The Gaming Den

i liked in the old might and magic games how you could become an undead vampire or go the path of the lich . .

Iduno wrote:I mean, at least let me run the world from the shadows with some sort of guild of assassins/thieves/Illuminati.

Any game more complicated than solitaire needs to let me just say "fuck it, I'll show the villain what evil really is."

That reminds me that Fire Emblem Conquest was pretty disappointing in that I was hoping that for once we could play as the conquering assholes, but your "evil" party turns to be mostly "we're actually good inside even if we look all evil in public and are pushing towards reforms to make our kingdom more fair, also get rid of our evil king that's been possessed by a demon."

At least we still get to conquer the "good" kingdom and stab all the honorable ninjas and samurais and shrine maidens, and some possible members of our party are genuine "why aren't we killing them yet?" bastards, so baby steps.

Preface: One of the quirks/issues of when I play strategy/rpg vidya that has a party of different characters, is that once I find my feet I fall into a rut and generally use the same setup all the way through to the final boss. For example, LISA The Painful RPG has ~30 party members, all of whom are delightful motherfuckers, I pretty much just stuck with three dudes the way through.

I don't think anyone else has played this game, but Steamworld Heist appears to have solved this problem. I have a couple of favorites, but I never have the same party two missions in a row. If I had to guess why, I'd give it two reasons:

A) So much of the game is tactic/aim-based and there are no limits on who can carry what equipment, so even when a party member falls behind in levels you can just give them the best gear and position them well and you'll be fine.

B) Every mission is structured differently (and I'm pretty sure it's partly procedural too), and even the party size is different so one-comp-fits-all approaches don't really work. (This can be a problem sometimes, since sometimes you don't know/remember what a mission is like in advance, so you pick a character that's a bad fit and becomes a liability but it's not a death sentence).

tl;dr: Steamworld Heist is an interesting strategy-RPG hybrid that manages to fix some of the problems & bad habits I have with its contemporaries.

maglag wrote:

Iduno wrote:I mean, at least let me run the world from the shadows with some sort of guild of assassins/thieves/Illuminati.

Any game more complicated than solitaire needs to let me just say "fuck it, I'll show the villain what evil really is."

That reminds me that Fire Emblem Conquest was pretty disappointing in that I was hoping that for once we could play as the conquering assholes, but your "evil" party turns to be mostly "we're actually good inside even if we look all evil in public and are pushing towards reforms to make our kingdom more fair, also get rid of our evil king that's been possessed by a demon."

At least we still get to conquer the "good" kingdom and stab all the honorable ninjas and samurais and shrine maidens, and some possible members of our party are genuine "why aren't we killing them yet?" bastards, so baby steps.

You'd enjoy Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

You also unlock cuter girls in the atrocity route



Really enjoying Nier Automata: Read zero spoilers so I was genuinely surprised by the early game developments with the enemies

@Iduno
I loved Fallout 1 and 2 for that.
Indiscriminate Genocide was an option.
If you were good enough at being deadly, you could simply kill every last living thing on the map. Aside from the re-occurring random encounters of course.

OgreBattle wrote:

maglag wrote:

Iduno wrote:I mean, at least let me run the world from the shadows with some sort of guild of assassins/thieves/Illuminati.

Any game more complicated than solitaire needs to let me just say "fuck it, I'll show the villain what evil really is."

That reminds me that Fire Emblem Conquest was pretty disappointing in that I was hoping that for once we could play as the conquering assholes, but your "evil" party turns to be mostly "we're actually good inside even if we look all evil in public and are pushing towards reforms to make our kingdom more fair, also get rid of our evil king that's been possessed by a demon."

At least we still get to conquer the "good" kingdom and stab all the honorable ninjas and samurais and shrine maidens, and some possible members of our party are genuine "why aren't we killing them yet?" bastards, so baby steps.

You'd enjoy Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

You also unlock cuter girls in the atrocity route

You mean the chaos path? Will probably give it a shot but Tactics Ogre games can sometimes be a bit obscure on what route one's taking.

Half-related recent comic:

At least Fire Emblem Heroes lets us play with the avatars-gone-evil-gods.

OgreBattle wrote: Really enjoying Nier Automata: Read zero spoilers so I was genuinely surprised by the early game developments with the enemies

You played any of the previous games? Because the "enemy development" in Nier Automata is something that already had kinda happened before. I guess it's a game that really works well as a standalone.

Gorgeous designs though. We need more cute robot maids to counter all the men with bad facial hair spawning all around in games for the last years.

Actually it's the other way around, the Chaos route is "stop this lunacy!!" the Law route is "I will do what is... necessary of me to win this war"

No haven't played the other Nier games, so yeah enjoying it as a standalone. I normally dislike playing as women in action games, but the Yoshida design for 2B is just so charming and follows in the asstastic tradition of Ashley Riot.

Ah, thanks!

As for action women, Drakengard 3 reached really silly levels since the main plot is that you're a female dragon rider fighting a team of magical girls that are the joint rulers of the land.

And after killing each of them the main character enslaves their boyfriends to start building up her own male harem which can be used as companions in battle and it's heavily implied she fucks them all every night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_vg6fH9eEw
§$%&!!!
That's gonna be a hassle to basically completely relearn the entire game. AGAIN!

OgreBattle wrote:I normally dislike playing as women in action games

That's racist.

There should be more games with female heroines as the main playable character. Enough of these bearded, Go-Bots loving cis-men.

That's sexist.

Stahlseele wrote:That's sexist.

It's neither. He said he doesn't like playing with female avatars.

Yeah, sexism is where people who don't like playing as female avatars (or males in heavily sexualised outfits) can play 95% of games without that being a problem for them, and people who don't like playing as male avatars (or females in heavily sexualised outfits) can play maybe 20% of games without that being a problem for them.

If Ogrebattle had said games should not be made with female protagonists so he didn't have ever even have to consider playing through with a female avatar, that would be sexist.

If he said games should normally have the option for female and male protagonists and avatars, that would be feminist.

Instead he just doesn't like some things, and that is fine. You're allowed to not like things, and avoid doing things you don't like, so long as you're not forcing your preferences on others, that is just a normal and healthy thing.

But it doesn't hurt try the green eggs and ham at some point.

Has anyone enjoyed playing Hard West?

The art is beautiful and they obviously spent time writing interesting (but short) storylines for the scenarios, but the actual playing of the game just doesn't seem very fun to me. I've done two scenarios and I think I'm out.

I was joking about the whole "racist" thing - I was just making a Cinemasins reference. I mean, I personally like games with female main characters, but I have nothing against people who don't.

@Sharpnel, I think most of them missed the joke, not surprised.

@K I've played up to the bit where you get gunned and come back down so far. Has a bit of an Xcom meets Deadlands feel to it minus the whole management bit.

@Tussock I do not like racing games and ham, I do not like them Sam I am. I will not play them in this life, if you insist, I will cut you with a knife. </s>

maglag wrote:Ah, thanks!

As for action women, Drakengard 3 reached really silly levels since the main plot is that you're a female dragon rider fighting a team of magical girls that are the joint rulers of the land.

And after killing each of them the main character enslaves their boyfriends to start building up her own male harem which can be used as companions in battle and it's heavily implied she fucks them all every night.

Yoko Taro is still the world's greatest treasure. He must be protected.

I enjoyed the joke and took part in my own way.

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I love racing sims. Especially the ones where you start in a crap car with no upgrades and have to do like twenty full length races to get a better car to race against better cars for more money to get a better car to do it again.

But I find once I get the best car, and am racing the best guys in the biggest races, that's kinda game over, never finish them. as I wasn't playing to win it, I was playing to get the better car, and once I get the best one it's not even fun, the results just don't matter, and I have no interest in starting over in the worst car because I already have the best car in that other save.

But if the game is just the one car, no upgrades, that will play to the end and win, because that is the only reward in that game. Nice to have difficulty options for a replay.

Racers that hold me longest are not linearly progressive, but there's different things I can race with, so I can skip into harder races with worse cars or easier races on better tracks or one offs or seasons with arbitrary cars and tracks I've unlocked, and doing more generally unlocks different stuff rather than better stuff. Those are very cool.

I'm like that with a lot of games. I will put up with a lot of bullshit to get the iterative rewards, but once I have the best reasonably obtainable one, fuck that noise. Can't get into games with unlimited reward piles at all, those really don't feel like rewards any more after a very short time. Random rewards can be good, Diablo II kinda stuff, but mostly because I can restart with a new class and try new things with the same random reward system if I get stuck or bored.

And multi-player, eh, you kinda have the play the same amount as other people, or have alts that each play the same amount as various other people, and getting ahead of people, or a long way behind, it just sucks all the fun out of it. All that stuff needs serious catch-up mechanics. And if I'm way better or worse than the person I'm playing with in general, that does not suit me in the long run at all.

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But mostly, Dwarf Fortress. Build a fort, dorfs die horribly, reclaim the fort, reclaim dies horribly, adventure to clear out problem, adventurer dies horribly, reclaim anyway, fort takes over the world then dies horribly, start new save, for dies horribly, ... it's much better again now the tantrum spirals are back in.

On the topic of "atrocity vs nice guy" routes, EVO on the snes let you save a family of herbivores against the t rex gang, then you had the option of eating them yourself.

But if you spare them, the warm heart of compassion unlocks the path of mammal evolution, which is needed for the "become Adam & Eve" ending.

Otherwise you can be an awesome dinosaur/bird man and populate Earth with your monstrous progeny

K wrote:Has anyone enjoyed playing Hard West?

The art is beautiful and they obviously spent time writing interesting (but short) storylines for the scenarios, but the actual playing of the game just doesn't seem very fun to me. I've done two scenarios and I think I'm out.

I wanted to like the game, but just couldn't.

I liked the cover system, including cover changing when you shot something over. The luck as armor thing was kind of weird, but it worked. The choices you got that gave you rewards between fights felt like you were choosing blind and hoping you guessed the right thing.

It's probably the last one that got me to drop the game. I didn't want to feel like I was playing wrong when there was a definite right way to play, and I didn't want to use a guide, but the game didn't give you enough information to make informed decisions.

As has been mentioned a few times in the "Fixing CoC" thread: Cultist Simulator sucks ass.

It is the kind of game that will appeal to anyone who likes Lovecraft etc. based on the writing and concept, but as a game it is just so unbelievably opaque and terrible that you would certainly be better off getting a text dump and experiencing the narrative that way. It's a frustrating, tedious plate-spinner that plays as though it was made by Satan's mobile games division.

That's overstating it. Zynga got up to way worse horrorshows than Cultist Simulator ever even got close to. I do recommend playing it with the cheat codes on, though, and just arbitrarily granting yourself whatever the RNG screws you out of, and giving yourself eighteen gazillion of whatever resource you're sick of spinning plates for.

Mord wrote:As has been mentioned a few times in the "Fixing CoC" thread: Cultist Simulator sucks ass.

It is the kind of game that will appeal to anyone who likes Lovecraft etc. based on the writing and concept, but as a game it is just so unbelievably opaque and terrible that you would certainly be better off getting a text dump and experiencing the narrative that way. It's a frustrating, tedious plate-spinner that plays as though it was made by Satan's mobile games division.

I can understand why someone might not enjoy the type of game Cultist Simulator is (like you said, it's extremely opaque and experimentation-based), but stating that like it's an objective failure is stupid. Plenty of people actually enjoy its gameplay and discovering how its systems work. Chill.

StarCrawlers is 100% the type of game I want to play, and only slightly more game-breaking bugs than a Bethesda game.

I made it like 3-4 story missions in (Triangulatin') this time before it decided I hadn't just beat a boss (Mechamoto) after it died, so I can't finish.

Well, maybe in another 3-6 months, there will be a patch and I'll make it 4-5 story missions in. It scratches an itch so well when it works, though.

Axebird wrote:I can understand why someone might not enjoy the type of game Cultist Simulator is (like you said, it's extremely opaque and experimentation-based), but stating that like it's an objective failure is stupid. Plenty of people actually enjoy its gameplay and discovering how its systems work. Chill.

Okay, first of all you're dumb and you should feel dumb.

Second, the problem is not that it's experimentation-based, it's that the actual allegedly fun experimentation part exists in a narrow band of spacetime that gets even narrower as the game progresses; the bulk of the actions you take is mindless grind. First you grind stats, then you grind books and followers, then you grind treatises and expeditions. There's no tactical choice involved. The interface and the timer system are purposefully designed to prolong the grind as much as possible. It's a digital card game that makes you manually place and sort cards to disguise how lacking in meaningful content it is.

You can't find something interesting and go look in the bookstore for books on the subject, because the bookstore exists for one and only one interaction -- feeding coins into it and getting random books out -- and it's most likely already exhausted. The same goes for the auction house -- you put coins into it, things fall out, then you're done. (Selling is not a real choice, because either money is not a problem and you're dumb for selling unique items, or you failed to jumpstart the moneymaking carousel and a fire sale won't save you.)

Unupgraded followers suck ass, and once they're gone they're gone, so you wait to upgrade them and *then* start doing expeditions. Expeditions are risk-free if you write down the stat requirements once in your (real) life (or look them up on the interwebs). For summons, you grind influences and wait for menaces to dissipate. Then you win.

So how do you lose? You lose if you try to speed up the grind and wrestle with the atrocious interface:
- In the beginning, try to force the initial stat buildup, get unlucky, die to poverty.
- Click "take all", fail to notice a menace card and where it landed.
- Grind for influences, get repeatedly unlucky, don't wait long enough between attempts.
- Summon a spirit, get unlucky, decide to try to keep it instead of releasing it safely and grinding for summoning influences again.

If you want to play a cult-themed card game that isn't shit, go play Underhand on android, it's free and clean.