The Gaming Den

Just to let everyone know you need to play Banner Saga before the new one comes out. Played this game twice in two days and everyone needs to get this pretty gem.

The gameplay isn't that complex or amazing, but the entire game is hand draw (tablet-draw?) and the score is so great for a indie game. Banner saga just has jaw-dropping dressing around the solid game. You have a few choices and story paths to choose from, better than most big triple A companies do now a days. Still surprised about how many languages the game comes in too.

This game has shitty gameplay, but it's pretty and makes pretty sounds. So you have to play it. Or you could watch a movie, instead of being an idiot.

Kaelik wrote:This game has shitty gameplay, but it's pretty and makes pretty sounds. So you have to play it. Or you could watch a movie, instead of being an idiot.

Not shitty cock sucker, its' gameplay just isn't the main draw of the title. Like you know, about every jrpg, rogue-like, or any other game genre that focuses on story more than gameplay.

RedstoneOrc wrote:

Kaelik wrote:This game has shitty gameplay, but it's pretty and makes pretty sounds. So you have to play it. Or you could watch a movie, instead of being an idiot.

Not shitty cock sucker, its' gameplay just isn't the main draw of the title. Like you know, about every jrpg, rogue-like, or any other game genre that focuses on story more than gameplay.

Uh... no. Like, maybe shitty JRPGs, but gameplay is pretty much the main draw of all rogue likes, also good RPGs, also good games.

I found Final Fantasy Tactic's gameplay a lot more enjoyable than Banner Saga's. The story was also pretty good. Sort of. Probably. Maybe that's just my nostalgia. It's a Final Fantasy, okay? Shit's convoluted at best and trippy at worst, but my younger self liked it.

DSMatticus wrote:I found Final Fantasy Tactic's gameplay a lot more enjoyable than Banner Saga's. The story was also pretty good. Sort of. Probably. Maybe that's just my nostalgia. It's a Final Fantasy, okay? Shit's convoluted at best and trippy at worst, but my younger self liked it.

The PSP re-release (War of the Lions) redid the translation and made it more coherent (while adding more shitty Olde English in the place of formal Japanese). It didn't make it any less insane, though.

Banner Saga is an SRPG with changes to the formula that are, as far as I can tell, different for the sake of being different. They're not any better than other SRPGs, and they're not necessarily worse. What it doesn't do is enhance the core gameplay mechanic, which is what you want when you change the formula. For instance, going down the line here:

The core gameplay mechanic is best represented by Final Fantasy Tactics or Shining Force. Turn-based, grid movement, and a discrete set of options you can utilize once per turn.

An alteration that enhances the gameplay mechanic is Valkyria Chronicles. Not only do you have to manage your standard, move, attack, item, etc., characters, but you also have a fairly decent cover system to interact with the typical combat (guns), AND you also get to manage tanks which have a wildly different movement and attack ability, while also trying to take down enemy tanks. It's different, and the mechanics are interesting enough to keep people playing.

An alteration that doesn't enhance the gameplay mechanic and is different for the sake of being different is, in my eyes, Fire Emblem and the Weapon Triangle. It's just one more parameter you have to watch when attacking in a genre that's already more or less defined by the numbers. It's a boring additional step.

Where does Banner Saga fall here? The third, because it's just a boring numbers shift, with options to interact with the new number. That doesn't make it exciting, it just makes it a boring numbers shift with new discrete options to interact with the new number.

I would call it a passable SRPG, because that's exactly what it is. The only thing that makes it stand out is its story and aesthetic, and that's enough for some people.

I played Banner Saga all the way through. Its gameplay was pretty middle of the road for me. I didn't find it particularly good or bad. I would rather play FF Tactics again in a heartbeat though. I enjoyed the story and gameplay much more.

Regarding FFT:

Why did people give the game shit for the line, "Blame yourself or God" it made perfect sense to me?

Also regarding War of Lions:
It was annoying that everyone even low class people were speaking the same level of sophisticated "olde english". Also Argath's line to the thieves:

You, no less human than we? Ha! Now there's a beastly thought. You've
been less than we from the moment your baseborn father fell upon your mother in
whatever gutter saw you sired! You've been chattel since you came into the
world drenched in common blood!

savage as fuck.

Middle English was still rather ponderous compared to the modern language, but it's also a thing where characters in plays (of all forms) are much better at speaking than real people are.

Plus, it's difficult to be properly rude and dismissive of people and still be PG 13 or whatever. And there's the weird thing where their serious curses are comedy lines to us, and our serious curses where just their normal words for everyday stuff. It wasn't until that whole puritan thing caught on that we did away with the words for sexual activity from normal speech.

I played Banner Saga, what I remember was the Oregon Trail minigame between turn-based strategy missions. Still not preordering 2 on principle. Because fuck preorders.

Leress wrote:Regarding FFT:

Why did people give the game shit for the line, "Blame yourself or God" it made perfect sense to me?

I think people gave it shit because until that point (in the original translation) none of the characters seemed quite so nihilistic to bust out a line like that. Either that or they thought it was awkward in the context.

Leress wrote: Why did people give the game shit for the line, "Blame yourself or God" it made perfect sense to me?

That was one of the most memorable lines of the game, turned into a meme among my friends before we even knew what memes were.

none of the characters seemed quite so nihilistic to bust out a line like that

The scene preceding that is Delita watching his little sister die isn't it? Delita has also just kidnapped a girl that was praying in a church.

Argath was a memorable character.

Chronologically it would be a couple years after witnessing his sister's death, but the line itself is delivered during the tutorial prologue at the start of the game. I would call that a mistake - you're not going to be able to really appreciate what the line says about post-timeskip Delita on your first playthrough. But yeah, it's a great line, and the new translation's crack at it is much less poignant.

Relentllessimp wrote:An alteration that doesn't enhance the gameplay mechanic and is different for the sake of being different is, in my eyes, Fire Emblem and the Weapon Triangle. It's just one more parameter you have to watch when attacking in a genre that's already more or less defined by the numbers. It's a boring additional step.

The FE weapon triangle already was a thing before the first final fantasy ever was dreamt of. FE did not do it for the sake of difference, it did it for being pretty much the first tactical rpg.

And it does add a key strategic layer, since the weapon you attack with is he weapon you willb be stuck with the rest of the round. So using a sword leaves you more vulnerable to spear enemies.

Meanwhile FFT has craploads of boring numbers maintenance with armor and acessories and fuck that noise. In FE each unit has only one weapon equipped at a time for passive gear and that is it, allowing you to focus on tactics instead of playing a glorified mass Christmas tree simulator.

maglag wrote: The FE weapon triangle already was a thing before the first final fantasy ever was dreamt of. FE did not do it for the sake of difference, it did it for being pretty much the first tactical rpg.

No, it was not. It was introduced in FE 4: Genealogy of the Holy War for the Super Famicom.

The weapon triangle isn't a disaster or anything but I feel like overall it hurt more games than it definitively helped. For example, Path of Radiance was easy mode even as a newbie to the series because the game gave you a steady drip of good cavaliers, a well-rounded class that would eventually move onto using 2 weapon types in a game where most units only end up using 1 type. It let you run around with axes all day and still have something your back pocket when a sword wielding dodge tank showed up.

maglag wrote:And it does add a key strategic layer, since the weapon you attack with is he weapon you willb be stuck with the rest of the round. So using a sword leaves you more vulnerable to spear enemies.

I'm sorry, maglag, I try to give you the benefit of the doubt but this is just wrong. The Weapon Triangle just means "Attack this enemy with this unit, this enemy with this unit, and this enemy with this unit". It's just one boring additional step to the numbers you're already keeping an eye on - like HP, Attack, Defense, and Skills.

maglag wrote:Meanwhile FFT has craploads of boring numbers maintenance with armor and acessories and fuck that noise. In FE each unit has only one weapon equipped at a time for passive gear and that is it, allowing you to focus on tactics instead of playing a glorified mass Christmas tree simulator.

And I already said that FFT is an example of the baseline. Bitching about it being boring, gameplay-wise, doesn't really add anything. I could just as easily say that the Job system adds a layer of strategic depth, like using a Black Mage throwing Ice spells at Bombs and Fire spells at goblins or using a Summoner to tear up the entire battlefield or breaking the game with a Calculator. It'd be lying, just like you with the weapon triangle.

Hyper Light Drifter is amazeballs.

K wrote:Hyper Light Drifter is amazeballs.

It looked interesting. What's the selling points on gameplay?

Maxus wrote:

K wrote:Hyper Light Drifter is amazeballs.

It looked interesting. What's the selling points on gameplay?

Old Top Down Zelda meets Dark Souls Combat, but with the platforming challenges of more modern Zelda crammed into a 2d game.

RelentlessImp wrote:

maglag wrote:And it does add a key strategic layer, since the weapon you attack with is he weapon you willb be stuck with the rest of the round. So using a sword leaves you more vulnerable to spear enemies.

I'm sorry, maglag, I try to give you the benefit of the doubt but this is just wrong. The Weapon Triangle just means "Attack this enemy with this unit, this enemy with this unit, and this enemy with this unit". It's just one boring additional step to the numbers you're already keeping an eye on - like HP, Attack, Defense, and Skills.

Maglag is objectively correct about the mechanical behavior.

Using a sword to attack means you are more vulnerable to being attacked by spear enemies unless you manage to unequip the sword, which is possible but logistically complicated. So there are circumstances when players will deliberately avoid using a weapon triangle advantage when attacking so they aren't vulnerable to other enemies in the area.

name_here wrote:Using a sword to attack means you are more vulnerable to being attacked by spear enemies unless you manage to unequip the sword, which is possible but logistically complicated. So there are circumstances when players will deliberately avoid using a weapon triangle advantage when attacking so they aren't vulnerable to other enemies in the area.

And how, precisely, is this different from keeping a squishy SRPG character, say a mage, away from the physical powerhouses, while making certain that you don't clump up your characters to avoid taking it up the ass from area of effect attacks? It's still baseline gameplay decisions.

Maxus wrote:

K wrote:Hyper Light Drifter is amazeballs.

It looked interesting. What's the selling points on gameplay?

First of all, the game is absolutely gorgeous. Other than that, it's a metroidvania top-down action 'platformer' with Dark Souls-esque way of giving narrative. No one speaks, occasional furries just show you pictures of their important life events and it's up to you to guess what any of that means.

RelentlessImp wrote:

name_here wrote:Using a sword to attack means you are more vulnerable to being attacked by spear enemies unless you manage to unequip the sword, which is possible but logistically complicated. So there are circumstances when players will deliberately avoid using a weapon triangle advantage when attacking so they aren't vulnerable to other enemies in the area.

And how, precisely, is this different from keeping a squishy SRPG character, say a mage, away from the physical powerhouses, while making certain that you don't clump up your characters to avoid taking it up the ass from area of effect attacks? It's still baseline gameplay decisions.

Well, yes ultimately it does end up manifesting as deciding who to move where and who to attack and what weapons to do that with. It is an SRPG and that is the entire game, and Valkyria Chronicles reduces to that with a bit of twitch reflexes courtesy of interception fire. You position your soldiers where they can't be easily shot, you shoot anti-infantry weapons at infantry and anti-tank weapons at tanks unless you can get a particularly kickass gun in position to shoot their radiator.

But it's different because you watch the weapon triangle in addition to keeping your mages away from physical powerhouses and in some maps avoiding clumping up. So there's more to your baseline gameplay decisions than if the weapon triangle didn't exist. It creates scenarios where people might use a weapon that is numerically inferior to another weapon It means having access to two weapon types is more valuable than having access to one of them. It allows for additional alterations like Reaver weapons. It provides an incentive for luring enemies into using a specific weapon so they're vulnerable on the next turn.

Yes, it's another thing to keep track of, but fucking everything is another thing to keep track of. The SRPG genre is about keeping track of a ton of things that influence who moves where and who they attack. The weapon triangle adds an additional factor that does not always reduce to just using whoever has a triangle advantage. It's a very simple mechanic, the GUI helpfully highlights it for you, and it interacts with other mechanics to produce far-reaching implications like ever using axes; they hit hard but without triangle advantage they just aren't accurate enough. But with the triangle:

Whipstitch wrote:For example, Path of Radiance was easy mode even as a newbie to the series because the game gave you a steady drip of good cavaliers, a well-rounded class that would eventually move onto using 2 weapon types in a game where most units only end up using 1 type. It let you run around with axes all day and still have something your back pocket when a sword wielding dodge tank showed up.

Paladins are always prized for their flexibility and PoR's crop was notably badass, and axes are valuable against the lancers that tend to make up the bulk of the enemy forces. Still, I honestly prefer focusing on lances because of their superior base stat profile, while I like swords even better but they often leave you down-triangle. Also, before PoR axes were honestly pretty shit even with the triangle, courtesy of cripplingly high weight. There's a reason the series has ditched the weight mechanic and expanded the triangle.

Weapons had a weight stat, which tended to be higher for better weapons and within a tier went sword<lance<axe. Pre-PoR, units had a Build stat, and effectively subtracted (weight-build) from their speed in a fight. Speed is really fucking important and tended to be even more important for units with low build. It was supposed to make people not just use the highest-tier weapon all the time, but it had a nasty habit of rendering Pegasus Knights and axe dudes borderline useless because they couldn't eat the penalty from the weapons they needed to keep up on damage output. PoR redid this to use (weight-strength) and the numbers work out to it basically being a non-issue for physical combatants.

Fates has replaced it with a system that actually works, where pretty much every weapon comes with a drawback and it's best to keep a mix on all your dudes so you can pick an appropriate one for a given situation. I'm a bit ambivalent about the silver weapon penalty; it gives a stacking -2 strength penalty after a fight that goes away at a rate of 1 per turn, which is absolutely crippling in a sustained fight. Relegates them to being can openers.

Longes wrote:

Maxus wrote:

K wrote:Hyper Light Drifter is amazeballs.

It looked interesting. What's the selling points on gameplay?

First of all, the game is absolutely gorgeous. Other than that, it's a metroidvania top-down action 'platformer' with Dark Souls-esque way of giving narrative. No one speaks, occasional furries just show you pictures of their important life events and it's up to you to guess what any of that means.

It's moody and evocative and beautiful.

Tough as shit sometimes, but I'm actually staying away from help forums because the figuring out is so charged.