What Are You Playing Right Now, Part 2: Daggerfall

[Eldan]

I swear, it's like people dont notice the woodcutter's axe next to the old man who is the first thing you are expected to interact with after leaving the cave. The woodcutter's axe is EVERYTHING you people want, but you all ignore it and complain about your wooden sticks breaking faster than you can replace them.

Had the damn axe. Broke it before leaving the plateau. Still didn't like the game.

[Anonymouswizard]

I swear, it's like people dont notice the woodcutter's axe next to the old man who is the first thing you are expected to interact with after leaving the cave. The woodcutter's axe is EVERYTHING you people want, but you all ignore it and complain about your wooden sticks breaking faster than you can replace them.

I mean, I outright said I missed the axe. Because the game doesn't draw attention to it it's possible to miss it completely.

So yeah, maybe we're not in the won't, maybe we just managed to miss one weapon because hey, things happen, and maybe we just don't like weapon durability.

I've used every weapon in every Devil May Cry game I've played, with the only one that hasn't seen regular use being Nevan. A game doesn't need weapon durability to make me use every weapon, it needs to make every weapon useful, different, and fun to play so I'll intentionally swap them out. In my honest opinion Breath of The Wild would have been better if the developers focused on giving the player six permanent weapons rather than three hundred temporary ones.

[GloatingSwine]

That's why Hyrule Warriors is the best Zelda game on Switch still.

[DigoDragon]

On Breath of the Wild--

Got the axe and it does the job of killing the moblin critters, if a bit slow. Just have to hit and dodhe. I don't mind degradation gameplay since I have no trouble with it in Fallout games and Minecraft, but I think it is the lack of a repair ability that makes BotW's way a bit annoying. I still do a lot of stealth to avoid enemies because weapons do not last long other than the axe, and it seems so far it's the only one.

I'm getting better at the controller, now that I think I have figured out the exact problem I have with it--the camera control feels backwards to me.

[Anteros]

My no death run of Sekiro is going well. I was worried about the camera in the well ninja fight, but relentless aggression carried me through before it could become a problem. I tried 7 spears and almost had his posture broken for the kill, but I aggroed a bunch of adds on accident and decided it wasn't worth the risk to stick around. I really should clear the adds from the area before I go for him, but I'm just impatient.

Next up is the snake eye sister in the depths. She's one of the hardest fights in the game on her own, and the area being covered in poison and other snipers makes it even tougher. I know you can cheese her into the poison pool, but that kinda defeats the purpose of a challenge run. I think I'm gonna take another little break before I try her and the ape.

[Erloas]

I'm very interested in Gears Tactics, and this was pretty high praise. I don't mind all the reviews that are complaining the game isn't x-com since I don't actually like X-com very much.

I don't think it's worth the price point to me right now though. I can afford it, but I almost never pay full price for a game these days. They're rarely worth the full 70 dollars and I've been burned too many times. I'll probably pick it up in a few months when the price drops a bit.

It might be worth looking at the Microsoft GamePass, as it includes Gears Tactics. I started downloading it last night after reading that too, but haven't had a chance to actually start the game.

[Anteros]

It might be worth looking at the Microsoft GamePass, as it includes Gears Tactics. I started downloading it last night after reading that too, but haven't had a chance to actually start the game.

I saw that, but my impression is that it's just for xbox one, which I don't have. Or is it available on PC too?

[Rodin]

I saw that, but my impression is that it's just for xbox one, which I don't have. Or is it available on PC too?

Appears to be

Disclaimer: I am not a Game Pass subscriber. But as far as I can tell it is available, and Gears Tactics is listed in the "For PC" section in the linked article.

[warty goblin]

I saw that, but my impression is that it's just for xbox one, which I don't have. Or is it available on PC too?

It's available for the pc, apparently quite reasonably priced too.


Got in some more Gears Tactics time last night. I'm really enjoying the sheer bloody-minded velocity of the thing. The zoomed out camera and enemies moving by group removes an enormous amount of dead space in a turn compared to XCOM. The group movement and multiple Overwatch shots in particular make the game feel almost we-go, instead of strictly group alternating.

I've also noticed that Gears enemies are built around very simple basic abilities like Overwatch and melee attack zones. This means that the tactical problems feel really organic to the idea of dudes hiding in ruins and shooting. In particular there don't seem to be enemies built around the XCOM staple of "disable a soldier, and screw you over next turn if you don't kill this particular alien" which I appreciate.

Only real complaint is that the equipment management interface is mildly horrible, but that's basically a given in this sort of thing.

[Erloas]

I saw that, but my impression is that it's just for xbox one, which I don't have. Or is it available on PC too?

Yeah, it is for the PC too. I've had it for a few months now and it seems to be a really good deal. I've played quite a few games that I had heard about but wasn't interested in paying much of anything for them, as well as some very new games that alone would cost half a year's worth of subscription.

[Razade]

I played Trials of Mana way back when it was fan-translated on an emulator. So when they said they were going to remake it, I got pretty excited. Been plugging away at it the last week or two and it's been...a moderately fun time. The frames on the Switch are a little janky in cutscenes though not in actual gameplay. Loading times are also a little rough but other than that the game runs fine.

The game was always odd to me growing up with its modular storytelling, I never really got far enough in it on an emulator to worry too much if that meant that the story would suffer because it was cut apart and slotted in based on who you picked. Now that I am, I think, near the end of the game...that is totally how it is. There are six characters and each are part of a pair. The main sword warrior and mage, the healer and the DPS brawling, the thief and the amazon. If you have the pair, you get a more fleshed out story as they are both assigned a "Main Villain" and that villain's henchpeople make up the antagonists going forward. If you don't...I actually don't know. I think they just make the first person you select determine it. I picked the main fighter and main mage so I got their storyline.

Doing that seems to be the best way to experience the story because, as mentioned, you get some additional cut scenes between them and it gives a bit more depth to their relationship. That's not saying a lot, the depth of the story is about as deep as a puddle. Big bads want to become a god, start killing and stealing the magical items to do it. You go out to stop them. They get close to succeeding, you kick their butts and everyone lives happily ever after. I'd give the story a big fat 1/10 if it was all the game had going for it, but the story really isn't the draw.

Combat is smooth, the UI other than the ring menus the game is famous for have been reworked and they're...fine. The biggest issue I have with combat/mechanics is they really don't explain things early on and that means you can end up with a build that's just not very good or a character you actually didn't want to use. The mage, for instance, really doesn't do a whole lot of magic until you get into class unlocking and then the elements are scattered around the stat bonuses and you only get access to them if you've unlocked the element which is totally story dependent. So if you want your mage girl as your main so you can fireball things...that's not going to happen until mid-game because fireball is locked behind the first class upgrade and then you have to hit a story event to unlock fire magic.

All that would be fine, I guess. A little convoluted and not at all a standard way of doing things but it works well in the game, but no one explains it. There's no tutorial, there's no real chance to get a feel for the characters at all and once you've picked your team, that's the team you've got for the rest of the game. Which would be fine on additional playthroughs, they obviously intend for that with 3 final bosses and some really nice NG+ options but that seems to be a big barrier to even reach NG+ if you ask me.

Chances are I'll do the other two on the knowledge that you keep levels and it'll make the game go by more swiftly. Probably not right one after another though. The game's good if you're looking for an old school JRPG and aren't afraid to do some research to figure out what you need to be doing.

[Rakaydos]

On Breath of the Wild--

Got the axe and it does the job of killing the moblin critters, if a bit slow. Just have to hit and dodhe. I don't mind degradation gameplay since I have no trouble with it in Fallout games and Minecraft, but I think it is the lack of a repair ability that makes BotW's way a bit annoying. I still do a lot of stealth to avoid enemies because weapons do not last long other than the axe, and it seems so far it's the only one.

I'm getting better at the controller, now that I think I have figured out the exact problem I have with it--the camera control feels backwards to me.

There's usually a replacement axe anytime you find a cabin or village, and they are replaced each time a blood moon happens.

Most weapons are more powerful than the axe while they last-with the limited inventory space for weapons, imo the best approach is to break your weakest weapons first over the enemy's face and replace it with stuff they are carrying, if it's better than the weakest stuff you already have. Keep the axe as a reliable backup.

There's 4 weapons that are repairable, each at a specific smithy with a specific ingredient list, not just money. You get them by beating each Divine Beast. The master sword self-repairs, and requires going through the lost woods with iirc 13 or more health.

[Morty]

Inspired by my girlfriend talking to me about it, I've picked up Hollow Knight again. This time I managed not to get lost as much and eventually acquired a map, quill and compass, so I actually know where I'm going most of the time. With the benefit of this, the game is pretty fun. Very Dark Souls in both gameplay and atmosphere.

[warty goblin]

Beat the first boss fight in Gears Tactics this morning. This was the part of the game I was most uncertain about, because I really, really hate boss fights as a general rule. So often they come down to being locked in some rando space with a giant sack of HP that requires doing exactly the same thing like 10 times, and it just sucks all the dynamism and life out of the game.

This was actually fun! The boss had actions that created interesting problems to solve, without invalidating huge swaths of the basic game and reducing it to spamming the same actions again and again. I wiped once (had to restart from a checkpoint), but it really was just a nice long and complex fight.

The boss fight also definitively proved what I had pretty much already figured out. Gears Tactics actually has a ballistics model. Not a complex one to be sure, but instead of an abstract dice roll, it's at least partially relying on actual traced trajectories. I first suspected this when I realized you could take friendly fire when shooting too close to other soldiers. Then I wounded one dude with a shotgun blast from overwatch, right before his buddy ran in front of him and ate the second blast, some of which hit the first dude and finished him off. The boss fight is very definitely built around actual bullet trajectories, which sort of wraps the matter up. I like this; a halfway decent simulation almost always produces more interesting results than just dice rolls.

[Cespenar]

Gears Tactics actually has a ballistics model. Not a complex one to be sure, but instead of an abstract dice roll, it's at least partially relying on actual traced trajectories. I first suspected this when I realized you could take friendly fire when shooting too close to other soldiers. Then I wounded one dude with a shotgun blast from overwatch, right before his buddy ran in front of him and ate the second blast, some of which hit the first dude and finished him off. The boss fight is very definitely built around actual bullet trajectories, which sort of wraps the matter up. I like this; a halfway decent simulation almost always produces more interesting results than just dice rolls.

Reminds me of Phoenix Point, which had a trajectory system and a free first person aim system on top of the XCOM chassis.

[factotum]

Speaking of XCom-alikes...I have just requested a Steam refund on XCom: Chimera Squad, which I think is the first time I've ever done that. I just wasn't having fun with the game--the stuff they've done to simplify it compared to the mainline XCom titles has also, IMHO, removed what I enjoy about the game.

[Rakaydos]

Inspired by my girlfriend talking to me about it, I've picked up Hollow Knight again. This time I managed not to get lost as much and eventually acquired a map, quill and compass, so I actually know where I'm going most of the time. With the benefit of this, the game is pretty fun. Very Dark Souls in both gameplay and atmosphere.

Having recently played through it the first time... You won't be able to access fog canyons map until well after you can reach it, and when you reach the Royal Waterways, go left and ignore the sign for the bench if you want the map.

[Eldan]

Speaking of XCom-alikes...I have just requested a Steam refund on XCom: Chimera Squad, which I think is the first time I've ever done that. I just wasn't having fun with the game--the stuff they've done to simplify it compared to the mainline XCom titles has also, IMHO, removed what I enjoy about the game.

Could you give some more detail? I was considering buying it, but waffling around about it.

[factotum]

Could you give some more detail? I was considering buying it, but waffling around about it.

Having thought a bit more about it, I think the fault pretty much entirely lies in the Breach mechanic the game has. This has a few main effects, IMHO:

a) It breaks up the map into small "rooms", so, rather than moving organically round a larger, more complicated map, you're performing each fight in a small, restricted area. Think of an indoor fight from X-Com: Apocalypse but turned up to 11.

b) After you breach into a room, all your guys get to act once, then all the enemies who are still capable will respond. You only have at most four operatives in a battle (at least early on, don't know if that changes later), so if the room has 6 people in you're probably going to take a couple of hits while you're standing in the open (because you don't go into cover until the enemy has responded), which is just annoying.

c) After the above-mentioned enemy response, all your guys run into the nearest cover. You have no control over this or where they'll end up, so you just have to hope you took out the most dangerous targets and at least have some cover for the rest of that room.

d) I didn't get far enough into the game to unlock the higher level abilities for my agents, but all the first-tier abilities they got could only be used during the breach, thus severely restricting their use.

Bear in mind my total play time was just short of two hours (116 minutes--that's why I went for the refund because I realised it was probably the first time I ever could, I usually play games longer before giving up on them) so maybe this all gets more interesting later on. I couldn't be bothered to wait for it to get good, though, there are plenty of better things I can be playing.

[Cespenar]

Having thought a bit more about it, I think the fault pretty much entirely lies in the Breach mechanic the game has. This has a few main effects, IMHO:

a) It breaks up the map into small "rooms", so, rather than moving organically round a larger, more complicated map, you're performing each fight in a small, restricted area. Think of an indoor fight from X-Com: Apocalypse but turned up to 11.

b) After you breach into a room, all your guys get to act once, then all the enemies who are still capable will respond. You only have at most four operatives in a battle (at least early on, don't know if that changes later), so if the room has 6 people in you're probably going to take a couple of hits while you're standing in the open (because you don't go into cover until the enemy has responded), which is just annoying.

c) After the above-mentioned enemy response, all your guys run into the nearest cover. You have no control over this or where they'll end up, so you just have to hope you took out the most dangerous targets and at least have some cover for the rest of that room.

d) I didn't get far enough into the game to unlock the higher level abilities for my agents, but all the first-tier abilities they got could only be used during the breach, thus severely restricting their use.

Bear in mind my total play time was just short of two hours (116 minutes--that's why I went for the refund because I realised it was probably the first time I ever could, I usually play games longer before giving up on them) so maybe this all gets more interesting later on. I couldn't be bothered to wait for it to get good, though, there are plenty of better things I can be playing.

It's not that bad, honestly, but I like the main formula too much to be not biased.

a) You're fighting 1-2 XCOM 2 "pockets" worth of enemies each encounter in an area that you probably would be using during that game, so it's not that restricted, really.

b) That's not a given, since as the game hastily introduces the breach concept, they brief us a bit about the three enemy states during breach: surprised, alert, and aggressive. Only aggressive enemies shoot at you during a breach, so you're kinda expected to take care of them if you want to avoid some 1st turn damage. But instead you might want to focus on removing as many targets as you can, or target the high-value ones first, etc. so there's some tactical depth there in the breach mechanic.

[GloatingSwine]

b) That's not a given, since as the game hastily introduces the breach concept, they brief us a bit about the three enemy states during breach: surprised, alert, and aggressive. Only aggressive enemies shoot at you during a breach, so you're kinda expected to take care of them if you want to avoid some 1st turn damage. But instead you might want to focus on removing as many targets as you can, or target the high-value ones first, etc. so there's some tactical depth there in the breach mechanic.

Or leave lots of enemies on low health so you can remove them from the turn order during the rest of the encounter via your handy new police brutality button (capturing alive is good).

Also, with some skills there are instances where leaving an aggressive enemy to shoot is actually good. Cherub gets a skill that forces an alert enemy to shoot at him and negates any damage from it, giving him an energy charge he can use to get extra damage in the turn.

[MCerberus]

I think a problem is that the game doesn't force you to mess with the timeline early. You start out being able to just club the next guy on the timeline, but you need to abuse the action economy to breaking by the time you get to the later boss levels

[warty goblin]

I kinda bounced off of Chimera Squad. The breech mechanic was fine, but I didn't really have an appetite for hours of it. It's a good mechanic, and as an occasional part of a game it would be fine, but it seemed a bit... thin to build an entire game around. Sure it was a game that I paid $10 for, but it was also going to take a lot of time to play. Besides, at some level if I really wanted to spend hours figuring out how to kick down doors, I'd, um, just play Doorkickers.

...and then Gears Tactics dropped, and it's just so much smoother and faster than XCOM has ever been. It's going to be really, really hard to go back to XCOM's comparatively restrictive verb set after setting up a killzone with a heavy with 4AP and grinding an entire group of Wretches into spaghetti sauce.

[factotum]

It's not that bad, honestly, but I like the main formula too much to be not biased.

I like the X-Com formula fine, which is why I wish Firaxis would stop messing with it. IMHO, X-Com: Enemy Unknown is easily the best of the modern X-Com games. What they needed to do was fix some of the more egregious bugs, improve the map variety, and come up with a reasonable storyline to start off the second game. What they did was to ignore the bugs (seriously, even in Chimera Squad I had an early mission where one of my guys was floating several feet off the floor for no readily apparent reason) and add stuff that just made the formula worse. In X-Com 2 it was time limits all over the place, even to the point where I literally failed a mission because *one* of my troopers was still outside the evac zone when the turn timer ran out--I mean, just say I left the guy behind and he died, I would rather that than have to replay the entire thing!

Then Chimera Squad comes along and decides that all those large, organic maps to play over are too complicated for people's widdle brains and we should be fighting in a series of boxes instead...

[Erloas]

It didn't feel like X-COM EW's maps were all that interesting. Sure they were reasonable sized, but given the pod mechanics about 80% of the map was "busy work" to slowly advance to the point where something happened and there really was only a small part of the map utilized at any given time, and with a few good spots to put your squad and a lot of bad spots to put them. In short they were large but their size didn't really come into play given the rest of the mechanics of the game.

[Anteros]

Well, I beat Rimworld. The game never did get difficult exactly. Just more and more tedious. Sure, they throw raids with over a hundred enemies at you, but once your defenses are set up it really doesn't matter what they do. The grind for uranium and waiting for an opportunity to get an AI core for the ship were the tedious bits. Lots of hours basically just waiting for caravans, trading ships, and quests while nothing happened. I don't think I'll go back. There's not enough there to justify another run I think. Nothing to really do in the mid to late game. I did get about 50-100 hours from it though so I can't exactly complain. It's a good game if you want something peaceful to just veg out to while you watch TV or something.



Still playing Sekiro. It's almost funny how easy bosses like Genichiro, Corrupted Monk, and Butterfly feel now. I remember feeling like they were almost impossible the first time I fought them, but once you know their patterns it's really just a matter of getting them into a pattern and hitting fairly easy parry timings. I actually forgot to even use the memories to boost my attack power until I was 4 bosses in.
I'm not the smartest man.

I've almost died to random enemy mobs more times now than bosses though. The game really is well designed with how fine tuned the combat is, and how well it teaches you to use the system. No other combat in a game even feels close to as good. I've heard the new God of War is close though, so I'll probably try that next. I never played the series before, so I hadn't bothered with this one.

[GloatingSwine]

Then Chimera Squad comes along and decides that all those large, organic maps to play over are too complicated for people's widdle brains and we should be fighting in a series of boxes instead...

Or, among the intelligentsia we realised that the large organic maps produced a degenerate strategy of creeping forward on overwatch to activate one pod at a time and alpha strike it to minimise the engagements.

And 100% of all the changes made in Enemy Within, XCOM2 and War of the Chosen existed to specifically try to disrupt that one degenerate strategy without any real success because all they did was make it more valuable to minimise engagements, it was too innate to the core structure of alien pods and their reaction moves.

[factotum]

Or, among the intelligentsia we realised that the large organic maps produced a degenerate strategy of creeping forward on overwatch to activate one pod at a time and alpha strike it to minimise the engagements.

Well, maybe because it's I never used that strategy (which sounds hella boring, by the way, do people not play games to actually have fun these days?) that I considered all those changes to make things worse. Although it doesn't explain why both X-Com 2 and Chimera Squad have effectively added time limits on the Geoscape that were never there in earlier games.

[Cespenar]

...and then Gears Tactics dropped, and it's just so much smoother and faster than XCOM has ever been. It's going to be really, really hard to go back to XCOM's comparatively restrictive verb set after setting up a killzone with a heavy with 4AP and grinding an entire group of Wretches into spaghetti sauce.

I'm definitely gonna look at that as well at some point.

I like the X-Com formula fine, which is why I wish Firaxis would stop messing with it. IMHO, X-Com: Enemy Unknown is easily the best of the modern X-Com games. What they needed to do was fix some of the more egregious bugs, improve the map variety, and come up with a reasonable storyline to start off the second game. What they did was to ignore the bugs (seriously, even in Chimera Squad I had an early mission where one of my guys was floating several feet off the floor for no readily apparent reason) and add stuff that just made the formula worse. In X-Com 2 it was time limits all over the place, even to the point where I literally failed a mission because *one* of my troopers was still outside the evac zone when the turn timer ran out--I mean, just say I left the guy behind and he died, I would rather that than have to replay the entire thing!

Then Chimera Squad comes along and decides that all those large, organic maps to play over are too complicated for people's widdle brains and we should be fighting in a series of boxes instead...

I'm 100% with you about the time limits, which is in fact the reason the True Concealment mod was the first thing I got for XCOM 2, but I like the fact that they're trying new things for new titles. Just polishing and patching isn't enough to make a new game, and we have that problem already with lots of AAA titles.

The 10 bucks package is an especially good way to do it. Here's the thing you loved, but in a shorter, different format with some bells and whistles. Oh, and sixth of the price.

Or, among the intelligentsia we realised that the large organic maps produced a degenerate strategy of creeping forward on overwatch to activate one pod at a time and alpha strike it to minimise the engagements.

And 100% of all the changes made in Enemy Within, XCOM2 and War of the Chosen existed to specifically try to disrupt that one degenerate strategy without any real success because all they did was make it more valuable to minimise engagements, it was too innate to the core structure of alien pods and their reaction moves.

I don't understand what they expected anyway. If you present permadeath and deadly enemies in an information-scarce area, of course the players are going to do the very thing that militaries do in real life -- cover each other's advances. It's as natural to the tactical genre as rushing or turtling are to the strategy genre.

[warty goblin]

Well, maybe because it's I never used that strategy (which sounds hella boring, by the way, do people not play games to actually have fun these days?) that I considered all those changes to make things worse. Although it doesn't explain why both X-Com 2 and Chimera Squad have effectively added time limits on the Geoscape that were never there in earlier games.

I suspect they added timers to the geoscape to make it into something that actually forced strategic decisions, instead of a loading screen between upgrades and missions.

Even with that, I don't think XCOM's strategy layer actually does make interesting decisions, or contextualize the tactical combat all that well. For a game about defending a planet, it seems entirely uninterested in geography, and because losing a mission is so heavily penalized, every mission needs to be winnable. My general litmus test for interesting strategy is if the game allow for a tactical loss/strategic victory, or vice versa, since this generally means you're doing something more meaningful than choosing the next place to win, and there's interesting carryover between the two portions. XCOM really does not do this
. The closest the game comes is choosing which of 3 bad things to prevent, but this is a ludicrously inorganic gamey choice, and generally isn't that much of a choice anyway.

Bottom line, I miss the strategy layer in Gears Tactics not at all.

I don't understand what they expected anyway. If you present permadeath and deadly enemies in an information-scarce area, of course the players are going to do the very thing that militaries do in real life -- cover each other's advances. It's as natural to the tactical genre as rushing or turtling are to the strategy genre.

Something that Gears Tactics has made me realize is that I don't actually object to using Overwatch a lot, because I Overwatch least as much in GT as in XCOM. The difference is that Overwatch in XCOM is boring - move to place, push button - there's no interesting decision there. Gears makes you decide where you're Overwatching, and how much to do it, which makes it an engaging decision.

The issue isn't Overwatch creep, it's that XCOM fails to do anything to make Overwatch creep fun.