Wednesday Action Log 7-31-24

By Issac Young Posted Wednesday Jul 31, 2024

Filed under: Epilogue, Action Log 22 comments

This week I think I’m finally running out of steam with Rimworld. At this point I’m just selling Flake and collecting Vanometric power cells without any goals in mind.

On the other hand I did end up getting Helldivers 2. The over the top theming is fun and the game seems to be surprisingly well optimized, I also didn’t expect to like the Stratagem system but having a quick puzzle in the midst of combat really adds to the tension.

Anyway, so what are you guys doing this week.

 


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22 thoughts on “Wednesday Action Log 7-31-24

  1. sheer_falacy says:

    I’ve been playing Unicorn Overlord. It’s fire emblem, but with a squad system and a gambit system. Generally been enjoying it. There’s a lot of interesting design elements in it.

    Good:
    There’s a lot of ways to feel powerful. A lot of unit types have hard counters who can obliterate them – Cav vs any infantry, flyers vs cav, archers vs flyers, dealing 2x (or more) damage is a big deal. They do mix up enemy units, both within squads and in which squads they have, so you have actual choices to make.

    The game is very, very open about information. You can see the expected results of a fight before you even start moving your guys, and they’re pretty accurate because accuracy and crits are the only random elements in fights.

    You can run around a lot in the overworld even before liberating areas. There are enemies who will try to chase you down but they’re not great at catching you and even if they do it generally doesn’t stop you. This lets you grab resources, complete some quests, and explore a lot. It’s not actually that impactful but I like that it’s an option.

    The gambit system is sweet. You can easily get into a fight with expected odds of losing and change that to a total win by setting up the correct priorities on your skills. There are a lot of conditions to choose from.

    Weird:
    Thieves are tanks. They’re pretty bad at doing damage but if your opponent doesn’t have a hard answer then they’ll take no damage from most attacks – they have an autododge that costs resources, and very generously it only activates if the normal dodge chance wouldn’t have worked. They are literally immune to the big gimmick boss of Act 1, which was really funny.

    The game gives out some prepromotes that feel… grossly overpowered. Like, when Fire Emblem gives you a prepromote, you bench them and never think about them again because they’re actually 20 levels over your other guys but have the stats of someone 5 levels higher. In this game the prepromote is the same level as your other guys, they just have better stats and get double the actions and have better abilities. Except Josef, Josef is a standard garbage prepromote.

    Meh:
    The writing is Fire Emblem. They have approximately one story, shared between all of them. You’re nobility on the run, the bad guy wants to conquer the world (and in this case actually does in the prologue), etc. The friendship conversations are not exciting. The characters are bland, as expected when they have to write dozens of them.

    Bad:
    The game frequently gives you an option about whether to recruit people or not. This is a pointless system because the correct answer is always yes. You get some minor reward for turning down/executing them, and you can recruit generics, but c’mon, it’s Fire Emblem, you recruit people. Plus they often have side quests tied to them.

    Mission goals have absolutely no variety. This is actually even worse than Fire Emblem, which occasionally had missions where you needed to defend an area or escape or whatever. In Unicorn Overlord every single mission is “beat the squad standing on the enemy fort”.

  2. Pun Pundit says:

    This week it’s more Pathfinder: Wrath of the Ritghteous and Trails of Cold Steel 3 again, they’re still good RPGs of the C and J variety respectively. However, I’ve also added X4: Foundations, which I can see swallowing many hours of creating a virtual business empire while shooting von neumann machines.

  3. Daimbert says:

    I did manage to get in a short run at The Old Republic, hitting the sudden but inevitable betrayal of Darth Baras, and so heading into the last part of that one. Again, I’m not enjoying it as much as the previous character but it does work well enough.

    Also started playing Mass Effect 2. I’m already sick of the probe planet exploration, but I’ll have to check on that before I do more exploration because while the game didn’t bring over all my credits because I was level 55 — according to the import, anyway — at the end of Mass Effect I started with a significant amount of credits and resources. Maybe I won’t need to look around too much for resources to build the things I need for the endgame. While I didn’t notice it before, I did notice here that the conversation with the Illusive Man is indeed one where the dialogue doesn’t work. For example, asking him why he thinks the Collectors are related to the Reapers really does only give a response of “We have to stop the Reapers!”. Yeah, that’s not what I asked. That being said, I talked to Miranda early on and she starts her arc around her own confidence issues by demurring when you comment on her genetic enhancement making her perfect, and noting that she makes a lot of mistakes. You can indeed easily see the thread where she’s not as confident in her own abilities and feels like all the good stuff about her is created and not something she has earned herself.

    I also played a DLC that I hadn’t before, which is visiting the crashed Normandy. The scene and the like reminded me of Dragon Age, which I still like better than Mass Effect. But there wasn’t that much there to do.

    1. BlueHorus says:

      You don’t understand. The Illusive Man is just too smart for you to comprehend the 11-dimensional chess he’s constantly playing as he sits in an empty room all day, chain-smoking and watching a light show. I’m telling you, TIM’s so clever he puts the j in genius!

      My defining memory of Mass Effect undermining the payer around TIM was when he demanded that I don’t blow up the Collector Base but instead give it to him, when one of the most consistent things that we know about Reaper technology is ‘anyone who spends too much time with it gets indoctrinated’.
      And despite the fact that we’d *already been* to a site where a load of Cerberus scientists had died researching Reaper tech (on his orders), you simply can’t tell him how stupid that plan is. Instead Shepard brays something about not letting fear rules us.

      And naturally, regardless of what you do, TIM still gets hold of Reaper tech and indoctrinates himself.
      He’s a genius, I tell you!

      1. Daimbert says:

        TIM’s delusional belief that he won’t get indoctrinated kinda mirrors Saren’s belief, though. Both of them think that they are smarter or better than others and so that actually makes some sense. Here, though, the issue is indeed more that you can ask him question and he just won’t answer them in any way that makes sense. This actually perfectly fits the character — he’s perfectly willing to and does lie to you in service of his own agenda — but that the player can only internally call that out is a bit annoying there.

      2. Dev Null says:

        TIM’s so clever he puts the j in genius!

        My brother-in-law used to run a home contracting business. He had baseball caps printed up with the logo and slogan:

        “Putting the K in Kwality!”

        As far as I know, no one ever read one.

    2. Dreadjaws says:

      You’re really gonna have to farm Element Zero. That’s the rarest one and one of the most necessary ones. All the other ones don’t matter that much.

      1. Daimbert says:

        I started with something like 9000 and have about 13000 I think after mining some planets in the system where the Normandy crashed, and also picking up some from that site. I’ll have to look to see what the things I want cost and will grind out resources as needed instead of just exploring everything like I did the first time and both times in ME.

  4. Syal says:

    Same as last week. Brotato has a character called Pacifist, who’s whole gimmick is he can’t do damage, and the easiest difficulty is proving too hard to get a clear with them even with a lucky build. Not sure if getting a clear with them would be enough to put the game away, or just get me to play on the higher levels again.

    1. Fizban says:

      I don’t recall exactly what the big build for pacifist was aside from “no seriously, you do not want to do damage,” but if you’re having trouble with a certain character you might want to clear some other characters before coming back. There were definitely a bunch of items I unlocked later that made me go wow, this would have made X run so much easier.

      1. Syal says:

        I’m down to five uncleared characters right now. I’m going to say Arms Dealer is the second-worst character, because the gimmick of “you have to buy new weapons every round” is only slightly less crippling than Pacifist’s “none of your weapons will do damage”.

        Jack is surprisingly hard to clear. It’s probably due to my absolute refusal to give up the SMG despite him basically being designed to counter SMG builds.

        1. Fizban says:

          Pretty sure I got stuck on Arms Dealer for a while too. I know I figured the optimal build was “as much passive stuff as you can find,” though I don’t know if that’s what actually did it. Basically think like an engineer that doesn’t have reliable access to wrenches, turrets and landmines and stuff like the sausage that makes all your attacks set people on fire. And as you’ll be aware, a lot of runs also come down to that roguelike staple, “did I get the thing that makes it possible to survive, or not?” Or just getting lucky with crate drops and solid weapons when you need them most.

          Do you mean Jack like the Lumberjack, or is that a boss name (never looked at a wiki once)?

          1. Syal says:

            Jack’s another character, the one with way fewer enemies who have way more health. AKA “stop using crowd control weapons” guy.

            He’s cleared now. Everyone’s cleared but Arms Dealer. And Pacifist. Made it to Wave 18 with Pacifist using an Armor/Knockback build. Wave 18 is completely immune to knockback.

            1. Syal says:

              And so the saga ends. Arms Dealer went fairly smoothly, but notably also got a Chain Gun for the boss. The boss died in seven seconds. I didn’t know they could do that.

              And then Pacifist got, like, the luckiest build possible. Six shields scaling off Armor meant I could use both Melee and Ranged as dump stats, and then I kept getting more armor, and also a ton of HP regeneration, and also the item that heals you when you pick up cash, and also all four Scared Sausages meaning everything lit on fire guaranteed, and also a Ring of Destruction halfway through, the one that increases damage every wave. And then ANOTHER Ring of Destruction. At which point I was just killing everything, the path of peace mercifully rejected.

              So that’s how I recommend doing Pacifism. Just Don’t.

  5. BlueHorus says:

    Phoenix Point continues. Despite my habit of restarting constantly whenever something goes wrong, I managed to beat the game, so I decided to look into the two free DLC that I got with my Year One Edition.

    First one is Blood and Titanuim, a robot-themed expansion which is pretty good. Introduces a new faction of robot-men (and also one of mutants, for some reason) that turn up once in a blue moon to replace the standard enemies and add some variety to missions. It works really well, because the game lets you know before the mission starts which enemy you’re fighting – and you need to bring different gear to deal with the different threats each group poses. It helps make the variety of equipment available in the game actually matter – you end up having a reserve store of specific weapons and grenades in waiting just to fight faction X.

    Plus, you get access to the robot tech and can enhance your own troops! Which is expensive, requires constant upkeep, and has an arbitrary ‘safety limitation’ so you can’t do it fully.
    It’s so fitting for this game: ‘Here is a fun thing you can do! Complete with a load of restrictions and strings attatched that make it a hassle to actually achieve, sucking half the fun out.’

    Which brings us neatly to the second DLC: Legacy Of The Ancients. This allows you to make weapons that surpass the vanilla weapons in every way, finally giving you an edge on the enemy. And all you need to do is:

    – Complete the necessary research
    – Build and launch probes to find sources of unique resources
    – Kill the guardians of the this resource point, who are more tougher dangerous than almost any other enemy in the game
    – Gather the resources
    – Find ANOTHER site, which allows you to process the resources you’ve gathered
    – Kill the guardians at that site
    – Defend all your sites from the alien threat and in-game factions, who naturally want the resources for themselves

    …all of which is fine, apart from the guardians, who are an excercise in keyboard-smashing bullshit.

    Anyway, all these problems are lessened by mods, (or straight-up cheating in the case of those f**king guardians) which is good. I’m surprised by how much more fun the game is after modding, honestly. I guess I’m not the intended audience.

    Still haven’t managed to build a legendary weapon yet, though.

  6. Dreadjaws says:

    I continue to be sick, despite my best efforts, so all my gameplay has been on mobile these days.

    I’ve been playing Dicey Dungeons, which is a game I avoided for long because I wasn’t convinced by the previews (and the roguelike label has a stink to it these days), but turns out is quite a bit of fun, and having different characters to play as with completely different strategies to them goes a long way into making the game not feel repetitive.

    I’ve also been playing What the car?. Just like What the golf? before it is a game that relies in absurd but imaginative gameplay and I love it. Every stage has a different variation to it and like in the other game, there’s no rush or pressure. You can do any at your leisure, but you have to perfect them if you want to reap higher rewards.

    Very Little Nightmares is another one I’ve been playing. It’s more puzzle-like than the original Little Nightmares, which is a puzzle platformer, so it’s more at home in mobile. I’ve only played the first few stages, so nothing hard so far, but it’s clearly ramping up.

  7. Cozzer says:

    I completed Ender Lilies, a pretty nice gloomy Metroidvania. Everything it does has already been done, often slightly better, but as a fan of the genre I still liked it.

    Now I’m playing Dungeons of Hinterburg after reading a couple enthusiastic reviews, and I really like it! I love traveling, but I also live in a city where overtourism is becoming a serious problem, so I’m interested in the themes. It helps that the gameplay is fun, not too hard and not diluted into an infinite open world content soup.

  8. Vernal_ancient says:

    Got all the ship upgrades in Starstruck Vagabond, now I’ve just got to finish romancing a crewmate and then go for the end of the story
    Haven’t decided yet if I’m going to do a third run with a different personality or but myself a different game; I’ve been wanting to try both Nine Sols and Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus. Might come down to if either of them is on sale when I finish my playthrough

  9. Glide says:

    Replaying Dragon Age II, still adore the story and characters. I just finished “All That Remains” which was and still is one of my favorite questlines in an RPG for the way it builds across the game and the relative subtlety of the mystery/horror tropes (in the buildup at least – the finale of the quest is many things but subtle is not one of them). I’ve played a LOT of RPGs since my last time with this game in 2016 and I think the perspective has shifted my views on the combat from “it’s fine, just simple” to “this is actively problematic”. In particular, having combat as waves of spawning enemies is just bad. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve tried to use strategy and positioning to set up an advantageous battlefield only to have six enemies spawn in directly behind my mage and kill them in one turn.

    1. Daimbert says:

      Yeah, I always found that annoying in DA2 as well, where you set things up — or play as a mage and set yourself up — to be out of the main combat line and then the forces swarm you anyway. That being said, playing as a rogue is just SO much fun that I forgive DA2 for those issues.

      I still find the characters less interesting than DAO’s or Mass Effect’s and note the issues with the story, but appreciate the story more realizing that it’s a tragedy and so the fact that you can’t really resolve any of the issues is not so much railroading or taking power away but just an acknowledgement that these things are too big for you to solve just by going out and hitting things.

  10. Dev Null says:

    Finally finished Death Stranding. Amazing game. Amazing story even though most of the actual details make no sense. The end though! Talk about dragging on! I finished a climactic bossfight, the end of functionally interactive gameplay, and a cathartic cutscene of story wrapup. Then I quit for the day, figuring I’d have an hour or so to wrap up the next day. Started at noon. The end credits rolled at 2:30pm. Finished the game just after 6pm. I really loved this game, but I was getting pretty antsy by the end of the 6-hour cutscene.

    … and then, a couple days later, I’m back playing it again, just to run around and explore things I missed.

  11. Confanity says:

    Just got into Hollow Knight together with my son. I have to say, it’s really good; I hope the word gets out about it. ;p One oddity of the whole thing is that it’s on my Steam account, so as a matter of pride I’m trying to keep a few steps ahead so I can earn my own achievements. Is that weird?

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