What are you playing right now?

[Keyrock]

Like most games, it gets harder as you get older.

[Hurlshort]

Graphics are great, but gameplay is a grind.

[Majek]

And it's Hardcore and Ironman, so you fail hard sooner than later.

[Keyrock]

After playing Shin Megami Tensei Liberation Dx2 on my phone for a bit I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised so far. I was worried that this would simply be a clone of an existing, exploitative, crappy phone game with a MegaTen coat of paint over the top of it. After all we've seen famous jRPG franchises exploited to sell garbage pgone shovelware before *cough* Final Fantasy All the Bravest *cough* I can happily report that this is not that, but instead an actual MegaTen game.

 

All the elements you would expect to find in a MegaTen title are here. You play a demon tamer of sorts, in this case you download demons into the world via an app on your phone making you a Demon Downloader, hence Dx2. You, and other Dx2s you add to your team along the way, make parties of up to 4 demons each. You acquire demons in several ways: You can negotiate with enemy demons sometimes and, if successful, convince them to join you. You can summon demons via a summoning portal which costs currency (more on currency in a bit). And, of course, you can fuse demons together to make different (hopefully stronger) demons. There are often multiple combinations of demons to fuse the same demon, but, since the new demon may inherit skills from its "parents" it can create different versions of the same demon type. Plus stronger versions of parent demons tend to create stronger new demons, so a lot of work and thought goes into creating the demons you want, you need to think several generations ahead when fusing high rank demons. You can also improve existing demons several ways to make them stronger. Constantly evolving your parties of demons to make them stronger is the core of MegaTen IMHO.

 

Combat itself is what you expect from MegaTen. Turn-based, menu-driven battles centered around exploiting elemental weaknesses. I'm not going to go into a lengthy explanation of how everything works (its deeper than it seems at first) but suffice to say that hitting weaknesses not only does more damage but also gives you more actions per turn, while an attack that is nullified, drained, etc.

takes away actions. Also, powerful abilities cost high MP and you only recover 3 MP per turn, you may need that MP later. You need to think about your acfions carefully, especially later on when battles drag out much longer.

 

The main story happens in stages consisting of some story exposition followed by a battle then sometimes more exposition. Rather than full on movie style cutscenes, you get characters appearing in front of a static background, visual novel style. The characters themselves are not static, however, they have animation loops as they gesture. Also, they are fully voice acted in Japanese with english subtitles. The character designs are flat out terrific and they have quirky, over the top personalities, in the tradition of MegaTen, and Atlus franchises, for that matter. The animation loops are also really well done, it really makes them come alive.

 

I can't comment on the quality of the voice acting since I don't understand Japanese, but I do like the way it sounds. Sound effects are solid and the music is quite good.

 

Besides the main story there are other activities. Some of them are just battles against strong monsters, but of note is the Aura Gate, a multi-level dungeon played in old school grid-based dungeon crawler fashion. This game already has a ton to offer and I haven't even unlocked it all yet.

 

I'll also praised this game for its tutorials. The first time you do anything the game, quite literally, guides you through everything step by step, showing you what to press and how it works. It's a bit frustrating to a MegaTen vet, like me, since it slowed me down and I know full well how all this stuff works already, but I'm glad it's there for those new to the series. Another cool feature is that you can set the game to loop auto-battle any battle you have already manually beaten. The game even has specific levelling quests designed for this where 2 characters' teams gain experience at once. The designers recognized the tedium of grinding and how prevalent it is in jRPGs and, while they didn't remove the grind, they put in a feature where the game literally plays itself at max battle speed and you can set your phone down and make yourself a sandwich or whatever while your demons level up.

 

With all the praiseout of the way, I still fully expect to hit a paywall eventually. It hasn't happened yet, but it's a f2p game, it's bound to happen eventually. The game does have a popup every now and then offering to sell you stuff, some for real money and some for in game currency, which you can also purchase for real money, of course. I'm a lot more forgiving of this sort of thing when a game is f2p (they have to make money somehow) as opposed to a game that also charges you up front, especially a $60 title, but know that it's there. Summoning, fusing, enhancing, awakening latent skills, etc. all costs currency and, as you would expect froma f2p mobile game, there are so many different currencies that you need to hire a team of accountants to keep track of them all. I have not yet come close to being short on currency for something I REALLY needed to do, but cost increases with the power of the demon in question so that's almost certainly coming down the line.

 

All in all, I'm quite impressed so far. I expected a slap dash, crappy cash grab and instead got an honest to goodness MegaTen game that real effort and polish was put into. How egregious the paywall that's almost certainly coming and how shamelessly they try to milk me will determine whether I reward their efforts with some money and continue to play or not give them a dime ans uninstall. Hopefully its the former since I'm having a great time so far.

[GhostofAnakin]

Okay, a switch flipped after two things: building a PSI Ops chamber and upgrading my weapons to the "alien" version.  As long as the enemy doesn't swarm me with those snake things, I don't seem to be having issues with the combat anymore.  So either I'm learning well, or the designers did things ass backwards by making the beginning ridiculously hard and the middle/ending easy.  If it's the latter, that's a bad game design, no?  You kind of want people to get into the game and continue playing early on so they become invested in the game, not give up because it's too difficult and never give it a chance.

[213374U]

Finally tried Stellaris, got it over a year ago because I wanted to play a Star Trek mod that I saw but never got around to actually doing it.

 

Is it me or is this game less complex than other Paradox titles? I'm thinking Hearts of Iron 3 which was micromanagement hell and especially Victoria 2. Not that simplicity is a bad thing per se, but previous games seemed to have way more depth than this, and as a consequence, a much steeper learning curve. I'm fairly surprised how easy it is to get into this game. Beautiful music, too.

 

However playing a Paradox game reminded me that I'm still butthurt that they killed East vs West and seemingly have no interest in developing a similar game themselves. Bah.

[Chilloutman]

yes its less complex than other their games which is shame, i hope they deepen it soon

[Hawke64]

Completed Beast of Winter. Going to replay and see other outcomes.

The only complaint is that previously rarely used skills are required in many interactions, which is good from the balance standpoint, but bad, because no one in my active party has them high enough. Everything else is absolutely amazing.

[Katphood]

Oh yeah, finally managed to beat Club Mars in Yakuza 0. There are 4 more clubs to beat though, gotta train my staff since Club Mars is actually the weakest of the five.

[GhostofAnakin]

Having a PSI Ops soldier in my squad has made things so much easier now.  He just mind controls the other side's toughest soldier, they focus on trying to kill that one (I usually pick the shield guy since it takes forever for the enemy to knock down his shield), and I pick them off while they're distracted.

[GhostofAnakin]

More XCOM 2.

 

Now I've got two PSI Ops soldiers in my squad, upped my squad size to six, and have the ability to mind control with each operative.  So most missions I essentially have a squad of 8 soldiers.

 

It's so weird how they made it so difficult and frustrating early on, and so easy late on.  Usually games take the opposite approach.

[wolfrider100]

I bought Ys: Memories of Celceta on GOG today and have started up a new playthrough, so far I'm enjoying what little I have played of this (been playing for a hour or so).

 

Well Ys: Memories of Celceta's PC port is turning out to be better then Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA's was at launch, right now Memories of Celceta is already far less buggy.

Edited August 8, 2018 by wolfrider100

[Malcador]

Playing WoW and doing the pre-expansion stuff. Not too impressed with the reasoning for the war and it has the usual authors making enemies look like imbeciles in order to portray one character as military genius.

[Humanoid]

More XCOM 2.

 

Now I've got two PSI Ops soldiers in my squad, upped my squad size to six, and have the ability to mind control with each operative.  So most missions I essentially have a squad of 8 soldiers.

 

It's so weird how they made it so difficult and frustrating early on, and so easy late on.  Usually games take the opposite approach.

 

I remember an old interview during the time of XCOM 1 where they explained the inverted difficulty curve was somewhat intended, because the retry cost for failing a campaign late in the game was crippling, whereas if you failed early it was no big deal to start afresh.

[GhostofAnakin]

 

More XCOM 2.

 

Now I've got two PSI Ops soldiers in my squad, upped my squad size to six, and have the ability to mind control with each operative.  So most missions I essentially have a squad of 8 soldiers.

 

It's so weird how they made it so difficult and frustrating early on, and so easy late on.  Usually games take the opposite approach.

 

I remember an old interview during the time of XCOM 1 where they explained the inverted difficulty curve was somewhat intended, because the retry cost for failing a campaign late in the game was crippling, whereas if you failed early it was no big deal to start afresh.

 

 

With the ability to save scum (unless you play ironman), I don't know why that would matter?  I pretty much create a new save after every mission, so if one wipes me out, I won't have to start again just to get back to that point.

[Humanoid]

 

 

More XCOM 2.

 

Now I've got two PSI Ops soldiers in my squad, upped my squad size to six, and have the ability to mind control with each operative.  So most missions I essentially have a squad of 8 soldiers.

 

It's so weird how they made it so difficult and frustrating early on, and so easy late on.  Usually games take the opposite approach.

 

I remember an old interview during the time of XCOM 1 where they explained the inverted difficulty curve was somewhat intended, because the retry cost for failing a campaign late in the game was crippling, whereas if you failed early it was no big deal to start afresh.

 

 

With the ability to save scum (unless you play ironman), I don't know why that would matter?  I pretty much create a new save after every mission, so if one wipes me out, I won't have to start again just to get back to that point.

 

 

Ironman is the one true path!

[Katphood]

God of War: Chains of Olympus. 

 

After that I'll be playing Ghost of Sparta, Ascension, I, II, III and eventually, God of War(PS4). Gotta put the PS3 to god good use.

[Mamoulian War]

I was never much into that kind of games, but somehow every God of War achieved always something, what other similar games did not. I had fun playing it!

[Katphood]

This is one of the God of War games that was made by Ready at Dawn Studios(same folks who made The Order 1886) so it'll be interesting to see how it fairs against other God of War games.

 

My impressions so far? First mission: elimimate the invading Persian army.

Edited August 8, 2018 by Katphood

[Mamoulian War]

I have played it on my PSP, and liked it

Edited August 8, 2018 by Mamoulian War

[Katphood]

Yeah, played it some more and it's super fun. The different abilities you aquire after boss fights are fun to use.

 

I just don't like the quick-time events because...I mean come on, the sex mini-game is harder to pull off than the real thing.

[LittleArmadillo0]

I'm playing Stardew Valley again.

It is so relaxing.

[injurai]

5e

[rjshae]

I tried Knights of the Chalice for a while, but it feels like a big time sink due to the paucity of resting places that require multiple do-overs. I've got better things to do with my time.

[Keyrock]

I'm about halfway through chapter 3 in Shin Megami Tensei Liberation Dx2. If this is anything like previous MegaTen games then I expect 5 or 6 chapters of increasing length. I still haven't hit any real paywall and the game has an almost overwhelming amount of stuff to do.From previous experience MegaTen games tend to take 30+ hours to complete if you rush and close to 100 hours if you want to assemble the ultimate team of demons (and why wouldn't you?). This game seems to be following that same path as far as projected play time.