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frytechnician posted:Uh... thought this game was raved about pretty universally and got tons of GotY nominations when it came out? Did it? I hadn't even heard of it until a friend mentioned it a couple weeks back.
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Feb 13, 2024 23:28
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5-Headed Snake God posted:Did it? I hadn't even heard of it until a friend mentioned it a couple weeks back. Yeah, it placed #9 in the 2021 Game of the Year thread, people were absolutely raving about it back then.
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Feb 14, 2024 04:42
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Just beat Bloodstained Ritual of the Night and it kicked rear end. End game dragged a little bit but it was awesome otherwise.
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Feb 14, 2024 07:54
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5-Headed Snake God posted:I just beat 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim last night. Not a perfect game, but the plot absolutely grabbed me and never let go. What an underappreciated gem of a game. I'm not a huge fan of Vanillaware beat em ups but I think 13 Sentinels is their best game so I have high hopes for Unicorn Overlord's more tactical gameplay
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Feb 14, 2024 12:30
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frytechnician posted:Uh... thought this game was raved about pretty universally and got tons of GotY nominations when it came out? Even though it was pretty well liked on the forums, it's still an underappreciated game imo
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Feb 14, 2024 18:56
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hemborger consider it
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Feb 14, 2024 19:35
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13 Sentinels is the one that has those "kids gotta be naked to use the machines, no other way to do it" situations, right?
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Feb 14, 2024 20:49
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credburn posted:13 Sentinels is the one that has those "kids gotta be naked to use the machines, no other way to do it" situations, right? Just like my posts
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Feb 14, 2024 20:50
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credburn posted:13 Sentinels is the one that has those "kids gotta be naked to use the machines, no other way to do it" situations, right? free the world with a caged dong? don't think so pal
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Feb 14, 2024 22:05
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credburn posted:13 Sentinels is the one that has those "kids gotta be naked to use the machines, no other way to do it" situations, right? To be fair, it is because (huge spoilers, do not read this if you haven't beaten the game but plan to) typically when you grow a clone in a vat they don't come with clothes
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Feb 15, 2024 03:16
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Foul Fowl posted:free the world with a caged dong? don't think so pal Chastity is the greatest freedom, friend.
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Feb 15, 2024 10:06
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credburn posted:13 Sentinels is the one that has those "kids gotta be naked to use the machines, no other way to do it" situations, right? Yes, and it doesn't really matter that there's an explanation for it because the way they're drawn is pretty skeevy. It IS legitimately a very good game though.
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Feb 15, 2024 14:30
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Morpheus posted:To be fair, it is because (huge spoilers, do not read this if you haven't beaten the game but plan to) typically when you grow a clone in a vat they don't come with clothes My only problem with this is why do some of them still have glasses then?
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Feb 15, 2024 15:17
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I dont think bare shoulders count as particularly inappropriate
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Feb 15, 2024 15:22
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There's a lot more than bare shoulders in that game.
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Feb 16, 2024 12:49
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Some of 13 Sentinels art is definitely very bleh. Like there's one character whose every animation can only be described as "breasting boobily", and some schoolgirls get pretty bad poses for when they're in a robot when compared to the guys who you can at most see the shoulder of. I also think female characters' characterization was way worse, since a lot of them were just "In Love" and that was their entire motivation and everything they did. Even when guys were involved with someone they were allowed to be weird goobers, at least. Still, the game is fun, even if I would prefer it if it wasn't so twisty. I think the middle lost me because at that point the game just seems incoherent with how much it throws at you. There's possible (spoilered for tropes used even if some of them end up false) time travel, UFOs, simulations, people in robots, robots in people, apocalypce, clones, AIs and at that point I just dissociated and went along with the game.
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Feb 16, 2024 12:52
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So I finally finished (remastered) Nier Replicant, and all of its endings from A-E. Huge spoilers below: It should be said that I haven't played through all of Automata - I've played the first ending then promptly dropped it for reasons unknown years ago. So I went into Replicant without much knowledge of the lore or setting at all. I'm not too bothered about the gameplay, so I won't write much about it but; God drat, it really is a PS2 game made into the modern age. So much grinding, 90% of the side quests are grind this, kill that quests. The maps are incredibly small, very few zones, tons of backtracking back to old regions, none of the places really feel lively, lived in or utilized save for being set pieces for the story. And that's fine for me. I'm alright with that. I would've loved to get more immersed in the world itself through the designs of the locale, but I get what they were working with so I can respect what they've done. I don't think the Nier games really are the sort of games for that anyhow. In fact, I've always read of the Nier games to be an incredibly applauded piece of work that never fails to make people cry through its focus on identity and perseverance in the face of doom. So for the story? I.. Liked it. Ending A was a nice conclusion to the half of the story, but ending B really hit me the most as it recontextualizes everything you did in ending A to make it a story into a question of whom deserves the right to be called human. And the ending cinematic of B really hit me because it was a clear farewell to the Shades/Gestalts and all the enemies you've fought; they've lost, their project failed, and though Replicants are apparently completely unable to procreate due to being clones of the real humans, it is still a beautiful but heartbreaking ending as you know that at least Nier will have his sister back for the time they have left. Humanity is doomed, but for the time they have left, at least Nier got his sister back. Oh, and Emil survived!  But there were more endings, and I was told they were much, much, MUCH better! Ending C where you decide to kill Kainé confused the gently caress out of me. I might have misread the text or gotten an entirely wrong vibe, but I truly did not get the impression that Nier was in any way shape or form in love with Kainé. That he found her attractive? Sure. I'd imagine she's the epitome of fantasy for a lot of guys. But their relationship for me always struck me more as a deep friendship - he relies on her for being a steadfast companion with unrelenting determination to protect those few she cares about (a principle Nier clearly has above all else), and she relies on him for never seeing her as the monster she deeply believed she was; always seeing her as something more than just a freak. And I thought that was a beautiful reading of it. Imagine my surprise then when he tried to kiss her as she died upon his blade? I admit again, I could have read their interaction entirely wrong, but it felt insanely out of place. Maybe I missed a side quest or two or maybe I forgot some of the voice lines, but that felt entirely out of place and rather and actually kind of disturbing to me? It evoked a feeling of one of those guys who pine and never tell you what they truly feel until you are in the most vulnerable situation in your life to take advantage of your vulnerable state after having completely misinterpreted Kainé's affection for a romantic one. I repeat, I could be entirely wrong on this and I would welcome a different interpretation, and even having my opinion corrected. At least he could be with Yonah again for the rest of humanity's existence. Ending D, however, felt more correct in my opinion. Nier, as a character, holds the principle of always protecting and saving those he loves as the highest principle. So to save his friend by erasing all traces of his existence just so Kainé can live a 'normal' life and protect Yonah? I can definitely see him doing that. And honestly, seeing everything about my character deleted made me incredibly sad, and really emphasized how much time, energy and emotional effort I put into the game. For me this was a conclusive, final ending - he saved Yonah, he saved Kainé, and without knowing it, somewhere in the world is Emil's rolling head. After speedrunning to get to the Kainé recruitment mission, I finally got to complete ending E. I was told this would tie into Automata and give continuity to play it, but honestly I've no idea what the gently caress happened except that I loving KNEW the memory tree was actually some hosed up stuff. So any connection to Automata save the aesthetic one as we delve deeply into Kainé's memory I've no idea of. I think the two robots, the boy and the girl, could be templates for 2B and 9S? Whatever's the case - I really, really loved this ending. It was a continuation directly from the themes of D, and it is about Kainé utterly rejecting her position as a thing but rather embracing her humanity in the face of her very creators literally objectifying her by making clones and telling her she's not human. She refuses this and fights to save not only herself, but to reclaim the existence of Nier whom saw her humanity more than anything, and to know that this ended with Nier, Kainé, Emil and Yonah able to live together (and adventure together and eat a lot of good food!) before humanity's end made me really, really glad for all the characters. I played this ending right after reading about that Kainé was born intersex as well - to a village who's very culture is isolationist, conservative, hating of outsiders. This just further emphasized her deep connection with not only Nier but the rest of the crew as well, because aside from her grandma, it was the merry bunch of adventurers and the sick sister that saw beyond what she is and just saw her as a good person I thought this wrapped up her arch incredibly well. I don't know what the white lotus blossoming signifies, but I know it is some Drakengard fuckery going on. All in all, a good game I'm gonna remember, and probably ponder about some more. But nowhere near as heartbreaking as people made it out to be. But nonetheless a good experience! I totally suggest a lets play with a good commentator / writer if you're not interested in spending hours grinding, though. When it hits, it hits good, but to get there there's tons of tedious stuff to get through.
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Feb 16, 2024 15:32
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I "beat" Foamstars a few days ago by getting 100% of the trophies. I thought I'd be done with it after that and move on, but the experience is still rattling around in my head. So, I'm typing up some words about it. First, the good. It's fun! Despite all the other issues with the game, the core gameplay is fun. Yes it's "just Splatoon" but the game puts its own spin on the style to make it different enough. In the 4 v 4 modes there's more emphasis on shooting the other team than filling the map with your color. But, you also slide around faster on your color so you still want to be foaming everything up when you can. Finding that balance between attacking and supporting adds a little bit of strategy that I liked. The other change is that only shooting someone doesn't kill them (or "chill" them as the game calls it), you have to slide into them once they're Foamed Up to get the kill. But a teammate can also slide into them to save them. So there's a little bit of teamwork involved as well. The other mode is the Mission mode. Missions are just base defense against 10 waves of enemies. There are single player missions for each character, which is where some of the meme-y stuff comes from. They are oddly written and voiced, and are there mainly as tutorials. And to get you started on upgrading your core for the co-op missions. Co-op missions are where you team up with 3 other players and defend the core against bigger waves of the "bubble beasties." The normal mission isn't too bad once you know what you're doing, but completing the Hard mission requires a decent team with a lot of upgrades. Completing the Hard mission took the longest and was the most frustrating trophy / achievement to get, but it was still pretty fun and felt very satisfying to finally accomplish. And now, the bad. First up, the GaaS elements and mtx. The game is stuffed full of them. You've got the usual battle pass, and daily / weekly challenges. Not the most egregious (the pass is only $6 compared to the usual $10), but for a game with 3 maps and 4 modes it still feels pretty scummy. The shop is also filled with all the dumb things you can customize: skins, back decal, surfboard color, etc, but at least it's not very intrusive. I do want to single out the party poppers though. They're 99 cents each or cheaper in the bulk packs, but no matter the price, they're a ripoff. You get 300 XP at the end of the match if someone on your team uses one. That's about the same bonus as winning the match. But, you can't use more than one, and if the match errors out or doesn't finish (more on that later), you lose it. Considering levels are a flat 3000 XP all the way through, the poppers don't make much sense. The GaaS and mtx stuff is bad, but what will really sink the game are some of the weird / bad / confusing design decisions. Like no instant rematch or way to keep to playing with a team you end up liking. After every match you're thrown back to your lounge and have to start matchmaking again, even if you're doing the mission mode. Totally kills the "just one more" feeling. But the absolute worst UX mistake is that if one person in a match disconnects, the whole match errors out. Just a baffling decision. And bonus points for giving everyone on both teams a loss when it happens, too. So many games ended where one team was about to win and someone on the other team quit to end the match. Even in Ranked. Especially in Ranked. And there's no penalty for doing it either so there's no real downside. And that's Foamstars in a nutshell. Some very fun gameplay wrapped up in a bunch of frustrating and bizarre choices. TrueTrophies says I spent 15 hours playing it, and I probably enjoyed like 14 of those hours. Not bad for a "free" game! It's very easy to write this game off and I don't blame anyone for doing that. However, I'm glad I took the plunge and tried it out. Just like with Deathverse and Rumbleverse, it's a unique experience that probably won't be available for long. I'd rather jump in and experience these weird, ephemeral games while they're around. Maybe you would too? Probably not, but y'know, maybe?
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Feb 16, 2024 16:22
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So I finally got around to beating Yakuza 7 after my original playthrough was interrupted by Elden Ring dropping a couple of years ago. Terrific ending, and I love each and every member of the party. Also, this may be a hot take, but I actually prefer the English cast over the Japanese one save for all of the returning characters. English Kiryu is rooooouuuugh to listen to.
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Feb 16, 2024 18:15
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Here Comes Niko! - a chill 3D platformer where the goal is to help people with their simple problems (catching fish, reuniting missing friends, playing volleyball, etc.). The game is not challenging, so it's perfect to play while watching TV or listening to music or whatever. The art design is Paper Mario-esque and cute. The controls are fine - you can jump and dive all over the drat place. I encountered some glitches, but nothing game breaking. Overall, a cute and chill game to vibe with.
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Feb 16, 2024 19:33
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Just beat and 100%ed Portal Revolution, a Portal 2 mod that got a full independent release and entry with special license from Valve. This mod is mostly notable for its very high production values (better than any other portal mod I've encountered), considerable length (about 40 chambers) and a plot that largely tracks alongside many of beats of Portal 2 itself, adding onto its storyline in a fairly limited and fanservice-y way without being offensive. Gameplay-wise, all the puzzles are fair and well-made, introducing three of completely new mechanics and exploring their interactions with other systems effectively...but not exhaustively. Puzzles in the mod are definitely on the easy side if you're used to common ball-grinding fanmade fare. Another notable feature is excellent checkpointing and a full range of options for spawning from any map in the main menu, which made clearing the (fair, reasonable) achievements far less painful. Other than occasionally less than perfect VA work and a very weak ending, it's a fantastic mod. Keep an eye out for the Community easter egg. I feel nothing.
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Feb 17, 2024 05:04
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I just beat Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and had a great time the entire time. I played on normal difficulty, which was just fine for me, a Bad Dad Gamer. 27 hours, 74%. Been playing it for an hour or two most nights for a few weeks. I highly recommend it! I had a nice little eShop coupon so I didn't mind getting it at full price, but I can really see a lot of folks enjoying it at 20-30 bucks. It ran great on the Switch, with a few little hiccups here and there and some annoying bugs. I once activated a power right as a boss died and it somehow made the whole game run at like 15fps until I saved and quit. There was another annoying bug where, because of the pants I was wearing, the game hard locked me out of a boss fight. Changing my pants back to default fixed it? But that was stupid. The platforming and puzzles are super super fun. Combat is great. Your special attacks are all ridiculous limit breaks. Soundtrack is not at all like the trailer branding with rap and stuff and is actually super Persian inspired, albeit not memorable at all. Not sure what to play next. I never finished Metroid Dread, and I feel like I need to now. But I've also got Divinity: Original Sin and Baldurs Gate 3 just sitting there.
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Feb 17, 2024 18:59
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I beat the 1986 arcade game Aliens. Lol it really is just contra
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Feb 17, 2024 20:00
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Finished up Ender Lillies this evening. Lovely little Metroidvania - plays well, it’s gorgeous, the music is fantastic. Absolutely worth a look if you are fine with the Obviously Souls Inspired with Difficult Combat branch of the genre.
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Feb 18, 2024 04:03
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Recently beat Azure Striker Gunvolt! Steam review below: A pretty neat Megaman-ish experience with all the usual parts you'd expect like great boss fights and dashing/walljumping around great levels, but with an innovative twist to its typical straightforward run-n-gun combat with the tagging system, where you can tag multiple enemies with darts and then shock them with homing electricity while being able to move around and dodge as you like during! While I enjoyed myself, I'll admit that I had a bit of a rough first impression with this: *The visual noise and clutter is high in this game, which makes it difficult to parse and can lead to what feels like a lot of cheap deaths. You've got a camera so zoomed-in you can barely see a few steps ahead of you, an appropriately named "flash"field which covers so much of the screen with flashy electricity sparks, and you've got constant dialogue on the bottom of the screen which not only covers part of the screen but splits you attention as you want to learn what's going on. *The difficulty can be wildly different depending on how you approach the game. If you just play it for the story, the game gives you too many tools that allow you to just brute force past all enemy and boss mechanics, which can easily make you unsatisfied since the combat doesn't get a chance to show its unique appeal. If you try to embrace the scoring system, you'll get to see the full extents of the combat system and its appeal, but at the same time it can be rather frustrating and require so much trial-and-error and memorization of stage/enemy layouts to dodge what feels like cheap traps due to the aforementioned issues above. *The localization is rather strange. I played it on English (Japanese Voice Mode) at first and found it good, and I'd recommend you stick with that. But, I was wondering if there was an English Voice Mode instead, so I switched to just English, where I was disappointed to find that not only was there no english voices, meaning I'd have to split my attention to read the characters dialogue during gameplay no matter what, but the script was completely different, filled with totally wacky words and phrases, like some sort of joke script you'd unlock as a bonus, not something most people will mistakenly treat as the intended experience. *Story felt like a bit of a downer and unsatisfying, even after getting the True Ending. I don't need everything to be sunshine and rainbows, but man, it just felt like it left too much hanging and nothing got accomplished. Maybe the sequel will resolve it? In spite of the rough stuff above, I still enjoyed my experience very much and grew addicted to rerunning stages to go for higher ranks. Looking forward to playing the rest of the series!
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Feb 18, 2024 05:32
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Finally finished Death Stranding. So now I can say, Death Stranding is a stupid video game. Now there are parts of it I really like and enjoy. The core game play of pick up job, take it from point A to point B can be fascinating and rewarding, and then it's surrounded by Kojima Bullshit(tm). Now, don't get me wrong, Kojima Bullshit is why anyone would care about it. It's why I pre-ordered it 5 years ago, but that also doesn't mean it isn't stupid.
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Feb 18, 2024 23:11
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Rap Game Goku posted:Death Stranding Yeah, I feel generally similar overall. I really liked chilling with the core delivery experience, but the more things it stacked on top of that, the less I liked it. And it was a very talky game, even for Kojima. I had trouble not just skipping through everything as fast as possible to get back to delivering. One of my thoughts is that it's kinda funny that one of the controversial parts of MGSV, having so much background and story relegated to TV cassette tapes, feels like it would've been a natural fit here. I liked listening to those while running around doing random stuff in the Afghanistan desert, and I think it would've felt right to do that during all the delivery missions.
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Feb 18, 2024 23:28
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Finally wrapped up my ~65 hour playthrough of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I'm constantly surprised, although I shouldn't be at this point, at how well this series marries the sentimental with the absurd and goofy. Legit had me tearing up at points recalling Kiryu's past adventures in a way that wasn't pandering, but then a second later had me busting a gut laughing. Cheered when Ichiban got to go on a date with Etsuko. And the minigames keep me coming back time and time again. Curse it for making me play Animal Crossing, but I'll be damned if I wasn't going to get that resort to 5 stars by blanketing the island with white SUVs to make number go up. The world continues to revel in the weirdos and it's such a good fit for turn-based RPGs, getting to fight perverts or a guy wearing a giant beach ball instead of goblins and the like. I found it easier than LaD 7, but I also never found anything as game breaking as the darts were in the previous entry. (Also I only realized that Eri was an optional character in 7 by the fact that I never heard her mentioned once in this game.) An early GOTY contender for me, definitely in the top 10 at least. To rest my brain, I also went through a few quick ones I had in my backlog. 20 Small Mazes - It's cute. It's free. There are small mazes, twenty of them. Celeste 64 - Celeste as an N64 game made by the creators of Celeste works quite well. Invokes nostalgia from that era, all the way down to its most difficult part - the camera. Only one world (with some fun subareas reminiscent of Super Mario Sunshine), but I'd play more if they ever make more. Mainly gets me wanting to go back to Celeste. Bzzzt - Short platformer with cute art and solid mechanics. It wears its intention to be a time attack/speed game on its sleeve, but I was more focused on collecting all the screws than on trying to skip cycles or find shortcuts.
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Feb 19, 2024 01:01
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Pomeron posted:20 Small Mazes - It's cute. It's free. There are small mazes, twenty of them. On the recommendation of this post, went and beat this, and wish to second the comment.
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Feb 19, 2024 02:11
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Wait, Eri was an optional character in LAD7? 
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Feb 19, 2024 02:31
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Jerusalem posted:Wait, Eri was an optional character in LAD7? Yup, and arguably the best character in the game! She carried me through most of the endgame lol
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Feb 19, 2024 02:43
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So was she originally just part of the business minigame? This is bizarre to me!
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Feb 19, 2024 02:47
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Yeah, once you get the business to Rank 100 she decides to join the team. You can even romance her 
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Feb 19, 2024 02:51
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Haha yeah, I got the substory/cutscene where all of Ichiban's girlfriends show up at the same time  I guess it just didn't occur to me that people wouldn't immediately stop everything else to just crush the Business game till it was done and you were a billionaire 
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Feb 19, 2024 02:56
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Jerusalem posted:Haha yeah, I got the substory/cutscene where all of Ichiban's girlfriends show up at the same time Fun fact, the speedrun does that because spending an hour doing that saves more than an hour through the rest of the game.
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Feb 19, 2024 04:04
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That's kind of amazing
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Feb 19, 2024 04:08
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Rolled credits twice today. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth rules. It took just shy of 96 hours to complete this one. I love the cast on these games so much. I'm not a huge RPG fan but I'll gladly keep coming back for these ones. I also played and wrapped up Fez. Not real sure why I was in the mood for it, but I downloaded and got to credits in about 4 hours. For whatever reason I dropped off it hard back when it first came out. Glad I gave it another go. Really love the art and the puzzles. There seems to be a whole lot of rabbit holes you can go down if you're looking to 100% this one, but no thanks for me right now.
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Feb 19, 2024 04:18
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Jerusalem posted:That's kind of amazing Yup. Not only is Dart Airstrike a very strong attack that hits a common weakness, but without her you spend a decent chunk of the game with only three characters. So the upside of getting Eri is very strong despite the time investment.
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Feb 19, 2024 04:35
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Finished Granblue Relink. Or, at least, the story, which arguably is like a third of the game's content. Liked it, but the final chapters were a little exhausting. Really had that problem of "time for the final fight!"....."okay actually THIS is the final fight!"...."Okay in fact now THIS-" and I was just happy for it to end. I wouldn't have minded it going that long, but being constantly told you're in for the final battle, have a huge climactic fight and big finale, only to have it pulled out from under you can be really annoying. Looking forward to getting into the rest of the game though.
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Feb 19, 2024 04:38
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I beat The Talos Principle 2. I was a big fan of the first game when it originally came out, I replayed it last year and found that it mostly held up outside of some really obscure puzzle solutions and a bit too much reliance on things like sight lines. I also played the DLC for the first time, which did a lot of work to establish the mentalities and personalities of the sorts of characters and style of writing that the sequel is full of. So I do want to mention that I am glad I went back and played Road to Gehenna before starting 2. On a surface level, Talos Principle 2 is very much a direct sequel to the first game - the gameplay structure is very similar, you're still solving discrete puzzles that feed into the larger progression, the puzzles often involve boxes and coloured light beams and various other gimmicks to throw you off - the game includes 12 different areas and they each have either a unique puzzle mechanic or are themed around a certain type of puzzle. Each area has 10 puzzles, plus two "hidden" puzzles that need to be solved via an area-specific meta layer, akin to the star puzzles in the first game. If you solve all of those, you unlock an extra extra tricky puzzle in each region near the end of the game. The structure of the gameplay is very rigid like that - every area has the same amount of content in it, and the hidden puzzles all fall into one of three categories, so there aren't a ton of surprises here. What's really different from the first game is the way the narrative intermingles with what you're doing. First of all, there are actual interactable characters now that you can talk to, who have full dialogue trees and who will wander around in the world alongside you. There's even a sort of narrative hub in the form of the city that you start in that you can walk around in for like an hour and just talk to people. This makes the storytelling a lot less optional than it was in the first game, which might be a negative for some depending on how much you just want to get to the next puzzle. But if you appreciated the narrative from the first game, as I did, then this increase in scope and ambition is pretty much exactly what you want from a sequel. It also features one of my favourite game story tropes, which is that you aren't playing the same character from the first game, and part of the overall goal is to discover what exactly happened to them. Talos 2 sets up a pretty effective mystery while deftly establishing its own new worldbuilding, history, and stakes that all tie together very nicely and ultimately come to a very satisfying conclusion. You are essentially going on an expedition with largely the same crew throughout the game, they all have different personalities that define them despite the fact that they all look the same (because they are robots, you see). By the end I really got to like most of the characters, and they all get to have their own little sub-arc that isn't necessarily super flashy or dramatic, but totally fits within the world and tone that the game establishes. I can't say they always nail what they're going for, but overall the game feels exceedingly earnest and never really talks down to the player - it has the vibes of a 60s or 70s sci-fi novel, but is crucially a lot less cynical. One of the strengths of the game's story, and a thing that genuinely make it stand out, especially these days, is that it features a largely very optimistic post-apocalyptic setting. Humanity is gone, but the people that follow in their wake now have the chance to start over without making the same mistakes. There are a few elements of friction here, but most of the characters are very hopeful and trusting in a way that feels pretty unique - different characters disagree about what the future of this new society is, but there's no murder, there's no backstabbing, no ulterior motives, etc. I hate to call it something as stupid as Hopepunk, because I don't think that's what it is; it's a more Star Trek-esque vision of a society that mostly got over its own bullshit and is able to work together as professionals even though the future is uncertain. Suffice to say I really enjoyed the storytelling, with the caveat that some of the voice acting maybe isn't all up to snuff, and the game still has a bit of clumsy text log-itis that I wish could've been implemented in a more interesting way. Special shout outs to the game's fake social media board, which is something that they clearly developed based on the fake BBSes in Road to Gehenna, a highlight of that DLC. I played the game over the course of a month or so, and I think that worked well, it took me around 40 hours to do everything, but if you binged it, I could see it getting a bit too samey. The game is generally more logically constructed than the first game; the puzzle solutions rely less on fiddling with sight lines, the complexity of any given puzzle is a bit more measured than in some of the harder examples from Road to Gehenna, and I often fell into the trap of overthinking what I had to do because I thought the game asked more of me. Which can be both a good or a bad thing, but I will say I beat every puzzle in the game, except maybe two or three, without having to look anything up. Which was definitely not the case with some of the more obscure star puzzles in the first game. All in all, a very satisfying experience that's probably going to stick with me for a while. The final section of the game just before the actual ending is a bit of a miss, though - great idea and cool visuals, but the act of navigating the various aspects of those puzzles was very tedious in a way that was more annoying than difficult, but that's really the only time I feel like they could've done rethought what they were doing on a design level. I also wish the game had more varied visuals in general - in the endgame you get to see examples of some more grandiose and abstract art design, but that's MOSTLY just near the end, and the majority of the game is just running around in various fields and plains that aren't super visually exciting. Ultimately pretty minor negatives considering how solid I thought most of the game was - tl;dr, it's exactly what I wanted from a Talos Principle sequel, and the amount of well-designed puzzle-solving and sometimes genuinely affecting storytelling that you get for 25 bucks or thereabouts is very impressive. It took a long time to come out, but in my mind it was well worth it.
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Feb 19, 2024 11:58
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