Soooooo what'cha playing?

[Fabulously Olivier]

On 10/22/2023 at 4:58 PM, Lightcosmo said:

I played The Legend of Heroes: Kuro No Kiseki Crimson Sin: this time in English! 

Storyline was alright, the early acts were the best parts. Late game needed some work. 

Gameplay was as always, leagues better than CS.

I really am excited that they announced Kuro No Kiseki's worldwide release for next year. Trails needs that refresh. Let's friggin go.

[Lightcosmo]

12 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I really am excited that they announced Kuro No Kiseki's worldwide release for next year. Trails needs that refresh. Let's friggin go.

Are you referring to them needing new gameplay or just their engine being reworked entirely?

[Fabulously Olivier]

2 minutes ago, Lightcosmo said:

Are you referring to them needing new gameplay or just their engine being reworked entirely?

The continuity, really. All the time with Rean and Class VII has largely overstayed its welcome, and it was time for a change of pace.

 

The gameplay changes also feel necessary because grid-based games bluntly aren't fun to grind in.

[Lightcosmo]

8 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

The continuity, really. All the time with Rean and Class VII has largely overstayed its welcome, and it was time for a change of pace.

 

The gameplay changes also feel necessary because grid-based games bluntly aren't fun to grind in.

On visiting new characters: I agree. After CS II, i was wondering why Class VII needed to stay around. I honestly wanted a new MC at that point as well, Rean's story was finished. I admit, there are characters i enjoyed in those games, but they just needed to let go of them.

I don't mind their system, they just never fine-tuned it at all. Most of the glaring flaws that they had right to begin with, were never addressed.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Just now, Lightcosmo said:

On visiting new characters: I agree. After CS II, i was wondering why Class VII needed to stay around. I honestly wanted a new MC at that point as well, Rean's story was finished. I admit, there are characters i enjoyed in those games, but they just needed to let go of them.

I don't mind their system, they just never fine-tuned it at all. Most of the glaring flaws that they had right to begin with, were never addressed.

Trails of CS 3 & 4 were bluntly the point when the writing and pacing took a nosedive. And the new Class VII was lame and just made me want more of the old Class VII.

[Lightcosmo]

Just now, Fabulously Olivier said:

Trails of CS 3 & 4 were bluntly the point when the writing and pacing took a nosedive. And the new Class VII was lame and just made me want more of the old Class VII.

Oh i agree.  Although i think i appreciated NC7 over the old, as they kinda lost their drive alongside Rean in III. (Most of them, anyways, there were exceptions)

Although i honestly think Reverie was worse than those two, and that's saying something.

[Fabulously Olivier]

2 minutes ago, Lightcosmo said:

Oh i agree.  Although i think i appreciated NC7 over the old, as they kinda lost their drive alongside Rean in III. (Most of them, anyways, there were exceptions)

Although i honestly think Reverie was worse than those two, and that's saying something.

Haven't gotten to Reverie yet because I'm not buying new games right now. My understanding is that it's another Sky 3 - great gameplay, irrelevant or semi-canon story. Just an excuse to get the whole gang together.

[Lightcosmo]

Just now, Fabulously Olivier said:

Haven't gotten to Reverie yet because I'm not buying new games right now. My understanding is that it's another Sky 3 - great gameplay, irrelevant or semi-canon story. Just an excuse to get the whole gang together.

Reverie was riddled with errors such as these:

the quality of the translation was terrible this time around. I could name maybe 4 crafts with errors in them in IV, but Reverie? A new player will likely make many mistakes due to crafts/arts having wrong descriptions. (Here as you can see, Laura's Radiant Wings has Alisa's Heavenly Gift Crafts description)

[Fabulously Olivier]

13 minutes ago, Lightcosmo said:

Reverie was riddled with errors such as these:

the quality of the translation was terrible this time around. I could name maybe 4 crafts with errors in them in IV, but Reverie? A new player will likely make many mistakes due to crafts/arts having wrong descriptions. (Here as you can see, Laura's Radiant Wings has Alisa's Heavenly Gift Crafts description)

Shiiit. I'd actually use Laura if she had that skill. That's hilarious.

[Lightcosmo]

Just now, Fabulously Olivier said:

Shiiit. I'd actually use Laura if she had that skill. That's hilarious.

That's not even the most unusual to be honest, to begin with they broke the characters link skill lists:

on any "new" character in Reverie, their skill list was just "Link Attack" 7 times repeated. This was fixed almost a day or two after, but it was funny for day 1 players like myself!

[Tryhard]

Playing through (the new) Lords of the Fallen right now, which seems to have been fairly polarising from what I've seen, if not people outright saying it's bad. And I don't really get it. It's not the best game ever, by any means, including some objective flaws like performance issues, but unironically I am enjoying it at about a 8/10 game level.

The game is basically a love letter to Dark Souls 1, all the way down to things I would consider flaws. The level design takes pretty much the whole "loops back to Firelink Shrine" aspect of the first half of DS1 and copies it. I remember people being so impressed by the interconnected level design when DS1 came out, and still to this day, but rarely have I seen any praise when another game manages to do it to basically the same effect.

Then there is the criticisms that I could just as readily apply to DS1. One of the most common is that the bosses are (relatively) easy, which I think is true. But then I think about the boss design and philosophy in Demon's Souls and DS1 and how most of the bosses were intended to be spectacles rather than super challenging. O&S might be the only real difficult boss in the base game of DS1, although I would throw Capra Demon in there for when you fight him as well. The rest of the game is like Iron Golem, Gaping Dragon, and Moonlight Butterfly bosses. Cool looking, but not really much difficulty there, the newer Souls games really stepped it up much more in that regard. In fact, the entire design philosophy has slowly became more action-oriented in games like Bloodborne, DS3 and Elden Ring. Far faster pace when compared to Demon's Souls and DS1, which had more deliberation in its combat.

Another being that the levels can be rather brutal or that the mob density can be too much (they have recently patched the game to address this somewhat) - which is the same kind of complaints I was hearing about places like Blighttown or Sen's Fortress in OG DS1. Most of the levels in Demon's Souls and DS1 were harder than the bosses.

The whole level design in Lords is generally good and the exploration is pretty interesting with the ability to go in/out of the umbral world and it allowing you to pickup hidden items. People have been comparing the game to Lies of P mainly because it's another Soulslike that's come out recently but LoP has basically no exploration and is solely concentrated on linear levels.

It's just weird hearing a lot of people slam the game for attempting to, and doing the same design decisions that DS1 did, which was universally praised and still is. I don't even like DS1 as much as a lot of From fanboys do, but yet it seems like this game gets bashed when it's one of the more faithful homages to DS1 I've seen.

There are some things I can definitely criticise, such as the poor enemy variety, and some questionable janky motions on the movesets (the attack motions have a tendency to propel you forward, which takes some time to get used to), and of course the performance issues, but certainly nothing that makes the game "bad," from my perspective.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Tryhard

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Spooky games month!

Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways

Spoiler

It’s a very first world problem to say that there are so many new games to play when you still haven’t gotten your fill of what you did find time for. Resident Evil 4 Remake was a fantastic romp and I was so happy about Separate Ways giving me an excuse to go back. The gun and knifeplay are excellent, the secret trinkets are fun to hunt down, and each sequence hits that same sweetspot of that-thing-you-remember while also indulging in a steady stream of new ideas to keep you guessing. Sure, it’s a little scummy that they held back this mode as a ten dollar add on campaign. But not nearly as scummy as having it as a bonus for the PS2 port almost twenty years ago. That’s how they did DLC back then, selling you another full priced copy. On the same system as the original version was exclusive to if they were as shameless as Square Enix. We were spared the worst of it because our localized releases were being finalized the same time the post-release content was ready to go. To not include it would be to revert back to the buggier, broken V1.0 release.

The original Separate Ways wasn’t much to write home about. A careful asset flip that holds most of its new areas until the final chapter. Ada’s pre-chapter narration talking about a lot without really saying much at all. RE4’s combat was unique and extremely entertaining for the mid 2000s, so more of that game to play was gratefully appreciated. But I know from watching people play RE4 decades later for the first time that it’s kind of a slog that didn’t meaningfully add to the experience. It didn’t expand on the story or its major characters other than implying that Luis was working with Ada in some way. Said cutscene actually got worked into the main game of the remake, so I wasn’t sure they were interested in doing Separate Ways again. What we got was a serious enhancement though. It’s longer and the majority of play time is new areas and new story beats separate from the main campaign. On top of re-adding the few biggest omissions from the original game’s campaign as a fun surprise. Separate Ways feels more like a real complement to the main campaign and that justifies the asking price better than if it were just another asset flip. Do not skip.

The Callisto Protocol: Final Transmission

Spoiler

I thought this would be a good chance to return to another RE4-styled horror game. I get the sense I was softer on Callisto than most. No doubt my ability to temper expectations. Sure it looks like Dead Space, talks like Dead Space, but it walks like Punch Out. I liked what the game was, not what I was hoping it to be. My initial impressions aside, Callisto has come a long way. It’s a more content complete game – if you shell out extra for its season pass. They sped up the healing injector animation to make it viable to try and heal yourself during combat. You can skip cutscenes and NG+. And look at that! Jacob can continue listening to audio recordings as he exits the menu. I wasn’t here for any sort of horde mode, I wanted to round out the game’s story. There’s an option to carry over your save data from the main campaign but I flubbed that menu and ended up with the default gear. No great loss from a gameplay perspective. I came up short on healing items, and credits to purchase more by the end. But mostly because the DLC expects the player to have come fresh off the main campaign with a full grasp on controls. Instead of a year later, fumbling to remember what the GRIP button was.

Our story picks up with Jacob's final escape attempt, aided by Dr. Mahler's directions to a working ship loaded with hard drives of experiment data that we supposedly care to preserve. The main campaign dabbled a little into the psychological elements of horror without really committing to any supernatural framework. It may very well have been a nod to Dead Space's Markers, but not anything beyond that. Here in Final Transmission, Jacob is absolutely losing it. Waking up in strange places, swinging at enemies that aren't there (but still seem to hurt me when I flub my dodge HMMMM). I'm more than a little surprised to see folks' negative reaction to the big reveal at the end. Of course Jacob "deserves" to make it home, but it's a horror story where the major theme is penitence. He's only a Hero in the actionable sense, and they bent over backwards to set up our next protagonist should they ever do a sequel. What else is there to ask for?

Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within

Spoiler

Here’s a game from some of the deepest recesses of my memory. The sort of game that you rediscover only with the help of late 2000s Youtube Let’s Players. The “Blues Clues Game”, I called it. I’m pleased to finally sit down and play all the way through myself. Gabriel Knight is a murder mystery trilogy starring a writer with a delightful southern drawl. He’s a writer by trade and an unwitting heir to a clan of German schattenjagers (‘Shadow Hunter’). Basically the Belmont clan. He’s joined by his shrewd, often callous sidekick Grace Nakamura. She conducts herself professionally, but her temper runs hot and she’s so over Gabriel’s shit at all hours of the day. I’m in love with her. This second game is a departure from the first in using live actors on green screen backdrops. Just like the then recently released Phantasmagoria, another Sierra game.

So, the FMV scenes are definitely youtube poop worthy. “Cringe” as the kids would say. Every dialogue scene (and I do mean every) seems to end in a “This has to be intentional, but to what purpose…?” awkward silence. Like the Editor was meant to cut those out and perhaps use as extra reaction shot fodder, but didn’t get the memo in time. Seeing Gabriel’s wordless expressions is like looking in a mirror. Did I learn my non-confrontational facial language from this man? If only I had such lusciously long hair. I’ll say this much in the script’s defense, it nails the experience of battling a language barrier. Gabriel doesn’t speak German. If the player knows German, you’re getting intriguing details that he never picks up on. And a good laugh at the Californian actors doing their best with pronunciation.

There’s not a whole lot to say on Gameplay. I almost feel weird for bringing it up, as this is a huge departure from the previous title, and Sierra games in general with their Six Verb interactive setups. In Gabriel Knight 2, it’s all one interact action. Talking to NPCs, picking up things, pushing things, looking at things, all with your left click. Obviously this is modern age convenience to us twenty first century types, but the interactivity and puzzle solving is...light to put it diplomatically. Settle in for twenty minute stretches of nothing but clicking the next dialogue topic. When it’s filmed actors instead of computer graphics, a lot of ideas were no doubt left on the cutting room. Leaving us with nothing but cutscene.

The object oriented puzzle solutions are obtuse in a classic point and click fashion. One handicap I appreciated was the game highlighting world map areas in which I still have things to do in the current chapter. Never saying what I should do, but at least letting me know where I should be looking. The most ambitious puzzle is there in the game’s first chapter. Gabriel must splice a full sentence together from bits of a recorded audio conversation. It even has its own hint system to guide the precise order of the phrase Gabe is looking for. It’s a beautifully handled, unique puzzle that I wish we got two or three more of. But it comes at the cost of a pretty glaring plot contrivance. Gabriel needs this spliced tape to get closer to wolves at the zoo, but there also exists a meats shop that the player cannot fail to notice. Anyone would think that purchasing meat is the answer for getting wolves to come to you, and yet it’s not. It’s some serious Occam’s Razor Denial.

I love this game. But I'm not sure I'd recommend it beyond a "yes, FMV adventure games DID exist" curiosity. The lack of interactivity is a poor showcase of genre, and it's certainly not as funny and charming as The Secret of Monkey Island. Its environs are not as exotic as you might hope. Gabriel's ancestral home, the Rittersburg Castle overlooking a small villa, is comprised of a half dozen screens and one secret passage. Disappointingly domesticated. I also completely blotted from my memory how many F Bombs are in the script, and it's jarring given how G rated the first half of the game is. I couldn't get the game looking right either. It took modifying the DOSBox config file to get it into a 4:3 resolution, but the visual quality was still off. I also take issue with the final chapter. Forcing us to accept its bizarre time jump (Gabe is still wearing the same clothes two months later?). The way that conflict gets resolved leaves a weird taste in my mouth. If this were written today, our sympathetic villain would be granted his second chance.

Until Dawn

Spoiler

I'm a big fan of SuperMassive Games. Well actually I'm a big fan of Watching their games. Ever since this all nighter group stream of Until Dawn, I've followed these Game Trailers folks (now, The Easy Allies) every time a new adventure had come out since. I've long dreamt of getting friends together for our own couch playthrough, but those plans have never materialized all these years later. Might be a kind of awkward sell now that most of us have moved on from consoles and this PS4 entry is finally becoming dated in its own way. Modern games from this developer allow for online two player simultaneous co-op in addition to a Pass the Controller mode on a single screen. So now I'm finally taking Until Dawn off the shelf of my backlog and experiencing it solo.

One of the most compelling aspects of these games is how your characters can die, and the story just keeps moving on without them. The possibility of getting someone killed ramps up dramatically as choices have greater consequences toward the end of the game. I got a whopping five out of eight playable characters killed over the course of my playthrough, and for a variety of reasons. Missing the Don’t Move QTE, Making a choice that’s obviously bad in retrospect, and failing to find enough clues for that character to know, in-universe, what to do. There's one death I’m a little upset about. I didn’t understand what caused it even with the game’s Butterfly Effect menu explaining it. I looked up the circumstances behind Matt’s death, and it comes down to the dialogue choices I had made in the previous chapter. I decided to have him agree with his girlfriend’s plan (as opposed to disagreeing, but inevitably following her anyway), and that sealed his fate. By being too supportive, and/or trying too hard to save her, he will make choices outside the player’s control that seal his fate in a later scene. In researching this, I’m happy to read that I’m not the only one to call out this particular death. It’s random and doesn’t meaningfully engage with decisions the player was making.

I appreciate Until Dawn most as an evolution of Adventure Horror games, like the previously talked about Gabriel Knight 2. Here, too, is a game with real actors that can better respond to the players' input and decision making. The butterfly effect menu was loaded with vindications on how incidentally smart my choices were throughout the game. The Totems are an interesting way of foreshadowing events without spelling out what you're supposed to do. The QTEs are a bit archaic. Especially when they can be so small on screen that you fail to notice them. The Don't Move sequences are especially strict. Almost like they expect players to set the controller down on a coffee table and lean on top of it when it's time to press a button. Glad they did away with that idea. 

 

[Fabulously Olivier]

November was a month in which some serious milestones were made. I got caught up on Yakuza after almost a year of tackling the franchise. I played the whole Tomb Raider survivor trilogy, and the whole Nathan Drake Collection.

 

71. Like a Dragon Ishin

Cleared 10/29

7/10

Spoiler

This one ranks around the lower-middle of the Yakuza games. Still good, just less good than most.

 

+ Good story

+ The emphasis on weapon based combat is a refreshing change of pace for Yakuza

+ Strong side quests and side content

 

- No side quest discovery markers

- Traversing the map is slow and annoying

- Some of the sections are extremely unfun. Namely the ones that require you to shoot enemies while moving between cover. They don't work.

- The katana moveset sucks until you get the attack speed moveset, at which point its better than all the others.

 

72, 77, & 80. Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Cleared 11/1, 11/12, & 11/17

8/10, 8/10, 6/10

Spoiler

Honestly wasn't expecting to like this, since I don't generally play stealth games, or puzzle games. But heck, for something on Ps Plus Extra with no entry fee, it was worth a shot. And I liked it enough to finish the trilogy, and do Uncharted as well. Turns out, being a good game overcomes most hangups.

 

+ Strong cinematic story

+ Decent third person cover shooting

+ Satisfying climbing/platforming

+ All of them have pretty exciting finales, especially Shadow.

+ Great pacing throught the trilogy.

 

- First one is full of annoying QTEs

- The weapon upgrade system gets worse with each game. Rise introduces crafting, and Shadow makes upgrades specific to one gun. I'm only actually dinging Shadow one point for it.

- I'm also dinging Shadow for triggering my thalossophobia, and for the ramped up horror elements throughout that accursed cave. 

- Some sequences are very frustrating, and some platforming sequences don't quite work.

 

73 & 79. Torchlight III and Torchlight Infinite

Cleared 11/3 and 11/14

3/10, 2/10

Spoiler

These are, without a doubt, the worst games I have played all year, and I say that as someone who liked TL1 & 2. This series fell from grace hard. I only really finished 3 because it was a gift, and Infinite because it was something short to do during lunch breaks.

 

+ Good skill trees in both. Especially Infinite.

+ Some of the gear is really fun to use.

+ Environments are vibrant, and enemy designs are good. They stand out among the sea of gray and brown gothic ARPGs.

+ Infinite improves upon character models greatly, being more reminscient of TL1 character designs, or something like League of Legends. It works.

 

- Torchlight 3's player character models and gear are ugly as sin. Very little of it looks okay, let alone good.

- Unacceptable enemy balancing. They all take way too much damage, and the game randomly, frequently throws enough damage at you to down you before you can reasonably react. Both games have the damage spike issue, while TL Infinite enemies at least have the decency of dying fast.

- Boss fights are particularly bad, having obscene health, and 1-2 shot abilities. They're like massive battles of attrition, that will wear down your patience until you make a mistake.

- By the way, that was on Normal. I shudder to think of what the high end difficulties are like.

- All of Infinite's depth is in its passives. With only an autoattack and 3 active powers, there is no room for real combat depth.

- Infinite ends on a cliffhanger in Chapter 4, and Chapters 5-6 are just boss runs. There is no resolution to its story, and if it can't be bothered, I can't be bothered.

 

74. NieR Replicant ver 1.22474487139...

Cleared 11/4

6/10

Spoiler

It is extremely rare that a game actually puts me to sleep, but NieR  did it because of its beautiful soundtrack and boring first parts.

 

+ Good combat

+ Top tier soundtrack

+ Wise and Kaine are delightful, amusing companions.

+ The story packs a powerful twist.

 

- Awful targeting/camera

- The pacing is bad, and the first half is quite boring.

- No fast travel until the 2nd half, and even then, it's cumbersome.

- No, sorry, I don't want to replay the game for 4 endings. It isn't good enough for that. Very few games are.

- The side quests suck, and you have to do them to earn enough gold for the later endings. Again, sorry, but I don't care that much.

 

75. Middle Earth: Shadow of War

Cleared 11/5

9/10

Spoiler

While Ghost of Tsushima may be the best Assassin's Creed style game narratively, Shadow of War wins in the gameplay department hands-down.

Also, if I were to design my own video game character, I imagine him looking and playing a lot like Tallion.

 

+ The Nemesis system is amazing, and it sucks that they patented it.

+ Excellent combat. It's like a responsive, non-sucky version of Assassin's Creed with Batman Arkham elements blended in.

+ Excellent stage design makes stealthing and harassing orcs fun.

+ Traversing the map is quick and fun.

+ Lots of content, and the dynamic systems behind it make it worth playing.

+ Tons of replay value, and postgame value

 

- Collection bloat, just like AC.

- Much like Assassin's Creed, parkour is inconsistent and often janky. It can be unreasonably hard at times to make the game do what you want.

- It is beyond me why domination doesn't prioritize broken captains over everything else. I lost the coolest looking Olog I've ever seen because the game refused to target him, he knocked me down, and then my bodyguard killed him.

- Iron Will is an objectively stupid mechanic. Your orc betrays you, they gain this buff that makes it impossible to recruit them. Shaming them can randomly remove this buff, but it also changes their appearance so you may not even want them anymore.

 

76. Sword and Fairy Together Forever 

Cleared 11/8

6/10

Spoiler

I love Wuxia settings. They combine eastern fantasy with so-bad-it's-good martial arts cheese in the best way. But unfortunately there is a dirth of good Wuxia games. And this one is only okay, so I'm still looking.

 

+ This game is gorgeous. Actually one of the prettiest games I've played.

+ Solid, simple combat.

+ Likeable characters and an interesting plot, if you can follow it.

 

- Hilariously bad localization

- Bosses have way too much health and do way too much damage. The worst one by far is the demon lord who is basically a solo boss fight with no healers to help you. The game is not designed for this.

- Boring side quests.

 

78. Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name

Cleared 11/12.

8/10

Spoiler

I reckon this one ranks in the middle of the Yakuza games, or just below the middle. And well, it's a real mixed bag.

 

+ Some of the best combat in the franchise. 

+ Both of Kiryu's movesets are a delight.

+ That ending made me cry.

+ Best arena in the franchise.

+ Side quests (while somewhat below average for this franchise) were still good and memorable.

+ Generally well paced and doesn't overstay its welcome.

 

- Soundtrack is mixed.

- Ubisoft style bloat.

- The story is superfluous. This game absolutely did not need to happen and does not tell us much of anything we didn't already know. And given that Yakuza is one of gaming's best and most ambitious narratives, it sucks to see it stumble.

- Live action cabaret club is awkward and creepy. Kill it with fire.

 

 

81. High on Life

Cleared 11/17.

7/10

Spoiler

I reckon this game is super subjective. If you don't find it funny, it's probably a 5/10. If you do, it could maybe be as much as an 8. I'm somewhere in the middle here. It's hilarious sometimes.

 

+ Pretty solid gunplay.

+ The guns are all fun to use.

+ When the jokes land, I think they really land. It definitely made me laugh out loud a few times and chuckle quite a bit.

+ It's irreverantly aware of gaming tropes and makes good use of that.

+ Traversal mechanics feel good.

+ Maps are vibrant and fun.

+ Generally well paced.

 

- Lots of revisiting the same locations.

- Doesn't do anything remarkable. If it doesn't endear itself to you with comedy, it won't exactly stand out.

- No burst fire gun. Burst fire is my favorite.

 

82. Assassin's Creed Rogue

Cleared 11/19.

5/10

Spoiler

This is without a doubt in my mind the worst AC. Other than maybe the 2D chronicles games.

 

+ Uhhh... the core AC game loop is fun I guess.

+ If you like the naval combat stuff, it's still here and it's still good. It's just not my thing. I just want to be an impeccably dressed murder hobo who parkours through densely packed cities. I don't want to fast travel and then sail through 3,000 meters of ocean to my next mission, only to be told I should upgrade my ship.

 

- Bad mission design. The Hope assassination is a contender for the worst in the franchise.

- I absolutely loathe the stalker enemies. Never bring them back.

- Weak story.

- Yet another redundant game in the same boring time period. It's no wonder why people got sick of this franchise. 3, Liberation, Black Flag, Freedom Cry, Rogue, and Unity all took place in one goddamn lifetime. Seriously, Cormac comes into contact with Adewale, Connor's dad, and Arno's dad. 

- Full of Ubisoft collection and objective bloat.

- Fucking crafting!

- Even at its short length, it still feels poorly paced.

 

83-85. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, & Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Cleared 11/21, 11/25, 11/26.

6/10, 8/10, 9/10

 

Spoiler

+ Excellent cinematic gameplay and some really memorable setpieces.

+ Strong narrative

+ Nate, Sully, Elina, and Chloe are all delightful

+ Solid enough gunplay. It's actually really good in Uncharted 3.

+ Strong soundtrack

+ Climbing/platforming is generally fun.

+ Great pacing.

 

- Uncharted 1 suffers some serious jank, including one of the worst final bosses I've ever seen. This comes affer a really bad timed segment too.

- Platforming detection occassionally feels off. It's frustrating when you definitely did the thing right and your character careens down a ravine anyway.

 

Playing now and near future.

I'm continuing Shining Force. It hasn't aged well, but I'm having fun nonetheless.

Playing Odin Sphere and liking it a lot.

Persona 5 Tactica and... it's super mid. Like, I understand the Mario + Rabbids comparisons but it does not live up.

 

Planning to finish the Uncharted franchise, Alan Wake (if I can stomach the horror), and Control by year's end.

 

In 2024, I'll be less focused on sheer quantity and more on plugging the obvious holes in my gaming history (ie: clearing Witcher 3, BotW, Mass Effect trilogy, Shadow of the Colossus, and more).

Edited November 26, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Fire Emblem: Drums of War

Spoiler

I’m a relative newcomer to Fire Emblem rom hacks. I’ve seen plenty of new projects on streams here or there, but haven’t dived into many of them personally. So you’ll forgive me for being impressed at what is, for all I know, just checkable boxes offered by modern FE Builder hacking tools. Seeing an enemies’ most important statistics without having to hit R to see more, DS era HP Bars on our units, Shoving, view all enemy ranges, not having battle music interrupt the Player/Enemy Phase music. If The Last Promise was Sputnik, then today’s hackers are landing on the freaking moon. If you wanna talk about real innovation though, this hack comes with its own unofficial Prima strategy guide. Complete with charmingly bad editorial advice on unit strengths.

The highlight of Drums of War for me was actually the plot, authored by SF’s very own Parrhesia. The game’s first Act hooked me good. Its depiction of soldier life is spot on. That restless state of fear and boredom waiting for the enemy to arrive. The Service Guarantees Citizenship promise. Your CO ordering you by the wrong name. The plot takes us into more directions than that, but I’d rather not tip off the details beyond Act 1. Your army is consistently on the back foot both in the narrative and map design. It puts you in the characters’ shoes without it being Kaizo hard. It’s a carefully crafted setting with layers of factions and you’re never fighting as a binary force for good or evil. They even put in a Mass Effect ‘Codex’ to keep track of the Jargon and look up events from the past that characters keep mentioning.

If there’s one thing that sets this level of challenge apart from most Fire Emblem games, it’s how tight the resources are. You don’t get much Gold at all, and even the basic iron class weaponry is expensive. You’re not showered with stat boosters, or sellable items either. This all plays into the game’s ransom mechanic. At the end of every map, one of the boss characters will have survived and be available to ransom, or join your party. These units are usually pretty good, and typically pre-promoted so they won’t cut into your Master Seal supply. But the money is hard to say no to. In Acts 1 and 2 I ransomed off all but three of them and I think I came out on top of the equation. Boss characters have shallower support pools, and half the maps stiff you with just 8 or 10 deployment slots. I barely found room for the early game crew that I stuck by the entire time. Still, the ransom system would make for a fascinating iron man experience. Bit of a shame then that ransom decisions are made before saving, and many minutes of dialogue before you can actually look at their stats for yourself and judge if it was the right call. I'm on an emulator with rewind, but it's an icky situation for the no-reset runner. I was definitely not iron manning. I made constant use of the game’s start of turn save feature, and still left two units dead permanently despite the convenience. Almost every map took me over an hour, so I was unwilling to start them over from the beginning.

I’m genuinely impressed with how well this game’s systems come together. This is what I want Fire Emblem to be. Narratively complex yet mechanically un-complex. A game that’s more about the moment to moment decision making than the between-battle preparations. My ideal game would certainly have more bite-sized maps and perhaps an Easy Mode with +2 deployment slots and a bunch of dropped Elixirs and stat boosters (mere weeks after I write this, the latest update adds an Easy Mode lol), but I can’t deny that its level of balance was meticulously considered. Take for instance how the game handles reinforcements. Very Path of Radiance. They’re placed directly in front and behind where the player would be at that point of the map and force you to respond to two fronts at once, or else focus hard on one before the other reaches you. This approach can only be pulled off with careful expectations of the map’s pacing and player behavior. I'm appropriately rushed even though this hack almost never has bandits coming for the village or thieves running for the chests.

Robocop: Rogue City

Spoiler

Peter Weller once said, in light of the 2014 reboot, that remakes feel sinful and that he’s done with Robocop. And here he is reprising his legendary role. Wherever that lands on the Hypocracy Scale, I am nonetheless grateful for him lending his voice to such a faithful recreation of that world. It’s a new story, set between the second and third films, but walking down the streets of Old Detroit and its rusted out steel mills feels like being on the set of those movies. The biggest cliche of games journalism for movie-based / super hero video games is “this game really makes you feel like _______” but that really is the element you need to nail above all else. I don’t want to play a shooter starring Robocop, I want to play a Robocop Game. That’s a considerable difference from a game design perspective. Robocop is a walking tank who can take an outrageous bit of abuse, but you won't refill health by sitting behind cover. He recovers with what is essentially med kits and ripping circuit boxes open for the juicy electricity. Your dialogue options are between different flavors of hoaky one-liners. It’s delightfully charming how stupid Detroit’s thugs are. Imagine the disconnect if these were well written antagonists whose AI was still dumb enough to think they could go toe to toe with Robocop in a straight gun battle during gameplay. The universe makes more sense if we’re gunning down mindless goons instead of members of a shadowy, international crime syndicate like most modern shooters.

The artistry at work holds a clear reverence for that universe. Perhaps it’s that same reverence that makes for its greatest obstacle, narratively. None of the game’s alternative endings can contradict the third movie’s upcoming events. The only characters allowed to see meaningful consequence of your actions are ones introduced in this game. It has that 80s idiosyncratic scene of our hero having wholesome interactions with a child mere minutes after gunning down a hundred goons. I can absolutely imagine someone approaching this narrative and not “getting” it. Because we make movies different in the twenty first century and, well, a lot of Robocop’s corporate near-future ended up coming true. The developers offer no new angles to the film's original parody or themes. If you want a perfect adaptation of 1987's Robocop, this is the game for you. If you want a thoroughly engaging sci-fi story that reflects the human condition, then this dialogue will consistently come off as trite and not as self-aware as modern stories. There's a side quest where you're rescuing a cat, before things get violently out of hand. The biggest cliche of any super hero story, and not one line of dialogue lampshades the absurdity of Robocop spending time rescuing a cat. No "So that happened" capstone to the scene. The writers take it on faith that you know it's absurd without having to be told.

So just what kind of game is Robocop beyond it’s connection to the films? Well there’s not much going on under the hood. I was really bugged by people making comparisons to Fallout. It’s not an open world game, and it’s not a looter shooter. You explore large zones, tackle side quests that sound interesting, and once you’ve had your fill you move on to the next level, leaving any optional content you missed behind permanently. Rogue City rejects open world games and looter shooter gameplay loops in favor of a tighter, Immersive Sim framework. If we must make comparison, It’s like Deus Ex if the loud, guns blazing play style was your only option. And then the game ends without having overstayed its welcome. While I wouldn't necessarily say no to more game in this game, I do think the lack of bloat is its own strength. People today say "Style Over Substance" like it's an insult, but in reality it's a balance. I will never get tired of hearing the incredible Squelch sound effect of popping a goon's head with bullets, and in development terms, they spent more time perfecting that than they did adding some fetch quest. I'll remember that squelch noise when I think back on this game, but I won't remember half of the things I did in a 40 hour open world game.

Shining Force 2

Spoiler

Shining Force had been on my mind ever since playing Fire Emblem Gaiden. Two different games, released within two weeks of each other, both trying to combine a contemporary JRPG flare to FE1's sterling example. Shining Force 1 wins the race hands down. Even if we disregard for a moment it’s better presentation courtesy of the Mega Drive’s superior hardware and graphical capability. It’s integration of towns and dungeons is years ahead of Gaiden (released inbetween final fantasies 4 and 5, mind you). Gaiden strayed much further from FE1 and it might have ended up the better game overall if it weren't so incredibly unpolished and buggy.

Shining Force 2 changes little, and really most of its ambitious tweaks are just "Make it like Fire Emblem" flavored changes. Honestly I’m not sure why it’s the preferred over its predecessor among the fandom? Here’s what I noticed that’s changed since the first game: Enemies will prioritize any target in range that they have the stats to reduce to 0 HP (There's that classic Fire Emblem AI). They also added a random chance to counterattack and double attack enemies like in Fire Emblem, but since these are not influenced by stats or any decision making on the player’s part, it doesn’t add to the game’s strategy, only its RNG possibilities. The promotion system is much improved – more on that later, but it’s the only avenue by which things seem flatly better than in the previous game. It definitely feels like more of the last game rather than an innovative sequel like all of Kaga Era Fire Emblem was.

The biggest drag as an SRPG is once again its turn order. Defined vaguely by each unit’s Agility stat. The player is helpless at all times to determine who is getting the next turn on the player or enemy army. Not only does this make it difficult to keep individual units from getting mobbed and killed before you can respond, it drains the game of most of its moment-to-moment strategic depth. Even if you notice one of your units has a higher agility stat than another unit, you should have no expectation that faster characters will get their next turn as fast or faster than slower ones. The game is making invisible turn order rolls after every move. I confirmed it myself via emulator rewind, the turn order was changing right in front of me just as surely as the attack rolls would. This along with enemies randomly doubling and killing my toughest units gave me no shame in rewinding the most egregious moments of my playthrough.

The inventory system is host to some grievances too. You’ll be nearly halfway through the game before you get an item storage for stat boosters and the new mithril collectible that lets you craft superweapons for the finale. Before then you’re squeezing every item slot you can out of your unused units’ four slots. Healing items are extremely useful for most of the game, so having at least one on everybody is optimal. But you’ll also want an open slot on each of your active units because some unique equipment and stat boosters drop from enemies. If the unit that kills them doesn’t have an open space, that reward is gone. No message telling you it happened either. 

They fixed Promotion, which was indeed my biggest issue with the last game. No longer do you revert to a level 1 character and lose a ton of stats. Everything is kept in Shining Force 2, except for the Movement stat booster - be sure to save those until after. You can put off promoting for an additional 20 levels, but it's not necessary and just makes the game harder. You have to be promoted in order to wield the latest weapons by the halfway point of the game. And promoted level ups tend to award more stat gains anyway. The level cap once promoted goes up to 99, in a game where you'll be earning about 50 level ups total for everyone by the end. You won't be "missing" anything by promoting ASAP. Stopping to Grind is possible with the Egress spell, but even as I went through without grinding at all, the experience gain scaled harshly to the point where some enemies were just giving me 1 point for the kill. Seeing so many sources on the internet, both 5 years old or 15 years old, telling you to wait on promotion for both Shining Force 1 and 2 is baffling. The worst archaic advice you’d hear from old Fire Emblem players is “Don’t Use Jagens” but this is a far more destructive rule to follow.

Yakuza Kiwami 2

Spoiler

It’s been over 18 months since my journey of 100% completing Yakuza 0. I definitely needed the break, but now I'm ready for the next heavy duty plunge. It’s convenient also that I neglected to write about this game when I first played in 2019. I’ve got some things to say about the “Dragon Engine” but I’m planning to play Y6 next and it will feel more appropriate to talk about it there. Broadstrokes are that I like how it enhances the virtual tourism aspects, and I don’t like how my Throws and Finishing Holds fail whenever I’m within 6 feet of some level architecture.

For this replay I went for the 100% completion on a fresh save of Legend difficulty. The Completion List leans lighter on the minigames and much more on combat this time around. Cabaret Club Manager is back and better. Much faster to beat, but if you’re going for a full CP list, you’ll be playing long after its story has concluded just like in 0. I don’t mind. It might be the best sub-game in the series. Not as funny as Pocket Circuit, but also not as trial and error and demands very little of my attention. Plenty of money earned for that time spent too. The downside to 100%ing a Yakuza game is, once again, Mahjong. I don’t know why someone at RGG thinks you should have to play this more than the two big sub-games. 30 total winning hands! I’m much better at Mahjong now and it took me longer to wrap up it up here than in Yakuza 0 when I was still learning and making numerous mistakes. It’s only ‘better’ this time around by just asking you to play and win a bunch, rather than score outrageously high with very unlikely hands. Now that low scoring hands are permitted, you can steal. Opening up some of the very little strategy that Mahjong offers.

The beat em up gameplay was a bit of an acquired taste in the end. Generic enemies on the street are obnoxious because they block and dodge with the same frequency as boss tier opponents. Quickstepping behind their attacks no longer opens them up, they’ll still inexplicably block your full combo from behind. Your basic square square triangle strings have never been this wimpy. Instead they angled for a more defensive, bait and attack playstyle. They saw players having fun with the overpowered Tiger Drop and said “let’s make the whole game that”, with a bunch of easy Counter Heat Moves with no special condition. Tanimura’s Y4 Parry stance too, but I didn’t find it nearly as useful as just tapping triangle when the enemy breathes. And then there’s the Extreme Heat super mode which just grants you passive super armor and an inability to die. Perfect for brute forcing opponents with weapons and refilling your health with hundreds of food items that you’re allowed to carry. If there’s one change I’m grateful for it’s that they toned down the health of boss fights dramatically compared to the Y3-Kiwami 1 era. Fights are equally sped up by Heat Moves only depreciating in damage when you used the same one as before, and the heat gauge not depleting completely on each one. Honestly I think they over-corrected, but I’d prefer this over not lifting a finger to address a decade of health sponge boss fights.

I’d like to speak on the story (no spoilers, don’t worry), purely because this was the second and last game written with the help of crime novelist Hase Seishu. One of the new sub stories lampshades this detail, as Kiryu consoles an overwhelmed director of an acclaimed series of Yakuza action films reeling from the response to ‘Yakuza Sunset 3’. Apparently this man is brilliant at tender character moments but not so much at envisioning action set pieces that made the first two so special. This is a fun bit of metanarrative, I just disagree completely with its premise. Yakuza 3’s plot and characters were the problem. It wouldn’t have been “fixed” by adding tiger fights in a Ninja Castle. Anyway I don’t think the plot is worthy of its alleged place on a pedestal. And this being a remake didn’t allow them much room to tweak it. Where Kiwami 2 comes out ahead is in its characters. Returning ones from the previous game have all settled into new lives. That’s noteworthy in a series all too willing to reset its recurring cast to their v1.0 states. Ryuji Goda is a heck of a villain analogue to Kiryu the more you think about it. Kaoru is hard to pin down, I guess I’m just impressed there’s a female character in Yakuza A) making decisions and B) not dying as a result of them. But overall it falls into a lot of the trappings of Yakuza plots. Our protagonist has no arc, there are several forced minigame diversions that kill the pace, and the ending searches so hard for a twist that it no longer relates to the story it was telling. Overall, I could see it ranking above average for the standards of Yakuza plots, but that’s for a series where "Average" is thematically confused, awfully paced, self-unaware, and Tell-Don't-Show.

Anyway the 100% experience went down with relatively little friction. And I’m willing to bet that’s “Very Good” and/or “Very Short” for the standards of Yakuza Completionism. Besides the hours of Mahjong and repeating every Bouncer mission two additional times, little else was wasting my time. Tracking down 15 of each random enemy encounter in both cities was dull. The Batting Center was needlessly tough until I noticed I was being thrown the same pitches, and then discovered a guide detailing all of them in order. The Bouncer Missions were 80% of the game’s difficult content, but after awhile I just broke down and began using the infinite pistol and laser sword for expediency. If there’s one thing I would have liked is demanding the player perform every Heat Move at least once. I started to do that out of boredom during the bouncer missions since the game was actually tracking them for me. That actually is a CP requirement in some earlier games, and I love that idea. So much art goes into these mini cutscene actions, and forcing the player to see them would no doubt give them a greater appreciation and understanding of the game’s systems. Certainly more than making them eat every restaurant item would.

 

With The Game Awards next week, I'm reminded there's a handful of Big 2023 games I've played but didn't write about, and I should probably do something with the notes I jotted down on them at the time

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon

Spoiler

Now that Fromsoftware is King of Video Games, they've written themselves license to do pretty much whatever they want. It would be all too easy to just do another Kings Field given that's the predecessor to Souls, so the mech game must be a breath of fresh air after all these years. On Rubicon, you take jobs from multiple corporate factions. No allegiance, pure mercenarism. A scavenger of a larger conflict (Ah, ‘Raven’ perhaps?). Enemies from a previous mission could be an ally later and vice versa. What nuance the game has in its storytelling fizzles out before its mech customization screens. This game wants you to spend about as much time building and testing as you do actually playing missions. At least on a first playthrough. And the experimentation is greatly encouraged by allowing the player to sell parts for 100% of the sale price and try something else with no risk. Repeat playthroughs are an invitation to go through the missions you passed up earlier and continue trying exotic combinations to see what else work.

I’ve heard constant praise on the customization of your mech. And aesthetically, absolutely. As far as the gameplay, I feel like the only thing you need to customize is your legs, which dictate how your guy moves around, and your weapon loadout. A lot of what you can influence with other parts is extremely miniscule as far as I could tell. Just take the best gear you can without going over the weight and energy limits. I wasn’t able to influence things I did care about like maximum ammo, weapon reload / cooldown. I also went in expecting to make a “Melee Build” and was disappointed to find it’s only available as your left hand weapon slot. The mech I did make was a tank blasting cannons you normally wouldn’t be able to run and gun with. This is apparently the optimal, no skill build for most fights as far as I could gleam about the PvE meta. The more you stagger bosses, the less time they spend being able to shoot back, so you’ll win the damage race just firing off cooldown with no mind for strategy. Imagine spending hours trying out builds only to discover it's still not as good as twin Songbirds and two Zimmerman shotguns. The game offers no answer to that simple setup.

It's been months since I played, and skimming the patch notes now definitely tells me they addressed the weapon balance a great deal. If I hop back into this game and get absolutely bodied, I won't complain. I was totally asking for it with my degenerate build. However I'm not seeing any notes on adding a Would you like to Equip Now? Prompt when buying a piece of gear. What a bizarre UI gaffe. And when you’re working through the Arena fights, I remember there’s no Proceed to Next Match? Prompt. You have to load back to the regular menu, then load in this other fight. Other than these lapses in polish,  AC6 is the Criterion Collection of building and smashing Mechs if that's what you're into. I enjoyed the PvP a fair bit too. I really wish I could get two other friends online for the 3v3 team based mode. Was really looking forward to it but it never panned out.

Starfield

Spoiler

This is not an easy game to summarize. Bethesda open worlds typically lean heavier on the Simulation aspects than the RPG aspects, and that's the real disconnect for my preferences. There's enough in Starfield to have held my attention though. I didn't want to walk away from the game without seeing all of its major faction questlines and my playtime added up to 58 hours. I engaged very little with Surveying planets and using the game's Ship Building suite, and totally ignored its crafting systems and building Outposts because I didn't see what I could gain that would make it worth it. I was at least two dozen hours in before I ultimately decided I liked the game overall. The setting didn't give me too much to draw me in. The Settled Systems are too settled for me. There's not a lot of conflict out in the galaxy. Most quests are low stakes. The decision to have no sentient Alien Life in this Sci-fi universe is...bold to put it diplomatically. Even in the far reaches of space, humans stand alone at the apex of power and the sole inheritors of Intelligence. A lot of the quests begged the question of why ask our character, a stranger, to help with this task when there are so many alternatives. In The Outer Worlds, they would use that opportunity to make some joke about corporate bureaucracy. Starfield's Colony War against the two largest factions is in the distant past, but even Skyrim had a war between stormcloaks and imperials going on in the background, serving as a catalyst for mundane issues to get even more threatening.

It’s remarkable how dull they made the main quest. Let me stress that I mean this criticism constructively. Bethesda main quests are always action packed. They expose you to major factions and major characters every hour. They take you through the most carefully constructed dungeons and cities. And yet these fetch quests for ancient artifacts and temples feel like an after-thought. Like a callback to Oblivion's Gates that nobody asked for. The questline hinges on a player’s investment in the Questions of a Universe they have not yet begun to explore. It’s esoteric and quietly contemplative. Great for hour 30 of an RPG, but not hour 1. Fast Travel to this location, walk toward a distant waypoint and press the Interact key is not compelling gameplay. It doesn’t open the player's eyes to what's possible in the Simulation. It won't provide any role playing decisions or alternative quest solutions. The only enemies you shoot at are nameless bandits and a mysterious enemy that is later revealed to be nameless bandits with better tech. If all of them were as interesting as the Entangled Quest near the end, then it’d be a different story. Seriously, Entangled may be the best individual quest I've played in a game like this. Incredible Sci-fi storytelling.

I think the decision to make Constellation the “Main Story” questline came down to “this is where the player gets their ‘Skyrim Shout’ abilities”. And they’re not even that useful to begin with. They’d be much more compelling for the players that did go out of their way and suddenly their character can use the force like a freaking Jedi. Like how doing The Companions’ quest in Skyrim turns you into a werewolf. It’s cool and unexpected that something that significant is waiting off the main quest path. Even if the player forgets this power hours later, it’s the sense of discovery that sticks with them, not the gameplay implications. Bethesda wanted that feeling for its main quest and it failed spectacularly to land with me. What change would I make to fix the main questline? Make the temples and the three or four most mindless artifact hunts optional. Then make the quest Supra Et Ultra mandatory in their place. The UC Vanguard’s first quest is a great one for new players because it starts with an (optional) history of the Universe. That baseline context would really help the Constellation story telling. Then it introduces a unique threat that happens to look like Fallout’s Deathclaws and is too powerful to shoot down with an early game character – demonstrating that there are better solutions for quests than shooting your way through. The main quest that we did get just feels like a lot of padding.

The gameplay parts of the RPG can drag too. Skills having their own trackable "challenges" before you're allowed to upgrade them is fun until you realize that progress stops getting tracked until you've upgraded to the next tier. The Ship-based skill upgrades really suffer here because there's no quick way to "farm" more enemy encounters in space. I also had a great deal of conveyance-related issues with the UI. Like how the Upgrade Ship and Ship Builder screens have separate inventories of stuff to buy. Until I discovered the latter, I didn’t know how to do something as basic as expanding my ship cargo. The local map is pathetically un helpful. The star map only labels the names of places with big cities. So if you want to go some place specific (or go somewhere you've already been) and don’t have a quest waypoint to hook up, it feels like a crapshoot trying to find your way back there. One thing I loved is the Crew Menu, letting you assign your various crew members to outposts and ships from the pause screen instead of physically tracking them down and telling them what you want. That's a huge QOL change from past Bethesda games. I also think it warrants praise that Bethesda launched a game with a perfectly reasonable amount of bugs. They could have released this in November of last year with their old "just patch it later" mentality, and they relented. Bravo.

My ultimate takeaway on Starfield is that it's far from "Bethetic". I jokingly called the game No Man's Skyrim for years and that's really what it turned out to be. A big universe to explore with extremely little guidance. You can't ask the game to engage you, you have to engage with the game. And hope you get out more than you put in. That's a hard game to sell to people.

Street Fighter 6

Spoiler

I didn't play this game as much as I expected to at the outset of this year, but I don't want to just let it slip by without comment. SF6 is excellent. Definitely the best Vanilla Street Fighter experience and a strong opening statement for the Post-Yoshinori Ono era of Capcom fighters. I like its RE Engine redesigns, I like the hip hop aesthetics and musical style, and its Drive Gauge based gameplay. The biggest triumph is in Acessibility though. Fighting Games have been failing to attract new blood for as long as the genre has existed. There's an inherent skill floor to fighting games that gets higher and higher the longer a series goes on. Even if you change the mechanics, it's not exactly like learning a whole new game for veteran players. They've already proven they're willing to put the work in. We've seen a lot of approaches to both attract non-fighting game players and ease them past that skill floor. Robust tutorials, smoothing of intensive/precise inputs, and high budget story modes that a casual player can enjoy without much friction. Street Fighter 6 says Yes to all three options.

In order, the tutorials come with video examples where you can press a button to play them out yourself for some instant feedback. Catering to players that both learn by example or are visual learners. It’s actually a little embarrassing, having such a good teacher and going in a match to put on such a novice performance. Then there's the new "Modern" Control scheme. I have yet to use it myself so I'm not clear on the precise details, but I've heard from so many people that this was the great equalizer. They were winning matches online for the first time in their life. That's a huge feeling. In retrospect, I kind of wish that I did turn on Modern Controls. Sure I can do a DP motion on command, but I was struggling to get used Lily's full circle command grab and all the while wondering if I'd have a better time on simpler controls. It's not so much that I wanted to win more matches, but that I wanted to engage the game more on its intended design instead of an old language. You can even switch them on a character by character basis, the game will remember your preference at character select. Last is World Tour. I don't think we were prepared for just how big it was. Too big in my case, I think I barely got through half of it. It's kinda hard! I remember running up against so many quests where I have to open up this CPU twenty times more often than he gets me. I couldn't figure out how to beef up my stats. But it was still fun overall. Making a Ryo Hazuki avatar and playing what is essentially a Yakuza game with 80% less cutscene.

 

[Fabulously Olivier]

9 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Fire Emblem: Drums of War

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I’m a relative newcomer to Fire Emblem rom hacks. I’ve seen plenty of new projects on streams here or there, but haven’t dived into many of them personally. So you’ll forgive me for being impressed at what is, for all I know, just checkable boxes offered by modern FE Builder hacking tools. Seeing an enemies’ most important statistics without having to hit R to see more, DS era HP Bars on our units, Shoving, view all enemy ranges, not having battle music interrupt the Player/Enemy Phase music. If The Last Promise was Sputnik, then today’s hackers are landing on the freaking moon. If you wanna talk about real innovation though, this hack comes with its own unofficial Prima strategy guide. Complete with charmingly bad editorial advice on unit strengths.

The highlight of Drums of War for me was actually the plot, authored by SF’s very own Parrhesia. The game’s first Act hooked me good. Its depiction of soldier life is spot on. That restless state of fear and boredom waiting for the enemy to arrive. The Service Guarantees Citizenship promise. Your CO ordering you by the wrong name. The plot takes us into more directions than that, but I’d rather not tip off the details beyond Act 1. Your army is consistently on the back foot both in the narrative and map design. It puts you in the characters’ shoes without it being Kaizo hard. It’s a carefully crafted setting with layers of factions and you’re never fighting as a binary force for good or evil. They even put in a Mass Effect ‘Codex’ to keep track of the Jargon and look up events from the past that characters keep mentioning.

If there’s one thing that sets this level of challenge apart from most Fire Emblem games, it’s how tight the resources are. You don’t get much Gold at all, and even the basic iron class weaponry is expensive. You’re not showered with stat boosters, or sellable items either. This all plays into the game’s ransom mechanic. At the end of every map, one of the boss characters will have survived and be available to ransom, or join your party. These units are usually pretty good, and typically pre-promoted so they won’t cut into your Master Seal supply. But the money is hard to say no to. In Acts 1 and 2 I ransomed off all but three of them and I think I came out on top of the equation. Boss characters have shallower support pools, and half the maps stiff you with just 8 or 10 deployment slots. I barely found room for the early game crew that I stuck by the entire time. Still, the ransom system would make for a fascinating iron man experience. Bit of a shame then that ransom decisions are made before saving, and many minutes of dialogue before you can actually look at their stats for yourself and judge if it was the right call. I'm on an emulator with rewind, but it's an icky situation for the no-reset runner. I was definitely not iron manning. I made constant use of the game’s start of turn save feature, and still left two units dead permanently despite the convenience. Almost every map took me over an hour, so I was unwilling to start them over from the beginning.

I’m genuinely impressed with how well this game’s systems come together. This is what I want Fire Emblem to be. Narratively complex yet mechanically un-complex. A game that’s more about the moment to moment decision making than the between-battle preparations. My ideal game would certainly have more bite-sized maps and perhaps an Easy Mode with +2 deployment slots and a bunch of dropped Elixirs and stat boosters (mere weeks after I write this, the latest update adds an Easy Mode lol), but I can’t deny that its level of balance was meticulously considered. Take for instance how the game handles reinforcements. Very Path of Radiance. They’re placed directly in front and behind where the player would be at that point of the map and force you to respond to two fronts at once, or else focus hard on one before the other reaches you. This approach can only be pulled off with careful expectations of the map’s pacing and player behavior. I'm appropriately rushed even though this hack almost never has bandits coming for the village or thieves running for the chests.

Robocop: Rogue City

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Peter Weller once said, in light of the 2014 reboot, that remakes feel sinful and that he’s done with Robocop. And here he is reprising his legendary role. Wherever that lands on the Hypocracy Scale, I am nonetheless grateful for him lending his voice to such a faithful recreation of that world. It’s a new story, set between the second and third films, but walking down the streets of Old Detroit and its rusted out steel mills feels like being on the set of those movies. The biggest cliche of games journalism for movie-based / super hero video games is “this game really makes you feel like _______” but that really is the element you need to nail above all else. I don’t want to play a shooter starring Robocop, I want to play a Robocop Game. That’s a considerable difference from a game design perspective. Robocop is a walking tank who can take an outrageous bit of abuse, but you won't refill health by sitting behind cover. He recovers with what is essentially med kits and ripping circuit boxes open for the juicy electricity. Your dialogue options are between different flavors of hoaky one-liners. It’s delightfully charming how stupid Detroit’s thugs are. Imagine the disconnect if these were well written antagonists whose AI was still dumb enough to think they could go toe to toe with Robocop in a straight gun battle during gameplay. The universe makes more sense if we’re gunning down mindless goons instead of members of a shadowy, international crime syndicate like most modern shooters.

The artistry at work holds a clear reverence for that universe. Perhaps it’s that same reverence that makes for its greatest obstacle, narratively. None of the game’s alternative endings can contradict the third movie’s upcoming events. The only characters allowed to see meaningful consequence of your actions are ones introduced in this game. It has that 80s idiosyncratic scene of our hero having wholesome interactions with a child mere minutes after gunning down a hundred goons. I can absolutely imagine someone approaching this narrative and not “getting” it. Because we make movies different in the twenty first century and, well, a lot of Robocop’s corporate near-future ended up coming true. The developers offer no new angles to the film's original parody or themes. If you want a perfect adaptation of 1987's Robocop, this is the game for you. If you want a thoroughly engaging sci-fi story that reflects the human condition, then this dialogue will consistently come off as trite and not as self-aware as modern stories. There's a side quest where you're rescuing a cat, before things get violently out of hand. The biggest cliche of any super hero story, and not one line of dialogue lampshades the absurdity of Robocop spending time rescuing a cat. No "So that happened" capstone to the scene. The writers take it on faith that you know it's absurd without having to be told.

So just what kind of game is Robocop beyond it’s connection to the films? Well there’s not much going on under the hood. I was really bugged by people making comparisons to Fallout. It’s not an open world game, and it’s not a looter shooter. You explore large zones, tackle side quests that sound interesting, and once you’ve had your fill you move on to the next level, leaving any optional content you missed behind permanently. Rogue City rejects open world games and looter shooter gameplay loops in favor of a tighter, Immersive Sim framework. If we must make comparison, It’s like Deus Ex if the loud, guns blazing play style was your only option. And then the game ends without having overstayed its welcome. While I wouldn't necessarily say no to more game in this game, I do think the lack of bloat is its own strength. People today say "Style Over Substance" like it's an insult, but in reality it's a balance. I will never get tired of hearing the incredible Squelch sound effect of popping a goon's head with bullets, and in development terms, they spent more time perfecting that than they did adding some fetch quest. I'll remember that squelch noise when I think back on this game, but I won't remember half of the things I did in a 40 hour open world game.

Shining Force 2

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Shining Force had been on my mind ever since playing Fire Emblem Gaiden. Two different games, released within two weeks of each other, both trying to combine a contemporary JRPG flare to FE1's sterling example. Shining Force 1 wins the race hands down. Even if we disregard for a moment it’s better presentation courtesy of the Mega Drive’s superior hardware and graphical capability. It’s integration of towns and dungeons is years ahead of Gaiden (released inbetween final fantasies 4 and 5, mind you). Gaiden strayed much further from FE1 and it might have ended up the better game overall if it weren't so incredibly unpolished and buggy.

Shining Force 2 changes little, and really most of its ambitious tweaks are just "Make it like Fire Emblem" flavored changes. Honestly I’m not sure why it’s the preferred over its predecessor among the fandom? Here’s what I noticed that’s changed since the first game: Enemies will prioritize any target in range that they have the stats to reduce to 0 HP (There's that classic Fire Emblem AI). They also added a random chance to counterattack and double attack enemies like in Fire Emblem, but since these are not influenced by stats or any decision making on the player’s part, it doesn’t add to the game’s strategy, only its RNG possibilities. The promotion system is much improved – more on that later, but it’s the only avenue by which things seem flatly better than in the previous game. It definitely feels like more of the last game rather than an innovative sequel like all of Kaga Era Fire Emblem was.

The biggest drag as an SRPG is once again its turn order. Defined vaguely by each unit’s Agility stat. The player is helpless at all times to determine who is getting the next turn on the player or enemy army. Not only does this make it difficult to keep individual units from getting mobbed and killed before you can respond, it drains the game of most of its moment-to-moment strategic depth. Even if you notice one of your units has a higher agility stat than another unit, you should have no expectation that faster characters will get their next turn as fast or faster than slower ones. The game is making invisible turn order rolls after every move. I confirmed it myself via emulator rewind, the turn order was changing right in front of me just as surely as the attack rolls would. This along with enemies randomly doubling and killing my toughest units gave me no shame in rewinding the most egregious moments of my playthrough.

The inventory system is host to some grievances too. You’ll be nearly halfway through the game before you get an item storage for stat boosters and the new mithril collectible that lets you craft superweapons for the finale. Before then you’re squeezing every item slot you can out of your unused units’ four slots. Healing items are extremely useful for most of the game, so having at least one on everybody is optimal. But you’ll also want an open slot on each of your active units because some unique equipment and stat boosters drop from enemies. If the unit that kills them doesn’t have an open space, that reward is gone. No message telling you it happened either. 

They fixed Promotion, which was indeed my biggest issue with the last game. No longer do you revert to a level 1 character and lose a ton of stats. Everything is kept in Shining Force 2, except for the Movement stat booster - be sure to save those until after. You can put off promoting for an additional 20 levels, but it's not necessary and just makes the game harder. You have to be promoted in order to wield the latest weapons by the halfway point of the game. And promoted level ups tend to award more stat gains anyway. The level cap once promoted goes up to 99, in a game where you'll be earning about 50 level ups total for everyone by the end. You won't be "missing" anything by promoting ASAP. Stopping to Grind is possible with the Egress spell, but even as I went through without grinding at all, the experience gain scaled harshly to the point where some enemies were just giving me 1 point for the kill. Seeing so many sources on the internet, both 5 years old or 15 years old, telling you to wait on promotion for both Shining Force 1 and 2 is baffling. The worst archaic advice you’d hear from old Fire Emblem players is “Don’t Use Jagens” but this is a far more destructive rule to follow.

Yakuza Kiwami 2

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It’s been over 18 months since my journey of 100% completing Yakuza 0. I definitely needed the break, but now I'm ready for the next heavy duty plunge. It’s convenient also that I neglected to write about this game when I first played in 2019. I’ve got some things to say about the “Dragon Engine” but I’m planning to play Y6 next and it will feel more appropriate to talk about it there. Broadstrokes are that I like how it enhances the virtual tourism aspects, and I don’t like how my Throws and Finishing Holds fail whenever I’m within 6 feet of some level architecture.

For this replay I went for the 100% completion on a fresh save of Legend difficulty. The Completion List leans lighter on the minigames and much more on combat this time around. Cabaret Club Manager is back and better. Much faster to beat, but if you’re going for a full CP list, you’ll be playing long after its story has concluded just like in 0. I don’t mind. It might be the best sub-game in the series. Not as funny as Pocket Circuit, but also not as trial and error and demands very little of my attention. Plenty of money earned for that time spent too. The downside to 100%ing a Yakuza game is, once again, Mahjong. I don’t know why someone at RGG thinks you should have to play this more than the two big sub-games. 30 total winning hands! I’m much better at Mahjong now and it took me longer to wrap up it up here than in Yakuza 0 when I was still learning and making numerous mistakes. It’s only ‘better’ this time around by just asking you to play and win a bunch, rather than score outrageously high with very unlikely hands. Now that low scoring hands are permitted, you can steal. Opening up some of the very little strategy that Mahjong offers.

The beat em up gameplay was a bit of an acquired taste in the end. Generic enemies on the street are obnoxious because they block and dodge with the same frequency as boss tier opponents. Quickstepping behind their attacks no longer opens them up, they’ll still inexplicably block your full combo from behind. Your basic square square triangle strings have never been this wimpy. Instead they angled for a more defensive, bait and attack playstyle. They saw players having fun with the overpowered Tiger Drop and said “let’s make the whole game that”, with a bunch of easy Counter Heat Moves with no special condition. Tanimura’s Y4 Parry stance too, but I didn’t find it nearly as useful as just tapping triangle when the enemy breathes. And then there’s the Extreme Heat super mode which just grants you passive super armor and an inability to die. Perfect for brute forcing opponents with weapons and refilling your health with hundreds of food items that you’re allowed to carry. If there’s one change I’m grateful for it’s that they toned down the health of boss fights dramatically compared to the Y3-Kiwami 1 era. Fights are equally sped up by Heat Moves only depreciating in damage when you used the same one as before, and the heat gauge not depleting completely on each one. Honestly I think they over-corrected, but I’d prefer this over not lifting a finger to address a decade of health sponge boss fights.

I’d like to speak on the story (no spoilers, don’t worry), purely because this was the second and last game written with the help of crime novelist Hase Seishu. One of the new sub stories lampshades this detail, as Kiryu consoles an overwhelmed director of an acclaimed series of Yakuza action films reeling from the response to ‘Yakuza Sunset 3’. Apparently this man is brilliant at tender character moments but not so much at envisioning action set pieces that made the first two so special. This is a fun bit of metanarrative, I just disagree completely with its premise. Yakuza 3’s plot and characters were the problem. It wouldn’t have been “fixed” by adding tiger fights in a Ninja Castle. Anyway I don’t think the plot is worthy of its alleged place on a pedestal. And this being a remake didn’t allow them much room to tweak it. Where Kiwami 2 comes out ahead is in its characters. Returning ones from the previous game have all settled into new lives. That’s noteworthy in a series all too willing to reset its recurring cast to their v1.0 states. Ryuji Goda is a heck of a villain analogue to Kiryu the more you think about it. Kaoru is hard to pin down, I guess I’m just impressed there’s a female character in Yakuza A) making decisions and B) not dying as a result of them. But overall it falls into a lot of the trappings of Yakuza plots. Our protagonist has no arc, there are several forced minigame diversions that kill the pace, and the ending searches so hard for a twist that it no longer relates to the story it was telling. Overall, I could see it ranking above average for the standards of Yakuza plots, but that’s for a series where "Average" is thematically confused, awfully paced, self-unaware, and Tell-Don't-Show.

Anyway the 100% experience went down with relatively little friction. And I’m willing to bet that’s “Very Good” and/or “Very Short” for the standards of Yakuza Completionism. Besides the hours of Mahjong and repeating every Bouncer mission two additional times, little else was wasting my time. Tracking down 15 of each random enemy encounter in both cities was dull. The Batting Center was needlessly tough until I noticed I was being thrown the same pitches, and then discovered a guide detailing all of them in order. The Bouncer Missions were 80% of the game’s difficult content, but after awhile I just broke down and began using the infinite pistol and laser sword for expediency. If there’s one thing I would have liked is demanding the player perform every Heat Move at least once. I started to do that out of boredom during the bouncer missions since the game was actually tracking them for me. That actually is a CP requirement in some earlier games, and I love that idea. So much art goes into these mini cutscene actions, and forcing the player to see them would no doubt give them a greater appreciation and understanding of the game’s systems. Certainly more than making them eat every restaurant item would.

 

With The Game Awards next week, I'm reminded there's a handful of Big 2023 games I've played but didn't write about, and I should probably do something with the notes I jotted down on them at the time

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon

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Now that Fromsoftware is King of Video Games, they've written themselves license to do pretty much whatever they want. It would be all too easy to just do another Kings Field given that's the predecessor to Souls, so the mech game must be a breath of fresh air after all these years. On Rubicon, you take jobs from multiple corporate factions. No allegiance, pure mercenarism. A scavenger of a larger conflict (Ah, ‘Raven’ perhaps?). Enemies from a previous mission could be an ally later and vice versa. What nuance the game has in its storytelling fizzles out before its mech customization screens. This game wants you to spend about as much time building and testing as you do actually playing missions. At least on a first playthrough. And the experimentation is greatly encouraged by allowing the player to sell parts for 100% of the sale price and try something else with no risk. Repeat playthroughs are an invitation to go through the missions you passed up earlier and continue trying exotic combinations to see what else work.

I’ve heard constant praise on the customization of your mech. And aesthetically, absolutely. As far as the gameplay, I feel like the only thing you need to customize is your legs, which dictate how your guy moves around, and your weapon loadout. A lot of what you can influence with other parts is extremely miniscule as far as I could tell. Just take the best gear you can without going over the weight and energy limits. I wasn’t able to influence things I did care about like maximum ammo, weapon reload / cooldown. I also went in expecting to make a “Melee Build” and was disappointed to find it’s only available as your left hand weapon slot. The mech I did make was a tank blasting cannons you normally wouldn’t be able to run and gun with. This is apparently the optimal, no skill build for most fights as far as I could gleam about the PvE meta. The more you stagger bosses, the less time they spend being able to shoot back, so you’ll win the damage race just firing off cooldown with no mind for strategy. Imagine spending hours trying out builds only to discover it's still not as good as twin Songbirds and two Zimmerman shotguns. The game offers no answer to that simple setup.

It's been months since I played, and skimming the patch notes now definitely tells me they addressed the weapon balance a great deal. If I hop back into this game and get absolutely bodied, I won't complain. I was totally asking for it with my degenerate build. However I'm not seeing any notes on adding a Would you like to Equip Now? Prompt when buying a piece of gear. What a bizarre UI gaffe. And when you’re working through the Arena fights, I remember there’s no Proceed to Next Match? Prompt. You have to load back to the regular menu, then load in this other fight. Other than these lapses in polish,  AC6 is the Criterion Collection of building and smashing Mechs if that's what you're into. I enjoyed the PvP a fair bit too. I really wish I could get two other friends online for the 3v3 team based mode. Was really looking forward to it but it never panned out.

Starfield

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This is not an easy game to summarize. Bethesda open worlds typically lean heavier on the Simulation aspects than the RPG aspects, and that's the real disconnect for my preferences. There's enough in Starfield to have held my attention though. I didn't want to walk away from the game without seeing all of its major faction questlines and my playtime added up to 58 hours. I engaged very little with Surveying planets and using the game's Ship Building suite, and totally ignored its crafting systems and building Outposts because I didn't see what I could gain that would make it worth it. I was at least two dozen hours in before I ultimately decided I liked the game overall. The setting didn't give me too much to draw me in. The Settled Systems are too settled for me. There's not a lot of conflict out in the galaxy. Most quests are low stakes. The decision to have no sentient Alien Life in this Sci-fi universe is...bold to put it diplomatically. Even in the far reaches of space, humans stand alone at the apex of power and the sole inheritors of Intelligence. A lot of the quests begged the question of why ask our character, a stranger, to help with this task when there are so many alternatives. In The Outer Worlds, they would use that opportunity to make some joke about corporate bureaucracy. Starfield's Colony War against the two largest factions is in the distant past, but even Skyrim had a war between stormcloaks and imperials going on in the background, serving as a catalyst for mundane issues to get even more threatening.

It’s remarkable how dull they made the main quest. Let me stress that I mean this criticism constructively. Bethesda main quests are always action packed. They expose you to major factions and major characters every hour. They take you through the most carefully constructed dungeons and cities. And yet these fetch quests for ancient artifacts and temples feel like an after-thought. Like a callback to Oblivion's Gates that nobody asked for. The questline hinges on a player’s investment in the Questions of a Universe they have not yet begun to explore. It’s esoteric and quietly contemplative. Great for hour 30 of an RPG, but not hour 1. Fast Travel to this location, walk toward a distant waypoint and press the Interact key is not compelling gameplay. It doesn’t open the player's eyes to what's possible in the Simulation. It won't provide any role playing decisions or alternative quest solutions. The only enemies you shoot at are nameless bandits and a mysterious enemy that is later revealed to be nameless bandits with better tech. If all of them were as interesting as the Entangled Quest near the end, then it’d be a different story. Seriously, Entangled may be the best individual quest I've played in a game like this. Incredible Sci-fi storytelling.

I think the decision to make Constellation the “Main Story” questline came down to “this is where the player gets their ‘Skyrim Shout’ abilities”. And they’re not even that useful to begin with. They’d be much more compelling for the players that did go out of their way and suddenly their character can use the force like a freaking Jedi. Like how doing The Companions’ quest in Skyrim turns you into a werewolf. It’s cool and unexpected that something that significant is waiting off the main quest path. Even if the player forgets this power hours later, it’s the sense of discovery that sticks with them, not the gameplay implications. Bethesda wanted that feeling for its main quest and it failed spectacularly to land with me. What change would I make to fix the main questline? Make the temples and the three or four most mindless artifact hunts optional. Then make the quest Supra Et Ultra mandatory in their place. The UC Vanguard’s first quest is a great one for new players because it starts with an (optional) history of the Universe. That baseline context would really help the Constellation story telling. Then it introduces a unique threat that happens to look like Fallout’s Deathclaws and is too powerful to shoot down with an early game character – demonstrating that there are better solutions for quests than shooting your way through. The main quest that we did get just feels like a lot of padding.

The gameplay parts of the RPG can drag too. Skills having their own trackable "challenges" before you're allowed to upgrade them is fun until you realize that progress stops getting tracked until you've upgraded to the next tier. The Ship-based skill upgrades really suffer here because there's no quick way to "farm" more enemy encounters in space. I also had a great deal of conveyance-related issues with the UI. Like how the Upgrade Ship and Ship Builder screens have separate inventories of stuff to buy. Until I discovered the latter, I didn’t know how to do something as basic as expanding my ship cargo. The local map is pathetically un helpful. The star map only labels the names of places with big cities. So if you want to go some place specific (or go somewhere you've already been) and don’t have a quest waypoint to hook up, it feels like a crapshoot trying to find your way back there. One thing I loved is the Crew Menu, letting you assign your various crew members to outposts and ships from the pause screen instead of physically tracking them down and telling them what you want. That's a huge QOL change from past Bethesda games. I also think it warrants praise that Bethesda launched a game with a perfectly reasonable amount of bugs. They could have released this in November of last year with their old "just patch it later" mentality, and they relented. Bravo.

My ultimate takeaway on Starfield is that it's far from "Bethetic". I jokingly called the game No Man's Skyrim for years and that's really what it turned out to be. A big universe to explore with extremely little guidance. You can't ask the game to engage you, you have to engage with the game. And hope you get out more than you put in. That's a hard game to sell to people.

Street Fighter 6

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I didn't play this game as much as I expected to at the outset of this year, but I don't want to just let it slip by without comment. SF6 is excellent. Definitely the best Vanilla Street Fighter experience and a strong opening statement for the Post-Yoshinori Ono era of Capcom fighters. I like its RE Engine redesigns, I like the hip hop aesthetics and musical style, and its Drive Gauge based gameplay. The biggest triumph is in Acessibility though. Fighting Games have been failing to attract new blood for as long as the genre has existed. There's an inherent skill floor to fighting games that gets higher and higher the longer a series goes on. Even if you change the mechanics, it's not exactly like learning a whole new game for veteran players. They've already proven they're willing to put the work in. We've seen a lot of approaches to both attract non-fighting game players and ease them past that skill floor. Robust tutorials, smoothing of intensive/precise inputs, and high budget story modes that a casual player can enjoy without much friction. Street Fighter 6 says Yes to all three options.

In order, the tutorials come with video examples where you can press a button to play them out yourself for some instant feedback. Catering to players that both learn by example or are visual learners. It’s actually a little embarrassing, having such a good teacher and going in a match to put on such a novice performance. Then there's the new "Modern" Control scheme. I have yet to use it myself so I'm not clear on the precise details, but I've heard from so many people that this was the great equalizer. They were winning matches online for the first time in their life. That's a huge feeling. In retrospect, I kind of wish that I did turn on Modern Controls. Sure I can do a DP motion on command, but I was struggling to get used Lily's full circle command grab and all the while wondering if I'd have a better time on simpler controls. It's not so much that I wanted to win more matches, but that I wanted to engage the game more on its intended design instead of an old language. You can even switch them on a character by character basis, the game will remember your preference at character select. Last is World Tour. I don't think we were prepared for just how big it was. Too big in my case, I think I barely got through half of it. It's kinda hard! I remember running up against so many quests where I have to open up this CPU twenty times more often than he gets me. I couldn't figure out how to beef up my stats. But it was still fun overall. Making a Ryo Hazuki avatar and playing what is essentially a Yakuza game with 80% less cutscene.

 

You actually summed up my thoughts on Shining Force rather well. And I'm not ashamed to admit I'm save scumming and rewinding every unfavorable miss, deadly attack, or double. Because they really are pure random, the game makes no attempt to communicate its odds to you, and they add nothing to the game strategically.

[vanguard333]

I haven't been playing anything lately, as I have been very busy. My plan is to finish my playthrough of Persona 5 Royal that I'm almost done (I'm in the middle of the Royal-exclusive third semester), and then either finish Ocean's Heart or start playing the Super Mario RPG remake.

Regarding that last one, I have never played the original Super Mario RPG and I am hoping to go in blind (or at least, as blind as I can go into the game; it is a game from the 90s and I already know one or two things as a result of pop-cultural osmosis). However, there are some things I would like to know in advance:

1. Is there anything permanently missable in the game?

2. Is there anything else where, when playing the game, you thought, "I wish I knew that on my first playthrough"?

[Zapp Branniglenn]

3 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Regarding that last one, I have never played the original Super Mario RPG and I am hoping to go in blind (or at least, as blind as I can go into the game; it is a game from the 90s and I already know one or two things as a result of pop-cultural osmosis). However, there are some things I would like to know in advance:

1. Is there anything permanently missable in the game?

2. Is there anything else where, when playing the game, you thought, "I wish I knew that on my first playthrough"?

1. Nothing substantial. Some events give better rewards based on decisions you make or how well you perform, but the difference is just money, flower points, frog coins, all of which are farmable. 
2. The Remake spells out a lot of the hidden mechanics from the original so you're pretty well covered. But here's some juicy bullet points
   1. Mario's basic Jump spell gets 1 point more damage every 2 uses. It's not crucial that you power this up - Mario's a powerhouse without it, but it gives you something to work on in the early hours.
   2. Mario's Super Jump can be done up to 100 bounces, and the game secretly tracks your highest score. It's difficulty, but try to get at least 30. There's an NPC later that will award you one of the best accessories. He grants the best armor too (that anyone can equip) if you can get 100 but I've never gotten close myself. 
   3. In The Mushroom Kingdom, there's a new accessory in the remake that notifies you that you're in a room with one of the game's 39 Hidden Treasures. These are all hidden block treasures you reveal by jumping underneath them. It does not track any other type of secret. So I thought I'd clarify what the game is trying to tell you in those rooms.

[Interdimensional Observer]

On 11/25/2023 at 10:38 PM, Fabulously Olivier said:

Playing Odin Sphere and liking it a lot.

I know I should've asked a few days ago, but are you taking any breaks between character stories? While the characters fight differently, I know Odin Sphere in the long run can end up feeling repetitive. Perhaps take a few IRL days' break between the stories to keep things from getting stale? -But then I know you're a (fellow) Musou fan, so maybe you're fine. -Just advice from an OS fan.

[Fabulously Olivier]

24 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I know I should've asked a few days ago, but are you taking any breaks between character stories? While the characters fight differently, I know Odin Sphere in the long run can end up feeling repetitive. Perhaps take a few IRL days' break between the stories to keep things from getting stale? -But then I know you're a (fellow) Musou fan, so maybe you're fine. -Just advice from an OS fan.

I'm taking a week's break between each. And yes, there is definitely fatigue there because they share most of the same content. 2 routes down, 3 to go.

 

I'd like to have the luxury of months-long breaks, or to even treat it as annual routes like my other multi-route games, but I don't own it. I'm Extra subbing it, and my sub runs out January 26th.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[Etrurian emperor]

On 11/26/2023 at 4:38 AM, Fabulously Olivier said:

No fast travel until the 2nd half, and even then, it's cumbersome.

I'd stay away from such devilry where I you, lad. Every sage who attempted such a spell was turned to mincemeat when they hit obstacles in their path.

In any case what I think truly holds back Nier is the lack of level scaling. When repeating playthroughs you get so powerful that about every boss becomes an absolute joke. On one hand its efficient when you gotta do them four times but at the other hand it also ends up being a bit of a boring slog. And unlike Automata I don't really think the extra story is really worth it. Nier is very much ''science fiction'' so both the ''delete save file ending'' and the secret ending relying entirely on ''a wizard did it!'' as if its actually magic didn't sit well with me.

Spoiler

I can buy the whole Replicant/Shade set up but within the confines of this setup the delete save game ending makes no sense. There's no logical reason why that system would allow for Kaine to survive if another Replicant sacrifices himself, nor is there much reason why this would brainwash the entire world into forgetting about them.

 

[LeviMitchell]

Not long ago i bought ps 5. Now i am playing Death strandiing Kojima is genius really, msp 2, gow ragnarok.

Also i love to play cs2 and watch cybersport matches  https://bo3.gg/tools/compare/teams here.

Sometimes i love to play geometry dash i copleted all original levels and ~50 easiest demons.

Edited December 18, 2023 by LeviMitchell

[vanguard333]

I recently resumed my first playthrough of Persona 5 Royal; I was in the middle of the January part of the game when I had to stop playing it for a while due to being very busy. I'm hoping to finish this playthrough quickly, as well as finish playing through the game Ocean's Heart, and start playing Super Mario RPG Remake.

[Integrity]

i beat fire emblem 3: the drums of war and you should too

[Zapp Branniglenn]

17 hours ago, Integrity said:

i beat fire emblem 3: the drums of war and you should too

Some of us have! Hoping that a time traveling Vivica shows up in Drums of War 2

[vanguard333]

I started playing the Super Mario RPG Remake a few days ago. I just defeated the boss of the mines area and obtained the third star, and my party currently consists of Mario, Mallow and Geno.

Having never played the original SNES game, I can't give any thoughts on the remake as a remake; I can only say what I think of it on its own merits. I'll start with what I don't like so far:

1. I still don't like isometric formats; the 2D nature of it makes me want to use the control pad, but everything being diagonal means Mario is usually having to move diagonally, and holding a diagonal on a control pad is neither fun nor comfortable.

2. I am having a ton of trouble with the Yoshi racing mini-game; it's essentially a barebones rhythm game where you press a and b repeatedly in time with the rhythm, but I can't figure out the timing. I tried listening to the drumbeat, and I tried turning the volume down to zero and focusing on the visual indicators; neither worked consistently.

3. One thing I've never been a fan of with RPGs is having replace items with new ones that don't do anything in gameplay and just have bigger numbers. I really enjoyed using the green shell as its animation makes it really easy to get the action command timing right, and then I got to the mine area and had to replace the green shell with gloves that have better numbers but a harder-to-read attack animation.

Now, onto stuff that I like so far:

1. The game looks amazing and the animations have a ton of charm.

2. I like Mallow and Geno; they manage to fit nicely in the Mario world while also fitting as JRPG main characters. Their designs are very creative, with Mallow being a living cloud (by any chance, is he the same species as the smiling clouds that Lakitu ride?), and Geno being a star-being inhabiting a toy because their mission requires a physical body.

3. I'm fine with RPG armour and weapons that have different numbers so long as as it actually invokes some element of choice, and the armour introduced in the mine area do offer that: giving a choice between increased defenses and increased offense + speed. That's nice.