Soooooo what'cha playing?

[vanguard333]

I just bought that new Monster Hunter game: Monster Hunter Rise. I'm pretty much brand new to the series (though I did try the first demo for this game), so the experience is... interesting. I bought the game because it looked interesting and because I heard that the series has a bit of a steep learning curve, so I thought I'd get this game as a way of challenging myself.

Today, I basically walked around the village to learn where everything is, did the tutorial mission, then did some free roaming of the Shrine Ruins (the first hunting location available). I decided to go for Sword & Shield because I heard it was versatile and beginner-friendly. I'm guessing that "beginner-friendly" is a relative statement, as it certainly was beginner-friendly compared to stuff like the longsword and the bowguns. I even practiced in the training area for a bit before going on the first mission, and the combat was still very awkward for me. I suspect that as I get better and I learn what's the best thing to do in each situation (and after I watch a ton of beginner's guide videos on using Sword & Shield), it will start to click. But hey; I still somehow managed to beat an Arzuros (the bear monster) on my first try during the free roaming.

The wirebugs and the palamute really make exploring a lot of fun, and I like how you want to go off the beaten path to find items that can help with the quest, but at the same time, you are on a time limit unless you're free-roaming, so there's risk-reward involved.

Because I knew I was going to go for Sword & Shield, my first idea for my custom character was to make him Link from The Legend of Zelda... then I decided against it. That said, I still made my Palamute (the dog/wolf thing) Wolf Link and my Palaco (the cat creature) Midna.

The game's main hub is a surprisingly charming place; all the characters are rather quirky, but definitely in a good way, and even just engaging in chitchat with them is a bit fun. There's also something amusing about the way the player character puts an entire set of three dango in their mouth all at once and just scarfs it down. Incidentally, the opening of the game has the player character be awoken by the twins that give out the quests, and the game having the protagonist have to be woken up, as well as them being a big eater, really made me almost regret not sticking with my idea of making my character Link. 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I could beat Star Allies's Soul Melter yesterday which took me longer then expected thanks to awkwardly made 3D shooters against the final boss. However the real "challenge" just awaits me: Soul Melter Ex. Oh boi, I'm prepared for rage.

Besides I'm trying to unlock the secret end of Blowout Blast, and I have to say it's more difficult than expected to grab all the gold medals. I unlocked all extra stages, but I also need gold in all of them too to unlock the secret end which is easier said than done. 

Edit: Tried Soul Melter Ex. It went surprisingly well; made it to the final boss instantly. Died to phase 3 which everything but a surprise since I don't know how to dodge most of the attacks like the swords (first phase) and lasers (third phase). Considering I needed more than a dozen attempts to make it so far in "standard" Soul Melter, the first try in Ex went much better than expected.

Edited March 29, 2021 by Zan Partizanne

[Armchair General]

So, my parents got Bravely Default 2 (and a few more games) from Wal-Mart, a few weeks ago; and I just started playing it, a two days ago, because I had nothing else better to do. So far, I'm right after the first boss fight and I'm already bored of it. Tried saying "no" to the giant magic crystal and it kills me for some bullshit reason. Hooray for railroading!

 

Granted, I've been spamming the attack button to grind, but the story just doesn't feel exciting, for some reason.

Edited March 30, 2021 by Armchair General

[DarkSage861]

Smackdown vs Raw 2011 and making the most crackhead create a story yet

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Finished secret path of Blowout Blast. This was hard! Five stages including boss battles had to be done in a row. Only two little recovery items were given. I needed a half dozen of attempts to beat it. Final Dedede wasn't that bad though (first phase was harder than second one tbh). Despite being short, I found it fun and it had featured some challenge. I'd give this game 7 / 10.

100%'ed Kirby's Return To Dreamland (once more). I had massive struggle with one gear in the ice world. This monkey key race desperated me. Even with water (required to make it in time) I had so many fails and needed almost an entire hour to beat it since this section isn't in the beginning of the stage. 

Idk what to continue next: either Dreamland 2 or Dreamland 3

Probably both...

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Suikoden 2

Spoiler

 

Suikoden 2 is a pretty good followup to the original. My favorite aspect of the game was the improved sprite work. Both in and out of battle, characters are more expressive and well animated. This was an era of jrpgs where character models looked like an unfolded car engine, but suikoden's 2's visuals easily hold up due to its strictly 2D design. It has FMV cutscenes too, but smartly avoids showing us 3D character models just for the sake of it. The game also makes up for the biggest flaw of the original - by not loading your party up with too many forced characters. Once you can select your party, it's genuinely rare for you to have as many as 3 out of 6 forced party slots. This allows you to take more of whoever you want. And you'll want a diverse cast of leveled up characters for one particular sequence two thirds through the game. With Suikoden's exp scaling, you can of course get your characters up to speed in just a few short random battles. You also occasionally have an option to put plot-relevant characters in the convoy if you really don't want to use them.

I also liked the addition of rune slots, further allowing you to customize your characters. But since there's still no way to replenish spell charges and the spells are all extremely powerful, you yet again only end up saving them for boss fights. Physical oriented characters can just never compete with your mages unless you're willing to grind out incredibly rare drop runes. Speaking of, monster drops. Pretty much all of the most powerful equipment and runes are tied to monster drops or rare finds in shops. This makes the game feel very grindy if you want the best stuff. You virtually never had need of grinding in the original game, and now look at how they've mucked it up. Your money feels remarkably useless since shops so seldom have good stuff in their base inventory. You can still sharpen your weapons, but I hit the money cap constantly by the end of the game. And speaking of sharpening weapons, why is the blacksmith one of the last characters you can recruit? You can find 3 out of 4 of his upgrades long before he becomes available, whereas in the first game, the smithy improved by you recruiting more blacksmiths. Many of the basic facilities feel like they're available too late in the game, which is especially puzzling since they often pop up in areas you've already passed through much earlier in the game. There's no story justification for them to show up later.

And what happened to the inventory system? Equipment may not take up item slots anymore, but your inventory was shrunk by 50%, and the vault to store items carries just a measly 60 spaces. It's not enough to carry all the runes and key items, so you find yourself scrambling to find ways to use or sell junk many times throughout the game. I don't know how much the vault in the first game could carry because I never hit its limit, but I know for sure it's at least twice as much as what this game allows. I can't fathom why this is an issue now.

The weakest link of the game is easily the army battles. They suck. It is Fire Emblem-esque gameplay with no clear objective. And they become even worse when you understand what's going on. The vast majority of the battles throughout the game end on a certain turn, as one side surrenders to an incoming deus ex machina. You have no influence over actually winning, so you're better off not fighting enemies in order to minimize the odds of your units permanently dying. Even if you try to have fun routing the enemy, there's no battle forecast, or vague indication of whether you'll hit the enemy. The real hit rates are generally 30% or lower unless your stats are massively higher. You can create powerful units by teaming up specific recruited characters for unique abilities, but since the objective never matters I seldom took advantage of that micromanagement. Even when I did, the game would randomize my team setup anyway as I recruited more characters later on. There is only one battle that matters, early in the game, because it's one where you can recruit a missable character by damaging but not killing him. And to make these sequences even more of a joke, most of them have no music. The army battles are in complete silence. Suikoden 1's army battles were not mechanically impressive, but at least they ended in a minute or two and gave you ways of overcoming the game's RNG rolls.

Most of what I have to say is negative, but I did enjoy my time with Suikoden 2. It's best ideas are from the first game and if it's not broke, don't fix it. I'm happy that some facets of the game are truly refined and the presentation makes it feel a lot more big budget for its era. I'm predisposed to like the first game more because of its shorter length, but I can definitely see how the sequel caught on with players. You spend a lot more time experiencing the world and its characters. The villain, Luca Blight, is introduced in the first few minutes and is a terrifyingly evil person that you want to fight. But beyond him, I did not enjoy the plot in this game. There was a lot of dialogue, but very little is actually said or done with these character setups. The villain after the villain is especially obnoxious, perpetually citing fate as his motivation and nothing more. The localization has not improved. I know from interviews there was a lot more effort with this title, but it's also twice as large of a game, so mistakes manage to crop up about as frequently as in the original. In particular that common issue of text boxes being assigned to clearly the wrong character. This is what happens when you send your source code to a group of people, with no japanese script or accompanying authors' notes, and say "please write our game in English". It's hard to say whether the game's faults in narrative are a result of shoddy translation, bad writing, or a mix of both. 

 

As for Suikoden 3, it is one of ten games randomly selected from my backlog that I must play this year. But I feel like this is a good time for a break from the series. It will happen, just not now.

 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Glennstavos

[Fabulously Olivier]

Genshin Impact out of habit.

 

And Persona 5 Strikers because I love it.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Completed Kirby's Dreamland 3.

If you're not doing it for 100% to unlock the true final boss, it's  fun and not too easy game for Kirby standards.

However if you're really going for all the missions, then it will cause frustration for sure. Some memorizing puzzles and combining the right friend with the right power are fine to a certain extent, but selecting a random path whose outcome is unknown to get a star is obnoxious. I don't need any luckbased stuff at all, much less in a platformer. It was the first time I had to use a guide for a Kirby game. Never expected it to let it happen.  Losing the required power or friend during the stage means an automatic reset. Since the stages are pretty long later on, this will consume lots of time. 

The biggest issue I had with this game were the hitboxes. Kirby's hitboxes were just weird and I had massive struggle moving him down besides blocks. It took me up tp ten attempts to find the exact spot to let him moving down.

This game has a multiplayer mode actually (someone told me about). The second person can control Gooey, one of his friends, who can also use abilites.

As much as I liked the heartwarming OST and soft artstyle, I wouldn't replay this game, at least not for 100% again.

I'd give this game a 6 / 10.

 

Superstar will be next since I have made a little progress already (completed three missions).

[Reality]

Star Control 2

I'm beating the final boss with EVERYONE - it's only really designed to be fought with Pkunk / Avatar / Utwig ... so it's been "interesting" using the wrong guys.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Finished Kirby's Squeak Squad today.

After all the issues I had with Dreamland 3, this was a breather. The game was very easy, but still fun. The races against the Squeaks were fun and I liked the entire Squeak team. The OST was a bit lame since most themes were remixes from older parts and the few new themes became repetitive fast. The only real disappoint was the final boss which appeared out of nowhere, means no single characterization or plot info, and was incredibly weak. Even for Kirby standards this was a pathetic boss overall. Still I had some fun moments with this game. Definitely not the best Kirby game, but not the worst either.

I'd give this game a 7 / 10.

Epic Yarn will be next.

Edited April 7, 2021 by Zan Partizanne

[Boatcat2111]

I'm getting back into Nioh after getting my butt handed to me by the first proper level when it was first put on PS+.

It's a struggle, but I've finally beaten chapter 3.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Beaten Kirby's Epic Yarn.

Gameplaywise it's still a typical platformer beat'em up like a classic Kirby game for me except there's no way to die. Howe dover thisesn't decrease the game's quality. Some stages have certain special sections like controlling car, tank or a bullet hell shooter. The main difference is that Epic Yarn's story is told by a narrator which is surprising as cool. The music is very calming with lots of nice themes. It was a fun game overall. Yet have to play two more stages and the extra content.

I'd would give this game a 7.5 / 10

[Etrurian emperor]

I started a new game with Sekiro. I thought my experience would my the second playthrough significantly easier. It didn't 😄

[Dinar87]

Currently replaying 'SUPER PAPER MARIO' and 'SKYRIM'. They're extremely good games.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I'm doing bossrushes in Kirby series now. Yesterday I finished Return To Dreamland's True Arena with every character. Today I'm going to attempt the probably hardest challenge: beating Robobot's True Arena without abilities It might not be the hardest challenge, but it's the most frustrating since this bossrush is twice as long as the one from other parts. Yet have to beat Soul Melter Ex in Star Allies, but this will become my final trial.

Also still playing Super Mario World 3D, unlocked postgame stage and character. Idk yet if I will collect all the stamps and green stars to unlock Champion's Road...

[Zapp Branniglenn]

The past couple weeks I've been playing Wild Arms 2. Known as Wild Arms Second Ignition in Japanese. Definitely a better name than 2. Especially since they're going for the Final Fantasy thing where none of the games are actual sequels. This game does a lot of things I like. You can warp to towns you've been to from the start. Overworld vehicles are introduced very early on. It's a game that allows you to freely switch your characters and equipment mid battle. Each party member has fairly specific strengths and their own ability progression unique to them. There's a new system of personal skills that let you customize your characters a little. There's a blue mage, though I wish you didn't get her so late in the game so that you could build her repertoire of spells up gradually over the game's playtime. There's a ton of superbosses that really make up for the game's otherwise lax difficulty. The tools make for some nice Zelda-esque dungeon design just like in the first game. Random battles can be skipped if you press a button within a time limit of the battle beginning. And the game will alert you if the upcoming encounter has an enemy that's not yet in your bestiary. How thoughtful.

It even has a decent looking story, from what little I could understand. I feel like a broken record coming off the suikoden games, but wow, the translation is awful. Maybe the worst I've seen since Breath of Fire 2 and this was an entire generation later. And the first game's translation was perfectly serviceable. Maybe above average for its time. At it's absolute best, Wild Arms 2 is like modern google translate, where the grammar is improper and the syntax is poor, but otherwise you can follow along with the meaning of the sentence. But much of the game's narrative is totally incoherent. It's truly rare for a plot development or a joke to come through in a way that you can comprehend. In particular there are several sequences with two minor antagonists. Not only does none of their dialogue make any sense on the face of it, your own party members' dialogue stops making sense as well whenever they're on screen. Where the translation becomes truly problematic is in the dungeons. Many dungeons in this game have puzzles solvable only by text based clues. And if it doesn't make sense, then it doesn't make sense. Some of the puzzle solutions simply can't be trial and errored. Sometimes the clue does make sense but it's flat out the wrong information. There's even a quiz game near the end where a factually wrong answer may be considered the right one.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with the game. It is a 40 hour game which is always generally too long for my preference. But I think this game owns it by constantly introducing new puzzle types up to the end and having dungeons that aren't very long individually. I definitely can recommend Wild Arms 2 for fans of PS1 rpgs. Just keep a guide handy for when the game stops making sense.

I also played Trapt. One of the games I picked up from the PSN store recently. I'm learning now it's the fourth part of Tecmo's Deception series, which is characterized by fighting enemies through traps and other passive means. The traps are extremely easy to combo into each other and into various other stage hazards. You can't help but experiment, and the results are often hilarious. I'm a sucker for slapstick. There's a giddy anticipation as you patiently lure these slow, dumb AIs in range of obvious placements. Then they get up and the process continues. The traps reset themselves automatically. So even if you mistime one of them, you can always give yourself another chance by luring the enemy back into position. Individual enemies are programmed to be immune to certain types of traps, often forcing you to try a new strategy. There's not a whole lot of stuff to try out, but certainly enough to fill out the game's four hour runtime. And half of that amount is probably cutscenes. The story can be safely skipped. It's just a bunch of dark brooding nonsense where everybody wants to kill your character. And if they do seem friendly, it only means that they'll betray you later. Whoever wrote this game has a serious persecution complex. Lots of proofreading errors too. The game's in Japanese with english subtitles. The main character's name change is particularly glaring too. The text claims her name to be Allura but other characters clearly call her "Alicia". 

Trapt definitely isn't one of the must plays that are disappearing in a few months, but for me it was plenty of fun, and over before it could become dull. That's the best I can ask for when diving into the backlog.

Edited April 18, 2021 by Glennstavos

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

I feel like a broken record coming off the suikoden games, but wow, the translation is awful.

I like a good terrible translation. But skimming the start of a longplay for the game, I don't see anything that looks anything out of the ordinary. Any screenshots of the bad stuff, or could you tell me at what point in the game to look for the "so bad it's good"?

Edited April 18, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I like a good terrible translation. But skimming the start of a longplay for the game, I don't see anything that looks anything out of the ordinary. Any screenshots of the bad stuff, or could you tell me at what point in the game to look for the "so bad it's good"?

I distinctly remember this was the dungeon where I noticed something was definitely up. I think it's a good showcase since it's so dialogue heavy. It's the first dungeon where you meet the minor antagonists that I mentioned. Every time they're on screen all characters seem to stop making sense. I don't know if I'd call any of the dialogue mishaps throughout the game "so bad it's good". Mostly exhausting.

[null]

A bit burned out on MonHun right now after putting almost 200 something hours into the games over the past few months.

Going back to clean up some games I've left unfinished in my backlog before returning to Ghost of Tsushima.

First up is Luigi's Mansion 3. I'm a bit over halfway through the game, and I'll have it finished pretty soon, I'd guess. After that is Pikmin 3 Deluxe.

[Samz707]

Redneck Rampage.
YEEEEHAAAWWWWW!

It's not exactly great but I still enjoy the old-school level design.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

This week I played Metal Gear Solid Peacewalker, the PS3 port in the HD collection. It was easy to identify which aspects of the game are geared towards the platform of the PSP. The audience for handheld games is presumed to have much shorter play sessions than a console game, so they chop the game up into ten minute, self contained linear missions. You also have to remember that the game was designed for a small screen, so enemies have shorter sightlines than in MGS3 and 4. Their patrol routes are also much more out in the open rather than creeping around corners so that they can be easier to spot at a distance than in previous games. The way the game delivers its narrative is also better paced. You can only call one person on the codec, and he'll remind you what your objective is. Cutscenes are much less frequent than previous games, but what is there seems highly curated. I was immediately attached to every side character on just their introductory cutscene alone. If you want the series' quirky and interesting codec calls, you listen to them outside of missions as casette tapes. I miss the context sensitive codec calls of earlier games, but I'll admit it was very rarely fruitful trying to find good codec calls to listen to among constant repeats, so sectioning them off from the main gameplay is a good call for players who do care for them as much as players who don't care for them.

Peacewalker feels very un-reliant on stealth compared to previous games. I think the major benefit of tranquilizing or knocking out enemies is not so much to deal with them quietly but to add them to your army. And choosing to evade enemies entirely doesn't seem to be rewarded at all. Getting spotted rarely was a cause for concern though. My weapon loadout for non boss fight missions was the tranq pistol and a heavy machine gun. And when I didn't feel like going out guns blazing, it was trivially easy to evade enemies during an alert because they just have a very passive and un-curious AI. In previous games, if you wanted harsher penalties for getting caught, you'd crank up the difficulty setting. But this is the first game that has no difficulty setting. What you see is what you get. I think your main reward for clearing a mission with no alerts is earning more heroism, but I have no idea what that stat even does for me that I can't get through some other means. 

Then there's the boss fight missions. I'll say it right now, Monster Hunter has never interested me, even though I'm a longtime proponent of the theory that Co-op can make even the most menial games seem fun. So when they put monster hunter inspired mech fights in the game, I wasn't into it. If you ever wondered how tedious it might be to take out a mech with just a pistol, the game has an answer for you. Each one may have big red weakpoints to shoot, but there is no strategy beyond that. Most of them were twenty minutes of me standing there blaring a machine gun at them while casually dodging attacks and setting up supply drops to refill on ammo. I looked up high level playthroughs to see if I was missing something obvious, but no, this is just how you do these fights. The first two of these battles - against a tank and a helicopter - have a non lethal solution that comes with an awesome reward, but the later fights do not. Shooting bullets it the one single answer. The worst thing in the world is dying near the end of the fight and having to redo all those minutes of mindless shooting. 

I had a hard time with Peacewalker, but once I made more of an effort to engage with the game on its own terms, I came around on its game design. It's not a favorite of mine overall, but it inspires me to take another look at MGS5. I didn't finish that game. It's narrative didn't feel like Metal Gear. And while its core gameplay loop was compelling, it felt like it was trying to be every triple A game of its era rather than a meticulously crafted stealth game that's got a weird, zany plot development every hour. But maybe I ought to give it another shot. I already (voluntarily) had MGS5's plot spoiled for me in the years since it came out, but I still want to experience the game in its own words before deciding if I like it or not. And then I'll sit down and watch all the video essays on the game produced in the last five years in order to see what I "didn't get" because that's another fun aspect of the Metal Gear experience. Before all that though, I'm reminded that the HD collection also has the original two MSX Metal Gear games, and I never sat down to play those.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Glennstavos

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Beaten all modes on highest difficulty of Kirby Star Stacker. This was a surprisingly fun and challenging puzzle game and not done in just a few minutes. Beaten all 50 levels on intense mode took more than four hours. 

Yet have to beat Block Ball, but this game can become really tedious very fast for me since I can't really manage the ball physics well.

 

Also still playing Super Mario World 3D, but I'm kinda struggling in the space world. Also can't beat the soccer ball challenge which is bad since I have to get all the green stars.

Edited April 26, 2021 by Zan Partizanne

[Lyn]

The Legend of Zelda- Breath of the Wild. Catching fish near Lurelin Village. 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Began with Persona 5 Strikers yesterday. It's what I expected from a hack and slash. Tons of button commands I have to memorize. Won't be easy, but I'll give my best to master it. Otherwise this game is exactly what I expected from a Persona game.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

This week I played Medal of Honor for the PS1. Once again I am accepting the call of duty to fight the Nazi menace. As a goldeneye-era console FPS, there's naturally some adjustments to be made. Tank controls, can only aim while stationary, dedicated buttons for strafing left and right. Unfortunately this game lacks the auto aim of Goldeneye, and that sweet sweet soundtrack. But it wasn't all bad. Levels may not have checkpoints but they're never terribly long. Like in Goldeneye it is possible to clear a level and then get told you failed since you didn't complete an objective. However you can always pause to see what still needs doing, and nothing proved too well hidden for me. The game did get harder as it went on, but I found that it was always planting the right amount of health packs around corners. It was only in the final stages did they give enemies rocket launchers that instantly kill you on a direct hit. It reminded me of Red Faction's finale where enemies suddenly carry rail guns that can instantly kill you, but unlike those weapons, a rocket can be dodged by strafing if your reaction timing is good.

Enemy placements are pretty devious. Taking full advantage of the player's difficulty with negotiating corner. However, their AI is pretty predictable. If they can see you they'll stay right where they are, giving you time to aim at them. But if they lose sight of you they book it over to your position. So A good strategy is let yourself get spotted, duck back around that same corner and wait with your gun raised to shoot them as they round the corner. I would worry idly that a level might be too difficult to complete, but simply knowing enemy spawns on the next go-around made all the difference. While searching for a rumored German superweapon in Norway I happened upon three nazi soldiers building a snowman and their backs were turned to me. I gunned them down, but found the nazi snowman impervious to my shotgun blasts. Very Troubling.