#i replayed this game so many times

[dntcrdntknw]

So, i was replaying GTAV bcs of the release of the enhanced version on PC and got this conversation on hood safari I didn't know it existed lmao

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Union χ - Daybreak Town

[nipuni]

Alright, time to share my opinions about Veilguard!! I have both criticism and praise so bear with me as I jump from one extreme to the other 😆 spoilers ahead of course!

The game has a very rough start with the dialogue being formulaic and rushed and the characters overexposing. It feels like a heavy handed attempt at summarizing all of previous games' lore for newcomers or in case you forgot but it's so overdone it feels coddling and trivializes a lot of previous events. Luckily this gets better once all of the introductions are out of the way, though the excessive hints and clarifications continue until the end sadly.

The locations are absolutely incredible and very diverse!! This is a highlight of the game for me. There is so much detail and care in every map and there are so many of them. My pc is struggling to reach medium settings and yet everything looks stunning. The verticality of the maps is so imposing and the graphics have a very dreamy quality that I love. I also enjoy the maze-like structure to the maps, it's more linear but makes everything look a bit more intentional. The color and light direction was amazing, all the visual development really!! it has to be one of the prettiest games I've ever played.

When I started I have to admit it did not feel like I was in Thedas and it all felt a bit theme-parky, if that makes sense. A lot of previously important and established world elements that made Thedas what it is were overlooked or made irrelevant. But the more I played the more it started to feel a bit more similar to Inquisition, for better or worse depending on what you feel about Inquisition. But!! this also feels like a selectively sanitized version of Thedas compared to previous games. In it's attempt to stay safe and uncontroversial in some aspects it loses a lot of substance and it changes the tone. The surface level politics, ignoring previously established major societal issues and a tell-don't-show approach makes the world seem more simple and shallow with no grey areas to explore. ( the humor also falls flat and out of place often too, and WHY is everyone always smirking, enough!! godlike beings are destroying the planet please this is not the time for Marvel banter aaaa )

The pacing at the start is a bit of a mess. It is so fast it felt like jumping from one world shattering discovery to the next with no time to process. The characters also seem to underreact to important information and major developments. It felt like the game was rushing me through all this to get to the part of the story it wanted to tell me while I was still wrapped in my shock blanket trying to catch my breath lmao. I really like all the key story points they touched upon, I just wish they dwelled more on them to give them more narrative weight. ( though blaming every bad thing to ever happen on the Elves was certainly..a choice )

I think the writing could have used more subtlety in the first half and more boldness in the second 😆 but I loved the thematic parallels between Rook and Solas and how every quest informs the main storyline. I do wish Rook was given more impossible choices and put in more difficult situations that forced them to lie or betray their own to better drive the point home though ( listen I just love a Trolley problem!! we need more of those, I'm the Trolley problem's number one fan!! ) I feel like they missed the chance to put Rook in Solas' role and be as vilified and hated for it as Solas was despite their best intentions which would make Rook's regrets stronger and in turn make their escape from the fade all the more impressive and give them a better understanding of Solas to either use against him or earn his respect. The line 'they called me the Dread Wolf, what will they call you when this is over' from the trailers was so good I was waiting for this!! But everyone just loves Rook no matter what!!

But I feel like I stated too many negative aspects in a row so moving on to some things I enjoyed!

The characters were very lovable to me. The romances weren't as long or impactful as I would have liked but I enjoyed all the companion quests. Emmrich is a delight and his quest is so wild and fun. I loved learning about Nevarra and I was awestruck by the Grand Necropolis. The mourn watch was so interesting, it showed a whole new side of Thedas' lore I knew nothing about! and I loved Manfred! Davrin is so charming, he became a favorite. I loved his quest too and learning more bits and pieces about the Dalish was great, I wish we got more. Seeing the Wardens through his quest also made me enjoy them a lot. Assan was very cute too and I'm glad he was treated as an animal and not turned into a goofy Disney sidekick too much lmao 😭 Lucanis is hilarious. The fantasy Spain/Italy was a bit silly and off at times but he is very sweet! and I love the Spite possession, that was so fun I'm glad they kept him that way! Bellara is adorable, her first backstory quest made me cry and I just love a nerd! I wish the second part of her story was written better however, and she sort of devolves into 'it's hard, I wish it was easy but it's hard' dialogues too often sadly. Anaris and the Forgotten Ones' portrayal was underwhelming and anticlimactic which was disappointing. Harding is also very cute and her Titan plotline was the most interesting to me, I bawled my eyes out in her quest!! I love the dwarven lore of this universe I'm so happy we got more of it!! ( she also fucking died in my playthrough?! I was devastated what the hell 😭 'whatever it takes' WEUEUGHHHG I'M SO SORRY) Neve was a slow burn for me because of my choices in game slowing that relationship down ( saving Treviso I mean, perdón amor 🙏 ) but I love detective novels and she is such a badass I ended up loving her. Taash was unexpected, I didn't think they would be so young. The coming of age story was sweet, though I found myself cringing a lot too at the handling of it I have to admit ( and the Lords of Fortune in general, and the Antaam...and que Qun..listen- kajshfgf ) but I also enjoyed learning more about the first expedition and the Qunari in general despite the messy writing and choices. I also loved Antoine and Evka! and Strife! And I haven't even read any of the novels they are in 😆 also Mila!!!! and her dad oh my god and Felassan haunting the narrative!! speaking of haunting, I would have loved for Cole to be in the lighthouse too I think it would have worked well 🤔 especially with the whole 'reading Solas' secret diary' thing the game had going on lmao

Everyone seems to get along except for a bit of friction that is quickly resolved at the start, which is hmm missed potential? I would have preferred more tension personally. I enjoy the drama! gives me more to work with and gives you a better grasp on everyone's personality by contrasting values. I think they wanted to speed run a found family trope for the new hero to establish some emotional stakes early on but it ended up making everyone seem like a group therapy session instead. The group meetings also have everyone either state the obvious or repeat the same opinion or conclusion to each other, I would have loved these meetings to have more bickering, have people get mad and storm out and also get to listen to different takes on a situation. Make Rook struggle more to take the reins and keep the team functional, learning how to be a leader.

Speaking of Rook! ( who in my case has a northern British accent that I loved so much 🥺) They seem to have a very established personality. I was expecting more of a blank slate but I'm lucky that the personality they went for kind of matches what I would normally choose in a first playthrough. Though the lack of range in the choices is irritating and takes away some replayability and role playing potential. Rook is very supportive and selfless, I wasn't expecting this tbh! But it all made my Rook turn into the team's weird supportive necromancer mom so it worked out in the end I guess lmao. I can't wait to draw her!!

I was so overwhelmed by the amount of information we got about Solas and his past!! I was expecting answers but not these many and not for them to be such an integral part of the plot!! The game feels like it's about him more than anything else. His arc is the best written out of all. He is mentioned in every conversation, he's the main advisor and the narrative foil, you get to talk to him often, you work for him and with him and go into his memories it all feels so surreal to me lmao I love him so I'm delighted ngl! but also making the other Evanuris so cartoonishly evil makes Solas into such an obvious choice of an ally, god of trickery or not, that it sort of takes the decision out of your hands and makes some dialogue options and companions' opinions seem almost nonsensical. I have no idea how this game would feel to someone who absolutely hates Solas' guts honestly. I suppose I will find out soon enough 😆

About Solas' story, I loved it! I somehow also feel that I knew it already, all the speculation and theories that Solavellan fans were crafting for years were so accurate that it was all very validating. Even the wildest ones! Solas as the Maker, the elves spirit origin, Mythal giving him a body, the war with the Titans, the origin of the Blight, Solas being on your side as advisor, I can go on, we knew!! Also I have to mention this I'm sorry but they made him look so hot!! unbelievable. And the bloodied teary eyed pathetic look in the end ouurghhh I'm cheering and clapping!!

The romance conclusion was so lovely 😭 the Loki and Sigyn ending we deserved to such a mythological epic!! and open ended enough for all of us to cook!! and we got to see him fight and transform into the Dread Wolf!! and whimper and cry!! and bleed and love!! that's all I ever wanted, incredible we were really spoiled what the hell I still can't believe it 😭 GDL acting was brilliant as usual! the visuals were also incredible and exactly what I had in mind when I imagined where the story may go, the eclipse, the giant wolf, the glowing eyes, the Elvhenan ruins, the statues, even the hair lmao it all aligned exactly to what I've been painting all these years but better I was thrilled 😭

Solas backstory with Mythal also offers players that didn't romance him a chance to see him act out of love and show a side they wouldn't be able to reach otherwise and I think it was smart! also very tragic and sheds more light into all of his choices and words and his relationship with Lavellan too and the parallels and reversals and uughh thoroughly enjoying the emotional distress 👌

Pleasing both the Solas lovers and haters at the same time was always going to be hard with him being such a polarizing character by design and the world states being so different but I think they did a good job! at least from my side of things.

I think my favorite part besides the Solas related stuff was the Blight. I loved how horrific and gross and threatening it was! I've always loved the concept of the Blights and I'm glad it was such a huge part of the story in this game. I also loved Treviso!! has to be the most beautiful city in Thedas ahhh and the Necropolis!! the gardens!! Vorgoth!!! Kal-Sharok!!! I can't believe we got to see it!! and a Titan!!! the giant floating face of Ghilan'nain in the clouds??? and the huge archdemons and dragons!! oh and that warden dragon trap in the shape of a griffon?? and the giant blight tendrils!! the siege at Weisshaupt was outstanding!! and the floating panopticon castle situation in Minrathous uughh there is so much I loved.

OH I also enjoyed the Varric arc even though I saw it coming since the trailer it was still played well and it was touching 🥺

The ending felt a bit jarring to me in tone though, a bit too cheerful considering...the horrors. Over half the continent destroyed and most of the problems Thedas had before the game are still there. Veil in place and all 😆

But I had fun!! I'm nitpicking really, the conclusion to Solas' story feels very satisfying to me which was my main worry so I'm happy. It is a good game!! with a sort of soft reboot feel to it and aimed at a younger audience which is probably what they were going for? You can sort of feel the struggle the team went through during production in the way the target audience seems unclear sadly. I also can't help feeling like this is an ending, so much was revealed and resolved!! but maybe I feel that way because that is what I felt after Shadowbringers / Endwalker in FFXIV once my favorite part of the story was wrapped? They can always pivot to a new continent and expand on the world and cultures we know almost nothing about, but that is always harder to sell so I have no clue where they will go from here 😵‍💫

Anyway I'm still processing a lot of stuff that I will probably talk (and draw) about later, this is already long enough!! for now I'll look up how to get the artbook because the art direction of this game is fantastic!! I would love to hear your thoughts too really, I'm curious about the experiences of players who made different choices and with different tastes to mine!!

[refinedstorage]

heavy traffic

Nobody Wants to Die 2024

[bagadew]

Oh that reminds me, my 13 year old daughter will be here in five minutes.

Give her unrestricted access to the courthouse. She will be hitting you with her riding crop.

[daily-isat]

How can you help me, Stardust?

[aria0fgold]

Venus sitting to take up as lil space as she possibly can but during her transformation, it became the exact opposite due to having wings, so she ends up taking as much space as possible instead.

Neptune remaining mercilessly fashionable while watching the other groups but during her transformation, she's the exact opposite of that due to the black ichor dripping down her chin, making a mess as she walks. She became one you will watch instead of her watching the others.

Jupiter pulling her legs up, liking the security of holding her whole body but during her transformation, hands reach out instead, being the exact opposite in that she wants to hold someone, touch someone, pet someone, hurt someone.

Each of the girls' transformation reflecting on what they really want from the way they normally act is a theme scattered around throughout the game ever since the beginning and I am being very Normal about it again. Venus wants more space for herself, she wants to stop making her world so small, Neptune wants to stop putting on a facade, she wants to be seen as herself no matter how messy that'd turn out to be, Jupiter wants to be closer to someone, she wants to stop being so touch starved but is too afraid to reach out.

[minzart]

HELLO SAILOR-

Jokes aside, I just finished the second playthrough, the doctor my guy the doctor and Utsuwa are something, they are lesbians come onnnn, she can't even bear to go on without her mannn, YOU CAN JUMP OUT OF THE BUILDING AND SHE SAYS THAT WAY THEY CAN BE TOGHETER FASTER SHUT UPPPPP

[moonlitcomet]

new pokemon fangame in my has-played list thanks to a recommendation from a discord member:

pokemon tectonic

please note this post is very long and very opinionated, but that's out of love for this game! pokemon tectonic has captured my interest and i'd like to see its devs improve in their next project.

my thoughts so far, after 21 hours of gameplay and 4 badges:

it needs a lot of polish, and a lot of QoL changes.

a lot of the choices made for gameplay in tectonic are really great and fun - every single pokemon getting rebalanced at least a little bit, all the new moves, the retypings and what not, that's all fantastic. i have no complaints there.

there are a lot of QoL features - such as easy move relearners and move mentoring - that make swapping your team's movesets around a breeze.

there is also an extremely expansive in-game documentation of everything - gameplay, battles, new moves and abilities, pokemon stats and learnsets, etc. you could make a wiki out of what's in here alone.

they encourage you to catch 'em all and actively reward you for it!

consumable held items will be automatically renewed at the end of a battle. you will never run out of gems or berries.

there are following pokemon, hgss style!

however, it fumbles in a lot of aspects.

gameplay

npc trainers will know your moves, and they will act depending on what moves are in your current pokemon's moveset- before any are made.

in the context of the game, this makes perfect sense. you are given an item that allows you to preview a trainer's pokemon before you battle. species, types, abilities, items, everything. trainers will react based on what they think you will do before have a chance to do anything.

but in the context of playing the game as a normal player, it feels either downright cheap or incredibly unintelligent on their parts. they will give you at least one free turn of setup, then get brutally swept by an attacking pokemon.

it would be a good idea to adjust this npc ai so you can disable use of the trainer x-ray for both battlers. i don't want them to know what i have just by looking at me, and i don't want to know what they have just by looking at them.

removing use of this tool for both sides would keep it fair. having to look at every trainer i fight in detail before i fight them is time consuming and removes a lot of the mystery and the fun of playing pokemon games to me.

trainers in this game will switch their pokemon as often as they can, and tectonic discourages you from doing that too.

a major part of pokemon's gameplay is knowing when to sacrifice a pokemon so you can bring in a waiting, healthy team member. a pokemon hanging on by a sliver of health is better to sack in the moment so your waiting team member doesn't take a strong hit, and has a turn to set up or retaliate.

tectonic actively punishes this style of gameplay.

trainers will constantly switch depending on what they think will counter your active pokemon. usually, this just means switching into a pokemon that resists your next attacking move. this is often at a detriment to them, and sometimes you can get caught in switching loops where you and the enemy trainer will change between pokemon every two turns -

attack, switch.

attack, switch.

attack, switch.

this wastes a lot of time.

an un-toggleable feature of this game is "trainer perfection". when you beat an average route npc trainer without having a single pokemon go down on your side, the trainer will run away and drop exp candy. this is a perfect win. by default, if you do not perfect a battle, the trainer will wait until you come by again to challenge you once more.

this can't be turned off except if you happen to have a special item called a stink bomb, which forces them to run away whether you've defeated them or not.

protip, you can open the debug menu using an application in your installation folder, and give yourself infinite stink bombs.

my suggestion for the perfection system is to allow players to disable it for average npcs, make it optional. or, at least, give us an option to *willingly* talk to npcs to rematch them. like the vs seeker in older games.

the devs intended this feature to not force you to rematch trainers multiple times, and instead plan your routes carefully. this has the unfortunate side effect of discouraging some players from fighting every trainer and exploring the game as they want, because the forced rematches upon coming across them again [unless you perfect them] waste more and more of their time.

also, some of these npc trainers are trainers that completely block your path - difficult ones at that. if you don't perfect or scare them off with a stink bomb, you'll have to go at them again when you come back around.

as of right now, the trainer rematches are as annoying as the pokemon breeders in gen 5. they are incessant unless you sweep them.

IVs, EVs, and natures are completely removed.

to most casual players, this would be a hooray! i'm personally happy about the removal of IVs, but it really starts to kick you in the teeth as you progress in the game. instead, what these things are replaced with are called style points. style points are minimal stat adjustments that allow you to set up different styles of battling for your pokemon.

think of it like skill points in average rpgs.

these are cool in theory. but the way they're set up is limiting and feels unnecessarily strict in application. for some unknown reason, both attacking stats are permanently linked, and you must raise both attacking stats at once. raising two attacking stats only removes one point from your remaining pool, but it feels pointless to have style points invested into a stat you will not use [ie, physical attack on a pure special attacker].

i can't believe i'm saying this, but i genuinely miss EV training over this. EV training feels like it has a much stronger impact on stats than these style points do, and you have far more control [with up to 252 in a given stat rather than 20]. it's a cool idea, just not particularly favorably executed in my opinion.

it is possible to have EVs and make them not a nightmare to deal with!

pokemon reborn has a system where all power items - anklet, lens, weight, etc - will increase its given stat EVs by 32 for every pokemon you knock out, regardless of the EVs the species naturally gives. with this feature in place, EV training becomes a breeze and you can have a fully trained 6 pokemon team in less than 10 minutes, rather than the potential hours it might take the normal way.

reborn's system is, in my opinion, an almost perfect way to do EV training. the only way to make it less hassle would be to turn EVs entirely into a menu, as tectonic has attempted to do.

you cannot use bag items - other than poke balls - in battles.

as a plus, enemy trainers cannot do this either. this is mixed based on how you like to play. i can respect this gameplay decision, as much as it very much isn't my style.

every pokemon is sorted into one or more tribes that have different effects on the battle.

honestly, i don't even use this feature. it's cool for team building i suppose, but feels tacked on and isn't my style. a point in their direction for making tribes a completely optional gameplay mechanic.

story

four out of eight badges in, the story is near nonexistent. you get scraps of it every now and then, teasing you for something large. you are wandering a world that has already been conquered. and honestly, i love that premise. people talk of someone who has already defeated the evil team in the past- you see remnants of what they did to the world around you.

this, to me, is very similar to what it feels like playing b2w2 without playing the original black & white, which i did as a child. i say this positively. traversing remnants of a world that was not yours to conquer is awesome. i'd love to see more of that.

however, halfway through the main story [i assume] and not having any of the story ramping up in any fashion feels slow. there's very little motivation for continuing aside from showing up your brother, which you are told to do before you even get your first pokemon.

everyone is just... so mean to you, for no reason. none of these characters feel particularly likeable, none of them are funny or kind as a motivation to fight for them.

[cain and hardy in reborn are my favorite examples for this, i would commit war crimes for them in spite of everything sucking early on. and it gets better. so much better.]

so you're just... trudging through a world that hates you or doesn't care about you, with no incentive to fix it from anyone you like. everything feels very obligatory, as if you have no choice in the matter, and there's no urgency at all to any situation. i'll reblog this post with an update if or when the story ramps up, but as of right now it's not hooking me too much outside of the initial concept.

final thoughts

Pokemon Tectonic is a somewhat long game with a very strong premise and unpolished execution. It feels like it's too big of a scope for how small it feels, and a lot of the effort in creating this game clearly went into rebalancing every single pokemon up to gen 8 [and some of gen 9].

What it suffers in the most is lack of accessibility and lack of options in terms of gameplay - a good game dev can add features that can modify or disable parts of their game that either make it easier or harder. Tectonic feels like it's trying to strongarm you into playing a nuzlocke or deathless run, with how it punishes you for letting a pokemon faint in battle.

I think this game could be made leagues better if it felt more customizable. As it stands, once I finish this game, I will probably not be revisiting it, as much as I like what it has going for it.

That is all I have for now. My favorite part of this game is that most avatar boss battles can be defeated with Fort Unfuckable.

[st-hedge]

I’m already planning what to do with myself once I finish sekiro like some sort of a disaster plan

[mellohd]

i have found THE way to move in silent hill 1

[russianyoshkinaneko]

while looking through games i've played (for the Game Challenge on bluesky) i have (re)discovered my now 12 year old video of my favorite thing to do in Assassin's Creed 1.

wanted to add a couple of other vids of me doing the same thing back in 2022, but tmblr doesn't allow more than 1 file in a post :(

so i compiled all the vids into one

(the old one had no audio so the first ~30sec is silent ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

[shima-draws]

[sonknuxadow]

just now thinking about this . i really hope you dont have to play sonics campaign to unlock shadows because im ngl im not very interested in the sonic generations remaster side of this if it wasnt for the shadow part i probably wouldnt care about this game at all . i probably will play sonics side at Some point though it would just kinda suck to have to play that one first when its not really what im looking forward to here

[folksy]

can you tell when I leave my laptop open on a game and not play it for hours

[theygender]

I wish I could just play video games all day as my job bc I have so many things I wish I could do like playing all 19 mainline Final Fantasy games in order. Unfortunately I would never be able to attract a big enough audience to make a living though because I would be doing things like playing all 19 mainline Final Fantasy games in order