#I'm pretty impressed with the gameplay for this skill so far

[jasminesilk]

Tristan has been getting into the new gemology skill and even made his first pair of earrings!

I've decided to go with gemology for his second creative skill mostly because it's new but also because I think it'll go really well with spellcaster gameplay.

[brialavellan]

A "Way Too Late for Anyone to Care About" Veilguard Review by Some Dude

I replayed Veilguard and now 5 months after Everyone already gave their Hot Takes, I finally feel confident enough to have some.

Spoilers for everything.

Things I Loved -

Environments:

The environments are fucking gorgeous guys. Arlathan Forest was one of my favorite levels to run around in. Treviso is what I wanted Orlais in DA:I to be. Kal-Sharok was very nice too. I think some of the armor and some things might be a bit over-designed (looking at you especially, Champion's Brilliant Regalia) but otherwise this is a very pretty game. Very pretty to look at will be a running theme.

Things I Liked -

Companions:

I really tried hard not to bog myself down in questions of whether I liked the companions or not. Or even questions of whether they were/acted "realistic" (whatever the fuck that means in a fantasy "elves-and-dragons" type of game). That's a very different quest than "were these companions well-written and did they serve the narrative"?

In this case, I think they MOSTLY* succeeded. I think every companion being tied to a faction was a good choice. I think MOST* companions had interesting arcs and I do think the writing of MOST* companions was quite strong. I don't think, like some detractors seem to, that everyone was too pleasant and nice and there was no confrontation - if so, they never got that scene with Emmrich and Taash then. Or noticed the obvious initial tension between Davrin and Lucanis.

Why do I keep saying MOSTLY? Because, as a biracial person who is ALSO transgender, Taash's entire "pick a heritage" "arc" had me halfway between groaning and seething throughout.

I have only played two romances so far and I think I chose possibly the most underwhelming one (Bellara) which gave me a negative impression overall. Emmrich's romance was much nicer in terms of feeling like there was actual content tailored to the companion that flowed nicely from initial interest to end of romance that was a nice supplement to the companion's arc. And that's what I'm looking for with any companion I romance.

Bellara's romance was adorable for the....2 scenes I got? I, again, don't want to fall in the trap of realism here or say it's wrong? Her romance scenes were good. I enjoyed her romance (what little there was). I just thought the build-up did not flow well, giving me that feeling of "I'm clicking the romance button until the sex scene pops up." And I really I don't like that feeling.

What was Hit-and-Miss -

The Gameplay

A satisfying gameplay loop seems to always take a backseat to story with Dragon Age and every game seems to be a new iteration of them trying desperately to update their mechanics to today's Current Gen "way of gaming". I've played as a mage and a rogue and somehow, someway, still end up just button mashing my way through the same fights the same way I did in Origins and DA:2. And it gets tiresome fast. I upped the difficulty to see if it made a difference and it did not. I would say it's a skill issue (quite literally, in this case), but most reviews that aren't like...IGN...say the same thing. I do enjoy the fluid animations and I ended up gravitating towards archery-heavy play with my rogue but again, it's pretty to look again but not meaty or fun.

I'm actually in favor of the hubs - I think open-world gameplay served DA:I poorly and made Corypheus feel like a distant, far-off "threat". The story line was tighter and flowed better, but the writing itself was....

What was Mostly Miss -

The Writing

I'm putting it in the "mostly was a miss" paragraph because honestly, it was so inconsistent. Some parts are incredibly strong and some parts are so weak that it kinda melds together into a generally bland narrative that has some highs (Blood of Arlathan) and some lows (Lair of the Dragon King) and includes some truly baffling choices.

I'll take a little suspension of disbelief - I know that story-wise, the Warden can't have all their companions dropping dead of Blight the first time they fight darkspawn (especially when I specced Wynne with Arcane Bomb). But Rook blowing up Blight boils and being "Blighted" as an Affliction status along with "Weakened" or "Light Armor Mastery" is pushing my suspension of disbelief to its breaking point.

Some people complained about the reactivity to previous games and I'm inclined to agree with some of it. While I truly do not think whether Bella or Lloyd owns the Redcliffe tavern or even if Feynriel is in Tevinter or not matters in the grand scheme of things, I think who is the Divine, whether the Circles are still around in Thedas, or who drank from the Well of Sorrow should have some impact. I'm also inclined to think that razing the entire South of Thedas was not the best idea.

But even the reactivity and changes to lore were weird in some ways i.e. why is the ancient elven empire full of weird Fade-Tech? We have not seen Fade-Tech before in any previous games. How is Hezenkoss tearing open the Veil and we're in the actual Fade, something that's only been done twice and was, until now apparently, A Very Big Deal?

Even the choices that were supposed to matter seemed to affect nothing but some dialogue and some codices. And even this was inconsistent.

I'm not going to touch how I personally feel my "Stop Solas at all Cost" Solas-romancing Lavellan was butchered because I haven't got through all dialogue trees and haven't seen all results but I found it weird she was pleading for mercy in the exact same way my "Redeem Solas" Trevelyan was - almost like that decision meant nothing.

What was REALLY Fucked Up -

"There's No Binary to Gender. Only Race!" - Why Taash's Rivaini vs Qunari arc was the fucking Worst*

"Why does the Indigenous Asian elf have White Guilt?" - Why it's Not a Good Look for the Ancient Elves to be Sadistic Slavers*

*Honestly, these are going to be separate posts.....I had a thing written down but after some reflection, they deserve their own posts.

As a final note: I really did not want to dislike Veilguard. I really, REALLY didn't. I even went through an entire second playthrough with a different character as divergent from my first one as possible to try and see if I just had a bad run. It just doesn't feel like a Dragon Age game in the same way the other three did.

I did not need this to game to be dark and gritty. I did not need to see elven slaves being whipped in Dock Town or to be called a fantasy slur every 5 seconds. I'm happy other people enjoyed it. I personally did not.

Anyway - that's my view. Take it or leave it.

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Also the secret ending was the stupidest fucking thing ever and I'm so glad it's tucked away only if you find those three ring codices and I'm glad Bioware will never get the chance to ruin more DA lore if they ended up following up on that bullshit - I'm treating it like a Marvel end credits cutscene but for a DC movie meaning it'll get dropped and never mentioned again when the franchise is rebooted.

[littleshysheep-at-da]

here with my report on master of the labyrinth, 27 days post-launch. it's just below average.

it's a slog to get through dailies, and it takes and hour or more to level up each day.

the longer i look at the events, the more i realise how predatory they are.

it's easy to see the P2W aspects, especially when i, a ~7 million powered little spider, am being beaten by 3m power spiders with skill not fitting their power.

i'll continue playing, just to see how far a free to play can get. i'm level 91 right now, and i need level 100 to get arachne. at my current pace of 1 level a day, i'll be there soon enough.

Tumblr has seemed to have a weird delay with Notifs cause I saw this in my inbox before seeing the Notif for it? So sorry is this replay is late.

Thank You for the Report!!! 🫡 I’ve actually been keeping up with Playing it myself (though I’ve only just passed Level 60 cause there isn’t really Gameplay and gets a bit boring so your patience is quite impressive!) and I did actually mean to give an Update on it after Playing for a Month but my complete lack of sense of time means I have no idea how long it’s been lol.

And on the actual Report, you are SO CORRECT. It’s just very light on Gameplay and the Gameplay it does have is kind a slog (I do get… weirdly into the mining though). It’s like still super cute, though I still think some of elements are too generic and not actually related to KumoDesu, but yeah it’s just kinda… it.

I still Play because Blorbos On Demand tm (and I never get that for KumoDesu!!! I still need someone to rip and the Chara Models and Assets fr), and I’ve actually have been keeping up with it Daily but I haven’t been trying to max things out or anything. I’m lucky to be VERY resistant to FOMO so their Paywalling hasn’t gotten to me and I’ve also remained F2P (aside from the literal 1 cent to Bind Account). I mean I do admit to not really understanding the point of AFK Style Games (which I’m pretty sure Laby is lit just a Re-Skin of a Previous Game) but it is weird that it both has so many tabs but also not much to actually do.

Also you said it but yeah PAYWALLED AF. I mentioned this before but KumoDesu had a Collab with The Ants: Underground Kingdom fought before they Released Laby (interest check maybe?) and it is also a Ridiculously Paywalled Game. I will say The Ants has the benefit of being geared more towards being a Resource Management Type Game (which does make sense for running an ant hill honestly) so it has slightly more Gameplay than Laby (but not as many of my Blorbos…). But yeah in both you can’t go 2 seconds without them Advertising SOME Pack for Blah Blah Blah (but in The Ants I Cheated it by jointing a high Ranked Gulid with a lot of whales who are also super nice). Like bro… I just want to Scout my funny Characters and put them Ships together😭 I literally Play Laby just to try and get my Babies…

I did manage to get Halloween Fei as a F2P! But I haven’t got any of the other Event Outfits/Charas thus far! Ganbatte homie! We’re in this together!

[qsmp-yaoi-island]

Now that Purgatory (round 1??) is over I wanna do a more concise review on it. Warning for possible neg and long post, I just wanna talk about my personal opinion with it:

The event itself: I wanna say first that the most fun part of this event was the CCs. The event itself was... the least fun part. I understand the point of purgatory was to suffer, but from a content creator point you have to take your audience into account. To spend your limited time running back to your body for 30 minutes - 2 hours to get back to your body was just one part of the frustration and then pile people hunting you for points on top of that, it's bound to get people upset. People have already talked about how the biggest problem was the lack of testing for the event, so it they had to balance the event as it was ongoing. The constant changing rules made every victory feel less about skill and more about exploiting the rules/Who had the most people on that day.

Meta vs. Lore: This has been a problem with the qsmp for a while now, but it's never been more apparent with purgatory. All of the hints that were thrown around vague or not about the cursed team caused so much confusion. Cellbit said a really good point about it early on: "Why would they have an event where one team was bound to win? You're grinding for 10 hours each day just to give up and let one team win." <- paraphrased. So we were faced with a conundrum where we're unsure if we take the hints as something to consider in the competition of the game, or just play what the admins intended. And the balancing having to be done by the players for no enchants, lead to a lot of anger over disagreeing with that rule was in rp or not.

Was it worth it the reward?: First impressions, I want to say no. The coming days will probably change my mind but for now to justify two weeks of ten hours a day of grinding for a cliffhanger is pretty defeating. Multiple cc's have said they want a break after how intense this event has been and now they don't really get a reward for it, and will probably have to do it again. The drama was good, the emotions were high, but you cannot keep a story going on hopelessness forever. And now that they're going back to the island it's undetermined how this is gonna effect the characters in lore and feels like again, everything is put on hold for now.

I loved this event, the admins did so well despite it's flaws. My only hope is from here is that things start to get solved, the Eye being introduced at this point has really muddled with all the current mystery of the Fed and Resistance already had going on, and it's spreading out the focus far too much. We need answers not more villains.

That being said I'm excited to see where they take it from here. It really jumpstarted my love for the server all over again: it had tons of good interactions we wouldn't have gotten otherwise, intense gameplay, and tons of good character driven content. But man, I want off this wild ride.

[crystalelemental]

Some of my wife's coworkers will give her game recommendations, and the recent one was a game called Silent Hope. It's a dungeon exploration game, kind of a button masher. You have seven characters you can play as that go through the dungeon, each with their own battle style. It's pretty cozy, not too difficult and generally just about doing some fun runs. I tried the demo and we picked up the full game on 70% discount on the e-shop, so can't complain. Anyway, preliminary thoughts below.

Naturally, because there are seven classes and you can play as one at a time, I have to rank them. Sorry, that's just life.

Wanderer - easy worst, I do not like him. Short range, skills aren't particularly impressive, nothing he's doing is exciting to me.

Archer - Range is generally my preferred approach, but Archer is stupid squishy and I'm not particularly impressed with his skillset. He has one good straight-line shot that deals good damage, but his trap feels basically useless.

Warrior - Big slow swings for big damage. She's fine, but not a favorite. She's at least able to consistently handle things, and has a good charge attack that deals a ton while stopping enemies from attacking and breaking through walls.

Caster - Range but better. I like his skills, Gravity to gather enemies together then burst damage. It's a decent combo. I just need to get a good weapon on him. Also, his dodge is a teleport, so he can get behind enemies and out of situations where others get stuck.

Rogue - Very short range, but has skills to make up for it. Rogue has a solid offensive close-range attack, but also has ranged spin and a charge in that deals pretty solid damage too. Like Caster, she can teleport behind enemies, but this is far more valuable for her, as it means dodging a physical strike and then unleashing her heavy hitting attack. Really fun, but can be a bit squishy.

Fighter - Punch Ojou-sama. Really close range by default which frustrates me at times, but her skills more than make up for it. She has a rocket punch that draws enemies to her, then a heavy charge attack at close range that just trucks things. Her main buff is kinda whatever, focusing more on attack speed than actual damage, but it's fine.

Farmer - Easy best of the initial set. Good range on basic attacks, solid stats despite no standouts, her a nice charge that stuns for breakthrough and disruption, has a Poison Butterfly that deals poison chip damage and can confuse to get enemies attacking one another, and a passive buff that improves random stats. Notably, while I discounted that one, during a segment in a challenge section when I ran out of healing potion, it turned out one buff was passive regen. So like. Farmer does it all. I beat the first boss with Farmer, and had basic equipment. No frills, still won first try. Took a while! But we won. Farmer's crazy good.

Thing is, each run, you want to swap between all of them. They all give a permanent passive buff for the remainder of your exploration each time you switch out, with the party member leaving providing their buff. You really want to cycle though all of them, and admittedly I can't remember which one provides which stat to give an impression of their importance.

The gameplay loop is fairly long, but I'm enjoying myself overall. The biggest hangup is resource collection. Sure as shit, the second area has a lot more specific materials that you need a lot of to upgrade stuff, and it can be hard to get the rarer options like Straight Lumber and Obsidian. It makes the experience a little more frustrating, but honestly the difficulty isn't so extreme that I've felt like I needed too much. You can get by with weaker equipment if you're skilled enough at dodging and abusing your skills. So it hasn't progressed to the point of irritation. Despite taking really risky moves, I have yet to see a game over screen despite sub-optimal equipment on half my party.

There's not really "story," per se. The ancient kind of some place fucked off into the abyss and stole everyone's ability to speak, so his daughter cried so hard her tears literally crusted over her entire body, and now you guys are summoned to go find the king at her behest. She's the only character who speaks, and she relays information to you throughout the dungeon. It's cute enough, but what sells me is the enemies. Not because they're like super interesting in appearance or anything, but because they're all kinda vaguely named after vices, and sort of hint toward what the king's deal was. The dungeon looks like the old kingdom and, for example, there's a crab enemy whose title is a spin on "penny pincher." They all come with little flavor text about some kind of wicked thought or action, the funniest of which is probably the cute early game bunny heads that talk about pure malice. It's fun, I like the idea.

It's fun, takes a while to play through, but I'm enjoying it for now. Waiting for the area that gets too up its own ass on rare materials, when I finally snap. Because I feel like it's coming.

[sharkface]

So far my impression of sxsg is very positive, it's definitely not a project as large in scope as frontiers but I was not expecting it to be so I'm very pleased. Full disclosure I have only been playing Shadow's story so far since I figure that's the one they promod hardest AND the one I'm most likely to get spoilers on sooner. The new skills make the gameplay pretty varied and fun (I'm not a HUGE fan of boost gameplay) and it mostly just controls like frontiers so it feels familiar enough that I don't mind some minor jank. The OST is insane. Some people have called Shadow's new characterization OOC but I could not disagree more, Shadow was always a little corny it was just less obvious when you were a kid. He's finally driven and determined in a way that makes him prone to self isolation instead of being uncomplicatedly mean and reclusive again!

The game is also REALLY easy, like to the point I (a person bad at these games) wish it was harder because it just isn't challenging for me, but tbf these are kids games and I've been playing Sonic for as long as I could hold a controller lol.

[blueberry-lemon]

Persona 5 Tactica non-spoiler First Impressions

I'm honestly pretty burned out on Persona, specifically the P5 cast, at this point, BUT...I figured I'd give them one last rodeo with Tactica. Especially bc I like seeing different takes on tactics RPG gameplay.

I'm liking it so far! Its closest parallel game is definitely Mario+Rabbids, but I think I prefer this game more than that series.

If you're wondering if you can play this game without playing Persona 5, I would say yeah probably. Maybe read like a 1-sentence synopsis of who the Phantom Thieves are so you know who the cast is?

Non-spoilers impressions below:

Love the art style. Love the dialogue portraits and the 3D cutscenes, which I honestly like more than their counterparts in actual Persona 5. I was unsure of the character designs when Tactica was first teased, but I grew to love them. Everyone's really expressive.

New character, Erina, is great. Love her.

Fun tactics gameplay. Definitely leans slightly in the direction of "puzzley tactics" rather than "all-out brawl" tactics if that makes sense. What I mean is that like, battles can take a hard swing for the good or the bad depending on whether you made a huge mistake. I did one side quest that definitely felt like a "puzzle", in that there was a specific way to beat in the required amount of turns. The main story missions are a nice blend so far. I guess I would call Final Fantasy Tactics an "all-out brawl" tactics game.

If you play this game, definitely make sure you digest the main mechanic of the game: knock an opponent away from cover, then hit them when they're out in the open. That gives you an extra turn. This is absolutely crucial to surviving.

But on that note...the game generously offers, like, 5 different difficulty choices!

Character customization is nice and streamlined. I don't think the game cares at all if you're a nerd about Persona fusion, you can kind of just go with the flow. Your choices are a combination of equipping Personas and also leveling up a character skill tree.

I honestly like how the Personas themselves are handled in this more than in Persona 5. Each character has their signature Persona at all times, PLUS equips one of your homemade fused Personas. So Joker can have Arsene + Jack Frost, for example. To account for this, I think each Persona only has 2 Skills each.

Each party member has their own, like, "Ultimate" ability and Passive ability that's unique to them, so that's nice.

No hub world to run around in, which for me is a HUGE plus. Just a pleasant hub menu with things to do in between battles.

The game does a GREAT job of slowly unraveling the mechanics so that it doesn't overwhelm you all at once in the beginning

The story is whatever so far, if I'm being honest. But it's inoffensive and you can easily skip a few cutscenes without missing any crucial information.

I don't think the game is gonna blow any Persona fan or tactics fan's mind, but I think it's successful so far. It feels like an alternate choice to Mario+Rabbids, with a slightly different take on how to make a similar game.

Good job Atlus!

[soundofseclusion]

54. Trek to Yomi

Release: 2022, PC/PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series Beaten: October 8th, Xbox Series S (Game Pass) Playtime: 5h 53m

Trek to Yomi doesn't break any new ground or do anything spectacular. Its biggest strength is the fact that it's a very visually impressive game, with compelling cinematography and framing, a lot of visual flair, and some extraordinary set pieces. But everything else it does is just done well. Combat is enjoyable and interesting, albeit somewhat repetitive. For the most part, I didn't get bored of combat, but I recognized that there wasn't a huge amount of depth to it. You unlock new combos and skills throughout the game, but they don't change up the moment-to-moment gameplay in a substantial way and are mostly just fun to collect. The story is not particularly deep, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I felt like the main character's narrative and evolution was pretty strong, though not so much so for the other characters, of which there are really only a few. The story doesn't have any outright faults as far as I'm concerned, and the overall plot is interesting. So, combat and plot are both good, but not exceptional. And really, I think that's okay. Not every game needs to blow my mind to qualify as an enjoyable experience, nor does it need to be exceptional to be "good."

[klymilark]

So my partner and I said a while ago we should play #BrighterShores and we finally got around to it! I gotta say I'm impressed, we played about 3-4 hours (I played another hour after her), and it was a blast! Story/dialog: I love the humor. The fact that you're allowed to repeatedly call a high ranking guard "Binnsy" just to make his day a little worse is great, and a lot of the small stuff shows a lot of care. I found an NPC who's entire thing was that she liked when people were happy. Its stuff like that Gameplay: They do hit you with the grind pretty early, which I don't really mind. It was a money grind for us, but once we figured out cooking was a cash cow we got pretty far in the other skills. Plus mashing potatoes with a mallet made me chuckle quite a bit. Also the life skilling level scales, which is... Not something I've ever seen, and I quite like it! It makes all of the life skill spots stay populated throughout the game, and the nodes aren't shared so you're not competing QoL: While there's limited fast travel, which is annoying, and limited information given when questing (use the wiki if you want, I don't), the game doesn't skimp on features I haven't seen in other games, notably the discovery system. When you find a gathering node, you can add it to your skill menu, and then later on you can go to your skill menu and see all of the areas you've found that have that node in it. I don't know why more games don't do this, it's the best. Same applies to enemies, you can add them to your skill menu and then just know where they are. Also the "banks" are right next to crafting stations which holy *shit* that's great. You can't completely afk and make 1000 potions without looking, but you also don't spend more time running than crafting. I'm only about 5 hours in, but I'm already very impressed overall. The only feature I wish they had was an action queue, even if it were just one action, so once you finish one action you'd start the next. My reaction time isn't great, so the current system leads to some inefficiencies when grinding https://social.lol/@klymilark/114702797980906775

[retphienix]

Hm.

Haven't really collected my thoughts on it so more of a "first (ish) impression" situation but ages ago I beat Enshrouded's "current content" (at that time) and had a complete blast.

I'm redoing it with all the new stuff they added and the main game itself is still great, but I swapped classes and oh boy I think they might need some work on this playstyle in my opinion.

My first was a mage and even in that far less refined version of the game (so many more mage-y things now) you could combine some neat things to make wand centric gameplay feel pretty nice!

Also you were "snappier" in combat since this was before they nerfed dodge/block after an action which I have really mixed feelings on but think doing so for ranged options at least makes sense.

This time around I'm going 2 handed barbarian style and just?

What do I have?

1h has safer blocks and low enough recovery on actions to use that block.

All 3 range styles have plenty of options.

Daggers seem snappy enough.

I mean I have damage, sure. I have health. I have to stretch my skill points to have healing beyond leech so it's more about stacking defense and damage but like it just doesn't feel "good" as a playstyle right now to me and mostly because of the nerf that was supposed to focus on wand users.

It's a few things really, and maybe my opinions will shift. But like the dodge/block nerfs feel ten billion times worse on 2h melee than wand, like it feels like they wanted to stop wands (rightfully so) from having the free-est damage ever since they could insta-block after every swing and in changing this they made 2h melee feel AWFULLLLLLLL.

Even with the perk that increases swing speed for 2h weapons you swing and have to wait 30 years before you can block or dodge, it feels like playing the original demon's souls in slow motion while enemies are at full speed, it's TERRIBLE feeling.

It pushes 2h melee to just never swing until the enemy is animation locked or to commit to just swing swing swing swing swing because fuck it, you'll never block or dodge, the game won't allow it anymore.

Wands can still outspace enemies. 1h melee still has enough low recovery frames to block. Daggers are cancel-able-enough.

But 2h melee got classed as "You can't dodge or block in response to anything. You have to just stare at your opponent until they are open and THEN attack or mash mash mash mash" and that seems lame to me.

Like an over-correction that gives 2h melee an identity as the least satisfying way to play.

We'll see. Guess it just means I'll be swapping back to any other weapon at some point because 2h is so brutally slow (WITH the swing speed perk) that you can't respond in combat which feels terrible.

Like the correct option in combat is almost always just "Keep swinging" because the recovery is so long you'll just eat 2 extra hits trying to wait on it so you can dodge or block. Just keep swinging. Unga bunga.

Skill issue.

[televinita]

Survivor Forty-Several*: Episode 1

(*I will run this joke into the ground or die trying)

New season, new set of players, NEW JUDGMENTS TO BE CAST! No real thoughts on episode 1 (except that I was neither devastated nor thrilled by the first boot), but I do like to do a lil' favoritism ranking order of castaways based on my 1-episode first impressions, so here we go before I watch episode 2 and they start to shift.

(With a bonus aside for who they remind me of because I swear to god, half of casting's mandate is "make sure they look like someone famous so viewers will attach to them more quickly.")

Sierra (literally all I ever ask for are young and pretty women who last past episode 1; FINALLY)

Teeney (can't stand this name. but what an outstanding personality. I feel like they -- oh that's wild, that pronoun has never before sounded natural to me in my life but I just used it before even looking it up to confirm -- might very easily backstab a favorite I like more in the future...BUT could just as easily become top fave. Chaos Tinkerbell vibes here)

Sue (Glenn Close with a facelift? My mom thinks she looks like the woman whose plastic surgery made her look like a cat. Either way, I'm pleasantly surprised by how cool she seems so far)

Kishan (want to see more of him to know for sure but so far he seems really smiley. I would feel calm if he were my ER doc)

TK (I want to lop that stupid bun right off his head, it looks like a wart. but otherwise, he's so smiley!)

Caroline (reminds me of Emily Deschanel) (that's it, that's the appeal)

Kyle (want to see more of him to make a proper eval but I like the hair, the sad backstory, the small-town-Michigan background and did I hear correctly, construction job?)

Genevieve (I thought I would love her more but she's allying with the most boring guy and I'm questioning her judgment)

Rachel (Gabby??) (I could go either way. Because of her Gabbyface I'm inclined to like her, but I also feel like she could turn Mean like that. and this is not about Andy, because he deserved it and her reaction to him is actually what got her ranked above the next 3)

Aysha (seems pleasant enough; she and the next two women are pretty neutral to me and on very equal footing so far)

Tiyana (kinda brash? not making a great impression on me but also not really making a bad one either)

Annika (samesies; this was a coin flip)

The Nothing Men:

13. Gabe (he's giving Milosh-from-Seinfeld face. and skill in gameplay too, tbh. but I don't hate him...yet)

14. Rome (people who race to find the first idol are so boring to me)

15. Sol (I've never seen a person so expressionless in my life)

16. Sam (jockbro human equivalent of a Minecraft block. he's giving nothing. except maybe mildly annoying unearned jockbro confidence)

17. ANDY (would have been higher but what in the embarrassing hell was all that. get him out of my sight immediately. you gotta earn an emotional breakdown out here. do it halfway through the season and we will love you for showing vulnerability [yes this is about Ben from 46], but the same courtesy is NOT extended to brandons who flop on day 2)

As for the first boot...I'm actually kind of sad about Jon, because halfway through I was kinda feeling like I'd rank him lower in the pack, but by voting time I DEFINITELY wanted him to stay and now that I've made my list, I would place him at either 8th, 9th or 10th, with potential to move up (except that potential is now gone, sigh).

[dumbfinntales]

The year is finally coming to an end. How fast it went by, especially with school the months just passed by. But starting next year we'll really get into the meat of things and start learning different kinds of programming. Should be interesting! Also per my yearly tradition I'll also look back at some games I've played and choose my personal GOTY. So more below.

At that start of this year I played through Beyond Good and Evil which was a fun game with some annoying stealth sections. It really reminded me of PS2 era games and it was fun. I also bought a game called Darkwood when I was drunk and still haven't played it. I really don't like having a "backlog" of games, but now they're building up. Maybe I'll start 2024 with Darkwood?

Early this year a game that absolutely blew me away was released. Pizza Tower. There's nothing I don't love about this game. The characters, art style, humor, the vibes, gameplay, music etc... Everything beyond immaculate. And the game reached quite the popularity, didn't it? Never expected Pizza Tower of all things to get a fandom like Undertale. Pizza Tower is in fact so ridiculously popular and connected with annoying little kids that I almost feel guilty enjoying it as much as I do. But, I'll stay true to myself. I loved the game when I played it and I won't let little kids ruin it for me.

A new Zelda game was also released this year, but quite frankly it failed to impress me like Breath of the Wild did. Mainly because everything that Tears of the Kingdom did was already done by BotW, and the few unique things ToftK did have weren't really my thing. I'm kinda craving for a more traditional 3D Zelda.

Racing towards the end of the year I played a ton of good and fun games back to back. Just to name some: My Friendly Neighborhood, Blasphemous 2, Remnant 2, Lies of P, The Last Faith, Lords of the fallen (2023). The new LoftF is an extremely flawed game that I can't call "good" with good conscience, but I can't deny that I still enjoyed it in a weird guilty pleasure type of way. It is the only game in existence that I hated upon beating it, but still went back to make another character.

And of course as it seems like a yearly tradition now, in December I fell back into a Path of Exile addiction. I've been playing it for a couple weeks now and made a splitting steel build. I wanted something "melee", but melee builds in this game are scuffed so I compromised. Splitting steel is a hybrid melee and ranged skill that shoots metal shards that split. It's pretty fun, and dopamine for days! Seriously PoE is a dangerous game with just how good it feels to play.

Now it is high time for me to choose my GOTY. Is it Pizza Tower that I oh so much praised earlier on? I thought about this a lot. And honestly? My personal GOTY goes to Lies of P, a game I only briefly mentioned. It is the closest that any game ever has gotten to that sweet Fromsoftware game quality. In fact I'd go as far as to say that it did reach that quality, with flying colors. I can't believe that a game loosely based on the story of Pinocchio would be this good. The characters, story, level design, atmosphere, bosses, combat, EVERYTHING is so good. You can check my review on the game for extended thoughts, but Lies of P is an absolute gem of a game. Of course I had to give my GOTY to a game in a genre I love above all else. Pizza Tower is still amazing, but action RPG's will always have my heart. Lies of P was also one of the most challenging games I've ever beat, can't wait to see what they'll cook up with the DLC!

Happy new year to anyone reading! Have a good 2024.

[fernsnailz]

@thefantastician i caught up on everything and I HAVE THOUGHTS HEHE.... i watched the summer game fest trailer and these two levels gamescage played and man. shit looks fun as hell

in terms of gameplay i like what i've seen so far! i especially like what they're doing with the chaos control ability - i'm glad that chaos control is more based around skill rather than power or speed, and the fact that shadow essentially has a time-freezing ability in the game about time travel fits pretty well thematically lol. i do wish they would give him at least one gun but i know it's not gonna happen :(

i'm excited to see what the other levels bring, especially since it seems like they're combining a number of different areas/time periods in a few longer levels. i definitely prefer the quality over quantity approach, but i do see an evil timeline where there's only like. three levels total. and if that happens i will die laughing lmfao

oh and also the artstyle!! i fuckin ADORE the kaleidoscopic and dream-like direction they took the second half of the space colony ark level, i really hope it gets wackier and weirder beyond that point. and i was surprisingly impressed by some of the character animation as well! doom's eye looks FANTASTIC and i love that he swims around like a little freak. shadow's animation is also incredibly fluid, i love the moments where he stumbles or slides into his next movements - it adds a more personal level of intensity i feel like is sometimes missing from sonic games. the facial animation is still really stiff though. shadow's only two expressions are >:| and >:o

and after finally seeing the wings and the preorder bonuses, i have. some sort of theory. i don't really have enough evidence yet to put anything into words and it's very likely that i'm onto absolutely nothing here BUT. i sense a few possible connections:

OH WAIT ONE LAST THING. WHY HAVE I SEEN NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THE TERIOS SKIN. THIS WAS THE ONLY THING ON THE SONIC X SHADOW SITE THAT MADE ME AUDIBLY GASP

in conclusion. i love how crazy all of this is and i hope shit gets even wilder and weirder

i go somewhat offline for a week and they give shadow the hedgehog wings in my absence . sega hates me specifically

[wandringaesthetic]

Thoughts on FFXVI so far (Jill is awake and she and Clive are on the way to Rosaria) (spoilers to that point)

The game is beautiful. I've been taking a lot of screenshots like "man this pretty"/"man this almost looks real." I saw a few "this looks like a PS3 game" comments from earlier demo/gameplay footage, and I think I understand that, because the zones from the demo (the barren mountains where Titan and Shiva fight and the blighted village) are somewhat empty and have fewer/more muted colors. The story takes place in a dying world, and has the look and lighting of somewhere far north. You can quibble with the aesthetics if you like but not the graphics.

The thing that impresses me most in this generation in graphics is lighting, so. I keep being like "woa" and taking screenshots of water.

There is no minimap, and in "dungeon" zones, no map at all. I like this a lot, because I feel like I stare at the map if it's there instead of the very beautiful pictures in front of me, and I think it's appropriate to feel a little lost and disoriented and nervous about it in, say, the enemy castle you are infiltrating. But I imagine some people will not like this. Areas so far have been fairly linear, though I did get a little turned around in the first forest area (the greatwood?)

Bosses and midbosses are fun and very beautifully animated. Average field enemies feel like a bit of a waste of time and should either be a little easier or a lot tougher. I feel like, with skill, one could absolutely blaze through boss fights, and with either more caution or less skill they're a bit of a slow grinding down. Feel like I'm generally falling somewhere in between on these.

I'm playing on "action" mode and am not using any of the "timely" accessories. I have played some action-y games but am by no means a real pro gamer. I've had to retry some boss fights (when you do this, the game lets you restart the fight with a full inventory of potions (4 potions and 3 hi potions)) but I haven't felt like I've been "stuck" on anything yet. I feel like the "reward" of increasing your skill isn't necessarily just getting through the game (which you can probably do regardless of skill if you just grind at it) but feeling like a bamf as you do.

(there is a kinship with FFVIII in this regard)

I've done....4? Sidequests so far. They are very reminiscent of FFXIV sidequests. Go rescue this girl and grab the supplies she was supposed to gather. Be Valisthea's surliest waiter. Not too exciting but they fulfill what I think is their primary function of fleshing out the world building.

The intuition I had regarding the "bearer" tattoos from the trailers and the demo was that they were magical and either sedated or memory wiped the bearer or somehow made it impossible to escape (need to the spell renewed so often or they kill you or something like that). And it turns out, no, the system of slavery is so ingrained and the odds of being cast out and then hunted down are so high that they don't need to be magical. The mark is enough.

I ALSO thought the bearers were generally POW slaves acquired through conquest and weren't necessarily people who can use magic. THEN I thought they were ALL people who could use magic, but no and no. They are ALL people who can use magic WITHOUT a crystal (excepting dominants, which are special) and Clive was actually a weird cultural exception as the first shield of Rosaria BEFORE he was branded and then fell into the general norm after. Which makes a terrible sense! We do not like what we can't control! Also makes Annabella's weird disgust towards him make more sense!

I think probably part of the reasoning behind that awkward Yoshi-P statement saying "everyone in this game is white because we didn't want it to be about race" is probably BECAUSE slavery is a major plot and world-building thing in a system that in some ways mimics but mostly doesn't real world chattel slavery. Whether making it all be white on white crime is effective or worth it is something I'm going to reserve judgement on for now.

Oh Cid. Cid. What are you doing, Cid? I didn't understand what he wanted at all at first, and now I get the idea that he is good intentioned but has no coherent plan. Free as many bearers as possible and then eventually we'll have a revolution? But you don't want to say that because you're already pretty sure you'll fail. a lot of the people you're freeing are old or infirm you're not exactly forming an army. This is only working because the powers that be are too busy fighting each other to notice you. What are you going to do when they do, Cid? I'm going to do what I think is right until they come kill me and then God can judge me??

I enjoy Cid. He is just some guy who is trying and not at all an inspirational figure.

This game is pretty brutal, huh? I keep thinking about the guy who ended up as a blood spatter under a rock in the first few minutes of the game and the blood pooling under some of Shiva's ice later.

(the ice and the rocks creaking and the subtle controller vibration as you walk through the aftermath of Shiva and Titan's fight really sold the scale and also that this is all about to come crashing down)

I feel it's more tasteful, if you're going to do violence, to have semi-realistic violence rather than bloodless violence. Also I just personally like it. I like bones crunching. I like the post battle blood on your heroes clothes and armor. Enough to be slightly gross but not Dragon Age style ridiculously drenched in blood. Just right.

There are a weird number of surprise lethal axe throws though.

Alas, Benedikta. We hardly knew you. She has a kinship to Yotsuya. I actually wonder if there is a Japanese trope both of them fall under with the long pipe.

None of the soldiers in this game seem to be women. The only women we see fight are Jill and Benedikta, who are both dominants and therefore exceptional. Which... I will reserve judgement on whether that adequately makes sense later. Valisthea is in other ways not a nice place.

I get the idea that the eikons/dominants aren't always passed down via blood. It seems maybe each eikon has its own rules? I wonder if they always have a gender preference for their host.

I like the little overlay arrows showing where you can climb up or under something. It feels like that breaks immersion less so than all Horizon Forbidden West's foot and handholds being yellow, for example. Or all the walls you can run on having a certain texture, or w/e.

The music is good, ofc. Maybe my new favorite main character theme? I have to meditate on it.

Oh, the one huge awkward guy is named Goetz, which is speculated to be what Guts Berserk's name is "supposed" to be. Or Gotz, some Germanic shortening of Gottfried or similar via translation party shenanigans. I don't think this has any significance but it might be a nod. (Which make me wonder whether FFV's Bartz/Butz was supposed to be something like that now. Hmm.) Also I lay like 50% odds he's going to end up as Titan's dominant by the end of the game.

I am also on High Berserk Fan Alert due to the eclipse in the one live action trailer/advertisement.

I have NO IDEA what we're heading for here in terms of overarching plot or what the final showdown is going to be, and since I don't have enough freedom to just dick around in the game I'm getting a little antsy about that. And where's that second time skip gonna land?

(oh man I just happened to encounter the shortened version of that commercial in the wild in the break room on tv FATE WILL FALL that music aaaaaa)

There's a shot in the very beginning of the game that's a Gandalf versus Balrog visual reference and Clive opens double doors by dramatically throwing his arms wide. There are a lot of small details that feel a near copy to Game of Thrones. Clive grows up in the castle with his father's ward who is like a sibling to him. He's second fiddle to his brother. His mother figure hates his face. He has a loyal doggo. He's Aragorn. He's Jon Snow.

I've often thought that the storytelling of FFXIV feels more like doorstopper fantasy novel storytelling than video game storytelling (or movie or tv show storytelling for that matter). FFXVI seems to be continuing that. Opening up the active time lore menu (I love this feature, BTW?) feels like flipping to the glossary.

Alexander O. Smith cites A Song of Ice and Fire as inspiration for the style of Vagrant Story and FFXII. And I'm glad he did, because when I played those games in a world pre Game of Thrones television show, I was like "is anybody else seeing this???" It turns out the Venn diagram overlap of "people who play epic fantasy video games" and "people who read epic fantasy novels" is SURPRISINGLY SMALL. Smith overdoes it but just occasionally, imo. By which I mean, if you use the phrase "mummer's farce" there had best be some fucking mummers in your story. It took a long time for anyone to hit approximately this correct tone in video games again but.

I'm digressing.

ANYWAY. I THINK IT'S INTERESTING THAT WE INITIALLY ADDED THIS FLAVOR IN EX POST FACTO IN THE LOCALIZATION AND NOW WE'RE GOING FOR IT INTENTIONALLY THE WHOLE TIME. Because this was written simultaneously in English and Japanese. I find it interesting that we started by being inspired by the tabletop gaming heirs of fantasy literature and now we're taking after fantasy literature itself.

We're also seeming to go for the Game of Thrones thematic thing where the nobles are squabbling amongst each other when everyone ought to be banding together against the oncoming climate apocalypse.

But we will (most likely. Hopefully.) Be reaching a conclusion in 40-80 hours of action RPG instead of leaving me hanging for the rest of my natural life. And I would be shocked if we have some sort of red wedding situation in the works.

I'm having a good time, overall. Hesitant to quantify how much of a good time at this juncture.

Sometimes I feel like we need to put the F-word privileges back on the shelf for a minute, but mostly the swears are effective.

Oh gosh, I glanced upon this subject in tags, but I do love Clive's post accepting he killed Joshua freakout. And how Cid's all "well, why don't you just track this guy down anyway, and if he wasn't involved THEN you can kill yourself ;D" because it comes right after a moment Clive was standing on a bridge, and there's not any attention drawn to it but you KNOW he's thinking about jumping. And then Torgal bounds up to him and the moment passes.

And Cid's "welp, you're alive so you may as well make yourself useful" attitude is not the BEST but it's also not the WORST, you know?

Anyway, like I said, having a good time. Having a good time having a bad time.

[efangamez]

Hm. So I've played two new games today! Lemme give you a teeny review of them both so far.

Barony:

Barony is a first person rogue like dungeon crawler with pixelated graphics and combat reminiscent of the old Elder Scrolls games. I played about an hour of this game and sadly couldnt get into it. The amount of content was overwhelming to me, and the way the tutorial handled these explanations wasn't too hot. The combat was also not very smooth. I do appreciate the devs putting in time into this game as people seem to really love this game, but it just didn't *feel* good to me, so I refunded it. Still waiting for a simple, fun, single player FPS Fantasy Rogue like that has really fun Melee combat (I'm looking at you, Elderborn: your combat is fucking awesome).

Terminator: Resistance:

Now this is a shockingly fun game. I had heard some great things about this game, so I went ahead and dove in, and I'm pretty impressed. The visuals are great, the gunplay matches the tone of the game (this is so under-utilized in games) and some of the characters have really great personalities. I also dig the Skills, barebones as they are, to help with gameplay variety. I also love how threatening the Terminators are and the music that plays.

Now some critiques. The sound design, save for the laser and Terminator sounds, is very lackluster. You can hear certain sound fonts from games like Halo (the shotgun sound AND the sniper rifle sound, sometimes not even edited). It does kinda take me outta the immersion, and I really wish they'd change it. The voice acting and character modeling could also use a pretty decent buff (WAIT. THE WITCHER VA IS IN THIS. WHY ISNT HE THE MC???? AHHHHH).

This game is kinda what I wished Fallout's gameplay was gonna be for 4 (with some improvements of course) because I just got HEAVY fallout 3 inspo from this game and it really is awesome.

Okay enough writing. I'm sleepy. I need to do this more often; this is fun! Also, feel free to reply or reblogs with game recs!

[gascon-en-exil]

I'm up through Chapter 9 on my first, Morality-aligned playthrough.

The story so far: From both demos it's pretty easy to build a lot of points in the desired conviction if you're only going for one of them, so up to a point manipulating the story splits was very easy. The Chapter 7 vote is now Morality (protect Roland) vs. Utility (surrender Roland), instead of the former being Liberty as in the first demo, which makes more sense although it does lead to the odd situation of Roland himself initially wanting to vote against his own conviction. This led into voting to believe Silvio in Chapter 8 and then foiling his attempt at a Red Wedding, but then I actually lost the Chapter 9 vote because it's Liberty vs. Utility and I didn't have enough points to convince anyone of anything. I'd wanted to go the Utility of route on engaging in the illicit salt trade, but that got narrowly outvoted sending the story to Hyzante to expose Sorsley's illegal trade. I just finished the fight against his retainer, who ambushes the party on the way to the Hyzantian capital.

Impressions on the story: Actually quite good so far, with much of the promised political complexities. Nobody comes out of this looking perfect, not even Roland's family or the ambitious (and amusingly voiced) early plot sacrifice Dragan. As I'm aiming to go down what is effectively Roland's route I'm pleased to see him going through a decent amount of development. He has to deal with the deaths of his father, brother, and master in short order before going on the run and then later fake his own death to get Aesfrost to back off. I assume that last bit is also to help the plot converge again for Chapter 9 since I know it does that, although I'm curious to see how effectively that's pulled off considering there are four separate versions of the previous chapter. This is also, I presume, why Avlora kills Landroi if your army doesn't.

I assume that Silvio is going to die at some point, but I think it'd be funny if he didn't. He's entertainingly slimy, and I have to appreciate a man so into wine that grapes are his house sigil.

Side characters: I have the blacksmith Jens, Julio from the first demo, and the barrel robot singing and dancing automaton Decimal. Jens and Decimal were much puzzled over when they were datamined, the first because one of his starting abilities is building a ladder (yes, really) and the second because...it's a barrel robot, which is just about on the same level of random weirdness as some of Chrono Cross's recruitable cast, or maybe like a less developed fantasy version of Robo from Chrono Trigger. So far I've found Jens more useful (and funny) for his spring trap and net skills, although his ladders came in very handy for the Liberty version of Chapter 9. Decimal's attacking abilities are random in a sense, but extremely broken if you can use them just right as they cover a massive range and attack all enemies with certain HP or TP values. Using it is dumb but oddly fun.

Gameplay: TS is indeed more visual novel than tactical game, but when you do get around to combat it's quite fun and engaging. There's a good sense of character progression despite it being fairly linear, and the rhythm of gameplay keeps all the exploration and voting segments in between from feeling repetitive. Even playing on Very Easy the enemies aren't complete pushovers, and the battles have a lot of variety in terrain and to a lesser extent objectives.