What game are you playing?

[Tinky Winky]

Mages are also too OP

Fits the theme of the books then

Mages are so OP in the sequel that they basically render James and Solon irrelevant other than being meat shields. You'd also need speed hack since the combat is so slooooow it's unbearable.

[rusty_shackleford]

I ruined betrayal at krondor for myself because I was just wandering around the entire map in the first chapter and got bored but I probably should have just did the story

[Classix]

Been playing some "Legend Bowl" at night with D2 amongst some AG games ( on to Amberland now ). Had a team based on the 'Mud Dogs' from the "Water Boy" movie. Team name is set to Missouri Mud Dogs and not 'Louisiana' as is in the movie as a family friend has moved to there so I changed the name. First season; lost in the finals but won the 'Legend Bowl ( Championship )' in season 2, on 3 at the moment. Thinking I might make a new season with players from the HQ here with a name, field and uniform design to fit when I can. sPoRrTs BaLl !

► Show Spoiler

legend_bowl_3.png

legend_bowl_2.png

legend_bowl_4.png

[KnightoftheWind]

Playing through "The Darkness II" now, as well Final Fantasy VII on-and-off. The Darkness II is a very enjoyable FPS, with an entertaining plot and cast of characters, including some attractive female ones, back when western devs were SHOCKINGLY allowed to include such things. It's a very visceral game, with you controlling a demonic entity with tentacle or hydra-like appendages that you use to slash at enemies and eat their hearts to regain health or ammo, as well as snatch various objects from the environment to act as makeshift shields or to throw at enemies. You are also forced to shoot out lights to ensure the "darkness" won't go away, and leave you vulnerable to enemy gunfire without a way to heal yourself. Typical two-weapon limit like most FPS titles of the era, but like the Halo Trilogy you can also dual wield them which is cool. It's a solid experience all around so far, and has a cozy comic-like aesthetic and tone that you never see anymore. So far it's a 7/10 for me, definitely recommend it.

As for Final Fantasy VII, it's...surprisingly **** enjoyable so far, and that's something I thought I would never say. I HATE turn-based JRPGs, but something about this seems to intrigue me so far. Maybe it's the pre-rendered environments and how dynamic and funny the characters are. There's always something happening around you, which is such an improvement on all the 16-bit JRPGs I've attempted in the past, which were very static and dull aside from Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG. There's very clearly a generational leap between this and what came before, and I as the most casual of players of this particular genre can see it. It reminds me a lot of Paper Mario 64/TTYD in some ways, which is why I'm enticed to play. I like games with a lot of personality, even ones in genres I normally dislike.

Darkness 2 is fun, but aside from being on PC it's inferior to Darkness 1 in every way.
Darkness 3 never ever.

I was looking to start with the first game of course, but I quickly found out it was a console exclusive. Just another reason to hate those shitboxes, I suppose.

[Tinky Winky]

Finished the unmodded Oblolivion for the first time in 10.5 hours, not the objectively worse cRPG I've ever played but all the criticism 'codex has is still valid. The level scaling is indeed **** though, but it also allows me to focus on the main quest (which is also the most reasonable thing to do btw).

[KnightoftheWind]

Beat "The Darkness II". Not much else to say as it's a consistent experience throughout, and enjoyable for what it is. Although there were instances where I wanted to eat hearts off dead bodies on the ground to recover my health, and ended up changing weapons instead, which is never good. But a solid 7/10 for me, short and sweet. The game does end on a cliffhanger however, and seeing as there hasn't been a peep on a potential "Darkness III" in 13 years, and seeing as the industry is collapsing before our very eyes, it'll never be resolved. I look forward to playing the original game though, if Nightdive is indeed working on a remaster of it.

[Rienen]

Been playing some "Legend Bowl" at night with D2 amongst some AG games ( on to Amberland now ). Had a team based on the 'Mud Dogs' from the "Water Boy" movie. Team name is set to Missouri Mud Dogs and not 'Louisiana' as is in the movie as a family friend has moved to there so I changed the name. First season; lost in the finals but won the 'Legend Bowl ( Championship )' in season 2, on 3 at the moment. Thinking I might make a new season with players from the HQ here with a name, field and uniform design to fit when I can. sPoRrTs BaLl !

► Show Spoiler

Have you tried College Bowl? I'm curious if the dynasty mode is worth the price of admission for someone who enjoys the recruiting and team-building aspect of CFB games more than the on-the-field gameplay.

[Classix]

Have you tried College Bowl? I'm curious if the dynasty mode is worth the price of admission for someone who enjoys the recruiting and team-building aspect of CFB games more than the on-the-field gameplay.

I have not but I'm aware of it. Will have to look into it more for the HQ Team playthrough I have in mind, maybe it's better for career/dynasty stuff. I did the 2 season run on Legend Bowl with myself, brother, cousins and a couple family friends along with Bobby Boucher and characters from the 'Mud Dogs' team from the movie and it went well as far as customization goes. A lot of options. Been thinking the last few days about making my own first thread for a 1 Season ( to start ) playthrough using HQ member names on here for a laugh. Maybe ask some people what position, number, and stat preference they want. Always busy with work trying to secure a house for my brother and I hopefully with the next year, so it's a bit much to put together like formatting and voting polls ( in my mind anyway ) for me right now but the ideas are flowing. Make it kind of like a 'Channel' one would subscribe to that's nothing but the RPGHQ team with Coach Rusty at the helm and make up some stuff along the way like mock interviews before the game, player drama and such. Lot of ideas, little time. About to work on some stuff for it shortly though.

[methoxetamine]

Been playing some "Legend Bowl" at night with D2 amongst some AG games ( on to Amberland now ). Had a team based on the 'Mud Dogs' from the "Water Boy" movie. Team name is set to Missouri Mud Dogs and not 'Louisiana' as is in the movie as a family friend has moved to there so I changed the name. First season; lost in the finals but won the 'Legend Bowl ( Championship )' in season 2, on 3 at the moment. Thinking I might make a new season with players from the HQ here with a name, field and uniform design to fit when I can. sPoRrTs BaLl !

► Show Spoiler

legend_bowl_3.png

legend_bowl_2.png

legend_bowl_4.png

This actually looks neat, I'm gonna try it out

[Classix]

This actually looks neat, I'm gonna try it out

Tutorial for dodges and jukes is important, make some notes to write down to remember them. Also jumping a missed tackle was not very important for me against the CPU, the spin/juke is far more useful. Good luck my man, maybe we'll see you in the team draft for the inaugural season when I get it going. : )

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Still going through Honkai Star Rail. I am finishing up the side storylines and events before jumping to the 3.X Amphoreus expansion, so the story and events writeup will be in a separate post.

I feel that the game does not seem to encourage using the debuffer/DoT class Nihility, and the tank/incoming damage reduction class Preservation very much, which is a shame.

► about party role design

You just need one healer in your party and you can get through almost every battle except the Doomsday Beast and Argenti (both of which were early on in the story), and the rest of your party does not particularly matter in terms of beating the game. Just fill in the other three slots with whoever you like. You can't go wrong. But if you want to get through fights faster, then you are probably going to have 1 to 3 damage dealers (Destruction/Hunt/Erudition) and maybe one or two buffers (Harmony).



Maybe it is because I have been using Hyacine who has a powerful teamwide heal skill and ultimate, in which case this is a powercreep character who makes preservation characters unnecessary. But my impression even from using Luocha and Gallagher (who only have the single target heal skills) in my alt parties for Pure Fiction/Memory of Chaos is that there is simply not that much incoming damage. And then in the roguelite endgame modes of Simulated Universe/Divergent Universe, you get to pick so many buffs and powers that can allow you to eviscerate enemies or make your team more durable. Ofcourse you can clear faster depending on your party and builds, but it doesn't feel like you can actually wipe and lose. I haven't unlocked Apocalyptic Shadow yet so IDK if there is a higher incoming damage there.




I think maybe the devs tuned incoming damage under the assumption that players should not be forced to need preservation characters. So the incoming damage is almost always able to be covered by just the one healer. And with the right buffs in SU/DU like the one that regens 30% of your max HP each time you weakness break or kill an enemy, you don't even need healers.




It is odd how every class except Preservation (and the new Remembrance pet class introduced in Amphoreus) has at least a dozen characters, but Preservation only has five, and the last one was introduced over a year ago. Amphoreus has had none yet, and according to the leaks for the next five upcoming characters over the next 30 weeks is, there is not one Preservation character (edit, new upcoming Dan Heng form is supposedly going to be Preservation). So perhaps the devs realized that there is no real need for preservation characters and/or saw their low usage rates, and just lost interest in creating new characters for that role. Or perhaps Mihoyo is unable to envision how to make "cool" preservation characters that will appeal to a lot of people, whereas it is easier to make a cool fighter who kills enemies in a variety of imaginative ways. Genshin had a similar issue where the fans fixated on the fighter characters.


Nihility is really niche but it has just as many characters as the other Paths.


It is also weird that Blade is labelled as a destruction character, since his Hellscape skill is an AoE taunt, and he has abilities that restore his health (he deals more damage the more HP he loses).




I think it would be easier to balance the game around needing/incentivizing the use of Preservation characters if the party size was 5 or 6 characters, not 4. With 4, you already have the mandatory healer slot, which means you only have three other slots to play around with. Making incoming damage so high as to make tanks mandatory would mean that players would only have two slots to customize, which would feel too restrictive. So the party size would have to be increased. The new Remembrance pet class has already inflated the turn order with the pets, and they can also be targeted by enemy single target attacks, effectively reducing the incoming damage for the four human party members. You can have four Remembrance characters and thus 8 total characters on the field now, so raising the party member limit from 4 to 5 does not feel like a leap.

The only other option I see to incintivize bringing preservation characters is to have some sort of fragile civilian guest NPC in the backline who has to be kept alive in order to win.



I feel there is not much reason to bring a debuffer along unless I particularly like him, since what is the point of applying debuffs to enemies if they are just going to die very quickly regardless? You mow down lots and lots of waves, but fight relatively few bosses. Divergent Universe allows you to swap party members in/out, so you can reach a boss battle and bring a Nihility character in just for that and them swap him back out. It seems Nihility characters only get to shine in the two side endgame modes of Pure Fiction and Memory of Chaos, as you need two full parties and they both have to beat a shared turn timer, so it is not enough to just stay alive. You have to kill them in a timely manner. The mobs in there are very bulky and don't fall over immediately like all of the other mobs in this game, so a debuffer reducing their DEF can be useful in reducing their defense. But PF/MoC isn't the main endgame mode like SU/DU, so Nihility still feels like a niche class.

Also, DoTs activate on the enemy's turn, which means the enemy has to get more turns for the DoT to be more useful, which seems counterintuitive when you are trying to outspeed your enemies and get more turns than them. You are also weakness breaking the mobs which delays them. DoTs expire after a few turns, and bosses seem to often get multiple turns in a row so that means more of your party's shared skill point pool is being used to refresh the DoT, etc. Or you could avoid all of this and just add another buffer or damage dealer.

[KnightoftheWind]

Playing through "Darkwatch", an underrated little FPS gem released for the PS2/Xbox. No PC version for some bizarre reason, so no mouse and keyboard controls or FOV slider. Despite these significant drawbacks, the game is pretty fun and has an aesthetic we rarely see in games, oddly enough. It combines a Wild West setting with gothic aesthetics and monsters. You play as "Jericho Cross", an outlaw who mistakenly frees an immortal vampire from a vault on board a train, and gets bitten by him. Giving him various powers, at the cost of his soul. Throughout the game you are given choices to free the souls of victims (Good), or to consume them (Evil). Depending on what you do, you eventually unlock different powers. I'm doing an all Good playthrough like any chad.

The game is a budget one and definitely shows, with a "hub" that is pathetically small and static, and the levels are short and strictly linear. How I like em'.

[methoxetamine]

Finished Stranger of Paradise (story), FF4, and FF5 over the past week.

Trying to decide what to play now, I started SMT 3 Nocturne on PC but for my 3DS I'm trying to choose between Fire Emblem Awakening, a DQ game (5, 7, or 8), Etrian Odyssey 4, or Persona Q2. I played the first hour or so of a few of them but nothing is really grabbing me

[Tweed]

Finished Stranger of Paradise (story), FF4, and FF5 over the past week.

Trying to decide what to play now, I started SMT 3 Nocturne on PC but for my 3DS I'm trying to choose between Fire Emblem Awakening, a DQ game (5, 7, or 8), Etrian Odyssey 4, or Persona Q2. I played the first hour or so of a few of them but nothing is really grabbing me

Why mess with that when you can play Hardtype?

[methoxetamine]

Finished Stranger of Paradise (story), FF4, and FF5 over the past week.

Trying to decide what to play now, I started SMT 3 Nocturne on PC but for my 3DS I'm trying to choose between Fire Emblem Awakening, a DQ game (5, 7, or 8), Etrian Odyssey 4, or Persona Q2. I played the first hour or so of a few of them but nothing is really grabbing me

Why mess with that when you can play Hardtype?

Hardtype? Do you mean the FF4 version?

[Tangerine]

DQ game (5, 7, or 8),

Save yourself the trouble and don't bother with 7. What dogwater.

[Gastrick]

I'm trying to choose between Fire Emblem Awakening, a DQ game (5, 7, or 8), Etrian Odyssey 4, or Persona Q2

Etrian Odyssey 4 should be the best out of these

[Tweed]

Finished Stranger of Paradise (story), FF4, and FF5 over the past week.

Trying to decide what to play now, I started SMT 3 Nocturne on PC but for my 3DS I'm trying to choose between Fire Emblem Awakening, a DQ game (5, 7, or 8), Etrian Odyssey 4, or Persona Q2. I played the first hour or so of a few of them but nothing is really grabbing me

Why mess with that when you can play Hardtype?

Hardtype? Do you mean the FF4 version?

No, I mean SMT. https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3299/

[methoxetamine]

Why mess with that when you can play Hardtype?

Hardtype? Do you mean the FF4 version?

No, I mean SMT. https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3299/

Ah interesting, I didn't even know it had any romhacks. It's my first time playing it though so I'm going in raw

I'm trying to choose between Fire Emblem Awakening, a DQ game (5, 7, or 8), Etrian Odyssey 4, or Persona Q2

Etrian Odyssey 4 should be the best out of these

It's actually the one I want to play the most out of the games I listed, but if I'm playing Nocturne I'd rather play something chill alongside it. I'll probably play EO4 when I'm done with Nocturne

[Tweed]

At least the HD port of Nocturne fixes Dante, too bad they make you pay for him.

[Oyster Sauce]

Dropping Spirit Tracks at the final boss. The controls are too ******. It made a Roguey out of me.

[rusty_shackleford]

Dropping Spirit Tracks at the final boss. The controls are too ******. It made a Roguey out of me.

You're getting old

[Oyster Sauce]

Dropping Spirit Tracks at the final boss. The controls are too ******. It made a Roguey out of me.

You're getting old

Touchscreen. Phantom Hourglass also sucked when I played it 18 years ago

[flecktarn]

Right now playing SWAT 4 with the Elite Force mod. A bit of a nostalgia trip, and wanted something similar after finishing all the Ready or Not DLC missions.

[A Chinese opium den]

Finished Stranger of Paradise (story), FF4, and FF5 over the past week.

Trying to decide what to play now, I started SMT 3 Nocturne on PC but for my 3DS I'm trying to choose between Fire Emblem Awakening, a DQ game (5, 7, or 8), Etrian Odyssey 4, or Persona Q2. I played the first hour or so of a few of them but nothing is really grabbing me

I've been thinking about playing ff4 recently, should I play the remake or the original?

[methoxetamine]

Finished Stranger of Paradise (story), FF4, and FF5 over the past week.

Trying to decide what to play now, I started SMT 3 Nocturne on PC but for my 3DS I'm trying to choose between Fire Emblem Awakening, a DQ game (5, 7, or 8), Etrian Odyssey 4, or Persona Q2. I played the first hour or so of a few of them but nothing is really grabbing me

I've been thinking about playing ff4 recently, should I play the remake or the original?

It was actually my first time playing it. I chose the jp snes version with unofficial English patch, the snes version we got was a very dumbed down because they thought gaijin were *******. The DS remakes of 3 and 4 are apparently notorious for being quite hard (at least for FF mainline games), I've heard good things about them though. I will probably end up playing them at some point

[Gastrick]

Finished Stranger of Paradise (story), FF4, and FF5 over the past week.

Trying to decide what to play now, I started SMT 3 Nocturne on PC but for my 3DS I'm trying to choose between Fire Emblem Awakening, a DQ game (5, 7, or 8), Etrian Odyssey 4, or Persona Q2. I played the first hour or so of a few of them but nothing is really grabbing me

I've been thinking about playing ff4 recently, should I play the remake or the original?

It was actually my first time playing it. I chose the jp snes version with unofficial English patch, the snes version we got was a very dumbed down because they thought gaijin were *******. The DS remakes of 3 and 4 are apparently notorious for being quite hard (at least for FF mainline games), I've heard good things about them though. I will probably end up playing them at some point

Patching the English version to play like the original is a better choice from what I've seen. That the fan translation patch was made early on and wasn't very good, and more of a rewrite for many parts.

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2337/

[KnightoftheWind]

I believe the PSP version is the definitive one.

[TKVNC]

Fallout 1 (et Tu)

[gerey]

Dropping Spirit Tracks at the final boss. The controls are too ******. It made a Roguey out of me.

Have you tried playing it with the D-Pad hack? It binds all touch controls to various buttons.

Not sure if your save is going to be compatible with a hacked rom, though I fail to see why it wouldn't.