#its a strategy to quit out of the game to reset enemy positions (TO MAKE THE GAME EASIER BTW)

[mommytimmy]

what do you mean people can make posts on the internet without knowing anything about what they're talking about? 🤯

[hysterialevi]

His Name Was Isaac - A RDR2 Fanfic

Fanfic summary: During a mission to avenge his mother’s death, Isaac hunts down the men responsible for her murder and kills them off one-by-one, only to discover that his last target is taking refuge among the Van der Linde gang. In an attempt to kill them, Isaac attacks the gang and unknowingly becomes enemies with his own father, who is in the process of fighting his own battle for redemption.

Point of view: third-person

Author’s note: Alright guys, here’s the first part of my Isaac fic! I’m not 100% sure if I’ll continue this one so please let me know if you like it. I hope you enjoy :)

Next chapter

This story is also on AO3

AMERICA, 1907

WEST ELIZABETH

Bang.

The man collapsed to the ground.

His body twitched, his face contorted, his chest spurted blood, and within a few heartbeats... he was already gone from this world.

He was dead.

Just like that.

And soon, his friend would follow with him.

Smoking pistol in hand, his assailant cocked their firearm one last time and brought their attention to the final survivor in the room, preparing to take them out.

They crawled helplessly away from their pursuer and attempted to grab the weapon of one of their fallen comrades, only to cry out in agony when the other man pressed a boot on top of their fingers, practically grinding them to dust.

“You ungrateful son-of-a-bitch...!” The victim growled through gritted teeth, his eyes wet with tears from the pain. “I knew I shoulda killed you when Whitley first brought you here...!”

His attacker disregarded the comment and simply continued to twist their heel into his hand, causing a disgusting crack to emit from their joints.

“...You expect me to be grateful?” The other man replied, his tone low and venomous. “You signed your death warrant the minute you killed my mother all them years ago. You pieces of shit ain’t even getting a fraction of what you deserve.”

The injured man remained on the floor, his jaw tightly clenched due to the ongoing pain throbbing throughout his hand.

“We let you live...” he whispered, desperately attempting to bargain with him. “We gave you a place to stay. We kept you fed. Goddammit, Isaac -- we raised you!”

Isaac glowered at the absurd statement and knelt to the ground, making sure he was face-to-face with the other man.

“No,” he corrected. “You used me. You took everything I had and then forced me to give you more. And now...”

He applied even more pressure onto the man’s hand, causing him to start weeping.

“...you’re gonna die for it.”

Knowing there was no way he was going to talk himself out of this one, the man resorted to cowardly insults and intimidation, trying his best to scare Isaac out of going after the rest of the gang, but to no avail.

“If you’re thinkin’ about tracking Whitley down too, you can forget it. He’s already long gone. He ain’t nothin’ but a ghost nowadays.”

“You think?” Isaac said. “Well, I’m not too worried about it. I managed to track you down, didn’t I?”

His victim shook his head in anger. “It’s been ten years since Whitley left our gang, Isaac. Ten. How the hell are you gonna recognize him? You’ll never find him!”

Isaac let out a chuckle and rose from the ground, finally taking his foot off the man’s hand.

“Have no fear.” He reassured, taking aim. “I already have.”

Bang.

~~~~~~~~~~

THREE DAYS LATER

RHODES, EVENING

“Blackjack!” The dealer announced after checking his cards, earning a series of groans from the two players sat around him, along with the spectating crowd. He happily removed their chips from the betting position and retrieved their cards, stacking them proudly amongst his own.

“Alright, everyone, place your bets.” He instructed once everything had been reset.

Not too confident about his luck, the first player decided to adopt a safer strategy and presented a smaller amount of chips than the last round while the second player, Eli Whitley, decided to go higher.

He scooted the chips into the small circle drawn onto the table’s surface, biting his lip in uncertainty.

“Okay, no more bets,” the dealer said, shuffling the cards. “Let’s begin.”

Placing a total of two cards in front of each player, Whitley ended up with a six and a jack while the other received a king and a queen, leaving them in a much more favorable light than Whitley himself.

The dealer addressed Whitley first, throwing a quick glance at his cards.

“We have a sixteen.” He observed.

“Hit me.” Eli said, taking a third card. This one was an eight.

“Bust.”

Whitley sighed in disappointment upon seeing the result, leaning back as the dealer took away his chips before moving on to the next player.

“Twenty.” He noted.

The player held a hand up. “I’ll stand.”

Keeping his cards in hand, the dealer returned to his own pile and began flipping them over one by one, only to end up with a nineteen.

The second player grinned proudly at that. “Well, alright then!”

“...Dammit.” Whitley muttered to himself. Tonight was not his night.

Repeating the cycle as always, the dealer cleaned up the table once again and put everyone’s cards back into the stack while also giving out the appropriate number of chips, only to perk his head up in interest when a third man joined the game.

“Welcome, sir.” The dealer greeted.

“Evening, gentlemen.” He replied casually, settling down two seats over from where Whitley was.

The new player caught Whitley’s attention.

He appeared to be much younger than everyone else at the table, and had a head of wavy, blond hair as well as a thick layer of scruff outlining his jaw. He carried the look of someone who was no stranger to traveling around the country and also kept a beautiful revolver on his waist, allowing it to hang just beside the rim of his rugged duster coat.

Though, what really intrigued Whitley was the man’s eyes. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something strangely familiar about them. Like... he had seen this man before. No names were coming to Whitley’s mind at the moment, and he was fairly certain he had never ran into this young man in the past, but everything about him just screamed, “you know me.”

Well, Whitley supposed it wouldn’t hurt to ask and turned to face the new player, curious to learn who he truly was.

“Hey there, partner.” He said, leaning forward. “Have we met before? You seem... familiar.”

The player simply carried on with the game, clearly not sharing Whitley’s sense of recognition.

“I don’t think so, mister. I’m usually pretty good at remember peoples’ faces, but...yours don’t ring any bells.”

Still, Eli was determined. “What about my name? You know anyone called Eli Whitley?”

The young man’s expression paused for a moment upon hearing his name -- as if he suddenly remembered who Whitley was -- but then returned to its natural state as he placed a small stack of chips in the betting ring.

“I’m afraid not. Sorry, mister.”

Whitley furrowed his brow in disappointment and confusion.

“Hmm... strange. Perhaps I’m mistakin’ you for someone else.”

The young man smiled in a friendly manner. “No worries. I guess I just have one of those faces.”

Letting their conversation drop there, Whitley fell back into silence as the dealer continued on with the game and began making his way around the table, starting with the new player.

“I see a twelve.” He examined.

“Hit me.”

The dealer placed another card down. “Eighteen.”

The young man held a hand up, signaling a stand. He moved on to Whitley.

“Fourteen.” He announced. Eli decided to take a risk and placed another stack of chips in the ring.

“I’ll double down.”

The dealer gave him an extra card, presenting a jack. “Bust.”

“Damn...!” Whitley cursed under his breath, shaking his head as his chips were whisked away. He could hear a few scattered moans of discouragement coming from the crowd.

“Welp...” He said with a lighthearted shrug, “I never did have much luck with gambling.”

The young man laughed softly at that and slid his cards back to the dealer.

“No, you didn’t.”

Whitley froze at the comment.

Wait, what?

What the hell was going on with this guy? Didn’t he just say that he had no idea who Whitley was? And now he was talking as if he knew him? Perhaps there was some sort of misunderstanding in their little exchange that Whitley failed to catch.

Eli jolted his head in the young man’s direction, admittedly somewhat perplexed by what was happening.

“Hang on a minute, I thought you didn’t--”

Just before he could finish speaking however, a fourth player decided to jump into the game and occupied the seat between Whitley and the blond haired man, blocking his line of sight. Eli tilted his body so that he could see around the newcomer and leaned back a tad, only to find himself staring at nothing more than an empty chair.

“What in the world...?” He murmured.

Whitley was beside himself with bewilderment.

Where did the man go? Who was he? How did he disappear so fast? Was he even real? Or did Eli just have one too many drinks tonight?

Well, whatever was going on, Whitley started to suspect that Blackjack wasn’t the only game being played. Clearly, the young man knew significantly more than he let on, and Eli was beginning to suspect that his true intentions were far from innocent.

Deciding to call it a day, Whitley returned his cards to the dealer and stood up from the table, fully determined to find that young man now. He had about a thousand questions swimming through his head at the moment, and by God was he going to get some answers.

~~~~~~~~~~

A WHILE LATER

SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE RHODES, MIDNIGHT

Squeak.

Squeak.

Squeak.

That was all Whitley could hear as his lantern swayed back and forth with his horse’s movement, causing his shadow to warp into all sorts of ominous shapes on the dirt road beneath him.

At the moment, Eli was trying to locate the young man in the fields just outside of Rhodes, but the nightfall in this area was brutal. Even with a flame to help guide the way, the darkness still managed to swallow the light of his lantern whole, and it also nearly enveloped his vision completely.

There was nothing around him except for endless fields of grass shrouded by utter blackness, and in the distance, Whitley could’ve sworn he saw an abandoned barn standing behind a misty layer of fog.

“...Jesus Christ...” He muttered, admittedly feeling on edge.

What was he doing out here? Was it even worth it to find this boy? For all Whitley knew, that young man could’ve been absolutely no one special, and he could’ve just been wasting his time out here like a complete moron, searching an answer that didn’t exist.

But no... it wasn’t that simple. It couldn’t be. It was clear that the man knew who Eli was. He knew his face. He knew his name. And somehow, he knew Eli would be in Rhodes tonight.

Whitley just had no idea how.

Pushing further into the night, Eli decided to make a beeline straight for the barn and lightly whipped the reins on his horse, urging it to go into a steady trot.

Despite all the fog surrounding the eerie structure, Whitley managed to spot the soft orange glow of another lantern sitting outside the barn’s doors, indicating that someone else might’ve been there, too.

Even if it wasn’t the young man, Whitley still felt a wave of relief rush over him nonetheless. There was no denying that these empty fields made him uneasy, and with the odd encounter he had at the Blackjack table earlier, he wanted nothing more than to return to his room until the world realigned itself.

Cautiously approaching the barn, Eli squinted through the darkness and held his lantern up a bit, hoping to catch a glimpse of what lay ahead.

Not too far away from him, it looked like there was another horse hitched by the barn’s entrance, and -- if Eli’s eyes weren’t deceiving him -- a person sitting on top of it as well. Their back was turned to Whitley at the moment, but there was no one else accompanying the stranger as far as he could tell, so he assumed it would be safe to introduce himself. Perhaps they were another lost soul, hopelessly trying to find their way around these winding meadows.

“Um, excuse me, sir?” Whitley called out, getting off his mount. “Or ma’am...?”

He walked over to the other horse, curious to see who this stranger was.

“I apologize for intruding, but I was wonderin’ if you could help me find my way back to town. It’s a hell of a lot darker out here than I first anticipated, and I seemed to have gotten myself turned around. Would you be so kind as to--”

Finally standing next to his new friend, it didn’t take long for Whitley to notice that the stranger was no person at all, and in fact, a simple scarecrow that had been placed on top of the saddle.

“What in the hell...?” Eli whispered in a baffled voice, observing the decoy.

That was when someone suddenly shot him from behind, planting a bullet in his leg.

“Shit!” He hissed, falling to the ground as smoke rose from his shattered kneecap and the horses whinnied in fear.

Tightly clutching his leg, Whitley heard the distant sound of someone cocking their gun, followed by a chain of footsteps emerging from the shadows that eventually led to his side.

“No wonder you have such bad luck with gambling,” a familiar voice remarked. “You’re far too predictable, Whitley.”

Holding onto his wounded knee as he writhed on the ground like a worm on a hook, Eli gazed upwards at his assailant and saw the same man from before, only with a completely different temperament this time.

As opposed to the casual, laid-back demeanor he carried during the game of Blackjack, he now lacked any empathy in his expression, and didn’t seem to hold even a shred of remorse in his conscience. His blue eyes were narrow with a sense of hatred, and the angled light coming from Eli’s fallen lantern cast a number of shadows across the man’s face that only seemed to sharpen his glare.

Whitley let out a series of rapid, shaky breaths, attempting to speak through the pain.

“W-Who the hell... are you?” He groaned out. “Why are you doin’ this...?!”

The young man kept his pistol aimed at Eli and slapped his horse with the other, scaring it off as a way to ensure Whitley had no means to escape.

“I’m surprised you don’t remember.” He answered vaguely. “I know it’s been over ten years, but seein’ as how you was drowning your sorrows in the parlor house back there, I figured you hadn’t forgotten.”

Eli sighed in frustration, his voice becoming more ragged due to anger. “Enough games, sir! Just gimme your name so I can know what the hell is goin’ on! Haven’t you played with me enough?”

“Not really,” the young man disagreed, “but I ain’t got any more time to waste on you. So consider yourself lucky. For once.”

Circling around Whitley like a vulture observing its meal, the young man finally decided to come clean and crouched next to Eli’s face, making sure his revolver was ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

“Fifteen years ago or so... you and your ‘associates’ may have robbed a small cabin...? Killed the owner in the process, too. A young woman, barely into her twenties. Her name was Eliza, and she had a son as well.”

He paused, holding up a finger. “Oh, but you didn’t kill her son. Instead, you took him in. Forced him to work for your gang, and then dug another grave by his mother’s to ensure his daddy wouldn’t come after him.”

The man aggressively pressed the barrel of his pistol against Whitley’s temple, nearly digging it through his skull as he growled his next words.

“Any of this ringin’ a bell now?”

Suddenly realizing just who this man was, Whitley’s eyes sprung wide open in remembrance as he gaped at his captor with a horrified look, finally understanding what all of this was about.

“...I-Isaac Morgan?” He breathed out in disbelief. “Is that you? My God... y-you was just a little boy the last time I saw you.”

Isaac nodded as confirmation, appearing satisfied with the answer. “If I recall correctly, you left your gang members behind ‘cause you couldn’t... ‘deal with the guilt anymore.”

Whitley closed his eyes in shame, unwilling to relive the tragic memory.

“...It was one of our first jobs, Isaac. We never meant to kill Eliza. We only wanted her money. But people just panicked, things got escalated, and -- for God’s sake -- it was an accident! Okay? The trigger went off and we couldn’t just undo it!”

Isaac shrugged at Eli’s confession, evidently not taking a word of it in. “I don’t care. Your ‘accident’ cost me my family, my home, and my childhood. And there ain’t no way in hell you can give any of that back, so I’ll just settle for takin’ your life. But before I do...”

He took a handful of Whitley’s collar, yanking the man’s face closer to his own. “...Tell me where Mackintosh is.”

Eli furrowed his brows at that. “Shay Mackintosh? How on earth would I know?”

“You and Mackintosh were practically brothers before you left the gang. You must know something!”

Whitley raised his hands in a diplomatic manner. “Look, I haven’t spoken to Mackintosh in years! I have no idea where he could be!”

Isaac pulled the hammer on his pistol down, afterwards pointing it at Eli’s other knee. “Well, you better give me something.”

“Wait!” The other man exclaimed, starting to panic. “Just wait! I’ve... I’ve heard rumors of him runnin’ around with the Van der Linde gang recently. Apparently, he’s one of them now.”

Morgan wasn’t quite finished with interrogating him yet. “The Van der Linde gang? Who are they? Where can I find them?”

“I don’t know,” Whitley answered truthfully. “I’ve never met them before. All I know is if you wanna find them, you gotta find Dutch van der Linde first. He’s their leader. He’s the one in charge.”

“...Dutch van der Linde...” Isaac repeated to himself, taking a mental note of the name. “Alright, then. I’ll go find him. And Mackintosh, too. Seems you ain’t completely useless, after all.”

“But what about Baumann and Blackmore?” Eli questioned, confused as to why Isaac stopped his interrogation there. “Aren’t you gonna look for them as well?”

Isaac stood up from the dirt path and patted any dust off his coat, averting his aim back to Whitley’s head.

“No need. They’re already dead.”

[ciathyzareposts]

Camelot: What Makes Us Unique

This particular Camelot character has probably never existed before or since.

             Back in 2004, I was meeting a friend at a bar in Boston. I opened the door to look in for him, saw that he wasn’t there, and backed out, elbowing in the stomach the man behind me. I turned around and saw that it was the governor of Massachusetts. Since then, I’ve liked to think that I’m the only person to have ever elbowed Mitt Romney in the stomach while he was walking into a bar. I’m sure plenty of people have elbowed him in the stomach on other occasions.

This is the kind of story I like, because it’s an assemblage of circumstances that has probably never occurred to anyone else. I look for those in life. I may not be the world record holder in any sport or hobby, but there’s a decent chance that by the end of my life, I will have published more blog articles on CRPGs than anyone else alive. If that turns out not to be true, I’ll only need one other modest qualifier (“than any other Mainer”) to make it true. I guarantee that I’m the only person in the world to have my particular combination of jobs (if you include CRPG blogging as one of them). I don’t hold the record for the number of airline miles flown between 2010 and 2018, but I’ve got to be within the top 10%, and when you’re in the top 10%, you only need one or two additional circumstances to make yourself unique. It’s possible that I’m the record-holder out of Bangor, Maine, for instance.

My enthusiasm for unique experiences filters into CRPGs and probably explains why I like open-world sandbox games so much. I don’t like the idea that I’ve reached the end of a game in the exact same position and circumstances as everyone else who has ever played the game. When you can’t even name your character, this is particularly infuriating. Look at my recent review of Deadly Towers, for instance. How do you really know it was me playing that game? I could have taken those screen shots from anyone. At least Dragon Warrior displayed the first four letters of “Chester.”

These issues got me thinking about the peculiar trade-off that exists between player and character. Think of a game like Pac-Man. When a champion like Billy Mitchell achieves a perfect score, we don’t say, “Wow, you created a great character there. You put a lot into him.” The very statement is absurd; every player’s Pac-Man is the same as everyone else’s. Instead, all praise goes to the hands and eyes of the player himself. In contrast, when we watch the ways that various players have won the Mulmaster Beholder Corps battle in Curse of the Azure Bonds, we look for clues in the characters–their levels, their spells, their weapons, their movements. We’re aware that there’s a player behind it all, of course–perhaps a very intelligent and strategic one. But his success is slightly diffused by the imposition of the characters. We are aware that his strategy only “works” because of the allowances of the game. Perhaps most important, we are aware that we could have done the same thing, whereas no studying of his technique is likely to make most of us like Billy Mitchell.

It is for these reasons that I don’t think it’s really possible to be “good at” a game like Skyrim. Experienced, sure. Patient, definitely. But “good”–what does that even mean? Early in its existence, some players proudly posted images on Reddit of their characters clad in leather armor and wielding pick-axes (possibly the worst weapon in the game) killing dragons. I thought it was silly. Either the game has enough flexibility to allow you to do such a thing or it doesn’t. It says nothing about your skill as a player that you were able to do it except that you were willing to use the game’s resources to grind, or enchant that pick-axe, or improve that armor, or carry and drink a hundred potions, or whatever you did to make it possible.

I just bought Irene the Myst 25th anniversary collection for Christmas. That is a “good at” game. A player that possesses the strength of puzzle-solving to blaze his way to the end without any spoilers is an impressive player. But his end-game screenshot is the same as everyone else and the “character” of the game is essentially invisible, a no-one, a ghost.               

In many modern games, “uniqueness” extends quite literally to the character’s appearance.

            In case it’s not clear, I’m not particularly interested in being “good at” CRPGs. I don’t play them for competitive reasons. I play them to enjoy the strategy, tactics, world-building, plots, and sense of character development. I like a challenge, but only a modest one–a temporary bump in a game that, because of its very nature (particularly because of reloading), you’re almost certain to eventually overcome.

Many people prize the opposite. I suppose even I do, in different circumstances. The value of most competitive games is that everyone’s playing the same game under the same circumstances, with no real imposition of “character” between the player and the performance. A king in chess isn’t a “character”; he’s just a piece. You don’t give him a name, and he doesn’t acquire new abilities as he defeats pawns and levels up. When he moves to take a rook, there are no probabilities associated with the encounter. When he wins, all glory goes to the player who moves him.

When my king reaches the end of a game, on the other hand, I want him to be my king–a unique character that no other player has won with. I want my endgame screenshots to look different from everyone else’s. And in those screenshots you should be able to tell something about how I played the game. Was I careful or daring? Did I rely on brains or brawn? Did I favor equipment or skills? What role-playing choices did I make along the way?

To me, some of the worst RPGs are closer to chess. Your “character” is just a gambit that you’ve moving across the screen, offering you no sense of connection or identity. These are essentially arcade games with a few nods to RPG mechanics. We’ve seen a million of them: Caverns of Freitag, Gateway to Apshai, Sword of Kadash, Sword of Fargoal. Even worse is when the game offers RPG-style inventory and leveling, but at fixed intervals along a linear plot, so that “character development” is just an illusion and everyone does reach the end the same as everyone else.

The best RPGs, however, offer plenty of opportunities to make your character your own:            

Name

Selection of race, sex, alignment, and class

Attributes

Skills and talents

Inventories, especially those with multiple slots

NPC interaction, dialogue, and role-playing choices

Choice of what order in which to do quests and side-quests

Ability to grind, or not (only meaningful without artificially low level caps)

Customization of character appearance

Statistics, achievements, and trophies

                The multiplication of these various factors means that many modern RPGs feature characters as unique as the humans who create them, finally achieving some of the sense of ownership and identification that tabletop RPGs allowed from the outset.           

Every player may have had to do exactly what I did to win Ultima IV, but at least my name and the number of turns are unique.

          Camelot is an early game, and thus not as advanced in the originality of its characters. But of the single-player PLATO games, it comes the furthest. When I play it, I do not feel as if I am feeding so many characters into a meat grinder, as I did with The Dungeon, The Game of Dungeons, and Orthanc. Its allowances for stealth, magic, and multiple fighting styles, paired with the strategic nature by which you must explore dungeon exploration, create as close to a unique experience as anything we’re going to get for many years. If nothing else, the combination of items in the 13 inventory slots likely creates characters for each player that no one else has ever played.

I’ve put about 12 hours into the game since the last Camelot entry and I’ve gotten a lot more powerful–enough to take on dungeon Level 5 with relative ease–but it’s still slightly frustrating how long its’ taking to finish the game, much more so because I keep dying and resetting my score back to -99,999. But I recognize that it was designed for different players in different circumstances.

There was an interesting moment the other night where creator Josh Tabin happened to be logged into the system at a moment that I got stuck. I had teleported into a section of Level 4 that offered only one exit: a downward chute. Unfortunately, I had taken a Potion of Levitation upon beginning the expedition (you always want to use Scrolls of Protection, Potions of Cepacol, and Potions of Levitation at the outset of each expedition if you have them). It turns out that Levitation stops you from using chutes, even deliberately. The condition doesn’t wear off until you return to town. There were no other exits from the area, and I was out of Scrolls of Recall. The only solution I could come up with is to wait until the turn of every hour, when the dungeon levels respawn, and kill everything in the half-dozen rooms I had access to, hoping to get a Scroll of Recall at some point. But since Josh was there, I informed him of my trouble and he opened a secret door for me, then spent some time patching the game so that even if you’re under the effect of levitation, you can manually choose to take a chute.

Other things about the game since I last wrote:            

As I previously mentioned, the game occasionally gives you a specific monster to kill before it will let you level up. It’s very erratic. I had a period from roughly Level 10 to 20 where I got a quest every level. Then I didn’t get any at all between Levels 20 and 29.

A “Palantir” tells you at what level you can find the object of your quest. If you’re already on that level, it tells you the specific coordinates. Of course, if the hour turns while you’re still seeking the quest creature, everything resets. 

As you move downward, enemies get harder but rewards get better. Some of the magic item rewards are awesome. I’ve had a couple of Wands of Fire that completely clear out rooms in one turn. The problem is how frequently they require recharging and the expense thereof. The game’s economy is still excellent. I make a lot of tough choices between leveling up, recharging, and purchasing new items.

It turns out that items don’t have a fixed number of charges but rather a small probability of running out within any given use. High intelligence seems to lower this chance.

Some of the best items that you can find increase your attributes. Manuals and tomes increase them permanently by one point while various potions increase them temporarily for several points. I have maxed out my strength, intelligence, and constitution with these items, and I must be close on the other two.

         A Manual of Bodily Health raises my constitution.

         Scrolls of Taming, Orbs of Entrapment, and Wands of Charming all work on different creatures. I’ve learned that when I lose a companion (or one leaves), I want to head down to the lowest dungeon level on which I can survive to start hunting for another. About six hours into this session, I was able to charm a succubus, and it’s remained with me ever since–an extremely powerful ally.

I probably mentioned this earlier, but there are special rooms on each level that the creator calls “stud rooms.” They feature enemies 2-3 levels harder than the normal ones on the same level, but with rewards 2-3 times greater. Any new expedition needs to begin with clearly the stud rooms that you know you can clear.  

          In one of the “stud rooms.” Seven green dragons are a little much for me. The Scroll of Identification gives grim odds.

         There’s a magic item called a “Tardis” that resets the dungeon in between the normal hourly resets. It allows you to quickly hit the stud rooms multiple times in a row until it runs out of magic. It’s incredibly useful but back in the day when there were multiple players hitting the dungeon at the same time, it must have been very annoying for some of them.

              The two players on the leaderboard who have won the game both have Level 60 characters, so I assume that’s the game’s level cap. Thus, I’m halfway there. I probably won’t have much more to say about Camelot until I win, so hopefully I can get it done this week while I also wrap up Challenge of the Five Realms. I’ll say this for Camelot: it’s the first PLATO game that I’ve enjoyed lingering with, rather than blasting through it just to document its historical value.

Time so far: 40 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/camelot-what-makes-us-unique/

[morshtalon]

Digital Devil Monogatari: Megami Tensei

Possibly part 1 of a series of posts on the whole series, maybe?

So, the first game in the popular MegaTen franchise is, wouldn't you know it, kind of weird. It was actually a video game sequel to a series of two novels starring a sort of villainous protagonist and the (government-mandated to exist ubiquitously through japanese media) high school exchange student as they become indirectly related to the summoning of ancient bad dudes Loki and Set through the magic of 80's computer programming, go into historic japanese landmarks to resurrect shinto goddesses, witness horrific, gruesome, sometimes sexual actions from the demons, go to space, fight using gods that turn into swords, and generally have a good time.

Naturally, considering the, um... Notorious source material, it's only logical that the videogame adaptation would, then, turn the sort of dark, villainous, intelligent programmer guy into a blank slate warrior with no personality, the girl into a standard RPG magic user, and drop them into a big dungeon crawl with almost no plot, nonsensical NPCs and a connection with the novels so tenuous they might as well have just taken some inspiration from it and opted to create a more original IP instead (I dunno, maybe put a "shin" in front of the title or something). Thus is born the antiquated experience that is Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei.

While Japanese gamers did at the time have the original version of Dragon Quest - with the sprites that always faced down and the lack of a save system - ushering in a new style of role-playing gameplay into the mainstream, I suppose the mindset of RPG development was still rooted in the design philosophies of the western games from throughout the decade that were distilled into DQ. Games that, like Megami Tensei, typically featured a simplistic first-person view and a party of six characters, following the rough guidelines of the most recent version of D&D, and had generally no plot development, consisting instead of a hardcore, punishing trek through a few 20x20 grid mazes full of traps and gimmicks.

Furthermore, this type of experience, from what I heard, was huge in Japan, so it's no wonder Atlus chose to capitalize on that market instead of streamlining it and risk losing fans of the genre that were looking for an experience similar to what they had witnessed from RPGs so far. Less cynically, it's also entirely possible the developers themselves were huge fans of the first person dungeon crawler and wanted to replicate their positive experiences in a passionate love letter to the genre. Also, for what it's worth, they did add uniqueness in party management and customization, as you surely already know, but we'll get to that later.

I guess we'll never know the true context behind the original MegaTen's creation, but the point is, this is a very old-school game. I don't think it's nearly as brutal as the ones that inspired it, but it is also definitely far from holding your hand. At no point in the game is it entirely obvious exactly where items you're supposed to collect are located, so you mostly have no choice but to comb the entire dungeon yourself until you stumble upon the stuff you need to progress. Furthermore, sometimes the very NPCs that tell you there's even something to look for at all are slightly out of your way, so there's always the mental pressure of maybe having left something behind and having to backtrack and go to all sorts of places trying to find it when you run into the next dead-end.

By itself, this isn't really a bad thing. As an exploration-based dungeon crawl, it's expected that the player will have some agency over what they're doing, and it's refreshing to see a game where you have so much ground to cover, but with hardly any setpiece to spice up the crawling in terms of context, the job of entertaining the player falls squarely upon the gameplay's shoulders.

To that end, the gameplay is definitely more boring than stimulating. This is where I have to admit, I beat the Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei remake version of it. I have played the original, though, and I am aware of the differences between versions. I have also played future games in the franchise with the same issues, so there's no evidence that the original is much different in this regard. Anyway, apart from an intense earlygame where you're at risk of death from a stray Zan spell cast by a gnome if you're unlucky, the rest of the game's fights are uneventful, once you level up enough and have an array of serviceable demons at your side. There's only ever one group of enemy demons per fight. There can be up to eight of them, but all eight are the same type of demon, and the graphics will only show the one until the entire group is dead. It's kind of like every fight is against only one demon but the demon can attack several times and has an erratic, huge HP pool. Furthermore, targeting is completely random for all moves, and you'd think this would add a fake layer of frustration, but the game gives you an auto-battle option. It simply makes the entire party use their regular attack for as many rounds as you want and prevents text from popping up on screen to slow down the monster-slaying, but for the most part, this is more than enough to get you through whatever part of the dungeon you find yourself in, with only the occasional, very rare exceptions of either:

-A demon that has a dangerous ability, therefore making it so that you want to kill them as quickly as possible;

-A boss;

-A battle that you got yourself into without noticing your HP is getting low, so you have to get yourself back to good conditions before proceeding.

It's definitely more of a preparations game than a reactions game. Preparation is fine, but there's never any need for you to deploy clever strategies. The game is ALL about having a good arsenal of choices up your sleeve and, when you do, you're good to go, and then you need to be either very callous or purposefully challenging yourself while playing in order to get into a situation that requires mental resourcefulness and wit. I will admit, I checked some of the mechanical differences between the original and remake versions, and it seems like they reduced the HP of enemies and bosses quite a bit, and generally went to great lengths to streamline the gameplay and make it more in tune with the next few games in the series (as far I could tell from the party itself, Kyuuyaku seems to have taken the inner workings from Megami Tensei II and applied it retroactively to the first game as well to make it more consistent, but I'm not 100% sure). Maybe this means that the original is more nerve-wracking and you need to level up much more, but I doubt it really becomes more strategy-based and oriented towards exploiting the mechanics, like the style future franchise titles would strive to achieve. As far as I can tell, the abilities remain the same, only the stats change, so it's likely more of a formula redesign than any major gameplay departure. If it is though, I apologize, and rectify my statements regarding battle mechanics boredom as far as the original version is concerned.

But hey, regardless of version, the whole demon system is pretty cool. I don't remember the characters doing it much in the books, I believe Nakajima only had Cerberus and that was it, so there's a nice, original expansion of the novels'... mechanics (?) on display here. I don't think the demon conversation, recruitment and fusion systems need any introduction, but I will say that up until Shin Megami Tensei II, the seventh overall game in the franchise, for some odd reason all demons were limited to three abilities/spells (later three spells and a few abilities), so they were not very versatile. Furthermore, magic and abilities generally sucked for the most part in early MegaTen, and in this game, outside of Hanmahan, group healing and the occasional kaja spell, all you really want is a good punching bag to take the heat off of Nakajima and Yumiko.

Also, maybe it's just in the remake, but there are quite a few demons that are exclusive to the player through demon fusion. This begins happening from pretty much the start of the game, making them sort of unique all the way through and making it sort of cool for the player to go around with these demons that you can't see anywhere else and who are usually more powerful than the enemy demons in the area. Still, however, the limited abilities and limited usefulness of said abilities make things a bit boring and makes the demons sort of interchangeable for the most part, especially considering you can't even see them in battle. But hey, in 1987 I'm sure the vast array of options alone would have been pretty impressive and, considering the plethora of real-life inspiration that was put into the demons' designs, it's kind of still impressive today, really.

Enemies do have a few tricks of their own up their sleeve, too, though, and they usually fall into the "early RPG unfairness" spectrum quite nicely, such as being able to cast death spells when the game's programming is such that you get a game over if the 2 (out of 6) human party members die, even if all your demons are still alive (naturally the final boss can use a pretty accurate version of this move), or the loathsome "smiles and laughs" attack that permanently drains an experience level from a human party member if it hits, making you have to work your way back up again without even the mercy of having the enemy that sucked your level give a massive hoard of EXP when defeated. Or the mercy of adjusting the experience table (if you're level 41 and get a level sucked from you, now you're level 40 but you still need enough experience for level 42 to get back to level 41). It's basically a reset button.

The original version also had some major frustration in the fact that there was, like DQ and so many others of its time, no save feature. You had to visit a guy near the start of the game to get a password or use a late game spell from the girl. There was also no auto-mapping feature (though the mapper/mappara spell did exist, in the old MegaTen-style 3x5 grid), so you just had to create maps yourself, I guess, which is kind of like wizardry and bard's tale and such, and kind of interesting. Though, for a game that isn't all that stimulating otherwise, it's good that in the remake you don't also have to go get a sheet of graph paper to keep track of where you've been. I'm torn on whether the original's extra doses of hardcore game design are better or worse than the remake's streamlining, but it seems to me like the hardcoreness, probably caused by memory limitations and such, served more like an arbitrary layer of confusion placed over a game that didn't really have a juicy core, while the remake's alleviation of it brought about the black spots a bit more into the limelight... It's hard to make up my mind.

The more standard things to talk about in a review are usually average-to-enjoyable here. The environment graphics are pretty good for their time in the original version, and the remake has some good stuff in the late-game, but has a tendency to make the ground a fake-looking gradient that feels artificial and standoffish. Demon designs are always a treat in MegaTen and I wouldn't say this game is an exception, but I think the original designs look kind of goofy for the most part, while the remake uses the scaled-down style of SMT II and SMT If... instead of the better-looking, more detailed style of SMT I, so that's somewhat disappointing. The music is alright, nothing special, but it starts with really cheery, upbeat tunes that go against the ambiance, especially in the remake where they added a dark-ish prologue with more fitting, atmospheric music. The sheer length of each individual section of the dungeon means the tracks will start to get repetitive at some point, and they have a repetitive nature on their own, but they're not bad. I like the bass in Valhalla Corridor. I also like the last two areas' music. Bien's track sucks, though.

Either way, it surely isn't a great game. Nor does it have to be one, honestly. It's a 1987, sort of experimental game that toyed around with the concept of a dungeon crawler in a very japanese setting coming from a very risqué source. It has its merits in creativity, sorely marred by technical limitations and overly emphasizing on its subpar dungeon crawling gameplay, extending it to the point where it overstays its welcome quite a bit. The devs were wise in keeping the plot connections to its immediate sequel small (and it is fascinating, how different it is from all others in the franchise) because Megami Tensei 1 doesn't stand the test of time.

But again, such a thing shouldn't be expected from a late eighties, obscure weird little game, and for what it's worth, like I said about Dragon Quest, it served as a base, though in my opinion a rockier one, with which to found gameplay mechanics that would be expanded upon and embellished in future titles. I'd give it a 4 out of 10, perhaps an honorary extra half-point if the original version's gameplay is a tad more stimulating, but really it's hard to even give games like this a score. They're a product of the times, and they appeal to sensibilities of the times. Gamer mentalities, even within the genre, have moved past it, but it stays here as a testament to the growth of the series. Going into it, you're likely very aware of its shortcomings already, and whether you'd like it or not is, I think, even more independent of whatever mess of words I'd be able to string together like this than usual.

[lockylab-blog]

Ikaruga - Game Analysis

Ikaruga is a vertical scrolling, manic space invader style shoot em’ up, space game. It was released in 2001 as an arcade system which comes quite late in comparison to the prime arcade days. Very fast shooting and extremely snappy controls combined with a “Polarity” switching system is the core function of Ikaruga. This game has seen a large amount of commercial and reviewer success, with Gamespot giving it a 8.5 out of 10 in 2002 and a 96% reviewer rating on steam at this current stage. The game does sit upon a large base that has been used and reused since the 1980’s, being a space shooter game, however Ikaruga enables to bring new elements to the table making it feel different and new.

Core mechanics:

 Shooting:

As this is a manic Japanese space shooter, the shooting is very fast and very intense. You only have two weapons, the main shooting beam that fires twin lasers or beams extremely fast and a laser barrage that is able to fire once an energy meter is high enough

 Movement:

The movement of Ikaruga is quick, responsive and snappy, it is very easy to move in and around a large amount of enemy lasers and enemies themselves. The collision point on the player is also very small, which ads to the ease of movement around the levels.  

 Polarity(Switching):

With the touch of the B button you can switch the colour of your ship, from white and blue to black and orange, this colour scheme is also shown by the energy that you shoot and the energy the enemies shoot. If you are the same polarity colour as the enemy projectiles they will not damage you. Additionally if you run into enemy fire of the same polarity it will also fill a charge meter. This meter dictates how powerful your laser barrage attack can be. It is indicated by a x12 bar left of the screen. Also if you shoot the same polarity enemy as your lasers you get a chain meter, which can give you a huge increase to your score. If you shoot an enemy with the opposite polarity this meter will reset.

 Enemies + Bullet patterns:

There are a numerous amount of different enemies that shoot different projectiles that behave differently. This ranges from circle bot enemies that fire in clumps of 6 shots, or jet looking enemies that shoot out little bombs, to huge cube like structure that shoot in a firing line formation to huge bosses that used every kind of shooting pattern imaginable.

Dynamics + Aesthetics:

 Shooting + Movement:

The game is constantly moving and constantly shooting and both systems are designed to be done very quickly. Being fast and shooting a lot makes the player feel extremely powerful, especially when dodging large amounts of attacks, then moments later releasing a laser barrage that destroys multiple enemies at once.

Shooting + Polarity:

Switching your polarity will switch what colour of lasers you shoot and can increase the amount of score you get if you use the chain meter correctly. Constantly looking for what the enemy polarity is and attempting to mimic that creates a huge margin of difficulty when playing even go as far as making the player feel frustrated especially when trying maximising the player's score.

 Shooting + Enemies:

As the enemies are varied and their bullet patterns also become varied constantly shooting is essential however, holding your laser barrage for the right moment can make all the difference especially against boss fights or a tight situation. In general the small enemies on their own feel trivial however when in great numbers and combined with a boss, the overpowered nature of Ikaruga’s shooting becomes quite balanced if not geared against the player. This creates a continual challenge for the player and at the same time makes each level or wave feel achievable with evoking extreme power.

 Movement + Polarity:

Not long into the game things become fairly hectic as the player needs to move around heaps to dodge enemy bullets they also can use it as a way to build up their laser barrage meter. Switching polarity at the right time, is crucial and some of the waves and enemy patterns are built directly around that, secondly switch polarity and running around collecting the necessary energy can also become a good strategy. It can give the player a break from the chaos and a bit of breathing space, whilst adding the advantage of laser barrages.

 Movement + Enemies:

Aside from moving and shooting, moving and enemies are probably the two other major combinations in Ikaruga. Avoiding enemy fire, and enemies themselves is a very concentration heavy task as the player is given both energy lasers to dodge in a variety of patterns that crisscross and overlap. Moving into the right place at the right time is crucial and when there is so much going on within a level the fact that Ikaruga’s movement is so snappy makes the challenge for the player a little bit more attainable. The fact that the collision point for the player is so small also contributes greatly to this, it gives the player what feels like second chances as the shot that kills them must be spot on their position. It is a great design as it would just be to hard for the player to succeed otherwise. The sense of joy and relief that the player feels when a chapter is completed or an intense section is overcome is immense.

 Polarity +  Enemies:

As enemies have the same polarity as the player and come in varying forms, groups and patterns the player is put in positions to forcibly change polarity to avoid death rather than advancing. This adds another level of challenge to facing certain enemies especially bosses. For example the player may have full charge in one polarity and the bosses main weapon is the opposite polarity forcing the player to switch and now needs to build up the new meter. This can be quite challenging and frustrating to the player.

Game Loops:

Level Loop:

The level loop consists of and introduction / prologue tutorial stage, which is an easier version of what is going to come which last for three waves. Then the level properly starts. The levels consist of five stages however i only got past the second level so the remaining 3 may differ.

 Game Loop:

The core game loop is move and shoot enemies and then progress to the next level where you move and shoot more enemies.

 Session Loop:

A session can range from twenty seconds to five hours the session loop is completely dependant on the player. With that being said it was originally an arcade game so I would suggest that a session loop for be one or two level loops.

 M2M Loop:

Move and shoot very similar to the game loop.

 Ikaruga is not a new concept or game at its core however one major new mechanic (polarity) and some interesting enemy patterns separate this title from previous space shooters. It is a difficult yet rewarding game that keep me going back for more and I can see why it has been such a great success.

[ygoreviews]

Hourglass of Courage ———————————————— If this card is Normal or Flip Summoned, its original ATK and DEF are halved until the End Phase of your next turn. After that, the original ATK and DEF are doubled ———————————————— Can Be Found In: Storm of Ragnarok (STOR-EN091)

Low Level monsters had a very basic example about the power creep the card game suffers periodically. For a while they couldn't have a default high ATK unless with certain flaws or conditions to be met, leaving the big hits for the bigger monsters we could summon later on. However, with Normal Monsters gradually compensating their lack of effects with high stats and other creatures having tame negatives to work with, many monsters from the old days barely have a stable position nowadays unless with specific support to work along with.

"Hourglass of Courage" is a riskful monster which can become to take down if survives for a pair of turns. If is Normal or Flip Summoned, "Hourglass of Courage" will half its stats until the end of our next turn. If "Hourglass" survives the technically two turns in those conditions, in return it will reset and double its stats. Is a quite interesting premise to obtain a 2200 ATK and 2400 DEF monster, but clearly overshadowed by several alternatives and monstersnot requiring to wait two turns to obtain results.

While its obvious that its effect is very difficult to achieve, on the bright side "Hourglass of Courage" has a respectable number of tools to work along without depending on its ability to stay functional despite being Special Summoned and thus avoiding its own effect. Effects like "Summoner Monk" and "Shining Angel" will bring it out from our Deck under their respective conditions. If "Hourglass" is in our hand, instead can be summoned together with cards like "Marauding Captain" and "Tin Goldfish" most likely to setup a bigger summon together. Besides a few other obvious options like Pendulum Summon or revival effects like "Call of the Haunted", "Hourglass" can also work to pay certain effects like "Herald of Perfection" or "Master Hyperion" and overall not become a dead card under any situation.

If we Normal or Flip Summon "Hourglass of Courage", we must be fully prepared to protect it from many attackers taking advantage of its 550 ATK for two or three turns. The basic method is to locking down the opponent's Battle Phase, going from "Swords of Revealing Light" giving us enough turns to achieve "Hourglass" effect to "Messenger of Peace" staying on the field as long as we want. Alternatively we can use traps like "Waboku" or "Threatening Roar", only during a single turn but thanks to their chainable nature can respond any incoming threats right away. Another option is to specifically protect "Hourglass" from attacks, equipping it with cards like "Mist Body" and "Safe Zone" to become invulnerable against any attacks. Alternatively we can work arround the Field Spell "The Seal of Orichalcos", as since "Hourglass" being most likely our weakest monster due its effect it will avoid any attackers as long we have stronger monsters aiding it. Finally we can work along Anti-Meta effects to slow down the opponent's strategies from bringing strong enemies, easily achieved by the abilities of cards like "Thunder King Rai-Oh" or "Archlord Kristya". In the worst situations don't be afraid about "Hourglass" being defenseless, as with the help of effects like "Enemy Controller" and "Honest" we can immediately respond against any incoming attacks.

"Hourglass of Courage" has more than enough options to stay alive and obtain its stat boost, but its flaws are clear. For the various turns it takes to become viable we can instead focus on setting up big summons or powerful combos way easier to accomplish than a 2200 ATK monster, specially when "Hourglass" is not that difficult to take down before and after achieving its boosted stats. Doesn't help neither that there are many low Level monsters with high stats immediately available the moment are summoned, and although they have their flaws is way more effective to invest on a monster like "Goblin Attack Force" or "Chainsaw Insect" as well the many Normal Monsters easily matching "Hourglass" full effect. Overall, "Hourglass of Courage" is far for being worth playing,  but on the bright side is supported enough to make a funny accomplishment.

Personal Rating: D+

+ Doubles its stats a few turns after is Normal or Flip Summoned + Highly supported to stay alive and have other purposes

- To achieve its effect it will half its own stats - Very slow effect making it heavily dependant of other cards and effects - There are many better and faster alternatives to obtain strong monsters with

[thatguysamaniac-blog]

In roughly a week a swathe of 30-40 somethings are going to relive and re-start a habit in a bid to re-misspend a misspent youth. There is a swell of hype in niche pockets of the Internet as people get more and more excited for the launch of World of Warcraft Classic. But why? Why is there the familiar toot-toot of the hype-train on the horizon for a product that is over a decade old, has a newer shinier iteration currently out and available to play, and a product that held marmite-like, positive and negative criticism when it was out. Just to clear things up I have bought my ticket (ed: and a train drivers hat, matching t-shirt, undies and socks and the special edition coke cans) and I am on the hype train! I am genuinely looking forward to Classic, but my goals and approach are going to be massively different to it, as will it be for much of the community. So I'm gonna play a little bit of devils advocate here... Upon launch many, many people will just be diving in for the pure nostalgia of the game, and very few of us will (ed: should) spend the amount of time and effort that we previously had done in the original WoW. Especially since because of our demographic, most of us are now grownups* with grownup commitments. Being an adult aside, and just comparing current WoW and Classic WoW, part of what I have seen about why Classic has such a following, it that current WoW (retail) sees a bit of backlash in regard to how it plays nowadays, it is considered "dumbed down", the game has streamlined, homogenised, and refined itself to large degree making interaction minimal, levelling, dungeoning and raiding are all infinitely more accessible, and faster. The game has become easier, where, in classic, you would have to learn an individual enemy boars moves so you know how to kill him before he killed you, now you kill several boars, and don't even have time to read what moves it did on you. Where you used to chat to your guildmates or just general chat and group together and adventure your way to a dungeon, it has now been replaced by a couple of button presses followed by a teleport to the dungeon entrance. In short the game has become more of an action fantasy RPG, than an MMORPG. This is in part Echoed by my friend and fellow WoW classic returnee Joldrath: That being said, as we are all grownups* with grown up commitments, is Retail actually just the game we need for our hectic lives?! Is it WoW for adults? The game is so refined that it now sectioned off up into bitesize chunks, rather than the infamous 16-hour junk food stuffing, poop-socking sessions. As with most things on the Internets nowadays, hype lives in a bubble, and a select few loud voices are the ones that get heard. Does Classic exist just for these voices? Does this only exist for private server people? Is it just for streamers? The private server community and the streamers go hand in hand and the tin foil hat theory is that Blizzard just wanna cash in on this... Private servers have been running for years, and streamers sit on their ad revenue, when Blizz ain't even getting a subscription. Will Classic just be a way to regulate private servers will it be World of Warcraft: public private server edition. Probably. The thing is the WoW from 2004 did not have the influencer/content-creator machine to work with, but it did have a lot more eccentricities, character builds and fun to be had in that fashion, that in all honestly it is going to be a great place for content creation! 15 minute bites of "Look at this build kill this thing" or "10 Paladins take down Ragnaros".  But is that the reason the folks diving into nostalgia want to play it again? Probably not. For me, part of the nostalgia was that this game was emerging, new builds were coming out, people discussed strategies and new patches brought all sorts of shenanigans with them. WoW was a sandbox playground allowing for meta-gaming of all kinds and involving everyone in the community. With WoW Classic we are getting the final patch of WoW, we are getting  "phases" where content is opening up but nothing more, and I think that may be a drop off point for a lot of people, "what's next" is very much a thing in WoW hence the plethora of patches, content and expansions that's essentially kept WoW going and with a few other games created the Games as a Service Hellscape we now live in. What we are getting is a little slice of life, a snapshot of WoW as it existed for maybe a few months (?) and a few things will cycle around it. Yeah, don't worry,  I hear myself "Finally, WoW Classic, what's next?", but that is definitely a thing, and I'm sure it's not just me, I wonder what the hook will be to keep people on if there is nothing around the corner... or is there? One hot topic is, what will happen after the phases? simply a reset and start the phases again? there is debate that based on it's success will Blizz just dive into The Burning Crusade and so on... Or it is also speculated that there could be some horizontal development continuing development but keeping the lvl 60 WoW classic experience, Could we see Death knights join us at lvl 60 or could we see Paladins on the horde side? Maybe some pandas could join the fight? Could we see tweaking to see viable Ret-lol DPS?!?? There was also a suggestion that WoW Classic could potentially enter seasonal play, akin to that of Diablo 3 with buffs and effects and such at lvl 60, changing up gameplay. Personally I would love to lift a couple of the non-gameplay elements from modern WoW, Specifically the overhaul to the character models to make them prettier, and hand-in-hand, I heart my transmogging and would love to allow collecting those looks at lvl 60 be made viable (without the masses and stacks of bank room being used up by mats you need to just go to a dungeon in Classic). In any case I do hope there are plans post final phase, given the world we live in for the effort/time we have made with our lvl 60 this time round, it would be nice to have new challenges and change-ups to actually look forward to. So do we need WoW Classic? Based on my grumpy contrarian ramblings above: all we are getting is a non-updated game intended for private server veterans and content creators that due to its time sink qualities will mostly be inaccessible to the commitment-laden nostalgia crowd that actually want to wallow about there! What is the pull to bring people back and, and then stay back? I am fully a part of the mid-life-crisis-got-commitments-nostalgia crowd, I got shit I need to do! I actually spend my evenings with loved ones rather than skulking in "my mom's basement". I cook food rather than picking away at luke-warm kebab on a Molten Core run etc etc. So why should I look forward to a game known to be a time-sink when I can a similar dopamine hit from Retail or even just any other game. Jesus fucking hell, Richie Who's a Debbie Downer! Ha, well unfortunately much of the above is true and quite honestly when this was announced, I immediately thought and realised this was going to be hyped behind a lot of rose-tinted glasses and to echo my parting statement from this post after the announcement, I was always going to play it, just to dip my toe-in at the very least. WoW was arduous, it was not an easy game. And I had to ask myself a few hard questions like: Why do I want to play that grind again? Can I find the time to play again? Do I even want a faithful recreation of that game from 15 years ago? What do I want from another WoW experience!? And Boom! that was the question that re-ignited my passion to play! Personally I love the Paladin class, I played my Blood Elf Paladin at from the first expansion onwards, but in WoW I (badly) played a Mage. I think what I want from WoW Classic is... Drum roll... ...wait for it... ... "Redemption" ... ... ... geddit? Cuz redemption is the name of a paladin spell?... ...Fine whatever, geez... I want to experience the original paladin or play WoW Paladin: Classic Flavour. I wanna do the Paladin Horsey quests (at least the alliance version), I want to do the multitude of Paladin-ish quests in the game, the Scarlet Monasteries and the Scarlet Crusade through Hearthglen, and on to getting Exhalted with the Argent Dawn. And so I realised that I have almost set myself a Goal, a path to go through the game with My goal will simply be lvl 60 hitting the iconic Paladin quests along the way. As much as I have had a grumble about what WoW classic is and if we need it, but it cannot be denied that when WoW came out it was so impactful on everything (media, games, etc), and perhaps this resurgence of Classic can rekindle some of what sparked that zeitgeist. Wow is old, and that cant be denied, just have a look at her face, her non existent nose, and the world is the same, jagged polygonal models, scenery with seams etc etc. However most of the time it can be very beautiful, Each zone has a different flavour, musical theme, and atmosphere, and its hard to any parallels that rival this even today. And it's Huge, yes you can argue that today its huger, with all of the additional zones being added in, but in all actuality because of the addition of flying mounts the world is just so much smaller. Recently I had a chat with Thatguyer, Doppelganger, discussing about how that leap from 16-bit to 3D was so impressive and awe-inspiring, but nowadays you can almost feel like you are just playing an N64/PS1 game, just with smoother graphics. What is the next leap in games? Where do we go from here? logically it should have been VR/AR, but is too much of an ask for the consumer, despite it being forced into our eyesockets. I would argue that mainstream MMO machine of WoW was a leap at that time, moving to online play but at the same time generating community spirit was a massive turning point for games. The traction it gained led the way for the online console experiences and ultimately the community based games we see dominating the Twitch-osphere. Is there more that revisiting this monolith can change/teach the new generation of people who think playing computer games is a job? As the hype-train has been getting ever closer to its destination, I have had to change my news-getting methods, where I used to haunt/feature on WoW Insider, it is now a shadow of it's former self. I have been looking to Podcasts, Reddit and even joined Discord. In particular I wanna give a shout out to countdowntoclassic.com and a big shout out to the shows host Josh on @count2classic who has kept the hype train running with interviews with Class leaders, the original designers and generally great WoW Classic content! It has been a bit part of what is making me excited about Classic! Anyways right, I guess see you in Azeroth? Love and Seal, Judge, Rave, Repeat. Richie X *Grownups absolutely use the word grownups, we're definitely not three cats in a trench coat, fake nose, glasses and a hat. No sir.

http://www.thatguys.co.uk/2019/08/wow-classic-do-we-need-this.html

[gamerszone2019-blog]

Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review - War And Peace

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/fire-emblem-three-houses-review-war-and-peace/

Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review - War And Peace

Fire Emblem: Three Houses asks a lot of you. Every piece, from battle to friendships to training your units, must be managed both individually and as part of a whole. It can be intimidating, but when it all clicks together, it really clicks. Mastering the art of thoughtful lesson planning as a professor improves your performance on the battlefield, where success relies on calculated teamwork and deft execution. Cultivating relationships during battle in turn draws you closer to each of the characters, who you then want to invest even more time into in the classroom. Every piece feeds into the next in a rewarding, engrossing loop where you get lost in the whole experience, not just in the minutiae.

Three Houses casts you as a mercenary who, while out on a mission with their father, runs into a group of teens under attack. After a brief introduction and battle tutorial–which you shouldn’t need, since you’re apparently already an established mercenary, but we’ll go with it–you learn that they are students at Garreg Mach monastery. Each of them leads one of the school’s three houses: Black Eagles, Blue Lions, or Golden Deer. At the behest of the church’s archbishop, who definitely gives off nefarious vibes but is also a gentle mom figure, you end up becoming a professor and must choose which of the houses to lead. There is a lot of mystery to the setup, with consistent hints that something is not quite right, and it’s easy to get absorbed in trying to figure out what the archbishop and various other shady figures are up to.

Your main role as professor is to instruct your students in matters of combat and prepare them for story battles at the end of each month. Battles in Three Houses feature the same turn-based, tactical combat at the heart of the series, albeit with some changes. The classic weapon triangle is downplayed quite a bit in favor of Combat Arts, which have been altered somewhat from their introduction in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. Combat Arts are attacks tied to a weapon type and can boost a unit’s attack power at the expense of weapon durability; some are effective against specific enemy types, like armored units. You can also unlock skills outside of Combat Arts that grant you better stats with certain weapons, like a heftier boost for using an axe against a lance user, similar to the old weapon triangle. It’s the same complexity the series is known for but less abstracted, making it a bit easier to strategize without sacrificing depth.

One of the big combat additions is battalions, mini armies you can equip that provide various benefits to a unit during battle. They also give you a new type of attack called a Gambit, which varies based on the type of battalion–magic-focused, brute force, and so on–and stuns the enemies it hits. Gambits are limited-use and can be incredibly powerful against the right enemies. You can increase a Gambit’s effectiveness even further if one or more of your other units are within attack range of the target, a tried-and-true Fire Emblem concept that applies to all kinds of attacks. There’s also an anime-style splash screen as you attack that shows each character involved in the Gambit looking fierce, which adds a nice bit of drama.

How much you use Combat Arts and Gambits depends on what difficulty you’re on. On Normal difficulty, well-trained units will likely be able to dispatch most enemies in one or two hits without the help of Combat Arts or Gambits. On Hard, however, enemies hit harder and withstand your attacks better. You have to think much more carefully about unit placement, the best time to use a Gambit and take advantage of its stun effect, and how many Combat Arts you can fire off before your weapon breaks. This is where things get exciting; after a few turns of cautious setup, you (hopefully) get to knock out tons of enemies as your plans fall into place.

Some of the early-game and optional battle maps are open spaces that don’t require you to think too hard, especially on Normal. But the story battles throughout feature a variety of map layouts–from pirate ships to what appears to be a lava-filled cavern–that challenge you to consider where your units need to be, both in the next turn and several turns down the line. Many of them have different routes, enemies coming at you from multiple angles, optional treasure to chase, and other quirks that require you to split your party up or change their equipped classes to suit the situation. Thieves, for instance, can open chests and doors without a key, while flying units don’t take damage from ground that’s on fire.

The depth of strategy in these elements really shines on Hard difficulty, but especially so when coupled with Divine Pulse, another limited-use ability. Divine Pulse allows you to rewind time in order to redo all or part of the battle, usually if one of your units dies. Rewinding with Divine Pulse shows just how important unit placement and attack choice can be, as even a slight change can make or break the encounter. It’s also just a nice quality-of-life feature if you play on Classic mode, in which units who die in battle are lost forever and can’t fight or train anymore. You might still soft reset from time to time, but it’s great to be able to rectify a mistake right away and get a shot of instant gratification for a job well re-done.

Battling, of course, is only one part of life at the monastery. The backbone of Three Houses is the monthly school calendar, and if you like organizing things, planning ahead, or school in general, this can be the most engrossing part. On Sundays, you have free time you can spend in one of four ways: exploring the monastery, participating in side battles, holding a seminar to improve your students’ skills, or simply taking the day off. Mondays are for instruction, which consists of selecting students from a list and choosing a few of their skills to boost. The rest of the week goes by automatically, with a sprite of the professor running along the calendar and stopping occasionally for random events or story cutscenes. It sounds a bit hands-off, but there’s a lot to think about as it is, and the week-by-week rather than day-by-day structure keeps things moving and ensures you never have to wait too long to progress in any area.

The predictable structure of each month–and the fact that you can see the full month’s schedule with events listed ahead of time–gives you the foundation to make effective plans. All that time management can definitely be overwhelming, at least at first. You have to keep tabs on your students’ skills and study goals, your own skills, everyone’s inventory, and various other meters and menus while planning for the lessons and battles to come. But you’re treated to a near-constant stream of positive reinforcement as those meters fill up week by week and your students improve their skills. You’re always moving toward the next thing: the next level up, the next skill you need to develop, the next month and what may unfold.

To complement this, your activities when exploring the monastery (as well as how many battles you can participate in, if you choose to battle on your day off) are limited by activity points. You get more as your “professor level” increases, which means you have to balance activities that boost your professor level with ones that help your students grow. Activity points also ensure that the month continues at a healthy pace, preventing you from lingering on any one Sunday for too long. Seminars and rest days just eat up the whole day without consideration for activity points, which can break up the more involved weeks and provide their own benefits.

How you choose to spend your time also comes down to how motivated your students are to learn. Each of your students has a motivation gauge that’s drained when you instruct them, and they can’t be instructed again until you interact with them and get their motivation back up. You can do this most effectively when exploring the monastery–where you get to talk to different characters, give them gifts, and share bonding time with them–whereas battle only rarely increases motivation levels. While you can skip a lot of the school life bits and even automate instruction, you won’t get the best results. You’re directly at a disadvantage in combat if you don’t make time for your students, which is by design.

Like all recent Fire Emblem games, keeping you invested in your units and their relationships is the glue that binds the whole experience together. It’s incredibly effective in Three Houses, where your direct involvement in nearly all aspects of a unit’s growth trajectory gives you a special stake in their success. After spending time and effort to help a character achieve their full potential, you’re not just satisfied when they win a fight–you’re proud. And the more you invest in someone–both emotionally and through months of lesson plans and instruction–the more cautious you’ll be about putting them in harm’s way, and the more you’ll work to come up with a solid battle strategy.

Considering you’re a teacher, it’s good rather than disappointing that there’s almost no romance to speak of. Some students are flirty, but mainly, you’re fostering camaraderie rather than playing matchmaker or romancing them yourself. As you unlock new support levels with different characters–both by interacting with them at the monastery and by using teamwork in battles–you get cutscenes that flesh them out more. Some are charming, lighthearted conversations between two friends, while many of them give you insight into more serious matters–a father forcing his daughter into marriage, discrimination within the monastery, the dark reason behind someone’s lofty ambitions. For the most part, each support conversation is just a piece of who a character is, and as you slowly build support levels over time, you begin to uncover the full picture of each person. As a result, learning more about each of the characters and their place in the monastery is as much a reward for progress as the level bars that tick forever upward as you go.

Every NPC is fully voiced in both English and Japanese, which brings a lot of life to the brief support conversations. Disappointingly, though, the professor is silent. They do have a voice–they’ll occasionally say a line when leveling up or improving a skill–but in cutscenes and when talking to students and faculty, they just nod or shake their head flatly. There are brief dialogue options during conversations, but where they could give way to a full, subtitled sentence or two from the professor, you’re just left with the other character’s reaction. Characters do, however, refer to the professor’s personality and how they come across throughout the game, which is odd considering they mostly nod at things. This puts distance between you and the characters you’re bonding with, and it’s a missed opportunity in a game where the protagonist has an otherwise set look, personality, and backstory.

It’s not hard to like a lot of the characters, though. They draw you in with anime archetypes–the ladies’ man, the bratty prince, the clumsy but well-meaning girl–and surprise you with much more nuance under the surface. Some of the funniest scenes early on involve Bernadetta, a shut-in with extreme reactions to normal social situations, but her inner life is a lot darker and more complicated than those early conversations let on. You might discover a character you thought was a jerk is actually one of your favorites or slowly stop using a less-than-favorite character in battle. You also have the option of having tea with someone, during which you have to choose conversation topics according to what you know about them, dating sim-style. Knowing what topics they’ll like is actually a lot harder than it sounds, and successfully talking to a favorite character–even if the tea setup can be a little awkward in practice–is a small victory.

Each house’s campaign feels distinct but not so different that one seems way better than the other. Every house has a mix of personalities and skills, and they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Students from different houses can form friendships with each other, too, and you can eventually recruit students from other houses to join yours. Rather than being repetitive, on a second playthrough, recruiting gives you access to different relationship combinations; you can see a different side to a character through a different set of support conversations. And while the overall setup of the game is largely the same across the three houses, each has its own web of B plots, and the second half of the game will look very different depending on who you’re with and the choices you’ve made.

The first half concerns the church, its secrets, and the fact that the professor knows very little about their own identity. As the basic loop of each month pulls you forward, so too does the promise of learning the truth about something, whether it’s why the archbishop wanted you to be a teacher in the first place or who a suspicious masked individual is. These threads remain pretty open, though, at least after one and a quarter playthroughs. You get different details in each route, and so far it’s been a long process to piece everything together.

Learning more about each of the characters and their place in the monastery is as much a reward for progress as the level bars that tick forever upward as you go.

After a five-year time skip, you enter the “war phase” of the game. While the structure of the game is the same–you even instruct your units, since you still need to train for battle–the focus shifts to the house-specific stories. They involve a lot of hard decisions, with old friends becoming enemies, people you wish you didn’t have to kill, and students who’ve changed either in spite or because of your guidance. Late-game battles are especially challenging, with higher stakes and multi-lane layouts that require a lot of forethought. Success in these battles is incredibly rewarding, as you’re seeing dozens of hours of investment in your students reach a crescendo, but they’re bittersweet in context.

When all was said and done, all I could think about was starting another playthrough. I was curious about the mysteries left unsolved, of course, but I also hoped to undo my mistakes. There were characters I didn’t talk to enough, students I didn’t recruit, and far more effective ways to train my units. A second playthrough treads familiar ground in the beginning, but after learning and growing so much in the first, it feels fresh, too. That speaks to Three Houses’ mechanical complexity and depth as well as the connections it fosters with its characters–and whether you’re managing inventories or battlefields, it’s the kind of game that’s hard to put down, even when it’s over.

Source : Gamesport

[thomasroach]

A Plague Tale: Innocence Review – A Tail and a Half

The post A Plague Tale: Innocence Review – A Tail and a Half appeared first on Fextralife.

A Plague Tale Innocence combines a narrative driven story with puzzles, choices and a whole lot of rats…I’m not joking there are a ton of rats in this game. In this review I will look at how this title sets itself apart from your usual story driven titles with plenty of interesting rat mechanics, engaging plot as well as how it performs in terms of gameplay.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Review – A Tail and a Half

Genre: Action, adventure, puzzle, narrative-driven Published by: Focus Home Interactive Release date: May 14th Platforms: PC (review platform), PS4, Xbox One Price at time of review: $44.99 Website: http://bit.ly/2JGQ8K0

Story & Setting

A Plague Tale Innocence follows a woeful tale of a family who are ripped apart during an Inquisition. The main focus is 15 year old Amicia who must now look after her ailing brother Hugo, afflicted with a mysterious disease. In order to save her brother, their journey will take them through the plagued streets that have now devastated the Kingdom of France.

They must find a path through the numerous soldiers, enemies and the masses of rats. With only a trusty sling shot to protect her brother and her resourcefulness, Amicia will face a number of evils, but will also find a few friendly faces along the way. There is a sense of mystery in this story that starts right from the beginning. Why are people after Hugo? How can his sister save him from his illness? Why are there so many damn rats?

Expect a lot of violence in this one as Amicia will find herself against a number of foes, the imagery is quite realistic and gruesome in places. If that hasn’t put you off, then you’re in for a unique adventure.

Gameplay

Since A Plague Tale is primarily a story driven title, you will find most of the gameplay consists of exploring areas which will be met with playing out scenarios or cut scenes, the ability to gather materials, stealth, combat and puzzles to solve. While the puzzles aren’t your traditional read a text to discover a clue, or enter a combination of numbers to unlock doors, you will find in order to progress certain areas you will need to find ways to navigate through rats. The game cleverly uses lights to help steer rats away, meaning you will need to figure out the best way out of different situations.

Using a sling shot you will find there is auto-aim in this title, you simply need to point in the general direction of your target to lock on and then prime your shot for strength. There is an option to turn off assisted aim, but I didn’t feel is was necessary as targets are pre-determined and you don’t need to aim at specific body parts. No need to worry about the subtleties of projectile estimations, simply lock on, determine whether the target it close or at a distance, and away you go. There are definitely David and Goliath situations in the game, which makes you wonder whether its realistic, but that soon gets pushed out of your mind by the sheer awesomeness of delivering a final blow to the giant stacked soldier which is truly satisfying.

The game is told in chapters, meaning if you wish to go back to a previous chapter to pick up collectibles or simply replay a certain scene, you can do so. But be warned as any upgrades made during your playthrough from then on will be wiped clean. There are autosave points meaning you will need to wait until certain parts of the chapter or to progress to the next chapter in order to have your progress saved.

Mechanics

The strategy in this game concentrates on two main factors: stealth and puzzles. Letting you choose how you wish to distract the soldiers, either letting you hide while throwing a rock at a crate full of armor, or to choose a more invasive move of throwing Deverantis (a poisonous powder substance) at their helmets, causing them to remove them and then letting you swiftly hit them in the head using your sling shot. As you progress the game you will pick up new abilities that are chosen from a circular menu, most will require you to choose a target, and similar to the sling shot, prime your shot.

Stealth was a bit of hit or miss with me, at times it was well thought out and other points just seemed to be there for you to have something to do. Don’t expect Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or Sekiro stealth mechanics here, its a bit rough around the edges but it does its job and creates some sense of danger in-game. Each enemy has its own trigger meter, so you know if they have sensed your position. There is also the added factor of Amicia’s younger brother, who you can leave in certain situations to perform tasks, but leaving too much distance will cause him to panic. You will need to choose whether to distract guards by throwing a pot or going straight for a kill. With a number of enemies this can become be quite tricky to determine and can often have more than one way to be carried out.

Puzzles consist of using light to help navigate your way through the vermin infested lands. You will also run into 3 or even 4 person puzzles where you will need figure out who needs to assist in turning a lever at the right time or shift different blocks around. While not overly difficult, it does make you stop and think about your next move. If you fail at successfully coaxing the rats with a light source, this can result in the most devastating death, being eaten alive by these flesh hungry vermin. From time to time you may send Hugo to help with unlocking doors or reaching places that Amicia can’t fit, while pretty straight forward it provides a bit of variation.

As I was playing on PC, controls for the radial menu wasn’t always easy to navigate in certain areas of game, especially if you need to switch quickly between different abilities. Re-binding keys for shortcuts was needed in my opinion, as after doing this is felt much easier to tackle more intense gameplay.

Crafting

There is some degree of crafting in A Plague Tale, by gathering scraps of materials you will encounter crafting tables to help upgrade a few different aspects. You can increase the effectiveness of Amicia’s sling shot to lessen the time it takes to fire at an enemy. Other options include ways to help with stealth, abilities or to increase number of items carried. The crafting tables also acts as a save point, which is useful when you’re in between auto saves.

Audio & Visuals

At times that I can only describe as the ickiness of the game, really out does itself. Whether its the sound of rats scurrying in a huge mass, or just the visual itself, the developer does well to make you feel a little on edge especially when you’re trying to manoeuvre around a huge vermin pile. The story is in a medieval setting, full of stone castles, close knit towns and natural forest areas. Often these places are rather creepy looking due to the rat nests that have taken over the place, which is contrasted with some really idyllic areas.

Characters had voice actors that did well to bring life to the scenes as well as created some sort of connection, making you a little worried whether they’ll survive or not. The game is developed by a French studio, so you can also switch the audio to the original French soundtrack, there is also a German option. I tried to switch the language options mid-game but it seems you need to exit to the menu and begin at a check point to have this work. As far as I could tell from the brief experience of other language options, voice acting in other languages were well chosen.

The music swells at the right moments, with daunting cello sounds that can really put you on edge. There is also the sound of rats echoing throughout the game and sticks in your memory when you’ve even shut it off.

There were a few glitches here and there, some were visual where one characters head was placed at a rather awkward angle. The other caused a slight problem with solving one of the puzzles, resulting in restarting at a checkpoint to reset the puzzle. While neither of these glitches caused any major upset to gameplay, it just needed a couple of details ironed out to make the experience a little smoother.

Visually the characters are stunning, a lot of attention to detail to what they wear and the way they were designed. A slight drawback at times were the muted expressions in certain scenes. The more menacing characters really fitted their looks, and their armor was awesome.

Final Thoughts

Aboso Studio has done well to tell this particularly grim set story of a plague infested time. They truly got me to care about the characters as well as managed to throw in a few surprises along the way. A Plague Tale Innocence really manages to immerse you through the story telling, the beautiful and at times pretty disgusting surroundings. I don’t think I’ve played a game that has introduced this many rats, which definitely makes it feel quite unsettling.

The gameplay while not always as smooth as I would have liked, did a good job of creating urgency with oncoming soldiers and the piles of rats that are ready to devour anything that crosses their path. Using the sling shot was fun as it gave quite a few ways to play the game, choosing from the different abilities such as Deverantis or Luminosa (to light objects) made it feel very unique. I think if it was strictly just a straight forward sling shot option, it wouldn’t have been as enjoyable.

While you won’t be choosing the outcome of the story, how you play is where the options lie. You can go back and play out chapters differently, whether choosing a more stealthy approach or choosing to use different abilities. Unless you wish to playthrough in another language option or use different upgrade choices, replayability is a tad limited as there is only one ending.

If you’re looking to be whisked off into a grim yet intriguing title to play, introducing mystery, puzzles and something quite supernatural, then this is a title you should pick up.

A Plague Tale Innocence is available to play on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

If you enjoyed this review we recommend you read more our reviews in Days Gone Review: A Saphire In The Rough and Sekiro Review: Shinobis Die Many Times. If you want another narrative driven title, you should look into the lovecraftian investigative title Call Of Cthulhu Review. You can also check out what’s releasing this month in Top 5 Upcoming RPGs Of June 2019 (Bloodstained, Warhammer And More!).

The post A Plague Tale: Innocence Review – A Tail and a Half appeared first on Fextralife.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Review – A Tail and a Half published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

[terryblount]

System 3 has removed the Denuvo anti-tamper tech from Constructor

System 3 has announced that it has removed the Denuvo anti-tamper tech from Constructor. Constructor was released in 2017 and back then a number of players complained about the inclusion of this controversial anti-tamper tech. In order to please these gamers, the company has decided to remove it.

In Constructor, players take on the role of a budding property tycoon who must do battle with your competitors to create a thriving and profitable city in any way they see fit. Players can build houses and factories, cope with the incessant demands of their tenants as well as keeping a whole bunch of undesirable characters under control.

Alongside the removal of Denuvo, the game’s latest update has implemented an option to restart the current game as well as the ability to change HUD animation speed, adds toggle to invert mouse-wheel scrolling of the map, adds new particles for Psycho Chainsaw attack and Foreman takeover, and adds names to… cockroaches.

As always, Steam will auto-download this latest patch and you can find its complete changelog below.

Constructor Patch November 23rd Release Notes

QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES/NEW FEATURES

Implemented option to restart the current game.

Implemented ability to change HUD animation speed.

Allow for continuous placement of the same property whilst shift is held allowing you to place multiple buildings of the same type without needing to go through the estate manager multiple times.

Workteams are now smarter and will automatically go between the inside and outside of a home to finish any room upgrades/fence that is in progress.

Workteams will now automatically enter a Gadget Factory if standing in the grounds, and there are currently gadgets waiting to be manufactured.

Added alert sound for “last conflict” notification.

Allow stepping through building lists using < and > keys. Useful to progress through tenant properties by one level at a time.

Players may now change the fences on Undesirable abodes depending on the type of undesirable. This will only be available if you have at least two choices of fence. The default fence will always be available regardless of whether you have unlocked it via the resources.

Players may now change the fence for their Headquarters.

Sheds placed in the grounds of a Gadget Factory provide additional storage for Gadgets (caps at four Sheds).

Sheds placed in the grounds of a Resource Yard provide additional storage for that particular resource (caps at four Sheds).

Added strength factor to fence display in UI – each star represents the number of hits one panel may take before being pulled down.

Save games can be confirmed using the mouse/controller on PC as opposed to just the keyboard.

Added toggle to invert mouse-wheel scrolling of the map.

New hint messages have been added to various areas of the game, and will trigger up to three times (not in the same game) after certain events. You may disable these by toggling “Hide Hints” in the Message Options.

Added View Previous Messages button to mission briefing display on subsequent visits.

Right-click on the time will now revert the game speed to normal speed if it was running at a faster speed.

Monuments such as the Liberty Statue, Washington Monument, and the System 3 Statue will provide a trickle of income based on how many tenants visit them.

Allow full control of game functions in pause mode.

Enable cloud synchronisation of saved games so that settings and saves are accessible across all user’s machines.

FIXES

Implemented relinking of opponent lists when loading a game if any were corrupted, to resolve certain crashes.

Fixed instance where messages for overcrowded prisons would be displayed if prisoners were dropped off at the Housing Authority building.

Fixed memory leak caused by continuous loading of SFX that were not loaded at boot, as a result of changes to the SFX routine for the Switch.

Fixed logic for repeating messages within 30 days so that it works as expected.

Fixed wrong image capture being used if save was cancelled the next time you try to save, or visit a screen which uses the last image taken as a background.

Corrected RMB functionality where it no longer allowed right-clicking the resource icons on the left-hand side to zoom to the relevant building.

Corrected RMB functionality which stopped right-click cancelling out of placing external gadgets.

Fixed characters remaining in frozen state if hypnotised by Clown whilst Clown’s Arcade was destroyed.

Fixed instance where Mr Fixit being arrested as his ladder deployed conflicted with his arrested status.

Fixed Council Workers sometimes paving the wrong tile if they were interrupted during the tiling animation.

Fixed recoil animation for laser weapon not correctly resetting to character’s default animation in certain situations.

Corrected character videos playing more than once for newly created characters when video mode “Once” was selected.

AI CHANGES

AI will now reassign repairmen shortly after they are removed from an estate as a result of being knocked out – a companion change to go with the previous changes in this area.

Decreased delay of AI assignment routine for repairmen to 4 months down from 8.

AI no longer immediately build/rebuild their Police Station. It is instead put on a timer that scales inversely with the difficulty.

AI must have a resource of the correct type built in order to build more buildings.

AI will protect high priority building sites such as the now required resource yards more effectively.

AI defenders on building sites/completed sites will chase intruders a short distance.

AI must now have a functioning resource yard before they can continue building structures that require that resource.

Take-over hits for AI fences reduced by 1-2 depending on the fence type.

Made adjustments to SOS logic so that the Street Party + Gangster combination is not quite so effective, but is still a valid strategy against the AI.

AI repair logic now runs in two stages, and AI frequency for creating repairmen is dictated by difficulty. Easy – 120 days/repairman Normal – 120 days/repairman Hard – 60 days/repairman Original – 90 days/repairman

MISCELLANEOUS CHANGES

Auto-Save now runs in a separate thread and will no longer cause the game to hitch.

Spooky The Ghost is no longer able to block work sites.

Unlinked Police Station so that it no longer only unlocks when one of the original three level two houses is built to resolve an issue where only building DLC level two homes did not unlock it, and later caused it to disappear from the list until one of the original level two homes were built.

Removed Denuvo Anti-tamper.

New option menu “Config” for certain configuration options.

Cockroaches now have names.

Increased favours per gangster converted at HQ to 3 on Hard Difficulty.

Increased Prison capacity to 5 prisoners.

HQ button changed to display the colour of the team you are playing.

Adjusted font for character names to compensate for longer names.

Additional door-knock voices added for the following tenants (triggered by clicking on rival homes): * Slob * Greaser * Major

Clown molotov explosion now much more spectacular.

Improved flooded building destruction sequence.

Repair Kit no longer expires.

Added new particles for Psycho Chainsaw attack, and Foreman takeover.

Gangsters no longer target tenants that enter the grounds of Parks.

Ordering multiple internal gadgets no longer allows creation of multiple tenants to collect the gadgets. Instead, any internal gadgets beyond the first two ordered will be picked up in subsequent trips.

All buildings affect tenant stress. A green, happy face, will show above houses when the effect is positive (Parks, Schools etc). A red, unhappy face, will show above houses when the effect is negative (Prisons, Undesirables etc).

Lower level houses negatively impact the happiness of tenants in higher level houses. This is only a minor effect of -5 happiness per level of difference.

Added faint black outline to all characters to reduce blending in large groups.

Rebalanced Lounge effect so that positive stress modifiers are a little more pronounced.

Removed requirement of Deluxe Rooms in Beach House for final stage of Basic Job.

Story missions will unlock sequentially (if you have not previously completed them) but you need only attempt a mission to unlock the next one.

Story missions will now display the number of times the mission was attempted.

Emergency fence repair of undesirable abodes will only restore the original fence if it has not been completely replaced with either the destroyed fence panels or the takeover barriers.

Gangster weapons deal slightly reduced damage against HQs.

Added currently selected estate highlight when purchasing/viewing estates.

Added floating icon above buildings that are being picketed by a Hippy.

Various balancing functions added to make certain aspects of the AI/game relate to difficulty better. This includes: • Frequency of response to intruders on AI building sites • Earliest time the AI can build its Police Station • Earliest time it can rebuild its Police Station after it is destroyed • How likely it is to build on another team’s estate if “Build On Enemy Estates” is on • How often it will send its undesirables to harass another team • How often it builds undesirable abodes • How effectively it responds to a player’s Street Party when attempting to defend its HQ • How strong a player’s own characters are against other teams (only applies to easy(100% bonus dmg) and normal(50% bonus damage) which is intended to make things a tad easier for new fans. • How many buildings a player can take over without the AI retaliating (only applies to easy(2)/normal(1)) • How often the AI attempts to take over another team’s properties • How often the AI creates its own repairmen

Improved Wood Yard’s Tin Roof.

Dog Kennel no longer requires Brick Factory.

System 3 has removed the Denuvo anti-tamper tech from Constructor published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[thelongestdamnreviews]

Front Mission Evolved

I got Dad Titanfall 2 for Father's Day, and the mech combat inspired me to look at something I've owned for years and something else he finished years ago--Front Mission Evolved.  It took me about seven and a half hours to get to the end on Normal and I in no way got close to 100% completion.  I used an Xbox 360 controller but I did at least try keyboard and mouse a little bit.  There's Multiplayer but I didn't touch it at all. 

Front Mission as a series is typically a strategy RPG akin to Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem.  You have a number of pilots on your roster and they all have their own Wanzer, a giant humanoid battle robot they drive and fight with.  A big draw is being able to customize not only the weapons the Wanzers use, but also the parts that make up their bodies, sometimes giving them different abilities.  This game is not a typical Front Mission, instead it has more in common with Front Mission Gun Hazard (SNES game), where you control one person in a third-person shooter environment with some on-foot sections, though this is all in 3D. 

Dylan Ramsey is just a typical Wanzer engineer.  During a performance test of a prototype Wanzer, he learns of an attack by an unknown group of Wanzer pilots in the city around where his father works, so he rushes off in the prototype to go save him.  From there, things get worse and Dylan ends up in the middle of a war.  Good thing he's a natural despite no military training.  And there's an ace-in-the-hole system he can use if things get too tough...

I, um, may have tried to color my Wanzer in the ‘blue body, white limbs, red toes’ Gundam style. 

I actually had a little bit of trouble with the controls at first.  I guess it's been a while since I've done a third-person shooter and I couldn't remember if I had inverted Y-axis or not.  I'm used to holding the controller with the index fingers on the triggers and I'd bring them up when necessary, but I needed to change to middle fingers on triggers and indexes on shoulders due to how the game works its weapons.  Your Wanzer has four weapon slots, one in each hand and one on each shoulder, and each of those four buttons is tied to those slots.  The initial setup of a missile launcher on the left shoulder and a gun on the right trigger is fine, but you might need some coordination to use all four.  Of course, the game has a weight limit vs power output system, so you won't have all four filled unless you use weaker yet lighter gear. 

There are quite a few different parts and weapons to equip and naturally you unlock more the further through the campaign you get.  One thing I found neat was that instead of having a typical RPG "buy part, sell part for reduced value" system, you keep the full value of the things you buy no matter how long you use them.  When you buy a new part or weapon, you merely pay the difference (or are refunded it) between the old and new with zero loss.  That said, I found myself low on funds especially during the last act of the game.  You're given the option to replay any mission you've cleared previously, but I didn't go back and grind out money.  Probably should have.  You especially want a strong torso part since if that runs out of health, you're dead, but you still want strong arms and legs since those getting destroyed greatly screws your accuracy and movement speed respectively.  But then you need strong weapons to deal with enemies, so where do you balance the budget?  There are little money pickups in each map as well as mini-achievements for each mission that award cash when completed, but I didn't really try for those. 

I had “Weapon Pack 1″ DLC installed already, as it must’ve come packaged from when I bought the game.  They’re pretty nice weapons apart from their weight, if only because they cost either nothing or $100 to use, and they’re competitive with much costlier weapons.  I honestly made use of these to offset my deficit, but I wouldn’t recommend shelling out real money to get around not having enough game cash. 

Another neat thing I found was that if you die, you can go back to the Hangar and refit your Wanzer, and the game will put you back to the last checkpoint instead of having you restart the mission.  If you're having trouble with one segment, maybe you just need to swap gear around to get through.  I know I made use of this feature quite a bit near the end. 

With the below gripe, this is the only time in the game where the changes are actually forced on you instead of the game saying you need X. 

One gripe I had regarding the customization is that some missions require the use of specific gear.  You need a long-range weapon for this one, you need this type of legs for this other one.  It kinda gets in the way if you have a certain playstyle, though in a couple of cases, the requirements seem just arbitrary.  I'm pretty sure you can't use quad/hover legs in the last mission because of the prerendered cutscenes and they didn't want to have a continuity error. 

There are Battle Skills for each weapon type, and each weapon has a number of slots you can equip to them.  Each skill has a percentage chance to activate when you use the weapon, and then it lasts for a set amount of seconds.  Effects range from simply more damage to damage over time, to stunning the enemy or weapon-specific effects like homing missiles locking on quicker and shields taking zero damage.  Remember to set your Battle Skills every time you change weapons since even changing weapons within the same type resets them! 

While you sometimes have allies on the field, you don't really need to worry about them and it didn't seem like there was friendly fire...at least on your part to them.  I'm pretty sure I got tagged by a friendly but I don't remember if it did damage or just did the stun animation instead.  One of the parts you can equip lets you heal allies in return for all of your energy, but I don't think it was necessary at all, though having an on-demand heal is extremely useful, even taking into account the torso having regenerating health on its own.  Maybe it works better in Multiplayer?  Enemy Wanzers can have the same gear so you should probably kill the Engineers first.

Squishy meaty foot soldier VS giant metal killing mecha goes about as well as you’d expect.  At least they can’t step on you like you can when you’re driving...as far as I know.

I honestly had quite a bit of trouble in terms of difficulty.  Brawler Wanzers are extremely dangerous, partly because they abuse the "use melee while skating to inflict extra damage" feature, but also because they only hit your torso.  And uh, also because they force you into a hit animation if they connect.  Maybe kill the Brawlers before Engineers.  A couple of the boss battles were troublesome too, mostly because they have really damaging weapons.  Most telling was the penultimate battle where I had to retry at least 20 times.  Even with the best torso part, either his missiles completely shredded me (dash under him to avoid) or his sword attack got me (back evade but watch for his fake-outs).  And then the second phase with the EMP traps as well as the scattered ones...  I really should have done some grinding, I guess.  The actual final boss tripped me up a couple of times but it was a matter of avoiding his big attack and then unloading when he was open, and the second phase wasn't bad at all.  I wound up actually using all four weapon slots for that one, and while they were weaker weapons, I think the alpha strike method worked out okay. 

Four versus one just doesn’t seem fair to them, honestly. 

I'm pretty sure I died at least once in every on-foot section.  The controls are pretty similar, though you have just two weapons you carry with one in use at all times, you can't jump and instead do a combat roll, and instead of worrying about the health of individual parts, you just have a basic health bar that regenerates when you're not hurt after so many seconds.  And you actually need to reload your gun.  You have zero pilot upgrades so each section is pretty much the same in terms of how you'd expect to perform, other than enemy density and positioning.  There are no timed sections there and your allies are still invulnerable, so you can probably do a better job than I did if you just take your time and stay in cover to heal up. 

There are three sections where you're being airlifted to another area and you have to fire at the enemy using the ship's guns attached to your Wanzer.  It's basically an auto-scrolling level but your guns and missiles have infinite ammo, just you have to mind their overheating.  Those aren't bad, but you don't have a very wide angle of attack so something slipping by and getting under the helicopter can potentially hurt you a bit.  

I almost wonder how much of the military’s money I wasted just by holding down all four fire buttons.  Maybe that’s why I was broke all game? 

The controls otherwise did fine for me, though I had some trouble setting up the keyboard and mouse controls mostly because of how many functions you need to set up, and I tried to make it as close to how I have Warframe's controls set, though that didn't work out too well.  I also got so used to needing the Agility backpack to skate using B that I completely missed that you can skate without it by pressing L3.  Remember to read the manual and controls! 

I don't really have anything to say about the music, other than I didn't really notice it most of the game.  The voicework was all right, but I noticed that some cutscenes had drastically lower volume for the voices than the rest of the game, and that kinda threw me off.  A couple of the voiced lines during the missions seemed to get cut off immediately by another character but that didn't seem to break the game any the two times it happened.  

The quirky miniboss squad would be right at home in a Metal Gear game.  The twist: Kojima Productions actually is in the credits...

Each mission has 20 sensors to find and destroy, as well as three emblems to discover, as well as the mini-achievements specific to those missions.  100%ing the game would take some time, especially if you don't have a guide to hunt down the sensors, but the game is otherwise pretty short.  No extra endings, no New Game Plus, though you can always play early missions with your late-game gear and steamroll the enemy.  You don’t seem to unlock anything for beating the game, either.  I think I got about all the enjoyment I could out of this, though. 

It's not turn-based or grid-based, but Front Mission Evolved still isn't too bad of a third-person shooter with giant robots and secret government weapons.  Someone who's really followed the series might get more out of it despite the gameplay departure, given some of the locations and the factions involved, but even someone new to the series could get into this.  It ran well enough on my aging computer, but given it's a game from 2010...  There are probably better games on the market, but I had interest in the series and I don't regret this purchase, even if it’s years down the road.   

Zombie Wanzers.  I’m pretty sure this isn’t a Metal Gear game. 

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review - Teacher's Pet

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review - Teacher's Pet

Fire Emblem: Three Houses asks a lot of you. Every piece, from battle to friendships to training your units, must be managed both individually and as part of a whole. It can be intimidating, but when it all clicks together, it really clicks. Mastering the art of thoughtful lesson planning as a professor improves your performance on the battlefield, where success relies on calculated teamwork and deft execution. Cultivating relationships during battle in turn draws you closer to each of the characters, who you then want to invest even more time into in the classroom. Every piece feeds into the next in a rewarding, engrossing loop where you get lost in the whole experience, not just in the minutiae.

Three Houses casts you as a mercenary who, while out on a mission with their father, runs into a group of teens under attack. After a brief introduction and battle tutorial–which you shouldn’t need, since you’re apparently already an established mercenary, but we’ll go with it–you learn that they are students at Garreg Mach monastery. Each of them leads one of the school’s three houses: Black Eagles, Blue Lions, or Golden Deer. At the behest of the church’s archbishop, who definitely gives off nefarious vibes but is also a gentle mom figure, you end up becoming a professor and must choose which of the houses to lead. There is a lot of mystery to the setup, with consistent hints that something is not quite right, and it’s easy to get absorbed in trying to figure out what the archbishop and various other shady figures are up to.

Your main role as professor is to instruct your students in matters of combat and prepare them for story battles at the end of each month. Battles in Three Houses feature the same turn-based, tactical combat at the heart of the series, albeit with some changes. The classic weapon triangle is downplayed quite a bit in favor of Combat Arts, which have been altered somewhat from their introduction in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. Combat Arts are attacks tied to a weapon type and can boost a unit’s attack power at the expense of weapon durability; some are effective against specific enemy types, like armored units. You can also unlock skills outside of Combat Arts that grant you better stats with certain weapons, like a heftier boost for using an axe against a lance user, similar to the old weapon triangle. It’s the same complexity the series is known for but less abstracted, making it a bit easier to strategize without sacrificing depth.

One of the big combat additions is battalions, mini armies you can equip that provide various benefits to a unit during battle. They also give you a new type of attack called a Gambit, which varies based on the type of battalion–magic-focused, brute force, and so on–and stuns the enemies it hits. Gambits are limited-use and can be incredibly powerful against the right enemies. You can increase a Gambit’s effectiveness even further if one or more of your other units are within attack range of the target, a tried-and-true Fire Emblem concept that applies to all kinds of attacks. There’s also an anime-style splash screen as you attack that shows each character involved in the Gambit looking fierce, which adds a nice bit of drama.

How much you use Combat Arts and Gambits depends on what difficulty you’re on. On Normal difficulty, well-trained units will likely be able to dispatch most enemies in one or two hits without the help of Combat Arts or Gambits. On Hard, however, enemies hit harder and withstand your attacks better. You have to think much more carefully about unit placement, the best time to use a Gambit and take advantage of its stun effect, and how many Combat Arts you can fire off before your weapon breaks. This is where things get exciting; after a few turns of cautious setup, you (hopefully) get to knock out tons of enemies as your plans fall into place.

Some of the early-game and optional battle maps are open spaces that don’t require you to think too hard, especially on Normal. But the story battles throughout feature a variety of map layouts–from pirate ships to what appears to be a lava-filled cavern–that challenge you to consider where your units need to be, both in the next turn and several turns down the line. Many of them have different routes, enemies coming at you from multiple angles, optional treasure to chase, and other quirks that require you to split your party up or change their equipped classes to suit the situation. Thieves, for instance, can open chests and doors without a key, while flying units don’t take damage from ground that’s on fire.

The depth of strategy in these elements really shines on Hard difficulty, but especially so when coupled with Divine Pulse, another limited-use ability. Divine Pulse allows you to rewind time in order to redo all or part of the battle, usually if one of your units dies. Rewinding with Divine Pulse shows just how important unit placement and attack choice can be, as even a slight change can make or break the encounter. It’s also just a nice quality-of-life feature if you play on Classic mode, in which units who die in battle are lost forever and can’t fight or train anymore. You might still soft reset from time to time, but it’s great to be able to rectify a mistake right away and get a shot of instant gratification for a job well re-done.

Battling, of course, is only one part of life at the monastery. The backbone of Three Houses is the monthly school calendar, and if you like organizing things, planning ahead, or school in general, this can be the most engrossing part. On Sundays, you have free time you can spend in one of four ways: exploring the monastery, participating in side battles, holding a seminar to improve your students’ skills, or simply taking the day off. Mondays are for instruction, which consists of selecting students from a list and choosing a few of their skills to boost. The rest of the week goes by automatically, with a sprite of the professor running along the calendar and stopping occasionally for random events or story cutscenes. It sounds a bit hands-off, but there’s a lot to think about as it is, and the week-by-week rather than day-by-day structure keeps things moving and ensures you never have to wait too long to progress in any area.

The predictable structure of each month–and the fact that you can see the full month’s schedule with events listed ahead of time–gives you the foundation to make effective plans. All that time management can definitely be overwhelming, at least at first. You have to keep tabs on your students’ skills and study goals, your own skills, everyone’s inventory, and various other meters and menus while planning for the lessons and battles to come. But you’re treated to a near-constant stream of positive reinforcement as those meters fill up week by week and your students improve their skills. You’re always moving toward the next thing: the next level up, the next skill you need to develop, the next month and what may unfold.

To complement this, your activities when exploring the monastery (as well as how many battles you can participate in, if you choose to battle on your day off) are limited by activity points. You get more as your “professor level” increases, which means you have to balance activities that boost your professor level with ones that help your students grow. Activity points also ensure that the month continues at a healthy pace, preventing you from lingering on any one Sunday for too long. Seminars and rest days just eat up the whole day without consideration for activity points, which can break up the more involved weeks and provide their own benefits.

How you choose to spend your time also comes down to how motivated your students are to learn. Each of your students has a motivation gauge that’s drained when you instruct them, and they can’t be instructed again until you interact with them and get their motivation back up. You can do this most effectively when exploring the monastery–where you get to talk to different characters, give them gifts, and share bonding time with them–whereas battle only rarely increases motivation levels. While you can skip a lot of the school life bits and even automate instruction, you won’t get the best results. You’re directly at a disadvantage in combat if you don’t make time for your students, which is by design.

Like all recent Fire Emblem games, keeping you invested in your units and their relationships is the glue that binds the whole experience together. It’s incredibly effective in Three Houses, where your direct involvement in nearly all aspects of a unit’s growth trajectory gives you a special stake in their success. After spending time and effort to help a character achieve their full potential, you’re not just satisfied when they win a fight–you’re proud. And the more you invest in someone–both emotionally and through months of lesson plans and instruction–the more cautious you’ll be about putting them in harm’s way, and the more you’ll work to come up with a solid battle strategy.

Considering you’re a teacher, it’s good rather than disappointing that there’s almost no romance to speak of. Some students are flirty, but mainly, you’re fostering camaraderie rather than playing matchmaker or romancing them yourself. As you unlock new support levels with different characters–both by interacting with them at the monastery and by using teamwork in battles–you get cutscenes that flesh them out more. Some are charming, lighthearted conversations between two friends, while many of them give you insight into more serious matters–a father forcing his daughter into marriage, discrimination within the monastery, the dark reason behind someone’s lofty ambitions. For the most part, each support conversation is just a piece of who a character is, and as you slowly build support levels over time, you begin to uncover the full picture of each person. As a result, learning more about each of the characters and their place in the monastery is as much a reward for progress as the level bars that tick forever upward as you go.

Every NPC is fully voiced in both English and Japanese, which brings a lot of life to the brief support conversations. Disappointingly, though, the professor is silent. They do have a voice–they’ll occasionally say a line when leveling up or improving a skill–but in cutscenes and when talking to students and faculty, they just nod or shake their head flatly. There are brief dialogue options during conversations, but where they could give way to a full, subtitled sentence or two from the professor, you’re just left with the other character’s reaction. Characters do, however, refer to the professor’s personality and how they come across throughout the game, which is odd considering they mostly nod at things. This puts distance between you and the characters you’re bonding with, and it’s a missed opportunity in a game where the protagonist has an otherwise set look, personality, and backstory.

It’s not hard to like a lot of the characters, though. They draw you in with anime archetypes–the ladies’ man, the bratty prince, the clumsy but well-meaning girl–and surprise you with much more nuance under the surface. Some of the funniest scenes early on involve Bernadetta, a shut-in with extreme reactions to normal social situations, but her inner life is a lot darker and more complicated than those early conversations let on. You might discover a character you thought was a jerk is actually one of your favorites or slowly stop using a less-than-favorite character in battle. You also have the option of having tea with someone, during which you have to choose conversation topics according to what you know about them, dating sim-style. Knowing what topics they’ll like is actually a lot harder than it sounds, and successfully talking to a favorite character–even if the tea setup can be a little awkward in practice–is a small victory.

Each house’s campaign feels distinct but not so different that one seems way better than the other. Every house has a mix of personalities and skills, and they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Students from different houses can form friendships with each other, too, and you can eventually recruit students from other houses to join yours. Rather than being repetitive, on a second playthrough, recruiting gives you access to different relationship combinations; you can see a different side to a character through a different set of support conversations. And while the overall setup of the game is largely the same across the three houses, each has its own web of B plots, and the second half of the game will look very different depending on who you’re with and the choices you’ve made.

The first half concerns the church, its secrets, and the fact that the professor knows very little about their own identity. As the basic loop of each month pulls you forward, so too does the promise of learning the truth about something, whether it’s why the archbishop wanted you to be a teacher in the first place or who a suspicious masked individual is. These threads remain pretty open, though, at least after one and a quarter playthroughs. You get different details in each route, and so far it’s been a long process to piece everything together.

Learning more about each of the characters and their place in the monastery is as much a reward for progress as the level bars that tick forever upward as you go.

After a five-year time skip, you enter the “war phase” of the game. While the structure of the game is the same–you even instruct your units, since you still need to train for battle–the focus shifts to the house-specific stories. They involve a lot of hard decisions, with old friends becoming enemies, people you wish you didn’t have to kill, and students who’ve changed either in spite or because of your guidance. Late-game battles are especially challenging, with higher stakes and multi-lane layouts that require a lot of forethought. Success in these battles is incredibly rewarding, as you’re seeing dozens of hours of investment in your students reach a crescendo, but they’re bittersweet in context.

When all was said and done, all I could think about was starting another playthrough. I was curious about the mysteries left unsolved, of course, but I also hoped to undo my mistakes. There were characters I didn’t talk to enough, students I didn’t recruit, and far more effective ways to train my units. A second playthrough treads familiar ground in the beginning, but after learning and growing so much in the first, it feels fresh, too. That speaks to Three Houses’ mechanical complexity and depth as well as the connections it fosters with its characters–and whether you’re managing inventories or battlefields, it’s the kind of game that’s hard to put down, even when it’s over.

Source : Gamesport

[gamerszone2019-blog]

Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review - Fight For Your Friends

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/fire-emblem-three-houses-review-fight-for-your-friends/

Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review - Fight For Your Friends

Fire Emblem: Three Houses asks a lot of you. Every piece, from battle to friendships to training your units, must be managed both individually and as part of a whole. It can be intimidating, but when it all clicks together, it really clicks. Mastering the art of thoughtful lesson planning as a professor improves your performance on the battlefield, where success relies on calculated teamwork and deft execution. Cultivating relationships during battle in turn draws you closer to each of the characters, who you then want to invest even more time into in the classroom. Every piece feeds into the next in a rewarding, engrossing loop where you get lost in the whole experience, not just in the minutiae.

Three Houses casts you as a mercenary who, while out on a mission with their father, runs into a group of teens under attack. After a brief introduction and battle tutorial–which you shouldn’t need, since you’re apparently already an established mercenary, but we’ll go with it–you learn that they are students at Garreg Mach monastery. Each of them leads one of the school’s three houses: Black Eagles, Blue Lions, or Golden Deer. At the behest of the church’s archbishop, who definitely gives off nefarious vibes but is also a gentle mom figure, you end up becoming a professor and must choose which of the houses to lead. There is a lot of mystery to the setup, with consistent hints that something is not quite right, and it’s easy to get absorbed in trying to figure out what the archbishop and various other shady figures are up to.

Your main role as professor is to instruct your students in matters of combat and prepare them for story battles at the end of each month. Battles in Three Houses feature the same turn-based, tactical combat at the heart of the series, albeit with some changes. The classic weapon triangle is downplayed quite a bit in favor of Combat Arts, which have been altered somewhat from their introduction in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. Combat Arts are attacks tied to a weapon type and can boost a unit’s attack power at the expense of weapon durability; some are effective against specific enemy types, like armored units. You can also unlock skills outside of Combat Arts that grant you better stats with certain weapons, like a heftier boost for using an axe against a lance user, similar to the old weapon triangle. It’s the same complexity the series is known for but less abstracted, making it a bit easier to strategize without sacrificing depth.

One of the big combat additions is battalions, mini armies you can equip that provide various benefits to a unit during battle. They also give you a new type of attack called a Gambit, which varies based on the type of battalion–magic-focused, brute force, and so on–and stuns the enemies it hits. Gambits are limited-use and can be incredibly powerful against the right enemies. You can increase a Gambit’s effectiveness even further if one or more of your other units are within attack range of the target, a tried-and-true Fire Emblem concept that applies to all kinds of attacks. There’s also an anime-style splash screen as you attack that shows each character involved in the Gambit looking fierce, which adds a nice bit of drama.

How much you use Combat Arts and Gambits depends on what difficulty you’re on. On Normal difficulty, well-trained units will likely be able to dispatch most enemies in one or two hits without the help of Combat Arts or Gambits. On Hard, however, enemies hit harder and withstand your attacks better. You have to think much more carefully about unit placement, the best time to use a Gambit and take advantage of its stun effect, and how many Combat Arts you can fire off before your weapon breaks. This is where things get exciting; after a few turns of cautious setup, you (hopefully) get to knock out tons of enemies as your plans fall into place.

Some of the early-game and optional battle maps are open spaces that don’t require you to think too hard, especially on Normal. But the story battles throughout feature a variety of map layouts–from pirate ships to what appears to be a lava-filled cavern–that challenge you to consider where your units need to be, both in the next turn and several turns down the line. Many of them have different routes, enemies coming at you from multiple angles, optional treasure to chase, and other quirks that require you to split your party up or change their equipped classes to suit the situation. Thieves, for instance, can open chests and doors without a key, while flying units don’t take damage from ground that’s on fire.

The depth of strategy in these elements really shines on Hard difficulty, but especially so when coupled with Divine Pulse, another limited-use ability. Divine Pulse allows you to rewind time in order to redo all or part of the battle, usually if one of your units dies. Rewinding with Divine Pulse shows just how important unit placement and attack choice can be, as even a slight change can make or break the encounter. It’s also just a nice quality-of-life feature if you play on Classic mode, in which units who die in battle are lost forever and can’t fight or train anymore. You might still soft reset from time to time, but it’s great to be able to rectify a mistake right away and get a shot of instant gratification for a job well re-done.

Battling, of course, is only one part of life at the monastery. The backbone of Three Houses is the monthly school calendar, and if you like organizing things, planning ahead, or school in general, this can be the most engrossing part. On Sundays, you have free time you can spend in one of four ways: exploring the monastery, participating in side battles, holding a seminar to improve your students’ skills, or simply taking the day off. Mondays are for instruction, which consists of selecting students from a list and choosing a few of their skills to boost. The rest of the week goes by automatically, with a sprite of the professor running along the calendar and stopping occasionally for random events or story cutscenes. It sounds a bit hands-off, but there’s a lot to think about as it is, and the week-by-week rather than day-by-day structure keeps things moving and ensures you never have to wait too long to progress in any area.

The predictable structure of each month–and the fact that you can see the full month’s schedule with events listed ahead of time–gives you the foundation to make effective plans. All that time management can definitely be overwhelming, at least at first. You have to keep tabs on your students’ skills and study goals, your own skills, everyone’s inventory, and various other meters and menus while planning for the lessons and battles to come. But you’re treated to a near-constant stream of positive reinforcement as those meters fill up week by week and your students improve their skills. You’re always moving toward the next thing: the next level up, the next skill you need to develop, the next month and what may unfold.

To complement this, your activities when exploring the monastery (as well as how many battles you can participate in, if you choose to battle on your day off) are limited by activity points. You get more as your “professor level” increases, which means you have to balance activities that boost your professor level with ones that help your students grow. Activity points also ensure that the month continues at a healthy pace, preventing you from lingering on any one Sunday for too long. Seminars and rest days just eat up the whole day without consideration for activity points, which can break up the more involved weeks and provide their own benefits.

How you choose to spend your time also comes down to how motivated your students are to learn. Each of your students has a motivation gauge that’s drained when you instruct them, and they can’t be instructed again until you interact with them and get their motivation back up. You can do this most effectively when exploring the monastery–where you get to talk to different characters, give them gifts, and share bonding time with them–whereas battle only rarely increases motivation levels. While you can skip a lot of the school life bits and even automate instruction, you won’t get the best results. You’re directly at a disadvantage in combat if you don’t make time for your students, which is by design.

Like all recent Fire Emblem games, keeping you invested in your units and their relationships is the glue that binds the whole experience together. It’s incredibly effective in Three Houses, where your direct involvement in nearly all aspects of a unit’s growth trajectory gives you a special stake in their success. After spending time and effort to help a character achieve their full potential, you’re not just satisfied when they win a fight–you’re proud. And the more you invest in someone–both emotionally and through months of lesson plans and instruction–the more cautious you’ll be about putting them in harm’s way, and the more you’ll work to come up with a solid battle strategy.

Considering you’re a teacher, it’s good rather than disappointing that there’s almost no romance to speak of. Some students are flirty, but mainly, you’re fostering camaraderie rather than playing matchmaker or romancing them yourself. As you unlock new support levels with different characters–both by interacting with them at the monastery and by using teamwork in battles–you get cutscenes that flesh them out more. Some are charming, lighthearted conversations between two friends, while many of them give you insight into more serious matters–a father forcing his daughter into marriage, discrimination within the monastery, the dark reason behind someone’s lofty ambitions. For the most part, each support conversation is just a piece of who a character is, and as you slowly build support levels over time, you begin to uncover the full picture of each person. As a result, learning more about each of the characters and their place in the monastery is as much a reward for progress as the level bars that tick forever upward as you go.

Every NPC is fully voiced in both English and Japanese, which brings a lot of life to the brief support conversations. Disappointingly, though, the professor is silent. They do have a voice–they’ll occasionally say a line when leveling up or improving a skill–but in cutscenes and when talking to students and faculty, they just nod or shake their head flatly. There are brief dialogue options during conversations, but where they could give way to a full, subtitled sentence or two from the professor, you’re just left with the other character’s reaction. Characters do, however, refer to the professor’s personality and how they come across throughout the game, which is odd considering they mostly nod at things. This puts distance between you and the characters you’re bonding with, and it’s a missed opportunity in a game where the protagonist has an otherwise set look, personality, and backstory.

It’s not hard to like a lot of the characters, though. They draw you in with anime archetypes–the ladies’ man, the bratty prince, the clumsy but well-meaning girl–and surprise you with much more nuance under the surface. Some of the funniest scenes early on involve Bernadetta, a shut-in with extreme reactions to normal social situations, but her inner life is a lot darker and more complicated than those early conversations let on. You might discover a character you thought was a jerk is actually one of your favorites or slowly stop using a less-than-favorite character in battle. You also have the option of having tea with someone, during which you have to choose conversation topics according to what you know about them, dating sim-style. Knowing what topics they’ll like is actually a lot harder than it sounds, and successfully talking to a favorite character–even if the tea setup can be a little awkward in practice–is a small victory.

Each house’s campaign feels distinct but not so different that one seems way better than the other. Every house has a mix of personalities and skills, and they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Students from different houses can form friendships with each other, too, and you can eventually recruit students from other houses to join yours. Rather than being repetitive, on a second playthrough, recruiting gives you access to different relationship combinations; you can see a different side to a character through a different set of support conversations. And while the overall setup of the game is largely the same across the three houses, each has its own web of B plots, and the second half of the game will look very different depending on who you’re with and the choices you’ve made.

The first half concerns the church, its secrets, and the fact that the professor knows very little about their own identity. As the basic loop of each month pulls you forward, so too does the promise of learning the truth about something, whether it’s why the archbishop wanted you to be a teacher in the first place or who a suspicious masked individual is. These threads remain pretty open, though, at least after one and a quarter playthroughs. You get different details in each route, and so far it’s been a long process to piece everything together.

Learning more about each of the characters and their place in the monastery is as much a reward for progress as the level bars that tick forever upward as you go.

After a five-year time skip, you enter the “war phase” of the game. While the structure of the game is the same–you even instruct your units, since you still need to train for battle–the focus shifts to the house-specific stories. They involve a lot of hard decisions, with old friends becoming enemies, people you wish you didn’t have to kill, and students who’ve changed either in spite or because of your guidance. Late-game battles are especially challenging, with higher stakes and multi-lane layouts that require a lot of forethought. Success in these battles is incredibly rewarding, as you’re seeing dozens of hours of investment in your students reach a crescendo, but they’re bittersweet in context.

When all was said and done, all I could think about was starting another playthrough. I was curious about the mysteries left unsolved, of course, but I also hoped to undo my mistakes. There were characters I didn’t talk to enough, students I didn’t recruit, and far more effective ways to train my units. A second playthrough treads familiar ground in the beginning, but after learning and growing so much in the first, it feels fresh, too. That speaks to Three Houses’ mechanical complexity and depth as well as the connections it fosters with its characters–and whether you’re managing inventories or battlefields, it’s the kind of game that’s hard to put down, even when it’s over.

Source : Gamesport