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The Lamplighters League now has a demo It does a good job with the presentation. The music and environments invoke that pulp adventure feel. While I am less hot on the character design, it at least feels distinct from others in the genre and doesn't clash with the rest of the game. Plays most like an xcom, but with a character focus like a Jagged Alliance. And like the new Jagged Alliance you can use real time to take out loners, sneak around, and setup ambushes. Like JA3, this can be finicky. But Lamplighters League buts much more of an emphasis, giving each character special abilities they can only use in real time, so I found my annoyances with real time adding up much quicker. There are only 2 missions in the demo, and both were rather easy. This is early game so I assume the difficulty would ramp up, but wit how much real time ablities trivialize encounters and stuff like the melee unit you get feeling like a easy win button, I am interested in seeing what the balance shakes out to be like in the final game. All in all something I will keep my eye on and I do recommend checking out the demo if you are interested in the genre.
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Sep 29, 2023 21:13
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ImpAtom posted:The player or anyone who so much as googles the name of their sword To be fair it takes a while before the sword is named too.
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Sep 29, 2023 22:32
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Most Fate fans already made good guesses on the true identities of the new Servant. The only exception being Caster because (Samurai Remnant spoilers) only Touhou fans have ever heard in the west of Hieda no Are lmao
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Sep 29, 2023 22:42
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Ohhh, Samurai Remnant. I was sure that Fate/Extra wasn't out yet. I totally forgot about the other one.
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Sep 29, 2023 22:58
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Infinity Gaia posted:To be fair it takes a while before the sword is named too. Didn't it get namedropped in thr first Noble Phantasm?
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Sep 29, 2023 23:17
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lolling at how summon night 3 has a minor bad guy who antagonizes you throughout the game and is obsessed with setting forest fires and at one point suggests to his boss that they should light up your boat, betrays her to go along with her jokerfied evil brother and join a syndicate of magic terrorists, and then two chapters before the end the guy he defected to the terrorist group with stabs the leader of the group and he just awkwardly stands around going "hey uhh. you know i never had any intentions of betraying you" and instantly gets blown up with a fireball and dies and nobody comments on it the actual plotting in this game gets a bit messy but i like that it consistently has bits like that and a whole extensive sidequest chain about hanging out with the comic relief pirate gang where you just see them go on cartoon pirate adventures getting into trouble with long dead pirate ghosts, and it ends with you helping the comic relief pirate captain's brother hook up with a sexy bunny girl he met while cooking food for the island residents
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Sep 29, 2023 23:57
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I am so sick of these oval office guards trying to swindle me in Gothic. I ain't paying you poo poo.
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Sep 30, 2023 00:03
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Evil Fluffy posted:But this applies to every Diagaea game (except 3) when compared to 6. I liked it about as much as 5, maybe a little more. GiantRockFromSpace posted:Most Fate fans already made good guesses on the true identities of the new Servant. The only exception being Caster because (Samurai Remnant spoilers) only Touhou fans have ever heard in the west of Hieda no Are lmao Heck yeah, Hieda no Are!
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Sep 30, 2023 00:55
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The 7th Guest posted:yea i feel like they shook up the roster briefly at the beginning because they resolved so many character arcs in zero. but noel and wazy, at least until this point, have had no character arcs at all (wazy serving primarily as a catalyst for his rival's arc). noel's existence on the team has been pretty much an afterthought despite her useful crafts in battle. like she gives small insights about the CGF but there's nothing she's really going through, no real internal conflict except that in chapter 4 she wants to go back to CGF. Without going into spoiler territory Wazy not getting much of an “arc” initially makes a lot more sense in a few chapters, at least. Noel…well, she gets more later, but it’s still kind of an afterthought compared to the main protagonist focuses of Azure. Idk, I liked Azure a lot but that’s mostly because it’s the sequel to Zero, the game that’s pure strain “walk around the town seeing the silly little character arcs of the NPCs”, seeing Chapter 4 didn’t feel toothless because i spent all that time seeing the little character arcs and making the rounds, so seeing the Downtown District so hosed up in an obvious way and everyone in Crossbell collectively scared as poo poo because an army of heavily armed super humans ran in, kicked the poo poo out of the militia, blew up a national landmark, and attempted to destroy another one is, idk, relatable as an act of terrorism? Doing the rounds and not just hitting up your favorite NPCs and using a guide for hidden side quests is kind of objectively insane though tbh.
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Sep 30, 2023 01:38
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Wazy and Randy are cool.
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Sep 30, 2023 01:38
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Clarste posted:I liked it about as much as 5, maybe a little more. Awesome.
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Sep 30, 2023 02:34
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ImpAtom posted:The player or anyone who so much as googles the name of their sword disrespectful to the setting. you think they had google back then?
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Sep 30, 2023 02:39
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https://twitter.com/f3PAg2NPxL7Rvtn/status/1707549839574352207 Yoshitaka Tamaki has passed away at 55
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Sep 30, 2023 04:22
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RIP. Shining Force forever. Is Time Stalkers worth a play?
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Sep 30, 2023 05:04
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Last Celebration posted:Idk, I liked Azure a lot but that’s mostly because it’s the sequel to Zero, the game that’s pure strain “walk around the town seeing the silly little character arcs of the NPCs”, seeing Chapter 4 didn’t feel toothless because i spent all that time seeing the little character arcs and making the rounds, so seeing the Downtown District so hosed up in an obvious way and everyone in Crossbell collectively scared as poo poo because an army of heavily armed super humans ran in, kicked the poo poo out of the militia, blew up a national landmark, and attempted to destroy another one is, idk, relatable as an act of terrorism? Doing the rounds and not just hitting up your favorite NPCs and using a guide for hidden side quests is kind of objectively insane though tbh.
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Sep 30, 2023 05:35
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ImpAtom posted:Didn't it get namedropped in thr first Noble Phantasm? I'd need to go back and watch the cutscene again but I'm pretty sure the namedrop gets interrupted. But it's also possible I wasn't paying full attention during the cutscene and just missed it.
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Sep 30, 2023 06:17
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The 7th Guest posted:i've only looked at a guide to see if a chapter has a hidden quest, but otherwise i just ignored guides and went around and talked to a bunch of NPCs as often as I could. i don't really need guides for Trails, it's not like they're very hard games (and this one has been by far the easiest of all of them) I did specify “for hidden side quests”, lol, but tbh I didn’t even feel the need to use one there.
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Sep 30, 2023 06:39
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Disposable Scud posted:Is Time Stalkers worth a play?
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Sep 30, 2023 07:06
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You're not
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Sep 30, 2023 09:46
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I realized I'm old and I don't have the patience for Yakuza 0's minigames :'(
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Sep 30, 2023 14:45
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Kara filmed the entire Chrono Trigger soundtrack for 3 instruments, piano, organ, and harpsichord and just released it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fGq2BfstZs
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Sep 30, 2023 17:16
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A Sometimes Food posted:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1229880/Koumajou_Remilia_Scarlet_Symphony/ That's not a metroidvania though, is it? There's no exploring or anything. The Colonel posted:actually surprised caligula effect didnt get mentioned, fate/extra uses its setting to excuse having a ton of different weird places but caligula runs with it to present really bizarre takes on real world locations. first game has the fate/extra effect though where it's, pretty cheap, so much of the dungeons are just repeating hallways Caligula Effect 2 is also really good, though the first is kinda eh. I hope the Fate/Extra remake comes to the west. Type-Moon seems to finally be doing that with more stuff, but I don't think they've said anything. about that. It'd be even cooler if it had the sequel/remake/expansion/whatever that wasn't translated but considering how long it's taking for just Extra itself, that doesn't seem likely any time soon. Runa posted:Normally I'm not one to signal boost a kickstarter but this one's very close to their goal with just 48 hours to go and I really want to see them drag this over the finishing line. Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass was a fantastic if emotionally heavy journey and I trust Kasey Ozymy to make another solid game with a standout story. I quite liked A very long Rope, will definitely keep an eye on this even if I missed the backing window. Shame it missed out on newgame+ since those can be fun. Shastahanshah fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Sep 30, 2023 |
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Sep 30, 2023 22:15
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i dont think theres any doubt about extra record getting tled, the only games type-moon hasn't launched same day in other territories are their vns
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Sep 30, 2023 23:21
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also just finished summon night 3. it's, firmly in that territory of kinda janky low budget rpg with a lot of major gameplay issues that keep it from being as fun as something like disgaea or fire emblem, not really experimental enough to stand up next to something like a sting srpg either. the plot is also a bit wonky, it doesn't always have the best pacing. the character writing is for the most part though a lot of fun, aty is a cool protagonist and it generally maintains a very fun lighthearted atmosphere and there's a lot of incredibly funny random gags and subplots, and it has a pretty fun overarching theme about people from other cultures coming together and cooperating to create a better world for everyone. dont think it's a must play exactly but i can see why it's a game people in japan who played it when they were younger have a fondness for also it has a scene like ten minutes before you go into the final boss fight where the leader of an evil terrorist gang you just beat up a half hour ago runs into the room to call you a dumbass and then he bolts out and is never seen again
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Sep 30, 2023 23:36
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The Colonel posted:
Epic More games should do that
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Oct 1, 2023 00:28
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i will say that the one part of summon night 3 i am not a fan of is the final boss it's a gimmick fight where there are two pillars you have to hit, but the pillars are invincible and the boss is constantly spawning adds and the gimmick of the adds is that you have to kill them to weaken shields around the pillars and they come in four variants. two for each tower, one that weakens the shield on both towers, and one that doesn't give you anything. for every add you kill to weaken a shield you get to hit that tower once. the towers are weighted so one is weak to magic and one is weak to physical attacks. none of this, sounds, that bad, but there's three major problems. problem number one. when i say a tower is weak to a damage type i only mean, that damage type can hurt it at all if your stats are really high. summon night 3 encourages you to hover around the max level of the enemies you're fighting and the maps immediately before this max out at level 29. the game is already very difficult if you do try to do this for the brave points it awards you with because higher level enemies can decimate your weaker units, but it never restricts you from overleveling either and if you do so it's generally easy to get into a groove where you'll never have to grind too much to stay ahead of the curve, especially with late game unit summons and unit summon buffs that let you grant them an extra three levels over whoever summons them. that skill alone will make you feel comfortable with your party, safe in the knowledge you can always summon in a penguin with funny goggles none of your enemies can kill. i was like three levels above the bosses of the past few maps and i could barely make a dent in either tower because they asked for an absurdly high level of raw physical and magical damage. compared to my magic attackers the only units i had who were even remotely capable of dealing enough physical damage was a random golem summon i found and, aty, when powered up with the magic sword. neither of these units could do nearly as much damage to the physical tower as my magic attackers could do to the magic tower. this, created a problem. number 2. every turn the final boss will, in addition to its dozens of adds, hit three of your units with a cross-shaped aoe. if anyone is standing within two spaces of each other they will both get hit. this aoe starts out not doing that much damage but it scales with how low the pillars' hp gets. combined with the damage from adds this means the closer you get to the end of the fight, the higher the odds are the boss will just decide to delete three (or more) of your units if you aren't constantly keeping them at max hp. this gets extremely difficult to do because summon night 3 makes healing items limited and the better ones very expensive, and healing magic will never get anyone even close to full hp if they've taken more than a slight bruise. the final boss also randomly uses an attack that does enough damage to basically instakill most units if you leave them close to the center of the arena but that one isn't really hard to dodge at all since it's telegraphed, thankfully number 3, you can't revive units in summon night. this, normally isn't the worst thing. maps are balanced around it, obviously. enemy units can't be revived either so it's pretty fair and easy to plan around. given how unit summons work it's a reasonable way to balance things out a bit. the final battle is the only time in the entire game you will be dealing with an unending enemy force and thus the first time the game will really make you struggle with resource scarcity, you will run out of mp and you will run out of items unless you stocked up massively for this one specific fight in particular meaning, yes, this is the kind of rpg where item hoarding is the way to go and you will have hosed up if you haven't hoarded all the best healing items you stumbled onto. it's the only part of the game that really actually gave me trouble after the opening chapters and it's just, a gargantuan difficulty spike in every sense of the word. and i'm pretty sure it's possible to softlock yourself with no way to buy items or grind if you save just before it. but if you keep a safety save at the start of every chapter you do have room to work around it so it isn't actually the worst thing in the world, just, yeah it's in the wiegraf school of a guy who comes out of literally nowhere to completely ruin your day by being unreasonably harder than anything else in the entire game The Colonel fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 01:54
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The Colonel posted:none of this, sounds, that bad, but there's three major problems. Actually, it already sounds awful imo.
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Oct 1, 2023 02:23
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the lack of good physical damage dealers in my party may also have something to do with the fact that melee attacks in summon night kinda uhhh. blow. they suck. if you can't hit anything at least two spaces away from you you're probably spending most of the game not hitting anything without taking immense risk. it's not that physical damage dealers in summon night can't land some good blows but they're living in an srpg system where anything and everything exists to inconvenience you and make moving around the map really awkward and annoying, your best movement skill only lets you run in a straight line in four directions, meanwhile they're getting pelted from all directions with arrows, knives, bullets, giant robots with medical syringes, a sentient drill, a cooking pan, a pile of swords, and creatures inspired by japanese folklore and horror mythology, some of which are summoned using leatherface's mask from texas chainsaw massacre as a catalyst. it's hard to justify using any melee attacker that can't at least hit someone at a diagonal angle and even of those it's hard to justify spending a space on someone who can't use summons in general because summons are by and large the absolute best way to do anything and everything once you build someone up properly for it, and if you want a basic-rear end melee attacker summon units usually will fair far better at it than any of your dedicated full-on dudes, given their high stats and ability to fly around ignoring parts of the terrain. so, it presents a pretty major issue, when the game pushes you into a spot where you need someone with way higher physical attack stats than any of the unit summons you might have been tasking with that sort of thing. basically dont go into the final boss of summon night 3 until all your main dudes are like, level 35 and you have someone with attack at 400. maybe lower those numbers if playing on easy and, i recommend playing on easy, cause summon night works best as something to chill out with rather than as like an actual challenge to overcome. everything i like about the game comes down to its dialog, its characters, its aesthetic and its cool summon animations The Colonel fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 02:23
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In the finale of azure now (at stargazers tower) and idk if I like having the revelations/explanations blasting at me one starting with the end of chapter 4. the game is too in love with plot twists and too many crazy things have happened for me to enjoy unpacking it all especially in this way. I’d have scaled back a LITTLE also maybe I’m alone in this (I’m sure I’ve complained about it before) but… I’ve never super loved the robots but I get that it’s a part of the franchise, but when it gets deep into the supernatural I feel like the games creep more towards being Every Other JRPG and loses sort of the unique charm. It becomes less compelling to me. again I accept that this stuff is just a big part of trails (especially this and sky 3rd) but I wish it wasn’t, personally after this I will maybe dip into Nayuta, it looks fun. idk about reverie bc I didn’t even play CS2 bc I didn’t love CS1, let alone CS3&4. Also I’m thinking of getting LunarLux because it looks cute e: to be clear though i still think azure is mostly alright, i just don't like it as much as Zero The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 03:19
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The 7th Guest posted:In the finale of azure now (at stargazers tower) and idk if I like having the revelations/explanations blasting at me one starting with the end of chapter 4. the game is too in love with plot twists and too many crazy things have happened for me to enjoy unpacking it all especially in this way. I’d have scaled back a LITTLE I guess it’s subjective, but having robots that are called archaisms because they’re just either just old robots from an advanced ancient civilization or tech that was reverse engineered from old robots is one of the cooler more distinct parts of Trails relative to other games. I get not liking giant robots just showing up in a vacuum, cause poo poo, I wasn’t really onboard with them when Cold Steel 1 was the first Trails game I beat, but at least with the context of Sky on top of the overarching setting being The Industrial Revolution But Magic where people reverse engineered gemstones to become in infinite energy source along with having robots that are also powered by magic adds to things in a way there just being robots in other games doesn’t.
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Oct 1, 2023 03:58
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the robots dont take away from the charm, to be clear, though they do stick out when they appear. but they're not my favorite aspect of trails (which is the down-to-earth peacekeeping stuff, and making all the connections with the various people of the world who live their lives throughout the games) e: also i had played Sky 1 before CS1, and so I should've known the robots would show up in CS1 eventually, but the game waits until the very end, that I honestly forgot about them being in the setting... so when they showed up in the finale i was like.. wait huh??? what's going on??? lol The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 05:14
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dragon's dogma has been a lot of fun but the RC grind in bitterblack isle is awfully real, good lord
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Oct 1, 2023 06:46
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The 7th Guest posted:In the finale of azure now (at stargazers tower) and idk if I like having the revelations/explanations blasting at me one starting with the end of chapter 4. the game is too in love with plot twists and too many crazy things have happened for me to enjoy unpacking it all especially in this way. I’d have scaled back a LITTLE There is zero point in playing Reverie without having played all the CS games
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Oct 1, 2023 10:23
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having played a fair bit of samurai remnant myself id say its a pretty interesting game if you have any longform interest in the musou series, even outside of the fate stuff. its sort of using those mechanics to tell the story. the game's set in 17th century japan but the premise is 'summoning powerful heroes from history,' so the protag's just a pretty bogstandard samurai while the other characters are running around shooting magic beams and teleporting and poo poo. the gameplay sorta emphasizes that dichotomy. the protag plays like a character from dynasty warriors 4 or something while the ancient heroes play like they're from one piece warriors. its an interesting use of the musou system. one guy can handle 20 guys at once but has a kind of basic moveset for dealing with bosses, the other can press one button and wipe out 100 guys and chunk boss health bars. its neat gameplay/story integration. but definitely dont go into it expecting like, a normal action rpg. its got a town and some sidequests and stuff, and side content, but gameplay structure wise its still like, a musou.
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Oct 1, 2023 13:25
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also speaking of fate, https://twitter.com/SnowyAria/status/1708195048700195036 fate/extra ccc tl patch is gonna be out by christmas, apparently
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Oct 1, 2023 13:26
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Endorph posted:having played a fair bit of samurai remnant myself id say its a pretty interesting game if you have any longform interest in the musou series, even outside of the fate stuff. its sort of using those mechanics to tell the story. the game's set in 17th century japan but the premise is 'summoning powerful heroes from history,' so the protag's just a pretty bogstandard samurai while the other characters are running around shooting magic beams and teleporting and poo poo. the gameplay sorta emphasizes that dichotomy. the protag plays like a character from dynasty warriors 4 or something while the ancient heroes play like they're from one piece warriors. its an interesting use of the musou system. one guy can handle 20 guys at once but has a kind of basic moveset for dealing with bosses, the other can press one button and wipe out 100 guys and chunk boss health bars. its neat gameplay/story integration. Yeah i really like how they actually make the Servants feel as powerful as they're supposed to be.
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Oct 1, 2023 13:35
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Endorph posted:also speaking of fate, I was just coming to post this. Glad to see this thing finally coming together, I'm pretty excited to play CCC.
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Oct 1, 2023 15:41
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alright, done with trails to azure. bleh. of course it ends with a "now play cold steel!" ending, no epilogue where you get to talk to everyone. laaaaame. unlike the other turncoat characters, grimwood barely has any art change, they just fog up his glasses and change his smile to a frown. lol. i dunno that whole bit... it's just yet another plot twist, this game just couldn't stop doing plot twists and it was tiring. the foot was on the gas pedal the entire second half. is this what CS2-4 are like?? cause if so that makes me even less interested in playing those the one plot twist that i wanted to like was the very last one of everyone fawned over kea because she had enchantment magic emanating out of her but they made it way too obvious in azure with how thick they laid it on... i think that if they did a better job of showing a natural progression of going from Obviously Enchanted to just naturally liking her, it would have made for a better overall story. she is too much in the background of zero's first two-thirds--outside of intermission-- and there's really not much in the way of scenes with her and the group other than just being the person who welcomes them home and cooks food and isn't she so great, which they were already kinda doing in azure. THOUGH I WILL SAY, kea actually felt like a real character this time around than in azure, the writing of her got way better. i dunno. it'll probably be a while before i play a mainline trails game again unless i skip to Kuro when that comes out. the series is at its best when it's not crazy high stakes and crazy plot twists and is more grounded and about journeying around making connections with townspeople and handling small conflicts. but i mean, i get it, it's Legend of Heroes, not Legend of Mild Problem Solvers... maybe there'll be an RPG series that fits just right for me in this regard. something that has more stakes than an atelier game, but doesn't end in you fighting a god that can reshape reality by bending time and space lol e: maybe that's why i like the octopath series as much as i do, because every character's final boss is just like, related to their personal conflict and though there are stakes, it's not all-of-reality-threatening... (until you do the superboss i guess!!!!!!) yeah one guy has to infiltrate and usurp a tyrannical ruler, but another one of the eight is just trying to stop a town from being bulldozed, and another is fighting an old rich guy with a train The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 23:14
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Endorph posted:but definitely dont go into it expecting like, a normal action rpg. its got a town and some sidequests and stuff, and side content, but gameplay structure wise its still like, a musou. I feel so misled... The first announcement calling it an "action RPG" might've just been how it was translated though, I suppose. I've played a couple of the warrior games at a friend's place and they just bored me to tears. They were for series I liked even! (Three Hopes and Extella)
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Oct 1, 2023 23:16
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When you think about it, in some ways aren't musous already action rpgs?
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Oct 1, 2023 23:38
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