Video Games

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 10:44 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I don't know if anyone does Origin, but they're giving out Dragon Age 1 for free.

Too pricey, let me know when they start paying me to play that shit. Then I'll keep an eye on it until they start paying enough.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 4:52 am

If it involves downloading an Origin "Hey, we can be like Steam, right?" client rather than just registering a fake email address to collect their spam, then yeah, free is definitely overpriced.

I haven't played Dragon Age, so I can't say whether the game is shit on its own merits, but as a pessimist I'll lean towards "yes".

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 8:22 pm

The "Protect the Villager" quests in Code of Princess are fucking bullshit. Especially Dusk Recon. Protect quests in general suck, but this game goes above and beyond the standards of protect quest suckitude. Apparently someone thought that it was a good idea to make the defenseless villagers you are defending run towards the fucking monsters. Naturally, this makes the quest frustratingly difficult, to the point of near-impossibility.

Seriously, fuck that fucking shit so fucking hard. It's been quite a while since a game has pissed me off this much.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 9:12 pm

Koumei wrote:If it involves downloading an Origin "Hey, we can be like Steam, right?" client rather than just registering a fake email address to collect their spam, then yeah, free is definitely overpriced.

I haven't played Dragon Age, so I can't say whether the game is shit on its own merits, but as a pessimist I'll lean towards "yes".

I had the first Dragon Age, played it maybe up until Morrigan joins the party, and I instantly disliked her. I'm not sure why, I just did. I sold the game soon after.

Give me Morrigan over Morrigan any day.

Count Arioch the 28th · Fri Oct 10, 2014 9:36 pm

I somewhat like Morrigan (DA:O), but I didn't until I had played through the game and really like her, and her mother Flemeth (before DA2 changed her for some reason.)

Some things to keep in mind:

Morrigan was raised to be a vessel for the soul of her "mother" who has been switching bodies every time she got old for centuries at this point. Her upbringing wasn't the best simply because she just had to be functional and physically fit, her mentality wasn't important other than to keep her from becoming suicidal. Not only did Flemeth not really care, she's batshit insane and probably wouldn't know how to raise a human child even if she chose to, instead using her as bait for games where she's stalk and kill the Templars (a mostly LN organization that although is needed for a world where meages can and do get possessed by demons but tends to have a corrupt streak)

Everything about Morrigan backs that up. She speaks in meter because she learned language mostly through reading old books rather than hearing how humans actually speak. Her teeth are brownish grey and rotting out of her skull. There are multiple references in-game to how terrible she smells. She is manipulative, but in a very ikea sense in that she knows that men want to put tab A into slot B and that can be useful to her, and not only does it not occur to her that men have emotions, it doesn't occur to her that SHE might possibly have emotions, and if a relationship is pursued with her, you can tell she has no clue how to act on that.

All in all, she comes across as someone who doesn't know how a woman is "supposed" to act, and tends to act in an exaggerated fashion like in a terrible old fantasy novel, and despite being a very capable person and a skilled mage, she is emotionally stunted and in effect that flaw makes her seem almost real.

But what do I know. I think Alistair is a total bro and I would total throw back beers with him. Most DA:O fans consider him annoying at best.

If you don't agree, that's fine. I didn't like her at first either.

Also, I wonder if they upped the price for the DLC since they're giving out free copies right now, because it seems excessive. $15 for Shale my ass, EA!

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 11:07 pm

DA:O is bloated and overlong (particularly with the Deep Roads), its lore is frustratingly unoriginal, and its graphics are unimaginative at best. But I think the party members are probably tied with Mass Effect 2 as Bioware's best written. And in shorter sessions, the tactical combat is very fun. The game can get proper difficult, too, which makes success actually rewarding. The first time I played the Redcliffe Keep defense bit is probably one of my more memorable CRPG experiences.

If you're willing to do Origin and haven't played DA:O before, it's definitely worth checking out.

And for what it's worth, I thought the conversations you get by having Alistair and Morrigan in your party together were really funny.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 12:12 am

Shrapnel wrote:Give me Morrigan over Morrigan any day.

I agree 100%. I would go so far as to say that any Morrigan who is not Morrigan Aensland is unworthy of the name.

Darth Rabbit: that pissed me off with Dragon Crown, having to stop the vampires from getting anywhere near the villager girls. Because even one touch means "they turned into vampires afterwards and you had to kill them". I have no idea if managing to protect them all through witchcraft does anything special.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sat Oct 11, 2014 1:15 am

Blicero wrote: And for what it's worth, I thought the conversations you get by having Alistair and Morrigan in your party together were really funny.

Romancing both Morrigan and Leliana at the same time and putting them both in the party is also lulzworthy.

I spent a lot of time tweaking the party member's AI to be unique for each character. That's fun, but in DA:O you don't get nearly enough tactical entries to do anything cool (Had a tactical setup for Anders in DA2 where he'd switch between blasting and healing modes without me telling him).

One of the expansions of the game does something I actually thought was a touch you don't see in fantasy games:

One of the campanions for both DA:O and DA:A is an alcoholic dwarf named Oghren. He's crude, belligerent, drinks too much, and is basically every unpleasant stereotype that /tg/ has for dwarves.

In the extended Awakenings game, it shows that Oghren started a new family that's disintegrating, he's frequently incoherent, and on several occasions obviously suffering from DT). That is literally the first time I've seen any "drunk" in a fantasy game actually suffer from the negative effects of alcohol abuse, and they get a gold star from me.

Oghren also has some very interesting moments. His drunkeness and brawling is seen as an abberation, his constant sexual comments quickly are shown to result from his wife leaving him for another woman, sacrificing said woman to the darkspawn because she is trying to re-learn a lost bit of dwarf technology that binds the souls of sentient beings and enslaves them to become Golems, and where the "good" ending is him having to help kill her himself. They took a crude /tg/ stereotype and wrote it in a way where it makes sense that someone would act like that.

Heck, even the dog you get has lots of interactions with the other party, and has tons of personality. Despite the fact the dog is inferior statwise, I still take him along. He's pretty good at taking out mages and gets stat bonuses for peeing on things (no, really).

But fuck Leliana. If you want to romance her as a male warden, expect to spent a very long time talking about shoes. I am not shitting you.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 1:26 am

DA:O was fun for a low-fantasy game and I liked the world building... but then Alistair is a dick at the end (he leaves if you recruit Logaine, and if you're playing a female character, he just toys with you and then doesn't make your character queen).

I liked DA 2 a lot better for the chance of starting a revolution and burn the chantry nazis down... but then it turns out even if you bagged Leliana as a mage in DA 1, seemingly by DA 2 she leaves "the hero of Ferelden" and rejoins the chantry, so I'll do my best to kill her or get her killed if I play DA 3.

I still wouldn't subject my machine to Origin even if the three of them were free. Knowing EA, they'll probably try to rootkit my machine or something like that.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 1:42 am

Dogbert wrote:DA:O was fun for a low-fantasy game and I liked the world building... but then Alistair is a dick at the end (he leaves if you recruit Logaine, and if you're playing a female character, he just toys with you and then doesn't make your character queen).

Actually, if you're playing a human noble, he does marry the female character. Because politics he can't marry mages or other races, but you can score a standing position as mistress if certain conditions are met.

I liked DA 2 a lot better for the chance of starting a revolution and burn the chantry nazis down... but then it turns out even if you bagged Leliana as a mage in DA 1, seemingly by DA 2 she leaves "the hero of Ferelden" and rejoins the chantry, so I'll do my best to kill her or get her killed if I play DA 3.

There's some tie-in novel stuff relating to that. It's kind of a long story, but basically there's a pseudo-civil war in the Chantry, and she's on the non-Nazi side.

I'm also told she shows up even if you murdered her and says something vague about divine intervention. Which I suppose is fair enough in her case.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 1:58 am

I liked DA:O. It's not perfect, but I'm snarky enough to laugh at the corny bits and the battles are agreeable enough, particularly if like all right thinking Denners you assume that casters are probably better than other people. Which they are, because magic.

I really disliked DA2. I liked the promises but hated the execution and very quickly gave even less fucks about what was going on than I did in DA:O, which is impressive in all the wrong ways. Hilariously, they tried tweaking some things so that your PC's responses would be fairly consistent but mostly it made me feel like my character was kinda thick.

Archmage Joda · Post by **Archmage Joda** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 2:23 am

I rather like DA: O myself, either as a dual-wielding warrior (I just don't like having to fiddle with trying to set up backstabbing as a rogue, but I like dual-wielding better than sword and board or two-handed in this case), or a mage, though I find I have a tough time building a mage I can be happy with, or whether to go for blasty fireballs and lightning and storm of the century, or something else (though I had the idea for a "spirit nuker" where I blasted but did primarily "spirit" type rather than elemental damage, but haven't figured that build out yet either.

I want to get DA2, but am still holding out for it to be on Steam. If I find it pretty cheap, I might eventually cave and get it for 360, but I'm not gonna download Origin (the EA steam knock off of evil), not even on my worst enemy's computer.

On another game: I got the Divinity anthology on steam recently, 'cuz it was on sale. What order would be best for me to play Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity, and Divinity 2 in?

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 11:04 am

Archmage Joda wrote:I rather like DA: O myself, either as a dual-wielding warrior (I just don't like having to fiddle with trying to set up backstabbing as a rogue, but I like dual-wielding better than sword and board or two-handed in this case), or a mage, though I find I have a tough time building a mage I can be happy with, or whether to go for blasty fireballs and lightning and storm of the century, or something else (though I had the idea for a "spirit nuker" where I blasted but did primarily "spirit" type rather than elemental damage, but haven't figured that build out yet either.

I want to get DA2, but am still holding out for it to be on Steam. If I find it pretty cheap, I might eventually cave and get it for 360, but I'm not gonna download Origin (the EA steam knock off of evil), not even on my worst enemy's computer.

On another game: I got the Divinity anthology on steam recently, 'cuz it was on sale. What order would be best for me to play Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity, and Divinity 2 in?

Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity feel and play very much like Diablo, with some plot slapped on top. I'd suggest skipping them, and going straight for the Divinity 2, which is a really great game. And Kirill Pokrovskiy is, in my opinion, one of the best living soundtrack composers.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 1:50 pm

I can't tell you if this is nostalgia talking or not, but I enjoyed Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity more than Divine Divinity II.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:19 am

Gaaah . . one of my favourite youtubers (The Mighty Jingles / Bohemian Eagle) is making a valiant attempt at doing a playthrough of alien isolation. in the dark. and i need to remember to not watch that. in the dark. x.x

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 1:36 am

I just want to say that Blazblue: Calamity Trigger is awesome.

So is Abyss Odyssey.

That is all.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Oct 19, 2014 5:51 pm

Ugh. FF13 is bad not beause of its corridor nature. Not because of its stupid plot. Not even because of its poor graphics (square fingers in 2010? What is this, Wasteland 2?).

No. FF13 is bad, because the core game mechanic (role-switching) doesn't come online until you are two hours into the game. Until that moment the every fight in the game is literaly played by mashing "Auto-Battle".

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Oct 19, 2014 11:48 pm

That's pretty disappointing. I was a bit bummed that the logic-scripting of FF12 was barely existent to start with and you had to wait a long time to get your favourite auto-combinations going, even though you already had the actual abilities you wanted to use.

Admittedly, if the game could play itself insofar as wandering from plot point to plot point or "just go over there and grind for a few levels while I go out", that'd be even better. But the most fun "if-then" stuff is basically end-game or New Game+

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 12:22 am

Ever since FFXII I've wanted to make a game about commanding robots in a post-apocalyptic world. You can control robots directly, but the game requires a lot of grind so the idea is that you use functions to set up automatic behaviors and then set the game speed to x20 until you have the resources built up to upgrade your robots or add new bots to the network or otherwise increase your power so you can push into more difficult areas of the map. You can save certain bot configurations, both hardware and software, as templates, so that you can have stock scavenger bots going out to find new resources, stock courier bots ferrying resources from the buildings you've constructed in home base to refine scavenge into usable parts and finished robots, stock guard bots maintaining the perimeter of that base, etc. etc.

More on topic, I found FFXIII to be pretty intolerable even after I slogged through the never-ending prologue and got to the part where actual gameplay happened. The combat was new and interesting but the lack of exploration, even just of alternate routes in a dungeon, was stifling and the characters were awful. The plot took forever to go anywhere and it was an insane Final Fantasy plot, which I'm normally willing to put up with because it's populated by decent characters, but this one...Wasn't. I still remember being psyched for the game in its opening because it looked like we were getting a rebel alliance type story, but then we get all that l'cie nonsense and it turns out that the government's shipping tons of terrified bystanders to prison camps was a temporary and also one-off measure. Possibly worthy of condemnation as an overreaction, but not nearly to the point where I'm comfortable killing people over it, which made me feel really disinterested towards fighting all their stormtroopers.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 12:33 am

That shouldn't be a surprise: Final Fantasy has always been a cocktease in regards to rebellions and uprisings. Seven and eight both basically start with "The overlords are total dicks, and you're the plucky rebels" then wander off to do a silly "Main character and/or villain is really special and super" thing. Nine basically did that as well, more or less. Sure, five did its own thing, and you'll have to ask someone else about one, two, three, four, six or ten.

If a Final Fantasy game starts with you fighting THE MAN, just assume that this will last a few hours before you're off SAVING THE WORLD from SOME FANCY PERSON.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 6:23 am

One thing that confuses me: Lightning is basically a village guard.
a) Why does she and Zsablackguy mention uniform, but she doesn't wear one, and never wore one.
b) Why is a village guard better trained and equiped than the PSICOM special forces?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 1:49 pm

I would've been okay with focus eventually drifting from the tyrannical government towards the fal'cie, who are basically the gods of that tyrannical government anyway, and you end up spending a lot of time fighting government troops even if overthrowing them isn't your direct goal. The problem is that the government wasn't actually especially tyrannical, which means hacking through waves of their stormtroopers wasn't a whole lot of fun. I mean, sure, self-defense and all, but when your bodycount enters the triple digits you have to wonder if maybe you couldn't find a way to avoid some of these casualties. Just like all the rest of XIII's problems, even that wouldn't really have been a dealbreaker on its own, but when almost ever part of the game is pretty bad, you have a pretty bad game.

Also: II is very straightforwardly an overthrow the evil emperor plot and X is sort of debatable. It takes a long time to reveal the government is corrupt (like 3/4s of the way through the game) and once it does you're only trying to destroy the government because it turns out that their ongoing existence is dependent upon the continued threat of the kaiju you've been trying to kill since the beginning of the game. So it's not really "overthrow the corrupt government" as "turns out the corrupt government will incidentally be overthrown if we save the world from Godzilla, so now they are trying to kill us." FFI didn't really have a corrupt government at all, and I have no idea about III or IV.

MisterDee · Post by **MisterDee** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 2:03 pm

III is apolitical - there might be a couple of evil kingdoms in there, but they're local roadblocks, not really main villains.

IV has an evil government, but it's not a "plucky rebel" story, more of a "let's get all other countries to ally and kick the shit out of Evil Kingdom" story (and even that is revealed to be secondary to the main save-the-world plot fairly quickly)

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 2:52 pm

In III an evil wizard is trying to conquer the world via magical crystals. I don't think there are even evil kingdoms anywhere in this game. The party are homeless adventurers, with no ties to any of the local powers. One kingdom in the initial area is cursed, so you lift the curse. The other kingdoms are [SPOILERS].

III had a remake for iOS and Android (and PC) recently, and I highly recommend playing it.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 4:21 pm

Looks like it's on Steam, too, along with IV, VII, VIII, and XIII (they also have joke entries for XI and XIV, which is hilarious because everyone knows they skipped those ones!). It occurs to me that since FFXII is the only game I actually still own, it'd be neat if they'd start porting more of them to PC so I could build up a Steam collection of the series.