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What games are you playing?

do you like them video games? what about those there romhacks? well pop on in here and talk about them then! what are you waiting for?!
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Doc Sophie
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Doc Sophie »

I've gotten back into Hollow Knight big time after playing, loving, getting lost, and then dropping it in 2017. Currently got all of the movement upgrades in the game, half the grubs, and the way open to the final boss. Proooooooooobably gonna try and 100% it, outside of crazy stuff like the Radiant Godseeker fights.

Or at least try and see all the unique content, anyway.

I'm also giving World of Light nuzlockes a shot in Smash Bros Ultimate, after having not touched it in a while. Hard mode is hard and I am BAD at that game, good lord. The furthest I've made it is the Juri spirit on the Villager route (Bayonetta stamina battle w/ a favoritism toward side special). Marth curbstomped me on attempt #2 when I went to start his path. Haven't tried Sheik's yet, but maybe that's where I'll find some vague success...
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by EllenHouraisan »

Video games.

Playing through Fire Emblem 6 after getting into the series with 7. Compared to that game, this one is a lot harder, and not for the best reasons. The ratio of how many enemy units there are in a battle vs. how many you're allowed to bring makes getting through battles into an immense slog, and that's not even considering the crazy amounts of reinforcements that keep spawning. It's also not shy about pulling massive dick moves from time to time, like hiding some dragon riders in a fog of war mission which is also mostly in a desert, meaning the only units that can move properly are squishies (and they give you one such squishy at level 1, who died very fast because of that). Still a fun game, but it really needed to either curb some of the enemy numbers or at least give me a larger unit count to deal with them faster (instead of dropping a ton of useless new units within the battles themselves to try and make up for it :/). Doesn't help that most of the characters have the personality of a plank in this one.

Also been playing Pokemon Unite since it dropped on mobile. I expected to play a match or two just to see what it was like and then forget about it forever, but in spite of its absurd monetization problems, the game is actually really fun! It helps that matches are very short and there's no in-game chat for idiots to yell at you, so it's very enjoyable to play casually. When I lose, the amount of time and stress is so small that I just move on to the next game without feeling bad, so that's nice. On top of that, the scoring system is very cathartic, and has a ton of interesting nuances that never let a match feel completely hopeless (unless the enemy gets Zapdos, in which case, yeah, you lost). If anyone is playing, hit me up! I'm always up for a quick game or two.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Chapter 5 on Summon Night 2, A Fleeting Calm ~Black Chasers~ (boy does that subtitle sound sussy as shit). Grinded on Chapter 3 to Lv10 with some characters and in Chapter 5, I'm aiming for Lv15. Toris has just become flat out a murder hobo with the constant bloodshed I put her through in the free battles (I've skipped the one with actual monsters lol, it's all fellow humes) and I've spent roughly 13 hours in game grinding and I feel very powerful

The pass near Zeram rewards 800 EXP and 700 baum (money) for chapters 2 and 3 in a battle where all opposing members are beaten, while the Quicksand Valley rewards 1400 EXP and 900 baum. The chapter 4 free battles were too annoying, so I just relied on the Deigleiya forces (protect Amer) and Kelma battles to level up Amer, sadly couldn't level up Minis or Rocca.

The Kelma battle is especially neat if you pick a female protag because Kelma has a unit exclusive charm summon (at least I think it's unobtainable), and she can cast it on Toris, Hasaha, Amer and Minis, who are all girls, but also Magna, Bulrell and Resi who are male and likely along with Le-O-Ld, who is a robot and likely disregards gender entirely? And I'm glad there's no real binary charm filter. It's a challenging battle gimmick, and also somewhat progressive.

Tangent:
The SaGa games handle charm similarly last I checked, but Romancing SaGa 2 actually makes it a point of Rocbouquet charming men specifically, and it's a plot point (and a huge pain in the ass in the final boss, good luck using a male only party lol, my party was two women (Imperial Guard and Amazon iirc), the Final Emperor with the Somon Ring from the prologue, one Salamander and Coppelia).

However she can only charm human men (I refuse to believe none of your party members couldn't be queer if Romancing SaGa 2 was an actual world, especially as they're all blank slates, patriarchal standards of pop culture regardless, so my personal theory is that she just overrides sexual and romantic identity and attraction through brainwashing with Temptation, basically hypno fetishes), so we can just assume Salamanders and Molemen are either not attracted to humans or have a different way of looking at romantic attraction, as they don't seem to be sexually dimorphic (which is pretty cool) and I'm not sure if they ever use any gendered pronouns in the English release (I've only gotten that far in the Super Famicom but without knowing Japanese and Japanese doesn't really do gendered second person pronouns).

But anyway, Flight-Plan really likes their casual queerness and it's very pleasant, Black Matrix actually had a hidden gay route specifically targeted to yaoi fangirls and it's honestly really cool and part of why I want to play the game. Also I just like gothic bullshit. Sugarette in a Pratty file is also a good example, and I've seen people appreciate Razzy for her gender ambiguity (only using "her" for canon's sake, feel free to characterize Razzy as any gender you want), there's also a girl in Swordcraft 2 who kisses you on the lips regardless of gender iirc.

Back to Summon Night.
Chapter 5's equivalents of the Zeram pass and Quicksand Valley reward 2400 EXP/1300b and 3200 EXP/1400b respectively. After this the pass near Zeram closes and I gain access to the Flotte Wetlands for one chapter (3200 EXP/1400b Quicksand, 5400 EXP/1600b Flotte), then Flotte closes and the Quicksand Valley gets harder (5800 EXP/2000b), followed by another area opening in Chapter 8 (The Great Prairie, 11300 EXP/2600b) as we move to Fanan for a hot second to avoid the Deigleyans who are after Amer (she's treated as a sort of "Holy Maiden", she does have healing abilities).

Also got all the summons I could so far, got a few Stained Vases from free battles, an Imp's Playing Card or two, two Haunted Picture Books, a few Kogarasu-maru (katanas, sold all except one since the only one who can use them right now is Keina), and one Golden Gentleman. Did get a few repeats of Tete since he's the only Maetropan I could get so far and I have a few characters that correspond to that realm, Resi, Folte and Minis specifically (and since I got Resi, Toris too, but she seems to be acquiring the ability to summon from other realms as well, just got Sapureth).

Since I don't feel like opening up Mednafen again, looking at the Ritual of Pledging cheat sheet on happy days, a lovely site full of info for most Summon Night games (no Twin Age or Gran-Thesis), that seems to be made in a blog template, I've got:
  • a few Diablos
  • a few Kuros (pun on Crow most likely, they're tengu)
  • a few Petit Devils (Lil' Imps?)
  • one or two Bibiaroids (Vibiaroids?)
  • a few Reisers (Rygel in Swordcraft Story)
  • quite a lot of Myojin
  • a few Lipsies (very handy for healing in the off case your F-Aids or HP Recovery fruit storage has dried up mid battle)
  • a few Mujinas (their name literally means raccoon dog)
  • quite a lot of Rock Materials (standard colorless summon spell)
  • a few Bezzsaws (Nesty starts with one already but it's always handy)
  • like one or two Bowa
  • like one Powaso (Pouso in Swordcraft Story)
  • like two Lunia
  • one Foundation of Masonry (yes that is it's name, 石細工の土台, good luck fitting that in a translation patch)
  • and a lot of Tetes (more like tatas)
So far my game plan is, because the game is a bit easy up until the battle where Leonard joins, against Gareano (honestly I'd go with Gallearno a la that one Arc the Lad 2 mafia boss dude whose name I forget, Gallarno or some shit), I'm thinking of doing my next grinding session in Chapter 8 and just getting everyone + Tete, Rygel/Reiser and Powaso/Pouso up to Lv15 for now.

Toris/Magna (i think the protags eventually get every realm), Minis (Maetropa) and Nesty (Loreilal) can summon backup units (Tete, Rygel, Pouso and Myojin), this also disables the summon's equivalent spells as long as they're on the board iirc, and only one of each can be on the board at one time. This goes for any unit who's of the Summoner class in the game (still need to get someone for Silturn, and a Sapureth only summoner). In Summon Night 1 this could be anyone but in 2 this is more of an effort to rebalance the game, it seems.

happy days also has an experience chart, something I wish was more common these days, but seems to have died off with the advent of GameFAQs becoming less of a big deal. From Lv1 to Lv15 the exp needed is, in order: 100, 200, 400, 700, 1100, 1600, 2200, 2900, 3700, 4600, 5600, 6700, 7900, 9200. Adding it up gives about 46900 EXP total. Toris is at 14, Resi, Amer and Folte, my go to bunch are at 10 rn, Nesty's at 9, the poor fella, Keina's at 8, she needs to catch up, and Minis and Rocca are at 6 because they joined so soon. so that'd be (34000 x 7) + (3700 x 4) + (2900 x 3) + (3800 x 2) + 9200 = 278300 EXP to level up all my main units, no idea about the three summon units I have access to, but they have the same EXP chart.

Anyway it should take me a few hours but I can manage, especially since I can level up Toris, Folte, Resi and Amer to the point of four man army-ing the Quicksand Valley with the help of healing items, and stock up on EXP, which I'm already doing honestly. The EXP just adds to a counter that you can later choose to apply to units post battle, be it through quitting a battle prematurely or winning.

Amer comes in handy for sniping the units, especially the summoners, with the Lil' Imp's Evil Fire, the rest is physical attackers and the occasional Tete summon (the もうゆるさん! spell, "Grr, this is what you get!"), though Amer and Toris also have Lipsy for healing with Little Heal. I think I replaced Toris' Lipsy with Pouso, though, I might put Lipsy back. I also sometimes get Nesty out to help me summon some Loreilal and colorless summons, I have to rely on Summon areas for Silturn summons rn. It's a crime how many Colorless Summonite Stones I have compared to the first game, wish I had more Oni and Spirit Stones...

So yeah, wish me luck (^^)v

As an aside, the recently released Memorial Service Tempest SMW hack has a stage named "The Great Prairie" in Japanese.

Its graphics are a bunch of wwwwww

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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Kleetus »

Continued the Shadowrun Returns trilogy with the creatively named final installment Hong Kong. The fist game is a murder mystery, the second is a conspiracy thriller, the final one is a horror story, a very different feel.

In the first two campaigns, your character is an accomplished mercenary-black-ops-man, whereas is Hong Kong your character is a (probably) law abiding citizen forced into the underworld. Your character also has more of a backstory and previous relations with some of the characters; some people didn't like this but I think it upped the emotional stakes. The main teammates in your party are also younger and less experienced than the ones in Dragonfall, which results in very different dialogue.

In the past two campaigns most missions took place in either slums, laboratories, or corporate offices; Hong Kong has much more diversity in its set pieces; one level can turn into a restaurant shoot out if it plays out a certain way. Even when old themes are used, they're given more personality; the Kowloon walled city for example is depicted as an infinite bleak void of buildings stretching up and down, with gunshots and crying as ambient sounds, rather than just another dense slum.

The walled city was an established part of the ttrpg a few years before preparations were underway to demolish it in real life, but the big alternate universe divergent stuff in the lore happens in the early 2010s. The solution? They built a second one at some point. This is just one of the many examples of 90s stuff that has persisted in the game over the years. I think the Hong Kong of 2056 still uses the 1959 flag.

Gameplay wise there are a few changes.
First is the inclusion of a cyberware affinity skill, which lets you make a killer cyborg build for your character.
Second is changes to spirit summoning. Spirits are overall weaker, but more reliable. I like the change it makes spirit summoning a tool I use much more.
Third is changes to ley/dragon lines, spaces in the environment that power up magic wielding characters. In Dead Man's Switch and Dragonfall, ley lines were usually out in the open. "Yeah, sure, I'll put my squishy support character out in front of all the guns." In Hong Kong, dragon lines are usualy behind cover, so I find myself placing dudes on them more. Unfortunately, dragon lines are not as cool looking as ley lines.

I know this is a weird thing to compliment in a game, but I really like the look of the character portraits. I would post some, but adding pictures doesn't seem to be working at the moment.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

At Chapter 8 in Summon Night 2, trying to get everyone to Lv18 since one to two rounds of the Great Prairie (11300 EXP) is enough to level up around those numbers, 15-18 being 9200, 10600, 12100, 13700 respectively. Toris can effectively one woman army the Great Prairie at Lv18 with the stat building I gave her, though she needs a few casts of Lipsy to recover from the Summon Monster clean up at the start of the match, the Summoners have Hippos and Tamus/Rock Material and Lil' Imp respectively.

Hippos and Tamus can cast sleep (Sweet Breath) or a highly damaging attack (Acid Breath), there's also Dark Breath which does less damage and can cast Darkness, but I haven't seen the weaker Summoner cast it yet. Rock Material does weak damage with Petit Meteor. Most of my time the weak Summoner usually casts either Petit Meteor a lot or Sweet Breath + Petit Meteor, which is not a big deal, basically fall asleep then get woken up automatically by Petit Meteor the next turn, letting me attack. Acid Breath seems to be on certain circumstances wrt how the AI is programmed (the AI in Summon Night is incredibly easy to manipulate), namely if you have allies around you while being in the Summoner's range.

The leader Summoner has access to Evil Fire and Evil Spike (Evil Fire spelled Ibiru Faia, and Evil Spike spelled Ebiru Supaiku??? k) and if your Magic Defense isn't high enough, Evil Spike can destroy you despite it's weird X shaped attack radius. Evil Fire is nothing to sneeze at either, which is why I rely on it with Amer (also trauma from Summon Night 1) but thankfully I have Toris' Physical and Magical Defense buffed up enough that she can take either no prob, usually does like 9 damage, and my strategy always sets me up to be at range to walk up to the Summoner and do one attack. He's in defensive stance, making him block it which makes it deal slightly less damage, but it's usually a volley of like. Evil Fire, then I slash at him, Evil Fire, then slash, Evil Fire, then kill.

I've also managed to get Minis and Nesty to catch up pretty nicely to Lv14, need to work on Keina, Resi and Rocca, and the summons, of which Taquesi* is a unit too, so... There's two Sapureth summon units. Go off. I'm checking right now and Maetropa seems to have a unit named Punim, I think this one is new... I assume it's the one with weird fluffy fingers at the edge of its ears that it can shape into a punch, on the map screen. Maetropa also has Swamp, which is also new. Sapureth has one more in the form of Gurimu? Silturn has Shishikoma and Nagare, the latter of which I actually got and forgot about until now, and Loreilal also has Golem and Bocks, which seem to function simply as extra units, fitting for a golem, really.

Anyway Jakinie was surprisingly tough, need to pump up Defense more, Magic Defense effectively made his Lorelei's Aqua Tornado useless outside of like Morlin and Kazamine lmao. Need to get some repeats of Lorelei for my Maetropa aligned units.

* - Taquesi is renamed Ghoul in Swordcraft 1 iirc, it also shows up in the Wario battle in Seawar Mario World (with a custom sprite, I'd personally just rip one from Swordcraft honestly) along with one summon's laser bits (forget its name, Wingale? I got that one recently) and Silvana, a Wyvern who is an event summon here and part of Minis' subplot, don't know if there's any Silturn summons in that boss battle.

-------------------------------

I've also beat the first two stages (of 12 apparently, can't find much info on later games though) of Farland Story 1 and it's alright. I feel like Albert Odyssey took a huge deal of inspiration from it, there's a lot of parallels between the two gameplay wise, semi-hexagonal movement, no MP healing spells, easy difficulty curve, similar characters...

BTAxis, the translation patch author, apparently fucked with the gameplay in later Farlands' patches to increase difficulty, but allowed to restore the original difficulty if one so wished, which is good, but 3 has a problem where some enemies are hardcoded by TGL for some reason, so he changed those but can't change them back which is, A Choice. Other than that it's bog standard Strategy RPG, but being able to control a turn based strategy RPG with the mouse is fucking cathartic, though. Trying to figure out F12 was the mouse shortcut in NP21/W was a thing, shout outs to r/pc98.

Best Google results these days are from Reddit and Stack Exchange+Stack Exchange clones, swear to god. Then again Google is purposefully ignoring smaller sites these days. Don't be evil, my ass. Anyway BTAxis changed the User Disk info text into a Miami Mike-ass call out (and a nice hello to people who knew him so there's that I guess).

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I mean Dynamic-Designs still does this shit so I guess it's just "as was the style at the time". Readmes don't exist in this universe.

I'm planning on going through the whole Farland series, as the resident Strategy RPG bitch. Saga 1&2 (first one was where worldpeace got some music for JUMP, Farland is popular in South Korea and China, Windows versions of Saga 1 onwards were translated), the Gaiden games on SNES, the seventh PC98 entry, the eighth Story entry, which is on Windows, and both Odysseys are not translated to English. Out of those Odyssey 2 seems to be hard to track down so I might just play the Korean version despite being unable to read it, it's named Farland Tactics 4 there I believe (it's kind of a mystery dungeon type game tho, numbering started at Saga 1).

Korean PC games are really easy to find and Farland Odyssey 1&2 were never ported to consoles. Symphony and FS8 are on My Abandonware, and FS8, Saga 2 and Odyssey 1 are on the Redump IBM PC Compatible set, F on archive.org (lemme know if you want a link, no warez rule after all. p.s. have I mentioned how much I love archive.org's stash of Japanese PC games). I will play either the PSX or Saturn versions of Farland Saga 1&2, though. Summing it up: Symphony has been translated for some reason, along with the PCFX port of 1 and the first six PC98 entries. Juuou no Akashi... Not today. But I will still play you.

-------------------------------

Lastly, I've restarted Grandia with the PSX script patch from SegaXtreme, Masha'Allah. I love the entire cast of this game and the writing, oh my lord. Some jokes are uncomfortable, like the Clara sidequest with an old man (he's writing a love letter to a supposedly 18 year old girl, initially claiming it was in place of his son). But considering Lunar, I guess that's just how the Lunar and Grandia crew write. Ginn (where did ShotgunNova get "Java" from) is a superb character and Sue is one of my favorite RPG characters ever so far.

Currently at Leck Mines and I'm resting a bit before pushing onward to reach the Steamer Ship (more like cleveland steamer hurr hurr). My opinions on this game have not changed, truly a masterpiece. Patching this game was a bit of a pain, mostly because I set the region free patch on the Sega Saturn Patcher and Mednafen seems to be incompatible with it? Leaving the translation patch to alter the region to NTSC-U (it basically forces it by default) seemed to fix it.
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HatKid
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by HatKid »

Finally got to the final dungeon in The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure. Was planning on really getting into it before I stopped but the pre-dungeon optional events and prep took much longer than I anticipated so... but! Even starting it is a huge milestone. I can't wait to see how it all concludes, well, at least the Azure plot since Crossbell isn't going away any time soon. Looking at the maps for the dungeon, it does look like it's pretty dang long. Great! But it hasn't been cramped like Zero's final dungeon was so I guess I'm happy.

Been playing a little of Atelier Sophie on my Vita. I don't really like crafting games (Minecraft being a notable exception) all that much but I guess this one (and maybe the entire series? No way in heck I'd play em all though.) managed to appeal to me. I almost feel like there's too little direction, but at the same time it feels cool to figure things out, like where to find a certain material or where a certain monster is.

EllenHouraisan wrote: 2 years ago Video games.

Playing through Fire Emblem 6 after getting into the series with 7. [...]
Have fun? FE6 is definitely one of my least favorite FE games for some of the reasons you mentioned. Such a massive mistep after Thracia 776...
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by EllenHouraisan »

Well, the core gameplay loop is still fun, but the game really tests my patience sometimes. The Bow of the Wind mission almost made me give up on it, and I'm now savescumming like hell.

Probably gonna try out Thracia 776 next, but not right away. Got some other games I need to get back to before that.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by raekuul »

Xenoblade Chronicles 2, just got up to the end of Chapter 1. I know where I'm going thanks to Chuggaconroy's LP being what got me into the game, but the journey is part of the destination.

Also been mucking around in OG Metroid. To misquote Nick Landis: "Everything looks the goddamn same on this goddamn planet!"
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Emral »

Playing metroid dread all day and really enjoying it. I think I'm nearing the lategame now. My most recently acquired ability is

the screw attack

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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by HatKid »

EllenHouraisan wrote: 2 years ago Well, the core gameplay loop is still fun, but the game really tests my patience sometimes. The Bow of the Wind mission almost made me give up on it, and I'm now savescumming like hell.

Probably gonna try out Thracia 776 next, but not right away. Got some other games I need to get back to before that.
Haha, I usually savescum FE games, my luck is too crappy to not do so, the obvious exception is if I'm playing on console.
I would say at least play Genealogy of the Holy War first, since Thracia is a midquel that I feel like isn't nearly as interesting if you haven't played Genealogy first.
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Beat Trails to Azure, and it now has to compete with Sky the 3rd for my favorite Trails game. It's fantastic. I can't wait for the official localization because then it's easier for more people to play it. Um, I don't really know what else to say, but yeah. I liked it haha
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

Metroid Dread is great. Had a fun time going through an 100% run in just a hair over nine hours my first time through. I'll be coming back to this one again.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Onurubu »

I have been playing Persona 5 Royal.

Some backstory:
Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 were the two games that split my final year of high school into two halves. I happened to randomly stumble upon a used PSVita at the beginning of 2017, and then ordered P4G to play on it. I had heard it was a really good game and even owned the ps2 version and played a little of it on there (although I was very young and it was too much for me). I always wanted to play Persona 4 and thought that was the best opportunity to do so.

I ended up falling in love with the game and the day I finished it (~ August 2017) I ordered Persona 5 and started playing it. I fell in love with that game as well. Those two games were perfect frameworks and experiences for that year for me (as I said it was my final year of high school).
Anyway I had let it rest for 4 years, but decided to play Persona 5 Royal and I have been enjoying it so much. There are a lot of quality of life improvements, the graphics are so much prettier, the new area is awesome, and the new OST is amazing.
As for the new characters,

I love the councillor and Jose so far. Both seem really interesting. Kasumi left a poor first impression on me but is very quickly winning me back

.

Overall I am loving it, but it is difficult not to constantly make comparisons to the first game and note all the differences

like the introduction of Kasumi in the opening scene stuck out for me because it felt really out of place

. Another problem I have noticed is

only the protagonist ever seems to interact with Kasumi, making her indeed feel very much like she was just pushed in without changing anything to acknowledge her presence. Although I believe her character is really strong now that I have spent more time with her.



Anyway, I am mostly loving it, I have loved all of the changes and new additions, and I am very much looking forward to seeing all the cool new stuff I have yet to reach.

If anyone else has some thoughts on Persona 5 Royal I would love to talk about it!
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by raekuul »

my understanding is that that's by design.

I'm stumbling around Torigoth in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I can see why people love this game; I'll have to get Xenoblade Chronicles 1 once I'm done with 2 so that I get the other half of the jokes (alternatively I could just watch cc's let's play of it)
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Doc Sophie »

Xenoblade 1 is fantastic, highly recommend it. I'd argue that it's a more... polished experience than the sequel; definitely less deep, though, since XB2 has stacks on stacks on stacks of systems.

Also since the English patch dropped yesterday, I've been marathoning the shit out of Labyrinth of Touhou. God what a fantastic dungeon crawler that thing is. Needless to say, everything else has been put on the backburner lol
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

kingdom hearts 2 final mix+ is good and so is fire emblem 1 nes

i have lost one unit so far but going full ironman mode is too much of a pain rn
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Re: What games are you playing?

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started phoenotopia awakening recently, it's somewhere between a metroidvania and an RPG but with shades of zelda 2??? idk it's mostly a platformer RPG more than anything i guess, lotta talking and quests but also platforming and puzzling and combat and exploring and the game is just really pretty besides that

lots of neat secret hiding and puzzles and such and like the game feels polished to a fine sheen except for whatever reason they decided that combat needed to always feel terrible, you have the tiniest attack range ever and hitting stuff in the air is nearly impossible with how slow the attack comes out, plus on most difficulty settings attacking takes away from your energy bar? i turned that off because LOL no but while a lot of this game is retro in a charming way that aspect is retro in a There's A Reason Why We Don't Design Games Like This Anymore kinda way so the game is generally really good except when I have to fight things, which is not that often thankfully but Still

anyways it seems to be pretty decently sized too, i have 10 hours logged and feel like i might be, at best, a third of the way through
i've honestly never played a video game in my life
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

brain broken

technically started super mario 3d world while fucking with cemu, it now runs at like 45 fps with the performance settings dialed up. currently on 1-2, it's good.

also technically restarted super mario odyssey at ~15-25 fps and i keep being stunned at how absurdly detailed the models are on this. i'm at tostarena and im not gonna be super focused on this one because it's mostly a test thing for ryujinx and yuzu (i'm playing on yuzu now, but i might use ryujinx for something else) and i'm mostly wasting my time harassing npcs. feels a bit better to play on pc though, just my experience. cutscenes don't really work very well on my pc though, the real time rendering runs at a slow but manageable framerate, but the audio gets destroyed with stuttering.

and because i wanted to try out switch emus for metroid dread (and three houses), on top of watching the wha happun videos on metroid other m and metroid prime. again. i've continued my metroid ii playthrough and i'm at area 3 (not counting the surface area with the first metroid) and i have 25 left. this game is pretty fun, despite some issues (spider ball controls are finicky, refilling stations are too spread out). do still use a map plz

i'm honestly glad the site im using for switch files has torrents because i don't have money for a vpn subscription yet and the free one i use has a cap on downloads. trials of mana also seems to be running marginally better now that i've messed with the nvidia control panel.

weenie
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

Hey, Bean. Which game disappointed you the most this year so far?
Glad you asked. It's a remake of something that was originally good by Sega.
Which one? Sonic Colors Ultimate or Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania?
Exactly.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by ultratowel112 »

I'm playing through Final Fantasy (NES) for the first time. I made the mistake of choosing a pretty bad team from the manual (2x black belt, 1x white mage, 1x black mage), but that just means I am grinding a little more. I just cleared Gurgu Volcano in quite a unique fashion...

I used up all my wm level 5 magic on hel2 going up the volcano. After collecting the flame armor on the top floor, both of my Lv17 black belts were slain. Rather than calling it quits, I decided to see if I could take out Kary with just a Lv18 wm and Lv18 bm that were running low on magic (wm was out of all healing, bm had used up all lit3 and a lot of other spells). Luckily, Kary can be hit with status. Turn 1, I get lucky and connect with both slow and mute. From there, the wm set up with everything it had - 2x fog2, 4x invs split evenly between wm and bm. The bm hit it with all the magic it had - 1x fir3, 5x lit2, 5x ice, and 7x lit. I tried to use heal potions (22 in stock) to keep the party above 100hp. This worked until round 42, where the wm got hit with a 93 damage critical before the heal potion came out. Not too much later, the bm finished the fight with a 30 damage critical on round 51. All in all, I'm just glad for the criticals so I didn't have to sit through so many 1-3 damage rounds. I only needed to just 6 heal potions.
Edit: also, I didn't realize you could warp out after restoring the earth orb, so I trekked back through that whole dungeon. I read the manual some more (and felt like a total idiot) between then and completing Gurgu Volcano.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Doc Sophie »

Still plugging away at Labyrinth of Touhou, I think I'm about halfway through the sixth floor? Fantastic game, super glad it's on Steam and got a proper English translation. <3
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Catabo »

Cyril wrote: 2 years ago started phoenotopia awakening recently, it's somewhere between a metroidvania and an RPG but with shades of zelda 2??? idk it's mostly a platformer RPG more than anything i guess, lotta talking and quests but also platforming and puzzling and combat and exploring and the game is just really pretty besides that

lots of neat secret hiding and puzzles and such and like the game feels polished to a fine sheen except for whatever reason they decided that combat needed to always feel terrible, you have the tiniest attack range ever and hitting stuff in the air is nearly impossible with how slow the attack comes out, plus on most difficulty settings attacking takes away from your energy bar?
Yo, this was my game of 2020! Not sure if it actually came out then, but it sure was my game. I was a big fan of its brutalism— like, it's not hard hard so much as it has its own rules that it sticks to. It's neat how most(?) enemies actually have to attack you to hit you instead of just doing contact damage, and it was a neat puzzle having to find openings in boss fights when I had a few seconds to eat food rather than just being able to eat it all in the menu. When I beat it, I was sad that it was over because I felt like I was just getting used to how everything in the game worked.

Still gotta go back to figure out the trade sequence.


KobaBeach wrote: 2 years agofire emblem 1 nes

i have lost one unit so far but going full ironman mode is too much of a pain rn
Ah, but rolling with the punches is the best way to play FE1! There's a reason why the game constantly showers you in cannon fodder units with zero lines of dialogue.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by EllenHouraisan »

So, I've played through the newest installment in the To the Moon series, Impostor Factory. Here's some quick thoughts (not gonna spoil any crucial plot details, but I'll still put it in spoilers for people who wanna go in blind):
It's hard to say it's a bad game, as there's clearly a lot of love and care put into it and at no point did I perceive a lack of quality, but it has some pretty glaring problems. It tries to tell a different story from TTM and Finding Paradise, with a new main character, Quincy, who you quickly find out is already in a simulation akin to the ones of previous games. From then on, it's the usual experience of going through someone's life and seeing all their highs and lows before the plot gets resolved in the third act. The biggest issue I have with it, however, is that there's a distinct lack of interactivity. For the most part, the game falls in the trappings of the walking simulator genre, where you're a glorified cameraman pointing at the story and pressing right to make the plot move. Not only are the minigames gone (those always felt a bit forced, but I thought they were a good way to break up the story beats), but in general Quincy just doesn't interact with anything the way Watts and Rosalene did in some of the more memorable moments in the previous games, being nothing but a silent observer. He's also alone for most of it, meaning he doesn't have anyone to bounce off of. In fact, he has very little input on anything, barely a line of dialogue as you go through the very sad story of the person in question, which is not bad by any means, but with nothing to break up the drama, ends up feeling rather cumbersome. Perhaps people who are into no-nonsense drama will find that more to their liking, but to someone like me who isn't a huge fan of the genre, having the perspective of two snarky scientists who are treating the whole situation like a regular tuesday went a long way to improve my enjoyment of the previous games. In general, I feel like this would have been better off as a visual novel or an animation, as it takes no advantage of the medium's strengths, and I would say is hampered by it. Shame, too, because TTM is a perfect example of how to tell a story through the medium of video games with minimal gameplay, but still being involving and fun. I'm not disappointed that the game is different, but I am sad that it seemingly tosses away the foundation that TTM built, making it feel a lot more amateurish by comparison.
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Re: What games are you playing?

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Catabo wrote: 2 years ago
Cyril wrote: 2 years ago started phoenotopia awakening recently, it's somewhere between a metroidvania and an RPG but with shades of zelda 2??? idk it's mostly a platformer RPG more than anything i guess, lotta talking and quests but also platforming and puzzling and combat and exploring and the game is just really pretty besides that

lots of neat secret hiding and puzzles and such and like the game feels polished to a fine sheen except for whatever reason they decided that combat needed to always feel terrible, you have the tiniest attack range ever and hitting stuff in the air is nearly impossible with how slow the attack comes out, plus on most difficulty settings attacking takes away from your energy bar?
Yo, this was my game of 2020! Not sure if it actually came out then, but it sure was my game. I was a big fan of its brutalism— like, it's not hard hard so much as it has its own rules that it sticks to. It's neat how most(?) enemies actually have to attack you to hit you instead of just doing contact damage, and it was a neat puzzle having to find openings in boss fights when I had a few seconds to eat food rather than just being able to eat it all in the menu. When I beat it, I was sad that it was over because I felt like I was just getting used to how everything in the game worked.

Still gotta go back to figure out the trade sequence.

yeah i'm playing on the settings where normal attacks don't use energy and i can eat food from the menu and i still find the combat incredibly unfun
basically anytime i'm following the main story quest i'm miserable bcuz there's an abundance of combat and anytime i'm screwing around with side content i'm having a lot of fun because it's more puzzles and exploration and stuff

it doesn't help that the armor is so pitifully useless and finding heart rubies seems to be the hardest of the three main collectibles to find (i am close to endgame now i think and i still have less than half of them) and the knockback and juggling is RIDICULOUS lol

but yeah side content neat main content blech
i've honestly never played a video game in my life
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

tales of destiny - i started this yesterday after drawing fetish art of khang because im down bad. anyway i didn't get khang my first visit to neuestadt, but im almost at sheeden just from one session so *smokes five cigs*. the writing is absolutely obnoxious, worse than working designs but without the gross bits, but apparently that's just how tales is. it's also weirdly sexist but i've chalked that up to Anime

there's a scene in like junk town, junkland, whatever, currently its optional but it might come into play near the end of the game, but eh; everyone is miserable and poor and like philia is like "how can people live like this it's gross" and i pick the option that has stahn tell her that "that's rude you shouldn't say such things" and he goes and says something like "it is pretty gross but it's their home". These Are Our Heroes.

also the place it's on, calvalese, its entire gimmick is like. "people are xenophobic". to someone who's more "ignorant", pardon the term, i can believe finding this funny, but to someone who is intimately aware of like the way things are right now it's extremely uncomfortable that this is just played for laughs.

rutee is the best character on this show, she is more important than the salami and the bologna combined (khang is moé moé kyun, gachimuchi is otoko no roman...)

power of the hired - i'm at scene 7 of 18 and man i wish dynamic designs was good at their job. loving the garbage cramped maps, rude ai and general jank ass gameplay btw (HARD SARCASM, this game sucks absolute ass). i refuse to believe there's a way to beat the bridge stage without savescumming, despite having done so a few months back on the untranslated version

beyond the beyond - i've gotten lost like three times because of how easy it is to miss things in the overworld, and how vague the information you get in most of the game is with characters saying like just "south", "west", "east" instead of like "southwest" or "east beyond the mountains". im stopping at the shrine of gaea because i'm gonna grind for annie's heal rain and. man. this game is garbage too btw, one of the worst jrpgs i've played, just play one of the dragon quests or golden sun 1&2, im mostly playing it because i do nothing but play rpgs.

might continue star ocean 2 next that game's good w :pal:
EDIT: im grinding to raise skills (and by extension, gain stats) in star ocean the second story because the harfainx in hoffmann ruins are complete shit, and im just glad the exp gains from encounters are extremely good in this game. fun fact: my magl4 stage was gonna be named after that dungeon. The More You Know

i also did not freshen up on the controls and i've gotten owned by messing up at figuring them out multiple times and this is why controllers are illegal. good game but i gotta say. penis. by which i mean, star ocean is mad jank and i kind of admire that about it,

EDIT THE SECOND STORY: im at disc 2, the final battle with shin ruled. mostly because claude died and i had to handle everything as ashton while keeping rena and celine's mp up with blackberries. very hectic! :slow: :slow: :slow: :slow:
i love this game's skill system,,,
Catabo wrote: 2 years ago
KobaBeach wrote: 2 years agofire emblem 1 nes

i have lost one unit so far but going full ironman mode is too much of a pain rn
Ah, but rolling with the punches is the best way to play FE1! There's a reason why the game constantly showers you in cannon fodder units with zero lines of dialogue.
i just do not have the patience to constantly savescum

EDIT: I was originally gonna make a joke about how all of the por/rd units are expendable except for skrimir, caineghis, mordecai and giffca (i.e. my many gay wives) but that just read like me shitting on the games for no reason than making a dumb joke about how much of a simp i am (i would have used the f slur but im not in my gay friends' dms and i don't want to come off as a self hating gay dude)
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Catabo »

Cyril wrote: 2 years agoyeah i'm playing on the settings where normal attacks don't use energy and i can eat food from the menu and i still find the combat incredibly unfun
basically anytime i'm following the main story quest i'm miserable bcuz there's an abundance of combat and anytime i'm screwing around with side content i'm having a lot of fun because it's more puzzles and exploration and stuff

it doesn't help that the armor is so pitifully useless and finding heart rubies seems to be the hardest of the three main collectibles to find (i am close to endgame now i think and i still have less than half of them) and the knockback and juggling is RIDICULOUS lol

but yeah side content neat main content blech
Combat is more survival than anything; it's far more important to dodge the enemies while your stamina recovers than it is to actually do damage to them. Granted I have no idea if those settings change that. I hated flying enemies because I was an awful shot with all the ranged options.

Re: heart rubies, if you're at endgame you probably have the equipment that lets you access the person who tells you where you can find the next one you're missing.

It's the top entrance of the building at the beginning of Daea that requires you to fly to get there.



But yeah, I hear you on the side content. I remember some of the puzzles being some of the best puzzles I've seen in a vidgame that isn't a devoted puzzler-type game.
KobaBeach wrote: 2 years agoEDIT: I was originally gonna make a joke about how all of the por/rd units are expendable except for skrimir, caineghis, mordecai and giffca (i.e. my many gay wives) but that just read like me shitting on the games for no reason than making a dumb joke about how much of a simp i am
Hey, I never even bothered to finish FE9 or play FE10 and I still thought it was funny because I assumed it was a reference to the community meme(?) of "don't bother with non-royal laguz they're mediocre".
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