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After ruminating on it for five more minutes, I realized why the second half of the game - despite all previously stated shortcomings - still felt a bit better overall. And that's because the maps after the big turn suddenly become way more linear/arena-focused in a way that lets you actually go nuts as an apex predator. The final map is essentially an assault on a fortress and for once it feels like getting in and doing what you need to do is a complex challenge regardless of approach. The flooded district has areas that, while not strictly linear, have a flow much more in common with linear shooter levels. Like retrieving your gear from the bottom of the weeper-infested refinery is a very self-contained basic action-y setpiece. And while goosing Daud on a ghost run is cute, having the "duel only we could have" is way more badass. It still doesn't fix the problems with the combat, but it didn't feel out of place anymore. Because indeed, in direct contrast the preceding missions are very Thief/Hitman style puzzle boxes, so barging straight in and shooting up the place never fits right and because of the game's limitations they can't really stuff more enemies into those cramped quarters even on high chaos. And in comparison, I remember disliking the second half of the game a lot more the first time because doing it in low chaos ends up feeling really weird and awkward (hooray, an escort mission in an immersive sim!) and sneaking in the big open areas feels wrong and the more narrow, linear bits feel overly simplistic and limited. I think a goon once said they played the game strictly non-lethal and sneaky for the first half and then when poo poo went down they switched to murder mode. Seems like doing it that way would really make the game shine.
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Oct 26, 2022 21:46
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Man, I managed to beat the bit in the Colosseum I was stuck on in Hollow Knight only to do several more easy stages then die and have to start from the start if I want to do it again. There's a stage with a bunch of enemies that just hop around, you get so much soul from them and it's easy to find space and time to heal. There is no reason whatsoever to not just let me restart from there because I can do every stage leading up to that with my eyes closed at this point and I get nothing for doing it cleanly since that one acts effectively as a reset, it's just added tedium.
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Oct 26, 2022 22:01
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People who don't like Luke don't seem to understand his character at all, interesting
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Oct 26, 2022 22:55
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I don't like XCOM 2's tutorial. Like, I like the actual mission, it's cool. And it works as a tutorial, that's cool. But it has scripted character deaths which count against you and I don't like that. You can turn the tutorial off, but then you play an entirely different opening mission. Why isn't there an option to play the tutorial mission without the tutorial!
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Oct 27, 2022 01:17
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Walton Simons posted:Man, I managed to beat the bit in the Colosseum I was stuck on in Hollow Knight only to do several more easy stages then die and have to start from the start if I want to do it again. There's a stage with a bunch of enemies that just hop around, you get so much soul from them and it's easy to find space and time to heal. There is no reason whatsoever to not just let me restart from there because I can do every stage leading up to that with my eyes closed at this point and I get nothing for doing it cleanly since that one acts effectively as a reset, it's just added tedium. Sounds like you're talking about the third trial? It's pretty long, yeah. If it's frustrating you right now, I'd definitely recommend going to do other poo poo for a while and coming back to it later (if you even want to; it's an entirely optional challenge with no real reward anyway). I don't want to spoil anything, but you may be missing one or more abilities that would make the colosseum easier, depending on when in your playthrough you decided to tackle it.
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Oct 27, 2022 01:31
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Man, the beginning of Inscryption is just perfect. Ultra creepy vibe, stellar music, bosses are horrifying, the game is challenging and requires planning and a coherent strategy. Act 2 had a cute SNES aesthetic but it as nowhere near as challenging or thoughtful. Act 3 you end up OP as hell, the atmosphere is kinda “blah” and the challenge is mostly gone. The ending is just sorta ok but fails to recapture the magic from the beginning. The game just seems to run out of steam. After act 1 I was pretty sure it was my favorite game of the year.
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Oct 27, 2022 02:09
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Marvel Snap seems fun but playing an Odin on an empty Bar Sinister location takes *ages* to resolve, as the card copies itself three times, then activates each copy’s On Reveal ability….which is, itself, to resolve the On Reveal ability of every other of your cards at that location. So it goes on for about half as long as an average game, just resolving this effect recursively over and over again.
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Oct 27, 2022 02:34
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I'm near the end of the recently released Plague Tale Requiem. It's a fantastic sequel, and I would highly recommend it, but there have been a few mandatory combat segments where you're forced to take on waves of enemies that I've found overly frustrating and they don't really fit into the game as a whole. It's a stealth game that does a really good job of making you feel weak and the options you have for actually killing enemies tend to be very limited resources that take a long time to find replacements for. Every time one of those combat sections comes up I feel like I'm basically forced to use everything I have, which is never enough, so I spend the rest of the time running around in circles trying to get enemies to walk near traps that can be activated to kill them, which makes the whole thing feel kind of artificial. I don't remember sequences like that being in the original game, and I'm not sure why they felt they had to do it multiple times in this one. The first time it happened I didn't mind it, since most of the enemies could be killed with your unlimited ammo sling and it fit into the story well, but every one since has felt tacked on and took me way too many attempts to get through.
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Oct 27, 2022 03:01
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e: misread the above post, not looking forward to more bum-rush segments
Oxxidation has a new favorite as of 03:42 on Oct 27, 2022 |
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Oct 27, 2022 03:18
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I liked the first Plague Tale up until the incredibly doofy last boss. Is the new one more like the bulk of the first game or does it build off mechanically with all of the stuff you have at the end?
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Oct 27, 2022 03:48
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The parry and deflect skills in Let Us Cling Together can eat my whole rear end. Nothing like thinking "100% chance to hit" and then the game just goes "gently caress you" and blocks anyway.
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Oct 27, 2022 03:51
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Shiroc posted:I liked the first Plague Tale up until the incredibly doofy last boss. Is the new one more like the bulk of the first game or does it build off mechanically with all of the stuff you have at the end? i'm a little past the halfway point and it's almost definitely planning to ramp up to a similar level of insanity as the first game, but it doesn't start you off in a beksinskian rat-poo poo nightmareland. the pace and degree of escalation is pretty similar slightly spoilery details: hugo's powers have gone dormant in the time between games and when they do come back it's with such ferocity that he can't harness them like he can in the first game without accidentally drowning the countryside in rats
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Oct 27, 2022 03:52
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Rockman Reserve posted:Marvel Snap seems fun but playing an Odin on an empty Bar Sinister location takes *ages* to resolve, as the card copies itself three times, then activates each copy’s On Reveal ability….which is, itself, to resolve the On Reveal ability of every other of your cards at that location. So it goes on for about half as long as an average game, just resolving this effect recursively over and over again. I admit that I've underestimated the game's Dumb Horseshit capabilities, because pairing some of the fun on reveal cards with Odin or Bar Sinister is extremely funny, even if it isn't always very good and can occasionally take rather some time to resolve. (I am proud of my 'Odin-Powered Squirrel and Tiger Generator' deck, though.) My only complaint now is that the card acquisition is entirely linear. Everyone gets Ironheart at the exact same time in their progress in the exact same way, so there's no real personality or direction to your collection, and while balance-wise it's probably good that everyone at a given skill level has nearly exactly the same cards, it really doesn't have that level of excitement and curiosity of seeing someone crack out poo poo that you've just never seen, because chances are low that you're all that far off from getting it yourself. It probably would've been more fun to have a few 'starter routes' that give you exclusive cards, so that your X-Men deck feels at least a little more unique than your opponent's Avengers deck.
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Oct 27, 2022 05:39
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Cleretic posted:I admit that I've underestimated the game's Dumb Horseshit capabilities, because pairing some of the fun on reveal cards with Odin or Bar Sinister is extremely funny, even if it isn't always very good and can occasionally take rather some time to resolve. (I am proud of my 'Odin-Powered Squirrel and Tiger Generator' deck, though.) Wong/Onslaught/Mystique is the current broken horse poo poo. Had a guy actually break the game a bit with them yesterday 
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Oct 27, 2022 06:29
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Frank Frank posted:Man, the beginning of Inscryption is just perfect. Ultra creepy vibe, stellar music, bosses are horrifying, the game is challenging and requires planning and a coherent strategy. I loved the part of this game that was actually advertised and made me want to buy it. Didn't care for the rest of, which ofc I didn't know about.
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Oct 27, 2022 06:47
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Opopanax posted:Wong/Onslaught/Mystique is the current broken horse poo poo. Had a guy actually break the game a bit with them yesterday This screenshot is absolutely inscrutable. "There is a turn 7 this game" - statement dreamed up by the utterly Deranged
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Oct 27, 2022 06:52
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Brain In A Jar posted:This screenshot is absolutely inscrutable. "There is a turn 7 this game" - statement dreamed up by the utterly Deranged There's usually only six turns, but each game there are different landmarks that have different effects. That one adds a turn. Its a genuinely neat little game that is actually designed around being on phones, so turns are quick and matches are short. Whole thing is very bite-sized.
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Oct 27, 2022 07:17
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Nyoro posted:People who don't like Luke don't seem to understand his character at all, interesting Oh no, I get his character. It just takes him way too long to get where he's going and when you pair that with how bad the rest of the cast is + how generally unpleasant the game itself is, it's just too much to deal with. Cleretic posted:My only complaint now is that the card acquisition is entirely linear. Everyone gets Ironheart at the exact same time in their progress in the exact same way, so there's no real personality or direction to your collection, and while balance-wise it's probably good that everyone at a given skill level has nearly exactly the same cards, it really doesn't have that level of excitement and curiosity of seeing someone crack out poo poo that you've just never seen, because chances are low that you're all that far off from getting it yourself. It probably would've been more fun to have a few 'starter routes' that give you exclusive cards, so that your X-Men deck feels at least a little more unique than your opponent's Avengers deck. Card collection is random and based on a pool system to determine what cards you're unlocking. It actually kind of sucks!
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Oct 27, 2022 15:24
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on my yearly attempt to tolerate RTwP enough to finish it, really enjoying how the first two dungeon-ish areas accessible in pillars of eternity are full of enemies with permanent passive stun on-hit. probably there is a way to design RTwP so it isn't actively repellent to anyone who hasn't been playing it since the IE games but this is not a very welcoming introduction.
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Oct 27, 2022 16:45
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Nyoro posted:People who don't like Luke don't seem to understand his character at all, interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ikGvLUbOuU
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Oct 27, 2022 17:19
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Valentin posted:on my yearly attempt to tolerate RTwP enough to finish it, really enjoying how the first two dungeon-ish areas accessible in pillars of eternity are full of enemies with permanent passive stun on-hit. probably there is a way to design RTwP so it isn't actively repellent to anyone who hasn't been playing it since the IE games but this is not a very welcoming introduction. The dungeon beneath the starting town is rude as hell, it must be said. I have been playing Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and have almost finished the first act, I think. It has a smoother introduction to the game's moment to moment tactical mechanics than Pillars did, I think, but holy poo poo is it an overwhelming cavalcade of strategy mechanics. Every character, even the relatively simple ones, has access to millions of build options from the jump that you need to be thinking about. And when you get a spell that can do more than one thing, it might put X versions of that spell on your hot bar. Fortunately you can tweak the difficulty a loooooot and playing on Core (the closest they get to table top accurate rules) is actually harder than normal and not recommended because they know this is a loving lot to drop on someone a new player. marshmallow creep has a new favorite as of 17:43 on Oct 27, 2022 |
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Oct 27, 2022 17:37
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Urbek is a recent indie city builder. Nice voxel art and an interesting central conceit that there is no money resource you have to use to build things. Seemed like a cool idea in the beginning. Managing food, wood etc. instead of a budget like in Simcity sounded neat. Resource management games like Anno are great certainly  Only I don't think it works very well in this case as the simulation isn't complicated enough. No traffic simulation so the optimal layout is long roads without junctions maximising density. Pollution only affects housing and no disasters calling for fire coverage. Without a way to trade one resource for a different type it just becomes a case of keeping everything in positive income and throwing down huge new farms/factories/neighbourhoods in an optimal pattern. Maybe I'm playing it wrong by fixating on optimal play 
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Oct 27, 2022 17:39
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Valentin posted:on my yearly attempt to tolerate RTwP enough to finish it, really enjoying how the first two dungeon-ish areas accessible in pillars of eternity are full of enemies with permanent passive stun on-hit. probably there is a way to design RTwP so it isn't actively repellent to anyone who hasn't been playing it since the IE games but this is not a very welcoming introduction. For the church basement in the village, it's best to go back with a fuller party and a couple of levels under your belt. For the keep where you go to meet the old Watcher... try sneaking? That's pretty much how I get past it these days, just because I save doing all the side quests for after (certain side activities activate based on progressing quests) so I'm always super low level when I get there
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Oct 27, 2022 18:10
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i got past it, i'm only on normal, it wasn't particularly hard. it was just kind of stupid and didn't give me a lot of hope for what's to come. RTwP is most fun for me when minor encounters can play mostly in real time as a check against which you can easily assess your party's fitness and your own understanding of the game, so you know you're roughly in line with where the game wants you to be, and then you take more granular control for bosses or stuff you're underleveled for or if you're doing a challenge run or something. pretty much everything about pillars' design makes it difficult to take this approach (which i assume stems from some combination of the original design having you controlling the full party, hence why pathfinding and party member scripting are hosed, plus replicating the infinity engine "feel" being more important in some respects than making a game that plays how i just described). if you're going to fill trash encounters with on-hit perma-stun enemies who must be prioritized and can also teleport then i want effective tools for playing at real speed (a real command system where i can order characters to stand still, actual party member scripting, etc.) to address it, and pillars just doesn't have those. Valentin has a new favorite as of 18:53 on Oct 27, 2022 |
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Oct 27, 2022 18:50
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I hate that there are no life bars on bosses in Hollow Knight, some bosses take a lot of punishment and I have no idea if I'm just one or two more attacks away from winning or if I'm miles away and need to upgrade.
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Oct 27, 2022 22:23
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Walton Simons posted:I hate that there are no life bars on bosses in Hollow Knight, some bosses take a lot of punishment and I have no idea if I'm just one or two more attacks away from winning or if I'm miles away and need to upgrade. I haven’t played in ages but I’m pretty sure there’s an accessory combo or an item that lets you see health bars.
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Oct 27, 2022 23:10
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That's good, I haven't come across that one yet, it does feel like something that should be standard, though. It's key to a game like Hollow Knight to be able to know when you're outmatched and move on but when you don't have that information it's too tempting to just keep having one more try and accidentally spend an hour and a half failing to beat the Lost Kin like I just did. I looked at some hints in the end even though I normally avoid them like the plague and it looks like there are things I've yet to get that'll make it easier. I get massive sunk cost fallacy not wanting to lose the muscle memory I've just built up, because the next go is going to be the one.
Walton Simons has a new favorite as of 23:35 on Oct 27, 2022 |
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Oct 27, 2022 23:33
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Walton Simons posted:I hate that there are no life bars on bosses in Hollow Knight, some bosses take a lot of punishment and I have no idea if I'm just one or two more attacks away from winning or if I'm miles away and need to upgrade. This straight up killed Aeterna Noctis for me. ran into three different awful frustrating bosses in the second half of the game that I beat my face against for awhile but had no idea if I nearly had them and just needed to do a little better or if I was struggling to even hit 50%. Felt extra bad because the game was actually fantastic before that point.
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Oct 27, 2022 23:34
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I just hate it in general when any game where specific enemy health details constantly matter for strategy (RPGs, brawlers, etc) but they don't show them by default. Doubly bad if it's something unlockable later, but it uses up an equip slot.
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Oct 27, 2022 23:45
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Frank Frank posted:I haven’t played in ages but I’m pretty sure there’s an accessory combo or an item that lets you see health bars. This is incorrect. There's no way in the unmodded game to see boss health bars. Walton Simons posted:That's good, I haven't come across that one yet, it does feel like something that should be standard, though. It's key to a game like Hollow Knight to be able to know when you're outmatched and move on but when you don't have that information it's too tempting to just keep having one more try and accidentally spend an hour and a half failing to beat the Lost Kin like I just did. I looked at some hints in the end even though I normally avoid them like the plague and it looks like there are things I've yet to get that'll make it easier. I get massive sunk cost fallacy not wanting to lose the muscle memory I've just built up, because the next go is going to be the one. For the most part, the moment you have access to a boss fight, you probably have the tools you need to beat that boss at a reasonable level of difficulty. Lost Kin is an unfortunate exception; it's way harder than you'd expect compared to when you're likely to stumble into it (right after fighting Broken Vessel and getting Monarch Wings). In general, if it's a harder version of a boss you've already fought, it's probably really fuckin hard, and you might want to wait until you feel you're in the late-game; most of these "re-fights" you probably won't discover until late-game anyway (except Lost Kin). As a general tip, for bosses that you can "stagger", each stagger is probably about 15-30% of its health.
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Oct 27, 2022 23:57
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Ptolo posted:No traffic simulation This would be a positive for me, really. Most city builder games after a certain point aren't about building a city, they're about making a road system and the city takes a hell of a backseat to it. Cities: Skylines is a major example of this. If you don't painstakingly design your entire road system, then emergency vehicles can't get around, corpses can't get picked up (aside: why the gently caress are most people in that game dying in their homes or workplaces?), goods can't get delivered, and people can't get to work unless you invest extremely heavily in public transport. But not buses, because that makes the traffic problem even worse. And the best part is, in the vanilla game you don't have access to any roads other than a generic two lane for a good portion of the early game, and by the time you get the more specialized ones your city is already big enough that in order to use them you have to redesign your entire old town. I like logistics management in games. Raw resources to industry to commercial? An interesting puzzle. Having to account for the fact that if twelve cars want to turn left anywhere on a main road they all get in the left lane immediately and get stuck behind the guy turning onto First when their destination is Sixteenth, and the right lane is completely empty? Not fun. Apparently the devs considered making emergency vehicles have no collision so that at least that wasn't an issue, but decided against it. There are now multiple mods that do exactly that, so apparently I'm not the only one annoyed by it.
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Oct 27, 2022 23:58
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Death Stranding still looks great, I'm loving wandering around the landscape but it's just always gonna bug me deep down that it just looks nothing like US geography even after an apocalypse. Like, I'm hiking around thinking how beautiful and icelandic it looks, then I plug into the network and I'm in the middle of Ohio 
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Oct 28, 2022 00:35
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I choose to sincerely believe that Kojima has never touched ground on US soil for anything more than a convention/awards appearance and thinks all farmland just looks like that
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Oct 28, 2022 00:44
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I know someone has said it before but I'll reiterate that, even with a goodly amount of playtime in both, whenever anyone mentions Paths of Exile or Pillars of Eternity, I have to stop for a sec and think of which one of the two that is.
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Oct 28, 2022 01:32
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Arrath posted:I know someone has said it before but I'll reiterate that, even with a goodly amount of playtime in both, whenever anyone mentions Paths of Exile or Pillars of Eternity, I have to stop for a sec and think of which one of the two that is. Really? I frequently get the acronym mixed up but I don't get the games confused...
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Oct 28, 2022 01:38
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Captain Hygiene posted:I just hate it in general when any game where specific enemy health details constantly matter for strategy (RPGs, brawlers, etc) but they don't show them by default. Doubly bad if it's something unlockable later, but it uses up an equip slot. I'm aware this is a me problem.
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Oct 28, 2022 02:23
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I don't mind not having health bars in Hollow Knight because fights are usually fairly short, and the bosses usually have stuff like phase transitions and staggers often enough to know how you're doing. I don't much care for it in a game like Monster Hunter though
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Oct 28, 2022 02:27
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Splicer posted:I can't stand it because I need to know roughly how long the fight is going to be. If I've got a rhythm down but don't know how long I have to keep it up my brain starts punching me. this is one of my issues with monster hunter. Thankfully there are mods for that
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Oct 28, 2022 02:55
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Item detection and priority in monster hunter world drives me up the wall. In The Guiding Lands items disappear super fast, so when there's an opportunity to pick stuff up mid fight you need to take it. But nah, slinger ammo will always take priority, even if you have a full slinger ammo load in your gun. Have fun picking up every piece of ammo on the floor before you can pick up that material your tempered elder dragon just dropped, before it turns around and sets you on fire.
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Oct 28, 2022 03:04
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Nuebot posted:Item detection and priority in monster hunter world drives me up the wall. In The Guiding Lands items disappear super fast, so when there's an opportunity to pick stuff up mid fight you need to take it. But nah, slinger ammo will always take priority, even if you have a full slinger ammo load in your gun. Have fun picking up every piece of ammo on the floor before you can pick up that material your tempered elder dragon just dropped, before it turns around and sets you on fire. IIRC there's a mod for PC that fixes that so shinies are always highest priority.
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Oct 28, 2022 03:33
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