What are you Playing Now? Who needs a life anyway?...

[Keyrock]

I'm thoroughly enjoying Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore. This game feels a lot like Persona, from the combat to character progression to the EXTREMELY anime flourishes during dialogue when a character gets emotional. Persona technically is a MegaTen spinoff, but I consider it its own franchise now, given how distinct it is from mainline MegaTen, way more than any other spinoff like Devil Survivor, for example.

I'm still failing to grasp the Fire Emblem half of the crossover. The only thing I can think of is the session system which very vaguely resembles follow up attacks in FE. If you strike a weakness and other party members have appropriate skills they will automatically perform a free attack on the target. In FE if characters have developed a bond and they are both adjacent to a target, when one strikes the target the other will perform a free follow up attack, which isn't really the same but sort of... I'm grasping at steaws here.

Bottom line, this is basically a Persona game, even to the point of mirages preying on people's insecurities and personality traits to warp them. This is fine given that Persona is awesome, but it seems dishonest advertising this as a MegaTen x Fire Emblem crossover when it's at most tangentially MegaTen related and not at all Fire Emblem.

Edited May 8, 2022 by Keyrock

[the_dog_days]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore

Oh, come on, Japan! That's not nearly enough nouns and verbs for a title. Gotta be something like, Surprising Tokyo Very Mirage Extreme Sessions 420 #FE Last Encore: of Darkness.

[Keyrock]

28 minutes ago, the_dog_days said:

Oh, come on, Japan! That's not nearly enough nouns and verbs for a title. Gotta be something like, Surprising Tokyo Very Mirage Extreme Sessions 420 #FE Last Encore: of Darkness.

I think a lot of it has to do with translation. Some stuff just doesn't translate cleanly to English, or any other western language for that matter. That's how you wind up with 5 Kanji characters being translated as "The Last Breath of the Butterfly Sings the Moon's Sorrow In My Sister's Soul: Retaliation"

[melkathi]

When the game informs you that a certain boss will only attack you if you have a specific item, but you should never carry the specific item with you since if you do, a certain boss will attack you, maybe I should learn to listen to the game.

My level 12 party in Stranger of Sword City ran into a level 37 boss.

[Hawke64]

Completed Timespinner. It is a platformer/Metroidvania about a time traveller. The story is engaging and the characters are likable. The graphics and soundtrack are stylish and fit the game. The controls, despite being rebindable, are uncomfortable. The protagonist possesses flexibility of a tank, while all enemies at all times are inflicting damage on contact - jumping on a fluffy bird hurts just as getting hit by a mechanical spider. The lowest difficulty allows to face-tank everything without reloading and it is the only reason why I was able to complete the game. The map is reasonably large and fast travel is unlocked somewhere mid-game. There are several side quests that are tracked in the in-game journal. The weapons (orbs) are diverse in terms of movesets and appearance, but other equipment is not visible on the character.

[kanisatha]

22 hours ago, BruceVC said:

The only thing I didnt like was my battle with Dettlaff in the Blood and Wine expansion, I couldnt defeat him and stopped trying after 5 hours or so

I couldn't defeat any of the major bosses in either DLC, even on the lowest difficulty setting, and so had to give up on playing them.

Just not good with Witcher-style combat using keyboard and mouse (as someone who's never played console games of any kind).

[BruceVC]

17 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

I couldn't defeat any of the major bosses in either DLC, even on the lowest difficulty setting, and so had to give up on playing them.

Just not good with Witcher-style combat using keyboard and mouse (as someone who's never played console games of any kind).

I also dropped the difficulty level and it made no difference, the AI was also cheating in your game as well 

Im glad Im not the only one 

[uuuhhii]

19 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

I couldn't defeat any of the major bosses in either DLC, even on the lowest difficulty setting, and so had to give up on playing them.

Just not good with Witcher-style combat using keyboard and mouse (as someone who's never played console games of any kind).

witcher 3 combat really depend more on build and preparation than actual skill

with oil and silver bomb beating vampire are very easy

[Malcador]

Wticher 1 was the best.

Playing Crowns and Pawns, so far seems okay for a modern adventure game, at least the puzzles aren't too simplistic.  Apparently from reviews, I will learn a lot about Lithuania from this game, so that's cool and helps justify the $20.

[Lexx]

Loading times in Witcher 1 killed the game for me.

[HoonDing]

The game was a mess at release, crashed literally every half hour for me. Just like Morrowind and Arx Fatalis.

[uuuhhii]

quick save that need to be manually deleted was horrible in witcher 1

mass delete in save file folder may cause accidental delete of key point save

dice game was really addictive though

really hoped dev keep it with the gwent in witcher 3

[melkathi]

Pick up a quest item that makes a tough boss spawn.

Realize boss is way too hard for you at this level.

Decide to stash the item until you get 10 levels.

Make a post about it here.

Go to bed.

Wake up.

Go to work.

Go home.

Fire up the game.

Enter the dungeon.

Get attacked by boss.

Realize you forgot to stash the quest item...

[Wormerine]

Ah, Witcher1! My poor laptop wasn't able to run it, but it was my freshman year at Uni and a good colleague of mine and a fellow gamer was kind enough to lend me his machine. I would borrow it once per week around 10 PM, when he was done with his homework and I would meet him during breakfast in the morning and hand the laptop back after entire night of gaming. That's how I finished my first run of it. Good times.

[Keyrock]

There's a lot to love about Witcher 1, like the nudie cards you got for sexing up various women and Zoltan being the best, but the combat... *fart noise* There's no weight or feedback to it, you just pick the right combat stance, which is super obvious, then you play a rhythym game that's mostly disconnected from the enemies on the screen. The bigger issue is the ****ing swamp though, that's the reason I only ever finished the game once. I tried replaying the game twice, got to the swamp both times, tried to talk myself into pushing through it because there's stuff I really like after that, gave up both times after the swamp had destroyed my will to continue. **** that swamp.

[BruceVC]

9 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Ah, Witcher1! My poor laptop wasn't able to run it, but it was my freshman year at Uni and a good colleague of mine and a fellow gamer was kind enough to lend me his machine. I would borrow it once per week around 10 PM, when he was done with his homework and I would meet him during breakfast in the morning and hand the laptop back after entire night of gaming. That's how I finished my first run of it. Good times.

Thats a nice story wormie, I admire that kind of commitment to gaming

How long did it take you to finish W1, it must have been frustrating being only able to play W1 once a week?

[Zoraptor]

I actually found the W1 swamp fine, on replay. The key is to be able to minimise the number of times you go there, and hence the respawning, which of course you don't know how to do first time around. But if you're only going there 3 (?) times it's a lot more palatable than going there maybe a dozen times.

But, any level which is as obnoxious as the swamp on a first play through is by definition poorly designed. You shouldn't have to metagame quests and the like to make it acceptable, and swarms of annoying potentially 0xp monsters respawning is nothing more than bad makework, really.

[BruceVC]

12 hours ago, HoonDing said:

The game was a mess at release, crashed literally every half hour for me. Just like Morrowind and Arx Fatalis.

The pirated version is designed to do that, rather just pay for your games. Its the right thing to do 

[bugarup]

I didn't mind the swamp, but that's probably because I was younger and more tolerant to things that waste my time. Now when I'm old and cranky, I can't go past boring stupid forest in Witcher 2, where I have to wait for some schmuck to open his office at 9 am or something. 

Played VtM visual novels, Coteries and Shadows of New York. Short and meh, but predictably made me want to go play Bloodlines again. Alas, my old saves got corrupted with apartment texture bug, fingers crossed it won't affect my new game. Maybe I'll make a Brujah and will be able to finish that final combat stretch without cheating this time. 

Looking forward to "Swansong", I loved "The Council".  

[Bartimaeus]

My fond memory of The Witcher is that I was gifted it by a friend on Steam, I played about 3 hours of it, realized I hated almost literally every single aspect of the game (whether it was gameplay, characters, storytelling, whatever), and proceeded to feel terrible that a friend gifted me a game that I loathed. That was the beginning and end of my Witcher experiences.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

My fond memory of The Witcher is that I was gifted it by a friend on Steam, I played about 3 hours of it, realized I hated almost literally every single aspect of the game (whether it was gameplay, characters, storytelling, whatever), and proceeded to feel terrible that a friend gifted me a game that I loathed. That was the beginning and end of my Witcher experiences.

I need to gift you some anime.

[uuuhhii]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

My fond memory of The Witcher is that I was gifted it by a friend on Steam, I played about 3 hours of it, realized I hated almost literally every single aspect of the game (whether it was gameplay, characters, storytelling, whatever), and proceeded to feel terrible that a friend gifted me a game that I loathed. That was the beginning and end of my Witcher experiences.

witcher 1 are extremely jank and awkward even when it came out

player can not suffer through it today are understandable

[Zoraptor]

I'd say that the game proper isn't too janky at least now, but for as much criticism as the swamp gets in W1 the opening chapter is definitely worse quality wise and makes a very poor first impression; and yeah, it's so very, very janky.

Chapter 1 has: lots of houses, so lots of v e r y s l o w level transitions, almost all the actually broken dialogue in the game, dialogue that isn't broken but is clearly badly translated, and dialogue that badly effects both quests and world building. There are also some really baffling gameplay choices like having the player fight an archespore while drunk (and not having any Wive's Tears, potentially), annoying respawns, and the ludicrous end boss. That boss Barghest in particular was hilarious, and epitomised the problems since roughly 20% of people did what I did, used aard, got a lucky stun, and won in the first 5 seconds and thought the battle was stupidly easy. The other 80% died repeatedly and thought the battle was ridiculously hard. No one- at least seemingly- thought it was well designed and fair.

[Chilloutman]

Looking at W1 through today lances is bit weird, It got tons of jenkiness but big part of witcher is preparation, potions and oils. Some people prefer railroad experience and thats fine, its just not witcher style

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, uuuhhii said:

witcher 1 are extremely jank and awkward even when it came out

player can not suffer through it today are understandable

I played it probably in about 2010 is the thing, though. I also received New Vegas a gift from the same friend around the same time and I also couldn't make myself play through that (better writing doesn't suddenly make the horrid Fallout 3 gameplay go away...), so really, probably people just shouldn't ever gift me any kind of media because I am the worst. Witcher was probably the last ARPG I tried before Dark Souls, and that was obviously a bit of a crossing the rubicon moment for ARPGs - difficult to go back to the really janky/unrefined stuff after that. Not that Dark Souls wasn't also pretty janky, but it made the "action RPG" part of the game compelling in of itself for me, which was new.

I also despise using one-use consumables/abilities in pretty much all genres of gaming, and apparently that was a big part in making the combat workable in Witcher 1, so once I learned that, I pretty much immediately uninstalled the game. I don't use e.g. potions in games like Baldur's Gate, which is fine in that because they're not in any way necessary even for the extra difficult content in those games, so I'm certainly not going to use them in an action RPG.

Edited May 10, 2022 by Bartimaeus