Video Games

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 1:32 am

Or Mega Man Zero 2. Fucking Elpizo.

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 2:56 am

Was Elpizo that hard? I beat him without any problem.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 12:11 am

I remember him being tough, but it's been a while since I've played MMZ2. But you know, YMMV and all that as well.

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Mar 10, 2016 5:56 pm

I've mostly completed the Oblivion main story, all of the guilds, and most of Shivering Isles and I have to say one thing: I used to think Draugr and Dwemer ruins in Skyrim were monotonous and samey, I literally had no idea how much an improvement that was over Oblivion's dungeons. I can see there are a lot of things that Oblivion did better, dungeon design is not one of them.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 7:05 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I've mostly completed the Oblivion main story, all of the guilds, and most of Shivering Isles and I have to say one thing: I used to think Draugr and Dwemer ruins in Skyrim were monotonous and samey, I literally had no idea how much an improvement that was over Oblivion's dungeons. I can see there are a lot of things that Oblivion did better, dungeon design is not one of them.

Wut. That is almost exactly the opposite of my experience with Skyrim. I remember the Oblivion dungeons being pretty bad (mostly linear, but with some occasional branches and hidden passages and shortcuts and the like) and the Skyrim dungeons literally being a straight line that someone bent in a few places.

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Mar 10, 2016 8:02 pm

Perhaps "dungeon design" was the incorrect way to describe it. Perhaps "dungeon aesthetics" might be a better word to use. The Skyrim dungeons look better. Oblivion dungeons are uninteresting to look at and although the layout tends to be more interesting and complex the actual look of the dungeons are a bit drab.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 11:33 pm

Morrowind had the best dungeons. Morrowind had the best everything.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 11:36 pm

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada has entered open beta.

Let the galaxy burn!

Though I feel like the game speed should be maybe a bit lower because I keep having to shift into slowdown mode to coordinate things in the skirmish mode and you can't do that in multiplayer.

Archmage Joda · Post by **Archmage Joda** » Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:17 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I've mostly completed the Oblivion main story, all of the guilds, and most of Shivering Isles and I have to say one thing: I used to think Draugr and Dwemer ruins in Skyrim were monotonous and samey, I literally had no idea how much an improvement that was over Oblivion's dungeons. I can see there are a lot of things that Oblivion did better, dungeon design is not one of them.

Out of curiosity, what are some of the "a lot of things" that Oblivion did better?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:30 pm

Archmage Joda wrote:
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I've mostly completed the Oblivion main story, all of the guilds, and most of Shivering Isles and I have to say one thing: I used to think Draugr and Dwemer ruins in Skyrim were monotonous and samey, I literally had no idea how much an improvement that was over Oblivion's dungeons. I can see there are a lot of things that Oblivion did better, dungeon design is not one of them.
Out of curiosity, what are some of the "a lot of things" that Oblivion did better?

I can't speak for Count, but quest design, having actual stats, the actual dungeon layouts, and to a lesser extent the overworld and city designs. Although at least that very last one could be more subjective than the others.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sat Mar 12, 2016 12:12 am

I liked the overworld design for Skyrim better, but yeah that's pretty much it. I liked that I couldn't complete all of the various guild questlines in less than an hour (I do two jobs correctly and all of a sudden I'm the chosen one that saves the guild? I know that fantasy game plots tend to be contrived, but come on!). I'm not that fond of HOW Oblivion handled stat growth but at least there was some planning involved and it felt like I had more control over my character.

Except the Oblivion gates. Those boring things can fuck right off. I give them an "A" for effort but the execution was lackluster. I was mostly ignoring the non-story gates until I got to the point where I had to clear one gate outside every city then I could no longer be arsed to do it.

EDIT: Also, Oblivion seems to have a lot more humor than Skyrim as well.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Mar 19, 2016 11:34 pm

Yep. Shadowrun Online/Shadowrun Chronicles is still bad.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Tue Mar 22, 2016 5:20 am

Finally got around to playing Tales of Zestiria. I... have no words for this game. I'm a giant fanboy of Tales games, but this game. Holy shit, this game. The characters are wildly unlikable. I see why they made Alisha's Story, because she's the only character that you're likely to give a fuck about and she is missing from most of the main game story.

I'd like to talk about Alisha for a moment, though. Alisha is fucking awesome. You know how video game princesses basically fuck off and don't do anything important? Alisha is a legitimate fantasy world princess involved in politics, holding her seat of power, and having her own political ambitions. She's an actual princess, and that's pretty fucking cool, and a goddamned godsend. She briefly spends a stint as Sorey's Squire, and I am SO glad the story took the direction it did (harnessing that power nearly fucking kills her, so she fucks off to go be an awesome example of a princess). She is the best anime princess ever.

However, she isn't the main focus without the DLC. So, back to the actual game.

I have never, ever run into a Tales game that tries to discourage me from playing it so fucking actively. The combat is fucking TEDIOUS, which is a word I have never, ever used for a Tales game. It relies way too much on a process called Armatization (which combines a Human character and a Seraph into a superpowered being) just to carve through the chunks of meat that are your enemies. Worse yet, Armatization reduces your in-combat party. You have two humans and two Seraphs at any one given time, but when you Armatize you lose access to the Seraph. So your combat party continually shifts from four active characters, to three active characters, to two active characters.

They nerfed Free Running. The combat system utilizes a CC-like system like Graces and Hearts, but the CC is used for EVERYTHING. Even your basic attacks are arte chains. Free Running used to let you get out of the fucking way while recharging this meter, but now it halts it building. The only way to regain the meter is standing still and blocking. That's a fucking irritating direction for a game based on a fluid, free-roaming combat system to take.

The equipment system is fucking ass. You have a grid, and you need to line up symbols on a grid for bonuses. The symbols come from skills attached to your armor and weapons. The grid is two sets of 5x5 squares, and you get massive bonuses from lining up a line of five vertically or horizontally, to the point where you find yourself using the same gear for basically ages until it massively outpaces your old gear - and even then, you lose stats switching to it.

In addition, they use a Tales of the Abyss-style "combat skills" grid, and THOSE skills are all ass, too. Worse yet, instead of gaining them while leveling, you have to fulfill absolutely annoying combat "tricks". It is legitimately enraging.

Sorey is the least-likable protagonist ever, but the Seraphs are at least fun. The one that makes Sorey the Shepherd (the legendary "savior"/"messiah" archetype in the world's mythos) is your typical older-than-Jesus anime teenager who doesn't tell you fucking anything because of an oath she made, but the others are alright. Your protagonist grew up with Mikleo, and you definitely get the "we are brothers" feeling from the two of them. Edna is probably the most fun one, as she is literally Toph - even being Earth-aligned, a loli, and unmistakably awesome at what she does.

Let's talk about the second protagonist for a moment, though. Rose. Rose is a goddamned Mary Sue of the first degree. She's an otherwise normal human, who has been accompanied by a Seraph since she was a child, who is also an Assassin and the daughter of a famed general and leads her own merry little band of assassins. When Alisha leaves the party, she soon joins up as Sorey's second Squire, and rapidly acclimates to the ability to see and Armatize with Seraphs - things that the protagonist, Sorey, the motherfucking Magic Jesus, HAD COLOSSAL AMOUNTS OF TROUBLE WITH! The game really feels like it wanted to make her the protagonist, but instead shoehorns her in alongside Sorey and Sues her up to the Nth degree. Holy shit does Rose piss me off.

I have yet to finish the game, because it bores me to fucking tears to play. The combat isn't fun, the story isn't engaging. The only reason to get this is to play Alisha's Story so you can see what an actual fantasy princess is supposed to look like, but like 90% of it won't make sense without playing the main game. Oh my god, this game blows.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Mar 22, 2016 8:02 am

I ended up having to memorize what moves were good against what types to get chains going. I didn't really use armatization except on bosses.

The story got a lot better for me once it started focusing on what the fuck is up with the villain, why he is like he is and what you can do about it.

I'll concede on the characters. I just didn't like Sorey that much. There was something missing. People just kept shrugging it off as "Sorey is Sorey" in the story, but it was like they were trying to hit some of the notes Tales games hit about personal dynamics without actually trying to work at it.

If you haven't reached it already, I'll say they DO explain what the fuck is up with Rose and it makes some sense. For one, she didn't know she was accompanied by a Seraph.

Alisha is definitely awesome.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Tue Mar 22, 2016 11:06 am

I've spent a lot of time just dicking around because the story bores me so much and the cutscenes take just a little too fucking long to get to the goddamned point. I did try to go blow up Edna's brother, and even reduced him down to ??? hp. Apparently I need something from later in the plot to actually kill him, despite Armatizing with Zaveid and tearing him a new asshole for about 30 straight minutes hoping his HP would eventually become a number again and reach 0.

Oh, and Heldalf is on my shitlist. That motherfucker showed up, kicked Sorey's ass, took away his ability to see and communicate with Seraphs for about half an hour, and was the primary reason Sorey met Rose and we got to know her as a 'character'. That motherfucker needs to be murdered for that alone.

I swear, this game... and I even liked Innocence! And fucking Eternia!

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:16 am

Last Week came out a game on PS4 (get a PC release later) called Salt & Sanctuary. Think 2D Dark Souls, which stylistically, and to some degree mechanically it does resemble a Souls game. I'd definitely recommend it to Maxus to check out, since I know he likes Souls-games quite a bit. It's by Ska-Studios kats who did Dishwasher-series of action games and other such.

I think the major bits where it differs, is in the leveling is handled by spending your Souls Salt on points you put into a very large stat-tree sorta like Path of Exile. Which handles the stat points, as well as proficiency's in types of weapons, armor, or arcane/divine magic equivalent, there being 5 tiers or rank of each kind. This is kinda nice as you can spend your XP, bank the points for later to put into proficiencys with higher point requirements (ex: Rank 3 prof costs 3pts). Also you can totally jump, there's a couple combo you can do, like to uppercut a foe into the air. You also get story upgrades that give you greater ability to maneuver around, sorta Castlevania-RPG esque in that respect. Finally, rolling takes a bit of getting used to, as need to be practically hugging the enemy to roll past them, which is pretty pivotal to know when you're fighting bosses....

I quite like it overall though I've yet to beat it, but have about 30hrs into the thing. Oh, and It has a wiki as well.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:39 am

Ooh, thanks for the rec, I'll record it.

Right now I'm jumping between Stardew Valley, MKX, and Fallout 4.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:51 am

How's the combat feel in saltsanc, you fought any other players?

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 7:34 am

OgreBattle wrote:How's the combat feel in saltsanc, you fought any other players?

I'm not sure if you can fight other players or not, though I know there is an item to PvP with your Local Co-op teammate. Either way if it is possible, it's not something I've tried or would be interested in.

The Combat plays out in similar feel to Souls-games I would think, where the level makes you slow down a little bit to figure out what you need to do. The game seems to reward Heavy armored, big weapon users more than casters in this game. Running up to enemies with a big-ol Warhammer to smash face helps take out foes pretty easily. Rolling aside, I would probably say the Combat is tight, only a couple times I felt like the game cheated me (one is an enemy attacks fast enough to seemingly stun-lock you, while the other is pure BS or the Spindlebeast ). I think at first, I had trouble watching my Stamina bar, whether because been forever I've played a Souls-game, or perhaps just the new format throwing me off.

Right now I'm jumping between Stardew Valley, MKX, and Fallout 4

Oh nice, I plan to be playing the new Automatron DLC this week. I've got Stardew Valley on my list, never played a Harvest Moon game (I've watched someone play the SNES and N64 ones years ago), but what can you tell me about that game?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 8:48 am

Aryxbez wrote:
Right now I'm jumping between Stardew Valley, MKX, and Fallout 4
Oh nice, I plan to be playing the new Automatron DLC this week. I've got Stardew Valley on my list, never played a Harvest Moon game (I've watched someone play the SNES and N64 ones years ago), but what can you tell me about that game?

Depends on how much you want to know. What I tell everyone, though, is this:

1) There's a questline involving giving offerings, completing a set of offerings--like one each of spring crops--gives you a decent-ish reward, like something you might not be able to craft you. Completing a -big- set of offerings gives you a -big- reward, something that increases quality of life in the game. Like fixiing up minecarts so you can fast-travel between some handy locations, or repairing the broken-down greenhouse on your farm, so you can grow stuff in any seasons.

Get started on the damn bundles as soon as you can. No shame in wiki'ing that shit.

2) The game gives you a lot of leeway in how you make your money. You can grow and sell crops, or you can build things like kegs so you can make wine or juice out of your products and sell them for a multiple of what their base value is. You can do the same deal with animal products--you can sell that cow's milk, or turn it into cheese for a markup. Or you can fish and set crab traps all day to pick up cash. Or a combination of any or all of he above.

3) IN GENERAL, money in your pocket is money not growing (literally) into even more money. Invest in seeds and tools and they pay you the hell back.

Now the more spoilery advice, things I've learned after a restart:

A) Have a whack of cash when the first festival rolls around (You can get two crops of parsnips out before there, you can buy strawberry seeds at the festival and those things are a great cash crop.

B) Save up wood, chop a lot of trees. 300 pieces of wood lets you repair a bridge down at the beach, so you can reach a tidal pool area that spawns coral and urchins you can grab and sell each day for cash, so if you do that early on you can get a steady cash flow going while you're waiting for harvests. Don't clear cut all your trees, though, they'll spread seeds and grow more trees, and you can make tappers so you can get maple syrup or pine sap out of them.

C) You want to get a steel/iron axe, you use it to get to this forest area.

D) There's a merchant wagon that appears on Fridays and Sundays, they sell a randomized selection of stuff at semi-random prices, you can find some things out of season, and items to complete bundles, also out of season. Or stuff like a duck's feather without having a duck. Or fish that are a pain in the ass to catch.

I've got more specific stuff if you just want the walkthrough, but that's enough to get you started.

Count Arioch the 28th · Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:12 pm

I recently got FF4 and FF4: The After Years for free on Steam. Some thoughts:

* I had previously played a few of the episodes on Wii. Although I'm only a bit farther than I was in the Wii version it does seem that the balance is a bit better. So far useless characters seem less useless (I haven't played Edward's scenario yet and I would assume it would take the infinite power of Christ to make Harley worthwhile, but Ceodore and the Eblan Weiner Patrol seem a bit better overall. Except the dolls, they're still terrible.).

* Instead of using the ff4 advance engine they used the ff4 DS one. However, thus far the game doesn't give me the impression it hates me unlike FF4 DS. In fact, the game thus far seems a little TOO easy, although that might change once I clear the scenarios and enter the endgame (one can hope, anyway).

* The challenge dungeons and cameo bosses are gone. I remember the challenge dungeons sucking balls unless you manipulated the RNG to get something that's not worthless at the end, however the cameo bosses were worked into the plot so it might lose some of the childhood-destroying impact the endgame has...

* Supposedly the items you'd get in the challenge dungeons are available for sale in the last part of the game so you don't miss out, I'm not sure how they worked in the item drops that the cameo bosses had yet. And no proto-babil, unfortunately.

All in all, I do like it better than the Wii version (and the fact I didn't have to buy all the chapters separately, but I'm not sure I'd be as happy had I purchased the game with my own money.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 11:51 pm

Urk, i had forgotten how bad the grind on World of Warships can be x.x

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 4:12 pm

Zestria is on my list of games to get back to; I got distracted by Fallout 4 a bit after Rose got the ability to Armatize. Edna is most definitely the best. I kind of like the rest of the main characters, and Rose's ease with armatization is explicitly and openly sinister in origin. Lailah's open refusal to explain important information at least manifests amusingly, though I hope there's a good reason.

Abyss really, really pissed me off with people not telling the main character important things. Mostly because of how much shit they give Luke when he triggers a major disaster by accident because he didn't know that would happen because no one in the party would answer a goddamn question. Apparently purely because they liked feeling smugly superior rather than because there was some actual reason. They could have averted the catastrophe by telling him what they knew about his powers when he asked.

The thing that bugs me about the story in Zestria is that Sorrey is straight-up the messiah but there's this whole plotline where if he uses his powers for dramatic miracles apparently that will make people hate and fear him. Even though they're devout followers of the religion he's a messiah of!

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 5:16 pm

name_here wrote:Zestria is on my list of games to get back to; I got distracted by Fallout 4 a bit after Rose got the ability to Armatize. Edna is most definitely the best. I kind of like the rest of the main characters, and Rose's ease with armatization is explicitly and openly sinister in origin. Lailah's open refusal to explain important information at least manifests amusingly, though I hope there's a good reason.
.....

The thing that bugs me about the story in Zestria is that Sorrey is straight-up the messiah but there's this whole plotline where if he uses his powers for dramatic miracles apparently that will make people hate and fear him. Even though they're devout followers of the religion he's a messiah of!

They go into both of those, but mostly in skits later on. So without a bit of guilt:

1) Lailah can't answer questions about Important Stuff because she's sworn that whole oath/vow thing. It's not explained how it works, just that for seraphs (and possibly Shepherds), ritual behaviors or sacrifices makes things happen. Lailah can bestow the power to purify evil, but has to relegate herself to a backseat role and watch each Shepherd make the same mistakes and flounder around and figure out things every time. Dezel also has sort of deal going, he files his teeth to points as his sacrifice. Zaveid doesn't wear a shirt because he's got to lose a layer of skin each month. Apparently it's some Japanese cultural thing that they just took for granted--stuff like not cutting your hair until you make an A on your finals or something. And a bit of Arthurian stuff in there two, they were big on wearing garters and keeping scars for obscure reasons.

2) Because Sorey, badass as he grows to be, can't do everything. He can't heal the sick, he can't be everywhere at once. The religion makes it harder for him, personally, because people are going to ask "Why didn't the Shepherd save my husband from that rockslide" or "Why doesn't the Shepherd cure my daughter's epilepsy". The lower-key he can stay while doing the save-the-world-stuff, the less heartache he'd encounter.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Mar 24, 2016 7:41 pm

No, 2 is a separate issue that is quite well explained. What I'm talking about is in the bridge scene, where he only raises support columns because of that issue, and then the witnesses who specifically requested that he have Edna use heruse his vast magical powers to help them rebuild the bridge back away in fear when he actually does it.