What game are you playing?

[CornCake]

Never played Vampire the Masquerade before, but I've heard it's a legendary game. Guess I'll find out.

Combat is janky but the rest is top notch. You said you only had good games left, but I still see Redemption sitting there ready to ruin your day.

That one is bad? Everything I found on it says tech issues make it rough but still enjoyable.

[J1M]

Never played Vampire the Masquerade before, but I've heard it's a legendary game. Guess I'll find out.

Combat is janky but the rest is top notch. You said you only had good games left, but I still see Redemption sitting there ready to ruin your day.

That one is bad? Everything I found on it says tech issues make it rough but still enjoyable.

My thoughts: viewtopic.php?p=281351-junior-adventure ... le#p281351

TLDR: Even the ecoterrorist-simulator Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood is a significantly better World of Darkness game than Redemption.

[Cedric]

I've finished 9Sols (highly recommend) and Silksong so now I'm trying some more games in the genre. Laika, Ender Lilies, Blasphemous 2.

I had a good amount of fun playing The King Is Watching and Void Wars, too.

[GhostShiroyama]

Just bought No Mans Sky Gonna be lit.

[Rezeren]

Fallout: New Vegas (Xbox), and Persona 4: Golden. I'll probably start a new NV playthrough on PC after I'm done with it on Xbox and I'm looking forward to trying out some mods that restore cut content. Open to suggestions!

I have already installed Persona 5 as I think I'm halfway through Golden. So far, I enjoyed P3 more, but it's still a fun game

[rusty_shackleford]

Fallout: New Vegas (Xbox), and Persona 4: Golden. I'll probably start a new NV playthrough on PC after I'm done with it on Xbox and I'm looking forward to trying out some mods that restore cut content. Open to suggestions!

I think @loregamer maintains an updated all-in-one version of a popular modpack for FNV, maybe he can chime in

[wndrbr]

Started playing Silent Hill f

Before the game even begins there's a disclaimer screen saying that the game explores the various heavy themes such as abuse, and that if you feel bad you should immediately pause the game and seek help. Opening cutscene - the main character is getting berated by her angry dad. Cutscene ends, i open a journal, and there's an entry complaining about patriarchy. A bit later i found a broken radio that was transmitting a message from some guy who was saying that women belong in the kitchen. I feel like the game is trying to say something to me, convey some sort of message. Not sure what exactly.

[DemoGraph]

Also, people said that Age of Sigmar is a mix between the two themes??

Correct me if I am wrong?

AoS is a mix between poststructural feminism and prostate cancer.

[DecadeRiptide]

I have now gone 1 day without playing Vermintide II

[wndrbr]

Started playing Silent Hill f

Before the game even begins there's a disclaimer screen saying that the game explores the various heavy themes such as abuse, and that if you feel bad you should immediately pause the game and seek help. Opening cutscene - the main character is getting berated by her angry dad. Cutscene ends, i open a journal, and there's an entry complaining about patriarchy. A bit later i found a broken radio that was transmitting a message from some guy who was saying that women belong in the kitchen. I feel like the game is trying to say something to me, convey some sort of message. Not sure what exactly.

Such a masterful writing. Ryukishi07, I kneel.

[wndrbr]

What is it with these Japanese videogame writers behaving like quirky celebrities and having nicknames? Suda, swery, nier guy, this guy - every jap who makes anything does that for some reason. Can't they just be normal?

aahh im going to design a quirky post-apocalyptic le deep meta fourth wall breaking kafkaesque lynchean story where you play as a cyborg femboy and the true ending is hidden behind new game +++, and my name is kokujin1337

[Tweed]

What is it with these Japanese videogame writers behaving like quirky celebrities and having nicknames? Suda, swery, nier guy, this guy - every jap who makes anything does that for some reason. Can't they just be normal?

aahh im going to design a quirky post-apocalyptic le deep meta fourth wall breaking kafkaesque lynchean story where you play as a cyborg femboy and the true ending is hidden behind new game +++, and my name is kokujin1337

I wonder if this is part of how devs in old jap games used to make up nicknames in the credits. Was real common in the 80s/90s consoles and arcade games.

[Oyster Sauce]

What is it with these Japanese videogame writers behaving like quirky celebrities and having nicknames? Suda, swery, nier guy, this guy - every jap who makes anything does that for some reason. Can't they just be normal?

usernames are significantly more soulful

[Oyster Sauce]

Okami sure is a piece of ****

[Nico]

Started playing Silent Hill f

Before the game even begins there's a disclaimer screen saying that the game explores the various heavy themes such as abuse, and that if you feel bad you should immediately pause the game and seek help. Opening cutscene - the main character is getting berated by her angry dad. Cutscene ends, i open a journal, and there's an entry complaining about patriarchy. A bit later i found a broken radio that was transmitting a message from some guy who was saying that women belong in the kitchen. I feel like the game is trying to say something to me, convey some sort of message. Not sure what exactly.

I'm currently playing Resident Evil 4 Remake and the writing is also deep and thougtful, the characters complex and believable. Must be a japanese thing.

[wndrbr]

Okami sure is a piece of ****

I heard that it's really slow, braindead easy, and has a ton of unskippable babbymode forced tutorials.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how does it compare to Skyward Sword?

[Oyster Sauce]

Okami sure is a piece of ****

I heard that it's really slow, braindead easy, and has a ton of unskippable babbymode forced tutorials.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how does it compare to Skyward Sword?

I had to tab out to fix a new problem every 5 seconds and after making it mostly playable I took break. Will find out later.

[GhostShiroyama]

I'm playing No Mans Sky, and I can't put the controller down D: send halp

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Trails in the Sky remake

I have finished the Bose chapter 1.

Overall enjoying it, but it lacks something and I am trying to put my finger on. I am not sure if it's just because it's a remake to a game I have already played twice and thus doesn't have that magic of discovering new locations, meeting new people, watching a plot unfold for the first time, hearing new tracks for the first time, seeing new things, etc.

I think it might be the visual presentation, namely the expressiveness. IIRC the OG - descending from that Final Fantasy traditional of looking down at little characters reenacting a theater play - had the characters moving around a lot more, and ofcourse the more expressive 2D portraits. Here the characters are a lot more static feeling, and there us not as much if an attempt to make every face in every scene feel unique. Colonel Richard's face has lost its edge. Olivier's face has lost its slight hint of cunning. Schera's face has lost that slight catlike look. Weissman's foreshadowingly evil glare/slipup face looks impotent. Etc. I wish they had put more effort into the movements and the faces.






I wish they had added a few extra battle tracks. Hearing the same sidequest boss theme boss theme, and danger theme over and over again quickly becomes repetitive.

It is disappointing that you can't see Haken Gate from atop the Amber tower, or really anything except Bose.




Battles are getting pretty repetitive. Everyone uses clock up three times to max the speed buff and then uses clock up again when 1 turn is left in it to refresh. Estelle casts Earth Guard at the start and then people spresd out to avoid the party getting hit by AoEs. Estelle uses Morale to keep CP regen up. Estelle is positioned in the pack of mobs to draw proximity aggro and get hit to build CP for spamming morale. For AoE spam Aerial, for single target spam the cheap elemental spell it is weak too. Joshua spams Cloak and Dagger on bosses. Schera pop S-craft to prevent bosses from getting a zero arts turn order bonus. Ideally everyone should have an expensive art like the wind Storm that they can use if they get a zero arts turn order bonus.


The text was good up until now, but then there was unexpected Twitter slang and sudden cursing.

[Roguey]

Finished the Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter demo myself. I like the stepsibling romance subplot; not particularly enthused about the rest of the narrative. It also has the stereotypical jrpg design featuring a ton of very samey-feeling combat encounters in any given area combined with a combat system that piles layers and layers of subsystems. I prefer the opposite approach: relatively simple, easy to learn systems with fewer and more varied encounters. After the first day I just stopped bothering with any battle that wasn't quest-critical or a powerful enemy guarding a nice item in a chest; got through it well enough, possibly because I set the difficulty to Easy from the start.

I'm fine calling it a day here, seems likely the story and the gameplay will just get more miserable. The demo took me about 8 hours, fairly big chunk of game available for free, props to them for that at least.

[chongnog]

Stalker Anomaly

[KnightoftheWind]

Been playing some old Game & Watch classics, and they're surprisingly entertaining!. It's almost refreshing to just play a pure and simple 'video game', without any of the baggage of modern titles or plot or any of it. They're dead simple, but that's what makes them the perfect handheld experience in particular. The best ones I think are Fire, Fire Attack (extremely Based game), Oil Panic, Lifeboat, and Mario Bros. The more complicated handhelds and handheld games got, the further away we drifted from the 'intent' of portable gaming. The Steam Deck is remarkable, but it's a very bulky and expensive PC that you would be afraid to bring with you for fear of it being damaged or stolen. Same goes for the Switch.

The cost and complexity of the newest devices makes the medium unapproachable to the casual player, children in particular. No parent is going to buy them a Switch 2, which'll cost them $1000 after buying just a few games and accessories, nevermind a Steam Deck with it's complex menus and perceived risk of breaking either one. I honestly wish these old games would be reprinted again, because I think there is a market for them, especially the times where you just want something simple to play for a few minutes. Phone games obviously exist, but they're predatory and come with a bevy of restrictions, often ads or an always online requirement. They could even make new G&W's solar powered, so it'll be something you can play if the power goes out or if you don't have access to batteries or a charger. A niche market to be sure, but no more niche than a plastic Virtual Boy or a talking flower stand. If any of you are interested in giving these a go, here's some links:

https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-lifeboat
https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-fire-attack
https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-mario-bros
https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-fire-widescreen
https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-oil-panic

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Trails in the Sky remake

I have finished Ruan chapter 2.

► Show Spoiler

Curiously, despite being made in the same engine, the 3D ocean water developed in Kuro 2 is absent.






Neat fish model. Would be cool to tame as a pet. Curious how we are 13 games into this franchise with almost 100 playable party members, and not one of them is a beastmaster!




Mmm




The big dog like snouts are funny.




Spent an hour retrying on the frog-plant boss over and over. There is no way to burst down the adds from the get go, so I had to rely on using Chaos Brand to keep the adds confused and off my back. It was also at this point that I had to rebuild Estelle as a bulky tank who can stand in a pack of adds to draw proximity aggro (didn't have the taunt quartz yet) and live while Joshua maintains buffs and deals damage. Once the adds are gone, you are very close to winning provided that you 1. do not run out EP to cast arts to maintain speed buffs (Iost once here because of this) or 2. do not get bad RNG and the frog decides to eat Kloe.






The game is brainwashing me into liking the low HP danger theme:




I liked that a bystander got upset overhearing only a part of what I said to someone else. Too often in fiction, everything a character days is interpreted the correct way by the right people. No accidents happen. The bystander part also makes the world feel a little more alive, that peoole in the background can get involved too. Which this happened more often.




I now have the gladiator headband+ equipped on Estelle. If she is in a pack of adds, she will get attacked so often and thus gain so much CP that I can keep popping her S-Craft. But once a single boss is left, her speed is abysmal and she gets few turns even when Joshua buffs her speed.




The game (most noticeable in the remake but also an issue with the original game too) does a lackluster job portraying the devestation of the war. Aside from the old man overlooking the grave in Ravennue village, none of the NPCs talk about what they were doing during the war or how they lost their homes or someone they knew or lost an arm, etc. It is almost entirely just main story characters talking about the war. You also see no visible indication of battles like ruined tanks or mass graves or deforestation and so on. No areas cordoned off because of lingering landmines. Liberl is also too far small for the war that is being described. They make it sound like the Erebonian armies swept through 4 out of the 5 provinces and besieged the last province, but the last province is just one city with other towns there, and the "provinces" that the Erebonians captured is just a half dozen very small towns with less than 50 NPCs each. Suikoden 2 did a much better job conveying that this was a larger country being invaded with the many towns. Trails of Cold Steel 1 and 2 also did a much better job at implying that there was a larger world in Eastern Erebonia than just the locations you visited, since you take a train that skips past many locations and presumably a lot aren't marked on the map or connected by rail, not to mention the offscreen Western Erebonia.

I don't think this was in the original. Not a fan of this insinuation. Feels very unwholesome and un-Trails like. Same with the addition of normalized adultery to the latest Trails arc with Kuro.






The woman announcer at the school sounds suspiciously like Towa's voice actress.


Always remember: brainwashing started in the very first game.





The black ops guy sounds very distinctive and intimidating in Japanese. I wonder who his VA is.




The combination of the voice acting and the music makes these guys feel a lot more important.






The seriousness of the situation is undercut when the black ops guy kneecaps Gilbert but no blood appears.




Hahaha *glares at the entire Trails series* It is hilarious to see Falcom try to bend over backwards to justify foreign interference. I wonder if the message would be the same if this was a Nippon themed land...




I am not sure how exactly these new AoE circles work. I don't think I have ever seen any of my characters take damage from standing in them. Does the damage tick at the start or end of your character's turn if they are standing in it? Or only tick at the start/end of the mob's turn?

[dagal]

Replaying kotor 2. Kreia you **** come back and upgrade my crystal

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Trails in the Sky remake

Finished Zeiss chapter 3. Heading into the final chapter now.

► Show Spoiler

"This device does not have a serial number, therefore it must have been made for evil!"






It is funny how all of these Easterners talk about the goddess as Aidios instead of as their Heavenly Mother that was retconned in Kuro.

It's a shame we haven't heard anything about Cid after Sky. Not even a name drop about where he was at during the world war in CS4. He is an underrated character.




The confrontation scene has also been dated by the sequels. Here, Colonel Richard inexplicably can't "sense" the heroes standing right outside the window, even though Richard has over a decade of Eight Leaves One Blade experience over Rean who only had a few years by the time he was sensing Fie behind pillars at the start of Cold Steel 1.





Fighting maneating penguins to groovy jazz music is the experience.








This boss became frustrating towards the end. He would just keep spamming his heal move. Even with everyone at triple stacks of Saint buff, it was very hard to outdps him.

[Bertram_Tung]

I've officialy had no PC for two months since it broke down during my move.

When I get my brand new PC next week (5070ti, 9800x3d, and 64gb ram), I think I'm gonna use all that raw power to play Witcher 1 since ive never played it. After I finish my Kotor2 playthrough which was rudely interrupted by my PC dying, of course.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

I've officialy had no PC for two months since it broke down during my move.

When I get my brand new PC next week (5070ti, 9800x3d, and 64gb ram), I think I'm gonna use all that raw power to play Witcher 1 since ive never played it. After I finish my Kotor2 playthrough which was rudely interrupted by my PC dying, of course.

Just add a little more and get 5080 or 5090, you got top CPU, might as well get top GPU.

[Bertram_Tung]

I've officialy had no PC for two months since it broke down during my move.

When I get my brand new PC next week (5070ti, 9800x3d, and 64gb ram), I think I'm gonna use all that raw power to play Witcher 1 since ive never played it. After I finish my Kotor2 playthrough which was rudely interrupted by my PC dying, of course.

Just add a little more and get 5080 or 5090, you got top CPU, might as well get top GPU.

Eh, I looked into it, and the 5080 costed $400-$500 more and reportedly only performs about 10% better than 5070ti. Doesn't seem worth it. Would rather put the cash towards a new OLED monitor or something.

[Oyster Sauce]

I've officialy had no PC for two months since it broke down during my move.

When I get my brand new PC next week (5070ti, 9800x3d, and 64gb ram), I think I'm gonna use all that raw power to play Witcher 1 since ive never played it. After I finish my Kotor2 playthrough which was rudely interrupted by my PC dying, of course.

Just add a little more and get 5080 or 5090, you got top CPU, might as well get top GPU.

Eh, I looked into it, and the 5080 costed $400-$500 more and reportedly only performs about 10% better than 5070ti. Doesn't seem worth it. Would rather put the cash towards a new OLED monitor or something.

Get the 5090 and an OLED monitor

[Bertram_Tung]

Just add a little more and get 5080 or 5090, you got top CPU, might as well get top GPU.

Eh, I looked into it, and the 5080 costed $400-$500 more and reportedly only performs about 10% better than 5070ti. Doesn't seem worth it. Would rather put the cash towards a new OLED monitor or something.

Get the 5090 and an OLED monitor

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