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Cream-of-Plenty posted:I think a lot of the gangs are either inspired by real people or kickstarters, as well. Like the group on Dismal island, which the wiki says is based on Jim Sterling and his "Dismal Jesters" podcast. Not just according to wiki, all those guys did the characters' sound effects
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Sep 19, 2015 18:48
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RT's a really, really good party member but I hate him.
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Sep 19, 2015 20:15
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pon alien posted:RT's a really, really good party member but I hate him. I never used him. What does he even do?
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Sep 19, 2015 21:44
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Just grabbed this after seeing it mentioned in the Undertale thread. Should I play it on regular mode or go straight to Pain, particularly if I'm likely to only play it once this year?
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Sep 20, 2015 01:38
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Stabbatical posted:I never used him. What does he even do? He has strong fire skills with decent burn chances and can also cause blind, weird, and deep poison. It's just a really solid set, he's a great utility guy if you don't want to use Birdie and if you do use Birdie he's another fireball.
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Sep 20, 2015 01:38
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Memnaelar posted:Just grabbed this after seeing it mentioned in the Undertale thread. Going Pain is pretty easy, since it doesn't make the game much more difficult. However, it does mean you can only use save points once. Soooooo, gently caress it and go regular since pain mode adds very little to the game that you can't just look up on YouTube. Seriously. The added content is marginal, and being able to save at a place more than once is worth missing out on it.
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Sep 20, 2015 01:46
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I just realized that the tribesmen on the bloody mountain were talking about Yado.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:27
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Amgard posted:Garth was pretty dumb. The rest stuck out like a sore thumb but I quite enjoyed Jack and Yazan being weirdos. I never used Sonny or RT ever though. I don't see how anyone of them really stick out frankly. LISA is full of weirdos. Mexicat posted:I just realized that the tribesmen on the bloody mountain were talking about Yado. How so?
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Sep 21, 2015 05:29
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Anatharon posted:How so? You've met him. The shadow of the father howls into the night. His song will make us all dance. He birthed her, he will have her. She does not belong to you. These pretty much all say 'Yado' to me. Mexicat fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Sep 22, 2015 |
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Sep 22, 2015 02:02
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Huh, that's really interesting.
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Sep 23, 2015 01:23
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Wow, this game (the Painful I guess? the original game) is really good; I just beat it for the first time. I have a lot of small gripes with it both mechanically and like, narratively/thematically, but overall it's a really interesting, distinctive thing and I've recommended it repeatedly and will continue to recommend to friends remotely interested in JRPGs. One question: I used Joy when Buzzo forced it down my throat, to beat the ECW champ, and in the final gauntlet. I don't have a save file before all that stuff, and I don't feel like replaying it entirely from the beginning yet, but if I never take Joy (and presumably get the Joyless End achievement) does Brad still become a mutant in the epilogue?
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Sep 27, 2015 07:46
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Zombies' Downfall posted:Wow, this game (the Painful I guess? the original game) is really good; I just beat it for the first time. I have a lot of small gripes with it both mechanically and like, narratively/thematically, but overall it's a really interesting, distinctive thing and I've recommended it repeatedly and will continue to recommend to friends remotely interested in JRPGs. Yes, but you get an extended ending.
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Sep 27, 2015 07:46
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Zombies' Downfall posted:spoiler]does Brad still become a mutant in the epilogue?[/spoiler] It's too late to fight it... Giving in feels good.
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Sep 27, 2015 07:51
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Zombies' Downfall posted:Wow, this game (the Painful I guess? the original game) is really good; I just beat it for the first time. I have a lot of small gripes with it both mechanically and like, narratively/thematically, but overall it's a really interesting, distinctive thing and I've recommended it repeatedly and will continue to recommend to friends remotely interested in JRPGs.
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Sep 27, 2015 09:35
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Bought this game recently and I'm in the middle of act three after having made some horrible, horrible decisions. lost my three best mates and then my last arm, and all of my possessions. I'm amazed that I'm still making progress at all. The tsunami gang is kicking my rear end at the moment but I think it'll still be possible if I jigger my party lineup a bit. The game wasn't really grabbing me until act 2, when I decided to give tnt to the random gang members in the hub area. I figured it would make my life more difficult later, which I was okay with, since I'm very good at video games and I can handle it. I, uh, didn't expect them to use it to round up and nuke an entire town of civilians.
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Oct 20, 2015 17:01
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DolphinCop posted:I, uh, didn't expect them to use it to round up and nuke an entire town of civilians.[/spoiler] Lisa is a game that will make you regret EVERY decision you will make, and not make you feel good about it in the end. Enjoy your experience!
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Oct 21, 2015 01:07
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That's not entirely true. I don't regret playing Lisa--it was a very enjoyable experience. It also balances out a lot of the dismal situations with some wonderfully bleak humour.
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Oct 21, 2015 02:12
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Blind Sally posted:That's not entirely true. I don't regret playing Lisa--it was a very enjoyable experience. It also balances out a lot of the dismal situations with some wonderfully bleak humour. Oh I didn't mean that as in 'You'll regret playing the game' but like 'Your decisions will never feel like you made the right choice'
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Oct 22, 2015 22:13
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Ha, okay, I got your meaning. Yeah, the game's plot is really Brad continuing down a series of wrong choices that lead to ultimate disaster. No matter what you do, you creep inexorably towards you doom.
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Oct 23, 2015 04:24
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I always figured the overarching theme of LISA is how people who choose to make decisions they know will hurt others tend to cause a spiral effect that leads to destruction. It starts with Brad's dad and spreads like cancer infecting everyone... Ultimately the sins of that man are in part to blame for the apocalypse, Because of Buzzo and his relationship with Lisa, a girl who was abused enough to want her own body mutilated to make it less appealing, basically the poo poo doesn't just roll downhill but it snowballs till literally everything is buried. Ultimately everyone is both to blame and blameless, they're just beetles moving around their own small chunks of poo poo... the ultimate evil in the series though is THE poo poo itself. Inanimate and without a will it simply ruins and corrupts everyone to some level
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Oct 23, 2015 10:06
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Blind Sally posted:That's not entirely true. I don't regret playing Lisa--it was a very enjoyable experience. It also balances out a lot of the dismal situations with some wonderfully bleak humour. Keep in mind The Joyful is pretty much devoid of that latter part. I was thinking about it again as I was talking to a friend who'd just played Lisa, and I think one thing about the game that bothers me is Buddy. Ignoring all gameplay concerns and other story concerns, I'm just going to focus on why I feel like Buddy wasn't as engaging a protagonist as Brad. Brad was an excellent protagonist. The game shows a lot of bad things about Brad. He raised Buddy poorly, leaving her with enormous emotional scars. He completely neglected Rando despite him being his ACTUAL second chance, Buddy was more like a third. He murdered dozens of people for very selfish reasons, and ultimately his actions made everyone's lives a little worse. On the other hand, we also get to see some of his good points. Which is interesting. Look at what Brad is willing to do for his gang: He lets Columbo rob him to save Terry's life. He'll let Buzzo cut off an arm to save one. Most of all, he lets Buzzo mutilate Buddy to save their lives. It's easy to say he did it for selfish reasons- He needed them to fight his way to save Buddy. But I don't think that really holds up. He had plenty of other guys to work for him. He was pretty strong on his own, and most of all he comprimised Buddy's safety to save their lives. Obviously, he does another Bad Thing at Rando Island when he kills his gang, but that situation is a bit morally grey. If you have no gang members left, Brad at the very least seems guilty to have let them die. Contrast Buddy. She gets really no redeeming moments. She's incredibly cruel to Rando, she attacks people who pose no threat to her, and she generally is pretty awful. She has a bit of a character arc, but it's just so schizophrenic it just wasn't believable or enjoyable. I mean, she suddenly wakes up as an anime swordswoman and she acts in general like a completely different person than she was before. She's also serious all the time and doesn't get to play straight man to anyone. She gets to talk to Rando for the first half of the DLC, but then he's uncerimoniously swept out of the plot for ~pathos~ e: I get kinda worked up about Lisa the Joyful and Hotline Miami 2 because both of them are games I was really really looking forward to, then was immensely let down by. 
Cuntellectual fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Oct 23, 2015 |
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Oct 23, 2015 10:52
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Anatharon posted:Contrast Buddy. She gets really no redeeming moments. She's incredibly cruel to Rando, she attacks people who pose no threat to her, and she generally is pretty awful. She has a bit of a character arc, but it's just so schizophrenic it just wasn't believable or enjoyable. I mean, she suddenly wakes up as an anime swordswoman and she acts in general like a completely different person than she was before. She's also serious all the time and doesn't get to play straight man to anyone. She gets to talk to Rando for the first half of the DLC, but then he's uncerimoniously swept out of the plot for ~pathos~ We didn't really get to see much of Buddy's personality in the main game to be honest so I don't think that's a fair point.
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Oct 23, 2015 11:00
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Golden Goat posted:We didn't really get to see much of Buddy's personality in the main game to be honest so I don't think that's a fair point. I'm willing to concede the point, but one of her few traits that we got to see was she was curious about things and that never comes across. She's also kind of fearful of Brad, but wakes up and starts slicing him up without missing a beat.
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Oct 23, 2015 11:10
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Anatharon posted:I'm willing to concede the point, but one of her few traits that we got to see was she was curious about things and that never comes across. She's also kind of fearful of Brad, but wakes up and starts slicing him up without missing a beat. She's kind of scared of him but I think being cornered along with the fact she hates his guts meant she kind of fought back instantly. I do think that maybe Buddy was TOO violent in Joyful but I do believe some of why she acted like she should own everything was because of how everybody treated her as special, unique and an object. It was actually something I really liked, like in the trailer having the line "In a world YOU own" was cool because it wasn't going with a down beat "she's all alone and trying to survive" feeling.
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Oct 23, 2015 11:24
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Anatharon posted:I'm willing to concede the point, but one of her few traits that we got to see was she was curious about things and that never comes across. She's also kind of fearful of Brad, but wakes up and starts slicing him up without missing a beat. That's the only fight in either game where choosing not to fight is has any significance, since if you do over 2000 damage to Buzzo ends the fight early and say "don't touch him" instead of "stay back" and then you're locked out of the scene you need to see to get the third ending.
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Oct 23, 2015 11:47
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Anatharon posted:Keep in mind The Joyful is pretty much devoid of that latter part. Disappointing DLC/Sequels--  Never forget
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Oct 23, 2015 14:57
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Anatharon posted:Contrast Buddy. She gets really no redeeming moments. She's incredibly cruel to Rando, she attacks people who pose no threat to her, and she generally is pretty awful. She has a bit of a character arc, but it's just so schizophrenic it just wasn't believable or enjoyable. I mean, she suddenly wakes up as an anime swordswoman and she acts in general like a completely different person than she was before. She's also serious all the time and doesn't get to play straight man to anyone. She gets to talk to Rando for the first half of the DLC, but then he's uncerimoniously swept out of the plot for ~pathos~ I agree with your point that The Joyful and Hotline Miami 2 are disappointing, but I don't agree that The Joyful is disappointing for these reasons (I won't even touch HM2). No, Buddy doesn't really get any redeeming points, but then the game isn't about her, it's about Brad. If Lisa: The Painful were a novel, The Joyful would be the weird coda at the end that Stephen King warns you not to read because it'll leave you feeling unsatisfied (gently caress the Dark Tower 7). We don't get much time with Buddy. She exists in this brief moment of time where she is overwhelmed with grief and anger and in a near-constant state of hosed up bliss because she's on Joy. There's no real development, and instead what we're really getting is more development of Brad via the lives of these other people who have affected by him: Rando, Buddy, and Buzzo. Through this DLC, we learned more about Brad's world, his history, and about Lisa, than we do about Buddy--because she's just a vessel to take us through the epilogue. Also, ignoring the update that added a bunch of new moves, I never for moment thought she woke up an anime swordsperson. She gets one skill: aimed stab--which gets a few damage upgrades but operate on the same principal that can be hosed up fairly easy. That dull gameplay doesn't strike me as someone who is skilled and knows a lot of techniques, that strikes me as a relative newbie who only knows how to repeat this one technique over and over again. Compare to Brad, who has dozens of abilities and can also just do whatever with his dial-a-combo hits and still do crazy damage. Regarding to acting like an entirely different person, I don't feel that's true either. Buddy in The Joyful was like Buddy in The Painful after she started rejecting Brad and talking about how much she hated him. She's angry and violent and is hosed up on joy, so this angry violent emotion is amplified. That's her state of being for nearly the whole DLC, but again, I saw the DLC as a coda for Brad's store as told through a different point of view. The Joyful sucks because it's boring, lacks charm, and has no sense of subtlety.
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Oct 23, 2015 15:08
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Anatharon posted:Keep in mind The Joyful is pretty much devoid of that latter part. I'm in the awkward position of agreeing with you completely while also arguing that you're kind of missing the point of LtJ. If Brad was the struggle to retain one's moral compass in the face of an uncaring, abusive, toxic world - then Buddy is the madness of that world made manifest. Brad's heroism and his villainy are simultaneously made from his experiences before the White Flash. His desire to protect Buddy at all costs, and the bodies that pile up because of it, are a direct result of his failure to protect Lisa. As such, Brad is a man we know either personally or abstractly, and we are able to identify with him closely even when he does terrible things. We put ourselves in the strange and uncomfortable position of rooting for a monster and hoping he doesn't have to pursue this dark path, but we're powerless to stop him. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. And let's not fool ourselves: Brad is a bad dude. He has moments of heroism and he is undoubtedly altruistic at many points - but his drive was born out of a deep and incurable brokenness that will let him discard his allies, brutally, the moment they try to stop him. Brad is a villain protagonist, despite feeble gestures otherwise. Buddy, by contrast, is incomparable to what we would call a "real world" character. She is, both literally and figuratively, a deity in the world of Lisa. She decides the future of humanity, whether war or peace happens, who lives and who dies. Despite the fact she's a 12(???) year old girl, she wields an unfathomable existential power over all humanity - even more than Dr. Yado, who literally considers himself a god. But Yado, as Buzzo so helpfully tosses out, has no power over the future of people. He can make mutants, and he can destroy humanity, but humanity isn't going to fight wars over him or rally behind him. He is a force of entropy and the signal of the end of humanity, something that Buddy ends up combating as part of her ultimate decision. So what's Buddy's ultimate decision? It's pretty weighty, but it asks "How do I exercise that power?". Part of why Buddy seems unapproachable as a protagonist like Brad is that she wasn't raised in a world that accepts the same moral fundamentals that we do. And while her flashback schooling by Brad in the beginning of LtJ seems a bit like a post-hoc characterization given her more reserved conduct in LtP, it also makes more sense. Buddy IS the future of everything, whether or not Brad accepts it, and that means she can't sit aside and watch other people decide the future of humanity - she has to intervene, whether violently or peacefully. To her, and to the world she's raised in, peace doesn't make a whole lot of sense (and I'll talk about where peace failed in just a moment with Rando.) Her lust for power was driven, in part, by the addiction of Joy and Joy's side-effect of magnifying, for lack of a better term, "raw intent." That intent wouldn't be there unless she truly wanted to be Queen, though Joy does affect how she approaches and feels about it. When you consolidate the necessary megalomania that The Future of Humanity would feel, the madness of a drug designed to make you mad, and the rearing of a violent man who taught her to be violent, you get Buddy in a nutshell. A twisted, destructive psychopath who has no choice but to act in a big way. I felt a lot of the way you did about Buddy and LtJ, pretty much through to the endgame. I felt the game was very directionless, overly brutal, and lacked a lot of the character and charm that LtP brought. I also feel that the endgame, from Rando's death to the credits, completely reversed my opinion of the game. It's still, by all counts, an extremely hacked RPG video game: it's not very fun, it's very very tedious, there's no choice for the player (either meaningful or meaningless, which is pretty impressive), and the story cleans up a bit TOO nicely - but it also follows the questions LtP asked to a T, explores the characters of Brad/Buddy/Rando/Buzzo and leaves you with a feeling that the choices they made were ultimately more important than the choices the player has made. Brad's tragic end in LtP was one way to end Brad's story, but LtJ explored Brad's legacy in a way that added an immense amount of complexity to why he became the sad husk he ended up being. It also, without reservation, explored the weakening mind of a scared girl who was both coerced and made the choice to wage a violent war for power. If LtP is about how broken people create broken people, LtJ looks at how broken people create broken societies. It's only through an incredibly monumental moment (some would argue it's a contrived one) that Buddy can make the choice to "Join Them" or "Leave Them". It's salvation in its most transparent form, with Buzzo giving Buddy the means to escape a cycle of abuse and violence and build a new world. So while Buddy is a difficult protagonist to stomach, I think she's excellently written, compelling, and altogether disturbing - which I argue is the REAL strength of LtJ - I finished that then realized I didn't talk about Rando, so I'll do that briefly. Rando has the "Peacemaker" job, but despite how admirable he is, no one could fail more at his job than he has. Rando is the epitome of the "passive actor" through all levels of the story. In Lisa the Painful, the most significant thing he ever does, through the course of the entire game, is give Brad some Rando Rations after Hub 1. Beyond that, anything the Rando Army does is either defensive (defending Buddy/Rando from Brad. Fighting the Buzzo gang), or completely against Rando's wishes and out of his control (attacking Brad after he received said rations). Buddy was "kidnapped" by Rick and Sticky, Buddy traveled to meet Rando herself, and so on. Rando's showdown with Brad is even inevitable, Rando has no choice whether or not to fight. Even his origin story is to sit idly until Brad accepts him, to be victimized when Buzzo brutalized, and to be abandoned when Brad rejects him. While Rando assists Buddy in LtJ, it's entirely according to her ambitions. He tells her how to find the warlords of Olathe, and he protects her from Bolo. Even when he arranges Buddy's second "kidnapping", his co-conspirators are in more control than he is (to be fair, he is badly wounded at the time), of which he immediately distances himself, playing again a passive actor. For Rando, peace is done through inaction, and it results in just as much trouble happening as Brad and Buddy cause actively. Even in his death, the question of his fate is left entirely to the Player and Buddy, both in the hanging scene and after with his mercy-death. As such, Rando does serve as a good foil to Buddy and Brad: how peace is a poor excuse for inaction. Rando has his heart in the right place, but never uses what he has to change the world - and it ends up getting him killed. I like Rando's character a lot, he's certainly the most likable character in Lisa - but he's a tragic figure who engineers his own failures because he doesn't have the raw intent and the will to act like Brad and Buddy do. Anyway, sorry for the huge high-school level analysis. I have mixed feelings about LtJ but I think what it set out to do is something it definitely succeeded at. It's a logical extension of the themes of the game wrapped up in a very feverish, maddened conclusion that cleans up the story very nicely. Maybe a bit TOO clean, though. Also HM2 was great for the music alone.
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Oct 23, 2015 16:51
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The Joyful actually grew on me a lot as time passed. It's not perfect, but it still has great moments (and of course, music) and I'd say it's still worth it. The patch also fixed a few things that made it so frustrating.
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Oct 23, 2015 16:57
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what Lisa the Joyful did that Lisa the Painful didn't was actually build a coherent setting and fit it into the plot. Painful's story was good, but exploration basically just boils down to absurdist fallout, or maybe more accurately "whatever dingaling was thinking about when it came time to design the next area". Joyful actually shows a society that has passed the tipping point and can't sustain itself, and you can see it in every single area and warlord. the nice warlords are doomed even without buddy's conquest, what with farty's supply routes being filled with raiders and ambushes, and mr beautiful's peaceful enclave being wrecked by joy mutants. there's a death cult actively campaigning against the people who are trying fix things, and the most powerful warlord is less interested in helping and more interested in murdering the hell out of anybody who challenges him.
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Oct 23, 2015 17:59
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also Joyful may have less humor but it still had my favorite joke overall. Vega Van Dam is showing off! *whap whack whap* oo~ *slow kick*
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Oct 23, 2015 18:01
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Recurring character Gary the Hot Soup.
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Oct 23, 2015 19:37
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Amgard posted:Also HM2 was great for the music alone. Soundtrack is great, plot and gameplay are kind of dull.
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Oct 23, 2015 21:15
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hotline miami 2 is significantly better than hotline miami 1 but theres a lot of differences in tone and structure so i can forgive people for having the wrong opinion about it
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Oct 23, 2015 21:21
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DolphinCop posted:hotline miami 2 is significantly better than hotline miami 1 but theres a lot of differences in tone and structure so i can forgive people for having the wrong opinion about it and i forgive you for this wrong opinion, so whatever floats yer boat
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Oct 23, 2015 21:26
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The most correct opinion and near objective fact is that if we ever get more Lisa, it needs to just be a full game about Rando's rise to power.
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Oct 24, 2015 02:07
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DolphinCop posted:hotline miami 2 is significantly better than hotline miami 1 but theres a lot of differences in tone and structure so i can forgive people for having the wrong opinion about it
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Oct 24, 2015 02:18
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Amgard posted:If Brad was the struggle to retain one's moral compass in the face of an uncaring, abusive, toxic world - then Buddy is the madness of that world made manifest. Brad's heroism and his villainy are simultaneously made from his experiences before the White Flash. His desire to protect Buddy at all costs, and the bodies that pile up because of it, are a direct result of his failure to protect Lisa. As such, Brad is a man we know either personally or abstractly, and we are able to identify with him closely even when he does terrible things. We put ourselves in the strange and uncomfortable position of rooting for a monster and hoping he doesn't have to pursue this dark path, but we're powerless to stop him. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. And let's not fool ourselves: Brad is a bad dude. He has moments of heroism and he is undoubtedly altruistic at many points - but his drive was born out of a deep and incurable brokenness that will let him discard his allies, brutally, the moment they try to stop him. Brad is a villain protagonist, despite feeble gestures otherwise. It's why The Joyful kind of fell flat to me; showing the kind of person Brad created was important, but an entire game devoted to exploring that person needs contrast, and there just wasn't any. It would have made for a better full sequel with a large cast and a world to explore - as it stands, the whole game was kind of one note.
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Oct 24, 2015 02:57
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Whalley posted:Brad's a bad guy. It's right there from the start, in the most blatant narrative form possible - we're introduced to him in gameplay by having him kill a dog. It's a technique used in the opening scene of House of Cards, too. It's kind of a whole thing - if you have a character that you want people to know, deep down, that they're Not A Good Person, you have them kill a dog. Buddy's just the detritus of a bad person trying to convince himself he's good. Bad guys can do good things. And good guys can do bad things for the wrong reason. You take that back. Cheese Legs was a loving lovely dog for putting Ter-bear up in that tree.
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Oct 24, 2015 03:42
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Amgard posted:Cheese Legs was a loving lovely dog for putting Ter-bear up in that tree. cheese legs did nothing wrong but deserved it anyway
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Oct 24, 2015 03:55
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