November Chat Thread: You can and should invite Garrus to your polycule

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > November Chat Thread: You can and should invite Garrus to your polycule

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Is Rarity a gamer? This poll is closed.
Yes	17	17.35%
Obviously	43	43.88%
Noisette	23	23.47%
please visit my new and wildly popular subreddit r/SNUle34	15	15.31%
Total:	98 votes

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

homeless snail posted:

if you're including rune factory, as I do, literally any of the rune factories

if not, well, mineral town is pretty good I'm sorry. as is, magical melody, 64, and the original snes game. none of those aside from maybe hm1 are easy to look at though, even the prettiest hm, a wonderful life, has atrocious aesthetics

stardew is better than those however

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:21

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# ? Jun 10, 2024 02:06

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

you are disqualified from this discussion, based on your farm game cow sprite opinions

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:22

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

Vermain posted:

I really didn't glom onto it when I finally tried it out. I suppose I'm just tired of the Dark Souls combat formula overall, and even From's brilliant art direction can't paper over the fact that I've already played three games with more-or-less the same rhythms and pacing. Like, Code Vein wasn't a masterpiece or anything, but it tried to at least do a few things differently with its combat and character building.

code vein did nothing differently and also did everything badly. play sekiro instead.

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:22

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Vermain posted:

I really didn't glom onto it when I finally tried it out. I suppose I'm just tired of the Dark Souls combat formula overall, and even From's brilliant art direction can't paper over the fact that I've already played three games with more-or-less the same rhythms and pacing. Like, Code Vein wasn't a masterpiece or anything, but it tried to at least do a few things differently with its combat and character building.

Code Vein was a masterpiece and the problem with bloodborne was that it changed the best parts of dark souls, not that it hewed too closely to it

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:23

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

going to have to push back very hard on this because bloodborne is genuinely fantastic and code vein is the worst souls like ive played since lords of the fallen.

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:24

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Stux posted:

going to have to push back very hard on this because bloodborne is genuinely fantastic and code vein is the worst souls like ive played since lords of the fallen.

hm I don't agree

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:25

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

wait sorry i shouldve said "since the surge" apologies

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:25

Jay Rust: Sep 27, 2011

I�ve only played the snes harvest moon and hm64, but stardew is better than them in every way possible, idk how anyone could think differently

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:25

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

cheetah7071 posted:

hm I don't agree

your bad game taste has been well documented and even self admitted by this point. ipso facto and also qed

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:26

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Stux posted:

your bad game taste has been well documented and even self admitted by this point. ipso facto and also qed

yeah but I wrote big effortpost about how good code vein was. where's your effort post on why it's bad. effort is victory, in posting

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:27

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

cheetah7071 posted:

yeah but

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:27

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

cheetah7071 posted:

This is an effort post about Code Vein, as I promised last night. I wanted to put that upfront, because I'm going to start this by talking (a lot) about Dark Souls. Dark Souls did a lot of things that, while not strictly revolutionary, were extremely unusual in prominent games of its era. When you set out to create a game like Dark Souls, there's a lot of baggage about what that could mean, because it did so many unusual things. From Software made decisions about which parts of the whole were core and which were changeable when they considered the series. I think the best way to understand Code Vein is as a game that goes back to Dark Souls 1, and re-examines which parts of the formula are important and which are ancillary, and creates something which, in my mind, is more cohesive and competent than any of the actual Dark Souls sequels. (I won't talk about Bloodborne here because I kind of dislike it for reasons entirely separate from the point of this post)

Here are the aspects of Dark Souls I can think of that are important parts of the Dark Souls experience:

It's a game where nearly every interaction is designed to test your skills, and where the punishment for insufficient mastery is death (this is a bit different from difficulty per se, though it often gets talked about in the same breath). And you're strong-armed into either mastering it or giving up entirely--there's no difficulty settings. There's some difficulty control in summoning, but it's limited by spending a resource to summon another player who might just suck worse than you do, and it opens you up to involuntary PvP.

The level design is set up to constantly ratchet up the tension. Your resources are slowly depleted with no indication of how close you are to the next bonfire--or even if you're moving towards the bonfire! The maze like levels leave you constantly uncertain if safety is around the next corner or far far away. You might have even missed a bonfire!

The mechanics are obscure. Basic mechanics are explained poorly or not at all. The stat system is full of pitfalls which can easily cause you to completely waste levelups.

The world is confusing and mazelike, full of loops and hidden paths and hard-to-find ways to proceed.

The story is hidden, split into a bunch of small, easy-to-miss pieces. You can easily finish the game and have no idea what you were even doing or why.

A methodical combat system, mostly about footsies and positioning, but with elements designed to ratchet up the tension even further. Animation locks and a stamina bar mean the choice between attacking and defending is always meaningful and never automatic.

Dark Souls 2 and 3 mostly kept the entire package, only really ditching the fourth element--a mazelike, interconnected, world design is kind of pointless when you can teleport, after all. They also fiddled with the combat, mostly in favor of reducing the tension between attacking and blocking by reducing animation lock and decreasing stamina costs. Dark Souls 3 also tended towards being less about positioning and more about reaction speed. Code Vein made different choices about what to carry over, and I think ended up making stronger choices which I argue make more sense in a sequel/clone than the choices made by the actual sequels.

Code Vein definitely kept the "difficulty", in that every enemy has a chance to kill you or deplete your healing, and death is both common and punishing. This style of mastery-testing is probably Dark Souls' biggest lasting contribution to modern game design, and I'm happy to see it in more games. Code Vein does, however, offer far more control over the difficulty of your experience. Summoning other players to help you doesn't cost any resources and doesn't open you up to PvP. And Code Vein's biggest innovation is the AI partner--you can bring the story characters along with you (and can also summon a human, for two allies). I think this is a really good direction to go, in the modern gaming landscape. In 2011, not many players were used to the idea of dying constantly until you achieve mastery, and insisting "no, really, I believe in you, you can do it" by not providing an easy mode made a lot of sense. But in 2019, when Code Vein released, how many players would still think "ah, I need to turn the difficulty down" when they die ten minutes into a soulslike? It's just a completely understood part of the genre. Genre conventions do a lot of heavy lifting here in a way they didn't in 2011. And so, Code Vein has a (pseudo) easy mode, in the AI companion. And you know what? It's fun. I played solo my first time and with a companion on my recent replay. The difficulty is tuned really well so that most bosses will still put up a fight and wipe you, even with a helper. The game still demands mastery and kills you if you haven't achieved it. It just demands less mastery than before. You still get the core gameplay loop and experience, it just cycles faster and you move on earlier than you would have playing solo. If you're someone who wants an easy mode in Dark Souls for yourself, and not for a hypothetical other person you're arguing on behalf of, Code Vein is for you.

The level design is carried over almost (though not entirely) wholesale from Dark Souls. (The art design of the levels is a bit lacking though.) The levels are mazes where you have no idea how close you are to the next checkpoint, designed to ratchet the tension higher and higher as you get deeper and deeper into the level, with less and less healing, no idea if you're going to make it or not. Code Vein also relies heavily on telegraphed ambushes, where a clever, observant player can turn a nightmare fight into a much easier one by noticing and picking off the ambushers before you get ambushed. It's a lot of fun to defang a bad situation before it happens, and it's also very tense (in a good way) when you get caught by an ambush you missed and get put into a bad spot. It is a bit nicer than Dark Souls in a few ways, though. First off, almost no bonfire-equivalent is missable. You're going to pass by all but one or two of them, guaranteed. Secondly, there is a map--though it doesn't tell you the layout of the world. Rather, it puts footstep markers where you've been already, making it easier to navigate back to your corpse, or tell which directions you've already gone at a fork in the road. At the end of each section there's a Metroid-style mapping station which fills in the map for the area you just left, and you can go comb it for any goodies you missed once you've overcome it once.

The obscure mechanics are completely dropped. Everything is explained in clear tutorials, and there's absolutely no way to screw up your build. In fact, the way builds work in Code Vein is probably its second-biggest innovation, after the AI companion. Rather than putting points into stats directly, you just equip a class, which solely determines your stat spread. You can change classes at any time (outside of combat). There's no worry about putting points into dex and then finding a cool str weapon. Just switch to a str-based class and use it! The game even encourages swapping classes around because they all have learnable spells and passives which you can use in any class after you master them by spending some time in the class.

The confusing, mazelike world is completely gone. There are no hidden zones (though there are some optional zones). In addition, you can always see what your next objective is, so you never have to be confused about which location to go to next. To be honest, things like the lower undead burg key were always kind of poo poo even in Dark Souls, and once you give players the ability to teleport between zones you might as well just make it obvious which one to teleport to.

The story is upfront and fairly standard. It's pretty dang anime and competently told. It's not exactly lighting the world on fire, but I like it well enough (I just wish it would let me advance dialogue during cutscenes instead of forcing me to listen to the voices reach the end of the line). Once the general feeling of obscurity from the mechanics and world are gone, it would be out of place for the story to remain obscure, and I think it makes sense to ditch that, too.

The combat is back to what I love about Dark Souls 1. Animation locks are a million years long, and while stamina costs are a bit low, stamina recovers slowly enough that you run out of it often and have to think about stamina management again. Positioning and footsies is key to getting favorable patterns from bosses, and attacks tend to be meaty enough to force you to both use your i-frames and pick a dodge direction that gets you fully out of the path of the attack. One nice innovation is that most regular enemies get stunned in two hits, rather than one, so you get the same feeling of offense vs defense tradeoffs against them as you get vs bosses. And bosses can be staggered too--it takes enough hits that you can never rely on it but it adds a nice little breather to recover stamina, heal, or get some hits in, but goes by briefly enough you need to make your decision fast. My only real complaint is that all but two of the bosses play like Artorias variants. Artorias is cool and all, but I'd rather see a bit more variety.

tl;dr: Code Vein kept the combat and tension from Dark Souls while ditching the intentional obfuscation of the world, story, and mechanics, and smoothing over the rough edges of systems like summoning help and creating your build. And I think that was a really smart move. In 2019, who wants to play a Soulslike but hasn't already played one? Anybody playing Code Vein already knows how Souls work. Hiding core mechanics is just disrespecting the player. And hiding where to even go next to progress and stuffing the world full of secrets can be cool, but also can take away focus and polish from the core path in a smaller-budget AA game (or hell, even in Dark Souls itself--imagine if the dev resources spent on Ash Lake were spent on making Lost Izalith not suck, instead), and puts the player in the position of either looking things up in a wiki or accepting that they're going to miss cool experiences. There's a time and place for mazelike worlds and hidden progression, and I think they work best in games about discovery, which I'm not sure any of the Soulses have been since Dark Souls 1 itself. Together with a few legitimate innovations (being able to switch painlessly between builds, AI companions) you have a great game that, to me, stands up taller than any of Dark Souls' actual sequels.

Also, there's only like three songs but they all slap. And the character creator is really robust and powerful. And I have it on good authority that everyone likes sexy vampires, which Code Vein is chock full of.

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:30

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

That post was 1939 words. You will need at least 1940 to defeat me

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:31

Jay Rust: Sep 27, 2011

It�s actually kind of weird, the only person I know with perfect taste in art, is me...

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:32

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

im not reading that

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:33

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

interesting its "1939" words tho. know someone else fond of that particular number... anything you want to tell us

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:33

Shinjobi: Jul 10, 2008; Gravy Boat 2k

cheetah7071 posted:

That post was 1939 words. You will need at least 1940 to defeat me

This is why I still use message boards. This post.

Also yeah there are a ton of bad Harvest Moon games. Stardew can hang with the franchise's best, but I don't think it can exceed em.

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:35

Jay Rust: Sep 27, 2011

Shinjobi posted:

Also yeah there are a ton of bad Harvest Moon games. Stardew can hang with the franchise's best, but I don't think it can exceed em.

Ok name the best ones, but note that I�ve already proven that stardew is better than snes hm and hm64

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:38

Electric Phantasm: Apr 7, 2011; YOSPOS

It's pointless because Rune Factory 4 is better than all of them.

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:40

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Jay Rust posted:

I�ve only played the snes harvest moon and hm64, but stardew is better than them in every way possible, idk how anyone could think differently

stardew has way more busy work, including the social mechanics which are way more of a pain in the rear end than dealing with people in, most hms, hard to generalize there because every hm is totally different, it is better than a lot of them. and just about every choice stardew makes re mechanics on the farm are imo bad, the stamina mechanic, leveling, the crafting and building, etc. stardew is a game i dread to start over because the beginning is so bad where a lot of hms you are practically done with the game before stardew gets to The Good Part

you should play a rune factory, however

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:41

Waffleman_: Jan 20, 2011; I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna!!!

Are we talking about real Harvest Moon games or the fake Harvest Moon games Natsume keeps making after they lost Bokujou Monogatari for the express purpose of confusing consumers

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:41

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Stux posted:

interesting its "1939" words tho. know someone else fond of that particular number... anything you want to tell us

1939 is a cool number. If you put a 1 anywhere in it, you get a prime: 11939, 19139, 19319, and 19391 are all prime.

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:42

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Waffleman_ posted:

Are we talking about real Harvest Moon games or the fake Harvest Moon games Natsume keeps making after they lost Bokujou Monogatari for the express purpose of confusing consumers

you might as well include the fake ones, because theyd all be at the bottom of the list anyway

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:44

Jay Rust: Sep 27, 2011

I will try a rune factory, which is a good one to play first?

I won�t lie, this cover doesn�t inspire confidence. I look at it and think, �here are some JRPG NPCs I don�t want to listen to�

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:47

Andrast: Apr 21, 2010

homeless snail posted:

stardew has way more busy work, including the social mechanics which are way more of a pain in the rear end than dealing with people in, most hms, hard to generalize there because every hm is totally different, it is better than a lot of them. and just about every choice stardew makes re mechanics on the farm are imo bad, the stamina mechanic, leveling, the crafting and building, etc. stardew is a game i dread to start over because the beginning is so bad where a lot of hms you are practically done with the game before stardew gets to The Good Part

you should play a rune factory, however

big agree on this post

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:47

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

cheetah7071 posted:

1939 is a cool number. If you put a 1 anywhere in it, you get a prime: 11939, 19139, 19319, and 19391 are all prime.

stux DESTROYED by number facts

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:48

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Jay Rust posted:

I will try a rune factory, which is a good one to play first?

I won�t lie, this cover doesn�t inspire confidence. I look at it and think, �here are some JRPG NPCs I don�t want to listen to�

you should listen to the jrpg npcs

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:49

Red Alert 2 Yuris Revenge: May 8, 2006; "My brain is amazing! It's full of wrinkles, and... Uh... Wait... What am I trying to say?"

drat I should go back to rune factory 4

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:49

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Jay Rust posted:

I will try a rune factory, which is a good one to play first?

I won�t lie, this cover doesn�t inspire confidence. I look at it and think, �here are some JRPG NPCs I don�t want to listen to�

yeah but what if you could smooch them

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:49

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

that cover has it all. cute anime boys and girls, dragons, elves, dumplings...

I'm in awe of hod good the box art is

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:51

Propaganda Hour: Aug 25, 2008; after editing wikipedia as a joke for 16 years, i ve convinced myself that homer simpson's japanese name translates to the "The beer goblin"

homeless snail posted:

stardew has way more busy work, including the social mechanics which are way more of a pain in the rear end than dealing with people in, most hms, hard to generalize there because every hm is totally different, it is better than a lot of them. and just about every choice stardew makes re mechanics on the farm are imo bad, the stamina mechanic, leveling, the crafting and building, etc. stardew is a game i dread to start over because the beginning is so bad where a lot of hms you are practically done with the game before stardew gets to The Good Part

you should play a rune factory, however

More reasons to play Graveyard Keeper!

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:51

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

rune factory 5 will have gay marriage finally so i am buying it even if it's otherwise bad

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:52

Jay Rust: Sep 27, 2011

homeless snail posted:

yeah but what if you could smooch them

they�re 12 years old

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:52

Jay Rust: Sep 27, 2011

cheetah7071 posted:

that cover has it all. cute anime boys and girls, dragons, elves, dumplings...

I'm in awe of hod good the box art is

Completely opposite reaction, yowza

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:53

Jay Rust: Sep 27, 2011

To me busywork is The Point, routine, planning and careful time management coalesce into a comfortable bubble bath of fun. But my favourite part of these farming �sims� is slowly clearing the field of debris over the course of the first dozen game days, exxxtremely satisfying

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:54

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

homeless snail posted:

stardew has way more busy work, including the social mechanics which are way more of a pain in the rear end than dealing with people in, most hms, hard to generalize there because every hm is totally different, it is better than a lot of them. and just about every choice stardew makes re mechanics on the farm are imo bad, the stamina mechanic, leveling, the crafting and building, etc. stardew is a game i dread to start over because the beginning is so bad where a lot of hms you are practically done with the game before stardew gets to The Good Part

you should play a rune factory, however

wrong on all counts, astounding.

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:54

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

rf4 is the only farm game that's held me for more than few hours I usually find them very boring. I haven't tried the other rune factories, though

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:55

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

the ONLY flaw with stardew valley is the default clock should be slightly slower however mods easily fix this small issue.

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:57

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

the dark secret of harvest moon, is that most of them have barely any farming, and "the bad hms" are often the ones that focus on it most heavily. the farm in rf4 is tiny as gently caress and you can only have, a little bit of livestock. but the amount of farming they do have, it is crucial that you manage because you have to do it but it sucks time and energy away from what is more important. its a careful balance of design

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:59

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# ? Jun 10, 2024 02:06

Jay Rust: Sep 27, 2011

The only flaw is that the scarecrows aren�t buxom animal anime girls, thankfully there�s a mod that fixes that too

# ? Nov 10, 2021 05:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > November Chat Thread: You can and should invite Garrus to your polycule

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