What game are you wasting time on?

[Grauken]

Finished Metroid 2 and moved on to Super Metroid

 

[Abu Antar]

Since you played the game can you tell me is there any point in playing hard mode?
The first boss almost insta kills two of my characters easily compared to normal.That is kinda a red flag in terms of artificial difficulty for me.

The game is all about wasting your time. It wants you to grind. Artificial difficulty is a perfect description. I got this in a bundle, and I wanted to see if everything I thought about Kemco was true and it was. They develop mobile rpgs/games and have been porting them to PC. A piece of friendly advice: Do yourself a favor and uninstall the game now.

 

[JDR13]

Finished Metroid 2 and moved on to Super Metroid

Da fuq? You doing speed runs or something?

 

[Grauken]

Finished Metroid 2 and moved on to Super Metroid

Da fuck? You doing speed runs or something?

Nope, Metroid 2 is pretty short, I finished in 3:50 or so and I played the game before. Also, still on vacation

 

[Citizen]

 

[JDR13]

Da fuck? You doing speed runs or something?

Nope, Metroid 2 is pretty short, I finished in 3:50 or so and I played the game before. Also, still on vacation

Nice. Talking about it made me want to play, so I downloaded the latest version of AM2R. Might do a run in my spare time.

I'm currently playing Jedi: Fallen Order. Anyone who likes metroidvanias should check it out. It's like someone threw Metroid, Tomb Raider, and Star Wars into a blender. It's a lot better than I was expecting.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

KING OF FIGHTERS '98/2002

 

[octavius]

My Assassin, Barbarian and Sorceress didn't have much problem getting past the Hell Ancients in Diablo 2, while my Amazon had some small problems. My Paladin (Zeal+Fanaticisn) OTOH has major problems, main one being too low damage output (still stuck with the same weapon that killed Baal on Normal), and too low damage reduction. Looks like he will have to grind and/or rely on hand-me-downs from my other characters.

 

[Lilura]

My Assassin, Barbarian and Sorceress didn't have much problem getting past the Hell Ancients in Diablo 2, while my Amazon had some small problems. My Paladin (Zeal+Fanaticisn) OTOH has major problems, main one being too low damage output (still stuck with the same weapon that killed Baal on Normal), and too low damage reduction. Looks like he will have to grind and/or rely on hand-me-downs from my other characters.

I didn't know you were into Diablo 2. Have you read my posts on it?

Now, another addictive game, and one I'm playing now, is Warband. I'm playing the Brytenwalda mod which you can read about here. I have invested about 50 real hours. I need to stop, but I can't. Just so much fun.

 

[octavius]

My Assassin, Barbarian and Sorceress didn't have much problem getting past the Hell Ancients in Diablo 2, while my Amazon had some small problems. My Paladin (Zeal+Fanaticisn) OTOH has major problems, main one being too low damage output (still stuck with the same weapon that killed Baal on Normal), and too low damage reduction. Looks like he will have to grind and/or rely on hand-me-downs from my other characters.

I didn't know you were into Diablo 2. Have you read my posts on it?

Yes, some of them were interesting, others rather too extreme for my taste.

I see many Diablo 2 player totally specialize their characters, like your Bowazon. I prefer to make them more versatile, like putting one point in Jab and Fend. My Bowazon who completed Hell killed most of the bosses with only one point in Jab (with some skill points from items).

Anyway I try to play as "untwinked" (my characters drop items they don't need in the shared storage, though, since it's so bloody annoying to find the best items with the wrong characters) and with as little grinding/farming as possible.
It's definitely possible with 1.09, but I understand later patches make NM and Hell monster tougher. OTOH you can do much more with the Cube in 1.10+ and get more Uniques (not many Elite Uniques in 1.09).

 

[AdamReith]

Finished Unwritten Tales 2 finally over the holidays after six months of playing it on and off.

It's a long, long adventure game and provided many very enjoyable Sunday afternoons while I worked through it. As the game progressed the scenarios did start to feel anemic however, like they received less polish. It never descended to the level of Broken Sword 5 - Part 2 in terms of feeling completely unfinished though. The last scenario has you playing a butler which you would think would have all manner of possibilities but it felt like the developers just wanted to stop working on the game at that point.

The ending was garbage. They were going for an Empires Strikes Back type setup but it felt half hearted but ultimately I was glad they just decided to stop instead of letting the quality of the gameplay drop even more.

Overall a very excellent game start to finish, I wonder if they will ever make a third one.

 

[Okagron]

Finished Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom with 100% in around 22 hours and had a fantastic time. Level design is pretty great (even though there are a few instances that it can be somewhat frustrating), the hand drawn graphics are gorgeous, music is phenomenal, bosses are pretty fun and some can be quite difficult, the controls are responsive and tight, and the monster transformations lead to a lot of clever puzzles and platform challenges. Only thing i wish the game had is a hard mode or a new game plus.

This and Hollow Knight are the two Metroidvanias i had the most fun in recent memory.

 

[Dux]

Just starting playing ELEX and I'm already having Risen 3 PTSD flashbacks. I really hoped this would be different, that Piranha Bytes would learn and stop being stubborn idiots.

But nope, it's the same shit as always. There's little doubt that as I continue to play I'll immerse myself more in the world like with the original Risen but with the ugly consolised interface and the combat which makes Witcher 2's look inspired - it's going to be rough. Don't forget the customary cardboard cutout protagonist. Gotta have those.

I've already had one situation which I really hope won't set the tone for the rest of the game:

I take an elevator down to ground level and as I step out my character says that either the Berserkers or the Albs will try to kill me if they see me. I'm in Berserker territory. I see someone squatting down in front of me, back turned against me. I begin to sneak, pull out my bow and train a shot against the back of his head. I fire. The arrow whizzes through him. I chalk that up to Piranha Bytes' patented crippled targeting mechanics and shoot again - this time square in the back. Arrow goes right through. That's when I realise that this is one of those "essential" NPCs.

So I lower my bow in disgust and approach the guy. A cutscene begins to play where my character actually tries to sneak up on the dude to kill him. My character fails miserably like an absolute retard and gets punched in the face. Then I spend the next five minutes listening to the benign, altruistic stranger (who apparently DOESN'T want me dead) as he explains the most obvious shit imaginable: being part of a faction is good, weapons are useful and that if you act mean people will dislike you.



That's one of the things I appreciated about the old Gothic games. They plopped you down in a hostile world and basically said "fuck you, figure it out". That's pretty neat. Meh, guess I'll soldier on and try to concentrate on the positives but I can already tell I'm going ranged/magic again - just like every other modern Piranha Bytes game. FUCK that melee combat. Seriously.

 

[Darth Roxor]

That's one of the things I appreciated about the old Gothic games.

Diego tells you the exact same things as Duras at the very start of the game - being part of a faction is good, weapons are useful and if you act mean people will dislike you.

You're also welcome to try to kill Diego at any point in the game and see what happens.

Stop sperging.

 

[ebPD8PePfC]

Manifold Garden – This is a puzzle game where Space is a 3d dimensional repeating manifold, which means that when you fall to the bottom you reappear at the top. Add to it that a lot if huge structures, and you get a fantastic feeling of falling alongside huge endless buildings. This along with the sound design, are the fantastic parts. The game has a lot of sections where you look around and enjoy the sights. Sadly this is also a line puzzle game, and many of those puzzles have nothing to do with the manifold structures. They are just regular line puzzles. You can turn around the direction of gravity, which adds some complexity, but many of those puzzles too don’t make use of the best features of the game. I would guess about 70% of puzzles have nothing to do with the unique nature of the space.
It’s a shame, because the game is enjoyable for those who like line puzzles, but fails to reach excellence since the best parts are never explored. It feels like the manifold spaces were created, and then the devs figured they couldn’t sell a game about spatial exploration, so they added more recognizable gameplay in the form of line puzzles. Your enjoyment of the game depends mainly on how much you care for the visuals, and how tolerant you are to basic line puzzles. Those two don’t intersect enough, so if you removed them and made the game half as long it would probably be better. Most people would probably complain though, so it’s not like I blame the devs or anything. The end result is still worth playing, at least until the novelty of the giant endless structures wears off.

It reminded me a lot of NaissanceE, a game whose best feature was the exploration of huge and beautiful structures. The devs probably felt this wasn't enough, so they added a lot of gameplay elements almost at random, some of which work really well while others drag the game to a halt. At the end of the day Manifold Garden wins because they picked the least intrusive puzzles they could think of, even though those puzzles are almost like a minigame attached to the core gameplay. It seems obvious that games like these that have beautiful environments should focus on exploration, but like 90's adventure games puzzles are picked instead, because exploration by itself isn't deemed sufficient to fill the playtime quota demanded by the players.

 

[someone else]

KOTC, there is damage reduction for slash/blunt/pierce/lawful/chaotic/evil/adamantium/cold iron. If I carry the best weapons for my dual wield fighter, her backpack will be very heavy.
Also trying to get the 2 million GP achievement so I'm avoiding crafting as much as possible.

 

[Dux]

That's one of the things I appreciated about the old Gothic games.

Diego tells you the exact same things as Duras at the very start of the game - being part of a faction is good, weapons are useful and if you act mean people will dislike you.

You're also welcome to try to kill Diego at any point in the game and see what happens.

Stop sperging.

It was the first game of its kind too, so it stands to reason to have an opening like that. You arrive in the world and literally one moment later you have Diego telling you about what's in store. It's straight to the point. Then you're free as a bird, pretty much. In ELEX you're running down corridors with invisible walls for about 15 minutes, following all of the familiar beats of modern gaming design until you encounter your first human - in enemy territory - that just so happens to be an essential NPC with exposition galore: much of which was already explained in the intro.

The fact that Gothic did it doesn't excuse anything. Gothic did indeed do it and it was done much better - providing a fast and effective entry into the game world while pointing out the fact that you had the reins. It had an unforgiving tone, which is what made the series - in my opinion. PB can do better and actually did better with Risen. In that you're shipwrecked on a beach and what you do after is up to you. You can go along with the game's loosely intended design or you can run around like a madman, going straight to the swamp or get captured by the mages. There's no figurative corridors to be seen.

Also I might have my autistic moments but this is not one of them. I hold PB to a higher standard, honestly. But, as I said before, I have no doubt that this game will grow on me, despite its lacklustre opening.

 

[JDR13]

The fact that Gothic did it doesn't excuse anything. Gothic did indeed do it and it was done much better - providing a fast and effective entry into the game world while pointing out the fact that you had the reins. It had an unforgiving tone, which is what made the series - in my opinion. PB can do better and actually did better with Risen. In that you're shipwrecked on a beach and what you do after is up to you. You can go along with the game's loosely intended design or you can run around like a madman, going straight to the swamp or get captured by the mages. There's no figurative corridors to be seen.

There's no figurative corridors in Elex either. The game does nudge you towards Goliet at the start, but the world is completely open.

Imo, it's a thousand times better than Risen 3 once you get into it. I'm a big fan of post-apoc settings though so YMMV.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Still playing Betrayal at Krondor. One month in, still in Chapter 1. It's a testament to how slowly I play and also to how good BaK is. I reached Krondor a while ago and decided instead to go around the entire map of Midkemia with Locklear, Owyn and Gorath. I'm almost done with that, but there's at least one side quest yet to complete and one dungeon I still need to check out before moving on to Chapter 2. Owyn is quite a badass right now, he can even summon a water spirit!

Yesterday I reached a settlement northwest, can't remember the name right now, and when visiting a particular house I was greeted by a man covered in flour. Behind him, a woman working at a table, also covered in flour, and all around the smell of freshly baked bread. Locklear asked for some of their bread and the man explained that they had an exclusivity agreement with an inn just down the road, where they could buy the bread.

That's it. No sidequest, no dialogue tree, nothing. And it's all very well written too. This game is pure bliss.

 

[Jvegi]

Fallout 2. This game could really use the option to tag secondary skills (for something like 50% effectivnes of a bonus to SP). Tagging most skills feels wrong, since they don't need to be that high to be effective, and you'll eventually get them to an okeish level by reading books. With secondary skills you could make that outdorsman mechanic, without feeling like an idiot.

 

[Kabas]

Tried Dominions for the first time, the latest fifth one.
After a few failed attempts i finally managed to win against an Ai with what i believe is one of the simpliest pretender builds - a fomorian giant boar with nature regeneration bless.
I learned how to expand, i think.

Cool game, though i prefer the faster pacing of CoE4 a tiny bit more.

 

[ebPD8PePfC]

Ace Combat 7 – Played the first 10 missions. It’s an arcady flight simulator, focusing on dogfights. You have 86 auto-locking missiles, plus 30 more auto-locking missiles that can be shot in rounds of four. The challenge is not to shot down your opponents with your gun, nor is it to stay alive, the challenge is to cycle targets until you find one you can shot with your auto aiming missiles. That’s the game, level after level:
cycle targets → shot → cycle targets
Tab tab tab → right click mouse → tab tab tab
The hardest thing about the game is not to get mad that you have to cycle targets like a dummy, because the game lacks a button to target the enemy you’re aiming at. There’s also aren’t any cool manuvers you can do, which leaves the combat feel pretty bare.
For what it’s worth, the visuals are good, the music is good, and the story could appeal to some people… but at the end of the day this is a low depth, high budget AAA experience. It’s not inherently bad, but it isn’t too interesting either. At best it makes me want to play Free Space 2.
The game also has a Half Life style muted protagonist that everyone talks to but he never responds. Fuck that.

 

[Villagkouras]

It's amazing how sometimes developers shoot themselves in their foot, with no reason at all. I've played The Way on release, because it was a puzzle/platformer like Another World or Flashback, which were games I enjoyed back in the day. I quickly abandoned it because it had terrible controls, one of the worst I had encountered by then and a terrible checkpoint system which made you replay entire sections before reaching the place you died (and you die a lot in this game). It had a good premise but terrible execution.

I knew it was heavily patched, so in the last Steam sale I bought it for 1,50€. And surprise: Now the game is great. Movement is fine, although you need to get used to it, but it's fine. Also, the checkpoints are much more sane now. If you finish a sequence, there is a checkpoint. No more tedious replaying of the same things.

Too bad, the damage was already done: The game had a justified 61 metacritic when it was released (I know because I keep track of the games I play and metacritic score is something I write down). Now it has 67, probably later reviewers played the patched version and 1 XBOX review (the game was released a year after PC) is at 80/100. So, I wonder: How many sales this good game lost due to the devs not having the patience to refine their game for some months?

The game itself has many things in store: Action sequences, platform sequences, but it's mainly a puzzle game, most of the time you solve puzzles. You need to pay attention to details for clues/hints and most of the puzzles are on the right level, even the hardest ones are absolutely logical. The game spices things up with new things and it's not repetitive. It has an interesting story which is well told without becoming tiring. Art is fine for what it is and music is meh. The game has character and atmosphere. I really enjoyed myself playing it, but it could achieve a much higher status if it had a proper release.

 

[Viata]

I've finished Disco Elysium. It is a really good game and I can understand why it is GOTY for some people(then again, this is the only 2019 game I have played, that I can remember), but I have a hard time seeing it as a rpg and more like a 3D visual novel. Then again, on codex, the game is rpg if you like it and not if you don't, so who cares what is the genre?
The game is quite easy, perhaps the easiest rpg/visual novel/adventure game I have ever played. The skill checks are nice and you have a guarantee of passing ALL of them, as you have 1 in 36 chances of getting two 6 or ~3%. The opposite also happens, as you have ~3% of failing any skill check(and I'll tell you, there is nothing that hurts more in this game than rolling two 1 when you have more than 90% of passing it). There are two kinds of skill checks: white and red ones.
The red ones are available only once and if you fail it, that is it.
The white ones, however, can be done as many times as you want(in theory) because if you fail it, you just need to level up the skill to try it again. I say in theory because this game does something I really like: Suppose you have a skill check in pain threshold. You fail it and thinks "ok, I'll just level up that skill and try again", so you get enough exp to level it up and when you try to do that, you can't. Why? Because your skill level is limited by your status level. You can't have logic 5(which depends on int) if your int is not at least 5 too. So, if you have 2 of int, that is how much you can level up your logic. This is my favorite thing in the game, btw.
The only other way to level up logic is during dialogues, as they can level up specific skills. You can wear clothes or use items that increase a skill, but it is not considered as a level up and so that skill check is going to stay blocked. So, in a way, you can get fucked by a white skill check and "never" be able to do it.
Why "never"? Because of the thought cabinet. The though cabinet is like a second set of skills/items you can equip(think). They are limited by skill points and to stop thinking about something or unlock new available spaces to think about it(our protagonist has a hard time thinking of many things at the same time, I guess) also requires the use of skill points. So yeah, you either increase a skill or unlock new spaces to think/stop thinking about something. The though cabinet has some good uses, it can increase skills(and also decrease them), help you get past some part of the game(tbh, it only happened once for me so) and even clear all white skill checks so you can try them again. There are even, of course. The though cabinet system is kinda broken, for example, by just saying something like "yeah, sometimes rich people do wrong" and you already have voices in your head asking if you want to build communism, which, if accepted, prompts you to think about it. It doesn't really chances anything in the game, not for me at least, and I think the dev can better explore this in the second game. The voices on your head is a cool idea, most of them is just your knowledge in some skill talking to you and helping you (or not: "Why are you listening to me? Don't listen to me!" said Empathy when I selected exactly what it said and the person I was talking to didn't like it) pass dialogues. It really helped, but made the game even easier.
On politics, the game has more communism dialogues than any other political view, however, some of them are not the kind of today's left would really associate with. A great example is the old man at the end of the game, his view is quite different from the kind of commies I see both in university and on the internet and in fact he would even be hated by them. There are some critics to the left, too, like protagonist telling how they like to ditch someone as soon as that person does something they dislike and so on(just like we see on twitter). The right(and center) dialogues are not only extremist but also made for someone that has no idea what it is and just asked people's opinion on twitter. The same also happens to the left, but imo, in a not so exagerated way[then again perhaps because I'm more used to see retarded shit left does in my country and so I don't think the game exaggerated it as much it does to right]. One thing I disliked in the game was the racist guy who is there just so the played can make some choice and have the thought system asking you if you wanna build communism/be a fascist/or whatever the shit. I disliked it because it was really bad, stupid and even unnecessary in the game when it has so many nice dialogues. The politics shit didn't stop me from enjoying the game, I'm used to hearing dumb commies left and right(I'm an university student, after all) and I can enjoy something without having it stopping me from having fun.
Overall, it was a really great game and I do recommend it to anyone that wants to play it. It's not, for me, neither GOTY nor RPG, but that is not really important, what is important is if the game is good or not. And it is really good.

 

[ebPD8PePfC]

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! - The game is about a gang of girls in a school in the 1920, who go on an adventure to acquit their janitor from a nefarious plot. You start by recruiting a the gang leader from a list of 10+ girls, each with her own stats. You then recruit up to three more girls and start to talk to people around the school, which advances the story.
The game plays a like a mix between an adventure game and an RPG. There are no puzzles though. Instead the game has all conflict resolution done through one of five mini-games, which are based on the stats of your characters, so there is an incentive to build a varied party. The minigames themselves are mostly uninteresting, but they are short enough to be unintrusive. Sadly they are used far far too often and turn into a boring chore.
Talking to characters also isn’t too interesting. The writing isn’t good enough, and sometimes feel disjointed, as if sentences don’t relate to one another. The overall plot isn’t interesting, at least not enough to carry the game by itself. There’s also an issue with the decision to have you pick from 10+ girls, as they all spout the same generic text and lack character of their own, so you companion for the adventure aren't interesting in any way. The game is designed to be played once, so it would have been better to have a fixed party of four girls with fixed personalities, rather than go for a systematic route that makes the girls feel identical, bar their different stats.
In practice I don’t think you can really lose the game. Just talk to everyone until you find the next character that moves the plot and don’t make really dumb choices in mini-games. This sort of game loop is fine as the base for a casual game, but the production values are probably a bit too low for that crowd.

A mini-game that does work well and I would like to see in other RPGs is Hangman, where you try to get some information from the character you’re talking to. There's a hidden sentence you need to reveal, and you can spend tokens whose number depends on your stats to reveal certain words. When you run out of tokens you have to guess the right words.

When a complicated sentence is hidden, the players' success to reveal it will depend on their understanding of the character they’re talking to and the conversation as a whole, as well the character’s stats. On the other hand when the hidden sentence is simple, it doesn’t work because it’s easy to guess the next word through basic English.
It’s not fun enough to last a hundred times like this game uses it, but it could fit into a CRPG as an addition to the conversation system.

For all it’s faults, the game has an interesting design and a great theme so it’s worth playing it a bit just to toy with its systems. I wouldn’t really recommended it though, because everything good about it gets drowned out through the supposedly 7+ hours it lasts. I didn’t get nearly that far.