What are you Playing Now? It's not how you play the game, it's how you place the blame

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

Yeah, I always enjoy the idea of the classic games much more than the actual gameplay. Some genres held up better than others, too. RPG's tended to be pretty bad. I'd argue that the infinity engine games are the only ones that aged somewhat well, and even they benefited from the EE makeover.

I tried to play Might and Magic 7 awhile back and I don't understand how I navigated that thing back in the day.

Some RPGs still looke awesome. Lands of Lore 1 is still georgeous in this day and age, but 2 and three looks like manmade product after eating yoghurt with sausage, melon juice, mustard and canned fish...

[Lexx]

Also Realms of Arkana. Still love how it looks and stuff. Played it a lot back then.
 

Spoiler

 

Edited December 2, 2022 by Lexx

[Sven_]

11 hours ago, Lexx said:

Ancient egypt game looks pretty nice, but I'm 100% sure I wouldn't enjoy that gameplay for longer than an hour.

Yeah those games likely don't play very nice anymore, interface and controls included. What I'm missing is that they're offering scenarios that have since almost completely disappeared from RPGs and crawlers. Makes me sad. And it's kinda puzzling as well -- it's not as if horror-themed settings ever have went out of style elsewhere. There's a few Ravenloft user campaigns for NWN 2 though.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Sven_

[Sarex]

Finished God of War Ragnarok main story, have to beat the rest of the optional hard bosses and I will be 100%. What can I say other than that they knocked it out of the park. The story was great and this was a worthy sequel and maybe a better game overall. The only think I can mark it down for is that the game seemed less polished, but I pretty much played the previous one on the last patch, so it could be the case that they will iron it out through patches. There weren't any (big) bugs or things like that, but some cut scenes and talking parts had rough animation, and some new characters were very close to being uncanny valley (although they had very few appearances).

Wish I could have played it on PC (hate controllers) and that I bought an ssd for the PS4.

[Tale]

I'm 3 hours into Callisto Protocol. Playing the medium difficulty and I've got my nitpicks.

1) The combat is overtuned. That's my fancy way of saying it's too hard while trying not to sound like an old fogie. But seriously, I think the combat is overdesigned for attack->counterattack loops. And the second I try to put my own spice on it I get bashed. Especially in scripted encounters where they are transparently programmed to keep you in combat with two enemies simultaneously. It's weird how it keeps popping up. Find two guys, take one down. Take another down and it gets an immediate replacement too. 

I die in those encounters a lot. Because someone got behind me, I wanted to try something out, I thought there was a reason to use GRP in combat and there really wasn't (despite this encounter teaching me about GRP), or I'm just getting frustrated at repeating this one encounter and I do something to try and speed it up. And then I see an animation of my face getting bashed in. Loading screen. Back to where I was. I need to learn to just stick to dodging left and right and then using standard attacks when it's safe.

There's no room for personal style.

2) The level design needs work. Too often I'll come across two unlocked doors. Go down one until I hit what looks like an area transition, run all the way back to the other one, and check it out. Sometimes this leads to a back and forth as the area transition wasn't really the area transition. But the other one definitely is and you can't go back. It needs some better signposting of what areas you can't return from. And to build up trust that you'll get to go back to the fork pressing forward. It doesn't have that.

[Oner]

7 hours ago, Tale said:

2) The level design needs work. Too often I'll come across two unlocked doors. Go down one until I hit what looks like an area transition, run all the way back to the other one, and check it out. Sometimes this leads to a back and forth as the area transition wasn't really the area transition. But the other one definitely is and you can't go back. It needs some better signposting of what areas you can't return from. And to build up trust that you'll get to go back to the fork pressing forward. It doesn't have that.

That's interesting, I'm playing through Dead Space 1-2 right now and I can't stop being happy about the breadcrumb system helping me with exploration. 

[Bartimaeus]

7 hours ago, Tale said:

There's no room for personal style.

Tangent: People complain about Dark Souls being too hard, but one thing that's great about it (specifically speaking of Dark Souls 1 here) is that there's a ton of variety in how you can play...at least on NG1. Shield, heavy armor, or rolling? Magic or melee? Do you use bows to snipe enemies before they aggro onto you? A lot of fast and light attacks or fewer but well-timed slow and heavy attacks? Are you an up close sloppy brawler that gets hit a lot but has lots of health and armor so you can always get back up, or are you someone that's always backpedalling trying to figure out what leaves your enemies vulnerable for safe attacks? There's a lot of variation to how one can decide to play, lots of personal flair and style, and the game is forgiving enough that most of them are pretty effective once you get your mechanics, timing, and strategy down somewhat consistently - plus the game gives you plenty of options to change up your approach if what you're doing just isn't working for a particular fight. So what is often frustrating to me with other games, particularly a lot of so-called soulslike games, is that they lack these kinds of options and variety - maybe they present you a few, but the one thing that really ends up working and actually being effective just isn't that fun, and what should be fun just isn't very effective, so it kind of herds players towards doing the same thing over and over for the entire game. Bleh.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Tangent:

Looking at Protocol's reviews, though, I get an impression it is closer to a QTE then a game system - from what I understand it requires a specific sequence of inputs, rather then having specific moves that work as a combo in specific order.

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Tangent: People complain about Dark Souls being too hard, but one thing that's great about it (specifically speaking of Dark Souls 1 here) is that there's a ton of variety in how you can play...at least on NG1. Shield, heavy armor, or rolling? Magic or melee? Do you use bows to snipe enemies before they aggro onto you? A lot of fast and light attacks or fewer but well-timed slow and heavy attacks? Are you an up close sloppy brawler that gets hit a lot but has lots of health and armor so you can always get back up, or are you someone that's always backpedalling trying to figure out what leaves your enemies vulnerable for safe attacks? There's a lot of variation to how one can decide to play, lots of personal flair and style, and the game is forgiving enough that most of them are pretty effective once you get your mechanics, timing, and strategy down somewhat consistently - plus the game gives you plenty of options to change up your approach if what you're doing just isn't working for a particular fight. So what is often frustrating to me with other games, particularly a lot of so-called soulslike games, is that they lack these kinds of options and variety - maybe they present you a few, but the one thing that really ends up working and actually being effective just isn't that fun, and what should be fun just isn't very effective, so it kind of herds players towards doing the same thing over and over for the entire game. Bleh.

Just never, ever, ever, ever make your playstyle based on Miracle Build, saves you a lot of new gray hairs

Edited December 3, 2022 by Mamoulian War

[Mamoulian War]

After a day of break I have finished Final Fantasy XV – Episode Gladiolus DLC on PS4. It did not take so long compared to Comrades. Only 2 and half hours on Normal difficulty with few retries, because I was afraid to use up Phoenix Down, as I wanted to save all of them for the final fight. In the end it was not needed at all, even though Gilgamesh did made me sweat few times . In the end, I had much more fun with combat, than in the main game or Comrades.

[Gorth]

Continued from old thread...

 

[majestic]

For f*cks sake, the ONE time I type up a semi-long reply and don't CTRL + A; CTRL + C it just to make sure you go and lock the old thread in between, and that post is gone, sacrificed to the forum gods.

Such irony, the post talked about me making things harder on myself by accident, in both Sekiro and Dark Souls.

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, I've had the "locked thread ate my post" thing happen too. It's funny, irreversibly losing even just a couple of paragraphs of text makes it feel like a pretty herculean task to write up the rough equivalent again, and it always makes me wonder how I had the energy or inclination to do it in the first place, because I certainly don't anymore. If I do lose a post, I ain't redoing it, so I guess I better always remember to CTRL+A+C.

The original thread could still possibly have a draft of your post saved, but the only way to see would be to unlock it.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Humanoid]

I mean, it's not how you play the game, it's how you place the blame. And in this instance, the blame lies with Gorth.

[bugarup]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

For f*cks sake, the ONE time I type up a semi-long reply and don't CTRL + A; CTRL + C it just to make sure you go and lock the old thread in between, and that post is gone, sacrificed to the forum gods.

Such irony, the post talked about me making things harder on myself by accident, in both Sekiro and Dark Souls.

Then it's totes good for you that the post got eaten, because isn't trying and failing and failing and failing and repeating this circle of pain ad infinitum the ultimate Dark Souls experience?

[majestic]

11 minutes ago, bugarup said:

Then it's totes good for you that the post got eaten, because isn't trying and failing and failing and failing and repeating this circle of pain ad infinitum the ultimate Dark Souls experience?

Only if you don't git gud at some point.

[Keyrock]

Is "locked thread ate my post" the new "dog ate my homework"?

[Hurlshort]

The Obsidian forums is the original Roguelike game.

[Bokishi]

Can't stop playing Caesar 3 

[Tale]

7 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Just never, ever, ever, ever make your playstyle based on Miracle Build, saves you a lot of new gray hairs

Lies and slander. My lightning thrower build from DS1 is one of my favorites.

[InsaneCommander]

8 hours ago, majestic said:

For f*cks sake, the ONE time I type up a semi-long reply and don't CTRL + A; CTRL + C it just to make sure you go and lock the old thread in between, and that post is gone, sacrificed to the forum gods.

Such irony, the post talked about me making things harder on myself by accident, in both Sekiro and Dark Souls.

It happened to me once. Soon only Stand users will be able to post here.

 

[Gorth]

16 hours ago, majestic said:

For f*cks sake, the ONE time I type up a semi-long reply and don't CTRL + A; CTRL + C it just to make sure you go and lock the old thread in between, and that post is gone, sacrificed to the forum gods.

Such irony, the post talked about me making things harder on myself by accident, in both Sekiro and Dark Souls.

Sorry...

I do a brief check (the user list at the bottom of the forums has a feature showing what currently logged in users are currently doing), but there is a slight delay between checking and actually getting around to locking it. Third time that happened in as many years

About to go to a place called Threshold in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I suspect the end is near...

[Mamoulian War]

Finished goal Nr. 24. \o/
My thumbs are still in pain, but last time, when I was so happy and satisfied with myself, that I finished some nice challenge was, when I defeated Ancient Dragon in Dark Souls 2

Yesterday at 10PM I have finally unlocked all trophies in Final Fantasy XV – Episode Gladiolus DLC on my PS4. The last two challenges were painfully hard for me, but also a lot of fun and a little bit of rage. Especially the Final Trial against Cor . Both challenges were all about tactics, a lot of patience and good reflexes. Of course, the last one is something, which I lack , so I spent on each challenge approximately 2 hours to learn how to execute them good enough to fulfill all the prerequisites for the trophies.

[Tale]

I decided to try out Darktide on Gamepass. One match and I realized they want me to grind a bunch just to get to the fun part. Hard pass.

So I finally decided to start up Valheim. Kind of grindy too. But I like building stuff and exploring.

[majestic]

Darktide looks like a fun game with a big downside. Online co-op with randoms? Yeah, I tried that in Mass Effect and Anthem. Hard, hard... VERY HARD pass.