I tried the first one a few years back and it seemed right up my alley as far as art style and gameplay but I gave up after finding my fourth character because all four of them had personalities and dialogue that were grating on me. I like jrpgs and I can’t remember another one I bailed on explicitly because I found the dialogue annoying.
When I looked through reviews they seemed mostly positive, and even for the critical reviews that did share my complaint it was mostly an afterthought to other concerns that were not a big deal to me personally. If anyone felt similarly and also tried out the sequel I’d really like to know if it’s any better in that regard because I really wanted to like the first one.
No, I feel you. I did finish the game and enjoyed it overall, but the dialogue and writing was jarring. I’m not sure what exactly it was, but I was particularly annoyed by the characters being such clichés and the dialogue in the cutscenes being soooo slow (overused animations, dramatic pauses in every sentence, …).
Being clichés was exactly it, I would find all of the other things perfectly tolerable if the characters had depth. I think three of the four introductions I saw just felt like “this character has actual values that you, the player, will totally align with” but completely hamfisted. If the protagonists are going to be the good guys then a story making that clear should be enough, rather than having “being the good guy” be an entire personality at the very start. (The exception to that came across as a generic oonga boonga beast woman, so having her dialogue be the least taxing for me to read was not exactly reason for optimism.)
I expected they’re all going to be given more depth as the story advances but I didn’t feel excited to wait around to see if that makes them less annoying, especially with four more intro stories remaining.
If you’ve played the second game I would like an opinion on if that one has a better cast.
I have not played 2 yet but plan to when I can catch a decent sale. From what I read, the writing is better and there also seem to be some QoL features might help with the pacing of the dialogue and cutscenes.
I imagine Silksong gets a release date announced for all platforms during Microsoft’s Gamescom things, but there are a number of third party games with no release dates that could feasibly show up here. I’m hoping for the likes of Mouse: P.I. for Hire. Plus there will probably be a bunch of games that are old news on PC and other consoles but get release dates for Switch 2 now that Nintendo has a platform that can handle them.
It is hard to tell but either Nintendo are still being insanely stingy with devkits or they are actively snubbing any studio with ties to Tencent. So… that is gonna be a big impact for a lot of the “This already exists on X and now it is getting a Switch 2 release” “nindies”.
Studios like Digital Extremes have been pretty open that they can’t “port” their switch 1 games (in this case, Warframe) to take advantage of the hardware because they just haven’t gotten a devkit no matter how much they ask. I saw speculation that a lot of the studios being open about this are affiliated/owned by Tencent to a significant degree, but it is unclear if that is “Nintendo hates Tencent” or “Tencent owns a significant chunk of the world and the studios that are financially stable would risk openly complaining”
A youtuber/streamer I really like who plays a lot of Vintage Story and has created themselves and shown off a lot of other Vintage Story builders work is Ashantin.
What I like about Ashantin is the vibe, they really understand the game but are super relaxed and chill in their playstyle. As in… Ashantin gives off the moment to moment vibes of a very casual player but they understand the game really well at the same time and it is a really pleasant combination that makes good background watching.
If you are curious about Vintage Story it is also a great way to get an idea of what the gameplay is like (I HIGHLY recommend Vintage Story!!!).
Incredible game. Highly recommend to everyone. It’s another of those games where every piece of brilliance gets destroyed of I spoil them for you in a review
Thank you! I’ve yet to sign up for mastodon (pretty new to Lemmy, too), but feel free to share it there yourself if you can think of any nerds who might appreciate it!
I played only a bit of Oolite about 10 years ago and man, this does not look like the same game at all. In a good way, of course! There’s actualy detail on the ships now! Props to the Oolite team!
Nah, the game has plenty of flaws and design issues.
Example: defense. It’s completely different from most games that came after it and unintuitive (it works like in Diablo I). It rather works like evasion in newer games and it’s basically the defensive version of attack rating. Either it negates all physical damage or nothing. Not to be confused with chance to block. Which does the same, but with blockstun. Oh, and while running, your defense is set to zero. Which again isn’t explained anywhere (but you can check it by keeping your stats open and running). Walking is fine.
Hidden stats: so more defense is better, right? Not necessarily. First, you have the strength requirements which are visible; second, there are hidden armor classes that impact your character’s movement speed, which is why stuff like Archon Plate is so good.
So there are four resistances (fire, lightning, ice and poison). Just kidding, it’s actually six because physical and magic damage can also be modified in the same way (though that attribute is rare for players, but it exists). But they’re not shown on the resistances page, but rather under all stats if modified. This is how monsters gain their “immune to physical / magic” property.
Then the game doesn’t really explain itself most of the time. Take “Amplify Damage”. The in-game description is “Increases the amount of damage received.”. So let’s guess what it does: probably amplify the damage regardless of type and then apply resistance? You couldn’t be more wrong, it lowers physical resistance.
Talking about skills, the skill trees could use some improvements I think. I’m not a big fan of synergies because it can force you into dumping points into practically unusable skills.
Items are also a bit of a pain point. A lot of uniques are straight up unneeded because they’re only relevant when itemization doesn’t matter yet and then just fall off. Their effects are often not as unique as one would like. But this is excusable because the game pioneered a lot of this stuff.
Where it gets ugly is when none of the items matter (be it rare, set or unique) because of runewords. The biggest offenders are Enigma, Infinity, Insight, Grief and Spirit. Infinity and Insight usually go onto your mercenary, so they’re not competing with personal equipment slots. But just double Spirit is really good. Paladins, the first or second best class, can use this even earlier because they don’t need to wait for Monarchs; their exceptional shields can have four sockets, in addition to very good resistances. They stand above other classes with the sorceress. Or did until Mosaic was introduced.
Oh, and did you know that “+X% enhanced damage” behaves differently depending on whether it’s on a weapon or on another piece of equipment?
Still love the game to death. But it’s not flawless
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