Ashtear

@Ashtear@lemm.ee

Getting it done with the power of friendship since 1991.

🔥💨💧💎 🌒🌕🌘 ✨

Some suggested Lemmy communities:

!patientgamers

!jrpg

!retrogaming

Discord for Japanese-style role-playing game (JRPG) discussion: discord.gg/vHXCjzf2ex

Profil ze zdalnego serwera może być niekompletny. Zobacz więcej na oryginalnej instancji.

Looking for emotional game recommendations angielski

My favorite games are Omori, Disco Elysium and Outer Wilds. I cried for hours at the end of those games, and I think the common point in them is high-quality emotional writing and stellar OST (music really affect me) and my attachment to the characters....

Ashtear,

Final Fantasy X still holds my personal ugly-cry record. To this day, I can’t hear some of the music from it without tearing up. It’s one of those games that has emotional react videos on YouTube.

Shadow of the Colossus manages to be emotional with very little explicit story. A lot of it has to do with its use of dynamic music in an orchestral soundtrack.

Persona 3 just had a remake, and that’s part of a series that can really gets its hooks into you. A big part of it is the parasocial gameplay, but even if you’re not the type to get into that, the story is still very moving. Persona series composer Shoji Meguro recently said the ending theme in this game was his magnum opus.

Ashtear,

The legality of the emulation itself has long been established, but I’ve been concerned for a while that illegal DRM circumvention of the games themselves has been a viable legal avenue. Under the DMCA, even the process to dump your own legally-licensed games has arguably been in a legal grey area for a while now, with how they are locked down. If any method to playing the games become illegal, any unauthorized emulation of games becomes de facto illegal.

I’d cite legal precedent here, but there’s been a substantial right-wing, pro-corporate shift in American courts over time. Who knows how this will go.

Ashtear,

I love the mods and graphical upgrades. For example, the “FFT Complete” hack on PSX is still my preferred way to play Final Fantasy Tactics, and I can get a buttery-smooth 60fps on Link’s Awakening (2019).

Lately I’ve also been dabbling into CRT filters with mixed success. Every now and then I’ll get the nostalgia buzz, but a lot of the time I feel like I’m just looking at a game with visible scanlines. I’ve heard it’s better on 4K displays though, and I don’t have regular access to one.

Ashtear,

It’s still a trilogy. In any case, Disc 2 of the original was much shorter than the first, and Disc 3 was almost entirely ending cinematics.

Ashtear,

As a heads up, don’t read the Gamespot review if you’re carefully avoiding spoilers. The review tries to discuss the ending without revealing too much but wasn’t entirely successful.

Ashtear,

Last week I went deep into Next Fest and came up with a bunch of demos, to varying success. Tried Synergy (promising), Sword of Convallaria (great, but deeply concerned about the mobile/gacha systems), Guild Saga: Vanished Worlds (not great, borrows shamelessly from Divinity: Original Sin 2), and Balatro (surprisingly interesting).

For now, I’m kind of bouncing around, not being able to settle on anything. Might go back to Atelier Ayesha tonight.

Ashtear, (edited )

A terrible loss for the industry, especially after getting a new startup off the ground. Beloved by the Suikoden community. His new game was only a couple months away.

By all accounts, a good guy, too.

Ashtear,

But don’t sleep on the Persona 4 anime. That one was amazing.

Ashtear,

I don’t watch a ton of anime, but it’s certainly the best I’ve seen (or heard of, for that matter). The recent Castlevania is good too, but I don’t even know if that counts?

Agreed on the Golden episodes. Wasn’t the same.

Ashtear,

I played a bit of Terranigma this past week for a Discord Game of the Month run. Would love to see this and Illusion of Gaia get remasters with script updates.

Currently playing No Man’s Sky. This is my third attempt with it since it came out, and it’s going a lot better so far this time around. Ironically, it might have been the things missing from Starfield that finally whetted my appetite for what this game has to offer.

Ashtear,

That’s near the top of the list of what I’ve been working on. I got snagged again by something I remembered hating about the main quest last time, getting stuck in one system working through it. This time was particularly awful because it kept sending me back to the same extreme world to do it, ugh.

Now I’m just trying to find a semi-permanent base location. Finding a comfortable biome that doesn’t look ugly to me has been shockingly diffcult 😅

Ashtear,

This is a meaty demo, taking me a little over 2 hours.

As someone who adored the “City Building” series by Impressions (Caesar, Pharaoh, Emperor) and thought going in that Synergy had similar vibes, it’s about what I expected. It has a lot of similar systems with plenty of different resources, both physical and “well-being,” which is like Desirability. It does away with the really fussy stuff like city walkers and labor availability, and instead gives buildings a range of effect. Travel time for your populace still appears to be important (like Tropico).

It also has its fair share of jank. Building work orders are by far the biggest problem; you can only assign one task, and even when there are available resources for an alternative task, the building will just idle. This is especially bad in the gathering huts because you have to manually select the plants to collect from, and plants have multiple resources (but only one mode is available at a time). I could see this being a recipe for micromanagement hell. There are some other small issues I figure will be resolved for the full release, like missing ambient audio from the settlement itself and untranslated elements, although the translation itself was good (this was developed by a French studio and publisher in case you couldn’t tell; no native English speaker in their right mind would release a video game named Synergy).

Overall, I’m interested. I also got the impression it might be a continuous city campaign, unlike the chapters you’d get in the City Building or Tropico series, which could be a fun change of pace. I’ll be keeping an eye out for a release date.

Ashtear,

Finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Torna: the Golden Country last week. The gameplay was largely the same, and I didn’t find that to be the base game’s strength. I mostly liked the story but the dozens of forced side quests absolutely killed any pacing it had going for it, and there was sidequest-styled filler even before that in the main questline. On top of that, I have a few nits to pick about how the story closed out. Ultimately I was rather disappointed, considering I’d heard a lot of positive word-of-mouth on this over the years.

For now, I’ve got one more year left in Atelier Meruru, so I’m going to see about closing that one out. This is probably going to end up being my favorite in the series so far, but I’m really looking forward to the games with the looser/no time limits.

I also just started the demo for Synergy, an upcoming city builder in the style of Pharaoh and Emperor. Mostly good, but the biggest problem by far is that the buildings need a more developed work-order system. Could see this being a worthy successor in this genre.

Ashtear,

If it’s part of a shift that includes dropping Xbox hardware, that’s very much not a good thing. Less competition doesn’t turn out well for consumers.

Ashtear,

Yeah. Between these rumors and Microsoft not having a next-gen GPU contract yet, it’s a possibility.

Hope I’m wrong.

Ashtear,

Oh wow, I guess I always just assumed they had a draft mode. The game’s been on my radar for a while, but that’s a non-starter for me without one.

Ashtear,

It depends on the implementation, but typically, everyone sits down at the table as equals. No advantages are brought in from collections, unlike constructed formats.

Building a deck is also a separate skill to piloting one. Especially when there is a timer involved, it can be a frantic, fun challenge to draft correctly.

Finally–and perhaps most importantly to me–it takes a long time for draft sets to get “solved” by meta-gaming. There are so many moving parts in new sets that you have to play the game to find out what works. And even if a set does get solved, you’re still having to work with limited options and need a good plan B or plan C.

Ashtear,

George Miller? Kojima gets the most fucking random people, I swear.

Léa Seydoux seems better this time around, somehow? I wasn’t thrilled with her performance in the original game. Something always a little bit off.

Ashtear,

Katharine’s review today steps back from that flash-in-the-pan take (and it wasn’t a good one).

No doubt there’s some empty calories here, though.

Ashtear,

You’re getting downvoted, but I think there’s something to this, even if it’s not the whole story. The game had a robust presence unnaturally quickly on Tiktok and among streamers. This studio isn’t big enough to have engineered a big campaign, but it’s quite possible they did some small, targeted marketing and it really paid off.

Ashtear, (edited )

Mm, “it plays itself” is a common, reductive argument against turn-based combat that I don’t think is helpful.

Otherwise, I think this review is mostly okay for those new to the series (or the genre). Saying that he had a motivated start is interesting, as the story’s notoriously slow start is a frequent complaint about the earlier versions (and the series in general).

It’s good to see a new player in the mix, though the reviewers who are familiar enough with the original games to outline what is missing were the most valuable to me. The missing content makes this a “wait for a sale” purchase for me.

Ashtear,

Finished Lost Odyssey over the weekend, and I’ve moved on to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Torna.

The menus still drive me nuts like they did with the base game, but it’s still fun to wander around. The characters are already growing on me a bit too.

Ashtear,

Some, yes. The flashbacks in XBC2 give a general idea of who’s around, plus some new characters.

Ashtear,

Yeah, I think D:OS2 is still a good call for people wanting more. Trying to talk my gaming partner into picking it up.

I think the first D:OS is too much of a quality-of-life nightmare at this point to recommend.

Ashtear,

I had a good time with Loop Hero for a while, a few months after it came out. Ultimately stopped running it because it felt like I was never able to pivot mid-run if I found a great drop. Had a “what’s the point of the randomness then?” thought after that and it broke the spell for me. Don’t know if they ever made any changes along those lines.

What are some hidden indie gems nobody knows about? angielski

Which indies did you discover and would love more people to know about? I’ll start: The Pale Beyond. Not sure if it’s a hidden gem tbh, but it’s such a good story rich game. I laughed, I cried and felt the characters struggles. If you like story rich games/ choices matter, check it out.

Ashtear,

I had a great time with a couple card battlers last year, Cobalt Core and Nitro Kid.

Cobalt Core has a similar presentation to FTL, with a turn-based format instead. Plenty to do in it, great soundtrack, charming writing.

Nitro Kid is on a more traditional 2D grid with an isometric viewpoint. It appealed greatly to my love of 80’s settings, but I’d wait for a sale as it’s thin on content.

Ashtear,

Several hours in, I couldn’t even make it to a point where the story started rewarding me. Which was part of the problem. I “cleared” one of the planets (Brittle Hollow), with its platforming elements (something I don’t like in 3D), and my “reward” was a small piece of a puzzle. I needed a lot more than that.

Even before that point, the game hadn’t made a good first impression. There was nothing about the intro section on the starting planet that particularly interested me. And then the ship controls drove me a bit nuts. The loop was the only interesting part about the game for me then.

Felt like the writing was on the wall for me after exploring that first planet, so I dropped it.

Ashtear,

“We know, stop writing us.”

Ashtear,

Having played through the PL story, I didn’t like the overhauled skill system as much as I’d hoped, but I still want to go back through the main story again. There are still some old sidequests I never got around to as well.

Ashtear,

Professional sports leagues are another example. Put a shit product on the field, you’re going to get shit back from the fans. Every now and then a young star player comes up (especially in American football) that received adulation for years at the college level and suddenly gets faced with jeers. They react like Colossal Order does here and–eventually–learn that they are picking a fight against collective emotional response that they are never going to win.

CO is learning that lesson now. While they can and should take actions against those that cross the line (death threats, etc.), there’s not much in the way of effective corrective action here. It’s all on them. They can a) put out a better product, b) hire community managers with thicker skin that can better assuage their fans, or c) withdraw from community interaction. Most that can’t handle it pick the third option.

Ashtear,

Peak of 370k concurrent players on Steam already, topping Starfield’s peak.

Did this come out of nowhere or did I just miss the signs?

Ashtear,

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m perfectly happy with seeing a creatively bankrupt game if it also eventually means genuine competition in a genre that’s been thin for decades.

Ashtear,

I always tell people concerned about this sort of thing to look at how cable TV still exists long after obsolescence. The content delivery system won’t dry up before the content you want does (at least not in your lifetime).

Ashtear,

Sure, and the amount of lost PBS footage alone due to draconian copyright restrictions borders on criminal.

The point isn’t on the quality of the distribution method. Even if it was, preservation efforts for games that qualify for the concept of game ownership are far more advanced. The point is that when an entertainment industry gets this big, it takes the deaths of multiple generations for the market to dry up.

Ashtear,

Just started Lost Odyssey. I’d heard it was like a Final Fantasy game but I don’t think I was prepared for just how much Final Fantasy X DNA is in the game. Mostly enjoying so far.

Ashtear,

I find games that have genuine path branching to be most satisfying for me in the “choices matter” department. Some games that come to mind for this are Tactics Ogre Reborn (or the PSP version), The Witcher 2, Triangle Strategy, and Baldur’s Gate 3.

There are others that have interesting decisions (especially ending/late-game ones) like Deus Ex, The Witcher 3, and Life is Strange, but I’m not sure if those quite have the scope you’re looking for.

Many players have become "patient gamers". What are games people might miss out on by waiting for sales? angielski

Sales follow the tradition of supply and demand. Products come out at their highest price because of expectations and hype. Then, as interest wanes, the publisher continues to make some sales by reducing price to tempt the less interested parties....

Ashtear,

Owning physical editions of games can be a problem for patient gamers. As digital distribution continues to expand (even in previously resistant markets such as Japan), we’re again getting to a point where pre-orders may be necessary if you want a physical copy for small releases.

NIS America has also increased prices on their games, although, unlike Factorio, they have sales. Also unlike Factorio, they don’t spout nonsense like “inflation” for the increase. That doesn’t track on a game that already has virtually zero marginal cost and sunk development costs now that development has moved to a paid expansion. Dude would have been better off just announcing the increase and keeping his mouth shut on the rest.

Ashtear,

While that’s true, specifically avoiding the zeitgeist (read: hype) is the stated goal for patient gaming communities (at least the ones on Reddit and here on Lemmy at !patientgamers). It’s why people pay too much for games that are released unfinished in the first place. And there’s always a popular game out or right around the corner.

Ashtear,

Those were fun. The KQ2 remake was way better than expected.

Ashtear,

Just finished Alan Wake 2. I’ve never liked survival horror gameplay much so I wasn’t big on that most of the time, but everything else about it was great. I’ve never seen a game use music more effectively.

I think I’ll be heading back to Atelier Meruru this week. Might also give Dave the Diver another shot; I’m a little bummed that I’m not enjoying it as much as everyone else seemed to.

Ashtear,

I wish I had one of these 😩

I used to run the service through the app on my Samsung TV and it ran mostly ok before Samsung pulled the plug on it last year.

I tried setting up a second PC to run it through but I get awful frame loss even on a wired connection, and even in the Steam menus!

Ashtear,

Parasite Eve and Persona 2: EP were always a bit striking to me in this regard especially because they are in modern-day settings. Also, they both don’t have a young child joining the party at any point, which is a thing in a lot of the games in this list.

Ashtear, (edited )

I’m absolutely smitten with Cobalt Core. It’s been called “FTL meets Slay the Spire,” but I’d say it’s more the former than the latter (which works for me, I liked FTL a lot more). There’s also a dash of Hades-style storytelling. This won’t have the legs StS can have for the deckbuilding nerds, but I’m having a blast with it.

The writing cracks me up, the soundtrack is phenomenal, and the strategy is keeping me engaged. Also, must protect Riggs at all costs. 💜

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