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a-bit-too-much-of-a-pokemon-fan · 2 years ago

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My Thoughts on Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

Uh oh, someone else's take on these controversial ass games. I'm sure everything that can be said about them, has. But as is my custom, I need to vent. For a bit of background, I have never played Diamond or Pearl. I got Platinum for Christmas in 2008 and have only ever played that for my Sinnoh experience, up until this month when I borrowed Brilliant Diamond from the library and hardcore Nuzlocked it.

First, let's talk about the ways BDSP is better than DPPt, because it would be flat out dishonest to pretend that they offer nothing to Sinnoh and are completely horrible.

HMs are gone. Thank god. HMs have always been bad, but with 8 of them in Sinnoh, it's especially bad in DPPt. It actually fundamentally changes how you can build a team when you don't always need to have a Surfer and Flier with you.

EXP All. I love to see it. Majorly cuts down on grinding. I really wish I could turn it off just for purposes of not accidentally overleveling, but that's kinda okay because of...

Access to your boxes anywhere. Honestly probably the best contribution that SwSh made to the series. I love this feature. Aside from when you're in gyms, overleveling isn't always a problem. It's easier to switch up your team to try out new mons and experiment, too. If you liked the difficulty of having to make it through a dungeon or route with the team you went in with, that's the best part: it's optional. Options are never a bad thing.

The music and sound effects are in higher fidelity. There's a charm to the Nintendo DS sound font, but the remastered soundtrack sounds great (I generally prefer Zame's remasters though). Don't get me started on the unpatched Day 1 soundtrack, though.

The Grand Underground is neat. It doesn't do much good for me in a Nuzlocke, but I can appreciate its value for vanilla runs. There's more to do on the singleplayer side, and Scarlet and Violet have me totally roaming-encounter-pilled. For all purposes besides making encounters straightforward in Nuzlockes, fuck random encounters.

You can register four key items instead of just one. Switching between fishing and cycling was never easier. They took the Gen VI approach of directional registration, which works off of muscle memory instead of Gen V's list. I like it.

Boss fights are now harder. They have better held items (including super effectiveness nullification berries), better abilities, and trickier coverage moves. They're harder to plan around and I like that minor bump in difficulty.

The town map moving from being a key item to a button on the pause menu, and being able to fly from the town map screen. Both things just make navigating Sinnoh a bit easier (which you know it needed). Also a welcome addition from SwSh.

That's it. From here on out, it's just complaining. Those complaints fit into two camps. 1) Quality of life updates aside, BDSP is a poor remake of DP, and 2) BDSP is a remake of DP, not Platinum. The direction of the game seemed to be "make it as faithful as possible to Diamond and Pearl, but also make it worse in random and baffling ways." I can go off about the Platinum problem later, so let's go over the ways BDSP is just a bad remake.

The friendship rework. Gen VI introduced Pokémon Amie, and anyone who bothered to put enough time into it would find their Pokémon randomly doing better in battle. Having high affection created a chance that your mon will either dodge an attack, tank a fatal hit with 1 HP, or land a critical hit. This has been folded into the friendship mechanic, so now any Pokémon who hits the newly-raised friendship cap will now have these buffs. I'm of two minds with this one. I think it's neat that the Pokémon you spend the most time with can do better in battle. It rewards sticking to a team of your favorites, which is what NPCs usually encourage you to do. Thing is, I think this should be optional. Anything that makes the game easier or harder via RNG should be in the player's control, and this isn't. Where this becomes a real nuisance is that once a Pokémon reaches the point of using these buffs, using them is battle is a slight but cumulative time loss. Every time you send them out, the game takes the time to shake them back and forth and put up a dialogue box with pointless flavor text. Every turn you do an attack, there's another useless and repetitive dialogue box. Every time the buff PROCs, a little heart animation plays. Bro. Just shut up and let me play the game. It's actually very annoying, especially during grinding sessions when I. Just. Want. To. Kill. My. Opponent. Jesus Christ.

As a side effect of the friendship rework, the friendship checker Pokétch app is now tuned to the higher cap. That means it's just about useless when checking on your friendship evolution mons. Your Golbat, Budew, and Buneary will all evolve before they show two big hearts. Now they'll have two big hearts when they have access to the RNG buffs, but you'll know that anyway because every battle just got several seconds longer.

The art direction. I won't spend too much time on this because it's been torn to shreds already, but I do need to mention it. Come on. The chibi style worked in DPPt because the DS required it. At every opportunity, they showed characters at true scale. They were intended to be life-size and just appeared small when they had to. I'm sorry, I just can't take Cyrus seriously when he's talking about his plan for recreating the world because he just looks like an angry little Funko Pop. And that little waddle that everyone has... ugh. Gross.

This is truly a tiny nitpick, but it looks like chibi Lucas's textures were applied to the T-posed model without consideration as to how they looked when he is standing normally. Look closely, his vest looks like it has tiny sleeves that come over his shoulder. It probably wouldn't bother me if I felt better about the game as a whole, but now every little problem sticks out like a sore thumb.

The bicycle has some weird problems. In high gear, it can't move just one tile at a time. It has a long windup time on low gear. It can't maintain speed when making a 180 turn on one tile. It's just weird and functions worse than it used to. The cycling outfit is also not as stylish as the defaults, but that's not major.

Registered key items are activated with Start, not Y. Uh-uh, no. Not having it. DP took advantage of the new buttons on the DS and functionally replaced Start with X and Select with Y. This was the format all the way up through SwSh, and they just randomly decided to fuck it up. They didn't even map something different to Y! It's just a useless button now! Sure, it just means I have to move my thumb a bit further, but it's frustrating that they threw away over a decade of precedent for a less convenient system. (P:LA and SV get a pass for changing things because they alter the whole control scheme)

Pokémon have their Gen VIII movesets. Some of the changes are non consequential, like how Zubat now has Absorb because Leech Life got buffed. Some are sucker punches, like Jupiter's Skuntank having Belch at Spear Pillar. Others fuck up how Pokémon function. Mime Jr needs to know Mimic to evolve, meaning it is now a useless baby until Lv 32 instead of 18. Infernape used to learn Flare Blitz at Lv 57, giving it a powerful STAB move in the very late game. Now it's at 68, making Flame Wheel its most powerful Fire move by level up until the post game.

That's all that comes to mind right now. I'm sure I'll pile more nonsense onto this. I just want to be done with this game but there's so much grinding before the Elite Four. Psh.

#pokemon #pokemon bdsp #brilliant diamond and shining pearl #my thoughts #this is why I have this blog

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softcoregamer · 4 years ago

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DRAGON QUEST XI S: ECHOES OF AN ELUSIVE AGE - DEFINITIVE EDITION

I've never played a Dragon Quest game before, so all I had to go on with this game was the pretty looking graphics and charming character art by the Dragonball guy, which- combined with having a hankering for a JRPG, a genre I haven't played since probably the Digital Devil Saga games (minus an abandoned most-of-the-way-done playthrough of SMT3 and a partial of one of the Megadimension Neptunias) was enough to sell me on it. I'm having a tough time determining if it was worth it.

(spoilers)

The story starts off very weak. Your glowing hand marks you as the chosen one, you have to collect glowing orbs to defeat the dark lord. It's like the story of a generic videogame you'd see in the background of a movie. They do throw in a little novelty to keep you on your toes- you present yourself to the king and he throws you in the dungeon, you go back to your hometown and travel back in time for some reason- but I really never warmed to the setting. It's just a collection of cliches and cute gimmicks, like the town of people who speak in haikus, the town of people who speak in rhyming couplets (you're stuck with these people for the bulk of the exposition at the start of act 2, which is a nightmare) and the town of- ugh- Italians. There's no sense of these places being places. It's just a nice pleasant fairytale kingdom of the kind that's normally mentioned in Snow White or whatever as the place the handsome prince comes from, except here you spend dozens of hours trudging through it looking for glowing tree roots and orbs. The big problem in Gallopolis is that the sultan's son isn't brave enough for god's sake. Acts 2 and 3 pick things up, and there's some neat reveals- I like that the lil red star you've been seeing in the sky right from the start was the stain of the original hero's failure to slay the villain, literally hanging over the entire setting all this time. Also the annoying act 1 scene where you get handed the name of the villain and an orb quest in an exposition dump is retroactively improved by the fact that the exposition isn't quite correct. Act 3 reintroducing time travel and actually being thoughtful about it was welcome as well, but sadly that has the effect of making you redo story points you already did since, logically, you're back in time to where you haven't done them yet. Sometimes this comes across as getting a do-over to get a more positive outcome for something that previously ended more tragically, in keeping with the way time travel is explained in-universe as essentially reloading an earlier save (and, as revealed in the end, continuing in a separate save slot). The 8th party member's act 3 quest is a standout here. In reading discussion of the game I've seen people insist on referring to this character as 8, presumably to preserve the plot twist of his existence, so I guess I'll do it too. But more often than not, act 3 quests consist of just doing the same stuff as act 2 again, in a somewhat more curt manner. This sticks in the craw after so much of act 2 already consisted of just doing the same stuff as act 1 again. The party members aren't much better, for the most part. The first three people you meet all say "ah, you're the Luminary, I was sent to help you" and there isn't much to them beyond that for a long time. Sylvando has a lot of personality, which is probably partly why he's become the game's big meme character, but it gets grating and he is insanely trite. The Dark Lord takes over the world and purges the unclean, and Sylvando's overriding concern is that he wants people to laugh and smile more. It's like he takes advantage of the fact that I need him for his boat to get my goat by acting like a fucking teletubby. Things pick way up when you meet Rab, and the 8th party member is genuinely really good. Even the early-game party members end up having their moments (Erik's backstory was pretty fun) but the game really doesn't put its best foot forward with these characters. Not that it needs to; for the first few I was just glad to be getting some help in combat. The combat is excellent in this game, when it gets going. I played with the "draconian quest" tougher enemies mode on, and I turned it off right at the act 2 end boss. The difficulty curve flowed really well this way, with act 3 enemies not feeling noticeably less tough than "draconian" act 2 enemies. The abilities and spells you get are carefully balanced so that it's very difficult to put together a perfect 4-person party, you're always missing something. This means the fact that you can change your line-up midfight isn't just a nice quality of life feature, it's a potentially vital mechanic. They tread a fine line where sometimes needing to swap people out during the battle doesn't mean the characters themselves feel useless; everyone is capable of some extremely tough stuff. And on the other end of the scale, enemy damage is heavy enough that buffing your attack and using big-damage abilities vs healing or defending can be a properly difficult choice; a heavy hit or a big heal at the right time can turn the tide of an entire battle, as can your big hitter suddenly getting put to sleep or your healer getting knocked out. Again, this is all with the caveat that I had "draconian quest" on for the first 2/3 of the game, from what I've heard combat without it is insanely easy. My big gripe with the combat is that there's very little in the way of tooltips. What's this enemy's magic resistance? Does my Sap have a better chance of landing if I up my Magical Might, or does that just increase spell damage? Does Oomphle affect Quadraslash? If I increase my agility will it go up by enough that I can take my turn ahead of these enemies? Does agility even do that? Does using abilities and spells mean I go later in the turn order vs generic attacks and defending? You just have to guess at all this; the wiki has some info on enemy stats but I don't know where they're getting it from other than datamining. There's an entire bestiary with almost no useful information which is functionally just a model viewer for all 700+ enemies. The only way to know anything is to experiment, which I guess at least adds some purpose to combat when you've filled out the bestiary for an area but still have to grid encounters- which will be required at some point, because fighting is the only way you get xp and money. There is also too much RNG. Critical hits being rare and certain attacks having a chance to cause Confusion or whatever is fine (although I'd prefer for attacks which are labelled as having a chance to inflict status effects to actually inflict the status effect way more often than they do) but why the fuck does the resurrection spell have a 50% success rate? Under what possible circumstances would I be using that spell other than needing my dead teammate back right now? Same for all the abilities on the skill tree that say "doesn't connect very often, but when it does it can cause a critical hit" OK that "CAN" is telling me that this ability which doesn't often connect won't even necessarily crit if it does. Why would I choose this ability? To handicap myself? How is this going to help me defeat the Timewyrm? All that said, when the combat is good it's really good, and whenever I lose a fight I'm thinking "I can win that next time if I do XYZ". The 2D battles are much less fun because the pace is much slower and there are no cute animations to liven it up, but it's always satisfying when the "flash" of an enemy taking damage becomes the "flash" of them disappearing, and you know you have slayed yet another blob. Non-combat gameplay is a mixed bag. The early-game fun of running around looking for new enemies to fight and fill out the bestiary wears off hard once act 2 begins and everything is either a reskin or a glowing-eyes "vicious" version of something you've already fought, and many maps are fairly sparse with just the odd treasure chest and locked door to liven up your path to the next area. That said, there are also several areas and dungeons which make a minigame out of traversing them; the Eerie Eyrie and the Battleground were standouts for me. Especially the remixed version of Eerie Eyrie you go to later on, where you get a flying mount to ride around. Crafting is surprisingly involved, with a whole minigame around it and hundreds of recipes to find all over the place. In most cases you can just use money in lieu of ingredients, which means minimal farming is required to get a lot out of the system, and the recipes with ingredients that can't be bought feel special instead of bullshit. In terms of items and recipes there really is a deluge of content- there are recipe books all over the place, with new ones available even in the last couple of maps that open up in the entire game, and there's an undeniable cookie-clicker rush you get from getting better at crafting and taking something you could barely get to +1 all the way to +3. I play games like this as a magpie, accumulating items with nice pictures and effects that make me do a 😲 face, and DQ11 certainly delivers. This even extends to character advancement, with Hidden Goodies incentivizing picking skills you might not want otherwise, and entire new skill trees opening up as quest rewards.

Overall, DQ11 is a good combat system with loot and progression systems that are well-executed enough to feel rewarding after 100 hours, all wrapped up in a style and tone that is not up my alley at all. A good litmus test for how much you'd like the game is probably: watch this scene and if you think it's the most epic thing you've ever seen then Dragon Quest 11 is for you.

#game review #dragon quest

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qm-vox · 4 years ago

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So You Want To Play Hades

I spent six hours coming up with that title because I have problems in my mind which I refuse to either examine or resolve.

So, Hades! The latest work from Supergiant Games, who brought you the interactive soundtracks to Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre, all superb games in their own rights known for their intuitive gameplay, build-your-own-hard-mode difficulty style, incredible atmosphere and characterization, thought-provoking stories, and that sexy, sexy fuckin’ music.

Like, listen to this sometime it’s amazing (all of their soundtracks are available from them on Youtube, by the by, though if you like ‘em you can support the creators by buying the music from them directly too):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH3Aoj1nw58

You’re likely asking, quite reasonably, why in the infinite and undying fuck I’m writing this post right now, and the long and short of it is I want more people to talk Hades with so now y’all are gonna get hit with the sales pitch and what I hope will be a helpful beginner’s guide if you decide to get into the game. Let’s get into that first part, shall we?

Thou Shalt Subject Your Gods To Market Forces

(Image sourced from Supergiant’s website)

Hades is an action-roguelike/lite that places you in the role of Prince Zagreus, secret son of Hades. Zag is trying to move out of his father’s house and live somewhere else for awhile and, well, Dad’s just being an entire dick about the whole thing. Hades challenges you to face down the endless ranks of the dead one chamber at a time, gathering the resources you need to breach upward through the Greek underworld and open the mighty gates into the living world. You can acquire it on Steam or on the Epic Store.

How do you know if Hades is or isn’t for you? If you like action games with tight controls and widely varied playstyles, we’ve got you covered here (if you’re thinking in terms of previous Supergiant offerings, Bastion has the most bones in). Hades also offers a great character-focused narrative, centering around the relationships Zagreus has and develops with the people around him - from legendary shades like Achilles and Sisyphus, to the gods of Olympus, to the cthonic gods of the underworld like Charon, Nyx, and the Furies - which fully incorporates the conceits of the genre. Unlike many roguelikes which sorta quietly elide failed runs or deaths, Zag’s defeats are part of his journey. After all, he’s already in the underworld. Where the fuck else is he going to go when he dies? Connecticut?

Though I can gush about the characters and narrative all day (and I’ll do it a bit more later), don’t get me wrong: Hades expects you to perform some pretty tight mechanics. Since dying is just the end of this run and not the game, the game feels pretty free to take brutal measures; the environments you move in are full of deadly traps, the seething ranks of the dead outnumber you to vast degrees, and you’ll fight a dizzying mix of opponents who do not hesitate to catch you in cross-fires, push you into lava, or drop bombs when you kill them because fuck you for succeeding you weird godling bastard. If you get easily frustrated or flustered, Hades may be quite stressful for you; before it’s anything else, it’s an action game with a heavy focus on combat, and if you decide to ride this train that’s the price of the ticket. If you relish the challenge and especially if you like the satisfaction of watching your play improve, though, it’s one hell of a ride.

In terms of accessibility features, Hades is a mixed bag. It has subtitles and aim assistance available, as well as a variety of supported languages and control adjustments which can alter how you do things like dash or attack, but it’s missing, for instance, a colorblind mode (and that’s gonna be important here in a minute), and many enemy behaviors & traps have audio cues which are not part of the current subtitle support. A rumble feature for controllers that have it is supported; Hades strongly suggests the use of a controller, but I know several players who choose to use a mouse & keyboard and seem to prefer it. Semi-recently, a God Mode option was added which empowers you when it’s turned on and does so further every time you die; it’s the closest Hades comes to an ‘easy’ mode, and while reception of it from my fellow players has been highly positive I’ve not tried it for myself.

If you’ve liked action games in the past, I’d highly endorse giving Hades a try as long as it’s accessible for you. The current build of the game (just before formal release) is selling at $24.99 USD on Steam right now, and like...I am not a highly skilled Gaming Individual(tm). I lose at games a lot. I play most of my games on Easy or maybe Normal if I’m really feeling like my dick is big - and with that in mind, I loved this one enough to buy it twice. I love the tight feeling of the combat, the way the mechanics feel, its gorgeous environments and its captivating characters. Hell, that’s why I’m out here writing a whole-ass article.

Stealth, Guile, Subtlety, And Other Things You Will Not Need - Getting Started In Hades

(Artwork sourced from the Hades wiki)

So you’ve decided to acquire Hades, you already own it, or the first part of this article was intriguing enough for you to look at the advice portion and see what sort of game you could be dealing with. Hades can be intimidating at first; it throws a lot of stuff at you, very quickly, and while it gives you some strong guidance on what to do with many of the resources you’ll acquire not all of those uses are immediately intuitive. The following is a guide to help your first few runs go a bit more smoothly and work on the fundamentals that will help you through your entire experience.

Let’s start with some General Tips that will help you out with every run and every weapon:

- Relax. No, seriously: relax. You haven’t ‘failed’ a run if you don’t beat the final boss. Hell, you probably haven’t even ‘failed’ a run if you die in Tartarus. If you learned something or got any permanent resource - gemstones, darkness, nectar, keys, blood, diamonds, ambrosia - then that run was a success. Even if the game wasn’t currently early access and thus without a proper ‘end’ at the moment, it’s supposed to be fun. Don’t castigate yourself for dying, just dive screaming back in and rip your vengeance from the spectral chest of your slayer.

- Always Be Moving. You only have so many hit points (you start a save file with a max of 50 and the most you can start a given run with is 200) and healing is limited over the course of a run. If you’re standing still, you’re getting hit. Zag’s quick on his feet - keep him moving and use your dash liberally. Once you’ve dealt some damage, leave and let your enemies swing at empty air, then dash back in and bully them back into their graves. When you start a dash you’re invulnerable until the dash finishes, which can make for some real cheeky dodges once you’ve had time to learn enemy timing.

- Watch And Learn. Early on in the game you’ll be learning about new enemies every chamber, especially when you start transferring to new zones and all of the enemies you’ve been facing just stop being a thing. Take the chance to know your foe! You’re not on a clock: don’t leap into the fight immediately. Dash around and watch how your enemies move and attack. What’s the limitations of their tactics? The reach on their attacks? How fast do they swing and move? If you’d like to watch some of that stuff ahead of time, I’d like to suggest amber_cxc’s Twitch channel: she’s been doing a lot of runs and speedruns of Hades of late, among the other games she plays.

- Manipulate Your Rewards. Certain things in Hades can only be offered a limited number of times per run, and once you’ve hit your quota they stop appearing. You can take advantage of this to get more Boons, Centaur Hearts, and Poms of Power. Specifically, you can only have up to two Daedelus Hammers and up to three Hermes Boons. If you can knock these out early I highly endorse doing so; they’re never bad to have, and even if somehow you want none of what they have to offer getting them off the RNG will help you later. Additionally, you can use Keepsakes (more on these in a minute) to manipulate who you get Boons from, when, by changing in and out of them at each biome. In this way you can control the shape of your build for the run.

- Accept That Your Dick Energy Is Fucking Huge. A lot of games try to keep you humble. Dark Souls is infamous for it, of course, and others in this genre such as Crypt of the Necrodancer and Enter the Gungeon do not reward haste at all. That is not this game. Walk into Hades like you’re the lord god of the Big Dick Dimension even if you know you’re not; take risks and learn from experience how you can mitigate, manipulate, or cancel out those risks. That unearned confidence won’t just help you with tip one (Relax), it’ll help you practice in those high-pressure situations which will occur more and more as your Heat rises.

- A Brief Note On Projectiles. This game has a few kinds of projectiles that you’ll need to learn to identify. Balls and Arrows can be broken - hit them with an Attack and they pop and won’t hurt you. Waves cannot be broken; they travel fast along the ground and have to be dodged or deflected. Lasers can neither be broken nor deflected. Traps can’t be broken, and deflecting them doesn’t always make them safe for you; these include the lava balls in Asphodel, Inferno Bombs, and the shit spit out by Bothers and Pests. Know your foe and always be moving.

In terms of the resources you’re offered, there are broadly two kinds: in-run resources, and out-of-run resources. Let’s talk briefly about in-run ones.

- Boons: Boons are the powerful gifts of your Olympian relatives. They change how you play during your run by augmenting your abilities (like your Attack, Special, or Dash) or by offering passive benefits. In general, look at Aphrodite, Athena, or Dionysus if you want powerful defenses, Ares, Artemis, or Zeus for powerful attacks, and Poseidon and Demeter for a combination of damage and utility. Different gods will be good with different weapons, and we’ll get into that later. Boons have a Rarity and a Level; Rarity determines their starting power and how well they scale if they do scale, and Level is that scaling.

- Centaur Hearts: +25 max and current HP for this run. Do you like not dying?

- Poms of Power: Poms increase the Level of a Boon by 1, which generally makes it better at doing whatever it does. Not all Boons will level up, but the ones that you can attach to your Attack, Special, Cast, Dash, or Call always do. You do eventually hit diminishing returns with these, so you’ll generally want to spread the love around if you keep picking up Poms.

- Obols: DOLLAH DOLLAH BILLS Y’ALL. Obols are the coins preferred by Charon, the Ferryman, who will take them from you for goods and services. Obols can be turned into all other resources - even out-of-run resources. They’re almost always a great choice of investment.

These in-run resources are presented as potential rewards when you’re selecting chambers. I tend to run heavy on Boons and Obols myself, but your own play style is likely to differ! Experiment with the feel of acquiring various rewards and see what you like to invest in. After all, they’re only for the run you’re on; you literally can’t take it with you.

Out-of-run resources are used to permanently advance Zagreus’s power, his relationships, or both. They are as follows:

- Cthonic Keys: Used to unlock new weapons and new parts of the Mirror of Night. Once your weapons and Mirror are wholly unlocked these keys stop being useful more or less instantly, and can be safely traded at the Wretched Broker between runs to acquire Nectar (but see Gemstones, below).

- Gemstones: Early in the game, Gemstones can be traded in at the House Contractor between runs in order to enhance the underworld; in particular, they can be used to install fountain rooms, to open up access to Chaos and Erebus, to give you access to Infernal Troves (and upgrade said troves), and to add in-run resources to Keys, Nectar, and Gemstones. These services are in the first tab of the House Contractor and you should buy them out as soon as possible so that your runs can springboard off of these powerful additions. Once that’s taken care of, Gemstones can be used to renovate the House of Hades, including Zag’s bedroom and the lounge, again at the House Contractor.

- Nectar: The nectar of the gods is in short supply in the underworld, and is a treasured gift that Zagreus can offer to his friends. In most cases, the first time you give a character Nectar they will trade you a powerful Keepsake in return; these are run-altering tools you select at the start of each run and change how you play. Early on, spread the love, but once you’re full up on Keepsakes you can feel free to develop relationships through gift-giving however you see fit.

- Darkness: The power of Night is used to give permanent, powerful passive benefits to Zagreus via the Mirror of Night in his bedroom. I would suggest using Darkness to get your extra Dash and extra hit points before anything else, but once you’ve got those tools kinda fuck around and find out. Eventually a dialogue option with Nyx will unlock the flip side of the Mirror’s talents, which must be developed separately and cost even more Darkness; you’ll want lots of this and you’ll want it for a very long time. Oh, and try to save aside 8,888 Darkness for a rainy day. You’ll need it.

- Titan Blood: Offered by the first and last bosses at each level of Heat (more on Heat later). Titan Blood is used to upgrade your weapons, making them better at doing all of the things they do, as well as to unlock Aspects of those weapons. We’re still shy one Aspect as of the latest patch, so ah, don’t stop collecting this. You’ll always have a use for it.

- Diamonds: Offered by the second boss at each level of Heat. Diamonds are used to buy plot-relevant renovations to the House of Hades, to advance certain relationships, and to acquire the fishing minigame and in-game access to the soundtrack within the House. Like Blood, you’ll have a use for these for a long, long time.

- Ambrosia: Offered by the third boss at each level of Heat. When you reach the point at which you can no longer offer people Nectar, genuine Ambrosia from Olympus becomes the princely gesture by which you can show your gratitude. You may be tempted to trade this for Blood early on. Don’t.

When you’re starting out, Darkness and Gemstones will be the gods of your new world, followed closely by Cthonic Keys You’ll run out of immediate need for Gemstones faster than you will for Darkness, but by that time you’ll either be comfortable with Hades or you’ll have determined it’s not for you. Focus on unlocking access to your new weapons, upgrading the underworld itself, and paying off your talents; at this stage, escaping the underworld isn’t really a priority so much as setting up for your eventual triumph is.

And When You Can No Longer Lay Waste - Infernal Arms And Heat

(Artwork sourced from the Hades Wiki)

The assault rifle with under-slung mortar launcher is definitely my favorite ancient Greek weapon.

So I’ve mentioned unlocking weapons, and I’ve mentioned that Hades offers varied play styles, so I suppose I ought to talk about them. Zagreus’s weapons - his Infernal Arms - form the first layer of your play style choices, which will be augmented by your in-run choices, and the second layer comes in the form of the Pact of Punishment and its Heat. Each weapon has differing values for its attacks and behaves very differently. I’m not gonna give you the specific numbers here - we have a wiki for that - and will instead make some general statements on how they play and what might pair well with them.

- Stygius, the Blade of the Underworld: You start each save file with this bad boy. Stygius is a generalist weapon that leans somewhat towards speed; its Attack is a three-hit combo that ends in a Thrust with knockback, while its Dash Attack (note: these are not the same with ANY weapon) is solely the Thrust, still with knockback. Its Special, slower than the Attack, is a high-damage shockwave that breaks enemy projectiles and knocks them back. You might be asking yourself, Vox, why would I Special when it makes people leave sword range, at which point I will direct you back to Always Be Moving; your Special makes your enemies Go Away, which saves you hit points. Stygius can build into almost anything, though its Attack benefits the least from Zeus and Poseidon, and is notable for having the most wild fucking Hammer options. Some of them do little things like make your Special bigger, but then you get stuff like Hoarding Slash (deal extra damage equal to 5% of your Obols), World Splitter (you do one big swing with a base damage of 80) and motherfucking CURSED SLASH, which is where Stygius rips a line of cocaine off of a mirror, cuts your health by 60%, and then heals you for 2 every time you hit something. My advice for this is whatever you start down, commit. Stygius might build into anything, but it can’t build into everything: once you choose a boon path, pick things to compliment that and go fucking ham.

- Varatha, the Eternal Spear: The forgotten child of Hades’ weapons, Varatha is a versatile weapon that, like Stygius, does a bit of everything - and unlike Stygius, does it all at the same time. Varatha’s base attack is a series of three long-range thrusts with low damage, and its Special throws the spear in a straight line, at which point it hovers in the air until you Special again; it follows a straight line from its position to your current one, damaging anything in that line. Last, but not least, you can perform a powerful Spin Attack by holding down the Attack button and charging up. Spin is one of the strongest single hits in the game, but you do have to stop moving to charge it up. However, you can dash out of the charge - even better, dashing releases the Spin at the end of your dash. This means that once you learn the timings of your charges, you can use Spin to attack and dodge at the same time, in a wide circle around yourself. Unlike Stygius, Varatha benefits to an extent from splitting your build up; its Attack wants big hitters like Aphrodite, Artemis, or Poseidon, whose high multipliers pair amazingly with the spin, while its Special can mount debuffs or stranger forms of damage like those offered by Dionysus and Ares. If you start building into one thing, but then Hammer into an alternate focus, the end result is still going to be pretty cohesive. Like Generic Goodstuff, or want a weapon to use while building up many divine relationships? Varatha does it all.

- Aegis, the Shield of Chaos: Just because this thing has the only block function in the game doesn’t mean it’s a defensive weapon. Aegis is a fast-moving melee weapon whose hits cause native knockback, slamming foes into walls, up against cliffs, and through traps & magma. Since Aegis throws people around it’s great for a highly aggressive style; dash in, hit them, and watch them slide away before they can do damage back to you. Its Special throws the shield Captain America style, where it ricochets off of opponents and obstacles before eventually returning. Use this with care; you can’t attack or block while your Special is out. Holding down the Attack button begins to charge a Bull Rush; while you’re charging, you’re immune to damage in the direction the shield is facing, and then when you release you dash to the end of the indicated line, damaging anything you hit. Despite how sexy that sounds, Bull Rush is honestly kinda slow and can be hard to build for specifically; instead, Bull Rush is best used to get out of bad situations, or to outlast big long boss combos, especially those used by the first and second bosses who are known to spit out absolute STREAMS of projectiles. Aegis hits fast and gets lots of bonus damage against normal enemies by bullying them against walls for that sweet, sweet Wall Slam damage, but it craves big damage multipliers less than some other weapons; consider using Zeus, Dionysus, or Demeter for your Attack, saving big damage choices for if you can get a Dash Attack build going. Special is great for mounting utility like Aphrodite or Poseidon that let you control the engagement further, just remember to think before you hit the yeet button.

- Coronacht, the Heart-Seeking Bow: Meet your first ranged weapon! Coronacht deals damage in a straight line by charging up a shot; when your line flashes, release the shot for a Power Shot that deals extra damage. Its Special is...bad, I’m gonna be real; it’s a wide-sweeping volley of arrows that deal individually low damage and will rarely, if ever, hit the same target. Still, it has its uses. Coronacht benefits from either high damage or battlefield control on its Attack; look into Artemis, Aphrodite, Demeter, and Poseidon. Its Special is harder to build for, but Ares and Zeus both do well on it since they can cause damage out of proportion with the range and/or area of your volley. Play keep-away and use distance to get off those charge shots, and remember that you can break projectiles and hit multiple enemies with each attack. Avoid mounting odd damage (Ares or Dionysus) or utility (Athena) on your Attack; it’s not going to come out fast enough to take meaningful advantage of those tools.

- Malphon, the Twin Fists: Easily the angriest weapon in all of Hades, Malphon is a pair of massive fuck-off gauntlets that are used for fast-moving combos at extremely short range. It is unique in that its Attack has a Dash Attack, and its Special - a massive uppercut - has a dash upper, letting you sweep in and deal big damage in a tight area immediately. Though each of Malphon’s hits are individually small, it throws out so fucking many of them that you can put almost anything on your Attack and it’ll work out. Athena Attack? Why not, you’ll be swinging when the enemy is. Dionysus Attack? Poison stacking has never been easier! Artemis Attack? Sure, you don’t do a lot of base damage, but you swing so often that you’ll crit constantly and take advantage of passives like Support Fire. Your Special has much higher base damage and can easily become the focus of your build, and because it moves slower it wants bigger damage multipliers like Artemis or Aphrodite if it’s your focus. If it’s not your focus, consider Poseidon in its slot (to get enemies to Go Away) or a god that will combo with your Attack (for instance, if you’re doing Demeter Attack, consider Zeus Special so you can potentially pick up the Cold Fusion boon and get 10 seconds of free damage every time you tap the Special button). You pay a price for this ease of use: Malphon’s range is directly inside the enemy’s ass, which means you need to have razor-thin timing to dash out of the way of attacks and keep your combos going, especially if you get swarmed. Since Malphon can mount and build literally fucking anything, it’s the ideal weapon to use if you want to power-level Keepsakes; slap something on at the start of a run and then just never take it off. Sure, you’re letting the Three Fates decide your build, but fuck it, it all just works!

- The Adamant Rail: What if you invaded the underworld with a fucking machine gun. The Adamant Rail has an ammo counter; each Attack takes 1 bullet (and Dash Attack takes and fires 2), and you reload by pressing the right-hand stick in. Its Special is a slow-moving mortar that hits in a wide area. The Rail is a powerful and versatile weapon capable of engaging at great range, which tends to build either Attack or Special. If you’re building Special, look for big hits like Aphrodite, Artemis, or even Poseidon, and any Special upgrade at all from the Hammers. Attack usually wants utility or stacks - stuff like Poseidon, Demeter, Dionysus, or Zeus - but certain Hammer upgrades like Spread Shot might make it more worthwhile to invest in big hits for it if you get them early. However! Just because you’ve decided on a focus doesn’t mean you should neglect the other half of your weapon. For instance, an Attack-focused build might still entertain the Targeting System upgrade so that you can more easily land your hits and avoid the enemy, while a Special-focused one benefits from mounting debuffs like Weak or Chill on its Attack.

For any weapon, once you settle into a play style you enjoy, find ways to be rewarded for what you’re already going to do. If you enjoy, say, the Chiron Aspect for the bow which makes it into a Special-focused weapon, mount benefits like Doom or Weak on its Attack since you still have to use that to make your shit go-go. This applies more broadly too; if you’re saving up Gemstones for something, for instance, use the extra money you get during your run to visit the shops earlier and more often. Let Hades reward you for doing the things you already want to do.

To close this guide out I’m going to briefly touch on Heat, which is how Supergiant Games has manifested their signature build-your-own-hard-mode approach. After you clear the game with any weapon for the first time, you acquire access to the Pact of Punishment. This Pact lets you turn on hostile modifiers to your run, which each have a Heat value; once you clear the game with a weapon at any given level of Heat (0, 1, 2, etc) you can only get Titan’s Blood, Diamonds, and Ambrosia with that weapon by advancing to the next level of Heat. In this way the game gradually gets harder on a weapon-by-weapon basis.

So, what modifiers to turn on? Depends on what you’re good at and bad at, but I would highly, highly suggest that you get used to Extreme Measures, Middle Management, and Benefits Package as soon as possible. Not only are they sources of big Heat by themselves that don’t change too much of the run by themselves, but their primary difficulty is knowledge-based; once you know them, they’re practically free real estate. Since Heat is tracked per-weapon and not in total, you can also always go back to weapons you’re not as good with and use practice with them as an excuse to get more permanent resources that you can pour into the ones you prefer.

Obviously this guide is not comprehensive! I’ve left out a lot of things you might want to know, like boss patterns, enemy types, and a whole lot of stuff about characters. Some of these things I’ve not talked about because I don’t want to give spoilers; others I haven’t talked about because I’m, again, actually pretty bad at games and the Hades community has talented folks whose guides on Steam, on the Reddit, and on the wiki can provide you with thorough breakdowns of the math that makes the game work. Still, it’s my hope that this can ease your entry into the world of Hades and help guide you in those early runs when it can feel like you’re spinning your wheels. I look forward to hearing from you; reblogs and commentary are welcome!

See you all in Hell.

#hades #hades supergiant #supergiant games #roguelike #action #guide #Greek Mythology #video games

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moistwithgender · 6 years ago

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(Overdue) Media round-up (January 2019)

Feb’s almost over and I was gonna write about what I’ve processed when I realized I only posted about the anime I watched, I think? So this is a catch-up post for manga and games, before the end of this month in a few days. If you want to read the January anime round-up, it’s in my “curry watches anime” tag.

Games:

Puresabe’s 2019 New Year Rockman Hack (NES): Puresabe does one of these every year and they are always pretty hard! But I think the last few years have been much more balanced than their older projects. They are always just boss fights, but with complex patterns and sometimes multiple phases. Being just a boss fight (or two) means they are super short, but you will spend most of your time learning them. Also there are no checkpoints, so every death means you’re back to phase one. It’s very fun when it’s a good hack, and this was a good hack. I had a very rough start to the year and considered giving up, but went back and beat it, for good fortune in the new year. (Beaten 1/2/19)

The 2nd Super Robot Wars (NES): I decided 2019 would be the year I got into SRW, and so I started here, because the first game actually has no hard plot. I enjoyed it to a point, but the difficulty climbs to an absurd degree, and I wish I’d cut my losses and just youtubed it. The game allows you to save at any time during a turn, and resetting the console means it recycles the RNG and you can get different luck. This is...required. Most of the way into the game, I was having to reset twenty times in a row per unit action, just to make sure I could survive an enemy attack, or successfully hit an enemy. The funniest thing is that when I finally beat this, I almost immediately started up one of the later games, so clearly the kernel of value was visible to me through all that bullshit. (Beaten 1/13/19)

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: World of Light (Switch): I had been chomping at the bit for what felt like forever just to play this mode of this game, and not only was it good, it surpassed my expectations multiple times. This mode has a lot of twists for something that mostly implies narrative, or otherwise ignores it. I’m the rare person who mostly plays Smash Bros solo because I have NO FRIENDS, and this was worth the price of admission for me. I don’t consider Smash Ultimate itself beaten yet because I haven’t beaten Classic Mode on 9.9 difficulty yet. I have finished with 9.8, like, four times. Please kill me. (Beaten 1/18/19)

PaRappa the Rapper (PSP): While taking care of my cat, I found an opportunity to actually use my PSP for the first time since...2008 or 09? When I bought it secondhand? Jesus. Anyway, it turns out that PaRappa actually has absurd input detection and an equally hard to parse system for what counts as “freestyling”, which ultimately results in a final stage where you’re...required to play notes that are completely unrelated to what it says to do on-screen? I still beat the game (in a single sitting, too. it’s short), but I was pretty frustrated. Greenblat’s aesthetic is iconic, and the songs are very fun to listen to (this game has maybe the only potty humor I actually enjoyed), but the game part is actually the problem. (Beaten 1/25/19)

Patapon (PSP): I played PaRappa spontaneously, but I’ve actually meant to play the Patapon series for quite a while. This is less a song-performing rhythm game and more of an action/strategy type of rhythm game where you consistently keep a beat to keep morale up. It’s pretty good, but missions can be 3-6 minutes of consecutively hitting four notes and then waiting four notes, and while that itself sounds doable, I am just terrible at rhythm and messed up a lot of good opportunities. The difficulty curve in this is high in the beginning, lowers over time, before hitting a huge spike and then being a cakewalk for the last four or so missions. There’s also a lot of grinding, which means this rhythm game came out to almost a 16 hour run. A bit tiring. Not sure when I’ll jump on Patapon 2, but I hope it’s easier to play, since my impetus for picking up the series was the intro FMV for the third game. (Beaten 1/30/19)

Games beaten in January: 5 Games beaten in 2019 thus far: 5

Manga:

Getter Robo Vol 2 (Finished): I didn’t feel like plowing through 51 episodes of the old 70s anime, so I decided to just read the much shorter, and somewhat unrelated manga. In the show, the heroes are what they are, heroes. Likable mains for kids to watch on Saturday mornings. In the manga, as per Go Nagai’s influence (and the main author, Ken Ishikawa, who I LOVE and who was Nagai’s assistant), the heroes are violent asshole moron sociopath terrorists who gradually become more unhinged as they are exposed to the very radiation that powers the machine they use to fight dinosaurs (though said gradual descent is more of a thing in the later manga/OVAs). Also, the villains are dinosaurs. Turns out they had the original ancient civilization and Getter Rays chased them into the Earth’s core and they want to planet back. That’s Getter Robo! It’s very good.

Getter Robo G Vol 1-3 (Finished): This is kind of more of the same as the first, and again, I didn’t want to watch the 39 episodes, I wanted the primer so I could play SRW. As I’ve approached the later games, it turns out they prefer to take influence from the shows, not the manga. Oops! Whatever. In this sequel, it turns out the Dinosaur Empire was a pawn or something to It Was Aliens, the Hyakki Empire, and it’s...more of the same. In both the GR and GR G mangas, I found the occasional chapter with wildly different art, and I figured that those were Ishikawa’s gorgeous art, and the majority was Nagai’s. But, I’m not sure, and I wonder if those were revised or extra chapters done years later. Idk. Anyway, they are both very fun reads, even if they serve more as primers of the lore.

Shin Getter Robo Vol 1-2 (Finished): HERE’s where things start to get really good, and surreal, and bleak. This manga is not adapting a tv series (though later OVAs would reference it. This manga is actually I think where a lot of the inspiration for Gurren Lagann came from, and if you like that series, you should read this to see the connection. I can’t really explain without spoiling either (though if in 2019 you don’t know what happens in Gurren, you are super lucky and need to go watch it all asap). NOTE, this takes place after the 7 volume Getter Robo Go manga, which has a show but I think is unrelated, but more importantly is probably the BEST Getter Robo series. I read that before knowing a thing about Getter and still loved it (though I think having context will really benefit it). GR Go is the biggest justification for getting into the series. If any friends of mine want to look into this series, I’ll actually help give them a guide. Interestingly, the most modern Getter series (of which the most recent was in 2004 (please come back)) all take reference from the darker mangas, not the old 70s show.

Mazinger Z Vol 1-5 (Finished): I think Go Nagai’s works are weird, melodramatic, gross, and just kinda badly drawn. They are great experiences, if you go in with a grain of salt and also avoid the *most* transgressive ones. Don’t google Iron Virgin Jun. Just. Don’t do it. Devilman is probably his best work, but Mazinger Z is another series with a much more famous long-running 70s cartoon (92 episodes!!!) and burned itself into the nostalgia of Japan. Whereas Devilman eventually becomes traumatizing, Mazinger Z is pretty laid back and goofy, while also being Nagai’s brand of The Most Dramatic Thing Ever. If you follow me, you might’ve seen me post pages in my manga tag. It’s a LOT. Though, actually, I don’t think this manga is all that great. It can be *really* funny, but I don’t even remember if the series actually ends. If you read one or two volumes and want to put it down, I think you’re safe to. You got most of the lore. The biggest events seem to take place in later series that I haven’t delved into yet.

UFO Robo Grendizer Vol 1 (Finished): I actually haven’t been able to find anywhere to read Great Mazinger, the sequel series, so I skipped to Grendizer, which is the second sequel. It’s pretty unrelated continuity-wise, so it’s easy to pick up. This is only one volume and yeah they really just want you to watch the 74 episode show, but I’m good. Still, this is a fun book, and Nagai throws in his batshit ideas. The main character is an alien prince whose tragic backstory is literally that the villain kidnapped his younger siblings and all the country’s children and just! Dropped them all from the sky to their death in the middle of the city! And they don’t censor it! GO NAGAI! I really need to read the autobio manga Gekiman because of what snippets I’ve seen, Nagai is actually a super mild-mannered dude who doesn’t really get where his ideas cross lines. If you want to say “oh that’s just wacky Japan”, it’s really not, he was public enemy #1 with parents all over the country for a long time.

Super Robot Retsuden Vol 1 (Finished): This is a single volume crossover of Nagai super robot IPs including Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, Great Mazinger, Grendizer, and Steel Jeeg (a guy who’s more Ultraman-adjacent than super robot), and there’s no real plot beyond “oh no new bad guy! buy the toys, kids!” It’s throwaway, and I mostly read it to see who Jeeg is without getting into his own series. Also, it was drawn by Ishikawa, so I felt a bit obligated. His art is just so pretty.

Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer Vol 1 (and maybe 2?): Satoshi Mizukami is a godly storyteller who uses the language of shonen to tell deeply mature and introspective stories for adults and if you follow my posts you might remember me gushing about Spirit Circle and Planet With. I actually haven’t touched this series since February started but I need to get back in because the first two volumes out of ten are amazing (warning, though: there’s a pet death and it’s real sudden and was hard for me to handle). Please read Mizukami’s works.

Manga volumes read in January: 14-15 Manga volumes read in 2019 thus far: 14-15

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Okay that’s everything. I wrote a lot more than I expected to. If you read all that, thanks. If you are interested in any of the things I wrote about, great! If you decide to play through SRW2, don’t, stop, don’t do that. In a few days I’ll be writing about a much better SRW game.

#curry plays games #curry reads manga

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lacquerware · 6 years ago

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Mega Man should stop presenting its flaws as indispensable features

When I was fifteen, I learned to play the song Malagueña on the piano. It was a laborious project; the culmination of nine years of piano lessons under the tutelage of Mrs. Diane Miller, and the main event for her upcoming student showcase.

This arrangement of the piece was a seven-pager, and somewhere around page four was a problem phrase I kept playing wrong, a rapid two-handed run up the keyboard with tricky fingering. I got to a point where I could play flawlessly up to that phrase, only to flub the phrase every time. Each time I flubbed it, my teacher would stop me and send me back to page 2. “You have to perfect that phrase,” she would say, “so try it again, but first play the preceding two pages, so it’s no longer fresh in your mind by the time you get to it again.” Alas, this would result in more flubs, and after three flubs in a row she would send me back to the beginning of the entire piece. “You’re still not getting it,” she’d say. “So I think we should run through the stuff you’ve already mastered one more time.” I would glance at her, trying to read her intent, and she would stare back at me, bug-eyed and malevolent.

The above story is false,because Mrs. Miller was a kind, intelligent, and non-insane person. Like all people of that description, she understood that you don’t work out a problem area by indiscriminately repeating ALL PRACTICE. When you get one problem wrong on a math quiz, you don’t review the entire textbook. You don’t work on your free throws by drilling layups and then also free throws. You can’t learn to poach an egg by toasting English fucking muffins all day. To suggest otherwise is an act of hostility.

Mega Manhas always carried this hostility. The game dishes out its challenges in neat little screen-sized units, but penalizes your failures with gratuitous setbacks, often requiring you to replay entire stages from the beginning. This makes learning inordinately tedious. You have to retread every yard for every yard gained.

I guess this is a relic of the arcade age, when games were designed with the express intent of punishing players—unless they paid up. Indeed, most of Mega Man’s NES contemporaries inherited this same feature in the form of finite lives and scarce checkpoints, but it never made much sense on home consoles. You could argue that it prolonged the lifespan of each game, but that only held true for the masochists who continued to tolerate this torturous system rather than reallocate all that wasted time to more fruitful pursuits like, I dunno, learning to play piano or poach an egg.

I’ve always liked Mega Man, but it was already starting to feel like a tired concept as early as Mega Man IV. I was about eight years old by then, and starting to catch on that they were running out of boss motifs. Pharaoh Man felt like a red flag.

Mega Man has since proliferated into a multi-faceted franchise spanning more than 120 titles and three decades (and for the record, I’ve played through almost all of them), but it’s never really dispensed with its ancient baggage. Mega Man X brought new visual flare while diversifying the core action; Mega Man Zero imbued the series canon with new consequence and cool factor; Mega Man ZX fused the classic gameplay with the Metroidvania template; but all of these spin-offs continued to punish, punish, punish, to gatekeep their content from the series’ own consumers to no certain end.

When Capcom revealed Mega Man 9, I was momentarily taken with the nostalgia of it, but quickly lost interest when I realized that Capcom had no intent of evolving the series’ concepts, even in basic quality-of-life ways. Lives and weapon energy were still pointlessly commodified, checkpoints sadistically scarce. They’d even removed what few innovations the series had seen to date, such as the slide and the charge shot. Nor did the roster of Robot Masters appear any more inspired than the cast of rejects that had turned me off five installments prior. Capcom had had seventeen years to think about it and all they’d come up with were lame analogs of pastbosses, like Tornado Man and Magma Man. It’s like they thought they hadto retread the same shit beat for beat or people would get confused. Even their ace, Splash Woman, was just another in a long line of water-themed bosses.

Mega Man 10 as a follow-up was downright depressing. Strike Man, Pump Man, and Chill Man are what you get when you realize yesterday was the deadline and all you’ve got is a pen and a cocktail napkin. I can’t fathom that a bunch of game designers sat around brainstorming ideas for Mega Man fucking 10 and someone was like, “Hmm, what about an ice-themed boss.”

Now we have Mega Man 11, the long-awaited, belligerently-demanded revival of the MM franchise after some eight years of dormancy. After playing the demo, I find myself wondering why. Why are we here? Why is Mega Man 11 Capcom’s answer after saying no to Mega Man for eight years? It’s the SAME.

Yes, it looks and sounds nicer and there’re a couple new mechanics—which are themselves comically uninspired takes on the ancient tropes of bullet time* and Devil Trigger—but I’m mystified at how unchanged the formula still is after eight years of seemingly adamant dismissal of the entire franchise, let alone the thirty-one years they could’ve been critically examining it. Do they realize that other developers have been building on this genre since the eighties?

*Weird side note: The tutorial for Mega Man’s new “Speed Gear” ability explains that the gear makes you “move so fast that everything else seems slow,” but in practice Mega Man moves just as slowly as everything else. So it’s not Mega Man who’s moving fast, it’s. . . the player?

Punishment as “Difficulty”

In the Block Man (lol) stage of the demo, there’s a section where you have to jump and slide through elaborate platforms as they scroll toward you, an insta-kill grinding device nipping at your heels all the while. The third platform has very peculiar collision detection, such that your head bonks against the empty space you’re supposed to jump through, seemingly rendering the challenge impossible. This is several screens into the stage but still prior to the first checkpoint (on Normal mode), so every time this platform killed me, I had to start the entire stage over. After about fifteen tries, I discovered that the collision doesn’t trigger if you’re holding left as you make the jump—an illogical thing to do unless you’ve died so many times you’ve run out of other ideas. By the time I cracked this idiosyncrasy, I’d already spent close to an hour replaying the preceding screens over and over for no reason. Why is this still a thing? This is punishment, not difficulty. It contributes to the challenge only in that it makes the experience less fun, “challenging” your resolve to continue playing. Think of all the origami you could be learning. All the old ladies you could be helping cross streets.

The Mega Man games are quite clever in the way they parse out the platforming and shooting in little bite-sized units. Each screen is essentially an action puzzle for you to solve. It would be so logical for each screen break to be a checkpoint, because each screen break isa checkpoint—the start of the next challenge. Games like Super Meat Boy do this, meting (meating?) out their challenges in bite-sized, infinitely repeatable increments. Nobody accuses Super Meat Boy of being too easy because it doesn’t make you repeat the shit you’ve already completed when you fail at the current task. If you wantthat kind of punishment, no one’s stopping you from resetting the game.

Mega Man 11 adds a “Casual” mode which increases the number of checkpoints, but it’s still annoying to me that the more punishing model is treated as the norm while the more logical distribution of checkpoints is treated as a concession. Soulsplayers will tell me to “git gud,” but that’s why I led with the piano analogy. I got damn good at Malagueña, and I still had time left over to do my homework and play video games.

Special Weapons

Using your Special Weapons in Mega Man games is like spending the money you might need to pay rent on stuff you could be getting for free through your well-connected friend Dave. The trial-and-error pairing of the right weapon and the right boss is such an integral part of Mega Man’s progression that any other use of anyspecial weapon becomes a high-risk gamble—unless, of course, you just Google the answers.

I understand the need to impose limits on the more powerful weapons, but games have figured out countless better ways to do this in the thirty-one years since Mega Man 1. Cool-down times. Cool-down meters. Recovery proportional to damage inflicted. Recovery proportional to damage received. Recovery by way of skillful attack, à laMetal Gear Rising. Enemy fire absorption à la Alien Soldier and Radiant Silvergun. Ranger X on the Sega Genesis had solar-powered special weapons; why not steal that idea for this game’s allegedly solar-powered protagonist?

Instead, even in its eleventh installment in two-thousand-goddamn-eighteen, Mega Man still employs an RNG-based item drop system. Replenishing your meter is as simple and menial as finding an enemy spawn point and brainlessly standing and shooting until an enemy happens to drop the energy you need. Don’t forget to cycle over to the gun you want to replenish, or else the battery is wasted, as if Mega Man just eats it by mistake.*

*Later games in the series introduced the Energy Balancer, a purchasable item which automatically refills the weapon that needs refilling even if you don’t have it selected. Why is that a thing you have to buy? Why put a fundamental improvement to the game behind a paywall, virtual or otherwise?

Meanwhile, MM11still employs the same bizarre meter continuity between deaths as past installments. Each death means repeating sections of the stage without reacquiring any previously spent meter, effectively creating a difficulty vortex—the harder this game is, the harder it gets. There was a ruthlessly capitalistic logic to this in the arcade days,but the Mega Man series has never been coin-operated (with a few obscure exceptions). It hasnevermade sense that, often, the best strategy is to voluntarily leap to your death over and over to force a Game Over, just to restart with a full weapon meter as an alternative to the tedium of refilling it manually or facing the boss without it. What is the explanation for this meter continuity in the first place? Are we supposed to think Mega Man is repeatedly exploding and materializing but he can’t materialize a few extra shots from his bubble gun while he’s at it? There’s a multi-faceted idiocy to this whole system.

Rush

Capcom ought to take a long, hard look at Rush, Mega Man’s transforming robot dog companion. It’s hard to believe the same guy who invented a fully autonomous solar-powered robot boy couldn’t design a dog-shaped spring that runs on renewable energy. Special weapons are one thing, but why does Rush have an exhaustible meter? He’s a fucking spring. It makes no sense as a narrative detail nor as an element of game design. What exactly are the designers trying to limit? Your ability to spam high jumps? The logistics of the Rush Coil already do that; you have to set him up like a lawn ornament and he peaces out after a single bound. He’s unspammable, even with a full bar. To begin with, there are rarely that many useful opportunities to use the Rush Coil within a single stage, and energy power-ups are infinite as long as you’re willing to endure the chore of finding them, so it’s not as though the game is challenging you to budget your resources—it’s just discouraging you from searching for those meaningful jump opportunities in the first place. It’s driving you to Google.

Bosses

The Robot Masters have always received special star treatment in the Mega Man games but rarely been very interesting as boss fights. You know the deal: dodge the dizzying hail of projectiles in an empty square room while desperately scrambling to land enough hits with the weakness weapon before you die. Considering all the fanfare these bosses get (mug shot, intro screen, and now reveal trailers), most of them feel kind of interchangeable. Most of them have nearly identical silhouettes and shoot functionally redundant projectiles in superficially different shapes. Every gun is a Lucky Charms marshmallow.

The boss fights actually do seem a little more interesting in Mega Man 11—Block Man in particular stands out with his mid-fight transformation into a hulking colossus. I’d hoped to see more of this in future Mega Mans—fights that evolve and really set each Robot Master apart as a distinct embodiment of its corresponding motif—so maybe they’re onto something this time. Still, it’s a little ridiculous that this game has yet another fire boss, electricity boss, cold boss, and bomb boss. Why are we still here?

Before the mob comes for me, I want to stress that there’s always been lots to love about Mega Man, and I’m glad Capcom is investing in the IP again. I just hope this is the start of a long-term effort to reevaluate and improve the series, not another short-sighted extension of a tired status quo.

#mega man 11 #mm11 #capcom #games #video games #videogames #gaming #reflections #demo #games writing #criticism #rant

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theultimateegghead-blog · 6 years ago

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30 FOLLOWER 5 PART SPECIAL! TOP 50 HARDEST BOSSES I HAVE FOUGHT. Part 1 – bosses 50 - 41

Hello everyone! Today is a happy day! I have 30 followers now! As a sign of appreciation, I will be doing this special 5-part series. 50 bosses that proved to be quite a challenge. Now for some rules… This list in my opinion. Some bosses on this list were difficult when I was a child but may not be hard now…Those examples are more towards the 50-40 and 40-30 section. I will try to limit one boss per game, however be prepared for an exception later on. This list may contain spoilers so read with caution. I will include all games in the boss description and in the tags, feel free to skip one if you don’t want spoilers. Finally here is a little guide for my decision making process…

50 – 41 – Might have been hard the first time I fought them, but are now significantly easier.

40 – 31 – Tough then and still provide a challenge now but are still easier to fight when compared to the first fight.

30 – 21 – Hard then, still tough now but not as much. Overall manageable, but they might get a victory or two over me.

20 – 11 – Hard then and still tough now. While I will not struggle as much as my first fight, they will still provide a tough challenge.

10 – 1 – Very hard then and very hard now. These bosses are so difficult that no matter how many times I fight them they still manage to be a huge challenge.

Now without further ado, lets get started.

NUMBER 50 General Tsao (Sly 3)

General Tsao is one of the villains from Sly 3. He serves as a menace to former foe Panda King. He intends to marry the Panda King’s daughter, and her consent is blatantly ignored. After sabotaging his base and pestering him in the shadows, Sly and this chicken finally clash. This fight has two stages, stage one is manageable enough. Armed with his sawblade shield and fire balls, he attacks from the top of Bamboo sticks. Avoiding him is easy and he often leads himself open, its once the battle takes to the ground things heat up… On the ground, he attacks relentlessly and often retaliates to combos. He can summon various magical entities to track you down such as zombie hands that are very fast. He has quite a bit of health as well. This is made worse during one of the challenges which require beating him with only half your health. Also, did I mention he is horribly sexist? Because he is.

Hardest thing about this boss – His zombie hand attack can really be a nuisance. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NUMBER 49 Jaguar Chase (The Emperor’s new Groove)

My first button masher. This boss was a huge roadblock for me when I was a child. The premise is simple, outrun the Jaguars, avoid obstacles and reach the end. The problem was the button mashing, my little hands got tired so fast and I could never beat it! My grandfather wound up beating this level with me! He did the button mashing and I steered the character around the obstacles. While this boss is not nearly as hard today, it still brings back memories of frustration and relief when I beat it. It can be a challenge to try to get all the coins in one run though….

Hardest part about this boss – MY POOR BABY HANDS! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NUMBER 48 The Cyberdemon (Doom)

The infamous Cyberdemon from Doom. First appearing in the Tower of Babel level, then later in the THY FLESH CONSUME episode. Along with some appearances in DOOM 2. The Cyberdemon is a powerful foe armed with a rocket launcher. Its roar is frightening, and its stature is intimidating. While a simple boss with only one attack, that said attack packs a punch. It is fought in a large arena dotted with giant pillars that can be used as cover. The best weapons against this guy is either the plasma rifle, the rocket launcher or the BFG 9000 if you have it. It wanders around and shoots rockets, it only takes about 2 direct hits to do you in, so strafing is key. Once I figured out how to avoid its rocket it became less of a challenge. He can take punishment though, so the fight might be long. The one in the final episode is much worse, simply due to his position on the map and since the map is particularly long, so a death there sets you back pretty far.

Hardest thing about this boss – Its tough when he somehow manages to get into small enclosed spaces, causing the player to take a risk in hitting him. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NUMBER 47 Skorge (Gears of War 2)

When people think of hard bosses in the Gears of War series, most fingers point to general RAAM. However, I never really had that much of a problem with RAAM even on higher difficulties. Skorge is the cream of the locust crop in my opinion. The high priest of the locust hoard and main general of the army after RAAM’s death. Skorge is aggressive and mobile, he starts the fight by trying to crush you with pillars in the palace of the Locust. Not to mention a swarm of tickers blowing up at your feet and the fact he drops grenades from the ceiling. His weapon of choice in this fight is a double ended chainsaw staff, which is as awesome as it sounds, and dual handguns. After destroying his staff, Skorge retreats and mounts his Hydra and a chase begins. The battle kicks it up here as he tries to knock you out of the sky. Eventually his Hydra is killed, and he is impaled on his pet’s tooth.

Hardest part of this boss – The chase, it is easy to die on the final part. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NUMBER 46 The Field Marshal (Halo Reach)

The Field Marshal is a special unique elite that appears throughout the campaign of Halo Reach. He is often accompanied by two Zealots at almost all times. First appearing early in the game, the Field Marshal attacks Noble team with his two companions, while he escapes his companions are killed. He then appears briefly and kills a member of the team “Kat” with a sniper rifle. In the end of the game, when it is up to the player to man a large cannon to ensure the Pillar of Autumn escapes, the Field Marshal and his companions block the way. The companions are tough on their own, but the Marshal can be a royal pain in the butt with his fuel rod cannon and his plasma blade. Once his shield goes down, he makes a mad rush for you with his sword, if he gets you he can easily one shot you. There is no prime strategy, just be extra careful and fight him like any other elite.

Hardest thing about this boss – His fuel rod cannon is a nightmare on higher difficulty levels, and he is quite trigger happy with it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NUMBER 45 Mask of Infamy (The Binding of Isaac)

Much of the binding of Isaac relies on good skill and a bit of RNG (random-number-generator, a more realistic way of saying ‘luck’) when it comes to items. The Mask of Infamy’s difficulty depends on your items, stats and skills. The boss starts with two parts, the titular mask and a floating heart. The Heart is the target and the mask damages you on contact. After the heart is destroyed, the mask gets faster and it can only be damaged on its back. This can be tricky as it always tries its best to remain facing you…

Hardest thing about this boss – Trying to finish it off after destroying the heart. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NUMBER 44 Final Bowser (Super Mario 64)

After a long star filled journey, its time to take on Bowser for the third and final time. Way up in the sky, Bowser’s final stand begins. The overgrown turtle has some tricks up his shell. He breaths both red and blue fire, the blue fire splits into parts and bounces around. He can create shockwaves as well. The method of beating him is the same, throw him into the bombs around his stage. There is a catch this time, Bowser breaks the stage into a star shape which can make throwing him tough. He needs three blasting in order to stay down.

Hardest thing about this boss – The final throw, where he is very aggressive, and the platform is oddly shaped. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NUMBER 43 Carnage (Ultimate Spiderman)

Carnage is one of the final bosses in Ultimate Spider Man and is fought by Venom. Carnage is tough, he jumps around and has attacks that cover a wide area. His fight covers three stages and they progressively get harder. The first stage is a one on one fight, Carnage leaves himself open a lot but retaliates often. Once his health goes down he retreats and starts to feed, restoring health. Venom must give chase, and this is where the challenge really begins. The player must balance feeding and restoring health while fighting carnage and waves of security goons. The third stage is like this as well, only in a huge room. This boss fight is an endurance test, and with Carnage’s speed and ferocity, he can be quite the challenge during the first run. Venom’s health is constantly depleting by the way.

Hardest thing about this boss – Having to balance your healing priority and keeping him from healing himself. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NUMBER 42 Wounded Vader (Star Wars the Force Unleashed)

The secret alternate final boss of the Force unleashed game. Despite being critically wounded, Vader is one of the hardest bosses in the game, even harder than the Emperor. He has plenty of health and a near infinite amount of force power at his disposal. He is a master at lightsaber combat, so attacking him head on is quite the challenge. The best way to damage him is to counter him, these can be tough and require quite a bit of focus. If you don’t counter him you will be in for a long fight. Eventually you will have to finish him off with a quick time event.

Hardest thing about this boss – The fact that he rarely puts his guard down. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NUMBER 41 The Yellow Devil (Mega Man)

The infamous yellow devil. Often regarded as the hardest boss in the original Mega Man, the yellow devil is known for pushing players to the edge. Its pattern is simple but punishing, it has two methods of attack and a very small weak spot. It reveals its’ eye and shoots at Mega Man before breaking apart and sliding across the screen. These parts are indestructible and will hurt if you hit them. The only option to retaliate is to shoot it in the eye and then avoid the onslaught before shooting it again. This battle can take time and be frustrating. There is a glitch that can be exploited to defeat it, and I admit I used this glitch the first time I beat the Yellow Devil, but since then I have beaten it properly. This evil robot has made several appearances in other games, including smash bros.

Hardest thing about this boss – Its assembly attack, while the pattern does not change, it is still difficult to dodge.

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This is just part 1! We still have 40 more bosses to go! Is there a boss that gives you a hard time? Tell me in the comments of this post! Thank you all for helping me reach 30 followers! In the grand scale of things it is not a lot but I never thought id make it to 20! Thank you all again!

#boss battle #sly cooper #disney #doom #gears of war #halo #the binding of isaac #Super Mario 64 #spider man #star wars #mega man #yellow devil #darthvader #vader #carnage #bowser #thank you #followers #special

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thesevenseraphs · 7 years ago

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Bungie Weekly Update - 4/26/18

This week at Bungie, we introduced you to Warmind.

Several waves of developers talked about what you’ll find in the game on May 8. Creative Director Brent Gibson from Vicarious Visions joined Design Lead Evan Nikolich from Bungie on our Twitch stream to talk about Destiny 2: Warmind. It was our first conversation about a new story created by two studios working as partners. After a quick tour of Hellas Basin and an introduction to Ana Bray, we dove into a bit of gameplay. Design Lead Jacob Benton and Design Lead Ben Wommack walked us through Escalation Protocol, a new cooperative endgame activity with some intense challenges and exclusive rewards. For the final act, Senior Crucible Designer Kevin Yanes gave us a preview of Seasonal Crucible Rankings and Private Matches, with Cozmo riding “shotgun,” while Senior Sandbox Designer Jon Weisnewski and Sandbox Design Lead Josh Hamrick spiced the live fire exercise with some commentary about how Exotic weapons are evolving for all players in Season 3. Oh, and DeeJ hosted, but no one cares what he has to say. If you missed the stream, here’s footage in full:

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There’s a lot more we have to tell you today about Season 3. Read on for more!

Exotic Investments

How do you make an Exotic feel more Exotic? It’s a two part question, including how it feels to acquire and upgrade the weapon and how it feels to use the weapon. To answer the first question, Senior Investment Designer Mark Uyeda is here to walk us through the process.

Mark: Our goals in extending Masterwork perks and mechanics to Exotic weapons are primarily to create new in-game goals for hobbyist players and reinforce specific activities with these long tail pursuits.There were a few “problem spaces” that we wanted to address when creating the Exotic Masterwork pursuit. First up, Exotics in Destiny 2 are very easy to acquire. Many players have most, if not all, of the non-quest Exotics. As we don’t want to make players re-earn every Exotic weapon, Exotic Masterwork acquisition and progression needed to take place after acquisition. Additionally, we needed to figure out a player-friendly way of representing the process of obtaining and applying an Exotic Masterwork. The milestone tray doesn’t provide a good flow for every Exotic Masterwork, and bounties are planned for summer (as noted on our recently updated Development Roadmap). With these goals and restrictions, we landed on the following player experience: There will be one Exotic Masterwork per Exotic weapon that exists so far in Destiny 2. In order to begin the Masterwork process, players will have to find an Exotic Masterwork Catalyst. When inspecting the Exotic, there will be a hint at what activities can grant the catalyst for that weapon. Not all Exotic Masterworks have the same drop rates. Some Exotic Masterwork weapons are guaranteed after a certain amount of engagement, while others are earned at random.

Once acquired, the catalyst can be applied to immediately enable orb generation on double kills for the weapon. Exotic weapons with a catalyst applied will also start tracking enemies defeated, like their Legendary Masterwork weapon counterparts.

After applying the catalyst, there will be bounty-like objectives available that need to be completed in order to upgrade to the final Masterwork state, which will apply stat/perk bonuses to the weapon.

A few Masterworks will require you to do a single thing, where others will have multiple steps. These objectives will vary in difficulty and length, but will not be determined by RNG. The goal for these objectives is to push the player to engage with the weapon that they wish to make into a full Masterwork. When it comes to difficulty, there are a few Exotic Masterworks paired with difficult activities or accomplishments in-game. We’re expecting that there may be one or two Exotic Masterwork weapons that give players the opportunity to set goals in mastering specific activities in order to earn their most desired Masterwork. To get ahead of a few questions we’re expecting, here’s a quick roundup of more specific notes:

Exotic weapon Masterwork pursuits only need to be done once per account- you don’t have to chase your white whale on each character.

Through the Masterwork process, duplicate drops of an Exotic weapon via engrams, milestones, or even the Exotic Collection will be initialized at your current Masterwork upgrade state.

The Exotic Masterwork process takes place fully in the weapon details screen – there won’t be any objectives that take up character inventory space.

Not all Exotic Masterworks will be available immediately when Season 3 begins. If you inspect an Exotic Weapon and a Masterwork socket is not visible, the catalyst is not yet available.

We won’t be publishing guides on how to acquire specific Exotic Masterworks. This is in your hands!

As with all things in Destiny 2, these new features are subject to evolution. We’ll be monitoring acquisition rates and community reaction once these are in the wild and adjusting as needed.

The Exotic Gunsmiths

Over the last few weeks, Senior Sandbox Designer Jon Weisnewski has been giving previews on how some Exotic weapons are evolving at base level to feel more powerful in Season 3. We’re keeping the streak up. This week, Tractor Cannon, Hard Light, and Borealis are up for conversation!

Jon: Quick thanks and recognition to the video capture team that has been working hard to play, record, and publish this stuff on a tight deadline. The Tractor Cannon has delivered a high amount of spectacle and has a huge fun factor, but was lacking utility for many players. To address this, in addition to the expected damage and physics impulse, any target hit by Tractor Cannon now has a debuff applied that adds suppression and makes the target vulnerable to Void damage for 10 seconds. Suppression will function as you expect, so in the Crucible, this will shut down active supers and prevent players from using their abilities. In PvE, this will put most enemies in the suppression state where they cower and grovel. The Void vulnerability adds a significant weakness to any source of incoming Void damage. So if you’re a solo player, run it with your favorite Void weapons and/or subclass for optimal effect. If you’re running with a coordinated fireteam… we’re both excited and terrified to see how fast you can melt some of our harder bosses with strategic Void attacks. The Void vulnerability does not stack with itself, but it does stack with other damage debuffs. Get to work!

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Hard Light is inheriting the Borealis damage type reload swap: Holding reload will cycle elemental damage types in combat. The teaser clip shows this off pretty well, but what it doesn’t show very clearly is the other interesting change we made to lean in to this weapon’s gameplay. The bounce projectiles have always been a dazzling laser light show, but actually using them to do real work on your enemies around corners or off of walls has been difficult. It’s more of a suppression tactic than reliable offense. One option we considered was preserving aim assist for the lifetime of the projectile, but we couldn’t commit due to the sheer amount of pressure this would put on our runtime engine. (Imagine 12 players on a console in 6v6 all using this weapon, each player firing a round every three frames, and our aim assist code trying to predict the trajectory of each bullet for up to three bounces and then attempt to correct it to hit a target.) So, rather than make it easier for you to land a bounce shot, we made the payoff better for when it does happen. Bounced bullets now do double damage. We’re looking forward to seeing some montages from the geometry nerds out there.

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So a natural question that may come from this is: doesn’t this change make Hard Light a better choice than Borealis? While Hard Light will definitely have more uptime due to living in your Energy slot, Borealis is also getting an update that will make it a tempting choice.

For Borealis, the utility of having a weapon that can match any damage shield on the fly is good, but in order to make the weapon great we wanted to double down on the reward for successfully pulling this off. After breaking an enemy shield with a matching damage type, Borealis now deals double damage until the next reload or damage type swap. For PvE activities it gives the weapon a more reliable benefit than Hard Light, in both casual modes and high pressure activities. However, it’s not a perk that was meant just for PvE. This behavior also applies to enemy Guardians in the Crucible while their supers are active. Simply put: If you use a Void round to break shield and/or kill an enemy Sentinel Titan who is actively using their super, you have double damage sniper rounds (yes, that’s a one hit kill to the body) until you die or reload. It’s pretty rare to pull off and requires a fair amount of predictive awareness, but we’ve had it happen organically a few times during internal playtests and I’m highly confident that skilled players will be able to make some amazing plays with this weapon.

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That’s all for this week! I’m sure we’ll be chatting again soon.

Glory, Valor, and Combat

Since their original announcement, Seasonal Crucible Rankings have been a hot topic. The Crucible team has been hard at work to implement the system. Starting with Season 3, Crucible Ranks will be available to all players of Destiny 2.

Senior Crucible Designer Kevin Yanes gave a quick overview on stream of what to expect. We’re diving deeper into the weeds to answer some of your burning questions.

Kevin: Hey everyone. During the Warmind reveal stream, we showcased Seasonal Crucible Ranks for the first time. We’ve been seeing a lot of questions from the community, so let’s get into the hot topics you’ve been asking about:

"What are Seasonal Crucible Ranks?"Seasonal Crucible Ranks are comprised of two key mechanics: a level and rank points. As players earn points in each rank, they will level up and unlock new rewards for Shaxx to dole out in the Tower. Leveling up gives players an assortment of Crucible Tokens, Crucible Engrams, and Masterwork Cores depending on how far up they have leveled. There are six specific Crucible Ranks that players can reach, starting with the rank of "Guardian" and ending with players becoming "Legend.” Here is the full break down of what levels each Crucible Rank will feature:

Guardian

Brave

Heroic

Fabled

Mythic

Legend

"What types of Seasonal Crucible Ranks are there?

"Starting in Season 3, we're launching two Crucible Ranks: Valor and Glory. Valor is a progression rank that goes up as you complete matches. Winning helps you move up faster and there are no loss penalties. Valor Ranks serve to showcase a player’s time commitment to playing Crucible. As players win, they will accumulate a win streak that will give players bonus points for each subsequent win. These win streaks will cap out after five wins, and then reset. Try to see how often you can hit a full five win streak! Players who complete their Valor Ranks can choose to reset them to begin their journey anew and even make progress toward some rewards that require a fixed number of resets.

Glory is a progression rank earned in the Competitive playlist that goes up as you win matches, but down as you lose. Closing out wins is how players are going to move up here. Glory Ranks serve to showcase the mastery players have in some of our most intense game modes, and show how they stack up against worthy opponents. Glory features the same win streak system from Valor but with the addition of loss streaks that work similarly. As players lose consecutive matches, they will lose more and more points. This means no game is without its stakes, so it's best to keep on your A-game.

"What do I earn for moving up the Ranks?

"Beginning in Season 3, new crucible rewards will be attached to Seasonal Crucible Ranks. This means that armor ornaments, emblems, and new weapons will require players to earn both Valor and Glory ranks to acquire them. Players receive reward packages when reaching a new level in Valor or Glory. (Note: Players receive Glory reward packages only the first time a new rank is reached in a season; if you lose a match and drop a rank, you do not receive another reward package when ranking back up.)

In addition to the suite of Season 3 rewards, we’re planning on bringing a unique weapon to Glory Ranks for players to work toward. The weapon will only be available for the duration of the season and once the season ends, it will disappear for a long, long, long time. This season we have a new weapon called Redrix's Claymore. This Pulse Rifle features a unique perk set in Outlaw as well as a new synergistic perk called "Desperado" - "Reloading while Outlaw is active increases your rate of fire." This translates to defeating enemies in the same three bursts it currently takes from a high-impact Pulse Rifle, just much faster. Make sure to land your headshot kills and you can keep Desperado and Outlaw running indefinitely.

Redrix's Claymore will be available to players once they reach the Fabled level in the Glory Rank. Ranking above Fabled will be rewarded with an ornament for Redrix's Claymore and a new emblem- and for those who push their Glory rank to Mythic and above, a special secret awaits you.

"Where can I earn these ranks?"

Valor

Quickplay

Rumble

Mayhem

Glory

Competitive

Trials and Iron Banner will not have any Crucible Ranks attached to them as they have their own investment rewards and are separate from the Crucible. Additionally, to maintain the integrity of Glory Ranks, players will only be able to earn Glory in the Competitive playlist.

“Why should I keep earning Glory week over week?”

Each week your Glory Rank will change depending on the number of games you played, maxing out at three games per week. Players ranked Fabled and below will earn bonus Glory Rank Points each week. For players ranked Mythic and Legend, each match completed will reduce the amount of Glory Rank decay, up to preventing the decay for the week. This means if you’re a player in Mythic or Legend you’ll need to hop into the Competitive playlist at least three times a week to maintain your status.

“Will matchmaking be based on Glory Ranks in the Competitive playlist?”

The Competitive playlist will be using our existing matchmaking system. At the start of Season 3 we are going to reset the skill bucket in Competitive to give every player an equal start as they begin their climb to Fabled and beyond. This means that as you win and lose, your skill and rank will go up or down accordingly. As always, we are never done iterating and improving our systems, and so once you’ve had time to sink your teeth into ranks we’d love to hear your feedback.

"Too long, give me bullets"

Valor

Caps out at 2,000 Rank Points

Features win streak bonus points

Can be reset when fully completed, with no cap on resets per season

Resets each season

Has ornament, emblem, and weapon rewards

Requires a fixed number of Valor resets to earn some rewards

Featured in: Quickplay, Rumble, Mayhem

Glory

Caps out at 5,500 Rank Points

Features win streak bonus points

Adds loss streak penalties for recurring losses

Players can earn bonus rank points or fend off decay by completing three competitive matches each week

Only resets each season

Has ornament, emblem, and weapon rewards

Features unique seasonal chase weapon that can be earned at Fabled level (about ~40% of the way through your journey in Glory Ranks)

Lets players earn ornament for seasonal weapon at Legend level

"How are you going to make sure everyone plays fair in the Ranked environment?”

Update 1.2.0 will come with a slew of improvements to our security systems to better maintain the sanctity of the Competitive experience. We've made what we feel are appropriate arrangements to ensure your Crucible experience is a good one.

"When can I begin earning Ranks?"

Players can start earning Seasonal Crucible Ranks beginning on May 8 with the release of Update 1.2.0.

Worthy Opponents

Playing the role of matchmaker isn’t an easy feat. In Destiny 2 Update 1.2.0, the Crucible team will be addressing player feedback about pre-made Fireteams being matched against solo players.

PvP Design Lead Derek Carroll has a quick breakdown of the changes that are going in, and what players can expect starting May 8.

Derek: From reading your feedback and looking at data, it’s clear that solo players are facing an uphill battle in the Crucible when they encounter well-coordinated opponents. Players in Fireteams have a substantial advantage, particularly as average skill increases. In the current Crucible, solo players at virtually all skill levels win fewer than half of their games. We're making some under-the-hood adjustments to try to ensure that even when solo players do end up fighting against Fireteams, they’ll be doing it on a more-even battlefield.

Instead of using your normal skill value when in a Fireteam, we will use a modified value that takes your Fireteam size into account. The larger your Fireteam, the larger the potential modification. We don’t want to try to completely nullify the benefit of team-play, so our initial values are conservative and can (and will) be tuned as we see the system working in the wild. All of these settings can be configured on our servers without waiting for a new update, so we'll be able to make additional tweaks based on what we see.

We always encourage you to bring your friends with you into the Crucible, but we think this change will improve your experience during those times you have to fly solo. As always, we’ll be keeping an eye on how well these changes are working once they’re live, and look forward to hearing your thoughts! #FTMM (Editors note: For those like me who didn't understand this hashtag immediately, this means Fireteam Matchmaking.)

Season 2 Finale

Lord Saladin returns for the final bout of Iron Banner in Season 2.

Begins: Tuesday, May 1

Ends: Tuesday, May 8

The game is Control!

As some of you may have noticed, we’re diving back into the Iron Banner playlist pretty quickly compared to previous months.

Senior Designer Jeremiah Pieschl gave us a quick rundown of initial feedback we’re looking to address since 6v6 went live:

Jerpie: While we continue to evaluate the feedback and data from the last Iron Banner Control with 6v6, we've heard two messages very clearly. Having more opportunities to play 6v6 is highly desired and Control remains the most popular mode for 6v6. As such, you can expect Iron Banner to feature 6v6 Control exclusively moving into Season 3.

As a warning, this will be your last chance to earn Season 2 ornaments, so make sure to jump in and complete those objectives.

Safari Stripes

Speaking of Iron Banner, Destiny Player Support has been working behind the scenes to investigate reports of error codes encountered last week. If you’ve recently seen a pesky ZEBRA or two, read below for some important information.

ZEBRA

With the launch of 6v6 Iron Banner, we saw a large increase in ZEBRA error codes which were determined to be caused by players timing out while loading into the maps. We took steps to reduce the rate of this error code by increasing the time in which players could attempt to load into a Crucible match. If you continued to frequently encounter ZEBRA error codes during 6v6 Iron Banner, you may be experiencing issues with your connection quality or your PC hardware may be below the minimum specifications. To improve performance and reduce the frequency of ZEBRA error codes, you may want to try the following:

Read through the Network Troubleshooting Guide for recommendations on optimizing your network setup

On consoles, try clearing your console cache

On PC, close other open programs, ensure all drivers are up to date, or run the Scan and Repair tool

We expect to see this issue continue in future 6v6 Iron Banner events; however, after Update 1.2.0 this instance of the ZEBRA error code will provide players with the BEET or KALE error codes. If you encounter these issues, please post a report to the #Help forum.

#bungie weekly update #Destiny #Destiny the game #Destiny 2 #Warmind #long post

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bkbgames · 7 years ago

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SquareEnix Collective Update

Life has been busy for the two of us over here at Fourends. I’m dealing with a recent second baby and both of us have hands full with a two-year-old (and other projects). But work on Voiceless continues on!

Most recently we’ve built a “bobbing” system---check out the gif below. Any event can have its own X and Y offsets at any time, which means our demonic monsters now float menacingly, our lilly pads gently bob in the water, terrified NPCs cower in fright, and so on and so on. This graphical addition is the same kind of subtle detail we seek out in the primary parts of the game, the writing and mechanics.

And sometimes it breaks...

But always looks awesome.

Our SquareEnix Collective campaign drawing to an end, may we turn your attention to the best sources of new information on Voiceless: the social media accounts---our Facebook, Twitter, and itch.io (demo) pages. Or simply join the mailing list and we will update you on anything Voiceless related. Go! Follow one (or all) of them!

Combat - We want battles to feature the nail-biting difficulty of old school JRPGs, where each dungeon is a task of endurance and the player will be perpetually challenged---and immensely satisfied at the moment of victory. We also want to eschew the tediousness and RNG-ness (and, one could say, poor design) of some of those old games that usually created the tension.

Our goal is three types of combat: 1) a new encounter--in which you play it safe to learn the enemy’s moveset; 2) known encounters (the majority)--in which you must balance your limited resources (HP, MP, items, etc.) to not only defeat foes, but stay well stocked for the rest of the dungeon; 3) and the JRPG staple--enemies that are so below your skill and level that you just mash Attack until defeated. Putting enemies on the map will let you choose your encounters more strategically--we don’t want crazy fights to constantly interrupt your exploration unless you want them to, and the rewards for victory will be all the sweeter.

Our six voiceless party members start off in typical roles for the player to mix and match their own party of four--we have your typical tank, DPS, healer, and a few that are in-between. Over a few short levels of choosing particular progression paths and seeing the range that’s possible, they can be molded to fit roles of your choice, so you can play them how you want them. While some combinations are more viable from the start--we want your strategic choices and skill to be what opens the door to all (sane) combinations being viable at the end. Your more “typical” tank may start as a tank, but by endgame he could be a master of inflicting damage and nasty statuses. Or maybe you’ve doubled down on the tank role and added a retribution aura and some potent healing abilities. Or heck, he may end up a mix of both if that’s how you like it.

The enemies you’ll encounter will cycle through their attacks (a la FF1), permitting the player to exploit their patterns--once you know them. However, while balancing each encounter is not too hard a process at low levels, as your custom party of four very customized heroes grows, our job gets harder; in fact, making bosses the right amount of tougher-than-you (yet winnable) becomes a logistical nightmare as we try to account for all the possibilities. That aspect of the game design will take up more of our time than any other. So give us some time (or your own excel sheet of balanced changes and we will think about merging it in--seriously).

Besides that, we continue to play with our stealth mechanics and provide you a 5th party member: Foxe himself. He may not be under your direct control, or on the front lines of battle, but where else should a master thief be than stealing items from enemies so you don’t have to waste a turn. And should those enemies run out of items--or if you equip Foxe differently--our mouth-running master thief is also capable of dealing out some extra damage (and not just he verbal kind) or applying potions in tight situations.

Other Platforms - One of the most intriguing responses we’ve been getting from you guys is the desire to play this game on the Nintendo Switch. We want that, too! In fact we REALLY want it. Heck, we’d love to see it on the PS4 and Xbox and 3DS. And it’s highly plausible given our understanding of Unity. The unfortunate problem: it would take a lot of dev-time (a year?) to move the engine over to Unity and then an additional eternity of troubleshooting and console-debugging. While it’s certainly not out of the cards, we do want to get Voiceless out to the public as soon as possible, and a PC release first is the best way to do that (key word being “first,” not only).

But if that’s really what you fellas want---and we want it too---we will let you tell us exactly that with our upcoming Kickstarter campaign. If that campaign proves successful enough, you decide the stretch goals: 1) upgrading to 16-bit art, 2) expanding our library of music tailored specifically for this game, and 3) getting this game on the Switch. Oh, and virtual hats, always more virtual hats.

Since this is my dev blog - I do really really (triple really) want to see this game on the Switch. It might be the perfect JRPG/casual/handheld console. However, working in software development with a multi-platform product... it is terrifying how differently (and sometimes terribly) different platforms work. We could see a bug free Voiceless release to PC by early next year - and in a perfect world port to unity and release to all platforms within the next year... but the requirements for consoles are so different than PC. PCs (usualy) have lots of RAM, beefy CPUs, and error eating that let games get by easy. Consoles... you have to have it run crash free for DAYS while someone tries to break it.... I don’t want crashes, but I don’t have the time to find and fix a bug that isnt reproducable that sometimes only ever happens on a device that is 12 years old and only 3 people have... not a fun bug/witch hunt.

To explain - no, there is no time - to sum up (best movie ever): I would love to spend the time to build a legit JRPG system on top of unity and see Voiceless ported to the world of consoles - but it would take a non-zero amount of time and monies... so.. I guess we let the people decide in the most democratic way ever - put your cash where your voice is with our kickstarter (coming soon to an internet near you).

#Voiceless #voicelcessjrpg #JRPG #indie #kickstarter #square enix collective #i hate bugs

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killapenguingaming-blog · 5 years ago

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Exploring Legend of Keepers, early access version 0.7.0.2

Legend of Keepers is one of the more recent early access games I've gotten my hands on, so it hasn't been neglected like some of the others I'll end up covering when time permits, but it has received a recent balance update that changes the flow of the game by making your opponents more dangerous. Changelogs make my eyes glaze over, though, so I jumped right in without knowing what had changed. It feels like heroes do less damage but have significantly more health in this latest version. There are also indicators to let you know if an attack's damage will be enough to kill or scare off a hero, which is a godsend since opponents are left with a barely perceptible sliver of health more often than you'd expect. Heroes having more health causes each dungeon to last a little longer as both sides exchange more attacks, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; many of the last version's dungeons were only fast because heroes could walk in and kill two-thirds of a room of monsters before they even had the chance to act. That happens less often now, though there are still at least one or two recurring heroes who are a giant difficulty spike capable of wiping out your team with ease. I captured that in the embedded video. Legend of Keepers only saves after a dungeon, so right now you can quit out if a strategy goes horribly awry and there's no chance of you surviving a group of heroes. So long as you quit to the menu before your dungeon master falls, you can restart it from the beginning and try different tactics. This is something I hope never changes. It makes learning how to play much easier. The video starts with me trying several different strategies against a group of heroes—who were supposed to be the easiest ones—with a B-team of monsters and no way of swapping the best ones in. My strategies failed over and over until I finally found one that (barely) worked. Then I went on to beat every other opponent in a single try. Part of the problem is roster-related; you have to pay money to refresh the merchant's monster list, so you won't always have a suitable backup team that complements your playstyle while your main team is sidelined. And sidelining them is borderline mandatory given how often your first team will die in a dungeon and have their morale drop. A cheaper way of finding the monsters you need for your playstyle would help to reduce the frustration since the RNG would revolve around upgrading them rather than finding them.

I ended up using a strategy as the enchantress that revolved around stacking poison on absolutely everyone. It started to get a little annoying how many heroes would show up who were immune to poison or all damage-over-time effects, but removing one or two of your three opponents makes a huge enough difference that I stuck with it anyway, using succubuses to maximize the number of poison stacks I could land before the heroes wiped out my team. Hiring a bunch of backup succubuses allowed me to adopt a glass cannon approach that I enjoyed. The strange thing is that the harder groups of heroes that supposedly provide better loot aren't noticeably better than the lowest-tier mob that I struggled with at the beginning of the video. You'd expect the lesser rewards to be accompanied by an easier mob, but they all seem to be roughly equivalent. Another thing I noticed is that you can hire more monsters than fit in the barracks screen, causing their details to freak out and flicker when you mouse over them (51:15). That's a very minor concern, though, and absent a way of getting rid of them that doesn't involve getting lucky with a random event, I prefer there not being a strict monster limit. Otherwise, it'd be far too easy to get stuck with a team of monsters you don't want. Lastly, I think there needs to be more of a payoff at the end. Yes, climbing the corporate ladder is nice, but I'm not sure that a one-size-fits-all reward hits the right note. Even a text-only epilogue describing the horrors your character goes on to visit on the innocent after getting promoted would feel like a more fulfilling sendoff. And can you imagine if the specific types of horrors depended on the monsters you used the most and how many opponents you killed versus scared? Like, succubuses would presumably cause a different kind of chaos than a bunch of skeletons. That might be wishful thinking, but it would add a ton of replay value by incentivizing you to experiment with different types of builds. Legend of Keepers is still addictive in its current form, though. Goblinz Studio are masters at making turn-based combat with lots of status effects. Read the full article

#LegendofKeepers

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onychaos · 7 years ago

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Dungeon Souls review

Let me talk about Dungeon souls, a rogue-like game made by Lamina Studios, Mike Studios.

Dungeon Souls is your run of the mill rogue-like game and what makes it stand out from the rest? I am here to tell you. Maybe. I don’t know but I am going to try anyway. :D

I’m Sonik and I will be your guide.

Dungeon Souls

Story

I will try to give you an idea of a story, though, there is not much here for one.

You have died in a dungeon that is part of a much bigger threat. Those who die in this dungeon are cursed to guard it in the afterlife against their will. That is, till you come along. You have died but was brought back to life to break the curse that the dungeon has placed on you and others and save the day or die trying.

That is what I get from playing Dungeon Souls. I am not sure there is a story but if not, you got one now. For free.

Gameplay

Dungeon Souls is your rogue-like game that will have different dungeon layouts every time you die, win or restart the level. It’s always a new change of pace

Dungeon Souls Archer

In Dungeon Souls, You can do a lot, it may not look like it but there is a lot to do.

In this game, you can level up as you play, earn money and pick up objects that can be used later. This is an RPG Rogue-like that lets you upgrade your character after a run has ended.

Passives and rank, Another feature that this game has. Passives are for all characters, That is a great thing to do.

Here are passives at max. (I played this game to death.) >_>

Passives give you an HP boost or make gold or gems or cash worth more

Dungeon Souls Maxed Passives

And as for ranks, I have beaten one character with all rank or 5 stars. Rank adds a permanent upgrade to your stats, like the passives they add a permanent upgrade to stats.

You can also craft items or gear or rare ingredients at Arcane Forge, which can be used to make weapons or gear that has a rare effect.

Which is cool to get an edge on your next run, to keep you alive when the going gets tough.

For the goal, you must work your way through the dungeon while getting stronger and upgrading yourself to stay alive. In each room, there are 2 levels then an area boss, you must beat to get to the next area to move on.

And let’s talk about game difficulty because BOY. This is where the game will test you

We have Easy

Dungeon Souls Easy mode

This is a difficulty that you NEED to play, if you are new. Trying to play on normal and it’s your first time, you are not going to have a fun time. TRUST ME.

Then we have Normal

Dungeon Souls Normal mode

This is what I feel you should play after you beaten Easy and unlocked a few items and got the hang of things. Mainly, the control and feel for the game. But this is base game difficulty but it’s fair after you mastered the basics.

Then we have Nightmare

Nightmare is where you must have learned and/or know the basics of the game, and have some luck on your side while knowing what items to pick up and leave. This is for those who want a real challenge when normal mode is not enough.

Now, you may ask “What is the last skull or difficulty?”

Do you like suffer in video games? If you said yes, I don’t know why you would say yes.

NANI?!?!?!

Well, here we are. Welcome to hell.

Dungeon Souls IMPOSSIBLE mode

The game has assumed you mastered everything the game has to offer. This is RNG Mode, in a sense that if you get bad drops or loot, your run may be over before it can start. This is a more of a Risk vs reward.

I should talk about the shop in Dungeon Souls.

Dungeon Souls Shopkeeper

Here, you are able to buy 1 item to help you out on your quest. Some items do stack which will make the item stronger or make its effect stronger or give it a higher % to activate.

Which is great to have. If you are playing on a harder mode.

I should talk about how you clear a level.

You start here

Dungeon Souls starting point

Each level has a X number of marks that you need to find and activate to clear the level and move on to the next one. If you get all the marks but take to long to leave the level. This guy will greet you.

He will come for you and steal your HP till you are dead. No, you don’t want to fight this bad boy.

My final thoughts

Dungeon Souls is a fun rogue-like that is deep with content and secrets, The game is fun and if you are into rogue-like games, you may like this. It’s no binding of Isaac, but for what it does, it does it well.

It stands out from your other rogue-like games and that is better than being a clone of another game. It’s a rogue-like that adds RPG elements to the mix which gives you a reason to replay the game over after you won or lost.

Dungeon Souls does have controller support but it feels like it was meant to be played on the keyboard. Don’t get me wrong, controller support is great… Unless you are attacking which, at that point, it feels like elements from “enter the Gungeon”, on how you attack, by holding the right analog stick to aim then press the button to attack/shoot.

Just a minor nitpick I have with the game.

The game is $12.99, It’s a fair price for what the game offers here. I did get this game via a steam key by Black Shell Media and I want to say that. This is what I think about the game.

As I am writing this, A bug with a patch or update has broken the game, making it unplayable by blocking off areas in some levels. I will say this, wait till the bugs are fixed then buy the game if you are into it.

UPDATE: The game has been fixed and updated. You can beat the game now with no problems.

But this was my thoughts/review on Dungeon souls. Worth the money or wait for a steam sale.

I’m Sonik and thanks for reading. :3

#dungeon souls #Lamina Studios #rogue-like #review #steam game #my posts #onychaos

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draco-omega · 8 years ago

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Just curious, but define what you personally consider as good examples of games with 'deep tactical combat'.

This turned out tobe a harder question to answer than I’d expected, and in attemptingto answer it, I realized that perhaps ‘deep tactical combat’ wasn’tthe best term to describe this in the first place – in many of thebest examples I can think of, it’s the interaction between thetactical and strategic layers that makes combat interesting.

Anyway, what I meanby ‘deep combat’ can be summed up by the following criteria:

You have a varietyof options

…that aremeaningfully different from each other

Deciding which ofthem is best to use at any given moment is non-trivial

Being more skillfulat making these decisions produces significantly better outcomes (ie:the game has a high skill ceiling)

But combat stillallows for flexible solutions, rather than requiring one fixedapproach

This can apply toboth reflex-oriented games as well as turn-based ones, though I tendto value this criteria more highly in turn-based games, sincedecision-making is all they have. If you look at combat a‘puzzle’ to be solved, then in a game without execution requirements,simply knowing a solution means there’s nothing left for theplayer to do – they can’t possibly fail at that point. And if thissolution was obvious, then there wasn’t much for them to do inthe first place. And if this same solution works over and over andagain, then a whole lot of the game is just going through themotions. (This is a problem a lot of jRPG combat suffers from.)

Now, not that everybattle needs to be a gruelling test of tactical decision-making, byany means! What I perhaps want more than sheer depth is 'engagement’:to feel that what I’m doing requires at least a little thought on anongoing basis and that the game rewards this thought. A certainnumber of straightforward battles between challenging ones isn’tshallowness, then – just good pacing.

Anyway, a few (somewhat arbitrary) examples of games with turn-based combat I have particularly enjoyed:

Dungeon Crawl StoneSoup

Roguelikes ingeneral tend to be great examples of the kind of meaningful tacticalcombat I’m talking about and Crawl is the roguelike I have spentby-far the most time with (at least 126 victories, by last count).

I admit a certain…hesitation to endorse it after my somewhat acrimonious departure fromthe devteam a few years ago, and there’s been a lot of changes to itsince then that I disagree with, but as of the last time I playedit, it had an enormously high skill ceiling and an immensevariety of viable character archetypes. And even for a character withno active abilities except 'bash weapon into enemy’, it stillprovides more meaningful decision-making in its first hour than manyRPGs might do over an entire game; positioning is vital – when andwhere to move – as is when to use your consumables and when to savethem, when to engage and when to retreat, and how to prepare yourcharacter for future threats.

Its difficulty curveis brutal to newcomers, unfortunately, and individual damage rollsare extremely high-variance. There’s honestly a lot of very validcomplaints that could be levelled at parts of it (I could write alist as long as my arm, myself), but make no mistake – no matterhow much randomness there is in the game, consistently good tacticaland strategic decisions is rewarded heavily, with expertplayers winning something like 100 times as often as averageplayers.

FTL: Faster thanLight

A roguelike of arather different stripe, FTL has achieved possibly the mostfinely-tuned resource system I’ve ever seen in a game. Scrap (ie:money) is the primary means to both repair and improve your ship andis vital to your success, but you never have as much of it as you’dlike, there’s always multiple valuable things to spent it on, and thegame is constantly forcing you to make hard decisions about where andwhen to use it; moreso than Crawl, this is a game about long-termplanning. Decision-making within individual combats is oftenrelatively straightforward until something goes amiss – butit will, and then how you choose to react can spell the differencebetween just a few points of hull damage or game over.

FTL’s greatest flaw,unfortunately, is that because so much of the depth comes froman accumulation of long-term decisions, many deaths often appear tobe the result of unkind RNG rather than player mistakes. “The gamethrew a ship at me that I simply couldn’t deal with and there wasnothing I could do.” And the truth is that you might well be right– in that specific battle, there was no viable way for youto have won, but that was only because you played less well inprevious battles andtherefore suffered more hull damage than necessary which meant thatyou couldn’t afford to buy that burst laser 2 from the shop whichmeant you were underequipped for the next sector and took even moreunnecessary damage, etc, etc.

But despite howrandom it feels when you’re new, multiple people have managedwin-streaks of 26+ on the highest difficulty, so good decision-makingis very much rewarded and I recommend the game very highly if youlike that sort of thing; it’s extremely well-designed.

Touhou Labyrinth 2

An oldschooldungeon-crawler with menu-based combat. And yes, this is a Touhoufangame, but even if you don’t care one whit about Touhou, Igenuinely consider this to be one of the very best examples of deepand engaging jRPG-style combat, bar none. Okay, the random encountersare a bit mindless, but the bosses are really good – seriously.

Different bossesrequire different approaches and sometimes entirely different teamcompositions, and from moment to moment, it’s non-obvious what thecorrect action is (something jRPGs almost never manage).

The core of why thisachieves so much more combat depth than its brethren is in the partyswitching system. While only 4 party members are 'active’ in combatat any given moment, your total party size is a whopping 12characters. You can freely swap a front-line character with one inreserve on any character’s turn and the game makes this an integralpart of actually winning. Each individual character’s repertoire islimited, so you’ll need to swap people to access different abilities,but characters in reserve also cannot be attacked and actuallyregenerate mp. So you might need to swap damage-dealers whenone runs out of gas to let the first recover or you might need tohide someone in reserve to prevent them being killed, and you’lloften need to weigh the value of one character acting nowversus using their turn to switch some in some othercharacter to act later. It can get pretty tense!

There’s also a hugeroster, tons of character-customization and the game also has somegreat quality of life features like free reallocation of characterskill points in town, full exp sharing with all members not in yourcurrent party, the ability to voluntarily cap your own party’s levelfor 'challenges’. The dungeon design is not as good as EtrianOdyssey, unfortunately, but I would say the combat’s actually muchbetter. Highly recommended if you like that sort of thing.

Genius of Sappheiros

What, another Touhoufangame? Hey, I can’t help if it they somehow keep managing toproduce better combat than mainstream RPGs. >.>

It has a smallerroster than Touhou Labyrinth and more conventional core mechanics,but the characters and their abilities are also more differentiatedfrom one another other. And it earns its place on this list for thesimple reason that there were so many boss battles where myfirst encounter with them ended with 'Okay, that’s impossible’ butafter staring at my team’s ability list for a while, I managed tocobble together a roster that succeeded in overcoming them withoutneeding to gain a single extra level (and this was never the samesetup for any two bosses). Any jRPG that so repeatedly lets carefulstrategic choices overcome giant numerical handicaps wins huge pointsin my book. It also strikes this nice balance where you never seem tohave quite enough room in your roster to fit in all the skillsyou want to have (ie: hard choices). The plot’s mostly garbage,though.

Brogue

The only otherroguelike I’m going to bother to mention by name, though essentiallyany quality example from the genre will have deep combat. Brogue is afar more streamlined experience than Crawl and some of its design iswonderfully put together. Success and failure is very much aboutmaking the most of the tools you find scattered around the dungeon,and a lot of these items can be character-defining. Weapons types arehighly differentiated from each other, consumables are powerful andallow for a variety of creative-yet-intuitive uses (like hurling apotion of incineration at a bridge to burn it out from underneath themonster standing on it), and the differing selection of tools eachrun forces you to think on your feet.

The food clock’s abit tight for my tastes and the game feels less consistently winnablethan Crawl to me, though I’m hardly an expert and there’s a lot ofgreat design in there.

…and I thinkthat’s quite enough words on the topic for now. I hope that atleast somewhat answers your question! (If you even bothered to readall of this :P)

#Draco Replies Entirely Too Thoroughly #Game Design #Kinda?#Anonymous #DCSS #FTL: Faster Than Light #Touhou Labyrinth #Genius of Sappheiros #Brogue

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Interview — David Walgrave Shares Game Details and Reflects on Obtaining the IP from Wizards of the Coast

February 27, 2020 4:15 PM EST

After getting a look at Baldur’s Gate 3, we chatted with Larian Studios about what to expect from this long-awaited sequel.

After watching a three-hour presentation on an alpha build of Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 at a preview event in San Francisco, I had the privilege of interviewing Larian senior producer David Walgrave about the Dungeons and Dragons-based RPG which Larian plans on releasing in early access this year.

We chatted about everything; from the game’s tone, inspiration, and relation to previous Baldur’s Gate titles, to the implementation of the Dungeons and Dragon‘s tabletop elements and rulebook. I also asked Walgrave questions about the gameplay I saw, including information on the game’s multiplayer and difficulty settings. Ultimately, the game holds very true to the lore, creativity, and RNG elements that characterize Dungeons and Dragons.

Josh Starr: Both the Baldur’s Gate and Divinity: Original Sin series are regarded as definitive CRPG experiences, but are still quite different games. How much are you looking to reconcile the Larian style with long-time Baldur’s Gate fans? Are you trying to go for a middle ground, opting for something more akin to BioWare’s work, or sticking with what Larian knows and does well?

David Walgrave: Oh, wow. So, obviously we know our own strengths and weaknesses, and we always take our strengths into the next game we develop. So, over the last 10 or so years, there have been certain pieces of technology and philosophy that we identify as core Larian and take into our next project. For example, when it comes to technology, a lot of stuff in our games follow systemics, so it’s really more of a simulation than anything else. We used to do this because we were a very small team, and if you work with systemics, you get a lot of gameplay for free. But we started noticing that a lot of this free gameplay was also creating a lot of fun, and creating a lot of different experiences for different players. So, everyone that was talking to each other about our games had different stories, which is really cool. So, that’s technology.

The way that we organize dialogues from a technical point of view has also been kind of the same for the last couple of years. There is some technology that we have and reuse, and there is also some philosophy that we have and reuse.

One philosophy we call N-plus-one design. This means that if there is a door that’s closed, you need to be able to open it in different ways. You can burn it down, you can start hacking it down, or you can just open it with a key if you find a key. But then a designer will say, “What if the key got lost?” Then you need to be able to unlock the door. “But what if you don’t have lockpicks?” Well, you can maybe jump over it, or maybe you can teleport through it with a spell. We always think of different ways to approach things. Not just doors, also quests. We even stopped calling quests, “quests” because we think of a quest as a simple task like, “Hey, I lost my boots, can you please get my boots?” We don’t do that anymore. We call them situations. That’s from a design philosophy point of view.

“…we started noticing that a lot of this free gameplay was also creating a lot of fun, and creating a lot of different experiences for different players. So, everyone that was talking to each other about our games had different stories, which is really cool.”

So, there is a lot of Larian that’s going to be in Baldur’s Gate 3. On the other hand, we also like Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, and certain things that they did in them. They did things that we have been trying for the last few years to do ourselves. For instance, if you like Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, what you will recognize is not just the Dungeons and Dragons terminology, vocabulary, and ruleset, but also the emphasis on your character, the emphasis on the party, the emphasis on your companions, and the emphasis on how they react to things that you do, how they react to each other, and the relationship between them.

One of the biggest things that we think Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 players still remember is all of the different companions that can join you. They have very outspoken personalities, and they also react to each other in specific ways. That is something from the originals that we really really wanted to have in Baldur’s Gate 3.

JS: I’d like to touch a bit more on the relationships between characters. In the gameplay presentation we saw, I noticed that many of the characters developed gripes with each other or with the player-controlled-character. To what degree can you improve or destroy the relationships you have with your companions?

DW: Completely. They might start attacking you, which is not actually that bad, because if they attack you then they are still part of the party, I think. But they also might just leave your party, and then they are gone. Meanwhile, on the other end, when they really like you, and the choices you make, there are romance options. So, you can go to the extreme in either direction.

JS: While we are talking about characters, fans have, of course, been asking about the whereabouts of Minsc and Boo, and if they’ll return. Are there any other favorite characters you’d particularly like to bring into Baldur’s Gate 3?

DW: Well, I know that our writers are planning to have cameos with characters that you will recognize from either the previous games or from The Forgotten Realms novels. I have my own personal favorites, but I don’t know if they’ll make it into the game or not.

JS: Have you spoken to any of the original BioWare or Black Isle teams about concepts, and how you might best approach development on a new title? Are any of those developers involved? Are there any plans or considerations to involve the Bhaalspawn or Bhaal, or do you plan to tell a story of your own within the setting?

DW: No, we haven’t. With Baldur’s Gate 3, we are creating a story completely of our own in the Baldur’s Gate setting.

JS: With the game being a story of Larian creation, would you say the tone of the game is leaning more towards Divinity or Baldur’s Gate? There’s body horror present in the reveal cinematic, but are you intending to make a darker game than before? What kind of humor, if any?

DW: I think, and it should have become clear from the game’s intro movie, that it’s a pretty dark tone. We also think that it’s full of serious topics; we said this about [Divinity] Original Sin 2, and I think that in Original Sin 2, we introduced pretty serious topics. I think that Baldur’s Gate 3, because of the setting, characters, and themes that we are trying to include, it is going to be very serious and dark.

But as you may have noticed during the presentation, there is also still humor. However, it’s not the typical Larian humor anymore. This is a bit of a different thing. Also, because it’s Forgotten Realms, it has its own lore, it has its own stories and backgrounds, and we’ve got to keep those; we are trying to keep the tone of Baldur’s Gate.

JS: How does the music and art direction complement the dark tone and themes? Are they key things that you try to include early, or something you fit into a developed framework?

DW: I am a producer, so I don’t know too much about art direction. But when it comes to art direction, we do have photogrammetry in the engine now, so the art direction is very realistic when it comes to nature: rocks, trees, and all that. We are also trying to put realism into everyone’s armor and weaponry. So, I think our art direction from the beginning has really been more realistic.

Music is only written after we finish a certain part of the world, and then designers and writers talk to the composer and discuss what is happening in every small region of the world. Then he starts composing stuff that really fits into that section of the world. But music is also very dynamic, so when combat starts the music changes. If you’re losing a battle, music changes. When you’re sneaking, music changes. So, it’s very involved.

“With Baldur’s Gate 3, we are creating a story completely of our own in the Baldur’s Gate setting.”

JS: How connected are you intending to make the plot of Baldur’s Gate 3 with prequel tabletop module Descent into Avernus?

DW: Very, because everything that Wizards of the Coast writes concerning D&D rules or Forgotten Realms lore is something that we need to know. We need to make sure that we don’t do anything within the game that contradicts the lore. It also makes a lot of sense, not just from a writing point of view, but also from a consumer point of view for Wizards, that what we put into the game is very recognizable.

In Descent into Avernus, something that’s currently happening is that the Tieflings are now refugees and they are fleeing to Baldur’s Gate. Within the gameplay presentation, you could see the Tiefling refugee camp that we explored. That’s something that came directly out of Descent into Avernus.

JS: In general, when people see a new game released with a numbered title, that can be very daunting for potential new players. What is Larian doing to make Baldur’s Gate 3 more attractive and accessible to a new audience?

DW: Obviously, you don’t have to play Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2. Though, it is a sequel. The 5th edition ruleset of D&D in Baldur’s Gate 3 is 100 years after what happened in Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, so people in the game know that as history. But as a player yourself, you don’t really need to know any of it.

To make sure young people play it, we’ve made the game look very nice. When I first saw these numbers, they were a bit shocking to me because, for some reason, I kept thinking we were making RPGs only for thirty and forty-plus-year-old people. But most of the people that are playing our games are in their twenties. I think that’s because we are using a tried and true formula, and we are introducing it to a new audience. We are trying to make sure that our game looks attractive, that it looks nice, that it looks 21st-century, that it looks appealing.

With Baldur’s Gate 3, when you see the cinematics or something like that, you’re immediately drawn to it. What 20-year-old people might not want to play is RPGs that still look and feel like it’s 1998. There are things that we love from the ’80s and the ’90s, and we are putting those elements into our game, but it’s 2020, and we want to make the game look like it’s from 2020. There are more than 300 people working on this game, and it needs to be a triple-A experience. So, if we limited our audience to this group of 42-plus-year-old-people, then we would have a very small audience.

JS: That tried and true formula you just mentioned is, of course, the Dungeons and Dragons formula, and it’s been stated Larian has been making an interpretation of D&D rather than a straight port of the tabletop systems. With that said, how are you adjusting that formula for the game? How many of the options for races, classes, abilities, etc. are you trying to include? And what kind of flexibility are you hoping to incorporate?

DW: We are actually trying to implement the D&D ruleset as close to the literal meaning as possible. I think that if you know D&D and you play our game, you will recognize about 95% of everything that’s in it. However, some things just don’t work in a computer game, so we approach them from a different angle so that it is still in the game, but in a slightly altered form that works in the game’s format.

For instance, one of the things that we don’t do from the 5th edition is called reactions. When I say we don’t do it, I mean that they are in the game, but not in the way they are in the handbook. When you’re playing tabletop, you actually interrupt someone else’s turn and say, ” I am going to play a reaction.” We don’t do that because that would take the speed out of the combat. We are always trying to make turn-based actually as fast as possible.

However, reactions are in the game, they’re just automatically executed. For instance, if an attack of opportunity triggers, your character will just automatically attack of opportunity. So, the thing is still in there, but we might have changed it a tiny bit.

There are things that we left out. But usually, that’s just magic spells that are simply too wild because Dungeons and Dragons is so free-form and out there. There is a spell called “Wish” where you can make any wish. You could just tell your dungeon master, “I wish I was a pigeon.” You can come up with crazy ideas. We didn’t put that in. Sometimes, we did put it in, but we just thought of the five most-wanted options.

JS: Touching more on what you were just talking about with spells and game balance, when balancing the power of player abilities and classes, do you try to keep things relatively even, or are you okay with disparities? Lots of options with some better or less situational than others, or a more tightly curated variety?

DW: We are implementing things based on how they are in the book. So, if they are a bit skewed in the book, then that’s how we are going to implement them. What we are trying to do is make sure that every class is a lot of fun, and has many different and unique ways to have fun. For example, implementing the fighter in a computer game is a bit of a challenge because we want them to still have interesting choices to make.

“We are actually trying to implement the D&D ruleset as close to the literal meaning as possible. I think that if you know D&D and you play our game, you will recognize about 95% of everything that’s in it.”

JS: In the gameplay I saw today, I noticed the game seemed very difficult. Swen appeared to be struggling at points, even though he’s played this segment dozens of times, and already knows many of the different environmental combos. Are there different difficulty options available or is it meant to be a learning experience where you adjust after developing more knowledge?

DW: We will have difficulty settings available. We always do that because as difficult as the game sometimes seems, some people think that they can really cheese anything. Because of the way that the systems and simulations work, you can really use the game against itself. So, some people are really good at that and then start saying, “The game is way too easy because there is so much stuff that I can abuse.” But we really like the fact that people can abuse the systems against themselves. It’s part of what makes the game so cool. But there will also be a story mode difficulty so that you can go through the story without having too much trouble during combat.

JS: During the presentation, there were also a few brief mentions of the multiplayer mode. Could you describe that mode a bit more, and specifically how it differs from the single-player experience?

DW: There are two different types of multiplayer when you start a game. Let’s say you’ve been playing for half an hour or 17 hours or whatever. Your friends can just drop in and out, and they’ll take control of one of your party members. This is very nice because the hard thing about multiplayer is if you always need to start on time, and someone can’t make it that night, then you’re kinda stuck. So, that’s one possibility. Then you also have multiplayer where you say, “Okay, let’s take on the game together from the start.” So, you and your friends – up to four people – basically start together in character creation, choose your characters, and play from there.

In multiplayer, you can basically do all of the same things that you’ve seen. You don’t have to stick together, but it’s recommended because combat is going to be pretty hard. You can do all sorts of things behind everyone’s back. If you’re the first person to start talking to someone, you might have a certain impact on the entire world and the others in the group don’t have a say about that.

Multiplayer within our previous games was actually very popular because you are in a party, and if you have a party member that’s not agreeing with you, you can actually help each other in combat because you both think differently. Multiplayer for us is a big deal because even if you just prefer single-player, all of the things that we are doing to make multiplayer work actually have a positive impact on the single-player campaign because of all of the different ramifications that we thought of. So, we have a convenient drop-in option, as well as a more traditional group D&D experience available.

“I didn’t know if we ever thought we would land the IP because we asked Wizards of the Coast five years ago, and they said, ‘No.’”

JS: From everything I’ve seen, you guys have created a video game that is very true to the D&D formula. Earlier you stated that you guys were creating your own entirely new story. So, what influenced you guys to use the Baldur’s Gate name in the game? Did you have a specific story idea in that universe? Are you guys big fans of the games?

DW: I think that Baldur’s Gate 3, for all of the RPG developers in the world, is like the golden grill. A lot of people have been asking for it, like, “We want to do it, can we please do it.” So, it’s not strange that it’s something we wanted to do, but we knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I didn’t know if we ever thought we would land the IP because we asked Wizards of the Coast five years ago, and they said, “No.”

So, at first, they said no, and then we released Original Sin 2. They played it themselves, and they really liked it. They liked it because they thought that it was a computer game where the freedom of creativity in Dungeon and Dragons really came forward. So, they said, “If anyone can make a D&D game like Baldur’s Gate 3, it’s you guys.” Then they said, “It’s okay, you can do Baldur’s Gate 3.”

We actually work together with them on writing the story. So, Swen came up with the main idea that you have a tadpole in your head and your going to turn into a Mindflayer, but for very big decisions we talk to Wizards of the Coast.

Larian has announced that Baldur’s Gate 3 will enter early access in 2020 before it has its full launch on PC marketplaces and Google Stadia. This isn’t shocking, as they took advantage of early access to help finetune their more recent games like Divinity Original Sin 2.

Editor’s Note: All images were provided by Larian. Some portions of this piece have been edited for clarity’s sake.

February 27, 2020 4:15 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/baldurs-gate-3-interview-david-walgrave-shares-game-details-and-reflects-on-obtaining-the-ip-from-wizards-of-the-coast/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=baldurs-gate-3-interview-david-walgrave-shares-game-details-and-reflects-on-obtaining-the-ip-from-wizards-of-the-coast

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dewprisms · 5 years ago

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Ok starting ReMind liveblogging now

please have your tags filtered

Ok....if ur on mobile sorry for long post?

😍😍😍😍😍😍 there he is, first again!

Xig: “oh my god shut up.”

the xiglux content I wanted

nowkiss.png

Honestly.....Nomura did always say Luxord was his favorite way back in Days....so no surprise he’s getting a bigger role too

OOOOO he’s so cute when he’s pouting 😍😍😍😍😍

So....this is Xehanort’s trip mentioned in his reports? But...

I’m so confused, this is Xehaort before he was “corrupted” but he’s.....is this taking place in the past instead? Why is the Master there in the past if he wasn’t suppose to be around til after the war?

Ooooh yeah that’s Christopher Lloyd alright...I like his voice more, sorry Hauer :/

It’s really weird just hearing them officially refer to them as “Riku Replica” instead of “the riku replica,” “young xehanort” and so on...

So we have a reason for WHY Xion was chosen but not HOW and also why SHE agreed to it...

*weird cat noises*

oh OH The. The Sleeping Realm theory got part of it right????

Oh they’re actually explaining THAT weird scene

ARE WE GONNA GET CANON STATIONS FOR EACH GUARDIAN???

oh shit, Darkness?? THAT Darkness???

The...Dark Inferno again?

This was much easier this time...

Oh shit we are! Why....is Xehanort and Vanitas there in Aqua’s but not Eraqus?

uh...Light Form > Darkqua...

Ugh...I’m gonna have to read a recap of this cause I’m still confused....

DO I GET TO PLAY AS LINGERING WILL???

nvm he died :/ that’s extremely disappionting

Lemme....play as Mickey here....please... :/

Whyyyyy are we redoing the fights? Most of us replayed the game just before the DLC dropped :/ I just finished it YESTERDAY

WHAT....Why do I get the option between Sora and Riku but not Sora and Mickey????? HE WAS PLAYABLE IN KH2!!

Wait...Xigbar’s dying phrase was different...I couldn’t hear what he said but I know it was different because it was shorter

DEMYX I KNOW YOU’RE THE MASTER

Oh my god he has a gummiphone....from Ienzo....Zemyx is canon......

“If you damage Namine’s vessel I’m gonna beat the shit out of you.”

Did...did they fix...oh my god they fixed Vanitas’s voice to be less gravely

I’m confused, so Vanitas isn’t really Ven? So is he actually Darkness then?

Aww I don’t get to play as Ven :(

Wow ok Terranort/Vanitwas was hard, mostly the former, wth

Oof Vanitas’s voice uses the old voice clip here :/

LOL I completely forgot about the earlier new terranort scene

Oh...yet again Eraqus is missing from a Station of Awakening??? that’s his dad! why is there so much Eraqus erasure? It’s kinda annoying

Ok so the Toy Story thing was connected to Xion after all.

So...is this a plan by Saix to bring Xion back then or just coincidence? Seems like it, Saix is getting mad that Lea isn’t remembering

Booooo fuck off Sora let me play as Lea now since Kairi is later

Riku is in Roxas’ Station but not Namine? Ok....wait why did Xion disappear from it just now?

oh shit Kairi vs Xemnas, no wonder he took her

Oh neat, Roxas is still OP

....So “Roxas” was actually Sora possessing his vessel? Or...

Oooooh the light is Sora possessing each of them

Man I’m getting a loooooooot of max MP increases, which is fine by me since I picked Mystic/Wisdom and spam Firaga in boss fights

They....redubbed Xehanort’s speech before the Nort Court but not Vanitas’s lines? The uh, lines by Lloyd don’t quite match up with the movements. Ok they even redubbed his lines during the fight too. Can they just...have him redub the rest of the base game lines too?

Ansem, you have depression

Still don’t care about Xemnas, it’s ya own damn fault you bitch

S....So Kairi didn’t die after all? If he just crystalized her then why do all this??

Doesn’t he still need 2 more hearts befre he can find Kairi though? He only has 5.

I thought I somehow missed this chest twice, but no, I get to actually explore Scala now

Oh no....they added like 10 chests....I must have their contents...nvm most of them suck

Lol....Sora isn’t even in Riku’s Station

This is interesting. Don’t like how the 2 girls and Mickey are relegated to Defense though :/

Oh god, Ven and Roxas talking to each other

Mickey in the with save!

the return of MickeyRiku

Donald and Goofy didn’t get to do anything huh

playing as kairi and roxas was super fun, riku and aqua not so much. the team attack sphere thing was kinda neat.

Chirithy: *Sees Sora and Kairi holding hands* “Uh oh, that’s dirty...”

But...does Ven even remember Chirithy?

Oh my god...they’re just going on a bunch of dates now 😭

SORA’S BEEN DEAD FOR A YEAR?!

KAIRI’S BEEN IN A FUCKING COMA?!?

This is so funny....considering I didn’t.. actually... do the original Data Fights 😥😥😥

i gave up on xion, so i know i wouldn’t be able to do master xehanort. only xigbar and marluxia were any fun. several, many, tons of times i came very close to breaking something. who in the hell thought making fights this hard on the standard difficulty was a good idea? if people want to have a rough time they’ll play fucking critical mode. don’t gatekeep the goddamn story behind rng bosses with ridiculous mechanics and a shitty camera.

the bad end of the secret episode surprised me. i don’t care one bit about yozora so....idc about this otherwise.

this wasn’t worth $30. Just go watch the scenes on youtube and spare yourself and your wallet. Most of the good shit was in the free update anyway.

#kh3 spoilers /#remind spoilers /#kh3 reminder spoilers /#kingdom hearts spoilers /#kingdom hearts 3 spoilers /#kingdom hearts 3 remind spoilers /#playing: kingdom hearts

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waynekelton · 6 years ago

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Essential DOTA Underlords Tips

The battle for Auto Chess supremacy is now firmly underway, and the war has spread to mobile devices quite quickly. You’ll have seen our round-up of Auto Chess-like games available on the various App Stores, which included DOTA Underlords.

At the time of writing it was still in closed beta, but now the game is out in the wild and available to anyone who’s interested in trying the format out, but doesn’t want to deal with potential knock-offs or clones. Now, a point of order: This isn’t DOTA Auto Chess, or the mobile spin off known simply as Auto Chess (Origin), from original creators Drodro Studio.

This is a separate game from Valve, based on the original Dota Auto Chess mod, but built by an entirely separate team inside Valve. It also isn’t part of DOTA 2, like the original mod was, but a standalone free to play game on both PC and mobile. Totally not confusing at all.

When it comes to Underlords anyone familiar with Auto Chess is going to feel very comfortable, as they share an awful lot of similarities. It’s effectively the same game, just with a ton of UI improvements, systems to make it easier to play and understand, and a few other tweaks here and there. But those tweaks can catch you out, and if this is your first Auto Chess rodeo then you are probably going to be more than a little confused.

Don't worry, we have the ultimate guide to everything you are going to need to know to master DOTA Underlords:

DOTA Underlords Basics

First and most importantly, don't feel pressured into trying to learn this on the fly with real players online. Unlike Auto Chess, Underlords not only has a more robust tutorial, but there's also a Soliatire mode where you can play against AI opponents. You can set the difficulty between Easy, Medium, Challenging and Hardcore, and you can even enable an option to disable the round timers so you can take your time and play at your own pace. Matches can be paused and even left, so you can come back to them later (or switch to PC - see below). Don't get too used to this though - live multiplayer games are kept to strict timers, so you'll need to learn how to make decisions quickly.

In DOTA Underlords you face off against seven other players to build a roster of heroes who will battle it out effectively until the death. You buy the heroes you want, position them on the board and then let them fight it out against one of the other players in the game while you sit back and watch the carnage unfold. Lose a fight and you’ll take damage, win and you’ll stay healthy. Once a player has lost all their health they are knocked out of the game, and the last surviving player is the winner.

When building your roster you’re going to have to consider Alliances, buffs to your heroes or debuffs to your opponents, which can be earned by having multiple heroes with same Alliance types on your board. For example, if you have three Mages then your opponent will have reduced magic resistance. So combining Alliances is really the only way to win.

You’ll also get gold that can be used to buy your heroes and upgrade them should you get three of the same hero at the same level, so three level ones become a level two, and three level twos become a level three. And gold is used to level up, allowing you to put more units on the board.

Auto Chess vs. DOTA Underlords

There’s a ton of smaller differences between DOTA Underlords and the mod it was based on, Auto Chess, but there are a few that are very significant. Perhaps the biggest is the new item system. Instead of creep rounds just dropping items you get a choice of three items if you win the creep round, or just one should you lose, although creeps are way easier to beat now. Choose the items that play into your strats, otherwise you’ll be stuck with a buff to Hunters when you have none on the board.

Global items are also a new addition, these items are not equipped by a hero, but instead augment all your heroes of a certain Alliance. Some add new abilities, such as heroes exploding when they die, and others are buffs such as extra magic resistance for your team. Most are very useful if the RNG is kind and you get one that suits your strategy.

Other smaller tweaks such as new hero abilities, or the fact that interest is locked at the start of a round instead of the end of a round are significantly smaller changes that you probably don’t need to worry about until you have the basics mastered.

Underlords Strategies

In what can only be described as the biggest shock the world has seen since High School Musical not being nominated for an Oscar, Valve is listening to the community and shipping near daily patches for Underlords. So if we were to tell you Mages are really strong right now, (which they are), then there’s a good chance they will have been nerfed into the ground within a day or two.

But there are a few things worth keeping in mind. Generally speaking you’re going to want to heavily focus on one Alliance, usually one of the larger ones with many heroes, and then try and finish off a few others when you have spare unit slots on your board. Trying to go all in on Blood-Bound or Shaman units probably isn’t going to work out too well but grab a couple of them alongside another main Alliance, such as Mages, and you have a nice bonus to play with.

Some alliances provide global effects regardless of unit type, like ‘Savage’, which gives a 10% attack damage boost to every piece on your board, or ‘Warlock’ which gives all allies a Lifesteal chance. We’re also a fan of the ‘Elusive’ alliance, because the more of these pieces you have, the higher the evasion boost bonus is. Being able to evade attacks means your pieces have the chance to survive longer, generate more mana, and fire off their abilities more often.

You are also going to have to consider your positioning, a lot. Sticking weaker units in the line of fire is going to see them killed instantly and you probably coming out with a loss. However, put them behind some tanky units who will take the aggro first and you are onto a winner. You’ll also want to use the edges of your board to your advantage in some situations. Assassin units can instantly jump into your backlines at the start of a round, but box in your squishy damage dealers with tanks and the edge of the board and they won't be able to reach them.

You’ll also want to think about putting units that need mana to hit their abilities somewhere where they can dish out and take some damage so they can get that ability off before they die. There’s no real right or wrong way to position most of the time, so play around with it, but always be thinking about it, and in the later stages position to counter your opponent’s boards (which you can see by tapping on their box on the leaderboard.)

Other top tips:

Don’t be afraid to change Alliances on the fly. Sure you may have started out with a good run of Scrappy units, but if you suddenly get the chance to switch into Assassins, and that seems like it will be better at winning the game then go for it. You’re rarely locked into a strategy until the late game starts. And don’t stick with an Alliance just because you got an early global item for it, forcing into Demon Hunters and Demons because you got the Strange Bedfellows item early isn’t always a great move, if the units just aren't there for you.

Tapping on the right hand side of an entry in the kill feed at the top of the screen will “YO!” that item and send an audible “Yo” to opponents. It serves basically no point, but it's fun to try and get into opponent’s heads by yo-ing everything they do.

You get one gold interest at the end of every round for every 10 gold you have when it starts. So if you start the round with 10 gold you’ll get an extra gold at the end of it. Start with 20 and you’ll get 2 gold, and so on. This is however capped at 5 gold, so holding onto more than 50 gold is rarely worth it. Spend that cash, up your level or try and grab some new heroes and you’ll still be making maximum dollar.

And finally, you can switch mid game between mobile and PC. So if you decide to kick things off on the PC version and then nature calls, you can simply grab your iOS or Android device and continue playing while on the toilet. Then you can even come back to the PC version when you are done. The future really is great, isn’t it?

Let us know if you have any other questions or need further help getting to grips with DOTA Underlords. The AutoChess genre is a fascinating new archetype and we hope it flourishes on mobile, so expect to see more like this in the weeks and months to come!

Essential DOTA Underlords Tips published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

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