Soooooo what'cha playing?

[Specta]

8 minutes ago, Benice said:

More like a wronger

I don't necessarily agree-I think that a story should have a clear and focused idea, (something I struggle with a lot) and you can guide your reader, but ultimately, what the reader gets from it, and whether they enjoyed it, is what really counts in my uneducated opinion.

Never taken a creative writing course, though, so my perspective will likely change once I do later this year.

I can speak as a licensed English teacher (lots of teaching of writing and story analysis! Fun shit!) that there is a lot of merit in the effect of the writing isolated from the intent of the writing. It's just two different approaches to judging something. Generally judging by the effect is the more commonly suggested route because you don't always know what someone was explicitly going for but you can always gauge some message or meaning based on how you respond to the text

I imagine your perspective will not change drastically haha but have fun seeing what you learn

Edited September 30, 2020 by Specta

[Benice]

3 minutes ago, Specta said:

I can speak as a licensed English teacher (lots of teaching of writing and story analysis! Fun shit!) that there is a lot of merit in the effect of the writing isolated from the intent of the writing. It's just two different approaches to judging something. Generally judging by the effect is the more commonly suggested route because you don't always know what someone was explicitly going for but you can always gauge some message or meaning based on how you respond to the text

Huh. That is good to know! Thanks!

5 minutes ago, Specta said:

I imagine your perspective will not change drastically haha but have fun seeing what you learn

We shall see indeed! Hopefully I end up doing well in this course, since I've always liked writing...

[null]

Getting back to the topic myself.

Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy

It's kind of interesting how these games are both equally enjoyable to me, but for different reasons.

Sunshine, for example, is a much less polished game with glitches, tedious shines, and strange difficulty spikes in certain areas. Galaxy, on the other hand, while much more polished, has a better presentation than actual gameplay in my opinion. The art style, music, and overall atmosphere are fantastic, but the actual platforming isn't nearly as fluid or fun (haha) as Sunshine's. I may get frustrated with some gameplay aspects of Sunshine at times, but I can see myself returning to it more often than I would Galaxy, which I kind of see as a one-and-done type of game, although it is quite excellent in its own right.

Edited September 30, 2020 by twilitfalchion

[vanguard333]

I got Mario 3D All-Stars. I'm starting with 64, and I'll 100% it before moving on to quickly going through Sunshine (though not all of it), then Galaxy. 

64 surprisingly holds up well. Graphics were always going to age, but the gameplay and level design is pretty good. Each of the 3D Mario games seem to be especially good at something in particular, and I would consider 64 the jack-of-all-trades. That said, the camera is bad. Most of the time, it's fine, but the limited angles it can turn and Lakitu's tendency to get stuck and prevent you from seeing at certain angles can really hinder the game. 

On 9/29/2020 at 9:31 PM, twilitfalchion said:

Getting back to the topic myself.

Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy

It's kind of interesting how these games are both equally enjoyable to me, but for different reasons.

Sunshine, for example, is a much less polished game with glitches, tedious shines, and strange difficulty spikes in certain areas. Galaxy, on the other hand, while much more polished, has a better presentation than actual gameplay in my opinion. The art style, music, and overall atmosphere are fantastic, but the actual platforming isn't nearly as fluid or fun (haha) as Sunshine's. I may get frustrated with some gameplay aspects of Sunshine at times, but I can see myself returning to it more often than I would Galaxy, which I kind of see as a one-and-done type of game, although it is quite excellent in its own right.

There's a good reason why Sunshine is much less polished: it and Wind Waker were both rushed out the door due to lackluster initial sales of the GameCube. 

[Lightcosmo]

KH3 Critical mode run, standard stuff, yadayadayada. 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Also playing the Mario Allstars triology right now.

Finished 64 past weekend weekend and going to start with Galaxy next since I'm way more interested in this than in Sunshine.

 

My main projects are Sakura Wars and Tokyo Xanadu though.

Sakura Wars has been my first visual novel for me, and I've to say I'm absolutely positive surprised from this game. The characterization and content of the dialogues are absolutely well done. It gave me some laughters, but also almost wet eyes. It's a bit of a dating simulator, but still I enjoy reading all the dialogues. Besides being a visual novel it features battles between mechs which is action based. I would assume it's kind of a mix of Xenoblade and Warriors series (though haven't played latter). It's very fun, and this comes by someone who doesn't like robot fights.

[null]

As much as I'm not a fan of Kaga's games, I've started Berwick Saga.

It's surprised me so far, ngl. The gameplay is good, the characters are interesting, the hub world is actually very nicely done, and the music is excellent.

The hexagonal grid on the maps and the order of turns are different, but I like things like that to distinguish the game from FE (which TRS did not do at all, really).

The only things I dislike so far are the hit rates (which I've been told will improve) and the random way weapons seem to break. There's no durability number to indicate the uses left, so it's a bit confusing about how that works.

Despite that, I'm definitely looking forward to continuing my playthrough. Cautiously optimistic, but still looking forward to it.

Edited October 2, 2020 by twilitfalchion

[Interdimensional Observer]

10 hours ago, twilitfalchion said:

The only things I dislike so far are the hit rates (which I've been told will improve) and the random way weapons seem to break. There's no durability number to indicate the uses left, so it's a bit confusing about how that works.

According to the SF calculations page for BS:

All brand-new weapons start with 101 durability points, but some units begin with already-used equipment. If an item's durability counter ever falls below 1 without breaking, it is set to 1. If an item's durability counter would ever go above 101, it is set to 101.

Durability Depletion

Each time a weapon hits an enemy or a shield blocks an attack, its durability points decrease by a fixed amount. (Missing with a weapon does not decrease durability.) The exact amount of points lost depends on the item's durability class. 

Note: The skill Armsthrift has a 20% chance to prevent weapon durability points from being depleted. Its activation is never announced to the player.

Durability Class	Depletion per use (weapon)	Depletion per use (shield)
S	1	4
A	2	8
B	3	12
C	4	16
D	5	20
E	6	24
F	7	28

Let me try to translate this into actual total durability numbers, not having played BS, I do not know how accurate this is.

Weapons:

• S- 101 uses.
• A- 51
• B- 34
• C- 26
• D- 21
• E- 17
• F- 15

 

Shields:

• S- 26 uses
• A- 13
• B- 9
• C- 7
• D- 6
• E- 5
• F- 4

[null]

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

According to the SF calculations page for BS:

All brand-new weapons start with 101 durability points, but some units begin with already-used equipment. If an item's durability counter ever falls below 1 without breaking, it is set to 1. If an item's durability counter would ever go above 101, it is set to 101.

Durability Depletion

Each time a weapon hits an enemy or a shield blocks an attack, its durability points decrease by a fixed amount. (Missing with a weapon does not decrease durability.) The exact amount of points lost depends on the item's durability class. 

Note: The skill Armsthrift has a 20% chance to prevent weapon durability points from being depleted. Its activation is never announced to the player.

Durability Class	Depletion per use (weapon)	Depletion per use (shield)
S	1	4
A	2	8
B	3	12
C	4	16
D	5	20
E	6	24
F	7	28

Let me try to translate this into actual total durability numbers, not having played BS, I do not know how accurate this is.

Weapons:

• S- 101 uses.
• A- 51
• B- 34
• C- 26
• D- 21
• E- 17
• F- 15

 

Shields:

• S- 26 uses
• A- 13
• B- 9
• C- 7
• D- 6
• E- 5
• F- 4

Oh, thanks for sharing that info! It'll definitely be helpful to know.

Edited October 3, 2020 by twilitfalchion

[aradii]

Playing Total War: Warhammer 2 as high elves fighting against dark elves, One of the greatest strategy games ever, this game is absolutely amazing so it has extremely addicting gameplay and It's unbelievably well balanced considered the number of different races.

[Samz707]

Serious Sam: The First Encounter

It's not terrible but there are definitely a few awkward moments so far, I've only played Serious Sam 2 before this one.

[Reality]

Playing Nino-No-Kun, Warth of the White Witch --- Not having too much fun so far. Unhappy, First 3 hours of the game were pretty railroaded... game is "kind of" opening up now, but with samey fetch quests. Dialog/story sections look like they will folllow the quest compass model for the rest of the game. Combat... seems like it's lying to me - I was told to try out new party member > party member arrives at level 1 instead of scaling to match current charather's level > can be beaten to death by any random encounter > I'm too old for this and just play "solo mode" to funnel everything to my original charather... Combat seems too easy against bosses / too hard against generic mobs - That is it feels like you can mitigate almost all of a boss's attacks, while with random mobs you cannot avoid trading at least some hits - it's very dependent on your infinite item-space and topping off after every battle which doesn't feel good... (so I'm hoarding up to avoid doing dungeons in multiple trips) I'm going to treat the game like NES Dragon Quest going forward and it's loses in that comparison for me

[Samz707]

Alone in the Dark - The New Nightmare

One of my favorite survival horror titles and playing it again since Halloween . (Even if it's so stingy with ammo that I blame no one for using cheats considering how the basic in-game revolver is basically worthless yet ammo for it is still stingy.) 

It did the "Two campaigns" thing better than Resident evil 2 (Both Resident Evil 2's) and has a great atmosphere all around.

Edited October 11, 2020 by Samz707

[ZeManaphy]

Just started Yooka-Laylee. Gotta say, I really enjoy the open world approach to levels and exploration. Really enjoying the level and character designs.

.

[Xenomata]

You know, I wasn't sure if I was gonna like Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but I decided "I got it already, apparently I bought the DLC as well so I guess I should give it a go now that I'm bored out of my mind." Apparently I've clocked 55 hours into this thing now and I've only barely scratched the surface of Chapter 5.

So... I guess I like it? Even despite that I don't understand some things and keep forgetting how Blade Combos work, and even despite the time the game glitched and cost me almost a whole half of chapter 4, I just keep coming back to it.

[Etrurian emperor]

I'm playing Hades. I admit rogue-likes aren't my thing and that I mainly bought it for the mythology aspect, but its actually quite good to play too. 

[Samz707]

Code of Honor 3: Desperate Measures

A decent little budget shooter. (The fact I got it digitally on a big discount helped), also fairly certain that the PC's VA is the one who does Jeralt in Three Houses or at least someone who sounds like him, game doesn't list the voice actors so I'm not actually sure. (It's close enough to the point where I'm not sure if it's him or not since it sounds close enough to be him a bit younger/doing a different voice.)

Edited October 15, 2020 by Samz707

[Zapp Branniglenn]

There are two games I started a month ish ago that I just found time to finish

The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures was a game I had been saving until I could play with friends. Then I found out you need a gba adapter for each player and I own only one, so nuts to that. I played in single player using a gamecube controller. Guess you could call it Poor Swords Adventure. From what I hear about this game's release, boxed copies came with one adapter, but I'm honestly stunned you need that much of them for multiplayer. Imagine if you bought a light gun game, and it comes with a gun controller, but you're not allowed to use the gun controller unless you own two of them. It's dumb. You can easily have made this game's multiplayer just use gamecube controllers on one TV screen with split screen. It wouldn't look good, but I can't imagine the GBA screen experience is any better. Trust me, those are tinier than you remember. By the way, how did multiplayer come to Zelda before Super Mario Bros? The early 2000s were certainly the most experimental era for the series. Besides Triforce Heroes, this is actually the last of the Zelda games I haven't played, or the CDI games (which they should put on my Switch). It's also the last gamecube game in my collection I had never beaten, so today I retired that system from active duty.

What really keeps this from feeling like a Zelda game is the lack of character progression. All upgrades you acquire in a ~30 minute level are lost once the level is cleared. And I think progression has always been key to the Zelda experience. In particular, I think it would have been fair for the player to maintain item upgrades. Since a lot of puzzles require the upgraded versions of the items, it would have been cool to see level design in the later stages of the game incorporate their new applications without having to find their upgrades first. The game has no side quests or side objectives but it's decently lengthed at about 10 hours. The narrative is pretty good too which was unexpected. Level design was pretty hit or miss from me. The use of classic zelda items was always creative, but it was consistently frustrating to find the way forward is just to break a certain pot, cut a certain square of grass, or fall down a pit. That is not puzzle solving. That is banging your head against the wall. You kind of just resign yourself to interacting with everything in the room, thereby accruing way more force gems than you need to clear the stage. Getting more than 2000 force gems does absolutely nothing. And the game won't even keep track of your high score for you to try to beat your record. Dumb. Some stages are a load of fun to figure out though, like Kakariko village which is one big puzzle box as you locate and round up all ten thieves in town. Or the Village of the Blue maiden which is a long quest of using items to get more items. I imagine these levels are a lot of fun with friends as you verbally communicate what NPCs are telling your character and what items are needed where. But I can't get over this multiplayer game that doesn't want you to play multiplayer. Such a wasted opportunity.

There's also Donkey Kong Country. I grew up with this game, but never finished it. Boy do I see why now, this game has some tough levels. And you have to clear as many as five stages just to earn a save point or a warp to a previous world in order to save before moving on. If I had one piece of advice for my past self, stop to grind some extra lives inbetween worlds. The game will not stop you, and it'll save you from having to replay some infuriating levels. I've got a lot to say about DKC1, but honestly it's a lot of griping and complaining. The trickiest sections tend to come down to trial and error rather than having good reaction timing or patience. Maybe it's the extra input lag of modern day displays, but man it feels like the developers didn't realize that humans can react to oncoming hazards in time but still not be in the clear due to poor hit detection and Donkey Kong's large frame that takes up a quarter of the screen real estate. Heck, even as Diddy I felt like I was dying to things that didn't touch me. I really wish the game were zoomed out just 10%. It would really help.

The game may look great, but the lovingly rendered foregrounds do a poor job of communicating where ledges are and that makes it hard to judge when to press the jump button as you're running off. Or when to fight against the Kong's slippery traction. Also the camera moves to the left immediately every time you try to correct your landings. Just pressing to the left for a second to avoid an oncoming hazard shifts the camera so far away that I momentarily lose sight of the thing I'm trying to avoid. And that's especially disorienting for some auto scroller stages where you can't afford to lose sight of what's ahead of you so you can dodge in time. Boss fights are kind of a let down too. Feels like they decided late in development to have them at the end of each world, because every boss fight besides Necky and K Rool are just existing enemies but several times bigger. And Necky appears twice! Overall I'm happy I came back to this game, because some stages are definitely winners. And I'd like to be able to compliment the first Donkey Kong beyond just its aesthetics and music. 

[Interdimensional Observer]

7 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

What really keeps this from feeling like a Zelda game is the lack of character progression. All upgrades you acquire in a ~30 minute level are lost once the level is cleared. And I think progression has always been key to the Zelda experience. In particular, I think it would have been fair for the player to maintain item upgrades. Since a lot of puzzles require the upgraded versions of the items, it would have been cool to see level design in the later stages of the game incorporate their new applications without having to find their upgrades first.

FSA was I think the only non-CDI (or BS) Zelda title not playable for someone with a 3DS and a Wii U. It's definitely been more on the forgotten side of LoZ. Though as you point out, it thats understandable, because the game is like a 6 or 7/10, not bad, but below the usual Zelda standard. And visually, it's kinda lazy, between the upscaled ALttP 2D and Wind Waker stylings. Apparently it's one of the least successful Zeldas, only 937k (which is kinda incredible that the "worst" Zelda still almost reached 1 million).

As for the part of what you said that I quoted, I completely remember that. I think it was done for sake of pick-up-and-play, but it does remove any sense of personal growth, and perhaps makes the later parts of the game a little easy to compensate. In retrospect, I think it's a lot slower than Tri-Force Heroes, and I might say for whatever flak the latter got, that it is the better attempt at a multiplayer Zelda, even if I find the two ideas not entirely compatible.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Zapp Branniglenn]

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

FSA was I think the only non-CDI (or BS) Zelda title not playable for someone with a 3DS and a Wii U. It's definitely been more on the forgotten side of LoZ. Though as you point out, it thats understandable, because the game is like a 6 or 7/10, not bad, but below the usual Zelda standard. And visually, it's kinda lazy, between the upscaled ALttP 2D and Wind Waker stylings. Apparently it's one of the least successful Zeldas, only 937k (which is kinda incredible that the "worst" Zelda still almost reached 1 million).

 

That is true. For all my issues of the 3DS/Wii U generation they did indeed get everything either as a remaster or virtual console release, which is very impressive for such a long running series and was probably the greatest trivia you could provide as an argument that virtual console was decent for games preservation. And even now, in 2020, it's STILL true until Hyrule Warriors: The Pre-Sequel comes out exclusively for Switch. Or if you don't count HW, BotW 2. Although I will add that GBA Four Swords deserves an asterisk as well since it was distributed for free for a brief period before ALBW came out and you can't get it anymore if you don't already have it. I'm not even sure if I could get it back if I deleted it off my 3DS. Heh, I guess that's the ancient origin of the limited release thing Nintendo's doing now. 

If I had to guess though, GBA Four Swords may be the "least successful" zelda game at least when focusing on a game's initial release It only existed as a part of the Link to the Past port. While that did sell 1.4 million copies, unlike the 3DS version, there was no single player mode. You needed friends (and equipment) to play it at all. The Gamecube game at least allows for single player. But I'm not grateful. Zelda multiplayer games were killed in their infancy by peripherals.

Quote

As for the part of what you said that I quoted, I completely remember that. I think it was done for sake of pick-up-and-play, but it does remove any sense of personal growth, and perhaps makes the later parts of the game a little easy to compensate. In retrospect, I think it's a lot slower than Tri-Force Heroes, and I might say for whatever flak the latter got, that it is the better attempt at a multiplayer Zelda, even if I find the two ideas not entirely compatible.

I thought about them wanting to maintain the "integrity" of pick up and play, but honestly, who cares? Imagine jumping into your friend's game, they've got the upgraded pegasus boots and you're running on air having a blast, you wouldn't say to yourself "man, I wish I had a chance to earn this every level". Resident Evil 5 is one of my favorite co-op games and they don't care about what loadout you bring with you. All they do is prevent you from donating weapons to a random player online, since that would upset the balance too much.

I kind of want to play Triforce Heroes now. I know one of my friends owns it, and it even has online multiplayer. I should get on that before the 3DS servers shut down.

[Samz707]

Ghost Recon 1 PC.

I'm a big fan of old Red Storm video games and their realism. (Even if the enemy AI blatantly cheats, hard.)

Anyone played that Ghost Recon turn-based spin-off on the 3Ds? I'm wondering if I should check it out and it's been compared to FE a few times from what I've seen.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I'm playing Persona 4 Golden right now. I didn't enjoy original Persona 4 too much, but since I have finished Persona 5 Royal I was kinda in a Persona mood. So far it's more enjoyable since I play better. Still the new character Marie has given me a very poor first impression. Gameplaywise I haven't really any changes yet, aside of a strong partner attack if an enemy's weakness was hit (?). At least cool that a few more themes and social links are added. Still overall I think this game will my least favorite compared to Persona 3 FES and 5 (Royal) because neither the soundtrack nor the character cast can impress me.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Kasumi Yoshizawa

[Zapp Branniglenn]

This week I played The Secret of Monkey Island. It's probably the most popular point and click adventure game of all time. I played the 2009 remake which had been sitting in my steam library for about half as many years. And I had a lot of fun with it. The humor is very sharp, and it’s very unlike other games of its genre in that there is no game over or failure state. I can see why the dialogue-based swordfighting is iconic, as the player must learn as many biting, witty phrases as they can, and the comebacks to each of them to demoralize your opponent. Learning new stuff can get annoying as there’s no guarantee your opponent can teach you something you haven’t heard, but you don’t need a full set, just enough to defeat the swordmaster. From there you'll never sword duel again which I think is unfortunate. I also like that each response has two takes from the voice actor, one where he confidently says the correct answer and one where he meekly gives an incorrect answer.

The voice acting is excellent. Almost every line out of Guybrush sounded very well considered given the context and tone of the scene. Although I’m sure it’s helped by the fact that this is a remake and they can just watch the original game’s scene to figure out how it should sound. That’s better than having a script. And the script is just really funny. It’s a nice blend of cartoony gags, metatextual humor, and the game giving you tantalizing dialogue responses to spice up mundane scenarios. The user interface isn’t too great. You often have to guess whether something in the environment needs you to press open, pick up, pull, push, or if you need to use an item on it. You just end up trying everything at once. A lot of areas in the game I needed to reach I never found on my own because you just need to click on the correct part of the screen with no visual indication. There are also annoying puzzles where you use one thing on another thing in your inventory and some sources online say that used to be less clunky in the original. The grog mug puzzle took me several tries because time doesn’t stop while fiddling through your menu. Still I liked the game a bunch.

I also played Shalnor Legends I: Sacred Lands. A top down indie adventure game. People like to compare it to Zelda, especially due to its Link to the Past-esque art style, but I'd sooner compare it to schmups or those white knuckle platformers like Super Meat Boy, or VVVVVV where precision is key. Even the game's puzzles are solved primarily by having a flawless sense of timing and dexterity to get past hazards. The game's real difficult too. Once you're past the first dungeon, everything is hitting you for almost half your health. Save points are sufficiently frequent, but some individual rooms proved so difficult that I was stuck on them for a long time. Enemies and especially bosses are so dangerous to approach since you risk touching them in order to get into sword range. Boss hitboxes are notoriously larger than the sprite suggests. It may take longer since you need to wait for your mana to refill, but everything is safer to kill by just standing back with your bow and arrow.

Grinding for upgrades also started to feel necessary, mostly the arrow upgrades that give you health and mana back on each successful hit. And the game was definitely built with grinding in mind. Material grinding was seldom a concern since they seem to come from any barrel or blade of grass. There are limits to how much of a material you can carry, but if you hit that limit, the game actually spawns something you do have room for instead so you can fill up on anything in any room of the game. I definitely appreciate it only taking 15-30 minutes to grab some things that are helpful. Secret collectibles also serve as helpful upgrades, but I'll confess I only found about a third of what's in the game so I can't comment on what in particular is worth seeking out to curve the game's difficulty. I had a good time playing the game, but its final two dungeons are a slog. Both of them are just a very long sequence of one-room challenges and it was just so repetitive and dull to play through. And I wish there was more to do in the overworld than opening shortcuts and searching for more one-room challenges to do. Like I said I missed a lot of secrets, but none of them seemed compelling enough to seek out.

[henrymidfields]

Tokyo Mirage Sessions and Three Houses

[null]

Mostly Pikmin 3 Deluxe and some Three Houses on the side.

Never played Pikmin 3 on Wii U so the Switch version was a pretty much given for pre-ordering it. Been good so far. Fairly chill for the most part, as gathering fruit and collecting story items is the main goal, but the bosses can be pretty intense. The game is fairly forgiving though so you never lose too many Pikmin at one time. So far, good impressions. 8.5/10.

Three Houses is just my Azure Moon hard/classic file from a while back that I wanted to continue with.