Nier: Automata, like the final ending. I’ve 100% this game three times and each time I end tearing up, thinking about a world where would could all come together and help eachother, then I look at the news and that dream is immediately shattered.
still d&d dark alliance because I have been playing a few mins at a time. I really need to play the witcher but it can lock you into getting to a point that is not clear where it is or waste time redoing.
Mine is Cosmic Fantasy 2, for the TurboGrafx-16 CD System, was a game that I was given when I was not even a teenager yet, and I beat that without any guides, without any walkthroughs, without any support, and nobody helped me.
I believe it was the first game that I beat on my own.
I tried replaying it for nostalgia’s sake, and the interface is so clunky and bad.
It uses a static card system for the enemies, nobody moves, the pacing is very slow, battles are frequent and pretty grueling, but I still remember the music, and I remember that it was the first game I ever played that had full motion video in it, even though it was anime full motion video, and the story was actually fantastic.
I honestly wish they would reboot this game or remake this game. There’s like an entire Cosmic Fantasy series of role-playing games that were huge, like in the 90s, I guess, early 2000s, something, and they just freaking disappeared. And in English translation, we only got Cosmic Fantasy 2.
There’s a lot of good story to mine, and the best part is it’s a crossover where, like, some worlds have magic and some worlds have technology and people go back and forth between them and there’s all sorts of different interesting creatures and stories that each world is experiencing.
Truthfully the weakest and strongest part of ME2 is that nothing that impacts the overall plot happens basically at all.
At the start of the first game, the Council is shown irrefutable proof of the existence of Reapers.
Then the second game fully focuses on doing side missions and expanding lore, without anything directly related to the Reapers (Excluding Arrival DLC).
Then 3 has you actually confront the Reapers.
2 is likely my favorite of the games, if only because I love the set pieces, lore, gameplay, all the squad members, and the difficulty level of insanity.
But the ending of 1 with M4 Pt 2 by Faunts playing was just so incredibly like the meme in the post haha. I do also get the same vibe for the ending of Mass Effect 2.
Ending aside, I disliked 3 because of the forced over-the-shoulder perspective in missions. It made the combat, and more importantly the sections in between combat encounters, feel awkward and rushed.
ME3 not quite sticking the landing is an understatement. I mostly remember the awful unskippable dream sequences, Shepard suddenly becoming utterly incompetent whenever that mall-ninja cerberus assassin pops up in a cinematic, and to top it of the nonsensical red-green-blue ending. I tried to replaying it last year but couldn’t get any further than the second mission because I just got annoyed.
Games are an incredible story telling medium. So many things work in games better than they can in any other medium like diverging storylines and personalized content. Role playing games are an entirely different beast.
I understand, but there is something about physically having to play the controls that distracts me from the plot, and I find it overall boring. Side quests just overwhelm my brain and I either immediately do them or completely forget about them. I play a handful of “not very control heavy, no plot” games, such as Factorio and Minecraft and I enjoy the creativity. I played with my partner (aka they played and I gave some pointers) Disco Elysium, Outer Wilds and Zelda. It doesn’t resonate with me. :( I know I’m missing out
it’s basically such a rare item that that people with tens of thousands of hours of game time rarely see one drop organically. (they can be farmed in different ways though, that’s how I usually get mine) like lottery chances basically
It duplicates an item exactly. PoE was all about RNGesus. I can’t remember the numbers off the top of my head (and it got way more complicated over the game’s life), but each rare (yellow colored) item can have 6 magical effects, 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes. Each of those effects can have a tier from 1-11 (different for some effects), and each of those tiers has its own range of numbers. So a truly amazing item has a super, super low chance to spawn (because getting 6 of the effects [and the right effects at that] to be tier 1 is hard enough, and then getting the max number within that tier takes even more sacrifices to rngesus).
Just as an example, let’s say you wanted the ‘super super best’ armor you could get. First, you’d have to be playing at a really high monster level so that items have a chance to spawn the tier 1 effect (monster level=item level when dropped, and you need minimum item levels for high tier drops). Then you’d have to get lucky and have the right chest armor drop (because even at high monster levels, you can get the worst of the worst armors. So give or take a 1 in whatever chance for the armor, then a 1 in 20 chance for the right armor… Then you’d have to get the right effects, so that’s a whatever in whatever combination calculation (I can’t be arsed for that math, but let’s just assume it’s not too bad, so like a 1 in 300 chance), then each of those effects you’ll want to be tier 1, which means for each effect there’s between a 1 in 3 chance to a 1 in 11 chance (some effects only have a few tiers) to get that, then you’ll want each of those effects to be at the max number for that tier, so grab your ankles and prepare for even more chances with a wide range…
See why I don’t want to do the math? To get really, really good items is a really, really low chance. That means that if you have a really good item, it’s going to be wanted by everyone else. Cue the dilemma: if you sell it, you’ll make money, but you only have the one opportunity to sell it. If you could somehow duplicate it… well, sweet money, baby! So a mirror let’s you duplicate an amazing item without losing the original. There was a famous dagger with spell modifications (most items are either melee based or magic based, but a dagger can have effects that boost either, which means you have even less chance of getting what effects you want) that a fella would charge beaucoups of money for, after you already had obtained a mirror of your own, and he would get the money, because the dagger was just that rare and valuable. Probably something like 1 in a billion chance of something that good dropping, so it was much easier to save money and trade for the duplicated dagger.
Oh, and an item that was a duplicate couldn’t be duplicated again (it was ‘mirrored’), only the original item could be duplicated.
The mirror? Of course. It’s a drop, and a rare drop, which made it valuable in and of itself, but PoE was brilliant in making its currency have intrinsic value in both use and rarity. HC folks were grinding for the best gear as well, but obviously there were factors that made the best gear even more rare. Having a duplicated amazing item was still a great thing for hardcore folks.
This is a really, really bad explanation, written colloquially and informally. The wiki was amazing and crafted by folks both technically brilliant and with great understanding of how to present information.
Yeah, I played from the end of the open beta until nearly poe2 came out. I was always an on-and-off player, and actually hated the emphasis on path-of-trading that it became. SSF was basically what I would do until high tiers when it was impossible to progress without trading.
I also much preferred the early game, before it became a spamfest gotta-go-fast run. New spells and mechanics were cool, but power creep was insane. I still fondly remember struggling to beat the boss of act iii, and god, that feeling when they added the fourth act, and then totally revamped everything for the ten act story… ggg was freaking amazing.
I respect that. I also typically play SSF, I have 9k hours in the first game, even went to exilecon. definitely try act 4 in poe 2 if you haven’t tried it yet, it’s a return to early game golden gameplay. probably the best campaign act in any ARPG.
I agree with everything you said for the most part. now I just play at my own pace, I hate racing or being rushed just to get a slightly better trade market price. I try to avoid using PoB until i’ve already “maxed” the character by my own means.
I always encouraged friends to avoid reading anything or looking up guides until the first character stalled out. The most fun has always been the hair brained discussions about wtf is going on as you experience a game for the first time.
I will admit though, after reading through a few build guides, you do start to see how the numbers fit together, and then it’s a whole new world of fun as you start putting together ideas about life equivalence and stacking bonuses. I remember being able to download the character planner and then things just got wild.
I have been avoiding poe2. Poe wasn’t as bad as the old school mmos, but I definitely fall too far into games and come out months later. Nowadays I definitely prefer games that are easy to pick up and put down, and have a definitive ending, which hurts, because story and not playing for hours on end means you forget nuances, and a lot of my classic ‘grindy rpg but really good story’ ones need way too much time in a single sitting. I’m becoming the silly nonce who plays games I’ve already played because I can remember their stories despite long gaps between playing.
Anyway. Avoiding poe2 because I know I’ll have to invest time I don’t have to have fun, and I really disliked the inability to play parts of the game that they phase out. I’ll never know what the background of the elder and the shaper were, or how that red haired chick with a name starting with z was involved, because I took a break for their introduction. That was what really ended my love for poe.
No shame in looking up solutions on YouTube. Some of their puzzles can be brutal. I hated anything timing based. They dropped those in the second game thankfully.
There is great satisfaction to coming back to a puzzle and finally figuring it out yourself though.
It's one thing to read a cyberpunk novel or watch a cyberpunk movie and "get" the moral of the story, which is usually "misuse of technology is bad".
But it's another thing to actually spend time in that world; to feel the effects of corporate corruption on your community, to experience the addiction to mind- and body-altering technologies, to watch loved ones - who you've spent hours looking directly in the eye and having conversations with - have their lives taken from them unfairly so that the richest person in the world can get 0.0001% richer.
I'd always been wary of techno-corpo bullshit. But that game instilled an all-new level of hatred in me; a hatred toward billionaires and megacorporations, toward oligarchs and aristocrats, toward those with the resources to change things for the better but too apathetic to stick their necks out.
Yeah, I first finished with the ending where >!I’m gliding to somewhere beautiful with the woman I love. !<
Right after that, I did the one where >!I sign myself off to the corpo, so my physical body is about to be destroyed, and I just walk there as a cow to a butcher. !<
That hit hard. Especially listening to the same messages from different people: “haven’t heard of you, I hope you are in a good place!” I was depressed for a couple days since, until I did a third ending where >!I give a kid my guitar. !<
This is what I call “choices matter”! Many endings, which have their own missions that lead to some actual changes and bend the narrative, not just several pre-made cutscenes.
What I especially love about the endings is that there isn't any "good" ending in the game. Some are worse than others, but there's never a net positive for V. No matter what, there is a human cost to victory. Night City would never allow some lowly merc to have a happy ending. Arguably, the "third option" can be seen as the "best" ending, as it costs the fewest amount of lives. But holy shit, the voicemails you get in that ending are heartbreaking.
Also, I think this is just an Mbin issue, but the spoiler tags don't work if there's a space before the closing tag.
Spoiler tags aren’t working for me either, I don’t think they’re correct for Lemmy markdown. It should look like this:
::: spoiler Spoiler Title
Spoiler text body goes here
:::
And hopefully work like:
Spoiler TitleSpoiler text body goes here
Anyway for Cyberpunk endings I agree, and happy endings don’t really go with the setting. Personally the one I felt best about was doing the “Don’t Fear The Reaper” secret ending path into the Temperance ending, for me that was an awesome and fitting resolution. But I had grown quite close with Johnny over my playthrough. Caveat that I haven’t finished the DLC yet and I know it adds endings, so maybe I’ll like one of those better.
I think “the sun” variation where you take Rogue with you is the best ending. It’s still sad, but you do get to realize your dreams and do crazy awesome merc shit in the Path of Glory epilogue.
For me that was the first ending I got, Rogue’s path followed by the Sun. I felt like absolute shit afterwards personally. I took Johnny’s offer because I was appealed by the idea of redemption, but instead he dragged Rogue down with him one last time. And then in Path Of Glory V had learned nothing, discarded all the character growth and ignored every lesson to instead let Night City consume her like it does everyone else that fails to realize it’s a festering swamp you must leave behind at all costs. That’s why the two endings that have a positive undertone - The Star and Temperance - involve the main character leaving Night City behind.
Yeah, they’ve all got serious drawbacks at best. The most terrible ending is the Phantom Liberty one where you take Reed’s help, imo. You literally squeak out with nothing more than your life, and you’re a shell of your former self.
I think Temperance was the first ending I got, but I’ve played it so many times it’s hard to remember now, haha.
The Tower is bad, but The Devil may be worse. Once you know what Yorinobu is up to, the one ending where he’s stopped before he can pull it off is pretty bad.
For me the best and canonical ending is the secret ending and letting Johnny take the body. Mostly because I tend to play a solo tank build and that building is a joke even on very hard. Also because johnny is V’s bro by the end so i give him the body. Makes no sense to just waste some preem ‘ganic material like that by letting V just die.
The first time I played through it, it didn’t really sink in. When I got to the ending where
SpoilerYou you give up Songbird in exchange for your cure and you find that they are able to heal you only by removing your cybernetics
I booted the game back up the next day, but just couldn’t bring myself to continue with my character. It felt like I finally got them out of that world. I didn’t pick it back up again for another month and started with a fresh character because of how hard it sunk in.
That’s exactly why I think the game has value despite being a mediocre experience as a game. Adam Something did a video recently on how terrible it is, and while he’s not strictly wrong, he missed a deeper point. Yes, the traffic modeling is terrible. It’s terrible in many of the same ways that real traffic is terrible. That doesn’t make for a good game, but it does make a different point.
Also, if you want to ride motorcycles, that game is worth a play for traveling around on one. Not because the physics of the game motorcycles are good–they’re shit–but because it can teach you how to learn to avoid target fixation. Car pulls out in front of you and your eyes will naturally focus on the car. Then you will just as naturally hit the car. If you learn to dart your eyes to the side, you will tend to miss it. Very valuable skill for actual riding. They accidentally made a target fixation trainer.
That used to be a more popular sentiment but somehow CDPR manages to get a bunch of goodwill and the ‘labor of love’ award after… fixing all the bugs that still existed in their botched releae.
I have to agree with Frezik too. At least for me, the graphics and storyline are top notch but the gameplay and other mechanics are pretty average. And the open world is stunning to traverse but you realize if you explore a bit more deeply that it’s pretty dead and there’s not much to discover.
I literally had to delete an account because I made a comment on reddit before I left about how I didn’t think cyberpunk has ever really lived up to the hype despite what people say about it now.
Honestly, I don’t think it hit me the same way, and I wish it did. I already went into it agreeing with everything you said from our real world. It’s still a great game and I enjoyed it, but it didn’t change my view on anything because it’s just a heightened version of our real world. If you were paying attention to our world then CP2077 mostly wouldn’t change your opinion. Hell, if anything it’s a nicer view of our future than I have based on our current path. There’s almost more social mobility in that game than there is in real life America currently.
That is to say, Johnny not only was right, but is right.
It was 2013 and Zombie hype was peak. All my roommates gathered around the TV to watch me play a level each night. We would discuss what happened and our theories in between each play session. When those credits rolled we kept talking about it for weeks. Unforgettable.
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. It made me realize that the future is not going to be people on spaceships. It will be bizarre and beautiful post-human intelligences. That’s what made me choose to study biology (although in retrospect I should have bet on silicon rather than carbon).
I’ll vote for the Civilization series as something that changed my life. It wasn’t a single profound experience when I “completed the game”. I’ve done that a number of times in multiple different versions of Civ. It was more the “aha” moments along the way. Learning about wonders of the world, hearing about different cultures. Thinking about how X led to Y. Civ taught me a lot of things, but more importantly, it made me curious so that I learned things outside the game.
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