I’ve played only Origins but this trailer is not doing a whole lot for me. Even visually I don’t like it (which is bizarre because I think Origins looks like shit and still I somehow prefer it). Don’t really like this art direction, personally.
That really is one of the biggest flaws of Civ. It’s so hard to find a breakpoint where the gameplay “feels good” but still is challenging. If you’re at a difficulty level where the gameplay is mostly intact, the AI is just too dumb, and if you bump it up it becomes a meta game of playing around the AI bonuses.
I don’t know, I never saw it as a meme but rather just shorthand in cases where no other term existed that efficiently communicated the genre or style of a game.
Do you have a replacement term available for Souls-like that sums up what you can expect of a game within that genre using two words or less?
I haven’t played 2 or 3, but calling DA:O bad is a bit of a hot take. What did you not like about it?
While the overall plot is fairly standard issue fantasy save-the-world fare, I think the execution and the RPG aspects were excellent. How the game really made your choice of origin matter was incredible to me, and I enjoyed several of the characters too.
It does look like shit though, I’ll give you that. I wish it was less depressingly brown-grey washed out looking.
Nothing compares to getting into the flow when you’re playing Spy, I love some psychological warfare. Stringing together long sequences of backstabs and hide-and-seeks with the enemy team is so much fun.
The knife that hides backstabbed corpses and instantly disguises you as them is also super fun to use.
I think my favourite low-int detail was in Fallout 2. You come across the tribal Torr early on in Klamath and he speaks in grunts and broken sentences just like that if you talk to him with normal INT or above. However, if you talk to him with low INT the conversation completely changes into long eloquent sentences with advanced vocabulary for both him and you, matching the dialogue options unlocked at 10 INT. Amazing.
Played a lot of Wuthering Waves since it launched. It’s a tricky one because it has a lot of flaws and weaknesses, but at the same time the core is actually really solid.
The combat feels amazing, and that really is the big selling point here. Parries and perfect dodges feel great, the bosses have fun movesets and the pace is fast and fluid with lots of tech like animation cancelling and character swapping. The character gameplay design is also excellent, with each character having a unique feel and playstyle, and a unique way of building and using the Forte gauge.
I wish the main story wasn’t complete garbage, but hey ho. At least there is a skip button. Even the good characters (like Aalto and Encore) feel out of place and too goofy in a supposedly post-apocalyptic setting. Funny enough some unvoiced side quests have been better than the main story by a long shot (I’m thinking of Eternal Concert, for example).
Also the localisation is insultingly bad and it definitely seems like Kuro actually disregards the importance of non-chinese regions to the point of not employing a single foreign language speaker even to their localisation team. Even their announcements are worse translations than Google translate, and it’s the same for all languages. You’d think they’d at least care about the JP translation. Puzzling and almost offensive.
Still, the game is mechanically satisfying enough to have me hooked for now. And it’s free (and very F2P friendly at the moment).
I’m not sure if the above comment played on launch or after the Final Cut update, but there isn’t all that much reading in the game anymore. Almost all text is fully voice acted now. You still have to mentally absorb it of course, but I find it less taxing than reading, personally.
The book-like nature of it is spot on though; it’s better to treat it like an interactive novel where you choose the order in which you read its pages than as a traditional RPG.
Don’t be afraid to pick wild and weird dialogue options, and especially don’t be afraid to fail at things. The game pioneered a “fail-forward” design philosophy
I do agree that a lot of the find-the-symbols puzzles felt like an afterthought, but overall they didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the game. The story and presentation were fantastic and I thought the blind trial was extremely well done and one of my favourite video game levels.
I could be mistaken, as I don’t really play competitive games anymore. I thought between Overwatch, Valorant, Apex, The Finals and what have you there was lots of stiff competition.
I had a lot of good times and even more bad times with DotA over the years, until I finally freed myself from it years ago.
IceFrog being behind this backed by Valve bodes well, and I think the premise of an FPS/MOBA hybrid has promise, despite the market being insanely oversaturated already.
I’m not really interested in competitive games these days, but I hope it’ll be good to watch at least. Following The International was fun even after I quit DotA.
Thank you for the extremely comprehensive run-down! I don’t think I’ve ever had it laid out so clearly before.
I think I’ll keep them on my tentative “to-do” list, but maybe not at the highest priority. I loved Origins but with how it ends I don’t have a super pressing need to continue the story immediately. There are so many good games out there, and more keep being released. It’s hard to find time for all of them. I’m really looking forward to Hellblade 2 next.
I think I will get around to them at some point, though. Exporting my save through all three games and seeing callbacks and consequences does sound interesting, and I’ve heard that is something that does happen.
Interesting. So the side content is mostly uninteresting, I take it?
I still have only played DA:O, which I really liked. I still haven’t played the sequels, would you say they’re still worthwhile or is it for the best to leave the story at the end of Origins?
I think DS3 is great in its own way and has some awesome areas, but it’s hard to compare anything to the first half of Dark Souls. That level design is just something else.
What I like about DS3 compared to ER is there are a lot less delayed attacks and fakeouts. I get that FromSoft needs to constantly up the challenge but it makes it harder to get the same kind of enjoyable combat flow, at least for me. DS3 has some bosses that are just so enjoyable, even though they’re not super hard.
Oh and, don’t know if you’ve done them yet but the DLCs should be more challenging than the main game, if that’s what you’re after.