Keyrock

In the interest of equality: You're welcome.

Yeah, formations would be nice. I should probably pop on over to the inXile forums and request that, if someone hasn't already, or add my voice to the existing request for that feature. Maybe it's something they could add in a patch? With formations, you could set your Rangers up in such a fashion that even if you do get caught by surprise and wander into a fight without having carefully placed all your Rangers and devised a plan, you at least wouldn't be caught in as horrible a tactical mess as having all your party members smooshed together in a random blob.

You get a gold star and bonus points for the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer reference (which is the origin of my handle).

I've found pre-combat planning and positioning to be very important in this game. If you just wander into combat all bunched up in a group you can easily wind up in a really tough situation, for example a shotgun wielding character stuck behind other characters unable to fire at the enemies without hitting her teammates (I speak from experience on that one). If at all possible, turn off group control and move each individual character into a good position before entering combat. How you begin combat can make the difference between an almost impossible situation and a manageable one. I'm really liking the leadership skill, I've been regularly pumping that one up on my giant Native American lady boss. I also gave her high charisma so that the effect radius is nice and large, allowing me to scatter my group and still have everyone get the bonus from the skill.

I'm loving the heck out of this game. I'm going through it super duper slow. Steam reports 5 hours played, keep in mind well over an hour of that was me making my characters. I've gone through the Radio Tower, I went to the Mysterious Shrine, and I just arrived at the Agricultural Center. I love how ruthlessly unforgiving this game is. Oh, what's that, you don't have the necessary skill? You didn't pay careful attention and just clicked on something without thinking it through? Well too bad, you're dead. Good times.

Man that collector's box looks great.

Pistols at dawn, unless you prefer a different dueling weapon. Your choice.

Which is why I'm so glad I avoided the game until full release.

Here's a quick pro-tip. This has surely been discovered by others, but I'll put it out here anyway in case it saves even one person some aggravation: There is an option to take a snapshot of your character model to use as your portrait, since there are not nearly enough stock portraits to closely match up with character models. If you make your character model tall and then take a snapshot then there will be a white bar at the top, where the graphics on the model cut off. A very simple workaround is to make your character model shorter temporarily, take the snapshot, then you can make the character model whatever size you want.

Meet Keyrock's Ranger Crew: The Leader - Tallulah The Sniper and Tech - Rayyan The Medic - Makiko The Meathead - Grimey

I've spent almost an hour in character creation and will likely spend almost another hour. So far I have made 2 characters, complete with bio. I'm a bit obsessive like that. It will be all the more painful when I get brutally slaughtered early on in the game since I'll be playing on Ranger difficulty (because, bring it the **** on) right off the bat.

Off-screen Bravely Second gameplay I wants it. I wants it!

A large problem with this whole thing, as with so many issues, is that the moderate and open minded people tend to get drowned out by the zealots on both sides. The zealots are not only the ones who yell the loudest, they get further amplified because they are the ones the media focuses on because loud obnoxious people are the ones that sell newspapers garner viewers get clicks. It's the same reason why extremely uninhibited and/or opinionated people are the ones specifically chosen for reality shows, because these are the types of people that are likely to get into controversial situations that create a buzz. So you have moderate, open minded people on both sides that not only get ignored by the mainstream, they also immediately get demonized by the zealots on the opposing side as soon as they make a statement, no matter how well thought out, rational, or even offering compromise, that conflicts with their strict ideology as either misogynists or fascists, depending on which side of the fence they happen to be on. So, according to mainstream media, everyone is either a disgusting misogynist misanthrope that wants to kick all the vaginas out of their boys' club or a power hungry harpy seeking to force feed everyone their own totalitarian ideology. While both those extremes do, sadly, exist, along with people attaching themselves to either side with no intention other than to gain some spotlight and make a profit off this, there are also tons of people out there being more rational about this and saying "We just want to see more diverse games out there so that there are more gaming experiences out there that cater to things other than just stereotypical male power trip fantasies" and "We're fine with there being games for all audiences, we just don't want the typical male power trip fantasies to become abolished or shamed out of existence because we frankly enjoy that sort of thing from time to time and there's really nothing wrong with that." Sadly, the voices of the moderates tend to get drowned out.

I see by it updating in my Steam account that it's out already (rather than the usual 1 PM EST time). Pretty sweet, though it doesn't do me any good because I'm off to work. Stupid work, always getting in the way of things.

Finished Pirate Creed with 94% completion. I know I missed 1 buried treasure (and the map for it) somewhere and I imagine the other missing percentage is not getting 100% sync on every story mission because, to the best of my knowledge, I did everything else, found all fragments, treasure chests, shanties, messages in a bottle, did all assassin contracts, all naval missions, etc. I may one day come back and replay the missions I didn't 100% sync, though more likely I'll just say close enough and be done with it for good. I enjoyed the vast majority of the game, but there were a few exceptions. For example, if I never have to tail somebody and/or eavesdrop on them ever again, it will be too soon. Most importantly, my schedule is now clear for Wasteland 2 tomorrow.

This Thursday night game... Holy freakin' beatdown! It's gone way past comical to just plain sad at this point.

How does it compare to the original Dragonfall?

I'm at 83% completion in Pirate Creed and should be really close to the end of the game. I'll almost certainly finish the story when I get home tonight, though I probably won't get 100% completion. Do you need to get 100% sync on all the main story missions to 100% the game? Either way, I'll be done with this game after tonight. Gotta clear my schedule for Wasteland 2.

New trailer for Fatal Frame 5, now with added hazubendo! I swear, if this doesn't get localized for North America, so help me, I'll... get really mad, pout quite a bit, and maybe write some angry emails.

Fargo definitely likes to take shots at the industry and create a us (gamers) vs them (publishers) vibe. Whether he's truly bitter, really believes his own rhetoric, or it's just a marketing ploy (judging from the amount of pledges he's gotten for his 2 Kickstarters, a successful one), I don't much care, I mostly tune that stuff out and try to go by the games or game concepts themselves. Anyway, the gameplay footage itself looks absolutely marvelous, in my opinion (as exhibited by the Sailor Moon heart eyes gif I posted). I was really struck by just how insanely gorgeous everything looked. It's hard not to compare it to what we've seen of PoE, and I'm thoroughly happy with what I've seen of PoE in action, but this... my eyes literally popped open wide and my jaw dropped a bit when I saw TToN in action. Much of it is likely because of how alien everything looked, that's part of what I loved so much about PST and Morrowind, but also everything just looked so beautiful and the animations were so good.

I'm definitely going to get Civ: Beyond Earth eventually, but I won't pre-order it or get it day 1 because it suffers from Releases on the Same Day as Bayonetta 2-itis. I'm looking forward to impressions, though.

Looks like Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is a month away from release.

I also enjoyed The Bard's Tale "remake" (honestly, it's a completely different game). It's a pretty fun tongue in cheek action game.

Ironically, Resi 4 is the game that dumped the horrifically bad controls of the early games in favor of more modern shooter controls, but also signaled the move away from horror and toward action, making it a bittersweet game. It also has the distinction of being one of the most notoriously awful PC ports ever. They released an updated "HD" version earlier this year (because, of course they did) that supposedly works a heck of a lot better on PC. I haven't played the new version so I can't speak from experience.