What are you Playing Now? - Back to the Grind

[Keyrock]

In Dragon's Dogma 2 I am currently making the journey from Vernworth, which is more or less the starting area, to Battahl. If you could go as the bird flies, it wouldn't be that long a trip, but my party can't go as the bird flies and Dragon's Dogma 2, while open world, still funnels you down paths with cliffs and ravines often, which I'm totally fine with.

I made it to a town called, I kid you not, Checkpoint Rest Town (on the nose award winning town name), it's close to the border of Battahl. While there I decided to change vocations for both my character and main pawn, in hindsight doing both at once was a less than stellar idea. Main char thief to warrior and pawn mage to sorcerer. When first acquiring a new vocation you are given a set of starter gear. I unlocked both vocations but didn't switch right away and I wound up selling the starter gear off because I figure I was just going to get much better gear anyway and this junk was just weighing me down, literally, weight is quite important in this game. The problem is that when I made that decision to sell off the starter gear I was in Vernworth where the prices are significantly lower than in Checkpoint Rest Town. On the bright side, CRT has better gear for sale, but that coming at the literal cost of even their "cheaper" stuff still costing a pretty penny. Long story short, I was unable to fully equip my 2 characters. I probably should just have switched back to my old vocations and gone out to farm some loot to get gear for the new vocations, but I'm stubborn. Anyway, it was at precisely this time that a local merchant heard his boy had been dragged off by wolves, because of course it was. So here I am poorly equipped and I have half a mind to pretend I didn't hear about the kid and moving on with my life, but I decided to try to find him. I asked around town and found out he liked to plant flowers some ways outside town. I'm sure he's a precious kid and they're lovely flowers, but maybe don't do that by yourself, that's a recipe for getting dragged off by wolves.

With a last known location in hand, I journeyed outside the town to the location. I found precious little at the scene except some scraps so I decided to search the area and try to find where the wolves had taken him. I searched high and low the entire day, got into quite a few scraps with harpies along the way, but no wolves. As the day turned into night the living dead emerged from their slumber, mainly in the form of skeletons, with a few spirits. I continued to look for the kid as I found a weird small cellar with seemingly endless skeletons spawning in it and a treasure chest. As a warrior with a giant hammer I'm well equipped to fight skeletons, even if my armor leaves a bit to be desired, I don't even have a helm. Anyway, I smashed up a bunch of skeletons and once I figured out that they would just keep spawning, I quickly looted the chest and hightailed it out of there.

At this point my party was weary and battered and I decided to start heading back toward town, it would have me go past the last know location one last time as I was further from the town when fighting in the skeleton cellar. I Slowly made the journey while still keeping an eye out for any sign of wolves or the kid. Nothing. About halfway back to town I found a campsite and made the call to camp till morning. At dawn we go back to town to sell off all the loot gathered and get better gear. And the kid... Well that kid is dead, he's been eaten. I tried, I really did, but thus ends the tale of the foolish adventurers and the precious kid who was eaten by wolves.

[melkathi]

In school, when I was writing my own RPG setting (as one does as a 16 year old), I had a kingdom where they let the military bureaucracy run everything, and the first thing they did was rename all villages for efficiency. They would have approved of Checkpoint Rest Town.

[Keyrock]

I'm enjoying playing warrior, it's very different from thief, obviously, much slower but with the ability to charge up for some insanely powerful blows. The hammer, in particular, has a particularly high knockdown rating making it stagger even large enemies. It's fun jumping onto an ogre and stabbing it in the head as a thief and you can climb onto the ogre as a warrior too, though thieves are better at it, but there's something to be said about hitting the ogre with a giant hammer so hard that it gets knocked off balance and with a successive blow it falls over. This is why I gravitate toward hammer in Monster Hunter. I can't wait to unlock some hybrid vocations.

[the_dog_days]

I have 40 hours in DD2. I just recently 'legally immigrated' to Batthal. Seriously though, all backdoor ways into the country are very dangerous. I honestly can't wait to see what speedrunners can do with this game.

[Raithe]

Been plowing through Horizon Forbidden West on pc now. Completed the main quest and moved onto the Burning Shores dlc.

Pretty good all in all, though possibly not quite as emotionally engaging or as deep a story as the first one. The music score still adds a lot of depth to the game and the emotional story beats you do get. Some of the context sensitive controls can be a bit finnicky, and I've sworn a bunch of times where I've meant to take several small steps carefully at climbable edges and it's read it as the double click for dodge-roll and launched Aloy off a high surface.

Possibly because of the nature of the story this time around, since you aren't plumbing the depths of so many ancient ruins looking for answers you also don't get quite so much of the bittersweet and melancholic datapoints and holo/audio recordings of last moments from the fall.

And I have to say, the end sequence for the main story is incredibly cinematically done for the credits.  Aloy on flying mount going across the landscape, looking across glorious vistas as it slowly covers the entire game world map in lazy S paths, end credits emerging from the landscape only to scatter into glitter on the wind as the you move into them, finally reaching the point of the map the final mission occured just as the sun is setting behind that location and the credits morph into a "thank you for playing" all set to slow, epic orchestral music.

[pmp10]

I was giving Dragons Dogma 2 a try but gave up after reaching the second city.
They managed to stay too faithful to the original, just a bigger map with no notable improvements to speak of.
A shame since the original had great potential, this could have been a great game if only they were willing to work on it.

[Keyrock]

I really appreciate how dark night is in DD2, it's significantly darker than in most games. This makes your lantern extremely important because without it you can't see $#+! at night. Of course, you can always adjust how dark a game is with brightness settings and such, but that only goes so far. I'm really happy to have truly dark night out of the box, I think it looks great , they used just the right amount of bloom to make the glow of the lanterns look really fantastic.

Anyway, I found an elvish town, too bad I don't speak any elvish.I wasn't planning to go there, I just discovered it while exploring. At least I know where it is now, I guess.

[melkathi]

Does your character learn elvish at some point or do you as the player have to learn elvish, with Capcom offering two week intensive elvish language courses?

[Keyrock]

21 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Does your character learn elvish at some point or do you as the player have to learn elvish, with Capcom offering two week intensive elvish language courses?

There is a trait pawns can have that will allow them to translate for you. None of my hired pawns currently has the trait and my main pawn hasn't learned it yet.

[the_dog_days]

1 hour ago, melkathi said:

Does your character learn elvish at some point or do you as the player have to learn elvish, with Capcom offering two week intensive elvish language courses?

No, but you can pick an elf, give them flowers once a day for three days consecutive days and they'll give you a book you can use to teach your pawn elvish and they'll act as translator for you. On an unrelated note, I have an elven innkeeper who's quite taken with me.

Edited March 30 by the_dog_days

[melkathi]

The publisher should hire me as a consultant then.

By having out-of-game mega-transactions, they can circumvent all the negative reviews over in-game micro-transactions.

 

And by making it an elvish language course, they can probably get into a literacy program and have 0 expenses.

Edited March 30 by melkathi

[Mamoulian War]

I have solved the "Mystery" in the Nashville station in Encased. The game has really a lot of text, but I got used to it. The story has taken a very interesting turn there. And I am now hyped, what to expect next.   Even without the knowledge of the game, I am still able to move forward without attacking anyone. But it was already twice very close to fail at Nashville

[the_dog_days]

1 hour ago, melkathi said:

And by making it an elvish language course, they can probably get into a literacy program and have 0 expenses.

You can buy the same scroll to teach elvish in game. It just take longer to unlock that store. All Capcom games have a meta too them. Watch some speedruns of DD:DA. This is just another one. I honestly couldn't tell you what they have for microtransations 'cause I've never needed them even through I bought the Basic B!tch Edition.

[Keyrock]

I'm of the same mind as @the_dog_daysabout the online shop. I'm not as far into DD2 because I'm a slow gamer, I'm only about 24 hours in, but the thought of needing, or wanting, for that matter, anything in the online shop has never crossed my mind. Who is this for? I suppose if someone really really really sucks at the game they could hire pawns significantly higher level and let them do all the fighting. Pawns are cheap to hire so long as they are fairly close to your level, once you go a few levels above your own the price rises very quickly; I guess that's the one scenario I can think of where someone would be inclined to use the online shop. Personally, I like to hire pawns 1 or 2 levels above mine and then I keep them until I'm a couple levels higher then they are, that way I can keep them for 3 or 4 levels rather than swap them out all the time.

Side-note: Hired pawns do not gain levels, only you and your main pawn do.

Edited March 30 by Keyrock

[Hawke64]

Finished Saints Row. Shared the late-game thoughts here. After finishing the post-game, I would add that I would love if the side activities were more tightly bound to the main story and less numerous and repetitive, while the main rivals and companions had more dedicated missions. I liked the Eurekabator quest line - there were 3 missions, they directly referenced Marshall, and each rewarded with a cool gadget. The Food Truck ones, on the other hand, were very similar, not related to anything, and there were 5 of them. So, to unlock the final final mission I spammed the Lottery Ticket in-game cheat to get the funds required to build the final Criminal Ventures. I probably could go and finish all side quests, while the funds built up through the passive income, but I did not want to.

About DDDA. I liked that the nights were dark and the random areas were not FOMO-inducing - there was nothing of note there and nothing to miss by not exploring them meter by meter, while they still provided the sense of travel and adventure, thus, being the opposite of Ubisoft's approach.

[melkathi]

Saints Row side activities are hit and miss. Mind, I felt that way about side activities in previous games as well, and in other games of this type.

I appreciate that in this game they tried to flesh them out. They did not do their best at integrating them. There is so much to do, and repeatedly, the main story is basically over, and you are still in the side activity drudgery. I completed my criminal empire, built the Saints Tower and uninstalled. Getting the skyscraper should feel awesome, not "good, I can uninstall now".

It is unfortunate that the tedium resulting from "too much" side activity can overshadow the effort put in by the writing team to make the activities interesting compared to SR3 for example. Here rampages have a point - you demonstrate the destructive capability of weapons to buyers on the black market. Shady Oaks, the insurance scam, has well written dialogue which elevates is over the exact same activity in previous games.

A couple of questlines, Eurekabator, Let's Pretend, Laundromat, are all well thought out.

On the other hand, while I appreciate the Wages of Fear reference of Bright Future, doing that 12 times? Ugh.

Similarly, grabbing things for Wuzyers Repo again and again is tedious and not that different from Choplifting - they could have cut half the missions from those two and merged them.

And of course, by the time you get to Let's Pretend or First Strike Dojo, things like Pony Express and Wingsuit Saboteur may have tired you out.

I 100%ed the base game. But in the end I looked up locations online.

[Hawke64]

Finished Death of a Wish. In short, it is a good action game with good controls and a variety of builds.
Review:

Spoiler

Death of a Wish is a stylish action game with light roll-playing elements. The story follows Christian (name) who is on his quest to avenge himself and destroy a vaguely Christian-esque religious institution. The protagonist is predefined and talkative, which seems like a step down when compared to the first game, but it fits the context and watching the train wreck unfold can be entertaining.

Spoiler

The developers have confirmed that there is only one ending not counting filling the Corruption bar.

The combat is engaging and satisfying. The available actions include light and heavy attacks with various weapons (2 sets can be equipped simultaneously and switched freely mid-combat), dodging/parrying (same key), and magical abilities with familiars (pets). The customisation options are limited to combat and consist of various modifiers (e.g. restoring own health on hitting an opponent), while the character development system allows to improve the main character's base stats, such as health or physical damage. Unlike Lucah and other Souls-likes, there is no stamina. For some of the boss battles, an AI ally can be summoned. Though, it can be hard to read the environment and attack hitboxes when there are several allies and/or foes.

There is an optional Corruption system (can be disabled from the Inventory screen > Tech), where the protagonist gains Corruption during combat encounters and especially upon taking damage, and it can result in having to start from the beginning of the current chapter after a short bad-end sequence (the level and equipment carry over), but it is very manageable - each well-performed battle reduces the build-up and the early-game battles can be replayed easily.

The map unlocks as the story progresses and the new abilities allow to access more of it, though there are no story consequences for going to one of the areas early, as the main story part is blocked by a barrier.

The keyboard and mouse controls are comfortable and rebindable, though 5-button mice are not supported. Among the difficulty settings, there are options to set the damage dealt and received, and also the speed of the game.

The visual style is strikingly unique and fitting. It also maintains a high readability of the foes' actions and locations. The sound design is as fitting and helpful as the visuals - the attacks have clear audio cues, and the VA is absent. The game saves the progress on checkpoints, and there are few save slots. A certain story event unlocks the ability to revert to the previous chapters, with the equipment and levels carrying over, but the event depends on the player's actions and can be missed easily. Thus, unfortunately, for manual saving one must use Windows Explorer.

Overall, Death of a Wish is an excellent action game and I recommend it.

It was somehow funny to play DoaW alongside Saints Row - both MCs are very good at combat and prone to start it, but where the Boss is laid-back and has a social support circle, Chris spends most of the story being angry and causing unhappy accidents to his immediate environment.

[melkathi]

And poor Chris does not have Juana Villalobbos doing News Flashes about his unhappy accidents?

[Hawke64]

Thanks to the bank holidays (and to ShadySands for the key), finished Citizen Sleeper. It is a visual novel with management elements in a cyberpunk setting (the MC is a runaway cyborg on a falling apart space station). I did not notice much branching in the dialogues - quite often the options were "yes" with different levels of enthusiasm, but the ability to fail or not to complete quest lines somehow alleviated it (there were timers and the MC needed to consume resources to avoid dying and/or death spiralling). The game used only the mouse (including the scroll) and Esc, and they could not be rebound. The most frequent action was dragging something across the screen - dice, items, cash, etc. So, while I did not find the dystopian narrative too compelling or the gameplay too engaging, it was generally fine.

Edited April 1 by Hawke64

[Wormerine]

On 3/30/2024 at 9:40 AM, Raithe said:

Pretty good all in all, though possibly not quite as emotionally engaging or as deep a story as the first one.

Hmm, I must say, I don’t remember H:ZD story to be much more than serviceable. I cool visual design though. Alloy was likeable, if a bit too one note. 
I am tempted to pick it up at some point. While Open World checklist simulators aren’t my cup of tea, Sony ones (Spiderman, Horizon) have been fairly pleasant time wasters, when I wasn’t in a mood to play anything demanding attention. 

[Keyrock]

I decide to take an ox cart from Melve to Vernworth. I hit the doze off button, but about a third of the way through the trip I get woken up by an attack. Saurians, not a big deal, I hop out of the cart and help kill the Saurians. No sooner do I get back in the cart than I see goblins up the road. Gotta kill them too. While I'm fighting the goblins a griffon decides to join the party, absolutely massacres the ox cart, then goes to work on my party and what's left of the ox cart's security detail. I had a long, thrilling, and challenging fight with the griffon and then had to hoof it the rest of the way to Vernworth. So much for fast travel. 

Edited April 2 by Keyrock

[the_dog_days]

13 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Hmm, I must say, I don’t remember H:ZD story to be much more than serviceable. I cool visual design though. Alloy was likeable, if a bit too one note. 
I am tempted to pick it up at some point. While Open World checklist simulators aren’t my cup of tea, Sony ones (Spiderman, Horizon) have been fairly pleasant time wasters, when I wasn’t in a mood to play anything demanding attention. 

I didn't like Aloy. Not 'cause she was a bad character but 'cause I bought the game to fight robot dinosaurs and her cut scenes were the stuff that happened in between the fighting robot dinosaurs.

Edited April 2 by the_dog_days

[Raithe]

With H:ZD it was the layered reveal of the history as it went. It had that start-up that was possibly a bit too long before the serious hooks kicked in, but was nicely structured. The reveals, the half twists of the story as it led you through it all. Combine that with how much you picked up the assorted datapoints and audio recordings of peoples moments during the fall. The emotional delivery behind some of the moments of Operation Enduring Victory added a great level to it. But then again, that depends on how much you got engaged by it all.

Que sera sera.

[Wormerine]

10 hours ago, the_dog_days said:

I didn't like Aloy.

Cute socially awkward gingers though

4 hours ago, Raithe said:

With H:ZD it was the layered reveal of the history as it went. It had that start-up that was possibly a bit too long before the serious hooks kicked in, but was nicely structured. The reveals, the half twists of the story as it led you through it all.

Yeah, you see my memories are completely opposite. It is the opening that I remember fodly as far as narrative is concerned (Alloy being shunned by her local tribe and longing to become), and after the intro I remember being somewhat bored by the story. Yeah, it was generic and predictable (humans created AI, bla bla bla) but it is a game about hunting robot dinasours.

As I am trying to recall it I think my issue might have been that story missions weren't particulalrly interesting, rather than the plot itself.

Anyway, I can't recall story well enough to provide strong opinion piece. Mostly what I remember is beautiful visuals and killing robo-dinasour with its own minigun. AH, I also absolutely hated "RPG" systems. There was some kind of inventory management, I think.

[Wormerine]

Ok I haven't made my gaming updater in a while, and I am sure you are all dying to know of my gaming habits.

 

Dragon's Dogma

I am commiting to finishing this one as my highest priority. I pushed beyond opening and the game became quite playable. There is originality to it, I appreciate, but so far I am still not convinced it is a "good game". I think it was a cult classic for a reason. But perhaps, it will get better as it goes on.

I find quest design frustratingly uneven. So far they seem like excuses to get you our into the wild more than anything else, but them seem to range from handholdy to frustratingly obtuse. So far it more seems like uneven standard an inconsistant design, rather than intentional creative choice.

More importantly, I am not sold on combat, and overal systems. UI is horrendous, that the first thing. But to me the game seems to land in the awkard spot for action-RPG where it is neither decent action game nor an RPG. I am not seeing much possible variation in builds so far, and gameplay seems to revolve around spamming attack and abilities with final result mostly coming down to stats (do I do enough damage and stagger, and can enemy kill me in a single chain of attacks). Of course, the most novel and interesting bit so far are enemy weaknesses - but while capturing imagination, I wasn't particularly blown away gameplay wise. So far it seems simply that certain enemies need to be attacked certain way to made the encounter more managable, but that's about all the depth it has. You either know or you don't. Climbing enemies is cool, though, at least from visual perspective. Still, games like Dark Souls also had optional limb removal/weak spots mechanics, and overall I think their system is far more competent and intricate in both halfs of action-RPG genre.

I like thought, that it is an action-RPG focused on a party - but again, without controlling the party members it's not particularly deep experience.

Edit. Oh, unprofeshional, out of tune singing in the main menu really, really irritates me /edit

 

Prince of Persia: Lost Crown

It's good, but I wasn't blown away by it. Being done by same devs as excellent latest Rayman games platforming is great. Combat is also more complex than your usual metroidvania experience (a bit of side scrolling DMC there), but I also wasn't particularly impressed by it. Yes, there are more attacks, and you can create basic combos, but I just didn't think the combat was deliberate enough to be rewarding. Yes, Hollownight had very basic attacks, but all upgrades, modifiers and player in combat decisions felt very impactful. Not so much in Prince of Persia, and in spite of fairly decent enemy variety, I didn't find enemies particularly memorable. Bosses were fairly challenging, but in what I found to be rather annoying way. In a dark souls fashion, you kinda need to memorise their moves and timing. At least on highest difficulty parrying and dodging isn't very forgiving, so reacting on what you see isn't really possible in my opinion. It's all about dying few times, learning of proper timings and responses to each attack sequence.

As for the motroidvania bit - it felt quite handholdy. It took the game a long time before it actually allowed you to explore a bit, but every area felt to be designed more like a Dark Souls level - a maze that you explore in linear fashion and unlock shortcut, rather than genuine exploration. I was surprised, as with game giving you new ways of marking the map (with in game screenshots) and option at the start between guided and non-guided experience, I expected something a bit more freeform. Most things you need to get back to, are collectibles that you can see but can't get to due to power X, Y and Z being missing (think Arkham series) but personally I find this design more frustrating that rewarding.

Still, overall a good game, though it feels a bit derivativede. It mostly just seems to adapt well tested designsed (a lot of Hollow Knight in there), which I think is a bit of a shame - I would prefer if there was more Prince of Persia in there.

 

Diablo 4

Not much to say. With it coming to GamePass I gave it ago, played for two evenings and got bored. It's not really a criticism of the title, that's how my adventure ends with all hack'n slashes so far. Numbers going up just doesn't excite me much, which is good considering the state of my bank account.

 

Street Fighter 6

150h in and still going. I exhausted single player content, and am deep in online play and getting my butt kicked, and occasionally kicking butt of even bigger noob. I am getting better, but the progress is gradually slowing. Looking at skill ranking I am still a below average player (and by a fair margin). I am still enjoying myself, though, and that's what's important.

So yeah, after years of dipping into fighting games I can recommend SF6 for its onboarding experience. Lengthy singleplayer campaign is a good way of familiarising one self with controls, roster and various mechanics. There is also a fairly gentle transition into online play, where game keeps you in the noob section for a while, before allowing you to get pummeled. I double down on my commitment by buying an arcade stick in an impulse purchase:

 

For one, I am a bit angry at myself that I bought it instead of a Flight Stick, as it would be a more versatile purchase. I am also not sure of how good of a purchase it was, but I am getting around to it. I am still getting proficient with it, and I had to dose my playtime as between it and violin playing I started to strain my wrist. By either my hand got stronger, or spring weaker, and I didn't encounter any issues lately. I am also getting more and more competent with using it, with less wrong imputs and quicker response time.

It's this funny thing, where a stick definitely didn't make me a better player, but the game makes more intuitive sense. Chaining command inputs is far easier for me to wrap my head around, than with buttons.

It being a Capcom game, one also needs to mention monatization. Game has been very stingy with cosmetics costing extra and new character not being earnable in game - now, the game isn't designed as annoyingly as other titles. Shop button is decreet enough, and the game doesn't bombard you with microtransactions like other games do. But the truth is, everything extra will cost you. Unfortuantely, that means that game will be pricey to continue playing as further character passes are released. It's definitely a financial commitment.

Edited April 2 by Wormerine