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Metis of the Hallway posted:My Time at Portia is addicting even though I think it is a fairly terrible game. The mechanics are mostly annoying, none of the writing is very good, it's quite ugly, and YET. I have hours and hours of playtime. Hey, gently caress you, I wrote two of the missions for My Time at Portia in a weird 'working for a random Chinese company' experience. ... But, you're right.
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Sep 8, 2022 04:33
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 11:34 |
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Metis of the Hallway posted:Lmao, sorry! That's cool though, I would never have expected to run into a writer for that game here. What was it like working for them? Which missions were they? Maybe I liked them, actually! The quests I wrote for Portia were a few of the friendship/relationship missions for Remington, and looking through the wiki, they definitely Engrish'd them up a bit. They were actually 'writing tests' for a still undisclosed project I worked on for them that I haven't seen any mention of in their PR stuff. They paid well (they had recently had a chunk of their company bought by Tencent), but were kind of unfocused and from I could tell, they never gave any of their indie US-based writers much direction. I feel like they wanted to bypass some US localization by hiring a few indie authors since they had their own writers who actually spoke Mandarin and English. The relationship eventually fizzled out as they kept changing scope, setting, etc. Kind of hard to write missions when the gameplay is vague and everchanging, but I did write a bunch of random lore. The worst part was using WeChat, which is like a government monitored WhatsApp. It took weeks to get approved as a non-Chinese user, and you had to have references/approvals from current users. Felt quite weird to use, and I didn't want to get anyone 'disappeared' for mentioning the wrong thing, haha. Varsity fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 15:02
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I wouldn't recommend Potion Permit, and this is coming from a guy who has been playing Farm and Life Simulators since Harvest Moon on the Gameboy. It looks like it should be a charming Farm/life/shop simulator, but it really isn't. The gameplay loop is really bad, it's either run and talk to villagers to increase their once-daily friendship stat increase, or fast travel to the forest area and farm the same exact mobs and resource nodes that you've been farming for the last 7 in-game days. All the progress unlocks that I have seen are literally just grind up wood/stone/money and maybe the occasional 'talk to this NPC', and then they open up a new area with differently skinned resource nodes and more mobs. As for the main gimmick of the game, curing villagers and whatnot... It gets old about 3 sick villagers in. You play a 'babby's first rhythm game' over and over, and then make a randomized potion that the game wants. Everything about it is unfun, tedious and annoying. Other than the graphics, the villager interactions are nice and every new level of friendship brings a cutscene/quest. Those are well written, but the solution is almost always a random fetch quest or make a potion (which as we've established, is quite boring). I wouldn't recommend it, unless you really are jonesing for an on-rails, grindy experience. Cute graphics, and competently written, but pretty unfun. Varsity fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Sep 27, 2022 |
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Sep 27, 2022 19:11
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tildes posted:Sadly this all feels true for me. In theory it really felt like it should hit, but it really did not. Just feels super constrained and artificial to me. I just wish there was some kind of attempt at depth. The tetrimino puzzle game is fun for a few times, but then you have to make some popping potion and you just sigh and start the tedious process of fitting in the pieces. Something like this would have at least made the potion part of the game interesting: This patient has a burn level of 6 and 3 scratches. Let me throw in 3 red flowers that treat +2 burn a piece, and the blue flower that treats +4 scratch. But oh hey, this new plant I unlocked has +5 burn and +3 scratch, saving me materials, sweet! Now I have room to add in the yellow +3 sweet flower that adds satisfaction. Just... anything to make the process worth doing. Shrug.
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Sep 28, 2022 14:56
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Megazver posted:Kynseed hit 1.0, apparently. I bought this a long time ago when it was in EA and I didn't like it, so I shelved it until it finally came out. Here's a mini-review breaking stuff down. Started playing it, and I still didn't like it! But, it's grown on me some. You really can't go into it thinking it's a Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley type game. Sure, it has some elements of those, but it's more of an exploration/gathering RPG than it is a farming sim. The art style is very charming, I love it. Farming/Fishing/Etc: You have access to your 'home' which has farming plots, fishing and stuff, it's all very surface level. Click on a plot, add seeds, water with your unlimited watering can, repeat until harvest. Fishing you just throw in the lure, wait until a fish swims up to it and the chomp sound effect plays and then hold a button down. (A thing I love, if you land your lure on top of a fish shadow, it's an automatic catch and you reel in that fish from it's back) Ranching, I'm only like 4-5 hours in and there really isn't much to it. Click on your pig or whatever and click feed and then on whatever edible item you have on you. Items all have different effects, some raise speed, constitution, whatever, and it shows your animal being buffed, but... not really sure what actual effects it has. Townsfolk/etc: Everyone is kind of... just there? They all have unique personalities/schedules but the writing is a bit weird, and they all seem to pull from the same pool of speech outside of their unique responses. So one day you'll have the blacksmith say something relating to forging and the next day he'll say the same thing the guy down the street said to you. General Harvest Moon gameplay, give them a gift everyday to increase FP. Increased friend levels give you some benefits. A thing I like is that some folks/family are just grumpy pricks and hate you from the get-go. So eventually once you get them to warm up to you, that'll be fun. Exploration: The art is gorgeous and there's a lot of weird mysterious things going on. Once you get to a certain point in the story the rest of the map opens up, and it's pretty large and diverse. I haven't explored it all, but there are other towns and mysterious places to visit. So far its just more of the same kind of townsfolks and shops kind of thing. Combat: Didn't really get it at first, but it grew on me. It's kind of Action Turn-based. Your character and enemies have a stamina bar that fills up and once it does you can do an attack. The player gets to move between 'nodes' to dodge and such to avoid attacks without expending stamina. It's pretty fun so far, your character has stats, gains xp, etc. Combat so far is only in a specific area, so you aren't running around getting into battle until you're ready. Story/Writing: For the standard writing... I kind of hate it. All items have descriptions and some of them are just weird, unfunny, not really my style at all. There's a lot of culture references and stuff. Some examples: Egg: Ova Here. - Honey - You won't get hives from this. A recipe called something like Over the Bush: With this you'll be running up that hill. For the story: You're a twin who is adopted by some dude and are being raised on his farm. Your twin isn't a huge fan of the place but you're a standard protagonist and just run around doing tasks and such. There is some weird Fae stuff going on and you're having weird mysterious dreams about some creepy stuff and being chosen for... weird things? You don't really have any idea of what's going on, but things are getting stranger every day! Spoilery stuff once you actually get to the meat of the game, about a week or two in. (I like it so far and it's got me intrigued to keep playing.) So, the town and the world is kind of hosed up and your twin is NOT into it at all, enough so that they want to take off as soon as they are old enough to. You have a weird Fae friend named Twig who takes you to meet some mysterious guy who has been invading your dreams. He offers you a deal to help you learn about and maybe stop all the hosed up things happening. The deal consists of him giving you a Kynseed, a weird seed that lets you pass your traits/reputation/etc down to your future children (or orphan of your choice if you have no spawn). The creepy dream guy deals in years of your life though, and you *will* die when you turn 50. If you agree, he gets to take 5 years of you life. If you do, you timeskip 5 years into the future. Your twin is mega-pissed at you because you just disappeared and left her for 5 years, your 'uncle' dies and you get the farm. At this point the map opens up and you get to explore the world and are able to start figuring out what is going on. Overall, I like it enough to keep playing, but the general writing outside of the story is not my thing. There are so many NPCs (something like 85) that outside of their general personality (grumpy dude, blacksmith guy, etc.) they all feel fairly shallow. The world is beautiful and the story is interesting enough to keep going, but a lot of the story seems gated behind gathering stuff for people. E.g., learn X skills from 5 people to progress, each person needs 10 of this item and 10 of that item that correlates with the skill you're trying to learn. (Combat guy needs 5 bones, 10 monster eye, etc. before learning this next skill!)
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Dec 8, 2022 20:17
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RE: Dredge It's eh! It's way more fun at first when you start the game, there's some weirdness going on, and fishing actually feels like it has some meaning, going out and collecting fish, one by one and managing the inventory, exploring the local areas and thinking about the cool stuff you get to add to your boat. Opinions on mid-game and why I probably won't return. About halfway through the game (that I can tell, going on how many biomes there are in the game), fishing doesn't really matter any more, it's just resource nodes that you fill up your inventory with so you can get enough money to make it to the next upgrade. Different fish types don't really matter, other than increasing your money per trip. Upgrading feels *really* lackluster. At first it's nice to have a little bit more cargo space, a little more room to get a bigger engine, but about halfway up the upgrade tree, it's "get a whole 4 more cargo slots! Get one extra engine grid spot!" and at that point it just makes your trips a couple percentage points faster, or fit one or two more fish in the cargo hold. At first the quests were fun, but they really boil down to back and forth trips and collecting specific fish out of the random spawns. They're not difficult or too dangerous, just lots of travel back and forth. Not sure if I'll finish, because the last biome will probably be just more of the same in a different area. The game had a lot of potential at the beginning, but everything feels like a flat line in terms of 'stuff to do'. You're doing the same exact thing you were doing in hour 1, but in hour 5, you're doing it faster. Had there been an actual fishing minigame that different rods/equipment allowed you to navigate differently, it would have kept things fresh, or a reason to be excited other than opening new fishing nodes that are the exact same. Sailing feels great at the beginning, but there isn't a lot of 'gamey'ness to it, and you're eventually just blasting through waiting on a 'speed-up' cooldown while avoiding the easy to avoid obstacles/occult stuff. TLDR: It starts off promising, and then it's just back and forth sailing between interaction points. Eh. Overall, it's super cute and very charming, but I have a difficult time wanting to go back to it after a couple hours.
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Apr 1, 2023 21:24
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Played a couple hours of Palia, enough to get my Pick and Axe up to the next level, and I'm kind of over the game already? I feel like the next incremental steps will be exactly the same to level up to the next level, etc. Lore seems fine, graphics and performance were alright, random slow-downs here and there and having to wait in line to get to your homestead or the main village hub is weird. Other than that, it feels like a barebones Harvest Moon clone with a lot of grinding and timers in-between the interesting bits. That and the fact that it's an MMO is pretty strange? It's basically My Time At Portia without the combat and you can see other players running around, oh and every timer is 3x as long, and once you toss all the ingredients into your next house upgrade, you have to wait 8 real life hours for it to complete.
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Oct 10, 2023 00:04
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A Sometimes Food posted:
I tried the demo and it just screams 2002 RPG Maker. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but like above, seems quite pricey.  You open your inventory for the first time and you're bombarded with all that, like, what? Didn't seem like you're going to get in-depth farming or anything, very surface level RPG Maker feels. Could be fine as a narrative based game, there was a few interesting story hooks, but I'm definitely waiting for glowing reviews before even thinking about it. (also, this is a hit to the new Harvest Moon game too: Don't tie my run button to the same stamina I use for tasks throughout the day. gently caress you.)
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Oct 12, 2023 18:31
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Been playing Coral Island, and I've been enjoying it! Waited until 1.0 release because, who wants to play a game where you end up hitting a content wall and have to wait another year or so for them to fully flesh out all the story lines, etc? Early access is lame! Oh. Wait. No, a ton of the endgame content and quest lines aren't slated for release until 'sometime' next year. gently caress that noise, v1.0 my rear end.
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Nov 17, 2023 20:49
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Gadzuko posted:Wait, what? I fired it up on Gamepass and it is pretty fun but if it's not actually done then I will keep waiting. I was already a bit put off by the text badly needing a major editing pass, if the gameplay is unfinished on top of that then I'm out. I have too many good games queued up to play right now as it is. Yeah, apparently for the Main Quest (the town) and the other big Side-Main Quest (diving stuff) once you hit a certain point in each you get a WIP journal entry and can't continue. Along with other later game stuff, dating, marriage, kids, etc. it's all barebones and shows how unfinished it is. Stuff like your partner's dialogue not changing, etc. Cool. Varsity fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Nov 17, 2023 |
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Nov 17, 2023 22:08
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Just finished what will end up being my last session of Forager. It's cute and looks like it has a pretty wide selection of skills. I got up to 25/64~, but man, the grind is real around this part. I'm not sure if I didn't go down the right path or something, but I'm just running all over my islands, smacking trees and after a full circuit, I really don't feel like I've accomplished much. Add in the fact that one of my bottlenecks is hides and apparently there really isn't any good way to farm them until you're even further along specific upgrade paths or you've stumbled across certain map sections. Mid-game feels a bit too much of a slog for me to continue on, especially since everything is so random, that when I clear out a section, by the time I circle back to it instead of going: "yay, more resources." it turns into "sigh, now I have to clear it all out again."
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Jan 6, 2024 23:35
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 11:34 |
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Snagged Echoes of the Plum Grove, has good reviews, looks like Harvest Moon and Paper Mario had a baby. Anyone have any deeper recommendations for things on sale that aren't idle farmers or Early Access? Leave a penny, take a penny: If you've played through all the mainstream, highly rated farm / farm-adjacent games and are looking for something, I'd recommend Kynseed, it's pretty, has a lot of things to do and had some interesting plot things going on back when I last played it. It definitely *feels* a little weird though, something about the game is just odd. Looks like they dropped a big update a while back, I'll have to jump back into it and try again.
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Apr 30, 2024 01:44
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