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Zibniyat

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2014
Messages
6,536
KotOR II: Kreia's Petty Vendetta. Sponsored by Xanax.

32 hours of pseudo-intellectual philosophical meanderings courtesy of the malignant walking tumour known as Kreia, a space witch who can't wait to tell me about causality and entropy and all the other hip subjects she picked up in community college. Don't forget a convoluted, nihilistic and bleak storyline that goes absolutely nowhere slow (even with the restoration patch), complete with the most contrived plot devices and resolutions you're ever likely to see in a game. There's also the vivid cast of characters including a sassy former groupie redhead with a wee rocket launcher on her wrist, a frustrated anime albino yoga instructor in heat, a spiky-headed alien dude voiced by a guy with his jaws wired shut, a Firefly reject sidekick with a stupid haircut who crack jokes and abuses droids but is actually really conflicted and sensitive inside because he did naughty things in his past and the dry humour is all just a cover and oh the humanity. Makes me cry every time. Then there's the wookiee who is more one-note than Zaalbar. The only ones who gets a pass is the blind waifu because Kelly Hu, and Mandalore because Mandalore. Lastly, a main character who is actually the manifestation of Force AIDS, spreading his influence all around him. Blargh, that is what I say to that. Humbug.

Not taking shots at your playthrough or anything but sometimes I just gotta do it, know what I'm saying?

:mlady:
 

Jinn

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
4,930
Started playing Dragon Quest VIII again, after letting it rest for over a year. Should have done it earlier, because this games makes me feel relaxed. You have to take your time to play through it and spend hours grinding, so you don't need to hurry through it. And when one character reached a level you feel that you achieved your goal for this day, so you can put it down. Besides that, I still found this quite charming in all aspects: It has a simple but intense story about pain and how to react to it, sympathetic characters, a fairytale atmosphere and the monsters are still creative and so CUTE. The atmosphere is optimistic without being dumbed down, the music is also good, the mechanics simple but effective. I just love it. Worth every cent and timeless, even after 15 years. Feels like coming home.

Would highly recommend giving Dragon Quest XI a shot in the future if you haven't already. You're going to like it a lot if you like DQ VIII.
 

baud

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 11, 2016
Messages
3,992
Location
Septentrion
RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
I have been playing Zeus recently, after the latest Sseth video. Sometime it feel like it's spinning a lot of plates, especially since there's no information on how much is being produced, so it's complicated to evaluate how many buildings for oil and cloth I need. But once everything is running smoothly, I find it relaxing to just look everyone going to work, following the paths I've traced.
Also I want to give Emperor a try, for a less familiar setting.
 

Azalin

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 16, 2011
Messages
7,305
Finished Dear Esther Landmark Edition my first walking simulator,the name is pretty accurate since all you do is walk around for a bit over a hour looking around but doing nothing but listening to the main character's monologue until the "game" ends.Graphics are nice but it's obvious this is a remake of an old game so don't expect something spectacular by today's standard.Story is meh. Rating wtf is this shit/10.Not recommended
 

Kabas

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Feb 10, 2018
Messages
1,258
Welp, i finished the whole age of fear series so far so here is my thoughts.

The first Age of fear: the undead king. It's going to get a gold version in the near future, which will add the open world from the 2/3 games and bases(from what i heard)
Humans are basic, but have all of the bases covered. You have healer monks, double damage blademasters, high damage ballista, mobile and tanky knights. Wizards won't impress you with original spell list but they're tremendously useful. Their only weakness i noticed is the lack of high hp units, the only one they have is a vulnerable to electricity knight/paladin. Something like a pair of dwarven tesla gunners can make a short work of them.
Undead are fun, especially once you start getting stuff like the bone catapults, bone golems and plague zombies(this ones will quickly lose their usefulness tho). Necromancer is their key unit and his rise dead spell can do two things:
-Revive the enemy corpse as a cheap and expendable skeleton, the skeleton type depends on the enemy type
-Revive at full hp your fleshy undead types like abominations or vampires.
So your usual tactic as them is to slowly overwhelm your enemy with the group of constantly reviving ghouls/vampires and once you start inflict casualities overwhelm them with your skeletons. I like pulling this bullshit against enemies, but hate it than the game pulls this against me.

Age of fear 2: the chaos lords
Demons are fun and suprisingly diverse. A lot of your units have a fire strike(80% to +1 fire damage). You have beholders with a ranged paralyze attack, cannon that can hit up to 5 targets inside it's range, body possessing will-o-wisps. Mancubuses deal high damage and have a lot of resistances, but are clumsy(can't walk and attack at the same turn), succubuses have a very useful spell list and can hold their own in melee. Summoners/demonologists/Chaos mages can summon some very useful and expendable demons(especially once they reach an elite rank), but they start the battle with no mana.
Orcs have a strong melee/middle range in the form of ogres, black orcs and troll throwers. One of their leaders also have the bonuses towards an avaliable army size. Shaman can hypnotise enemies and goblin kamikaze is just plain amazing. As a weakness, they tend to have a limited ranged and spell damage options, goblins are very fragile and their death can quickly cause a morale loss. Guys like ogres tend to be very vulnerable to ranged damage and poison.

Age of fear 3: The legend
Forest folk feels a bit similar to the humans in the sense that they have all bases covered(with the exception of artillery). The have a lot of choices in their army composition. Saproling/Ents can root the enemy on attack(doesn't need to hit, the enemy will be rooted even on miss), have a lot of hp and regeneration, but they're vulnerable to fire and they have a low attack stat(low chance to hit). Insectoids are alternative frontliners with a fire resistance and both of their evolution options have some fun abilities, they have low morale however. Fungusoids with the posion immunity and poison arrows or more long-range driad huntresses with the crippling shot. Driad/Nature sorceress can heal, turn into bear or transform the enemy into the pig. Anti-undead holy aligment unicorns as a cavalry or evil aligment driders as an alternative(which you can't hire in the campaign, you only have one as a hero). Their plant/mushroom types tend to have/can learn a regrowth ability, which means that they don't die even if killed. You also have vampire mushrooms and dire bears, and i heard that the developer plans to upgrade their roster in the near future.
Dwarfs are quality over quantity race. Their units tend to start with some outrageous abilities, which for the other factions would be a high tier upgrades. Like the precision on dwarven gunners/rogues(ignore defences above 3) or engineer starting with 3 shots of flame breath. All of the dwarves are prepared to chug ale at the moment notice which heals them, removes posion and makes them immune to hypnotise spell at the cost of some stat penalties. All of the dwarves are tanky and they can compliment their army composition with constructs like arrow resistant animated armors or super mobile but vulnerable to magic guardians who can shoot a fire laser, they also have super long range aoe damage cannon. Their weakness is a generally low speed, lack of cavalry, a proper long ranged sniper and a proper spellcaster. Runemaster's runes are strong, but they're all are one use items and so he will quickly become a deadweight in a protracted engagement. Dwarves are also expensive and their leaders are grumpy(-1 army size)

All in all, a solid fantasy tactics game as i said before. Earn the loot from fights, develop your squad, choose the equips for your heroes - you don't need to do much to make a men happy. If interested, you can try the Age of Fear: The Free World, a free version of the game with the open world and no campaign missions. You can choose here your own hero, like the animated armor.
VKmedNn.png
 
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Self-Ejected

Harry Easter

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jul 27, 2016
Messages
819
Started Ys:Seven yesterday, thanks to a sale. And after configuring the controls a bit I must say ... I'm hooked. It's still the good old Ys'ian hacking and slashing, but now I have companions at my side and that makes it double awesome. If possible, I would only play as Dogi, because there's nothing manlier than putting your enemy down, only with your fists, YEAH! Surprised how good that works after Oath in Felghana and Origins and curious how the story will unfold (I already know what is about, but that HOW is often more interesting than the WHAT).
 
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Kabas

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Feb 10, 2018
Messages
1,258
Slowly clearing away my backlog, right now it's the Etherlords(Both games).
There is a lot of annoyances related to the strategic homm-like layer of the first game, mainly the things you need to do to upgrade the deck of your hero. All of your level 1 heroes start with the faction's basic deck, new spells/summons are bought from the special shop which needs to be visited by your hero personally. Anything other than your basic "cards" requires runes to cast, which are bought separetely for each spell in a different shop. Those two shops can be very far away from each over and no matter how hard i looked it doesn't seem like i can exchange the cards between two heroes. On top of that, all of the turns are played simultaneously, meaning you can only do one thing each turn(gather one resource, visit one shop, attack one enemy and etc.).
All in all, i feel like i am doing too much back and forth for something so basic, yet crucial. My opinion is not improved by the fact that the missions seems to be structured around you dealing with the overleveled enemy hero equipped with full deck.

Fights themselves are fun however, and(all this running around aside) so is building your own deck with your limited resources and spell catalogue.
And it looks like the homm-like layer was abandoned in the sequel in favour of something more similar to the king's bounty. Understandable why, but i feel that something was lost for some reason.
wNoxhbV.png

Aside from this, it's absolutely the same game as the first one but with a few new cards.
 
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Vorark

Erudite
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
Messages
1,394
On PS4, I am playing Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. On Hard, it offers an acceptable challenge, but that's mostly for boss fights. You can tell that the game was a cross-platform game (PS Vita), because graphics aren't exactly top notch. It basically plays like a SMT copy. Since we haven't been spoiled with those kinds of games, I'll take it. Story isn't amazing, but it's interesting enough for me to want to find out more. I had already played this, but my PS Vita saves got corrupted when I reached chapter 8. I'm now at chapter 6, in other words, I'm almost back to where I was.

The story will pick up very soon, keep playing!
 

HansDampf

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2015
Messages
1,471
I'm getting my brain kicked by the last few levels of Baba Is You, a Sokoban-style puzzle game with a twist that lets you change the rules. The rules are defined by text blocks that you can push around and rearrange. For example, the most common rule is "Baba Is You", which means you are controlling Baba (some dog-like or sheep-like creature). If you replace "Baba" with, say, "Box", you will instead be controlling every box in the level. The game may look and sound retarded, but the resulting puzzles are really interesting and often funny, many of which have more than one solution. Any object can potentially have any attributes, including the text itself. It's best to go in with as little foreknowledge as possible.
And this game is hard! The levels are structured in different areas on a world map. If one puzzle gives you trouble, just go to a different area and come back later. What's odd is, to see the end credits you barely have to scratch the surface. You have to clear only 3 of the 10 main areas. But even after you've completed all 10 of them, including the extra levels (harder versions of some puzzles), the bonus content is crazy. There are bonus levels hidden within bonus levels, that are made up of more bonus levels, in which you can transform objects into yet even more bonus levels.
wtfamireading.png

Two points of criticism: Making sense of the different rules can be confusing in the beginning. Some words can't be taken literally, like the word "Open". And text blocks also have a special rule in that they are always pushable, probably to save the devs from adding "Text Is Push" into every level. The other problem is the flood of text in some of the later stages. Having to read and process like 10 or more different rules, before you can even start thinking about a solution, can get tiring.
 

Quilty

Magister
Joined
Apr 11, 2008
Messages
2,406
Battlefield 1
Love dipping back into this one. No, it does not provide a simulation of WW1, but weirdly that's what makes it so enjoyable: it's a pulpy, over-the-top (pun not intended), fast-paced game with a wide array of weapons and vehicles that allows for some uninhibited Battlefield fun while appropriating the aesthetics of the time period. The score is absolutely thrilling, too.

Tropico 1
Tried playing the latest one, Tropico 6, and it just reminded me of how much more fun the original was. Really great art and music, and the difficulty can be brutal, with the player constantly struggling to stay in power. Ever since the third installment, the series has just felt like another bland city builder game, despite all the groan-inducing jokes and characters. Thankfully, the original is still bursting with charm and energy that were, for me at least, lost in the subsequent versions.
 
Self-Ejected

Harry Easter

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jul 27, 2016
Messages
819
Finished Ys 1 (did most of the game ine one big session, but then spend three hours with beating the last boss) and now finished one third of Ys 2. And I have to say: the second game is so much better. 1 is nice, but this is SO GOOD. I don't know why, maybe it's because it has more of everything: more story, better graphics and magic is a nice addition to the gameplay. It feels like Ys 2 was the game we were promised to get, while Ys 1 was the 8 hours (11 for me, because of that boss) was only the prologue. This is good shit. Excited to see, what happens next.
 

Jinn

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
4,930
Finished Ys 1 (did most of the game ine one big session, but then spend three hours with beating the last boss) and now finished one third of Ys 2. And I have to say: the second game is so much better. 1 is nice, but this is SO GOOD. I don't know why, maybe it's because it has more of everything: more story, better graphics and magic is a nice addition to the gameplay. It feels like Ys 2 was the game we were promised to get, while Ys 1 was the 8 hours (11 for me, because of that boss) was only the prologue. This is good shit. Excited to see, what happens next.

Ys 2 is generally considered the better of the two and for good reason. It's got the fun aspects of the first game, but much expanded upon and fleshed out. Enjoy!
 

zaper

Yes.
Developer
Joined
Nov 7, 2015
Messages
404
Pathfinder: Kingmaker felt like a tabletop RPG experience in both the good, the bad and the ugly ways. At some point after dealing with the Kobolds and the Trolls the need to avoid doing some repetitive stuff overcame the want to continue playing and I never touched it.

Pathway is FTL + Indiana Jones + some laziness. Game has potential but gets too repetitive in its events and battles. I think also this game would work better on mobile.
 
Self-Ejected

Harry Easter

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jul 27, 2016
Messages
819
Ys 2 is generally considered the better of the two and for good reason. It's got the fun aspects of the first game, but much expanded upon and fleshed out. Enjoy!

I did and finished it yesterday :D. This was a really good one and you can see, that the guys who later made Terranigma devrloped it. Good, conclusive story, but I'm happy that there were more games. But after this they didn't need to make another one. Simple, but effective story and Bossfights out of a Shoot'em Up-hell. One of the new favorites.
 
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oldbonebrown

Arcane
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
841
Location
TELAH
I ended up playing 60 hours of The Witcher 3 in total, which was enough to do most of everything in the Novigrad area. Got completely disenchanted with the game as soon as I was forced to move on to the next area. It struck me that I was not doing anything at level 25 that I couldn't have done at the start of the game had my stats just been higher. No real increase in the skill required and no significant new abilities acquired, just the same shit but with higher numbers.
After doing most of the available side quests in Skellinge that were around my level and I felt forced to move on with the main plot I dropped the game. Everything involving Yennifer or Ciri is so intensely boring that I can't stand it. The excessive amount of standing around yapping about gay shit doesn't do anything for my enjoyment of the game.
Got 60 hours of decent entertainment, not bad, but in retrospect definitely a waste of time.

Played a bit of Xcom 2 after that and was having quite a bit of fun with it up until I installed the Alien Hunters DLC, which introduced enemies that to me seem like complete unbalanced bullshit.
I don't know if I am relying too much on savescumming and not focusing on tactics to mitigate losses enough, but losing your top soldiers feels like such a big hit that it would be hard to advance in the game after that, and the alien rulers are so OP that I don't know how to play without grave losses other than savescumming to the extreme, which is not fun. When I return to the game I think I will use mods to nerf them, but even so the further I got into the game the more other "unfair" stuff it seemed to throw at me.

Decided to take a break from Xcom 2 and play some Xcom: Enemy Within, with the Long War mod and the LW rebalance mod mod. Had quite a thrilling experience playing it on the easiest difficulty setting with ironman on, until a surprise army of aliens suddenly completely wiped my team in one mission. Considered that a loss and gave up.
I really missed the more destructible environments from Xcom 2, many times my plans went to shit because they relied on being able to blow up walls, that I would have been able to blow up in Xcom 2 but couldn't in this game. Don't remember if that's just how EW is or if it's the mod that has locked further destruction behind more powerful tech? Either way I will probably try this again sometime soon, playing a long strategy game without saves made for a nice engaging thing to return to every other evening for a short while, just enough to see some advancement and put myself in a new situation for the next evening.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,089
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
I'm getting my brain kicked by the last few levels of Baba Is You, a Sokoban-style puzzle game with a twist that lets you change the rules. The rules are defined by text blocks that you can push around and rearrange. For example, the most common rule is "Baba Is You", which means you are controlling Baba (some dog-like or sheep-like creature). If you replace "Baba" with, say, "Box", you will instead be controlling every box in the level. The game may look and sound retarded, but the resulting puzzles are really interesting and often funny, many of which have more than one solution. Any object can potentially have any attributes, including the text itself. It's best to go in with as little foreknowledge as possible.
And this game is hard! The levels are structured in different areas on a world map. If one puzzle gives you trouble, just go to a different area and come back later. What's odd is, to see the end credits you barely have to scratch the surface. You have to clear only 3 of the 10 main areas. But even after you've completed all 10 of them, including the extra levels (harder versions of some puzzles), the bonus content is crazy. There are bonus levels hidden within bonus levels, that are made up of more bonus levels, in which you can transform objects into yet even more bonus levels.
wtfamireading.png

Two points of criticism: Making sense of the different rules can be confusing in the beginning. Some words can't be taken literally, like the word "Open". And text blocks also have a special rule in that they are always pushable, probably to save the devs from adding "Text Is Push" into every level. The other problem is the flood of text in some of the later stages. Having to read and process like 10 or more different rules, before you can even start thinking about a solution, can get tiring.

Based on this, I gave Baba is You a go and mucked about with it most of yesterday. My thoughts:

# The combination of Soko Ban and basic 'programming strands' of Rules makes for very interesting gameplay. If done right we would have a winner here.
# The game is very bad in explaining gameplay elements to you, especially new ones. Trial and error is often the only way forward.
# The way forward is not linear. As mentioned, progress through the levels involves jumping back and forth to solve what few levels are doable. This is pointless IMO.
# As a result the game is truly hard. I have decades of experience with puzzle games and I was running into serious obstacles just in the second cluster of levels. The answer is far too often an unexplained or unrevealed aspect of the Rules of the game.
# Puzzles having more than one solution is Verboten by the developer. I've been watching the Steam forums, and the dev spends his time tracking down any alternate methods of solving the levels and removing them. I don't know why the dev chooses to cripple his own game like this, but it's his game, his call.
# This means that the layout of many levels is not final, and the game should be considered to be still in development.

My recommendation? If this game interests you, put it in your wishlist and check back on it in a few months to see if development has finalized.
For those looking for a DRM-free version, check the Humble Bundle store.
 

Night Goat

The Immovable Autism
Patron
No Fun Allowed
Joined
May 6, 2013
Messages
1,865,441
Location
[redacted]
Codex 2013 Codex 2014
I'm playing Final Fantasy XII. It's set in a land that's been invaded by the British and now you need a loicense for absolutely anything and everything.
 

Night Goat

The Immovable Autism
Patron
No Fun Allowed
Joined
May 6, 2013
Messages
1,865,441
Location
[redacted]
Codex 2013 Codex 2014
I ended up playing 60 hours of The Witcher 3 in total, which was enough to do most of everything in the Novigrad area. Got completely disenchanted with the game as soon as I was forced to move on to the next area. It struck me that I was not doing anything at level 25 that I couldn't have done at the start of the game had my stats just been higher. No real increase in the skill required and no significant new abilities acquired, just the same shit but with higher numbers.
After doing most of the available side quests in Skellinge that were around my level and I felt forced to move on with the main plot I dropped the game. Everything involving Yennifer or Ciri is so intensely boring that I can't stand it. The excessive amount of standing around yapping about gay shit doesn't do anything for my enjoyment of the game.
Got 60 hours of decent entertainment, not bad, but in retrospect definitely a waste of time.
I recommend sticking with it. You're past the worst part of the game, and near the end of the base game. Then you get to do Hearts of Stone which is much better.
 

HansDampf

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2015
Messages
1,471
# Puzzles having more than one solution is Verboten by the developer. I've been watching the Steam forums, and the dev spends his time tracking down any alternate methods of solving the levels and removing them. I don't know why the dev chooses to cripple his own game like this, but it's his game, his call.
# This means that the layout of many levels is not final, and the game should be considered to be still in development.
That would explain why I saw a new extra level appear in one area. Thought I was imagining it. Maybe he is also trying to prevent people from breaking puzzles which are teaching mechanics that are going to be crucial later in the game. Most of the time, when I found an alternative solution, it was using the same principle as the intended one. It's too late for me now, anyway, since I've completed everything, at least according to achievements.
Some of the later rules can be especially hard to grasp, but they are all consistent. It can also get confusing when a rule is usually associated with one certain type of object that doesn't behave like you would expect. For example, walls are usually Stop, but that doesn't mean they are "solid". Stop just means, other objects can't move onto the same square. However, the wall itself could still move onto other objects that aren't Stop ... There were quite a few puzzles I've been stuck on for days, but they are all logical in the end, some of them even genius. I haven't come across anything I'd call bullshit, with maybe one exception. The final bonus area is completely bonkers, though.
:shredder:

It's a big sub-area with >20 levels, and the area map itself is also a puzzle. Many of those levels feature the rare word Level (yes...), which is mainly used to turn the corresponding level node on the map into another object, like a Baba or a Flag. Depending on where you need to go on the map, you'll have to turn some levels into different objects. There is one particular puzzle which has to be solved in 3 or 4 slightly different ways (annoying if you just want to try something quickly). You can also make "Level Is Text" to turn a level into the word "Level", and use it on the map. And to top it off, even the map cursor is treated as an object that can be manipulated.
The "bullshit" solution, I was referring to, happens in the final level of that bonus area. It can't be solved on its own. You first have to enter the adjacent level, turn that one into a Flag, then enter the other level and make "Level Near Flag Is Win". It's a neat idea, and the hints are there, but this mechanic is never used anywhere else in the game. It's a special case made only for that one particular puzzle.
 

flyingjohn

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
2,945
Sheep,dog and wolf for the ps1.
A looney toons stealth sheep stealing puzzle game,that should get anybody's interest.

Plus:
-Aesthetics and graphics are pretty nice and follow the looney toons style pretty faithfully
-A solid selection of music ranging from rock to more smooth tunes
-Limited item used very well.You never feel like you needed more or less items.
-Each levels introduces something new and later on you are even dealing with going back in time to effect the present.The new things range from enemies to items and concepts.
One moment you are sneaking in a normal grassy area and the next you are time traveling to change the terrain.
Tired of using only items at a time,here is the ability to combine specif items together.
-The secrets are hidden nicely(minus 1-2 obvious ones)
-The levels length are just right,most levels last around 10 minutes with the later ones being longer.

Cons:
-Camera is atrocious and i mean it.It gets locked up around objects,barely shows you what you want and it gets worse.
-Controls are terrible as well.They just don't feel responsive and combine with the fact you can easily get stuck on objects it is a recipe for disaster.
-Timings are way too obnoxious. You always have way too little time for anything.Coupled with the controls you will get annoyed a lot.
-Bosses are terribly designed and combine the worst of all the flaws.
-Only one way of beating a level,even though you might think you found a alternative.

Neutral:
-Puzzles.This is a console platform puzzle game so don't expect anything on the level of point and click adventure games.
Some examples are:
-Dressing up as a different character to bypass the watchdog
-Luring sheep with various items(lettuce,fishing rod,perfume)
-Freezing sheep to send them in a river to pickup later

I can't recommend this game just because of the controls and camera.They are terrible.
 

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