What Are You Playing Right Now, Part 2: Daggerfall

[Erloas]

I might be mixing up Civ 5 and 6, but I think tech can be stolen from any city with a university, so you would need quite a few counter spies to stop all tech loss, and even that just makes it harder, not impossible.

[Narkis]

I might be mixing up Civ 5 and 6, but I think tech can be stolen from any city with a university, so you would need quite a few counter spies to stop all tech loss, and even that just makes it harder, not impossible.

In 5 you can send spies to steal tech from any city, but the time it takes is directly proportional to the city's tech output. And since it pays massively to have one city focus in tech, it's completely impractical to steal tech from anywhere else. One spy is enough to protect your research, unless you're doing something weird with your cities.

[LibraryOgre]

Well, all three Witcher games came in at under $20 on GOG, so we'll see how I like those if I get sick of Fallout 4.

[Morty]

I've been thinking about dusting off Witcher 1 myself. See how well or poorly it's aged. After dealing with Witcher 3 inventory again, Witcher 1's might feel like a gift from Heaven.

[Zevox]

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Maybe I'm just too genre-savvy for my own good but that was in no way a surprise to me. I believe I called it somewhere around 30 seconds into the first conversation with her on the ship. After all, there's pretty much one of those in every single piece of Star Wars media, it's basically a trope by now

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I don't know how you could, given Cere doesn't even mention having a padawan until some time later (I'd initially assumed she had been a Padawan when Order 66 happened, seems to be the more common story for survivors), and when she does, she indicates that she died.

Also probably helps that I'm familiar with the Inquisitors from the Rebels cartoon, where they were just faceless, effectively nameless villains that existed to chase the show's Jedi in early seasons. Titles like "Second Sister" are genuinely all the identity they had in that show, so I hadn't assumed this game would give her any more than the show did. She was there to be the mandatory force-user villain you fight a couple of times, nothing more. I didn't even assume she'd be the main villain, honestly, I could totally have seen someone else being introduced a little way into the game to take that role.

[halfeye]

I've been thinking about dusting off Witcher 1 myself. See how well or poorly it's aged. After dealing with Witcher 3 inventory again, Witcher 1's might feel like a gift from Heaven.

It runs on Windows 7. It's quite long, that may be in part me making mistaken choices, because it is fairly unforgiving of those in the short term at least.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Civ 5, right? Counterespionage is a great way to farm xp for your agents, they go up a rank every time they kill an enemy spy. And the constabulary-police station-I can't even remember line of buildings are mandatory in your capital. You can't prevent tech from being stolen entirely, but you can slow it down enough to make it irrelevant.

Yeah, Civ 5. It's constabulary, then police station. National Intelligence Agency is the national wonder that requires police stations in all your cities.

And you're probably right. I only notice the tech stealing when it happens, but there are plenty more turns where it isn't stolen. It's hard to put the effectiveness of counter-espionage into perspective because the mechanics are so obscured, and my attention is focused on the active elements of the game. Which is kind of fitting for espionage, I guess. On the other hand, those spy kill notifications are some of my favorite. It's just one simple sentence, but it evokes images of James Bond or Mission Impossible exploits behind the scenes.

[Yora]

After a one year break I continued playing Baldur's Gate. I'm in the endgame now and taking a quick detour through the expansion before continuing on to the second game. I've finished the first game probably six times or so, but the last time mighr already have been 10 years ago. And I think I finished the second game only twice, and its expansion only once when it came out in 2001.
I feel the first game doesn't hold up very well, at least when you're going to complete it for the seventh time. And I expect this one will be the last. So I really want to do a complete run through the whole series with the same character one more time.

Quite amazingly, I now discovered a use for the Golden Pantaloons in the first game. The mystery of the famous joke item finally solved after 21 years.
There's a guy in a very tucked away corner of the Splurging Sturgeon who will have slightly different dialog if you have the pants in your inventory and take them from you. But I reloaded because I knew I will need them again at the very end of the series. (It's the only inventory item that get's exported into the second game.)

[Zevox]

Finished Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Pretty darn happy with the game on the whole. Kind of short, but I suspected as much going in, and what was there was largely satisfying. Starts off slow - could've done with less fighting of random animals on that first world, for sure - and there were occasional gameplay gripes, mostly revolving around the lock-on feature failing, but all in all solid.

I really enjoyed the final fight with Second Sister, that was a very good boss battle, much more satisfying than any I can think of in another Dark Souls style game. And a good showcase of the game's mechanics, really; I'm pretty sure nearly every ability I had came in handy in that fight at one point or another.

Story-wise,

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the ending did feel a tad bit contrived. It feels like it would have been more natural for them to destroy the holocron to keep it out of Vader's hands, rather than have it and just decide "nah, let's not do this." I mean yes, there was setup with Nightsister Merrin's challenging you about whether it would be right to take those random force-sensitive kids to rebuild the Order potentially against their will, and in Cal's vision of a future where he tried to rebuild the Order only for the Empire to find them and slaughter them, but still, there wasn't a lot of reflection of those points, so in the moment it felt off that he made that choice. I'm also honestly surprised that both Cere and Cal survived the game - I figured at least that Cere was legitimately dead when Vader tossed her off that platform.

On the whole, good story, though no moment ever quite matched the strength of Second Sister's reveal as Trilla, and they sadly didn't build as much on that as I'd hoped. My next favorite part was probably Nightsister Merrin; it was interesting to see a Jedi survivor and the last Nightsister forge a friendship of sorts over their shared status as survivors of wartime tragedies, and for Merrin to decide to actually join you and leave Dathomir, where there's not really anything left for her. Unexpected, but makes sense. And good to see a bit of a follow-up on events from the Clone Wars cartoon there.

So yeah, good game, I'd be happy to see more like it. And in general it's nice to see something out of Star Wars that I can really enjoy right now, after everything that happened with the sequel trilogy.

[Lord Raziere]

been playing monster hunter world, using long sword. been rising through the game with my defender set, got my gala layered armor, things have been cool there, a couple days ago, Diablos was the first monster to hand me a true main story defeat. I managed to kill it next time around though.

Nergigante was the second thing to truly defeat me. I can tell my defender armor is not as useful as it once was. I might have to start grinding to make a loadout specifically to face it. I am getting the general rhythm of how mhw fights go though, and Nergigante still follows that rhythm so I'm pretty sure I can defeat him, it just needs a bit more work to do so.

[Anteros]

The defender set should be good enough to carry you through anything pre-expansion except the Behemoth missions. With Nerg, you just need to make sure you're avoiding his dive bomb attack. It's the only thing he does that's truly dangerous.

You probably already know this, but if you do the "dodge" where your character jumps and faceplants on the ground you're invincible throughout the entire animation. It's done by sheathing your weapon and sprinting away from the monster before dodging. It's really useful against a lot of the tougher monsters that have one or two moves that 1-shot.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I've just finished the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot (not to be confused with the 2007 remake). As a person who is still somewhat unreasonably proud of having finished the very first Tomb Raider game as well but who hasn't really played the games since, I have to say this game is a lot better than it could have ended up being. Yes, that's right, they did a good job.

The controls are smoother and as a result the pacing is better, the environments come across as less gamey and puzzley while still containing all the same puzzle solving elements, the fighting is more engaging, the upgrade system is kind of fun and adds to the exploration element and having a modern recharging health system rather than a fixed bar and health packs is nice, that never really added anything in hindsight. The loading of new map sections is hidden within short scenes of Lara walking through sections of uneventful caves and corridors, which doesn't strictly add anything and is probably slower than a plain loading screen would have been but is a nice thought from an immersion perspective. There is a mild over-reliance on quicktime events, especially in the very first section of the game, and there are a few too many cutscenes. Some of the harder combat sections also contain one or two too few save points, which resulted in me redoing quite long sections of fighting a bunch of times. (To be fair, I did have the combat difficulty set to hard, which apart from that save point thing was nice and doable, roughly what you'd expect from a series like this, being primarily about the platforming and exploration stuff.) The stealth sections are engaging and give you a good reason to go for stealth without railroading too much and the on rails "oh no I'm gliding down a hill full of obstacles" sections don't feel too weird either.

So far that's all just stuff you would expect from a modern update to the series, but the surprising part is this: they manage to do all that without hurting the core characterization of Lara Croft. She returns as a recognizable character despite not having pointy boobs out to here, not fighting with two pistols held out in stretched arms and not having most of her dialogue consisting of landing grunts and "aha" sounds for when she finds stuff. (She also feels a good foot shorter, probably a choice made to have the enemies look more threatening in melee.) Pretty much everything that made Lara Lara is gone, yet she's still Lara and I don't feel the least bit insulted as someone who liked part one. It's a bit like seeing a Duke Nukem movie where he's played by Tom Cruise but still leaving feeling like you definitely saw a Duke Nukem movie.

So, to summarize: good reboot.

Edit: Oh, one kind of bad thing: the game requires a lot of different keys. I was very happy with my gaming mouse with two extra buttons. Then again, my scrollwheel is a bit wonky, if I could have used that for reliable weapon switches that would have freed up the number keys for other functions. But I definitely recommend either extra buttons or a non-wonky scrollwheel.

[Resileaf]

I've returned to FTL, making myself a fresh restart. Decided to focus on unlocking stuff before going for the flagship destruction quest.

Turns out sometimes the game just makes it easy for you, and I won with the Kestrel B (Red soemthing) while I was trying to unlock Kestrel C. The game just put the five-shot laser weapon in my lap, so I couldn't just not take it. At that point it was just a matter of getting various systems to complement my shooting style, which ended up being mind control (invaluable against boarders) and hacking. I didn't even have a single missile weapon for the entire game.

I had the opportunity to unlock the mantid cruiser, but I didn't know I needed a level 2 med bay, so I barely missed that one.

[Rodin]

I've returned to FTL, making myself a fresh restart. Decided to focus on unlocking stuff before going for the flagship destruction quest.

Turns out sometimes the game just makes it easy for you, and I won with the Kestrel B (Red soemthing) while I was trying to unlock Kestrel C. The game just put the five-shot laser weapon in my lap, so I couldn't just not take it. At that point it was just a matter of getting various systems to complement my shooting style, which ended up being mind control (invaluable against boarders) and hacking. I didn't even have a single missile weapon for the entire game.

I had the opportunity to unlock the mantid cruiser, but I didn't know I needed a level 2 med bay, so I barely missed that one.

Not too surprising - the Kestrel B is one of the strongest ships in the game. It's got the added benefit of being strong in the early game, which helps even out the RNG that can doom other ships that scale better into the late game.

[Anonymouswizard]

SO I beat Bloodlines as a Brujah, going to give it a run as a Malkavian in a bit, but I'm taking a break to play another couple of games first. I picked up Coteries of New York, and while it's good as a visual novel I get more the hit I'd get from reading a book or the like rather than the kind of hit I'd get from playing a game.

I've also been playing more Shin Megami Tensei IV, just managed to make my way to Ikkeburo and wow some bits of this are unclear. Like I think I've found that Domain I think includes this demon I'm supposed to kill, but I have no clue how to get into it. Also every time I get back into this game after a while I forget that to go up or down ladders you have to hit the correct direction on the d-pad before using them, that caused me no end of problems until I stumbled across it on a website.

But all in all, my main problem with MegaTenIV is the bits that I can see were taken from Persona, I like Isabeau when she's not acting like a Persona love interest girl and is being something different, although I've heard that the sequel goes even harder on the classic anime tropes than IV itself does, which means I'm not looking forward to when I've seen all four endingds of IV and want more. I like the bits where IV strays from classic anime tropes to be something different. Plus I've found myself not too torn up over the lack of a defence stat, sure it can make Normal difficulty even more brutal, but it quickens the battles and that's a good thing for a portable game that I'm going to be playing on the train.

Finally, blargh to App Point taxes. I can't get any of the interesting Apps because the designers decided to lock half my demon's Skill slots behind App purchases, and four skills doesn't really let you build a complete skill set. Pretty much all my purchases have been on the +Skills apps, the Expanded stock apps, and the Mug app, with the only real diversion from that being MP recovery 1. Like, I'm fine with Expanded Stock, but let me have the full eight skills from the beginning of the game.

[Yora]

I finished Baldur's Gate and moved on to Baldur's Gate 2. In many respects, it's a really big improvement. There are much fewer quests, but they are almost universally a lot longer and more complex, which is a really great thing. I also really like how it moved away from the bog standard ren fair aesthetic of the first game to something more exotic. Athkatla reminds me of a blend of medieval Italy and Planescape. I really like the direct Planescape references in the Planar Sphere and Haer'Dalis quests. Speaking of which, this is the first time I am playing the game in English, and immediately after I talked with Haer'Dalis for the first time I had to look up if that's the voice of Raziel, which it totally is.
For a time, my party included Commander Shepard, Azula, and Raziel.

However, something that I didn't expect, and which actually quite diminishes my enjoyment of the game, is how incredibly cringy a very significant portion of the dialog in the game is. Right from the start, Imoen's attempt to distressed by her imprisonment and also amazed by the wonders encountered in the first dungeon are really annoyingly whiny and sappy. Jaheira is constantly bitching and throwing abuse at you because she's being distressed about the death of her husband. Viconia is constantly abusing and insulting everyone because she's being distressed about her terrible past as a drow and everyone on the surface thinking she's an evil psychopath, which she totally is. Nalia as a staw-puppet aristocratic socialist is often rather cringy and at times just whiny. I didn't even take Airie into my party, even though cleric/wizard is a killer combo in this game, because I remembered her constantly whining about being distressed about being a circus attraction and having lost her ability to fly.
This game has some seriously messed up things going on with its attempt at sympathetic female characters.

Not that the men are much better. Back when I was 16, I thought Minsc and Jan Jansen were comedy gold. These days I find them only annoying and not the least little bit funny. Keldorn and Anomen are both poster boys for being Lawful Obnoxious. The main villain Irenicus is trying way too hard to be cool with his edgelord monologs. And don't get me started about Jaeira's entire Harper storyline. I thought the Harpers are supposed to be good guys? In this game they seem to be lawful evil in the most cringy carricature way possible. Nalia's storyline with the evil noble who wants to forcefully marry her and who turns out to be a corrupt law officer who seems to be the crime kingpin in the city is appalling as well.
Also, what is going on with serial killers in this game? Was that the latest fad in 2000? Overall, I have to say the writing in this game is really rather dreadful. With the Jaheira and Nalia getting victimized storylines I just started skipping through the dialog without reading at some point, just to get it over with.

I am also not quite sure about the game balance as I am getting into the higher levels and the more difficult sections of the game. There are quite a lot of monsters that can only be harmed by +3 weapons and are immune to spells, and even though I kept those sections for much later, my entire party has only two such weapons. And there are way too many save or die abilities with the bigger monsters and the higher level spells. There's a lot of random luck and save scumming fights as the game goes on.

I'm still having a decent enough time with this game and really want to play through the late game parts of the game and the expansion. But to my great surprise, this really is not a game I can recommend to anyone anymore. Both Baldur's Gate games have aged rather poorly and aren't terribly fun to play.

[LibraryOgre]

Still playing Fallout 4, in my usual Bethesda manner: Studiously Avoiding the Main Plot (which I spoiled myself on years ago).

Right now, I'm mostly bopping around, building settlements. I've gotten good at building wooden houses, and I have an impressive array of supply lines.

[Rodin]

Going back and forth between Battle Brothers and the Fire Emblem Three Houses DLC, which is a really weird experience. Three Houses is like driving a car with loads of fancy features after playing Battle Brothers, and the dice rolls being tilted in your favor is extremely nice. On the flip side, Battle Brothers trains you to not worry too much about a flubbed roll. Brothers are expendable, and if you miss a roll chances are you just take some armor damage in return. Missing a roll in Three Houses often means losing an irreplaceable character to a single blow.

The result is my tactical sense being all screwed up in BOTH games, leading to save scumming in Battle Brothers and copious use of Dragon Pulse to rewind time in Three Houses.

On the plus side, Marianne as a Trickster is the best thing ever. She got the chance to thrash Edelgard in 1v1 combat without resorting to magic.

[factotum]

I'm currently playing Ni No Kuni 2--up to chapter 9. I'm not sure what's kept me going through it, to be honest, I normally give up on JRPGs much sooner than this.

[Erloas]

Played a bit of Phoenix Point for a while but just wasn't really feeling it after a bit. Some parts seemed good but at least as far as I got it didn't feel like unit progression was happening nearly as fast as enemy progression and the story advancement seemed very indirect. The interaction with the other factions also seemed... lacking I guess. I think it is mostly a case of being a really good game hidden behind poor communication from the game.


Started playing Valkyrie Chronicles and seems good so far, but there is some clear bugs with tank controls and keyboard/mouse controls, I've already fixed the biggest issue caused by high framerates but still some weird control things. I'm not 100% behind the writing style, but I realize that is a much more Nintendo style (it's a Sega game, but similar style).

[Lord Raziere]

I've managed to defeated Kushala Daora with my longsword in monster hunter worlds. now trying to kill Teostra with whatever fire resist gear and the barnos jacket. I can fight him pretty well and getting him down to low health, but its predicting those explosions that are key to surviving him long enough to kill him.

been thinking of getting back into skyrim with even more mods. I don't know what insanity this is or why I'm doing it.

[Zevox]

Spent a lot of the forum's downtime back and forth between a few different games.

For a while there I was playing a lot of Smash Ultimate, because of Byleth's release. I enjoy the character, but find I am not as good with them as with many other characters - I was just unable to get them to Elite Smash ranks online. Which is a bit of a pity, but oh well.

That stopped because Street Fighter 5: Championship Edition released, and considering that upgrading to that gets you all of the game's DLC characters and costumes for only $20, I decided to do that and give the game another shot. I actually find I do like some of the newer characters, particularly the newest, Seth. Unfortunately, the game's performance online is still not great. Even the recent patch that was supposed to improve the netcode doesn't seem to have done all that much in my experience - maybe just because I'm playing random people on ranked, so running into bad connections that for some reason the game displays as 4-5 bar quality is always a potential issue, but any fighting game should be able to handle that better than SF5 does IMO. Still, I'll play it for a little bit - until Dragonball FighterZ's season 3 update and Kefla drop early next week, anyway, because goddamn does that all look like the most exciting thing to happen to that game since it launched.

(For some reason this has been a huge month for fighting games. Byleth in Smash, SF5: Championship Edition, DBFZ season 3 and Kefla, a new version of UNIEL I haven't tried but probably would have if there weren't so many other fighting games I want to play right now, and then Granblue Fantasy Versus right at the start of March. Hard to find time for it all.)

Outside of fighting games, I've continued to slowly play through Fire Emblem: Three Houses' Blue Lions route. I'm past the time skip now, and, uh...

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Well, Dimitri sure is nuts, no doubts there. Goddamn man, you sound like you should be the game's villain at times. Also, I'm betting that Dedue isn't actually dead and him showing up alive will help snap Dimitri out of it.

Also, slightly annoyed that Lorenz ditched at the time skip. I'm sure I'll get him back, just like Ashe in the Golden Deer route, but I was using him as my Assassin, damn it, now I don't have a lockpicker anymore...

Also in the RPG vein of things, I've been playing Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore - because I actually never finished the original game and a re-release with extra content was the perfect excuse to go back to it, since I'd have to restart to remember what was going on anyway. Game's pretty much as I remembered: plenty of fun, but damn is it silly. I mean, the core conceit is that your characters get better at combat by becoming better performers, and thus everyone in the party is either a pop star, an actor, or often both. Still, watching super moves that involve singing J-Pop at your enemies to conjure up blasts of magic is pretty entertaining - it's like a whole RPG where everyone is bards, but turned up to 11, and also extremely anime.

Going back and forth between Battle Brothers and the Fire Emblem Three Houses DLC, which is a really weird experience. Three Houses is like driving a car with loads of fancy features after playing Battle Brothers, and the dice rolls being tilted in your favor is extremely nice. On the flip side, Battle Brothers trains you to not worry too much about a flubbed roll. Brothers are expendable, and if you miss a roll chances are you just take some armor damage in return. Missing a roll in Three Houses often means losing an irreplaceable character to a single blow.

The result is my tactical sense being all screwed up in BOTH games, leading to save scumming in Battle Brothers and copious use of Dragon Pulse to rewind time in Three Houses.

On the plus side, Marianne as a Trickster is the best thing ever. She got the chance to thrash Edelgard in 1v1 combat without resorting to magic.

How is the Three Houses DLC, by the way? Been thinking about grabbing it after I finish the Blue Lions run, so I can do its side-story in between that and my Church route run, and have the extra characters/classes for that.

[DigoDragon]

My local group decided to play a board game called Forbidden Island. The premise is to collect four treasures and escape together (its cooperative) before the island sinks. There are a few ways that the entire party can lose.

We lost the game before the first player even finished his first turn. So... yeah, 1/10, would not recommend. XD

been thinking of getting back into skyrim with even more mods. I don't know what insanity this is or why I'm doing it.

I had just finished playing through the Dragonborn dlc. Its a neat add on with some interesting places to go. A little disappointed at the final battle because it seemed that the bbeg was immune to my shouts and the only shout he was using was the standard force shout. Felt that it could have been better as a shouting match.

[Razade]

Spent a lot of the forum's downtime back and forth between a few different games.

For a while there I was playing a lot of Smash Ultimate, because of Byleth's release. I enjoy the character, but find I am not as good with them as with many other characters - I was just unable to get them to Elite Smash ranks online. Which is a bit of a pity, but oh well.

That stopped because Street Fighter 5: Championship Edition released, and considering that upgrading to that gets you all of the game's DLC characters and costumes for only $20, I decided to do that and give the game another shot. I actually find I do like some of the newer characters, particularly the newest, Seth. Unfortunately, the game's performance online is still not great. Even the recent patch that was supposed to improve the netcode doesn't seem to have done all that much in my experience - maybe just because I'm playing random people on ranked, so running into bad connections that for some reason the game displays as 4-5 bar quality is always a potential issue, but any fighting game should be able to handle that better than SF5 does IMO. Still, I'll play it for a little bit - until Dragonball FighterZ's season 3 update and Kefla drop early next week, anyway, because goddamn does that all look like the most exciting thing to happen to that game since it launched.

(For some reason this has been a huge month for fighting games. Byleth in Smash, SF5: Championship Edition, DBFZ season 3 and Kefla, a new version of UNIEL I haven't tried but probably would have if there weren't so many other fighting games I want to play right now, and then Granblue Fantasy Versus right at the start of March. Hard to find time for it all.)

Outside of fighting games, I've continued to slowly play through Fire Emblem: Three Houses' Blue Lions route. I'm past the time skip now, and, uh...

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Well, Dimitri sure is nuts, no doubts there. Goddamn man, you sound like you should be the game's villain at times. Also, I'm betting that Dedue isn't actually dead and him showing up alive will help snap Dimitri out of it.

Also, slightly annoyed that Lorenz ditched at the time skip. I'm sure I'll get him back, just like Ashe in the Golden Deer route, but I was using him as my Assassin, damn it, now I don't have a lockpicker anymore...

Also in the RPG vein of things, I've been playing Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore - because I actually never finished the original game and a re-release with extra content was the perfect excuse to go back to it, since I'd have to restart to remember what was going on anyway. Game's pretty much as I remembered: plenty of fun, but damn is it silly. I mean, the core conceit is that your characters get better at combat by becoming better performers, and thus everyone in the party is either a pop star, an actor, or often both. Still, watching super moves that involve singing J-Pop at your enemies to conjure up blasts of magic is pretty entertaining - it's like a whole RPG where everyone is bards, but turned up to 11, and also extremely anime.


How is the Three Houses DLC, by the way? Been thinking about grabbing it after I finish the Blue Lions run, so I can do its side-story in between that and my Church route run, and have the extra characters/classes for that.

Three Houses DLC is really dang good. Quite challenging and the characters you get are all pretty cool. The story is kinda meh imho. Worth rhe DLC price though considering all the other stuff you get for it.

[oxybe]

So Dissidia ffoo had it's 2nd anniversary this feb and gave a ton of goodies and extras, including a Global first character: FFXV's Aranea.

And boy howdy is she borked. Decent longevity, huge damage and lots of turn manipulation shenanigans. Just a really good character and as a bonus, as with many spear users, she counts as a ranged character with her attacks and i have only a few DPS ranged characters.

Finished her Chaos difficulty stage, the hardest difficulty levels in the game, with ease and turn count to spare. I did pair her with great characters mind you, Zack and Rosa, but normally with Chaos I usually only barely get a clear, and frequently have to use a revive to do so and get the precious ingot fragments.

Feels great as a F2P to get that full stage complete and all the goodies it holds.

[Rodin]

Three Houses DLC is really dang good. Quite challenging and the characters you get are all pretty cool. The story is kinda meh imho. Worth rhe DLC price though considering all the other stuff you get for it.

This.

The story itself is passable, but not on the same quality as the rest of the Three Houses story. This is mostly down to it being very compressed and isolated from the rest of the game. It's difficult to tell a compelling story in 7 Chapters when the other Houses get 18-21 chapters. It was fine for what it was. Biggest disappointment was that they didn't use it to clear up some of the mysteries in the story that never get addressed.

The campaign itself was pretty good, if flawed. They resorted to the same map recycling that has plagued the rest of the game, leaving us with only 3 new maps (one of which is used twice). The actual battles on the maps were quite well done, so it kept things fresh. The different ruleset the campaign operated under also made things interesting. No buying all the best weapons, no training people up to a high skill level. What you have is what you got, apart from the limited inventory the shops have. The maps are also designed at a high difficulty level - the difficulty starts slightly below the difficulty of the final missions of vanilla and ramps up to "really damn hard" by the end. It's not the same level as Maddening (thank God Sothis), but it still took me about a dozen tries to find a strategy that let me beat chapter 6.

The real meat of the DLC is the new characters. All four are great - they feel distinct from the other students, they feel like real people, and they're all quite likeable themselves. They have their own set of Supports, including with some people who are not present for the DLC campaign. Once you've beaten the campaign you can recruit them very early into the main story - chapter 2, I think. Once recruited they are present for all the events in the story and will react to what is going on just like any of the other students. They also get their own Paralogues and Monastery quests.

The new classes they bring are fantastic. I've always complained about a lack of options for the caster classes in this game - there was Mage, Mage+, and then either Mage++ or a hybrid with a melee class that most casters would be uninterested in. The DLC introduces a raft of different options for them. Trickster is great for your mages that have Sword proficiency - I have Marianne and Manuela in the role. Valkyrie and Dark Flier provide two different flavors of mobile mage. Lysithea on a horse with range 5 magic is just plain broken, so much so that I took the relic off her and gave it to Lorenz. War Monk/Cleric is the weird one of the group. I haven't found that limited casting makes up for the lost stats of the Grappler/War Master line myself, but it's still nice to have a different option available. War Cleric allows the girls to finally get some fisticuffs in, and I've been having reasonable success making Anna into a War Cleric. They still have that ridiculous metal skirt though.

Speaking of Anna, there's the other stuff from earlier waves that the Season Pass brings. Anna is your standard DLC character with no Supports, but she is present in the Monastery more often than she was and she'll respond to current events. She also has her own Paralogue (which is absolute cancer) and a new ongoing quest that gives you stat-boost items in return for doing Auxiliary/Quest battles. There's the Sauna, which is a little mini-game which gives a skill training bonus for the rest of the month and support points with the character you enter with. You can feed the animals in the monastery to get Smithing materials, most notably Mythril which is very difficult to obtain normally. There's also new Auxiliary battles, new Quests, new costumes, etc. None of it is especially notable, but it is nice bonus content.

The best minor features are in the Abyss (a small town area which the DLC campaign uses as home base) which adds a Renown altar and a Support merchant. At the altar you can sell Storehouse items for Resolve, then cash the resolve in for various rare items. Nothing too OP, but it makes items like Wo Daos easier to obtain. The Support merchant lets you purchase additional Support points for Renown, and only shows up post-timeskip to prevent you from cheesing the Recruitment process. The best thing she does is to allow you to lock in a Paired Ending. This means that you can get A Supports on people without worrying about screwing up who you want them to marry.

My verdict for the DLC is that anyone who loves Three Houses should get it. It's more content, plain and simple. The biggest complaint I can levy against the DLC is that it wasn't ambitious enough in places. I would have liked to see the side campaign woven into the main story once you completed the isolated version. It should have been 7 new maps, not just 3, but then that complaint goes to Three Houses reusing maps in general. And they needed to do more with the story, rather than write a fairly standard filler story.

[Razade]

This.

The story itself is passable, but not on the same quality as the rest of the Three Houses story. This is mostly down to it being very compressed and isolated from the rest of the game. It's difficult to tell a compelling story in 7 Chapters when the other Houses get 18-21 chapters. It was fine for what it was. Biggest disappointment was that they didn't use it to clear up some of the mysteries in the story that never get addressed.

The campaign itself was pretty good, if flawed. They resorted to the same map recycling that has plagued the rest of the game, leaving us with only 3 new maps (one of which is used twice). The actual battles on the maps were quite well done, so it kept things fresh. The different ruleset the campaign operated under also made things interesting. No buying all the best weapons, no training people up to a high skill level. What you have is what you got, apart from the limited inventory the shops have. The maps are also designed at a high difficulty level - the difficulty starts slightly below the difficulty of the final missions of vanilla and ramps up to "really damn hard" by the end. It's not the same level as Maddening (thank God Sothis), but it still took me about a dozen tries to find a strategy that let me beat chapter 6.

The real meat of the DLC is the new characters. All four are great - they feel distinct from the other students, they feel like real people, and they're all quite likeable themselves. They have their own set of Supports, including with some people who are not present for the DLC campaign. Once you've beaten the campaign you can recruit them very early into the main story - chapter 2, I think. Once recruited they are present for all the events in the story and will react to what is going on just like any of the other students. They also get their own Paralogues and Monastery quests.

The new classes they bring are fantastic. I've always complained about a lack of options for the caster classes in this game - there was Mage, Mage+, and then either Mage++ or a hybrid with a melee class that most casters would be uninterested in. The DLC introduces a raft of different options for them. Trickster is great for your mages that have Sword proficiency - I have Marianne and Manuela in the role. Valkyrie and Dark Flier provide two different flavors of mobile mage. Lysithea on a horse with range 5 magic is just plain broken, so much so that I took the relic off her and gave it to Lorenz. War Monk/Cleric is the weird one of the group. I haven't found that limited casting makes up for the lost stats of the Grappler/War Master line myself, but it's still nice to have a different option available. War Cleric allows the girls to finally get some fisticuffs in, and I've been having reasonable success making Anna into a War Cleric. They still have that ridiculous metal skirt though.

Speaking of Anna, there's the other stuff from earlier waves that the Season Pass brings. Anna is your standard DLC character with no Supports, but she is present in the Monastery more often than she was and she'll respond to current events. She also has her own Paralogue (which is absolute cancer) and a new ongoing quest that gives you stat-boost items in return for doing Auxiliary/Quest battles. There's the Sauna, which is a little mini-game which gives a skill training bonus for the rest of the month and support points with the character you enter with. You can feed the animals in the monastery to get Smithing materials, most notably Mythril which is very difficult to obtain normally. There's also new Auxiliary battles, new Quests, new costumes, etc. None of it is especially notable, but it is nice bonus content.

The best minor features are in the Abyss (a small town area which the DLC campaign uses as home base) which adds a Renown altar and a Support merchant. At the altar you can sell Storehouse items for Resolve, then cash the resolve in for various rare items. Nothing too OP, but it makes items like Wo Daos easier to obtain. The Support merchant lets you purchase additional Support points for Renown, and only shows up post-timeskip to prevent you from cheesing the Recruitment process. The best thing she does is to allow you to lock in a Paired Ending. This means that you can get A Supports on people without worrying about screwing up who you want them to marry.

My verdict for the DLC is that anyone who loves Three Houses should get it. It's more content, plain and simple. The biggest complaint I can levy against the DLC is that it wasn't ambitious enough in places. I would have liked to see the side campaign woven into the main story once you completed the isolated version. It should have been 7 new maps, not just 3, but then that complaint goes to Three Houses reusing maps in general. And they needed to do more with the story, rather than write a fairly standard filler story.

I'll echo this now that I can post longer replies not on my phone.

I'd have liked a full fourth House frankly. I know they've said they have no plans for a Golden Route...which is fine with me honestly. I like that you have to live with the consequences of your choices and there isn't an objectively better (ok, I think Verdant Wind is the objectively best route as far as where it leaves the country after the war but that's just my opinion) or best route to take. I'd have liked the DLC to be more than just some costumes and some extra side missions until the last of its roll out. The side mission was fine, and enjoyable, but I'd have liked more content like that. Especially for Crimson Flower's run. Give us the three or so missing chapters, please.

I don't regret buying it but I just felt like a lot of the early stuff wasn't worth the price of admission and the end stuff came way too late for me to really enjoy it in the moment. I'd played all four routes before doing the side mission and now I have to work through getting all the supports on the characters I've missed. Which is fine, I'm not in a huge hurry to do it, but now it just feels like I'm checking them off the list instead of feeling like I'm exploring all these new characters fresh and eager. I'll have to do at least two more runs to 100% them...which I'll probably never end up doing. Such is life though.

The only real gripe I have is...the classes are still just really kinda bland. Maybe it's because I'm more used to/accustomed to Disgaea's method of classes and free for all systems but I wouldn't feel so bored with cycling through the stories if I didn't feel like I ended up with the same team over and over and over again. The Master Classes are alll insanely hyper-specced with a very very deep bias to mounted lance users. If you want a master class and use an axe all the way through you've got Wyvern Lord (Which is a great class) or War Master (which...I don't care for.). And that's kinda what you get if you're a guy. The Advanced Classes just feel a little more well developed, there's a better number of them and they're not gender locked except for Hero. Which more than makes up for the absurd number of female only classes which the DLC doesn't help. Why is Dark Flyer female only exactly? Why is Valkyrie other than because it's named that? War Cleric isn't male only, neither is Trickster. I guess the few male-casters are shafted just for the lolz.

I'm hoping the rumors are true and that there are two more DLC things coming. I know that's a long shot predicated on some deep diving in the files, two more slots doesn't mean they'll be used but a man can hope. If not, I hope we get another full game in the future, I've certainly enjoyed and spent a good amount of time on the game.

[Anteros]

I just finished up the campaign for Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem. I absolutely can't recommend it to anyone by the way, even if you like ARPGs. It's a completely buggy unfinished mess.

The servers don't work, certain skills are 1000X more effective than other similar skills, and many of the passive nodes on the talent tree simply don't function correctly at all. On top of all this, the main story isn't even finished. It just stops right before the climax. I guess they wanted to sell a DLC or something. There's the skeleton of a good game in there somewhere, but what they actually released was complete garbage.

[Cazero]

Well, I'd say that Wolcen is still bloody enjoyable, but, yeah, your critics all hold.

[Zevox]

The best minor features are in the Abyss (a small town area which the DLC campaign uses as home base) which adds a Renown altar and a Support merchant. [...] The best thing she does is to allow you to lock in a Paired Ending. This means that you can get A Supports on people without worrying about screwing up who you want them to marry.

Okay, now that I'm quite interested in. Is that something that won't show up in a main campaign until completing the DLC story, or do you get it as soon as you buy the DLC? Because it'd be nice to be able to lock in endings on my current run.

(Just bought the DLC, incidentally. Wish you guys had better things to say about the story, but still, sounds good enough to get me to grab it. Especially considering how much I love the game already, don't mind throwing some extra money the developers' way for it as much given that.)