I was playing Divinity Original Sin recently. After I got Pet Pal, what the animals think of each other and the people around them gave me a lot of good laughs.
I guess I should have some stance on this. I played Nier Automata, and the combat was horrendous to me. I still think there must have been some core mechanic that was unclear to me, but even on brief review, I didn’t see anything.
I dropped the difficulty down to nothing so I could quickly force through all the story content and see “what’s so amazing about this game”. And the story did nothing. It had me burst out laughing in mockery at the times players were supposed to be crying.
That could just be a quirk of that game’s story in particular. I do think some scenes I’ve enjoyed out of long JRPGs were only notable because I’d invested time and effort in them, so I think a lot is lost if the player isn’t interacting with the premise at all. It’s why I’d prefer forms of difficulty adjustment, removing just one form of challenge, over total removal of the entire gameplay system. Unfortunately, I think a lot of action games handle that poorly, in a very lazy way that doesn’t appreciate what challenges players.
Personally I enjoyed Nier Automata’s story, but I think that’s mostly because I enjoy camp/anime trash. I can definitely see why it wouldn’t be appealing if you went in looking for a more well put together story. That said, I don’t really remember the gameplay well enough to have an opinion on it.
To the point about being more granular with the difficulty settings: I’d definitely like that if it were done well. There are some types of gameplay I really enjoy and some which I don’t and depending on how intrusive the parts I don’t like are, I either put up with it or it’s enough to make me abandon the game. For me, while I like games that make me think and make decisions like RPGs, card games, strategy games, etc, I get really overwhelmed by too much complexity. I like games which enable me to make deep decisions using relatively simple interactions. So there are almost certainly some games I’d play if I could flip a switch that hid/automated all of the stuff like making complicated character builds and just let me do the parts I like. The game that actually prompted this thread was Expedition 33. I really wanted to play it because of all the good reviews it got and I enjoyed the combat, story, setting, etc. But I just got exhausted by having to mess around with the character builds. I supose I could have just looked up some builds online and who knows? Maybe I’ll go back to it some day and do that, but it would have been nice if there were a difficulty option that just said “Choose my skills/passives.” That way I could still engage with the combat at a level that was challenging for me without getting overwhelmed by the build stuff.
I can’t comment on Nier, as I’ve never played it. But I did notice the reverse situation— after beating Final Fantasy X, I replayed it with a “no sphere grid” game… and suddenly found a lot of these scenes far more impactful. What used to be a “meh, another stupid boss fight, whatever, no big deal…” suddenly became impactful fights to the death that carried emotional weight for me. So I think you have something there in your hypothesis.
Not a funny line but I laughed out loud when selling items in Lethal Company for the first time. It’s an absurd game made with humor, and the multiplayer gameplay creates a lot of hilarious situations.
Sir Whoopass when the goblins are looking for a wifi connection.
I know there are some cool new ways to run PC games on stuff like this. If you have them, how does this run the PC versions of games like Isaac, Gungeon, Slay the Spire, or Vampire Survivors? I know these all (or mostly) have Android or Switch ports but for one reason or another (usually mod support) the PC version is superior. I’m looking into this device as a lower weight, lower power alternative to a Steam Deck, so support for 2D indie PC games is a must.
You can use things like GameHub/GameHub Lite (a community fork which strips the telemetry), or Winlator. This can run far, far more taxing games than just the little indies. Tomb Raider (2013), Halo MCC, Fallout New Vegas, Silksong, Dave the Diver, Hades II and so on. There is tinkering sometimes, but its getting more and more impressive as time goes on.
Its up to you if you want to plan for the future and buy the ‘Max’ version (with more RAM), but for all that’s possible now, the 12GB version (the Pro model) is more than enough.
It will 100% play small indie games, but remember some games are weird. They’re fickle and refuse to work (I think one of the Deus Ex games refuses to play, I might have read that somewhere?). So it might be a case-by-case basis. If it helps, do a search for AYN Odin 2 (or AYN Odin 2 Portal) + GameHub or Winlator. They share the same chip and have plenty of users sharing their experiences!
I am curious. Do you play 1 game each day? Or is it at some point in your life? Because I feel like 1 ga be a day is time consuming and also doesn’t let to dummy grasp the story of the canes. Or at least would be difficult for me.
When I started this it was at some point in my life. Around the 30 day mark though it just kind of evolved into 1 Game Daily.
I have a really open schedule right now (I’m a college student and only have classes 3 days of the week) so usually my days are pretty relaxed with lots of downtime. Though sometimes things do get a little exhausting such as during midterm seasons. I feel like it kind of shows in my posts during that time
Having played the original (and most Obsidian games), I can only partially comment (also: Support BDS, fuck Microsoft, Obsidian are probably dead either way regardless of sales…):
I strongly disagree with that. I think a much better statement is that Obsidian… generally doesn’t super care about the overall plot outside of a few major beats (Pillars of Eternity 1 being their really big exception and it arguably being their greatest work as a result).
They instead care about the moment to moment narrative. They want you to CARE about what is happening in the now. Because the main quest? That is mostly a quick journey. What matters is the people and scenarios you meet along the way. And a huge part of that is writing those chains of quests in a way that it feels like your actions Matter.
And when it works? It fucking WORKS. You really feel like you are part of a living and breathing world in a way that few studios can even hope to manage. Like, yes, the world is ending, but life still moves on and you become deeply invested in this family that refuses to give up and die… even though they probably will. It is very reminiscent of how RGG does the Yakuza/LAD games.
And… like the LADs… it also can mean that you just don’t actually care about what the giant bad vibes tree is actually going to do. But, once you have finished up all the side quests you kind of just don’t care? RGG tends to avert that by making the last hour or two just constant cutscenes, epic fights, and shirts getting ripped off. Obsidian prefer to go much more introspective and… if you vibe with that then it works. If you don’t, it doesn’t.
Contrast that with (classic) Bioware (and modern day Larian) where you have that same fork/join model of story telling but they make it a point to constantly shoehorn in references to the main plot into every interaction to the point it is a bigger surprise if the woman who stole that cake wasn’t secretly the adjutant of the big bad’s top general.
And, just for funsies, Owlcat tend to be a lot more like Obsidian in their approach but also are generally much better at tying in enough of those side beats to the main quest (or at least a party member) that it still holds together.
But yeah. That is a huge chunk of why so many people never finished Outer Worlds 1. They did the three or four planets to get access to the imperial capital world and… were done by then because they had effectively experienced two or three REALLY solid mini stories/arcs and didn’t see much point in moving on.
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