Junior Adventurer's Guild: December - Darksiders

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Great game, i like it alot! My first game with exploration part. I liked story alot, protagonist is big, strong masculine, persistent, stubborn, strong, never gives up, and does what is right no matter what. Cutscenes are great, the direction and presentation delight me alot. I want more cutscenes like in this in whole gaming in general. The aesthetics, surroundings, and locations are incredible. While playing, you don't notice that the game is over 10 years old and all the graphical flaws that come with it, art style easily makes up for any flaws. @Oyster Sauce Badge, please.

► Show Spoiler

Darksiders Warmastered Edition Screenshot 2025.12.12 - 13.12.01.15.png

Darksiders Warmastered Edition Screenshot 2025.12.12 - 13.14.17.73.png

[J1M]

With so many nominations, next month should be interesting. Looking forward to finding out which BioWare game we will be playing!

I didn't know BioWare made Two Worlds II.

Right after they made Final Fantasy XII.

[Oyster Sauce]

I'm incredibly disappointed that the hookshot isn't a webslinger

[rusty_shackleford]

hold down the attack button and you can back/side dash repeatedly without cooldown

[WhiteShark]

I watched a long YouTube review of the game in which the reviewer faulted the game for not teaching the block-counter well enough despite its being 'necessary' for the final boss, which was really funny to me because I beat the final boss' second phase without using it at all.

[Tadeusz]

I watched a long YouTube review of the game in which the reviewer faulted the game for not teaching the block-counter well enough

Isn't there a necessary challenge with it?

which was really funny to me because I beat the final boss' second phase without using it at all.

Same. I barely used blocks in the whole game, it was mostly dodges.

[WhiteShark]

I watched a long YouTube review of the game in which the reviewer faulted the game for not teaching the block-counter well enough

Isn't there a necessary challenge with it?

Yeah. His argument was that it came so late the player would already have firmly established combat habits. I don't know if I think that's a huge impediment, but I guess if you're coming at it from the perspective that it's necessary to beat the game, it makes some sense. I certainly never mastered it, hardly using it outside of that trial.

[Fitz]

I went out of my way to practice blocking against some Ice Elemental type enemy. Wanted to master it because my idea of War fighting was not to dodge, but to block and hit back.

There are a lot of block cancel shenanigans you can do too. Think of it something like the jump cancelling in DMC3, but not so polished. Thing is the challenge here isn't so great that you have to learn/use the technique.

[rusty_shackleford]

I went out of my way to practice blocking against some Ice Elemental type enemy. Wanted to master it because my idea of War fighting was not to dodge, but to block and hit back.

There are a lot of block cancel shenanigans you can do too. Think of it something like the jump cancelling in DMC3, but not so polished. Thing is the challenge here isn't so great that you have to learn/use the technique.

You can block cancel your attack for very fast attack spam

[rusty_shackleford]

I watched a long YouTube review of the game in which the reviewer faulted the game for not teaching the block-counter well enough despite its being 'necessary' for the final boss, which was really funny to me because I beat the final boss' second phase without using it at all.

[J1M]

I watched a long YouTube review of the game in which the reviewer faulted the game for not teaching the block-counter well enough

Isn't there a necessary challenge with it?

Yeah. His argument was that it came so late the player would already have firmly established combat habits. I don't know if I think that's a huge impediment, but I guess if you're coming at it from the perspective that it's necessary to beat the game, it makes some sense. I certainly never mastered it, hardly using it outside of that trial.

It sounds like the reviewer thought the quicktime event you initiate by pressing attack on the last boss was a block counter and tried to rationalize why his soy fingers couldn't mash the button fast enough to pass it.

Because aside from the mandatory tutorial trial that teaches you blocking I never used block in the entire game, including on Apocalyptic difficulty.

[WhiteShark]

It sounds like the reviewer thought the quicktime event you initiate by pressing attack on the last boss was a block counter and tried to rationalize why his soy fingers couldn't mash the button fast enough to pass it.

No, he understood the difference. He seemed to believe that you could only hurt him through block counters, so you had to do enough of those successfully to get to the QTEs. I assume he got that impression because the boss does a blocking animation when you hit him normally, so he thought damage wasn't going through.

Because aside from the mandatory tutorial trial that teaches you blocking I never used block in the entire game, including on Apocalyptic difficulty.

I tried to block counter a few times for fun, but since regular blocking still meant you took damage, I'd usually try to dash instead (and get hit anyway 90% of the time because of the huge, sweeping attacks big monsters had).

[Finarfin]

► Show Spoiler

Badge @Oyster Sauce
Nominating Darksiders 2

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Nominating Mass Effect 1.

[Oyster Sauce]

I did it

[Tangerine]

I nominate Two Worlds II.

[Kolgrim]

First game I've completed for the Junior Adventurer's Guild. Once I saw you guys chose this game I knew I had to do another replay. Personally I'm hyped for Darksiders 4. The peak of the series was definitely the first two games but the third and Genesis were fun. Fury in particular grew on me by the end of the third game. My only real criticism of the first Darksiders is that the Black Throne dungeon dragged on a bit too long and brought the pace down too much. We also had to fight that Guardian mini boss three times which was kind of annoying.



Also wanted to say it's funny how dialogue like the following from the watcher would cause all kinds of butthurt from journos and twitter types today:

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[J1M]

Doubt many people are familiar with the game I nominated, so I'll share the trailer. Golf Story is basically a JRPG where conflict is resolved via golf shots instead of blobber combat.

[Kalarion]

Completed.



Steam says I have 37.5 hours on it. Of that, probably 10 or so was just having the game open and paused while I did other stuff like Christmas shopping trips. Another 10 or so was for backtracking, minimum. I really loathed the backtracking.

Good:
- easy action combat. I described it as babby's first DMC and I'm sure I wasn't the first. Perfect for someone like me who needs 2 seconds minimum to press the correct button when prompted!
- good use of environmental exploration.
- three of the boss fights (The Griever, Silitha and Straga) were genuinely fun. Abbadon was fine but he was also completely trivialized by my having the Abyssal Armor. He barely hurt me even with his strongest attacks. I suspect I would have enjoyed him more without it.
- the Fracture Cannon sequence in The Ashlands was genuinely my favorite time of the entire game. They did a really good job with that weapon and with the Retributor (or whatever the Angel equivalent was called).

Bad:
- story was dumb. I will say the ending sequence after beating the final boss was major hype and a great setup for a sequel.
- key mapping for mouse and keyboard was horrendous. Yes, I could have used a controller, but I didn't want to and there was no reason a simple action game like this couldn't have decent m+k support.
- two of the boss fights (Tiamat and Stygian) were complete and total ***. Special mention from Tiamat for constantly pressing the Windows key by accident while trying to dash away from a fireball, knowing that as soon as I came back into the game I was going to take it to the face. This was compounded by my not being very good at quickly multi-targeting with the Crossblade (to explode bombs on Tiamat). Also to trying to make Mercy do what I needed it to during the dogshit mini-worm portion of the Stygian fight.
- not getting full exploration tools until the very end of the game sucked. It incentivized constant backtracking throughout. No thanks.
- I have always hated the Joe Madureira, 90s - early 00s comic book art style, and this game is no exception.
- the script was awful. I also didn't think the voice acting was much good, with the notable exceptions of Azrael and the Watcher.

All in all I had a good time for the most part. The only times I got really angry were Tiamat and Stygian, and that was because of the ****** controls and targeting system, not because the fights themselves wouldn't have been fun otherwise.

BADGE!

[rusty_shackleford]

hey I beat the game give me a badge

[J1M]

Running out of time for nominations!

[Kolgrim]

Can we nominate non PC games? Specifically ones you can emulate on Dolphin or PCSX2? I have a game in mind I think some of you might like but wanted to ask first.

[Oyster Sauce]

Can we nominate non PC games? Specifically ones you can emulate on Dolphin or PCSX2? I have a game in mind I think some of you might like but wanted to ask first.

Yes

[Tweed]

Can we nominate non PC games? Specifically ones you can emulate on Dolphin or PCSX2? I have a game in mind I think some of you might like but wanted to ask first.

The only thing you can't do is nominate RPGs.

[J1M]

Can we nominate non PC games? Specifically ones you can emulate on Dolphin or PCSX2? I have a game in mind I think some of you might like but wanted to ask first.

There's no rule against it. Wouldn't be the first console game nominated.

To have a chance at winning I think it would need to be something that can be emulated on PC.

[Kolgrim]

Can we nominate non PC games? Specifically ones you can emulate on Dolphin or PCSX2? I have a game in mind I think some of you might like but wanted to ask first.

Yes

Cool. In that case I nominate The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. It's a sixth gen turn based RPG that back in the day got some criticism for basically copying Final Fantasy's mechanics without adding anything new. It's imo the best game based on the IP and not super well known although some of you guys probably have heard of it since this is a RPG forum.

[Tadeusz]

Nominations we have so far (correct me if I missed someone):
J1M - Golf Story
Tangerine - Two Worlds 2
Finarfin - Darksiders 2
Faceless_Sentinel - Mass Effect
Kolgrim - The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

@Fitz @WhiteShark @Solaire @Kalarion Do you want to nominate something?
I'll just endorse Two Worlds 2 this time.

[Fitz]

Nothing to add. This list looks awesome. I've got some ideas for further down the road tho.

[J1M]

Nothing to add. This list looks awesome. I've got some ideas for further down the road tho.

Nothing wrong with lots of nominations. Can lead to unpredictable results.

[WhiteShark]

I'll think on it, but otherwise I'll probably vote for Golf Story.