(shouting)

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?!
thatguyif
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by thatguyif »

Oh, forgot to post this. This is the how the game looks on UW with a special hotfix live-patcher someone was nice enough to make :)

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BobisOnlyBob
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by BobisOnlyBob »

Oops. Time slipped again. And I spent a lot of it playing Warframe or watching streams when I could've been playing novel experiences.

December:
BobisOnlyBob wrote: 3 years ago Katana Zero! Barely 30 minutes into this one. Room-clearing murder-puzzles, like a side-on Hotline Miami as a lethal samurai with precognition. Made by Askiisoft, creators of the wonderful Tower of Heaven and Pause Ahead, and featuring a video-like rewind aesthetic to the latter. More on this once I've bested it.
Katana Zero! What initially seems like a gore-soaked VHS level-by-level experience like Hotline Miami gives way to a more thoughtful experience with an interesting dialogue system - you're able to interrupt people at any time or wait for their dialogue to finish - and a much more tactical style of play, where keeping a cool head is more important than flawless reflexes (but they do help). Thoroughly beat it and explored all possibilities, including a somewhat wacky bonus boss, but didn't bother with the Hard Mode. Unfortunately I'm writing this almost six months later so my raw reactions are lost to time but I look forward to the inevitable sequel or anything else by Askiisoft.

January:

Paper Mario: The Origami King! The king is back! As a huge fan of Super Paper Mario and a moderate fan of Thousand-Year Door I was delighted by Origami King's experiences, literally turn-based battle-puzzle system, and enjoyed its quirky characters. I even got a little choked up at the end, which tells me this experience was exactly what I was looking and hoping for. Unfortunately, despite his folds, the major villain is somewhat flat - and the game still falls afoul of Nintendo's inexplicable creative restrictions compared to the two best titles in the subfranchise, with very few novel enemies or fun variations on existing archetypes, but your companion Olivia and the various bosses do manage to keep the game feeling fresh and lively at every turn. And the music is absolutely a delight from beginning to end. Honestly, I'd put it below your favourite Paper Mario title and on par with your second favourite, whichever ones those happen to be.

February:

Control! Played by streaming to my fiancée from February through to April, which meant long gaps between play sessions. A lore-heavy third-person shooter by Remedy Entertainment, creators of Alan Wake and Quantum Break. Play as a bewildered and bemused young woman, Jesse Faden, haunted by conspiracy and a spiralling voice in her head, as she infiltrates a secretive government agency known as the Federal Bureau of Control - and is immediately made Director and responsible for all the current supernatural problems occurring within, primarily an incursion by a resonant mind-control frequency with a propensity for dadaist verse and red. This game is overwhelming a homage/love letter/blatant ripoff of the SCP Foundation and its scientific horror stories, with similar documents explaining protocols and reporting on the behaviour of anomalous objects and people and how they're choosing to handle them, with plenty of random documents and audio logs scattered all over the place to pick up and read. Of course, if you're looking for the gunplay, there's a hell of a gun - The Service Weapon. A modular pistol that self-reloads and can be reconfigured into shotgun, sniper, or even grenade launcher like capacity all while one-handed, as Jesse runs, dashes, ducks,

floats

and otherwise paranaturally makes a nuisance of herself. The gunplay itself isn't much to write home about - it's competent - but it doesn't need to be much more, and the

psychic ability to throw boxes and corpses about

often takes precedence in your combat. Overall delightful with a good story, good experience. Worst points would be how rapid death can come and how long the loading times are, but I can forgive the latter for how bloody gorgeous it all is - if you have a latest-gen console or high-end PC, the raytracing and reflections are absolutely worth the processor cycles.

March:

Monster Hunter Rise (Demo)! Played with my girlfriend, a monster-hunter veteran, on the Switch! I hunted a velociraptor while wasting all my items, and then hunted an angry washing-machine elemental dragon and slipped and fell over a lot, but got the bugger in the end. I did not like the big sword, I liked the twin blades. I got it for her birthday, but decided I wasn't quite convinced myself and put this aside for now.

YRKKEY'S PARADISE! A strange little game about games and building computers as an odd little raccoon fellow. I enjoyed this. Good exploration. I recommend it. Give it a try?

Hand of Fate 2! A more agile, leaner successor with a stronger story connecting the chapters together, but still fundamentally a "tabletop roguelike", alternating between decision-making parlour games of chance and Arkham-style counter-dodge combat. I haven't actually finished this, as runs take a while and can be quite exasperating to clear - like I said, it can be quite chance based - but the framing is beautiful and the Dealer's dialogue remains the biggest appeal. He's very charming and very pissed off at the previous protagonist. Might say more on this in the future, might not, it's a nice filler game but I'd struggle to recommend it unless you're a fan of the first or eager for a different kind of roguelike.

Rhythm Doctor! Have you ever wondered what would happen if you mixed up Rhythm Heaven with the British National Health Service? No? Well, too bad, this game is the answer anyway! A one-button rhythm game requiring a strict sense of timing, a game that will teach you what a polyrhythm is and how to tap along to it, while telling a quirky story about the weird patients of a hospital and their new music-based defibrilation system. It's got a lot of charm and heart. Also has a ton of custom levels and a thriving community, and I'm even making one myself because the editor is actually quite fun to work in. I recommend it, it's delightful.

April and May:

Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection! Two nostalgic games for me in one package - the original Command & Conquer (aka Tiberium Dawn) and Red Alert. I played both of these as a kid and only ever finished one of the four total campaigns. Bloody hell I had no idea how hard the original was and how comparatively easy its cold war successor is! Some of those Nod and GDI missions are intensely bloody stressful, while I rarely felt as harrowed during the Soviet and Allied campaigns. The remastered visuals look just like how I remember the game, and the original visuals - a tap of the spacebar away - look like chunky pixel vomit, but still kinda charming. A great one for those few remaining fans of the RTS genre.

Everhood! Played by streaming to a small friend group. Another "Child of MOTHER", this one taking influence from Undertale, OFF, and Yume Nikki - so maybe a "Grandchild of MOTHER"? Regardless of heritage, apparently some Guitar Hero DNA got spliced into it for an extremely funky rhythm-dodging action game that's also a psychedelic and existential trip. I don't wanna spoil anything about this one, I just want people to play it. Watch the trailer, see what you think. I think I love this game? I've been re-playing it to get a lot of the achievements. There's a strong modern-buddhist vibe to it, like Zer0ranger, and it really resonated with me in a good way, even when I played the first hour or two rather aggressively cynically.

Helltaker: Examtaker! A little free update to Helltaker, the not-so-lewd sokoban game about sharply dressed demon girls and catchy music. A few long puzzles, a few strict timing challenges, and an utter motherfucker of a boss with strict pattern memorization. Killed an hour and my fingers.

I really feel like I must have played more than this, but... this seems to be it for now.
:pal:
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Nast »

Later Alligator is a good game and if there were some kind of alternate timeline version of me that were to make a post complaining about it (imagine that) I'd bonk them on the snoot

Also beat Gato Roboto, all cartridges and health kits. Great game, very breezy and fun. I'll probably attempt the 'no health kits' achievement tomorrow as an excuse to get some more playtime out of it.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Lunar: Eternal Blue is really good but it's very much draining me with its difficulty (and I'm playing with the difficulty restored to the Japanese standard).

Thus I started Albert Odyssey (SNES, Saturn is Gaiden) since it's easy according to the Japanese internet. So far it seems to be a very decent, if somewhat clunky, Strategy RPG with a very barebones NES style plot. At least the beginning is like that. The intro was pretty good though. Albert, Neumann (pronounced noy-man) chose to aid Sophia in her quest to beat up Oswald and stop him from reviving Clowvas, then she took them to King Goth VIII and now we're off to take a letter to Slay, leader of the Chivalric Order of Goth, who is up in another town.

Also played some Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe. Got lucky and beat Tu Kwai after beefing up SS Emelia like a fuckton for her Skills (I'm pretty sure anyone could have done it but she had the highest Combat Power). Just levelling up characters, Instant Expedition Tickets are the best. Also played some Tokyo Afterschool Summoners and I'm not really doing anything in any sort of goal. Did some quests but w/e. Trying to level up daddy Hogen and the rest of my character pool but level ups aren't too common and you can't really repeat story quests, just side quests. My wife Oz is like lv15 and that's really funny. I have some nice boys (and girl). Progress is effectively meaningless since these will eventually end.
BobisOnlyBob wrote: 2 years ago Oops. Time slipped again. And I spent a lot of it playing Warframe or watching streams when I could've been playing novel experiences.
(...)
I really feel like I must have played more than this, but... this seems to be it for now.
:pal:
i need to play order and obtain (command & conquer)

i think katana zero has cboyardee as one of its writers and it definitely has moments where it goes full on barkley gaiden from what i've heard, apparently there's an anime fangirl office lady sidequest that was entirely written by him
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by BobisOnlyBob »

KobaBeach wrote: 2 years ago i think katana zero has cboyardee as one of its writers and it definitely has moments where it goes full on barkley gaiden from what i've heard, apparently there's an anime fangirl office lady sidequest that was entirely written by him
Oh yeah, there's several ways that can play out from severely pissing her off to befriending her but there's a very specific and silly route through her dialogues that's a big Yu-Gi-Oh! pastiche.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Kleetus »

A while back I finished off Shadowrun Returns. Not usually the kind of stuff I play but I had fun. I'm not used to games using an isometric camera to have such detailed environments, which is good because it helps distract you from how hideous the character models are.
The game has something of a cruel twist at the very end which you can see from a mile away, so you just walk into it a groan.

One thing I really appreciate, is that during dialogue, intimidation is based on your character's strength stat; so my shotgun wielding, fuck all bringer of street justice was able to get some additional dialogue paths. (It also helps that you don't need to put a lot into charisma to get some bonuses.)
Of course this just shows how used I am to d20; where because intimidation runs on charisma, the half elf who keeps hitting on the barmaid is much scarier than the 7ft 300lb dragon man that erupts into a DBZ battle aura when they mess up his order of chicken wings.

I decided to flip through a few old Shadowrun game books to brush up on some of the lore. One thing that is very cool about Returns is that it ties into the greater established lore of the setting, acting as a set up to what happens in

Chicago

. A few established characters show up too. I'm sure if you were more familiar with the setting than I am, you would stop and say "hey it's that guy/thing" a lot.

There's this poster tucked away in one area of the game, I looked at it once and can no longer get it out of my head.
Big D governs in my brain unelected.PNG
Big D governs in my brain unelected.PNG (64.88 KiB) Viewed 3301 times
I know that the Shadowrun lore is kept somewhat vague to allow for mysteries for GMs to use, but I think the real mystery that needs to be solved is; where do dragons buy their clothes and how much do they cost?
Do you think that suit's a custom number, or does Hugo Boss have a line of 60ft men's wear?
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

Getting close to the halfway point in It Takes Two now. Game is pretty dang imaginative with its design thanks to the structure. So far, it's one of the best games I've played this year. Keep holding up there.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by HatKid »

Geofront released their Trails to Azure patch yesterday so I started that. I didn't actually really get to play the game at all until very late so I only had time to do the prologue before I went to bed. Feels a lot like Zero in most ways, which isn't surprising in the slightest. I hear that Azure gets really crazy and doesn't let up once it does so I'm excited to see exactly what that means.

Otherwise, I was playing Super Robot Wars OG Gaiden, which was weird to go back to after finishing SRW V, as A. the game is in Japanese and not English, and B. I actually have to try in OGG, unlike V, which is pretty easy, but features no-less-annoying RNG. It's nice going back to the OG characters as their stories are contained within the games and not lifted from a bazillion different animes. It's not like you really need to watch every single Gundam and whatever to play the games (partially since the newer ones have the character and mech bios) and SRW stories tend to not be very special anyway. So, back to OGG, it's challenging, but never really felt unfair so far, not taking into account SR Points as there's no reason to get them in OGG other than for difficulty.

And I was playing Super Mario Galaxy via 3D All-Stars for the first time since around 2007 or 08? I played the game around when it originally released but I never played it again until recently. I just did the Ghost Race level, which was made much easier by using the touchscreen instead of having to point a WiiRemote at the sensor bar, hope the sensor bar detects it, then moving it to the next star , etc. I don't mind too much haha. I have about 53 stars, so approaching the final level rapidly. I plan to get all 120 stars as both Mario and Luigi at some point since I never did that on the Wii, but like with my 3D-All Stars playthroughs of Sunshine and 64, I don't feel like doing that right now.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Heading to Courtlord in Albert Odyssey (SNES), defeated the Lesser Demon, gave the letter to Slay in Neulaht, he gave a big spiel about how he wants to defeat Oswald's minion Liamoth because he defeated his old war buddy from the old days and attacked the wise old ladies of Neulaht, he joined us, we defeated the Harpy, headed to Micheana and got some info about Courtlord and the leader of the Micheana workers, Dasch who left for Courtlord apparently (my Japanese isn't very good ^^;). Trying to defeat the Ghast and Smoke Clouds (Smokes) taking hold of Courtlord right now.

Started Star Ocean: The Second Story and I'm at the Heraldry Forest. I'm liking the writing, the game is very fast paced but I'm enjoying the interactions between the characters. Celine reminds me a lot of Rouge the Bat, which I like because apart from the boob physics, Rouge is a pretty good character. Rena's feelings for Dias and Claude's feelings about that are kind of adorable and handled with more class than Yoyo's relationship with Palpaleos and Byuu in Bahamut Lagoon. Cheering for them so much.

So far:
Started as Claude, saved Rena (neither of the ones in Talkhaus) from a monster, saw the sights of Arlia, saved Rena from a possessed Alen in Salva, headed out for an adventure with her, saw a Private Action in Arlia and Salva (Rena reminisced about a boy she grew up with, Claude reminisced about his days as an Ensign for his father Ronyx from the first game), headed to Cross, stayed the night in a hotel before meeting the king, had a talk with Rena about her ex, got permission from the king to sail to the Continent of El, met up with an adventurer named Celine, went through a nearby cave with her for some treasure and a boss fight, let her join the party, went to Clik, saw a Private Action there, where a crowd gathered around a woman saying a catastrophe was about to happen, waited for our ship, had our money stolen, recovered our money, stopped a bunch of kids from being mean towards the rich kid who stole our money because he wanted to buy things so people would be his friends, a huge catastrophe happened and Clik was destroyed with some survivors, we had to go to Mars, we met up with the Elder and Celine's parents about a bandit who kidnapped some kids and Rena's ex Dias is planning to go but the Elder is hesitant, Rena decides to go with Dias out of frustration of Claude wanting to go just the three of them (Claude, Celine, Rena) instead of aiding Dias.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by thatguyif »

So, played a bit of Falconeer. It's a very lovely looking game, hobbled by some very basic bugs that kind of just ruin things. Like, the tutorial teaches you targeting, but not how to actually shoot things. Combat feels....eh. And, they have a mission to teach you how to feed your Falcon, except there's a bug where you can't feed your Falcon and I don't actually know if they fixed it. Which is highly frustrating! Not sure I'll ever return to that. Might pick it up for free if it ever pops on the Epic Store, but other than that...

Also played the first two missions of Control. It's a very...interesting game. A 3D Metroidvania, or at least something resembling it. I didn't think much of it when I heard about it, but now that I played a bit, I kind of enjoyed it. Bit annoyed about the game's difficulty to some extent, but other than that, it's definitely something special. XBGP has the Standard Edition. While the Ultimate Edition is on sale now on Steam, going to hold off on buying it until I clear a good chunk of my backlog.

The rest of the week is interesting. My XBGP free trials expire June 1 and I don't need to spend money right now. I'll probably take a stab at No Man's Sky, which has long been on my Steam wishlist, just to get a feel for it. I also know that MechWarrior 5 has a big update dropping Thursday to mark its release on Steam, and if it extends to XBGP, I'll probably play a little bit? That said, I move next Tuesday, and I need to pack. I'll start doing that Thursday-ish (probably sooner), and I'll need to spend time getting things in order for that. So while NMS will be a thing, MW5 might not.

After that? While I do want to blitz through Bully, I need a couch first (and I don't see that happening until later next week, if not the week after), so I'll probably continue Hollow Knight until Fiesta season starts.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Nast »

About 4 hours into Psychonauts. It's taking a little while to click with me but it's getting there. It reminds me of a mid 2000's cartoon and feels fully realized as such, which is commendable, but that style has never really been my thing. Still, the world and setting they're building up are pretty interesting.

And I went up to the start of the second world in Cuphead. About time I played this one. It's pretty fun! Pretty challenging too but not in an obnoxious way, in part because levels and bosses are fairly short so replaying them is not that frustrating. They both have a lot going on as well which prevents them from ever getting boring. The aesthetic is great too which goes without saying.

thatguyif wrote: 2 years ago After that? While I do want to blitz through Bully, I need a couch first (and I don't see that happening until later next week, if not the week after)
Man that is a game of which I have a lot of fond memories, even if it reminds me of the worst parts of middle school lol. Hope your move goes smoothly btw!
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by thatguyif »

Nast wrote: 2 years ago Man that is a game of which I have a lot of fond memories, even if it reminds me of the worst parts of middle school lol. Hope your move goes smoothly btw!
Thanks! I mean, there's a certain resonance I have with the game because I grew up in New England (the game's setting), and there are definitely vibes with some of the private schools I knew of, even going through Chapter 1.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Playing actual games instead of trash gacha. Added some games to my Vita through the power of PSX2PSP and they seem to be working on Adrenaline despite reading in a lot of places that they didn't. For anyone that comes across this post and wants to add PSX games to their Vita that aren't on the PSN or PKGj, I used compression level 3 on all of them, had a problem booting up an uncompressed Star Ocean due to it being a two disc game.

Star Ocean: The Second Story: Made it past the Heraldry Forest and into Hilton in the Continent of Lacour, seems to be half of the first disc. Got the info in Herlie about the Dragon at the Cross Cave, and had Ashton (and Gyoro and Ururun) join my party. The Dragons' names are very awkward in an English context. YK thought it could be a pun that didn't get translated but no it's just Rena trying to give em cute, non-threatening names. I really don't know what to localize it to. Most likely a really silly name you'd see a rich lady character call her pet chihuahua or poodle like Flipsy-poo or something. The Private Action with Celine worrying about her weight felt super awkward.

SaGa Frontier (replay, PSX): English version, only JP was on PSN. Made it past the Shingrow Palace segment as Emelia. Got the Light Gift on my main party, but I still haven't recruited Roufas outside of missions, so I need to head to Shrike and find him, forgot about him entirely. In any case, I'm working on building Emelia (Gun), Lyza (Martial Arts), Annie (Sword), Lute (Sword) and Mei-Ling (Gun). I still think it's funny Lyza mentions people calling her "too bitchy", swearing is funny.

The Legend of Heroes IV (PSX): Grinding a bit while doing the quests available in Phildin to recruit Muse and maybe Martie with the dosh and then do Retrieve the Ancient Manuscript (古文書の奪回). Did all the quests there up to Exterminate the Hamakages (ハマカゲス退治): Return Daisy's Book (デイジーさんの本を図書館に返却), Search for Lil' Kate (ヤンク氏の姪ケイトちゃんを探す), Collect Burner's Money (集金代行) and Deliver Rovel's Letter (手紙配達代行), and then Exterminate etc.

Digimon World: Giving this another shot because why not, better check if it's working, read it didn't because of using POPSloader. Went with Agumon as my starter (Jijimon: "Do you have friends?" >Yes) and recruited the wild Agumon, Kunemon and Palmon. I wanted Greymon but I couldn't reach the Weight requirement, so I got Centarumon instead. I like boil boy here, he's helping save my files from the dreaded Numemon <3. And he uses fire techniques so it's convenient if I ever get Agumon again (I like cycling through the available roster ^^) and a few fire techs, since they both specialize in Fire, Biyomon and Gabumon only have two fire techs available.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by GenesisJames »

It's been a bit! In between my bouts of absolute 0 motivation to do anything, I finished/am playing some games.

1. Finished Cyberpunk 2077. Loved it. Basically got 100% other than a few annoying missions and all endings. Absolutely stunning world (probably one of the most fleshed out worlds in any game I've ever played), a lot of fun and touching moments, and just an all-around blast to play... ASIDE from the glitches and the hand-to-hand combat. I don't know how a game with simple yet gratifying and super-fun gun-play can also have one of the WORST hand-to-hand combat systems I've ever experienced in a game. You can largely ignore it, but there's a select few missions that require you to fistfight, and they were infuriating. I still haven't beaten the last two and I probably never will unless they patch the game to make them bearable.
Most of the glitches are fairly unimportant, with models being thrown around and random things floating, etc. But the most annoying part was the crashes. Numerous crashes. I had a few at the start, went through most of the game without any more, then my last few hours of the game, there were many more of them. It's a super fun game and I really would recommend it, but I'd wait until the next big update comes out in hopes that they fix a lot of the bugs and crashes.

2. Finished New Pokémon Snap. As someone who's never played the original and only had passive knowledge on the game from LP's, I had a blast with this! It's surprisingly deep, looks really nice, and captures the feel of the original while adding a lot of cool new elements. I especially like the replay value added in the amount of Pokémon, the (main) four different poses to try and catch them in, and the ranking system. There's WAY more content in this game than I expected. Cool environments, as well. It's definitely not a game that's gonna appeal to everyone, but it's super fun and if you liked the original, I think you'll love this one.

3. Started my attempts to 1cc the new Touhou 18. Definitely having a lot of fun with it, but it's definitely on the harder side lmao. Not as hard as 15, but I would definitely place it as second hardest, even over 11. The card system is super cool and reminds me a lot of an indie shmup called AngerForce, which uses a similar shopping/upgrade mechanic. I've been really liking the new girls (Takane might be one of my new favorites) and the music and patterns are also pretty good. No idea what's up with that difficulty curve, though. I know Stage 4's usually supposed to be the spike, but where other games have a difficulty hill, this one's a difficulty cliff. I'd say it's actually harder than Stage 5 and maybe even Stage 6, at least to me. Other than that though, a lot of replayability and good times with this one. Might even tackle the extra stage, since apparently it's one of the easier ones. I can finally have an extra boss other than Mokou under my belt, maybe!!
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Lunar: Eternal Blue: o/ Went and beat the Black Fiend pretty easily after getting Ronfar's Health magic to Lv29. Restored the Black Dragon. Later got to Raculi, talked to two people and promptly avoided almost everyone after figuring out it was another "town of crazies" like Iluk, not risking another "funny" ableist joke. I'll only take the "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" gag. Went back a little later and went through the Serak Palace*, fought the Firebirds while Ronfar made it through Mauri's subconscious to get to her id or whatever, easy pickings. Leo was also there**.

Entered the Red Dragon's Cave and leveled Lemina's Ice to Lv27, as in my walkthrough, and proceeded. Beat the shit out of the (very femme) Red Fiend (i'll headcanon him as a boy because his mane reminds me of Pina from Beastars, he's apparently really hard in the Working Designs difficulty, again, I'm using the Unworked patch) and saw Ruby mature into a fully fledged Dragon(ess). Spoilers she's still travelling back with us. Saved at the Serak Palace after getting the loot from the Lava Area. Next up is revisiting Pentagulia, then the endgame, then postgame (no real superbosses just an extended epilogue with two bosses), though I'll try to see if I can do a small stop at the Lion's Head*** and the Dragon's Nest first.

* - :serac:
** - :sheath:
*** - me!
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

Beat It Takes Two last night. Very good game, but it's pretty much a one-and-done deal. Still enjoyed it for the most part because of the gameplay variety, so I do recommend giving it a go. Also been getting around to doing some Mega Man 3 recording this weekend. I always forget how much slowdown that game has until I get started with it. Still love MM3, but that is its biggest flaw.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Star Ocean: The Second Story: Did the Ashton sidequest across the Mountain Palace, the Lassguss Mountain and the Salva Drift. Then did the Tournament of Arms, recruited Precis and went through the Sanctuary of Linga for herbs. Heading to Hoffman Ruins now.

The Legend of Heroes IV (original): Still grinding.

Guardian's Crusade: Made it past Chapter 1 - Departure.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by GenesisJames »

I feel like I got worse at Touhou somehow? I've been trying to 1cc 18 but man, I can't even get past stage 4 without continues. :( I even lose lives in stage 3 in stupid ways. I wonder if somehow my reaction time's gotten worse or something? It's super frustrating; I beat almost every other game in the series AND 8's extra but I can't even come close here. :reimuko:
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Guardian's Crusade: Got beat up by Darkbeat and Ibkee in Isten, allowing Marco to be the Mayor as he deserves, got to Zed Harbor, decided to get the Beast Emerald to get tickets for the Zephyr from the mayor as they sold out, and took on the job to deliver the Stone Slate to Garik in Carmarthen after making it past the tunnel nearby (had to meet some travelers at the dock first).

Went through the Kuldo Ruins to the west to try and obtain the Beast Emerald, the travelers beat us to it, defeated the Winged Lion anyway, gave the Stone Slate to Garik, went on the Zephyr, learned some more about Darkbeat and Ibkee's past, made it to Jungo. Saw Ibkee's orphanage, named the young couple's baby, got Ringsider (i think?), now grinding a bit before heading to the Lighthouse.

Albert Odyssey (SNES): Defeated the Ghast (Gust?) and Liamoth who were blocking our path to Courtlord. Liamoth was later betrayed by Oswald who ordered his men to take his life. In his deathbed Liamoth seemed to have a change of heart. Now I'm off to Maurina.

Arc the Lad III: At Forestamoore. Did all Jobs up to 15: Recover the Strange UFO. Failed Model for a Troubled Painter (i'm bad at this minigame) and Examiner's Assistant (didn't heal beforehand) sadly.

Wild Arms 3: At Baskar Colony. Grinding Virginia's levels a bit before going to get the other guardians at the Fallen Sanctuary, already got Grudiev.

Lastly, two games I'm playing on my 3DS:

Riviera: The Promised Land: At 1-3: Angelic Advent - Stairway of Judgment.

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride: Barely started, at Roundbeck, gonna grind to equip Bianca first before heading to Uptaten. Man this game slows down in some areas, nds-bootstrap no doubt.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Slimeman01 »

Help Binding of Isaac has taken my life over again

Almost finished getting all the completion marks with the

Normal Characters

, going pretty well so far, over halfway done!
:iris: :demo:
raocow wrote:To answer your question Slimeman yes that is super fine
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by raekuul »

Code: Select all

1. FFTA - Next totema: Omega
2. Switch Online SNES - Super Metroid, Demon's Crest, Star Fox
3. Intense EET - Mary Sue the Fighter/Wild Mage
4. GZDoom - Try out Roguelike Arsenal.  Also install Chex Quest IWADs.
5. Wii Sports+Resort - Putting practice
6. Trickster Online - Mermaid Palace
7. Pocket Monsters Sword - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
8. Revelations: The Demon Slayer - Test Modern Spell Names + Better Monster Names
9. MMMerge - Tomb of VARN and the rest of MM6's endgame
Games Beaten In 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Beat Lunar: Eternal Blue.

A profound game.

The Sega CD wasn't the most popular add-on, in any part of the world, but there were some standout titles for it, the only official English release of Snatcher, arguably Sonic CD, Panic!, Eternal Champions: Challenge from yadda yadda... But a lot of was ports and FMV shovelware. There were a few RPGs for it. One notable one was Lunar: Silver Star, which I plan to do a review on (5/Jun/2021 here). Lunar sold nearly 1:1 with the Sega CD in Japan, known there as the Mega CD. It didn't save the Mega CD especially compared to the PC Engine and Super Famicom, but it was a slight success for Sega.

The idea behind Silver Star was to create a game about a young boy travelling the world spreading democracy, which mutated into a story of good vs. evil, and resulted in one of the most kindhearted games in JRPG history. Eternal Blue takes this kindness even further.

Like the first game, it is a story about descovering the power the kindness of humanity has when it comes to fighting pure evil and a superhuman being discovering love with the help of friends. Lucia is a very Rei Ayanami type character. First being cold and emotionless, but not outright heartless, she soon learns the beauty of Lunar and humanity thanks to the help of Hiro and Ruby, who protect her from Althena's Heroes.

Another theme touched upon is the weakness of humanity. Hiro and Leo are compared by their loyalty, Leo never questioning it until it is too late. Ronfar and Mauri are compared by love, Ronfar choosing to leave her behind out of guilt for not being able to help her, until discovering Zophar has enslaved her due to the Blood of Zophar that he gave her to cure her illness. Jean and Lunn are compared by how they handle power, Jean sees power as a way to stop evil and defend humanity (this isn't conveyed as well, this is more of an interpretation of her actions throughout the game) while Lunn saw power as a way to dominate the weak. Lastly, Lemina and Borgan are compared by ambition, Lemina wishes to restore Vane by restoring the guild, and while that leads her to a path of greed and businesswoman-type attitudes (which is mostly played for laughs), Borgan goes and bismirches Vane by creating a new improved Vane that surpasses the original in magic power to appease Lemina's mother, and forces all who aren't powerful mages into slavery.

All four evil counterparts do resign their ways and work for good in the end, Leo joining your party after LEANING FOREVER a few times to make up for past transgressions, Mauri is healed thanks to Ronfar doing psychic damage by rescuing her id, I guess. Lunn sees that he's surpassed by Jean and learns that power isn't something to be held by a few to oppress others. Lastly, Borgan sees that doing all the things he did for Miria's sake was wrong and chooses to Go Home And Be A Family Man for Miria and Lemina. While the characters are paper thin, there is some feeling of warmth in their small personalities. My favorite characters are personally Lemina and Ronfar.

The gameplay is the same as the first game (I'll go into detail with a Silver Star review), with the addition of a Tactics system where you can quickly choose preset strategies for one turn, which is good for button mashing past small fry battles. I mostly used it for conserving MP by always Attacking.

The only problem with this game apart from slight difficulty spikes, some choice design decisions in the Epilogue messing with its profoundness and an annoying encounter rate... Is the translation. Everyone has heard this before but, Working Designs has some strange, pretty childish quirks in their writing. Their standard writing is pretty average for the time, not phenomenal but does the job. They have a tendency to add unfitting pop culture references to replace pointless NPC chatter which I find dumb, but you could do worse. Then. THEN. There's the edgy humor. Right in Larpa, there is an NPC that contemplates quitting her job and going on welfare, causing a reply from Ruby about wasting her life. In another instance, there is an instance of Ruby calling an NPC the R slur over beating himself bloody on purpose. In another instance, Ronfar makes a quip about "fake girls" grossing him out.

This is downright embarrassing. A phenomenal, beautiful game like this should not have such trash jokes attached to it. It's why despite being able to have fun with Working Designs published games, I always have to append a content warning to them. Working Designs on the whole was pretty unprofessional though with Vic Ireland constantly burning bridges and starting shit so I wouldn't be surprised if a similar mindset is what inspired these jokes, pardon me if I'm going too far. They also have a tendency of screwing up the balancing, in this game's case, awkwardly rebalancing the enemies by hand to give less EXP and Silver and making you pay Magic EXP (formula is (hiro's level)x15) to save. I purposefully used a patch to remove this and restore the Japanese difficulty, much like how I did 7th Saga. I understand this is to combat rentals and supposed "abusers of the game trade-in system", or so he said about Thunder Force V having its Kids mode removed in a Usenet thread which is both dumb and pretty ableist in retrospect, but it feels consumer unfriendly and this catering exclusively to hardcore, challenge junky gamers as well as being outclassed by fresher publishers outbidding them in other games and the constant expenditures in making every release a collector's edition and the constant delays, is a big indication of how they went under.

That thread is really funny feel free to read it for some quality hot takes from both sides, I was on a arguments in Working Designs discussion threads high at the time, they're very funny.

So yeah, in the end, I wholeheartedly recommend it, it's not FF7 levels of a revelation but. It's pretty touching and in the end, for a JRPG that's what matters the most. Just content warning about all the Working Designs grime.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by thatguyif »

So last weekend, before my move Tuesday, I played a bit of both No Man's Sky and MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. Note that I couldn't spend that much time with them, so my thoughts are more from the hip than usual.

No Man's Sky is a game I want to enjoy. It's beautiful, it's got cool exploration, it's got pew-pew. The problem is...it slams you in the face with crafting. Crafting I don't mind if it's a side thing to do for fun, but when it's a game that requires you to do it, it's not fun. And NMS gives those vibes. Like I wanted to explore, and they were all "you need to build a fabricator," "you need to build stuff," "you need to mine for various things just to get around," stupid shit like that. They refuse to give you controls of your ship, but they spend a lot of time teaching you crafting. If this game gets the Free Epic Game of the Week treatment, I'll pick it up, buuuut I don't think I want to be super into some Minecraft clone.

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is probably a game I will pick up in the future. I enjoyed MW4 way back in the day. Playing through the tutorial mission, it felt like old times. It's also the first game that's really tested my 2080 Ti. It's kind of insane to think about. To be fair, I haven't gone deep into the game, but it feels like a fun mech game.

Anyway...back to Hollownest for me.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Riviera: The Promised Land: Made it to Chapter 2: Pursuit of Truth, 2-3 - Lacrima Castle: Moonlight Garden to be specific. Gonna be working on gaining what skills I can for now. Lina is adorable, she's my fave character so far but Fia's calmer yet mature attitude and soft disposition is definitely my type. I'll see whatever happens with the affection system though, I don't want to force any path, like a real life relationship. God this is so nerdy.

Terranigma: Got past Eklemata, the scene with the goat I expected to be harsher, but it's still pretty moving. Keyblade999 complained about Dark Morph on their FAQ but it was generally piss easy, same person who complained about some questionable shit on Minelvaton Saga too so ¯\_(^o^)_/¯ maybe they just need to git gud.

Dark Morph is also super inspired by Vagullion (i had to look up the spelling) from Ys, the awful bat boss from 1 (I think Origin too?). Quintet was founded by ex-Falcom members, specifically the Ys writer (Tomoyoshi Miyazaki), and the director, designer and programmer (Masaya Hashimoto) is also a member. It's almost as annoying but its bats are easier to tank since i-frames and the ability to walk on diagonals is a thing here (I think diagonals was also on TGCD Ys though not sure, maybe just 4? Definitely not PC88, mantis boy was also dreadful). Taking a small break and will be stocking up on Medium Size Bulbs (M.Bulb) before heading on with Louran which I've triggered the dungeon entry already.

This game is art.
thatguyif wrote: 2 years ago No Man's Sky is a game I want to enjoy. It's beautiful, it's got cool exploration, it's got pew-pew. The problem is...it slams you in the face with crafting. Crafting I don't mind if it's a side thing to do for fun, but when it's a game that requires you to do it, it's not fun. And NMS gives those vibes. Like I wanted to explore, and they were all "you need to build a fabricator," "you need to build stuff," "you need to mine for various things just to get around," stupid shit like that. They refuse to give you controls of your ship, but they spend a lot of time teaching you crafting.
This is why I don't like survival Minecraft. It's basically sandbox with a dragon slaying goal that was added "posthumously" (I'm pretty sure it was during the final release not after but y'know) and everything relies on crafting and scavenging randomly generated worlds, creating a shelter, creating armor, creating weapons... I just want to build fancy shit. If you're gonna make me craft just give me like. Swordcraft Story level depth.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Vay: At Smythe Village (Gilan in the English version). I have a hard time understanding most of spoken Japanese (my audible understanding seems to correspond with fluency) but I'd take this over Sylph (Sirufa) having an anal evacuating whenever you want to teleport, Unworked patch or otherwise. There's only so much scat jokes I can take.
GamePro commented that the story, stylistics, and general progression of Vay are generic and forgettable, but that the game is overall worthwhile for the sole reason of its intelligent dialogue. They elaborated that "you actually look forward to talking to people - not simply to see what they have to say, but how they say it. ... It's not really literature (you wouldn't buy it if it were a book, and you can't really quote it without sounding silly), but it's mature and serious enough to acquire its own urgency, and funny in a way that even adults will appreciate."
I hate 90s game magazines' taste in video games so much.

The first village (Jeffle in English) is also called Suhorook in Japanese and that's the worst name for a village in a JRPG. Jeffle isn't much better it sounds like Arfenhouse. Grinding for gold to upgrade Pottle's gear and level him up since Hybelger (Sandor) is already at Lv5. Very much a Dragon Quest clone, it's good enough but not groundbreaking, which could turn off more casual RPG fans who yearn for more notable experiences. As well as people who just aren't huge Working Designs stans. Imagine suffering through the English translation while not being into DQ style RPGs. I shudder.
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