Project Zomboid just released version 42 beta, so all PZ all the time for me. I’m just living the farming life and getting into the new crafting system in between smacking zombies. Very satisfying.
The Greece DLC released about a month ago, and I just picked it up in the last few days. Lots of fun so far, the map is starting to get pretty big. I’m planning to do another long haul across the whole map at some point.
The only other tip I can think of is to enable the auto save/load state in RA, now I can close my device and it’ll power off after 10 minutes. Turning it back on boots right into the last game and works really well
Excellent idea. It feels much better than having to manually launch the last game. I’m assuming you’ve already configured Rertroarch to create a save state any time a game is being closed.
Is there a way to have the hinge work as a power button even if the device is fully powered down? I really don’t like that you have to hold the power button for several seconds.
Neat theme, by the way. How difficult is it to create one of these?
From what I heard the processor’s“sleep” doesn’t have the super low power mode and would end up using too much battery, so the only way to get the hinge to wake would be to give up battery life. It would be really nice though, maybe another company will make their own SP with the feature 🤞
Theming isn’t hard! It’s pretty customizable and easy to work with, but there’s no style inheritance/file importing so custom pages might each have the same duplicate style settings in each
I think there are too many JRPGs that still use their battle system in support of their narrative for it to be considered anything other than a core system in those games. That’s especially the case in lower budget games in the genre.
Larger budget projects are branching more and more into side content/worldbuilding, but I’d argue it’s still highly underdeveloped in the genre when compared with western RPGs, in quality if not also in quantity. Persona and Yakuza are exceptions, rather than the rule. Persona is doing something entirely different (and well enough that it’s being emulated now) while Yakuza, as you say, carry a lot of that over from prior development into its RPGs from the series’ action games.
Have Indy on the go on the XBOX, but also returned to Foundation, which is still in early access but making good progress as a more informal town builder.
Finished Disco Elysium. I think I made pretty much the same choices as my first time years ago. I’m still not a huge fan of the ending, but now that knew what to expect, it wasn’t as jarring. When I do another playthrough in a couple of years, I might have to be a stealing racist or something, but I like Lieutenant Kim too much and probably won’t go through with that.
Then more Windblown. I beat the game on the first three difficulties (of five) now and unlocked almost everything for now. I’ll definitely try to get through everything, it doesn’t seem too hard.
Finally, I started Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I’m still very early on, but I hope I’m finished by the time FF7 Rebirth is out. This game has proper turn-based combat, not just RTwP like the first game, which I like a lot more, even if it’s much slower.
My daughter is a bit older but loved Tinykin - its on sale for around $6 right now and is a great sandbox environment to play around in while you explore the various rooms with creatures that help you get to your next objective.
Not single-player, but snipperclips is good, relaxed puzzle fun.
Goals are visual and easy to understand, each player controls a shape and they can cut each other to try and fit a predefined “hole” together. There are some physics puzzles based on cutting your shape in clever ways too.
Mistakes have no consequence and often lead to funny interactions. You can’t really lose, you just reset your shape and try again.
From my point of view, you’ve got it wrong, but so do many developers. A good JRPG is all about resource management. Your HP, MP, items, money and the balance between these and your EXP and equipment. Combat is simply a drain on your resources up until the final boss, which should require more strategy. This needs something akin to a dungeon without constant healing and money being a thight resource. Once you’re in a dungeon, you should either be prepped or doomed.
You mostly see this done in dungeon crawlers, think any Etrian Odyssey game for example. Persona 5 goes for the same thing, as do most Shin Megami Tensei games.
Most modern games, however, are overly lenient with either money or healing. Often times, combat is easy enough to not even drain your resources. That’s when endless grinding becomes an option. Once you’ve destroyed this balance, you need something else to keep attention and that’s where I think your observation comes in.
Is this a modern/old dichotomy? Playing through Metaphor right now, I agree that they go with the old-school dungeon crawler approach, but Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII are definitely not modern, and I don’t think they’d fall into the same bucket.
Not entirely, however, I feel as though proper resource management got less common over time. While the ideas are still present in modern games, they tend to be easy enough that most resources can just be horded. Most people don’t even use consumables nowadays. Games are seemingly balanced around ignoring entire systems.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne