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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Red Faction OdysseyDonkey Kong BananzaIt's chaotic. It's messy. It's tons of fun.
I'm loving it.
It's rare that we get a new 3D collectathon these days, and even rarer that we get one with such a big budget and polish.
I don't want to overhype the game -- it does have its issues. Framerate drops are frequent and noticeable (which is odd for a flagship game on brand new hardware). Also, by nature of how the game is (you spend a lot of time underground and in cramped tunnels you've made yourself), you'll invariably run into some momentarily frustrating camera angles. Finally (and Mario Kart World shares this complaint so I need to extra emphasize it):
Nintendo please let us adjust the volume for sound effects and music separately. You have AMAZING scores for your games that get entirely drowned out by noise.
I. Want. To. Hear. The. Music.
Anyway, in terms of design and gameplay, it's an utter delight. They nailed the feeling of DK just wrecking things. I've played the game for hours (255 bananas so far), and it still fun to just beast my way through a mountain. Being able to go through walls, dig underground, climb things, etc. adds so much versatility to the collectathon genre.
With regards to comparisons to Odyssey, the DNA is certainly there, but Bananza isn't really a platformer so much as it is an exploration game. The game is very rarely about precise navigation or jumps. Instead, you have a lot of different options for how to get to different places, and the game encourages you to scour their wonderfully designed levels. Sidenote: the speedrunning scene for this game is going to be WILD.
Also, there's some nice, built-in, and entirely optional QoL stuff for tracking down those last collectibles. Kinda surprised to see that sort of thing from Nintendo, to be honest. Now PLEASE patch the game to let me change the volume levels. I'm begging you.
The game has got Nintendo's traditional whimsy and charm, with DK and Pauline creating a cute found-family father/daughter dynamic. I think it's an utterly splendid game for kids. I imagine a lot of kids will feel about this the way that I do about Super Mario 64. To me, the game seems like it's meant to be a collectathon for the Minecraft generation -- not in the sense of crafting/building, but in the "let me dig around and see what I can find" kind of way.
On a final note: this isn't a hot take so much as it is a solemn confession, but I honestly didn't love Super Mario Odyssey. I think it's a very good game, and I played through all of it, but it didn't "click" with me. I don't find myself wanting to return to it, years later, like I have with some of my all-time favorite games.
Bananza, on the other hand, clicked with me almost immediately.
And that click is still there many hours later.
I can see myself eagerly coming back to this five or ten years from now.
I've definitely been looking forward to Bananza, but I made the mistake of picking up and starting Expedition 33 the weekend before the Destiny 2 expansion came out, thinking "I'd have plenty of time to play both". I was horribly wrong, so it will probably be another month before I get Bananza, but I'm really looking forward to it!
It's going to take a lot to knock E33 down from my personal GOTY pedestal. How far into it are you?
Only about 6-8 hours, I’m in the second “main” area with all the red trees (being vague to not spoil for others). It’s fantastic so far, I just fell off for a week because of the new Destiny expansion.
Not a mistake at all. Bananza is not going anywhere and E33 is a treat.
It's truly a wonderful game! I noticed the same, that it's only very lightly a platformer, and much more of a destructible sandbox. It makes for an interesting and novel experience, and there's just a general spirit of creativity throughout the entire game. So many of the enemies and environments in the game really add to the 'playground' feel, and it's clear that the developers must have had so much fun brainstorming ways to interact with the game's destructibility and emphasis on environmental interactions. (Trying to be vague to avoid spoilers, because when you see each of these things for the first time, it's such a delight!)
I've been absolutely loving this game as well! Such a great stress reliever and so much charm. My 2 year old son likes the game a lot as well, calling it the "monkey smash" game.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
So basically, about a year ago the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC dropped for Elden Ring, and I played about half of it, but then Final Fantasy XIV's Dawntrail expansion came out shortly afterward, and I put all my efforts into that as I'm a pretty serious raider.
Two FFXIV Savage tiers, Chaotic and Forked Tower, and an Ultimate later, and I'm free of raiding obligations for a while, and I receive Elden Ring Nightreign for my birthday, just about a year after SotE came out.
Of course, I'm totally hooked on Nightreign (all nightlords and everdark modes defeated, all achievements unlocked, most remembrance quests finished or close) and could go on and on about it, but it also brought me back into SotE between expeditions. I've since finished that (it's fantastic) and got sucked into an entire Demon's Souls (2020) replay by way of firing up the game once to admire it's visuals and being unable to put it down.
Anyway, with SotE off my plate I'm done all the RPG souls games: Demon's Souls, the Dark Souls trilogy, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring... all done, right? But if we're counting it, there is still Sekiro...
Sekiro has always stood kind of souls adjacent but it's much much lighter on RPG systems, playing out more like an action game with customization systems that resemble something more like a modern AAA's simple skill trees and a few ability slots, and that's really it.
In Dark Souls or Elden Ring, these RPG systems can often be your ticket through a challenge. Level more, try a different weapon, ailment, spell, item, or defensive option. There's lots of defensive options to overcome just one attack, maybe roll, maybe block, maybe parry, or maybe good old movement tricks can get you out of the way. Maybe your wondrous physick will let you take a free hit.
Sekiro on the other hand pretty firmly demands you play on it's terms. Yeah it has some options with the shinobi prosthetic and combat arts, but for the most part your choice of shinobi prosthetic is a response to a barrier the enemy is presenting you: loaded axe the shield guy, firecracker the beasts, flame vent the red eye guy.
Defensive "options" are tightened up to the point of being responses, not options, too. I don't know the frame data, but dodging is not your one size fits all failsafe option like souls, it's at best a positioning tool. Guarding exists, but incurs significant penalties to the player's posture, so the game expects us to reach for last-second blocking (deflecting) most of the time instead.
Timing, especially reaction time and sequence memorization, become the essential skills the game tests for. It might be easier to hit the fast reactions of some attacks if it was all about training that L1/LB deflect reaction, but of course enemies have the perilous sweep attacks that need to be jumped over, the perilous lunge attacks that need to be mikiri countered (timing sensitive dodge forward to step on weapon), and grabs that I believe need to be dodged. Our options aren't options, they're the correct tools to deal with specific attacks, so the player must react in time with the right response or be punished.
Anyway, on to my experience so far. It's still pretty early game, and I've been told this system eventually clicks, but reacting correctly is such an overwhelmingly present part of the game that it demands all my attention and leaves me very little mental capacity to find my openings to attack as well. Broadly, reaction time and general timing is not my strength. In fighting games, combo link timings that people may say are wide and forgiving can be ones where I cannot perceive the difference in feeling between pressing early, on time, or late, and that's without reaction time in the mix, as I decide when to press the first button of a combo and should therefore be fully informed when my next button's window is coming. I have never "hit confirmed" in a fighting game - if I have ever landed even a partial combo on someone, I did not move into it by reacting to my hit from neutral landing, but instead assuming or more likely hoping it will hit and inputting the combo reaction-free. I just do not think fast, never have. Can't catch a ball, etc.
Anyway, getting a bit tired of a perilous attack lunge coming in and I first press LB (deflect) as a wrong reaction, and then try to correct to B to mikiri counter but didn't stop holding left stick in a direction other than neutral or forward so I just do a regular dodge in a stray direction and eat the attack and die, and probably even if I did let go of stick and get the right input for mikiri counter, I'm probably late cause it's probably buffered after the accidental deflect input. My gameplay is a full-on disaster, for me this is by far the hardest of any of these games, I am struggling really hard to react correctly. I'm getting kinda low on confidence that I'll ever roll the credits to be honest.
Oh, also, the game is kinda gross at times if you hate bugs. The sound of the crickets, and oh god the centipedes... disgusting...
Sekiro can be considered an action-rhythm game. Yeah the beat changes every now and then when bosses switch up their moves, but it by and large is reacting in time and on time.
While some Prosthetics or Combat Arts do occasionally break bosses to the point of triviality, most of them require you to learn the rhythm of their attacks entirely.
It feels decidedly FromSoft even if it's unlike any of their other games.
Even though I defeated that one double boss fight on the first try, the game as a whole never fully clicked for me and I'd have to really commit to learning a boss before being able to defeat them. That of course also rings true in the Souls games, but those battles always feel more as if I made a mistake myself, not that I just simply didn't know how fast or often I needed to deflect.
Despite that, Sekiro is a solid game with a strong foundation, oozes style all over, and has some unique play by play moments you'll never find anywhere else. I'd stick with it for at least a while, it's easily the most difficult to get into but also one of the more rewarding of the series. Because when a fight does feel like you're in the groove, little else will match that experience.
Fancy seeing you here!
Of course, you should spend your time how you see fit, but for what it’s worth, once Sekiro “clicked” for me it quickly became my favorite FromSoft combat, and that includes Nightreign. I get what you’re saying about reaction timings not being your strength, but in my mind it’s less about twitch reactions and more about figuring out the “rhythm” of any given enemy or boss. Most enemy movesets, even the bosses, are not so varied that you can’t eventually internalize them and “do the dance” with them instead of trying to panic-react to swings on the fly.
No matter what you end up doing with the game (if anything), it is cool to see how much hidden influence it had on Nightreign especially. Jumps/vaulting, Wylder’s grapple, Wylder’s grapple follow up (some axe prosthetic combo moves), obviously executor’s deflect and the crouch/stealth mechanic that’s in ER proper but not Nightreign so much. I’m sure there are more, but I’m just glad to see some of its spirit continue in the FromSoft universe and hope we see more of its mechanics in the future.
Well, a new expansion came out for Destiny 2, The Edge of Fate, so I predictably played that for about 30 hours in the last week. It's good! You'll definitely see a lot of negative sentiment online and while some of it is warranted, people are being extremely dramatic about some of the changes ("BUNGIE IF YOU DON'T CHANGE THE GAME BACK TO HOW I LIKE IT, I'M LEAVING" sort of stuff that we get every expansion).
The good stuff is that the campaign was excellent. It was on par with previous offerings despite Destiny 2 moving to a two expansion a year model with each being a bit smaller than when they were doing one expansion a year. The narrative and gameplay were both awesome and while a lot of people are complaining about the "matterspark" mechanic, it really does "click" later in the campaign and makes for some very unique boss fights, I liked it. Some of the UI changes the game got were also sorely needed and there was a complete overhaul of the armor system, which feels good when you get a good build going, but can also feel bad with specific builds. Some builds I had from before aren't viable even when I redo the stats for the new system while some other builds far exceed the power of my previous builds. The new raid, The Desert Perpetual, is also stunning and has some incredible fights in it.
That said, I might as well touch on the negatives and why there's so much discourse on the game right now. The primary change fueling the angry internet nerds is the armor 3.0 system, which ditched the mostly irrelevant amor stats from before and introduced a new system where you actually have to care about armor stats now and may want to have four or so good armor sets for various builds you might have. While some builds are vastly improved under this new system and you can do some ridiculous things, there are also some builds where cooldowns are longer than before and it leads to a "feels bad". This is in part from the new system and also because armor building is brand new and people need to figure it out. For example, many people trying grenade builds are pumping their grenade stat to infinity to get the new bonus damage under the new system and complaining that their melee ability charges much slower, but I've been building my grenade builds where my melee still has respectable stats to keep it charged like before, but my grenade ability is still more powerful than pre-expansion (just not to the degree of pumping it fully). Like I said, though, there are definitely issues with the new system itself, like how ammo generation is tied to a stat where it wasn't before, so you can feel more ammo starved. That's just one example, I won't go through all of them, but while there's reason for people to have feedback on the new system, it went well past constructive feedback and into full gamer rage and I've just had enough of it and am ignoring it so I can just play the game.
Besides that, though, there definitely are a number of bugs right now and something with damage numbers feels a bit off. Some content feels about the same difficulty as before, but some content is way harder, like dungeons got harder even though they weren't directly changed, but regular strike missions are just as easy. Combine that with the fact that Bungie made the new raid on contest mode purposefully extremely difficult with very high damage checks and the community is pretty pissed.
IMO it's the same discourse we get with every expansion. Stuff changes, people get mad, stuff changes again, people get mad again. I stopped caring and just play the game. It's still destiny, it's still fun. I like some of the changes and dislike some of the changes, but it's still my favorite game and I know the folks at Bungie are trying, but game development is hard, especially when thousands of people criticize everything you do no matter what.
If you're a D2 player and contemplating returning, I'd say the campaign is worth the entry fee, but I wouldn't blame you for waiting until a couple weeks before the Ash & Iron update in September since besides the new campaign, some secrets in the new location, and the new raid, there isn't much to do beyond that that's new. This expansion focused a lot on system updates and I'll be curious to see if those pay off once we get a few updates in.
I'd like to get into Destiny 2. I actually played a bit many years ago, before it went f2p I think, and it's (was?) an enjoyable casual FPS.
But I like to keep the games I buy, and Bungie regularly "vaulting" (deleting from the game) whole DLCs makes it an absolute no-go for me. It also makes onboarding a total mess, and I don't understand how Bungie hope to keep (or even raise) player counts with such a decision.
I want to get into Destiny 2. But I switched platforms, and lost all of my paid content. The fun got sucked out. I really liked the prismatic kits too.
Stopped playing after Final Shape and don't really have any motivation to return, but it's nice to hear that somebody is enjoying Destiny 2 still. The news revolving around it has been mostly of disappointment, whether it be controversial changes or just a lack of quantity and variety in content, but at least whoever's left at Bungie can still make a good campaign and raid.
Any idea how bad the grind is if you're returning? Has it improved much over the last few years? I dropped the game after The Witch Queen (which was a pretty great campaign!) but the idea of having to grind and level to keep up with the new power levels puts me off, since I usually found you dailies were the only good way to level and that'd block continuing with the story.
I'll preface by saying that I don't think you're blocked from doing the story at all based on your light level from where you left off. Almost everything is relative to your power level now instead of being set to a specific value and gating you out of content, with some restriction (like you need to be 100 light to get into advanced strikes, but once you unlock it, it's relative to your level).
So this expansion reset everyone to minimum power (10). By playing the campaign on legend difficulty and then doing the campaign side quests and post campaign exotic quest, I was around 200 power level which is where it will reset to in future expansions now, it's kind of a floor (that said, I doubt things are staying exactly as is, there's been enough outrage about it). This season you can get up to 450 power or something, but there isn't much of a point unless you want to grind, since (if nothing changes) we'll reset back to 200 when Renegades comes out later this year. Various difficulties of things like nightfalls are all relative to your power level now instead of a set power and your power is set to 5 below the highest in your fireteam if you're more than 5 below. So you can play nightfalls at 200 power or 400 power and it will feel the same.
Higher tiers of weapons and armor start dropping when you're a higher light level. So if you want the best builds possible, you eventually want to get your light level up so you can get higher tier loot. That said, every activity in the game now drops pinnacles, essentially. You don't have to hunt for specific playlists to up your power level, you just play.
So the grind is still there, but different, and isn't really "required". I am sitting on mostly tier 1 armor and my builds feel alright. They will feel better if I can get up to tier 4 or 5 this season, but I'm not gonna push for that, I'm just gonna have fun with my friends and my power level will go up naturally.
So there is a grind, but it's in a weird place where it's kind of only required if you want to do it, you can otherwise play everything in the game without being high power level, it just guarantees you higher tiers of weapons and armor. Admittedly, higher weapon tiers would be really nice to unlock because they start dropping multiple perks per column, making it easier to get good rolls, but again, I'm not gonna push for it, I'm just gonna see where I end up when playing for fun.
If you want to experience the story from where you left off, the non-current expansions frequently go on sale for 90% off. In fact, it looks like Steam has Lightfall and Final Shape for like $15 if you play on PC. Overall, it definitely isn't less grindy that before, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily more grindy either, it's just different, but still destiny, with all of the good and the bad, ha.
Huh, resetting power level is an interesting—though not unwanted—change. It sounds like it's quickly getting back up to the 1000+ levels it was before though.
Thanks for the detailed comment! I'll maybe take another look at picking up the newer campaigns.
Even if you don’t care to be caught up or play the newest stuff, I would say it’s worth it to at least play Lightfall and Final Shape to cap off the light and darkness saga when they’re that cheap. Final Shape had possibly the best campaign they’ve ever done.
Two friends convinced the rest of us to finally get Palworld. Not quite my experience of playing Minecraft for the first time and playing 14hrs straight, but I feel like playing 5hrs of Palworld straight on the first day means I enjoy it enough. I did about 12hrs over the weekend, total.
As polished-looking as it is, there are enough things that still point it to be an Early Access title. Which is fine. None of it is seriously game breaking, either through cheesing or crashing, that I can tell. I think the most difficult thing for me, so far, is leaving the Pokemon mindset behind me. At least the way I've played Pokemon. I rarely had more than one of each Pokemon, whereas in Palworld, you're incentivized to have at least 12 of each one. Because you need lots of bodies for the, uhhh, "involuntary servitude" that's needed to maintain a base. Interestingly, or perhaps disturbingly, some human NPCs are catchable. I definitely have one bad guy working on my base since I was curious if that was even possible. Look, he attacked me first, OK?
Anyway, we're still definitely in the early stages of the game, but so far only one off six or seven people said it wasn't for them. I can see us playing this for at least a couple of weeks.
On the single player side, I'm giving in to my Millennial nostalgia and playing The Oregon Trail. The new one from 2022. I bought it around when it came out, but it just sat in my library. But I was looking for something to play recently, saw it, and was like, "Y'know...I never made it to Oregon Territory back on the Apple IIe or DOS PC days in school."
My party is approaching Fort Hall, which is in modern-day Idaho. And no one has died yet! Though, I feel like at least one of them will soon. My luck will run out at some point.
I really do like how much they added to the game, especially on the educational side. The original game was supposed to be educational, but was it? Idk, I don't remember reading that much about life on the trails and such from the original game. I mostly just remember trying to ford the damn rivers and my party dying from dysentery.
Finished some games in the last few days:
Metal Gear (MSX2): Surprisingly good, it might be on my top 3 of 8bits games, it took me a while to understand how the save game mechanic worked but once I understood that I enjoyed it a lot.
For this game in particular it was a whole odyssey for me, at first I was playing it on my MGS Legacy Collection for the PS3 but some weeks before I dropped my console while cleaning, and didn't check for damages, because of that the hard drive was faulty and 2 hours in or so it crashed and didn't booth again.
Then I remembered I already have Metal Gear on NES but to my surprise the game is completely different there, and since I was already enjoying the original version, I didn't want to play that other one.
After that I downloaded the MGS3 remake on my PS Vita (which contains the original Metal Gear as extra content), but some weird glitch corrupted my game and it crashed around half of the story and the savefiles were also corrupted because of the glitch.
So I had to emulate the original MSX2 rom on my Nintendo 3ds (after a few hours searching for the original bios) and that was the way I played it.
Replayed the original Bioshock: Still a perfect game, I think I like it more now watching how well it has aged, I played the original version, I don't know if the remaster is still as good.
Expedition 33: (spoilers) I quite didn't like the act 3 of the game, the Paintress boss fight was way too epic in comparison to anything that comes after, I also didn't care that much for the story so the reveal at the end didn't move me or anything, is not that I hated the epilogue, just that it dragged too much the game for me.
Now playing Okami HD: I remember playing it when it game on the Wii but I didn't get far enough, I'm enjoying it a lot now, it is so pretty, it literally makes me cry of how beautiful it is. Not much to say beside that, I love this game.
I feel like I should give Bioshock another go. I first played it in 2007 or whenever it first came out and liked it enough to begin with, but began to sour on it as I continued to play it. Eventually did finish it and ended up kind of hating it, but that might be because of the effusive praise it got.
But now it's been almost 20 years and my tastes and opinions have changed quite a bit, so I do wonder if I'd still feel the same.
I didn't expect it to hold up that well but I was surprised, I'm starting to consider it my favorite FPS game now.
Okami HD on the Switch was my first time playing the game, and it was stunning. Never actually finished it. After finishing what feels like the main quest the game kinda just ... keeps going. I kept going for a while, but I felt like I already had the closure, so my motivation wasn't quite there. May need to revisit it at some point.
Yeah it's a very long story but the game worths it imo, feeding animals and pissing on the enemies are my favorite parts
PEAK
Played like 5 hours of it, not actually that much, only got to the third biome....
Uh I dunno, I think it's charming and it's a fun game to mess around in but even in my short time I was getting kinda mad with the resets we kept having to do.
When you die in PEAK then you are back to the start, so it's a hell of a journey, especially if you only got up a certain part of the mountain because of a good item combo.
I feel like I'm missing something because everything feels difficult in PEAK depending on the map. The first day we played, we genuinely walked up to the first biome, the second day it was like ultra hard, we needed equipment to get to the second. I dunno what it is, maybe we just suck, but I got a bit pissy having go do it over and over without any more progress.
Anyway I'd still play some more just to blow dart my friends but I don't think I'd go out my way to play it.
Motorsport Manager
This one was a little left field, but I read somewhere that it was an excellent management/simulator game. I don't know squat about F1 except cars go fast and I'm having a good time. There's lots of dials to turn and buttons to press but it doesn't feel overwhelming. It feels like I have a lot of control and choice over the team and what I can/can't do which is nice!
I did get offered a bunch of different championships and I had no idea what to pick, so I just picked the European one and I'm not sure if it was a good idea or not, but it seems fun to mess around in anyway.
I spent the first year getting angry emails from my boss threatening to fire me if I didn't do better, and I managed to eek out the bare minimum every time. Huge success!
Then I spent all my money I was meant to use on my car on my HQ so my car for the following year is currently shit lol.
Side note, any tips without like outright telling me what to do or meta stats I would appreciate! I'm making best guess efforts right now and enjoying working it out for myself but there is a lot of game, so any advice of like "I wish I knew this before I started playing" would be lovely.
Motorsport Manager is a real gem! And it runs surprisingly well on my old laptop with integrated graphics.
It's been a couple years since last time I played it, so I'm not sure I remember any useful beginner's tips.
Peak is definitely more of a mess around with my friends kinda game and maybe once you've played a whole actually try for some of the challenges if you're enjoying the game. You should definitely be on the easiest difficulty if you aren't already, dont start with normal.
Take your time to learn the mechanics and everything.
There's multiple potential routes to take on every map every day, some will be much harder than others.
Generally if we had a bad map/couldn't find an easier route we wouldn't replay it more than twice. You just come back a different day and try that days map.
I jumped back into Octopath Traveler on my Switch 2 and I'm really enjoying it.
I bought it at launch and then took a break when I was about 25 hours in. It's a testament to how well it's designed that, 5-6 years later, I was able to just jump right back into my old playthrough and quickly refresh myself on where all the different characters' stories are at.
It's also really refreshing to play a JRPG with such low stakes. I guess there's still time for a world-ending threat to emerge before the end, but following all these characters' small, disconnected personal journeys has been so enjoyable.
Definitely has one of the all-time great JRPG soundtracks too.
i've been slowly trying to clear all the decks on gold stake in balatro. it's definitely been keeping me busy.
Finished the Mass Effect trilogy on Insane (max) difficulty. Through the playthrough, I explored some alternate decision branches, saw a few new mini storylines, played a different character class, and deepened my knowledge and appreciation of the world lore. I even inadvertently found
spoiler about ending of ME3
a third ending to ME3. It's sort of presented to the player as a dichotomy, if you're not paying attention to the dialogue.Good series. 8/10, would recommend.
Next thing I think I'll be trying is Dishonored 1 and 2.
A new patch came out for Oblivion that fixed the game-crashing bug I was stuck on, so I'm back at it! Finished out the shivering isles dlc so now I'm doing the main game again. Mostly just wandering around and doing side-missions, though I did unintentionally wander into the first post-tutorial main quest step so I have a crappy horse now!
Hit one side-mission that annoyed me. You have to find a paint thief but doing that is less about figuring out who-done-it and more going step by step through the process it had in mind: talk to everyone, then find all the "clues." The last clue is in a totally different place than you'd expect and subtle so I had to resort to a uide to find it even though I had searched that room. But the annoying part is that the hint really is utterly pointless, it's clear who did it before that hint but still you have to find it for no other reason than linear quest design.
Then I went wandering again. Found a little town that had a suspicious basement. Went down there and boom, evil cannibal cult. Rescued a person and back alleyed into a side-quest to save that person which I hadn't even yet picked up.
Dragon Quest VIII
On a PlayStation 2 emulator. Just 2x resolution and some mipmapping and anisotropic filtering make the game look great on a modern screen. This game is too slow. That's the biggest problem with it. It isn't the random encounters, it isn't turn-based combat, it's how long it takes to do anything and the length of animations and walking speed. Yet I can't quit it. I wish they had front loaded my skill points so I could get more skills earlier, but the combat is still so solid and still feels like I have lots of options.
The presentation is lovely. The voice acting seems to be handled by British people making exaggerated accents, and I'm here for it.
Final Fantasy XII | The Zodiac Age
I'm not sold on the job system being an improvement over the original ability system. I'm mostly happy about the visual upgrades, and the 60 FPS bump. The original PS2 release already looked better than real life, but this takes it to a whole new level. However, because I'm never happy, I must include the texture upscale is very noticeable.
The changes they made to the shops also made it so there aren't any good upgrades in shops till the Barheim Passage, and the beginning of the game was already a drag. They still only allow the gambits to be used as late as in the original, and that's also a drag. Many people mention how the gambits are optional, but controlling the game without them actually sucks.
I've tried playing this version before, however never got all the way through. I hope I can change that this time cause I want to experience more of the games environments in high resolution.
The gambits are the best part of FFXII and trying to play without them sounds insane to me! I'm still shocked that it's been what, two decades since that game first came out and as far as I know, no other major rpg/jrpg has copied that gambit system or improved on its potential (granted, I haven't played many FF games since XII, but I have played tons of other games that I felt could really benefit from that system). There are small commands/automation that you can give to your followers in plenty of rpgs, but nothing that comes remotely close to the granularity and customization that you could get with the gambit system.
Also, in a weird taking-a-step-back sorta way, I'm surprised it hasn't been incorporated into more kid-friendly games as a way to subtly teach them programing and computer literacy. The whole system boils down to a bunch of if->then statements, just with health bars and monster weaknesses rather than math.
That's also part of the beauty of the system, that it can be used very sparingly if you just want to ignore it (if enemy weak to fire -> cast firaga, or if ally health low -> cast curaga) or you can get as wacky with it as you please if you have the creativity to go nuts.
Plus finding and unlocking new gambit pieces in the world and in shops felt amazing, similar to finding new Gwent cards in Witcher 3, except way more practical since they could completely alter your gameplan going forward.
Also, one more thing about FFXII that I fondly remember loving/hating: that massive skill tree, lol.
I can see why people don't like them. Having all the characters attack without player input was probably a bad idea. Leader control ought to have been manual in some way.
FF XIII has a system of changing stances in combat, which changes the character behaviour, but isn't granular control like gambits.
Been a while since I last played it, but do all the characters have to attack? I have fond memories of making a super up Vaan dual-wielding a katana while the rest of my party just constantly cast stuff like heals and haste and berserk on him. Thats the beauty of the system. No other game I’ve played has given me that same sense of control over my party.
Like another super fond memory is finding a slime monster that kept producing smaller slimes. So I could set my party to only attack enemies that were below a certain level or hp amount. So essentially I could level up forever without having to do anything. I remember leaving my ps2 on, going to school, then coming home hours later to a boosted party who had been grinding away at slimes all day, lol. Again, that’s such a cool thing to let the player be able to do, made me feel so proud of myself as a kid for figuring it out.
Eventually, yes. You'd have to overlevel to get through the game with only one character attacking.
Do you mean he was holding one katana with both hands? Cause you can't dual wield Katana in this game. The Masamune is a weapon many would use as you described. It has a high combo rate, so you can buff its wielder and go to town while the other characters support.
My point was not about attacking per se. You just won't be comfortably able to input all the commands your characters can get in a fight manually. Too many clicks for that.
I've seen that! I failed at doing just about any of those auto-grind sessions in this game back in the PS2 days. Even when I tried setting things up as the guides told me, I still failed.
That sounds about right. I don't remember all the details since it's been a decade or two, I just have this very funny image of him like super angry (probably cuz of the berserk or rage or whatever it's called constantly being cast on him) and super fast (because of the haste) just soloing enemies left and right with a big katana while the rest of the party watches terrified from a distance. 10-year-old me thought that was hilarious, and honestly I still do!
Not sure if they've changed it for the remake, but I remember just sort of figuring it out through trial and error, maybe reloading a few saves. Maybe there was some healing of enemies involved? Like if the big slime took a certain amount of damage my party would heal him so that he could continue to produce slime? Not sure of the details but it was very fulfilling trying to troubleshoot my way into the loop (again, very similar to programming in that sense, testing out if->then statements and then adjusting depending on results).
To be honest I've forgotten a lot of that game's story. You're inspiring me to pick it up again! I remember something about these two space pirates(one being a bunny lady) crash landing near some town in a desert. Then the main character and his friend/sister/something somehow team up with them to get out of there. And then somehow there's a princess involved? And one dude was named Bach I think, lol. Sorta all over the place with three separate story lines that maybe(hopefully) get wrapped up at the end. Also I remember fighting cacti for some reason, and a big T-Rex/wolf hybrid thing. Fun times!
Doom 2016
Bloody, straight forward, rockin.
I'll be playing Doom Eternal next, and then stopping my play through of the series. Second Wind did a few reviews of Doom Dark Ages and it does not look like they kept the bag up
I have now finished all 4 games in the Infinity series of science fiction visual novels.
Thoughts on the last 2 games:
Remember11
Premise: A young woman is involved in a plane crash and finds herself stranded in a blizzard-bound mountain cabin with a handful of other passengers. As she struggles to survive exposure and starvation, the woman finds herself trading bodies back and forth with a man in a psychiatric institution whose life is threatened by an unknown assailant.
The Good:
The game does a great job of setting this really tense, claustrophobic (almost gothic in the literary sense) tone for the entire story. The entire story takes place in the mountain cabin and the psychiatric institution (which is also very small), both of which are completely isolated from the outside world by the elements and geography. Fear, dread and suspicion are constantly hanging over the two protagonists as they alternate between the prospect of a slow but sure death in the cabin and an unpredictable and violent death in the psychiatric institution, all while working with a potentially untrustworthy stranger who periodically takes control of their own body. It's an engaging way to frame the (otherwise potentially pretty dry) science fiction elements and a really stark contrast to the more lighthearted tone in the rest of the series.
The Bad:
This game drops the branching route structure of the first 2 games entirely and only has two routes in a fixed order - the woman's story, followed by the man's story which takes place concurrently and covers what happens on the other side of each body swap. The first route sets up the mysteries, while the second provides the answers... or so the player is led to think. In practice, the answers provided in the second route lead to a bunch of new questions which are not explicitly answered (including some critical stuff like the motivations of the 'antagonist'), and the second route itself - and hence the game - terminates on a very abrupt cliffhanger with no third act to close it out.
Having looked into it a bit after emerging from the game confused, this refusal to spoon-feed all of the answers to the player (which is something all 3 other games at least make an attempt at) seems to be a majorly polarising love/hate point for players and reviewers:
On one side, you have the people who argue that the clues for working out the remaining mysteries are already present in the existing two routes and praise the game for challenging the player to really pay attention to the text and read between the lines to draw their own conclusions. To this day, there are a good number of fan sites out there with their own corkboard and red string attempts to resolve the questions the story does not explicitly answer (some of which are more entertaining reading than the game itself!) which speaks to just how deeply this game clicks for some people.
On the other, you have those who feel unsatisfied that there are no 'official answers' (I'm definitely in this camp). I wouldn't say I hated how the story turned out, but it feels a bit like I turned up to a restaurant and was served a perfectly nice first and second course, only to then be told the staff were going home and I had to cook the remainder of the meal myself with help from the other diners. If the game was always only going to have the two existing routes, I would have preferred that they just cut the stuff which is not properly explained in either of them.
My other gripe is that they go too hard with some of the sci-fi. The ideas are genuinely interesting, but some of the writing is pitched at such a high level that I just couldn't understand the concepts even with the assistance of the Wikipedia entries on those topics. Fortunately, most of this stuff is either buried pretty deep in the optional 'TIPS' section (a feature which would later re-appear in Zero Escape 2 and the AI: The Somnium Files series) or in optional dialogue branches where you can just tell the speaker to move on, and understanding how these science fiction concepts work under the hood is not necessary to understand what the related macguffins do for story purposes.
12Riven
Premise: A boy receives a text message from an unknown sender informing him that his childhood friend will be killed at noon on the roof of an abandoned hotel. In parallel, a policewoman with photographic memory searches for her colleague who disappears while investigating a plot to 'destroy time'.
This last game in the series combines the best parts of all of the previous ones. It has:
An absolutely bonkers core sci-fi idea which took me more than half of the game to fully grasp (but which is explained in detail).
A focus on action and density of story which completely eliminates the 'slow middle'.
All 3 earlier games take place over a period 7 days (a lot of which is taken up by mundane stuff like people eating or ruminating on their situation), but 12Riven takes place over a much shorter period of around 48 hours and is packed with fighting, shootouts, explosions, mystery solving, misdirection and plot twists. It's like reading a weird fusion of 24 and a Christopher Nolan film.
A simple structure with just 3 routes (the boy's story, the policewoman's story and an unlockable 'true ending' route which turns both earlier stories on their head). The game still offers a lot of choices, but you won't need to faff about just trying to get onto the right route.
If you are the sort of weirdo like me who enjoys old VNs, this is probably the one I'd recommend out of the series, along with Ever17 if you can stomach the repetitiveness of the first 12 hours (the final route and extra story which make up the last 8 hours or so are good!)
I'm now playing The Hundred Line: Last Defence Academy.
This is the mammoth adventure / tactical RPG with 100 endings from Kodaka Kazutaka (writer of Danganronpa) and Uchikoshi Kotaro (writer of Zero Escape and the above Infinity series) about a group of students who are forcibly enlisted to defend a school from attack by mysterious invaders for 100 days. They are told that if they succeed, they can go home - but if they fail, they and their loved ones, along with the rest of humanity, are doomed.
Right from the get-go, everything from the art, character designs and music to the premise, writing and presentation - even the UI - feels laser-targeted at tricking my brain into thinking this is a new Danganronpa game. The tone is colourful and irreverent but also over-the-top violent and darkly conspiratorial in a very familiar way. I'm digging it a lot!
I've barely just started the game, but the actual gameplay seems to be along the lines of:
Gathering resources / improving your skills by training and hanging out with fellow students on days with no invasion.
Repelling the invaders when they attack.
Moving the story forward.
...which again feels very much like Danganronpa with battles in place of investigations / trials.
The combat part is pretty breezy and will probably feel casual to people used to more involved tactical JRPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea or Fire Emblem. There are no levels, equipment or real stats beyond HP / attack / range, and there's a shared pool of 'action points' (moves) for all of your units. All of the damage is deterministic (e.g. someone using an 'attack 2' move always deals 2 damage), and the enemies can often be killed in just 1-2 hits but are constantly coming at you in big waves.
Therefore, the challenge lies in clearing out each wave and configuration of enemies as efficiently as possible, almost like a block clearing puzzle game. There's no permadeath (players can even 'sacrifice' units to perform special attacks, in which case they'll return at the start of the next wave) and certain enemies will also reward you with extra action points when you defeat them (enabling you to go on a self-sustaining killing spree with some clever positioning), so playing aggressively definitely feels like the way to go.
I'm looking forward to diving deeper into this one over the coming weeks. I don't really care about 100%-ing it or getting achievements, but I'm invested in the story and would like to see all of the endings that have substance to them.
So a while ago there was an announcement trailer for a non mainline game of Rune Factory called Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma. At the time I was a casual fan of the series but I quickly forgot about it because the release date seemed so far away. I really don't get hyped about stuff unless a release date is revealed to be soon.
So I have been on vacation this month (with almost no internet) and while waiting for my partner to do something, I was scrolling through the Switch News app and I came across an ad for it and it looked surprisingly interesting. It gave me an interesting choice. I really like Rune Factory and besides 2 screenshots, a introductory post and a faint memory of the trailer. I could get this game without my usual researching it for days to see if it's worth it. I just could get it and play it blindly. I can't remember the last time I did something like that to be honest.
So luckily I managed to find a copy in a supermarket. Suprisingly only for 45 euro, which was a big relief at the time because downloading it on the internet was just something I didn't want to do.
So onto the game itself, and my blind experience with it.
So far it has changed quite a bit compared to RF5. I never got far in that game, the switch port runs pretty poorly and it has got that 3d jank as the first 3d game of the series. The biggest change is the farming aspect of it. What used to be something you did only as a player, is changed into something you can assign your villagers to using the village management aspect of it. You can still do it manually but I don't see why you would do it specifically. I'm not sure which option I like better in the end. To be fair to the developers, in my opinion the farming aspect did not change much from RF3 to RF5 (I mean it is fun and I don't see a way to make it even more fun tbh) and I would say all of the other improvements are definitely upgrades.
In my experience as well RFGoA runs way better on the switch, unlike RF5 I would say that playing the switch version is not shooting yourself in the foot.
Then there are the characters, this is the most fun aspect of a blind playthrough. I don't know who to expect out there and so far I would say I like all of them. I don't know if there is a child making aspect like RF5 either at this point of the game but there are romance systems in place that I can see but haven't experienced.
The combat and exploring elements are definitely the biggest upgrades, the combat is not something I would say is challenging, in the end you can just upgrade yourself through most problems by just farming gold with your village but it is really fun. You got alot of weapon variations, special attacks and if you manage to dodge an attack you can flurry rush the enemy. Which results in being able to take on pretty high level enemies if you know how to avoid the attacks which is really fun! Once I got so close to taking someone out way above my level but I got cocky and paid the price for it.
I'm not sure how much there is left of the game to beat, again especially with my rule to not research this game in any sort of way online has been so fun. I do want to make a proper review once I'm done with it.
Might & Magic 4 + 5 - World of Xeen
Yup, still playing this one. I finally received my Darkside of Xeen Clue Book earlier this week and will be bringing it with me on a road trip coming-up this week, just in case I actually make it past Clouds of Xeen.
My party is now between level 13-14 and I feel like I'm kind of topping out in Clouds, as I've burned through 3 out of the 4 areas and the last castle I did, Castle Basanji was supposed to be pretty tough, but ended-up being a fairly easy romp for my party. Traps did mess me up a bit, but otherwise, the Wizards and Werewolves were no trouble at all. So I'm following my Clouds Clue Book section "How to Win" and I think I'll go to the Tomb of Terror next to do the next steps to head towards the end of this section of the game.
I know it's not the newest or most exciting thing, but I'm just feeling really happy existing in my retro DOS gaming niche right now. I feel like it's a perfect break from the modern gaming discussion.
My best friend and I got into Ravenswatch, and it's been super great. It's a co-op action rogue like (think Hades) based on a "dark" version of general folklore (characters include red riding hood, Aladdin, Wukong, etc).
The game is fairly difficult, but really well put together. Each character has their own abilities, and there's an actual mechanical focus on teamwork in a lot of the abilities and upgrades which I really enjoy. And then you level up and get talents that can change your play style from game to game.
One unique point that I've really come to appreciate is that the game has the classic rogue like "dash" available to all characters, but you don't get invincibility frames during it. What that means is dodging enemy attacks requires actual, y'know, dodging, instead of just treating it as a "ignore damage for the next second" button like games such as Hades or Sworn do. It honestly took some time (and damage received) to get used to, but is much more satisfying. Also, each character has a "defense" ability that in addition to whatever other effect does also provide a small invuln window, so you still get the panic button, it's just on a cool down and not necessarily as mobile.
Me and a friend played through the demo of Absolum together, another mutliplayer Hades-like. It's more of a Streets of Rage like beat 'em up. Might be worth checking out once you're done with Ravenswatch.