#also I'm very very very bad at combat and I'm now on easy mode which is a step up for me

[utilitycaster]

Started up Veilguard like hmm I recall putting off a main quest but not what it was. It is, of course, The Cauldron.

[bakafox]

Mid-game thoughts on/review of Dragon Age: Veilguard

TLDR: I like it and yes would recommend it to people who liked the previous DA games, or Mass Effect games, or who like ARPG's or even just RPG's provided you aren't wishing to play as evil characters/make evil choices.

It might honestly be one of my favorite DA games, right after DAO, for all that yes, it's very different in mechanics and aesthetics than DAO... but that's only a 'maybe' as I do need to see how this sucker ends before really making a call.

On my 'melt faces' storyteller setting, it is ABSOLUTELY the escapist game I've needed right now, much like DAI was honestly just the game I needed when it came out too.

Bold text will warn if spoilers are in following sections in my longer thoughts.

I admit some of the negativity I saw pre-launch had me nervous and wary, but I'm mid-game now on one Rook, having done my usual thing of winding up with several different games/Rooks to try out different classes and also because on my FIRST one, I made some mistakes that I regretted by not understanding a few game mechanics. And I really like it.

Next 3 paragraphs may contain spoilers for PREVIOUS games, the following 3 paragraphs may have minor lore spoilers for Veilguard re: how things compare to previous games, skip to next bold text to avoid such spoilers:

I am not a Dragon Age absolute fanatic, but I've really enjoyed all 3 prior games, and DAI got me through a very rough spot in my life, and for all that I heard this game was 'too different', to my play preferences and my memories of playing those games, it really isn't all that different other than in mechanics.

It is mildly annoying to me that who I chose as Divine doesn't translate over from DAI, but the Southern Chantry has 0 to do with the storyline, so in the end it's honestly easy to forget about that for me. I also found it a bit irritating at first that the Crows are very different than they came across as being in DAO and DA2, but yes, I was able to get over that because I do really like the Crow companion and storyline, and I just tell myself that the organization reorganized after Zevran killed off a lot of the leaders.

Spoiler-free thoughts on combat/game mechanics.

Prefacing this by saying I am not actually into combat-driven games for the most part, and I tend to play a lot of games with active, real-time combat on easier modes. I am very bad at combat that needs dodging and shit. I am currently playing on the easiest preset, "Storyteller" mode. This means I am pretty much only dying ever in boss fights or because my arch nemesis in games is jumping and jumping puzzles, and I do a lot of falling to my death.

Thankfully, all my fatal failures are quickly dealt with, my jumping deaths just respawn me right where I fucked up, so I don't even have to reload a save.

The combat is probably easier with a controller, and it took me a while to get used to having to combine keys for combos or hold them down to charge attacks with my kb and mouse play style, but once I figured them out, I've been actively enjoying fights even if my housemate does overhear me swearing a lot at some boss and miniboss battles. In fact, I probably will try a slightly harder difficulty eventually, whether preset or fully tweaking whatever settings, to give non-boss fights a bit more challenge at some point. On Storyteller mode, once I get past level 10 or so or have done enough sidequests I'm sometimes a tad 'over level' I feel a bit like a lawnmower for non-boss fights, which is fun and satisfying in its own way, but does mean I seldom break out team combos except in miniboss or boss fights.

The puzzles are not what I would call difficult, but it can be easy to overlook some little ledge or clue, or not realize you need to go forward and then backtrack, so yes, some have been a bit annoying for me and taken a while.

Spoiler-ish for how Veilguard handles looting/crafting/upgrades and equipping companions:

The system for finding treasure and looting is yes, very different from previous games, but my inner loot goblin enjoys hunting for chests and does not mourn the fact that corpses seldom give anything and when they do it's only upgrade material.

There is no crafting, but you upgrade your gear via workshop, merchants, and also random chest finds can upgrade things in your inventory, and this system works fine for me, though it can be a little frustrating when the RNG refuses to change the quality of the item you really want it to and gives you an epic or legendary thingy you won't equip.

You do not equip companions with just random finds, they just get specific gear drops that then upgrade randomly or using faction merchants. Levelling up your rank with faction merchants can be a bit annoying once you're past like lvl 2 or 3, but I admit again, I'm playing on 'melt faces' mode so it's easy for me to shrug off, your mileage may vary on how badly you find yourself wishing for easier gear upgrades for your crew.

Nonspoiler about story and quests I have so far encountered:

So far, frankly, I really enjoy it all. Main story AND the side companion stories/quests. Maybe I'm not enough of a purist to notice some tweaks to previous lore, but then previous lore was usually also given by unreliable narrators- regardless, it all feels very Thedas-y and Dragon-Agey to me, and while nothing is ever flawless, and there's always some discourse to be had about how the game series in general has tackled certain issues or 'grey morality' I think the writing is pretty good, and I like the general directions they've taken as to the backstories behind all that's gone on as well as most of the specifics.

Nonspoiler about the types of dialogue or storychoices made & remembered in Veilguard, and the tutorial quest/level:

I am still only at midgame at BEST, but so far, for better or worse, I don't think the story choices you're allowed in this game are all that different than previous games, in terms of your options. I saw complaints of railroading and limitations in the early stuff that had me a bit less enthusiastic about the launch, but I am not personally finding anything to complain about. It's not a Baldur's Gate game, but no DA game, not even DAO, has been a Baldur's Gate game in breadth of choice options.

The tutorial/start quest feels most like DAI's, in terms of setup, and after running it twice I did kind of wish I could skip it entirely lol, but that's also how I've felt about every DA tutorial-quest-setup after making 2 protagonists or so.

When it comes to the dialogue wheel- I have not been ambushed nearly as often by the real dialogue coming out way differently than I expected.

Mild spoiler maybe about the dialogue choices/wheel.

I was a LITTLE surprised that even the third general wheel choice that looked like it might be kind of mean to me due to the icon generally was still very nice, just very direct and to the point. I don't play DA games to play assholes though so that's actually a good or at least neutral thingy for me, it's just the icon did make me think it was going to be grumpier/angrier.

Angrier and grumpier dialogue has a different icon and is only available for certain chats, same with more anxious or empathetic/sad dialogue.

Nonspoiler about companions:

They're great. Choosing 'favorite' DA companions is a fraught exercise, but of course every game I've had a few favorites, and have romanced certain ones more thoroughly than others.

This game made it harder for me to immediately pick favorites. I think they really got personalities and the depth of back story right in Veilguard. I still have developed a sort of 'ranking list' of who I want to romance, but this may be the first DA game ever where I honestly am pretty enthusiastic about romancing all of them, and where I'm very HAPPY to switch up my party and cycle through the various companions to make sure I get high rep/bond with all of them.

Everyone's tastes will differ but there isn't a single companion in this game that annoys me, that I find kind of dull, that I wish was written a BIT differently, or makes my mental illnesses/anxiety go brrrrr.

This is also why I am way behind on story and have not beaten the game, because I've so far made 3 different Rooks bc I keep changing my mind about who to romance first.

I can't really judge well if there's a bit less banter in total between companions than in any previous games, but I find the amount there is to be pretty satisfying when not just fast-traveling around.

Fuck I don't know if this counts as a spoiler or not, about the world's "openness" and environment aesthetics:

I do not find myself missing the more open world map mechanics of DAI. What there is for terrain maps/zones is gorgeous (or creepy and depressing as needed,) and I do sometimes avoid fast-traveling even through areas I know I've cleared before of POI type stuff just to enjoy the landscape as well as companion banter.

Character creator, nonspoiler:

It's pretty in-depth, and I am incredibly happy with all three Rooks I have made so far. Honestly the happiest I've ever been with how my DA character looks even outside of the char creator without mods.

I could always wish for more scars, tattoos, and hair styles, but what there are so far are satisfying enough for me. I'd have to go back to take shots of their full body looks and won't do that, but while the amount of fat or muscle or boob or bulge you can add is still constrained to a degree, the sliders still having maybe slightly basic-bitch limitations, I like the variety of body shape and height I've accomplished as well as facial.

And Opal, the Qunari mage, even without me going to the maximum of 'soft and chubby' the creators allow is still satisfyingly more so than most previous games I've ever played have allowed, so I'll take it.

(I kind of think we'll never get really wide slider differentials in part because would that make it hard to make garments and scenes not have clipping issues?)

Also yes that last Rook has a somewhat broken/crooked nose when viewed from the front even if it's not too intense/easy to see and also has a slight cauliflower ear, again things I haven't been able to do to my brawlers in most games I've played. Though their hair hides the ear.

Anyway, yeah, I've played 85 hours so far, am farthest into the story as my extremely polite non binary warrior with the broken nose and heart of soppy gold, and I think it's a really fun game and fits right in as a Dragon Age one.

[lowpolyshadow]

okay here's my final horizons review that nobody asked for :) the short summary is an overall like 8/10 personally with high highs and low lows to average it all out there, but like . god those highs are high

speaking of i played on hard mode for the entire thing and did not change it a single time so this also influences my perception but like im a loser tryhard sweaty gamer so that probably just added to the positives for me ngl JGKLASDFJL;KS okay anyways

amy gameplay 8/10, tails gameplay 8/10, knuckles gameplay 6/10

i am SO FUCKING SERIOUS WHEN I SAY KNUCKLES WOULD BE LIKE 9/10 IF HE HAD FREE CLIMBING AND WASN'T LIMITED TO THE RED SPOTS like it makes sense in this scenario since he's literally free dlc and like the game wasn't really made with knuckles in mind therefore if he was given free range to climb and shit like SA2 it might be weird or just lead to things you super weren't intended to do etc. BUT like. im just saying. in a perfect world he would be able to climb on all surfaces and that would be more than enough for me to forgive his glide's super wide turns (i already forgive it because it makes sense it's just like. from a player feel perspective)

i can't forgive some of those awful camera angles though it's the same issue i have with sonic when he wall climbs, wall climbing just has bad camera angles that i greatly dislike u__u also i think i was most looking forward to playing as knuckles so i was just kinda disappointed he isn't more punchy i want PUNCHY

amy was super fun to play and would've been a 9 but i am in fact a hammer believer, i know they like at least bring it up in game why she doesn't hammer more but i AM a hammer enjoyer and i think if she had more swingy hammer movesets it would be like. chef's kiss i love her floatiness and tarot cards

tails is tails he's so broken LMAOOOO and the wrench attack shit is genuinely really good and so funny, his entire thing fits perfectly with the fact that he's like, not really a Fighter fighter guy and matches with previous tails gameplay .... but i do still want a homing attack for specifically objects not enemies or something. idk that'd be hard to handle sometimes but that's my single grievance i thought tails was really good he's so cute :)

in general i wish all 3 had more combat options but again. it's free dlc. in the future if they do like sonic adventure 3 or whatever then i'll be more harsh for not having more moves for them like sonic but this is free dlc

sonic gameplay 8.5/10

i'm crazy and i thought the towers were a lot of fun, my favorite WOULD'VE BEEN tower 2 except the pink squares not respawning is genuinely like girl what's wrong with you + tower 5 eked out being my favorite anyways in the end

my favorites in order were 5, 2, 4, 1, and 3 (3 was by far the easiest but also like . i am so not into the wall climbing camera JGKALSDJFKLASDJ and also i had the funny glitch where the boostpad clipped me out of the tower which like, funny but now i have to climb the tower again) i thought these were super fun platforming challenges with the only grievance being they're literally WAY more difficult than anything from base game and so the sudden jump is like actually insane expecting little timmy to play frontiers on like hard mode which is very easy, and then doing this

the combat trials were disappointing bc like. .. the first one had some difficulty to it and then the rest were snzzzz and then suddenly MASTER KING KOCO BABYYYYY but again im insane. and deranged. i thought a time/ring limit boss rush was sick as fuck and perfect parry is what i wished the actual base game parry was so like. yeah. but again the boss fights weren't Made for perfect parry so especially wyvern, figuring out was like harder than necessary since this is something they throw at you with no warning or prior practice in the base game or anything

i had fun though. i had gamer fun and joy. so like <- sick in the head i just felt the thrill of battle and violence and any time i figured out the parry timing/got consistent with it and i was like being the ultimate speedrun gamer it's like. YIPPEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! also kellin quinn's vocals carried me because god the music never gets old dude that shit pumped me up (helps i only had to fight knight twice and the problem child was just wyvern lol)

AND THE FINAL BOSS .... supreme still lowkey is a very very very very mid boss. and the new THE END doesn't change it a Ton because like after you see the sickass cutscene and stuff, it becomes kind of a mid boss again but with really hype animations and all .... like it's not a hard fight. it's just ... jank .... the controls feel kinda wonky when you're trying to target the tube .... the camera is weird because it's so easy for sonic to not be visible from all the trees, so while parrying the meteors isn't hard it's just like ... why would you do this to me

final boss fight itself is like 7/10 carried by the visuals and setting, but then the end of the boss fight is like WHOOOOOOOOOOO FUCK YEAH FUCK YEAH FUCK YEAH LETS GOOOOO I FUCKING LOVE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG YYEAHHHHHH YEAHHHHHHHHHHH so like overall good dlc imo

[crystalelemental]

Started up Little Witch Nobeta. I'm only in like Area 2, but preliminary thoughts.

Before I get into this, I want to say something. It might not have been their official marketing, but pretty much everything I saw about this game prior to getting it referred to it as a "souls-like," so I will be following suit in that comparison. Because...there are quite a few similarities, and I lack familiarity with the broader genre to make other comparisons.

The game is, overall, a bit clunky? Mechanically there are a few frustrations, mostly in where they start the default controls. The camera is way too close, spins way too fast, and the basic attack button to me really feels like a dodge, so I keep fucking up my inputs. It's really embarrassing.

On the positive side, the game seems very...stress-free. HP and MP auto-regenerate while you travel, and I've never once come close to dying. The worst was around halfway, and it was specifically in two situations: where I was fucking around trying to get the Absorption timing (failed miserably), and when I was fucking around trying to show my wife the fencer doll design (I am not good enough at dodging to do this). Damage numbers are fairly low, and the recovery means it's never too much of a problem to eat shit in a room.

Right now the most frustrating aspect of the game is the lockon sucking ass. When you lock on, all it does is lock your camera on. Your spells have a separate toggle to aim, and it does not auto-align, so if you lock on and fire, odds are you missed. Which...sucks. It's really bad. There's bonus damage for landing headshots too, which is endlessly frustrating given this lack of automatic targeting to the broader body in the first place, but also because there's recoil for firing that throws your next shot slightly off from the first. It's messy. On the plus side, the above auto-regen covers a lot of this fault. But in the moment, it can get annoying to just constantly miss, especially when hitting also doesn't seem to stagger so you take more damage anyway.

The thing I'm enjoying most...well, two things. First is level up rate. The Souls games are about building out a character slowly over the course of the game, but levels feel very finite as a result, and there's very little variety to be had because points only go into what aligns to the build. Nobeta feels like I get like 6-8 levels every save point. It's a nice experience.

I will divert momentarily to comment, this could easily come back to haunt them a bit. One of my favorite Souls-related videos (around Elden Ring specifically) talks about the concept of diegetic difficulty in games, noting that Souls games have an "Easy mode" in the sense that the game becomes much easier or harder depending on the skills and traits you use. In the original Dark Souls, Sorcery was the effective easy mode. Powerful ranged attacks with high spell count meant you could ignore a lot of the direct combat aspects of the game, and made it a lot easier as a result, albeit with certain things then becoming more difficult because you had no melee capability. Nobeta is, presumably, balanced around the fact that ranged attacks are guaranteed, which could be a better or worse outcome depending on how they do with the whole situation. More on that once I'm better acquainted with the game.

The other thing I really like is the magic system actually having variety. Look. Dark Souls magic sucks ass. It's so fucking boring. It's all just different blue beams. Sometimes they go fast and deal little damage, sometimes they're slow and deal big damage, sometimes they hover for a bit before tracking the enemy, but they're all visually boring blue beams of power or whatever. It sucks. Even the alternates of miracles (just lightning bolts) and pyromancy (just fire, sometimes poison) are limited. Magic just always feels really restrictive in the souls games. Nobeta, being focused on the magic, has different types. I've only encountered two: your starting Arcane/Dark spells that have heavy impact and pierce with charge, and the new Ice that operates like a gatling gun that can be charged to multi-target enemies and rain death from above. They feel and look distinct, and I like this a lot.

Still getting truly acquainted with the game. My timing is shit, my familiarity with controls is lacking, I have had no real trouble beating whatever I come up against, and progression feels fast-paced. Enjoying it so far, will update over time.

[spinningbuster98]

Kept you waiting huh?

Oh boy it's DMC4 guys! Probably the hardest game in the series to talk about that isn't the reboot and for reasons that veterans probably can already suspect but let's just say that I ain't looking forward very much to some of the stuff will have to offer later down the road

Not now though, now's the time for fun!

So unlike previously I'm actually playing on a New Game + on the highest difficulty mode AND Turbo Mode turned on, which speeds up character and enemy movements by 20%.

This is probably a very bad idea on my part given that DMC4 is not the game I'm best at in this series and I'm also a bit rusty as of now, which you can see by how throughly I got bodied by the literal tutorial boss

Oh yeah: unlike DMC1 and 3 which told newcomers to git gud fast or take a hike DMC4 actually wants to be pretty beginner friendly in a number of ways, firstly by having an actual tutorial serve as the intro stage!

Normally I would complain that it's boring but honestly? The cutscenes intersperced between the gameplay help make this tutorial kind of fun and memorable

(Also these people worship Sparda as their God and given that Dante is Sparda's son this means that, from their persepctive, Jesus just came crashing down from a window and shot the pope right in the face. Also Dante is Jesus)

So here we have our new boy to the group Nero!

So Nero was very blatantly created to be beginner friendly character since his gameplay is way simpler than Dante's:

unlike the Red guy Nero only has one sword, the Red Queen, and one gun, the Blue Rose. This means that Nero's moveset is certainly more limited, which is why to my knowledge, back then, some ultra experts hated him. However this makes Nero very easy easy to pick up and play and there's lots of genuine fun to be had in his simple style because what he lacks in complexity he makes up for in cathartic aggression

Nero's #1 signature ability is his Devil Buster: he can grap any enemy in the game that's close to him and initiate a unique animation (unique to every enemy and is also different depending on whether or not you have Devil Trigger on) that will have Nero going ape shit on the poor demon dealing great damage, it can even be used on bosses if you manage to stun them. The Buster is hella fun to use because of the variety of animations and just how fun it is to see Nero just lay the smack down on enemies. You have to be careful though: you're not invulnerable during the animation so don't think it's a get out of jail free card!

If you're locking onto an enemy when using the buster you'll instead drag the poor sucker towards you or, if the enemy is too heavy, you'll drag yourself to it. This is great because it gives you greater freedom across the battlefield and it can also be used in mid-air, causing Nero to be generally a better air-combatant than Dante.

Then there's Nero's gun: when you start it's really weak, but you'll be able to buy upgrades for it which will allow you to get 3 different charge levels for it. Do yourselves a favor: go into the options screen and switch the button for Nero's gun for one of the shoulder buttons. This will allow you to charge the gun while you're fighting with your sword thus always having a charge shot ready. This makes MUCH more of a difference than you might think (or even I at first) because the third level charge shot is DISGUSTING: not only does it do great damage, if the enemy survives it will explode seconds later for even more damage, which may even hit nearby enemies!

Poor Berial, the game's first proper boss, gets fucked so hard by the fully charged shot even on DMD! Before I thought this guy was a pain on DMD because I could never properly combo him without him suddenly swinging his big ass sword around and knocking me on my ass. But if you keep your distance and play it defensively while hitting him with charge shots Jesus did you see his health?

There are other gameplay mechanics related to Nero, mainly his Exeed gimmick and his unique Devil Trigger, but I'll save them for later.

Aw yeah the first few stages of DMC4 fuck pretty hard if you ask me!

....too bad this won't last forever...

[mouseratz]

initial thoughts after a couple hots with it: I like it, but I see why not everyone took to it- it's definitely more within the modern horror style, but so far is intriguing & keeps the heart of what a silent Hill game is usually about intact (this being exploration and discovery imo, with the threat of combat lurking).

good points:

-it goes through a lot of trouble to keep up suspense & tension, and incorporates the radio system in a great way

-it has an interesting concept (someone who is aiming to escape his current situation no matter what, and sees his entry into silent hill as an opportunity, not knowing what waits for him).

-it encourages backtracking (which you can expect some of in any silent hill game) within the smaller areas, as especially in the other world, objects and environments are prone to changing, making that more rewarding

-puzzles! on normal mode, they're tricky but not so obscure, you'll be like "oh so that's what it does" & have a little fun tinkering with it & solve it & continue with your life. (and like previous entries, there's a difficulty toggle for puzzles too!)

-NO weapon durability. thank fucking god. origins is unplayable to me due to the way they implemented that mechanic.

-the camera doesn't suck so so bad, and you can find your options and load screens easily.....there's also a lot of tutorials and explanations of mechanics. there's a pop-up that lets you know when something's interactive (as opposed to pressing x everywhere you possibly can and praying). the controls are overall far more modern.

I don't like this:

- back on the controls: for some reason, they moved all the old button mapping around (like r2 doesn't prepare an attack or weapon, but THROWS your weapon. but l1 does prepare your weapon?? why are they on opposite sides????) and theres no way to adjust this at all. Most of the controls seem perfectly serviceable otherwise, if they didn't have the precedent of at least 3 (and probably more) other games with entirely opposite control schemes.

-this many years out, PS3 version still has performance issues that are just part of the game. so far, no crashes or anything breaking, but every now and then a jitter or lag which are very noticeable.

- overall just not a fan of the combat style. even on easy mode, enemies will trigger quicktime events to free yourself with stick wiggling and all that nonsense, even for common or multiple enemies (and it's also often difficult to tell how many enemies may be in an area.....and like sh3, even those same simple common enemies don't like to stay down, even after you've kicked or attacked them again, which is annoying. for unique or boss enemies I understand, but it's just a nuisance for ones you'll see often- here the screaming girls, in sh3 the dogs.)

-there are too many weapon choices. I wouldn't say that if you had a classic inventory system, but here you only can hold one melee weapon at any given time.

overall I'm having fun with it, it's just not without complaint

ok starting silent hill downpour 👍 nopony posts about this one so we'll see if its stinky

[a-shrieking-cloud-of-bats]

What kind of audience do you think you'd recommend dwarf fortress to? It definetly looks very different from anything else I played

Hmm. that's a very good question anon and I'm going to break it down.

People that like making their own fun. At the end of the day, dwarf fortress is a game that's only as meaningful as you make it, due to the random generation. If you take everything literally it's just pseudo guided actions performed by randomly generated dwarves. What is a tragic tale of a soldier going on a rampage in the fort after a siege because his cat died in the fighting is very easily reduced to simple numbers, because the underlying systems are not very complex and they do not try very hard to hide themselves. Similarly after you've gotten over the initial hump, if the narrative stuff isn't quite selling you, you have to be willing to challenge yourself. I'm currently attempting to build a boat, in the ocean, and making a nice looking port town with it. None of this holds bearing on the world or how it interacts in any major way (I don't think, anyway, it's been a while), but it's a fun project and if I end up keeping the world it will continue to exist long after I'm finished playing it. I can go there in adventure mode, and dwarves from that fort that live can show up in other forts. That's pretty satisfying, if you ask me. Probably the most important part.

On to the actual game. It's mostly a logistics game, as you're attempting to wrangle a big group of mostly autonomous dwarves into doing things that will make the fort better and bigger and more like what you want it to be. The semi autonomous part is a big part of what seperates it from say, factorio, you are not exactly working with precision tools here. About the only thing you can guarantee is that you can build what and where you want to build, and the military control is pretty direct (but not setting up the military! Oh God No). Dwarves will take personal time, dwarves will sleep, dwarves will eat, dwarves will throw parties, dwarves will make artifacts (randomly generated, so there's that first point again! is that artifact sword with broccoli on it fun or dumb? that sort've random gen thing will be happening a lot.), dwarves will generally dick around a lot without any explicit order to do so. Sometimes for a startling amount of time. But that's kind've part of the fun too, even if it's sort've frustrating sometimes.

Combat and adventure mode. I mean.... it's not nothing? I've found the military more frustrating then anything and winning direct fights is usually pretty hard. But setting up an airtight fort with loads of traps and misdirection is fun too, to the right person, I'm sure. The adventure mode combat system is sort've neat and has an impressive amount of depth but you have to grind forever to get anywhere with it and it's extremely long winded, even as deep as it can get. There's an entire thread on the DF forums (or was, it's ben a while) about dwarf martial arts and how catching incoming attacks can be used to perform various complex actions. Any game where that's possible is pretty neat! It's still very long winded and nothing is easy as a result, though. I can't really speak on this much.

That's about it.

If you want to get started yourself, look for the lazy newb pack (it's a staple, don't feel bad for using it, mostly everyone does) and a video tutorial, I dunno a modern one but people used to be reccomending krugsmash I think it was? Maybe still good? Dunno. Also the wiki, which is an exhaustive source of information, but worry about that after you're done with the GUI. The dwarf fortress GUI is absolutely jam packed with information and learning how to navigate it is task number one. It's also the thing most people get stuck on, though I think it's probably a bit less of a difficulty wall now that easier alternatives are out (rimworld, gnomoria, I guess? it never really took off honestly) and some of the concepts have been used in a different place. Though dwarf fortress is still hard to start even considering that. Thankfully it's also the easiest thing to learn through a series of youtube videos.

You're never really Done learning the nuances of the UI but once you know how to make your dwarves do things, and how dwarves do things, you're through most of the meta difficulty that you don't impose on yourself.

I hope that helped! I kind've went on a bit.

[blazehedgehog]

What are your thoughts on project P6?

Ironically, I just streamed this to a friend on Discord the other night, because he'd never seen it before, so it's fresh in my mind again.

I like it. I was harsh on it at first, but as ChaosX kept updating and polishing Project 06, I started to warm up to a lot of it.

There are parts of it that are hard to "fix," though. Like it really puts in to stark contrast what a bad level White Acropolis is. Almost every aspect of it is hard to redeem. Even with better controls and physics, the snowboarding segment is too fiddly. You bump in to one thing during the snowball chase and it's over. And it has to be that way! The snowball has to be a threat!

And then there's Tropical Jungle. That's not a great level, either. Too easy to fall to your death. You miss time a vine swing, you slip off the edge of a log by accident, all kinds of weird sensitive stuff can kill you unexpectedly, and it's not a very fun level to move through and explore. It's dense and narrow and weird.

Shadow's campaign also isn't super enjoyable to me. There's a stark increase in difficulty, and now that Sonic's gameplay feels WAY better, Shadow's mashy melee combat feels kind of boring and lame. Same goes for the increased focus on vehicles -- whereas before getting in Shadow's motorcycle felt thrilling because you were nearly invincible, now it feels scary because it's a step down from the regular game controls and you take damage a lot more often.

And the glider and hovercar segments... yikes.

If you're focused on accurately representing Sonic 06, these are the things that probably can't be fixed. Not without pulling them out and replace it with something totally new, at which point it's not Sonic 06 anymore.

But much like an official Sonic game, it's easy to just replay the parts you like and ignore the things that are less-than-great. Radical Train is pretty cool. Crisis City is pretty cool. Wave Ocean is nice. I've even started to turn a little on Flame Core.

And, wow, giving Omega a first person mode is straight up genius.

I'm really anticipating what's next. I get the vibe that ChaosX is struggling with burnout, probably because he worked SO dang hard on this remake. He ported like 50% of an entire game in like two or three years. And not just porting it, he improved upon it significantly. That's a lot of work and I respect it. I'd love to see more, I'd love to see it a complete remake of the entire game, but I understand if he some day announces he's going to move on after just getting all the levels and characters in.

What's here is already a herculean effort, as far as I'm concerned.

[pinnochiro]

pinn reviews - final fantasy xv

a long ramble about final fantasy fifteen that sort of looks like a review, as written by someone who finished the game fifteen minutes ago and needs to get these words out of his head. spoilers inbound.

i'm a pretty big fan of video games. i don't know what my first was, but it was probably either banjo and kazooie or mario kart 64, at my cousin's house when i was very small. i think that video games as a medium are so interesting, since the fact that video games are inherently interactive changes the way that they tell any story. it's a shame that despite loving video games so much, i'm absolutely terrible at them.

i'm absolute dogshit at video games. whenever i boot up something new, i always play on easy mode because. i'm that bad. unfortunately, this means that a lot of video games are simply. impossible for me to beat. that's fine, as at the moment i live with my good friend lizz, who is certifiably Good at Video Games, and so we've been playing video games together for a little bit now. typically this means that she will actually play the majority of the game while i sit with her and watch, but occasionally i'll have a go, but she'll end up with the controller as soon as a boss fight or puzzle or a mechanic i just can't seem to grasp shows up. we recently played through the entirety of the kingdom hearts series together, and this was an absolute blast of a time. i'm glad to say that i adore kingdom hearts now, and it's become one of my hyperfixations, which you might be able to tell from my icon. but we'd finished the kingdom hearts series, and we were left to move onto something else. we'd also played final fantasy 7 remake, so in my wisdom, i suggested that we play another final fantasy game.

we looked through the ff games that were already purchased on our consoles thanks to lizz's uncle, and eventually, we decided that we should play. all of them. however to start, we were going to play final fantasy xv, 15, and work our way backwards through the mainline, single-player games.

i'd heard that xv wasn't very good, but honestly, i was still quite curious. one person who i'd been following on twitter for years was pretty obsessed with the main party members, to the point where i knew their names and what-not even though i didn't have much of an idea what the game itself was about. i remember watching a video by supereyepatchwolf a few years ago about how the game sucked, but i couldn't remember much of the details, and i knew, based on my obsession with kingdom hearts, that xv had started as a different game called final fantasy versus xiiv. i don't know all the details about versus thirteen, but i do know that it was originally helmed by the creator of my beloved kingdom hearts, mr tetsuya nomura, and that after many years, the vast majority of the game was thrown out, nomura wasn't in charge any more, and the whole thing was rewritten and reworked, which sounds like a fairly rough development cycle. but so what, i don't care about gameplay. i want to play the video game with those cute guys that i see fanart of on twitter, and lizz seemed happy enough to play through it with me.

and so we started final fantasy xv. i've been told that since the game was practically dead on arrival, they threw in a bunch of new content and reworked a lot of the early game before i got my hands on it. so my gameplay started with a scene of the four guys fighting some demon dude on fire and they're all old and grotty. whatever, that cutscene ends and we're put into a combat tutorial. that's over and we're on the road in what looks to be central america, pushing a car.

our four leading lads are noctis, the prince of the lucis empire, his best friend prompto, his bodyguard, gladio, and his chef and other things, ignis. i do quite like the main four members of the party in xv. prompto is quite easily my favourite, voiced by robbie daymond of goro akechi fame and with a bunch of fun little animations and quips that make him very likeable. he gets extremely excited at the idea of riding chocobos and has what i considered the best scene of the game, where he and noctis meet on a motel rooftop and discuss prompto's imposter syndrome, since he's only part of noctis' official retinue as his best friend. noctis is a fairly typical main protagonist, he's in love with a woman he hasn't seen in eight years and needs to go marry her or something, i don't care. gladio is a tough macho man with a mullet who wears leather jackets and wields a greatsword, and is apparently only 22, which is at least 10 years younger than i assumed. ignis is a strategist and chef, who takes on the most authoritative role and constantly tells noctis to not drive his car at night. i was not a fan of ignis at the start, but he grew on me, especially with how hard the game hit me with his personal arc. the four boys are off, driving to noctis' wedding in a different country across the desert when their car breaks down. we then run into the first issue of the game.

cindy is a mechanic. she also has her ass and tits out constantly, like your sleazy uncle's shirt with a naked woman was instead semi-alive as a video game person. she fixes your car and acts fairly sexual and it's just like. why do we have to do this. aren't we over overtly sexualised women in video games who have no reason for the way they dress other than the character designer was horny? whatever, i like women as much as the next guy, but cindy's design just. makes me feel so uncomfortable.

anyways you get to do a little driving around with the boys, until you stay the night before catching the boat to your fiance. overnight, you find out that noctis' kingdom has been basically destroyed by an invading empire called niflheim, and practically everyone noctis knows, including his father, are dead. you learn that noctis and his bride to be are also assumed dead, with noctis hearing his own death announcement on the radio. the game has a bunch of added cutscenes that are actually footage from the three-hour-long prequel movie that came out after the game, are extremely hard to follow and honestly i had no idea what i was looking at. anyways, noctis' family is dead, so it's time to do some hunting sidequests.

that brings us to the combat, i suppose. rather than the turn-based or even active turn-based combat that the series is known for, xv opts for more modern action rpg-styled combat. i was, naturally, terrible at this, but i managed to get around it with the fact that. it is almost impossible to die in this video game, provided you have enough items. the game allows you so much time to heal yourself that there's practically no way to have your entire party wipe unless you're doing absolutely terrible, and even then, your party members will probably try and heal you themselves before that happens. lizz tells me that the combat is boring, you just push the same button over and over and then you win. i do appreciate that, for someone like me who is terrible at reading enemy movements, there is a giant button that pops up on screen that tells you when to push the block button, but even then i was prone to fucking it up. whether that's the bad game design or my terrible gaming abilities is up to you to decide. anyways, the game is fairly easy but has annoying combat, your teammates limit breaks will only land about 50% of the time (or never, if you are gladio) and i was still bad at it, so i didn't have all that much fun.

instead of an active levelling system, the game will only tally your character's level ups when you either make camp or visit a hotel. camping is, in my opinion, the only saving grace of this game. each time you make camp, you get to see the characters doing fun little camping activities together and just hanging out, ignis will cook up a new meal in a dramatic fashion and everyone will compliment him and eat it off their coleman's branded plates, it's just very fun. you also get to see what pictures prompto has taken, which is one of my favourite gameplay features. prompto's passion is photography, and while i support him in this wholeheartedly, his picture taking skills are, quite frankly, awful. the game will randomly take shots while you're on the move, which leaves you with a delightful selection of awkward poses, characters hidden behind bushes, pictures taken while someone is half-dead in combat, and snaps where the natural lighting absolutely makes it impossible to tell what's going on. it's hilarious and going through prompto's collection of photos each night is honestly the best part of the game. we managed to wind up with a few shots that, even despite being scripted events, turned out absolutely terrible, and i will cherish those forever.

anyways, since noctis' father and fiance are dead, that leaves him the king of lucis. the only important person to make it out of the capital alive tells you to drive to the middle of nowhere, where he randomly springs on you. hey. go into a bunch of these dungeons and absorb a bunch of swords, this is your destiny as king and how you will defeat the empire. noctis goes, uh, alright i guess, and you're set loose again to wander around for a bit collecting the 'royal arms'. this plot point wasn't explained well but hey, whatever, we're collecting the glowy swords and that's fine.

you're introduced at some point to ardyn, the main antagonist. he's old, kind of groady and wears a fedora. he's a dick to you and talks about his automobeeel. apparently my friend miri thinks he's hot, she is wrong.

i can't remember what happens specifically but you're told that your fiance is still alive and in fantasy venice, and she's talking to the gods on your behalf to borrow their powers. there's a mission where you follow some purple trees that are electric, and you do that i guess. i enjoyed riding the chocobos around, but couldn't care much for the plot at this point. ardyn leads you to a volcano, where you fight a giant lava god. he tries to step on you and i, a denizen of the internet and with an active fear of foot fetishists, was extremely uncomfortable. noctis becomes friends with foot man and a lightning god who lived in those trees, and ardyn steals your car.

very upset by this, noctis and his gang risk everything to sneak into a military base and steal it back. because this is a video game, this works out fine.

there's a little mining city which is all about Girl Power, because all the Women run the Mining Industry like Girl Bosses, and you hang around there for a bit. because all the women are so Empowered, they wear bikinis all the time with overalls over the top. gladio decides he needs to fuck off for a bit, i have no idea what he does since i haven't played the dlc, and then he comes back with another scar. you hang out with his sixteen year old sister, who has a crush on the engaged and 20-year old noctis, and then you drive her to a lighthouse. when she's in your party, she can't really fight, but she gets a pink chocobo and i thought that was very cute. we turned out own chocobo white and lizz named him 'jones' after a mount she has in ffxiv.

eventually, you have a long boat ride over to fantasy venice. this is the part where the game stops being 'fun with a few issues in combat and a rushed and poorly told story.' the open world, which was a main feature with a bunch of little areas to find where noctis can fish, little hunting sidequests and random photo spots where prompto takes touristy photos, is now gone, and it will not return for the entire rest of the game. you can 'go back in time', but the open world was the most enjoyable part of the game, and it kind of really sucks that the main story doesn't let you have any more freedom like that.

after arriving in fantasy venice, you have a talk with fantasy hillary clinton and beg her to let your girlfriend summon a god into the middle of her city. hillary agrees, and you don't get to meet up with your fiance, because even if the game is constantly telling you how much noctis loves her, there is. barely any interactions between the two in the entire game. from what i can tell, they met when noctis was a child and they haven't seen each other in ten years but are still fantasy dog pen-pals. noctis marrying her was supposed to make an alliance or something like that, but her brother has betrayed her to the army. noctis' girlfriend is also an oracle, which means she can heal people, i guess? everyone talks about how important she is and she's constantly telling people that she needs to use her powers to help noctis but she's practically a non-entity.

as can be expected of most female love interests in a game primarily focused on men, noctis' fiance is killed while summoning a god for noctis to befriend. noct gets very mad about this, and turns super saiyan and kills the god back, but his girlfriend is dead and that's super sad you guys. there's a beautiful prerendered cutscene where she says goodbye to noctis but since we barely know her, and we've only been told over and over that they're in love without anything to actually well, show this, it didn't have much of an impact. fantasy venice is destroyed, and ignis is blinded while trying to help calm the giant raging god.

iggy's blindness and how the game makes you account for this and grow to care for him was one of the highlights, in my opinion, as well as crushingly depressing. while i'm not disabled and have no right to say if this was 'good disabled representation' or anything like that, i believe that the game handles it decently enough. the group falls apart as noctis is upset about his girlfriend, gladio is extremely mad that noctis won't care for ignis, and prompto just wants everyone to get along. there's a mission where gladio constantly yells at you passive aggressive things to noctis about how he's a cunt for running, which is obnoxious, but the character arc itself is fairly strong. when you make camp, ignis can't cook anymore, so everyone eats cup noodles in a depressing ass cutscene. ignis remains in your party for the rest of the game despite his disability, and he doesn't magically regain his sight like other fantasy media would do, which at the very least i think is good. i'm not sure what the opinion of actual disabled people is of the character, considering how often disabled characters are either turned into misery porn to make the abled audience be glad that isn't them and if ignis' arc falls into this trap, but i hope that it wasn't handled too poorly, as that would just be another terrible mark in this game's list of bad moves.

the characters eventually make it to the evil empire's capital, which is abandoned and filled with daemons. the characters learn that ardyn is super evil and taught the king of the empire how to turn humans into daemons, which has now happened to the entire city. the 'magitek suits', presumed to be enchanted armour that fights as the empire's infantry, actually house the souls of the human-turned daemons. honestly i like this as a plot point but the game handles it pretty terribly. there could have been more lead up to this, the explanation is pretty lacking, and prompto's Big Plot Twist is. terribly handled. turns out that prompto was born in the empire and was going to be one of those empty soldier daemons, but he was rescued by people belonging to noctis' empire. not that the game tells you that. instead, prompto goes 'turns out i'm one of ... them' and Does Not Elaborate. The game doesn't tell you shit, not about prompto's past, not about how he feels about this, not about how anyone else feels about this either because the other party members just go 'oh that sucks, good thing you're not evil' and the scene ends. robbie daymond tries so hard to sell these terrible, terrible lines, and it almost entirely fails, i'm so sorry prompto. fortunately because i'm a nosy ass, i read prompto's wikia page and knew the plot twist ahead of time, because i don't think i would have even registered it if i didn't.

anyways everyone in the evil empire is dead and ardyn starts talking about how he's immortal and an ancient king of noctis' country but the gods thought he sucked because he's too evil. i missed most of this because the cats got the zoomies and were dashing across the couch right in the middle of his speech so i can't tell you anything else. noctis tries to get a big magic crystal to fight him and instead. gets schlorped inside.

TEN YEARS LATER

yes then ten years actually pass while noctis is asleep. the game shows this by switching the head on noctis' character model to have a beard, but that's it, no changes in animations or whatever. the sky is permanently night and only one human civilisation remains, the rest destroyed by daemons. as a plot point, this ends up feeling. extremely worthless. why was noctis asleep for ten whole goddamn years? so we can wake up and go 'damn it sucks out here'. but it's barely even a like, incentive to fix everything, because you have a long talk with a former child you were friends with where he talks about how humanity is still going fine and everyone's okay and the world has moved on without you. it feels. pointless. when you meet up with your party members, they are exactly as you left them, only with slightly different character models. there is no change in the voice performance, the character's movements or how they talk to show that they've been without you for ten years. they barely mention it. i'm just. so confused as to why they decided that a ten year timeskip was the way to go? since nothing really changes, couldn't you have made it like, two years? one year? six months?? have the characters react a little more? something??? at least if it was only a year or so i wouldn't have to deal with the fact that noctis looks like norman reedus with his shitty facial hair now.

anyways after that there's a bunch of long and boring boss fights. you fight some dead kings for some reason, your party members get a little bit to talk about how cool they are and how much they love noctis, and then you meet up with ardyn. there's another boring boss fight and god this was only a few hours ago but it's already gone from my head. you summon the gods and the old kings to beat the shit out of him after you both go super saiyan again? there's incredible music but it feels barely earned and just kind of eh. anyways, noctis dies, which was the price of using the crystal of light or whatever the fuck. his ghost marries his fiance's ghost finally, and they smile as they look at one of prompto's pictures. you can pick any picture you want to go here, and then the credits roll, showing all of the pictures you saved of prompto's shots. showing me all the pictures at the end is honestly lovely, but it really only served to remind me of how much more fun the game was in the first half. and that's the end, of final fantasy xv.

so what did i think of the story? it's terribly cobbled together and struggles to get you to feel anything and play out all the plot beats. you feel awful for the countless employees who spent years working on the beautiful cutscenes only to have them be in this game, which sucks and the story barely gets through. there were parts that i enjoyed, mostly the thing about the daemons being people, but honestly the rest of it is a mess. it's hard to follow at the best of times and just awkward and terribly written at the worst. the ending is cheap, and it doesn't feel like you've actually accomplished anything. i left that game feeling numb and empty, sad that i'd wasted so much time to end up with such a colossal failure of a conclusion.

i had fun with the game when it was my four little guys running around doing sidequests and camping together. after the midway point of the game, there's none of that, and you're bogged down into a plot that just pushes you from point a to point b and boring overlong bossfight to boring overlong bossfight. the character moments between your party are a lot of fun, but the second you hit fantasy venice, everything is pretty much on rails and you can't do anything except what the game tells you explicitly to do.

should you play this game? no lol. if anything i've mentioned about the story interests you, you'll be better off watching a lore video or reading the wiki. if you do want to play it after all that, just don't proceed after the myrthril refining quest, it's pretty much all downhill from there. will i play the dlc? unlikely, i think lizz and i will just watch a cutscene movie of those.

this game left me feeling empty and numb and not in a fun way. i wanted, so, so hard to like this game, and it all crashed around me in a beautifully overproduced and confusingly written cascade. i love you prompto, but even your cute little freckly face and terrible photography can't save this trainwreck of a game.

tl;dr - final fantasy xv sucks. i hope that 13, our next ff game, will be better.

[h34vybottom]

tl;dr the game got worse and the game is already one of the worst ever tl;don't care - game balancing is fucking nonexistent, shit is still the same easy peasy garbage for normal enemies and the mid-bosses are fucking unbalanced dogshit. The only difference is that the game is so fucking piss easy that the unbalanced dogshit is just vestigial. The hard mode is fucking piss easy. The speed-up button doesn't do anything for animations, it only impacts how fast the menus scroll away. Which means that the game has to lie to people by flashing up speed lines to trick people (Like in manga, except that makes sense, you know? This does not). The slash animation to start combat is both unresponsive and badly animated. Persona 5 saved RPGs from being good. Thank you Atlus The animations, models, and menus are so fucking bad. All of the animations have this lack of quality to them that's very persistent in like asset flips. Shit just does not look right in the most general of senses. The demon models are all super fucking lazy either because they're just reused assets from Persona 5, SMT5, Soul Hackers 2 w/ no attempt to make them fit this game's watered down Genshin ass look. The backgrounds and overworld designs are so fucking bad but the way they try to make shit look murky and otherworldly is just. fucking next level bad. Actual asset flip level of no shits given. The menus are taken straight from Persona 5 and they were bad then, now they're incredibly lazy, bad, and fucking tired almost 10 years on. Seriously, they didn't fucking try. The cop cunt's weapon shop is so egregious. The new character models are so bad, they're Genshin levels of lacking artistic cohesion. There's no fatigue system anymore (Okay change frankly) but they ruined the healing in Tartarus so now it's locked to a stupid new shard system instead of just costing money. The shards are far too limited to waste on healing, whereas money wasn't that big of an issue beforehand. BTW the shards also lock chests now. These shards didn't exist before. The voice acting is very fucking annoying. This is half the fault of the writing being fucking piss poor garbage and half the fault of whoever was in charge of the dubbings. I'm considering this for both english and japanese. Seriously, this shit is so fucking bad. The music got worse! All of the mixing is wrong. There's fucking fart noises in tracks now. The new singing that replaces their previous singer does not match the track, which is remixed so lazily it's largely the same instrumentation and performance. Lotus Juice is a bad rapper who cannot rap. I'm sure you can understand how that goes when they replace the other rapper they had w/ LJ this time. Fucking atrocious. The music in 3 was already lazy trash, largely just the same track remixed over and over again w/ nothing new in terms of instruments or just sound. There's, of course there is, a bunch of music DLC from 4 and 5. There's DLC data in the game for the shitty dancing game music and a season pass w/ post-game cut off as DLC. Because of course there is. Thank you Atlus for making RPGs bad. Lotus Juice needs to be banned from making "art" cuz bro can't fucking do it and it's getting worse as the years go on. I shit you not one of the battle themes reuses the flow from a shitty Persona Q song. They just added that in there. For some reason. Doesn't fit at all. It's so bad. Writing is just as fucking atrocious as always. Genuinely an achievement in the art of ruining RPGs. Atlus is really doing us a favour by making all RPGs bad. So glad they published DSJ. The fucking characters never shut the fuck up ever under any circumstance. They say the exact same 4 lines over and over and it's never funny. Just a fucking deluge of ass booty garbage. tl; did read - game fucking costs 70 usd and has a fucking season pass planned

there's actually no way that persona 3 reload is that bad

there's no way they managed to make even my extremely low estimations look like a fucking godsend

[bearpillowmonster]

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom

There are no difficulty modes, you could see that as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you think of its base. I hear some people say it's hard because they don't grind enough and I hear some people say it's easy because they grind too much or they're just really good at figuring out what to use for stats and building their kingdom, which I'll get to shortly.

There's a pretty smooth transition from fighting to traveling and vice versa, the only downside is that once you're engaged in combat, it locks you in so you can't escape until you defeat them or they defeat you. You do have a chance to run before they catch you though.

One of the the best things about the game is that it's not turn based. I've seen Dragon Quest XI gameplay where it looks like it should play more similar to this and I actually prefer this over FFXV combat. So it's not the same as the original for those who've played it. The other best thing about this game is its visual design, the whole reason I bought it. There were some character designs that I really liked as well as some that lack but all in a Ghibli-esque style.

In the grand scope of things, it’s a big world with tons of side quests. With some of the side quests, you HAVE to look it up, like this one where you make a tart for this guy in Goldpaw (pretty early in the game) but you can't actually make it until you beat the main story, I get having side-quests in areas that you can't do yet so no one area is deemed irrelevant and they do have certain side-quests and NPCs open up after beating certain missions but why not these? Why were these the exceptions? It just doesn't make sense to do it this way, if anything, give me the resources readily available. There's no reason I can't have a certain market or lumber yard when they're all the same but with different names.

Now my biggest complaint so far is the potential. Sometimes the person you do the quest for will join your kingdom but the game requires you to keep your kingdom a certain way in order to progress, so you can't just pick and choose your villagers, there's a minimum amount you need to have. That breaks the illusion of being able to customize your kingdom and getting to interact with your villagers in an engaging way because most of the time, you're just filling in another space. There's a specific point where the difficulty ramps up overall which was around the end of Hydropolis for me but it makes it very easy to fall behind on leveling your kingdom as well as your party. There are also "skirmishes" which have a similar playstyle to Pokemon Rumble (cool in concept) but in reality is pretty annoying. You even have to work on your skirmish forces' level separately through the kingdom research (as well as just doing more skirmishes) so there's a lot to keep track of.

That kingdom research (for whatever department it may be in) says things like "this will take 9 minutes" or "this will take 25 minutes" but that's annoying when you have nothing else to do but wait for those to be done, when you need to level up in order to progress your missions. The kingdom is just a mandatory mobile game! You can actually speed up research but you have to spend your money, and not just regular money, oh no, this is a special currency that you only get from your kingdom, for your kingdom. The whole thing seems pretty counterproductive if you ask me, especially considering it's done in increments. To speed up a single research task you could be spending purchase after purchase to lower it by 10% each time, mere minutes to sometimes a wait above 45. All it needs are the microtransactions to purchase them with real money and you got yourself a gacha.

I believe MGS5 has something similar to the research part, but the difference is that I actually had fun with Mother Base in MGS, this one just makes me feel like I'm playing Clash of Clans. Once you get enough gold steadily coming in, it's not as big of a deal but it's definitely tedious. Combine that with the grinding, which took me way too much time just to keep up with the level gap of "Recommended strength" and my actual level. You're taking down hordes at a time and the XP just seems to slow down. I would be fighting enemies way above my level and barely even a scratch so I looked it up and it said it's more quantity over quality, (or in this case level) which is nuts to begin with but even doing so barely increased it at a solid rate, I got the exp necklace, messed with the tactic-tweaker, did side-quests, did a bunch of stuff with the kingdom itself and it was just never enough, it was like the game was trying to unnecessarily inflate its playtime. Now my best advice that actually ended up working, is to do the optional boss fights littered among the world (tainted monsters). I don't like them but they're the only things that seemed to give me a reasonable amount of xp and even some decent weapons. Mornstar, The Sword of Unity, end-game item with 270 damage? Try my Giant's Tooth or whatever it's called with 290!

The story isn't necessarily priority here, it kind of sets itself up from the start. You go to each kingdom, beat their boss, unite them. That about sums it up, that's not bad for a game like this but it's not as rich as many JRPGs and I hear even the first game so I doubt you would have to play the first one to understand it (at least I didn't). It also starts out as a sort of isekai where Roland is a president who gets sent to Ding Dong Dell to service a furry king...what a fanfic.

The first half peaked and then just became unenjoyable for me after Hydropolis. There was a boss late-game that I was into but it was sandwiched between 2 really dumb bosses, so it evened out. I'll give it a 2/5 or 4/10 overall. I don't really recommend it but if I did, I would recommend the Nintendo Switch version (which is apparently out now) because I got this on PS4 around launch (yeah, it took me this long) and I felt that it was best suited for the Switch as soon as I started because of the quest system. The only downside is that I hear that version runs poorly, which is a shame because honestly, I might've dropped it if the PS4 version ran that poorly. It actually ran pretty well, barely had any load times and has a massive world with consistent quality, quite impressive.

[fyonnkalnonn]

Playing Old School Runescape recently and I've been having trouble defining why it's appealing to me in this moment when I have long held that it is a Bad Game About Nothing. What I've realized is that, for me, Runescape is about two things: logistics and inventory management. In an extremely weird way, Runescape kind of is the game I wanted Black Desert Online to be. Everything I do in Runescape is in service of making the inconveniences of the world more convenient to me.

Allow me to illustrate:

For context, I'm playing in Iron Man mode, since I had no real intention of interacting with the community when I started and was just looking to mess around for a bit. Now I'm stuck with it. What this means is that I cannot trade items with other players, purchase things from the Grand Exchange, or pick up items other players dropped. I have to be 100% self-sufficient.

I use the Smithing skill to make equipment to 1) equip myself without spending gold and 2) get gold to purchase critical equipment from NPC shops where it is available. Smithing requires that I get appropriate ore(s) from a Mine, smelt them in a Furnace, and the forge them into something at an Anvil. Problem: it is very hard to find a Mine that is anywhere near a Furnace, and it is very hard to find a Furnace that is anywhere near an Anvil. There's a Furnace & Anvil set in Lumbridge, but the Anvil is rusted, and can only be used for Bronze gear because that's how that works apparently.

Yes, it would make far more sense for every Anvil to have a Furnace nearby. It's such an obvious choice to do so, that this choice not to do so must be deliberate. Because there's no Furnace in Varrock, mining for iron south of Varrock is kind of a pain in the ass. I'll have to walk all the way to Edgetown or Lumbridge to smelt the iron, then go back to Varrock to blacksmith it into something. And, because of my extremely limited inventory space and nigh-complete lack of item stacking, I have to do this a lot. So far as I know, there is not a way to expand my on-person inventory space in the game. Combine that with the extremely easy-to-use inventory tab, that suggests this very inventory size is also critical to the game's design.

North of Al Kharid is a more conveniently-placed mine spot, but there are two major concerns. The first concern is that the free way to access the desert the mine is in is not especially closer than mining south of Varrock, but I can pay 10 Gold to pass through a gate immediately next to Lumbridge and its Furnace. Going from Lumbridge to the mine and then back to Lumbridge is going to cost me 20 Gold each time. Now that I'm decently established that's effectively a negligible cost that selling the iron swords I'm making to General Stores more than makes up for.

Next problem is that the mine is swarming with scorpions. Scorpions are aggressive, so I either need to have good enough equipment to reliably win fights against them relatively quickly or be strong enough so that they don't mess with me. The combat in Runescape, especially if you're just a melee character, is painfully dull. It is not engaging whatsoever. Sure, you can change what kind of attack you're using, but that's largely about changing which combat skill you're training and doesn't meaningfully effect outcomes. And that's because combat isn't a core function of OS Runescape, it's another logistics problem. If I want to go to X, Y, or Z, I need to be properly equipped to survive multiple fights against hostile enemies in those areas. If I want to go to X, Y, or Z regularly, it's far more efficient to train long enough that the enemies will not attack me in the first place.

Now that I've gotten my iron, passed through the gate back to Lumbridge, and smelted roughly 50% of my iron into iron bars (smelting iron has a flat 50% failure chance due to impurities), I have to walk up to Varrock to smith it, because the rusted anvil in Lumbridge isn't good enough. But! I could make a canoe out of a large tree placed in Lumbridge for this purpose. I can then ride my canoe up to Varrock. That requires a certain amount of Woodcutting skill, however - yet another logistics problem. Plus, the canoe that I can make right now, at least, is only one way.

Right now the logistics problems I am trying to solve are 1) how do I get back to Lumbridge quickly without using my once-per-30-minute teleport and 2) how do I get my hands on a Ring of Forging to turn that 50% iron smelting rate into a 100% iron smelting rate, and is it even worth it to do so?

These problems only exist because Runescape's world is very slightly nonsensical. It's very strange, but it's like Runescape is a game constructed out of and defined by rough edges.

PS: don't tell me the answers to these questions, and also I'm not using mini-game teleports for traversal because that feels too much like an exploit to me personally.