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Octopath 2 definitely has one of the best soundtracks of the year and it's a shame the digital OST isn't available outside of japan.
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Dec 4, 2023 19:57
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 04:25 |
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Silver Falcon posted:I'm a D&D nerd and this bit jumped out at me. Just to clarify, you can absolutely cast a cantrip and a spell as your action and bonus action. So for instance a Warlock could do Hex and then Eldritch Blast on the same turn no problem. You just can't cast more than one actual "spell" (the kind that use up a spell slot) per turn. it's actually worse than that. You can cast two spells if they both use an action (i.e. you cast fireball, action surge, and then cast haste). But if you use a bonus action spell slot *then* your action spells need to be cantrips.
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Dec 18, 2023 14:18
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Here's a general list of the (new to me) games that I have played this year, with the ones in bold being ones I have completed. FE: Engage Lil Gator Game Hi-Fi Rush Metroid Prime: Remastered Chained Echoes I was a Teenage Exocolonist RE4 Remake Octopath Traveler 2 Dead Space Remake Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Theatrythm: Final Bar Line Cyberpunk 2077 Age of Wonders 4 Pikmin 4 Final Fantasy 16 Baldur's Gate 3 Detective Pikachu Returns Star Ocean 2 Remake Super Mario RPG Remake The Talos Principle 2 Against the Storm (I think I beat it? All my seals are at prestige difficulty so it sounds like i'm on post-game content now") Overall... A pretty good year for gaming! I think the selection of games that came out caused a few moments of introspection, a few moments of rediscovery of things that I loved, and a few moments that made me think "Man, I love video games". Other Mentions Remakes Of Already Good Games (Star Ocean 2, Super Mario RPG, RE4, Dead Space, 7th Guest VR, Metroid Prime) In general, I enjoyed each of these games an equal amount. Because for each of them they're remakes of games that were already pretty dang good, and probably didn't even need to be remade. Dead Space was already a pretty dang good game. Original RE4 still feels pretty dang good to play and the Remake is really just kind of a marginal improvement on it. Super Mario RPG was already a classic that is finally playable on newer generations of consoles. Star Ocean 2 is probably the only one of these games that I hadn't played all the way through before. But really, all of these games are still really good games, and you can't go wrong playing any of them. Will future years hold more remakes of games that probably didn't need it? Yeah, that's pretty likely. I'm still the sucker that bought all these games and am enabling all of this behavior. Best TTRPG I made the switch to - Pathfinder 2e Running TTRPGs is a lot of work, and somehow I found a system that makes it feel like no work at all. Combat encounters are easy to design and adjust on the fly to account for missing people. There's a FoundryVTT module available that does all the heavy lifting on math and rules enforcement so that there's no miscommunication on how a rule is intended to play out. I went from being able to run one game every other week to being able to run two games simultaneously with this system. It has its faults, for sure, and can sometimes be a little bit too plodding when it should go for streamlined, but making the change has been really good for both my mental health and for the amount of fun that I have when actually playing the game. Best Trainwreck - Silent Hill Ascension  What if Silent Hill was a lovely D-list soap opera. That's about it! I've been staying plugged in for a couple of weeks now to catch up on Ascension indirectly and everything I have seen of this is a big trainwreck that it's hard to look away from. I love seeing just random blurbs and side characters that they introduce like berry guy and random detectives. I know that the creators have said multiple times that this thing isn't written by AI, which I think is probably a testament to how bad the writing is that every episode feels like "Nothing, Forever" but with a coat of Silent Hill paint on it. Seriously, in all of the hundreds or so of scenes that are already out there, nothing happens in nearly any of them. It's all plodding along for "Hm, should I confess my feelings to this character?" or "Oh no, a silent hill monster appears! Anyways, about *that event* that happened *years ago*" (with no mention as to what that event actually was) ==TOP 10== 10. Lil Gator Game  This was a pretty dang good exploration adventure that resonated a lot with me with its message about the creative process and playing with others. Probably what I identified most with was the fact that there's a character who more or less functioned as a rules arbiter of the game, but was so bogged down with work and other responsibilities that the game itself wasn't fun for them anymore. It reminded me a lot of playing a DM/GM in TTRPGs for some reason. I think apart from that, the game controls exceptionally well and does a really nice job of giving winks and nods to other notable games of the past generation. For example, you get to do a L.A. Noire style interrogation on someone who doesn't think they're cool enough to hang out with the cool kids. The game just oozes charm and fun at every opportunity, and it felt like a shame to not include it on my GOTY list this year. 9. I Was A Teenage Exocolonist  It's hard to talk about this game without going into spoilers, but it's very much a game that you're kind of expected to fail at your first go around. As the title states, you play as a teenager on a colony in an alien world that very much does not want the colony or your people to be there. It's simultaneously an exercise in frustration at how little control you have over the events around you, and surprising just how much control you do end up having on what can happen. Colonists can live or die depending on what your character ends up learning through your life, and you can shape the way things play out through cascading events that you don't realize how important they are until you bear the full brunt of their consequences. (Early-game spoilers) This is probably most especially apparent when one of your potential best friends dies very early on in the game and the consequences that cascade from that. But then (post-game spoilers) You learn how to prevent it, and can do exactly that on subsequent runthroughs. So much of the game relies on this sort of knowledge that it kind of ends up being pretty fun trying to attempt a perfect run. 8. Against the Storm  I've sunk probably a hundred or so hours into this game, and it is simultaneously the chillest city builder and probably the most stressful city builder; depending entirely on what season you're in and what location you're playing at. Did you just step foot outside of the capitol and you're getting your first settlement off the ground? Take your time, figure things out; there's no "real" time limit to this game anyways. Are you trying to reforge a platinum seal and it suddenly hit storm season? well gently caress you you better plunge all of your resources into the abyss in the hopes that your villagers don't just up and leave (or die). So many elements of city building are very modular- from population you have, to the specializations you choose, to the environment that you're in, to even the buildings that you construct, are so modular that every game is a practice in trying to make a working economy from the elements that you're given. And then you get to seals. I love the tension that seals add to the game because The environment itself feels so eldritch and inhospitable that there's such a time pressure to get it done and get out of there. I've only cleared up to gold so far, and they do kind of give you an edge with the extra traits you get for fulfilling the eye's requests, but the fact that the trees all look like dead people and blood flowers still keeps me on edge. It's probably my ultimate "chill and watch something" game. 7. Final Fantasy XVI  This is the part of the list where I think 'Yeah, if those other six games didn't exist this would easily be a #1 GOTY contender", and it feels kind of weird to put FF16 at #7. It's an incredible character-action game with some incredible combat, fantastically cinematic moments of gameplay, and a pretty intriguing story for the first two thirds of the game. I think what ultimately puts it so low on my list is that last third; You end up going to a place so desolate that a lot of the strong writing and interesting environments the game had just turn barren. At that point, the game kind of feels like a checklist of sidequests you need to clear off before getting to the grand finale. I don't think any of it was particularly bad, but it wasn't as engaging as the first 2/3rds of the game. Also, a bit of a personal gripe but I hated that (full game spoilers) Jill kind of gets thrown to the sidelines as soon as Clive sleeps with her. Also, it's really lovely that Jill, as an eikon, never won a single eikon battle in the entire game. Really, her whole character deserved better. All of that aside, FF16 is still a fantastic game that I'm looking forward to revisiting when the DLC comes out. Every Eikon fight in the game has been some of the most cinematic and epic experiences that i've seen. 6. The Talos Principle 2  What if religion and history, but robots? The Talos Principle 2 has been a very chill and unique puzzle experience that picks up directly where the first game left off. The Talos Principle 2 does something very interesting in that it explores the space of veneration of the past and the trepidation of going into the future. It takes a look at the ending of the first game and fast forwards a little bit to ask "What would that society of robots look like?", while presenting you with an intriguing environment to explore. There's a constant debate between the characters you meet about how to not replicate the mistakes of their predecessors, and none of them agree on what's right for society. Is there a limit where they should just stop growing and wait out their remaining days until they die? If they look outward from their city, are they doomed to ruin their world as their predecessors did? The game explores these questions with three metaphysical AIs that you encounter throughout the game; Pandora (more or less stating "stay in your loving lane and don't gently caress things up again."), Prometheus (stating, "gently caress yeah, the world is ours for the taking"), and the Sphinx- not outright stating anything but asking you what you think the right thing to do is. Of course, the puzzles are there, and some of the mechanics have been interesting, but the puzzles are more or less a break from the questions the game asks. I loved The Talos Principle 1, and I loved the Talos Principle 2. I hope I love the Talos Principle 3 whenever that comes out. 5. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom  I kind of love open world games, and I love open world games that aren't afraid to pull their punches when you wander into an area well above your weight class. Tears of the Kingdom is one of these games and does such a good job of it my wife and I reminisce about different parts of the game where we were exploring around when we stumbled onto something serious. In order these stories are (Middle of the Map) Finishing the tutorial island and wandering around for a solid 6-10 hours completing shrines and the like until we went to the main town and got the paraglider. (Top left) Wandering around the Rito Village area and using batteries and rockets to get enough lift and unlocking the air temple before we did the quest to find the sage. (Top Middle) Trying to find our way into the Korok Forest by land, by air, and then finally by the underground and fighting the phantom ganon inside woefully underprepared and then finally (Bottom Middle) Stumbling our way through the clouded area in the bottom center of the map only to find the hidden spirit temple before the main quest brought us there, using the world map to have a general idea of where we can go. I think that's kind of an aspect to open world adventures that I love- the emergent gameplay that occurs when you have so many interconnected and well designed systems that coalesce into so many memorable moments. Tears of the Kingdom is all of these, and no two playthroughs of this game are going to be the same. The spoilered sections that I listed above might be things that you experience in your game, or you might experience something completely different. Tears of the Kingdom was such a good sequel to Breath of the Wild that i'm kind of happy and sad about it. I'm happy because it's a gameplay style that I'm excited to see more or and see the teams involved expand on them, but a little sad because i'm going to miss that classic zelda experience. Hopefully future games will be able to mix the two a little bit more, but I wouldn't blame them if they wanted to expand more on the open world aspect. 4. Pikmin 4  I'd be lying if I said that I always had a fondness for the Pikmin franchise. I have played a good majority of the Pikmin franchise thanks to the influence of my older sister but I can't ever really say that I enjoyed it; I enjoyed the premise of it; the time limit coupled with the strategy involved in collecting ship parts/treasure was an interesting idea, but I loving hated how it controlled. Pikmin 4 did a fantastic job of remedying this with the introduction of Oatchi. No longer do I need to worry about not taking the optimal path through a narrow passage and all of my pikmin drowning. I think Oatch is only the tip of the iceberg at how well the developers honed in on what was good about the first three Pikmin games and cranks them up to 11. Dandori Challenges were some of the most fun i've ever had playing a Pikmin Game. The post-game where you get to play as Captain Olimar and more or less replay a version of Pikmin 1 was also pretty drat good. Other Pikmin games had me thinking "Well, i'm glad that's over" by the time I was finished with them, while this one had me wanting more. 3. Octopath Traveler 2  Before I go too far into this game, I have to say that I bounced hard off of the first Octopath Traveler game. I thought the first game had some pretty fun gameplay but with some absolutely loving boring storylines- having started as primrose and collected just about every character, it seemed like everybody was some mix of "aw shucks gee gosh darn, better go milk the cows!" with their call to adventure being little more than because they're bored (Primrose being the exception). Enter Octopath Traveler 2, where playing Agnea's story... felt a lot like the same as Octopath Traveler 1. But Traveler 2 succeeds where 1 fails by having a wide variety of tones to the potential stories available, with some of them matching your typical call to adventure, to something more grimdark, to something that's just about the meaning of being a star. I think the more varied writing, coupled with improvements made on 1s engine, as well as the fact that the game isn't afraid to let some moments just build and build to an absolutely incredible payoff easily puts this game into my top three. I would recommend this game to anyone with a fondness for JRPGs, especially if they fell off of the first one for any reason that isn't "I didn't really like the gameplay." I was a little shocked with how much of this game resonated with me, how much of it I enjoyed, and just how dang fun it was. 2. Age of Wonders 4  Age of Wonders is a series very near and very dear to my heart, and I think the thing that I most appreciate about it is that Triumph Studios always makes an effort to change up the formula every title. If they wanted to, they could have made AoW 2 3 & 4 just be AoW 1 with a fancy new coat of paint and... probably fade into obscurity. But they didn't, and the fact that AoW 4 dives fully into "you get to play as a god-like figure, create and shape your people and lead them to victory" makes it all the more enjoyable. I think that this series has always had a very high fantasy feel to it - the first game having 12 playable species (that were... mostly the same until you hit T3), and 4 does a great job of expanding on that aspect of things by making everything about your civilization that customizable. You choose what kind of form you want your people to have (Are they goblins? Mole people? Humans?), how their civilization functions (are they magical? industrial? barbarians?) as well as so many other aspects that it's very difficult for any two civilizations to be the same. I sank a lot of hours into this game. A lot of hours. My wife and I joke that this is a game that we play if we want to fast forward through a day because we will typically start playing at around noon and then check the clock and it will be 6:00 or 7:00 PM. The game has only improved since its release, and I hope that it's able to get a second round of DLC as time progresses; the ability to create our own civilization has us replaying a bunch, and it's great to take a gimmick and try to adapt your playstyle to it as the game progresses. I would love to see them to be able to expand on that a bunch, but I don't think Triumph Studios has ever done wrong on a game release. I'm always going to be excited for whatever their next title ends up being. 1. Baldur's Gate 3  Hoo boy, I was very hesitant about this game as soon as I heard it was announced. After playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 I got to hear that Larian Studios was making a video game based on 5th edition D&D. Having grown up with the original Baldur's Gate games and trying out early access as soon as it came out I thought that this game was going to bomb or be mediocre at best. I am so loving glad they had the liberty to make changes to the system to make the game run better in tabletop (looking at you, bonus spell restrictions, jumping rules, and the monk class) but also that they had the freedom to be like "Oh, yeah, so you're a monk, you get this extra bit of dialogue in these places. If you're a dragonborn, you get some extra stuff in these other spots. And if you're both? Well then at this one point in the game you'll get a little something extra to say." And it's like that for every class and race combination in the game. Granted, not all of those dialogue moments are unique. I don't think they're all that exclusive, either; I think one of the special monk dialogues I got to see again when I was playing a cleric on a different playthrough (as more or less a synonym option; it had the same effect and bonus but was worded differently). But they do achieve the goal of making every moment feel unique to your character, which is what TTRPGs and some RPGs should be about. I think BG3 succeeds incredibly uniquely in this regard; a lot of interactions do have the feeling of being personal to your character. Companion interactions can achieve this as well (and a lot of the companions are very well written, while others are less so). There's a special magic to a game that isn't afraid to record a few extra lines of dialogue because you decided to play a wild magic sorcerer and thus can talk about the time you accidentally teleported yourself into the middle of a wedding. I think BG3 succeeds far beyond any other game (including Wrath of the Righteous and BG 1 & 2) in this respect. There are moments where I think it does fall flat (Act 3 spoilers) Sarevok, Viconia, which can be attributed to a lot of things. The final product, however, filled me with such a sense of wonder and magic that it got me thinking "gently caress, I love playing video games." and got me to play through the original trilogy (well, Quadrilogy) again. I hope Larian Studios gets the chance to expand on it, or put some of this magic into the next Divinity game that they end up making. Abridged List 10. Lil Gator Game 9. I Was A Teenage Exocolonist 8. Against the Storm 7. Final Fantasy XVI 6. The Talos Principle 2 5. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 4. Pikmin 4 3. Octopath Traveler 2 2. Age of Wonders 4 1. Baldur's Gate 3
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Dec 25, 2023 19:49
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The REAL Goobusters posted:Man this thread always loving delivers. Love reading everyones lists! Especially the write ups 
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Dec 30, 2023 23:05
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That list needs Byron, Alcatraz, Melville, and Yaqut imo
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Jan 1, 2024 17:58
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Fuckin' aces. If GOTY 6ers are being handed out gimme one plz. Glad to have given my vote to the GOAT, but would have been just as happy if OT2 or ToTK had gotten first (or even AC6 though I didn't get to play that one)
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Jan 13, 2024 19:42
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 04:25 |
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Arist posted:I’m not a big CRPG guy. I’ve dipped my toes into Fallout 1 and Planescape: Torment for about an hour each, but I’ve never had major experience with the genre. This is my first real entry into this space, and I’ve gotta say: it was pretty incredible. There’s something wonderful about the incredible freedom and trust in the player here by the designers, the willingness to indulge so many possibilities and to let the audience fail or screw themselves over. It’s staggering. Hell, in Act II I found the main hub and near-immediately wandered into an encounter that killed everyone in that hub when I lost a fight (I reloaded, because, wow). The game feels incredibly alive in that way, there’s just so much going on. Here you go. I liked this quote.
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Jan 13, 2024 19:55
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