xzar_monty

This is what is generally called "an opinion". It's not as if there's anything substantial to back it up.

I have now played Disco Elysium a bit further. It's a very, very good game, by the looks of it. My only gripe is the walking pace, but the writing is really good.

For me it was the other way around: Gorecci Street was easier, the digsite was really hard. But here's the strange thing: they were not red skull encounters, not even close (maybe one white skull). Engwithian Titan was a "three red skulls" encounter but proved to be not difficult at all, etc.

It's not that that is the problem. It's the fact that in retrospect, after you've basically won the game, you realize that boy, the hardest fights and greatest difficulties I ever had were right there on the first island, and nothing has come close since.

Yeah, it's great. It does have some peculiar problems, like Gorecci Street and/or the digsite being a lot more difficult than anything you ever meet afterwards (like, huh, how's that possible?!), and the main story is a bit weak(*), but all in all it's bloody good. (*) I suppose the depiction of the main story also relies on the dialogue options you choose, because some of it left me a bit baffled. I also had some of this in PoE.

No, not aggressive or in bad faith at all, don't worry about that.

Your terminology is not consistent and therefore your argument is rendered hopelessly illogical. You cannot just switch concepts around. "Relevance" is not "quality". You have to be precise, otherwise we're not going to have a meaningful argument. But hey, this is off topic, let's stop here -- I won't be commenting on this subject anymore.

Hey, what I'm arguing is that whole idea of making lists of top films or top bands is meaningless, and the fact of the innumerable articles out there does not mean much. Of course they're being written and lists are being made, because there are plenty of people who enjoy that kind of thing, but from that it does not follow that it's a sensible business -- simply look at the question a bit more deeply and you will recognize that there can be no reasonable standards for making judgements on what is the best ever. However, making lists and writing articles like that is a fairly nice and easy way of selling magazines: that's what the lists and articles are for (I have a history in journalism, I know rather a lot about how it works). And once a consensus is established, in just about anything, it has an astonishing way of perpetuating itself.

There is an element of truth to this, but it's nowhere near the absolute truth (as if anything was...). There's no question that Citizen Kane is a masterpiece, and for the reasons you describe, but calling it "the best film" makes little sense. Now, if we were to put together, say, the 50 greatest films (without any order), Citizen Kane would certainly be on the list (and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, for instance, would not). But simply putting Citizen Kane above everything else is not justifiable. Pretty much the same goes for The Beatles. There is obviously no questioning their influence, but influence or impact is not the same as quality. You have to consider how early The Beatles appeared on the pop scene: when they arrived, the whole pop thing was fairly new, so there was ample room for someone to become a huge influence. This is not possible these days. When I listen to The Beatles, I find that pretty much everything they did before Revolver is meaningless (so yes, that would include Yesterday, which is not a particularly good song -- the only really clever bit is right in the beginning where you're faced with the ambiguity of not knowing whether we're in F major or D minor). Then they improved drastically, and both Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road are excellent albums (although I ever listen to the latter). Much of the musicianship, although certainly not that of Paul McCartney, is second- or third-rate by today's standards (the drumming in particular is frankly poor, much of the time), and much of their work hasn't aged that well. Like, you could easily drop half the songs from the White Album, and that would only improve its overall quality. However, there are some superb songs in their catalogue, and their huge influence is certainly not in question. Again, The Beatles would certainly rank among the 50 greatest pop bands (or even 20), but the best? Nah. The most influental? Almost certainly, yes.

Ok, I see what you mean but do not agree -- at least in the sense that I would like to play the game like that (no problem in this for either of us, I'm sure). I would argue that you'll have to think ahead anyway, even in RTwP, because while you can in a sense react immediately to everything, often this cannot actually happen because there are action speeds, cooldown times, all that. But yeah, that's one of way of doing it, sure, just not the one for me.

How is that the best of both worlds? To me that sounds the opposite, the worst of both worlds. Automatic pause is not a good idea: I want the game to pause when I say, and not be unpausable at any time.

I strongly agree. I did try D:OS2 and even Bard's Tale IV, and the turn-based combat simply isn't immersive. I know that RTwP also has strict mechanics running in the background, but at least it gives a proper impression/illusion of things in free flow. In TB, the combatants simply stand around most of the time, giving the impression of transmogrified Chess (nicely put!). I know perfectly well which one's more suited for me. This is probably a question of temperament -- some people prefer one, others the other. I think it's good that both are there, but I'll always pick RTwP.

But there are no objective criteria by which to judge the game itself. The purpose of any game is to be enjoyed, and enjoyability is subjective, based on preference. There is no way around this problem. This is precisely the reason why I say the whole question of "best game" is meaningless. There is no way around the other problem you present, either. Taste both is and isn't subjective. On the one hand, anyone can like what they want, but on the other, if somebody were to claim that Ed Wood is a better director than Stanley Kubrick, I suppose a lot of people would have problems trusting that person's capacity for judgement.

Its reception has been fairly poor, but of course that is not a direct answer to your question. I can feel your pain, though: I loved BG2, PoE, Deadfire and P:K, and I would dearly like to play another game of that quality and in that genre. But as far as I'm aware, there aren't any.

Actually it's NetHack, but since you're talking roguelikes anyway, you can be forgiven.

Oh, absolutely, and nothing wrong with the OP. I was simply responding to @daven, and more specifically to his claim concerning Tetris. Tetris is definitely famous, and deservedly so, but all talk about "best ever" is too much.

The question of "best ever" is essentially meaningless in everything that is not strictly quantifiable like, say, the 100 meters dash. Best book, best movie, best album, best band -- all meaningless. There can be no reasonable basis for assessment.

You don't even know when he was born. Again, it's not helpful to get angry in an instant. Incidentally, you wrote: "Kids these days, they think everything was invented in their lifetime." Are you aware that this is essentially the oldest complaint known to man? Almost literally. One of the earliest surviving written texts is a cuneiform wherein an elderly priest laments that the young ones no longer respect the gods the same way people did in days of yore. So the "kids these days" is the cliche of all cliches.

The Beatles also had a lot of merchandise in the 1960s. I am not sure who started the whole thing, but I do agree with Boeroer that it's not necessary to get angry and superior about it.

But you see, you are misusing the word legend. It is not a question of individual preference. A legend is someone who is overwhelmingly well known and greatly respected in their field. This does not apply to the Bitmap Brothers. Eric Clapton is a legend of the blues guitar. I don't personally care for his music and never listen to it, but he is still a legend. Whether I like him or not makes no difference.

I had a brief stint within the computer game world in the late 1980s, and I would never regard the Bitmap Brothers as legends. To the extent that there were legends at the time (which is highly debatable), one would be David Braben, the creator of Elite, and another would be Richard Garriott, the creator of the Ultima world. But of course even these two nominations are dependent on the kinds of games you prefer. But there's just no way the Bitmap Brothers were legends. You mean, for Xenon and Speedball? Xenon was a good game, I don't deny that, but that's it -- it was just a good game. I also agree with @daven in the sense that both legend and genius are very strong words that should be used with great care.

No, I meant the books. Clearly the movies couldn't apply to what I said.

This is only true to an extent, or, alternatively put, it is not the only thing that is true. As a counterexample: Lord of the Rings was not familiar when it came out, neither was Star Wars. Both have been unbelievably successful -- much more so than nearly all books and movies that are remakes, remasters, sequels and whatever. So, people do recognize and enjoy new things, too, even if they like the familiar. (And yes, Star Wars does contain sequels.)

I started Disco Elysium. Looks quite good. One funny thing: at the crime scene, very early on in the game, there are these two troublemaker kids. One of them peppers her speech with words from a language that not a lot of people in this world speak and that is meant to be clearly alien (not as in extraterrestrial) in the game. I happen to speak that language rather well, so I'm one of the very few for whom that "exotic" bit isn't exotic -- I just happen to note that the pronunciation is off.

I'll just give you one small example from the early part of PoE, something that struck me at the time and was possibly an indication of a larger problem. I went to Raedric's Hold and ended up facing him. He had either one or two wizards supporting him, and they were called "Archmages". I was approximately at level 5 at the time, and I thought I was going to be royally screwed. I mean, there's no way a 5th level character can survive an archmage on his own, let alone as a part of a larger group. But I did. Then I got their spellbooks, and there wasn't anything special in them. So I thought: what exactly does archmage mean in this game? Another example: later on, below Caed Nua, on approximately level 9 of the dungeon, I met some vampires. They were called fampyrs, though, but of course they were vampires. I thought, sheesh, this is going to be tough, surely? These monsters are going to have some really devastating abilities, so I'll have to pay extra careful attention. But no. They had nothing. They could charm, but that generally lasted less than 20 seconds, often even less. So although I did enjoy PoE and the beginning especially was superb, I did definitely feel that some things were watered down quite a lot.