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MerrMan posted:Played a bunch of Roboquest since it was free on Game Pass. It's.. okay? Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I just feel like I get weaker and weaker as a run goes on. I haven't put anything together that was particularly powerful, my best run was with extra damage to ignited enemies and then the marking shotgun that did fire damage on ... the rocket/shotgun class. Most runs end slightly before the second boss when I hit a gauntlet room that is small and fills up with enemies because my damage falls behind to a degree that I can't clear it fast enough. Then it's just attrition until I'm dead. To be honest I think Roboquest makes the mistake of both hiding a lot of key features behind metaprogression AND making some of those metaprogression upgrades sound uninteresting. Normal difficulty is nasty in exactly the way you describe because on a fresh save you don't have access to almost anything. Like technically by default you have access to all guns and items, but actually seeing guns with crazy affixes isn't a thing at first, nor will you see anything but a glimpse of the item pool. You get to pick between a whopping 2 upgrades per level when down the road it'll be 4 per level and you'll get two rerolls for free. It's absolutely possible to put together something monstrously broken, but it's a hell of a lot harder when so much of the game is obfuscated behind progression. My advice is to try temporarily bumping the difficulty down to Easy. I had the same exact problem you did, and Easy let me acclimate to the game way faster because I could survive long enough to see more of it. And you get more wrenches from a 80-90% complete Easy run vs. a 40% complete Normal one. You're not likely to actually beat the game for ~reasons~ but you'll get dug into the progression so much faster instead of needing to fail forward inch by inch.
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Nov 18, 2023 06:40
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Thanks for recommending Skul btw, I'm digging it! Same with Astral Ascent and Deadlink. Man, so many good roguelikes out there!  On that note, would you currently recommend Ravenwatch? It's $6 in my region and that's going to change in a couple days when we switch back to USD. The game looks interesting but there's quite a bit of caveats from what I've read.John Murdoch posted:To be honest I think Roboquest makes the mistake of both hiding a lot of key features behind metaprogression AND making some of those metaprogression upgrades sound uninteresting. Normal difficulty is nasty in exactly the way you describe because on a fresh save you don't have access to almost anything. Like technically by default you have access to all guns and items, but actually seeing guns with crazy affixes isn't a thing at first, nor will you see anything but a glimpse of the item pool. You get to pick between a whopping 2 upgrades per level when down the road it'll be 4 per level and you'll get two rerolls for free. It's absolutely possible to put together something monstrously broken, but it's a hell of a lot harder when so much of the game is obfuscated behind progression. Yeah agreed with all this. Some of the mobility upgrades are massive too and those are all basically hidden behind off-the-beaten-path exploration or sidequests (grapple hook, cape, jetpack). It's basically my only criticism aside from enemy variety maybe.
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Nov 18, 2023 06:49
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Roboquest also hides enemy variety behind unlocks - as you get the crystals, more elite (interesting) enemies show up It's Bad Metaprog, for sure re: Ravenswatch, it's by the Curse of the Dead Gods devs, which I love - but it's a very different game, and it's still very EA - extremely polished EA, but not content complete That said, the theme it's got going on is real drat cool, playing coop with the Piper, Red Riding Hood, Beowolf and Aladdin is just neat
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Nov 18, 2023 09:03
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The Roboquest metaprogression kinda sucks but boy howdy the actual gameplay makes up for it in a lot of ways.
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Nov 18, 2023 09:20
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victrix posted:re: Ravenswatch, it's by the Curse of the Dead Gods devs, which I love - but it's a very different game, and it's still very EA - extremely polished EA, but not content complete I've played more Ravenswatch since it started EA in April than I played during all of Hades' EA (which was not little) Which makes me incredibly hyped for how much replayability it'll have at 1.0
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Nov 18, 2023 09:24
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I am too bad of a gamer for Ravenswatch
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Nov 18, 2023 09:31
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I couldn't really vibe with Ravenswatch. In the short period of time I tried it it felt weird playing an action game where you felt quite as weak? Underpowered? As you did in that game. On top of that, enforcing a hard time limit on each session by teleporting you to some trippy boss arena when the timer runs out left me with a pretty cold impression of it.
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Nov 18, 2023 09:36
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Tried the Roboquest demo. The movement and gunplay felt very... polished, for better or for worse. Most of the weapons feel like generic DPS hoses, they seem reluctant to have really idiosyncratic weapons. Even non-auto weapons seem to tend to have a high enough ROF that they're not drastically different from full auto weapons.
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Nov 18, 2023 18:19
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I bought Death Roads: Tournament since I loved Car Wars and Dark Future as a kid. It seems like a game with a really solid foundation: Slay the Spire style navigation through map nodes, and combat is grid-based deckbuilding. You maneuver your car around using your equipped weapons and gear (each of which adds its own cards to your deck) and there's a bunch of fun systems like losing grip and skidding around, ramming other cars and vehicles etc. My big complaint after a couple of hours of playing is that the difficulty has insane spikes. You'll go from cruising along smoothly with essentially full health to just getting your poo poo absolutely wrecked in a couple of turns in the next fight. People have been urging the devs to do rebalancing or to add difficulty options since the Early Access version, but no luck so far. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4ihY4iBvQo So... anyone else playing? Anyone have any tips?
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Nov 18, 2023 19:00
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Death Roads is really weird. I'm still struggling to figure it out and I'm suspecting that it's frankly not that great of a game, but the presentation really carries it. I particularly like their combat theme that changes dynamically depending on who's turn it is. It's really good. Although I wish they maybe had more than one music track. Here's one piece of advice though. If you're going to be dealing handling damage to your opponents you don't want them to skid. An opponent that skids might take some damage, or they might even do some damage to you and then play 3/4rds of their moves the next turn. An opponent that's you leave at 1 handling, will simply skip their turn completely. There's this one car that starts with a rear-mounter laser that does 10 handling damage, and practically every car during the first half of the run has 11 max handling.
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Nov 18, 2023 19:05
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That IS a good bit of advice and it makes perfect sense considering the "if you skid, your turn immediately ends" mechanic, and it feels like it should be obvious, but I hadn't really considered it until now.
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Nov 18, 2023 19:12
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:That IS a good bit of advice and it makes perfect sense considering the "if you skid, your turn immediately ends" mechanic, and it feels like it should be obvious, but I hadn't really considered it until now. If it makes you feel any better, I didn't realize it myself until I tried using that one starter car.
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Nov 18, 2023 19:14
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Ravenswatch looks pretty neat. Is it balanced to be played co-op or can I play alone & still have a good time
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Nov 18, 2023 20:28
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Ciaphas posted:Ravenswatch looks pretty neat. Is it balanced to be played co-op or can I play alone & still have a good time you can play solo fine, you get a set of revives (it's a Mario like)
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Nov 18, 2023 21:16
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I played Ravenswatch when it came out in Early Access and I had absolutely NO loving IDEA what was going on. Just a map full of random icons, half of which didn't seem to do anything that I could figure out, and then 25 minutes later the big boss spawned and I killed it. It's Early Access so I'm not expecting a ton of polish yet, but the game really could do with a good tutorial, because it seems to be a lot more complex than Curse of the Dead Gods, which I loved.
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Nov 18, 2023 21:19
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I've watched some streamers play Ravenswatch, but it really looks like the kind of game you want to wait until is out of Early Access to play.
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Nov 18, 2023 21:24
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Also thinking about it a bit more, another bone I have to pick with Roboquest is that the default class is simultaneously so much more boring than the others while also requiring more familiarity and skill to get the most out of. Sort of reminds me of Risk of Rain/2 where the Commando is hypothetically one of the strongest characters...assuming you know what items to seek out (if they're even unlocked) and fully understand the proc system which the game never actually explains. Though ultimately I guess it's less of a big deal than the other metaprog issues since you can unlock everything but the final class pretty quick.
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Nov 18, 2023 21:45
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Yeah, I've finished the game with every character in Roboquest except for the starter because he's so boring. Shame it's the introductionary class.
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Nov 18, 2023 22:22
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OneBit Adventure with a Mega Update, even if it wound up missing an entire aspect to it: Desert Dungeon & Equipment Update https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1688320/view/5849674468178466649 quote:We are truly excited to bring you to the next phase of OneBit Adventure by bringing in so much new content and many more ways to make your character builds even stronger. This update brings a new Desert Dungeon which has a world of traps for you to avoid while you climb higher to go against the new Tremor boss. We’ve added 45 new equipment, 7 new enemies, 1 new boss, 12 new runes, starting HUB, and so much more! Grab some coffee or tea because this is a long one.
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Nov 18, 2023 22:24
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I dunno I think the guns in Roboquest end up feeling pretty different from one another even if they don't have like, gun that shoots bees or whatever.
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Nov 18, 2023 22:35
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upgraded guns with proper supporting perks absolutely let you fill rooms with freezing explosions or whatever you're just not likely to assemble that out of the gate (or even know it's possible until you've seen all the different upgrade lines on each class)
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Nov 18, 2023 23:19
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Snooze Cruise posted:I dunno I think the guns in Roboquest end up feeling pretty different from one another even if they don't have like, gun that shoots bees or whatever. In one of my demo playthroughs wound up with a scout sniper rifle and dual sawnoffs and like, yeah, one is way better at long ranges and one is way better at short ranges but there's a huge area of overlap where I just had a real hard time caring about which gun I had out as I lazily M1'd over enemies. Especially since reloads are very quick and painless, so it never felt like I had a reason to swap out for more ammo.
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Nov 18, 2023 23:24
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I can definitely understand the complaints. Like, Gunfire Reborn has a few boring guns (like the SMG that's literally just...an SMG with no flavor at all) but also a bunch of "staple FPS gun with kooky flavor" and "weird bespoke nonsense I've never seen before" whereas most of the guns in Roboquest are super streamlined. There are a few more unique ones in the mix but on average there's a lot of overlap where for shotguns it'll be like faster/weaker shotgun, slower/stronger shotgun, energy shotgun. Or within energy weapons each element gets its own mostly-similar rifle weapon. How meaningfully different are the dual crossbows vs. dual energy pistols?  But at the same time I think the weapons are sort of meant to be blank canvases to attach a lot of crazy affixes to, including alt-fires. (Which of course circles back to my point that none of that poo poo is unlocked by default or super tamped down to start with.) It comes at the cost of weapon personality though. Broken Cog posted:Yeah, I've finished the game with every character in Roboquest except for the starter because he's so boring. Shame it's the introductionary class. I did manage to figure out a fantastic combo of the melee shockwave + Bonk Hammer which meant I could delete an enemy every couple of seconds without needing to run right up in their face. I've never gotten much traction trying to invest super deep into the shield skill itself though. Edit: The game also has a lot of stuff oriented around head bonks and like, I don't never ever get those, but it's so much more common to try to go for one and then eat poo poo for it vs. doing one by happy accident. It's an odd mechanic to get as much focus as it does, which isn't a ton, but enough to make it seem like a fundamental strategy. Edit 2: And again again, they only become easily accessible after unlocking all the various mobility upgrades that make being above enemies more likely to be a thing in the first place. John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Nov 18, 2023 |
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Nov 18, 2023 23:47
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the holy poopacy posted:In one of my demo playthroughs wound up with a scout sniper rifle and dual sawnoffs and like, yeah, one is way better at long ranges and one is way better at short ranges but there's a huge area of overlap where I just had a real hard time caring about which gun I had out as I lazily M1'd over enemies. Especially since reloads are very quick and painless, so it never felt like I had a reason to swap out for more ammo. the scenario you describe, which I think happens a lot in like the rooms where a bunch of enemies keep spawning - the way I think of those situations is less about "what gun do I use" and "how do I position myself to not take fire from all these dudes". I'm spraying my weapon vaguely in the enemy's direction, and incidentally it takes out some, but I'm more worried about waiting for my decoy to be on cooldown/watching my drone health/etc.
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Nov 19, 2023 00:03
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Bastion is quite strong since it's a toggle, but it is both boring and a very bad fit for the starter class since it's kind of a shmup bomb, knowing when you've hosed up enough to turn it on before you get hit is hard. Trying to use it all at once as an ult is extremely underwhelming.death cob for cutie posted:the scenario you describe, which I think happens a lot in like the rooms where a bunch of enemies keep spawning - the way I think of those situations is less about "what gun do I use" and "how do I position myself to not take fire from all these dudes". I'm spraying my weapon vaguely in the enemy's direction, and incidentally it takes out some, but I'm more worried about waiting for my decoy to be on cooldown/watching my drone health/etc.
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Nov 19, 2023 00:13
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I just don't really get the point of not using commando because commando is super fun. The ranger seems cool too but commando! Commando!
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Nov 19, 2023 00:15
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commando & the engineer? are tops because they both have readily-accessible rocket jumps right from the off what, shoot enemies with them? pshaw
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Nov 19, 2023 00:17
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Recon is probably my favourite so far. Get the skill that turns your knife into a cutlass and just chop chop. Edit: Also, with commando you can spec into explosions and use the jetpack to become an airborne bomber.
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Nov 19, 2023 00:31
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Just want to say cobalt core is incredible. First StS-like that has made me laugh that I can remember. Example: (random ? Event that happened >5 runs in) Dracula randomly showing up, and everyone’s reactions like it was normal, since it’s a common “?” event in these sorts of games.
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Nov 19, 2023 19:08
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To talk about Legends of Runeterra / Path of Championsfor a second, I got a completely filthy setup going with Yasuo the other day. For those of you unfamiliar, LoR is basically Hearthstone + MTG, kind of a decent middle ground in card complexity and interaction between the two. One of the main conceits is 'Champions', cards representing the actual playable characters in League of Legends, which are the cornerstone of your deck and basically decide which 'colors' (regions) you're playing. Again, middle ground between HS and MTG. Champions can level up after meeting some objective, becoming more powerful. Yasuo is a bit of a control enabler - At first his deal is that any time you stun or recall an enemy, he attacks it for 2 damage. This triggers attack payoffs and also generally lets your stuns be more useful. If you stun/recall 5 times in a game, then he flips; and now he deals his attack in damage to the creature. This is combined with three other very fun things:
So basically, Yasuo goes from being a one off stun enabler to a one-time board sweeper that will then keep your opponent's board cleared if they can't kill him, and creature-based removal like Challenger (basically you get to pick who blocks a creature) isn't very effective when my ENTIRE DECK is full of stuns. He's probably my current strongest Champion in PoC with that equipment, because basically as soon as he flips, he wipes the enemy board in most cases and then proceeds to kill anything left over every turn. It's such an aggressive control of the board that it's extremely hard to bounce back from, especially since Stun already has benefits like removing blockers/attackers.
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Nov 19, 2023 19:27
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The current iteration of the Cross Blitz demo is extremely fun and also a weirdly rare example of a roguelike deckbuilder that has you playing against AI opponents with their own decks of cards playing by roughly the same set of rules that you are instead of enemies with a small list of predetermined intents.
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Nov 19, 2023 19:33
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Pastrami posted:Just want to say cobalt core is incredible. First StS-like that has made me laugh that I can remember. Example: (random ? Event that happened >5 runs in) Dracula randomly showing up, and everyone’s reactions like it was normal, since it’s a common “?” event in these sorts of games. Would you believe they're arguably canonical? The studio's previous game, a starship CAD simulator called Sunshine Heavy Industries (yes, that one), featured them as a repeat customer in a free Halloween update. Glazius fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 01:51
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So what's the local take on Risk of Rain Returns and GUNHEAD?
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Nov 20, 2023 04:31
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Gunhead is exactly Cryptark in 3d. Minor changes to the economy (though that could be my bad memory). A little rough on the hands, but if you're playing FPS roguelites, it'll be just fine. Def feels good in the "fighting in a giant machine that hates you" sense, where you can dismember it bit by bit.
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Nov 20, 2023 05:38
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Risk of Rain Returns is cool, ror1 with more stuff. new playable characters, enemies, etc. It's also the only thing the original ror devs are working on since gearbox owns everything else under the ip now.
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Nov 20, 2023 06:16
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Anything else I should be looking at if I'm really vibing with rift wizard? Need to see what else is out there while I wait for 2 to hit
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Nov 20, 2023 06:50
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ZearothK posted:So what's the local take on Risk of Rain Returns and GUNHEAD? Risk of Rain 1 is a really good game, and Risk of Rain Returns is just that but with new stuff and (probably I guess) less finicky multiplayer. It's good.
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Nov 20, 2023 06:53
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w00tmonger posted:Anything else I should be looking at if I'm really vibing with rift wizard? Path of Achra would be the call here.
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Nov 20, 2023 06:58
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I want to play gunhead even though I don't really like CryptArk that much.w00tmonger posted:Anything else I should be looking at if I'm really vibing with rift wizard? My eyes are tired, I thought you wrote nft wizard and I was about to mock you
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Nov 20, 2023 06:59
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King of Solomon posted:Risk of Rain 1 is a really good game, and Risk of Rain Returns is just that but with new stuff and (probably I guess) less finicky multiplayer. It's good. The multiplayer is 100% less finnicky. I was able to get into 20 lobbies on launch day and I never had issues, while I was never able to set up or connect to a server in the original RoR. The extra content is great and the game looks gorgeous to boot.
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Nov 20, 2023 08:29
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