T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I’ve been too busy to really play anything between work and Halloween. All I’ve done was finish the Borderlands 3 DLC I was playing last week. The DLC was fine, no complaints, though I have found that I’ve been procrastinating on playing the game itself as time goes on. I originally intended to do everything, but it’s becoming a slog and I might drop the game soon.
So, how’s everyone this week?
A Lack of Vision and Leadership
People fault EA for being greedy, but their real sin is just how terrible they are at it.
Punishing The Internet for Sharing
Why make millions on your video game when you could be making HUNDREDS on frivolous copyright claims?
The Middle Ages
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
Push the Button!
Scenes from Half-Life 2:Episode 2, showing Gordon Freeman being a jerk.
Why I Hated Resident Evil 4
Ever wonder how seemingly sane people can hate popular games? It can happen!
Strangers of Paradise. Unlocked a 300 level and beat it for some of the highest level gear possible, so am as close to saying I’ve completed the game as I think I’m going to get. The game never got easy, but after the initial Chaos run it also stayed fun. I would say this means I should give Bloodborne another chance, except I did right before starting SOP again and it still pissed me off horribly, so no I won’t be doing that.
After finishing SOP I picked up Tales of Arise where I’d left it, and can now say it’s a big step down from SOP. There’s a very clear distinction between SOP being a Souls-like game, and Arise being a Tales game with Souls elements. Some of those elements really don’t play nice with the Tales style; the enemies have very quick attacks that I wouldn’t say are properly telegraphed, and even when they are the AI companions really can’t handle them. Another thing that doesn’t play nice; particle effects. You can’t have Soulslike enemy damage when the enemy can get fully obscured by a companion’s spellcasting. SOP’s spells were all mostly see-through and short, ToA’s are standard anime overkill. And both games struggle with the camera, but Arise doesn’t let you tilt the camera up so enemies can straight up fly offscreen.
Also the game has input queueing, which while I find it interesting, I’m not willing to work around. (If you try to attack, and hit the button twice, you’re now locked into two attacks. SOP lets you cancel out of nearly anything instantly; Tales does not. So deaths in SOP always* feel like you made a mistake, while deaths in Tales often feel like the game just decided you were going to get hit.) But Arise is also much much easier than SOP; the meanest fight I’ve had on Normal difficulty killed me three times, where an isolated generic trash mob in SOP can still kill me a dozen times on its own.
The plot is generic teen Anime stuff, and also has parts where the writers are like “I like this line and don’t care if it makes sense in context.”
“Have you convinced them we aren’t allied with any Renan Lords?” asks the RENAN LORD.I have fun with goofy nonsense like that, so it’s kind of a plus for the game. It’s also got sidequests throughout, which is better than Berseria anyway; that game had, like, one sidequest before endgame, and you couldn’t complete it until endgame. I will say Arise has two sidequests in the first town that seem to only be completable in endgame, which is annoying. The first is a monster that five realms later I’m still underleveled for, the second is a sidequest for clothing that just refuses to advance.Special mention goes to Kisara, the “armor girl” character in this one. Not for good reasons, mind you. Her character arc has been a spastic pinball of emotional flailing, contradicting both the dying wishes of people around her, and her own statements from a few seconds prior. She’s also got the silliest armor girl costume I’ve ever seen, in that her backside has no armor at all, it’s a lacy evening gown with a steel thong. I’ve been calling it an Armor Mullet; “business in the front, party in the back”. The most positive thing I can say about her is that she’s still better than Kamoana from Berseria. A very low bar to clear, as “naked ten-year-old who screams in every scene” is one of the most offputting characters possible to make. But Kamoana’s got a more consistent personality than Kisara.
I was ready for the game to be over in the last dungeon, despite knowing we have a whole ‘nother planet to deal with. A very bad sign for a videogame; the last time it triggered for me was Dragon Quest 11, which had me hoping for credits at the end of Act 1. I don’t know if this is the halfway point or the punultimate dungeon, either would make sense. But we got a whole second Opening Cutscene, and a Red Girl, so I’m left thinking this is a weird attempt to go all Nier Automata Ending C and I’ve got another half a game to go. Ugh. I’ll probably do it. But ugh.
Decided to play a round of Brotato, only to find they made a free update; new characters, new item balancing. So I’ve unlocked and beaten the four new guys. Had just watched someone playing Baby with 24 Sticks, the item that buffs itself based on every other Stick held. Copied the strategy and tore up the world. Who knew a 98 attack bonus on all 24 held weapons, before all the other bonuses, would be a good time. Baby is a super fun character.
*(that is, as long as the camera was cooperating. Not always the case.)
Armor Mullet is excellent.
Yeah, DQ 11 was looong. At 71 hours I fell off and don’t think I’ll be going back.
I thought the Brotato notes said they nerfed the stick, but with 24 stacked the nerf won’t really matter. Which does bring into question why they bothered.
I didn’t pay enough attention to the stick to know if they’ve nerfed it. The per-stick bonus is still +4 at the bottom tier and that’s what stick is all about.
Another strange decision was that they buffed Wisdom, the item that constantly increases damage over time. Maybe I just don’t take the threat from Elites seriously enough, but that one always seemed like a no-brainer, and now the debuff is -15 instead of -20 and it’s even less of a brainer.
I remember something that struck me about the characters in Arise, which led to me checking its stats on AO3. It’s rare to see a game where the characters are so blatantly straight they can even get AO3 to go along with it (particularly given why AO3 exists in the first place).
Really depressed for some reason.
The Outsider: It happened again…
We mostly played Monster Hunter World in Coop. We reached the Rotten Vale, which is a vast step down in visual appealing compared to the previous landscapes. And that red dog is a menace.
Also playing the app for Everdell without doing the Tutorial. I had most rules down by the second game. So the app is pretty good in clearance.
In solo I beat the end boss of Goat Simulator 3. Achievements are just above 20%, so there is a ton of missed stuff.
Analog Theme Park Mania got delivered. The roads mechanics are too random for me and support mean spirited gameplay. So house-ruling a Wingspan-like display in, it is.
Finished up the System Shock remake and now I’m giving Deathloop a try
Factorio: Space Age: My adventures on Vulcanus continue – I finally figured out how to kill a Demolisher, which secures access to tungsten for me and basically means I’ve “finished” this planet (although I’ll still come back to expand occasionally). It also means I finally get the “rush to space” achievement (not researching purple or yellow science until you’ve researched a planetary science), so I can now get some other techs I badly needed.
I’m not a huge fan of the Demolisher design – fights feel far too swingy. Either you don’t do enough damage to overcome their regeneration, or you do and they die in about 20 seconds. They have this cool eruption attack that’s designed to make you dodge around it, but if they survive long enough that you actually need to dodge, you’ve already lost. I set up a grid of about 50 turrets and 500 ammo (using bots to get it set up quickly in the demolisher’s path, which did feel pretty clever), and attacked with a tank at the same time for extra DPS, and it was barely enough. I really like the visuals, though.
I also tried “guerilla mining” – setting up a group of solar-powered miners on a tungsten patch, mining as much as I can, and then running away as soon as the demolisher showed up. It gets you a decent amount of ore and is very fun, but since you need to babysit it, you can’t work on anything else while it’s happening. Using bots to mine the volcanic rocks is an easier and safer way to get the tungsten you need early on.
Apparently they designed Demolishers that way because if players could do any amount of reliable damage they’d spend an hour chipping away at them, but I don’t think they got the balance quite right.
Well, this Halloween saw the release of a new DLC for Vampire Survivors so of course my intention was to play that for a bit… except that instead of buying the DLC for my Xbox (the platform I’ve been playing the game on) I bought it for the PC (the platform where I also owned the game but I hadn’t played it on yet). This means I basically had to restart the game from scratch. You can play just for a bit to unlock stage selection and go right to the DLC but instead I’ve been going through everything in the game in order, unlocking everything there is to unlock. I’ve been playing for hours throughout the week and I have yet to reach the latest two DLCs. This game is yet again consuming me.
Wanted to do a bit of a change of pace, though, so I played some Shovel Knight for the first time. And look, I get it. It’s a good game. It’s well designed, it looks beautiful and it is fun to play, I just don’t really feel in the mood for it. It hasn’t trapped me in the way something like The Messenger or Infernax (two other NES/SNES-style pixel art games, both excellent) did. I think the issue is that both those other two games look like old console classics but they feel a bit more modern to play while Shovel Knight feels like it belongs on the NES. Again, that’s an achievement and a mark of good design, it just doesn’t feel as appealing to me.
Make no mistake, I have no issue replaying old NES titles, but that’s because I have nostalgia on my side. Trying to play NES games I never played before is much harder. Not in a difficulty sense, it’s just harder to have fun with something so basic without nostalgia holding your hand through it. I just don’t know if I’m gonna continue with it. We’ll see.
I played more Mass Effect 3, but due to time constraints and other factors only did the first Cerberus base. On the one hand, I liked the multi-step mission there, but didn’t like that they didn’t really telegraph that that was happening and also didn’t find that mission entertaining enough for the dramatic elements they added to it. It certainly didn’t make me want to keep playing after that, as I stopped playing for the day right after that mission.
I managed to escape from the Reapers for possibly the first time, and cleared a couple of areas to get War Assets. I’m still not sure how to manage exploration this time, but so far I did okay. I still don’t care much for it, though.
Did manage to get in some Three Houses eventually. I think I’ve about run out of text walls to post? I finally went ahead and spoiled myself on some of the last few standard skill unlocks I hadn’t looked at, so now I know that Riding and Flying aren’t really worth unless you’re gonna go all the way, but basically everyone should go for Heavy Armor C because it gives Weight -3, which is effectively 3 speed. More and more characters are pulling the 3 levels without strength/speed/etc, and they’re all ending up close to their next level at the end of the fight. I experimented with rewinds and reloads and I’m pretty sure it rolls everyone’s levels when you start a map, so you can do some reloads to avoid problems. . . but not with like half your team needing to all roll perfect levels. I actually “benched” Ingrid for the entirety of the last fight I did since she was the only one with a completely useless level, just rewound and told her to go stand over there.
Responding to CSilvestri from last week: Yes, I’m aware that different classes modify growth rates, though you have just reminded me that cav have that speed reduction. My Ingrid’s speed is still going up fine, again it’s the str she’s just dropped, and yeah that’s kindof a major problem with this game: recruiting early means you can get masteries and change their skills, but will probably screw up the otherwise perfect average stats they were getting. . . except by that logic you should never recruit them at all. (There’s also a problem where you should promote immediately to get possible free stats, rather than waiting to master your current class, though you can just promote and immediately switch back) Honestly, the random levelups are just so. . . dated. You could easily write it to conform mostly to average with some wiggle so not everything is exactly the same at the same time, but just as with DnD, random stats have never been fair. There’s enough stuff to juggle and screw up here that just getting screwed by the RNG, especially when you’re given so much control over everything else, well it’s not very fun is it?
I do do the ‘explore’ and talk to everyone, yes, after finding a bunch of xp laying on the ground in people’s rooms I even check all the dorms for stuff on top of the grounds. Though I can easily see the basic challenge mode of doing only the bare minimum. I’ve been hitting explore on the first choice of the month, then battle on the second, leaving the last unplanned. But it’s clear I’m screwing myself on teaching days by doing that, since the teaching action points are now so high and the free motivation from supports no longer rolling in, that I’m wasting half or more of my teaching points after the battle day because no one is motivated. So clearly I should be leaving battle day for the last free day before the final mission, even though I would rather alternate. They also keep giving “rare monster” sightings, and while the previous one had a rusty legendary weapon, the last one I checked only had silver gauntlets. I can buy those. So the whole point of battling on that day was a waste.
Of course, those teaching sessions are worth maybe 25-30 points of skill per student, and the higher ranks cost hundreds and hundreds, so the value may be questionable aside from say getting new recruits’ authority up so they can equip decent battalions. And yeah, as my checking of the standard skill effects shows, you apparently very much do want to be cranking those up to high levels, as magic can get all range up and weapons can manually unlock the 5 weapon damage skills. Which means you *can* make a female endgame fistfighter, in theory, if you grind that skill like it’s the only thing in the world that matters (because lacking the proper classes they will in fact grind it slower).
Aha, interesting, thanks! I found the best thing for Ingrid’s strength in at least one of my playthroughs was to get her to unlock Paladin at level 20, even if she doesn’t use the class, just for the minimum strength boost. And I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on more story when you get there!
Hmm. Problem is I’m coming up on 20th in like two levels, probably hitting it after next story mission, no way she’ll get to B riding that fast. Maybe if I cram she can get to like C or C or something and I can save scum the exam. ‘Cause yeah, for a peg knight the only alternate class to try and pull stats from is either pal, or wyvern knight, which requires a ton of axe instead, and she’s got zero axe.
Diving for Super Earth and Managed Democracy in Helldivers 2 is a blast with friends and family.
My Dungeons And Dragons campaign was on hold as two members moved across the country.
Age of Wonders 4 just launched its latest DLC, and it’s fun.