What Are You Playing Right Now, Part 2: Daggerfall

[Zevox]

I have a question about your playthrough that's kind of a longshot and is pretty spoilery

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Did you do Dedue's paralogue? I'm wondering because the later story mission says that the guys you save in that mission later somehow save Dedue. Considering that bromance is the catalyst to get Dimitri out of 'boar prince' mode, I'd really like to know what happens if he's actually dead by that point.

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I did, yes. I did most of the possible paralogues - I think I only missed the Petra/Bernie, Ferdinand/Lysithea, and Ignatz/Rafael ones, since I didn't recruit most of those characters. I don't recall that implication of how Dedue survived, but maybe I'm just forgetting. I just assumed he always survived.

[Sermil]

Just lost yet another run of FTL: Advanced. There's a lot of wreckage out there in space...

Crystal ship, got all the way to the boss's final form, but just didn't have enough strength and hull to make it through. Honestly, not surprised -- felt like the ship was a bit underpowered through most of the run. Might have survived if all the repair stations didn't get taken over after I fought the boss's first form, but there it is.

[factotum]

Just got started on Octopath Traveller. It's...kind of interesting; I think the writer was way too enamoured of his art, so the stories tend to be overlong and I have no idea what the heck that cod-mediaeval way they speak in the hunter village is supposed to be about, since no-one else speaks like that. Overall, though, having fun with it so far, we'll have to see if that continues.

[Rodin]

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I did, yes. I did most of the possible paralogues - I think I only missed the Petra/Bernie, Ferdinand/Lysithea, and Ignatz/Rafael ones, since I didn't recruit most of those characters. I don't recall that implication of how Dedue survived, but maybe I'm just forgetting. I just assumed he always survived.

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I looked it up after Dedue was revealed to have survived because it seemed like such an anti-climax. If it was an intended part of the story they would have made a bigger deal of it, but instead Dedue just sort of shows up. Dedue having a possibility of death explains why - they can't make it a major focus because he might be dead.

The moment that knocks Dmitri out of his "boar prince" mode is actually Rodriguez sacrificing himself to save Dmitri from the assassin.

[Cespenar]

Just lost yet another run of FTL: Advanced. There's a lot of wreckage out there in space...

Crystal ship, got all the way to the boss's final form, but just didn't have enough strength and hull to make it through. Honestly, not surprised -- felt like the ship was a bit underpowered through most of the run. Might have survived if all the repair stations didn't get taken over after I fought the boss's first form, but there it is.

Yeah, the final map's RNG could get very unforgiving, so it's best to enter it expecting no mid-repairs whatsoever. The crystal ship itself is pretty good in the first 2 or so sectors, but it's a quite easy pitfall to hold on to your crystal weapons and find out at one point that you can't actually damage the ship in front of you. I've fallen to it a couple times, admittedly.

[Anonymouswizard]

So I just finished day 2 and wow. Just, wow. Even managed to locate where they put the title screen.

The humour has mostly gone, there's still the occasional joke but mostly the story has become dark and serious. Not in the 90s 'omg look so edgy' way, in the way that actually encourages me to think and try to work through everything, doubting both myself and the options I've picked in conversation.

I've also sunk more skill points into unlocking Thought slots than increasing skills at this point. I don't know why, but it seems like most of the skills I care about are high enough for now in the 5-7 range, and thoughts are tempting with the promise of potentially unlocking more story.

The only problems I'm having are tracking down my gun and my badge, but the second one should turn up eventually and I just need to get the first before any actual firefights occur, which from what little spoilers I haven't avoided I understand is much further in the game.

[halfeye]

I just restarted Dragon Age Origins, as a human rogue, I might ditch that and restart as a mage again if it gets too hard.

[Eldan]

So I just finished day 2 and wow. Just, wow. Even managed to locate where they put the title screen.

The humour has mostly gone, there's still the occasional joke but mostly the story has become dark and serious. Not in the 90s 'omg look so edgy' way, in the way that actually encourages me to think and try to work through everything, doubting both myself and the options I've picked in conversation.

I've also sunk more skill points into unlocking Thought slots than increasing skills at this point. I don't know why, but it seems like most of the skills I care about are high enough for now in the 5-7 range, and thoughts are tempting with the promise of potentially unlocking more story.

The only problems I'm having are tracking down my gun and my badge, but the second one should turn up eventually and I just need to get the first before any actual firefights occur, which from what little spoilers I haven't avoided I understand is much further in the game.

Yeah, thought slots are for the most part great. There are actually some skills I'd absolutely want to level in every stat*, but you can increase levelling caps with thoughts too, so that's fine. There are difficulties of up to 20, though, against the game rolls 2d6+your skill, so going up to 10 can be worth it for a few of them. For the most part, though, you can get modifiers on the truly heavy ones through the right dialogue choices.

Most thoughts don't unlock much story. Some unlock some dialogue choices, mainly the political thoughts. Some thoughts can be used to farm XP, those are kinda super powerful if you get them early. What many thoughts do is give you heavy bonuses on some skill checks. I remember up to +6 for some thoughts.

*At least Inland Empire, Conceptualization, Shivers and Perception, to name one from each stat. And Esprit de Corps, though you can save that for the late game.

As for the gun, let's just say there are ways around not having it.

Anyway, on my first playthrough, I also spent most skills on thought slots. (On my second, I kinda rushed a thought that gave you farmable XP on the first day, and then I had so many skill points, I never really had to bother again.)

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, thought slots are for the most part great. There are actually some skills I'd absolutely want to level in every stat*, but you can increase levelling caps with thoughts too, so that's fine. There are difficulties of up to 20, though, against the game rolls 2d6+your skill, so going up to 10 can be worth it for a few of them. For the most part, though, you can get modifiers on the truly heavy ones through the right dialogue choices.

Most thoughts don't unlock much story. Some unlock some dialogue choices, mainly the political thoughts. Some thoughts can be used to farm XP, those are kinda super powerful if you get them early. What many thoughts do is give you heavy bonuses on some skill checks. I remember up to +6 for some thoughts.

*At least Inland Empire, Conceptualization, Shivers and Perception, to name one from each stat. And Esprit de Corps, though you can save that for the late game.

As for the gun, let's just say there are ways around not having it.

Anyway, on my first playthrough, I also spent most skills on thought slots. (On my second, I kinda rushed a thought that gave you farmable XP on the first day, and then I had so many skill points, I never really had to bother again.)

I've only found one though I've regretted so far, having dropped two skills I care about by a point, but the one I'm so far most happy with is the 'farm XP with consistent political declarations' thought I unlocked (I'm not going to say what one that is, we should stay away from that aspect of the game). There's also some incredibly useful ones, the scientific racism thought gives nice bonuses and doesn't seem to lock you into any dialogue choices (in fact, once I internalised it I got to point out how stupid it is, which was a nice touch).

And yeah, with the sheer number of thoughts I didn't expect most to offer up many dialogue choices, but I've mainly concentrated on those I suspect will, to become the Sorry Art Cop of the Apocalypse!

For the gun, I honestly don't care that much about retrieving it. Firearms aren't something I associate with cops, due to living in the UK, and I'm honestly planning to do a second run where I just ignore the gun completely. But the game heavily pushes you to get it, so I feel like it's going to simplify things down the line.

It is nice to play a game about police being detectives, I honestly feel like having found the gun or focusing on physical skills instead of deduction and imagination would have changed my experience by affecting what clues I get. But the plot thickens, an actual theory has been formed and a motive begun to materialise...

Also found my badge early on day 3, I feel like that'll come in handy. And got the boots, the game drew so much attention to them that I felt they must be useful later on.

[Morty]

I found the thought cabinet a little clunky in practice. You spend XP to unlock a slot, you internalize a thought... then it turns out it doesn't benefit you that much, so you have to spend XP to forget it. It's not a big deal, since XP aren't hard to come by, but still.

[Eldan]

Oh, it's absolutely clunky, but I would still have loved it just for the little stories and the artwork. On my second playthrough, I looked every thought up in the Wiki before internalizing it, because there are some that are just bad.

There are also some which will give you easily 5-10 skill points worth of XP if you get them early.

[Zombimode]

Recently I've finished Dishonored which I throughoutly enjoyed. I had a mediocre experience in the beginning, but that was due expectations that weren't met. The game is at least in part to blame for this. Dishonored comunicates with every fiber "Hey! I'm like Thief!". From the setting, the core gameplay trappings to collecting treasure. But it isn't. And expecting Thief from Dishonored results in disappointment. When I finally accepted Dishonored as its own thing my enjoyment of the game took of
Corvo as a character didn't do it for me. On the other hand I really enjoyed playing as Daud. The "Knife of Dunwall" DLC is probably my favorite part of the game. The Billie/Daud interaction was excellent. While the game spills the beans regarding Dauds erm... doubts about Billie, the game managed to create exactly the same unease about Billie in me that Daud describes in his diary.


After that I picked up Mars: War Logs. I've never heard of the game until some month ago. People's oponions are a bit polarized about the game, but that is to be expected from this type of game. I concluded that I would fall in the target audience and gave it a shot.
I was pleasantly surprised ! For me the immersion was very high. I really liked some of the narrative conceits: that the point-of-view character was actually NOT the protagonist/alter ego of the player. I enjoyed the setting and most of the characters. The game system and character options, while obviously limited, were well thought out: most of the skills had a meaningful impact on how I played the game. In general the progression is less about increasing numbers and more about opening up options*.

The game was as its stronges in the first chapter: the games style and systems were very well suited for the prison setting. The following chapters would have benefited from a higher variation in terms of aesthetics and gameplay. In genral the lack of budget became more appearent as the game went on. Especially at then end higher production values were called for, but instead it felt that the funds had run dry by this point.

The aprox. 25 hours of playtime (GoG tracked 29h, but there were some idle hours) may seem short, but on the other hand the game did not overstay its welcome. The game simply does not have the "meat" for a longer playtime.

All in all a fun ride

[Eurus]

For the gun, I honestly don't care that much about retrieving it. Firearms aren't something I associate with cops, due to living in the UK, and I'm honestly planning to do a second run where I just ignore the gun completely. But the game heavily pushes you to get it, so I feel like it's going to simplify things down the line.

To be fair, the protag seems to mostly want to get his gun back to make sure nobody is going to do something bad with it! Also, I agree that the thought cabinet is pretty disappointing. There are useful thoughts, but the majority of them suck, and telling the difference between the two types is impossible without (very expensive) trial and error or using a guide.

[Eldan]

Which I didn't really have a problem with. I went at it mostly from a roleplaying perspective, thinking, yeah, Raphael Ambrosius would think that. At least on playthrough one. On playthrough 2, I just rushed the two most powerful thoughts on days one and three to powergame.

[Morty]

Which I didn't really have a problem with. I went at it mostly from a roleplaying perspective, thinking, yeah, Raphael Ambrosius would think that. At least on playthrough one. On playthrough 2, I just rushed the two most powerful thoughts on days one and three to powergame.

Which thoughts were that? I do remember using the thought that gives XP and money for Encyclopaedia checks to get a lot of both.

[Eldan]

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Actual Art Degree can be earned on day one, if you go to the bookshop and buy a few books, then criticize them. Plus talk about poems with Tommy and look at the statue of the king in the traffic jam. Gives you +10 XP for every conceptualization check, which is enormously good on an intelligent character.

On day three, you can get Wompty-Dompty-Dom center by talking to Trant Heidelstam, which gives you 10 XP For encyclopedia, very good again. Also makes money.

I also like to get Cop of the Apocalypse early, because it raises the cap on Shivers to 6, and that's the only physical skill I really care about most of the time. Needs to be high, though, because it's awesome.

[Cespenar]

I too pretty much went full Thought Cabinet to get my hands on any bit lore I could find. Didn't seem to suffer much, even though there were quite a bit of "trap" thoughts in the list.

[jacinda]

Jade Empire

[Wookieetank]

Just finished up all the side bosses in FFXII TZA on the switch, and eesh, Yiazmat was a beast. Even at 4x speed took over an hour to finish beating that beasty down. Omega Mk. XII was easier than that. Never faced either of those in the original, since at the time I didn't know they existed, but I've seen horror stories of the Yiazmat fight taking 4 or more hours

Next up on the Switch I'll be working on Raging Loop, which looks to be an interesting visual novel take on the werewolf/mafia game.

Been playing a bit of Heros of Hammerwatch on the computer and been giving some considerations to picking up the expansions with how much I've been enjoying it.

Also been gradually working my way through my 2nd playthrough of Persona Q when I can't sleep on the 3ds, in the 2nd to last dungeon now, so might be picking up Persona Q2, or Etrian Odyssey Nexus in the near future.

[Man_Over_Game]

Been playing Captain Toad Treasure Tracker. It sounds weird and dumb, but it's actually weird and good.

It's effectively just a 2d/3d platformer where each level is a puzzle and half the work is rotating the camera correctly. That sounds annoying, but it's actually incredibly well done.

It shares a similar feeling to the Super Mario Odyssey and Galaxy games, where each level has its own mechanics and physics, except take that and turn it into a puzzle game.

On top of that, it includes the sidekick co-op concept that is shown in those kinds of games, where you can have your co-op buddy play a second toad character, or you can have them control your camera and new point-click functions (like stunning/shooting bad guys).

[Morgaln]

I'm currently playing "Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark," a strategy RPG that really reminds me a lot of the old days with my PS1, playing games like FF Tactics and Vandal Hearts.

[Cespenar]

I'm currently playing "Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark," a strategy RPG that really reminds me a lot of the old days with my PS1, playing games like FF Tactics and Vandal Hearts.

Oh yeah, Fell Seal was a pretty good scratch for that FFT itch. Admittedly, at its start it felt a little too bland both in mechanics and story, but it then fortunately develops in both of those aspects.

[Zevox]

Finished up the Cindered Shadows DLC story for Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Definitely a very good one gameplay-wise - I was playing on hard, and damn, for once that difficulty name was actually true. Even beating the penultimate level at all was dicey and actually took me two tries. Having my characters typically 3 levels behind the enemies they were throwing at me instead of 3-5 above, as usually happens playing the main game due to paralogues leveling you up quickly, makes a huge difference. I really came to appreciate Weapon Artes and Gambits more for it, too - when you're not getting many double-attacks and quick kills, those look a lot more useful. It was actually nice to find situations where Gambits were useful besides breaking monster barriers - temporarily preventing enemies from moving with them in particular was a total lifesaver on more than one occasion. Heck, I even learned something about the game's mechanics that had never come up before: attacks that are super-effective on monsters can one-shot full-strength barrier tiles, just like the main target of a gambit. Never had that happen in the main game, because there were never so many monsters to deal with in a map that I ran out of Gambits. And also because effective-on-monsters moves often still looked less effective than just double-attacking.

As far as the story goes, eh, less good, but not bad. It's definitely not nearly as compelling a story as the main game's, and at first glance it doesn't seem like any of the Ashen Wolves will be among the more interesting members of the cast (though I guess it's hard to be sure now, given their supports are only available during the main game, oddly enough), but it's a decent little side-story that does tie into a mystery that the main story never quite fully addressed.

Spoiler: Many spoilers, for DLC and main plot.

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Have to say, I called Aelfric being the villain a little too quickly. At first it was just a possibility to me based on his character design (red and black Priest robes, when no other member of the Church wears those colors?), but then when he was kidnapped under mysterious circumstances and everybody was uneasy about it, I became pretty sure. Not sure how I feel about Yuri's little double-cross (or is it a triple-cross with how many flips he did?), honestly. It seems like a good idea in theory that didn't work quite as well in execution, due to requiring way too much telling instead of showing when all the twists were abruptly happening back-to-back.

Still, cool to learn more about what happened to Byleth's mother, and what exactly Rhea did to make Byleth who he/she is. It does raise more questions, though - did Rhea simply implant Sothis' Crest Stone when she gave Byleth Sitri's heart? Or did Sitri already have Sothis' Crest Stone attached to her heart previously? Was she another experiment of Rhea's in trying to bring Sothis back? Also, she clearly wasn't human, given the condition of her body (and implication of one of Rhea's lines), so what was she? One of the Children of the Goddess, like Rhea? A human altered by the influence of Sothis' Crest Stone? Something else? Was her sickness that kept her in the monastery Rhea's doing, or an actual natural illness? Yeah, so very many questions...

Also, just in gameplay spoilers territory, holy **** chapter 6 there on hard. Four mages with four castings each of Bolting smack in the center of the map, and you have to keep the Ashen Wolves alive while they're all separated from the rest of the group? Goddamn, was that rough. I wound up using Ashe's "Retribution" Gambit on Dimitri to let him counter-attack from any distance and took out the Mages that way, but even that I had to be careful with, since he could only survive two Boltings at most even from full health. And I seriously thought Balthus might be screwed, thanks to his terrible speed stat making him particularly bad when isolated - thankfully there was exactly one space he could reach where only one enemy could attack him, who wasn't one of the bolting mages, so once he weathered that attacker, he was good.

Dimitri in general was probably the MVP of the run for me - I was worried at first seeing his speed stat being kind of low, but somehow, it never seemed to matter much, he was just extremely strong all around. Byleth, Edelgard, and Claude were of course great (though I was really wishing for a way to increase Edelgard's move stat, because being stuck with that base move 4 on Fortress Knight sucks when I'm used to handing mine a Move Ring). Sadly the non-Lords who accompanied you into the DLC weren't great. I mean, Ashe and Lindhart are far from the strongest of their houses to begin with, and Hilda didn't have the best starting stats or good luck with her growths for me. And the Ashen Wolves themselves were a mixed bunch. Constance was probably the most all-around strong of them, which is perhaps not surprising from a Dark Flier. Hapi was pretty solid despite her poor speed, just as a highly-mobile Mage. Yuri was good against axe-wielders, but his poor strength and magic stats made it tough for him to contribute against many enemy types - even giving him a Levin Sword wasn't as much help as I expected it to be. He got pretty solid by the end though, and was one-rounding the illusory Aelfrics for me. Balthus was definitely the worst of the lot - terrible speed, poor defense, weak healing magic, not even that much brute strength if I'm honest. I feel like maybe he'd be better suited to Fortress Knight, where that bad speed of his no longer matters and his defense will be pushed up significantly. He really needed that Relic of his to be effective half of the time. Still, I like the class he came with - finally, a gauntlet class that's not gender-locked!

But yeah, all in all, pretty good, happy I bought it. I look forward to seeing the Ashen Wolves in my next run of the main story, especially their supports.

Aside: one big disappointment for me is that decision not to have supports in the Cindered Shadows story. I know, the normal story's supports wouldn't work, and it's shorter than the main story so maybe you couldn't go up to the usual A rank, but it was a golden opportunity to have supports between the three house leaders when they're otherwise mutually exclusive from each other. Really wish they'd done that, even if it was only a few side-story-specific C and B supports.

Also, minor thing I noticed when looking through the support archive afterward: Yuri and Jeritza can apparently S-rank a male Byleth. So, they actually wound up fixing the imbalance of the game's same-sex romance options via the DLC - three for each gender now, one of which is only available on Crimson Flower for both. Kind of surprising, but nice. And I'm pretty Jeritza is free, too, so it's only Yuri who's actually behind a paywall. (Well, assuming neither of them are fake-out S ranks like Alois and Gilbert, anyway, but neither one significantly older than Byleth the way those two are, so I'm guessing they aren't.)

[Anteros]

Oh yeah, Fell Seal was a pretty good scratch for that FFT itch. Admittedly, at its start it felt a little too bland both in mechanics and story, but it then fortunately develops in both of those aspects.

It never really made it past the bland stage for me. The plot was fine enough. Typical RPG fare. I just didn't really like the art style, and I didn't care about any of the characters.

The class system was a nice call back to FFT, and I liked that generic characters could have their own unique classes to make them special. I didn't like they generic characters were almost always superior to the main cast as a result though.

[factotum]

Just had the first second-tier boss fight in Octopath Traveller, and *boy* was that not much fun. It wasn't difficult--I was never even close to a TPK--but the boss seemed to take forever to kill and he had an annoying habit of knocking my characters unconscious. I wish the makers of RPGs would realise at some point that having agency taken away and having to watch the enemy smash you into pulp without being able to retaliate is just not enjoyable! I also think the usual JRPG "Oh, you have 8 characters but can only use 4 at a time, and the four you're not using don't earn XP" really hurts things here, because I've had to swap out my higher level party for a mostly lower-level one in order to ensure everybody is levelling OK. Sure, I could fix that by grinding forever in low-level areas, but that ain't much fun either.

Despite all that, though, still liking the game--I actually want to know what happens to these eight people and their distinct but interesting storylines.

[Razade]

A lot of JRPGs have left the "only the party get XP" behind. I was looking at getting Octopath Traveler though hearing that is a bit disappointing. I've heard the combat gets fairly tedious as well so not surprised that that's repeated here.

[Cespenar]

It never really made it past the bland stage for me. The plot was fine enough. Typical RPG fare. I just didn't really like the art style, and I didn't care about any of the characters.

The class system was a nice call back to FFT, and I liked that generic characters could have their own unique classes to make them special. I didn't like they generic characters were almost always superior to the main cast as a result though.

The art style is pretty generic RPG Maker tier, so there's not much going on there, yes. The other parts seemed enough to hold my attention though, at least.

[factotum]

A lot of JRPGs have left the "only the party get XP" behind. I was looking at getting Octopath Traveler though hearing that is a bit disappointing. I've heard the combat gets fairly tedious as well so not surprised that that's repeated here.

I actually like the combat. It's fairly simple while still having some strategic decisions to be made, plus it's proper turn-based. I would certainly class it as far more interesting than Ni No Kuni 2, which to date is the only JRPG I've played to completion. The only slight fly in the ointment is that how difficult any particular combat will be is a bit in the lap of the gods, because the four characters you're currently packing might not have the right tools to easily deal with it.

[Eurus]

I actually like the combat. It's fairly simple while still having some strategic decisions to be made, plus it's proper turn-based. I would certainly class it as far more interesting than Ni No Kuni 2, which to date is the only JRPG I've played to completion. The only slight fly in the ointment is that how difficult any particular combat will be is a bit in the lap of the gods, because the four characters you're currently packing might not have the right tools to easily deal with it.

You can set up your party so that your four characters have all eight classes between them, but considering how often I end up shuffling my party around (to see all the travel banter) it's too much trouble to be worth it for me, heh.

[tonberrian]

You can set up your party so that your four characters have all eight classes between them, but considering how often I end up shuffling my party around (to see all the travel banter) it's too much trouble to be worth it for me, heh.

AKSHUALLY there's 12 classes. Four of them are secret. And more powerful.