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I finally watched Band of Brothers which encouraged me to replay Brothers and Arms and the early Call of Duty games. I don't really have any complaints about the BIA companions as they can hold their own, but the COD companions in 2 are absolutely worthless. I get that they're all about selling the idea of the PC as the hero so you have to do all the work/get all the glory, but if you're going to have a character yell out 'go on, we have you covered,' actually loving do that. At least in the first game the AI would sometimes shoot at the enemies. The AI teammates in 2 will pass through buildings and bunkers and still somehow let a bunch of troops flank you through positions they should have cleared. That or they'll happily sit in a second floor room blocking you in so the enemies they ignored can lob grenades at your face. Added with the lovely checkpoint system and the insane number of enemies it's a wonder anyone survived the war against Hitler's clone armies when the Allies were busy staring at walls and constantly reloading already loaded firearms.
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Jul 30, 2021 06:29
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There was a bug I found in I think in road to hill 30 near the end. A mission has you fight 2 tanks then cross a road to go into a warehouse. The pathfinding and geometry worked out so that the squad would get stuck on an ankle high bit of kerb and wouldn't go into the warehouse
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Jul 30, 2021 07:21
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Neo The World Ends With You gently caress the wolf enemies. They have an attack where they pounce on one of your party members, and if they land, they pin them to the ground and start mauling them, dealing constant damage. If there are other wolves in the fight, they'll come over and ALSO start mauling the affected party member. And of course, you can't use the trapped party member while they're being mauled to death, and the only way to free them is to hit the wolves with an attack that has knockback- except, the only attacks that have knockback are either combo finishers or ones that need to be charged up, so you're basically guaranteed to take damage if you get trapped.
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Jul 30, 2021 11:09
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Continued teething pains with The Surge 2.  I was looking forward to the next area, because fancy botanical garden + killer robots sounded like a great combo but instead it kinda sucks! The basic enemy for the area are ones that cloak, which is definitely not loving dumb in a game all about careful targeting. Dotted around the area are statues that are actually security robots in disguise. S-tier design, it's cool/creepy as gently caress to watch them split apart into big gangly robots. Unfortunately they're also obscenely overtuned for this part of the game. They can easily two shot you AND they have a shield, which require a charge attack to break apart before you can do anything else. Their gangly arms + their weapon of choice, a big spear lance thinger, means dodging is basically a non-option unless you double dodge straight backwards and hope for the best. They are basically the game saying "learn to parry or GTFO". So I did the former. Oh also they do that wonderful thing where you kill them once and then they revive with a slightly variant moveset based on which part you cut off. The other problem with the area is that it's repetitive. There's a monster running around and you have to force it into a trap so you can actually fight it properly. Naturally this requires activating 3 doohickeys conveniently spread across the 3 main routes through the area. But instead of each route having meaningful variations, they all boil down to the same general configurations of enemies. The one exception, an area where the monster has apparently birthed some additional nano fuckers. These things are incredibly unpleasant. For one, they spawn darting around and hiding in the trees and then dive down into you, which is straight up unfair. And then they have more gotchas like an unblockable AoE burst and the fact that they can split into babies if you chop them in half. This is also around the time they start planting pre-damaged security robots around as defacto turrets. Their AI says if you're at any amount of distance they should use their deathray, which I have zero clue how you're meant to actually avoid. Ostensibly you could circle around them except they're always conveniently placed in spots where that isn't feasible. So you're basically forced to take damage to get in close...at which point it's back to the parry or get hosed melee attacks, joy. Before you can activate the third doohickey, you have to fight a boss that's just some dude. But this is the Surge 2 so instead of a sane fight with telegraphs and patterns and y'know good gameplay instead he randomly 1) cloaks, 2) tries to ambush you from stealth OR drops stun traps, 3) does a bunch of flailing Darth Maul poo poo good luck parrying fucko, and 4) stops to shoot you with a shotgun that's so delayed you will never be hit by it but also never close enough to take advantage of the opening it creates. And sure he's a guy but you can't just expect to poise break Some Guy, because gently caress you. All of this also takes place in an awkwardly small arena for maximum unpleasantness. The area finally culminates in fighting the big nano beastie and it's an absolutely dogshit fight. Three fuckin' phases for no good reason. Phase 1: If you haven't learned to parry by now, you will absolutely quit playing here. If you have, this phase will now waste your time every time you die and respawn. Phase 2: The boss turns into a Souls-esque dog from hell, where it can just do whatever the gently caress it wants and has no patterns to discern whatsoever. Stay at range? It charges at you. Stay close? It does a spin attack with no tell. Or extends its neck to do an unparryable (though still blockable) attack. Or does its one single claw attack that can be parried that you will never be ready for. Or it mixes any and all of these things together with no rhyme or reason or telegraphing. Oh, you dodged the charge and go in for a hit? Nah, it's going to instantly do the neck attack because gently caress you. if you stay at mid range, it does a bizarre sequence where it expends health to shoot projectiles at you, then dive bombs you, then reabsorbs the projectiles it shot. You can break the lingering projectiles to essentially lock in that damage, though the timing seems incredibly fussy (and if you want the boss's upgraded weapon you're arguably disinclined to "skip" the second phase like this). Otherwise after diving it flops over for a good couple of seconds which opens it up to some damage...except once it absorbs the projectiles they can hit you again. And it then creates a nano field that will instantly loving kill you with no warning or reason. It genuinely comes off like an egregious bug than an intended part of the fight. Phase 3: A meaner version of phase 1, where parrying will get you far. Or...you can do what literally everyone does and abuse its broken AI where if you keep your distance it will repeatedly do the same two attacks, a ground slam that sends a line of nano crap at you, and then a big floppy charge where it leaves a giant opening for it to take hits. The only downside is that if you do manage to get hit by the charge it will gently caress you up and also everything its doing is leaving lingering nano crap around which ticks up the game's equivalent of DS's Bleed, but conveniently the damage patches last exactly as long as a single loop of this pattern, so you never have to actively play around it. (Sure can't wait to fight this thing three more times later on in the game.  )The last little annoyance is that the area ends with you delivering the brain of the monster (which is apparently like twice your size, another pet peeve of mine in games) to an NPC, but for no real reason this requires going through a load screen, then a big empty lobby, and then an elevator ride. At which point some plot points are discussed and then he immediately sends you off to another location, necessitating going backwards through all of that, and then also the garden area, and then fully exiting back to the main city area to start going down a different route. The next area changes gears entirely, to a bewildering degree. Gone are the multiple loops and nested shortcuts. Because this thing is a linear gauntlet instead.  The shortcuts aren't completely gone, but most of them shorten individual sections rather than connect directly back to the medbay. Which turns the whole thing into a slog. It's also a dark, dingy, bombed out city kind of place hemmed in by security fences which makes the layout incredibly confusing. It turns out the real goal of the area is to reach an arbitrary high up base area, where you find a key traversal tool: the zipline hook!  Finally I can use all those ziplines that have dotted literally every area of the game! Oh wait, no, I can't. You see, I have the hook that lets me go down ziplines. Going up is an entirely different upgrade.  And obviously I've been keeping careful track of which direction every single zipline in the game goes in. This was immediately relevant, because the way forward is to use the obvious zipline return route all the way back to the start of the area (and the medbay)...then go up a random elevator where there is a single now-usable zipline that takes you to the boss. Zero signposting, maximum confusion.The final bit of insanity? When you return to the medbay there's now an NPC there who asks if he can have the hook you just went through hell to get. Naturally if you give it up, you get a weapon, so you're inclined to do so. Which means you now have to go all the way back through the area a second time just to pick up a new one, because it magically respawns. If you were dumb enough to rest at the medbay and respawn the enemies you now have to do tedious backtracking. If you weren't that dumb you now have to do boring backtracking instead. I guess in the process you get to open some previously-inaccessible closets with inconsequential items inside.  Also there was an enemy in a side room with a unique weapon I guess and an armor set I would've loved to farm off it but oops it doesn't respawn.  Ironically, I finished tonight's session feeling much better about the combat though. Helps that I have better equipment now and a slightly retooled build, but really I'm just glad to be fighting normal, non-gimmicky enemies. Hell, the dreaded scorpion robots from the first game have returned and they are utterly defanged thanks to parrying. (Of course as if to compensate they've added a new annoying robot type...) I feel like I've jumped ahead a bit in the power curve and I'm not just treading water against everything.
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Jul 30, 2021 12:14
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BioEnchanted posted:It's ironic that Horizon's biggest problem is a lack of focus Aw man, I just bought this off Ebay for 99 cents (and $5.00 shipping). Hopefully it's not complete garbage.
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Jul 30, 2021 12:17
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Frank Frank posted:Aw man, I just bought this off Ebay for 99 cents (and $5.00 shipping). Hopefully it's not complete garbage. HZD is fine, it's just crammed with absolute shitloads of open-world filler content to pad out what is ultimately a very short and shallow plotline. Much of which gates your access to the tools you need to have a good time. The good parts are hunting robo-animals. The bad parts are, everything else. You'll have fun with it for 10-20 hours and then you'll get bored because it's all just stuff you've already seen and done with so much of it left.
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Jul 30, 2021 12:27
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MiddleOne posted:HZD is fine, it's just crammed with absolute shitloads of open-world filler content to pad out what is ultimately a very short and shallow plotline. Much of which gates your access to the tools you need to have a good time. The good parts are hunting robo-animals. The bad parts are, everything else. Eh, I guess that's not terrible for $5.99. I gotta say, the best thing about buying a PS5 is that I never owned a PS4 and am able to pick up some absolutely amazing games for almost no money. So far: Bloodborne, Nioh 1 and 2 and I just picked up HZD and Prey. Haven't paid more than $10 for any of them.
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Jul 30, 2021 12:35
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The biggest problem with the Surge 2 for me was the Cult plotline. I can truck through stuff way more tedious than the second half of that game if I think the narrative is going somewhere interesting or entertaining but once I realized the stupid two-dimensional cult was the main plot I had to stop because I could not possibly care anymore. I liked the garden area, though.
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Jul 30, 2021 12:45
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Is that the “Dark Souls with robots” game? Are those worth picking up?
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Jul 30, 2021 12:47
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Frank Frank posted:Is that the “Dark Souls with robots” game? Are those worth picking up? They are interesting but divisive. A lot of neat ideas mixed in with really clunky poo poo. If you can find the first one on deep sale, I'd say check it out. But deep sale.
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Jul 30, 2021 12:51
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Frank Frank posted:Aw man, I just bought this off Ebay for 99 cents (and $5.00 shipping). Hopefully it's not complete garbage. HZD is not perfect but still pretty drat great, don't listen to the haters. Definitely one of my favourite games of the last decade.
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Jul 30, 2021 12:55
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Frank Frank posted:Eh, I guess that's not terrible for $5.99. I gotta say, the best thing about buying a PS5 is that I never owned a PS4 and am able to pick up some absolutely amazing games for almost no money. So far: Bloodborne, Nioh 1 and 2 and I just picked up HZD and Prey. Haven't paid more than $10 for any of them. It’s much better than that description IMO. As far as open world games go it’s definitely one of the best
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Jul 30, 2021 12:59
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John Murdoch posted:I was looking forward to the next area, because fancy botanical garden + killer robots sounded like a great combo but instead it kinda sucks! This area was a massive slog for me the first time through but for what it's worth I thought it was a lot of fun on subsequent playthroughs where I knew where everything was and was actually good at the game and could blast through it in like half an hour. RenegadeStyle1 posted:I think branching story lines work best it focuses on a relationship system like Until Dawn and leaves the way you get there and the ending somewhat linear. Branching storylines thay effect just the ending itself rarely works and leaves a bad taste in everyones mouthes more often than not it seems like. I like oldschool jrpg branching storylines like Persona 1 or Tactics Ogre where they basically included 2 completely different campaigns in the same game and there's some choice you can make with relatively little fanfare that will lock you into one of them. The closest semi recent thing I can remember was Witcher 2, and come to think of it that was like a decade ago. The Moon Monster has a new favorite as of 13:22 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 30, 2021 13:16
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e: double post
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Jul 30, 2021 13:21
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Crowetron posted:The biggest problem with the Surge 2 for me was the Cult plotline. I can truck through stuff way more tedious than the second half of that game if I think the narrative is going somewhere interesting or entertaining but once I realized the stupid two-dimensional cult was the main plot I had to stop because I could not possibly care anymore. I haven't been fully spoiled, but I am loosely aware it's heading in that direction and hell if I can even guess how it gets there. I'm going to throw a dart and say the cult kidnaps the macguffin I mean important child character so the mystery plot can be stretched out for a few more hours. But after that...  Frank Frank posted:Is that the “Dark Souls with robots” game? Are those worth picking up? At this point you can get the first game for like, $4 easy. And it's certainly worth at least that much. The CREO World DLC is also legit good and fills out the game real well. I'll keep you posted on whether or not 2 is worth it. 
John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 13:31 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 30, 2021 13:27
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I stopped playing The Surge 1 after a few hours and jumped to The Surge 2 and played it all the way through. I mostly enjoyed the game, but I definitely get some of you frustrations.John Murdoch posted:Dotted around the area are statues that are actually security robots in disguise. S-tier design, it's cool/creepy as gently caress to watch them split apart into big gangly robots. Unfortunately they're also obscenely overtuned for this part of the game. They can easily two shot you AND they have a shield, which require a charge attack to break apart before you can do anything else. Their gangly arms + their weapon of choice, a big spear lance thinger, means dodging is basically a non-option unless you double dodge straight backwards and hope for the best. I died to the first one of these more than anything before and probably after. It seemed like all the other ones in the area were much weaker, making the first one feel like some way overpowered gatekeeping. I've never liked or been good at parrying in Soulslike games, so it took me a long time to make it through that first one. John Murdoch posted:The area finally culminates in fighting the big nano beastie and it's an absolutely dogshit fight. Three fuckin' phases for no good reason. I then died to this boss more than any other boss. The fight was way too long and needing to go through all the phases on every attempt was very tedious. If I remember, the follow up versions are only one phase of the fight, so they are not as much of a slog. John Murdoch posted:Zero signposting, maximum confusion. I liked the game and had fun playing it. But this was definitely my feeling with much of it. I may have a vague sense of what they want from me, but not where they actually want me to go. I'd walk around, do some exploring, fight a bunch of mobs, and the find an online walkthrough to tell me where I need to go next.
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Jul 30, 2021 13:48
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John Murdoch posted:
I really like Surge 2, despite a few flaws. Like, honestly it's easy to tear apart any of the souls games if you really like, but I'm just happy Surge isn't another dark fantasy with big weapons. I like the equipment aspect of it, where wearing 3 or 5 parts of a set give you bonuses, then you can upgrade and get new poo poo by chopping bits off your enemies. It means entering a new area, seeing enemies with all kinds of new wacky poo poo on them, and grinning. The DLC (for both) is also pretty cool. And I am going to recommend you get good at partying. This is coming from someone who literally never gave a poo poo about parrying in any of the soulsborne games, but with the enhancement that tell you where to party from, the windows become generous enough that it can become a non-issue once you learn even the most basics of an enemy's timing. Like, I farmed those statues immediately despite them hitting like trucks. And the last boss is almost entirely made up of parry-able attacks, to the point where I fought it twice over two playthroughs and didn't die a single time. Again, never parried in any other game, never found the use for it.
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Jul 30, 2021 13:57
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John Murdoch posted:Nah, those are the standard Fallout time of day ones. Found it: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Claustrophobia It's role playing. Because it's a role playing game. Not everything needs to be max efficiency
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Jul 30, 2021 14:10
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jjack229 posted:I liked the game and had fun playing it. But this was definitely my feeling with much of it. I may have a vague sense of what they want from me, but not where they actually want me to go. I'd walk around, do some exploring, fight a bunch of mobs, and the find an online walkthrough to tell me where I need to go next. It vacillates between being pretty direct and being inexplicably vague. Like the difference between the cult guy telling you first thing to head for the octopus and then being told to go to the night club. Y'know, the one...over there somewhere. Look, the developers copy and pasted a mostly-useless map a hundred times in the game world, you figure it out. Doesn't help that you're constantly coming entrances across to late-game areas, shortcuts you can't use yet, etc. Edit: Oh right, sort of related but the zipline area has one of those "hold button to focus on scripted event" moments and it's to show you an enemy ziplining down. I guess maybe to imply the dude just got one of those sweet hooks and you can go get one? But instead the camera follows his entire path down and at first I thought it was my buddy Warren swooping in, still in disguise, maybe he was gonna take out some enemies for me. Nope, it's a regular enemy that lands and then immediately starts shooting at you before the camera can even move back to its default position. Thanks game! Morpheus posted:And I am going to recommend you get good at partying. I'm already there. It's another reason why the difficulty has leveled out. I would've prefered it to not be forced by enemies that basically can only be dealt with by using it. Well that and the default controls for it not being rear end. But I'm over that hump. Gaius Marius posted:It's role playing. Because it's a role playing game. Not everything needs to be max efficiency You can justify literally anything by saying it's roleplaying. Also I wasn't really talking about min/maxing. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 14:46 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 30, 2021 14:38
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Morpheus posted:And I am going to recommend you get good at partying. This is coming from someone who literally never gave a poo poo about parrying in any of the soulsborne games, but with the enhancement that tell you where to party from, the windows become generous enough that it can become a non-issue once you learn even the most basics of an enemy's timing. Like, I farmed those statues immediately despite them hitting like trucks. And the last boss is almost entirely made up of parry-able attacks, to the point where I fought it twice over two playthroughs and didn't die a single time. Again, never parried in any other game, never found the use for it. I'm going to suggest that while you're busy partying he masters the blade.
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Jul 30, 2021 14:51
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Lol, I didn't even notice. But you're also wrong because I don't use bladed weapons in Souls games. 
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Jul 30, 2021 14:53
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The real problem with NV's various roleplaying perks is SPECIAL can't go above 10. So it's incredibly easy to max out any one stat and then all the other boosts to it don't matter.
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Jul 30, 2021 15:18
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Frank Frank posted:Is that the “Dark Souls with robots” game? Are those worth picking up? Can’t comment on surge 2 as I haven’t played it but 1 absolutely sucks
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Jul 30, 2021 16:44
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Frank Frank posted:Eh, I guess that's not terrible for $5.99. I gotta say, the best thing about buying a PS5 is that I never owned a PS4 and am able to pick up some absolutely amazing games for almost no money. So far: Bloodborne, Nioh 1 and 2 and I just picked up HZD and Prey. Haven't paid more than $10 for any of them. Did you grab the PS+ collection from the store? It requires a subscription obviously but it’s like, 20 games, and generally really good ones.
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Jul 31, 2021 00:30
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Speaking of hard solo missions in MMOs this is what threw me off Champions Online entirely. I rolled Grimoire and apparently that class sucks because there are all these mission chains that are kinda fun and have cool lore but the capstone boss or wave would just be undoable at my level. I could neither do damage nor heal fast enough, it was just mathematically not possible.
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Jul 31, 2021 01:33
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I never learned to party properly. I just abused the healing implant.
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Jul 31, 2021 02:15
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Maxwell Lord posted:Speaking of hard solo missions in MMOs this is what threw me off Champions Online entirely. I rolled Grimoire and apparently that class sucks because there are all these mission chains that are kinda fun and have cool lore but the capstone boss or wave would just be undoable at my level. I could neither do damage nor heal fast enough, it was just mathematically not possible. There was a while where Grimoire straight-up didn't get stat buffs from its role. Like, you got buffs to healing from being a healer-style character, buffs to defense form being a tank-style character, and so on... but, and I forget exactly how, the role Grimoire was given straight up had no stat buffs, which meant that Grimoire was the single worst-statted kind of character in the game. I think it got fixed eventually, but that was a weird exhibit on the pile of nonsense that was Champions Online trying to do free-to-play. It was a complete clusterfuck, Atari put Cryptic in such a garbage position that they had to design their free-to-play model based around catering to existing lifetime subscribers, which meant free players were second-class citizens in so many weird little ways. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 08:57 on Jul 31, 2021 |
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Jul 31, 2021 08:51
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Frank Frank posted:Aw man, I just bought this off Ebay for 99 cents (and $5.00 shipping). Hopefully it's not complete garbage. HZD had a really great premise and I found the storyline to be really engaging. As someone said earlier, it suffers from being an open world game with your standard generic OWG map clearing and collectables garbage that only exist to tick the boxes of being OWG.
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Jul 31, 2021 09:28
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sinburger posted:HZD had a really great premise and I found the storyline to be really engaging. As someone said earlier, it suffers from being an open world game with your standard generic OWG map clearing and collectables garbage that only exist to tick the boxes of being OWG. For all its baggage, it's probably the most enjoyable open-world game I've played. I was actually invested in the story (at least the part of it with Ted Faro in it) which almost never happens in games, and beating up robo dinosaurs was more fun and novel than breaking swords on bokoblins in Breath of the Wild or stabbing dudes in Assassin's Creed or whatnot.
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Jul 31, 2021 10:26
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Horizon is far more restrained than most open-world games. There aren't a million missions, a million collectibles, or a million points-of-interest on the map. The game does not intend to go on forever and has a definite ending. The only real busywork is inventory management. 
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Jul 31, 2021 10:32
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Yeah, like, Tallnecks are literally the exact same thing as the towers you climb in Far Cry or Assassin's Creed to reveal the map and all its many icons. But there are five of them in the whole world (one more in the DLC) as opposed to god knows how many dozens in any Ubisoft game.
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Jul 31, 2021 10:37
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Also each Tallneck is a challenge in and of itself, with pretty unique approaches. IIRC only two are fairly standard, the first one and the one northwest. There's one that's walking around in Snapmaw invested waters with a bunch of Glinthawks for support, another one in a bandit camp, one that's in a jungle just crawling with machines that make any approach tricky because you're vulnerable when climbing the mountain to jump on the tallneck, and of course the DLC one that is its own mission. I didn't mind the collectables. Most of them are a pretty engaging puzzle or combat/sneak challenge (How do I get up there? How do should I approach this? etc.) and (except for the Metal Flowers) there's only 6 or 12 of each set to collect. They usually bring you to interesting locations with a bit of world building available and unless I'm mistaken they're entirely optional. I'm replaying the game now (Ultra Hard NG+) and enjoying it a lot again. Once you get the hang of combat I'd recommend bumping up the difficulty because not being able to just brute force the encounters makes the fights a lot more interesting. I actually have to think about how to approach things, set traps, have a strategy, instead of just rolling in with my spear and plinking arrows until they die. One thing really dragging the game down is riding a mount. It turns weird, gets stuck on terrain for seemingly no reason and just generally never quite does what I want it to.
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Jul 31, 2021 11:58
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Horizon had loot boxes and loot rarity in a single player game. Unexcusable
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Jul 31, 2021 12:52
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I had stopped immediately before the cheapest boss in The Surge 2. So far we're 3 for 3 when it comes to awful boss designs. Phase 1 is a mech with two really bullshit attacks. One is a minigun where you have to hide behind cover to not eat poo poo. However, all of its other attacks either break that cover, go through/over it, or flush you out of it. So if you're unlucky you can absolutely be caught out in the open with no recourse and just die. It can even choose that attack as its very first one the second you enter the fight and if you don't immediately respond appropriately you just get hosed. It actually started attacking me before I had officially entered the fight via a zipline. Just garbage. The other awful attack is a flamethrower that's telegraphed as if it's meant to be responded to...but it's actually not. It's aimed near-perfectly to head you off, so if you try to dodge it you'll instead get hit 99% of the time. However, the hitbox or the graphic for it is also totally hosed so even if you visibly avoid it you will still get hit at least 25% of the time anyway. The ammo tanks for these attacks are their own weakpoints, but what attacking them actually does is incredibly cloudy. Seems like it forces the mech to reload inbetween attacks instead of just spamming endlessly? It's not intuitive. There's also ammo crates all over for you to use, but to what end isn't entirely clear either. I guess you can dump some damage in from range during times you're forced to play keep-away? In phase 2 the pilot leaps out and he's another flail master with combos and overpowered leap attacks. On his own he'd just be another annoying Surge boss and he can at least be staggered. What makes this phase hell is that the mech is still mostly operational, so it's spamming its railgun periodically, throwing out some mortars, and, of course, tossing out flamethrower attacks. This time a double one so you get locked into a ring of fire with the boss. Basically the problem is that it's information overload. The boss on his own is a bastard, but then you have to listen for the railgun going off and god help you if you haven't figured out the flamethrower yet. You can optionally destroy it, but easier said than done since the boss is constantly up your rear end. Not quite as dogshit as the Delver fight, but yeah, not a fan. Looking around online this is another infamous boss that makes people stop playing. In other news, I literally only just figured out on the very last Delver re-fight that the orange shields next the boss's HP bar are meant to signify how many parries they need to be staggered. I swear the game never, ever explained that. 
John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 13:22 on Jul 31, 2021 |
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Jul 31, 2021 12:59
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Its funny, the final boss of the Surge 2 ended up being really really easy versus the 3 stage boss, the weirdly difficult cloaking jerk in the woods, and mister lets continue this mech fight battle on foot. The 2nd stage of that 3 stage fight sucks so so horribly bad and the solo version of that fight just murdered me like 20 times in the refight because the camera just 100% would not cooperate with me and a single whiff on its insanely long attack phase is basically death.
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Jul 31, 2021 13:31
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Gaius Marius posted:Horizon had loot boxes and loot rarity in a single player game. Unexcusable This is only true if your only definition of "lootbox" is "something that comes in a box." You get random crafting materials and mods from quests, but every weapon and outfit in the game is purchaseable from vendors along a deterministic upgrade path. You wouldn't say Trials of Mana has "loot rarity" because in one town you can buy a Saber and in the next one you can buy Saber +1.
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Jul 31, 2021 13:46
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Barudak posted:The 2nd stage of that 3 stage fight sucks so so horribly bad and the solo version of that fight just murdered me like 20 times in the refight because the camera just 100% would not cooperate with me and a single whiff on its insanely long attack phase is basically death. For that I tried approaching it basically identically to phase one - bait combos and parry parry parry - and that mostly worked. It seems like if you let it set the pace, it will always do a couple of swings, the bite, and then predictably do the spin attack instead of acting super random. Still the worst of the three phases by far tho.
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Jul 31, 2021 13:51
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I liked the boss fights in the Surge 2 for the most part but on replays I didn't bother going for the special version of the nano-beast's weapon or fighting any of the powered up single stage variants. That thing is just a giant pain in the rear end. The worst is still the mech guy though, he hit on the genius strategy of simply never not using his flamethrower, and even destroying it only disables it for like 3 seconds.
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Jul 31, 2021 14:03
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exquisite tea posted:This is only true if your only definition of "lootbox" is "something that comes in a box." You get random crafting materials and mods from quests, but every weapon and outfit in the game is purchaseable from vendors along a deterministic upgrade path. You wouldn't say Trials of Mana has "loot rarity" because in one town you can buy a Saber and in the next one you can buy Saber +1. This. It's also not like there's a huge variety of weapons like in other games. You get like 3 or 4 different bow types, a kind of grenade launcher, a bow for setting traps and (in the dlc I think one or two new kind of weapons.) Each of these has I think 3 'rarities' that are just improved versions of the previous ones (I think the dlc adds a fourth?) and these are attainable at appropriate moments and sooner than you'd think you need them. It's not like D&D inspired games where there's a ton of equipment with varying levels of power and special abilities. It's just a very good game and pretty much all of the complaints are either about the genre (open world action rpgs just aren't for everyone I guess) or really minor poo poo that's blown way out of proportion. (Just to find something to hate on and justify why they don't like it maybe?) Yeah, there's 'lootboxes' (if you want to call them that) but they only contain random crafting materials, health items and minor upgrades, nothing major and definitely no equipment. Yeah, riding a mount often sucks and sometimes isn't worth it. Yeah, the skill tree isn't great, but you get so many skillpoints thrown at you that you'll have unlocked everything you want before you know it and the rest is just gravy. Sometimes the facial animations are kinda crappy, I guess? I never really noticed. None of that really gets into the way of what is, despite some flaws, a game that's much better than you'd expect it to be. They obviously put in a lot of love, effort and skill into making it and it shows. For a game that's essentially about using primitive weapons to hunt robots it has a great narrative and presentation and the combat is engaging, challenging and fun in a way that you can tailor to your own preference. Rushing in and dodging attacks while hitting the machines in melee is viable, but so is keeping your distance and using your arrows or being sneaky, setting traps and finishing them off stealthily.
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Jul 31, 2021 14:43
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HZD is filled with half-baked and residual and unstreamlined mechanics, of which the "lootboxes" are one of them. At some point in the past, alot of itemization and quest rewards and world-building wasn't nailed down. Which is how you get a quest for a single spear upgrade in the starting zone. And a rather poor skill tree that needs to purchase what are basically mandatory skills. And an inventory inundated with worthless distraction rocks, as well as way too many explosive traps to ever use. Still far more cohesive than Witcher 3, which gave you a glut of worthless crafting items and (?) points of interest on the map with generic cloned trash loot. And tons of absolutely worthless weapons.
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Jul 31, 2021 14:58
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