The gameplay is fantastic and offers a lot of variety (especially as you grow your team and unlock more skills and combo attacks), and the art style and art direction, locations, and the soundtrack are beautiful. I had a lot of fun exploring, looking for treasure, talking to everyone, finding tons of secrets and side quests. The story is very much cliché and mostly an afterthought, but it’s fine (not bad, not good, just fine) and the cast is cute.
Unfortunately, 2/3 into the game, the developers either depleted their budget, or they stopped giving a shit. The story feels super rushed in the last act, and the ending is downright insulting. Half the cast enters a portal at the end of the second act, and you never see or hear from them again. One of the main party members goes like “Oh my, this thing I just discovered changes everything, I need to study this more” but you never see them again until the very end, and they don’t do anything, nor do they say why the thing they found was important or what did they study. A lot of things that were foreshadowed or hinted at, like the legendary sea slug or the Queen that was, are just random optional bosses scattered in the game’s world with no purpose or backstory whatsoever. Most don’t even have a dungeon attached to them. The true ending is a slap in the face.
I loved the game, but the last act and the ending really soured my experience with it.
I’d have to spoiler tag the entire message to be able to reply to that.
spoilerFor a multitude of reasons. First of all, the true ending is achieved by collecting random Shells around the world. Sure, you have a magical parrot telling you where the missing chests are, but in my case it would tell me that a chest was missing in the Flooded Graveyard, and I’d spend four hours straight going up and down the same map over, and over and over again, until I finally gave up and looked for an internet guide to tell me where the missing chest was. I’m a completionist, but I don’t care about achievements: I like exploring maps and collecting stuff and finding secrets, but I hate random, pointless collectibles and I never care about them in the games I play. Having them tied to the true ending was a huge mistake IMO and ruined my experience. Secondly, as I said in another comment of mine: I despise time travel. Always. It just doesn’t work, unless you put a lot of thought into it, and the Sea of Stars developers clearly didn’t even try. Garl’s chapter was probably the most emotional moment of the game, but the true ending comes and says “Yeah, no, he’s alive and well, and actually it never happened. B’st did those things, not Garl”, which doesn’t make any sense as B’st did not know Garl and would not be able to imitate him, nor do the same things he did. The purpose of reviving Garl was for him to throw an apple at the bad guy to taunt him and have him choose to fight in place of his minion? Seriously, you go through the hassle of collecting all conches, and that’s the only thing that differs from the normal ending. The rest plays out exactly the same. You defeat the Fleshmancer, and… Resha’an shows up, takes his bf into a portal with him, doesn’t say a word to the party, and goes away. And everyone’s happy. To say that I was underwhelmed is an euphemism. I was expecting some new revelations, some closure, but all I got is a slightly different turn of events with a different boss fight and an equally disappointing ending. Meanwhile, dozens of questions remain unanswered. What was Resha’an researching? What the heck was the “night” inside of Zale, and why had he to confront it? Valere is able to fly just as well as he does, and has no night inside her at all. Why was Serai hiding her true identity from her crew? What happened to Brugaves, the Acolytes and the Dweller? (Yes, I know that they end up being boss fights in the Messenger, but I should NOT be required to play an entirely different game to have some closure to this storyline. That would be like Capcom asking their players to play Monster Hunter to know what happens to Ada in Resident Evil)
I haven’t played the beta yet but I’m hoping that The Finals, which is made by ex-Dice devs, will be a good alternative to Battlefield and COD. I just miss destructible environments so badly. Bad Company 2 was so so good back in the day.
I really, really hope that it doesn’t get overrun with cheaters like warzone did. I have really high hopes for the game because I’m having a blast with the beta. Not often does a game come along out of nowhere and just tick all the boxes with having such a solid formula. Last game I felt like this with was Alex Legends. Pls devs don’t screw this up 🙏
Saw an article on that game recently that they’re using AI voices in that. I don’t think it’s for everything, but if you happen to be an opponent to AI, that’s something to know. If not, well, carry on 😅
There is a single player option but the game is way more interesting as a multiplayer game.
You have 30 days to avoid a meteorite destroying your world. You start on a wild planet and you need to progress through several technological advancement to build a laser able to destroy the asteroid.
You have some classical resource collection and processing. However where it become interesting is the fact that every action impact the environment, slowly first then more drastically towards the end.
If the miner left his tailing on the ground untreated then it will slowly pollute the ground and impact the production of the farmer.
If one of the woodcutter cut too much woods in the forest then you create some deforestation, less trees means less pollutions to be absorbed. The hunter can hunt some animals species to extinction or help them to thrive.
Since it’s a multiplayer game there is the possibility of voting laws to protect some lands and which money will be used for global exchange.
It’s a fascinating game, unfortunately it is quite time consuming and not very polished but I love the concept.
Yes. Stopping the meteor requires a number of materials as well as powering the device to destroy the meteor. Also just to clarify, 30 days to stop the meteor is 30 real time days. The game is largely complete and honestly, I don’t think you’d even really notice what’s missing unless you specifically look up what’s not there.
I haven’t had time to build up a big city, but so far I’ve enjoyed it. I’m running on Linux with a 5600X + 6600XT, and 1080p at medium gets me 30-40 fps.
I LOVE that roads transmit power and water. Money is way more available early game than in 1. The only annoyance for me so far has been the terrain overlay that comes up when you select a zoning tool (similar to how selecting water pipes switches to underground. You can make it go back to normal by hitting i after selecting the tool. It’s minor, but its an annoying difference from 1.
Definitely easier to manage new/remote developments in this game. Government subsidies are also a nice hand-hold but I have no idea how it’s calculated. Trains in C:S1 are super unprofitable, government investment makes it work well. (I’ve gotten subways can be profitable in C:S1 after lots of work).
I wouldn’t mind the terrain overlays if it looked clearer with it selected, for some reason it was hard to use, especially at night.
Sidenote: Pioneers of Pagonia is by the actual developer of the actual old The Settlers.
I loved it. And yeah, it’s a simple management game without much depth or fuss, but that chill easygoing settling of the landscape is what enchanted me about the original right around 30 years ago, and it worked just as well with the demo. In fact I found that comparing Against The Storm, I kinda prefer the less gameplay that PoP has, exactly because it has less gameplay. ATS sits a bit in the middle, still being a chill town builder but also wanting to be deeper, and in that case I just want a proper 4X or Grand Strategy game instead. PoP is then the exact opposite of that for me, it appeals to the chill&relax part of gaming, a bit like playing Dorfromantik or something.
Some of my most favorite games were fairly short experiences.
In fact I value when a game doesn’t waste my time and is 100% fun, great content without fillers and stuff to just give you FOMO that ends up being boring and underwhelming when you actually try to do it. Even worse when you can’t tell what is and isn’t the filler.
Like, I’ve bought Outer Wilds for maybe 20€ or so and it is probably my favorite game of all time. I wouldn’t have bought it for 60€ (and it’s especially a hard sell because you can’t really entice anyone to play it without spoiling some part of the game to them which really sucks; like, I’d argue even the Steam description already spoils some of the magic). But it would be 100% worth it even if I 100% the game after maybe 10 hours (and there is no way to replay it, unfortunately).
Similarly, I’ve gotten A Short Hike for free with a Humble Bundle subscription (and not like free to own as part of the monthly bundle but just free in their “trove”) and I also completely loved it - was maybe 5 hours.
Meanwhile I played, say, Cyberpunk 2077 for free, finished it, and I am still kinda disappointed? Like there was good stuff in the game but I’m really glad I didn’t pay for it - it’s enough that I paid by putting the time in it. It left me with a feeling of wasted potential and like “surely there has to be something more” and then I finished the game and there wasn’t more. It’s so hard to explain… Like yeah, I enjoyed many hours of it, I think. But in the end it doesn’t feel good overall.
So yeah, these are the extremes, but I really don’t think you can put value on a game like that. Games by their very nature vary a lot and length isn’t (or shouldn’t) really be the main criteria. And enjoyment varies a lot as well. It can be so good that a few hours of it is enough, and it can be so mild that it’s not really worth playing. Oh and that also completely ignores the fact that some games are made to be played for hundreds of hours by design (Factorio, Rimworld), while purely story games can hardly be stretched for dozens of hours and still be fun/interesting. And games with balanced narrative and gameplay can reach a few dozen hours but even for the larger ones going 50-100 hours is usually a stretch.
Minecraft hands down. I’ve put more time into that game than any other in my life. I constantly go back to it, and almost everyone I meet online plays it or has played it. There is so much enjoyability from a game as limitless as that
Rimworld for sure. I paid full price for it on Ludeon’s website and played it a lot. When it released on Steam I started playing it there and now it’s my most played Steam game by far. Based on some quick and dirty math, it’s cost me under $0.03 per hour of enjoyment.
Another big one is Against the Storm. I’ve only played a few hundred hours so far but that’s been worth every penny I spent too. I bought it during the last Winter Sale on Steam and I’ve put in about 200 hours.
Same, about 0.02 USD per hour at this point, with DLC included. Would be even lower if I had bought the game earlier instead of pirating it for months.
Mine are Subnautica, I’ve put myself in danger in that game just for the music. Honorable mentions include horizon (zero dawn specifically, but I am currently playing through forbidden West for the first time, so I still might prefer it), Halo(CE), and Skyrim for me as well.
City on the mesa is my personal favorite! Also, looking at the album again, something needs to be said about how big that soundtrack is. It contains eighty songs.
Dual subtitles, aka polyglot mode. Doubt that it’d ever happen, probably I’m the only one who wants it. Sometimes I’d just merge 2 subtitles with python script and upload it to my Plex.
Fast forward and save states especially for classic remaster. Some have this, some don’t
I don’t think I count as a polyglot (Native English, Spanish proficient, learning Japanese and German) but what is that even useful for? I feel like it’d be really confusing to have two subtitles for the same dialogue.
I just watch, in whatever language I want to practice.
I think the term came from polyglot books, i.e. books that are written in 2 languages on each side.
Often times for me, the spoken foreign language can be quite fast or filled with colloquials, so I prefer to have subtitles in that language, and also English subtitles. Or in some cases, such as for Japanese voiced games, I’d prefer to have a Japanese subtitles to help me recognize the Kanjis, and additional English subs for translation.
I tried this method on Plex, uploaded dual subtitles for some movies, and it helped me a lot in acquiring new vocabularies. I think Netflix allows users to do the same thing too.
I could see it being a lot more useful for Japanese or other no Latin alphabet languages. Especially for the kanji. I’m too early in Japanese to watch content.
Been playing these games since DeS on the PS3 when it first came in 2009.
Overall, I’m enjoying it. Multiplayer that doesn’t require consumables and rituals like placing signs or ringing bells is such a QOL improvement. After 14 years of putting down summon signs and ringing bells and gaining insight, I just want to get to it these days. A few thoughts:
Bosses initially seem challenging until you get a grip on their movesets and then realize you can defeat them with just a few moves. I beat one boss using nothing more than a running R2 attack over and over again.
Perfect parry windows seem huge.
A few control decisions and whatnot are bizarre. Someone else mentioned filling the quick items with apparently random items when you deplete another for instance. Most of the time I don’t even equip any other quick use items, just my estus/healing plants/flasks/whatever.
visuals generally are good on PS5. Am playing in performance mode for the FPS.
umbral mechanics are pretty neat.
short cuts and area connections feel good and natural, DS1-like.
only been invaded once and haven’t tried an invasion yet. Battle went back and forth until my invader went in for the coup de grace and I dodged while they went sailing over the edge of a cliff. They probably would’ve had me had it not been for that cliff.
dodging feels like a mix of Souls and Bloodborne. Stamina meter might be a bit too forgiving, as it feels like you can dodge over and over through pretty much anything.
weapons feel like they have weight to them. Movement is a tiny bit floaty but generally the weapon movesets and decent and feel like they have impact
inexplicable missing sound in some instances. Sliding down ladders for instance happens in dead silence.
being able to watch the host continue playing while you’re dead is nice. Nothing worse than helping someone almost defeat a boss and then not being able to watch the end result if you happen to bag it near the end.
Anyways, a few thoughts. Hope they continue to support the game with patches for a while to come and fix up a few odds and ends. I’m not all that far into it, but this feels like it has legs.
One thing I haven’t figured out is if perfect parry wither damage is variable.
Sometimes it feels like I take a lot of wither, othertimes not. I’m using a shield and 2hing a lot so I wonder if it’s a shield vs weapon parry thing? Or if it’s timing based like partial parry damage mitigation in ds3.
I was too engrossed to do testing so far, have you tried at all?
What weapons are you using btw? my wife uses a giant axe and seems to yeet herself a lot. Are the certain weapons with lots of lungy movements that might be tripping people up?
I haven’t been 2hing much and haven’t tested much on those sorts of things yet. I did notice that I don’t think you can die on a perfect parry even if you have no health left, though, as I seemed to be in that position during a boss earlier today.
Started with a ranger who starts with an axe, went to a spear, then a halberd, most recently using a hammer. The spear was quite lungy which caused some issues around open air vertical areas with a lot of narrow paths, while the halberd was just too slow. Hammer is feeling good, and has a good set of running attacks.
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