T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I’ve finally gotten back to Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.
So far I’ve gotten a town through very nice methods and not at all taking it from a rebellion. Now I have to work very hard to not have a rebellion start in my new town, which is difficult with the population of the town not liking me for some unknown reason.
What’s everyone else doing this week?
Spider-Man
A game I love. It has a solid main story and a couple of really obnoxious, cringy, incoherent side-plots in it. What happened here?
Control
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
Project Frontier
A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.
The Witch Watch
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Playing through the Super Mario Rpg remake. It’s probably my 6th or 7th time through the game, but my first through the switch version. It’s got some nice quality of life improvements without changing what made the original so we’ll regarded. Overall, just a charming, fun game
Metaphor Re:Fantazio got its hooks in me to the point that I finally connected my PS4 to the internet, to make an account and download a digital copy. Persona in a fantasy setting, with its own calendar system so *hopefully* we won’t have as many dead days as Persona gives you. The Fusion system is replaced by a more standard Job system that all your characters have access to; I’ve managed to go into nearly every boss fight with a team that’s specifically weak to that boss, and had to reload and rebuild a couple times now.
Lots of cool mysteries at play already, largest of which is of course what the “Metaphor” is. Racism is front-but-not-center, and we’re fighting giant non-Euclidean monsters known as… “Humans”. You’re prompted to name both Yourself the Player, and the main character, so I’m greatly enjoying the adventures of “Chlorasty” and “Glow Bang”, which somehow seem appropriate. PS4 version is of course the worst version, but apart from load times it’s been good, much better than Yakuza: Infinite Wealth was running on there.
Restarted Cassette Beasts. I’m still not sure if the load times are the game’s fault or the fault of only playing it on the old computer, but I’m constantly running into tile edges and getting stuck because the game hasn’t loaded the next square yet. Also I forgot the game had this horrible switch-flipping game that’s the lock on a boss door. I spent like an hour trying to flip the switches to make a damn tetris piece that faced the right direction, and all the while the enemies are respawning and getting in the way. Whoever designed that has PROBABLY already been punched for it, but if they haven’t we need to correct that.
Neo: The World Ends With You is going back on the shelf. I started a ten-chain battle, and got killed on the tenth fight. Then I started a nine-chain battle, and got killed on the ninth fight. I could turn the difficulty down, or turn my levels up, or fight smaller chains, but frankly the game isn’t fun enough to work around it. The upgraded dogs have gone from being fast and fragile to being fast and tanky, the targetting system seems hellbent on focusing down the least dangerous enemy every time, and the current Day’s plot is yet another “go visit every screen” mission. See you in a couple years I guess. Or at least until I’m done with Metaphor.
I’m also enjoying Metaphor: Re:Complicatedname, though I don’t think I’m as far into it
The “name yourself and the character” kinda annoyed me, I don’t have that many fictional names to pull out of my hat, so I just looked up a ‘default’ name for the protagonist, (“Will” apparently) – wish they at least had a button for that in the UI, especially since it’s a fictional setting; I didn’t want to end up in an “Aerith and Bob” situation where the protagonists name is jarring and distracting every time it’s used. (Though obviously some people enjoy the humor of that)
Also, I’m kinda hung up on the very early plot point that all the OST is music being magically projected into the protagonists head by his fairy friend. There’s nothing wrong with it, I guess, it’s just maybe the least necessary bit of world-building I’ve ever encountered.
But I think I like the battle system a lot more – I like that it seems a bit more flexible, less centered on the main character, and maybe more interesting than Persona’s system that seemed to boil down to “just keep smashing personas together more-or-less-at-random and they just keep getting better”.
I’m still very early; I watched an LP up to the beginning of the second major dungeon, and my game has not yet caught up to that. I completely forgot about the music thing; probably because my memory of the opening was getting absolutely blasted by the first monster in the world because it’s a stealth section, and the Game Over screen being “Fantasy Is Dead.” Quite the welcome.
I certainly won’t miss the level limits of the Fusion systems. Why are you going to show me a Fusion for a LV 43 Anubis when I’m Level 5 and can’t use it for another 38 levels?
A bit of snow here meant that I couldn’t get in another planet of The Old Republic, but I did get in another couple of hours of Mass Effect 3, working through another DLC (the one with the Leviathan, I think). I still haven’t quite finished that one yet, although the premise sounds interesting and I’d like to see how it turns out. I just wish I knew how many more War Assets I actually need to get the minimum, because the exploration is still a bit boring and I can only do a little bit of it before deciding that I really want to move on to something else. I might just start leaving it completely aside and use a walkthrough to pick up what I need if I don’t get it through normal play.
No progress on Three Houses, because I’ve been trying to get my new comp set up over the last week. By which I mean cleaning out and putting the new drives in the old comp that I never got around to, cleaning stuff out of the entertainment center in the living room and moving a shelf, digging through all the system menus on win10 to disable as much bullshit as possible on principle and familiarize myself with it, the same for their stupid edge browser even though I’m never using it, going out to get another HDMI cable and long ethernet cable except it turns out the old one *was* actually working, moving more stuff around, cleaning more out and moving another shelf after removing all the screws that were put in to make it un-movable, cleaning off the stuff that was clean that got dust on it from the stuff I cleaned later, actually getting the comp mostly on the shelf and hooked up, faffing about with fixing the desktop off the edges problem with the shitty little tv being used as an aux monitor, failing to get steam link working because it turns out the pair menu doesn’t actually do any pairing unless you’ve already told something to ask for a game stream because that totally makes sense. And then finally a quick test of wandering around Elden Ring to ensure stuff works. Tired.
I did review the A rank/ending pairing mechanics for Three Houses and consider my options, which was like an hour and a half of “gameplay.”
I keep chipping away at anything not-the-main-plot in AC:Origins. It’s a lot of running around, but the squirrel brain is super happy with with gradually finishing the map. I do however fear that the rest of the main plot will be.. disappointing afterwards xD
I have also dipped a toe in ALIENS: Dark Descent, and at least the beginning of the tutorial works interestingly well on the PS5-Controller, and in Citizen Sleeper, into which I hope to get deeper. It has an interesting mechanic, and I’m curious to see how the narrative goes.
Well, in lieu of a new playthrough of Prey I started playing Prey: Mooncrash. Started pretty well, advanced quite a bit, unlocked all characters, many of their skills and nearly all exits… and then got bored of it. It’s nearly inevitable for a roguelike, but particularly for one with a persistent layout. The issue with a game that relies on repetition is that, well, it gets repetitive. This is why roguelikes are better when the mechanics are simple or the world is smaller. As it is the game overstays its welcome long before you’re half done with it.
Did a full playthrough of the story mode of Mortal Kombat 11, including the DLC. A few reservations aside I really enjoy the story. I remember starting to play the previous games months ago in preparation for the release of the new one, and then I heard a bunch of things about it that I didn’t like, so I never bought it and this one stayed downloaded but unplayed for quite a bit. Now being in a MK mood I rewatched the 2021 film, thinking that maybe my opinion on it would have improved if I went with a positive outlook. It didn’t work. If anything, I dislike it even more now.
And now playing through the Resident Evil 4 Remake, hunting for achievements, since now I know the game like the back of my hand. So not much new for now.
Still primarily playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Things I said last week stand and by my estimation I should wrap it up around the weekend so I’ll reserve further comments until I’m done.
In co-op we’ve started playing Mechwarrior 5. The game in itself seems fine enough, the mechs are properly stompy, the mechanics (so far and on easy difficulty because we’re scrubs) don’t feel too unforgiving. I am somewhat concerned about how quickly it’s going to get repetitive but we’re prepared to drop it from our co-op rotation and I can continue it solo one mission at a time as we switch to something else we’ve got queued.
I was traveling most of the week, so I hadn’t much equipment other than the anberNic. Which means I mostly played Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced. Half the world is covered in locations now. I broke 3 crystals and successfully survived a lawless zone.
What I don’t like in this game is all this missing the target as it drags the combat out without providing any challenge. Also the menu is abysmal, as you have to switch different menus back and forth and push different buttons in different menus to get all the information you need. You learn skills by using equipment. To learn which skills could be learned by which class, press R in the equipment menu. To see the stats of the equipment press Select. To see the progress of learned skill go to the abilities menu and press R. To see the class of weapons and skills to obey the laws … I haven’t found out yet. In fights where blades are forbidden, hitting someone with a sword is absolutely okay. In battles where “Holy” is forbidden, white magic Protect and Prayers of Cure are okay, but white magic of Cure is not.
Picked up Team Fortress 2 again (for basically the first time in like five years) after hearing about a community game mode recreating an old one called Engineer Fortress, where it pits (up to) 24 humans against 40 bot Engineers. It’s kinda like a reverse Mann vs. Machine where you’re on offense instead of defense, except this mode has no time limit or failure condition (other than giving up). It feels a bit, strangely, like an FPS version of the Creeper World games, where you fight back against an overwhelming physics simulation. A lot of it is about slowly taking and holding ground, and it brings out exactly what drew me to TF2 in the first place, that sense of a team all pulling together and working in unison towards a common goal.
It’s simultaneously utter chaos and strangely relaxing; with the number of players (human and bot) running around and the constant barrage of ordinance it feels a bit like being on a WWI front, yet the fact that the bots only go Engineer means you don’t have to worry about being backstabbed by a spy or being set on fire or other sorts of surprise attacks, and since sentries have a maximum range you can often set up outside it in relative safety and shoot at them (though the bots respawn instantly, making it very hard to actually contain them at all). It’s called One Thousand Uncles* (just search for “uncle” in the server browser) if anyone wants to try it.
*An in-joke because it was set up by a Youtuber named Uncle Dane, who mainly plays Engineer, and the bots all have his iconic cosmetic loadout.
In Factorio: Space Age I’m finally off of Gleba, with science production rolling and my territory secure (though I haven’t yet built any spidertrons.). I recommend visiting Gleba second or last – it’s way easier if you can import military items from other planets.
I’m now on Fulgora, which has a funky inverted production system – advanced resources like blue circuits are easy to get from scrap, but getting basics like iron plates or green circuits requires multiple recycler steps. This made it a little hard to build my starter mall, because basic construction items like transport belts need lots of basic resources.
Busy time for me, so I haven’t been playing a whole lot, but I did read some news related to the last game I played: there were a lot of layoffs at Deck Nine, who recently released Life is Strange: Double Exposure. I feel like it’s a bad sign for the industry as a whole when “this was clearly because the game was received very poorly” and “not necessarily, a lot of companies just do this even when the game is good” both seem like valid points.