T w e n t y S i d e d
This week was going to be more Rimworld, but I made a decision that has robbed me of all the free time I had. I got Balatro.
I never thought a poker Rougelike would work as well as it does, but it has so much feedback through its bells and chimes on every little action, that it is very appealing to my brain.
I know I’m late to the Balatro party. I don’t tend to play new games.
Now I’m going to finish writing this so I can continue playing Balatro. I guess I should also ask what everyone else is doing this week. What’s going on with you guys this week? Balatro?
Best. Plot Twist. Ever.
Few people remember BioWare's Jade Empire, but it had a unique setting and a really well-executed plot twist.
Bethesda’s Launcher is Everything You Expect
From the company that brought us Fallout 76 comes a storefront / Steam competitor. It's a work of perfect awfulness. This is a monument to un-usability and anti-features.
Punishing The Internet for Sharing
Why make millions on your video game when you could be making HUNDREDS on frivolous copyright claims?
Dead or Alive 5 Last Round
I'm not surprised a fighting game has an absurd story. I just can't figure out why they bothered with the story at all.
TitleWhat’s Inside Skinner’s Box?
What is a skinner box, how does it interact with neurotransmitters, and what does it have to do with shooting people in the face for rare loot?
Been replaying Deathloop. No particular reason, just got the itch. It’s a pretty well designed game, overall.
More Sleeping Dogs. I just played The Funeral mission and think I might be close to the end. It’s been a decade since I played this game for the first time. I miss the True Crime Series.
In coop we’ve been playing Monster Hunter: Rise and made it to the first Stampede-mission. Really hectic tower defense. Failed it twice but got a ton of materials. Also the new Add-on for digital Wingspan. We still need to play the new Duo-mode cause just the new birds don’t ring it for me.
Analog I learned the rules to Apiary. This game is right up my ally. No dice-rolls and card luck is just a minor buff, everything else is just pure tactic – great. Now I will learn Meadow. Should be good for all I’ve heard.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 approaches endgame, and continues to be excellent on all accounts. Trying to avoid spoilers, so I’ll just say I can’t remember a game narrative I’ve liked better, and then stick to talking about the mechanics. This is the most complex Timed Hit system I’ve seen in an RPG; it’s basically like playing a Team Ninja game. You’ve got your Normal Dodge button, that avoids damage; you’ve got your Normal Parry button, that’s got a shorter window but counterattacks if you Parry the whole sequence; then you’ve got your Special Attack Dodge button, exclusively for attacks with the Special highlight, that has a separate button for counterattacking afterward. Then you’ve got your OTHER Special Attack Dodge Button, for attacks marked with the OTHER Special highlight, that automatically counterattacks. And then enemies throw anywhere between one and
ninetwenty attacks at you per enemy turn, which can contain multiples types of attack, and also the enemies love to juke and balk and fake you out however they can, and damage adds up very quickly. They’ve basically distilled an action game into the turn-based system. There’s no passive tanking here, you dodge or die. Or both. You can definitely do both.Likewise, most of the characters seem built around comboing with themselves; their skills buff their other skills that buff their other skills, so you’re theoretically rotating through all your skills every fight. Of course there’s some broken options too, and I’m leaning into those as hard as I can. Which is not enough to get me past the optional bosses. I’ve tried and failed to kill about a dozen optional bosses now, who are reminding me I’m bad at timing things and have convinced me to just do the character sidequests and finish the game. But that’s why they’re optional, and I have very few complaints. Although I laughed when a Youtube comment mentioned the signposting being really good; I think I’ve gotten lost in at least half the dungeons. One time I walked back out the entrance thinking I had found the far exit.
It’s very clear at this point that characters not in the main party receive reduced xp, which is an unfortunate mark against the game. I’ve got two supersluggers and one Blue Mage that can only learn stuff if they’re in the party (this is why I don’t care for Blue Mages), and the rest of the team is now ten levels behind. This is a problem that’s been repeatedly solved and unsolved in RPG history, and it’s unfortunate Clair takes the unsolved path. On the other hand… I’m not using those characters, it doesn’t much matter.
Brotato managed to get something of a dream run. Fisherman got Damage up to about 750%, and then I got the Axolotl, which lets you trade your highest stat for your lowest. My lowest was Armor, meaning I suddenly managed to get a run where I had 750 points of armor. The downside was I needed that damage boost to actually kill anything, but it didn’t matter at that point, because the enemies literally couldn’t hurt me. What a satisfying feeling.
And then I STILL died on Wave 40.
Here’s some advice on Clair Obscur. You can make short work of any optional bosses if you farm enough Lumina points. They are not limited. You can effectively farm enough to give every character all existent passives, which is way more than you’ll ever need (every character can have up to 999 Lumina points, and I finished the game with less than half for each one, and if you’re not using a couple characters you’ll need even less). You can also farm Grandiose Chroma Catalysts, which allow you to upgrade every weapon until level 32 (at which point you can use the Perfect Chroma Catalysts you obtain by killing a few of the side bosses to get them to level 33). Assuming you are in Act III, of course. They’re not impossible to farm in Act II, but they’ll take too long.
If you’re interested in where, read on.
There’s an enemy called Clair Obscur (insert Peter Griffin Pointing meme) that you can find near the last flag of the Monolith (before the fight with Renoir). Backtrack from the flag up the stairs, past the fountain until you see a grapple point. Grapple to it and you’ll find it near the tables. Every time you defeat him and its two cohorts you get 5 Lumina points. Then you race back to the flag to reset them and try again.
Another possibility is the Merchant you find atop a building near the last flag in Renoir’s Drafts. That guy gives you only 1 Lumina point, but you can immediately fight him again after defeating him, without having to run to the flag each time. You’ll need to be a bit stronger for this one though.
As for the Grandiose Chroma Catalysts, there are three groups of Noir enemies in Dark Shores (left bottom of the map), and each drops a couple of those.
What actually happened is I finished the character quests, and then started New Game+, which deleted New Game= and thus locked me out of all the optional endgame bosses until I complete the entire game again.
I think it’s for the best.
More Deliverancing of a Coming Kingdom, and it keeps being good&interesting. I’m still in the very early of the game, and will need to see where things will lead. Currently I’m doing my best to stick a bit longer to the main line before running around like a headless chicken on the open world xD
I didn’t have time to play this week.
I played a bit of balatro a while ago, but it didn’t really work on me. It was fun for a bit, but not interesting enough to continue after a few games.
I picked up Balatro for a vacation last month (figured it would be perfect for the ten-hour flights). Even with the sound off, it’s pretty solid as a time killer. Only complaint I’d have is it still has the rogue-like difficulty wall of “OK, now you’re not playing better for a better score, you’re just trying not to play poorly while you wait for the RNG to bless you.”
I have been enjoying Balatro for a couple of months now, I think I’ve only ‘won’ twice? Also playing some Satisfactory, not very far in that one. Also a friend of mine and I do a few hours of co-op The Planet Crafter every weekend and it’s been very satisfying — we are off the main planet and on a moon now.
Still just Nightreign. Was getting a bit tired but they put in a superboss that gives you a currency for mysterious good stuff so I spammed that along with everyone else, slowly improving my performance on each fight from “this is impossible” to “oh I see that’s how you dodge that, they just intentionally designed it to seem impossible,” and then suddenly having a run with some uber players with uber gear that just blew it away. Turns out the solution is more DPS. And then I start feeling like it’s mighty suspicious I keep seeing other people instantly finding god-tier gear in seemingly the very first loot of the run, when I’m spending the entire run trying and failing to find any of the good spells, but hey there’s anti-cheat so they can’t possibly be cheating I just suck and have no luck, right?
The rewards aren’t so crazy as to make those unable to catch sufficient carriers unable to play. Some optimized relics which may or may not line up nicely with the stuff you’ve already been using. New “vessels” for putting relics on characters in different color combinations, which again may or may not line up with what you have available (and the terrible UIs mean you’ll have to work that all out on the side to see if any of them are worth getting. You can buy the alternate skins as well, at ridiculous prices that you’d basically have to never lose for those to be worth it compared to the normal currency you get every time: reducing the 1,000’s to 1’s, you normally get almost 2k per run and the costumes cost 14k, 35k, or 7.5k. You get 5 of the new currency per superboss kill and only on success, and they want 5-20 per outfit. So those might as well not even be there it’s such a waste.
And they’ve just released the next superboss, so I’ll probably keep on that for the next week, and so on.
Was still enjoying Blue Prince last week, though I’ve gone to the internets for help a few times, on puzzles that in retrospect I would _never_ have gotten without hints. I’m fine with that though; I feel no shame in getting hints in solo games.
Haven’t touched it this week though, because I got a copy of the tabletop ISS Vanguard and we have been playing non-stop. Ticks all my boxes: space exploration, levelling up the crew, researching new gear… Its basically XCom, but as a legacy boardgame with a good (so far) story.
Still playing Conception Plus. I’m working my way through the grinding part of getting all the relationships to MAX and grinding levels, but the dungeons are pretty boring and I don’t really gain a lot of levels, as in the final dungeon I have to use too many potions after battles — either due to HP loss or MP loss if I used skills — and so only really grind through the first level, and in the other dungeons I don’t have to fight but don’t gain a lot of XP either. I’m thinking about trying to go once through the normal dungeons and then after the relationships section in-between grinding the first floor again until it gets easy, as the first case will restore my healing potions and it will give me two sections of interacting with the Star Maidens, but that can’t change the fact that the dungeons are just BORING. So we’ll see how long I stick with doing that instead of just going after the end bosses.
Still working on Blue Prince – I’m on the first major step after getting to Room 46, had awhile of “wandering in the desert” where I didn’t have very much in the way of specific leads, but I picked up the trail within the last few days in game. Turns out there’s quite a few steps required for the last piece of that puzzle. (Had to
get enough trophies to get the blue tents, buy the blue tents, then find the memos relating to unlocking the right area)I haven’t quite solved it yet, but I’m definitely looking at a clear and obvious “puzzle” now, so hopefully I’ll have pushed through that pretty soon.
Speaking of clear puzzles, I did solve the Gallery. Not a huge fan – it’s a particular brand of weird word puzzle that I don’t love – but at least it doesn’t appear that it’s actually a critical part of the game. (I ended up using some scripting to generate possible answers, which helped)
Just saw the Steam Summer Sale has Crypt of the Necrodancer at 90% off, down to $1.50. I urge everyone to buy it; the ending was a nightmare and a mistake, but the first two thirds are absolutely worth $1.50.
They’ve also got Borderlands 3 for $3.00, but I’ve tried multiple times to get into Borderlands 1 and 2 and have come to terms with the fact I just don’t like what they’re doing.
Much to my chagrin I went and started a NG+ playthrough of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Do you know how rare that is? Starting a new playthrough after I finished the first one is the sort of thing I only do with very short games and if I’m achievement hunting. I am absolutely obsessed with this game, though.
But I’m also playing Lost in Random: The Eternal Die. I truly loved the first game, and while this one is notoriously different I had liked the demo, so I picked it up too. The first game is truly special, one of its kind, so it’s kind of a shame that this new entry (not exactly a sequel) goes for a different approach, but it’s fun nonetheless. They’ve fully embraced the “random” in the title and went for a roguelike experience very similar to Hades. Not much to add. If you liked Hades you’ll like this one. Though I strongly recommend the first game even more. It’s a truly beautiful experience.
Children of Morta was on sale so I picked up a second copy and have been playing co-op with my son. It’s pretty good fun, although I wouldn’t want to go through the completionist grind of all the achievements again; a couple of the RNG-based ones overstayed their welcome a bit on my first playthrough. Still, the fundamentals are good enough that I’ve started a new game plus to run through solo.
And of course Territory Idle continues to chug along in the background. I’ve settled pretty deeply into a pattern to follow on each island, though, which means that there’s not a lot of thought or strategy going on. I think I have the patience to get all the achievements, but unless a much more interesting layer opens up in the late-game I won’t be particularly sad to see the end of it.