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

[Rakaydos]

If you liked the old Advance Wars games, Wargroove on switch is a great spiritual successor.

[Man_Over_Game]

That's what happens when you make a game an open world sandbox with crafting. The world of BotW is beautiful and expansive and great to explore but it's just so dang empty. Post-Apocalypse Hyrule wouldn't be so bad if there was more to do between all that empty space and if the Shrines weren't both utterly boring and derivative by the 50th one while also doing more for you than upping your stamina or health. Increasing weapon durability or something similar would have been a nice perk imho. In fact that's the one thing that's missing from BotW that a lot of modern sandbox games have, a skill tree. I guess they felt that wasn't Zelda but neither was reducing the dungeon crawling to four really short Divine Beasts and making the shrines do all the heavy lifting. The biggest thing is barely anything you do is of any actual consequence. There's no reason to do all the Shrines, it gets you some ok armor. There's no real reason to max out your armor, there's no reason to get all the fairy shrines, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to getting all the Korok seeds. It's all just the same sandbox slough of seeing numbers go higher.

I was a little disappointed in more than that, though. Feels like most of the effort was put into the first 30% of the game. There are a TON of puzzles in BotW that use a lot of different physics manipulation, whether it's through using Stasis to lock something in mid-air to use as a platform, using the momentum of your Magnet power to turn something into a swing, using the ice power to create a block that can block wind or other objects from moving, but you don't really see much of these things really interact.

A puzzle using wind and metal objects is generally limited to just that. There's nothing that requires you to create an ice block to block a wind path so that another wind path can accelerate your bomb's throwing distance so you can blow something up on the far end of the room. While each of those aspects in the game are used individually, none of them are used together.

For example, there are metal floor panels that you move around. I think those are used for a shrine twice. Metal items can be used to create a circuit to charge something, but I don't think it's ever relevant for the sake of mobile metal floor panels. There's never an instance of "I have to break this circuit or the floor will fry me", or "I have to use the same floor panel to create a circuit to get that ball rolling down the hill and recreate my floor before the ball blocks off my route".

All of the shrines feel like tutorials for different modes of thinking. It's like only playing the first half of the Portal games, to basically stop playing before you have to start combining all of the lessons you learned into some really cool stuff.

If anything, learning how to play better from doing shrines just taught me how to cheat through the shrines. One such example was some dumb puzzle that had you create an artificial timer using directional fans to blow a ball into a hole (like golf) while you got enough time to get into position to be launched into the next area. But instead, I just dropped the ball on the goal and used Stasis and just stood on the launching platform for when Stasis ran out.

Woulda been cool if the Shrines had multiple levels to them, so they were often times exceptionally difficult. I'd be down for that, and then follow up by just reducing the number of shrines.

Even the Divine Beasts didn't really utilize these puzzle aspects all that much. They generally added in their own weird physics that involved rotating and shifting the entire dungeon to solve (and most of them were pretty straightforward, except **** the Gerudo dungeon), so again it's another instance of "learn this new way of thinking that you'll never use again".

Don't get me wrong, the game is great fun. I've just found that the last 40% has been a lot less interesting than the first 60%.

If you liked the old Advance Wars games, Wargroove on switch is a great spiritual successor.

I did like Advance Wars...

[factotum]

Welp, just finished Persona 3 (yes, I know it's a bit odd I ended up playing that after 4 and 5, guess I'm just weird), and hooboy, that ending:

Spoiler

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Where the last option you get to select is "Close your eyes", with the clear implication that the protagonist you've been playing for the last hundred hours or so is going to the sleep that no-one wakes up from, despite having saved the world...

I don't think I've been that emotionally wrenched by a game in years.

[DeTess]

@Factotum, yeah, that ending hits hard. It even took me little while to figure out the exact implications of that ending :(

Anyway, I was wondering if people could have some game recommendations for me fitting a very odd request. I'm looking for an rpg(ish) game with a strong focus on story and connecting to your companions, and a general white-and-grey morality, by which I mean that every character has a good reason for what they're doing, and no one is evil for the sake of it. I'm thinking something along the lines of Fire emblem: 3 houses morality-wise, where good arguments for and against every faction can be made. If its a game where you could do a semi-pacifist play-through, or at least where combat and killing are treated very seriously, that'd be a plus.

In case someone's wondering what could possibly have triggered such an oddly specific request, I've recently finished 'ghost of Tsushima', and while that game has very solid gameplay and a decent story, its complete lack of nuance towards the general war storyline was something I really disliked. Add to that the fact that I've only just discovered that the entire studio ghibli catalog is available on Netflix and I've been watching a bunch of those, and I really could do with a palate cleanser from ghost of Tsushima's violence.

[Cespenar]

Welp, just finished Persona 3 (yes, I know it's a bit odd I ended up playing that after 4 and 5, guess I'm just weird),

Wow, that's... endurance, I guess? I just finished P4 myself and I feel like I'm inured against JRPGs for a year or something. Though it was good overall, I feel like I could easily cut, like, 30-40% of it in a heartbeat.

[Spacewolf]

If anyone is a total war fan remember you can get Troy free today on Epic. I doubt it's going to redefine the genre but may as well give it a go.

[factotum]

Wow, that's... endurance, I guess? I just finished P4 myself and I feel like I'm inured against JRPGs for a year or something. Though it was good overall, I feel like I could easily cut, like, 30-40% of it in a heartbeat.

Oh, don't get me wrong, Tartarus really started to drag for the last 50-100 levels of the 264 in total (!!), but it's the storyline that kept me going in all three cases, even in P4 and P3 where the gameplay alone wasn't going to manage it. (I actually enjoyed the combat in P5 much more, that wasn't any hardship to go through).

[Rakaydos]

All of the shrines feel like tutorials for different modes of thinking. It's like only playing the first half of the Portal games, to basically stop playing before you have to start combining all of the lessons you learned into some really cool stuff.

If anything, learning how to play better from doing shrines just taught me how to cheat through the shrines. One such example was some dumb puzzle that had you create an artificial timer using directional fans to blow a ball into a hole (like golf) while you got enough time to get into position to be launched into the next area. But instead, I just dropped the ball on the goal and used Stasis and just stood on the launching platform for when Stasis ran out.

Woulda been cool if the Shrines had multiple levels to them, so they were often times exceptionally difficult. I'd be down for that, and then follow up by just reducing the number of shrines.

The problem is that they couldnt count on you finding a "tuturial shrine" before reaching a harder shrine.

However, I expect BOTW2 will have some advanced mechanics, to give people who have completely broken BOTW something interesting.

[Man_Over_Game]

The problem is that they couldnt count on you finding a "tuturial shrine" before reaching a harder shrine.

However, I expect BOTW2 will have some advanced mechanics, to give people who have completely broken BOTW something interesting.

I agree. I'm just not sure how they'd do it as any other method than "more of the same".

Borderlands' PreSequel comes to mind. It was a good game, added new mechanics, did more of the same even better, but people complained that it felt like a really well-done expansion to the previous game (Borderlands 2). Which was fair.

On top of the fact that BotW 2 was revealed not too long after the original came out (when you compare how long BotW 1 was in the works), I am a bit concerned.

I'd be totally on board for a major expansion, though. Maybe one where you explore an underground world where you visit the Sheikah and deal with harder and more intricate puzzles and monsters. BotW 1 has a lot of untapped potential, but it's in a weird place where replacing it would be too much work while not doing so could result in backlash for being lazy (which is not something Zelda has been known for, unlike say Pokemon).

I dunno, we'll see.

[factotum]

The problem is that they couldnt count on you finding a "tuturial shrine" before reaching a harder shrine.

I've never played BoTW, but I heard it started on an isolated plateau that acted as a tutorial area before you got into the open world as a whole? Couldn't they have put a simple shrine there to give you the idea?

[tonberrian]

I've never played BoTW, but I heard it started on an isolated plateau that acted as a tutorial area before you got into the open world as a whole? Couldn't they have put a simple shrine there to give you the idea?

They do put 4 shrines there, to introduce you to four basic sheikah slate powers. And those powers are all you need to go through each other shrine. So I'm not sure what Rakaydos wants here.

[Rakaydos]

I've never played BoTW, but I heard it started on an isolated plateau that acted as a tutorial area before you got into the open world as a whole? Couldn't they have put a simple shrine there to give you the idea?

They do put 4 shrines there, to introduce you to four basic sheikah slate powers. And those powers are all you need to go through each other shrine. So I'm not sure what Rakaydos wants here.

You misuderstand. The tuturial shrines on the plateau teach you Slate powers 101. Man_over_game commented that most of the shrines in the game get to intermediate slate powers, at best.

With BotW2, they can jump into harder puzzles on the assumption that people have played the first game, and because they are spending less developer time building basic assets, they can put more effort into puzzle and dungeon design.

[Man_Over_Game]

I've never played BoTW, but I heard it started on an isolated plateau that acted as a tutorial area before you got into the open world as a whole? Couldn't they have put a simple shrine there to give you the idea?

They do put 4 shrines there, to introduce you to four basic sheikah slate powers. And those powers are all you need to go through each other shrine. So I'm not sure what Rakaydos wants here.

You misuderstand. The tuturial shrines on the plateau teach you Slate powers 101. Man_over_game commented that most of the shrines in the game get to intermediate slate powers, at best.

With BotW2, they can jump into harder puzzles on the assumption that people have played the first game, and because they are spending less developer time building basic assets, they can put more effort into puzzle and dungeon design.

So imagine you have several functions:
Sensation
Legs
Arms
Mouth

And you experience the tutorial 4 shrines to get adapted to those 4 individually.

Now imagine every shrine afterwards only use a maximum of 2 of those at a time, you'd feel like it was a waste. You're required to become so fluent in those basic functions - just to survive - that it feels like it falls short on ever breaching past that initial learning curve.


You could do some crazy stuff in Breath of the Wild! The game just never really asks you to be anything more than mediocre, unless it comes down to fighting generic monsters (seriously, a basic group of 8 bokoblins [goblins] has been harder than most boss fights)

[Zevox]

As for good games on Switch, with a challenge. Fire Emblem: Three Houses isn't the hardest Fire Emblem game (or so I'm told) but it's got enough of one on the low difficulties to warm you up for the higher difficulties and it's just generally a great game.

While Three Houses is excellent and I would normally leap to recommend it to anyone, if the first thing you're looking for right now is a challenge, I don't think it's the one to go to. Even on hard difficulty, the game's really not that difficult, especially once you start to understand the newer mechanics in the game. And turning it all the way up to Maddening is inadvisable on you first run, and in general may be such a massive difficulty spike that you might not want to deal with it at all. On the very short list of criticisms I can give of the game is definitely that it could've used a difficulty in between those two - or for normal and/or hard to just be harder in general.

Ebony & Ivory also suffered from the large environments of DMC2 having made guns far more powerful.

I mean, if you're comparing them to DMC2, then yeah, but they were also much more powerful on a basic, literal level in that game, to the point of outshining the melee weapons, especially when Devil Trigger was active. That was one of DMC2's problems - you were better off sitting back mindlessly spamming gunshots than actually getting in close with anything.

Welp, just finished Persona 3 (yes, I know it's a bit odd I ended up playing that after 4 and 5, guess I'm just weird), and hooboy, that ending:

Spoiler

Show

Where the last option you get to select is "Close your eyes", with the clear implication that the protagonist you've been playing for the last hundred hours or so is going to the sleep that no-one wakes up from, despite having saved the world...

I don't think I've been that emotionally wrenched by a game in years.

Yeah, P3 pulls no punches on that way. Funny thing: technically, the original opening for the game kind of tells you that's going to happen.

Spoiler

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Some of the text that flashes briefly during the sequence includes the line "Remember you will die."

I mean, when you get right down to it, that whole game is basically about death and all of the ways it affects people, so it's perhaps unsurprising that it finally ends in that way.

Also,

Spoiler: Spoiler for "The Answer" post-game story from P3FES, in case you intend to play that.

Show

(s)he actually dies because of saving the world, not despite it. "The Answer" reveals that the main character's soul itself becomes the seal preventing Nyx from returning to our world. Because without something like that, Ryoji would've been right - she would have been unstoppable. Because she's Death, so you can't kill her. The only thing that even kept him/her alive after the fight with Nyx was the promise to be there with the rest of the group on that last day of school.

Anyway, I was wondering if people could have some game recommendations for me fitting a very odd request. I'm looking for an rpg(ish) game with a strong focus on story and connecting to your companions, and a general white-and-grey morality, by which I mean that every character has a good reason for what they're doing, and no one is evil for the sake of it.

*Opens mouth to say something...*

I'm thinking something along the lines of Fire emblem: 3 houses morality-wise, where good arguments for and against every faction can be made.

*Closes it abruptly*

Ah, right. Yeah, I've got nothing then. Three Houses might well be the only game I've ever played where the morality is fully like that. Even the Persona games, as wonderful as their writing is, have some clear-cut evil villains in them. Mostly much more realistic ones than most games, but still.

[Man_Over_Game]

While Three Houses is excellent and I would normally leap to recommend it to anyone, if the first thing you're looking for right now is a challenge, I don't think it's the one to go to. Even on hard difficulty, the game's really not that difficult, especially once you start to understand the newer mechanics in the game. And turning it all the way up to Maddening is inadvisable on you first run, and in general may be such a massive difficulty spike that you might not want to deal with it at all. On the very short list of criticisms I can give of the game is definitely that it could've used a difficulty in between those two - or for normal and/or hard to just be harder in general.

That's how I felt about Kingdom Hearts 3. Was kind of a letdown, honestly.

The game gives you so many friggin' mechanics to work with, whether it's adaptive weapons that change how you fight when you charge them by fighting in specific ways, or magic that has multipurpose effects, or summons that add new mechanics, or making combo attacks with teammates, or jumping off of different aspects of the environment, or blocking-counterattacking enemies, or using an enemy's mechanical weakness against them, or using the Shotlocks, or attacking certain enemies to unlock the Attraction attacks, or...

Yeah, you don't need to do any of that. Most of the game, on Hard, was easy enough to spam the attack button with an occasional dodge. I don't even want to know what Normal or Easy were supposed to be like.

Then they added Critical Mode, and, well, it increased the difficulty real damn quick. Right off the bat, an attack by most things killed you in one hit. I got so friggin' paranoid about never letting an enemy get into my blindspots, that I just stopped having fun altogether. Never made it past the third fight of the game.

It could have been great. One such weapon mode was this illusion staff that shot lasers, and each dash you made created an illusionary mirror of yourself that ALSO shot lasers. So you'd dash like 5 times to create a bunch of illusions of yourself and then spammed the attack button to see one badguy get torn apart by a bunch of white light from every direction.

Lots of potential, ruined by dumb balancing decisions.

[Anteros]

You misuderstand. The tuturial shrines on the plateau teach you Slate powers 101. Man_over_game commented that most of the shrines in the game get to intermediate slate powers, at best.

With BotW2, they can jump into harder puzzles on the assumption that people have played the first game, and because they are spending less developer time building basic assets, they can put more effort into puzzle and dungeon design.

They won't. It's Nintendo. The casual gamer market and kids are their target niche. Even if BotW2 is slightly more advanced, the vast majority of it is going to be made to appeal to the lowest common denominator in skill like the rest of their products.

[Zevox]

That's how I felt about Kingdom Hearts 3. Was kind of a letdown, honestly.

The game gives you so many friggin' mechanics to work with, whether it's adaptive weapons that change how you fight when you charge them by fighting in specific ways, or magic that has multipurpose effects, or summons that add new mechanics, or making combo attacks with teammates, or jumping off of different aspects of the environment, or blocking-counterattacking enemies, or using an enemy's mechanical weakness against them, or using the Shotlocks, or attacking certain enemies to unlock the Attraction attacks, or...

Yeah, you don't need to do any of that. Most of the game, on Hard, was easy enough to spam the attack button with an occasional dodge. I don't even want to know what Normal or Easy were supposed to be like.

Then they added Critical Mode, and, well, it increased the difficulty real damn quick. Right off the bat, an attack by most things killed you in one hit. I got so friggin' paranoid about never letting an enemy get into my blindspots, that I just stopped having fun altogether. Never made it past the third fight of the game.

It could have been great. One such weapon mode was this illusion staff that shot lasers, and each dash you made created an illusionary mirror of yourself that ALSO shot lasers. So you'd dash like 5 times to create a bunch of illusions of yourself and then spammed the attack button to see one badguy get torn apart by a bunch of white light from every direction.

Lots of potential, ruined by dumb balancing decisions.

Haven't played Kingdom Hearts 3, so I can't fully comment on that comparison, but I will say that sounds like a more extreme version of the problem than Three Houses has. There are certainly parts of Three Houses that can be challenging, particularly on Hard difficulty. The biggest issue is really that it seems to have been balanced around the assumption that you're only doing the main story missions, so if you do the Paralogues (much less the optional fights you could theoretically do just for extra rewards/grinding), you will almost certainly end up over-leveled, which obviously makes things easier than they should be. And you really want to do the Paralogues, since they're basically your students' and fellow faculty members' personal side-quests, which add to their characters and are part of what makes the cast so rich and interesting. Plus many of them have great rewards, including most of the game's legendary weapons.

The game's DLC story that you have to play separately from the main one, Cindered Shadows, is actually a lot better at providing a challenging but fair difficulty on Hard, and I strongly suspect that's simply because there aren't any optional missions for you to do, just the main story ones.

Speaking of games that are easier than you'd like them to be though, I haven't said what I'm playing in a while, so here it is: I'm playing Okami HD on my Switch, which I picked up on a sale a while back. I had actually tried to play it on the Wii many years ago, but found the motion controls made it too difficult to draw things the way the game wants you to. Which is strange, you'd think they'd work just fine for that mechanic, but they didn't for me, so I gave up on it pretty early on because of those struggles. Fortunately just being able to use normal controls for it fixes the issue.

Anyway, it's definitely a very good, fun game - has a lot of Legend of Zelda feel to it, and does a very good job of making it feel like you're actually playing as a goddess, with all of the magic abilities you get. Conjuring the sun into the sky, instantly repairing anything that's damaged, causing plants to bloom or grow instantly, controlling the wind, conjuring a bomb from thin air, all good stuff that makes for some very fun gameplay. It's just also extremely easy. Heck, thanks to your "godhood" mechanic that can absorb a few hits for you and regenerates as you hit enemies, I've barely taken actual damage outside of boss fights, and even those I've never really been in serious danger of losing.

Also, I could do without the pervy bug-man. I mean, yeesh, I know it's Zelda-esque, but did they need to include a (much worse IMO) Navi? Amaterasu's a goddess, it wouldn't hurt anything if she could talk despite being in the form of a wolf, at least to the game's various supernatural beings. Might lose a little something if she were just talking to the normal people, but I don't think you really needed Issun for that, either.

[Man_Over_Game]

They won't. It's Nintendo. The casual gamer market and kids are their target niche. Even if BotW2 is slightly more advanced, the vast majority of it is going to be made to appeal to the lowest common denominator in skill like the rest of their products.

Mmm....not quite. The plateau is easily one of the most stressful tutorials I've ever played as a gamer, as it doesn't really tell you how to do anything. You mark your own destinations with your telescope from high distances. You mark your own icons on the map. You figure out how to not freeze to death using any means you can think of. You choose when you need to take a break from climbing before you fall and kill yourself. You choose when running from an enemy is better than fighting them. Your choice in weapons depend on how, when, and why you'd use them, whether that's because you like the reach, the damage, or just because it's not going to break in 3 hits. Break a tree down with an axe, roll it down hill and watch it kill all of your problems for you. Early on, the best weapons are from skeletons that rise from the ground that keep reviving until you break their heads, because their arms are left behind to become fragile, high damage weapons (and high damage is pretty rare early on).

Most of this stuff, by the way, you learn on the same plateau with no real direction. Most enemies kill you in 3-4 hits, and most of the starter armor are in hidden chests on the plateau that you can miss (you can buy it later, though money's hard to come by).

The game scales in difficulty (enemies get permanently harder the more you kill them), the plot's pretty dark, and it's a fairly humorless game compared to Twilight Princess.

Made for children? It was very much made for the Witcher 3/Half Life crowd. The only reason I ever do well in the game is because I figured out how to cheat. I still don't know how to block efficiently in this game, other than getting lucky with a Guardian laser parry.

[Sermil]

About to beat BotW (I think I am, anyway, since I just got the last Divine Beast). Anyone got suggestions for another good game for the Switch? Something preferably a bit difficult, designed for an experienced gamer? Genre doesn't matter too much, as long as it's not a sport or racing game.

Well, Into the Breach is available for the Switch. That definitely hard, though in a turn-based tactics way.

[Anteros]

Mmm....not quite. The plateau is easily one of the most stressful tutorials I've ever played as a gamer, as it doesn't really tell you how to do anything. You mark your own destinations with your telescope from high distances. You mark your own icons on the map. You figure out how to not freeze to death using any means you can think of. You choose when you need to take a break from climbing before you fall and kill yourself. You choose when running from an enemy is better than fighting them. Your choice in weapons depend on how, when, and why you'd use them, whether that's because you like the reach, the damage, or just because it's not going to break in 3 hits. Break a tree down with an axe, roll it down hill and watch it kill all of your problems for you. Early on, the best weapons are from skeletons that rise from the ground that keep reviving until you break their heads, because their arms are left behind to become fragile, high damage weapons (and high damage is pretty rare early on).

Most of this stuff, by the way, you learn on the same plateau with no real direction. Most enemies kill you in 3-4 hits, and most of the starter armor are in hidden chests on the plateau that you can miss (you can buy it later, though money's hard to come by).

The game scales in difficulty (enemies get permanently harder the more you kill them), the plot's pretty dark, and it's a fairly humorless game compared to Twilight Princess.

Made for children? It was very much made for the Witcher 3/Half Life crowd. The only reason I ever do well in the game is because I figured out how to cheat. I still don't know how to block efficiently in this game, other than getting lucky with a Guardian laser parry.

That's....odd. I've heard a lot of things about BoTW, but you're the only person I've ever seen say it's difficult. If anything, one of the most common complaints about the game is how easy it is. Everyone complains how it's basically impossible to lose unless you fight things way before you're supposed to. You have to basically run straight to Ganon without doing side content if you want him to challenge you at all. At least, that's the sentiment I've seen from a lot of other people. I haven't personally played it due to a personal burnout on rpgs with huge empty maps with repetitive content.

[Man_Over_Game]

That's....odd. I've heard a lot of things about BoTW, but you're the only person I've ever seen say it's difficult. If anything, one of the most common complaints about the game is how easy it is. Everyone complains how it's basically impossible to lose unless you fight things way before you're supposed to. You have to basically run straight to Ganon without doing side content if you want him to challenge you at all. At least, that's the sentiment I've seen from a lot of other people. I haven't personally played it due to a personal burnout on rpgs with huge empty maps with repetitive content.

It's not impossibly hard, but the first 15% of the game, it's an uphill struggle until you get upgraded bombs.

From 15%-30%, you're basically abusing your bombs unless you encounter something really lethal and you have to spend a couple of your hard-earned weapons on taking it down.

Once you hit the 30% mark and beat your first Divine Beast, you're able to play the game the way it was supposed to. The rest all comes pretty quickly until you hit the last 70% of the game.


To put into perspective, the easiest, most obvious, and most recommended Divine Beast you should take on is in the Zora region, which has a ton of enemies that use Lightning (which a hit causes you to drop your shield and weapon and stuns you), and any lightning attacks that hit water create an explosive AoE that will hurt you just the same (and the Zora are an aquatic species).

The first mission the Zora send you to do is to collect a ton of lightning arrows from an evil centaur mob that are probably one of the most difficult monsters in the game. I can kill most of the bosses easily, I still haven't been able to kill a Lynel with decent gear. You can attempt to fight the Lynel (highly unwise), or a perceptive and cautious player can sneak around the Lynel to collect lightning arrows that he's shot at previous adventurers near him. He has a massive range of perception (even hiding behind a rock with maxed out stealth while raining will not be enough to hide from him if you are close enough), he has lightning arrows (obviously) that he knows how to shoot into the air to turn into falling comets, it's RAINING (which means any missed shots from lightning arrows explode), and he has all of the OTHER lovely attacks Lynels do as murdercentaurs (like 1-shotting you while you're running away to safety).

Given, this is one of the harder scenarios involving Divine Beasts, but your other options are "Mountain where 40% of the environment sets you on fire unless you scavenge for lizards every 5 minutes, while another 40% will STILL set you on fire unless you make even more potent fire resistance", and "Infiltrate ninja hideout where being caught means you are instantly killed".

I should also mention that stealth in BotW is not Link's strong suit, not unless you want to fork over an hour's worth of money grinding for a ninja suit that has virtually no defense.

Yes, you can solve most of your problems by abusing some dumb logic in the enemy's code (like how they're tethered to their spawn point) and throwing an unlimited number of bombs. I wouldn't really call it overly easy, though. There were a lot of times early on that you just gotta learn that running away is the winning solution. Hell, there's a Guardian turret on the tutorial plateau, and you're not even supposed to really fight those until you're ready to kill Ganon.


I just realized what it reminded me of: Dragon's Dogma. It had the same philosophy of "Run away unless you know you can kill it", and it too ran into an issue of the difficulty curve plateauing over time.

[Zevox]

Finally achieved my Smash Ultimate goal of getting to Elite Smash with Byleth tonight! ...granted, that patch that added Small Battlefield also slightly lowered the rank threshold to qualify for Elite Smash, but eh, I'm not going to worry about the difference between being in the top 5% and the top 3.5%.

That accomplished, I think I need to move to another fighting game for a while, because Smash's online is rough, and I can only take so much of it at this point. Actually thinking about dusting off Soul Calibur 6 for the first time... well, since Smash Ultimate came out, actually. A recent update to that added the option to disable outfit destruction, which I've never really liked personally, and I never did pick up and try 2B after they put her in the game.

[factotum]

Spoiler: Spoiler for "The Answer" post-game story from P3FES, in case you intend to play that.

Show

(s)he actually dies because of saving the world, not despite it. "The Answer" reveals that the main character's soul itself becomes the seal preventing Nyx from returning to our world. Because without something like that, Ryoji would've been right - she would have been unstoppable. Because she's Death, so you can't kill her. The only thing that even kept him/her alive after the fight with Nyx was the promise to be there with the rest of the group on that last day of school.

Version I played was PSP one, so it doesn't have "The Answer", but I watched a video on Youtube that put all the cinematics from that together to tell the story. Overall, I think that actually makes things worse:

Spoiler

Show

The guy isn't just dead, in which case you could at least think he's hanging out with Shinji in a Heavenly boxing ring, he's spending a large chunk of eternity preventing Mankind's distorted desires from triggering the apocalypse. Pretty heavy fate for a 17-year-old, really.

[warty goblin]

I picked up Anthem the other day for $10, and finally gave it a spin last night, after a lot of downloading. Since this was Origin's play-while-still-downloading trick, I could only do the two intro missions so far.

It's, hmmm. Graphically it looks a real treat, although I noticed enemies had a weird tendency to just stop animating before disappearing when I killed them. Not fall over, just freeze then disappear. This could be due to the game being half downloaded though, I'll have wait and see.

The gunplay is fine, but definitely nothing really above average. If you've played a console third person shooter in the last 5 years, you'll be very unsurprised. You also get some special abilities, which so far consist of a grenade with the impact of a dry fart, a homing rocket that is fine but very forgettable, and the post-MOBA industry mandated ultimate ability. This causes a gratifyingly large explosion, but was completely pointless in the two intro scenarios.

This is because the intro missions are... not the greatest. The first one bombards you with a whole host of Proper Noun Fantasy Babble, which is probably supposed to feel epic. Since the idea of a world abandoned by its gods, who left all their divine power tools running and constantly remaking the landscape is pretty cool, it partially succeeds.

The sticking point is that the mission itself consists of watching other people do cool stuff in cutscenes, and walking around shooting bugs. If you're gonna lean this hard on the epic waa-waa pedal, I should be doing epic stuff, not shooting weakass bugs on foot like a peon.

Then the game decides that you've failed the cutscene, and so don't stop the apocalypse. Years pass, and the city turns its backs on the semi-mythic dudes in power armor for failing to protect them from said apocalypse, which doesn't seem to actually be doing all that much. You get sent out to do something involving standing next to things while... shooting more goddamn bugs. At least they let you fly now, and flying is legit cool and feels good. Of course being the first cool thing the game has actually allowed me to do, it's introduced with roughly the impact of going to the grocery store.

After standing next to three things, you go to different thing and have to pick up some glowy key things to open a door. This is fine, if rote as hell, and the in game explanation is a laughable collection of more uncontextualized fantasy nonsense. Then you fly through some non interactive but very cool environments to shut down another apocalypse. Queue more shiny key things, which set off a big particle effect that spawns enemies. A lot of them are wolves, and functionally identical to bugs. Some of them freeze you in place though, so it changes things up a bit. You have to pick up another 3 things to stop the particle effect, which causes a cutscene where it almost spawns a big boss monster that might have been vaguely challenging to fight.

And all through mission 2 your radio mission guy and you kept up this wretched nonstop prattle of horrible "relatably humorous banter." This was both annoying in it's own right, and undermined any sense of awe, wonder or mystery the game could have built.

So overall so far, eh. Mechanically it's fine, but with really uninteresting mission design. The writing is boring, and it seems oddly reluctant to actually let me do anything. There was a whole lot cutscene, and a whole lot that wasn't exposition or world building, it was watching people do gameplay stuff.

[Man_Over_Game]

I picked up Anthem the other day for $10, and finally gave it a spin last night, after a lot of downloading. Since this was Origin's play-while-still-downloading trick, I could only do the two intro missions so far.

I tried to get into it. One thing that frustrated me is that the game doesn't scale the number of enemies down very well, and so my super fast assassin suit wasn't very good at doing anything solo. Problem is, it sometimes takes 15 minutes to get anyone willing to do a 20 minute mission, so I end up basically dashing in to kill one enemy, running away to heal, and very slowly pick them off.

On top of that, my gameplay was incredibly boring and straightforward. Sure, I moved really fast and was super agile and stuff, but my combos and strategies were the same for every single fight, so even that got old.

[Anteros]

I picked up Total War Troy for free. It honestly seems like a massive step backwards from Three Kingdoms. I know I can't complain about a free game, but this franchise has so much potential. I'd really like to see them actually evolve and make games again instead of just re-skinning the game game every year like it's Fifa or Madden. They do the bare minimum they can get away with and it shows.

[Zevox]

Version I played was PSP one, so it doesn't have "The Answer", but I watched a video on Youtube that put all the cinematics from that together to tell the story. Overall, I think that actually makes things worse:

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The guy isn't just dead, in which case you could at least think he's hanging out with Shinji in a Heavenly boxing ring, he's spending a large chunk of eternity preventing Mankind's distorted desires from triggering the apocalypse. Pretty heavy fate for a 17-year-old, really.

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Oh, for sure. It's definitely among the most bittersweet endings to an RPG out there.

Though technically it's possible (s)he'll get saved in a future game. Elizabeth left the Velvet Room to try to find a way to save him/her without releasing Nyx (IIRC Margaret alludes to this in P4, and they made it explicit in Persona 4 Arena), so that is a plot hook they've got out there. But I kind of doubt she'll ever accomplish that. Seems more like they're using it as an excuse to have her pop up in the Arena games' story modes at random times. Though I suppose if they ever really want to add the P3 MC(s) to a future Arena game, having her figure out a way to do that is an option - but with how much the franchise seems to stick to character deaths, and how thematic that one is to P3 in particular, I'd still bet against it.

[Anteros]

I started a new hardcore run of Subnautica...and there's Sandsharks in the shallows for me. I know sometimes animals move around over the course of the game, but this is the first time I've ever seen something blatantly in the wrong place at the start of a new file.

On the one hand, it's somewhat interesting, and makes the early game more dangerous, which is good. On the other hand, they're loud and annoying and I don't know that I want them near my starter base. I'm thinking of restarting.

[Zombimode]

I picked up Total War Troy for free. It honestly seems like a massive step backwards from Three Kingdoms. I know I can't complain about a free game, but this franchise has so much potential. I'd really like to see them actually evolve and make games again instead of just re-skinning the game game every year like it's Fifa or Madden. They do the bare minimum they can get away with and it shows.

I have zero interest in Troy so I can't comment your impression of the game, but the Warhammer series at least is a true labor of love.

[Narkis]

I picked up Total War Troy for free. It honestly seems like a massive step backwards from Three Kingdoms. I know I can't complain about a free game, but this franchise has so much potential. I'd really like to see them actually evolve and make games again instead of just re-skinning the game game every year like it's Fifa or Madden. They do the bare minimum they can get away with and it shows.

It wasn't made by the same guys as Three Kingdoms, afaik. Troy was developed by the B-team, the same one that made Britannia. And yeah, it shows.