What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

[Zevox]

So I'm just under fifteen hours into Persona 4 Golden.

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So I've just rescued Kanji, and why aren't him, Yousuke, and Teddie gay options? Not only is Kanji clearly a 4 or 5 on the Kinsey scale, but Yousuke was originally intended as bi and I'm not certain if Teddie even has a concept of gender.

Also Kanji has by far the best of the story arcs, due to it being entirely about overcompensation in the face of prejudice. The entire 'is Kanji gay' argument just obfuscates his actual problems being overcompensation for not matching up to expectations.

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Well, I don't recall anything implying that Yosuke was bi - if anything the homophobia he displays towards Kanji at times would seem to imply the reverse. I guess you could see that as his own form of compensating, but it never came across that way to me. And Teddie just displays little understanding of romance in general.

As far as Kanji goes, you could argue that he's because

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even by the end of the game he hasn't fully figured out or become completely comfortable with his own sexuality,

but the truth really is that Persona just hasn't ever done openly gay relationships. Kanji's a great character and definitely one of the biggest stand-outs of Persona 4, but he's as open as the series has ever gotten with a non-straight character. The next most overt is the implied possibility of Chie and Yukiko that you get mostly from their shadows' remarks about each other. Everything else is even more in the read-between-the-lines implied realm, at best. I hope that changes in a future game, but it's hard to know how likely that is. Japan is a very different culture about that sort of thing, and even Japanese games that have grown more comfortable depicting gay characters recently still seem to prefer to leave gay relationships more in the implied realm than not (see Fire Emblem: Three Houses, for instance).

22 hours here, just did the school camp and I believe the sixth member has just showed up--leastways, she's the person who's dancing immediately after Kanji in the opening titles, so I assume she's next. Mind you, this is one heck of a long game, it started on April 12th and I've only done about 3 months in game time--I believe the whole thing lasts all year?

I do wonder just how important increasing those Social Links are, though. For the members of your investigation team, yes, because that gives you direct benefits in battles, but for everyone else it just gives a couple of levels to any persona you Fuse, which just doesn't seem all that exciting. Does anything interesting happen once you get it to max, or something?

If memory serves Persona 4 ends just after Christmas - though I don't know if Golden expanded that, the way Royal did with Persona 5. But yes, Persona games are very long. I've found that I more often have play times over 100 hours on a play through than under.

As far as Social Links, as Tyckspoon mentioned maxing the link unlocks the most powerful Persona of that Arcana for fusion, which matters in the late-game, and generally speaking a maxed social link will mean enough bonus experience that even most late-game Personas will learn all of their skills as soon as you fuse them, which can be quite helpful. Plus of course you get to experience the entire story of the character the link centers around, which is kind of a big chunk of the game. They didn't add further benefits beyond those until Persona 5 though.

[Anonymouswizard]

22 hours here, just did the school camp and I believe the sixth member has just showed up--leastways, she's the person who's dancing immediately after Kanji in the opening titles, so I assume she's next.

I don't want to spoil it for you, but...

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You're beary close.

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Well, I don't recall anything implying that Yosuke was bi - if anything the homophobia he displays towards Kanji at times would seem to imply the reverse. I guess you could see that as his own form of compensating, but it never came across that way to me. And Teddie just displays little understanding of romance in general.

As far as Kanji goes, you could argue that he's because

Spoiler: Minor Kanji spoiler

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even by the end of the game he hasn't fully figured out or become completely comfortable with his own sexuality,

but the truth really is that Persona just hasn't ever done openly gay relationships. Kanji's a great character and definitely one of the biggest stand-outs of Persona 4, but he's as open as the series has ever gotten with a non-straight character. The next most overt is the implied possibility of Chie and Yukiko that you get mostly from their shadows' remarks about each other. Everything else is even more in the read-between-the-lines implied realm, at best. I hope that changes in a future game, but it's hard to know how likely that is. Japan is a very different culture about that sort of thing, and even Japanese games that have grown more comfortable depicting gay characters recently still seem to prefer to leave gay relationships more in the implied realm than not (see Fire Emblem: Three Houses, for instance).

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I believe Yousuke was intended to be romanceable until late in development. I also have had personal experience expressing homophobia due to believing society would look down on my sexuality, it took me until I was about 19 to fully come to terms with it, and Yosuke's homophobia could fall into that category.

With Kanji, I'd honestly say he's the one party member who should not be dateable, because of the fact that his arc revolves around being uncomfortable with who he is. It just feels annoying to have a character who explicitly likes men (and women) and being told 'no, you can't agree with him that men are hot'.

I'd also argue that Persona 2 was just as fine with gay relationships as 4, but this essentially boils down to there being so many romanceable women in the game, but not a single gay option. Sure, it's a different culture, but I find it hard to believe that Japan doesn't have any gay people in it and it's not like they have to make it an explicit 'oh the schoolboys are naked under the covers' situation if they don't want to, although yes I do ideally want that level of confirmation.

Plus I suspect that if they'd gone with 'human world Teddie is a girl' as they originally planned Teddie would have been romanceable and Naoto wouldn't have been.

[Zevox]

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I believe Yousuke was intended to be romanceable until late in development. I also have had personal experience expressing homophobia due to believing society would look down on my sexuality, it took me until I was about 19 to fully come to terms with it, and Yosuke's homophobia could fall into that category.

With Kanji, I'd honestly say he's the one party member who should not be dateable, because of the fact that his arc revolves around being uncomfortable with who he is. It just feels annoying to have a character who explicitly likes men (and women) and being told 'no, you can't agree with him that men are hot'.

I'd also argue that Persona 2 was just as fine with gay relationships as 4, but this essentially boils down to there being so many romanceable women in the game, but not a single gay option. Sure, it's a different culture, but I find it hard to believe that Japan doesn't have any gay people in it and it's not like they have to make it an explicit 'oh the schoolboys are naked under the covers' situation if they don't want to, although yes I do ideally want that level of confirmation.

Plus I suspect that if they'd gone with 'human world Teddie is a girl' as they originally planned Teddie would have been romanceable and Naoto wouldn't have been.

Spoiler: Persona 4, character depictions and relationships.

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RE: Yosuke and Teddie - I've never heard that about them, though to be fair I haven't really seen anything about how the game changed over the course of development at all. Do you have a source on those? It's interesting if so, and very surprising in Yosuke's case, given we've still never seen a same-sex romance option in the series.

Re: Yosuke's homophobia/sexuality - As I said, I agree that could be a possibility (I am certainly aware it's something that happens in the real world), it just never came across that way to me. Perhaps I'm just bad at picking up on such a thing though. *shrug*

Agreed about Kanji not being dateable fitting with his story.

Re: Persona 2 - Can't speak to that one, I started playing that (the PSP remake of one version of it anyway), but didn't get very far. If there's a gay character in there, I wouldn't know. When I talk about the franchise like that I tend to mean from 3 onward, since the series changed so much at that point, and most fans haven't played the first two anyway.

Re: Japanese culture and homosexuality - It's not a matter of not having gay people in it, it's a matter of their specific attitudes towards homosexuality and how they have or haven't changed over time. Disclaimer: I'm speaking from very secondhand, probably dated knowledge that could be rather off-base here; but my understanding is that while Japanese culture is more comfortable with acknowledging the existence of homosexuality than many western cultures have long been, and even more comfortable with people experimenting with it in their youth than western ones, it looks down upon it in the long-term. Essentially, there's a cultural expectation that even if you're gay, you should still marry someone of the opposite sex, settle down, and have kids. And, at least last I heard, their culture seems to be slower to change that attitude than we here in the west have been to change ours. I suspect, if that's all correct and I'm not completely misinterpreting or been fed misinformation about that, that's part of what keeps most Japanese games from more openly portraying gay relationships - even if they're shown between younger characters, if the characters end the game in that relationship, it'll probably come off as a long-term one, which they don't like.

[Rodin]

My journey through old RTS nostalgia continues! Tiberium Dawn and Red Alert were great nostalgia, but they weren't the games I cut my teeth on. In fact, I only played them for the first time in either the late 90s or early 00s. This time I decided to go for a game I have real nostalgia for:

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans

I played this when it first came out back in 1994. It was only the second game that is recognizable as a proper RTS game after 1993's Dune 2. I looked for Dune 2, but it was only available as a browser game and I didn't feel like messing with it. As such, I wasn't expecting much. Being so early means that it's aged badly even compared to other early RTS games. Despite that, I actually had a lot of fun with it! More than C&C, at any rate.

The production values were a lot cheaper than I remembered them being, especially compared to the FMV video and pseudo-3D cutscenes that Westwood used. Blizzard was a tiny studio at the time, and this would actually be their first game to launch with the Blizzard name. The game plays much better than I expected. The lack of mouse controls is easily made up for by hotkeys, and the low unit count makes controlling the units much easier. I'm much more at home with this style of gameplay compared to the massed units of C&C.

Oh, but the pathfinding...I owe C&C an apology for my earlier complaint. Their units are downright intelligent compared to Warcraft. I had units that would stand there and not fight back because they were told to move to a square occupied by an enemy unit, or because they couldn't move to that square without breaking formation with the rest of their control group even though the path was free. The peons were downright comical, often heading to the gold mine by doing a full lap of the town hall. C&C units would ignore orders to engage if fired upon, but Warcraft units would not.

The balance was much as I remember. Humans are better across the board, especially when controlled by the AI. Archers get an extra tile of range in a game where range is king. Healing is godly when handled with AI reflexes. Poison cloud is a terrible spell. Invisibility is vicious. The one exception was Demons, which are hilariously overpowered. In the second to last mission there are two towns. I sent 4 demons to one of them, and wiped it out. The other town got twice as many, because why not? Demons are free, excepting the initial research cost.

I was most surprised by the AI. I had kind of assumed that it would use one of two styles. The first is the "fling everything at your base" that Dune 2 uses. The second is the "pick a unit, then send a pre-determined attack force to it" that C&C uses. Instead, it was a bit more sophisticated. They would build attack forces at rally points, and if you took that rally point they would fall back to a different one. Those attacks would go to your town, but they deliberately took different paths to keep you on your toes and try to sneak around your forces. They would also send individual units specifically to harass supply lines. In addition to all of that, the AI used its magic with brutal efficiency. Mages would wait until they all had full magic and cast together to summon swarms of scorpions. They would send invisible troops into your peon lines. They recognized high value targets like a cluster of Warlocks, and would specifically target them with Rain of Fire and invisible troops.

It may seem simple, but it was way, way smarter than I was expecting.

Overall, I love the game as much as I did back in 1994. It remains a very fun game despite how dated it is.

Next up: Warcraft II. I obsessed over this game as a kid. I'm almost scared to pick it up again.

[Silverraptor]

Oh, but the pathfinding...I owe C&C an apology for my earlier complaint. Their units are downright intelligent compared to Warcraft. I had units that would stand there and not fight back because they were told to move to a square occupied by an enemy unit, or because they couldn't move to that square without breaking formation with the rest of their control group even though the path was free. The peons were downright comical, often heading to the gold mine by doing a full lap of the town hall. C&C units would ignore orders to engage if fired upon, but Warcraft units would not.

I remember something about C&C where the developers tried to do some ground breaking pathfinding since they wanted big battles. One of the first ideas they came up with was to setup the AI that if multiple units were moving, the AI would not use their models or space the other moving units were occupying as part of their pathing calculations. They reasoned that, if you are moving a bunch of units at the same time, you're sending them to the same location, so they should all be able to walk together in formation at the same speed. And it actually worked! Large groups of units would go to where you wanted to go, instead of some going to the completely opposite side of the map.

[Gnoman]

I asked someone about what you meant by that, and they said you can take pictures of stuff that you're looking for, like foraging supplies, and it'll be highlighted around you to find.

However, when I asked, they didn't know if they could drop the item and THEN scan it. Does that work?

Close. What it allows you to is to tune your shrine radar to look for any object you've taken a picture of (including one that you've dropped). I find this most useful for rare ore deposits, but it is also really handy for various quests/upgrade materials. Not necessarily for finding the object (the sensor is kind of massively clunky), but for telling you there's a Luminous Stone deposite or Sunshroom in the area.


You can also simply buy photos, so you don't even have to take pictures of everything.

[Rodin]

I remember something about C&C where the developers tried to do some ground breaking pathfinding since they wanted big battles. One of the first ideas they came up with was to setup the AI that if multiple units were moving, the AI would not use their models or space the other moving units were occupying as part of their pathing calculations. They reasoned that, if you are moving a bunch of units at the same time, you're sending them to the same location, so they should all be able to walk together in formation at the same speed. And it actually worked! Large groups of units would go to where you wanted to go, instead of some going to the completely opposite side of the map.

This didn't match my experience with Tiberium Dawn or Red Alert, so I looked the story up myself. Apparently the pathfinding breakthrough is for Tiberium Sun, which came out in 1999 (a year after Starcraft). They had to do it because Tiberium Sun has hundreds of units on screen at once, and pathfinding to that level would melt the processors of the Pentium III processors that were cutting edge at the time. So, they cheated in the way you described in order to save processing power.

Boy, do I wish they had that breakthrough with the first game. It would make things SO much better.

I'm only a short way into Warcraft II, and the pathfinding is still noticeably shonky. It's way better than anything that came before it though.

I'm also a bit shocked by how modern the game feels. It's got a proper attack-move, the ability to build anywhere, and fog of war. The fog of war being optional still amuses me, especially since the first time I played the game I turned it off immediately. 13 year old me had no idea how revolutionary that idea was.

Weirdly, the AI seems worse than the original Warcraft. I keep losing units because I'm used to the defenders all rushing out. Warcraft II will happily leave defending units on the opposite side of the base while you smash everything in sight.

[Anteros]

So I finished up Terraria. The final tier of equipment after Moon Lord is truly ridiculous. Especially the Zenith. It's a shame that there's nothing to do with it since I've already beaten everything, including the Empress of Light during daytime. I can't really complain though since the game already gave me a ridiculous amount of content, and kept going well past where other games would have ended. Steam says I have 250 hours in it, although I'm sure the vast majority of that was just when I left it open and sitting idle for days at a time. The game is very enjoyable, but way too grindy. If I ever play again I'll definitely do so on a Journey mode character so I can remove a lot of the tedium and pointless grinding and waiting for day or night time. I might revisit the game whenever the cataclysm mod is updated to 1.4 and check it out then, but I'm shelving it until then.

I'm thinking of getting into Warhammer Total War 2...but man there's a lot of DLC. Does anyone know if the DLC really add anything if you're not planning on playing as those specific factions? Like, I don't want to pay 60 dollars for DLC to unlock a bunch of warlords that I'm never going to use...but I'll pay for the DLC if it adds significant mechanics to the base game. If anyone knows I'd appreciate the info.

Edit: Also if I don't have a DLC like for the Tomb Kings, do they appear in my campaign if I play as another race? Does the DLC unlock the faction for the entire game, or is it only unlocking my ability to play as them?

[Rynjin]

I'm thinking of getting into Warhammer Total War 2...but man there's a lot of DLC. Does anyone know if the DLC really add anything if you're not planning on playing as those specific factions? Like, I don't want to pay 60 dollars for DLC to unlock a bunch of warlords that I'm never going to use...but I'll pay for the DLC if it adds significant mechanics to the base game. If anyone knows I'd appreciate the info.

Edit: Also if I don't have a DLC like for the Tomb Kings, do they appear in my campaign if I play as another race? Does the DLC unlock the faction for the entire game, or is it only unlocking my ability to play as them?

Most of the DLC in general are pointless, adding stuff that is largely superfluous. And yes, the factions are still in your game and face off against you if you don't have their DLC.

The only DLC for a faction I can think of that is super necessary if you plan to play a faction that's already in the game is the "Warlock and the Prophet" DLC because it adds some legitimately key units to Skaven and the faction doesn't feel right not having them.

Also keep in mind for Total War Warhammer 2 that its campaign (the Vortex thing) kinda blows, so buying a copy of the first game so you can play Mortal Empires instead is pretty much a necessary purchase as well.

[Anteros]

Most of the DLC in general are pointless, adding stuff that is largely superfluous. And yes, the factions are still in your game and face off against you if you don't have their DLC.

The only DLC for a faction I can think of that is super necessary if you plan to play a faction that's already in the game is the "Warlock and the Prophet" DLC because it adds some legitimately key units to Skaven and the faction doesn't feel right not having them.

Also keep in mind for Total War Warhammer 2 that its campaign (the Vortex thing) kinda blows, so buying a copy of the first game so you can play Mortal Empires instead is pretty much a necessary purchase as well.

Thanks. I already own the first and second games since I got them on sale forever ago, so you basically just saved me 60 dollars. I definitely appreciate it.

[Silverraptor]

This didn't match my experience with Tiberium Dawn or Red Alert, so I looked the story up myself. Apparently the pathfinding breakthrough is for Tiberium Sun, which came out in 1999 (a year after Starcraft). They had to do it because Tiberium Sun has hundreds of units on screen at once, and pathfinding to that level would melt the processors of the Pentium III processors that were cutting edge at the time. So, they cheated in the way you described in order to save processing power.

Boy, do I wish they had that breakthrough with the first game. It would make things SO much better.

I'm only a short way into Warcraft II, and the pathfinding is still noticeably shonky. It's way better than anything that came before it though.

I'm also a bit shocked by how modern the game feels. It's got a proper attack-move, the ability to build anywhere, and fog of war. The fog of war being optional still amuses me, especially since the first time I played the game I turned it off immediately. 13 year old me had no idea how revolutionary that idea was.

Weirdly, the AI seems worse than the original Warcraft. I keep losing units because I'm used to the defenders all rushing out. Warcraft II will happily leave defending units on the opposite side of the base while you smash everything in sight.

Ah. I remembered it was something C&C related, but I didn't remember for which game. I actually didn't play any of the C&C games and only read about it, which was revolutionary at the time.

For Starcraft, the reason why the dragoon was such a terrible pathfinder was because the dragoon changed pixel sizes as it walked. So say you had a standing dragoon, it would take up like 2x2 pixels for the purpose of pathfinding. Then when you ordered it to walk, while it was taking it's step, it would change to like 3x3 pixels for purpose of pathfinding, and when it completed it step it went back to 2x2 before changing again to 3x3 for the next step and it repeated the cycle. So it was effectively constantly changing it's own size while trying to calculate how to get the the destination that you told it to go to. Just hearing about that made me really question how that got past screening.

[Zevox]

So, yeah, after finishing the Trade Federation campaign in Galactic Battlegrounds and starting up on the Gungan one, I was already getting tired of it, so I've set that aside. Moved on to the next single-player game I've been intending to do: Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

First remark: holy cow, it must be huge. It's a two-disk PS4 game (which I've never seen before - hell, I don't think I've seen a multi-disk game since the PS1), and it needed a good 80 gigs of space, which meant I had to delete three other games just to make space for it.

Beyond that though, I'm certainly enjoying it so far. Looks great, no surprise there given that's about the one thing Square-Enix usually seems to have going for them with this series. Gameplay so far is pretty fun, much more so than most of the rest of the Final Fantasy series. I approve of it finally becoming an action RPG rather than keeping that half-assed ATB marrying turn-based mechanics with real-time combat. And yes, this game has something it calls the ATB, but in practice it has nothing to do with that mechanic, it's more of a super meter mechanic; or special move meter mechanic I guess, with Limit Breaks playing the actual super meter role. It does still seem to be keeping the mindset of making combat more of a puzzle than a true action game, though - there's a variety of enemy types that I've seen even pretty early into the game where you need to figure out what kind of attacks they're more vulnerable to if you want to more easily dispatch them. One type of skilled melee enemy can be quite a pain at first, but become a lot easier when you realize that Cloud's counter-attack in his alternate combat stance is very effective at staggering them, for instance. Or there's soldiers equipped with riot shields who you flat-out can't beat with regular sword swings, but who you can also pull that counter-attack method against (but to less effect than that other enemy type), and actually are very vulnerable to magic if you have mp to throw around. Feels like for as early in the game as I am I've seen a pretty reasonable variety of enemies, too, so that's promising.

Have to say though, so far, I like basically everyone else better than Cloud. He's kind of a a jackass, with a "screw everyone else's idealism, I want my money" attitude so far. Barrett can be at times, too, but he more comes off as someone who doesn't always know when to turn off his hard-ass mode, because he can certainly be nicer, and obviously has his ideals. Though he really didn't do a great job of expressing them in that train after the first mission, because wow, those random Shinra dudes came off as the reasonable ones in that conversation, and I don't think they were supposed to. Haven't seen much of Tifa or Aerith yet. I do quite like Jessie and Biggs though. Wedge... I would like more if they'd stop with the "haha, he's fat and eats a lot" "jokes." The first one wasn't good, and it's all been downhill from there with them.

Also, still playing Them's Fightin' Herds. I've now gotten to try some worse connections - and gooddamn, if I'm not still impressed. It seems like the cutoff for where games get bad is somewhere around 300 ping. I've had games in the 260-280 range that, while not as good as ones with lower ping, were perfectly playable at only 3-4 frames of delay. I actually don't even mind playing multiple games with someone at that point. The one I've tried that hit the "okay, this is too bad to keep playing" mark was around 330 ping, with 5 frames of recommended delay. At that point it started feeling the kind of matches I shy away from in other fighting games, where Dragon Ball FighterZ would be showing 5-7 frames of input delay. Which, honestly, is pretty astounding. Granted, I don't have as much of a frame of reference as I'd like, since the only other fighting game I've ever played that gave ping numbers is Skullgirls, and I didn't play a lot of that, but I seem to recall that one starting to have lag issues not too high above 100 ping. If that's true, then Fightin' Herds' netcode is a miracle by comparison. I really cannot give them enough praise on that account - if every fighting game played like this online, that would be a dream come true. Online this good would be enough to highly recommend the game on its own, IMO, never mind all its other strengths.

[Anteros]

I played around a bit with Warhammer, and now I remember what drove me to eventually stop playing 3 Kingdoms. I know that designing AI for a strategy game is hard, but holy **** is the AI in TotalWar awful. All you need is one cavalry unit to keep the enemy from using every single one of their ranged units for the entire battle since they're too stupid to ever stop running away from it, and they never bother to protect them. It can't be impossible to write an AI that doesn't just let you chase their completely unprotected archers all over the map to the point of uselessness. I suppose that would require actual game design though instead of re-skinning the same game every year. I don't normally use cheap strategies in games like this...but what am I supposed to do? Just avoid harrying their archers with my cavalry? That's like tactics 101. If I have to handcuff myself that much to make the AI competitive then there's a severe problem with the AI.


So basically almost every battle plays out the same since the is completely braindead...and there are hundreds of them over the course of the campaign. Plus, you can't even use the auto-resolve because it loses anything that's remotely close, even if it shouldn't...and even if it wins it gives you ridiculous casualties.

[Cygnia]

It was cheap enough even before the Steam sale, but I dropped a couple of bucks on the ol' puzzle game "Chip's Challenge".

[Rodin]

I played around a bit with Warhammer, and now I remember what drove me to eventually stop playing 3 Kingdoms. I know that designing AI for a strategy game is hard, but holy **** is the AI in TotalWar awful. All you need is one cavalry unit to keep the enemy from using every single one of their ranged units for the entire battle since they're too stupid to ever stop running away from it, and they never bother to protect them. It can't be impossible to write an AI that doesn't just let you chase their completely unprotected archers all over the map to the point of uselessness. I suppose that would require actual game design though instead of re-skinning the same game every year. I don't normally use cheap strategies in games like this...but what am I supposed to do? Just avoid harrying their archers with my cavalry? That's like tactics 101. If I have to handcuff myself that much to make the AI competitive then there's a severe problem with the AI.


So basically almost every battle plays out the same since the is completely braindead...and there are hundreds of them over the course of the campaign. Plus, you can't even use the auto-resolve because it loses anything that's remotely close, even if it shouldn't...and even if it wins it gives you ridiculous casualties.

I picked up Warhammer on deep sale last year. I lasted two or three battles before I refunded it. It's the same exact battle system that has existed since Rome: Total War. Oh, it's been refined a little bit over the years, but it's a linear growth. They never fixed the AI and they never upgraded the core gameplay.

It's a 20 year old series, and I can only point to one generational shift. That's between Medieval: Total War and Rome: Total War...over 15 years ago.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I finally finished my glass bridge! (And as an encore, the main Subnautica questline. )

It ended up being over 1037 meters long and takes 2 minutes 50 seconds to cross at a run.

Now on to Below Zero!

[Aotrs Commander]

Out of interest, for when I've finished BATTLETECH, who here has played Phantom Doctirne and/or Phoenix Point?

Waiting for the latter's nonEpic release, the former's on my wishlist, but I'm interested in how people think they compare (broadly, in the case of the former) to stuff like X-Com 2.

(I'm guessing neither are going to have anything like the propaganda poster feature from X-Com 2, sadly, because that REALLY ought to become a standard feature in some form of all these games...)

[Narkis]

Out of interest, for when I've finished BATTLETECH, who here has played Phantom Doctirne and/or Phoenix Point?

Waiting for the latter's nonEpic release, the former's on my wishlist, but I'm interested in how people think they compare (broadly, in the case of the former) to stuff like X-Com 2.

(I'm guessing neither are going to have anything like the propaganda poster feature from X-Com 2, sadly, because that REALLY ought to become a standard feature in some form of all these games...)

I've played Phantom Doctrine. It was immensely disappointing. You think you're getting an X-Com style tactics game, but it's more similar to a turn-based version of a stealth game like Commandos or Shadow Tactics. Except the turn-based thing makes it trivial to evade patrols and your agents are practically indistinguishable from each other with almost no special abilities and practically no customization. And the AI is really bad. Enemy guards stick to their patrol unless the alarm is sounded, at which point they all rush you X-Com style. But they can't see through a disguise, so almost every mission can be easily completed by one disguised agent looting everything and finishing all the objectives by himself while the rest of the team chills by the extraction point. Alternatively, you can systematically knock everyone out one-by-one and hide the bodies (which takes one action and dissolves the body into thin air) and the others won't care one bit. Some missions (more as the campaign goes on) also have enemy agents, who can see through disguises and start looking for you if you knock-out too many guards. But they too stick to their patrol before something suspicious happens, and no one else cares if they are knocked-out, so you can simply have your disguised agent take out the enemy agent first and then proceed as usual.

I got bored and quit the game somewhere in the middle of Chapter 2 of the campaign. It's possible there's more to it later on, but I don't think it's very

[Cazero]

Out of interest, for when I've finished BATTLETECH, who here has played Phantom Doctirne and/or Phoenix Point?

I've played Phantom Doctrine.
It may look similar to XCOM at first glance with the same engine and the alternating strategic base/tactical combat thing, but they are quite different.

On the tactical level :
Most missions start with an infiltration phase, where you can (and are expected to) take your time. Idealy, you don't want to ever get out of the infiltration phase, hence the importance of silenced weapons.
Every mission contain a number of secondary loots and intel to collect, wich is easy enough to do while infiltrating but usualy too risky to be worthwhile after your cover is blown. Getting as many as possible is important, but searching for them quickly become tedious because your UI doesn't help you with it like it does for mission objectives.
Enemies are split into two categories, mooks and agents. Agents are more dangerous without being stronger. In fact, endgame mooks are typicaly better equiped than enemy agents, and still comparatively harmless because those big numbers don't mean much until the firefight starts.
The difficulty setting has a huge impact on tactical combats. The few extra guards, the higher enemy agent count, the extra health of enemies and the faster enemy response make a real difference, especialy on the infiltration phase.
Attacks are not random. Your agents don't get oneshot because they dodge. Single shot attacks are ineffective against a dodging target, whereas semi-auto still works fine as long as you're flanking.
Dodging is based on an acuity bar that slowly recharges. Mooks start mission with no acuity and don't recover it until the alarm goes off. Full auto attacks empty the acuity bar completely regardless of cover/armor/dodging/etc, making it a very effective setup against priority targets.
There is a breach mechanics. It's very, very powerful. Breaching with silenced weapons doesn't end the infiltration phase.
Body disposal is a bit too primitive. Your agents simply erase them, unless you play in hard in wich case the body disposal action is unavailable and the body is here to stay, unless it's an unconscious agent in wich case you can pick it up for rescueing/interrogation. So that's kinda weird.
With enough investment, endgame agents can be very, very powerful, but the way movement actions are set up make heavy armor much more penalizing for highly trained operatives than for newbies. Again, weird.
While objectives are shuffled around every time, the number of different maps remains limited. It can be a problem.
I recommand activating the disguise nerf in the options. It's just too powerful otherwise.

On the strategic layer :
Agent management is a lot more important than with XCOM troopers.
You have to manage your agents presence on the globe to make sure you always have someone close enough to respond to a situation, but you will also have to move them back to HQ to train on a regular basis. And since nothing can be done without someone working on it, you also need a permanent presence in HQ.
Snowballing is huge. If your good enough at the tactical part of the game, the extra captured agents can eventualy make the strategic game easier in hard.
Technology progress is gated by campaign advancement, wich can be frustrating.
The game propose three different campaigns, but they actualy merge after saving Omnicron.
There is a minigame where you connect things on a pinboard that get tiring after a while. It can be automated by affecting agents to it, but you can't afford to do that early in the game.

On the whole, it's an interesting experience that really pushes the spy aspect. They managed to make playing smart, thinking ahead and gathering information the key aspect on the tactical game, and that's great. However, it doesn't have as much replayability as XCOM.


edited :

I got bored and quit the game somewhere in the middle of Chapter 2 of the campaign. It's possible there's more to it later on, but I don't think it's very

Try in hard. Most enemy agents have too many HP to be knocked out and react at the very first guard casualty. It might make it more suitable for your tastes.

[Cespenar]

Yep, Phantom Doctrine is summarized enough by the two posts above.

For Phoenix Point, I've found it to be too similar to XCOM(1-2) to muster any sort of enthusiasm, and so failed to make much headway into the game. The only interesting thing going on was a V.A.T.S. like (but better) aiming system that let you freely shoot at whatever body part(s) you wished on an alien, with two (small and large) accuracy circles simulating your spread. And aliens (kinda) had some interesting things going on on their different body parts -- one crab type alien had a huge, beefy claw that had a lot of HP and also blocked much of its body from view, but you could bypass it by flanking it, etc.

It also had a three-faction reputation system, with somewhat interesting/somewhat cliché factions, sabotage missions to piss off one faction but favor the other, etc. but that sort of thing is not exactly groundbreaking in the overall X-com sphere either.

The rest seemed like XCOM, but slightly less polished.

[Aotrs Commander]

I got bored and quit the game somewhere in the middle of Chapter 2 of the campaign. It's possible there's more to it later on, but I don't think it's very

On the whole, it's an interesting experience that really pushes the spy aspect. They managed to make playing smart, thinking ahead and gathering information the key aspect on the tactical game, and that's great. However, it doesn't have as much replayability as XCOM.

That's why I've got it on my wishlist; it sounds interesting, but I have heard the complaints (because I always do some research!) I'm not in a hurry at the moment, so I can wait until there's a sale (I missed the last one!), and then in case I don't get on with it, it doesn't owe me as much.

Yep, Phantom Doctrine is summarized enough by the two posts above.

For Phoenix Point, I've found it to be too similar to XCOM(1-2) to muster any sort of enthusiasm, and so failed to make much headway into the game. The only interesting thing going on was a V.A.T.S. like (but better) aiming system that let you freely shoot at whatever body part(s) you wished on an alien, with two (small and large) accuracy circles simulating your spread. And aliens (kinda) had some interesting things going on on their different body parts -- one crab type alien had a huge, beefy claw that had a lot of HP and also blocked much of its body from view, but you could bypass it by flanking it, etc.

It also had a three-faction reputation system, with somewhat interesting/somewhat cliché factions, sabotage missions to piss off one faction but favor the other, etc. but that sort of thing is not exactly groundbreaking in the overall X-com sphere either.

The rest seemed like XCOM, but slightly less polished.

I mean, that doesn't sound very damning, to be honest. Given that I thought X-Com 1 and especially 2 were great, so "not quite the same, more very like it, maybe not quite as good" isn't necessarily a problem for me.

(The other advantage of waiting is, of course, both games have more time to polish with patches/expansion et al in the meantime. I so very rarely play a game on release these days, always give a lot of time now! Haven't played BATTLETECH since before the first expansion came out; I waited, like a year until all three were out. Hell, I never played either of the new X-Com games until the expansions were out, nor any of the Witcher until the extended/game of the year et al editions were, so...!)

[Triaxx]

Kind of wish we had more Fallout Tactics like games. Six man groups and the otpion to jump between turn-based and sort of turn-based.

[Erloas]

I've got maybe 10-30 hours in Phoenix Point (it's on XBox Gamepass for PC, so don't know exactly) and it just... seemed to be missing something. The actual combat seems to be fine. The overworld seems reasonable enough, it just feels like they're trying to do too much without really making it clear how anything actual works and affects other parts of the game. The "realism*" of ammo clips and soldier recovery just feel like adding annoyances without enhancing the gameplay or even feel of desperation/underdog tone of the game. They give you a lot of things to worry about in the overworld without any sense of what should be a priority, when you're capable of handling them, or what the tradeoffs are. I'm sure a lot of that would be better after you've played the game a lot or looked up a lot of guides, but I don't want to play a game 2-3 times to be able to start enjoying it (long games like this at least). I think the game would be a lot better if there were more tactical combat and less "realism*" in the overworld.

*Using the term realism very loosely, for lack of a better option. A lot of game design choices to make the game "harder" without improving the experience.


So far I've found Gears Tactics to be much more enjoyable. (also on Gamepass) It's not a hard game (so far at least) but it plays well and is faster paced.

[Rodin]

Kind of wish we had more Fallout Tactics like games. Six man groups and the otpion to jump between turn-based and sort of turn-based.

I was very disappointed when Mutant Year Zero restricted you to three party members. It took the game in a different direction than I was expecting and didn't scratch the Fallout Tactics itch.

I've got maybe 10-30 hours in Phoenix Point (it's on XBox Gamepass for PC, so don't know exactly) and it just... seemed to be missing something. The actual combat seems to be fine. The overworld seems reasonable enough, it just feels like they're trying to do too much without really making it clear how anything actual works and affects other parts of the game. The "realism*" of ammo clips and soldier recovery just feel like adding annoyances without enhancing the gameplay or even feel of desperation/underdog tone of the game. They give you a lot of things to worry about in the overworld without any sense of what should be a priority, when you're capable of handling them, or what the tradeoffs are. I'm sure a lot of that would be better after you've played the game a lot or looked up a lot of guides, but I don't want to play a game 2-3 times to be able to start enjoying it (long games like this at least). I think the game would be a lot better if there were more tactical combat and less "realism*" in the overworld.

*Using the term realism very loosely, for lack of a better option. A lot of game design choices to make the game "harder" without improving the experience.

This sums up my experience pretty well. The game isn't bad, but it had a lot of rough edges and I felt completely blind playing it. I've felt annoyed in the past at the way the modern XCOM games favor flash over substance. Well, Phoenix Point goes the other way. Everything is very dry and you can tell that making the game look good was not a priority.

It's the sort of game that's likely to develop a small but very dedicated fanbase.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Got back into Grim Dawn after Steam told me it had an update. It's weird, because I've had the game for a while but quit because I had to commit relatively long amounts of time into each session to really enjoy it. And now I've made the time, it's actually really fun. Just about finished the Homestead business, heading further northwest.

The Devotion system is frankly dense, but I think I'm getting used to it. Don't have any DLC yet, but I'll probably pick them up after I finish my first run.

Running a two-handed Warder, using Cadence as my default attack and then Brute Force for passive damage bonus. Not sure if I should bother with Pets, or if I should just continue putting points into the personal skills.

[Triaxx]

Yeah, I was hoping MYZ to be more like tactics. It turned out to not be bad, but it wasn't the game I was looking for.

[MCerberus]

Trying out Dauntless and it's actually a pretty good Monster Hunter clone, but I'm not the biggest fan of the artstyle, which shares assets with Fortnight.

The only issue is that the game, unlike monster hunter doesn't actively hate me. You don't need to set up elaborate suicidal traps on pulls, monsters don't have enough health to trip the time limit, and what's worst is that movement aids for weapon sets are single button presses instead of relying on elaborate combos that can easily send you to your death

It's just not the same.

[factotum]

Running a two-handed Warder, using Cadence as my default attack and then Brute Force for passive damage bonus. Not sure if I should bother with Pets, or if I should just continue putting points into the personal skills.

As a general rule, if you want to be remotely effective in higher difficulty levels, you need to synergise your skillset as much as possible--so going for pets will only work if you're making a dedicated pet build and putting everything toward that aim. If you're never intending to take the character beyond Normal difficulty then go ahead. If the worst comes to the worst and you find you've made a mistake, you can always respec by paying the relevant NPC some gold.

As for the DLC, I can definitely recommend Ashes of Malmouth--get that one ASAP, you get to Malmouth from the Homestead area so you're right in the right place to do it. Forgotten Gods I didn't find as fun, but it's probably worth getting. Crucible is an arena-style thing where you're just killing endless waves of enemies, which is fun for a bit and can gain you some nice loot, but is definitely not critical by any means.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Been playing a lot of Slay the Spire lately. Pretty entertaining; I think the Defect and the Watcher are my two favorite characters. Now that I've beaten the true ending with all four characters I'm starting to run out of steam, but I think that's partially my fault for defaulting to the same strategies, especially with D and W. The amount of entertainment that can be derived from getting as many innate Storms as possible and then just spamming powers while quoting Emperor Palpatine is large, but finite (ironically). As for the Watcher, I typically go for a "stance dancer" build, but my most successful run also made heavy use of the Divine stance, so maybe I'll focus on that next time.

I've also been playing Full Metal Furies with my dad and sister, and it's a lot of fun! We don't have nearly the coordination to combo off each other instead of getting in each others' way, so we switched to Story Mode for easier combat and that's been working pretty well.

[Narkis]

Try in hard. Most enemy agents have too many HP to be knocked out and react at the very first guard casualty. It might make it more suitable for your tastes.

Sounds like it does nothing to fix the OP disguises, and maybe make it even easier to ambush agents by luring them near the extraction point and assassinating them when no one else cares about knocked out guards. And those weren't even my only complaints, I also disliked, say, how agents teleport to a mission from the base instead of making do with whoever's physically there, or the repetitiveness of the world map section.