Coelacanth

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

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.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Nothing has ever hit me harder than Disco Elysium, and I don’t think anything else ever will. Everything from its themes of failure and depression and addiction and clinging to the past to its surprising message of hope in the face of unrelenting nihilism resonated with me on a molecular level. And the Final Dream is just the single most impactful, emotional and heart-rending moment I’ve had in any game ever. The culmination of the entire game distilled into one scene, and even the whole pathos of that one scene concentrated into three closing words:

spoiler“See you tomorrow”

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Reaching Room 46 the first time is the first of like three or four natural jumping-off points, I’d say. You can totally stop playing there if you’re satisfied, but if you want to keep digging you can go so much deeper.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Finished Enotria: The Last Song and even did a quick NG+ run to get the secret ending and its achievement. Not going to bother with 100%-ing it, however. I really enjoyed my time with it overall. For a somewhat janky AA Soulslike it’s got a lot of charm and the Commedia Dell’Arte framing is great. Beautiful environments and some well designed levels, enough fun to be had with the skill tree, loadout switching, active abilities and elemental/status system. Not too hard (which is fine by me at this stage of my life) and short enough to not overstay its welcome. If you’re a Soulslike fan and can stomach AA games it’ll do the job if you’re done with the usual suspects. I still wouldn’t pay full price for it, but as part of the current €17 Humble Bundle it feels like good value and if you’re not interested in the other games in there then keep it in mind for a future deep sale.

Next I’m not sure. I started playing GRIME that I’ve had my eye on for a while and snagged recently when it was on an all-time low sale, but even though I can tell it’s really good it’s not grabbed me yet. Spooktober made me pirate Cronos: The New Dawn to try it and see if I like it, otherwise I have an impending Alan Wake 2 revisit planned. I still haven’t played the DLCs but I want to replay the Final Draft again first in preparation.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

Did the customary scroll through my 50-game wishlist for irresistible 80-90% discounts and basically came up empty. Most of the deep sales are games that will surely be on another deep sale before I finish my upcoming few planned games to play, nevermind my whole backlog. Normally I end up adding something to the pile out of the old “well this is too good to pass up” but for once my wallet might be safe.

Maybe I give in to temptation and pickup one of Virgo Versus The Zodiac(-70%), The Banner Saga(-80%) or Salt and Sanctuary(-75%).

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

If it would have had Swedish voice acting I would have bought it.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I think he’s talking about the second one, which I’ve heard mixed things about. I thought the first one was an excellent - albeit short - experience that knows what it tries to do and doesn’t do anything else.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Yeah I’m feeling a little out of the loop here. I know of The Crew only because of it being the flashpoint starting Stop Killing Games. Is it supposed to be a timeless classic I’m missing out on?

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I feel like I’m the only one unexcited by this. It looks good and reviews well but 50ish hours of Ghost of Tsushima was more than enough for me. I don’t really have appetite for another helping of “more of the same”.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

A remaster like this is pointless in the first place, it’s not meaningfully doing anything to make people play it who wouldn’t otherwise. A proper Nightdive-style remake is what the game deserves.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I guess that’s probably fair. I never had huge issues with them but it’s been a hot minute since I last played through.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I’m playing two games at once this week, firstly I’m playing bits and pieces of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword on my 3DS. It’s a really great game so far, super fun and surprisingly good at translating the mainline NG gameplay onto a handheld and using stylus input for controls. Might well end up one of my favourite DS/3DS games when I’m done with it. I’m about halfway through so far I think.

I’m also playing through Enotria: The Last Song on PC for the first time. So far I’m having a blast with it, after some initial information overload I’m finally starting to engage with the systems and am starting to really enjoy using the stances and elemental rock-paper-scissors. From what I’ve seen so far it does not really deserve its mixed steam reviews - yes, there is some jank and it’s plainly AA but there is a lot of good to make up for it. The world design is gorgeous, the level design is great with lots of verticality and the setting is so lovely and unique. I have heard it’s fairly short, and I do maybe concur that it might not merit a full price purchase, but I do think it’s worth wishlisting for a deep sale if you like the genre. I’m having a lot of fun with it so far.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

What difficulty setting were you playing on? I think Story mode post nerfs should be manageable even if you get hit a lot - at least as far as main story goes.

If you want to give it another shot, invest in HP and Defense, bring a healer and build Maelle as a tank with Egide to give yourself a lot of margins and sort of grind out encounters safely. There aren’t many DPS checks - if any.

Late game you can stack so much damage on Maelle that she one-shots everything, if you like.

Its a great game and worth trying to finish. Now as far as the optional superboss… Yeah, that’s another story.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I couldn’t beat it “fairly” either, but approaching it as a puzzle fight where you’re trying to figure out how to deal with its bullshit is also kind of fun. I ended up stunlocking it, which in itself you can do in several different ways. The game has a lot of fun things you can do with builds.

Or just Stendhal.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Lune was by far my favourite to use mechanically, the stains system just made for such fun planning of rotations. There is a lot of fun with various weapon combos too, like the Potierim support build that applies Greater Slow. I personally used her as AP and buff battery with Typhoon giving everyone max AP and refreshing greater versions of all buffs every turn. And then I used Braselim with Storm Caller and Lightning Dance to farm a tier 3 Gradient every turn.

The Genesis build is AP efficient but once you have 9 every turn it gets outdamaged by Lightning Dance (single target) and Hell (AoE). Though you wouldn’t guess so going by the astronomically poor and unclear skill descriptions.

I didn’t get Medalum either but honestly you don’t need it. The one shot builds only need it pre Cheater to start in Virtuoso, after that you can just Last Chance anyway.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

250GB install sizes plus an additional 100GB shader caches. This is what the future looks like, buckle up.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Make sure you play the Mankind Divided DLCs after! A Criminal Past in particular is probably the best “new Deus Ex” content they ever put out.

Also, congrats on being made a mod! I literally cannot think of a better person for the role.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

If the recent pathetic patent filings were not enough to finally wake you up to what an awful company Nintendo are I don’t know what to tell you.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Existing IPs, maybe. But the real point of this patent is to stifle innovation and preempt competition. No indie developer is going to dare enter this creative space anymore as they don’t have the resources to challenge Nintendo’s patent - even though I think this won’t hold up in court.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Let’s hope so, because this sounds like it could be pretty disastrous doesn’t it? But who’s gonna afford challenging Nintendo?

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I have no idea what people were expecting to be honest. Hollow Knight was already known for being an extremely difficult game with punishing anti-fun elements like runbacks and corpse runs. Which game had everyone played that got them so hyped for Silksong?

There’s a reason I stayed away from HK, and I will be staying away from Silksong too. Game looks great but I won’t be able to beat it and I won’t have any fun failing to do so.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Not everything that makes the game harder or more challenging to play is good game design though, and a game shouldn’t get a free pass just because its developers stated “well the game being hard is part of our artistic vision”. It’s fine to criticise things, even - or actually maybe especially - things we like. We don’t have to be binary about things, we can like something while still recognising its flaws.

Excessive runbacks for example is something that is primarily concerned with disrespecting your time as a player and even FromSoft seem to have realised that they’re not a good addition or a fun way of increasing difficulty seeing as they introduced Stakes of Marika in Elden Ring. Hell, even Ninja Gaiden went away from boss runbacks starting from the second game, and that came out in 2008!

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Mandragora had the exact same difficulty system, you could adjust enemy HP, Damage and even Stamina cost at every bonfire. Great accessibility feature.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

To each their own, I always think of difficulty and challenge as proportional and relative to the individual. You can just as easily turn the question around the other way: how can you feel any satisfaction beating a Souls game using magic and summons and level ups and items when there are people who have beat it at Level 1 hitless and using a dance pad instead of controller? What’s “appropriately challenging” is way too individual for the bluntness of a single difficulty setting.

And coming up with solutions isn’t even that hard. Add some sliders to adjust the length of parry windows and i-frames on dodge rolls and whatnot and you’re probably a good part of the way there. Gameplay intact, people still go through the same motions they just have a chance now even if they don’t have the reflexes or timing for frame-perfect inputs.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

You can also do the 2.5D style of like Trine or Mandragora.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Buying on GOG is always the play whenever the option is available.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

The 2D sidescroller base that’s at the foundation of Metroidvanias is quite a bit older than that, though, so I think it’s fair to call it an older genre. Even though it is fairly evergreen.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

To each their own, but when I played through Blasphemous just recently it felt like the game had tons of design elements intended to either piss you off or deliberately waste your time or both.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Well, I was merely speaking in general, I didn’t actually buy Silksong! 😅 The combination of being prohibitively difficult and having tons of tricky platforming (I hate platforming) means I’m just doing like with Hollow Knight and staying away to save myself the frustration.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Bloodlines 2 should be in the crew as well, though it is also actually coming out now.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Football Manager.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

An upside of SI tending to have very minor year-on-year upgrades between FM editions is that most people don’t buy it every year. It’s common to buy every two or three years, unless a momentous change is implemented. The sortitoutsi.net site has squad updates among its mods that let you play older games for longer.

Not that I want to be encouraging you to take it up, the game is literally like crack and I don’t let myself play it anymore.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I have not. How does it compare to FM?

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I’ll take a look at it, but like I said above I don’t let myself play FM anymore and this sounds equally dangerous. Do you need a PES install to play or is it fully standalone?

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I love it! I don’t know why but game cartridges always had a much better feel to them than disks to me. Could just be nostalgia for the times, though. But I recently dug out my 3DS and there is just something so satisfying about the click of inserting a game.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

They’re very different games, in my opinion. If “bang for your buck” is most important then BG3 has objectively more content. It’s way longer, has way more side content and can support many playthroughs.

I think BG3 is a very good game, but it is not perfect and it is somewhat overrated. It’s a great game, but not the best game ever. It has a fair share of flaws, and while the writing is fine it’s still very much videogamey.

Expedition 33 is more of a work of art. It still has its problems too, but at all the critical points it delivers in spades. It’s got a great cast of characters, beautiful art direction and a story with resonant themes that will hit home with most people. Plus one of the best soundtracks of all time. It’s got fantastic presentation, some incredible set pieces and moments and phenomenal voice acting, direction and facial expressions. Even though the game is turn-based, the implementation of active elements like Parry and Dodge will feel very familiar to you coming from Elden Ring. In fact, one of the gameplay designers used to be a Sekiro speedrunner, and it shows.

From your frame of reference BG3 is more like Skyrim I’d say, in that it can almost be your “forever-game”. People put thousands of hours into it over dozens of playthroughs and it has a very vivid modding scene. Expedition 33 is all about that one, cinematic impactful playthrough. Maybe you play it a second time to pick up on foreshadowing and stuff like that.

For me personally I had a great time playing BG3, but I will eventually forget about it. I spent fewer hours in Expedition 33, but the experience will stay with me way longer.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Yeah, BG3 isn’t a truly branching path game in the way something like Witcher 2 for example is.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

The gameplay is good, but being shackled to D&D 5E is not ideal. I have a lot of issues with the writing of the game in general, Act 3 is also very bad. It’s still a great game, it’s just that people frequently claim it’s the best game of all time and I think that’s overrating it.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Clair Obscur does technically have an NG+, though I’d say it’s less of a focus than in Souls games. There is, however, quite a bit of foreshadowing and pieces of the story that you won’t understand on your first playthrough but that hits different the second time through. I personally opted to consume it by watching others play after I completed my own first playthrough, but I’d say there is grounds enough for a second playthrough if that’s important to you.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Ironically much like BG3, the third act of E33 is a mess. There is a ton of important side content with character moments and lore, particularly relating to Clea but also the whole Maelle relationship quest. But the pacing is completely off, it’s all presented as optional and it just feels very rushed. A “Definitive Edition” type patch or DLC that retools and restructures Act 3 would do E33 a world of good.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Admittedly it’s been a while since I played D:OS2, but I enjoyed that combat system quite a lot. No random success chance felt good, the action economy was more interesting and the skills had more freedom and interesting effects because they didn’t have to stick to existing 5E material. Magic/physical armor was an interesting strategic factor to play around and combat mostly felt good - although yes, it did frequently and infamously devolve into elemental surface spam.

Writing wise it’s all still in the patented Larian tone, which is sometimes funny but frequently unserious and sort of Marvel-esque for better or worse. I didn’t mind it as much in DOS2, but I was quite a few years younger when I played it. The romance sucked in that game too but at least one positive is I don’t remember every companion throwing themselves at you in a pathetic display of wish fulfillment protagonist-sexuality writing like they do in BG3.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Still on the ninja grind, at this point I’m hopefully done with Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge relatively soon. Not yet, though.

I really wish this solid fundamental combat system wasn’t trapped inside a godawful game. I really truly hate everything the story and presentation is doing. The setting is shit, the narrative is shit, the QTE gameplay is shit. The levels are boring. The voice acting is bad, but not even in a fun and campy way anymore but just bad. And worst of all - unlike the previous games this attempts to be “story focused”. So instead of just getting a cutscene at the start and end of a chapter and then action in between you are non-stop engaging with the terrible garbage they’re serving.

And they even managed to fuck up executing the combat even though they have the most solid fundamentals in place of the entire series. I hate the Steel On Bone counters, and the combat is designed around spamming them all the time. It’s boring. QTE-ing a single SOB counter into multiple instant kills feels unearned, and so much less satisfying than deliberately delimbing enemies with specific combos in NG2 to set them up for instant execution.

Plus the bosses are actually even worse here. Some are okay, I know it’s infamous but the T-rex actually felt fine to me but stuff like the tank and helicopter bosses are just pure trash. I’ve also heard the final boss is a world record holder in unfair bullshit so you know, I have that to look forward to too, I guess.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

I’ve dug up my New3DS again and am ordering some games for it. Castlevania is somewhat of a gaming blind spot for me, is there one playable on the 3DS you’d recommend?

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

How hard is it to hack your 3DS? I haven’t done it and I haven’t really experimented with stuff like that for like 20 years. I feel like it could be a good idea to look into after Nintendo closed the eShop and second hand 3DS games are getting more and more expensive.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Thank you! I’ll bookmark that for the future.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

It’s a great console. I’m not buying any new Nintendo products but the 3DS was amazing and the N3DSXL just feels so nice in your hands.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

This is absolutely insane. Move over Skyblivion, we have a new king in town.

Coelacanth, 2 miesiące temu

Seeing as you liked Chaos Theory and look like you have access to a PS2 the co-op campaign in Splinter Cell: Double Agent (OG Xbox/PS2 version developed by Ubisoft Montreal) also tends to get good reviews. I haven’t played it myself though.