What game are you wasting time on?

[Freddie]

Secret of the Silver Blades

Spoiler

The lich Dreadlord's soul is cleansed and there was much rejoicing. Sort of.

The only reason I could power through this game fairly quickly - especially in the wake of Azure Bonds - is because this game is 99% dungeon crawling. There is pretty much no deviation from the plot, which includes collecting staff pieces like it's Elder Scrolls: Arena, and go through mines, caverns and glaciers to ultimately reach the buried and spooky castle of Villain #19. Even though the game still has that SSI seal of quality, one might wonder aloud why this series lost steam so quickly. Pool of Radiance offered varied and interesting locations, memorable encounters, actual role-playing and so on, but Silver Blades is - as I said - a dungeon crawl filled with battles that quickly outstay their welcome. Giants, dragons, umber hulks, medusae, Banites, iron golems. It wouldn't be so bad if the fighting was spaced out better and given more context. Often it's just you walking down dreary corridors immolating trash mobs with Delayed Blast Fireballs.

Even Pool of Radiance was huge success, SSI's leadership always saw SSI as Strategy game company. I don't recall details about how they ended licensing AD&D to begin with, but SSI boss never really saw them but just something to really invest, but cash cows. I don't know who was working with each game, but while Krynn series is IMO perhaps the most consistent series, there are really uneven works too, because leadership wasn't really intellectually invested to find out what AD&D even could be so while good programmers, devs really had no idea what do at times.

Prime example of this was in one interview where one of the devs outright admitted that they put in lot of enemies because they just felt there should be those. So even lot of things were done right in Pool of Radiance and Champions of Krynn for example, knowledge wasn't necessarily applied in other games. Some devs didn't really know what to do with AD&D and no higher up was invested enough to understand that either and even being able to call them out for their mistakes.

So SSI gave us many good games but also useless trash mobs and AD&D game which was basically very literally dungeons.

One also have to mention the baffling level cap imposed on all non-human characters, which make them completely unviable as party members. This carries into Pools of Darkness, as well, making it even worse due to the higher ceiling. It's completely insane and I don't really know why it's in there. Maybe it's some kind weird and archaic D&D rule? In any event, it's pretty damn stupid.

They could have made exceptions for code, but there is more. IIRC Gold Box games rules were mix of AD&D and AD&D 2nd. edition which may or may not had influenced demi human level caps.

Behind AD&D rules were Gygax vision since the first D&D where AFAIK demihumans weren't available as player race in core rules. DM could however allow players to choose monster classes to be available as playable race. I recall reading that Gygax saw the very first setting Greyhawk as human setting, demihumans existing but not being really involved with the world. I suppose some demihuman races however become popular among players and Wizards of the Coast couldn't make any money from unofficial rules. So in AD&D Elves, Half-Elves and Dwarfs became available for players inside of core rules. Then later AD&D second edition fixed lot of things for demihumans and with some human classes which were perhaps.. so powerful that they were simply ridiculous on higher levels. I think first edition AD&D Barbarian might have been able to solo a dragon if player knew his stuff, but I digress.

To to sum this up. SSI's leadership wasn't that involved and devs might had difficulties to get consistent information from WotC of what AD&D was all about.

 

[Jason Liang]

Gave up on wonder boy dragon trap.It is a metroidvania like game on the master system where you use transformations to progress further.
Two major problems ruin the game:
1-Once you get hit you enter the "i take no damage " phase for a couple of seconds like most games of that era.One problem with this.If you touch a enemy you will get bounced.Now you can easily get in a situation where you get hit,bounce to the next enemy which bounces you back to the first and of course your "not taking damage" is gone and you get to have the bouncy bullshit back again.Sometimes enemies that you hit near the wall bounce straight back to your face.
In fact if if you get hit during a boss time and the boss is near the edge,enjoy bouncy town.
2-Your attack range is shit and i mean shit.It is so small and annoying that i have no idea what were they thinking.
For bosses you have two options:
-Bounce in their face and hope you hit them but usually all that will happen is that you will get hit.
-Wait until the boss comes to you,stand still,jump and hope the hit connects.

I have no idea what is with the master system zelda/metroid clones and hit boxes.The same thing happens in golden axe warrior(although in that game the attack range is much better then this game,especially after you get the axe)

I can easily tolerate old school difficulty like ninja gaiden and castelavnia even though i suck at those games.But when i have to hope my toothpick of a sword will actually connect with the enemy,that is where i draw the line.

Did you play it on master system emulator or the remake?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

They could have made exceptions for code, but there is more. IIRC Gold Box games rules were mix of AD&D and AD&D 2nd. edition which may or may not had influenced demi human level caps.

Behind AD&D rules were Gygax vision since the first D&D where AFAIK demihumans weren't available as player race in core rules. DM could however allow players to choose monster classes to be available as playable race. I recall reading that Gygax saw the very first setting Greyhawk as human setting, demihumans existing but not being really involved with the world. I suppose some demihuman races however become popular among players and Wizards of the Coast couldn't make any money from unofficial rules. So in AD&D Elves, Half-Elves and Dwarfs became available for players inside of core rules. Then later AD&D second edition fixed lot of things for demihumans and with some human classes which were perhaps.. so powerful that they were simply ridiculous on higher levels. I think first edition AD&D Barbarian might have been able to solo a dragon if player knew his stuff, but I digress.

To to sum this up. SSI's leadership wasn't that involved and devs might had difficulties to get consistent information from WotC of what AD&D was all about.

Dungeons & Dragons was owned and published by Tactical Studies Rules, which had been founded by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye in 1973; partly for publishing Chainmail Rules for Miniatures, hence the name, which would soon be simplified to TSR, as D&D overshadowed Chainmail.

The original set of Dungeons & Dragons rules explicitly allowed dwarves, elves, and hobbits halflings as player-characters, but they were limited to being fighters (except elves, who were both fighters and magic-users) and had strict level limits: 6th level for dwarves, 4th/8th level for elves, and 4th(!) level for halflings. The rules also included a paragraph concerning "other character types", with details left to the discretion of the Dungeon Master.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

6th level for dwarves, 4th/8th level for elves, and 4th(!) level for halflings.

Is this a restriction based on height? Because it looks like a restriction based on height.

 

[Cael]

In the AD&D/Gold Box era, things were quite confused. Elves, for example, at one stage was a class (basically F/M), not a race, IIRC.

Then the various different settings also changed a lot of stuff. The level caps for FR is different from the level caps in Greyhawk, for example.

Dragonlance had the most generous level caps for demi-humans, which made them very powerful when compared to humans (especially since they took out dual classing for humans). Human Knights were the only true competition for a Qualinesti F/M/C or F/T/M and that is only because Knights of the Sword/Rose are basically F/C in one class.

Dark Sun had the most ridiculous human dual classing in that you can dual class TWICE and with ANY combination of classes, which meant that in Dark Sun 2 (level cap 15 across the board), you can end up being a Gladiator 14/Druid 14/Preserver 15 or Ranger 14/Druid 14/Preserver 15, something that is flat out impossible for other races.

 

[flyingjohn]

Gave up on wonder boy dragon trap.It is a metroidvania like game on the master system where you use transformations to progress further.
Two major problems ruin the game:
1-Once you get hit you enter the "i take no damage " phase for a couple of seconds like most games of that era.One problem with this.If you touch a enemy you will get bounced.Now you can easily get in a situation where you get hit,bounce to the next enemy which bounces you back to the first and of course your "not taking damage" is gone and you get to have the bouncy bullshit back again.Sometimes enemies that you hit near the wall bounce straight back to your face.
In fact if if you get hit during a boss time and the boss is near the edge,enjoy bouncy town.
2-Your attack range is shit and i mean shit.It is so small and annoying that i have no idea what were they thinking.
For bosses you have two options:
-Bounce in their face and hope you hit them but usually all that will happen is that you will get hit.
-Wait until the boss comes to you,stand still,jump and hope the hit connects.

I have no idea what is with the master system zelda/metroid clones and hit boxes.The same thing happens in golden axe warrior(although in that game the attack range is much better then this game,especially after you get the axe)

I can easily tolerate old school difficulty like ninja gaiden and castelavnia even though i suck at those games.But when i have to hope my toothpick of a sword will actually connect with the enemy,that is where i draw the line.

Did you play it on master system emulator or the remake?

Played it on a emulator.I know there is a remake on steam.

 

[Alex]

The differentiation between race and class was always present in AD&D and it was kept from plain D&D even after Advanced came along. So that might be the source of your confusion. Mystara was the default settin for D&D later on, for instance, and it had elves, dwarves and halflings as their own classes rather than a race that is to be mixed with a class.

Also note that although they were limited in levels, they could improve their saving throws further (at least in the Rules Cyclopedia version) and eventually become immortals like any other char (never saw an immortals campaign, though).

 

[Freddie]

They could have made exceptions for code, but there is more. IIRC Gold Box games rules were mix of AD&D and AD&D 2nd. edition which may or may not had influenced demi human level caps.

Behind AD&D rules were Gygax vision since the first D&D where AFAIK demihumans weren't available as player race in core rules. DM could however allow players to choose monster classes to be available as playable race. I recall reading that Gygax saw the very first setting Greyhawk as human setting, demihumans existing but not being really involved with the world. I suppose some demihuman races however become popular among players and Wizards of the Coast couldn't make any money from unofficial rules. So in AD&D Elves, Half-Elves and Dwarfs became available for players inside of core rules. Then later AD&D second edition fixed lot of things for demihumans and with some human classes which were perhaps.. so powerful that they were simply ridiculous on higher levels. I think first edition AD&D Barbarian might have been able to solo a dragon if player knew his stuff, but I digress.

To to sum this up. SSI's leadership wasn't that involved and devs might had difficulties to get consistent information from WotC of what AD&D was all about.

Dungeons & Dragons was owned and published by Tactical Studies Rules, which had been founded by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye in 1973; partly for publishing Chainmail Rules for Miniatures, hence the name, which would soon be simplified to TSR, as D&D overshadowed Chainmail.

The original set of Dungeons & Dragons rules explicitly allowed dwarves, elves, and hobbits halflings as player-characters, but they were limited to being fighters (except elves, who were both fighters and magic-users) and had strict level limits: 6th level for dwarves, 4th/8th level for elves, and 4th(!) level for halflings. The rules also included a paragraph concerning "other character types", with details left to the discretion of the Dungeon Master.

Yeah, TSR that was and Wizards of the Coast bought them in the late '90s. Should had mentioned it.

I never played original 1974 edition but 1983 revision and moved to AD&D, but according to Wiki demihumans were indeed playable races within 1974 D&D core rules and 'other character types' were for creation of playable monster characters.

Yet, demihuman level caps were quite telling and my point how all that reflected to Gold Box games still stands.

 

[Freddie]

The differentiation between race and class was always present in AD&D and it was kept from plain D&D even after Advanced came along. So that might be the source of your confusion. Mystara was the default settin for D&D later on, for instance, and it had elves, dwarves and halflings as their own classes rather than a race that is to be mixed with a class.

Also note that although they were limited in levels, they could improve their saving throws further (at least in the Rules Cyclopedia version) and eventually become immortals like any other char (never saw an immortals campaign, though).

Yeah, that must be it. There was something bothering me with all this, like very clear memory from the rule book where Elves were classified as monsters.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Playing through clear sky, with mods of course.
Its a lot better with alternate ballistics.

Is there a way to make Loners actually defend locations? Its really pissing me off that I have to go baby sit them all the fucking time because I can't trust them to defend a point against mutants in the garbage.
Mutants and bandits are really annoying, because they keep respawning and I can't get rid of the fuckers.

 

[sullynathan]

Just beat Isaac as Samson. The combo of tear burst and brim stone is ridiculously OP even if your brimstone does little damage and has a long charge up time. It's like the devs overlooked that, you can kill nearly every boss in one hit and clear every room and recharge tear burst easily.

 

[sullynathan]

beat isaac twice. Isaac is easier than Satan, I haven't lost to him yet.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So there's a cabaret underneath the cabaret in Saboteur, with minigames and burlesque dances.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

BIG FUCKIN TITS

That's the very first thing the game shows you. A pair o' tits. RIP pandemic.

 

[Mark Richard]

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock hit the news with its Broken Alliance expansion recently. I snapped the whole thing up on a whim. Turns out its a surprisingly decent fleet tactics game set during the first Cylon war. The twelve colonies have just signed the Articles of Colonisation and united, but the new alliance is tenuous at best. There's a lot of sceptical eyeballs on the newly formed Colonial Fleet, which the player is a part of. What this boils down to is shuffling around model ships on a galactic campaign map to protect colonies from Cylon rading parties (lest they leave the alliance and stop funding Colonial operations) while occasionally taking a story mission to advance the plot.

As simple as the campaign map is, the battles themselves can get deceptively involved. Combat is simultaneous turn-based, meaning you move your ships while trying to predict the opponent's movements, and the results play out over ten seconds of real time. Fights are in a 3D space so the vertical plane needs to be considered, as there may not be much in the way of guns or armour at the top/bottom of some ships. Throw in a bunch of frail individual subsystems that regulate everything from weapons to navigation, and you get a scrumptious combat soup. Angling ships to protect their damaged sides, jockeying for position to assault an enemy's vulnerable rear, closing to point blank range to unleash a devastating torpedo volley, it's all good clean fun. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the music too, which emulates the style of the 2004 show and forces me to take back everything bad I ever said about bagpipes.

 

[flyingjohn]

There is some really weird shit for the pc-88.

 

[pakoito]

Just beat Isaac as Samson. The combo of tear burst and brim stone is ridiculously OP even if your brimstone does little damage and has a long charge up time. It's like the devs overlooked that, you can kill nearly every boss in one hit and clear every room and recharge tear burst easily.

There are literally hundreds of combos like that, and most of them use brimstone. The Godlike builds I mentioned before. You can only do one run at a time tho :D

BoI "breaks you" when you start restarting runs because you didn't have a good build by the time you reach the womb.

beat isaac twice. Isaac is easier than Satan, I haven't lost to him yet.

Kind of, yeah. Isaac is better with defensive builds, with 3 orbitals he's almost trivial. The first phase is the worst, the rest is manageable. The most annoying bit is when the babies spawn on top of you and you get cheaped out of life.

 

[Average Manatee]

Been playing Dark Souls 2 recently. Had it since release but was a bit disappointed in some of the stuff near the beginning and dropped it. Finished it Monday with a pure Longsword build (no shield), in the middle of a pure sorcery build now. Thoughts:

- The adaptability/I-frame thing is bullshit of the highest degree. Hitting your I-frames properly to dodge through shit is *the* essential skill of Dark Souls (assuming you aren't a shield coward), having the timing window vary is the dumbest idea ever. It'd be like playing a Guitar Hero game with a variable timing window for hitting notes, it just doesn't work. You need consistency to develop a reaction to things. On top of that you start with the window so insanely short that the game just makes you feel like you are complete shit at Souls games even if you are literally doing everything properly. Tons of attacks (as far as I can tell) are flat out unavoidable without a longer I-Frame window. Trying to dodge under Pursuer's strikes or through the big troll-like monsters in the first area with minimum agility is completely suicidal, which is a problem when that's what you are supposed to be doing to fight them. Once you dump all of your initial 20 levels or so into adaptability or attunement it's fine, before then it's shit (hope you read the wiki to figure out that you needed to do this to get more I-Frames). Probably a big part of what pissed me off initially and led to me dropping it, along with the control lag.
- Linear as fuck areas with no interleaving. At any time there's only 2 or 3 possible areas to visit, then when you finish all available paths 2 or 3 new areas open up.
- Overall level design is just poor and too video-gamey. Almost nothing feels like a real previously lived-in area like in DaS or especially DeS. The first castle was alright but the 2nd and end game one was just a linear corridor to the end.
- Way too many randomly locked doors that you have to backtrack too later, with keys to them found half a game away. Worse yet, there's virtually no indication of what key goes where, so I hope you're writing down all those randomly locked doors on a notepad somewhere and willing to check them all when you find something. I bet this was an attempt to alleviate the feeling of linearity but it just makes the game insufferable to play without checking the wiki to figure out what goes where. The worst being the fucking Iron Key, which is found 3/4ths of the way through the game and has nothing to indicate that it opens a door right next to the first boss you fought.
- Way more NPCs/dialog/story time in DaS2 than DaS1, yet I understood how the story was going far less. DaS1 you could really feel the climax of the game. DaS2 I didn't even know I was fighting the final boss until she died and the ending selection option appeared. I'm not actually sure what lets you progress, as far as I can tell it's kill some unspecified number of bosses at the end of 4 linear paths (game implied I needed all 4, but IIRC I had only 3 and the NPC just said "lol wutever you can go but you'll be killed"), then you bum around in the castle and go down another linear path till you reach the end, then you bum around in the first area activating trees to fight in other people's memories, one of which gives you a boss fight that gives you a soul that lets you finish the game in aforementioned castle's basement. I have no idea what any of this was for, the game is literally just doors that say "you must fuck around till you find the macguffin that lets you pass".
- Game has way too many souls to find. I ended at level 171 and I could have leveled way higher had I consumed all the boss souls in my inventory. This is enough to soft-cap literally everything I needed with points to spare. That's Vigor, Endurance, Vitality, Strength, Dexterity, and Adaptibility all softcapped and I didn't know what to do with about 15 points left over since I was trying to play a no-casting build. This really ruins variety if you aren't roleplaying a very narrow class. Had I not maxed both Str and Dex I could have easily been a fully-powered caster in addition to a maxed warrior by the end game. And I didn't even do the DLC areas, they must push you over level 200.
- Fragrant Branches of Yore are BULLSHIT AS HELL. Yes, lets make limited-use items to unpetrify people that block areas, guard vital equipment, or even just have vital items on them with no hint to this (fairly important merchant is hidden behind a door whose key is found off a completely random statue). No hint of which ones are important or which ones are worthless, so go use a guide. Did I mention there is a limited number in the entire game? This is not something you can farm or buy more of, run out and you lose access to content until NG+.
- Lots of important things are hidden in very specific spots, some of them even in NG+. Stuff like spell selection or certain items don't show up at all until you've basically finished the game. Wouldn't be a problem if the game was far less linear, or if it was overall shorter with a lower level limit, but it looks like some builds will basically need to hit level 100ish before they become useful.
- Soul Memory is really awful for PvP and I can't understand what it tried to accomplish. Stop people from level squatting while getting +15 weapons to destroy newbs? But you can still do since weapons don't require much souls to level and there's a ring to stop you from gaining more souls. In the end it just punishes you for losing your souls or spending them on equipment since you end up being thrown in a higher PvP bracket.

+ M&K controls are surprisingly good once you turn off the double click crap and remap a few things. Aside from XBOX button prompts it feels like a native 3rd person PC game. Stuff like the camera control and turning radius are way better (i.e. instant response) than most 3rd person shooters I've played. It's very smooth and completely playable without lockon in melee. Only issue I've noticed is that if you really, really spam mouse clicks fast, mashing to get attacks out as fast as possible, it sometimes won't register at all. But the game buffers input a bit so there's no reason to do this.
+ Like the enhanced difficulty covenant option.
+ Like the far more limited estus flasks. Especially in the beginning, I was at 1 or 2 uses per area for a long, long time. Made it all feel very tense. Good way to reward exploration too.
+ Pursuer mini-boss popping up and the much more significant number of AI invaders is cool.
+ Use of darkness and torches in a few areas is good.
+ Quicker durability loss but durability restored on rest makes a lot of sense, and encourages carrying multiple weapons quite well.
+ I like some of the new covenants. Blue Guardian especially is a nice change of pace, pitting two unprepared people against one prepared person.
+ Bonfire Ascetics are a great idea to unlock some NG+ stuff without needing to do NG+ (though you need to read a wiki to find where certain NG+ items are), and being able to fight bosses again is fun.
+ Didn't actually have any real problems with hitboxes, despite the amount of stuff I've heard about them. Not sure if SotFS fixed it, it was overblown, or people just weren't getting Adaptability. Yes, if you get brushed by the Pursuer with his stabbing attack it teleports you right into the center of the sword for the animation. It looks really stupid but a hits a hit and the lesson is to not get hit. Some enemies do track a bit late in their animation too but it seems overblown as well. All I can say is that I dodged the pursuer for like 5 minutes as a sorcerer without being hit in order to slowly chip away at him in Lost Bastille. Twice. If I can do that then anyone should be able to git gud playing a normal build.

Overall it's definitely worse than DaS1 or DeS, but I still enjoy it. It's kind of like pizza, even when it's mediocre you'll stuff yourself.

STILL DEMON SOULS PLUGING ALONG WITH A MAGIC BUILD

BRO ITS STILL NOT TO LATE TO REPENT FROM YOUR SORCEROUS WAYS.

TRUE BROS DON'T LET BROS PLAY NON-MELEE BUILDS.

Oh man, I take this back for DaS2. Magic is OP in DeS and DaS1, but in DaS2 it is complete shit. Most of the buffs from DaS1 are gone and all the spells are nerfed. Stuff like Great Heavy Soul Arrow only deals around 50% more damage than basic Soul Arrow and Soul Spear isn't findable forever. Crystal Soul Spear is end of NG+. Everything sucks. Can't find a better catalyst than starter until half way through the game (apparently pre-SotFS you couldn't find it until literally the 2nd to last boss, lol). Killing the scorpion queen boss to get it took around 75 spell casts. A far cry from DaS1 where you loaded up Soul Spear, Power Within, Red Tearstone, whatever the helm was called, then you 1-shotted half the bosses and 2-shotted the rest. Instead of a half dozen sources granting +20-50% damage each DaS2 has, uhh, an enemy you can fight once per game that has a small chance to drop a helm giving +3% magic damage in exchange for -15% HP. Not making this up, it's that shit (http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/black-witch-domino-mask).

I guess someone at From heard that Magic was OP and decided to burn it all to the ground. On the plus side magic/warrior hybrids look way better, the Magic Shield spell in particular is insanely good and anyone can have enough casts to last forever. But if you want hardcore play pure sorcerer, only magic for damage, Company of Champions, final destination.

 

[Adon]

Recently I went through F.E.A.R. and had a good ol' time with it. There's only like 4-5 enemy types, and the story is very barebones -- functioning more as a premise as you spend 90% of your time chasing after one guy -- but the gameplay is where it's at. Fast, and visceral and some pretty good AI for the time. Pretty good atmsophere, too. Good enough to warrant one playthrough at least.

So as a result I'm going through F.E.A.R. 2 now, and I can immediately see where it's weaker as a game. Shooting is better, but the atmosphere isn't as good as it was in the previous game. Enemy AI seems like downgrade, and the worst symptom that this went through consoleitis is not being able to lean. At least there seems to be more enemy types this time around.

 

[Azalin]

Finished Tyranny and its dlcs. pretty good game,better than Poe and I enjoyed it more obviously.Graphics and music are ok,combat is streamlined compared to PoE which is a plus in my book,the setting is interesting,it has good c&c and quite a lot of skill checks although most of them are quite easy.Recommended

 

[Humppaleka]

Hmm, currently working in another town than my main computer so let's see.

Sacred 1 - Diablo for masochists. Level-scaling difficulty, which means that until your build is really good even the basic enemies fuck you up. Currently level 24 and still need to chug health potions, even when doing a reasonable build (I've played Sacred games a lot before). Still, I like the graphics and removing fog of war is best for relaxation.
Duke Nukem - with an arcade joystick. Quite ok, some frustrating map designs.
Dungeons of Dredmor - Fun. Never beat this. Had amazing luck yesterday but then stepped into a mysterious portal and got twoshot.
Some other shit randomly like Super Hexagon, Worms: Armageddon, Mortal Kombat.

 

[sullynathan]

I beat Ratchet & Clank PS4. The first Ratchet game I played and it was pretty good. Mix of action platformer shooting with good level design, fun gameplay and great graphics.
There's a large enough variety of enemies in this game and lots of great an fun guns to use. I can't think of a recent shooter with this many varied guns. There's about a dozen planets that can be explored with good level design across them.

The game was overall easy on my first playthrough but my second playthrough now on Challenge mode is more challenging and even, it would've been better to have this mode from the beginning. This still gets easy once you upgrade all your guns, so Challenge mode on Hard is really the best way to play the game. You earn so much money by the end of the first game that you can buy every weapon with a lot of money left. Money is better handled in Challenge mode due to having Omega variants of all the guns and making them far more expensive, but you'll still earn a shit ton of money due to the way checkpoints are handled (everytime you died or reloaded the game you earned back some ammo and kept all your current money and enemies respawned) and due to earning large amounts of bolts/money in late game.

You get a Jetpack in the biggest level of the game, but can only use it in only two other levels which includes the final level. That was disappointing. The combat is very good, platforming with shooting at the same time. It doesn't take that much skill since there is lock-on, but the overall gameplay has a lot of variety. Levels based under water, spaceships, hoverboarding, hacking, ship battles and more keeps the game varied all around.

I would like if you have even more optional misisions per planet instead of one or two. Each level could be expanded with even more locations. it would be better if the game didn't outright tell you which items/locations we're optional so you could find it yourself. The constant talking and jokes throughout the game is also unnecesary.

 

[agentorange]

Played through STALKER Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat again. Clear Sky was about how I remembered it when I first played it. Great, varied area design with a similar atmosphere to the first game, and even surpassing its tension and forlorn quality in some areas; places like the Red Forest stand out as among the best in the series. But gameplay wise everything is overshadowed by the misguided and poorly implemented faction wars system. Because so much effort was put into the factions there is very little side content unrelated to it, and the content related to the factions is repetitive and frustrating. Many of the areas end up feeling extremely empty if the player is not particularly interested in dealing with factional conflicts, and some areas, like the aforementioned Red Forest or Limansk which visually are so attractive, feel almost completely devoid of content beyond the main story-line related missions. There are some side-quests that can be initiated by random stalkers, but these are exclusively mundane fetch quests and the rewards for them are all so paltry as to to be insignificant when compared to faction rewards (which makes a catch 22-like situation where the faction missions are so repetitive and boring that I did not want to do them but the rewards for them are so good that they make the non-faction quests seem pointless). Story wise it presents a nice prelude to the story of the first game, while simultaneously leaving certain mysteries unresolved and having different enough characters that it does not end up as a pointless prequel as so many prequels end up. It's a lot like Half-Life: Opposing Force in how it presents an opposing viewpoint to Strelok.

Call of Pripyat was surprising to replay because I had not tried it since playing it when it came out 8 years ago. Back then I remember being disappointed because of how different the game was in structure to both Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky. I personally really like the segmented, limited open world in SoC and CS, where you have individual, open areas through which you are lead through in the main quest, but you can stop at any time to explore these areas at your own pace. Each area being small enough that it can be hand designed. So when I first played CoP I thought they had decided to go in the Elder Scrolls wide open bullshit direction, so I think I was very dismissive and ended up playing through the game quite quickly. On this replay however I really came to appreciate how densely packed both Zaton and Jupiter are. Nearly every corner of the map has something of interest to explore, and most of these locations will be involved in side quests. These side quests in CoP are the real point of mastery in the game, because every single one of them is unique. I mean this is an FPS game at its core and it does side quest design better than 99% of CRPGs. Many of the side-quests are multidimensional, with plot-lines and objectives that can span the entire course of the game, continuing from one area to another (such as a storyline where you are accused of stealing a weapon by a scheming stalker in the first area, who sets you up in an ambush and escapes, and who then returns in the next area to steal your stuff, then leading to the quest conclusion). Some of them offer intricate scripted scenarios (like the bloodsucker lair and the sniper mission), that work amazing well considering how flawed to outright broken many of the scripted sequences in the previous games were (the Duty assault on the Freedom base in SoC that would always bug out in 1 of 100 ways), while others take advantage of the A-Life system for more unpredictable situations. However in making these larger, more consistent areas they had to sacrifice much of the unique visual designs of the previous games, and Zaton and Jupiter both end up looking very similar; there is nothing that offers a real dramatic change of scenery like Yantar or the Red Forest from previous games. Another shortcoming is the final area, Pripyat. At the same time that this area offers the most bleak and haunting atmosphere in the game, that rivals some places in the previous games, it feels as devoid of content as much of Clear Sky. This does in a certain way serve to increase the feeling of loneliness in the area, but that doesn't make up for how disappointing the area is in comparison to the rest of the game. It has every indication that they simply ran out of time, and this is especially apparent in how abruptly the final mission is initiated.

Overall STALKER is one of the few series where the developers carefully listened to criticism after each game and managed to consistently improve on the systems throughout each entry. Despite Clear Sky being so riddled with bugs it did generally improve on the combat mechanics and introduce many features that were lacking in Shadow of Chernobyl such as repairing and upgrading; even the poorly implemented faction wars was an attempt to give the factions more depth than what little they had in SoC. And even if I personally prefer SoC for its more unique, atmospherically dense locations and more intriguing plot, Call of Pripyat is probably what most people wanted out of a STALKER game from the outset.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Dungeons of Dredmor - Fun. Never beat this. Had amazing luck yesterday but then stepped into a mysterious portal and got twoshot.

Man, this game can be a handful. I assume you're playing with all the expansions? If so I'm gonna give you a tip: Vlad Diggula (an optional boss) was a tougher fight for me than the endboss of the game. Keep him at a distance, preferably with nukes. That's how tough he is.

 

[Abu Antar]

I just beat my first game in Chinese. Faith of Danschant. Skipped some scenes, used google image translate every now and then, and I also had to use common sense. Fun, turn-based combat, that lulled you into being confident, and then you get an encounter that fucks you up. It wasn’t really overly complicated. Even if combat occurs on a separate battlefield, there are no random encounters. Pacing is straight forward. You move from one location to the next, doing side missions on your way. You get to sew a couple of cities or villages that you get to spend some time in.
Graphically, it’s impressive for a Chinese RPG, and it feels like they took advantage of UE4. Presentation is solid in general. Music was also nice, but I like Chinese music in general, so I don’t know if I’m the best judge on that.