically you have to really like a sort of late 90s/early 2000s kitchen sink kinda fantasy world. It doesn't take itself 100% seriously, but it isn't farce or self parody either, it's just there to be fun. What AoW4 does is let you generate worlds like that, populate them with appropriately fun stuff, build cool fantasy stuff then have big honking epic fantasy wars there.

Basically I use it as an ad libs generator for the videogame equivalent of fantasytrilogies cycles with names like The Dragon Element Saga Book 3: Tears of the Flame. I get depressingly into this too, I have little headcanon things about where my leader comes from, and try to make reasonably in character decisions throughout a run. Last night I got to recruit a leader from a previous game and it was awesome because of course the human barbarian queen would help out the wolf people, it totally fits with her character.

Nobody writes this exact brand of fantasy nonsense anymore. Maybe they never did. But I love it forever.

ArmyOfOptimists

2024-04-24, 01:00 PM

Nobody writes this exact brand of fantasy nonsense anymore. Maybe they never did. But I love it forever.

I kinda find that the Magic the Gathering universe is exactly this kind of thing. It takes itself seriously, but the conceit of having its characters be multiverse hopping sorcerers means that they're free to shove any idea they want as long as it vaguely reads as "fantasy." So you end up with your traditional wizard towers and castles, goblins and elves, knights and dragons stuff. But it also has worlds dominated by political faction wars, borg-like assimilating metal monsters, Victorian angels and lycanthropes, eastern Asian mafia turf wars, and more.

It's the main reason I've come to dislike how much they push crossover cards these days. I understand that they draw attention and therefore money, but the Magic writers can cook some compelling original bits when they want to and it's much less interesting to get old familiar properties mashed into the game instead.

Cespenar

2024-04-24, 01:29 PM

I like AoW, and I know some people love the camp, kitchen-sink approach, but I don't know. I think titles like Dragon Age and similar stuff really poisoned the well in the sense that they made people think that serious worldbuilding is kinda boring. It doesn't have to be. Disco or Tyranny are surefire examples of that, though I'm aware that going into RPGs might be a bit unfair towards AoW, for which my actual gripes are something else entirely.

warty goblin

2024-04-24, 06:13 PM

Magic is a good parallel. Back in the day when I set fire to money bought Magic cards recall really enjoying the deft touch with which MtG would suggest a world through art and flavor text. They felt both like places and wide open for your imagination. Mirroden is still super cool, and wow did I just date myself.

I mean I've been saying worldbuilding is overrated as an end even of itself for years, so I very much appreciate a lighter touch at it, particularly in RPGs. Ultimately go stab the bad guy is not a plot that requires a huge amount of background to execute, arguably it's counterproductive because the more grounded and detailed a world is, the less plausible it often seems that you have a single bad guy who's stabbing will particularly fix anything.

But one of the things I really like about AoW4, and what made me like it more than BG3, is the freedom of perspective and lack of protagonist centrality that comes from being a strategy game instead of an RPG. I really like the sense of being a completely expected part of the world - while the player avatar is unusually powerful they aren't uniquely so, or of any particular cosmic importance. You can lose a game, and that's a sensible outcome in the universe, you don't have to load a save and try again.

Errorname

2024-04-24, 08:36 PM

I think titles like Dragon Age and similar stuff really poisoned the well in the sense that they made people think that serious worldbuilding is kinda boring. It doesn't have to be. Disco or Tyranny are surefire examples of that, though I'm aware that going into RPGs might be a bit unfair towards AoW, for which my actual gripes are something else entirely.

Something that I think undermines the worldbuilding in Dragon Age or Pillars of Eternity is the pressures of making a setting that is marketable as offbrand D&D. I think that might be the big factor making those settings feel boring, they're very worldbuilding heavy but the worldbuilding is very derivative.

Zevox

2024-04-25, 10:52 PM

Well, Stellar Blade's out tomorrow, so my time with Yu-gi-oh!: Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution is about done - for now, at least, I might actually come back to it. There's a lot of single-player duels in this, it turns out. I've so far only completed two series' story campaigns, the original and 5D's, and done a couple of the first duels for a couple of others just to unlock some of their card packs. Between the regular version and the reverse duel of each there's a lot to those alone, but going through them also unlocks "Duelist Challenges" for each series - matches where you select the character you want to fight and face them using a better deck than they probably used in the story, with one of your own rather than a premade deck. Usually they have one in keeping with their deck's theme in the story, though not always - Mai still uses a Harpy deck, but Pegasus ditched his Toon deck for a "Madolche" deck in that mode, for a examples from the original series. Which is still kind of fitting with all the cards being cutesy characters, but not exactly what you'd expect of him. I've done all of these for the original series, and most from 5D's.

As far as the story modes go, I found playing 5D's interesting. I did try to follow the story at first, but the game does so much summarizing to fit things into a short space before and after each duel that I eventually got lost and just started skipping it, so unfortunately it's clearly not great at communicating the story if you don't already know it. The duels themselves though remained fun. 5D's('s?) made heavy use of "synchro summoning," one of the several mechanics that didn't exist when I last played the actual card game, and I found it fun. Kind of like they were trying to make a version of fusion that didn't suck, while also trying to justify why you would use monsters below level 4 aside from when they have extremely potent stand-alone abilities, and it feels like they mostly succeeded - although decks that focused too much on just synchro-summoning did feel very, very bad when you didn't get the right combination of cards to do it. Weirdly this got worse the deeper I got into the story mode, as the main character's deck especially eventually wound up so full of niche tuner cards that were weak on their own that I was struggling to draw any non-tuner cards to synchro them with. Which made for an odd juxtaposition to the original series story mode, where the decks generally started awful (aside from Yugi's Exodia deck in the first duel) and got better over time. I'd say my favorite duel from 5D's story was Sayer vs Carly Carmine. It was just fun to play from both sides: Sayer's psychic deck and Carly's Fortune Lady deck both felt pretty good to use, and about evenly matched, so it was a particularly fun one.

Despite the random nature of getting cards from booster packs, this game's also extremely easy to build your collection in. Just from playing those I not only completely assembled my old deck (or as close to it as I'm going to get from memory), I've acquired most of the cards from the packs associated with the original series' characters, a couple of characters each from 5D's and GX, and a decent chunk of cards from several others. The game's just really generous with "Victory Points," its in-game currency you buy the packs with. Even a loss will generally get you the points to buy 2 packs (even just starting a duel and immediately conceding will get you that, I noticed after backing out of one I entered by mistake once), and a win is often 4-5 packs worth of points. So I've also built variants of my old deck enhanced with newer cards that didn't exist when I last played, which is fun to screw around with and beat the AI up with. The game also doesn't enforce banned/restricted list rules when you're playing the AI, which makes it kind of tempting to put together a blatantly OP deck full of such cards, but I'm at least forcing myself to follow the old list as I remember it from when I last played. (The current one, at least current according to this game, surprises me in a lot of ways - Cannon Soldier is banned entirely, but Mirror Force, Swords of Revealing Light, Dark Hole, Magic Cylinder, and Ring of Destruction all aren't even restricted anymore? Would not have called that, to say the least.)

So yeah, it's been fun, and I might well come back to it to play the rest of the single-player stuff after I go through Stellar Blade. $10 well-spent I'd say.

Corlindale

2024-04-26, 12:18 AM

In my periodical quest for a good Diablo-style game, I've found myself gravitating back to Diablo 3, of all things. Specifically the console version. I find that if you just switch off the dialogue so you don't need to engage with the story in any way, it's actually very good fun to play.

First of all, there's no silly always online-requirement on the console version, which means 0 lag. Since it's an older title it also runs flawlessly on my PS4 and loading times are refreshingly swift. There's very little that keeps you from actually playing the game. Secondly, while the ability to swap out all skills at will was something that kind of turned me off back in the day, I find myself appreciating it more now that I'm a parent with a full-time job and two young children. It mercifully means I don't need to take 10 different Demon Hunters through the game to try out all the builds, I can just switch things around as I go. Also makes Legendary items much more fun to find, as I never have to sigh and go "oh well, for another character/build, this *would* have been great".

Speaking of which, I absolutely love D3's design philosophy of making Legendary items ridiculously overpowered. In the 10 hours or so I spent on Diablo 4 before boredom set in, I found exactly one Legendary item. Do you know what its legendary ability was? It made the Incinerate skill deal 21% more damage. Yes, I almost fell asleep just typing that out. Yes, I was playing a Lightning build so I couldn't even make use of it.

Meanwhile, my Demon Hunter in D3 found a belt that gives my grenades a chance to bounce and explode several times, while giving an 800% damage boost to the final explosion. So I've equipped all of the grenade spawning skills + the Grenadier passive, and I am having an absolute blast (pun intended) blowing everything to bits. I also cannot wait until I get the rune that makes Strafe shoot grenades instead of arrows, it's going to become even more deliciously absurd.

D3 on consoles also makes the whole inventory-management bit quite breezy. There are just big, friendly icons when you pick something up so you can see at a glance what it improves, and then it's just pressing a button to equip. And then you occasionally pop into town and click 'salvage all' to dust the rest. There are so many other Diablo-style games where inventory management feels like a day job in itself.

Anonymouswizard

2024-04-26, 01:53 PM

Somehow I'd forgotten that Ace Attorney was on Steam.

...

Yeah, I'm not playing anything else until I've finished at least the first three.

NeoVid

2024-04-27, 01:49 AM

Sure, I'm still playing the hell out of Gigantic: Rampage Edition, but something else has grabbed me, and everyone needs to be reminded about it if they've forgotten:

The new RPG from the creator of Suikoden, Eiyuden Chronicle, released this week. I spent about 6 hours playing on launch day. I don't want to spend much time typing up an in-depth analysis of what I've seen so far, since that would take up valuable time I could be using to play it.

Let me just remind everyone that Yo****aka Murayama only worked on Suikoden 1 and 2, which is why those games were so much better than the rest of the series. Eiyuden Chronicle is what the guy who made those games created after 20 more years of experience and tech advancements.

WritersBlock

2024-04-27, 03:53 AM

Picked up all 3 Call of Juarez games off gog for under 10 bucks, so, yeah, those are what I will be playing next. Currently on sale and you save a ton buying all 3 of them separately rather then getting the bundle.

LibraryOgre

2024-04-27, 09:51 AM

Playing Mass Effect: Andromeda, and what's really striking me is how some of the flags trip... but don't stay tripped.

This is a messy, messy, game. If it were any more messy, it would be on the Argentina national team.

Just... people talking over themselves. Running around Eos's site 2 in mid-game (after Kadara), and Liam is commenting on dead settlers that we had picked up on our first trip to Eos. Just... all these dialog flags that feel like they would have been closed up if there hadn't been a deadline.

Form

2024-04-27, 11:07 AM

One thing I noticed in Andromeda myself is that quite a few characters seem strangely fixated on this little arm computer they have. When you'd talk to them, they would keep just tapping away on that thing during the conversation. Like some kind of in universe smartphone addiction. Not a big deal, but it did come across as a little odd.

LibraryOgre

2024-04-27, 02:32 PM

Like every door opening with an omnitool, even among the Angara, who don't have them? Like doors that take forever to open with an omnitool, like Kralla's Song on Kadara?

Errorname

2024-04-27, 06:21 PM

Andromeda was the first game by a new wing of the studio and they wasted a bunch of early development time on deluded pipe dreams of a procedurally generated galaxy, something they could never hope to deliver and which nobody in their core audience actually wanted, and knowing that made the entire project made sense to me.

It's an unsurvivable combination of an extremely green team and deeply incompetent management. Better leads might able to shape the fledgling studio into a team that could have shipped a polished product, and likewise a more seasoned team might have been able to endure foolish management

warty goblin

2024-04-27, 07:52 PM

It was their first solo effort, but they developed ME3's multiplayer.

Given the utter garbage fire that is Anthem, I don't think any team could weather management as bad as Bioware's. Andromeda at least swung for the fences, and while what they ended up with was middling, it's a perfectly serviceable and playable Ubigame. The combat is really quite good, one of the stronger third person shooters around, and the jetpack integration is excellent. Anthem is a subpar copy of Destiny that lacked the courage to admit that's what it was doing and completely screwed that up, to the point it tunnelled right through merely mediocre and into realms of baffling incompetence. I really cannot express just how utterly bad Anthem is. Even the jetpack isn't so much good as it is the one thing that mostly works
and is then left out to die by a game that cannot meaningfully support its one halfway decent feature.

ShadowShinobi

2024-04-28, 02:23 AM

Ah, I'd wondered why there was such a difference in the 3rd game, and onwards.

Errorname

2024-04-28, 03:01 AM

Given the utter garbage fire that is Anthem, I don't think any team could weather management as bad as Bioware's.

Yeah, there's a reason I said might, but a more seasoned team probably ships a more polished turd, if nothing else.

Andromeda at least swung for the fences

Honestly, they didn't. They wasted a bunch of money and time fantasizing about swinging for the fences and then decided to aim for a perfectly reasonable and attainable target that they should have been aiming at the whole time and then thoroughly whiffed it

Cespenar

2024-04-28, 10:36 AM

I have tried to get into Stray Gods: A Roleplaying Musical, but sadly couldn't. The songs felt really rough, and the overall pacing was erratic at best. Unfortunate, since the VAs sounded pretty good and it was supposedly written by David Gaider, the OG Bioware writer fella?

Anonymouswizard

2024-04-28, 01:31 PM

Bioware has suffered from a mixture of over-ambition and poor management since at least Dragon Age: Inquisition, maybe Dragon Age 2. Although I suspect if the developers had been allowed an actual development cycle instead of rushing an early version to publishable DA2 would have been exactly what they wanted (it benefits from it's much smaller scope, it really needed a longer third act more than anything).

I also think ME3 had the extra hurdle of losing the original Reaper motivation.

Inquisition however suffers heavily from someone deciding the open world levels were a good idea when the strength of the studio was in densely packed areas with lots of story content. Inquisition shines in the heavily scripted missions, but nobody took the team aside and told them to make more of that.

Heck, the best non mission specific map was the one where you fight your way to and kill an Avaar who picked a fight with you.

I'd actually argue that on the whole Andromeda gets off better than Inquisition. At least once they were forced to work on achievable ideas the Andromeda team cut down on the number of maps.

WritersBlock

2024-04-28, 03:25 PM

Bioware suffered from all of that and more ever since they sold out to EA. The exact second they did that was the end of them as a even half-decent company.

Call of Juarez has been pretty cool so far, I hear Gunslinger is the really good one so when I eventually finish the other 2 I will see for myself. One day I need to jump in the the 2 ancient gods dlc's of doom eternal still.

Zevox

2024-04-28, 05:26 PM

So, Stellar Blade. It came out a couple of days ago, I got it... and I'm honestly still unsure how I feel about it.

The combat is pretty good, don't get me wrong, I'm having fun while I'm fighting the lovecraftian abominations that are this game's monsters, the "Naytiba." But everything else about it kind of leaves me feeling very... meh. As I already knew, the game really wants to be Nier: Automata, so most of it is taking place in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic Earth, with rather melancholy background music. Someone who likes this sort of thing would probably praise it as "atmospheric" or somesuch; for me, it just leaves the world feeling dull and lifeless, which makes it less fun to engage with. At least Nier: Automata had Platinum Games' combat to carry it; while Stellar Blade's combat is good, it's definitely got nothing on Platinum Games' work.

The writing is pretty flat - dialogue is often awkward (hard to tell if that's the original writing or the translation, but either way it's not good), the characters aren't interesting or fun at all as yet, and the story seems straightforward, predictable, and relatively minimal. Side-quests that I've encountered so far are rather boring, simplistic fetch-quests, most of which end with you finding out someone you were looking for died. Much like the world around it, it all just feels kind of lifeless and dull to me.

Still, there's definitely cool moments happening when I'm fighting, which keeps me somewhat interested. But it is telling that I've actually gone back and played a little bit more Legacy of the Duelist in between Stellar Blade sessions the last couple of days. Me playing anything but a fighting game at the same time as a new game pretty much never happens.

Beelzebub1111

2024-04-29, 08:02 AM

I've been having fun with stellar blade. I'm not very far into it. Just at the Syringe Horse and I'm just starting to get ahead on the combat. They are offering me an intriguing enough mystery with the whole transhumanism aspect making me wonder what EVE actually is. It's somewhere between Nier and Devil May Cry never quite feeling like either. The use of yellow paint is just enough to not be completely annoying, but I think I'd rather only see it when I scan for it. maybe say it's infrared paint left by a survivor group or something as it's implied to be but make it a little more hidden for the people that hate that sort of thing.

I keep forgetting to perfect guard every hit of a combo and try to riposte on the first parry which gets me killed a lot. It's like I need to rewire part of my muscle memory.

AlanBruce

2024-04-30, 08:56 AM

I just finished Stellar Blade.

Its not a groundbreaking story- not by any means. I dont believe they were aiming for top notch storytelling. However, combat is the highlight of this game and it that regard, it excels. I am thankful for playing Sekiro awhile back, since this game requires you to get in their face and perfect parry & punish. The counters can get tricky- knowing when to dash forward or backward depending on the glow to punish the enemy with a counter. Later on, a few bosses will mix both moves back to back, so quick reflexes are a must.

Im going for platinum and glad to say that none of the trophies require Hard Mode, which is unlocked after finishing the game. I did enjoy hunting for cans, oddly enough. Their design is really good and some are cleverly hidden. Also, fishing. I wasnt too keen on the mechanics until it was brought up you can make it much easier in Accessibility mode in the menu.

The enemy designs are very good. All incredibly grotesque to contrast with Eves beauty and her ever expanding collection of body suits.

Zombimode

2024-04-30, 11:08 AM

Recently started Geneforge 1 - Mutagen. And, oh boy, this is RPG comfort food to me.
For a short introduction, the world of Geneforge is heavily influenced by the use of bio-magical creations, artificially created living things. They see use as workers, servants, soldiers and even tools.
The organisation that has the knowledge for creation and the means of control is called The Shapers. The player character is bound to become one of the Shapers and is on a trip by sea to reach a training facility on an island. This journey gets interrupted by an attack from an unknown vessel and the player character gets swept to shores of Sucia, and island declared Barred by the Shapers over 200 years ago. When Shapers retreated from this island (for unknown reasons) they left behind many of their creations. These have not just survived by thrived. Especially the human-like Servilles have unsurprisingly, as these are actually sapient beings, created societies of their own.
You, stranded on this foreign land with only few skills and no equipment, have to survive. But more than that, you have to decide how position yourself in regards to the Serville communities. Do you subjugate? Do you seek harmony? Or do you just seek power?

On the negative side, there are some issues with this setup. First, it is explicitly stated that the player character has yet to receive any Shaper training and is not yet part of the organisation. But in many situations the PC is assumed to have ingrained Shaper doctrine and rules. In others "your Shaper training" is explicitly mentioned. This feeds into the second more important issue is that the game thrusts the player into a place that contrasts the norms of the setting, but without giving the player the opportunity to learn and experience what is normal in this world.
As such the whole shock value of Servilles *grasp* thinking for themselves (how dare they?!) falls flat.

Thankfully the game works despite all that. How to deal with the various factions is interesting regardless, and I like that in this games only your actions really matter. Just saying that you respect the sovereignty of the Servilles will not lock you into anything. So far I have the impression that the game is very open in how to approach your objectives.

The other big selling point is the minionmancy. You don't have to play a minionmancer in Geneforge, but the game allows you to go all-in on that. The game is essentially a single character RPG meaning that you only have to care for the survival of your PC. Your minions are very much disposable. I have great fun treating them as such: throwing them into the jaws of the opposition to cover my retreat, standing in the corner of the map just sending my creations against the enemy, or creating wave after wave (with trips to town in between) to slowly wearing down even strong enemy groups is all oddly satisfying.

LibraryOgre

2024-04-30, 11:56 AM

So, still avoiding Baldur's Gate 3, though getting closer to wanting to continue, I have dropped Andromeda for now, and am picking up Kingmaker, again. I set a rule for myself of "No Bards", and faffed about with a Sacred Huntsman/Druid build that I abandoned about the Troll Fortress... just BORED of the character. I have restarted as a half-orc grenadier. Don't ever plan to pick up Infusion, I am a melee grenadier.

warty goblin

2024-04-30, 12:35 PM

Been poking at a fun little indie called First Cut: Samurai Duel. It's a 2d side view sword fighting game where every hit is lethal. While this is at some level unrealistic - plenty of sword strikes are survivable - it correctly enforces extreme paranoia on the player.

The combat is relatively simple in its components. You have high, middle and low stances mapped to up/neutral/down on the d-pad or left thumbstick. You attack with X, which swings from your current stance. If you are in the same stance that an attack is launched from, you parry the strike automatically. The longer you hold X, the faster the swing and the longer the reach. The A button dodges high or low attacks, so long as you match stance, and lets you follow up very quickly. It is a static dodge though, not a dodge roll you can reposition with. You can also counter attack off of a successful parry, though I'm terrible at it.

This turns into a relentlessly tense and extremely difficult game. Being in measure with an enemy is appropriately scary because one mistake and you die. So you have to read the enemy's stance and respond to that. There's no discrete combos, just the basic moves. The timing is tight enough that even a two parry exchange of blows is hard (at least for me, but I suck at games) and discombobulating enough you want to retreat and reassess.

Fortunately the respawn button is instant, because you will need it. A lot.

I've often thought that 2d side view is one of the stronger formats for videogame interpretations of sword combat because it removes the difficulty of precisely judging reach in 3d third person systems, and allows for much more intuitive representations of high and low strikes*. This is a really solid implementation of those ideas, in a quite lovely and exceedingly violent pixel art package. Definitely worth checking out.

*the 0-class jankfest and general crime against taste and standards Age of Barbarian does something sort of similar. I can't say it does it well, because it's Age of Barbarian and part of its charm is that it's the best worst version of itself. But the fundamental ideas of reach, tempo, and high/low lines are jankily well represented in a way fully 3d systems generally fail to realize

LibraryOgre

2024-04-30, 01:40 PM

So, Kingmaker: If you're playing an Alchemist who doesn't have the Infusion discovery, how does casting communal spells (eg "Stoneskin, Communal") work? Does it still work on everyone?

ArmyOfOptimists

2024-04-30, 02:55 PM

So, Kingmaker: If you're playing an Alchemist who doesn't have the Infusion discovery, how does casting communal spells (eg "Stoneskin, Communal") work? Does it still work on everyone?

From the PF1e rules, emphasis mine:

An extract is cast by drinking it, as if imbibing a potionthe effects of an extract exactly duplicate the spell upon which its formula is based, save that the spell always affects only the drinking alchemist.

Infusion doesn't change this. By default all spells cast by an alchemist only affect themselves as if the target line was swapped to "Caster Only". Infusion modifies this to swap the target line to "One nearby ally". The downside, of course, is that communal or otherwise multi-target spells are pretty garbage in the hands of an Alchemist. The upside is that spells usually locked to Caster Only, like Mirror Image, can be cast on others.

Zevox

2024-04-30, 04:37 PM

I've been having fun with stellar blade. I'm not very far into it. Just at the Syringe Horse and I'm just starting to get ahead on the combat. They are offering me an intriguing enough mystery with the whole transhumanism aspect making me wonder what EVE actually is.
:smallconfused: I don't get the impression that there's supposed to be any mystery about what Eve is? She's exactly what she seems to be: an android, sent by that Mother Sphere thing to kill the Naytibas. Pretty cut and dry there, really. It's everything else that seems set up for "twists."

After seeing the lab in the wastelands, it's pretty clear that the big "twist" will be that the Naytibas are what became of humanity after their war with the original androids, which the humans lost. Not sure if the transformation was intentional or not or who caused it or why, but it clearly happened, and that's all that'll really matter. The thing you recover before the Tachy fight backs this up, saying Mother Sphere was created by humans, and it was only after she (it?) created the first androids that she decided she no longer had any reason to keep humans around; pretty obvious that would've been the cause of that war between the humans and androids. Based on this, it seems Mother Sphere is basically using everyone for her own ends, one of which is wiping out the Naytibas - either because she just can't leave the job of wiping out humanity incomplete, or because the Naytibas will never stop attacking her and her androids as long as they exist and she wants Earth specifically to be hers for whatever reason. Or both, could easily be both. In any case, I pretty much expect Mother Sphere to be the final boss in some way.

The only thing I'm not feeling too clear on is how the prophet fellow in Xion that you're working with plays into things, but I'll bet he's revealed as a villain by the end too, given the implications about Mother Sphere and him being a figurehead of her religion. Also because that room he's in is more than big enough to serve as a major boss fight room, and is mostly empty as it stands, which felt like kind of a giveaway from the moment I first set foot in it.

I just finished Stellar Blade.

Its not a groundbreaking story- not by any means. I dont believe they were aiming for top notch storytelling.
I don't know, I definitely get the impression they want you to care about this story and this world. They're obviously not aiming for a DMC/Bayonetta style game that shuttles you from one action setpiece to another, even though that would play much more to the game's actual strengths. They're giving us all these side-quests, the hub city, and tons of (stiff, awkward) dialogue and scenes for a reason.

To say nothing of trying to make Tachy's actual death scene dramatic and emotional even though you barely knew her and Eve seems almost incapable of expressing emotion...

However, combat is the highlight of this game and it that regard, it excels. I am thankful for playing Sekiro awhile back, since this game requires you to get in their face and perfect parry & punish. The counters can get tricky- knowing when to dash forward or backward depending on the glow to punish the enemy with a counter. Later on, a few bosses will mix both moves back to back, so quick reflexes are a must.
[...]
I did enjoy hunting for cans, oddly enough. Their design is really good and some are cleverly hidden.
I don't know if it changes later on (again, I'm only just past the 2nd Alpha Naytiba), but thus far I've found the color-coded forward/back dodge attacks by far the easiest to deal with. They're so telegraphed it's almost a test of patience to wait after seeing the initial flash for the one on your sword that lets you know when to actually do the counter move. It's everything else, where you want to parry or perfect dodge, that I need to learn the timing on and can mess up. Combat is definitely the game's strong point, no argument here, but I'd by no means compare it to Sekiro, it feels simpler and much easier than that game.

I did recently get Burst moves though, and should say I do greatly appreciate Eve getting to learn Judgment Cut End. A little Vergil flair is a very welcome addition to any action game's repertoire.

I kind of like the cans too personally, but it's more because it feels silly to me, particularly with the pose Eve strikes when you find one. Feels like the kind of thing that would fit in the more Bayonetta-esque version of the game that I'd assumed it was from the first trailer. I don't expect to actually try to track them all down though, I just enjoy when I find one.

Edit: Okay, question time for folks. Apparently, Solasta: Crown of the Magister got a Playstation release in early March that I hadn't heard of. It not being on my main systems has been the only reason I haven't picked it up, and it's now also on a pretty steep sale, so I'm probably going to grab it, I just need to decide which version. Standard edition is an enticingly cheap $9, but "Lightbringers Edition" (which lists off a bunch of what I assume to be DLC that's included with the game: Lost Valley, Palace of Ice, Primal Calling, Inner Strength, and a Supporter Pack) is also discounted at $34. Would the latter be worth the almost quadruple price tag, or should I just grab the base game?

Zombimode

2024-05-01, 01:19 AM

Okay, question time for folks. Apparently, Solasta: Crown of the Magister got a Playstation release in early March that I hadn't heard of. It not being on my main systems has been the only reason I haven't picked it up, and it's now also on a pretty steep sale, so I'm probably going to grab it, I just need to decide which version. Standard edition is an enticingly cheap $9, but "Lightbringers Edition" (which lists off a bunch of what I assume to be DLC that's included with the game: Lost Valley, Palace of Ice, Primal Calling, Inner Strength, and a Supporter Pack) is also discounted at $34. Would the latter be worth the almost quadruple price tag, or should I just grab the base game?

Lost Valley adds a new campaign for a fresh party. Palace of Ice adds the third campaign, this time a continuation of the main game. Primal Calling and Inner Strength add character building options (classes, races etc.). For the full 5e base class setup Primal Calling and Inner Strength are necessary.

While I found Lost Valley to be no on the same level of quality then the main campaign it was still fun. And Palace of Ice was pretty good.
Personally I would not want to play Solasta without the two class DLCs as the character building options of just the base game are a bit limited.

In short, the additions in the Lightbringers Edition are real content, adding new campaigns and enhancing the base game. I would go for the complete package.

Corlindale

2024-05-01, 01:49 AM

You'd better believe I'm still steadily ignoring all my new games to play Might & Magic VII.

My current project: Single-class challenge runs. I'm going to do runs where I try to win the game with single-classed parties, going through all the classes in alphabetical order. Why? Just for fun, and as an excuse to play more MMVII.

It's early days, so I've only just started playing my first run: Team Archer. I expect the main strength of this party will be ranged combat (duh), so I figure I should make it an early priority to get everyone up to Master level with the Bow skill. This lets my Archers fire two arrows with every shot, literally doubling their damage output. A no-brainer, really. The only problem? The person who can teach Master Bow is located in Mount Nighon, a region which is only accessible by going through a series of three interconnected dungeons, each more deadly than the last. Still, I figure I can make a dash for it. Maybe hire a Gate Master NPC before I go so I can at least Town Portal back to the mainland after getting the skill.

Archers are also decent at the elemental magic skills, but the Expert and Master levels are pretty heavily gated behind the class promotion quests, which in my opinion are among the most difficult in the game. So it'll sadly be a while before I can enjoy the convenience of spells like Fly and Town Portal, though at least this will be one of only three single-class challenge runs where I actually get these spells (the others being Druid and Sorcerer). I also discovered that Expert rank of Disarm Trap is similarly gated (curse you, incorrect Gamefaqs guide!), so I'll have to make do with Basic rank until fairly late in the game. Pretty annoying, hope I can at least find a +Disarm item soon.

Looking forward to the next couple of single-class challenge runs too. Team Cleric should end up as an offensive powerhouse once I get full Dark Magic online. Probably the strongest of all the single-class runs in terms of direct combat potential, given that they have both the most lethal offensive spells in the game and strong defensive spells like Regeneration and Protection from Magic. Team Druid should be fun too, with access to almost all spells in the game and some interesting decisions about how to focus their magic. Honestly, I'm mainly dreading the really low-magic runs like Knight, Monk and Thief, although at least they should be good in combat.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-01, 09:56 AM

My biggest issue with Solasta is that they essentially use unaltered 5e spellcasting monsters, as I found out when zi ran into a goblin random encounter. And the game is very willing to use Lightning Bolt on your third level characters, unlike BG3.

Oh, and an extra voice person gender would be nice. Can't have a team of four ladies without at least two sharing a voice.

Otherwise, just make sure to decide if you want to artificially remove dice clumping or failed noncombat checks and it's fun. No BG3, but certainly a B tier RPG.

And yes, I'd too very much recommend the additional character building options. The base game only has like five races and classes, and I fortunately one of those is Vanilla Human.

warty goblin

2024-05-01, 10:26 AM

I like Solasta quite a bit, it feels like playing through somebody's high school D&D setting but in the fun it's kinda cliche and very sincere way. Just be aware of the following:

1) It's more of a tactics game than a standard cRPG, just a tactics game where your squad is four D&D adventurers. NPCs are few, far between, and not very interesting. Your entire party are custom made characters, with the personality deficits that come with it. The game uses a kinda cool system where you assign personality traits to characters, and then they speak according to those traits, but this isn't a game you play for the sizzling character writing.

2) it's definitely budget. Everything looks very default Unity, flat lighting, character faces straight from the Idaho potato fields, etc. The word "adequate" was made for this.

3) The combat is very D&D 5e. It doesn't reinterprete and house rule it like BG3 does, it's straight, by the book 5e. There's custom subclasses, but that's as outre as it gets.

The good side of this is that it has really solid combat. It goes full XCOM and uses a 3d cube grid, with genuine 3d movement and rings that let you walk on walls and genuine flying enemies and so on. When the encounters really lean into this it can be fantastic, spiders coming out of the ceiling, or jumping from ledge to ledge down a cliff. Its focus on strong fundamentals over shiny gear and tweaked builds feels refreshingly old-school.

I also find something very charming about it's relatively minimal story and characterization. This is a game about going cool places, stabbing goblins, and taking their stuff, and it doesn't overcomplicate that. It's very low key, you play as some folks doing some stuff.

Basically ask yourself if fantasy XCOM ("ELFCOM") sounds appealing. If so, Solasta scratches that itch very effectively.

The DLC is generally very worth it, it adds lots of character options, and they're all pretty chunky options as well. There's no point in playing with a quarter of the toy chest.

Zombimode

2024-05-01, 01:44 PM

True, but this is also one reason why I clearly prefer the combat in Solasta over BG3. I was actually annoyed by the incompetent spellcasting enemies in BG3 who waste their turns casting irrelevant spells. Spellcasters in Solasta actually use good spells against you.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-01, 03:52 PM

The issue is that enemies get better spells than you and don't have to worry about having slots free later, tabletop D&D theoretically solves this with the assumption that even if pushed to absolute desperation that goblin shaman almost certainly doesn't have all their spell slots. I'd argue it's a bad solution, enemy Spellcasters should just not have regular access to spells that can drop the entire party, but it's certainly an attempt.

On the other hand I like it when the game uses it in story encounters as part of the puzzle. At least one level 3 encounter is made much easier if you successfully disrupt their spell caster's flight, because they'll take several d6 of falling damage and die a round or two later.

BG3 goes in completely the opposite direction and just let's enemies spam weaker spells. Which is better for casual players, but annoying when they're not using spells that benefit from this strategy. Honestly the only Spellcasters that were really effective were those with Command, Hold Person, Darkness, or Misty Step, otherwise it was generally the sheet number of foes the hand can throw at you.

Zevox

2024-05-01, 04:08 PM

I do have an idea of what Solasta is like guys - I have seen you all talk about it for the last couple of years, after all :smalltongue: . That's the whole reason it was on my radar to begin with, I'd probably never have heard of it otherwise.

But thank you all. Entire additional campaigns sounds like a pretty good reason to get the Lightbringers Edition, and more character options is certainly good too. Went ahead and grabbed that; looks like I now know what I'll be playing after I complete Stellar Blade.

Zevox

2024-05-01, 11:21 PM

Huh. So, turns out beating Stellar Blade came much sooner than I thought: just did it. Things proceeded pretty abruptly after a certain point, and the last few bosses were pretty steep difficulty spikes (though only the last one in a way I wasn't fond of).

Story-wise, yeah, it's not good. There's some ideas in there that would've had some potential in the hands of a better writer, but not with the execution as-is; and oh boy, does it fall apart at the ending. This is up there with Mass Effect 3 as far as the ending coming from nowhere and not making sense goes - though on the strangely plus side, since it doesn't make you care before getting there, that's less of a problem than it was with ME3.
I really wish my guess about Mother Sphere being the final boss had been accurate, it would've been considerably more satisfying than the random mech.

Honestly, I had half a mind to tell Adam to shove it just because his whole "fuse with me" thing made no damn sense, but I figured that had to be the better ending considering the alternative was doing what Mother Sphere wanted. Wish the game would let me change my final choice there when I reload my completed file so I could fight the other final boss and see that ending without resorting to Youtube or a full second play-through though.
That said, the combat is definitely quite good, and gets better as the game goes on. If the game had a boss rush mode, I'd be quite eager to play that. Honestly, after finishing it, I now wish even more that the game had been a more Bayonetta/DMC-style game: taking its story less seriously and cutting the side-quests and few large maps in favor of more linear levels would play immensely to the game's strengths, as the best parts of the game (the stages leading up to the Alpha Naytiba fights) are already basically designed that way. It wouldn't be as good as Bayonetta/DMC even then, but that's a high bar to clear, so no shame there. And it would be a fair bit better. I'd be much more inclined to do a second play-through to try the New Game+ mode and hard difficulty, for sure.

As-is though, I'm probably done with it for now. Maybe some day I'll come back and replay it to see the other ending and try NG+/hard, but I'm not inclined to do so right now.

Beelzebub1111

2024-05-02, 06:24 AM

In this way it reminds me ALOT of the 2003 Temple of Elemental Evil game. Which (I should add) is a game that I absolutely adore and think there should be more games like it. A fantasy tactical game that faithfully adapts a classic D&D module. I'm taking a break from it before I get into earning the ironman achievement for a run. But I completed the main campaign and throne of ice on authentic difficulty with no deaths.

I don't mind your party being four people you just create. and yes, only 5 voice options does limit you a lot, but to be fair to the creators this is something that was made on a budget and the game is fully voiced and they did more work to diversify them than most modern games do (even if they end up mismatching a few subtitles here and there)

Cespenar

2024-05-02, 10:34 AM

@Zevox: While I loved Solasta's encounter design, which could be among top 3 in recent tactics games, 30 something $ seems a bit too much, at least for me. The rest of the game is a bit too unpolished for such a price tag IMHO.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-02, 11:26 AM

Started a new game of Bloodlines as a Malkavian, modded to look less ridiculous. Again I'm struck by the implications that the Malk PC's madness is only the hallucinations, the dialogue options seem more like someone trying and failing to get into character as the terror of the night and missing the mark.

And honestly 'over-,enthusiastic LARPer' is not a terrible Malkavian concept.

Going for a Persuasion/Stealth/Melee build, mainly because going for guns would require using a lot of blood on Dementation until decent options become available, and partially because not going guns just let's me dump Auspex in favour of the two actually useful Disciplines Malks get. Now it's just making the knife work until I can do the boss fight which drops the first actual sword of the game.

(I was going to pick up a Tremere playthrough, but I've switched over to an SSD since then and I don't want to do the entire Thaumaturgy/Dominate spam thing.)

Rodin

2024-05-02, 12:25 PM

Tabletop D&D also assumes you have a DM along adjusting the combat on the fly. Our group once encountered three hags and we stepped on a magical trap as we entered the room. If our DM was playing to "win" each Hag would have cast Lightning Bolt on their turn while we were coming up the stairs, resulting in a TPK. Instead after the first Hag fried us the remaining Hags mysteriously started focusing on melee attacks...

warty goblin

2024-05-02, 12:39 PM

Tactics videogames get around the more powerful enemy problem by giving you arbitrarily good coordination, and the enemies the intelligence of unusually belligerent doorknobs. Also by generally stiffing the bad guys on stuff like healing potions - just imagine how annoying fights would be if enemies chugged those suckers like players do - how easy it is to perma-kill them vs how hard it is to drop a player unit, and most of the deeply cheesy stuff that players are absolutely encouraged to use. If you come up with a character build that trivializes the entire game, you are all clever. Drop that same build on an enemy and the game's a terribly balanced piece of crap.

Which about tracks. The point of a tactics game isn't an even fight, it's to give the player a moderately to severely challenging optimization problem.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-02, 01:18 PM

Co- ordination means nothing when the computer drops 3/4 of your party in round one because you weren't expecting it to have AoE spells that one shot your party members.

Sure you could reload and spread your party out more, but an encounter which assumes meta knowledge of enemy spells is terrible design. The same encounter at level 5 is fine, then you'll have the hp to avoid being wiped by level 3 AoEs and can recover.

On the other hand, at least Solasta actually uses the languages roles.

warty goblin

2024-05-02, 01:39 PM

Unless you expect to win literally every fight on the first try, getting wiped by an AoW due to bad positioning is just fine. And if you aren't winning every fight on the first try, I don't see how you can avoid meta knowledge.

Personally I rather like it when a tactics game pushes back hard enough I have to restart a fight. I don't want that every fight certainly, but I would get very bored of a game which didn't occasionally throw up that level of resistance. That way I know it can, which keeps things interesting. Bonus points if it can do it with normal enemies with good positioning or some novel element like that rather than a big dumb boss fight.

Ionathus

2024-05-02, 04:06 PM

All this tactics game talk is reminding me of Triangle Strategy, which I got most (I think?) of the way through two years ago before more or less ragequitting. The difficulty curve on that game was pretty rough: Medium was a guaranteed victory on every mission, but Hard was practically a guaranteed wipe every time. I simply could not figure out what the game was going to consider "good" strategy and what it was going to punish in unexpected ways. A real hair-puller.

I wanted to like the game but it never "let me in." Which is a pity, because it reminded me so much of my hours and hours of enjoyment playing Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance on the GBA.

I tried the original Fallout once off a GOG Games sale, but since I had played Fallout 3 already I was not in the right mindset for the wildly different gameplay. I think going back now I would be much better prepared for what to expect!

Batcathat

2024-05-02, 04:28 PM

Heh, that's pretty much what happened to me, only in reverse. When Fallout 3 first came out, I tried it but it was so different from the Fallout games I was used to that I couldn't really get into it. Then I returned to it a year or two later, knowing what to expect. I still don't think it's great, but playing it might've made it easier for me to "accept" New Vegas, which I think is probably the best Fallout game, combining the best aspects of 1, 2 and 3.

WritersBlock

2024-05-02, 04:35 PM

I love how the new "next-gen update" for fallout 4 not only did not fix any of the bugs, glitches or issues the game has, but ALSO broke all the mods that were used to fix some of said problems in the first place.

Psyren

2024-05-03, 11:45 AM

My friends and I have gotten really into Ravenswatch; think Hades meets Diablo 3 with a tiny dash of MOBAs like League (the hero controls and shopping mechanics). Set in a dark gothic fairytale land where you and a bunch of other public domain heroes form the titular squad, the Ravenswatch seeks to help the Sandman liberate the dream world of Reverie from Lovecraftian Nightmare entities.

The characters released so far are:

The Pied Piper, who attacks with a magic flute and a constantly-replenishing swarm of rats;
Scarlet, a speedy red-robed rogue who can turn into a heavy-hitting werewolf at night (she appears to be based on Red Riding Hood);
The Snow Queen (not-Elsa) a sorceress monarch with potent ice attacks;
Beowulf, a powerful bruiser of a warrior with a little pet dragon that can enhance his attacks with fire;
Gepetto, an elderly artificer who crafts puppets and bombs in the field to help him attack;
Melusine, a hydrokinetic siren (based on the Little Mermaid?)
Aladdin, an agile prince who attacks with speedy enchanted scimitars, and who carries with him his amazingly powerful but limited-use magic lamp;
Sun Wukong, the monkey king, who utilizes his divine powers and a big staff to self-heal and smash his enemies.

Each one has a suite of abilities that you can upgrade and tailor into various builds, as well as (at the time of this writing) one of two Ultimate abilities with longer cooldowns that you can whip out for emergencies or burst windows. It's been a blast to play despite being Early Access and I can't wait for the full release.

Eldan

2024-05-03, 03:06 PM

Melusine is a French legend. She's a water fae who agrees to marry a knight and bring him riches and fame, as long as he keeps a list of weird conditions which change depending on the telling of the legend. I think she has a snake's tail instead of legs and possibly wings in her true shape, though she appears human. And of course the knight breaks the contract and is cursed. Or she turns into a dragon and devours him and/or the town.

Zombimode

2024-05-03, 04:46 PM

Wraped up Geneforge. Had a blast. An interesting setting coupled with a good challenge and a very open game design combines to a pretty good package. Plus the glorious minionmancy!
The game would also be a good candidate for a second play-through - if I would actually replay games. Maybe a day will come when all gaming is just Fortnite, Minecraft and Cookie Clicker. But today is not that day! I will put Geneforge 1 on me replay list for now.
I was a bit unsure about the Geneforge series but Mutagen has definitely won me over. Geneforge 2 Infestation is now in my wishlist set to be played next year and thus continuing my tradition of playing one Spiderweb Software game every year.

Next up: As I spend a lot of time in the last couple of days reading The Three Body Problem, I'm in the mood for SciFi. For that a game called Walking Mars has caught my eye. No idea what this game is all about, but it looks interesting :smallsmile:

Psyren

2024-05-03, 10:46 PM

Nice! That teaches me not to google :smallsmile: And that definitely fits with her characterization in the game.

Zevox

2024-05-05, 12:03 AM

Okay, so, Solasta. Started playing it, and admittedly, it's a bit rougher than I expected.

Visually in particular, oh boy. The faces especially are reminding me of nothing so much as Gladius, that strategy-RPGish gladiator game I replayed last year, which is a 20 year old Gamecube game that wasn't exactly cutting-edge visually itself even when it came out. I honestly didn't think it was possible for something released only a few years ago to look like that, even a low-budget indie game. Not any kind of deal-breaker, just legitimately surprising to me that it looks as bad as this - and it's not doing itself any favors by trying to show characters more cinematically during cutscenes, with close shots of their faces at times. Probably should've kept that camera further back even during the story cutscenes.

As far as the story goes, eh, seems fairly standard fantasy thus far, nothing too interesting, but nothing wrong with it either, which is fine. The dialogue is kind of awkward at times though - thankfully not as much so as in Stellar Blade, but still noticeably enough that I went to check if the game was made somewhere that English isn't the native language, and yep, French company, so I'm assuming slightly sub-par localization is probably to blame for the clunkier dialogue moments. Again, nothing major to me, just a pretty noticeable flaw.

One thing that does bother me and makes me less inclined towards to the game is that it really seems to favor a style of D&D that's not entirely to my tastes. It assumes that the party is motivated by a desire for loot and money rather than altruism (even though most of my party has altruism and/or friendliness as major personality traits), the party seem to be sarcastic jerks to each other a lot (again, despite the personality traits I assigned), it wants you tracking how much food you have for journeys, every single normal arrow is counted if you're using bows/crossbows, encumbrance limits are pretty tight and you lose mobility quickly for going over them; in general it favors more fiddly bits of the game's mechanics I much prefer to have glossed over, and sets a tone for the game that isn't to my preferences.

It also doesn't seem to give me the full information about a lot of things, which can be frustrating - I can find no way to know the weight of an individual item, nor can I get more detailed spell descriptions for the spells the game has that aren't a normal part of 5e D&D (i.e. I had to learn that the Shadow Dagger cantrip has a 1d8 damage dice by casting it, the description only tells me that it deals psychic damage on a failed save). The UI in general is clunkier than BG3's I'd say. Also, unlike BG3 despite this being the console version it does not let me directly control the characters, I'm moving a pseudo-mouse cursor around and point-and-clicking them, which is always kind of awkward with a controller. Fine enough in combat, but for general exploration, it's definitely not my preference.

That said, I am generally enjoying the combat portions of the game at least, there's definitely been some good design there. Like BG3 it uses terrain well frequently, which is good. I did run into a frustrating bit during my latest journey though, where a random encounter put me up against a four-person group, three of whom could attack three times per turn. While I was level 3. And I'm playing on the normal difficulty. The fight almost wiped me, two characters were unconscious, one was straight-up dead, and the last one at 1 health when I finished it; thankfully despite the dead character being my Cleric, the free revivify from the plot crown let me get her back up. But when I ran into that same encounter a second time later in the journey, you'd better believe I reloaded the save I'd made after surviving the first one; that's just some BS right there. That is the one thing that's bothered me about the combat thus far though, other than that, it's certainly easy to see why it's the game's strong point.

Beelzebub1111

2024-05-05, 10:02 AM

Hold <alt> when hovering over the description it will show you the dice value and weight of everything. It also shows the damage dice and area of effect. I don't know why it isn't showing for you.

Oh, for my party, since it's a full custom group, I went with a batch based on Legend of Zelda characters: Link as a Fighter, Zelda as a Cleric, Sheik as a Rogue, and Midna as a Sorceress. Which has wound up feeling weirdly appropriate given the number of cube-shaped rocks I'm pushing around to solve minor puzzles. Also appropriate that I chose Midna to be the one to pick up that crown. Yeah, strange how things are kind lining up with that party design decision I made on a whim, but I'll take it.
Oh that's fun. My run one I made my friend's D&D party. My second I'm doing ironman difficulty acievements which means that I need to optomize as much as I can. Ironman means it saves at the start of each player turn, so it goes really punishing on choices in combat. you can kill your save if you don't protect plot vital npcs.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-05, 10:50 AM

For the run I just started I just created what I see as a normal D&D group: a half-orc paladin, a tiefling bard, an elven druid, and a gnome wizard (the sole man of the group). I'm very glad that unlike my first attempted run I actually have the character option DLCs so I didn't end up with a human fighter.

Interestingly I forgot to give Nodkin the wizard Arcana proficiency, so he's now more of a historian who picked up magic for fun.

Zevox

2024-05-05, 05:08 PM

Yeah, this is definitely for a wargamer's table. A few tags are stronger than others and it just represents the likelihood of any phrasing over another with a weighted randomness (or if a line exists for it in the first place). I find that you really have to deliberately weight them with a kindness, altruism, and Formal and even then it's tricky. Feels more like friends around a D&D table more than characters in the world. Most of me just goes for the ride an abstracts a lot of it.
I did actually double up a personality trait on everyone to try and make it their primary one: kindness for Link, altruism for Zelda, caution for Sheik, and cynicism for Midna. So that behavior out of Midna makes more sense to me, and is more fitting for her character from Twilight Princess anyway; the others, less so. Sheik and Link also have altruism as one of their other personality traits. Though somehow Link wound up with one called "slang" taking the place of his fourth? Zelda is the only with formal there (probably because of her aristocrat background), while Sheik and Midna got casual.

As far as tracking food and arrows I'd pick up the create food spell as soon as you can. and get rid of any rations. those are the items that are probably causing your encumbrance issues.
I suppose that'll be an option, but Create Food and Water is a 3rd-level spell. Even once I get it, kind of annoying needing to keep that prepared all the time during journeys.

Hold <alt> when hovering over the description it will show you the dice value and weight of everything. It also shows the damage dice and area of effect. I don't know why it isn't showing for you.
Again, I'm on the console version; no alt button exists for me to hold. Though after trying literally every button, I finally wound the way: I need to hit L3 (the left control stick...), which pulls up "tooltip mode," allowing me to slowly move a psuedo-mouse cursor over the inventory, then hit L2 while over the designated item to get more details like weight. And there is zero indication of this anywhere that I can find, you had to just randomly try L3 while on the inventory screen to figure this out. Yeah, not a fan of this UI...

The game does expect some level of optimization as well as the mechanics. For those random encounters it expects you to go nova during them because you take a long rest afterwards and are balanced in that way. I recommend heat metal for those mercenaries.
As far as optimization goes, I'll give my characters good stats for their class, good equipment, and what I feel are the best spells. Beyond that, not my thing, especially in 5e. I don't really multiclass, and I'm much less inclined towards taking feats over maxing my main stat, and even when I do take feats it tends not to be the ones that optimizers seem to love (polearm master, great weapon master, sharpshooter).

Heat Metal is not a spell anyone in my party can get - it's Druid and Bard only, and my casters are a Cleric and a Sorcerer.

Oh that's fun. My run one I made my friend's D&D party. My second I'm doing ironman difficulty acievements which means that I need to optomize as much as I can. Ironman means it saves at the start of each player turn, so it goes really punishing on choices in combat. you can kill your save if you don't protect plot vital npcs.
I did an ironman run in X-Com 2 once; the file got corrupted 2/3 of the way through and I lost the whole run. So I'm never doing that again. If I ever want to challenge myself to not reload an earlier save like that, I'll just do it voluntarily, not make the game force me to have only one save.

WritersBlock

2024-05-05, 05:56 PM

Some good sales recently so I took advantage last night and got Way of the Samurai 4, Lorna the amazon queen, and Valkyria Chronicles (classic sega game with no Denuvo)

Beelzebub1111

2024-05-06, 04:54 AM

I did actually double up a personality trait on everyone to try and make it their primary one: kindness for Link, altruism for Zelda, caution for Sheik, and cynicism for Midna. So that behavior out of Midna makes more sense to me, and is more fitting for her character from Twilight Princess anyway; the others, less so. Sheik and Link also have altruism as one of their other personality traits. Though somehow Link wound up with one called "slang" taking the place of his fourth? Zelda is the only with formal there (probably because of her aristocrat background), while Sheik and Midna got casual.

Slang and Formal are based on Backgrounds, not personalities. Like I said, it's a percentile chance for each line of dialogue if it exists.

I suppose that'll be an option, but Create Food and Water is a 3rd-level spell. Even once I get it, kind of annoying needing to keep that prepared all the time during journeys.

It's one prep, you barely notice it and you only cast it just before resting. There's also rations lying around everywhere, so if you keep four on hand between missions it's alright

Again, I'm on the console version; no alt button exists for me to hold. Though after trying literally every button, I finally wound the way: I need to hit L3 (the left control stick...), which pulls up "tooltip mode," allowing me to slowly move a psuedo-mouse cursor over the inventory, then hit L2 while over the designated item to get more details like weight. And there is zero indication of this anywhere that I can find, you had to just randomly try L3 while on the inventory screen to figure this out. Yeah, not a fan of this UI...

Oh, that's bad, but at least you got it.

As far as optimization goes, I'll give my characters good stats for their class, good equipment, and what I feel are the best spells. Beyond that, not my thing, especially in 5e. I don't really multiclass, and I'm much less inclined towards taking feats over maxing my main stat, and even when I do take feats it tends not to be the ones that optimizers seem to love (polearm master, great weapon master, sharpshooter).

Heat Metal is not a spell anyone in my party can get - it's Druid and Bard only, and my casters are a Cleric and a Sorcerer.
My problem with those encounters at first was always holding on to spells like I needed them later. Don't skimp on casting your leveled spells and just throw everything you have at the random encounters. I play on authentic difficulty and it carried me. Upcast sleep, use hold person, Use calm emotions if you are overwhelmed. Enemy cast a spell with concentrate? magic missile. Throw out scorching rays. Cantrips in random encounters are for when you run out of spell slots or you are going for one of the damage type achievements.

I did an ironman run in X-Com 2 once; the file got corrupted 2/3 of the way through and I lost the whole run. So I'm never doing that again. If I ever want to challenge myself to not reload an earlier save like that, I'll just do it voluntarily, not make the game force me to have only one save.
Fair enough. there's an achievement associted with it so that's why I'm going for it. I just got the no death one on my last run.

Cespenar

2024-05-06, 10:31 AM

For "optimization", I only remember getting good mileage from picking a Paladin instead of a Fighter in Solasta as my meleeguy.

So, the same as table top, really. :p

Zombimode

2024-05-06, 11:19 AM

Plus, if you pick a Paladin, you can also skip taking a Cleric with you, because the Paladin can do everything you will ever use a Cleric for: casting Bless.

Double optimization! :smalltongue:

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-06, 12:36 PM

For "optimization", I only remember getting good mileage from picking a Paladin instead of a Fighter in Solasta as my meleeguy.

So, the same as table top, really. :p

IIRC Paladin is extra cheesy as one subclass is specialised in fight shapeshifters... which includes the primary enemies for the Crown of the Magister campaign.

Going back to a BG3 halfling bard run. It really is a shame that the only male body types they could think up for male humans were 'dorito' and 'bigger dorito', when both halfling body types manage to be delightfully podgy.

Zevox

2024-05-06, 05:55 PM

My problem with those encounters at first was always holding on to spells like I needed them later. Don't skimp on casting your leveled spells and just throw everything you have at the random encounters. I play on authentic difficulty and it carried me. Upcast sleep, use hold person, Use calm emotions if you are overwhelmed. Enemy cast a spell with concentrate? magic missile. Throw out scorching rays. Cantrips in random encounters are for when you run out of spell slots or you are going for one of the damage type achievements.
Yeah, I got that from them basically telling me as much during the tutorial random encounter. Problem is that using everything only goes so far at level 3 when your opponents have nearly triple your action economy. Especially when they roll a 15+ on the dice versus your Hold Person.

Fortunately, doing the first gem mission jumped me from level 3 to 6, so now I've picked up Fireball on Midna and Spirit Guardians on Zelda, which are obviously an immense boon. Plus of course second attack on Link. Hopefully I won't ever have a matchup that silly again.

I should ask, why mention Calm Emotions though? Last I checked that doesn't do much in combat unless you need to stop a Barbarian from raging or negate a fear effect or something, I'd expect it to be situational at best and a waste of a spell prep/known slot at worst in a game like this. :smallconfused:

For "optimization", I only remember getting good mileage from picking a Paladin instead of a Fighter in Solasta as my meleeguy.

So, the same as table top, really. :p
As much as I like the Paladin class, the Zelda theme kind of precludes it. I guess you could stretch Link to use it, but Fighter and Ranger both feel much more natural for him.

Plus, if you pick a Paladin, you can also skip taking a Cleric with you, because the Paladin can do everything you will ever use a Cleric for: casting Bless.

Double optimization! :smalltongue:
In my experience Clerics are too busy concentrating on Spirit Guardians to bother casting Bless, and Paladins are usually too busy smiting to bother casting it either. :smalltongue:

Form

2024-05-07, 05:34 AM

I've almost played through all of Horizon: Forbidden West and whilst picking apart machine animals with my arrows is fun, oof, it's a big game. That's not a bad thing, but I do feel the need to play something different now and may commit the sin of not doing all the sidequests and collecting all quest related collectibles. On the one hand I do want to listen to that last black box, on the other hand I don't feel like exploring what remains of the map to find it.

I've met Tilda and I'm just a little disappointed there wasn't a stroopwafel on the breakfast table. Saving The Night Watch is nice and all, but no stroopwafels? Tsk, so this is what 1000 years of immortality does to a Dutch person.

Also, it occurs to me she may well be the person responsible for the signal that woke up Hades. They had to hastily abandon their colony in Sirius with only a few of them making it to their ship and she seems to be the techie among them. There's potential for a dramatic revelation here later on.

Beelzebub1111

2024-05-07, 07:05 AM

.
I should ask, why mention Calm Emotions though? Last I checked that doesn't do much in combat unless you need to stop a Barbarian from raging or negate a fear effect or something, I'd expect it to be situational at best and a waste of a spell prep/known slot at worst in a game like this. :smallconfused:
This is where interpretative mechanics help you. In solasta it completely de-agros in a radius until they are attacked. One save, no rerolls until they take damage. You get as much time as you need to position, heal up and buff when you are overwhelmed.

Cygnia

2024-05-07, 10:58 AM

Got all the achievements done for Sentinels of Earth-Prime. I think Sentinels of the Multiverse is the better card play, but SoEP has some good one in their deck too.

Cespenar

2024-05-08, 10:45 AM

As much as I like the Paladin class, the Zelda theme kind of precludes it. I guess you could stretch Link to use it, but Fighter and Ranger both feel much more natural for him.

In my experience Clerics are too busy concentrating on Spirit Guardians to bother casting Bless, and Paladins are usually too busy smiting to bother casting it either. :smalltongue:

Theming is a noble pursuit, so I can only tip my hat on that note. :p

For Bless though, it's such a badly leveled spell that it would even be worth it if your least fitting member (rogue?) took a level/feat to cast it.

warty goblin

2024-05-08, 11:48 AM

Won a somewhat anticlimactic Seal victory in Age of Wonders 4 wolf game. I had figured once I pulled ahead on Seal points my ally would declare war on me, but instead they were happy to play second fiddle. Everyone else was at war with me, but they were weak and far away so I completely ignored them. By endgame unless somebody can show up with 3 stacks of maxed out dudes they just don't matter.

Continuing my heavy handed theming, now I'm on to a dragon leading an army of lizard people who ride velociraptors. Later I'll turn the lizards into dragon-lizard hybrids. Dragon leaders are a lot of fun, particularly early game where, well, you start with a giant dragon. Enjoyably they get their own custom dragon skill tree, so you can give them a tail whip ability, improve and alter their breath weapon, etc. To balance this you can't equip most items, but since all your other heroes are normal humanoids, you just give all the good stuff to them.

The velociraptor mounts are fun, they make your cavalry immune from opportunity attacks. So now my knights can charge from enemy to enemy without penalty. That's right, I'm a dragon leading knights. Dragon knights to be specific.

Wookieetank

2024-05-08, 03:09 PM

That's right, I'm a dragon leading knights. Dragon knights to be specific.

Watch out for anyone wielding Dragon Lances, or mages with hourglass pupils :smallwink:

Zevox

2024-05-09, 10:42 AM

This is where interpretative mechanics help you. In solasta it completely de-agros in a radius until they are attacked. One save, no rerolls until they take damage. You get as much time as you need to position, heal up and buff when you are overwhelmed.
So basically, Solasta turned Calm Emotions into a better version of Hypnotic Pattern. Probably not a great call on their part, but I guess it's something to keep in mind.

Just finished the volcano stage, and uh, wow, the game does not handle Orcs well. The way they're portrayed aside (which already was iffy), the way that area ends, with the Orc allies you had just disappearing, possibly buried under rubble as the place randomly collapses, and the party banter mostly indicating they don't care about them... oof. Was also disappointing that the whole area felt like it was building to a bigger climax, where your Orc tribe allies would be battling the villain's tribe while you go after him, and then it just ends with an anticlimax where he's killed all his allies already and just has a couple of Elementals fighting with him. Easiest boss fight in the game thus far, I killed him before he could take a turn and twinspell Banished his elementals.

Oh, and it seems that the game just isn't taking party level into account at all with random encounters, as I ran into another of that same group that nearly wiped me at level 3 while I was level 8 (and naturally mopped the floor with them). So that certainly explains why those can seem really off at times.

Beelzebub1111

2024-05-09, 10:47 AM

Did you take the back entrance into the throne room? If you fight the ghost and leave you get more of an explanation as to what was going on.

Zevox

2024-05-09, 10:54 AM

Did you take the back entrance into the throne room? If you fight the ghost and leave you get more of an explanation as to what was going on.
I fought the ghost, yes. Doesn't feel unclear what happened, just less satsfying than what it felt like it was setting up.

Cespenar

2024-05-09, 11:26 AM

I've almost played through all of Horizon: Forbidden West and whilst picking apart machine animals with my arrows is fun, oof, it's a big game.

I'm also running through Forbidden West, and I'm normally cynical towards AAA titles and that industry as a whole, but man, that's a good combo of excellent character modelling, voice acting, writing and acting direction. At least someone is putting all that budget into good use, it seems like.

DeTess

2024-05-09, 12:27 PM

I can't believe I didn't notice that! It's some brilliant characterization showing that she doesn't really have her priorities straight.

warty goblin

2024-05-09, 12:33 PM

Watch out for anyone wielding Dragon Lances, or mages with hourglass pupils :smallwink:

That's a brilliant idea, next game I'm absolutely going to set my leader up as Raistlin. Honestly Laurana would work pretty well too, but I haven't gone up the Dark tree in a while.

ArmyOfOptimists

2024-05-10, 11:17 AM

So basically, Solasta turned Calm Emotions into a better version of Hypnotic Pattern. Probably not a great call on their part, but I guess it's something to keep in mind.

I don't see it as a misread of the 5E text. Calm Emotions does specify that it can cause all targets to become indifferent to hostile creatures as one of the effects. The main difference in the book text is that Calm Emotions is restricted to Bard, Cleric (a bit weird that a mass control spell is available to Clerics earlier than Wizards) and when any of the affected targets is attacked, it breaks for the whole group. Hypnotic Pattern is Bard, Wizard, Warlock, Sorcerer and each target is affected individually, so you can pick them off one-by-one.

Haven't booted up Solasta yet, but it seems like they implemented it faithfully reading the book text versus the game text.

Beelzebub1111

2024-05-10, 11:25 AM

Form

2024-05-11, 08:58 AM

I've picked up One step from Eden and whilst the gameplay is entirely different from what I've played before (I'm not used to frantically dancing around on a 4x4 grid whilst desperately shooting/casting away at the enemy), I've been able to jump right into it and have fun. I'm starting to get a better feel for the various cards and bosses, but the later bosses are both too tough and too fast for me to clear. I've gotten to the final boss only once so far. Usually I get killed one or two bosses before that.

I will make it to Eden eventually. Though I may have to lower the difficulty via Angel Mode to do so.

warty goblin

2024-05-11, 10:16 AM

Wrapped up my dragon lizard velociraptor AoW 4 game with a Magic victory. The two remaining AI empires actually put up a credible fight at the end, throwing absolute buckets of reasonably powerful armies at what amounted to my own personal continent. Sadly they were immediately absolutely smashed by my seven fully pimped stacks of doom. Six actually, I held one in reserve just in case.

So ended the reign of the dragon, with an ascent to the stars. He started out a young and confused firebreather, just searching for answers. Then he entered his hippy phase, started glowing green, and healing people (well, lizards) with his breath. Tree hugging however did not supply the answers he needed, so inevitably he found God. And by God I mean himself. Yes, it was his destiny to lead his people (well, lizards, ratmen and a batch of elves who declared war on the wrong reptile and got absorbed) into legend as a big scaly angel who is also God Emperor.

Various heretic foreigners (mostly dwarves) failed to get with the program and kept invading. They all got enlightened, by which I mean vaporized by the holy vapors of the dragon god to be's breath. Or torn apart by undead dragons, because for some reason I ended up with gobs of undead dragons. Look, the Church of The Big Dragon embraces all, being dead is no obstacle to a righteous life.

WritersBlock

2024-05-12, 02:04 AM

I just noticed recently that Daggerfall Unity does not have an option to exit to the main menu, just to exit to desktop, I wish they would do something about that.

That minor nitpick aside Dream combined with Weeb Overhaul makes the game look absolutely amazing. In some ways I prefer this to Skyrim actually and I DEFINITELY prefer this to Oblivion. (Morrowind I like about the same but in different ways)

Zevox

2024-05-12, 06:55 PM

Okay, wrapped up the main campaign of Solasta. For the most part, opinion of the game didn't change much throughout - it does the combat of D&D well, the rest of it fairly meh to weak, and isn't exactly my personal type of D&D in tone or style. I will say I did not much like the final battle; it was a huge difficulty jump compared to the rest of the campaign, simply because the bosses did so much damage (on their turns and as legendary actions) and were accompanied by so many other allies, some of which were pretty durable, and practically everyone gets 3 attacks per turn.
And that random Gold Dragon that joined me as an ally helped way less than it feels like it should've. Hell, I had to restart a couple of times just because it was AI-controlled and dumb enough to use its breath weapon on my party, killing 3/4 of it, twice. Outside of that, pretty much every enemy resisted its attacks, it kept rotating who it attacked rather than focusing on any one target, and it started with half of its health already gone, so even as a meat shield it wasn't that great. It did not survive wave 1, despite me having Zelda cast Heal on it to try and save it.

Blessedly I'd picked Improved Invisibility as one of Midna's spells, so casting a twinspell version of that wound up being my answer. With Midna and Zelda permanently invisible and these enemies seemingly having no way to see invisible things, they were safe to do whatever they wanted throughout the fight, while Link's AC and Sheik's mobility made them tough to kill (although boy did they both come close).

Also, screw them for including Shikkaths in wave 2. Why on earth would you be dropping one enemy with 160+ hp, legendary actions, and legendary resistance every turn during the survival portion of the fight?
So, overall, not bad, but not that great either. I'm hesitating on whether I want to pick up with the Palace of Ice right now, or move on to something else.

Oh, and here's a weird one: remember I mentioned being on a Yu-Gi-Oh nostalgia kick? Well, that included rewatching the original show, and when I got to the end of the first season, I was reminded of an old GBA game for a Yu-Gi-Oh spin-off: Dungeon Dice Monsters. And wouldn't you know, digging through my old games, there it was, and the oldest system I still own just so happens to be a GBA SP. So I've actually played a little bit of that recently. It's honestly a decently fun little spin-off game, but it can be frustrating because everything is so RNG-dependent - even moving and attacking with your monsters requires a resource you get only by rolling specific "crests" on your dice, so some games can go by with one side basically unable to do anything because they just don't roll any attack crests or movement crests. So not any kind of hidden gem or anything, just a strange thing I happened to still have when the mood hit to play a little bit of it again.

Haven't booted up Solasta yet, but it seems like they implemented it faithfully reading the book text versus the game text.

Hypnotic Pattern has a larger radius and makes them unable to take any actions at all. Calm Emotions still allows for non-hostile actions and movement. In practice of the game, however most enemies with low will saves don't have actions that aren't hostile so they will just meander about for their turns.
The fact that attacking any of the targets breaks the effect on everyone is a notable disadvantage relative to Hypnotic Pattern for it I'll grant. I do feel it's a misread of the spell though. Altering the enemies' attitude towards you would only sometimes help, and even then only if you also stop acting hostile in turn. The spell doesn't change what the enemies know about the situation at all after all: they know that you were fighting and why, so depending on that "why," their attitude may not matter. The spell could stop someone who was only fighting you because you made them angry for something like that I feel, but a bandit who wants to kill you and take your money? An assassin who was paid to kill you? More monstrous humanoids who see you as attacking their homes, or even as dinner? Not so much.

Cygnia

2024-05-16, 07:53 AM

Since it's free on Steam until the 27th, I checked out the puzzle game Machinika Museum (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1507190/Machinika_Museum/) last night. Pretty intriguing. Reminds me a little of Myst in tone.

Beelzebub1111

2024-05-16, 10:31 AM

In a way, but the examining of strange artifacts to try and figure out what purpose they serve seems more like Rama to me.

LibraryOgre

2024-05-16, 10:44 AM

So, Kingmaker: If you're playing an Alchemist who doesn't have the Infusion discovery, how does casting communal spells (eg "Stoneskin, Communal") work? Does it still work on everyone?

I now have an answer to this: It affects everyone, but can only target you.

If Octavia casts Haste, she picks a person as the centerpoint; the AoE is based on who she picks.

If my character casts Haste, I am the centerpoint, but it affects everyone around me.

And I would very much love a "Communal spell" metamagic... one that changes the range to zero and the AoE to a 10' radius.

warty goblin

2024-05-16, 11:06 AM

The Age of Age of Wonders continues.

I'm doing Mystic Elves again. This is a very natural combination, as elves get default bonuses to accuracy with magic and ranged attacks, and Mystic is all about turning spellcasters into doom machines.

There are two tricky parts. Firstly, the obvious play is Mystic culture, load up on Astral cultural ablities, and then beeline through Astral tomes for a maximum magic playthrough. This tends to leave you economically weak, as all the good "make more stuff" abilities are Nature or Materium, and if you don't have an economy you don't have an army until decent summoning gets online. So I compromised and took Materium and Nature perks.

The second problem is that the Mystic combat style is pretty distinct and micro intensive. Your line infantry sucks, their only job is to not die long enough for the backline of battle mage units to roast everything. This means your typical battle plan is to shuffle your casters around a bit, move the blocking units a couple hexes forwards, hope you got the magical ranged BBQ dude to meatshield dude ratio correct, then unleash hell on everything that moves into range. If it works, by the time the survivors reach your line, they are electrocuted, on fire, and also somehow frozen, and it's genuinely quite cool.

The combat AI isn't great at this, which causes unnecessary losses. This is doubly bad, as your economy is pretty weak early on. So expect to manually fight a lot of battles.

But I pushed through the pain point, made unusuallybad by a couple really nasty infestations plundering most if the townlands around,my capital, and am now at the point in the game where I can smash the AI who have been bullying me up until now. Highlights include a marvelous joint operation where I simultaneously took one city while a second army group relieved thr siege of one of my vassels.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-16, 02:10 PM

I now have an answer to this: It affects everyone, but can only target you.

If Octavia casts Haste, she picks a person as the centerpoint; the AoE is based on who she picks.

If my character casts Haste, I am the centerpoint, but it affects everyone around me.

And I would very much love a "Communal spell" metamagic... one that changes the range to zero and the AoE to a 10' radius.

Now I'm getting the urge to restart Kingmaker or WotR as an Alchemist.

If only I was allowed to wear my lens at the moment...

LibraryOgre

2024-05-16, 02:19 PM

Now I'm getting the urge to restart Kingmaker or WotR as an Alchemist.

If only I was allowed to wear my lens at the moment...

The Grenadier scratches a lot of my itches, but not quite all of them.

Playing through these always makes me itch for classless games, though.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-16, 04:39 PM

The Grenadier scratches a lot of my itches, but not quite all of them.

Playing through these always makes me itch for classless games, though.

Honestly not sure what to go for, a lot of them seem like decent picks. Except for the healing one, but I've got an itch to do a Sarenrae Chigureon in WotR. Honestly Grenadier's actually the one I'm least intrigued by, I might just go straight.

...not in terms of the romance options, obviously. There's too many sexy devil ladies for that.

LibraryOgre

2024-05-16, 05:14 PM

...not in terms of the romance options, obviously. There's too many sexy devil ladies for that.

The only reason I play a straight character is Tali Zorah vas Normandy is fine with humans, but only if they're dudes.

For the grenadier, I would up switching to a halfling... I originally wanted to be melee, so was half-orc, but went to a ranged halfling, instead.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-16, 06:09 PM

The only reason I play a straight character is Tali Zorah vas Normandy is fine with humans, but only if they're dudes.

For the grenadier, I would up switching to a halfling... I originally wanted to be melee, so was half-orc, but went to a ranged halfling, instead.

I have so much trouble not going human for the extra skill point, despite the mechanics of Owlcat games making skillmonkies less of a necessity. Although halfling is tempting, while not as bad as BG3 the Pathfinder games are generally short on Small party members...

Ah, **** it, who needs strength? All hail Marie, Golarion's most chaotic genius under three feet tall!

(Yes I dumped Strength down to 5, I needed those two points to get 18 INT.)

Zevox

2024-05-16, 11:00 PM

I'm now going between a few. Back to doing duels in Yu-Gi-Oh: Legacy of the Duelist here and there, going through the single-player story campaigns and doing the special duels you unlock from them with my own decks, of which I've thrown together a few more for kicks. I'm now through the fourth story campaign, Zexal, so only two to go. That one introduced "Xyz" summoning, to which my first thought is "that's seriously the name they gave it? The hell?" Besides that, eh, it's a less interesting variation on Synchro summoning, just requiring 2-3 monsters of the same level instead of monsters whose level adds up to a specific number. Also feels more power-creepy than Synchro summoning did, by quite a bit. Not as much of a fan of that as I was of Synchro summoning as a result.

Besides that, I also started back on Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, since a new DLC character I'd like to try is coming out soon. Started out just playing my main, good old Belial, and it did not take long to get back into the swing of things, so I already switched to one of those characters I was surprised I liked: Eustace, a special agent gunman type who is a weird hybrid zoner/pressure character. Definitely harder on me , but I am having fun trying to figure him out and get better with him. I've got about a week until that DLC character hits, should be plenty of time to get a good feel for him.

Outside of dabbling in Yu-Gi-Oh and returning to my multiplayer genre of choice though, I've opted to dust off my PS3 and go back to one of the greats that I haven't played in way too long: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Goddamn, this is what I wish Stellar Blade had been. It's still one of the best action games of all time, easy. Even visually, it holds up pretty well - doesn't quite look as good as modern games obviously, but we'd clearly hit the point of diminishing returns on graphics enhancements by the late PS3/360 era, because it looks quite a bit closer in quality to modern games than when I replayed Batman: Arkham Asylum on my 360 last year. And everything else about it, from the crazy story, to the fantastic combat, to the great music with perfect timing on when to have it kick in during boss fights, to the (to my knowledge) still unparalleled physics on cutting up enemies and objects, is just so wonderful and satisfying. I need to replay it more often, frankly. I look forward to kicking a US Senator's ass in the final boss fight once more.

LibraryOgre

2024-05-17, 09:49 AM

Ah, **** it, who needs strength? All hail Marie, Golarion's most chaotic genius under three feet tall!

(Yes I dumped Strength down to 5, I needed those two points to get 18 INT.)

Oh, I can't even go there. My halfling started with a 10 strength.

Though I do relish playing skill monkeys. Part of what makes the Bard so alluring to me is "I know every skill and get better at them all the time". If you're an Archaeologist, you get a bonus of half your level to six different skills, and a +1 to all skill checks.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-17, 10:02 AM

Oh, I can't even go there. My halfling started with a 10 strength.

My thought process was 'when I'm not throwing bombs or using extracts I'm going to be using a crossbow, and treasure is plentiful enough that I won't care about leaving low grade armour behind'. Like I might have picked up some Strength, but there were so many other stats I wanted.

Still need to pick up Infusion though, I can now see the point of going Grenadier or Vivisectionist.

My plan for my next attempt at WotR is to go Human Alchemist, get the background that runs Lore off off INT, and just know ALL THE THIGS. Plus have Trickery, even though there's normally a good number of party members with that. I like highly skilled characters, it's an issue I have with D&D5e, but rarely feel the need to have everything.

Especially as Kingmaker and WotR actually allow me to offload Persuasion ont other party members. Linzi's the current talker, but I suspect she'll be replaced before Act 1 is over.

Zombimode

2024-05-17, 10:08 AM

Last weekend I spend my gaming time with Svarog's Dream, an RPG that is something special.
First, the game uses the ARPG (like in Diablo) setup with an isometric view, character centered camera and action combat. But this is in not a Diablo-like game, but a classic rpg.
The game is moody and slow, with a surprisingly low combat density.
It has all the idiosyncrasies of an unsupervised one-person passion project. The game's setting an theme is centered around the clash between and the cultural transition from (slavic) paganism to Christianity - although the game does not fully commit to anything historical. The term "Christianity" (or similar) is never mentioned, the christian god is called "The One God", there are no typical christian insignia etc. Only the Bible is mentioned explicitly, and only once. The slavic gods have their proper names (as you can infer from the games title) and their description explicitly equates them with other well-known germanic, greek and roman gods. But the names of people and places, the history and lore of the people do not point to anything historical (or maybe I simply do not recognize it...)
The discussion of religion in the game has a very "personal" touch to it, I feel.

But the most interesting aspect of Svarog's Dream is that it is designed around permadeath. Some clarifications are in order:
- Contrary to an "Iron Man" mode that some games offer for an advanced challenge, dying is Svarog's Dream does not result in an Game Over - it "just" means the death of that particular character
- But also, unlike games like Hades where you're expected to die over and over again, every time effectively restarting the game but with some kind of meta-progression, there is nothing meta* about dying in Svarog's Dream. There is also no "restart" of the game in any kind - the world continues, its just that the person you were playing is dead. You continue playing a different person.

When I was starting the game I expected that character death would be a at least semi-common occurrence. But then... I just kept surviving. There were hairy situations, but I managed to pull through. With time my abilities grew, I amassed good equipment, my personal abilities of playing the game improved. I was... confident. The realization grew that, maybe, I could finish the game with my starting character. I explored most of the map, did most of the sidequests and went deep into the main quest. Then I was confronted with a Boss encounter. The buildup was great. I was well prepared and mentally ready. The fight is tough - but, I realize, doable. My build works, my equipment is good and I have a good amount of toughness. Slowly I grind the enemy down. I stay focused, the opponents healthbar is almost gone, I put in everything to seal the deal and... the boss goes down.

.
..
...

Then the second phase of the boss battle starts.
But the cooldown for both my healing spell AND my potions are still on, I need to scramble, need to get out of this area effect, *ouch* getting hit by a nasty damage-over-time, maybe I can...
The screen fades to black.

I was stunned. I never felt like this when dying in a video game.
It is the same feeling like loosing a character in a tabletop rpg.

I will continue with Svarog's Dream, because it is really good, but not right now. I need... I need time.

* well. You keep your levels and a number of traits that are tied to the progress in the main quest.

So, for this weekend I have something else in store. As one person on Steam has put it aptly:"The days of searching for 'Ghost of Tsushima PC' a million times are finally over."

So that's what I will play :smallsmile:

LibraryOgre

2024-05-17, 10:11 AM

Especially as Kingmaker and WotR actually allow me to offload Persuasion ont other party members. Linzi's the current talker, but I suspect she'll be replaced before Act 1 is over.

I refuse to offload Persuasion. I'm the Queen, dammit, I gotta be able to talk to people.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-17, 10:22 AM

I refuse to offload Persuasion. I'm the Queen, dammit, I gotta be able to talk to people.

Why does the baroness talk for herself? I have seneshals for that :smallwink:

LibraryOgre

2024-05-17, 10:39 AM

Why does the baroness talk for herself? I have seneshals for that :smallwink:

Because when I threaten Hargulka with death by acid, I want to do it myself.

tonberrian

2024-05-17, 07:56 PM

I want to play Wrath of the Righteous again, but i'm waiting for the next dlc to drop. I think it'll be the last one so i can finally play through ALL THE CONTENT.

Dunno if i'm going Oracle Angel or Fighter something or Monk Lich though. Next dlc has Titan fighter and I can dual wield some very big weapons.

Rynjin

2024-05-18, 05:50 AM

Living Grimoire is lowkey one of my fave archetypes so I'm interested to see their tweaks to it.

ArmyOfOptimists

2024-05-18, 05:58 AM

I want to play Wrath of the Righteous again, but i'm waiting for the next dlc to drop. I think it'll be the last one so i can finally play through ALL THE CONTENT.

Dunno if i'm going Oracle Angel or Fighter something or Monk Lich though. Next dlc has Titan fighter and I can dual wield some very big weapons.

I'm really interested in that Slayer Vampire archetype they showed. The Slayer class is one of my favorite hybrids next to the Magus, but it's unfortunately very straightforward. Having vampire powers and special mechanics to power them sounds like it'll give the class a much more dynamic playstyle.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-18, 06:00 AM

Huh, hopefully they let you stick that on a dhamphyr.

LibraryOgre

2024-05-18, 08:52 AM

Huh, hopefully they let you stick that on a dhamphyr.

I think it might be a dhampyr only archetype.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-18, 10:25 AM

I think it might be a dhampyr only archetype.

That would make sense.

Having trouble with Kingmaker, I think just the fact that I know the kingdom management is coming up is putting me off. But picked up the second Season Pass for WotR, so maybe I'll try the Shifter class, maybe do a Werewolf Azata before going Vampire Trickster with the new DLC. Because the one thing I've been saying D&D needs for years is a dedicated shapeshifters class.

Form

2024-05-18, 12:18 PM

I've managed to make my way to Eden in One step from Eden on a pacifist run and without having to use Angel Mode. Tried a few more deck combinations and characters. Some Phalanx cards are good to have because you can always use some shielding for survivability. I've gotten decent mileage out of convergence cards as well by focusing almost exclusively on trinity cards. I've also managed a couple of neutral runs and broken down the gate to Eden and once even managed a partial genocide run, beaten Serif and got sent back to the start again.

But a full genocide run is just not within my grasp. I've tried fighting the shopkeeper a couple of times, but she just kicks my ass every time. I just can't get a good feel for that quadrant attack of hers. It's so fast and it hits the entire field and even though I know the movement pattern I'm supposed to follow to dodge it I just can't get the timing right. This is one of those bad endings you really gotta work hard for.

LibraryOgre

2024-05-18, 01:22 PM

That would make sense.

I kinda feel like Shifter gets poisoned a little by having Ulbreg in the game... like, there's more than a few different ways to be an Oracle or a Wizard or a Fighter, but it feels like being another Shifter when there's Ulbreg limits your options. Kinda like BG3 already having 2 druids as companions... my druid needs to be pretty special to work in that situation.

LibraryOgre

2024-05-18, 01:27 PM

The Mod Ogre: We're on the edge of 50 pages again, neighbors. Be thinking about your new title.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-18, 03:25 PM

Possibly, although I believe he gets a more focused variant, which might be just about different enough from the standard class. I'm much, much more annoyed by the alignment restriction right now.

Debating going Azata or Demon->Legend right now. I vaguely like the idea of Shifter 20/Barbarian 20, but I want to look up exactly how Legend works first. Azata meanwhile is Azata, and there's always the option of Demon-> Gold Dragon...

LibraryOgre

2024-05-18, 04:43 PM

Possibly, although I believe he gets a more focused variant, which might be just about different enough from the standard class. I'm much, much more annoyed by the alignment restriction right now.

If you have Inevitable Excess, it can be a good way to test some build ideas... create a new Commander who makes all those choices you want.

Rynjin

2024-05-18, 04:46 PM

I mean, your Druid is special. Because they're your Druid. Like your Druid companions are Sex Pest and Yearns For Death, you're by default more interesting than them.

...Also I don't even know who Ulbreg is, I'm pretty sure you can just bring other companions, not like you're short of them in either game.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-18, 05:11 PM

If you have Inevitable Excess, it can be a good way to test some build ideas... create a new Commander who makes all those choices you want.

I do, and I might. Although I've settled on Demon for my early path and either Gold Dragon or Legend of my late game path, because I honestly feel like good-aligned demon is one of those paths that's clearly been intended (and the Evil dialogue choices seem to lean towards it anyway).

I mean, your Druid is special. Because they're your Druid. Like your Druid companions are Sex Pest and Yearns For Death, you're by default more interesting than them.

He asks once, and let's it drop with no fuss if you just say no.

...Also I don't even know who Ulbreg is, I'm pretty sure you can just bring other companions, not like you're short of them in either game.

To be fair being a Shifter he slots into a warrior role, which is one of the better ones to double up on. Which you can just do because of the six person party. And that only matters for his personal quests, on this run I can just slot in Seelah or Regill at other times.

LibraryOgre

2024-05-18, 05:20 PM

...Also I don't even know who Ulbreg is, I'm pretty sure you can just bring other companions, not like you're short of them in either game.

I shifted gears in there. Ulbreg is from Wrath of the Righteous "The Last Sarkorians" DLC. He's a Shifter, a new class introduced (think "Barbarian who Wild Shapes instead of Rages" and you're not far off), and while there are a lot of different archetypes for them, they seem to mostly boil down to "You turn into monster to hit things".

For "my druid needs to be pretty special", I mean "I am largely mechanically interchangeable with two NPCs"

Rynjin

2024-05-18, 05:57 PM

He asks once, and let's it drop with no fuss if you just say no.

Oh cool, if they patched that I can amend his nickname to Irrelevant Boringman instead!

For "my druid needs to be pretty special", I mean "I am largely mechanically interchangeable with two NPCs"

So you don't play any classes your companions have? No Rogue because Astarion, can't play a Wizard because of Gale, etc.?

Kinda limits your options pretty heavily.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-18, 08:26 PM

Yeah, it's basically another hybrid class but with a very solid concept. Honestly I'd probably agree with you if I'd gone for one of the archetypes, pretty much all of them focus on one alternate form, but I'm a base shifter and so while Ulbrig does one form very well I get to play mix and match with (eventually) five animals.

Plus, you know...

For "my druid needs to be pretty special", I mean "I am largely mechanically interchangeable with two NPCs"

This is why I like the mythic paths. Sure it'll take until Act 3 to really pay off, but I'll have mechanical stuff Ulbrig just doesn't.

Currently thinking of potential Legend Builds, I wonder if I can do something decent with one of the unmounted Cavalier archetypes instead of Barbarian or Fighter....

Or I'll just go Shifter 20/Gold Dragon 10, but I can't be a tiger and a dragon at the same time...

Zevox

2024-05-18, 09:05 PM

So you don't play any classes your companions have? No Rogue because Astarion, can't play a Wizard because of Gale, etc.?

Kinda limits your options pretty heavily.
Also, kind of an odd choice given you can freely reclass your companions, so nobody ever needs have the same class as you no matter what you pick. And Halsin and Jaheira both take a narrative back seat to the main six companions anyway. Personally I've always just had them as bench-warmers outside of when doing their personal quests.

Triaxx

2024-05-18, 11:26 PM

Nah you just don't use a companion that shares your class.

Errorname

2024-05-19, 02:19 AM

It's a shame we're at 3 years over 10 between Elder Scrolls titles or I'd suggest keeping the theme up.

Designing party balance is very tricky, especially with modern CRPGs which generally go tall on a handful of companions. BG3 having two druids felt terrible to me in a game which didn't even have companions from every class. I think you want to be able to support diverse party compositions without feeling like you're breaking the narrative, and I think it's hard to do that without a deeper bench.

Honestly it making your druid feel less special doesn't bother me as much, in a story with schools of magic it doesn't feel wrong for the main character to run into and recruit a peer of similar background. All it requires is some reactive dialogue that makes it feel like Druid!Tav and Halsin have a different dynamic owing to both being druids, which isn't nothing but honestly a little reactivity can go a long way for this sort of thing.

Also, kind of an odd choice given you can freely reclass your companions, so nobody ever needs have the same class as you no matter what you pick. And Halsin and Jaheira both take a narrative back seat to the main six companions anyway. Personally I've always just had them as bench-warmers outside of when doing their personal quests.

Jaheira also still feels right as a Ranger, which helps.

Zevox

2024-05-19, 03:41 PM

Finished Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance today. And I already want to play it again, so I'll probably do that. Yeah, goddamn is it one of the greats, been way too long since I last pulled it out.

Triaxx

2024-05-19, 05:39 PM

What are you playing: 10 ways to stealth archer.

Errorname

2024-05-19, 06:08 PM

Finished Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance today. And I already want to play it again, so I'll probably do that. Yeah, goddamn is it one of the greats, been way too long since I last pulled it out.

I love how it's basically a musical.

Zevox

2024-05-19, 07:01 PM

I love how it's basically a musical.
Oh hell yeah, the music and its use of it is fantastic.

(...random thought: "What Are you Playing 10: The Musical"? If nobody has any better ideas.)

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-19, 08:39 PM

Finally unlocked the '**** it wolf time' power. While personally I'd have preferred to become a normal sized rather than massive wolf I can see why they did it for the game.

...yes I went wolf, I almost went mammoth but I wanted something bitey with the +2 damage. Probably picking up tiger for my second aspect.

In honour of the recent discussion I propose What Are You Playing 10: Party Member Took My Favourite Class

warty goblin

2024-05-19, 09:23 PM

Not a lot of game time this week + weekend, final wedding prep is getting under way, and a couple of setbacks making the rings ate my entire weekend.

(Pro tip, don't air cool rose gold unless you want to make it super hard and brittle.)

Wrapped up another AoW 4 game, short version is my very magical elves made friends with a rather mineralized orc and a very disappointing dragon, then stomped the other two AIs into the dirt. Also we swapped out legs for snake bits because it made commuting around the inland sea a lot faster and also looked rad.

It's definitely time for an AoW break though. Thought about Solasta, but between mainlining AoW for two months and beating Knight's Tale over the previous two months, I feel a need for something that isn't turn based tactics (this also precludes Fallen Legion, the otherwise excellent looking Knight's Tale spinoff)

Obviously the solution is real time strategy, specifically Spellforce 3. Game still looks damn good, and I quite like the hold ALT to pull up abilities system the game uses. I do kinda miss the over the top art style of the first two games, but the more realistic aesthetic is quite good too.

DaedalusMkV

2024-05-19, 10:33 PM

The Mod Ogre: We're on the edge of 50 pages again, neighbors. Be thinking about your new title.

It feels like, this being gaming, we can do some work with the Roman numeral. Say:

What Are You Playing: Xtreme Edition
What Are You Playing: Solve for X
What Are You Playing: X Games in my Backlog

Something like that.

halfeye

2024-05-20, 04:21 AM

I blooming loathe musicals. When I was a kid every other film was a pesky musical, The Sound of Music was the worst but by no means the only.

I vote -1 for any potential thread title with "musical" in it.

Rynjin

2024-05-20, 05:07 AM

I nominate: "What Are You Playing: Halfeye X Musical"

Y'know, like Street Fighter X Tekken or somethin'.

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-20, 03:19 PM

Went back to my old Cleric/Angel playthrough, just because I actually got it to Act 4 and so feel like I should give actually completing it a good chance. I'll possibly flick between the two as I feel like it.

...no, this isn't just because I felt dread at doing the Defender's Heart defence. Okay, a little bit of dread, but I also want to see Irabeth's shifter specific line.

Once the Angel run is completed I'll likely flick between the Shifter run and Through the Ashes.

warty goblin

2024-05-20, 03:38 PM

I nominate: "What Are You Playing: Halfeye X Musical"

Y'know, like Street Fighter X Tekken or somethin'.

Either that or

"What Are You Playing: Build Really Takes off Aver Level 10"

Zevox

2024-05-20, 03:55 PM

I nominate: "What Are You Playing: Halfeye X Musical"

Y'know, like Street Fighter X Tekken or somethin'.
"What Are You Playing X: Crossover Extravaganza"?

Or maybe "What Are Playing 10: Probably an RPG", given this site. :smalltongue:

Batcathat

2024-05-20, 03:58 PM

Would "What Are You Playing: Probably Trying 10 Different Builds Before Finishing The Tutorial" be too wordy? :smalltongue:

IthilanorStPete

2024-05-20, 04:52 PM

I've started playing Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus, which I think I heard about from this thread a while back. I'm 7 hours in, it's definitely fun; the gameplay's quite different from the XCOM formula, which I appreciate. It also does a great job of capturing the feel of the Adeptus Mechanicus, between the visuals and the sound design.

Currently I've got three Tech-Priests; I've got one melee specialist, one ranged specialist, and one utility priest focused on CP generation and some healing. I've been taking more damage than I want lately, so I might try adding more healing gear/skills into the mix; for now, I'm using Servitors as expendable meat shields.

It feels like, this being gaming, we can do some work with the Roman numeral. Say:

What Are You Playing: Xtreme Edition
What Are You Playing: Solve for X
What Are You Playing: X Games in my Backlog

Something like that.

I like "X Games in my Backlog", for what it's worth.

Not a lot of game time this week + weekend, final wedding prep is getting under way, and a couple of setbacks making the rings ate my entire weekend.

(Pro tip, don't air cool rose gold unless you want to make it super hard and brittle.)

Congrats on the upcoming wedding! Making your own rings sounds really cool.

Rynjin

2024-05-20, 04:55 PM

Not a lot of game time this week + weekend, final wedding prep is getting under way, and a couple of setbacks making the rings ate my entire weekend.

(Pro tip, don't air cool rose gold unless you want to make it super hard and brittle.)

Well don't leave us hanging, what IS the proper method? Oil quenching? Do you need to put it in a vacuum chamber? Bury it?

warty goblin

2024-05-20, 06:42 PM

I like "X Games in my Backlog", for what it's worth.

Seconded, this is a good one.

Congrats on the upcoming wedding! Making your own rings sounds really cool.
Thanks! I only did a very little work in rose gold for the engagement ring, which had a gold setting poured into a sterling silver band, so it's been a definite learning experience. I'm currently on version 3, which is also the final version.

Version 1 failed due to a very large trapped air pocket caused by bad sprueing on my part

Version 2 failed because I accidentally hardened the metal, then broke one of the prongs for holding the gem (lab grown emerald, surprisingly affordable.)

Version 3 suffered from an unusual amount of surface bubbling in the metal that I still don't fully understand, but was able to file out.

Well don't leave us hanging, what IS the proper method? Oil quenching? Do you need to put it in a vacuum chamber? Bury it?

The super careful version is that you turn out all the lights, heat it to a dull red, air cool it until it's 'black hot' (i.e. just below red hot) and then quench it, optimally in alcohol. This actually over-softened it for my purposes, so after I got the gem placed and the whole thing finished to 600 grit, I set up the third hard to dangle just the gem setting in a dish of water to prevent damage to the stone, then heated the body of the ring back up to red hot and air cooled it to re-harden the metal.

The annealing is actually totally standard for a copper alloy. My mistake was not knowing that air cooling hardened the metal, a quirk of physical chemistry apparently relatively unique to rose gold - I've never encountered it in copper or brass or bronze - hence the broken prong on the setting. I had been using the torch to bend them, and after they had cooled was adjusting one with the pliers, and snap.

Wookieetank

2024-05-21, 08:21 AM

Would "What Are You Playing: Probably Trying 10 Different Builds Before Finishing The Tutorial" be too wordy? :smalltongue:

What are you Playing 10: Alternate Builds, the true endgame

Anonymouswizard

2024-05-21, 08:24 AM

What Are You Playing: 10 Builds, Zero Progress

Wookieetank

2024-05-21, 08:41 AM

What Are You Playing: 10 Builds, Zero Progress

Well done, I'll throw a vote in on this.

Batcathat

2024-05-21, 08:46 AM

If we do go with it, can we please change it to either "Ten Builds, Zero progress" or "10 Builds, 0 progress"? Having one of each hurts my brain more than I like to admit. :smalleek:

Cespenar

2024-05-21, 10:47 AM

Mechanicus is a pretty good example IMHO of how much to innovate while still using a good chassis to bounce off from, without looking like an absolute cash grab clone. Looking at you, other XCOM-likes.

Also a pretty good game.

LibraryOgre

2024-05-21, 01:55 PM

New thread up. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?667762-What-Are-You-Playing-10-Ten-Builds-Zero-Progress&p=26015716)

What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age [Archive] - Page 6 (2024)