What game are you wasting time on?

[Sigourn]

I've been playing Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne for over 20 hours already.

It's a good candidate for the "diamond in the rough" definition: this game does a lot of things great, but a lot of things wrong. I'll be comparing it to JRPGs as a whole since it's how the game truly shines.

Pros:

- You can actually die in random battles if you are not careful, meaning most fights are engaging.
- Boss battles require strategy. Party composition requires some strategy.
- Movesets are important. Buffs and Debuffs satisfyingly so, as they can make a huge difference between "impossible" and "doable".
- The Press Turn system is great. Basically, you are given one "turn" for each party member you have. Battles are divided in rounds: all side's turns first, then the second side's turns. Missing an attack means you lose two turns. Getting a Critical Hit or a hitting a weakness means you get an extra half-turn. Having your attack Voided means your round ends. Overall, it encourages thinking as opposed to "spam Attack", because fights in Nocturne are potentially deadly and your entire party could be wiped out if you were an unlucky idiot.
- Magatamas allow for customization of your character, as they affect what skills does he learn, his weaknesses, and his strengths, as well as bonus points to his attributes (that aren't permanent).
- Fusing your demons is always nice.
- Interesting premise and story so far.
- Demon design kicks ass. Artstyle is fantastic.
- Soundtrack is cool.

Cons:

- Dying kicks you to the intro screens, as opposed to asking you if you want to reload. No game that has this problem can EVER be a 10/10 in my book, it's the most basic flaw anyone who play tests a videogame should have become aware of.
- The Press Turn system, as mentioned, is great. However, I don't think Critical hits should be rewarded with extra turns. Whereas you can reliably augment your chances to dodge an attack, or cause your enemy to be more prone to getting hit, getting a Critical Hit is something so random (for the most part) that a battle can go horribly wrong (or horribly right) if your luck was bad. Having enemies constantly land criticals on you as you watch hopelessly is just not my idea of fun.
- Magatamas can't be switched mid-battle. Prepare to reload if you faced a boss that was strong against your current Magatama. I would have made it so that switching Magatamas gave the enemy double the turns.
- Dismissing a demon takes one turn. Summoning a demon takes another. Frankly, I've survived in Hard without ever needing to dismiss and summon a Demon, because it's such a fucking bore (and inconvenient) to have the process take two entire turns.
- Running away is another fucking chore that I never felt like pulling off, which is funny considering there are more than enough reasons to run away in this game compared to other JRPGs.
- No rule for who gets the first round in a battle. Training demons becomes a hassle when you can't get your party to consistently get the first round and obliterate the opposition before your weaker demons get killed.
- Movement is shit, I don't like it at all. I would have made this a grid-based dungeon crawler like the originals. 3D movement adds nothing to the game, IMO.
- Encounter rate is too high for my taste. This makes the tougher areas of the game a pain to traverse, as not only every encounter has the chance to be lethal, you have to traverse TONS of them.
- High MP requirements of spells and low MP pools in the early game make spells something that should be used very sparingly. Not necessarily something BAD, but it's kind of annoying.

 

[Great Deceiver]

The main problem I had with Nocturne was the grinding. I don't usually complain about grinding in JRPGs but this is one of the most egregious examples.

On topic: I'm playing NieR: Automata. It's pretty cool but definitely slower than other Platinum games. I never played any of the Drakengard games or the first NieR either, so I'm not crazy about the setting.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Picked up the expansion for Renowned Explorer

Still a pretty fun of a game, the expansion makes it somewhat harder because the challenges rails you to one particular playstyle which might not be optimum, but it certainly adds more difficulty to the game.

 

[Astral Rag]

Divine Divinity is at least alliterative. DD is a curious short name.

MDK is only leading to Murder Death Kill. Most stupid juvenile name ever.

Hint: It's never officially stated what MDK actually stands for. MDK standing for Murder Death Kill is only a theory. A game theory.

Meaning of "MDK"

While the precise meaning of the title's three-letter acronym is never revealed during the game, the gaming press and fans adopted Murder, Death, Kill,[47] which was coined as a neologism in the 1993 film Demolition Man. Another possibility is documented in the game manual, where Kurt's mission is named "Mission: Deliver Kindness".[17] It could also stand for the first initials of game's characters; Max, Dr. Hawkins, and Kurt.[23] In the README for the PC version of the game, it is stated "It stands for whatever we say it stands for on any given day; i.e., today it stands for Mother's Day Kisses."[48] In the European PC release, the background images during installation present many possible meanings for the letters; one of which is "Murder, Death, Kill". In the Japanese release, on the back cover it says in bold yellow letters: "My Dear Knight". During the installation of MDK2, various meanings are shown, again including "Murder, Death, Kill". The original meaning of "MDK" from the company's initial promo video was in fact "Murder Death Kill".[49] In a 2009 interview with NowGamer, David Perry revealed that because the North American publisher PIE was supposed to make toys based on the game, they did not like the title, so the words were removed and simply replaced with "MDK".[50]

 

[Daedalos]

As always..
Heroes of the Storm
Hearthstone

New kids on the block:

Prey
Player Unknown: Battlegrounds

Edit: Why y'all niggers so butthurt bout' my playing?

I play loads of RPGS, too, y'know, thing is, I've already completed all the recent good ones. So.

 

[Blonsky]

Dungeon Hack
A almost perfect run ruined by experience draining enemies. Fuck.

 

[Vorark]

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

Been so long, playing on the PPSSPP. Last time I tried PPSSPP had trouble emulating sounds, ages ago . Oh, how I missed thee MHFU -- no gimmicks, just plain unadultareted hunting bliss. Pokke Village, lovely as always and dat music... Still the best MH game, hands down.

Edit: Hell, psyched enough I might even give 4U another chance.

 

[sullynathan]

Been trying Bayonetta, E.Y.E., SC: Double Agent and Binding of Isaac Rebirth. What's the difference between rebirth, afterbirth and afterbirth+?

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Dungeon Hack
A almost perfect run ruined by experience draining enemies. Fuck.

I'll never forget the run I had where I died at the very last floor to a blue dragon. I was wailing on it for a good while, then suddenly he instagibbed me. The weird thing was that it was completely stationary, taking way more punishment than it should have and some of my attacks weren't even causing its sprite to flash as if it were taking damage. I'm pretty sure that he was either bugged out, or there were multiple monsters somehow spawned on top of the same square. That run would have hit the high score, too ;(

 

[octavius]

This is rather embarrasing, but I now realize that I never completed Half-Life back in the days, despite playing it 2-3 times. I must have disliked Xen more than I remember...

Anyway, my final verdict for Half-Life:


Two things ruined it from being a masterpiece - bugs and too many jumping puzzles.

I can't count the times I had to reload due to being stuck in the furniture (most often an elevator). In the end I had to Google how to use the console to to be able to fly out of one of Nihilant's little caves, since the I got stuck when hitching a ride with a floating thing.

Jumping puzzles ruin the flow of the game, especially the chapters Residue Processing (the "Fun" House) and most of Xen.

Compared to Unreal it is more uneven. The best parts (like Surface Tension) is better, but Unreal was an ultra smooth and bug free experience where I never screamed "fucking piece of shit!" when playing.
Half-Life tells the story of the game better, by showing and with interacting with live people instead of journals of dead people.
Encounter design, if you can call it that in a shooter, is excellent, with lots of memorable encounters, including fights between marines and aliens. Level design is also mostly excellent. Unlike Half-Life 2 (as far as I played at least), not all encounters are ambushes, and I like being able to be the hunter once in a while and use the crossbow.
Also, Half-Life has humour. I just loved those science guys with their British accents, and their dry comments.

I don't remember much from the first 2-3 times I played this game, so it was almost like playing it for the first time, which made it all the more enjoyable.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Gave a shot for JA2 Wildfire. Nothing spectacular - some new textures here and here plus new map, interface and stuff.
There is a patch that make almost any JA2 mod playable on Wildfire, no idea why people would do that (variety?) in the first place.
Speaking about mods - 1.13 have one annoying aspect. New stable versions are released few years after last build. Wanna test some cool feature, like custom gear for your IMP that was released few months after last stable build? Suck it down with unstable build.

 

[adddeed]

Finished Myth Fallen Lords today. Great little game, must have been spectacular back in the day. Soulblighter is a tough son of a bitch.

Checked out Myth 2 for a bit, seems to be even better, visuals especially (though im running it with the texture pack).

 

[Zdzisiu]

Finished Myth Fallen Lords today. Great little game, must have been spectacular back in the day. Soulblighter is a tough son of a bitch.

Checked out Myth 2 for a bit, seems to be even better, visuals especially (though im running it with the texture pack).

You might be "possibly retarded" but that is a fine choice of games. Myth games are awesome, the first two ones. The third one is a bit of a letdown.

 

[Exhuminator]

As far as RPGs go, most recently I finished Demon's Souls. And now I'm halfway through The 7th Saga. I've been playing as Lejes, the demon. The 7th Saga is... well, it's something alright.

 

[Rahdulan]

Finished Myth Fallen Lords today. Great little game, must have been spectacular back in the day. Soulblighter is a tough son of a bitch.

Checked out Myth 2 for a bit, seems to be even better, visuals especially (though im running it with the texture pack).

Did you play Fallen Lords through Soulblighter? You get to enjoy the better UI of the sequel and things like that. They were amazing games, though.

Do share what you think about Myth 3 eventually.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

The Surge. A close contendor for best rpg this year (Prey being main candidate right now).

 

[panzertoter]

Dungeon Hack
A almost perfect run ruined by experience draining enemies. Fuck.

You can turn them off in options if I remember correctly.

 

[octavius]

Next game on my play list is Thief: The Dark Project.
It's a game I've both been eagerly looking forward to, as well as dreading. Looking forward to, since it was was favourite game once, and I played most of the fan made missions made up to 2007.
But then for some reason I started to get motion sickness from certain 1st PP games, starting with Thief 2, which is why I have also dreaded playing TDP.
Since 2007 I've learnt that it's the head bobbing that makes me sick, and it turns out it can actualle be turned off in the Thief games. Halleluja! :D

Edit the configuration file.
Open <path-to-game>\cam_ext.cfg with a text editor.

1. Find the line ;bob_factor.

Change the default value to 0.
bob_factor 0.0 (default 0.3)

Hadn't it been for this I would seriously consider munching sea sickness pills before playing...

 

[Blonsky]

You can turn them off in options if I remember correctly.

Yes, it is posible to customize the difficulity and remove experience drain or monster spells or even traps on the level but that makes monsters and levels alot less interesting to deal with.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Finished Resident Evil Revelations 2. Not as good as the first Revelations, and felt much more oriented towards co-op and replays. One of the things I most enjoy about Resident Evil is the story (yes, it's awesome in a popcorn kind of way), but I didn't really get much here. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

Getting very close to finishing Trails of Cold Steel 2. It's absolutely brilliant. Also playing Trails in the Sky 3 when I don't have access to the PS3.

 

[adddeed]

Finished Myth Fallen Lords today. Great little game, must have been spectacular back in the day. Soulblighter is a tough son of a bitch.

Checked out Myth 2 for a bit, seems to be even better, visuals especially (though im running it with the texture pack).

Did you play Fallen Lords through Soulblighter? You get to enjoy the better UI of the sequel and things like that. They were amazing games, though.

Do share what you think about Myth 3 eventually.

Nope, original. The only weird thing about the UI was how formations worked. Also thank god for the ability to speed up the game (up to 16x), normal speed is pretty damn slow, and the maps are big, the objectives are not marked, and they are sometimes a bit ambiguous. Being able to quickly explore the map or move units around when there is no enemy is great.

 

[nimateb]

Furi, awesome boss rush action game.

 

[Average Manatee]

Finished The Evil Within. Pleasantly surprised by the gameplay. It's set up to be an RE4 knockoff but is actually way more stealth based. You get FUCKING NOTHING for ammo so being smart and luring enemies into traps or stealth killing them is actually fairly essential. Also liked how powerful the weapons feel. Even the lowly pistol fully upgraded for damage can take out bosses fairly efficiently. The Crossbow gets cheesy OP by the end game though (but its the game's signature weapon so I can excuse a bit, and it's cool). Plot is complete horse shit. Massive plot holes everywhere, Deus Ex Machinas are thrown at the player in every other cutscene to warp them to a new place and out of danger, and the whole reason that the player exists in the story isn't explained.

Spoiler

But the whole game literally turns out to be a dream inside a dream inside a dream, so nothing actually happened anyway.

Currently trying to plow through Geneforge 4. Man does all this combat become a drag. Half of the stuff in the game either one hits you or applies some ailment that make you incapable while two hitting you. And enemies in the game seem to target semi-randomly and will happily cross your entire vision range just to randomly snipe you even with creations set up in between you and them to tank. I'd go just hide in a corner and let my creations handle things but they need buffs to survive endless respawns and buffs last a criminally short time.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Spent all of 6 hours playing through the whole of Max Payne 2, since it's been sitting in my "played but never finished" collection for a while. Seems like whoever made it decided the dream sequence from the first one was the best part of the game, so they added even more awkward instant-death platforming. And an escort mission. Ugh. I'm surprised it was over that quickly though.

 

[Barnabas]

My laptop is in the shop so I'm playing bg2. Just kind of planning my party and such until I get it back on a lesser computer. I'm going to import my cavelier paladin and I'm thinking my party will be: Minsc, Keldorn, Jaheira, Yoshimo and Aerie. Once I get Imoen back she'll replace Yosh. The first time I played bg2 seriously was long ago and I couldn't get past Rohk the Transmuter. Maybe I was under leveled.